Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete

By John Addington Symonds

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Title: Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece
       Series I, II, and III

Author: John Symonds

Release Date: July 22, 2006 [eBook #18893]
[Most recently updated: October 17, 2021]

Language: English


Produced by: Turgut Dincer, Ted Garvin, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY AND GREECE ***

[Illustration]




Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece

by John Addington Symonds


Contents

 VOLUME I.
 THE LOVE OF THE ALPS
 WINTER NIGHTS AT DAVOS
 BACCHUS IN GRAUBÜNDEN
 OLD TOWNS OF PROVENCE
 THE CORNICE
 AJACCIO
 MONTE GENEROSO
 LOMBARD VIGNETTES
 COMO AND IL MEDEGHINO
 BERGAMO AND BARTOLOMMEO COLLEONI
 CREMA AND THE CRUCIFIX
 CHERUBINO AT THE SCALA THEATRE
 A VENETIAN MEDLEY
 THE GONDOLIER'S WEDDING
 A CINQUE CENTO BRUTUS
 TWO DRAMATISTS OF THE LAST CENTURY

 VOLUME II.
 RAVENNA
 RIMINI
 MAY IN UMBRIA
 THE PALACE OF URBINO
 VITTORIA ACCORAMBONI
 AUTUMN WANDERINGS
 PARMA
 CANOSSA
 FORNOVO
 FLORENCE AND THE MEDICI
 THE DEBT OF ENGLISH TO ITALIAN LITERATURE
 POPULAR SONGS OF TUSCANY
 POPULAR ITALIAN POETRY OF THE RENAISSANCE
 THE ‘ORFEO’ OF POLIZIANO
 EIGHT SONNETS OF PETRARCH

 VOLUME III.
 FOLGORE DA SAN GEMIGNANO
 THOUGHTS IN ITALY ABOUT CHRISTMAS
 SIENA
 MONTE OLIVETO
 MONTEPULCIANO
 PERUGIA
 ORVIETO
 LUCRETIUS
 ANTINOUS
 SPRING WANDERINGS
 AMALFI, PÆSTUM, CAPRI
 ETNA
 PALERMO
 SYRACUSE AND GIRGENTI
 ATHENS
 INDEX FOR ALL THREE VOLUMES




PREFATORY NOTE


In preparing this new edition of the late J.A. Symonds's three volumes
of travels, 'Sketches in Italy and Greece,' 'Sketches and Studies in
Italy,' and 'Italian Byways,' nothing has been changed except the order
of the Essays. For the convenience of travellers a topographical
arrangement has been adopted. This implied a new title to cover the
contents of all three volumes, and 'Sketches and Studies in Italy and
Greece' has been chosen as departing least from the author's own
phraseology.

HORATIO F. BROWN.

Venice: _June_ 1898.




SKETCHES AND STUDIES
IN
ITALY AND GREECE




VOLUME I.




THE LOVE OF THE ALPS[1]


Of all the joys in life, none is greater than the joy of arriving on
the outskirts of Switzerland at the end of a long dusty day's journey
from Paris. The true epicure in refined pleasures will never travel to
Basle by night. He courts the heat of the sun and the monotony of
French plains,—their sluggish streams and never-ending poplar trees—for
the sake of the evening coolness and the gradual approach to the great
Alps, which await him at the close of the day. It is about Mulhausen
that he begins to feel a change in the landscape. The fields broaden
into rolling downs, watered by clear and running streams; the green
Swiss thistle grows by riverside and cowshed; pines begin to tuft the
slopes of gently rising hills; and now the sun has set, the stars come
2out, first Hesper, then the troop of lesser lights; and he feels—yes,
indeed, there is now no mistake—the well-known, well-loved magical
fresh air, that never fails to blow from snowy mountains and meadows
watered by perennial streams. The last hour is one of exquisite
enjoyment, and when he reaches Basle, he scarcely sleeps all night for
hearing the swift Rhine beneath the balconies, and knowing that the
moon is shining on its waters, through the town, beneath the bridges,
between pasture-lands and copses, up the still mountain-girdled valleys
to the ice-caves where the water springs. There is nothing in all
experience of travelling like this. We may greet the Mediterranean at
Marseilles with enthusiasm; on entering Rome by the Porta del Popolo,
we may reflect with pride that we have reached the goal of our
pilgrimage, and are at last among world-shaking memories. But neither
Rome nor the Riviera wins our hearts like Switzerland. We do not lie
awake in London thinking of them; we do not long so intensely, as the
year comes round, to revisit them. Our affection is less a passion than
that which we cherish for Switzerland.

 [1] This Essay was written in 1866, and published in 1867. Reprinting
 it in 1879, after eighteen months spent continuously in one high
 valley of the Grisons, I feel how slight it is. For some amends, I
 take this opportunity of printing at the end of it a description of
 Davos in winter.

Why, then, is this? What, after all, is the love of the Alps, and when
and where did it begin? It is easier to ask these questions than to
answer them. The classic nations hated mountains. Greek and Roman poets
talk of them with disgust and dread. Nothing could have been more
depressing to a courtier of Augustus than residence at Aosta, even
though he found his theatres and triumphal arches there. Wherever
classical feeling has predominated, this has been the case. Cellini's
Memoirs, written in the height of pagan Renaissance, well express the
aversion which a Florentine or Roman felt for the inhospitable
wildernesses of Switzerland.[2] Dryden, in his dedication to 'The
Indian 3Emperor,' says, 'High objects, it is true, attract the sight;
but it looks up with pain on craggy rocks and barren mountains, and
continues not intent on any object which is wanting in shades and green
to entertain it.' Addison and Gray had no better epithets than
'rugged,' 'horrid,' and the like for Alpine landscape. The classic
spirit was adverse to enthusiasm for mere nature. Humanity was too
prominent, and city life absorbed all interests,—not to speak of what
perhaps is the weightiest reason—that solitude, indifferent
accommodation, and imperfect means of travelling, rendered mountainous
countries peculiarly disagreeable. It is impossible to enjoy art or
nature while suffering from fatigue and cold, dreading the attacks of
robbers, and wondering whether you will find food and shelter at the
end of your day's journey. Nor was it different in the Middle Ages.
Then individuals had either no leisure from war or strife with the
elements, or else they devoted themselves to the salvation of their
souls. But when the ideas of the Middle Ages had decayed, when improved
arts of life had freed men from servile subjection to daily needs, when
the bondage of religious tyranny had been thrown off and political
liberty allowed the full development of tastes and instincts, when,
moreover, the classical traditions had lost their power, and courts and
coteries became too narrow for the activity of man,—then suddenly it
was discovered that Nature in herself possessed transcendent charms. It
may seem absurd to class them all together; yet there is no doubt that
the French Revolution, the criticism of the Bible, Pantheistic forms of
religious feeling, landscape-painting, Alpine travelling, and the
poetry of Nature, are all signs of the same movement—of a new
Renaissance. Limitations of every sort have been shaken off during the
last century; all forms have been destroyed, all questions asked. The
classical spirit loved to 4arrange, model, preserve traditions, obey
laws. We are intolerant of everything that is not simple, unbiassed by
prescription, liberal as the wind, and natural as the mountain crags.
We go to feed this spirit of freedom among the Alps. What the virgin
forests of America are to the Americans, the Alps are to us. What there
is in these huge blocks and walls of granite crowned with ice that
fascinates us, it is hard to analyse. Why, seeing that we find them so
attractive, they should have repelled our ancestors of the fourth
generation and all the world before them, is another mystery. We cannot
explain what rapport there is between our human souls and these
inequalities in the surface of the earth which we call Alps. Tennyson
speaks of

Some vague emotion of delight
In gazing up an Alpine height,


and its vagueness eludes definition. The interest which physical
science has created for natural objects has something to do with it.
Curiosity and the charm of novelty increase this interest. No towns, no
cultivated tracts of Europe however beautiful, form such a contrast to
our London life as Switzerland. Then there is the health and joy that
comes from exercise in open air; the senses freshened by good sleep;
the blood quickened by a lighter and rarer atmosphere. Our modes of
life, the breaking down of class privileges, the extension of
education, which contribute to make the individual greater and society
less, render the solitude of mountains refreshing. Facilities of
travelling and improved accommodation leave us free to enjoy the
natural beauty which we seek. Our minds, too, are prepared to
sympathise with the inanimate world; we have learned to look on the
universe as a whole, and ourselves as a part of it, related by close
ties of friendship to all its other members 5Shelley's, Wordsworth's,
Goethe's poetry has taught us this; we are all more or less Pantheists,
worshippers of 'God in Nature,' convinced of the omnipresence of the
informing mind.

 [2] See, however, what is said about Leo Battista Alberti in the
 sketch of Rimini in the second series.

Thus, when we admire the Alps, we are after all but children of the
century. We follow its inspiration blindly; and while we think
ourselves spontaneous in our ecstasy, perform the part for which we
have been trained from childhood by the atmosphere in which we live. It
is this very unconsciousness and universality of the impulse we obey
which makes it hard to analyse. Contemporary history is difficult to
write; to define the spirit of the age in which we live is still more
difficult; to account for 'impressions which owe all their force to
their identity with themselves' is most difficult of all. We must be
content to feel, and not to analyse.

Rousseau has the credit of having invented the love of Nature. Perhaps
he first expressed, in literature, the pleasures of open life among the
mountains, of walking tours, of the '_école buissonnière_,' away from
courts, and schools, and cities, which it is the fashion now to love.
His bourgeois birth and tastes, his peculiar religious and social
views, his intense self-engrossment,—all favoured the development of
Nature-worship. But Rousseau was not alone, nor yet creative, in this
instance. He was but one of the earliest to seize and express a new
idea of growing humanity. For those who seem to be the most original in
their inauguration of periods are only such as have been favourably
placed by birth and education to imbibe the floating creeds of the
whole race. They resemble the first cases of an epidemic, which become
the centres of infection and propagate disease. At the time of
Rousseau's greatness the French people were initiative. In politics, in
literature, in fashions, and in 6philosophy, they had for some time led
the taste of Europe. But the sentiment which first received a clear and
powerful expression in the works of Rousseau, soon declared itself in
the arts and literature of other nations. Goethe, Wordsworth, and the
earlier landscape-painters, proved that Germany and England were not
far behind the French. In England this love of Nature for its own sake
is indigenous, and has at all times been peculiarly characteristic of
our genius. Therefore it is not surprising that our life and literature
and art have been foremost in developing the sentiment of which we are
speaking. Our poets, painters, and prose writers gave the tone to
European thought in this respect. Our travellers in search of the
adventurous and picturesque, our Alpine Club, have made of Switzerland
an English playground.

The greatest period in our history was but a foreshadowing of this. To
return to Nature-worship was but to reassume the habits of the
Elizabethan age, altered indeed by all the changes of religion,
politics, society, and science which the last three centuries have
wrought, yet still, in its original love of free open life among the
fields and woods, and on the sea, the same. Now the French national
genius is classical. It reverts to the age of Louis XIV., and
Rousseauism in their literature is as true an innovation and
parenthesis as Pope-and-Drydenism was in ours. As in the age of the
Reformation, so in this, the German element of the modern character
predominates. During the two centuries from which we have emerged, the
Latin element had the upper hand. Our love of the Alps is a Gothic, a
Teutonic, instinct; sympathetic with all that is vague, infinite, and
insubordinate to rules, at war with all that is defined and systematic
in our genius. This we may perceive in individuals as well as in the
broader aspects of arts and literatures. The classically minded man,
the reader of Latin poets, the lover 7of brilliant conversation, the
frequenter of clubs and drawing-rooms, nice in his personal
requirements, scrupulous in his choice of words, averse to unnecessary
physical exertion, preferring town to country life, _cannot_ deeply
feel the charm of the Alps. Such a man will dislike German art, and
however much he may strive to be Catholic in his tastes, will find as
he grows older that his liking for Gothic architecture and modern
painting diminish almost to aversion before an increasing admiration
for Greek peristyles and the Medicean Venus. If in respect of
speculation all men are either Platonists or Aristotelians, in respect
of taste all men are either Greek or German.

At present the German, the indefinite, the natural, commands; the
Greek, the finite, the cultivated, is in abeyance. We who talk so much
about the feeling of the Alps, are creatures, not creators of our
_cultus_,—a strange reflection, proving how much greater man is than
men, the common reason of the age in which we live than our own
reasons, its constituents and subjects.

Perhaps it is our modern tendency to 'individualism' which makes the
Alps so much to us. Society is there reduced to a vanishing point—no
claims are made on human sympathies—there is no need to toil in
yoke-service with our fellows. We may be alone, dream our own dreams,
and sound the depths of personality without the reproach of
selfishness, without a restless wish to join in action or money-making
or the pursuit of fame. To habitual residents among the Alps this
absence of social duties and advantages may be barbarising, even
brutalising. But to men wearied with too much civilisation, and
deafened by the noise of great cities, it is beyond measure refreshing.
Then, again, among the mountains history finds no place. The Alps have
no past nor present nor future. The human beings who live upon their
sides are at odds 8with nature, clinging on for bare existence to the
soil, sheltering themselves beneath protecting rocks from avalanches,
damming up destructive streams, all but annihilated every spring. Man,
who is paramount in the plain, is nothing here. His arts and sciences,
and dynasties, and modes of life, and mighty works, and conquests and
decays, demand our whole attention in Italy or Egypt. But here the
mountains, immemorially the same, which were, which are, and which are
to be, present a theatre on which the soul breathes freely and feels
herself alone. Around her on all sides is God, and Nature, who is here
the face of God and not the slave of man. The spirit of the world hath
here not yet grown old. She is as young as on the first day; and the
Alps are a symbol of the self-creating, self-sufficing, self-enjoying
universe which lives for its own ends. For why do the slopes gleam with
flowers, and the hillsides deck themselves with grass, and the
inaccessible ledges of black rock bear their tufts of crimson primroses
and flaunting tiger-lilies? Why, morning after morning, does the red
dawn flush the pinnacles of Monte Rosa above cloud and mist unheeded?
Why does the torrent shout, the avalanche reply in thunder to the music
of the sun, the trees and rocks and meadows cry their 'Holy, Holy,
Holy'? Surely not for us. We are an accident here, and even the few men
whose eyes are fixed habitually upon these things are dead to them—the
peasants do not even know the names of their own flowers, and sigh with
envy when you tell them of the plains of Lincolnshire or Russian
steppes.

But indeed there is something awful in the Alpine elevation above human
things. We do not love Switzerland merely because we associate its
thought with recollections of holidays and joyfulness. Some of the most
solemn moments of life are spent high up above among the mountains, on
the barren tops of rocky passes, where the soul has seemed to hear in
solitude 9a low controlling voice. It is almost necessary for the
development of our deepest affections that some sad and sombre moments
should be interchanged with hours of merriment and elasticity. It is
this variety in the woof of daily life which endears our home to us;
and perhaps none have fully loved the Alps who have not spent some days
of meditation, or it may be of sorrow, among their solitudes. Splendid
scenery, like music, has the power to make 'of grief itself a fiery
chariot for mounting above the sources of grief,' to ennoble and refine
our passions, and to teach us that our lives are merely moments in the
years of the eternal Being. There are many, perhaps, who, within sight
of some great scene among the Alps, upon the height of the Stelvio or
the slopes of Mürren, or at night in the valley of Courmayeur, have
felt themselves raised above cares and doubts and miseries by the mere
recognition of unchangeable magnificence; have found a deep peace in
the sense of their own nothingness. It is not granted to us everyday to
stand upon these pinnacles of rest and faith above the world. But
having once stood there, how can we forget the station? How can we
fail, amid the tumult of our common cares, to feel at times the hush of
that far-off tranquillity? When our life is most commonplace, when we
are ill or weary in city streets, we can remember the clouds upon the
mountains we have seen, the sound of innumerable waterfalls, and the
scent of countless flowers. A photograph of Bisson's or of Braun's, the
name of some well-known valley, the picture of some Alpine plant,
rouses the sacred hunger in our souls, and stirs again the faith in
beauty and in rest beyond ourselves which no man can take from us. We
owe a deep debt of gratitude to everything which enables us to rise
above depressing and enslaving circumstances, which brings us nearer in
some way or other to what is eternal in the universe, and which makes
us know 10that, whether we live or die, suffer or enjoy, life and
gladness are still strong in the world. On this account, the proper
attitude of the soul among the Alps is one of silence. It is almost
impossible without a kind of impiety to frame in words the feelings
they inspire. Yet there are some sayings, hallowed by long usage, which
throng the mind through a whole summer's day, and seem in harmony with
its emotions—some portions of the Psalms or lines of greatest poets,
inarticulate hymns of Beethoven and Mendelssohn, waifs and strays not
always apposite, but linked by strong and subtle chains of feeling with
the grandeur of the mountains. This reverential feeling for the Alps is
connected with the Pantheistic form of our religious sentiments to
which I have before alluded. It is a trite remark, that even devout men
of the present generation prefer temples _not_ made with hands to
churches, and worship God in the fields more contentedly than in their
pews. What Mr. Ruskin calls 'the instinctive sense of the divine
presence not formed into distinct belief' lies at the root of our
profound veneration for the nobler aspects of mountain scenery. This
instinctive sense has been very variously expressed by Goethe in
Faust's celebrated confession of faith, by Shelley in the stanzas of
'Adonais,' which begin 'He is made one with nature,' by Wordsworth in
the lines on Tintern Abbey, and lately by Mr. Roden Noel in his noble
poems of Pantheism. It is more or less strongly felt by all who have
recognised the indubitable fact that religious belief is undergoing a
sure process of change from the dogmatic distinctness of the past to
some at present dimly descried creed of the future. Such periods of
transition are of necessity full of discomfort, doubt, and anxiety,
vague, variable, and unsatisfying. The men in whose spirits the
fermentation of the change is felt, who have abandoned their old
moorings, and have not yet 11reached the haven for which they are
steering, cannot but be indistinct and undecided in their faith. The
universe of which they form a part becomes important to them in its
infinite immensity. The principles of beauty, goodness, order and law,
no longer connected in their minds with definite articles of faith,
find symbols in the outer world. They are glad to fly at certain
moments from mankind and its oppressive problems, for which religion no
longer provides a satisfactory solution, to Nature, where they vaguely
localise the spirit that broods over us controlling all our being. To
such men Goethe's hymn is a form of faith, and born of such a mood are
the following far humbler verses:—

At Mürren let the morning lead thee out
    To walk upon the cold and cloven hills,
To hear the congregated mountains shout
    Their pæan of a thousand foaming rills.
Raimented with intolerable light
    The snow-peaks stand above thee, row on row
Arising, each a seraph in his might;
    An organ each of varied stop doth blow.
Heaven's azure dome trembles through all her spheres,
    Feeling that music vibrate; and the sun
Raises his tenor as he upward steers,
    And all the glory-coated mists that run
Below him in the valley, hear his voice,
And cry unto the dewy fields, Rejoice!


There is a profound sympathy between music and fine scenery: they both
affect us in the same way, stirring strong but undefined emotions,
which express themselves in 'idle tears,' or evoking thoughts 'which
lie,' as Wordsworth says, 'too deep for tears,' beyond the reach of any
words. How little we know what multitudes of mingling reminiscences,
held in solution by the mind, and colouring its fancy with the
iridescence of variable hues, go to make up the sentiments 12which
music or which mountains stir! It is the very vagueness, changefulness,
and dreamlike indistinctness of these feelings which cause their charm;
they harmonise with the haziness of our beliefs and seem to make our
very doubts melodious. For this reason it is obvious that unrestrained
indulgence in the pleasures of music or of scenery may tend to destroy
habits of clear thinking, sentimentalise the mind, and render it more
apt to entertain embryonic fancies than to bring ideas to definite
perfection.

If hours of thoughtfulness and seclusion are necessary to the
development of a true love for the Alps, it is no less essential to a
right understanding of their beauty that we should pass some wet and
gloomy days among the mountains. The unclouded sunsets and sunrises
which often follow one another in September in the Alps, have something
terrible. They produce a satiety of splendour, and oppress the mind
with a sense of perpetuity. I remember spending such a season in one of
the Oberland valleys, high up above the pine-trees, in a little châlet.
Morning after morning I awoke to see the sunbeams glittering on the
Eiger and the Jungfrau; noon after noon the snow-fields blazed beneath
a steady fire; evening after evening they shone like beacons in the red
light of the setting sun. Then peak by peak they lost the glow; the
soul passed from them, and they stood pale yet weirdly garish against
the darkened sky. The stars came out, the moon shone, but not a cloud
sailed over the untroubled heavens. Thus day after day for several
weeks there was no change, till I was seized with an overpowering
horror of unbroken calm. I left the valley for a time; and when I
returned to it in wind and rain, I found that the partial veiling of
the mountain heights restored the charm which I had lost and made me
feel once more at home. The landscape takes a graver tone beneath the
mist that hides the higher 13peaks, and comes drifting, creeping,
feeling, through the pines upon their slopes—white, silent, blinding
vapour-wreaths around the sable spires. Sometimes the cloud descends
and blots out everything. Again it lifts a little, showing cottages and
distant Alps beneath its skirts. Then it sweeps over the whole valley
like a veil, just broken here and there above a lonely châlet or a
thread of distant dangling torrent foam. Sounds, too, beneath the mist
are more strange. The torrent seems to have a hoarser voice and grinds
the stones more passionately against its boulders. The cry of shepherds
through the fog suggests the loneliness and danger of the hills. The
bleating of penned sheep or goats, and the tinkling of the cowbells,
are mysteriously distant and yet distinct in the dull dead air. Then,
again, how immeasurably high above our heads appear the domes and peaks
of snow revealed through chasms in the drifting cloud; how desolate the
glaciers and the avalanches in gleams of light that struggle through
the mist! There is a leaden glare peculiar to clouds, which makes the
snow and ice more lurid. Not far from the house where I am writing, the
avalanche that swept away the bridge last winter is lying now, dripping
away, dank and dirty, like a rotting whale. I can see it from my
window, green beech-boughs nodding over it, forlorn larches bending
their tattered branches by its side, splinters of broken pine
protruding from its muddy caves, the boulders on its flank, and the
hoarse hungry torrent tossing up its tongues to lick the ragged edge of
snow. Close by, the meadows, spangled with yellow flowers and red and
blue, look even more brilliant than if the sun were shining on them.
Every cup and blade of grass is drinking. But the scene changes; the
mist has turned into rain-clouds, and the steady rain drips down,
incessant, blotting out the view. Then, too, what a joy it is if the
clouds break towards evening with a north wind, and a rainbow in 14the
valley gives promise of a bright to-morrow! We look up to the cliffs
above our heads, and see that they have just been powdered with the
snow that is a sign of better weather.

Such rainy days ought to be spent in places like Seelisberg and Mürren,
at the edge of precipices, in front of mountains, or above a lake. The
cloud-masses crawl and tumble about the valleys like a brood of
dragons; now creeping along the ledges of the rock with sinuous
self-adjustment to its turns and twists; now launching out into the
deep, repelled by battling winds, or driven onward in a coil of twisted
and contorted serpent curls. In the midst of summer these wet seasons
often end in a heavy fall of snow. You wake some morning to see the
meadows which last night were gay with July flowers huddled up in snow
a foot in depth. But fair weather does not tarry long to reappear. You
put on your thickest boots and sally forth to find the great cups of
the gentians full of snow, and to watch the rising of the cloud-wreaths
under the hot sun. Bad dreams or sickly thoughts, dissipated by
returning daylight or a friend's face, do not fly away more rapidly and
pleasantly than those swift glory-coated mists that lose themselves we
know not where in the blue depths of the sky.

In contrast with these rainy days nothing can be more perfect than
clear moonlight nights. There is a terrace upon the roof of the inn at
Courmayeur where one may spend hours in the silent watches, when all
the world has gone to sleep beneath. The Mont Chétif and the Mont de la
Saxe form a gigantic portal not unworthy of the pile that lies beyond.
For Mont Blanc resembles a vast cathedral; its countless spires are
scattered over a mass like that of the Duomo at Milan, rising into one
tower at the end. By night the glaciers glitter in the steady moon;
domes, pinnacles, and buttresses stand 15clear of clouds. Needles of
every height and most fantastic shapes rise from the central ridge,
some solitary, like sharp arrows shot against the sky, some clustering
into sheaves. On every horn of snow and bank of grassy hill stars
sparkle, rising, setting, rolling round through the long silent night.
Moonlight simplifies and softens the landscape. Colours become scarcely
distinguishable, and forms, deprived of half their detail, gain in
majesty and size. The mountains seem greater far by night than
day—higher heights and deeper depths, more snowy pyramids, more
beetling crags, softer meadows, and darker pines. The whole valley is
hushed, but for the torrent and the chirping grasshopper and the
striking of the village clocks. The black tower and the houses of
Courmayeur in the foreground gleam beneath the moon until she reaches
the edge of the Cramont, and then sinks quietly away, once more to
reappear among the pines, then finally to leave the valley dark beneath
the shadow of the mountain's bulk. Meanwhile the heights of snow still
glitter in the steady light: they, too, will soon be dark, until the
dawn breaks, tinging them with rose.

But it is not fair to dwell exclusively upon the more sombre aspect of
Swiss beauty when there are so many lively scenes of which to speak.
The sunlight and the freshness and the flowers of Alpine meadows form
more than half the charm of Switzerland. The other day we walked to a
pasture called the Col de Checruit, high up the valley of Courmayeur,
where the spring was still in its first freshness. Gradually we
climbed, by dusty roads and through hot fields where the grass had just
been mown, beneath the fierce light of the morning sun. Not a breath of
air was stirring, and the heavy pines hung overhead upon their crags,
as if to fence the gorge from every wandering breeze. There is nothing
more oppressive than these scorching sides of narrow rifts, shut in by
woods 16and precipices. But suddenly the valley broadened, the pines
and larches disappeared, and we found ourselves upon a wide green
semicircle of the softest meadows. Little rills of water went rushing
through them, rippling over pebbles, rustling under dock leaves, and
eddying against their wooden barriers. Far and wide 'you scarce could
see the grass for flowers,' while on every side the tinkling of
cow-bells, and the voices of shepherds calling to one another from the
Alps, or singing at their work, were borne across the fields. As we
climbed we came into still fresher pastures, where the snow had
scarcely melted. There the goats and cattle were collected, and the
shepherds sat among them, fondling the kids and calling them by name.
When they called, the creatures came, expecting salt and bread. It was
pretty to see them lying near their masters, playing and butting at
them with their horns, or bleating for the sweet rye-bread. The women
knitted stockings, laughing among themselves, and singing all the
while. As soon as we reached them, they gathered round to talk. An old
herdsman, who was clearly the patriarch of this Arcadia, asked us many
questions in a slow deliberate voice. We told him who we were, and
tried to interest him in the cattle-plague, which he appeared to regard
as an evil very unreal and far away—like the murrain upon Pharaoh's
herds which one reads about in Exodus. But he was courteous and polite,
doing the honours of his pasture with simplicity and ease. He took us
to his châlet and gave us bowls of pure cold milk. It was a funny
little wooden house, clean and dark. The sky peeped through its tiles,
and if shepherds were not in the habit of sleeping soundly all night
long, they might count the setting and rising stars without lifting
their heads from the pillow. He told us how far pleasanter they found
the summer season than the long cold winter which they have to spend in
gloomy houses in Courmayeur. This, indeed, is 17the true pastoral life
which poets have described—a happy summer holiday among the flowers,
well occupied with simple cares, and harassed by 'no enemy but winter
and rough weather.'

Very much of the charm of Switzerland belongs to simple things—to
greetings from the herdsmen, the 'Guten Morgen,' and 'Guten Abend,'
that are invariably given and taken upon mountain paths; to the tame
creatures, with their large dark eyes, who raise their heads one moment
from the pasture while you pass; and to the plants that grow beneath
your feet. The latter end of May is the time when spring begins in the
high Alps. Wherever sunlight smiles away a patch of snow, the brown
turf soon becomes green velvet, and the velvet stars itself with red
and white and gold and blue. You almost see the grass and lilies grow.
First come pale crocuses and lilac soldanellas. These break the last
dissolving clods of snow, and stand upon an island, with the cold wall
they have thawed all round them. It is the fate of these poor flowers
to spring and flourish on the very skirts of retreating winter; they
soon wither—the frilled chalice of the soldanella shrivels up and the
crocus fades away before the grass has grown; the sun, which is
bringing all the other plants to life, scorches their tender petals.
Often when summer has fairly come, you still may see their pearly cups
and lilac bells by the side of avalanches, between the chill snow and
the fiery sun, blooming and fading hour by hour. They have as it were
but a Pisgah view of the promised land, of the spring which they are
foremost to proclaim. Next come the clumsy gentians and yellow
anemones, covered with soft down like fledgling birds. These are among
the earliest and hardiest blossoms that embroider the high meadows with
a diaper of blue and gold. About the same time primroses and auriculas
begin to tuft the dripping rocks, while frail white fleur-de-lis,
18like flakes of snow forgotten by the sun, and golden-balled
ranunculuses join with forget-me-nots and cranesbill in a never-ending
dance upon the grassy floor. Happy, too, is he who finds the
lilies-of-the-valley clustering about the chestnut boles upon the
Colma, or in the beechwood by the stream at Macugnaga, mixed with
garnet-coloured columbines and fragrant white narcissus, which the
people of the villages call 'Angiolini.' There, too, is Solomon's seal,
with waxen bells and leaves expanded like the wings of hovering
butterflies. But these lists of flowers are tiresome and cold; it would
be better to draw the portrait of one which is particularly
fascinating. I think that botanists have called it _Saxifraga
cotyledon_; yet, in spite of its long name, it is beautiful and poetic.
London-pride is the commonest of all the saxifrages; but the one of
which I speak is as different from London-pride as a Plantagenet upon
his throne from that last Plantagenet who died obscure and penniless
some years ago. It is a great majestic flower, which plumes the granite
rocks of Monte Rosa in the spring. At other times of the year you see a
little tuft of fleshy leaves set like a cushion on cold ledges and dark
places of dripping cliffs. You take it for a stonecrop—one of those
weeds doomed to obscurity, and safe from being picked because they are
so uninviting—and you pass it by incuriously. But about June it puts
forth its power, and from the cushion of pale leaves there springs a
strong pink stem, which rises upward for a while, and then curves down
and breaks into a shower of snow-white blossoms. Far away the splendour
gleams, hanging like a plume of ostrich-feathers from the roof of rock,
waving to the wind, or stooping down to touch the water of the mountain
stream that dashes it with dew. The snow at evening, glowing with a
sunset flush, is not more rosy-pure than this cascade of pendent
blossoms. It loves to be alone—inaccessible ledges, chasms where winds
combat, or 19moist caverns overarched near thundering falls, are the
places that it seeks. I will not compare it to a spirit of the
mountains or to a proud lonely soul, for such comparisons desecrate the
simplicity of nature, and no simile can add a glory to the flower. It
seems to have a conscious life of its own, so large and glorious it is,
so sensitive to every breath of air, so nobly placed upon its bending
stem, so royal in its solitude. I first saw it years ago on the
Simplon, feathering the drizzling crags above Isella. Then we found it
near Baveno, in a crack of sombre cliff beneath the mines. The other
day we cut an armful opposite Varallo, by the Sesia, and then felt like
murderers; it was so sad to hold in our hands the triumph of those many
patient months, the full expansive life of the flower, the splendour
visible from valleys and hillsides, the defenceless creature which had
done its best to make the gloomy places of the Alps most beautiful.

After passing many weeks among the high Alps it is a pleasure to
descend into the plains. The sunset, and sunrise, and the stars of
Lombardy, its level horizons and vague misty distances, are a source of
absolute relief after the narrow skies and embarrassed prospects of a
mountain valley. Nor are the Alps themselves ever more imposing than
when seen from Milan or the church-tower of Chivasso or the terrace of
Novara, with a foreground of Italian cornfields and old city towers and
rice-ground, golden-green beneath a Lombard sun. Half veiled by clouds,
the mountains rise like visionary fortress walls of a celestial
city—unapproachable, beyond the range of mortal feet. But those who
know by old experience what friendly châlets, and cool meadows, and
clear streams are hidden in their folds and valleys, send forth fond
thoughts and messages, like carrier-pigeons, from the marble parapets
of Milan, crying, 'Before another sun has set, I too shall rest beneath
the shadow of their pines!' It is in truth not more 20than a day's
journey from Milan to the brink of snow at Macugnaga. But very sad it
is to _leave_ the Alps, to stand upon the terraces of Berne and waft
ineffectual farewells. The unsympathising Aar rushes beneath; and the
snow-peaks, whom we love like friends, abide untroubled by the coming
and the going of the world. The clouds drift over them—the sunset warms
them with a fiery kiss. Night comes, and we are hurried far away to
wake beside the Seine, remembering, with a pang of jealous passion,
that the flowers on Alpine meadows are still blooming, and the rivulets
still flowing with a ceaseless song, while Paris shops are all we see,
and all we hear is the dull clatter of a Paris crowd.

THE ALPS IN WINTER

The gradual approach of winter is very lovely in the high Alps. The
valley of Davos, where I am writing, more than five thousand feet above
the sea, is not beautiful, as Alpine valleys go, though it has scenery
both picturesque and grand within easy reach. But when summer is
passing into autumn, even the bare slopes of the least romantic glen
are glorified. Golden lights and crimson are cast over the grey-green
world by the fading of innumerable plants. Then the larches begin to
put on sallow tints that deepen into orange, burning against the solid
blue sky like amber. The frosts are severe at night, and the meadow
grass turns dry and wan. The last lilac crocuses die upon the fields.
Icicles, hanging from watercourse or mill-wheel, glitter in the noonday
sunlight. The wind blows keenly from the north, and now the snow begins
to fall and thaw and freeze, and fall and thaw again. The seasons are
confused; wonderful days of flawless purity are 21intermingled with
storm and gloom. At last the time comes when a great snowfall has to be
expected. There is hard frost in the early morning, and at nine o'clock
the thermometer stands at 2°. The sky is clear, but it clouds rapidly
with films of cirrus and of stratus in the south and west. Soon it is
covered over with grey vapour in a level sheet, all the hill-tops
standing hard against the steely heavens. The cold wind from the west
freezes the moustache to one's pipe-stem. By noon the air is thick with
a coagulated mist; the temperature meanwhile has risen, and a little
snow falls at intervals. The valleys are filled with a curious opaque
blue, from which the peaks rise, phantom-like and pallid, into the grey
air, scarcely distinguishable from their background. The pine-forests
on the mountain-sides are of darkest indigo. There is an indescribable
stillness and a sense of incubation. The wind has fallen. Later on, the
snow-flakes flutter silently and sparely through the lifeless air. The
most distant landscape is quite blotted out. After sunset the clouds
have settled down upon the hills, and the snow comes in thick,
impenetrable fleeces. At night our hair crackles and sparkles when we
brush it. Next morning there is a foot and a half of finely powdered
snow, and still the snow is falling. Strangely loom the châlets through
the semi-solid whiteness. Yet the air is now dry and singularly
soothing. The pines are heavy with their wadded coverings; now and
again one shakes himself in silence, and his burden falls in a white
cloud, to leave a black-green patch upon the hillside, whitening again
as the imperturbable fall continues. The stakes by the roadside are
almost buried. No sound is audible. Nothing is seen but the
snow-plough, a long raft of planks with a heavy stone at its stem and a
sharp prow, drawn by four strong horses, and driven by a young man
erect upon the stem.

So we live through two days and nights, and on the third 22a north wind
blows. The snow-clouds break and hang upon the hills in scattered
fleeces; glimpses of blue sky shine through, and sunlight glints along
the heavy masses. The blues of the shadows are everywhere intense. As
the clouds disperse, they form in moulded domes, tawny like sunburned
marble in the distant south lands. Every châlet is a miracle of
fantastic curves, built by the heavy hanging snow. Snow lies mounded on
the roads and fields, writhed into loveliest wreaths, or outspread in
the softest undulations. All the irregularities of the hills are
softened into swelling billows like the mouldings of Titanic statuary.

It happened once or twice last winter that such a clearing after
snowfall took place at full moon. Then the moon rose in a swirl of
fleecy vapour—clouds above, beneath, and all around. The sky was blue
as steel, and infinitely deep with mist-entangled stars. The horn above
which she first appears stood carved of solid black, and through the
valley's length from end to end yawned chasms and clefts of liquid
darkness. As the moon rose, the clouds were conquered, and massed into
rolling waves upon the ridges of the hills. The spaces of open sky grew
still more blue. At last the silver light came flooding over all, and
here and there the fresh snow glistened on the crags. There is
movement, palpitation, life of light through earth and sky. To walk out
on such a night, when the perturbation of storm is over and the heavens
are free, is one of the greatest pleasures offered by this winter life.
It is so light that you can read the smallest print with ease. The
upper sky looks quite black, shading by violet and sapphire into
turquoise upon the horizon. There is the colour of ivory upon the
nearest snow-fields, and the distant peaks sparkle like silver,
crystals glitter in all directions on the surface of the snow, white,
yellow, and pale blue. The stars are exceedingly keen, but only a few
can shine in the intensity of moonlight. 23The air is perfectly still,
and though icicles may be hanging from beard and moustache to the furs
beneath one's chin, there is no sensation of extreme cold.

During the earlier frosts of the season, after the first snows have
fallen, but when there is still plenty of moisture in the ground, the
loveliest fern-fronds of pure rime may be found in myriads on the
meadows. They are fashioned like perfect vegetable structures, opening
fan-shaped upon crystal stems, and catching the sunbeams with the
brilliancy of diamonds. Taken at certain angles, they decompose light
into iridescent colours, appearing now like emeralds, rubies, or
topazes, and now like Labrador spar, blending all hues in a wondrous
sheen. When the lake freezes for the first time, its surface is of
course quite black, and so transparent that it is easy to see the
fishes swimming in the deep beneath; but here and there, where rime has
fallen, there sparkle these fantastic flowers and ferns and mosses made
of purest frost. Nothing, indeed, can be more fascinating than the new
world revealed by frost. In shaded places of the valley you may walk
through larches and leafless alder thickets by silent farms, all
silvered over with hoar spangles—fairy forests, where the flowers and
foliage are rime. The streams are flowing half-frozen over rocks
sheeted with opaque green ice. Here it is strange to watch the swirl of
water freeing itself from these frost-shackles, and to see it eddying
beneath the overhanging eaves of frailest crystal-frosted snow. All is
so silent, still, and weird in this white world, that one marvels when
the spirit of winter will appear, or what shrill voices in the air will
make his unimaginable magic audible. Nothing happens, however, to
disturb the charm, save when a sunbeam cuts the chain of diamonds on an
alder bough, and down they drift in a thin cloud of dust. It may be
also that the air is full of floating crystals, like tiniest most
restless fire-flies 24rising and falling and passing crosswise in the
sun-illumined shade of tree or mountain-side.

It is not easy to describe these beauties of the winter-world; and yet
one word must be said about the sunsets. Let us walk out, therefore,
towards the lake at four o'clock in mid-December. The thermometer is
standing at 3°, and there is neither breath of wind nor cloud. Venus is
just visible in rose and sapphire, and the thin young moon is beside
her. To east and south the snowy ranges burn with yellow fire,
deepening to orange and crimson hues, which die away and leave a
greenish pallor. At last, the higher snows alone are livid with a last
faint tinge of light, and all beneath is quite white. But the tide of
glory turns. While the west grows momently more pale, the eastern
heavens flush with afterglow, suffuse their spaces with pink and
violet. Daffodil and tenderest emerald intermingle; and these colours
spread until the west again has rose and primrose and sapphire
wonderfully blent, and from the burning skies a light is cast upon the
valley—a phantom light, less real, more like the hues of molten gems,
than were the stationary flames of sunset. Venus and the moon meanwhile
are silvery clear. Then the whole illumination fades like magic.

All the charms of which I have been writing are combined in a
sledge-drive. With an arrowy gliding motion one passes through the
snow-world as through a dream. In the sunlight the snow surface
sparkles with its myriad stars of crystals. In the shadow it ceases to
glitter, and assumes a blueness scarcely less blue than the sky. So the
journey is like sailing through alternate tracts of light irradiate
heavens, and interstellar spaces of the clearest and most flawless
ether. The air is like the keen air of the highest glaciers. As we go,
the bells keep up a drowsy tinkling at the horse's head. The whole
landscape is transfigured—lifted high up out of commonplaceness. 25The
little hills are Monte Rosas and Mont Blancs. Scale is annihilated, and
nothing tells but form. There is hardly any colour except the blue of
sky and shadow. Everything is traced in vanishing tints, passing from
the almost amber of the distant sunlight through glowing white into
pale greys and brighter blues and deep ethereal azure. The pines stand
in black platoons upon the hillsides, with a tinge of red or orange on
their sable. Some carry masses of snow. Others have shaken their plumes
free. The châlets are like fairy houses or toys, waist-deep in stores
of winter fuel. With their mellow tones of madder and umber on the
weather-beaten woodwork relieved against the white, with fantastic
icicles and folds of snow depending from their eaves, or curled like
coverlids from roof and window-sill, they are far more picturesque than
in the summer. Colour, wherever it is found, whether in these cottages
or in a block of serpentine by the roadside, or in the golden bulrush
blades by the lake shore, takes more than double value. It is shed upon
the landscape like a spiritual and transparent veil. Most beautiful of
all are the sweeping lines of pure untroubled snow, fold over fold of
undulating softness, billowing along the skirts of the peaked hills.
There is no conveying the charm of immaterial, aë;rial, lucid beauty,
the feeling of purity and aloofness from sordid things, conveyed by the
fine touch on all our senses of light, colour, form, and air, and
motion, and rare tinkling sound. The magic is like a spirit mood of
Shelley's lyric verse. And, what is perhaps most wonderful, this
delicate delight may be enjoyed without fear in the coldest weather. It
does not matter how low the temperature may be, if the sun is shining,
the air dry, and the wind asleep.

Leaving the horse-sledges on the verge of some high hill-road, and
trusting oneself to the little hand-sledge which the 26people of the
Grisons use, and which the English have christened by the Canadian term
'toboggan,' the excitement becomes far greater. The hand-sledge is
about three feet long, fifteen inches wide, and half a foot above the
ground, on runners shod with iron. Seated firmly at the back, and
guiding with the feet in front, the rider skims down precipitous slopes
and round perilous corners with a rapidity that beats a horse's pace.
Winding through sombre pine-forests, where the torrent roars fitfully
among caverns of barbed ice, and the glistening mountains tower above
in their glory of sun-smitten snow, darting round the frozen ledges at
the turnings of the road, silently gliding at a speed that seems
incredible, it is so smooth, he traverses two or three miles without
fatigue, carried onward by the mere momentum of his weight. It is a
strange and great joy. The toboggan, under these conditions, might be
compared to an enchanted boat shooting the rapids of a river; and what
adds to its fascination is the entire loneliness in which the rider
passes through those weird and ever-shifting scenes of winter radiance.
Sometimes, when the snow is drifting up the pass, and the world is
blank behind, before, and all around, it seems like plunging into
chaos. The muffled pines loom fantastically through the drift as we
rush past them, and the wind, ever and anon, detaches great masses of
snow in clouds from their bent branches. Or again at night, when the
moon is shining, and the sky is full of flaming stars, and the snow,
frozen to the hardness of marble, sparkles with innumerable crystals, a
new sense of strangeness and of joy is given to the solitude, the
swiftness, and the silence of the exercise. No other circumstances
invest the poetry of rapid motion with more fascination. Shelley, who
so loved the fancy of a boat inspired with its own instinct of life,
would have delighted in the game, and would probably have pursued it
recklessly. At the same time, 27as practised on a humbler scale nearer
home, in company, and on a run selected for convenience rather than for
picturesqueness, tobogganing is a very Bohemian amusement. No one who
indulges in it can count on avoiding hard blows and violent upsets, nor
will his efforts to maintain his equilibrium at the dangerous corners
be invariably graceful.

Nothing, it might be imagined, could be more monotonous than an Alpine
valley covered up with snow. And yet to one who has passed many months
in that seclusion Nature herself presents no monotony; for the changes
constantly wrought by light and cloud and alternations of weather on
this landscape are infinitely various. The very simplicity of the
conditions seems to assist the supreme artist. One day is wonderful
because of its unsullied purity; not a cloud visible, and the pines
clothed in velvet of rich green beneath a faultless canopy of light.
The next presents a fretwork of fine film, wrought by the south wind
over the whole sky, iridescent with delicate rainbow tints within the
influences of the sun, and ever-changing shape. On another, when the
turbulent Föhn is blowing, streamers of snow may be seen flying from
the higher ridges against a pallid background of slaty cloud, while the
gaunt ribs of the hills glisten below with fitful gleams of lurid
light. At sunrise, one morning, stealthy and mysterious vapours clothe
the mountains from their basement to the waist, while the peaks are
glistening serenely in clear daylight. Another opens with silently
falling snow. A third is rosy through the length and breadth of the
dawn-smitten valley. It is, however, impossible to catalogue the
indescribable variety of those beauties, which those who love nature
may enjoy by simply waiting on the changes of the winter in a single
station of the Alps.

28




WINTER NIGHTS AT DAVOS


I

Light, marvellously soft yet penetrating, everywhere diffused,
everywhere reflected without radiance, poured from the moon high above
our heads in a sky tinted through all shades and modulations of blue,
from turquoise on the horizon to opaque sapphire at the zenith—_dolce
color_. (It is difficult to use the word _colour_ for this scene
without suggesting an exaggeration. The blue is almost indefinable, yet
felt. But if possible, the total effect of the night landscape should
be rendered by careful exclusion of tints from the word-palette. The
art of the etcher is more needed than that of the painter.) Heaven
overhead is set with stars, shooting intensely, smouldering with dull
red in Aldeboran, sparkling diamond-like in Sirius, changing from
orange to crimson and green in the swart fire of yonder double star. On
the snow this moonlight falls tenderly, not in hard white light and
strong black shadow, but in tones of cream and ivory, rounding the
curves of drift. The mountain peaks alone glisten as though they were
built of silver burnished by an agate. Far away they rise diminished in
stature by the all-pervading dimness of bright light, that erases the
distinctions of daytime. On the path before our feet lie crystals of
many hues, the splinters of a thousand gems. In the wood there are
caverns of darkness, alternating with spaces of star-twinkled sky, or
windows opened between russet stems and solid branches for the 29moony
sheen. The green of the pines is felt, although invisible, so soft in
substance that it seems less like velvet than some materialised depth
of dark green shadow.

II

Snow falling noiseless and unseen. One only knows that it is falling by
the blinking of our eyes as the flakes settle on their lids and melt.
The cottage windows shine red, and moving lanterns of belated wayfarers
define the void around them. Yet the night is far from dark. The
forests and the mountain-bulk beyond the valley loom softly large and
just distinguishable through a pearly haze. The path is purest
trackless whiteness, almost dazzling though it has no light. This was
what Dante felt when he reached the lunar sphere:

Parova a me, che nube ne coprisse
Lucida, spessa, solida e pulita.


Walking silent, with insensible footfall, slowly, for the snow is deep
above our ankles, we wonder what the world would be like if this were
all. Could the human race be acclimatised to this monotony (we say)
perhaps emotion would be rarer, yet more poignant, suspended brooding
on itself, and wakening by flashes to a quintessential mood. Then fancy
changes, and the thought occurs that even so must be a planet, not yet
wholly made, nor called to take her place among the sisterhood of light
and song.

III

Sunset was fading out upon the Rhætikon and still reflected from the
Seehorn on the lake, when we entered the gorge of the Fluela—dense
pines on either hand, a mounting drift of snow in front, and faint
peaks, paling from rose to saffron, far above, beyond. There was no
sound but a tinkling stream 30and the continual jingle of our
sledge-bells. We drove at a foot's pace, our horse finding his own
path. When we left the forest, the light had all gone except for some
almost imperceptible touches of primrose on the eastern horns. It was a
moonless night, but the sky was alive with stars, and now and then one
fell. The last house in the valley was soon passed, and we entered
those bleak gorges where the wind, fine, noiseless, penetrating like an
edge of steel, poured slantwise on us from the north. As we rose, the
stars to west seemed far beneath us, and the Great Bear sprawled upon
the ridges of the lower hills outspread. We kept slowly moving onward,
upward, into what seemed like a thin impalpable mist, but was
immeasurable tracts of snow. The last cembras were left behind,
immovable upon dark granite boulders on our right. We entered a
formless and unbillowed sea of greyness, from which there rose dim
mountain-flanks that lost themselves in air. Up, ever up, and still
below us westward sank the stars. We were now 7500 feet above
sea-level, and the December night was rigid with intensity of frost.
The cold, and movement, and solemnity of space, drowsed every sense.

IV

The memory of things seen and done in moonlight is like the memory of
dreams. It is as a dream that I recall the night of our tobogganing to
Klosters, though it was full enough of active energy. The moon was in
her second quarter, slightly filmed with very high thin clouds, that
disappeared as night advanced, leaving the sky and stars in all their
lustre. A sharp frost, sinking to three degrees above zero Fahrenheit,
with a fine pure wind, such wind as here they call 'the mountain
breath.' We drove to Wolfgang in a two-horse sledge, four of us inside,
and our two Christians on the box. Up 31there, where the Alps of Death
descend to join the Lakehorn Alps, above the Wolfswalk, there is a
world of whiteness—frozen ridges, engraved like cameos of aë;rial onyx
upon the dark, star-tremulous sky; sculptured buttresses of snow,
enclosing hollows filled with diaphanous shadow, and sweeping aloft
into the upland fields of pure clear drift. Then came the swift
descent, the plunge into the pines, moon-silvered on their frosted
tops. The battalions of spruce that climb those hills defined the
dazzling snow from which they sprang, like the black tufts upon an
ermine robe. At the proper moment we left our sledge, and the big
Christian took his reins in hand to follow us. Furs and greatcoats were
abandoned. Each stood forth tightly accoutred, with short coat, and
clinging cap, and gaitered legs for the toboggan. Off we started in
line, with but brief interval between, at first slowly, then glidingly,
and when the impetus was gained, with darting, bounding, almost savage
swiftness—sweeping round corners, cutting the hard snow-path with keen
runners, avoiding the deep ruts, trusting to chance, taking advantage
of smooth places, till the rush and swing and downward swoop became
mechanical. Space was devoured. Into the massy shadows of the forest,
where the pines joined overhead, we pierced without a sound, and felt
far more than saw the great rocks with their icicles; and out again,
emerging into moonlight, met the valley spread beneath our feet, the
mighty peaks of the Silvretta and the vast blue sky. On, on, hurrying,
delaying not, the woods and hills rushed by. Crystals upon the
snow-banks glittered to the stars. Our souls would fain have stayed to
drink these marvels of the moon-world, but our limbs refused. The magic
of movement was upon us, and eight minutes swallowed the varying
impressions of two musical miles. The village lights drew near and
nearer, then the sombre village huts, and soon the speed grew less, and
soon we glided to our rest into the sleeping village street.

32

V

It was just past midnight. The moon had fallen to the western horns.
Orion's belt lay bar-like on the opening of the pass, and Sirius shot
flame on the Seehorn. A more crystalline night, more full of fulgent
stars, was never seen, stars everywhere, but mostly scattered in large
sparkles on the snow. Big Christian went in front, tugging toboggans by
their strings, as Gulliver, in some old woodcut, drew the fleets of
Lilliput. Through the brown wood-châlets of Selfrangr, up to the
undulating meadows, where the snow slept pure and crisp, he led us.
There we sat awhile and drank the clear air, cooled to zero, but
innocent and mild as mother Nature's milk. Then in an instant, down,
down through the hamlet, with its châlets, stables, pumps, and logs,
the slumbrous hamlet, where one dog barked, and darkness dwelt upon the
path of ice, down with the tempest of a dreadful speed, that shot each
rider upward in the air, and made the frame of the toboggan
tremble—down over hillocks of hard frozen snow, dashing and bounding,
to the river and the bridge. No bones were broken, though the race was
thrice renewed, and men were spilt upon the roadside by some furious
plunge. This amusement has the charm of peril and the unforeseen. In no
wise else can colder, keener air be drunken at such furious speed. The
joy, too, of the engine-driver and the steeplechaser is upon us. Alas,
that it should be so short! If only roads were better made for the
purpose, there would be no end to it; for the toboggan cannot lose his
wind. But the good thing fails at last, and from the silence of the
moon we pass into the silence of the fields of sleep.

33

VI

The new stable is a huge wooden building, with raftered lofts to stow
the hay, and stalls for many cows and horses. It stands snugly in an
angle of the pine-wood, bordering upon the great horse-meadow. Here at
night the air is warm and tepid with the breath of kine. Returning from
my forest walk, I spy one window yellow in the moonlight with a lamp. I
lift the latch. The hound knows me, and does not bark. I enter the
stable, where six horses are munching their last meal. Upon the
corn-bin sits a knecht. We light our pipes and talk. He tells me of the
valley of Arosa (a hawk's flight westward over yonder hills), how deep
in grass its summer lawns, how crystal-clear its stream, how blue its
little lakes, how pure, without a taint of mist, 'too beautiful to
paint,' its sky in winter! This knecht is an Ardüser, and the valley of
Arosa lifts itself to heaven above his Langwies home. It is his duty
now to harness a sleigh for some night-work. We shake hands and part—I
to sleep, he for the snow.

VII

The lake has frozen late this year, and there are places in it where
the ice is not yet firm. Little snow has fallen since it froze—about
three inches at the deepest, driven by winds and wrinkled like the
ribbed sea-sand. Here and there the ice-floor is quite black and clear,
reflecting stars, and dark as heaven's own depths. Elsewhere it is of a
suspicious whiteness, blurred in surface, with jagged cracks and
chasms, treacherously mended by the hand of frost. Moving slowly, the
snow cries beneath our feet, and the big crystals tinkle. These are
shaped like fern-fronds, growing fan-wise from a point, and set at
various angles, so that the moonlight takes 34them with capricious
touch. They flash, and are quenched, and flash again, light darting to
light along the level surface, while the sailing planets and the stars
look down complacent at this mimicry of heaven. Everything above,
around, beneath, is very beautiful—the slumbrous woods, the snowy
fells, and the far distance painted in faint blue upon the tender
background of the sky. Everything is placid and beautiful; and yet the
place is terrible. For, as we walk, the lake groans, with throttled
sobs, and sudden cracklings of its joints, and sighs that shiver,
undulating from afar, and pass beneath our feet, and die away in
distance when they reach the shore. And now and then an upper crust of
ice gives way; and will the gulfs then drag us down? We are in the very
centre of the lake. There is no use in thinking or in taking heed.
Enjoy the moment, then, and march. Enjoy the contrast between this
circumambient serenity and sweetness, and the dreadful sense of
insecurity beneath. Is not, indeed, our whole life of this nature? A
passage over perilous deeps, roofed by infinity and sempiternal things,
surrounded too with evanescent forms, that like these crystals, trodden
underfoot, or melted by the Föhn-wind into dew, flash, in some lucky
moment, with a light that mimics stars! But to allegorise and sermonise
is out of place here. It is but the expedient of those who cannot etch
sensation by the burin of their art of words.

VIII

It is ten o'clock upon Sylvester Abend, or New Year's Eve. Herr Buol
sits with his wife at the head of his long table. His family and
serving folk are round him. There is his mother, with little Ursula,
his child, upon her knee. The old lady is the mother of four comely
daughters and nine 35stalwart sons, the eldest of whom is now a
grizzled man. Besides our host, four of the brothers are here to-night;
the handsome melancholy Georg, who is so gentle in his speech; Simeon,
with his diplomatic face; Florian, the student of medicine; and my
friend, colossal-breasted Christian. Palmy came a little later, worried
with many cares, but happy to his heart's core. No optimist was ever
more convinced of his 6philosophy than Palmy. After them, below the
salt, were ranged the knechts and porters, the marmiton from the
kitchen, and innumerable maids. The board was tesselated with plates of
birnen-brod and eier-brod, küchli and cheese and butter; and Georg
stirred grampampuli in a mighty metal bowl. For the uninitiated, it may
be needful to explain these Davos delicacies. Birnen-brod is what the
Scotch would call a 'bun,' or massive cake, composed of sliced pears,
almonds, spices, and a little flour. Eier-brod is a saffron-coloured
sweet bread, made with eggs; and küchli is a kind of pastry, crisp and
flimsy, fashioned into various devices of cross, star, and scroll.
Grampampuli is simply brandy burnt with sugar, the most unsophisticated
punch I ever drank from tumblers. The frugal people of Davos, who live
on bread and cheese and dried meat all the year, indulge themselves but
once with these unwonted dainties in the winter.

The occasion was cheerful, and yet a little solemn. The scene was
feudal. For these Buols are the scions of a warrior race:

A race illustrious for heroic deeds;
Humbled, but not degraded.

During the six centuries through which they have lived nobles in Davos,
they have sent forth scores of fighting men to foreign lands,
ambassadors to France and Venice and the Milanese, governors to
Chiavenna and Bregaglia and the much-contested Valtelline. Members of
their house are 36Counts of Buol-Schauenstein in Austria, Freiherrs of
Muhlingen and Berenberg in the now German Empire. They keep the patent
of nobility conferred on them by Henri IV. Their ancient coat—parted
per pale azure and argent, with a dame of the fourteenth century
bearing in her hand a rose, all counterchanged—is carved in wood and
monumental marble on the churches and old houses hereabouts. And from
immemorial antiquity the Buol of Davos has sat thus on Sylvester Abend
with family and folk around him, summoned from alp and snowy field to
drink grampampuli and break the birnen-brod.

These rites performed, the men and maids began to sing—brown arms
lounging on the table, and red hands folded in white aprons—serious at
first in hymn-like cadences, then breaking into wilder measures with a
jodel at the close. There is a measured solemnity in the performance,
which strikes the stranger as somewhat comic. But the singing was good;
the voices strong and clear in tone, no hesitation and no shirking of
the melody. It was clear that the singers enjoyed the music for its own
sake, with half-shut eyes, as they take dancing, solidly, with
deep-drawn breath, sustained and indefatigable. But eleven struck; and
the two Christians, my old friend, and Palmy, said we should be late
for church. They had promised to take me with them to see bell-ringing
in the tower. All the young men of the village meet, and draw lots in
the Stube of the Rathhaus. One party tolls the old year out; the other
rings the new year in. He who comes last is sconced three litres of
Veltliner for the company. This jovial fine was ours to pay to-night.

When we came into the air, we found a bitter frost; the whole sky
clouded over; a north wind whirling snow from alp and forest through
the murky gloom. The benches and 37broad walnut tables of the Bathhaus
were crowded with men, in shaggy homespun of brown and grey frieze. Its
low wooden roof and walls enclosed an atmosphere of smoke, denser than
the external snow-drift. But our welcome was hearty, and we found a
score of friends. Titanic Fopp, whose limbs are Michelangelesque in
length; spectacled Morosani; the little tailor Kramer, with a French
horn on his knees; the puckered forehead of the Baumeister; the
Troll-shaped postman; peasants and woodmen, known on far excursions
upon pass and upland valley. Not one but carried on his face the memory
of winter strife with avalanche and snow-drift, of horses struggling
through Fluela whirlwinds, and wine-casks tugged across Bernina, and
haystacks guided down precipitous gullies at thundering speed 'twixt
pine and pine, and larches felled in distant glens beside the frozen
watercourses. Here we were, all met together for one hour from our
several homes and occupations, to welcome in the year with clinked
glasses and cries of _Prosit Neujahr!_

The tolling bells above us stopped. Our turn had come. Out into the
snowy air we tumbled, beneath the row of wolves' heads that adorn the
pent-house roof. A few steps brought us to the still God's acre, where
the snow lay deep and cold upon high-mounded graves of many
generations. We crossed it silently, bent our heads to the low Gothic
arch, and stood within the tower. It was thick darkness there. But far
above, the bells began again to clash and jangle confusedly, with
volleys of demonic joy. Successive flights of ladders, each ending in a
giddy platform hung across the gloom, climb to the height of some
hundred and fifty feet; and all their rungs were crusted with frozen
snow, deposited by trampling boots. For up and down these stairs,
ascending and descending, moved other than angels—the friezejacketed
38Bürschen, Grisons bears, rejoicing in their exercise, exhilarated
with the tingling noise of beaten metal. We reached the first room
safely, guided by firm-footed Christian, whose one candle just defined
the rough walls and the slippery steps. There we found a band of boys,
pulling ropes that set the bells in motion. But our destination was not
reached. One more aë;rial ladder, perpendicular in darkness, brought us
swiftly to the home of sound. It is a small square chamber, where the
bells are hung, filled with the interlacement of enormous beams, and
pierced to north and south by open windows, from whose parapets I saw
the village and the valley spread beneath. The fierce wind hurried
through it, charged with snow, and its narrow space was thronged with
men. Men on the platform, men on the window-sills, men grappling the
bells with iron arms, men brushing by to reach the stairs, crossing,
recrossing, shouldering their mates, drinking red wine from gigantic
beakers, exploding crackers, firing squibs, shouting and yelling in
corybantic chorus. They yelled and shouted, one could see it by their
open mouths and glittering eyes; but not a sound from human lungs could
reach our ears. The overwhelming incessant thunder of the bells drowned
all. It thrilled the tympanum, ran through the marrow of the spine,
vibrated in the inmost entrails. Yet the brain was only steadied and
excited by this sea of brazen noise. After a few moments I knew the
place and felt at home in it. Then I enjoyed a spectacle which
sculptors might have envied. For they ring the bells in Davos after
this fashion:—The lads below set them going with ropes. The men above
climb in pairs on ladders to the beams from which they are suspended.
Two mighty pine-trees, roughly squared and built into the walls, extend
from side to side across the belfry. Another from which the bells hang,
connects these massive trunks at right 39angles. Just where the central
beam is wedged into the two parallel supports, the ladders reach them
from each side of the belfry, so that, bending from the higher rung of
the ladder, and leaning over, stayed upon the lateral beam, each pair
of men can keep one bell in movement with their hands. Each comrade
plants one leg upon the ladder, and sets the other knee firmly athwart
the horizontal pine. Then round each other's waist they twine left arm
and right. The two have thus become one man. Right arm and left are
free to grasp the bell's horns, sprouting at its crest beneath the
beam. With a grave rhythmic motion, bending sideward in a close
embrace, swaying and returning to their centre from the well-knit
loins, they drive the force of each strong muscle into the vexed bell.
The impact is earnest at first, but soon it becomes frantic. The men
take something from each other of exalted enthusiasm. This efflux of
their combined energies inspires them and exasperates the mighty
resonance of metal which they rule. They are lost in a trance of what
approximates to dervish passion—so thrilling is the surge of sound, so
potent are the rhythms they obey. Men come and tug them by the heels.
One grasps the starting thews upon their calves. Another is impatient
for their place. But they strain still, locked together, and forgetful
of the world. At length they have enough: then slowly, clingingly
unclasp, turn round with gazing eyes, and are resumed, sedately, into
the diurnal round of common life. Another pair is in their room upon
the beam.

The Englishman who saw these things stood looking up, enveloped in his
ulster with the grey cowl thrust upon his forehead, like a monk. One
candle cast a grotesque shadow of him on the plastered wall. And when
his chance came, though he was but a weakling, he too climbed and for
some moments hugged the beam, and felt the madness of the 40swinging
bell. Descending, he wondered long and strangely whether he ascribed
too much of feeling to the men he watched. But no, that was impossible.
There are emotions deeply seated in the joy of exercise, when the body
is brought into play, and masses move in concert, of which the subject
is but half conscious. Music and dance, and the delirium of battle or
the chase, act thus upon spontaneous natures. The mystery of rhythm and
associated energy and blood tingling in sympathy is here. It lies at
the root of man's most tyrannous instinctive impulses.

It was past one when we reached home, and now a meditative man might
well have gone to bed. But no one thinks of sleeping on Sylvester
Abend. So there followed bowls of punch in one friend's room, where
English, French, and Germans blent together in convivial Babel; and
flasks of old Montagner in another. Palmy, at this period, wore an
archdeacon's hat, and smoked a churchwarden's pipe; and neither were
his own, nor did he derive anything ecclesiastical or Anglican from the
association. Late in the morning we must sally forth, they said, and
roam the town. For it is the custom here on New Year's night to greet
acquaintances, and ask for hospitality, and no one may deny these
self-invited guests. We turned out again into the grey snow-swept
gloom, a curious Comus—not at all like Greeks, for we had neither
torches in our hands nor rose-wreaths to suspend upon a lady's
door-posts. And yet I could not refrain, at this supreme moment of
jollity, in the zero temperature, amid my Grisons friends, from humming
to myself verses from the Greek Anthology:—

The die is cast! Nay, light the torch!
    I'll take the road! Up, courage, ho!
Why linger pondering in the porch?
    Upon Love's revel we will go!

Shake off those fumes of wine! Hang care
    And caution! What has Love to do
With prudence? Let the torches flare!
    Quick, drown the doubts that hampered you!

Cast weary wisdom to the wind!
    One thing, but one alone, I know:
Love bent e'en Jove and made him blind
    Upon Love's revel we will go!

41

And then again:—

I've drunk sheer madness! Not with wine,
    But old fantastic tales, I'll arm
My heart in heedlessness divine,
    And dare the road, nor dream of harm!

I'll join Love's rout! Let thunder break,
    Let lightning blast me by the way!
Invulnerable Love shall shake
    His ægis o'er my head to-day.

This last epigram was not inappropriate to an invalid about to begin
the fifth act in a roystering night's adventure. And still once more:—

Cold blows the winter wind; 'tis Love,
    Whose sweet eyes swim with honeyed tears,
That bears me to thy doors, my love,
    Tossed by the storm of hopes and fears.

Cold blows the blast of aching Love;
    But be thou for my wandering sail,
Adrift upon these waves of love,
    Safe harbour from the whistling gale!


However, upon this occasion, though we had winter-wind enough, and cold
enough, there was not much love in the business. My arm was firmly
clenched in Christian Buol's, and Christian Palmy came behind, trolling
out songs in Italian dialect, with still recurring _canaille_ choruses,
of which the facile rhymes seemed mostly made on a prolonged
42_amu-u-u-r_. It is noticeable that Italian ditties are specially
designed for fellows shouting in the streets at night. They seem in
keeping there, and nowhere else that I could ever see. And these
Davosers took to them naturally when the time for Comus came. It was
between four and five in the morning, and nearly all the houses in the
place were dark. The tall church-tower and spire loomed up above us in
grey twilight. The tireless wind still swept thin snow from fell and
forest. But the frenzied bells had sunk into their twelvemonth's
slumber, which shall be broken only by decorous tollings at less
festive times. I wondered whether they were tingling still with the
heart-throbs and with the pressure of those many arms? Was their old
age warmed, as mine was, with that gust of life—the young men who had
clung to them like bees to lily-bells, and shaken all their locked-up
tone and shrillness into the wild winter air? Alas! how many
generations of the young have handled them; and they are still there,
frozen in their belfry; and the young grow middle-aged, and old, and
die at last; and the bells they grappled in their lust of manhood toll
them to their graves, on which the tireless wind will, winter after
winter, sprinkle snow from alps and forests which they knew.

'There is a light,' cried Christian, 'up in Anna's window!' 'A light! a
light!' the Comus shouted. But how to get at the window, which is
pretty high above the ground, and out of reach of the most ardent
revellers? We search a neighbouring shed, extract a stable-ladder, and
in two seconds Palmy has climbed to the topmost rung, while Christian
and Georg hold it firm upon the snow beneath. Then begins a passage
from some comic opera of Mozart's or Cimarosa's—an escapade familiar to
Spanish or Italian students, which recalls the stage. It is an episode
from 'Don Giovanni,' translated to this dark-etched scene of snowy
hills, and 43Gothic tower, and mullioned windows deep embayed beneath
their eaves and icicles. _Deh vieni alla finestra!_ sings
Palmy-Leporello; the chorus answers: _Deh vieni! Perchè non vieni
ancora?_ pleads Leporello; the chorus shouts: _Perchè? Mio amu-u-u-r_,
sighs Leporello; and Echo cries, _amu-u-u-r!_ All the wooing, be it
noticed, is conducted in Italian. But the actors murmur to each other
in Davoser Deutsch, 'She won't come, Palmy! It is far too late; she is
gone to bed. Come down; you'll wake the village with your
caterwauling!' But Leporello waves his broad archdeacon's hat, and
resumes a flood of flexible Bregaglian. He has a shrewd suspicion that
the girl is peeping from behind the window curtain; and tells us,
bending down from the ladder, in a hoarse stage-whisper, that we must
have patience; 'these girls are kittle cattle, who take long to draw:
but if your lungs last out, they're sure to show.' And Leporello is
right. Faint heart ne'er won fair lady. From the summit of his ladder,
by his eloquent Italian tongue, he brings the shy bird down at last. We
hear the unbarring of the house door, and a comely maiden, in her
Sunday dress, welcomes us politely to her ground-floor sitting-room.
The Comus enters, in grave order, with set speeches, handshakes, and
inevitable _Prosits_! It is a large low chamber, with a huge stone
stove, wide benches fixed along the walls, and a great oval table. We
sit how and where we can. Red wine is produced, and eier-brod and
küchli. 44Fräulein Anna serves us sedately, holding her own with decent
self-respect against the inrush of the revellers. She is quite alone;
but are not her father and mother in bed above, and within earshot?
Besides, the Comus, even at this abnormal hour and after an abnormal
night, is well conducted. Things seem slipping into a decorous
wine-party, when Leporello readjusts the broad-brimmed hat upon his
head, and very cleverly acts a little love-scene for our benefit.
Fräulein Anna takes this as a delicate compliment, and the thing is so
prettily done in truth, that not the sternest taste could be offended.
Meanwhile another party of night-wanderers, attracted by our mirth,
break in. More _Prosits_ and clinked glasses follow; and with a fair
good-morning to our hostess, we retire.

It is too late to think of bed. 'The quincunx of heaven,' as Sir Thomas
Browne phrased it on a dissimilar occasion, 'runs low.... The huntsmen
are up in America; and not in America only, for the huntsmen, if there
are any this night in Graubünden, have long been out upon the snow, and
the stable-lads are dragging the sledges from their sheds to carry down
the mails to Landquart. We meet the porters from the various hotels,
bringing letter-bags and luggage to the post. It is time to turn in and
take a cup of black coffee against the rising sun.

IX

Some nights, even in Davos, are spent, even by an invalid, in bed. A
leaflet, therefore, of 'Sleep-chasings' may not inappropriately be
flung, as envoy to so many wanderings on foot and sledge upon the
winter snows.

The first is a confused medley of things familiar and things strange. I
have been dreaming of far-away old German towns, with gabled houses
deep in snow; dreaming of châlets in forgotten Alpine glens, where
wood-cutters come plunging into sleepy light from gloom, and sinking
down beside the stove to shake the drift from their rough shoulders;
dreaming of vast veils of icicles upon the gaunt black rocks in places
where no foot of man will pass, and where the snow is weaving eyebrows
over the ledges of grey whirlwind-beaten precipices; dreaming of
Venice, forlorn beneath the windy drip of rain, the gas lamps
flickering on the swimming piazzetta, the barche 45idle, the gondolier
wrapped in his thread-bare cloak, alone; dreaming of Apennines, with
world-old cities, brown, above the brown sea of dead chestnut boughs;
dreaming of stormy tides, and watchers aloft in lighthouses when day is
finished; dreaming of dead men and women and dead children in the
earth, far down beneath the snow-drifts, six feet deep. And then I lift
my face, awaking, from my pillow; the pallid moon is on the valley, and
the room is filled with spectral light.

I sleep, and change my dreaming. This is a hospice in an unfrequented
pass, between sad peaks, beside a little black lake, overdrifted with
soft snow. I pass into the house-room, gliding silently. An old man and
an old woman are nodding, bowed in deepest slumber, by the stove. A
young man plays the zither on a table. He lifts his head, still
modulating with his fingers on the strings. He looks right through me
with wide anxious eyes. He does not see me, but sees Italy, I know, and
some one wandering on a sandy shore.

I sleep, and change my dreaming. This is S. Stephen's Church in Wien.
Inside, the lamps are burning dimly in the choir. There is fog in the
aisles; but through the sleepy air and over the red candles flies a
wild soprano's voice, a boy's soul in its singing sent to heaven.

I sleep, and change my dreaming. From the mufflers in which his father,
the mountebank, has wrapped the child, to carry him across the heath, a
little tumbling-boy emerges in soiled tights. He is half asleep. His
father scrapes the fiddle. The boy shortens his red belt, kisses his
fingers to us, and ties himself into a knot among the glasses on the
table.

I sleep, and change my dreaming. I am on the parapet of a huge circular
tower, hollow like a well, and pierced with windows at irregular
intervals. The parapet is broad, and 46slabbed with red Verona marble.
Around me are athletic men, all naked, in the strangest attitudes of
studied rest, down-gazing, as I do, into the depths below. There comes
a confused murmur of voices, and the tower is threaded and rethreaded
with great cables. Up these there climb to us a crowd of young men,
clinging to the ropes and flinging their bodies sideways on aë;rial
trapezes. My heart trembles with keen joy and terror. For nowhere else
could plastic forms be seen more beautiful, and nowhere else is peril
more apparent. Leaning my chin upon the utmost verge, I wait. I watch
one youth, who smiles and soars to me; and when his face is almost
touching mine, he speaks, but what he says I know not.

I sleep, and change my dreaming. The whole world rocks to its
foundations. The mountain summits that I know are shaken. They bow
their bristling crests. They are falling, falling on us, and the earth
is riven. I wake in terror, shouting: INSOLITIS TREMUERUNT MOTIBUS
ALPES! An earthquake, slight but real, has stirred the ever-wakeful
Vesta of the brain to this Virgilian quotation.

I sleep, and change my dreaming. Once more at night I sledge alone upon
the Klosters road. It is the point where the woods close over it and
moonlight may not pierce the boughs. There come shrill cries of many
voices from behind, and rushings that pass by and vanish. Then on their
sledges I behold the phantoms of the dead who died in Davos, longing
for their homes; and each flies past me, shrieking in the still cold
air; and phosphorescent like long meteors, the pageant turns the
windings of the road below and disappears.

I sleep, and change my dreaming. This is the top of some high mountain,
where the crags are cruelly tortured and cast in enormous splinters on
the ledges of cliffs grey with old-world ice. A ravine, opening at my
feet, plunges 47down immeasurably to a dim and distant sea. Above me
soars a precipice embossed with a gigantic ice-bound shape. As I gaze
thereon, I find the lineaments and limbs of a Titanic man chained and
nailed to the rock. His beard has grown for centuries, and flowed this
way and that, adown his breast and over to the stone on either side;
and the whole of him is covered with a greenish ice, ancient beyond the
memory of man. 'This is Prometheus,' I whisper to myself, 'and I am
alone on Caucasus.'

48




BACCHUS IN GRAUBÜNDEN


I

Some years' residence in the Canton of the Grisons made me familiar
with all sorts of Valtelline wine; with masculine but rough _Inferno_,
generous _Forzato_, delicate _Sassella_, harsher _Montagner_, the
raspberry flavour of _Grumello_, the sharp invigorating twang of
_Villa_. The colour, ranging from garnet to almandine or ruby, told me
the age and quality of wine; and I could judge from the crust it forms
upon the bottle, whether it had been left long enough in wood to ripen.
I had furthermore arrived at the conclusion that the best Valtelline
can only be tasted in cellars of the Engadine or Davos, where this
vintage matures slowly in the mountain air, and takes a flavour unknown
at lower levels. In a word, it had amused my leisure to make or think
myself a connoisseur. My literary taste was tickled by the praise
bestowed in the Augustan age on Rhætic grapes by Virgil:

Et quo te carmine dicam,
Rhætica? nec cellis ideo contende Falernis.

I piqued myself on thinking that could the poet but have drank one
bottle at Samaden—where Stilicho, by the way, in his famous recruiting
expedition may perhaps have drank it—he would have been less chary in
his panegyric. For the point of inferiority on which he seems to
insist, namely, that Valtelline wine does not keep well in cellar, is
only proper to this vintage in Italian climate.

49Such meditations led my fancy on the path of history. Is there truth,
then, in the dim tradition that this mountain land was colonised by
Etruscans? Is _Ras_ the root of Rhætia? The Etruscans were accomplished
wine-growers, we know. It was their Montepulciano which drew the Gauls
to Rome, if Livy can be trusted. Perhaps they first planted the vine in
Valtelline. Perhaps its superior culture in that district may be due to
ancient use surviving in a secluded Alpine valley. One thing is
certain, that the peasants of Sondrio and Tirano understand viticulture
better than the Italians of Lombardy.

Then my thoughts ran on to the period of modern history, when the
Grisons seized the Valtelline in lieu of war-pay from the Dukes of
Milan. For some three centuries they held it as a subject province.
From the Rathhaus at Davos or Chur they sent their nobles—Von Salis and
Buol, Planta and Sprecher von Bernegg—across the hills as governors or
podestàs to Poschiavo, Sondrio, Tirano, and Morbegno. In those old days
the Valtelline wines came duly every winter over snow-deep passes to
fill the cellars of the Signori Grigioni. That quaint traveller Tom
Coryat, in his so-called 'Crudities,' notes the custom early in the
seventeenth century. And as that custom then obtained, it still
subsists with little alteration. The wine-carriers—Weinführer, as they
are called—first scaled the Bernina pass, halting then as now, perhaps
at Poschiavo and Pontresina. Afterwards, in order to reach Davos, the
pass of the Scaletta rose before them—a wilderness of untracked
snow-drifts. The country-folk still point to narrow, light
hand-sledges, on which the casks were charged before the last pitch of
the pass. Some wine came, no doubt, on pack-saddles. A meadow in front
of the Dischma-Thal, where the pass ends, still bears the name of the
Ross-Weid, or horse-pasture. It was here that the beasts 50of burden
used for this wine-service, rested after their long labours. In
favourable weather the whole journey from Tirano would have occupied at
least four days, with scanty halts at night.

The Valtelline slipped from the hands of the Grisons early in this
century. It is rumoured that one of the Von Salis family negotiated
matters with Napoleon more for his private benefit than for the
interests of the state. However this may have been, when the Graubünden
became a Swiss Canton, after four centuries of sovereign independence,
the whole Valtelline passed to Austria, and so eventually to Italy.
According to modern and just notions of nationality, this was right. In
their period of power, the Grisons masters had treated their Italian
dependencies with harshness. The Valtelline is an Italian valley,
connected with the rest of the peninsula by ties of race and language.
It is, moreover, geographically linked to Italy by the great stream of
the Adda, which takes its rise upon the Stelvio, and after passing
through the Lake of Como, swells the volume of the Po.

But, though politically severed from the Valtelline, the Engadiners and
Davosers have not dropped their old habit of importing its best
produce. What they formerly levied as masters, they now acquire by
purchase. The Italian revenue derives a large profit from the frontier
dues paid at the gate between Tirano and Poschiavo on the Bernina road.
Much of the same wine enters Switzerland by another route, travelling
from Sondrio to Chiavenna and across the Splügen. But until quite
recently, the wine itself could scarcely be found outside the Canton.
It was indeed quoted upon Lombard wine-lists. Yet no one drank it; and
when I tasted it at Milan, I found it quite unrecognisable. The fact
seems to be that the Graubündeners alone know how to 51deal with it;
and, as I have hinted, the wine requires a mountain climate for its
full development.

II

The district where the wine of Valtellina is grown extends, roughly
speaking, from Tirano to Morbegno, a distance of some fifty-four miles.
The best sorts come from the middle of this region. High up in the
valley, soil and climate are alike less favourable. Low down a coarser,
earthier quality springs from fat land where the valley broadens. The
northern hillsides to a very considerable height above the river are
covered with vineyards. The southern slopes on the left bank of the
Adda, lying more in shade, yield but little. Inferno, Grumello, and
Perla di Sassella are the names of famous vineyards. Sassella is the
general name for a large tract. Buying an Inferno, Grumello, or Perla
di Sassella wine, it would be absurd to suppose that one obtained it
precisely from the eponymous estate. But as each of these vineyards
yields a marked quality of wine, which is taken as standard-giving, the
produce of the whole district may be broadly classified as approaching
more or less nearly to one of these accepted types. The Inferno,
Grumello, and Perla di Sassella of commerce are therefore three sorts
of good Valtelline, ticketed with famous names to indicate certain
differences of quality. Montagner, as the name implies, is a somewhat
lighter wine, grown higher up in the hill-vineyards. And of this class
there are many species, some approximating to Sassella in delicacy of
flavour, others approaching the tart lightness of the Villa vintage.
This last takes its title from a village in the neighbourhood of
Tirano, where a table-wine is chiefly grown.

Forzato is the strongest, dearest, longest-lived of this 52whole family
of wines. It is manufactured chiefly at Tirano; and, as will be
understood from its name, does not profess to belong to any one of the
famous localities. Forzato or Sforzato, forced or enforced, is in fact
a wine which has undergone a more artificial process. In German the
people call it Strohwein, which also points to the method of its
preparation. The finest grapes are selected and dried in the sun (hence
the _Stroh_) for a period of eight or nine weeks. When they have almost
become raisins, they are pressed. The must is heavily charged with
sugar, and ferments powerfully. Wine thus made requires several years
to ripen. Sweet at first, it takes at last a very fine quality and
flavour, and is rough, almost acid, on the tongue. Its colour too turns
from a deep rich crimson to the tone of tawny port, which indeed it
much resembles.

Old Forzato, which has been long in cask, and then perhaps three years
in bottle, will fetch at least six francs, or may rise to even ten
francs a flask. The best Sassella rarely reaches more than five francs.
Good Montagner and Grumello can be had perhaps for four francs; and
Inferno of a special quality for six francs. Thus the average price of
old Valtelline wine may be taken as five francs a bottle. These, I
should observe, are hotel prices.

Valtelline wines bought in the wood vary, of course, according to their
age and year of vintage. I have found that from 2.50 fr. to 3.50 fr.
per litre is a fair price for sorts fit to bottle. The new wine of 1881
sold in the following winter at prices varying from 1.05 fr. to 1.80
fr. per litre.

It is customary for the Graubünden wine-merchants to buy up the whole
produce of a vineyard from the peasants at the end of the vintage. They
go in person or depute their agents to inspect the wine, make their
bargains, and seal the cellars where the wine is stored. Then, when the
snow has 53fallen, their own horses with sleighs and trusted servants
go across the passes to bring it home. Generally they have some local
man of confidence at Tirano, the starting-point for the homeward
journey, who takes the casks up to that place and sees them duly
charged. Merchants of old standing maintain relations with the same
peasants, taking their wine regularly; so that from Lorenz Gredig at
Pontresina or Andreas Gredig at Davos Dörfli, from Fanconi at Samaden,
or from Giacomi at Chiavenna, special qualities of wine, the produce of
certain vineyards, are to be obtained. Up to the present time this wine
trade has been conducted with simplicity and honesty by both the
dealers and the growers. One chief merit of Valtelline wine is that it
is pure. How long so desirable a state of things will survive the slow
but steady development of an export business may be questioned.

III

With so much practical and theoretical interest in the produce of the
Valtelline to stimulate my curiosity, I determined to visit the
district at the season when the wine was leaving it. It was the winter
of 1881-82, a winter of unparalleled beauty in the high Alps. Day
succeeded day without a cloud. Night followed night with steady stars,
gliding across clear mountain ranges and forests of dark pines
unstirred by wind. I could not hope for a more prosperous season; and
indeed I made such use of it, that between the months of January and
March I crossed six passes of the Alps in open sleighs—the Fluela
Bernina, Splügen, Julier, Maloja, and Albula—with less difficulty and
discomfort in mid-winter than the traveller may often find on them in
June.

At the end of January, my friend Christian and I left Davos long before
the sun was up, and ascended for four 54hours through the interminable
snow-drifts of the Fluela in a cold grey shadow. The sun's light seemed
to elude us. It ran along the ravine through which we toiled; dipped
down to touch the topmost pines above our heads; rested in golden calm
upon the Schiahorn at our back; capriciously played here and there
across the Weisshorn on our left, and made the precipices of the
Schwartzhorn glitter on our right. But athwart our path it never fell
until we reached the very summit of the pass. Then we passed quietly
into the full glory of the winter morning—a tranquil flood of sunbeams,
pouring through air of crystalline purity, frozen and motionless. White
peaks and dark brown rocks soared up, cutting a sky of almost purple
blueness. A stillness that might be felt brooded over the whole world;
but in that stillness there was nothing sad, no suggestion of suspended
vitality. It was the stillness rather of untroubled health, of strength
omnipotent but unexerted.

From the Hochspitz of the Fluela the track plunges at one bound into
the valley of the Inn, following a narrow cornice carved from the
smooth bank of snow, and hung, without break or barrier, a thousand
feet or more above the torrent. The summer road is lost in snow-drifts.
The galleries built as a protection from avalanches, which sweep in
rivers from those grim, bare fells above, are blocked with snow. Their
useless arches yawn, as we glide over or outside them, by paths which
instinct in our horse and driver traces. As a fly may creep along a
house-roof, slanting downwards we descend. One whisk from the swinged
tail of an avalanche would hurl us, like a fly, into the ruin of the
gaping gorge. But this season little snow has fallen on the higher
hills; and what still lies there, is hard frozen. Therefore we have no
fear, as we whirl fast and faster from the snow-fields into the black
forests of gnarled cembras and wind-wearied pines. Then 55Süss is
reached, where the Inn hurries its shallow waters clogged with
ice-floes through a sleepy hamlet. The stream is pure and green; for
the fountains of the glaciers are locked by winter frosts; and only
clear rills from perennial sources swell its tide. At Süss we lost the
sun, and toiled in garish gloom and silence, nipped by the
ever-deepening cold of evening, upwards for four hours to Samaden.

The next day was spent in visiting the winter colony at San Moritz,
where the Kulm Hotel, tenanted by some twenty guests, presented in its
vastness the appearance of a country-house. One of the prettiest spots
in the world is the ice-rink, fashioned by the skill of Herr Caspar
Badrutt on a high raised terrace, commanding the valley of the Inn and
the ponderous bulwarks of Bernina. The silhouettes of skaters, defined
against that landscape of pure white, passed to and fro beneath a
cloudless sky. Ladies sat and worked or read on seats upon the ice. Not
a breath of wind was astir, and warm beneficent sunlight flooded the
immeasurable air. Only, as the day declined, some iridescent films
overspread the west; and just above Maloja the apparition of a mock
sun—a well-defined circle of opaline light, broken at regular intervals
by four globes—seemed to portend a change of weather. This forecast
fortunately proved delusive. We drove back to Samaden across the silent
snow, enjoying those delicate tints of rose and violet and saffron
which shed enchantment for one hour over the white monotony of Alpine
winter.

At half-past eight next morning, the sun was rising from behind Pitz
Languard, as we crossed the Inn and drove through Pontresina in the
glorious light, with all its huge hotels quite empty and none but a few
country-folk abroad. Those who only know the Engadine in summer have
little conception of its beauty. Winter softens the hard details of
bare rock, and rounds the melancholy grassless mountain 56flanks,
suspending icicles to every ledge and spangling the curved surfaces of
snow with crystals. The landscape gains in purity, and, what sounds
unbelievable, in tenderness. Nor does it lose in grandeur. Looking up
the valley of the Morteratsch that morning, the glaciers were
distinguishable in hues of green and sapphire through their veil of
snow; and the highest peaks soared in a transparency of amethystine
light beneath a blue sky traced with filaments of windy cloud. Some
storm must have disturbed the atmosphere in Italy, for fan-shaped mists
frothed out around the sun, and curled themselves above the mountains
in fine feathery wreaths, melting imperceptibly into air, until, when
we had risen above the cembras, the sky was one deep solid blue.

All that upland wilderness is lovelier now than in the summer; and on
the morning of which I write, the air itself was far more summery than
I have ever known it in the Engadine in August. We could scarcely bear
to place our hands upon the woodwork of the sleigh because of the
fierce sun's heat. And yet the atmosphere was crystalline with windless
frost. As though to increase the strangeness of these contrasts, the
pavement of beaten snow was stained with red drops spilt from
wine-casks which pass over it.

The chief feature of the Bernina—what makes it a dreary pass enough in
summer, but infinitely beautiful in winter—is its breadth; illimitable
undulations of snow-drifts; immensity of open sky; unbroken lines of
white, descending in smooth curves from glittering ice-peaks.

A glacier hangs in air above the frozen lakes, with all its green-blue
ice-cliffs glistening in intensest light. Pitz Palu shoots aloft like
sculptured marble, delicately veined with soft aë;rial shadows of
translucent blue. At the summit of the pass all Italy seems to burst
upon the eyes in those steep serried ranges, with their craggy crests,
violet-hued in noonday 57sunshine, as though a bloom of plum or grape
had been shed over them, enamelling their jagged precipices.

The top of the Bernina is not always thus in winter. It has a bad
reputation for the fury of invading storms, when falling snow hurtles
together with snow scooped from the drifts in eddies, and the weltering
white sea shifts at the will of whirlwinds. The Hospice then may be
tenanted for days together by weather-bound wayfarers; and a line drawn
close beneath its roof shows how two years ago the whole building was
buried in one snow-shroud. This morning we lounged about the door,
while our horses rested and postillions and carters pledged one another
in cups of new Veltliner.

The road takes an awful and sudden dive downwards, quite irrespective
of the carefully engineered post-track. At this season the path is
badly broken into ruts and chasms by the wine traffic. In some places
it was indubitably perilous: a narrow ledge of mere ice skirting thinly
clad hard-frozen banks of snow, which fell precipitately sideways for
hundreds of sheer feet. We did not slip over this parapet, though we
were often within an inch of doing so. Had our horse stumbled, it is
not probable that I should have been writing this.

When we came to the galleries which defend the road from avalanches, we
saw ahead of us a train of over forty sledges ascending, all charged
with Valtelline wine. Our postillions drew up at the inner side of the
gallery, between massive columns of the purest ice dependent from the
rough-hewn roof and walls of rock. A sort of open _loggia_ on the
farther side framed vignettes of the Valtelline mountains in their hard
cerulean shadows and keen sunlight. Between us and the view defiled the
wine-sledges; and as each went by, the men made us drink out of their
_trinketti_. These are oblong, hexagonal wooden kegs, holding about
fourteen litres, 58which the carter fills with wine before he leaves
the Valtelline, to cheer him on the homeward journey. You raise it in
both hands, and when the bung has been removed, allow the liquor to
flow stream-wise down your throat. It was a most extraordinary Bacchic
procession—a pomp which, though undreamed of on the banks of the
Ilissus, proclaimed the deity of Dionysos in authentic fashion.
Struggling horses, grappling at the ice-bound floor with sharp-spiked
shoes; huge, hoarse drivers, some clad in sheepskins from Italian
valleys, some brown as bears in rough Graubünden homespun; casks,
dropping their spilth of red wine on the snow; greetings, embracings;
patois of Bergamo, Romansch, and German roaring around the low-browed
vaults and tingling ice pillars; pourings forth of libations of the new
strong Valtelline on breasts and beards;—the whole made up a scene of
stalwart jollity and manful labour such as I have nowhere else in such
wild circumstances witnessed. Many Davosers were there, the men of
Andreas Gredig, Valär, and so forth; and all of these, on greeting
Christian, forced us to drain a _Schluck_ from their unmanageable
cruses. Then on they went, crying, creaking, struggling, straining
through the corridor, which echoed deafeningly, the gleaming crystals
of those hard Italian mountains in their winter raiment building a
background of still beauty to the savage Bacchanalian riot of the team.

How little the visitors who drink Valtelline wine at S. Moritz or Davos
reflect by what strange ways it reaches them. A sledge can scarcely be
laden with more than one cask of 300 litres on the ascent; and this
cask, according to the state of the road, has many times to be shifted
from wheels to runners and back again before the journey is
accomplished. One carter will take charge of two horses, and
consequently of two sledges and two casks, driving them both by voice
and gesture rather than by rein. When they leave the Valtelline, 59the
carters endeavour, as far as possible, to take the pass in gangs, lest
bad weather or an accident upon the road should overtake them singly.
At night they hardly rest three hours, and rarely think of sleeping,
but spend the time in drinking and conversation. The horses are fed and
littered; but for them too the night-halt is little better than a
baiting-time. In fair weather the passage of the mountain is not
difficult, though tiring. But woe to men and beasts alike if they
encounter storms! Not a few perish in the passes; and it frequently
happens that their only chance is to unyoke the horses and leave the
sledges in a snow-wreath, seeking for themselves such shelter as may
possibly be gained, frost-bitten, after hours of battling with
impermeable drifts. The wine is frozen into one solid mass of rosy ice
before it reaches Pontresina. This does not hurt the young vintage, but
it is highly injurious to wine of some years' standing. The perils of
the journey are aggravated by the savage temper of the drivers.
Jealousies between the natives of rival districts spring up; and there
are men alive who have fought the whole way down from Fluela Hospice to
Davos Platz with knives and stones, hammers and hatchets, wooden staves
and splintered cart-wheels, staining the snow with blood, and bringing
broken pates, bruised limbs, and senseless comrades home to their women
to be tended.

Bacchus Alpinus shepherded his train away from us to northward, and we
passed forth into noonday from the gallery. It then seemed clear that
both conductor and postillion were sufficiently merry. The plunge they
took us down those frozen parapets, with shriek and _jauchzen_ and
cracked whips, was more than ever dangerous. Yet we reached La Rosa
safely. This is a lovely solitary spot, beside a rushing stream, among
grey granite boulders grown with spruce and rhododendron: a veritable
rose of Sharon 60blooming in the desert. The wastes of the Bernina
stretch above, and round about are leaguered some of the most
forbidding sharp-toothed peaks I ever saw. Onwards, across the silent
snow, we glided in immitigable sunshine, through opening valleys and
pine-woods, past the robber-huts of Pisciadella, until at evenfall we
rested in the roadside inn at Poschiavo.

IV

The snow-path ended at Poschiavo; and when, as usual, we started on our
journey next day at sunrise, it was in a carriage upon wheels. Yet even
here we were in full midwinter. Beyond Le Prese the lake presented one
sheet of smooth black ice, reflecting every peak and chasm of the
mountains, and showing the rocks and water-weeds in the clear green
depths below. The glittering floor stretched away for acres of
untenanted expanse, with not a skater to explore those dark mysterious
coves, or strike across the slanting sunlight poured from clefts in the
impendent hills. Inshore the substance of the ice sparkled here and
there with iridescence like the plumelets of a butterfly's wing under
the microscope, wherever light happened to catch the jagged or oblique
flaws that veined its solid crystal.

From the lake the road descends suddenly for a considerable distance
through a narrow gorge, following a torrent which rushes among granite
boulders. Chestnut trees begin to replace the pines. The sunnier
terraces are planted with tobacco, and at a lower level vines appear at
intervals in patches. One comes at length to a great red gate across
the road, which separates Switzerland from Italy, and where the export
dues on wine are paid. The Italian custom-house is romantically perched
above the torrent. Two courteous and elegant _finanzieri_, mere boys,
were sitting wrapped in 61their military cloaks and reading novels in
the sun as we drove up. Though they made some pretence of examining the
luggage, they excused themselves with sweet smiles and apologetic
eyes—it was a disagreeable duty!

A short time brought us to the first village in the Valtelline, where
the road bifurcates northward to Bormio and the Stelvio pass, southward
to Sondrio and Lombardy. It is a little hamlet, known by the name of La
Madonna di Tirano, having grown up round a pilgrimage church of great
beauty, with tall Lombard bell-tower, pierced with many tiers of
pilastered windows, ending in a whimsical spire, and dominating a
fantastic cupola building of the earlier Renaissance. Taken altogether,
this is a charming bit of architecture, picturesquely set beneath the
granite snow-peaks of the Valtelline. The church, they say, was raised
at Madonna's own command to stay the tide of heresy descending from the
Engadine; and in the year 1620, the bronze statue of S. Michael, which
still spreads wide its wings above the cupola, looked down upon the
massacre of six hundred Protestants and foreigners, commanded by the
patriot Jacopo Robustelli.

From Madonna the road leads up the valley through a narrow avenue of
poplar-trees to the town of Tirano. We were now in the district where
Forzato is made, and every vineyard had a name and history. In Tirano
we betook ourself to the house of an old acquaintance of the Buol
family, Bernardo da Campo, or, as the Graubündeners call him, Bernard
Campbèll. We found him at dinner with his son and grandchildren in a
vast, dark, bare Italian chamber. It would be difficult to find a more
typical old Scotchman of the Lowlands than he looked, with his clean
close-shaven face, bright brown eyes, and snow-white hair escaping from
a broad-brimmed hat. He might have sat to a painter for 62some
Covenanter's portrait, except that there was nothing dour about him, or
for an illustration to Burns's 'Cotter's Saturday Night.' The air of
probity and canniness combined with a twinkle of dry humour was
completely Scotch; and when he tapped his snuff-box, telling stories of
old days, I could not refrain from asking him about his pedigree. It
should be said that there is a considerable family of Campèlls or
Campbèlls in the Graubünden, who are fabled to deduce their stock from
a Scotch Protestant of Zwingli's time; and this made it irresistible to
imagine that in our friend Bernardo I had chanced upon a notable
specimen of atavism. All he knew, however, was, that his first ancestor
had been a foreigner, who came across the mountains to Tirano two
centuries ago.[3]

 [3] The Grisons surname Campèll may derive from the Romansch Campo
 Bello. The founder of the house was one Kaspar Campèll, who in the
 first half of the sixteenth century preached the Reformed religion in
 the Engadine.

This old gentleman is a considerable wine-dealer. He sent us with his
son, Giacomo, on a long journey underground through his cellars, where
we tasted several sorts of Valtelline, especially the new Forzato, made
a few weeks since, which singularly combines sweetness with strength,
and both with a slight effervescence. It is certainly the sort of wine
wherewith to tempt a Polyphemus, and not unapt to turn a giant's head.

Leaving Tirano, and once more passing through the poplars by Madonna,
we descended the valley all along the vineyards of Villa and the vast
district of Sassella. Here and there, at wayside inns, we stopped to
drink a glass of some particular vintage; and everywhere it seemed as
though god Bacchus were at home. The whole valley on the right side of
the Adda is one gigantic vineyard, climbing the hills in tiers 63and
terraces, which justify its Italian epithet of _Teatro di Bacco_. The
rock is a greyish granite, assuming sullen brown and orange tints where
exposed to sun and weather. The vines are grown on stakes, not
trellised over trees or carried across boulders, as is the fashion at
Chiavenna or Terlan. Yet every advantage of the mountain is adroitly
used; nooks and crannies being specially preferred, where the sun's
rays are deflected from hanging cliffs. The soil seems deep, and is of
a dull yellow tone. When the vines end, brushwood takes up the growth,
which expires at last in crag and snow. Some alps and chalets, dimly
traced against the sky, are evidences that a pastoral life prevails
above the vineyards. Pan there stretches the pine-thyrsus down to
vine-garlanded Dionysos.

The Adda flows majestically among willows in the midst, and the valley
is nearly straight. The prettiest spot, perhaps, is at Tresenda or S.
Giacomo, where a pass from Edolo and Brescia descends from the southern
hills. But the Valtelline has no great claim to beauty of scenery. Its
chief town, Sondrio, where we supped and drank some special wine called
_il vino de' Signori Grigioni_, has been modernised in dull Italian
fashion.

V

The hotel at Sondrio, La Maddalena, was in carnival uproar of masquers,
topers, and musicians all night through. It was as much as we could do
to rouse the sleepy servants and get a cup of coffee ere we started in
the frozen dawn. 'Verfluchte Maddalena!' grumbled Christian as he
shouldered our portmanteaus and bore them in hot haste to the post.
Long experience only confirms the first impression, that, of all cold,
the cold of an Italian winter is most penetrating. As we lumbered out
of Sondrio in a heavy diligence, I could 64have fancied myself back
once again at Radicofani or among the Ciminian hills. The frost was
penetrating. Fur-coats would not keep it out; and we longed to be once
more in open sledges on Bernina rather than enclosed in that cold
coupé. Now we passed Grumello, the second largest of the renowned vine
districts; and always keeping the white mass of Monte di Disgrazia in
sight, rolled at last into Morbegno. Here the Valtelline vintage
properly ends, though much of the ordinary wine is probably supplied
from the inferior produce of these fields. It was past noon when we
reached Colico, and saw the Lake of Como glittering in sunlight,
dazzling cloaks of snow on all the mountains, which look as dry and
brown as dead beech-leaves at this season. Our Bacchic journey had
reached its close; and it boots not here to tell in detail how we made
our way across the Splügen, piercing its avalanches by low-arched
galleries scooped from the solid snow, and careering in our sledges
down perpendicular snow-fields, which no one who has crossed that pass
from the Italian side in winter will forget. We left the refuge station
at the top together with a train of wine-sledges, and passed them in
the midst of the wild descent. Looking back, I saw two of their horses
stumble in the plunge and roll headlong over. Unluckily in one of these
somersaults a man was injured. Flung ahead into the snow by the first
lurch, the sledge and wine-cask crossed him like a garden-roller. Had
his bed not been of snow, he must have been crushed to death; and as it
was, he presented a woeful appearance when he afterwards arrived at
Splügen.

VI

Though not strictly connected with the subject of this paper, I shall
conclude these notes of winter wanderings in 65the high Alps with an
episode which illustrates their curious vicissitudes.

It was late in the month of March, and nearly all the mountain roads
were open for wheeled vehicles. A carriage and four horses came to meet
us at the termination of a railway journey in Bagalz. We spent one day
in visiting old houses of the Grisons aristocracy at Mayenfeld and
Zizers, rejoicing in the early sunshine, which had spread the fields
with spring flowers—primroses and oxlips, violets, anemones, and bright
blue squills. At Chur we slept, and early next morning started for our
homeward drive to Davos. Bad weather had declared itself in the night.
It blew violently, and the rain soon changed to snow, frozen by a
bitter north blast. Crossing the dreary heath of Lenz was both
magnificent and dreadful. By the time we reached Wiesen, all the
forests were laden with snow, the roads deep in snow-drifts, the whole
scene wintrier than it had been the winter through.

At Wiesen we should have stayed, for evening was fast setting in. But
in ordinary weather it is only a two hours drive from Wiesen to Davos.
Our coachman made no objections to resuming the journey, and our four
horses had but a light load to drag. So we telegraphed for supper to be
prepared, and started between five and six.

A deep gorge has to be traversed, where the torrent cleaves its way
between jaws of limestone precipices. The road is carried along ledges
and through tunnels in the rock. Avalanches, which sweep this passage
annually from the hills above, give it the name of Züge, or the
Snow-Paths. As we entered the gorge darkness fell, the horses dragged
more heavily, and it soon became evident that our Tyrolese driver was
hopelessly drunk. He nearly upset us twice by taking sharp turns in the
road, banged the carriage against telegraph 66posts and jutting rocks,
shaved the very verge of the torrent in places where there was no
parapet, and, what was worst of all, refused to leave his box without a
fight. The darkness by this time was all but total, and a blinding
snow-storm swept howling through the ravine. At length we got the
carriage to a dead-stop, and floundered out in deep wet snow toward
some wooden huts where miners in old days made their habitation. The
place, by a curious, perhaps unconscious irony, is called Hoffnungsau,
or the Meadow of Hope. Indeed, it is not ill named; for many wanderers,
escaping, as we did, from the dreadful gorge of Avalanches on a stormy
night, may have felt, as we now felt, their hope reviving when they
reached this shelter.

There was no light; nothing above, beneath, around, on any side, but
tearing tempest and snow whirled through the ravine. The horses were
taken out of the carriage; on their way to the stable, which
fortunately in these mountain regions will be always found beside the
poorest habitation, one of them fell back across a wall and nearly
broke his spine. Hoffnungsau is inhabited all through the year. In its
dismal dark kitchen we found a knot of workmen gathered together, and
heard there were two horses on the premises besides our own. It then
occurred to us that we might accomplish the rest of the journey with
such sledges as they bring the wood on from the hills in winter, if
coal-boxes or boxes of any sort could be provided. These should be
lashed to the sledges and filled with hay. We were only four persons;
my wife and a friend should go in one, myself and my little girl in the
other. No sooner thought of than put into practice. These original
conveyances were improvised, and after two hours' halt on the Meadow of
Hope, we all set forth again at half-past eight.

I have rarely felt anything more piercing than the grim 67cold of that
journey. We crawled at a foot's pace through changeful snow-drifts. The
road was obliterated, and it was my duty to keep a petroleum
stable-lamp swinging to illuminate the untracked wilderness. My little
girl was snugly nested in the hay, and sound asleep with a deep white
covering of snow above her. Meanwhile, the drift clave in frozen masses
to our faces, lashed by a wind so fierce and keen that it was difficult
to breathe it. My forehead-bone ached, as though with neuralgia, from
the mere mask of icy snow upon it, plastered on with frost. Nothing
could be seen but millions of white specks, whirled at us in eddying
concentric circles. Not far from the entrance to the village we met our
house-folk out with lanterns to look for us. It was past eleven at
night when at last we entered warm rooms and refreshed ourselves for
the tiring day with a jovial champagne supper. Horses, carriage, and
drunken driver reached home next morning.

68




OLD TOWNS OF PROVENCE


Travellers journeying southward from Paris first meet with olive-trees
near Montdragon or Monsélimart—little towns, with old historic names,
upon the road to Orange. It is here that we begin to feel ourselves
within the land of Provence, where the Romans found a second Italy, and
where the autumn of their antique civilisation was followed, almost
without an intermediate winter of barbarism, by the light and delicate
springtime of romance. Orange itself is full of Rome. Indeed, the ghost
of the dead empire seems there to be more real and living than the
actual flesh and blood of modern time, as represented by narrow dirty
streets and mean churches. It is the shell of the huge theatre,
hollowed from the solid hill, and fronted with a wall that seems made
rather to protect a city than to form a sounding-board for a stage,
which first tells us that we have reached the old Arausio. Of all
theatres this is the most impressive, stupendous, indestructible, the
Colosseum hardly excepted; for in Rome herself we are prepared for
something gigantic, while in the insignificant Arausio—a sort of
antique Tewkesbury—to find such magnificence, durability, and vastness,
impresses one with a nightmare sense that the old lioness of Empire can
scarcely yet be dead. Standing before the colossal, towering, amorphous
precipice which formed the background of the scena, we feel as if once
more the 'heart-shaking sound of Consul Romanus' might be heard; as if
Roman knights and deputies, arisen 69from the dead, with faces hard and
stern as those of the warriors carved on Trajan's frieze, might take
their seats beneath us in the orchestra, and, after proclamation made,
the mortmain of imperial Rome be laid upon the comforts, liberties, and
little gracefulnesses of our modern life. Nor is it unpleasant to be
startled from such reverie by the voice of the old guardian upon the
stage beneath, sonorously devolving the vacuous Alexandrines with which
he once welcomed his ephemeral French emperor from Algiers. The little
man is dim with distance, eclipsed and swallowed up by the shadows and
grotesque fragments of the ruin in the midst of which he stands. But
his voice—thanks to the inimitable constructive art of the ancient
architect, which, even in the desolation of at least thirteen
centuries, has not lost its cunning-emerges from the pigmy throat, and
fills the whole vast hollow with its clear, if tiny, sound. Thank
heaven, there is no danger of Roman resurrection here! The illusion is
completely broken, and we turn to gather the first violets of February,
and to wonder at the quaint postures of a praying mantis on the grass
grown tiers and porches fringed with fern.

The sense of Roman greatness which is so oppressive in Orange and in
many other parts of Provence, is not felt at Avignon. Here we exchange
the ghost of Imperial for the phantom of Ecclesiastical Rome. The fixed
epithet of Avignon is Papal; and as the express train rushes over its
bleak and wind-tormented plain, the heavy dungeon-walls and
battlemented towers of its palace fortress seem to warn us off, and bid
us quickly leave the Babylon of exiled impious Antichrist. Avignon
presents the bleakest, barest, greyest scene upon a February morning,
when the incessant mistral is blowing, and far and near, upon desolate
hillside and sandy plain, the scanty trees are bent sideways, the
crumbling castle turrets shivering like bleached skeletons in the dry
ungenial air. Yet 70inside the town, all is not so dreary. The Papal
palace, with its terrible Glacière, its chapel painted by Simone Memmi,
its endless corridors and staircases, its torture-chamber,
funnel-shaped to drown and suffocate—so runs tradition—the shrieks of
wretches on the rack, is now a barrack, filled with lively little
French soldiers, whose politeness, though sorely taxed, is never
ruffled by the introduction of inquisitive visitors into their
dormitories, eating-places, and drill-grounds. And strange, indeed, it
is to see the lines of neat narrow barrack beds, between which the
red-legged little men are shaving, polishing their guns, or mending
their trousers, in those vaulted halls of popes and cardinals, those
vast presence-chambers and audience-galleries, where Urban entertained
S. Catherine, where Rienzi came, a prisoner, to be stared at. Pass by
the Glacière with a shudder, for it has still the reek of blood about
it; and do not long delay in the cheerless dungeon of Rienzi. Time and
regimental whitewash have swept these lurking-places of old crime very
bare; but the parable of the seven devils is true in more senses than
one, and the ghosts that return to haunt a deodorised, disinfected,
garnished sepulchre are almost more ghastly than those which have never
been disturbed from their old habitations.

Little by little the eye becomes accustomed to the bareness and
greyness of this Provençal landscape; and then we find that the scenery
round Avignon is eminently picturesque. The view from Les Doms—which is
a hill above the Pope's palace, the Acropolis, as it were, of
Avignon—embraces a wide stretch of undulating champaign, bordered by
low hills, and intersected by the flashing waters of the majestic
Rhone. Across the stream stands Villeneuve, like a castle of romance,
with its round stone towers fronting the gates and battlemented walls
of the Papal city. A bridge used to connect the two towns, but it is
now broken. The remaining fragment is of 71solid build, resting on
great buttresses, one of which rises fantastically above the bridge
into a little chapel. Such, one might fancy, was the bridge which
Ariosto's Rodomonte kept on horse against the Paladins of Charlemagne,
when angered by the loss of his love. Nor is it difficult to imagine
Bradamante spurring up the slope against him with her magic lance in
rest, and tilting him into the tawny waves beneath.

On a clear October morning, when the vineyards are taking their last
tints of gold and crimson, and the yellow foliage of the poplars by the
river mingles with the sober greys of olive-trees and willows, every
square inch of this landscape, glittering as it does with light and
with colour, the more beautiful for its subtlety and rarity, would make
a picture. Out of many such vignettes let us choose one. We are on the
shore close by the ruined bridge, the rolling muddy Rhone in front;
beyond it, by the towing-path, a tall strong cypress-tree rises beside
a little house, and next to it a crucifix twelve feet or more in
height, the Christ visible afar, stretched upon His red cross; arundo
donax is waving all around, and willows near; behind, far off, soar the
peaked hills, blue and pearled with clouds; past the cypress, on the
Rhone, comes floating a long raft, swift through the stream, its rudder
guided by a score of men: one standing erect upon the prow bends
forward to salute the cross; on flies the raft, the tall reeds rustle,
and the cypress sleeps.

For those who have time to spare in going to or from the south it is
worth while to spend a day or two in the most comfortable and
characteristic of old French inns, the Hôtel de l'Europe, at Avignon.
Should it rain, the museum of the town is worth a visit. It contains
Horace Vernet's not uncelebrated picture of Mazeppa, and another, less
famous, but perhaps more interesting, by swollen-cheeked David, the
72'genius in convulsion,' as Carlyle has christened him. His canvas is
unfinished. Who knows what cry of the Convention made the painter fling
his palette down and leave the masterpiece he might have spoiled? For
in its way the picture is a masterpiece. There lies Jean Barrad,
drummer, aged fourteen, slain in La Vendée, a true patriot, who, while
his life-blood flowed away, pressed the tricolor cockade to his heart,
and murmured 'Liberty!' David has treated his subject classically. The
little drummer-boy, though French enough in feature and in feeling,
lies, Greek-like, naked on the sand—a very Hyacinth of the Republic, La
Vendée's Ilioneus. The tricolor cockade and the sentiment of upturned
patriotic eyes are the only indications of his being a hero in his
teens, a citizen who thought it sweet to die for France.

In fine weather a visit to Vaucluse should by no means be omitted, not
so much, perhaps, for Petrarch's sake as for the interest of the drive,
and for the marvel of the fountain of the Sorgues. For some time after
leaving Avignon you jog along the level country between avenues of
plane-trees; then comes a hilly ridge, on which the olives, mulberries,
and vineyards join their colours and melt subtly into distant purple.
After crossing this we reach L'Isle, an island village girdled by the
gliding Sorgues, overshadowed with gigantic plane-boughs, and echoing
to the plash of water dripped from mossy fern-tufted millwheels. Those
who expect Petrarch's Sorgues to be some trickling poet's rill emerging
from a damp grotto, may well be astounded at the rush and roar of this
azure river so close upon its fountain-head. It has a volume and an
arrow-like rapidity that communicate the feeling of exuberance and
life. In passing, let it not be forgotten that it was somewhere or
other in this 'chiaro fondo di Sorga,' as Carlyle describes, that
Jourdain, the hangman-hero of the Glacière, stuck fast upon his pony
when flying from his foes, 73and had his accursed life, by some
diabolical providence, spared for future butcheries. On we go across
the austere plain, between fields of madder, the red roots of the
'garance' lying in swathes along the furrows. In front rise ash-grey
hills of barren rock, here and there crimsoned with the leaves of the
dwarf sumach. A huge cliff stands up and seems to bar all passage. Yet
the river foams in torrents at our side. Whence can it issue? What pass
or cranny in that precipice is cloven for its escape? These questions
grow in interest as we enter the narrow defile of limestone rocks which
leads to the cliff-barrier, and find ourselves among the figs and
olives of Vaucluse. Here is the village, the little church, the ugly
column to Petrarch's memory, the inn, with its caricatures of Laura,
and its excellent trout, the bridge and the many-flashing, eddying
Sorgues, lashed by millwheels, broken by weirs, divided in its course,
channelled and dyked, yet flowing irresistibly and undefiled. Blue,
purple, greened by moss and water-weeds, silvered by snow-white
pebbles, on its pure smooth bed the river runs like elemental diamond,
so clear and fresh. The rocks on either side are grey or yellow,
terraced into oliveyards, with here and there a cypress, fig, or
mulberry tree. Soon the gardens cease, and lentisk, rosemary, box, and
ilex—shrubs of Provence—with here and there a sumach out of reach,
cling to the hard stone. And so at last we are brought face to face
with the sheer impassable precipice. At its basement sleeps a pool,
perfectly untroubled; a lakelet in which the sheltering rocks and
nestling wild figs are glassed as in a mirror—a mirror of blue-black
water, like amethyst or fluor-spar—so pure, so still, that where it
laps the pebbles you can scarcely say where air begins and water ends.
This, then, is Petrarch's 'grotto;' this is the fountain of Vaucluse.
Up from its deep reservoirs, from the mysterious basements of the
mountain, wells the silent stream; pauseless 74and motionless it fills
its urn, rises unruffled, glides until the brink is reached, then
overflows, and foams, and dashes noisily, a cataract, among the
boulders of the hills. Nothing at Vaucluse is more impressive than the
contrast between the tranquil silence of the fountain and the roar of
the released impetuous river. Here we can realise the calm clear eyes
of sculptured water-gods, their brimming urns, their gushing streams,
the magic of the mountain-born and darkness-cradled flood. Or again,
looking up at the sheer steep cliff, 800 feet in height, and arching
slightly roofwise, so that no rain falls upon the cavern of the pool,
we seem to see the stroke of Neptune's trident, the hoof of Pegasus,
the force of Moses' rod, which cleft rocks and made water gush forth in
the desert. There is a strange fascination in the spot. As our eyes
follow the white pebble which cleaves the surface and falls visibly,
until the veil of azure is too thick for sight to pierce, we feel as if
some glamour were drawing us, like Hylas, to the hidden caves. At
least, we long to yield a prized and precious offering to the spring,
to grace the nymph of Vaucluse with a pearl of price as token of our
reverence and love.

Meanwhile nothing has been said about Petrarch, who himself said much
about the spring, and complained against those very nymphs to whom we
have in wish, at least, been scattering jewels, that they broke his
banks and swallowed up his gardens every winter. At Vaucluse Petrarch
loved, and lived, and sang. He has made Vaucluse famous, and will never
be forgotten there. But for the present the fountain is even more
attractive than the memory of the poet.[4]

 [4] I have translated and printed at the end of the second volume some
 sonnets of Petrarch as a kind of palinode for this impertinence.

The change from Avignon to Nismes is very trying to the latter place;
for Nismes is not picturesquely or historically 75interesting. It is a
prosperous modern French town with two almost perfect Roman
monuments—Les Arènes and the Maison Carrée. The amphitheatre is a
complete oval, visible at one glance. Its smooth white stone, even
where it has not been restored, seems unimpaired by age; and Charles
Martel's conflagration, when he burned the Saracen hornet's nest inside
it, has only blackened the outer walls and arches venerably. Utility
and perfect adaptation of means to ends form the beauty of Roman
buildings. The science of construction and large intelligence displayed
in them, their strength, simplicity, solidity, and purpose, are their
glory. Perhaps there is only one modern edifice—Palladio's Palazzo
della Ragione at Vicenza—which approaches the dignity and loftiness of
Roman architecture; and this it does because of its absolute freedom
from ornament, the vastness of its design, and the durability of its
material. The temple, called the Maison Carrée, at Nismes, is also very
perfect, and comprehended at one glance. Light, graceful, airy, but
rather thin and narrow, it reminds one of the temple of Fortuna Virilis
at Rome.

But if Nismes itself is not picturesque, its environs contain the
wonderful Pont du Gard. A two or three hours' drive leads through a
desolate country to the valley of the Cardon, where suddenly, at a turn
of the road, one comes upon the aqueduct. It is not within the scope of
words to describe the impression produced by those vast arches, row
above row, cutting the deep blue sky. The domed summer clouds sailing
across them are comprehended in the gigantic span of their perfect
semicircles, which seem rather to have been described by Miltonic
compasses of Deity than by merely human mathematics. Yet, standing
beneath one of the vaults and looking upward, you may read Roman
numerals in order from I. to X., which prove their human origin well
enough. 76Next to their strength, regularity, and magnitude, the most
astonishing point about this triple tier of arches, piled one above the
other to a height of 180 feet above a brawling stream between two
barren hills, is their lightness. The arches are not thick; the
causeway on the top is only just broad enough for three men to walk
abreast. So smooth and perpendicular are the supporting walls that
scarcely a shrub or tuft of grass has grown upon the aqueduct in all
these years. And yet the huge fabric is strengthened by no buttress,
has needed no repair. This lightness of structure, combined with such
prodigious durability, produces the strongest sense of science and
self-reliant power in the men who designed it. None but Romans could
have built such a monument, and have set it in such a place—a
wilderness of rock and rolling hill, scantily covered with low
brushwood, and browsed over by a few sheep—for such a purpose, too, in
order to supply Nemausus with pure water. The modern town does pretty
well without its water; but here subsists the civilisation of eighteen
centuries past intact: the human labour yet remains, the measuring,
contriving mind of man, shrinking from no obstacles, spanning the air,
and in one edifice combining gigantic strength and perfect beauty. It
is impossible not to echo Rousseau's words in such a place, and to say
with him: 'Le retentissement de mes pas dans ces immenses voûtes me
faisait croire entendre la forte voix de ceux qui les avaient bâties.
Je me perdais comme un insecte dans cette immensité. Je sentais, tout
en me faisant petit, je ne sais quoi qui m'élevait l'âme; et je me
disais en soupirant, Que ne suis-je né Romain!'

There is nothing at Arles which produces the same deep and indelible
impression. Yet Arles is a far more interesting town than Nismes,
partly because of the Rhone delta which begins there, partly because of
its ruinous antiquity, and 77partly also because of the strong local
character of its population. The amphitheatre of Arles is vaster and
more sublime in its desolation than the tidy theatre at Nismes; the
crypts, and dens, and subterranean passages suggest all manner of
speculation as to the uses to which they may have been appropriated;
while the broken galleries outside, intricate and black and cavernous,
like Piranesi's etchings of the 'Carceri,' present the wildest pictures
of greatness in decay, fantastic dilapidation. The ruins of the smaller
theatre, again, with their picturesquely grouped fragments and their
standing columns, might be sketched for a frontispiece to some
dilettante work on classical antiquities. For the rest, perhaps the
Aliscamps, or ancient Roman burial-ground, is the most interesting
thing at Arles, not only because of Dante's celebrated lines in the
canto of 'Farinata:'—

Si come ad Arli ove 'l Rodano stagna,
Fanno i sepolcri tutto 'l loco varo;


but also because of the intrinsic picturesqueness of this avenue of
sepulchres beneath green trees upon a long soft grassy field.

But as at Avignon and Nismes, so also at Arles, one of the chief
attractions of the place lies at a distance, and requires a special
expedition. The road to Les Baux crosses a true Provençal desert where
one realises the phrase, 'Vieux comme les rochers de Provence,'—a
wilderness of grey stone, here and there worn into cart-tracks, and
tufted with rosemary, box, lavender, and lentisk. On the way it passes
the Abbaye de Mont Majeur, a ruin of gigantic size, embracing all
periods of architecture; where nothing seems to flourish now but
henbane and the wild cucumber, or to breathe but a mumble-toothed and
terrible old hag. The ruin stands above a desolate marsh, its vast
Italian buildings of Palladian splendour 78looking more forlorn in
their decay than the older and austerer mediæval towers, which rise up
proud and patient and defiantly erect beneath the curse of time. When
at length what used to be the castle town of Les Baux is reached, you
find a naked mountain of yellow sandstone, worn away by nature into
bastions and buttresses and coigns of vantage, sculptured by ancient
art into palaces and chapels, battlements and dungeons. Now art and
nature are confounded in one ruin. Blocks of masonry lie cheek by jowl
with masses of the rough-hewn rock; fallen cavern vaults are heaped
round fragments of fan-shaped spandrel and clustered column-shaft; the
doors and windows of old pleasure-rooms are hung with ivy and wild fig
for tapestry; winding staircases start midway upon the cliff, and lead
to vacancy. High overhead suspended in mid-air hang chambers—lady's
bower or poet's singing-room—now inaccessible, the haunt of hawks and
swallows. Within this rocky honeycomb—'cette ville en monolithe,' as it
has been aptly called, for it is literally scooped out of one mountain
block—live about two hundred poor people, foddering their wretched
goats at carved piscina and stately sideboards, erecting mud
beplastered hovels in the halls of feudal princes. Murray is wrong in
calling the place a mediæval town in its original state, for anything
more purely ruinous, more like a decayed old cheese, cannot possibly be
conceived. The living only inhabit the tombs of the dead. At the end of
the last century, when revolutionary effervescence was beginning to
ferment, the people of Arles swept all its feudality away, defacing the
very arms upon the town gate, and trampling the palace towers to dust.

The castle looks out across a vast extent of plain over Arles, the
stagnant Rhone, the Camargue, and the salt pools of the lingering sea.
In old days it was the eyrie of an eagle race called Seigneurs of Les
Baux; and whether they took their 79title from the rock, or whether, as
genealogists would have it, they gave the name of Oriental
Balthazar—their reputed ancestor, one of the Magi—to the rock itself,
remains a mystery not greatly worth the solving.

Anyhow, here they lived and flourished, these feudal princes, bearing
for their ensign a silver comet of sixteen rays upon a field of
gules—themselves a comet race, baleful to the neighbouring lowlands,
blazing with lurid splendour over wide tracts of country, a burning,
raging, fiery-souled, swift-handed tribe, in whom a flame unquenchable
glowed from son to sire through twice five hundred years until, in the
sixteenth century, they were burned out, and nothing remained but
cinders—these broken ruins of their eyrie, and some outworn and dusty
titles. Very strange are the fate and history of these same titles:
King of Arles, for instance, savouring of troubadour and high romance;
Prince of Tarentum, smacking of old plays and Italian novels; Prince of
Orange, which the Nassaus, through the Châlons, seized in all its
emptiness long after the real principality had passed away, and came
therewith to sit on England's throne.

The Les Baux in their heyday were patterns of feudal nobility. They
warred incessantly with Counts of Provence, archbishops and burghers of
Arles, Queens of Naples, Kings of Aragon. Crusading, pillaging,
betraying, spending their substance on the sword, and buying it again
by deeds of valour or imperial acts of favour, tuning troubadour harps,
presiding at courts of love,—they filled a large page in the history of
Southern France. The Les Baux were very superstitious. In the fulness
of their prosperity they restricted the number of their dependent
towns, or _places baussenques_, to seventy-nine, because these numbers
in combination were thought to be of good omen to their house. Beral
des Baux, Seigneur of Marseilles, was one day starting on a journey
80with his whole force to Avignon. He met an old woman herb-gathering
at daybreak, and said, 'Mother, hast thou seen a crow or other bird?'
'Yea,' answered the crone, 'on the trunk of a dead willow.' Beral
counted upon his fingers the day of the year, and turned bridle. With
troubadours of name and note they had dealings, but not always to their
own advantage, as the following story testifies. When the Baux and
Berengers were struggling for the countship of Provence, Raymond
Berenger, by his wife's counsel, went, attended by troubadours, to meet
the Emperor Frederick at Milan. There he sued for the investiture and
ratification of Provence. His troubadours sang and charmed Frederick;
and the Emperor, for the joy he had in them, wrote his celebrated lines
beginning—

Plas mi cavalier Francez.


And when Berenger made his request he met with no refusal. Hearing
thereof, the lords of Baux came down in wrath with a clangour of armed
men. But music had already gained the day; and where the Phoebus of
Provence had shone, the Æolus of storm-shaken Les Baux was powerless.
Again, when Blacas, a knight of Provence, died, the great Sordello
chanted one of his most fiery hymns, bidding the princes of Christendom
flock round and eat the heart of the dead lord. 'Let Rambaude des
Baux,' cries the bard, with a sarcasm that is clearly meant, but at
this distance almost unintelligible, 'take also a good piece, for she
is fair and good and truly virtuous; let her keep it well who knows so
well to husband her own weal.' But the poets were not always adverse to
the house of Baux. Fouquet, the beautiful and gentle melodist whom
Dante placed in paradise, served Adelaisie, wife of Berald, with long
service of unhappy love, and wrote upon her death 'The Complaint of
Berald des Baux for Adelaisie.' Guillaume de Cabestan loved Berangère
des Baux, and was 81so loved by her that she gave him a philtre to
drink, whereof he sickened and grew mad. Many more troubadours are
cited as having frequented the castle of Les Baux, and among the
members of the princely house were several poets.

Some of them were renowned for beauty. We hear of a Cécile, called
Passe Rose, because of her exceeding loveliness; also of an unhappy
François, who, after passing eighteen years in prison, yet won the
grace and love of Joan of Naples by his charms. But the real temper of
this fierce tribe was not shown among troubadours, or in the courts of
love and beauty. The stern and barren rock from which they sprang, and
the comet of their scutcheon, are the true symbols of their nature.
History records no end of their ravages and slaughters. It is a tedious
catalogue of blood—how one prince put to fire and sword the whole town
of Courthezon; how another was stabbed in prison by his wife; how a
third besieged the castle of his niece, and sought to undermine her
chamber, knowing her the while to be in childbed; how a fourth was
flayed alive outside the walls of Avignon. There is nothing terrible,
splendid, and savage, belonging to feudal history, of which an example
may not be found in the annals of Les Baux, as narrated by their
chronicler, Jules Canonge.

However abrupt may seem the transition from these memories of the
ancient nobles of Les Baux to mere matters of travel and
picturesqueness, it would be impossible to take leave of the old towns
of Provence without glancing at the cathedrals of S. Trophime at Arles,
and of S. Gilles—a village on the border of the dreary flamingo-haunted
Camargue. Both of these buildings have porches splendidly encrusted
with sculptures, half classical, half mediæval, marking the transition
from ancient to modern art. But that of S. Gilles is by far the richer
and more elaborate. The whole façade of 82this church is one mass of
intricate decoration; Norman arches and carved lions, like those of
Lombard architecture, mingling fantastically with Greek scrolls of
fruit and flowers, with elegant Corinthian columns jutting out upon the
church steps, and with the old conventional wave-border that is called
Etruscan in our modern jargon. From the midst of florid fret and
foliage lean mild faces of saints and Madonnas. Symbols of evangelists
with half-human, half-animal eyes and wings, are interwoven with the
leafy bowers of cupids. Grave apostles stand erect beneath acanthus
wreaths that ought to crisp the forehead of a laughing Faun or Bacchus.
And yet so full, exuberant, and deftly chosen are these various
elements, that there remains no sense of incongruity or discord. The
mediæval spirit had much trouble to disentangle itself from classic
reminiscences; and fortunately for the picturesqueness of S. Gilles, it
did not succeed. How strangely different is the result of this
transition in the south from those severe and rigid forms which we call
Romanesque in Germany and Normandy and England!

83




THE CORNICE


It was a dull afternoon in February when we left Nice, and drove across
the mountains to Mentone. Over hill and sea hung a thick mist. Turbia's
Roman tower stood up in cheerless solitude, wreathed round with driving
vapour, and the rocky nest of Esa seemed suspended in a chaos between
sea and sky. Sometimes the fog broke and showed us Villafranca, lying
green and flat in the deep blue below: sometimes a distant view of
higher peaks swam into sight from the shifting cloud. But the whole
scene was desolate. Was it for this that we had left our English home,
and travelled from London day and night? At length we reached the edge
of the cloud, and jingled down by Roccabruna and the olive-groves, till
one by one Mentone's villas came in sight, and at last we found
ourselves at the inn door. That night, and all next day and the next
night, we heard the hoarse sea beat and thunder on the beach. The rain
and wind kept driving from the south, but we consoled ourselves with
thinking that the orange-trees and every kind of flower were drinking
in the moisture and waiting to rejoice in sunlight which would come.

It was a Sunday morning when we woke and found that the rain had gone,
the sun was shining brightly on the sea, and a clear north wind was
blowing cloud and mist away. Out upon the hills we went, not caring
much what path we took; for everything was beautiful, and hill and vale
were 84full of garden walks. Through lemon-groves,—pale, golden-tender
trees,—and olives, stretching their grey boughs against the lonely
cottage tiles, we climbed, until we reached the pines and heath above.
Then I knew the meaning of Theocritus for the first time. We found a
well, broad, deep, and clear, with green herbs growing at the bottom, a
runlet flowing from it down the rocky steps, maidenhair, black
adiantum, and blue violets, hanging from the brink and mirrored in the
water. This was just the well in _Hylas_. Theocritus has been badly
treated. They call him a court poet, dead to Nature, artificial in his
pictures. Yet I recognised this fountain by his verse, just as if he
had showed me the very spot. Violets grow everywhere, of every shade,
from black to lilac. Their stalks are long, and the flowers 'nod' upon
them, so that I see how the Greeks could make them into chaplets—how
Lycidas wore his crown of white violets[5] lying by the fireside
elbow-deep in withered asphodel, watching the chestnuts in the embers,
and softly drinking deep healths to Ageanax far off upon the waves. It
is impossible to go wrong in these valleys. They are cultivated to the
height of about five hundred feet above the sea, in terraces
laboriously built up with walls, earthed and manured, and irrigated by
means of tanks and aqueducts. Above this level, where the virgin soil
has not been yet reclaimed, or where the winds of winter bring down
freezing currents from the mountains through a gap or gully of the
lower hills, a tangled growth of heaths and arbutus, and pines, and
rosemarys, and myrtles, continue the vegetation, till it finally ends
in bare grey rocks and peaks some thousand feet in height. Far above
all signs of cultivation 85on these arid peaks, you still may see
villages and ruined castles, built centuries ago for a protection from
the Moorish pirates. To these mountain fastnesses the people of the
coast retreated when they descried the sails of their foes on the
horizon. In Mentone, not very long ago, old men might be seen who in
their youth were said to have been taken captive by the Moors; and many
Arabic words have found their way into the patois of the people.

 [5] This begs the question whether λευκόϊον does not properly mean
 snowflake, or some such flower. Violets in Greece, however, were often
 used for crowns: ΐοστέφανος  is the epithet of Homer for Aphrodite,
 and of Aristophanes for Athens.

There is something strangely fascinating in the sight of these ruins on
the burning rocks, with their black sentinel cypresses, immensely tall
and far away. Long years and rain and sunlight have made these
castellated eyries one with their native stone. It is hard to trace in
their foundations where Nature's workmanship ends and where man's
begins. What strange sights the mountain villagers must see! The vast
blue plain of the unfurrowed deep, the fairy range of Corsica hung
midway between the sea and sky at dawn or sunset, the stars so close
above their heads, the deep dew-sprinkled valleys, the green pines! On
penetrating into one of these hill-fortresses, you find that it is a
whole village, with a church and castle and piazza, some few feet
square, huddled together on a narrow platform. We met one day three
magnates of Gorbio taking a morning stroll backwards and forwards, up
and down their tiny square. Vehemently gesticulating, loudly
chattering, they talked as though they had not seen each other for ten
years, and were but just unloading their budgets of accumulated news.
Yet these three men probably had lived, eaten, drunk, and talked
together from the cradle to that hour: so true it is that use and
custom quicken all our powers, especially of 93gossiping and
scandal-mongering. S. Agnese is the highest and most notable of all
these villages. The cold and heat upon its absolutely barren rock must
be alike intolerable. In appearance 86it is not unlike the Etruscan
towns of Central Italy; but there is something, of course, far more
imposing in the immense antiquity and the historical associations of a
Narni, a Fiesole, a Chiusi, or an Orvieto. Sea-life and rusticity
strike a different note from that of those Apennine-girdled seats of
dead civilisation, in which nations, arts, and religions have gone by
and left but few traces,—some wrecks of giant walls, some excavated
tombs, some shrines, where monks still sing and pray above the relics
of the founders of once world-shaking, now almost forgotten, orders.
Here at Mentone there is none of this; the idyllic is the true note,
and Theocritus is still alive.

We do not often scale these altitudes, but keep along the terraced
glades by the side of olive-shaded streams. The violets, instead of
peeping shyly from hedgerows, fall in ripples and cascades over mossy
walls among maidenhair and spleen-worts. They are very sweet, and the
sound of trickling water seems to mingle with their fragrance in a most
delicious harmony. Sound, smell, and hue make up one chord, the sense
of which is pure and perfect peace. The country-people are kind,
letting us pass everywhere, so that we make our way along their
aqueducts and through their gardens, under laden lemon-boughs, the pale
fruit dangling at our ears, and swinging showers of scented dew upon us
as we pass. Far better, however, than lemon or orange trees, are the
olives. Some of these are immensely old, numbering, it is said, five
centuries, so that Petrarch may almost have rested beneath their shade
on his way to Avignon. These veterans are cavernous with age: gnarled,
split, and twisted trunks, throwing out arms that break into a hundred
branches; every branch distinct, and feathered with innumerable sparks
and spikelets of white, wavy, greenish light. These are the leaves, and
the stems are grey with lichens. The sky and sea—two blues, one full
87of sunlight and the other purple—set these fountains of perennial
brightness like gems in lapis-lazuli. At a distance the same olives
look hoary and soft—a veil of woven light or luminous haze. When the
wind blows their branches all one way, they ripple like a sea of
silver. But underneath their covert, in the shade, grey periwinkles
wind among the snowy drift of allium. The narcissus sends its arrowy
fragrance through the air, while, far and wide, red anemones burn like
fire, with interchange of blue and lilac buds, white arums, orchises,
and pink gladiolus. Wandering there, and seeing the pale flowers, stars
white and pink and odorous, we dream of Olivet, or the grave Garden of
the Agony, and the trees seem always whispering of sacred things. How
people can blaspheme against the olives, and call them imitations of
the willow, or complain that they are shabby shrubs, I do not know.[6]

 [6] Olive-trees must be studied at Mentone or San Remo, in Corfu, at
 Tivoli, on the coast between Syracuse and Catania, or on the lowlands
 of Apulia. The stunted but productive trees of the Rhone valley, for
 example, are no real measure of the beauty they can exhibit.

This shore would stand for Shelley's Island of Epipsychidion, or the
golden age which Empedocles describes, when the mild nations worshipped
Aphrodite with incense and the images of beasts and yellow honey, and
no blood was spilt upon her altars—when 'the trees flourished with
perennial leaves and fruit, and ample crops adorned their boughs
through all the year.' This even now is literally true of the
lemon-groves, which do not cease to flower and ripen. Everything fits
in to complete the reproduction of Greek pastoral life. The goats eat
cytisus and myrtle on the shore; a whole flock gathered round me as I
sat beneath a tuft of golden green euphorbia the other day, and nibbled
bread from my hands. The frog still croaks by tank and 88fountain,
'whom the Muses have ordained to sing for aye,' in spite of Bion's
death. The narcissus, anemone, and hyacinth still tell their tales of
love and death. Hesper still gazes on the shepherd from the
mountain-head. The slender cypresses still vibrate, the pines murmur.
Pan sleeps in noontide heat, and goat-herds and wayfaring men lie down
to slumber by the roadside, under olive-boughs in which cicadas sing.
The little villages high up are just as white, the mountains just as
grey and shadowy when evening falls. Nothing is changed—except
ourselves. I expect to find a statue of Priapus or pastoral Pan, hung
with wreaths of flowers—the meal cake, honey, and spilt wine upon his
altar, and young boys and maidens dancing round. Surely, in some
far-off glade, by the side of lemon-grove or garden, near the village,
there must be still a pagan remnant of glad Nature-worship. Surely I
shall chance upon some Thyrsis piping in the pine-tree shade, or Daphne
flying from the arms of Phoebus. So I dream until I come upon the
Calvary set on a solitary hillock, with its prayer-steps lending a wide
prospect across the olives and the orange-trees, and the broad valleys,
to immeasurable skies and purple seas. There is the iron cross, the
wounded heart, the spear, the reed, the nails, the crown of thorns, the
cup of sacrificial blood, the title, with its superscription royal and
divine. The other day we crossed a brook and entered a lemon-field,
rich with blossoms and carpeted with red anemones. Everything basked in
sunlight and glittered with exceeding brilliancy of hue. A tiny white
chapel stood in a corner of the enclosure. Two iron-grated windows let
me see inside: it was a bare place, containing nothing but a wooden
praying-desk, black and worm-eaten, an altar with its candles and no
flowers, and above the altar a square picture brown with age. On the
floor were scattered several pence, and in a vase above the holy-water
vessel stood 89some withered hyacinths. As my sight became accustomed
to the gloom, I could see from the darkness of the picture a pale
Christ nailed to the cross with agonising upward eyes and ashy aureole
above the bleeding thorns. Thus I stepped suddenly away from the
outward pomp and bravery of nature to the inward aspirations, agonies,
and martyrdoms of man—from Greek legends of the past to the real
Christian present—and I remembered that an illimitable prospect has
been opened to the world, that in spite of ourselves we must turn our
eyes heavenward, inward, to the infinite unseen beyond us and within
our souls. Nothing can take us back to Phoebus or to Pan. Nothing can
again identify us with the simple natural earth. '_Une immense
espérance a traversé la terre_,' and these chapels, with their deep
significances, lurk in the fair landscape like the cares of real life
among our dreams of art, or like a fear of death and the hereafter in
the midst of opera music. It is a strange contrast. The worship of men
in those old times was symbolised by dances in the evening, banquets,
libations, and mirth-making. 'Euphrosyne' was alike the goddess of the
righteous mind and of the merry heart. Old withered women telling their
rosaries at dusk; belated shepherds crossing themselves beneath the
stars when they pass the chapel; maidens weighed down with Margaret's
anguish of unhappy love; youths vowing their life to contemplation in
secluded cloisters,—these are the human forms which gather round such
chapels; and the motto of the worshippers consists in this, 'Do often
violence to thy desire.' In the Tyrol we have seen whole villages
praying together at daybreak before their day's work, singing their
_Miserere_ and their _Gloria_ and their _Dies Iræ_, to the sound of
crashing organs and jangling bells; appealing in the midst of Nature's
splendour to the Spirit which is above Nature, which dwells in darkness
rather than light, 90and loves the yearnings and contentions of our
soul more than its summer gladness and peace. Even the olives here tell
more to us of Olivet and the Garden than of the oil-press and the
wrestling-ground. The lilies carry us to the Sermon on the Mount, and
teach humility, instead of summoning up some legend of a god's love for
a mortal. The hillside tanks and running streams, and water-brooks
swollen by sudden rain, speak of Palestine. We call the white flowers
stars of Bethlehem. The large sceptre-reed; the fig-tree, lingering in
barrenness when other trees are full of fruit; the locust-beans of the
Caruba:—for one suggestion of Greek idylls there is yet another, of far
deeper, dearer power.

But who can resist the influence of Greek ideas at the Cap S. Martin?
Down to the verge of the sea stretch the tall, twisted stems of Levant
pines, and on the caverned limestone breaks the deep blue water.
Dazzling as marble are these rocks, pointed and honeycombed with
constant dashing of the restless sea, tufted with corallines and grey
and purple seaweeds in the little pools, but hard and dry and rough
above tide level. Nor does the sea always lap them quietly; for the
last few days it has come tumbling in, roaring and raging on the beach
with huge waves crystalline in their transparency, and maned with
fleecy spray. Such were the rocks and such the swell of breakers when
Ulysses grasped the shore after his long swim. Samphire, very salt and
fragrant, grows in the rocky honeycomb; then lentisk and beach-loving
myrtle, both exceeding green and bushy; then rosemary and euphorbia
above the reach of spray. Fishermen, with their long reeds, sit lazily
perched upon black rocks above blue waves, sunning themselves as much
as seeking sport. One distant tip of snow, seen far away behind the
hills, reminds us of an alien, unremembered winter. While dreaming
there, this fancy came into my 91head: Polyphemus was born yonder in
the Gorbio Valley. There he fed his sheep and goats, and on the hills
found scanty pasture for his kine. He and his mother lived in the white
house by the cypress near the stream where tulips grow. Young Galatea,
nursed in the caverns of these rocks, white as the foam, and shy as the
sea fishes, came one morning up the valley to pick mountain hyacinths,
and little Polyphemus led the way. He knew where violets and sweet
narcissus grew, as well as Galatea where pink coralline and spreading
sea-flowers with their waving arms. But Galatea, having filled her lap
with bluebells, quite forgot the leaping kids, and piping Cyclops, and
cool summer caves, and yellow honey, and black ivy, and sweet vine, and
water cold as Alpine snow. Down the swift streamlet she danced
laughingly, and made herself once more bitter with the sea. But
Polyphemus remained,—hungry, sad, gazing on the barren sea, and piping
to the mockery of its waves.

Filled with these Greek fancies, it is strange to come upon a little
sandstone dell furrowed by trickling streams and overgrown with English
primroses; or to enter the village of Roccabruna, with its mediæval
castle and the motto on its walls, _Tempora labuntur tacitisque
senescimus annis_. A true motto for the town, where the butcher comes
but once a week, and where men and boys, and dogs, and palms, and
lemon-trees grow up and flourish and decay in the same hollow of the
sunny mountain-side. Into the hard conglomerate of the hill the town is
built; house walls and precipices mortised into one another, dovetailed
by the art of years gone by, and riveted by age. The same plants grow
from both alike—spurge, cistus, rue, and henbane, constant to the
desolation of abandoned dwellings. From the castle you look down on
roofs, brown tiles and chimney-pots, set one above the other like a big
card-castle. Each house has 92its foot on a neighbour's neck, and its
shoulder set against the native stone. The streets meander in and out,
and up and down, overarched and balconied, but very clean. They swarm
with children, healthy, happy, little monkeys, who grow fat on salt
fish and yellow polenta, with oil and sun _ad libitum_.

At night from Roccabruna you may see the flaring gas-lamps of the
gaming-house at Monaco, that Armida's garden of the nineteenth century.
It is the sunniest and most sheltered spot of all the coast. Long ago
Lucan said of Monaco, '_Non Corus in illum jus habet aut Zephyrus_;'
winter never comes to nip its tangled cactuses, and aloes, and
geraniums. The air swoons with the scent of lemon-groves; tall
palm-trees wave their graceful branches by the shore; music of the
softest and the loudest swells from the palace; cool corridors and
sunny seats stand ready for the noontide heat or evening calm; without,
are olive-gardens, green and fresh and full of flowers. But the witch
herself holds her high court and never-ending festival of sin in the
painted banquet-halls and among the green tables.

Let us leave this scene and turn with the country-folk of Roccabruna to
S. Michael's Church at Mentone. High above the sea it stands, and from
its open doors you look across the mountains with their olive-trees.
Inside the church is a seething mass of country-folk and townspeople,
mostly women, and these almost all old, but picturesque beyond
description; kerchiefs of every colour, wrinkles of every shape and
depth, skins of every tone of brown and yellow, voices of every
gruffness, shrillness, strength, and weakness. Wherever an empty corner
can be found, it is soon filled by tottering babies and mischievous
children. The country-women come with their large dangling earrings of
thin gold, wearing pink tulips or lemon-buds in their black hair. A low
buzz of gossiping and mutual recognition keeps the air alive. The whole
service seems a holiday—a general enjoyment of gala dresses and
friendly greetings, very different from the silence, immobility, and
_noli me tangere_ aspect of an English congregation. Over all drones,
rattles, snores, and shrieks the organ; wailing, querulous, asthmatic,
incomplete, its everlasting nasal chant—always beginning, never ending,
through a range of two or three notes ground into one monotony. The
voices of the congregation rise and sink above it. These southern
people, like the Arabs, the Apulians, and the Spaniards, seem to find
their music in a hurdy-gurdy swell of sound. The other day we met a
little girl, walking and spinning, and singing all the while, whose
song was just another version of this chant. It has a discontented
plaintive wail, as if it came from some vast age, and were a cousin of
primeval winds.

At first sight, by the side of Mentone, San Remo is sadly prosaic. The
valleys seem to sprawl, and the universal olives are monotonously grey
upon their thick clay soil. Yet the wealth of flowers in the fat earth
is wonderful. One might fancy oneself in a weedy farm flower-bed
invaded by stray oats and beans and cabbages and garlic from the
kitchen-garden. The country does not suggest a single Greek idea. It
has no form or outline—no barren peaks, no spare and difficult
vegetation. The beauty is rich but tame—valleys green with oats and
corn, blossoming cherry-trees, and sweet bean-fields, figs coming into
leaf, and arrowy bay-trees by the side of sparkling streams: here and
there a broken aqueduct or rainbow bridge hung with maidenhair and
briar and clematis and sarsaparilla.

In the cathedral church of San Siro on Good Friday they hang the
columns and the windows with black; they cover the pictures and deface
the altar; above the high altar they 94raise a crucifix, and below they
place a catafalque with the effigy of the dead Christ. To this sad
symbol they address their prayers and incense, chant their 'litanies
and lurries,' and clash the rattles, which commemorate their rage
against the traitor Judas. So far have we already passed away from the
Greek feeling of Mentone. As I listened to the hideous din, I could not
but remember the Theocritean burial of Adonis. Two funeral beds
prepared: two feasts recurring in the springtime of the year. What a
difference beneath this superficial similarity—καλος νέκυς οι΅α
καθεύδων—_attritus ægrâ macie_. But the fast of Good Friday is followed
by the festival of Easter. That, after all, is the chief difference.

After leaving the cathedral we saw a pretty picture in a dull old
street of San Remo—three children leaning from a window, blowing
bubbles. The bubbles floated down the street, of every colour, round
and trembling, like the dreams of life which children dream. The town
is certainly most picturesque. It resembles a huge glacier of houses
poured over a wedge of rock, running down the sides and along the
ridge, and spreading itself into a fan between two torrents on the
shore below. House over house, with balcony and staircase, convent
turret and church tower, palm-trees and olives, roof gardens and
clinging creepers—this white cataract of buildings streams downward
from the lazar-house, and sanctuary, and sandstone quarries on the
hill. It is a mass of streets placed close above each other, and linked
together with arms and arches of solid masonry, as a protection from
the earthquakes, which are frequent at San Remo. The walls are tall,
and form a labyrinth of gloomy passages and treacherous blind alleys,
where the Moors of old might meet with a ferocious welcome. Indeed, San
Remo is a fortress as well as a dwelling-place. Over its gateways may
still be traced the pipes for molten lead, and on its walls the
eyeloops for 95arrows, with brackets for the feet of archers. Masses of
building have been shaken down by earthquakes. The ruins of what once
were houses gape with blackened chimneys and dark forlorn cellars;
mazes of fungus and unhealthy weeds among the still secure habitations.
Hardly a ray of light penetrates the streets; one learns the meaning of
the Italian word _uggia_ from their cold and gloom. During the day they
are deserted by every one but babies and witchlike old women—some
gossiping, some sitting vacant at the house door, some spinning or
weaving, or minding little children—ugly and ancient as are their own
homes, yet clean as are the streets. The younger population goes
afield; the men on mules laden for the hills, the women burdened like
mules with heavy and disgusting loads. It is an exceptionally
good-looking race; tall, well-grown, and strong.—But to the streets
again. The shops in the upper town are few, chiefly wine-booths and
stalls for the sale of salt fish, eggs, and bread, or cobblers' and
tinkers' ware. Notwithstanding the darkness of their dwellings, the
people have a love of flowers; azaleas lean from their windows, and
vines, carefully protected by a sheath of brickwork, climb the six
stories, to blossom out into a pergola upon the roof. Look at that mass
of greenery and colours, dimly seen from beneath, with a yellow cat
sunning herself upon the parapet! To reach such a garden and such
sunlight who would not mount six stories and thread a labyrinth of
passages? I should prefer a room upon the east side of the town,
looking southward to the Molo and the sea, with a sound of water
beneath, and a palm soaring up to fan my window with his feathery
leaves.

The shrines are little spots of brightness in the gloomy streets.
Madonna with a sword; Christ holding His pierced and bleeding heart;
l'Eterno Padre pointing to the dead Son stretched upon His knee; some
souls in torment; S. Roch 96reminding us of old plagues by the spot
upon his thigh;—these are the symbols of the shrines. Before them stand
rows of pots filled with gillyflowers, placed there by pious, simple,
praying hands—by maidens come to tell their sorrows to our Lady rich in
sorrow, by old women bent and shrivelled, in hopes of paradise or
gratitude for happy days, when Madonna kept Cecchino faithful to his
home, or saved the baby from the fever.

Lower down, between the sea and the hill, is the municipal,
aristocratic, ecclesiastical quarter of San Remo. There stands the
Palace Borea—a truly princely pile, built in the last Renaissance style
of splendour, with sea-nymphs and dolphins, and satyric heads, half
lips, half leafage, round about its doors and windows. Once it formed
the dwelling of a feudal family, but now it is a roomy anthill of a
hundred houses, shops, and offices, the Boreas of to-day retaining but
a portion of one flat, and making profit of the rest. There, too, are
the barracks and the syndic's hall; the Jesuits' school, crowded with
boys and girls; the shops for clothes, confectionery, and trinkets; the
piazza, with its fountain and tasselled planes, and flowery
chestnut-trees, a mass of greenery. Under these trees the idlers
lounge, boys play at leap-frog, men at bowls. Women in San Remo work
all day, but men and boys play for the most part at bowls or toss-penny
or leap-frog or morra. San Siro, the cathedral, stands at one end of
the square. Do not go inside; it has a sickly smell of immemorial
incense and garlic, undefinable and horrible. Far better looks San Siro
from the parapet above the torrent. There you see its irregular
half-Gothic outline across a tangle of lemon-trees and olives. The
stream rushes by through high walls, covered with creepers, spanned by
ferny bridges, feathered by one or two old tufty palms. And over all
rises the ancient turret of San Siro, like a Spanish giralda, a minaret
of pinnacles and 97pyramids and dome bubbles, with windows showing
heavy bells, old clocks, and sundials painted on the walls, and a
cupola of green and yellow tiles like serpent-scales, to crown the
whole. The sea lies beyond, and the house-roofs break it with grey
horizontal lines. Then there are convents, legions of them, large white
edifices, Jesuitical apparently for the most part, clanging importunate
bells, leaning rose-blossoms and cypress-boughs over their jealous
walls.

Lastly, there is the port—the mole running out into the sea, the quay
planted with plane-trees, and the fishing-boats—by which San Remo is
connected with the naval glory of the past—with the Riviera that gave
birth to Columbus—with the Liguria that the Dorias ruled—with the great
name of Genoa. The port is empty enough now; but from the pier you look
back on San Remo and its circling hills, a jewelled town set in
illimitable olive greyness. The quay seems also to be the
cattle-market. There the small buff cows of North Italy repose after
their long voyage or march, kneeling on the sandy ground or rubbing
their sides against the wooden cross awry with age and shorn of all its
symbols. Lambs frisk among the boats; impudent kids nibble the drooping
ears of patient mules. Hinds in white jackets and knee-breeches made of
skins, lead shaggy rams and fiercely bearded goats, ready to butt at
every barking dog, and always seeking opportunities of flight. Farmers
and parish priests in black petticoats feel the cattle and dispute
about the price, or whet their bargains with a draught of wine.
Meanwhile the nets are brought on shore glittering with the fry of
sardines, which are cooked like whitebait, with cuttlefish—amorphous
objects stretching shiny feelers on the hot dry sand—and prickly purple
eggs of the sea-urchin. Women go about their labour through the throng,
some carrying stones upon their heads, or unloading boats and bearing
planks of wood in single file, two marching 98side by side beneath one
load of lime, others scarcely visible under a stack of oats, another
with her baby in its cradle fast asleep.

San Remo has an elder brother among the hills, which is called San
Romolo, after one of the old bishops of Genoa. Who San Remo was is
buried in remote antiquity; but his town has prospered, while of San
Romolo nothing remains but a ruined hill-convent among pine-trees. The
old convent is worth visiting. Its road carries you into the heart of
the sierra which surrounds San Remo, a hill-country something like the
Jura, undulating and green to the very top with maritime pines and
pinasters. Riding up, you hear all manner of Alpine sounds; brawling
streams, tinkling cowbells, and herdsmen calling to each other on the
slopes. Beneath you lies San Remo, scarcely visible; and over it the
great sea rises ever so far into the sky, until the white sails hang in
air, and cloud and sea-line melt into each other indistinguishably.
Spanish chestnuts surround the monastery with bright blue gentians,
hepaticas, forget-me-nots, and primroses about their roots. The house
itself is perched on a knoll with ample prospect to the sea and to the
mountains, very near to heaven, within a theatre of noble
contemplations and soul-stirring thoughts. If Mentone spoke to me of
the poetry of Greek pastoral life, this convent speaks of mediæval
monasticism—of solitude with God, above, beneath, and all around, of
silence and repose from agitating cares, of continuity in prayer, and
changelessness of daily life. Some precepts of the _Imitatio_ came into
my mind: 'Be never wholly idle; read or write, pray or meditate, or
work with diligence for the common needs.' 'Praiseworthy is it for the
religious man to go abroad but seldom, and to seem to shun, and keep
his eyes from men.' 'Sweet is the cell when it is often sought, but if
we gad about, it wearies us by its 99seclusion.' Then I thought of the
monks so living in this solitude; their cell windows looking across the
valley to the sea, through summer and winter, under sun and stars. Then
would they read or write, what long melodious hours! or would they
pray, what stations on the pine-clad hills! or would they toil, what
terraces to build and plant with corn, what flowers to tend, what cows
to milk and pasture, what wood to cut, what fir-cones to gather for the
winter fire! or should they yearn for silence, silence from their
comrades of the solitude, what whispering galleries of God, where never
human voice breaks loudly, but winds and streams and lonely birds
disturb the awful stillness! In such a hermitage as this, only more
wild, lived S. Francis of Assisi, among the Apennines.[7] It was there
that he learned the tongues of beasts and birds, and preached them
sermons. Stretched for hours motionless on the bare rocks, coloured
like them and rough like them in his brown peasant's serge, he prayed
and meditated, saw the vision of Christ crucified, and planned his
order to regenerate a vicious age. So still he lay, so long, so like a
stone, so gentle were his eyes, so kind and low his voice, that the
mice nibbled breadcrumbs from his wallet, lizards ran over him, and
larks sang to him in the air. There, too, in those long, solitary
vigils, the Spirit of God came upon him, and the spirit of Nature was
even as God's Spirit, and he sang: 'Laudato sia Dio mio Signore, con
tutte le creature, specialmente messer lo frate sole; per suor luna, e
per le stelle; per frate vento e per l'aire, e nuvolo, e sereno e ogni
tempo.' Half the value of this hymn would be lost were we to forget how
it was written, in what solitudes and mountains far from men, or to
ticket it with some abstract word like Pantheism. Pantheism it is not;
but an acknowledgment of that brotherhood, beneath the love of God, by
which the sun 100and moon and stars, and wind and air and cloud, and
clearness and all weather, and all creatures, are bound together with
the soul of man.

 [7] Dante, Par. xi. 106.

Few, of course, were like S. Francis. Probably no monk of San Romolo
was inspired with his enthusiasm for humanity, or had his revelation of
the Divine Spirit inherent in the world. Still fewer can have felt the
æsthetic charm of Nature but most vaguely. It was as much as they could
boast, if they kept steadily to the rule of their order, and attended
to the concerns each of his own soul. A terrible selfishness, if
rightly considered; but one which accorded with the delusion that this
world is a cave of care, the other world a place of torture or undying
bliss, death the prime object of our meditation, and lifelong
abandonment of our fellow-men the highest mode of existence. Why, then,
should monks, so persuaded of the riddle of the earth, have placed
themselves in scenes so beautiful? Why rose the Camaldolis and
Chartreuses over Europe? white convents on the brows of lofty hills,
among the rustling boughs of Vallombrosas, in the grassy meadows of
Engelbergs,—always the eyries of Nature's lovers, men smitten with the
loveliness of earth? There is surely some meaning in these poetic
stations.

Here is a sentence of the _Imitatio_ which throws some light upon the
hymn of S. Francis and the sites of Benedictine monasteries, by
explaining the value of natural beauty for monks who spent their life
in studying death: 'If thy heart were right, then would every creature
be to thee a mirror of life, and a book of holy doctrine. There is no
creature so small and vile that does not show forth the goodness of
God.' With this sentence bound about their foreheads, walked Fra
Angelico and S. Francis. To men like them the mountain valleys and the
skies, and all that they contained, were full of deep significance.
Though they reasoned '_de conditione 101humanæ miseriæ_,' and '_de
contemptu mundi_,' yet the whole world was a pageant of God's glory, a
testimony to His goodness. Their chastened senses, pure hearts, and
simple wills were as wings by which they soared above the things of
earth, and sent the music of their souls aloft with every other
creature in the symphony of praise. To them, as to Blake, the sun was
no mere blazing disc or ball, but 'an innumerable company of the
heavenly host singing, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty."' To
them the winds were brothers, and the streams were sisters—brethren in
common dependence upon God their Father, brethren in common
consecration to His service, brethren by blood, brethren by vows of
holiness. Unquestioning faith rendered this world no puzzle; they
overlooked the things of sense because the spiritual things were ever
present, and as clear as day. Yet did they not forget that spiritual
things are symbolised by things of sense; and so the smallest herb of
grass was vital to their tranquil contemplations. We who have lost
sight of the invisible world, who set our affections more on things of
earth, fancy that because these monks despised the world, and did not
write about its landscapes, therefore they were dead to its beauty.
This is mere vanity: the mountains, stars, seas, fields, and living
things were only swallowed up in the one thought of God, and made
subordinate to the awfulness of human destinies. We to whom hills are
hills, and seas are seas, and stars are ponderable quantities, speak,
write, and reason of them as of objects interesting in themselves. The
monks were less ostensibly concerned about such things, because they
only found in them the vestibules and symbols of a hidden mystery.

The contrast between the Greek and mediæval modes of regarding Nature
is not a little remarkable. Both Greeks and monks, judged by
nineteenth-century standards, were 102unobservant of natural beauties.
They make but brief and general remarks upon landscapes and the like.
The ποντίων τε κυμάτων άνήριθμον γέλασμα is very rare. But the Greeks
stopped at the threshold of Nature; the forces they found there, the
gods, were inherent in Nature, and distinct. They did not, like the
monks, place one spiritual power, omnipotent and omnipresent, above
all, and see in Nature lessons of Divine government. We ourselves
having somewhat overstrained the latter point of view, are now apt to
return vaguely to Greek fancies. Perhaps, too, we talk so much about
scenery because it is scenery to us, and the life has gone out of it.

I cannot leave the Cornice without one word about a place which lies
between Mentone and San Remo. Bordighera has a beauty which is quite
distinct from both. Palms are its chief characteristics. They lean
against the garden walls, and feather the wells outside the town, where
women come with brazen pitchers to draw water. In some of the marshy
tangles of the plain, they spring from a thick undergrowth of spiky
leaves, and rear their tall aë;rial arms against the deep blue
background of the sea or darker purple of the distant hills. White
pigeons fly about among their branches, and the air is loud with
cooings and with rustlings, and the hoarser croaking of innumerable
frogs. Then, in the olive-groves that stretch along the level shore,
are labyrinths of rare and curious plants, painted tulips and white
periwinkles, flinging their light of blossoms and dark glossy leaves
down the swift channels of the brawling streams. On each side of the
rivulets they grow, like sister cataracts of flowers instead of spray.
At night fresh stars come out along the coast, beneath the stars of
heaven; for you can see the lamps of Ventimiglia and Mentone and
Monaco, and, far away, the lighthouses upon the promontories of Antibes
and the Estrelles. At dawn, a vision of Corsica grows from the sea. The
island lies eighty miles away, but 103one can trace the dark strip of
irregular peaks glowing amid the gold and purple of the rising sun. If
the air is clear and bright, the snows and overvaulting clouds which
crown its mountains shine all day, and glitter like an apparition in
the bright blue sky. 'Phantom fair,' half raised above the sea, it
stands, as unreal and transparent as the moon when seen in April
sunlight, yet not to be confounded with the shape of any cloud. If
Mentone speaks of Greek legends, and San Romolo restores the monastic
past, we feel ourselves at Bordighera transported to the East; and
lying under its tall palms can fancy ourselves at Tyre or Daphne, or in
the gardens of a Moslem prince.

Note.—Dec. 1873. My old impressions are renewed and confirmed by a
third visit, after seven years, to this coast. For purely idyllic
loveliness, the Cornice is surpassed by nothing in the South. A very
few spots in Sicily, the road between Castellammare and Amalfi, and the
island of Corfu, are its only rivals in this style of scenery. From
Cannes to Sestri is one continuous line of exquisitely modulated
landscape beauty, which can only be fully appreciated by travellers in
carriage or on foot.

104




AJACCIO


It generally happens that visitors to Ajaccio pass over from the
Cornice coast, leaving Nice at night, and waking about sunrise to find
themselves beneath the frowning mountains of Corsica. The difference
between the scenery of the island and the shores which they have left
is very striking. Instead of the rocky mountains of the Cornice,
intolerably dry and barren at their summits, but covered at their base
with villages and ancient towns and olive-fields, Corsica presents a
scene of solitary and peculiar grandeur. The highest mountain-tops are
covered with snow, and beneath the snow-level to the sea they are as
green as Irish or as English hills, but nearly uninhabited and
uncultivated. Valleys of almost Alpine verdure are succeeded by tracts
of chestnut wood and scattered pines, or deep and flowery brushwood—the
'maquis' of Corsica, which yields shelter to its traditional outlaws
and bandits. Yet upon these hillsides there are hardly any signs of
life; the whole country seems abandoned to primeval wildness and the
majesty of desolation. Nothing can possibly be more unlike the smiling
Riviera, every square mile of which is cultivated like a garden, and
every valley and bay dotted over with white villages. After steaming
for a few hours along this savage coast, the rocks which guard the
entrance to the bay of Ajaccio, murderous-looking teeth and needles
ominously christened Sanguinari, are passed, and we enter the splendid
land-locked harbour, on the northern shore of which 105Ajaccio is
built. About three centuries ago the town, which used to occupy the
extreme or eastern end of the bay, was removed to a more healthy point
upon the northern coast, so that Ajaccio is quite a modern city.
Visitors who expect to find in it the picturesqueness of Genoa or San
Remo, or even of Mentone, will be sadly disappointed. It is simply a
healthy, well-appointed town of recent date, the chief merits of which
are, that it has wide streets, and is free, externally at least, from
the filth and rubbish of most southern seaports.

But if Ajaccio itself is not picturesque, the scenery which it
commands, and in the heart of which it lies, is of the most
magnificent. The bay of Ajaccio resembles a vast Italian lake—a Lago
Maggiore, with greater space between the mountains and the shore. From
the snow-peaks of the interior, huge granite crystals clothed in white,
to the southern extremity of the bay, peak succeeds peak and ridge
rises behind ridge in a line of wonderful variety and beauty. The
atmospheric changes of light and shadow, cloud and colour, on this
upland country, are as subtle and as various as those which lend their
beauty to the scenery of the lakes, while the sea below is blue and
rarely troubled. One could never get tired with looking at this view.
Morning and evening add new charms to its sublimity and beauty. In the
early morning Monte d'Oro sparkles like a Monte Rosa with its fresh
snow, and the whole inferior range puts on the crystal blueness of dawn
among the Alps. In the evening, violet and purple tints and the golden
glow of Italian sunset lend a different lustre to the fairyland. In
fact, the beauties of Switzerland and Italy are curiously blended in
this landscape.

In soil and vegetation the country round Ajaccio differs much from the
Cornice. There are very few olive-trees, nor is the cultivated ground
backed up so immediately by stony mountains; but between the seashore
and the hills there is 106plenty of space for pasture-land, and
orchards of apricot and peach-trees, and orange gardens. This
undulating champaign, green with meadows and watered with clear
streams, is very refreshing to the eyes of Northern people, who may
have wearied of the bareness and greyness of Nice or Mentone. It is
traversed by excellent roads, recently constructed on a plan of the
French Government, which intersect the country in all directions, and
offer an infinite variety of rides or drives to visitors. The broken
granite of which these roads are made is very pleasant for riding over.
Most of the hills through which they strike, after starting from
Ajaccio, are clothed with a thick brushwood of box, ilex, lentisk,
arbutus, and laurustinus, which stretches down irregularly into
vineyards, olive-gardens, and meadows. It is, indeed, the native growth
of the island; for wherever a piece of ground is left untilled, the
macchi grow up, and the scent of their multitudinous aromatic blossoms
is so strong that it may be smelt miles out at sea. Napoleon, at S.
Helena, referred to this fragrance when he said that he should know
Corsica blindfold by the smell of its soil. Occasional woods of holm
oak make darker patches on the landscape, and a few pines fringe the
side of enclosure walls or towers. The prickly pear runs riot in and
out among the hedges and upon the walls, diversifying the colours of
the landscape with its strange grey-green masses and unwieldy fans. In
spring, when peach and almond trees are in blossom, and when the
roadside is starred with asphodels, this country is most beautiful in
its gladness. The macchi blaze with cistus flowers of red and silver.
Golden broom mixes with the dark purple of the great French lavender,
and over the whole mass of blossom wave plumes of Mediterranean heath
and sweet-scented yellow coronilla. Under the stems of the ilex peep
cyclamens, pink and sweet; the hedgerows are a tangle of vetches,
convolvuluses, 107lupines, orchises, and alliums, with here and there a
purple iris. It would be difficult to describe all the rare and lovely
plants which are found here in a profusion that surpasses even the
flower-gardens of the Cornice, and reminds one of the most favoured
Alpine valleys in their early spring.

Since the French occupied Corsica they have done much for the island by
improving its harbours and making good roads, and endeavouring to
mitigate the ferocity of the people. But they have many things to
contend against, and Corsica is still behind the other provinces of
France. The people are idle, haughty, umbrageous, fiery, quarrelsome,
fond of gipsy life, and retentive through generations of old feuds and
prejudices to an almost inconceivable extent. Then the nature of the
country itself offers serious obstacles to its proper colonisation and
cultivation. The savage state of the island and its internal feuds have
disposed the Corsicans to quit the seaboard for their mountain villages
and fortresses, so that the great plains at the foot of the hills are
unwholesome for want of tillage and drainage. Again, the mountains
themselves have in many parts been stripped of their forests, and
converted into mere wildernesses of macchi stretching up and down their
slopes for miles and miles of useless desolation. Another impediment to
proper cultivation is found in the old habit of what is called free
pasturage. The highland shepherds are allowed by the national custom to
drive down their flocks and herds to the lowlands during the winter, so
that fences are broken, young crops are browsed over and trampled down,
and agriculture becomes a mere impossibility. The last and chief
difficulty against which the French have had to contend, and up to this
time with apparent success, is brigandage. The Corsican system of
brigandage is so very different from that of the Italians, Sicilians,
and Greeks, that 108a word may be said about its peculiar character. In
the first place, it has nothing at all to do with robbery and thieving.
The Corsican bandit took to a free life among the macchi, not for the
sake of supporting himself by lawless depredation, but because he had
put himself under a legal and social ban by murdering some one in
obedience to the strict code of honour of his country. His victim may
have been the hereditary foe of his house for generations, or else the
newly made enemy of yesterday. But in either case, if he had killed him
fairly, after a due notification of his intention to do so, he was held
to have fulfilled a duty rather than to have committed a crime. He then
betook himself to the dense tangles of evergreens which I have
described, where he lived upon the charity of countryfolk and
shepherds. In the eyes of those simple people it was a sacred duty to
relieve the necessities of the outlaws, and to guard them from the
bloodhounds of justice. There was scarcely a respectable family in
Corsica who had not one or more of its members thus _alla campagna_, as
it was euphemistically styled. The Corsicans themselves have attributed
this miserable state of things to two principal causes. The first of
these was the ancient bad government of the island: under its Genoese
rulers no justice was administered, and private vengeance for homicide
or insult became a necessary consequence among the haughty and warlike
families of the mountain villages. Secondly, the Corsicans have been
from time immemorial accustomed to wear arms in everyday life. They
used to sit at their house doors and pace the streets with musket,
pistol, dagger, and cartouch-box on their persons; and on the most
trivial occasion of merriment or enthusiasm they would discharge their
firearms. This habit gave a bloody termination to many quarrels, which
might have ended more peaceably had the parties been unarmed; and so
the seeds of _vendetta_ were constantly being 109sown. Statistics
published by the French Government present a hideous picture of the
state of bloodshed in Corsica even during this century. In one period
of thirty years (between 1821 and 1850) there were 4319 murders in the
island. Almost every man was watching for his neighbour's life, or
seeking how to save his own; and agriculture and commerce were
neglected for this grisly game of hide-and-seek. In 1853 the French
began to take strong measures, and, under the Prefect Thuillier, they
hunted the bandits from the macchi, killing between 200 and 300 of
them. At the same time an edict was promulgated against bearing arms.
It is forbidden to sell the old Corsican stiletto in the shops, and no
one may carry a gun, even for sporting purposes, unless he obtains a
special licence. These licences, moreover, are only granted for short
and precisely measured periods.

In order to appreciate the stern and gloomy character of the Corsicans,
it is necessary to leave the smiling gardens of Ajaccio, and to visit
some of the more distant mountain villages—Vico, Cavro, Bastelica, or
Bocognano, any of which may easily be reached from the capital.
Immediately after quitting the seaboard, we enter a country austere in
its simplicity, solemn without relief, yet dignified by its majesty and
by the sense of freedom it inspires. As we approach the mountains, the
macchi become taller, feathering man-high above the road, and
stretching far away upon the hills. Gigantic masses of granite, shaped
like buttresses and bastions, seem to guard the approaches to these
hills; while, looking backward over the green plain, the sea lies
smiling in a haze of blue among the rocky horns and misty headlands of
the coast. There is a stateliness about the abrupt inclination of these
granite slopes, rising from their frowning portals by sharp _arêtes_ to
the snows piled on their summits, which contrasts in a strange way with
the softness and beauty 110of the mingling sea and plain beneath. In no
landscape are more various qualities combined; in none are they so
harmonised as to produce so strong a sense of majestic freedom and
severe power. Suppose that we are on the road to Corte, and have now
reached Bocognano, the first considerable village since we left
Ajaccio. Bocognano might be chosen as typical of Corsican
hill-villages, with its narrow street, and tall tower-like houses of
five or six stories high, faced with rough granite, and pierced with
the smallest windows and very narrow doorways. These buildings have a
mournful and desolate appearance. There is none of the grandeur of
antiquity about them; no sculptured arms or castellated turrets, or
balconies or spacious staircases, such as are common in the poorest
towns of Italy. The signs of warlike occupation which they offer, and
their sinister aspect of vigilance, are thoroughly prosaic. They seem
to suggest a state of society in which feud and violence were
systematised into routine. There is no relief to the savage austerity
of their forbidding aspect; no signs of wealth or household comfort; no
trace of art, no liveliness and gracefulness of architecture. Perched
upon their coigns of vantage, these villages seem always menacing, as
if Saracen pirates, or Genoese marauders, or bandits bent on vengeance,
were still for ever on the watch. Forests of immensely old
chestnut-trees surround Bocognano on every side, so that you step from
the village streets into the shade of woods that seem to have remained
untouched for centuries. The country-people support themselves almost
entirely upon the fruit of these chestnuts; and there is a large
department of Corsica called Castagniccia, from the prevalence of these
trees and the sustenance which the inhabitants derive from them. Close
by the village brawls a torrent, such as one may see in the Monte Rosa
valleys or the Apennines, but very rarely in Switzerland. It is of a
pure green colour, 111absolutely like Indian jade, foaming round the
granite boulders, and gliding over smooth slabs of polished stone, and
eddying into still, deep pools fringed with fern. Monte d'Oro, one of
the largest mountains of Corsica, soars above, and from his snows the
purest water, undefiled by glacier mud or the _débris_ of avalanches,
melts away. Following the stream, we rise through the macchi and the
chestnut woods, which grow more sparely by degrees, until we reach the
zone of beeches. Here the scene seems suddenly transferred to the
Pyrenees; for the road is carried along abrupt slopes, thickly set with
gigantic beech-trees, overgrown with pink and silver lichens. In the
early spring their last year's leaves are still crisp with hoar-frost;
one morning's journey has brought us from the summer of Ajaccio to
winter on these heights, where no flowers are visible but the pale
hellebore and tiny lilac crocuses. Snow-drifts stretch by the roadside,
and one by one the pioneers of the vast pine-woods of the interior
appear. A great portion of the pine-forest (_Pinus larix_, or Corsican
pine, not larch) between Bocognano and Corte had recently been burned
by accident when we passed by. Nothing could be more forlorn than the
black leafless stems and branches emerging from the snow. Some of these
trees were mast-high, and some mere saplings. Corte itself is built
among the mountain fastnesses of the interior. The snows and granite
cliffs of Monte Rotondo overhang it to the north-west, while two fair
valleys lead downward from its eyrie to the eastern coast. The rock on
which it stands rises to a sharp point, sloping southward, and
commanding the valleys of the Golo and the Tavignano. Remembering that
Corte was the old capital of Corsica, and the centre of General Paoli's
government, we are led to compare the town with Innsprück, Meran, or
Grenoble. In point of scenery and situation it is hardly second to any
of these mountain-girdled cities; but its 112poverty and bareness are
scarcely less striking than those of Bocognano.

The whole Corsican character, with its stern love of justice, its
furious revengefulness and wild passion for freedom, seems to be
illustrated by the peculiar elements of grandeur and desolation in this
landscape. When we traverse the forest of Vico or the rocky
pasture-lands of Niolo, the history of the Corsican national heroes,
Giudice della Rocca and Sampiero, becomes intelligible, nor do we fail
to understand some of the mysterious attraction which led the more
daring spirits of the island to prefer a free life among the macchi and
pine-woods to placid lawful occupations in farms and villages. The
lives of the two men whom I have mentioned are so prominent in Corsican
history, and are so often still upon the lips of the common people,
that it may be well to sketch their outlines in the foreground of the
Salvator Rosa landscape just described. Giudice was the governor of
Corsica, as lieutenant for the Pisans, at the end of the thirteenth
century. At that time the island belonged to the republic of Pisa, but
the Genoese were encroaching on them by land and sea, and the whole
life of their brave champion was spent in a desperate struggle with the
invaders, until at last he died, old, blind, and in prison, at the
command of his savage foes. Giudice was the title which the Pisans
usually conferred upon their governor, and Della Rocca deserved it by
right of his own inexorable love of justice. Indeed, justice seems to
have been with him a passion, swallowing up all other feelings of his
nature. All the stories which are told of him turn upon this point in
his character; and though they may not be strictly true, they
illustrate the stern virtues for which he was celebrated among the
Corsicans, and show what kind of men this harsh and gloomy nation loved
to celebrate as heroes. This is not the place either to criticise these
legends or to recount them at 113full length. The most famous and the
most characteristic may, however, be briefly told. On one occasion,
after a victory over the Genoese, he sent a message that the captives
in his hands should be released if their wives and sisters came to sue
for them. The Genoese ladies embarked, and arrived in Corsica, and to
Giudice's nephew was intrusted the duty of fulfilling his uncle's
promise. In the course of executing his commission, the youth was so
smitten with the beauty of one of the women that he dishonoured her.
Thereupon Giudice had him at once put to death. Another story shows the
Spartan justice of this hero in a less savage light. He was passing by
a cowherd's cottage, when he heard some young calves bleating. On
inquiring what distressed them, he was told that the calves had not
enough milk to drink after the farm people had been served. Then
Giudice made it a law that the calves throughout the land should take
their fill before the cows were milked.

Sampiero belongs to a later period of Corsican history. After a long
course of misgovernment the Genoese rule had become unbearable. There
was no pretence of administering justice, and private vengeance had
full sway in the island. The sufferings of the nation were so great
that the time had come for a new judge or saviour to rise among them.
Sampiero was the son of obscure parents who lived at Bastelica. But his
abilities very soon declared themselves, and made a way for him in the
world. He spent his youth in the armies of the Medici and of the French
Francis, gaining great renown as a brave soldier. Bayard became his
friend, and Francis made him captain of his Corsican bands. But
Sampiero did not forget the wrongs of his native land while thus on
foreign service. He resolved, if possible, to undermine the power of
Genoa, and spent the whole of his manhood and old age in one long
struggle with their great captain, Stephen Doria. Of 114his stern
patriotism and Roman severity of virtue the following story is a
terrible illustration. Sampiero, though a man of mean birth, had
married an heiress of the noble Corsican house of the Ornani. His wife,
Vannina, was a woman of timid and flexible nature, who, though devoted
to her husband, fell into the snares of his enemies. During his absence
on an embassy to Algiers the Genoese induced her to leave her home at
Marseilles and to seek refuge in their city, persuading her that this
step would secure the safety of her child. She was starting on her
journey when a friend of Sampiero arrested her, and brought her back to
Aix, in Provence. Sampiero, when he heard of these events, hurried to
France, and was received by a relative of his, who hinted that he had
known of Vannina's projected flight. 'E tu hai taciuto?' was Sampiero's
only answer, accompanied by a stroke of his poignard that killed the
lukewarm cousin. Sampiero now brought his wife from Aix to Marseilles,
preserving the most absolute silence on the way, and there, on entering
his house, he killed her with his own hand. It is said that he loved
Vannina passionately; and when she was dead, he caused her to be buried
with magnificence in the church of S. Francis. Like Giudice, Sampiero
fell at last a prey to treachery. The murder of Vannina had made the
Ornani his deadly foes. In order to avenge her blood, they played into
the hands of the Genoese, and laid a plot by which the noblest of the
Corsicans was brought to death. First, they gained over to their scheme
a monk of Bastelica, called Ambrogio, and Sampiero's own squire and
shield-bearer, Vittolo. By means of these men, in whom he trusted, he
was drawn defenceless and unattended into a deeply wooded ravine near
Cavro, not very far from his birthplace, where the Ornani and their
Genoese troops surrounded him. Sampiero fired his pistols in vain, for
Vittolo had loaded them with the shot downwards. Then he drew 115his
sword, and began to lay about him, when the same Vittolo, the Judas,
stabbed him from behind, and the old lion fell dead by his friend's
hand. Sampiero was sixty-nine when he died, in the year 1567. It is
satisfactory to know that the Corsicans have called traitors and foes
to their country Vittoli for ever. These two examples of Corsican
patriots are enough; we need not add to theirs the history of Paoli—a
milder and more humane, but scarcely less heroic leader. Paoli,
however, in the hour of Corsica's extremest peril, retired to England,
and died in philosophic exile. Neither Giudice nor Sampiero would have
acted thus. The more forlorn the hope, the more they struggled.

Among the old Corsican customs which are fast dying out, but which
still linger in the remote valleys of Niolo and Vico, is the _vócero_,
or funeral chant, improvised by women at funerals over the bodies of
the dead. Nothing illustrates the ferocious temper and savage passions
of the race better than these _vóceri_, many of which have been written
down and preserved. Most of them are songs of vengeance and
imprecation, mingled with hyperbolical laments and utterances of
extravagant grief, poured forth by wives and sisters at the side of
murdered husbands and brothers. The women who sing them seem to have
lost all milk of human kindness, and to have exchanged the virtues of
their sex for Spartan fortitude and the rage of furies. While we read
their turbid lines we are carried in imagination to one of the
cheerless houses of Bastelica or Bocognano, overshadowed by its
mournful chestnut-tree, on which the blood of the murdered man is yet
red. The _gridata_, or wake, is assembled in a dark room. On the wooden
board, called _tola_, the corpse lies stretched; and round it are
women, veiled in the blue-black mantle of Corsican costume, moaning and
rocking themselves upon their chairs. The _pasto_ or _conforto_, food
supplied for mourners, 116stands upon a side table, and round the room
are men with savage eyes and bristling beards, armed to the teeth, keen
for vengeance. The dead man's musket and pocket-pistol lie beside him,
and his bloody shirt is hung up at his head. Suddenly, the silence,
hitherto only disturbed by suppressed groans and muttered curses, is
broken by a sharp cry. A woman rises: it is the sister of the dead man;
she seizes his shirt, and holding it aloft with Mænad gestures and
frantic screams, gives rhythmic utterance to her grief and rage. 'I was
spinning, when I heard a great noise: it was a gunshot, which went into
my heart, and seemed a voice that cried, "Run, thy brother is dying." I
ran into the room above; I took the blow into my breast; I said, "Now
he is dead, there is nothing to give me comfort. Who will undertake thy
vengeance? When I show thy shirt, who will vow to let his beard grow
till the murderer is slain? Who is there left to do it? A mother near
her death? A sister? Of all our race there is only left a woman,
without kin, poor, orphan, and a girl. Yet, O my brother! never fear.
For thy vengeance thy sister is enough!

'"Ma per fà la to bindetta,
Sta siguru, basta anch ella!


Give me the pistol; I will shoulder the gun; I will away to the hills.
My brother, heart of thy sister, thou shalt be avenged!"' A _vócero_
declaimed upon the bier of Giammatteo and Pasquale, two cousins, by the
sister of the former, is still fiercer and more energetic in its
malediction. This Erinnys of revenge prays Christ and all the saints to
extirpate the murderer's whole race, to shrivel it up till it passes
from the earth. Then, with a sudden and vehement transition to the
pathos of her own sorrow, she exclaims:—

'Halla mai bista nissunu
Tumbà l'omi pe li canti?'


117

It appears from these words that Giammatteo's enemies had killed him
because they were jealous of his skill in singing. Shortly after, she
curses the curate of the village, a kinsman of the murderer, for
refusing to toll the funeral bells; and at last, all other threads of
rage and sorrow being twined and knotted into one, she gives loose to
her raging thirst for blood: 'If only I had a son, to train like a
sleuth-hound, that he might track the murderer! Oh, if I had a son! Oh,
if I had a lad!' Her words seem to choke her, and she swoons, and
remains for a short time insensible. When the Bacchante of revenge
awakes, it is with milder feelings in her heart: 'O brother mine,
Matteo! art thou sleeping? Here I will rest with thee and weep till
daybreak.' It is rare to find in literature so crude and intense an
expression of fiery hatred as these untranslatable _vóceri_ present.
The emotion is so simple and so strong that it becomes sublime by mere
force, and affects us with a strange pathos when contrasted with the
tender affection conveyed in such terms of endearment as 'my dove,' 'my
flower,' 'my pheasant,' 'my bright painted orange,' addressed to the
dead. In the _vóceri_ it often happens that there are several
interlocutors: one friend questions and another answers; or a kinswoman
of the murderer attempts to justify the deed, and is overwhelmed with
deadly imprecations. Passionate appeals are made to the corpse: 'Arise!
Do you not hear the women cry? Stand up. Show your wounds, and let the
fountains of your blood flow! Alas! he is dead; he sleeps; he cannot
hear!' Then they turn again to tears and curses, feeling that no help
or comfort can come from the clay-cold form. The intensity of grief
finds strange language for its utterance. A girl, mourning over her
father, cries:—

'Mi l'hannu crucifissatu
Cume Ghiesu Cristu in croce.'

118

Once only, in Viale's collection, does any friend of the dead remember
mercy. It is an old woman, who points to the crucifix above the bier.

But all the _vóceri_ are not so murderous. Several are composed for
girls who died unwedded and before their time, by their mothers or
companions. The language of these laments is far more tender and
ornate. They praise the gentle virtues and beauty of the girl, her
piety and helpful household ways. The most affecting of these dirges is
that which celebrates the death of Romana, daughter of Dariola Danesi.
Here is a pretty picture of the girl: 'Among the best and fairest
maidens you were like a rose among flowers, like the moon among stars;
so far more lovely were you than the loveliest. The youths in your
presence were like lighted torches, but full of reverence; you were
courteous to all, but with none familiar. In church they gazed at you,
but you looked at none of them; and after mass you said, "Mother, let
us go." Oh! who will console me for your loss? Why did the Lord so much
desire you? But now you rest in heaven, all joy and smiles; for the
world was not worthy of so fair a face. Oh, how far more beautiful will
Paradise be now!' Then follows a piteous picture of the old bereaved
mother, to whom a year will seem a thousand years, who will wander
among relatives without affection, neighbours without love; and who,
when sickness comes, will have no one to give her a drop of water, or
to wipe the sweat from her brow, or to hold her hand in death. Yet all
that is left for her is to wait and pray for the end, that she may join
again her darling.

But it is time to return to Ajaccio itself. At present the attractions
and ornaments of the town consist of a good public library, Cardinal
Fesch's large but indifferent collection of pictures, two monuments
erected to Napoleon, and Napoleon's house. It will always be the chief
pride of Ajaccio that she 119gave birth to the great emperor. Close to
the harbour, in a public square by the sea-beach, stands an equestrian
statue of the conqueror, surrounded by his four brothers on foot. They
are all attired in Roman fashion, and are turned seaward, to the west,
as if to symbolise the emigration of this family to subdue Europe.
There is something ludicrous and forlorn in the stiffness of the
group—something even pathetic, when we think how Napoleon gazed seaward
from another island, no longer on horseback, no longer laurel-crowned,
an unthroned, unseated conqueror, on S. Helena. His father's house
stands close by. An old Italian waiting-woman, who had been long in the
service of the Murats, keeps it and shows it. She has the manners of a
lady, and can tell many stories of the various members of the
Buonaparte family. Those who fancy that Napoleon was born in a mean
dwelling of poor parents will be surprised to find so much space and
elegance in these apartments. Of course his family was not rich by
comparison with the riches of French or English nobles. But for
Corsicans they were well-to-do, and their house has an air of antique
dignity. The chairs of the entrance-saloon have been literally stripped
of their coverings by enthusiastic visitors; the horse-hair stuffing
underneath protrudes itself with a sort of comic pride, as if
protesting that it came to be so tattered in an honourable service.
Some of the furniture seems new; but many old presses, inlaid with
marbles, agates, and lapis-lazuli, such as Italian families preserve
for generations, have an air of respectable antiquity about them. Nor
is there any doubt that the young Napoleon led his minuets beneath the
stiff girandoles of the formal dancing-room. There, too, in a dark back
chamber, is the bed in which he was born. At its foot is a photograph
of the Prince Imperial sent by the Empress Eugénie, who, when she
visited the room, wept much 120_pianse molto_ (to use the old lady's
phrase)—at seeing the place where such lofty destinies began. On the
wall of the same room is a portrait of Napoleon himself as the young
general of the republic—with the citizen's unkempt hair, the fierce
fire of the Revolution in his eyes, a frown upon his forehead, lips
compressed, and quivering nostrils; also one of his mother, the
pastille of a handsome woman, with Napoleonic eyes and brows and nose,
but with a vacant simpering mouth. Perhaps the provincial artist knew
not how to seize the expression of this feature, the most difficult to
draw. For we cannot fancy that Letizia had lips without the firmness or
the fulness of a majestic nature.

The whole first story of this house belonged to the Buonaparte family.
The windows look out partly on a little court and partly on narrow
streets. It was, no doubt, the memory of this home that made Napoleon,
when emperor, design schemes for the good of Corsica—schemes that might
have brought him more honour than many conquests, but which he had no
time or leisure to carry out. On S. Helena his mind often reverted to
them, and he would speak of the gummy odours of the macchi wafted from
the hillsides to the seashore.

121




MONTE GENEROSO


The long hot days of Italian summer were settling down on plain and
country when, in the last week of May, we travelled northward from
Florence and Bologna seeking coolness. That was very hard to find in
Lombardy. The days were long and sultry, the nights short, without a
respite from the heat. Milan seemed a furnace, though in the Duomo and
the narrow shady streets there was a twilight darkness which at least
looked cool. Long may it be before the northern spirit of improvement
has taught the Italians to despise the wisdom of their forefathers, who
built those sombre streets of palaces with overhanging eaves, that,
almost meeting, form a shelter from the fiercest sun. The lake country
was even worse than the towns; the sunlight lay all day asleep upon the
shining waters, and no breeze came to stir their surface or to lift the
tepid veil of haze, through which the stony mountains, with their yet
unmelted patches of winter snow, glared as if in mockery of coolness.

Then we heard of a new inn, which had just been built by an
enterprising Italian doctor below the very top of Monte Generoso. There
was a picture of it in the hotel at Cadenabbia, but this gave but
little idea of any particular beauty. A big square house, with many
windows, and the usual ladies on mules, and guides with alpenstocks,
advancing towards it, and some round bushes growing near, was all it
showed. Yet there hung the real Monte Generoso above our heads, and we
122thought it must be cooler on its height than by the lake-shore. To
find coolness was the great point with us just then. Moreover, some one
talked of the wonderful plants that grew among its rocks, and of its
grassy slopes enamelled with such flowers as make our cottage gardens
at home gay in summer, not to speak of others rarer and peculiar to the
region of the Southern Alps. Indeed, the Generoso has a name for
flowers, and it deserves it, as we presently found.

This mountain is fitted by its position for commanding one of the
finest views in the whole range of the Lombard Alps. A glance at the
map shows that. Standing out pre-eminent among the chain of lower hills
to which it belongs, the lakes of Lugano and Como with their long arms
enclose it on three sides, while on the fourth the plain of Lombardy
with its many cities, its rich pasture-lands and cornfields intersected
by winding river-courses and straight interminable roads, advances to
its very foot. No place could be better chosen for surveying that
contrasted scene of plain and mountain, which forms the great
attraction of the outlying buttresses of the central Alpine mass. The
superiority of the Monte Generoso to any of the similar eminences on
the northern outskirts of Switzerland is great. In richness of colour,
in picturesqueness of suggestion, in sublimity and breadth of prospect,
its advantages are incontestable. The reasons for this superiority are
obvious. On the Italian side the transition from mountain to plain is
far more abrupt; the atmosphere being clearer, a larger sweep of
distance is within our vision; again, the sunlight blazes all day long
upon the very front and forehead of the distant Alpine chain, instead
of merely slanting along it, as it does upon the northern side.

From Mendrisio, the village at the foot of the mountain, an easy
mule-path leads to the hotel, winding first through 123English-looking
hollow lanes with real hedges, which are rare in this country, and
English primroses beneath them. Then comes a forest region of luxuriant
chestnut-trees, giants with pink boles just bursting into late leafage,
yellow and tender, but too thin as yet for shade. A little higher up,
the chestnuts are displaced by wild laburnums bending under their
weight of flowers. The graceful branches meet above our heads, sweeping
their long tassels against our faces as we ride beneath them, while the
air for a good mile is full of fragrance. It is strange to be reminded
in this blooming labyrinth of the dusty suburb roads and villa gardens
of London. The laburnum is pleasant enough in S. John's Wood or the
Regent's Park in May—a tame domesticated thing of brightness amid smoke
and dust. But it is another joy to see it flourishing in its own home,
clothing acres of the mountain-side in a very splendour of
spring-colour, mingling its paler blossoms with the golden broom of our
own hills, and with the silver of the hawthorn and wild cherry. Deep
beds of lilies-of-the-valley grow everywhere beneath the trees; and in
the meadows purple columbines, white asphodels, the Alpine spiræa,
tall, with feathery leaves, blue scabious, golden hawkweeds, turkscap
lilies, and, better than all, the exquisite narcissus poeticus, with
its crimson-tipped cup, and the pure pale lilies of San Bruno, are
crowded in a maze of dazzling brightness. Higher up the laburnums
disappear, and flaunting crimson peonies gleam here and there upon the
rocks, until at length the gentians and white ranunculuses of the
higher Alps displace the less hardy flowers of Italy.

About an hour below the summit of the mountain we came upon the inn, a
large clean building, with scanty furniture and snowy wooden floors,
guiltless of carpets. It is big enough to hold about a hundred guests;
and Doctor Pasta, who built it, a native of Mendrisio, was gifted
either 124with much faith or with a real prophetic instinct.[8] Anyhow
he deserves commendation for his spirit of enterprise. As yet the house
is little known to English travellers: it is mostly frequented by
Italians from Milan, Novara, and other cities of the plain, who call it
the Italian Righi, and come to it, as cockneys go to Richmond, for
noisy picnic excursions, or at most for a few weeks' _villeggiatura_ in
the summer heats. When we were there in May the season had scarcely
begun, and the only inmates besides ourselves were a large party from
Milan, ladies and gentlemen in holiday guise, who came, stayed one
night, climbed the peak at sunrise, and departed amid jokes and
shouting and half-childish play, very unlike the doings of a similar
party in sober England. After that the stillness of nature descended on
the mountain, and the sun shone day after day upon that great view
which seemed created only for ourselves. And what a view it was! The
plain stretching up to the high horizon, where a misty range of pink
cirrus-clouds alone marked the line where earth ended and the sky
began, was islanded with cities and villages innumerable, basking in
the hazy shimmering heat. Milan, seen through the doctor's telescope,
displayed its Duomo perfect as a microscopic shell, with all its
exquisite fretwork, and Napoleon's arch of triumph surmounted by the
four tiny horses, as in a fairy's dream. Far off, long silver lines
marked the lazy course of Po and Ticino, while little lakes like Varese
and the lower end of Maggiore spread themselves out, connecting the
mountains with the plain.

 [8] It is but just to Doctor Pasta to remark that the above sentence
 was written more than ten years ago. Since then he has enlarged and
 improved his house in many ways, furnished it more luxuriously, made
 paths through the beechwoods round it, and brought excellent water at
 a great cost from a spring near the summit of the mountain. A more
 charming residence from early spring to late autumn can scarcely be
 discovered.

125Five minutes' walk from the hotel brought us to a ridge where the
precipice fell suddenly and almost sheer over one arm of Lugano Lake.
Sullenly outstretched asleep it lay beneath us, coloured with the tints
of fluor-spar, or with the changeful green and azure of a peacock's
breast. The depth appeared immeasurable. San Salvadore had receded into
insignificance: the houses and churches and villas of Lugano bordered
the lake-shore with an uneven line of whiteness. And over all there
rested a blue mist of twilight and of haze, contrasting with the
clearness of the peaks above. It was sunset when we first came here;
and, wave beyond wave, the purple Italian hills tossed their crested
summits to the foot of a range of stormy clouds that shrouded the high
Alps. Behind the clouds was sunset, clear and golden; but the mountains
had put on their mantle for the night, and the hem of their garment was
all we were to see. And yet—over the edge of the topmost ridge of
cloud, what was that long hard line of black, too solid and immovable
for cloud, rising into four sharp needles clear and well defined?
Surely it must be the familiar outline of Monte Rosa itself, the form
which every one who loves the Alps knows well by heart, which
picture-lovers know from Ruskin's woodcut in the 'Modern Painters.' For
a moment only the vision stayed: then clouds swept over it again, and
from the place where the empress of the Alps had been, a pillar of mist
shaped like an angel's wing, purple and tipped with gold, shot up
against the pale green sky. That cloud-world was a pageant in itself,
as grand and more gorgeous perhaps than the mountains would have been.
Deep down through the hollows of the Simplon a thunderstorm was
driving; and we saw forked flashes once and again, as in a distant
world, lighting up the valleys for a moment, and leaving the darkness
blacker behind them as the storm blurred out the landscape forty miles
away. 126Darkness was coming to us too, though our sky was clear and
the stars were shining brightly. At our feet the earth was folding
itself to sleep; the plain was wholly lost; little islands of white
mist had formed themselves, and settled down upon the lakes and on
their marshy estuaries; the birds were hushed; the gentian-cups were
filling to the brim with dew. Night had descended on the mountain and
the plain; the show was over.

The dawn was whitening in the east next morning, when we again
scrambled through the dwarf beechwood to the precipice above the lake.
Like an ink-blot it lay, unruffled, slumbering sadly. Broad sheets of
vapour brooded on the plain, telling of miasma and fever, of which we
on the mountain, in the pure cool air, knew nothing. The Alps were all
there now—cold, unreal, stretching like a phantom line of snowy peaks,
from the sharp pyramids of Monte Viso and the Grivola in the west to
the distant Bernina and the Ortler in the east. Supreme among them
towered Monte Rosa—queenly, triumphant, gazing down in proud
pre-eminence, as she does when seen from any point of the Italian
plain. There is no mountain like her. Mont Blanc himself is scarcely so
regal; and she seems to know it, for even the clouds sweep humbled
round her base, girdling her at most, but leaving her crown clear and
free. Now, however, there were no clouds to be seen in all the sky. The
mountains had a strange unshriven look, as if waiting to be blessed.
Above them, in the cold grey air, hung a low black arch of shadow, the
shadow of the bulk of the huge earth, which still concealed the sun.
Slowly, slowly this dark line sank lower, till, one by one, at last,
the peaks caught first a pale pink flush; then a sudden golden glory
flashed from one to the other, as they leapt joyfully into life. It is
a supreme moment this first burst of life and light over the sleeping
world, as one can 127only see it on rare days and in rare places like
the Monte Generoso. The earth—enough of it at least for us to picture
to ourselves the whole—lies at our feet; and we feel as the Saviour
might have felt, when from the top of that high mountain He beheld the
kingdoms of the world and all the glory of them. Strangely and solemnly
may we image to our fancy the lives that are being lived down in those
cities of the plain: how many are waking at this very moment to toil
and a painful weariness, to sorrow, or to 'that unrest which men
miscall delight;' while we upon our mountain buttress, suspended in
mid-heaven and for a while removed from daily cares, are drinking in
the beauty of the world that God has made so fair and wonderful. From
this same eyrie, only a few years ago, the hostile armies of France,
Italy, and Austria might have been watched moving in dim masses across
the plains, for the possession of which they were to clash in mortal
fight at Solferino and Magenta. All is peaceful now. It is hard to
picture the waving cornfields trodden down, the burning villages and
ransacked vineyards, all the horrors of real war to which that fertile
plain has been so often the prey. But now these memories of

Old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago,


do but add a calm and beauty to the radiant scene that lies before us.
And the thoughts which it suggests, the images with which it stores our
mind, are not without their noblest uses. The glory of the world sinks
deeper into our shallow souls than we well know; and the spirit of its
splendour is always ready to revisit us on dark and dreary days at home
with an unspeakable refreshment. Even as I write, I seem to see the
golden glow sweeping in broad waves over the purple hills nearer and
nearer, till the lake brightens at our 128feet, and the windows of
Lugano flash with sunlight, and little boats creep forth across the
water like spiders on a pond, leaving an arrowy track of light upon the
green behind them, while Monte Salvadore with its tiny chapel and a
patch of the further landscape are still kept in darkness by the shadow
of the Generoso itself. The birds wake into song as the sun's light
comes; cuckoo answers cuckoo from ridge to ridge; dogs bark; and even
the sounds of human life rise up to us: children's voices and the
murmurs of the market-place ascending faintly from the many villages
hidden among the chestnut-trees beneath our feet; while the creaking of
a cart we can but just see slowly crawling along the straight road by
the lake, is heard at intervals.

The full beauty of the sunrise is but brief. Already the low lakelike
mists we saw last night have risen and spread, and shaken themselves
out into masses of summer clouds, which, floating upward, threaten to
envelop us upon our vantage-ground. Meanwhile they form a changeful sea
below, blotting out the plain, surging up into the valleys with the
movement of a billowy tide, attacking the lower heights like the
advance-guard of a besieging army, but daring not as yet to invade the
cold and solemn solitudes of the snowy Alps. These, too, in time, when
the sun's heat has grown strongest, will be folded in their midday pall
of sheltering vapour.

The very summit of Monte Generoso must not be left without a word of
notice. The path to it is as easy as the Bheep-walks on an English
down, though cut along grass-slopes descending at a perilously sharp
angle. At the top the view is much the same, as far as the grand
features go, as that which is commanded from the cliff by the hotel.
But the rocks here are crowded with rare Alpine flowers—delicate golden
auriculas with powdery leaves and 129stems, pale yellow cowslips,
imperial purple saxifrages, soldanellas at the edge of lingering
patches of the winter snow, blue gentians, crocuses, and the frail,
rosy-tipped ranunculus, called glacialis. Their blooming time is brief.
When summer comes the mountain will be bare and burned, like all
Italian hills. The Generoso is a very dry mountain, silent and solemn
from its want of streams. There is no sound of falling waters on its
crags; no musical rivulets flow down its sides, led carefully along the
slopes, as in Switzerland, by the peasants, to keep their hay-crops
green and gladden the thirsty turf throughout the heat and drought of
summer. The soil is a Jurassic limestone: the rain penetrates the
porous rock, and sinks through cracks and fissures, to reappear above
the base of the mountain in a full-grown stream. This is a defect in
the Generoso, as much to be regretted as the want of shade upon its
higher pastures. Here, as elsewhere in Piedmont, the forests are cut
for charcoal; the beech-scrub, which covers large tracts of the hills,
never having the chance of growing into trees much higher than a man.
It is this which makes an Italian mountain at a distance look woolly,
like a sheep's back. Among the brushwood, however, lilies-of-the-valley
and Solomon's seals delight to grow; and the league-long beds of wild
strawberries prove that when the laburnums have faded, the mountain
will become a garden of feasting.

It was on the crest of Monte Generoso, late one afternoon in May, that
we saw a sight of great beauty. The sun had yet about an hour before it
sank behind the peaks of Monte Rosa, and the sky was clear, except for
a few white clouds that floated across the plain of Lombardy. Then as
we sat upon the crags, tufted with soldanellas and auriculas, we could
see a fleecy vapour gliding upward from the hollows of the mountain,
very thin and pale, yet dense enough to blot the 130landscape to the
south and east from sight. It rose 314with an imperceptible motion, as
the Oceanides might have soared from the sea to comfort Prometheus in
the tragedy of Æschylus. Already the sun had touched its upper edge
with gold, and we were expecting to be enveloped in a mist; when
suddenly upon the outspread sheet before us there appeared two forms,
larger than life, yet not gigantic, surrounded with haloes of such
tempered iridescence as the moon half hidden by a summer cloud is wont
to make. They were the glorified figures of ourselves; and what we did,
the phantoms mocked, rising or bowing, or spreading wide their arms.
Some scarce-felt breeze prevented the vapour from passing across the
ridge to westward, though it still rose from beneath, and kept fading
away into thin air above our heads. Therefore the vision lasted as long
as the sun stayed yet above the Alps; and the images with their
aureoles shrank and dilated with the undulations of the mist. I could
not but think of that old formula for an anthropomorphic Deity—'the
Brocken-spectre of the human spirit projected on the mists of the
Non-ego.' Even like those cloud-phantoms are the gods made in the image
of man, who have been worshipped through successive ages of the world,
gods dowered with like passions to those of the races who have crouched
before them, gods cruel and malignant and lustful, jealous and noble
and just, radiant or gloomy, the counterparts of men upon a vast and
shadowy scale. But here another question rose. If the gods that men
have made and ignorantly worshipped be really but glorified copies of
their own souls, where is the sun in this parallel? Without the sun's
rays the mists of Monte Generoso could have shown, no shadowy forms.
Without some other power than the mind of man, could men have fashioned
for themselves 131those ideals that they named their gods? Unseen by
Greek, or Norseman, or Hindoo, the potent force by which alone they
could externalise their image, existed outside them, independent of
their thought. Nor does the trite epigram touch the surface of the real
mystery. The sun, the human beings on the mountain, and the mists are
all parts of one material universe: the transient phenomenon we
witnessed was but the effect of a chance combination. Is, then, the
anthropomorphic God as momentary and as accidental in the system of the
world as that vapoury spectre? The God in whom we live and move and
have our being must be far more all-pervasive, more incognisable by the
souls of men, who doubt not for one moment of His presence and His
power. Except for purposes of rhetoric the metaphor that seemed so
clever fails. Nor, when once such thoughts have been stirred in us by
such a sight, can we do better than repeat Goethe's sublime profession
of a philosophic mysticism. This translation I made one morning on the
Pasterze Gletscher beneath the spires of the Gross Glockner:—

To Him who from eternity, self-stirred,
Himself hath made by His creative word!
To Him, supreme, who causeth Faith to be,
Trust, Hope, Love, Power, and endless Energy!
To Him, who, seek to name Him as we will,
Unknown within Himself abideth still!

Strain ear and eye, till sight and sense be dim;
Thou'lt find but faint similitudes of Him:
Yea, and thy spirit in her flight of flame
Still strives to gauge the symbol and the name:
Charmed and compelled thou climb'st from height to height,
And round thy path the world shines wondrous bright;
Time, Space, and Size, and Distance cease to be,
And every step is fresh infinity.


132
What were the God who sat outside to scan
The spheres that 'neath His finger circling ran?
God dwells within, and moves the world and moulds,
Himself and Nature in one form enfolds:
Thus all that lives in Him and breathes and is,
Shall ne'er His puissance, ne'er His spirit miss.

The soul of man, too, is an universe:
Whence follows it that race with race concurs
In naming all it knows of good and true
God,—yea, its own God; and with homage due
Surrenders to His sway both earth and heaven;
Fears Him, and loves, where place for love is given.

133




LOMBARD VIGNETTES


ON THE SUPERGA

This is the chord of Lombard colouring in May. Lowest in the scale:
bright green of varied tints, the meadow-grasses mingling with willows
and acacias, harmonised by air and distance. Next, opaque blue—the blue
of something between amethyst and lapis-lazuli—that belongs alone to
the basements of Italian mountains. Higher, the roseate whiteness of
ridged snow on Alps or Apennines. Highest, the blue of the sky,
ascending from pale turquoise to transparent sapphire filled with
light. A mediæval mystic might have likened this chord to the spiritual
world. For the lowest region is that of natural life, of plant and bird
and beast, and unregenerate man; it is the place of faun and nymph and
satyr, the plain where wars are fought and cities built, and work is
done. Thence we climb to purified humanity, the mountains of purgation,
the solitude and simplicity of contemplative life not yet made perfect
by freedom from the flesh. Higher comes that thin white belt, where are
the resting places of angelic feet, the points whence purged souls take
their flight toward infinity. Above all is heaven, the hierarchies
ascending row on row to reach the light of God.

This fancy occurred to me as I climbed the slope of the Superga, gazing
over acacia hedges and poplars to the mountains bare in morning light.
The occasional occurrence of 134bars across this chord—poplars
shivering in sun and breeze, stationary cypresses as black as night,
and tall campanili with the hot red shafts of glowing brick—adds just
enough of composition to the landscape. Without too much straining of
the allegory, the mystic might have recognised in these aspiring bars
the upward effort of souls rooted in the common life of earth.

The panorama, unrolling as we ascend, is enough to overpower a lover of
beauty. There is nothing equal to it for space and breadth and majesty.
Monte Rosa, the masses of Mont Blanc blent with the Grand Paradis, the
airy pyramid of Monte Viso, these are the battlements of that vast
Alpine rampart, in which the vale of Susa opens like a gate. To west
and south sweep the Maritime Alps and the Apennines. Beneath, glides
the infant Po; and where he leads our eyes, the plain is only limited
by pearly mist.

A BRONZE BUST OF CALIGULA AT TURIN

The Albertina bronze is one of the most precious portraits of
antiquity, not merely because it confirms the testimony of the green
basalt bust in the Capitol, but also because it supplies an even more
emphatic and impressive illustration to the narrative of Suetonius.

Caligula is here represented as young and singularly beautiful. It is
indeed an ideal Roman head, with the powerful square modelling, the
crisp short hair, low forehead and regular firm features, proper to the
noblest Roman type. The head is thrown backward from the throat; and
there is a something of menace or defiance or suffering in the
suggestion of brusque movement given to the sinews of the neck. This
attitude, together with the tension of the forehead, and the fixed
expression of pain and strain communicated by the 135lines of the
mouth—strong muscles of the upper lip and abruptly chiselled under
lip—in relation to the small eyes, deep set beneath their cavernous and
level brows, renders the whole face a monument of spiritual anguish. I
remember that the green basalt bust of the Capitol has the same anxious
forehead, the same troubled and overburdened eyes; but the agony of
this fretful mouth, comparable to nothing but the mouth of Pandolfo
Sigismondo Malatesta, and, like that, on the verge of breaking into the
spasms of delirium, is quite peculiar to the Albertina bronze. It is
just this which tha portrait of the Capitol lacks for the completion of
Caligula. The man who could be so represented in art had nothing wholly
vulgar in him. The brutality of Caracalla, the overblown sensuality of
Nero, the effeminacy of Commodus or Heliogabalus, are all absent here.
This face idealises the torture of a morbid soul. It is withal so truly
beautiful that it might easily be made the poem of high suffering or
noble passion. If the bronze were plastic, I see how a great sculptor,
by but few strokes, could convert it into an agonising Stephen or
Sebastian. As it is, the unimaginable touch of disease, the unrest of
madness, made Caligula the genius of insatiable appetite; and his
martyrdom was the torment of lust and ennui and everlasting agitation.
The accident of empire tantalised him with vain hopes of satisfying the
Charybdis of his soul's sick cravings. From point to point he passed of
empty pleasure and unsatisfying cruelty, for ever hungry; until the
malady of his spirit, unrestrained by any limitations, and with the
right medium for its development, became unique—the tragic type of
pathological desire. What more than all things must have plagued a man
with that face was probably the unavoidable meanness of his career.
When we study the chapters of Suetonius, we are forced to feel that,
though the situation and the madness of Caligula 136were dramatically
impressive, his crimes were trivial and, small. In spite of the vast
scale on which he worked his devilish will, his life presents a total
picture of sordid vice, differing only from pot-house dissipation and
schoolboy cruelty in point of size. And this of a truth is the Nemesis
of evil. After a time, mere tyrannous caprice must become commonplace
and cloying, tedious to the tyrant, and uninteresting to the student of
humanity: nor can I believe that Caligula failed to perceive this to
his own infinite disgust.

Suetonius asserts that he was hideously ugly. How are we to square this
testimony with the witness of the bronze before us? What changed the
face, so beautiful and terrible in youth, to ugliness that shrank from
sight in manhood? Did the murderers find it blurred in its fine
lineaments, furrowed with lines of care, hollowed with the soul's
hunger? Unless a life of vice and madness had succeeded in making
Caligula's face what the faces of some maniacs are—the bloated ruin of
what was once a living witness to the soul within—I could fancy that
death may have sanctified it with even more beauty than this bust of
the self-tormented young man shows. Have we not all seen the anguish of
thought-fretted faces smoothed out by the hands of the Deliverer?

FERRARI AT VERCELLI

It is possible that many visitors to the Cathedral of Como have carried
away the memory of stately women with abundant yellow hair and
draperies of green and crimson, in a picture they connect thereafter
with Gaudenzio Ferrari. And when they come to Milan, they are probably
both impressed and disappointed by a Martyrdom of S. Catherine in the
Brera, bearing the same artist's name. If they wish to understand this
painter, they must seek him at Varallo, at 137Saronno, and at Vercelli.
In the Church of S. Cristoforo in Vercelli, Gaudenzio Ferrari at the
full height of his powers ghowed what he could do to justify Lomazzo's
title chosen for him of the Eagle. He has indeed the strong wing and
the swiftness of the king of birds. And yet the works of few really
great painters—and among the really great we place Ferrari—leave upon
the mind a more distressing sense of imperfection. Extraordinary
fertility of fancy, vehement dramatic passion, sincere study of nature,
and great command of technical resources are here (as elsewhere in
Ferrari's frescoes) neutralised by an incurable defect of the combining
and harmonising faculty, so essential to a masterpiece. There is stuff
enough of thought and vigour and imagination to make a dozen artists.
And yet we turn away disappointed from the crowded, dazzling,
stupefying wilderness of forma and faces on these mighty walls.

All that Ferrari derived from actual life—the heads of single figures,
the powerful movement of men and women in excited action, the
monumental pose of two praying nuns—is admirably rendered. His angels
too, in S. Cristoforo as elsewhere, are quite original; not only in
their type of beauty, which is terrestrial and peculiar to Ferrari,
without a touch of Correggio's sensuality; but also in the intensity of
their emotion, the realisation of their vitality. Those which hover
round the Cross in the fresco of the 'Crucifixion' are as passionate as
any angels of the Giottesque masters in Assisi. Those again which crowd
the Stable of Bethlehem in the 'Nativity' yield no point of idyllic
charm to Gozzoli's in the Riccardi Chapel.

The 'Crucifixion' and the 'Assumption of Madonna' are very tall and
narrow compositions, audacious in their attempt to fill almost
unmanageable space with a connected action. Of the two frescoes the
'Crucifixion,' which has points of 138strong similarity to the same
subject at Varallo, is by far the best. Ferrari never painted anything
at once truer to life and nobler in tragic style than the fainting
Virgin. Her face expresses the very acme of martyrdom—not exaggerated
nor spasmodic, but real and sublime—in the suffering of a stately
matron. In points like this Ferrari cannot be surpassed. Raphael could
scarcely have done better; besides, there is an air of sincerity, a
stamp of popular truth, in this episode, which lies beyond Raphael's
sphere. It reminds us rather of Tintoretto.

After the 'Crucifixion,' I place the 'Adoration of the Magi,' full of
fine mundane motives and gorgeous costumes; then the 'Sposalizio'
(whose marriage, I am not certain), the only grandly composed picture
of the series, and marked by noble heads; then the 'Adoration of the
Shepherds,' with two lovely angels holding the bambino. The 'Assumption
of the Magdalen'—for which fresco there is a valuable cartoon in the
Albertina Collection at Turin—must have been a fine picture; but it is
ruined now. An oil altar-piece in the choir of the same church struck
me less than the frescoes. It represents Madonna and a crowd of saints
under an orchard of apple-trees, with cherubs curiously flung about
almost at random in the air. The motive of the orchard is prettily
conceived and carried out with spirit.

What Ferrari possessed was rapidity of movement, fulness and richness
of reality, exuberance of invention, excellent portraiture, dramatic
vehemence, and an almost unrivalled sympathy with the swift and
passionate world of angels. What he lacked was power of composition,
simplicity of total effect, harmony in colouring, control over his own
luxuriance, the sense of tranquillity. He seems to have sought grandeur
in size and multitude, richness, éclat, contrast. Being the 139disciple
of Lionardo and Raphael, his defects are truly singular. As a composer,
the old leaven of Giovenone remained in him; but he felt the dramatic
tendencies of a later age, and in occasional episodes he realised them
with a force and _furia_ granted to very few of the Italian painters.

LANINI AT VERCELLI

The Casa Mariano is a palace which belonged to a family of that name.
Like many houses of the sort in Italy, it fell to vile uses; and its
hall of audience was turned into a lumber-room. The Operai of Vercelli,
I was told, bought the palace a few years ago, restored the noble hall,
and devoted a smaller room to a collection of pictures valuable for
students of the early Vercellese style of painting. Of these there is
no need to speak. The great hall is the gem of the Casa Mariano. It has
a coved roof, with a large flat oblong space in the centre of the
ceiling. The whole of this vault and the lunettes beneath were painted
by Lanini; so runs the tradition of the fresco-painter's name; and
though much injured by centuries of outrage, and somewhat marred by
recent restoration, these frescoes form a precious monument of Lombard
art. The object of the painter's design seems to have been the
glorification of Music. In the central compartment of the roof is an
assembly of the gods, obviously borrowed from Raphael's 'Marriage of
Cupid and Psyche' in the Farnesina at Rome. The fusion of Roman
composition with Lombard execution constitutes the chief charm of this
singular work, and makes it, so far as I am aware, unique. Single
figures of the goddesses, and the whole movement of the scene upon
Olympus, are transcribed without attempt at concealment. And yet the
fresco is not a barefaced copy. 140The manner of feeling and of
execution is quite different from that of Raphael's school. The poetry
and sentiment are genuinely Lombard. None of Raphael's pupils could
have carried out his design with a delicacy of emotion and a technical
skill in colouring so consummate. What, we think, as we gaze upward,
would the Master have given for such a craftsman? The hardness,
coarseness, and animal crudity of the Roman School are absent: so also
is their vigour. But where the grace of form and colour is so soft and
sweet, where the high-bred calm of good company is so sympathetically
rendered, where the atmosphere of amorous languor and of melody is so
artistically diffused, we cannot miss the powerful modelling and rather
vulgar _tours de force_ of Giulio Romano. The scale of tone is silvery
golden. There are no hard blues, no coarse red flesh-tints, no black
shadows. Mellow lights, the morning hues of primrose, or of palest
amber, pervade the whole society. It is a court of gentle and
harmonious souls; and though this style of beauty might cloy, at first
sight there is something ravishing in those yellow-haired white-limbed,
blooming deities. No movement of lascivious grace as in Correggio, no
perturbation of the senses as in some of the Venetians, disturbs the
rhythm of their music; nor is the pleasure of the flesh, though felt by
the painter and communicated to the spectator, an interruption to their
divine calm. The white, saffron-haired goddesses are grouped together
like stars seen in the topaz light of evening, like daffodils half
smothered in snowdrops, and among them, Diana, with the crescent on her
forehead, is the fairest. Her dream-like beauty need fear no comparison
with the Diana of the Camera di S. Paolo. Apollo and Bacchus are
scarcely less lovely in their bloom of earliest manhood; honey-pale, as
Greeks would say; like statues of living electron; realising Simaetha's
picture of her lover and his friend:—

141

Τοίς δ΄ ήν ξανθοτέρα μέν ελιχρύσοιο γενειάς
στήθεα δε στίλβοντα πολύ πλέον η΅ τυ Σελάνα.[9]


 [9] 'The down upon their cheeks and chin was yellower than
 helichrysus, and their breasts gleamed whiter far than thou, O Moon.'


It was thus that the almost childlike spirit of the Milanese painters
felt the antique: how differently from their Roman brethren! It was
thus that they interpreted the lines of their own poets:—

E i tuoi capei più volte ho somigliati
Di Cerere a le paglie secche o bionde
Dintorno crespi al tuo capo legati.[10]


 [10] 'Thy tresses have I oftentimes compared to Ceres' yellow autumn
 sheaves, wreathed in curled bands around thy head.'


Yet the painter of this hall—whether we are to call him Lanini or
another—was not a composer. Where he has not robbed the motives and the
distribution of the figures from Raphael, he has nothing left but grace
of detail. The intellectual feebleness of his style may be seen in many
figures of women playing upon instruments of music, ranged around the
walls. One girl at the organ is graceful; another with a tambourine has
a sort of Bassarid beauty. But the group of Apollo, Pegasus, and a Muse
upon Parnassus, is a failure in its meaningless frigidity, while few of
these subordinate compositions show power of conception or vigour of
design.

Lanini, like Sodoma, was a native of Vercelli; and though he was
Ferrari's pupil, there is more in him of Luini or of Sodoma than of his
master. He does not rise at any point to the height of these three
great masters, but he shares some of Luini's and Sodoma's fine
qualities, without having any of Ferrari's force. A visit to the
mangled remnants of his frescoes in S. Caterina will repay the student
of art. This was once, apparently, a double church, or a church with
the hall and chapel of a _confraternita_ appended to it. One 142portion
of the building was painted with the history of the Saint; and very
lovely must this work have been, to judge by the fragments which have
recently been rescued from whitewash, damp, and ruthless mutilation.
What wonderful Lombard faces, half obliterated on the broken wall and
mouldering plaster, smile upon us like drowned memories swimming up
from the depths of oblivion! Wherever three or four are grouped
together, we find an exquisite little picture—an old woman and two
young women in a doorway, for example, telling no story, but touching
us with simple harmony of form. Nothing further is needed to render
their grace intelligible. Indeed, knowing the faults of the school, we
may seek some consolation by telling ourselves that these incomplete
fragments yield Lanini's best. In the coved compartments of the roof,
above the windows, ran a row of dancing boys; and these are still most
beautifully modelled, though the pallor of recent whitewash is upon
them. All the boys have blonde hair. They are naked, with scrolls or
ribbons wreathed around them, adding to the airiness of their continual
dance. Some of the loveliest are in a room used to stow away the lumber
of the church—old boards and curtains, broken lanterns, candle-ends in
tin sconces, the musty apparatus of festival adornments, and in the
midst of all a battered, weather-beaten bier.

THE PIAZZA OF PIACENZA

The great feature of Piacenza is its famous piazza—romantically,
picturesquely perfect square, surpassing the most daring attempts of
the scene-painter, and realising a poet's dreams. The space is
considerable, and many streets converge upon it at irregular angles.
Its finest architectural feature is the antique Palace of the Commune:
Gothic 143arcades of stone below, surmounted by a brick building with
wonderfully delicate and varied terra-cotta work in the round-arched
windows. Before this façade, on the marble pavement, prance the bronze
equestrian statues of two Farnesi—insignificant men, exaggerated
horses, flying drapery—as _barocco_ as it is possible to be in style,
but so splendidly toned with verdigris, so superb in their _bravura_
attitude, and so happily placed in the line of two streets lending far
vistas from the square into the town beyond, that it is difficult to
criticise them seriously. They form, indeed, an important element in
the pictorial effect, and enhance the terra-cotta work of the façade by
the contrast of their colour.

The time to see this square is in evening twilight—that wonderful hour
after sunset—when the people are strolling on the pavement, polished to
a mirror by the pacing of successive centuries, and when the cavalry
soldiers group themselves at the angles under the lamp-posts or beneath
the dimly lighted Gothic arches of the Palace. This is the magical
mellow hour to be sought by lovers of the picturesque in all the towns
of Italy, the hour which, by its tender blendings of sallow western
lights with glimmering lamps, casts the veil of half shadow over any
crudeness and restores the injuries of Time; the hour when all the
tints of these old buildings are intensified, etherealised, and
harmonised by one pervasive glow. When I last saw Piacenza, it had been
raining all day; and ere sundown a clearing had come from the Alps,
followed by fresh threatenings of thunderstorms. The air was very
liquid. There was a tract of yellow sunset sky to westward, a faint new
moon half swathed in mist above, and over all the north a huge towered
thundercloud kept flashing distant lightnings. The pallid primrose of
the West, forced down and reflected back from that vast bank of
tempest, gave unearthly beauty to the hues of church and
144palace—tender half-tones of violet and russet paling into greys and
yellows on what in daylight seemed but dull red brick. Even the
uncompromising façade of S. Francesco helped; and the Dukes were like
statues of the 'Gran Commendatore,' waiting for Don Giovanni's
invitation.

MASOLINO AT CASTIGLIONE D'OLONA

Through the loveliest Arcadian scenery of woods and fields and rushing
waters the road leads downward from Varese to Castiglione. The
Collegiate Church stands on a leafy hill above the town, with fair
prospect over groves and waterfalls and distant mountains. Here in the
choir is a series of frescoes by Masolino da Panicale, the master of
Masaccio, who painted them about the year 1428. 'Masolinus de Florentia
pinxit' decides their authorship. The histories of the Virgin, S.
Stephen and S. Lawrence, are represented: but the injuries of time and
neglect have been so great that it is difficult to judge them fairly.
All we feel for certain is that Masolino had not yet escaped from the
traditional Giottesque mannerism. Only a group of Jews stoning Stephen,
and Lawrence before the tribunal, remind us by dramatic energy of the
Brancacci Chapel.

The Baptistery frescoes, dealing with the legend of S. John, show a
remarkable advance; and they are luckily in better preservation. A
soldier lifting his two-handed sword to strike off the Baptist's head
is a vigorous figure, full of Florentine realism. Also in the Baptism
in Jordan we are reminded of Masaccio by an excellent group of
bathers—one man taking off his hose, another putting them on again, a
third standing naked with his back turned, and a fourth shivering
half-dressed with a look of curious sadness on his face. The nude has
been carefully studied and well realised. 145The finest composition of
this series is a large panel representing a double action—Salome at
Herod's table begging for the Baptist's head, and then presenting it to
her mother Herodias. The costumes are quattrocento Florentine, exactly
rendered. Salome is a graceful slender creature; the two women who
regard her offering to Herodias with mingled curiosity and horror, are
well conceived. The background consists of a mountain landscape in
Masaccio's simple manner, a rich Renaissance villa, and an open loggia.
The architecture perspective is scientifically accurate, and a frieze
of boys with garlands on the villa is in the best manner of Florentine
sculpture. On the mountain side, diminished in scale, is a group of
elders, burying the body of S. John. These are massed together and
robed in the style of Masaccio, and have his virile dignity of form and
action. Indeed this interesting wall-painting furnishes an epitome of
Florentine art, in its intentions and achievements, during the first
half of the fifteenth century. The colour is strong and brilliant, and
the execution solid.

The margin of the Salome panel has been used for scratching the
Chronicle of Castiglione. I read one date, 1568, several of the next
century, the record of a duel between two gentlemen, and many
inscriptions to this effect, 'Erodiana Regina,' 'Omnia praetereunt,'
&c. A dirty one-eyed fellow keeps the place. In my presence he swept
the frescoes over with a scratchy broom, flaying their upper surface in
profound unconsciousness of mischief. The armour of the executioner has
had its steel colours almost rubbed off by this infernal process. Damp
and cobwebs are far kinder.

146

THE CERTOSA

The Certosa of Pavia leaves upon the mind an impression of bewildering
sumptuousness: nowhere else are costly materials so combined with a
lavish expenditure of the rarest art. Those who have only once been
driven round together with the crew of sightseers, can carry little
away but the memory of lapis-lazuli and bronze-work, inlaid agates and
labyrinthine sculpture, cloisters tenantless in silence, fair painted
faces smiling from dark corners on the senseless crowd, trim gardens
with rows of pink primroses in spring, and of begonia in autumn,
blooming beneath colonnades of glowing terra-cotta. The striking
contrast between the Gothic of the interior and the Renaissance façade,
each in its own kind perfect, will also be remembered; and thoughts of
the two great houses, Visconti and Sforza, to whose pride of power it
is a monument, may be blended with the recollection of art-treasures
alien to their spirit.

Two great artists, Ambrogio Borgognone and Antonio Amadeo, are the
presiding genii of the Certosa. To minute criticism, based upon the
accurate investigation of records and the comparison of styles, must be
left the task of separating their work from that of numerous
collaborators. But it is none the less certain that the keynote of the
whole music is struck by them, Amadeo, the master of the Colleoni
chapel at Bergamo, was both sculptor and architect. If the façade of
the Certosa be not absolutely his creation, he had a hand in the
distribution of its masses and the detail of its ornaments. The only
fault in this otherwise faultless product of the purest quattrocento
inspiration, is that the façade is a frontispiece, with hardly any
structural relation to the church it masks: and this, though serious
from the point of view of 147architecture, is no abatement of its
sculpturesque and picturesque refinement. At first sight it seems a
wilderness of loveliest reliefs and statues—of angel faces, fluttering
raiment, flowing hair, love-laden youths, and stationary figures of
grave saints, mid wayward tangles of acanthus and wild vine and
cupid-laden foliage; but the subordination of these decorative details
to the main design, clear, rhythmical, and lucid, like a chaunt of
Pergolese or Stradella, will enrapture one who has the sense for unity
evoked from divers elements, for thought subduing all caprices to the
harmony of beauty. It is not possible elsewhere in Italy to find the
instinct of the earlier Renaissance, so amorous in its expenditure of
rare material, so lavish in its bestowal of the costliest workmanship
on ornamental episodes, brought into truer keeping with a pure and
simple structural effect.

All the great sculptor-architects of Lombardy worked in succession on
this miracle of beauty; and this may account for the sustained
perfection of style, which nowhere suffers from the languor of
exhaustion in the artist or from repetition of motives. It remains the
triumph of North Italian genius, exhibiting qualities of tenderness and
self-abandonment to inspiration, which we lack in the severer
masterpieces of the Tuscan school.

To Borgognone is assigned the painting of the roof in nave and
choir—exceeding rich, varied, and withal in sympathy with stately
Gothic style. Borgognone again is said to have designed the saints and
martyrs worked in _tarsia_ for the choir-stalls. His frescoes are in
some parts well preserved, as in the lovely little Madonna at the end
of the south chapel, while the great fresco above the window in the
south transept has an historical value that renders it interesting in
spite of partial decay. Borgognone's oil pictures throughout the church
prove, if such proof were needed after 148inspection of the altar-piece
in our National Gallery, that he was one of the most powerful and
original painters of Italy, blending the repose of the earlier masters
and their consummate workmanship with a profound sensibility to the
finest shades of feeling and the rarest forms of natural beauty. He
selected an exquisite type of face for his young men and women; on his
old men he bestowed singular gravity and dignity. His saints are a
society of strong, pure, restful, earnest souls, in whom the passion of
deepest emotion is transfigured by habitual calm. The brown and golden
harmonies he loved, are gained without sacrifice of lustre: there is a
self-restraint in his colouring which corresponds to the reserve of his
emotion; and though a regret sometimes rises in our mind that he should
have modelled the light and shade upon his faces with a brusque,
unpleasing hardness, their pallor dwells within our memory as something
delicately sought if not consummately attained. In a word, Borgognone
was a true Lombard of the best time. The very imperfection of his
flesh-painting repeats in colour what the greatest Lombard sculptors
sought in stone—a sharpness of relief that passes over into angularity.
This brusqueness was the counterpoise to tenderness of feeling and
intensity of fancy in these northern artists. Of all Borgognone's
pictures in the Certosa I should select the altar-piece of S. Siro with
S. Lawrence and S. Stephen and two Fathers of the Church, for its
fusion of this master's qualities.

The Certosa is a wilderness of lovely workmanship. From Borgognone's
majesty we pass into the quiet region of Luini's Christian grace, or
mark the influence of Lionardo on that rare Assumption of Madonna by
his pupil, Andrea Solari. Like everything touched by the Lionardesque
spirit, this great picture was left unfinished: yet Northern Italy has
nothing finer to show than the landscape, outspread in its
149immeasurable purity of calm, behind the grouped Apostles and the
ascendant Mother of Heaven. The feeling of that happy region between
the Alps and Lombardy, where there are many waters—_et tacitos sine
labe laous sine murmure rivos_—and where the last spurs of the
mountains sink in undulations to the plain, has passed into this azure
vista, just as all Umbria is suggested in a twilight background of
young Raphael or Perugino.

The portraits of the Dukes of Milan and their families carry us into a
very different realm of feeling. Medallions above the doors of sacristy
and chancel, stately figures reared aloft beneath gigantic canopies,
men and women slumbering with folded hands upon their marble biers—we
read in all those sculptured forms a strange record of human
restlessness, resolved into the quiet of the tomb. The iniquities of
Gian Galeazzo Visconti, _il gran Biscione_, the blood-thirst of Gian
Maria, the dark designs of Filippo and his secret vices, Francesco
Sforza's treason, Galeazzo Maria's vanities and lusts; their tyrants'
dread of thunder and the knife; their awful deaths by pestilence and
the assassin's poignard; their selfishness, oppression, cruelty and
fraud; the murders of their kinsmen; their labyrinthine plots and acts
of broken faith;—all is tranquil now, and we can say to each what
Bosola found for the Duchess of Malfi ere her execution:—

Much you had of land and rent;
Your length in clay's now competent:
A long war disturbed your mind;
Here your perfect peace is signed!


Some of these faces are commonplace, with _bourgeois_ cunning written
on the heavy features; one is bluff, another stolid, a third bloated, a
fourth stately. The sculptors have dealt fairly with all, and not one
has the lineaments of utter baseness. To Cristoforo Solari's statues of
Lodovico Sforza and 150his wife, Beatrice d'Este, the palm of
excellence in art and of historical interest must be awarded. Sculpture
has rarely been more dignified and true to life than here. The woman
with her short clustering curls, the man with his strong face, are
resting after that long fever which brought woe to Italy, to Europe a
new age, and to the boasted minion of Fortune a slow death in the
prison palace of Loches. Attired in ducal robes, they lie in state; and
the sculptor has carved the lashes on their eyelids, heavy with death's
marmoreal sleep. He at least has passed no judgment on their crimes.
Let us too bow and leave their memories to the historian's pen, their
spirits to God's mercy.

After all wanderings in this Temple of Art, we return to Antonio
Amadeo, to his long-haired seraphs playing on the lutes of Paradise, to
his angels of the Passion with their fluttering robes and arms
outspread in agony, to his saints and satyrs mingled on pilasters of
the marble doorways, his delicate _Lavabo_ decorations, and his hymns
of piety expressed in noble forms of weeping women and dead Christs.
Wherever we may pass, this master-spirit of the Lombard style enthralls
attention. His curious treatment of drapery as though it ¦were made of
crumpled paper, and his trick of enhancing relief by sharp angles and
attenuated limbs, do not detract from his peculiar charm. That is his
way, very different from Donatello's, of attaining to the maximum of
life and lightness in the stubborn vehicle of stone. Nor do all the
riches of the choir—those multitudes of singing angels, those
Ascensions and Assumptions, and innumerable basreliefs of gleaming
marble moulded into softest wax by mastery of art—distract our eyes
from the single round medallion, not larger than a common plate,
inscribed by him upon the front of the high altar. Perhaps, if one who
loved Amadeo were bidden to point out his masterpiece, he would lead
the way at 151once to this. The space is small: yet it includes the
whole tragedy of the Passion. Christ is lying dead among the women on
his mother's lap, and there are pitying angels in the air above. One
woman lifts his arm, another makes her breast a pillow for his head.
Their agony is hushed, but felt in every limb and feature; and the
extremity of suffering is seen in each articulation of the worn and
wounded form just taken from the cross. It would be too painful, were
not the harmony of art so rare, the interlacing of those many figures
in a simple round so exquisite. The noblest tranquillity and the most
passionate emotion are here fused in a manner of adorable naturalness.

From the church it is delightful to escape into the cloisters, flooded
with sunlight, where the swallows skim, and the brown hawks circle, and
the mason bees are at work upon their cells among the carvings. The
arcades of the two cloisters are the final triumph of Lombard
terra-cotta. The memory fails before such infinite invention, such
facility and felicity of execution. Wreaths of cupids gliding round the
arches among grape-bunches and bird-haunted foliage of vine; rows of
angels, like rising and setting planets, some smiling and some grave,
ascending and descending by the Gothic curves; saints stationary on
their pedestals, and faces leaning from the rounds above; crowds of
cherubs, and courses of stars, and acanthus leaves in woven lines, and
ribands incessantly inscribed with Ave Maria! Then, over all, the rich
red light and purple shadows of the brick, than which no substance
sympathises more completely with the sky of solid blue above, the broad
plain space of waving summer grass beneath our feet.

It is now late afternoon, and when evening comes, the train will take
us back to Milan. There is yet a little while to rest tired eyes and
strained spirits among the willows and 152the poplars by the monastery
wall. Through that grey-green leafage, young with early spring, the
pinnacles of the Certosa leap like flames into the sky. The rice-fields
are under water, far and wide, shining like burnished gold beneath the
level light now near to sun-down. Frogs are croaking; those persistent
frogs, whom the Muses have ordained to sing for aye, in spite of Bion
and all tuneful poets dead. We sit and watch the water-snakes, the busy
rats, the hundred creatures swarming in the fat well-watered soil.
Nightingales here and there, new-comers, tune their timid April song:
but, strangest of all sounds in such a place, my comrade from the
Grisons jodels forth an Alpine cowherd's melody. _Auf den Alpen droben
ist ein herrliches Leben!_

Did the echoes of Gian Galeazzo's convent ever wake to such a tune as
this before?

SAN MAURIZIO

The student of art in Italy, after mastering the characters of
different styles and epochs, finds a final satisfaction in the
contemplation of buildings designed and decorated by one master, or by
groups of artists interpreting the spirit of a single period. Such
supreme monuments of the national genius are not very common, and they
are therefore the more precious. Giotto's Chapel at Padua; the Villa
Farnesina at Rome, built by Peruzzi and painted in fresco by Raphael
and Sodoma; the Palazzo del Te at Mantua, Giulio Romano's masterpiece;
the Scuola di San Rocco, illustrating the Venetian Renaissance at its
climax, might be cited among the most splendid of these achievements.
In the church of the Monastero Maggiore at Milan, dedicated to S.
Maurizio, Lombard architecture and fresco-painting may be studied in
this rare combination. The monastery itself, one of the 153oldest in
Milan, formed a retreat for cloistered virgins following the rule of S.
Benedict. It may have been founded as early as the tenth century; but
its church was rebuilt in the first two decades of the sixteenth,
between 1503 and 1519, and was immediately afterwards decorated with
frescoes by Luini and his pupils. Gian Giacomo Dolcebono, architect and
sculptor, called by his fellow-craftsmen _magistro di taliare pietre_,
gave the design, at once simple and harmonious, which was carried out
with hardly any deviation from his plan. The church is a long
parallelogram, divided into two unequal portions, the first and smaller
for the public, the second for the nuns. The walls are pierced with
rounded and pilastered windows, ten on each side, four of which belong
to the outer and six to the inner section. The dividing wall or septum
rises to the point from which the groinings of the roof spring; and
round three sides of the whole building, north, east, and south, runs a
gallery for the use of the convent. The altars of the inner and outer
church are placed against the septum, back to back, with certain
differences of structure that need not be described. Simple and severe,
S. Maurizio owes its architectural beauty wholly and entirely to purity
of line and perfection of proportion. There is a prevailing spirit of
repose, a sense of space, fair, lightsome, and adapted to serene moods
of the meditative fancy in this building, which is singularly at
variance with the religious mysticism and imaginative grandeur of a
Gothic edifice. The principal beauty of the church, however, is its
tone of colour. Every square inch is covered with fresco or rich
woodwork, mellowed by time into that harmony of tints which blends the
work of greater and lesser artists in one golden hue of brown. Round
the arcades of the convent-loggia run delicate arabesques with faces of
fair female saints—Catherine, Agnes, Lucy, Agatha,—gem-like or
star-like, gazing from their gallery 154upon the church below. The
Luinesque smile is on their lips and in their eyes, quiet, refined, as
though the emblems of their martyrdom brought back no thought of pain
to break the Paradise of rest in which they dwell. There are twenty-six
in all, a sisterhood of stainless souls, the lilies of Love's garden
planted round Christ's throne. Soldier saints are mingled with them in
still smaller rounds above the windows, chosen to illustrate the
virtues of an order which renounced the world. To decide whose hand
produced these masterpieces of Lombard suavity and grace, or whether
more than one, would not be easy. Near the altar we can perhaps trace
the style of Bartolommeo Suardi in an Annunciation painted on the
spandrils—that heroic style, large and noble, known to us by the
chivalrous S. Martin and the glorified Madonna of the Brera frescoes.
It is not impossible that the male saints of the loggia may be also
his, though a tenderer touch, a something more nearly Lionardesque in
its quietude, must be discerned in Lucy and her sisters. The whole of
the altar in this inner church belongs to Luini. Were it not for
darkness and decay, we should pronounce this series of the Passion in
nine great compositions, with saints and martyrs and torch-bearing
genii, to be one of his most ambitious and successful efforts. As it
is, we can but judge in part; the adolescent beauty of Sebastian, the
grave compassion of S. Rocco, the classical perfection of the cupid
with lighted tapers, the gracious majesty of women smiling on us
sideways from their Lombard eyelids—these remain to haunt our memory,
emerging from the shadows of the vault above.

The inner church, as is fitting, excludes all worldly elements. We are
in the presence of Christ's agony, relieved and tempered by the
sunlight of those beauteous female faces. All is solemn here, still as
the convent, pure as the meditations 155of a novice. We pass the
septum, and find ourselves in the outer church appropriated to the
laity. Above the high altar the whole wall is covered with Luini's
loveliest work, in excellent light and far from ill preserved. The
space divides into eight compartments. A Pietà, an Assumption, Saints
and Founders of the church, group themselves under the influence of
Luini's harmonising colour into one symphonious whole. But the places
of distinction are reserved for two great benefactors of the convent,
Alessandro de' Bentivogli and his wife, Ippolita Sforza. When the
Bentivogli were expelled from Bologna by the Papal forces, Alessandro
settled at Milan, where he dwelt, honoured by the Sforzas and allied to
them by marriage, till his death in 1532. He was buried in the
monastery by the side of his sister Alessandra, a nun of the order.
Luini has painted the illustrious exile in his habit as he lived. He is
kneeling, as though in ever-during adoration of the altar mystery,
attired in a long black senatorial robe trimmed with furs. In his left
hand he holds a book; and above his pale, serenely noble face is a
little black berretta. Saints attend him, as though attesting to his
act of faith. Opposite kneels Ippolita, his wife, the brilliant queen
of fashion, the witty leader of society, to whom Bandello dedicated his
Novelle, and whom he praised as both incomparably beautiful and
singularly learned. Her queenly form is clothed from head to foot in
white brocade, slashed and trimmed with gold lace, and on her forehead
is a golden circlet. She has the proud port of a princess, the beauty
of a woman past her prime but stately, the indescribable dignity of
attitude which no one but Luini could have rendered so majestically
sweet. In her hand is a book; and she, like Alessandro, has her saintly
sponsors, Agnes and Catherine and S. Scolastica.

Few pictures bring the splendid Milanese Court so vividly 156before us
as these portraits of the Bentivogli: they are, moreover, very precious
for the light they throw on what Luini could achieve in the secular
style so rarely touched by him. Great, however, as are these frescoes,
they are far surpassed both in value and interest by his paintings in
the side chapel of S. Catherine. Here more than anywhere else, more
even than at Saronno or Lugano, do we feel the true distinction of
Luini—his unrivalled excellence as a colourist, his power over pathos,
the refinement of his feeling, and the peculiar beauty of his favourite
types. The chapel was decorated at the expense of a Milanese advocate,
Francesco Besozzi, who died in 1529. It is he who is kneeling,
grey-haired and bareheaded, under the protection of S. Catherine of
Alexandria, intently gazing at Christ unbound from the scourging
pillar. On the other side stand S. Lawrence and S. Stephen, pointing to
the Christ and looking at us, as though their lips were framed to say:
'Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto his sorrow.' Even the
soldiers who have done their cruel work, seem softened. They untie the
cords tenderly, and support the fainting form, too weak to stand alone.
What sadness in the lovely faces of S. Catherine and Lawrence! What
divine anguish in the loosened limbs and bending body of Christ; what
piety in the adoring old man! All the moods proper to this supreme
tragedy of the faith are touched as in some tenor song with low
accompaniment of viols; for it was Luini's special province to feel
profoundly and to express musically. The very depth of the Passion is
there; and yet there is no discord.

Just in proportion to this unique faculty for yielding a melodious
representation of the most intense moments of stationary emotion, was
his inability to deal with a dramatic subject. The first episode of S.
Catherine's execution, when the wheel was broken and the executioners
struck by lightning, 157is painted in this chapel without energy and
with a lack of composition that betrays the master's indifference to
his subject. Far different is the second episode when Catherine is
about to be beheaded. The executioner has raised his sword to strike.
She, robed in brocade of black and gold, so cut as to display the curve
of neck and back, while the bosom is covered, leans her head above her
praying hands, and waits the blow in sweetest resignation. Two soldiers
stand at some distance in a landscape of hill and meadow; and far up
are seen the angels carrying her body to its tomb upon Mount Sinai. I
cannot find words or summon courage to describe the beauty of this
picture; its atmosphere of holy peace, the dignity of its composition,
the golden richness of its colouring. The most tragic situation has
here again been alchemised by Luini's magic into a pure idyll, without
the loss of power, without the sacrifice of edification.

S. Catherine in this incomparable fresco is a portrait, the history of
which so strikingly illustrates the relation of the arts to religion on
the one hand, and to life on the other, in the age of the Renaissance,
that it cannot be omitted. At the end of his fourth Novella, having
related the life of the Contessa di Cellant, Bandello says: 'And so the
poor woman was beheaded; such was the end of her unbridled desires; and
he who would fain see her painted to the life, let him go to the Church
of the Monistero Maggiore, and there will he behold her portrait.' The
Contessa di Cellant was the only child of a rich usurer who lived at
Casal Monferrato. Her mother was a Greek; and she was a girl of such
exquisite beauty, that, in spite of her low origin, she became the wife
of the noble Ermes Visconti in her sixteenth year. He took her to live
with him at Milan, where she frequented the house of the Bentivogli,
but none other. Her husband told Bandello that he knew her temper
better than to let her visit 158with the freedom of the Milanese
ladies. Upon his death, while she was little more than twenty, she
retired to Casale and led a gay life among many lovers. One of these,
the Count of Cellant in the Val d'Aosta, became her second husband,
conquered by her extraordinary loveliness. They could not, however,
agree together. She left him, and established herself at Pavia. Rich
with her father's wealth and still of most seductive beauty, she now
abandoned herself to a life of profligacy. Three among her lovers must
be named: Ardizzino Valperga, Count of Masino; Roberto Sanseverino, of
the princely Naples family; and Don Pietro di Cardona, a Sicilian. With
each of the two first she quarrelled, and separately besought each to
murder the other. They were friends and frustrated her plans by
communicating them to one another. The third loved her with the insane
passion of a very young man. What she desired, he promised to do
blindly; and she bade him murder his two predecessors in her favour. At
this time she was living at Milan, where the Duke of Bourbon was acting
as viceroy for the Emperor. Don Pietro took twenty-five armed men of
his household, and waylaid the Count of Masino, as he was returning
with his brother and eight or nine servants, late one night from
supper. Both the brothers and the greater part of their suite were
killed: but Don Pietro was caught. He revealed the atrocity of his
mistress; and she was sent to prison. Incapable of proving her
innocence, and prevented from escaping, in spite of 15,000 golden
crowns with which she hoped to bribe her jailors, she was finally
beheaded. Thus did a vulgar and infamous Messalina, distinguished only
by rare beauty, furnish Luini with a S. Catherine for this masterpiece
of pious art! The thing seems scarcely credible. Yet Bandello lived in
Milan while the Church of S. Maurizio was being painted; nor does he
show the slightest sign of 159disgust at the discord between the
Contessa's life and her artistic presentation in the person of a royal
martyr.

A HUMANIST'S MONUMENT

In the Sculpture Gallery of the Brera is preserved a fair white marble
tomb, carved by that excellent Lombard sculptor, Agostino Busti. The
epitaph runs as follows:—

En Virtutem Mortis nesciam.
Vivet Lancinus Curtius
    Sæcula per omnia
Quascunque lustrans oras,
Tantum possunt Camoenæ.

'Look here on Virtue that knows nought of Death! Lancinus Curtius shall
live through all the centuries, and visit every shore of earth. Such
power have the Muses.' The timeworn poet reclines, as though sleeping
or resting, ready to be waked; his head is covered with flowing hair,
and crowned with laurel; it leans upon his left hand. On either side of
his couch stand cupids or genii with torches turned to earth. Above is
a group of the three Graces, flanked by winged Pegasi. Higher up are
throned two Victories with palms, and at the top a naked Fame. We need
not ask who was Lancinus Curtius. He is forgotten, and his virtue has
not saved him from oblivion; though he strove in his lifetime, _pro
virili parte_, for the palm that Busti carved upon his grave. Yet his
monument teaches in short compass a deep lesson; and his epitaph sums
up the dream which lured the men of Italy in the Renaissance to their
doom. We see before us sculptured in this marble the ideal of the
humanistic poet-scholar's life: Love, Grace, the Muse, and Nakedness,
and Glory. There is not a single intrusive thought derived from
Christianity. The end for which the man lived was 160Pagan. His hope
was earthly fame. Yet his name survives, if this indeed be a survival,
not in those winged verses which were to carry him abroad across the
earth, but in the marble of a cunning craftsman, scanned now and then
by a wandering scholar's eye in the half-darkness of a vault.

THE MONUMENT OF GASTON DE FOIX IN THE BRERA

The hero of Ravenna lies stretched upon his back in the hollow of a
bier covered with laced drapery; and his head rests on richly
ornamented cushions. These decorative accessories, together with the
minute work of his scabbard, wrought in the fanciful mannerism of the
_cinquecento_, serve to enhance the statuesque simplicity of the young
soldier's effigy. The contrast between so much of richness in the
merely subordinate details, and this sublime severity of treatment in
the person of the hero, is truly and touchingly dramatic. There is a
smile as of content in death, upon his face; and the features are
exceedingly beautiful—with the beauty of a boy, almost of a woman. The
heavy hair is cut straight above the forehead and straight over the
shoulders, falling in massive clusters. A delicately sculptured laurel
branch is woven into a victor's crown, and laid lightly on the tresses
it scarcely seems to clasp. So fragile is this wreath that it does not
break the pure outline of the boy-conqueror's head. The armour is quite
plain. So is the surcoat. Upon the swelling bust, that seems fit
harbour for a hero's heart, there lies the collar of an order composed
of cockle-shells; and this is all the ornament given to the figure. The
hands are clasped across a sword laid flat upon the breast, and placed
between the legs. Upon the chin is a little tuft of hair, parted, and
curling either way; for the victor of Ravenna, like the Hermes of
Homer, was πρωτον ϋπμνήτμς, 'a 161youth of princely blood, whose beard
hath just begun to grow, for whom the season of bloom is in its prime
of grace.' The whole statue is the idealisation of _virtù_—that quality
so highly prized by the Italians and the ancients, so well fitted for
commemoration in the arts. It is the apotheosis of human life resolved
into undying memory because of one great deed. It is the supreme
portrait in modern times of a young hero, chiselled by artists
belonging to a race no longer heroic, but capable of comprehending and
expressing the æsthetic charm of heroism. Standing before it, we may
say of Gaston what Arrian wrote to Hadrian of Achilles:—'That he was a
hero, if hero ever lived, I cannot doubt; for his birth and blood were
noble, and he was beautiful, and his spirit was mighty, and he passed
in youth's prime away from men.' Italian sculpture, under the condition
of the _cinquecento_, had indeed no more congenial theme than this of
bravery and beauty, youth and fame, immortal honour and untimely death;
nor could any sculptor of death have poetised the theme more thoroughly
than Agostino Busti, whose simple instinct, unlike that of
Michelangelo, led him to subordinate his own imagination to the pathos
of reality.

SARONNO

The church of Saronno is a pretty building with a Bramantesque cupola,
standing among meadows at some distance from the little town. It is the
object of a special cult, which draws pilgrims from the neighbouring
country-side; but the concourse is not large enough to load the
sanctuary with unnecessary wealth. Everything is very quiet in the holy
place, and the offerings of the pious seem to have been only just
enough to keep the building and its treasures of art in repair. The
church consists of a nave, a 162central cupola, a vestibule leading to
the choir, the choir itself, and a small tribune behind the choir. No
other single building in North Italy can boast so much that is
first-rate of the work of Luini and Gandenzio Ferrari.

The cupola is raised on a sort of drum composed of twelve pieces,
perforated with round windows and supported on four massive piers. On
the level of the eye are frescoes by Luini of S. Rocco, S. Sebastian,
S. Christopher, and S. Antony—by no means in his best style, and
inferior to all his other paintings in this church. The Sebastian, for
example, shows an effort to vary the traditional treatment of this
saint. He is tied in a sprawling attitude to a tree; and little of
Luini's special pathos or sense of beauty—the melody of idyllic grace
made spiritual—appears in him. These four saints are on the piers.
Above are frescoes from the early Bible history by Lanini, painted in
continuation of Ferrari's medallions from the story of Adam expelled
from Paradise, which fill the space beneath the cupola, leading the eye
upward to Ferrari's masterpiece.

The dome itself is crowded with a host of angels singing and playing
upon instruments of music. At each of the twelve angles of the drum
stands a coryphaeus of this celestial choir, full length, with waving
drapery. Higher up, the golden-haired, broad-winged, divine creatures
are massed together, filling every square inch of the vault with
colour. Yet there is no confusion. The simplicity of the selected
motive and the necessities of the place acted like a check on Ferrari,
who, in spite of his dramatic impulse, could not tell a story
coherently or fill a canvas with harmonised variety. There is no trace
of his violence here. Though the motion of music runs through the whole
multitude like a breeze, though the joy expressed is a real _tripudio
celeste_, not one of all these angels flings his arms abroad or makes a
movement 163that disturbs the rhythm. We feel that they are keeping
time and resting quietly, each in his appointed seat, as though the
sphere was circling with them round the throne of God, who is their
centre and their source of gladness. Unlike Correggio and his
imitators, Ferrari has introduced no clouds, and has in no case made
the legs of his angels prominent. It is a mass of noble faces and
voluminously robed figures, emerging each above the other like flowers
in a vase. Bach too has specific character, while all are robust and
full of life, intent upon the service set them. Their instruments of
music are all the lutes and viols, flutes, cymbals, drums, fifes,
citherns, organs, and harps that Ferrari's day could show. The scale of
colour, as usual with Ferrari, is a little heavy; nor are the tints
satisfactorily harmonised. But the vigour and invention of the whole
work would atone for minor defects of far greater consequence.

It is natural, beneath this dome, to turn aside and think one moment of
Correggio at Parma. Before the _macchinisti_ of the seventeenth century
had vulgarised the motive, Correggio's bold attempt to paint heaven in
flight from earth—earth left behind in the persons of the Apostles
standing round the empty tomb, heaven soaring upward with a spiral
vortex into the abyss of light above—had an originality which set at
nought all criticism. There is such ecstasy of jubilation, such
rapturous rapidity of flight, that we who strain our eyes from below,
feel we are in the darkness of the grave which Mary left. A kind of
controlling rhythm for the composition is gained by placing Gabriel,
Madonna, and Christ at three points in the swirl of angels.
Nevertheless, composition—the presiding all-controlling intellect—is
just what makes itself felt by absence; and Correggio's special
qualities of light and colour have now so far vanished from the cupola
of the Duomo that the, constructive poverty is not disguised. Here
164if anywhere in painting, we may apply Goethe's words—_Gefühl ist
Alles._

If then we return to Ferrari's angels at Saronno, we find that the
painter of Varallo chose a safer though a far more modest theme. Nor
did he expose himself to that most cruel of all degradations which the
ethereal genius of Correggio has suffered from incompetent imitators.
To daub a tawdry and superficial reproduction of those Parmese
frescoes, to fill the cupolas of Italy with veritable _guazzetti di
rane_, was comparatively easy; and between our intelligence and what
remains of that stupendous masterpiece of boldness, crowd a thousand
memories of such ineptitude. On the other hand, nothing but solid work
and conscientious inspiration could enable any workman, however able,
to follow Ferrari in the path struck out by him at Saronno. His cupola
has had no imitator; and its only rival is the noble pendant painted at
Varallo by his own hand, of angels in adoring anguish round the Cross.

In the ante-choir of the sanctuary are Luini's priceless frescoes of
the 'Marriage of the Virgin,' and the 'Dispute with the Doctors.'[11]
Their execution is flawless, and they are perfectly preserved. If
criticism before such admirable examples of so excellent a master be
permissible, it may be questioned whether the figures are not too
crowded, whether the groups are sufficiently varied and connected by
rhythmic lines. Yet the concords of yellow and orange with blue in the
'Sposalizio,' and the blendings of dull violet and red in the
'Disputa,' make up for much of stiffness. Here, as in the Chapel of S.
Catherine at Milan, we feel that Luini was the greatest colourist among
_frescanti._ In the 'Sposalizio' the female heads are singularly noble
and idyllically graceful. Some of the young men too have Luini's
special grace and abundance of golden hair. In 165the 'Disputa' the
gravity and dignity of old men are above all things striking.

 [11] Both these and the large frescoes in the choir have been
 chromolithographed by the Arundel Society.

Passing into the choir, we find on either hand the 'Adoration of the
Magi' and the 'Purification of the Virgin,' two of Luini's divinest
frescoes. Above them in lunettes are four Evangelists and four Latin
Fathers, with four Sibyls. Time and neglect have done no damage here:
and here, again, perforce we notice perfect mastery of colour in
fresco. The blues detach themselves too much, perhaps, from the rest of
the colouring; and that is all a devil's advocate could say. It is
possible that the absence of blue makes the S. Catherine frescoes in
the Monastero Maggiore at Milan surpass all other works of Luini. But
nowhere else has he shown more beauty and variety in detail than here.
The group of women led by Joseph, the shepherd carrying the lamb upon
his shoulder, the girl with a basket of white doves, the child with an
apple on the altar-steps, the lovely youth in the foreground heedless
of the scene; all these are idyllic incidents treated with the purest,
the serenest, the most spontaneous, the truest, most instinctive sense
of beauty. The landscape includes a view of Saronno, and an episodical
picture of the 'Flight into Egypt' where a white-robed angel leads the
way. All these lovely things are in the 'Purification,' which is dated
_Bernardinus Lovinus pinxit_, MDXXV.

The fresco of the 'Magi' is less notable in detail, and in general
effect is more spoiled by obtrusive blues. There is, however, one young
man of wholly Lionardesque loveliness, whose divine innocence of
adolescence, unalloyed by serious thought, unstirred by passions,
almost forces a comparison with Sodoma. The only painter who approaches
Luini in what may be called the Lombard, to distinguish it from the
Venetian idyll, is Sodoma; and the work of his which comes nearest to
Luini's masterpieces is the legend of S. Benedict, at 166Monte Oliveto,
near Siena. Yet Sodoma had not all Luini's innocence or _naïveté._ If
he added something slightly humorous which has an indefinite charm, he
lacked that freshness as of 'cool, meek-blooded flowers' and boyish
voices, which fascinates us in Luini. Sodoma was closer to the earth,
and feared not to impregnate what he saw of beauty with the fiercer
passions of his nature. If Luini had felt passion, who shall say? It
appears nowhere in his work, where life is toned to a religious
joyousness. When Shelley compared the poetry of the Theocritean
amourists to the perfume of the tuberose, and that of the earlier Greek
poets to 'a meadow-gale of June, which mingles the fragrance of all the
flowers of the field,' he supplied us with critical images which may
not unfairly be used to point the distinction between Sodoma at Monte
Oliveto and Luini at Saronno.

THE CASTELLO OF FERRARA

Is it possible that the patron saints of cities should mould the temper
of the people to their own likeness? S. George, the chivalrous, is
champion of Ferrara. His is the marble group above the Cathedral porch,
so feudal in its medieval pomp. He and S. Michael are painted in fresco
over the south portcullis of the Castle. His lustrous armour gleams
with Giorgionesque brilliancy from Dossi's masterpiece in the
Pinacoteca. That Ferrara, the only place in Italy where chivalry struck
any root, should have had S. George for patron, is at any rate
significant.

The best preserved relic of princely feudal life in Italy is this
Castello of the Este family, with its sombre moat, chained drawbridges,
doleful dungeons, and unnumbered tragedies, each one of which may be
compared with Parisina's history. I do not want to dwell on these
things now. It is enough to 167remember the Castello, built of ruddiest
brick, time-mellowed with how many centuries of sun and soft sea-air,
as it appeared upon the close of one tempestuous day. Just before
evening the rain-clouds parted and the sun flamed out across the misty
Lombard plain. The Castello burned like a hero's funeral pyre, and
round its high-built turrets swallows circled in the warm blue air. On
the moat slept shadows, mixed with flowers of sunset, tossed from
pinnacle and gable. Then the sky changed. A roof of thunder-cloud
spread overhead with the rapidity of tempest. The dying sun gathered
his last strength against it, fretting those steel-blue arches with
crimson; and all the fierce light, thrown from vault to vault of cloud,
was reflected back as from a shield, and cast in blots and patches on
the buildings. The Castle towered up rosy-red and shadowy sombre,
enshrined, embosomed in those purple clouds; and momently ran lightning
forks like rapiers through the growing mass. Everything around,
meanwhile, was quiet in the grass-grown streets. The only sound was a
high, clear boy's voice chanting an opera tune.

PETRARCH'S TOMB AT ARQUA

The drive from Este along the skirts of the Euganean Hills to Arqua
takes one through a country which is tenderly beautiful, because of its
contrast between little peaked mountains and the plain. It is not a
grand landscape. It lacks all that makes the skirts of Alps and
Apennines sublime. Its charm is a certain mystery and repose—an
undefined sense of the neighbouring Adriatic, a pervading consciousness
of Venice unseen, but felt from far away. From the terraces of Arqua
the eye ranges across olive-trees, laurels, and pomegranates on the
southern slopes, to the misty level land that melts into the sea, with
churches and tall campanili like 168gigantic galleys setting sail for
fairyland over 'the foam of perilous seas forlorn.' Let a blue-black
shadow from a thunder-cloud be cast upon this plain, and let one ray of
sunlight strike a solitary bell-tower;—it burns with palest flame of
rose against the steely dark, and in its slender shaft and shell-like
tint of pink all Venice is foreseen.

The village church of Arqua stands upon one of these terraces, with a
full stream of clearest water flowing by. On the little square before
the church-door, where the peasants congregate at mass-time—open to the
skies with all their stars and storms, girdled by the hills, and within
hearing of the vocal stream—is Petrarch's sepulchre. Fit resting-place
for what remains to earth of such a poet's clay! It is as though
archangels, flying, had carried the marble chest and set it down here
on the hillside, to be a sign and sanctuary for after-men. A simple
rectilinear coffin, of smooth Verona _mandorlato_, raised on four thick
columns, and closed by a heavy cippus-cover. Without emblems,
allegories, or lamenting genii, this tomb of the great poet, the great
awakener of Europe from mental lethargy, encircled by the hills,
beneath the canopy of heaven, is impressive beyond the power of words.
Bending here, we feel that Petrarch's own winged thoughts and fancies,
eternal and aë;rial, 'forms more real than living man, nurslings of
immortality,' have congregated to be the ever-ministering and
irremovable attendants on the shrine of one who, while he lived, was
purest spirit in a veil of flesh.

ON A MOUNTAIN

Milan is shining in sunset on those purple fields; and a score of
cities flash back the last red light, which shows each inequality and
undulation of Lombardy outspread four thousand feet beneath. Both
ranges, Alps and Apennines, 169are clear to view; and all the silvery
lakes are over-canopied and brought into one picture by flame-litten
mists. Monte Rosa lifts her crown of peaks above a belt of clouds into
light of living fire. The Mischabelhörner and the Dom rest stationary
angel-wings upon the rampart, which at this moment is the wall of
heaven. The pyramid of distant Monte Viso burns like solid amethyst
far, far away. Mont Cervin beckons to his brother, the gigantic
Finsteraarhorn, across tracts of liquid ether. Bells are rising from
the villages, now wrapped in gloom, between me and the glimmering lake.
A hush of evening silence falls upon the ridges, cliffs, and forests of
this billowy hill, ascending into wave-like crests, and toppling with
awful chasms over the dark waters of Lugano. It is good to be alone
here at this hour. Yet I must rise and go—passing through meadows,
where white lilies sleep in silvery drifts, and asphodel is pale with
spires of faintest rose, and narcissus dreams of his own beauty,
loading the air with fragrance sweet as some love-music of Mozart.
These fields want only the white figure of Persephone to make them
poems: and in this twilight one might fancy that the queen had left her
throne by Pluto's side, to mourn for her dead youth among the flowers
uplifted between earth and heaven. Nay, they are poems now, these
fields; with that unchanging background of history, romance, and human
life—the Lombard plain, against whose violet breadth the blossoms bend
their faint heads to the evening air. Downward we hurry, on pathways
where the beeches meet, by silent farms, by meadows honey-scented, deep
in dew. The columbine stands tall and still on those green slopes of
shadowy grass. The nightingale sings now, and now is hushed again.
Streams murmur through the darkness, where the growth of trees, heavy
with honeysuckle and wild rose, is thickest. Fireflies begin to flit
above the growing 170corn. At last the plain is reached, and all the
skies are tremulous with starlight. Alas, that we should vibrate so
obscurely to these harmonies of earth and heaven! The inner finer sense
of them seems somehow unattainable—that spiritual touch of soul evoking
soul from nature, which should transfigure our dull mood of self into
impersonal delight. Man needs to be a mytho-poet at some moments, or,
better still, to be a mystic steeped through half-unconsciousness in
the vast wonder of the world. Gold and untouched to poetry or piety by
scenes that ought to blend the spirit in ourselves with spirit in the
world without, we can but wonder how this phantom show of mystery and
beauty will pass away from us—how soon—and we be where, see what, use
all our sensibilities on aught or nought?

SIC GENIUS

In the picture-gallery at Modena there is a masterpiece of Dosso Dossi.
The frame is old and richly carved; and the painting, bordered by its
beautiful dull gold, shines with the lustre of an emerald. In his happy
moods Dosso set colour upon canvas, as no other painter out of Venice
ever did; and here he is at his happiest. The picture is the portrait
of a jester, dressed in courtly clothes and with a feathered cap upon
his head. He holds a lamb in his arms, and carries the legend, _Sic
Genius_. Behind him is a landscape of exquisite brilliancy and depth.
His face is young and handsome. Dosso has made it one most wonderful
laugh. Even so perhaps laughed Yorick. Nowhere else have I seen a laugh
thus painted: not violent, not loud, although the lips are opened to
show teeth of dazzling whiteness;—but fine and delicate, playing over
the whole face like a ripple sent up from the depths of the soul
within. Who was he? What 171does the lamb mean? How should the legend
be interpreted? We cannot answer these questions. He may have been the
court-fool of Ferrara; and his genius, the spiritual essence of the
man, may have inclined him to laugh at all things. That at least is the
value he now has for us. He is the portrait of perpetual irony, the
spirit of the golden Sixteenth Century which delicately laughed at the
whole world of thoughts and things, the quintessence of the poetry of
Ariosto, the wit of Berni, all condensed into one incarnation and
immortalised by truthfullest art. With the Gaul, the Spaniard, and the
German at her gates, and in her cities, and encamped upon her fields,
Italy still laughed; and when the voice of conscience sounding through
Savonarola asked her why, she only smiled—_Sic Genius_.

One evening in May we rowed from Venice to Torcello, and at sunset
broke bread and drank wine together among the rank grasses just outside
that ancient church. It was pleasant to sit in the so-called chair of
Attila and feel the placid stillness of the place. Then there came
lounging by a sturdy young fellow in brown country clothes, with a
marvellous old wide-awake upon his head, and across his shoulders a
bunch of massive church-keys. In strange contrast to his uncouth garb
he flirted a pink Japanese fan, gracefully disposing it to cool his
sunburned olive cheeks. This made us look at him. He was not ugly. Nay,
there was something of attractive in his face—the smooth-curved chin,
the shrewd yet sleepy eyes, and finely cut thin lips—a curious mixture
of audacity and meekness blent upon his features. Yet this impression
was but the prelude to his smile. When that first dawned, some breath
of humour seeming to stir in him unbidden, the true meaning was given
to his face. Each feature helped to make a smile that was the very
soul's life of the man expressed. I broadened, showing 172brilliant
teeth, and grew into a noiseless laugh; and then I saw before me
Dosso's jester, the type of Shakspere's fools, the life of that wild
irony, now rude, now fine, which once delighted Courts. The laughter of
the whole world and of all the centuries was silent in his face. What
he said need not be repeated. The charm was less in his words than in
his personality; for Momus-philosophy lay deep in every look and
gesture of the man. The place lent itself to irony: parties of
Americans and English parsons, the former agape for any rubbishy old
things, the latter learned in the lore of obsolete Church-furniture,
had thronged Torcello; and now they were all gone, and the sun had set
behind the Alps, while an irreverent stranger drank his wine in
Attila's chair, and nature's jester smiled—_Sic Genius_.

When I slept that night I dreamed of an altar-piece in the Temple of
Folly. The goddess sat enthroned beneath a canopy hung with bells and
corals. On her lap was a beautiful winged smiling genius, who
flourished two bright torches. On her left hand stood the man of Modena
with his white lamb, a new S. John. On her right stood the man of
Torcello with his keys, a new S. Peter. Both were laughing after their
all-absorbent, divine, noiseless fashion; and under both was written,
_Sic Genius_. Are not all things, even profanity, permissible in
dreams?

173




COMO AND IL MEDEGHINO


To which of the Italian lakes should the palm of beauty be accorded?
This question may not unfrequently have moved the idle minds of
travellers, wandering through that loveliest region from Orta to
Garda—from little Orta, with her gemlike island, rosy granite crags,
and chestnut-covered swards above the Colma; to Garda, bluest of all
waters, surveyed in majestic length from Desenzano or poetic Sirmione,
a silvery sleeping haze of hill and cloud and heaven and clear waves
bathed in modulated azure. And between these extreme points what varied
lovelinesses lie in broad Maggiore, winding Como, Varese with the
laughing face upturned to heaven, Lugano overshadowed by the crested
crags of Monte Generoso, and Iseo far withdrawn among the rocky Alps!
He who loves immense space, cloud shadows slowly sailing over purple
slopes, island gardens, distant glimpses of snow-capped mountains,
breadth, air, immensity, and flooding sunlight, will choose Maggiore.
But scarcely has he cast his vote for this, the Juno of the divine
rivals, when he remembers the triple lovelinesses of the Larian
Aphrodite, disclosed in all their placid grace from Villa
Serbelloni;—the green blue of the waters, clear as glass, opaque
through depth; the _millefleurs_ roses clambering into cypresses by
Cadenabbia; the laburnums hanging their yellow clusters from the clefts
of Sasso Eancio; the oleander arcades of Varenna; the wild white
limestone crags of San Martiuo, which he has climbed to feast his eyes
174with the perspective, magical, serene, Lionardesquely perfect, of
the distant gates of Adda. Then while this modern Paris is yet
doubting, perhaps a thought may cross his mind of sterner, solitary
Lake Iseo—the Pallas of the three. She offers her own attractions. The
sublimity of Monte Adamello, dominating Lovere and all the lowland like
Hesiod's hill of Virtue reared aloft above the plain of common life,
has charms to tempt heroic lovers. Nor can Varese be neglected. In some
picturesque respects, Varese is the most perfect of the lakes. Those
long lines of swelling hills that lead into the level, yield an
infinite series of placid foregrounds, pleasant to the eye by contrast
with the dominant snow-summits, from Monte Viso to Monte Leone: the sky
is limitless to southward; the low horizons are broken by bell-towers
and farmhouses; while armaments of clouds are ever rolling in the
interval of Alps and plain.

Of a truth, to decide which is the queen of the Italian lakes, is but
an _infinita quæstio_; and the mere raising of it is folly. Still each
lover of the beautiful may give his vote; and mine, like that of
shepherd Paris, is already given to the Larian goddess. Words fail in
attempting to set forth charms which have to be enjoyed, or can at best
but lightly be touched with most consummate tact, even as great poets
have already touched on Como Lake—from Virgil with his 'Lari maxume,'
to Tennyson and the Italian Manzoni. The threshold of the shrine is,
however, less consecrated ground; and the Cathedral of Como may form a
vestibule to the temple where silence is more golden than the speech of
a describer.

The Cathedral of Como is perhaps the most perfect building in Italy for
illustrating the fusion of Gothic and Renaissance styles, both of a
good type and exquisite in their sobriety. The Gothic ends with the
nave. The noble transepts and the choir, each terminating in a rounded
tribune of the same 175dimensions, are carried out in a simple and
decorous Bramantesque manner. The transition from the one style to the
other is managed so felicitously, and the sympathies between them are
so well developed, that there is no discord. What we here call Gothic,
is conceived in a truly southern spirit, without fantastic
efflorescence or imaginative complexity of multiplied parts; while the
Renaissance manner, as applied by Tommaso Rodari, has not yet stiffened
into the lifeless neo-Latinism of the later _cinquecento_: it is still
distinguished by delicate inventiveness, and beautiful subordination of
decorative detail to architectural effect. Under these happy conditions
we feel that the Gothic of the nave, with its superior severity and
sombreness, dilates into the lucid harmonies of choir and transepts
like a flower unfolding. In the one the mind is tuned to inner
meditation and religious awe; in the other the worshipper passes into a
temple of the clear explicit faith—as an initiated neophyte might be
received into the meaning of the mysteries.

After the collapse of the Roman Empire the district of Como seems to
have maintained more vividly than the rest of Northern Italy some
memory of classic art. _Magistri Comacini_ is a title frequently
inscribed upon deeds and charters of the earlier middle ages, as
synonymous with sculptors and architects. This fact may help to account
for the purity and beauty of the Duomo. It is the work of a race in
which the tradition of delicate artistic invention had never been
wholly interrupted. To Tommaso Rodari and his brothers, Bernardino and
Jacopo, the world owes this sympathetic fusion of the Gothic and the
Bramantesque styles; and theirs too is the sculpture with which the
Duomo is so richly decorated. They were natives of Maroggia, a village
near Mendrisio, beneath the crests of Monte Generoso, close to
Campione, which sent so many able craftsmen out into the 176world
between the years 1300 and 1500. Indeed the name of Campionesi would
probably have been given to the Rodari, had they left their native
province for service in Eastern Lombardy. The body of the Duomo had
been finished when Tommaso Rodari was appointed master of the fabric in
1487. To complete the work by the addition of a tribune was his duty.
He prepared a wooden model and exposed it, after the fashion of those
times, for criticism in his _bottega_; and the usual difference of
opinion arose among the citizens of Como concerning its merits.
Cristoforo Solaro, surnamed Il Gobbo, was called in to advise. It may
be remembered that when Michelangelo first placed his Pietà in S.
Peter's, rumour gave it to this celebrated Lombard sculptor, and the
Florentine was constrained to set his own signature upon the marble.
The same Solaro carved the monument of Beatrice Sforza in the Certosa
of Pavia. He was indeed in all points competent to criticise or to
confirm the design of his fellow-craftsman. Il Gobbo disapproved of the
proportions chosen by Rodari, and ordered a new model to be made; but
after much discussion, and some concessions on the part of Rodari, who
is said to have increased the number of the windows and lightened the
orders of his model, the work was finally entrusted to the master of
Maroggia.

Not less creditable than the general design of the tribune is the
sculpture executed by the brothers. The north side door is a
master-work of early Renaissance chiselling, combining mixed Christian
and classical motives with a wealth of floral ornament. Inside, over
the same door, is a procession of children seeming to represent the
Triumph of Bacchus, with perhaps some Christian symbolism. Opposite,
above the south door, is a frieze of fighting Tritons—horsed sea
deities pounding one another with bunches of fish and splashing the
water, in Mantegna's spirit. The doorways of the façade are
177decorated with the same rare workmanship; and the canopies,
supported by naked fauns and slender twisted figures, under which the
two Plinies are seated, may be reckoned among the supreme achievements
of delicate Renaissance sculpture. The Plinies are not like the work of
the same master. They are older, stiffer, and more Gothic. The chief
interest attaching to them is that they are habited and seated after
the fashion of Humanists. This consecration of the two Pagan saints
beside the portals of the Christian temple is truly characteristic of
the fifteenth century in Italy. Beneath, are little basreliefs
representing scenes from their respective lives, in the style of carved
predellas on the altars of saints.

The whole church is peopled with detached statues, among which a
Sebastian in the Chapel of the Madonna must be mentioned as singularly
beautiful. It is a finely modelled figure, with the full life and
exuberant adolescence of Venetian inspiration. A peculiar feature of
the external architecture is the series of Atlantes, bearing on their
shoulders urns, heads of lions, and other devices, and standing on
brackets round the upper cornice just below the roof. They are of all
sorts; young and old, male and female; classically nude, and boldly
outlined. These water-conduits, the work of Bernardo Bianco and
Francesco Rusca, illustrate the departure of the earlier Renaissance
from the Gothic style. They are gargoyles; but they have lost the
grotesque element. At the same time the sculptor, while discarding
Gothic tradition, has not betaken himself yet to a servile imitation of
the antique. He has used invention, and substituted for grinning
dragons' heads something wild and bizarre of his own in harmony with
classic taste.

The pictures in the chapels, chiefly by Luini and Ferrari—an idyllic
Nativity, with faun-like shepherds and choirs of angels—a sumptuous
adoration of the Magi—a jewelled 178Sposalizio with abundance of golden
hair flowing over draperies of green and crimson—will interest those
who are as yet unfamiliar with Lombard painting. Yet their
architectural setting, perhaps, is superior to their intrinsic merit as
works of art; and their chief value consists in adding rare dim flakes
of colour to the cool light of the lovely church. More curious, because
less easily matched, is the gilded woodwork above the altar of S.
Abondio, attributed to a German carver, but executed for the most part
in the purest Luinesque manner. The pose of the enthroned Madonna, the
type and gesture of S. Catherine, and the treatment of the Pietà above,
are thoroughly Lombard, showing how Luini's ideal of beauty could be
expressed in carving. Some of the choicest figures in the Monastero
Maggiore at Milan seem to have descended from the walls and stepped
into their tabernacles on this altar. Yet the style is not maintained
consistently. In the reliefs illustrating the life of S. Abondio we
miss Luini's childlike grace, and find instead a something that reminds
us of Donatello—a seeking after the classical in dress, carriage, and
grouping of accessory figures. It may have been that the carver,
recognising Luini's defective composition, and finding nothing in that
master's manner adapted to the spirit of relief, had the good taste to
render what was Luinesquely lovely in his female figures, and to fall
back on a severer model for his basreliefs.

The building-fund for the Duomo was raised in Como and its districts.
Boxes were placed in all the churches to receive the alms of those who
wished to aid the work. The clergy begged in Lent, and preached the
duty of contributing on special days. Presents of lime and bricks and
other materials were thankfully received. Bishops, canons, and
municipal magistrates were expected to make costly gifts on taking
office. Notaries, under penalty of paying 100 soldi if they
179neglected their engagement, were obliged to persuade testators, _cum
bonis modis dulciter_, to inscribe the Duomo on their wills. Fines for
various offences were voted to the building by the city. Each new
burgher paid a certain sum; while guilds and farmers of the taxes
bought monopolies and privileges at the price of yearly subsidies. A
lottery was finally established for the benefit of the fabric. Of
course each payment to the good work carried with it spiritual
privileges; and so willingly did the people respond to the call of the
Church, that during the sixteenth century the sums subscribed amounted
to 200,000 golden crowns. Among the most munificent donators are
mentioned the Marchese Giacomo Gallio, who bequeathed 290,000 lire, and
a Benzi, who gave 10,000 ducats.

While the people of Como were thus straining every nerve to complete a
pious work, which at the same time is one of the most perfect
masterpieces of Italian art, their lovely lake was turned into a
pirate's stronghold, and its green waves stained with slaughter of
conflicting navies. So curious is this episode in the history of the
Larian lake that it is worth while to treat of it at some length.
Moreover, the lives of few captains of adventure offer matter more rich
in picturesque details and more illustrative of their times than that
of Gian Giacomo de' Medici, the Larian corsair, long known and still
remembered as Il Medeghino. He was born in Milan in 1498, at the
beginning of that darkest and most disastrous period of Italian
history, when the old fabric of social and political existence went to
ruin under the impact of conflicting foreign armies. He lived on until
the year 1555, witnessing and taking part in the dismemberment of the
Milanese Duchy, playing a game of hazard at high stakes for his own
profit with the two last Sforzas, the Empire, the French, and the
Swiss. At the beginning of the century, 180while he was still a youth,
the rich valley of the Valtelline, with Bormio and Chiavenna, had been
assigned to the Grisons. The Swiss Cantons at the same time had
possessed themselves of Lugano and Bellinzona. By these two acts of
robbery the mountaineers tore a portion of its fairest territory from
the Duchy; and whoever ruled in Milan, whether a Sforza, or a Spanish
viceroy, or a French general, was impatient to recover the lost jewel
of the ducal crown. So much has to be premised, because the scene of
our hero's romantic adventures was laid upon the borderland between the
Duchy and the Cantons. Intriguing at one time with the Duke of Milan,
at another with his foes the French or Spaniards, Il Medeghino found
free scope for his peculiar genius in a guerilla warfare, carried on
with the avowed purpose of restoring the Valtelline to Milan. To steer
a plain course through that chaos of politics, in which the modern
student, aided by the calm clear lights of history and meditation,
cannot find a clue, was of course impossible for an adventurer whose
one aim was to gratify his passions and exalt himself at the expense of
others. It is therefore of little use to seek motives of statecraft or
of patriotism in the conduct of Il Medeghino. He was a man shaped
according to Machiavelli's standard of political morality—self-reliant,
using craft and force with cold indifference to moral ends, bent only
upon wringing for himself the largest share of this world's power for
men who, like himself, identified virtue with unflinching and
immitigable egotism.

Il Medeghino's father was Bernardo de' Medici, a Lombard, who neither
claimed nor could have proved cousinship with the great Medicean family
of Florence. His mother was Cecilia Serbelloni. The boy was educated in
the fashionable humanistic studies, nourishing his young imagination
with the tales of Roman heroes. The first exploit by which he 181proved
his _virtù_, was the murder of a man he hated, at the age of sixteen.
This 'virile act of vengeance,' as it was called, brought him into
trouble, and forced him to choose the congenial profession of arms. At
a time when violence and vigour passed for manliness, a spirited
assassination formed the best of introductions to the captains of mixed
mercenary troops. Il Medeghino rose in favour with his generals, helped
to reinstate Francesco Sforza in his capital, and, returning himself to
Milan, inflicted severe vengeance on the enemies who had driven him to
exile. It was his ambition, at this early period of his life, to be
made governor of the Castle of Musso, on the Lake of Como. While
fighting in the neighbourhood, he had observed the unrivalled
capacities for defence presented by its site; and some pre-vision of
his future destinies now urged him to acquire it, as the basis for the
free marauding life he planned. The headland of Musso lies about
halfway between Gravedona and Menaggio, on the right shore of the Lake
of Como. Planted on a pedestal of rock, and surmounted by a sheer
cliff, there then stood a very ancient tower, commanding this
promontory on the side of the land. Between it and the water the
Visconti, in more recent days, had built a square fort; and the
headland had been further strengthened by the addition of connecting
walls and bastions pierced for cannon. Combining precipitous cliffs,
strong towers, and easy access from the lake below, this fortress of
Musso was exactly the fit station for a pirate. So long as he kept the
command of the lake, he had little to fear from land attacks, and had a
splendid basis for aggressive operations. Il Medeghino made his request
to the Duke of Milan; but the foxlike Sforza would not grant him a
plain answer. At length he hinted that if his suitor chose to rid him
of a troublesome subject, the noble and popular Astore Yisconti, he
should receive 182Musso for payment. Crimes of bloodshed and treason
sat lightly on the adventurer's conscience. In a short time he
compassed the young Visconti's death, and claimed his reward. The Duke
despatched him thereupon to Musso, with open letters to the governor,
commanding him to yield the castle to the bearer. Private advice, also
entrusted to Il Medeghino, bade the governor, on the contrary, cut the
bearer's throat. The young man, who had the sense to read the Duke's
letter, destroyed the secret document, and presented the other, or, as
one version of the story goes, forged a ducal order in his own
favour.[12] At any rate, the castle was placed in his hands; and
affecting to know nothing of the Duke's intended treachery, Il
Medeghino took possession of it as a trusted servant of the ducal
crown.

 [12] I cannot see clearly through these transactions, the muddy waters
 of decadent Italian plot and counterplot being inscrutable to senses
 assisted by nothing more luminous than mere tradition.

As soon as he was settled in his castle, the freebooter devoted all his
energies to rendering it still more impregnable by strengthening the
walls and breaking the cliffs into more horrid precipices. In this work
he was assisted by his numerous friends and followers; for Musso
rapidly became, like ancient Rome, an asylum for the ruffians and
outlaws of neighbouring provinces. It is even said that his sisters,
Clarina and Margherita, rendered efficient aid with manual labour. The
mention of Clarina's name justifies a parenthetical side-glance at Il
Medeghino's pedigree, which will serve to illustrate the exceptional
conditions of Italian society during this age. She was married to the
Count Giberto Borromeo, and became the mother of the pious Carlo
Borromeo, whose shrine is still adored at Milan in the Duomo. Il
Medeghino's brother, Giovan Angelo, rose to the Papacy, assuming the
title of Pius IV. Thus this murderous 183marauder was the brother of a
Pope and the uncle of a Saint; and these three persons of one family
embraced the various degrees and typified the several characters which
flourished with peculiar lustre in Renaissance Italy—the captain of
adventure soaked in blood, the churchman unrivalled for intrigue, and
the saint aflame with holiest enthusiasm. Il Medeghino was short of
stature, but well made and powerful; broad-chested; with a penetrating
voice and winning countenance. He dressed simply, like one of his own
soldiers; slept but little; was insensible to carnal pleasure; and
though he knew how to win the affection of his men by jovial speech, he
maintained strict discipline in his little army. In all points he was
an ideal bandit chief, never happy unless fighting or planning
campaigns, inflexible of purpose, bold and cunning in the execution of
his schemes, cruel to his enemies, generous to his followers,
sacrificing all considerations, human and divine, to the one aim of his
life, self-aggrandisement by force and intrigue. He knew well how to
make himself both feared and respected. One instance of his dealing
will suffice. A gentleman of Bellano, Polidoro Boldoni, in return to
his advances, coldly replied that he cared for neither amity nor
relationship with thieves and robbers; whereupon Il Medeghino
extirpated his family, almost to a man.

Soon after his settlement in Musso, Il Medeghino, wishing to secure the
gratitude of the Duke, his master, began war with the Grisons. From
Coire, from the Engadine, and from Davos, the Alpine pikemen were now
pouring down to swell the troops of Francis I.; and their road lay
through the Lake of Como. Il Medeghino burned all the boats upon the
lake, except those which he took into his own service, and thus made
himself master of the water passage. He then swept the 'length of
lordly Lario' from Colico to Lecco, harrying 184the villages upon the
shore, and cutting off the bands of journeying Switzers at his
pleasure. Not content with this guerilla, he made a descent upon the
territory of the Trepievi, and pushed far up towards Chiavenna, forcing
the Grisons to recall their troops from the Milanese. These acts of
prowess convinced the Duke that he had found a strong ally in the
pirate chief. "When Francis I. continued his attacks upon the Duchy,
and the Grisons still adhered to their French paymaster, the Sforza
formally invested Gian Giacomo de' Medici with the perpetual
governorship of Musso, the Lake of Como, and as much as he could wrest
from the Grisons above the lake. Furnished now with a just title for
his depredations, Il Medeghino undertook the siege of Chiavenna. That
town is the key to the valleys of the Splügen and Bregaglia. Strongly
fortified and well situated for defence, the burghers of the Grisons
well knew that upon its possession depended their power in the Italian
valleys. To take it by assault was impossible, Il Medeghino used craft,
entered the castle, and soon had the city at his disposition. Nor did
he lose time in sweeping Val Bregaglia. The news of this conquest
recalled the Switzers from the Duchy; and as they hurried homeward just
before the battle of Pavia, it may be affirmed that Gian Giacomo de'
Medici was instrumental in the defeat and capture of the French King.
The mountaineers had no great difficulty in dislodging their pirate
enemy from Chiavenna, the Valtelline, and Val Bregaglia. But he
retained his hold on the Trepievi, occupied the Valsassina, took
Porlezza, and established himself still more strongly in Musso as the
corsair monarch of the lake.

The tyranny of the Sforzas in Milan was fast going to pieces between
France and Spain; and in 1526 the Marquis of Pescara occupied the
capital in the name of Charles V. The Duke, meanwhile, remained a
prisoner in his Castello. 185Il Medeghino was now without a master; for
he refused to acknowledge the Spaniards, preferring to watch events and
build his own power on the ruins of the dukedom. At the head of 4,000
men, recruited from the lakes and neighbouring valleys, he swept the
country far and wide, and occupied the rich champaign of the Brianza.
He was now lord of the lakes of Como and Lugano, and absolute in Lecco
and the adjoining valleys. The town of Como itself alone belonged to
the Spaniards; and even Como was blockaded by the navy of the corsair.
Il Medeghino had a force of seven big ships, with three sails and
forty-eight oars, bristling with guns and carrying marines. His
flagship was a large brigantine, manned by picked rowers, from the mast
of which floated the red banner with the golden palle of the Medicean
arms. Besides these larger vessels, he commanded a flotilla of
countless small boats. It is clear that to reckon with him was a
necessity. If he could not be put down with force, he might be bought
over by concessions. The Spaniards adopted the second course, and Il
Medeghino, judging that the cause of the Sforza family was desperate,
determined in 1528 to attach himself to the Empire. Charles V. invested
him with the Castle of Musso and the larger part of Como Lake,
including the town of Lecco. He now assumed the titles of Marquis of
Musso and Count of Lecco: and in order to prove his sovereignty before
the world, he coined money with his own name and devices.

It will be observed that Gian Giacomo de' Medici had hitherto acted
with a single-hearted view to his own interests. At the age of thirty
he had raised himself from nothing to a principality, which, though
petty, might compare with many of some name in Italy—with Carpi, for
example, or Mirandola, or Camerino. Nor did he mean to remain quiet in
the prime of life. He regarded Como Lake as the mere basis for more
186arduous undertakings. Therefore, when the whirligig of events
restored Francesco Sforza to his duchy in 1529, Il Medeghino refused to
obey his old lord. Pretending to move under the Duke's orders, but
really acting for himself alone, he proceeded to attack his ancient
enemies, the Grisons. By fraud and force he worked his way into their
territory, seized Morbegno, and overran the Valtelline. He was
destined, however, to receive a serious check. Twelve thousand Switzers
rose against him on the one hand, on the other the Duke of Milan sent a
force by land and water to subdue his rebel subject, while Alessandro
Gonzaga marched upon his castles in the Brianza. He was thus assailed
by formidable forces from three quarters, converging upon the Lake of
Como, and driving him to his chosen element, the water. Hastily
quitting the Valtelline, he fell back to the Castle of Mandello on the
lake, collected his navy, and engaged the ducal ships in a battle off
Menaggio. In this battle he was worsted. But he did not lose his
courage. From Bellagio, from Varenna, from Bellano he drove forth his
enemies, rolled the cannon of the Switzers into the lake, regained
Lecco, defeated the troops of Alessandro Gonzaga, and took the Duke of
Mantua prisoner. Had he but held Como, it is probable that he might
have obtained such terms at this time as would have consolidated his
tyranny. The town of Como, however, now belonged to the Duke of Milan,
and formed an excellent basis for operations against the pirate.
Overmatched, with an exhausted treasury and broken forces, Il Medeghino
was at last compelled to give in. Yet he retired with all the honours
of war. In exchange for Musso and the lake, the Duke agreed to give him
35,000 golden crowns, together with the feud and marquisate of
Marignano. A free pardon was promised not only to himself and his
brothers, but to all his followers; and the Duke further undertook to
transport his 187artillery and munitions of war at his own expense to
Marignano. Having concluded this treaty under the auspices of Charles
V. and his lieutenant, Il Medeghino, in March 1532, set sail from
Musso, and turned his back upon the lake for ever. The Switzers
immediately destroyed the towers, forts, walls, and bastions of the
Musso promontory, leaving in the midst of their ruins the little chapel
of S. Eufemia.

Gian Giacomo de' Medici, henceforth known to Europe as the Marquis of
Marignano, now took service under Spain; and through the favour of
Anton de Leyva, Viceroy for the Duchy, rose to the rank of Field
Marshal. When the Marquis del Vasto succeeded to the Spanish
governorship of Milan in 1536, he determined to gratify an old grudge
against the ex-pirate, and, having invited him to a banquet, made him
prisoner. II Medeghino was not, however, destined to languish in a
dungeon. Princes and kings interested themselves in his fate. He was
released, and journeyed to the court of Charles V. in Spain. The
Emperor received him kindly, and employed him first in the Low
Countries, where he helped to repress the burghers of Ghent, and at the
siege of Landrecy commanded the Spanish artillery against other Italian
captains of adventure: for, Italy being now dismembered and enslaved,
her sons sought foreign service where they found best pay and widest
scope for martial science. Afterwards the Medici ruled Bohemia as
Spanish Viceroy; and then, as general of the league formed by the Duke
of Florence, the Emperor, and the Pope to repress the liberties of
Tuscany, distinguished himself in that cruel war of extermination,
which turned the fair Contado of Siena into a poisonous Maremma. To the
last Il Medeghino preserved the instincts and the passions of a brigand
chief. It was at this time that, acting for the Grand Duke of Tuscany,
he first claimed open kinship with the Medici of Florence. Heralds and
188genealogists produced a pedigree, which seemed to authorise this
pretension; he was recognised, together with his brother, Pius IV., as
an offshoot of the great house which had already given Dukes to
Florence, Kings to France, and two Popes to the Christian world. In the
midst of all this foreign service he never forgot his old dream of
conquering the Valtelline; and in 1547 he made proposals to the Emperor
for a new campaign against the Grisons. Charles V. did not choose to
engage in a war, the profits of which would have been inconsiderable
for the master of half the civilised world, and which might have proved
troublesome by stirring up the tameless Switzers. Il Medeghino was
obliged to abandon a project cherished from the earliest dawn of his
adventurous manhood.

When Gian Giacomo died in 1555, his brother Battista succeeded to his
claims upon Lecco and the Trepievi. His monument, magnificent with five
bronze figures, the masterpiece of Leone Lioni, from Menaggio,
Michelangelesque in style, and of consummate workmanship, still adorns
the Duomo of Milan. It stands close by the door that leads to the roof.
This mausoleum, erected to the memory of Gian Giacomo and his brother
Gabrio, is said to have cost 7800 golden crowns. On the occasion of the
pirate's funeral the Senate of Milan put on mourning, and the whole
city followed the great robber, the hero of Renaissance _virtù_, to the
grave.

Between the Cathedral of Como and the corsair Medeghino there is but a
slight link. Yet so extraordinary were the social circumstances of
Renaissance Italy, that almost at every turn, on her seaboard, in her
cities, from her hill-tops, we are compelled to blend our admiration
for the loveliest and purest works of art amid the choicest scenes of
nature with memories of execrable crimes and lawless characters.
Sometimes, as at Perugia, the _nexus_ is but local. At others, one
189single figure, like that of Cellini, unites both points of view in a
romance of unparalleled dramatic vividness. Or, again, beneath the
vaults of the Certosa, near Pavia, a masterpiece of the serenest beauty
carries our thoughts perforce back to the hideous cruelties and
snake-like frauds of its despotic founder. This is the excuse for
combining two such diverse subjects in one study.

190




BERGAMO AND BARTOLOMMEO COLLEONI


From the new town of commerce to the old town of history upon the hill,
the road is carried along a rampart lined, with horse-chestnut
trees—clumps of massy foliage, and snowy pyramids of bloom, expanded in
the rapture of a southern spring. Each pair of trees between their
stems and arch of intermingling leaves includes a space of plain,
checkered with cloud-shadows, melting blue and green in amethystine
haze. To right and left the last spurs of the Alps descend, jutting
like promontories, heaving like islands from the misty breadth below:
and here and there are towers, half-lost in airy azure; and cities
dwarfed to blots; and silvery lines where rivers flow; and distant,
vapour-drowned, dim crests of Apennines. The city walls above us wave
with snapdragons and iris among fig-trees sprouting from the riven
stones. There are terraces over-rioted with pergolas of vine, and
houses shooting forward into balconies and balustrades, from which a
Romeo might launch himself at daybreak, warned by the lark's song. A
sudden angle in the road is turned, and we pass from airspace and
freedom into the old town, beneath walls of dark brown masonry, where
wild valerians light their torches of red bloom in immemorial shade.
Squalor and splendour live here side by side. Grand Renaissance portals
grinning with Satyr masks are flanked by tawdry frescoes shamming
stonework, or by doorways where the withered bush hangs out a promise
of bad wine. 191The Cappella Colleoni is our destination, that
masterpiece of the sculptor-architect's craft, with its variegated
marbles,—rosy and white and creamy yellow and jet-black,—in patterns,
basreliefs, pilasters, statuettes, encrusted on the fanciful domed
shrine. Upon the façade are mingled, in the true Renaissance spirit of
genial acceptance, motives Christian and Pagan with supreme
impartiality. Medallions of emperors and gods alternate with virtues,
angels and cupids in a maze of loveliest arabesque; and round the base
of the building are told two stories—the one of Adam from his creation
to his fall, the other of Hercules and his labours. Italian craftsmen
of the _quattrocento_ were not averse to setting thus together, in one
framework, the myths of our first parents and Alemena's son: partly
perhaps because both subjects gave scope to the free treatment of the
nude; but partly also, we may venture to surmise, because the heroism
of Hellas counterbalanced the sin of Eden. Here then we see how Adam
and Eve were made and tempted and expelled from Paradise and set to
labour, how Cain killed Abel, and Lamech slew a man to his hurt, and
Isaac was offered on the mountain. The tale of human sin and the
promise of redemption are epitomised in twelve of the sixteen
basreliefs. The remaining four show Hercules wrestling with Antæus,
taming the Nemean lion, extirpating the Hydra, and bending to his will
the bull of Crete. Labour, appointed for a punishment to Adam, becomes
a title to immortality for the hero. The dignity of man is reconquered
by prowess for the Greek, as it is repurchased for the Christian by
vicarious suffering. Many may think this interpretation of Amadeo's
basreliefs far-fetched; yet, such as it is, it agrees with the spirit
of Humanism, bent ever on harmonising the two great traditions of the
past. Of the workmanship little need be said, except that it is wholly
Lombard, distinguished from the similar work of Della 192Quercia at
Bologna and Siena by a more imperfect feeling for composition, and a
lack of monumental gravity, yet graceful, rich in motives, and instinct
with a certain wayward _improvvisatore_ charm.

This Chapel was built by the great Condottiere Bartolommeo Colleoni, to
be the monument of his puissance even in the grave. It had been the
Sacristy of S. Maria Maggiore, which, when the Consiglio della
Misericordia refused it to him for his half-proud, half-pious purpose,
he took and held by force. The structure, of costliest materials,
reared by Gian Antonio Amadeo, cost him 50,000 golden florins. An
equestrian statue of gilt wood, voted to him by the town of Bergamo,
surmounts his monument inside the Chapel. This was the work of two
German masters, called 'Sisto figlio di Enrico Syri da Norimberga' and
'Leonardo Tedesco.' The tomb itself is of marble, executed for the most
part in a Lombard style resembling Amadeo's, but scarcely worthy of his
genius. The whole effect is disappointing. Five figures representing
Mars, Hercules, and three sons-in-law of Colleoni, who surround the
sarcophagus of the buried general, are indeed almost grotesque. The
angularity and crumpled draperies of the Milanese manner, when so
exaggerated, produce an impression of caricature. Yet many subordinate
details—a row of _putti_ in a _cinquecento_ frieze, for instance—and
much of the low relief work—especially the Crucifixion with its
characteristic episodes of the fainting Maries and the soldiers casting
dice—are lovely in their unaffected Lombardism.

There is another portrait of Colleoni in a round above the great door,
executed with spirit, though in a _bravura_ style that curiously
anticipates the decline of Italian sculpture. Gaunt, hollow-eyed, with
prominent cheek bones and strong jaws, this animated, half-length
statue of the hero bears the 193stamp of a good likeness; but when or
by whom it was made, I do not know.

Far more noteworthy than Colleoni's own monument is that of his
daughter Medea. She died young in 1470, and her father caused her tomb,
carved of Carrara marble, to be placed in the Dominican Church of
Basella, which he had previously founded. It was not until 1842 that
this most precious masterpiece of Antonio Amadeo's skill was
transferred to Bergamo. _Hic jacet Medea virgo._ Her hands are clasped
across her breast. A robe of rich brocade, gathered to the waist and
girdled, lies in simple folds upon the bier. Her throat, exceedingly
long and slender, is circled with a string of pearls. Her face is not
beautiful, for the features, especially the nose, are large and
prominent; but it is pure and expressive of vivid individuality. The
hair curls in crisp short clusters, and the ear, fine and shaped almost
like a Faun's, reveals the scrupulous fidelity of the sculptor. Italian
art has, in truth, nothing more exquisite than this still sleeping
figure of the girl, who, when she lived, must certainly have been so
rare of type and lovable in personality. If Busti's Lancinus Curtius be
the portrait of a humanist, careworn with study, burdened by the laurel
leaves that were so dry and dusty—if Gaston de Foix in the Brera,
smiling at death and beautiful in the cropped bloom of youth, idealise
the hero of romance—if Michelangelo's Penseroso translate in marble the
dark broodings of a despot's soul—if Della Porta's Julia Farnese be the
Roman courtesan magnificently throned in nonchalance at a Pope's
footstool—if Verocchio's Colleoni on his horse at Venice impersonate
the pomp and circumstance of scientific war—surely this Medea exhales
the flower-like graces, the sweet sanctities of human life, that even
in that turbid age were found among high-bred Italian ladies. Such
power have mighty sculptors, even in our 194modern world, to make the
mute stone speak in poems and clasp the soul's life of a century in
some five or six transcendent forms.

The Colleoni, or Coglioni, family were of considerable antiquity and
well-authenticated nobility in the town of Bergamo. Two lions' heads
conjoined formed one of their canting ensigns; another was borrowed
from the vulgar meaning of their name. Many members of the house held
important office during the three centuries preceding the birth of the
famous general, Bartolommeo. He was born in the year 1400 at Solza, in
the Bergamasque Contado. His father Paolo, or Pùho as he was commonly
called, was poor and exiled from the city, together with the rest of
the Guelf nobles, by the Visconti. Being a man of daring spirit, and
little inclined to languish in a foreign state as the dependent on some
patron, Pùho formed the bold design of seizing the Castle of Trezzo.
This he achieved in 1405 by fraud, and afterwards held it as his own by
force. Partly with the view of establishing himself more firmly in his
acquired lordship, and partly out of family affection, Pùho associated
four of his first-cousins in the government of Trezzo. They repaid his
kindness with an act of treason and cruelty, only too characteristic of
those times in Italy. One day while he was playing at draughts in a
room of the Castle, they assaulted him and killed him, seized his wife
and the boy Bartolommeo, and flung them into prison. The murdered Pùho
had another son, Antonio, who escaped and took refuge with Giorgio
Benzone, the tyrant of Crema. After a short time the Colleoni brothers
found means to assassinate him also; therefore Bartolommeo alone, a
child of whom no heed was taken, remained to be his father's avenger.
He and his mother lived together in great indigence at Solza, until the
lad felt strong enough to enter the service of one of the numerous
195petty Lombard princes, and to make himself if possible a captain of
adventure. His name alone was a sufficient introduction, and the Duchy
of Milan, dismembered upon the death of Gian Maria Visconti, was in
such a state that all the minor despots were increasing their forces
and preparing to defend by arms the fragments they had seized from the
Visconti heritage. Bartolommeo therefore had no difficulty in
recommending himself to Filippo d'Arcello, sometime general in the pay
of the Milanese, but now the new lord of Piacenza. With this master he
remained as page for two or three years, learning the use of arms,
riding, and training himself in the physical exercises which were
indispensable to a young Italian soldier. Meanwhile Filippo Maria
Visconti reacquired his hereditary dominions; and at the age of twenty,
Bartolommeo found it prudent to seek a patron stronger than d'Arcello.
The two great Condottieri, Sforza Attendolo and Braccio, divided the
military glories of Italy at this period; and any youth who sought to
rise in his profession, had to enrol himself under the banners of the
one or the other. Bartolommeo chose Braccio for his master, and was
enrolled among his men as a simple trooper, or _ragazzo_, with no
better prospects than he could make for himself by the help of his
talents and his borrowed horse and armour. Braccio at this time was in
Apulia, prosecuting the war of the Neapolitan Succession disputed
between Alfonso of Aragon and Louis of Anjou under the weak sovereignty
of Queen Joan. On which side of a quarrel a Condottiere fought mattered
but little: so great was the confusion of Italian politics, and so
complete was the egotism of these fraudful, violent, and treacherous
party leaders. Yet it may be mentioned that Braccio had espoused
Alfonso's cause. Bartolommeo Colleoni early distinguished himself among
the ranks of the Bracceschi. But he soon perceived that he could
196better his position by deserting to another camp. Accordingly he
offered his services to Jacopo Caldora, one of Joan's generals, and
received from him a commission of twenty men-at-arms. It may here be
parenthetically said that the rank and pay of an Italian captain varied
with the number of the men he brought into the field. His title
'Condofctiere' was derived from the circumstance that he was said to
have received a _Condotta di venti cavalli_, and so forth. Each
_cavallo_ was equal to one mounted man-at-arms and two attendants, who
were also called _ragazzi_. It was his business to provide the
stipulated number of men, to keep them in good discipline, and to
satisfy their just demands. Therefore an Italian army at this epoch
consisted of numerous small armies varying in size, each held together
by personal engagements to a captain, and all dependent on the will of
a general-in-chief, who had made a bargain with some prince or republic
for supplying a fixed contingent of fighting-men. The _Condottiere_ was
in other words a contractor or _impresario_, undertaking to do a
certain piece of work for a certain price, and to furnish the requisite
forces for the business in good working order. It will be readily seen
upon this system how important were the personal qualities of the
captain, and what great advantages those Condottieri had, who, like the
petty princes of Romagna and the March, the Montefeltri, Ordelaffi,
Malatesti, Manfredi, Orsini, and Vitelli, could rely upon a race of
hardy vassals for their recruits. It 239is not necessary to follow
Colleoni's fortunes in the Regno, at Aquila, Ancona, and Bologna. He
continued in the service of Caldora, who was now General of the Church,
and had his _Condotta_ gradually increased. Meanwhile his cousins, the
murderers of his father, began to dread his rising power, and
determined, if possible, to ruin him. He was not a man to be easily
assassinated; so they sent a hired ruffian 197to Caldora's camp to say
that Bartolommeo had taken his name by fraud, and that he was himself
the real son of Pùho Colleoni. Bartolommeo defied the liar to a duel;
and this would have taken place before the army, had not two witnesses
appeared, who knew the fathers of both Colleoni and the _bravo_, and
who gave such evidence that the captains of the army were enabled to
ascertain the truth. The impostor was stripped and drummed out of the
camp.

At the conclusion of a peace between the Pope and the Bolognese,
Bartolommeo found himself without occupation. He now offered himself to
the Venetians, and began to fight again under the great Carmagnola
against Filippo Visconti. His engagement allowed him forty men, which,
after the judicial murder of Carmagnola at Venice in 1432, were
increased to eighty. Erasmo da Narni, better known as Gattamelata, was
now his general-in-chief—a man who had risen from the lowest fortunes
to one of the most splendid military positions in Italy. Colleoni spent
the next years of his life, until 1443, in Lombardy, manoeuvring
against Il Piccinino, and gradually rising in the Venetian service,
until his Condotta reached the number of 800 men. Upon Gattamelata's
death at Padua in 1440, Colleoni became the most important of the
generals who had fought with Caldora in the March. The lordships of
Romano in the Bergamasque and of Covo and Antegnate in the Cremonese
had been assigned to him; and he was in a position to make independent
engagements with princes. What distinguished him as a general, was a
combination of caution with audacity. He united the brilliant system of
his master Braccio with the more prudent tactics of the Sforzeschi; and
thus, though he often surprised his foes by daring stratagems and
vigorous assaults, he rarely met with any serious check. He was a
captain who could be relied upon for boldly seizing an advantage, no
less 198than for using a success with discretion. Moreover he had
acquired an almost unique reputation for honesty in dealing with his
masters, and for justice combined with humane indulgence to his men.
His company was popular, and he could always bring capital troops into
the field.

In the year 1443 Colleoni quitted the Venetian service on account of a
quarrel with Gherardo Dandolo, the Provoditore of the Republic. He now
took a commission from Filippo Maria Visconti, who received him at
Milan with great honour, bestowed on him the Castello Adorno at Pavia,
and sent him into the March of Ancona upon a military expedition. Of
all Italian tyrants this Visconti was the most difficult to serve.
Constitutionally timid, surrounded with a crowd of spies and base
informers, shrinking from the sight of men in the recesses of his
palace, and controlling the complicated affairs of his Duchy by means
of correspondents and intelligencers, this last scion of the Milanese
despots lived like a spider in an inscrutable network of suspicion and
intrigue. His policy was one of endless plot and counterplot. He
trusted no man; his servants were paid to act as spies on one another;
his bodyguard consisted of mutually hostile mercenaries; his captains
in the field were watched and thwarted by commissioners appointed to
check them at the point of successful ambition or magnificent victory.
The historian has a hard task when he tries to fathom the Visconti's
schemes, or to understand his motives. Half the Duke's time seems to
have been spent in unravelling the webs that he had woven, in undoing
his own work, and weakening the hands of his chosen ministers.
Conscious that his power was artificial, that the least breath might
blow him back into the nothingness from which he had arisen on the
wrecks of his father's tyranny, he dreaded the personal eminence of his
generals above all things. His chief object was to establish a system
of checks, by means 199of which no one whom he employed should at any
moment be great enough to threaten him. The most formidable of these
military adventurers, Francesco Sforza, had been secured by marriage
with Bianca Maria Visconti, his master's only daughter, in 1441; but
the Duke did not even trust his son-in-law. The last six years of his
life were spent in scheming to deprive Sforza of his lordships; and the
war in the March, on which he employed Colleoni, had the object of
ruining the principality acquired by this daring captain from Pope
Eugenius IV. in 1443.

Colleoni was by no means deficient in those foxlike qualities which
were necessary to save the lion from the toils spread for him by
Italian intriguers. He had already shown that he knew how to push his
own interests, by changing sides and taking service with the highest
bidder, as occasion prompted. Nor, though his character for probity and
loyalty stood exceptionally high among the men of his profession, was
he the slave to any questionable claims of honour or of duty. In that
age of confused politics and extinguished patriotism, there was not
indeed much scope for scrupulous honesty. But Filippo Maria Visconti
proved more than a match for him in craft. While Colleoni was engaged
in pacifying the revolted population of Bologna, the Duke yielded to
the suggestion of his parasites at Milan, who whispered that the
general was becoming dangerously powerful. He recalled him, and threw
him without trial into the dungeons of the Forni at Monza. Here
Colleoni remained a prisoner more than a year, until the Duke's death
in 1447, when he made his escape, and profited by the disturbance of
the Duchy to reacquire his lordships in the Bergamasque territory. The
true motive for his imprisonment remains still buried in obscure
conjecture. Probably it was not even known to the Visconti, who acted
on this, as on so many other occasions, 200by a mere spasm of
suspicious jealousy, for which he could have given no account.

From the year 1447 to the year 1455, it is difficult to follow
Colleoni's movements, or to trace his policy. First, we find him
employed by the Milanese Republic, during its brief space of
independence; then he is engaged by the Venetians, with a commission
for 1500 horse; next, he is in the service of Francesco Sforza; once
more in that of the Venetians, and yet again in that of the Duke of
Milan. His biographer relates with pride that, during this period, he
was three times successful against French troops in Piedmont and
Lombardy. It appears that he made short engagements, and changed his
paymasters according to convenience. But all this time he rose in
personal importance, acquired fresh lordships in the Bergamasque, and
accumulated wealth. He reached the highest point of his prosperity in
1455, when the Republic of S. Mark elected him General-in-Chief of
their armies, with the fullest powers, and with a stipend of 100,000
florins. For nearly twenty-one years, until the day of his death, in
1475, Colleoni held this honourable and lucrative office. In his will
he charged the Signory of Venice that they should never again commit
into the hands of a single captain such unlimited control over their
military resources. It was indeed no slight tribute to Colleoni's
reputation for integrity, that the jealous Republic, which had
signified its sense of Carmagnola's untrustworthiness by capital
punishment, should have left him so long in the undisturbed disposal of
their army. The Standard and the Bâton of S. Mark were conveyed to
Colleoni by two ambassadors, and presented to him at Brescia on June
24, 1455. Three years later he made a triumphal entry into Venice, and
received the same ensigns of military authority from the hands of the
new Doge, Pasquale Malipiero. On this occasion his staff consisted of
201some two hundred officers, splendidly armed, and followed by a train
of serving-men. Noblemen from Bergamo, Brescia, and other cities of the
Venetian territory, swelled the cortege. When they embarked on the
lagoons, they found the water covered with boats and gondolas, bearing
the population of Venice in gala attire, to greet the illustrious guest
with instruments of music. Three great galleys of the Republic, called
Bucentaurs, issued from the crowd of smaller craft. On the first was
the Doge in his state robes, attended by the government in office, or
the Signoria of S. Mark. On the second were members of the Senate and
minor magistrates. The third carried the ambassadors of foreign powers.
Colleoni was received into the first state-galley, and placed by the
side of the Doge. The oarsmen soon cleared the space between the land
and Venice, passed the small canals, and swept majestically up the
Canalozzo among the plaudits of the crowds assembled on both sides to
cheer their General. Thus they reached the piazzetta, where Colleoni
alighted between the two great pillars, and, conducted by the Doge in
person, walked to the Church of S. Mark. Here, after Mass had been
said, and a sermon had been preached, kneeling before the high altar he
received the truncheon from the Doge's hands. The words of his
commission ran as follows:—

'By authority and decree of this most excellent City of Venice, of us
the Prince, and of the Senate, you are to be Commander and Captain
General of all our forces and armaments on terra firma. Take from our
hands this truncheon, with good augury and fortune, as sign and warrant
of your power. Be it your care and effort, with dignity and splendour
to maintain and to defend the Majesty, the Loyalty, and the Principles
of this Empire. Neither provoking, not yet provoked, unless at our
command, shall you break into open 202warfare with our enemies. Free
jurisdiction and lordship over each one of our soldiers, except in
cases of treason, we hereby commit to you.'

After the ceremony of his reception, Colleoni was conducted with no
less pomp to his lodgings, and the next ten days were spent in
festivities of all sorts.

The commandership-in-chief of the Venetian forces was perhaps the
highest military post in Italy. It placed Colleoni on the pinnacle of
his profession, and made his camp the favourite school of young
soldiers. Among his pupils or lieutenants we read of Ercole d'Este, the
future Duke of Ferrara; Alessandro Sforza, lord of Pesaro; Boniface,
Marquis of Montferrat; Cicco and Pino Ordelaffi, princes of Forli;
Astorre Manfredi, the lord of Faenza; three Counts of Mirandola; two
princes of Carpi; Deifobo, the Count of Anguillara; Giovanni Antonio
Caldora, lord of Jesi in the March; and many others of less name.
Honours came thick upon him. When one of the many ineffectual leagues
against the infidel was formed in 1468, during the pontificate of Paul
II., he was named Captain-General for the Crusade. Pius II. designed
him for the leader of the expedition he had planned against the impious
and savage despot, Sigismondo Malatesta. King René of Anjou, by special
patent, authorised him to bear his name and arms, and made him a member
of his family. The Duke of Burgundy, by a similar heraldic fiction,
conferred upon him his name and armorial bearings. This will explain
why Colleoni is often styled 'di Andegavia e Borgogna.' In the case of
René, the honour was but a barren show. But the patent of Charles the
Bold had more significance. In 1473 he entertained the project of
employing the great Italian General against his Swiss foes; nor does it
seem reasonable to reject a statement made by Colleoni's biographer, to
the effect that a secret compact had been 203drawn up between him and
the Duke of Burgundy, for the conquest and partition of the Duchy of
Milan. The Venetians, in whose service Colleoni still remained, when
they became aware of this project, met it with peaceful but
irresistible opposition.

Colleoni had been engaged continually since his earliest boyhood in the
trade of war. It was not therefore possible that he should have gained
a great degree of literary culture. Yet the fashion of the times made
it necessary that a man in his position should seek the society of
scholars. Accordingly his court and camp were crowded with students, in
whose wordy disputations he is said to have delighted. It will be
remembered that his contemporaries, Alfonso the Magnanimous, Francesco
Sforza, Federigo of Urbino, and Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, piqued
themselves at least as much upon their patronage of letters, as upon
their prowess in the field.

Colleoni's court, like that of Urbino, was a model of good manners. As
became a soldier, he was temperate in food and moderate in slumber. It
was recorded of him that he had never sat more than one hour at meat in
his own house, and that he never overslept the sunrise. After dinner he
would converse with his friends, using commonly his native dialect of
Bergamo, and entertaining the company now with stories of adventure,
and now with pithy sayings. In another essential point he resembled his
illustrious contemporary, the Duke of Urbino; for he was sincerely
pious in an age which, however it preserved the decencies of ceremonial
religion, was profoundly corrupt at heart. His principal lordships in
the Bergamasque territory owed to his munificence their fairest
churches and charitable institutions. At Martinengo, for example, he
rebuilt and re-endowed two monasteries, the one dedicated to S. Chiara,
the other to S. Francis. In Bergamo itself he founded an establishment
named' La Pieta,' for 204the good purpose of dowering and marrying poor
girls. This house he endowed with a yearly income of 3000 ducats. The
Sulphur baths of Trescorio, at some distance from the city, were
improved and opened to poor patients by a hospital which he provided.
At Rumano he raised a church to S. Peter, and erected buildings of
public utility, which on his death he bequeathed to the society of the
Misericordia in that town. All the places of his jurisdiction owed to
him such benefits as good water, new walls, and irrigation works. In
addition to these munificent foundations must be mentioned the Basella,
or Monastery of Dominican friars, which he established not far from
Bergamo, upon the river Serio, in memory of his beloved daughter Medea.
Last, not least, was the Chapel of S. John the Baptist, attached to the
Church of S. Maria Maggiore, which he endowed with fitting maintenance
for two priests and deacons.

The one defect acknowledged by his biographer was his partiality for
women. Early in life he married Tisbe, of the noble house of the
Brescian Martinenghi, who bore him one daughter, Caterina, wedded to
Gasparre Martinengo. Two illegitimate daughters, Ursina and Isotta,
were recognised and treated by him as legitimate. The first he gave in
marriage to Gherardo Martinengo, and the second to Jacopo of the same
family. Two other natural children, Doratina and Ricardona, were
mentioned in his will: he left them four thousand ducats a piece for
dowry. Medea, the child of his old age (for she was born to him when he
was sixty), died before her father, and was buried, as we have seen, in
the Chapel of Basella.

Throughout his life he was distinguished for great physical strength
and agility. When he first joined the troop of Braccio, he could race,
with his corselet on, against the swiftest runner of the army; and when
he was stripped, few 205horses could beat him in speed. Far on into old
age he was in the habit of taking long walks every morning for the sake
of exercise, and delighted in feats of arms and jousting matches. 'He
was tall, straight, and full of flesh, well proportioned, and
excellently made in all his limbs. His complexion inclined somewhat to
brown, but was coloured with sanguine and lively carnation. His eyes
were black; in look and sharpness of light, they were vivid, piercing,
and terrible. The outlines of his nose and all his countenance
expressed a certain manly nobleness, combined with goodness and
prudence.' Such is the portrait drawn of Colleoni by his biographer;
and it well accords with the famous bronze statue of the general at
Venice.

Colleoni lived with a magnificence that suited his rank. His favourite
place of abode was Malpaga, a castle built by him at the distance of
about an hour's drive from Bergamo. The place is worth a visit, though
its courts and gates and galleries have now been turned into a monster
farm, and the southern rooms, where Colleoni entertained his guests,
are given over to the silkworms. Half a dozen families, employed upon a
vast estate of the Martinengo family, occupy the still substantial
house and stables. The moat is planted with mulberry-trees; the upper
rooms are used as granaries for golden maize; cows, pigs, and horses
litter in the spacious yard. Yet the walls of the inner court and of
the ancient state rooms are brilliant with frescoes, executed by some
good Venetian hand, which represent the chief events of Colleoni's
life—his battles, his reception by the Signory of Venice, his
tournaments and hawking parties, and the great series of entertainments
with which he welcomed Christiern of Denmark. This king had made his
pilgrimage to Rome and was returning westward, when the fame of
Colleoni and his princely state at Malpaga induced him to turn aside
and spend 206some days as the general's guest. In order to do him
honour, Colleoni left his castle at the king's disposal and established
himself with all his staff and servants in a camp at some distance from
Malpaga. The camp was duly furnished with tents and trenches,
stockades, artillery, and all the other furniture of war. On the king's
approach, Colleoni issued with trumpets blowing and banners flying to
greet his guest, gratifying him thus with a spectacle of the pomp and
circumstance of war as carried on in Italy. The visit was further
enlivened by sham fights, feats of arms, and trials of strength. When
it ended, Colleoni presented the king with one of his own suits of
armour, and gave to each of his servants a complete livery of red and
white, his colours. Among the frescoes at Malpaga none are more
interesting, and none, thanks to the silkworms rather than to any other
cause, are fortunately in a better state of preservation, than those
which represent this episode in the history of the Castle.

Colleoni died in the year 1475, at the age of seventy-five. Since he
left no male representative, he constituted the Republic of S. Mark his
heir-in-chief, after properly providing for his daughters and his
numerous foundations. The Venetians received under this testament a sum
of 100,000 ducats, together with all arrears of pay due to him, and
10,000 ducats owed him by the Duke of Ferrara. It set forth the
testator's intention that this money should be employed in defence of
the Christian faith against the Turk. One condition was attached to the
bequest. The legatees were to erect a statue to Colleoni on the Piazza
of S. Mark. This, however, involved some difficulty; for the proud
Republic had never accorded a similar honour, nor did they choose to
encumber their splendid square with a monument. They evaded the
condition by assigning the Campo in front of the Scuola di S. Marco,
where also stands the Church of S. Zanipolo, 207to the purpose. Here
accordingly the finest bronze equestrian statue in Italy, if we except
the Marcus Aurelius of the Capitol, was reared upon its marble pedestal
by Andrea Verocchio and Alessandro Leopardi.

Colleoni's liberal expenditure of wealth found its reward in the
immortality conferred by art. While the names of Braccio, his master in
the art of war, and of Piccinino, his great adversary, are familiar to
few but professed students, no one who has visited either Bergamo or
Venice can fail to have learned something about the founder of the
Chapel of S. John and the original of Leopardi's bronze. The annals of
sculpture assign to Verocchio, of Florence, the principal share in this
statue: but Verocchio died before it was cast; and even granting that
he designed the model, its execution must be attributed to his
collaborator, the Venetian Leopardi. For my own part, I am loth to
admit that the chief credit of this masterpiece belongs to a man whose
undisputed work at Florence shows but little of its living spirit and
splendour of suggested motion. That the Tuscan science of Verocchio
secured conscientious modelling for man and horse may be assumed; but I
am fain to believe that the concentrated fire which animates them both
is due in no small measure to the handling of his northern
fellow-craftsman.

While immersed in the dreary records of crimes, treasons, cruelties,
and base ambitions, which constitute the bulk of fifteenth-century
Italian history, it is refreshing to meet with a character so frank and
manly, so simply pious and comparatively free from stain, as Colleoni.
The only general of his day who can bear comparison with him for purity
of public life and decency in conduct, was Federigo di Montefeltro.
Even here, the comparison redounds to Colleoni's credit; for he, unlike
the Duke of Urbino, rose to eminence by his own exertion in a
profession fraught with peril to men 208of ambition and energy.
Federigo started with a principality sufficient to satisfy his just
desires for power. Nothing but his own sense of right and prudence
restrained Colleoni upon the path which brought Francesco Sforza to a
duchy by dishonourable dealings, and Carmagnola to the scaffold by
questionable practice against his masters.

209




CREMA AND THE CRUCIFIX


Few people visit Crema. It is a little country town of Lombardy,
between Cremona and Treviglio, with no historic memories but very misty
ones belonging to the days of the Visconti dynasty. On every side
around the city walls stretch smiling vineyards and rich meadows, where
the elms are married to the mulberry-trees by long festoons of foliage
hiding purple grapes, where the sunflowers droop their heavy golden
heads among tall stems of millet and gigantic maize, and here and there
a rice-crop ripens in the marshy loam. In vintage time the carts, drawn
by their white oxen, come creaking townward in the evening, laden with
blue bunches. Down the long straight roads, between rows of poplars,
they creep on; and on the shafts beneath the pyramid of fruit lie
contadini stained with lees of wine. Far off across that 'waveless sea'
of Lombardy, which has been the battlefield of countless generations,
rise the dim grey Alps, or else pearled domes of thunder-clouds in
gleaming masses over some tall solitary tower. Such backgrounds, full
of peace, suggestive of almost infinite distance, and dignified with
colours of incomparable depth and breadth, the Venetian painters loved.
No landscape in Europe is more wonderful than this—thrice wonderful in
the vastness of its arching heavens, in the stillness of its level
plain, and in the bulwark of huge crested mountains, reared afar like
bastions against the northern sky. 210The little town is all alive in
this September weather. At every corner of the street, under rustling
abeles and thick-foliaged planes, at the doors of palaces and in the
yards of inns, men, naked from the thighs downward, are treading the
red must into vats and tuns; while their mild-eyed oxen lie beneath
them in the road, peaceably chewing the cud between one journey to the
vineyard and another. It must not be imagined that the scene of Alma
Tadema's 'Roman Vintage,' or what we fondly picture to our fancy of the
Athenian Lenaea, is repeated in the streets of Crema. This modern
treading of the wine-press is a very prosaic affair. The town reeks
with a sour smell of old casks and crushed grape-skins, and the men and
women at work bear no resemblance whatever to Bacchus and his crew. Yet
even as it is, the Lombard vintage, beneath floods of sunlight and a
pure blue sky, is beautiful; and he who would fain make acquaintance
with Crema, should time his entry into the old town, if possible, on
some still golden afternoon of autumn. It is then, if ever, that he
will learn to love the glowing brickwork of its churches and the quaint
terra-cotta traceries that form its chief artistic charm.

How the unique brick architecture of the Lombard cities took its
origin—whether from the precepts of Byzantine aliens in the earliest
middle ages, or from the native instincts of a mixed race composed of
Gallic, Ligurian, Roman, and Teutonic elements, under the leadership of
Longobardic rulers—is a question for antiquarians to decide. There can,
however, be no doubt that the monuments of the Lombard style, as they
now exist, are no less genuinely local, no less characteristic of the
country they adorn, no less indigenous to the soil they sprang from,
than the Attic colonnades of Mnesicles and Ictinus. What the marble
quarries of Pentelicus were to the Athenian builders, the clay beneath
their 211feet was to those Lombard craftsmen. From it they fashioned
structures as enduring, towers as majestic, and cathedral aisles as
solemn, as were ever wrought from chiselled stone. There is a true
sympathy between those buildings and the Lombard landscape, which by
itself might suffice to prove the originality of their almost unknown
architects. The rich colour of the baked clay—finely modulated from a
purplish red, through russet, crimson, pink, and orange, to pale yellow
and dull grey—harmonises with the brilliant greenery of Lombard
vegetation and with the deep azure of the distant Alpine range. Reared
aloft above the flat expanse of plain, those square _torroni_, tapering
into octagons and crowned with slender cones, break the long sweeping
lines and infinite horizons with a contrast that affords relief, and
yields a resting-place to tired eyes; while, far away, seen haply from
some bridge above Ticino, or some high-built palace loggia, they gleam
like columns of pale rosy fire against the front of mustering
storm-clouds blue with rain. In that happy orchard of Italy, a pergola
of vines in leaf, a clump of green acacias, and a campanile soaring
above its church roof, brought into chance combination with the reaches
of the plain and the dim mountain range, make up a picture eloquent in
its suggestive beauty.

Those ancient builders wrought cunningly with their material. The
bricks are fashioned and fixed to last for all time. Exposed to the icy
winds of a Lombard winter, to the fierce fire of a Lombard summer, and
to the moist vapours of a Lombard autumn; neglected by unheeding
generations; with flowers clustering in their crannies, and birds
nesting in their eaves, and mason-bees filling the delicate network of
their traceries—they still present angles as sharp as when they were
but finished, and joints as nice as when the mortar dried in the first
months of their building. This immunity 212from age and injury they owe
partly to the imperishable nature of baked clay; partly to the care of
the artists who selected and mingled the right sorts of earth, burned
them with scrupulous attention, and fitted them together with a
patience born of loving service. Each member of the edifice was
designed with a view to its ultimate place. The proper curve was
ascertained for cylindrical columns and for rounded arches. Larger
bricks were moulded for the supporting walls, and lesser pieces were
adapted to the airy vaults and lanterns. In the brickfield and the kiln
the whole church was planned and wrought out in its details, before the
hands that made a unity of all these scattered elements were set to the
work of raising it in air. When they came to put the puzzle together,
they laid each brick against its neighbour, filling up the almost
imperceptible interstices with liquid cement composed of quicklime and
fine sand in water. After five centuries the seams between the layers
of bricks that make the bell-tower of S. Gottardo at Milan, yield no
point of vantage to the penknife or the chisel.

Nor was it in their welding of the bricks alone that these craftsmen
showed their science. They were wont to enrich the surface with marble,
sparingly but effectively employed—as in those slender detached
columns, which add such beauty to the octagon of S. Gottardo, or in the
string-courses of strange beasts and reptiles that adorn the church
fronts of Pavia. They called to their aid the _mandorlato_ of Verona,
supporting their porch pillars on the backs of couchant lions,
inserting polished slabs on their façades, and building huge sarcophagi
into their cloister alleys. Between terra-cotta and this marble of
Verona there exists a deep and delicate affinity. It took the name of
_mandorlato_, I suppose, from a resemblance to almond blossoms. But it
is far from having the simple beauty of a single hue. Like all noble
veined stones, 213it passes by a series of modulations and gradations
through a gamut of associated rather than contrasted tints. Not the
pink of the almond blossom only, but the creamy whiteness of the almond
kernel, and the dull yellow of the almond nut may be found in it; and
yet these colours are so blent and blurred to all-pervading mellowness,
that nowhere is there any shock of contrast or violence of a
preponderating tone. The veins which run in labyrinths of crossing,
curving, and contorted lines all over its smooth surface add, no doubt,
to this effect of unity. The polish, lastly, which it takes, makes the
_mandorlato_ shine like a smile upon the sober face of the brickwork:
for, serviceable as terra-cotta is for nearly all artistic purposes, it
cannot reflect light or gain the illumination which comes from surface
brightness.

What the clay can do almost better than any crystalline material, may
be seen in the mouldings so characteristic of Lombard architecture.
Geometrical patterns of the rarest and most fanciful device; scrolls of
acanthus foliage, and traceries of tendrils; Cupids swinging in
festoons of vines; angels joining hands in dance, with fluttering
skirts and windy hair, and mouths that symbol singing; grave faces of
old men and beautiful profiles of maidens leaning from medallions;
wide-winged genii filling the spandrils of cloister arches, and cherubs
clustered in the rondure of rose-windows—ornaments like these, wrought
from the plastic clay, and adapted with true taste to the requirements
of the architecture, are familiar to every one who has studied the
church front of Crema, the cloisters of the Certosa, the courts of the
Ospedale Maggiore at Milan, or the public palace of Cremona.

If the _mandorlato_ gives a smile to those majestic Lombard buildings,
the terra-cotta decorations add the element of life and movement. The
thought of the artist in its first 214freshness and vivacity is felt in
them. They have all the spontaneity of improvisation, the seductive
melody of unpremeditated music. Moulding the supple earth with 'hand
obedient to the brain,' the _plasticatore_ has impressed his most
fugitive dreams of beauty on it without effort; and what it cost him
but a few fatigueless hours to fashion, the steady heat of the furnace
has gifted with imperishable life. Such work, no doubt, has the defects
of its qualities. As there are few difficulties to overcome, it suffers
from a fatal facility—_nec pluteum coedit nec demorsos sapit ungues_.
It is therefore apt to be unequal, touching at times the highest point
of inspiration, as in the angels of Guccio at Perugia, and sinking not
unfrequently into the commonplace of easygoing triviality, as in the
common floral traceries of Milanese windows. But it is never laboured,
never pedantic, never dulled by the painful effort to subdue an
obstinate material to the artist's will. If marble is required to
develop the strength of the few supreme sculptors, terra-cotta saves
intact the fancies of a crowd of lesser men.

When we reflect that all the force, solemnity, and beauty of the
Lombard buildings was evoked from clay, we learn from them this lesson:
that the thought of man needs neither precious material nor yet
stubborn substance for the production of enduring masterpieces. The red
earth was enough for God when He made man in His own image; and mud
dried in the sun suffices for the artist, who is next to God in his
creative faculty—since _non merita nome di creatore se non Iddio ed il
poeta_. After all, what is more everlasting than terra-cotta? The
hobnails of the boys who ran across the brickfields in the Roman town
of Silchester, may still be seen, mingled with the impress of the feet
of dogs and hoofs of goats, in the tiles discovered there. Such traces
might serve as a metaphor for the footfall of artistic genius, when
215the form-giver has stamped his thought upon the moist clay, and fire
has made that imprint permanent.

Of all these Lombard edifices, none is more beautiful than the
Cathedral of Crema, with its delicately finished campanile, built of
choicely tinted yellow bricks, and ending in a lantern of the
gracefullest, most airily capricious fancy. This bell-tower does not
display the gigantic force of Cremona's famous torrazzo, shooting 396
feet into blue ether from the city square; nor can it rival the octagon
of S. Gottardo for warmth of hue. Yet it has a character of elegance,
combined with boldness of invention, that justifies the citizens of
Crema in their pride. It is unique; and he who has not seen it does not
know the whole resources of the Lombard style. The façade of the
Cathedral displays that peculiar blending of Byzantine or Romanesque
round arches with Gothic details in the windows, and with the acute
angle of the central pitch, which forms the characteristic quality of
the late _trecento_ Lombard manner. In its combination of purity and
richness it corresponds to the best age of decorated work in English
Gothic. What, however, strikes a Northern observer is the strange
detachment of this elaborate façade from the main structure of the
church. Like a frontispiece cut out of cardboard and pierced with
ornamental openings, it shoots far above the low roof of the nave; so
that at night the moon, rising above the southern aisle, shines through
its topmost window, and casts the shadow of its tracery upon the
pavement of the square. This is a constructive blemish to which the
Italians in no part of the peninsula were sensitive. They seem to have
regarded their church fronts as independent of the edifice, capable of
separate treatment, and worthy in themselves of being made the subject
of decorative skill.

In the so-called Santuario of Crema—a circular church dedicated to S.
Maria della Croce, outside the walls—the 216Lombard style has been
adapted to the manner of the Mid-Renaissance. This church was raised in
the last years of the fifteenth century by Gian Battista Battagli, an
architect of Lodi, who followed the pure rules of taste, bequeathed to
North Italian builders by Bramante. The beauty of the edifice is due
entirely to its tranquil dignity and harmony of parts, the lightness of
its circling loggia, and the just proportion maintained between the
central structure and the four projecting porticoes. The sharp angles
of these vestibules afford a contrast to the simplicity of the main
building, while their clustered cupolas assist the general effect of
roundness aimed at by the architect. Such a church as this proves how
much may be achieved by the happy distribution of architectural masses.
It was the triumph of the best Renaissance style to attain lucidity of
treatment, and to produce beauty by geometrical proportion. When Leo
Battista Alberti complained to his friend, Matteo di Bastia, that a
slight alteration of the curves in his design for S. Francesco at
Rimini would 'spoil his music,' _ciò che tu muti discorda tutta quella
musica_, this is what he meant. The melody of lines and the harmony of
parts made a symphony to his eyes no less agreeable than a concert of
tuned lutes and voices to his ears; and to this concord he was so
sensitive that any deviation was a discord.

After visiting the churches of Crema and sauntering about the streets
awhile, there is nothing left to do but to take refuge in the old
Albergo del Pozzo. This is one of those queer Italian inns, which carry
you away at once into a scene of Goldoni. It is part of some palace,
where nobles housed their _bravi_ in the sixteenth century, and which
the lesser people of to-day have turned into a dozen habitations. Its
great stone staircase leads to a saloon upon which the various
bedchambers open; and round its courtyard runs an open 217balcony, and
from the court grows up a fig-tree poking ripe fruit against a bedroom
window. Oleanders in tubs and red salvias in pots, and kitchen herbs in
boxes, flourish on the pavement, where the ostler comes to wash his
carriages, and where the barber shaves the poodle of the house.
Visitors to the Albergo del Pozzo are invariably asked if they have
seen the Museo; and when they answer in the negative, they are
conducted with some ceremony to a large room on the ground-floor of the
inn, looking out upon the courtyard and the fig-tree. It was here that
I gained the acquaintance of Signor Folcioni, and became possessor of
an object that has made the memory of Crema doubly interesting to me
ever since.

When we entered the Museo, we found a little old man, gentle, grave,
and unobtrusive, varnishing the ugly portrait of some Signor of the
_cinquecento_. Round the walls hung pictures, of mediocre value, in
dingy frames; but all of them bore sounding titles. Titians, Lionardos,
Guido Renis, and Luinis, looked down and waited for a purchaser. In
truth this museum was a _bric-à-brac_ shop of a sort that is common
enough in Italy, where treasures of old lace, glass, armour, furniture,
and tapestry, may still be met with. Signor Folcioni began by pointing
out the merits of his pictures; and after making due allowance for his
zeal as amateur and dealer, it was possible to join in some of his
eulogiums. A would-be Titian, for instance, bought in Verona from a
noble house in ruins, showed Venetian wealth of colour in its gemmy
greens and lucid crimsons shining from a background deep and glowing.
Then he led us to a walnut-wood bureau of late Renaissance work,
profusely carved with nymphs and Cupids, and armed men, among festoons
of fruits embossed in high relief. Deeply drilled worm-holes set a seal
of antiquity upon the blooming faces and luxuriant garlandslike 218the
touch of Time who 'delves the parallels in beauty's brow.' On the
shelves of an ebony cabinet close by he showed us a row of cups cut out
of rock-crystal and mounted in gilt silver, with heaps of engraved
gems, old snuff-boxes, coins, medals, sprays of coral, and all the
indescribable lumber that one age flings aside as worthless for the
next to pick up from the dust-heap and regard as precious. Surely the
genius of culture in our century might be compared to a chiffonnier of
Paris, who, when the night has fallen, goes into the streets, bag on
back and lantern in hand, to rake up the waifs and strays a day of
whirling life has left him.

The next curiosity was an ivory carving of S. Anthony preaching to the
fishes, so fine and small you held it on your palm, and used a lens to
look at it. Yet there stood the Santo gesticulating, and there were the
fishes in rows—the little fishes first, and then the middle-sized, and
last of all the great big fishes almost out at sea, with their heads
above the water and their mouths wide open, just as the _Fioretti di
San Francesco_ describes them. After this came some original drawings
of doubtful interest, and then a case of fifty-two _nielli_. These were
of unquestionable value; for has not Cicognara engraved them on a page
of his classic monograph? The thin silver plates, over which once
passed the burin of Maso Finiguerra, cutting lines finer than hairs,
and setting here a shadow in dull acid-eaten grey, and there a high
light of exquisite polish, were far more delicate than any proofs
impressed from them. These frail masterpieces of Florentine art—the
first beginnings of line engraving—we held in our hands while Signor
Folcioni read out Cicognara's commentary in a slow impressive voice,
breaking off now and then to point at the originals before us.

The sun had set, and the room was almost dark, when he laid his book
down, and said: 'I have not much left to show—yet stay! 219Here are
still some little things of interest.' He then opened the door into his
bedroom, and took down from a nail above his bed a wooden Crucifix. Few
things have fascinated me more than this Crucifix—produced without
parade, half negligently, from the dregs of his collection by a dealer
in old curiosities at Crema. The cross was, or is—for it is lying on
the table now before me—twenty-one inches in length, made of strong
wood, covered with coarse yellow parchment, and shod at the four ends
with brass. The Christ is roughly hewn in reddish wood, coloured
scarlet, where the blood streams from the five wounds. Over the head an
oval medallion, nailed into the cross, serves as framework to a
miniature of the Madonna, softly smiling with a Correggiesque simper.
The whole Crucifix is not a work of art, but such as may be found in
every convent. Its date cannot be earlier than the beginning of the
eighteenth century. As I held it in my hand, I thought—perhaps this has
been carried to the bedside of the sick and dying; preachers have
brandished it from the pulpit over conscience-stricken congregations;
monks have knelt before it on the brick floor of their cells, and
novices have kissed it in the vain desire to drown their yearnings
after the relinquished world; perhaps it has attended criminals to the
scaffold, and heard the secrets of repentant murderers; but why should
it be shown me as a thing of rarity? These thoughts passed through my
mind, while Signor Folcioni quietly remarked: 'I bought this Cross from
the Frati when their convent was dissolved in Crema.' Then he bade me
turn it round, and showed a little steel knob fixed into the back
between the arms. This was a spring. He pressed it, and the upper and
lower parts of the cross came asunder; and holding the top like a
handle, I drew out as from a scabbard a sharp steel blade, concealed in
the thickness of the wood, behind the very body of the agonising
Christ. What 220had been a crucifix became a deadly poniard in my
grasp, and the rust upon it in the twilight looked like blood. 'I have
often wondered,' said Signor Folcioni, 'that the Frati cared to sell me
this.'

There is no need to raise the question of the genuineness of this
strange relic, though I confess to having had my doubts about it, or to
wonder for what nefarious purposes the impious weapon was
designed—whether the blade was inserted by some rascal monk who never
told the tale, or whether it was used on secret service by the friars.
On its surface the infernal engine carries a dark certainty of treason,
sacrilege, and violence. Yet it would be wrong to incriminate the Order
of S. Francis by any suspicion, and idle to seek the actual history of
this mysterious weapon. A writer of fiction could indeed produce some
dark tale in the style of De Stendhal's 'Nouvelles,' and christen it
'The Crucifix of Crema.' And how delighted would Webster have been if
he had chanced to hear of such a sword-sheath! He might have placed it
in the hands of Bosola for the keener torment of his Duchess. Flamineo
might have used it; or the disguised friars, who made the deathbed of
Bracciano hideous, might have plunged it in the Duke's heart after
mocking his eyes with the figure of the suffering Christ. To imagine
such an instrument of moral terror mingled with material violence, lay
within the scope of Webster's sinister and powerful genius. But unless
he had seen it with his eyes, what poet would have ventured to devise
the thing and display it even in the dumb show of a tragedy? Fact is
more wonderful than romance. No apocalypse of Antichrist matches what
is told of Roderigo Borgia; and the crucifix of Crema exceeds the
sombre fantasy of Webster.

Whatever may be the truth about this cross, it has at any rate the
value of a symbol or a metaphor. The idea which it 221materialises, the
historical events of which it is a sign, may well arrest attention. A
sword concealed in the crucifix—what emblem brings more forcibly to
mind than this that two-edged glaive of persecution which Dominic
unsheathed to mow down the populations of Provence and to make Spain
destitute of men? Looking upon the crucifix of Crema, we may seem to
see pestilence-stricken multitudes of Moors and Jews dying on the
coasts of Africa and Italy. The Spaniards enter Mexico; and this is the
cross they carry in their hands. They take possession of Peru; and
while the gentle people of the Incas come to kiss the bleeding brows of
Christ, they plunge this dagger in their sides. What, again, was the
temporal power of the Papacy but a sword embedded in a cross? Each Papa
Rè, when he ascended the Holy Chair, was forced to take the crucifix of
Crema and to bear it till his death. A long procession of war-loving
Pontiffs, levying armies and paying captains with the pence of S.
Peter, in order to keep by arms the lands they had acquired by fraud,
defiles before our eyes. First goes the terrible Sixtus IV., who died
of grief when news was brought him that the Italian princes had made
peace. He it was who sanctioned the conspiracy to murder the Medici in
church, at the moment of the elevation of the Host. The brigands hired
to do this work refused at the last moment. The sacrilege appalled
them. 'Then,' says the chronicler, 'was found a priest, who, being used
to churches, had no scruple.' The poignard this priest carried was this
crucifix of Crema. After Sixtus came the blood-stained Borgia; and
after him Julius II., whom the Romans in triumphal songs proclaimed a
second Mars, and who turned, as Michelangelo expressed it, the chalices
of Rome into swords and helms. Leo X., who dismembered Italy for his
brother and nephew; and Clement VII., who broke the neck of Florence
and delivered the Eternal City to the spoiler, 222follow. Of the
antinomy between the Vicariate of Christ and an earthly kingdom,
incarnated by these and other Holy Fathers, what symbol could be found
more fitting than a dagger with a crucifix for case and covering?

It is not easy to think or write of these matters without rhetoric.
When I laid my head upon my pillow that night in the Albergo del Pozzo
at Crema, it was full of such thoughts; and when at last sleep came, it
brought with it a dream begotten doubtless by the perturbation of my
fancy. For I thought that a brown Franciscan, with hollow cheeks, and
eyes aflame beneath his heavy cowl, sat by my bedside, and, as he
raised the crucifix in his lean quivering hands, whispered a tale of
deadly passion and of dastardly revenge. His confession carried me away
to a convent garden of Palermo; and there was love in the story, and
hate that is stronger than love, and, for the ending of the whole
matter, remorse which dies not even in the grave. Each new possessor of
the crucifix of Crema, he told me, was forced to hear from him in
dreams his dreadful history. But, since it was a dream and nothing
more, why should I repeat it? I have wandered far enough already from
the vintage and the sunny churches of the little Lombard town.

223




CHERUBINO AT THE SCALA THEATRE


I

It was a gala night. The opera-house of Milan was one blaze of light
and colour. Royalty in field-marshal's uniform and diamonds, attended
by decorated generals and radiant ladies of the court, occupied the
great box opposite the stage. The tiers from pit to gallery were filled
with brilliantly dressed women. From the third row, where we were
fortunately placed, the curves of that most beautiful of theatres
presented to my gaze a series of retreating and approaching lines,
composed of noble faces, waving feathers, sparkling jewels, sculptured
shoulders, uniforms, robes of costly stuffs and every conceivable
bright colour. Light poured from the huge lustre in the centre of the
roof, ran along the crimson velvet cushions of the boxes, and flashed
upon the gilded frame of the proscenium—satyrs and acanthus scrolls
carved in the manner of a century ago. Pit and orchestra scarcely
contained the crowd of men who stood in lively conversation, their
backs turned to the stage, their lorgnettes raised from time to time to
sweep the boxes. This surging sea of faces and sober costumes enhanced
by contrast the glitter, variety, and luminous tranquillity of the
theatre above it.

No one took much thought of the coming spectacle, till the conductor's
rap was heard upon his desk, and the orchestra broke into the overture
to Mozart's _Nozze_. Before they were half through, it was clear that
we should not enjoy that 224evening the delight of perfect music added
to the enchantment of so brilliant a scene. The execution of the
overture was not exactly bad. But it lacked absolute precision, the
complete subordination of all details to the whole. In rendering German
music Italians often fail through want of discipline, or through
imperfect sympathy with a style they will not take the pains to master.
Nor, when the curtain lifted and the play began, was the vocalisation
found in all parts satisfactory. The Contessa had a meagre _mezza
voce_. Susanna, though she did not sing false, hovered on the verge of
discords, owing to the weakness of an organ which had to be strained in
order to make any effect on that enormous stage. On the other hand, the
part of Almaviva was played with dramatic fire, and Figaro showed a
truly Southern sense of comic fun. The scenes were splendidly mounted,
and something of a princely grandeur—the largeness of a noble train of
life—was added to the drama by the vast proportions of the theatre. It
was a performance which, in spite of drawbacks, yielded pleasure.

And yet it might have left me frigid but for the artist who played
Cherubino. This was no other than Pauline Lucca, in the prime of youth
and petulance. From her first appearance to the last note she sang, she
occupied the stage. The opera seemed to have been written for her. The
mediocrity of the troupe threw her commanding merits—the richness of
her voice, the purity of her intonation, her vivid conception of
character, her indescribable brusquerie of movement and emotion—into
that relief which a sapphire gains from a setting of pearls. I can see
her now, after the lapse of nearly twenty years, as she stood there
singing in blue doublet and white mantle, with the slouched Spanish hat
and plume of ostrich feathers, a tiny rapier at her side, and blue
rosettes upon her white silk shoes! 225The _Nozze di Figaro_ was
followed by a Ballo. This had for its theme the favourite legend of a
female devil sent from the infernal regions to ruin a young man.
Instead of performing the part assigned her, Satanella falls in love
with the hero, sacrifices herself, and is claimed at last by the powers
of goodness. _Quia multum amavit_, her lost soul is saved. If the opera
left much to be desired, the Ballo was perfection. That vast stage of
the Scala Theatre had almost overwhelmed the actors of the play. Now,
thrown open to its inmost depths, crowded with glittering moving
figures, it became a fairyland of fantastic loveliness. Italians
possess the art of interpreting a serious dramatic action by pantomime.
A Ballo with them is no mere affair of dancing—fine dresses, evolutions
performed by brigades of pink-legged women with a fixed smile on their
faces. It takes the rank of high expressive art. And the motive of this
Ballo was consistently worked out in an intelligible sequence of
well-ordered scenes. To moralise upon its meaning would be out of
place. It had a conflict of passions, a rhythmical progression of
emotions, a tragic climax in the triumph of good over evil.

II

At the end of the performance there were five persons in our box—the
beautiful Miranda, and her husband, a celebrated English man of
letters; a German professor of biology; a young Milanese gentleman,
whom we called Edoardo; and myself. Edoardo and the professor had
joined us just before the ballet. I had occupied a seat behind Miranda
and my friend the critic from the commencement. We had indeed dined
together first at their hotel, the Rebecchino; and they now proposed
that we should all adjourn together there on 226foot for supper. From
the Scala Theatre to the Rebecchino is a walk of some three minutes.

When we were seated at the supper-table and had talked some while upon
indifferent topics, the enthusiasm roused in me by Pauline Lucca burst
out. I broke a moment's silence by exclaiming, 'What a wonder-world
music creates! I have lived this evening in a sphere of intellectual
enjoyment raised to rapture. I never lived so fast before!' 'Do you
really think so?' said Miranda. She had just finished a _beccafico_,
and seemed disposed for conversation. 'Do you really think so? For my
part, music is in a wholly different region from experience, thought,
or feeling. What does it communicate to you?' And she hummed to herself
the _motif_ of Cherubino's 'Non so più cosa son cosa faccio.'—'What
does it teach me?' I broke in upon the melody. 'Why, to-night, when I
heard the music, and saw her there, and felt the movement of the play,
it seemed to me that a new existence was revealed. For the first time I
understood what love might be in one most richly gifted for emotion.'
Miranda bent her eyes on the table-cloth and played with her wineglass.
'I don't follow you at all. I enjoyed myself to-night. The opera,
indeed, might have been better rendered. The ballet, I admit, was
splendid. But when I remember the music—even the best of it—even
Pauline Lucca's part'—here she looked up, and shot me a quick glance
across the table—'I have mere music in my ears. Nothing more. Mere
music!' The professor of biology, who was gifted with, a sense of music
and had studied it scientifically, had now crunched his last leaf of
salad. Wiping his lips with his napkin, he joined our _tête-à-tête_.
'Gracious madam, I agree with you. He who seeks from music more than
music gives, is on the quest—how shall I put it?—of the Holy Grail.'
'And what,' I struck in, 'is this minimum or maximum that 227music
gives?' 'Dear young friend,' replied the professor, 'music gives
melodies, harmonies, the many beautiful forms to which sound shall be
fashioned. Just as in the case of shells and fossils, lovely in
themselves, interesting for their history and classification, so is it
with music. You must not seek an intellectual meaning. No; there is no
_Inhalt_ in music' And he hummed contentedly the air of 'Voi che
sapete.' While he was humming, Miranda whispered to me across the
table, 'Separate the Lucca from the music.' 'But,' I answered rather
hotly, for I was nettled by Miranda's argument _ad hominem_, 'But it is
not possible in an opera to divide the music from the words, the
scenery, the play, the actor. Mozart, when he wrote the score to Da
Ponte's libretto, was excited to production by the situations. He did
not conceive his melodies out of connection with a certain cast of
characters, a given ethical environment.' 'I do not know, my dear young
friend,' responded the professor, 'whether you have read Mozart's Life
and letters. It is clearly shown in them how he composed airs at times
and seasons when he had no words to deal with. These he afterwards used
as occasion served. Whence I conclude that music was for him a free and
lovely play of tone. The words of our excellent Da Ponte were a
scaffolding to introduce his musical creations to the public. But
without that carpenter's work, the melodies of Cherubino are
_Selbst-ständig_, sufficient in themselves to vindicate their place in
art. Do I interpret your meaning, gracious lady?' This he said bending
to Miranda. 'Yes,' she replied. But she still played with her
wineglass, and did not look as though she were quite satisfied. I
meanwhile continued: 'Of course I have read Mozart's Life, and know how
he went to work. But Mozart was a man of feeling, of experience, of
ardent passions. How can you prove to me that the melodies he gave to
Cherubino had not been evolved 228from situations similar to those in
which Cherubino finds himself? How can you prove he did not feel a
natural appropriateness in the _motifs_ he selected from his memory for
Cherubino? How can you be certain that the part itself did not
stimulate his musical faculty to fresh and still more appropriate
creativeness? And if we must fall back on documents, do you remember
what he said himself about the love-music in _Die Entführung?_ I think
he tells us that he meant it to express his own feeling for the woman
who had just become his wife.' Miranda looked up as though she were
almost half-persuaded. Yet she hummed again 'Non so più,' then said to
herself, 'Yes, it is wiser to believe with the professor that these are
sequences of sounds, and nothing more.' Then she sighed. In the pause
which followed, her husband, the famous critic, filled his glass,
stretched his legs out, and began: 'You have embarked, I see, upon the
ocean of æsthetics. For my part, to-night I was thinking how much
better fitted for the stage Beaumarchais' play was than this musical
mongrel—this operatic adaptation. The wit, observe, is lost. And
Cherubino—that sparkling little _enfant terrible_—becomes a sentimental
fellow—a something I don't know what—between a girl and a boy—a medley
of romance and impudence—anyhow a being quite unlike the sharply
outlined playwright's page. I confess I am not a musician; the drama is
my business, and I judge things by their fitness for the stage. My wife
agrees with me to differ. She likes music, I like plays. To-night she
was better pleased than I was; for she got good music tolerably well
rendered, while I got nothing but a mangled comedy.'

We bore the critic's monologue with patience. But once again the
spirit, seeking after something which neither Miranda, nor her husband,
nor the professor could be got to recognise, moved within me. I cried
out at a venture, 229'People who go to an opera must forget music pure
and simple, must forget the drama pure and simple. You must welcome a
third species of art, in which the play, the music, the singers with
their voices, the orchestra with its instruments—Pauline Lucca, if you
like, with her fascination' (and here I shot a side-glance at Miranda),
'are so blent as to create a world beyond the scope of poetry or music
or acting taken by themselves. I give Mozart credit for having had
insight into this new world, for having brought it near to us. And I
hold that every fresh representation of his work is a fresh revelation
of its possibilities.'

To this the critic answered, 'You now seem to me to be confounding the
limits of the several arts.' 'What!' I continued, 'is the drama but
emotion presented in its most external forms as action? And what is
music but emotion, in its most genuine essence, expressed by sound?
Where then can a more complete artistic harmony be found than in the
opera?'

'The opera,' replied our host, 'is a hybrid. You will probably learn to
dislike artistic hybrids, if you have the taste and sense I give you
credit for. My own opinion has been already expressed. In the _Nozze_,
Beaumarchais' _Mariage de Figaro_ is simply spoiled. My friend the
professor declares Mozart's music to be sufficient by itself, and the
libretto to be a sort of machinery for its display. Miranda, I think,
agrees with him. You plead eloquently for the hybrid. You have a right
to your own view. These things are matters, in the final resort, of
individual taste rather than of demonstrable principles. But I repeat
that you are very young.' The critic drained his Lambrusco, and smiled
at me.

'Yes, he is young,' added Miranda. 'He must learn to distinguish
between music, his own imagination, and a pretty woman. At present he
mixes them all up together. It is a 230sort of transcendental omelette.
But I think the pretty woman has more to do with it than metaphysics!'

All this while Edoardo had bestowed devout attention on his supper. But
it appeared that the drift of our discourse had not been lost by him.
'Well,' he said, 'you finely fibred people dissect and analyse. I am
content with the _spettacolo_. That pleases. What does a man want more?
The _Nozze_ is a comedy of life and manners. The music is adorable.
To-night the women were not bad to look at—the Lucca was divine; the
scenes—ingenious. I thought but little. I came away delighted. You
could have a better play, Caro Signore!' (with a bow to our host).
'That is granted. You might have better music, Cara Signora!' (with a
bow to Miranda). 'That too is granted. But when the play and the music
come together—how shall I say?—the music helps the play, and the play
helps the music; and we—well we, I suppose, must help both!'

Edoardo's little speech was so ingenuous, and, what is more, so true to
his Italian temperament, that it made us all laugh and leave the
argument just where we found it. The bottles of Lambrusco supplied us
each with one more glass; and while we were drinking them, Miranda,
woman-like, taking the last word, but contradicting herself, softly
hummed 'Non so più cosa son,' and 'Ah!' she said, 'I shall dream of
love to-night!'

We rose and said good-night. But when I had reached my bedroom in the
Hôtel de la Ville, I sat down, obstinate and unconvinced, and penned
this rhapsody, which I have lately found among papers of nearly twenty
years ago. I give it as it stands.

231

III

Mozart has written the two melodramas of love—the one a melo-tragedy,
the other a melo-comedy. But in really noble art, Comedy and Tragedy
have faces of equal serenity and beauty. In the Vatican there are
marble busts of the two Muses, differing chiefly in their head-dresses:
that of Tragedy is an elaborately built-up structure of fillets and
flowing hair, piled high above the forehead and descending in long
curls upon the shoulders; while Comedy wears a similar adornment, with
the addition of a wreath of vine-leaves and grape-bunches. The
expression of the sister goddesses is no less finely discriminated.
Over the mouth of Comedy plays a subtle smile, and her eyes are relaxed
in a half-merriment. A shadow rests upon the slightly heavier brows of
Tragedy, and her lips, though not compressed, are graver. So delicately
did the Greek artist indicate the division between two branches of one
dramatic art. And since all great art is classical, Mozart's two
melodramas, _Don Giovanni_ and the _Nozze di Figaro_, though the one is
tragic and the other comic, are twin-sisters, similar in form and
feature.

The central figure of the melo-tragedy is Don Juan, the hero of
unlimited desire, pursuing the unattainable through tortuous
interminable labyrinths, eager in appetite yet never satisfied, 'for
ever following and for ever foiled.' He is the incarnation of lust that
has become a habit of the soul—rebellious, licentious, selfish, even
cruel. His nature, originally noble and brave, has assumed the
qualities peculiar to lust—rebellion, license, cruelty, defiant
egotism. Yet, such as he is, doomed to punishment and execration, Don
Juan remains a fit subject for poetry and music, because he is
complete, because he is impelled by some demonic influence, spurred on
by yearnings after an unsearchable delight. In 232his death, the spirit
of chivalry survives, metamorphosed, it is true, into the spirit of
revolt, yet still tragic, such as might animate the desperate sinner of
a haughty breed.

The central figure of the melo-comedy is Cherubino, the genius of love,
no less insatiable, but undetermined to virtue or to vice. This is the
point of Cherubino, that the ethical capacities in him are still
potential. His passion still hovers on the borderland of good and bad.
And this undetermined passion is beautiful because of extreme
freshness; of infinite, immeasurable expansibility. Cherubino is the
epitome of all that belongs to the amorous temperament in a state of
still ascendant adolescence. He is about sixteen years of age—a boy
yesterday, a man to-morrow—to-day both and neither—something beyond
boyhood, but not yet limited by man's responsibility and man's
absorbing passions. He partakes of both ages in the primal awakening to
self-consciousness. Desire, which in Don Juan has become a fiend,
hovers before him like a fairy. His are the sixteen years, not of a
Northern climate, but of Spain or Italy, where manhood appears in a
flash, and overtakes the child with sudden sunrise of new faculties.
_Nondum amabam, sed amare amabam, quaerebam quod amarem, amans
amare_—'I loved not yet, but was in love with loving; I sought what I
should love, being in love with loving.' That sentence, penned by S.
Augustine and consecrated by Shelley, describes the mood of Cherubino.
He loves at every moment of his life, with every pulse of his being.
His object is not a beloved being, but love itself—the satisfaction of
an irresistible desire, the paradise of bliss which merely loving has
become for him. What love means he hardly knows. He only knows that he
must love. And women love him—half as a plaything to be trifled with,
half as a young god to be wounded by. This rising of the star of love
as it ascends into the heaven of youthful fancy, is revealed 233in the
melodies Mozart has written for him. How shall we describe their
potency? Who shall translate those curiously perfect words to which
tone and rhythm have been indissolubly wedded? _E pur mi piace languir
cosi.... E se non ho chi m' oda, parlo d'amor con me._

But if this be so, it may be asked, Who shall be found worthy to act
Cherubino on the stage? You cannot have seen and heard Pauline Lucca,
or you would not ask this question.

Cherubino is by no means the most important person in the plot of the
_Nozze_. But he strikes the keynote of the opera. His love is the
standard by which we measure the sad, retrospective, stately love of
the Countess, who tries to win back an alienated husband. By Cherubino
we measure the libertine love of the Count, who is a kind of Don Juan
without cruelty, and the humorous love of Figaro and his sprightly
bride Susanna. Each of these characters typifies one of the many
species of love. But Cherubino anticipates and harmonises all. They are
conscious, experienced, world-worn, disillusioned, trivial. He is all
love, foreseen, foreshadowed in a dream of life to be; all love,
diffused through brain and heart and nerves like electricity; all love,
merging the moods of ecstasy, melancholy, triumph, regret, jealousy,
joy, expectation, in a hazy sheen, as of some Venetian sunrise. What
will Cherubino be after three years? A Romeo, a Lovelace, a Lothario, a
Juan? a disillusioned rake, a sentimentalist, an effete fop, a romantic
lover? He may become any one of these, for he contains the
possibilities of all. As yet, he is the dear glad angel of the May of
love, the nightingale of orient emotion. This moment in the unfolding
of character Mozart has arrested and eternalised for us in Cherubino's
melodies; for it is the privilege of art to render things most fugitive
and evanescent fixed imperishably in immortal form.

234

IV

This is indeed a rhapsodical production. Miranda was probably right.
Had it not been for Pauline Lucca, I might not have philosophised the
_Nozze_ thus. Yet, in the main, I believe that my instinct was well
grounded. Music, especially when wedded to words, more especially when
those words are dramatic, cannot separate itself from emotion. It will
not do to tell us that a melody is a certain sequence of sounds; that
the composer chose it for its beauty of rhythm, form, and tune, and
only used the words to get it vocalised. We are forced to go farther
back, and ask ourselves, What suggested it in the first place to the
composer? why did he use it precisely in connection with this dramatic
situation? How can we answer these questions except by supposing that
music was for him the utterance through art of some emotion? The final
fact of human nature is emotion, crystallising itself in thought and
language, externalising itself in action and art. 'What,' said Novalis,
'are thoughts but pale dead feelings?' Admitting this even in part, we
cannot deny to music an emotional content of some kind. I would go
farther, and assert that, while a merely mechanical musician may set
inappropriate melodies to words, and render music inexpressive of
character, what constitutes a musical dramatist is the conscious
intention of fitting to the words of his libretto such melody as shall
interpret character, and the power to do this with effect.

That the Cherubino of Mozart's _Nozze_ is quite different from
Beaumarchais' Cherubin does not affect this question. He is a new
creation, just because Mozart could not, or would not, conceive the
character of the page in Beaumarchais' sprightly superficial spirit. He
used the part to utter something unutterable except by music about the
soul of 235the still adolescent lover. The libretto-part and the
melodies, taken together, constitute a new romantic ideal, consistent
with experience, but realised with the intensity and universality
whereby art is distinguished from life. Don Juan was a myth before
Mozart touched him with the magic wand of music. Cherubino became a
myth by the same Prospero's spell. Both characters have the
universality, the symbolic potency, which belongs to legendary beings.
That there remains a discrepancy between the boy-page and the music
made for him, can be conceded without danger to my theory; for the
music made for Cherubino is meant to interpret his psychical condition,
and is independent of his boyishness of conduct.

This further explains why there may be so many renderings of
Cherubino's melodies. Mozart idealised an infinite emotion. The singer
is forced to define; the actor also is forced to define. Each
introduces his own limit on the feeling. When the actor and the singer
meet together in one personality, this definition of emotion becomes of
necessity doubly specific. The condition of all music is that it
depends in a great measure on the temperament of the interpreter for
its momentary shade of expression, and this dependence is of course
exaggerated when the music is dramatic. Furthermore, the subjectivity
of the audience enters into the problem as still another element of
definition. It may therefore be fairly said that, in estimating any
impression produced by Cherubino's music, the original character of the
page, transplanted from French comedy to Italian opera, Mozart's
conception of that character, Mozart's specific quality of emotion and
specific style of musical utterance, together with the contralto's
interpretation of the character and rendering of the music, according
to her intellectual capacity, artistic skill, and timbre of voice, have
236collaborated with the individuality of the hearer. Some of the
constituents of the ever-varying product—a product which is new each
time the part is played—are fixed. Da Ponte's Cherubino and Mozart's
melodies remain unalterable. All the rest is undecided; the singer and
the listener change on each occasion.

To assert that the musician Mozart meant nothing by his music, to
assert that he only cared about it _quâ_ music, is the same as to say
that the painter Tintoretto, when he put the Crucifixion upon canvas,
the sculptor Michelangelo, when he carved Christ upon the lap of Mary,
meant nothing, and only cared about the beauty of their forms and
colours. Those who take up this position prove, not that the artist has
no meaning to convey, but that for them the artist's nature is
unintelligible, and his meaning is conveyed in an unknown tongue. It
seems superfluous to guard against misinterpretation by saying that to
expect clear definition from music—the definition which belongs to
poetry—would be absurd. The sphere of music is in sensuous perception;
the sphere of poetry is in intelligence. Music, dealing with pure
sound, must always be vaguer in significance than poetry, dealing with
words. Nevertheless, its effect upon the sentient subject may be more
intense and penetrating for this very reason. We cannot fail to
understand what words are intended to convey; we may very easily
interpret in a hundred different ways the message of sound. But this is
not because words are wider in their reach and more alive; rather
because they are more limited, more stereotyped, more dead. They
symbolise something precise and unmistakable; but this precision is
itself attenuation of the something symbolised. The exact value of the
counter is better understood when it is a word than when it is a chord,
because all that a word conveys has already become a thought, while all
that musical 237sounds convey remains within the region of emotion
which has not been intellectualised. Poetry touches emotion through the
thinking faculty. If music reaches the thinking faculty at all, it is
through fibres of emotion. But emotion, when it has become thought, has
already lost a portion of its force, and has taken to itself a
something alien to its nature. Therefore the message of music can never
rightly be translated into words. It is the very largeness and
vividness of the sphere of simple feeling which makes its symbolical
counterpart in sound so seeming vague. But in spite of this
incontestable defect of seeming vagueness, emotion expressed by music
is nearer to our sentient self, if we have ears to take it in, than the
same emotion limited by language. It is intenser, it is more immediate,
as compensation for being less intelligible, less unmistakable in
meaning. It is an infinite, an indistinct, where each consciousness
defines and sets a limitary form.

V

A train of thought which begins with the concrete not unfrequently
finds itself finishing, almost against its will, in abstractions. This
is the point to which the performance of Cherubino's part by Pauline
Lucca at the Scala twenty years ago has led me—that I have to settle
with myself what I mean by art in general, and what I take to be the
proper function of music as one of the fine arts.

'Art,' said Goethe, 'is but form-giving.' We might vary this
definition, and say, 'Art is a method of expression or presentation.'
Then comes the question: If art gives form, if it is a method of
expression or presentation, to what does it give form, what does it
express or present? The answer certainly must be: Art gives form to
human consciousness; expresses or presents the feeling or the thought
of man. 238Whatever else art may do by the way, in the communication of
innocent pleasures, in the adornment of life and the softening of
manners, in the creation of beautiful shapes and sounds, this, at all
events, is its prime function.

While investing thought, the spiritual subject-matter of all art, with
form, or finding for it proper modes of presentation, each of the arts
employs a special medium, obeying the laws of beauty proper to that
medium. The vehicles of the arts, roughly speaking, are material
substances (like stone, wood, metal), pigments, sounds, and words. The
masterly handling of these vehicles and the realisation of their
characteristic types of beauty have come to be regarded as the
craftsman's paramount concern. And in a certain sense this is a right
conclusion; for dexterity in the manipulation of the chosen vehicle and
power to create a beautiful object, distinguish the successful artist
from the man who may have had like thoughts and feelings. This
dexterity, this power, are the properties of the artist _quâ_ artist.
Yet we must not forget that the form created by the artist for the
expression of a thought or feeling is not the final end of art itself.
That form, after all, is but the mode of presentation through which the
spiritual content manifests itself. Beauty, in like manner, is not the
final end of art, but is the indispensable condition under which the
artistic manifestation of the spiritual content must he made. It is the
business of art to create an ideal world, in which perception, emotion,
understanding, action, all elements of human life sublimed by thought,
shall reappear in concrete forms as beauty. This being so, the logical
criticism of art demands that we should not only estimate the technical
skill of artists and their faculty for presenting beauty to the
æsthetic sense, but that we should also ask ourselves what portion of
the human spirit he has chosen to invest with form, and how he has
conceived his subject. It is not necessary that the ideas embodied in a
work of art should be the artist's own. They may be common to the race
and age: as, for instance, the conception of sovereign deity expressed
in the Olympian Zeus of Pheidias, or the conception of divine maternity
expressed in Raphael's 'Madonna di San Sisto.' Still the personality of
the artist, his own intellectual and moral nature, his peculiar way of
thinking and feeling, his individual attitude towards the material
given to him in ideas of human consciousness, will modify his choice of
subject and of form, and will determine his specific type of beauty. To
take an example: supposing that an idea, common to his race and age, is
given to the artist for treatment; this will be the final end of the
work of art which he produces. But his personal qualities and technical
performance determine the degree of success or failure to which he
attains in presenting that idea and in expressing it with beauty.
Signorelli fails where Perugino excels, in giving adequate and lovely
form to the religious sentiment. Michelangelo is sure of the sublime,
and Raphael of the beautiful.

Art is thus the presentation of the human spirit by the artist to his
fellow-men. The subject-matter of the arts is commensurate with what
man thinks and feels and does. It is as deep as religion, as wide as
life. But what distinguishes art from religion or from life is, that
this subject-matter must assume beautiful form, and must be presented
directly or indirectly to the senses. Art is not the school or the
cathedral, but the playground, the paradise of humanity. It does not
teach, it does not preach. Nothing abstract enters into art's domain.
Truth and goodness are transmuted into beauty there, just as in science
beauty and goodness assume the shape of truth, and in religion truth
and beauty become goodness. The rigid definitions, the unmistakable
laws of science, are not to be found in art. Whatever art has touched
240acquires a concrete sensuous embodiment, and thus ideas presented to
the mind in art have lost a portion of their pure thought-essence. It
is on this account that the religious conceptions of the Greeks were so
admirably fitted for the art of sculpture, and certain portions of the
mediæval Christian mythology lent themselves so well to painting. For
the same reason the metaphysics of ecclesiastical dogma defy the
artist's plastic faculty. Art, in a word, is a middle term between
reason and the senses. Its secondary aim, after the prime end of
presenting the human spirit in beautiful form has been accomplished, is
to give tranquil and innocent enjoyment.

From what has gone before it will be seen that no human being can make
or mould a beautiful form without incorporating in that form some
portion of the human mind, however crude, however elementary. In other
words, there is no work of art without a theme, without a motive,
without a subject. The presentation of that theme, that motive, that
subject, is the final end of art. The art is good or bad according as
the subject has been well or ill presented, consistently with the laws
of beauty special to the art itself. Thus we obtain two standards for
æsthetic criticism. We judge a statue, for example, both by the
sculptor's intellectual grasp upon his subject, and also by his
technical skill and sense of beauty. In a picture of the Last Judgment
by Fra Angelico we say that the bliss of the righteous has been more
successfully treated than the torments of the wicked, because the
former has been better understood, although the painter's skill in each
is equal. In the Perseus of Cellini we admire the sculptor's spirit,
finish of execution, and originality of design, while we deplore that
want of sympathy with the heroic character which makes his type of
physical beauty slightly vulgar and his facial expression vacuous.
241If the phrase 'Art for art's sake' has any meaning, this meaning is
simply that the artist, having chosen a theme, thinks exclusively in
working at it of technical dexterity or the quality of beauty. There
are many inducements for the artist thus to narrow his function, and
for the critic to assist him by applying the canons of a soulless
connoisseurship to his work; for the conception of the subject is but
the starting-point in art-production, and the artist's difficulties and
triumphs as a craftsman lie in the region of technicalities. He knows,
moreover, that, however deep or noble his idea may be, his work of art
will be worthless if it fail in skill or be devoid of beauty. What
converts a thought into a statue or a picture, is the form found for
it; and so the form itself seems all-important. The artist, therefore,
too easily imagines that he may neglect his theme; that a fine piece of
colouring, a well-balanced composition, or, as Cellini put it, 'un bel
corpo ignudo,' is enough. And this is especially easy in an age which
reflects much upon the arts, and pursues them with enthusiasm, while
its deeper thoughts and feelings are not of the kind which translate
themselves readily into artistic form. But, after all, a fine piece of
colouring, a well-balanced composition, a sonorous stanza, a learned
essay in counterpoint, are not enough. They are all excellent good
things, yielding delight to the artistic sense and instruction to the
student. Yet when we think of the really great statues, pictures,
poems, music of the world, we find that these are really great because
of something more—and that more is their theme, their presentation of a
noble portion of the human soul. Artists and art-students may be
satisfied with perfect specimens of a craftsman's skill, independent of
his theme; but the mass of men will not be satisfied; and it is as
wrong to suppose that art exists for artists and art-students, as to
talk of art for art's sake. Art exists for 242humanity. Art transmutes
thought and feeling into terms of beautiful form. Art is great and
lasting in proportion as it appeals to the human consciousness at
large, presenting to it portions of itself in adequate and lovely form.

VI

It was necessary in the first place firmly to apprehend the truth that
the final end of all art is the presentation of a spiritual content; it
is necessary in the next place to remove confusions by considering the
special circumstances of the several arts.

Each art has its own vehicle of presentation. What it can present and
how it must present it, depends upon the nature of this vehicle. Thus,
though architecture, sculpture, painting, music, poetry, meet upon the
common ground of spiritualised experience—though the works of art
produced by the architect, sculptor, painter, musician, poet, emanate
from the spiritual nature of the race, are coloured by the spiritual
nature of the men who make them, and express what is spiritual in
humanity under concrete forms invented for them by the artist—yet it is
certain that all of these arts do not deal exactly with the same
portions of this common material in the same way or with the same
results. Each has its own department. Each exhibits qualities of
strength and weakness special to itself. To define these several
departments, to explain the relation of these several vehicles of
presentation to the common subject-matter, is the next step in
criticism.

Of the fine arts, architecture alone subserves utility. We build for
use. But the geometrical proportions which the architect observes,
contain the element of beauty and powerfully influence the soul. Into
the language of arch and aisle and colonnade, of cupola and façade and
pediment, of spire 243and vault, the architect translates emotion,
vague perhaps but deep, mute but unmistakable. When we say that a
building is sublime or graceful, frivolous or stern, we mean that
sublimity or grace, frivolity or sternness, is inherent in it. The
emotions connected with these qualities are inspired in us when we
contemplate it, and are presented to us by its form. Whether the
architect deliberately aimed at the sublime or graceful—whether the
dignified serenity of the Athenian genius sought to express itself in
the Parthenon, and the mysticism of mediæval Christianity in the gloom
of Chartres Cathedral—whether it was Renaissance paganism which gave
its mundane pomp and glory to S. Peter's, and the refined selfishness
of royalty its specious splendour to the palace of Versailles—need not
be curiously questioned. The fact that we are impelled to raise these
points, that architecture more almost than any art connects itself
indissolubly with the life, the character, the moral being of a nation
and an epoch, proves that we are justified in bringing it beneath our
general definition of the arts. In a great measure because it subserves
utility, and is therefore dependent upon the necessities of life, does
architecture present to us through form the human spirit. Comparing the
palace built by Giulio Romano for the Dukes of Mantua with the
contemporary castle of a German prince, we cannot fail at once to
comprehend the difference of spiritual conditions, as these displayed
themselves in daily life, which then separated Italy from the Teutonic
nations. But this is not all. Spiritual quality in the architect
himself finds clear expression in his work. Coldness combined with
violence marks Brunelleschi's churches; a certain suavity and well-bred
taste the work of Bramante; while Michelangelo exhibits wayward energy
in his Library of S. Lorenzo, and Amadeo self-abandonment to fancy in
his Lombard chapels. I have chosen examples from 244one nation and one
epoch in order that the point I seek to make, the demonstration of a
spiritual quality in buildings, may be fairly stated.

Sculpture and painting distinguish themselves from the other fine arts
by the imitation of concrete existences in nature. They copy the bodies
of men and animals, the aspects of the world around us, and the
handiwork of men. Yet, in so far as they are rightly arts, they do not
make imitation an object in itself. The grapes of Zeuxis at which birds
pecked, the painted dog at which a cat's hair bristles—if such grapes
or such a dog were ever put on canvas—are but evidences of the artist's
skill, not of his faculty as artist. These two plastic, or, as I prefer
to call them, figurative arts, use their imitation of the external
world for the expression, the presentation of internal, spiritual
things. The human form is for them the outward symbol of the inner
human spirit, and their power of presenting spirit is limited by the
means at their disposal.

Sculpture employs stone, wood, clay, the precious metals, to model
forms, detached and independent, or raised upon a flat surface in
relief. Its domain is the whole range of human character and
consciousness, in so far as these can be indicated by fixed facial
expression, by physical type, and by attitude. If we dwell for an
instant on the greatest historical epoch of sculpture, we shall
understand the domain of this art in its range and limitation. At a
certain point of Greek development the Hellenic Pantheon began to be
translated by the sculptors into statues; and when the genius of the
Greeks expired in Rome, the cycle of their psychological conceptions
had been exhaustively presented through this medium. During that long
period of time, the most delicate gradations of human personality,
divinised, idealised, were 245presented to the contemplation of the
consciousness which gave them being, in appropriate types. Strength and
swiftness, massive force and airy lightness, contemplative repose and
active energy, voluptuous softness and refined grace, intellectual
sublimity and lascivious seductiveness—the whole rhythm of qualities
which can be typified by bodily form—were analysed, selected, combined
in various degrees, to incarnate the religious conceptions of Zeus,
Aphrodite, Herakles, Dionysus, Pallas, Fauns and Satyrs, Nymphs of
woods and waves, Tritons, the genius of Death, heroes and hunters,
lawgivers and poets, presiding deities of minor functions, man's
lustful appetites and sensual needs. All that men think, or do, or are,
or wish for, or imagine in this world, had found exact corporeal
equivalents. Not physiognomy alone, but all the portions of the body
upon which the habits of the animating soul are wont to stamp
themselves, were studied and employed as symbolism. Uranian Aphrodite
was distinguished from her Pandemic sister by chastened lust-repelling
loveliness. The muscles of Herakles were more ponderous than the tense
sinews of Achilles. The Hermes of the palæstra bore a torso of majestic
depth; the Hermes, who carried messages from heaven, had limbs alert
for movement. The brows of Zeus inspired awe; the breasts of Dionysus
breathed delight.

A race accustomed, as the Greeks were, to read this symbolism,
accustomed, as the Greeks were, to note the individuality of naked
form, had no difficulty in interpreting the language of sculpture. Nor
is there now much difficulty in the task. Our surest guide to the
subject of a basrelief or statue is study of the physical type
considered as symbolical of spiritual quality. From the fragment of a
torso the true critic can say whether it belongs to the athletic or the
erotic species. A limb of Bacchus differs from a limb of Poseidon.
246The whole psychological conception of Aphrodite Pandemos enters into
every muscle, every joint, no less than into her physiognomy, her hair,
her attitude.

There is, however, a limit to the domain of sculpture. This art deals
most successfully with personified generalities. It is also strong in
the presentation of incarnate character. But when it attempts to tell a
story, we often seek in vain its meaning. Battles of Amazons or
Centaurs upon basreliefs, indeed, are unmistakable. The subject is
indicated here by some external sign. The group of Laocoon appeals at
once to a reader of Virgil, and the divine vengeance of Leto's children
upon Niobe is manifest in the Uffizzi marbles. But who are the several
heroes of the Æginetan pediment, and what was the subject of the
Pheidian statues on the Parthenon? Do the three graceful figures of a
basrelief which exists at Naples and in the Villa Albani, represent
Orpheus, Hermes, and Eurydice, or Antiope and her two sons? Was the
winged and sworded genius upon the Ephesus column meant for a genius of
Death or a genius of Love?

This dimness of significance indicates the limitation of sculpture, and
inclines some of those who feel its charm to assert that the sculptor
seeks to convey no intellectual meaning, that he is satisfied with the
creation of beautiful form. There is sense in this revolt against the
faith which holds that art is nothing but a mode of spiritual
presentation. Truly the artist aims at producing beauty, is satisfied
if he conveys delight. But it is impossible to escape from the
certainty that, while he is creating forms of beauty, he means
something; and that something, that theme for which he finds the form,
is part of the world's spiritual heritage. Only the crudest works of
plastic art, capricci and arabesques, have no intellectual content; and
even these are good in so far as they convey the playfulness of fancy.

247Painting employs colours upon surfaces—walls, panels, canvas. What
has been said about sculpture will apply in a great measure to this
art. The human form, the world around us, the works of man's hands, are
represented in painting, not for their own sake merely, but with a view
to bringing thought, feeling, action, home to the consciousness of the
spectator from the artist's consciousness on which they have been
impressed. Painting can tell a story better than sculpture, can
represent more complicated feelings, can suggest thoughts of a subtler
intricacy. Through colour, it can play, like music, directly on
powerful but vague emotion. It is deficient in fulness and roundness of
concrete reality. A statue stands before us, the soul incarnate in
ideal form, fixed and frozen for eternity. The picture is a reflection
cast upon a magic glass; not less permanent, but reduced to a shadow of
reality. To follow these distinctions farther would be alien from the
present purpose. It is enough to repeat that, within their several
spheres, according to their several strengths and weaknesses, both
sculpture and painting present the spirit to us only as the spirit
shows itself immersed in things of sense. The light of a lamp enclosed
within an alabaster vase is still lamplight, though shorn of lustre and
toned to coloured softness. Even thus the spirit, immersed in things of
sense presented to us by the figurative arts, is still spirit, though
diminished in its intellectual clearness and invested with hues not its
own. To fashion that alabaster form of art with utmost skill, to make
it beautiful, to render it transparent, is the artist's function. But
he will have failed of the highest if the light within burns dim, or if
he gives the world a lamp in which no spiritual flame is lighted.

Music transports us to a different region. It imitates nothing. It uses
pure sound, and sound of the most wholly 248artificial kind—so
artificial that the musical sounds of one race are unmusical, and
therefore unintelligible, to another. Like architecture, music relies
upon mathematical proportions. Unlike architecture, music serves no
utility. It is the purest art of pleasure—the truest paradise and
playground of the spirit. It has less power than painting, even less
power than sculpture, to tell a story or to communicate an idea. For we
must remember that when music is married to words, the words, and not
the music, reach our thinking faculty. And yet, in spite of all, music
presents man's spirit to itself through form. The domain of the spirit
over which music reigns, is emotion—not defined emotion, not feeling
even so defined as jealousy or anger—but those broad bases of man's
being out of which emotions spring, defining themselves through action
into this or that set type of feeling. Architecture, we have noticed,
is so connected with specific modes of human existence, that from its
main examples we can reconstruct the life of men who used it. Sculpture
and painting, by limiting their presentation to the imitation of
external things, have all the help which experience and, association
render. The mere artificiality of music's vehicle separates it from
life and makes its message untranslatable. Yet, as I have already
pointed out, this very disability under which it labours is the secret
of its extraordinary potency. Nothing intervenes between the musical
work of art and the fibres of the sentient being it immediately
thrills. We do not seek to say what music means. We feel the music. And
if a man should pretend that the music has not passed beyond his ears,
has communicated nothing but a musical delight, he simply tells us that
he has not felt music. The ancients on this point were wiser than some
moderns when, without pretending to assign an intellectual significance
to music, they held it for an axiom that one type of music bred one
type of character, 249another type another. A change in the music of a
state, wrote Plato, will be followed by changes in its constitution. It
is of the utmost importance, said Aristotle, to provide in education
for the use of the ennobling and the fortifying moods. These
philosophers knew that music creates a spiritual world, in which the
spirit cannot live and move without contracting habits of emotion. In
this vagueness of significance but intensity of feeling lies the magic
of music. A melody occurs to the composer, which he certainly connects
with no act of the reason, which he is probably unconscious of
connecting with any movement of his feeling, but which nevertheless is
the form in sound of an emotional mood. When he reflects upon the
melody secreted thus impromptu, he is aware, as we learn from his own
lips, that this work has correspondence with emotion. Beethoven calls
one symphony Heroic, another Pastoral; of the opening of another he
says, 'Fate knocks at the door.' Mozart sets comic words to the
mass-music of a friend, in order to mark his sense of its inaptitude
for religious sentiment. All composers use phrases like Maestoso,
Pomposo, Allegro, Lagrimoso, Con Fuoco, to express the general
complexion of the mood their music ought to represent.

Before passing to poetry, it may be well to turn aside and consider two
subordinate arts, which deserve a place in any system of æsthetics.
These are dancing and acting. Dancing uses the living human form, and
presents feeling or action, the passions and the deeds of men, in
artificially educated movements of the body. The element of beauty it
possesses, independently of the beauty of the dancer, is rhythm. Acting
or the art of mimicry presents the same subject-matter, no longer under
the conditions of fixed rhythm but as an ideal reproduction of reality.
The actor is 250what he represents, and the element of beauty in his
art is perfection of realisation. It is his duty as an artist to show
us Orestes or Othello, not perhaps exactly as Othello and Orestes were,
but as the essence of their tragedies, ideally incorporate in action,
ought to be. The actor can do this in dumb show. Some of the greatest
actors of the ancient world were mimes. But he usually interprets a
poet's thought, and attempts to present an artistic conception in a
secondary form of art, which has for its advantage his own personality
in play.

The last of the fine arts is literature; or, in the narrower sphere of
which it will be well to speak here only, is poetry. Poetry employs
words in fixed rhythms, which we call metres. Only a small portion of
its effect is derived from the beauty of its sound. It appeals to the
sense of hearing far less immediately than music does. It makes no
appeal to the eyesight, and takes no help from the beauty of colour. It
produces no tangible object. But language being the storehouse of all
human experience, language being the medium whereby spirit communicates
with spirit in affairs of life, the vehicle which transmits to us the
thoughts and feelings of the past, and on which we rely for continuing
our present to the future, it follows that, of all the arts, poetry
soars highest, flies widest, and is most at home in the region of the
spirit. What poetry lacks of sensuous fulness, it more than balances by
intellectual intensity. Its significance is unmistakable, because it
employs the very material men use in their exchange of thoughts and
correspondence of emotions. To the bounds of its empire there is no
end. It embraces in its own more abstract being all the arts. By words
it does the work in turn of architecture, sculpture, painting, music.
It is the metaphysic of the fine arts. Philosophy finds place in
251poetry; and life itself, refined to its last utterance, hangs
trembling on this thread which joins our earth to heaven, this bridge
between experience and the realms where unattainable and imperceptible
will have no meaning.

If we are right in defining art as the manifestation of the human
spirit to man by man in beautiful form, poetry, more incontestably than
any other art, fulfils this definition and enables us to gauge its
accuracy. For words are the spirit, manifested to itself in symbols
with no sensual alloy. Poetry is therefore the presentation, through
words, of life and all that life implies. Perception, emotion, thought,
action, find in descriptive, lyrical, reflective, dramatic, and epical
poetry their immediate apocalypse. In poetry we are no longer puzzled
with problems as to whether art has or has not of necessity a spiritual
content. There cannot be any poetry whatsoever without a spiritual
meaning of some sort: good or bad, moral, immoral, or non-moral,
obscure or lucid, noble or ignoble, slight or weighty—such distinctions
do not signify. In poetry we are not met by questions whether the poet
intended to convey a meaning when he made it. Quite meaningless poetry
(as some critics would fain find melody quite meaningless, or a statue
meaningless, or a Venetian picture meaningless) is a contradiction in
terms. In poetry, life, or a portion of life, lives again, resuscitated
and presented to our mental faculty through art. The best poetry is
that which reproduces the most of life, or its intensest moments.
Therefore the extensive species of the drama and the epic, the
intensive species of the lyric, have been ever held in highest esteem.
Only a half-crazy critic flaunts the paradox that poetry is excellent
in so far as it assimilates the vagueness of music, or estimates a poet
by his power of translating sense upon the borderland of nonsense into
melodious words. Where poetry falls short in the comparison with other
arts, is 252in the quality of form-giving, in the quality of sensuous
concreteness. Poetry can only present forms to the mental eye and to
the intellectual sense, stimulate the physical senses by indirect
suggestion. Therefore dramatic poetry, the most complicated kind of
poetry, relies upon the actor; and lyrical poetry, the intensest kind
of poetry, seeks the aid of music. But these comparative deficiencies
are overbalanced, for all the highest purposes of art, by the width and
depth, the intelligibility and power, the flexibility and multitudinous
associations, of language. The other arts are limited in what they
utter. There is nothing which has entered into the life of man which
poetry cannot express. Poetry says everything in man's own language to
the mind. The other arts appeal imperatively, each in its own region,
to man's senses; and the mind receives art's message by the help of
symbols from the world of sense. Poetry lacks this immediate appeal to
sense. But the elixir which it offers to the mind, its quintessence
extracted from all things of sense, reacts through intellectual
perception upon all the faculties that make men what they are.

VII

I used a metaphor in one of the foregoing paragraphs to indicate the
presence of the vital spirit, the essential element of thought or
feeling, in the work of art. I said it radiated through the form, as
lamplight through an alabaster vase. Now the skill of the artist is
displayed in modelling that vase, in giving it shape, rich and rare,
and fashioning its curves with subtlest workmanship. In so far as he is
a craftsman, the artist's pains must be bestowed upon this precious
vessel of the animating theme. In so far as he has power over beauty,
he must exert it in this plastic act. It is here that he displays
dexterity; here that he creates; here that he 253separates himself from
other men who think and feel. The poet, more perhaps than any other
artist, needs to keep this steadily in view; for words being our daily
vehicle of utterance, it may well chance that the alabaster vase of
language should be hastily or trivially modelled. This is the true
reason why 'neither gods nor men nor the columns either suffer
mediocrity in singers.' Upon the poet it is specially incumbent to see
that he has something rare to say and some rich mode of saying it. The
figurative arts need hardly be so cautioned. They run their risk in
quite a different direction. For sculptor and for painter, the danger
is lest he should think that alabaster vase his final task. He may too
easily be satisfied with moulding a beautiful but empty form.

The last word on the topic of the arts is given in one sentence. Let us
remember that every work of art enshrines a spiritual subject, and that
the artist's power is shown in finding for that subject a form of ideal
loveliness. Many kindred points remain to be discussed; as what we mean
by beauty, which is a condition indispensable to noble art; and what
are the relations of the arts to ethics. These questions cannot now be
raised. It is enough in one essay to have tried to vindicate the
spirituality of art in general.

254




A VENETIAN MEDLEY


I.—FIRST IMPRESSIONS AND FAMILIARITY

It is easy to feel and to say something obvious about Venice. The
influence of this sea-city is unique, immediate, and unmistakable. But
to express the sober truth of those impressions which remain when the
first astonishment of the Venetian revelation has subsided, when the
spirit of the place has been harmonised through familiarity with our
habitual mood, is difficult.

Venice inspires at first an almost Corybantic rapture. From our
earliest visits, if these have been measured by days rather than weeks,
we carry away with us the memory of sunsets emblazoned in gold and
crimson upon cloud and water; of violet domes and bell-towers etched
against the orange of a western sky; of moonlight silvering
breeze-rippled breadths of liquid blue; of distant islands shimmering
in sun-litten haze; of music and black gliding boats; of labyrinthine
darkness made for mysteries of love and crime; of statue-fretted palace
fronts; of brazen clangour and a moving crowd; of pictures by earth's
proudest painters, cased in gold on walls of council chambers where
Venice sat enthroned a queen, where nobles swept the floors with robes
of Tyrian brocade. These reminiscences will be attended by an
ever-present sense of loneliness and silence in the world around; the
sadness of a limitless horizon, the solemnity of an unbroken arch of
heaven, the calm and greyness of evening on the lagoons, the 255pathos
of a marble city crumbling to its grave in mud and brine.

These first impressions of Venice are true. Indeed they are inevitable.
They abide, and form a glowing background for all subsequent pictures,
toned more austerely, and painted in more lasting hues of truth upon
the brain. Those have never felt Venice at all who have not known this
primal rapture, or who perhaps expected more of colour, more of
melodrama, from a scene which nature and the art of man have made the
richest in these qualities. Yet the mood engendered by this first
experience is not destined to be permanent. It contains an element of
unrest and unreality which vanishes upon familiarity. From the blare of
that triumphal bourdon of brass instruments emerge the delicate voices
of violin and clarinette. To the contrasted passions of our earliest
love succeed a multitude of sweet and fanciful emotions. It is my
present purpose to recapture some of the impressions made by Venice in
more tranquil moods. Memory might be compared to a kaleidoscope. Far
away from Venice I raise the wonder-working tube, allow the glittering
fragments to settle as they please, and with words attempt to render
something of the patterns I behold.

II.—A LODGING IN SAN VIO

I have escaped from the hotels with their bustle of tourists and
crowded _tables-d'hôte_. My garden stretches down to the Grand Canal,
closed at the end with a pavilion, where I lounge and smoke and watch
the cornice of the Prefettura fretted with gold in sunset light. My
sitting-room and bed-room face the southern sun. There is a canal
below, crowded with gondolas, and across its bridge the good folk of
San Vio come and go the whole day long—men in blue shirts with
256enormous hats, and jackets slung on their left shoulder; women in
kerchiefs of orange and crimson. Barelegged boys sit upon the parapet,
dangling their feet above the rising tide. A hawker passes, balancing a
basket full of live and crawling crabs. Barges filled with Brenta water
or Mirano wine take up their station at the neighbouring steps, and
then ensues a mighty splashing and hurrying to and fro of men with tubs
upon their heads. The brawny fellows in the wine-barge are red from
brows to breast with drippings of the vat. And now there is a bustle in
the quarter. A _barca_ has arrived from S. Erasmo, the island of the
market-gardens. It is piled with gourds and pumpkins, cabbages and
tomatoes, pomegranates and pears—a pyramid of gold and green and
scarlet. Brown men lift the fruit aloft, and women bending from the
pathway bargain for it. A clatter of chaffering tongues, a ring of
coppers, a Babel of hoarse sea-voices, proclaim the sharpness of the
struggle. When the quarter has been served, the boat sheers off
diminished in its burden. Boys and girls are left seasoning their
polenta with a slice of _zucca_, while the mothers of a score of
families go pattering up yonder courtyard with the material for their
husbands' supper in their handkerchiefs. Across the canal, or more
correctly the _Rio_, opens a wide grass-grown court. It is lined on the
right hand by a row of poor dwellings, swarming with gondoliers'
children. A garden wall runs along the other side, over which I can see
pomegranate-trees in fruit and pergolas of vines. Far beyond are more
low houses, and then the sky, swept with sea-breezes, and the masts of
an ocean-going ship against the dome and turrets of Palladio's
Redentore.

This is my home. By day it is as lively as a scene in _Masaniello_. By
night, after nine o'clock, the whole stir of the quarter has subsided.
Far away I hear the bell of some church tell the hours. But no noise
disturbs my rest, unless 257perhaps a belated gondolier moors his boat
beneath the window. My one maid, Catina, sings at her work the whole
day through. My gondolier, Francesco, acts as valet. He wakes me in the
morning, opens the shutters, brings sea-water for my bath, and takes
his orders for the day. 'Will it do for Chioggia, Francesco?'
'Sissignore! The Signorino has set off in his _sandolo_ already with
Antonio. The Signora is to go with us in the gondola.' 'Then get three
more men, Francesco, and see that all of them can sing.'

III.—TO CHIOGGIA WITH OAR AND SAIL

The _sandolo_ is a boat shaped like the gondola, but smaller and
lighter, without benches, and without the high steel prow or _ferro_
which distinguishes the gondola. The gunwale is only just raised above
the water, over which the little craft skims with a rapid bounding
motion, affording an agreeable variation from the stately swanlike
movement of the gondola. In one of these boats—called by him the
_Fisolo_ or Seamew—my friend Eustace had started with Antonio,
intending to row the whole way to Chioggia, or, if the breeze favoured,
to hoist a sail and help himself along. After breakfast, when the crew
for my gondola had been assembled, Francesco and I followed with the
Signora. It was one of those perfect mornings which occur as a respite
from broken weather, when the air is windless and the light falls soft
through haze on the horizon. As we broke into the lagoon behind the
Redentore, the islands in front of us, S. Spirito, Poveglia, Malamocco,
seemed as though they were just lifted from the sea-line. The
Euganeans, far away to westward, were bathed in mist, and almost blent
with the blue sky. Our four rowers put their backs into their work; and
soon we reached the port of Malamocco, where a breeze from the
258Adriatic caught us sideways for a while. This is the largest of the
breaches in the Lidi, or raised sand-reefs, which protect Venice from
the sea: it affords an entrance to vessels of draught like the steamers
of the Peninsular and Oriental Company. We crossed the dancing wavelets
of the port; but when we passed under the lee of Pelestrina, the breeze
failed, and the lagoon was once again a sheet of undulating glass. At
S. Pietro on this island a halt was made to give the oarsmen wine, and
here we saw the women at their cottage doorways making lace. The old
lace industry of Venice has recently been revived. From Burano and
Pelestrina cargoes of hand-made imitations of the ancient fabrics are
sent at intervals to Jesurun's magazine at S. Marco. He is the chief
_impresario_ of the trade, employing hundreds of hands, and speculating
for a handsome profit in the foreign market on the price he gives his
workwomen.

Now we are well lost in the lagoons—Venice no longer visible behind;
the Alps and Euganeans shrouded in a noonday haze; the lowlands at the
mouth of Brenta marked by clumps of trees ephemerally faint in silver
silhouette against the filmy, shimmering horizon. Form and colour have
disappeared in light-irradiated vapour of an opal hue. And yet
instinctively we know that we are not at sea; the different quality of
the water, the piles emerging here and there above the surface, the
suggestion of coast-lines scarcely felt in this infinity of lustre, all
remind us that our voyage is confined to the charmed limits of an
inland lake. At length the jutting headland of Pelestrina was reached.
We broke across the Porto di Chioggia, and saw Chioggia itself ahead—a
huddled mass of houses low upon the water. One by one, as we rowed
steadily, the fishing-boats passed by, emerging from their harbour for
a twelve hours' cruise upon the open sea. In a long line they came,
with variegated sails of orange, red, and 259saffron, curiously
chequered at the corners, and cantled with devices in contrasted tints.
A little land-breeze carried them forward. The lagoon reflected their
deep colours till they reached the port. Then, slightly swerving
eastward on their course, but still in single file, they took the sea
and scattered, like beautiful bright-plumaged birds, who from a
streamlet float into a lake, and find their way at large according as
each wills.

The Signorino and Antonio, though want of wind obliged them to row the
whole way from Venice, had reached Chioggia an hour before, and stood
waiting to receive us on the quay. It is a quaint town this Chioggia,
which has always lived a separate life from that of Venice. Language
and race and customs have held the two populations apart from those
distant years when Genoa and the Republic of S. Mark fought their duel
to the death out in the Chioggian harbours, down to these days, when
your Venetian gondolier will tell you that the Chioggoto loves his pipe
more than his _donna_ or his wife. The main canal is lined with
substantial palaces, attesting to old wealth and comfort. But from
Chioggia, even more than from Venice, the tide of modern luxury and
traffic has retreated. The place is left to fishing folk and builders
of the fishing craft, whose wharves still form the liveliest quarter.
Wandering about its wide deserted courts and _calli_, we feel the
spirit of the decadent Venetian nobility. Passages from Goldoni's and
Casanova's Memoirs occur to our memory. It seems easy to realise what
they wrote about the dishevelled gaiety and lawless license of Chioggia
in the days of powder, sword-knot, and _soprani_. Baffo walks beside us
in hypocritical composure of bag-wig and senatorial dignity, whispering
unmentionable sonnets in his dialect of _Xe_ and _Ga_. Somehow or
another that last dotage of S. Mark's decrepitude is more recoverable
by our fancy than the heroism of Pisani in the fourteenth century.
260From his prison in blockaded Venice the great admiral was sent forth
on a forlorn hope, and blocked victorious Doria here with boats on
which the nobles of the Golden Book had spent their fortunes. Pietro
Doria boasted that with his own hands he would bridle the bronze horses
of S. Mark. But now he found himself between the navy of Carlo Zeno in
the Adriatic and the flotilla led by Vittore Pisani across the lagoon.
It was in vain that the Republic of S. George strained every nerve to
send him succour from the Ligurian sea; in vain that the lords of Padua
kept opening communications with him from the mainland. From the 1st of
January 1380 till the 21st of June the Venetians pressed the blockade
ever closer, grappling their foemen in a grip that if relaxed one
moment would have hurled him at their throats. The long and breathless
struggle ended in the capitulation at Chioggia of what remained of
Doria's forty-eight galleys and fourteen thousand men.

These great deeds are far away and hazy. The brief sentences of
mediæval annalists bring them less near to us than the _chroniques
scandaleuses_ of good-for-nothing scoundrels, whose vulgar adventures
might be revived at the present hour with scarce a change of setting.
Such is the force of _intimité_ in literature. And yet Baffo and
Casanova are as much of the past as Doria and Pisani. It is only
perhaps that the survival of decadence in all we see around us, forms a
fitting framework for our recollections of their vividly described
corruption.

Not far from the landing-place a balustraded bridge of ample breadth
and large bravura manner spans the main canal. Like everything at
Chioggia, it is dirty and has fallen from its first estate. Yet neither
time nor injury can obliterate style or wholly degrade marble. Hard by
the bridge there are two rival inns. At one of these we ordered a
seadinner—crabs, 261cuttlefishes, soles, and turbots—which we ate at a
table in the open air. Nothing divided us from the street except a row
of Japanese privet-bushes in hooped tubs. Our banquet soon assumed a
somewhat unpleasant similitude to that of Dives; for the Chioggoti, in
all stages of decrepitude and squalor, crowded round to beg for
scraps—indescribable old women, enveloped in their own petticoats
thrown over their heads; girls hooded with sombre black mantles; old
men wrinkled beyond recognition by their nearest relatives; jabbering,
half-naked boys; slow, slouching fishermen with clay pipes in their
mouths and philosophical acceptance on their sober foreheads.

That afternoon the gondola and sandolo were lashed together side by
side. Two sails were raised, and in this lazy fashion we stole
homewards, faster or slower according as the breeze freshened or
slackened, landing now and then on islands, sauntering along the
sea-walls which bulwark Venice from the Adriatic, and singing—those at
least of us who had the power to sing. Four of our Venetians had
trained voices and memories of inexhaustible music. Over the level
water, with the ripple plashing at our keel, their songs went abroad,
and mingled with the failing day. The barcaroles and serenades peculiar
to Venice were, of course, in harmony with the occasion. But some
transcripts from classical operas were even more attractive, through
the dignity with which these men invested them. By the peculiarity of
their treatment the _recitativo_ of the stage assumed a solemn
movement, marked in rhythm, which removed it from the commonplace into
antiquity, and made me understand how cultivated music may pass back by
natural, unconscious transition into the realm of popular melody.

The sun sank, not splendidly, but quietly in banks of clouds above the
Alps. Stars came out, uncertainly at first, 262and then in strength,
reflected on the sea. The men of the Dogana watch-boat challenged us
and let us pass. Madonna's lamp was twinkling from her shrine upon the
harbour-pile. The city grew before us. Stealing into Venice in that
calm—stealing silently and shadowlike, with scarce a ruffle of the
water, the masses of the town emerging out of darkness into twilight,
till San Giorgio's gun boomed with a flash athwart our stern, and the
gas-lamps of the Piazzetta swam into sight; all this was like a long
enchanted chapter of romance. And now the music of our men had sunk to
one faint whistling from Eustace of tunes in harmony with whispers at
the prow.

Then came the steps of the Palazzo Venier and the deep-scented darkness
of the garden. As we passed through to supper, I plucked a spray of
yellow Banksia rose, and put it in my buttonhole. The dew was on its
burnished leaves, and evening had drawn forth its perfume.

IV.—MORNING RAMBLES

A story is told of Poussin, the French painter, that when he was asked
why he would not stay in Venice, he replied, 'If I stay here, I shall
become a colourist!' A somewhat similar tale is reported of a
fashionable English decorator. While on a visit to friends in Venice,
he avoided every building which contains a Tintoretto, averring that
the sight of Tintoretto's pictures would injure his carefully trained
taste. It is probable that neither anecdote is strictly true. Yet there
is a certain epigrammatic point in both; and I have often speculated
whether even Venice could have so warped the genius of Poussin as to
shed one ray of splendour on his canvases, or whether even Tintoretto
could have so 263sublimed the prophet of Queen Anne as to make him add
dramatic passion to a London drawing-room. Anyhow, it is exceedingly
difficult to escape from colour in the air of Venice, or from
Tintoretto in her buildings. Long, delightful mornings may be spent in
the enjoyment of the one and the pursuit of the other by folk who have
no classical or pseudo-mediæval theories to oppress them.

Tintoretto's house, though changed, can still be visited. It formed
part of the Fondamenta dei Mori, so called from having been the quarter
assigned to Moorish traders in Venice. A spirited carving of a turbaned
Moor leading a camel charged with merchandise, remains above the
waterline of a neighbouring building; and all about the crumbling walls
sprout flowering weeds—samphire and snapdragon and the spiked
campanula, which shoots a spire of sea-blue stars from chinks of
Istrian stone.

The house stands opposite the Church of Santa Maria dell' Orto, where
Tintoretto was buried, and where four of his chief masterpieces are to
be seen. This church, swept and garnished, is a triumph of modern
Italian restoration. They have contrived to make it as commonplace as
human ingenuity could manage. Yet no malice of ignorant industry can
obscure the treasures it contains—the pictures of Cima, Gian Bellini,
Palma, and the four Tintorettos, which form its crowning glory. Here
the master may be studied in four of his chief moods: as the painter of
tragic passion and movement, in the huge 'Last Judgment;' as the
painter of impossibilities, in the 'Vision of Moses upon Sinai;' as the
painter of purity and tranquil pathos, in the 'Miracle of S. Agnes;' as
the painter of Biblical history brought home to daily life, in the
'Presentation of the Virgin.' Without leaving the Madonna dell' Orto, a
student can explore his genius in all its depth and breadth; comprehend
the enthusiasm he 264excites in those who seek, as the essentials of
art, imaginative boldness and sincerity; understand what is meant by
adversaries who maintain that, after all, Tintoretto was but an
inspired Gustave Doré. Between that quiet canvas of the 'Presentation,'
so modest in its cool greys and subdued gold, and the tumult of flying,
running ascending figures in the 'Judgment,' what an interval there is!
How strangely the white lamb-like maiden, kneeling beside her lamb in
the picture of S. Agnes, contrasts with the dusky gorgeousness of the
Hebrew women despoiling themselves of jewels for the golden calf!
Comparing these several manifestations of creative power, we feel
ourselves in the grasp of a painter who was essentially a poet, one for
whom his art was the medium for expressing before all things thought
and passion. Each picture is executed in the manner suited to its tone
of feeling, the key of its conception.

Elsewhere than in the Madonna dell' Orto there are more distinguished
single examples of Tintoretto's realising faculty. The 'Last Supper' in
San Giorgio, for instance, and the 'Adoration of the Shepherds' in the
Scuola di San Rocco illustrate his unique power of presenting sacred
history in a novel, romantic framework of familiar things. The
commonplace circumstances of ordinary life have been employed to
portray in the one case a lyric of mysterious splendour; in the other,
an idyll of infinite sweetness. Divinity shines through the rafters of
that upper chamber, where round a low large table the Apostles are
assembled in a group translated from the social customs of the
painter's days. Divinity is shed upon the straw-spread manger, where
Christ lies sleeping in the loft, with shepherds crowding through the
room beneath.

A studied contrast between the simplicity and repose of the central
figure and the tumult of passions in the multitude 265around, may be
observed in the 'Miracle of S. Agnes.' It is this which gives dramatic
vigour to the composition. But the same effect is carried to its
highest fulfilment, with even a loftier beauty, in the episode of
Christ before the judgment-seat of Pilate, at San Rocco. Of all
Tintoretto's religious pictures, that is the most profoundly felt, the
most majestic. No other artist succeeded as he has here succeeded in
presenting to us God incarnate. For this Christ is not merely the just
man, innocent, silent before his accusers. The stationary, white-draped
figure, raised high above the agitated crowd, with tranquil forehead
slightly bent, facing his perplexed and fussy judge, is more than man.
We cannot say perhaps precisely why he is divine. But Tintoretto has
made us feel that he is. In other words, his treatment of the high
theme chosen by him has been adequate.

We must seek the Scuola di San Rocco for examples of Tintoretto's
liveliest imagination. Without ceasing to be Italian in his attention
to harmony and grace, he far exceeded the masters of his nation in the
power of suggesting what is weird, mysterious, upon the borderland of
the grotesque. And of this quality there are three remarkable instances
in the Scuola. No one but Tintoretto could have evoked the fiend in his
'Temptation of Christ.' It is an indescribable hermaphroditic genius,
the genius of carnal fascination, with outspread downy rose-plumed
wings, and flaming bracelets on the full but sinewy arms, who kneels
and lifts aloft great stones, smiling entreatingly to the sad, grey
Christ seated beneath a rugged pent-house of the desert. No one again
but Tintoretto could have dashed the hot lights of that fiery sunset in
such quivering flakes upon the golden flesh of Eve, half hidden among
laurels, as she stretches forth the fruit of the Fall to shrinking
Adam. No one but Tintoretto, till we come to Blake, could have imagined
yonder Jonah, summoned 266by the beck of God from the whale's belly.
The monstrous fish rolls over in the ocean, blowing portentous vapour
from his trump-shaped nostril. The prophet's beard descends upon his
naked breast in hoary ringlets to the girdle. He has forgotten the past
peril of the deep, although the whale's jaws yawn around him. Between
him and the outstretched finger of Jehovah calling him again to life,
there runs a spark of unseen spiritual electricity.

To comprehend Tintoretto's touch upon the pastoral idyll we must turn
our steps to San Giorgio again, and pace those meadows by the running
river in company with his Manna-Gatherers. Or we may seek the
Accademia, and notice how he here has varied the 'Temptation of Adam by
Eve,' choosing a less tragic motive of seduction than the one so
powerfully rendered at San Rocco. Or in the Ducal Palace we may take
our station, hour by hour, before the 'Marriage of Bacchus and
Ariadne.' It is well to leave the very highest achievements of art
untouched by criticism, undescribed. And in this picture we have the
most perfect of all modern attempts to realise an antique myth—more
perfect than Raphael's 'Galatea,' or Titian's 'Meeting of Bacchus with
Ariadne,' or Botticelli's 'Birth of Venus from the Sea.' It may suffice
to marvel at the slight effect which melodies so powerful and so direct
as these produce upon the ordinary public. Sitting, as is my wont, one
Sunday morning, opposite the 'Bacchus,' four Germans with a cicerone
sauntered by. The subject was explained to them. They waited an
appreciable space of time. Then the youngest opened his lips and spake:
'Bacchus war der Wein-Gott.' And they all moved heavily away. _Bos
locutus est_. 'Bacchus was the wine-god!' This, apparently, is what a
picture tells to one man. To another it presents divine harmonies,
perceptible indeed in nature, but here by the painter-poet for the
first time brought 267together and cadenced in a work of art. For
another it is perhaps the hieroglyph of pent-up passions and desired
impossibilities. For yet another it may only mean the unapproachable
inimitable triumph of consummate craft.

Tintoretto, to be rightly understood, must be sought all over Venice—in
the church as well as the Scuola di San Rocco; in the 'Temptation of S.
Anthony' at S. Trovaso no less than in the Temptations of Eve and
Christ; in the decorative pomp of the Sala del Senato, and in the
Paradisal vision of the Sala del Gran Consiglio. Yet, after all, there
is one of his most characteristic moods, to appreciate which fully we
return to the Madonna dell' Orto. I have called him 'the painter of
impossibilities.' At rare moments he rendered them possible by sheer
imaginative force. If we wish to realise this phase of his creative
power, and to measure our own subordination to his genius in its most
hazardous enterprise, we must spend much time in the choir of this
church. Lovers of art who mistrust this play of the audacious
fancy—aiming at sublimity in supersensual regions, sometimes attaining
to it by stupendous effort or authentic revelation, not seldom sinking
to the verge of bathos, and demanding the assistance of interpretative
sympathy in the spectator—such men will not take the point of view
required of them by Tintoretto in his boldest flights, in the 'Worship
of the Golden Calf' and in the 'Destruction of the World by Water.' It
is for them to ponder well the flying archangel with the scales of
judgment in his hand, and the seraph-charioted Jehovah enveloping Moses
upon Sinai in lightnings.

The gondola has had a long rest. Were Francesco but a little more
impatient, he might be wondering what had become of the padrone. I bid
him turn, and we are soon gliding into the Sacca della Misericordia.
This is a protected float, where the wood which comes from Cadore and
the hills of the 268Ampezzo is stored in spring. Yonder square white
house, standing out to sea, fronting Murano and the Alps, they call the
Oasa degli Spiriti. No one cares to inhabit it; for here, in old days,
it was the wont of the Venetians to lay their dead for a night's rest
before their final journey to the graveyard of S. Michele. So many
generations of dead folk had made that house their inn, that it is now
no fitting home for living men. San Michele is the island close before
Murano, where the Lombardi built one of their most romantically
graceful churches of pale Istrian stone, and where the Campo Santo has
for centuries received the dead into its oozy clay. The cemetery is at
present undergoing restoration. Its state of squalor and abandonment to
cynical disorder makes one feel how fitting for Italians would be the
custom of cremation. An island in the lagoons devoted to funeral pyres
is a solemn and ennobling conception. This graveyard, with its ruinous
walls, its mangy riot of unwholesome weeds, its corpses festering in
slime beneath neglected slabs in hollow chambers, and the mephitic wash
of poisoned waters that surround it, inspires the horror of disgust.

The morning has not lost its freshness. Antelao and Tofana, guarding
the vale above Cortina, show faint streaks of snow upon their amethyst.
Little clouds hang in the still autumn sky. There are men dredging for
shrimps and crabs through shoals uncovered by the ebb. Nothing can be
lovelier, more resting to eyes tired with pictures than this tranquil,
sunny expanse of the lagoon. As we round the point of the Bersaglio,
new landscapes of island and Alp and low-lying mainland move into sight
at every slow stroke of the oar. A luggage-train comes lumbering along
the railway bridge, puffing white smoke into the placid blue. Then we
strike down Cannaregio, and I muse upon processions of kings and
generals and noble strangers, entering Venice by 269this water-path
from Mestre, before the Austrians built their causeway for the trains.
Some of the rare scraps of fresco upon house fronts, still to be seen
in Venice, are left in Cannaregio. They are chiaroscuro allegories in a
bold bravura manner of the sixteenth century. From these and from a few
rosy fragments on the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, the Fabbriche Nuove, and
precious fading figures in a certain courtyard near San Stefano, we
form some notion how Venice looked when all her palaces were painted.
Pictures by Gentile Bellini, Mansueti, and Carpaccio help the fancy in
this work of restoration. And here and there, in back canals, we come
across coloured sections of old buildings, capped by true Venetian
chimneys, which for a moment seem to realise our dream.

A morning with Tintoretto might well be followed by a morning with
Carpaccio or Bellini. But space is wanting in these pages. Nor would it
suit the manner of this medley to hunt the Lombardi through palaces and
churches, pointing out their singularities of violet and yellow
panellings in marble, the dignity of their wide-opened arches, or the
delicacy of their shallow chiselled traceries in cream-white Istrian
stone. It is enough to indicate the goal of many a pleasant pilgrimage:
warrior angels of Vivarini and Basaiti hidden in a dark chapel of the
Frari; Fra Francesco's fantastic orchard of fruits and flowers in
distant S. Francesco della Vigna; the golden Gian Bellini in S.
Zaccaria; Palma's majestic S. Barbara in S. Maria Formosa; San Giobbe's
wealth of sculptured frieze and floral scroll; the Ponte di Paradiso,
with its Gothic arch; the painted plates in the Museo Civico; and
palace after palace, loved for some quaint piece of tracery, some
moulding full of mediæval symbolism, some fierce impossible Renaissance
freak of fancy.

Bather than prolong this list, I will tell a story which drew 270me one
day past the Public Gardens to the metropolitan Church of Venice, San
Pietro di Castello. The novella is related by Bandello. It has, as will
be noticed, points of similarity to that of 'Romeo and Juliet.'

V.—A VENETIAN NOVELLA

At the time when Carpaccio and Gentile Bellini were painting those
handsome youths in tight jackets, parti-coloured hose, and little round
caps placed awry upon their shocks of well-combed hair, there lived in
Venice two noblemen, Messer Pietro and Messer Paolo, whose palaces
fronted each other on the Grand Canal. Messer Paolo was a widower, with
one married daughter, and an only son of twenty years or thereabouts,
named Gerardo. Messer Pietro's wife was still living; and this couple
had but one child, a daughter, called Elena, of exceeding beauty, aged
fourteen. Gerardo, as is the wont of gallants, was paying his addresses
to a certain lady; and nearly every day he had to cross the Grand Canal
in his gondola, and to pass beneath the house of Elena on his way to
visit his Dulcinea; for this lady lived some distance up a little canal
on which the western side of Messer Pietro's palace looked.

Now it so happened that at the very time when the story opens, Messer
Pietro's wife fell ill and died, and Elena was left alone at home with
her father and her old nurse. Across the little canal of which I spoke
there dwelt another nobleman, with four daughters, between the years of
seventeen and twenty-one. Messer Pietro, desiring to provide amusement
for poor little Elena, besought this gentleman that his daughters might
come on feast-days to play with her. For you must know that, except on
festivals of the Church, the custom of Venice required that gentlewomen
should remain 271closely shut within the private apartments of their
dwellings. His request was readily granted; and on the next feast-day
the five girls began to play at ball together for forfeits in the great
saloon, which opened with its row of Gothic arches and balustraded
balcony upon the Grand Canal. The four sisters, meanwhile, had other
thoughts than for the game. One or other of them, and sometimes three
together, would let the ball drop, and run to the balcony to gaze upon
their gallants, passing up and down in gondolas below; and then they
would drop flowers or ribands for tokens. Which negligence of theirs
annoyed Elena much; for she thought only of the game. Wherefore she
scolded them in childish wise, and one of them made answer, 'Elena, if
you only knew how pleasant it is to play as we are playing on this
balcony, you would not care so much for ball and forfeits!'

On one of those feast-days the four sisters were prevented from keeping
their little friend company. Elena, with nothing to do, and feeling
melancholy, leaned upon the window-sill which overlooked the narrow
canal. And it chanced that just then Gerardo, on his way to Dulcinea,
went by; and Elena looked down at him, as she had seen those sisters
look at passers-by. Gerardo caught her eye, and glances passed between
them, and Gerardo's gondolier, bending from the poop, said to his
master, 'O master! methinks that gentle maiden is better worth your
wooing than Dulcinea.' Gerardo pretended to pay no heed to these words;
but after rowing a little way, he bade the man turn, and they went
slowly back beneath the window. This time Elena, thinking to play the
game which her four friends had played, took from her hair a clove
carnation and let it fall close to Gerardo on the cushion of the
gondola. He raised the flower and put it to his lips, acknowledging the
courtesy with a grave bow. But the perfume of the clove and the beauty
of Elena in that moment 272took possession of his heart together, and
straightway he forgot Dulcinea.

As yet he knew not who Elena was. Nor is this wonderful; for the
daughters of Venetian nobles were but rarely seen or spoken of. But the
thought of her haunted him awake and sleeping; and every feast-day,
when there was the chance of seeing her, he rowed his gondola beneath
her windows. And there she appeared to him in company with her four
friends; the five girls clustering together like sister roses beneath
the pointed windows of the Gothic balcony. Elena, on her side, had no
thought of love; for of love she had heard no one speak. But she took
pleasure in the game those friends had taught her, of leaning from the
balcony to watch Gerardo. He meanwhile grew love-sick and impatient,
wondering how he might declare his passion. Until one day it happened
that, talking through a lane or _calle_ which skirted Messer Pietro'a
palace, he caught sight of Elena's nurse, who was knocking at the door,
returning from some shopping she had made. This nurse had been his own
nurse in childhood; therefore he remembered her, and cried aloud,
'Nurse, Nurse!' But the old woman did not hear him, and passed into the
house and shut the door behind her. Whereupon Gerardo, greatly moved,
still called to her, and when he reached the door, began to knock upon
it violently. And whether it was the agitation of finding himself at
last so near the wish of his heart, or whether the pains of waiting for
his love had weakened him, I know not; but, while he knocked, his
senses left him, and he fell fainting in the doorway. Then the nurse
recognised the youth to whom she had given suck, and brought him into
the courtyard by the help of handmaidens, and Elena came down and gazed
upon him. The house was now full of bustle, and Messer Pietro heard the
noise, and seeing the son of his neighbour in so piteous a plight, he
caused Gerardo 273to be laid upon a bed. But for all they could do with
him, he recovered not from his swoon. And after a while force was that
they should place him in a gondola and ferry him across to his father's
house. The nurse went with him, and informed Messer Paolo of what had
happened. Doctors were sent for, and the whole family gathered round
Gerardo's bed. After a while he revived a little; and thinking himself
still upon the doorstep of Pietro's palace, called again, 'Nurse,
Nurse!' She was near at hand, and would have spoken to him. But while
he summoned his senses to his aid, he became gradually aware of his own
kinsfolk and dissembled the secret of his grief. They beholding him in
better cheer, departed on their several ways, and the nurse still sat
alone beside him. Then he explained to her what he had at heart, and
how he was in love with a maiden whom he had seen on feast-days in the
house of Messer Pietro. But still he knew not Elena's name; and she,
thinking it impossible that such a child had inspired this passion,
began to marvel which of the four sisters it was Gerardo loved. Then
they appointed the next Sunday, when all the five girls should be
together, for Gerardo by some sign, as he passed beneath the window, to
make known to the old nurse his lady.

Elena, meanwhile, who had watched Gerardo lying still and pale in swoon
beneath her on the pavement of the palace, felt the stirring of a new
unknown emotion in her soul. When Sunday came, she devised excuses for
keeping her four friends away, bethinking her that she might see him
once again alone, and not betray the agitation which she dreaded. This
ill suited the schemes of the nurse, who nevertheless was forced to be
content. But after dinner, seeing how restless was the girl, and how
she came and went, and ran a thousand times to the balcony, the nurse
began to wonder whether Elena herself were not in love with some one.
So she feigned to 274sleep, but placed herself within sight of the
window. And soon Gerardo came by in his gondola; and Elena, who was
prepared, threw to him her nosegay. The watchful nurse had risen, and
peeping behind the girl's shoulder, saw at a glance how matters stood.
Thereupon she began to scold her charge, and say, 'Is this a fair and
comely thing, to stand all day at balconies and throw flowers at
passers-by? Woe to you if your father should come to know of this! He
would make you wish yourself among the dead!' Elena, sore troubled at
her nurse's rebuke, turned and threw her arms about her neck, and
called her 'Nanna!' as the wont is of Venetian children. Then she told
the old woman how she had learned that game from the four sisters, and
how she thought it was not different, but far more pleasant, than the
game of forfeits; whereupon her nurse spoke gravely, explaining what
love is, and how that love should lead to marriage, and bidding her
search her own heart if haply she could choose Gerardo for her husband.
There was no reason, as she knew, why Messer Paolo's son should not
mate with Messer Pietro's daughter. But being a romantic creature, as
many women are, she resolved to bring the match about in secret.

Elena took little time to reflect, but told her nurse that she was
willing, if Gerardo willed it too, to have him for her husband. Then
went the nurse and made the young man know how matters stood, and
arranged with him a day, when Messer Pietro should be in the Council of
the Pregadi, and the servants of the palace otherwise employed, for him
to come and meet his Elena. A glad man was Gerardo, nor did he wait to
think how better it would be to ask the hand of Elena in marriage from
her father. But when the day arrived, he sought the nurse, and she took
him to a chamber in the palace, where there stood an image of the
Blessed Virgin. Elena was there, pale and timid; and when the lovers
clasped 275hands, neither found many words to say. But the nurse bade
them take heart, and leading them before Our Lady, joined their hands,
and made Gerardo place his ring on his bride's finger. After this
fashion were Gerardo and Elena wedded. And for some while, by the
assistance of the nurse, they dwelt together in much love and solace,
meeting often as occasion offered.

Messer Paolo, who knew nothing of these things, took thought meanwhile
for his son's career. It was the season when the Signiory of Venice
sends a fleet of galleys to Beirut with merchandise; and the noblemen
may bid for the hiring of a ship, and charge it with wares, and send
whomsoever they list as factor in their interest. One of these galleys,
then, Messer Paolo engaged, and told his son that he had appointed him
to journey with it and increase their wealth. 'On thy return, my son,'
he said, 'we will bethink us of a wife for thee.' Gerardo, when he
heard these words, was sore troubled, and first he told his father
roundly that he would not go, and flew off in the twilight to pour out
his perplexities to Elena. But she, who was prudent and of gentle soul,
besought him to obey his father in this thing, to the end, moreover,
that, having done his will and increased his wealth, he might
afterwards unfold the story of their secret marriage. To these good
counsels, though loth, Gerardo consented. His father was overjoyed at
his son's repentance. The galley was straightway laden with
merchandise, and Gerardo set forth on his voyage.

The trip to Beirut and back lasted usually six months or at the most
seven. Now when Gerardo had been some six months away, Messer Pietro,
noticing how fair his daughter was, and how she had grown into
womanhood, looked about him for a husband for her. When he had found a
youth suitable in birth and wealth and years, he called for Elena,
276and told her that the day had been appointed for her marriage. She,
alas! knew not what to answer. She feared to tell her father that she
was already married, for she knew not whether this would please
Gerardo. For the same reason she dreaded to throw herself upon the
kindness of Messer Paolo. Nor was her nurse of any help in counsel; for
the old woman repented her of what she had done, and had good cause to
believe that, even if the marriage with Gerardo were accepted by the
two fathers, they would punish her for her own part in the affair.
Therefore she bade Elena wait on fortune, and hinted to her that, if
the worst came to the worst, no one need know she had been wedded with
the ring to Gerardo. Such weddings, you must know, were binding; but
till they had been blessed by the Church, they had not taken the force
of a religious sacrament. And this is still the case in Italy among the
common folk, who will say of a man, 'Si, è ammogliato; ma il matrimonio
non è stato benedetto.' 'Yes, he has taken a wife, but the marriage has
not yet been blessed.'

So the days flew by in doubt and sore distress for Elena. Then on the
night before her wedding, she felt that she could bear this life no
longer. But having no poison, and being afraid to pierce her bosom with
a knife, she lay down on her bed alone, and tried to die by holding in
her breath. A mortal swoon came over her; her senses fled; the life in
her remained suspended. And when her nurse came next morning to call
her, she found poor Elena cold as a corpse. Messer Pietro and all the
household rushed, at the nurse's cries, into the room, and they all saw
Elena stretched dead upon her bed undressed. Physicians were called,
who made theories to explain the cause of death. But all believed that
she was really dead, beyond all help of art or medicine. Nothing
remained but to carry her to church for burial instead of marriage.
Therefore, that very evening, a funeral procession 277was formed, which
moved by torchlight up the Grand Canal, along the Riva, past the blank
walls of the Arsenal, to the Campo before San Pietro in Castello. Elena
lay beneath the black felze in one gondola, with a priest beside her
praying, and other boats followed bearing mourners. Then they laid her
in a marble chest outside the church, and all departed, still with
torches burning, to their homes.

Now it so fell out that upon that very evening Gerardo's galley had
returned from Syria, and was anchoring within the port of Lido, which
looks across to the island of Castello. It was the gentle custom of
Venice at that time that, when a ship arrived from sea, the friends of
those on board at once came out to welcome them, and take and give the
news. Therefore many noble youths and other citizens were on the deck
of Gerardo's galley, making merry with him over the safe conduct of his
voyage. Of one of these he asked, 'Whose is yonder funeral procession
returning from San Pietro?' The young man made answer, 'Alas, for poor
Elena, Messer Pietro's daughter! She should have been married this day.
But death took her, and to-night they buried her in the marble monument
outside the church.' A woeful man was Gerardo, hearing suddenly this
news, and knowing what his dear wife must have suffered ere she died.
Yet he restrained himself, daring not to disclose his anguish, and
waited till his friends had left the galley. Then he called to him the
captain of the oarsmen, who was his friend, and unfolded to him all the
story of his love and sorrow, and said that he must go that night and
see his wife once more, if even he should have to break her tomb. The
captain tried to dissuade him, but in vain. Seeing him so obstinate, he
resolved not to desert Gerardo. The two men took one of the galley's
boats, and rowed together toward San Pietro. It was past midnight when
they reached the Campo and broke the marble sepulchre 278asunder.
Pushing back its lid, Gerardo descended into the grave and abandoned
himself upon the body of his Elena. One who had seen them at that
moment could not well have said which of the two was dead and which was
living—Elena or her husband. Meantime the captain of the oarsmen,
fearing lest the watch (set by the Masters of the Night to keep the
peace of Venice) might arrive, was calling on Gerardo to come back.
Gerardo heeded him no whit. But at the last, compelled by his
entreaties, and as it were astonied, he arose, bearing his wife's
corpse in his arms, and carried her clasped against his bosom to the
boat, and laid her therein, and sat down by her side and kissed her
frequently, and suffered not his friend's remonstrances. Force was for
the captain, having brought himself into this scrape, that he should
now seek refuge by the nearest way from justice. Therefore he hoved
gently from the bank, and plied his oar, and brought the gondola apace
into the open waters. Gerardo still clasped Elena, dying husband by
dead wife. But the sea-breeze freshened towards daybreak; and the
captain, looking down upon that pair, and bringing to their faces the
light of his boat's lantern, judged their case not desperate at all. On
Elena's cheek there was a flush of life less deadly even than the
pallor of Gerardo's forehead. Thereupon the good man called aloud, and
Gerardo started from his grief; and both together they chafed the hands
and feet of Elena; and, the sea-breeze aiding with its saltness, they
awoke in her the spark of life.

Dimly burned the spark. But Gerardo, being aware of it, became a man
again. Then, having taken counsel with the captain, both resolved to
bear her to that brave man's mother's house. A bed was soon made ready,
and food was brought; and after due time, she lifted up her face and
knew Gerardo. The peril of the grave was past, but thought had now to
be 279taken for the future. Therefore Gerardo, leaving his wife to the
captain's mother, rowed back to the galley and prepared to meet his
father. With good store of merchandise and with great gains from his
traffic, he arrived in that old palace on the Grand Canal. Then having
opened to Messer Paolo the matters of his journey, and shown him how he
had fared, and set before him tables of disbursements and receipts, he
seized the moment of his father's gladness. 'Father,' he said, and as
he spoke he knelt upon his knees, 'Father, I bring you not good store
of merchandise and bags of gold alone; I bring you also a wedded wife,
whom I have saved this night from death.' And when the old man's
surprise was quieted, he told him the whole story. Now Messer Paolo,
desiring no better than that his son should wed the heiress of his
neighbour, and knowing well that Messer Pietro would make great joy
receiving back his daughter from the grave, bade Gerardo in haste take
rich apparel and clothe Elena therewith, and fetch her home. These
things were swiftly done; and after evenfall Messer Pietro was bidden
to grave business in his neighbour's palace. With heavy heart he came,
from a house of mourning to a house of gladness. But there, at the
banquet-table's head he saw his dead child Elena alive, and at her side
a husband. And when the whole truth had been declared, he not only
kissed and embraced the pair who knelt before him, but of his goodness
forgave the nurse, who in her turn came trembling to his feet. Then
fell there joy and bliss in overmeasure that night upon both palaces of
the Canal Grande. And with the morrow the Church blessed the spousals
which long since had been on both sides vowed and consummated.

280

VI.—ON THE LAGOONS

The mornings are spent in study, sometimes among pictures, sometimes in
the Marcian Library, or again in those vast convent chambers of the
Frari, where the archives of Venice load innumerable shelves. The
afternoons invite us to a further flight upon the water. Both sandolo
and gondola await our choice, and we may sail or row, according as the
wind and inclination tempt us.

Yonder lies San Lazzaro, with the neat red buildings of the Armenian
convent. The last oleander blossoms shine rosy pink above its walls
against the pure blue sky as we glide into the little harbour. Boats
piled with coal-black grapes block the landing-place, for the Padri are
gathering their vintage from the Lido, and their presses run with new
wine. Eustace and I have not come to revive memories of Byron—that
curious patron saint of the Armenian colony—or to inspect the
printing-press, which issues books of little value for our studies. It
is enough to pace the terrace, and linger half an hour beneath the low
broad arches of the alleys pleached with vines, through which the domes
and towers of Venice rise more beautiful by distance.

Malamocco lies considerably farther, and needs a full hour of stout
rowing to reach it. Alighting there, we cross the narrow strip of land,
and find ourselves upon the huge sea-wall—block piled on block—of
Istrian stone in tiers and ranks, with cunning breathing-places for the
waves to wreak their fury on and foam their force away in fretful
waste. The very existence of Venice may be said to depend sometimes on
these _murazzi_, which were finished at an immense cost by the Republic
in the days of its decadence. The enormous monoliths which compose them
had to be brought across the 281Adriatic in sailing vessels. Of all the
Lidi, that of Malamocco is the weakest; and here, if anywhere, the sea
might effect an entrance into the lagoon. Our gondoliers told us of
some places where the _murazzi_ were broken in a gale, or _sciroccale_,
not very long ago. Lying awake in Venice, when the wind blows hard, one
hears the sea thundering upon its sandy barrier, and blesses God for
the _murazzi_. On such a night it happened once to me to dream a dream
of Venice overwhelmed by water. I saw the billows roll across the
smooth lagoon like a gigantic Eager. The Ducal Palace crumbled, and San
Marco's domes went down. The Campanile rocked and shivered like a reed.
And all along the Grand Canal the palaces swayed helpless, tottering to
their fall, while boats piled high with men and women strove to stem
the tide, and save themselves from those impending ruins. It was a mad
dream, born of the sea's roar and Tintoretto's painting. But this
afternoon no such visions are suggested. The sea sleeps, and in the
moist autumn air we break tall branches of the seeded yellowing
samphire from hollows of the rocks, and bear them homeward in a wayward
bouquet mixed with cobs of Indian-corn.

Fusina is another point for these excursions. It lies at the mouth of
the Canal di Brenta, where the mainland ends in marsh and meadows,
intersected by broad renes. In spring the ditches bloom with
fleurs-de-lys; in autumn they take sober colouring from lilac daisies
and the delicate sea-lavender. Scores of tiny plants are turning
scarlet on the brown moist earth; and when the sun goes down behind the
Euganean hills, his crimson canopy of cloud, reflected on these
shallows, muddy shoals, and wilderness of matted weeds, converts the
common earth into a fairyland of fabulous dyes. Purple, violet, and
rose are spread around us. In front stretches the lagoon, tinted with a
pale light from the east, and beyond this 282pallid mirror shines
Venice—a long low broken line, touched with the softest roseate flush.
Ere we reach the Giudecca on our homeward way, sunset has faded. The
western skies have clad themselves in green, barred with dark
fire-rimmed clouds. The Euganean hills stand like stupendous pyramids,
Egyptian, solemn, against a lemon space on the horizon. The far reaches
of the lagoons, the Alps, and islands assume those tones of glowing
lilac which are the supreme beauty of Venetian evening. Then, at last,
we see the first lamps glitter 288on the Zattere. The quiet of the
night has come.

Words cannot be formed to express the endless varieties of Venetian
sunset. The most magnificent follow after wet stormy days, when the
west breaks suddenly into a labyrinth of fire, when chasms of clear
turquoise heavens emerge, and horns of flame are flashed to the zenith,
and unexpected splendours scale the fretted clouds, step over step,
stealing along the purple caverns till the whole dome throbs. Or,
again, after a fair day, a change of weather approaches, and high,
infinitely high, the skies are woven over with a web of
half-transparent cirrus-clouds. These in the afterglow blush crimson,
and through their rifts the depth of heaven is of a hard and gemlike
blue, and all the water turns to rose beneath them. I remember one such
evening on the way back from Torcello. We were well out at sea between
Mazzorbo and Murano. The ruddy arches overhead were reflected without
interruption in the waveless ruddy lake below. Our black boat was the
only dark spot in this sphere of splendour. We seemed to hang
suspended; and such as this, I fancied, must be the feeling of an
insect caught in the heart of a fiery-petalled rose. Yet not these
melodramatic sunsets alone are beautiful. Even more exquisite, perhaps,
are the lagoons, painted in monochrome of greys, with just one touch of
pink upon a western cloud, scattered in ripples 283here and there on
the waves below, reminding us that day has passed and evening come. And
beautiful again are the calm settings of fair weather, when sea and sky
alike are cheerful, and the topmost blades of the lagoon grass, peeping
from the shallows, glance like emeralds upon the surface. There is no
deep stirring of the spirit in a symphony of light and colour; but
purity, peace, and freshness make their way into our hearts.

VII.—AT THE LIDO

Of all these afternoon excursions, that to the Lido is most frequent.
It has two points for approach. The more distant is the little station
of San Nicoletto, at the mouth of the Porto. With an ebb-tide, the
water of the lagoon runs past the mulberry gardens of this hamlet like
a river. There is here a grove of acacia-trees, shadowy and dreamy,
above deep grass, which even an Italian summer does not wither. The
Riva is fairly broad, forming a promenade, where one may conjure up the
personages of a century ago. For San Nicoletto used to be a fashionable
resort before the other points of Lido had been occupied by
pleasure-seekers. An artist even now will select its old-world quiet,
leafy shade, and prospect through the islands of Vignole and Sant'
Erasmo to snow-touched peaks of Antelao and Tofana, rather than the
glare and bustle and extended view of Venice which its rival Sant'
Elisabetta offers.

But when we want a plunge into the Adriatic, or a stroll along smooth
sands, or a breath of genuine sea-breeze, or a handful of horned
poppies from the dunes, or a lazy half-hour's contemplation of a
limitless horizon flecked with russet sails, then we seek Sant'
Elisabetta. Our boat is left at the landing-place. We saunter across
the island and back again. 284Antonio and Francesco wait and order
wine, which we drink with them in the shade of the little _osteria's_
wall.

A certain afternoon in May I well remember, for this visit to the Lido
was marked by one of those apparitions which are as rare as they are
welcome to the artist's soul. I have always held that in our modern
life the only real equivalent for the antique mythopoeic sense—that
sense which enabled the Hellenic race to figure for themselves the
powers of earth and air, streams and forests, and the presiding genii
of places, under the forms of living human beings, is supplied by the
appearance at some felicitous moment of a man or woman who impersonates
for our imagination the essence of the beauty that environs us. It
seems, at such a fortunate moment, as though we had been waiting for
this revelation, although perchance the want of it had not been
previously felt. Our sensations and perceptions test themselves at the
touchstone of this living individuality. The keynote of the whole music
dimly sounding in our ears is struck. A melody emerges, clear in form
and excellent in rhythm. The landscapes we have painted on our brain,
no longer lack their central figure. The life proper to the complex
conditions we have studied is discovered, and every detail, judged by
this standard of vitality, falls into its right relations.

I had been musing long that day and earnestly upon the mystery of the
lagoons, their opaline transparencies of air and water, their fretful
risings and sudden subsidence into calm, the treacherousness of their
shoals, the sparkle and the splendour of their sunlight. I had asked
myself how would a Greek sculptor have personified the elemental deity
of these salt-water lakes, so different in quality from the Ægean or
Ionian sea? What would he find distinctive of their spirit? The Tritons
of these shallows must be of other form and lineage than the
fierce-eyed youth who blows his conch upon 285the curled crest of a
wave, crying aloud to his comrades, as he bears the nymph away to
caverns where the billows plunge in tideless instability.

We had picked up shells and looked for sea-horses on the Adriatic
shore. Then we returned to give our boatmen wine beneath the vine-clad
_pergola_. Four other men were there, drinking, and eating from a dish
of fried fish set upon the coarse white linen cloth. Two of them soon
rose and went away. Of the two who stayed, one was a large, middle-aged
man; the other was still young. He was tall and sinewy, but slender,
for these Venetians are rarely massive in their strength. Each limb is
equally developed by the exercise of rowing upright, bending all the
muscles to their stroke. Their bodies are elastically supple, with free
sway from the hips and a mercurial poise upon the ankle. Stefano showed
these qualities almost in exaggeration. The type in him was refined to
its artistic perfection. Moreover, he was rarely in repose, but moved
with a singular brusque grace. A black broad-brimmed hat was thrown
back upon his matted _zazzera_ of dark hair tipped with dusky brown.
This shock of hair, cut in flakes, and falling wilfully, reminded me of
the lagoon grass when it darkens in autumn upon uncovered shoals, and
sunset gilds its sombre edges. Fiery grey eyes beneath it gazed
intensely, with compulsive effluence of electricity. It was the wild
glance of a Triton. Short blonde moustache, dazzling teeth, skin
bronzed, but showing white and healthful through open front and sleeves
of lilac shirt. The dashing sparkle of this animate splendour, who
looked to me as though the sea-waves and the sun had made him in some
hour of secret and unquiet rapture, was somehow emphasised by a curious
dint dividing his square chin—a cleft that harmonised with smile on lip
and steady flame in eyes. I hardly know what effect it would have upon
a reader to compare eyes to 286opals. Yet Stefano's eyes, as they met
mine, had the vitreous intensity of opals, as though the colour of
Venetian waters were vitalised in them. This noticeable being had a
rough, hoarse voice, which, to develop the parallel with a sea-god,
might have screamed in storm or whispered raucous messages from crests
of tossing billows.

I felt, as I looked, that here, for me at least, the mythopoem of the
lagoons was humanised; the spirit of the saltwater lakes had appeared
to me; the final touch of life emergent from nature had been given. I
was satisfied; for I had seen a poem.

Then we rose, and wandered through the Jews' cemetery. It is a quiet
place, where the flat grave-stones, inscribed in Hebrew and Italian,
lie deep in Lido sand, waved over with wild grass and poppies. I would
fain believe that no neglect, but rather the fashion of this folk, had
left the monuments of generations to be thus resumed by nature. Yet,
knowing nothing of the history of this burial-ground, I dare not affirm
so much. There is one outlying piece of the cemetery which seems to
contradict my charitable interpretation. It is not far from San
Nicoletto. No enclosure marks it from the unconsecrated dunes.
Acacia-trees sprout amid the monuments, and break the tablets with
their thorny shoots upthrusting from the soil. Where patriarchs and
rabbis sleep for centuries, the fishers of the sea now wander, and
defile these habitations of the dead:

    Corruption most abhorred
Mingling itself with their renownèd ashes.


Some of the grave-stones have been used to fence the towing-path; and
one I saw, well carved with letters legible of Hebrew on fair Istrian
marble, which roofed an open drain leading from the stable of a
Christian dog.

287

VIII.—A VENETIAN RESTAURANT

At the end of a long glorious day, unhappy is that mortal whom the
Hermes of a cosmopolitan hotel, white-chokered and white-waistcoated,
marshals to the Hades of the _table-d'hôte_. The world has often been
compared to an inn; but on my way down to this common meal I have, not
unfrequently, felt fain to reverse the simile. From their separate
stations, at the appointed hour, the guests like ghosts flit to a
gloomy gas-lit chamber. They are of various speech and race,
preoccupied with divers interests and cares. Necessity and the waiter
drive them all to a sepulchral syssition, whereof the cook too
frequently deserves that old Greek comic epithet—αδου μάγειρος —cook of
the Inferno. And just as we are told that in Charon's boat we shall not
be allowed to pick our society, so here we must accept what fellowship
the fates provide. An English spinster retailing paradoxes culled
to-day from Ruskin's handbooks; an American citizen describing his
jaunt in a gondóla from the railway station; a German shopkeeper
descanting in one breath on Baur's Bock and the beauties of the
Marcusplatz; an intelligent æsthete bent on working into clearness his
own views of Carpaccio's genius: all these in turn, or all together,
must be suffered gladly through well-nigh two long hours. Uncomforted
in soul we rise from the expensive banquet; and how often rise from it
unfed!

Far other be the doom of my own friends—of pious bards and genial
companions, lovers of natural and lovely things! Nor for these do I
desire a seat at Florian's marble tables, or a perch in Quadri's
window, though the former supply dainty food, and the latter command a
bird's-eye view of the Piazza. Rather would I lead them to a certain
humble tavern on the Zattere. It is a quaint, low-built, unpretending
little place, near a bridge, with a garden hard by which sends a
cataract of honeysuckles sunward over a too-jealous wall. In front lies
a Mediterranean steamer, which all day long has been discharging cargo.
Gazing westward up Giudecca, masts and funnels bar the sunset and the
Paduan hills; and from a little front room of the _trattoria_ the view
is so marine that one keeps fancying oneself in some ship's cabin.
Sea-captains sit and smoke beside their glass of grog in the pavilion
and the _caffé_. But we do not seek their company at dinner-time. Our
way lies under yonder arch, and up the narrow alley into a paved court.
Here are oleanders in pots, and plants of Japanese spindle-wood in
tubs; and from the walls beneath the window hang cages of all sorts of
birds—a talking parrot, a whistling blackbird, goldfinches, canaries,
linnets. Athos, the fat dog, who goes to market daily in a _barchetta_
with his master, snuffs around. 'Where are Porthos and Aramis, my
friend?' Athos does not take the joke; he only wags his stump of tail
and pokes his nose into my hand. What a Tartufe's nose it is! Its
bridge displays the full parade of leather-bound brass-nailed muzzle.
But beneath, this muzzle is a patent sham. The frame does not even
pretend to close on Athos' jaw, and the wise dog wears it like a
decoration. A little farther we meet that ancient grey cat, who has no
discoverable name, but is famous for the sprightliness and grace with
which she bears her eighteen years. Not far from the cat one is sure to
find Carlo—the bird-like, bright-faced, close-cropped Venetian urchin,
whose duty it is to trot backwards and forwards between the cellar and
the dining-tables. At the end of the court we walk into the kitchen,
where the black-capped little _padrone_ and the gigantic white-capped
chef are in close consultation. Here we have the privilege of
inspecting the larder—fish of various sorts, meat, vegetables,
289several kinds of birds, pigeons, tordi, beccafichi, geese, wild
ducks, chickens, woodcock, &c., according to the season. We select our
dinner, and retire to eat it either in the court among the birds
beneath the vines, or in the low dark room which occupies one side of
it. Artists of many nationalities and divers ages frequent this house;
and the talk arising from the several little tables, turns upon points
of interest and beauty in the life and landscape of Venice. There can
be no difference of opinion about the excellence of the _cuisine_, or
about the reasonable charges of this _trattoria_. A soup of lentils,
followed by boiled turbot or fried soles, beefsteak or mutton cutlets,
tordi or beccafichi, with a salad, the whole enlivened with good red
wine or Florio's Sicilian Marsala from the cask, costs about four
francs. Gas is unknown in the establishment. There is no noise, no
bustle, no brutality of waiters, no _ahurissement_ of tourists. And
when dinner is done, we can sit awhile over our cigarette and coffee,
talking until the night invites us to a stroll along the Zattere or a
_giro_ in the gondola.

IX.—NIGHT IN VENICE

Night in Venice! Night is nowhere else so wonderful, unless it be in
winter among the high Alps. But the nights of Venice and the nights of
the mountains are too different in kind to be compared.

There is the ever-recurring miracle of the full moon rising, before day
is dead, behind San Giorgio, spreading a path of gold on the lagoon
which black boats traverse with the glow-worm lamp upon their prow;
ascending the cloudless sky and silvering the domes of the Salute;
pouring vitreous sheen upon the red lights of the Piazzetta; flooding
the Grand Canal, and lifting the Rialto higher in ethereal whiteness;
piercing 290but penetrating not the murky labyrinth of _rio_ linked
with _rio_, through which we wind in light and shadow, to reach once
more the level glories and the luminous expanse of heaven beyond the
Misericordia.

This is the melodrama of Venetian moonlight; and if a single impression
of the night has to be retained from one visit to Venice, those are
fortunate who chance upon a full moon of fair weather. Yet I know not
whether some quieter and soberer effects are not more thrilling.
To-night, for example, the waning moon will rise late through veils of
_scirocco_. Over the bridges of San Cristoforo and San Gregorio,
through the deserted Calle di Mezzo, my friend and I walk in darkness,
pass the marble basements of the Salute, and push our way along its
Riva to the point of the Dogana. We are out at sea alone, between the
Canalozzo and the Giudecca. A moist wind ruffles the water and cools
our forehead. It is so dark that we can only see San Giorgio by the
light reflected on it from the Piazzetta. The same light climbs the
Campanile of S. Mark, and shows the golden angel in a mystery of gloom.
The only noise that reaches us is a confused hum from the Piazza.
Sitting and musing there, the blackness of the water whispers in our
ears a tale of death. And now we hear a plash of oars, and gliding
through the darkness comes a single boat. One man leaps upon the
landing-place without a word and disappears. There is another wrapped
in a military cloak asleep. I see his face beneath me, pale and quiet.
The _barcaruolo_ turns the point in silence. From the darkness they
came; into the darkness they have gone. It is only an ordinary incident
of coastguard service. But the spirit of the night has made a poem of
it.

Even tempestuous and rainy weather, though melancholy enough, is never
sordid here. There is no noise from carriage traffic in Venice, and the
sea-wind preserves the purity and 291transparency of the atmosphere. It
had been raining all day, but at evening came a partial clearing. I
went down to the Molo, where the large reach of the lagoon was all
moon-silvered, and San Giorgio Maggiore dark against the bluish sky,
and Santa Maria della Salute domed with moon-irradiated pearl, and the
wet slabs of the Riva shimmering in moonlight, the whole misty sky,
with its clouds and stellar spaces, drenched in moonlight, nothing but
moonlight sensible except the tawny flare of gas-lamps and the orange
lights of gondolas afloat upon the waters. On such a night the very
spirit of Venice is abroad. We feel why she is called Bride of the Sea.

Take yet another night. There had been a representation of Verdi's
'Forza del Destino' at the Teatro Malibran. After midnight we walked
homeward through the Merceria, crossed the Piazza, and dived into the
narrow _calle_ which leads to the _traghetto_ of the Salute. It was a
warm moist starless night, and there seemed no air to breathe in those
narrow alleys. The gondolier was half asleep. Eustace called him as we
jumped into his boat, and rang our _soldi_ on the gunwale. Then he
arose and turned the _ferro_ round, and stood across towards the
Salute. Silently, insensibly, from the oppression of confinement in the
airless streets to the liberty and immensity of the water and the night
we passed. It was but two minutes ere we touched the shore and said
good-night, and went our way and left the ferryman. But in that brief
passage he had opened our souls to everlasting things—the freshness,
and the darkness, and the kindness of the brooding, all-enfolding night
above the sea.

292




THE GONDOLIER'S WEDDING


The night before the wedding we had a supper-party in my rooms. We were
twelve in all. My friend Eustace brought his gondolier Antonio with
fair-haired, dark-eyed wife, and little Attilio, their eldest child. My
own gondolier, Francesco, came with his wife and two children. Then
there was the handsome, languid Luigi, who, in his best clothes, or out
of them, is fit for any drawing-room. Two gondoliers, in dark blue
shirts, completed the list of guests, if we exclude the maid Catina,
who came and went about the table, laughing and joining in the songs,
and sitting down at intervals to take her share of wine. The big room
looking across the garden to the Grand Canal had been prepared for
supper; and the company were to be received in the smaller, which has a
fine open space in front of it to southwards. But as the guests
arrived, they seemed to find the kitchen and the cooking that was going
on quite irresistible. Catina, it seems, had lost her head with so many
cuttlefishes, _orai_, cakes, and fowls, and cutlets to reduce to order.
There was, therefore, a great bustle below stairs; and I could hear
plainly that all my guests were lending their making, or their marring,
hands to the preparation of the supper. That the company should cook
their own food on the way to the dining-room, seemed a quite novel
arrangement, but one that promised well for their contentment with the
banquet. Nobody could be dissatisfied with what was everybody's affair.

When seven o'clock struck, Eustace and I, who had been 293entertaining
the children in their mothers' absence, heard the sound of steps upon
the stairs. The guests arrived, bringing their own _risotto_ with them.
Welcome was short, if hearty. We sat down in carefully appointed order,
and fell into such conversation as the quarter of San Vio and our
several interests supplied. From time to time one of the matrons left
the table and descended to the kitchen, when a finishing stroke was
needed for roast pullet or stewed veal. The excuses they made their
host for supposed failure in the dishes, lent a certain grace and comic
charm to the commonplace of festivity. The entertainment was theirs as
much as mine; and they all seemed to enjoy what took the form by
degrees of curiously complicated hospitality. I do not think a
well-ordered supper at any _trattoria_, such as at first suggested
itself to my imagination, would have given any of us an equal pleasure
or an equal sense of freedom. The three children had become the guests
of the whole party. Little Attilio, propped upon an air-cushion, which
puzzled him exceedingly, ate through his supper and drank his wine with
solid satisfaction, opening the large brown eyes beneath those tufts of
clustering fair hair which promise much beauty for him in his manhood.
Francesco's boy, who is older and begins to know the world, sat with a
semi-suppressed grin upon his face, as though the humour of the
situation was not wholly hidden from him. Little Teresa, too, was
happy, except when her mother, a severe Pomona, with enormous earrings
and splendid _fazzoletto_ of crimson and orange dyes, pounced down upon
her for some supposed infraction of good manners—_creanza_, as they
vividly express it here. Only Luigi looked a trifle bored. But Luigi
has been a soldier, and has now attained the supercilious superiority
of young-manhood, which smokes its cigar of an evening in the piazza
and knows the merits of the different cafés.

294The great business of the evening began when the eating was over,
and the decanters filled with new wine of Mirano circulated freely. The
four best singers of the party drew together; and the rest prepared
themselves to make suggestions, hum tunes, and join with fitful effect
in choruses. Antonio, who is a powerful young fellow, with bronzed
cheeks and a perfect tempest of coal-black hair in flakes upon his
forehead, has a most extraordinary soprano—sound as a bell, strong as a
trumpet, well trained, and true to the least shade in intonation.
Piero, whose rugged Neptunian features, sea-wrinkled, tell of a rough
water-life, boasts a bass of resonant, almost pathetic quality.
Francesco has a _mezzo voce_, which might, by a stretch of politeness,
be called baritone. Piero's comrade, whose name concerns us not, has
another of these nondescript voices. They sat together with their
glasses and cigars before them, sketching part-songs in outline,
striking the keynote—now higher and now lower—till they saw their
subject well in view. Then they burst into full singing, Antonio
leading with a metal note that thrilled one's ears, but still was
musical. Complicated contrapuntal pieces, such as we should call
madrigals, with ever-recurring refrains of 'Venezia, gemma Triatica,
sposa del mar,' descending probably from ancient days, followed each
other in quick succession. Barcaroles, serenades, love-songs, and
invitations to the water were interwoven for relief. One of these
romantic pieces had a beautiful burden, 'Dormi, o bella, o fingi di
dormir,' of which the melody was fully worthy. But the most successful
of all the tunes were two with a sad motive. The one repeated
incessantly 'Ohimé! mia madre morî;' the other was a girl's love
lament: 'Perchè tradirmi, perchè lasciarmi! prima d'amarmi non eri
cosî!' Even the children joined in these; and Catina, who took the solo
part in the second, was inspired to a great dramatic effort. All these
were purely popular 295songs. The people of Venice, however, are
passionate for operas. Therefore we had duets and solos from 'Ernani,'
the 'Ballo in Maschera,' and the 'Forza del Destino,' and one comic
chorus from 'Boccaccio,' which seemed to make them wild with pleasure.
To my mind, the best of these more formal pieces was a duet between
Attila and Italia from some opera unknown to me, which Antonio and
Piero performed with incomparable spirit. It was noticeable how,
descending to the people, sung by them for love at sea, or on
excursions to the villages round Mestre, these operatic reminiscences
had lost something of their theatrical formality, and assumed instead
the serious gravity, the quaint movement, and marked emphasis which
belong to popular music in Northern and Central Italy. An antique
character was communicated even to the recitative of Verdi by slight,
almost indefinable, changes of rhythm and accent. There was no end to
the singing. 'Siamo appassionati per il canto,' frequently repeated,
was proved true by the profusion and variety of songs produced from
inexhaustible memories, lightly tried over, brilliantly performed,
rapidly succeeding each other. Nor were gestures wanting—lifted arms,
hands stretched to hands, flashing eyes, hair tossed from the
forehead—unconscious and appropriate action—which showed how the spirit
of the music and words alike possessed the men. One by one the children
fell asleep. Little Attilio and Teresa were tucked up beneath my Scotch
shawl at two ends of a great sofa; and not even his father's clarion
voice, in the character of Italia defying Attila to harm 'le mie
superbe città,' could wake the little boy up. The night wore on. It was
past one. Eustace and I had promised to be in the church of the Gesuati
at six next morning. We therefore gave the guests a gentle hint, which
they as gently took. With exquisite, because perfectly unaffected,
breeding they sank for a few moments into common conversation, 296then
wrapped the children up, and took their leave. It was an uncomfortable,
warm, wet night of sullen _scirocco_.

The next day, which was Sunday, Francesco called me at five. There was
no visible sunrise that cheerless damp October morning. Grey dawn stole
somehow imperceptibly between the veil of clouds and leaden waters, as
my friend and I, well sheltered by our _felze_, passed into the
Giudecca, and took our station before the church of the Gesuati. A few
women from the neighbouring streets and courts crossed the bridges in
draggled petticoats on their way to first mass. A few men, shouldering
their jackets, lounged along the Zattere, opened the great green doors,
and entered. Then suddenly Antonio cried out that the bridal party was
on its way, not as we had expected, in boats, but on foot. We left our
gondola, and fell into the ranks, after shaking hands with Francesco,
who is the elder brother of the bride. There was nothing very
noticeable in her appearance, except her large dark eyes. Otherwise
both face and figure were of a common type; and her bridal dress of
sprigged grey silk, large veil and orange blossoms, reduced her to the
level of a _bourgeoise_. It was much the same with the bridegroom. His
features, indeed, proved him a true Venetian gondolier; for the skin
was strained over the cheekbones, and the muscles of the throat beneath
the jaws stood out like cords, and the bright blue eyes were deep-set
beneath a spare brown forehead. But he had provided a complete suit of
black for the occasion, and wore a shirt of worked cambric, which
disguised what is really splendid in the physique of these oarsmen, at
once slender and sinewy. Both bride and bridegroom looked uncomfortable
in their clothes. The light that fell upon them in the church was dull
and leaden. The ceremony, which was very hurriedly performed by an
unctuous priest, did not appear to impress either of them. Nobody in
the bridal party, 297crowding together on both sides of the altar,
looked as though the service was of the slightest interest and moment.
Indeed, this was hardly to be wondered at; for the priest, so far as I
could understand his gabble, took the larger portion for read, after
muttering the first words of the rubric. A little carven image of an
acolyte—a weird boy who seemed to move by springs, whose hair had all
the semblance of painted wood, and whose complexion was white and red
like a clown's—did not make matters more intelligible by spasmodically
clattering responses.

After the ceremony we heard mass and contributed to three distinct
offertories. Considering how much account even two _soldi_ are to these
poor people, I was really angry when I heard the copper shower. Every
member of the party had his or her pennies ready, and dropped them into
the boxes. Whether it was the effect of the bad morning, or the
ugliness of a very ill-designed _barocco_ building, or the fault of the
fat oily priest, I know not. But the _sposalizio_ struck me as tame and
cheerless, the mass as irreverent and vulgarly conducted. At the same
time there is something too impressive in the mass for any perfunctory
performance to divest its symbolism of sublimity. A Protestant
Communion Service lends itself more easily to degradation by
unworthiness in the minister.

We walked down the church in double file, led by the bride and
bridegroom, who had knelt during the ceremony with the best
man—_compare_, as he is called—at a narrow _prie-dieu_ before the
altar. The _compare_ is a person of distinction at these weddings. He
has to present the bride with a great pyramid of artificial flowers,
which is placed before her at the marriage-feast, a packet of candles,
and a box of bonbons. The comfits, when the box is opened, are found to
include two magnificent sugar babies lying in their cradles. I was told
that a _compare_, who does the thing handsomely, must be 298prepared to
spend about a hundred francs upon these presents, in addition to the
wine and cigars with which he treats his friends. On this occasion the
women were agreed that he had done his duty well. He was a fat, wealthy
little man, who lived by letting market-boats for hire on the Rialto.

From the church to the bride's house was a walk of some three minutes.
On the way we were introduced to the father of the bride—a very
magnificent personage, with points of strong resemblance to Vittorio
Emmanuele. He wore an enormous broad-brimmed hat and emerald-green
earrings, and looked considerably younger than his eldest son,
Francesco. Throughout the _nozze_ he took the lead in a grand imperious
fashion of his own. Wherever he went, he seemed to fill the place, and
was fully aware of his own importance. In Florence I think he would
have got the nickname of _Tacchin_, or turkey-cock. Here at Venice the
sons and daughters call their parent briefly _Vecchio_. I heard him so
addressed with a certain amount of awe, expecting an explosion of
bubbly-jock displeasure. But he took it, as though it was natural,
without disturbance. The other _Vecchio_, father of the bridegroom,
struck me as more sympathetic. He was a gentle old man, proud of his
many prosperous, laborious sons. They, like the rest of the gentlemen,
were gondoliers. Both the _Vecchi_, indeed, continue to ply their
trade, day and night, at the _traghetto_.

_Traghetti_ are stations for gondolas at different points of the
canals. As their name implies, it is the first duty of the gondoliers
upon them to ferry people across. This they do for the fixed fee of
five centimes. The _traghetti_ are in fact Venetian cab-stands. And, of
course, like London cabs, the gondolas may be taken off them for trips.
The municipality, however, makes it a condition, under penalty of fine
to the _traghetto_, that each station should always be provided with
two boats for the service of the ferry. When vacancies occur 299on the
_traghetti_, a gondolier who owns or hires a boat makes application to
the municipality, receives a number, and is inscribed as plying at a
certain station. He has now entered a sort of guild, which is presided
over by a _Capo-traghetto_, elected by the rest for the protection of
their interests, the settlement of disputes, and the management of
their common funds. In the old acts of Venice this functionary is
styled _Gastaldo di traghetto_. The members have to contribute
something yearly to the guild. This payment varies upon different
stations, according to the greater or less amount of the tax levied by
the municipality on the _traghetto_. The highest subscription I have
heard of is twenty-five francs; the lowest, seven. There is one
_traghetto_, known by the name of Madonna del Giglio or Zobenigo, which
possesses near its _pergola_ of vines a nice old brown Venetian
picture. Some stranger offered a considerable sum for this. But the
guild refused to part with it.

As may be imagined, the _traghetti_ vary greatly in the amount and
quality of their custom. By far the best are those in the neighbourhood
of the hotels upon the Grand Canal. At any one of these a gondolier
during the season is sure of picking up some foreigner or other who
will pay him handsomely for comparatively light service. A _traghetto_
on the Giudecca, on the contrary, depends upon Venetian traffic. The
work is more monotonous, and the pay is reduced to its tariffed
minimum. So far as I can gather, an industrious gondolier, with a good
boat, belonging to a good _traghetto_, may make as much as ten or
fifteen francs in a single day. But this cannot be relied on. They
therefore prefer a fixed appointment with a private family, for which
they receive by tariff five francs a day, or by arrangement for long
periods perhaps four francs a day, with certain perquisites and small
advantages. It is great luck to get such an engagement for 300the
winter. The heaviest anxieties which beset a gondolier are then
disposed of. Having entered private service, they are not allowed to
ply their trade on the _traghetto_, except by stipulation with their
masters. Then they may take their place one night out of every six in
the rank and file. The gondoliers have two proverbs, which show how
desirable it is, while taking a fixed engagement, to keep their hold on
the _traghetto_. One is to this effect: _il traghetto è un buon
padrone_. The other satirises the meanness of the poverty-stricken
Venetian nobility: _pompa di servitù, misera insegna_. When they
combine the _traghetto_ with private service, the municipality insists
on their retaining the number painted on their gondola; and against
this their employers frequently object. It is therefore a great point
for a gondolier to make such an arrangement with his master as will
leave him free to show his number. The reason for this regulation is
obvious. Gondoliers are known more by their numbers and their
_traghetti_ than their names. They tell me that though there are
upwards of a thousand registered in Venice, each man of the trade knows
the whole confraternity by face and number. Taking all things into
consideration, I think four francs a day the whole year round are very
good earnings for a gondolier. On this he will marry and rear a family,
and put a little money by. A young unmarried man, working at two and a
half or three francs a day, is proportionately well-to-do. If he is
economical, he ought upon these wages to save enough in two or three
years to buy himself a gondola. A boy from fifteen to nineteen is
called a _mezz' uomo_, and gets about one franc a day. A new gondola
with all its fittings is worth about a thousand francs. It does not
last in good condition more than six or seven years. At the end of that
time the hull will fetch eighty francs. A new hull can be had for three
hundred francs. The old fittings—brass 301sea-horses or _cavalli_,
steel prow or _ferro_, covered cabin or _felze_, cushions and
leather-covered back-board or _stramazetto_, maybe transferred to it.
When a man wants to start a gondola, he will begin by buying one
already half past service—a _gondola da traghetto_ or _di mezza età_.
This should cost him something over two hundred francs. Little by
little, he accumulates the needful fittings; and when his first
purchase is worn out, he hopes to set up with a well-appointed
equipage. He thus gradually works his way from the rough trade which
involves hard work and poor earnings to that more profitable industry
which cannot be carried on without a smart boat. The gondola is a
source of continual expense for repairs. Its oars have to be replaced.
It has to be washed with sponges, blacked, and varnished. Its bottom
needs frequent cleaning. Weeds adhere to it in the warm brackish water,
growing rapidly through the summer months, and demanding to be scrubbed
off once in every four weeks. The gondolier has no place where he can
do this for himself. He therefore takes his boat to a wharf, or
_squero_, as the place is called. At these _squeri_ gondolas are built
as well as cleaned. The fee for a thorough setting to rights of the
boat is five francs. It must be done upon a fine day. Thus in addition
to the cost, the owner loses a good day's work.

These details will serve to give some notion of the sort of people with
whom Eustace and I spent our day. The bride's house is in an excellent
position on an open canal leading from the Canalozzo to the Giudecca.
She had arrived before us, and received her friends in the middle of
the room. Each of us in turn kissed her cheek and murmured our
congratulations. We found the large living-room of the house arranged
with chairs all round the walls, and the company were marshalled in
some order of precedence, my friend and I taking place near the bride.
On either hand airy bedrooms opened 302out, and two large doors, wide
open, gave a view from where we sat of a good-sized kitchen. This
arrangement of the house was not only comfortable, but pretty; for the
bright copper pans and pipkins ranged on shelves along the kitchen
walls had a very cheerful effect. The walls were whitewashed, but
literally covered with all sorts of pictures. A great plaster cast from
some antique, an Atys, Adonis, or Paris, looked down from a bracket
placed between the windows. There was enough furniture, solid and well
kept, in all the rooms. Among the pictures were full-length portraits
in oils of two celebrated gondoliers—one in antique costume, the other
painted a few years since. The original of the latter soon came and
stood before it. He had won regatta prizes; and the flags of four
discordant colours were painted round him by the artist, who had
evidently cared more to commemorate the triumphs of his sitter and to
strike a likeness than to secure the tone of his own picture. This
champion turned out a fine fellow—Corradini—with one of the brightest
little gondoliers of thirteen for his son.

After the company were seated, lemonade and cakes were handed round
amid a hubbub of chattering women. Then followed cups of black coffee
and more cakes. Then a glass of Cyprus and more cakes. Then a glass of
curaçoa and more cakes. Finally, a glass of noyau and still more cakes.
It was only a little after seven in the morning. Yet politeness
compelled us to consume these delicacies. I tried to shirk my duty; but
this discretion was taken by my hosts for well-bred modesty; and
instead of being let off, I had the richest piece of pastry and the
largest maccaroon available pressed so kindly on me, that, had they
been poisoned, I would not have refused to eat them. The conversation
grew more, and more animated, the women gathering together in their
dresses of bright blue and scarlet, the men lighting 303cigars and
puffing out a few quiet words. It struck me as a drawback that these
picturesque people had put on Sunday-clothes to look as much like
shopkeepers as possible. But they did not all of them succeed. Two
handsome women, who handed the cups round—one a brunette, the other a
blonde—wore skirts of brilliant blue, with a sort of white jacket, and
white kerchief folded heavily about their shoulders. The brunette had a
great string of coral, the blonde of amber, round her throat. Gold
earrings and the long gold chains Venetian women wear, of all patterns
and degrees of value, abounded. Nobody appeared without them; but I
could not see any of an antique make. The men seemed to be contented
with rings—huge, heavy rings of solid gold, worked with a rough flower
pattern. One young fellow had three upon his fingers. This circumstance
led me to speculate whether a certain portion at least of this display
of jewellery around me had not been borrowed for the occasion.

Eustace and I were treated quite like friends. They called us _I
Signori_. But this was only, I think, because our English names are
quite unmanageable. The women fluttered about us and kept asking
whether we really liked it all? whether we should come to the _pranzo_?
whether it was true we danced? It seemed to give them unaffected
pleasure to be kind to us; and when we rose to go away, the whole
company crowded round, shaking hands and saying: 'Si divertirà bene
stasera!' Nobody resented our presence; what was better, no one put
himself out for us. 'Vogliono veder il nostro costume,' I heard one
woman say.

We got home soon after eight, and, as our ancestors would have said,
settled our stomachs with a dish of tea. It makes me shudder now to
think of the mixed liquids and miscellaneous cakes we had consumed at
that unwonted hour.

At half-past three, Eustace and I again prepared ourselves 304for
action. His gondola was in attendance, covered with the _felze_, to
take us to the house of the _sposa_. We found the canal crowded with
poor people of the quarter—men, women, and children lining the walls
along its side, and clustering like bees upon the bridges. The water
itself was almost choked with gondolas. Evidently the folk of San Vio
thought our wedding procession would be a most exciting pageant. We
entered the house, and were again greeted by the bride and bridegroom,
who consigned each of us to the control of a fair tyrant. This is the
most fitting way of describing our introduction to our partners of the
evening; for we were no sooner presented, than the ladies swooped upon
us like their prey, placing their shawls upon our left arms, while they
seized and clung to what was left available of us for locomotion. There
was considerable giggling and tittering throughout the company when
Signora Fenzo, the young and comely wife of a gondolier, thus took
possession of Eustace, and Signora dell' Acqua, the widow of another
gondolier, appropriated me. The affair had been arranged beforehand,
and their friends had probably chaffed them with the difficulty of
managing two mad Englishmen. However, they proved equal to the
occasion, and the difficulties were entirely on our side. Signora Fenzo
was a handsome brunette, quiet in her manners, who meant business. I
envied Eustace his subjection to such a reasonable being. Signora dell'
Acqua, though a widow, was by no means disconsolate; and I soon
perceived that it would require all the address and diplomacy I
possessed, to make anything out of her society. She laughed
incessantly; darted in the most diverse directions, dragging me along
with her; exhibited me in triumph to her cronies; made eyes at me over
a fan, repeated my clumsiest remarks, as though they gave her
indescribable amusement; and all the while jabbered Venetian at express
rate, without the 305slightest regard for my incapacity to follow her
vagaries. The _Vecchio_ marshalled us in order. First went the _sposa_
and _comare_ with the mothers of bride and bridegroom. Then followed
the _sposo_ and the bridesmaid. After them I was made to lead my fair
tormentor. As we descended the staircase there arose a hubbub of
excitement from the crowd on the canals. The gondolas moved turbidly
upon the face of the waters. The bridegroom kept muttering to himself,
'How we shall be criticised! They will tell each other who was decently
dressed, and who stepped awkwardly into the boats, and what the price
of my boots was!' Such exclamations, murmured at intervals, and
followed by chest-drawn sighs, expressed a deep preoccupation. With
regard to his boots, he need have had no anxiety. They were of the
shiniest patent leather, much too tight, and without a speck of dust
upon them. But his nervousness infected me with a cruel dread. All
those eyes were going to watch how we comported ourselves in jumping
from the landing-steps into the boat! If this operation, upon a
ceremonious occasion, has terrors even for a gondolier, how formidable
it ought to be to me! And here is the Signora dell' Acqua's white
cachemire shawl dangling on one arm, and the Signora herself
languishingly clinging to the other; and the gondolas are fretting in a
fury of excitement, like corks, upon the churned green water! The
moment was terrible. The _sposa_ and her three companions had been
safely stowed away beneath their _felze_. The _sposo_ had successfully
handed the bridesmaid into the second gondola. I had to perform the
same office for my partner. Off she went, like a bird, from the bank. I
seized a happy moment, followed, bowed, and found myself to my
contentment gracefully ensconced in a corner opposite the widow. Seven
more gondolas were packed. The procession moved. We glided down the
little channel, broke 306away into the Grand Canal, crossed it, and
dived into a labyrinth from which we finally emerged before our
destination, the Trattoria di San Gallo. The perils of the landing were
soon over; and, with the rest of the guests, my mercurial companion and
I slowly ascended a long flight of stairs leading to a vast upper
chamber. Here we were to dine.

It had been the gallery of some palazzo in old days, was above one
hundred feet in length, fairly broad, with a roof of wooden rafters and
large windows opening on a courtyard garden. I could see the tops of
three cypress-trees cutting the grey sky upon a level with us. A long
table occupied the centre of this room. It had been laid for upwards of
forty persons, and we filled it. There was plenty of light from great
glass lustres blazing with gas. When the ladies had arranged their
dresses, and the gentlemen had exchanged a few polite remarks, we all
sat down to dinner—I next my inexorable widow, Eustace beside his calm
and comely partner. The first impression was one of disappointment. It
looked so like a public dinner of middle-class people. There was no
local character in costume or customs. Men and women sat politely
bored, expectant, trifling with their napkins, yawning, muttering
nothings about the weather or their neighbours. The frozen
commonplaceness of the scene was made for me still more oppressive by
Signora dell' Acqua. She was evidently satirical, and could not be
happy unless continually laughing at or with somebody. 'What a stick
the woman will think me!' I kept saying to myself. 'How shall I ever
invent jokes in this strange land? I cannot even flirt with her in
Venetian! And here I have condemned myself—and her too, poor thing—to
sit through at least three hours of mortal dulness!' Yet the widow was
by no means unattractive. Dressed in black, she had contrived by an
artful arrangement of lace and jewellery to give an air of lightness to
her 307costume. She had a pretty little pale face, a _minois
chiffonné_, with slightly turned-up nose, large laughing brown eyes, a
dazzling set of teeth, and a tempestuously frizzled mop of powdered
hair. When I managed to get a side-look at her quietly, without being
giggled at or driven half mad by unintelligible incitements to a
jocularity I could not feel, it struck me that, if we once found a
common term of communication we should become good friends. But for the
moment that _modus vivendi_ seemed unattainable. She had not recovered
from the first excitement of her capture of me. She was still showing
me off and trying to stir me up. The arrival of the soup gave me a
momentary relief; and soon the serious business of the afternoon began.
I may add that before dinner was over, the Signora dell' Acqua and I
were fast friends. I had discovered the way of making jokes, and she
had become intelligible. I found her a very nice, though flighty,
little woman; and I believe she thought me gifted with the faculty of
uttering eccentric epigrams in a grotesque tongue. Some of my remarks
were flung about the table, and had the same success as uncouth Lombard
carvings have with connoisseurs in _naïvetés_ of art. By that time we
had come to be _compare_ and _comare_ to each other—the sequel of some
clumsy piece of jocularity.

It was a heavy entertainment, copious in quantity, excellent in
quality, plainly but well cooked. I remarked there was no fish. The
widow replied that everybody present ate fish to satiety at home. They
did not join a marriage feast at the San Gallo, and pay their nine
francs, for that! It should be observed that each guest paid for his
own entertainment. This appears to be the custom. Therefore attendance
is complimentary, and the married couple are not at ruinous charges for
the banquet. A curious feature in the whole proceeding had its origin
in this custom. I noticed that before 308each cover lay an empty plate,
and that my partner began with the first course to heap upon it what
she had not eaten. She also took large helpings, and kept advising me
to do the same. I said: 'No; I only take what I want to eat; if I fill
that plate in front of me as you are doing, it will be great waste.'
This remark elicited shrieks of laughter from all who heard it; and
when the hubbub had subsided, I perceived an apparently official
personage bearing down upon Eustace, who was in the same perplexity. It
was then circumstantially explained to us that the empty plates were
put there in order that we might lay aside what we could not
conveniently eat, and take it home with us. At the end of the dinner
the widow (whom I must now call my _comare_) had accumulated two whole
chickens, half a turkey, and a large assortment of mixed eatables. I
performed my duty and won her regard by placing delicacies at her
disposition.

Crudely stated, this proceeding moves disgust. But that is only because
one has not thought the matter out. In the performance there was
nothing coarse or nasty. These good folk had made a contract at so much
a head—so many fowls, so many pounds of beef, &c, to be supplied; and
what they had fairly bought, they clearly had a right to. No one, so
far as I could notice, tried to take more than his proper share;
except, indeed, Eustace and myself. In our first eagerness to conform
to custom, we both overshot the mark, and grabbed at disproportionate
helpings. The waiters politely observed that we were taking what was
meant for two; and as the courses followed in interminable sequence, we
soon acquired the tact of what was due to us.

Meanwhile the room grew warm. The gentlemen threw off their coats—a
pleasant liberty of which I availed myself, and was immediately more at
ease. The ladies divested themselves of their shoes (strange to
relate!) and sat in comfort 309with their stockinged feet upon the
_scagliola_ pavement. I observed that some cavaliers by special
permission were allowed to remove their partners' slippers. This was
not my lucky fate. My _comare_ had not advanced to that point of
intimacy. Healths began to be drunk. The conversation took a lively
turn; and women went fluttering round the table, visiting their
friends, to sip out of their glass, and ask each other how they were
getting on. It was not long before the stiff veneer of _bourgeoisie_
which bored me had worn off. The people emerged in their true selves:
natural, gentle, sparkling with enjoyment, playful. Playful is, I
think, the best word to describe them. They played with infinite grace
and innocence, like kittens, from the old men of sixty to the little
boys of thirteen. Very little wine was drunk. Each guest had a litre
placed before him. Many did not finish theirs; and for very few was it
replenished. When at last the dessert arrived, and the bride's comfits
had been handed round, they began to sing. It was very pretty to see a
party of three or four friends gathering round some popular beauty, and
paying her compliments in verse—they grouped behind her chair, she
sitting back in it and laughing up to them, and joining in the chorus.
The words, 'Brunetta mia simpatica, ti amo sempre più,' sung after this
fashion to Eustace's handsome partner, who puffed delicate whiffs from
a Russian cigarette, and smiled her thanks, had a peculiar
appropriateness. All the ladies, it may be observed in passing, had by
this time lit their cigarettes. The men were smoking Toscani, Sellas,
or Cavours, and the little boys were dancing round the table breathing
smoke from their pert nostrils.

The dinner, in fact, was over. Other relatives of the guests arrived,
and then we saw how some of the reserved dishes were to be bestowed. A
side-table was spread at the end of the gallery, and these late-comers
were regaled with plenty by 310their friends. Meanwhile, the big table
at which we had dined was taken to pieces and removed. The _scagliola_
floor was swept by the waiters. Musicians came streaming in and took
their places. The ladies resumed their shoes. Every one prepared to
dance.

My friend and I were now at liberty to chat with the men. He knew some
of them by sight, and claimed acquaintance with others. There was
plenty of talk about different boats, gondolas, and sandolos and topos,
remarks upon the past season, and inquiries as to chances of
engagements in the future. One young fellow told us how he had been
drawn for the army, and should be obliged to give up his trade just
when he had begun to make it answer. He had got a new gondola, and this
would have to be hung up during the years of his service. The
warehousing of a boat in these circumstances costs nearly one hundred
francs a year, which is a serious tax upon the pockets of a private in
the line. Many questions were put in turn to us, but all of the same
tenor. 'Had we really enjoyed the _pranzo_? Now, really, were we
amusing ourselves? And did we think the custom of the wedding _un bel
costume_?' We could give an unequivocally hearty response to all these
interrogations. The men seemed pleased. Their interest in our enjoyment
was unaffected. It is noticeable how often the word _divertimento_ is
heard upon the lips of the Italians. They have a notion that it is the
function in life of the _Signori_ to amuse themselves.

The ball opened, and now we were much besought by the ladies. I had to
deny myself with a whole series of comical excuses. Eustace performed
his duty after a stiff English fashion—once with his pretty partner of
the _pranzo_, and once again with a fat gondolier. The band played
waltzes and polkas, chiefly upon patriotic airs—the Marcia Reale,
Garibaldi's Hymn, &c. Men danced with men, women with 311women, little
boys and girls together. The gallery whirled with a laughing crowd.
There was plenty of excitement and enjoyment—not an unseemly or
extravagant word or gesture. My _comare_ careered about with a light
mænadic impetuosity, which made me regret my inability to accept her
pressing invitations. She pursued me into every corner of the room, but
when at last I dropped excuses and told her that my real reason for not
dancing was that it would hurt my health, she waived her claims at once
with an _Ah, poverino!_

Some time after midnight we felt that we had had enough of
_divertimento_. Francesco helped us to slip out unobserved. With many
silent good wishes we left the innocent playful people who had been so
kind to us. The stars were shining from a watery sky as we passed into
the piazza beneath the Campanile and the pinnacles of S. Mark. The Riva
was almost empty, and the little waves fretted the boats moored to the
piazzetta, as a warm moist breeze went fluttering by. We smoked a last
cigar, crossed our _traghetto_, and were soon sound asleep at the end
of a long pleasant day. The ball, we heard next morning, finished about
four.

Since that evening I have had plenty of opportunities for seeing my
friends the gondoliers, both in their own homes and in my apartment.
Several have entertained me at their mid-day meal of fried fish and
amber-coloured polenta. These repasts were always cooked with
scrupulous cleanliness, and served upon a table covered with coarse
linen. The polenta is turned out upon a wooden platter, and cut with a
string called _lassa_. You take a large slice of it on the palm of the
left hand, and break it with the fingers of the right. Wholesome red
wine of the Paduan district and good white bread were never wanting.
The rooms in which we met to eat looked out on narrow lanes or over
pergolas of yellowing vines. Their whitewashed walls were hung with
photographs 312of friends and foreigners, many of them souvenirs from
English or American employers. The men, in broad black hats and lilac
shirts, sat round the table, girt with the red waist-wrapper, or
_fascia_, which marks the ancient faction of the Castellani. The other
faction, called Nicolotti, are distinguished by a black _assisa_. The
quarters of the town are divided unequally and irregularly into these
two parties. What was once a formidable rivalry between two sections of
the Venetian populace, still survives in challenges to trials of
strength and skill upon the water. The women, in their many-coloured
kerchiefs, stirred polenta at the smoke-blackened chimney, whose huge
pent-house roof projects two feet or more across the hearth. When they
had served the table they took their seat on low stools, knitted
stockings, or drank out of glasses handed across the shoulder to them
by their lords. Some of these women were clearly notable housewives,
and I have no reason to suppose that they do not take their full share
of the housework. Boys and girls came in and out, and got a portion of
the dinner to consume where they thought best. Children went tottering
about upon the red-brick floor, the playthings of those hulking
fellows, who handled them very gently and spoke kindly in a sort of
confidential whisper to their ears. These little ears were mostly
pierced for earrings, and the light blue eyes of the urchins peeped
maliciously beneath shocks of yellow hair. A dog was often of the
party. He ate fish like his masters, and was made to beg for it by
sitting up and rowing with his paws. _Voga, Azzò, voga!_ The Anzolo who
talked thus to his little brown Spitz-dog has the hoarse voice of a
Triton and the movement of an animated sea-wave. Azzo performed his
trick, swallowed his fish-bones, and the fiery Anzolo looked round
approvingly.

On all these occasions I have found these gondoliers the 313same
sympathetic, industrious, cheery affectionate folk. They live in many
respects a hard and precarious life. The winter in particular is a time
of anxiety, and sometimes of privation, even to the well-to-do among
them. Work then is scarce, and what there is, is rendered disagreeable
to them by the cold. Yet they take their chance with facile temper, and
are not soured by hardships. The amenities of the Venetian sea and air,
the healthiness of the lagoons, the cheerful bustle of the poorer
quarters, the brilliancy of this Southern sunlight, and the beauty
which is everywhere apparent, must be reckoned as important factors in
the formation of their character. And of that character, as I have
said, the final note is playfulness. In spite of difficulties, their
life has never been stern enough to sadden them. Bare necessities are
marvellously cheap, and the pinch of real bad weather—such frost as
locked the lagoons in ice two years ago, or such south-western gales as
flooded the basement floors of all the houses on the Zattere—is rare
and does not last long. On the other hand, their life has never been so
lazy as to reduce them to the savagery of the traditional Neapolitan
lazzaroni. They have had to work daily for small earnings, but under
favourable conditions, and their labour has been lightened by much
good-fellowship among themselves, by the amusements of their _feste_
and their singing clubs.

Of course it is not easy for a stranger in a very different social
position to feel that he has been admitted to their confidence.
Italians have an ineradicable habit of making themselves externally
agreeable, of bending in all indifferent matters to the whims and
wishes of superiors, and of saying what they think _Signori_ like. This
habit, while it smoothes the surface of existence, raises up a barrier
of compliment and partial insincerity, against which the more downright
natures of us Northern folk break in vain efforts. Our advances are met
with an imperceptible but impermeable resistance by the very people who
are bent on making the world pleasant to us. It is the very reverse of
that dour opposition which a Lowland Scot or a North English peasant
offers to familiarity; but it is hardly less insurmountable. The
treatment, again, which Venetians of the lower class have received
through centuries from their own nobility, makes attempts at
fraternisation on the part of gentlemen unintelligible to them. The
best way, here and elsewhere, of overcoming these obstacles is to have
some bond of work or interest in common—of service on the one side
rendered, and goodwill on the other honestly displayed. The men of whom
I have been speaking will, I am convinced, not shirk their share of
duty or make unreasonable claims upon the generosity of their
employers.

315




A CINQUE CENTO BRUTUS


I.—THE SESTIERE DI SAN POLO

There is a quarter of Venice not much visited by tourists, lying as it
does outside their beat, away from the Rialto, at a considerable
distance from the Frari and San Rocco, in what might almost pass for a
city separated by a hundred miles from the Piazza. This is the quarter
of San Polo, one corner of which, somewhere between the back of the
Palazzo Foscari and the Campo di San Polo, was the scene of a memorable
act of vengeance in the year 1546. Here Lorenzino de' Medici, the
murderer of his cousin Alessandro, was at last tracked down and put to
death by paid cut-throats. How they succeeded in their purpose, we know
in every detail from the narrative dictated by the chief assassin. His
story so curiously illustrates the conditions of life in Italy three
centuries ago, that I have thought it worthy of abridgment. But, in
order to make it intelligible, and to paint the manners of the times
more fully, I must first relate the series of events which led to
Lorenzino's murder of his cousin Alessandro, and from that to his own
subsequent assassination. Lorenzino de' Medici, the Florentine Brutus
of the sixteenth century, is the hero of the tragedy. Some of his
relatives, however, must first appear upon the scene before he enters
with a patriot's knife concealed beneath a court-fool's bauble.

316

II.—THE MURDER OF IPPOLITO DE' MEDICI

After the final extinction of the Florentine Republic, the hopes of the
Medici, who now aspired to the dukedom of Tuscany, rested on three
bastards—Alessandro, the reputed child of Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino;
Ippolito, the natural son of Giuliano, Duke of Nemours; and Giulio, the
offspring of an elder Giuliano, who was at this time Pope, with the
title of Clement VII. Clement had seen Rome sacked in 1527 by a horde
of freebooters fighting under the Imperial standard, and had used the
remnant of these troops, commanded by the Prince of Orange, to crush
his native city in the memorable siege of 1529-30. He now determined to
rule Florence from the Papal chair by the help of the two bastard
cousins I have named. Alessandro was created Duke of Cività di Penna,
and sent to take the first place in the city. Ippolito was made a
cardinal; since the Medici had learned that Rome was the real basis of
their power, and it was undoubtedly in Clement's policy to advance this
scion of his house to the Papacy. The sole surviving representative of
the great Lorenzo de' Medici's legitimate blood was Catherine, daughter
of the Duke of Urbino by Madeleine de la Tour d'Auvergne. She was
pledged in marriage to the Duke of Orleans, who was afterwards Henry
II. of France. A natural daughter of the Emperor Charles V. was
provided for her putative half-brother Alessandro. By means of these
alliances the succession of Ippolito to the Papal chair would have been
secured, and the strength of the Medici would have been confirmed in
Tuscany, but for the disasters which have now to be related.

Between the cousins Alessandro and Ippolito there was no love lost. As
boys, they had both played the part of princes in Florence under the
guardianship of the Cardinal Passerini 317da Cortona. The higher rank
had then been given to Ippolito, who bore the title of Magnifico, and
seemed thus designated for the lordship of the city. Ippolito, though
only half a Medici, was of more authentic lineage than Alessandro; for
no proof positive could be adduced that the latter was even a spurious
child of the Duke of Urbino. He bore obvious witness to his mother's
blood upon his mulatto's face; but this mother was the wife of a groom,
and it was certain that in the court of Urbino she had not been chary
of her favours. The old magnificence of taste, the patronage of art and
letters, and the preference for liberal studies which distinguished
Casa Medici, survived in Ippolito; whereas Alessandro manifested only
the brutal lusts of a debauched tyrant. It was therefore with great
reluctance that, moved by reasons of state and domestic policy,
Ippolito saw himself compelled to accept the scarlet hat. Alessandro
having been recognised as a son of the Duke of Urbino, had become
half-brother to the future Queen of France. To treat him as the head of
the family was a necessity thrust, in the extremity of the Medicean
fortunes, upon Clement. Ippolito, who more entirely represented the
spirit of the house, was driven to assume the position of a cadet, with
all the uncertainties of an ecclesiastical career.

In these circumstances Ippolito had not strength of character to
sacrifice himself for the consolidation of the Medicean power, which
could only have been effected by maintaining a close bond of union
between its members. The death of Clement in 1534 obscured his
prospects in the Church. He was still too young to intrigue for the
tiara. The new Pope, Alessandro Farnese, soon after his election,
displayed a vigour which was unexpected from his age, together with a
nepotism which his previous character had scarcely warranted. The
Cardinal de' Medici felt himself excluded and oppressed. He joined the
party of those 318numerous Florentine exiles, headed by Filippo
Strozzi, and the Cardinals Salviati and Ridolfi, all of whom were
connected by marriage with the legitimate Medici, and who unanimously
hated and were jealous of the Duke of Cività di Penna. On the score of
policy it is difficult to condemn this step. Alessandro's hold upon
Florence was still precarious, nor had he yet married Margaret of
Austria. Perhaps Ippolito was right in thinking he had less to gain
from his cousin than from the anti-Medicean faction and the princes of
the Church who favoured it. But he did not play his cards well. He
quarrelled with the new Pope, Paul III., and by his vacillations led
the Florentine exiles to suspect he might betray them.

In the summer of 1535 Ippolito was at Itri, a little town not far from
Gaeta and Terracina, within easy reach of Fondi, where dwelt the
beautiful Giulia Gonzaga. To this lady the Cardinal paid assiduous
court, passing his time with her in the romantic scenery of that
world-famous Capuan coast. On the 5th of August his seneschal, Giovann'
Andrea, of Borgo San Sepolcro, brought him a bowl of chicken-broth,
after drinking which he exclaimed to one of his attendants, 'I have
been poisoned, and the man who did it is Giovann' Andrea.' The
seneschal was taken and tortured, and confessed that he had mixed a
poison with the broth. Four days afterwards the Cardinal died, and a
post-mortem examination showed that the omentum had been eaten by some
corrosive substance. Giovann' Andrea was sent in chains to Rome; but in
spite of his confession, more than once repeated, the court released
him. He immediately took refuge with Alessandro de' Medici in Florence,
whence he repaired to Borgo San Sepolcro, and was, at the close of a
few months, there murdered by the people of the place. From these
circumstances it was conjectured, not without good reason, that
Alessandro had procured his cousin's death; and a certain 319Captain
Pignatta, of low birth in Florence, a bravo and a coward, was believed
to have brought the poison to Itri from the Duke. The Medicean
courtiers at Florence did not disguise their satisfaction; and one of
them exclaimed, with reference to the event, 'We know how to brush
flies from our noses!'

III.—THE MURDER OF ALESSANDRO DE' MEDICI

Having removed his cousin and rival from the scene, Alessandro de'
Medici plunged with even greater effrontery into the cruelties and
debaucheries which made him odious in Florence. It seemed as though
fortune meant to smile on him; for in this same year (1535) Charles V.
decided at Naples in his favour against the Florentine exiles, who were
pleading their own cause and that of the city injured by his tyrannies;
and in February of the following year he married Margaret of Austria,
the Emperor's natural daughter. Francesco Guicciardini, the first
statesman and historian of his age, had undertaken his defence, and was
ready to support him by advice and countenance in the conduct of his
government. Within the lute of this prosperity, however, there was one
little rift. For some months past he had closely attached to his person
a certain kinsman, Lorenzo de' Medici, who was descended in the fourth
generation from Lorenzo, the brother of Cosimo Pater Patriæ. This
Lorenzo, or Lorenzino, or Lorenzaccio, as his most intimate
acquaintances called him, was destined to murder Alessandro; and it is
worthy of notice that the Duke had received frequent warnings of his
fate. A Perugian page, for instance, who suffered from some infirmity,
saw in a dream that Lorenzino would kill his master. Astrologers
predicted that the Duke must die by having his throat cut. One of them
is said to have named Lorenzo de' Medici 320as the assassin; and
another described him so accurately that there was no mistaking the
man. Moreover, Madonna Lucrezia Salviati wrote to the Duke from Rome
that he should beware of a certain person, indicating Lorenzino; and
her daughter, Madonna Maria, told him to his face she hated the young
man, 'because I know he means to murder you, and murder you he will.'
Nor was this all. The Duke's favourite body-servants mistrusted
Lorenzino. On one occasion, when Alessandro and Lorenzino, attended by
a certain Giomo, were escalading a wall at night, as was their wont
upon illicit love-adventures, Giomo whispered to his master: 'Ah, my
lord, do let me cut the rope, and rid ourselves of him!' To which the
Duke replied: 'No, I do not want this; but if he could, I know he'd
twist it round my neck.'

In spite, then, of these warnings and the want of confidence he felt,
the Duke continually lived with Lorenzino, employing him as pander in
his intrigues, and preferring his society to that of simpler men. When
he rode abroad, he took this evil friend upon his crupper; although he
knew for certain that Lorenzino had stolen a tight-fitting vest of mail
he used to wear, and, while his arms were round his waist, was always
meditating how to stick a poignard in his body. He trusted, so it
seems, to his own great strength and to the other's physical weakness.

At this point, since Lorenzino is the principal actor in the two-act
drama which follows, it will be well to introduce him to the reader in
the words of Varchi, who was personally acquainted with him. Born at
Florence in 1514, he was left early by his father's death to the sole
care of his mother, Maria Soderini, 'a lady of rare prudence and
goodness, who attended with the utmost pains and diligence to his
education. No sooner, however, had he acquired the rudiments of humane
learning, which, being of very quick parts, he imbibed 321with
incredible facility, than he began to display a restless mind,
insatiable and appetitive of vice. Soon afterwards, under the rule and
discipline of Filippo Strozzi, he made open sport of all things human
and divine; and preferring the society of low persons, who not only
flattered him but were congenial to his tastes, he gave free rein to
his desires, especially in affairs of love, without regard for sex or
age or quality, and in his secret soul, while he lavished feigned
caresses upon every one he saw, felt no esteem for any living being. He
thirsted strangely for glory, and omitted no point of deed or word that
might, he thought, procure him the reputation of a man of spirit or of
wit. He was lean of person, somewhat slightly built, and on this
account people called him Lorenzino. He never laughed, but had a
sneering smile; and although he was rather distinguished by grace than
beauty, his countenance being dark and melancholy, still in the flower
of his age he was beloved beyond all measure by Pope Clement; in spite
of which he had it in his mind (according to what he said himself after
killing the Duke Alessandro) to have murdered him. He brought Francesco
di Raffaello de' Medici, the Pope's rival, who was a young man of
excellent attainments and the highest hope, to such extremity that he
lost his wits, and became the sport of the whole court at Rome, and was
sent back, as a lesser evil, as a confirmed madman to Florence.' Varchi
proceeds to relate how Lorenzino fell into disfavour with the Pope and
the Romans by chopping the heads off statues from the arch of
Constantine and other monuments; for which act of vandalism Molsa
impeached him in the Roman Academy, and a price was set upon his head.
Having returned to Florence, he proceeded to court Duke Alessandro,
into whose confidence he wormed himself, pretending to play the spy
upon the exiles, and affecting a personal timidity which put the Prince
off his guard. 322Alessandro called him 'the philosopher,' because he
conversed in solitude with his own thoughts and seemed indifferent to
wealth and office. But all this while Lorenzino was plotting how to
murder him.

Giovio's account of this strange intimacy may be added, since it
completes the picture I have drawn from Varchi:—'Lorenzo made himself
the accomplice and instrument of those amorous amusements for which the
Duke had an insatiable appetite, with the object of deceiving him. He
was singularly well furnished with all the scoundrelly arts and trained
devices of the pander's trade; composed fine verses to incite to lust;
wrote and represented comedies in Italian; and pretended to take
pleasure only in such tricks and studies. Therefore he never carried
arms like other courtiers, and feigned to be afraid of blood, a man who
sought tranquillity at any price. Besides, he bore a pallid countenance
and melancholy brow, walking alone, talking very little and with few
persons. He haunted solitary places apart from the city, and showed
such plain signs of hypochondria that some began covertly to pass jokes
on him. Certain others, who were more acute, suspected that he was
harbouring and devising in his mind some terrible enterprise.' The
Prologue to Lorenzino's own comedy of 'Aridosiso' brings the sardonic,
sneering, ironical man vividly before us. He calls himself 'un certo
omiciatto, che non è nessun di voi che veggendolo non l'avesse a noia,
pensando che egli abbia fatto una commedia;' and begs the audience to
damn his play to save him the tedium of writing another. Criticised by
the light of his subsequent actions, this prologue may even be
understood to contain a covert promise of the murder he was meditating.

'In this way,' writes Varchi, 'the Duke had taken such familiarity with
Lorenzo, that, not content with making use of him as a ruffian in his
dealings with women, whether 323religious or secular, maidens or wives
or widows, noble or plebeian, young or elderly, as it might happen, he
applied to him to procure for his pleasure a half-sister of Lorenzo's
own mother, a young lady of marvellous beauty, but not less chaste than
beautiful, who was the wife of Lionardo Ginori, and lived not far from
the back entrance to the palace of the Medici.' Lorenzino undertook
this odious commission, seeing an opportunity to work his designs
against the Duke. But first he had to form an accomplice, since he
could not hope to carry out the murder without help. A bravo, called
Michele del Tavolaccino, but better known by the nickname of
Scoronconcolo, struck him as a fitting instrument. He had procured this
man's pardon for a homicide, and it appears that the fellow retained a
certain sense of gratitude. Lorenzino began by telling the man there
was a courtier who put insults upon him, and Scoronconcolo professed
his readiness to kill the knave. 'Sia chi si voglia; io l'ammazzerò, se
fosse Cristo.' Up to the last minute the name of Alessandro was not
mentioned. Having thus secured his assistant, Lorenzino chose a night
when he knew that Alessandro Vitelli, captain of the Duke's guard,
would be from home. Then, after supper, he whispered in Alessandro's
ear that at last he had seduced his aunt with an offer of money, and
that she would come to his, Lorenzo's chamber at the service of the
Duke that night. Only the Duke must appear at the rendezvous alone, and
when he had arrived, the lady should be fetched. 'Certain it is,' says
Varchi, 'that the Duke, having donned a cloak of satin in the
Neapolitan style, lined with sable, when he went to take his gloves,
and there were some of mail and some of perfumed leather, hesitated
awhile and said: "Which shall I choose, those of war, or those of
love-making?"' He took the latter and went out with only four
attendants, three of whom he dismissed upon the Piazza di San Marco,
while 324one was stationed just opposite Lorenzo's house, with strict
orders not to stir if he should see folk enter or issue thence. But
this fellow, called the Hungarian, after waiting a great while,
returned to the Duke's chamber, and there went to sleep.

Meanwhile Lorenzino received Alessandro in his bedroom, where there was
a good fire. The Duke unbuckled his sword, which Lorenzino took, and
having entangled the belt with the hilt, so that it should not readily
be drawn, laid it on the pillow. The Duke had flung himself already on
the bed, and hid himself among the curtains—doing this, it is supposed,
to save himself from the trouble of paying compliments to the lady when
she should arrive. For Caterina Ginori had the fame of a fair speaker,
and Alessandro was aware of his own incapacity to play the part of a
respectful lover. Nothing could more strongly point the man's brutality
than this act, which contributed in no small measure to his ruin.

Lorenzino left the Duke upon the bed, and went at once for
Scoronconcolo. He told him that the enemy was caught, and bade him only
mind the work he had to do. 'That will I do,' the bravo answered, 'even
though it were the Duke himself.' 'You've hit the mark,' said Lorenzino
with a face of joy; 'he cannot slip through our fingers. Come!' So they
mounted to the bedroom, and Lorenzino, knowing where the Duke was laid,
cried: 'Sir, are you asleep?' and therewith ran him through the back.
Alessandro was sleeping, or pretending to sleep, face downwards, and
the sword passed through his kidneys and diaphragm. But it did not kill
him. He slipped from the bed, and seized a stool to parry the next
blow. Scoronconcolo now stabbed him in the face, while Lorenzino forced
him back upon the bed; and then began a hideous struggle. In order to
prevent his cries, Lorenzino doubled his fist into the Duke's mouth.
Alessandro seized 325the thumb between his teeth, and held it in a vice
until he died. This disabled Lorenzino, who still lay upon his victim's
body, and Scoronconcolo could not strike for fear of wounding his
master. Between the writhing couple he made, however, several passes
with his sword, which only pierced the mattress. Then he drew a knife
and drove it into the Duke's throat, and bored about till he had
severed veins and windpipe.

IV.—THE FLIGHT OF LORENZINO DE' MEDICI

Alessandro was dead. His body fell to earth. The two murderers,
drenched with blood, lifted it up, and placed it on the bed, wrapped in
the curtains, as they had found him first. Then Lorenzino went to the
window, which looked out upon the Via Larga, and opened it to rest and
breathe a little air. After this he called for Scoronconcolo's boy, Il
Freccia, and bade him look upon the dead man. Il Freccia recognised the
Duke. But why Lorenzino did this, no one knew. It seemed, as Varchi
says, that, having planned the murder with great ability, and executed
it with daring, his good sense and good luck forsook him. He made no
use of the crime he had committed; and from that day forward till his
own assassination, nothing prospered with him. Indeed, the murder of
Alessandro appears to have been almost motiveless, considered from the
point of view of practical politics. Varchi assumes that Lorenzino's
burning desire of glory prompted the deed; and when he had acquired the
notoriety he sought, there was an end to his ambition. This view is
confirmed by the Apology he wrote and published for his act. It remains
one of the most pregnant, bold, and brilliant pieces of writing which
we possess in favour of tyrannicide from that epoch of insolent crime
and audacious rhetoric. So energetic is the style, and so biting the
invective of this masterpiece, in which the author 326stabs a second
time his victim, that both Giordani and Leopardi affirmed it to be the
only true monument of eloquence in the Italian language. If thirst for
glory was Lorenzino's principal incentive, immediate glory was his
guerdon. He escaped that same night with Scoronconcolo and Freccia to
Bologna, where he stayed to dress his thumb, and then passed forward to
Venice. Filippo Strozzi there welcomed him as the new Brutus, gave him
money, and promised to marry his two sons to the two sisters of the
tyrant-killer. Poems were written and published by the most famous men
of letters, including Benedetto Varchi and Francesco Maria Molsa, in
praise of the Tuscan Brutus, the liberator of his country from a
tyrant. A bronze medal was struck bearing his name, with a profile
copied from Michelangelo's bust of Brutus. On the obverse are two
daggers and a cup, and the date viii. id. Jan.

The immediate consequence of Alessandro's murder was the elevation of
Cosimo, son of Giovanni delle Bande Nere, and second cousin of
Lorenzino, to the duchy. At the ceremony of his investiture with the
ducal honours, Cosimo solemnly undertook to revenge Alessandro's
murder. In the following March he buried his predecessor with pomp in
San Lorenzo. The body was placed beside the bones of the Duke of Urbino
in the marble chest of Michelangelo, and here not many years ago it was
discovered. Soon afterwards Lorenzino was declared a rebel. His
portrait was painted according to old Tuscan precedent, head downwards,
and suspended by one foot, upon the wall of the fort built by
Alessandro. His house was cut in twain from roof to pavement, and a
narrow lane was driven through it, which received the title of
Traitor's Alley, _Chiasso del Traditore_. The price of four thousand
golden florins was put upon his head, together with the further sum of
one hundred florins per 327annum in perpetuity to be paid to the
murderer and his direct heirs in succession, by the Otto di Balia.
Moreover, the man who killed Lorenzino was to enjoy all civic
privileges; exemption from all taxes, ordinary and extraordinary; the
right of carrying arms, together with two attendants, in the city and
the whole domain of Florence; and the further prerogative of restoring
ten outlaws at his choice. If Lorenzino could be captured and brought
alive to Florence, the whole of this reward would be doubled.

This decree was promulgated in April 1537, and thenceforward Lorenzino
de' Medici lived a doomed man. The assassin, who had been proclaimed a
Brutus by Tuscan exiles and humanistic enthusiasts, was regarded as a
Judas by the common people. Ballads were written on him with the title
of the 'Piteous and sore lament made unto himself by Lorenzino de'
Medici, who murdered the most illustrious Duke Alessandro.' He had
become a wild beast, whom it was honourable to hunt down, a pest which
it was righteous to extirpate. Yet fate delayed nine years to overtake
him. What remains to be told about his story must be extracted from the
narrative of the bravo who succeeded, with the aid of an accomplice, in
despatching him at Venice.[13] So far as possible, I shall use the
man's own words, translating them literally, and omitting only
unimportant details. The narrative throws brilliant light upon the
manners and movements of professional cut-throats at that period in
Italy. It seems to have been taken down from the hero Francesco, or
Cecco, Bibboni's lips; and there is no doubt that we possess in it a
valuable historical document for the illustration of 328contemporary
customs. It offers in all points a curious parallel to Cellini's
account of his own homicides and hair-breadth escapes. Moreover, it is
confirmed in its minutest circumstances by the records of the criminal
courts of Venice in the sixteenth century. This I can attest from
recent examination of MSS. relating to the _Signori di Notte_ and the
_Esecutori contro la Bestemmia_, which are preserved among the Archives
at the Frari.

 [13] Those who are interested in such matters may profitably compare
 this description of a planned murder in the sixteenth century with the
 account written by Ambrogio Tremazzi of the way in which he tracked
 and slew Troilo Orsini in Paris in the year 1577. It is given by Gnoli
 in his _Vittoria Accoramboni_, pp. 404-414.

V.—THE MURDER OF LORENZINO DE' MEDICI

'When I returned from Germany,' begins Bibboni, 'where I had been in
the pay of the Emperor, I found at Vicenza Bebo da Volterra, who was
staying in the house of M. Antonio da Roma, a nobleman of that city.
This gentleman employed him because of a great feud he had; and he was
mighty pleased, moreover, at my coming, and desired that I too should
take up my quarters in his palace.'

This paragraph strikes the keynote of the whole narrative, and
introduces us to the company we are about to keep. The noblemen of that
epoch, if they had private enemies, took into their service soldiers of
adventure, partly to protect their persons, but also to make war, when
occasion offered, on their foes. The _bravi_, as they were styled, had
quarters assigned them in the basement of the palace, where they might
be seen swaggering about the door or flaunting their gay clothes behind
the massive iron bars of the windows which opened on the streets. When
their master went abroad at night they followed him, and were always at
hand to perform secret services in love affairs, assassination, and
espial. For the rest, they haunted taverns, and kept up correspondence
with prostitutes. An Italian city had a whole population of such
fellows, the offscourings of armies, drawn from 329all nations, divided
by their allegiance of the time being into hostile camps, but united by
community of interest and occupation, and ready to combine against the
upper class, upon whose vices, enmities, and cowardice they throve.

Bibboni proceeds to say how another gentleman of Vicenza, M. Francesco
Manente, had at this time a feud with certain of the Guazzi and the
Laschi, which had lasted several years, and cost the lives of many
members of both parties and their following. M. Francesco being a
friend of M. Antonio, besought that gentleman to lend him Bibboni and
Bebo for a season; and the two _bravi_ went together with their new
master to Celsano, a village in the neighbourhood. 'There both parties
had estates, and all of them kept armed men in their houses, so that
not a day passed without feats of arms, and always there was some one
killed or wounded. One day, soon afterwards, the leaders of our party
resolved to attack the foe in their house, where we killed two, and the
rest, numbering five men, entrenched themselves in a ground-floor
apartment; whereupon we took possession of their harquebuses and other
arms, which forced them to abandon the villa and retire to Vicenza; and
within a short space of time this great feud was terminated by an ample
peace.' After this Bebo took service with the Rector of the University
in Padua, and was transferred by his new patron to Milan. Bibboni
remained at Vicenza with M. Galeazzo della Seta, who stood in great
fear of his life, notwithstanding the peace which had been concluded
between the two factions. At the end of ten months he returned to M.
Antonio da Roma and his six brothers, 'all of whom being very much
attached to me, they proposed that I should live my life with them, for
good or ill, and be treated as one of the family; upon the
understanding that if war broke out and I wanted to take part in it, I
should always have twenty-five crowns and arms 330and horse, with
welcome home, so long as I lived; and in case I did not care to join
the troops, the same provision for my maintenance.'

From these details we comprehend the sort of calling which a bravo of
Bibboni's species followed. Meanwhile Bebo was at Milan. 'There it
happened that M. Francesco Vinta, of Volterra, was on embassy from the
Duke of Florence. He saw Bebo, and asked him what he was doing in
Milan, and Bebo answered that he was a knight errant.' This phrase,
derived no doubt from the romantic epics then in vogue, was a pretty
euphemism for a rogue of Bebo's quality. The ambassador now began
cautiously to sound his man, who seems to have been outlawed from the
Tuscan duchy, telling him he knew a way by which he might return with
favour to his home, and at last disclosing the affair of Lorenzo. Bebo
was puzzled at first, but when he understood the matter, he professed
his willingness, took letters from the envoy to the Duke of Florence,
and, in a private audience with Cosimo, informed him that he was ready
to attempt Lorenzino's assassination. He added that 'he had a comrade
fit for such a job, whose fellow for the business could not easily be
found.'

Bebo now travelled to Vicenza, and opened the whole matter to Bibboni,
who weighed it well, and at last, being convinced that the Duke's
commission to his comrade was _bona fide_, determined to take his share
in the undertaking. The two agreed to have no accomplices. They went to
Venice, and 'I,' says Bibboni, 'being most intimately acquainted with
all that city, and provided there with many friends, soon quietly
contrived to know where Lorenzino lodged, and took a room in the
neighbourhood, and spent some days in seeing how we best might rule our
conduct.' Bibboni soon discovered that Lorenzino never left his palace;
and he therefore remained in much perplexity, until, by good 331luck,
Ruberto Strozzi arrived from France in Venice, bringing in his train a
Navarrese servant, who had the nickname of Spagnoletto. This fellow was
a great friend of the bravo. They met, and Bibboni told him that he
should like to go and kiss the hands of Messer Ruberto, whom he had
known in Rome. Strozzi inhabited the same palace as Lorenzino. 'When we
arrived there, both Messer Ruberto and Lorenzo were leaving the house,
and there were around them so many gentlemen and other persons, that I
could not present myself, and both straightway stepped into the
gondola. Then I, not having seen Lorenzo for a long while past, and
because he was very quietly attired, could not recognise the man
exactly, but only as it were between certainty and doubt. Wherefore I
said to Spagnoletto, "I think I know that gentleman, but don't remember
where I saw him." And Messer Ruberto was giving him his right hand.
Then Spagnoletto answered, "You know him well enough; he is Messer
Lorenzo. But see you tell this to nobody. He goes by the name of Messer
Dario, because he lives in great fear for his safety, and people don't
know that he is now in Venice." I answered that I marvelled much, and
if I could have helped him, would have done so willingly. Then I asked
where they were going, and he said, to dine with Messer Giovanni della
Casa, who was the Pope's Legate. I did not leave the man till I had
drawn from him all I required.'

Thus spoke the Italian Judas. The appearance of La Casa on the scene is
interesting. He was the celebrated author of the scandalous 'Capitolo
del Forno,' the author of many sublime and melancholy sonnets, who was
now at Venice, prosecuting a charge of heresy against Pier Paolo
Vergerio, and paying his addresses to a noble lady of the Quirini
family. It seems that on the territory of San Marco he made common
cause with the exiles from Florence, for he 332was himself by birth a
Florentine, and he had no objection to take Brutus-Lorenzino by the
hand.

After the noblemen had rowed off in their gondola to dine with the
Legate, Bibboni and his friend entered their palace, where he found
another old acquaintance, the house-steward, or _spenditore_ of
Lorenzo. From him he gathered much useful information. Pietro Strozzi,
it seems, had allowed the tyrannicide one thousand five hundred crowns
a year, with the keep of three brave and daring companions (_tre
compagni bravi e facinorosi_), and a palace worth fifty crowns on
lease. But Lorenzo had just taken another on the Campo di San Polo at
three hundred crowns a year, for which swagger (_altura_) Pietro
Strozzi had struck a thousand crowns off his allowance. Bibboni also
learned that he was keeping house with his uncle, Alessandro Soderini,
another Florentine outlaw, and that he was ardently in love with a
certain beautiful Barozza. This woman was apparently one of the grand
courtesans of Venice. He further ascertained the date when he was going
to move into the palace at San Polo, and, 'to put it briefly, knew
everything he did, and, as it were, how many times a day he spit.' Such
were the intelligences of the servants' hall, and of such value were
they to men of Bibboni's calling.

In the Carnival of 1546 Lorenzo meant to go masqued in the habit of a
gipsy woman to the square of San Spirito, where there was to be a
joust. Great crowds of people would assemble, and Bibboni hoped to do
his business there. The assassination, however, failed on this
occasion, and Lorenzo took up his abode in the palace he had hired upon
the Campo di San Polo. This Campo is one of the largest open places in
Venice, shaped irregularly, with a finely curving line upon the western
side, where two of the noblest private houses in the city are still
standing. Nearly opposite 333these, in the south-western angle, stands,
detached, the little old church of San Polo. One of its side entrances
opens upon the square; the other on a lane, which leads eventually to
the Frari. There is nothing in Bibboni's narrative to make it clear
where Lorenzo hired his dwelling. But it would seem from certain things
which he says later on, that in order to enter the church his victim
had to cross the square. Meanwhile Bibboni took the precaution of
making friends with a shoemaker, whose shop commanded the whole Campo,
including Lorenzo's palace. In this shop he began to spend much of his
time; 'and oftentimes I feigned to be asleep; but God knows whether I
was sleeping, for my mind, at any rate, was wide-awake.'

A second convenient occasion for murdering Lorenzo soon seemed to
offer. He was bidden to dine with Monsignor della Casa; and Bibboni,
putting a bold face on, entered the Legate's palace, having left Bebo
below in the loggia, fully resolved to do the business. 'But we found,'
he says, 'that, they had gone to dine at Murano, so that we remained
with our tabors in their bag.' The island of Murano at that period was
a favourite resort of the Venetian nobles, especially of the more
literary and artistic, who kept country-houses there, where they
enjoyed the fresh air of the lagoons and the quiet of their gardens.

The third occasion, after all these weeks of watching, brought success
to Bibboni's schemes. He had observed how Lorenzo occasionally so far
broke his rules of caution as to go on foot, past the church of San
Polo, to visit the beautiful Barozza; and he resolved, if possible, to
catch him on one of these journeys. 'It so chanced on the 28th of
February, which was the second Sunday of Lent, that having gone, as was
my wont, to pry out whether Lorenzo would give orders for going abroad
that day, I entered the shoemaker's 334shop, and stayed awhile, until
Lorenzo came to the window with a napkin round his neck for he was
combing his hair—and at the same moment I saw a certain Giovan Battista
Martelli, who kept his sword for the defence of Lorenzo's person, enter
and come forth again. Concluding that they would probably go abroad, I
went home to get ready and procure the necessary weapons, and there I
found Bebo asleep in bed, and made him get up at once, and we came to
our accustomed post of observation, by the church of San Polo, where
our men would have to pass.' Bibboni now retired to his friend the
shoemaker's, and Bebo took up his station at one of the side-doors of
San Polo; 'and, as good luck would have it, Giovan Battista Martelli
came forth, and walked a piece in front, and then Lorenzo came, and
then Alessandro Soderini, going the one behind the other, like storks,
and Lorenzo, on entering the church, and lifting up the curtain of the
door, was seen from the opposite door by Bebo, who at the same time
noticed how I had left the shop, and so we met upon the street as we
had agreed, and he told me that Lorenzo was inside the church.'

To any one who knows the Campo di San Polo, it will be apparent that
Lorenzo had crossed from the western side of the piazza and entered the
church by what is technically called its northern door. Bebo, stationed
at the southern door, could see him when he pushed the heavy _stoia_ or
leather curtain aside, and at the same time could observe Bibboni's
movements in the cobbler's shop. Meanwhile Lorenzo walked across the
church and came to the same door where Bebo had been standing. 'I saw
him issue from the church and take the main street; then came
Alessandro Soderini, and I walked last of all; and when we reached the
point we had determined on, I jumped in front of Alessandro with the
poignard in my hand, crying, "Hold hard, Alessandro, and 335get along
with you in God's name, for we are not here for you!" He then threw
himself around my waist, and grasped my arms, and kept on calling out.
Seeing how wrong I had been to try to spare his life, I wrenched myself
as well as I could from his grip, and with my lifted poignard struck
him, as God willed, above the eyebrow, and a little blood trickled from
the wound. He, in high fury, gave me such a thrust that I fell
backward, and the ground besides was slippery from having rained a
little. Then Alessandro drew his sword, which he carried in its
scabbard, and thrust at me in front, and struck me on the corslet,
which for my good fortune was of double mail. Before I could get ready
I received three passes, which, had I worn a doublet instead of that
mailed corslet, would certainly have run me through. At the fourth pass
I had regained my strength and spirit, and closed with him, and stabbed
him four times in the head, and being so close he could not use his
sword, but tried to parry with his hand and hilt, and I, as God willed,
struck him at the wrist below the sleeve of mail, and cut his hand off
clean, and gave him then one last stroke on his head. Thereupon he
begged for God's sake spare his life, and I, in trouble about Bebo,
left him in the arms of a Venetian nobleman, who held him back from
jumping into the canal.'

Who this Venetian nobleman, found unexpectedly upon the scene, was,
does not appear. Nor, what is still more curious, do we hear anything
of that Martelli, the bravo, 'who kept his sword for the defence of
Lorenzo's person.' The one had arrived accidentally, it seems. The
other must have been a coward and escaped from the scuffle.

'When I turned,' proceeds Bibboni, 'I found Lorenzo on his knees. He
raised himself, and I, in anger, gave him a great cut across the head,
which split it in two pieces, and laid him at my feet, and he never
rose again.'

336

VI.—THE ESCAPE OF THE BRAVI

Bebo, meanwhile, had made off from the scene of action. And Bibboni,
taking to his heels, came up with him in the little square of San
Marcello. They now ran for their lives till they reached the traghetto
di San Spirito, where they threw their poignards into the water,
remembering that no man might carry these in Venice under penalty of
the galleys. Bibboni's white hose were drenched with blood. He
therefore agreed to separate from Bebo, having named a rendezvous. Left
alone, his ill luck brought him face to face with twenty constables
(_sbirri_). 'In a moment I conceived that they knew everything, and
were come to capture me, and of a truth I saw that it was over with me.
As swiftly as I could I quickened pace and got into a church, near to
which was the house of a Compagnia, and the one opened into the other,
and knelt down and prayed, commending myself with fervour to God for my
deliverance and safety. Yet while I prayed, I kept my eyes well open
and saw the whole band pass the church, except one man who entered, and
I strained my sight so that I seemed to see behind as well as in front,
and then it was I longed for my poignard, for I should not have heeded
being in a church.' But the constable, it soon appeared, was not
looking for Bibboni. So he gathered up his courage, and ran for the
Church of San Spirito, where the Padre Andrea Volterrano was preaching
to a great congregation. He hoped to go in by one door and out by the
other, but the crowd prevented him, and he had to turn back and face
the _sbirrí_. One of them followed him, having probably caught sight of
the blood upon his hose. Then Bibboni resolved to have done with the
fellow, and rushed at him, and flung him down with his head upon the
pavement, and ran like mad and came at last, all out of breath, to San
Marco.

337It seems clear that before Bibboni separated from Bebo they had
crossed the water, for the Sestiere di San Polo is separated from the
Sestiere di San Marco by the Grand Canal. And this they must have done
at the traghetto di San Spirito. Neither the church nor the traghetto
are now in existence, and this part of the story is therefore
obscure.[14] Having reached San Marco, he took a gondola at the Ponte
della Paglia, where tourists are now wont to stand and contemplate the
Ducal Palace and the Bridge of Sighs. First, he sought the house of a
woman of the town who was his friend; then changed purpose, and rowed
to the palace of the Count Salici da Collalto. 'He was a great friend
and intimate of ours, because Bebo and I had done him many and great
services in times passed. There I knocked; and Bebo opened the door,
and when he saw me dabbled with blood, he marvelled that I had not come
to grief and fallen into the hands of justice, and, indeed, had feared
as much because I had remained so long away.' It appears, therefore,
that the Palazzo Collalto was their rendezvous. 'The Count was from
home; but being known to all his people, I played the master and went
into the kitchen to the fire, and with soap and water turned my hose,
which had been white, to a grey colour.' This is a very delicate way of
saying that he washed out the blood of Alessandro and Lorenzo!

 [14] So far as I can discover, the only church of San Spirito in
 Venice was a building on the island of San Spirito, erected by
 Sansavino, which belonged to the Sestiere di S. Croce, and which was
 suppressed in 1656. Its plate and the fine pictures which Titian
 painted there were transferred at that date to S.M. della Salute. I
 cannot help inferring that either Bibboni's memory failed him, or that
 his words were wrongly understood by printer or amanuensis. If for S.
 Spirito we substitute S. Stefano, the account would be intelligible.

Soon after the Count returned, and 'lavished caresses' upon Bebo and
his precious comrade. They did not tell 338him what they had achieved
that morning, but put him off with a story of having settled a _sbirro_
in a quarrel about a girl. Then the Count invited them to dinner; and
being himself bound to entertain the first physician of Venice,
requested them to take it in an upper chamber. He and his secretary
served them with their own hands at table. When the physician arrived,
the Count went downstairs; and at this moment a messenger came from
Lorenzo's mother, begging the doctor to go at once to San Polo, for
that her son had been murdered and Soderini wounded to the death. It
was now no longer possible to conceal their doings from the Count, who
told them to pluck up courage and abide in patience. He had himself to
dine and take his siesta, and then to attend a meeting of the Council.

About the hour of vespers, Bibboni determined to seek better refuge.
Followed at a discreet distance by Bebo, he first called at their
lodgings and ordered supper. Two priests came in and fell into
conversation with them. But something in the behaviour of one of these
good men roused his suspicions. So they left the house, took a gondola,
and told the man to row hard to S. Maria Zobenigo. On the way he bade
him put them on shore, paid him well, and ordered him to wait for them.
They landed near the palace of the Spanish embassy; and here Bibboni
meant to seek sanctuary. For it must be remembered that the houses of
ambassadors, no less than of princes of the Church, were inviolable.
They offered the most convenient harbouring-places to rascals. Charles
V., moreover, was deeply interested in the vengeance taken on
Alessandro de' Medici's murderer, for his own natural daughter was
Alessandro's widow and Duchess of Florence. In the palace they were met
with much courtesy by about forty Spaniards, who showed considerable
curiosity, and told them that Lorenzo and Alessandro Soderini had been
murdered 339that morning by two men whose description answered to their
appearance. Bibboni put their questions by and asked to see the
ambassador. He was not at home. In that case, said Bibboni, take us to
the secretary. Attended by some thirty Spaniards, 'with great joy and
gladness,' they were shown into the secretary's chamber. He sent the
rest of the folk away, 'and locked the door well, and then embraced and
kissed us before we had said a word, and afterwards bade us talk freely
without any fear.' When Bibboni had told the whole story, he was again
embraced and kissed by the secretary, who thereupon left them and went
to the private apartment of the ambassador. Shortly after he returned
and led them by a winding staircase into the presence of his master.
The ambassador greeted them with great honour, told them he would
strain all the power of the empire to hand them in safety over to Duke
Cosimo, and that he had already sent a courier to the Emperor with the
good news.

So they remained in hiding in the Spanish embassy; and in ten days'
time commands were received from Charles himself that everything should
be done to convey them safely to Florence. The difficulty was how to
smuggle them out of Venice, where the police of the Republic were on
watch, and Florentine outlaws were mounting guard on sea and shore to
catch them. The ambassador began by spreading reports on the Rialto
every morning of their having been seen at Padua, at Verona, in Friuli.
He then hired a palace at Malghera, near Mestre, and went out daily
with fifty Spaniards, and took carriage or amused himself with horse
exercise and shooting. The Florentines, who were on watch, could only
discover from his people that he did this for amusement. When he
thought that he had put them sufficiently off their guard, the
ambassador one day took Bibboni and Bebo out by Canaregio and Mestre to
Malghera, concealed in his own gondola, with 340the whole train of
Spaniards in attendance. And though, on landing, the Florentines
challenged them, they durst not interfere with an ambassador or come to
battle with his men. So Bebo and Bibboni were hustled into a coach, and
afterwards provided with two comrades and four horses. They rode for
ninety miles without stopping to sleep, and on the day following this
long journey reached Trento, having probably threaded the mountain
valleys above Bassano, for Bibboni speaks of a certain village where
the people talked half German. The Imperial Ambassador at Trento
forwarded them next day to Mantua; from Mantua they came to Piacenza;
thence, passing through the valley of the Taro, crossing the Apennines
at Cisa, descending on Pontremoli, and reaching Pisa at night, the
fourteenth day after their escape from Venice.

When they arrived at Pisa, Duke Cosimo was supping. So they went to an
inn, and next morning presented themselves to his Grace. Cosimo
received them kindly, assured them of his gratitude, confirmed them in
the enjoyment of their rewards and privileges, and swore that they
might rest secure of his protection in all parts of his dominion. We
may imagine how the men caroused together after this reception. As
Bibboni adds, 'We were now able for the whole time of life left us to
live splendidly, without a thought or care.' The last words of his
narrative are these: 'Bebo from Pisa, at what date I know not, went
home to Volterra, his native town, and there finished his days; while I
abode in Florence, where I have had no further wish to hear of wars,
but to live my life in holy peace.'

So ends the story of the two _bravi_. We have reason to believe, from
some contemporary documents which Cantù has brought to light, that
Bibboni exaggerated his own part in the affair. Luca Martelli, writing
to Varchi, says that it 341was Bebo who clove Lorenzo's skull with a
cutlass. He adds this curious detail, that the weapons of both men were
poisoned, and that the wound inflicted by Bibboni on Soderini's hand
was a slight one. Yet, the poignard being poisoned, Soderini died of
it. In other respects Martelli's brief account agrees with that given
by Bibboni, who probably did no more, his comrade being dead, than
claim for himself, at some expense of truth, the lion's share of their
heroic action.

VII.—LORENZINO BRUTUS

It remains to ask ourselves, What opinion can be justly formed of
Lorenzino's character and motives? When he murdered his cousin, was he
really actuated by the patriotic desire to rid his country of a
monster? Did he imitate the Roman Brutus in the noble spirit of his
predecessors, Olgiati and Boscoli, martyrs to the creed of tyrannicide?
Or must this crowning action of a fretful life be explained, like his
previous mutilation of the statues on the Arch of Constantine, by a
wild thirst for notoriety? Did he hope that the exiles would return to
Florence, and that he would enjoy an honourable life, an immortality of
glorious renown? Did envy for his cousin's greatness and resentment of
his undisguised contempt—the passions of one who had been used for vile
ends—conscious of self-degradation and the loss of honour, yet mindful
of his intellectual superiority—did these emotions take fire in him and
mingle with a scholar's reminiscences of antique heroism, prompting him
to plan a deed which should at least assume the show of patriotic zeal,
and prove indubitable courage in its perpetrator? Did he, again,
perhaps imagine, being next in blood to Alessandro and direct heir to
the ducal crown by the Imperial Settlement of 1530, that the city would
elect her liberator for her ruler?

342Alfieri and Niccolini, having taken, as it were, a brief in favour
of tyrannicide, praised Lorenzino as a hero. De Musset, who wrote a
considerable drama on his story, painted him as a _roué_ corrupted by
society, enfeebled by circumstance, soured by commerce with an
uncongenial world, who hides at the bottom of his mixed nature enough
of real nobility to make him the leader of a forlorn hope for the
liberties of Florence. This is the most favourable construction we can
put upon Lorenzo's conduct. Yet some facts of the case warn us to
suspend our judgment. He seems to have formed no plan for the
liberation of his fellow-citizens. He gave no pledge of self-devotion
by avowing his deed and abiding by its issues. He showed none of the
qualities of a leader, whether in the cause of freedom or of his own
dynastic interests, after the murder. He escaped as soon as he was
able, as secretly as he could manage, leaving the city in confusion,
and exposing himself to the obvious charge of abominable treason. So
far as the Florentines knew, his assassination of their Duke was but a
piece of private spite, executed with infernal craft. It is true that
when he seized the pen in exile, he did his best to claim the guerdon
of a patriot, and to throw the blame of failure on the Florentines. In
his Apology, and in a letter written to Francesco de' Medici, he taunts
them with lacking the spirit to extinguish tyranny when he had slain
the tyrant. He summons plausible excuses to his aid—the impossibility
of taking persons of importance into his confidence, the loss of blood
he suffered from his wound, the uselessness of rousing citizens whom
events proved over-indolent for action. He declares that he has nothing
to regret. Having proved by deeds his will to serve his country, he has
saved his life in order to spend it for her when occasion offered. But
these arguments, invented after the catastrophe, these words, so
bravely penned when action ought to have 343confirmed his resolution,
do not meet the case. It was no deed of a true hero to assassinate a
despot, knowing or half knowing that the despot's subjects would
immediately elect another. Their languor could not, except
rhetorically, be advanced in defence of his own flight.

The historian is driven to seek both the explanation and palliation of
Lorenzo's failure in the temper of his times. There was enough daring
left in Florence to carry through a plan of brilliant treason, modelled
on an antique Roman tragedy. But there was not moral force in the
protagonist to render that act salutary, not public energy sufficient
in his fellow-citizens to accomplish his drama of deliverance. Lorenzo
was corrupt. Florence was flaccid. Evil manners had emasculated the
hero. In the state the last spark of independence had expired with
Ferrucci.

Still I have not without forethought dubbed this man a Cinque Cento
Brutus. Like much of the art and literature of his century, his action
may be regarded as a _bizarre_ imitation of the antique manner. Without
the force and purpose of a Roman, Lorenzo set himself to copy
Plutarch's men—just as sculptors carved Neptunes and Apollos without
the dignity and serenity of the classic style. The antique faith was
wanting to both murderer and craftsman in those days. Even as
Renaissance work in art is too often aimless, decorative, vacant of
intention, so Lorenzino's Brutus tragedy seems but the snapping of a
pistol in void air. He had the audacity but not the ethical consistency
of his crime. He played the part of Brutus like a Roscius, perfect in
its histrionic details. And it doubtless gave to this skilful actor a
supreme satisfaction—salving over many wounds of vanity, quenching the
poignant thirst for things impossible and draughts of fame—that he
could play it on no mimic stage, but on the theatre of Europe. The
weakness of his conduct was the central 344weakness of his age and
country. Italy herself lacked moral purpose, sense of righteous
necessity, that consecration of self to a noble cause, which could
alone have justified Lorenzo's perfidy. Confused memories of Judith,
Jael, Brutus, and other classical tyrannicides, exalted his
imagination. Longing for violent emotions, jaded with pleasure which
had palled, discontented with his wasted life, jealous of his brutal
cousin, appetitive to the last of glory, he conceived his scheme.
Having conceived, he executed it with that which never failed in Cinque
Cento Italy—the artistic spirit of perfection. When it was over, he
shrugged his shoulders, wrote his magnificent Apology with a style of
adamant upon a plate of steel, and left it for the outlaws of Filippo
Strozzi's faction to deal with the crisis he had brought about. For
some years he dragged out an ignoble life in obscurity, and died at
last, as Varchi puts it, more by his own carelessness than by the
watchful animosity of others. Over the wild, turbid, clever,
incomprehensible, inconstant hero-artist's grave we write our
_Requiescat_. Clio, as she takes the pen in hand to record this prayer,
smiles disdainfully and turns to graver business.

345




TWO DRAMATISTS OF THE LAST CENTURY


There are few contrasts more striking than that which is presented by
the memoirs of Goldoni and Alfieri. Both of these men bore names highly
distinguished in the history of Italian literature. Both of them were
framed by nature with strongly marked characters, and fitted to perform
a special work in the world. Both have left behind them records of
their lives and literary labours, singularly illustrative of their
peculiar differences. There is no instance in which we see more clearly
the philosophical value of autobiographies, than in these vivid
pictures which the great Italian tragedian and comic author have
delineated. Some of the most interesting works of Lionardo da Vinci,
Giorgione, Albert Dürer, Rembrandt, Rubens, and Andrea del Sarto, are
their portraits painted by themselves. These pictures exhibit not only
the lineaments of the masters, but also their art. The hand which drew
them was the hand which drew the 'Last Supper,' or the 'Madonna of the
Tribune:' colour, method, chiaroscuro, all that makes up manner in
painting, may be studied on the same canvas as that which faithfully
represents the features of the man whose genius gave his style its
special character. We seem to understand the clear calm majesty of
Lionardo's manner, the silver-grey harmonies and smooth facility of
Andrea's Madonnas, the better for looking at their faces drawn by their
own hands at Florence. And if this be the case with a dumb picture, how
far higher must be the 346interest and importance of the written life
of a known author! Not only do we recognise in its composition the
style and temper and habits of thought which are familiar to us in his
other writings; but we also hear from his own lips how these were
formed, how his tastes took their peculiar direction, what
circumstances acted on his character, what hopes he had, and where he
failed. Even should his autobiography not bear the marks of uniform
candour, it probably reveals more of the actual truth, more of the
man's real nature in its height and depth, than any memoir written by
friend or foe. Its unconscious admissions, its general spirit, and the
inferences which we draw from its perusal, are far more valuable than
any mere statement of facts or external analysis, however scientific.
When we become acquainted with the series of events which led to the
conception or attended the production of some masterpiece of
literature, a new light is thrown upon its beauties, fresh life bursts
forth from every chapter, and we seem to have a nearer and more
personal interest in its success. What a powerful sensation, for
instance, is that which we experience when, after studying the 'Decline
and Fall of the Roman Empire,' Gibbon tells us how the thought of
writing it came to him upon the Capitol, among the ruins of dead Rome,
and within hearing of the mutter of the monks of Ara Coeli, and how he
finished it one night by Lake Geneva, and laid his pen down and walked
forth and saw the stars above his terrace at Lausanne!

The memoirs of Alfieri and Goldoni are not deficient in any of the
characteristics of good autobiography. They seem to bear upon their
face the stamp of truthfulness, they illustrate their authors' lives
with marvellous lucidity, and they are full of interest as stories. But
it is to the contrast which they present that our attention should be
chiefly drawn. Other biographies may be as interesting and amusing.
None 347show in a more marked manner two distinct natures endowed with
genius for one art, and yet designed in every possible particular for
different branches of that art. Alfieri embodies Tragedy; Goldoni is
the spirit of Comedy. They are both Italians: their tragedies and
comedies are by no means cosmopolitan; but this national identity of
character only renders more remarkable the individual divergences by
which they were impelled into their different paths. Thalia seems to
have made the one, body, soul, and spirit; and Melpomene the other;
each goddess launched her favourite into circumstances suited to the
evolution of his genius, and presided over his development, so that at
his death she might exclaim,—Behold the living model of my Art!

Goldoni was born at Venice in the year 1707; he had already reached
celebrity when Alfieri saw the light for the first time, in 1749, at
Asti. Goldoni's grandfather was a native of Modena, who had settled in
Venice, and there lived with the prodigality of a rich and ostentatious
'bourgeois.' 'Amid riot and luxury did I enter the world,' says the
poet, after enumerating the banquets and theatrical displays with which
the old Goldoni entertained his guests in his Venetian palace and
country-house. Venice at that date was certainly the proper birthplace
for a comic poet. The splendour of the Renaissance had thoroughly
habituated her nobles to pleasures of the sense, and had enervated
their proud, maritime character, while the great name of the republic
robbed them of the caution for which they used to be conspicuous. Yet
the real strength of Venice was almost spent, and nothing remained but
outward insolence and prestige. Everything was gay about Goldoni in his
earliest childhood. Puppet-shows were built to amuse him by his
grandfather. 'My mother,' he says, 'took charge of my education, and my
father of my amusements.'

348Let us turn to the opening scene in Alfieri's life, and mark the
difference. A father above sixty, 'noble, wealthy, and respectable,'
who died before his son had reached the age of one year old. A mother
devoted to religion, the widow of one marquis, and after the death of a
second husband, Alfieri's father, married for the third time to a
nobleman of ancient birth. These were Alfieri's parents. He was born in
a solemn palazzo in the country town of Asti, and at the age of five
already longed for death as an escape from disease and other earthly
troubles. So noble and so wealthy was the youthful poet that an abbé
was engaged to carry out his education, but not to teach him more than
a count should know. Except this worthy man he had no companions
whatever. Strange ideas possessed the boy. He ruminated on his
melancholy, and when eight years old attempted suicide. At this age he
was sent to the academy at Turin, attended, as befitted a lad of his
rank, by a man-servant, who was to remain and wait on him at school.
Alfieri stayed here several years without revisiting his home,
tyrannised over by the valet who added to his grandeur, constantly
subject to sickness, and kept in almost total ignorance by his
incompetent preceptors. The gloom and pride and stoicism of his
temperament were augmented by this unnatural discipline. His spirit did
not break, but took a haughtier and more disdainful tone. He became
familiar with misfortunes. He learned to brood over and intensify his
passions. Every circumstance of his life seemed strung up to a tragic
pitch. This at least is the impression which remains upon our mind
after reading in his memoirs the narrative of what must in many of its
details have been a common schoolboy's life at that time.

Meanwhile, what had become of young Goldoni? His boyhood was as
thoroughly plebeian, various, and comic as Alfieri's had been
patrician, monotonous, and tragical. 349Instead of one place of
residence, we read of twenty. Scrape succeeds to scrape, adventure to
adventure. Knowledge of the world, and some book learning also, flow in
upon the boy, and are eagerly caught up by him and heterogeneously
amalgamated in his mind. Alfieri learned nothing, wrote nothing, in his
youth, and heard his parents say—'A nobleman need never strive to be a
doctor of the faculties.' Goldoni had a little medicine and much law
thrust upon him. At eight he wrote a comedy, and ere long began to read
the plays of Plautus, Terence, Aristophanes, and Machiavelli. Between
the nature of the two poets there was a marked and characteristic
difference as to their mode of labour and of acquiring knowledge. Both
of them loved fame, and wrought for it; but Alfieri did so from a sense
of pride and a determination to excel; while Goldoni loved the
approbation of his fellows, sought their compliments, and basked in the
sunshine of smiles. Alfieri wrote with labour. Each tragedy he composed
went through a triple process of composition, and received frequent
polishing when finished. Goldoni dashed off his pieces with the
greatest ease on every possible subject. He once produced sixteen
comedies in one theatrical season. Alfieri's were like lion's
whelps—brought forth with difficulty, and at long intervals; Goldoni's,
like the brood of a hare—many, frequent, and as agile as their parent.
Alfieri amassed knowledge scrupulously, but with infinite toil. He
mastered Greek and Hebrew when he was past forty. Goldoni never gave
himself the least trouble to learn anything, but trusted to the ready
wit, good memory, and natural powers, which helped him in a hundred
strange emergencies. Power of will and pride sustained the one;
facility and a good-humoured vanity the other. This contrast was
apparent at a very early age. We have seen how Alfieri passed his time
at Turin, in a kind of aristocratic prison of educational ignorance.
350Goldoni's grandfather died when he was five years old, and left his
family in great embarrassment. The poet's father went off to practise
medicine at Perugia. His son followed him, acquired the rudiments of
knowledge in that town, and then proceeded to study philosophy alone at
Rimini. There was no man-servant or academy in his case. He was far too
plebeian and too free. The boy lodged with a merchant, and got some
smattering of Thomas Aquinas and the Peripatetics into his small brain,
while he contrived to form a friendship with an acting company. They
were on the wing for Venice in a coasting boat, which would touch at
Chiozza, where Goldoni's mother then resided. The boy pleased them.
Would he like the voyage? This offer seemed too tempting, and away he
rushed, concealed himself on board, and made one of a merry motley
shipload. 'Twelve persons, actors as well as actresses, a prompter, a
machinist, a storekeeper, eight domestics, four chambermaids, two
nurses, children of every age, cats, dogs, monkeys, parrots, birds,
pigeons, and a lamb; it was another Noah's ark.' The young poet felt at
home; how could a comic poet feel otherwise? They laughed, they sang,
they danced; they ate and drank, and played at cards. 'Macaroni! Every
one fell on it, and three dishes were devoured. We had also alamode
beef, cold fowl, a loin of veal, a dessert, and excellent wine. What a
charming dinner! No cheer like a good appetite.' Their harmony,
however, was disturbed. The 'première amoureuse,' who, in spite of her
rank and title, was ugly and cross, and required to be coaxed with cups
of chocolate, lost her cat. She tried to kill the whole boat-load of
beasts—cats, dogs, monkeys, parrots, pigeons, even the lamb stood in
danger of her wrath. A regular quarrel ensued, was somehow set at
peace, and all began to laugh again. This is a sample of Goldoni's
youth. Comic pleasures, comic dangers; nothing 351deep or lasting, but
light and shadow cheerfully distributed, clouds lowering with storm, a
distant growl of thunder, then a gleam of light and sunshine breaking
overhead. He gets articled to an attorney at Venice, then goes to study
law at Pavia; studies society instead, and flirts, and finally is
expelled for writing satires. Then he takes a turn at medicine with his
father in Friuli, and acts as clerk to the criminal chancellor at
Chiozza.

Every employment seems easy to him, but he really cares for none but
literature. He spends all his spare time in reading and in amusements,
and begins to write a tragic opera. This proves, however, eminently
unsuccessful, and he burns it in a comic fit of anger. One laughable
love-affair in which he engaged at Udine exhibits his adventures in
their truly comic aspect. It reminds us of the scene in 'Don Giovanni,'
where Leporello personates the Don and deceives Donna Elvira. Goldoni
had often noticed a beautiful young lady at church and on the public
drives: she was attended by a waiting-maid, who soon perceived that her
mistress had excited the young man's admiration, and who promised to
befriend him in his suit. Goldoni was told to repair at night to the
palace of his mistress, and to pour his passion forth beneath her
window. Impatiently he waited for the trysting hour, conned his
love-sentences, and gloried in the romance of the adventure. When night
came, he found the window, and a veiled figure of a lady in the
moonlight, whom he supposed at once to be his mistress. Her he
eloquently addressed in the true style of Romeo's rapture, and she
answered him. Night after night this happened, but sometimes he was a
little troubled by a sound of ill-suppressed laughter interrupting the
_tête-à-tête_. Meanwhile Teresa, the waiting-maid, received from his
hands costly presents for her mistress, and made him promises on her
part in exchange. As she proved 352unable to fulfil them, Goldoni grew
suspicious, and at last discovered that the veiled figure to whom he
had poured out his tale of love was none other than Teresa, and that
the laughter had proceeded from her mistress, whom the faithless
waiting-maid regaled at her lover's expense. Thus ended this ridiculous
matter. Goldoni was not, however, cured by his experience. One other
love-affair rendered Udine too hot to hold him, and in consequence of a
third he had to fly from Venice just when he was beginning to flourish
there. At length he married comfortably and suitably, settling down
into a quiet life with a woman whom, if he did not love her with
passion, he at least respected and admired. Goldoni, in fact, had no
real passion in his nature.

Alfieri, on the other hand, was given over to volcanic ebullitions of
the most ungovernable hate and affection, joy and sorrow. The chains of
love which Goldoni courted so willingly, Alfieri regarded with the
greatest shyness. But while Goldoni healed his heart of all its bruises
in a week or so, the tragic poet bore about him wounds that would not
close. He enumerates three serious passions which possessed his whole
nature, and at times deprived him almost of his reason. A Dutch lady
first won his heart, and when he had to leave her, Alfieri suffered so
intensely that he never opened his lips during the course of a long
journey through Germany, Switzerland, and Piedmont. Fevers, and
suicides attempted but interrupted, marked the termination of this
tragic amour. His second passion had for its object an English lady,
with whose injured husband he fought a duel, although his collarbone
was broken at the time. The lady proved unworthy of Alfieri as well as
of her husband, and the poet left her in a most deplorable state of
hopelessness and intellectual prostration. At last he formed a
permanent affection for the wife of Prince Charles Edward, the Countess
of Albany, in close 353friendship with whom he lived after her
husband's death. The society of this lady gave him perfect happiness;
but it was founded on her lofty beauty, the pathos of her situation,
and her intellectual qualities. Melpomene presided at this union, while
Thalia blessed the nuptials of Goldoni. How characteristic also were
the adventures which these two pairs of lovers encountered! Goldoni
once carried his wife upon his back across two rivers in their flight
from the Spanish to the Austrian camp at Rimini, laughing and groaning,
and perceiving the humour of his situation all the time. Alfieri, on an
occasion of even greater difficulty, was stopped with his illustrious
friend at the gates of Paris in 1792. They were flying in post-chaises,
with their servants and their baggage, from the devoted city, when a
troop of _sansculottes_ rushed on them, surged around the carriage,
called them aristocrats, and tried to drag them off to prison. Alfieri,
with his tall gaunt figure, pallid face, and red voluminous hair,
stormed, raged, and raised his deep bass voice above the tumult. For
half an hour he fought with them, then made his coachmen gallop through
the gates, and scarcely halted till they got to Gravelines. By this
prompt movement they escaped arrest and death at Paris. These two
scenes would make agreeable companion pictures: Goldoni staggering
beneath his wife across the muddy bed of an Italian stream—the smiling
writer of agreeable plays, with his half-tearful helpmate ludicrous in
her disasters; Alfieri mad with rage among Parisian Mænads, his
princess quaking in her carriage, the air hoarse with cries, and death
and safety trembling in the balance. It is no wonder that the one man
wrote 'La Donna di Garbo' and the 'Cortese Veneziano,' while the other
was inditing essays on Tyranny and dramas of 'Antigone,' 'Timoleon,'
and 'Brutus.'

The difference between the men is seen no less remarkably 354in regard
to courage. Alfieri was a reckless rider, and astonished even English
huntsmen by his desperate leaps. In one of them he fell and broke his
collar-bone, but not the less he held his tryst with a fair lady,
climbed her park gates, and fought a duel with her husband. Goldoni was
a pantaloon for cowardice. In the room of an inn at Desenzano which he
occupied together with a female fellow-traveller, an attempt was made
to rob them by a thief at night. All Goldoni was able to do consisted
in crying out for help, and the lady called him 'M. l'Abbé' ever after
for his want of pluck. Goldoni must have been by far the more agreeable
of the two. In all his changes from town to town of Italy he found
amusement and brought gaiety. The sights, the theatres, the society
aroused his curiosity. He trembled with excitement at the performance
of his pieces, made friends with the actors, taught them, and wrote
parts to suit their qualities. At Pisa he attended as a stranger the
meeting of the Arcadian Academy, and at its close attracted all
attention to himself by his clever improvisation. He was in truth a
ready-witted man, pliable, full of resource, bred half a valet, half a
Roman _græculus_. Alfieri saw more of Europe than Goldoni. France,
Germany, Holland, Switzerland, England, Spain, all parts of Italy he
visited with restless haste. From land to land he flew, seeking no
society, enjoying nothing, dashing from one inn door to another with
his servants and his carriages, and thinking chiefly of the splendid
stud of horses which he took about with him upon his travels. He was a
lonely, stiff, self-engrossed, indomitable man. He could not rest at
home: he could not bear to be the vassal of a king and breathe the air
of courts. So he lived always on the wing, and ended by exiling himself
from Sardinia in order to escape the trammels of paternal government.
As for his tragedies, he wrote them to win laurels 355from posterity.
He never cared to see them acted; he bullied even his printers and
correctors; he cast a glove down in defiance of his critics. Goldoni
sought the smallest meed of approbation. It pleased him hugely in his
old age to be Italian master to a French princess. Alfieri openly
despised the public. Goldoni wrote because he liked to write; Alfieri,
for the sake of proving his superior powers. Against Alfieri's hatred
of Turin and its trivial solemnities, we have to set Goldoni's love of
Venice and its petty pleasures. He would willingly have drunk chocolate
and played at dominoes or picquet all his life on the Piazza di San
Marco, when Alfieri was crossing the sierras on his Andalusian horse,
and devouring a frugal meal of rice in solitude. Goldoni glided through
life an easy man, with genial, venial thoughts; with a clear, gay,
gentle temper; a true sense of what is good and just; and a heart that
loved diffusively, if not too warmly. Many were the checks and
obstacles thrown on his path; but round them or above them he passed
nimbly, without scar or scathe. Poverty went close behind him, but he
kept her off, and never felt the pinch of need. Alfieri strained and
strove against the barriers of fate; a sombre, rugged man, proud,
candid, and self-confident, who broke or bent all opposition; now
moving solemnly with tragic pomp, now dashing passionately forward by
the might of will. Goldoni drew his inspirations from the moment and
surrounding circumstances. Alfieri pursued an ideal, slowly formed, but
strongly fashioned and resolutely followed. Of wealth he had plenty and
to spare, but he disregarded it, and was a Stoic in his mode of life.
He was an unworldly man, and hated worldliness. Goldoni, but for his
authorship, would certainly have grown a prosperous advocate, and died
of gout in Venice. Goldoni liked smart clothes; Alfieri went always in
black. Goldoni's fits of spleen—for he _was_ melancholy now and
then—lasted 356a day or two, and disappeared before a change of place.
Alfieri dragged his discontent about with him all over Europe, and let
it interrupt his work and mar his intellect for many months together.
Alfieri was a patriot, and hated France. Goldoni never speaks of
politics, and praises Paris as a heaven on earth. The genial moralising
of the latter appears childish by the side of Alfieri's terse
philosophy and pregnant remarks on the development of character. What
suits the page of Plautus would look poor in 'Oedipus' or 'Agamemnon.'
Goldoni's memoirs are diffuse and flippant in their light French dress.
They seem written to please. Alfieri's Italian style marches with
dignity and Latin terseness. He rarely condescends to smile. He writes
to instruct the world and to satisfy himself. Grim humour sometimes
flashes out, as when he tells the story of the Order of Homer, which he
founded. How different from Goldoni's naïve account of his little
ovation in the theatre at Paris!

But it would be idle to carry on this comparison, already tedious. The
life of Goldoni was one long scene of shifts and jests, of frequent
triumphs and some failures, of lessons hard at times, but kindly.
Passions and _ennui_, flashes of heroic patriotism, constant suffering
and stoical endurance, art and love idealised, fill up the life of
Alfieri. Goldoni clung much to his fellow-men, and shared their pains
and pleasures. Alfieri spent many of his years in almost absolute
solitude. On the whole character and deeds of the one man was stamped
Comedy: the other was own son of Tragedy.

If, after reading the autobiographies of Alfieri and Goldoni, we turn
to the perusal of their plays, we shall perceive that there is no
better commentary on the works of an artist than his life, and no
better life than one written by himself. The old style of criticism,
which strove to separate an author's productions from his life, and
even from the age in 357which he lived, to set up an arbitrary canon of
taste, and to select one or two great painters or poets as ideals
because they seemed to illustrate that canon, has passed away. We are
beginning to feel that art is a part of history and of physiology. That
is to say, the artist's work can only be rightly understood by studying
his age and temperament. Goldoni's versatility and want of depth
induced him to write sparkling comedies. The merry life men passed at
Venice in its years of decadence proved favourable to his genius.
Alfieri's melancholy and passionate qualities, fostered in solitude,
and aggravated by a tyranny he could not bear, led him irresistibly to
tragic composition. Though a noble, his nobility only added to his
pride, and insensibly his intellect had been imbued with the democratic
sentiments which were destined to shake Europe in his lifetime. This,
in itself, was a tragic circumstance, bringing him into close sympathy
with the Brutus, the Prometheus, the Timoleon of ancient history.
Goldoni's _bourgeoisie_, in the atmosphere of which he was born and
bred, was essentially comic. The true comedy of manners, which is quite
distinct from Shakspere's fancy or from Aristophanic satire, is always
laid in middle life. Though Goldoni tried to write tragedies, they were
unimpassioned, dull, and tame. He lacked altogether the fire,
high-wrought nobility of sentiment, and sense of form essential for
tragic art. On the other hand, Alfieri composed some comedies before
his death which were devoid of humour, grace, and lightness. A strange
elephantine eccentricity is their utmost claim to comic character.
Indeed, the temper of Alfieri, ever in extremes, led him even to
exaggerate the qualities of tragedy. He carried its severity to a pitch
of dulness and monotony. His chiaroscuro was too strong; virtue and
villany appearing in pure black and white upon his pages. His hatred of
tyrants induced him to transgress 358the rules of probability, so that
it has been well said that if his wicked kings had really had such
words of scorn and hatred thrown at them by their victims, they were
greatly to be pitied. On the other hand, his pithy laconisms have often
a splendidly tragical effect. There is nothing in the modern drama more
rhetorically impressive, though spasmodic, than the well-known dialogue
between Antigone and Creon:—

'_Cr_. Scegliesti?
'_Ant_. Ho scelto.
'_Cr_. Emon?
'_Ant_. Morte.
'_Cr_. L'avrai!'


Goldoni's comedies, again, have not enough of serious thought or of
true creative imagination to be works of high art. They lean too much
to the side of farce; they have none of the tragic salt which gives a
dignity to Tartuffe. They are, in a word, almost too enethistically
comic.

The contrast between these authors might lead us to raise the question
long ago discussed by Socrates at Agathon's banquet—Can the same man
write both comedies and tragedies? We in England are accustomed to read
the serious and comic plays of Shakspere, Fletcher, Jonson, and to
think that one poet could excel in either branch. The custom of the
Elizabethan theatre obliged this double authorship; yet it must be
confessed that Shakspere's comedies are not such comedies as Greek or
Romnan or French critics would admit. They are works of the purest
imagination, wholly free from the laws of this world; while the
tragedies of Fletcher have a melodramatic air equally at variance with
the classical Melpomene. It may very seriously be doubted whether the
same mind could produce, with equal power, a comedy like the
359'Cortese Veneziano' and a tragedy like Alfieri's 'Brutus.' At any
rate, returning to our old position, we find in these two men the very
opposite conditions of dramatic genius. They are, as it were, specimens
prepared by Nature for the instruction of those who analyse genius in
its relations to temperament, to life, and to external circumstances.




VOLUME II.


1




RAVENNA


The Emperor Augustus chose Ravenna for one of his two naval stations,
and in course of time a new city arose by the sea-shore, which received
the name of Portus Classis. Between this harbour and the mother city a
third town sprang up, and was called Cæsarea. Time and neglect, the
ravages of war, and the encroaching powers of Nature have destroyed
these settlements, and nothing now remains of the three cities but
Ravenna. It would seem that in classical times Ravenna stood, like
modern Venice, in the centre of a huge lagune, the fresh waters of the
Ronco and the Po mixing with the salt waves of the Adriatic round its
very walls. The houses of the city were built on piles; canals instead
of streets formed the means of communication, and these were always
filled with water artificially conducted from the southern estuary of
the Po. Round Ravenna extended a vast morass, for the most part under
shallow water, but rising at intervals into low islands like the Lido
or Murano or Torcello which surround Venice. These islands were
celebrated for their fertility: the 2vines and fig-trees and
pomegranates, springing from a fat and fruitful soil, watered with
constant moisture, and fostered by a mild sea-wind and liberal
sunshine, yielded crops that for luxuriance and quality surpassed the
harvests of any orchards on the mainland. All the conditions of life in
old Ravenna seem to have resembled those of modern Venice; the people
went about in gondolas, and in the early morning barges laden with
fresh fruit or meat and vegetables flocked from all quarters to the
city of the sea.[15] Water also had to be procured from the
neighbouring shore, for, as Martial says, a well at Ravenna was more
valuable than a vineyard. Again, between the city and the mainland ran
a long low causeway all across the lagune like that on which the trains
now glide into Venice. Strange to say, the air of Ravenna was
remarkably salubrious: this fact, and the ease of life that prevailed
there, and the security afforded by the situation of the town, rendered
it a most desirable retreat for the monarchs of Italy during those
troublous times in which the empire nodded to its fall. Honorius
retired to its lagunes for safety; Odoacer, who dethroned the last
Cæsar of the West, succeeded him; and was in turn, supplanted by
Theodoric the Ostrogoth. Ravenna, as we see it now, recalls the
peaceful and half-Roman rule of the great Gothic king. His palace, his
churches, and the mausoleums in which his daughter Amalasuntha laid the
hero's bones, have survived the sieges of Belisarius and Astolphus, the
conquest of Pepin, the bloody quarrels of Iconoclasts with the children
of the Roman Church, the mediæval wars of Italy, the victory of Gaston
de Foix, and still stand gorgeous with marbles and mosaics in spite of
time and the decay of all around them.

 [15] We may compare with Venice what is known about the ancient
 Hellenic city of Sybaris. Sybaris and Ravenna were the Greek and Roman
 Venice of antiquity.

3As early as the sixth century, the sea had already retreated to such a
distance from Ravenna that orchards and gardens were cultivated on the
spot where once the galleys of the Cæsars rode at anchor. Groves of
pines sprang up along the shore, and in their lofty tops the music of
the wind moved like the ghost of waves and breakers plunging upon
distant sands. This Pinetum stretches along the shore of the Adriatic
for about forty miles, forming a belt of variable width between the
great marsh and the tumbling sea. From a distance the bare stems and
velvet crowns of the pine-trees stand up like palms that cover an oasis
on Arabian sands; but at a nearer view the trunks detach themselves
from an inferior forest-growth of juniper and thorn and ash and oak,
the tall roofs of the stately firs shooting their breadth of sheltering
greenery above the lower and less sturdy brushwood. It is hardly
possible to imagine a more beautiful and impressive scene than that
presented by these long alleys of imperial pines. They grow so thickly
one behind another, that we might compare them to the pipes of a great
organ, or the pillars of a Gothic church, or the basaltic columns of
the Giant's Causeway. Their tops are evergreen and laden with the heavy
cones, from which Ravenna draws considerable wealth. Scores of peasants
are quartered on the outskirts of the forest, whose business it is to
scale the pines and rob them of their fruit at certain seasons of the
year. Afterwards they dry the fir-cones in the sun, until the nuts
which they contain fall out. The empty husks are sold for firewood, and
the kernels in their stony shells reserved for exportation. You may see
the peasants, men, women, and boys, sorting them by millions, drying
and sifting them upon the open spaces of the wood, and packing them in
sacks to send abroad through Italy. The _pinocchi_ or kernels of the
stone-pine are largely used in cookery, and those of Ravenna are prized
for their good 4quality and aromatic flavour. When roasted or pounded,
they taste like a softer and more mealy kind of almonds. The task of
gathering this harvest is not a little dangerous. Men have to cut
notches in the straight shafts, and having climbed, often to the height
of eighty feet, to lean upon the branches, and detach the fir-cones
with a pole—and this for every tree. Some lives, they say, are yearly
lost in the business.

As may be imagined, the spaces of this great forest form the haunt of
innumerable living creatures. Lizards run about by myriads in the
grass. Doves coo among the branches of the pines, and nightingales pour
their full-throated music all day and night from thickets of
white-thorn and acacia. The air is sweet with aromatic scents: the
resin of the pine and juniper, the mayflowers and acacia-blossoms, the
violets that spring by thousands in the moss, the wild roses and faint
honeysuckles which throw fragrant arms from bough to bough of ash or
maple, join to make one most delicious perfume. And though the air upon
the neighbouring marsh is poisonous, here it is dry, and spreads a
genial health. The sea-wind murmuring through these thickets at
nightfall or misty sunrise, conveys no fever to the peasants stretched
among their flowers. They watch the red rays of sunset flaming through
the columns of the leafy hall, and flaring on its fretted rafters of
entangled boughs; they see the stars come out, and Hesper gleam, an eye
of brightness, among dewy branches; the moon walks silver-footed on the
velvet tree-tops, while they sleep beside the camp-fires; fresh morning
wakes them to the sound of birds and scent of thyme and twinkling of
dewdrops on the grass around. Meanwhile ague, fever, and death have
been stalking all night long about the plain, within a few yards of
their couch, and not one pestilential breath has reached the charmed
precincts of the forest.

You may ride or drive for miles along green aisles between 5the pines
in perfect solitude; and yet the creatures of the wood, the sunlight
and the birds, the flowers and tall majestic columns at your side,
prevent all sense of loneliness or fear. Huge oxen haunt the
wilderness—grey creatures, with mild eyes and spreading horns and
stealthy tread. Some are patriarchs of the forest, the fathers and the
mothers of many generations who have been carried from their sides to
serve in ploughs or waggons on the Lombard plain. Others are yearling
calves, intractable and ignorant of labour. In order to subdue them to
the yoke, it is requisite to take them very early from their native
glades, or else they chafe and pine away with weariness. Then there is
a sullen canal, which flows through the forest from the marshes to the
sea; it is alive with frogs and newts and snakes. You may see these
serpents basking on the surface among thickets of the flowering rush,
or coiled about the lily leaves and flowers—lithe monsters, slippery
and speckled, the tyrants of the fen.

It is said that when Dante was living at Ravenna he would spend whole
days alone among the forest glades, thinking of Florence and her civil
wars, and meditating cantos of his poem. Nor have the influences of the
pine-wood failed to leave their trace upon his verse. The charm of its
summer solitude seems to have sunk into his soul; for when he describes
the whispering of winds and singing birds among the boughs of his
terrestrial paradise, he says:—

Non però dal lor esser dritto sparte
    Tanto, che gli augelletti per le cime
    Lasciasser d' operare ogni lor arte:
Ma con piena letizia l' aure prime,
    Cantando, ricevano intra le foglie,
    Che tenevan bordone alle sue rime
Tal, qual di ramo in ramo si raccoglie
    Per la pineta in sul lito di Chiassi
    Quand' Eolo Scirocco fuor discioglie.

6With these verses in our minds, while wandering down the grassy
aisles, beside the waters of the solitary place, we seem to meet that
lady singing as she went, and plucking flower by flower, 'like
Proserpine when Ceres lost a daughter, and she lost her spring.' There,
too, the vision of the griffin and the car, of singing maidens, and of
Beatrice descending to the sound of Benedictus and of falling flowers,
her flaming robe and mantle green as grass, and veil of white, and
olive crown, all flashed upon the poet's inner eye, and he remembered
how he bowed before her when a boy. There is yet another passage in
which it is difficult to believe that Dante had not the pine-forest in
his mind. When Virgil and the poet were waiting in anxiety before the
gates of Dis, when the Furies on the wall were tearing their breasts
and crying, 'Venga Medusa, e si 'l farem di smalto,' suddenly across
the hideous river came a sound like that which whirlwinds make among
the shattered branches and bruised stems of forest-trees; and Dante,
looking out with fear upon the foam and spray and vapour of the flood,
saw thousands of the damned flying before the face of one who forded
Styx with feet unwet. 'Like frogs,' he says, 'they fled, who scurry
through the water at the sight of their foe, the serpent, till each
squats and hides himself close to the ground.' The picture of the storm
among the trees might well have occurred to Dante's mind beneath the
roof of pine-boughs. Nor is there any place in which the simile of the
frogs and water-snake attains such dignity and grandeur. I must confess
that till I saw the ponds and marshes of Ravenna, I used to fancy that
the comparison was somewhat below the greatness of the subject; but
there so grave a note of solemnity and desolation is struck, the scale
of Nature is so large, and the serpents coiling in and out among the
lily leaves and flowers are so much in their right place, that they
suggest a scene by no means unworthy of Dante's conception.

7Nor is Dante the only singer who has invested this wood with poetical
associations. It is well known that Boccaccio laid his story of
'Honoria' in the pine-forest, and every student of English literature
must be familiar with the noble tale in verse which Dryden has founded
on this part of the 'Decameron.' We all of us have followed Theodore,
and watched with him the tempest swelling in the grove, and seen the
hapless ghost pursued by demon hounds and hunter down the glades. This
story should be read while storms are gathering upon the distant sea,
or thunderclouds descending from the Apennines, and when the pines
begin to rock and surge beneath the stress of labouring winds. Then
runs the sudden flash of lightning like a rapier through the boughs,
the rain streams hissing down, and the thunder 'breaks like a whole sea
overhead.'

With the Pinetum the name of Byron will be for ever associated. During
his two years' residence in Ravenna he used to haunt its wilderness,
riding alone or in the company of friends. The inscription placed above
the entrance to the house he occupied alludes to it as one of the
objects which principally attracted the poet to the neighbourhood of
Ravenna: 'Impaziente di visitare l' antica selva, che inspirò già il
Divino e Giovanni Boccaccio.' We know, however, that a more powerful
attraction, in the person of the Countess Guiccioli, maintained his
fidelity to 'that place of old renown, once in the Adrian Sea,
Ravenna.'

Between the Bosco, as the people of Ravenna call this pine-wood, and
the city, the marsh stretches for a distance of about three miles. It
is a plain intersected by dykes and ditches, and mapped out into
innumerable rice-fields. For more than half a year it lies under water,
and during the other months exhales a pestilential vapour, which
renders it as uninhabitable as the Roman Campagna; yet in springtime
8this dreary flat is even beautiful. The young blades of the rice shoot
up above the water, delicately green and tender. The ditches are lined
with flowering rush and golden flags, while white and yellow lilies
sleep in myriads upon the silent pools. Tamarisks wave their pink and
silver tresses by the road, and wherever a plot of mossy earth emerges
from the marsh, it gleams with purple orchises and flaming marigolds;
but the soil beneath is so treacherous and spongy, that these splendid
blossoms grow like flowers in dreams or fairy stories. You try in vain
to pick them; they elude your grasp, and flourish in security beyond
the reach of arm or stick.

Such is the sight of the old town of Classis. Not a vestige of the
Roman city remains, not a dwelling or a ruined tower, nothing but the
ancient church of S. Apollinare in Classe. Of all desolate buildings
this is the most desolate. Not even the deserted grandeur of S. Paolo
beyond the walls of Rome can equal it. Its bare round campanile gazes
at the sky, which here vaults only sea and plain—a perfect dome,
star-spangled like the roof of Galla Placidia's tomb. Ravenna lies low
to west, the pine-wood stretches away in long monotony to east. There
is nothing else to be seen except the spreading marsh, bounded by dim
snowy Alps and purple Apennines, so very far away that the level rack
of summer clouds seem more attainable and real. What sunsets and
sunrises that tower must see; what glaring lurid afterglows in August,
when the red light scowls upon the pestilential fen; what sheets of
sullen vapour rolling over it in autumn; what breathless heats, and
rainclouds big with thunder; what silences; what unimpeded blasts of
winter winds! One old monk tends this deserted spot. He has the huge
church, with its echoing aisles and marble columns and giddy bell-tower
and cloistered corridors, all to himself. At rare intervals, priests
from Ravenna come to sing some special mass at these 9cold altars;
pious folk make vows to pray upon their mouldy steps and kiss the
relics which are shown on great occasions. But no one stays; they
hurry, after muttering their prayers, from the fever-stricken spot,
reserving their domestic pieties and customary devotions for the
brighter and newer chapels of the fashionable churches in Ravenna. So
the old monk is left alone to sweep the marsh water from his church
floor, and to keep the green moss from growing too thickly on its
monuments. A clammy conferva covers everything except the mosaics upon
tribune, roof, and clerestory, which defy the course of age. Christ on
His throne _sedet aternumque sedebit: _ the saints around him glitter
with their pitiless uncompromising eyes and wooden gestures, as if
twelve centuries had not passed over them, and they were nightmares
only dreamed last night, and rooted in a sick man's memory. For those
gaunt and solemn forms there is no change of life or end of days. No
fever touches them; no dampness of the wind and rain loosens their firm
cement. They stare with senseless faces in bitter mockery of men who
live and die and moulder away beneath. Their poor old guardian told us
it was a weary life. He has had the fever three times, and does not
hope to survive many more Septembers. The very water that he drinks is
brought him from Ravenna; for the vast fen, though it pours its
overflow upon the church floor, and spreads like a lake around, is
death to drink. The monk had a gentle woman's voice and mild brown
eyes. What terrible crime had consigned him to this living tomb? For
what past sorrow is he weary of his life? What anguish of remorse has
driven him to such a solitude? Yet he looked simple and placid; his
melancholy was subdued and calm, as if life were over for him, and he
were waiting for death to come with a friend's greeting upon noiseless
wings some summer night across the fen-lands in a cloud of soft
destructive fever-mist.

10Another monument upon the plain is worthy of a visit. It is the
so-called Colonna dei Francesi, a _cinquecento_ pillar of Ionic design,
erected on the spot where Gaston de Foix expired victorious after one
of the bloodiest battles ever fought. The Ronco, a straight sluggish
stream, flows by the lonely spot; mason bees have covered with
laborious stucco-work the scrolls and leafage of its ornaments,
confounding epitaphs and trophies under their mud houses. A few
cypress-trees stand round it, and the dogs and chickens of a
neighbouring farmyard make it their rendezvous. Those mason bees are
like posterity, which settles down upon the ruins of a Baalbec or a
Luxor, setting up its tents, and filling the fair spaces of Hellenic or
Egyptian temples with clay hovels. Nothing differs but the scale; and
while the bees content themselves with filling up and covering, man
destroys the silent places of the past which he appropriates.

In Ravenna itself, perhaps what strikes us most is the abrupt
transition everywhere discernible from monuments of vast antiquity to
buildings of quite modern date. There seems to be no interval between
the marbles and mosaics of Justinian or Theodoric and the insignificant
frippery of the last century. The churches of Ravenna—S. Vitale, S.
Apollinare, and the rest—are too well known, and have been too often
described by enthusiastic antiquaries, to need a detailed notice in
this place. Every one is aware that the ecclesiastical customs and
architecture of the early Church can be studied in greater perfection
here than elsewhere. Not even the basilicas and mosaics of Rome, nor
those of Palermo and Monreale, are equal for historical interest to
those of Ravenna. Yet there is not one single church which remains
entirely unaltered and unspoiled. The imagination has to supply the
atrium or outer portico from one building, the vaulted baptistery with
its marble font from another, the pulpits and ambones from a 11third
the tribune from a fourth, the round brick bell-tower from a fifth, and
then to cover all the concave roofs and chapel walls with grave and
glittering mosaics.

There is nothing more beautiful in decorative art than the mosaics of
such tiny buildings as the tomb of Galla Placidia or the chapel of the
Bishop's Palace. They are like jewelled and enamelled cases; not an
inch of wall can be seen which is not covered with elaborate patterns
of the brightest colours. Tall date-palms spring from the floor with
fruit and birds among their branches, and between them stand the
pillars and apostles of the Church. In the spandrels and lunettes above
the arches and the windows angels fly with white extended wings. On
every vacant place are scrolls and arabesques of foliage,—birds and
beasts, doves drinking from the vase, and peacocks spreading gorgeous
plumes—a maze of green and gold and blue. Overhead, the vault is
powdered with stars gleaming upon the deepest azure, and in the midst
is set an aureole embracing the majestic head of Christ, or else the
symbol of the sacred fish, or the hand of the Creator pointing from a
cloud. In Galla Placidia's tomb these storied vaults spring above the
sarcophagi of empresses and emperors, each lying in the place where he
was laid more than twelve centuries ago. The light which struggles
through the narrow windows serves to harmonise the brilliant hues and
make a gorgeous gloom.

Besides these more general and decorative subjects, many of the
churches are adorned with historical mosaics, setting forth the Bible
narrative or incidents from the life of Christian emperors and kings.
In S. Apollinare Nuovo there is a most interesting treble series of
such mosaics extending over both walls of the nave. On the left hand,
as we enter, we see the town of Classis; on the right the palace of
Theodoric, its doors and loggie rich with curtains, and its friezes
blazing with 12coloured ornaments. From the city gate of Classis
virgins issue, and proceed in a long line until they reach Madonna
seated on a throne, with Christ upon her knees, and the three kings in
adoration at her feet. From Theodoric's palace door a similar
procession of saints and martyrs carry us to Christ surrounded by
archangels. Above this double row of saints and virgins stand the
fathers and prophets of the Church, and highest underneath the roof are
pictures from the life of our Lord. It will be remembered in connection
with these subjects that the women sat upon the left and the men upon
the right side of the church. Above the tribune, at the east end of the
church, it was customary to represent the Creative Hand, or the
monogram of the Saviour, or the head of Christ with the letters A and
[Greek Ô]. Moses and Elijah frequently stand on either side to
symbolise the transfiguration, while the saints and bishops specially
connected with the church appeared upon a lower row. Then on the side
walls were depicted such subjects as Justinian and Theodora among their
courtiers, or the grant of the privileges of the church to its first
founder from imperial patrons, with symbols of the old Hebraic
ritual—Abel's lamb, the sacrifice of Isaac, Melchisedec's offering of
bread and wine,—which were regarded as the types of Christian
ceremonies. The baptistery was adorned with appropriate mosaics
representing Christ's baptism in Jordan.

Generally speaking, one is struck with the dignity of these designs,
and especially with the combined majesty and sweetness of the face of
Christ. The sense for harmony of hue displayed in their composition is
marvellous. It would be curious to trace in detail the remnants of
classical treatment which may be discerned—Jordan, for instance, pours
his water from an urn like a river-god crowned with sedge—or to show
what points of ecclesiastical tradition are established these ancient
monuments. We find Mariolatry already imminent, 13the names of the
three kings, Kaspar, Melchior, and Balthazar, the four evangelists as
we now recognise them, and many of the rites and vestments which
Ritualists of all denominations regard with superstitious reverence.

There are two sepulchral monuments in Ravenna which cannot be passed
over unnoticed. The one is that of Theodoric the Goth, crowned by its
semisphere of solid stone, a mighty tomb, well worthy of the conqueror
and king. It stands in a green field, surrounded by acacias, where the
nightingales sing ceaselessly in May. The mason bees have covered it,
and the water has invaded its sepulchral vaults. In spite of many
trials, it seems that human art is unable to pump out the pond and
clear the frogs and efts from the chamber where the great Goth was laid
by Amalasuntha.

The other is Dante's temple, with its basrelief and withered garlands.
The story of his burial, and of the discovery of his real tomb, is
fresh in the memory of every one. But the 'little cupola, more neat
than solemn,' of which Lord Byron speaks, will continue to be the goal
of many a pilgrimage. For myself—though I remember Chateaubriand's
bareheaded genuflection on its threshold, Alfieri's passionate
prostration at the altar-tomb, and Byron's offering of poems on the
poet's shrine—I confess that a single canto of the 'Inferno,' a single
passage of the 'Vita Nuova,' seems more full of soul-stirring
associations than the place where, centuries ago, the mighty dust was
laid. It is the spirit that lives and makes alive. And Dante's spirit
seems more present with us under the pine-branches of the Bosco than
beside his real or fancied tomb. 'He is risen,'—'Lo, I am with you
alway'—these are the words that ought to haunt us in a burying-ground.
There is something affected and self-conscious in overpowering grief or
enthusiasm or humiliation at a tomb.

14




RIMINI


SIGISMONDO PANDOLFO MALATESTA AND LEO BATTISTA ALBERTI

Rimini is a city of about 18,000 souls, famous for its Stabilmento de'
Bagni and its antiquities, seated upon the coast of the Adriatic, a
little to the south-east of the world-historical Rubicon. It is our
duty to mention the baths first among its claims to distinction, since
the prosperity and cheerfulness of the little town depend on them in a
great measure. But visitors from the north will fly from these, to
marvel at the bridge which Augustus built and Tiberius completed, and
which still spans the Marecchia with five gigantic arches of white
Istrian limestone, as solidly as if it had not borne the tramplings of
at least three conquests. The triumphal arch, too, erected in honour of
Augustus, is a notable monument of Roman architecture. Broad,
ponderous, substantial, tufted here and there with flowering weeds, and
surmounted with mediaeval machicolations, proving it to have sometimes
stood for city gate or fortress, it contrasts most favourably with the
slight and somewhat gimcrack arch of Trajan in the sister city of
Ancona. Yet these remains of the imperial pontifices, mighty and
interesting as they are, sink into comparative insignificance beside
the one great wonder of Rimini, the cathedral remodelled for Sigismondo
Pandolfo Malatesta by Leo Battista Alberti in 1450. This strange
church, one of 15the earliest extant buildings in which the Neopaganism
of the Renaissance showed itself in full force, brings together before
our memory two men who might be chosen as typical in their contrasted
characters of the transitional age which gave them birth.

No one with any tincture of literary knowledge is ignorant of the fame
at least of the great Malatesta family—the house of the Wrongheads, as
they were rightly called by some prevision of their future part in
Lombard history. The readers of the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth
cantos of the 'Inferno' have all heard of

E il mastin vecchio e il nuovo da Verucchio
    Che fecer di Montagna il mal governo,


while the story of Francesca da Polenta, who was wedded to the
hunchback Giovanni Malatesta and murdered by him with her lover Paolo,
is known not merely to students of Dante, but to readers of Byron and
Leigh Hunt, to admirers of Flaxman, Ary Scheffer, Doré—to all, in fact,
who have of art and letters any love.

The history of these Malatesti, from their first establishment under
Otho III. as lieutenants for the Empire in the Marches of Ancona, down
to their final subjugation by the Papacy in the age of the Renaissance,
is made up of all the vicissitudes which could befall a mediaeval
Italian despotism. Acquiring an unlawful right over the towns of
Rimini, Cesena, Sogliano, Ghiacciuolo, they ruled their petty
principalities like tyrants by the help of the Guelf and Ghibelline
factions, inclining to the one or the other as it suited their humour
or their interest, wrangling among themselves, transmitting the
succession of their dynasty through bastards and by deeds of force,
quarrelling with their neighbours the Counts of Urbino, alternately
defying and submitting to the 16Papal legates in Romagna, serving as
condottieri in the wars of the Visconti and the state of Venice, and by
their restlessness and genius for military intrigues contributing in no
slight measure to the general disturbance of Italy. The Malatesti were
a race of strongly marked character: more, perhaps, than any other
house of Italian tyrants, they combined for generations those qualities
of the fox and the lion, which Machiavelli thought indispensable to a
successful despot. Son after son, brother with brother, they continued
to be fierce and valiant soldiers, cruel in peace, hardy in war, but
treasonable and suspicious in all transactions that could not be
settled by the sword. Want of union, with them as with the Baglioni and
many other of the minor noble families in Italy, prevented their
founding a substantial dynasty. Their power, based on force, was
maintained by craft and crime, and transmitted through tortuous
channels by intrigue. While false in their dealings with the world at
large, they were diabolical in the perfidy with which they treated one
another. No feudal custom, no standard of hereditary right, ruled the
succession in their family. Therefore the ablest Malatesta for the
moment clutched what he could of the domains that owned his house for
masters. Partitions among sons or brothers, mutually hostile and
suspicious, weakened the whole stock. Yet they were great enough to
hold their own for centuries among the many tyrants who infested
Lombardy. That the other princely families of Romagna, Emilia, and the
March were in the same state of internal discord and dismemberment, was
probably one reason why the Malatesti stood their ground so firmly as
they did.

So far as Rimini is concerned, the house of Malatesta culminated in
Sigismondo Pandolfo, son of Gian Galeazzo Visconti's general, the
perfidious Pandolfo. It was he who built the Rocca, or castle of the
despots, which stands a little 17way outside the town, commanding a
fair view of Apennine tossed hill-tops and broad Lombard plain, and who
remodelled the Cathedral of S. Francis on a plan suggested by the
greatest genius of the age. Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta was one of
the strangest products of the earlier Renaissance. To enumerate the
crimes which he committed within the sphere of his own family,
mysterious and inhuman outrages which render the tale of the Cenci
credible, would violate the decencies of literature. A thoroughly
bestial nature gains thus much with posterity that its worst qualities
must be passed by in silence. It is enough to mention that he murdered
three wives in succession,[16] Bussoni di Carmagnuola, Guinipera
d'Este, and Polissena Sforza, on various pretexts of infidelity, and
carved horns upon his own tomb with this fantastic legend underneath:—

Porto le corna ch' ognuno le vede,
E tal le porta che non se lo crede.


 [16] His first wife was a daughter of the great general of the
 Venetians against Francesco Sforza. Whether Sigismondo murdered her,
 as Sansovino seems to imply in his _Famiglie Illustri_, or whether he
 only repudiated her after her father's execution on the Piazza di San
 Marco, admits of doubt. About the question of Sigismondo's marriage
 with Isotta there is also some uncertainty. At any rate she had been
 some time his mistress before she became his wife.

He died in wedlock with the beautiful and learned Isotta degli Atti,
who had for some time been his mistress. But, like most of the
Malatesti, he left no legitimate offspring. Throughout his life he was
distinguished for bravery and cunning, for endurance of fatigue and
rapidity of action, for an almost fretful rashness in the execution of
his schemes, and for a character terrible in its violence. He was
acknowledged as a great general; yet nothing succeeded with him. The
long warfare which he carried on against the Duke of 18Montefeltro
ended in his discomfiture. Having begun by defying the Holy See, he was
impeached at Rome for heresy, parricide, incest, adultery, rape, and
sacrilege, burned in effigy by Pope Pius II., and finally restored to
the bosom of the Church, after suffering the despoliation of almost all
his territories, in 1463. The occasion on which this fierce and
turbulent despiser of laws human and divine was forced to kneel as a
penitent before the Papal legate in the gorgeous temple dedicated to
his own pride, in order that the ban of excommunication might be
removed from Rimini, was one of those petty triumphs, interesting
chiefly for their picturesqueness, by which the Popes confirmed their
questionable rights over the cities of Romagna. Sigismondo, shorn of
his sovereignty, took the command of the Venetian troops against the
Turks in the Morea, and returned in 1465, crowned with laurels, to die
at Rimini in the scene of his old splendour.

A very characteristic incident belongs to this last act of his life.
Dissolute, treacherous, and inhuman as he was, the tyrant of Rimini had
always encouraged literature, and delighted in the society of artists.
He who could brook no contradiction from a prince or soldier, allowed
the pedantic scholars of the sixteenth century to dictate to him in
matters of taste, and sat with exemplary humility at the feet of
Latinists like Porcellio, Basinio, and Trebanio. Valturio, the
engineer, and Alberti, the architect, were his familiar friends; and
the best hours of his life were spent in conversation with these men.
Now that he found himself upon the sacred soil of Greece, he was
determined not to return to Italy empty-handed. Should he bring
manuscripts or marbles, precious vases or inscriptions in half-legible
Greek character? These relics were greedily sought for by the
potentates of Italian cities; and no doubt Sigismondo enriched his
library with some such treasures. But he obtained 19a nobler
prize—nothing less than the body of a saint of scholarship, the
authentic bones of the great Platonist, Gemisthus Pletho.[17] These he
exhumed from their Greek grave and caused them to be deposited in a
stone sarcophagus outside the cathedral of his building in Rimini. The
Venetians, when they stole the body of S. Mark from Alexandria, were
scarcely more pleased than was Sigismondo with the acquisition of this
Father of the Neopagan faith. Upon the tomb we still may read this
legend: 'Jemisthii Bizantii philosopher sua temp principis reliquum
Sig. Pan. Mal. Pan. F. belli Pelop adversus Turcor regem Imp ob
ingentem eruditorum quo flagrat amorem huc afferendum introque
mittendum curavit MCCCCLXVI.' Of the Latinity of the inscription much
cannot be said; but it means that 'Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta,
having served as general against the Turks in the Morea, induced by the
great love with which he burns for all learned men, brought and placed
here the remains of Gemisthus of Byzantium, the prince of the
philosophers of his day.'

 [17] For the place occupied in the evolution of Italian scholarship by
 this Greek sage, see my 'Revival of Learning,' _Renaissance in Italy_,
 part 2.

Sigismondo's portrait, engraved on medals, and sculptured upon every
frieze and point of vantage in the Cathedral of Rimini, well denotes
the man. His face is seen in profile. The head, which is low and flat
above the forehead, rising swiftly backward from the crown, carries a
thick bushy shock of hair curling at the ends, such as the Italians
call a _zazzera_. The eye is deeply sunk, with long venomous flat
eyelids, like those which Leonardo gives to his most wicked faces. The
nose is long and crooked, curved like a vulture's over a petulant
mouth, with lips deliberately pressed together, as though it were
necessary to control some nervous twitching. The 20cheek is broad, and
its bone is strongly marked. Looking at these features in repose, we
cannot but picture to our fancy what expression they might assume under
a sudden fit of fury, when the sinews of the face were contracted with
quivering spasms, and the lips writhed in sympathy with knit forehead
and wrinkled eyelids.

Allusion has been made to the Cathedral of S. Francis at Rimini, as the
great ornament of the town, and the chief monument of Sigismondo's
fame. It is here that all the Malatesti lie. Here too is the chapel
consecrated to Isotta, 'Divæ Isottæ Sacrum;' and the tombs of the
Malatesta ladies, 'Malatestorum domûs heroidum sepulchrum;' and
Sigismondo's own grave with the cuckold's horns and scornful epitaph.
Nothing but the fact that the church is duly dedicated to S. Francis,
and that its outer shell of classic marble encases an old Gothic
edifice, remains to remind us that it is a Christian place of
worship.[18] It has no sanctity, no spirit of piety. The pride of the
tyrant whose legend—'Sigismundus Pandulphus Malatesta Pan. F. Fecit
Anno Gratiæ MCCCCL'—occupies every arch and stringcourse of the
architecture, and whose coat-of-arms and portrait in medallion, with
his cipher and his emblems of an elephant and a rose, are wrought in
every piece of sculptured work throughout the building, seems so to
fill this house of prayer that there is no room left for God. Yet the
Cathedral of Rimini remains a monument of first-rate importance for all
students who seek to penetrate the revived Paganism of the fifteenth
century. It serves also to bring a far more interesting 21Italian of
that period than the tyrant of Rimini himself, before our notice.

 [18] The account of this church given by Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini
 (Pii Secundi, Comment., ii. 92) deserves quotation: 'Ædificavit tamen
 nobile templum Arimini in honorem divi Francisci, verum ita gentilibus
 operibus implevit, ut non tam Christianorum quam infidelium dæmones
 adorantium templum esse videatur.'

In the execution of his design, Sigismondo received the assistance of
one of the most remarkable men of this or any other age. Leo Battista
Alberti, a scion of the noble Florentine house of that name, born
during the exile of his parents, and educated in the Venetian
territory, was endowed by nature with aptitudes, faculties, and
sensibilities so varied, as to deserve the name of universal genius.
Italy in the Renaissance period was rich in natures of this sort, to
whom nothing that is strange or beautiful seemed unfamiliar, and who,
gifted with a kind of divination, penetrated the secrets of the world
by sympathy. To Pico della Mirandola, Lionardo da Vinci, and Michel
Agnolo Buonarroti may be added Leo Battista Alberti. That he achieved
less than his great compeers, and that he now exists as the shadow of a
mighty name, was the effect of circumstances. He came half a century
too early into the world, and worked as a pioneer rather than a settler
of the realm which Lionardo ruled as his demesne. Very early in his
boyhood Alberti showed the versatility of his talents. The use of arms,
the management of horses, music, painting, modelling for sculpture,
mathematics, classical and modern literature, physical science as then
comprehended, and all the bodily exercises proper to the estate of a
young nobleman, were at his command. His biographer asserts that he was
never idle, never subject to ennui or fatigue. He used to say that
books at times gave him the same pleasure as brilliant jewels or
perfumed flowers: hunger and sleep could not keep him from them then.
At other times the letters on the page appeared to him like twining and
contorted scorpions, so that he preferred to gaze on anything but
written scrolls. He would then turn to music or painting, or to the
physical sports in which he excelled. The 22language in which this
alternation of passion and disgust for study is expressed, bears on it
the stamp of Alberti's peculiar temperament, his fervid and imaginative
genius, instinct with subtle sympathies and strange repugnances. Flying
from his study, he would then betake himself to the open air. No one
surpassed him in running, in wrestling, in the force with which he cast
his javelin or discharged his arrows. So sure was his aim and so
skilful his cast, that he could fling a farthing from the pavement of
the square, and make it ring against a church roof far above. When he
chose to jump, he put his feet together and bounded over the shoulders
of men standing erect upon the ground. On horseback he maintained
perfect equilibrium, and seemed incapable of fatigue. The most restive
and vicious animals trembled under him and became like lambs. There was
a kind of magnetism in the man. We read, besides these feats of
strength and skill, that he took pleasure in climbing mountains, for no
other purpose apparently than for the joy of being close to nature.

In this, as in many other of his instincts, Alberti was before his age.
To care for the beauties of landscape unadorned by art, and to
sympathise with sublime or rugged scenery, was not in the spirit of the
Renaissance. Humanity occupied the attention of poets and painters; and
the age was yet far distant when the pantheistic feeling for the world
should produce the art of Wordsworth and of Turner. Yet a few great
natures even then began to comprehend the charm and mystery which the
Greeks had imaged in their Pan, the sense of an all-pervasive spirit in
wild places, the feeling of a hidden want, the invisible tie which
makes man a part of rocks and woods and streams around him. Petrarch
had already ascended the summit of Mont Ventoux, to meditate, with an
exaltation of the soul he scarcely understood, upon the scene spread at
his feet and above his head. Æneas 23Sylvius Piccolomini delighted in
wild places for no mere pleasure of the chase, but for the joy he took
in communing with nature. How S. Francis found God in the sun and the
air, the water and the stars, we know by his celebrated hymn; and of
Dante's acute observation, every canto of the 'Divine Comedy' is
witness.

Leo Alberti was touched in spirit by even a deeper and a stranger
pathos than any of these men: 'In the early spring, when he beheld the
meadows and hills covered with flowers, and saw the trees and plants of
all kinds bearing promise of fruit, his heart became exceeding
sorrowful; and when in autumn he looked on fields heavy with harvest
and orchards apple-laden, he felt such grief that many even saw him
weep for the sadness of his soul.' It would seem that he scarcely
understood the source of this sweet trouble: for at such times he
compared the sloth and inutility of men with the industry and fertility
of nature; as though this were the secret of his melancholy. A poet of
our century has noted the same stirring of the spirit, and has striven
to account for it:—

Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy autumn fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.

Both Alberti and Tennyson have connected the _mal du pays_ of the human
soul for that ancient country of its birth, the mild Saturnian earth
from which we sprang, with a sense of loss. It is the waste of human
energy that affects Alberti; the waste of human life touches the modern
poet. Yet both perhaps have scarcely interpreted their own spirit; for
is not the true source of tears deeper and more secret? Man is a child
of nature in the simplest sense; and the stirrings of the secular
breasts that gave him suck, and on which he even now must hang, have
potent influences over his emotions. 24Of Alberti's extraordinary
sensitiveness to all such impressions many curious tales are told. The
sight of refulgent jewels, of flowers, and of fair landscapes, had the
same effect upon his nerves as the sound of the Dorian mood upon the
youths whom Pythagoras cured of passion by music. He found in them an
anodyne for pain, a restoration from sickness. Like Walt Whitman, who
adheres to nature by closer and more vital sympathy than any other poet
of the modern world, Alberti felt the charm of excellent old age no
less than that of florid youth. 'On old men gifted with a noble
presence and hale and vigorous, he gazed again and again, and said that
he revered in them the delights of nature (_naturæ delitias_).' Beasts
and birds and all living creatures moved him to admiration for the
grace with which they had been gifted, each in his own kind. It is even
said that he composed a funeral oration for a dog which he had loved
and which died.

To this sensibility for all fair things in nature, Alberti added the
charm of a singularly sweet temper and graceful conversation. The
activity of his mind, which was always being exercised on subjects of
grave speculation, removed him from the noise and bustle of commonplace
society. He was somewhat silent, inclined to solitude, and of a pensive
countenance; yet no man found him difficult of access: his courtesy was
exquisite, and among familiar friends he was noted for the flashes of a
delicate and subtle wit. Collections were made of his apophthegms by
friends, and some are recorded by his anonymous biographer.[19] Their
finer perfume, as almost always happens with good sayings which do not
certain the 25full pith of a proverb, but owe their force, in part at
least, to the personality of their author, and to the happy moment of
their production, has evanesced. Here, however, is one which seems
still to bear the impress of Alberti's genius: 'Gold is the soul of
labour, and labour the slave of pleasure.' Of women he used to say that
their inconstancy was an antidote to their falseness; for if a woman
could but persevere in what she undertook, all the fair works of men
would be ruined. One of his strongest moral sentences is aimed at envy,
from which he suffered much in his own life, and against which he
guarded with a curious amount of caution. His own family grudged the
distinction which his talents gained for him, and a dark story is told
of a secret attempt made by them to assassinate him through his
servants. Alberti met these ignoble jealousies with a stately calm and
a sweet dignity of demeanour, never condescending to accuse his
relatives, never seeking to retaliate, but acting always for the honour
of his illustrious house. In the same spirit of generosity he refused
to enter into wordy warfare with detractors and calumniators, sparing
the reputation even of his worst enemy when chance had placed him in
his power. This moderation both of speech and conduct was especially
distinguished in an age which tolerated the fierce invectives of
Filelfo, and applauded the vindictive courage of Cellini. To money
Alberti showed a calm indifference. He committed his property to his
friends and shared with them in common. Nor was he less careless about
vulgar fame, spending far more pains in the invention of machinery and
the discovery of laws, than in their publication to the world. His
service was to knowledge, not to glory. Self-control was another of his
eminent qualities. With the natural impetuosity of a large heart, and
the vivacity of a trained athlete, he yet never allowed himself to be
subdued by anger or by sensual impulses, but took pains 26to preserve
his character unstained and dignified before the eyes of men. A story
is told of him which may remind us of Goethe's determination to
overcome his giddiness. In his youth his head was singularly sensitive
to changes of temperature; but by gradual habituation he brought
himself at last to endure the extremes of heat and cold bareheaded. In
like manner he had a constitutional disgust for onions and honey; so
powerful, that the very sight of these things made him sick. Yet by
constantly viewing and touching what was disagreeable, he conquered
these dislikes; and proved that men have a complete mastery over what
is merely instinctive in their nature. His courage corresponded to his
splendid physical development. When a boy of fifteen, he severely
wounded himself in the foot. The gash had to be probed and then sewn
up. Alberti not only bore the pain of this operation without a groan,
but helped the surgeon with his own hands; and effected a cure of the
fever which succeeded by the solace of singing to his cithern. For
music he had a genius of the rarest order; and in painting he is said
to have achieved success. Nothing, however, remains of his work and
from what Vasari says of it, we may fairly conclude that he gave less
care to the execution of finished pictures, than to drawings subsidiary
to architectural and mechanical designs. His biographer relates that
when he had completed a painting, he called children and asked them
what it meant. If they did not know, he reckoned it a failure. He was
also in the habit of painting from memory. While at Venice, he put on
canvas the faces of friends at Florence whom he had not seen for
months. That the art of painting was subservient in his estimation to
mechanics, is indicated by what we hear about the camera, in which he
showed landscapes by day and the revolutions of the stars by night, so
lively drawn that the spectators were affected with amazement. The
semi-scientific 27impulse to extend man's mastery over nature, the
magician's desire to penetrate secrets, which so powerfully influenced
the development of Lionardo's genius, seems to have overcome the purely
æsthetic instincts of Alberti, so that he became in the end neither a
great artist like Raphael, nor a great discoverer like Galileo, but
rather a clairvoyant to whom the miracles of nature and of art lie
open.

 [19] Almost all the facts of Alberti's life are to be found in the
 Latin biography included in Muratori. It has been conjectured, and not
 without plausibility, by the last editor of Alberti's complete works,
 Bonucci, that this Latin life was penned by Alberti himself.


After the first period of youth was over, Leo Battista Alberti devoted
his great faculties and all his wealth of genius to the study of the
law—then, as now, the quicksand of the noblest natures. The industry
with which he applied himself to the civil and ecclesiastical codes
broke his health. For recreation he composed a Latin comedy called
'Philodoxeos,' which imposed upon the judgment of scholars, and was
ascribed as a genuine antique to Lepidus, the comic poet. Feeling
stronger, Alberti returned at the age of twenty to his law studies, and
pursued them in the teeth of disadvantages. His health was still
uncertain, and the fortune of an exile reduced him to the utmost want.
It was no wonder that under these untoward circumstances even his
Herculean strength gave way. Emaciated and exhausted, he lost the
clearness of his eyesight, and became subject to arterial disturbances,
which filled his ears with painful sounds. This nervous illness is not
dissimilar to that which Rousseau describes in the confessions of his
youth. In vain, however, his physicians warned Alberti of impending
peril. A man of so much stanchness, accustomed to control his nature
with an iron will, is not ready to accept advice. Alberti persevered in
his studies, until at last the very seat of intellect was invaded. His
memory began to fail him for names, while he still retained with
wonderful accuracy whatever he had seen with his eyes. It was now
impossible to think of law as a profession. Yet since he could not live
without severe mental exercise, he had 28recourse to studies which tax
the verbal memory less than the intuitive faculties of the reason.
Physics and mathematics became his chief resource; and he devoted his
energies to literature. His 'Treatise on the Family' may be numbered
among the best of those compositions on social and speculative subjects
in which the Italians of the Renaissance sought to rival Cicero. His
essays on the arts are mentioned by Vasari with sincere approbation.
Comedies, interludes, orations, dialogues, and poems flowed with
abundance from his facile pen. Some were written in Latin, which he
commanded more than fairly; some in the Tuscan tongue, of which owing
to the long exile of his family in Lombardy, he is said to have been
less a master. It was owing to this youthful illness, from which
apparently his constitution never wholly recovered, that Alberti's
genius was directed to architecture.

Through his friendship with Flavio Biondo, the famous Roman antiquary,
Alberti received an introduction to Nicholas V. at the time when this,
the first great Pope of the Renaissance, was engaged in rebuilding the
palaces and fortifications of Rome. Nicholas discerned the genius of
the man, and employed him as his chief counsellor in all matters of
architecture. When the Pope died, he was able, while reciting his long
Latin will upon his deathbed, to boast that he had restored the Holy
See to its due dignity, and the Eternal City to the splendour worthy of
the seat of Christendom. The accomplishment of the second part of his
work he owed to the genius of Alberti. After doing thus much for Rome
under Thomas of Sarzana, and before beginning to beautify Florence at
the instance of the Rucellai family, Alberti entered the service of the
Malatesta, and undertook to remodel the Cathedral of S. Francis at
Rimini. He found it a plain Gothic structure with apse and side
chapels. Such churches are common enough in Italy, where pointed
architecture never 29developed its true character of complexity and
richness, but was doomed to the vast vacuity exemplified in S. Petronio
of Bologna. He left it a strange medley of mediæval and Renaissance
work, a symbol of that dissolving scene in the world's pantomime, when
the spirit of classic art, as yet but little comprehended, was
encroaching on the early Christian taste. Perhaps the mixture of styles
so startling in S. Francesco ought not to be laid to the charge of
Alberti, who had to execute the task of turning a Gothic into a classic
building. All that he could do was to alter the whole exterior of the
church, by affixing a screen-work of Roman arches and Corinthian
pilasters, so as to hide the old design and yet to leave the main
features of the fabric, the windows and doors especially, _in statu
quo_. With the interior he dealt upon the same general principle, by
not disturbing its structure, while he covered every available square
inch of surface with decorations alien to the Gothic manner.
Externally, S. Francesco is perhaps the most original and graceful of
the many attempts made by Italian builders to fuse the mediæval and the
classic styles. For Alberti attempted nothing less. A century elapsed
before Palladio, approaching the problem from a different point of
view, restored the antique in its purity, and erected in the Palazzo
della Ragione of Vicenza an almost unique specimen of resuscitated
Roman art.

Internally, the beauty of the church is wholly due to its exquisite
wall-ornaments. These consist for the most part of low reliefs in a
soft white stone, many of them thrown out upon a blue ground in the
style of Della Robbia. Allegorical figures designed with the purity of
outline we admire in Botticelli, draperies that Burne-Jones might copy,
troops of singing boys in the manner of Donatello, great angels traced
upon the stone so delicately that they seem to be rather drawn than
sculptured, statuettes in niches, personifications of all arts and
30sciences alternating with half-bestial shapes of satyrs and
sea-children:—such are the forms which fill the spaces of the chapel
walls, and climb the pilasters, and fret the arches, in such abundance
that had the whole church been finished as it was designed, it would
have presented one splendid though bizarre effect of incrustation.
Heavy screens of Verona marble, emblazoned in open arabesques with the
ciphers of Sigismondo and Isotta, with coats-of-arms, emblems, and
medallion portraits, shut the chapels from the nave. Who produced all
this sculpture it is difficult to say. Some of it is very good: much is
indifferent. We may hazard the opinion that, besides Bernardo
Ciuffagni, of whom Vasari speaks, some pupils of Donatello and
Benedetto da Majano worked at it. The influence of the sculptors of
Florence is everywhere perceptible.

Whatever be the merit of these reliefs, there is no doubt that they
fairly represent one of the most interesting moments in the history of
modern art. Gothic inspiration had failed; the early Tuscan style of
the Pisani had been worked out; Michelangelo was yet far distant, and
the abundance of classic models had not overwhelmed originality. The
sculptors of the school of Ghiberti and Donatello, who are represented
in this church, were essentially pictorial, preferring low to high
relief, and relief in general to detached figures. Their style, like
the style of Boiardo in poetry, of Botticelli in painting, is specific
to Italy in the middle of the fifteenth century. Mediæval standards of
taste were giving way to classical, Christian sentiment to Pagan; yet
the imitation of the antique had not been carried so far as to efface
the spontaneity of the artist, and enough remained of Christian feeling
to tinge the fancy with a grave and sweet romance. The sculptor had the
skill and mastery to express his slightest shade of thought with
freedom, spirit, and precision. Yet 31his work showed no sign of
conventionality, no adherence to prescribed rules. Every outline, every
fold of drapery, every attitude was pregnant, to the artist's own mind
at any rate, with meaning. In spite of its symbolism, what he wrought
was never mechanically figurative, but gifted with the independence of
its own beauty, vital with an inbreathed spirit of life. It was a happy
moment, when art had reached consciousness, and the artist had not yet
become self-conscious. The hand and the brain then really worked
together for the procreation of new forms of grace, not for the
repetition of old models, or for the invention of the strange and
startling. 'Delicate, sweet, and captivating,' are good adjectives to
express the effect produced upon the mind by the contemplation even of
the average work of this period.

To study the flowing lines of the great angels traced upon the walls of
the Chapel of S. Sigismund in the Cathedral of Rimini, to follow the
undulations of their drapery that seems to float, to feel the dignified
urbanity of all their gestures, is like listening to one of those clear
early Italian compositions for the voice, which surpasses in suavity of
tone and grace of movement all that Music in her full-grown vigour has
produced. There is indeed something infinitely charming in the
crepuscular moments of the human mind. Whether it be the rathe
loveliness of an art still immature, or the beauty of art upon the
wane—whether, in fact, the twilight be of morning or of evening, we
find in the masterpieces of such periods a placid calm and chastened
pathos, as of a spirit self-withdrawn from vulgar cares, which in the
full light of meridian splendour is lacking. In the Church of S.
Francesco at Rimini the tempered clearness of the dawn is just about to
broaden into day.

32




MAY IN UMBRIA


FROM ROME TO TERNI

We left Rome in clear sunset light. The Alban Hills defined themselves
like a cameo of amethyst upon a pale blue distance; and over the Sabine
Mountains soared immeasurable moulded domes of alabaster thunderclouds,
casting deep shadows, purple and violet, across the slopes of Tivoli.
To westward the whole sky was lucid, like some half-transparent topaz,
flooded with slowly yellowing sunbeams. The Campagna has often been
called a garden of wild-flowers. Just now poppy and aster, gladiolus
and thistle, embroider it with patterns infinite and intricate beyond
the power of art. They have already mown the hay in part; and the
billowy tracts of greyish green, where no flowers are now in bloom,
supply a restful groundwork to those brilliant patches of diapered
_fioriture_. These are like praying-carpets spread for devotees upon
the pavement of a mosque whose roof is heaven. In the level light the
scythes of the mowers flash as we move past. From their bronzed
foreheads the men toss masses of dark curls. Their muscular flanks and
shoulders sway sideways from firm yet pliant reins. On one hill,
fronting the sunset, there stands a herd of some thirty huge grey oxen,
feeding and raising their heads to look at us, with just a flush of
crimson on their horns and dewlaps. This is the scale of Mason's and
33of Costa's colouring. This is the breadth and magnitude of Rome.

Thus, through dells of ilex and oak, yielding now a glimpse of Tiber
and S. Peter's, now opening on a purple section of the distant Sabine
Hills, we came to Monte Rotondo. The sun sank; and from the flames
where he had perished, Hesper and the thin moon, very white and keen,
grew slowly into sight. Now we follow the Tiber, a swollen, hurrying,
turbid river, in which the mellowing Western sky reflects itself. This
changeful mirror of swift waters spreads a dazzling foreground to
valley, hill, and lustrous heaven. There is orange on the far horizon,
and a green ocean above, in which sea-monsters fashioned from the
clouds are floating. Yonder swims an elf with luminous hair astride
upon a sea-horse, and followed by a dolphin plunging through the fiery
waves. The orange deepens into dying red. The green divides into
daffodil and beryl. The blue above grows fainter, and the moon and
stars shine stronger.

Through these celestial changes we glide into a landscape fit for
Francia and the early Umbrian painters. Low hills to right and left;
suavely modelled heights in the far distance; a very quiet width of
plain, with slender trees ascending into the pellucid air; and down in
the mystery of the middle distance a glimpse of heaven-reflecting
water. The magic of the moon and stars lends enchantment to this scene.
No painting could convey their influences. Sometimes both luminaries
tremble, all dispersed and broken, on the swirling river. Sometimes
they sleep above the calm cool reaches of a rush-grown mere. And here
and there a ruined turret, with a broken window and a tuft of shrubs
upon the rifted battlement, gives value to the fading pallor of the
West. The last phase in the sunset is a change to blue-grey monochrome,
faintly silvered with starlight; hills, Tiber, fields and woods, 34all
floating in aë;rial twilight. There is no definition of outline now.
The daffodil of the horizon has faded into scarcely perceptible pale
greenish yellow.

We have passed Stimigliano. Through the mystery of darkness we hurry
past the bridges of Augustus and the lights of Narni.

THE CASCADES OF TERNI

The Velino is a river of considerable volume which rises in the highest
region of the Abruzzi, threads the upland valley of Rieti, and
precipitates itself by an artificial channel over cliffs about seven
hundred feet in height into the Nera. The water is densely charged with
particles of lime. This calcareous matter not only tends continually to
choke its bed, but clothes the precipices over which the torrent
thunders with fantastic drapery of stalactite; and, carried on the wind
in foam, incrusts the forests that surround the falls with fine white
dust. These famous cascades are undoubtedly the most sublime and
beautiful which Europe boasts; and their situation is worthy of so
great a natural wonder. We reach them through a noble mid-Italian
landscape, where the mountain forms are austere and boldly modelled,
but the vegetation, both wild and cultivated, has something of the
South-Italian richness. The hillsides are a labyrinth of box and
arbutus, with coronilla in golden bloom. The turf is starred with
cyclamens and orchises. Climbing the staircase paths beside the falls
in morning sunlight, or stationed on the points of vantage that command
their successive cataracts, we enjoyed a spectacle which might be
compared in its effect upon the mind to the impression left by a
symphony or a tumultuous lyric. The turbulence and splendour, the
swiftness and resonance, the veiling of the scene in smoke of shattered
water-masses, the withdrawal of these veils according as the 35volume
of the river slightly shifted in its fall, the rainbows shimmering on
the silver spray, the shivering of poplars hung above impendent
precipices, the stationary grandeur of the mountains keeping watch
around, the hurry and the incoherence of the cataracts, the immobility
of force and changeful changelessness in nature, were all for me the
elements of one stupendous poem. It was like an ode of Shelley
translated into symbolism, more vivid through inarticulate appeal to
primitive emotion than any words could be.

MONTEFALCO

The rich land of the Clitumnus is divided into meadows by transparent
watercourses, gliding with a glassy current over swaying reeds. Through
this we pass, and leave Bevagna to the right, and ascend one of those
long gradual roads which climb the hills where all the cities of the
Umbrians perch. The view expands, revealing Spello, Assisi, Perugia on
its mountain buttress, and the far reaches northward of the Tiber
valley. Then Trevi and Spoleto came into sight, and the severe
hill-country above Gubbio in part disclosed itself. Over Spoleto the
fierce witch-haunted heights of Norcia rose forbidding. This is the
kind of panorama that dilates the soul. It is so large, so dignified,
so beautiful in tranquil form. The opulent abundance of the plain
contrasts with the severity of mountain ranges desolately grand; and
the name of each of all those cities thrills the heart with memories.

The main object of a visit to Montefalco is to inspect its many
excellent frescoes; painted histories of S. Francis and S. Jerome, by
Benozzo Gozzoli; saints, angels, and Scripture episodes by the gentle
Tiberio d'Assisi. Full justice had been done to these, when a little
boy, seeing us lingering outside 36the church of S. Chiara, asked
whether we should not like to view the body of the saint. This
privilege could be purchased at the price of a small fee. It was only
necessary to call the guardian of her shrine at the high altar.
Indolent, and in compliant mood, with languid curiosity and half an
hour to spare, we assented. A handsome young man appeared, who
conducted us with decent gravity into a little darkened chamber behind
the altar. There he lighted wax tapers, opened sliding doors in what
looked like a long coffin, and drew curtains. Before us in the dim
light there lay a woman covered with a black nun's dress. Only her
hands, and the exquisitely beautiful pale contour of her face
(forehead, nose, mouth, and chin, modelled in purest outline, as though
the injury of death had never touched her) were visible. Her closed
eyes seemed to sleep. She had the perfect peace of Luini's S. Catherine
borne by the angels to her grave on Sinai. I have rarely seen anything
which surprised and touched me more. The religious earnestness of the
young custode, the hushed adoration of the country-folk who had
silently assembled round us, intensified the sympathy-inspiring beauty
of the slumbering girl. Could Julia, daughter of Claudius, have been
fairer than this maiden, when the Lombard workmen found her in her
Latin tomb, and brought her to be worshipped on the Capitol? S.
Chiara's shrine was hung round with her relics; and among these the
heart extracted from her body was suspended. Upon it, apparently
wrought into the very substance of the mummied flesh, were impressed a
figure of the crucified Christ, the scourge, and the five stigmata. The
guardian's faith in this miraculous witness to her sainthood, the
gentle piety of the men and women who knelt before it, checked all
expressions of incredulity. We abandoned ourselves to the genius of the
place; forgot even to ask what Santa Chiara was sleeping 37here; and
withdrew, toned to a not unpleasing melancholy. The world-famous S.
Clair, the spiritual sister of S. Francis, lies in Assisi. I have often
asked myself, Who, then, was this nun? What history had she? And I
think now of this girl as of a damsel of romance, a Sleeping Beauty in
the wood of time, secluded from intrusive elements of fact, and folded
in the love and faith of her own simple worshippers. Among the hollows
of Arcadia, how many rustic shrines in ancient days held saints of
Hellas, apocryphal, perhaps, like this, but hallowed by tradition and
enduring homage![20]

 [20] There is in reality no doubt or problem about this Saint Clair.
 She was born in 1275, and joined the Augustinian Sisterhood, dying
 young, in 1308, as Abbess of her convent. Continual and impassioned
 meditation on the Passion of our Lord impressed her heart with the
 signs of His suffering which have been described above. I owe this
 note to the kindness of an anonymous correspondent, whom I here thank.

FOLIGNO

In the landscape of Raphael's votive picture, known as the Madonna di
Foligno, there is a town with a few towers, placed upon a broad plain
at the edge of some blue hills. Allowing for that license as to details
which imaginative masters permitted themselves in matters of
subordinate importance, Raphael's sketch is still true to Foligno. The
place has not materially changed since the beginning of the sixteenth
century. Indeed, relatively to the state of Italy at large, it is still
the same as in the days of ancient Rome. Foligno forms a station of
commanding interest between Rome and the Adriatic upon the great
Flaminian Way. At Foligno the passes of the Apennines debouch into the
Umbrian plain, which slopes gradually toward the valley of the Tiber,
and from it the valley of the Nera is reached by an 38easy ascent
beneath the walls of Spoleto. An army advancing from the north by the
Metaurus and the Furlo Pass must find itself at Foligno; and the level
champaign round the city is well adapted to the maintenance and
exercises of a garrison. In the days of the Republic and the Empire,
the value of this position was well understood; but Foligno's
importance, as the key to the Flaminian Way, was eclipsed by two
flourishing cities in its immediate vicinity, Hispellum and Mevania,
the modern Spello and Bevagna. We might hazard a conjecture that the
Lombards, when they ruled the Duchy of Spoleto, following their usual
policy of opposing new military centres to the ancient Roman municipia,
encouraged Fulginium at the expense of her two neighbours. But of this
there is no certainty to build upon. All that can be affirmed with
accuracy is that in the Middle Ages, while Spello and Bevagna declined
into the inferiority of dependent burghs, Foligno grew in power and
became the chief commune of this part of Umbria. It was famous during
the last centuries of struggle between the Italian burghers and their
native despots, for peculiar ferocity in civil strife. Some of the
bloodiest pages in mediæval Italian history are those which relate the
vicissitudes of the Trinci family, the exhaustion of Foligno by
internal discord, and its final submission to the Papal power. Since
railways have been carried from Rome through Narni and Spoleto to
Ancona and Perugia, Foligno has gained considerably in commercial and
military status. It is the point of intersection for three lines; the
Italian government has made it a great cavalry depôt, and there are
signs of reviving traffic in its decayed streets. Whether the presence
of a large garrison has already modified the population, or whether we
may ascribe something to the absence of Roman municipal institutions in
the far past, and to the savagery of the mediæval period, it is
difficult to say. Yet 39the impression left by Foligno upon the mind is
different from that of Assisi, Spello, and Montefalco, which are
distinguished for a certain grace and gentleness in their inhabitants.

My window in the city wall looks southward across the plain to Spoleto,
with Montefalco perched aloft upon the right, and Trevi on its
mountain-bracket to the left. From the topmost peaks of the Sabine
Apennines, gradual tender sloping lines descend to find their quiet in
the valley of Clitumnus. The space between me and that distance is
infinitely rich with every sort of greenery, dotted here and there with
towers and relics of baronial houses. The little town is in commotion;
for the working men of Foligno and its neighbourhood have resolved to
spend their earnings on a splendid festa—horse-races, and two nights of
fireworks. The acacias and paulownias on the ramparts are in full bloom
of creamy white and lilac. In the glare of Bengal lights these trees,
with all their pendulous blossoms, surpassed the most fantastic of
artificial decorations. The rockets sent aloft into the sky amid that
solemn Umbrian landscape were nowise out of harmony with nature. I
never sympathised with critics who resent the intrusion of fireworks
upon scenes of natural beauty. The Giessbach, lighted up at so much per
head on stated evenings, with a band playing and a crowd of cockneys
staring, presents perhaps an incongruous spectacle. But where, as here
at Foligno, a whole city has made itself a festival, where there are
multitudes of citizens and soldiers and country-people slowly moving
and gravely admiring, with the decency and order characteristic of an
Italian crowd, I have nothing but a sense of satisfaction.

It is sometimes the traveller's good fortune in some remote place to
meet with an inhabitant who incarnates and interprets for him the
_genius loci_ as he has conceived it. Though 40his own subjectivity
will assuredly play a considerable part in such an encounter,
transferring to his chance acquaintance qualities he may not possess,
and connecting this personality in some purely imaginative manner with
thoughts derived from study, or impressions made by nature; yet the
stranger will henceforth become the meeting-point of many memories, the
central figure in a composition which derives from him its vividness.
Unconsciously and innocently he has lent himself to the creation of a
picture, and round him, as around the hero of a myth, have gathered
thoughts and sentiments of which he had himself no knowledge. On one of
these nights I had been threading the aisles of acacia-trees, now
glaring red, now azure, as the Bengal lights kept changing. My mind
instinctively went back to scenes of treachery and bloodshed in the
olden time, when Gorrado Trinci paraded the mangled remnants of three
hundred of his victims, heaped on mule-back, through Foligno, for a
warning to the citizens. As the procession moved along the ramparts, I
found myself in contest with a young man, who readily fell into
conversation. He was very tall, with enormous breadth of shoulders, and
long sinewy arms, like Michelangelo's favourite models. His head was
small, curled over with crisp black hair. Low forehead, and thick level
eyebrows absolutely meeting over intensely bright fierce eyes. The nose
descending straight from the brows, as in a statue of Hadrian's age.
The mouth full-lipped, petulant, and passionate above a firm round
chin. He was dressed in the shirt, white trousers, and loose white
jacket of a contadino; but he did not move with a peasant's slouch,
rather with the elasticity and alertness of an untamed panther. He told
me that he was just about to join a cavalry regiment; and I could well
imagine, when military dignity was added to that gait, how grandly he
would go. This young man, of whom I heard nothing more after 41our
half-hour's conversation among the crackling fireworks and roaring
cannon, left upon my mind an indescribable impression of
dangerousness—of 'something fierce and terrible, eligible to burst
forth.' Of men like this, then, were formed the Companies of Adventure
who flooded Italy with villany, ambition, and lawlessness in the
fifteenth century. Gattamelata, who began life as a baker's boy at
Narni and ended it with a bronze statue by Donatello on the public
square in Padua, was of this breed. Like this were the Trinci and their
bands of murderers. Like this were the bravi who hunted Lorenzaccio to
death at Venice. Like this was Pietro Paolo Baglioni, whose fault, in
the eyes of Machiavelli, was that he could not succeed in being
'perfettamente tristo.' Beautiful, but inhuman; passionate, but cold;
powerful, but rendered impotent for firm and lofty deeds by immorality
and treason; how many centuries of men like this once wasted Italy and
plunged her into servitude! Yet what material is here, under sterner
discipline, and with a nobler national ideal, for the formation of
heroic armies. Of such stuff, doubtless, were the Roman legionaries.
When will the Italians learn to use these men as Fabius or as Cæsar,
not as the Vitelli and the Trinci used them? In such meditations,
deeply stirred by the meeting of my own reflections with one who seemed
to represent for me in life and blood the spirit of the place which had
provoked them, I said farewell to Cavallucci, and returned to my
bedroom on the city wall. The last rockets had whizzed and the last
cannons had thundered ere I fell asleep.

SPELLO

Spello contains some not inconsiderable antiquities—the remains of a
Roman theatre, a Roman gate with the heads of two men and a woman
leaning over it, and some fragments 42of Roman sculpture scattered
through its buildings. The churches, especially those of S.M. Maggiore
and S. Francesco, are worth a visit for the sake of Pinturicchio.
Nowhere, except in the Piccolomini Library at Siena, can that master's
work in fresco be better studied than here. The satisfaction with which
he executed the wall paintings in S. Maria Maggiore is testified by his
own portrait introduced upon a panel in the decoration of the Virgin's
chamber. The scrupulously rendered details of books, chairs, window
seats, &c., which he here has copied, remind one of Carpaccio's study
of S. Benedict at Venice. It is all sweet, tender, delicate, and
carefully finished; but without depth, not even the depth of Perugino's
feeling. In S. Francesco, Pinturicchio, with the same meticulous
refinement, painted a letter addressed to him by Gentile Baglioni. It
lies on a stool before Madonna and her court of saints. Nicety of
execution, technical mastery of fresco as a medium for Dutch
detail-painting, prettiness of composition, and cheerfulness of
colouring, are noticeable throughout his work here rather than either
thought or sentiment. S. Maria Maggiore can boast a fresco of Madonna
between a young episcopal saint and Catherine of Alexandria from the
hand of Perugino. The rich yellow harmony of its tones, and the
graceful dignity of its emotion, conveyed no less by a certain
Raphaelesque pose and outline than by suavity of facial expression,
enable us to measure the distance between this painter and his
quasi-pupil Pinturicchio.

We did not, however, drive to Spello to inspect either Roman
antiquities or frescoes, but to see an inscription on the city walls
about Orlando. It is a rude Latin elegiac couplet, saying that, 'from
the sign below, men may conjecture the mighty members of Roland, nephew
of Charles; his deeds are written in history.' Three agreeable old
gentlemen of Spello, 43who attended us with much politeness, and were
greatly interested in my researches, pointed out a mark waist-high upon
the wall, where Orlando's knee is reported to have reached. But I could
not learn anything about a phallic monolith, which is said by Guerin or
Panizzi to have been identified with the Roland myth at Spello. Such a
column either never existed here, or had been removed before the memory
of the present generation.

EASTER MORNING AT ASSISI

We are in the lower church of S. Francesco. High mass is being sung,
with orchestra and organ and a choir of many voices. Candles are
lighted on the altar, over-canopied with Giotto's allegories. From the
low southern windows slants the sun, in narrow bands, upon the
many-coloured gloom and embrowned glory of these painted aisles. Women
in bright kerchiefs kneel upon the stones, and shaggy men from the
mountains stand or lean against the wooden benches. There is no moving
from point to point. Where we have taken our station, at the
north-western angle of the transept, there we stay till mass be over.
The whole low-vaulted building glows duskily; the frescoed roof, the
stained windows, the figure-crowded pavements blending their rich but
subdued colours, like hues upon some marvellous moth's wings, or like a
deep-toned rainbow mist discerned in twilight dreams, or like such
tapestry as Eastern queens, in ancient days, wrought for the pavilion
of an empress. Forth from this maze of mingling tints, indefinite in
shade and sunbeams, lean earnest, saintly faces—ineffably pure—adoring,
pitying, pleading; raising their eyes in ecstasy to heaven, or turning
them in ruth toward earth. Men and women of whom the world was not
worthy—at the hands of those old painters they have received 44the
divine grace, the dovelike simplicity, whereof Italians in the
fourteenth century possessed the irrecoverable secret. Each face is a
poem; the counterpart in painting to a chapter from the Fioretti di San
Francesco. Over the whole scene—in the architecture, in the frescoes,
in the coloured windows, in the gloom, on the people, in the incense,
from the chiming bells, through the music—broods one spirit: the spirit
of him who was 'the co-espoused, co-transforate with Christ;' the
ardent, the radiant, the beautiful in soul; the suffering, the strong,
the simple, the victorious over self and sin; the celestial who
trampled upon earth and rose on wings of ecstasy to heaven; the
Christ-inebriated saint of visions supersensual and life beyond the
grave. Far down below the feet of those who worship God through him, S.
Francis sleeps; but his soul, the incorruptible part of him, the
message he gave the world, is in the spaces round us. This is his
temple. He fills it like an unseen god. Not as Phoebus or Athene, from
their marble pedestals; but as an abiding spirit, felt everywhere,
nowhere seized, absorbing in itself all mysteries, all myths, all
burning exaltations, all abasements, all love, self-sacrifice, pain,
yearning, which the thought of Christ, sweeping the centuries, hath
wrought for men. Let, therefore, choir and congregation raise their
voices on the tide of prayers and praises; for this is Easter
morning—Christ is risen! Our sister, Death of the Body, for whom S.
Francis thanked God in his hymn, is reconciled to us this day, and
takes us by the hand, and leads us to the gate whence floods of
heavenly glory issue from the faces of a multitude of saints. Pray, ye
poor people; chant and pray. If all be but a dream, to wake from this
were loss for you indeed!

45

PERUSIA AUGUSTA

The piazza in front of the Prefettura is my favourite resort on these
nights of full moon. The evening twilight is made up partly of sunset
fading over Thrasymene and Tuscany; partly of moonrise from the
mountains of Gubbio and the passes toward Ancona. The hills are capped
with snow, although the season is so forward. Below our parapets the
bulk of S. Domenico, with its gaunt perforated tower, and the finer
group of S. Pietro, flaunting the arrowy 'Pennacchio di Perugia,' jut
out upon the spine of hill which dominates the valley of the Tiber. As
the night gloom deepens, and the moon ascends the sky, these buildings
seem to form the sombre foreground to some French etching. Beyond them
spreads the misty moon-irradiated plain of Umbria. Over all rise
shadowy Apennines, with dim suggestions of Assisi, Spello, Foligno,
Montefalco, and Spoleto on their basements. Little thin whiffs of
breezes, very slight and searching, flit across, and shiver as they
pass from Apennine to plain. The slowly moving population—women in
veils, men winter-mantled—pass to and fro between the buildings and the
grey immensity of sky. Bells ring. The bugles of the soldiers blow
retreat in convents turned to barracks. Young men roam the streets
beneath, singing May songs. Far, far away upon the plain, red through
the vitreous moonlight ringed with thundery gauze, fires of unnamed
castelli smoulder. As we lean from ledges eighty feet in height, gas
vies with moon in chequering illuminations on the ancient walls;
Etruscan mouldings, Roman letters, high-piled hovels, suburban
world-old dwellings plastered like martins' nests against the masonry.

Sunlight adds more of detail to this scene. To the right of Subasio,
where the passes go from Foligno towards Urbino and Ancona, heavy
masses of thundercloud hang every day; 46but the plain and
hill-buttresses are clear in transparent blueness. First comes Assisi,
with S.M. degli Angeli below; then Spello; then Foligno; then Trevi;
and, far away, Spoleto; with, reared against those misty battlements,
the village height of Montefalco—the 'ringhiera dell' Umbria,' as they
call it in this country. By daylight, the snow on yonder peaks is
clearly visible, where the Monti della Sibilla tower up above the
sources of the Nera and Velino from frigid wastes of Norcia. The lower
ranges seem as though painted, in films of airiest and palest azure,
upon china; and then comes the broad green champaign, flecked with
villages and farms. Just at the basement of Perugia winds Tiber,
through sallows and grey poplar-trees, spanned by ancient arches of red
brick, and guarded here and there by castellated towers. The mills
beneath their dams and weirs are just as Raphael drew them; and the
feeling of air and space reminds one, on each coign of vantage, of some
Umbrian picture. Every hedgerow is hoary with May-bloom and
honeysuckle. The oaks hang out their golden-dusted tassels. Wayside
shrines are decked with laburnum boughs and iris blossoms plucked from
the copse-woods, where spires of purple and pink orchis variegate the
thin, fine grass. The land waves far and wide with young corn, emerald
green beneath the olive-trees, which take upon their under-foliage
tints reflected from this verdure or red tones from the naked earth. A
fine race of _contadini_, with large, heroically graceful forms, and
beautiful dark eyes and noble faces, move about this garden, intent on
ancient, easy tillage of the kind Saturnian soil.

LA MAGIONE

On the road from Perugia to Cortona, the first stage ends at La
Magione, a high hill-village commanding the passage from the Umbrian
champaign to the lake of Thrasymene. 47It has a grim square fortalice
above it, now in ruins, and a stately castle to the south-east, built
about the time of Braccio. Here took place that famous diet of Cesare
Borgia's enemies, when the son of Alexander VI. was threatening Bologna
with his arms, and bidding fair to make himself supreme tyrant of Italy
in 1502. It was the policy of Cesare to fortify himself by reducing the
fiefs of the Church to submission, and by rooting out the dynasties
which had acquired a sort of tyranny in Papal cities. The Varani of
Camerino and the Manfredi of Faenza had been already extirpated. There
was only too good reason to believe that the turn of the Vitelli at
Città di Castello, of the Baglioni at Perugia, and of the Bentivogli at
Bologna would come next. Pandolfo Petrucci at Siena, surrounded on all
sides by Cesare's conquests, and specially menaced by the fortification
of Piombino, felt himself in danger. The great house of the Orsini, who
swayed a large part of the Patrimony of S. Peter's, and were closely
allied to the Vitelli, had even graver cause for anxiety. But such was
the system of Italian warfare, that nearly all these noble families
lived by the profession of arms, and most of them were in the pay of
Cesare. When, therefore, the conspirators met at La Magione, they were
plotting against a man whose money they had taken, and whom they had
hitherto aided in his career of fraud and spoliation.

The diet consisted of the Cardinal Orsini, an avowed antagonist of
Alexander VI.; his brother Paolo, the chieftain of the clan; Vitellozzo
Vitelli, lord of Città di Castello; Gian-Paolo Baglioni, made
undisputed master of Perugia by the recent failure of his cousin
Grifonetto's treason; Oliverotto, who had just acquired the March of
Fermo by the murder of his uncle Giovanni da Fogliani; Ermes
Bentivoglio, the heir of Bologna; and Antonio da Venafro, the secretary
of Pandolfo Petrueci. These men vowed hostility on the basis of
48common injuries and common fear against the Borgia. But they were for
the most part stained themselves with crime, and dared not trust each
other, and could not gain the confidence of any respectable power in
Italy except the exiled Duke of Urbino. Procrastination was the first
weapon used by the wily Cesare, who trusted that time would sow among
his rebel captains suspicion and dissension. He next made overtures to
the leaders separately, and so far succeeded in his perfidious policy
as to draw Vitellozzo Vitelli, Oliverotto da Fermo, Paolo Orsini, and
Francesco Orsini, Duke of Gravina, into his nets at Sinigaglia. Under
pretext of fair conference and equitable settlement of disputed claims,
he possessed himself of their persons, and had them strangled—two upon
December 31, and two upon January 18, 1503. Of all Cesare's actions,
this was the most splendid for its successful combination of sagacity
and policy in the hour of peril, of persuasive diplomacy, and of
ruthless decision when the time to strike his blow arrived.

CORTONA

After leaving La Magione, the road descends upon the lake of Thrasymene
through oak-woods full of nightingales. The lake lay basking,
leaden-coloured, smooth and waveless, under a misty, rain-charged,
sun-irradiated sky. At Passignano, close beside its shore, we stopped
for mid-day. This is a little fishing village of very poor people, who
live entirely by labour on the waters. They showed us huge eels coiled
in tanks, and some fine specimens of the silver carp—Reina del Lago. It
was off one of the eels that we made our lunch; and taken, as he was,
alive from his cool lodging, he furnished a series of dishes fit for a
king.

Climbing the hill of Cortona seemed a quite interminable 49business. It
poured a deluge. Our horses were tired, and one lean donkey, who, after
much trouble, was produced from a farmhouse and yoked in front of them,
rendered but little assistance.

Next day we duly saw the Muse and Lamp in the Museo, the Fra Angelicos,
and all the Signorellis. One cannot help thinking that too much fuss is
made nowadays about works of art—running after them for their own
sakes, exaggerating their importance, and detaching them as objects of
study, instead of taking them with sympathy and carelessness as
pleasant or instructive adjuncts to our actual life. Artists,
historians of art, and critics are forced to isolate pictures; and it
is of profit to their souls to do so. But simple folk, who have no
aesthetic vocation, whether creative or critical, suffer more than is
good for them by compliance with mere fashion. Sooner or later we shall
return to the spirit of the ages which produced these pictures, and
which regarded them with less of an industrious bewilderment than they
evoke at present.

I am far indeed from wishing to decry art, the study of art, or the
benefits to be derived from its intelligent enjoyment. I only mean to
suggest that we go the wrong way to work at present in this matter.
Picture and sculpture galleries accustom us to the separation of art
from life. Our methods of studying art, making a beginning of art-study
while traveling, tend to perpetuate this separation. It is only on
reflection, after long experience, that we come to perceive that the
most fruitful moments in our art education have been casual and
unsought, in quaint nooks and unexpected places, where nature, art, and
life are happily blent.

The Palace of the Commune at Cortona is interesting because of the
shields of Florentine governors, sculptured on blocks of grey stone,
and inserted in its outer walls—Peruzzi, 50Albizzi, Strozzi, Salviati,
among the more ancient—de' Medici at a later epoch. The revolutions in
the Republic of Florence may be read by a herald from these
coats-of-arms and the dates beneath them.

The landscape of this Tuscan highland satisfies me more and more with
sense of breadth and beauty. From S. Margherita above the town the
prospect is immense and wonderful and wild—up into those brown,
forbidding mountains; down to the vast plain; and over to the cities of
Chiusi, Montepulciano, and Foiano. The jewel of the view is Trasimeno,
a silvery shield encased with serried hills, and set upon one corner of
the scene, like a precious thing apart and meant for separate
contemplation. There is something in the singularity and circumscribed
completeness of the mountain-girded lake, diminished by distance, which
would have attracted Lionardo da Vinci's pencil, had he seen it.

Cortona seems desperately poor, and the beggars are intolerable. One
little blind boy, led by his brother, both frightfully ugly and ragged
urchins, pursued us all over the city, incessantly whining 'Signore
Padrone!' It was only on the threshold of the inn that I ventured to
give them a few coppers, for I knew well that any public beneficence
would raise the whole swarm of the begging population round us. Sitting
later in the day upon the piazza of S. Domenico, I saw the same blind
boy taken by his brother to play. The game consists, in the little
creature throwing his arms about the trunk of a big tree, and running
round and round it, clasping it. This seemed to make him quite
inexpressibly happy. His face lit up and beamed with that inner
beatitude blind people show—a kind of rapture shining over it, as
though nothing could be more altogether delightful. This little boy had
the smallpox at eight months, and has never been able to see since. He
looks sturdy, and may 51live to be of any age—doomed always, is that
possible, to beg?

CHIUSI

What more enjoyable dinner can be imagined than a flask of excellent
Montepulciano, a well-cooked steak, and a little goat's cheese in the
inn of the Leone d'Oro at Chiusi? The windows are open, and the sun is
setting. Monte Cetona bounds the view to the right, and the wooded
hills of Città della Pieve to the left. The deep green dimpled valley
goes stretching away toward Orvieto; and at its end a purple mountain
mass, distinct and solitary, which may peradventure be Soracte! The
near country is broken into undulating hills, forested with fine olives
and oaks; and the composition of the landscape, with its crowning
villages, is worthy of a background to an Umbrian picture. The breadth
and depth and quiet which those painters loved, the space of lucid sky,
the suggestion of winding waters in verdant fields, all are here. The
evening is beautiful—golden light streaming softly from behind us on
this prospect, and gradually mellowing to violet and blue with stars
above.

At Chiusi we visited several Etruscan tombs, and saw their red and
black scrawled pictures. One of the sepulchres was a well-jointed vault
of stone with no wall-paintings. The rest had been scooped out of the
living tufa. This was the excuse for some pleasant hours spent in
walking and driving through the country. Chiusi means for me the
mingling of grey olives and green oaks in limpid sunlight; deep leafy
lanes; warm sandstone banks; copses with nightingales and cyclamens and
cuckoos; glimpses of a silvery lake; blue shadowy distances; the
bristling ridge of Monte Cetona; the conical towers, Becca di Questo
and Becca di Quello, over against each other on the borders; ways
winding among 52hedgerows like some bit of England in June, but not so
full of flowers. It means all this, I fear, for me far more than
theories about Lars Porsenna and Etruscan ethnology.

GUBBIO

Gubbio ranks among the most ancient of Italian hill-towns. With its
back set firm against the spine of central Apennines, and piled, house
over house, upon the rising slope, it commands a rich tract of upland
champaign, bounded southward toward Perugia and Foligno by peaked and
rolling ridges. This amphitheatre, which forms its source of wealth and
independence, is admirably protected by a chain of natural defences;
and Gubbio wears a singularly old-world aspect of antiquity and
isolation. Houses climb right to the crests of gaunt bare peaks; and
the brown mediæval walls with square towers which protected them upon
the mountain side, following the inequalities of the ground, are still
a marked feature in the landscape. It is a town of steep streets and
staircases, with quaintly framed prospects, and solemn vistas opening
at every turn across the lowland. One of these views might be selected
for especial notice. In front, irregular buildings losing themselves in
country as they straggle by the roadside; then the open post-road with
a cypress to the right; afterwards, the rich green fields, and on a bit
of rising ground an ancient farmhouse with its brown dependencies;
lastly, the blue hills above Fossato, and far away a wrack of tumbling
clouds. All this enclosed by the heavy archway of the Porta Romana,
where sunlight and shadow chequer the mellow tones of a dim fresco,
indistinct with age, but beautiful.

Gubbio has not greatly altered since the middle ages. But poor people
are now living in the palaces of noblemen and merchants. These new
inhabitants have walled up the fair 53arched windows and slender
portals of the ancient dwellers, spoiling the beauty of the streets
without materially changing the architectural masses. In that witching
hour when the Italian sunset has faded, and a solemn grey replaces the
glowing tones of daffodil and rose, it is not difficult, here dreaming
by oneself alone, to picture the old noble life—the ladies moving along
those open loggias, the young men in plumed caps and curling hair with
one foot on those doorsteps, the knights in armour and the sumpter
mules and red-robed Cardinals defiling through those gates into the
courts within. The modern bricks and mortar with which that picturesque
scene has been overlaid, the ugly oblong windows and bright green
shutters which now interrupt the flowing lines of arch and gallery;
these disappear beneath the fine remembered touch of a sonnet sung by
Folgore, when still the Parties had their day, and this deserted city
was the centre of great aims and throbbing aspirations.

The names of the chief buildings in Gubbio are strongly suggestive of
the middle ages. They abut upon a Piazza de' Signori. One of them, the
Palazzo del Municipio, is a shapeless unfinished block of masonry. It
is here that the Eugubine tables, plates of brass with Umbrian and
Roman incised characters, are shown. The Palazzo de' Consoli has higher
architectural qualities, and is indeed unique among Italian palaces for
the combination of massiveness with lightness in a situation of
unprecedented boldness. Rising from enormous substructures mortised
into the solid hillside, it rears its vast rectangular bulk to a giddy
height above the town; airy loggias imposed on great forbidding masses
of brown stone, shooting aloft into a light aë;rial tower. The empty
halls inside are of fair proportions and a noble size, and the views
from the open colonnades in all directions fascinate. But the final
impression made by the building is one of square, 54tranquil, massive
strength—perpetuity embodied in masonry—force suggesting facility by
daring and successful addition of elegance to hugeness. Vast as it is,
this pile is not forbidding, as a similarly weighty structure in the
North would be. The fine quality of the stone and the delicate though
simple mouldings of the windows give it an Italian grace.

These public palaces belong to the age of the Communes, when Gubbio was
a free town, with a policy of its own, and an important part to play in
the internecine struggles of Pope and Empire, Guelf and Ghibelline. The
ruined, deserted, degraded Palazzo Ducale reminds us of the advent of
the despots. It has been stripped of all its tarsia-work and sculpture.
Only here and there a Fe.D., with the cupping-glass of Federigo di
Montefeltro, remains to show that Gubbio once became the fairest fief
of the Urbino duchy. S. Ubaldo, who gave his name to this duke's son,
was the patron of Gubbio, and to him the cathedral is dedicated—one low
enormous vault, like a cellar or feudal banqueting hall, roofed with a
succession of solid Gothic arches. This strange old church, and the
House of Canons, buttressed on the hill beside it, have suffered less
from modernisation than most buildings in Gubbio. The latter, in
particular, helps one to understand what this city of grave palazzi
must have been, and how the mere opening of old doors and windows would
restore it to its primitive appearance. The House of the Canons has, in
fact, not yet been given over to the use of middle-class and
proletariate.

At the end of a day in Gubbio, it is pleasant to take our ease in the
primitive hostelry, at the back of which foams a mountain-torrent,
rushing downward from the Apennines. The Gubbio wine is very fragrant,
and of a rich ruby colour. Those to whom the tints of wine and jewels
give a pleasure not entirely childish, will take delight in its
specific blending 55of tawny hues with rose. They serve the table
still, at Gubbio, after the antique Italian fashion, covering it with a
cream-coloured linen cloth bordered with coarse lace—the creases of the
press, the scent of old herbs from the wardrobe, are still upon it—and
the board is set with shallow dishes of warm, white earthenware,
basket-worked in open lattice at the edge, which contain little
separate messes of meat, vegetables, cheese, and comfits. The wine
stands in strange, slender phials of smooth glass, with stoppers; and
the amber-coloured bread lies in fair round loaves upon the cloth.
Dining thus is like sitting down to the supper at Emmaus, in some
picture of Gian Bellini or of Masolino. The very bareness of the
room—its open rafters, plastered walls, primitive settees, and
red-brick floor, on which a dog sits waiting for a bone—enhances the
impression of artistic delicacy in the table.

FROM GUBBIO TO FANO

The road from Gubbio, immediately after leaving the city, enters a
narrow Alpine ravine, where a thin stream dashes over dark, red rocks,
and pendent saxifrages wave to the winds. The carriage in which we
travelled at the end of May, one morning, had two horses, which our
driver soon supplemented with a couple of white oxen. Slowly and
toilsomely we ascended between the flanks of barren hills—gaunt masses
of crimson and grey crag, clothed at their summits with short turf and
scanty pasture. The pass leads first to the little town of Scheggia,
and is called the Monte Calvo, or bald mountain. At Scheggia, it joins
the great Flaminian Way, or North road of the Roman armies. At the top
there is a fine view over the conical hills that dominate Gubbio, and,
far away, to noble mountains above the Furlo and the Foligno line of
railway to Ancona. Range rises over range, crossing 56at unexpected
angles, breaking into sudden precipices, and stretching out long,
exquisitely modelled outlines, as only Apennines can do, in silvery
sobriety of colours toned by clearest air. Every square piece of this
austere, wild landscape forms a varied picture, whereof the composition
is due to subtle arrangements of lines always delicate; and these lines
seem somehow to have been determined in their beauty by the vast
antiquity of the mountain system, as though they all had taken time to
choose their place and wear down into harmony. The effect of tempered
sadness was heightened for us by stormy lights and dun clouds, high in
air, rolling vapours and flying shadows, over all the prospect, tinted
in ethereal grisaille.

After Scheggia, one enters a land of meadow and oak-trees. This is the
sacred central tract of Jupiter Apenninus, whose fane—

    Delubra Jovis saxoque minantes
Apenninigenis cultae pastoribus arae


—once rose behind us on the bald Iguvian summits. A second little pass
leads from this region to the Adriatic side of the Italian watershed,
and the road now follows the Barano downward toward the sea. The valley
is fairly green with woods, where mistletoe may here and there be seen
on boughs of oak, and rich with cornfields. Cagli is the chief town of
the district, and here they show one of the best pictures left to us by
Raphael's father, Giovanni Santi. It is a Madonna, attended by S.
Peter, S. Francis, S. Dominic, S. John, and two angels. One of the
angels is traditionally supposed to have been painted from the boy
Raphael, and the face has something which reminds us of his portraits.
The whole composition, excellent in modelling, harmonious in grouping,
soberly but strongly coloured, with a peculiar blending of dignity and
sweetness, grace and vigour, makes one wonder 57why Santi thought it
necessary to send his son from his own workshop to study under
Perugino. He was himself a master of his art, and this, perhaps the
most agreeable of his paintings, has a masculine sincerity which is
absent from at least the later works of Perugino.

Some miles beyond Cagli, the real pass of the Furlo begins. It owes its
name to a narrow tunnel bored by Vespasian in the solid rock, where
limestone crags descend on the Barano. The Romans called this gallery
Petra Pertusa, or Intercisa, or more familiarly Forulus, whence comes
the modern name. Indeed, the stations on the old Flaminian Way are
still well marked by Latin designations; for Cagli is the ancient
Calles, and Fossombrone is Forum Sempronii, and Fano the Fanum Fortunæ.
Vespasian commemorated this early achievement in engineering by an
inscription carved on the living stone, which still remains; and
Claudian, when he sang the journey of his Emperor Honorius from Rimini
to Rome, speaks thus of what was even then an object of astonishment to
travellers:—

Laetior hinc fano recipit fortuna vetusto,
Despiciturque vagus praerupta valle Metaurus,
Qua mons arte patens vivo se perforat arcu
Admittitque viam sectae per viscera rupis.

The Forulus itself may now be matched, on any Alpine pass, by several
tunnels of far mightier dimensions; for it is narrow, and does not
extend more than 126 feet in length. But it occupies a fine position at
the end of a really imposing ravine. The whole Furlo Pass might,
without too much exaggeration, be described as a kind of Cheddar on the
scale of the Via Mala. The limestone rocks, which rise on either hand
above the gorge to an enormous height, are noble in form and solemn,
like a succession of gigantic portals, with stupendous flanking
obelisks and pyramids. Some of these 58crag-masses rival the fantastic
cliffs of Capri, and all consist of that southern mountain limestone
which changes from pale yellow to blue grey and dusky orange. A river
roars precipitately through the pass, and the roadsides wave with many
sorts of campanulas—a profusion of azure and purple bells upon the hard
white stone. Of Roman remains there is still enough (in the way of
Roman bridges and bits of broken masonry) to please an antiquary's eye.
But the lover of nature will dwell chiefly on the picturesque qualities
of this historic gorge, so alien to the general character of Italian
scenery, and yet so remote from anything to which Swiss travelling
accustoms one.

The Furlo breaks out into a richer land of mighty oaks and waving
cornfields, a fat pastoral country, not unlike Devonshire in detail,
with green uplands, and wild-rose tangled hedgerows, and much running
water, and abundance of summer flowers. At a point above Fossombrone,
the Barano joins the Metauro, and here one has a glimpse of far-away
Urbino, high upon its mountain eyrie. It is so rare, in spite of
immemorial belief, to find in Italy a wilderness of wild flowers, that
I feel inclined to make a list of those I saw from our carriage windows
as we rolled down lazily along the road to Fossombrone. Broom, and
cytisus, and hawthorn mingled with roses, gladiolus, and sainfoin.
There were orchises, and clematis, and privet, and wild-vine, vetches
of all hues, red poppies, sky-blue cornflowers, and lilac pimpernel. In
the rougher hedges, dogwood, honeysuckle, pyracanth, and acacia made a
network of white bloom and blushes. Milk-worts of all bright and tender
tints combined with borage, iris, hawkweeds, harebells, crimson clover,
thyme, red snap-dragon, golden asters, and dreamy love-in-a-mist, to
weave a marvellous carpet such as the looms of Shiraz or of Cashmere
never spread. Rarely have I gazed on Flora in such riot, 59such
luxuriance, such self-abandonment to joy. The air was filled with
fragrances. Songs of cuckoos and nightingales echoed from the copses on
the hillsides. The sun was out, and dancing over all the landscape.

After all this, Fano was very restful in the quiet sunset. It has a
sandy stretch of shore, on which the long, green-yellow rollers of the
Adriatic broke into creamy foam, beneath the waning saffron light over
Pesaro and the rosy rising of a full moon. This Adriatic sea carries an
English mind home to many a little watering-place upon our coast. In
colour and the shape of waves it resembles our Channel.

The sea-shore is Fano's great attraction; but the town has many
churches, and some creditable pictures, as well as Roman antiquities.
Giovanni Santi may here be seen almost as well as at Cagli; and of
Perugino there is one truly magnificent altar-piece—lunette, great
centre panel, and predella—dusty in its present condition, but
splendidly painted, and happily not yet restored or cleaned. It is
worth journeying to Fano to see this. Still better would the journey be
worth the traveller's while if he could be sure to witness such a game
of _Pallone_ as we chanced upon in the Via dell' Arco di Augusto—lads
and grown-men, tightly girt, in shirt sleeves, driving the great ball
aloft into the air with cunning bias and calculation of projecting
house-eaves. I do not understand the game; but it was clearly played
something after the manner of our football, that is to say; with sides,
and front and back players so arranged as to cover the greatest number
of angles of incidence on either wall.

Fano still remembers that it is the Fane of Fortune. On the fountain in
the market-place stands a bronze Fortuna, slim and airy, offering her
veil to catch the wind. May she long shower health and prosperity upon
the modern watering-place of which she is the patron saint!

60




THE PALACE OF URBINO


I

At Rimini, one spring, the impulse came upon my wife and me to make our
way across San Marino to Urbino. In the Piazza, called apocryphally
after Julius Cæsar, I found a proper _vetturino_, with a good carriage
and two indefatigable horses. He was a splendid fellow, and bore a
great historic name, as I discovered when our bargain was completed.
'What are you called?' I asked him. '_Filippo Visconti, per servirla!_'
was the prompt reply. Brimming over with the darkest memories of the
Italian Renaissance, I hesitated when I heard this answer. The
associations seemed too ominous. And yet the man himself was so
attractive—tall, stalwart, and well looking—no feature of his face or
limb of his athletic form recalling the gross tyrant who concealed
worse than Caligula's ugliness from sight in secret chambers—that I
shook this preconception from my mind. As it turned out, Filippo
Visconti had nothing in common with his infamous namesake but the name.
On a long and trying journey, he showed neither sullen nor yet
ferocious tempers; nor, at the end of it, did he attempt by any
master-stroke of craft to wheedle from me more than his fair pay; but
took the meerschaum pipe I gave him for a keepsake, with the frank
goodwill of an accomplished gentleman. The only exhibition of his hot
Italian blood which I remember did his humanity credit. 61While we were
ascending a steep hillside, he jumped from his box to thrash a ruffian
by the roadside for brutal treatment to a little boy. He broke his
whip, it is true, in this encounter; risked a dangerous quarrel; and
left his carriage, with myself and wife inside it, to the mercy of his
horses in a somewhat perilous position. But when he came back, hot and
glowing, from this deed of justice, I could only applaud his zeal.

An Italian of this type, handsome as an antique statue, with the
refinement of a modern gentleman and that intelligence which is innate
in a race of immemorial culture, is a fascinating being. He may be
absolutely ignorant in all book-learning. He may be as ignorant as a
Bersagliere from Montalcino with whom I once conversed at Rimini, who
gravely said that he could walk in three months to North America, and
thought of doing it when his term of service was accomplished. But he
will display, as this young soldier did, a grace and ease of address
which are rare in London drawing-rooms; and by his shrewd remarks upon
the cities he has visited, will show that he possesses a fine natural
taste for things of beauty. The speech of such men, drawn from the
common stock of the Italian people, is seasoned with proverbial
sayings, the wisdom of centuries condensed in a few nervous words. When
emotion fires their brain, they break into spontaneous eloquence, or
suggest the motive of a poem by phrases pregnant with imagery.

For the first stage of the journey out of Rimini, Filippo's two horses
sufficed. The road led almost straight across the level between
quickset hedges in white bloom. But when we reached the long steep hill
which ascends to San Marino, the inevitable oxen were called out, and
we toiled upwards leisurely through cornfields bright with red anemones
and sweet narcissus. At this point pomegranate hedges replaced 62the
May-thorns of the plain. In course of time our _bovi_ brought us to the
Borgo, or lower town, whence there is a further ascent of seven hundred
feet to the topmost hawk's-nest or acropolis of the republic. These we
climbed on foot, watching the view expand around us and beneath. Crags
of limestone here break down abruptly to the rolling hills, which go to
lose themselves in field and shore. Misty reaches of the Adriatic close
the world to eastward. Cesena, Rimini, Verucchio, and countless
hill-set villages, each isolated on its tract of verdure conquered from
the stern grey soil, define the points where Montefeltri wrestled with
Malatestas in long bygone years. Around are marly mountain-flanks in
wrinkles and gnarled convolutions like some giant's brain, furrowed by
rivers crawling through dry wasteful beds of shingle. Interminable
ranges of gaunt Apennines stretch, tier by tier, beyond; and over all
this landscape, a grey-green mist of rising crops and new-fledged
oak-trees lies like a veil upon the nakedness of Nature's ruins.

Nothing in Europe conveys a more striking sense of geological antiquity
than such a prospect. The denudation and abrasion of innumerable ages,
wrought by slow persistent action of weather and water on an upheaved
mountain mass, are here made visible. Every wave in that vast sea of
hills, every furrow in their worn flanks, tells its tale of a
continuous corrosion still in progress. The dominant impression is one
of melancholy. We forget how Romans, countermarching Carthaginians,
trod the land beneath us. The marvel of San Marino, retaining
independence through the drums and tramplings of the last seven
centuries, is swallowed in a deeper sense of wonder. We turn
instinctively in thought to Leopardi's musings on man's destiny at war
with unknown nature-forces and malignant rulers of the universe.

63

    Omai disprezza
Te, la natura, il brutto
Poter che, ascoso, a comun danno impera,
E l' infinita vanità del tutto.


And then, straining our eyes southward, we sweep the dim blue distance
for Recanati, and remember that the poet of modern despair and
discouragement was reared in even such a scene as this.

The town of San Marino is grey, narrow-streeted, simple; with a great,
new, decent, Greek-porticoed cathedral, dedicated to the eponymous
saint. A certain austerity defines it from more picturesque hill-cities
with a less uniform history. There is a marble statue of S. Marino in
the choir of his church; and in his cell is shown the stone bed and
pillow on which he took austere repose. One narrow window near the
saint's abode commands a proud but melancholy landscape of distant
hills and seaboard. To this, the great absorbing charm of San Marino,
our eyes instinctively, recurrently, take flight. It is a landscape
which by variety and beauty thralls attention, but which by its
interminable sameness might grow almost overpowering. There is no
relief. The gladness shed upon far humbler Northern lands in May is
ever absent here. The German word _Gemüthlichkeit_, the English phrase
'a home of ancient peace,' are here alike by art and nature
untranslated into visibilities. And yet (as we who gaze upon it thus
are fain to think) if peradventure the intolerable _ennui_ of this
panorama should drive a citizen of San Marino into out-lands, the same
view would haunt him whithersoever he went—the swallows of his native
eyrie would shrill through his sleep—he would yearn to breathe its fine
keen air in winter, and to watch its iris-hedges deck themselves with
blue in spring;—like Virgil's hero, dying, he would think of San
Marino: _Aspicit, et dulces moriens reminiscitur Argos_. Even 64a
passing stranger may feel the mingled fascination and oppression of
this prospect—the monotony which maddens, the charm which at a distance
grows upon the mind, environing it with memories.

Descending to the Borgo, we found that Filippo Visconti had ordered a
luncheon of excellent white bread, pigeons, and omelette, with the best
red muscat wine I ever drank, unless the sharp air of the hills
deceived my appetite. An Italian history of San Marino, including its
statutes, in three volumes, furnished intellectual food. But I confess
to having learned from these pages little else than this: first, that
the survival of the Commonwealth through all phases of European
politics had been semi-miraculous; secondly, that the most eminent San
Marinesi had been lawyers. It is possible on a hasty deduction from
these two propositions (to which, however, I am far from wishing to
commit myself), that the latter is a sufficient explanation of the
former.

From San Marino the road plunges at a break-neck pace. We are now in
the true Feltrian highlands, whence the Counts of Montefeltro issued in
the twelfth century. Yonder eyrie is San Leo, which formed the key of
entrance to the duchy of Urbino in campaigns fought many hundred years
ago. Perched on the crest of a precipitous rock, this fortress looks as
though it might defy all enemies but famine. And yet San Leo was taken
and re-taken by strategy and fraud, when Montefeltro, Borgia,
Malatesta, Rovere, contended for dominion in these valleys. Yonder is
Sta. Agata, the village to which Guidobaldo fled by night when
Valentino drove him from his dukedom. A little farther towers Carpegna,
where one branch of the Montefeltro house maintained a countship
through seven centuries, and only sold their fief to Rome in 1815.
Monte Coppiolo lies behind, Pietra Rubia in front: two other eagles'
nests of the same brood. What a road it is! 65It beats the tracks on
Exmoor. The uphill and downhill of Devonshire scorns compromise or
mitigation by _détour_ and zigzag. But here geography is on a scale so
far more vast, and the roadway is so far worse metalled than with us in
England—knotty masses of talc and nodes of sandstone cropping up at
dangerous turnings—that only Dante's words describe the journey:—

Vassi in Sanleo, e discendesi in Noli,
Montasi su Bismantova in cacume
Con esso i piè; ma qui convien ch' uom voli.


Of a truth, our horses seemed rather to fly than scramble up and down
these rugged precipices; Visconti cheerily animating them with the
brave spirit that was in him, and lending them his wary driver's help
of hand and voice at need.

We were soon upon a cornice-road between the mountains and the
Adriatic: following the curves of gulch and cleft ravine; winding round
ruined castles set on points of vantage; the sea-line high above their
grass-grown battlements, the shadow-dappled champaign girdling their
bastions mortised on the naked rock. Except for the blue lights across
the distance, and the ever-present sea, these earthy Apennines would be
too grim. Infinite air and this spare veil of spring-tide greenery on
field and forest soothe their sternness. Two rivers, swollen by late
rains, had to be forded. Through one of these, the Foglia, bare-legged
peasants led the way. The horses waded to their bellies in the tawny
water. Then more hills and vales; green nooks with rippling corn-crops;
secular oaks attired in golden leafage. The clear afternoon air rang
with the voices of a thousand larks overhead. The whole world seemed
quivering with light and delicate ethereal sound. And yet my mind
turned irresistibly to thoughts of war, violence, and pillage. How
often has this intermediate 66land been fought over by Montefeltro and
Brancaleoni, by Borgia and Malatesta, by Medici and Della Rovere! Its
_contadini_ are robust men, almost statuesque in build, and beautiful
of feature. No wonder that the Princes of Urbino, with such materials
to draw from, sold their service and their troops to Florence, Rome, S.
Mark, and Milan. The bearing of these peasants is still soldierly and
proud. Yet they are not sullen or forbidding like the Sicilians, whose
habits of life, for the rest, much resemble theirs. The villages, there
as here, are few and far between, perched high on rocks, from which the
folk descend to till the ground and reap the harvest. But the southern
_brusquerie_ and brutality are absent from this district. The men have
something of the dignity and slow-eyed mildness of their own huge oxen.
As evening fell, more solemn Apennines upreared themselves to
southward. The Monte d'Asdrubale, Monte Nerone, and Monte Catria hove
into sight. At last, when light was dim, a tower rose above the
neighbouring ridge, a broken outline of some city barred the sky-line.
Urbino stood before us. Our long day's march was at an end.

The sunset was almost spent, and a four days' moon hung above the
western Apennines, when we took our first view of the palace. It is a
fancy-thralling work of wonder seen in that dim twilight; like some
castle reared by Atlante's magic for imprisonment of Ruggiero, or
palace sought in fairyland by Astolf winding his enchanted horn. Where
shall we find its like, combining, as it does, the buttressed
battlemented bulk of mediæval strongholds with the airy balconies,
suspended gardens, and fantastic turrets of Italian pleasure-houses?
This unique blending of the feudal past with the Renaissance spirit of
the time when it was built, connects it with the art of Ariosto—or more
exactly with Boiardo's epic. Duke Federigo planned his palace at Urbino
just at the 67moment when the Count of Scandiano had began to chaunt
his lays of Roland in the Castle of Ferrara. Chivalry, transmuted by
the Italian genius into something fanciful and quaint, survived as a
frail work of art. The men-at-arms of the Condottieri still glittered
in gilded hauberks. Their helmets waved with plumes and bizarre crests.
Their surcoats blazed with heraldries; their velvet caps with medals
bearing legendary emblems. The pomp and circumstance of feudal war had
not yet yielded to the cannon of the Gascon or the Switzer's pike. The
fatal age of foreign invasions had not begun for Italy. Within a few
years Charles VIII.'s holiday excursion would reveal the internal
rottenness and weakness of her rival states, and the peninsula for half
a century to come would be drenched in the blood of Frenchmen, Germans,
Spaniards, fighting for her cities as their prey. But now Lorenzo de'
Medici was still alive. The famous policy which bears his name held
Italy suspended for a golden time in false tranquillity and
independence. The princes who shared his culture and his love of art
were gradually passing into modern noblemen, abandoning the savage
feuds and passions of more virile centuries, yielding to luxury and
scholarly enjoyments. The castles were becoming courts, and despotisms
won by force were settling into dynasties.

It was just at this epoch that Duke Federigo built his castle at
Urbino. One of the ablest and wealthiest Condottieri of his time, one
of the best instructed and humanest of Italian princes, he combined in
himself the qualities which mark that period of transition. And these
he impressed upon his dwelling-house, which looks backward to the
mediæval fortalice and forward to the modern palace. This makes it the
just embodiment in architecture of Italian romance, the perfect
analogue of the 'Orlando Innamorato.' By comparing 68it with the castle
of the Estes at Ferrara and the Palazzo del Te of the Gonzagas at
Mantua, we place it in its right position between mediæval and
Renaissance Italy, between the age when principalities arose upon the
ruins of commercial independence and the age when they became dynastic
under Spain.

The exigencies of the ground at his disposal forced Federigo to give
the building an irregular outline. The fine façade, with its embayed
_loggie_ and flanking turrets, is placed too close upon the city
ramparts for its due effect. We are obliged to cross the deep ravine
which separates it from a lower quarter of the town, and take our
station near the Oratory of S. Giovanni Battista, before we can
appreciate the beauty of its design, or the boldness of the group it
forms with the cathedral dome and tower and the square masses of
numerous out-buildings. Yet this peculiar position of the palace,
though baffling to a close observer of its details, is one of singular
advantage to the inhabitants. Set on the verge of Urbino's towering
eminence, it fronts a wave-tossed sea of vales and mountain summits
toward the rising and the setting sun. There is nothing but illimitable
air between the terraces and loggias of the Duchess's apartments and
the spreading pyramid of Monte Catria.

A nobler scene is nowhere swept from palace windows than this, which
Castiglione touched in a memorable passage at the end of his
'Cortegiano.' To one who in our day visits Urbino, it is singular how
the slight indications of this sketch, as in some silhouette, bring
back the antique life, and link the present with the past—a hint,
perhaps, for reticence in our descriptions. The gentlemen and ladies of
the court had spent a summer night in long debate on love, rising to
the height of mystical Platonic rapture on the lips of Bembo, when one
of them exclaimed, 'The day has broken!' 'He 69pointed to the light
which was beginning to enter by the fissures of the windows. Whereupon
we flung the casements wide upon that side of the palace which looks
toward the high peak of Monte Catria, and saw that a fair dawn of rosy
hue was born already in the eastern skies, and all the stars had
vanished except the sweet regent of the heaven of Venus, who holds the
borderlands of day and night; and from her sphere it seemed as though a
gentle wind were breathing, filling the air with eager freshness, and
waking among the numerous woods upon the neighbouring hills the
sweet-toned symphonies of joyous birds.'

II

The House of Montefeltro rose into importance early in the twelfth
century. Frederick Barbarossa erected their fief into a county in 1160.
Supported by imperial favour, they began to exercise an undefined
authority over the district, which they afterwards converted into a
duchy. But, though Ghibelline for several generations, the Montefeltri
were too near neighbours of the Papal power to free themselves from
ecclesiastical vassalage. Therefore in 1216 they sought and obtained
the title of Vicars of the Church. Urbino acknowledged them as
semi-despots in their double capacity of Imperial and Papal deputies.
Cagli and Gubbio followed in the fourteenth century. In the fifteenth,
Castel Durante was acquired from the Brancaleoni by warfare, and
Fossombrone from the Malatestas by purchase. Numerous fiefs and
villages fell into their hands upon the borders of Rimini in the course
of a continued struggle with the House of Malatesta: and when Fano and
Pesaro were added at the opening of the sixteenth century, the domain
over which they ruled was a compact territory, some forty miles square,
between the 70Adriatic and the Apennines. From the close of the
thirteenth century they bore the title of Counts of Urbino. The famous
Conte Guido, whom Dante placed among the fraudulent in hell, supported
the honours of the house and increased its power by his political
action, at this epoch. But it was not until the year 1443 that the
Montefeltri acquired their ducal title. This was conferred by Eugenius
IV. upon Oddantonio, over whose alleged crimes and indubitable
assassination a veil of mystery still hangs. He was the son of Count
Guidantonio, and at his death the Montefeltri of Urbino were extinct in
the legitimate line. A natural son of Guidantonio had been, however,
recognised in his father's lifetime, and married to Gentile, heiress of
Mercatello. This was Federigo, a youth of great promise, who succeeded
his half-brother in 1444 as Count of Urbino. It was not until 1474 that
the ducal title was revived for him.

Duke Frederick was a prince remarkable among Italian despots for
private virtues and sober use of his hereditary power. He spent his
youth at Mantua, in that famous school of Vittorino da Feltre, where
the sons and daughters of the first Italian nobility received a model
education in humanities, good manners, and gentle physical
accomplishments. More than any of his fellow-students Frederick
profited by this rare scholar's discipline. On leaving school he
adopted the profession of arms, as it was then practised, and joined
the troop of the Condottiere Niccolò Piccinino. Young men of his own
rank, especially the younger sons and bastards of ruling families,
sought military service under captains of adventure. If they succeeded
they were sure to make money. The coffers of the Church and the
republics lay open to their not too scrupulous hands; the wealth of
Milan and Naples was squandered on them in retaining-fees and salaries
for active service. There was always the further possibility of
71placing a coronet upon their brows before they died, if haply they
should wrest a town from their employers, or obtain the cession of a
province from a needy Pope. The neighbours of the Montefeltri in
Umbria, Romagna, and the Marches of Ancona were all of them
Condottieri. Malatestas of Rimini and Pesaro, Vitelli of Città di
Castello, Varani of Camerino, Baglioni of Perugia, to mention only a
few of the most eminent nobles, enrolled themselves under the banners
of plebeian adventurers like Piccinino and Sforza Attendolo. Though
their family connections gave them a certain advantage, the system was
essentially democratic. Gattamelata and Carmagnola sprang from
obscurity by personal address and courage to the command of armies.
Colleoni fought his way up from the grooms to princely station and the
_bâton_ of S. Mark. Francesco Sforza, whose father had begun life as a
tiller of the soil, seized the ducal crown of Milan, and founded a
house which ranked among the first in Europe.

It is not needful to follow Duke Frederick in his military career. We
may briefly remark that when he succeeded to Urbino by his brother's
death in 1444, he undertook generalship on a grand scale. His own
dominions supplied him with some of the best troops in Italy. He was
careful to secure the goodwill of his subjects by attending personally
to their interests, relieving them of imposts, and executing equal
justice. He gained the then unique reputation of an honest prince,
paternally disposed toward his dependents. Men flocked to his standards
willingly, and he was able to bring an important contingent into any
army. These advantages secured for him alliances with Francesco Sforza,
and brought him successively into connection with Milan, Venice,
Florence, the Church of Naples. As a tactician in the field he held
high rank among the generals of the age, and so considerable were his
engagements that he acquired great 72wealth in the exercise of his
profession. We find him at one time receiving 8000 ducats a month as
war-pay from Naples, with a peace pension of 6000. While
Captain-General of the League, he drew for his own use in war 45,000
ducats of annual pay. Retaining-fees and pensions in the name of past
services swelled his income, the exact extent of which has not, so far
as I am aware, been estimated, but which must have made him one of the
richest of Italian princes. All this wealth he spent upon his duchy,
fortifying and beautifying its cities, drawing youths of promise to his
court, maintaining a great train of life, and keeping his vassals in
good-humour by the lightness of a rule which contrasted favourably with
the exactions of needier despots.

While fighting for the masters who offered him _condotta_ in the
complicated wars of Italy, Duke Frederick used his arms, when occasion
served, in his own quarrels. Many years of his life were spent in a
prolonged struggle with his neighbour Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta,
the bizarre and brilliant tyrant of Rimini, who committed the fatal
error of embroiling himself beyond all hope of pardon with the Church,
and who died discomfited in the duel with his warier antagonist. Urbino
profited by each mistake of Sigismondo, and the history of this long
desultory strife with Rimini is a history of gradual aggrandisement and
consolidation for the Montefeltrian duchy.

In 1459 Duke Frederick married his second wife, Battista, daughter of
Alessandro Sforza, Lord of Pesaro. Their portraits, painted by Piero
della Francesca, are to be seen in the Uffizzi at Florence. Some years
earlier, Frederick lost his right eye and had the bridge of his nose
broken in a jousting match outside the town-gate of Urbino. After this
accident, he preferred to be represented in profile—the profile so well
known to students of Italian art on medals and basreliefs. It 73was not
without medical aid and vows fulfilled by a mother's self-sacrifice to
death, if we may trust the diarists of Urbino, that the ducal couple
got an heir. In 1472, however, a son was born to them, whom they
christened Guido Paolo Ubaldo. He proved a youth of excellent parts and
noble nature—apt at study, perfect in all chivalrous accomplishments.
But he inherited some fatal physical debility, and his life was marred
with a constitutional disease, which then received the name of gout,
and which deprived him of the free use of his limbs. After his father's
death in 1482, Naples, Florence, and Milan continued Frederick's war
engagements to Guidobaldo. The prince was but a boy of ten. Therefore
these important _condotte_ must be regarded as compliments and pledges
for the future. They prove to what a pitch Duke Frederick had raised
the credit of his state and war establishment. Seven years later,
Guidobaldo married Elisabetta, daughter of Francesco Gonzaga, Marquis
of Mantua. This union, though a happy one, was never blessed with
children; and in the certainty of barrenness, the young Duke thought it
prudent to adopt a nephew as heir to his dominions. He had several
sisters, one of whom, Giovanna, had been married to a nephew of Sixtus
IV., Giovanni della Rovere, Lord of Sinigaglia and Prefect of Rome.
They had a son, Francesco Maria, who, after his adoption by Guidobaldo,
spent his boyhood at Urbino.

The last years of the fifteenth century were marked by the sudden rise
of Cesare Borgia to a power which threatened the liberties of Italy.
Acting as General for the Church, he carried his arms against the petty
tyrants of Romagna, whom he dispossessed and extirpated. His next move
was upon Camerino and Urbino. He first acquired Camerino, having lulled
Guidobaldo into false security by treacherous professions of goodwill.
Suddenly the Duke received intelligence that 74the Borgia was marching
on him over Cagli. This was in the middle of June 1502. It is difficult
to comprehend the state of weakness in which Guidobaldo was surprised,
or the panic which then seized him. He made no efforts to rouse his
subjects to resistance, but fled by night with his nephew through rough
mountain roads, leaving his capital and palace to the marauder. Cesare
Borgia took possession without striking a blow, and removed the
treasures of Urbino to the Vatican. His occupation of the duchy was not
undisturbed, however; for the people rose in several places against
him, proving that Guidobaldo had yielded too hastily to alarm. By this
time the fugitive was safe in Mantua, whence he returned, and for a
short time succeeded in establishing himself again at Urbino. But he
could not hold his own against the Borgias, and in December, by a
treaty, he resigned his claims and retired to Venice, where he lived
upon the bounty of S. Mark. It must be said, in justice to the Duke,
that his constitutional debility rendered him unfit for active
operations in the field. Perhaps he could not have done better than
thus to bend beneath the storm.

The sudden death of Alexander VI. and the election of a Della Rovere to
the Papacy in 1503 changed Guidobaldo's prospects. Julius II. was the
sworn foe of the Borgias and the close kinsman of Urbino's heir. It was
therefore easy for the Duke to walk into his empty palace on the hill,
and to reinstate himself in the domains from which he had so recently
been ousted. The rest of his life was spent in the retirement of his
court, surrounded with the finest scholars and the noblest gentlemen of
Italy. The ill-health which debarred him from the active pleasures and
employments of his station, was borne with uniform sweetness of temper
and philosophy.

When he died, in 1508, his nephew, Francesco Maria della 75Rovere,
succeeded to the duchy, and once more made the palace of Urbino the
resort of men-at-arms and captains. He was a prince of very violent
temper: of its extravagance history has recorded three remarkable
examples. He murdered the Cardinal of Pavia with his own hand in the
streets of Ravenna; stabbed a lover of his sister to death at Urbino;
and in a council of war knocked Francesco Guicciardini down with a blow
of his fist. When the history of Italy came to be written, Guicciardini
was probably mindful of that insult, for he painted Francesco Maria's
character and conduct in dark colours. At the same time this Duke of
Urbino passed for one of the first generals of the age. The greatest
stain upon his memory is his behaviour in the year 1527, when, by
dilatory conduct of the campaign in Lombardy, he suffered the passage
of Frundsberg's army unopposed, and afterwards hesitated to relieve
Rome from the horrors of the sack. He was the last Italian Condottiere
of the antique type; and the vices which Machiavelli exposed in that
bad system of mercenary warfare were illustrated on these occasions.
During his lifetime, the conditions of Italy were so changed by Charles
V.'s imperial settlement in 1530, that the occupation of Condottiere
ceased to have any meaning. Strozzi and Farnesi, who afterwards
followed this profession, enlisted in the ranks of France or Spain, and
won their laurels in Northern Europe.

While Leo X. held the Papal chair, the duchy of Urbino was for a while
wrested from the house of Della Rovere, and conferred upon Lorenzo de'
Medici. Francesco Maria made a better fight for his heritage than
Guidobaldo had done. Yet he could not successfully resist the power of
Rome. The Pope was ready to spend enormous sums of money on this petty
war; the Duke's purse was shorter, and the mercenary troops he was
obliged to use, proved worthless in the field. Spaniards, for the most
part, pitted against Spaniards, they 76suffered the campaigns to
degenerate into a guerilla warfare of pillage and reprisals. In 1517
the duchy was formally ceded to Lorenzo. But this Medici did not live
long to enjoy it, and his only child Catherine, the future Queen of
France, never exercised the rights which had devolved upon her by
inheritance. The shifting scene of Italy beheld Francesco Maria
reinstated in Urbino after Leo's death in 1522.

This Duke married Leonora Gonzaga, a princess of the House of Mantua.
Their portraits, painted by Titian, adorn the Venetian room of the
Uffizzi. Of their son, Guidobaldo II., little need be said. He was
twice married, first to Giulia Varano, Duchess by inheritance of
Camerino; secondly, to Vittoria Farnese, daughter of the Duke of Parma.
Guidobaldo spent a lifetime in petty quarrels with his subjects, whom
he treated badly, attempting to draw from their pockets the wealth
which his father and the Montefeltri had won in military service. He
intervened at an awkward period of Italian politics. The old Italy of
despots, commonwealths, and Condottieri, in which his predecessors
played substantial parts, was at an end. The new Italy of Popes and
Austro-Spanish dynasties had hardly settled into shape. Between these
epochs, Guidobaldo II., of whom we have a dim and hazy presentation on
the page of history, seems somehow to have fallen flat. As a sign of
altered circumstances, he removed his court to Pesaro, and built the
great palace of the Della Roveres upon the public square.

Guidobaldaccio, as he was called, died in 1574, leaving an only son,
Francesco Maria II., whose life and character illustrate the new age
which had begun for Italy. He was educated in Spain at the court of
Philip II., where he spent more than two years. When he returned, his
Spanish haughtiness, punctilious attention to etiquette, and
superstitious piety attracted observation. The violent temper of the
Della Roveres, 77which Francesco Maria I. displayed in acts of
homicide, and which had helped to win his bad name for Guidobaldaccio,
took the form of sullenness in the last Duke. The finest episode in his
life was the part he played in the battle of Lepanto, under his old
comrade, Don John of Austria. His father forced him to an uncongenial
marriage with Lucrezia d'Este, Princess of Ferrara. She left him, and
took refuge in her native city, then honoured by the presence of Tasso
and Guarini. He bore her departure with philosophical composure,
recording the event in his diary as something to be dryly grateful for.
Left alone, the Duke abandoned himself to solitude, religious
exercises, hunting, and the economy of his impoverished dominions. He
became that curious creature, a man of narrow nature and mediocre
capacity, who, dedicated to the cult of self, is fain to pass for saint
and sage in easy circumstances. He married, for the second time, a
lady, Livia della Rovere, who belonged to his own family, but had been
born in private station. She brought him one son, the Prince
Federigo-Ubaldo. This youth might have sustained the ducal honours of
Urbino, but for his sage-saint father's want of wisdom. The boy was a
spoiled child in infancy. Inflated with Spanish vanity from the cradle,
taught to regard his subjects as dependents on a despot's will,
abandoned to the caprices of his own ungovernable temper, without
substantial aid from the paternal piety or stoicism, he rapidly became
a most intolerable princeling. His father married him, while yet a boy,
to Claudia de' Medici, and virtually abdicated in his favour. Left to
his own devices, Federigo chose companions from the troupes of players
whom he drew from Venice. He filled his palaces with harlots, and
degraded himself upon the stage in parts of mean buffoonery. The
resources of the duchy were racked to support these parasites. Spanish
rules of etiquette and ceremony were outraged by 78their orgies. His
bride brought him one daughter, Vittoria, who afterwards became the
wife of Ferdinand, Grand Duke of Tuscany. Then in the midst of his low
dissipation and offences against ducal dignity, he died of apoplexy at
the early age of eighteen—the victim, in the severe judgment of
history, of his father's selfishness and want of practical ability.

This happened in 1623. Francesco Maria was stunned by the blow. His
withdrawal from the duties of the sovereignty in favour of such a son
had proved a constitutional unfitness for the duties of his station.
The life he loved was one of seclusion in a round of pious exercises,
petty studies, peddling economies, and mechanical amusements. A
powerful and grasping Pope was on the throne of Rome. Urban at this
juncture pressed Francesco Maria hard; and in 1624 the last Duke of
Urbino devolved his lordships to the Holy See. He survived the formal
act of abdication seven years; when he died, the Pontiff added his
duchy to the Papal States, which thenceforth stretched from Naples to
the bounds of Venice on the Po.

III

Duke Frederick began the palace at Urbino in 1454, when he was still
only Count. The architect was Luziano of Lauranna, a Dalmatian; and the
beautiful white limestone, hard as marble, used in the construction,
was brought from the Dalmatian coast. This stone, like the Istrian
stone of Venetian buildings, takes and retains the chisel mark with
wonderful precision. It looks as though, when fresh, it must have had
the pliancy of clay, so delicately are the finest curves in scroll or
foliage scooped from its substance. And yet it preserves each cusp and
angle of the most elaborate pattern with the crispness and the
sharpness of a crystal. 79When wrought by a clever craftsman, its
surface has neither the waxiness of Parian, nor the brittle edge of
Carrara marble; and it resists weather better than marble of the
choicest quality. This may be observed in many monuments of Venice,
where the stone has been long exposed to sea-air. These qualities of
the Dalmatian limestone, no less than its agreeable creamy hue and
smooth dull polish, adapt it to decoration in low relief. The most
attractive details in the palace at Urbino are friezes carved of this
material in choice designs of early Renaissance dignity and grace. One
chimney-piece in the Sala degli Angeli deserves especial comment. A
frieze of dancing Cupids, with gilt hair and wings, their naked bodies
left white on a ground of ultramarine, is supported by broad flat
pilasters. These are engraved with children holding pots of flowers;
roses on one side, carnations on the other. Above the frieze another
pair of angels, one at each end, hold lighted torches; and the
pyramidal cap of the chimney is carved with two more, flying, and
supporting the eagle of the Montefeltri on a raised medallion.
Throughout the palace we notice emblems appropriate to the Houses of
Montefeltro and Della Rovere: their arms, three golden bends upon a
field of azure: the Imperial eagle, granted when Montefeltro was made a
fief of the Empire: the Garter of England, worn by the Dukes Federigo
and Guidobaldo: the ermine of Naples: the _ventosa_, or cupping-glass,
adopted for a private badge by Frederick: the golden oak-tree on an
azure field of Della Rovere: the palm-tree, bent beneath a block of
stone, with its accompanying motto, _Inclinata Resurgam_: the cipher,
FE DX. Profile medallions of Federigo and Guidobaldo, wrought in the
lowest possible relief, adorn the staircases. Round the great courtyard
runs a frieze of military engines and ensigns, trophies, machines, and
implements of war, alluding to Duke Frederick's 80profession of
Condottiere. The doorways are enriched with scrolls of heavy-headed
flowers, acanthus foliage, honeysuckles, ivy-berries, birds and boys
and sphinxes, in all the riot of Renaissance fancy.

This profusion of sculptured _rilievo_ is nearly all that remains to
show how rich the palace was in things of beauty. Castiglione, writing
in the reign of Guidobaldo, says that 'in the opinion of many it is the
fairest to be found in Italy; and the Duke filled it so well with all
things fitting its magnificence, that it seemed less like a palace than
a city. Not only did he collect articles of common use, vessels of
silver, and trappings for chambers of rare cloths of gold and silk, and
suchlike furniture, but he added multitudes of bronze and marble
statues, exquisite pictures, and instruments of music of all sorts.
There was nothing but was of the finest and most excellent quality to
be seen there. Moreover, he gathered together at a vast cost a large
number of the best and rarest books in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, all of
which he adorned with gold and silver, esteeming them the chiefest
treasure of his spacious palace.' When Cesare Borgia entered Urbino as
conqueror in 1502, he is said to have carried off loot to the value of
150,000 ducats, or perhaps about a quarter of a million sterling.
Vespasiano, the Florentine bookseller, has left us a minute account of
the formation of the famous library of manuscripts, which he valued at
considerably over 30,000 ducats. Yet wandering now through these
deserted halls, we seek in vain for furniture or tapestry or works of
art. The books have been removed to Rome. The pictures are gone, no man
knows whither. The plate has long been melted down. The instruments of
music are broken. If frescoes adorned the corridors, they have been
whitewashed; the ladies' chambers have been stripped of their rich
arras. Only here and there we find a raftered ceiling, painted in
fading 81colours, which, taken with the stonework of the chimney, and
some fragments of inlaid panel-work on door or window, enables us to
reconstruct the former richness of these princely rooms.

Exception must be made in favour of two apartments between the towers
upon the southern facade. These were apparently the private rooms of
the Duke and Duchess, and they are still approached by a great winding
staircase in one of the _torricini_. Adorned in indestructible or
irremovable materials, they retain some traces of their ancient
splendour. On the first floor, opening on the vaulted loggia, we find a
little chapel encrusted with lovely work in stucco and marble; friezes
of bulls, sphinxes, sea-horses, and foliage; with a low relief of
Madonna and Child in the manner of Mino da Fiesole. Close by is a small
study with inscriptions to the Muses and Apollo. The cabinet connecting
these two cells has a Latin legend, to say that Religion here dwells
near the temple of the liberal arts:

Bina vides parvo discrimine juncta sacella,
    Altera pars Musis altera sacra Deo est.

On the floor above, corresponding in position to this apartment, is a
second, of even greater interest, since it was arranged by the Duke
Frederick for his own retreat. The study is panelled in tarsia of
beautiful design and execution. Three of the larger compartments show
Faith, Hope, and Charity; figures not unworthy of a Botticelli or a
Filippino Lippi. The occupations of the Duke are represented on a
smaller scale by armour, _bâtons_ of command, scientific instruments,
lutes, viols, and books, some open and some shut. The Bible, Homer,
Virgil, Seneca, Tacitus, and Cicero, are lettered; apparently to
indicate his favourite authors. The Duke himself, arrayed in his state
robes, occupies a fourth 82great panel; and the whole of this elaborate
composition is harmonised by emblems, badges, and occasional devices of
birds, articles of furniture, and so forth. The tarsia, or inlaid wood
of different kinds and colours, is among the best in this kind of art
to be found in Italy, though perhaps it hardly deserves to rank with
the celebrated choir-stalls of Bergamo and Monte Oliveto. Hard by is a
chapel, adorned, like the lower one, with excellent reliefs. The loggia
to which these rooms have access looks across the Apennines, and down
on what was once a private garden. It is now enclosed and paved for the
exercise of prisoners who are confined in one part of the desecrated
palace!

A portion of the pile is devoted to more worthy purposes; for the
Academy of Raphael here holds its sittings, and preserves a collection
of curiosities and books illustrative of the great painter's life and
works. They have recently placed in a tiny oratory, scooped by
Guidobaldo II. from the thickness of the wall, a cast of Raphael's
skull, which will be studied with interest and veneration. It has the
fineness of modelling combined with shapeliness of form and smallness
of scale which is said to have characterised Mozart and Shelley.

The impression left upon the mind after traversing this palace in its
length and breadth is one of weariness and disappointment. How shall we
reconstruct the long-past life which filled its rooms with sound, the
splendour of its pageants, the thrill of tragedies enacted here? It is
not difficult to crowd its doors and vacant spaces with liveried
servants, slim pages in tight hose, whose well-combed hair escapes from
tiny caps upon their silken shoulders. We may even replace the
tapestries of Troy which hung one hall, and build again the sideboards
with their embossed gilded plate. But are these chambers really those
where Emilia Pia held debate on love with Bembo and Castiglione; where
Bibbiena's 83witticisms and Fra Serafino's pranks raised smiles on
courtly lips; where Bernardo Accolti, 'the Unique,' declaimed his
verses to applauding crowds? Is it possible that into yonder hall,
where now the lion of S. Mark looks down alone on staring desolation,
strode the Borgia in all his panoply of war, a gilded glittering
dragon, and from the dais tore the Montefeltri's throne, and from the
arras stripped their ensigns, replacing these with his own Bull and
Valentinus Dux? Here Tasso tuned his lyre for Francesco Maria's
wedding-feast, and read 'Aminta' to Lucrezia d'Este. Here Guidobaldo
listened to the jests and whispered scandals of the Aretine. Here
Titian set his easel up to paint; here the boy Raphael, cap in hand,
took signed and sealed credentials from his Duchess to the Gonfalonier
of Florence. Somewhere in these huge chambers, the courtiers sat before
a torch-lit stage, when Bibbiena's 'Calandria' and Caetiglione's
'Tirsi,' with their miracles of masques and mummers, whiled the night
away. Somewhere, we know not where, Giuliano de' Medici made love in
these bare rooms to that mysterious mother of ill-fated Cardinal
Ippolito; somewhere, in some darker nook, the bastard Alessandro sprang
to his strange-fortuned life of tyranny and license, which
Brutus-Lorenzino cut short with a traitor's poignard-thrust in Via
Larga. How many men, illustrious for arts and letters, memorable by
their virtues or their crimes, have trod these silent corridors, from
the great Pope Julius down to James III., self-titled King of England,
who tarried here with Clementina Sobieski through some twelve months of
his ex-royal exile! The memories of all this folk, flown guests and
masters of the still-abiding palace-chambers, haunt us as we hurry
through. They are but filmy shadows. We cannot grasp them, localise
them, people surrounding emptiness with more than withering cobweb
forms.

84Death takes a stronger hold on us than bygone life. Therefore,
returning to the vast Throne-room, we animate it with one scene it
witnessed on an April night in 1508. Duke Guidobaldo had died at
Fossombrone, repeating to his friends around his bed these lines of
Virgil:

Me circum limus niger et deformis arundo
Cocyti tardaque palus inamabilis unda
Alligat, et novies Styx interfusa coercet.


His body had been carried on the shoulders of servants through those
mountain ways at night, amid the lamentations of gathering multitudes
and the baying of dogs from hill-set farms alarmed by flaring
flambeaux. Now it is laid in state in the great hall. The dais and the
throne are draped in black. The arms and _bâtons_ of his father hang
about the doorways. His own ensigns are displayed in groups and
trophies, with the banners of S. Mark, the Montefeltrian eagle, and the
cross keys of S. Peter. The hall itself is vacant, save for the
high-reared catafalque of sable velvet and gold damask, surrounded with
wax candles burning steadily. Round it passes a ceaseless stream of
people, coming and going, gazing at their Duke. He is attired in
crimson hose and doublet of black damask. Black velvet slippers are on
his feet, and his ducal cap is of black velvet. The mantle of the
Garter, made of dark-blue Alexandrine velvet, hooded with crimson,
lined with white silk damask, and embroidered with the badge, drapes
the stiff sleeping form.

It is easier to conjure up the past of this great palace, strolling
round it in free air and twilight; perhaps because the landscape and
the life still moving on the city streets bring its exterior into
harmony with real existence. The southern façade, with its vaulted
balconies and flanking towers, takes the fancy, fascinates the eye, and
lends itself as a fit stage for 85puppets of the musing mind. Once more
imagination plants trim orange-trees in giant jars of Gubbio ware upon
the pavement where the garden of the Duchess lay—the pavement paced in
these bad days by convicts in grey canvas jackets—that pavement where
Monsignor Bombo courted 'dear dead women' with Platonic phrase,
smothering the Menta of his natural man in lettuce culled from Academe
and thyme of Mount Hymettus. In yonder loggia, lifted above the garden
and the court, two lovers are in earnest converse. They lean beneath
the coffered arch, against the marble of the balustrade, he fingering
his dagger under the dark velvet doublet, she playing with a clove
carnation, deep as her own shame. The man is Giannandrea,
broad-shouldered bravo of Verona, Duke Guidobaldo's favourite and
carpet-count. The lady is Madonna Maria, daughter of Rome's Prefect,
widow of Venanzio Varano, whom the Borgia strangled. On their discourse
a tale will hang of woman's frailty and man's boldness—Camerino's
Duchess yielding to a low-born suitor's stalwart charms. And more will
follow, when that lady's brother, furious Francesco Maria della Rovere,
shall stab the bravo in torch-litten palace rooms with twenty poignard
strokes 'twixt waist and throat, and their Pandarus shall be sent down
to his account by a varlet's _coltellata_ through the midriff.
Imagination shifts the scene, and shows in that same loggia Rome's
warlike Pope, attended by his cardinals and all Urbino's chivalry. The
snowy beard of Julius flows down upon his breast, where jewels clasp
the crimson mantle, as in Raphael's picture. His eyes are bright with
wine; for he has come to gaze on sunset from the banquet-chamber, and
to watch the line of lamps which soon will leap along that palace
cornice in his honour. Behind him lies Bologna humbled. The Pope
returns, a conqueror, to Rome. Yet once again imagination is at work. A
gaunt, bald man, close-habited in Spanish black, his spare, 86fine
features carved in purest ivory, leans from that balcony. Gazing with
hollow eyes, he tracks the swallows in their flight, and notes that
winter is at hand. This is the last Duke of Urbino, Francesco Maria
II., he whose young wife deserted him, who made for himself alone a
hermit-pedant's round of petty cares and niggard avarice and
mean-brained superstition. He drew a second consort from the convent,
and raised up seed unto his line by forethought, but beheld his
princeling fade untimely in the bloom of boyhood. Nothing is left but
solitude. To the mortmain of the Church reverts Urbino's lordship, and
even now he meditates the terms of devolution. Jesuits cluster in the
rooms behind, with comfort for the ducal soul and calculations for the
interests of Holy See.

A farewell to these memories of Urbino's dukedom should be taken in the
crypt of the cathedral, where Francesco Maria II., the last Duke,
buried his only son and all his temporal hopes. The place is scarcely
solemn. Its dreary _barocco_ emblems mar the dignity of death. A bulky
_Pietà_ by Gian Bologna, with Madonna's face unfinished, towers up and
crowds the narrow cell. Religion has evanished from this late
Renaissance art, nor has the afterglow of Guido Reni's hectic piety yet
overflushed it. Chilled by the stifling humid sense of an extinct race
here entombed in its last representative, we gladly emerge from the
sepulchral vault into the air of day.

Filippo Visconti, with a smile on his handsome face, is waiting for us
at the inn. His horses, sleek, well fed, and rested, toss their heads
impatiently. We take our seats in the carriage, open wide beneath a
sparkling sky, whirl past the palace and its ghost-like recollections,
and are halfway on the road to Fossombrone in a cloud of dust and whirr
of wheels before we think of looking back to greet Urbino. There is
just time. The last decisive turning lies in front. We stand
87bareheaded to salute the grey mass of buildings ridged along the sky.
Then the open road invites us with its varied scenery and movement.
From the shadowy past we drive into the world of human things, for ever
changefully unchanged, unrestfully the same. This interchange between
dead memories and present life is the delight of travel.

88




VITTORIA ACCORAMBONI


AND THE TRAGEDY OF WEBSTER

I

During the pontificate of Gregory XIII. (1572-85), Papal authority in
Rome reached its lowest point of weakness, and the ancient splendour of
the Papal court was well-nigh eclipsed. Art and learning had died out.
The traditions of the days of Leo, Julius, and Paul III. were
forgotten. It seemed as though the genius of the Renaissance had
migrated across the Alps. All the powers of the Papacy were directed to
the suppression of heresies and to the re-establishment of spiritual
supremacy over the intellect of Europe. Meanwhile society in Rome
returned to mediæval barbarism. The veneer of classical refinement and
humanistic urbanity, which for a time had hidden the natural savagery
of the Roman nobles, wore away. The Holy City became a den of bandits;
the territory of the Church supplied a battle-ground for senseless
party strife, which the weak old man who wore the triple crown was
quite unable to control. It is related how a robber chieftain,
Marianazzo, refused the offer of a general pardon from the Pope,
alleging that the profession of brigand was far more lucrative, and
offered greater security of life, than any trade within the walls of
Rome. The Campagna, the ruined citadels about the basements of the
Sabine and Ciminian hills, the 89quarters of the aristocracy within the
city, swarmed with bravos, who were protected by great nobles and fed
by decent citizens for the advantages to be derived from the assistance
of abandoned and courageous ruffians. Life, indeed, had become
impossible without fixed compact with the powers of lawlessness. There
was hardly a family in Rome which did not number some notorious
criminal among the outlaws. Murder, sacrilege, the love of adventure,
thirst for plunder, poverty, hostility to the ascendant faction of the
moment, were common causes of voluntary or involuntary outlawry; nor
did public opinion regard a bandit's calling as other than honourable.

It may readily be imagined that in such a state of society the
grisliest tragedies were common enough in Rome. The history of some of
these has been preserved to us in documents digested from public trials
and personal observation by contemporary writers. That of the Cenci, in
which a notorious act of parricide furnished the plot of a popular
novella, is well known. And such a tragedy, even more rife in
characteristic incidents, and more distinguished by the quality of its
_dramatis personæ_, is that of Vittoria Accoramboni.

Vittoria was born in 1557, of a noble but impoverished family, at
Gubbio, among the hills of Umbria. Her biographers are rapturous in
their praises of her beauty, grace, and exceeding charm of manner. Not
only was her person most lovely, but her mind shone at first with all
the amiable lustre of a modest, innocent, and winning youth. Her
father, Claudio Accoramboni, removed to Rome, where his numerous
children were brought up under the care of their mother, Tarquinia, an
ambitious and unscrupulous woman, bent on rehabilitating the decayed
honours of their house. Here Vittoria in early girlhood soon became the
fashion. She exercised an irresistible influence over all who saw her,
and many were the 90offers of marriage she refused. At length a suitor
appeared whose condition and connection with the Roman ecclesiastical
nobility rendered him acceptable in the eyes of the Accoramboni.
Francesco Peretti was welcomed as the successful candidate for
Vittoria's hand. His mother, Camilla, was sister to Felice, Cardinal of
Montalto; and her son, Francesco Mignucci, had changed his surname in
compliment to this illustrious relative. The Peretti were of humble
origin. The cardinal himself had tended swine in his native village;
but, supported by an invincible belief in his own destinies, and gifted
with a powerful intellect and determined character, he passed through
all grades of the Franciscan Order to its generalship, received the
bishoprics of Fermo and S. Agata, and lastly, in the year 1570, assumed
the scarlet with the title of Cardinal Montalto. He was now upon the
high way to the Papacy, amassing money by incessant care, studying the
humours of surrounding factions, effacing his own personality, and by
mixing but little in the intrigues of the court, winning the reputation
of a prudent, inoffensive old man. These were his tactics for securing
the Papal throne; nor were his expectations frustrated; for in 1585 he
was chosen Pope, the parties of the Medici and the Farnesi agreeing to
accept him as a compromise. When Sixtus V. was once firmly seated on S.
Peter's chair, he showed himself in his true colours. An implacable
administrator of severest justice, a rigorous economist, an
iconoclastic foe to paganism, the first act of his reign was to declare
a war of extirpation against the bandits who had reduced Rome in his
predecessor's rule to anarchy.

It was the nephew, then, of this man, whom historians have judged the
greatest personage of his own times, that Vittoria Accoramboni married
on the 28th of June 1573. For a short while the young couple lived
happily together. According to some accounts of their married life, the
bride secured 91the favour of her powerful uncle-in-law, who indulged
her costly fancies to the full. It is, however, more probable that the
Cardinal Montalto treated her follies with a grudging parsimony; for we
soon find the Peretti household hopelessly involved in debt. Discord,
too, arose between Vittoria and her husband on the score of a certain
levity in her behaviour; and it was rumoured that even during the brief
space of their union she had proved a faithless wife. Yet she contrived
to keep Francesco's confidence, and it is certain that her family
profited by their connection with the Peretti. Of her six brothers,
Mario, the eldest, was a favourite courtier of the great Cardinal
d'Este. Ottavio was in orders, and through Montalto's influence
obtained the See of Fossombrone. The same eminent protector placed
Scipione in the service of the Cardinal Sforza. Camillo, famous for his
beauty and his courage, followed the fortunes of Filibert of Savoy, and
died in France. Flaminio was still a boy, dependent, as the sequel of
this story shows, upon his sister's destiny. Of Marcello, the second in
age and most important in the action of this tragedy, it is needful to
speak with more particularity. He was young, and, like the rest of his
breed, singularly handsome—so handsome, indeed, that he is said to have
gained an infamous ascendency over the great Duke of Bracciano, whose
privy chamberlain he had become. Marcello was an outlaw for the murder
of Matteo Pallavicino, the brother of the Cardinal of that name. This
did not, however, prevent the chief of the Orsini house from making him
his favourite and confidential friend. Marcello, who seems to have
realised in actual life the worst vices of those Roman courtiers
described for us by Aretino, very soon conceived the plan of exalting
his own fortunes by trading on his sister's beauty. He worked upon the
Duke of Bracciano's mind so cleverly, that he brought this haughty
prince to the point of an 92insane passion for Peretti's young wife;
and meanwhile so contrived to inflame the ambition of Vittoria and her
mother, Tarquinia, that both were prepared to dare the worst of crimes
in expectation of a dukedom. The game was a difficult one to play. Not
only had Francesco Peretti first to be murdered, but the inequality of
birth and wealth and station between Vittoria and the Duke of Bracciano
rendered a marriage almost impossible. It was also an affair of
delicacy to stimulate without satisfying the Duke's passion. Yet
Marcello did not despair. The stakes were high enough to justify great
risks; and all he put in peril was his sister's honour, the fame of the
Accoramboni, and the favour of Montalto. Vittoria, for her part,
trusted in her power to ensnare and secure the noble prey both had in
view.

Paolo Giordano Orsini, born about the year 1537, was reigning Duke of
Bracciano. Among Italian princes he ranked at least upon a par with the
Dukes of Urbino, and his family, by its alliances, was more illustrious
than any of that time in Italy. He was a man of gigantic stature,
prodigious corpulence, and marked personal daring; agreeable in
manners, but subject to uncontrollable fits of passion, and incapable
of self-restraint when crossed in any whim or fancy. Upon the habit of
his body it is needful to insist, in order that the part he played in
this tragedy of intrigue, crime, and passion may be well defined. He
found it difficult to procure a charger equal to his weight, and he was
so fat that a special dispensation relieved him from the duty of
genuflexion in the Papal presence. Though lord of a large territory,
yielding princely revenues, he laboured under heavy debts; for no great
noble of the period lived more splendidly, with less regard for his
finances. In the politics of that age and country, Paolo Giordano
leaned toward France. Yet he was 93a grandee of Spain, and had played a
distinguished part in the battle of Lepanto. Now the Duke of Bracciano
was a widower. He had been married in 1553 to Isabella de' Medici,
daughter of the Grand Duke Cosimo, sister of Francesco, Bianca
Capello's lover, and of the Cardinal Ferdinando. Suspicion of adultery
with Troilo Orsini had fallen on Isabella, and her husband, with the
full concurrence of her brothers, removed her in 1576 from this
world.[21] No one thought the worse of Bracciano for this murder of his
wife. In those days of abandoned vice and intricate villany, certain
points of honour were maintained with scrupulous fidelity. A wife's
adultery was enough to justify the most savage and licentious husband
in an act of semi-judicial vengeance; and the shame she brought upon
his head was shared by the members of her own house, so that they stood
by, consenting to her death. Isabella, it may be said, left one son,
Virginio, who became in due time Duke of Bracciano.

 [21] The balance of probability leans against Isabella in this affair.
 At the licentious court of the Medici she lived with unpardonable
 freedom. Troilo Orsini was himself assassinated in Paris by
 Bracciano's orders a few years afterwards.


It appears that in the year 1581, four years after Vittoria's marriage,
the Duke of Bracciano had satisfied Marcello of his intention to make
her his wife, and of his willingness to countenance Francesco Peretti's
murder. Marcello, feeling sure of his game, introduced the Duke in
private to his sister, and induced her to overcome any natural
repugnance she may have felt for the unwieldy and gross lover. Having
reached this point, it was imperative to push matters quickly on toward
matrimony.

But how should the unfortunate Francesco be entrapped? They caught him
in a snare of peculiar atrocity, by working on the kindly feelings
which his love for Vittoria had caused 94him to extend to all the
Acooramboni. Marcello, the outlaw, was her favourite brother, and
Marcello at that time lay in hiding, under the suspicion of more than
ordinary crime, beyond the walls of Rome. Late in the evening of the
18th of April, while the Peretti family were retiring to bed, a
messenger from Marcello arrived, entreating Francesco to repair at once
to Monte Cavallo. Marcello had affairs of the utmost importance to
communicate, and begged his brother-in-law not to fail him at a
grievous pinch. The letter containing this request was borne by one
Dominico d'Aquaviva, _alias_ Il Mancino, a confederate of Vittoria's
waiting-maid. This fellow, like Marcello, was an outlaw; but when he
ventured into Rome he frequented Peretti's house, and had made himself
familiar with its master as a trusty bravo. Neither in the message,
therefore, nor in the messenger was there much to rouse suspicion. The
time, indeed, was oddly chosen, and Marcello had never made a similar
appeal on any previous occasion. Yet his necessities might surely have
obliged him to demand some more than ordinary favour from a brother.
Francesco immediately made himself ready to set out, armed only with
his sword and attended by a single servant. It was in vain that his
wife and his mother reminded him of the dangers of the night, the
loneliness of Monte Cavallo, its ruinous palaces and robber-haunted
caves. He was resolved to undertake the adventure, and went forth,
never to return. As he ascended the hill, he fell to earth, shot with
three harquebuses. His body was afterwards found on Monte Cavallo,
stabbed through and through, without a trace that could identify the
murderers. Only, in the course of subsequent investigations, Il Mancino
(on the 24th of February 1582) made the following statements:—That
Vittoria's mother, assisted by the waiting woman, had planned the trap;
that Marchionne of Gubbio and Paolo Barca of Bracciano, 95two of the
Duke's men, had despatched the victim. Marcello himself, it seems, had
come from Bracciano to conduct the whole affair. Suspicion fell
immediately upon Vittoria and her kindred, together with the Duke of
Bracciano; nor was this diminished when the Accoramboni, fearing the
pursuit of justice, took refuge in a villa of the Duke's at Magnanapoli
a few days after the murder.

A cardinal's nephew, even in those troublous times, was not killed
without some noise being made about the matter. Accordingly Pope
Gregory XIII. began to take measures for discovering the authors of the
crime. Strange to say, however, the Cardinal Montalto, notwithstanding
the great love he was known to bear his nephew, begged that the
investigation might be dropped. The coolness with which he first
received the news of Francesco Peretti's death, the dissimulation with
which he met the Pope's expression of sympathy in a full consistory,
his reserve in greeting friends on ceremonial visits of condolence,
and, more than all, the self-restraint he showed in the presence of the
Duke of Bracciano, impressed the society of Rome with the belief that
he was of a singularly moderate and patient temper. It was thought that
the man who could so tamely submit to his nephew's murder, and suspend
the arm of justice when already raised for vengeance, must prove a mild
and indulgent ruler. When, therefore, in the fifth year after this
event, Montalto was elected Pope, men ascribed his elevation in no
small measure to his conduct at the present crisis. Some, indeed,
attributed his extraordinary moderation and self-control to the right
cause. _'Veramente costui è un gran frate!_' was Gregory's remark at
the close of the consistory when Montalto begged him to let the matter
of Peretti's murder rest. '_Of a truth, that fellow is a consummate
hypocrite!_' How accurate this judgment was, appeared when Sixtus V.
assumed the reins of 96power. The same man who, as monk and cardinal,
had smiled on Bracciano, though he knew him to be his nephew's
assassin, now, as Pontiff and sovereign, bade the chief of the Orsini
purge his palace and dominions of the scoundrels he was wont to
harbour, adding significantly, that if Felice Peretti forgave what had
been done against him in a private station, he would exact uttermost
vengeance for disobedience to the will of Sixtus. The Duke of Bracciano
judged it best, after that warning, to withdraw from Rome.

Francesco Peretti had been murdered on the 16th of April 1581. Sixtus
V. was proclaimed on the 24th of April 1585. In this interval Vittoria
underwent a series of extraordinary perils and adventures. First of
all, she had been secretly married to the Duke in his gardens of
Magnanapoli at the end of April 1581. That is to say, Marcello and she
secured their prize, as well as they were able, the moment after
Francesco had been removed by murder. But no sooner had the marriage
become known, than the Pope, moved by the scandal it created, no less
than by the urgent instance of the Orsini and Medici, declared it void.
After some while spent in vain resistance, Bracciano submitted, and
sent Vittoria back to her father's house. By an order issued under
Gregory's own hand, she was next removed to the prison of Corte
Savella, thence to the monastery of S. Cecilia in Trastevere, and
finally to the Castle of S. Angelo. Here, at the end of December 1581,
she was put on trial for the murder of her first husband. In prison she
seems to have borne herself bravely, arraying her beautiful person in
delicate attire, entertaining visitors, exacting from her friends the
honours due to a duchess, and sustaining the frequent examinations to
which she was submitted with a bold, proud front. In the middle of the
month of July her constancy was sorely tried by the receipt of a letter
in the Duke's own handwriting, formally renouncing 97his marriage. It
was only by a lucky accident that she was prevented on this occasion
from committing suicide. The Papal court meanwhile kept urging her
either to retire to a monastery or to accept another husband. She
firmly refused to embrace the religious life, and declared that she was
already lawfully united to a living husband, the Duke of Bracciano. It
seemed impossible to deal with her; and at last, on the 8th of
November, she was released from prison under the condition of
retirement to Gubbio. The Duke had lulled his enemies to rest by the
pretence of yielding to their wishes. But Marcello was continually
beside him at Bracciano, where we read of a mysterious Greek
enchantress whom he hired to brew love-philters for the furtherance of
his ambitious plots. Whether Bracciano was stimulated by the brother's
arguments or by the witch's potions need not be too curiously
questioned. But it seems in any case certain that absence inflamed his
passion instead of cooling it.

Accordingly, in September 1583, under the excuse of a pilgrimage to
Loreto, he contrived to meet Vittoria at Trevi, whence he carried her
in triumph to Bracciano. Here he openly acknowledged her as his wife,
installing her with all the splendour due to a sovereign duchess. On
the 10th of October following, he once more performed the marriage
ceremony in the principal church of his fief; and in the January of
1584 he brought her openly to Rome. This act of contumacy to the Pope,
both as feudal superior and as supreme Pontiff, roused all the former
opposition to his marriage. Once more it was declared invalid. Once
more the Duke pretended to give way. But at this juncture Gregory died;
and while the conclave was sitting for the election of the new Pope, he
resolved to take the law into his own hands, and to ratify his union
with Vittoria by a third and public marriage in Rome. On the morning of
the 9824th of April 1585, their nuptials were accordingly once more
solemnised in the Orsini palace. Just one hour after the ceremony, as
appears from the marriage register, the news arrived of Cardinal
Montalto's election to the Papacy, Vittoria lost no time in paying her
respects to Camilla, sister of the new Pope, her former mother-in-law.
The Duke visited Sixtus V. in state to compliment him on his elevation.
But the reception which both received proved that Rome was no safe
place for them to live in. They consequently made up their minds for
flight.

A chronic illness from which Bracciano had lately suffered furnished a
sufficient pretext. This seems to have been something of the nature of
a cancerous ulcer, which had to be treated by the application of raw
meat to open sores. Such details are only excusable in the present
narrative on the ground that Bracciano's disease considerably affects
our moral judgment of the woman who could marry a man thus physically
tainted, and with her husband's blood upon his hands. At any rate, the
Duke's _lupa_ justified his trying what change of air, together with
the sulphur waters of Abano, would do for him.

The Duke and Duchess arrived in safety at Venice, where they had
engaged the Dandolo palace on the Zuecca. There they only stayed a few
days, removing to Padua, where they had hired palaces of the Foscari in
the Arena and a house called De' Cavalli. At Salò, also, on the Lake of
Garda, they provided themselves with fit dwellings for their princely
state and their large retinues, intending to divide their time between
the pleasures which the capital of luxury afforded and the simpler
enjoyments of the most beautiful of the Italian lakes. But _la gioia
dei profani è un fumo passaggier_. Paolo Giordano Orsini, Duke of
Bracciano, died suddenly at Salò on the 10th of November 1585, leaving
the young and beautiful 99Vittoria helpless among enemies. What was the
cause of his death? It is not possible to give a clear and certain
answer. We have seen that he suffered from a horrible and voracious
disease, which after his removal from Rome seems to have made progress.
Yet though this malady may well have cut his life short, suspicion of
poison was not, in the circumstances, quite unreasonable. The Grand
Duke of Tuscany, the Pope, and the Orsini family were all interested in
his death. Anyhow, he had time to make a will in Vittoria's favour,
leaving her large sums of money, jewels, goods, and houses—enough, in
fact, to support her ducal dignity with splendour. His hereditary fiefs
and honours passed by right to his only son, Virginio.

Vittoria, accompanied by her brother, Marcello, and the whole court of
Bracciano, repaired at once to Padua, where she was soon after joined
by Flaminio, and by the Prince Lodovico Orsini. Lodovico Orsini assumed
the duty of settling Vittoria's affairs under her dead husband's will.
In life he had been the Duke's ally as well as relative. His family
pride was deeply wounded by what seemed to him an ignoble, as it was
certainly an unequal, marriage. He now showed himself the relentless
enemy of the Duchess. Disputes arose between them as to certain
details, which seem to have been legally decided in the widow's favour.
On the night of the 22nd of December, however, forty men disguised in
black and fantastically tricked out to elude detection, surrounded her
palace. Through the long galleries and chambers hung with arras, eight
of them went, bearing torches, in search of Vittoria and her brothers.
Marcello escaped, having fled the house under suspicion of the murder
of one of his own followers. Flaminio, the innocent and young, was
playing on his lute and singing _Miserere_ in the great hall of the
palace. The murderers surprised him with a shot from one of their
100harquebuses. He ran, wounded in the shoulder, to his sister's room.
She, it is said, was telling her beads before retiring for the night.
When three of the assassins entered, she knelt before the crucifix, and
there they stabbed her in the left breast, turning the poignard in the
wound, and asking her with savage insults if her heart was pierced. Her
last words were, 'Jesus, I pardon you.' Then they turned to Flaminio,
and left him pierced with seventy-four stiletto wounds.

The authorities of Padua identified the bodies of Vittoria and
Flaminio, and sent at once for further instructions to Venice.
Meanwhile it appears that both corpses were laid out in one open coffin
for the people to contemplate. The palace and the church of the
Eremitani, to which they had been removed, were crowded all through the
following day with a vast concourse of the Paduans. Vittoria's
wonderful dead body, pale yet sweet to look upon, the golden hair
flowing around her marble shoulders, the red wound in her breast
uncovered, the stately limbs arrayed in satin as she died, maddened the
populace with its surpassing loveliness. '_Dentibus fremebant_,' says
the chronicler, when they beheld that gracious lady stiff in death. And
of a truth, if her corpse was actually exposed in the chapel of the
Eremitani, as we have some right to assume, the spectacle must have
been impressive. Those grim gaunt frescoes of Mantegna looked down on
her as she lay stretched upon her bier, solemn and calm, and, but for
pallor, beautiful as though in life. No wonder that the folk forgot her
first husband's murder, her less than comely marriage to the second. It
was enough for them that this flower of surpassing loveliness had been
cropped by villains in its bloom. Gathering in knots around the torches
placed beside the corpse, they vowed vengeance against the Orsini; for
suspicion, not unnaturally, fell on Prince Lodovico.

101The Prince was arrested and interrogated before the court of Padua.
He entered their hall attended by forty armed men, responded haughtily
to their questions, and demanded free passage for his courier to
Virginio Orsini, then at Florence. To this demand the court acceded;
but the precaution of waylaying the courier and searching his person
was very wisely taken. Besides some formal dispatches which announced
Vittoria's assassination, they found in this man's boot a compromising
letter, declaring Virginio a party to the crime, and asserting that
Lodovico had with his own poignard killed their victim. Padua placed
itself in a state of defence, and prepared to besiege the palace of
Prince Lodovico, who also got himself in readiness for battle. Engines,
culverins, and firebrands were directed against the barricades which he
had raised. The militia was called out and the Brenta was strongly
guarded. Meanwhile the Senate of S. Mark had dispatched the Avogadore,
Aloisio Bragadin, with full power to the scene of action. Lodovico
Orsini, it may be mentioned, was in their service; and had not this
affair intervened, he would in a few weeks have entered on his duties
as Governor for Venice of Corfu.

The bombardment of Orsini's palace began on Christmas Day. Three of the
Prince's men were killed in the first assault; and since the artillery
brought to bear upon him threatened speedy ruin to the house and its
inhabitants, he made up his mind to surrender. 'The Prince Luigi,'
writes one-chronicler of these events, 'walked attired in brown, his
poignard at his side, and his cloak slung elegantly under his arm. The
weapon being taken from him, he leaned upon a balustrade, and began to
trim his nails with a little pair of scissors he happened to find
there.' On the 27th he was strangled in prison by order of the Venetian
Republic. His body was carried to be buried, according to his own will,
in 102the church of S. Maria dell' Orto at Venice. Two of his followers
were hung next day. Fifteen were executed on the following Monday; two
of these were quartered alive; one of them, the Conte Paganello, who
confessed to having slain Vittoria, had his left side probed with his
own cruel dagger. Eight were condemned to the galleys, six to prison,
and eleven were acquitted. Thus ended this terrible affair, which
brought, it is said, good credit and renown to the lords of Venice
through all nations of the civilised world. It only remains to be added
that Marcello Accoramboni was surrendered to the Pope's vengeance and
beheaded at Ancona, where also his mysterious accomplice, the Greek
sorceress, perished.

II

This story of Vittoria Accoramboni's life and tragic ending is drawn,
in its main details, from a narrative published by Henri Beyle in his
'Chroniques et Novelles.'[22] He professes to have translated it
literally from a manuscript communicated to him by a nobleman of
Mantua; and there are strong internal evidences of the truth of this
assertion. Such compositions are frequent in Italian libraries, nor is
it rare for one of them to pass into the common market—as Mr.
Browning's famous purchase of the tale on which he based his 'Ring and
the Book' sufficiently proves. These pamphlets were produced, in the
first instance, to gratify the curiosity of the educated public in an
age which had no newspapers, and also to preserve the memory of famous
trials. How far the strict truth was represented, or whether, as in the
case of Beatrice Cenci, the pathetic aspect of the tragedy was unduly
dwelt on, depended, 103of course, upon the mental bias of the scribe,
upon his opportunities of obtaining exact information, and upon the
taste of the audience for whom he wrote. Therefore, in treating such
documents as historical data, we must be upon our guard. Professor
Gnoli, who has recently investigated the whole of Vittoria's eventful
story by the light of contemporary documents, informs us that several
narratives exist in manuscript, all dealing more or less accurately
with the details of the tragedy. One of these was published in Italian
at Brescia in 1586. A Frenchman, De Rosset, printed the same story in
its main outlines at Lyons in 1621. Our own dramatist, John Webster,
made it the subject of a tragedy, which he gave to the press in 1612.
What were his sources of information we do not know for certain. But it
is clear that he was well acquainted with the history. He has changed
some of the names and redistributed some of the chief parts. Vittoria's
first husband, for example, becomes Camillo; her mother, named Cornelia
instead of Tarquinia, is so far from abetting Peretti's murder and
countenancing her daughter's shame, that she acts the _rôle_ of a
domestic Cassandra. Flaminio and not Marcello is made the main
instrument of Vittoria's crime and elevation. The Cardinal Montalto is
called Monticelso, and his papal title is Paul IV. instead of Sixtus V.
These are details of comparative indifference, in which a playwright
may fairly use his liberty of art. On the other hand, Webster shows a
curious knowledge of the picturesque circumstances of the tale. The
garden in which Vittoria meets Bracciano is the villa of Magnanapoli;
Zanche, the Moorish slave, combines Vittoria's waiting-woman, Caterina,
and the Greek sorceress who so mysteriously dogged Marcello's footsteps
to the death. The suspicion of Bracciano's murder is used to introduce
a quaint episode of Italian poisoning.

 [22] I have amplified and corrected this chronicle by the light of
 Professor Gnoli's monograph, _Vittoria Accoramboni_, published by Le
 Monnier at Florence in 1870.

104Webster exercised the dramatist's privilege of connecting various
threads of action in one plot, disregarding chronology, and hazarding
an ethical solution of motives which mere fidelity to fact hardly
warrants. He shows us Vittoria married to Camillo, a low-born and
witless fool, whose only merit consists in being nephew to the Cardinal
Monticelso, afterwards Pope Paul IV.[23] Paulo Giordano Ursini, Duke of
Brachiano, loves Vittoria, and she suggests to him that, for the
furtherance of their amours, his wife, the Duchess Isabella, sister to
Francesco de' Medici, Grand Duke of Florence, should be murdered at the
same time as her own husband, Camillo. Brachiano is struck by this
plan, and with the help of Vittoria's brother, Flamineo, he puts it at
once into execution. Flamineo hires a doctor who poisons Brachiano's
portrait, so that Isabella dies after kissing it. He also with his own
hands twists Camillo's neck during a vaulting-match, making it appear
that he came by his death accidentally. Suspicion of the murder
attaches, however, to Vittoria. She is tried for her life before
Monticelso and De' Medici; acquitted, and relegated to a house of
Convertites or female reformatory. Brachiano, on the accession of
Monticelso to the Papal throne, resolves to leave Rome with Vittoria.
They escape, together with her mother Cornelia, and her brothers
Flamineo and Marcello, to Padua; and it is here that the last scenes of
the tragedy are laid.

 [23] In dealing with Webster's tragedy, I have adhered to his use and
 spelling of names.


The use Webster made of Lodovico Orsini deserves particular attention.
He introduces this personage in the very first scene as a spendthrift,
who, having run through his fortune, has been outlawed. Count Lodovico,
as he is always called, has no relationship with the Orsini, but is
attached to the service of Francesco de' Medici, and is an old lover of
the 105Duchess Isabella. When, therefore, the Grand Duke meditates
vengeance on Brachiano, he finds a fitting instrument in the desperate
Lodovico. Together, in disguise, they repair to Padua. Lodovico poisons
the Duke of Brachiano's helmet, and has the satisfaction of ending his
last struggles by the halter. Afterwards, with companions, habited as a
masquer, he enters Vittoria's palace and puts her to death together
with her brother Flamineo. Just when the deed of vengeance has been
completed, young Giovanni Orsini, heir of Brachiano, enters and orders
the summary execution of Lodovico for this deed of violence. Webster's
invention in this plot is confined to the fantastic incidents attending
on the deaths of Isabella, Camillo, and Brachiano, and to the murder of
Marcello by his brother Flamineo, with the further consequence of
Cornelia's madness and death. He has heightened our interest in
Isabella, at the expense of Brachiano's character, by making her an
innocent and loving wife instead of an adulteress. He has ascribed
different motives from the real ones to Lodovico in order to bring this
personage into rank with the chief actors, though this has been
achieved with only moderate success. Vittoria is abandoned to the
darkest interpretation. She is a woman who rises to eminence by crime,
as an unfaithful wife, the murderess of her husband, and an impudent
defier of justice. Her brother, Flamineo, becomes under Webster's
treatment one of those worst human infamies—a court dependent; ruffian,
buffoon, pimp, murderer by turns. Furthermore, and without any adequate
object beyond that of completing this study of a type he loved, Webster
makes him murder his own brother Marcello by treason. The part assigned
to Marcello, it should be said, is a genial and happy one; and
Cornelia, the mother of the Accoramboni, is a dignified character,
pathetic in her suffering. Webster, it may be added, treats the
Cardinal Monticelso as 106allied in some special way to the Medici. Yet
certain traits in his character, especially his avoidance of bloodshed
and the tameness of his temper after Camillo has been murdered, seem to
have been studied from the historical Sixtus.

III

The character of the 'White Devil, or Vittoria Corombona,' is perhaps
the most masterly creation of Webster's genius. Though her history is a
true one in its leading incidents, the poet, while portraying a real
personage, has conceived an original individuality. It is impossible to
know for certain how far the actual Vittoria was guilty of her first
husband's murder. Her personality fails to detach itself from the
romance of her biography by any salient qualities. But Webster, with
true playwright's instinct, casts aside historical doubts, and
delineates in his heroine a woman of a very marked and terrible nature.
Hard as adamant, uncompromising, ruthless, Vittoria follows ambition as
the loadstar of her life. It is the ambition to reign as Duchess, far
more than any passion for a paramour, which makes her plot Camillo's
and Isabella's murders, and throws her before marriage into Brachiano's
arms. Added to this ambition, she is possessed with the cold demon of
her own imperial and victorious beauty. She has the courage of her
criminality in the fullest sense; and much of the fascination with
which Webster has invested her, depends upon her dreadful daring. Her
portrait is drawn with full and firm touches. Although she appears but
five times on the scene, she fills it from the first line of the drama
to the last. Each appearance adds effectively to the total impression.
We see her first during a criminal interview with Brachiano, contrived
by her brother 107Flamineo. The plot of the tragedy is developed in
this scene; Vittoria suggesting, under the metaphor of a dream, that
her lover should compass the deaths of his duchess and her husband. The
dream is told with deadly energy and ghastly picturesqueness. The cruel
sneer at its conclusion, murmured by a voluptuous woman in the ears of
an impassioned paramour, chills us with the sense of concentrated vice.
Her next appearance is before the court, on trial for her husband's
murder. The scene is celebrated, and has been much disputed by critics.
Relying on her own dauntlessness, on her beauty, and on the protection
of Brachiano, Vittoria hardly takes the trouble to plead innocence or
to rebut charges. She stands defiant, arrogant, vigilant, on guard;
flinging the lie in the teeth of her arraigners; quick to seize the
slightest sign of feebleness in their attack; protesting her
guiltlessness so loudly that she shouts truth down by brazen strength
of lung; retiring at the close with taunts; blazing throughout with the
intolerable lustre of some baleful planet. When she enters for the
third time, it is to quarrel with her paramour. He has been stung to
jealousy by a feigned love-letter. She knows that she has given him no
cause; it is her game to lure him by fidelity to marriage. Therefore
she resolves to make his mistake the instrument of her exaltation.
Beginning with torrents of abuse, hurling reproaches at him for her own
dishonour and the murder of his wife, working herself by studied
degrees into a tempest of ungovernable rage, she flings herself upon
the bed, refuses his caresses, spurns and tramples on him, till she has
brought Brachiano, terrified, humbled, fascinated, to her feet. Then
she gradually relents beneath his passionate protestations and repeated
promises of marriage. At this point she speaks but little. We only feel
her melting humour in the air, and long to see the scene played by such
an actress as Madame 108Bernhardt. When Vittoria next appears, it is as
Duchess by the deathbed of the Duke, her husband. Her attendance here
is necessary, but it contributes little to the development of her
character. We have learned to know her, and expect neither womanish
tears nor signs of affection at a crisis which touches her heart less
than her self-love. Webster, among his other excellent qualities, knew
how to support character by reticence. Vittoria's silence in this act
is significant; and when she retires exclaiming, 'O me! this place is
hell!' we know that it is the outcry, not of a woman who has lost what
made life dear, but of one who sees the fruits of crime imperilled by a
fatal accident. The last scene of the play is devoted to Vittoria. It
begins with a notable altercation between her and Flamineo. She calls
him 'ruffian' and 'villain,' refusing him the reward of his vile
service. This quarrel emerges in one of Webster's grotesque
contrivances to prolong a poignant situation. Flamineo quits the stage
and reappears with pistols. He affects a kind of madness; and after
threatening Vittoria, who never flinches, he proposes they should end
their lives by suicide. She humours him, but manages to get the first
shot. Flamineo falls, wounded apparently to death. Then Vittoria turns
and tramples on him with her feet and tongue, taunting him in his death
agony with the enumeration of his crimes. Her malice and her energy are
equally infernal. Soon, however, it appears that the whole device was
but a trick of Flamineo's to test his sister. The pistol was not
loaded. He now produces a pair which are properly charged, and proceeds
in good earnest to the assassination of Vittoria. But at this critical
moment Lodovico and his masquers appear; brother and sister both die
unrepentant, defiant to the end. Vittoria's customary pride and her
familiar sneers impress her speech in these last moments with a 109
trenchant truth to nature:

    _You_ my death's-man!
Methinks thou dost not look horrid enough,
Thou hast too good a face to be a hangman:
If thou be, do thy office in right form;
Fall down upon thy knees, and ask forgiveness!

I will be waited on in death; my servant
Shall never go before me.

    Yes, I shall welcome death
As princes do some great ambassadors:
I'll meet thy weapon half-way.

    'Twas a manly blow!
The next thou giv'st, murder some sucking infant;
And then thou wilt be famous.

So firmly has Webster wrought the character of this white devil, that
we seem to see her before us as in a picture. 'Beautiful as the
leprosy, dazzling as the lightning,' to use a phrase of her
enthusiastic admirer Hazlitt, she takes her station like a lady in some
portrait by Paris Bordone, with gleaming golden hair twisted into
snakelike braids about her temples, with skin white as cream, bright
cheeks, dark dauntless eyes, and on her bosom, where it has been chafed
by jewelled chains, a flush of rose. She is luxurious, but not so
abandoned to the pleasures of the sense as to forget the purpose of her
will and brain. Crime and peril add zest to her enjoyment. When
arraigned in open court before the judgment-seat of deadly and
unscrupulous foes, she conceals the consciousness of guilt, and stands
erect, with fierce front, unabashed, relying on the splendour of her
irresistible beauty and the subtlety of her piercing wit. Chafing with
rage, the blood mounts and adds a lustre to her cheek. It is no flush
of modesty, but of rebellious indignation. The Cardinal, who hates her,
brands her emotion with the name of shame. She 110rebukes him, hurling
a jibe at his own mother. And when they point with spiteful eagerness
to the jewels blazing on her breast, to the silks and satins that she
rustles in, her husband lying murdered, she retorts:

Had I foreknown his death, as you suggest,
I would have bespoke my mourning.


She is condemned, but not vanquished, and leaves the court with a
stinging sarcasm. They send her to a house of Convertites:

_V.C_. A house of Convertites! what's that?
_M_. A house of penitent whores.
_V.C_. Do the noblemen of Rome
Erect it for their wives, that I am sent
To lodge there?

Charles Lamb was certainly in error? when he described Vittoria's
attitude as one of 'innocence-resembling boldness.' In the trial scene,
no less than in the scenes of altercation with Brachiano and Flamineo,
Webster clearly intended her to pass for a magnificent vixen, a
beautiful and queenly termagant. Her boldness is the audacity of
impudence, which does not condescend to entertain the thought of guilt.
Her egotism is so hard and so profound that the very victims whom she
sacrifices to ambition seem in her sight justly punished. Of Camillo
and Isabella, her husband and his wife, she says to Brachiano:

And both were struck dead by that sacred yew,
In that base shallow grave that was their due.

IV

It is tempting to pass from this analysis of Vittoria's life to a
consideration of Webster's drama as a whole, 111especially in a book
dedicated to Italian byways. For that mysterious man of genius had
explored the dark and devious paths of Renaissance vice, and had
penetrated the secrets of Italian wickedness with truly appalling
lucidity. His tragedies, though worthless as historical documents, have
singular value as commentaries upon history, as revelations to us of
the spirit of the sixteenth century in its deepest gloom.

Webster's plays, owing to the condensation of their thought and the
compression of their style, are not easy to read for the first time. He
crowds so many fantastic incidents into one action, and burdens his
discourse with so much profoundly studied matter, that we rise from the
perusal of his works with a blurred impression of the fables, a deep
sense of the poet's power and personality, and an ineffaceable
recollection of one or two resplendent scenes. His Roman history-play
of 'Appius and Virginia' proves that he understood the value of a
simple plot, and that he was able, when he chose, to work one out with
conscientious calmness. But the two Italian dramas upon which his fame
is justly founded, by right of which he stands alone among the
playwrights of all literatures, are marked by a peculiar and wayward
mannerism. Each part is etched with equal effort after luminous effect
upon a background of lurid darkness; and the whole play is made up of
these parts, without due concentration on a master-motive. The
characters are definite in outline, but, taken together in the conduct
of a single plot, they seem to stand apart, like figures in a _tableau
vivant_; nor do they act and react each upon the other in the play of
interpenetrative passions. That this mannerism was deliberately chosen,
we have a right to believe. 'Willingly, and not ignorantly, in this
kind have I faulted,' is the answer Webster gives to such as may object
that he has not constructed his plays upon the classic model. He seems
to have had a certain sombre richness of tone and 112intricacy of
design in view, combining sensational effect and sententious pregnancy
of diction in works of laboured art, which, when adequately represented
to the ear and eye upon the stage, might at a touch obtain the
animation they now lack for chamber-students.

When familiarity has brought us acquainted with his style, when we have
disentangled the main characters and circumstances from their adjuncts,
we perceive that he treats poignant and tremendous situations with a
concentrated vigour special to his genius; that he has studied each
word and trait of character, and that he has prepared by gradual
approaches and degrees of horror for the culmination of his tragedies.
The sentences which seem at first sight copied from a commonplace book,
are found to be appropriate. Brief lightning flashes of acute
perception illuminate the midnight darkness of his all but unimaginably
depraved characters. Sharp unexpected touches evoke humanity in the
_fantoccini_ of his wayward art. No dramatist has shown more consummate
ability in heightening terrific effects, in laying bare the innermost
mysteries of crime, remorse, and pain, combined to make men miserable.
It has been said of Webster that, feeling himself deficient in the
first poetic qualities, he concentrated his powers upon one point, and
achieved success by sheer force of self-cultivation. There is perhaps
some truth in this. At any rate, his genius was of a narrow and
peculiar order, and he knew well how to make the most of its
limitations. Yet we must not forget that he felt a natural bias toward
the dreadful stuff with which he deals. The mystery of iniquity had an
irresistible attraction for his mind. He was drawn to comprehend and
reproduce abnormal elements of spiritual anguish. The materials with
which he builds his tragedies are sought for in the ruined places of
lost souls, in the agonies of madness and despair, 113in the sarcasms
of criminal and reckless atheism, in slow tortures, griefs beyond
endurance, the tempests of remorseful death, the spasms of fratricidal
bloodshed. He is often melodramatic in the means employed to bring
these psychological conditions home to us. He makes too free use of
poisoned engines, daggers, pistols, disguised murderers, and so forth.
Yet his firm grasp upon the essential qualities of diseased and guilty
human nature saves him, even at his wildest, from the unrealities and
extravagances into which less potent artists of the _drame
sanglant_—Marston, for example—blundered.

With Webster, the tendency to brood on horrors was no result of
calculation. It belonged to his idiosyncrasy. He seems to have been
suckled from birth at the breast of that _Mater Tenebrarum_, our Lady
of Darkness, whom De Quincey in one of his 'Suspiria de Profundis'
describes among the Semnai Theai, the august goddesses, the mysterious
foster-nurses of suffering humanity. He cannot say the simplest thing
without giving it a ghastly or sinister turn. If one of his characters
draws a metaphor from pie-crust, he must needs use language of the
churchyard:

    You speak as if a man
Should know what fowl is coffined in a baked meat
Afore you cut it open.


Hideous similes are heaped together in illustration of the commonest
circumstances:

Places at court are but like beds in the hospital, where this man's
head lies at that man's foot, and so lower and lower.
When knaves come to preferment, they rise as gallowses are raised in
the Low Countries, one upon another's shoulders.
I would sooner eat a dead pigeon taken from the soles of the feet of
one sick of the plague than kiss one of you fasting.

114

A soldier is twitted with serving his master:

As witches do their serviceable spirits,
Even with thy prodigal blood.


An adulterous couple get this curse:

Like mistletoe on sear elms spent by weather,
Let him cleave to her, and both rot together.


A bravo is asked:

Dost thou imagine thou canst slide on blood,
And not be tainted with a shameful fall?
Or, like the black and melancholic yew-tree,
Dost think to root thyself in dead men's graves,
And yet to prosper?

It is dangerous to extract philosophy of life from any dramatist. Yet
Webster so often returns to dark and doleful meditations, that we may
fairly class him among constitutional pessimists. Men, according to the
grimness of his melancholy, are:

    Only like dead walls or vaulted graves,
That, ruined, yield no echo.
    O this gloomy world!
In what a shadow or deep pit of darkness
Doth womanish and fearful mankind live!

We are merely the stars' tennis-balls, struck and banded
Which way please them.

Pleasure of life! what is't? only the good hours of an ague.


A Duchess is 'brought to mortification,' before her strangling by the
executioner, in this high fantastical oration:

Thou art a box of worm-seed, at best but a salvatory of green mummy.
What's this flesh? A little crudded milk, fantastical puff-paste, &c.
&c.

115

Man's life in its totality is summed up with monastic cynicism in these
lyric verses:

Of what is't fools make such vain keeping?
Sin their conception, their birth weeping,
Their life a general mist of error,
Their death a hideous storm of terror.


The greatness of the world passes by with all its glory:

Vain the ambition of kings,
Who seek by trophies and dead things
To leave a living name behind,
And weave but nets to catch the wind.

It would be easy to surfeit criticism with similar examples; where
Webster is writing in sarcastic, meditative, or deliberately
terror-stirring moods. The same dark dye of his imagination shows
itself even more significantly in circumstances where, in the work of
any other artist, it would inevitably mar the harmony of the picture. A
lady, to select one instance, encourages her lover to embrace her at
the moment of his happiness. She cries:

    Sir, be confident!
What is't distracts you? This is flesh and blood, sir;
'Tis not the figure cut in alabaster,
Kneels at my husband's tomb.


Yet so sustained is Webster's symphony of sombre tints, that we do not
feel this sepulchral language, this 'talk fit for a charnel' (to use
one of his own phrases), to be out of keeping. It sounds like a
presentiment of coming woes, which, as the drama grows to its
conclusion, gather and darken on the wretched victims of his bloody
plot.

It was with profound sagacity, or led by some deep-rooted instinct,
that Webster sought the fables of his two great tragedies, 'The White
Devil' and 'The Duchess of Malfi,' in 116Italian annals. Whether he had
visited Italy in his youth, we cannot say; for next to nothing is known
about Webster's life. But that he had gazed long and earnestly into the
mirror held up by that enchantress of the nations in his age, is
certain. Aghast and fascinated by the sins he saw there flaunting in
the light of day—sins on whose pernicious glamour Ascham, Greene, and
Howell have insisted with impressive vehemence—Webster discerned in
them the stuff he needed for philosophy and art. Withdrawing from that
contemplation, he was like a spirit 'loosed out of hell to speak of
horrors.' Deeper than any poet of the time, deeper than any even of the
Italians, he read the riddle of the sphinx of crime. He found there
something akin to his own imaginative mood, something which he alone
could fully comprehend and interpret. From the superficial narratives
of writers like Bandello he extracted a spiritual essence which was, if
not the literal, at least the ideal, truth involved in them.

The enormous and unnatural vices, the domestic crimes of cruelty,
adultery, and bloodshed, the political scheming and the subtle arts of
vengeance, the ecclesiastical tyranny and craft, the cynical scepticism
and lustre of luxurious godlessness, which made Italy in the midst of
her refinement blaze like 'a bright and ominous star' before the
nations; these were the very elements in which the genius of
Webster—salamander-like in flame—could live and flourish. Only the
incidents of Italian history, or of French history in its Italianated
epoch, were capable of supplying him with the proper type of plot. It
was in Italy alone, or in an Italianated country, such as England for a
brief space in the reign of the first Stuart threatened to become, that
the well-nigh diabolical wickedness of his characters might have been
realised. An audience familiar with Italian novels through Belleforest
117and Painter, inflamed by the long struggle of the Reformation
against the scarlet abominations of the Papal See, outraged in their
moral sense by the political paradoxes of Machiavelli, horror-stricken
at the still recent misdoings of Borgias and Medici and Farnesi,
alarmed by that Italian policy which had conceived the massacre of S.
Bartholomew in France, and infuriated by that ecclesiastical hypocrisy
which triumphed in the same; such an audience were at the right point
of sympathy with a poet who undertook to lay the springs of Southern
villany before them bare in a dramatic action. But, as the old proverb
puts it, 'Inglese Italianato è un diavolo incarnato.' 'An Englishman
assuming the Italian habit is a devil in the flesh.' The Italians were
depraved, but spiritually feeble. The English playwright, when he
brought them on the stage, arrayed with intellectual power and gleaming
with the lurid splendour of a Northern fancy, made them tenfold darker
and more terrible. To the subtlety and vices of the South he added the
melancholy, meditation, and sinister insanity of his own climate. He
deepened the complexion of crime and intensified lawlessness by robbing
the Italian character of levity. Sin, in his conception of that
character, was complicated with the sense of sin, as it never had been
in a Florentine or a Neapolitan. He had not grasped the meaning of the
Machiavellian conscience, in its cold serenity and disengagement from
the dread of moral consequence. Not only are his villains stealthy,
frigid, quick to evil, merciless, and void of honour; but they brood
upon their crimes and analyse their motives. In the midst of their
audacity they are dogged by dread of coming retribution. At the crisis
of their destiny they look back upon their better days with
intellectual remorse. In the execution of their bloodiest schemes they
groan beneath the chains of guilt they wear, and quake before the
phantoms of their haunted brains. 118Thus passion and reflection,
superstition and profanity, deliberate atrocity and fear of judgment,
are united in the same nature; and to make the complex still more
strange, the play-wright has gifted these tremendous personalities with
his own wild humour and imaginative irony. The result is almost
monstrous, such an ideal of character as makes earth hell. And yet it
is not without justification. To the Italian text has been added the
Teutonic commentary, and both are fused by a dramatic genius into one
living whole.

One of these men is Flamineo, the brother of Vittoria Corombona, upon
whose part the action of the 'White Devil' depends. He has been bred in
arts and letters at the university of Padua; but being poor and of
luxurious appetites, he chooses the path of crime in courts for his
advancement. A duke adopts him for his minion, and Flamineo acts the
pander to this great man's lust. He contrives the death of his
brother-in-law, suborns a doctor to poison the Duke's wife, and
arranges secret meetings between his sister and the paramour who is to
make her fortune and his own. His mother appears like a warning Até to
prevent her daughter's crime. In his rage he cries:

What fury raised _thee_ up? Away, away!


And when she pleads the honour of their house he answers:

    Shall I,
Having a path so open and so free
To my preferment, still retain your milk
In my pale forehead?


Later on, when it is necessary to remove another victim, he runs his
own brother through the body and drives his mother to madness. Yet, in
the midst of these crimes, we are unable to regard him as a simple
cut-throat. His irony and reckless 119courting of damnation open-eyed
to get his gust of life in this world, make him no common villain. He
can be brave as well as fierce. When the Duke insults him he bandies
taunt for taunt:

_Brach_. No, you pander?
_Flam_. What, me, my lord?
Am I your dog?
_B_. A bloodhound; do you brave, do you stand me?
_F_. Stand you! let those that have diseases run;
I need no plasters.
_B_. Would you be kicked?
_F_. Would you have your neck broke?
I tell you, duke, I am not in Russia;
My shins must be kept whole.
_B_. Do you know me?
_F_. Oh, my lord, methodically:
As in this world there are degrees of evils,
So in this world there are degrees of devils.
You're a great duke, I your poor secretary.


When the Duke dies and his prey escapes him, the rage of disappointment
breaks into this fierce apostrophe:

I cannot conjure; but if prayers or oaths.
Will get the speech of him, though forty devils
Wait on him in his livery of flames,
I'll speak to him and shake him by the hand,
Though I be blasted.


As crimes thicken round him, and he still despairs of the reward for
which he sold himself, conscience awakes:

    I have lived
Riotously ill, like some that live in court,
And sometimes when my face was full of smiles Have felt the
maze of conscience in my breast.


The scholar's scepticism, which lies at the root of his perversity,
finds utterance in this meditation upon death:

120

Whither shall I go now? O Lucian, thy ridiculous purgatory! to find
Alexander the Great cobbling shoes, Pompey tagging points, and Julius
Cæsar making hair-buttons!
    Whether I resolve to fire, earth, water, air, or all the elements
    by scruples, I know not, nor greatly care.


At the last moment he yet can say:

We cease to grieve, cease to be Fortune's slaves,
Nay, cease to die, by dying.


And again, with the very yielding of his spirit:

My life was a black charnel.

It will be seen that in no sense does Flamineo resemble Iago. He is not
a traitor working by craft and calculating ability to well-considered
ends. He is the desperado frantically clutching at an uncertain and
impossible satisfaction. Webster conceives him as a self-abandoned
atheist, who, maddened by poverty and tainted by vicious living, takes
a fury to his heart, and, because the goodness of the world has been
for ever lost to him, recklessly seeks the bad.

Bosola, in the 'Duchess of Malfi,' is of the same stamp. He too has
been a scholar. He is sent to the galleys 'for a notorious murder,' and
on his release he enters the service of two brothers, the Duke of
Calabria and the Cardinal of Aragon, who place him as their
intelligencer at the court of their sister.

_Bos_. It seems you would create me
One of your familiars.
_Ferd_. Familiar! what's that?
_Bos_. Why, a very quaint invisible devil in flesh,
An intelligencer.
_Ferd_. Such a kind of thriving thing
I would wish thee; and ere long thou may'st arrive
At a higher place by it.

121

Lured by hope of preferment, Bosola undertakes the office of spy,
tormentor, and at last of executioner. For:

    Discontent and want
Is the best clay to mould a villain of.

But his true self, though subdued to be what he quaintly styles 'the
devil's quilted anvil,' on which 'all sins are fashioned and the blows
never heard,' continually rebels against this destiny. Compared with
Flamineo, he is less unnaturally criminal. His melancholy is more
fantastic, his despair more noble. Throughout the course of craft and
cruelty on which he is goaded by a relentless taskmaster, his nature,
hardened as it is, revolts.

At the end, when Bosola presents the body of the murdered Duchess to
her brother, Webster has wrought a scene of tragic savagery that
surpasses almost any other that the English stage can show. The sight,
of his dead sister maddens Ferdinand, who, feeling the eclipse of
reason gradually absorb his faculties, turns round with frenzied hatred
on the accomplice of his fratricide. Bosola demands the price of guilt.
Ferdinand spurns him with the concentrated eloquence of despair and the
extravagance of approaching insanity. The murderer taunts his master
coldly and laconically, like a man whose life is wrecked, who has waded
through blood to his reward, and who at the last moment discovers the
sacrifice of his conscience and masculine freedom to be fruitless.
Remorse, frustrated hopes, and thirst for vengeance convert Bosola from
this hour forward into an instrument of retribution. The Duke and his
brother the Cardinal are both brought to bloody deaths by the hand
which they had used to assassinate their sister.

It is fitting that something should be said about Webster's conception
of the Italian despot. Brachiano and Ferdinand, 122the employers of
Flamineo and Bosola, are tyrants such as Savonarola described, and as
we read of in the chronicles of petty Southern cities. Nothing is
suffered to stand between their lust and its accomplishment. They
override the law by violence, or pervert its action to their own
advantage:

    The law to him
Is like a foul black cobweb to a spider;
He makes it his dwelling and a prison
To entangle those shall feed him.


They are eaten up with parasites, accomplices, and all the creatures of
their crimes:

He and his brother are like plum-trees that grow crooked over standing
pools; they are rich and over-laden with fruit, but none but crows,
pies, and caterpillars feed on them.


In their lives they are without a friend; for society in guilt brings
nought of comfort, and honours are but emptiness:

Glories, like glow-worms, afar off shine bright;
But looked to near, have neither heat nor light.


Their plots and counterplots drive repose far from them:

There's but three furies found in spacious hell;
But in a great man's breast three thousand dwell.


Fearful shapes afflict their fancy; shadows of ancestral crime or
ghosts of their own raising:

    For these many years
None of our family dies, but there is seen
The shape of an old woman; which is given
By tradition to us to have been murdered
By her nephews for her riches.


Apparitions haunt them:

    How tedious is a guilty conscience!
When I look into the fish-ponds in my garden,
Methinks I see a thing armed with a rake
That seems to strike at me.

123Continually scheming against the objects of their avarice and
hatred, preparing poisons or suborning bravoes, they know that these
same arts will be employed against them. The wine-cup hides arsenic;
the headpiece is smeared with antimony; there is a dagger behind every
arras, and each shadow is a murderer's. When death comes, they meet it
trembling. What irony Webster has condensed in Brachiano's outcry:

On pain of death, let no man name death to me;
It is a word infinitely horrible.

And how solemn are the following reflections on the death of princes:

O thou soft natural death, that art joint-twin
To sweetest slumber! no rough-bearded comet
Stares on thy mild departure; the dull owl
Beats not against thy casement, the hoarse wolf
Scents not thy carrion: pity winds thy corse,
Whilst horror waits on princes.


After their death, this is their epitaph:

    These wretched eminent things
Leave no more fame behind'em than should one
Fall in a frost and leave his print in snow.

Of Webster's despots, the finest in conception and the firmest in
execution is Ferdinand of Aragon. Jealousy of his sister and avarice
take possession of him and torment him like furies. The flash of
repentance over her strangled body is also the first flash of insanity.
He survives to present the spectacle of a crazed lunatic, and to be run
through the body by his paid assassin. In the Cardinal of Aragon,
Webster paints a profligate Churchman, no less voluptuous,
blood-guilty, and the rest of it, than his brother the Duke of
Calabria. It seems to have been the poet's purpose in each 124of his
Italian tragedies to unmask Rome as the Papal city really was. In the
lawless desperado, the intemperate tyrant, and the godless
ecclesiastic, he portrayed the three curses from which Italian society
was actually suffering.

It has been needful to dwell upon the gloomy and fantastic side of
Webster's genius. But it must not be thought that he could touch no
finer chord. Indeed, it might be said that in the domain of pathos he
is even more powerful than in that of horror. His mastery in this
region is displayed in the creation of that dignified and beautiful
woman, the Duchess of Malfi, who, with nothing in her nature, had she
but lived prosperously, to divide her from the sisterhood of gentle
ladies, walks, shrined in love and purity and conscious rectitude, amid
the snares and pitfalls of her persecutors, to die at last the victim
of a brother's fevered avarice and a desperado's egotistical ambition.
The apparatus of infernal cruelty, the dead man's hand, the semblances
of murdered sons and husband, the masque of madmen, the dirge and
doleful emblems of the tomb with which she is environed in her prison
by the torturers who seek to goad her into lunacy, are insufficient to
disturb the tranquillity and tenderness of her nature. When the rope is
being fastened to her throat, she does not spend her breath in
recriminations, but turns to the waiting-woman and says:

    Farewell, Cariola!
I pray thee look thou givest my little boy
Some syrup for his cold, and let the girl
Say her prayers ere she sleep.

In the preceding scenes we have had enough, nay, over-much, of madness,
despair, and wrestling with doom. This is the calm that comes when
death is present, when the tortured soul lays down its burden of the
flesh with gladness. But Webster has not spared another touch of
thrilling pathos. 125The death-struggle is over; the fratricide has
rushed away, a maddened man; the murderer is gazing with remorse upon
the beautiful dead body of his lady, wishing he had the world wherewith
to buy her back to life again; when suddenly she murmurs 'Mercy!' Our
interest, already overstrained, revives with momentary hope. But the
guardians of the grave will not be exorcised; and 'Mercy!' is the last
groan of the injured Duchess.

Webster showed great skill in his delineation of the Duchess. He had to
paint a woman in a hazardous situation: a sovereign stooping in her
widowhood to wed a servant; a lady living with the mystery of this
unequal marriage round her like a veil. He dowered her with no salient
qualities of intellect or heart or will; but he sustained our sympathy
with her, and made us comprehend her. To the last she is a Duchess; and
when she has divested state and bowed her head to enter the low gate of
heaven—too low for coronets—her poet shows us, in the lines already
quoted, that the woman still survives.

The same pathos surrounds the melancholy portrait of Isabella in
'Vittoria Corombona.' But Isabella, in that play, serves chiefly to
enhance the tyranny of her triumphant rival. The main difficulty under
which these scenes of rarest pathos would labour, were they brought
upon the stage, is their simplicity in contrast with the ghastly and
contorted horrors that envelop them. A dialogue abounding in the
passages I have already quoted—a dialogue which bandies 'O you
screech-owl!' and 'Thou foul black cloud!'—in which a sister's
admonition to her brother to think twice of suicide assumes a form so
weird as this:

    I prithee, yet remember,
Millions are now in graves, which at last day
Like mandrakes shall rise shrieking.—

126

such a dialogue could not be rendered save by actors strung up to a
pitch of almost frenzied tension. To do full justice to what in
Webster's style would be spasmodic were it not so weighty, and at the
same time to maintain the purity of outline and melodious rhythm of
such characters as Isabella, demands no common histrionic power.

In attempting to define Webster's touch upon Italian tragic story, I
have been led perforce to concentrate attention on what is painful and
shocking to our sense of harmony in art. He was a vigorous and
profoundly imaginative playwright. But his most enthusiastic admirers
will hardly contend that good taste or moderation determined the
movement of his genius. Nor, though his insight into the essential
dreadfulness of Italian tragedy was so deep, is it possible to maintain
that his portraiture of Italian life was true to its more superficial
aspects. What place would there be for a Correggio or a Raphael in such
a world as Webster's? Yet we know that the art of Raphael and Correggio
is in exact harmony with the Italian temperament of the same epoch
which gave birth to Cesare Borgia and Bianca Gapello. The comparatively
slighter sketch of Iachimo in 'Cymbeline' represents the Italian as he
felt and lived, better than the laboured portrait of Flamineo.
Webster's Italian tragedies are consequently true, not so much to the
actual conditions of Italy, as to the moral impression made by those
conditions on a Northern imagination.

127




AUTUMN WANDERINGS


I.—ITALIAM PETIMUS

_Italiam Petimus!_ We left our upland home before daybreak on a clear
October morning. There had been a hard frost, spangling the meadows
with rime-crystals, which twinkled where the sun's rays touched them.
Men and women were mowing the frozen grass with thin short Alpine
scythes; and as the swathes fell, they gave a crisp, an almost tinkling
sound. Down into the gorge, surnamed of Avalanche, our horses plunged;
and there we lost the sunshine till we reached the Bear's Walk, opening
upon the vales of Albula, and Julier, and Schyn. But up above, shone
morning light upon fresh snow, and steep torrent-cloven slopes
reddening with a hundred fading plants; now and then it caught the
grey-green icicles that hung from cliffs where summer streams had
dripped. There is no colour lovelier than the blue of an autumn sky in
the high Alps, defining ridges powdered with light snow, and melting
imperceptibly downward into the warm yellow of the larches and the
crimson of the bilberry. Wiesen was radiantly beautiful: those aë;rial
ranges of the hills that separate Albula from Julier soared
crystal-clear above their forests; and for a foreground, on the green
fields starred with lilac crocuses, careered a group of children on
their sledges. Then came the row of giant peaks—Pitz d'Aela,
Tinzenhorn, and Michelhorn, above the deep ravine 128of Albula—all seen
across wide undulating golden swards, close-shaven and awaiting winter.
Carnations hung from cottage windows in full bloom, casting sharp
angular black shadows on white walls.

_Italiam petimus!_ We have climbed the valley of the Julier, following
its green, transparent torrent. A night has come and gone at Mühlen.
The stream still leads us up, diminishing in volume as we rise, up
through the fleecy mists that roll asunder for the sun, disclosing
far-off snowy ridges and blocks of granite mountains. The lifeless,
soundless waste of rock, where only thin winds whistle out of silence
and fade suddenly into still air, is passed. Then comes the descent,
with its forests of larch and cembra, golden and dark green upon a
ground of grey, and in front the serried shafts of the Bernina, and
here and there a glimpse of emerald lake at turnings of the road.
Autumn is the season for this landscape. Through the fading of
innumerable leaflets, the yellowing of larches, and something vaporous
in the low sun, it gains a colour not unlike that of the lands we seek.
By the side of the lake at Silvaplana the light was strong and warm,
but mellow. Pearly clouds hung over the Maloja, and floating overhead
cast shadows on the opaque water, which may literally be compared to
chrysoprase. The breadth of golden, brown, and russet tints upon the
valley at this moment adds softness to its lines of level strength.
Devotees of the Engadine contend that it possesses an austere charm
beyond the common beauty of Swiss landscape; but this charm is only
perfected in autumn. The fresh snow on the heights that guard it helps.
And then there are the forests of dark pines upon those many knolls and
undulating mountain-flanks beside the lakes. Sitting and dreaming there
in noonday sun, I kept repeating to myself _Italiam petimus!_

129A hurricane blew upward from the pass as we left Silvaplana,
ruffling the lake with gusts of the Italian wind. By Silz Maria we came
in sight of a dozen Italian workmen, arm linked in arm in two rows,
tramping in rhythmic stride, and singing as they went. Two of them were
such nobly built young men, that for a moment the beauty of the
landscape faded from my sight, and I was saddened. They moved to their
singing, like some of Mason's or Frederick Walker's figures, with the
free grace of living statues, and laughed as we drove by. And yet, with
all their beauty, industry, sobriety, intelligence, these Italians of
the northern valleys serve the sterner people of the Grisons like
negroes, doing their roughest work at scanty wages.

So we came to the vast Alpine wall, and stood on a bare granite slab,
and looked over into Italy, as men might lean from the battlements of a
fortress. Behind lies the Alpine valley, grim, declining slowly
northward, with wind-lashed lakes and glaciers sprawling from
storm-broken pyramids of gneiss. Below spread the unfathomable depths
that lead to Lombardy, flooded with sunlight, filled with swirling
vapour, but never wholly hidden from our sight. For the blast kept
shifting the cloud-masses, and the sun streamed through in spears and
bands of sheeny rays. Over the parapet our horses dropped, down through
sable spruce and amber larch, down between tangles of rowan and
autumnal underwood. Ever as we sank, the mountains rose—those sharp
embattled precipices, toppling spires, impendent chasms blurred with
mist, that make the entrance into Italy sublime. Nowhere do the Alps
exhibit their full stature, their commanding puissance, with such
majesty as in the gates of Italy; and of all those gates I think there
is none to compare with Maloja, none certainly to rival it in
abruptness of initiation into the Italian secret. Below Vico Soprano we
pass 130already into the violets and blues of Titian's landscape. Then
come the purple boulders among chestnut trees; then the double
dolomite-like peak of Pitz Badin and Promontogno.

It is sad that words can do even less than painting could to bring this
window-scene at Promontogno before another eye. The casement just
frames it. In the foreground are meadow slopes, thinly, capriciously
planted with chestnut trees and walnuts, each standing with its shadow
cast upon the sward. A little farther falls the torrent, foaming down
between black jaws of rain-stained granite, with the wooden buildings
of a rustic mill set on a ledge of rock. Suddenly above this landscape
soars the valley, clothing its steep sides on either hand with pines;
and there are emerald isles of pasture on the wooded flanks; and then
cliffs, where the red-stemmed larches glow; and at the summit, shooting
into ether with a swathe of mist around their basement, soar the double
peaks, the one a pyramid, the other a bold broken crystal not unlike
the Finsteraarhorn seen from Furka. These are connected by a snowy
saddle, and snow is lying on their inaccessible crags in powdery
drifts. Sunlight pours between them into the ravine. The green and
golden forests now join from either side, and now recede, according as
the sinuous valley brings their lines together or disparts them. There
is a sound of cow-bells on the meadows; and the roar of the stream is
dulled or quickened as the gusts of this October wind sweep by or
slacken. _Italiam petimus!_

_Tangimus Italiam!_ Chiavenna is a worthy key to this great gate
Italian. We walked at night in the open galleries of the cathedral
cloister—white, smoothly curving, well-proportioned loggie, enclosing a
green space, whence soars the campanile to the stars. The moon had
sunk, but her 131light still silvered the mountains that stand at watch
round Chiavenna; and the castle rock was flat and black against that
dreamy background. Jupiter, who walked so lately for us on the long
ridge of the Jacobshorn above our pines, had now an ample space of sky
over Lombardy to light his lamp in. Why is it, we asked each other, as
we smoked our pipes and strolled, my friend and I;—why is it that
Italian beauty does not leave the spirit so untroubled as an Alpine
scene? Why do we here desire the flower of some emergent feeling to
grow from the air, or from the soil, or from humanity to greet us? This
sense of want evoked by Southern beauty is perhaps the antique
mythopœic yearning. But in our perplexed life it takes another form,
and seems the longing for emotion, ever fleeting, ever new, unrealised,
unreal, insatiable.

II.—OVER THE APENNINES

At Parma we slept in the Albergo della Croce Bianca, which is more a
bric-à-brac shop than an inn; and slept but badly, for the good folk of
Parma twanged guitars and exercised their hoarse male voices all night
in the street below. We were glad when Christian called us, at 5 A.M.,
for an early start across the Apennines. This was the day of a right
Roman journey. In thirteen and a half hours, leaving Parma at 6, and
arriving in Sarzana at 7.30, we flung ourselves across the spine of
Italy, from the plains of Eridanus to the seashore of Etruscan Luna. I
had secured a carriage and extra post-horses the night before;
therefore we found no obstacles upon the road, but eager drivers, quick
relays, obsequious postmasters, change, speed, perpetual movement. The
road itself is a noble one, and nobly entertained in all things but
accommodation for travellers. At Berceto, near the 132summit of the
pass, we stopped just half an hour, to lunch off a mouldy hen and six
eggs; but that was all the halt we made.

As we drove out of Parma, striking across the plain to the _ghiara_ of
the Taro, the sun rose over the austere autumnal landscape, with its
withered vines and crimson haws. Christian, the mountaineer, who at
home had never seen the sun rise from a flat horizon, stooped from the
box to call attention to this daily recurring miracle, which on the
plain of Lombardy is no less wonderful than on a rolling sea. From the
village of Fornovo, where the Italian League was camped awaiting
Charles VIII. upon that memorable July morn in 1495, the road strikes
suddenly aside, gains a spur of the descending Apennines, and keeps
this vantage till the pass of La Cisa is reached. Many windings are
occasioned by thus adhering to arêtes, but the total result is a
gradual ascent with free prospect over plain and mountain. The
Apennines, built up upon a smaller scale than the Alps, perplexed in
detail and entangled with cross sections and convergent systems, lend
themselves to this plan of carrying highroads along their ridges
instead of following the valley.

What is beautiful in the landscape of that northern watershed is the
subtlety, delicacy, variety, and intricacy of the mountain outlines.
There is drawing wherever the eye falls. Each section of the vast
expanse is a picture of tossed crests and complicated undulations. And
over the whole sea of stationary billows, light is shed like an
ethereal raiment, with spare colour—blue and grey, and parsimonious
green—in the near foreground. The detail is somewhat dry and
monotonous; for these so finely moulded hills are made up of washed
earth, the immemorial wrecks of earlier mountain ranges. Brown
villages, not unlike those of Midland England, low houses built of
stone and tiled with stone, and 133square-towered churches, occur at
rare intervals in cultivated hollows, where there are fields and fruit
trees. Water is nowhere visible except in the wasteful river-beds. As
we rise, we break into a wilder country, forested with oak, where oxen
and goats are browsing. The turf is starred with lilac gentian and
crocus bells, but sparely. Then comes the highest village, Berceto,
with keen Alpine air. After that, broad rolling downs of yellowing
grass and russet beech-scrub lead onward to the pass La Cisa. The sense
of breadth in composition is continually satisfied through this ascent
by the fine-drawn lines, faint tints, and immense air-spaces of Italian
landscape. Each little piece reminds one of England; but the
geographical scale is enormously more grandiose, and the effect of
majesty proportionately greater.

From La Cisa the road descends suddenly; for the southern escarpment of
the Apennine, as of the Alpine, barrier is pitched at a far steeper
angle than the northern. Yet there is no view of the sea. That is
excluded by the lower hills which hem the Magra. The upper valley is
beautiful, with verdant lawns and purple hillsides breaking down into
thick chestnut woods, through which we wound at a rapid pace for nearly
an hour. The leaves were still green, mellowing to golden; but the
fruit was ripe and heavy, ready at all points to fall. In the still
October air the husks above our heads would loosen, and the brown nuts
rustle through the foliage, and with a dull short thud, like drops of
thunder-rain, break down upon the sod. At the foot of this rich forest,
wedged in between huge buttresses, we found Pontremoli, and changed our
horses here for the last time. It was Sunday, and the little town was
alive with country-folk; tall stalwart fellows wearing peacock's
feathers in their black slouched hats, and nut-brown maids.

From this point the valley of the Magra is exceeding rich 134with fruit
trees, vines, and olives. The tendrils of the vine are yellow now, and
in some places hued like generous wine; through their thick leaves the
sun shot crimson. In one cool garden, as the day grew dusk, I noticed
quince trees laden with pale fruit entangled with pomegranates—green
spheres and ruddy amid burnished leaves. By the roadside too were many
berries of bright hues; the glowing red of haws and hips, the amber of
the pyracanthus, the rose tints of the spindle-wood. These make autumn
even lovelier than spring. And then there was a wood of chestnuts
carpeted with pale pinkling, a place to dream of in the twilight. But
the main motive of this landscape was the indescribable Carrara range,
an island of pure form and shooting peaks, solid marble, crystalline in
shape and texture, faintly blue against the blue sky, from which they
were but scarce divided. These mountains close the valley to
south-east, and seem as though they belonged to another and more
celestial region.

Soon the sunlight was gone, and moonrise came to close the day, as we
rolled onward to Sarzana, through arundo donax and vine-girdled olive
trees and villages, where contadini lounged upon the bridges. There was
a stream of sound in our ears, and in my brain a rhythmic dance of
beauties caught through the long-drawn glorious golden autumn-day.

III.—FOSDINOVO

The hamlet and the castle of Fosdinovo stand upon a mountain-spur above
Sarzana, commanding the valley of the Magra and the plains of Luni.
This is an ancient fief of the Malaspina House, and is still in the
possession of the Marquis of that name.

The road to Fosdinovo strikes across the level through an avenue of
plane trees, shedding their discoloured leaves. It 135then takes to the
open fields, bordered with tall reeds waving from the foss on either
hand, where grapes are hanging to the vines. The country-folk allow
their vines to climb into the olives, and these golden festoons are a
great ornament to the grey branches. The berries on the trees are still
quite green, and it is a good olive season. Leaving the main road, we
pass a villa of the Malaspini, shrouded in immense thickets of sweet
bay and ilex, forming a grove for the Nymphs or Pan. Here may you see
just such clean stems and lucid foliage as Gian Bellini painted, inch
by inch, in his Peter Martyr picture. The place is neglected now; the
semicircular seats of white Carrara marble are stained with green
mosses, the altars chipped, the fountains choked with bay leaves; and
the rose trees, escaped from what were once trim garden alleys, have
gone wandering a-riot into country hedges. There is no demarcation
between the great man's villa and the neighbouring farms. From this
point the path rises, and the barren hillside is a-bloom with
late-flowering myrtles. Why did the Greeks consecrate these myrtle-rods
to Death as well as Love? Electra complained that her father's tomb had
not received the honour of the myrtle branch; and the Athenians
wreathed their swords with myrtle in memory of Harmodius. Thinking of
these matters, I cannot but remember lines of Greek, which have
themselves the rectitude and elasticity of myrtle wands:

καί προσπεσών εκλυσ΄ ε΄ρημίας τυχών
σπονδάς τε λύσας ασκόν ον Φέρω ξένοις

εσπεισα τύμβω δ΄άμφεθηκα μυρσίνας

As we approach Fosdinovo, the hills above us gain sublimity; the
prospect over plain and sea—the fields where Luna was, the widening bay
of Spezzia—grows ever grander. The castle is a ruin, still capable of
partial habitation, and now undergoing repair—the state in which a ruin
looks most sordid and forlorn. How strange it is, too, that, to enforce
136this sense of desolation, sad dishevelled weeds cling ever to such
antique masonry! Here are the henbane, the sow-thistle, the wild
cucumber. At Avignon, at Orvieto, at Dolce Acqua, at Les Baux, we never
missed them. And they have the dusty courtyards, the massive portals,
where portcullises still threaten, of Fosdinovo to themselves. Over the
gate, and here and there on corbels, are carved the arms of Malaspina—a
barren thorn-tree, gnarled with the geometrical precision of heraldic
irony.

Leaning from the narrow windows of this castle, with the spacious view
to westward, I thought of Dante. For Dante in this castle was the guest
of Moroello Malaspina, what time he was yet finishing the 'Inferno.'
There is a little old neglected garden, full to south, enclosed upon a
rampart which commands the Borgo, where we found frail canker-roses and
yellow amaryllis. Here, perhaps, he may have sat with ladies—for this
was the Marchesa's pleasaunce; or may have watched through a short
summer's night, until he saw that _tremolar della marina_, portending
dawn, which afterwards he painted in the 'Purgatory.'

From Fosdinovo one can trace the Magra work its way out seaward, not
into the plain where once the _candentia moenia Lunae_ flashed sunrise
from their battlements, but close beside the little hills which back
the southern arm of the Spezzian gulf. At the extreme end of that
promontory, called Del Corvo, stood the Benedictine convent of S.
Croce; and it was here in 1309, if we may trust to tradition, that
Dante, before his projected journey into France, appeared and left the
first part of his poem with the Prior. Fra Ilario, such was the good
father's name, received commission to transmit the 'Inferno' to
Uguccione della Faggiuola; and he subsequently recorded the fact of
Dante's visit in a letter which, though its genuineness has been called
in question, is far too interesting 137to be left without allusion. The
writer says that on occasion of a journey into lands beyond the
Riviera, Dante visited this convent, appearing silent and unknown among
the monks. To the Prior's question what he wanted, he gazed upon the
brotherhood, and only answered, 'Peace!' Afterwards, in private
conversation, he communicated his name and spoke about his poem. A
portion of the 'Divine Comedy' composed in the Italian tongue aroused
Ilario's wonder, and led him to inquire why his guest had not followed
the usual course of learned poets by committing his thoughts to Latin.
Dante replied that he had first intended to write in that language, and
that he had gone so far as to begin the poem in Virgilian hexameters.
Reflection upon the altered conditions of society in that age led him,
however, to reconsider the matter; and he was resolved to tune another
lyre, 'suited to the sense of modern men.' 'For,' said he, 'it is idle
to set solid food before the lips of sucklings.'

If we can trust Fra Ilario's letter as a genuine record, which is
unhappily a matter of some doubt, we have in this narration not only a
picturesque, almost a melodramatically picturesque glimpse of the
poet's apparition to those quiet monks in their seagirt house of peace,
but also an interesting record of the destiny which presided over the
first great work of literary art in a distinctly modern language.

IV.—LA SPEZZIA

While we were at Fosdinovo the sky filmed over, and there came a halo
round the sun. This portended change; and by evening, after we had
reached La Spezzia, earth, sea, and air were conscious of a coming
tempest. At night I went down to the shore, and paced the sea-wall they
have lately built 138along the Rada. The moon was up, but overdriven
with dry smoky clouds, now thickening to blackness over the whole bay,
now leaving intervals through which the light poured fitfully and
fretfully upon the wrinkled waves; and ever and anon they shuddered
with electric gleams which were not actual lightning. Heaven seemed to
be descending on the sea; one might have fancied that some powerful
charms were drawing down the moon with influence malign upon those
still resisting billows. For not as yet the gulf was troubled to its
depth, and not as yet the breakers dashed in foam against the
moonlight-smitten promontories. There was but an uneasy murmuring of
wave to wave; a whispering of wind, that stooped its wing and hissed
along the surface, and withdrew into the mystery of clouds again; a
momentary chafing of churned water round the harbour piers, subsiding
into silence petulant and sullen. I leaned against an iron stanchion
and longed for the sea's message. But nothing came to me, and the
drowned secret of Shelley's death those waves which were his grave
revealed not.

Howler and scooper of storms! capricious and dainty sea!

Meanwhile the incantation swelled in shrillness, the electric shudders
deepened. Alone in this elemental overture to tempest I took no note of
time, but felt, through self-abandonment to the symphonic influence,
how sea and air, and clouds akin to both, were dealing with each other
complainingly, and in compliance to some maker of unrest within them. A
touch upon my shoulder broke this trance; I turned and saw a boy beside
me in a coastguard's uniform. Francesco was on patrol that night; but
my English accent soon assured him that I was no _contrabbandiere_, and
he too leaned against the stanchion and told me his short story. He was
in his nineteenth year, and came from Florence, where his people live
in the 139Borgo Ognissanti. He had all the brightness of the Tuscan
folk, a sort of innocent malice mixed with _espieglerie_. It was
diverting to see the airs he gave himself on the strength of his new
military dignity, his gun, and uniform, and night duty on the shore. I
could not help humming to myself _Non più andrai_; for Francesco was a
sort of Tuscan Cherubino. We talked about picture galleries and
libraries in Florence, and I had to hear his favourite passages from
the Italian poets. And then there came the plots of Jules Verne's
stories and marvellous narrations about _l' uomo cavallo, l' uomo
volante, l' uomo pesce_. The last of these personages turned out to be
Paolo Boÿnton (so pronounced), who had swam the Arno in his diving
dress, passing the several bridges, and when he came to the great weir
'allora tutti stare con bocca aperta.' Meanwhile the storm grew
serious, and our conversation changed. Francesco told me about the
terrible sun-stricken sand shores of the Riviera, burning in summer
noon, over which the coast-guard has to tramp, their perils from
falling stones in storm, and the trains that come rushing from those
narrow tunnels on the midnight line of march. It is a hard life; and
the thirst for adventure which drove this boy—'il più matto di tutta la
famiglia'—to adopt it, seems well-nigh quenched. And still, with a
return to Giulio Verne, he talked enthusiastically of deserting, of
getting on board a merchant ship, and working his way to southern
islands where wonders are.

A furious blast swept the whole sky for a moment almost clear. The
moonlight fell, with racing cloud-shadows, upon sea and hills, the
lights of Lerici, the great _fanali_ at the entrance of the gulf, and
Francesco's upturned handsome face. Then all again was whirled in mist
and foam; one breaker smote the sea wall in a surge of froth, another
plunged upon its heels; with inconceivable swiftness came 140rain;
lightning deluged the expanse of surf, and showed the windy trees bent
landward by the squall. It was long past midnight now, and the storm
was on us for the space of three days.

V.—PORTO VENERE

For the next three days the wind went worrying on, and a line of surf
leapt on the sea-wall always to the same height. The hills all around
were inky black and weary.

At night the wild libeccio still rose, with floods of rain and
lightning poured upon the waste. I thought of the Florentine patrol. Is
he out in it, and where?

At last there came a lull. When we rose on the fourth morning, the sky
was sulky, spent and sleepy after storm—the air as soft and tepid as
boiled milk or steaming flannel. We drove along the shore to Porto
Venere, passing the arsenals and dockyards, which have changed the face
of Spezzia since Shelley knew it. This side of the gulf is not so rich
in vegetation as the other, probably because it lies open to the winds
from the Carrara mountains. The chestnuts come down to the shore in
many places, bringing with them the wild mountain-side. To make up for
this lack of luxuriance, the coast is furrowed with a succession of
tiny harbours, where the fishing-boats rest at anchor. There are many
villages upon the spurs of hills, and on the headlands naval stations,
hospitals, lazzaretti, and prisons. A prickly bindweed (the _Smilax
Sarsaparilla_) forms a feature in the near landscape, with its creamy
odoriferous blossoms, coral berries, and glossy thorned leaves.

A turn of the road brought Porto Venere in sight, and on its grey walls
flashed a gleam of watery sunlight. The village consists of one long
narrow street, the houses on the left side 141hanging sheer above the
sea. Their doors at the back open on to cliffs which drop about fifty
feet upon the water. A line of ancient walls, with mediaeval
battlements and shells of chambers suspended midway between earth and
sky, runs up the rock behind the town; and this wall is pierced with a
deep gateway above which the inn is piled. We had our lunch in a room
opening upon the town-gate, adorned with a deep-cut Pisan arch
enclosing images and frescoes—a curious episode in a place devoted to
the jollity of smugglers and seafaring folk. The whole house was such
as Tintoretto loved to paint—huge wooden rafters; open chimneys with
pent-house canopies of stone, where the cauldrons hung above logs of
chestnut; rude low tables spread with coarse linen embroidered at the
edges, and laden with plates of fishes, fruit, quaint glass,
big-bellied jugs of earthenware, and flasks of yellow wine. The people
of the place were lounging round in lazy attitudes. There were odd
nooks and corners everywhere; unexpected staircases with windows
slanting through the thickness of the town-wall; pictures of saints;
high-zoned serving women, on whose broad shoulders lay big coral beads;
smoke-blackened roofs, and balconies that opened on the sea. The house
was inexhaustible in motives for pictures.

We walked up the street, attended by a rabble rout of boys—_diavoli
scatenati_—clean, grinning, white-teethed, who kept incessantly
shouting, 'Soldo, soldo!' I do not know why these sea-urchins are so
far more irrepressible than their land brethren. But it is always thus
in Italy. They take an imperturbable delight in noise and mere
annoyance. I shall never forget the sea-roar of Porto Venere, with that
shrill obligate, 'Soldo, soldo, soldo!' rattling like a dropping fire
from lungs of brass.

At the end of Porto Venere is a withered and abandoned city, climbing
the cliffs of S. Pietro; and on the headland 142stands the ruined
church, built by Pisans with alternate rows of white and black marble,
upon the site of an old temple of Venus. This is a modest and pure
piece of Gothic architecture, fair in desolation, refined and
dignified, and not unworthy in its grace of the dead Cyprian goddess.
Through its broken lancets the sea-wind whistles and the vast reaches
of the Tyrrhene gulf are seen. Samphire sprouts between the blocks of
marble, and in sheltered nooks the caper hangs her beautiful purpureal
snowy bloom.

The headland is a bold block of white limestone stained with red. It
has the pitch of Exmoor stooping to the sea near Lynton. To north, as
one looks along the coast, the line is broken by Porto Fino's
amethystine promontory; and in the vaporous distance we could trace the
Riviera mountains, shadowy and blue. The sea came roaring, rolling in
with tawny breakers; but, far out, it sparkled in pure azure, and the
cloud-shadows over it were violet. Where Corsica should have been seen,
soared banks of fleecy, broad-domed alabaster clouds.

This point, once dedicated to Venus, now to Peter—both, be it
remembered, fishers of men—is one of the most singular in Europe. The
island of Palmaria, rich in veined marbles, shelters the port; so that
outside the sea rages, while underneath the town, reached by a narrow
strait, there is a windless calm. It was not without reason that our
Lady of Beauty took this fair gulf to herself; and now that she has
long been dispossessed, her memory lingers yet in names. For Porto
Venere remembers her, and Lerici is only Eryx. There is a grotto here,
where an inscription tells us that Byron once 'tempted the Ligurian
waves.' It is just such a natural sea-cave as might have inspired
Euripides when he described the refuge of Orestes in 'Iphigenia.'

143

VI.—LERICI

Libeccio at last had swept the sky clear. The gulf was ridged with
foam-fleeced breakers, and the water churned into green, tawny wastes.
But overhead there flew the softest clouds, all silvery, dispersed in
flocks. It is the day for pilgrimage to what was Shelley's home.

After following the shore a little way, the road to Lerici breaks into
the low hills which part La Spezzia from Sarzana. The soil is red, and
overgrown with arbutus and pinaster, like the country around Cannes.
Through the scattered trees it winds gently upwards, with frequent
views across the gulf, and then descends into a land rich with olives—a
genuine Riviera landscape, where the mountain-slopes are hoary, and
spikelets of innumerable light-flashing leaves twinkle against a blue
sea, misty-deep. The walls here are not unfrequently adorned with
basreliefs of Carrara marble—saints and madonnas very delicately
wrought, as though they were love-labours of sculptors who had passed a
summer on this shore. San Terenzio is soon discovered low upon the
sands to the right, nestling under little cliffs; and then the
high-built castle of Lerici comes in sight, looking across, the bay to
Porto Venere—one Aphrodite calling to the other, with the foam between.
The village is piled around its cove with tall and picturesquely
coloured houses; the molo and the fishing-boats lie just beneath the
castle. There is one point of the descending carriage road where all
this gracefulness is seen, framed by the boughs of olive branches,
swaying, wind-ruffled, laughing the many-twinkling smiles of ocean back
from their grey leaves. Here _Erycina ridens_ is at home. And, as we
stayed to dwell upon the beauty of the scene, came women from the bay
below—barefooted, straight as willow wands, with 144burnished copper
bowls upon their heads. These women have the port of goddesses,
deep-bosomed, with the length of thigh and springing ankles that
betoken strength no less than elasticity and grace. The hair of some of
them was golden, rippling in little curls around brown brows and
glowing eyes. Pale lilac blent with orange on their dress, and coral
beads hung from their ears.

At Lerici we took a boat and pushed into the rolling breakers.
Christian now felt the movement of the sea for the first time. This was
rather a rude trial, for the grey-maned monsters played, as it seemed,
at will with our cockle-shell, tumbling in dolphin curves to reach the
shore. Our boatmen knew all about Shelley and the Casa Magni. It is not
at Lerici, but close to San Terenzio, upon the south side of the
village. Looking across the bay from the molo, one could clearly see
its square white mass, tiled roof, and terrace built on rude arcades
with a broad orange awning. Trelawny's description hardly prepares one
for so considerable a place. I think the English exiles of that period
must have been exacting if the Casa Magni seemed to them no better than
a bathing-house.

We left our boat at the jetty, and walked through some gardens to the
villa. There we were kindly entertained by the present occupiers, who,
when I asked them whether such visits as ours were not a great
annoyance, gently but feelingly replied: 'It is not so bad now as it
used to be.' The English gentleman who rents the Casa Magni has known
it uninterruptedly since Shelley's death, and has used it for
_villeggiatura_ during the last thirty years. We found him in the
central sitting-room, which readers of Trelawny's 'Recollections' have
so often pictured to themselves. The large oval table, the settees
round the walls, and some of the pictures are still unchanged. As we
sat talking, I laughed to think of 145that luncheon party, when Shelley
lost his clothes, and came naked, dripping with sea-water, into the
room, protected by the skirts of the sympathising waiting-maid. And
then I wondered where they found him on the night when he stood
screaming in his sleep, after the vision of his veiled self, with its
question, '_Siete soddisfatto_?'

There were great ilexes behind the house in Shelley's time, which have
been cut down, and near these he is said to have sat and written the
'Triumph of Life.' Some new houses, too, have been built between the
villa and the town; otherwise the place is unaltered. Only an awning
has been added to protect the terrace from the sun. I walked out on
this terrace, where Shelley used to listen to Jane's singing. The sea
was fretting at its base, just as Mrs. Shelley says it did when the Don
Juan disappeared.

From San Terenzio we walked back to Lerici through olive woods,
attended by a memory which toned the almost overpowering beauty of the
place to sadness.

VII.—VIAREGGIO

The same memory drew us, a few days later, to the spot where Shelley's
body was burned. Viareggio is fast becoming a fashionable
watering-place for the people of Florence and Lucca, who seek fresher
air and simpler living than Livorno offers. It has the usual new inns
and improvised lodging-houses of such places, built on the outskirts of
a little fishing village, with a boundless stretch of noble sands.
There is a wooden pier on which we walked, watching the long roll of
waves, foam-flaked, and quivering with moonlight. The Apennines faded
into the grey sky beyond, and the sea-wind was good to breathe. There
is a feeling of 'immensity, liberty, action' here, which is not common
in Italy. It 146reminds us of England; and to-night the Mediterranean
had the rough force of a tidal sea.

Morning revealed beauty enough in Viareggio to surprise even one who
expects from Italy all forms of loveliness. The sand-dunes stretch for
miles between the sea and a low wood of stone pines, with the Carrara
hills descending from their glittering pinnacles by long lines to the
headlands of the Spezzian Gulf. The immeasurable distance was all
painted in sky-blue and amethyst; then came the golden green of the
dwarf firs; and then dry yellow in the grasses of the dunes; and then
the many-tinted sea, with surf tossed up against the furthest cliffs.
It is a wonderful and tragic view, to which no painter but the Roman
Costa has done justice; and he, it may be said, has made this landscape
of the Carrarese his own. The space between sand and pine-wood was
covered with faint, yellow, evening primroses. They flickered like
little harmless flames in sun and shadow, and the spires of the Carrara
range were giant flames transformed to marble. The memory of that day
described by Trelawny in a passage of immortal English prose, when he
and Byron and Leigh Hunt stood beside the funeral pyre, and libations
were poured, and the 'Cor Cordium' was found inviolate among the ashes,
turned all my thoughts to flame beneath the gentle autumn sky.

Still haunted by these memories, we took the carriage road to Pisa,
over which Shelley's friends had hurried to and fro through those last
days. It passes an immense forest of stone-pines—aisles and avenues;
undergrowth of ilex, laurustinus, gorse, and myrtle; the crowded
cyclamens, the solemn silence of the trees; the winds hushed in their
velvet roof and stationary domes of verdure.

147




PARMA


Parma is perhaps the brightest _Residenzstadt_ of the second class in
Italy. Built on a sunny and fertile tract of the Lombard plain, within
view of the Alps, and close beneath the shelter of the Apennines, it
shines like a well-set gem with stately towers and cheerful squares in
the midst of verdure. The cities of Lombardy are all like large country
houses: walking out of their gates, you seem to be stepping from a door
or window that opens on a trim and beautiful garden, where
mulberry-tree is married to mulberry by festoons of vines, and where
the maize and sunflower stand together in rows between patches of flax
and hemp. But it is not in order to survey the union of well-ordered
husbandry with the civilities of ancient city-life that we break the
journey at Parma between Milan and Bologna. We are attracted rather by
the fame of one great painter, whose work, though it may be studied
piecemeal in many galleries of Europe, in Parma has a fulness,
largeness, and mastery that can nowhere else be found. In Parma alone
Correggio challenges comparison with Raphael, with Tintoret, with all
the supreme decorative painters who have deigned to make their art the
handmaid of architecture. Yet even in the cathedral and the church of
S. Giovanni, where Correggio's frescoes cover cupola and chapel wall,
we could scarcely comprehend his greatness now—so cruelly have time and
neglect dealt with those delicate dream-shadows of celestial
fairyland—were it not for an interpreter, who consecrated a lifetime to
the task of translating 148his master's poetry of fresco into the prose
of engraving. That man was Paolo Toschi—a name to be ever venerated by
all lovers of the arts; since without his guidance we should hardly
know what to seek for in the ruined splendours of the domes of Parma,
or even seeking, how to find the object of our search. Toschi's labour
was more effectual than that of a restorer however skilful, more loving
than that of a follower however faithful. He respected Correggio's
handiwork with religious scrupulousness, adding not a line or tone or
touch of colour to the fading frescoes; but he lived among them, aloft
on scaffoldings, and face to face with the originals which he designed
to reproduce. By long and close familiarity, by obstinate and patient
interrogation, he divined Correggio's secret, and was able at last to
see clearly through the mist of cobweb and mildew and altar smoke, and
through the still more cruel travesty of so-called restoration. What he
discovered, he faithfully committed first to paper in water colours,
and then to copperplate with the burin, so that we enjoy the privilege
of seeing Correggio's masterpieces as Toschi saw them, with the eyes of
genius and of love and of long scientific study. It is not too much to
say that some of Correggio's most charming compositions—for example,
the dispute of S. Augustine and S. John—have been resuscitated from the
grave by Toschi's skill. The original offers nothing but a mouldering
surface from which the painter's work has dropped in scales. The
engraving presents a design which we doubt not was Correggio's, for it
corresponds in all particulars to the style and spirit of the master.
To be critical in dealing with so successful an achievement of
restoration and translation is difficult. Yet it may be admitted once
and for all that Toschi has not unfrequently enfeebled his original.
Under his touch Correggio loses somewhat of his sensuous audacity, his
dithyrambic ecstasy, and approaches 149the ordinary standard of
prettiness and graceful beauty. The Diana of the Camera di S. Paolo,
for instance, has the strong calm splendour of a goddess: the same
Diana in Toschi's engraving seems about to smile with girlish joy. In a
word, the engraver was a man of a more common stamp—more timid and more
conventional than the painter. But this is after all a trifling
deduction from the value of his work.

Our debt to Paolo Toschi is such that it would be ungrateful not to
seek some details of his life. The few that can be gathered even at
Parma are brief and bald enough. The newspaper articles and funeral
panegyrics which refer to him are as barren as all such occasional
notices in Italy have always been; the panegyrist seeming more anxious
about his own style than eager to communicate information. Yet a bare
outline of Toschi's biography may be supplied. He was born at Parma in
1788. His father was cashier of the post-office, and his mother's name
was Anna Maria Brest. Early in his youth he studied painting at Parma
under Biagio Martini; and in 1809 he went to Paris, where he learned
the art of engraving from Bervic and of etching from Oortman. In Paris
he contracted an intimate friendship with the painter Gérard. But after
ten years he returned to Parma, where he established a company and
school of engravers in concert with his friend Antonio Isac. Maria
Louisa, the then Duchess, under whose patronage the arts flourished at
Parma (witness Bodoni's exquisite typography), soon recognised his
merit, and appointed him Director of the Ducal Academy. He then formed
the project of engraving a series of the whole of Correggio's frescoes.
The undertaking was a vast one. Both the cupolas of S. John and the
cathedral, together with the vault of the apse of S. Giovanni[24] and
various portions of the 150side aisles, and the so-called Camera di S.
Paolo, are covered by frescoes of Correggio and his pupil Parmegiano.
These frescoes have suffered so much from neglect and time, and from
unintelligent restoration, that it is difficult in many cases to
determine their true character. Yet Toschi did not content himself with
selections, or shrink from the task of deciphering and engraving the
whole. He formed a school of disciples, among whom were Carlo Raimondi
of Milan, Antonio Costa of Venice, Edward Eichens of Berlin, Aloisio
Juvara of Naples, Antonio Dalcò, Giuseppe Magnani, and Lodovico Bisola
of Parma, and employed them as assistants in his work. Death overtook
him in 1854, before it was finished, and now the water-colour drawings
which are exhibited in the Gallery of Parma prove to what extent the
achievement fell short of his design. Enough, however, was accomplished
to place the chief masterpieces of Correggio beyond the possibility of
utter oblivion.

 [24] The fresco of the Coronation of the Virgin upon the semi-dome of
 S. Giovanni is the work of a copyist, Cesare Aretusi. But part of the
 original fresco, which was removed in 1684, exists in a good state of
 preservation at the end of the long gallery of the library.

To the piety of his pupil Carlo Raimondi, the bearer of a name
illustrious in the annals of engraving, we owe a striking portrait of
Toschi. The master is represented on his seat upon the scaffold in the
dizzy half-light of the dome. The shadowy forms of saints and angels
are around him. He has raised his eyes from his cartoon to study one of
these. In his right hand is the opera-glass with which he scrutinises
the details of distant groups. The upturned face, with its expression
of contemplative intelligence, is like that of an astronomer accustomed
to commerce with things above the sphere of common life, and ready to
give account of all that he has gathered from his observation of a
world not ours. In truth the world created by Correggio and interpreted
by Toschi is very far removed from that of actual existence. No painter
151has infused a more distinct individuality into his work, realising
by imaginative force and powerful projection an order of beauty
peculiar to himself, before which it is impossible to remain quite
indifferent. We must either admire the manner of Correggio, or else
shrink from it with the distaste which sensual art is apt to stir in
natures of a severe or simple type.

What, then, is the Correggiosity of Correggio? In other words, what is
the characteristic which, proceeding from the personality of the
artist, is impressed on all his work? The answer to this question,
though by no means simple, may perhaps be won by a process of gradual
analysis. The first thing that strikes us in the art of Correggio is,
that he has aimed at the realistic representation of pure unrealities.
His saints and angels are beings the like of whom we have hardly seen
upon the earth. Yet they are displayed before us with all the movement
and the vivid truth of nature. Next we feel that what constitutes the
superhuman, visionary quality of these creatures, is their uniform
beauty of a merely sensuous type. They are all created for pleasure,
not for thought or passion or activity or heroism. The uses of their
brains, their limbs, their every feature, end in enjoyment; innocent
and radiant wantonness is the condition of their whole existence.
Correggio conceived the universe under the one mood of sensuous joy:
his world was bathed in luxurious light; its inhabitants were capable
of little beyond a soft voluptuousness. Over the domain of tragedy he
had no sway, and very rarely did he attempt to enter on it: nothing,
for example, can be feebler than his endeavour to express anguish in
the distorted features of Madonna, S. John, and the Magdalen, who are
bending over the dead body of a Christ extended in the attitude of
languid repose. In like manner he could not deal with subjects which
demand a pregnancy of intellectual meaning. He paints the three Fates
like young and joyous Bacchantes, 152places rose-garlands and thyrsi in
their hands instead of the distaff and the thread of human destinies,
and they might figure appropriately upon the panels of a
banquet-chamber in Pompeii. In this respect Correggio might be termed
the Rossini of painting. The melodies of the 'Stabat Mater'—_Fac ut
portem_ or _Quis est homo_—are the exact analogues in music of
Correggio's voluptuous renderings of grave or mysterious motives. Nor,
again, did he possess that severe and lofty art of composition which
subordinates the fancy to the reason, and which seeks for the highest
intellectual beauty in a kind of architectural harmony supreme above
the melodies of gracefulness in detail. The Florentines and those who
shared their spirit—Michelangelo and Lionardo and Raphael—deriving this
principle of design from the geometrical art of the Middle Ages,
converted it to the noblest uses in their vast well-ordered
compositions. But Correggio ignored the laws of scientific
construction. It was enough for him to produce a splendid and brilliant
effect by the life and movement of his figures, and by the intoxicating
beauty of his forms. His type of beauty, too, is by no means elevated.
Lionardo painted souls whereof the features and the limbs are but an
index. The charm of Michelangelo's ideal is like a flower upon a tree
of rugged strength. Raphael aims at the loveliness which cannot be
disjoined from goodness. But Correggio is contented with bodies
'delicate and desirable.' His angels are genii disimprisoned from the
perfumed chalices of flowers, houris of an erotic paradise, elemental
spirits of nature wantoning in Eden in her prime. To accuse the painter
of conscious immorality or of what is stigmatised as sensuality, would
be as ridiculous as to class his seraphic beings among the products of
the Christian imagination. They belong to the generation of the fauns;
like fauns, they combine a certain savage wildness, a dithyrambic
ecstasy of inspiration, a delight in rapid movement 153as they revel
amid clouds or flowers, with the permanent and all-pervading sweetness
of the master's style. When infantine or childlike, these celestial
sylphs are scarcely to be distinguished for any noble quality of beauty
from Murillo's cherubs, and are far less divine than the choir of
children who attend Madonna in Titian's 'Assumption.' But in their
boyhood and their prime of youth, they acquire a fulness of sensuous
vitality and a radiance that are peculiar to Correggio. The lily-bearer
who helps to support S. Thomas beneath the dome of the cathedral at
Parma, the groups of seraphs who crowd behind the Incoronata of S.
Giovanni, and the two wild-eyed open-mouthed S. Johns stationed at each
side of the celestial throne, are among the most splendid instances of
the adolescent loveliness conceived by Correggio. Where the painter
found their models may be questioned but not answered; for he has made
them of a different fashion from the race of mortals: no court of Roman
emperor or Turkish sultan, though stocked with the flowers of Bithynian
and Circassian youth, have seen their like. Mozart's Cherubino seems to
have sat for all of them. At any rate they incarnate the very spirit of
the songs he sings.

As a consequence of this predilection for sensuous and voluptuous
forms, Correggio had no power of imagining grandly or severely.
Satisfied with material realism in his treatment even of sublime
mysteries, he converts the hosts of heaven into a 'fricassee of frogs,'
according to the old epigram. His apostles, gazing after the Virgin who
has left the earth, are thrown into attitudes so violent and so
dramatically foreshortened, that seen from below upon the pavement of
the cathedral, little of their form is distinguishable except legs and
arms in vehement commotion. Very different is Titian's conception of
this scene. To express the spiritual meaning, the emotion of Madonna's
transit, with all the pomp which 154colour and splendid composition can
convey, is Titian's sole care; whereas Correggio appears to have been
satisfied with realising the tumult of heaven rushing to meet earth,
and earth straining upwards to ascend to heaven in violent commotion—a
very orgasm of frenetic rapture. The essence of the event is forgotten:
its external manifestation alone is presented to the eye; and only the
accessories of beardless angels and cloud-encumbered cherubs are really
beautiful amid a surge of limbs in restless movement. More dignified,
because designed with more repose, is the Apocalypse of S. John painted
upon the cupola of S. Giovanni. The apostles throned on clouds, with
which the dome is filled, gaze upward to one point. Their attitudes are
noble; their form is heroic; in their eyes there is the strange
ecstatic look by which Correggio interpreted his sense of supernatural
vision: it is a gaze not of contemplation or deep thought, but of wild
half-savage joy, as if these saints also had become the elemental genii
of cloud and air, spirits emergent from ether, the salamanders of an
empyrean intolerable to mortal sense. The point on which their eyes
converge, the culmination of their vision, is the figure of Christ.
Here all the weakness of Correggio's method is revealed. He had
undertaken to realise by no ideal allegorical suggestion, by no
symbolism of architectural grouping, but by actual prosaic measurement,
by corporeal form in subjection to the laws of perspective and
foreshortening, things which in their very essence admit of only a
figurative revelation. Therefore his Christ, the centre of all those
earnest eyes, is contracted to a shape in which humanity itself is
mean, a sprawling figure which irresistibly reminds one of a frog. The
clouds on which the saints repose are opaque and solid; cherubs in
countless multitudes, a swarm of merry children, crawl about upon these
feather-beds of vapour, creep between the legs of the apostles, and
155play at bopeep behind their shoulders. There is no propriety in
their appearance there. They take no interest in the beatific vision.
They play no part in the celestial symphony; nor are they capable of
more than merely infantine enjoyment. Correggio has sprinkled them
lavishly like living flowers about his cloudland, because he could not
sustain a grave and solemn strain of music, but was forced by his
temperament to overlay the melody with roulades. Gazing at these
frescoes, the thought came to me that Correggio was like a man
listening to sweetest flute-playing, and translating phrase after
phrase as they passed through his fancy into laughing faces, breezy
tresses, and rolling mists. Sometimes a grander cadence reached his
ear; and then S. Peter with the keys, or S. Augustine of the mighty
brow, or the inspired eyes of S. John, took form beneath his pencil.
But the light airs returned, and rose and lily faces bloomed again for
him among the clouds. It is not therefore in dignity or sublimity that
Correggio excels, but in artless grace and melodious tenderness. The
Madonna della Scala clasping her baby with a caress which the little
child returns, S. Catherine leaning in a rapture of ecstatic love to
wed the infant Christ, S. Sebastian in the bloom of almost boyish
beauty, are the so-called sacred subjects to which the painter was
adequate, and which he has treated with the voluptuous tenderness we
find in his pictures of Leda and Danae and Io. Could these saints and
martyrs descend from Correggio's canvas, and take flesh, and breathe,
and begin to live; of what high action, of what grave passion, of what
exemplary conduct in any walk of life would they be capable? That is
the question which they irresistibly suggest; and we are forced to
answer, None! The moral and religious world did not exist for
Correggio. His art was but a way of seeing carnal beauty in a dream
that had no true relation to reality.

156Correggio's sensibility to light and colour was exactly on a par
with his feeling for form. He belongs to the poets of chiaroscuro and
the poets of colouring; but in both regions he maintains the
individuality so strongly expressed in his choice of purely sensuous
beauty. Tintoretto makes use of light and shade for investing his great
compositions with dramatic intensity. Rembrandt interprets sombre and
fantastic moods of the mind by golden gloom and silvery irradiation,
translating thought into the language of penumbral mystery. Lionardo
studies the laws of light scientifically, so that the proper roundness
and effect of distance should be accurately rendered, and all the
subtleties of nature's smiles be mimicked. Correggio is content with
fixing on his canvas the ανη΄ριθμον γέλασμα, the many-twinkling
laughter of light in motion, rained down through fleecy clouds or
trembling foliage, melting into half-shadows, bathing and illuminating
every object with a soft caress. There are no tragic contrasts of
splendour sharply defined on blackness, no mysteries of half-felt and
pervasive twilight, no studied accuracies of noonday clearness in his
work. Light and shadow are woven together on his figures like an
impalpable Coan gauze, aë;rial and transparent, enhancing the
palpitations of voluptuous movement which he loved. His colouring, in
like manner, has none of the superb and mundane pomp which the
Venetians affected; it does not glow or burn or beat the fire of gems
into our brain; joyous and wanton, it seems to be exactly such a
beauty-bloom as sense requires for its satiety. There is nothing in his
hues to provoke deep passion or to stimulate the yearnings of the soul:
the pure blushes of the dawn and the crimson pyres of sunset are
nowhere in the world that he has painted. But that chord of jocund
colour which may fitly be married to the smiles of light, the blues
which are found in laughing eyes, the pinks that tinge the 157cheeks of
early youth, and the warm yet silvery tones of healthy flesh, mingle as
in a marvellous pearl-shell on his pictures. Both chiaroscuro and
colouring have this supreme purpose in art, to effect the sense like
music, and like music to create a mood in the soul of the spectator.
Now the mood which Correggio stimulates is one of natural and
thoughtless pleasure. To feel his influence, and at the same moment to
be the subject of strong passion, or fierce lust, or heroic resolve, or
profound contemplation, or pensive melancholy, is impossible.
Wantonness, innocent because unconscious of sin, immoral because
incapable of any serious purpose, is the quality which prevails in all
that he has painted. The pantomimes of a Mohammedan paradise might be
put upon the stage after patterns supplied by this least spiritual of
painters.

It follows from this analysis that the Correggiosity of Correggio, that
which sharply distinguished him from all previous artists, was the
faculty of painting a purely voluptuous dream of beautiful beings in
perpetual movement, beneath the laughter of morning light, in a world
of never-failing April hues. When he attempts to depart from the
fairyland of which he was the Prospero, and to match himself with the
masters of sublime thought or earnest passion, he proves his weakness.
But within his own magic circle he reigns supreme, no other artist
having blended the witcheries of colouring, chiaroscuro, and faunlike
loveliness of form into a harmony so perfect in its sensuous charm.
Bewitched by the strains of the siren, we pardon affectations of
expression, emptiness of meaning, feebleness of composition,
exaggerated and melodramatic attitudes. There is what Goethe called a
demonic influence in the art of Correggio: 'In poetry,' said Goethe to
Eckermann, 'especially in that which is unconscious, before which
reason and understanding fall short, and 158which therefore produces
effects so far surpassing all conception, there is always something
demonic.' It is not to be wondered that Correggio, possessed of this
demonic power in the highest degree, and working to a purely sensuous
end, should have exercised a fatal influence over art. His successors,
attracted by an intoxicating loveliness which they could not analyse,
which had nothing in common with the reason or the understanding, but
was like a glamour cast upon the soul in its most secret sensibilities,
threw themselves blindly into the imitation of Correggio's faults. His
affectation, his want of earnest thought, his neglect of composition,
his sensuous realism, his all-pervading sweetness, his infantine
prettiness, his substitution of thaumaturgical effects for
conscientious labour, admitted only too easy imitation, and were but
too congenial with the spirit of the late Renaissance. Cupolas through
the length and breadth of Italy began to be covered with clouds and
simpering cherubs in the convulsions of artificial ecstasy. The
attenuated elegance of Parmigiano, the attitudinising of Anselmi's
saints and angels, and a general sacrifice of what is solid and
enduring to sentimental gewgaws on the part of all painters who had
submitted to the magic of Correggio, proved how easy it was to go
astray with the great master. Meanwhile no one could approach him in
that which was truly his own—the delineation of a transient moment in
the life of sensuous beauty, the painting of a smile on Nature's face,
when light and colour tremble in harmony with the movement of joyous
living creatures. Another demonic nature of a far more powerful type
contributed his share to the ruin of art in Italy. Michelangelo's
constrained attitudes and muscular anatomy were imitated by painters
and sculptors, who thought that the grand style lay in the presentation
of theatrical athletes, but who could not seize the secret whereby the
great master made even the bodies of men 159and women—colossal trunks
and writhen limbs—interpret the meanings of his deep and melancholy
soul.

It is a sad law of progress in art, that when the æsthetic impulse is
on the wane, artists should perforce select to follow the weakness
rather than the vigour, of their predecessors. While painting was in
the ascendant, Raphael could take the best of Perugino and discard the
worst; in its decadence Parmigiano reproduces the affectations of
Correggio, and Bernini carries the exaggerations of Michelangelo to
absurdity. All arts describe a parabola. The force which produces them
causes them to rise throughout their growth up to a certain point, and
then to descend more gradually in a long and slanting line of regular
declension. There is no real break of continuity. The end is the result
of simple exhaustion. Thus the last of our Elizabethan dramatists,
Shirley and Crowne and Killigrew, pushed to its ultimate conclusion the
principle inherent in Marlowe, not attempting to break new ground, nor
imitating the excellences so much as the defects of their forerunners.
Thus too the Pointed style of architecture in England gave birth first
to what is called the Decorated, next to the Perpendicular, and finally
expired in the Tudor. Each step was a step of progress—at first for the
better—at last for the worse—but logical, continuous, necessitated.[25]

 [25] See the chapter on Euripides in my _Studies of Greek Poets_,
 First Series, for a further development of this view of artistic
 evolution.

It is difficult to leave Correggio without at least posing the question
of the difference between moralised and merely sensual art. Is all art
excellent in itself and good in its effect that is beautiful and
earnest? There is no doubt that Correggio's work is in a way most
beautiful; and it bears unmistakable signs of the master having given
himself with single-hearted devotion to the expression of that phase of
160loveliness which he could apprehend. In so far we must admit that
his art is both excellent and solid. Yet we are unable to conceive that
any human being could be made better—stronger for endurance, more
fitted for the uses of the world, more sensitive to what is noble in
nature—by its contemplation. At the best Correggio does but please us
in our lighter moments, and we are apt to feel that the pleasure he has
given is of an enervating kind. To expect obvious morality of any
artist is confessedly absurd. It is not the artist's province to
preach, or even to teach, except by remote suggestion. Yet the mind of
the artist may be highly moralised, and then he takes rank not merely
with the ministers to refined pleasure, but also with the educators of
the world. He may, for example, be penetrated with a just sense of
humanity like Shakspere, or with a sublime temperance like Sophocles,
instinct with prophetic intuition like Michelangelo, or with passionate
experience like Beethoven. The mere sight of the work of Pheidias is
like breathing pure health-giving air. Milton and Dante were steeped in
religious patriotism; Goethe was pervaded with philosophy, and Balzac
with scientific curiosity. Ariosto, Cervantes, and even Boccaccio are
masters in the mysteries of common life. In all these cases the tone of
the artist's mind is felt throughout his work: what he paints, or
sings, or writes, conveys a lesson while it pleases. On the other hand,
depravity in an artist or a poet percolates through work which has in
it nothing positive of evil, and a very miasma of poisonous influence
may rise from the apparently innocuous creations of a tainted soul. Now
Correggio is moralised in neither way—neither as a good nor as a bad
man, neither as an acute thinker nor as a deliberate voluptuary. He is
simply sensuous. On his own ground he is even very fresh and healthy:
his delineation of youthful 161maternity, for example, is as true as it
is beautiful; and his sympathy with the gleefulness of children is
devoid of affectation. We have then only to ask ourselves whether the
defect in him of all thought and feeling which is not at once capable
of graceful fleshly incarnation, be sufficient to lower him in the
scale of artists. This question must of course be answered according to
our definition of the purposes of art. There is no doubt that the most
highly organised art—that which absorbs the most numerous human
qualities and effects a harmony between the most complex elements—is
the noblest. Therefore the artist who combines moral elevation and
power of thought with a due appreciation of sensual beauty, is more
elevated and more beneficial than one whose domain is simply that of
carnal loveliness. Correggio, if this be so, must take a comparatively
low rank. Just as we welcome the beautiful athlete for the radiant life
that is in him, but bow before the personality of Sophocles, whose
perfect form enshrined a noble and highly educated soul, so we
gratefully accept Correggio for his grace, while we approach the
consummate art of Michelangelo with reverent awe. It is necessary in
æsthetics as elsewhere to recognise a hierarchy of excellence, the
grades of which are determined by the greater or less comprehensiveness
of the artist's nature expressed in his work. At the same time, the
calibre of the artist's genius must be estimated; for eminent greatness
even of a narrow kind will always command our admiration: and the
amount of his originality has also to be taken into account. What is
unique has, for that reason alone, a claim on our consideration. Judged
in this way, Correggio deserves a place, say, in the sweet planet
Venus, above the moon and above Mercury, among the artists who have not
advanced beyond the contemplations which find their proper outcome in
love. Yet, 162even thus, he aids the culture of humanity. 'We should
take care,' said Goethe, apropos of Byron, to Eckermann, 'not to be
always looking for culture in the decidedly pure and moral. Everything
that is great promotes cultivation as soon as we are aware of it.'

163




CANOSSA


Italy is less the land of what is venerable in antiquity, than of
beauty, by divine right young eternally in spite of age. This is due
partly to her history and art and literature, partly to the temper of
the races who have made her what she is, and partly to her natural
advantages. Her oldest architectural remains, the temples of Paestum
and Girgenti, or the gates of Perugia and Volterra, are so adapted to
Italian landscape and so graceful in their massive strength, that we
forget the centuries which have passed over them. We leap as by a
single bound from the times of Roman greatness to the new birth of
humanity in the fourteenth century, forgetting the many years during
which Italy, like the rest of Europe, was buried in what our ancestors
called Gothic barbarism. The illumination cast upon the classic period
by the literature of Rome and by the memory of her great men is so
vivid, that we feel the days of the Republic and the Empire to be near
us; while the Italian Renaissance is so truly a revival of that former
splendour, a resumption of the music interrupted for a season, that it
is extremely difficult to form any conception of the five long
centuries which elapsed between the Lombard invasion in 568 and the
accession of Hildebrand to the Pontificate in 1073. So true is it that
nothing lives and has reality for us but what is spiritual,
intellectual, self-possessed in personality and consciousness. When the
Egyptian priest said to Solon, 'You Greeks are always children,' he
intended a gentle sarcasm, but he implied a compliment; for the
164quality of imperishable youth belonged to the Hellenic spirit, and
has become the heritage of every race which partook of it. And this
spirit in no common degree has been shared by the Italians of the
earlier and the later classic epoch. The land is full of monuments
pertaining to those two brilliant periods; and whenever the voice of
poet has spoken or the hand of artist has been at work, that spirit, as
distinguished from the spirit of mediaevalism, has found expression.

Yet it must be remembered that during the five centuries above
mentioned Italy was given over to Lombards, Franks, and Germans. Feudal
institutions, alien to the social and political ideals of the classic
world, took a tolerably firm hold on the country. The Latin element
remained silent, passive, in abeyance, undergoing an important
transformation. It was in the course of those five hundred years that
the Italians as a modern people, separable from their Roman ancestors,
were formed. At the close of this obscure passage in Italian history,
their communes, the foundation of Italy's future independence, and the
source of her peculiar national development, appeared in all the vigour
and audacity of youth. At its close the Italian genius presented Europe
with its greatest triumph of constructive ability, the Papacy. At its
close again the series of supreme artistic achievements, starting with
the architecture of churches and public palaces, passing on to
sculpture and painting, and culminating in music, which only ended with
the temporary extinction of national vitality in the seventeenth
century, was simultaneously begun in all the provinces of the
peninsula.

So important were these five centuries of incubation for Italy, and so
little is there left of them to arrest the attention of the student,
dazzled as he is by the ever-living glories of Greece, Rome, and the
Renaissance, that a visit to the ruins of Canossa is almost a duty.
There, in spite of himself, by 165the very isolation and forlorn
abandonment of what was once so formidable a seat of feudal despotism
and ecclesiastical tyranny, he is forced to confront the obscure but
mighty spirit of the middle ages. There, if anywhere, the men of those
iron-hearted times anterior to the Crusades will acquire distinctness
for his imagination, when he recalls the three main actors in the drama
enacted on the summit of Canossa's rock in the bitter winter of 1077.

Canossa lies almost due south of Reggio d'Emilia, upon the slopes of
the Apennines. Starting from Reggio, the carriage-road keeps to the
plain for some while in a westerly direction, and then bends away
towards the mountains. As we approach their spurs, the ground begins to
rise. The rich Lombard tilth of maize and vine gives place to
English-looking hedgerows, lined with oaks, and studded with handsome
dark tufts of green hellebore. The hills descend in melancholy
earth-heaps on the plain, crowned here and there with ruined castles.
Four of these mediaeval strongholds, called Bianello, Montevetro,
Monteluzzo, and Montezano, give the name of Quattro Castelli to the
commune. The most important of them, Bianello, which, next to Canossa,
was the strongest fortress possessed by the Countess Matilda and her
ancestors, still presents a considerable mass of masonry, roofed and
habitable. The group formed a kind of advance-guard for Canossa against
attack from Lombardy. After passing Quattro Castelli we enter the
hills, climbing gently upwards between barren slopes of ashy grey
earth—the _débris_ of most ancient Apennines—crested at favourable
points with lonely towers. In truth the whole country bristles with
ruined forts, making it clear that during the middle ages Canossa was
but the centre of a great military system, the core and kernel of a
fortified position which covered an area to be measured by scores of
square miles, 166reaching far into the mountains, and buttressed on the
plain. As yet, however, after nearly two hours' driving, Canossa has
not come in sight. At last a turn in the road discloses an opening in
the valley of the Enza to the left: up this lateral gorge we see first
the Castle of Rossena on its knoll of solid red rock, flaming in the
sunlight; and then, further withdrawn, detached from all surrounding
objects, and reared aloft as though to sweep the sea of waved and
broken hills around it, a sharp horn of hard white stone. That is
Canossa—the _alba Canossa_, the _candida petra_ of its rhyming
chronicler. There is no mistaking the commanding value of its
situation. At the same time the brilliant whiteness of Canossa's rocky
hill, contrasted with the red gleam of Rossena, and outlined against
the prevailing dulness of these earthy Apennines, secures a picturesque
individuality concordant with its unique history and unrivalled
strength.

There is still a journey of two hours before the castle can be reached:
and this may be performed on foot or horseback. The path winds upward
over broken ground; following the _arête_ of curiously jumbled and
thwarted hill-slopes; passing beneath the battlements of Rossena,
whence the unfortunate Everelina threw herself in order to escape the
savage love of her lord and jailor; and then skirting those horrid
earthen _balze_ which are so common and so unattractive a feature of
Apennine scenery. The most hideous _balze_ to be found in the length
and breadth of Italy are probably those of Volterra, from which the
citizens themselves recoil with a kind of terror, and which lure
melancholy men by intolerable fascination on to suicide. For ever
crumbling, altering with frost and rain, discharging gloomy glaciers of
slow-crawling mud, and scarring the hillside with tracts of barrenness,
these earth-precipices are among the most ruinous and discomfortable
failures of nature. They have not even so much of 167wildness or
grandeur as forms, the saving merit of nearly all wasteful things in
the world, and can only be classed with the desolate _ghiare_ of
Italian river-beds.

Such as they are, these _balze_ form an appropriate preface to the
gloomy and repellent isolation of Canossa. The rock towers from a
narrow platform to the height of rather more than 160 feet from its
base. The top is fairly level, forming an irregular triangle, of which
the greatest length is about 260 feet, and the width about 100 feet.
Scarcely a vestige of any building can be traced either upon the
platform or the summit, with the exception of a broken wall and windows
supposed to belong to the end of the sixteenth century. The ancient
castle, with its triple circuit of walls, enclosing barracks for the
garrison, lodgings for the lord and his retainers, a stately church, a
sumptuous monastery, storehouses, stables, workshops, and all the
various buildings of a fortified stronghold, have utterly disappeared.
The very passage of approach cannot be ascertained; for it is doubtful
whether the present irregular path that scales the western face of the
rock be really the remains of some old staircase, corresponding to that
by which Mont S. Michel in Normandy is ascended. One thing is tolerably
certain—that the three walls of which we hear so much from the
chroniclers, and which played so picturesque a part in the drama of
Henry IV.'s penance, surrounded the cliff at its base, and embraced a
large acreage of ground. The citadel itself must have been but the
acropolis or keep of an extensive fortress.

There has been plenty of time since the year 1255, when the people of
Reggio sacked and destroyed Canossa, for Nature to resume her
undisputed sway by obliterating the handiwork of men; and at present
Nature forms the chief charm of Canossa. Lying one afternoon of May on
the crisp short grass at the edge of a precipice purple with iris in
full 168blossom, I surveyed, from what were once the battlements of
Matilda's castle, a prospect than which there is none more
spirit-stirring by reason of its beauty and its manifold associations
in Europe. The lower castle-crowded hills have sunk. Reggio lies at our
feet, shut in between the crests of Monte Carboniano and Monte delle
Celle. Beyond Reggio stretches Lombardy—the fairest and most memorable
battlefield of nations, the richest and most highly cultivated garden
of civilised industry. Nearly all the Lombard cities may be seen, some
of them faint like bluish films of vapour, some clear with dome and
spire. There is Modena and her Ghirlandina. Carpi, Parma, Mirandola,
Verona, Mantua, lie well defined and russet on the flat green map; and
there flashes a bend of lordly Po; and there the Euganeans rise like
islands, telling us where Padua and Ferrara nestle in the amethystine
haze Beyond and above all to the northward sweep the Alps, tossing
their silvery crests up into the cloudless sky from the violet mist
that girds their flanks and drowns their basements. Monte Adamello and
the Ortler, the cleft of the Brenner, and the sharp peaks of the
Venetian Alps are all distinctly visible. An eagle flying straight from
our eyrie might traverse Lombardy and light among the snow-fields of
the Valtelline between sunrise and sundown. Nor is the prospect tame to
southward. Here the Apennines roll, billow above billow, in majestic
desolation, soaring to snow summits in the Pellegrino region. As our
eye attempts to thread that labyrinth of hill and vale, we tell
ourselves that those roads wind to Tuscany, and yonder stretches
Garfagnana, where Ariosto lived and mused in honourable exile from the
world he loved.

It was by one of the mountain passes that lead from Lucca northward
that the first founder of Canossa is said to have travelled early in
the tenth century. Sigifredo, if the tradition may be trusted, was very
wealthy; and with his money he 169bought lands and signorial rights at
Reggio, bequeathing to his children, when he died about 945, a
patrimony which they developed into a petty kingdom. Azzo, his second
son, fortified Canossa, and made it his principal place of residence.
When Lothair, King of Italy, died in 950, leaving his beautiful widow
to the ill-treatment of his successor, Berenger, Adelaide found a
protector in this Azzo. She had been imprisoned on the Lake of Garda;
but managing to escape in man's clothes to Mantua, she thence sent news
of her misfortunes to Canossa. Azzo lost no time in riding with his
knights to her relief, and brought her back in safety to his mountain
fastness. It is related that Azzo was afterwards instrumental in
calling Otho into Italy and procuring his marriage with Adelaide, in
consequence of which events Italy became a fief of the Empire. Owing to
the part he played at this time, the Lord of Canossa was recognised as
one of the most powerful vassals of the German Emperor in Lombardy.
Honours were heaped upon him; and he grew so rich and formidable that
Berenger, the titular King of Italy, laid siege to his fortress of
Canossa. The memory of this siege, which lasted for three years and a
half, is said still to linger in the popular traditions of the place.
When Azzo died at the end of the tenth century, he left to his son
Tedaldo the title of Count of Reggio and Modena; and this title was
soon after raised to that of Marquis. The Marches governed as Vicar of
the Empire by Tedaldo included Reggio, Modena, Ferrara, Brescia, and
probably Mantua. They stretched, in fact, across the north of Italy,
forming a quadrilateral between the Alps and Apennines. Like his
father, Tedaldo adhered consistently to the Imperial party; and when he
died and was buried at Canossa, he in his turn bequeathed to his son
Bonifazio a power and jurisdiction increased by his own abilities.
Bonifazio held the state of a sovereign at Canossa, adding the duchy of
Tuscany to his 170father's fiefs, and meeting the allied forces of the
Lombard barons in the field of Coviolo like an independent potentate.
His power and splendour were great enough to rouse the jealousy of the
Emperor; but Henry III. seems to have thought it more prudent to
propitiate this proud vassal, and to secure his kindness, than to
attempt his humiliation. Bonifazio married Beatrice, daughter of
Frederick, Duke of Lorraine—her whose marble sarcophagus in the Campo
Santo at Pisa is said to have inspired Niccola Pisano with his new
style of sculpture. Their only child, Matilda, was born, probably at
Lucca, in 1046; and six years after her birth, Bonifazio, who had
swayed his subjects like an iron-handed tyrant, was murdered. To the
great House of Canossa, the rulers of one-third of Italy, there now
remained only two women, Bonifazio's widow Beatrice, and his daughter
Matilda. Beatrice married Godfrey, Duke of Lorraine, who was recognised
by Henry IV. as her husband and as feudatory of the Empire in the full
place of Boniface. He died about 1070; and in this year Matilda was
married by proxy to his son, Godfrey the Hunchback, whom, however, she
did not see till the year 1072. The marriage was not a happy one; and
the question has even been disputed among Matilda's biographers whether
it was ever consummated. At any rate it did not last long; for Godfrey
was killed at Antwerp in 1076. In this year Matilda also lost her
mother, Beatrice, who died at Pisa, and was buried in the cathedral.

By this rapid enumeration of events it will be seen how the power and
honours of the House of Canossa, including Tuscany, Spoleto, and the
fairest portions of Lombardy, had devolved upon a single woman of the
age of thirty at the moment when the fierce quarrel between Pope and
Emperor began in the year 1076. Matilda was destined to play a great, a
striking, and a tragic part in the opening drama of Italian 171history.
Her decided character and uncompromising course of action have won for
her the name of 'la gran donna d'Italia,' and have caused her memory to
be blessed or execrated, according as the temporal pretensions and
spiritual tyranny of the Papacy may have found supporters or opponents
in posterity. She was reared from childhood in habits of austerity and
unquestioning piety. Submission to the Church became for her not merely
a rule of conduct, but a passionate enthusiasm. She identified herself
with the cause of four successive Popes, protected her idol, the
terrible and iron-hearted Hildebrand, in the time of his adversity;
remained faithful to his principles after his death; and having served
the Holy See with all her force and all that she possessed through all
her lifetime, she bequeathed her vast dominions to it on her deathbed.
Like some of the greatest mediaeval characters—like Hildebrand
himself—Matilda was so thoroughly of one piece, that she towers above
the mists of ages with the massive grandeur of an incarnated idea. She
is for us the living statue of a single thought, an undivided impulse,
the more than woman born to represent her age. Nor was it without
reason that Dante symbolised in her the love of Holy Church; though
students of the 'Purgatory' will hardly recognise the lovely maiden,
singing and plucking flowers beside the stream of Lethe, in the stern
and warlike chatelaine of Canossa. Unfortunately we know but little of
Matilda's personal appearance. Her health was not strong; and it is
said to have been weakened, especially in her last illness, by ascetic
observances. Yet she headed her own troops, armed with sword and
cuirass, avoiding neither peril nor fatigue in the quarrels of her
master Gregory. Up to the year 1622 two strong suits of mail were
preserved at Quattro Castelli, which were said to have been worn by her
in battle, and which were afterwards sold on the market-place at
Reggio. This habit of 172donning armour does not, however, prove that
Matilda was exceptionally vigorous; for in those savage times she could
hardly have played the part of heroine without participating personally
in the dangers of warfare.

No less monumental in the plastic unity of his character was the monk
Hildebrand, who for twenty years before his elevation to the Papacy had
been the maker of Popes and the creator of the policy of Rome. When he
was himself elected in the year 1073, and had assumed the name of
Gregory VII., he immediately began to put in practice the plans for
Church aggrandisement he had slowly matured during the previous quarter
of a century. To free the Church from its subservience to the Empire,
to assert the Pope's right to ratify the election of the Emperor and to
exercise the right of jurisdiction over him, to place ecclesiastical
appointments in the sole power of the Roman See, and to render the
celibacy of the clergy obligatory, were the points he had resolved to
carry. Taken singly and together, these chief aims of Hildebrand's
policy had but one object—the magnification of the Church at the
expense both of the people and of secular authorities, and the further
separation of the Church from the ties and sympathies of common life
that bound it to humanity. To accuse Hildebrand of personal ambition
would be but shallow criticism, though it is clear that his inflexible
and puissant nature found a savage selfish pleasure in trampling upon
power and humbling pride at warfare with his own. Yet his was in no
sense an egotistic purpose like that which moved the Popes of the
Renaissance to dismember Italy for their bastards. Hildebrand, like
Matilda, was himself the creature of a great idea. These two potent
personalities completely understood each other, and worked towards a
single end. Tho mythopoeic fancy might conceive of them as the male and
female manifestations of one dominant faculty, the spirit of
ecclesiastical 173dominion incarnate in a man and woman of almost
super-human mould.

Opposed to them, as the third actor in the drama of Canossa, was a man
of feebler mould. Henry IV., King of Italy, but not yet crowned
Emperor, had none of his opponents' unity of purpose or monumental
dignity of character. At war with his German feudatories, browbeaten by
rebellious sons, unfaithful and cruel to his wife, vacillating in the
measures he adopted to meet his divers difficulties, at one time
tormented by his conscience into cowardly submission, and at another
treasonably neglectful of the most solemn obligations, Henry was no
match for the stern wills against which he was destined to break in
unavailing passion. Early disagreements with Gregory had culminated in
his excommunication. The German nobles abandoned his cause; and Henry
found it expedient to summon a council in Augsburg for the settlement
of matters in dispute between the Empire and the Papacy. Gregory
expressed his willingness to attend this council, and set forth from
Rome accompanied by the Countess Matilda in December 1076. He did not,
however, travel further than Vercelli, for news here reached him that
Henry was about to enter Italy at the head of a powerful army. Matilda
hereupon persuaded the Holy Father to place himself in safety among her
strongholds of Canossa. Thither accordingly Gregory retired before the
ending of that year; and bitter were the sarcasms uttered by the
imperial partisans in Italy upon this protection offered by a fair
countess to the monk who had been made a Pope. The foul calumnies of
that bygone age would be unworthy of even so much as this notice, if we
did not trace in them the ineradicable Italian tendency to cynical
insinuation—a tendency which has involved the history of the
Renaissance Popes in an almost impenetrable mist of lies and
exaggerations. 173Henry was in truth upon his road to Italy, but with a
very different attendance from that which Gregory expected. Accompanied
by Bertha, his wife, and his boy son Conrad, the Emperor elect left
Spires in the condition of a fugitive, crossed Burgundy, spent
Christmas at Besançon, and journeyed to the foot of Mont Cenis. It is
said that he was followed by a single male servant of mean birth; and
if the tale of his adventures during the passage of the Alps can be
credited, history presents fewer spectacles more picturesque than the
straits to which this representative of the Cæsars, this supreme chief
of feudal civility, this ruler destined still to be the leader of
mighty armies and the father of a line of monarchs, was exposed.
Concealing his real name and state, he induced some shepherds to lead
him and his escort through the thick snows to the summit of Mont Cenis;
and by the help of these men the imperial party were afterwards let
down the snow-slopes on the further side by means of ropes. Bertha and
her women were sewn up in hides and dragged across the frozen surface
of the winter drifts. It was a year memorable for its severity. Heavy
snow had fallen in October, which continued ice-bound and unyielding
till the following April.

No sooner had Henry reached Turin, than he set forward again in the
direction of Canossa. The fame of his arrival had preceded him, and he
found that his party was far stronger in Italy than he had ventured to
expect. Proximity to the Church of Rome divests its fulminations of
half their terrors. The Italian bishops and barons, less superstitious
than the Germans, and with greater reason to resent the domineering
graspingness of Gregory, were ready to espouse the Emperor's cause.
Henry gathered a formidable force as he marched onward across Lombardy;
and some of the most illustrious prelates and nobles of the South were
in his suite. 175A more determined leader than Henry proved himself to
be, might possibly have forced Gregory to some accommodation, in spite
of the strength of Canossa and the Pope's invincible obstinacy, by
proper use of these supporters. Meanwhile the adherents of the Church
were mustered in Matilda's fortress; among whom may be mentioned Azzo,
the progenitor of Este and Brunswick; Hugh, Abbot of Clugny; and the
princely family of Piedmont. 'I am become a second Rome,' exclaims
Canossa, in the language of Matilda's rhyming chronicler; 'all honours
are mine; I hold at once both Pope and King, the princes of Italy and
those of Gaul, those of Rome, and those from far beyond the Alps.' The
stage was ready; the audience had assembled; and now the three great
actors were about to meet. Immediately upon his arrival at Canossa,
Henry sent for his cousin, the Countess Matilda, and besought her to
intercede for him with Gregory. He was prepared to make any concessions
or to undergo any humiliations, if only the ban of excommunication
might be removed; nor, cowed as he was by his own superstitious
conscience, and by the memory of the opposition he had met with from
his German vassals, does he seem to have once thought of meeting force
with force, and of returning to his northern kingdom triumphant in the
overthrow of Gregory's pride. Matilda undertook to plead his cause
before the Pontiff. But Gregory was not to be moved so soon to mercy.
'If Henry has in truth repented,' he replied, 'let him lay down crown
and sceptre, and declare himself unworthy of the name of king.' The
only point conceded to the suppliant was that he should be admitted in
the garb of a penitent within the precincts of the castle. Leaving his
retinue outside the walls, Henry entered the first series of outworks,
and was thence conducted to the second, so that between him and the
citadel itself there still remained the third of the surrounding
bastions. Here he was bidden to 176wait the Pope's pleasure; and here,
in the midst of that bitter winter weather, while the fierce winds of
the Apennines were sweeping sleet upon him in their passage from Monte
Pellegrino to the plain, he knelt barefoot, clothed in sackcloth,
fasting from dawn till eve, for three whole days. On the morning of the
fourth day, judging that Gregory was inexorable, and that his suit
would not be granted, Henry retired to the Chapel of S. Nicholas, which
stood within this second precinct. There he called to his aid the Abbot
of Clugny and the Countess, both of whom were his relations, and who,
much as they might sympathise with Gregory, could hardly be supposed to
look with satisfaction on their royal kinsman's outrage. The Abbot told
Henry that nothing in the world could move the Pope; but Matilda, when
in turn he fell before her knees and wept, engaged to do for him the
utmost. She probably knew that the moment for unbending had arrived,
and that her imperious guest could not with either decency or prudence
prolong the outrage offered to the civil chief of Christendom. It was
the 25th of January when the Emperor elect was brought, half dead with
cold and misery, into the Pope's presence. There he prostrated himself
in the dust, crying aloud for pardon. It is said that Gregory first
placed his foot upon Henry's neck, uttering these words of Scripture:
'Super aspidem et basiliscum ambulabis, et conculcabis leonem et
draconem,' and that then he raised him from the earth and formally
pronounced his pardon. The prelates and nobles who took part in this
scene were compelled to guarantee with their own oaths the vows of
obedience pronounced by Henry; so that in the very act of
reconciliation a new insult was offered to him. After this Gregory said
mass, and permitted Henry to communicate; and at the close of the day a
banquet was served, at which the King sat down to meat with the Pope
and the Countess.

177It is probable that, while Henry's penance was performed in the
castle courts beneath the rock, his reception by the Pope, and all that
subsequently happened, took place in the citadel itself. But of this we
have no positive information. Indeed the silence of the chronicles as
to the topography of Canossa is peculiarly unfortunate for lovers of
the picturesque in historic detail, now that there is no possibility of
tracing the outlines of the ancient building. Had the author of the
'Vita Mathildis' (Muratori, vol. v.) foreseen that his beloved Canossa
would one day be nothing but a mass of native rock, he would
undoubtedly have been more explicit on these points; and much that is
vague about an event only paralleled by our Henry II.'s penance before
Becket's shrine at Canterbury, might now be clear.

Very little remains to be told about Canossa. During the same year,
1077, Matilda made the celebrated donation of her fiefs to Holy Church.
This was accepted by Gregory in the name of S. Peter, and it was
confirmed by a second deed during the pontificate of Urban IV. in 1102.
Though Matilda subsequently married Guelfo d'Este, son of the Duke of
Bavaria, she was speedily divorced from him; nor was there any heir to
a marriage ridiculous by reason of disparity of age, the bridegroom
being but eighteen, while the bride was forty-three in the year of her
second nuptials. During one of Henry's descents into Italy, he made an
unsuccessful attack upon Canossa, assailing it at the head of a
considerable force one October morning in 1092. Matilda's biographer
informs us that the mists of autumn veiled his beloved fortress from
the eyes of the beleaguerers. They had not even the satisfaction of
beholding the unvanquished citadel; and, what was more, the banner of
the Emperor was seized and dedicated as a trophy in the Church of S.
Apollonio. In the following year the Countess opened her gates of
Canossa to an illustrious 178fugitive, Adelaide, the wife of her old
foeman, Henry, who had escaped with difficulty from the insults and the
cruelty of her husband. After Henry's death, his son, the Emperor Henry
V., paid Matilda a visit in her castle of Bianello, addressed her by
the name of mother, and conferred upon her the vice-regency of Liguria.
At the age of sixty-nine she died, in 1115, at Bondeno de' Roncori, and
was buried, not among her kinsmen at Canossa, but in an abbey of S.
Benedict near Mantua. With her expired the main line of the noble house
she represented; though Canossa, now made a fief of the Empire in spite
of Matilda's donation, was given to a family which claimed descent from
Bonifazio's brother Conrad—a young man killed in the battle of Coviolo.
This family, in its turn, was extinguished in the year 1570; but a
junior branch still exists at Verona. It will be remembered that
Michelangelo Buonarroti claimed kinship with the Count of Canossa; and
a letter from the Count is extant acknowledging the validity of his
pretension.

As far back as 1255 the people of Reggio destroyed the castle; nor did
the nobles of Canossa distinguish themselves in subsequent history
among those families who based their despotisms on the _débris_ of the
Imperial power in Lombardy. It seemed destined that Canossa and all
belonging to it should remain as a mere name and memory of the outgrown
middle ages. Estensi, Carraresi, Visconti, Bentivogli, and Gonzaghi
belong to a later period of Lombard history, and mark the dawn of the
Renaissance.

As I lay and mused that afternoon of May upon the short grass, cropped
by two grey goats, whom a little boy was tending, it occurred to me to
ask the woman who had served me as guide, whether any legend remained
in the country concerning the Countess Matilda. She had often,
probably, been asked this question by other travellers. Therefore she
179was more than usually ready with an answer, which, as far as I could
understand her dialect, was this. Matilda was a great and potent witch,
whose summons the devil was bound to obey. One day she aspired, alone
of all her sex, to say mass; but when the moment came for sacring the
elements, a thunderbolt fell from the clear sky, and reduced her to
ashes.[26] That the most single-hearted handmaid of the Holy Church,
whose life was one long devotion to its ordinances, should survive in
this grotesque myth, might serve to point a satire upon the vanity of
earthly fame. The legend in its very extravagance is a fanciful
distortion of the truth.

 [26] I find that this story is common in the country round Canossa. It
 is mentioned by Professor A. Ferretti in his monograph entitled
 _Canossa, Studi e Ricerche_, Reggio, 1876, a work to which I am
 indebted, and which will repay careful study.

180




FORNOVO


In the town of Parma there is one surpassingly strange relic of the
past. The palace of the Farnesi, like many a haunt of upstart tyranny
and beggared pride on these Italian plains, rises misshapen and
disconsolate above the stream that bears the city's name. The squalor
of this grey-brown edifice of formless brick, left naked like the
palace of the same Farnesi at Piacenza, has something even horrid in it
now that only vague memory survives of its former uses. The princely
_sprezzatura_ of its ancient occupants, careless of these unfinished
courts and unroofed galleries amid the splendour of their purfled silks
and the glitter of their torchlight pageantry, has yielded to sullen
cynicism—the cynicism of arrested ruin and unreverend age. All that was
satisfying to the senses and distracting to the eyesight in their
transitory pomp has passed away, leaving a sinister and naked shell.
Remembrance can but summon up the crimes, the madness, the trivialities
of those dead palace-builders. An atmosphere of evil clings to the
dilapidated walls, as though the tainted spirit of the infamous Pier
Luigi still possessed the spot, on which his toadstool brood of
princelings sprouted in the mud of their misdeeds. Enclosed in this
huge labyrinth of brickwork is the relic of which I spoke. It is the
once world-famous Teatro Farnese, raised in the year 1618 by Ranunzio
Farnese for the marriage of Odoardo Farnese with Margaret of Austria.
Giambattista Aleotti, a native of pageant-loving Ferrara, traced the
stately curves and noble orders of 181the galleries, designed the
columns that support the raftered roof, marked out the orchestra,
arranged the stage, and breathed into the whole the spirit of
Palladio's most heroic neo-Latin style. Vast, built of wood,
dishevelled, with broken statues and blurred coats of arms, with its
empty scene, its uncurling frescoes, its hangings all in rags, its
cobwebs of two centuries, its dust and mildew and discoloured gold—this
theatre, a sham in its best days, and now that ugliest of things, a
sham unmasked and naked to the light of day, is yet sublime, because of
its proportioned harmony, because of its grand Roman manner. The sight
and feeling of it fasten upon the mind and abide in the memory like a
nightmare,—like one of Piranesi's weirdest and most passion-haunted
etchings for the _Carceri_. Idling there at noon in the twilight of the
dust-bedarkened windows, we fill the tiers of those high galleries with
ladies, the space below with grooms and pages; the stage is ablaze with
torches, and an Italian Masque, such as our Marlowe dreamed of, fills
the scene. But it is impossible to dower these fancies with even such
life as in healthier, happier ruins phantasy may lend to imagination's
figments. This theatre is like a maniac's skull, empty of all but
unrealities and mockeries of things that are. The ghosts we raise here
could never have been living men and women: _questi sciaurati non fur
mai vivi._ So clinging is the sense of instability that appertains to
every fragment of that dry-rot tyranny which seized by evil fortune in
the sunset of her golden day on Italy.

In this theatre I mused one morning after visiting Fornovo; and the
thoughts suggested by the battlefield found their proper atmosphere in
the dilapidated place. What, indeed, is the Teatro Farnese but a symbol
of those hollow principalities which the despot and the stranger built
in Italy after the fatal date of 1494, when national enthusiasm and
political energy 182were expiring in a blaze of art, and when the
Italians as a people had ceased to be; but when the phantom of their
former life, surviving in high works of beauty, was still superb by
reason of imperishable style! How much in Italy of the Renaissance was,
like this plank-built plastered theatre, a glorious sham! The sham was
seen through then; and now it stands unmasked: and yet, strange to say,
so perfect is its form that we respect the sham and yield our spirits
to the incantation of its music.

The battle of Fornovo, as modern battles go, was a paltry affair; and
even at the time it seemed sufficiently without result. Yet the
trumpets which rang on July 6, 1495, for the onset, sounded the
_réveil_ of the modern world; and in the inconclusive termination of
the struggle of that day, the Italians were already judged and
sentenced as a nation. The armies who met that morning represented
Italy and France,—Italy, the Sibyl of Renaissance; France, the Sibyl of
Revolution. At the fall of evening Europe was already looking
northward; and the last years of the fifteenth century were opening an
act which closed in blood at Paris on the ending of the eighteenth.

If it were not for thoughts like these, no one, I suppose, would take
the trouble to drive for two hours out of Parma to the little village
of Fornovo—a score of bare grey hovels on the margin of a pebbly
river-bed beneath the Apennines. The fields on either side, as far as
eye can see, are beautiful indeed in May sunlight, painted here with
flax, like shallow sheets of water reflecting a pale sky, and there
with clover red as blood. Scarce unfolded leaves sparkle like flamelets
of bright green upon the knotted vines, and the young corn is bending
all one way beneath a western breeze. But not less beautiful than this
is the whole broad plain of Lombardy; nor are the nightingales louder
here than in the acacia trees around Pavia. As we drive, the fields
become less fertile, and the hills 183encroach upon the level, sending
down their spurs upon that waveless plain like blunt rocks jutting out
into a tranquil sea. When we reach the bed of the Taro, these hills
begin to narrow on either hand, and the road rises. Soon they open out
again with gradual curving lines, forming a kind of amphitheatre filled
up from flank to flank with the _ghiara_ or pebbly bottom of the Taro.
The Taro is not less wasteful than any other of the brotherhood of
streams that pour from Alp or Apennine to swell the Po. It wanders, an
impatient rivulet, through a wilderness of boulders, uncertain of its
aim, shifting its course with the season of the year, unless the jaws
of some deep-cloven gully hold it tight and show how insignificant it
is. As we advance, the hills approach again; between their skirts there
is nothing but the river-bed; and now on rising ground above the
stream, at the point of juncture between the Ceno and the Taro, we find
Fornovo. Beyond the village the valley broadens out once more,
disclosing Apennines capped with winter snow. To the right descends the
Ceno. To the left foams the Taro, following whose rocky channel we
should come at last to Pontremoli and the Tyrrhenian sea beside
Sarzana. On a May-day of sunshine like the present, the Taro is a
gentle stream. A waggon drawn by two white oxen has just entered its
channel, guided by a contadino with goat-skin leggings, wielding a long
goad. The patient creatures stem the water, which rises to the
peasant's thighs and ripples round the creaking wheels. Swaying to and
fro, as the shingles shift upon the river-bed, they make their way
across; and now they have emerged upon the stones; and now we lose them
in a flood of sunlight.

It was by this pass that Charles VIII. in 1495 returned from Tuscany,
when the army of the League was drawn up waiting to intercept and crush
him in the mousetrap of Fornovo. No road remained for Charles and his
troops but 184the rocky bed of the Taro, running, as I have described
it, between the spurs of steep hills. It is true that the valley of the
Baganza leads, from a little higher up among the mountains, into
Lombardy. But this pass runs straight to Parma; and to follow it would
have brought the French upon the walls of a strong city. Charles could
not do otherwise than descend upon the village of Fornovo, and cut his
way thence in the teeth of the Italian army over stream and boulder
between the gorges of throttling mountain. The failure of the Italians
to achieve what here upon the ground appears so simple, delivered Italy
hand-bound to strangers. Had they but succeeded in arresting Charles
and destroying his forces at Fornovo, it is just possible that
then—even then, at the eleventh hour—Italy might have gained the sense
of national coherence, or at least have proved herself capable of
holding by her leagues the foreigner at bay. As it was, the battle of
Fornovo, in spite of Venetian bonfires and Mantuan Madonnas of Victory,
made her conscious of incompetence and convicted her of cowardice.
After Fornovo, her sons scarcely dared to hold their heads up in the
field against invaders; and the battles fought upon her soil were duels
among aliens for the prize of Italy.

In order to comprehend the battle of Fornovo in its bearings on Italian
history, we must go back to the year 1492, and understand the
conditions of the various States of Italy at that date. On April 8 in
that year, Lorenzo de' Medici, who had succeeded in maintaining a
political equilibrium in the peninsula, expired, and was succeeded by
his son Piero, a vain and foolhardy young man, from whom no guidance
could be expected. On July 25, Innocent VIII. died, and was succeeded
by the very worst Pope who has ever occupied S. Peter's chair, Roderigo
Borgia, Alexander VI. It was felt at once that the old order of things
had somehow ended, and that a new era, 185the destinies of which as yet
remained incalculable, was opening for Italy. The chief Italian powers,
hitherto kept in equipoise by the diplomacy of Lorenzo de' Medici, were
these—the Duchy of Milan, the Republic of Venice, the Republic of
Florence, the Papacy, and the kingdom of Naples. Minor States, such as
the Republics of Genoa and Siena, the Duchies of Urbino and Ferrara,
the Marquisate of Mantua, the petty tyrannies of Romagna, and the
wealthy city of Bologna, were sufficiently important to affect the
balance of power, and to produce new combinations. For the present
purpose it is, however, enough to consider the five great Powers.

After the peace of Constance, which freed the Lombard Communes from
Imperial interference in the year 1183, Milan, by her geographical
position, rose rapidly to be the first city of North Italy. Without
narrating the changes by which she lost her freedom as a Commune, it is
enough to state that, earliest of all Italian cities, Milan passed into
the hands of a single family. The Visconti managed to convert this
flourishing commonwealth, with all its dependencies, into their private
property, ruling it exclusively for their own profit, using its
municipal institutions as the machinery of administration, and
employing the taxes which they raised upon its wealth for purely
selfish ends. When the line of the Visconti ended in the year 1447,
their tyranny was continued by Francesco Sforza, the son of a poor
soldier of adventure, who had raised himself by his military genius,
and had married Bianca, the illegitimate daughter of the last Visconti.
On the death of Francesco Sforza in 1466, he left two sons, Galeazzo
Maria and Lodovico, surnamed Il Moro, both of whom were destined to
play a prominent part in history. Galeazzo Maria, dissolute, vicious,
and cruel to the core, was murdered by his injured subjects in the year
1476. His son, Giovanni Galeazzo, aged eight, would in course of time
have succeeded to the Duchy, 186had it not been for the ambition of his
uncle Lodovico. Lodovico contrived to name himself as Regent for his
nephew, whom he kept, long after he had come of age, in a kind of
honourable prison. Virtual master in Milan, but without a legal title
to the throne, unrecognised in his authority by the Italian powers, and
holding it from day to day by craft and fraud, Lodovico at last found
his situation untenable; and it was this difficulty of an usurper to
maintain himself in his despotism which, as we shall see, brought the
French into Italy.

Venice, the neighbour and constant foe of Milan, had become a close
oligarchy by a process of gradual constitutional development, which
threw her government into the hands of a few nobles. She was
practically ruled by the hereditary members of the Grand Council. Ever
since the year 1453, when Constantinople fell beneath the Turk, the
Venetians had been more and more straitened in their Oriental commerce,
and were thrown back upon the policy of territorial aggrandisement in
Italy, from which they had hitherto refrained as alien to the
temperament of the Republic. At the end of the fifteenth century Venice
therefore became an object of envy and terror to the Italian States.
They envied her because she alone was tranquil, wealthy, powerful, and
free. They feared her because they had good reason to suspect her of
encroachment; and it was foreseen that if she got the upper hand in
Italy, all Italy would be the property of the families inscribed upon
the Golden Book. It was thus alone that the Italians comprehended
government. The principle of representation being utterly unknown, and
the privileged burghers in each city being regarded as absolute and
lawful owners of the city and of everything belonging to it, the
conquest of a town by a republic implied the political extinction of
that town and the disfranchisement of its inhabitants in favour of the
conquerors.

187Florence at this epoch still called itself a Republic; and of all
Italian commonwealths it was by far the most democratic. Its history,
unlike that of Venice, had been the history of continual and brusque
changes, resulting in the destruction of the old nobility, in the
equalisation of the burghers, and in the formation of a new aristocracy
of wealth. Prom this class of _bourgeois_ nobles sprang the Medici,
who, by careful manipulation of the State machinery, by the creation of
a powerful party devoted to their interests, by flattery of the people,
by corruption, by taxation, and by constant scheming, raised themselves
to the first place in the commonwealth, and became its virtual masters.
In the year 1492 Lorenzo de' Medici, the most remarkable chief of this
despotic family, died, bequeathing his supremacy in the Republic to a
son of marked incompetence.

Since the Pontificate of Nicholas V. the See of Rome had entered upon a
new period of existence. The Popes no longer dreaded to reside in Rome,
but were bent upon making the metropolis of Christendom both splendid
as a seat of art and learning, and also potent as the capital of a
secular kingdom. Though their fiefs in Romagna and the March were still
held but loosely, though their provinces swarmed with petty despots who
defied the Papal authority, and though the princely Roman houses of
Colonna and Orsini were still strong enough to terrorise the Holy
Father in the Vatican, it was now clear that the Papal See must in the
end get the better of its adversaries, and consolidate itself into a
first-rate Power. The internal spirit of the Papacy at this time
corresponded to its external policy. It was thoroughly secularised by a
series of worldly and vicious pontiffs, who had clean forgotten what
their title, Vicar of Christ, implied. They consistently used their
religious prestige to enforce their secular authority, while by their
temporal power they 188caused their religious claims to be respected.
Corrupt and shameless, they indulged themselves in every vice, openly
acknowledged their children, and turned Italy upside down in order to
establish favourites and bastards in the principalities they seized as
spoils of war.

The kingdom of Naples differed from any other state of Italy. Subject
continually to foreign rulers since the decay of the Greek Empire,
governed in succession by the Normans, the Hohenstauffens, and the
House of Anjou, it had never enjoyed the real independence, or the free
institutions, of the northern provinces; nor had it been Italianised in
the same sense as the rest of the peninsula. Despotism, which assumed
so many forms in Italy, was here neither the tyranny of a noble house,
nor the masked autocracy of a burgher, nor yet the forceful sway of a
condottiere. It had a dynastic character, resembling the monarchy of
one of the great European nations, but modified by the peculiar
conditions of Italian statecraft. Owing to this dynastic and
monarchical complexion of the Neapolitan kingdom, semi-feudal customs
flourished in the south far more than in the north of Italy. The barons
were more powerful; and the destinies of the Regno often turned upon
their feuds and quarrels with the Crown. At the same time the
Neapolitan despots shared the uneasy circumstances of all Italian
potentates, owing to the uncertainty of their tenure, both as
conquerors and aliens, and also as the nominal vassals of the Holy See.
The rights of suzerainty which the Normans had yielded to the Papacy
over their southern conquests, and which the Popes had arbitrarily
exercised in favour of the Angevine princes, proved a constant source
of peril to the rest of Italy by rendering the succession to the crown
of Naples doubtful. On the extinction of the Angevine line, however,
the throne was occupied by a prince who had no valid title but that of
the 189sword to its possession. Alfonso of Aragon conquered Naples in
1442, and neglecting his hereditary dominion, settled in his Italian
capital. Possessed with the enthusiasm for literature which was then
the ruling passion of the Italians, and very liberal to men of
learning, Alfonso won for himself the surname of Magnanimous. On his
death, in 1458, he bequeathed his Spanish kingdom, together with Sicily
and Sardinia, to his brother, and left the fruits of his Italian
conquest to his bastard, Ferdinand. This Ferdinand, whose birth was
buried in profound obscurity, was the reigning sovereign in the year
1492. Of a cruel and sombre temperament, traitorous and tyrannical,
Ferdinand was hated by his subjects as much as Alfonso had been loved.
He possessed, however, to a remarkable degree, the qualities which at
that epoch constituted a consummate statesman; and though the history
of his reign is the history of plots and conspiracies, of judicial
murders and forcible assassinations, of famines produced by iniquitous
taxation, and of every kind of diabolical tyranny, Ferdinand contrived
to hold his own, in the teeth of a rebellious baronage or a maddened
population. His political sagacity amounted almost to a prophetic
instinct in the last years of his life, when he became aware that the
old order was breaking up in Italy, and had cause to dread that Charles
VIII. of France would prove his title to the kingdom of Naples by force
of arms.[27]

 [27] Charles claimed under the will of René of Anjou, who in turn
 claimed under the will of Joan II.

Such were the component parts of the Italian body politic, with the
addition of numerous petty principalities and powers, adhering more or
less consistently to one or other of the greater States. The whole
complex machine was bound together by no sense of common interest,
animated by no common purpose, amenable to no central authority. Even
190such community of feeling as one spoken language gives, was lacking.
And yet Italy distinguished herself clearly from the rest of Europe,
not merely as a geographical fact, but also as a people intellectually
and spiritually one. The rapid rise of humanism had aided in producing
this national self-consciousness. Every State and every city was
absorbed in the recovery of culture and in the development of art and
literature. Far in advance of the other European nations, the Italians
regarded the rest of the world as barbarous, priding themselves the
while, in spite of mutual jealousies and hatreds, on their Italic
civilisation. They were enormously wealthy. The resources of the Papal
treasury, the private fortunes of the Florentine bankers, the riches of
the Venetian merchants might have purchased all that France or Germany
possessed of value. The single Duchy of Milan yielded to its masters
700,000 golden florins of revenue, according to the computation of De
Comines. In default of a confederative system, the several States were
held in equilibrium by diplomacy. By far the most important people,
next to the despots and the captains of adventure, were ambassadors and
orators. War itself had become a matter of arrangement, bargain, and
diplomacy. The game of stratagem was played by generals who had been
friends yesterday and might be friends again to-morrow, with troops who
felt no loyalty whatever for the standards under which they listed. To
avoid slaughter and to achieve the ends of warfare by parade and
demonstration was the interest of every one concerned. Looking back
upon Italy of the fifteenth century, taking account of her religious
deadness and moral corruption, estimating the absence of political
vigour in the republics and the noxious tyranny of the despots,
analysing her lack of national spirit, and comparing her splendid life
of cultivated ease with the want of martial energy, we can see but too
plainly that 191contact with a simpler and stronger people could not
but produce a terrible catastrophe. The Italians themselves, however,
were far from comprehending this. Centuries of undisturbed internal
intrigue had accustomed them to play the game of forfeits with each
other, and nothing warned them that the time was come at which
diplomacy, finesse, and craft would stand them in ill stead against
rapacious conquerors.

The storm which began to gather over Italy in the year 1492 had its
first beginning in the North. Lodovico Sforza's position in the Duchy
of Milan was becoming every day more difficult, when a slight and to
all appearances insignificant incident converted his apprehension of
danger into panic. It was customary for the States of Italy to
congratulate a new Pope on his election by their ambassadors; and this
ceremony had now to be performed for Roderigo Borgia. Lodovico proposed
that his envoys should go to Rome together with those of Venice,
Naples, and Florence; but Piero de' Medici, whose vanity made him wish
to send an embassy in his own name, contrived that Lodovico's proposal
should be rejected both by Florence and the King of Naples. So strained
was the situation of Italian affairs that Lodovico saw in this repulse
a menace to his own usurped authority. Feeling himself isolated among
the princes of his country, rebuffed by the Medici, and coldly treated
by the King of Naples, he turned in his anxiety to France, and advised
the young king, Charles VIII., to make good his claim upon the Regno.
It was a bold move to bring the foreigner thus into Italy; and even
Lodovico, who prided himself upon his sagacity, could not see how
things would end. He thought his situation so hazardous, however, that
any change must be for the better. Moreover, a French invasion of
Naples would tie the hands of his natural foe, King Ferdinand, whose
granddaughter, 192Isabella of Aragon, had married Giovanni Galeazzo
Sforza, and was now the rightful Duchess of Milan. When the Florentine
ambassador at Milan asked him how he had the courage to expose Italy to
such peril, his reply betrayed the egotism of his policy: 'You talk to
me of Italy; but when have I looked Italy in the face? No one ever gave
a thought to my affairs. I have, therefore, had to give them such
security as I could.'

Charles VIII. was young, light-brained, romantic, and ruled by
_parvenus_, who had an interest in disturbing the old order of the
monarchy. He lent a willing ear to Lodovico's invitation, backed as
this was by the eloquence and passion of numerous Italian refugees and
exiles. Against the advice of his more prudent counsellors, he taxed
all the resources of his kingdom, and concluded treaties on
disadvantageous terms with England, Germany, and Spain, in order that
he might be able to concentrate all his attention upon the Italian
expedition. At the end of the year 1493, it was known that the invasion
was resolved upon. Gentile Becchi, the Florentine envoy at the Court of
France, wrote to Piero de' Medici: 'If the King succeeds, it is all
over with Italy—_tutta a bordello._' The extraordinary selfishness of
the several Italian States at this critical moment deserves to be
noticed. The Venetians, as Paolo Antonio Soderini described them to
Piero de' Medici, 'are of opinion that to keep quiet, and to see other
potentates of Italy spending and suffering, cannot but be to their
advantage. They trust no one, and feel sure they have enough money to
be able at any moment to raise sufficient troops, and so to guide
events according to their inclinations.' As the invasion was directed
against Naples, Ferdinand of Aragon displayed the acutest sense of the
situation. 'Frenchmen,' he exclaimed, in what appears like a prophetic
passion when contrasted with the cold indifference of others no less
193really menaced, 'have never come into Italy without inflicting ruin;
and this invasion, if rightly considered, cannot but bring universal
ruin, although it seems to menace us alone.' In his agony Ferdinand
applied to Alexander VI. But the Pope looked coldly upon him, because
the King of Naples, with rare perspicacity, had predicted that his
elevation to the Papacy would prove disastrous to Christendom.
Alexander preferred to ally himself with Venice and Milan. Upon this
Ferdinand wrote as follows: 'It seems fated that the Popes should leave
no peace in Italy. We are compelled to fight; but the Duke of Bari
(_i.e._ Lodovico Sforza) should think what may ensue from the tumult he
is stirring up. He who raises this wind will not be able to lay the
tempest when he likes. Let him look to the past, and he will see how
every time that our internal quarrels have brought Powers from beyond
the Alps into Italy, these have oppressed and lorded over her.'

Terribly verified as these words were destined to be,—and they were no
less prophetic in their political sagacity than Savonarola's prediction
of the Sword and bloody Scourge,—it was now too late to avert the
coming ruin. On March 1, 1494, Charles was with his army at Lyons.
Early in September he had crossed the pass of Mont Genêvre and taken up
his quarters in the town of Asti. There is no need to describe in
detail the holiday march of the French troops through Lombardy,
Tuscany, and Rome, until, without having struck a blow of consequence,
the gates of Naples opened to receive the conqueror upon February 22,
1495. Philippe de Comines, who parted from the King at Asti and passed
the winter as his envoy at Venice, has more than once recorded his
belief that nothing but the direct interposition of Providence could
have brought so mad an expedition to so successful a conclusion. 'Dieu
monstroit conduire l'entreprise,' 194No sooner, however, was Charles
installed in Naples than the States of Italy began to combine against
him. Lodovico Sforza had availed himself of the general confusion
consequent upon the first appearance of the French, to poison his
nephew. He was, therefore, now the titular, as well as virtual, Lord of
Milan. So far, he had achieved what he desired, and had no further need
of Charles. The overtures he now made to the Venetians and the Pope
terminated in a League between these Powers for the expulsion of the
French from Italy. Germany and Spain entered into the same alliance;
and De Comines, finding himself treated with marked coldness by the
Signory of Venice, despatched a courier to warn Charles in Naples of
the coming danger. After a stay of only fifty days in his new capital,
the French King hurried northward. Moving quickly through the Papal
States and Tuscany, he engaged his troops in the passes of the
Apennines near Pontremoli, and on July 5, 1495, took up his quarters in
the village of Fornovo. De Comines reckons that his whole fighting
force at this time did not exceed 9,000 men, with fourteen pieces of
artillery. Against him at the opening of the valley was the army of the
League, numbering some 35,000 men, of whom three-fourths were supplied
by Venice, the rest by Lodovico Sforza and the German Emperor.
Francesco Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, was the general of the Venetian
forces; and on him, therefore, fell the real responsibility of the
battle.

De Comines remarks on the imprudence of the allies, who allowed Charles
to advance as far as Fornovo, when it was their obvious policy to have
established themselves in the village and so have caught the French
troops in a trap. It was a Sunday when the French marched down upon
Fornovo. Before them spread the plain of Lombardy, and beyond it the
white crests of the Alps. 'We were,' says De Comines, 195'in a valley
between two little mountain flanks, and in that valley ran a river
which could easily be forded on foot, except when it is swelled with
sudden rains. The whole valley was a bed of gravel and big stones, very
difficult for horses, about a quarter of a league in breadth, and on
the right bank lodged our enemies.' Any one who has visited Fornovo can
understand the situation of the two armies. Charles occupied the
village on the right bank of the Taro. On the same bank, extending
downward toward the plain, lay the host of the allies; and in order
that Charles should escape them, it was necessary that he should cross
the Taro, just below its junction with the Ceno, and reach Lombardy by
marching in a parallel line with his foes.

All through the night of Sunday it thundered and rained incessantly; so
that on the Monday morning the Taro was considerably swollen. At seven
o'clock the King sent for De Comines, who found him already armed and
mounted on the finest horse he had ever seen. The name of this charger
was _Savoy_. He was black, one-eyed, and of middling height; and to his
great courage, as we shall see, Charles owed life upon that day. The
French army, ready for the march, now took to the gravelly bed of the
Taro, passing the river at a distance of about a quarter of a league
from the allies. As the French left Fornovo, the light cavalry of their
enemies entered the village and began to attack the baggage. At the
same time the Marquis of Mantua, with the flower of his men-at-arms,
crossed the Taro and harassed the rear of the French host; while raids
from the right bank to the left were constantly being made by
sharpshooters and flying squadrons. 'At this moment,' says De Comines,
'not a single man of us could have escaped if our ranks had once been
broken.' The French army was divided into three main bodies. The
vanguard consisted of some 350 men-at-arms, 1963000 Switzers, 300
archers of the Guard, a few mounted crossbow-men, and the artillery.
Next came the Battle, and after this the rearguard. At the time when
the Marquis of Mantua made his attack, the French rearguard had not yet
crossed the river. Charles quitted the van, put himself at the head of
his chivalry, and charged the Italian horsemen, driving them back, some
to the village and others to their camp. De Comines observes, that had
the Italian knights been supported in this passage of arms by the light
cavalry of the Venetian force, called Stradiots, the French must have
been outnumbered, thrown into confusion, and defeated. As it was, these
Stradiots were engaged in plundering the baggage of the French; and the
Italians, accustomed to bloodless encounters, did not venture, in spite
of their immense superiority of numbers, to renew the charge. In the
pursuit of Gonzaga's horsemen Charles outstripped his staff, and was
left almost alone to grapple with a little band of mounted foemen. It
was here that his noble horse, Savoy, saved his person by plunging and
charging till assistance came up from the French, and enabled the King
to regain his van.

It is incredible, considering the nature of the ground and the number
of the troops engaged, that the allies should not have returned to the
attack and have made the passage of the French into the plain
impossible. De Comines, however, assures us that the actual engagement
only lasted a quarter of an hour, and the pursuit of the Italians three
quarters of an hour. After they had once resolved to fly, they threw
away their lances and betook themselves to Reggio and Parma. So
complete was their discomfiture, that De Comines gravely blames the
want of military genius and adventure in the French host. If, instead
of advancing along the left bank of the Taro and there taking up his
quarters for the 197night, Charles had recrossed the stream and pursued
the army of the allies, he would have had the whole of Lombardy at his
discretion. As it was, the French army encamped not far from the scene
of the action in great discomfort and anxiety. De Comines had to
bivouac in a vineyard, without even a mantle to wrap round him, having
lent his cloak to the King in the morning; and as it had been pouring
all day, the ground could not have afforded very luxurious quarters.
The same extraordinary luck which had attended the French in their
whole expedition, now favoured their retreat; and the same
pusillanimity which the allies had shown at Fornovo, prevented them
from re-forming and engaging with the army of Charles upon the plain.
One hour before daybreak on Tuesday morning, the French broke up their
camp and succeeded in clearing the valley. That night they lodged at
Fiorenzuola, the next at Piacenza, and so on; till on the eighth day
they arrived at Asti without having been so much as incommoded by the
army of the allies in their rear.

Although the field of Fornovo was in reality so disgraceful to the
Italians, they reckoned it a victory upon the technical pretence that
the camp and baggage of the French had been seized. Illuminations and
rejoicings made the piazza of S. Mark in Venice gay, and Francesco da
Gonzaga had the glorious Madonna della Vittoria painted for him by
Mantegna, in commemoration of what ought only to have been remembered
with shame.

A fitting conclusion to this sketch, connecting its close with the
commencement, may be found in some remarks upon the manner of warfare
to which the Italians of the Renaissance had become accustomed, and
which proved so futile on the field of Fornovo. During the middle ages,
and in the days of the Communes, the whole male population of 198Italy
had fought light-armed on foot. Merchant and artisan left the
counting-house and the workshop, took shield and pike, and sallied
forth to attack the barons in their castles, or to meet the Emperor's
troops upon the field. It was with this national militia that the
citizens of Florence freed their _Contado_ of the nobles, and the
burghers of Lombardy gained the battle of Legnano. In course of time,
by a process of change which it is not very easy to trace, heavily
armed cavalry began to take the place of infantry in mediæval warfare.
Men-at-arms, as they were called, encased from head to foot in iron,
and mounted upon chargers no less solidly caparisoned, drove the
foot-soldiers before them at the points of their long lances. Nowhere
in Italy do they seem to have met with the fierce resistance which the
bears of the Swiss Oberland and the bulls of Uri offered to the knights
of Burgundy. No Tuscan Arnold von Winkelried clasped a dozen lances to
his bosom that the foeman's ranks might thus be broken at the cost of
his own life; nor did it occur to the Italian burghers to meet the
charge of the horsemen with squares protected by bristling spears. They
seem, on the contrary, to have abandoned military service with the
readiness of men whose energies were already absorbed in the affairs of
peace. To become a practised and efficient man-at-arms required long
training and a life's devotion. So much time the burghers of the free
towns could not spare to military service, while the petty nobles were
only too glad to devote themselves to so honourable a calling. Thus it
came to pass that a class of professional fighting-men was gradually
formed in Italy, whose services the burghers and the princes bought,
and by whom the wars of the peninsula were regularly farmed by
contract. Wealth and luxury in the great cities continued to increase;
and as the burghers grew more comfortable, they 199were less inclined
to take the field in their own persons, and more disposed to vote large
sums of money for the purchase of necessary aid. At the same time this
system suited the despots, since it spared them the peril of arming
their own subjects, while they taxed them to pay the services of
foreign captains. War thus became a commerce. Romagna, the Marches of
Ancona, and other parts of the Papal dominions, supplied a number of
petty nobles whose whole business in life it was to form companies of
trained horsemen, and with these bands to hire themselves out to the
republics and the despots. Gain was the sole purpose of these captains.
They sold their service to the highest bidder, fighting irrespectively
of principle or patriotism, and passing with the coldest equanimity
from the camp of one master to that of his worst foe. It was impossible
that true military spirit should survive this prostitution of the art
of war. A species of mock warfare prevailed in Italy. Battles were
fought with a view to booty more than victory; prisoners were taken for
the sake of ransom; bloodshed was carefully avoided, for the men who
fought on either side in any pitched field had been comrades with their
present foemen in the last encounter, and who could tell how soon the
general of the one host might not need his rival's troops to recruit
his own ranks? Like every genuine institution of the Italian
Renaissance, warfare was thus a work of fine art, a masterpiece of
intellectual subtlety; and like the Renaissance itself, this peculiar
form of warfare was essentially transitional. The cannon and the musket
were already in use; and it only required one blast of gunpowder to
turn the sham-fight of courtly, traitorous, finessing captains of
adventure into something terribly more real. To men like the Marquis of
Mantua war had been a highly profitable game of skill; to men like the
Maréchal de Gié it 200was a murderous horseplay; and this difference
the Italians were not slow to perceive. When they cast away their
lances at Fornovo, and fled—in spite of their superior numbers—never to
return, one fair-seeming sham of the fifteenth century became a vision
of the past.

201




FLORENCE AND THE MEDICI


Di Firenze in prima si divisono intra loro i nobili, dipoi i nobili e
il popolo, e in ultimo il popolo e la plebe; e molte volte occorse che
una di queste parti rimasa superiore, si divise in due.—MACHIAVELLI.

I

Florence, like all Italian cities, owed her independence to the duel of
the Papacy and Empire. The transference of the imperial authority
beyond the Alps had enabled the burghs of Lombardy and Tuscany to
establish a form of self-government. This government was based upon the
old municipal organisation of duumvirs and decemvirs. It was, in fact,
nothing more or less than a survival from the ancient Roman system. The
proof of this was, that while vindicating their rights as towns, the
free cities never questioned the validity of the imperial title. Even
after the peace of Constance in 1183, when Frederick Barbarossa
acknowledged their autonomy, they received within their walls a supreme
magistrate, with power of life and death and ultimate appeal in all
decisive questions, whose title of Potestà indicated that he
represented the imperial power—Potestas. It was not by the assertion of
any right, so much as by the growth of custom, and by the weakness of
the Emperors, that in course of time each city became a sovereign
State. The theoretical supremacy of the Empire prevented any other
authority from taking the first place in Italy. On the other hand, the
202practical inefficiency of the Emperors to play their part encouraged
the establishment of numerous minor powers amenable to no controlling
discipline.

The free cities derived their strength from industry, and had nothing
in common with the nobles of the surrounding country. Broadly speaking,
the population of the towns included what remained in Italy of the old
Roman people. This Roman stock was nowhere stronger than in Florence
and Venice—Florence defended from barbarian incursions by her mountains
and marshes, Venice by the isolation of her lagoons. The nobles, on the
contrary, were mostly of foreign origin—Germans, Franks, and Lombards,
who had established themselves as feudal lords in castles apart from
the cities. The force which the burghs acquired as industrial
communities was soon turned against these nobles. The larger cities,
like Milan and Florence, began to make war upon the lords of castles,
and to absorb into their own territory the small towns and villages
around them. Thus in the social economy of the Italians there were two
antagonistic elements ready to range themselves beneath any banners
that should give the form of legitimate warfare to their mutual
hostility. It was the policy of the Church in the twelfth century to
support the cause of the cities, using them as a weapon against the
Empire, and stimulating the growing ambition of the burghers. In this
way Italy came to be divided into the two world-famous factions known
as Guelf and Ghibelline. The struggle between Guelf and Ghibelline was
the struggle of the Papacy for the depression of the Empire, the
struggle of the great burghs face to face with feudalism, the struggle
of the old Italie stock enclosed in cities with the foreign nobles
established in fortresses. When the Church had finally triumphed by the
extirpation of the House of Hohenstaufen, this conflict of Guelf and
Ghibelline was really ended. Until 203the reign of Charles V. no
Emperor interfered to any purpose in Italian affairs. At the same time
the Popes ceased to wield a formidable power. Having won the battle by
calling in the French, they suffered the consequences of this policy by
losing their hold on Italy during the long period of their exile at
Avignon. The Italians, left without either Pope or Emperor, were free
to pursue their course of internal development, and to prosecute their
quarrels among themselves. But though the names of Guelf and Ghibelline
lost their old significance after the year 1266 (the date of King
Manfred's death), these two factions had so divided Italy that they
continued to play a prominent part in her annals. Guelf still meant
constitutional autonomy, meant the burgher as against the noble, meant
industry as opposed to feudal lordship. Ghibelline meant the rule of
the few over the many, meant tyranny, meant the interest of the noble
as against the merchant and the citizen. These broad distinctions must
be borne in mind, if we seek to understand how it was that a city like
Florence continued to be governed by parties, the European force of
which had passed away.

II

Florence first rose into importance during the papacy of Innocent III.
Up to this date she had been a town of second-rate distinction even in
Tuscany. Pisa was more powerful by arms and commerce. Lucca was the old
seat of the dukes and marquises of Tuscany. But between the years 1200
and 1250 Florence assumed the place she was to hold thenceforward, by
heading the league of Tuscan cities formed to support the Guelf party
against the Ghibellines. Formally adopting the Guelf cause, the
Florentines made themselves the champions of municipal liberty in
Central 204Italy; and while they declared war against the Ghibelline
cities, they endeavoured to stamp out the very name of noble in their
State. It is not needful to describe the varying fortunes of the Guelfs
and Ghibellines, the burghers and the nobles, during the thirteenth and
the first half of the fourteenth centuries. Suffice it to say that
through all the vicissitudes of that stormy period the name Guelf
became more and more associated with republican freedom in Florence. At
last, after the final triumph of that party in 1253, the Guelfs
remained victors in the city. Associating the glory of their
independence with Guelf principles, the citizens of Florence
perpetuated within their State a faction that, in its turn, was
destined to prove perilous to liberty.

When it became clear that the republic was to rule itself henceforth
untrammelled by imperial interference, the people divided themselves
into six districts, and chose for each district two Ancients, who
administered the government in concert with the Potestà and the Captain
of the People. The Ancients were a relic of the old Roman municipal
organisation. The Potestà who was invariably a noble foreigner selected
by the people, represented the extinct imperial right, and exercised
the power of life and death within the city. The Captain of the People,
who was also a foreigner, headed the burghers in their military
capacity, for at that period the troops were levied from the citizens
themselves in twenty companies. The body of the citizens, or the
_popolo_, were ultimately sovereigns in the State. Assembled under the
banners of their several companies, they formed a _parlamento_ for
delegating their own power to each successive government. Their
representatives, again, arranged in two councils, called the Council of
the People and the Council of the Commune, under the presidency of the
Captain of the People and the Potestà, ratified the measures which had
previously been proposed and carried by 205the executive authority or
Signoria. Under this simple State system the Florentines placed
themselves at the head of the Tuscan League, fought the battles of the
Church, asserted their sovereignty by issuing the golden florin of the
republic, and flourished until 1266.

III

In that year an important change was effected in the Constitution. The
whole population of Florence consisted, on the one hand, of nobles or
Grandi, as they were called in Tuscany, and on the other hand of
working people. The latter, divided into traders and handicraftsmen,
were distributed in guilds called Arti; and at that time there were
seven Greater and five Lesser Arti, the most influential of all being
the Guild of the Wool Merchants. These guilds had their halls for
meeting, their colleges of chief officers, their heads, called Consoli
or Priors, and their flags. In 1266 it was decided that the
administration of the commonwealth should be placed simply and wholly
in the hands of the Arti, and the Priors of these industrial companies
became the lords or Signory of Florence. No inhabitant of the city who
had not enrolled himself as a craftsman in one of the guilds could
exercise any function of burghership. To be _scioperato_, or without
industry, was to be without power, without rank or place of honour in
the State. The revolution which placed the Arts at the head of the
republic had the practical effect of excluding the Grandi altogether
from the government. Violent efforts were made by these noble families,
potent through their territorial possessions and foreign connections,
and trained from boyhood in the use of arms, to recover the place from
which the new laws thrust them: but their menacing attitude, instead of
intimidating the burghers, roused their anger and drove them to the
passing of still more stringent laws. In 1293, after the 206Ghibellines
had been defeated in the great battle of Campaldino, a series of severe
enactments, called the Ordinances of Justice, were decreed against the
unruly Grandi. All civic rights were taken from them; the severest
penalties were attached to their slightest infringement of municipal
law; their titles to land were limited; the privilege of living within
the city walls was allowed them only under galling restrictions; and,
last not least, a supreme magistrate, named the Gonfalonier of Justice,
was created for the special purpose of watching them and carrying out
the penal code against them. Henceforward Florence was governed
exclusively by merchants and artisans. The Grandi hastened to enrol
themselves in the guilds, exchanging their former titles and dignities
for the solid privilege of burghership. The exact parallel to this
industrial constitution for a commonwealth, carrying on wars with
emperors and princes, holding haughty captains in its pay, and
dictating laws to subject cities, cannot, I think, be elsewhere found
in history. It is as unique as the Florence of Dante and Giotto is
unique. While the people was guarding itself thus stringently against
the Grandi, a separate body was created for the special purpose of
extirpating the Ghibellines. A permanent committee of vigilance, called
the College or the Captains of the Guelf Party, was established. It was
their function to administer the forfeited possessions of Ghibelline
rebels, to hunt out suspected citizens, to prosecute them for
Ghibellinism, to judge them, and to punish them as traitors to the
commonwealth. This body, like a little State within the State, proved
formidable to the republic itself through the unlimited and undefined
sway it exercised over burghers whom it chose to tax with treason. In
course of time it became the oligarchical element within the Florentine
democracy, and threatened to change the free constitution of the city
into a government conducted by a few powerful families.

207 There is no need to dwell in detail on the internal difficulties of
Florence during the first half of the fourteenth century. Two main
circumstances, however, require to be briefly noticed. These are (i)
the contest of the Blacks and Whites, so famous through the part played
in it by Dante; and (ii) the tyranny of the Duke of Athens, Walter de
Brienne. The feuds of the Blacks and Whites broke up the city into
factions, and produced such anarchy that at last it was found necessary
to place the republic under the protection of foreign potentates.
Charles of Valois was first chosen, and after him the Duke of Athens,
who took up his residence in the city. Entrusted with dictatorial
authority, he used his power to form a military despotism. Though his
reign of violence lasted rather less than a year, it bore important
fruits; for the tyrant, seeking to support himself upon the favour of
the common people, gave political power to the Lesser Arts at the
expense of the Greater, and confused the old State-system by enlarging
the democracy. The net result of these events for Florence was, first,
that the city became habituated to rancorous party-strife, involving
exiles and proscriptions; and, secondly, that it lost its primitive
social hierarchy of classes.

IV

After the Guelfs had conquered the Ghibellines, and the people had
absorbed the Grandi in their guilds, the next chapter in the troubled
history of Florence was the division of the Popolo against itself.
Civil strife now declared itself as a conflict between labour and
capital. The members of the Lesser Arts, craftsmen who plied trades
subordinate to those of the Greater Arts, rose up against their social
and political superiors, demanding a larger share in the government, a
more equal distribution of profits, higher wages, and privileges
208that should place them on an absolute equality with the wealthy
merchants. It was in the year 1378 that the proletariate broke out into
rebellion. Previous events had prepared the way for this revolt. First
of all, the republic had been democratised through the destruction of
the Grandi and through the popular policy pursued to gain his own ends
by the Duke of Athens. Secondly, society had been shaken to its very
foundation by the great plague of 1348. Both Boccaccio and Matteo
Villani draw lively pictures of the relaxed morality and loss of order
consequent upon this terrible disaster; nor had thirty years sufficed
to restore their relative position to grades and ranks confounded by an
overwhelming calamity. We may therefore reckon the great plague of 1348
among the causes which produced the anarchy of 1378. Rising in a mass
to claim their privileges, the artisans ejected the Signory from the
Public Palace, and for awhile Florence was at the mercy of the mob. It
is worthy of notice that the Medici, whose name is scarcely known
before this epoch, now came for one moment to the front. Salvestro de'
Medici was Gonfalonier of Justice at the time when the tumult first
broke out. He followed the faction of the handicraftsmen, and became
the hero of the day. I cannot discover that he did more than extend a
sort of passive protection to their cause. Yet there is no doubt that
the attachment of the working classes to the House of Medici dates from
this period. The rebellion of 1378 is known in Florentine history as
the Tumult of the Ciompi. The name Ciompi strictly means the
Wool-Carders. One set of operatives in the city, and that the largest,
gave its title to the whole body of the labourers. For some months
these craftsmen governed the republic, appointing their own Signory and
passing laws in their own interest; but, as is usual, the proletariate
found itself incapable of sustained government. The ambition and
209discontent of the Ciompi foamed themselves away, and industrious
working men began to see that trade was languishing and credit on the
wane. By their own act at last they restored the government to the
Priors of the Greater Arti. Still the movement had not been without
grave consequences. It completed the levelling of classes, which had
been steadily advancing from the first in Florence. After the Ciompi
riot there was no longer not only any distinction between noble and
burgher, but the distinction between greater and lesser guilds was
practically swept away. The classes, parties, and degrees in the
republic were so broken up, ground down, and mingled, that thenceforth
the true source of power in the State was wealth combined with personal
ability. In other words, the proper political conditions had been
formed for unscrupulous adventurers. Florence had become a democracy
without social organisation, which might fall a prey to oligarchs or
despots. What remained of deeply rooted feuds or factions—animosities
against the Grandi, hatred for the Ghibellines, jealousy of labour and
capital—offered so many points of leverage for stirring the passions of
the people and for covering personal ambition with a cloak of public
zeal. The time was come for the Albizzi to attempt an oligarchy, and
for the Medici to begin the enslavement of the State.

V

The Constitution of Florence offered many points of weakness to the
attacks of such intriguers. In the first place it was in its origin not
a political but an industrial organisation—a simple group of guilds
invested with the sovereign authority. Its two most powerful engines,
the Gonfalonier of Justice and the Guelf College, had been formed, not
with a view to the preservation of the government, but with the
210purpose of quelling the nobles and excluding a detested faction. It
had no permanent head, like the Doge of Venice; no fixed senate like
the Venetian Grand Council; its chief magistrates, the Signory, were
elected for short periods of two months, and their mode of election was
open to the gravest criticism. Supposed to be chosen by lot, they were
really selected from lists drawn up by the factions in power from time
to time. These factions contrived to exclude the names of all but their
adherents from the bags, or _borse_, in which the burghers eligible for
election had to be inscribed. Furthermore, it was not possible for this
shifting Signory to conduct affairs requiring sustained effort and
secret deliberation; therefore recourse was being continually had to
dictatorial Commissions. The people, summoned in parliament upon the
Great Square, were asked to confer plenipotentiary authority upon a
committee called _Balia_, who proceeded to do what they chose in the
State, and who retained power after the emergency for which they were
created passed away. The same instability in the supreme magistracy led
to the appointment of special commissioners for war, and special
councils, or _Pratiche_, for the management of each department. Such
supplementary commissions not only proved the weakness of the central
authority, but they were always liable to be made the instruments of
party warfare. The Guelf College was another and a different source of
danger to the State. Not acting under the control of the Signory, but
using its own initiative, this powerful body could proscribe and punish
burghers on the mere suspicion of Ghibellinism. Though the Ghibelline
faction had become an empty name, the Guelf College excluded from the
franchise all and every whom they chose on any pretext to admonish.
Under this mild phrase, _to admonish_, was concealed a cruel exercise
of tyranny—it meant to warn a man that he was suspected of treason, and
that he had better relinquish the 211exercise of his burghership. By
free use of this engine of Admonition, the Guelf College rendered their
enemies voiceless in the State, and were able to pack the Signory and
the councils with their own creatures. Another important defect in the
Florentine Constitution was the method of imposing taxes. This was done
by no regular system. The party in power made what estimate it chose of
a man's capacity to bear taxation, and called upon him for
extraordinary loans. In this way citizens were frequently driven into
bankruptcy and exile; and since to be a debtor to the State deprived a
burgher of his civic rights, severe taxation was one of the best ways
of silencing and neutralising a dissentient.

I have enumerated these several causes of weakness in the Florentine
State-system, partly because they show how irregularly the Constitution
had been formed by the patching and extension of a simple industrial
machine to suit the needs of a great commonwealth; partly because it
was through these defects that the democracy merged gradually into a
despotism. The art of the Medici consisted in a scientific
comprehension of these very imperfections, a methodic use of them for
their own purposes, and a steady opposition to any attempts made to
substitute a stricter system. The Florentines had determined to be an
industrial community, governing themselves on the co-operative
principle, dividing profits, sharing losses, and exposing their
magistrates to rigid scrutiny. All this in theory was excellent. Had
they remained an unambitious and peaceful commonwealth, engaged in the
wool and silk trade, it might have answered. Modern Europe might have
admired the model of a communistic and commercial democracy. But when
they engaged in aggressive wars, and sought to enslave sister-cities
like Pisa and Lucca, it was soon found that their simple trading
constitution would not serve. They 212had to piece it out with
subordinate machinery, cumbrous, difficult to manage, ill-adapted to
the original structure. Each limb of this subordinate machinery,
moreover, was a _point d'appui_ for insidious and self-seeking party
leaders.

Florence, in the middle of the fourteenth century, was a vast beehive
of industry. Distinctions of rank among burghers, qualified to vote and
hold office, were theoretically unknown. Highly educated men, of more
than princely wealth, spent their time in shops and counting-houses,
and trained their sons to follow trades. Military service at this
period was abandoned by the citizens; they preferred to pay mercenary
troops for the conduct of their wars. Nor was there, as in Venice, any
outlet for their energies upon the seas. Florence had no navy, no great
port—she only kept a small fleet for the protection of her commerce.
Thus the vigour of the commonwealth was concentrated on itself; while
the influence of the citizens, through their affiliated trading-houses,
correspondents, and agents, extended like a network over Europe. In a
community of this kind it was natural that wealth—rank and titles being
absent—should alone confer distinction. Accordingly we find that out of
the very bosom of the people a new plutocratic aristocracy begins to
rise. The Grandi are no more; but certain families achieve distinction
by their riches, their numbers, their high spirit, and their ancient
place of honour in the State. These nobles of the purse obtained the
name of _Popolani Nobili_; and it was they who now began to play at
high stakes for the supreme power. In all the subsequent vicissitudes
of Florence every change takes place by intrigue and by clever
manipulation of the political machine. Recourse is rarely had to
violence of any kind, and the leaders of revolutions are men of the
yard-measure, never of the sword. The despotism to which the republic
eventually succumbed was no less commercial than the democracy had
213been. Florence in the days of her slavery remained a _Popolo_.

VI

The opening of the second half of the fourteenth century had been
signalised by the feuds of two great houses, both risen from the
people. These were the Albizzi and the Ricci. At this epoch there had
been a formal closing of the lists of burghers;—henceforth no new
families who might settle in the city could claim the franchise, vote
in the assemblies, or hold magistracies. The Guelf College used their
old engine of admonition to persecute _novi homines_, whom they dreaded
as opponents. At the head of this formidable organisation the Albizzi
placed themselves, and worked it with such skill that they succeeded in
driving the Ricci out of all participation in the government. The
tumult of the Ciompi formed but an episode in their career toward
oligarchy; indeed, that revolution only rendered the political material
of the Florentine republic more plastic in the hands of intriguers, by
removing the last vestiges of class distinctions and by confusing the
old parties of the State.

When the Florentines in 1387 engaged in their long duel with Gian
Galeazzo Visconti, the difficulty of conducting this war without some
permanent central authority still further confirmed the power of the
rising oligarchs. The Albizzi became daily more autocratic, until in
1393 their chief, Maso degli Albizzi, a man of strong will and prudent
policy, was chosen Gonfalonier of Justice. Assuming the sway of a
dictator he revised the list of burghers capable of holding office,
struck out the private opponents of his house, and excluded all names
but those of powerful families who were well affected towards an
aristocratic government. The great house of the Alberti were exiled in
a body, declared rebels, and 214deprived of their possessions, for no
reason except that they seemed dangerous to the Albizzi. It was in vain
that the people murmured against these arbitrary acts. The new rulers
were omnipotent in the Signory, which they packed with their own men,
in the great guilds, and in the Guelf College. All the machinery
invented by the industrial community for its self-management and
self-defence was controlled and manipulated by a close body of
aristocrats, with the Albizzi at their head. It seemed as though
Florence, without any visible alteration in her forms of government,
was rapidly becoming an oligarchy even less open than the Venetian
republic. Meanwhile the affairs of the State were most flourishing. The
strong-handed masters of the city not only held the Duke of Milan in
check, and prevented him from turning Italy into a kingdom; they
furthermore acquired the cities of Pisa, Livorno, Arezzo,
Montepulciano, and Cortona, for Florence, making her the mistress of
all Tuscany, with the exception of Siena, Lucca, and Volterra. Maso
degli Albizzi was the ruling spirit of the commonwealth, spending the
enormous sum of 11,500,000 golden florins on war, raising sumptuous
edifices, protecting the arts, and acting in general like a powerful
and irresponsible prince.

In spite of public prosperity there were signs, however, that this rule
of a few families could not last. Their government was only maintained
by continual revision of the lists of burghers, by elimination of the
disaffected, and by unremitting personal industry. They introduced no
new machinery into the Constitution whereby the people might be
deprived of its titular sovereignty, or their own dictatorship might be
continued with a semblance of legality. Again, they neglected to win
over the new nobles (_nobili popolani_) in a body to their cause; and
thus they were surrounded by rivals ready to spring upon them when a
false step should be made. The 215Albizzi oligarchy was a masterpiece
of art, without any force to sustain it but the craft and energy of its
constructors. It had not grown up, like the Venetian oligarchy, by the
gradual assimilation to itself of all the vigour in the State. It was
bound, sooner or later, to yield to the renascent impulse of democracy
inherent in Florentine institutions.

VII

Maso degli Albizzi died in 1417. He was succeeded in the government by
his old friend, Niccolo da Uzzano, a man of great eloquence and wisdom,
whose single word swayed the councils of the people as he listed.
Together with him acted Maso's son, Rinaldo, a youth of even more
brilliant talents than his father, frank, noble, and high-spirited, but
far less cautious.

The oligarchy, which these two men undertook to manage, had accumulated
against itself the discontent of overtaxed, disfranchised, jealous
burghers. The times, too, were bad. Pursuing the policy of Maso, the
Albizzi engaged the city in a tedious and unsuccessful war with Filippo
Maria Visconti, which cost 350,000 golden florins, and brought no
credit. In order to meet extraordinary expenses they raised new public
loans, thereby depreciating the value of the old Florentine funds. What
was worse, they imposed forced subsidies with grievous inequality upon
the burghers, passing over their friends and adherents, and burdening
their opponents with more than could be borne. This imprudent financial
policy began the ruin of the Albizzi. It caused a clamour in the city
for a new system of more just taxation, which was too powerful to be
resisted. The voice of the people made itself loudly heard; and with
the people on this occasion sided Giovanni de' Medici. This was in
1427.

216It is here that the Medici appear upon that memorable scene where in
the future they are to play the first part. Giovanni de' Medici did not
belong to the same branch of his family as the Salvestro who favoured
the people at the time of the Ciompi Tumult. But he adopted the same
popular policy. To his sons Cosimo and Lorenzo he bequeathed on his
deathbed the rule that they should invariably adhere to the cause of
the multitude, found their influence on that, and avoid the arts of
factious and ambitious leaders. In his own life he had pursued this
course of conduct, acquiring a reputation for civic moderation and
impartiality that endeared him to the people and stood his children in
good stead. Early in his youth Giovanni found himself almost destitute
by reason of the imposts charged upon him by the oligarchs. He
possessed, however, the genius for money-making to a rare degree, and
passed his manhood as a banker, amassing the largest fortune of any
private citizen in Italy. In his old age he devoted himself to the
organisation of his colossal trading business, and abstained, as far as
possible, from political intrigues. Men observed that they rarely met
him in the Public Palace or on the Great Square.

Cosimo de' Medici was thirty years old when his father Giovanni died,
in 1429. During his youth he had devoted all his time and energy to
business, mastering the complicated affairs of Giovanni's
banking-house, and travelling far and wide through Europe to extend its
connections. This education made him a consummate financier; and those
who knew him best were convinced that his ambition was set on great
things. However quietly he might begin, it was clear that he intended
to match himself, as a leader of the plebeians, against the Albizzi.
The foundations he prepared for future action were equally
characteristic of the man, of Florence, and of the age. Commanding the
enormous capital of the Medicean bank he 217contrived, at any sacrifice
of temporary convenience, to lend money to the State for war expenses,
engrossing in his own hands a large portion of the public debt of
Florence. At the same time his agencies in various European capitals
enabled him to keep his own wealth floating far beyond the reach of
foes within the city. A few years of this system ended in so complete a
confusion between Cosimo's trade and the finances of Florence that the
bankruptcy of the Medici, however caused, would have compromised the
credit of the State and the fortunes of the fund-holders. Cosimo, in a
word, made himself necessary to Florence by the wise use of his riches.
Furthermore, he kept his eye upon the list of burghers, lending money
to needy citizens, putting good things in the way of struggling
traders, building up the fortunes of men who were disposed to favour
his party in the State, ruining his opponents by the legitimate process
of commercial competition, and, when occasion offered, introducing new
voters into the Florentine Council by paying off the debts of those who
were disqualified by poverty from using the franchise. While his
capital was continually increasing he lived frugally, and employed his
wealth solely for the consolidation of his political influence. By
these arts Cosimo became formidable to the oligarchs and beloved by the
people. His supporters were numerous, and held together by the bonds of
immediate necessity or personal cupidity. The plebeians and the
merchants were all on his side. The Grandi and the Ammoniti, excluded
from the State by the practices of the Albizzi, had more to hope from
the Medicean party than from the few families who still contrived to
hold the reins of government. It was clear that a conflict to the death
must soon commence between the oligarchy and this new faction.

218

VIII

At last, in 1433, war was declared. The first blow was struck by
Rinaldo degli Albizzi, who put himself in the wrong by attacking a
citizen indispensable to the people at large, and guilty of no
unconstitutional act. On September 7th of that year, a year decisive
for the future destinies of Florence, he summoned Cosimo to the Public
Palace, which he had previously occupied with troops at his command.
There he declared him a rebel to the State, and had him imprisoned in a
little square room in the central tower. The tocsin was sounded; the
people were assembled in parliament upon the piazza. The Albizzi held
the main streets with armed men, and forced the Florentines to place
plenipotentiary power for the administration of the commonwealth at
this crisis in the hands of a Balia, or committee selected by
themselves. It was always thus that acts of high tyranny were effected
in Florence. A show of legality was secured by gaining the compulsory
sanction of the people, driven by soldiery into the public square, and
hastily ordered to recognise the authority of their oppressors.

The bill of indictment against the Medici accused them of sedition in
the year 1378—that is, in the year of the Ciompi Tumult—and of
treasonable practice during the whole course of the Albizzi
administration. It also strove to fix upon them the odium of the
unsuccessful war against the town of Lucca. As soon as the Albizzi had
unmasked their batteries, Lorenzo de' Medici managed to escape from the
city, and took with him his brother Cosimo's children to Venice. Cosimo
remained shut up within the little room called Barberia in Arnolfo's
tower. From that high eagle's nest the sight can range Valdarno far and
wide. Florence with her towers and domes lies below; and the blue peaks
of Carrara close a prospect 219westward than which, with its
villa-jewelled slopes and fertile gardens, there is nought more
beautiful upon the face of earth. The prisoner can have paid but little
heed to this fair landscape. He heard the frequent ringing of the great
bell that called the Florentines to council, the tramp of armed men on
the piazza, the coming and going of the burghers in the palace halls
beneath. On all sides lurked anxiety and fear of death. Each mouthful
he tasted might be poisoned. For many days he partook of only bread and
water, till his gaoler restored his confidence by sharing all his
meals. In this peril he abode twenty-four days. The Albizzi, in concert
with the Balia they had formed, were consulting what they might venture
to do with him. Some voted for his execution. Others feared the popular
favour, and thought that if they killed Cosimo this act would ruin
their own power. The nobler natures among them determined to proceed by
constitutional measures. At last, upon September 29th, it was settled
that Cosimo should be exiled to Padua for ten years. The Medici were
declared Grandi, by way of excluding them from political rights. But
their property remained untouched; and on October 3rd, Cosimo was
released.

On the same day Cosimo took his departure. His journey northward
resembled a triumphant progress. He left Florence a simple burgher; he
entered Venice a powerful prince. Though the Albizzi seemed to have
gained the day, they had really cut away the ground beneath their feet.
They committed the fatal mistake of doing both too much and too
little—too much because they declared war against an innocent man, and
roused the sympathies of the whole people in his behalf; too little,
because they had not the nerve to complete their act by killing him
outright and extirpating his party. Machiavelli, in one of his
profoundest and most cynical critiques, remarks that few men know how
to be thoroughly 220bad with honour to themselves. Their will is evil;
but the grain of good in them—some fear of public opinion, some
repugnance to committing a signal crime—paralyses their arm at the
moment when it ought to have been raised to strike. He instances Gian
Paolo Baglioni's omission to murder Julius II., when that Pope placed
himself within his clutches at Perugia. He might also have instanced
Rinaldo degli Albizzi's refusal to push things to extremities by
murdering Cosimo. It was the combination of despotic violence in the
exile of Cosimo with constitutional moderation in the preservation of
his life, that betrayed the weakness of the oligarchs and restored
confidence to the Medicean party.

IX

In the course of the year 1434 this party began to hold up its head.
Powerful as the Albizzi were, they only retained the government by
artifice; and now they had done a deed which put at nought their former
arts and intrigues. A Signory favourable to the Medici came into
office, and on September 26th, 1434, Rinaldo in his turn was summoned
to the palace and declared a rebel. He strove to raise the forces of
his party, and entered the piazza at the head of eight hundred men. The
menacing attitude of the people, however, made resistance perilous.
Rinaldo disbanded his troops, and placed himself under the protection
of Pope Eugenius IV., who was then resident in Florence. This act of
submission proved that Rinaldo had not the courage or the cruelty to
try the chance of civil war. Whatever his motives may have been, he
lost his hold upon the State beyond recovery. On September 29th, a new
parliament was summoned; on October 2nd, Cosimo was recalled from exile
and the Albizzi were banished. The intercession of the Pope procured
for 221them nothing but the liberty to leave Florence unmolested.
Einaldo turned his back upon the city he had governed, never to set
foot in it again. On October 6th, Cosimo, having passed through Padua,
Ferrara, and Modena like a conqueror, reentered the town amid the
plaudits of the people, and took up his dwelling as an honoured guest
in the Palace of the Republic. The subsequent history of Florence is
the history of his family. In after years the Medici loved to remember
this return of Cosimo. His triumphal reception was painted in fresco on
the walls of their villa at Cajano under the transparent allegory of
Cicero's entrance into Rome.

X

By their brief exile the Medici had gained the credit of injured
innocence, the fame of martyrdom in the popular cause. Their foes had
struck the first blow, and in striking at them had seemed to aim
against the liberties of the republic. The mere failure of their
adversaries to hold the power they had acquired, handed over this power
to the Medici; and the reprisals which the Medici began to take had the
show of justice, not of personal hatred, or petty vengeance. Cosimo was
a true Florentine. He disliked violence, because he knew that blood
spilt cries for blood. His passions, too, were cool and temperate. No
gust of anger, no intoxication of success, destroyed his balance. His
one object, the consolidation of power for his family on the basis of
popular favour, was kept steadily in view; and he would do nothing that
might compromise that end. Yet he was neither generous nor merciful. We
therefore find that from the first moment of his return to Florence he
instituted a system of pitiless and unforgiving persecution against his
old opponents. The Albizzi were banished, root and branch, 222with all
their followers, consigned to lonely and often to unwholesome stations
through the length and breadth of Italy. If they broke the bonds
assigned them, they were forthwith declared traitors and their property
was confiscated. After a long series of years, by merely keeping in
force the first sentence pronounced upon them, Cosimo had the cruel
satisfaction of seeing the whole of that proud oligarchy die out by
slow degrees in the insufferable tedium of solitude and exile. Even the
high-souled Palla degli Strozzi, who had striven to remain neutral, and
whose wealth and talents were devoted to the revival of classical
studies, was proscribed because to Cosimo he seemed too powerful.
Separated from his children, he died in banishment at Padua. In this
way the return of the Medici involved the loss to Florence of some
noble citizens, who might perchance have checked the Medicean tyranny
if they had stayed to guide the State. The plebeians, raised to wealth
and influence by Cosimo before his exile, now took the lead in the
republic. He used these men as catspaws, rarely putting himself forward
or allowing his own name to appear, but pulling the wires of government
in privacy by means of intermediate agents. The Medicean party was
called at first _Puccini_ from a certain Puccio, whose name was better
known in caucus or committee than that of his real master.

To rule through these creatures of his own making taxed all the
ingenuity of Cosimo; but his profound and subtle intellect was suited
to the task, and he found unlimited pleasure in the exercise of his
consummate craft. We have already seen to what extent he used his
riches for the acquisition of political influence. Now that he had come
to power, he continued the same method, packing the Signory and the
Councils with men whom he could hold by debt between his thumb and
finger. His command of the public moneys 223enabled him to wink at
peculation in State offices; it was part of his system to bind
magistrates and secretaries to his interest by their consciousness of
guilt condoned but not forgotten. Not a few, moreover, owed their
living to the appointments he procured for them. While he thus
controlled the wheel-work of the commonwealth by means of organised
corruption, he borrowed the arts of his old enemies to oppress
dissentient citizens. If a man took an independent line in voting, and
refused allegiance to the Medicean party, he was marked out for
persecution. No violence was used; but he found himself hampered in his
commerce—money, plentiful for others, became scarce for him; his
competitors in trade were subsidised to undersell him. And while the
avenues of industry were closed, his fortune was taxed above its value,
until he had to sell at a loss in order to discharge his public
obligations. In the first twenty years of the Medicean rule, seventy
families had to pay 4,875,000 golden florins of extraordinary imposts,
fixed by arbitrary assessment.

The more patriotic members of his party looked with dread and loathing
on this system of corruption and exclusion. To their remonstrances
Cosimo replied in four memorable sayings: 'Better the State spoiled
than the State not ours.' 'Governments cannot be carried on with
paternosters.' 'An ell of scarlet makes a burgher.' 'I aim at finite
ends.' These maxims represent the whole man,—first, in his egotism,
eager to gain Florence for his family, at any risk of her ruin;
secondly, in his cynical acceptance of base means to selfish ends;
thirdly, in his bourgeois belief that money makes a man, and fine
clothes suffice for a citizen; fourthly, in his worldly ambition bent
on positive success. It was, in fact, his policy to reduce Florence to
the condition of a rotten borough: nor did this policy fail. One
notable sign of the influence he exercised was the change which now
came over the foreign 224relations of the republic. Up to the date of
his dictatorship Florence had uniformly fought the battle of freedom in
Italy. It was the chief merit of the Albizzi oligarchy that they
continued the traditions of the mediæval State, and by their vigorous
action checked the growth of the Visconti. Though they engrossed the
government they never forgot that they were first of all things
Florentines, and only in the second place men who owed their power and
influence to office. In a word, they acted like patriotic Tories, like
republican patricians. Therefore they would not ally themselves with
tyrants or countenance the enslavement of free cities by armed despots.
Their subjugation of the Tuscan burghs to Florence was itself part of a
grand republican policy. Cosimo changed all this. When the Visconti
dynasty ended by the death of Filippo Maria in 1447, there was a chance
of restoring the independence of Lombardy. Milan in effect declared
herself a republic, and by the aid of Florence she might at this moment
have maintained her liberty. Cosimo, however, entered into treaty with
Francesco Sforza, supplied him with money, guaranteed him against
Florentine interference, and saw with satisfaction how he reduced the
duchy to his military tyranny. The Medici were conscious that they,
selfishly, had most to gain by supporting despots who in time of need
might help them to confirm their own authority. With the same end in
view, when the legitimate line of the Bentivogli was extinguished,
Cosimo hunted out a bastard pretender of that family, presented him to
the chiefs of the Bentivogli faction, and had him placed upon the seat
of his supposed ancestors at Bologna. This young man, a certain Santi
da Cascese, presumed to be the son of Ercole de' Bentivogli, was an
artisan in a wool factory when Cosimo set eyes upon him. At first Santi
refused the dangerous honour of governing a proud republic; but the
intrigues of Cosimo prevailed, 225and the obscure craftsman ended his
days a powerful prince.

By the arts I have attempted to describe, Cosimo in the course of his
long life absorbed the forces of the republic into himself. While he
shunned the external signs of despotic power he made himself the master
of the State. His complexion was of a pale olive; his stature short;
abstemious and simple in his habits, affable in conversation, sparing
of speech, he knew how to combine that burgher-like civility for which
the Romans praised Augustus, with the reality of a despotism all the
more difficult to combat because it seemed nowhere and was everywhere.
When he died, at the age of seventy-five, in 1464, the people whom he
had enslaved, but whom he had neither injured nor insulted, honoured
him with the title of _Pater Patriæ_. This was inscribed upon his tomb
in S. Lorenzo. He left to posterity the fame of a great and generous
patron,[28] the infamy of a cynical, self-seeking, bourgeois tyrant.
Such combinations of contradictory qualities were common enough at the
time of the Renaissance. Did not Machiavelli spend his days in
tavern-brawls and low amours, his nights among the mighty spirits of
the dead, with whom, when he had changed his country suit of homespun
for the habit of the Court, he found himself an honoured equal?

 [28] For an estimate of Cosimo's services to art and literature, his
 collection of libraries, his great buildings, his generosity to
 scholars, and his promotion of Greek studies, I may refer to my
 _Renaissance in Italy_: 'The Revival of Learning,' chap. iv.

XI

Cosimo had shown consummate skill by governing Florence through a party
created and raised to influence by himself. The jealousy of these
adherents formed the chief 226difficulty with which his son Piero had
to contend. Unless the Medici could manage to kick down the ladder
whereby they had risen, they ran the risk of losing all. As on a former
occasion, so now they profited by the mistakes of their antagonists.
Three chief men of their own party, Diotisalvi Neroni, Agnolo
Acciaiuoli, and Luca Pitti, determined to shake off the yoke of their
masters, and to repay the Medici for what they owed by leading them to
ruin. Niccolo Soderini, a patriot, indignant at the slow enslavement of
his country, joined them. At first they strove to undermine the credit
of the Medici with the Florentines by inducing Piero to call in the
moneys placed at interest by his father in the hands of private
citizens. This act was unpopular; but it did not suffice to move a
revolution. To proceed by constitutional measures against the Medici
was judged impolitic. Therefore the conspirators decided to take, if
possible, Piero's life. The plot failed, chiefly owing to the coolness
and the cunning of the young Lorenzo, Piero's eldest son. Public
sympathy was strongly excited against the aggressors. Neroni,
Acciaiuoli, and Soderini were exiled. Pitti was allowed to stay,
dishonoured, powerless, and penniless, in Florence. Meanwhile, the
failure of their foes had only served to strengthen the position of the
Medici. The ladder had saved them the trouble of kicking it down.

The congratulations addressed on this occasion to Piero and Lorenzo by
the ruling powers of Italy show that the Medici were already regarded
as princes outside Florence. Lorenzo and Giuliano, the two sons of
Piero, travelled abroad to the Courts of Milan and Ferrara with the
style and state of more than simple citizens. At home they occupied the
first place on all occasions of public ceremony, receiving royal
visitors on terms of equality, and performing the hospitalities of the
republic like men who had been born to represent its 227dignities.
Lorenzo's marriage to Clarice Orsini, of the noble Roman house, was
another sign that the Medici were advancing on the way toward
despotism. Cosimo had avoided foreign alliances for his children. His
descendants now judged themselves firmly planted enough to risk the
odium of a princely match for the sake of the support outside the city
they might win.

XII

Piero de' Medici died in December 1469. His son Lorenzo was then barely
twenty-two years of age. The chiefs of the Medicean party, all-powerful
in the State, held a council, in which they resolved to place him in
the same position as his father and grandfather. This resolve seems to
have been formed after mature deliberation, on the ground that the
existing conditions of Italian politics rendered it impossible to
conduct the government without a presidential head. Florence, though
still a democracy, required a permanent chief to treat on an equality
with the princes of the leading cities. Here we may note the prudence
of Cosimo's foreign policy. When he helped to establish despots in
Milan and Bologna he was rendering the presidency of his own family in
Florence necessary.

Lorenzo, having received this invitation, called attention to his youth
and inexperience. Yet he did not refuse it; and, after a graceful
display of diffidence, he accepted the charge, entering thus upon that
famous political career, in the course of which he not only established
and maintained a balance of power in Italy, with Florence for the
central city, but also contrived to remodel the government of the
republic in the interest of his own family and to strengthen the Medici
by relations with the Papal See.

The extraordinary versatility of this man's intellectual 228and social
gifts, his participation in all the literary and philosophical
interests of his century, his large and liberal patronage of art, and
the gaiety with which he joined the people of Florence in their
pastimes—Mayday games and Carnival festivities—strengthened his hold
upon the city in an age devoted to culture and refined pleasure.
Whatever was most brilliant in the spirit of the Italian Benaissance
seemed to be incarnate in Lorenzo. Not merely as a patron and a
dilettante, but as a poet and a critic, a philosopher and scholar, he
proved himself adequate to the varied intellectual ambitions of his
country. Penetrated with the passion for erudition which distinguished
Florence in the fifteenth century, familiar with her painters and her
sculptors, deeply read in the works of her great poets, he conceived
the ideal of infusing the spirit of antique civility into modern life,
and of effecting for society what the artists were performing in their
own sphere. To preserve the native character of the Florentine genius,
while he added the grace of classic form, was the aim to which his
tastes and instincts led him. At the same time, while he made himself
the master of Florentine revels and the Augustus of Renaissance
literature, he took care that beneath his carnival masks and ball-dress
should be concealed the chains which he was forging for the republic.

What he lacked, with so much mental brilliancy, was moral greatness.
The age he lived in was an age of selfish despots, treacherous
generals, godless priests. It was an age of intellectual vigour and
artistic creativeness; but it was also an age of mean ambition, sordid
policy, and vitiated principles. Lorenzo remained true in all respects
to the genius of this age: true to its enthusiasm for antique culture,
true to its passion for art, true to its refined love of pleasure; but
true also to its petty political intrigues, to its 229cynical
selfishness, to its lack of heroism. For Florence he looked no higher
and saw no further than Cosimo had done. If culture was his pastime,
the enslavement of the city by bribery and corruption was the hard work
of his manhood. As is the case with much Renaissance art, his life was
worth more for its decorative detail than for its constructive design.
In richness, versatility, variety, and exquisiteness of execution, it
left little to be desired; yet, viewed at a distance, and as a whole,
it does not inspire us with a sense of architectonic majesty.

XIII

Lorenzo's chief difficulties arose from the necessity under which, like
Cosimo, he laboured of governing the city through its old institutions
by means of a party. To keep the members of this party in good temper,
and to gain their approval for the alterations he effected in the State
machinery of Florence, was the problem of his life. The successful
solution of this problem was easier now, after two generations of the
Medicean ascendency, than it had been at first. Meanwhile the people
were maintained in good humour by public shows, ease, plenty, and a
general laxity of discipline. The splendour of Lorenzo's foreign
alliances and the consideration he received from all the Courts of
Italy contributed in no small measure to his popularity and security at
home. By using his authority over Florence to inspire respect abroad,
and by using his foreign credit to impose upon the burghers, Lorenzo
displayed the tact of a true Italian diplomatist. His genius for
statecraft, as then understood, was indeed of a rare order, equally
adapted to the conduct of a complicated foreign policy and to the
control of a suspicious and variable Commonwealth. In one point alone
he was inferior to his grandfather. He neglected 230commerce, and
allowed his banking business to fall into disorder so hopeless that in
course of time he ceased to be solvent. Meanwhile his personal
expenses, both as a prince in his own palace, and as the representative
of majesty in Florence, continually increased. The bankruptcy of the
Medici, it had long been foreseen, would involve the public finances in
serious confusion. And now, in order to retrieve his fortunes, Lorenzo
was not only obliged to repudiate his debts to the exchequer, but had
also to gain complete disposal of the State purse. It was this
necessity that drove him to effect the constitutional revolution of
1480, by which he substituted a Privy Council of seventy members for
the old Councils of the State, absorbing the chief functions of the
commonwealth into this single body, whom he practically nominated at
pleasure. The same want of money led to the great scandal of his
reign—the plundering of the Monte delle Doti, or State Insurance Office
Fund for securing dowers to the children of its creditors.

XIV

While tracing the salient points of Lorenzo de' Medici's administration
I have omitted to mention the important events which followed shortly
after his accession to power in 1469. What happened between that date
and 1480 was not only decisive for the future fortunes of the Casa
Medici, but it was also eminently characteristic of the perils and the
difficulties which beset Italian despots. The year 1471 was signalised
by a visit by the Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza of Milan, and his wife
Bona of Savoy, to the Medici in Florence. They came attended by their
whole Court—body guards on horse and foot, ushers, pages, falconers,
grooms, kennel-varlets, and huntsmen. Omitting the mere baggage
service, 231their train counted two thousand horses. To mention this
incident would be superfluous, had not so acute an observer as
Machiavelli marked it out as a turning-point in Florentine history.
Now, for the first time, the democratic commonwealth saw its streets
filled with a mob of courtiers. Masques, balls, and tournaments
succeeded each other with magnificent variety; and all the arts of
Florence were pressed into the service of these festivals. Machiavelli
says that the burghers lost the last remnant of their old austerity of
manners, and became, like the degenerate Romans, ready to obey the
masters who provided them with brilliant spectacles. They gazed with
admiration on the pomp of Italian princes, their dissolute and godless
living, their luxury and prodigal expenditure; and when the Medici
affected similar habits in the next generation, the people had no
courage to resist the invasion of their pleasant vices.

In the same year, 1471, Volterra was reconquered for the Florentines by
Frederick of Urbino. The honours of this victory, disgraced by a brutal
sack of the conquered city, in violation of its articles of
capitulation, were reserved for Lorenzo, who returned in triumph to
Florence. More than ever he assumed the prince, and in his person
undertook to represent the State.

In the same year, 1471, Francesco della Rovere was raised to the Papacy
with the memorable name of Sixtus IV. Sixtus was a man of violent
temper and fierce passions, restless and impatiently ambitious, bent on
the aggrandisement of the beautiful and wanton youths, his nephews. Of
these the most aspiring was Girolamo Riario, for whom Sixtus bought the
town of Imola from Taddeo Manfredi, in order that he might possess the
title of count and the nucleus of a tyranny in the Romagna. This
purchase thwarted the plans of Lorenzo, who wished to secure the same
advantages for 232Florence. Smarting with the sense of disappointment,
he forbade the Roman banker, Francesco Pazzi, to guarantee the
purchase-money. By this act Lorenzo made two mortal foes—the Pope and
Francesco Pazzi. Francesco was a thin, pale, atrabilious fanatic, all
nerve and passion, with a monomaniac intensity of purpose, and a will
inflamed and guided by imagination—a man formed by nature for
conspiracy, such a man, in fact, as Shakspere drew in Cassius. Maddened
by Lorenzo's prohibition, he conceived the notion of overthrowing the
Medici in Florence by a violent blow. Girolamo Riario entered into his
views. So did Francesco Salviati, Archbishop of Pisa, who had private
reasons for hostility. These men found no difficulty in winning over
Sixtus to their plot; nor is it possible to purge the Pope of
participation in what followed. I need not describe by what means
Francesco drew the other members of his family into the scheme, and how
he secured the assistance of armed cut-throats. Suffice it to say that
the chief conspirators, with the exception of the Count Girolamo,
betook themselves to Florence, and there, after the failure of other
attempts, decided to murder Lorenzo and his brother Giuliano in the
cathedral on Sunday, April 26th, 1478. The moment when the priest at
the high altar finished the mass, was fixed for the assassination.
Everything was ready. The conspirators, by Judas kisses and
embracements, had discovered that the young men wore no protective
armour under their silken doublets. Pacing the aisle behind the choir,
they feared no treason. And now the lives of both might easily have
been secured, if at the last moment the courage of the hired assassins
had not failed them. Murder, they said, was well enough; but they could
not bring themselves to stab men before the newly consecrated body of
Christ. In this extremity a priest was found who, 'being accustomed to
233churches,' had no scruples. He and another reprobate were told off
to Lorenzo. Francesco de' Pazzi himself undertook Giuliano. The moment
for attack arrived. Francesco plunged his dagger into the heart of
Giuliano. Then, not satisfied with this death-blow, he struck again,
and in his heat of passion wounded his own thigh. Lorenzo escaped with
a flesh-wound from the poniard of the priest, and rushed into the
sacristy, where his friend Poliziano shut and held the brazen door. The
plot had failed; for Giuliano, of the two brothers, was the one whom
the conspirators would the more willingly have spared. The whole church
was in an uproar. The city rose in tumult. Rage and horror took
possession of the people. They flew to the Palazzo Pubblico and to the
houses of the Pazzi, hunted the conspirators from place to place, hung
the archbishop by the neck from the palace windows, and, as they found
fresh victims for their fury, strung them one by one in a ghastly row
at his side above the Square. About one hundred in all were killed.
None who had joined in the plot escaped; for Lorenzo had long arms, and
one man, who fled to Constantinople, was delivered over to his agents
by the Sultan. Out of the whole Pazzi family only Guglielmo, the
husband of Bianca de' Medici, was spared. When the tumult was over,
Andrea del Castagno painted the portraits of the traitors
head-downwards upon the walls of the Bargello Palace, in order that all
men might know what fate awaited the foes of the Medici and of the
State of Florence.[29] Meanwhile a bastard son of Giuliano's was
received into the Medicean household, to perpetuate his lineage. This
child, named Giulio, was destined to be famous in the annals of Italy
and Florence under the title of Pope Clement VII.

 [29] Giottino had painted the Duke of Athens, in like manner, on the
 same walls.

234

XV

As is usual when such plots miss their mark, the passions excited
redounded to the profit of the injured party. The commonwealth felt
that the blow struck at Lorenzo had been aimed at their majesty.
Sixtus, on the other hand, could not contain his rage at the failure of
so ably planned a _coup de main_. Ignoring that he had sanctioned the
treason, that a priest had put his hand to the dagger, that the impious
deed had been attempted in a church before the very Sacrament of
Christ, whose vicar on earth he was, the Pope now excommunicated the
republic. The reason he alleged was, that the Florentines had dared to
hang an archbishop.

Thus began a war to the death between Sixtus and Florence. The Pope
inflamed the whole of Italy, and carried on a ruinous campaign in
Tuscany. It seemed as though the republic might lose her subject
cities, always ready to revolt when danger threatened the sovereign
State. Lorenzo's position became critical. Sixtus made no secret of the
hatred he bore him personally, declaring that he fought less with
Florence than with the Medici. To support the odium of this long war
and this heavy interdict alone, was more than he could do. His allies
forsook him. Naples was enlisted on the Pope's side. Milan and the
other States of Lombardy were occupied with their own affairs, and held
aloof. In this extremity he saw that nothing but a bold step could save
him. The league formed by Sixtus must be broken up at any risk, and, if
possible, by his own ability. On December 6th, 1479, Lorenzo left
Florence, unarmed and unattended, took ship at Leghorn, and proceeded
to the court of the enemy, King Ferdinand, at Naples. Ferdinand was a
cruel and treacherous sovereign, who had murdered his guest, Jacopo
Piccinino, at a banquet given in 235his honour. But Ferdinand was the
son of Alfonso, who, by address and eloquence, had gained a kingdom
from his foe and jailor, Filippo Maria Visconti. Lorenzo calculated
that he too, following Alfonso's policy, might prove to Ferdinand how
little there was to gain from an alliance with Rome, how much Naples
and Florence, firmly united together for offence and defence, might
effect in Italy.

Only a student of those perilous times can appreciate the courage and
the genius, the audacity combined with diplomatic penetration,
displayed by Lorenzo at this crisis. He calmly walked into the lion's
den, trusting he could tame the lion and teach it, and all in a few
days. Nor did his expectation fail. Though Lorenzo was rather ugly than
handsome, with a dark skin, heavy brows, powerful jaws, and nose sharp
in the bridge and broad at the nostrils, without grace of carriage or
melody of voice, he possessed what makes up for personal defects—the
winning charm of eloquence in conversation, a subtle wit, profound
knowledge of men, and tact allied to sympathy, which placed him always
at the centre of the situation. Ferdinand received him kindly. The
Neapolitan nobles admired his courage and were fascinated by his social
talents. On March 1st, 1480, he left Naples again, having won over the
King by his arguments. When he reached Florence he was able to declare
that he brought home a treaty of peace and alliance signed by the most
powerful foe of the republic. The success of this bold enterprise
endeared Lorenzo more than ever to his countrymen. In the same year
they concluded a treaty with Sixtus, who was forced against his will to
lay down arms by the capture of Otranto and the extreme peril of
Turkish invasion. After the year 1480 Lorenzo remained sole master in
Florence, the arbiter and peacemaker of the rest of Italy.

236

XVI

The conjuration of the Pazzi was only one in a long series of similar
conspiracies. Italian despots gained their power by violence and
wielded it with craft. Violence and craft were therefore used against
them. When the study of the classics had penetrated the nation with
antique ideas of heroism, tyrannicide became a virtue. Princes were
murdered with frightful frequency. Thus Gian Maria Visconti was put to
death at Milan in 1412; Galeazzo Maria Sforza in 1484; the Chiarelli of
Fabriano were massacred in 1435; the Baglioni of Perugia in 1500;
Girolamo Gentile planned the assassination of Galeazzo Sforza at Genoa
in 1476; Niccolo d'Este conspired against his uncle Ercole in 1476;
Stefano Porcari attempted the life of Nicholas V. at Rome in 1453;
Lodovico Sforza narrowly escaped a violent death in 1453. I might
multiply these instances beyond satiety. As it is, I have selected but
a few examples falling, all but one, within the second half of the
fifteenth century. Nearly all these attempts upon the lives of princes
were made in church during the celebration of sacred offices. There was
no superfluity of naughtiness, no wilful sacrilege, in this choice of
an occasion. It only testified to the continual suspicion and guarded
watchfulness maintained by tyrants. To strike at them except in church
was almost impossible. Meanwhile the fate of the tyrannicides was
uniform. Successful or not, they perished. Yet so grievous was the
pressure of Italian despotism, so glorious was the ideal of Greek and
Roman heroism, so passionate the temper of the people, that to kill a
prince at any cost to self appeared the crown of manliness. This
bloodshed exercised a delirious fascination: pure and base, personal
and patriotic motives combined to add intensity of fixed and fiery
purpose to the murderous impulse. Those 237then who, like the Medici,
aspired to tyranny and sought to found a dynasty of princes, entered
the arena against a host of unknown and unseen gladiators.

XVII

On his deathbed, in 1492, Lorenzo lay between two men—Angelo Poliziano
and Girolamo Savonarola. Poliziano incarnated the genial, radiant,
godless spirit of fifteenth-century humanism. Savonarola represented
the conscience of Italy, self-convicted, amid all her greatness, of
crimes that called for punishment. It is said that when Lorenzo asked
the monk for absolution, Savonarola bade him first restore freedom to
Florence. Lorenzo, turned his face to the wall and was silent. How
indeed could he make this city in a moment free, after sixty years of
slow and systematic corruption? Savonarola left him, and he died
unshriven. This legend is doubtful, though it rests on excellent if
somewhat partial authority. It has, at any rate, the value of a mythus,
since it epitomises the attitude assumed by the great preacher to the
prince. Florence enslaved, the soul of Lorenzo cannot lay its burden
down, but must go with all its sins upon it to the throne of God.

The year 1492 was a memorable year for Italy. In this year Lorenzo's
death removed the keystone of the arch that had sustained the fabric of
Italian federation. In this year Roderigo Borgia was elected Pope. In
this year Columbus discovered America; Vasco de Gama soon after opened
a new way to the Indies, and thus the commerce of the world passed from
Italy to other nations. In this year the conquest of Granada gave unity
to the Spanish nation. In this year France, through the lifelong craft
of Louis XI., was for the first time united under a young hot-headed
sovereign. On 238every side of the political horizon storms threatened.
It was clear that a new chapter of European history had been opened.
Then Savonarola raised his voice, and cried that the crimes of Italy,
the abominations of the Church, would speedily be punished. Events led
rapidly to the fulfilment of this prophecy. Lorenzo's successor, Piero
de' Medici, was a vain, irresolute, and hasty princeling, fond of
display, proud of his skill in fencing and football-playing, with too
much of the Orsini blood in his hot veins, with too little of the
Medicean craft in his weak head. The Italian despots felt they could
not trust Piero, and this want of confidence was probably the first
motive that impelled Lodovico Sforza to call Charles VIII. into Italy
in 1494.

It will not be necessary to dwell upon this invasion of the French,
except in so far as it affected Florence. Charles passed rapidly
through Lombardy, engaged his army in the passes of the Apennines, and
debouched upon the coast where the Magra divided Tuscany from Liguria.
Here the fortresses of Sarzana and Pietra Santa, between the marble
bulwark of Carrara and the Tuscan sea, stopped his further progress.
The keys were held by the Florentines. To force these strong positions
and to pass beyond them seemed impossible. It might have been
impossible if Piero de' Medici had possessed a firmer will. As it was,
he rode off to the French camp, delivered up the forts to Charles,
bound the King by no engagements, and returned not otherwise than proud
of his folly to Florence. A terrible reception awaited him. The
Florentines, in their fury, had risen and sacked the Medicean palace.
It was as much as Piero, with his brothers, could do to escape beyond
the hills to Venice. The despotism of the Medici, so carefully built
up, so artfully sustained and strengthened, was overthrown in a single
day.

239

XVIII

Before considering what happened in Florence after the expulsion of the
Medici, it will be well to pause a moment and review the state in which
Lorenzo had left his family. Piero, his eldest son, recognised as chief
of the republic after his father's death, was married to Alfonsina
Orsini, and was in his twenty-second year. Giovanni, his second son, a
youth of seventeen, had just been made cardinal. This honour, of vast
importance for the Casa Medici in the future, he owed to his sister
Maddalena's marriage to Franceschetto Cybo, son of Innocent VIII. The
third of Lorenzo's sons, named Giuliano, was a boy of thirteen. Giulio,
the bastard son of the elder Giuliano, was fourteen. These four princes
formed the efficient strength of the Medici, the hope of the house; and
for each of them, with the exception of Piero, who died in exile, and
of whom no more notice need be taken, a brilliant destiny was still in
store. In the year 1495, however, they now wandered, homeless and
helpless, through the cities of Italy, each of which was shaken to its
foundations by the French invasion.

XIX

Florence, left without the Medici, deprived of Pisa and other subject
cities by the passage of the French army, with no leader but the monk
Savonarola, now sought to reconstitute her liberties. During the
domination of the Albizzi and the Medici the old order of the
commonwealth had been completely broken up. The Arti had lost their
primitive importance. The distinctions between the Grandi and the
Popolani had practically passed away. In a democracy that has submitted
to a lengthened course of tyranny, such extinction of its old life is
inevitable. Yet the passion for liberty was still 240powerful; and the
busy brains of the Florentines were stored with experience gained from
their previous vicissitudes, from \ the study of antique history, and
from the observation of existing constitutions in the towns of Italy.
They now determined to reorganise the State upon the model of the
Venetian republic. The Signory was to remain, with its old institution
of Priors, Gonfalonier, and College, elected for brief periods. These
magistrates were to take the initiative in debate, to propose measures,
and to consider plans of action. The real power of the State, for
voting supplies and ratifying the measures of the Signory, was vested
in a senate of one thousand members, called the Grand Council, from
whom a smaller body of forty, acting as intermediates between the
Council and the Signory, were elected. It is said that the plan of this
constitution originated with Savonarola; nor is there any doubt that he
used all his influence in the pulpit of the Duomo to render it
acceptable to the people. Whoever may have been responsible for its
formation, the new government was carried in 1495, and a large hall for
the assembly of the Grand Council was opened in the Public Palace.

Savonarola, meanwhile, had become the ruling spirit of Florence. He
gained his great power as a preacher: he used it like a monk. The
motive principle of his action was the passion for reform. To bring the
Church back to its pristine state of purity, without altering its
doctrine or suggesting any new form of creed; to purge Italy of ungodly
customs; to overthrow the tyrants who encouraged evil living, and to
place the power of the State in the hands of sober citizens: these were
his objects. Though he set himself in bold opposition to the reigning
Pope, he had no desire to destroy the spiritual supremacy of S. Peter's
see. Though he burned with an enthusiastic zeal for liberty, and
displayed rare genius for administration, he had no ambition to rule
Florence like a 241dictator. Savonarola was neither a reformer in the
northern sense of the word, nor yet a political demagogue. His sole
wish was to see purity of manners and freedom of self-government
re-established. With this end in view he bade the Florentines elect
Christ as their supreme chief; and they did so. For the same end he
abstained from appearing in the State Councils, and left the
Constitution to work by its own laws. His personal influence he
reserved for the pulpit; and here he was omnipotent. The people
believed in him as a prophet. They turned to him as the man who knew
what he wanted—as the voice of liberty, the soul of the new régime, the
genius who could breathe into the commonwealth a breath of fresh
vitality. When, therefore, Savonarola preached a reform of manners, he
was at once obeyed. Strict laws were passed enforcing sobriety,
condemning trades of pleasure, reducing the gay customs of Florence to
puritanical austerity.

Great stress has been laid upon this reaction of the monk-led populace
against the vices of the past. Yet the historian is bound to pronounce
that the reform effected by Savonarola was rather picturesque than
vital. Like all violent revivals of pietism, it produced a no less
violent reaction. The parties within the city who resented the
interference of a preaching friar, joined with the Pope in Rome, who
hated a contumacious schismatic in Savonarola. Assailed by these two
forces at the same moment, and driven upon perilous ground by his own
febrile enthusiasm, Savonarola succumbed. He was imprisoned, tortured,
and burned upon the public square in 1498.

What Savonarola really achieved for Florence was not a permanent reform
of morality, but a resuscitation of the spirit of freedom. His
followers, called in contempt _I Piagnoni_, or the Weepers, formed the
path of the commonwealth in future; and the memory of their martyr
served as a common bond of sympathy to unite them in times of trial. It
was a necessary 242consequence of the peculiar part he played that the
city was henceforth divided into factions representing mutually
antagonistic principles. These factions were not created by Savonarola;
but his extraordinary influence accentuated, as it were, the humours
that lay dormant in the State. Families favourable to the Medici took
the name of _Palleschi_. Men who chafed against puritanical reform, and
who were eager for any government that should secure them their old
licence, were known as _Compagnacci_. Meanwhile the oligarchs, who
disliked a democratic Constitution, and thought it possible to found an
aristocracy without the intervention of the Medici, came to be known as
_Gli Ottimati_. Florence held within itself, from this epoch forward to
the final extinction of liberty, four great parties: the _Piagnoni_,
passionate for political freedom and austerity of life; the
_Palleschi_, favourable to the Medicean cause, and regretful of
Lorenzo's pleasant rule; the _Compagnacci_, intolerant of the reformed
republic, neither hostile nor loyal to the Medici, but desirous of
personal licence; the _Ottimati_, astute and selfish, watching their
own advantage, ever-mindful to form a narrow government of privileged
families, disinclined to the Medici, except when they thought the
Medici might be employed as instruments in their intrigues.

XX

During the short period of Savonarola's ascendency, Florence was in
form at least a Theocracy, without any titular head but Christ; and as
long as the enthusiasm inspired by the monk lasted, as long as his
personal influence endured, the Constitution of the Grand Council
worked well. After his death it was found that the machinery was too
cumbrous. While adopting the Venetian form of government, the
Florentines had omitted one essential element—the Doge. By 243referring
measures of immediate necessity to the Grand Council, the republic lost
precious time. Dangerous publicity, moreover, was incurred; and so
large a body often came to no firm resolution. There was no permanent
authority in the State; no security that what had been deliberated
would be carried out with energy; no titular chief, who could transact
affairs with foreign potentates and their ambassadors. Accordingly, in
1502, it was decreed that the Gonfalonier should hold office for
life—should be in fact a Doge. To this important post of permanent
president Piero Soderini was appointed; and in his hands were placed
the chief affairs of the republic.

At this point Florence, after all her vicissitudes, had won her way to
something really similar to the Venetian Constitution. Yet the
similarity existed more in form than in fact. The government of
burghers in a Grand Council, with a Senate of forty, and a Gonfalonier
for life, had not grown up gradually and absorbed into itself the vital
forces of the commonwealth. It was a creation of inventive
intelligence, not of national development, in Florence. It had against
it the jealousy of the Ottimati, who felt themselves overshadowed by
the Gonfalonier; the hatred of the Palleschi, who yearned for the
Medici; the discontent of the working classes, who thought the presence
of a Court in Florence would improve trade; last, but not least, the
disaffection of the Compagnacci, who felt they could not flourish to
their heart's content in a free commonwealth. Moreover, though the name
of liberty was on every lip, though the Florentines talked, wrote, and
speculated more about constitutional independence than they had ever
done, the true energy of free institutions had passed from the city.
The corrupt government of Cosimo and Lorenzo bore its natural fruit
now. Egotistic ambition and avarice supplanted patriotism and industry.
It is necessary 244to comprehend these circumstances, in order that the
next revolution may be clearly understood.

XXI

During the ten years which elapsed between 1502 and 1512, Piero
Soderini administered Florence with an outward show of great
prosperity. He regained Pisa, and maintained an honourable foreign
policy in the midst of the wars stirred up by the League of Cambray.
Meanwhile the young princes of the House of Medici had grown to manhood
in exile. The Cardinal Giovanni was thirty-seven in 1512. His brother
Giuliano was thirty-three. Both of these men were better fitted than
their brother Piero to fight the battles of the family. Giovanni, in
particular, had inherited no small portion of the Medicean craft.
During the troubled reign of Julius II. he kept very quiet, cementing
his connections with powerful men in Rome, but making no effort to
regain his hold on Florence. Now the moment for striking a decisive
blow had come. After the battle of Ravenna in 1512, the French were
driven out of Italy, and the Sforzas returned to Milan; the Spanish
troops, under the Viceroy Cardona, remained masters of the country.
Following the camp of these Spaniards, Giovanni de' Medici entered
Tuscany in August, and caused the restoration of the Medici to be
announced in Florence. The people, assembled by Soderini, resolved to
resist to the uttermost. No foreign army should force them to receive
the masters whom they had expelled. Yet their courage failed on August
29th, when news reached them of the capture and the sack of Prato.
Prato is a sunny little city a few miles distant from the walls of
Florence, famous for the beauty of its women, the richness of its
gardens, and the grace of its buildings. Into this gem of cities the
savage soldiery of Spain marched in the bright 245autumnal weather, and
turned the paradise into a hell. It is even now impossible to read of
what they did in Prato without shuddering.[30] Cruelty and lust, sordid
greed for gold, and cold delight in bloodshed, could go no further.
Giovanni de' Medici, by nature mild and voluptuous, averse to violence
of all kinds, had to smile approval, while the Spanish Viceroy knocked
thus with mailed hand for him at the door of Florence. The Florentines
were paralysed with terror. They deposed Soderini and received the
Medici. Giovanni and Giuliano entered their devastated palace in the
Via Larga, abolished the Grand Council, and dealt with the republic as
they listed.

 [30] See _Archivio Storico_.

XXII

There was no longer any medium in Florence possible between either
tyranny or some such government as the Medici had now destroyed. The
State was too rotten to recover even the modified despotism of
Lorenzo's days. Each transformation had impaired some portion of its
framework, broken down some of its traditions, and sowed new seeds of
egotism in citizens who saw all things round them change but
self-advantage. Therefore Giovanni and Giuliano felt themselves secure
in flattering the popular vanity by an empty parade of the old
institutions. They restored the Signory and the Gonfalonier, elected
for intervals of two months by officers appointed for this purpose by
the Medici. Florence had the show of a free government. But the Medici
managed all things; and soldiers, commanded by their creature, Paolo
Vettori, held the Palace and the Public Square. The tyranny thus
established was less secure, inasmuch as it openly rested upon
violence, than Lorenzo's power had been; nor were there signs wanting
that the burghers could ill brook their 246servitude. The conspiracy of
Pietro Paolo Boscoli and Agostino Capponi proved that the Medicean
brothers ran daily risk of life. Indeed, it is not likely that they
would have succeeded in maintaining their authority—for they were poor
and ill-supported by friends outside the city—except for one most lucky
circumstance: that was the election of Giovanni de' Medici to the
Papacy in 1513.

The creation of Leo X. spread satisfaction throughout Italy.
Politicians trusted that he would display some portion of his father's
ability, and restore peace to the nation. Men of arts and letters
expected everything from a Medicean Pope, who had already acquired the
reputation of polite culture and open-handed generosity. They at any
rate were not deceived. Leo's first words on taking his place in the
Vatican were addressed to his brother Giuliano: 'Let us enjoy the
Papacy, now that God has given it to us;' and his notion of enjoyment
was to surround himself with court-poets, jesters, and musicians, to
adorn his Roman palaces with frescoes, to collect statues and
inscriptions, to listen to Latin speeches, and to pass judgment upon
scholarly compositions. Any one and every one who gave him sensual or
intellectual pleasure, found his purse always open. He lived in the
utmost magnificence, and made Rome the Paris of the Renaissance for
brilliance, immorality, and self-indulgent ease. The politicians had
less reason to be satisfied. Instead of uniting the Italians and
keeping the great Powers of Europe in check, Leo carried on a series of
disastrous petty wars, chiefly with the purpose of establishing the
Medici as princes. He squandered the revenues of the Church, and left
enormous debts behind him—an exchequer ruined and a foreign policy so
confused that peace for Italy could only be obtained by servitude.

Florence shared in the general rejoicing which greeted Leo's accession
to the Papacy. He was the first Florentine 247citizen who had received
the tiara, and the popular vanity was flattered by this honour to the
republic. Political theorists, meanwhile, began to speculate what
greatness Florence, in combination with Rome, might rise to. The Pope
was young; he ruled a large territory, reduced to order by his warlike
predecessors. It seemed as though the republic, swayed by him, might
make herself the first city in Italy, and restore the glories of her
Guelf ascendency upon the platform of Renaissance statecraft. There was
now no overt opposition to the Medici in Florence. How to govern the
city from Rome, and how to advance the fortunes of his brother Giuliano
and his nephew Lorenzo (Piero's son, a young man of twenty-one),
occupied the Pope's most serious attention. For Lorenzo Leo obtained
the Duchy of Urbino and the hand of a French princess. Giuliano was
named Gonfalonier of the Church. He also received the French title of
Duke of Nemours and the hand of Filiberta, Princess of Savoy. Leo
entertained a further project of acquiring the crown of Southern Italy
for his brother, and thus of uniting Rome, Florence, and Naples under
the headship of his house. Nor were the Medicean interests neglected in
the Church. Giulio, the Pope's bastard cousin, was made cardinal. He
remained in Rome, acting as vice-chancellor and doing the hard work of
the Papal Government for the pleasure-loving pontiff.

To Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, the titular head of the family, was
committed the government of Florence. During their exile, wandering
from court to court in Italy, the Medici had forgotten what it was to
be burghers, and had acquired the manners of princes. Leo alone
retained enough of caution to warn his nephew that the Florentines must
still be treated as free people. He confirmed the constitution of the
Signory and the Privy Council of seventy established by his father,
bidding Lorenzo, while he ruled this sham republic, to avoid 248the
outer signs of tyranny. The young duke at first behaved with
moderation, but he could not cast aside his habits of a great lord.
Florence now for the first time saw a regular court established in her
midst, with a prince, who, though he bore a foreign title, was in fact
her master. The joyous days of Lorenzo the Magnificent returned.
Masquerades and triumphs filled the public squares. Two clubs of
pleasure, called the Diamond and the Branch—badges adopted by the
Medici to signify their firmness in disaster and their power of
self-recovery—were formed to lead the revels. The best sculptors and
painters devoted their genius to the invention of costumes and cars.
The city affected to believe that the age of gold had come again.

XXIII

Fortune had been very favourable to the Medici. They had returned as
princes to Florence. Giovanni was Pope. Giuliano was Gonfalonier of the
Church. Giulio was Cardinal and Archbishop of Florence. Lorenzo ruled
the city like a sovereign. But this prosperity was no less brief than
it was brilliant. A few years sufficed to sweep off all the chiefs of
the great house. Giuliano died in 1516, leaving only a bastard son
Ippolito. Lorenzo died in 1519, leaving a bastard son Alessandro, and a
daughter, six days old, who lived to be the Queen of France. Leo died
in 1521. There remained now no legitimate male descendants from the
stock of Cosimo. The honours and pretensions of the Medici devolved
upon three bastards—on the Cardinal Giulio, and the two boys,
Alessandro and Ippolito. Of these, Alessandro was a mulatto, his mother
having been a Moorish slave in the Palace of Urbino; and whether his
father was Giulio, or Giuliano, or a base groom, was not known for
certain. To such extremities were the Medici 249reduced. In order to
keep their house alive, they were obliged to adopt this foundling. It
is true that the younger branch of the family, descended from Lorenzo,
the brother of Cosimo, still flourished. At this epoch it was
represented by Giovanni, the great general known as the Invincible,
whose bust so strikingly resembles that of Napoleon. But between this
line of the Medici and the elder branch there had never been true
cordiality. The Cardinal mistrusted Giovanni. It may, moreover, be
added, that Giovanni was himself doomed to death in the year 1526.

Giulio de' Medici was left in 1521 to administer the State of Florence
single-handed. He was archbishop, and he resided in the city, holding
it with the grasp of an absolute ruler. Yet he felt his position
insecure. The republic had no longer any forms of self-government; nor
was there a magistracy to whom the despot could delegate his power in
his absence. Giulio's ambition was fixed upon the Papal crown. The
bastards he was rearing were but children. Florence had therefore to be
furnished with some political machinery that should work of itself. The
Cardinal did not wish to give freedom to the city, but clockwork. He
was in the perilous situation of having to rule a commonwealth without
life, without elasticity, without capacity of self-movement, yet full
of such material as, left alone, might ferment, and breed a revolution.
In this perplexity, he had recourse to advisers. The most experienced
politicians, philosophical theorists, practical diplomatists, and
students of antique history were requested to furnish him with plans
for a new constitution, just as you ask an architect to give you the
plan of a new house. This was the field-day of the doctrinaires. Now
was seen how much political sagacity the Florentines had gained while
they were losing liberty. We possess these several drafts of
constitutions. Some recommend tyranny; some 250incline to aristocracy,
or what Italians called _Governo Stretto_; some to democracy, or
_Governo Largo_; some to an eclectic compound of the other forms, or
_Governo Misto_. More consummate masterpieces of constructive ingenuity
can hardly be imagined. What is omitted in all, is just what no
doctrinaire, no nostrum can communicate—the breath of life, the
principle of organic growth. Things had come, indeed, to a melancholy
pass for Florence when her tyrant, in order to confirm his hold upon
her, had to devise these springs and irons to support her tottering
limbs.

XXIV

While the archbishop and the doctors were debating, a plot was hatching
in the Rucellai Gardens. It was here that the Florentine Academy now
held their meetings. For this society Machiavelli wrote his 'Treatise
on the Art of War,' and his 'Discourses upon Livy.' The former was an
exposition of Machiavelli's scheme for creating a national militia, as
the only safeguard for Italy, exposed at this period to the invasions
of great foreign armies. The latter is one of the three or four
masterpieces produced by the Florentine school of critical historians.
Stimulated by the daring speculations of Machiavelli, and fired to
enthusiasm by their study of antiquity, the younger academicians formed
a conspiracy for murdering Giulio de' Medici, and restoring the
republic on a Roman model. An intercepted letter betrayed their plans.
Two of the conspirators were taken and beheaded. Others escaped. But
the discovery of this conjuration put a stop to Giulio's scheme of
reforming the State. Henceforth he ruled Florence like a despot, mild
in manners, cautious in the exercise of arbitrary power, but firm in
his autocracy. The Condottiere. Alessandro Vitelli, with a company of
soldiers, was 251taken into service for the protection of his person
and the intimidation of the citizens.

In 1523, the Pope, Adrian VI., expired after a short papacy, from which
he gained no honour and Italy no profit. Giulio hurried to Rome, and,
by the clever use of his large influence, caused himself to be elected
with the title of Clement VII. In Florence he left Silvio Passerini,
Cardinal of Cortona, as his vicegerent and the guardian of the two boys
Alessandro and Ippolito. The discipline of many years had accustomed
the Florentines to a government of priests. Still the burghers, mindful
of their ancient liberties, were galled by the yoke of a Cortonese,
sprung up from one of their subject cities; nor could they bear the
bastards who were being reared to rule them. Foreigners threw it in
their teeth that Florence, the city glorious of art and freedom, was
become a stable for mules—_stalla da muli_, in the expressive language
of popular sarcasm. Bastardy, it may be said in passing, carried with
it small dishonour among the Italians. The Estensi were all
illegitimate; the Aragonese house in Naples sprang from Alfonso's
natural son; and children of Popes ranked among the princes. Yet the
uncertainty of Alessandro's birth and the base condition of his mother
made the prospect of this tyrant peculiarly odious; while the primacy
of a foreign cardinal in the midst of citizens whose spirit was still
unbroken, embittered the cup of humiliation. The Casa Medici held its
authority by a slender thread, and depended more upon the disunion of
the burghers than on any power of its own. It could always reckon on
the favour of the lower populace, who gained profit and amusement from
the presence of a court. The Ottimati again hoped more from a weak
despotism than from a commonwealth, where their privileges would have
been merged in the mass of the Grand Council. Thus the sympathies of
the plebeians and the selfishness of 252the rich patricians prevented
the republic from asserting itself. On this meagre basis of personal
cupidity the Medici sustained themselves. What made the situation still
more delicate, and at the same time protracted the feeble rule of
Clement, was that neither the Florentines nor the Medici had any army.
Face to face with a potentate so considerable as the Pope, a free State
could not be established without military force. On the other hand, the
Medici, supported by a mere handful of mercenaries, had no power to
resist a popular rising if any external event should inspire the middle
classes with a hope of liberty.

XXV

Clement assumed the tiara at a moment of great difficulty. Leo had
ruined the finance of Rome. France and Spain were still contending for
the possession of Italy. While acting as Vice-Chancellor, Giulio de'
Medici had seemed to hold the reins with a firm grasp, and men expected
that he would prove a powerful Pope; but in those days he had Leo to
help him; and Leo, though indolent, was an abler man than his cousin.
He planned, and Giulio executed. Obliged to act now for himself,
Clement revealed the weakness of his nature. That weakness was
irresolution, craft without wisdom, diplomacy without knowledge of men.
He raised the storm, and showed himself incapable of guiding it. This
is not the place to tell by what a series of crooked schemes and cross
purposes he brought upon himself the ruin of the Church and Rome, to
relate his disagreement with the Emperor, or to describe again the sack
of the Eternal City by the rabble of the Constable de Bourbon's army.
That wreck of Rome in 1527 was the closing scene of the Italian
Renaissance—the 253last of the Apocalyptic tragedies foretold by
Savonarola—the death of the old age.

When the Florentines knew what was happening in Rome, they rose and
forced the Cardinal Passerini to depart with the Medicean bastards from
the city. The youth demanded arms for the defence of the town, and they
received them. The whole male population was enrolled in a militia. The
Grand Council was reformed, and the republic was restored upon the
basis of 1495. Niccolo Capponi was elected Gonfalonier. The name of
Christ was again registered as chief of the commonwealth—to such an
extent did the memory of Savonarola still sway the popular imagination.
The new State hastened to form an alliance with France, and Malatesta
Baglioni was chosen as military Commander-in-Chief. Meanwhile the city
armed itself for siege—Michel Angelo Buonarroti and Francesco da San
Gallo undertaking the construction of new forts and ramparts. These
measures were adopted with sudden decision, because it was soon known
that Clement had made peace with the Emperor, and that the army which
had sacked Rome was going to be marched on Florence.

XXVI

In the month of August 1529 the Prince of Orange assembled his forces
at Terni, and thence advanced by easy stages into Tuscany. As he
approached, the Florentines laid waste their suburbs, and threw down
their wreath of towers, in order that the enemy might have no
harbourage or points of vantage for attack. Their troops were
concentrated within the city, where a new Gonfalonier, Francesco
Carducci, furiously opposed to the Medici, and attached to the Piagnoni
party, now ruled. On September 4th the Prince of Orange appeared before
the walls, and opened the memorable siege. 254It lasted eight months,
at the end of which time, betrayed by their generals, divided among
themselves, and worn out with delays, the Florentines capitulated.
Florence was paid as compensation for the insult offered to the pontiff
in the sack of Rome.

The long yoke of the Medici had undermined the character of the
Florentines. This, their last glorious struggle for liberty, was but a
flash in the pan—a final flare-up of the dying lamp. The city was not
satisfied with slavery; but it had no capacity for united action. The
Ottimati were egotistic and jealous of the people. The Palleschi
desired to restore the Medici at any price—some of them frankly wishing
for a principality, others trusting that the old quasi-republican
government might still be reinstated. The Red Republicans, styled
Libertini and Arrabbiati, clung together in blind hatred of the
Medicean party; but they had no further policy to guide them. The
Piagnoni, or Frateschi, stuck to the memory of Savonarola, and believed
that angels would descend to guard the battlements when human help had
failed. These enthusiasts still formed the true nerve of the nation—the
class that might have saved the State, if salvation had been possible.
Even as it was, the energy of their fanaticism prolonged the siege
until resistance seemed no longer physically possible. The hero
developed by the crisis was Francesco Ferrucci, a plebeian who had
passed his youth in manual labour, and who now displayed rare military
genius. He fell fighting outside the walls of Florence. Had he
commanded the troops from the beginning, and remained inside the city,
it is just possible that the fate of the war might have been less
disastrous. As it was, Malatesta Baglioni, the Commander-in-Chief,
turned out an arrant scoundrel. He held secret correspondence with
Clement and the Prince of Orange. It was he who finally sold Florence
255to her foes, 'putting on his head,' as the Doge of Venice said
before the Senate, 'the cap of the biggest traitor upon record.'

XXVII

What remains of Florentine history may be briefly told. Clement, now
the undisputed arbiter of power and honour in the city, chose
Alessandro de' Medici to be prince. Alessandro was created Duke of
Cività di Penna, and married to a natural daughter of Charles V.
Ippolito was made a cardinal. Ippolito would have preferred a secular
to a priestly kingdom; nor did he conceal his jealousy for his cousin.
Therefore Alessandro had him poisoned. Alessandro in his turn was
murdered by his kinsman, Lorenzino de' Medici. Lorenzino paid the usual
penalty of tyrannicide some years later. When Alessandro was killed in
1539, Clement had himself been dead five years. Thus the whole
posterity of Cosimo de' Medici, with the exception of Catherine, Queen
of France, was utterly extinguished. But the Medici had struck root so
firmly in the State, and had so remodelled it upon the type of tyranny,
that the Florentines were no longer able to do without them. The chiefs
of the Ottimati selected Cosimo, the representative of Giovanni the
Invincible, for their prince, and thus the line of the elder Lorenzo
came at last to power. This Cosimo was a boy of eighteen, fond of
field-sports, and unused to party intrigues. When Francesco
Guicciardini offered him a privy purse of one hundred and twenty
thousand ducats annually, together with the presidency of Florence,
this wily politician hoped that he would rule the State through Cosimo,
and realise at last that dream of the Ottimati, a _Governo Stretto_ or
_di Pochi_. He was notably mistaken in his calculations. The first days
of Cosimo's administration showed that he possessed the craft of his
family and the vigour of his 256immediate progenitors, and that he
meant to be sole master in Florence. He it was who obtained the title
of Grand Duke of Tuscany from the Pope—a title confirmed by the
Emperor, fortified by Austrian alliances, and transmitted through his
heirs to the present century.

XXVIII

In this sketch of Florentine history, I have purposely omitted all
details that did not bear upon the constitutional history of the
republic, or on the growth of the Medici as despots; because I wanted
to present a picture of the process whereby that family contrived to
fasten itself upon the freest and most cultivated State in Italy. This
success the Medici owed mainly to their own obstinacy, and to the
weakness of republican institutions in Florence. Their power was
founded upon wealth in the first instance, and upon the ingenuity with
which they turned the favour of the proletariate to use. It was
confirmed by the mistakes and failures of their enemies, by Rinaldo
degli Albizzi's attack on Cosimo, by the conspiracy of Neroni and Pitti
against Piero, and by Francesco de' Pazzi's attempt to assassinate
Lorenzo. It was still further strengthened by the Medicean sympathy for
arts and letters—a sympathy which placed both Cosimo and Lorenzo at the
head of the Renaissance movement, and made them worthy to represent
Florence, the city of genius, in the fifteenth century. While thus
founding and cementing their dynastic influence upon the basis of a
widespread popularity, the Medici employed persistent cunning in the
enfeeblement of the Republic. It was their policy not to plant
themselves by force or acts of overt tyranny, but to corrupt ambitious
citizens, to secure the patronage of public officers, and to render the
spontaneous working of the State machinery impossible. By 257pursuing
this policy over a long series of years they made the revival of
liberty in 1494, and again in 1527, ineffectual. While exiled from
Florence, they never lost the hope of returning as masters, so long as
the passions they had excited, and they alone could gratify, remained
in full activity. These passions were avarice and egotism, the greed of
the grasping Ottimati, the jealousy of the nobles, the self-indulgence
of the proletariate. Yet it is probable they might have failed to
recover Florence, on one or other of these two occasions, but for the
accident which placed Giovanni de' Medici on the Papal chair, and
enabled him to put Giulio in the way of the same dignity. From the
accession of Leo in 1513 to the year 1527 the Medici ruled Florence
from Rome, and brought the power of the Church into the service of
their despotism. After that date they were still further aided by the
imperial policy of Charles V., who chose to govern Italy through
subject princes, bound to himself by domestic alliances and powerful
interests. One of these was Cosimo, the first Grand Duke of Tuscany.

258




THE DEBT OF ENGLISH TO ITALIAN LITERATURE


To an Englishman one of the chief interests of the study of Italian
literature is derived from the fact that, between England and Italy, an
almost uninterrupted current of intellectual intercourse has been
maintained throughout the last five centuries. The English have never,
indeed, at any time been slavish imitators of the Italians; but Italy
has formed the dreamland of the English fancy, inspiring poets with
their most delightful thoughts, supplying them with subjects, and
implanting in their minds that sentiment of Southern beauty which,
engrafted on our more passionately imaginative Northern nature, has
borne rich fruit in the works of Chaucer, Spenser, Marlowe, Shakspere,
Milton, and the poets of this century.

It is not strange that Italy should thus in matters of culture have
been the guide and mistress of England. Italy, of all the European
nations, was the first to produce high art and literature in the dawn
of modern civilisation. Italy was the first to display refinement in
domestic life, polish of manners, civilities of intercourse. In Italy
the commerce of courts first developed a society of men and women,
educated by the same traditions of humanistic culture. In Italy the
principles of government were first discussed and reduced to theory. In
Italy the zeal for the classics took its origin; and 259scholarship, to
which we owe our mental training, was at first the possession of none
almost but Italians. It therefore followed that during the age of the
Renaissance any man of taste or genius, who desired to share the newly
discovered privileges of learning, had to seek Italy. Every one who
wished to be initiated into the secrets of science or philosophy, had
to converse with Italians in person or through books. Every one who was
eager to polish his native language, and to render it the proper
vehicle of poetic thought, had to consult the masterpieces of Italian
literature. To Italians the courtier, the diplomatist, the artist, the
student of statecraft and of military tactics, the political theorist,
the merchant, the man of laws, the man of arms, and the churchman
turned for precedents and precepts. The nations of the North, still
torpid and somnolent in their semi-barbarism, needed the magnetic touch
of Italy before they could awake to intellectual life. Nor was this
all. Long before the thirst for culture possessed the English mind,
Italy had appropriated and assimilated all that Latin literature
contained of strong or splendid to arouse the thought and fancy of the
modern world; Greek, too, was rapidly becoming the possession of the
scholars of Florence and Rome; so that English men of letters found the
spirit of the ancients infused into a modern literature; models of
correct and elegant composition existed for them in a language easy,
harmonious, and not dissimilar in usage to their own.

The importance of this service, rendered by Italians to the rest of
Europe, cannot be exaggerated. By exploring, digesting, and reproducing
the classics, Italy made the labour of scholarship comparatively light
for the Northern nations, and extended to us the privilege of culture
without the peril of losing originality in the enthusiasm for
erudition. Our great poets could handle lightly, and yet profitably,
those 260masterpieces of Greece and Rome, beneath the weight of which,
when first discovered, the genius of the Italians had wavered. To the
originality of Shakspere an accession of wealth without weakness was
brought by the perusal of Italian works, in which the spirit of the
antique was seen as in a modern mirror. Then, in addition to this
benefit of instruction, Italy gave to England a gift of pure beauty,
the influence of which, in refining our national taste, harmonising the
roughness of our manners and our language, and stimulating our
imagination, has been incalculable. It was a not unfrequent custom for
young men of ability to study at the Italian universities, or at least
to undertake a journey to the principal Italian cities. From their
sojourn in that land of loveliness and intellectual life they returned
with their Northern brains most powerfully stimulated. To produce, by
masterpieces of the imagination, some work of style that should remain
as a memento of that glorious country, and should vie on English soil
with the art of Italy, was their generous ambition. Consequently the
substance of the stories versified by our poets, the forms of our
metres, and the cadences of our prose periods reveal a close attention
to Italian originals.

This debt of England to Italy in the matter of our literature began
with Chaucer. Truly original and national as was the framework of the
'Canterbury Tales,' we can hardly doubt but that Chaucer was determined
in the form adopted for his poem by the example of Boccaccio. The
subject-matter, also, of many of his tales was taken from Boccaccio's
prose or verse. For example, the story of Patient Grizzel is founded
upon one of the legends of the 'Decameron,' while the Knight's Tale is
almost translated from the 'Teseide' of Boccaccio, and Troilus and
Creseide is derived from the 'Filostrato' of the same author. The
Franklin's Tale and the Reeve's Tale 261are also based either on
stories of Boccaccio or else on French 'Fabliaux,' to which Chaucer, as
well as Boccaccio, had access. I do not wish to lay too much stress
upon Chaucer's direct obligations to Boccaccio, because it is
incontestable that the French 'Fabliaux,' which supplied them both with
subjects, were the common property of the mediæval nations. But his
indirect debt in all that concerns elegant handling of material, and in
the fusion of the romantic with the classic spirit, which forms the
chief charm of such tales as the Palamon and Arcite, can hardly be
exaggerated. Lastly, the seven-lined stanza, called _rime royal_, which
Chaucer used with so much effect in narrative poetry, was probably
borrowed from the earlier Florentine 'Ballata,' the last line rhyming
with its predecessor being substituted for the recurrent refrain.
Indeed, the stanza itself, as used by our earliest poets, may be found
in Guido Cavalcanti's 'Ballatetta,' beginning, _Posso degli occhi
miei_.

Between Chaucer and Surrey the Muse of England fell asleep; but when in
the latter half of the reign of Henry VIII. she awoke again, it was as
a conscious pupil of the Italian that she attempted new strains and
essayed fresh metres. 'In the latter end of Henry VIII.'s reign,' says
Puttenham, 'sprang up a new company of courtly makers, of whom Sir T.
Wyatt the elder, and Henry Earl of Surrey, were the two chieftains,
who, having travelled into Italy, and there tasted the sweet and
stately measures and style of the Italian poesy, as novices newly crept
out of the schools of Dante, Ariosto, and Petrarch, they greatly
polished our rude and homely manner of vulgar poesy, from that it had
been before, and for that cause may justly be said the first reformers
of our English metre and style.' The chief point in which Surrey
imitated his 'master, Francis Petrarcha,' was in the use of the sonnet.
He introduced this elaborate form of poetry into 262our literature; and
how it has thriven with us, the masterpieces of Spenser, Shakspere,
Milton, Wordsworth, Keats, Rossetti attest. As practised by Dante and
Petrarch, the sonnet is a poem of fourteen lines, divided into two
quatrains and two triplets, so arranged that the two quatrains repeat
one pair of rhymes, while the two triplets repeat another pair. Thus an
Italian sonnet of the strictest form is composed upon four rhymes,
interlaced with great art. But much divergence from this rigid scheme
of rhyming was admitted even by Petrarch, who not unfrequently divided
the six final lines of the sonnet into three couplets, interwoven in
such a way that the two last lines never rhymed.[31]

 [31] The order of rhymes runs thus: _a, b, b, a, a, b, b, a, c, d, c,
 d, c, d_; or in the terzets, _c, d, e, c, d, e_, or _c, d, e, d, c,
 e_, and so forth.

It has been necessary to say thus much about the structure of the
Italian sonnet, in order to make clear the task which lay before Surrey
and Wyatt, when they sought to transplant it into English. Surrey did
not adhere to the strict fashion of Petrarch: his sonnets consist
either of three regular quatrains concluded with a couplet, or else of
twelve lines rhyming alternately and concluded with a couplet. Wyatt
attempted to follow the order and interlacement of the Italian rhymes
more closely, but he too concluded his sonnet with a couplet. This
introduction of the final couplet was a violation of the Italian rule,
which may be fairly considered as prejudicial to the harmony of the
whole structure, and which has insensibly caused the English sonnet to
terminate in an epigram. The famous sonnet of Surrey on his love,
Geraldine, is an excellent example of the metrical structure as adapted
to the supposed necessities of English rhyming, and as afterwards
adhered to by Shakspere in his long series of love-poems. Surrey, while
adopting the form of the sonnet, kept quite clear of the Petrarchist's
mannerism. His language is simple and direct: 263there is no
subtilising upon far-fetched conceits, no wire-drawing of exquisite
sentimentalism, although he celebrates in this, as in his other
sonnets, a lady for whom he appears to have entertained no more than a
Platonic or imaginary passion. Surrey was a great experimentalist in
metre. Besides the sonnet, he introduced into England blank verse,
which he borrowed from the Italian _versi sciolti_, fixing that
decasyllable iambic rhythm for English versification in which our
greatest poetical triumphs have been achieved.

Before quitting the subject of the sonnet it would, however, be well to
mention the changes which were wrought in its structure by early poets
desirous of emulating the Italians. Shakspere, as already hinted,
adhered to the simple form introduced by Surrey: his stanzas invariably
consist of three separate quatrains followed by a couplet. But Sir
Philip Sidney, whose familiarity with Italian literature was intimate,
and who had resided long in Italy, perceived that without a greater
complexity and interweaving of rhymes the beauty of the poem was
considerably impaired. He therefore combined the rhymes of the two
quatrains, as the Italians had done, leaving himself free to follow the
Italian fashion in the conclusion, or else to wind up after English
usage with a couplet. Spenser and Drummond follow the rule of Sidney;
Drayton and Daniel, that of Surrey and Shakspere. It was not until
Milton that an English poet preserved the form of the Italian sonnet in
its strictness; but, after Milton, the greatest
sonnet-writers—Wordsworth, Keats, and Rossetti—have aimed at producing
stanzas as regular as those of Petrarch.

The great age of our literature—the age of Elizabeth—was essentially
one of Italian influence. In Italy the Renaissance had reached its
height: England, feeling the new life which had been infused into arts
and letters, turned instinctively to 264Italy, and adopted her canons
of taste. 'Euphues' has a distinct connection with the Italian
discourses of polite culture. Sidney's 'Arcadia' is a copy of what
Boccaccio had attempted in his classical romances, and Sanazzaro in his
pastorals.[32] Spenser approached the subject of the 'Faery Queen' with
his head full of Ariosto and the romantic poets of Italy. His sonnets
are Italian; his odes embody the Platonic philosophy of the
Italians.[33] The extent of Spenser's deference to the Italians in
matters of poetic art may be gathered from this passage in the
dedication to Sir Walter Raleigh of the 'Faery Queen:'

I have followed all the antique poets historical: first Homer, who in
the persons of Agamemnon and Ulysses hath ensampled a good governor and
a virtuous man, the one in his Ilias, the other in his Odysseis; then
Virgil, whose like intention was to do in the person of Æneas; after
him Ariosto comprised them both in his Orlando; and lately Tasso
dissevered them again, and formed both parts in two persons, namely,
that part which they in Philosophy call Ethice, or virtues of a private
man, coloured in his Rinaldo, the other named Politico in his Goffredo.


 [32] It has extraordinary interest for the student of our literary
 development, inasmuch as it is full of experiments in metres, which
 have never thriven on English soil. Not to mention the attempt to
 write in asclepiads and other classical rhythms, we might point to
 Sidney's _terza rima_, poems with _sdrucciolo_ or treble rhymes. This
 peculiar and painful form he borrowed from Ariosto and Sanazzaro; but
 even in Italian it cannot be handled without sacrifice of variety,
 without impeding the metrical movement and marring the sense.


 [33] The stately structure of the _Prothalamion_ and _Epithalamion_ is
 a rebuilding of the Italian Canzone. His Eclogues, with their
 allegories, repeat the manner of Petrarch's minor Latin poems.

From this it is clear that, to the mind of Spenser, both Ariosto and
Tasso were authorities of hardly less gravity than Homer and Virgil.
Raleigh, in the splendid sonnet with which he responds to this
dedication, enhances the fame of Spenser by affecting to believe that
the great Italian, Petrarch, will be 265jealous of him in the grave. To
such an extent were the thoughts of the English poets occupied with
their Italian masters in the art of song.

It was at this time, again, that English literature was enriched by
translations of Ariosto and Tasso—the one from the pen of Sir John
Harrington, the other from that of Fairfax. Both were produced in the
metre of the original—the octave stanza, which, however, did not at
that period take root in England. At the same period the works of many
of the Italian novelists, especially Bandello and Cinthio and
Boccaccio, were translated into English; Painter's 'Palace of Pleasure'
being a treasure-house of Italian works of fiction. Thomas Hoby
translated Castiglione's 'Courtier' in 1561. As a proof of the extent
to which Italian books were read in England at the end of the sixteenth
century, we may take a stray sentence from a letter of Harvey, in which
he disparages the works of Robert Greene:—'Even Guicciardine's silver
histories and Ariosto's golden cantos grow out of request: and the
Countess of Pembroke's "Arcadia" is not green enough for queasy
stomachs; but they must have seen Greene's "Arcadia," and I believe
most eagerly longed for Greene's "Faery Queen."'

Still more may be gathered on the same topic from the indignant protest
uttered by Roger Ascham in his 'Schoolmaster' (pp. 78-91, date 1570)
against the prevalence of Italian customs, the habit of Italian travel,
and the reading of Italian books translated into English. Selections of
Italian stories rendered into English were extremely popular; and
Greene's tales, which had such vogue that Nash says of them, 'glad was
that printer that might be so blest to pay him dear for the very dregs
of his wit,' were all modelled on the Italian. The education of a young
man of good family was not thought complete unless he had spent some
time in Italy, studied its 266literature, admired its arts, and caught
at least some tincture of its manners. Our rude ancestors brought back
with them from these journeys many Southern vices, together with the
culture they had gone to seek. The contrast between the plain dealing
of the North and the refined Machiavellism of the South, between
Protestant earnestness in religion and Popish scepticism, between the
homely virtues of England and the courtly libertinism of Venice or
Florence, blunted the moral sense, while it stimulated the intellectual
activity of the English travellers, and too often communicated a fatal
shock to their principles. _Inglese Italianato è un diavolo incarnato_
passed into a proverb: we find it on the lips of Parker, of Howell, of
Sidney, of Greene, and of Ascham; while Italy itself was styled by
severe moralists the court of Circe. In James Howell's 'Instructions
for forreine travell' we find this pregnant sentence: 'And being now in
Italy, that great limbique of working braines, he must be very
circumspect in his carriage, for she is able to turne a Saint into a
devill, and deprave the best natures, if one will abandon himselfe, and
become a prey to dissolut courses and wantonesse.' Italy, in truth, had
already become corrupt, and the fruit of her contact with the nations
of the North was seen in the lives of such scholars as Robert Greene,
who confessed that he returned from his travels instructed 'in all the
villanies under the sun.' Many of the scandals of the Court of James
might be ascribed to this aping of Southern manners.

Yet, together with the evil of depraved morality, the advantage of
improved culture was imported from Italy into England; and the
constitution of the English genius was young and healthy enough to
purge off the mischief, while it assimilated what was beneficial. This
is very manifest in the history of our drama, which, taking it
altogether, is at the same time the purest and the most varied that
exists in literature; 267while it may be affirmed without exaggeration
that one of the main impulses to free dramatic composition in England
was communicated by the attraction everything Italian possessed for the
English fancy. It was in the drama that the English displayed the
richness and the splendour of the Renaissance, which had blazed so
gorgeously and at times so balefully below the Alps. The Italy of the
Renaissance fascinated our dramatists with a strange wild glamour—the
contrast of external pageant and internal tragedy, the alternations of
radiance and gloom, the terrible examples of bloodshed, treason, and
heroism emergent from ghastly crimes. Our drama began with a
translation of Ariosto's 'Suppositi' and ended with Davenant's 'Just
Italian.' In the very dawn of tragic composition Greene versified a
portion of the 'Orlando Furioso,' and Marlowe devoted one of his most
brilliant studies to the villanies of a Maltese Jew. Of Shakspere's
plays five are incontestably Italian: several of the rest are furnished
with Italian names to suit the popular taste. Ben Jonson laid the scene
of his most subtle comedy of manners, 'Volpone,' in Venice, and
sketched the first cast of 'Every Man in his Humour' for Italian
characters. Tourneur, Ford, and Webster were so dazzled by the tragic
lustre of the wickedness of Italy that their finest dramas, without
exception, are minute and carefully studied psychological analyses of
great Italian tales of crime. The same, in a less degree, is true of
Middleton and Dekker. Massinger makes a story of the Sforza family the
subject of one of his best plays. Beaumont and Fletcher draw the
subjects of comedies and tragedies alike from the Italian novelists.
Fletcher in his 'Faithful Shepherdess' transfers the pastoral style of
Tasso and Guarini to the North. So close is the connection between our
tragedy and Italian novels that Marston and Ford think fit to introduce
passages of Italian dialogue into the plays of 'Giovanni 268and
Annabella' and 'Antonio and Mellida.' But the best proof of the extent
to which Italian life and literature had influenced our dramatists, may
be easily obtained by taking down Halliwell's 'Dictionary of Old
Plays,' and noticing that about every third drama has an Italian title.
Meanwhile the poems composed by the chief dramatists—Shakspere's 'Venus
and Adonis,' Marlowe's 'Hero and Leander,' Marston's 'Pygmalion,' and
Beaumont's 'Hermaphrodite'—are all of them conceived in the Italian
style, by men who had either studied Southern literature, or had
submitted to its powerful æsthetic influences. The Masques, moreover,
of Jonson, of Lyly, of Fletcher, and of Chapman are exact reproductions
upon the English court theatres of such festival pageants as were
presented to the Medici at Florence or to the Este family at
Ferrara.[34] Throughout our drama the influence of Italy, direct or
indirect, either as supplying our playwrights with subjects or as
stimulating their imagination, may thus be traced. Yet the Elizabethan
drama is in the highest sense original. As a work of art pregnant with
deepest wisdom, and splendidly illustrative of the age which gave it
birth, it far transcends anything that Italy produced in the same
department. Our poets have a more masculine judgment, more fiery fancy,
nobler sentiment, than the Italians of any age but that of Dante. What
Italy gave, was the impulse toward creation, not patterns to be
imitated—the excitement of the imagination by a spectacle of so much
grandeur, not rules and precepts for production—the keen sense of
tragic beauty, not any tradition of accomplished art.

 [34] Marlowe makes Gaveston talk of 'Italian masques.' At the same
 time, in the prologue to _Tamburlaine_, he shows that he was conscious
 of the new and nobler direction followed by the drama in England.

The Elizabethan period of our literature was, in fact, the period
during which we derived most from the Italian nation.

269The study of the Italian language went hand in hand with the study
of Greek and Latin, so that the three together contributed to form the
English taste. Between us and the ancient world stood the genius of
Italy as an interpreter. Nor was this connection broken until far on
into the reign of Charles II. What Milton owed to Italy is clear not
only from his Italian sonnets, but also from the frequent mention of
Dante and Petrarch in his prose works, from his allusions to Boiardo
and Ariosto in the 'Paradise Lost,' and from the hints which he
probably derived from Pulci, Tasso and Andreini. It would, indeed, be
easy throughout his works to trace a continuous vein of Italian
influence in detail. But, more than this, Milton's poetical taste in
general seems to have been formed and ripened by familiarity with the
harmonies of the Italian language. In his Tractate on Education
addressed to Mr. Hartlib, he recommends that boys should be instructed
in the Italian pronunciation of vowel sounds, in order to give
sonorousness and dignity to elocution. This slight indication supplies
us with a key to the method of melodious structure employed by Milton
in his blank verse. Those who have carefully studied the harmonies of
the 'Paradise Lost,' know how all-important are the assonances of the
vowel sounds of _o_ and _a_ in its most musical passages. It is just
this attention to the liquid and sonorous recurrences of open vowels
that we should expect from a poet who proposed to assimilate his
diction to that of the Italians.

After the age of Milton the connection between Italy and England is
interrupted. In the seventeenth century Italy herself had sunk into
comparative stupor, and her literature was trivial. France not only
swayed the political destinies of Europe, but also took the lead in
intellectual culture. Consequently, our poets turned from Italy to
France, and the French spirit pervaded English literature throughout
the 270period of the Restoration and the reigns of William and Queen
Anne. Yet during this prolonged reaction against the earlier movement
of English literature, as manifested in Elizabethanism, the influence
of Italy was not wholly extinct. Dryden's 'Tales from Boccaccio' are no
insignificant contribution to our poetry, and his 'Palamon and Arcite,'
through Chaucer, returns to the same source. But when, at the beginning
of this century, the Elizabethan tradition was revived, then the
Italian influence reappeared more vigorous than ever. The metre of 'Don
Juan,' first practised by Frere and then adopted by Lord Byron, is
Pulci's octave stanza; the manner is that of Berni, Folengo, and the
Abbé Casti, fused and heightened by the brilliance of Byron's genius
into a new form. The subject of Shelley's strongest work of art is
Beatrice Cenci. Rogers's poem is styled 'Italy.' Byron's dramas are
chiefly Italian. Leigh Hunt repeats the tale of Francesca da Rimini.
Keats versifies Boccaccio's 'Isabella.' Passing to contemporary poets,
Rossetti has acclimatised in English the metres and the manner of the
earliest Italian lyrists. Swinburne dedicates his noblest song to the
spirit of liberty in Italy. Even George Eliot and Tennyson have each of
them turned stories of Boccaccio into verse. The best of Mrs.
Browning's poems, 'Casa Guidi Windows' and 'Aurora Leigh,' are steeped
in Italian thought and Italian imagery. Browning's longest poem is a
tale of Italian crime; his finest studies in the 'Men and Women' are
portraits of Italian character of the Renaissance period. But there is
more than any mere enumeration of poets and their work can set forth,
in the connection between Italy and England. That connection, so far as
the poetical imagination is concerned, is vital. As poets in the truest
sense of the word, we English live and breathe through sympathy with
the Italians. The magnetic touch which is required to inflame the
imagination of the 271North, is derived from Italy. The nightingales of
English song who make our oak and beech copses resonant in spring with
purest melody, are migratory birds, who have charged their souls in the
South with the spirit of beauty, and who return to warble native
wood-notes in a tongue which is their own.

What has hitherto been said about the debt of the English poets to
Italy, may seem to imply that our literature can be regarded as to some
extent a parasite on that of the Italians. Against such a conclusion no
protest too energetic could be uttered. What we have derived directly
from the Italian poets are, first, some metres—especially the sonnet
and the octave stanza, though the latter has never taken firm root in
England. 'Terza rima,' attempted by Shelley, Byron, Morris, and Mrs.
Browning, has not yet become acclimatised. Blank verse, although
originally remodelled by Surrey upon the _versi sciolti_ of the
Italians, has departed widely from Italian precedent, first by its
decasyllabic structure, whereas Italian verse consists of
hendecasyllables; and, secondly, by its greater force, plasticity, and
freedom. The Spenserian stanza, again, is a new and original metre
peculiar to our literature; though it is possible that but for the
complex structures of Italian lyric verse, it might not have been
fashioned for the 'Faery Queen.' Lastly, the so-called heroic couplet
is native to England; at any rate, it is in no way related to Italian
metre. Therefore the only true Italian exotic adopted without
modification into our literature is the sonnet.

In the next place, we owe to the Italians the subject-matter of many of
our most famous dramas and our most delightful tales in verse. But the
English treatment of these histories and fables has been uniformly
independent and original. Comparing Shakspere's 'Romeo and Juliet' with
Bandello's tale, Webster's 'Duchess of Malfy' with the version 272given
from the Italian in Painter's 'Palace of Pleasure,' and Chaucer's
Knight's Tale with the 'Teseide' of Boccaccio, we perceive at once that
the English poets have used their Italian models merely as outlines to
be filled in with freedom, as the canvas to be embroidered with a
tapestry of vivid groups. Nothing is more manifest than the superiority
of the English genius over the Italian in all dramatic qualities of
intense passion, profound analysis, and living portrayal of character
in action. The mere rough detail of Shakspere's 'Othello' is to be
found in Cinthio's Collection of Novelle; but let an unprejudiced
reader peruse the original, and he will be no more deeply affected by
it than by any touching story of treachery, jealousy, and hapless
innocence. The wily subtleties of Iago, the soldierly frankness of
Cassio, the turbulent and volcanic passions of Othello, the charm of
Desdemona, and the whole tissue of vivid incidents which make 'Othello'
one of the most tremendous extant tragedies of characters in combat,
are Shakspere's, and only Shakspere's. This instance, indeed, enables
us exactly to indicate what the English owed to Italy and what was
essentially their own. From that Southern land of Circe about which
they dreamed, and which now and then they visited, came to their
imaginations a spirit-stirring breath of inspiration. It was to them
the country of marvels, of mysterious crimes, of luxurious gardens and
splendid skies, where love was more passionate and life more
picturesque, and hate more bloody and treachery more black, than in our
Northern climes. Italy was a spacious grove of wizardry, which mighty
poets, on the quest of fanciful adventure, trod with fascinated senses
and quickened pulses. But the strong brain which converted what they
heard and read and saw of that charmed land into the stuff of golden
romance or sable tragedy, was their own.

English literature has been defined a literature of genius.

273Our greatest work in art has been achieved not so much by
inspiration, subordinate to sentiments of exquisite good taste or
guided by observance of classical models, as by audacious sallies of
pure inventive power. This is true as a judgment of that constellation
which we call our drama, of the meteor Byron, of Milton and Dryden, who
are the Jupiter and Mars of our poetic system, and of the stars which
stud our literary firmament under the names of Shelley, Keats,
Wordsworth, Chatterton, Scott, Coleridge, Clough, Blake, Browning,
Swinburne, Tennyson. There are only a very few of the English poets,
Pope and Gray, for example, in whom the free instincts of genius are
kept systematically in check by the laws of the reflective
understanding. Now Italian literature is in this respect all unlike our
own. It began, indeed, with Dante, as a literature pre-eminently of
genius; but the spirit of scholarship assumed the sway as early as the
days of Petrarch and Boccaccio, and after them Italian has been
consistently a literature of taste. By this I mean that even the
greatest Italian poets have sought to render their style correct, have
endeavoured to subordinate their inspiration to what they considered
the rules of sound criticism, and have paid serious attention to their
manner as independent of the matter they wished to express. The passion
for antiquity, so early developed in Italy, delivered the later Italian
poets bound hand and foot into the hands of Horace. Poliziano was
content to reproduce the classic authors in a mosaic work of exquisite
translations. Tasso was essentially a man of talent, producing work of
chastened beauty by diligent attention to the rule and method of his
art. Even Ariosto submitted the liberty of his swift spirit to canons
of prescribed elegance. While our English poets have conceived and
executed without regard for the opinion of the learned and without
obedience to the usages of language—Shakspere, for example,
274producing tragedies which set Aristotle at defiance, and Milton
engrafting Latinisms on the native idiom—the Italian poets thought and
wrote with the fear of Academies before their eyes, and studied before
all things to maintain the purity of the Tuscan tongue. The consequence
is that the Italian and English literatures are eminent for very
different excellences. All that is forcible in the dramatic
presentation of life and character and action, all that is audacious in
imagination and capricious in fancy, whatever strength style can gain
from the sallies of original and untrammelled eloquence, whatever
beauty is derived from spontaneity and native grace, belong in abundant
richness to the English. On the other hand, the Italian poets present
us with masterpieces of correct and studied diction, with carefully
elaborated machinery, and with a style maintained at a uniform level of
dignified correctness. The weakness of the English proceeds from
inequality and extravagance; it is the weakness of self-confident
vigour, intolerant of rule, rejoicing in its own exuberant resources.
The weakness of the Italian is due to timidity and moderation; it is
the weakness that springs not so much from a lack of native strength as
from the over-anxious expenditure of strength upon the attainment of
finish, polish, and correctness. Hence the two nations have everything
to learn from one another. Modern Italian poets may seek by contact
with Shakspere and Milton to gain a freedom from the trammels imposed
upon them by the slavish followers of Petrarch; while the attentive
perusal of Tasso should be recommended to all English people who have
no ready access to the masterpieces of Greek and Latin literature.

Another point of view may be gained by noticing the pre-dominant tone
of the two literatures. Whenever English poetry is really great, it
approximates to the tragic and the stately; whereas the Italians are
peculiarly felicitous in the 275smooth and pleasant style, which
combines pathos with amusement, and which does not trespass beyond the
region of beauty into the domain of sublimity or terror. Italian poetry
is analogous to Italian painting and Italian music: it bathes the soul
in a plenitude of charms, investing even the most solemn subjects with
loveliness. Rembrandt and Albert Dürer depict the tragedies of the
Sacred History with a serious and awful reality: Italian painters, with
a few rare but illustrious exceptions, shrink from approaching them
from any point of view but that of harmonious melancholy. Even so the
English poets stir the soul to its very depths by their profound and
earnest delineations of the stern and bitter truths of the world:
Italian poets environ all things with the golden haze of an artistic
harmony; so that the soul is agitated by no pain at strife with the
persuasions of pure beauty.

276




POPULAR SONGS OF TUSCANY


It is a noticeable fact about the popular songs of Tuscany that they
are almost exclusively devoted to love. The Italians in general have no
ballad literature resembling that of our Border or that of Spain. The
tragic histories of their noble families, the great deeds of their
national heroes, and the sufferings of their country during centuries
of warfare, have left but few traces in their rustic poetry. It is true
that some districts are less utterly barren than others in these
records of the past. The Sicilian people's poetry, for example,
preserves a memory of the famous Vespers; and one or two terrible
stories of domestic tragedy, like the tale of Rosmunda in 'La Donna
Lombarda,' the romance of the Baronessa di Carini, and the so-called
Caso di Sciacca, may still be heard upon the lips of the people. But
these exceptions are insignificant in comparison with the vast mass of
songs which deal with love; and I cannot find that Tuscany, where the
language of this minstrelsy is purest, and where the artistic instincts
of the race are strongest, has anything at all approaching to our
ballads.[35] Though the Tuscan contadini are always singing, it rarely
happens that

277

    The plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
    And battles long ago.


On the contrary, we may be sure, when we hear their voices ringing
through the olive-groves or macchi, that they are chanting

    Some more humble lay,
Familiar matter of to-day,—
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
That has been, and may be again;


or else, since their melodies are by no means uniformly sad, some ditty
of the joyousness of springtime or the ecstasy of love.

 [35] This sentence requires some qualification. In his _Poesia
 Popolare Italiana_, 1878, Professor d'Ancona prints a Pisan, a
 Venetian, and two Lombard versions of our Border ballad 'Where hae ye
 been, Lord Randal, my son,' so close in general type and minor details
 to the English, German, Swedish, and Finnish versions of this
 Volkslied as to suggest a very ancient community of origin. It remains
 as yet, however, an isolated fact in the history of Italian popular
 poetry.

This defect of anything corresponding to our ballads of 'Chevy Chase,'
or 'Sir Patrick Spens,' or 'Gil Morrice,' in a poetry which is still so
vital with the life of past centuries, is all the more remarkable
because Italian history is distinguished above that of other nations by
tragic episodes peculiarly suited to poetic treatment. Many of these
received commemoration in the fourteenth century from Dante; others
were embodied in the _novelle_ of Boccaccio and Cinthio and Bandello,
whence they passed into the dramas of Shakspere, Webster, Ford, and
their contemporaries. But scarcely an echo can be traced through all
the volumes of the recently collected popular songs. We must seek for
an explanation of this fact partly in the conditions of Italian life,
and partly in the nature of the Italian imagination. Nowhere in Italy
do we observe that intimate connection between the people at large and
the great nobles which generates the sympathy of clanship. Politics in
most parts of the peninsula fell at a very early period into the hands
either of irresponsible princes, 278who ruled like despots, or else of
burghers, who administered the state within the walls of their Palazzo
Pubblico. The people remained passive spectators of contemporary
history. The loyalty of subjects to their sovereign which animates the
Spanish ballads, the loyalty of retainers to their chief which gives
life to the tragic ballads of the Border, did not exist in Italy.
Country-folk felt no interest in the doings of Visconti or Medici or
Malatesti sufficient to arouse the enthusiasm of local bards or to call
forth the celebration of their princely tragedies in verse. Amid the
miseries of foreign wars and home oppression, it seemed better to
demand from verse and song some mitigation of the woes of life, some
expression of personal emotion, than to record the disasters which to
us at a distance appear poetic in their grandeur.

These conditions of popular life, although unfavourable to the
production of ballad poetry, would not, however, have been sufficient
by themselves to check its growth, if the Italians had been strongly
impelled to literature of this type by their nature. The real reason
why their _Volkslieder_ are amorous and personal is to be found in the
quality of their imagination. The Italian genius is not creatively
imaginative in the highest sense. The Italians have never, either in
the ancient or the modern age, produced a great drama or a national
epic, the 'Æneid' and the 'Divine Comedy' being obviously of different
species from the 'Iliad' or the 'Nibelungen Lied.' Modern Italians,
again, are distinguished from the French, the Germans, and the English
in being the conscious inheritors of an older, august, and strictly
classical civilisation. The great memories of Rome weigh down their
faculties of invention. It would also seem as though they shrank in
their poetry from the representation of what is tragic and
spirit-stirring. They incline to what is cheerful, brilliant, or
pathetic. The dramatic element in 279human life, external to the
personality of the poet, which exercised so strong a fascination over
our ballad-bards and playwrights, has but little attraction for the
Italian. When he sings, he seeks to express his own individual
emotions—his love, his joy, his jealousy, his anger, his despair. The
language which he uses is at the same time direct in its intensity, and
hyperbolical in its display of fancy; but it lacks those imaginative
touches which exalt the poetry of personal passion into a sublimer
region. Again, the Italians are deficient in a sense of the
supernatural. The wraiths that cannot rest because their love is still
unsatisfied, the voices which cry by night over field and fell, the
water-spirits and forest fairies, the second-sight of coming woes, the
presentiment of death, the warnings and the charms and spells, which
fill the popular poetry of all Northern nations, are absent in Italian
songs. In the whole of Tigri's collection I only remember one mention
of a ghost. It is not that the Italians are deficient in superstitions
of all kinds. Every one has heard of their belief in the evil eye, for
instance. But they do not connect this kind of fetichism with their
poetry; and even their greatest poets, with the exception of Dante,
have shown no capacity or no inclination for enhancing the imaginative
effect of their creations by an appeal to the instinct of mysterious
awe.

The truth is that the Italians as a race are distinguished as much by a
firm grasp upon the practical realities of existence as by powerful
emotions. They have but little of that dreamy _Schwärmerei_ with which
the people of the North are largely gifted. The true sphere of their
genius is painting. What appeals to the imagination through the eyes,
they have expressed far better than any other modern nation. But their
poetry, like their music, is deficient in tragic sublimity and in the
higher qualities of imaginative creation.

280It may seem paradoxical to say this of the nation which produced
Dante. But we must remember not to judge races by single and
exceptional men of genius. Petrarch, the Troubadour of exquisite
emotions, Boccaccio, who touches all the keys of life so lightly,
Ariosto, with the smile of everlasting April on his lips, and Tasso,
excellent alone when he confines himself to pathos or the picturesque,
are no exceptions to what I have just said. Yet these poets pursued
their art with conscious purpose. The tragic splendour of Greece, the
majesty of Rome, were not unknown to them. Far more is it true that
popular poetry in Italy, proceeding from the hearts of uncultivated
peasants and expressing the national character in its simplicity,
displays none of the stuff from which the greatest works of art in
verse, epics and dramas, can be wrought. But within its own sphere of
personal emotion, this popular poetry is exquisitely melodious,
inexhaustibly rich, unique in modern literature for the direct
expression which it has given to every shade of passion.

Signor Tigri's collection,[36] to which I shall confine my attention in
this paper, consists of eleven hundred and eighty-five _rispetti_, with
the addition of four hundred and sixty-one _stornelli_. Rispetto, it
may be said in passing, is the name commonly given throughout Italy to
short poems, varying from six to twelve lines, constructed on the
principle of the octave stanza. That is to say, the first part of the
rispetto consists of four or six lines with alternate rhymes, while one
or more couplets, called the _ripresa_, complete the poem.[37] The
281stornello, or ritournelle, never exceeds three lines, and owes its
name to the return which it makes at the end of the last line to the
rhyme given by the emphatic word of the first. Browning, in his poem of
'Fra Lippo Lippi,' has accustomed English ears to one common species of
the stornello,[38] which sets out with the name of a flower, and rhymes
with it, as thus:

    Fior di narciso.
Prigionero d'amore mi son reso,
Nel rimirare il tuo leggiadro viso.


 [36] _Canti Popolari Toscani_, raccolti e annotati da Giuseppe Tigri.
 Volume unico. Firenze: G. Barbèra, 1869.


 [37] This is a description of the Tuscan rispetto. In Sicily the
 stanza generally consists of eight lines rhyming alternately
 throughout, while in the North of Italy it is normally a simple
 quatrain. The same poetical material assumes in Northern, Central, and
 Southern Italy these diverge but associated forms.


 [38] This song, called Ciure (Sicilian for _fiore_) in Sicily, is said
 by Signor Pitré to be in disrepute there. He once asked an old dame of
 Palermo to repeat him some of these ditties. Her answer was, 'You must
 get them from light women; I do not know any. They sing them in bad
 houses and prisons, where, God be praised, I have never been.' In
 Tuscany there does not appear to be so marked a distinction between
 the flower song and the rispetto.

The divisions of those two sorts of songs, to which Tigri gives names
like The Beauty of Women, The Beauty of Men, Falling in Love,
Serenades, Happy Love, Unhappy Love, Parting, Absence, Letters, Return
to Home, Anger and Jealousy, Promises, Entreaties and Reproaches,
Indifference, Treachery and Abandonment, prove with what fulness the
various phases of the tender passion are treated. Through the whole
fifteen hundred the one theme of Love is never relinquished. Only two
persons, 'I' and 'thou,' appear upon the scene; yet so fresh and so
various are the moods of feeling, that one can read them from first to
last without too much satiety.

To seek for the authors of these ditties would be useless. Some of them
may be as old as the fourteenth century; others may have been made
yesterday. Some are the native product of the Tuscan mountain villages,
especially of the regions round Pistoja and Siena, where on the spurs
of the 282Apennines the purest Italian is vernacular. Some, again, are
importations from other provinces, especially from Sicily and Naples,
caught up by the peasants of Tuscany and adapted to their taste and
style; for nothing travels faster than a _Volkslied_. Born some morning
in a noisy street of Naples, or on the solitary slopes of Radicofani,
before the week is out, a hundred voices are repeating it. Waggoners
and pedlars carry it across the hills to distant towns. It floats with
the fishermen from bay to bay, and marches with the conscript to his
barrack in a far-off province. Who was the first to give it shape and
form? No one asks, and no one cares. A student well acquainted with the
habits of the people in these matters says, 'If they knew the author of
a ditty, they would not learn it, far less if they discovered that it
was a scholar's.' If the cadence takes their ear, they consecrate the
song at once by placing it upon the honoured list of 'ancient lays.'
Passing from lip to lip and from district to district, it receives
additions and alterations, and becomes the property of a score of
provinces. Meanwhile the poet from whose soul it blossomed that first
morning like a flower, remains contented with obscurity. The wind has
carried from his lips the thistledown of song, and sown it on a hundred
hills and meadows, far and wide. After such wise is the birth of all
truly popular compositions. Who knows, for instance, the veritable
author of many of those mighty German chorals which sprang into being
at the period of the Reformation? The first inspiration was given,
probably, to a single mind; but the melody, as it has reached us, is
the product of a thousand. This accounts for the variations which in
different dialects and districts the same song presents. Meanwhile, it
is sometimes possible to trace the authorship of a ballad with marked
local character to an improvisatore famous in his village, or to one of
those professional 283rhymesters whom the country-folk employ in the
composition of love-letters to their sweethearts at a distance.[39]
Tommaseo, in the preface to his 'Canti Popolari,' mentions in
particular a Beatrice di Pian degli Ontani, whose poetry was famous
through the mountains of Pistoja; and Tigri records by name a little
girl called Cherubina, who made rispetti by the dozen as she watched
her sheep upon the hills. One of the songs in his collection (p. 181)
contains a direct reference to the village letter-writer:—

Salutatemi, bella, lo scrivano;
Non lo conosco e non so chi si sia.
A me mi pare un poeta sovrano,
Tanto gli è sperto nella poesia.[40]


 [39] Much light has lately been thrown on the popular poetry of Italy;
 and it appears that contemporary improvisatori trust more to their
 richly stocked memories and to their power of recombination than to
 original or novel inspiration. It is in Sicily that the vein of truly
 creative lyric utterance is said to flow most freely and most
 copiously at the present time.


 [40] 'Remember me, fair one, to the scrivener. I do not know him or
 who he is, but he seems to me a sovereign poet, so cunning is he in
 his use of verse.'

While I am writing thus about the production and dissemination of these
love-songs, I cannot help remembering three days and nights which I
once spent at sea between Genoa and Palermo, in the company of some
conscripts who were going to join their regiment in Sicily. They were
lads from the Milanese and Liguria, and they spent a great portion of
their time in composing and singing poetry. One of them had a fine
baritone voice; and when the sun had set, his comrades gathered round
him and begged him to sing to them 'Con quella patetica tua voce.' Then
followed hours of singing, the low monotonous melodies of his ditties
harmonising wonderfully with the tranquillity of night, so clear 284and
calm that the sky and all its stars were mirrored on the sea, through
which we moved as if in a dream. Sometimes the songs provoked
conversation, which, as is usual in Italy, turned mostly upon 'le
bellezze delle donne.' I remember that once an animated discussion
about the relative merits of blondes and brunettes nearly ended in a
quarrel, when the youngest of the whole band, a boy of about seventeen,
put a stop to the dispute by theatrically raising his eyes and arms to
heaven and crying, 'Tu sei innamorato d' una grande Diana cacciatrice
nera, ed io d' una bella Venere bionda.' Though they were but village
lads, they supported their several opinions with arguments not unworthy
of Firenzuola, and showed the greatest delicacy of feeling in the
treatment of a subject which could scarcely have failed to reveal any
latent coarseness.

The purity of all the Italian love-songs collected by Tigri is very
remarkable.[41] Although the passion expressed in them is Oriental in
its vehemence, not a word falls which could offend a virgin's ear. The
one desire of lovers is lifelong union in marriage. The _damo_—for so a
sweetheart is termed in Tuscany—trembles until he has gained the
approval of his future mother-in-law, and forbids the girl he is
courting to leave her house to talk to him at night:—

Dice che tu tî affacci alia finestra;
Ma non tî dice che tu vada fuora,
Perchè, la notte, è cosa disonesta.

285

All the language of his love is respectful. _Signore_, or master of my
soul, _madonna, anima mia, dolce mio ben, nobil persona,_ are the terms
of adoration with which he approaches his mistress. The elevation of
feeling and perfect breeding which Manzoni has so well delineated in
the loves of Renzo and Lucia are traditional among Italian
country-folk. They are conscious that true gentleness is no matter of
birth or fortune:—

E tu non mi lasciar per poverezza,
Chè povertà non guasta gentilezza.[42]


This in itself constitutes an important element of culture, and
explains to some extent the high romantic qualities of their
impassioned poetry. The beauty of their land reveals still more. 'O
fortunatos nimium sua si bona norint!' Virgil's exclamation is as true
now as it was when he sang the labours of Italian country-folk some
nineteen centuries ago. To a traveller from the north there is a pathos
even in the contrast between the country in which these children of a
happier climate toil, and those bleak, winter-beaten fields where our
own peasants pass their lives. The cold nights and warm days of Tuscan
springtime are like a Swiss summer. They make rich pasture and a hardy
race of men. Tracts of corn and oats and rye alternate with patches of
flax 286in full flower, with meadows yellow with buttercups or pink
with ragged robin; the young vines, running from bough to bough of elm
and mulberry, are just coming into leaf. The poplars are fresh with
bright green foliage. On the verge of this blooming plain stand ancient
cities ringed with hills, some rising to snowy Apennines, some covered
with white convents and sparkling with villas. Cypresses shoot, black
and spirelike, amid grey clouds of olive-boughs upon the slopes; and
above, where vegetation borders on the barren rock, are masses of ilex
and arbutus interspersed with chestnut-trees not yet in leaf. Men and
women are everywhere at work, ploughing with great white oxen, or
tilling the soil with spades six feet in length—Sabellian ligones. The
songs of nightingales among acacia-trees, and the sharp scream of
swallows wheeling in air, mingle with the monotonous chant that always
rises from the country-people at their toil. Here and there on points
of vantage, where the hill-slopes sink into the plain, cluster white
villages with flower-like campanili. It is there that the veglia, or
evening rendezvous of lovers, the serenades and balls and feste, of
which one hears so much in the popular minstrelsy, take place. Of
course it would not be difficult to paint the darker shades of this
picture. Autumn comes, when the contadini of Lucca and Siena and
Pistoja go forth to work in the unwholesome marshes of the Maremma, or
of Corsica and Sardinia. Dismal superstitions and hereditary hatreds
cast their blight over a life externally so fair. The bad government of
centuries has perverted in many ways the instincts of a people
naturally mild and cheerful and peace-loving. But as far as nature can
make men happy, these husbandmen are surely to be reckoned fortunate,
and in their songs we find little to remind us of what is otherwise
than sunny in their lot.

 [41] It must be remarked that Tigri draws a strong contrast in this
 respect between the songs of the mountain districts which he has
 printed and those of the towns, and that Pitrè, in his edition of
 Sicilian _Volkslieder_, expressly alludes to the coarseness of a whole
 class which he had omitted. The MSS. of Sicilian and Tuscan songs,
 dating from the fifteenth century and earlier, yield a fair proportion
 of decidedly obscene compositions. Yet the fact stated above is
 integrally correct. When acclimatised in the large towns, the rustic
 Muse not unfrequently assumes a garb of grossness. At home, among the
 fields and on the mountains, she remains chaste and romantic.


 [42] In a rispetto, of which I subjoin a translation, sung by a poor
 lad to a mistress of higher rank, love itself is pleaded as the sign
 of a gentle soul:—


My state is poor: I am not meet
    To court so nobly born a love;
For poverty hath tied my feet,
    Trying to climb too far above.
Yet am I gentle, loving thee;
Nor need thou shun my poverty.

A translator of these _Volkslieder_ has to contend with difficulties
287of no ordinary kind. The freshness of their phrases, the spontaneity
of their sentiments, and the melody of their unstudied cadences, are
inimitable. So again is the peculiar effect of their frequent
transitions from the most fanciful imagery to the language of prose. No
mere student can hope to rival, far less to reproduce, in a foreign
tongue, the charm of verse which sprang untaught from the hearts of
simple folk, which lives unwritten on the lips of lovers, and which
should never be dissociated from singing.[43] There are, besides,
peculiarities in the very structure of the popular rispetto. The
constant repetition of the same phrase with slight variations,
especially in the closing lines of the _ripresa_ of the Tuscan
rispetto, gives an antique force and flavour to these ditties, like
that which we appreciate in our own ballads, but which may easily, in
the translation, degenerate into weakness and insipidity. The Tuscan
rhymester, again, allows himself the utmost licence. It is usual to
find mere assonances like _bene_ and _piacere, oro_ and _volo, ala_ and
_alata_, in the place of rhymes; while such remote resemblances of
sound as _colli_ and _poggi_, _lascia_ and _piazza_, are far from
uncommon. To match these rhymes by joining 'home' and 'alone,' 'time'
and 'shine,' &c, would of course be a matter of no difficulty; but it
has seemed to me on the whole best to preserve, with some exceptions,
such accuracy as the English ear requires. I fear, however, that, after
all, these wild-flowers of song, transplanted to another climate and
placed in a hothouse, will appear but pale and hectic by the side of
their robuster brethren of the Tuscan hills.

 [43] When the Cherubina, of whom mention has been made above, was
 asked by Signor Tigri to dictate some of her rispetti, she answered,
 'O signore! ne dico tanti quando li canto! . . . ma ora . . .
 bisognerebbe averli tutti in visione; se no, proprio non vengono.'

In the following serenade many of the peculiarities which 288I have
just noticed occur. I have also adhered to the irregularity of rhyme
which may be usually observed about the middle of the poem (p. 103):—

Sleeping or waking, thou sweet face,
Lift up thy fair and tender brow:
List to thy love in this still place;
He calls thee to thy window now:
But bids thee not the house to quit,
Since in the night this were not meet.
Come to thy window, stay within;
I stand without, and sing and sing:
Come to thy window, stay at home;
I stand without, and make my moan.


Here is a serenade of a more impassioned character (p. 99):—

I come to visit thee, my beauteous queen,
Thee and the house where thou art harboured:
All the long way upon my knees, my queen,
I kiss the earth where'er thy footsteps tread.
I kiss the earth, and gaze upon the wall,
Whereby thou goest, maid imperial!
I kiss the earth, and gaze upon the house,
Whereby thou farest, queen most beauteous!


In the next the lover, who has passed the whole night beneath his
sweetheart's window, takes leave at the break of day. The feeling of
the half-hour before dawn, when the sound of bells rises to meet the
growing light, and both form a prelude to the glare and noise of day,
is expressed with much unconscious poetry (p. 105):—

I see the dawn e'en now begin to peer:
Therefore I take my leave, and cease to sing,
See how the windows open far and near,
And hear the bells of morning, how they ring!
Through heaven and earth the sounds of ringing swell;
Therefore, bright jasmine flower, sweet maid, farewell!
Through heaven and Rome the sound of ringing goes;
Farewell, bright jasmine flower, sweet maiden rose!

289

The next is more quaint (p. 99):—

I come by night, I come, my soul aflame;
I come in this fair hour of your sweet sleep;
And should I wake you up, it were a shame.
I cannot sleep, and lo! I break your sleep.
To wake you were a shame from your deep rest;
Love never sleeps, nor they whom Love hath blest.


A very great many rispetti are simple panegyrics of the beloved, to
find similitude for whose beauty heaven and earth are ransacked. The
compliment of the first line in the following song is perfect (p. 23):—

Beauty was born with you, fair maid:
The sun and moon inclined to you;
On you the snow her whiteness laid
The rose her rich and radiant hue:
Saint Magdalen her hair unbound,
And Cupid taught you how to wound—
How to wound hearts Dan Cupid taught:
Your beauty drives me love-distraught.


The lady in the next was December's child (p. 25):—

O beauty, born in winter's night,
Born in the month of spotless snow:
Your face is like a rose so bright;
Your mother may be proud of you!
She may be proud, lady of love,
Such sunlight shines her house above:
She may be proud, lady of heaven,
Such sunlight to her home is given.


The sea wind is the source of beauty to another (p. 16):—

Nay, marvel not you are so fair;
For you beside the sea were born:
The sea-waves keep you fresh and fair,
Like roses on their leafy thorn.

290 If roses grow on the rose-bush,
Your roses through midwinter blush;
If roses bloom on the rose-bed,
Your face can show both white and red.


The eyes of a fourth are compared, after quite a new and original
fashion, to stars (p. 210):—

The moon hath risen her plaint to lay
Before the face of Love Divine.
Saying in heaven she will not stay,
Since you have stolen what made her shine:
Aloud she wails with sorrow wan,—
She told her stars and two are gone:
They are not there; you have them now;
They are the eyes in your bright brow.


Nor are girls less ready to praise their lovers, but that they do not
dwell so much on physical perfection. Here is a pleasant greeting (p.
124):—

O welcome, welcome, lily white,
Thou fairest youth of all the valley!
When I'm with you, my soul is light;
I chase away dull melancholy.
I chase all sadness from my heart:
Then welcome, dearest that thou art!
I chase all sadness from my side:
Then welcome, O my love, my pride!
I chase all sadness far away:
Then welcome, welcome, love, to-day!


The image of a lily is very prettily treated in the next (p 79):—

I planted a lily yestreen at my window;
I set it yestreen, and to-day it sprang up:
When I opened the latch and leaned out of my window,
It shadowed my face with its beautiful cup.
O lily, my lily, how tall you are grown!
Remember how dearly I loved you, my own.
O lily, my lily, you'll grow to the sky!
Remember I love you for ever and aye.

291

The same thought of love growing like a flower receives another turn
(p. 69):—

On yonder hill I saw a flower;
And, could it thence be hither borne,
I'd plant it here within my bower,
And water it both eve and morn.
Small water wants the stem so straight;
'Tis a love-lily stout as fate.
Small water wants the root so strong:
'Tis a love-lily lasting long.
Small water wants the flower so sheen:
'Tis a love-lily ever green.


Envious tongues have told a girl that her complexion is not good. She
replies, with imagery like that of Virgil's 'Alba ligustra cadunt,
vaccinia nigra leguntur' (p. 31):—

Think it no grief that I am brown,
For all brunettes are born to reign:
White is the snow, yet trodden down;
Black pepper kings need not disdain:
White snow lies mounded on the vales
Black pepper's weighed in brazen scales.


Another song runs on the same subject (p. 38):—

The whole world tells me that I'm brown,
The brown earth gives us goodly corn:
The clove-pink too, however brown,
Yet proudly in the hand 'tis borne.
They say my love is black, but he
Shines like an angel-form to me:
They say my love is dark as night;
To me he seems a shape of light.


The freshness of the following spring song recalls the ballads of the
Val de Vire in Normandy (p. 85):—

It was the morning of the first of May,
Into the close I went to pluck a flower;
And there I found a bird of woodland gay,
Who whiled with songs of love the silent hour.

292 O bird, who fliest from fair Florence, how
Dear love begins, I prithee teach me now!—
Love it begins with music and with song,
And ends with sorrow and with sighs ere long.


Love at first sight is described (p. 79):—

The very moment that we met,
That moment love began to beat:
One glance of love we gave, and swore
Never to part for evermore;
We swore together, sighing deep,
Never to part till Death's long sleep.


Here too is a memory of the first days of love (p. 79):—

If I remember, it was May
When love began between us two:
The roses in the close were gay,
The cherries blackened on the bough.
O cherries black and pears so green!
Of maidens fair you are the queen.
Fruit of black cherry and sweet pear!
Of sweethearts you're the queen, I swear.


The troth is plighted with such promises as these (p. 230):—

Or ere I leave you, love divine,
Dead tongues shall stir and utter speech,
And running rivers flow with wine,
And fishes swim upon the beach;
Or ere I leave or shun you, these
Lemons shall grow on orange-trees.


The girl confesses her love after this fashion (p. 86):—

Passing across the billowy sea,
I let, alas, my poor heart fall;
I bade the sailors bring it me;
They said they had not seen it fall.
I asked the sailors, one and two;
They said that I had given it you.
I asked the sailors, two and three;
They said that I had given it thee.

293

It is not uncommon to speak of love as a sea. Here is a curious play
upon this image (p. 227):—

Ho, Cupid! Sailor Cupid, ho!
Lend me awhile that bark of thine;
For on the billows I will go,
To find my love who once was mine:
And if I find her, she shall wear
A chain around her neck so fair,
Around her neck a glittering bond,
Four stars, a lily, a diamond.


It is also possible that the same thought may occur in the second line
of the next ditty (p. 120):—

Beneath the earth I'll make a way
To pass the sea and come to you.
People will think I'm gone away;
But, dear, I shall be seeing you.
People will say that I am dead;
But we'll pluck roses white and red:
People will think I'm lost for aye;
But we'll pluck roses, you and I.


All the little daily incidents are beautified by love. Here is a lover
who thanks the mason for making his window so close upon the road that
he can see his sweetheart as she passes (p. 118):—

Blest be the mason's hand who built
This house of mine by the roadside,
And made my window low and wide
For me to watch my love go by.
And if I knew when she went by,
My window should be fairly gilt;
And if I knew what time she went,
My window should be flower-besprent.


Here is a conceit which reminds one of the pretty epistle of
Philostratus, in which the footsteps of the beloved are called
_ερηρεισμένα Φιλήματα_ (p. 117):—

294 What time I see you passing by;
I sit and count the steps you take:
You take the steps; I sit and sigh:
Step after step, my sighs awake.
Tell me, dear love, which more abound,
My sighs or your steps on the ground?
Tell me, dear love, which are the most,
Your light steps or the sighs they cost?


A girl complains that she cannot see her lover's house (p. 117):—

I lean upon the lattice, and look forth
To see the house where my lover dwells.
There grows an envious tree that spoils my mirth:
Cursed be the man who set it on these hills!
But when those jealous boughs are all unclad,
I then shall see the cottage of my lad:
When once that tree is rooted from the hills,
I'll see the house wherein my lover dwells.


In the same mood a girl who has just parted from her sweetheart is
angry with the hill beyond which he is travelling (p. 167):—

I see and see, yet see not what I would:
I see the leaves atremble on the tree:
I saw my love where on the hill he stood,
Yet see him not drop downward to the lea.
    O traitor hill, what will you do?
    I ask him, live or dead, from you.
    O traitor hill, what shall it be?
    I ask him, live or dead, from thee.


All the songs of love in absence are very quaint. Here is one which
calls our nursery rhymes to mind (p. 119):—

I would I were a bird so free,
That I had wings to fly away:
Unto that window I would flee,
Where stands my love and grinds all day.
295 Grind, miller, grind; the water's deep!
I cannot grind; love makes me weep.
Grind, miller, grind; the waters flow!
I cannot grind; love wastes me so.


The next begins after the same fashion, but breaks into a very shower
of benedictions (p. 118):—

Would God I were a swallow free,
That I had wings to fly away:
Upon the miller's door I'd be,
Where stands my love and grinds all day:
Upon the door, upon the sill,
Where stays my love;—God bless him still!
God bless my love, and blessed be
His house, and bless my house for me;
Yea, blest be both, and ever blest
My lover's house, and all the rest!


The girl alone at home in her garden sees a wood-dove flying by and
calls to it (p. 179):—

O dove, who fliest far to yonder hill,
Dear dove, who in the rock hast made thy nest,
Let me a feather from thy pinion pull,
For I will write to him who loves me best.
And when I've written it and made it clear,
I'll give thee back thy feather, dove so dear:
And when I've written it and sealed it, then
I'll give thee back thy feather love-laden.


A swallow is asked to lend the same kind service (p. 179):—

O swallow, swallow, flying through the air,
Turn, turn, I prithee, from thy flight above!
Give me one feather from thy wing so fair,
For I will write a letter to my love.
When I have written it and made it clear,
I'll give thee back thy feather, swallow dear;
When I have written it on paper white,
I'll make, I swear, thy missing feather right;
When once 'tis written on fair leaves of gold,
I'll give thee back thy wing and flight so bold.

296

Long before Tennyson's song in the 'Princess,' it would seem that
swallows were favourite messengers of love. In the next song which I
translate, the repetition of one thought with delicate variation is
full of character (p. 178):—

O swallow, flying over hill and plain,
If thou shouldst find my love, oh bid him come!
And tell him, on these mountains I remain
Even as a lamb who cannot find her home:
And tell him, I am left all, all alone,
Even as a tree whose flowers are overblown:
And tell him, I am left without a mate
Even as a tree whose boughs are desolate:
And tell him, I am left uncomforted
Even as the grass upon the meadows dead.


The following is spoken by a girl who has been watching the lads of the
village returning from their autumn service in the plain, and whose
damo comes the last of all (p. 240):—

O dear my love, you come too late!
What found you by the way to do?
I saw your comrades pass the gate,
But yet not you, dear heart, not you!
If but a little more you'd stayed,
With sighs you would have found me dead;
If but a while you'd keep me crying,
With sighs you would have found me dying.


The _amantium iræ_ find a place too in these rustic ditties. A girl
explains to her sweetheart (p. 240):—

'Twas told me and vouchsafed for true,
Your kin are wroth as wroth can be;
For loving me they swear at you,
They swear at you because of me;
Your father, mother, all your folk,
Because you love me, chafe and choke!
Then set your kith and kin at ease;
Set them at ease and let me die:
Set the whole clan of them at ease;
Set them at ease and see me die!

297

Another suspects that her damo has paid his suit to a rival (p. 200):—

On Sunday morning well I knew
Where gaily dressed you turned your feet;
And there were many saw it too,
And came to tell me through the street:
And when they spoke, I smiled, ah me!
But in my room wept privately;
And when they spoke, I sang for pride,
But in my room alone I sighed.


Then come reconciliations (p. 223):—

Let us make peace, my love, my bliss!
For cruel strife can last no more.
If you say nay, yet I say yes:
'Twixt me and you there is no war.
Princes and mighty lords make peace;
And so may lovers twain, I wis:
Princes and soldiers sign a truce;
And so may two sweethearts like us:
Princes and potentates agree;
And so may friends like you and me.


There is much character about the following, which is spoken by the
damo (p. 223):—

As yonder mountain height I trod,
I chanced to think of your dear name;
I knelt with clasped hands on the sod,
And thought of my neglect with shame:
I knelt upon the stone, and swore
Our love should bloom as heretofore.


Sometimes the language of affection takes a more imaginative tone, as
in the following (p. 232):—

Dearest, what time you mount to heaven above,
I'll meet you holding in my hand my heart:
You to your breast shall clasp me full of love,
And I will lead you to our Lord apart.

298 Our Lord, when he our love so true hath known,
Shall make of our two hearts one heart alone;
One heart shall make of our two hearts, to rest
In heaven amid the splendours of the blest.


This was the woman's. Here is the man's (p. 113):—

If I were master of all loveliness,
I'd make thee still more lovely than thou art:
If I were master of all wealthiness,
Much gold and silver should be thine, sweetheart:
If I were master of the house of hell,
I'd bar the brazen gates in thy sweet face;
Or ruled the place where purging spirits dwell,
I'd free thee from that punishment apace.
Were I in paradise and thou shouldst come,
I'd stand aside, my love, to make thee room;
Were I in paradise, well seated there,
I'd quit my place to give it thee, my fair!


Sometimes, but very rarely, weird images are sought to clothe passion,
as in the following (p. 136):—

Down into hell I went and thence returned:
Ah me! alas! the people that were there!
I found a room where many candles burned,
And saw within my love that languished there.
When as she saw me, she was glad of cheer,
And at the last she said: Sweet soul of mine;
Dost thou recall the time long past, so dear,
When thou didst say to me, Sweet soul of mine?
Now kiss me on the mouth, my dearest, here;
Kiss me that I for once may cease to pine!
So sweet, ah me, is thy dear mouth, so dear,
That of thy mercy prithee sweeten mine!
Now, love, that thou hast kissed me, now, I say,
Look not to leave this place again for aye.


Or again in this (p. 232):—

Methinks I hear, I hear a voice that cries:
Beyond the hill it floats upon the air.
It is my lover come to bid me rise,
If I am fain forthwith toward heaven to fare.

299 But I have answered him, and said him No!
I've given my paradise, my heaven, for you:
Till we together go to paradise,
I'll stay on earth and love your beauteous eyes.


But it is not with such remote and eerie thoughts that the rustic muse
of Italy can deal successfully. Far better is the following
half-playful description of love-sadness (p. 71):—

Ah me, alas! who know not how to sigh!
Of sighs I now full well have learned the art:
Sighing at table when to eat I try,
Sighing within my little room apart,
Sighing when jests and laughter round me fly,
Sighing with her and her who know my heart:
I sigh at first, and then I go on sighing;
'Tis for your eyes that I am ever sighing:
I sigh at first, and sigh the whole year through;
And 'tis your eyes that keep me sighing so.


The next two rispetti, delicious in their naïveté, might seem to have
been extracted from the libretto of an opera, but that they lack the
sympathising chorus, who should have stood at hand, ready to chime in
with 'he,' 'she,' and 'they,' to the 'I,' 'you,' and 'we' of the lovers
(p. 123):—

Ah, when will dawn that glorious day
When you will softly mount my stair?
My kin shall bring you on the way;
I shall be first to greet you there.
Ah, when will dawn that day of bliss
When we before the priest say Yes?

Ah, when will dawn that blissful day
When I shall softly mount your stair,
Your brothers meet me on the way,
And one by one I greet them there?
When comes the day, my staff, my strength,
To call your mother mine at length?
When will the day come, love of mine,
I shall be yours and you be mine?

300Hitherto the songs have told only of happy love, or of love
returned. Some of the best, however, are unhappy. Here is one, for
instance, steeped in gloom (p. 142):—

They have this custom in fair Naples town;
They never mourn a man when he is dead:
The mother weeps when she has reared a son
To be a serf and slave by love misled;
The mother weeps when she a son hath born
To be the serf and slave of galley scorn;
The mother weeps when she a son gives suck
To be the serf and slave of city luck.


The following contains a fine wild image, wrought out with strange
passion in detail (p. 300):—

I'll spread a table brave for revelry,
And to the feast will bid sad lovers all.
For meat I'll give them my heart's misery;
For drink I'll give these briny tears that fall.
Sorrows and sighs shall be the varletry,
To serve the lovers at this festival:
The table shall be death, black death profound;
Weep, stones, and utter sighs, ye walls around!
The table shall be death, yea, sacred death;
Weep, stones, and sigh as one that sorroweth!


Nor is the next a whit less in the vein of mad Jeronimo (p. 304):—

High up, high up, a house I'll rear,
High up, high up, on yonder height;
At every window set a snare,
With treason, to betray the night;
With treason, to betray the stars,
Since I'm betrayed by my false feres;
With treason, to betray the day,
Since Love betrayed me, well away!


The vengeance of an Italian reveals itself in the energetic song which
I quote next (p. 303):—

301

I have a sword; 'twould cut a brazen bell,
Tough steel 'twould cut, if there were any need:
I've had it tempered in the streams of hell
By masters mighty in the mystic rede:
I've had it tempered by the light of stars;
Then let him come whose skin is stout as Mars;
I've had it tempered to a trenchant blade;
Then let him come who stole from me my maid.


More mild, but brimful of the bitterness of a soul to whom the whole
world has become but ashes in the death of love, is tho following
lament (p. 143):—

Call me the lovely Golden Locks no more,
But call me Sad Maid of the golden hair.
If there be wretched women, sure I think
I too may rank among the most forlorn.
I fling a palm into the sea; 'twill sink:
Others throw lead, and it is lightly borne.
What have I done, dear Lord, the world to cross?
Gold in my hand forthwith is turned to dross.
How have I made, dear Lord, dame Fortune wroth?
Gold in my hand forthwith is turned to froth.
What have I done, dear Lord, to fret the folk?
Gold in my hand forthwith is turned to smoke.


Here is pathos (p. 172):—

The wood-dove who hath lost her mate,
She lives a dolorous life, I ween;
She seeks a stream and bathes in it,
And drinks that water foul and green:
With other birds she will not mate,
Nor haunt, I wis, the flowery treen;
She bathes her wings and strikes her breast;
Her mate is lost: oh, sore unrest!


And here is fanciful despair (p. 168):—

I'll build a house of sobs and sighs,
    With tears the lime I'll slack;
And there I'll dwell with weeping eyes
    Until my love come back:
302 And there I'll stay with eyes that burn
Until I see my love return.


The house of love has been deserted, and the lover comes to moan
beneath its silent eaves (p. 171):—

Dark house and window desolate!
Where is the sun which shone so fair?
'Twas here we danced and laughed at fate:
Now the stones weep; I see them there.
They weep, and feel a grievous chill:
Dark house and widowed window-sill!


And what can be more piteous than this prayer? (p. 809):—

Love, if you love me, delve a tomb,
And lay me there the earth beneath;
After a year, come see my bones,
And make them dice to play therewith.
But when you're tired of that game,
Then throw those dice into the flame;
But when you're tired of gaming free,
Then throw those dice into the sea.


The simpler expression of sorrow to the death is, as usual, more
impressive. A girl speaks thus within sight of the grave (p. 808):—

Yes, I shall die: what wilt thou gain?
The cross before my bier will go;
And thou wilt hear the bells complain,
The _Misereres_ loud and low.
Midmost the church thou'lt see me lie
With folded hands and frozen eye;
Then say at last, I do repent!—
Nought else remains when fires are spent.


Here is a rustic Œnone (p. 307):—

Fell death, that fliest fraught with woe!
Thy gloomy snares the world ensphere:
Where no man calls, thou lov'st to go;
But when we call, thou wilt not hear.
Fell death, false death of treachery,
Thou makest all content but me.

303

Another is less reproachful, but scarcely less sad (p. 308):—

Strew me with blossoms when I die,
Nor lay me 'neath the earth below;
Beyond those walls, there let me lie,
Where oftentimes we used to go.
There lay me to the wind and rain;
Dying for you, I feel no pain:
There lay me to the sun above;
Dying for you, I die of love.


Yet another of these pitiful love-wailings displays much poetry of
expression (p. 271):—

I dug the sea, and delved the barren sand:
I wrote with dust and gave it to the wind:
Of melting snow, false Love, was made thy band,
Which suddenly the day's bright beams unbind.
Now am I ware, and know my own mistake—
How false are all the promises you make;
Now am I ware, and know the fact, ah me!
That who confides in you, deceived will be.


It would scarcely be well to pause upon these very doleful ditties.
Take, then, the following little serenade, in which the lover on his
way to visit his mistress has unconsciously fallen on the same thought
as Bion (p. 85):—

    Yestreen I went my love to greet,
    By yonder village path below:
    Night in a coppice found my feet;
    I called the moon her light to show—
O moon, who needs no flame to fire thy face,
Look forth and lend me light a little space!


Enough has been quoted to illustrate the character of the Tuscan
popular poetry. These village rispetti bear the same relation to the
canzoniere of Petrarch as the 'savage drupe' to the 'suave plum.' They
are, as it were, the wild stock of that highly artificial flower of
art. Herein lies, perhaps, 304their chief importance. As in our ballad
literature we may discern the stuff of the Elizabethan drama
undeveloped, so in the Tuscan people's songs we can trace the crude
form of that poetic instinct which produced the sonnets to Laura. It is
also very probable that some such rustic minstrelsy preceded the Idylls
of Theocritus and the Bucolics of Virgil; for coincidences of thought
and imagery, which can scarcely be referred to any conscious study of
the ancients, are not a few. Popular poetry has this great value for
the student of literature: it enables him to trace those forms of fancy
and of feeling which are native to the people, and which must
ultimately determine the character of national art, however much that
may be modified by culture.

305




POPULAR ITALIAN POETRY OF THE RENAISSANCE


The semi-popular poetry of the Italians in the fifteenth century formed
an important branch of their national literature, and flourished
independently of the courtly and scholastic studies which gave a
special character to the golden age of the revival. While the latter
tended to separate the people from the cultivated classes, the former
established a new link of connection between them, different indeed
from that which existed when smiths and carters repeated the Canzoni of
Dante by heart in the fourteenth century, but still sufficiently real
to exercise a weighty influence over the national development. Scholars
like Angelo Poliziano, princes like Lorenzo de' Medici, men of letters
like Feo Belcari and Benivieni, borrowed from the people forms of
poetry, which they handled with refined taste, and appropriated to the
uses of polite literature. The most important of these forms, native to
the people but assimilated by the learned classes, were the Miracle
Play or 'Sacra Rappresentazione;' the 'Ballata' or lyric to be sung
while dancing; the 'Canto Carnascialesco' or Carnival Chorus; the
'Rispetto' or short love-ditty; the 'Lauda' or hymn; the 'Maggio' or
May-song; and the 'Madrigale' or little part-song.

At Florence, where even under the despotism of the Medici a show of
republican life still lingered, all classes joined in the amusements of
carnival and spring time; and 306this poetry of the dance, the pageant,
and the villa flourished side by side with the more serious efforts of
the humanistic muse. It is not my purpose in this place to inquire into
the origins of each lyrical type, to discuss the alterations they may
have undergone at the hands of educated versifiers, or to define their
several characteristics; but only to offer translations of such as seem
to me best suited to represent the genius of the people and the age.

In the composition of the poetry in question, Angelo Poliziano was
indubitably the most successful. This giant of learning, who filled the
lecture-rooms of Florence with students of all nations, and whose
critical and rhetorical labours marked an epoch in the history of
scholarship, was by temperament a poet, and a poet of the people.
Nothing was easier for him than to throw aside his professor's mantle,
and to improvise 'Ballate' for the girls to sing as they danced their
'Carola' upon the Piazza di Santa Trinità in summer evenings. The
peculiarity of this lyric is that it starts with a couplet, which also
serves as refrain, supplying the rhyme to each successive stanza. The
stanza itself is identical with our rime royal, if we count the couplet
in the place of the seventh line. The form is in itself so graceful and
is so beautifully treated by Poliziano that I cannot content myself
with fewer than four of his _Ballate_.[44] The first is written on the
world-old theme of 'Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.'

I went a roaming, maidens, one bright day,
In a green garden in mid month of May.

Violets and lilies grew on every side
    Mid the green grass, and young flowers wonderful,
Golden and white and red and azure-eyed;
307 Toward which I stretched my hands, eager to pull
    Plenty to make my fair curls beautiful,
To crown my rippling curls with garlands gay.

I went a roaming, maidens, one bright day,
In a green garden in mid month of May.

But when my lap was full of flowers I spied
    Roses at last, roses of every hue;
Therefore I ran to pluck their ruddy pride,
    Because their perfume was so sweet and true
    That all my soul went forth with pleasure new,
With yearning and desire too soft to say.

I went a roaming, maidens, one bright day,
In a green garden in mid month of May.

I gazed and gazed. Hard task it were to tell
    How lovely were the roses in that hour:
One was but peeping from her verdant shell,
    And some were faded, some were scarce in flower:
    Then Love said: Go, pluck from the blooming bower
Those that thou seest ripe upon the spray.

I went a roaming, maidens, one bright day,
In a green garden in mid month of May.

For when the full rose quits her tender sheath,
    When she is sweetest and most fair to see,
Then is the time to place her in thy wreath,
    Before her beauty and her freshness flee.
    Gather ye therefore roses with great glee,
Sweet girls, or ere their perfume pass away.

I went a roaming, maidens, one bright day,
In a green garden in mid month of May.


 [44] I need hardly guard myself against being supposed to mean that
 the form of _Ballata_ in question was the only one of its kind in
 Italy.


The next Ballata is less simple, but is composed with the same
intention. It may here be parenthetically mentioned that the courtly
poet, when he applied himself to this species of composition, invented
a certain rusticity of incident, scarcely in keeping with the spirit of
his art. It was in fact a conventional 308feature of this species of
verse that the scene should be laid in the country, where the burgher,
on a visit to his villa, is supposed to meet with a rustic beauty who
captivates his eyes and heart. Guido Cavalcanti, in his celebrated
Ballata, 'In un boschetto trovai pastorella,' struck the keynote of
this music, which, it may be reasonably conjectured, was imported into
Italy through Provençal literature from the pastorals of Northern
France. The lady so quaintly imaged by a bird in the following Ballata
of Poliziano is supposed to have been Monna Ippolita Leoncina of Prato,
white-throated, golden-haired, and dressed in crimson silk.

I found myself one day all, all alone,
For pastime in a field with blossoms strewn.

I do not think the world a field could show
    With herbs of perfume so surpassing rare;
But when I passed beyond the green hedge-row,
    A thousand flowers around me flourished fair,
    White, pied and crimson, in the summer air;
Among the which I heard a sweet bird's tone.

I found myself one day all, all alone,
For pastime in a field with blossoms strewn.

Her song it was so tender and so clear
    That all the world listened with love; then I
With stealthy feet a-tiptoe drawing near,
    Her golden head and golden wings could spy,
    Her plumes that flashed like rubies 'neath the sky,
Her crystal beak and throat and bosom's zone.

I found myself one day all, all alone,
For pastime in a field with blossoms strewn.

Fain would I snare her, smit with mighty love;
    But arrow-like she soared, and through the air
Fled to her nest upon the boughs above;
309 Wherefore to follow her is all my care,
    For haply I might lure her by some snare
Forth from the woodland wild where she is flown.

I found myself one day all, all alone,
For pastime in a field with blossoms strewn.

Yea, I might spread some net or woven wile;
    But since of singing she doth take such pleasure,
Without or other art or other guile
    I seek to win her with a tuneful measure;
    Therefore in singing spend I all my leisure,
To make by singing this sweet bird my own.

I found myself one day all, all alone,
For pastime in a field with blossoms strewn.

The same lady is more directly celebrated in the next Ballata, where
Poliziano calls her by her name, Ippolita. I have taken the liberty of
substituting Myrrha for this somewhat unmanageable word.

He who knows not what thing is Paradise,
Let him look fixedly on Myrrha's eyes.

From Myrrha's eyes there flieth, girt with fire,
    An angel of our lord, a laughing boy,
Who lights in frozen hearts a flaming pyre,
    And with such sweetness doth the soul destroy,
    That while it dies, it murmurs forth its joy;
Oh blessed am I to dwell in Paradise!

He who knows not what thing is Paradise,
Let him look fixedly on Myrrha's eyes.

From Myrrha's eyes a virtue still doth move,
    So swift and with so fierce and strong a flight,
That it is like the lightning of high Jove,
    Riving of iron and adamant the might;
    Nathless the wound doth carry such delight
That he who suffers dwells in Paradise.

He who knows not what thing is Paradise,
Let him look fixedly on Myrrha's eyes.

310 From Myrrha's eyes a lovely messenger
    Of joy so grave, so virtuous, doth flee,
That all proud souls are bound to bend to her;
    So sweet her countenance, it turns the key
    Of hard hearts locked in cold security:
Forth flies the prisoned soul to Paradise.

He who knows not what thing is Paradise,
Let him look fixedly on Myrrha's eyes.

In Myrrha's eyes beauty doth make her throne,
    And sweetly smile and sweetly speak her mind:
Such grace in her fair eyes a man hath known
    As in the whole wide world he scarce may find:
    Yet if she slay him with a glance too kind,
He lives again beneath her gazing eyes.

He who knows not what thing is Paradise,
Let him look fixedly on Myrrha's eyes.

The fourth Ballata sets forth the fifteenth-century Italian code of
love, the code of the Novelle, very different in its avowed laxity from
the high ideal of the trecentisti poets.

I ask no pardon if I follow Love;
Since every gentle heart is thrall thereof.

From those who feel the fire I feel, what use
    Is there in asking pardon? These are so
Gentle, kind-hearted, tender, piteous,
    That they will have compassion, well I know.
    From such as never felt that honeyed woe,
I seek no pardon: nought they know of Love.

I ask no pardon if I follow Love;
Since every gentle heart is thrall thereof.

Honour, pure love, and perfect gentleness,
    Weighed in the scales of equity refined,
Are but one thing: beauty is nought or less,
311 Placed in a dame of proud and scornful mind.
    Who can rebuke me then if I am kind
So far as honesty comports and Love?

I ask no pardon if I follow Love;
Since every gentle heart is thrall thereof.

Let him rebuke me whose hard heart of stone
    Ne'er felt of Love the summer in his vein!
I pray to Love that who hath never known
    Love's power, may ne'er be blessed with Love's great gain;
    But he who serves our lord with might and main,
May dwell for ever in the fire of Love!

I ask no pardon if I follow Love;
Since every gentle heart is thrall thereof.

Let him rebuke me without cause who will;
    For if he be not gentle, I fear nought:
My heart obedient to the same love still
    Hath little heed of light words envy-fraught:
    So long as life remains, it is my thought
To keep the laws of this so gentle Love.

I ask no pardon if I follow Love;
Since every gentle heart is thrall thereof.

This Ballata is put into a woman's mouth. Another, ascribed to Lorenzo
de' Medici, expresses the sadness of a man who has lost the favour of
his lady. It illustrates the well-known use of the word _Signore_ for
mistress in Florentine poetry.

312 How can I sing light-souled and fancy-free,
When my loved lord no longer smiles on me?

Dances and songs and merry wakes I leave
    To lovers fair, more fortunate and gay;
Since to my heart so many sorrows cleave
    That only doleful tears are mine for aye:
    Who hath heart's ease, may carol, dance, and play
While I am fain to weep continually.

How can I sing light-souled and fancy-free,
When my loved lord no longer smiles on me?

I too had heart's ease once, for so Love willed,
    When my lord loved me with love strong and great:
But envious fortune my life's music stilled,
    And turned to sadness all my gleeful state.
    Ah me! Death surely were less desolate
Than thus to live and love-neglected be!

How can I sing light-souled and fancy-free,
When my loved lord no longer smiles on me?

One only comfort soothes my heart's despair,
    And mid this sorrow lends my soul some cheer;
Unto my lord I ever yielded fair
    Service of faith untainted pure and clear;
    If then I die thus guiltless, on my bier
It may be she will shed one tear for me.

How can I sing light-souled and fancy-free,
When my loved lord no longer smiles on me?

The Florentine _Rispetto_ was written for the most part in octave
stanzas, detached or continuous. The octave stanza in Italian
literature was an emphatically popular form; and it is still largely
used in many parts of the peninsula for the lyrical expression of
emotion.[45] Poliziano did no more than treat it with his own facility,
sacrificing the unstudied raciness of his popular models to literary
elegance.

 [45] See my _Sketches in Italy and Greece_, p. 114.

Here are a few of these detached stanzas or _Rispetti Spicciolati_:—

Upon that day when first I saw thy face,
    I vowed with loyal love to worship thee.
Move, and I move; stay, and I keep my place:
    Whate'er thou dost, will I do equally.

313 In joy of thine I find most perfect grace,
    And in thy sadness dwells my misery:
Laugh, and I laugh; weep, and I too will weep.
Thus Love commands, whose laws I loving keep.

Nay, be not over-proud of thy great grace,
    Lady! for brief time is thy thief and mine.
White will he turn those golden curls, that lace
    Thy forehead and thy neck so marble-fine.
Lo! while the flower still flourisheth apace,
    Pluck it: for beauty but awhile doth shine.
Fair is the rose at dawn; but long ere night
    Her freshness fades, her pride hath vanished quite.

Fire, fire! Ho, water! for my heart's afire!
    Ho, neighbours! help me, or by God I die!
See, with his standard, that great lord, Desire!
    He sets my heart aflame: in vain I cry.
Too late, alas! The flames mount high and higher.
    Alack, good friends! I faint, I fail, I die.
Ho! water, neighbours mine! no more delay I
My heart's a cinder if you do but stay.

Lo, may I prove to Christ a renegade,
    And, dog-like, die in pagan Barbary;
Nor may God's mercy on my soul be laid,
    If ere for aught I shall abandon thee:
Before all-seeing God this prayer be made—
    When I desert thee, may death feed on me:
Now if thy hard heart scorn these vows, be sure
That without faith none may abide secure.

I ask not, Love, for any other pain
    To make thy cruel foe and mine repent,
Only that thou shouldst yield her to the strain
    Of these my arms, alone, for chastisement;
Then would I clasp her so with might and main,
    That she should learn to pity and relent,
And, in revenge for scorn and proud despite,
A thousand times I'd kiss her forehead white.

314 Not always do fierce tempests vex the sea,
    Nor always clinging clouds offend the sky;
Cold snows before the sunbeams haste to flee,
    Disclosing flowers that 'neath their whiteness lie;
The saints each one doth wait his day to see,
    And time makes all things change; so, therefore, I
Ween that 'tis wise to wait my turn, and say,
That who subdues himself, deserves to sway.

It will be observed that the tone of these poems is not passionate nor
elevated. Love, as understood in Florence of the fifteenth century, was
neither; nor was Poliziano the man to have revived Platonic mysteries
or chivalrous enthusiasms. When the octave stanzas, written with this
amorous intention, were strung together into a continuous poem, this
form of verse took the title of _Rispetto Gontinuato_. In the
collection of Poliziano's poems there are several examples of the long
Rispetto, carelessly enough composed, as may be gathered from the
recurrence of the same stanzas in several poems. All repeat the old
arguments, the old enticements to a less than lawful love. The one
which I have chosen for translation, styled _Serenata ovvero Lettera in
Istrambotti_, might be selected as an epitome of Florentine convention
in the matter of love-making.

O thou of fairest fairs the first and queen,
    Most courteous, kind, and honourable dame,
Thine ear unto thy servant's singing lean,
    Who loves thee more than health, or wealth, or fame;
For thou his shining planet still hast been,
    And day and night he calls on thy fair name:
First wishing thee all good the world can give,
Next praying in thy gentle thoughts to live.

He humbly prayeth that thou shouldst be kind
    To think upon his pure and perfect faith,
And that such mercy in thy heart and mind
    Should reign, as so much beauty argueth:
315 A thousand, thousand hints, or he were blind,
    Of thy great courtesy he reckoneth:
Wherefore thy loyal subject now doth sue
Such guerdon only as shall prove them true.

He knows himself unmeet for love from thee,
    Unmeet for merely gazing on thine eyes;
Seeing thy comely squires so plenteous be,
    That there is none but 'neath thy beauty sighs:
Yet since thou seekest fame and bravery,
    Nor carest aught for gauds that others prize,
And since he strives to honour thee alway,
He still hath hope to gain thy heart one day.

Virtue that dwells untold, unknown, unseen,
    Still findeth none to love or value it;
Wherefore his faith, that hath so perfect been,
    Not being known, can profit him no whit:
He would find pity in thine eyes, I ween,
    If thou shouldst deign to make some proof of it;
The rest may flatter, gape, and stand agaze;
Him only faith above the crowd doth raise.

Suppose that he might meet thee once alone,
    Face unto face, without or jealousy,
Or doubt or fear from false misgiving grown,
    And tell his tale of grievous pain to thee,
Sure from thy breast he'd draw full many a moan.
    And make thy fair eyes weep right plenteously:
Yea, if he had but skill his heart to show,
He scarce could fail to win thee by its woe.

Now art thou in thy beauty's blooming hour;
    Thy youth is yet in pure perfection's prime:
Make it thy pride to yield thy fragile flower,
    Or look to find it paled by envious time:
For none to stay the flight of years hath power,
    And who culls roses caught by frosty rime?
Give therefore to thy lover, give, for they
Too late repent who act not while they may.

316 Time flies: and lo! thou let'st it idly fly:
    There is not in the world a thing more dear;
And if thou wait to see sweet May pass by,
    Where find'st thou roses in the later year?
He never can, who lets occasion die:
    Now that thou canst, stay not for doubt or fear;
But by the forelock take the flying hour,
Ere change begins, and clouds above thee lower.

Too long 'twixt yea and nay he hath been wrung;
    Whether he sleep or wake he little knows,
Or free or in the bands of bondage strung:
    Nay, lady, strike, and let thy lover loose!
What joy hast thou to keep a captive hung?
    Kill him at once, or cut the cruel noose:
No more, I prithee, stay; but take thy part:
Either relax the bow, or speed the dart.

Thou feedest him on words and windiness,
    On smiles, and signs, and bladders light as air;
Saying, thou fain wouldst comfort his distress,
    But dar'st not, canst not: nay, dear lady fair,
All things are possible beneath the stress
    Of will, that flames above the soul's despair!
Dally no longer: up, set to thy hand;
Or see his love unclothed and naked stand.

For he hath sworn, and by this oath will bide,
    E'en though his life be lost in the endeavour,
To leave no way, nor art, nor wile untried,
    Until he pluck the fruit he sighs for ever:
And, though he still would spare thy honest pride,
    The knot that binds him he must loose or sever;
Thou too, O lady, shouldst make sharp thy knife,
If thou art fain to end this amorous strife.

Lo! if thou lingerest still in dubious dread,
    Lest thou shouldst lose fair fame of honesty,
Here hast thou need of wile and warihead,
    To test thy lover's strength in screening thee;
317 Indulge him, if thou find him well bestead,
    Knowing that smothered love flames outwardly:
Therefore, seek means, search out some privy way;
    Keep not the steed too long at idle play.

Or if thou heedest what those friars teach,
    I cannot fail, lady, to call thee fool:
Well may they blame our private sins and preach;
    But ill their acts match with their spoken rule;
The same pitch clings to all men, one and each.
    There, I have spoken: set the world to school
With this true proverb, too, be well acquainted
The devil's ne'er so black as he is painted.

Nor did our good Lord give such grace to thee
    That thou shouldst keep it buried in thy breast,
But to reward thy servant's constancy,
    Whose love and loyal faith thou hast repressed:
Think it no sin to be some trifle free,
    Because thou livest at a lord's behest;
For if he take enough to feed his fill,
To cast the rest away were surely ill.

They find most favour in the sight of heaven
    Who to the poor and hungry are most kind;
A hundred-fold shall thus to thee be given
    By God, who loves the free and generous mind;
Thrice strike thy breast, with pure contrition riven,
    Crying: I sinned; my sin hath made me blind!—
He wants not much: enough if he be able
To pick up crumbs that fall beneath thy table.

Wherefore, O lady, break the ice at length;
    Make thou, too, trial of love's fruits and flowers:
When in thine arms thou feel'st thy lover's strength,
    Thou wilt repent of all these wasted hours;
Husbands, they know not love, its breadth and length,
    Seeing their hearts are not on fire like ours:
Things longed for give most pleasure; this I tell thee:
If still thou doubtest let the proof compel thee.

318 What I have spoken is pure gospel sooth;
    I have told all my mind, withholding nought:
And well, I ween, thou canst unhusk the truth,
    And through the riddle read the hidden thought:
Perchance if heaven still smile upon my youth,
    Some good effect for me may yet be wrought:
Then fare thee well; too many words offend:
She who is wise is quick to comprehend.

The levity of these love-declarations and the fluency of their vows
show them to be 'false as dicers' oaths,' mere verses of the moment,
made to please a facile mistress. One long poem, which cannot be styled
a Rispetto, but is rather a Canzone of the legitimate type, stands out
with distinctness from the rest of Poliziano's love-verses. It was
written by him for Giuliano de' Medici, in praise of the fair
Simonetta. The following version attempts to repeat its metrical
effects in some measure:—

My task it is, since thus Love wills, who strains
    And forces all the world beneath his sway,
    In lowly verse to say
The great delight that in my bosom reigns.
For if perchance I took but little pains
    To tell some part of all the joy I find,
    I might be deem'd unkind
By one who knew my heart's deep happiness.
He feels but little bliss who hides his bliss;
    Small joy hath he whose joy is never sung;
    And he who curbs his tongue
Through cowardice, knows but of love the name.
Wherefore to succour and augment the fame
    Of that pure, virtuous, wise, and lovely may,
    Who like the star of day
Shines mid the stars, or like the rising sun,
Forth from my burning heart the words shall run.
    Far, far be envy, far be jealous fear,
    With discord dark and drear,
And all the choir that is of love the foe.—
The season had returned when soft winds blow,
319 The season friendly to young lovers coy,
    Which bids them clothe their joy
In divers garbs and many a masked disguise.
Then I to track the game 'neath April skies
    Went forth in raiment strange apparellèd,
    And by kind fate was led
Unto the spot where stayed my soul's desire.
The beauteous nymph who feeds my soul with fire,
    I found in gentle, pure, and prudent mood,
    In graceful attitude,
Loving and courteous, holy, wise, benign.
So sweet, so tender was her face divine,
    So gladsome, that in those celestial eyes
    Shone perfect paradise,
Yea, all the good that we poor mortals crave.
Around her was a band so nobly brave
    Of beauteous dames, that as I gazed at these
    Methought heaven's goddesses
That day for once had deigned to visit earth.
But she who gives my soul sorrow and mirth,
    Seemed Pallas in her gait, and in her face
    Venus; for every grace
And beauty of the world in her combined.
Merely to think, far more to tell my mind
    Of that most wondrous sight, confoundeth me,
    For mid the maidens she
Who most resembled her was found most rare.
Call ye another first among the fair;
    Not first, but sole before my lady set:
    Lily and violet
And all the flowers below the rose must bow.
Down from her royal head and lustrous brow
    The golden curls fell sportively unpent,
    While through the choir she went
With feet well lessoned to the rhythmic sound.
Her eyes, though scarcely raised above the ground,
    Sent me by stealth a ray divinely fair;
    But still her jealous hair
Broke the bright beam, and veiled her from my gaze.
She, born and nursed in heaven for angels' praise,
320 No sooner saw this wrong, than back she drew,
    With hand of purest hue,
Her truant curls with kind and gentle mien.
Then from her eyes a soul so fiery keen,
    So sweet a soul of love she cast on mine,
    That scarce can I divine
How then I 'scaped from burning utterly.
These are the first fair signs of love to be,
    That bound my heart with adamant, and these
    The matchless courtesies
Which, dreamlike, still before mine eyes must hover.
This is the honeyed food she gave her lover,
    To make him, so it pleased her, half-divine;
    Nectar is not so fine,
Nor ambrosy, the fabled feast of Jove.
Then, yielding proofs more clear and strong of love,
    As though to show the faith within her heart,
    She moved, with subtle art,
Her feet accordant to the amorous air.
But while I gaze and pray to God that ne'er
    Might cease that happy dance angelical,
    O harsh, unkind recall!
Back to the banquet was she beckonèd.
She, with her face at first with pallor spread,
    Then tinted with a blush of coral dye,
    'The ball is best!' did cry,
Gentle in tone and smiling as she spake.
But from her eyes celestial forth did break
    Favour at parting; and I well could see
    Young love confusedly
Enclosed within the furtive fervent gaze,
Heating his arrows at their beauteous rays,
    For war with Pallas and with Dian cold.
    Fairer than mortal mould,
She moved majestic with celestial gait;
And with her hand her robe in royal state
    Raised, as she went with pride ineffable.
    Of me I cannot tell,
Whether alive or dead I there was left.
Nay, dead, methinks! since I of thee was reft,
321 Light of my life! and yet, perchance, alive—
    Such virtue to revive
My lingering soul possessed thy beauteous face,
But if that powerful charm of thy great grace
    Could then thy loyal lover so sustain,
    Why comes there not again
More often or more soon the sweet delight?
Twice hath the wandering moon with borrowed light
    Stored from her brother's rays her crescent horn,
    Nor yet hath fortune borne
Me on the way to so much bliss again.
Earth smiles anew; fair spring renews her reign:
    The grass and every shrub once more is green;
    The amorous birds begin,
From winter loosed, to fill the field with song.
See how in loving pairs the cattle throng;
    The bull, the ram, their amorous jousts enjoy:
    Thou maiden, I a boy,
Shall we prove traitors to love's law for aye?
Shall we these years that are so fair let fly?
    Wilt thou not put thy flower of youth to use?
    Or with thy beauty choose
To make him blest who loves thee best of all?
Haply I am some hind who guards the stall,
    Or of vile lineage, or with years outworn,
    Poor, or a cripple born,
Or faint of spirit that you spurn me so?
Nay, but my race is noble and doth grow
    With honour to our land, with pomp and power;
    My youth is yet in flower,
And it may chance some maiden sighs for me.
My lot it is to deal right royally
    With all the goods that fortune spreads around,
    For still they more abound,
Shaken from her full lap, the more I waste.
My strength is such as whoso tries shall taste;
    Circled with friends, with favours crowned am I:
    Yet though I rank so high
Among the blest, as men may reckon bliss,
Still without thee, my hope, my happiness,
322 It seems a sad, and bitter thing to live!
    Then stint me not, but give
That joy which holds all joys enclosed in one.
Let me pluck fruits at last, not flowers alone!

With much that is frigid, artificial, and tedious in this old-fashioned
love-song, there is a curious monotony of sweetness which commends it
to our ears; and he who reads it may remember the profile portrait of
Simonetta from the hand of Piero della Francesca in the Pitti Palace at
Florence.

It is worth comparing Poliziano's treatment of popular or semi-popular
verse-forms with his imitations of Petrarch's manner. For this purpose
I have chosen a _Canzone_, clearly written in competition with the
celebrated 'Chiare, fresche e dolci acque,' of Laura's lover. While
closely modelled upon Petrarch's form and similar in motive, this
Canzone preserves Poliziano's special qualities of fluency and
emptiness of content.

Hills, valleys, caves and fells,
    With flowers and leaves and herbage spread;
    Green meadows; shadowy groves where light is low;
    Lawns watered with the rills
    That cruel Love hath made me shed,
    Cast from these cloudy eyes so dark with woe;
    Thou stream that still dost know
    What fell pangs pierce my heart,
    So dost thou murmur back my moan;
    Lone bird that chauntest tone for tone,
    While in our descant drear Love sings his part:
    Nymphs, woodland wanderers, wind and air;
    List to the sound out-poured from my despair!
Seven times and once more seven
    The roseate dawn her beauteous brow
    Enwreathed with orient jewels hath displayed;
    Cynthia once more in heaven
    Hath orbed her horns with silver now;
    While in sea waves her brother's light was laid;
    Since this high mountain glade
323 Felt the white footsteps fall
    Of that proud lady, who to spring
    Converts whatever woodland thing
    She may o'ershadow, touch, or heed at all.
    Here bloom the flowers, the grasses spring
    From her bright eyes, and drink what mine must bring.
Yea, nourished with my tears
    Is every little leaf I see,
    And the stream rolls therewith a prouder wave.
    Ah me! through what long years
    Will she withhold her face from me,
    Which stills the stormy skies howe'er they rave?
    Speak! or in grove or cave
    If one hath seen her stray,
    Plucking amid those grasses green
    Wreaths for her royal brows serene,
    Flowers white and blue and red and golden gay!
    Nay, prithee, speak, if pity dwell
    Among these woods, within this leafy dell!
O Love! 'twas here we saw,
    Beneath the new-fledged leaves that spring
    From this old beech, her fair form lowly laid:—
    The thought renews my awe!
    How sweetly did her tresses fling
    Waves of wreathed gold unto the winds that strayed
    Fire, frost within me played,
    While I beheld the bloom
    Of laughing flowers—O day of bliss!—
    Around those tresses meet and kiss,
    And roses in her lap of Love the home!
    Her grace, her port divinely fair,
    Describe it, Love! myself I do not dare.
In mute intent surprise
    I gazed, as when a hind is seen
    To dote upon its image in a rill;
    Drinking those love-lit eyes,
    Those hands, that face, those words serene,
    That song which with delight the heaven did fill,
    That smile which thralls me still,
    Which melteth stones unkind,
324 Which in this woodland wilderness
    Tames every beast and stills the stress
    Of hurrying waters. Would that I could find
    Her footprints upon field or grove!
    I should not then be envious of Jove.
Thou cool stream rippling by,
    Where oft it pleased her to dip
    Her naked foot, how blest art thou!
    Ye branching trees on high,
    That spread your gnarled roots on the lip
    Of yonder hanging rock to drink heaven's dew!
    She often leaned on you,
    She who is my life's bliss!
    Thou ancient beech with moss o'ergrown,
    How do I envy thee thy throne,
    Found worthy to receive such happiness!
    Ye winds, how blissful must ye be,
    Since ye have borne to heaven her harmony!
The winds that music bore,
    And wafted it to God on high,
    That Paradise might have the joy thereof.
    Flowers here she plucked, and wore
    Wild roses from the thorn hard by:
    This air she lightened with her look of love:
    This running stream above,
    She bent her face!—Ah me!
    Where am I? What sweet makes me swoon?
    What calm is in the kiss of noon?
    Who brought me here? Who speaks? What melody?
    Whence came pure peace into my soul?
    What joy hath rapt me from my own control?

Poliziano's refrain is always: 'Gather ye rosebuds while ye may. It is
spring-time now and youth. Winter and old age are coming!' A _Maggio_,
or May-day song, describing the games, dances, and jousting matches of
the Florentine lads upon the morning of the first of May, expresses
this facile philosophy of life with a quaintness that recalls Herrick.
It will be noticed that the Maggio is built, so far as rhymes go, on
the same system as Poliziano's Ballata. It has considerable
325historical interest, for the opening couplet is said to be Guido
Cavalcanti's, while the whole poem is claimed by Roscoe for Lorenzo de'
Medici, and by Carducci with better reason for Poliziano.

    Welcome in the May
    And the woodland garland gay!

Welcome in the jocund spring
    Which bids all men lovers be!
Maidens, up with carolling,
    With your sweethearts stout and free,
    With roses and with blossoms ye
Who deck yourselves this first of May!

Up, and forth into the pure
    Meadows, mid the trees and flowers!
Every beauty is secure
    With so many bachelors:
    Beasts and birds amid the bowers
Burn with love this first of May.

Maidens, who are young and fair,
    Be not harsh, I counsel you;
For your youth cannot repair
    Her prime of spring, as meadows do:
    None be proud, but all be true
To men who love, this first of May.

Dance and carol every one
    Of our band so bright and gay!
See your sweethearts how they run
    Through the jousts for you to-day!
    She who saith her lover nay,
Will deflower the sweets of May,

Lads in love take sword and shield
    To make pretty girls their prize:
Yield ye, merry maidens, yield
    To your lovers' vows and sighs:
    Give his heart back ere it dies:
Wage not war this first of May.

326 He who steals another's heart,
    Let him give his own heart too:
Who's the robber? 'Tis the smart
    Little cherub Cupid, who
    Homage comes to pay with you,
Damsels, to the first of May.

Love comes smiling; round his head
    Lilies white and roses meet:
'Tis for you his flight is sped.
    Fair one, haste our king to greet:
    Who will fling him blossoms sweet
Soonest on this first of May?

Welcome, stranger! welcome, king!
    Love, what hast thou to command?
That each girl with wreaths should ring
    Her lover's hair with loving hand,
    That girls small and great should band
In Love's ranks this first of May.

The _Canto Carnascialesco_, for the final development if not for the
invention of which all credit must be given to Lorenzo de' Medici, does
not greatly differ from the Maggio in structure. It admitted, however,
of great varieties, and was generally more complex in its interweaving
of rhymes. Yet the essential principle of an exordium which should also
serve for a refrain, was rarely, if ever, departed from. Two specimens
of the Carnival Song will serve to bring into close contrast two very
different aspects of Florentine history. The earlier was composed by
Lorenzo de' Medici at the height of his power and in the summer of
Italian independence. It was sung by masquers attired in classical
costume, to represent Bacchus and his crew.

Fair is youth and void of sorrow;
    But it hourly flies away.—
    Youths and maids, enjoy to-day;
Nought ye know about to-morrow.

327 This is Bacchus and the bright
    Ariadne, lovers true!
They, in flying time's despite,
    Each with each find pleasure new;
These their Nymphs, and all their crew
    Keep perpetual holiday.—
    Youths and maids, enjoy to-day;
Nought ye know about to-morrow.

These blithe Satyrs, wanton-eyed,
    Of the Nymphs are paramours:
Through the caves and forests wide
    They have snared them mid the flowers;
Warmed with Bacchus, in his bowers,
    Now they dance and leap alway.—
    Youths and maids, enjoy to-day;
Nought ye know about to-morrow.

These fair Nymphs, they are not loth
    To entice their lovers' wiles.
None but thankless folk and rough
    Can resist when Love beguiles.
Now enlaced, with wreathèd smiles,
    All together dance and play.—
    Youths and maids, enjoy to-day;
Nought ye know about to-morrow.

See this load behind them plodding
    On the ass! Silenus he,
Old and drunken, merry, nodding,
    Full of years and jollity;
Though he goes so swayingly,
    Yet he laughs and quaffs alway.—
    Youths and maids, enjoy to-day;
Nought ye know about to-morrow.

Midas treads a wearier measure:
    All he touches turns to gold:
If there be no taste of pleasure,
    What's the use of wealth untold?
328 What's the joy his fingers hold,
    When he's forced to thirst for aye?—
    Youths and maids, enjoy to-day;
Nought ye know about to-morrow.

Listen well to what we're saying;
    Of to-morrow have no care!
Young and old together playing,
    Boys and girls, be blithe as air!
Every sorry thought forswear!
    Keep perpetual holiday.—-
    Youths and maids, enjoy to-day;
Nought ye know about to-morrow.

Ladies and gay lovers young!
    Long live Bacchus, live Desire!
Dance and play; let songs be sung;
    Let sweet love your bosoms fire;
In the future come what may!—-
Youths and maids, enjoy to-day!
Nought ye know about to-morrow.

Fair is youth and void of sorrow;
    But it hourly flies away.

The next, composed by Antonio Alamanni, after Lorenzo's death and the
ominous passage of Charles VIII., was sung by masquers habited as
skeletons. The car they rode on, was a Car of Death designed by Piero
di Cosimo, and their music was purposely gloomy. If in the jovial days
of the Medici the streets of Florence had rung to the thoughtless
refrain, 'Nought ye know about to-morrow,' they now re-echoed with a
cry of 'Penitence;' for times had strangely altered, and the heedless
past had brought forth a doleful present. The last stanza of Alamanni's
chorus is a somewhat clumsy attempt to adapt the too real moral of his
subject to the customary mood of the Carnival.

329

Sorrow, tears, and penitence
Are our doom of pain for aye;
This dead concourse riding by
Hath no cry but penitence!

E'en as you are, once were we:
You shall be as now we are:
We are dead men, as you see:
We shall see you dead men, where
Nought avails to take great care,
After sins, of penitence.

We too in the Carnival
Sang our love-songs through the town;
Thus from sin to sin we all
Headlong, heedless, tumbled down:—
Now we cry, the world around,
Penitence! oh, Penitence!

Senseless, blind, and stubborn fools!
Time steals all things as he rides:
Honours, glories, states, and schools,
Pass away, and nought abides;
Till the tomb our carcase hides,
And compels this penitence.

This sharp scythe you see us bear,
Brings the world at length to woe:
But from life to life we fare;
And that life is joy or woe:
All heaven's bliss on him doth flow
Who on earth does penitence.

Living here, we all must die;
Dying, every soul shall live:
For the King of kings on high
This fixed ordinance doth give:
Lo, you all are fugitive!
Penitence! Cry Penitence!

Torment great and grievous dole
Hath the thankless heart mid you;
But the man of piteous soul
330 Finds much honour in our crew:
Love for loving is the due
That prevents this penitence.

Sorrow, tears, and penitence
Are our doom of pain for aye:
This dead concourse riding by
Hath no cry but Penitence!

One song for dancing, composed less upon the type of the Ballata than
on that of the Carnival Song, may here be introduced, not only in
illustration of the varied forms assumed by this style of poetry, but
also because it is highly characteristic of Tuscan town-life. This poem
in the vulgar style has been ascribed to Lorenzo de' Medici, but
probably without due reason. It describes the manners and customs of
female street gossips.

Since you beg with such a grace,
    How can I refuse a song,
    Wholesome, honest, void of wrong,
    On the follies of the place?

Courteously on you I call;
    Listen well to what I sing:
    For my roundelay to all
    May perchance instruction bring,
    And of life good lessoning.—
    When in company you meet,
    Or sit spinning, all the street
    Clamours like a market-place.

Thirty of you there may be;
    Twenty-nine are sure to buzz,
    And the single silent she
    Racks her brains about her coz:—
    Mrs. Buzz and Mrs. Huzz,
    Mind your work, my ditty saith;
    Do not gossip till your breath
    Fails and leaves you black of face!

331 Governments go out and in:—
    You the truth must needs discover.
    Is a girl about to win
    A brave husband in her lover?—
    Straight you set to talk him over:
    'Is he wealthy?' 'Does his coat
    Fit?' 'And has he got a vote?'
    'Who's his father?' 'What's his race?'

Out of window one head pokes;
    Twenty others do the same:—
    Chatter, clatter!—creaks and croaks
    All the year the same old game!—
    'See my spinning!' cries one dame,
    'Five long ells of cloth, I trow!'
    Cries another, 'Mine must go,
    Drat it, to the bleaching base!'

'Devil take the fowl!' says one:
    'Mine are all bewitched, I guess;
    Cocks and hens with vermin run,
    Mangy, filthy, featherless.'
    Says another: 'I confess
    Every hair I drop, I keep—
    Plague upon it, in a heap
    Falling off to my disgrace!'

If you see a fellow walk
    Up or down the street and back,
    How you nod and wink and talk,
    Hurry-skurry, cluck and clack!—
    'What, I wonder, does he lack
    Here about?'—'There's something wrong!'
    Till the poor man's made a song
    For the female populace.

It were well you gave no thought
    To such idle company;
    Shun these gossips, care for nought
    But the business that you ply.
332 You who chatter, you who cry,
    Heed my words; be wise, I pray:
    Fewer, shorter stories say:
    Bide at home, and mind your place.

Since you beg with such a grace,
    How can I refuse a song,
    Wholesome, honest, void of wrong,
    On the follies of the place?

The _Madrigale_, intended to be sung in parts, was another species of
popular poetry cultivated by the greatest of Italian writers. Without
seeking examples from such men as Petrarch, Michelangelo, or Tasso, who
used it as a purely literary form, I will content myself with a few
Madrigals by anonymous composers, more truly popular in style, and more
immediately intended for music.[46] The similarity both of manner and
matter, between these little poems and the Ballate, is obvious. There
is the same affectation of rusticity in both.

 [46] The originals will be found in Carducci's _Studi Letterari_, p.
 273 _et seq._ I have preserved their rhyming structure.


_Cogliendo per un prato._


Plucking white lilies in a field I saw
    Fair women, laden with young Love's delight:
    Some sang, some danced; but all were fresh and bright.
Then by the margin of a fount they leaned,
    And of those flowers made garlands for their hair—
    Wreaths for their golden tresses quaint and rare.
Forth from the field I passed, and gazed upon
Their loveliness, and lost my heart to one.


_Togliendo l' una all' altra._


One from the other borrowing leaves and flowers,
    I saw fair maidens 'neath the summer trees,
    Weaving bright garlands with low love-ditties.
Mid that sweet sisterhood the loveliest
333 Turned her soft eyes to me, and whispered, 'Take!'
    Love-lost I stood, and not a word I spake.
My heart she read, and her fair garland gave:
Therefore I am her servant to the grave.


_Appress' un fiume chiaro_.


Hard by a crystal stream
    Girls and maids were dancing round
    A lilac with fair blossoms crowned.
Mid these I spied out one
    So tender-sweet, so love-laden,
    She stole my heart with singing then:
Love in her face so lovely-kind
And eyes and hands my soul did bind.


_Di riva in riva_.


From lawn to lea Love led me down the valley,
    Seeking my hawk, where 'neath a pleasant hill
    I spied fair maidens bathing in a rill.
Lina was there all loveliness excelling;
    The pleasure of her beauty made me sad,
    And yet at sight of her my soul was glad.
Downward I cast mine eyes with modest seeming,
    And all a tremble from the fountain fled:
    For each was naked as her maidenhead.
Thence singing fared I through a flowery plain,
Where bye and bye I found my hawk again!


_Nel chiaro fiume_.


Down a fair streamlet crystal-clear and pleasant
    I went a fishing all alone one day,
    And spied three maidens bathing there at play.
Of love they told each other honeyed stories,
    While with white hands they smote the stream, to wet
    Their sunbright hair in the pure rivulet.
Gazing I crouched among thick flowering leafage,
    Till one who spied a rustling branch on high,
    Turned to her comrades with a sudden cry,
And 'Go! Nay, prithee go!' she called to me:
    'To stay were surely but scant courtesy.'


334

_Quel sole che nutrica._


The sun which makes a lily bloom,
    Leans down at times on her to gaze—
    Fairer, he deems, than his fair rays:
Then, having looked a little while,
    He turns and tells the saints in bliss
    How marvellous her beauty is.
Thus up in heaven with flute and string
Thy loveliness the angels sing.


_Di novo è giunt'._


Lo: here hath come an errant knight
    On a barbed charger clothed in mail:
His archers scatter iron hail.
At brow and breast his mace he aims;
    Who therefore hath not arms of proof,
    Let him live locked by door and roof;
Until Dame Summer on a day
That grisly knight return to slay.

Poliziano's treatment of the octave stanza for Rispetti was
comparatively popular. But in his poem of 'La Giostra,' written to
commemorate the victory of Giuliano de' Medici in a tournament and to
celebrate his mistress, he gave a new and richer form to the metre
which Boccaccio had already used for epic verse. The slight and
uninteresting framework of this poem, which opened a new sphere for
Italian literature, and prepared the way for Ariosto's golden cantos,
might be compared to one of those wire baskets which children steep in
alum water, and incrust with crystals, sparkling, artificial, beautiful
with colours not their own. The mind of Poliziano held, as it were, in
solution all the images and thoughts of antiquity, all the riches of
his native literature. In that vast reservoir of poems and mythologies
and phrases, so patiently accumulated, so tenaciously preserved, so
thoroughly assimilated, he plunged the trivial subject he had
335chosen, and triumphantly presented to the world the _spolia opima_
of scholarship and taste. What mattered it that the theme was slight?
The art was perfect, the result splendid. One canto of 125 stanzas
describes the youth of Giuliano, who sought to pass his life among the
woods, a hunter dead to love, but who was doomed to be ensnared by
Cupid. The chase, the beauty of Simonetta, the palace of Venus, these
are the three subjects of a book as long as the first Iliad. The second
canto begins with dreams and prophecies of glory to be won by Giuliano
in the tournament. But it stops abruptly. The tragic catastrophe of the
Pazzi Conjuration cut short Poliziano's panegyric by the murder of his
hero. Meanwhile the poet had achieved his purpose. His torso presented
to Italy a model of style, a piece of written art adequate to the great
painting of the Renaissance period, a double star of poetry which blent
the splendours of the ancient and the modern world. To render into
worthy English the harmonies of Poliziano is a difficult task. Yet this
must be attempted if an English reader is to gain any notion of the
scope and substance of the Italian poet's art. In the first part of the
poem we are placed, as it were, at the mid point between the
'Hippolytus' of Euripides and Shakspere's 'Venus and Adonis.' The cold
hunter Giuliano is to see Simonetta, and seeing, is to love her. This
is how he first discovers the triumphant beauty:[47]

White is the maid, and white the robe around her,
    With buds and roses and thin grasses pied;
Enwreathèd folds of golden tresses crowned her,
Shadowing her forehead fair with modest pride:

336 The wild wood smiled; the thicket where he found her,
    To ease his anguish, bloomed on every side:
Serene she sits, with gesture queenly mild,
And with her brow tempers the tempests wild.


 [47] Stanza XLIII. All references are made to Carducci's excellent
 edition, _Le Stanze, l'Orfeo e le Rime di Messer Angelo Ambrogini
 Poliziano._ Firenze: G. Barbéra. 1863.

After three stanzas of this sort, in which the poet's style is more
apparent than the object he describes, occurs this charming picture:—

Reclined he found her on the swarded grass
    In jocund mood; and garlands she had made
Of every flower that in the meadow was,
    Or on her robe of many hues displayed;
But when she saw the youth before her pass,
    Raising her timid head awhile she stayed;
Then with her white hand gathered up her dress,
    And stood, lap-full of flowers, in loveliness.

Then through the dewy field with footstep slow
    The lingering maid began to take her way,
Leaving her lover in great fear and woe,
    For now he longs for nought but her alway:
The wretch, who cannot bear that she should go,
    Strives with a whispered prayer her feet to stay;
And thus at last, all trembling, all afire,
In humble wise he breathes his soul's desire:

'Whoe'er thou art, maid among maidens queen,
    Goddess, or nymph—nay, goddess seems most clear—
If goddess, sure my Dian I have seen;
    If mortal, let thy proper self appear!
Beyond terrestrial beauty is thy mien;
    I have no merit that I should be here!
What grace of heaven, what lucky star benign
Yields me the sight of beauty so divine?'

A conversation ensues, after which Giuliano departs utterly lovesick,
and Cupid takes wing exultingly for Cyprus, where his mother's palace
stands. In the following picture of the house of Venus, who shall say
how much of Ariosto's 337Alcina and Tasso's Armida is contained? Cupid
arrives, and the family of Love is filled with joy at Giuliano's
conquest. From the plan of the poem it is clear that its beauties are
chiefly those of detail. They are, however, very great. How perfect,
for example, is the richness combined with delicacy of the following
description of a country life:—

BOOK I. STANZAS 17-21.


How far more safe it is, how far more fair,
    To chase the flying deer along the lea;
Through ancient woods to track their hidden lair,
    Far from the town, with long-drawn subtlety:
To scan the vales, the hills, the limpid air,
    The grass and flowers, clear ice, and streams so free;
To hear the birds wake from their winter trance,
The wind-stirred leaves and murmuring waters dance.

How sweet it were to watch the young goats hung
    From toppling crags, cropping the tender shoot,
While in thick pleachèd shade the shepherd sung
    His uncouth rural lay and woke his flute;
To mark, mid dewy grass, red apples flung,
    And every bough thick set with ripening fruit,
The butting rams, kine lowing o'er the lea,
And cornfields waving like the windy sea.

Lo! how the rugged master of the herd
    Before his flock unbars the wattled cote;
Then with his rod and many a rustic word
    He rules their going: or 'tis sweet to note
The delver, when his toothèd rake hath stirred
    The stubborn clod, his hoe the glebe hath smote;
Barefoot the country girl, with loosened zone,
Spins, while she keeps her geese 'neath yonder stone.

After such happy wise, in ancient years,
    Dwelt the old nations in the age of gold;
Nor had the fount been stirred of mothers' tears
    For sons in war's fell labour stark and cold;
338 Nor trusted they to ships the wild wind steers,
    Nor yet had oxen groaning ploughed the wold;
Their houses were huge oaks, whose trunks had store
Of honey, and whose boughs thick acorns bore.

Nor yet, in that glad time, the accursèd thirst
    Of cruel gold had fallen on this fair earth:
Joyous in liberty they lived at first;
    Unploughed the fields sent forth their teeming birth;
Till fortune, envious of such concord, burst
    The bond of law, and pity banned and worth;
Within their breasts sprang luxury and that rage
Which men call love in our degenerate age.

We need not be reminded that these stanzas are almost a cento from
Virgil, Hesiod, and Ovid. The merits of the translator, adapter, and
combiner, who knew so well how to cull their beauties and adorn them
with a perfect dress of modern diction, are so eminent that we cannot
deny him the title of a great poet. It is always in picture-painting
more than in dramatic presentation that Poliziano excels. Here is a
basrelief of Venus rising from the Ocean foam:—

STANZAS 99-107.


In Thetis' lap, upon the vexed Egean,
    The seed deific from Olympus sown,
Beneath dim stars and cycling empyrean
    Drifts like white foam across the salt waves blown;
Thence, born at last by movements hymenean,
    Rises a maid more fair than man hath known;
Upon her shell the wanton breezes waft her;
    She nears the shore, while heaven looks down with laughter

Seeing the carved work you would cry that real
    Were shell and sea, and real the winds that blow;
The lightning of the goddess' eyes you feel,
    The smiling heavens, the elemental glow:
339 White-vested Hours across the smooth sands steal,
    With loosened curls that to the breezes flow;
Like, yet unlike, are all their beauteous faces,
E'en as befits a choir of sister Graces.

Well might you swear that on those waves were riding
    The goddess with her right hand on her hair,
And with the other the sweet apple hiding;
    And that beneath her feet, divinely fair,
Fresh flowers sprang forth, the barren sands dividing;
    Then that, with glad smiles and enticements rare,
The three nymphs round their queen, embosoming her,
Threw the starred mantle soft as gossamer.

The one, with hands above her head upraised,
    Upon her dewy tresses fits a wreath,
With ruddy gold and orient gems emblazed;
    The second hangs pure pearls her ears beneath;
The third round shoulders white and breast hath placed
    Such wealth of gleaming carcanets as sheathe
Their own fair bosoms, when the Graces sing
Among the gods with dance and carolling.

Thence might you see them rising toward the spheres,
    Seated upon a cloud of silvery white;
The trembling of the cloven air appears
    Wrought in the stone, and heaven serenely bright;
The gods drink in with open eyes and ears
    Her beauty, and desire her bed's delight;
Each seems to marvel with a mute amaze—
Their brows and foreheads wrinkle as they gaze.

The next quotation shows Venus in the lap of Mars, and Visited by
Cupid:—

STANZAS 122—124.


Stretched on a couch, outside the coverlid,
    Love found her, scarce unloosed from Mars' embrace;
He, lying back within her bosom, fed
    His eager eyes on nought but her fair face;

340 Roses above them like a cloud were shed,
    To reinforce them in the amorous chace;
While Venus, quick with longings unsuppressed,
    A thousand times his eyes and forehead kissed.

Above, around, young Loves on every side
    Played naked, darting birdlike to and fro;
And one, whose plumes a thousand colours dyed,
    Fanned the shed roses as they lay arow;
One filled his quiver with fresh flowers, and hied
    To pour them on the couch that lay below;
Another, poised upon his pinions, through
The falling shower soared shaking rosy dew:

For, as he quivered with his tremulous wing,
    The wandering roses in their drift were stayed;—
Thus none was weary of glad gambolling;
    Till Cupid came, with dazzling plumes displayed,
Breathless; and round his mother's neck did fling
    His languid arms, and with his winnowing made
Her heart burn:—very glad and bright of face,
But, with his flight, too tired to speak apace.

These pictures have in them the very glow of Italian painting.
Sometimes we seem to see a quaint design of Piero di Cosimo, with
bright tints and multitudinous small figures in a spacious landscape.
Sometimes it is the languid grace of Botticelli, whose soul became
possessed of classic inspiration as it were in dreams, and who has
painted the birth of Venus almost exactly as Poliziano imagined it.
Again, we seize the broader beauties of the Venetian masters, or the
vehemence of Giulio Romano's pencil. To the last class belong the two
next extracts:—

STANZAS 104—107.


In the last square the great artificer
    Had wrought himself crowned with Love's perfect palm;
Black from his forge and rough, he runs to her,
    Leaving all labour for her bosom's calm:
341 Lips joined to lips with deep love-longing stir,
    Fire in his heart, and in his spirit balm;
Far fiercer flames through breast and marrow fly
    Than those which heat his forge in Sicily.

Jove, on the other side, becomes a bull,
    Goodly and white, at Love's behest, and rears
His neck beneath his rich freight beautiful:
    She turns toward the shore that disappears,
With frightened gesture; and the wonderful
    Gold curls about her bosom and her ears
Float in the wind; her veil waves, backward borne;
This hand still clasps his back, and that his horn.

With naked feet close-tucked beneath her dress,
    She seems to fear the sea that dares not rise:
So, imaged in a shape of drear distress,
    In vain unto her comrades sweet she cries;
They left amid the meadow-flowers, no less
    For lost Europa wail with weeping eyes:
Europa, sounds the shore, bring back our bliss
But the bull swims and turns her feet to kiss.

Here Jove is made a swan, a golden shower,
    Or seems a serpent, or a shepherd-swain,
To work his amorous will in secret hour;
    Here, like an eagle, soars he o'er the plain,
Love-led, and bears his Ganymede, the flower
    Of beauty, mid celestial peers to reign;
The boy with cypress hath his fair locks crowned,
Naked, with ivy wreathed his waist around.


STANZAS 110—112.


Lo! here again fair Ariadne lies,
    And to the deaf winds of false Theseus plains.
And of the air and slumber's treacheries;
    Trembling with fear even as a reed that strain.
And quivers by the mere 'neath breezy skies:
    Her very speechless attitude complains—
No beast there is so cruel as thou art,
No beast less loyal to my broken heart.

342 Throned on a car, with ivy crowned and vine,
    Rides Bacchus, by two champing tigers driven:
Around him on the sand deep-soaked with brine
    Satyrs and Bacchantes rush; the skies are riven
With shouts and laughter; Fauns quaff bubbling wine
    From horns and cymbals; Nymphs, to madness driven,
Trip, skip, and stumble; mixed in wild enlacements,
Laughing they roll or meet for glad embracements.

Upon his ass Silenus, never sated,
    With thick, black veins, wherethrough the must is soaking,
Nods his dull forehead with deep sleep belated;
    His eyes are wine-inflamed, and red, and smoking:
Bold Mænads goad the ass so sorely weighted,
    With stinging thyrsi; he sways feebly poking
The mane with bloated fingers; Fauns behind him,
E'en as he falls, upon the crupper bind him.

We almost seem to be looking at the frescoes in some Trasteverine
palace, or at the canvas of one of the sensual Genoese painters. The
description of the garden of Venus has the charm of somewhat artificial
elegance, the exotic grace of style, which attracts us in the earlier
Renaissance work:—

The leafy tresses of that timeless garden
    Nor fragile brine nor fresh snow dares to whiten;
Frore winter never comes the rills to harden,
    Nor winds the tender shrubs and herbs to frighten;
Glad Spring is always here, a laughing warden;
    Nor do the seasons wane, but ever brighten;
Here to the breeze young May, her curls unbinding,
With thousand flowers her wreath is ever winding.

Indeed it may be said with truth that Poliziano's most eminent faculty
as a descriptive poet corresponded exactly to the genius of the
painters of his day. To produce pictures radiant with Renaissance
colouring, and vigorous with Renaissance passion, was the function of
his art, not to 343express profound thought or dramatic situations.
This remark might be extended with justice to Ariosto, and Tasso, and
Boiardo. The great narrative poets of the Renaissance in Italy were not
dramatists; nor were their poems epics: their forte lay in the
inexhaustible variety and beauty of their pictures.

Of Poliziano's plagiarism—if this be the right word to apply to the
process of assimilation and selection, by means of which the
poet-scholar of Florence taught the Italians how to use the riches of
the ancient languages and their own literature—here are some specimens.
In stanza 42 of the 'Giostra' he says of Simonetta:—

E 'n lei discerne un non so che divino.


Dante has the line:—

Vostri risplende un non so che divino.


In the 44th he speaks about the birds:—

E canta ogni augelletto in suo latino.


This comes from Cavalcanti's:—

E cantinne gli augelli.
Ciascuno in suo latino.


Stanza 45 is taken bodily from Claudian, Dante, and Cavalcanti. It
would seem as though Poliziano wished to show that the classic and
medieval literature of Italy was all one, and that a poet of the
Renaissance could carry on the continuous tradition in his own style.
A, line in stanza 54 seems perfectly original:—

E già dall'alte ville il fumo esala.


It comes straight from Virgil:—

Et jam summa pocul villarum culmina fumant.

344

In the next stanza the line—

Tal che 'l ciel tutto rasserenò d'intorno,


is Petrarch's. So in the 56th, is the phrase 'il dolce andar celeste.'
In stanza 57—

Par che 'l cor del petto se gli schianti,


belongs to Boccaccio. In stanza 60 the first line:—

La notte che le cose ci nasconde,


together with its rhyme, 'sotto le amate fronde,' is borrowed from the
23rd canto of the 'Paradiso.' In the second line, 'Stellato ammanto' is
Claudian's 'stellantes sinus' applied to the heaven. When we reach the
garden of Venus we find whole passages translated from Claudian's
'Marriage of Honorius,' and from the 'Metamorphoses' of Ovid.

Poliziano's second poem of importance, which indeed may historically be
said to take precedence of 'La Giostra,' was the so-called tragedy of
'Orfeo.' The English version of this lyrical drama must be reserved for
a separate study: yet it belongs to the subject of this, inasmuch as
the 'Orfeo' is a classical legend treated in a form already familiar to
the Italian people. Nearly all the popular kinds of poetry of which
specimens have been translated in this chapter, will be found combined
in its six short scenes.

345




ORFEO


The 'Orfeo' of Messer Angelo Poliziano ranks amongst the most important
poems of the fifteenth century. It was composed at Mantua in the short
space of two days, on the occasion of Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga's
visit to his native town in 1472. But, though so hastily put together,
the 'Orfeo' marks an epoch in the evolution of Italian poetry. It is
the earliest example of a secular drama, containing within the compass
of its brief scenes the germ of the opera, the tragedy, and the
pastoral play. In form it does not greatly differ from the 'Sacre
Rappresentazioni' of the fifteenth century, as those miracle plays were
handled by popular poets of the earlier Renaissance. But while the
traditional octave stanza is used for the main movement of the piece,
Poliziano has introduced episodes of _terza rima_, madrigals, a
carnival song, a _ballata_, and, above all, choral passages which have
in them the future melodrama of the musical Italian stage. The lyrical
treatment of the fable, its capacity for brilliant and varied scenic
effects, its combination of singing with action, and the whole artistic
keeping of the piece, which never passes into genuine tragedy, but
stays within the limits of romantic pathos, distinguish the 'Orfeo' as
a typical production of Italian genius. Thus, though little better than
an improvisation, it combines the many forms of verse developed by the
Tuscans at the close of the Middle Ages, and fixes the limits beyond
which their dramatic poets, with a few 346exceptions, were not destined
to advance. Nor was the choice of the fable without significance.
Quitting the Bible stories and the Legends of Saints, which supplied
the mediaeval playwright with material, Poliziano selects a classic
story: and this story might pass for an allegory of Italy, whose
intellectual development the scholar-poet ruled. Orpheus is the power
of poetry and art, softening stubborn nature, civilising men, and
prevailing over Hades for a season. He is the right hero of humanism,
the genius of the Renaissance, the tutelary god of Italy, who thought
she could resist the laws of fate by verse and elegant accomplishments.
To press this kind of allegory is unwise; for at a certain moment it
breaks in our hands. And yet in Eurydice the fancy might discover
Freedom, the true spouse of poetry and art; Orfeo's last resolve too
vividly depicts the vice of the Renaissance; and the Mænads are those
barbarous armies destined to lay waste the plains of Italy, inebriate
with wine and blood, obeying a new lord of life on whom the poet's harp
exerts no charm. But a truce to this spinning of pedantic cobwebs. Let
Mercury appear, and let the play begin.

_THE FABLE OF ORPHEUS_

MERCURY _announces the show_.


Ho, silence! Listen! There was once a hind,
    Son of Apollo, Aristaeus hight,
    Who loved with so untamed and fierce a mind
    Eurydice, the wife of Orpheus wight,
    That chasing her one day with will unkind
    He wrought her cruel death in love's despite;
    For, as she fled toward the mere hard by,
    A serpent stung her, and she had to die.

347 Now Orpheus, singing, brought her back from hell,
    But could not keep the law the fates ordain:
    Poor wretch, he backward turned and broke the spell;
    So that once more from him his love was ta'en.
    Therefore he would no more with women dwell,
    And in the end by women he was slain.


_Enter_ A SHEPHERD, _who says_—


Nay, listen, friends! Fair auspices are given,
Since Mercury to earth hath come from heaven.


SCENE I


MOPSUS, _an old shepherd_.


Say, hast thou seen a calf of mine, all white
    Save for a spot of black upon her front,
    Two feet, one flank, and one knee ruddy-bright?


ARISTAEUS, _a young shepherd_.


Friend Mopsus, to the margin of this fount
    No herds have come to drink since break of day;
Yet may'st thou hear them low on yonder mount.
    Go, Thyrsis, search the upland lawn, I pray!
Thou Mopsus shalt with me the while abide;
    For I would have thee listen to my lay.

    [_Exit_ THYRSIS.

'Twas yester morn where trees yon cavern hide,
    I saw a nymph more fair than Dian, who
    Had a young lusty lover at her side:
But when that more than woman met my view,
    The heart within my bosom leapt outright,
    And straight the madness of wild Love I knew.
Since then, dear Mopsus, I have no delight;
    But weep and weep: of food and drink I tire,
    And without slumber pass the weary night.


MOPSUS.


348 Friend Aristaeus, if this amorous fire
    Thou dost not seek to quench as best may be,
    Thy peace of soul will vanish in desire.
Thou know'st that love is no new thing to me:
    I've proved how love grown old brings bitter pain:
    Cure it at once, or hope no remedy;
For if thou find thee in Love's cruel chain,
    Thy bees, thy blossoms will be out of mind,
    Thy fields, thy vines, thy flocks, thy cotes, thy grain


ARISTAEUS.


Mopsus, thou speakest to the deaf and blind:
    Waste not on me these wingèd words, I pray,
    Lest they be scattered to the inconstant wind,
I love, and cannot wish to say love nay;
    Nor seek to cure so charming a disease:
    They praise Love best who most against him say.
Yet if thou fain wouldst give my heart some ease,
    Forth from thy wallet take thy pipe, and we
    Will sing awhile beneath the leafy trees;
For well my nymph is pleased with melody.


THE SONG.


Listen, ye wild woods, to my roundelay;
Since the fair nymph will hear not, though I pray.

The lovely nymph is deaf to my lament,
    Nor heeds the music of this rustic reed;
Wherefore my flocks and herds are ill content,
    Nor bathe their hoof where grows the water weed,
    Nor touch the tender herbage on the mead;
So sad, because their shepherd grieves, are they.

Listen, ye wild woods, to my roundelay;
Since the fair nymph will hear not, though I pray.

The herds are sorry for their master's moan;
    The nymph heeds not her lover though he die,
349 The lovely nymph, whose heart is made of stone—
    Nay steel, nay adamant! She still doth fly
    Far, far before me, when she sees me nigh,
Even as a lamb flies fern the wolf away.

Listen, ye wild woods, to my roundelay;
Since the fair nymph will hear not, though I pray.

Nay, tell her, pipe of mine, how swift doth flee
    Beauty together with our years amain;
Tell her how time destroys all rarity,
    Nor youth once lost can be renewed again;
    Tell her to use the gifts that yet remain:
Roses and violets blossom not alway.

Listen, ye wild woods, to my roundelay;
Since the fair nymph will hear not, though I pray.

Carry, ye winds, these sweet words to her ears,
    Unto the ears of my loved nymph, and tell
How many tears I shed, what bitter tears!
    Beg her to pity one who loves so well:
    Say that my life is frail and mutable,
And melts like rime before the rising day.

Listen, ye wild woods, to my roundelay;
Since the fair nymph will hear not, though I pray.


MOPSUS.


Less sweet, methinks the voice of waters falling
    From cliffs that echo back their murmurous song;
    Less sweet the summer sound of breezes calling
    Through pine-tree tops sonorous all day long;
    Than are thy rhymes, the soul of grief enthralling,
    Thy rhymes o'er field and forest borne along:
If she but hear them, at thy feet she'll fawn.—
Lo, Thyrsis, hurrying homeward from the lawn!

    [_Re-enters_ THYRSIS.


350

ARISTAEUS.


What of the calf? Say, hast thou seen her now?


THYRSIS, _the cowherd_.


I have, and I'd as lief her throat were cut!
She almost ripped my bowels up, I vow,
Running amuck with horns well set to butt:
Nathless I've locked her in the stall below:
She's blown with grass, I tell you, saucy slut!


ARISTAEUS.


Now, prithee, let me hear what made you stay
So long upon the upland lawns away?


THYRSIS.


Walking, I spied a gentle maiden there,
    Who plucked wild flowers upon the mountain side:
    I scarcely think that Venus is more fair,
    Of sweeter grace, most modest in her pride:
    She speaks, she sings, with voice so soft and rare,
    That listening streams would backward roll their tide:
    Her face is snow and roses; gold her head;
    All, all alone she goes, white-raimented,


ARISTAEUS.


Stay, Mopsus! I must follow: for 'tis she
    Of whom I lately spoke. So, friend, farewell!


MOPSUS.


Hold, Aristaeus, lest for her or thee
Thy boldness be the cause of mischief fell!


ARISTAEUS.


Nay, death this day must be my destiny,
Unless I try my fate and break the spell.
Stay therefore, Mopsus, by the fountain stay!
I'll follow her, meanwhile, yon mountain way.

    [_Exit_ ARISTAEUS.


351

MOPSUS.


Thyrsis, what thinkest thou of thy loved lord?
    See'st thou that all his senses are distraught?
    Couldst thou not speak some seasonable word,
    Tell him what shame this idle love hath wrought?


THYRSIS.


Free speech and servitude but ill accord,
Friend Mopsus, and the hind is folly-fraught
Who rates his lord! He's wiser far than I.
To tend these kine is all my mastery.


SCENE II


ARISTAEUS, _in pursuit of_ EURYDICE.


Flee not from me, maiden!
    Lo, I am thy friend!
    Dearer far than life I hold thee.
    List, thou beauty-laden,
    To these prayers attend:
    Flee not, let my arms enfold thee!
    Neither wolf nor bear will grasp thee:
    That I am thy friend I've told thee:
    Stay thy course then; let me clasp thee!—
    Since thou'rt deaf and wilt not heed me,
    Since thou'rt still before me flying,
    While I follow panting, dying,
    Lend me wings, Love, wings to speed me!

    [_Exit_ ARISTAEUS, _pursuing_ EURYDICE.


SCENE III


A DRYAD.


Sad news of lamentation and of pain,
    Dear sisters, hath my voice to bear to you:
    I scarcely dare to raise the dolorous strain.
352 Eurydice by yonder stream lies low;
    The flowers are fading round her stricken head,
    And the complaining waters weep their woe.
The stranger soul from that fair house hath fled;
    And she, like privet pale, or white May-bloom
    Untimely plucked, lies on the meadow, dead.
Hear then the cause of her disastrous doom!
    A snake stole forth and stung her suddenly.
    I am so burdened with this weight of gloom
That, lo, I bid you all come weep with me!


CHORUS OF DRYADS.


Let the wide air with our complaint resound!
    For all heaven's light is spent.
    Let rivers break their bound,
    Swollen with tears outpoured from our lament!

Fell death hath ta'en their splendour from the skies:
    The stars are sunk in gloom.
    Stern death hath plucked the bloom
    Of nymphs:—Eurydice down-trodden lies.
Weep, Love! The woodland cries.
    Weep, groves and founts;
    Ye craggy mounts; you leafy dell,
    Beneath whose boughs she fell,
    Bend every branch in time with this sad sound.

Let the wide air with our complaint resound!

Ah, fortune pitiless! Ah, cruel snake!
    Ah, luckless doom of woes!
    Like a cropped summer rose,
    Or lily cut, she withers on the brake.
Her face, which once did make
    Our age so bright
    With beauty's light, is faint and pale;
    And the clear lamp doth fail,
    Which shed pure splendour all the world around

Let the wide air with our complaint resound!

353 Who e'er will sing so sweetly, now she's gone?
    Her gentle voice to hear,
    The wild winds dared not stir;
    And now they breathe but sorrow, moan for moan:
So many joys are flown,
    Such jocund days
    Doth Death erase with her sweet eyes!
    Bid earth's lament arise,
    And make our dirge through heaven and sea rebound!

Let the wide air with our complaint resound!


A DRYAD.


'Tis surely Orpheus, who hath reached the hill,
    With harp in hand, glad-eyed and light of heart!
    He thinks that his dear love is living still.
My news will stab him with a sudden smart:
    An unforeseen and unexpected blow
    Wounds worst and stings the bosom's tenderest part.
Death hath disjoined the truest love, I know,
    That nature yet to this low world revealed,
    And quenched the flame in its most charming glow.
Go, sisters, hasten ye to yonder field,
    Where on the sward lies slain Eurydice;
    Strew her with flowers and grasses! I must yield
This man the measure of his misery.

    [_Exeunt_ DRYADS. _Enter_ ORPHEUS, _singing_.


ORPHEUS.


_Musa, triumphales titulos et gesta canamus_
    _Herculis, et forti monstra subacta manu;_
_Ut timidae malri pressos ostenderit angues,_
    _Intrepidusque fero riserit ore puer._


A DRYAD.


Orpheus, I bring thee bitter news. Alas!
    Thy nymph who was so beautiful, is slain!
    flying from Aristaeus o'er the grass,
    What time she reached yon stream that threads the plain,

354 A snake which lurked mid flowers where she did pass,
    Pierced her fair foot with his envenomed bane:
    So fierce, so potent was the sting, that she
    Died in mid course. Ah, woe that this should be!

    [ORPHEUS _turns to go in silence._


MNESILLUS, _the satyr_.


Mark ye how sunk in woe
    The poor wretch forth doth pass,
    And may not answer, for his grief, one word?
    On some lone shore, unheard,
    Far, far away, he'll go,
    And pour his heart forth to the winds, alas!
    I'll follow and observe if he
    Moves with his moan the hills to sympathy.

    [_Follows_ ORPHEUS.


ORPHEUS.


Let us lament, O lyre disconsolate!
    Our wonted music is in tune no more.
    Lament we while the heavens revolve, and let
    The nightingale be conquered on Love's shore!
    O heaven, O earth, O sea, O cruel fate!
    How shall I bear a pang so passing sore?
    Eurydice, my love! O life of mine!
    On earth I will no more without thee pine!
I will go down unto the doors of Hell,
    And see if mercy may be found below:
    Perchance we shall reverse fate's spoken spell
    With tearful songs and words of honeyed woe:
    Perchance will Death be pitiful; for well
    With singing have we turned the streams that flow;
    Moved stones, together hind and tiger drawn,
    And made trees dance upon the forest lawn.

    [_Passes from sight on his way to Hades._


MNESILLUS.


The staff of Fate is strong
    And will not lightly bend,
    Nor yet the stubborn gates of steely Hell.
    Nay, I can see full well
355 His life will not be long:
    Those downward feet no more will earthward wend.
    What marvel if they lose the light,
    Who make blind Love their guide by day and night!


SCENE IV


ORPHEUS, _at the gate of Hell._


Pity, nay pity for a lover's moan!
    Ye Powers of Hell, let pity reign in you!
    To your dark regions led me Love alone:
    Downward upon his wings of light I flew.
    Hush, Cerberus! Howl not by Pluto's throne!
    For when you hear my tale of misery, you,
    Nor you alone, but all who here abide
    In this blind world, will weep by Lethe's tide.
There is no need, ye Furies, thus to rage;
    To dart those snakes that in your tresses twine:
    Knew ye the cause of this my pilgrimage,
    Ye would lie down and join your moans with mine.
    Let this poor wretch but pass, who war doth wage
    With heaven, the elements, the powers divine!
    I beg for pity or for death. No more!
    But open, ope Hell's adamantine door!

    [ORPHEUS _enters Hell._


PLUTO.


What man is he who with his golden lyre
    Hath moved the gates that never move,
    While the dead folk repeat his dirge of love?
The rolling stone no more doth tire
    Swart Sisyphus on yonder hill;
    And Tantalus with water slakes his fire;
The groans of mangled Tityos are still;
    Ixion's wheel forgets to fly;
    The Danaids their urns can fill:
I hear no more the tortured spirits cry;
But all find rest in that sweet harmony.


356

PROSERPINE.


Dear consort, since, compelled by love of thee,
    I left the light of heaven serene,
    And came to reign in hell, a sombre queen;
The charm of tenderest sympathy
    Hath never yet had power to turn
    My stubborn heart, or draw forth tears from me.
Now with desire for yon sweet voice I yearn;
    Nor is there aught so dear
    As that delight. Nay, be not stern
To this one prayer! Relax thy brows severe,
And rest awhile with me that song to hear!

    [ORPHEUS _stands before the throne._


ORPHEUS.


    Ye rulers of the people lost in gloom,
    Who see no more the jocund light of day!
    Ye who inherit all things that the womb
    Of Nature and the elements display!
    Hear ye the grief that draws me to the tomb!
    Love, cruel Love, hath led me on this way:
    Not to chain Cerberus I hither come,
    But to bring back my mistress to her home.
    A serpent hidden among flowers and leaves
    Stole my fair mistress—nay, my heart—from me:
    Wherefore my wounded life for ever grieves,
    Nor can I stand against this agony.
    Still, if some fragrance lingers yet and cleaves
    Of your famed love unto your memory,
    If of that ancient rape you think at all,
    Give back Eurydice!—On you I call.
    All things ere long unto this bourne descend:
    All mortal lives to you return at last:
    Whate'er the moon hath circled, in the end
    Must fade and perish in your empire vast:
    Some sooner and some later hither wend;
    Yet all upon this pathway shall have passed:
    This of our footsteps is the final goal;
    And then we dwell for aye in your control.
357 Therefore the nymph I love is left for you
    When nature leads her deathward in due time:
    But now you've cropped the tendrils as they grew,
    The grapes unripe, while yet the sap did climb:
    Who reaps the young blades wet with April dew,
    Nor waits till summer hath o'erpassed her prime?
    Give back, give back my hope one little day!—
    Not for a gift, but for a loan I pray.
    I pray not to you by the waves forlorn
    Of marshy Styx or dismal Acheron,
    By Chaos where the mighty world was born,
    Or by the sounding flames of Phlegethon;
    But by the fruit which charmed thee on that morn
    When thou didst leave our world for this dread throne!
    O queen! if thou reject this pleading breath,
    I will no more return, but ask for death!


PROSERPINE.


    Husband, I never guessed
    That in our realm oppressed
    Pity could find a home to dwell:
    But now I know that mercy teems in Hell.
    I see Death weep; her breast
    Is shaken by those tears that faultless fell.
    Let then thy laws severe for him be swayed
    By love, by song, by the just prayers he prayed!


PLUTO.


She's thine, but at this price:
    Bend not on her thine eyes,
    Till mid the souls that live she stay.
    See that thou turn not back upon the way!
    Check all fond thoughts that rise!
    Else will thy love be torn from thee away.
    I am well pleased that song so rare as thine
    The might of my dread sceptre should incline.


358

SCENE V


ORPHEUS, _sings._


_Ite tritumphales circum mea tempora lauri._
    _Vicimus Eurydicen: reddita vita mihi est,_
_Haec mea praecipue victoria digna coronâ._
    _Oredimus? an lateri juncta puella meo?_


EURYDICE.


All me! Thy love too great
    Hath lost not thee alone!
    I am torn from thee by strong Fate.
    No more I am thine own.
    In vain I stretch these arms. Back, back to Hell
    I'm drawn, I'm drawn. My Orpheus, fare thee well!

    [EURYDICE _disappears._


ORPHEUS.


Who hath laid laws on Love?
    Will pity not be given
    For one short look so full thereof?
    Since I am robbed of heaven,
    Since all my joy so great is turned to pain,
    I will go back and plead with Death again!

    [TISIPHONE _blocks his way._


TISIPHONE.


Nay, seek not back to turn!
    Vain is thy weeping, all thy words are vain.
    Eurydice may not complain
    Of aught but thee—albeit her grief is great.
    Vain are thy verses 'gainst the voice of Fate!
    How vain thy song! For Death is stern!
    Try not the backward path: thy feet refrain!
    The laws of the abyss are fixed and firm remain.


359

SCENE VI


ORPHEUS.


What sorrow-laden song shall e'er be found
    To match the burden of my matchless woe?
    How shall I make the fount of tears abound,
    To weep apace with grief's unmeasured flow?
    Salt tears I'll waste upon the barren ground,
    So long as life delays me here below;
    And since my fate hath wrought me wrong so sore,
    I swear I'll never love a woman more!
Henceforth I'll pluck the buds of opening spring,
    The bloom of youth when life is loveliest,
    Ere years have spoiled the beauty which they bring:
    This love, I swear, is sweetest, softest, best!
    Of female charms let no one speak or sing;
    Since she is slain who ruled within my breast.
    He who would seek my converse, let him see
    That ne'er he talk of woman's love to me!
How pitiful is he who changes mind
    For woman! for her love laments or grieves!
    Who suffers her in chains his will to bind,
    Or trusts her words lighter than withered leaves,
    Her loving looks more treacherous than the wind!
    A thousand times she veers; to nothing cleaves:
    Follows who flies; from him who follows, flees;
    And comes and goes like waves on stormy seas!
High Jove confirms the truth of what I said,
    Who, caught and bound in love's delightful snare,
    Enjoys in heaven his own bright Ganymed:
    Phoebus on earth had Hyacinth the fair:
    Hercules, conqueror of the world, was led
    Captive to Hylas by this love so rare.—
    Advice for husbands! Seek divorce, and fly
    Far, far away from female company!

[_Enter a_ MAENAD _leading a train of_ BACCHANTES.


A MAENAD.


Ho! Sisters! Up! Alive!
    See him who doth our sex deride!
360 Hunt him to death, the slave!
Thou snatch the thyrsus! Thou this oak-tree rive!
    Cast down this doeskin and that hide!
    We'll wreak our fury on the knave!
Yea, he shall feel our wrath, the knave!
    He shall yield up his hide
    Riven as woodmen fir-trees rive!
    No power his life can save;
    Since women he hath dared deride!
    Ho! To him, sisters! Ho! Alive!

[ORPHEUS _is chased off the scene and slain: the_ MAENADS
_then return._


A MAENAD.


Ho! Bacchus! Ho! I yield thee thanks for this!
    Through all the woodland we the wretch have borne:
    So that each root is slaked with blood of his:
    Yea, limb from limb his body have we torn
    Through the wild forest with a fearful bliss:
    His gore hath bathed the earth by ash and thorn!—
    Go then! thy blame on lawful wedlock fling!
    Ho! Bacchus! take the victim that we bring!


CHORUS OF MAENADS.


    Bacchus! we all must follow thee!
    Bacchus! Bacchus! Ohé! Ohé!

With ivy coronals, bunch and berry,
    Crown we our heads to worship thee!
Thou hast bidden us to make merry
    Day and night with jollity!
Drink then! Bacchus is here! Drink free,
And hand ye the drinking-cup to me!
    Bacchus! we all must follow thee!
    Bacchus! Bacchus! Ohé! Ohé!

See, I have emptied my horn already:
    Stretch hither your beaker to me, I pray:
Are the hills and the lawns where we roam unsteady?
    Or is it my brain that reels away?
361 Let every one run to and fro through the hay,
As ye see me run! Ho! after me!
    Bacchus! we all must follow thee!
    Bacchus! Bacchus! Ohé! Ohé!

Methinks I am dropping in swoon or slumber:
    Am I drunken or sober, yes or no?
What are these weights my feet encumber?
    You too are tipsy, well I know!
Let every one do as ye see me do,
Let every one drink and quaff like me!
    Bacchus! we all must follow thee!
    Bacchus! Bacchus! Ohé! Ohé!

Cry Bacchus! Cry Bacchus! Be blithe and merry,
    Tossing wine down your throats away!
Let sleep then come and our gladness bury:
    Drink you, and you, and you, while ye may!
Dancing is over for me to-day.
Let every one cry aloud Evohé!
    Bacchus! we all must follow thee!
    Bacchus! Bacchus! Ohé! Ohé!

Though an English translation can do little toward rendering the facile
graces of Poliziano's style, that 'roseate fluency' for which it has
been praised by his Italian admirers, the main qualities of the 'Orfeo'
as a composition may be traced in this rough copy. Of dramatic power,
of that mastery over the deeper springs of human nature which
distinguished the first effort of the English muse in Marlowe's plays,
there is but little. A certain adaptation of the language to the
characters, as in the rudeness of Thyrsis when contrasted with the
rustic elegance of Aristæus, a touch of simple feeling in Eurydice's
lyrical outcry of farewell, a discrimination between the tender
sympathy of Proserpine and Pluto's stern relenting, a spirited
presentation of the Bacchanalian _furore_ in the Mænads, an attempt to
model the Satyr Mnesillus as apart from human nature and yet
362sympathetic to its anguish, these points constitute the chief
dramatic features of the melodrama. Orpheus himself is a purely lyrical
personage. Of character, he can scarcely be said to have anything
marked; and his part rises to its height precisely in that passage
where the lyrist has to be displayed. Before the gates of Hades and the
throne of Proserpine he sings, and his singing is the right outpouring
of a poet's soul; each octave resumes the theme of the last stanza with
a swell of utterance, a crescendo of intonation that recalls the
passionate and unpremeditated descant of a bird upon the boughs alone.
To this true quality of music is added the persuasiveness of pleading.
That the violin melody of his incomparable song is lost, must be
reckoned a great misfortune. We have good reason to believe that the
part of Orpheus was taken by Messer Baccio Ugolini, singing to the
viol. Here too it may be mentioned that a _tondo_ in monochrome,
painted by Signorelli among the arabesques at Orvieto, shows Orpheus at
the throne of Plato, habited as a poet with the laurel crown and
playing on a violin of antique form. It would be interesting to know
whether a rumour of the Mantuan pageant had reached the ears of the
Cortonese painter.

If the whole of the 'Orfeo' had been conceived and executed with the
same artistic feeling as the chief act, it would have been a really
fine poem independently of its historical interest. But we have only to
turn the page and read the lament uttered for the loss of Eurydice, in
order to perceive Poliziano's incapacity for dealing with his hero in a
situation of greater difficulty. The pathos which might have made us
sympathise with Orpheus in his misery, the passion, approaching to
madness, which might have justified his misogyny, are absent. It is
difficult not to feel that in this climax of his anguish he was a poor
creature, and that 363the Mænads served him right. Nothing illustrates
the defect of real dramatic imagination better than this failure to
dignify the catastrophe. Gifted with a fine lyrical inspiration,
Poliziano seems to have already felt the Bacchic chorus which forms so
brilliant a termination to his play, and to have forgotten his duty to
the unfortunate Orpheus, whose sorrow for Eurydice is stultified and
made unmeaning by the prosaic expression of a base resolve. It may
indeed be said in general that the 'Orfeo' is a good poem only where
the situation is not so much dramatic as lyrical, and that its finest
passage—the scene in Hades—was fortunately for its author one in which
the dramatic motive had to be lyrically expressed. In this respect, as
in many others, the 'Orfeo' combines the faults and merits of the
Italian attempts at melo-tragedy. To break a butterfly upon the wheel
is, however, no fit function of criticism: and probably no one would
have smiled more than the author of this improvisation, at the thought
of its being gravely dissected just four hundred years after the
occasion it was meant to serve had long been given over to oblivion.

_NOTE_

Poliziano's 'Orfeo' was dedicated to Messer Carlo Canale, the husband
of that famous Vannozza who bore Lucrezia and Cesare Borgia to
Alexander VI. As first published in 1494, and as republished from time
to time up to the year 1776, it carried the title of 'La Favola di
Orfeo,' and was not divided into acts. Frequent stage-directions
sufficed, as in the case of Florentine 'Sacre Rappresentazioni,' for
the indication of the scenes. In this earliest redaction of the 'Orfeo'
the chorus of the Dryads, the part of Mnesillus, the lyrical speeches
of Proserpine and Pluto, and the first lyric of the Mænads are either
omitted or represented by passages in _ottava rima_. In the year 1776
the Padre Ireneo Affò 364printed at Venice a new version of 'Orfeo,
Tragedia di Messer Angelo Poliziano,' collated by him from two MSS.
This play is divided into five acts, severally entitled 'Pastoricus,'
'Nymphas Habet,' 'Heroïcus,' 'Necromanticus,' and 'Bacchanalis.' The
stage-directions are given partly in Latin, partly in Italian; and
instead of the 'Announcement of the Feast' by Mercury, a prologue
consisting of two octave stanzas is appended. A Latin Sapphic ode in
praise of the Cardinal Gonzaga, which was interpolated in the first
version, is omitted, and certain changes are made in the last soliloquy
of Orpheus. There is little doubt, I think, that the second version,
first given to the press by the Padre Affò, was Poliziano's own
recension of his earlier composition. I have therefore followed it in
the main, except that I have not thought it necessary to observe the
somewhat pedantic division into acts, and have preferred to use the
original 'Announcement of the Feast,' which proves the integral
connection between this ancient secular play and the Florentine Mystery
or 'Sacra Rappresentazione.' The last soliloquy of Orpheus, again, has
been freely translated by me from both versions for reasons which will
be obvious to students of the original. I have yet to make a remark
upon one detail of my translation. In line 390 (part of the first lyric
of the Mænads) the Italian gives us:—

Spezzata come il fabbro il cribro spezza.


This means literally: 'Riven as a blacksmith rives a sieve or boulter.'
Now sieves are made in Tuscany of a plate of iron, pierced with holes;
and the image would therefore be familiar to an Italian. I have,
however, preferred to translate thus:—

Riven as woodmen fir-trees rive,


instead of giving:—

Riven as blacksmiths boulters rive,


because I thought that the second and faithful version would be
unintelligible as well as unpoetical for English readers.

365




EIGHT SONNETS OF PETRARCH


ON THE PAPAL COURT AT AVIGNON


Fountain of woe! Harbour of endless ire!
    Thou school of errors, haunt of heresies!
    Once Rome, now Babylon, the world's disease,
    That maddenest men with fears and fell desire!
O forge of fraud! O prison dark and dire,
    Where dies the good, where evil breeds increase!
    Thou living Hell! Wonders will never cease
    If Christ rise not to purge thy sins with fire.
Founded in chaste and humble poverty,
    Against thy founders thou dost raise thy horn,
    Thou shameless harlot! And whence flows this pride?
Even from foul and loathed adultery,
    The wage of lewdness. Constantine, return!
    Not so: the felon world its fate must bide.


TO STEFANO COLONNA
WRITTEN FROM VAUCLUSE


Glorius Colonna, thou on whose high head
    Rest all our hopes and the great Latin name,
    Whom from the narrow path of truth and fame
    The wrath of Jove turned not with stormful dread:
Here are no palace-courts, no stage to tread;
    But pines and oaks the shadowy valleys fill
    Between the green fields and the neighbouring hill,
    Where musing oft I climb by fancy led.
These lift from earth to heaven our soaring soul,
    While the sweet nightingale, that in thick bowers
    Through darkness pours her wail of tuneful woe,
Doth bend our charmed breast to love's control;
    But thou alone hast marred this bliss of ours,
    Since from our side, dear lord, thou needs must go.

366

IN VITA DI MADONNA LAURA. XI
ON LEAVING AVIGNON


Backward at every weary step and slow
    These limbs I turn which with great pain I bear;
    Then take I comfort from the fragrant air
    That breathes from thee, and sighing onward go.
But when I think how joy is turned to woe,
    Remembering my short life and whence I fare,
    I stay my feet for anguish and despair,
    And cast my tearful eyes on earth below.
At times amid the storm of misery
    This doubt assails me: how frail limbs and poor
    Can severed from their spirit hope to live.
Then answers Love: Hast thou no memory
    How I to lovers this great guerdon give,
    Free from all human bondage to endure?


IN VITA DI MADONNA LAURA. XII
THOUGHTS IN ABSENCE


The wrinkled sire with hair like winter snow
    Leaves the beloved spot where he hath passed his years,
    Leaves wife and children, dumb with bitter tears,
    To see their father's tottering steps and slow.
Dragging his aged limbs with weary woe,
    In these last days of life he nothing fears,
    But with stout heart his fainting spirit cheers,
    And spent and wayworn forward still doth go;
Then comes to Rome, following his heart's desire,
    To gaze upon the portraiture of Him
    Whom yet he hopes in heaven above to see:
Thus I, alas! my seeking spirit tire,
    Lady, to find in other features dim
    The longed for, loved, true lineaments of thee.

367

IN VITA DI MADONNA LAURA. LII
OH THAT I HAD WINGS LIKE A DOVE!


I am so tired beneath the ancient load
    Of my misdeeds and custom's tyranny,
    That much I fear to fail upon the road
    And yield my soul unto mine enemy.
'Tis true a friend from whom all splendour flowed,
    To save me came with matchless courtesy:
    Then flew far up from sight to heaven's abode,
    So that I strive in vain his face to see.
Yet still his voice reverberates here below:
    Oh ye who labour, lo! the path is here;
    Come unto me if none your going stay!
What grace, what love, what fate surpassing fear
    Shall give me wings like dove's wings soft as snow,
    That I may rest and raise me from the clay?


IN MORTE DI MADONNA LAURA. XXIV


The eyes whereof I sang my fervid song,
    The arms, the hands, the feet, the face benign,
    Which severed me from what was rightly mine,
    And made me sole and strange amid the throng,
The crispèd curls of pure gold beautiful,
    And those angelic smiles which once did shine
    Imparadising earth with joy divine,
    Are now a little dust—dumb, deaf, and dull.
And yet I live! wherefore I weep and wail,
    Left alone without the light I loved so long,
    Storm-tossed upon a bark that hath no sail.
Then let me here give o'er my amorous song;
    The fountains of old inspiration fail,
    And nought but woe my dolorous chords prolong.

368

IN MORTE DI MADONNA LAURA. XXXIV


In thought I raised me to the place where she
    Whom still on earth I seek and find not, shines;
    There 'mid the souls whom the third sphere confines,
    More fair I found her and less proud to me.
She took my hand and said: Here shalt thou be
    With me ensphered, unless desires mislead;
    Lo! I am she who made thy bosom bleed,
    Whose day ere eve was ended utterly:
My bliss no mortal heart can understand;
    Thee only do I lack, and that which thou
    So loved, now left on earth, my beauteous veil.
Ah! wherefore did she cease and loose my hand?
    For at the sound of that celestial tale
    I all but stayed in paradise till now.


IN MORTE DI MADONNA LAURA. LXXIV


The flower of angels and the spirits blest,
    Burghers of heaven, on that first day when she
    Who is my lady died, around her pressed
    Fulfilled with wonder and with piety.
What light is this? What beauty manifest?
    Marvelling they cried: for such supremacy
    Of splendour in this age to our high rest
    Hath never soared from earth's obscurity.
She, glad to have exchanged her spirit's place,
    Consorts with those whose virtues most exceed;
    At times the while she backward turns her face
To see me follow—seems to wait and plead:
    Therefore toward heaven my will and soul I raise,
    Because I hear her praying me to speed.




VOLUME III.




FOLGORE DA SAN GEMIGNANO


Students of Mr. Dante Gabriel Rossetti's translations from the early
Italian poets (_Dante and his Circle_. Ellis & White, 1874) will not
fail to have noticed the striking figure made among those jejune
imitators of Provençal mannerism by two rhymesters, Cecco Angiolieri
and Folgore da San Gemignano. Both belong to the school of Siena, and
both detach themselves from the metaphysical fashion of their epoch by
clearness of intention and directness of style. The sonnets of both are
remarkable for what in the critical jargon of to-day might be termed
realism. Cecco is even savage and brutal. He anticipates Villon from
afar, and is happily described by Mr. Rossetti as the prodigal, or
'scamp' of the Dantesque circle. The case is different with Folgore.
There is no poet who breathes a fresher air of gentleness. He writes in
images, dealing but little with ideas. Every line presents a picture,
and each picture has the charm of a miniature fancifully drawn and
brightly coloured on a missal-margin. Cecco and Folgore alike have
abandoned the 2 mediæval mysticism which sounds unreal on almost all
Italian lips but Dante's. True Italians, they are content to live for
life's sake, and to take the world as it presents itself to natural
senses. But Cecco is perverse and impious. His love has nothing
delicate; his hatred is a morbid passion. At his worst or best (for his
best writing is his worst feeling) we find him all but rabid. If
Caligula, for instance, had written poetry, he might have piqued
himself upon the following sonnet; only we must do Cecco the justice of
remembering that his rage is more than half ironical and humorous:—

An I were fire, I would burn up the world;
    An I were wind, with tempest I'd it break;
    An I were sea, I'd drown it in a lake;
    An I were God, to hell I'd have it hurled;
An I were Pope, I'd see disaster whirled
    O'er Christendom, deep joy thereof to take;
    An I were Emperor, I'd quickly make
    All heads of all folk from their necks be twirled;
An I were death, I'd to my father go;
    An I were life, forthwith from him I'd fly;
    And with my mother I'd deal even so;
An I were Cecco, as I am but I,
    Young girls and pretty for myself I'd hold,
    But let my neighbours take the plain and old.


Of all this there is no trace in Folgore. The worst a moralist could
say of him is that he sought out for himself a life of pure enjoyment.
The famous Sonnets on the Months give particular directions for pastime
in a round of pleasure suited to each season. The Sonnets on the Days
are conceived in a like hedonistic spirit. But these series are
specially addressed to members of the Glad Brigades and Spending
Companies, which were common in the great mercantile cities of mediæval
Italy. Their tone is doubtless due to the occasion of their
composition, as compliments to Messer Nicholò di Nisi and Messer Guerra
Cavicciuoli.

3 The mention of these names reminds me that a word need be said about
the date of Folgore. Mr. Rossetti does not dispute the commonly
assigned date of 1260, and takes for granted that the Messer Nicolò of
the Sonnets on the Months was the Sienese gentleman referred to by
Dante in a certain passage of the 'Inferno':[48]—

And to the Poet said I: 'Now was ever
    So vain a people as the Sienese?
    Not for a certainty the French by far.'
Whereat the other leper, who had heard me,
    Replied unto my speech: 'Taking out Stricca,
    Who knew the art of moderate expenses,
And Nicolò, who the luxurious use
    Of cloves discovered earliest of all
    Within that garden where such seed takes root.
And taking out the band, among whom squandered
    Caccia d' Ascian his vineyards and vast woods,
    And where his wit the Abbagliato proffered.'


Now Folgore refers in his political sonnets to events of the years 1314
and 1315; and the correct reading of a line in his last sonnet on the
Months gives the name of Nicholò di Nisi to the leader of Folgore's
'blithe and lordly Fellowship.' The first of these facts leads us to
the conclusion that Folgore flourished in the first quarter of the
fourteenth, instead of in the third quarter of the thirteenth century.
The second prevents our identifying Nicholò di Nisi with the Niccolò
de' Salimbeni, who is thought to have been the founder of the
Fellowship of the Carnation. Furthermore, documents have recently been
brought to light which mention at San Gemignano, in the years 1305 and
1306, a certain Folgore. There is no sufficient reason to identify this
Folgore with the poet; but the name, to say the least, is so peculiar
that its occurrence in the records of so small a town as San Gemignano
gives some confirmation to the hypothesis of the 4 poet's later date.
Taking these several considerations together, I think we must abandon
the old view that Folgore was one of the earliest Tuscan poets, a view
which is, moreover, contradicted by his style. Those critics, at any
rate, who still believe him to have been a predecessor of Dante's, are
forced to reject as spurious the political sonnets referring to Monte
Catini and the plunder of Lucca by Uguccione della Faggiuola. Yet these
sonnets rest on the same manuscript authority as the Months and Days,
and are distinguished by the same qualities.[49]

 [48] _Inferno_, xxix. 121.—_Longfellow_.


 [49] The above points are fully discussed by Signor Giulio Navone, in
 his recent edition of _Le Rime di Folgore da San Gemignano e di Cene
 da la Chitarra d' Arezzo_. Bologna: Romagnoli, 1880. I may further
 mention that in the sonnet on the Pisans, translated on p. 18, which
 belongs to the political series, Folgore uses his own name.

Whatever may be the date of Folgore, whether we assign his period to
the middle of the thirteenth or the beginning of the fourteenth
century, there is no doubt but that he presents us with a very lively
picture of Italian manners, drawn from the point of view of the high
bourgeoisie. It is on this account that I have thought it worth while
to translate five of his Sonnets on Knighthood, which form the fragment
that remains to us from a series of seventeen. Few poems better
illustrate the temper of Italian aristocracy when the civil wars of two
centuries had forced the nobles to enroll themselves among the
burghers, and when what little chivalry had taken root in Italy was
fast decaying in a gorgeous over-bloom of luxury. The institutions of
feudal knighthood had lost their sterner meaning for our poet. He uses
them for the suggestion of delicate allegories fancifully painted.
Their mysterious significance is turned to gaiety, their piety to
amorous delight, their grimness to refined enjoyment. Still these
changes are effected with perfect good taste and in perfect good faith.
Something of the perfume of true 5 chivalry still lingered in a society
which was fast becoming mercantile and diplomatic. And this perfume is
exhaled by the petals of Folgore's song-blossom. He has no conception
that to readers of Mort Arthur, or to Founders of the Garter, to Sir
Miles Stapleton, Sir Richard Fitz-Simon, or Sir James Audley, his ideal
knight would have seemed but little better than a scented civet-cat.
Such knights as his were all that Italy possessed, and the poet-painter
was justly proud of them, since they served for finished pictures of
the beautiful in life.

The Italians were not a feudal race. During the successive reigns of
Lombard, Frankish, and German masters, they had passively accepted,
stubbornly resisted feudalism, remaining true to the conviction that
they themselves were Roman. In Roman memories they sought the
traditions which give consistency to national consciousness. And when
the Italian communes triumphed finally over Empire, counts, bishops,
and rural aristocracy; then Roman law was speedily substituted for the
'asinine code' of the barbarians, and Roman civility gave its tone to
social customs in the place of Teutonic chivalry. Yet just as the
Italians borrowed, modified, and misconceived Gothic architecture, so
they took a feudal tincture from the nations of the North with whom
they came in contact. Their noble families, those especially who
followed the Imperial party, sought the honour of knighthood; and even
the free cities arrogated to themselves the right of conferring this
distinction by diploma on their burghers. The chivalry thus formed in
Italy was a decorative institution. It might be compared to the
ornamental frontispiece which masks the structural poverty of such
Gothic buildings as the Cathedral of Orvieto.

On the descent of the German Emperor into Lombardy, the great vassals
who acknowledged him, made knighthood, 6 among titles of more solid
import, the price of their allegiance.[50] Thus the chronicle of the
Cortusi for the year 1354 tells us that when Charles IV. 'was advancing
through the March, and had crossed the Oglio, and was at the borders of
Cremona, in his camp upon the snow, he, sitting upon his horse, did
knight the doughty and noble man, Francesco da Carrara, who had
constantly attended him with a great train, and smiting him upon the
neck with his palm, said: "Be thou a good knight, and loyal to the
Empire." Thereupon the noble German peers dismounted, and forthwith
buckled on Francesco's spurs. To them the Lord Francesco gave chargers
and horses of the best he had.' Immediately afterwards Francesco dubbed
several of his own retainers knights. And this was the customary
fashion of these Lombard lords. For we read how in the year 1328 Can
Grande della Scala, after the capture of Padua, 'returned to Verona,
and for the further celebration of his victory upon the last day of
October held a court, and made thirty-eight knights with his own hand
of the divers districts of Lombardy.' And in 1294 Azzo d'Este 'was
knighted by Gerardo da Camino, who then was Lord of Treviso, upon the
piazza of Ferrara, before the gate of the Bishop's palace. And on the
same day at the same hour the said Lord Marquis Azzo made fifty-two
knights with his own hand, namely, the Lord Francesco, his brother, and
others of Ferrara, Modena, Bologna, Florence, Padua, and Lombardy; and
on this occasion was a great court held in Ferrara.' Another chronicle,
referring to the same event, says that the whole expenses of the
ceremony, including the rich dresses of the new knights, were at the
charge of the Marquis. It was customary, when a noble house had risen
to great wealth and 7 had abundance of fighting men, to increase its
prestige and spread abroad its glory by a wholesale creation of
knights. Thus the Chronicle of Rimini records a high court held by
Pandolfo Malatesta in the May of 1324, when he and his two sons, with
two of his near relatives and certain strangers from Florence, Bologna,
and Perugia, received this honour. At Siena, in like manner, in the
year 1284, 'thirteen of the house of Salimbeni were knighted with great
pomp.'

 [50] The passages used in the text are chiefly drawn from Muratori's
 fifty-third Dissertation.

It was not on the battlefield that the Italians sought this honour.
They regarded knighthood as a part of their signorial parade. Therefore
Republics, in whom perhaps, according to strict feudal notions, there
was no fount of honour, presumed to appoint procurators for the special
purpose of making knights. Florence, Siena, and Arezzo, after this
fashion gave the golden spurs to men who were enrolled in the arts of
trade or commerce. The usage was severely criticised by Germans who
visited Italy in the Imperial train. Otto Frisingensis, writing the
deeds of Frederick Barbarossa, speaks with bitterness thereof: 'To the
end that they may not lack means of subduing their neighbours, they
think it no shame to gird as knights young men of low birth, or even
handicraftsmen in despised mechanic arts, the which folk other nations
banish like the plague from honourable and liberal pursuits.' Such
knights, amid the chivalry of Europe, were not held in much esteem; nor
is it easy to see what the cities, which had formally excluded nobles
from their government, thought to gain by aping institutions which had
their true value only in a feudal society. We must suppose that the
Italians were not firmly set enough in their own type to resist an
enthusiasm which inflamed all Christendom. At the same time they were
too Italian to comprehend the spirit of the thing they borrowed. The
knights thus made already contained within themselves the germ of those
Condottieri 8who reduced the service of arms to a commercial
speculation. But they lent splendour to the Commonwealth, as may be
seen in the grave line of mounted warriors, steel-clad, with open
visors, who guard the commune of Siena in Ambrogio Lorenzetti's fresco.
Giovanni Villani, in a passage of his Chronicle which deals with the
fair state of Florence just before the outbreak of the Black and White
parties, says the city at that epoch numbered 'three hundred Cavalieri
di Corredo, with many clubs of knights and squires, who morning and
evening went to meat with many men of the court, and gave away on high
festivals many robes of vair.' It is clear that these citizen knights
were leaders of society, and did their duty to the commonwealth by
adding to its joyous cheer. Upon the battlefields of the civil wars,
moreover, they sustained at their expense the charges of the cavalry.

Siena was a city much given to parade and devoted to the Imperial
cause, in which the institution of chivalry flourished. Not only did
the burghers take knighthood from their procurators, but the more
influential sought it by a special dispensation from the Emperor. Thus
we hear how Nino Tolomei obtained a Cæsarean diploma of knighthood for
his son Giovanni, and published it with great pomp to the people in his
palace. This Giovanni, when he afterwards entered religion, took the
name of Bernard, and founded the Order of Monte Oliveto.

Owing to the special conditions of Italian chivalry, it followed that
the new knight, having won his spurs by no feat of arms upon the
battlefield, was bounden to display peculiar magnificence in the
ceremonies of his investiture. His honour was held to be less the
reward of courage than of liberality. And this feeling is strongly
expressed in a curious passage of Matteo Villani's Chronicle. 'When the
Emperor Charles had received the crown in Rome, as we have said, he
9turned towards Siena, and on the 19th day of April arrived at that
city; and before he entered the same, there met him people of the
commonwealth with great festivity upon the hour of vespers; in the
which reception eight burghers, given to display but miserly, to the
end they might avoid the charges due to knighthood, did cause
themselves then and there to be made knights by him. And no sooner had
he passed the gates than many ran to meet him without order in their
going or provision for the ceremony, and he, being aware of the vain
and light impulse of that folk, enjoined upon the Patriarch to knight
them in his name. The Patriarch could not withstay from knighting as
many as offered themselves; and seeing the thing so cheap, very many
took the honour, who before that hour had never thought of being
knighted, nor had made provision of what is required from him who
seeketh knighthood, but with light impulse did cause themselves to be
borne upon the arms of those who were around the Patriarch; and when
they were in the path before him, these raised such an one on high, and
took his customary cap off, and after he had had the cheek-blow which
is used in knighting, put a gold-fringed cap upon his head, and drew
him from the press, and so he was a knight. And after this wise were
made four-and-thirty on that evening, of the noble and lesser folk. And
when the Emperor had been attended to his lodging, night fell, and all
returned home; and the new knights without preparation or expense
celebrated their reception into chivalry with their families forthwith.
He who reflects with a mind not subject to base avarice upon the coming
of a new-crowned Emperor into so famous a city, and bethinks him how so
many noble and rich burghers were promoted to the honour of knighthood
in their native land, men too by nature fond of pomp, without having
made any solemn festival in common or in private to the fame of
chivalry, 10may judge this people little worthy of the distinction they
received.'

This passage is interesting partly as an instance of Florentine spite
against Siena, partly as showing that in Italy great munificence was
expected from the carpet-knights who had not won their spurs with toil,
and partly as proving how the German Emperors, on their parade
expeditions through Italy, debased the institutions they were bound to
hold in respect. Enfeebled by the extirpation of the last great German
house which really reigned in Italy, the Empire was now no better than
a cause of corruption and demoralisation to Italian society. The
conduct of a man like Charles disgusted even the most fervent
Ghibellines; and we find Fazio degli Uberti flinging scorn upon his
avarice and baseness in such lines as these:—

Sappi ch' i' son Italia che ti parlo,
Di Lusimburgo _ignominioso Carlo_ ...
Veggendo te aver tese tue arti
_A tór danari e gir con essi a casa_ ...
Tu dunque, Giove, perche 'l Santo uccello
Da questo Carlo quarto
Imperador non togli e dalle mani
_Degli altri, lurchi moderni Germani_
_Che d' aquila un allocco n' hanno fatto_?


From a passage in a Sienese chronicle we learn what ceremonies of
bravery were usual in that city when the new knights understood their
duty. It was the year 1326. Messer Francesco Bandinelli was about to be
knighted on the morning of Christmas Day. The friends of his house sent
peacocks and pheasants by the dozen, and huge pies of marchpane, and
game in quantities. Wine, meat, and bread were distributed to the
Franciscan and other convents, and a fair and noble court was opened to
all comers. Messer Sozzo, father of the novice, went, attended by his
guests, to 11hear high mass in the cathedral; and there upon the marble
pulpit, which the Pisans carved, the ceremony was completed. Tommaso di
Nello bore his sword and cap and spurs before him upon horseback.
Messer Sozzo girded the sword upon the loins of Messer Francesco, his
son aforesaid. Messer Pietro Ridolfi, of Rome, who was the first vicar
that came to Siena, and the Duke of Calabria buckled on his right spur.
The Captain of the People buckled on his left. The Count Simone da
Battifolle then undid his sword and placed it in the hands of Messer
Giovanni di Messer Bartolo de' Fibenzi da Rodi, who handed it to Messer
Sozzo, the which sword had previously been girded by the father on his
son. After this follows a list of the illustrious guests, and an
inventory of the presents made to them by Messer Francesco. We find
among these 'a robe of silken cloth and gold, skirt, and fur, and cap
lined with vair, with a silken cord.' The description of the many
costly dresses is minute; but I find no mention of armour. The singers
received golden florins, and the players upon instruments 'good store
of money.' A certain Salamone was presented with the clothes which the
novice doffed before he took the ceremonial bath. The whole catalogue
concludes with Messer Francesco's furniture and outfit. This, besides a
large wardrobe of rich clothes and furs, contains armour and the
trappings for charger and palfrey. The _Corte Bandita_, or open house
held upon this occasion, lasted for eight days, and the charges on the
Bandinelli estates must have been considerable.

Knights so made were called in Italy _Cavalieri Addobbati_, or _di
Corredo_, probably because the expense of costly furniture was borne by
them—_addobbo_ having become a name for decorative trappings, and
_Corredo_ for equipment. The latter is still in use for a bride's
trousseau. The former has the same Teutonic root as our verb 'to dub.'
But the Italians 12recognised three other kinds of knights, the
_Cavalieri Bagati_, _Cavalieri di Scudo_, and _Cavalieri d'Arme_. Of
the four sorts Sacchetti writes in one of his novels:—'Knights of the
Bath are made with the greatest ceremonies, and it behoves them to be
bathed and washed of all impurity. Knights of Equipment are those who
take the order with a mantle of dark green and the gilded garland.
Knights of the Shield are such as are made knights by commonwealths or
princes, or go to investiture armed, and with the casque upon their
head. Knights of Arms are those who in the opening of a battle, or upon
a foughten field, are dubbed knights.' These distinctions, however,
though concordant with feudal chivalry, were not scrupulously
maintained in Italy. Messer Francesco Bandinelli, for example, was
certainly a _Cavaliere di Corredo_. Yet he took the bath, as we have
seen. Of a truth, the Italians selected those picturesque elements of
chivalry which lent themselves to pageant and parade. The sterner
intention of the institution, and the symbolic meaning of its various
ceremonies, were neglected by them.

In the foregoing passages, which serve as a lengthy preamble to
Folgore's five sonnets, I have endeavoured to draw illustrations from
the history of Siena, because Folgore represents Sienese society at the
height of mediæval culture. In the first of the series he describes the
preparation made by the aspirant after knighthood. The noble youth is
so bent on doing honour to the order of chivalry, that he raises money
by mortgage to furnish forth the banquets and the presents due upon the
occasion of his institution. He has made provision also of equipment
for himself and all his train. It will be noticed that Folgore dwells
only on the fair and joyous aspect of the ceremony. The religious
enthusiasm of knighthood has disappeared, and already, in the first
decade of the fourteenth century, we find the spirit 13of Jehan de
Saintrè prevalent in Italy. The word _donzello_, derived from the Latin
_domicellus_, I have translated _squire_, because the donzel was a
youth of gentle birth awaiting knighthood.

This morn a young squire shall be made a knight;
    hereof he fain would be right worthy found,
    And therefore pledgeth lands and castles round
    To furnish all that fits a man of might.
Meat, bread and wine he gives to many a wight;
    Capons and pheasants on his board abound,
    Where serving men and pages march around;
    Choice chambers, torches, and wax candle light.
Barbed steeds, a multitude, are in his thought,
    Mailed men at arms and noble company,
    Spears, pennants, housing cloths, bells richly wrought.
Musicians following with great barony
    And jesters through the land his state have brought,
    With dames and damsels whereso rideth he.


The subject having thus been introduced, Folgore treats the ceremonies
of investiture by an allegorical method, which is quite consistent with
his own preference of images to ideas. Each of the four following
sonnets presents a picture to the mind, admirably fitted for artistic
handling. We may imagine them to ourselves wrought in arras for a
sumptuous chamber. The first treats of the bath, in which, as we have
seen already from Sacchetti's note, the aspirant after knighthood puts
aside all vice, and consecrates himself anew. Prodezza, or Prowess,
must behold him nude from head to foot, in order to assure herself that
the neophyte bears no blemish; and this inspection is an allegory of
internal wholeness.

Lo Prowess, who despoileth him straightway,
    And saith: 'Friend, now beseems it thee to strip;
    For I will see men naked, thigh and hip,
    And thou my will must know and eke obey;
14 And leave what was thy wont until this day,
    And for new toil, new sweat, thy strength equip;
    This do, and thou shalt join my fellowship,
    If of fair deeds thou tire not nor cry nay.'
And when she sees his comely body bare,
    Forthwith within her arms she him doth take,
    And saith: 'These limbs thou yieldest to my prayer;
I do accept thee, and this gift thee make,
    So that thy deeds may shine for ever fair;
    My lips shall never more thy praise forsake.'


After courage, the next virtue of the knightly character is gentleness
or modesty, called by the Italians humility. It is this quality which
makes a strong man pleasing to the world, and wins him favour.
Folgore's sonnet enables us to understand the motto of the great
Borromeo family—_Humilitas_, in Gothic letters underneath the coronet
upon their princely palace fronts.

Humility to him doth gently go,
    And saith: 'I would in no wise weary thee;
    Yet must I cleanse and wash thee thoroughly,
    And I will make thee whiter than the snow.
Hear what I tell thee in few words, for so
    Fain am I of thy heart to hold the key;
    Now must thou sail henceforward after me;
    And I will guide thee as myself do go.
But one thing would I have thee straightway leave;
    Well knowest thou mine enemy is pride;
    Let her no more unto thy spirit cleave:
So leal a friend with thee will I abide
    That favour from all folk thou shalt receive;
    This grace hath he who keepeth on my side.'


The novice has now bathed, approved himself to the searching eyes of
Prowess, and been accepted by Humility. After the bath, it was
customary for him to spend a night in vigil; and this among the Teutons
should have taken place in church, alone before the altar. But the
Italian poet, after his custom, 15gives a suave turn to the severe
discipline. His donzel passes the night in bed, attended by Discretion,
or the virtue of reflection. She provides fair entertainment for the
hours of vigil, and leaves him at the morning with good counsel. It is
not for nothing that he seeks knighthood, and it behoves him to be
careful of his goings. The last three lines of the sonnet are the
gravest of the series, showing that something of true chivalrous
feeling survived even among the Cavalieri di Corredo of Tuscany.

Then did Discretion to the squire draw near,
    And drieth him with a fair cloth and clean,
    And straightway putteth him the sheets between,
    Silk, linen, counterpane, and minevere.
Think now of this! Until the day was clear,
    With songs and music and delight the queen,
    And with new knights, fair fellows well-beseen,
    To make him perfect, gave him goodly cheer.
Then saith she: 'Rise forthwith, for now 'tis due,
    Thou shouldst be born into the world again;
    Keep well the order thou dost take in view.'
Unfathomable thoughts with him remain
    Of that great bond he may no more eschew,
    Nor can he say, 'I'll hide me from this chain.'


The vigil is over. The mind of the novice is prepared for his new
duties. The morning of his reception into chivalry has arrived. It is
therefore fitting that grave thoughts should be abandoned; and seeing
that not only prowess, humility, and discretion are the virtues of a
knight, but that he should also be blithe and debonair, Gladness comes
to raise him from his bed and equip him for the ceremony of
institution.

Comes Blithesomeness with mirth and merriment,
    All decked in flowers she seemeth a rose-tree;
    Of linen, silk, cloth, fur, now beareth she
    16 the new knight a rich habiliment;
Head-gear and cap and garland flower-besprent,
    So brave they were May-bloom he seemed to be;
    With such a rout, so many and such glee,
    That the floor shook. Then to her work she went;
And stood him on his feet in hose and shoon;
    And purse and gilded girdle 'neath the fur
    That drapes his goodly limbs, she buckles on;
Then bids the singers and sweet music stir,
    And showeth him to ladies for a boon
    And all who in that following went with her.


At this point the poem is abruptly broken. The manuscript from which
these sonnets are taken states they are a fragment. Had the remaining
twelve been preserved to us, we should probably have possessed a series
of pictures in which the procession to church would have been
portrayed, the investiture with the sword, the accolade, the buckling
on of the spurs, and the concluding sports and banquets. It is very
much to be regretted that so interesting, so beautiful, and so unique a
monument of Italian chivalry survives thus mutilated. But students of
art have to arm themselves continually with patience, repressing the
sad thoughts engendered in them by the spectacle of time's unconscious
injuries.

It is certain that Folgore would have written at least one sonnet on
the quality of courtesy, which in that age, as we have learned from
Matteo Villani, identified itself in the Italian mind with liberality.
This identification marks a certain degradation of the chivalrous
ideal, which is characteristic of Italian manners. One of Folgore's
miscellaneous sonnets shows how sorely he felt the disappearance of
this quality from the midst of a society bent daily more and more upon
material aims. It reminds us of the lamentable outcries uttered by the
later poets of the fourteenth century, Sacchetti, Boccaccio, Uberti,
and others of less fame, over the decline of their age.

17 Courtesy! Courtesy! Courtesy! I call:
    But from no quarter comes there a reply.
    And whoso needs her, ill must us befall.
Greed with his hook hath ta'en men one and all,
    And murdered every grace that dumb doth lie:
    Whence, if I grieve, I know the reason why;
    From you, great men, to God I make my call:
For you my mother Courtesy have cast
    So low beneath your feet she there must bleed;
    Your gold remains, but you're not made to last:
Of Eve and Adam we are all the seed:
    Able to give and spend, you hold wealth fast:
    Ill is the nature that rears such a breed!


Folgore was not only a poet of occasion and compliment, but a political
writer, who fully entertained the bitter feeling of the Guelphs against
their Ghibelline opponents.

Two of his sonnets addressed to the Guelphs have been translated by Mr.
Rossetti. In order to complete the list I have made free versions of
two others in which he criticised the weakness of his own friends. The
first is addressed, in the insolent impiety of rage, to God:—

I praise thee not, O God, nor give thee glory,
    Nor yield thee any thanks, nor bow the knee,
    Nor pay thee service; for this irketh me
    More than the souls to stand in purgatory;
Since thou hast made us Guelphs a jest and story
    Unto the Ghibellines for all to see:
    And if Uguccion claimed tax of thee,
    Thou'dst pay it without interrogatory.
Ah, well I wot they know thee! and have stolen
    St. Martin from thee, Altopascio,
    St. Michael, and the treasure thou hast lost;
And thou that rotten rabble so hast swollen
    That pride now counts for tribute; even so
    Thou'st made their heart stone-hard to thine own cost.


18About the meaning of some lines in this sonnet I am not clear. But
the feeling and the general drift of it are manifest. The second is a
satire on the feebleness and effeminacy of the Pisans.

Ye are more silky-sleek than ermines are,
    Ye Pisan counts, knights, damozels, and squires,
    Who think by combing out your hair like wires
    To drive the men of Florence from their car.
Ye make the Ghibellines free near and far,
    Here, there, in cities, castles, huts, and byres,
    Seeing how gallant in your brave attires,
    How bold you look, true paladins of war.
Stout-hearted are ye as a hare in chase,
    To meet the sails of Genoa on the sea;
    And men of Lucca never saw your face.
Dogs with a bone for courtesy are ye:
    Could Folgore but gain a special grace,
    He'd have you banded 'gainst all men that be.


Among the sonnets not translated by Mr. Rossetti two by Folgore remain,
which may be classified with the not least considerable contributions
to Italian gnomic poetry in an age when literature easily assumed a
didactic tone. The first has for its subject the importance of
discernment and discrimination. It is written on the wisdom of what the
ancient Greeks called Καιρός, or the right occasion in all human
conduct.

Dear friend, not every herb puts forth a flower;
    Nor every flower that blossoms fruit doth bear;
    Nor hath each spoken word a virtue rare;
    Nor every stone in earth its healing power:
This thing is good when mellow, that when sour;
    One seems to grieve, within doth rest from care;
    Not every torch is brave that flaunts in air;
    There is what dead doth seem, yet flame doth shower.
Wherefore it ill behoveth a wise man
    His truss of every grass that grows to bind,
    Or pile his back with every stone he can,
19 Or counsel from each word to seek to find,
    Or take his walks abroad with Dick and Dan:
    Not without cause I'm moved to speak my mind.


The second condemns those men of light impulse who, as Dante put it,
discoursing on the same theme, 'subject reason to inclination.'[51]

What time desire hath o'er the soul such sway
    That reason finds nor place nor puissance here,
    Men oft do laugh at what should claim a tear,
    And over grievous dole are seeming gay.
He sure would travel far from sense astray
    Who should take frigid ice for fire; and near
    Unto this plight are those who make glad cheer
    For what should rather cause their soul dismay.
But more at heart might he feel heavy pain
    Who made his reason subject to mere will,
    And followed wandering impulse without rein;
Seeing no lordship is so rich as still
    One's upright self unswerving to sustain,
    To follow worth, to flee things vain and ill.


The sonnets translated by me in this essay, taken together with those
already published by Mr. Rossetti, put the English reader in possession
of all that passes for the work of Folgore da San Gemignano.

 [51] The line in Dante runs:


'Che la ragion sommettono al talento.'


In Folgore's sonnet we read:


'Chi sommette rason a volontade.'


On the supposition that Folgore wrote in the second decade of the
fourteenth century, it is not impossible that he may have had knowledge
of this line from the fifth canto of the _Inferno_.

Since these words were written, England has lost the poet-painter, to
complete whose work upon the sonnet-writer of 20mediæval Siena I
attempted the translations in this essay. One who has trodden the same
path as Rossetti, at however a noticeable interval, and has attempted
to present in English verse the works of great Italian singers, doing
inadequately for Michelangelo and Campanella what he did supremely well
for Dante, may here perhaps be allowed to lay the tribute of reverent
recognition at his tomb.

21




THOUGHTS IN ITALY ABOUT CHRISTMAS


What is the meaning of our English Christmas? What makes it seem so
truly Northern, national, and homely, that we do not like to keep the
feast upon a foreign shore? These questions grew upon me as I stood one
Advent afternoon beneath the Dome of Florence. A priest was thundering
from the pulpit against French scepticism, and exalting the miracle of
the Incarnation. Through the whole dim church blazed altar candles.
Crowds of men and women knelt or sat about the transepts, murmuring
their prayers of preparation for the festival. At the door were pedlars
selling little books, in which were printed the offices for
Christmas-tide, with stories of S. Felix and S. Catherine, whose
devotion to the infant Christ had wrought them weal, and promises of
the remission of four purgatorial centuries to those who zealously
observed the service of the Church at this most holy time. I knew that
the people of Florence were preparing for Christmas in their own way.
But it was not our way. It happened that outside the church the climate
seemed as wintry as our own—snowstorms and ice, and wind and chilling
fog, suggesting Northern cold. But as the palaces of Florence lacked
our comfortable firesides, and the greetings of friends lacked our
hearty handshakes and loud good wishes, so there seemed to be a want of
the home feeling in those Christmas services and customs. Again I asked
myself, 'What do we mean by Christmas?'

22The same thought pursued me as I drove to Rome: by Siena, still and
brown, uplifted, mid her russet hills and wilderness of rolling plain;
by Chiusi, with its sepulchral city of a dead and unknown people;
through the chestnut forests of the Apennines; by Orvieto's rock,
Viterbo's fountains, and the oak-grown solitudes of the Ciminian
heights, from which one looks across the broad lake of Bolsena and the
Roman plain. Brilliant sunlight, like that of a day in late September,
shone upon the landscape, and I thought—Can this be Christmas? Are they
bringing mistletoe and holly on the country carts into the towns in
far-off England? Is it clear and frosty there, with the tramp of heels
upon the flag, or snowing silently, or foggy with a round red sun and
cries of warning at the corners of the streets?

I reached Rome on Christmas Eve, in time to hear midnight services in
the Sistine Chapel and S. John Lateran, to breathe the dust of decayed
shrines, to wonder at doting cardinals begrimed with snuff, and to
resent the open-mouthed bad taste of my countrymen who made a mockery
of these palsy-stricken ceremonies. Nine cardinals going to sleep, nine
train-bearers talking scandal, twenty huge, handsome Switzers in the
dress devised by Michelangelo, some ushers, a choir caged off by gilded
railings, the insolence and eagerness of polyglot tourists, plenty of
wax candles dripping on people's heads, and a continual nasal drone
proceeding from the gilded cage, out of which were caught at intervals
these words, and these only,—'Sæcula sæculorum, amen.' Such was the
celebrated Sistine service. The chapel blazed with light, and very
strange did Michelangelo's Last Judgment, his Sibyls, and his Prophets,
appear upon the roof and wall above this motley and unmeaning crowd.

Next morning I put on my dress-clothes and white tie, and repaired,
with groups of Englishmen similarly attired, and of Englishwomen in
black crape—the regulation costume —to 23S. Peter's. It was a glorious
and cloudless morning; sunbeams streamed in columns from the southern
windows, falling on the vast space full of soldiers and a mingled mass
of every kind of people. Up the nave stood double files of the
Pontifical guard. Monks and nuns mixed with the Swiss cuirassiers and
halberds. Contadini crowded round the sacred images, and especially
round the toe of S. Peter. I saw many mothers lift their swaddled
babies up to kiss it. Valets of cardinals, with the invariable red
umbrellas, hung about side chapels and sacristies. Purple-mantled
monsignori, like emperor butterflies, floated down the aisles from
sunlight into shadow. Movement, colour, and the stir of expectation,
made the church alive. We showed our dress-clothes to the guard, were
admitted within their ranks, and solemnly walked up toward the dome.
There under its broad canopy stood the altar, glittering with gold and
candles. The choir was carpeted and hung with scarlet. Two magnificent
thrones rose ready for the Pope: guards of honour, soldiers, attachés,
and the élite of the residents and visitors in Rome, were scattered in
groups picturesquely varied by ecclesiastics of all orders and degrees.
At ten a stirring took place near the great west door. It opened, and
we saw the procession of the Pope and his cardinals. Before him marched
the singers and the blowers of the silver trumpets, making the most
liquid melody. Then came his Cap of Maintenance, and three tiaras; then
a company of mitred priests; next the cardinals in scarlet; and last,
aloft beneath a canopy, upon the shoulders of men, and flanked by the
mystic fans, advanced the Pope himself, swaying to and fro like a Lama,
or an Aztec king. Still the trumpets blew most silverly, and still the
people knelt; and as he came, we knelt and had his blessing. Then he
took his state and received homage. After this the choir began to sing
a mass of Palestrina's, and the 24deacons robed the Pope. Marvellous
putting on and taking off of robes and tiaras and mitres ensued, during
which there was much bowing and praying and burning of incense. At
last, when he had reached the highest stage of sacrificial sanctity, he
proceeded to the altar, waited on by cardinals and bishops. Having
censed it carefully, he took a higher throne and divested himself of
part of his robes. Then the mass went on in earnest, till the moment of
consecration, when it paused, the Pope descended from his throne,
passed down the choir, and reached the altar. Every one knelt; the
shrill bell tinkled; the silver trumpets blew; the air became sick and
heavy with incense, so that sun and candle light swooned in an
atmosphere of odorous cloud-wreaths. The whole church trembled, hearing
the strange subtle music vibrate in the dome, and seeing the Pope with
his own hands lift Christ's body from the altar and present it to the
people. An old parish priest, pilgrim from some valley of the
Apennines, who knelt beside me, cried and quivered with excess of
adoration. The great tombs around, the sculptured saints and angels,
the dome, the volumes of light and incense and unfamiliar melody, the
hierarchy ministrant, the white and central figure of the Pope, the
multitude—made up an overpowering scene. What followed was
comparatively tedious. My mind again went back to England, and I
thought of Christmas services beginning in all village churches and all
cathedrals throughout the land—their old familiar hymn, their anthem of
Handel, their trite and sleepy sermons. How different the two feasts
are—Christmas in Rome, Christmas in England—Italy and the North—the
spirit of Latin and the spirit of Teutonic Christianity.

What, then, constitutes the essence of our Christmas as different from
that of more Southern nations? In their origin they are the same. The
stable of Bethlehem, the 25star-led kings, the shepherds, and the
angels—all the beautiful story, in fact, which S. Luke alone of the
Evangelists has preserved for us—are what the whole Christian world
owes to the religious feeling of the Hebrews. The first and second
chapters of S. Luke are most important in the history of Christian
mythology and art. They are far from containing the whole of what we
mean by Christmas; but the religious poetry which gathers round that
season must be sought upon their pages. Angels, ever since the Exodus,
played a first part in the visions of the Hebrew prophets and in the
lives of their heroes. We know not what reminiscences of old Egyptian
genii, what strange shadows of the winged beasts of Persia, flitted
through their dreams. In the desert, or under the boundless sky of
Babylon, these shapes became no less distinct than the precise outlines
of Oriental scenery. They incarnated the vivid thoughts and intense
longings of the prophets, who gradually came to give them human forms
and titles. We hear of them by name, as servants and attendants upon
God, as guardians of nations, and patrons of great men. To the Hebrew
mind the whole unseen world was full of spirits, active, strong, and
swift of flight, of various aspect, and with power of speech. It is
hard to imagine what the first Jewish disciples and the early Greek and
Roman converts thought of these great beings. To us, the hierarchies of
Dionysius, the services of the Church, the poetry of Dante and Milton,
and the forms of art, have made them quite familiar. Northern nations
have appropriated the Angels, and invested them with attributes alien
to their Oriental origin. They fly through our pine-forests, and the
gloom of cloud or storm; they ride upon our clanging bells, and gather
in swift squadrons among the arches of Gothic cathedrals; we see them
making light in the cavernous depth of woods, where sun or moon beams
rarely pierce, and ministering 26to the wounded or the weary; they bear
aloft the censers of the mass; they sing in the anthems of choristers,
and live in strains of poetry and music; our churches bear their names;
we call our children by their titles; we love them as our guardians,
and the whole unseen world is made a home to us by their imagined
presence. All these things are the growth of time and the work of races
whose myth-making imagination is more artistic than that of the
Hebrews. Yet this rich legacy of romance is bound up in the second
chapter of S. Luke; and it is to him we must give thanks when at
Christmas-tide we read of the shepherds and the angels in English words
more beautiful than his own Greek.

The angels in the stable of Bethlehem, the kings who came from the far
East, and the adoring shepherds, are the gift of Hebrew legend and of
the Greek physician Luke to Christmas. How these strange and splendid
incidents affect modern fancy remains for us to examine; at present we
must ask, What did the Romans give to Christmas? The customs of the
Christian religion, like everything that belongs to the modern world,
have nothing pure and simple in their nature. They are the growth of
long ages, and of widely different systems, parts of which have been
fused into one living whole. In this respect they resemble our
language, our blood, our literature, and our modes of thought and
feeling. We find Christianity in one sense wholly original; in another
sense composed of old materials; in both senses universal and
cosmopolitan. The Roman element in Christmas is a remarkable instance
of this acquisitive power of Christianity. The celebration of the
festival takes place at the same time as that of the Pagan Saturnalia;
and from the old customs of that holiday, Christmas absorbed much that
was consistent with the spirit of the new religion. During the
Saturnalia the world enjoyed, in thought at least, a perfect freedom.
Men who had gone to bed as 27slaves, rose their own masters. From the
_ergastula_ and dismal sunless cages they went forth to ramble in the
streets and fields. Liberty of speech was given them, and they might
satirise those vices of their lords to which, on other days, they had
to minister. Rome on this day, by a strange negation of logic, which we
might almost call a prompting of blind conscience, negatived the
philosophic dictum that barbarians were by law of nature slaves, and
acknowledged the higher principle of equality. The Saturnalia stood out
from the whole year as a protest in favour of universal brotherhood,
and the right that all men share alike to enjoy life after their own
fashion, within the bounds that nature has assigned them. We do not
know how far the Stoic school, which was so strong in Rome, and had so
many points of contact with the Christians, may have connected its own
theories of equality with this old custom of the Saturnalia. But it is
possible that the fellowship of human beings, and the temporary
abandonment of class prerogatives, became a part of Christmas through
the habit of the Saturnalia. We are perhaps practising a Roman virtue
to this day when at Christmas-time our hand is liberal, and we think it
wrong that the poorest wretch should fail to feel the pleasure of the
day.

Of course Christianity inspired the freedom of the Saturnalia with a
higher meaning. The mystery of the Incarnation, or the deification of
human nature, put an end to slavery through all the year, as well as on
this single day. What had been a kind of aimless licence became the
most ennobling principle by which men are exalted to a state of
self-respect and mutual reverence. Still in the Saturnalia was found,
ready-made, an easy symbol of unselfish enjoyment. It is, however,
dangerous to push speculations of this kind to the very verge of
possibility.

The early Roman Christians probably kept Christmas with 28no special
ceremonies. Christ was as yet too close to them. He had not become the
glorious creature of their fancy, but was partly an historic being,
partly confused in their imagination with reminiscences of Pagan
deities. As the Good Shepherd, and as Orpheus, we find him painted in
the Catacombs; and those who thought of him as God, loved to dwell upon
his risen greatness more than on the idyll of his birth. To them his
entry upon earth seemed less a subject of rejoicing than his opening of
the heavens; they suffered, and looked forward to a future happiness;
they would not seem to make this world permanent by sharing its
gladness with the Heathens. Theirs, in truth, was a religion of hope
and patience, not of triumphant recollection or of present joyfulness.

The Northern converts of the early Church added more to the peculiar
character of our Christmas. Who can tell what Pagan rites were half
sanctified by their association with that season, or how much of our
cheerfulness belonged to Heathen orgies and the banquets of grim
warlike gods? Certainly nothing strikes one more in reading
Scandinavian poetry, than the strange mixture of Pagan and Christian
sentiments which it presents. For though the missionaries of the Church
did all they could to wean away the minds of men from their old
superstitions; yet, wiser than their modern followers, they saw that
some things might remain untouched, and that even the great outlines of
the Christian faith might be adapted to the habits of the people whom
they studied to convert. Thus, on the one hand, they destroyed the old
temples one by one, and called the idols by the name of devils, and
strove to obliterate the songs which sang great deeds of bloody gods
and heroes; while, on the other, they taught the Northern sea-kings
that Jesus was a Prince surrounded by twelve dukes, who conquered all
the world. 29Besides, they left the days of the week to their old
patrons. It is certain that the imagination of the people preserved
more of heathendom than even such missionaries could approve; mixing up
the deeds of the Christian saints with old heroic legends; seeing
Balder's beauty in Christ and the strength of Thor in Samson;
attributing magic to S. John; swearing, as of old, bloody oaths in
God's name, over the gilded boar's-head; burning the yule-log, and
cutting sacred boughs to grace their new-built churches.

The songs of choirs and sound of holy bells, and superstitious
reverence for the mass, began to tell upon the people; and soon the
echo of their old religion only swelled upon the ear at intervals,
attaching itself to times of more than usual sanctity. Christmas was
one of these times, and the old faith threw around its celebration a
fantastic light. Many customs of the genial Pagan life remained; they
seemed harmless when the sense of joy was Christian. The Druid's
mistletoe graced the church porches of England and of France, and no
blood lingered on its berries. Christmas thus became a time of
extraordinary mystery. The people loved it as connecting their old life
with the new religion, perhaps unconsciously, though every one might
feel that Christmas was no common Christian feast. On its eve strange
wonders happened: the thorn that sprang at Glastonbury from the sacred
crown which Joseph brought with him from Palestine, when Avalon was
still an island, blossomed on that day. The Cornish miners seemed to
hear the sound of singing men arise from submerged churches by the
shore, and others said that bells, beneath the ground where villages
had been, chimed yearly on that eve. No evil thing had power, as
Marcellus in 'Hamlet' tells us, and the bird of dawning crowed the
whole night through. One might multiply folklore about the sanctity of
Christmas, but enough has been said 30to show that round it lingered
long the legendary spirit of old Paganism. It is not to Jews, or
Greeks, or Romans only that we owe our ancient Christmas fancies, but
also to those half-heathen ancestors who lovingly looked back to Odin's
days, and held the old while they embraced the new.

Let us imagine Christmas Day in a mediæval town of Northern England.
The cathedral is only partly finished. Its nave and transepts are the
work of Norman architects, but the choir has been destroyed in order to
be rebuilt by more graceful designers and more skilful hands. The old
city is full of craftsmen, assembled to complete the church. Some have
come as a religious duty, to work off their tale of sins by bodily
labour. Some are animated by a love of art—simple men, who might have
rivalled with the Greeks in ages of more cultivation. Others, again,
are well-known carvers, brought for hire from distant towns and
countries beyond the sea. But to-day, and for some days past, the sound
of hammer and chisel has been silent in the choir. Monks have bustled
about the nave, dressing it up with holly-boughs and bushes of yew, and
preparing a stage for the sacred play they are going to exhibit on the
feast day. Christmas is not like Corpus Christi, and now the
market-place stands inches deep in snow, so that the Miracles must be
enacted beneath a roof instead of in the open air. And what place so
appropriate as the cathedral, where poor people may have warmth and
shelter while they see the show? Besides, the gloomy old church, with
its windows darkened by the falling snow, lends itself to candlelight
effects that will enhance the splendour of the scene. Everything is
ready. The incense of morning mass yet lingers round the altar. The
voice of the friar who told the people from the pulpit the story of
Christ's birth, has hardly ceased to echo. Time has just been given for
a mid-day dinner, and for the shepherds and 31 farm lads to troop in
from the country-side. The monks are ready at the wooden stage to draw
its curtain, and all the nave is full of eager faces. There you may see
the smith and carpenter, the butcher's wife, the country priest, and
the grey cowled friar. Scores of workmen, whose home the cathedral for
the time is made, are also here, and you may know the artists by their
thoughtful foreheads and keen eyes. That young monk carved Madonna and
her Son above the southern porch. Beside him stands the master mason,
whose strong arms have hewn gigantic images of prophets and apostles
for the pinnacles outside the choir; and the little man with cunning
eyes between the two is he who cuts such quaint hobgoblins for the
gargoyles. He has a vein of satire in him, and his humour overflows
into the stone. Many and many a grim beast and hideous head has he
hidden among vine-leaves and trellis-work upon the porches. Those who
know him well are loth to anger him, for fear their sons and sons' sons
should laugh at them for ever caricatured in solid stone.

Hark! there sounds the bell. The curtain is drawn, and the candles
blaze brightly round the wooden stage. What is this first scene? We
have God in Heaven, dressed like a Pope with triple crown, and attended
by his court of angels. They sing and toss up censers till he lifts his
hand and speaks. In a long Latin speech he unfolds the order of
creation and his will concerning man. At the end of it up leaps an ugly
buffoon, in goatskin, with rams' horns upon his head. Some children
begin to cry; but the older people laugh, for this is the Devil, the
clown and comic character, who talks their common tongue, and has no
reverence before the very throne of Heaven. He asks leave to plague
men, and receives it; then, with many a curious caper, he goes down to
Hell, beneath the stage. The angels sing and toss their censers as
before, and the first scene closes to a sound of 32 organs. The next is
more conventional, in spite of some grotesque incidents. It represents
the Fall; the monks hurry over it quickly, as a tedious but necessary
prelude to the birth of Christ. That is the true Christmas part of the
ceremony, and it is understood that the best actors and most beautiful
dresses are to be reserved for it. The builders of the choir in
particular are interested in the coming scenes, since one of their
number has been chosen, for his handsome face and tenor voice, to sing
the angel's part. He is a young fellow of nineteen, but his beard is
not yet grown, and long hair hangs down upon his shoulders. A chorister
of the cathedral, his younger brother, will act the Virgin Mary. At
last the curtain is drawn.

We see a cottage-room, dimly lighted by a lamp, and Mary spinning near
her bedside. She sings a country air, and goes on working, till a
rustling noise is heard, more light is thrown upon the stage, and a
glorious creature, in white raiment, with broad golden wings, appears.
He bears a lily, and cries,—'Ave Maria, Gratia Plena!' She does not
answer, but stands confused, with down-dropped eyes and timid mien.
Gabriel rises from the ground and comforts her, and sings aloud his
message of glad tidings. Then Mary gathers courage, and, kneeling in
her turn, thanks God; and when the angel and his radiance disappears,
she sings the song of the Magnificat clearly and simply, in the
darkened room. Very soft and silver sounds this hymn through the great
church. The women kneel, and children are hushed as by a lullaby. But
some of the hinds and 'prentice lads begin to think it rather dull.
They are not sorry when the next scene opens with a sheepfold and a
little camp-fire. Unmistakable bleatings issue from the fold, and five
or six common fellows are sitting round the blazing wood. One might
fancy they had stepped straight from the church floor to the stage, so
natural 33 do they look. Besides, they call themselves by common
names—Colin, and Tom Lie-a-bed, and nimble Dick. Many a round laugh
wakes echoes in the church when these shepherds stand up, and hold
debate about a stolen sheep. Tom Lie-a-bed has nothing to remark but
that he is very sleepy, and does not want to go in search of it
to-night; Colin cuts jokes, and throws out shrewd suspicions that Dick
knows something of the matter; but Dick is sly, and keeps them off the
scent, although a few of his asides reveal to the audience that he is
the real thief. While they are thus talking, silence falls upon the
shepherds. Soft music from the church organ breathes, and they appear
to fall asleep.

The stage is now quite dark, and for a few moments the aisles echo only
to the dying melody. When, behold, a ray of light is seen, and
splendour grows around the stage from hidden candles, and in the glory
Gabriel appears upon a higher platform made to look like clouds. The
shepherds wake in confusion, striving to shelter their eyes from this
unwonted brilliancy. But Gabriel waves his lily, spreads his great gold
wings, and bids good cheer with clarion voice. The shepherds fall to
worship, and suddenly round Gabriel there gathers a choir of angels,
and a song of 'Gloria in Excelsis' to the sound of a deep organ is
heard far off. From distant aisles it swells, and seems to come from
heaven. Through a long resonant fugue the glory flies, and as it ceases
with complex conclusion, the lights die out, the angels disappear, and
Gabriel fades into the darkness. Still the shepherds kneel, rustically
chanting a carol half in Latin, half in English, which begins 'In dulci
Jubilo.' The people know it well, and when the chorus rises with 'Ubi
sunt gaudia?' its wild melody is caught by voices up and down the nave.
This scene makes deep impression upon many hearts; for the beauty of
Gabriel is rare, and few who see him in his angel's dress 34 would know
him for the lad who daily carves his lilies and broad water-flags about
the pillars of the choir. To that simple audience he interprets Heaven,
and little children will see him in their dreams. Dark winter nights
and awful forests will be trodden by his feet, made musical by his
melodious voice, and parted by the rustling of his wings. The youth
himself may return to-morrow to the workman's blouse and chisel, but
his memory lives in many minds and may form a part of Christmas for the
fancy of men as yet unborn.

The next drawing of the curtain shows us the stable of Bethlehem
crowned by its star. There kneels Mary, and Joseph leans upon his
staff. The ox and ass are close at hand, and Jesus lies in jewelled
robes on straw within the manger. To right and left bow the shepherds,
worshipping in dumb show, while voices from behind chant a solemn hymn.
In the midst of the melody is heard a flourish of trumpets, and heralds
step upon the stage, followed by the three crowned kings. They have
come from the far East, led by the star. The song ceases, while drums
and fifes and trumpets play a stately march. The kings pass by, and do
obeisance one by one. Each gives some costly gift; each doffs his crown
and leaves it at the Saviour's feet. Then they retire to a distance and
worship in silence like the shepherds. Again the angel's song is heard,
and while it dies away the curtain closes, and the lights are put out.

The play is over, and evening has come. The people must go from the
warm church into the frozen snow, and crunch their homeward way beneath
the moon. But in their minds they carry a sense of light and music and
unearthly loveliness. Not a scene of this day's pageant will be lost.
It grows within them and creates the poetry of Christmas. Nor must we
forget the sculptors who listen to the play. We spoke of them minutely,
because these mysteries sank deep into their 35 souls and found a way
into their carvings on the cathedral walls. The monk who made Madonna
by the southern porch, will remember Gabriel, and place him bending low
in lordly salutation by her side. The painted glass of the
chapter-house will glow with fiery choirs of angels learned by heart
that night. And who does not know the mocking devils and quaint satyrs
that the humorous sculptor will carve among his fruits and flowers?
Some of the misereres of the stalls still bear portraits of the
shepherd thief, and of the ox and ass who blinked so blindly when the
kings, by torchlight, brought their dazzling gifts. Truly these old
miracle-plays, and the carved work of cunning hands that they inspired,
are worth to us more than all the delicate creations of Italian
pencils. Our homely Northern churches still retain, for the child who
reads their bosses and their sculptured fronts, more Christmas poetry
than we can find in Fra Angelico's devoutness or the liveliness of
Giotto. Not that Southern artists have done nothing for our Christmas.
Cimabue's gigantic angels at Assisi, and the radiant seraphs of Raphael
or of Signorelli, were seen by Milton in his Italian journey. He gazed
in Romish churches on graceful Nativities, into which Angelico and
Credi threw their simple souls. How much they tinged his fancy we
cannot say. But what we know of heavenly hierarchies we later men have
learned from Milton; and what he saw he spoke, and what he spoke in
sounding verse lives for us now and sways our reason, and controls our
fancy, and makes fine art of high theology.

Thus have I attempted rudely to recall a scene of mediæval Christmas.
To understand the domestic habits of that age is not so easy, though
one can fancy how the barons in their halls held Christmas, with the
boar's head and the jester and the great yule-log. On the daïs sat lord
and lady, waited on by knight and squire and page; but down the long 36
hall feasted yeomen and hinds and men-at-arms. Little remains to us of
those days, and we have outworn their jollity. It is really from the
Elizabethan poets that our sense of old-fashioned festivity arises.
They lived at the end of one age and the beginning of another. Though
born to inaugurate the new era, they belonged by right of association
and sympathy to the period that was fleeting fast away. This enabled
them to represent the poetry of past and present. Old customs and old
states of feeling, when they are about to perish, pass into the realm
of art. For art is like a flower, which consummates the plant and ends
its growth, while it translates its nature into loveliness. Thus Dante
and Lorenzetti and Orcagna enshrined mediæval theology in works of
imperishable beauty, and Shakspere and his fellows made immortal the
life and manners that were decaying in their own time. Men do not
reflect upon their mode of living till they are passing from one state
to another, and the consciousness of art implies a beginning of new
things. Let one who wishes to appreciate the ideal of an English
Christmas read Shakspere's song, 'When icicles hang by the wall;' and
if he knows some old grey grange, far from the high-road, among
pastures, with a river flowing near, and cawing rooks in elm-trees by
the garden-wall, let him place Dick and Joan and Marian there.

We have heard so much of pensioners, and barons of beef, and yule-logs,
and bay, and rosemary, and holly boughs cut upon the hillside, and
crab-apples bobbing in the wassail bowl, and masques and mummers, and
dancers on the rushes, that we need not here describe a Christmas Eve
in olden times. Indeed, this last half of the nineteenth century is
weary of the worn-out theme. But one characteristic of the age of
Elizabeth may be mentioned: that is its love of music. Fugued melodies,
sung by voices without instruments, were 37 much in vogue. We call them
madrigals, and their half-merry, half-melancholy music yet recalls the
time when England had her gift of art, when she needed not to borrow of
Marenzio and Palestrina, when her Wilbyes and her Morlands and her
Dowlands won the praise of Shakspere and the court. We hear the echo of
those songs; and in some towns at Christmas or the New Year old
madrigals still sound in praise of Oriana and of Phyllis and the
country life. What are called 'waits' are but a poor travesty of those
well-sung Elizabethan carols. We turn in our beds half pitying, half
angered by harsh voices that quaver senseless ditties in the fog, or by
tuneless fiddles playing popular airs without propriety or interest.

It is a strange mixture of picturesquely blended elements which the
Elizabethan age presents. We see it afar off like the meeting of a
hundred streams that grow into a river. We are sailing on the flood
long after it has shrunk into a single tide, and the banks are dull and
tame, and the all-absorbing ocean is before us. Yet sometimes we hear a
murmur of the distant fountains, and Christmas is a day on which for
some the many waters of the age of great Elizabeth sound clearest.

The age which followed was not poetical. The Puritans restrained
festivity and art, and hated music. Yet from this period stands out the
hymn of Milton, written when he was a youth, but bearing promise of his
later muse. At one time, as we read it, we seem to be looking on a
picture by some old Italian artist. But no picture can give Milton's
music or make the 'base of heaven's deep organ blow.' Here he touches
new associations, and reveals the realm of poetry which it remains for
later times to traverse. Milton felt the true sentiment of Northern
Christmas when he opened his poem with the 'winter wild,' in defiance
of historical probability 38 and what the French call local colouring.
Nothing shows how wholly we people of the North have appropriated
Christmas, and made it a creature of our own imagination, more than
this dwelling on winds and snows and bitter frosts, so alien from the
fragrant nights of Palestine. But Milton's hymn is like a symphony,
embracing many thoughts and periods of varying melody. The music of the
seraphim brings to his mind the age of gold, and that suggests the
judgment and the redemption of the world. Satan's kingdom fails, the
false gods go forth, Apollo leaves his rocky throne, and all the dim
Phoenician and Egyptian deities, with those that classic fancy fabled,
troop away like ghosts into the darkness. What a swell of stormy sound
is in those lines! It recalls the very voice of Pan, which went abroad
upon the waters when Christ died, and all the utterances of God on
earth, feigned in Delphian shrines, or truly spoken on the sacred
hills, were mute for ever.

After Milton came the age which, of all others, is the prosiest in our
history. We cannot find much novelty of interest added to Christmas at
this time. But there is one piece of poetry that somehow or another
seems to belong to the reign of Anne and of the Georges—the poetry of
bells. Great civic corporations reigned in those days; churchwardens
tyrannised and were rich; and many a goodly chime of bells they hung in
our old church-steeples. Let us go into the square room of the belfry,
where the clock ticks all day, and the long ropes hang dangling down,
with fur upon their hemp for ringers' hands above the socket set for
ringers' feet. There we may read long lists of gilded names, recording
mountainous bob-majors, rung a century ago, with special praise to him
who pulled the tenor-bell, year after year, until he died, and left it
to his son. The art of bell-ringing is profound, and requires a long
apprenticeship. Even now, in some old cities, 39 the ringers form a
guild and mystery. Suppose it to be Christmas Eve in the year 1772. It
is now a quarter before twelve, and the sexton has unlocked the
church-gates and set the belfry door ajar. Candles are lighted in the
room above, and jugs of beer stand ready for the ringers. Up they
bustle one by one, and listen to the tickings of the clock that tells
the passing minutes. At last it gives a click; and now they throw off
coat and waistcoat, strap their girdles tighter round the waist, and
each holds his rope in readiness. Twelve o'clock strikes, and forth
across the silent city go the clamorous chimes. The steeple rocks and
reels, and far away the night is startled. Damp turbulent west winds,
rushing from the distant sea, and swirling up the inland valleys, catch
the sound, and toss it to and fro, and bear it by gusts and snatches to
watchers far away, upon bleak moorlands and the brows of woody hills.
Is there not something dim and strange in the thought of these eight
men meeting, in the heart of a great city, in the narrow belfry-room,
to stir a mighty sound that shall announce to listening ears miles,
miles away, the birth of a new day, and tell to dancers, mourners,
students, sleepers, and perhaps to dying men, that Christ is born?

Let this association suffice for the time. And of our own Christmas so
much has been said and sung by better voices, that we may leave it to
the feelings and the memories of those who read the fireside tales of
Dickens, and are happy in their homes. The many elements which I have
endeavoured to recall, mix all of them in the Christmas of the present,
partly, no doubt, under the form of vague and obscure sentiment; partly
as time-honoured reminiscences, partly as a portion of our own life.
But there is one phase of poetry which we enjoy more fully than any
previous age. That is music. Music is of all the arts the youngest, and
of all can free herself 40 most readily from symbols. A fine piece of
music moves before us like a living passion, which needs no form or
colour, no interpreting associations, to convey its strong but
indistinct significance. Each man there finds his soul revealed to him,
and enabled to assume a cast of feeling in obedience to the changeful
sound. In this manner all our Christmas thoughts and emotions have been
gathered up for us by Handel in his drama of the 'Messiah.' To
Englishmen it is almost as well known and necessary as the Bible. But
only one who has heard its pastoral episode performed year after year
from childhood in the hushed cathedral, where pendent lamps or sconces
make the gloom of aisle and choir and airy column half intelligible,
can invest this music with long associations of accumulated awe. To his
mind it brings a scene at midnight of hills clear in the starlight of
the East, with white flocks scattered on the down. The breath of winds
that come and go, the bleating of the sheep, with now and then a
tinkling bell, and now and then the voice of an awakened shepherd, is
all that breaks the deep repose. Overhead shimmer the bright stars, and
low to west lies the moon, not pale and sickly (he dreams) as in our
North, but golden, full, and bathing distant towers and tall aë;rial
palms with floods of light. Such is a child's vision, begotten by the
music of the symphony; and when he wakes from trance at its low silver
close, the dark cathedral seems glowing with a thousand angel faces,
and all the air is tremulous with angel wings. Then follow the solitary
treble voice and the swift chorus.

41




SIENA


After leaving the valley of the Arno at Empoli, the railway enters a
country which rises into earthy hills of no great height, and spreads
out at intervals into broad tracts of cultivated lowland. Geologically
speaking, this portion of Tuscany consists of loam and sandy deposits,
forming the basin between two mountain-ranges—the Apennines and the
chalk hills of the western coast of Central Italy. Seen from the
eminence of some old Tuscan turret, this champaign country has a stern
and arid aspect. The earth is grey and dusty, the forms of hill and
valley are austere and monotonous; even the vegetation seems to
sympathise with the uninteresting soil from which it springs. A few
spare olives cast their shadows on the lower slopes; here and there a
copse of oakwood and acacia marks the course of some small rivulet;
rye-fields, grey beneath the wind, clothe the hillsides with scanty
verdure. Every knoll is crowned with a village—brown roofs and white
house-fronts clustered together on the edge of cliffs, and rising into
the campanile or antique tower, which tells so many stories of bygone
wars and decayed civilisations.

Beneath these villages stand groups of stone pines clearly visible upon
the naked country, cypresses like spires beside the square white walls
of convent or of villa, patches of dark foliage, showing where the ilex
and the laurel and the myrtle hide thick tangles of rose-trees and
jessamines in ancient gardens. Nothing can exceed the barren aspect of
this 42 country in midwinter: it resembles an exaggerated Sussex,
without verdure to relieve the rolling lines of down, and hill, and
valley; beautiful yet, by reason of its frequent villages and lucid air
and infinitely subtle curves of mountain-ridges. But when spring comes,
a light and beauty break upon this gloomy soil; the whole is covered
with a delicate green veil of rising crops and fresh foliage, and the
immense distances which may be seen from every height are blue with
cloud-shadows, or rosy in the light of sunset.

Of all the towns of Lower Tuscany, none is more celebrated than Siena.
It stands in the very centre of the district which I have attempted to
describe, crowning one of its most considerable heights, and commanding
one of its most extensive plains. As a city it is a typical
representative of those numerous Italian towns, whose origin is buried
in remote antiquity, which have formed the seat of three civilisations,
and which still maintain a vigorous vitality upon their ancient soil.
Its site is Etruscan, its name is Roman, but the town itself owes all
its interest and beauty to the artists and the statesmen and the
warriors of the middle ages. A single glance at Siena from one of the
slopes on the northern side, will show how truly mediæval is its
character. A city wall follows the outline of the hill, from which the
towers of the cathedral and the palace, with other cupolas and
red-brick campanili, spring; while cypresses and olive-gardens stretch
downwards to the plain. There is not a single Palladian façade or
Renaissance portico to interrupt the unity of the effect. Over all, in
the distance, rises Monte Amiata melting imperceptibly into sky and
plain.

The three most striking objects of interest in Siena maintain the
character of mediæval individuality by which the town is marked. They
are the public palace, the cathedral, and the house of S. Catherine.
The civil life, the arts, and 43 the religious tendencies of Italy
during the ascendency of mediæval ideas, are strongly set before us
here. High above every other building in the town soars the straight
brick tower of the Palazzo Pubblico, the house of the republic, the
hearth of civil life within the State. It guards an irregular Gothic
building in which the old government of Siena used to be assembled, but
which has now for a long time been converted into prisons, courts of
law, and showrooms. Let us enter one chamber of the Palazzo—the Sala
della Pace, where Ambrogio Lorenzetti, the greatest, perhaps, of
Sienese painters, represented the evils of lawlessness and tyranny, and
the benefits of peace and justice, in three noble allegories. They were
executed early in the fourteenth century, in the age of allegories and
symbolism, when poets and painters strove to personify in human shape
all thoughts and sentiments. The first great fresco represents
Peace—the peace of the Republic of Siena. Ambrogio has painted the
twenty-four councillors who formed the Government, standing beneath the
thrones of Concord, Justice, and Wisdom. From these controlling powers
they stretch in a long double line to a seated figure, gigantic in
size, and robed with the ensigns of baronial sovereignty. This figure
is the State and Majesty of Siena.[52] Around him sit Peace, Fortitude,
and Prudence, 44 Temperance, Magnanimity, and Justice, inalienable
assessors of a powerful and righteous lord. Faith, Hope, and Charity,
the Christian virtues, float like angels in the air above. Armed
horsemen guard his throne, and captives show that he has laid his enemy
beneath his feet. Thus the mediæval artist expressed, by painting, his
theory of government. The rulers of the State are subordinate to the
State itself; they stand between the State and the great animating
principles of wisdom, justice, and concord, incarnating the one, and
receiving inspiration from the others. The pagan qualities of prudence,
magnanimity, and courage give stability and greatness to good
government, while the spirit of Christianity must harmonise and rule
the whole. Arms, too, are needful to maintain by force what right and
law demand, and victory in a just quarrel proclaims the power and
vigour of the commonwealth. On another wall Ambrogio has depicted the
prosperous city of Siena, girt by battlements and moat, with tower and
barbican and drawbridge, to insure its peace. Through the gates stream
country-people, bringing the produce of their farms into the town. The
streets are crowded with men and women intent on business or pleasure;
craftsmen at their trade, merchants with laden mules, a hawking party,
hunters scouring the plain, girls dancing, and children playing in the
open square. A school-master watching his class, together with the
sculptured figures of Geometry, Astronomy, and Philosophy, remind us
that education and science flourish under the dominion of well-balanced
laws. The third fresco exhibits the reverse of this fair spectacle.
Here Tyranny presides over a scene of anarchy and wrong. He is a
hideous monster, compounded of all the bestial attributes which
indicate force, treason, lechery, and fear. Avarice and Fraud and
Cruelty and War and Fury sit around him. At his feet lies Justice, and
45 above are the effigies of Nero, Caracalla, and like monsters of
ill-regulated power. Not far from the castle of Tyranny we see the same
town as in the other fresco; but its streets are filled with scenes of
quarrel, theft, and bloodshed. Nor are these allegories merely
fanciful. In the middle ages the same city might more than once during
one lifetime present in the vivid colours of reality the two contrasted
pictures.[53]

 [52] It is probable that the firm Ghibelline sympathies of the Sienese
 people for the Empire were allegorised in this figure; so that the
 fresco represented by form and colour what Dante had expressed in his
 treatise 'De Monarchiâ.' Among the virtues who attend him, Peace
 distinguishes herself by rare and very remarkable beauty. She is
 dressed in white and crowned with olive; the folds of her drapery,
 clinging to the delicately modelled limbs beneath, irresistibly
 suggest a classic statue. So again does the monumental pose of her
 dignified, reclining, and yet languid figure. It seems not
 unreasonable to believe that Lorenzetti copied Peace from the antique
 Venus which belonged to the Sienese, and which in a fit of
 superstitious malice they subsequently destroyed and buried in
 Florentine soil.


 [53] Siena, of all Italian cities, was most subject to revolutions.
 Comines describes it as a city which 'se gouverne plus follement que
 ville d'Italie.' Varchi calls it 'un guazzabuglio ed una confusione di
 repubbliche piuttosto che bene ordinata e instituta repubblica.' See
 my 'Age of the Despots' (_Renaissance in Italy_, Part I.), pp. 141,
 554, for some account of the Sienese constitution, and of the feuds
 and reconciliations of the burghers.

Quitting the Palazzo, and threading narrow streets, paved with brick
and overshadowed with huge empty palaces, we reach the highest of the
three hills on which Siena stands, and see before us the Duomo. This
church is the most purely Gothic of all Italian cathedrals designed by
national architects. Together with that of Orvieto, it stands to show
what the unassisted genius of the Italians could produce, when under
the empire of mediæval Christianity and before the advent of the
neopagan spirit. It is built wholly of marble, and overlaid, inside and
out, with florid ornaments of exquisite beauty. There are no flying
buttresses, no pinnacles, no deep and fretted doorways, such as form
the charm of French and English architecture; but instead of this, the
lines of parti-coloured marbles, the scrolls and wreaths of foliage,
the mosaics and the frescoes which meet the eye in every direction,
satisfy our sense of variety, producing most agreeable combinations of
blending hues and harmoniously connected forms. The chief fault which
offends against our Northern taste is the predominance of horizontal
lines, both in the 46 construction of the façade, and also in the
internal decoration. This single fact sufficiently proves that the
Italians had never seized the true idea of Gothic or aspiring
architecture. But, allowing for this original defect, we feel that the
Cathedral of Siena combines solemnity and splendour to a degree almost
unrivalled. Its dome is another point in which the instinct of Italian
architects has led them to adhere to the genius of their ancestral art
rather than to follow the principles of Gothic design. The dome is
Etruscan and Roman, native to the soil, and only by a kind of violence
adapted to the character of pointed architecture. Yet the builders of
Siena have shown what a glorious element of beauty might have been
added to our Northern cathedrals, had the idea of infinity which our
ancestors expressed by long continuous lines, by complexities of
interwoven aisles, and by multitudinous aspiring pinnacles, been
carried out into vast spaces of aë;rial cupolas, completing and
embracing and covering the whole like heaven. The Duomo, as it now
stands, forms only part of a vast design. On entering we are amazed to
hear that this church, which looks so large, from the beauty of its
proportions, the intricacy of its ornaments, and the interlacing of its
columns, is but the transept of the intended building lengthened a
little, and surmounted by a cupola and campanile.[54] Yet such is the
fact. Soon after its commencement a plague swept over Italy, nearly
depopulated Siena, and reduced the town to penury for want of men. The
cathedral, which, had it been accomplished, would have surpassed all
Gothic churches south of the Alps, remained a ruin. A fragment of the
nave still stands, enabling us to judge of its extent. The eastern wall
47 joins what was to have been the transept, measuring the mighty space
which would have been enclosed by marble vaults and columns delicately
wrought. The sculpture on the eastern door shows with what magnificence
the Sienese designed to ornament this portion of their temple; while
the southern façade rears itself aloft above the town, like those high
arches which testify to the past splendour of Glastonbury Abbey; but
the sun streams through the broken windows, and the walls are
encumbered with hovels and stables and the refuse of surrounding
streets.

 [54] The present church was begun about 1229. In 1321 the burghers
 fancied it was too small for the fame and splendour of their city. So
 they decreed a new _ecclesia pulcra, magna, et magnifica_, for which
 the older but as yet unfinished building was to be the transept.

One most remarkable feature of the internal decoration is a line of
heads of the Popes carried all round the church above the lower arches.
Larger than life, white solemn faces they lean, each from his separate
niche, crowned with the triple tiara, and labelled with the name he
bore. Their accumulated majesty brings the whole past history of the
Church into the presence of its living members. A bishop walking up the
nave of Siena must feel as a Roman felt among the waxen images of
ancestors renowned in council or in war. Of course these portraits are
imaginary for the most part; but the artists have contrived to vary
their features and expression with great skill.

Not less peculiar to Siena is the pavement of the cathedral. It is
inlaid with a kind of _tarsia_ work in stone, setting forth a variety
of pictures in simple but eminently effective mosaic. Some of these
compositions are as old as the cathedral; others are the work of
Beccafumi and his scholars. They represent, in the liberal spirit of
mediæval Christianity, the history of the Church before the
Incarnation. Hermes Trismegistus and the Sibyls meet us at the doorway:
in the body of the church we find the mighty deeds of the old Jewish
heroes—of Moses and Samson and Joshua and Judith. Independently of the
artistic beauty of the designs, of the skill 48 with which men and
horses are drawn in the most difficult attitudes, of the dignity of
some single figures, and of the vigour and simplicity of the larger
compositions, a special interest attaches to this pavement in
connection with the twelfth canto of the 'Purgatorio.' Dante cannot
have trodden these stones and meditated upon their sculptured
histories. Yet when we read how he journeyed through the plain of
Purgatory with eyes intent upon its storied floor, how 'morti i morti,
e i vivi parean vivi,' how he saw 'Nimrod at the foot of his great
work, confounded, gazing at the people who were proud with him,' we are
irresistibly led to think of the Divine comedy. The strong and simple
outlines of the pavement correspond to the few words of the poet.
Bending over these pictures and trying to learn their lesson, with the
thought of Dante in our mind, the tones of an organ, singularly sweet
and mellow, fall upon our ears, and we remember how he heard _Te Deum_
sung within the gateway of repentance.

Continuing our walk, we descend the hill on which the Duomo stands, and
reach a valley lying between the ancient city of Siena and a western
eminence crowned by the church of San Domenico. In this depression
there has existed from old time a kind of suburb or separate district
of the poorer people known by the name of the Contrada d' Oca. To the
Sienese it has especial interest, for here is the birthplace of S.
Catherine, the very house in which she lived, her father's workshop,
and the chapel which has been erected in commemoration of her saintly
life. Over the doorway is written in letters of gold 'Sponsa Christi
Katherinæ domus.' Inside they show the room she occupied, and the stone
on which she placed her head to sleep; they keep her veil and staff and
lantern and enamelled vinaigrette, the bag in which her alms were
placed, the sackcloth that she wore beneath her dress, the crucifix
from which she took the wounds of Christ. It is impossible 49 to
conceive, even after the lapse of several centuries, that any of these
relics are fictitious. Every particular of her life was remembered and
recorded with scrupulous attention by devoted followers. Her fame was
universal throughout Italy before her death; and the house from which
she went forth to preach and heal the sick and comfort plague-stricken
wretches whom kith and kin had left alone to die, was known and well
beloved by all her citizens. From the moment of her death it became,
and has continued to be, the object of superstitious veneration to
thousands. From the little loggia which runs along one portion of its
exterior may be seen the campanile and the dome of the cathedral; on
the other side rises the huge brick church of San Domenico, in which
she spent the long ecstatic hours that won for her the title of
Christ's spouse. In a chapel attached to the church she watched and
prayed, fasting and wrestling with the fiends of a disordered fancy.
There Christ appeared to her and gave her His own heart, there He
administered to her the sacrament with His own hands, there she assumed
the robe of poverty, and gave her Lord the silver cross and took from
Him the crown of thorns.

To some of us these legends may appear the flimsiest web of fiction: to
others they may seem quite explicable by the laws of semi-morbid
psychology; but to Catherine herself, her biographers, and her
contemporaries, they were not so. The enthusiastic saint and reverent
people believed firmly in these things; and, after the lapse of five
centuries, her votaries still kiss the floor and steps on which she
trod, still say, 'This was the wall on which she leant when Christ
appeared; this was the corner where she clothed Him, naked and
shivering like a beggar-boy; here He sustained her with angels' food.'

S. Catherine was one of twenty-five children born in 50 wedlock to
Jacopo and Lapa Benincasa, citizens of Siena. Her father exercised the
trade of dyer and fuller. In the year of her birth, 1347, Siena reached
the climax of its power and splendour. It was then that the plague of
Boccaccio began to rage, which swept off 80,000 citizens, and
interrupted the building of the great Duomo. In the midst of so large a
family, and during these troubled times, Catherine grew almost
unnoticed; but it was not long before she manifested her peculiar
disposition. At six years old she already saw visions and longed for a
monastic life: about the same time she used to collect her childish
companions together and preach to them. As she grew, her wishes became
stronger; she refused the proposals which her parents made that she
should marry, and so vexed them by her obstinacy that they imposed on
her the most servile duties in their household. These she patiently
fulfilled, pursuing at the same time her own vocation with unwearied
ardour. She scarcely slept at all, and ate no food but vegetables and a
little bread, scourged herself, wore sackcloth, and became emaciated,
weak, and half delirious. At length the firmness of her character and
the force of her hallucinations won the day. Her parents consented to
her assuming the Dominican robe, and at the age of thirteen she entered
the monastic life. From this moment till her death we see in her the
ecstatic, the philanthropist, and the politician combined to a
remarkable degree. For three whole years she never left her cell except
to go to church, maintaining an almost unbroken silence. Yet when she
returned to the world, convinced at last of having won by prayer and
pain the favour of her Lord, it was to preach to infuriated mobs, to
toil among men dying of the plague, to execute diplomatic negotiations,
to harangue the republic of Florence, to correspond with queens, and to
interpose between kings and popes. In the midst of this varied and 51
distracting career she continued to see visions and to fast and scourge
herself. The domestic virtues and the personal wants and wishes of a
woman were annihilated in her: she lived for the Church, for the poor,
and for Christ, whom she imagined to be constantly supporting her. At
length she died, worn out by inward conflicts, by the tension of
religious ecstasy, by want of food and sleep, and by the excitement of
political life. To follow her in her public career is not my purpose.
It is well known how, by the power of her eloquence and the ardour of
her piety, she succeeded as a mediator between Florence and her native
city, and between Florence and the Pope; that she travelled to Avignon,
and there induced Gregory XI. to put an end to the Babylonian captivity
of the Church by returning to Rome; that she narrowly escaped political
martyrdom during one of her embassies from Gregory to the Florentine
republic; that she preached a crusade against the Turks; that her last
days were clouded with sorrow for the schism which then rent the
Papacy; and that she aided by her dying words to keep Pope Urban on the
Papal throne. When we consider her private and spiritual life more
narrowly, it may well move our amazement to think that the intricate
politics of Central Italy, the counsels of licentious princes and
ambitious Popes, were in any measure guided and controlled by such a
woman. Alone, and aided by nothing but a reputation for sanctity, she
dared to tell the greatest men in Europe of their faults; she wrote in
words of well-assured command, and they, demoralised, worldly,
sceptical, or indifferent as they might be, were yet so bound by
superstition that they could not treat with scorn the voice of an
enthusiastic girl.

Absolute disinterestedness, the belief in her own spiritual mission,
natural genius, and that vast power which then belonged to all
energetic members of the monastic orders, 52 enabled her to play this
part. She had no advantages to begin with. The daughter of a tradesman
overwhelmed with an almost fabulously numerous progeny, Catherine grew
up uneducated. When her genius had attained maturity, she could not
even read or write. Her biographer asserts that she learned to do so by
a miracle. Anyhow, writing became a most potent instrument in her
hands; and we possess several volumes of her epistles, as well as a
treatise of mystical theology. To conquer self-love as the root of all
evil, and to live wholly for others, was the cardinal axiom of her
morality. She pressed this principle to its most rigorous conclusions
in practice; never resting day or night from some kind of service, and
winning by her unselfish love the enthusiastic admiration of the
people. In the same spirit of exalted self-annihilation, she longed for
martyrdom, and courted death. There was not the smallest personal tie
or afterthought of interest to restrain her in the course of action
which she had marked out. Her personal influence seems to have been
immense. When she began her career of public peacemaker and preacher in
Siena, Raymond, her biographer, says that whole families devoted to
_vendetta_ were reconciled, and that civil strifes were quelled by her
letters and addresses. He had seen more than a thousand people flock to
hear her speak; the confessionals crowded with penitents, smitten by
the force of her appeals; and multitudes, unable to catch the words
which fell from her lips, sustained and animated by the light of
holiness which beamed from her inspired countenance.[55] She was not
beautiful, but her face so shone with love, and her eloquence was so
pathetic in its tenderness, that none could hear or look on her without
emotion. Her writings contain 53 abundant proofs of this peculiar
suavity. They are too sweet and unctuous in style to suit our modern
taste. When dwelling on the mystic love of Christ she cries, 'O blood!
O fire! O ineffable love!' When interceding before the Pope, she prays
for 'Pace, pace, pace, babbo mio dolce; pace, e non più guerra.' Yet
clear and simple thoughts, profound convictions, and stern moral
teaching underlie her ecstatic exclamations. One prayer which she
wrote, and which the people of Siena still use, expresses the
prevailing spirit of her creed: 'O Spirito Santo, o Deità eterna Cristo
Amore! vieni nel mio cuore; per la tua potenza trailo a Te, mio Dio, e
concedemi carità con timore. Liberami, o Amore ineffabile, da ogni mal
pensiero; riscaldami ed infiammami del tuo dolcissimo amore, sicchè
ogni pena mi sembri leggiera. Santo mio Padre e dolce mio Signore, ora
aiutami in ogni mio ministero. Cristo amore. Cristo amore.' The
reiteration of the word 'love' is most significant. It was the key-note
of her whole theology, the mainspring of her life. In no merely
figurative sense did she regard herself as the spouse of Christ, but
dwelt upon the bliss, beyond all mortal happiness, which she enjoyed in
supersensual communion with her Lord. It is easy to understand how such
ideas might be, and have been, corrupted, when impressed on natures no
less susceptible, but weaker and less gifted than S. Catherine's.

 [55] The part played in Italy by preachers of repentance and peace is
 among the most characteristic features of Italian history. On this
 subject see the Appendix to my 'Age of the Despots,' _Renaissance in
 Italy_, Part I.

One incident related by Catherine in a letter to Raymond, her confessor
and biographer, exhibits the peculiar character of her influence in the
most striking light. Nicola Tuldo, a citizen of Perugia, had been
condemned to death for treason in the flower of his age. So terribly
did the man rebel against his sentence, that he cursed God, and refused
the consolations of religion. Priests visited him in vain; his heart
was shut and sealed by the despair of leaving life in all 54 the vigour
of its prime. Then Catherine came and spoke to him: 'whence,' she says,
'he received such comfort that he confessed, and made me promise, by
the love of God, to stand at the block beside him on the day of his
execution.' By a few words, by the tenderness of her manner, and by the
charm which women have, she had already touched the heart no priest
could soften, and no threat of death or judgment terrify into
contrition. Nor was this strange. In our own days we have seen men open
the secrets of their hearts to women, after repelling the advances of
less touching sympathy. Youths, cold and cynical enough among their
brethren, have stood subdued like little children before her who spoke
to them of love and faith and penitence and hope. The world has not
lost its ladies of the race of S. Catherine, beautiful and pure and
holy, who have suffered and sought peace with tears, and who have been
appointed ministers of mercy for the worst and hardest of their
fellow-men. Such saints possess an efficacy even in the imposition of
their hands; many a devotee, like Tuldo, would more willingly greet
death if his S. Catherine were by to smile and lay her hands upon his
head, and cry, 'Go forth, my servant, and fear not!' The chivalrous
admiration for women mixes with religious awe to form the reverence
which these saints inspire. Human and heavenly love, chaste and
ecstatic, constitute the secret of their power. Catherine then subdued
the spirit of Tuldo and led him to the altar, where he received the
communion for the first time in his life. His only remaining fear was
that he might not have strength to face death bravely. Therefore he
prayed Catherine, 'Stay with me, do not leave me; so it shall be well
with me, and I shall die contented;' 'and,' says the saint, 'he laid
his head in the prison on my breast, and I said, "Comfort thee, my
brother, the block shall soon become thy marriage altar, the blood of
Christ 55 shall bathe thy sins away, and I will stand beside thee."'
When the hour came, she went and waited for him by the scaffold,
meditating on Madonna and Catherine the saint of Alexandria. She laid
her own neck on the block, and tried to picture to herself the pains
and ecstasies of martyrdom. In her deep thought, time and place became
annihilated; she forgot the eager crowd, and only prayed for Tuldo's
soul and for herself. At length he came, walking 'like a gentle lamb,'
and Catherine received him with the salutation of 'sweet brother.' She
placed his head upon the block, and laid her hands upon him, and told
him of the Lamb of God. The last words he uttered were the names of
Jesus and of Catherine. Then the axe fell, and Catherine beheld his
soul borne by angels into the regions of eternal love. When she
recovered from her trance, she held his head within her hands; her
dress was saturated with his blood, which she could scarcely bear to
wash away, so deeply did she triumph in the death of him whom she had
saved. The words of S. Catherine herself deserve to be read. The
simplicity, freedom from self-consciousness, and fervent faith in the
reality of all she did and said and saw, which they exhibit, convince
us of her entire sincerity.

The supernatural element in the life of S. Catherine may be explained
partly by the mythologising adoration of the people ready to find a
miracle in every act of her they worshipped—partly by her own
temperament and modes of life, which inclined her to ecstasy and
fostered the faculty of seeing visions—partly by a pious misconception
of the words of Christ and Bible phraseology.

To the first kind belong the wonders which are related of her early
years, the story of the candle which burnt her veil without injuring
her person, and the miracles performed by her body after death. Many
childish incidents were 56 treasured up which, had her life proved
different, would have been forgotten, or have found their proper place
among the catalogue of common things. Thus on one occasion, after
hearing of the hermits of the Thebaïd, she took it into her head to
retire into the wilderness, and chose for her dwelling one of the
caverns in the sandstone rock which abound in Siena near the quarter
where her father lived. We merely see in this event a sign of her
monastic disposition, and a more than usual aptitude for realising the
ideas presented to her mind. But the old biographers relate how one
celestial vision urged the childish hermit to forsake the world, and
another bade her return to the duties of her home.

To the second kind we may refer the frequent communings with Christ and
with the fathers of the Church, together with the other visions to
which she frequently laid claim: nor must we omit the stigmata which
she believed she had received from Christ. Catherine was
constitutionally inclined to hallucinations. At the age of six, before
it was probable that a child should have laid claim to spiritual gifts
which she did not possess, she burst into loud weeping because her
little brother rudely distracted her attention from the brilliant forms
of saints and angels which she traced among the clouds. Almost all
children of a vivid imagination are apt to transfer the objects of
their fancy to the world without them. Goethe walked for hours in his
enchanted gardens as a boy, and Alfieri tells us how he saw a company
of angels in the choristers at Asti. Nor did S. Catherine omit any
means of cultivating this faculty, and of preventing her splendid
visions from fading away, as they almost always do, beneath the
discipline of intellectual education and among the distractions of
daily life. Believing simply in their heavenly origin, and receiving no
secular training whatsoever, she walked surrounded by a spiritual
world, environed, as her legend says, by angels. Her 57 habits were
calculated to foster this disposition: it is related that she took but
little sleep, scarcely more than two hours at night, and that too on
the bare ground; she ate nothing but vegetables and the sacred wafer of
the host, entirely abjuring the use of wine and meat. This diet,
combined with frequent fasts and severe ascetic discipline, depressed
her physical forces, and her nervous system was thrown into a state of
the highest exaltation. Thoughts became things, and ideas were
projected from her vivid fancy upon the empty air around her. It was
therefore no wonder that, after spending long hours in vigils and
meditating always on the thought of Christ, she should have seemed to
take the sacrament from His hands, to pace the chapel in communion with
Him, to meet Him in the form of priest and beggar, to hear Him speaking
to her as a friend. Once when the anguish of sin had plagued her with
disturbing dreams, Christ came and gave her His own heart in exchange
for hers. When lost in admiration before the cross at Pisa, she saw His
five wounds stream with blood—five crimson rays smote her, passed into
her soul, and left their marks upon her hands and feet and side. The
light of Christ's glory shone round about her, she partook of His
martyrdom, and awaking from her trance she cried to Raymond, 'Behold! I
bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus!'

This miracle had happened to S. Francis. It was regarded as the sign of
fellowship with Christ, of worthiness to drink His cup, and to be
baptised with His baptism. We find the same idea at least in the old
Latin hymns:

Fac me plagis vulnerari—
Cruce hac inebriari—
Fac ut portem Christi mortem,
Passionis fac consortem,
Et plagas recolere.


58 These are words from the 'Stabat Mater;' nor did S. Francis and S.
Catherine do more than carry into the vividness of actual hallucination
what had been the poetic rapture of many less ecstatic, but not less
ardent, souls. They desired to be _literally_ 'crucified with Christ;'
they were not satisfied with metaphor or sentiment, and it seemed to
them that their Lord had really vouchsafed to them the yearning of
their heart. We need not here raise the question whether the stigmata
had ever been actually self-inflicted by delirious saint or hermit: it
was not pretended that the wounds of S. Catherine were visible during
her lifetime. After her death the faithful thought that they had seen
them on her corpse, and they actually appeared in the relics of her
hands and feet. The pious fraud, if fraud there must have been, should
be ascribed, not to the saint herself, but to devotees and
relic-mongers.[56] The order of S. Dominic would not be behind that of
S. Francis. If the latter boasted of their stigmata, the former would
be ready to perforate the hand or foot of their dead saint. Thus the
ecstasies of genius or devotion are brought to earth, and rendered
vulgar by mistaken piety and the rivalry of sects. The people put the
most material construction on all tropes and metaphors: above the door
of S. Catherine's chapel at Siena, for example, it is written—

Hæc tenet ara caput Catharinæ; corda requiris?
    Hæc imo Christus pectore clausa tenet.

The frequent conversations which she held with S. Dominic and other
patrons of the Church, and her supernatural marriage, must be referred
to the same category. Strong faith, 59 and constant familiarity with
one order of ideas, joined with a creative power of fancy, and fostered
by physical debility, produced these miraculous colloquies. Early in
her career, her injured constitution, resenting the violence with which
it had been forced to serve the ardours of her piety, troubled her with
foul phantoms, haunting images of sin and seductive whisperings, which
clearly revealed a morbid condition of the nervous system. She was on
the verge of insanity. The reality of her inspiration and her genius
are proved by the force with which her human sympathies, and moral
dignity, and intellectual vigour triumphed over these diseased
hallucinations of the cloister, and converted them into the instruments
for effecting patriotic and philanthropic designs. There was nothing
savouring of mean pretension or imposture in her claim to supernatural
enlightenment. Whatever we may think of the wisdom of her public policy
with regard to the Crusades and to the Papal Sovereignty, it is
impossible to deny that a holy and high object possessed her from the
earliest to the latest of her life—that she lived for ideas greater
than self-aggrandisement or the saving of her soul, for the greatest,
perhaps, which her age presented to an earnest Catholic.

 [56] It is not impossible that the stigmata may have been naturally
 produced in the person of S. Francis or S. Catherine. There are cases
 on record in which grave nervous disturbances have resulted in such
 modifications of the flesh as may have left the traces of wounds in
 scars and blisters.

The abuses to which the indulgence of temperaments like that of S.
Catherine must in many cases have given rise, are obvious. Hysterical
women and half-witted men, without possessing her abilities and
understanding her objects, beheld unmeaning visions, and dreamed
childish dreams. Others won the reputation of sanctity by obstinate
neglect of all the duties of life and of all the decencies of personal
cleanliness. Every little town in Italy could show its saints like the
Santa Fina of whom San Gemignano boasts—a girl who lay for seven years
on a back-board till her mortified flesh clung to the wood; or the San
Bartolo, who, for hideous leprosy, received 60 the title of the Job of
Tuscany. Children were encouraged in blasphemous pretensions to the
special power of Heaven, and the nerves of weak women were shaken by
revelations in which they only half believed. We have ample evidence to
prove how the trade of miracles is still carried on, and how in the
France of our days, when intellectual vigour has been separated from
old forms of faith, such vision-mongering undermines morality,
encourages ignorance, and saps the force of individuals. But S.
Catherine must not be confounded with those sickly shams and
make-believes. Her enthusiasms were real; they were proper to her age;
they inspired her with unrivalled self-devotion and unwearied energy;
they connected her with the political and social movements of her
country.

Many of the supernatural events in S. Catherine's life were founded on
a too literal acceptation of biblical metaphors. The Canticles,
perhaps, inspired her with the belief in a mystical marriage. An
enigmatical sentence of S. Paul's suggested the stigmata. When the
saint bestowed her garment upon Christ in the form of a beggar and gave
Him the silver cross of her rosary, she was but realising His own
words: 'Inasmuch as ye shall do it unto the least of these little ones,
ye shall do it unto Me.' Charity, according to her conception,
consisted in giving to Christ. He had first taught this duty; He would
make it the test of all duty at the last day. Catherine was charitable
for the love of Christ. She thought less of the beggar than of her
Lord. How could she do otherwise than see the aureole about His
forehead, and hear the voice of Him who had declared, 'Behold, I am
with you, even to the end of the world.' Those were times of childlike
simplicity when the eye of love was still unclouded, when men could see
beyond the phantoms of this world, and stripping off the accidents of
matter, gaze upon the spiritual and eternal truths 61 that lie beneath.
Heaven lay around them in that infancy of faith; nor did they greatly
differ from the saints and founders of the Church—from Paul, who saw
the vision of the Lord, or Magdalen, who cried, 'He is risen!' An age
accustomed to veil thought in symbols, easily reversed the process and
discerned essential qualities beneath the common or indifferent objects
of the outer world. It was therefore Christ whom S. Christopher carried
in the shape of a child; Christ whom Fra Angelico's Dominicans received
in pilgrim's garb at their convent gate; Christ with whom, under a
leper's loathsome form, the flower of Spanish chivalry was said to have
shared his couch.

In all her miracles it will be noticed that S. Catherine showed no
originality. Her namesake of Alexandria had already been proclaimed the
spouse of Christ. S. Francis had already received the stigmata; her
other visions were such as had been granted to all fervent mystics;
they were the growth of current religious ideas and unbounded faith. It
is not as an innovator in religious ecstasy, or as the creator of a new
kind of spiritual poetry, that we admire S. Catherine. Her inner life
was simply the foundation of her character, her visions were a source
of strength to her in times of trial, or the expression of a more than
usually exalted mood; but the means by which she moved the hearts of
men belonged to that which she possessed in common with all leaders of
mankind—enthusiasm, eloquence, the charm of a gracious nature, and the
will to do what she designed. She founded no religious order, like S.
Francis or S. Dominic, her predecessors, or Loyola, her successor. Her
work was a woman's work—to make peace, to succour the afflicted, to
strengthen the Church, to purify the hearts of those around her; not to
rule or organise. When she died she left behind her a memory of love
more than of power, the fragrance of an unselfish and 62 gentle life,
the echo of sweet and earnest words. Her place is in the heart of the
humble; children belong to her sisterhood, and the poor crowd her
shrine on festivals.

Catherine died at Rome on the 29th of April 1380, in her thirty-third
year, surrounded by the most faithful of her friends and followers; but
it was not until 1461 that she received the last honour of canonisation
from the hands of Pius II., Æneas Sylvius, her countryman. Æeneas
Sylvius Piccolomini was perhaps the most remarkable man that Siena has
produced. Like S. Catherine, he was one of a large family; twenty of
his brothers and sisters perished in a plague. The licentiousness of
his early life, the astuteness of his intellect, and the worldliness of
his aims, contrast with the singularly disinterested character of the
saint on whom he conferred the highest honours of the Church. But he
accomplished by diplomacy and skill what Catherine had begun. If she
was instrumental in restoring the Popes to Rome, he ended the schism
which had clouded her last days. She had preached a crusade; he lived
to assemble the armies of Christendom against the Turks, and died at
Ancona, while it was still uncertain whether the authority and
enthusiasm of a pope could steady the wavering counsels and vacillating
wills of kings and princes. The middle ages were still vital in S.
Catherine; Pius II. belonged by taste and genius to the new period of
Renaissance. The hundreds of the poorer Sienese who kneel before S.
Catherine's shrine prove that her memory is still alive in the hearts
of her fellow-citizens; while the gorgeous library of the cathedral,
painted by the hand of Pinturicchio, the sumptuous palace and the
Loggia del Papa designed by Bernardo Rossellino and Antonio Federighi,
record the pride and splendour of the greatest of the Piccolomini. But
honourable as it was for Pius to fill so high a place in the annals of
his city; to have left it as a poor adventurer, to return to it first
as bishop, then 63 as pope: to have a chamber in its mother church
adorned with the pictured history of his achievements for a monument,
and a triumph of Renaissance architecture dedicated to his family,
_gentilibus suis_—yet we cannot but feel that the better part remains
with S. Catherine, whose prayer is still whispered by children on their
mother's knee, and whose relics are kissed daily by the simple and
devout.

Some of the chief Italian painters have represented the incidents of S.
Catherine's life and of her mystical experience. All the pathos and
beauty which we admire in Sodoma's S. Sebastian at Florence, are
surpassed by his fresco of S. Catherine receiving the stigmata. This is
one of several subjects painted by him on the walls of her chapel in
San Domenico. The tender unction, the sweetness, the languor, and the
grace which he commanded with such admirable mastery, are all combined
in the figure of the saint falling exhausted into the arms of her
attendant nuns. Soft undulating lines rule the composition; yet dignity
of attitude and feature prevails over mere loveliness. Another of
Siena's greatest masters, Beccafumi, has treated the same subject with
less pictorial skill and dramatic effect, but with an earnestness and
simplicity that are very touching. Colourists always liked to introduce
the sweeping lines of her white robes into their compositions. Fra
Bartolommeo, who showed consummate art by tempering the masses of white
drapery with mellow tones of brown or amber, painted one splendid
picture of the marriage of S. Catherine, and another in which he
represents her prostrate in adoration before the mystery of the
Trinity. His gentle and devout soul sympathised with the spirit of the
saint. The fervour of her devotion belonged to him more truly than the
leonine power which he unsuccessfully attempted to express in his large
figure of S. Mark. Other artists have painted the two Catherines 64
together—the princess of Alexandria, crowned and robed in purple,
bearing her palm of martyrdom, beside the nun of Siena, holding in her
hand the lantern with which she went about by night among the sick.
Ambrogio Borgognone makes them stand one on each side of Madonna's
throne, while the infant Christ upon her lap extends His hands to both,
in token of their marriage.

The traditional type of countenance which may be traced in all these
pictures is not without a real foundation. Not only does there exist at
Siena, in the Church of San Domenico, a contemporary portrait of S.
Catherine, but her head also, which was embalmed immediately after
death, is still preserved. The skin of the face is fair and white, like
parchment, and the features have more the air of sleep than death. We
find in them the breadth and squareness of general outline, and the
long, even eyebrows which give peculiar calm to the expression of her
pictures. This relic is shown publicly once a year on the 6th of May.
That is the Festa of the saint, when a procession of priests and
acolytes, and pious people holding tapers, and little girls dressed out
in white, carry a splendid silver image of their patroness about the
city. Banners and crosses and censers go in front; then follows the
shrine beneath a canopy: roses and leaves of box are scattered on the
path. The whole Contrada d'Oca is decked out with such finery as the
people can muster: red cloths hung from the windows, branches and
garlands strewn about the doorsteps, with brackets for torches on the
walls, and altars erected in the middle of the street. Troops of
country-folk and townspeople and priests go in and out to visit the
cell of S. Catherine; the upper and the lower chapel, built upon its
site, and the hall of the _confraternità_ blaze with lighted tapers.
The faithful, full of wonder, kneel or stand about the 'santi luoghi,'
marvelling at the relics, and 65 repeating to one another the miracles
of the saint. The same bustle pervades the Church of San Domenico.
Masses are being said at one or other chapel all the morning, while
women in their flapping Tuscan hats crowd round the silver image of S.
Catherine, and say their prayers with a continual undercurrent of
responses to the nasal voice of priest or choir. Others gain entrance
to the chapel of the saint, and kneel before her altar. There, in the
blaze of sunlight and of tapers, far away behind the gloss and gilding
of a tawdry shrine, is seen the pale, white face which spoke and
suffered so much, years ago. The contrast of its rigid stillness and
half-concealed corruption with the noise and life and light outside is
very touching. Even so the remnant of a dead idea still stirs the souls
of thousands, and many ages may roll by before time and oblivion assert
their inevitable sway.

66




MONTE OLIVETO


I

In former days the traveller had choice of two old hostelries in the
chief street of Siena. Here, if he was fortunate, he might secure a
prophet's chamber, with a view across tiled houseroofs to the distant
Tuscan champaign—glimpses of russet field and olive-garden framed by
jutting city walls, which in some measure compensated for much
discomfort. He now betakes himself to the more modern Albergo di Siena,
overlooking the public promenade La Lizza. Horse-chestnuts and acacias
make a pleasant foreground to a prospect of considerable extent. The
front of the house is turned toward Belcaro and the mountains between
Grosseto and Volterra. Sideways its windows command the brown bulk of
San Domenico, and the Duomo, set like a marble coronet upon the
forehead of the town. When we arrived there one October afternoon the
sun was setting amid flying clouds and watery yellow spaces of pure
sky, with a wind blowing soft and humid from the sea. Long after he had
sunk below the hills, a fading chord of golden and rose-coloured tints
burned on the city. The cathedral bell tower was glistening with recent
rain, and we could see right through its lancet windows to the clear
blue heavens beyond. Then, as the day descended into evening, the
autumn trees assumed that wonderful effect of luminousness
self-evolved, 67 and the red brick walls that crimson afterglow, which
Tuscan twilight takes from singular transparency of atmosphere.

It is hardly possible to define the specific character of each Italian
city, assigning its proper share to natural circumstances, to the
temper of the population, and to the monuments of art in which these
elements of nature and of human qualities are blended. The fusion is
too delicate and subtle for complete analysis; and the total effect in
each particular case may best be compared to that impressed on us by a
strong personality, making itself felt in the minutest details.
Climate, situation, ethnological conditions, the political vicissitudes
of past ages, the bias of the people to certain industries and
occupations, the emergence of distinguished men at critical epochs,
have all contributed their quota to the composition of an individuality
which abides long after the locality has lost its ancient vigour.

Since the year 1557, when Gian Giacomo de' Medici laid the country of
Siena waste, levelled her luxurious suburbs, and delivered her
famine-stricken citizens to the tyranny of the Grand Duke Cosimo, this
town has gone on dreaming in suspended decadence. Yet the epithet which
was given to her in her days of glory, the title of 'Fair Soft Siena,'
still describes the city. She claims it by right of the gentle manners,
joyous but sedate, of her inhabitants, by the grace of their pure
Tuscan speech, and by the unique delicacy of her architecture. Those
palaces of brick, with finely moulded lancet windows, and the lovely
use of sculptured marbles in pilastered colonnades, are fit abodes for
the nobles who reared them five centuries ago, of whose refined and
costly living we read in the pages of Dante or of Folgore da San
Gemignano. And though the necessities of modern life, the decay of
wealth, the dwindling of old aristocracy, and the absorption of what
was once an independent state in the Italian nation, 68 have
obliterated that large signorial splendour of the Middle Ages, we feel
that the modern Sienese are not unworthy of their courteous ancestry.

Superficially, much of the present charm of Siena consists in the soft
opening valleys, the glimpses of long blue hills and fertile
country-side, framed by irregular brown houses stretching along the
slopes on which the town is built, and losing themselves abruptly in
olive fields and orchards. This element of beauty, which brings the
city into immediate relation with the country, is indeed not peculiar
to Siena. We find it in Perugia, in Assisi, in Montepulciano, in nearly
all the hill towns of Umbria and Tuscany. But their landscape is often
tragic and austere, while this is always suave. City and country blend
here in delightful amity. Neither yields that sense of aloofness which
stirs melancholy.

The most charming district in the immediate neighbourhood of Siena lies
westward, near Belcaro, a villa high up on a hill. It is a region of
deep lanes and golden-green oak-woods, with cypresses and stone-pines,
and little streams in all directions flowing over the brown sandstone.
The country is like some parts of rural England—Devonshire or Sussex.
Not only is the sandstone here, as there, broken into deep gullies; but
the vegetation is much the same. Tufted spleenwort, primroses, and
broom tangle the hedges under boughs of hornbeam and sweet-chestnut.
This is the landscape which the two sixteenth-century novelists of
Siena, Fortini and Sermini, so lovingly depicted in their tales. Of
literature absorbing in itself the specific character of a country, and
conveying it to the reader less by description than by sustained
quality of style, I know none to surpass Fortini's sketches. The
prospect from Belcaro is one of the finest to be seen in Tuscany. The
villa stands at a considerable elevation, and commands an immense
extent of hill and dale. 69 Nowhere, except Maremma-wards, a level
plain. The Tuscan mountains, from Monte Amiata westward to Volterra,
round Valdelsa, down to Montepulciano and Radicofani, with their
innumerable windings and intricacies of descending valleys, are dappled
with light and shade from flying storm-clouds, sunshine here, and there
cloud-shadows. Girdling the villa stands a grove of ilex-trees, cut so
as to embrace its high-built walls with dark continuous green. In the
courtyard are lemon-trees and pomegranates laden with fruit. From a
terrace on the roof the whole wide view is seen; and here upon a
parapet, from which we leaned one autumn afternoon, my friend
discovered this _graffito_: '_E vidi e piansi il fato amaro!_'—'I
gazed, and gazing, wept the bitterness of fate.'

II

The prevailing note of Siena and the Sienese seems, as I have said, to
be a soft and tranquil grace; yet this people had one of the stormiest
and maddest of Italian histories. They were passionate in love and
hate, vehement in their popular amusements, almost frantic in their
political conduct of affairs. The luxury, for which Dante blamed them,
the levity De Comines noticed in their government, found counter-poise
in more than usual piety and fervour. S. Bernardino, the great preacher
and peacemaker of the Middle Ages; S. Catherine, the worthiest of all
women to be canonised; the blessed Colombini, who founded the Order of
the Gesuati or Brothers of the Poor in Christ; the blessed Bernardo,
who founded that of Monte Oliveto; were all Sienese. Few cities have
given four such saints to modern Christendom. The biography of one of
these may serve as prelude to an account of the Sienese monastery of
Oliveto Maggiore.

The family of Tolomei was among the noblest of the 70 Sienese
aristocracy. On May 10, 1272, Mino Tolomei and his wife Fulvia, of the
Tancredi, had a son whom they christened Giovanni, but who, when he
entered the religious life, assumed the name of Bernard, in memory of
the great Abbot of Clairvaux. Of this child, Fulvia is said to have
dreamed, long before his birth, that he assumed the form of a white
swan, and sang melodiously, and settled in the boughs of an olive-tree,
whence afterwards he winged his way to heaven amid a flock of swans as
dazzling white as he. The boy was educated in the Dominican Cloister at
Siena, under the care of his uncle Cristoforo Tolomei. There, and
afterwards in the fraternity of S. Ansano, he felt that impulse towards
a life of piety, which after a short but brilliant episode of secular
ambition, was destined to return with overwhelming force upon his
nature. He was a youth of promise, and at the age of sixteen he
obtained the doctorate in philosophy and both laws, civil and
canonical. The Tolomei upon this occasion adorned their palaces and
threw them open to the people of Siena. The Republic hailed with
acclamation the early honours of a noble, born to be one of their chief
leaders. Soon after this event Mino obtained for his son from the
Emperor the title of Cæsarian Knight; and when the diploma arrived, new
festivities proclaimed the fortunate youth to his fellow-citizens.
Bernardo cased his limbs in steel, and rode in procession with ladies
and young nobles through the streets. The ceremonies of a knight's
reception in Siena at that period were magnificent. From contemporary
chronicles and from the sonnets written by Folgore da San Gemignano for
a similar occasion, we gather that the whole resources of a wealthy
family and all their friends were strained to the utmost to do honour
to the order of chivalry. Open house was held for several days. Rich
presents of jewels, armour, dresses, chargers were freely 71
distributed. Tournaments alternated with dances. But the climax of the
pageant was the novice's investiture with sword and spurs and belt in
the cathedral. This, as it appears from a record of the year 1326,
actually took place in the great marble pulpit carved by the Pisani;
and the most illustrious knights of his acquaintance were summoned by
the squire to act as sponsors for his fealty.

It is said that young Bernardo Tolomei's head was turned to vanity by
these honours showered upon him in his earliest manhood. Yet, after a
short period of aberration, he rejoined his confraternity and mortified
his flesh by discipline and strict attendance on the poor. The time had
come, however, when he should choose a career suitable to his high
rank. He devoted himself to jurisprudence, and began to lecture
publicly on law. Already at the age of twenty-five his fellow-citizens
admitted him to the highest political offices, and in the legend of his
life it is written, not without exaggeration doubtless, that he ruled
the State. There is, however, no reason to suppose that he did not play
an important part in its government. Though a just and virtuous
statesman, Bernardo now forgot the special service of God, and gave
himself with heart and soul to mundane interests. At the age of forty,
supported by the wealth, alliances, and reputation of his semi-princely
house, he had become one of the most considerable party-leaders in that
age of faction. If we may trust his monastic biographer, he was aiming
at nothing less than the tyranny of Siena. But in that year, when he
was forty, a change, which can only be described as conversion, came
over him. He had advertised a public disputation, in which he proposed
before all comers to solve the most arduous problems of scholastic
science. The concourse was great, the assembly brilliant; but the hero
of the day, who had designed it for his glory, was stricken with sudden
blindness. In one 72 moment he comprehended the internal void he had
created for his soul, and the blindness of the body was illumination to
the spirit. The pride, power, and splendour of this world seemed to him
a smoke that passes. God, penitence, eternity appeared in all the awful
clarity of an authentic vision. He fell upon his knees and prayed to
Mary that he might receive his sight again. This boon was granted; but
the revelation which had come to him in blindness was not withdrawn.
Meanwhile the hall of disputation was crowded with an expectant
audience. Bernardo rose from his knees, made his entry, and ascended
the chair; but instead of the scholastic subtleties he had designed to
treat, he pronounced the old text, 'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.'

Afterwards, attended by two noble comrades, Patrizio Patrizzi and
Ambrogio Piccolomini, he went forth into the wilderness. For the human
soul, at strife with strange experience, betakes itself instinctively
to solitude. Not only prophets of Israel, saints of the Thebaïd, and
founders of religions in the mystic East have done so; even the Greek
Menander recognised, although he sneered at, the phenomenon. 'The
desert, they say, is the place for discoveries.' For the mediæval mind
it had peculiar attractions. The wilderness these comrades chose was
Accona, a doleful place, hemmed in with earthen precipices, some
fifteen miles to the south of Siena. Of his vast possessions Bernardo
retained but this—

The lonesome lodge,
    That stood so low in a lonely glen.

The rest of his substance he abandoned to the poor. This was in 1313,
the very year of the Emperor Henry VII.'s death at Buonconvento, which
is a little walled town between Siena and the desert of Accona. Whether
Bernardo's retirement was in any way due to the extinction of immediate
hope 73 for the Ghibelline party by this event, we do not gather from
his legend. That, as is natural, refers his action wholly to the
operation of divine grace. Yet we may remember how a more illustrious
refugee, the singer of the 'Divine Comedy,' betook himself upon the
same occasion to the lonely convent of Fonte Avellana on the Alps of
Catria, and meditated there the cantos of his Purgatory. While Bernardo
Tolomei was founding the Order of Monte Oliveto, Dante penned his
letter to the cardinals of Italy: _Quomodo sola sedet civitas plena
populo: facta est quasi vidua domina gentium_.

Bernardo and his friends hollowed with their own hands grottos in the
rock, and strewed their stone beds with withered chestnut-leaves. For
S. Scolastica, the sister of S. Benedict, they built a little chapel.
Their food was wild fruit, and their drink the water of the brook.
Through the day they delved, for it was in their mind to turn the
wilderness into a land of plenty. By night they meditated on eternal
truth. The contrast between their rude life and the delicate nurture of
Sienese nobles, in an age when Siena had become a by-word for luxury,
must have been cruel. But it fascinated the mediæval imagination, and
the three anchorites were speedily joined by recruits of a like temper.
As yet the new-born order had no rules; for Bernardo, when he renounced
the world, embraced humility. The brethren were bound together only by
the ties of charity. They lived in common; and under their sustained
efforts Accona soon became a garden.

The society could not, however, hold together without further
organisation. It began to be ill spoken of, inasmuch as vulgar minds
can recognise no good except in what is formed upon a pattern they are
familiar with. Then Bernardo had a vision. In his sleep he saw a ladder
of light ascending to the heavens. Above sat Jesus with Our Lady in
white 74 raiment, and the celestial hierarchies around them were
attired in white. Up the ladder, led by angels, climbed men in vesture
of dazzling white; and among these Bernardo recognised his own
companions. Soon after this dream, he called Ambrogio Piccolomini, and
bade him get ready for a journey to the Pope at Avignon.

John XXII. received the pilgrims graciously, and gave them letters to
the Bishop of Arezzo, commanding him to furnish the new brotherhood
with one of the rules authorised by Holy Church for governance of a
monastic order. Guido Tarlati, of the great Pietra-mala house, was
Bishop and despot of Arezzo at this epoch. A man less in harmony with
coenobitical enthusiasm than this warrior prelate, could scarcely have
been found. Yet attendance to such matters formed part of his business,
and the legend even credits him with an inspired dream; for Our Lady
appeared to him, and said: 'I love the valley of Accona and its pious
solitaries. Give them the rule of Benedict. But thou shalt strip them
of their mourning weeds, and clothe them in white raiment, the symbol
of my virgin purity. Their hermitage shall change its name, and
henceforth shall be called Mount Olivet, in memory of the ascension of
my divine Son, the which took place upon the Mount of Olives. I take
this family beneath my own protection; and therefore it is my will it
should be called henceforth the congregation of S. Mary of Mount
Olivet.' After this, the Blessed Virgin took forethought for the
heraldic designs of her monks, dictating to Guido Tarlati the blazon
they still bear; it is of three hills or, whereof the third and highest
is surmounted with a cross gules, and from the meeting-point of the
three hillocks upon either hand a branch of olive vert. This was in
1319. In 1324 John XXII. confirmed the order, and in 1344 it was
further approved by Clement VI. Affiliated societies sprang 75 up in
several Tuscan cities; and in 1347, Bernardo Tolomei, at that time
General of the Order, held a chapter of its several houses. The next
year was the year of the great plague or Black Death. Bernardo bade his
brethren leave their seclusion, and go forth on works of mercy among
the sick. Some went to Florence, some to Siena, others to the smaller
hill-set towns of Tuscany. All were bidden to assemble on the Feast of
the Assumption at Siena. Here the founder addressed his spiritual
children for the last time. Soon afterwards he died himself, at the age
of seventy-seven, and the place of his grave is not known. He was
beatified by the Church for his great virtues.

III

At noon we started, four of us, in an open waggonette with a pair of
horses, for Monte Oliveto, the luggage heaped mountain-high and tied in
a top-heavy mass above us. After leaving the gateway, with its massive
fortifications and frescoed arches, the road passes into a dull earthy
country, very much like some parts—and not the best parts—of England.
The beauty of the Sienese contado is clearly on the sandstone, not upon
the clay. Hedges, haystacks, isolated farms—all were English in their
details. Only the vines, and mulberries, and wattled waggons drawn by
oxen, most Roman in aspect, reminded us we were in Tuscany. In such
_carpenta_ may the vestal virgins have ascended the Capitol. It is the
primitive war-chariot also, capable of holding four with ease; and
Romulus may have mounted with the images of Roman gods in even such a
vehicle to Latiarian Jove upon the Alban hill. Nothing changes in
Italy. The wooden ploughs are those which Virgil knew. The sight of one
of them would 76 save an intelligent lad much trouble in mastering a
certain passage of the Georgics.

Siena is visible behind us nearly the whole way to Buonconvento, a
little town where the Emperor Henry VII. died, as it was supposed, of
poison, in 1313. It is still circled with the wall and gates built by
the Sienese in 1366, and is a fair specimen of an intact mediæval
stronghold. Here we leave the main road, and break into a country-track
across a bed of sandstone, with the delicate volcanic lines of Monte
Amiata in front, and the aë;rial pile of Montalcino to our right. The
pyracanthus bushes in the hedge yield their clusters of bright yellow
berries, mingled with more glowing hues of red from haws and glossy
hips. On the pale grey earthen slopes men and women are plying the long
Sabellian hoes of their forefathers, and ploughmen are driving furrows
down steep hills. The labour of the husbandmen in Tuscany is very
graceful, partly, I think, because it is so primitive, but also because
the people have an eminently noble carriage, and are fashioned on the
lines of antique statues. I noticed two young contadini in one field,
whom Frederick Walker might have painted with the dignity of Pheidian
form. They were guiding their ploughs along a hedge of olive-trees,
slanting upwards, the white-horned oxen moving slowly through the marl,
and the lads bending to press the plough-shares home. It was a delicate
piece of colour—the grey mist of olive branches, the warm smoking
earth, the creamy flanks of the oxen, the brown limbs and dark eyes of
the men, who paused awhile to gaze at us, with shadows cast upon the
furrows from their tall straight figures. Then they turned to their
work again, and rhythmic movement was added to the picture. I wonder
when an Italian artist will condescend to pluck these flowers of
beauty, so abundantly offered by the simplest things in his own native
land. Each city has 77 an Accademia delle Belle Arti, and there is no
lack of students. But the painters, having learned their trade, make
copies ten times distant from the truth of famous masterpieces for the
American market. Few seem to look beyond their picture galleries. Thus
the democratic art, the art of Millet, the art of life and nature and
the people, waits.

As we mount, the soil grows of a richer brown; and there are woods of
oak where herds of swine are feeding on the acorns. Monte Oliveto comes
in sight—a mass of red brick, backed up with cypresses, among
dishevelled earthy precipices, _balze_ as they are called—upon the hill
below the village of Chiusure. This Chiusure was once a promising town;
but the life was crushed out of it in the throes of mediæval civil
wars, and since the thirteenth century it has been dwindling to a
hamlet. The struggle for existence, from which the larger communes of
this district, Siena and Montepulciano, emerged at the expense of their
neighbours, must have been tragical. The _balze_ now grow sterner,
drier, more dreadful. We see how deluges outpoured from thunder-storms
bring down their viscous streams of loam, destroying in an hour the
terraces it took a year to build, and spreading wasteful mud upon the
scanty cornfields. The people call this soil _creta_; but it seems to
be less like a chalk than a marl, or _marna_. It is always washing away
into ravines and gullies, exposing the roots of trees, and rendering
the tillage of the land a thankless labour. One marvels how any
vegetation has the faith to settle on its dreary waste, or how men have
the patience, generation after generation, to renew the industry, still
beginning, never ending, which reclaims such wildernesses. Comparing
Monte Oliveto with similar districts of cretaceous soil—with the
country, for example, between Pienza and San Quirico—we perceive how
much is owed to the perseverance of the monks whom Bernard 78 Tolomei
planted here. So far as it is clothed at all with crop and wood, this
is their service.

At last we climb the crowning hill, emerge from a copse of oak, glide
along a terraced pathway through the broom, and find ourselves in front
of the convent gateway. A substantial tower of red brick, machicolated
at the top and pierced with small square windows, guards this portal,
reminding us that at some time or other the monks found it needful to
arm their solitude against a force descending from Chiusure. There is
an avenue of slender cypresses; and over the gate, protected by a
jutting roof, shines a fresco of Madonna and Child. Passing rapidly
downwards, we are in the courtyard of the monastery, among its stables,
barns, and out-houses, with the forlorn bulk of the huge red building,
spreading wide, and towering up above us. As good luck ruled our
arrival, we came face to face with the Abbate de Negro, who administers
the domain of Monte Oliveto for the Government of Italy, and exercises
a kindly hospitality to chance-comers. He was standing near the church,
which, with its tall square campanile, breaks the long stern outline of
the convent. The whole edifice, it may be said, is composed of a
red-brick inclining to purple in tone, which contrasts not unpleasantly
with the lustrous green of the cypresses, and the glaucous sheen of
olives. Advantage has been taken of a steep crest; and the monastery,
enlarged from time to time through the last five centuries, has here
and there been reared upon gigantic buttresses, which jut upon the
_balze_ at a sometimes giddy height.

The Abbate received us with true courtesy, and gave us spacious rooms,
three cells apiece, facing Siena and the western mountains. There is
accommodation, he told us, for three hundred monks; but only three are
left in it. As this order was confined to members of the nobility, each
of 79 the religious had his own apartment—not a cubicle such as the
uninstructed dream of when they read of monks, but separate chambers
for sleep and study and recreation.

In the middle of the vast sad landscape, the place is still, with a
silence that can be almost heard. The deserted state of those
innumerable cells, those echoing corridors and shadowy cloisters,
exercises overpowering tyranny over the imagination. Siena is so far
away, and Montalcino is so faintly outlined on its airy parapet, that
these cities only deepen our sense of desolation. It is a relief to
mark at no great distance on the hillside a contadino guiding his oxen,
and from a lonely farm yon column of ascending smoke. At least the
world goes on, and life is somewhere resonant with song. But here there
rests a pall of silence among the oak-groves and the cypresses and
_balze_. As I leaned and mused, while Christian (my good friend and
fellow-traveller from the Grisons) made our beds, a melancholy sunset
flamed up from a rampart of cloud, built like a city of the air above
the mountains of Volterra—fire issuing from its battlements, and
smiting the fretted roof of heaven above. It was a conflagration of
celestial rose upon the saddest purples and cavernous recesses of
intensest azure.

We had an excellent supper in the visitors' refectory—soup, good bread
and country wine, ham, a roast chicken with potatoes, a nice white
cheese made of sheep's milk, and grapes for dessert. The kind Abbate
sat by, and watched his four guests eat, tapping his tortoiseshell
snuff-box, and telling us many interesting things about the past and
present state of the convent. Our company was completed with Lupo, the
pet cat, and Pirro, a woolly Corsican dog, very good friends, and both
enormously voracious. Lupo in particular engraved himself upon the
memory of Christian, into whose large legs he thrust his claws, when
the cheese-parings and 80 scraps were not supplied him with sufficient
promptitude. I never saw a hungrier and bolder cat. It made one fancy
that even the mice had been exiled from this solitude. And truly the
rule of the monastic order, no less than the habit of Italian
gentlemen, is frugal in the matter of the table, beyond the conception
of northern folk.

Monte Oliveto, the Superior told us, owned thirty-two _poderi_, or
large farms, of which five have recently been sold. They are worked on
the _mezzeria_ system; whereby peasants and proprietors divide the
produce of the soil; and which he thinks inferior for developing its
resources to that of _affitto_, or leaseholding.

The contadini live in scattered houses; and he says the estate would be
greatly improved by doubling the number of these dwellings, and letting
the subdivided farms to more energetic people. The village of Chiusure
is inhabited by labourers. The contadini are poor: a dower, for
instance, of fifty _lire_ is thought something: whereas near Genoa,
upon the leasehold system, a farmer may sometimes provide a dower of
twenty thousand _lire_. The country produces grain of different sorts,
excellent oil, and timber. It also yields a tolerable red wine. The
Government makes from eight to nine per cent. upon the value of the
land, employing him and his two religious brethren as agents.

In such conversation the evening passed. We rested well in large hard
beds with dry rough sheets. But there was a fretful wind abroad, which
went wailing round the convent walls and rattling the doors in its
deserted corridors. One of our party had been placed by himself at the
end of a long suite of apartments, with balconies commanding the wide
sweep of hills that Monte Amiata crowns. He confessed in the morning to
having passed a restless night, tormented by the ghostly noises of the
wind, a wanderer, 'like the 81 world's rejected guest,' through those
untenanted chambers. The olives tossed their filmy boughs in twilight
underneath his windows, sighing and shuddering, with a sheen in them as
eerie as that of willows by some haunted mere.

IV

The great attraction to students of Italian art in the convent of Monte
Oliveto is a large square cloister, covered with wall-paintings by Luca
Signorelli and Giovannantonio Bazzi, surnamed Il Sodoma. These
represent various episodes in the life of S. Benedict; while one
picture, in some respects the best of the whole series, is devoted to
the founder of the Olivetan Order, Bernardo Tolomei, dispensing the
rule of his institution to a consistory of white-robed monks.
Signorelli, that great master of Cortona, may be studied to better
advantage elsewhere, especially at Orvieto and in his native city. His
work in this cloister, consisting of eight frescoes, has been much
spoiled by time and restoration. Yet it can be referred to a good
period of his artistic activity (the year 1497) and displays much which
is specially characteristic of his manner. In Totila's barbaric train,
he painted a crowd of fierce emphatic figures, combining all ages and
the most varied attitudes, and reproducing with singular vividness the
Italian soldiers of adventure of his day. We see before us the
long-haired followers of Braccio and the Baglioni; their handsome
savage faces; their brawny limbs clad in the particoloured hose and
jackets of that period; feathered caps stuck sideways on their heads; a
splendid swagger in their straddling legs. Female beauty lay outside
the sphere of Signorelli's sympathy; and in the Monte Oliveto cloister
he was not called upon to paint it. But none of the Italian masters
felt more keenly, or more powerfully 82 represented in their work, the
muscular vigour of young manhood. Two of the remaining frescoes,
different from these in motive, might be selected as no less
characteristic of Signorelli's manner. One represents three sturdy
monks, clad in brown, working with all their strength to stir a
boulder, which has been bewitched, and needs a miracle to move it from
its place. The square and powerfully outlined drawing of these figures
is beyond all praise for its effect of massive solidity. The other
shows us the interior of a fifteenth-century tavern, where two monks
are regaling themselves upon the sly. A country girl, with shapely arms
and shoulders, her upper skirts tucked round the ample waist to which
broad sweeping lines of back and breasts descend, is serving wine. The
exuberance of animal life, the freedom of attitude expressed in this,
the mainly interesting figure of the composition, show that Signorelli
might have been a great master of realistic painting. Nor are the
accessories less effective. A wide-roofed kitchen chimney, a page-boy
leaving the room by a flight of steps which leads to the house door,
and the table at which the truant monks are seated, complete a picture
of homely Italian life. It may still be matched out of many an inn in
this hill district.

Called to graver work at Orvieto, where he painted his gigantic series
of frescoes illustrating the coming of Anti-christ, the Destruction of
the World, the Resurrection, the Last Judgment, and the final state of
souls in Paradise and Hell, Signorelli left his work at Monte Oliveto
unaccomplished. Seven years later it was taken up by a painter of very
different genius. Sodoma was a native of Vercelli, and had received his
first training in the Lombard schools, which owed so much to Lionardo
da Vinci's influence. He was about thirty years of age when chance
brought him to Siena. Here he made acquaintance with Pandolfo Petrucci,
who had 83 recently established himself in a species of tyranny over
the Republic. The work he did for this patron and other nobles of
Siena, brought him into notice. Vasari observes that his hot Lombard
colouring, a something florid and attractive in his style, which
contrasted with the severity of the Tuscan school, rendered him no less
agreeable as an artist than his free manners made him acceptable as a
house-friend. Fra Domenico da Leccio, also a Lombard, was at that time
General of the monks of Monte Oliveto. On a visit to this compatriot in
1505, Sodoma received a commission to complete the cloister; and during
the next two years he worked there, producing in all twenty-five
frescoes. For his pains he seemed to have received but little
pay—Vasari says, only the expenses of some colour-grinders who assisted
him; but from the books of the convent it appears that 241 ducats, or
something over 60_l._ of our money, were disbursed to him.

Sodoma was so singular a fellow, even in that age of piquant
personalities, that it may be worth while to translate a fragment of
Vasari's gossip about him. We must, however, bear in mind that, for
some unknown reason, the Aretine historian bore a rancorous grudge
against this Lombard whose splendid gifts and great achievements he did
all he could by writing to depreciate. 'He was fond,' says Vasari, 'of
keeping in his house all sorts of strange animals: badgers, squirrels,
monkeys, cat-a-mountains, dwarf-donkeys, horses, racers, little Elba
ponies, jackdaws, bantams, doves of India, and other creatures of this
kind, as many as he could lay his hands on. Over and above these
beasts, he had a raven, which had learned so well from him to talk,
that it could imitate its master's voice, especially in answering the
door when some one knocked, and this it did so cleverly that people
took it for Giovannantonio himself, as all the folk of Siena know quite
well. In like manner, his other pets were 84 so much at home with him
that they never left his house, but played the strangest tricks and
maddest pranks imaginable, so that his house was like nothing more than
a Noah's Ark.' He was a bold rider, it seems; for with one of his
racers, ridden by himself, he bore away the prize in that wild
horse-race they run upon the Piazza at Siena. For the rest, 'he attired
himself in pompous clothes, wearing doublets of brocade, cloaks trimmed
with gold lace, gorgeous caps, neck-chains, and other vanities of a
like description, fit for buffoons and mountebanks.' In one of the
frescoes of Monte Oliveto, Sodoma painted his own portrait, with some
of his curious pets around him. He there appears as a young man with
large and decidedly handsome features, a great shock of dark curled
hair escaping from a yellow cap, and flowing down over a rich mantle
which drapes his shoulders. If we may trust Vasari, he showed his
curious humours freely to the monks. 'Nobody could describe the
amusement he furnished to those good fathers, who christened him
Mattaccio (the big madman), or the insane tricks he played there.'

In spite of Vasari's malevolence, the portrait he has given us of Bazzi
has so far nothing unpleasant about it. The man seems to have been a
madcap artist, combining with his love for his profession a taste for
fine clothes, and what was then perhaps rarer in people of his sort, a
great partiality for living creatures of all kinds. The darker shades
of Vasari's picture have been purposely omitted from these pages. We
only know for certain, about Bazzi's private life, that he was married
in 1510 to a certain Beatrice, who bore him two children, and who was
still living with him in 1541. The further suggestion that he painted
at Monte Oliveto subjects unworthy of a religious house, is wholly
disproved by the frescoes which still exist in a state of very
tolerable preservation. They represent various episodes in the legend
of S. 85 Benedict; all marked by that spirit of simple, almost childish
piety which is a special characteristic of Italian religious history.
The series forms, in fact, a painted _novella_ of monastic life; its
petty jealousies, its petty trials, its tribulations and temptations,
and its indescribably petty miracles. Bazzi was well fitted for the
execution of this task. He had a swift and facile brush, considerable
versatility in the treatment of monotonous subjects, and a
never-failing sense of humour. His white-cowled monks, some of them
with the rosy freshness of boys, some with the handsome brown faces of
middle life, others astute and crafty, others again wrinkled with old
age, have clearly been copied from real models. He puts them into
action without the slightest effort, and surrounds them with
landscapes, architecture, and furniture, appropriate to each successive
situation. The whole is done with so much grace, such simplicity of
composition, and transparency of style, corresponding to the _naïf_ and
superficial legend, that we feel a perfect harmony between the artist's
mind and the motives he was made to handle. In this respect Bazzi's
portion of the legend of S. Benedict is more successful than
Signorelli's. It was fortunate, perhaps, that the conditions of his
task confined him to uncomplicated groupings, and a scale of colour in
which white predominates. For Bazzi, as is shown by subsequent work in
the Farnesina Villa at Rome, and in the church of S. Domenico at Siena,
was no master of composition; and the tone, even of his masterpieces,
inclines to heat. Unlike Signorelli, Bazzi felt a deep artistic
sympathy with female beauty; and the most attractive fresco in the
whole series is that in which the evil monk Florentius brings a bevy of
fair damsels to the convent. There is one group, in particular, of six
women, so delicately varied in carriage of the head and suggested
movement of the body, as to be comparable only to a strain of concerted
86 music. This is perhaps the painter's masterpiece in the rendering of
pure beauty, if we except his S. Sebastian of the Uffizzi.

We tire of studying pictures, hardly less than of reading about them! I
was glad enough, after three hours spent among the frescoes of this
cloister, to wander forth into the copses which surround the convent.
Sunlight was streaming treacherously from flying clouds; and though it
was high noon, the oak-leaves were still a-tremble with dew. Pink
cyclamens and yellow amaryllis starred the moist brown earth; and under
the cypress-trees, where alleys had been cut in former time for pious
feet, the short firm turf was soft and mossy. Before bidding the
hospitable Padre farewell, and starting in our waggonette for Asciano,
it was pleasant to meditate awhile in these green solitudes.
Generations of white-stoled monks who had sat or knelt upon the now
deserted terraces, or had slowly paced the winding paths to Calvaries
aloft and points of vantage high above the wood, rose up before me. My
mind, still full of Bazzi's frescoes, peopled the wilderness with grave
monastic forms, and gracious, young-eyed faces of boyish novices.

87




MONTEPULCIANO


I

For the sake of intending travellers to this, the lordliest of Tuscan
hill-towns, it will be well to state at once and without circumlocution
what does not appear upon the time-tables of the line from Empoli to
Rome. Montepulciano has a station; but this railway station is at the
distance of at least an hour and a half's drive from the mountain upon
which the city stands.

The lumbering train which brought us one October evening from Asciano
crawled into this station after dark, at the very moment when a storm,
which had been gathering from the south-west, burst in deluges of rain
and lightning. There was, however, a covered carriage going to the
town. Into this we packed ourselves, together with a polite Italian
gentleman who, in answer to our questions, consulted his watch, and
smilingly replied that a little half-hour would bring us easily to
Montepulciano. He was a native of the place. He knew perfectly well
that he would be shut up with us in that carriage for two mortal hours
of darkness and downpour. And yet, such is the irresistible impulse in
Italians to say something immediately agreeable, he fed us with false
hopes and had no fear of consequences. What did it matter to him if we
were pulling out our watches and chattering in well-contented undertone
about _vino nobile_, _biftek_, and possibly a _polio arrosto_, or a
dish of _tord_? At 88 the end of the half-hour, as he was well aware,
self-congratulations and visions of a hearty supper would turn to
discontented wailings, and the querulous complaining of defrauded
appetites. But the end of half an hour was still half an hour off; and
we meanwhile were comfortable.

The night was pitchy dark, and blazing flashes of lightning showed a
white ascending road at intervals. Rain rushed in torrents, splashing
against the carriage wheels, which moved uneasily, as though they could
but scarcely stem the river that swept down upon them. Far away above
us to the left, was one light on a hill, which never seemed to get any
nearer. We could see nothing but a chasm of blackness below us on one
side, edged with ghostly olive-trees, and a high bank on the other.
Sometimes a star swam out of the drifting clouds; but then the rain
hissed down again, and the flashes came in floods of livid light,
illuminating the eternal olives and the cypresses which looked like
huge black spectres. It seemed almost impossible for the horses to keep
their feet, as the mountain road grew ever steeper and the torrent
swelled around them. Still they struggled on. The promised half-hour
had been doubled, trebled, quadrupled, when at last we saw the great
brown sombre walls of a city tower above us. Then we entered one of
those narrow lofty Tuscan gates, and rolled upon the pavement of a
street.

The inn at Montepulciano is called Marzocco, after the Florentine lion
which stands upon its column in a little square before the house. The
people there are hospitable, and more than once on subsequent occasions
have they extended to us kindly welcome. But on this, our first
appearance, they had scanty room at their disposal. Seeing us arrive so
late, and march into their dining-room, laden with sealskins,
waterproofs, and ulsters, one of the party 89 hugging a complete
Euripides in Didot's huge edition, they were confounded. At last they
conducted the whole company of four into a narrow back bedroom, where
they pointed to one fair-sized and one very little bed. This was the
only room at liberty, they said; and could we not arrange to sleep
here? _S' accomodi, Signore! S' accomodi, Signora!_ These encouraging
words, uttered in various tones of cheerful and insinuating politeness
to each member of the party in succession, failed to make us comprehend
how a gentleman and his wife, with a lean but rather lengthy English
friend, and a bulky native of the Grisons, could 'accommodate
themselves' collectively and undividedly with what was barely
sufficient for their just moiety, however much it might afford a
night's rest to their worse half. Christian was sent out into the storm
to look for supplementary rooms in Montepulciano, which he failed to
get. Meanwhile we ordered supper, and had the satisfaction of seeing
set upon the board a huge red flask of _vino nobile_. In copious
draughts of this the King of Tuscan wines, we drowned our cares; and
when the cloth was drawn, our friend and Christian passed their night
upon the supper table. The good folk of the inn had recovered from
their surprise, and from the inner recesses of their house had brought
forth mattresses and blankets. So the better and larger half of the
company enjoyed sound sleep.

It rained itself out at night, and the morning was clear, with the
transparent atmosphere of storm-clouds hurrying in broken squadrons
from the bad sea quarter. Yet this is just the weather in which Tuscan
landscape looks its loveliest. Those immense expanses of grey
undulating uplands need the luminousness of watery sunshine, the colour
added by cloud-shadows, and the pearly softness of rising vapours, to
rob them of a certain awful grimness. The main street of Montepulciano
goes straight uphill for a considerable distance 90 between brown
palaces; then mounts by a staircase-zigzag under huge impending masses
of masonry; until it ends in a piazza. On the ascent, at intervals, the
eye is fascinated by prospects to the north and east over Val di
Chiana, Cortona, Thrasymene, Chiusi; to south and west over Monte
Cetona, Radicofani, Monte Amiata, the Val d' Ombrone, and the Sienese
Contado. Grey walls overgrown with ivy, arcades of time-toned brick,
and the forbidding bulk of houses hewn from solid travertine, frame
these glimpses of aë;rial space. The piazza is the top of all things.
Here are the Duomo; the Palazzo del Comune, closely resembling that of
Florence, with the Marzocco on its front; the fountain, between two
quaintly sculptured columns; and the vast palace Del Monte, of heavy
Renaissance architecture, said to be the work of Antonio di San Gallo.

We climbed the tower of the Palazzo del Comune, and stood at the
altitude of 2000 feet above the sea. The view is finer in its kind than
I have elsewhere seen, even in Tuscany, that land of panoramic
prospects over memorable tracts of world-historic country. Such
landscape cannot be described in words. But the worst is that, even
while we gaze, we know that nothing but the faintest memory of our
enjoyment will be carried home with us. The atmospheric conditions were
perfect that morning. The sun was still young; the sky sparkled after
the night's thunderstorm; the whole immensity of earth around lay
lucid, smiling, newly washed in baths of moisture. Masses of
storm-cloud kept rolling from the west, where we seemed to feel the sea
behind those intervening hills. But they did not form in heavy blocks
or hang upon the mountain summits. They hurried and dispersed and
changed and flung their shadows on the world below.

91

II

The charm of this view is composed of so many different elements, so
subtly blent, appealing to so many separate sensibilities; the sense of
grandeur, the sense of space, the sense of natural beauty, and the
sense of human pathos; that deep internal faculty we call historic
sense; that it cannot be defined. First comes the immense surrounding
space—a space measured in each arc of the circumference by sections of
at least fifty miles, limited by points of exquisitely picturesque
beauty, including distant cloud-like mountain ranges and crystals of
sky-blue Apennines, circumscribing landscapes of refined loveliness in
detail, always varied, always marked by objects of peculiar interest
where the eye or memory may linger. Next in importance to this
immensity of space, so powerfully affecting the imagination by its mere
extent, and by the breadth of atmosphere attuning all varieties of form
and colour to one harmony beneath illimitable heaven, may be reckoned
the episodes of rivers, lakes, hills, cities, with old historic names.
For there spreads the lordly length of Thrasymene, islanded and
citadelled, in hazy morning mist, still dreaming of the shock of Roman
hosts with Carthaginian legions. There is the lake of Chiusi, set like
a jewel underneath the copse-clad hills which hide the dust of a dead
Tuscan nation. The streams of Arno start far far away, where Arezzo
lies enfolded in bare uplands. And there at our feet rolls Tiber's
largest affluent, the Chiana. And there is the canal which joins their
fountains in the marsh that Lionardo would have drained. Monte Cetona
is yonder height which rears its bristling ridge defiantly from
neighbouring Chiusi. And there springs Radicofani, the eagle's eyrie of
a brigand brood. Next, Monte Amiata stretches the long lines of her
antique volcano; the swelling mountain flanks, 92 descending gently
from her cloud-capped top, are russet with autumnal oak and chestnut
woods. On them our eyes rest lovingly; imagination wanders for a moment
through those mossy glades, where cyclamens are growing now, and
primroses in spring will peep amid anemones from rustling foliage
strewn by winter's winds. The heights of Casentino, the Perugian
highlands, Volterra, far withdrawn amid a wilderness of rolling hills,
and solemn snow-touched ranges of the Spolentino, Sibyl-haunted
fastnesses of Norcia, form the most distant horizon-lines of this
unending panorama. And then there are the cities placed each upon a
point of vantage: Siena; olive-mantled Chiusi; Cortona, white upon her
spreading throne; poetic Montalcino, lifted aloft against the vaporous
sky; San Quirico, nestling in pastoral tranquillity; Pienza, where
Æneas Sylvius built palaces and called his birthplace after his own
Papal name. Still closer to the town itself of Montepulciano,
stretching along the irregular ridge which gave it building ground, and
trending out on spurs above deep orchards, come the lovely details of
oak-copses, blending with grey tilth and fields rich with olive and
vine. The gaze, exhausted with immensity, pierces those deeply cloven
valleys, sheltered from wind and open to the sun—undulating folds of
brown earth, where Bacchus, when he visited Tuscany, found the
grape-juice that pleased him best, and crowned the wine of
Montepulciano king. Here from our eyrie we can trace white oxen on the
furrows, guided by brown-limbed, white-shirted contadini.

The morning glory of this view from Montepulciano, though irrecoverable
by words, abides in the memory, and draws one back by its unique
attractiveness. On a subsequent visit to the town in springtime, my
wife and I took a twilight walk, just after our arrival, through its
gloomy fortress streets, up to the piazza, where the impendent houses
93 lowered like bastions, and all the masses of their mighty
architecture stood revealed in shadow and dim lamplight. Far and wide,
the country round us gleamed with bonfires; for it was the eve of the
Ascension, when every contadino lights a beacon of chestnut logs and
straw and piled-up leaves. Each castello on the plain, each village on
the hills, each lonely farmhouse at the skirt of forest or the edge of
lake, smouldered like a red Cyclopean eye beneath the vault of stars.
The flames waxed and waned, leapt into tongues, or disappeared. As they
passed from gloom to brilliancy and died away again, they seemed almost
to move. The twilight scene was like that of a vast city, filling the
plain and climbing the heights in terraces. Is this custom, I thought,
a relic of old Pales-worship?

III

The early history of Montepulciano is buried in impenetrable mists of
fable. No one can assign a date to the foundation of these high-hill
cities. The eminence on which it stands belongs to the volcanic system
of Monte Amiata, and must at some time have formed a portion of the
crater which threw that mighty mass aloft. But sons have passed since
the _gran sasso di Maremma_ was a fire-vomiting monster, glaring like
Etna in eruption on the Tyrrhene sea; and through those centuries how
many races may have camped upon the summit we call Montepulciano!
Tradition assigns the first quasi-historical settlement to Lars
Porsena, who is said to have made it his summer residence, when the
lower and more marshy air of Clusium became oppressive. Certainly it
must have been a considerable town in the Etruscan period. Embedded in
the walls of palaces may still be seen numerous fragments of sculptured
basreliefs, the works of that mysterious people. Apropos of
Montepulciano's importance 94 in the early years of Roman history, I
lighted on a quaint story related by its very jejune annalist, Spinello
Benci. It will be remembered that Livy attributes the invasion of the
Gauls, who, after besieging Clusium, advanced on Rome, to the
persuasions of a certain Aruns. He was an exile from Clusium; and
wishing to revenge himself upon his country-people, he allured the
Senonian Gauls into his service by the promise of excellent wine,
samples of which he had taken with him into Lombardy. Spinello Benci
accepts the legend literally, and continues: 'These wines were so
pleasing to the palate of the barbarians, that they were induced to
quit the rich and teeming valley of the Po, to cross the Apennines, and
move in battle array against Chiusi. And it is clear that the wine
which Aruns selected for the purpose was the same as that which is
produced to this day at Montepulciano. For nowhere else in the Etruscan
district can wines of equally generous quality and fiery spirit be
found, so adapted for export and capable of such long preservation.'

We may smile at the historian's _naïveté_. Yet the fact remains that
good wine of Montepulciano can still allure barbarians of this epoch to
the spot where it is grown. Of all Italian vintages, with the exception
of some rare qualities of Sicily and the Valtellina, it is, in my
humble opinion, the best. And when the time comes for Italy to develop
the resources of her vineyards upon scientific principles,
Montepulciano will drive Brolio from the field and take the same place
by the side of Chianti which Volnay occupies by common Macon. It will
then be quoted upon wine-lists throughout Europe, and find its place
upon the tables of rich epicures in Hyperborean regions, and add its
generous warmth to Trans-atlantic banquets. Even as it is now made,
with very little care bestowed on cultivation and none to speak of on
selection of the grape, the wine is rich and noble, slightly rough to a
95 sophisticated palate, but clean in quality and powerful and racy. It
deserves the enthusiasm attributed by Redi to Bacchus:[57]

Fill, fill, let us all have our will!
But with _what_, with _what_, boys, shall we fill.
Sweet Ariadne—no, not _that_ one—_ah_ no;
Fill me the manna of Montepulciano:
Fill me a magnum and reach it me.—Gods!
How it glides to my heart by the sweetest of roads!
Oh, how it kisses me, tickles me, bites me!
Oh, how my eyes loosen sweetly in tears!
I'm ravished! I'm rapt! Heaven finds me admissible!
Lost in an ecstasy! blinded! invisible!—
Hearken all earth!
We, Bacchus, in the might of our great mirth,
To all who reverence us, are right thinkers;
Hear, all ye drinkers!
Give ear and give faith to the edict divine;
Montepulciano's the King of all wine.


 [57] From Leigh Hunt's Translation.

It is necessary, however, that our modern barbarian should travel to
Montepulciano itself, and there obtain a flask of _manna_ or _vino
nobile_ from some trusty cellar-master. He will not find it bottled in
the inns or restaurants upon his road.

IV

The landscape and the wine of Montepulciano are both well worth the
trouble of a visit to this somewhat inaccessible city. Yet more remains
to be said about the attractions of the town itself. In the Duomo,
which was spoiled by unintelligent rebuilding at a dismal epoch of
barren art, are fragments of one of the rarest monuments of Tuscan
sculpture. This is the tomb of Bartolommeo Aragazzi. He was a native of
Montepulciano, and secretary to Pope Martin V., that _Papa_ 96 _Martino
non vale un quattrino_, on whom, during his long residence in Florence,
the street-boys made their rhymes. Twelve years before his death he
commissioned Donatello and Michelozzo Michelozzi, who about that period
were working together upon the monuments of Pope John XXIII. and
Cardinal Brancacci, to erect his own tomb at the enormous cost of
twenty-four thousand scudi. That thirst for immortality of fame, which
inspired the humanists of the Renaissance, prompted Aragazzi to this
princely expenditure. Yet, having somehow won the hatred of his
fellow-students, he was immediately censured for excessive vanity.
Lionardo Bruni makes his monument the theme of a ferocious onslaught.
Writing to Poggio Bracciolini, Bruni tells a story how, while
travelling through the country of Arezzo, he met a train of oxen
dragging heavy waggons piled with marble columns, statues, and all the
necessary details of a sumptuous sepulchre. He stopped, and asked what
it all meant. Then one of the contractors for this transport, wiping
the sweat from his forehead, in utter weariness of the vexatious
labour, at the last end of his temper, answered: 'May the gods destroy
all poets, past, present, and future.' I inquired what he had to do
with poets, and how they had annoyed him. 'Just this,' he replied,
'that this poet, lately deceased, a fool and windy-pated fellow, has
ordered a monument for himself; and with a view to erecting it, these
marbles are being dragged to Montepulciano; but I doubt whether we
shall contrive to get them up there. The roads are too bad.' 'But,'
cried I, 'do you believe _that_ man was a poet—that dunce who had no
science, nay, nor knowledge either? who only rose above the heads of
men by vanity and doltishness?' 'I don't know,' he answered, 'nor did I
ever hear tell, while he was alive, about his being called a poet; but
his fellow-townsmen now decide he was one; nay, if he had but left a
few more money-bags, 97 they'd swear he was a god. Anyhow, but for his
having been a poet, I would not have cursed poets in general.'
Whereupon, the malevolent Bruni withdrew, and composed a
scorpion-tailed oration, addressed to his friend Poggio, on the
suggested theme of 'diuturnity in monuments,' and false ambition. Our
old friends of humanistic learning—Cyrus, Alexander, Cæsar—meet us in
these frothy paragraphs. Cambyses, Xerxes, Artaxerxes, Darius, are
thrown in to make the gruel of rhetoric 'thick and slab.' The whole
epistle ends in a long-drawn peroration of invective against 'that
excrement in human shape,' who had had the ill-luck, by pretence to
scholarship, by big gains from the Papal treasury, by something in his
manners alien from the easy-going customs of the Roman Court, to rouse
the rancour of his fellow-humanists.

I have dwelt upon this episode, partly because it illustrates the
peculiar thirst for glory in the students of that time, but more
especially because it casts a thin clear thread of actual light upon
the masterpiece which, having been transported with this difficulty
from Donatello's workshop, is now to be seen by all lovers of fine art,
in part at least, at Montepulciano. In part at least: the phrase is
pathetic. Poor Aragazzi, who thirsted so for 'diuturnity in monuments,'
who had been so cruelly assaulted in the grave by humanistic jealousy,
expressing its malevolence with humanistic crudity of satire, was
destined after all to be defrauded of his well-paid tomb. The monument,
a master work of Donatello and his collaborator, was duly erected. The
oxen and the contractors, it appears, had floundered through the mud of
Valdichiana, and struggled up the mountain-slopes of Montepulciano. But
when the church, which this triumph of art adorned, came to be
repaired, the miracle of beauty was dismembered. The sculpture for
which Aragazzi spent his thousands of crowns, which Donatello touched
with his immortalising chisel, over 98 which the contractors vented
their curses and Bruni eased his bile; these marbles are now visible as
mere _disjecta membra_ in a church which, lacking them, has little to
detain a traveller's haste.

On the left hand of the central door, as you enter, Aragazzi lies, in
senatorial robes, asleep; his head turned slightly to the right upon
the pillow, his hands folded over his breast. Very noble are the
draperies, and dignified the deep tranquillity of slumber. Here, we
say, is a good man fallen upon sleep, awaiting resurrection. The one
commanding theme of Christian sculpture, in an age of Pagan feeling,
has been adequately rendered. Bartolommeo Aragazzi, like Ilaria led
Carretto at Lucca, like the canopied doges in S. Zanipolo at Venice,
like the Acciauoli in the Florentine Certosa, like the Cardinal di
Portogallo in Samminiato, is carved for us as he had been in life, but
with that life suspended, its fever all smoothed out, its agitations
over, its pettinesses dignified by death. This marmoreal repose of the
once active man symbolises for our imagination the state into which he
passed four centuries ago, but in which, according to the creed, he
still abides, reserved for judgment and re-incarnation. The flesh, clad
with which he walked our earth, may moulder in the vaults beneath. But
it will one day rise again; and art has here presented it imperishable
to our gaze. This is how the Christian sculptors, inspired by the
majestic calm of classic art, dedicated a Christian to the genius of
repose. Among the nations of antiquity this repose of death was
eternal; and being unable to conceive of a man's body otherwise than
for ever obliterated by the flames of funeral, they were perforce led
back to actual life when they would carve his portrait on a tomb. But
for Christianity the rest of the grave has ceased to be eternal.
Centuries may pass, but in the end it must be broken. Therefore art is
justified in 99 showing us the man himself in an imagined state of
sleep. Yet this imagined state of sleep is so incalculably long, and by
the will of God withdrawn from human prophecy, that the ages sweeping
over the dead man before the trumpets of archangels wake him, shall
sooner wear away memorial stone than stir his slumber. It is a slumber,
too, unterrified, unentertained by dreams. Suspended animation finds no
fuller symbolism than the sculptor here presents to us in abstract
form.

The boys of Montepulciano have scratched Messer Aragazzi's sleeping
figure with _graffiti_ at their own free will. Yet they have had no
power to erase the poetry of Donatello's mighty style. That, in spite
of Bruni's envy, in spite of injurious time, in spite of the still
worse insult of the modernised cathedral and the desecrated monument,
embalms him in our memory and secures for him the diuturnity for which
he paid his twenty thousand crowns. Money, methinks, beholding him, was
rarely better expended on a similar ambition. And ambition of this
sort, relying on the genius of such a master to give it wings for
perpetuity of time, is, _pace_ Lionardo Bruni, not ignoble.

cpposite the figure of Messer Aragazzi are two square basreliefs from
the same monument, fixed against piers of the nave. One represents
Madonna enthroned among worshippers; members, it may be supposed, of
Aragazzi's household. Three angelic children, supporting the child
Christ upon her lap, complete that pyramidal form of composition which
Fra Bartolommeo was afterwards to use with such effect in painting. The
other basrelief shows a group of grave men and youths, clasping hands
with loveliest interlacement; the placid sentiment of human fellowship
translated into harmonies of sculptured form. Children below run up to
touch their knees, and reach out boyish 100 arms to welcome them. Two
young men, with half-draped busts and waving hair blown off their
foreheads, anticipate the type of adolescence which Andrea del Sarto
perfected in his S. John. We might imagine that this masterly panel was
intended to represent the arrival of Messer Aragazzi in his home. It is
a scene from the domestic life of the dead man, duly subordinated to
the recumbent figure, which, when the monument was perfect, would have
dominated the whole composition.

Nothing in the range of Donatello's work surpasses these two basreliefs
for harmonies of line and grouping, for choice of form, for beauty of
expression, and for smoothness of surface-working. The marble is of
great delicacy, and is wrought to a wax-like surface. At the high altar
are three more fragments from the mutilated tomb. One is a long low
frieze of children bearing garlands, which probably formed the base of
Aragazzi's monument, and now serves for a predella. The remaining
pieces are detached statues of Fortitude and Faith. The former reminds
us of Donatello's S. George; the latter is twisted into a strained
attitude, full of character, but lacking grace. What the effect of
these emblematic figures would have been when harmonised by the
architectural proportions of the sepulchre, the repose of Aragazzi on
his sarcophagus, the suavity of the two square panels and the rhythmic
beauty of the frieze, it is not easy to conjecture. But rudely severed
from their surroundings, and exposed in isolation, one at each side of
the altar, they leave an impression of awkward discomfort on the
memory. A certain hardness, peculiar to the Florentine manner, is felt
in them. But this quality may have been intended by the sculptors for
the sake of contrast with what is eminently graceful, peaceful, and
melodious in the other fragments of the ruined masterpiece.

101

V

At a certain point in the main street, rather more than halfway from
the Albergo del Marzocco to the piazza, a tablet has been let into the
wall upon the left-hand side. This records the fact that here in 1454
was born Angelo Ambrogini, the special glory of Montepulciano, the
greatest classical scholar and the greatest Italian poet of the
fifteenth century. He is better known in the history of literature as
Poliziano, or Politianus, a name he took from his native city, when he
came, a marvellous boy, at the age of ten, to Florence, and joined the
household of Lorenzo de' Medici. He had already claims upon Lorenzo's
hospitality. For his father, Benedetto, by adopting the cause of Piero
de' Medici in Montepulciano, had exposed himself to bitter feuds and
hatred of his fellow-citizens. To this animosity of party warfare he
fell a victim a few years previously. We only know that he was
murdered, and that he left a helpless widow with five children, of whom
Angelo was the eldest. The Ambrogini or Cini were a family of some
importance in Montepulciano; and their dwelling-house is a palace of
considerable size. From its eastern windows the eye can sweep that vast
expanse of country, embracing the lakes of Thrasymene and Chiusi, which
has been already described. What would have happened, we wonder, if
Messer Benedetto, the learned jurist, had not espoused the Medicean
cause and embroiled himself with murderous antagonists? Would the
little Angelo have grown up in this quiet town, and practised law, and
lived and died a citizen of Montepulciano? In that case the
lecture-rooms of Florence would never have echoed to the sonorous
hexameters of the 'Rusticus' and 'Ambra.' Italian literature would have
lacked the 'Stanze' and 'Orfeo.' European scholarship would have been
defrauded 102 of the impulse given to it by the 'Miscellanea.' The
study of Roman law would have missed those labours on the Pandects,
with which the name of Politian is honourably associated. From the
Florentine society of the fifteenth century would have disappeared the
commanding central figure of humanism, which now contrasts dramatically
with the stern monastic Prior of S. Mark. Benedetto's tragic death gave
Poliziano to Italy and to posterity.

VI

Those who have a day to spare at Montepulciano can scarcely spend it
better than in an excursion to Pienza and San Quirico. Leaving the city
by the road which takes a westerly direction, the first object of
interest is the Church of San Biagio, placed on a fertile plateau
immediately beneath the ancient acropolis. It was erected by Antonio di
San Gallo in 1518, and is one of the most perfect specimens existing of
the sober classical style. The Church consists of a Greek square,
continued at the east end into a semicircular tribune, surmounted by a
central cupola, and flanked by a detached bell-tower, ending in a
pyramidal spire. The whole is built of solid yellow travertine, a
material which, by its warmth of colour, is pleasing to the eye, and
mitigates the mathematical severity of the design. Upon entering, we
feel at once what Alberti called the music of this style; its large and
simple harmonies, depending for effect upon sincerity of plan and
justice of balance. The square masses of the main building, the
projecting cornices and rounded tribune, meet together and soar up into
the cupola; while the grand but austere proportions of the arches and
the piers compose a symphony of perfectly concordant lines. The music
is grave and solemn, architecturally expressed in terms of measured 103
space and outlined symmetry. The whole effect is that of one thing
pleasant to look upon, agreeably appealing to our sense of unity,
charming us by grace and repose; not stimulative nor suggestive, not
multiform nor mysterious. We are reminded of the temples imagined by
Francesco Colonna, and figured in his _Hypnerotomachia Poliphili_. One
of these shrines has, we feel, come into actual existence here; and the
religious ceremonies for which it is adapted are not those of the
Christian worship. Some more primitive, less spiritual rites, involving
less of tragic awe and deep-wrought symbolism, should be here
performed. It is better suited for Polifilo's lustration by Venus
Physizoe than for the mass on Easter morning. And in this respect, the
sentiment of the architecture is exactly faithful to that mood of
religious feeling which appeared in Italy under the influences of the
classical revival—when the essential doctrines of Christianity were
blurred with Pantheism; when Jehovah became _Jupiter Optimus Maximus_;
and Jesus was the _Heros_ of Calvary, and nuns were _Virgines
Vestales_. In literature this mood often strikes us as insincere and
artificial. But it admitted of realisation and showed itself to be
profoundly felt in architecture.

After leaving Madonna di San Biagio, the road strikes at once into an
open country, expanding on the right towards the woody ridge of Monte
Fallonica, on the left toward Cetona and Radicofani, with Monte Amiata
full in front—its double crest and long volcanic slope recalling Etna;
the belt of embrowned forest on its flank, made luminous by sunlight.
Far away stretches the Sienese Maremma; Siena dimly visible upon her
gentle hill; and still beyond, the pyramid of Volterra, huge and
cloud-like, piled against the sky. The road, as is almost invariable in
this district, keeps to the highest line of ridges, winding much, and
following 104 the dimplings of the earthy hills. Here and there a
solitary castello, rusty with old age, and turned into a farm, juts
into picturesqueness from some point of vantage on a mound surrounded
with green tillage. But soon the dull and intolerable _creta_, ash-grey
earth, without a vestige of vegetation, furrowed by rain, and
desolately breaking into gullies, swallows up variety and charm. It is
difficult to believe that this _creta_ of Southern Tuscany, which has
all the appearance of barrenness, and is a positive deformity in the
landscape, can be really fruitful. Yet we are frequently being told
that it only needs assiduous labour to render it enormously productive.

When we reached Pienza we were already in the middle of a country
without cultivation, abandoned to the marl. It is a little place,
perched upon the ledge of a long sliding hill, which commands the vale
of Orcia; Monte Amiata soaring in aë;rial majesty beyond. Its old name
was Cosignano. But it had the honour of giving birth to Æneas Sylvius
Piccolomini, who, when he was elected to the Papacy and had assumed the
title of Pius II., determined to transform and dignify his native
village, and to call it after his own name. From that time forward
Cosignano has been known as Pienza.

Pius II. succeeded effectually in leaving his mark upon the town. And
this forms its main interest at the present time. We see in Pienza how
the most active-minded and intelligent man of his epoch, the
representative genius of Italy in the middle of the fifteenth century,
commanding vast wealth and the Pontifical prestige, worked out his whim
of city-building. The experiment had to be made upon a small scale; for
Pienza was then and was destined to remain a village. Yet here, upon
this miniature piazza—in modern as in ancient Italy the meeting-point
of civic life, the forum— 105 we find a cathedral, a palace of the
bishop, a palace of the feudal lord, and a palace of the commune,
arranged upon a well-considered plan, and executed after one design in
a consistent style. The religious, municipal, signorial, and
ecclesiastical functions of the little town are centralised around the
open market-place, on which the common people transacted business and
discussed affairs. Pius entrusted the realisation of his scheme to a
Florentine architect; whether Bernardo Rossellino, or a certain
Bernardo di Lorenzo, is still uncertain. The same artist, working in
the flat manner of Florentine domestic architecture, with rusticated
basements, rounded windows and bold projecting cornices—the manner
which is so nobly illustrated by the Rucellai and Strozzi palaces at
Florence—executed also for Pius the monumental Palazzo Piccolomini at
Siena. It is a great misfortune for the group of buildings he designed
at Pienza, that they are huddled together in close quarters on a square
too small for their effect. A want of space is peculiarly injurious to
the architecture of this date, 1462, which, itself geometrical and
spatial, demands a certain harmony and liberty in its surroundings, a
proportion between the room occupied by each building and the masses of
the edifice. The style is severe and prosaic. Those charming episodes
and accidents of fancy, in which the Gothic style and the style of the
earlier Lombard Renaissance abounded, are wholly wanting to the rigid,
mathematical, hard-headed genius of the Florentine quattrocento.
Pienza, therefore, disappoints us. Its heavy palace frontispieces shut
the spirit up in a tight box. We seem unable to breathe, and lack that
element of life and picturesqueness which the splendid retinues of
nobles in the age of Pinturicchio might have added to the now forlorn
Piazza.

Yet the material is a fine warm travertine, mellowing to 106 dark red,
brightening to golden, with some details, especially the tower of the
Palazzo Comunale, in red brick. This building, by the way, is imitated
in miniature from that of Florence. The cathedral is a small church of
three aisles, equally high, ending in what the French would call a
_chevet_. Pius had observed this plan of construction somewhere in
Austria, and commanded his architect, Bernardo, to observe it in his
plan. He was attracted by the facilities for window-lighting which it
offered; and what is very singular, he provided by the Bull of his
foundation for keeping the walls of the interior free from frescoes and
other coloured decorations. The result is that, though the interior
effect is pleasing, the church presents a frigid aspect to eyes
familiarised with warmth of tone in other buildings of that period. The
details of the columns and friezes are classical; and the façade,
strictly corresponding to the structure, and very honest in its
decorative elements, is also of the earlier Renaissance style. But the
vaulting and some of the windows are pointed.

The Palazzo Piccolomini, standing at the right hand of the Duomo, is a
vast square edifice. The walls are flat and even, pierced at regular
intervals with windows, except upon the south-west side, where the
rectangular design is broken by a noble double Loggiata, gallery rising
above gallery—serene curves of arches, grandly proportioned columns,
massive balustrades, a spacious corridor, a roomy vaulting—opening out
upon the palace garden, and offering fair prospect over the wooded
heights of Castiglione and Rocca d' Orcia, up to Radicofani and shadowy
Amiata. It was in these double tiers of galleries, in the garden
beneath and in the open inner square of the palazzo, that the great
life of Italian aristocracy displayed itself. Four centuries ago these
spaces, now so desolate in their immensity, echoed to the tread of
serving-men, the songs of pages; horse-hooves struck upon the pavement
107 of the court; spurs jingled on the staircases; the brocaded trains
of ladies sweeping from their chambers rustled on the marbles of the
loggia; knights let their hawks fly from the garden parapets; cardinals
and abbreviators gathered round the doors from which the Pope would
issue, when he rose from his siesta to take the cool of evening in
those airy colonnades. How impossible it is to realise that scene amid
this solitude! The palazzo still belongs to the Piccolomini family. But
it has fallen into something worse than ruin—the squalor of
half-starved existence, shorn of all that justified its grand
proportions. Partition-walls have been run up across its halls to meet
the requirements of our contracted modern customs. Nothing remains of
the original decorations except one carved chimney-piece, an emblazoned
shield, and a frescoed portrait of the founder. All movable treasures
have been made away with. And yet the carved heraldics of the exterior,
the coat of Piccolomini, 'argent, on a cross azure five crescents or,'
the Papal ensigns, keys, and tiara, and the monogram of Pius, prove
that this country dwelling of a Pope must once have been rich in
details befitting its magnificence. With the exception of the very
small portion reserved for the Signori, when they visit Pienza, the
palace has become a granary for country produce in a starveling land.
There was one redeeming point about it to my mind. That was the
handsome young man, with earnest Tuscan eyes and a wonderfully sweet
voice, the servant of the Piccolomini family, who lives here with his
crippled father, and who showed us over the apartments.

We left Pienza and drove on to S. Quirico, through the same wrinkled
wilderness of marl; wasteful, uncultivated, bare to every wind that
blows. A cruel blast was sweeping from the sea, and Monte Amiata
darkened with rain-clouds. Still the pictures, which formed themselves
at intervals, as we 108 wound along these barren ridges, were very fair
to look upon, especially one not far from S. Quirico. It had for
fore-ground a stretch of tilth—olive-trees, honeysuckle hedges, and
cypresses. Beyond soared Amiata in all its breadth and blue
air-blackness, bearing on its mighty flanks the broken cliffs and
tufted woods of Castiglione and the Rocca d'Orcia; eagles' nests
emerging from a fertile valley-champaign, into which the eye was led
for rest. It so chanced that a band of sunlight, escaping from filmy
clouds, touched this picture with silvery greys and soft greens—a
suffusion of vaporous radiance, which made it for one moment a Claude
landscape.

S. Quirico was keeping _festa_. The streets were crowded with healthy,
handsome men and women from the contado. This village lies on the edge
of a great oasis in the Sienese desert—an oasis formed by the waters of
the Orcia and Asso sweeping down to join Ombrone, and stretching on to
Montalcino. We put up at the sign of the 'Two Hares,' where a notable
housewife gave us a dinner of all we could desire; _frittata di
cervello_, good fish, roast lamb stuffed with rosemary, salad and
cheese, with excellent wine and black coffee, at the rate of three
_lire_ a head.

The attraction of S. Quirico is its gem-like little collegiata, a
Lombard church of the ninth century, with carved portals of the
thirteenth. It is built of golden travertine; some details in brown
sandstone. The western and southern portals have pillars resting on the
backs of lions. On the western side these pillars are four slender
columns, linked by snake-like ligatures. On the southern side they
consist of two carved figures—possibly S. John and the Archangel
Michael. There is great freedom and beauty in these statues, as also in
the lions which support them, recalling the early French and German
manner. In addition, one finds the 109 usual Lombard grotesques—two
sea-monsters, biting each other; harpy-birds; a dragon with a twisted
tail; little men grinning and squatting in adaptation to coigns and
angles of the windows. The toothed and chevron patterns of the north
are quaintly blent with rude acanthus scrolls and classical
egg-mouldings. Over the western porch is a Gothic rose window.
Altogether this church must be reckoned one of the most curious
specimens of that hybrid architecture, fusing and appropriating
different manners, which perplexes the student in Central Italy. It
seems strangely out of place in Tuscany. Yet, if what one reads of
Toscanella, a village between Viterbo and Orbetello, be true, there
exist examples of a similar fantastic Lombard style even lower down.

The interior was most disastrously gutted and 'restored' in 1731: its
open wooden roof masked by a false stucco vaulting. A few relics,
spared by the eighteenth-century Vandals, show that the church was once
rich in antique curiosities. A marble knight in armour lies on his
back, half hidden by the pulpit stairs. And in the choir are half a
dozen rarely beautiful panels of tarsia, executed in a bold style and
on a large scale. One design—a man throwing his face back, and singing,
while he plays a mandoline; with long thick hair and fanciful beretta;
behind him a fine line of cypress and other trees—struck me as
singularly lovely. In another I noticed a branch of peach, broad leaves
and ripe fruit, not only drawn with remarkable grace and power, but so
modelled as to stand out with the roundness of reality.

The whole drive of three hours back to Montepulciano was one long
banquet of inimitable distant views. Next morning, having to take
farewell of the place, we climbed to the Castello, or _arx_ of the old
city! It is a ruined spot, outside the present walls, upon the southern
slope, where there is now a farm, and a fair space of short
sheep-cropped turf, very green and 110 grassy, and gemmed with little
pink geraniums as in England in such places. The walls of the old
castle, overgrown with ivy, are broken down to their foundations. This
may possibly have been done when Montepulciano was dismantled by the
Sienese in 1232. At that date the Commune succumbed to its more
powerful neighbours. The half of its inhabitants were murdered, and its
fortifications were destroyed. Such episodes are common enough in the
history of that internecine struggle for existence between the Italian
municipalities, which preceded the more famous strife of Guelfs and
Ghibellines. Stretched upon the smooth turf of the Castello, we bade
adieu to the divine landscape bathed in light and mountain air—to
Thrasymene and Chiusi and Cetona; to Amiata, Pienza, and S. Quirico; to
Montalcino and the mountains of Volterra; to Siena and Cortona; and,
closer, to Monte Fallonica, Madonna di Biagio, the house-roofs and the
Palazzo tower of Montepulciano.

111




PERUGIA


Perugia is the empress of hill-set Italian cities. Southward from her
high-built battlements and church towers the eye can sweep a circuit of
the Apennines unrivalled in its width. From cloudlike Radicofani, above
Siena in the west, to snow-capped Monte Catria, beneath whose summit
Dante spent those saddest months of solitude in 1313, the mountains
curve continuously in lines of austere dignity and tempered sweetness.
Assisi, Spoleto, Todi, Trevi, crown lesser heights within the range of
vision. Here and there the glimpse of distant rivers lights a silver
spark upon the plain. Those hills conceal Lake Thrasymene; and there
lies Orvieto, and Ancona there: while at our feet the Umbrian
champaign, breaking away into the valley of the Tiber, spreads in all
the largeness of majestically converging mountain-slopes. This is a
landscape which can never lose its charm. Whether it be purple golden
summer, or winter with sad tints of russet woods and faintly rosy
snows, or spring attired in tenderest green of new-fledged trees and
budding flowers, the air is always pure and light and finely tempered
here. City gates, sombre as their own antiquity, frame vistas of the
laughing fields. Terraces, flanked on either side by jutting masonry,
cut clear vignettes of olive-hoary slopes, with cypress-shadowed farms
in hollows of the hills. Each coign or point of vantage carries a
bastion or tower of Etruscan, Roman, mediæval architecture, tracing the
limits of the town upon its mountain plateau. Everywhere 112 art and
nature lie side by side in amity beneath a sky so pure and delicate,
that from its limpid depth the spirit seems to drink new life. What
air-tints of lilac, orange, and pale amethyst are shed upon those vast
ethereal hills and undulating plains! What wandering cloud-shadows sail
across this sea of olives and of vines, with here and there a fleece of
vapour or a column of blue smoke from charcoal burners on the mountain
flank! To southward, far away beyond those hills, is felt the presence
of eternal Rome, not seen, but clearly indicated by the hurrying of a
hundred streams that swell the Tiber.

In the neighbourhood of the town itself there is plenty to attract the
student of antiquities, or art, or history. He may trace the walls of
the Etruscan city, and explore the vaults where the dust of the
Volumnii lies coffered in sarcophagi and urns. Mild faces of grave
deities lean from the living tufa above those narrow alcoves, where the
chisel-marks are still fresh, and where the vigilant lamps still hang
suspended from the roof by leaden chains. Or, in the Museum, he may
read on basreliefs and vases how gloomy and morose were the
superstitions of those obscure forerunners of majestic Rome. The piazza
offers one of the most perfect Gothic façades, in its Palazzo Pubblico,
to be found in Italy. The flight of marble steps is guarded from above
by the bronze griffin of Perugia and the Baglioni, with the bronze lion
of the Guelf faction, to which the town was ever faithful. Upon their
marble brackets they ramp in all the lean ferocity of feudal heraldry,
and from their claws hang down the chains wrested in old warfare from
some barricaded gateway of Siena. Below is the fountain, on the
many-sided curves of which Giovanni Pisano sculptured, in quaint
statuettes and basreliefs, all the learning of the middle ages, from
the Bible history down to fables of Æsop and allegories of the several
months. Facing the same piazza 113 is the Sala del Cambio, a mediæval
Bourse, with its tribunal for the settlement of mercantile disputes,
and its exquisite carved woodwork and frescoes, the masterpiece of
Perugino's school. Hard by is the University, once crowded with native
and foreign students, where the eloquence of Greek Demetrius in the
first dawn of the Renaissance withdrew the gallants of Perugia—those
slim youths with shocks of nut-brown hair beneath their tiny red caps,
whose comely legs, encased in tight-fitting hose of two different
colours, looked so strange to modern eyes upon the canvas of
Signorelli—from their dice and wine-cups, and amours and daggers, to
grave studies in the lore of Greece and Rome.

This piazza, the scene of all the bloodiest tragedies in Perugian
annals, is closed at the north end by the Cathedral, with the open
pulpit in its wall from which S. Bernardino of Siena preached peace in
vain. The citizens wept to hear his words: a bonfire of vanities was
lighted on the flags beside Pisano's fountain: foe kissed foe: and the
same cowl of S. Francis was set in token of repentance on heads that
long had schemed destruction, each for each. But a few days passed, and
the penitents returned to cut each other's throat. Often and often have
those steps of the Duomo run with blood of Baglioni, Oddi, Arcipreti,
and La Staffa. Once the whole church had to be washed with wine and
blessed anew before the rites of Christianity could be resumed in its
desecrated aisles. It was here that within the space of two days, in
1500, the catafalque was raised for the murdered Astorre, and for his
traitorous cousin Grifonetto Baglioni. Here, too, if more ancient
tradition does not err, were stretched the corpses of twenty-seven
members of the same great house at the end of one of their grim
combats.

No Italian city illustrates more forcibly than Perugia the violent
contrasts of the earlier Renaissance. This is perhaps 114 its most
essential characteristic—that which constitutes its chief æsthetic
interest. To many travellers the name of Perugia suggests at once the
painter who, more than any other, gave expression to devout emotions in
consummate works of pietistic art. They remember how Raphael, when a
boy, with Pinturicchio, Lo Spagna, and Adone Doni, in the workshop of
Pietro Perugino, learned the secret of that style to which he gave
sublimity and freedom in his Madonnas di San Sisto, di Foligno, and del
Cardellino. But the students of mediæval history in detail know Perugia
far better as the lion's lair of one of the most ferocious broods of
heroic ruffians Italy can boast. To them the name of Perugia suggests
at once the great house of the Baglioni, who drenched Umbria with
blood, and gave the broad fields of Assisi to the wolf, and who through
six successive generations bred captains for the armies of Venice,
Florence, Naples, and the Church.[58] That the trade of Perugino in
religious pictures should have been carried on in the city which shared
the factions of the Baglioni—that Raphael should have been painting
Pietas while Astorre and Simonetto were being murdered by the beautiful
young Grifonetto—is a paradox of the purest water in the history of
civilisation.

 [58] Most of the references in this essay are made to the Perugian
 chronicles of Graziani, Matarazzo, Bontempi, and Frolliere, in the
 _Archivio Storico Italiano_, vol. xvi. parts 1 and 2. Ariodante
 Fabretti's _Biografie dei Capitani Venturieri dell' Umbria_ supply
 some details.

The art of Perugino implied a large number of devout and wealthy
patrons, a public not only capable of comprehending him, but also eager
to restrict his great powers within the limits of purely devotional
delineation. The feuds and passions of the Baglioni, on the other hand,
implied a society in which egregious crimes only needed success to be
accounted glorious, where force, cruelty, and cynical craft reigned 115
supreme, and where the animal instincts attained gigantic proportions
in the persons of splendid young athletic despots. Even the names of
these Baglioni, Astorre, Lavinia, Zenobia, Atalanta, Troilo, Ercole,
Annibale, Ascanio, Penelope, Orazio, and so forth, clash with the sweet
mild forms of Perugino, whose very executioners are candidates for
Paradise, and kill their martyrs with compunction.

In Italy of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries such contradictions
subsisted in the same place and under the conditions of a common
culture, because there was no limit to the development of personality.
Character was far more absolute then than now. The force of the modern
world, working in the men of those times like powerful wine, as yet
displayed itself only as a spirit of freedom and expansion and revolt.
The strait laces of mediæval Christianity were loosened. The coercive
action of public opinion had not yet made itself dominant. That was an
age of adolescence, in which men were and dared to be _themselves_ for
good or evil. Hypocrisy, except for some solid, well-defined, selfish
purpose, was unknown: the deference to established canons of decorum
which constitutes more than half of our so-called morality, would have
been scarcely intelligible to an Italian. The outlines of individuality
were therefore strongly accentuated. Life itself was dramatic in its
incidents and motives, its catastrophes and contrasts. These
conditions, eminently favourable to the growth of arts and the pursuit
of science, were no less conducive to the hypertrophy of passions, and
to the full development of ferocious and inhuman personalities. Every
man did what seemed good in his own eyes. Far less restrained than we
are by the verdict of his neighbours, but bound by faith more blind and
fiercer superstitions, he displayed the contradictions of his character
in picturesque chiaroscuro. What he could was the limit set on what 116
he would. Therefore, considering the infinite varieties of human
temperaments, it was not merely possible, but natural, for Pietro
Perugino and Gianpaolo Baglioni to be inhabitants at the same time of
the selfsame city, and for the pious Atalanta to mourn the bloodshed
and the treason of her Achillean son, the young and terrible Grifone.
Here, in a word, in Perugia, beneath the fierce blaze of the
Renaissance, were brought into splendid contrast both the martial
violence and the religious sentiment of mediævalism, raised for a
moment to the elevation of fine art.

Some of Perugino's qualities can be studied better in Perugia than
elsewhere. Of his purely religious pictures—altar-pieces of Madonna and
Saints, martyrdoms of S. Sebastian, Crucifixions, Ascensions,
Annunciations, and Depositions from the Cross,—fine specimens are
exhibited in nearly all the galleries of Europe. A large number of his
works and of those of his scholars may be seen assembled in the
Pinacoteca of Perugia. Yet the student of his pietistic style finds
little here of novelty to notice. It is in the Sala del Cambio that we
gain a really new conception of his faculty. Upon the decoration of
that little hall he concentrated all his powers of invention. The
frescoes of the Transfiguration and the Nativity, which face the great
door, are the triumphs of his devotional manner. On other panels of the
chamber he has portrayed the philosophers of Greece and Rome, the kings
and generals of antiquity, the prophets and the sibyls who announced
Christ's advent. The roof is covered with arabesques of delicate design
and dainty execution—labyrinths of fanciful improvisation, in which
flowers and foliage and human forms are woven into a harmonious
framework for the medallions of the seven planets. The woodwork with
which the hall is lined below the frescoes, shows to what a point of
perfection the art of intarsiatura had 117 been carried in his school.
All these decorative masterpieces are the product of one ingenuous
style. Uninfluenced by the Roman frescoes imitated by Raphael in his
Loggie of the Vatican, they breathe the spirit of the earlier
Renaissance, which created for itself free forms of grace and
loveliness without a pattern, divining by its innate sense of beauty
what the classic artists had achieved. Take for an example the
medallion of the planet Jupiter. The king of gods and men, hoary-headed
and mild-eyed, is seated in his chariot drawn by eagles: before him
kneels Ganymede, a fair-haired, exquisite, slim page, with floating
mantle and ribbands fluttering round his tight hose and jerkin. Such
were the cup-bearers of Galeazzo Sforza and Gianpaolo Baglioni. Then
compare this fresco with the Jupiter in mosaic upon the cupola of the
Chigi chapel in S. Maria del Popolo at Rome. A new age of experience
had passed over Raphael between his execution of Perugino's design in
the one and his conception of the other. He had seen the marbles of the
Vatican, and had heard of Plato in the interval: the simple graces of
the earlier Renaissance were no longer enough for him; but he must
realise the thought of classic myths in his new manner. In the same way
we may compare this Transfiguration with Raphael's last picture, these
sibyls with those of S. Maria della Pace, these sages with the School
of Athens, these warriors with the Battle of Maxentius. What is
characteristic of the full-grown Raphael is his universal
comprehension, his royal faculty for representing past and present,
near and distant, things the most diverse, by forms ideal and yet
distinctive. Each phase of the world's history and of human activity
receives from him appropriate and elevated expression. What is
characteristic of the frescoes in the Sala del Cambio, and indeed of
the whole manner of Perugino, is that all subjects, sacred or secular,
allegorical or real, are 118 conceived in the same spirit of restrained
and well-bred piety. There is no attempt at historical propriety or
dramatic realism. Grave, ascetic, melancholy faces of saints are put on
bodies of kings, generals, sages, sibyls, and deities alike. The same
ribbands and studied draperies clothe and connect all. The same
conventional attitudes of meditative gracefulness are repeated in each
group. Yet, the whole effect, if somewhat feeble and insipid, is
harmonious and thoughtful. We see that each part has proceeded from the
same mind, in the same mood, and that the master's mind was no common
one, the mood itself was noble. Good taste is everywhere apparent: the
work throughout is a masterpiece of refined fancy.

To Perugino the representative imagination was of less importance than
a certain delicate and adequately ideal mode of feeling and conceiving.
The consequent charm of his style is that everything is thought out and
rendered visible in one decorous key. The worst that can be said of it
is that its suavity inclines to mawkishness, and that its quietism
borders upon sleepiness. We find it difficult not to accuse him of
affectation. At the same time we are forced to allow that what he did,
and what he refrained from doing, was determined by a purpose. A fresco
of the Adoration of the Shepherds, and a picture of S. Sebastian in the
Pinacoteca, where the archer on the right hand is drawn in a natural
attitude with force and truth, show well enough what Perugino could do
when he chose.

The best way of explaining his conventionality, in which the supreme
power of a master is always verging on the facile trick of a mannerist,
is to suppose that the people of Perugia and the Umbrian highlands
imposed on him this narrow mode of treatment. We may presume that he
was always receiving orders for pictures to be executed in his
well-known manner. 119 Celestial insipidity in art was the fashion in
that Umbria which the Baglioni and the Popes laid waste from time to
time with fire and sword.[59]

 [59] It will not be forgotten by students of Italian history that
 Umbria was the cradle of the _Battuti_ or Flagellants, who overspread
 Italy in the fourteenth century, and to whose devotion were due the
 _Laude_, or popular hymns of the religious confraternities, which in
 course of time produced the _Sacre Rappresentazioni_ of
 fifteenth-century Florentine literature. Umbria, and especially
 Perugia and Assisi, seems to have been inventive in piety between 1200
 and 1400.

Therefore the painter who had made his reputation by placing devout
young faces upon twisted necks, with a back-ground of limpid twilight
and calm landscape, was forced by the fervour of his patrons, and his
own desire for money, to perpetuate pious prettinesses long after he
had ceased to feel them. It is just this widespread popularity of a
master unrivalled in one line of devotional sentimentalism which makes
the contrast between Perugino and the Baglioni family so striking.

The Baglioni first came into notice during the wars they carried on
with the Oddi of Perugia in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.[60]
This was one of those duels to the death, like that of the Visconti
with the Torrensi of Milan, on which the fate of so many Italian cities
in the middle ages hung. The nobles fought; the townsfolk assisted like
a Greek chorus, sharing the passions of the actors, but contributing
little to the 120 catastrophe. The piazza was the theatre on which the
tragedy was played. In this contest the Baglioni proved the stronger,
and began to sway the state of Perugia after the irregular fashion of
Italian despots. They had no legal right over the city, no hereditary
magistracy, no title of princely authority.[61] The Church was reckoned
the supreme administrator of the Perugian commonwealth. But in reality
no man could set foot on the Umbrian plain without permission from the
Baglioni. They elected the officers of state. The lives and goods of
the citizens were at their discretion. When a Papal legate showed his
face, they made the town too hot to hold him. One of Innocent VIII.'s
nephews had been murdered by them.[62] Another cardinal had shut
himself up in a box, and sneaked on mule-back like a bale of
merchandise through the gates to escape their fury. It was in vain that
from time to time the people rose against them, massacring Pandolfo
Baglioni on the public square in 1393, and joining with Ridolfo and
Braccio of the dominant house to assassinate another Pandolfo with his
son Niccolo in 1460. The more they were cut down, the more they
flourished. The wealth they derived from their lordships in the duchy
of Spoleto and the Umbrian hill-cities, and the treasures they
accumulated in the service of the Italian republics, made them
omnipotent in their native town. There they built tall houses on the
site which Paul III. chose afterwards for his _castello_, and which is
now an open place above the Porta San Carlo. From the 121 balconies and
turrets of these palaces, swarming with their _bravi_, they surveyed
the splendid land that felt their force—a land which, even in
midsummer, from sunrise to sunset keeps the light of day upon its
up-turned face. And from this eyrie they issued forth to prey upon the
plain, or to take their lust of love or blood within the city streets.
The Baglioni spent but short time in the amusements of peace. From
father to son they were warriors, and we have records of few Italian
houses, except perhaps the Malatesti of Rimini, who equalled them in
hardihood and fierceness. Especially were they noted for the
remorseless _vendette_ which they carried on among themselves, cousin
tracking cousin to death with the ferocity and craft of sleuthhounds.
Had they restrained these fratricidal passions, they might, perhaps, by
following some common policy, like that of the Medici in Florence or
the Bentivogli in Bologna, have successfully resisted the Papal
authority and secured dynastic sovereignty.

 [60] The Baglioni persecuted their rivals with persistent fury to the
 very last. Matarazzo tells how Morgante Baglioni gave a death-wound to
 his nephew, the young Carlo de li Oddi, in 1501: 'Dielli una ferita
 nella formosa faccia: el quale era in aspetto vago e bello giovane d'
 anni 23 o 24, _al quale uscivano e bionde tresse sotto la bella
 armadura_.' The same night his kinsman Pompeo was murdered in prison
 with this last lament upon his lips: 'O infelice casa degli Oddi,
 quale aveste tanta, fama di conduttieri, capitanie, cavaliere, speron
 d' oro, protonotarie, e abbate; et in uno solo tempo aveste homine
 quarantadue; e oggie, per me quale son ultimo, se asconde el nome de
 la magnifica e famosa casa degli Oddi, che mai al mondo non serà píu
 nominata' (p. 175).


 [61] The Baglioni were lords of Spello, Bettona, Montalera, and other
 Umbrian burghs, but never of Perugia. Perugia had a civic constitution
 similar to that of Florence and other Guelf towns under the protection
 of the Holy See. The power of the eminent house was based only on
 wealth and prestige.


 [62] See Matarazzo, p. 38. It is here that he relates the covert
 threat addressed by Guido Baglioni to Alexander VI., who was seeking
 to inveigle him into his clutches.

It is not until 1495 that the history of the Baglioni becomes dramatic,
possibly because till then they lacked the pen of Matarazzo.[63] But
from this year forward to their final extinction, every detail of their
doings has a picturesque and awful interest. Domestic furies, like the
revel descried by Cassandra above the palace of Mycenæ, seem to take
possession of the fated house; and the doom which has fallen on them is
worked out with pitiless exactitude to the last generation. In 1495 the
heads of the Casa Baglioni were two brothers, Guido and Ridolfo, who
had a numerous progeny of heroic sons. From Guido sprang Astorre,
Adriano, called for his 122 great strength Morgante,[64] Gismondo,
Marcantonio, and Gentile. Ridolfo owned Troilo, Gianpaolo, and
Simonetto. The first glimpse we get of these young athletes in
Matarazzo's chronicle is on the occasion of a sudden assault upon
Perugia, made by the Oddi and the exiles of their faction in September
1495. The foes of the Baglioni entered the gates, and began breaking
the iron chains, _serragli_, which barred the streets against advancing
cavalry. None of the noble house were on the alert except young
Simonetto, a lad of eighteen, fierce and cruel, who had not yet begun
to shave his chin.[65] In spite of all dissuasion, he rushed forth
alone, bareheaded, in his shirt, with a sword in his right hand and a
buckler on his arm, and fought against a squadron. There at the barrier
of the piazza he kept his foes at bay, smiting men-at-arms to the
ground with the sweep of his tremendous sword, and receiving on his
gentle body twenty-two cruel wounds. While thus at fearful odds, the
noble Astorre mounted his charger and joined him. Upon his helmet
flashed the falcon of the Baglioni with the dragon's tail that swept
behind. Bidding Simonetto tend his wounds, he in his turn held the
square.

 [63] His chronicle is a masterpiece of naïve, unstudied narrative. Few
 documents are so important for the student of the sixteenth century in
 Italy. Whether it be really the work of Matarazzo or Maturanzio, the
 distinguished humanist, is more than doubtful. The writer seems to me
 as yet unspoiled by classic studies and the pedantries of imitation.


 [64] This name, it may be incidentally mentioned, proves the
 wide-spread popularity of Pulci's poem, the _Morgante Maggiore_.


 [65] 'Era costui al presente di anni 18 o 19; ancora non se radeva
 barba; e mostrava tanta forza e tanto ardire, e era tanto adatto nel
 fatto d' arme, che era gran maraveglia; e iostrava cum tanta
 gintilezza e gagliardia, che homo del mondo non l' aria mai creso; et
 aria dato con la punta de la lancia in nel fondo d' uno bicchiere da
 la mattina a la sera,' &c. (p. 50).

Listen to Matarazzo's description of the scene; it is as good as any
piece of the 'Mort Arthur:'—'According to the report of one who told me
what he had seen with his own eyes, never did anvil take so many blows
as he upon his person and his steed; and they all kept striking at his
lordship in 123 such crowds that the one prevented the other. And so
many lances, partisans, and crossbow quarries, and other weapons, made
upon his body a most mighty din, that above every other noise and shout
was heard the thud of those great strokes. But he, like one who had the
mastery of war, set his charger where the press was thickest, jostling
now one, and now another; so that he ever kept at least ten men of his
foes stretched on the ground beneath his horse's hoofs; which horse was
a most fierce beast, and gave his enemies what trouble he best could.
And now that gentle lord was all fordone with sweat and toil, he and
his charger; and so weary were they that scarcely could they any longer
breathe.'

Soon after, the Baglioni mustered in force. One by one their heroes
rushed from the palaces. The enemy were driven back with slaughter; and
a war ensued, which made the fair land between Assisi and Perugia a
wilderness for many months. It must not be forgotten that, at the time
of these great feats of Simonetto and Astorre, young Raphael was
painting in the studio of Perugino. What the whole city witnessed with
astonishment and admiration, he, the keenly sensitive artist-boy,
treasured in his memory. Therefore in the S. George of the Louvre, and
in the mounted horseman trampling upon Heliodorus in the Stanze of the
Vatican, victorious Astorre lives for ever, immortalised in all his
splendour by the painter's art. The grinning griffin on the helmet, the
resistless frown upon the forehead of the beardless knight, the
terrible right arm, and the ferocious steed,—all are there as Raphael
saw and wrote them on his brain. One characteristic of the Baglioni, as
might be plentifully illustrated from their annalist, was their eminent
beauty, which inspired beholders with an enthusiasm and a love they
were far from deserving by their virtues. It is this, in combination
with their personal heroism, which gives a peculiarly 124 dramatic
interest to their doings, and makes the chronicle of Matarazzo more
fascinating than a novel. He seems unable to write about them without
using the language of an adoring lover.

In the affair of 1495 the Baglioni were at amity among themselves. When
they next appear upon the scene, they are engaged in deadly feud.
Cousin has set his hand to the throat of cousin, and the two heroes of
the piazza are destined to be slain by foulest treachery of their own
kin. It must be premised that besides the sons of Guido and Ridolfo
already named, the great house counted among its most distinguished
members a young Grifone, or Grifonetto, the son of Grifone and Atalanta
Baglioni. Both his father and grandfather had died violent deaths in
the prime of their youth; Galeotto, the father of Atalanta, by poison,
and Grifone by the knife at Ponte Ricciolo in 1477. Atalanta was left a
young widow with one only son, this Grifonetto, whom Matarazzo calls
'un altro Ganimede,' and who combined the wealth of two chief branches
of the Baglioni. In 1500, when the events about to be related took
place, he was quite a youth. Brave, rich, handsome, and married to a
young wife, Zenobia Sforza, he was the admiration of Perugia. He and
his wife loved each other dearly; and how, indeed, could it be
otherwise, since 'l' uno e l' altro sembravano doi angioli di
Paradiso?' At the same time he had fallen into the hands of bad and
desperate counsellors. A bastard of the house, Filippo da Braccio, his
half-uncle, was always at his side, instructing him not only in the
accomplishments of chivalry, but also in wild ways that brought his
name into disrepute. Another of his familiars was Carlo Barciglia
Baglioni, an unquiet spirit, who longed for more power than his poverty
and comparative obscurity allowed. With them associated Jeronimo della
Penna, a veritable ruffian, contaminated from his earliest 125 youth
with every form of lust and violence, and capable of any crime.[66]
These three companions, instigated partly by the Lord of Camerino and
partly by their own cupidity, conceived a scheme for massacring the
families of Guido and Ridolfo at one blow. As a consequence of this
wholesale murder, Perugia would be at their discretion. Seeing of what
use Grifonetto by his wealth and name might be to them, they did all
they could to persuade him to join their conjuration. It would appear
that the bait first offered him was the sovereignty of the city, but
that he was at last gained over by being made to believe that his wife
Zenobia had carried on an intrigue with Gianpaolo Baglioni. The
dissolute morals of the family gave plausibility to an infernal trick
which worked upon the jealousy of Grifonetto. Thirsting for revenge, he
consented to the scheme. The conspirators were further fortified by the
accession of Jeronimo della Staffa, and three members of the House of
Corgna. It is noticeable that out of the whole number only two,
Bernardo da Corgna and Filippo da Braccio, were above the age of
thirty. Of the rest, few had reached twenty-five. At so early an age
were the men of those times adepts in violence and treason. The
execution of the plot was fixed for the wedding festivities of Astorre
Baglioni with Lavinia, the daughter of Giovanni Colonna and Giustina
Orsini. At that time the whole Baglioni family were to be assembled in
Perugia, with the single exception of Marcantonio, who was taking baths
at Naples for his health. It was known that the members of the noble
house, nearly all of them condottieri by trade, and eminent for their
great strength 126 and skill in arms, took few precautions for their
safety. They occupied several houses close together between the Porta
San Carlo and the Porta Eburnea, set no regular guard over their
sleeping chambers, and trusted to their personal bravery, and to the
fidelity of their attendants.[67] It was thought that they might be
assassinated in their beds. The wedding festivities began upon the 28th
of July, and great is the particularity with which Matarazzo describes
the doings of each successive day—processions, jousts, triumphal
arches, banquets, balls, and pageants. The night of the 14th of August
was finally set apart for the consummation of _el gran tradimento_: it
is thus that Matarazzo always alludes to the crime of Grifonetto with a
solemnity of reiteration that is most impressive. A heavy stone let
fall into the courtyard of Guido Baglioni's palace was to be the
signal: each conspirator was then to run to the sleeping chamber of his
appointed prey. Two of the principals and fifteen bravi were told off
to each victim: rams and crowbars were prepared to force the doors, if
needful. All happened as had been anticipated. The crash of the falling
stone was heard. The conspirators rushed to the scene of operations.
Astorre, who was sleeping in the house of his traitorous cousin
Grifonetto, was slain in the arms of his young bride, crying, as he
vainly struggled, 'Misero Astorre che more come poltrone!' Simonetto,
who lay that night with a lad called Paolo he greatly loved, flew to
arms, exclaiming to his brother, 'Non dubitare Gismondo, mio fratello!'
He too was soon despatched, together with his bedfellow. Filippo da
Braccio, after killing him, tore from a great wound in his side the
still quivering heart, into which 127 he drove his teeth with savage
fury. Old Guido died groaning, 'Ora è gionto il ponto mio;' and
Gismondo's throat was cut while he lay holding back his face that he
might be spared the sight of his own massacre. The corpses of Astorre
and Simonetto were stripped and thrown out naked into the streets. Men
gathered round and marvelled to see such heroic forms, with faces so
proud and fierce even in death. In especial the foreign students
likened them to ancient Romans.[68] But on their fingers were rings,
and these the ruffians of the place would fain have hacked off with
their knives. From this indignity the noble limbs were spared; then the
dead Baglioni were hurriedly consigned to an unhonoured tomb. Meanwhile
the rest of the intended victims managed to escape. Gianpaolo, assailed
by Grifonetto and Gianfrancesco della Corgna, took refuge with his
squire and bedfellow, Maraglia, upon a staircase leading from his room.
While the squire held the passage with his pike against the foe,
Gianpaolo effected his flight over neighbouring house-roofs. He crept
into the attic of some foreign students, who, trembling with terror,
gave him food and shelter, clad him in a scholar's gown, and helped him
to fly in this disguise from the gates at dawn. He then joined his
brother Troilo at Marsciano, whence he returned without delay to punish
the traitors. At the same time Grifonetto's mother, Atalanta, taking
with her his wife Zenobia and the two young sons of Gianpaolo,
Malatesta and Orazio, afterwards so celebrated in Italian history for
their great feats of arms and their crimes, fled to her country-house
at Landona. Grifonetto in vain 128 sought to see her there. She drove
him from her presence with curses for the treason and the fratricide
that he had planned. It is very characteristic of these wild natures,
framed of fierce instincts and discordant passions, that his mother's
curse weighed like lead upon the unfortunate young man. Next day, when
Gianpaolo returned to try the luck of arms, Grifonetto, deserted by the
companions of his crime and paralysed by the sense of his guilt, went
out alone to meet him on the public place. The semi-failure of their
scheme had terrified the conspirators: the horrors of that night of
blood unnerved them. All had fled except the next victim of the feud.
Putting his sword to the youth's throat, Gianpaolo looked into his eyes
and said, 'Art thou here, Grifonetto? Go with God's peace: I will not
slay thee, nor plunge my hand in my own blood, as thou hast done in
thine.' Then he turned and left the lad to be hacked in pieces by his
guard. The untranslatable words which Matarazzo uses to describe his
death are touching from the strong impression they convey of
Grifonetto's goodliness: 'Qui ebbe sua signoria sopra sua nobile
persona tante ferite che suoi membra leggiadre stese in terra.'[69]
None but Greeks felt the charm of personal beauty thus. But while
Grifonetto was breathing out his life upon the pavement of the piazza,
his mother Atalanta and his wife Zenobia came to greet him through the
awe-struck city. As they approached, all men fell aside and slunk away
before their grief. None would seem to have had a share in Grifonetto's
murder. Then Atalanta knelt by her dying son, and ceased from wailing,
and prayed and exhorted him to pardon those who had caused his death.
It appears that Grifonetto was too weak to speak, but that he made a
signal of assent, and received his mother's blessing at the last: 129
'E allora porse el nobil giovenetto la dextra mano a la sua giovenile
matre strengendo de sua matre la bianca mano; e poi incontinente spirò
l' anima dal formoso corpo, e passò cum infinite benedizioni de sua
matre in cambio de la maledictione che prima li aveva date.'[70] Here
again the style of Matarazzo, tender and full of tears, conveys the
keenest sense of the pathos of beauty and of youth in death and sorrow.
He has forgotten _el gran tradimento_. He only remembers how comely
Grifonetto was, how noble, how frank and spirited, how strong in war,
how sprightly in his pleasures and his loves. And he sees the still
young mother, delicate and nobly born, leaning over the athletic body
of her bleeding son. This scene, which is perhaps a genuine instance of
what we may call the neo-Hellenism of the Renaissance, finds its
parallel in the 'Phoenissæ' of Euripides. Jocasta and Antigone have
gone forth to the battlefield and found the brothers Polynices and
Eteocles drenched in blood:—

From his chest
Heaving a heavy breath, King Eteocles heard
His mother, and stretched forth a cold damp hand
On hers, and nothing said, but with his eyes
Spake to her by his tears, showing kind thoughts
In symbols.


 [66] Matarazzo's description of the ruffians who surrounded Grifonetto
 (pp. 104, 105, 113) would suit Webster's Flamineo or Bosola. In one
 place he likens Filippo to Achitophel and Grifonetto to Absalom.
 Villano Villani, quoted by Fabretti (vol. iii. p. 125), relates the
 street adventures of this clique. It is a curious picture of the
 pranks of an Italian princeling in the fifteenth century.


 [67] Jacobo Antiquari, the secretary of Lodovico Sforza, in a curious
 letter, which gives an account of the massacre, says that he had often
 reproved the Baglioni for 'sleeping in their beds without any guard or
 watch, so that they might easily be overcome by enemies.'


 [68] 'Quelli che li vidino, e maxime li forastiere studiante
 assimigliavano el magnifico Messer Astorre cosî morto ad un antico
 Romano, perchè prima era unanissimo; tanto sua figura era degnia e
 magnia,' &c. This is a touch exquisitely illustrative of the
 Renaissance enthusiasm for classic culture.


 [69] Here his lordship received upon his noble person so many wounds
 that he stretched his graceful limbs upon the earth.


 [70] 'And then the noble stripling stretched his right hand to his
 youthful mother, pressing the white hand of his mother; and afterwards
 forthwith he breathed his soul forth from his beauteous body, and died
 with numberless blessings of his mother instead of the curses she had
 given him before.'

It was Atalanta, we may remember, who commissioned Raphael to paint the
so-called Borghese Entombment. Did she perhaps feel, as she withdrew
from the piazza, soaking with young Grifonetto's blood,[71] that she
too had some portion in the sorrow of that mother who had wept for
Christ? The 130 memory of the dreadful morning must have remained with
her through life, and long communion with our Lady of Sorrows may have
sanctified the grief that had so bitter and so shameful a root of sin.

 [71] See Matarazzo, p. 134, for this detail.

After the death of Grifonetto, and the flight of the conspirators,
Gianpaolo took possession of Perugia. All who were suspected of
complicity in the treason were massacred upon the piazza and in the
Cathedral. At the expense of more than a hundred murders, the chief of
the Baglioni found himself master of the city on the 17th of July.
First he caused the Cathedral to be washed with wine and reconsecrated.
Then he decorated the Palazzo with the heads of the traitors and with
their portraits in fresco, painted hanging head downwards, as was the
fashion in Italy.[72] Next he established himself in what remained of
the palaces of his kindred, hanging the saloons with black, and
arraying his retainers in the deepest mourning. Sad indeed was now the
aspect of Perugia. Helpless and comparatively uninterested, the
citizens had been spectators of these bloody broils. They were now
bound to share the desolation of their masters. Matarazzo's description
of the mournful palace and the silent town, and of the return of
Marcantonio from Naples, presents a picture striking for its
vividness.[73] In the true style of the Baglioni, Marcantonio sought to
vent his sorrow not so much in tears as by new violence. He prepared
and lighted torches, meaning to burn the whole quarter of Sant' Angelo;
and from this design he was with difficulty dissuaded by his 131
brother. To such mad freaks of rage and passion were the inhabitants of
a mediæval town in Italy exposed! They make us understand the
_ordinanze di giustizia_, by which to be a noble was a crime in
Florence.

 [72] See Varchi (ed. Lemonnier, 1857), vol. ii. p. 265, vol. iii. pp.
 224, 652, and Corio (Venice, 1554), p. 326, for instances of _dipinti
 per traditori_.


 [73] P. 142. 'Pareva ogni cosa oscura e lacrimosa: tutte loro
 servitore piangevano; et le camere de lo resto de li magnifici
 Baglioni, e sale, e ognie cosa erano tutte intorno cum pagnie negre. E
 per la città non era più alcuno che sonasse nè cantasse; e poco si
 rideva,' &c.

From this time forward the whole history of the Baglioni family is one
of crime and bloodshed. A curse had fallen on the house, and to the
last of its members the penalty was paid. Gianpaolo himself acquired
the highest reputation throughout Italy for his courage and sagacity
both as a general and a governor.[74] It was he who held Julius II. at
his discretion in 1506, and was sneered at by Machiavelli for not
consummating his enormities by killing the warlike Pope.[75] He again,
after joining the diet of La Magione against Cesare Borgia, escaped by
his acumen the massacre of Sinigaglia, which overthrew the other
conspirators. But his name was no less famous for unbridled lust and
deeds of violence. He boasted that his son Constantino was a true
Baglioni, since he was his sister's child. He once told Machiavelli
that he had it in his mind to murder four citizens of Perugia, his
enemies. He looked calmly on while his kinsmen Eusebio and Taddeo
Baglioni, who had been accused of treason, were hewn to pieces by his
guard. His wife, Ippolita de' Conti, was poignarded in her Roman farm;
on hearing the news, he ordered a festival in which he was engaged to
proceed with redoubled merriment.[76] At last the time came for him to
die 132 by fraud and violence. Leo X., anxious to remove so powerful a
rival from Perugia, lured him in 1520 to Rome under the false
protection of a papal safe-conduct. After a short imprisonment he had
him beheaded in the Castle of S. Angelo. It was thought that Gentile,
his first cousin, sometime Bishop of Orvieto, but afterwards the father
of two sons in wedlock with Giulia Vitelli—such was the discipline of
the Church at this epoch—had contributed to the capture of Gianpaolo,
and had exulted in his execution.[77] If so, he paid dear for his
treachery; for Orazio Baglioni, the second son of Gianpaolo and captain
of the Church under Clement VII., had him murdered in 1527, together
with his two nephews Fileno and Annibale.[78] This Orazio was one of
the most bloodthirsty of the whole brood. Not satisfied with the
assassination of Gentile, he stabbed Galeotto, the son of Grifonetto,
with his own hand in the same year.[79] Afterwards he died in the
kingdom of Naples while leading the Black Bands in the disastrous war
which followed the sack of Rome. He left no son. Malatesta, his elder
brother, became one of the most celebrated generals of the age, holding
the batons of the Venetian and Florentine republics, and managing to
maintain his ascendency in Perugia in spite of the persistent
opposition of successive popes. But his name is best known in history
for one of the greatest public crimes—a crime which must be ranked with
that of Marshal Bazaine. Intrusted with the defence of Florence during
the siege of 1530, he sold the city to his enemy, Pope Clement,
receiving for the price of this infamy certain privileges and
immunities which fortified his hold upon Perugia for a season. All
Italy was ringing 133 with the great deeds of the Florentines, who for
the sake of their liberty transformed themselves from merchants into
soldiers, and withstood the united powers of Pope and Emperor alone.
Meanwhile Malatesta, whose trade was war, and who was being largely
paid for his services by the beleaguered city, contrived by means of
diplomatic procrastination, secret communication with the enemy, and
all the arts that could intimidate an army of recruits, to push affairs
to a point at which Florence was forced to capitulate without
inflicting the last desperate glorious blow she longed to deal her
enemies. The universal voice of Italy condemned him. When Matteo
Dandolo, the Doge of Venice, heard what he had done, he cried before
the Pregadi in conclave, 'He has sold that people and that city, and
the blood of those poor citizens ounce by ounce, and has donned the cap
of the biggest traitor in the world.'[80] Consumed with shame, corroded
by an infamous disease, and mistrustful of Clement, to whom he had sold
his honour, Malatesta retired to Perugia, and died in 1531. He left one
son, Ridolfo, who was unable to maintain himself in the lordship of his
native city. After killing the Papal legate, Cinzio Filonardi, in 1534,
he was dislodged four years afterwards, when Paul III. took final
possession of the place as an appanage of the Church, razed the houses
of the Baglioni to the ground, and built upon their site the Rocca
Paolina. This fortress bore an inscription: 'Ad coercendam Perusinorum
audaciam.' The city was given over to the rapacity of the abominable
Pier Luigi Farnese, and so bad was this tyranny of priests and
bastards, that, strange to say, the Perugians regretted the troublous
times of the Baglioni. Malatesta in dying had exclaimed, 'Help me, if
you can; since after me you will be set to draw the cart like oxen.'
Frollieri, relating the speech, adds, 134 'And this has been fulfilled
to the last letter, for all have borne not only the yoke but the burden
and the goad.' Ridolfo Baglioni and his cousin Braccio, the eldest son
of Grifonetto, were both captains of Florence. The one died in battle
in 1554, the other in 1559. Thus ended the illustrious family. They are
now represented by descendants from females, and by contadini who
preserve their name and boast a pedigree of which they have no records.

 [74] See Frollieri, p. 437, for a very curious account of his
 character.


 [75] Fabretti (vol. iii. pp. 193-202. and notes) discusses this
 circumstance in detail. Machiavelli's critique runs thus (_Discorsi_,
 lib. i. cap. 27): 'Nè si poteva credere che si fosse astenuto o per
 bontà, o per coscienza che lo ritenesse; perchè in un petto d'un uomo
 facinoroso, che si teneva la sorella, ch' aveva morti i cugini e i
 nipotí per regnare, non poteva scendere alcuno pietoso rispetto: ma si
 conchiuse che gli uomini non sanno essere onorevolmente tristi, o
 perfettamente buoni,' &c.


 [76] See Fabretti, vol. iii. p. 230. He is an authority for the
 details of Gianpaolo's life. The circumstance alluded to above
 justifies the terrible opening scene in Shelley's tragedy, _The
 Cenci_.


 [77] Fabretti, vol. iii. p. 230, vol. iv. p. 10.


 [78] See Varchi, _Storie Florentine_, vol. i. p. 224.


 [79] Ibid.


 [80] Fabretti, vol. iv. p. 206.

The history of the Baglioni needs no commentary. They were not worse
than other Italian nobles, who by their passions and their parties
destroyed the peace of the city they infested. It is with an odd
mixture of admiration and discontent that the chroniclers of Perugia
allude to their ascendency. Matarazzo, who certainly cannot be accused
of hostility to the great house, describes the miseries of his country
under their bad government in piteous terms:[81] 'As I wish not to
swerve from the pure truth, I say that from the day the Oddi were
expelled, our city went from bad to worse. All the young men followed
the trade of arms. Their lives were disorderly; and every day divers
excesses were divulged, and the city had lost all reason and justice.
Every man administered right unto himself, _propriâ autoritate et manu
regiâ_. Meanwhile the Pope sent many legates, if so be the city could
be brought to order: but all who came returned in dread of being hewn
in pieces; for they threatened to throw some from the windows of the
palace, so that no cardinal or other legate durst approach Perugia,
unless he were a friend of the Baglioni. And the city was brought to
such misery, that the most wrongous men were most prized; and those who
had slain two or three men walked as they listed through the palace,
and went with sword or poignard to speak to the podestà and other
magistrates. Moreover, every man of 135 worth was down-trodden by bravi
whom the nobles favoured; nor could a citizen call his property his
own. The nobles robbed first one and then another of goods and land.
All offices were sold or else suppressed; and taxes and extortions were
so grievous that every one cried out. And if a man were in prison for
his head, he had no reason to fear death, provided he had some interest
with a noble.' Yet the same Matarazzo in another place finds it in his
heart to say:[82] 'Though the city suffered great pains for these
nobles, yet the illustrious house of Baglioni brought her honour
throughout Italy, by reason of the great dignity and splendour of that
house, and of their pomp and name. Wherefore through them our city was
often set above the rest, and notably above the commonwealths of
Florence and Siena.' Pride feels no pain. The gratified vanity of the
Perugian burgher, proud to see his town preferred before its
neighbours, blinds the annalist to all the violence and villany of the
magnificent Casa Baglioni. So strong was the _esprit de ville_ which
through successive centuries and amid all vicissitudes of politics
divided the Italians against themselves, and proved an insuperable
obstacle to unity.

 [81] Pp. 102, 103.


 [82] P. 139.

After reading the chronicle of Matarazzo at Perugia through one winter
day, I left the inn and walked at sunset to the blood-bedabbled
cathedral square; for still those steps and pavements to my strained
imagination seemed reeking with the outpoured blood of Baglioni; and on
the ragged stonework of San Lorenzo red patches slanted from the dying
day. Then by one of those strange freaks of the brain to which we are
all subject, for a moment I lost sight of untidy Gothic façades and
gaunt unfinished church walls; and as I walked, I was in the Close of
Salisbury on a perfumed summer afternoon. The drowsy scent of
lime-flowers and mignonette, 136 the cawing of elm-cradled rooks, the
hum of bees above, the velvet touch of smooth-shorn grass, and the
breathless shadow of motionless green boughs made up one potent and
absorbing mood of the charmed senses. Far overhead soared the calm grey
spire into the infinite air, and the perfection of accomplished beauty
slept beneath in those long lines of nave and choir and transepts. It
was but a momentary dream, a thought that burned itself upon a fancy
overtaxed by passionate images. Once more the puppet-scene of the brain
was shifted; once more I saw the bleak bare flags of the Perugian
piazza, the forlorn front of the Duomo, the bronze griffin, and
Pisano's fountain, with here and there a flake of that tumultuous fire
which the Italian sunset sheds. Who shall adequately compare the two
pictures? Which shall we prefer—the Close of Salisbury, with its sleepy
bells and cushioned ease of immemorial Deans—or this poor threadbare
passion of Perugia, where every stone is stained with blood, and where
genius in painters and scholars and prophets and ecstatic lovers has
throbbed itself away to nothingness? It would be foolish to seek an
answer to this question, idle to institute a comparison, for instance,
between those tall young men with their broad winter cloaks who remind
me of Grifonetto, and the vergers pottering in search of shillings
along the gravel paths of Salisbury. It is more rational, perhaps, to
reflect of what strange stuff our souls are made in this age of the
world, when æsthetic pleasures, full, genuine, and satisfying, can be
communicated alike by Perugia with its fascination of a dead
irrevocable dramatic past, and Salisbury, which finds the artistic
climax of its English comfort in the 'Angel in the House.' From
Matarazzo, smitten with a Greek love for the beautiful Grifonetto, to
Mr. Patmore, is a wide step.

137




ORVIETO


On the road from Siena to Rome, halfway between Ficulle and Viterbo, is
the town of Orvieto. Travellers often pass it in the night-time. Few
stop there, for the place is old and dirty, and its inns are said to be
indifferent. But none who see it even from a distance can fail to be
struck with its imposing aspect, as it rises from the level plain upon
that mass of rock among the Apennines.

Orvieto is built upon the first of those huge volcanic blocks which are
found like fossils embedded in the more recent geological formations of
Central Italy, and which stretch in an irregular but unbroken line to
the Campagna of Rome. Many of them, like that on which Civita
Castellana is perched, are surrounded by rifts and chasms and ravines
and fosses, strangely furrowed and twisted by the force of fiery
convulsions. But their advanced guard, Orvieto, stands up definite and
solid, an almost perfect cube, with walls precipitous to north and
south and east, but slightly sloping to the westward. At its foot rolls
the Paglia, one of those barren streams which swell in winter with the
snows and rains of the Apennines, but which in summer-time shrink up,
and leave bare beds of sand and pestilential canebrakes to stretch
irregularly round their dwindled waters.

The weary flatness and utter desolation of this valley present a
sinister contrast to the broad line of the Apennines, swelling tier on
tier, from their oak-girdled basements set with villages and towers, up
to the snow and cloud that crown 138 their topmost crags. The time to
see this landscape is at sunrise; and the traveller should take his
stand upon the rising ground over which the Roman road is carried from
the town—the point, in fact, which Turner has selected for his vague
and misty sketch of Orvieto in our Gallery. Thence he will command the
whole space of the plain, the Apennines, and the river creeping in a
straight line at the base; while the sun, rising to his right, will
slant along the mountain flanks, and gild the leaden stream, and flood
the castled crags of Orvieto with a haze of light. From the centre of
this glory stand out in bold relief old bastions built upon the solid
tufa, vast gaping gateways black in shadow, towers of churches shooting
up above a medley of deep-corniced tall Italian houses, and, amid them
all, the marble front of the Cathedral, calm and solemn in its
unfamiliar Gothic state. Down to the valley from these heights there is
a sudden fall; and we wonder how the few spare olive-trees that grow
there can support existence on the steep slope of the cliff.

Our mind, in looking at this landscape, is carried by the force of old
association to Jerusalem. We could fancy ourselves to be standing on
Mount Olivet, with the valley of Jehoshaphat between us and the Sacred
City. As we approach the town, the difficulty of scaling its crags
seems insurmountable. The road, though carried skilfully along each
easy slope or ledge of quarried rock, still winds so much that nearly
an hour is spent in the ascent. Those who can walk should take a
footpath, and enter Orvieto by the mediæval road, up which many a Pope,
flying from rebellious subjects or foreign enemies, has hurried on his
mule.[83]

 [83] Clement VII., for example, escaped from Rome disguised as a
 gardener after the sack in 1527, and, to quote the words of Varchi
 (St. Flor., v. 17), 'Entrò agli otto di dicembre a due ore di notte in
 Orvieto, terra di sito fortissimo, per lo essere ella sopra uno
 scoglio pieno di tufi posta, d' ogni intorno scosceso e dirupato,' &c.

139 To unaccustomed eyes there is something forbidding and terrible
about the dark and cindery appearance of volcanic tufa. Where it is
broken, the hard and gritty edges leave little space for vegetation;
while at intervals the surface spreads so smooth and straight that one
might take it for solid masonry erected by the architect of
Pandemonium. Rubbish and shattered bits of earthenware and ashes,
thrown from the city walls, cling to every ledge and encumber the
broken pavement of the footway. Then as we rise, the castle battlements
above appear more menacing, toppling upon the rough edge of the crag,
and guarding each turn of the road with jealous loopholes or
beetle-browed machicolations, until at last the gateway and portcullis
are in view.

On first entering Orvieto, one's heart fails to find so terrible a
desolation, so squalid a solitude, and so vast a difference between the
present and the past, between the beauty of surrounding nature and the
misery of this home of men. A long space of unoccupied ground
intervenes between the walls and the hovels which skirt the modern
town. This, in the times of its splendour, may have served for
oliveyards, vineyards, and pasturage, in case of siege. There are still
some faint traces of dead gardens left upon its arid wilderness, among
the ruins of a castellated palace, decorated with the cross-keys and
tiara of an unremembered pope. But now it lies a mere tract of scorched
grass, insufferably hot and dry and sandy, intersected by dirty paths,
and covered with the loathliest offal of a foul Italian town. Should
you cross this ground at mid-day, under the blinding sun, when no
living thing, except perhaps some poisonous reptile, is about, you
would declare that Orvieto had been stricken for its sins by Heaven.
Your mind would dwell mechanically on all that you have read of Papal
crimes, of fratricidal wars, of Pagan abominations in the high places
of the Church, of tempestuous passions and 140 refined iniquity—of
everything, in fact, which renders Italy of the Middle Ages and the
Renaissance dark and ominous amid the splendours of her art and
civilisation. This is the natural result; this shrunken and squalid old
age of poverty and self-abandonment is the end of that strong,
prodigal, and vicious youth. Who shall restore vigour to these dead
bones? we cry. If Italy is to live again, she must quit her ruined
palace towers to build fresh dwellings elsewhere. Filth, lust,
rapacity, treason, godlessness, and violence have made their habitation
here; ghosts haunt these ruins; these streets still smell of blood and
echo to the cries of injured innocence; life cannot be pure, or calm,
or healthy, where this curse has settled.

Occupied with such reflections, we reach the streets of Orvieto. They
are not very different from those of most Italian villages, except that
there is little gaiety about them. Like Assisi or Siena, Orvieto is too
large for its population, and merriment flows better from close
crowding than from spacious accommodation. Very dark, and big, and
dirty, and deserted, is the judgment we pronounce upon the houses; very
filthy and malodorous each passage; very long this central street; very
few and sad and sullen the inhabitants; and where, we wonder, is the
promised inn? In search of this one walks nearly through the city,
until one enters the Piazza, where there is more liveliness. Here cafés
may be found; soldiers, strong and sturdy, from the north, lounge at
the corners; the shops present more show; and a huge hotel, not bad for
such a place, and appropriately dedicated to the Belle Arti, standing
in a courtyard of its own, receives the traveller weary with his climb.
As soon as he has taken rooms, his first desire is to go forth and
visit the Cathedral.

The great Duomo was erected at the end of the thirteenth century to
commemorate the Miracle of Bolsena. The value 141 of this miracle
consisted in its establishing unmistakably the truth of
transubstantiation. The story runs that a young Bohemian priest who
doubted the dogma was performing the office of the mass in a church at
Bolsena, when, at the moment of consecration, blood issued from five
gashes in the wafer, which resembled the five wounds of Christ. The
fact was evident to all the worshippers, who saw blood falling on the
linen of the altar; and the young priest no longer doubted, but
confessed the miracle, and journeyed straightway with the evidence
thereof to Pope Urban IV. The Pope, who was then at Orvieto, came out
with all his retinue to meet the convert and do honour to the
magic-working relics. The circumstances of this miracle are well known
to students of art through Raphael's celebrated fresco in the Stanze of
the Vatican. And it will be remembered by the readers of ecclesiastical
history that Urban had in 1264 promulgated by a bull the strict
observance of the Corpus Christi festival in connection with his strong
desire to re-establish the doctrine of Christ's presence in the
elements. Nor was it without reason that, while seeking miraculous
support for this dogma, he should have treated the affair of Bolsena so
seriously as to celebrate it by the erection of one of the most
splendid cathedrals in Italy; for the peace of the Church had recently
been troubled by the reforming ardour of the Fraticelli and by the
promulgation of Abbot Joachim's Eternal Gospel. This new evangelist had
preached the doctrine of progression in religious faith, proclaiming a
kingdom of the Spirit which should transcend the kingdom of the Son,
even as the Christian dispensation had superseded the Jewish supremacy
of the Father. Nor did he fail at the same time to attack the political
and moral abuses of the Papacy, attributing its degradation to the want
of vitality which pervaded the old Christian system, and calling on the
clergy to lead more 142 simple and regenerate lives, consistently with
the spiritual doctrine which he had received by inspiration. The
theories of Joachim were immature and crude; but they were among the
first signs of that liberal effort after self-emancipation which
eventually stirred all Europe at the time of the Renaissance. It was,
therefore, the obvious policy of the Popes to crush so dangerous an
opposition while they could; and by establishing the dogma of
transubstantiation, they were enabled to satisfy the craving mysticism
of the people, while they placed upon a firmer basis the cardinal
support of their own religious power.

In pursuance of his plan, Urban sent for Lorenzo Maitani, the great
Sienese architect, who gave designs for a Gothic church in the same
style as the Cathedral of Siena, though projected on a smaller scale.
These two churches, in spite of numerous shortcomings manifest to an
eye trained in French or English architecture, are still the most
perfect specimens of Pointed Gothic produced by the Italian genius. The
Gottico Tedesco had never been received with favour in Italy. Remains
of Roman architecture, then far more numerous and perfect than they are
at present, controlled the minds of artists, and induced them to adopt
the rounded rather than the pointed arch. Indeed, there would seem to
be something peculiarly Northern in the spirit of Gothic architecture:
its intricacies suit the gloom of Northern skies, its massive exterior
is adapted to the severity of Northern weather, its vast windows catch
the fleeting sunlight of the North, and the pinnacles and spires which
constitute its beauty are better expressed in rugged stone than in the
marbles of the South. Northern cathedrals do not depend for their
effect upon the advantages of sunlight or picturesque situations. Many
of them are built upon broad plains, over which for more than half the
year hangs fog. But the cathedrals of Italy owe 143 their charm to
colour and brilliancy: their gilded sculpture and mosaics, the
variegated marbles and shallow portals of their façades, the light
aë;rial elegance of their campanili, are all adapted to the luminous
atmosphere of a smiling land, where changing effects of natural beauty
distract the attention from solidity of design and permanence of
grandeur in the edifice itself.[84]

 [84] In considering why Gothic architecture took so little root in
 mediæval Italy, we must remember that the Italians had maintained an
 unbroken connection with Pagan Rome, and that many of their finest
 churches were basilicas appropriated to Christian rites. Add to this
 that the commerce of their cities, which first acquired wealth in the
 twelfth century, especially Pisa and Venice, kept them in
 communication with the Levant, where they admired the masterpieces of
 Byzantine architecture, and whence they imported Greek artists in
 mosaic and stonework. Against these external circumstances, taken in
 connection with the hereditary leanings of an essentially Latin race,
 and with the natural conditions of landscape and climate alluded to
 above, the influence of a few imported German architects could not
 have had sufficient power to effect a thorough metamorphosis of the
 national taste. For further treatment of this subject see my 'Fine
 Arts,' _Renaissance in Italy_, Part III. chap. ii.

The Cathedral of Orvieto will illustrate these remarks. Its design is
very simple. It consists of a parallelogram, from which three chapels
of equal size project, one at the east end, and one at the north and
south. The windows are small and narrow, the columns round, and the
roof displays none of that intricate groining we find in English
churches. The beauty of the interior depends on surface decoration, on
marble statues, woodwork, and fresco-paintings. Outside, there is the
same simplicity of design, the same elaborated local ornament. The
sides of the Cathedral are austere, their narrow windows cutting
horizontal lines of black and white marble. But the façade is a triumph
of decorative art. It is strictly what has often been described as a
'frontispiece;' for it bears no sincere relation to the construction of
the building. The three gables 144 rise high above the aisles. The
pinnacles and parapets and turrets are stuck on to look agreeable. It
is a screen such as might be completed or left unfinished at will by
the architect. Finished as it is, the façade of Orvieto presents a
wilderness of beauties. Its pure white marble has been mellowed by time
to a rich golden hue, in which are set mosaics shining like gems or
pictures of enamel. A statue stands on every pinnacle; each pillar has
a different design; round some of them are woven wreaths of vine and
ivy; acanthus leaves curl over the capitals, making nests for singing
birds or Cupids; the doorways are a labyrinth of intricate designs, in
which the utmost elegance of form is made more beautiful by
incrustations of precious agates and Alexandrine glasswork. On every
square inch of this wonderful façade have been lavished invention,
skill, and precious material. But its chief interest centres in the
sculptures executed by Giovanni and Andrea, sons and pupils of Nicola
Pisano. The names of these three men mark an era in the history of art.
They first rescued Italian sculpture from the grotesqueness of the
Lombard and the wooden monotony of the Byzantine styles. Sculpture
takes the lead of all the arts. And Nicola Pisano, before Cimabue,
before Duccio, even before Dante, opened the gates of beauty, which for
a thousand years had been shut up and overgrown with weeds. As Dante
invoked the influence of Virgil when he began to write his mediæval
poem, and made a heathen bard his hierophant in Christian mysteries,
just so did Nicola Pisano draw inspiration from a Græco-Roman
sarcophagus. He studied the basrelief of Phædra and Hippolytus, which
may still be seen upon the tomb of Countess Beatrice in the Campo
Santo, and so learned by heart the beauty of its lines and the dignity
expressed in its figures, that in all his subsequent works we trace the
elevated tranquillity of Greek sculpture. This imitation never
degenerated into servile copying; nor, on the 145 other hand, did
Nicola attain the perfect grace of an Athenian artist. He remained a
truly mediæval carver, animated with a Christian instead of a Pagan
spirit, but caring for the loveliness of form which art in the dark
ages failed to realise.[85]

 [85] I am not inclined to reject the old legend mentioned above about
 Pisano's study of the antique. For a full discussion of the question
 see my 'Fine Arts,' _Renaissance in Italy_, Part III. chap. iii.

Whether it was Nicola or his scholars who designed the basreliefs at
Orvieto is of little consequence. Vasari ascribes them to the father;
but we know that he completed his pulpit at Pisa in 1230, and his death
is supposed to have taken place fifteen years before the foundation of
the cathedral. At any rate, they are imbued with his genius, and bear
the strongest affinity to his sculptures at Pisa, Siena, and Bologna.
To estimate the influence they exercised over the arts of sculpture and
painting in Italy would be a difficult task. Duccio and Giotto studied
here; Ghiberti closely followed them. Signorelli and Raphael made
drawings from their compositions. And the spirit which pervades these
sculptures may be traced in all succeeding works of art. It is not
classic; it is modern, though embodied in a form of beauty modelled on
the Greek.

The basreliefs are carved on four marble tablets placed beside the
porches of the church, and corresponding in size and shape with the
chief doorways. They represent the course of Biblical history,
beginning with the creation of the world, and ending with the last
judgment. If it were possible here to compare them in detail with the
similar designs of Ghiberti, Michel Angelo, and Raphael, it might be
shown that the Pisani established modes of treating sacred subjects
from which those mighty masters never deviated, though each stamped
upon them his peculiar genius, making them more perfect as time added
to the power of art. It would also be 146 not without interest to show
that, in their primitive conceptions of the earliest events in history,
the works of the Pisan artists closely resemble some sculptures
executed on the walls of Northern cathedrals, as well as early mosaics
in the South of Italy. We might have noticed how all the grotesque
elements which appear in Nicola Pisano, and which may still be traced
in Ghiberti, are entirely lost in Michel Angelo, how the supernatural
is humanised, how the symbolical receives an actual expression, and how
intellectual types are substituted for mere local and individual
representations. For instance, the Pisani represent the Creator as a
young man standing on the earth, with a benign and dignified
expression, and attended by two ministering angels. He is the Christ of
the Creed, 'by whom all things were made.' In Ghiberti we find an older
man, sometimes appearing in a whirlwind of clouds and attendant
spirits, sometimes walking on the earth, but still far different in
conception from the Creative Father of Michel Angelo. The latter is
rather the Platonic Demiurgus than the Mosaic God. By every line and
feature of his face and flowing hair, by each movement of his limbs,
whether he ride on clouds between the waters and the firmament, or
stand alone creating by a glance and by a motion of his hand Eve, the
full-formed and conscious woman, he is proclaimed the Maker who from
all eternity has held the thought of the material universe within his
mind. Raphael does not depart from this conception. The profound
abstraction of Michel Angelo ruled his intellect, and received from his
genius a form of perhaps greater grace. A similar growth from the
germinal designs of the Pisani may be traced in many groups.

But we must not linger at the gate. Let us enter the cathedral and see
some of the wonders it contains. Statues of gigantic size adorn the
nave. Of these, the most beautiful 147 are the work of Ippolito Scalza,
an artist whom Orvieto claims with pride as one of her own sons. The
long line of saints and apostles whom they represent conduct us to the
high altar, surrounded by its shadowy frescoes, and gleaming with the
work of carvers in marble and bronze and precious metals. But our steps
are drawn toward the chapel of the south transept, where now a golden
light from the autumnal sunset falls across a crowd of worshippers.
From far and near the poor people are gathered. Most of them are women.
They kneel upon the pavement and the benches, sunburnt faces from the
vineyards and the canebrakes of the valley. The old look prematurely
aged and withered—their wrinkled cheeks bound up in scarlet and
orange-coloured kerchiefs, their skinny fingers fumbling on the rosary,
and their mute lips moving in prayer. The younger women have great
listless eyes and large limbs used to labor. Some of them carry babies
trussed up in tight swaddling-clothes. One kneels beside a dark-browed
shepherd, on whose shoulder falls his shaggy hair; and little children
play about, half hushed, half heedless of the place, among old men
whose life has dwindled down into a ceaseless round of prayers. We
wonder why this chapel, alone in the empty cathedral, is so crowded
with worshippers. They surely are not turned towards that splendid
Pietà of Scalza—a work in which the marble seems to live a cold, dead,
shivering life. They do not heed Angelico's and Signorelli's frescoes
on the roof and walls. The interchange of light and gloom upon the
stalls and carved work of the canopies can scarcely rivet so intense a
gaze. All eyes seem fixed upon a curtain of red silk above the altar.
Votive pictures, and glass cases full of silver hearts, wax babies,
hands and limbs of every kind, are hung round it. A bell rings. A
jingling organ plays a little melody in triple time; and from the
sacristy comes forth the priest. With 148 much reverence, and with a
show of preparation, he and the acolytes around him mount the altar
steps and pull a string which draws the curtain. Behind the silken veil
we behold Madonna and her child—a faint, old, ugly picture, blackened
with the smoke and incense of five hundred years, a wonder-working
image, cased in gold, and guarded from the common air by glass and
draperies. Jewelled crowns are stuck upon the heads of the mother and
the infant. In the efficacy of Madonna di San Brizio to ward off agues,
to deliver from the pangs of childbirth or the fury of the storm, to
keep the lover's troth and make the husband faithful to his home, these
pious women of the marshes and the mountains put a simple trust.

While the priest sings, and the people pray to the dance-music of the
organ, let us take a quiet seat unseen, and picture to our minds how
the chapel looked when Angelico and Signorelli stood before its
plastered walls, and thought the thoughts with which they covered them.
Four centuries have gone by since those walls were white and even to
their brushes; and now you scarce can see the golden aureoles of
saints, the vast wings of the angels, and the flowing robes of prophets
through the gloom. Angelico came first, in monk's dress, kneeling
before he climbed the scaffold to paint the angry judge, the Virgin
crowned, the white-robed army of the Martyrs, and the glorious company
of the Apostles. These he placed upon the roof, expectant of the
Judgment. Then he passed away, and Luca Signorelli, the rich man who
'lived splendidly and loved to dress himself in noble clothes,' the
liberal and courteous gentleman, took his place upon the scaffold. For
all the worldliness of his attire and the worldliness of his living,
his brain teemed with stern and terrible thoughts. He searched the
secrets of sin and of the grave, of destruction and of resurrection, of
heaven and hell. All these he has painted on the walls beneath the
saints of Fra 149 Angelico. First come the troubles of the last days,
the preaching of Antichrist, and the confusion of the wicked. In the
next compartment we see the Resurrection from the tomb; and side by
side with that is painted Hell. Paradise occupies another portion of
the chapel. On each side of the window, beneath the Christ of Fra
Angelico, are delineated scenes from the Judgment. A wilderness of
arabesques, enclosing medallion portraits of poets and chiaroscuro
episodes selected from Dante and Ovid, occupies the lower portions of
the chapel walls beneath the great subjects enumerated above; and here
Signorelli has given free vein to his fancy and his mastery over
anatomical design, accumulating naked human figures in the most
fantastic and audacious variety of pose.

Look at the 'Fulminati'—so the group of wicked men are called whose
death precedes the Judgment. Huge naked angels, sailing upon vanlike
wings, breathe columns of red flame upon a crowd of wicked men and
women. In vain these sinners avoid the descending fire. It pursues and
fells them to the earth. As they fly, their eyes are turned towards the
dreadful faces in the air. Some hurry through a portico, huddled
together, falling men, and women clasping to their arms dead babies
scorched with flame. One old man stares straightforward, doggedly
awaiting death. One woman scowls defiance as she dies. A youth has
twisted both hands in his hair, and presses them against his ears to
drown the screams and groans and roaring thunder. They trample upon
prostrate forms already stiff. Every shape and attitude of sudden
terror and despairing guilt are here. Next comes the Resurrection. Two
angels of the Judgment—gigantic figures, with the plumeless wings that
Signorelli loves—are seen upon the clouds. They blow trumpets with all
their might, so that each naked muscle seems strained to make the
blast, which bellows through the air and shakes 150 the sepulchres
beneath the earth. Thence rise the dead. All are naked, and a few are
seen like skeletons. With painful effort they struggle from the soil
that clasps them round, as if obeying an irresistible command. Some
have their heads alone above the ground. Others wrench their limbs from
the clinging earth; and as each man rises, it closes under him. One
would think that they were being born again from solid clay, and
growing into form with labour. The fully risen spirits stand and walk
about, all occupied with the expectation of the Judgment; but those
that are yet in the act of rising, have no thought but for the strange
and toilsome process of this second birth. Signorelli here, as
elsewhere, proves himself one of the greatest painters by the simple
means with which he produces the most marvellous effects. His
composition sways our souls with all the passion of the terrible scenes
that he depicts. Yet what does it contain? Two stern angels on the
clouds, a blank grey plain, and a multitude of naked men and women. In
the next compartment Hell is painted. This is a complicated picture,
consisting of a mass of human beings entangled with torturing fiends.
Above hover demons bearing damned spirits, and three angels see that
justice takes its course. Signorelli here degenerates into no mediæval
ugliness and mere barbarity of form. His fiends are not the bestial
creatures of Pisano's basreliefs, but models of those monsters which
Duppa has engraved from Michel Angelo's 'Last Judgment'—lean naked men,
in whose hollow eyes glow the fires of hate and despair, whose nails
have grown to claws, and from whose ears have started horns. They sail
upon bats' wings; and only by their livid hue, which changes from
yellow to the ghastliest green, and by the cruelty of their remorseless
eyes, can you know them from the souls they torture. In Hell ugliness
and power of mischief come with length of years. 151 Continual growth
in crime distorts the form which once was human; and the interchange of
everlasting hatred degrades the tormentor and his victim to the same
demoniac ferocity. To this design the science of foreshortening, and
the profound knowledge of the human form in every posture, give its
chief interest. Paradise is not less wonderful. Signorelli has
contrived to throw variety and grace into the somewhat monotonous
groups which this subject requires. Above are choirs of angels, not
like Fra Angelico's, but tall male creatures clothed in voluminous
drapery, with grave features and still, solemn eyes. Some are dancing,
some are singing to the lute, and one, the most gracious of them all,
bends down to aid a suppliant soul. The men beneath, who listen in a
state of bliss, are all undraped. Signorelli, in this difficult
composition, remains temperate, serene, and simple; a Miltonic harmony
pervades the movement of his angelic choirs. Their beauty is the
product of their strength and virtue. No floral ornaments or cherubs,
or soft clouds, are found in his Paradise; yet it is fair and full of
grace. Here Luca seems to have anticipated Raphael.

It may be parenthetically observed, that Signorelli has introduced
himself and Niccolo Angeli, treasurer of the cathedral building fund,
in the corner of the fresco representing Antichrist, with the date
1503. They stand as spectators and solemn witnesses of the tragedy, set
forth in all its acts by the great master.

After viewing these frescoes, we muse and ask ourselves why
Signorelli's fame is so inadequate to his deserts? Partly, no doubt,
because he painted in obscure Italian towns, and left few
easel-pictures.[86] Besides, the artists of the sixteenth 152 century
eclipsed all their predecessors, and the name of Signorelli has been
swallowed up in that of Michel Angelo. Vasari said that 'esso Michel
Angelo imitò l'andar di Luca, 153 come può vedere ognuno.' Nor is it
hard to see that what the one began at Orvieto the other completed in
the Vatican. These great men had truly kindred spirits. Both struggled
154 to express their intellectual conceptions in the simplest and most
abstract forms. The works of both are distinguished by contempt for
adventitious ornaments and for the grace of positive colour. Both chose
to work in fresco, and selected subjects of the gravest and most
elevated character. The study of anatomy, and the scientific drawing of
the naked body, which Luca practised, were carried to perfection by
Michel Angelo. Sublimity of thought and self-restraint pervade their
compositions. He who would understand Buonarroti must first appreciate
Signorelli. The latter, it is true, was confined to a narrower circle
in his study of the beautiful and the sublime. He had not ascended to
that pure idealism, superior to all the accidents of place and time,
which is the chief distinction of Michel Angelo's work. At the same
time, his manner had not suffered from too fervid an enthusiasm for the
imperfectly comprehended antique. He painted the life he saw around
him, and clothed his men and women in the dress of Italy.

Such reflections, and many more, pass through our mind as we sit and
ponder in the chapel, which the daylight has deserted. The country
people are still on their knees, still careless of the frescoed forms
around them, still praying to Madonna of the Miracles. The service is
well-nigh done. The benediction has been given, the organist strikes up
his air of Verdi, and the congregation shuffles off, leaving the dimly
lighted chapel for the vast sonorous dusky nave. How strange it is to
hear that faint strain of a feeble opera sounding where, a short while
since, the trumpet-blast of Signorelli's angels seemed to thrill our
ears!

 [86] The Uffizzi and Pitti Galleries at Florence contain one or two
 fine specimens of Luca Signorelli's Holy Families, which show his
 influence over the early manner of Michel Angelo. Into the background
 of one circular picture he has introduced a group of naked figures,
 which was imitated by Buonarroti in the Holy Family of the Tribune.
 The Accademia has also a picture of saints and angels illustrative of
 his large style and crowded composition. The Brera at Milan can boast
 of a very characteristic Flagellation, where the nude has been
 carefully studied, and the brutality of an insolent officer is
 forcibly represented. But perhaps the most interesting of his works
 out of Orvieto are those in his native place, Cortona. In the Church
 of the Gesù in that town there is an altar-piece representing Madonna
 in glory with saints, which also contains on a smaller scale than the
 principal figures a little design of the Temptation in Eden. You
 recognise the master's individuality in the muscular and energetic
 Adam. The Duomo has a Communion of the Apostles which shows
 Signorelli's independence of tradition. It is the Cenacolo treated
 with freedom. Christ stands in the midst of the twelve, who are
 gathered around him, some kneeling and some upright, upon a marble
 pavement. The whole scene is conceived in a truly grand style—noble
 attitudes, broad draperies, sombre and rich colouring, masculine
 massing of the figures in effective groups. The Christ is especially
 noble. Swaying a little to the right, he gives the bread to a kneeling
 apostle. The composition is marked by a dignity and self-restraint
 which Raphael might have envied. San Niccolo, again, has a fine
 picture by this master. It is a Deposition with saints and
 angels—those large-limbed and wide-winged messengers of God whom none
 but Signorelli realised. The composition of this picture is hazardous,
 and at first sight it is even displeasing. The figures seem roughly
 scattered in a vacant space. The dead Christ has but little dignity,
 and the passion of S. Jerome in the foreground is stiff in spite of
 its exaggeration. But long study only serves to render this strange
 picture more and more attractive. Especially noticeable is the
 youthful angel clad in dark green who sustains Christ. He is a young
 man in the bloom of strength and beauty, whose long golden hair falls
 on each side of a sublimely lovely face. Nothing in painting surpasses
 the modelling of the vigorous but delicate left arm stretched forward
 to support the heavy corpse. This figure is conceived and executed in
 a style worthy of the Orvietan frescoes. Signorelli, for whose
 imagination angels had a special charm, has shown here that his too
 frequent contempt for grace was not the result of insensibility to
 beauty. Strength is the parent of sweetness in this wonderful winged
 youth. But not a single sacrifice is made in the whole picture to mere
 elegance.—Cortona is a place which, independently of Signorelli, well
 deserves a visit. Like all Etruscan towns, it is perched on the top of
 a high hill, whence it commands a wonderful stretch of landscape—Monte
 Amiata and Montepulciano to the south, Chiusi with its lake, the lake
 of Thrasymene, and the whole broad Tuscan plain. The city itself is
 built on a projecting buttress of the mountain, to which it clings so
 closely that, in climbing to the terrace of S. Margarita, you lose
 sight of all but a few towers and house-roofs. One can almost fancy
 that Signorelli gained his broad and austere style from the habitual
 contemplation of a view so severe in outline, and so vacant in its
 width. This landscape has none of the variety which distinguishes the
 prospect from Perugia, none of the suavity of Siena. It is truly
 sympathetic in its bare simplicity to the style of the great painter
 of Cortona. Try to see it on a winter morning, when the mists are
 lying white and low and thin upon the plain, when distant hills rise
 islanded into the air, and the outlines of lakes are just discernible
 through fleecy haze.—Next to Cortona in importance is the Convent of
 Monte Oliveto in the neighbourhood of Siena, where Signorelli painted
 eight frescoes from the story of S. Benedict, distinguished by his
 customary vigour of conception, masculine force of design, and martial
 splendour in athletic disdainful young men. One scene in this series,
 representing the interior of a country inn, is specially interesting
 for a realism not usual in the work of Signorelli. The frescoes
 painted for Petruccio at Siena, one of which is now in the National
 Gallery, the fresco in the Sistine Chapel, which has suffered sadly
 from retouching, and the magnificent classical picture called the
 'School of Pan,' executed for Lorenzo de' Medici, and now at Berlin,
 must not be forgotten, nor yet the church-pictures scattered over
 Loreto, Arcevia, Città di Castello, Borgo San Sepolcro, Volterra, and
 other cities of the Tuscan-Umbrian district. Arezzo, it may be added
 in conclusion, has two altar-pieces of Signorelli's in its Pinacoteca,
 neither of which adds much to our conception of this painter's style.
 Noticeable as they may be among the works of that period, they prove
 that his genius was hampered by the narrow and traditional treatment
 imposed on him in pictures of this kind. Students may be referred to
 Robert Vischer's _Luca Signorelli_ (Leipzig, 1879) for a complete list
 of the master's works and an exhaustive biography. I have tried to
 estimate his place in the history of Italian art in my volume on the
 'Fine Arts,' _Renaissance in Italy_, Part III. I may also mention two
 able articles by Professor Colvin published a few years since in the
 _Cornhill Magazine_.

155




LUCRETIUS


In seeking to distinguish the Roman from the Greek genius we can find
no surer guide than Virgil's famous lines in the Sixth Æneid. Virgil
lived to combine the traditions of both races in a work of profoundly
meditated art, and to their points of divergence he was sensitive as
none but a poet bent upon resolving them could be. The real greatness
of the Romans consisted in their capacity for government, law,
practical administration. What they willed, they carried into effect
with an iron indifference to everything but the object in view. What
they acquired, they held with the firm grasp of force, and by the might
of organised authority. Their architecture, in so far as it was
original, subserved purposes of public utility. Philosophy with them
ceased to be speculative, and applied itself to the ethics of conduct.
Their religious conceptions—in so far as these were not adopted
together with general culture from the Greeks, or together with sensual
mysticism from the East—were practical abstractions. The Latin ideal
was to give form to the state by legislation, and to mould the citizen
by moral discipline. The Greek ideal was contained in the poetry of
Homer, the sculpture of Pheidias, the heroism of Harmodius, the
philosophy of Socrates. Hellas was held together by no system, but by
the Delphic oracle and the Olympian games. The Greeks depended upon
culture, as the Romans upon law. The national character determined by
culture, and that determined by discipline, eventually broke down: but
the ruin in either case 156 was different. The Greek became servile,
indolent, and slippery; the Roman became arrogant, bloodthirsty,
tyrannous, and brutal. The Greeks in their best days attained to
σωφροσύνη, their regulative virtue, by a kind of instinct; and even in
their worst debasement they never exhibited the extravagance of lust
and cruelty and pompous prodigality displayed by Rome. The Romans,
deficient in the æsthetic instinct, whether applied to morals or to
art, were temperate upon compulsion; and when the strain of law
relaxed, they gave themselves unchecked to profligacy. The bad taste of
the Romans made them aspire to the huge and monstrous. Nero's whim to
cut through the isthmus, Caligula's villa built upon the sea at Baiæ,
the acres covered by imperial palaces in Rome, are as Latin as the
small scale of the Parthenon is Greek. Athens annihilates our notions
of mere magnitude by the predominance of harmony and beauty, to which
size is irrelevant. Rome dilates them to the full: it is the colossal
greatness, the mechanical pride, of her monuments that win our
admiration. By comparing the Dionysian theatre at Athens, during a
representation of the 'Antigone,' with the Flavian amphitheatre at
Rome, while the gladiators sang their _Ave Cæsar!_ we gain at once a
measure for the differences between Greek and Latin taste. In spiritual
matters, again, Rome, as distinguished from Hellas, was omnivorous. The
cosmopolitan receptivity of Roman sympathies, absorbing Egypt and the
Orient wholesale, is as characteristic as the exclusiveness of the
Greeks, their sensitive anxiety about the ἦθος. We feel that it was in
a Roman rather than a Greek atmosphere, where no middle term of art
existed like a neutral ground between the moral law and sin, where no
delicate intellectual sensibilities interfered with the assimilation of
new creeds, that Christianity was destined to strike root and flourish.

These remarks, familiar to students, form a proper prelude to 157 the
criticism of Lucretius: for in Lucretius the Roman character found its
most perfect literary incarnation. He is at all points a true Roman,
gifted with the strength, the conquering temper, the uncompromising
haughtiness, and the large scale of his race. Holding, as it were, the
thought of Greece in fee, he administers the Epicurean philosophy as
though it were a province, marshalling his arguments like legionaries,
and spanning the chasms of speculative insecurity with the masonry of
hypotheses. As the arches of the Pont du Gard, suspended in their power
amid that solitude, produce an overmastering feeling of awe; so the
huge fabric of the Lucretian system, hung across the void of Nihilism,
inspires a sense of terror, not so much on its own account as for the
Roman sternness of the mind that made it. 'Le retentissement de mes pas
dans ces immenses voûtes me faisait croire entendre la forte voix de
ceux qui les avait bâties. Je me perdais comme un insecte dans cette
immensité.' This is what Rousseau wrote about the aqueduct of Nismes.
This is what we feel in pacing the corridors of the Lucretian poem.
Sometimes it seems like walking through resounding caves of night and
death, where unseen cataracts keep plunging down uncertain depths, and
winds 'thwarted and forlorn' swell from an unknown distance, and rush
by, and wail themselves to silence in the unexplored beyond. At another
time the impression left upon the memory is different. We have been
following a Roman road from the gate of the Eternal City, through field
and vineyard, by lake and river-bed, across the broad intolerable plain
and the barren tops of Alps, down into forests where wild beasts and
barbarian tribes wander, along the marge of Rhine or Elbe, and over
frozen fens, in one perpetual straight line, until the sea is reached
and the road ends because it can go no further. All the while, the iron
wheel-rims of our chariot have jarred upon imperishable paved work;
there has been no stop nor stay; 158 the visions of things beautiful
and strange and tedious have flown past; at the climax we look forth
across a waste of waves and tumbling wilderness of surf and foam, where
the storm sweeps and hurrying mists drive eastward close above our
heads. The want of any respite, breathing-space, or intermission in the
poem, helps to force this image of a Roman journey on our mind. From
the first line to the last there is no turning-point, no pause of
thought, scarcely a comma, and the whole breaks off:—

rixantes potius quam corpora desererentur:

as though a scythe-sweep from the arm of Death had cut the thread of
singing short.

Is, then, this poem truly song? Indeed it is. The brazen voice of Rome
becomes tunable; a majestic rhythm sustains the progress of the singer,
who, like Milton's Satan,

O'er bog or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare,
With head, hands, wings or feet, pursues his way,
And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies.

It is only because, being so much a Roman, he insists on moving ever
onward with unwavering march, that Lucretius is often wearisome and
rough. He is too disdainful to care to mould the whole stuff of his
poem to one quality. He is too truth-loving to condescend to rhetoric.
The scoriæ, the grit, the dross, the quartz, the gold, the jewels of
his thought are hurried onward in one mighty lava-flood, that has the
force to bear them all with equal ease—not altogether unlike that
hurling torrent of the world painted by Tintoretto in his picture of
the Last Day, which carries on its breast cities and forests and men
with all their works, to plunge them in a bottomless abyss.

Poems of the perfect Hellenic type may be compared to bronze statues,
in the material of which many divers metals 159 have been fused. Silver
and tin and copper and lead and gold are there: each substance adds a
quality to the mass; yet the whole is bronze. The furnace of the poet's
will has so melted and mingled all these ores, that they have run
together and filled the mould of his imagination. It is thus that
Virgil chose to work. He made it his glory to realise artistic harmony,
and to preserve a Greek balance in his style. Not so Lucretius. In him
the Roman spirit, disdainful, uncompromising, and forceful, had full
sway. We can fancy him accosting the Greek masters of the lyre upon
Parnassus, deferring to none, conceding nought, and meeting their
arguments with proud indifference:—

tu regere imperio populos Romane memento.

The Roman poet, swaying the people of his thoughts, will stoop to no
persuasion, adopt no middle course. It is not his business to please,
but to command; he will not wait upon the καιρός, or court opportunity;
Greeks may surprise the Muses in relenting moods, and seek out 'mollia
tempora fandi;' all times and seasons must serve him; the terrible, the
discordant, the sublime, and the magnificent shall drag his thundering
car-wheels, as he lists, along the road of thought.

At the very outset of the poem we feel ourselves within the grasp of
the Roman imagination. It is no Aphrodite, risen from the waves and
white as the sea-foam, that he invokes:—

Æneadum genetrix, hominum divomque voluptas, alma Venus.

This Venus is the mother of the brood of Rome, and at the same time an
abstraction as wide as the universe. See her in the arms of Mavors:—

160    in gremium qui sæpe tuum se
reicit æterno devictus volnere amoris,
atque ita suspiciens tereti cervice reposta
pascit amore avidos inhians in te, dea, visus,
eque tuo pendet resupini spiritus ore.
hunc tu, diva, tuo recubantem corpore sancto
circumfusa super, suavis ex ore loquelas
funde petens placidam Romanis, incluta, pacem.


In the whole Lucretian treatment of love there is nothing really Greek.
We do not hear of Eros, either as the mystic mania of Plato, or as the
winged boy of Meleager. Love in Lucretius is something deeper, larger,
and more elemental than the Greeks conceived; a fierce and
overmastering force, a natural impulse which men share in common with
the world of things.[87] Both the pleasures and the pains of love are
conceived on a gigantic scale, and described with an irony that has the
growl of a roused lion mingled with its laughter:—

ulcus enim vivescit et inveterascit alendo
inque dies gliscit furor atque aerumna gravescit.


 [87] A fragment preserved from the _Danaides_ of Æschylus has the
 thought of Aphrodite as the mistress of love in earth and sky and sea
 and cloud; and this idea finds a philosophical expression in
 Empedocles. But the tone of these Greek poets is as different from
 that of Lucretius as a Greek Hera is from a Roman Juno.

The acts of love and the insanities of passion are viewed from no
standpoint of sentiment or soft emotion, but always in relation to
philosophical ideas, or as the manifestation of something terrible in
human life. Yet they lose nothing thereby in the voluptuous impression
left upon the fancy:—

sic in amore Venus simulacris ludit amantis,
nec satiare queunt spectando corpora coram
nec manibus quicquam teneris abradere membris
possunt errantes incerti corpore toto.
161 denique cum membris conlatis flore fruuntur
ætatis, iam cum præsagit gaudia corpus
atque in eost Venus ut muliebria conserat arva,
adfigunt avide corpus iunguntque salivas
oris et inspirant pressantes dentibus ora,
nequiquam, quoniam nil inde abradere possunt
nec penetrare et abire in corpus corpore toto.


The master-word in this passage is _nequiquam_. 'To desire the
impossible,' says the Greek proverb, 'is a disease of the soul.'
Lucretius, who treats of physical desire as a torment, asserts the
impossibility of its perfect satisfaction. There is something almost
tragic in these sighs and pantings and pleasure-throes, and incomplete
fruitions of souls pent up within their frames of flesh. We seem to see
a race of men and women such as have never lived, except perhaps in
Rome or in the thought of Michel Angelo,[88] meeting in leonine
embracements that yield pain, whereof the climax is, at best, relief
from rage and respite for a moment from consuming fire. There is a life
dæmonic rather than human in those mighty limbs; and the passion that
bends them on the marriage bed has in it the stress of storms, the
rampings and the roarings of leopards at play. Or, take again this
single line:—

et Venus in silvis iungebat corpora amantum.


What a picture of primeval breadth and vastness! The _vice égrillard_
of Voltaire, the coarse animalism of Rabelais, even the large comic
sexuality of Aristophanes, are in another region: for the forest is the
world, and the bodies of the lovers are things natural and unashamed,
and Venus is the tyrannous instinct that controls the blood in spring.
Only a Roman poet could have conceived of passion so mightily and 162
so impersonally, expanding its sensuality to suit the scale of Titanic
existences, and purging from it both sentiment and spirituality as well
as all that makes it mean.

 [88] See, for instance, his meeting of Ixion with the phantom of Juno,
 or his design for Leda and the Swan.

In like manner, the Lucretian conception of Ennui is wholly Roman:—

    Si possent homines, proinde ac sentire videntur
pondus inesse animo quod se gravitate fatiget,
e quibus id fiat causis quoque noscere et unde
tanta mali tamquam moles in pectore constet,
haut ita vitam agerent, ut nunc plerumque videmus
quid sibi quisque velit nescire et quærere semper
commutare locum quasi onus deponere possit.
exit sæpe foras magnis ex ædibus ille,
esse domi quem pertæsumst, subitoque revertit,
quippe foris nilo melius qui sentiat esse.
currit agens mannos ad villam præcipitanter,
auxilium tectis quasi ferre ardentibus instans;
oscitat extemplo, tetigit cum limina villæ,
aut abit in somnum gravis atque oblivia quærit,
aut etiam properans urbem petit atque revisit,
hoc se quisque modo fugit (at quem scilicet, ut fit,
effugere haut potis est, ingratis hæret) et odit
propterea, morbi quia causam non tenet æger;
quam bene si videat, iam rebus quisque relictis
naturam primum studeat cognoscere rerum,
temporis æterni quoniam, non unius horæ,
ambigitur status, in quo sit mortalibus omnis
ætas, post mortem quæ restat cumque manenda.


Virgil would not have written these lines. A Greek poet could not have
conceived them: unless we imagine to ourselves what Æschylus or Pindar,
oppressed by long illness, and forgetful of the gods, might possibly
have felt. In its sense of spiritual vacancy, when the world and all
its uses have become flat, stale, unprofitable, and the sentient soul
oscillates like a pendulum between weariful extremes, seeking repose in
restless movement, and hurling the ruins of a life into the gulf of its
exhausted cravings, we perceive already the symptoms of that unnamed
163 malady which was the plague of imperial Rome. The tyrants and the
suicides of the Empire expand before our eyes a pageant of their
lassitude, relieved in vain by festivals of blood and orgies of
unutterable lust. It is not that _ennui_ was a specially Roman disease.
Under certain conditions it is sure to afflict all overtaxed
civilisation; and for the modern world no one has expressed its nature
better than the slight and feminine De Musset.[89] Indeed, the Latin
language has no one phrase denoting Ennui;—_livor_ and _fastidium_, and
even _tædium vitæ_, meaning something more specific and less
all-pervasive as a moral agency. This in itself is significant, since
it shows the unconsciousness of the race at large, and renders the
intuition of Lucretius all the more remarkable. But in Rome there were
the conditions favourable to its development—imperfect culture,
vehement passions unabsorbed by commerce or by political life, the
habituation to extravagant excitement in war and in the circus, and the
fermentation of an age foredestined to give birth to new religious
creeds. When the infinite but ill-assured power of the Empire was
conferred on semi-madmen, Ennui in Rome assumed colossal proportions.
Its victims sought for palliatives in cruelty and crime elsewhere
unknown, except perhaps in Oriental courts. Lucretius, in the last days
of the Republic, had discovered its deep significance for human nature.
To all the pictures of Tacitus it forms a solemn tragic background,
enhancing, as it were, by spiritual gloom the carnival of passions
which gleam so brilliantly upon his canvas. In the person of Caligula,
Ennui sat supreme upon the throne of the terraqueous globe. The insane
desires and the fantastic deeds of the autocrat who wished one head for
humanity that he might cut it off, sufficiently reveal the extent to
which his spirit had been gangrened by this ulcer. There 164 is a
simple paragraph in Suetonius which lifts the veil from his imperial
unrest more ruthlessly than any legend:—'Incitabatur insomniis maxime;
neque enim plus tribus horis nocturnis quiescebat, ac ne his quidem
placidâ quiete, at pavidâ, miris rerum imaginibus ... ideoque magnâ
parte noctis, vigiliæ cubandique tædio, nunc toro residens, nunc per
longissimas porticus vagus, invocare identidem atque expectare lucem
consueverat.' This is the very picture of Ennui that has become mortal
disease. Nor was Nero different. 'Néron,' says Victor Hugo, 'cherche
tout simplement une distraction. Poë;te, comédien, chanteur, cocher,
épuisant la férocité pour trouver la volupté, essayant le changement de
sexe, époux de l'eunuque Sporus et épouse de l'esclave Pythagore, et se
promenant dans les rues de Rome entre sa femme et son mari; ayant deux
plaisirs: voir le peuple se jeter sur les pièces d'or, les diamants et
les perles, et voir les lions se jeter sur le peuple; incendiaire par
curiosité et parricide par désoeuvrement.' Nor need we stop at Nero.
Over Vitellius at his banquets, over Hadrian in his Tiburtine villa
calling in vain on Death, over Commodus in the arena, and Heliogabalus
among the rose-leaves, the same livid shadow of imperial Ennui hangs.
We can even see it looming behind the noble form of Marcus Aurelius,
who, amid the ruins of empire and the revolutions of belief, penned in
his tent among the Quadi those maxims of endurance which were powerless
to regenerate the world.

 [89] See the prelude to _Les Confessions d'un Enfant du Siècle_ and
 _Les Nuits_.

Roman again, in the true sense of the word, is the Lucretian philosophy
of Conscience. Christianity has claimed the celebrated imprecation of
Persius upon tyrants for her own, as though to her alone belonged the
secret of the soul-tormenting sense of guilt. Yet it is certain that we
owe to the Romans that conception of sin bearing its own fruit of
torment which the Latin Fathers—Augustine and Tertullian— 165 imposed
with such terrific force upon the mediæval consciousness. There is no
need to conclude that Persius was a Christian because he wrote—

Magne pater divum, sævos punire tyrannos, etc.,


when we know that he had before his eyes that passage in the third book
of the 'De Rerum Naturâ,' (978-1023) which reduces the myths of Tityos
and Sisyphus and Cerberus and the Furies to facts of the human soul:—

sed metus in vita poenarum pro male factis
est insignibus insignis, scelerisque luella,
carcer et horribilis de saxo iactu' deorsum,
verbera carnifices robur pix lammina tædæ;
quæ tamen etsi absunt, at mens sibi conscia facti
præmetuens adhibet stimulos terretque flagellis
nec videt interea qui terminus esse malorum
possit nec quæ sit poenarum denique finis
atque eadem metuit magis hæc ne in morte gravescant.


The Greeks, by personifying those secret terrors, had removed them into
a region of existences separate from man. They became dread goddesses,
who might to some extent be propitiated by exorcisms or expiatory
rites. This was in strict accordance with the mythopoeic and artistic
quality of the Greek intellect. The stern and somewhat prosaic
rectitude of the Roman broke through such figments of the fancy, and
exposed the sore places of the soul itself. The theory of the
Conscience, moreover, is part of the Lucretian polemic against false
notions of the gods and the pernicious belief in hell.

Positivism and Realism were qualities of Roman as distinguished from
Greek culture. There was no self-delusion in Lucretius—no attempt,
however unconscious, to compromise unpalatable truth, or to invest
philosophy with the charm of myth. A hundred illustrations might be
chosen to prove his method of setting forth thought with unadorned
simplicity. These, however, are familiar to any one who has but opened
166 the 'De Rerum Naturâ.' It is more profitable to trace this Roman
ruggedness in the poet's treatment of the subject which more than any
other seems to have preoccupied his intellect and fascinated his
imagination—that is Death. His poem has been called by a great critic
the 'poem of Death.' Shakspere's line—

And Death once dead, there's no more dying then,


might be written as a motto on the title-page of the book, which is
full of passages like this:—

scire licet nobis nil esse in morte timendum
nec miserum fieri qui non est posse neque hilum
differre anne ullo fuerit iam tempore natus,
mortalem vitam mors cum immortalis ademit.


His whole mind was steeped in the thought of death; and though he can
hardly be said to have written 'the words that shall make death
exhilarating,' he devoted his genius, in all its energy, to removing
from before men the terror of the doom that waits for all. Sometimes,
in his attempt at consolation, he adduces images which, like the
Delphian knife, are double-handled, and cut both ways:—

hinc indignatur se mortalem esse creatum
nec videt in vera nullum fore morte alium se
qui possit vivus sibi se lugere peremptum
stansque iacentem se lacerari urive dolere.


This suggests, by way of contrast, Blake's picture of the soul that has
just left the body and laments her separation. As we read, we are
inclined to lay the book down, and wonder whether the argument is,
after all, conclusive. May not the spirit, when she has quitted her old
house, be forced to weep and wring her hands, and stretch vain shadowy
arms to the limbs that were so dear? No one has felt more profoundly
than Lucretius the pathos of the dead. The intensity with 167 which he
realised what we must lose in dying and what we leave behind of grief
to those who loved us, reaches a climax of restrained passion in this
well-known paragraph:—

'iam iam non domus accipiet te læta, neque uxor
optima nec dulces occurrent oscula nati
præripere et tacita pectus dulcedine tangent.
non poteris factis florentibus esse, tuisque
præsidium. misero misere' aiunt 'omnia ademit
una dies infesta tibi tot præmia vitæ.'
illud in his rebus non addunt 'nec tibi earum
iam desiderium rerum super insidet una.'
quod bene si videant animo dictisque sequantur,
dissoluant animi magno se angore metuque.
'tu quidem ut es leto sopitus, sic eris ævi
quod superest cunctis privatu' doloribus ægris.
at nos horrifico cinefactum te prope busto
insatiabiliter deflevimus, æternumque
nulla dies nobis mærorem e pectore demet.'

Images, again, of almost mediæval grotesqueness, rise in his mind when
he contemplates the universality of Death. Simonides had dared to say:
'One horrible Charybdis waits for all.' That was as near a discord as a
Greek could venture on. Lucretius describes the open gate and 'huge
wide-gaping maw' which must devour heaven, earth, and sea, and all that
they contain:—

haut igitur leti præclusa est ianua cælo
nec soli terræque neque altis æquoris undis,
sed patet immani et vasto respectat hiatu.

The ever-during battle of life and death haunts his imagination.
Sometimes he sets it forth in philosophical array of argument.
Sometimes he touches on the theme with elegiac pity:—

    miscetur funere vagor
quem pueri tollunt visentis luminis oras;
nec nox ulla diem neque noctem aurora secutast
quæ non audierit mixtos vagitibus ægris
ploratus mortis comites et funeris atri.

168 Then again he returns, with obstinate persistence, to describe how
the dread of death, fortified by false religion, hangs like a pall over
humanity, and how the whole world is a cemetery overshadowed by
cypresses. The most sustained, perhaps, of these passages is at the
beginning of the third book (lines 31 to 93). The most profoundly
melancholy is the description of the new-born child (v. 221):—

    quare mors immatura vagatur?
tum porro puer, ut sævis proiectus ab undis
navita, nudus humi iacet, infans, indigus omni
vitali auxilio, cum primum in luminis oras
nixibus ex alvo matris natura profudit,
vagituque locum lugubri complet, ut æcumst
cui tantum in vita restet transire malorum.


Disease and old age, as akin to Death, touch his imagination with the
same force. He rarely alludes to either without some lines as terrible
as these (iii. 472, 453):—

nam dolor ac morbus leti fabricator uterquest.
claudicat ingenium, delirat lingua, labat mens.

Another kindred subject affects him with an equal pathos. He sees the
rising and decay of nations, age following after age, like waves
hurrying to dissolve upon a barren shore, and writes (ii. 75):—

    sic rerum summa novatur
semper, et inter se mortales mutua vivunt,
augescunt aliæ gentes, aliæ minuuntur,
inque brevi spatio mutantur sæcla animantum
et quasi cursores vitai lampada tradunt.

Although the theme is really the procession of life through countless
generations, it obtains a tone of sadness from the sense of
intervenient decay and change. No Greek had the heart thus to dilate
his imagination with the very element of death. What the Greeks
commemorated when they spoke of Death was the loss of the lyre and the
hymeneal chaunt, and 169 the passage across dim waves to a sunless
land. Nor indeed does Lucretius, like the modern poet of Democracy,
ascend into the regions of ecstatic trance:—

Lost in the loving, floating ocean of thee,
Laved in the flood of thy bliss, O Death.


He keeps his reason cool, and sternly contemplates the thought of the
annihilation which awaits all perishable combinations of eternal
things. Like Milton, Lucretius delights in giving the life of his
imagination to abstractions. Time, with his retinue of ages, sweeps
before his vision, and he broods in fancy over the illimitable ocean of
the universe. The fascination of the infinite is the quality which,
more than any other, separates Lucretius as a Roman poet from the
Greeks.

Another distinctive feature of his poetry Lucretius inherited as part
of his birthright. This is the sense of Roman greatness. It pervades
the poem, and may be felt in every part; although to Athens, and the
Greek sages, Democritus, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Heraclitus, and
Epicurus, as the fountain-heads of soul-delivering culture, he reserves
his most magnificent periods of panegyric. Yet when he would fain
persuade his readers that the fear of death is nugatory, and that the
future will be to them even as the past, it is the shock of Rome with
Carthage that he dwells upon as the critical event of the world's
history (iii. 830):—

    Nil igitur mors est ad nos neque pertinet hilum,
quandoquidem natura animi mortalis habetur.
et velut anteacto nil tempore sensimus ægri,
ad confligendum venientibus undique Poenis,
omnia cum belli trepido concussa tumultu
horrida contremuere sub altis ætheris oris,
_in dubioque fuere utrorum ad regna cadendum_
_omnibus humanis esset terraque marique_,
sic:


The lines in italics could have been written by none but a 170 Roman
conscious that the conflict with Carthage had decided the absolute
empire of the habitable world. In like manner the description of a
military review (ii. 323) is Roman: so, too, is that of the
amphitheatre (iv. 75):—

et volgo faciunt id lutea russaque vela
et ferrugina, cum magnis intenta theatris
per malos volgata trabesque trementia flutant.
namque ibi consessum caveai supter et omnem
scænai speciem, patrum coetumque decorum
inficiunt coguntque suo fluitare colore.

The imagination of Lucretius, however, was habitually less affected by
the particular than by the universal. He loved to dwell upon the large
and general aspects of things—on the procession of the seasons, for
example, rather than upon the landscape of the Campagna in spring or
autumn. Therefore it is only occasionally and by accident that we find
in his verse touches peculiarly characteristic of the manners of his
country. Therefore, again, it has happened that modern critics have
detected a lack of patriotic interest in this most Roman of all Latin
poets. Also may it here be remembered, that the single line which sums
up all the history of Rome in one soul-shaking hexameter, is not
Lucretian but Virgilian:—

Tantæ molis erat Romanam condere gentem.

The custode of the Baths of Titus, when he lifts his torch to explore
those ruined arches, throws the wan light upon one place where a Roman
hand has scratched that verse in gigantic letters on the cement. The
colossal genius of Rome seems speaking to us, an oracle no lapse of
time can render dumb.

But Lucretius is not only the poet _par excellence_ of Rome. He will
always rank also among the first philosophical poets of the world: and
here we find a second standpoint for inquiry. The question how far it
is practicable to express 171 philosophy in verse, and to combine the
accuracy of scientific language with the charm of rhythm and the
ornaments of the fancy, is one which belongs rather to modern than to
ancient criticism. In the progress of culture there has been an
ever-growing separation between the several spheres of intellectual
activity. What Livy said about the Roman Empire is true now of
knowledge: _magnitudine laborat suâ_; so that the labour of
specialising and distinguishing has for many centuries been
all-important. Not only do we disbelieve in the desirability of
smearing honey upon the lip of the medicine-glass through which the
draught of erudition has to be administered; but we know for certain
that it is only at the meeting-points between science and emotion that
the philosophic poet finds a proper sphere. Whatever subject-matter can
be permeated or penetrated with strong human feeling is fit for verse.
Then the rhythms and the forms of poetry to which high passions
naturally move, become spontaneous. The emotion is paramount, and the
knowledge conveyed is valuable as supplying fuel to the fire of
feeling. There are, were, and always will be high imaginative points of
vantage commanding the broad fields of knowledge, upon which the poet
may take his station to survey the world and all that it contains. But
it has long ceased to be his function to set forth, in any kind of
metre, systems of speculative thought or purely scientific truths. This
was not the case in the old world. There was a period in the
development of the intellect when the abstractions of logic appeared
like intuitions, and guesses about the structure of the universe still
wore the garb of fancy. When physics and metaphysics were scarcely
distinguished from mythology, it was natural to address the Muses at
the outset of a treatise of ontology, and to cadence a theory of
elemental substances in hexameter verse. Thus the philosophical poems
of Xenophanes, Parmenides, and 172 Empedocles belonged essentially to a
transitional stage of human culture.

There is a second species of poetry to which the name of philosophical
may be given, though it better deserves that of mystical. Pantheism
occupies a middle place between a scientific theory of the universe and
a form of religious enthusiasm. It supplies an element in which the
poetic faculty can move with freedom: for its conclusions, in so far as
they pretend to philosophy, are large and general, and the emotions
which it excites are co-extensive with the world. Therefore,
Pantheistic mysticism, from the Bhagavadgita of the far East, through
the Persian Soofis, down to the poets of our own century, Goethe, and
Shelley, and Wordsworth, and Whitman, and many more whom it would be
tedious to enumerate, has generated a whole tribe of philosophic
singers.

Yet a third class may be mentioned. Here we have to deal with what are
called didactic poems. These, like the metaphysical epic, began to
flourish in early Greece at the moment when exact thought was dividing
itself laboriously from myths and fancies. Hesiod with his poem on the
life of man leads the way; and the writers of moral sentences in
elegiac verse, among whom Solon and Theognis occupy the first place,
follow. Latin literature contributes highly artificial specimens of
this kind in the 'Georgics' of Virgil, the stoical diatribes of
Persius, and the 'Ars Poetica' of Horace. Didactic verse had a special
charm for the genius of the Latin race. The name of such poems in the
Italian literature of the Renaissance is legion. The French delighted
in the same style under the same influences; nor can we fail to
attribute the 'Essay on Man' and the 'Essay on Criticism' of our own
Pope to a similar revival in England of Latin forms of art. The taste
for didactic verse has declined. Yet in its stead another sort of
philosophical poetry has grown up in this century, which, for 173 the
want of a better term, may be called psychological. It deserves this
title, inasmuch as the motive-interest of the art in question is less
the passion or the action of humanity than the analysis of the same.
The 'Faust' of Goethe, the 'Prelude' and 'Excursion' of Wordsworth,
Browning's 'Sordello' and Mrs. Browning's 'Aurora Leigh,' together with
the 'Musings' of Coleridge and the 'In Memoriam' of Tennyson, may be
roughly reckoned in this class. It will be noticed that nothing has
been said about professedly religious poetry, much of which attaches
itself to mysticism, while some, like the 'Divine Comedy' of Dante, is
philosophic in the truest sense of the word.

Where, then, are we to place Lucretius? He was a Roman, imbued with the
didactic predilections of the Latin race; and the didactic quality of
the 'De Rerum Naturâ' is unmistakable. Yet it would be uncritical to
place this poem in the class which derives from Hesiod. It belongs
really to the succession of Xenophanes, Parmenides, and Empedocles. As
such it was an anachronism. The specific moment in the development of
thought at which the Parmenidean Epic was natural has been already
described. The Romans of the age of Lucretius had advanced far beyond
it. The idealistic metaphysics of the Socratic school, the positive
ethics of the Stoics, and the profound materialism of Epicurus, had
accustomed the mind to habits of exact and subtle thinking, prolonged
from generation to generation upon the same lines of speculative
inquiry. Philosophy expressed in verse was out of date. Moreover, the
very myths had been rationalised. Euhemerus had even been translated
into Latin by Ennius, and his prosaic explanations of Greek legend had
found acceptance with the essentially positive Roman intellect.
Lucretius himself, it may be said in passing, thought it worth while to
offer a philosophical explanation of the Greek mythology. The Cybele of
the poets 174 is shown in one of his sublimest passages (ii. 600-645)
to be Earth. To call the sea Neptune, corn Ceres, and wine Bacchus,
seems to him a simple folly (ii. 652-657). We have already seen how he
reduces the fiends and spectres of the Greek Hades to facts of moral
subjectivity (iii. 978-1023). In another place he attacks the worship
of Phoebus and the stars (v. 110); in yet another he upsets the belief
in the Centaurs, Scylla, and Chimæra (v. 877-924) with a gravity which
is almost comic. Such arguments formed a necessary element in his
polemic against foul religion (foeda religio—turpis religio); to
deliver men from which (i. 62-112), by establishing firmly in their
minds the conviction that the gods exist far away from this world in
unconcerned tranquillity (ii. 646), and by substituting the notion of
Nature for that of deity (ii. 1090), was the object of his scientific
demonstration.

Lucretius, therefore, had outgrown mythology, was hostile to religion,
and burned with unsurpassable enthusiasm to indoctrinate his Roman
readers with the weighty conclusions of systematised materialism. Yet
he chose the vehicle of hexameter verse, and trammelled his genius with
limitations which Empedocles, four hundred years before, must have
found almost intolerable. It needed the most ardent intellectual
passion and the loftiest inspiration to sustain on his far flight a
poet who had forged a hoplite's panoply for singing robes. Both passion
and inspiration were granted to Lucretius in full measure. And just as
there was something contradictory between the scientific subject-matter
and the poetical form of his masterpiece, so the very sources of his
poetic strength were such as are usually supposed to depress the soul.
His passion was for death, annihilation, godlessness. It was not the
eloquence, but the force of logic in Epicurus that roused his
enthusiasm:—

ergo vivida vis animi pervicit et extra
processit longe flammantia moenia mundi.

175

No other poet who ever lived in any age, or any shore, drew inspiration
from founts more passionless and more impersonal.

The 'De Rerum Naturâ' is therefore an attempt, unique in its kind, to
combine philosophical exposition and poetry in an age when the
requirements of the former had already outgrown the resources of the
latter. Throughout the poem we trace a discord between the matter and
the form. The frost of reason and the fire of fancy war in deadly
conflict; for the Lucretian system destroyed nearly everything with
which the classical imagination loved to play. It was only in some high
ethereal region, before the majestic thought of Death or the new Myth
of Nature, that the two faculties of the poet's genius met for mutual
support. Only at rare intervals did he allow himself to make artistic
use of mere mythology, as in the celebrated exordium of the first book,
or the description of the Seasons in the fifth book (737-745). For the
most part reason and fancy worked separately: after long passages of
scientific explanation, Lucretius indulged his readers with those
pictures of unparalleled sublimity and grace which are the charm of the
whole poem; or dropping the phraseology of atoms, void, motion, chance,
he spoke at times of Nature as endowed with reason and a will (v. 186,
811, 846).

It would be beyond the scope of this essay to discuss the particular
form given by Lucretius to the Democritean philosophy. He believed the
universe to be composed of atoms, infinite in number, and variable, to
a finite extent, in form, which drift slantingly through an infinite
void. Their combinations under the conditions of what we call space and
time are transitory, while they remain themselves imperishable.
Consequently, as the soul itself is corporeally constituted, and as
thought and sensation depend on mere material idola, men may divest
themselves of any fear of the hereafter. There is no such thing as
providence, nor do the 176 gods concern themselves with the
kaleidoscopic medley of atoms in transient combination which we call
our world. The latter were points of supreme interest to Lucretius. He
seems to have cared for the cosmology of Epicurus chiefly as it touched
humanity through ethics and religion. To impartial observers, the
identity or the divergence of the forms assumed by scientific
hypothesis at different periods of the world's history is not a matter
of much importance. Yet a peculiar interest has of late been given to
the Lucretian materialism by the fact that physical speculation has
returned to what is substantially the same ground. The most modern
theories of evolution and of molecular structure may be stated in
language which, allowing for the progress made by exact thought during
the last twenty centuries, is singularly like that of Lucretius. The
Roman poet knew fewer facts than are familiar to our men of science,
and was far less able to analyse one puzzle into a whole group of
unexplained phenomena. He had besides but a feeble grasp upon those
discoveries which subserve the arts of life and practical utility. But
as regards _absolute knowledge_—knowledge, that is to say, of what the
universe really is, and of how it became what it seems to us to
be—Lucretius stood at the same point of ignorance as we, after the
labours of Darwin and of Spencer, of Helmholtz and of Huxley, still do.
Ontological speculation is as barren now as then, and the problems of
existence still remain insoluble. The chief difference indeed between
him and modern investigators is that they have been lessoned by the
experience of the last two thousand years to know better the depths of
human ignorance, and the directions in which it is possible to sound
them.

It may not be uninteresting to collect a few passages in which the
Roman poet has expressed in his hexameters the lines of thought adopted
by our most advanced theorists. 177 Here is the general conception of
Nature, working by her own laws toward the achievement of that result
which we apprehend through the medium of the senses (ii. 1090):—

    Quæ bene cognita si teneas, natura videtur
libera continuo dominis privata superbis
ipsa sua per se sponte omnia dis agere expers.

Here again is a demonstration of the absurdity of supposing that the
world was made for the use of men (v. 156):—

dicere porro hominum causa voluisse parare
præclaram mundi naturam proptereaque
adlaudabile opus divom laudare decere
æternumque putare atque inmortale futurum
nec fas esse, deum quod sit ratione vetusta
gentibus humanis fundatum perpetuo ævo,
sollicitare suis ulla vi ex sedibus umquam
nec verbis vexare et ab imo evertere summa,
cetera de genere hoc adfingere et addere, Memmi
desiperest.


A like cogent rhetoric is directed against the arguments of toleology
(iv. 823):—

    Illud in his rebus vitium vementer avessis
effugere, errorem vitareque præmetuenter,
lumina ne facias oculorum clara creata,
prospicere ut possemus, et ut proferre queamus
proceros passus, ideo fastigia posse
surarum ac feminum pedibus fundata plicari,
bracchia tum porro validis ex apta lacertis
esse manusque datas utraque ex parte ministras,
ut facere ad vitam possemus quæ foret usus.
cetera de genere hoc inter quæcumque pretantur
omnia perversa præpostera sunt ratione,
nil ideo quoniam natumst in corpore ut uti
possemus, sed quod natumst id procreat usum.
nec fuit ante videre oculorum lumina nata
nec dictis orare prius quam lingua creatast,
sed potius longe linguæ præcessit origo
sermonem multoque creatæ sunt prius aures
178 quam sonus est auditus, et omnia denique membra
ante fuere, ut opinor, eorum quam foret usus.
haud igitur potuere utendi crescere causa.

The ultimate dissolution and the gradual decay of the terrestrial globe
is set forth in the following luminous passage (ii. 1148):—

Sic igitur magni quoque circum moenia mundi
expugnata dabunt labem putrisque ruinas.
iamque adeo fracta est ætas effetaque tellus
vix animalia parva creat quæ cuncta creavit
sæcla deditque ferarum ingentia corpora partu.[90]


 [90] Compare book v. 306-317 on the evidences of decay continually at
 work in the fabric of the world.

The same mind which recognised these probabilities knew also that our
globe is not single, but that it forms one among an infinity of sister
orbs (ii. 1084):—

quapropter cælum simili ratione fatendumst
terramque et solem lunam mare, cetera quæ sunt
non esse unica, sed numero magis innumerali.[91]


 [91] The same truth is insisted on with even greater force of language
 in vi. 649-652.

When Lucretius takes upon himself to describe the process of becoming
which made the world what it now is, he seems to incline to a theory
not at all dissimilar to that of unassisted evolution (v. 419):—

nam certe neque consilio primordia rerum
ordine se suo quæque sagaci mente locarunt
nec quos quæque darent motus pepigere profecto,
sed quia multa modis multis primordia rerum
ex infinito iam tempore percita plagis
ponderibusque suis consuerunt concita ferri
omnimodisque coire atque omnia pertemptare,
quæcumque inter se possent congressa creare,
propterea fit uti magnum volgata per ævom
omne genus coetus et motus experiundo
179 tandem conveniant ea quæ convecta repente
magnarum rerum fiunt exordia sæpe,
terrai maris et cæli generisque animantum.

Entering into the details of the process, he describes the many
ill-formed, amorphous beginnings of organised life upon the globe,
which came to nothing, 'since nature set a ban upon their increase' (v.
837-848); and then proceeds to explain how, in the struggle for
existence, the stronger prevailed over the weaker (v. 855-863). What is
really interesting in this exposition is that Lucretius ascribes to
nature the volition ('convertebat ibi natura foramina terræ;' 'quoniam
natura absterruit auctum') which has recently been attributed by
materialistic speculators to the same maternal power.

To press these points, and to neglect the gap which separates Lucretius
from thinkers fortified by the discoveries of modern chemistry,
astronomy, physiology, and so forth, would be childish. All we can do
is to point to the fact that the circumambient atmosphere of human
ignorance, with reference to the main matters of speculation, remains
undissipated. The mass of experience acquired since the age of
Lucretius is enormous, and is infinitely valuable; while our power of
tabulating, methodising, and extending the sphere of experimental
knowledge seems to be unlimited. Only ontological deductions, whether
negative or affirmative, remain pretty much where they were then.

The fame of Lucretius, however, rests not on this foundation of
hypothesis. In his poetry lies the secret of a charm which he will
continue to exercise as long as humanity chooses to read Latin verse.
No poet has created a world of larger and nobler images, designed with
the _sprezzatura_ of indifference to mere gracefulness, but all the
more fascinating because of the artist's negligence. There is something
monumental in the effect produced by his large-sounding single 180
epithets and simple names. We are at home with the dæmonic life of
nature when he chooses to bring Pan and his following before our eyes
(iv. 580). Or, again, the Seasons pass like figures on some frieze of
Mantegna, to which, by divine accident, has been added the glow of
Titian's colouring[92] (v. 737):—

it ver et Venus, et veris prænuntius ante
pennatus graditur zephyrus, vestigia propter
Flora quibus mater præspargens ante viai
cuncta coloribus egregiis et odoribus opplet.
inde loci sequitur calor aridus et comes una
pulverulenta Ceres et etesia flabra aquilonum,
inde antumnus adit, graditur simul Eubius Euan,
inde aliæ tempestates ventique secuntur,
altitonans Volturnus et auster fulmine pollens.
tandem bruma nives adfert pigrumque rigorem,
prodit hiemps, sequitur crepitans hanc dentibus algor.


 [92] The elaborate illustration of the first four lines of this
 passage, painted by Botticelli (in the Florence Academy of Fine Arts),
 proves Botticelli's incapacity or unwillingness to deal with the
 subject in the spirit of the original. It is graceful and 'subtle'
 enough, but not Lucretian.

With what a noble style, too, are the holidays of the primeval pastoral
folk described (v. 1379-1404). It is no mere celebration of the _bell'
età dell' oro_: but we see the woodland glades, and hear the songs of
shepherds, and feel the hush of summer among rustling forest trees,
while at the same time all is far away, in a better, simpler, larger
age. The sympathy of Lucretius for every form of country life was very
noticeable. It belonged to that which was most deeply and sincerely
poetic in the Latin genius, whence Virgil drew his sweetest strain of
melancholy, and Horace his most unaffected pictures, and Catullus the
tenderness of his best lines on Sirmio. No Roman surpassed the pathos
with which 181 Lucretius described the separation of a cow from her
calf (ii. 352-365). The same note indeed was touched by Virgil in his
lines upon the forlorn nightingale, and in the peroration to the third
'Georgic.' But the style of Virgil is more studied, the feeling more
artistically elaborated. It would be difficult to parallel such
Lucretian passages in Greek poetry. The Greeks lacked an undefinable
something of rusticity which dignified the Latin race. This quality was
not altogether different from what we call homeliness. Looking at the
busts of Romans, and noticing their resemblance to English country
gentlemen, I have sometimes wondered whether the Latin genius, just in
those points where it differed from the Greek, was not approximated to
the English.

All subjects needing a large style, brief and rapid, but at the same
time luminous with imagination, were sure of the right treatment from
Lucretius. This is shown by his enumeration of the celestial signs (v.
1188):—

in cæloque deum sedes et templa locarunt,
per cælum volvi quia nox et luna videtur,
luna dies et nox et noctis signa severa
noctivagæque faces cæli flammæque volantes,
nubila sol imbres nix venti fulmina grando
et rapidi fremitus et murmura magna minarum.


Again, he never failed to rise to an occasion which required the
display of fervid eloquence. The Roman eloquence, which in its
energetic volubility was the chief force of Juvenal, added a tidal
strength and stress of storm to the quick gathering thoughts of the
greater poet. The exordia to the first and second books, the analysis
of Love in the fourth, the praises of Epicurus in the third and fifth,
the praises of Empedocles and Ennius in the first, the elaborate
passage on the progress of civilisation in the fifth, and the
description of the plague at 182 Athens which closes the sixth, are
noble instances of the sublimest poetry sustained and hurried onward by
the volume of impassioned improvisation. It is difficult to imagine
that Lucretius wrote slowly. The strange word _vociferari_, which he
uses so often, and which the Romans of the Augustan age almost dropped
from their poetic vocabulary, seems exactly made to suit his utterance.
Yet at times he tempers the full torrent of resonant utterance with
divine tranquillity, and leaves upon our mind that sense of powerful
aloofness from his subject, which only belongs to the mightiest poets
in their most majestic moments. One instance of this rare felicity of
style shall end the list of our quotations (v. 1194):—

O genus infelix humanum, talia divis
cum tribuit facta atque iras adiunxit acerbas!
quantos tum gemitus ipsi sibi, quantaque nobis
volnera, quas lacrimas peperere minoribu' nostris!
nec pietas ullast velatum sæpe videri
vertier ad lapidem atque omnis accedere ad aras
nec procumbere humi prostratum et pandere palmas
ante deum delubra nec aras sanguine multo
spargere quadrupedum nec votis nectere vota,
sed mage pacata posse omnia mente tueri.
nam cum suspicimus magni cælestia mundi
ellisque micantibus æthera fixum,
et venit in mentem solis lunæque viarum,
tunc aliis oppressa malis in pectora cura
illa quoque expergefactum caput erigere infit,
ne quæ forte deum nobis inmensa potestas
sit, vario motu quæ candida sidera verset.
temptat enim dubiam mentem rationis egestas,
ecquænam fuerit mundi genitalis origo,
et simul ecquæ sit finis, quoad moenia mundi
solliciti motus hunc possint ferre laborem,
an divinitus æterna donata salute
perpetuo possint ævi labentia tractu
inmensi validas ævi contemnere viris.


It would be impossible to adduce from any other poet a 183 passage in
which the deepest doubts and darkest terrors and most vexing questions
that beset the soul, are touched with an eloquence more stately and a
pathos more sublime. Without losing the sense of humanity, we are
carried off into the infinite. Such poetry is as imperishable as the
subject of which it treats.

184




ANTINOUS


Visitors to picture and sculpture galleries are haunted by the forms of
two handsome young men—Sebastian and Antinous. Both were saints: the
one of decadent Paganism, the other of mythologising Christianity.
According to the popular beliefs to which they owed their canonisation,
both suffered death in the bloom of earliest manhood for the faith that
burned in them. There is, however, this difference between the two—that
whereas Sebastian is a shadowy creature of the pious fancy, Antinous
preserves a marked and unmistakable personality. All his statues are
distinguished by unchanging characteristics. The pictures of Sebastian
vary according to the ideal of adolescent beauty conceived by each
successive artist. In the frescoes of Perugino and Luini he shines with
the pale pure light of saintliness. On the canvas of Sodoma he
reproduces the voluptuous charm of youthful Bacchus, with so much of
anguish in his martyred features as may serve to heighten his dæmonic
fascination. On the richer panels of the Venetian masters he glows with
a flame of earthly passion aspiring heavenward. Under Guido's hand he
is a model of mere carnal comeliness. And so forth through the whole
range of the Italian painters. We know Sebastian only by his arrows.
The case is very different with Antinous. Depicted under diverse
attributes—as Hermes of the wrestling-ground, as Aristæus or Vertumnus,
as Dionysus, as Ganymede, as Herakles, or as a god of ancient Egypt—his
individuality is always prominent. No metamorphosis of 185 divinity can
change the lineaments he wore on earth. And this difference, so marked
in the artistic presentation of the two saints, is no less striking in
their several histories. The legend of Sebastian tells us nothing to be
relied upon, except that he was a Roman soldier converted to the
Christian faith, and martyred. In spite of the perplexity and mystery
that involve the death of Antinous in impenetrable gloom, he is a true
historic personage, no phantom of myth, but a man as real as Hadrian,
his master.

Antinous, as he appears in sculpture, is a young man of eighteen or
nineteen years, almost faultless in his form. His beauty is not of a
pure Greek type. Though perfectly proportioned and developed by
gymnastic exercises to the true athletic fulness, his limbs are round
and florid, suggesting the possibility of early over-ripeness. The
muscles are not trained to sinewy firmness, but yielding and elastic;
the chest is broad and singularly swelling; and the shoulders are
placed so far back from the thorax that the breasts project beyond them
in a massive arch. It has been asserted that one shoulder is slightly
lower than the other. Some of the busts seem to justify this statement;
but the appearance is due probably to the different position of the two
arms, one of which, if carried out, would be lifted and the other be
depressed. The legs and arms are modelled with exquisite grace of
outline; yet they do not show that readiness for active service which
is noticeable in the statues of the Meleager, the Apoxyomenos, or the
Belvedere Hermes. The whole body combines Greek beauty of structure
with something of Oriental voluptuousness. The same fusion of diverse
elements may be traced in the head. It is not too large, though more
than usually broad, and is nobly set upon a massive throat, slightly
inclined forwards, as though this posture were habitual; the hair lies
thick in clusters, which only form curls at the tips. The forehead 186
is low and somewhat square; the eyebrows are level, of a peculiar
shape, and very thick, converging so closely as almost to meet above
the deep-cut eyes. The nose is straight, but blunter than is consistent
with the Greek ideal. Both cheeks and chin are delicately formed, but
fuller than a severe taste approves: one might trace in their rounded
contours either a survival of infantine innocence and immaturity, or
else the sign of rapidly approaching over-bloom. The mouth is one of
the loveliest ever carved; but here again the blending of the Greek and
Oriental types is visible. The lips, half parted, seem to pout; and the
distance between mouth and nostrils is exceptionally short. The
undefinable expression of the lips, together with the weight of the
brows and slumberous half-closed eyes, gives a look of sulkiness or
voluptuousness to the whole face. This, I fancy, is the first
impression which the portraits of Antinous produce; and Shelley has
well conveyed it by placing the two following phrases, 'eager and
impassioned tenderness' and 'effeminate sullenness,' in close
juxtaposition.[93] But, after longer familiarity with the whole range
of Antinous's portraits, and after study of his life, we are brought to
read the peculiar expression of his face and form somewhat differently.
A prevailing melancholy, sweetness of temperament overshadowed by
resignation, brooding reverie, the innocence of youth, touched and
saddened by a calm resolve or an accepted doom—such are the sentences
we form to give distinctness to a still vague and uncertain impression.
As we gaze, Virgil's lines upon the young Marcellus recur to our mind:
what seemed sullen, becomes mournful; the unmistakable voluptuousness
is transfigured in tranquillity.

 [93] Fragment, _The Coliseum_.

After all is said and written, the statues of Antinous do not render up
their secret. Like some of the Egyptian gods with whom he was
associated, he remains for us a sphinx, 187 secluded in the shade of a
'mild mystery.' His soul, like the Harpocrates he personated, seems to
hold one finger on closed lips, in token of eternal silence. One thing,
however, is certain. We have before us no figment of the artistic
imagination, but a real youth of incomparable beauty, just as nature
made him, with all the inscrutableness of undeveloped character, with
all the pathos of a most untimely doom, with the almost imperceptible
imperfections that render choice reality more permanently charming than
the ideal. It has been disputed whether the Antinous statues are
portraits or idealised works of inventive art; and it is usually
conceded that the sculptors of Hadrian's age were not able to produce a
new ideal type. Critics, therefore, like Helbig and Overbeck, arrive at
the conclusion that Antinous was one of nature's masterpieces, modelled
in bronze, marble, and granite with almost flawless technical
dexterity. Without attaching too much weight to this kind of criticism,
it is well to find the decisions of experts in harmony with the
instincts of simple observers. Antinous is as real as any man who ever
sat for his portrait to a modern sculptor.

But who was Antinous, and what is known of him? He was a native of
Bithynium or Claudiopolis, a Greek town claiming to have been a colony
from Arcadia, which was situated near the Sangarius, in the Roman
province of Bithynia; therefore he may have had pure Hellenic blood in
his veins, or, what is more probable, his ancestry may have been hybrid
between the Greek immigrants and the native populations of Asia Minor.
Antinous was probably born in the first decade of the second century of
our era. About his youth and education we know nothing. He first
appears upon the scene of the world's history as Hadrian's friend.
Whether the Emperor met with him during his travels in Asia Minor,
whether he found him among the students of the University at 188
Athens, or whether the boy had been sent to Rome in his childhood, must
remain matter of the merest conjecture. We do not even know for certain
whether Antinous was free or a slave. The report that he was one of the
Emperor's pages rests upon the testimony of Hegesippus, quoted by a
Christian Father, and cannot therefore be altogether relied upon. It
receives, however, some confirmation from the fact that Antinous is
more than once represented in the company of Hadrian and Trajan in a
page's hunting dress upon the basreliefs which adorn the Arch of
Constantine. The so-called Antinous-Castor of the Villa Albani is
probably of a similar character. Winckelmann, who adopted the tradition
as trustworthy, pointed out the similarity between the portraits of
Antinous and some lines in Phædrus, which describe a curly-haired
_atriensis_. If Antinous took the rank of _atriensis_ in the imperial
_pædagogium_, his position would have been, to say the least,
respectable; for to these upper servants was committed the charge of
the _atrium_, where the Romans kept their family archives, portraits,
and works of art. Yet he must have quitted this kind of service some
time before his death, since we find him in the company of Hadrian upon
one of those long journeys in which an _atriensis_ would have had no
_atrium_ to keep. By the time of Hadrian's visit to Egypt, Antinous had
certainly passed into the closest relationship with his imperial
master; and what we know of the Emperor's inclination towards literary
and philosophical society perhaps justifies the belief that the youth
he admitted to his friendship had imbibed Greek culture, and had been
initiated into those cloudy metaphysics which amused the leisure of
semi-Oriental thinkers in the last age of decaying Paganism.

It was a moment in the history of the human mind when East and West
were blending their traditions to form the husk of Christian creeds and
the fantastic visions of neo-Platonism. 189 Rome herself had received
with rapture the strange rites of Nilotic and of Syrian superstition.
Alexandria was the forge of fanciful imaginations, the majority of
which were destined to pass like vapours and leave not a wrack behind,
while a few fastened with the force of dogma on the conscience of
awakening Christendom. During Hadrian's reign it was still uncertain
which among the many hybrid products of that motley age would live and
flourish; and the Emperor, we know, dreamed fondly of reviving the
cults and restoring the splendour of degenerate Hellas. At the same
time he was not averse to the more mystic rites of Egypt: in his villa
at Tivoli he built a Serapeum, and named one of its quarters Canopus.
What part Antinous may have taken in the projects of his friend and
master we know not; yet, when we come to consider the circumstances of
his death, it may not be superfluous to have thus touched upon the
intellectual conditions of the world in which he lived. The mixed blood
of the boy, born and bred in a Greek city near the classic ground of
Dindymean rites, and his beauty, blent of Hellenic and Eastern
qualities, may also not unprofitably be remembered. In such a youth,
nurtured between Greece and Asia, admitted to the friendship of an
emperor for whom neo-Hellenism was a life's dream in the midst of grave
state-cares, influenced by the dark and symbolical creeds of a dimly
apprehended East, might there not have lurked some spark of enthusiasm
combining the impulses of Atys and Aristogeiton, pathetic even in its
inefficiency when judged by the light of modern knowledge, but heroic
at that moment in its boundless vista of great deeds to be
accomplished?

After journeying through Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, and
Arabia, Hadrian, attended by Antinous, came to Egypt. He there restored
the tomb of Pompey, near Pelusium, with great magnificence, and shortly
afterwards 190 embarked from Alexandria upon the Nile, proceeding on
his journey through Memphis into the Thebaïd. When he had arrived near
an ancient city named Besa, on the right bank of the river, he lost his
friend. Antinous was drowned in the Nile. He had thrown himself, it was
believed, into the water; seeking thus by a voluntary death to
substitute his own life for Hadrian's, and to avert predicted perils
from the Roman Empire. What these perils were, and whether Hadrian was
ill, or whether an oracle had threatened him with approaching calamity,
we do not know. Even supposition is at fault, because the date of the
event is still uncertain; some authorities placing Hadrian's Egyptian
journey in the year 122, and others in the year 130 A.D. Of the two
dates, the second seems the more probable. We are left to surmise that,
if the Emperor was in danger, the recent disturbances which followed a
new discovery of Apis, may have exposed him to fanatical conspiracy.
The same doubt affects an ingenious conjecture that rumours which
reached the Roman court of a new rising in Judæa had disturbed the
Emperor's mind, and led to the belief that he was on the verge of a
mysterious doom. He had pacified the Empire and established its
administration on a solid basis. Yet the revolt of the indomitable
Jews—more dreaded since the days of Titus than any other perturbation
of the imperial economy—would have been enough, especially in Egypt, to
engender general uneasiness. However this may have been, the grief of
the Emperor, intensified either by gratitude or remorse, led to the
immediate canonisation of Antinous. The city where he died was rebuilt,
and named after him. His worship as a hero and as a god spread far and
wide throughout the provinces of the Mediterranean. A new star, which
appeared about the time of his decease, was supposed to be his soul
received into the company of the immortals. Medals were struck in his
honour, 191 and countless works of art were produced to make his memory
undying. Great cities wore wreaths of red lotos on his feast-day in
commemoration of the manner of his death. Public games were celebrated
in his honour at the city Antinoë;, and also in Arcadian Mantinea. This
canonisation may probably have taken place in the fourteenth year of
Hadrian's reign, A.D. 130.[94] Antinous continued to be worshipped
until the reign of Valentinian.

 [94] Overbeck, Hausrath, and Mommsen, following apparently the
 conclusions arrived at by Flemmer in his work on Hadrian's journeys,
 place it in 130 A.D. This would leave an interval of only eight years
 between the deaths of Antinous and Hadrian. It may here be observed
 that two medals of Antinous, referred by Rasche with some hesitation
 to the Egyptian series, bear the dates of the eighth and ninth years
 of Hadrian's reign. If these coins are genuine, and if we accept
 Flemmer's conclusions, they must have been struck in the lifetime of
 Antinous. Neither of them represents Antinous with the insignia of
 deity: one gives the portrait of Hadrian upon the reverse.

Thus far I have told a simple story, as though the details of the
youth's last days were undisputed. Still we are as yet but on the
threshold of the subject. All that we have any right to take for
uncontested is that Antinous passed from this life near the city of
Besa, called thereafter Antinoopolis or Antinoë;. Whether he was
drowned by accident, whether he drowned himself in order to save
Hadrian by vicarious suffering, or whether Hadrian sacrificed him in
order to extort the secrets of fate from blood-propitiated deities,
remains a question buried in the deepest gloom. With a view to throwing
such light as is possible upon the matter, we must proceed to summon in
their order the most trustworthy authorities among the ancients.

Dion Cassius takes precedence. In compiling his life of Hadrian, he had
beneath his eyes the Emperor's own 'Commentaries,' published under the
name of the freedman Phlegon. We therefore learn from him at least what
the 192 friend of Antinous wished the world to know about his death;
and though this does not go for much, since Hadrian is himself an
accused person in the suit before us, yet the whole Roman Empire may be
said to have accepted his account, and based on it a pious cult that
held its own through the next three centuries of growing Christianity.
Dion, in the abstract of his history compiled by Xiphilinus, speaks
then to this effect: 'In Egypt he also built the city named after
Antinous. Now Antinous was a native of Bithynium, a city of Bithynia,
which we also call Claudiopolis. He was Hadrian's favourite, and he
died in Egypt: whether by having fallen into the Nile, as Hadrian
writes, or by having been sacrificed, as the truth was. For Hadrian, as
I have said, was in general over-much given to superstitious
subtleties, and practised all kinds of sorceries and magic arts. At any
rate he so honoured Antinous, whether because of the love he felt for
him, or because he died voluntarily, since a willing victim was needed
for his purpose, that he founded a city in the place where he met this
fate, and called it after him, and dedicated statues, or rather images,
of him in, so to speak, the whole inhabited world. Lastly, he affirmed
that a certain star which he saw was the star of Antinous, and listened
with pleasure to the myths invented by his companions about this star
having really sprung from the soul of his favourite, and having then
for the first time appeared. For which things he was laughed at.'

We may now hear what Spartian, in his 'Vita Hadriani,' has to say: 'He
lost his favourite, Antinous, while sailing on the Nile, and lamented
him like a woman. About Antinous reports vary, for some say that he
devoted his life for Hadrian, while others hint what his condition
seems to prove, as well as Hadrian's excessive inclination to luxury.
Some Greeks, at the instance of Hadrian, canonised him, asserting that
oracles were 193 given by him, which Hadrian himself is supposed to
have made up.'

In the third place comes Aurelius Victor: 'Others maintain that this
sacrifice of Antinous was both pious and religious; for when Hadrian
was wishing to prolong his life, and the magicians required a voluntary
vicarious victim, they say that, upon the refusal of all others,
Antinous offered himself.'

These are the chief authorities. In estimating them we must remember
that, though Dion Cassius wrote less than a century after the event
narrated, he has come down to us merely in fragments and in the epitome
of a Byzantine of the twelfth century, when everything that could
possibly be done to discredit the worship of Antinous, and to blacken
the memory of Hadrian, had been attempted by the Christian Fathers. On
the other hand, Spartianus and Aurelius Victor compiled their histories
at too distant a date to be of first-rate value. Taking the three
reports together, we find that antiquity differed about the details of
Antinous's death. Hadrian himself averred that his friend was drowned;
and it was surmised that he had drowned himself in order to prolong his
master's life. The courtiers, however, who had scoffed at Hadrian's
fondness for his favourite, and had laughed to see his sorrow for his
death, somewhat illogically came to the conclusion that Antinous had
been immolated by the Emperor, either because a victim was needed to
prolong his life, or because some human sacrifice was required in order
to complete a dark mysterious magic rite. Dion, writing not very long
after the event, believed that Antinous had been immolated for some
such purpose with his own consent. Spartian, who wrote at the distance
of more than a century, felt uncertain about the question of
self-devotion; but Aurelius Victor, following after the interval of
another century, unhesitatingly adopted Dion's view, and gave it a
fresh colour. This opinion he summarised in a 194 compact,
authoritative form, upon which we may perhaps found an assumption that
the belief in Antinous, as a self-devoted victim, had been gradually
growing through two centuries.

There are therefore three hypotheses to be considered. The first is
that Antinous died an accidental death by drowning; the second is, that
Antinous, in some way or another, gave his life willingly for
Hadrian's; the third is, that Hadrian ordered his immolation in the
performance of magic rites.

For the first of the three hypotheses we have the authority of Hadrian
himself, as quoted by Dion. The simple words εἰς τον Νειλον εκπεσὼν
imply no more than accidental death; and yet, if the Emperor had
believed the story of his favourite's self-devotion, it is reasonable
to suppose that he would have recorded it in his 'Memoirs.' Accepting
this view of the case, we must refer the deification of Antinous wholly
to Hadrian's affection; and the tales of his _devotio_ may have been
invented partly to flatter the Emperor's grief, partly to explain its
violence to the Roman world. This hypothesis seems, indeed, by far the
most natural of the three; and if we could strip the history of
Antinous of its mysterious and mythic elements, it is rational to
believe that we should find his death a simple accident. Yet our
authorities prove that writers of history among the ancients wavered
between the two other theories of (i) Self-Devotion and (ii)
Immolation, with a bias toward the latter. These, then, have now to be
considered with some attention. Both, it may parenthetically be
observed, relieve Antinous from a moral stigma, since in either case a
pure untainted victim was required.

If we accept the former of the two remaining hypotheses, we can
understand how love and gratitude, together with sorrow, led Hadrian to
canonise Antinous. If we accept the latter, Hadrian's sorrow itself
becomes inexplicable; and we 195 must attribute the foundation of
Antinoë; and the deification of Antinous to remorse. It may be added,
while balancing these two solutions of the problem, that cynical
sophists, like Hadrian's Græculi, were likely to have put the worst
construction on the Emperor's passion, and to have invented the worst
stories concerning the favourite's death. To perpetuate these
calumnious reports was the real interest of the Christian apologists,
who not unnaturally thought it scandalous that a handsome page should
be deified. Thus, at first sight, the balance of probability inclines
toward the former of the two solutions, while the second may be
rejected as based upon court-gossip and religious animosity. Attention
may also again be called to the fact that Hadrian ventured to publish
an account of Antinous quite inconsistent with what Dion chose to call
the truth, and that virtuous Emperors like the Antonines did not
interfere with a cult, which, had it been paid to the mere victim of
Hadrian's passion and his superstition, would have been an infamy even
in Rome. Moreover, that cult was not, like the creations of the impious
emperors, forgotten or destroyed by public acclamation. It took root
and flourished apparently, as we shall see, because it satisfied some
craving of the popular religious sense, and because the people believed
that this man had died for his friend. It will not, however, do to
dismiss the two hypotheses so lightly.

The alternative of self-devotion presents itself under a double aspect.
Antinous may either have committed suicide by drowning with the
intention of prolonging the Emperor's life, or he may have offered
himself as a voluntary victim to the magicians, who required a
sacrifice for a similar purpose. Spartian's brief phrase, _aliis eum
devotum pro Hadriano_, may seem to point to the first form of
self-devotion; the testimony of Aurelius Victor clearly supports the
second: yet it does not much matter which of the two explanations we
adopt. 196 The point is whether Antinous gave his life willingly to
save the Emperor's, or whether he was murdered for the satisfaction of
some superstitious curiosity. It was absolutely necessary that the
vicarious victim should make a free and voluntary oblation of himself.
That the notion of vicarious suffering was familiar to the ancients is
sufficiently attested by the phrases αντίψυχοι, αντανδροι, and _hostia
succidanea_. We find traces of it in the legend of Alcestis, who died
for Admetus, and of Cheiron, who took the place of Prometheus in Hades.
Suetonius records that in the first days of Caligula's popularity, when
he was labouring under dangerous illness, many Romans of both sexes
vowed their lives for his recovery in temples of the gods. That this
superstition retained a strong hold on the popular imagination in the
time of Hadrian is proved by the curious affirmation of Aristides, a
contemporary of that Emperor. He says that once, when he was ill, a
certain Philumene offered her soul for his soul, her body for his body,
and that, upon his own recovery, she died. On the same testimony it
appears that her brother Hermeas had also died for Aristides. This
faith in the efficacy of substitution is persistent in the human race.
Not long ago a Christian lady was supposed to have vowed her own life
for the prolongation of that of Pope Pius IX., and good Catholics
inclined to the belief that the sacrifice had been accepted. We shall
see that in the first centuries of Christendom the popular conviction
that Antinous had died for Hadrian brought him into inconvenient
rivalry with Christ, whose vicarious suffering was the cardinal point
of the new creed.

The alternative of immolation has next to be considered. The question
before us here is, Did Hadrian sacrifice Antinous for the satisfaction
of a superstitious curiosity, and in the performance of magic rites?
Dion Cassius uses the word ἱερουργηθεις, and explains it by saying that
Hadrian needed a voluntary 197 human victim for the accomplishment of
an act of divination in which he was engaged. Both Spartian and Dion
speak emphatically of the Emperor's proclivities to the black art; and
all antiquity agreed about this trait in his character. Ammianus
Marcellinus spoke of him as '_futurorum sciscitationi nimiæ deditum_.'
Tertullian described him as '_curiositatum omnium exploratorem_.' To
multiply such phrases would, however, be superfluous, for they are
probably mere repetitions from the text of Dion. That human victims
were used by the Romans of the Empire seems certain. Lampridius, in the
'Life of Heliogabalus,' records his habit of slaying handsome and noble
youths, in order that he might inspect their entrails. Eusebius, in his
'Life of Maxentius,' asserts the same of that Emperor. _Quum inspiceret
exta puerilia_, νεογνον σπλάγχνα βρέφων διερευνομένου, are the words
used by Lampridius and Eusebius. Justin Martyr speaks of εποπτεύσεις
παίδων αδιαφθόρον. Caracalla and Julian are credited with similar
bloody sacrifices. Indeed, it may be affirmed in general that tyrants
have ever been eager to foresee the future and to extort her secrets
from Fate, stopping short at no crime in the attempt to quiet a
corroding anxiety for their own safety. What we read about Italian
despots—Ezzelino da Romano, Sigismondo Malatesta, Filippo Maria
Visconti, and Pier Luigi Farnese—throws light upon the practice of
their Imperial predecessors; while the mysterious murder of the
beautiful Astorre Manfredi by the Borgias in Hadrian's Mausoleum has
been referred by modern critics of authority to the same unholy
curiosity. That Hadrian laboured under this moral disease, and that he
deliberately used the body of Antinous for _extispicium_, is, I think,
Dion's opinion. But are we justified in reckoning Hadrian among these
tyrants? That must depend upon our view of his character.

Hadrian was a man in whom the most conflicting qualities 198 were
blent. In his youth and through his whole life he was passionately fond
of hunting; hardy, simple in his habits, marching bareheaded with his
legions through German frost and Nubian heat, sharing the food of his
soldiers, and exercising the most rigid military discipline. At the
same time he has aptly been described as 'the most sumptuous character
of antiquity.' He filled the cities of the empire with showy buildings,
and passed his last years in a kind of classic Munich, where he had
constructed imitations of every celebrated monument in Europe. He was
so far fond of nature that, anticipating the most recently developed of
modern tastes, he ascended Mount Ætna and the Mons Casius, in order to
enjoy the spectacle of sunrise. In his villa at Tivoli he indulged a
trivial fancy by christening one garden Tempe and another the Elysian
Fields; and he had his name carved on the statue of the vocal Memnon
with no less gusto than a modern tourist: _audivi voces divinas_. His
memory was prodigious, his eloquence in the Latin language studied and
yet forcible, his knowledge of Greek literature and philosophy far from
contemptible. He enjoyed the society of Sophists and distinguished
rhetoricians, and so far affected authorship as to win the unenviable
title of _Græculus_ in his own lifetime: yet he never neglected state
affairs. Owing to his untiring energy and vast capacity for business,
he not only succeeded in reorganising every department of the empire,
social, political, fiscal, military, and municipal; but he also held in
his own hands the threads of all its complicated machinery. He was
strict in matters of routine, and appears to have been almost a
martinet among his legions: yet in social intercourse he lived on terms
of familiarity with inferiors, combining the graces of elegant
conversation with the _bonhomie_ of boon companionship, displaying a
warm heart to his friends, and using magnificent generosity. He
restored the 199 domestic as well as the military discipline of the
Roman world; and his code of laws lasted till Justinian. Among many of
his useful measures of reform he issued decrees restricting the power
of masters over their slaves, and depriving them of their old capital
jurisdiction. His biographers find little to accuse him of beyond a
singular avidity for fame, addiction to magic arts and luxurious vices:
yet they adduce no proof of his having, at any rate before the date of
his final retirement to his Tiburtine villa, shared the crimes of a
Nero or a Commodus. On the whole, we must recognise in Hadrian a nature
of extraordinary energy, capacity for administrative government, and
mental versatility. A certain superficiality, vulgarity, and
commonplaceness seems to have been forced upon him by the circumstances
of his age, no less than by his special temperament. This quality of
the immitigable commonplace is clearly written on his many portraits.
Their chief interest consists in a fixed expression of fatigue—as
though the man were weary with much seeking and with little finding. In
all things, he was somewhat of a dilettante; and the Nemesis of that
sensibility to impressions which distinguishes the dilettante, came
upon him ere he died. He ended his days in an appalling and persistent
paroxysm of _ennui_, desiring the death which would not come to his
relief.

The whole creative and expansive force of Hadrian's century lay
concealed in the despised Christian sect. Art was expiring in a sunset
blaze of gorgeous imitation, tasteless grandeur, technical elaboration.
Philosophy had become sophistical or mystic; its real life survived
only in the phrase 'entbehren sollst du, sollst entbehren' of the
Stoics. Literature was repetitive and scholastic. Tacitus, Suetonius,
Plutarch, and Juvenal indeed were living; but their works formed the
last great literary triumph of the age. Religion 200 had degenerated
under the twofold influences of scepticism and intrusive foreign cults.
It was, in truth, an age in which, for a sound heart and manly
intellect, there lay no proper choice except between the stoicism of
Marcus Aurelius and the Christianity of the Catacombs. All else had
passed into shams, unrealities, and visions. Now Hadrian was neither
stoical nor Christian, though he so far coquetted with Christianity as
to build temples dedicated to no Pagan deity, which passed in after
times for unfinished churches. He was a _Græculus_. In that
contemptuous epithet, stripping it of its opprobrious significance, we
find the real key to his character. In a failing age he lived a
restless-minded, many-sided soldier-prince, whose inner hopes and
highest aspirations were for Hellas. Hellas, her art, her history, her
myths, her literature, her lovers, her young heroes filled him with
enthusiasm. To rebuild her ruined cities, to restore her deities, to
revive her golden life of blended poetry and science, to reconstruct
her spiritual empire as he had re-organised the Roman world, was
Hadrian's dream. It was indeed a dream; one which a far more creative
genius than Hadrian's could not have realised.

But now, returning to the two alternatives regarding his friend's
death: was this philo-Hellenic Emperor the man to have immolated
Antinous for _extispicium_ and then deified him? Probably not. The
discord between this bloody act and subsequent hypocrisy upon the one
hand, and Hadrian's Greek sympathies upon the other, must be reckoned
too strong for even such a dipsychic character as his. There is nothing
in either Spartian or Dion to justify the opinion that he was naturally
cruel or fantastically deceitful. On the other hand, Hadrian's
philo-Hellenic, splendour-loving, somewhat tawdry, fame-desiring nature
was precisely of the sort to jump eagerly at the deification of a
favourite who had either died a 201 natural death or killed himself to
save his master. Hadrian had loved Antinous with a Greek passion in his
lifetime. The Roman Emperor was half a god. He remembered how Zeus had
loved Ganymede, and raised him to Olympus; how Achilles had loved
Patroclus, and performed his funeral rites at Troy; how the demi-god
Alexander had loved Hephæstion, and lifted him into a hero's seat on
high. He, Hadrian, would do the like, now that death had robbed him of
his comrade. The Roman, who surrounded himself at Tivoli with copies of
Greek temples, and who called his garden Tempe, played thus at being
Zeus, Achilles, Alexander; and the civilised world humoured his whim.
Though the Sophists scoffed at his real grief and honourable tears,
they consecrated his lost favourite, found out a star for him, carved
him in breathing brass, and told tales about his sacred flower.
Pancrates was entertained in Alexandria at the public cost for his
fable of the lotos; and the lyrist Mesomedes received so liberal a
pension for his hymn to Antinous that Antoninus Pius found it needful
to curtail it.

After weighing the authorities, considering the circumstances of the
age, and estimating Hadrian's character, I am thus led to reject the
alternative of immolation. Spartian's own words, _quem muliebriter
flevit_, as well as the subsequent acts of the Emperor and the
acquiescence of the whole world in the new deity, prove to my mind that
in the suggestion of _extispicium_ we have one of those covert
calumnies which it is impossible to set aside at this distance of time,
and which render the history of Roman Emperors and Popes almost
impracticable.

The case, then, stands before us thus. Antinous was drowned in the
Nile, near Besa, either by accident or by voluntary suicide to save his
master's life. Hadrian's love for him had been unmeasured, so was his
grief. Both of 202 them were genuine; but in the nature of the man
there was something artificial. He could not be content to love and
grieve alone; he must needs enact the part of Alexander, and realise,
if only by a sort of makebelieve, a portion of his Greek ideal.
Antinous, the beautiful servant, was to take the place of Ganymede, of
Patroclus, of Hephæstion; never mind if Hadrian was a Roman and his
friend a Bithynian, and if the love between them, as between an emperor
of fifty and a boy of nineteen, had been less than heroic. The
opportunity was too fair to be missed; the _rôle_ too fascinating to be
rejected. The world, in spite of covert sneers, lent itself to the
sham, and Antinous became a god.

The uniformly contemptuous tone of antique authorities almost obliges
us to rank this deification of Antinous, together with the Tiburtine
villa and the dream of a Hellenic Renaissance, among the part-shams,
part-enthusiasms of Hadrian's 'sumptuous' character. Spartian's account
of the consecration, and his hint that Hadrian composed the oracles
delivered at his favourite's tomb; Arrian's letter to the Emperor
describing the island Leukè and flattering him by an adroit comparison
with Achilles; the poem by Pancrates mentioned in the 'Deipnosophistæ,'
which furnished the myth of a new lotos dedicated to Antinous; the
invention of the star, and Hadrian's conversations with his courtiers
on this subject—all converge to form the belief that something of
consciously unreal mingled with this act of apotheosis by Imperial
decree. Hadrian sought to assuage his grief by paying his favourite
illustrious honours after death; he also desired to give the memory of
his own love the most congenial and poetical environment, to feed upon
it in the daintiest places, and to deck it with the prettiest flowers
of fancy. He therefore canonised Antinous, and took measures for
disseminating his cult throughout the world, careless of the element of
imposture 203 which might seem to mingle with the consecration of his
true affection. Hadrian's superficial taste was not offended by the
gimcrack quality of the new god; and Antinous was saved from being a
merely pinchbeck saint by his own charming personality.

This will not, however, wholly satisfy the conditions of the problem;
and we are obliged to ask ourselves whether there was not something in
the character of Antinous himself, something divinely inspired and
irradiate with spiritual beauty, apparent to his fellows and remembered
after his mysterious death, which justified his canonisation, and
removed it from the region of Imperial makebelieve. If this was not the
case, if Antinous died like a flower cropped from the seraglio garden
of the court-pages, how should the Emperor in the first place have
bewailed him with 'unhusbanded passion,' and the people afterwards have
received him as a god? May it not have been that he was a youth of more
than ordinary promise, gifted with intellectual enthusiasms
proportioned to his beauty and endowed with something of Phoebean
inspiration, who, had he survived, might have even inaugurated a new
age for the world, or have emulated the heroism of Hypatia in a
hopeless cause? Was the link between him and Hadrian formed less by the
boy's beauty than by his marvellous capacity for apprehending and his
fitness for realising the Emperor's Greek dreams? Did the spirit of
neo-Platonism find in him congenial incarnation? At any rate, was there
not enough in the then current beliefs about the future of the soul, as
abundantly set forth in Plutarch's writings, to justify a conviction
that after death he had already passed into the lunar sphere, awaiting
the final apotheosis of purged spirits in the sun? These questions may
be asked—indeed, they must be asked—for, without suggesting them, we
leave the worship of Antinous an almost 204 inexplicable scandal, an
almost unintelligible blot on human nature. Unless we ask them, we must
be content to echo the coarse and violent diatribes of Clemens
Alexandrinus against the vigils of the deified _exoletus_. But they
cannot be answered, for antiquity is altogether silent about him; only
here and there, in the indignant utterance of a Christian Father, stung
to the quick by Pagan parallels between Antinous and Christ, do we
catch a perverted echo of the popular emotion upon which his cult
reposed, which recognised his godhood or his vicarious self-sacrifice,
and which paid enduring tribute to the sublimity of his young life
untimely quenched.

The _senatus consultum_ required for the apotheosis of an Emperor was
not, so far as we know, obtained in the case of Antinous. Hadrian's
determination to exalt his favourite sufficed; and this is perhaps one
of the earliest instances of those informal deifications which became
common in the later Roman period. Antinous was canonised according to
Greek ritual and by Greek priests: _Græci quidam volente Hadriano eum
consecraverunt_. How this was accomplished we know not; but forms of
canonisation must have been in common usage, seeing that emperors and
members of the Imperial family received the honour in due course. The
star which was supposed to have appeared soon after his death, and
which represented his soul admitted to Olympus, was somewhere near the
constellation Aquila, according to Ptolemy, but not part of it. I
believe the letters η.θ.ι.κ.λ. of Aquila now bear the name of Antinous;
but this appropriation dates only from the time of Tycho Brahe. It was
also asserted that as a new star had appeared in the skies, so a new
flower had blossomed on the earth, at the moment of his death. This was
the lotos, of a peculiar red colour, which the people of Lower Egypt
used to wear in wreaths upon his festival. It received the name
Antinoeian; and the Alexandrian sophist, Pancrates, seeking 205 to pay
a double compliment to Hadrian and his favourite, wrote a poem in which
he pretended that this lily was stained with the blood of a Libyan lion
slain by the Emperor. As Arrian compared his master to Achilles, so
Pancrates flattered him with allusions to Herakles. The lotos, it is
well known, was a sacred flower in Egypt. Both as a symbol of the
all-nourishing moisture of the earth and of the mystic marriage of Isis
and Osiris, and also as an emblem of immortality, it appeared on all
the sacred places of the Egyptians, especially on tombs and funeral
utensils. To dignify Antinous with the lotos emblem was to consecrate
him; to find a new species of the revered blossom and to wear it in his
honour, calling it by his name, was to exalt him to the company of
gods. Nothing, as it seems, had been omitted that could secure for him
the patent of divinity.

He met his death near the city Besa, an ancient Egyptian town upon the
eastern bank of the Nile, almost opposite to Hermopolis. Besa was the
name of a local god, who gave oracles and predicted future events. But
of this Besa we know next to nothing. Hadrian determined to rebuild the
city, change its name, and let his favourite take the place of the old
deity. Accordingly, he raised a splendid new town in the Greek style;
furnished it with temples, agora, hippodrome, gymnasium, and baths;
filled it with Greek citizens; gave it a Greek constitution, and named
it Antinoë;. This new town, whether called Antinoë;, Antinoopolis,
Antinous, Antinoeia, or even Besantinous (for its titles varied),
continued long to flourish, and was mentioned by Ammianus Marcellinus,
together with Copton and Hermopolis, as one of the three most
distinguished cities of the Thebaïd. In the age of Julian these three
cities were perhaps the only still thriving towns of Upper Egypt. It
has even been maintained on Ptolemy's authority that Antinoë; was the
metropolis 206 of a nome, called Antinoeitis; but this is doubtful,
since inscriptions discovered among the ruins of the town record no
name of nomarch or strategus, while they prove the government to have
consisted of a Boulè and a Prytaneus, who was also the Eponymous
Magistrate. Strabo reckons it, together with Ptolemais and Alexandria,
as governed after the Greek municipal system.

In this city Antinous was worshipped as a god. Though a Greek god, and
the eponym of a Greek city, he inherited the place and functions of an
Egyptian deity, and was here represented in the hieratic style of
Ptolemaic sculpture. A fine specimen of this statuary is preserved in
the Vatican, showing how the neo-Hellenic sculptors had succeeded in
maintaining the likeness of Antinous without sacrificing the
traditional manner of Egyptian piety. The sacred emblems of Egyptian
deities were added: we read, for instance, in one passage, that his
shrine contained a boat. This boat, like the mystic egg of Erôs or the
cista of Dionysos, symbolised the embryo of cosmic life. It was
specially appropriated to Osiris, and suggested collateral allusions
doubtless to immortality and the soul's journey in another world.
Antinous had a college of priests appointed to his service; and oracles
were delivered from the cenotaph inside his temple. The people believed
him to be a genius of warning, gracious to his suppliants, but terrible
to evil-doers, combining the qualities of the avenging and protective
deities. Annual games were celebrated in Antinoë; on his festival, with
chariot races and gymnastic contests; and the fashion of keeping his
day seems, from Athenæus's testimony, to have spread through Egypt. An
inscription in Greek characters discovered at Rome upon the Campus
Martius entitles Antinous a colleague of the gods in Egypt—

ΑΝΤΙΝΟΩΙ ΣΥΝΘΡΟΝΩΙ ΤΩΝ ΕΝ ΑΙΓΥΗΤΩΙ ΘΕΩΝ.

207 The worship of Antinous spread rapidly through the Greek and Asian
provinces, especially among the cities which owed debts of gratitude to
Hadrian or expected from him future favours. At Athens, for example,
the Emperor, attended perhaps by Antinous, had presided as Archon
during his last royal progress, had built a suburb called after his
name, and raised a splendid temple to Olympian Jove. The Athenians,
therefore, founded games and a priesthood in honour of the new
divinity. Even now, in the Dionysiac theatre, among the chairs above
the orchestra assigned to priests of elder deities and more august
tradition, may be found one bearing the name of Antinous—ΙΕΡΕΩΣ
ΑΝΤΙΝΟΟΥ. A marble tablet has also been discovered inscribed with the
names of agonothetai for the games celebrated in honour of Antinous;
and a stele exists engraved with the crown of these contests together
with the crowns of Severus, Commodus, and Antoninus. It appears that
the games in honour of Antinous took place both at Eleusis and at
Athens; and that the agonothetai, as also the priest of the new god,
were chosen from the Ephebi. The Corinthians, the Argives, the
Achaians, and the Epirots, as we know from coins issued by the priests
of Antinous, adopted his cult;[95] but the region of Greece proper
where it flourished most was Arcadia, the mother state of his Bithynian
birthplace. Pausanias, who lived contemporaneously with Antinous, and
might have seen him, though he tells us that he had not chanced to meet
the youth alive, mentions the temple of Antinous at Mantinea as the
newest in that city. 'The Mantineans,' he says, 'reckon Antinous among
their gods.' He then describes the yearly festival and mysteries
connected 208 with his cult, the quinquennial games established in his
honour, and his statues. The gymnasium had a cell dedicated to
Antinous, adorned with pictures and fair stone-work. The new god was in
the habit of Dionysus.

 [95] For example:


ΟΣΤΙΛΙΟΣ ΜΑΡΚΕΛΛΟΣΟ ΙΕΡΕΥΣΤΟΥ ΑΝΤΙΟΟΥ ΑΝΕΘΗΚΕ ΤΟΙΣ ΑΧΑΙΟΙΣ and a
similar inscription for Corinth.

As was natural, his birthplace paid him special observance. Coins
dedicated by the province of Bithynia, as well as by the town
Bithynium, are common, with the epigraphs, ΑΝΤΙΟΟΥ Η ΠΑΤΡΙΣ and
ΑΝΤΙΝΟΟΝ ΘΕΟΝ Η ΠΑΤΡΙΣ. Among the cities of Asia Minor and the vicinity
the new cult seems to have been widely spread. Adramyttene in Mysia,
Alabanda, Ancyra in Galatia, Chalcedon, Cuma in Æolis, Cyzicum in
Mysia, the Ciani, the Hadrianotheritæ of Bithynia, Hierapolis in
Phrygia, Nicomedia, Philadelphia, Sardis, Smyrna, Tarsus, the Tianians
of Paphlagonia, and a town Rhesæna in Mesopotamia, all furnish their
quota of medals. On the majority of these medals he is entitled Herôs,
but on others he has the higher title of god; and he seems to have been
associated in each place with some deity of local fame.

Being essentially a Greek hero, or divinised man received into the
company of immortals and worshipped with the attributes of god, his
cult took firmer root among the neo-Hellenic provinces of the empire
than in Italy. Yet there are signs that even in Italy he found his
votaries. Among these may first be mentioned the comparative frequency
of his name in Roman inscriptions, which have no immediate reference to
him, but prove that parents gave it to their children. The discovery of
his statues in various cities of the Roman Campagna shows that his cult
was not confined to one or two localities. Naples in particular, which
remained in all essential points a Greek city, seems to have received
him with acclamation. A quarter of the town was called after his name,
and a phratria of priests was founded in connection with his worship.
The Neapolitans owed much to the patronage of Hadrian, and they repaid
him 209 after this fashion. At the beginning of the last century
Raffaello Fabretti discovered an inscription near the Porta S.
Sebastiano at Rome, which throws some light on the matter. It records
the name of a Roman knight, Sufenas, who had held the office of
Lupercus and had been a fellow of the Neapolitan phratria of
Antinous—_fretriaco Neapoli Antinoiton et Eunostidon_. Eunostos was a
hero worshipped at Tanagra in Boeotia, where he had a sacred grove no
female foot might enter; and the wording of the inscription leaves it
doubtful whether the Eunostidæ and Antinoitæ of Naples were two
separate colleges; or whether the heroes were associated as the common
patrons of one brotherhood.

A valuable inscription discovered in 1816 near the Baths at Lanuvium or
Lavigna shows that Antinous was here associated with Diana as the saint
of a benefit club. The rules of the confraternity prescribe the
payments and other contributions of its members, provide for their
assembling on the feast days of their patrons, fix certain fines, and
regulate the ceremonies and expenses of their funerals. This club seems
to have resembled modern burial societies, as known to us in England;
or still more closely to have been formed upon the same model as
Italian confraternitè of the Middle Ages. The Lex, or table of
regulations, was drawn up in the year 133 A.D. It fixes the birthday of
Antinous as v.k. Decembr., and alludes to the temple of
Antinous—_Tetrastylo Antinoi_. Probably we cannot build much on the
birthday as a genuine date, for the same table gives the birthday of
Diana; and what was wanted was not accuracy in such matters, but a
settled anniversary for banquets and pious celebrations. When we come
to consider the divinity of Antinous, it will be of service to remember
that at Lanuvium, together with Diana of the nether world, he was
reckoned among the saints of sepulture. Could this thought have
penetrated the imagination of his worshippers: that since 210 Antinous
had given his life for his friend, since he had faced death and
triumphed over it, winning immortality and godhood for himself by
sacrifice, the souls of his votaries might be committed to his charge
and guidance on their journey through the darkness of the tomb? Could
we venture to infer thus much from his selection by a confraternity
existing for the purpose of securing decent burial or pious funeral
rites, the date of its formation, so soon after his death, would
confirm the hypothesis that he was known to have devoted his life for
Hadrian.

While speaking of Antinous as a divinised man, adscript to the gods of
Egypt, accepted as hero and as god in Hellas, Italy, and Asia Minor, we
have not yet considered the nature of his deity. The question is not so
simple as it seems at first sight: and the next step to take, with a
view to its solution, is to consider the various forms under which he
was adored—the phases of his divinity. The coins already mentioned, and
the numerous works of glyptic art surviving in the galleries of Europe,
will help us to place ourselves at the same point of view as the least
enlightened of his antique votaries. Reasoning upon these data by the
light of classic texts, may afterwards enable us to assign him his true
place in the Pantheon of decadent and uninventive Paganism.

In Egypt, as we have already seen, Antinous was worshipped by the
neo-Hellenes of Antinoopolis as their Eponymous Hero; but he took the
place of an elder native god, and was represented in art according to
the traditions of Egyptian sculpture. The marble statue of the Vatican
is devoid of hieratic emblems. Antinous is attired with the Egyptian
head-dress and waistband: he holds a short truncheon firmly clasped in
each hand; and by his side is a palm-stump, such as one often finds in
statues of the Greek Hermes. Two colossal statues of red granite
discovered in the ruins of Hadrian's villa, at Tivoli, represent him in
like manner with the usual Egyptian 211 head-dress. They seem to have
been designed for pillars supporting the architrave of some huge
portal; and the wands grasped firmly in both hands are supposed to be
symbolical of the genii called Dii Averrunci. Von Levezow, in his
monograph upon Antinous in art, catalogues five statues of a similar
description to the three already mentioned. From the indistinct
character of all of them, it would appear that Antinous was nowhere
identified with any one of the great Egyptian deities, but was treated
as a Dæmon powerful to punish and protect. This designation corresponds
to the contemptuous rebuke addressed by Origen to Celsus, where he
argues that the new saint was only a malignant and vengeful spirit. His
Egyptian medals are few and of questionable genuineness: the majority
of them seem to be purely Hellenic; but on one he bears a crown like
that of Isis, and on another a lotos wreath. The dim records of his
cult in Egypt, and the remnants of Græco-Egyptian art, thus mark him
out as one of the Averruncan deities, associated perhaps with Kneph or
the Agathodæmon of Hellenic mythology, or approximated to Anubis, the
Egyptian Hermes. Neither statues nor coins throw much light upon his
precise place among those gods of Nile whose throne he is said to have
ascended. Egyptian piety may not have been so accommodating as that of
Hellas.

With the Græco-Roman world the case is different. We obtain a clearer
conception of the Antinous divinity, and recognise him always under the
mask of youthful gods already honoured with fixed ritual. To worship
even living men under the names and attributes of well-known deities
was no new thing in Hellas. We may remember the Ithyphallic hymn with
which the Athenians welcomed Demetrius Poliorkêtes, the marriage of
Anthony as Dionysus to Athenè, and the deification of Mithridates as
Bacchus. The Roman Emperors had already been represented in art with
the characteristics 212 of gods—Nero, for example, as Phoebus, and
Hadrian as Mars. Such compliments were freely paid to Antinous. On the
Achaian coins we find his portrait on the obverse, with different types
of Hermes on the reverse, varied in one case by the figure of a ram, in
another by the representation of a temple, in a third by a nude hero
grasping a spear. One Mysian medal, bearing the epigraph 'Antinous
Iacchus,' represents him crowned with ivy, and exhibits Demeter on the
reverse. A single specimen from Ancyra, with the legend 'Antinous
Herôs,' depicts the god Lunus carrying a crescent moon upon his
shoulder. The Bithynian coins generally give youthful portraits of
Antinous upon the obverse, with the title of 'Herôs' or 'Theos;' while
the reverse is stamped with a pastoral figure, sometimes bearing the
talaria, sometimes accompanied by a feeding ox or a boar or a star.
This youth is supposed to be Philesius, the son of Hermes. In one
specimen of the Bithynian series the reverse yields a head of
Proserpine crowned with thorns. A coin of Chalcedon ornaments the
reverse with a griffin seated near a naked figure. Another, from
Corinth, bears the sun-god in a chariot; another, from Cuma, presents
an armed Pallas. Bulls, with the crescent moon, occur in the
Hadrianotheritan medals: a crescent moon in that of Hierapolis: a ram
and star, a female head crowned with towers, a standing bull, and
Harpocrates placing one finger on his lips, in those of Nicomedia; a
horned moon and star in that of Epirot Nicopolis. One Philadelphian
coin is distinguished by Antinous in a temple with four columns;
another by an Aphrodite in her cella. The Sardian coins give Zeus with
the thunderbolt, or Phoebus with the lyre; those of Smyrna are stamped
with a standing ox, a ram, and the caduceus, a female panther and the
thyrsus, or a hero reclining beneath a plane-tree; those of Tarsus with
the Dionysian cista, the Phoebean tripod, the 213 river Cydnus, and the
epigraphs 'Neos Puthios,' 'Neos Iacchos;' those of the Tianians with
Antinous as Bacchus on a panther, or, in one case, as Poseidôn.

It would be unsafe to suppose that the emblems of the reverse in each
case had a necessary relation to Antinous, whose portrait is almost
invariably represented on the obverse. They may refer, as in the case
of the Tarsian river-god, to the locality in which the medal was
struck. Yet the frequent occurrence of the well-known type with the
attributes and sacred animals of various deities, and the epigraphs
'Neos Puthios' or 'Neos Iacchos,' justify us in assuming that he was
associated with divinities in vogue among the people who accepted his
cult—especially Apollo, Dionysus, and Hermes. On more than one coin he
is described as Antinous-Pan, showing that his Arcadian compatriots of
Peloponnese and Bithynia paid him the compliment of placing him beside
their great local deity. In a Latin inscription discovered at Tibur, he
is connected with the sun-god of Noricia, Pannonia and Illyria, who was
worshipped under the title of Belenus:—

Antinoo et Beleno par ætas famaque par est;
    Cur non Antinous sit quoque qui Belenus?

This couplet sufficiently explains the ground of his adscription to the
society of gods distinguished for their beauty. Both Belenus and
Antinous are young and beautiful: why, therefore, should not Antinous
be honoured equally with Belenus? The same reasoning would apply to all
his impersonations. The pious imagination or the æsthetic taste tricked
out this favourite of fortune in masquerade costumes, just as a wealthy
lover may amuse himself by dressing his mistress after the similitude
of famous beauties. The analogy of statues confirms this assumption. A
considerable majority represent him as Dionysus Kisseus: in some of the
best he is conceived as Hermes of the Palæstra or a simple hero: in one
he is probably 214 Dionysus Antheus; in another Vertumnus or Aristæus;
yet again he is the Agathos Daimon: while a fine specimen preserved in
England shows him as Ganymede raising a goblet of wine: a little statue
in the Louvre gives him the attributes of youthful Herakles; a
basrelief of somewhat doubtful genuineness in the Villa Albani exhibits
him with Romanised features in the character perhaps of Castor. Again,
I am not sure whether the Endymion in the celebrated basrelief of the
Capitol does not yield a portrait of Antinous.

This rapid enumeration will suffice to show that Antinous was
universally conceived as a young deity in bloom, and that preference
was given to Phoebus and Iacchus, the gods of divination and
enthusiasm, for his associates. In some cases he appears to have been
represented as a simple hero without the attributes of any deity. Many
of his busts, and the fine nude statues of the Capitol and the
Neapolitan Museum, belong to this class, unless we recognise the two
last as Antinous under the form of a young Hercules, or of the
gymnastic Hermes. But when he comes before us with the title of
Puthios, or with the attributes of Dionysus, distinct reference is
probably intended in the one case to his oracular quality, in the other
to the enthusiasm which led to his death. Allusions to Harpocrates,
Lunus, Aristæus, Philesius, Vertumnus, Castor, Herakles, Ganymedes,
show how the divinising fancy played around the beauty of his youth,
and sought to connect him with myths already honoured in the pious
conscience. Lastly, though it would be hazardous to strain this point,
we find in his chief impersonations a Chthonian character, a touch of
the mystery that is shrouded in the world beyond the grave. The double
nature of his Athenian cult may perhaps confirm this view. But, over
and above all these symbolic illustrations, one artistic motive of
immortal loveliness pervades and animates the series.

215 It becomes at this point of some moment to determine what was the
relation of Antinous to the gods with whom he blended, and whose
attributes he shared. It seems tolerably certain that he had no special
legend which could be idealised in art. The mythopoeic fancy invented
no fable for him. His cult was parasitic upon elder cults. He was the
colleague of greater well-established deities, from whom he borrowed a
pale and evanescent lustre. Speaking accurately, he was a hero or
divinised mortal, on the same grade as Helen immortalised for her
beauty, as Achilles for his prowess, or as Herakles for his great
deeds. But having no poet like Homer to sing his achievements, no myth
fertile in emblems, he dwelt beneath the shadow of superior powers, and
crept into a place with them. What was this place worth? What was the
meaning attached by his votaries to the title σύνθρονος or πάρεδρος
θεός? According to the simple meaning of both epithets, he occupied a
seat together with or by the side of the genuine Olympians. In this
sense Pindar called Dionysus the πάρεδρος of Demeter, because the
younger god had been admitted to her worship on equal terms at Eleusis.
In this sense Sophocles spoke of Himeros as πάρεδρος of the eternal
laws, and of Justice as σύνοικος with the Chthonian deities. In this
sense Euripides makes Helen ζύνθακος her brethren, the Dioscuri. In
this sense the three chief Archons at Athens were said to have two
πάρεδροι apiece. In this sense, again, Hephæstion was named a θεος
παρεδρος, and Alexander in his lifetime was voted a thirteenth in the
company of the twelve Olympians. The divinised emperors were πάρεδροι
or σύνθρονοι nor did Virgil hesitate to flatter Augustus by questioning
into which college of the immortals he would be adscript after death—

Tuque adeo, quem mox quæ sint habitura deorum
Concilia, incertum est.

216 Conscript deities of this heroic order were supposed to avert evils
from their votaries, to pursue offenders with calamity, to inspire
prophetic dreams, and to appear, as the phantom of Achilles appeared to
Apollonius of Tyana, and answer questions put to them. They
corresponded very closely and exactly to the saints of mediævalism,
acting as patrons of cities, confraternities, and persons, and
interposing between the supreme powers of heaven and their especial
devotees. As a πάρεδρος of this exalted quality, Antinous was the
associate of Phoebus, Bacchus, and Hermes among the Olympians, and a
colleague with the gods of Nile. The principal difficulty of grasping
his true rank consists in the variety of his emblems and divine
disguises.

It must here be mentioned that the epithet πάρεδρος had a secondary and
inferior signification. It was applied by later authors to the demons
or familiar spirits who attended upon enchanters like Simon Magus or
Apollonius; and such satellites were believed to be supplied by the
souls of innocent young persons violently slain. Whether this secondary
meaning of the title indicates a degeneration of the other, and forms
the first step of the process whereby classic heroes were degraded into
the foul fiends of mediæval fancy, or whether we find in it a wholly
new application of the word, is questionable. I am inclined to believe
that, while πάρεδρος θεος in the one case means an associate of the
Olympian gods, πάοεδρος δαίμων in the other means a fellow-agent and
assessor of the wizard. In other words, however they may afterwards
have been confounded, the two uses of the same epithet were originally
distinct: so that not every πάρεδρος θεος, Achilles, or Hephæstion or
Antinous, was supposed to haunt and serve a sorcerer, but only some
inferior spirit over whom his black art gave him authority. The
πάρεδρος θεος was so called because he sat with the great gods. The
πάρεδρος δαίμον was so 217 called because he sat beside the magician.
At the same time there seems sufficient evidence that the two meanings
came to be confounded; and as the divinities of Hellas, with all their
lustrous train, paled before the growing splendour of Christ, they
gradually fell beneath the necromantic ferule of the witch.

Returning from this excursion, and determining that Antinous was a hero
or divinised mortal, adscript to the college of the greater gods, and
invested with many of their attributes, we may next ask the question,
why this artificial cult, due in the first place to imperial passion
and caprice, and nourished by the adulation of fawning provinces, was
preserved from the rapid dissolution to which the flimsy products of
court-flattery are subject. The mythopoetic faculty was extinct, or in
its last phase of decadent vitality. There was nothing in the life of
Antinous to create a legend or to stimulate the sense of awe; and yet
this worship persisted long after the fear of Hadrian had passed away,
long after the benefits to be derived by humouring a royal fancy had
been exhausted, long after anything could be gained by playing out the
farce. It is clear, from a passage in Clemens Alexandrinus, that the
sacred nights of Antinous were observed, at least a century after the
date of his deification, with an enthusiasm that roused the anger of
the Christian Father. Again, it is worthy of notice that, while many of
the noblest works of antiquity have perished, the statues of Antinous
have descended to us in fair preservation and in very large numbers.
From the contemptuous destruction which erased the monuments of base
men in the Roman Empire they were safe; and the state in which we have
them shows how little they had suffered from neglect. The most rational
conclusion seems to be that Antinous became in truth a popular saint,
and satisfied some new need in Paganism, for which none of the elder
and more respectable deities sufficed. The novelty of his cult had, no
doubt, 218 something to do with the fascination it exercised; and
something may be attributed to the impulse art received from the
introduction of so rare and original a type of beauty into the
exhausted cycle of mythical subjects. The blending of Greek and
Egyptian elements was also attractive to an age remarkable for its
eclecticism. But after allowing for the many adventitious circumstances
which concurred to make Antinous the fashion, it is hardly unreasonable
to assume that the spirit of poetry in the youth's story, the rumour of
his self-devoted death, kept him alive in the memory of the people. It
is just that element of romance in the tale of his last hours, that
preservative association with the pathos of self-sacrifice, which forms
the interest we still feel for him.

The deified Antinous was therefore for the Roman world a charming but
dimly felt and undeveloped personality, made perfect by withdrawal into
an unseen world of mystery. The belief in the value of vicarious
suffering attached itself to his beautiful and melancholy form. His
sorrow borrowed something of the universal world-pain, more pathetic
than the hero-pangs of Herakles, the anguish of Prometheus, or the
passion of Iacchus-Zagreus, because more personal and less suggestive
of a cosmic mystery. The ancient cries of Ah Linus, Ah Adonis, found in
him an echo. For votaries ready to accept a new god as simply as we
accept a new poet, he was the final manifestation of an old-world
mystery, the rejuvenescence of a well-known incarnation, the
semi-Oriental realisation of a recurring Avatar. And if we may venture
on so bold a surmise, this last flower of antique mythology had taken
up into itself a portion of the blood outpoured on Calvary. Planted in
the conservatory of semi-philosophical yearnings, faintly tinctured
with the colours of misapprehended Christianity, without inherent
stamina, without the powerful nutrition which the earlier heroic fables
had derived from the spiritual vigour 219 of a truly mythopoeic age,
the cult of Antinous subsisted as an echo, a reflection, the last
serious effort of deifying but no longer potent Paganism, the last
reverberation of its oracles, an æsthetic rather than a religious
product, viewed even in its origin with sarcasm by the educated, and
yet sufficiently attractive to enthral the minds of simple votaries,
and to survive the circumstances of its first creation. It may be
remembered that the century which witnessed the canonisation of
Antinous, produced the myth of Cupid and Psyche—or, if this be too
sweeping an assertion, gave it final form, and handed it, in its
suggestive beauty, to the modern world. Thus at one and the same moment
the dying spirit of Hellas seized upon those doctrines of self-devotion
and immortality which, through the triumph of Christian teaching, were
gaining novel and incalculable value for the world. According to its
own laws of inspiration, it stamped both legends of Love victorious
over Death, with beautiful form in myth and poem and statuary.

That we are not altogether unjustified in drawing this conclusion may
be gathered from the attitude assumed by the Christian apologists
toward Antinous. There is more than the mere hatred of a Pagan hero,
more than the bare indignation at a public scandal, in their acrimony.
Accepting the calumnious insinuations of Dion Cassius, these gladiators
of the new faith found a terrible rhetorical weapon ready to their
hands in the canonisation of a court favourite. Prudentius, Clemens
Alexandrinus, Tertullian, Eusebius, Justin Martyr, Athanasius,
Tatian—all inveigh, in nearly the same terms, against the Emperor's
Ganymede, exalted to the skies, and worshipped with base fear and
adulation by abject slaves. But in Origen, arguing with Celsus, we find
a somewhat different keynote struck. Celsus, it appears, had told the
story of Antinous, and had compared his cult with that of Christ.
Origen replies justly, that there 220 was nothing in common between the
lives of Antinous and of Christ, and that his supposed divinity is a
fiction. We can discern in this response an echo of the faith which
endeared Antinous to his Pagan votaries. Antinous was hated by the
Christians as a rival; insignificant, it is true, and unworthy, but
still of sufficient force to be regarded and persecuted. If Antinous
had been utterly contemptible, if he had not gained some firm hold upon
the piety of Græco-Roman Paganism, Celsus could hardly have ventured to
rest an argument upon his worship, nor would Origen have chosen to
traverse that argument with solid reasoning, instead of passing it by
in rhetorical silence. Nothing is more difficult than to understand the
conditions of that age or to sympathise with its dominant passions.
Educated as we have been in the traditions of the finally triumphant
Christian faith, warmed through and through as we are by its summer
glow and autumn splendour, believing as we do in the adequacy of its
spirit to satisfy the cravings of the human heart, how can we
comprehend a moment in its growth when the divinised Antinous was not
merely an object offensive to the moral sense, but also a parody
dangerous to the pure form of Christ?

It remains to say somewhat of Antinous as he appears in art. His place
in classic sculpture corresponds to his position in antique mythology.
The Antinous statues and coins are reflections of earlier artistic
masterpieces, executed with admirable skill, but lacking original
faculty for idealisation in the artists. Yet there is so much personal
attraction in his type, his statues are so manifestly faithful
portraits, and we find so great a charm of novelty in his delicately
perfect individuality, that the life-romance which they reveal, as
through a veil of mystery, has force enough to make them rank among the
valuable heirlooms of antiquity. We could almost believe that, while so
many gods and heroes of Greece have perished, 221 Antinous has been
preserved in all his forms and phases for his own most lovely sake; as
though, according to Ghiberti's exquisite suggestion, gentle souls in
the first centuries of Christianity had spared this blameless youth,
and hidden him away with tender hands, in quiet places, from the fury
of iconoclasts. Nor is it impossible that the great vogue of his
worship was due among the Pagan laity to this same fascination of pure
beauty. Could a more graceful temple of the body have been fashioned,
after the Platonic theory, for the habitation of a guileless,
god-inspired, enthusiastic soul? The personality of Antinous, combined
with the suggestion of his self-devoted death, made him triumphant in
art as in the affections of the pious.

It would be an interesting task to compose a _catalogue raisonné_ of
Antinous statues and basreliefs, and to discuss the question of their
mythological references. This is, however, not the place for such an
inquiry. And yet I cannot quit Antinous without some retrospect upon
the most important of his portraits. Among the simple busts, by far the
finest, to my thinking, are the colossal head of the Louvre, and the
ivy-crowned bronze at Naples. The latter is not only flawless in its
execution, but is animated with a pensive beauty of expression. The
former, though praised by Winckelmann, as among the two or three most
precious masterpieces of antique art, must be criticised for a certain
vacancy and lifelessness. Of the heroic statues, the two noblest are
those of the Capitol and Naples. The identity of the Capitoline
Antinous has only once, I think, been seriously questioned; and yet it
may be reckoned more than doubtful. The head is almost certainly not
his. How it came to be placed upon a body presenting so much
resemblance to the type of Antinous I do not know. Careful comparison
of the torso and the arms with an indubitable portrait will even raise
the question whether this fine 222 statue is not a Hermes or a hero of
an earlier age. Its attitude suggests Narcissus or Adonis; and under
either of these forms Antinous may properly have been idealised. The
Neapolitan marble, on the contrary, yields the actual Antinous in all
the exuberant fulness of his beauty. Head, body, pose, alike bring him
vividly before us, forming an undoubtedly authentic portrait. The same
personality, idealised, it is true, but rather suffering than gaining
by the process, is powerfully impressed upon the colossal Dionysus of
the Vatican. What distinguishes this great work is the inbreathed
spirit of divinity, more overpowering here than in any other of the
extant ανδριάντες και αγάλματα The basrelief of the Villa Albani,
restored to suit the conception of a Vertumnus, has even more of florid
beauty; but whether the restoration was wisely made may be doubted. It
is curious to compare this celebrated masterpiece of technical
dexterity with another basrelief in the Villa Albani, representing
Antinous as Castor. He is standing, half clothed with the chlamys, by a
horse. His hair is close-cropped, after the Roman fashion, cut straight
above the forehead, but crowned with a fillet of lotos-buds. The whole
face has a somewhat stern and frowning Roman look of resolution,
contrasting with the mild benignity of the Bacchus statues, and the
almost sulky voluptuousness of the busts. In the Lateran Museum
Antinous appears as a god of flowers, holding in his lap a multitude of
blossoms, and wearing on his head a wreath. The conception of this
statue provokes comparison with the Flora of the Neapolitan Museum. I
should like to recognise in it a Dionysus Antheus, rather than one of
the more prosy Roman gods of horticulture. Not unworthy to rank with
these first-rate portraits of Antinous is a Ganymede, engraved by the
Dilettante Society, which represents him standing alert, in one hand
holding the wine-jug and in the other lifting a cup aloft. It will be
seen from even this brief enumeration of a 223 few among the statues of
Antinous, how many and how various they are. One, however, remains
still to be discussed, which, so far as concerns the story of Antinous,
is by far the most interesting of all. As a work of art, to judge by
photographs, it is inferior to others in execution and design. Yet
could we but understand its meaning clearly, the mystery of Antinous
would be solved: the key to the whole matter probably lies here; but,
alas! we know not how to use it. I speak of the Ildefonso Group at
Madrid.[96]

 [96] See Frontispiece.


On one pedestal there are three figures in white marble. To the extreme
right of the spectator stands a little female statue of a goddess, in
archaistic style, crowned with the calathos, and holding a sphere,
probably of pomegranate fruit, to her breast. To the left of this image
are two young men, three times the height of the goddess, quite naked,
standing one on each side of a low altar. Both are crowned with a
wreath of leaves and berries—laurel or myrtle. The youth to the right,
next the image, holds a torch in either hand: with the right he turns
the flaming point downwards, till it lies upon the altar; with the left
he lifts the other torch aloft, and rests it on his shoulder. He has a
beautiful Græco-Roman face, touched with sadness or ineffable
reflection. The second youth leans against his comrade, resting his
left arm across the other's back, and this hand is lightly placed upon
the shoulder, close to the lifted torch. His right arm is bent, and so
placed that the hand just cuts the line of the pelvis a little above
the hip. The weight of his body is thrown principally upon the right
leg; the left foot is drawn back, away from the altar. It is the
attitude of the Apollo Sauroctonos. His beautiful face, bent downward,
is intently gazing with a calm, collected, serious, and yet sad cast of
earnest meditation. His eyes seem fixed on something beyond him and
beneath 224 him—as it were on an inscrutable abyss; and in this
direction also looks his companion. The face is unmistakably the face
of Antinous; yet the figure, and especially the legs, are not
characteristic. They seem modelled after the conventional type of the
Greek Ephebus. Parts of the two torches and the lower half of the right
arm of Antinous are restorations.

Such is the Ildefonso marble; and it may be said that its execution is
hard and rough—the arms of both figures are carelessly designed; the
hands and fingers are especially angular, elongated, and ill-formed.
But there is a noble feeling in the whole group, notwithstanding. F.
Tieck, the sculptor and brother of the poet, was the first to suggest
that we have here Antinous, the Genius of Hadrian, and Persephone.[97]
He also thought that the self-immolation of Antinous was indicated by
the loving, leaning attitude of the younger man, and by his melancholy
look of resolution. The same view, in all substantial points, is taken
by Friedrichs, author of a work on Græco-Roman sculpture. But
Friedrichs, while admitting the identity of the younger figure with
Antinous, and recognising Persephone in the archaic image, is not
prepared to accept the elder as the Genius of Hadrian; and it must be
confessed that this face does not bear any resemblance to the portraits
of the Emperor. According to his interpretation, the Dæmon is kindling
the fire upon the sacrificial altar with the depressed torch; and the
second or lifted torch must be supposed to have been needed for the
performance of some obscure rite of immolation. What Friedrichs fails
to elucidate is the trustful attitude of Antinous, who could scarcely
have been conceived as thus affectionately 225 reclining on the
shoulder of a merely sacrificial dæmon; nor is there anything upon the
altar to kindle. It must, however, be conceded that the imperfection of
the marble at this point leaves the restoration of the altar and the
torch upon it doubtful.

 [97] See the article on Antinous, by Victor Rydberg, in the _Svensk
 Tidskrift för Litteratur, Politik, och Ekonomi_. 1875, Stockholm. Also
 Karl Bötticher, _Königliches Museum, Erklärendes Verzeichniss_.
 Berlin, 1871.

Charles Bötticher started a new solution of the principal problem.
According to him, it was executed in the lifetime of Antinous; and it
represents not a sacrifice of death, but a sacrifice of fidelity on the
part of the two friends, Hadrian and Antinous, who have met together
before Persephone to ratify a vow of love till death. He suggests that
the wreaths are of stephanotis, that large-leaved myrtle, which was
sacred to the Chthonian goddesses after the liberation of Semele from
Hades by her son Dionysus. With reference to such ceremonies between
Greek comrades, Bötticher cites a vase upon which Theseus and
Peirithous are sacrificing in the temple of Persephone; and he assumes
that there may have existed Athenian groups in marble representing
similar vows of friendship, from which Hadrian had this marble copied.
He believes that the Genius of Hadrian is kindling one torch at the
sacred fire, which he will reach to Antinous, while he holds the other
in readiness to kindle for himself. This explanation is both ingenious
and beautiful. It has also the great merit of explaining the action of
the right arm of Antinous. Yet it is hardly satisfactory. It throws no
light upon the melancholy and solemnity of both figures, which
irresistibly suggest a funereal rather than a joyous rite. Antinous is
not even looking at the altar, and the meditative curves of his
beautiful reclining form indicate anything rather than the spirited
alacrity with which a friend would respond to his comrade's call at
such a moment. Besides, why should not the likeness of Hadrian have
been preserved as well as that of Antinous, if the group commemorated
an act of their joint 226 will? On the other hand, we must admit that
the altar itself is not dressed for a funereal sacrifice.

It has been pointed out that in the British Museum there exists a
basrelief of Homer's apotheosis where we notice a figure holding two
torches. Is it, then, possible that the Ildefonso marble may express,
not the sacrifice, but the apotheosis of Antinous, and that the Genius
who holds the two torches is conferring on him immortality? The lifted
torch would symbolise his new life, and the depressed torch would stand
for the life he had devoted. According to this explanation, the
sorrowful expression of Antinous must indicate the agony of death
through which he passed into the company of the undying. Against this
interpretation is the fact that we have no precise authority for the
symbolism of the torches, except only the common inversion of the
life-brand by the Genius of Death.

Yet another solution may be suggested. Assuming that we have before us
a sacrificial ceremony, and that the group was executed after the
self-devotion of Antinous had passed into the popular belief, we may
regard the elder youth as either the Genius of the Emperor, separate in
spirit from Hadrian himself and presiding over his destinies, who
accepts the offer of Antinous with solemn calmness suited to so great a
gift; or else as the Genius of the Roman people, witnessing the same
act in the same majestic spirit. This view finds some support in the
abstract ideality of the torch-bearer, who is clearly no historical
personage as Antinous himself is, but rather a power controlling his
fate. The interpretation of the two torches remains very difficult. In
the torch flung down upon the flameless and barren altar we might
recognise a symbol of Hadrian's life upon the point of extinction, but
not yet extinguished; and in the torch lifted aloft we might find a
metaphor of life resuscitated and exalted. Nor is it 227 perhaps
without significance that the arm of the self-immolating youth meets
the upraised torch, as though to touch the life which he will purchase
with his death. There is, however, the objection stated above to this
bold use of symbolism.

In support of any explanation which ascribes this group to a period
later than the canonisation of Antinous, it may be repeated that the
execution is inferior to that of almost all the other statues of the
hero. Is it possible, then, that it belongs to a subsequent date, when
art was further on the wane, but when the self-devotion of Antinous had
become a dogma of his cult?

After all is said, the Ildefonso marble, like the legend of Antinous,
remains a mystery. Only hypotheses, more or less ingenious, more or
less suited to our sympathies, varying between Casaubon's coarse
vilification and Rydberg's roseate vision, are left us.

As a last note on the subject of Antinous let me refer to Raphael's
statue of Jonah in the Chigi Chapel of S. Maria del Popolo at Rome.
Raphael, who handled the myth of Cupid and Psyche so magnificently in
the Villa Farnesina of his patron Agostino Chigi, dedicated a statue of
Antinous—the only statue he ever executed in marble—under the title of
a Hebrew prophet in a Christian sanctuary. The fact is no less
significant than strange. During the early centuries of Christianity,
as is amply proved by the sarcophagi in the Lateran Museum, Jonah
symbolised self-sacrifice and immortality. He was a type of Christ, an
emblem of the Christian's hope beyond the grave. During those same
centuries Antinous represented the same ideas, however inadequately,
however dimly, for the unlettered laity of Paganism. It could scarcely
have been by accident, or by mere admiration for the features of
Antinous, that Raphael, in his marble, blent the Christian 228 and the
Pagan traditions. To unify and to transcend the double views of
Christianity and Paganism in a work of pure art was Raphael's
instinctive, if not his conscious, aim. Nor is there a more striking
instance of this purpose than the youthful Jonah with the head of
Hadrian's favourite. Leonardo's Dionysus-John-the-Baptist seems but a
careless _jeu d'esprit_ compared with this profound and studied symbol
of renascent humanism. Thus to regard the Jonah-Antinous of the
Cappella Chigi as a type of immortality and self-devotion, fusing
Christian and Græco-Roman symbolism in one work of modern art, is the
most natural interpretation; but it would not be impossible to trace in
it a metaphor of the resurgent Pagan spirit also—as though, leaving
Jonah and his Biblical associations in the background, the artist had
determined that from the mouth of the monstrous grave should issue not
a bearded prophet, but the victorious youth who had captivated with his
beauty and his heroism the sunset age of the classic world. At any
rate, whatever may have been Raphael's intention, the legend of
Antinous, that last creation of antique mythology, shines upon us in
this marble, just as the tale of Hero and Leander, that last blossom of
antique literature, flowers afresh in the verses of our Marlowe. It
would appear as though the Renaissance poets, hastening to meet the
classic world with arms of welcome, had embraced its latest saints, as
nearest to them, in the rapture of their first enthusiasm.

Over all these questions, over all that concerns Antinous, there rests
a cloud of darkness and impenetrable doubt. To pierce that cloud is now
impossible. The utmost we can do is to indulge our fancy in dreams of
greater or less probability, and to mark out clearly the limitations of
the subject. It is indeed something to have shown that the stigma of
slavery and disgrace attaching to his name has no solid historical
justification, and something to have suggested plausible reasons 229
for conjecturing that his worship had a genuine spiritual basis. Yet
the sincere critic, at the end of the whole inquiry, will confess that
he has only cast a plummet into the unfathomable sea of ignorance. What
remains, immortal, indestructible, victorious, is Antinous in art.
Against the gloomy background of doubt, calumny, contention, terrible
surmise, his statues are illuminated with the dying glory of the
classic genius—even as the towers and domes of a marble city shine
forth from the purple banks of a thunder-cloud in sunset light. Here
and here only does reality emerge from the chaos of conflicting
phantoms. Front to front with them, it is allowed us to forget all else
but the beauty of one who died young because the gods loved him. But
when we question those wonderful mute features and beg them for their
secret, they return no answer. There is not even a smile upon the
parted lips. So profound is the mystery, so insoluble the enigma, that
from its most importunate interrogation we derive nothing but an
attitude of deeper reverence. This in itself, however, is worth the
pains of study.[98]

 [98] I must here express my indebtedness to my friend H.F. Brown for a
 large portion of the materials used by me in this essay on Antinous,
 which I had no means at Davos Platz of accumulating for myself, and
 which he unearthed from the libraries of Florence in the course of his
 own work, and generously placed at my disposal.

230




SPRING WANDERINGS


ANA-CAPRI

The storm-clouds at this season, though it is the bloom of May, are
daily piled in sulky or menacing masses over Vesuvius and the Abruzzi,
frothing out their curls of moulded mist across the bay, and climbing
the heavens with toppling castle towers and domes of alabaster.

We made the most of a tranquil afternoon, when there was an armistice
of storm, to climb the bluff of Mount Solaro. A ruined fort caps that
limestone bulwark; and there we lay together, drinking the influences
of sea, sun, and wind. Immeasurably deep beneath us plunged the
precipices, deep, deep descending to a bay where fisher boats were
rocking, diminished to a scale that made the fishermen in them
invisible. Low down above the waters wheeled white gulls, and higher up
the hawks and ospreys of the cliff sailed out of sunlight into shadow.
Immitigable strength is in the moulding of this limestone, and sharp,
clear definiteness marks yon clothing of scant brushwood where the
fearless goats are browsing. The sublime of sculpturesque in crag
structure is here, refined and modulated by the sweetness of sea
distances. For the air came pure and yielding to us over the unfooted
sea; and at the basement of those fortress-cliffs the sea was dreaming
in its caves; and far away, to east and south and west, soft light was
blent with mist upon the surface of the shimmering waters.

231 The distinction between prospects viewed from a mountain
overlooking a great plain, or viewed from heights that, like this,
dominate the sea, principally lies in this: that while the former only
offer cloud shadows cast upon the fields below our feet, in the latter
these shadows are diversified with cloud reflections. This gives
superiority in qualities of colour, variety of tone, and luminous
effect to the sea, compensating in some measure for the lack of those
associations which render the outlook over a wide extent of populated
land so thrilling. The emergence of towered cities into sunlight at the
skirts of moving shadows, the liquid lapse of rivers half disclosed by
windings among woods, the upturned mirrors of unruffled lakes, are
wanting to the sea. For such episodes the white sails of vessels, with
all their wistfulness of going to and fro on the mysterious deep, are
but a poor exchange. Yet the sea-lover may justify his preference by
appealing to the beauty of empurpled shadows, toned by amethyst or
opal, or shining with violet light, reflected from the clouds that
cross and find in those dark shields a mirror. There are suggestions,
too, of immensity, of liberty, of action, presented by the boundless
horizons and the changeful changeless tracts of ocean which no plain
possesses.

It was nigh upon sunset when we descended to Ana-Capri. That evening
the clouds assembled suddenly. The armistice of storm was broken. They
were terribly blue, and the sea grew dark as steel beneath them, till
the moment when the sun's lip reached the last edge of the waters. Then
a courier of rosy flame sent forth from him passed swift across the
gulf, touching, where it trod, the waves with accidental fire. The
messenger reached Naples; and in a moment, as by some diabolical
illumination, the sinful city kindled into light like glowing charcoal.
From Posilippo on the left, along the palaces of the Chiaja, up to S.
Elmo on the hill, past Santa 232 Lucia, down on the Marinella, beyond
Portici, beyond Torre del Greco, where Vesuvius towered up aloof, an
angry mount of amethystine gloom, the conflagration spread and reached
Pompeii, and dwelt on Torre dell' Annunziata. Stationary, lurid, it
smouldered while the day died slowly. The long, densely populated
sea-line from Pozzuoli to Castellammare burned and smoked with
intensest incandescence, sending a glare of fiery mist against the
threatening blue behind, and fringing with pomegranate-coloured blots
the water where no light now lingered. It is difficult to bend words to
the use required. The scene, in spite of natural suavity and grace, had
become like Dante's first glimpse of the City of Dis—like Sodom and
Gomorrah when fire from heaven descended on their towers before they
crumbled into dust.

FROM CAPRI TO ISCHIA

After this, for several days, Libeccio blew harder. No boats could
leave or come to Capri. From the piazza parapet we saw the wind
scooping the surface of the waves, and flinging spray-fleeces in sheets
upon the churning water. As they broke on Cape Campanella, the rollers
climbed in foam—how many feet?—and blotted out the olive-trees above
the headland. The sky was always dark with hanging clouds and masses of
low-lying vapour, very moist, but scarcely raining—lightning without
thunder in the night.

Such weather is unexpected in the middle month of May, especially when
the olives are blackened by December storms, and the orange-trees
despoiled of foliage, and the tendrils of the vines yellow with cold.
The walnut-trees have shown no sign of making leaves. Only the figs
seem to have suffered little.

It had been settled that we should start upon the first 233 seafaring
dawn for Ischia or Sorrento, according as the wind might set; and I was
glad when, early one morning, the captain of the _Serena_ announced a
moderate sirocco. When we reached the little quay we found the surf of
the Libeccio still rolling heavily into the gulf. A gusty south-easter
crossed it, tearing spray-crests from the swell as it went plunging
onward. The sea was rough enough; but we made fast sailing, our captain
steering with a skill which it was beautiful to watch, his five oarsmen
picturesquely grouped beneath the straining sail. The sea slapped and
broke from time to time on our windward quarter, drenching the boat
with brine; and now and then her gunwale scooped into the shoulder of a
wave as she shot sidling up it. Meanwhile enormous masses of
leaden-coloured clouds formed above our heads and on the sea-line; but
these were always shifting in the strife of winds, and the sun shone
through them petulantly. As we climbed the rollers, or sank into their
trough, the outline of the bay appeared in glimpses, shyly revealed,
suddenly withdrawn from sight; the immobility and majesty of mountains
contrasted with the weltering waste of water round us—now blue and
garish where the sunlight fell, now shrouded in squally rain-storms,
and then again sullen beneath a vaporous canopy. Each of these
vignettes was photographed for one brief second on the brain, and
swallowed by the hurling drift of billows. The painter's art could but
ill have rendered that changeful colour in the sea, passing from tawny
cloud-reflections and surfaces of glowing violet to bright blue or
impenetrable purple flecked with boiling foam, according as a
light-illuminated or a shadowed facet of the moving mass was turned to
sight.

Halfway across the gulf the sirocco lulled; the sail was lowered, and
we had to make the rest of the passage by rowing. Under the lee of
Ischia we got into comparatively quiet 234 water; though here the
beautiful Italian sea was yellowish green with churned-up sand, like an
unripe orange. We passed the castle on its rocky island, with the domed
church which has been so often painted in _gouache_ pictures through
the last two centuries, and soon after noon we came to Casamicciola.

LA PICCOLA SENTINELLA

Casamicciola is a village on the north side of the island, in its
centre, where the visitors to the mineral baths of Ischia chiefly
congregate. One of its old-established inns is called La Piccola
Sentinella. The first sight on entrance is an open gallery, with a pink
wall on which bloom magnificent cactuses, sprays of thick-clustering
scarlet and magenta flowers. This is a rambling house, built in
successive stages against a hill, with terraces and verandahs opening
on unexpected gardens to the back and front. Beneath its long irregular
façade there spreads a wilderness of orange-trees and honeysuckles and
roses, verbenas, geraniums and mignonette, snapdragons, gazanias and
stocks, exceeding bright and fragrant, with the green slopes of Monte
Epomeo for a background and Vesuvius for far distance. There are
wonderful bits of detail in this garden. One dark, thick-foliaged
olive, I remember, leaning from the tufa over a lizard-haunted wall,
feathered waist-high in huge acanthus leaves. The whole rich orchard
ground of Casamicciola is dominated by Monte Epomeo, the extinct
volcano which may be called the _raison d'être_ of Ischia; for this
island is nothing but a mountain lifted by the energy of fire from the
sea-basement. Its fantastic peaks and ridges, sulphur-coloured, dusty
grey, and tawny, with brushwood in young leaf upon the cloven flanks,
form a singular pendant to the austere but more artistically modelled
limestone crags of Capri. No two islands that I know, within so 235
short a space of sea, offer two pictures so different in style and
quality of loveliness. The inhabitants are equally distinct in type.
Here, in spite of what De Musset wrote somewhat affectedly about the
peasant girls—

Ischia! c'est là qu'on a des yeux,
C'est là qu'un corsage amoureux
    Serre la hanche.
Sur un bas rouge bien tiré
Brille, sous le jupon doré,
    La mule blanche—

in spite of these lines I did not find the Ischian women eminent, as
those of Capri are, for beauty. But the young men have fine, loose,
faun-like figures, and faces that would be strikingly handsome but for
too long and prominent noses. They are a singular race, graceful in
movement.

Evening is divine in Ischia. From the topmost garden terrace of the inn
one looks across the sea towards Terracina, Gaeta, and those descending
mountain buttresses, the Phlegræan plains, and the distant snows of the
Abruzzi. Rain-washed and luminous, the sunset sky held Hesper trembling
in a solid green of beryl. Fireflies flashed among the orange blossoms.
Far away in the obscurity of eastern twilight glared the smouldering
cone of Vesuvius—a crimson blot upon the darkness—a Cyclops' eye,
bloodshot and menacing.

The company in the Piccola Sentinella, young and old, were decrepit,
with an odd, rheumatic, shrivelled look upon them. The dining-room
reminded me, as certain rooms are apt to do, of a ship's saloon. I felt
as though I had got into the cabin of the _Flying Dutchman_, and that
all these people had been sitting there at meat a hundred years,
through storm and shine, for ever driving onward over immense waves in
an enchanted calm.

236

ISCHIA AND FORIO

One morning we drove along the shore, up hill, and down, by the Porto
d'Ischia to the town and castle. This country curiously combines the
qualities of Corfu and Catania. The near distance, so richly
cultivated, with the large volcanic slopes of Monte Epomeo rising from
the sea, is like Catania. Then, across the gulf, are the bold outlines
and snowy peaks of the Abruzzi, recalling Albanian ranges. Here, as in
Sicily, the old lava is overgrown with prickly pear and red valerian.
Mesembrianthemums—I must be pardoned this word; for I cannot omit those
fleshy-leaved creepers, with their wealth of gaudy blossoms, shaped
like sea anemones, coloured like strawberry and pineapple
cream-ices—mesembrianthemums, then, tumble in torrents from the walls,
and large-cupped white convolvuluses curl about the hedges. The Castle
Rock, with Capri's refined sky-coloured outline relieving its hard
profile on the horizon, is one of those exceedingly picturesque objects
just too theatrical to be artistic. It seems ready-made for a back
scene in 'Masaniello,' and cries out to the chromo-lithographer, 'Come
and make the most of me!' Yet this morning all things, in sea, earth,
and sky, were so delicately tinted and bathed in pearly light that it
was difficult to be critical.

In the afternoon we took the other side of the island, driving through
Lacca to Forio. One gets right round the bulk of Epomeo, and looks up
into a weird region called Le Falange, where white lava streams have
poured in two broad irregular torrents among broken precipices. Forio
itself is placed at the end of a flat headland, boldly thrust into the
sea; and its furthest promontory bears a pilgrimage church, intensely
white and glaring.

237 There is something arbitrary in the memories we make of places
casually visited, dependent as they are upon our mood at the moment, or
on an accidental interweaving of impressions which the _genius loci_
blends for us. Of Forio two memories abide with me. The one is of a
young woman, with very fair hair, in a light blue dress, standing
beside an older woman in a garden. There was a flourishing
pomegranate-tree above them. The whiteness and the dreamy smile of the
young woman seemed strangely out of tune with her strong-toned southern
surroundings. I could have fancied her a daughter of some moist
north-western isle of Scandinavian seas. My other memory is of a lad,
brown, handsome, powerfully featured, thoughtful, lying curled up in
the sun upon a sort of ladder in his house-court, profoundly
meditating. He had a book in his hand, and his finger still marked the
place where he had read. He looked as though a Columbus or a Campanella
might emerge from his earnest, fervent, steadfast adolescence. Driving
rapidly along, and leaving Forio in all probability for ever, I kept
wondering whether those two lives, discerned as though in vision, would
meet—whether she was destined to be his evil genius, whether posterity
would hear of him and journey to his birthplace in this world-neglected
Forio. Such reveries are futile. Yet who entirely resists them?

MONTE EPOMEO

About three on the morning which divides the month of May into two
equal parts I woke and saw the waning moon right opposite my window,
stayed in her descent upon the slope of Epomeo. Soon afterwards
Christian called me, and we settled to ascend the mountain. Three
horses and a stout black donkey, with their inevitable grooms, were
ordered; 238 and we took for guide a lovely faun-like boy, goat-faced,
goat-footed, with gentle manners and pliant limbs swaying beneath the
breath of impulse. He was called Giuseppe.

The way leads past the mineral baths and then strikes uphill, at first
through lanes cut deep in the black lava. The trees meet almost
overhead. It is like Devonshire, except that one half hopes to see
tropical foxgloves with violet bells and downy leaves sprouting among
the lush grasses and sweet-scented ferns upon those gloomy, damp, warm
walls. After this we skirted a thicket of arbutus, and came upon the
long volcanic ridge, with divinest outlook over Procida and Miseno
toward Vesuvius. Then once more we had to dive into brown sandstone
gullies, extremely steep, where the horses almost burst their girths in
scrambling, and the grooms screamed, exasperating their confusion with
encouragements and curses. Straight or bending as a willow wand,
Giuseppe kept in front. I could have imagined he had stepped to life
from one of Lionardo's fancy-sprighted studies.

After this fashion we gained the spine of mountain which composes
Ischia—the smooth ascending ridge that grows up from those eastern
waves to what was once the apex of fire-vomiting Inarime, and breaks in
precipices westward, a ruin of gulfed lava, tortured by the violence of
pent Typhoeus. Under a vast umbrella pine we dismounted, rested, and
saw Capri. Now the road skirts slanting-wise along the further flank of
Epomeo, rising by muddy earth-heaps and sandstone hollows to the quaint
pinnacles which build the summit. There is no inconsiderable peril in
riding over this broken ground; for the soil crumbles away, and the
ravines open downward, treacherously masked with brushwood.

On Epomeo's topmost cone a chapel dedicated to S. Niccolo da Bari, the
Italian patron of seamen, has been 239 hollowed from the rock. Attached
to it is the dwelling of two hermits, subterranean, with long dark
corridors and windows opening on the western seas. Church and hermitage
alike are scooped, with slight expenditure of mason's skill, from solid
mountain. The windows are but loopholes, leaning from which the town of
Forio is seen, 2500 feet below; and the jagged precipices of the
menacing Falange toss their contorted horror forth to sea and sky.
Through gallery and grotto we wound in twilight under a monk's
guidance, and came at length upon the face of the crags above
Casamicciola. A few steps upward, cut like a ladder in the stone,
brought us to the topmost peak—a slender spire of soft, yellowish tufa.
It reminded me (with differences) of the way one climbs the spire at
Strasburg, and stands upon that temple's final crocket, with nothing
but a lightning conductor to steady swimming senses. Different indeed
are the views unrolled beneath the peak of Epomeo and the pinnacle of
Strasburg! Vesuvius, with the broken lines of Procida, Miseno, and Lago
Fusaro for foreground; the sculpturesque beauty of Capri, buttressed in
everlasting calm upon the waves; the Phlegræan plains and champaign of
Volturno, stretching between smooth seas and shadowy hills; the mighty
sweep of Naples' bay; all merged in blue; aë;rial, translucent,
exquisitely frail. In this ethereal fabric of azure the most real of
realities, the most solid of substances, seem films upon a crystal
sphere.

The hermit produced some flasks of amber-coloured wine from his stores
in the grotto. These we drank, lying full-length upon the tufa in the
morning sunlight. The panorama of sea, sky, and long-drawn lines of
coast, breathless, without a ripple or a taint of cloud, spread far and
wide around us. Our horses and donkey cropped what little grass, blent
with bitter herbage, grew on that barren summit. Their grooms 240
helped us out with the hermit's wine, and turned to sleep face
downward. The whole scene was very quiet, islanded in immeasurable air.
Then we asked the boy, Giuseppe, whether he could guide us on foot down
the cliffs of Monte Epomeo to Casamicciola. This he was willing and
able to do; for he told me that he had spent many months each year upon
the hillside, tending goats. When rough weather came, he wrapped
himself in a blanket from the snow that falls and melts upon the
ledges. In summer time he basked the whole day long, and slept the calm
ambrosial nights away. Something of this free life was in the burning
eyes, long clustering dark hair, and smooth brown bosom of the
faun-like creature. His graceful body had the brusque, unerring
movement of the goats he shepherded. Human thought and emotion seemed
a-slumber in this youth who had grown one with nature. As I watched his
careless incarnate loveliness I remembered lines from an old Italian
poem of romance, describing a dweller of the forest, who

Haunteth the woodland aye 'neath verdurous shade,
Eateth wild fruit, drinketh of running stream;
And such-like is his nature, as 'tis said,
That ever weepeth he when clear skies gleam,
Seeing of storms and rain he then hath dread,
And feareth lest the sun's heat fail for him;
But when on high hurl winds and clouds together,
Full glad is he and waiteth for fair weather.


Giuseppe led us down those curious volcanic _balze_, where the soil is
soft as marl, with tints splashed on it of pale green and rose and
orange, and a faint scent in it of sulphur. They break away into wild
chasms, where rivulets begin; and here the narrow watercourses made for
us plain going. The turf beneath our feet was starred with cyclamens
and wavering anemones. At last we reached the chestnut woods, and so
241 by winding paths descended on the village. Giuseppe told me, as we
walked, that in a short time he would be obliged to join the army. He
contemplated this duty with a dim and undefined dislike. Nor could I,
too, help dreading and misliking it for him. The untamed, gentle
creature, who knew so little but his goats as yet, whose nights had
been passed from childhood _à la belle étoile_, whose limbs had never
been cumbered with broadcloth or belt—for him to be shut up in the
barrack of some Lombard city, packed in white conscript's sacking,
drilled, taught to read and write, and weighted with the knapsack and
the musket! There was something lamentable in the prospect. But such is
the burden of man's life, of modern life especially. United Italy
demands of her children that by this discipline they should be brought
into that harmony which builds a nation out of diverse elements.

FROM ISCHIA TO NAPLES

Ischia showed a new aspect on the morning of our departure. A sea-mist
passed along the skirts of the island, and rolled in heavy masses round
the peaks of Monte Epomeo, slowly condensing into summer clouds, and
softening each outline with a pearly haze, through which shone emerald
glimpses of young vines and fig-trees.

We left in a boat with four oarsmen for Pozzuoli. For about an hour the
breeze carried us well, while Ischia behind grew ever lovelier, soft as
velvet, shaped like a gem. The mist had become a great white luminous
cloud—not dense and alabastrine, like the clouds of thunder; but filmy,
tender, comparable to the atmosphere of Dante's moon. Porpoises and
sea-gulls played and fished about our bows, dividing the 242 dark brine
in spray. The mountain distances were drowned in bluish vapour—Vesuvius
quite invisible. About noon the air grew clearer, and Capri reared her
fortalice of sculptured rock, aë;rially azure, into liquid ether. I
know not what effect of atmosphere or light it is that lifts an island
from the sea by interposing that thin edge of lustrous white between it
and the water. But this phenomenon to-day was perfectly exhibited. Like
a mirage on the wilderness, like Fata Morgana's palace ascending from
the deep, the pure and noble vision stayed suspense 'twixt heaven and
ocean. At the same time the breeze failed, and we rowed slowly between
Procida and Capo Miseno—a space in old-world history athrong with
Cæsar's navies. When we turned the point, and came in sight of Baiæ,
the wind freshened and took us flying into Pozzuoli. The whole of this
coast has been spoiled by the recent upheaval of Monte Nuovo with its
lava floods and cindery deluges. Nothing remains to justify its fame
among the ancient Romans and the Neapolitans of Boccaccio's and
Pontano's age. It is quite wrecked, beyond the power even of
hendecasyllables to bring again its breath of beauty:—

Mecum si sapies, Gravina, mecum
Baias, et placidos coles recessus,
Quos ipsæ et veneres colunt, et illa
Quæ mentes hominum regit voluptas.
Hic vina et choreæ jocique regnant,
Regnant et charites facetiæque.
Has sedes amor, has colit cupido.
His passim juvenes puellulæque
Ludunt, et tepidis aquis lavantur,
Coenantque et dapibus leporibusque
Miscent delitias venustiores:
Miscent gaudia et osculationes,
Atque una sociis toris foventur,
Has te ad delitias vocant camoenæ;
Invitat mare, myrteumque littus;
243 Invitant volueres canoræ, et ipse
Gaurus pampineas parat corollas.[99]


 [99] These verses are extracted from the second book of Pontano's
 _Hendecasyllabi_ (Aldus, 1513, p. 208). They so vividly paint the
 amusements of a watering-place in the fifteenth century that I have
 translated them:—


With me, let but the mind be wise, Gravina,
With me haste to the tranquil haunts of Baiæ,
Haunts that pleasure hath made her home, and she who
Sways all hearts, the voluptuous Aphrodite.
Here wine rules, and the dance, and games and laughter;
Graces reign in a round of mirthful madness;
Love hath built, and desire, a palace here too,
Where glad youths and enamoured girls on all sides
Play and bathe in the waves in sunny weather,
Dine and sup, and the merry mirth of banquets
Blend with dearer delights and love's embraces,
Blend with pleasures of youth and honeyed kisses,
Till, sport-tired, in the couch inarmed they slumber.
Thee our Muses invite to these enjoyments;
Thee those billows allure, the myrtled seashore,
Birds allure with a song, and mighty Gaurus
Twines his redolent wreath of vines and ivy.

At Pozzuoli we dined in the Albergo del Ponte di Caligola (Heaven save
the mark!), and drank Falernian wine of modern and indifferent vintage.
Then Christian hired two open carriages for Naples. He and I sat in the
second. In the first we placed the two ladies of our party. They had a
large, fat driver. Just after we had all passed the gate a big fellow
rushed up, dragged the corpulent coachman from his box, pulled out a
knife, and made a savage thrust at the man's stomach. At the same
moment a _guardia-porta_, with drawn cutlass, interposed and struck
between the combatants. They were separated. Their respective friends
assembled in two jabbering crowds, and the whole party, uttering
vociferous objurgations, marched off, as I imagined, to the
watch-house. A very shabby lazzarone, without more ado, 244 sprang on
the empty box, and we made haste for Naples. Being only anxious to get
there, and not at all curious about the squabble which had deprived us
of our fat driver, I relapsed into indifference when I found that
neither of the men to whose lot we had fallen was desirous of
explaining the affair. It was sufficient cause for self-congratulation
that no blood had been shed, and that the Procuratore del Rè would not
require our evidence.

The Grotta di Posilippo was a sight of wonder, with the afternoon sun
slanting on its festoons of creeping plants above the western
entrance—the gas lamps, dust, huge carts, oxen, and _contadini_ in its
subterranean darkness—and then the sudden revelation of the bay and
city as we jingled out into the summery air again by Virgil's tomb.

NIGHT AT POMPEII

On to Pompeii in the clear sunset, falling very lightly upon mountains,
islands, little ports, and indentations of the bay.

From the railway station we walked above half a mile to the Albergo del
Sole under a lucid heaven of aqua-marine colour, with Venus large in it
upon the border line between the tints of green and blue.

The Albergo del Sole is worth commemorating. We stepped, without the
intervention of courtyard or entrance hall, straight from the little
inn garden into an open, vaulted room. This was divided into two
compartments by a stout column supporting round arches. Wooden gates
furnished a kind of fence between the atrium and what an old Pompeian
would have styled the triclinium. For in the further part a table was
laid for supper and lighted with suspended lamps. And here a party of
artists and students drank and talked and 245 smoked. A great live
peacock, half asleep and winking his eyes, sat perched upon a heavy
wardrobe watching them. The outer chamber, where we waited in armchairs
of ample girth, had its _loggia_ windows and doors open to the air.
There were singing-birds in cages; and plants of rosemary, iris, and
arundo sprang carelessly from holes in the floor. A huge vase filled to
overflowing with oranges and lemons, the very symbol of generous
prodigality, stood in the midst, and several dogs were lounging round.
The outer twilight, blending with the dim sheen of the lamps, softened
this pretty scene to picturesqueness. Altogether it was a strange and
unexpected place. Much experienced as the nineteenth-century nomad may
be in inns, he will rarely receive a more powerful and refreshing
impression, entering one at evenfall, than here.

There was no room for us in the inn. We were sent, attended by a boy
with a lantern, through fields of dew-drenched barley and folded
poppies, to a farmhouse overshadowed by four spreading pines.
Exceedingly soft and grey, with rose-tinted weft of steam upon its
summit, stood Vesuvius above us in the twilight. Something in the
recent impression of the dimly lighted supper-room, and in the idyllic
simplicity of this lantern-litten journey through the barley,
suggested, by one of those inexplicable stirrings of association which
affect tired senses, a dim, dreamy thought of Palestine and Bible
stories. The feeling of the _cenacolo_ blent here with feelings of
Ruth's cornfields, and the white square houses with their flat roofs
enforced the illusion. Here we slept in the middle of a _contadino_
colony. Some of the folk had made way for us; and by the wheezing,
coughing, and snoring of several sorts and ages in the chamber next me,
I imagine they must have endured considerable crowding. My bed was
large enough to have 246 contained a family. Over its bead there was a
little shrine, hollowed in the thickness of the wall, with several
sacred emblems and a shallow vase of holy water. On dressers at each
end of the room stood glass shrines, occupied by finely dressed Madonna
dolls and pots of artificial flowers. Above the doors S. Michael and S.
Francis, roughly embossed in low relief and boldly painted, gave
dignity and grandeur to the walls. These showed some sense for art in
the first builders of the house. But the taste of the inhabitants could
not be praised. There were countless gaudy prints of saints, and
exactly five pictures of the Bambino, very big, and sprawling in a
field alone. A crucifix, some old bottles, a gun, old clothes suspended
from pegs, pieces of peasant pottery and china, completed the furniture
of the apartment.

But what a view it showed when Christian next morning opened the door!
From my bed I looked across the red-tiled terrace to the stone-pines
with their velvet roofage and the blue-peaked hills of Stabiæ.

SAN GERMANO

No one need doubt about his quarters in this country town. The Albergo
di Pompeii is a truly sumptuous place. Sofas, tables, and chairs in our
sitting-room are made of buffalo horns, very cleverly pieced together,
but torturing the senses with suggestions of impalement. Sitting or
standing, one felt insecure. When would the points run into us? when
should we begin to break these incrustations off? and would the whole
fabric crumble at a touch into chaotic heaps of horns?

It is market day, and the costumes in the streets are brilliant. The
women wear a white petticoat, a blue skirt made straight and tightly
bound above it, a white richly 247 worked bodice, and the white
square-folded napkin of the Abruzzi on their heads. Their jacket is of
red or green—pure colour. A rug of striped red, blue, yellow, and black
protects the whole dress from the rain. There is a very noble quality
of green—sappy and gemmy—like some of Titian's or Giorgione's—in the
stuffs they use. Their build and carriage are worthy of goddesses.

Rain falls heavily, persistently. We must ride on donkeys, in
waterproofs, to Monte Cassino. Mountain and valley, oak wood and ilex
grove, lentisk thicket and winding river-bed, are drowned alike in
soft-descending, soaking rain. Far and near the landscape swims in
rain, and the hillsides send down torrents through their watercourses.

The monastery is a square, dignified building, of vast extent and
princely solidity. It has a fine inner court, with sumptuous staircases
of slabbed stone leading to the church. This public portion of the
edifice is both impressive and magnificent, without sacrifice of
religious severity to parade. We acknowledge a successful compromise
between the austerity of the order and the grandeur befitting the fame,
wealth, prestige, and power of its parent foundation. The church itself
is a tolerable structure of the Renaissance—costly marble incrustations
and mosaics, meaningless Neapolitan frescoes. One singular episode in
the mediocrity of art adorning it, is the tomb of Pietro de' Medici.
Expelled from Florence in 1494, he never returned, but was drowned in
the Garigliano. Clement VII. ordered, and Duke Cosimo I. erected, this
marble monument—the handicraft, in part at least, of Francesco di San
Gallo—to their relative. It is singularly stiff, ugly, out of place—at
once obtrusive and insignificant.

A gentle old German monk conducted Christian and me over the
convent—boys' school, refectory, printing press, 248 lithographic
workshop, library, archives. We then returned to the church, from which
we passed to visit the most venerable and sacred portion of the
monastery. The cell of S. Benedict is being restored and painted in
fresco by the Austrian Benedictines; a pious but somewhat frigid
process of re-edification. This so-called cell is a many-chambered and
very ancient building, with a tower which is now embedded in the
massive superstructure of the modern monastery. The German artists
adorning it contrive to blend the styles of Giotto, Fra Angelico,
Egypt, and Byzance, not without force and a kind of intense frozen
pietism. S. Mauro's vision of his master's translation to heaven—the
ladder of light issuing between two cypresses, and the angels watching
on the tower walls—might even be styled poetical. But the decorative
angels on the roof and other places, being adapted from Egyptian art,
have a strange, incongruous appearance.

Monasteries are almost invariably disappointing to one who goes in
search of what gives virtue and solidity to human life; and even Monte
Cassino was no exception. This ought not to be otherwise, seeing what a
peculiar sympathy with the monastic institution is required to make
these cloisters comprehensible. The atmosphere of operose indolence,
prolonged through centuries and centuries, stifles; nor can antiquity
and influence impose upon a mind which resents monkery itself as an
essential evil. That Monte Cassino supplied the Church with several
potentates is incontestable. That mediæval learning and morality would
have suffered more without this brotherhood cannot be doubted. Yet it
is difficult to name men of very eminent genius whom the Cassinesi
claim as their alumni; nor, with Boccaccio's testimony to their
carelessness, and with the evidence of their library before our eyes,
can we rate their services to 249 civilised erudition very highly. I
longed to possess the spirit, for one moment, of Montalembert. I longed
for what is called historical imagination, for the indiscriminate
voracity of those men to whom world-famous sites are in themselves
soul-stirring.

250




AMALFI, PÆSTUM, CAPRI


The road between Vietri and Amalfi is justly celebrated as one of the
most lovely pieces of coast scenery in Italy. Its only rivals are the
roads from Castellammare to Sorrento, from Genoa to Sestri, and from
Nice to Mentone. Each of these has its own charm; and yet their
similarity is sufficient to invite comparison: under the spell of each
in turn, we are inclined to say, This then, at all events, is the most
beautiful. On first quitting Vietri, Salerno is left low down upon the
sea-shore, nestling into a little corner of the bay which bears its
name, and backed up by gigantic mountains. With each onward step these
mountain-ranges expand in long aë;rial line, revealing reaches of
fantastic peaks, that stretch away beyond the plain of Pæstum, till
they end at last in mist and sunbeams shimmering on the sea. On the
left hand hangs the cliff above the deep salt water, with here and
there a fig-tree spreading fanlike leaves against the blue beneath. On
the right rises the hillside, clothed with myrtle, lentisk, cistus, and
pale yellow coronilla—a tangle as sweet with scent as it is gay with
blossom. Over the parapet that skirts the precipice lean heavy-foliaged
locust-trees, and the terraces in sunny nooks are set with
lemon-orchards. There are but few olives, and no pines. Meanwhile each
turn in the road brings some change of scene—now a village with its
little beach of grey sand, lapped by clearest sea-waves, where
bare-legged fishermen mend their nets, and naked boys bask like lizards
in the 251 sun—now towering bastions of weird rock, broken into spires
and pinnacles like those of Skye, and coloured with bright hues of red
and orange—then a ravine, where the thin thread of a mountain streamlet
seems to hang suspended upon ferny ledges in the limestone—or a
precipice defined in profile against sea and sky, with a lad, half
dressed in goat-skin, dangling his legs into vacuity and singing—or a
tract of cultivation, where the orange, apricot, and lemon trees nestle
together upon terraces with intermingled pergolas of vines.

Amalfi and Atrani lie close together in two of these ravines, the
mountains almost arching over them, and the sea washing their very
house-walls. Each has its crowning campanile; but that of Amalfi is the
stranger of the two, like a Moorish tower at the top, and coloured with
green and yellow tiles that glitter in the sunlight. The houses are all
dazzling white, plastered against the naked rock, rising on each
other's shoulders to get a glimpse of earth and heaven, jutting out on
coigns of vantage from the toppling cliff, and pierced with staircases
as dark as night at noonday. Some frequented lanes lead through the
basements of these houses; and as the donkeys pick their way from step
to step in the twilight, bare-chested macaroni-makers crowd forth like
ants to see us strangers pass. A myriad of swallows or a swarm of mason
bees might build a town like this.

It is not easy to imagine the time when Amalfi and Atrani were one
town, with docks and arsenals and harbourage for their associated
fleets, and when these little communities were second in importance to
no naval power of Christian Europe. The Byzantine Empire lost its hold
on Italy during the eighth century; and after this time the history of
Calabria is mainly concerned with the republics of Naples and Amalfi,
their conflict with the Lombard dukes of Benevento, their opposition to
the Saracens, and their final subjugation by the 252 Norman conquerors
of Sicily. Between the year 839 A.D., when Amalfi freed itself from the
control of Naples and the yoke of Benevento, and the year 1131, when
Roger of Hauteville incorporated the republic in his kingdom of the Two
Sicilies, this city was the foremost naval and commercial port of
Italy. The burghers of Amalfi elected their own doge; founded the
Hospital of Jerusalem, whence sprang the knightly order of S. John;
gave their name to the richest quarter in Palermo; and owned trading
establishments or factories in all the chief cities of the Levant.
Their gold coinage of _tari_ formed the standard of currency before the
Florentines had stamped the lily and S. John upon the Tuscan florin.
Their shipping regulations supplied Europe with a code of maritime
laws. Their scholars, in the darkest depth of the dark ages, prized and
conned a famous copy of the Pandects of Justinian; and their seamen
deserved the fame of having first used, if they did not actually
invent, the compass.

To modern visitors those glorious centuries of Amalfitan power and
independence cannot but seem fabulous; so difficult is it for us to
imagine the conditions of society in Europe when a tiny city, shut in
between barren mountains and a tideless sea, without a circumjacent
territory, and with no resources but piracy or trade, could develop
maritime supremacy in the Levant and produce the first fine flowers of
liberty and culture.

If the history of Amalfi's early splendour reads like a brilliant
legend, the story of its premature extinction has the interest of a
tragedy. The republic had grown and flourished on the decay of the
Greek Empire. When the hard-handed race of Hauteville absorbed the
heritage of Greeks and Lombards and Saracens in Southern Italy, these
adventurers succeeded in annexing Amalfi. But it was not their interest
to extinguish the state. On the contrary, they relied for 253
assistance upon the navies and the armies of the little commonwealth.
New powers had meanwhile arisen in the North of Italy, who were jealous
of rivalry upon the open seas; and when the Neapolitans resisted King
Roger in 1135, they called Pisa to their aid, and sent her fleet to
destroy Amalfi. The ships of Amalfi were on guard with Roger's navy in
the Bay of Naples. The armed citizens were, under Roger's orders, at
Aversa. Meanwhile the home of the republic lay defenceless on its
mountain-girdled seaboard. The Pisans sailed into the harbour, sacked
the city, and carried off the famous Pandects of Justinian as a trophy.
Two years later they returned, to complete the work of devastation.
Amalfi never recovered from the injuries and the humiliation of these
two attacks. It was ever thus that the Italians, like the children of
the dragon's teeth which Cadmus sowed, consumed each other. Pisa cut
the throat of her sister-port Amalfi, and Genoa gave a mortal wound to
Pisa, when the waters of Meloria were dyed with blood in 1284. Venice
fought a duel to the death with Genoa in the succeeding century; and
what Venice failed to accomplish was completed by Milan and the lords
of the Visconti dynasty, who crippled and enslaved the haughty queen of
the Ligurian Riviera.

The naval and commercial prosperity of Amalfi was thus put an end to by
the Pisans in the twelfth century. But it was not then that the town
assumed its present aspect. What surprises the student of history more
than anything is the total absence of fortifications, docks, arsenals,
and breakwaters, bearing witness to the ancient grandeur of a city
which numbered 50,000 inhabitants, and traded with Alexandria, Syria,
and the far East. Nothing of the sort, with the exception of a single
solitary tower upon the Monte Aureo, is visible. Nor will he fail to
remember that Amalfi and 254 Atrani, which are now divided by a jutting
mountain buttress, were once joined by a tract of sea-beach, where the
galleys of the republic rested after sweeping the Levant, and where the
fishermen drew up their boats upon the smooth grey sand. That also has
disappeared. The violence of man was not enough to reduce Amalfi to its
present state of insignificance. The forces of nature aided—partly by
the gradual subsidence of the land, which caused the lower quarters of
the city to be submerged, and separated Amalfi from her twin-port by
covering the beach with water—partly by a fearful tempest, accompanied
by earthquake, in 1343. Petrarch, then resident at Naples, witnessed
the destructive fury of this great convulsion, and the description he
wrote of it soon after its occurrence is so graphic that some notice
may well be taken of it here.

His letter, addressed to the noble Roman, Giovanni Colonna, begins with
a promise to tell something of a storm which deserved the title of
'poetic,' and in a degree so superlative that no epithet but 'Homeric'
would suffice to do it justice. This exordium is singularly
characteristic of Petrarch, who never forgot that he was a literary
man, and lost no opportunity of dragging the great names of antiquity
into his rhetorical compositions. The catastrophe was hardly
unexpected; for it had been prophesied by an astrological bishop, whom
Petrarch does not name, that Naples would be overwhelmed by a terrible
disaster in December 1343. The people were therefore in a state of wild
anxiety, repenting of their sins, planning a total change of life under
the fear of imminent death, and neglecting their ordinary occupations.
On the day of the predicted calamity women roamed in trembling crowds
through the streets, pressing their babies to their breasts, and
besieging the altars of the saints with prayers. Petrarch, who shared
the general disquietude, kept 255 watching the signs of the weather;
but nothing happened to warrant an extraordinary panic. At sunset the
sky was quieter than usual; and he could discern none of the symptoms
of approaching tempest, to which his familiarity with the mountains of
Vaucluse accustomed him. After dusk he stationed himself at a window to
observe the moon until she went down, before midnight, obscured by
clouds. Then he betook himself to bed; but scarcely had he fallen into
his first sleep when a most horrible noise aroused him. The whole house
shook; the night-light on his table was extinguished; and he was thrown
with violence from his couch. He was lodging in a convent; and soon
after this first intimation of the tempest he heard the monks calling
to each other through the darkness. From cell to cell they hurried, the
ghastly gleams of lightning falling on their terror-stricken faces.
Headed by the Prior, and holding crosses and relics of the saints in
their hands, they now assembled in Petrarch's chamber. Thence they
proceeded in a body to the chapel, where they spent the night in prayer
and expectation of impending ruin. It would be impossible, says the
poet, to relate the terrors of that hellish night—the deluges of rain,
the screaming of the wind, the earthquake, the thunder, the howling of
the sea, and the shrieks of agonising human beings. All these horrors
were prolonged, as though by some magician's spell, for what seemed
twice the duration of a natural night. It was so dark that at last by
conjecture rather than the testimony of their senses they knew that day
had broken. A hurried mass was said. Then, as the noise in the town
above them began to diminish, and a confused clamour from the sea-shore
continually increased, their suspense became unendurable. They mounted
their horses, and descended to the port—to see and perish. A fearful
spectacle awaited them. The ships in the harbour had broken their
moorings, and 256 were crashing helplessly together. The strand was
strewn with mutilated corpses. The breakwaters were submerged, and the
sea seemed gaining momently upon the solid land. A thousand watery
mountains surged up into the sky between the shore and Capri; and these
massive billows were not black or purple, but hoary with a livid foam.
After describing some picturesque episodes—such as the gathering of the
knights of Naples to watch the ruin of their city, the procession of
court ladies headed by the queen to implore the intercession of Mary,
and the wreck of a vessel freighted with 400 convicts bound for
Sicily—Petrarch concludes with a fervent prayer that he may never have
to tempt the sea, of whose fury he had seen so awful an example.

The capital on this occasion escaped the ruin prophesied. But Amalfi
was inundated; and what the waters then gained has never been restored
to man. This is why the once so famous city ranks now upon a level with
quiet little towns whose names are hardly heard in history—with San
Remo, or Rapallo, or Chiavari—and yet it is still as full of life as a
wasp's nest, especially upon the molo, or raised piazza paved with
bricks, in front of the Albergo de' Cappuccini. The changes of scene
upon this tiny square are so frequent as to remind one of a theatre.
Looking down from the inn-balcony, between the glazy green pots gay
with scarlet amaryllis-bloom, we are inclined to fancy that the whole
has been prepared for our amusement. In the morning the corn for the
macaroni-flour, after being washed, is spread out on the bricks to dry.
In the afternoon the fishermen bring their nets for the same purpose.
In the evening the city magnates promenade and whisper. Dark-eyed
women, with orange or crimson kerchiefs for headgear, cross and
re-cross, bearing baskets on their shoulders. Great lazy large-limbed
fellows, girt with scarlet sashes and finished off with dark blue 257
nightcaps (for a contrast to their saffron-coloured shirts, white
breeches, and sunburnt calves), slouch about or sleep face downwards on
the parapets. On either side of this same molo stretches a miniature
beach of sand and pebble, covered with nets, which the fishermen are
always mending, and where the big boats lade or unlade, trimming for
the sardine fishery, or driving in to shore with a whirr of oars and a
jabber of discordant voices. As the land-wind freshens, you may watch
them set off one by one, like pigeons taking flight, till the sea is
flecked with twenty sail, all scudding in the same direction. The
torrent runs beneath the molo, and finds the sea beyond it; so that
here too are the washerwomen, chattering like sparrows; and everywhere
the naked boys, like brown sea-urchins, burrow in the clean warm sand,
or splash the shallow brine. If you like the fun, you may get a score
of them to dive together and scramble for coppers in the deeper places,
their lithe bodies gleaming wan beneath the water in a maze of
interlacing arms and legs.

Over the whole busy scene rise the grey hills, soaring into blueness of
air-distance, turreted here and there with ruined castles, capped with
particoloured campanili and white convents, and tufted through their
whole height with the orange and the emerald of the great tree-spurge,
and with the live gold of the blossoming broom. It is difficult to say
when this picture is most beautiful—whether in the early morning, when
the boats are coming back from their night-toil upon the sea, and along
the headlands in the fresh light lie swathes of fleecy mist, betokening
a still, hot day—or at noontide, when the houses on the hill stand,
tinted pink and yellow, shadowless like gems, and the great
caruba-trees above the tangles of vines and figs are blots upon the
steady glare—or at sunset, when violet and rose, reflected from the
eastern sky, make all these terraces and peaks translucent 258 with a
wondrous glow. The best of all, perhaps, is night, with a full moon
hanging high overhead. Who shall describe the silhouettes of boats upon
the shore or sleeping on the misty sea? On the horizon lies a dusky
film of brownish golden haze, between the moon and the glimmering
water; and here and there a lamp or candle burns with a deep red. Then
is the time to take a boat and row upon the bay, or better, to swim out
into the waves and trouble the reflections from the steady stars. The
mountains, clear and calm, with light-irradiated chasms and hard
shadows cast upon the rock, soar up above a city built of alabaster, or
sea-foam, or summer clouds. The whole is white and wonderful: no
similes suggest an analogue for the lustre, solid and transparent, of
Amalfi nestling in moonlight between the grey-blue sea and lucid hills.
Stars stand on all the peaks, and twinkle, or keep gliding, as the boat
moves, down the craggy sides. Stars are mirrored on the marble of the
sea, until one knows not whether the oar has struck sparks from a star
image or has scattered diamonds of phosphorescent brine.

All this reads like a rhapsody; but indeed it is difficult not to be
rhapsodical when a May night of Amalfi is in the memory, with the echo
of rich baritone voices chanting Neapolitan songs to a mandoline. It is
fashionable to complain that these Italian airs are opera-tunes; but
this is only another way of saying that the Italian opera is the
genuine outgrowth of national melody, and that Weber was not the first,
as some German critics have supposed, to string together Volkslieder
for the stage. Northerners, who have never seen or felt the beauty of
the South, talk sad nonsense about the superiority of German over
Italian music. It is true that much Italian music is out of place in
Northern Europe, where we seem to need more travail of the intellect in
art. But the Italians are rightly satisfied with such facile melody 259
and such simple rhythms as harmonise with sea and sky and boon earth
sensuously beautiful. 'Perchè pensa? Pensando s' invecchia,' expresses
the same habit of mind as another celebrated saying, 'La musica è il
lamento dell' amore o la preghiera agli Dei.' Whatever may be the value
of Italian music, it is in concord with such a scene as Amalfi by
moon-light; and he who does not appreciate this no less than some more
artificial combination of sights and sounds in Wagner's theatre at
Bayreuth, has scarcely learned the first lesson in the lore of beauty.

There is enough and to spare for all tastes at Amalfi. The student of
architecture may spend hours in the Cathedral, pondering over its
high-built western front, and wondering whether there is more of
Moorish or of Gothic in its delicate arcades. The painter may transfer
its campanile, glittering like dragon's scales, to his canvas. The
lover of the picturesque will wander through its aisle at mass-time,
watching the sunlight play upon those upturned Southern faces with
their ardent eyes; and happy is he who sees young men and maidens on
Whit Sunday crowding round the chancel rails, to catch the marigolds
and gillyflowers scattered from baskets which the priest has blessed.
Is this a symbol of the Holy Spirit's gifts, or is it some quaint relic
of Pagan _sparsiones_? This question, with the memory of Pompeian
_graffiti_ in our mind, may well suggest itself in Southern Italy,
where old and new faiths are so singularly blended. Then there is
Ravello on the hills above. The path winds upward between stone walls
tufted with maidenhair; and ever nearer grow the mountains, and the
sea-line soars into the sky. An Englishman has made his home here in a
ruined Moorish villa, with cool colonnaded cloisters and rose-embowered
terraces, lending far prospect over rocky hills and olive-girdled
villages to Pæstum's plain. The churches of Ravello have 260 rare
mosaics, and bronze doors, and marble pulpits, older perhaps than those
of Tuscany, which tempt the archæologist to ask if Nicholas the Pisan
learned his secret here. But who cares to be a sober antiquary at
Amalfi? Far pleasanter is it to climb the staircase to the Capuchins,
and linger in those caverns of the living rock, and pluck the lemons
hanging by the mossy walls; or to row from cove to cove along the
shore, watching the fishes swimming in the deeps beneath, and the
medusas spreading their filmy bells; to land upon smooth slabs of rock,
where corallines wave to and fro; or to rest on samphire-tufted ledges,
when the shadows slant beneath the westering sun.

There is no point in all this landscape which does not make a picture.
Painters might even complain that the pictures are too easy and the
poetry too facile, just as the musicians find the melodies of this fair
land too simple. No effect, carefully sought and strenuously seized,
could enhance the mere beauty of Amalfi bathed in sunlight. You have
only on some average summer day to sit down and paint the scene. Little
scope is afforded for suggestions of far-away weird thoughts, or for
elaborately studied motives. Daubigny and Corot are as alien here as
Blake or Dürer.

What is wanted, and what no modern artist can successfully recapture
from the wasteful past, is the mythopoeic sense—the apprehension of
primeval powers akin to man, growing into shape and substance on the
borderland between the world and the keen human sympathies it stirs in
us. Greek mythology was the proper form of art for scenery like this.
It gave the final touch to all its beauties, and added to its sensuous
charm an inbreathed spiritual life. No exercise of the poetic faculty,
far less that metaphysical mood of the reflective consciousness which
'leads from nature up to nature's God,' can now supply this need. From
sea and earth 261 and sky, in those creative ages when the world was
young, there leaned to greet the men whose fancy made them, forms
imagined and yet real—human, divine—the archetypes and everlasting
patterns of man's deepest sense of what is wonderful in nature. Feeling
them there, for ever there, inalienable, ready to start forth and greet
successive generations—as the Hamadryad greeted Rhaicos from his
father's oak—those mythopoets called them by immortal names. All their
pent-up longings, all passions that consume, all aspirations that
inflame—the desire for the impossible, which is disease, the day-dreams
and visions of the night, which are spontaneous poems—were thus
transferred to nature. And nature, responsive to the soul that loves
her, gave them back transfigured and translated into radiant beings of
like substance with mankind. It was thus, we feel, upon these southern
shores that the gods of Greece came into being. The statues in the
temples were the true fine flower of all this beauty, the culmination
of the poetry which it evoked in hearts that feel and brains that
think.

In Italy, far more than in any other part of Europe, the life of the
present is imposed upon the strata of successive past lives. Greek,
Latin, Moorish, and mediæval civilisations have arisen, flourished, and
decayed on nearly the same soil; and it is common enough to find one
city, which may have perished twenty centuries ago, neighbour to
another that enjoyed its brief prosperity in the middle of our era.
There is not, for example, the least sign of either Greek or Roman at
Amalfi. Whatever may have been the glories of the republic in the early
middle ages, they had no relation to the classic past. Yet a few miles
off along the bay rise the ancient Greek temples of Pæstum, from a
desert—with no trace of any intervening occupants. Poseidonia was
founded in the sixth century before Christ, by colonists from Sybaris.
262 Three centuries later the Hellenic element in this settlement,
which must already have become a town of no little importance, was
submerged by a deluge of recurrent barbarism. Under the Roman rule it
changed its name to Pæstum, and was prosperous. The Saracens destroyed
it in the ninth century of our era; and Robert Guiscard carried some of
the materials of its buildings to adorn his new town of Salerno. Since
then the ancient site has been abandoned to malaria and solitude. The
very existence of Pæstum was unknown, except to wandering herdsmen and
fishers coasting near its ruined colonnades, until the end of the last
century. Yet, strange to relate, after all these revolutions, and in
the midst of this total desolation, the only relics of the antique city
are three Greek temples, those very temples where the Hellenes,
barbarised by their Lucanian neighbours, met to mourn for their lost
liberty. It is almost impossible to trace more than the mere circuit of
the walls of Poseidonia. Its port, if port it had in Roman days, has
disappeared. Its theatre is only just discernible. Still not a column
of the great hypæthral temple, built by the Sybarite colonists two
thousand and five hundred years ago, to be a house for Zeus or for
Poseidon, has been injured. The accidents that erased far greater
cities, like Syracuse, from the surface of the earth—pillage,
earthquake, the fury of fanatics, the slow decay of perishable stone,
or the lust of palace builders in the middle ages—have spared those
three houses of the gods, over whom, in the days of Alexander, the
funeral hymn was chanted by the enslaved Hellenes.

'We do the same,' said Aristoxenus in his Convivial Miscellanies, 'as
the men of Poseidonia, who dwell on the Tyrrhenian Gulf. It befell
them, having been at first true Hellenes, to be utterly barbarised,
changing to Tyrrhenes or Romans, and altering their language, together
with their 263 other customs. Yet they still observe one Hellenic
festival, when they meet together and call to remembrance their old
names and bygone institutions; and having lamented one to the other,
and shed bitter tears, they afterwards depart to their own homes. Even
thus a few of us also, now that our theatres have been barbarised, and
this art of music has gone to ruin and vulgarity, meet together and
remember what once music was.'[100]

 [100] _Athenæus_, xiv. 632.

This passage has a strange pathos, considering how it was penned, and
how it has come down to us, tossed by the dark indifferent stream of
time. The Aristoxenus who wrote it was a pupil of the Peripatetic
School, born at Tarentum, and therefore familiar with the vicissitudes
of Magna Græcia. The study of music was his chief preoccupation; and he
used this episode in the agony of an enslaved Greek city, to point his
own conservative disgust for innovations in an art of which we have no
knowledge left. The works of Aristoxenus have perished, and the
fragment I have quoted is embedded in the gossip of Egyptian Athenæus.
In this careless fashion has been opened for us, as it were, a little
window on a grief now buried in the oblivion of a hundred generations.
After reading his words one May morning, beneath the pediment of
Pæstum's noblest ruin, I could not refrain from thinking that if the
spirits of those captive Hellenes were to revisit their old
habitations, they would change their note of wailing into a thin
ghostly pæan, when they found that Romans and Lucanians had passed
away, that Christians and Saracens had left alike no trace behind,
while the houses of their own αντήλιοι θεοι—dawn-facing deities—were
still abiding in the pride of immemorial strength. Who knows whether
buffalo-driver or bandit may not ere now have seen processions of these
Poseidonian phantoms, bearing laurels and chaunting hymns on 264 the
spot where once they fell each on the other's neck to weep? Gathering
his cloak around him and cowering closer to his fire of sticks, the
night-watcher in those empty colonnades may have mistaken the Hellenic
outlines of his shadowy visitants for fevered dreams, and the melody of
their evanished music for the whistling of night winds or the cry of
owls. So abandoned is Pæstum in its solitude that we know not even what
legends may have sprung up round those relics of a mightier age.

The shrine is ruined now; and far away
To east and west stretch olive groves, whose shade
Even at the height of summer noon is grey.

Asphodels sprout upon the plinth decayed
Of these low columns, and the snake hath found
Her haunt 'neath altar-steps with weeds o'erlaid.

Yet this was once a hero's temple, crowned
With myrtle-boughs by lovers, and with palm
By wrestlers, resonant with sweetest sound

Of flute and fife in summer evening's calm,
And odorous with incense all the year,
With nard and spice, and galbanum and balm.


These lines sufficiently express the sense of desolation felt at
Pæstum, except that the scenery is more solemn and mournful, and the
temples are too august to be the shrine of any simple hero. There are
no olives. The sea plunges on its sandy shore within the space of half
a mile to westward. Far and wide on either hand stretch dreary
fever-stricken marshes. The plain is bounded to the north, and east,
and south, with mountains, purple, snow-peaked, serrated, and grandly
broken like the hills of Greece. Driving over this vast level where the
Silarus stagnates, the monotony of the landscape is broken now and then
by a group of buffaloes 265 standing up to their dewlaps in reeds, by
peasants on horseback, with goads in their hands, and muskets slung
athwart their backs, or by patrols of Italian soldiers crossing and
re-crossing on the brigand-haunted roads. Certain portions have been
reclaimed from the swamp, and here may be seen white oxen in herds of
fifty grazing; or gangs of women at field-labour, with a man to oversee
them, cracking a long hunting-whip; or the mares and foals of a famous
stud-farm browsing under spreading pines. There are no villages, and
the few farmhouses are so widely scattered as to make us wonder where
the herdsmen and field-workers, scanty as they are, can possibly be
lodged.

At last the three great temples come in sight. The rich orange of the
central building contrasts with the paler yellow of its two companions,
while the glowing colour of all three is splendidly relieved against
green vegetation and blue mountain-flanks. Their material is
travertine—a calcareous stone formed by the deposit of petrifying
waters, which contains fragments of reeds, spiral shells, and other
substances, embedded in the porous limestone. In the flourishing period
of old Poseidonia these travertine columns were coated with stucco,
worked to a smooth surface, and brilliantly tinted to harmonise with
the gay costumes of a Greek festival. Even now this coating of fine
sand, mingled with slaked lime and water, can be seen in patches on the
huge blocks of the masonry. Thus treated, the travertine lacked little
of the radiance of marble, for it must be remembered that the Greeks
painted even the Pentelic cornice of the Parthenon with red and blue.
Nor can we doubt that the general effect of brightness suited the glad
and genial conditions of Greek life.

All the surroundings are altered now, and the lover of the picturesque
may be truly thankful that the hand of time, by 266 stripping the
buildings of this stucco, without impairing their proportions, has
substituted a new harmony of tone between the native stone and the
surrounding landscape, no less sympathetic to the present solitude than
the old symphony of colours was to the animated circumstances of a
populous Greek city. In this way those critics who defend the
polychrome decorations of the classic architects, and those who contend
that they cannot imagine any alteration from the present toning of
Greek temples for the better, are both right.

In point of colour the Pæstum ruins are very similar to those of
Girgenti; but owing to their position on a level plain, in front of a
scarcely indented sea-shore, we lack the irregularity which adds so
much charm to the row of temples on their broken cliff in the old town
of Agrigentum. In like manner the celebrated _asymmetreia_ of the
buildings of the Athenian Acropolis, which causes so much variety of
light and shade upon the temple-fronts, and offers so many novel points
of view when they are seen in combination, seems to have been due
originally to the exigencies of the ground. At Pæstum, in planning out
the city, there can have been no utilitarian reasons for placing the
temples at odd angles, either to each other or the shore. Therefore we
see them now almost exactly in line and parallel, though at unequal
distances. If something of picturesque effect is thus lost at Pæstum
through the flatness of the ground, something of impressive grandeur on
the other hand is gained by the very regularity with which those
phalanxes of massive Doric columns are drawn up to face the sea.

Poseidonia, as the name betokens, was dedicated to the god of the sea;
and the coins of the city are stamped with his effigy bearing a
trident, and with his sacred animal, the bull. It has therefore been
conjectured that the central of the three temples—which was hypæthral
and had two entrances, 267 east and west—belonged to Poseidon; and
there is something fine in the notion of the god being thus able to
pass to and fro from his cella through those sunny peristyles, down to
his chariot, yoked with sea-horses, in the brine. Yet hypæthral temples
were generally consecrated to Zeus, and it is therefore probable that
the traditional name of this vast edifice is wrong. The names of the
two other temples, _Tempio di Cerere_ and _Basilica_, are wholly
unsupported by any proof or probability. The second is almost certainly
founded on a mistake; and if we assign the largest of the three shrines
to Zeus, one or other of the lesser belonged most likely to Poseidon.

The style of the temples is severe and primitive. In general effect
their Doric architecture is far sterner than that adapted by Ictinus to
the Parthenon. The entablature seems somewhat disproportioned to the
columns and the pediment; and, owing to this cause, there is a general
effect of heaviness. The columns, again, are thick-set; nor is the
effect of solidity removed by their gradual narrowing from the base
upwards. The pillars of the _Neptune_ are narrowed in a straight line;
those of the _Basilica_ and _Ceres_ by a gentle curve. Study of these
buildings, so sublime in their massiveness, so noble in the parsimony
of their decoration, so dignified in their employment of the simplest
means for the attainment of an indestructible effect of harmony,
heightens our admiration for the Attic genius which found in this grand
manner of the elder Doric architects resources as yet undeveloped;
creating, by slight and subtle alterations of outline, proportion, and
rhythm of parts, what may fairly be classed as a style unique, because
exemplified in only one transcendent building.

It is difficult not to return again and again to the beauty of
colouring at Pæstum. Lying basking in the sun upon a flat slab of
stone, and gazing eastward, we overlook a foreground of dappled light
and shadow, across which the lizards run— 268 quick streaks of living
emerald—making the bunches of yellow rue and little white serpyllum in
the fissures of the masonry nod as they hurry past. Then come two
stationary columns, built, it seems, of solid gold, where the sunbeams
strike along their russet surface. Between them lies the landscape, a
medley first of brakefern and asphodel and feathering acanthus and blue
spikes of bugloss; then a white farm in the middle distance, roofed
with the reddest tiles and sheltered by a velvety umbrella pine. Beyond
and above the farm, a glimpse of mountains purple almost to indigo with
cloud shadows, and flecked with snow. Still higher—but for this we have
to raise our head a little—the free heavens enclosed within the
frame-work of the tawny travertine, across which sail hawks and flutter
jackdaws, sharply cut against the solid sky. Down from the architrave,
to make the vignette perfect, hang tufts of crimson snapdragons. Each
opening in the peristyle gives a fresh picture.

The temples are overgrown with snapdragons and mallows, yellow asters
and lilac gillyflowers, white allium and wild fig. When a breeze
passes, the whole of this many-coloured tapestry waves gently to and
fro. The fields around are flowery enough; but where are the roses? I
suppose no one who has read his Virgil at school, crosses the plain
from Salerno to Pæstum without those words of the 'Georgics' ringing in
his ears: _biferique rosaria Pæsti_. They have that wonderful Virgilian
charm which, by a touch, transforms mere daily sights and sounds, and
adds poetic mystery to common things. The poets of ancient Rome seem to
have felt the magic of this phrase; for Ovid has imitated the line in
his 'Metamorphoses,' tamely substituting _tepidi_ for the suggestive
_biferi_, while again in his 'Elegies' he uses the same termination
with _odorati_ for his epithet. Martial sings of _Pæstanæ rosæ_ and
_Pæstani gloria ruris_. Even Ausonius, 269 at the very end of Latin
literature, draws from the rosaries of Pæstum a pretty picture of
beauty doomed to premature decline:—

Vidi Pæstano gaudere rosaria cultu
    Exoriente novo roscida Lucifero.


'I have watched the rose-beds that luxuriate on Pæstum's well-tilled
soil, all dewy in the young light of the rising dawn-star.'

What a place indeed was this for a rose-garden, spreading far and wide
along the fertile plain, with its deep loam reclaimed from swamps and
irrigated by the passing of perpetual streams! But where are the roses
now? As well ask, _où sont les neiges d'antan?_

We left Amalfi for Capri in the freshness of an early morning at the
end of May. As we stepped into our six-oared boat the sun rose above
the horizon, flooding the sea with gold and flashing on the terraces
above Amalfi. High up along the mountains hung pearly and empurpled
mists, set like resting-places between a world too beautiful and heaven
too far for mortal feet. Not a breath of any wind was stirring. The
water heaved with a scarcely perceptible swell, and the vapours lifted
gradually as the sun's rays grew in power. Here the hills descend
abruptly on the sea, ending in cliffs where light reflected from the
water dances. Huge caverns open in the limestone; on their edges hang
stalactites like beards, and the sea within sleeps dark as night. For
some of these caves the maidenhair fern makes a shadowy curtain; and
all of them might be the home of Proteus, or of Calypso, by whose side
her mortal lover passed his nights in vain home-sickness:—

εν σπέσσι γλαφυροισι παρ' ουκ εθέλων εθελούση.

This is a truly Odyssean journey. Soon the islands of the Sirens come
in sight,—bare bluffs of rock, shaped like galleys 270 taking flight
for the broad sea. As we row past in this ambrosial weather, the
oarsmen keeping time and ploughing furrows in the fruitless fields of
Nereus, it is not difficult to hear the siren voices—for earth and
heaven and sea make melodies far above mortal singing. The water round
the Galli—so the islands are now called, as antiquaries tell us, from
an ancient fortress named Guallo—is very deep, and not a sign of
habitation is to be seen upon them. In bygone ages they were used as
prisons; and many doges of Amalfi languished their lives away upon
those shadeless stones, watching the sea around them blaze like a
burnished shield at noon, and the peaks of Capri deepen into purple
when the west was glowing after sunset with the rose and daffodil of
Southern twilight.

The end of the Sorrentine promontory, Point Campanella, is absolutely
barren—grey limestone, with the scantiest over-growth of rosemary and
myrtle. A more desolate spot can hardly be imagined. But now the
morning breeze springs up behind; sails are hoisted, and the boatmen
ship their oars. Under the albatross wings of our lateen sails we scud
across the freshening waves. The precipice of Capri soars against the
sky, and the Bay of Naples expands before us with those sweeping curves
and azure amplitude that all the poets of the world have sung. Even
thus the mariners of ancient Hellas rounded this headland when the
world was young. Rightly they named yon rising ground, beneath
Vesuvius, Posilippo—rest from grief. Even now, after all those
centuries of toil, though the mild mountain has been turned into a
mouth of murderous fire, though Roman emperors and Spanish despots have
done their worst to mar what nature made so perfect, we may here lay
down the burden of our cares, gaining tranquillity by no mysterious
lustral rites, no penitential prayers or offerings of holocausts, but
by the influence of beauty in 271 the earth and air, and by sympathy
with a people unspoiled in their healthful life of labour alternating
with simple joy.

The last hour of the voyage was beguiled by stories of our boatmen,
some of whom had seen service on distant seas, while others could tell
of risks on shore and love adventures. They showed us how the
tunny-nets were set, and described the solitary life of the
tunny-watchers, in their open boats, waiting to spear the monsters of
the deep entangled in the chambers made for them beneath the waves. How
much of Æschylean imagery, I reflected, is drawn from this old fisher's
art—the toils of Clytemnestra and the tragedy of Psyttaleia rising to
my mind. One of the crew had his little son with him, a child of six
years old; and when the boy was restless, his father spoke of
Barbarossa and Timberio (_sic_) to keep him quiet; for the memory of
the Moorish pirate and the mighty emperor is still alive here. The
people of Capri are as familiar with Tiberius as the Bretons with King
Arthur; and the hoof-mark of illustrious crime is stamped upon the
island.

Capri offers another example of the versatility of Southern Italy. If
Amalfi brings back to us the naval and commercial prosperity of the
early middle ages; if Pæstuni remains a monument of the oldest Hellenic
civilisation; Capri, at a few miles' distance, is dedicated to the
Roman emperor who made it his favourite residence, when, life-weary
with the world and all its shows, he turned these many peaks and
slumbering caves into a summer palace for the nursing of his brain-sick
phantasy. Already on landing, we are led to remember that from this
shore was loosed the galley bearing that great letter—_verbosa et
grandis epistola_—which undid Sejanus and shook Rome. Riding to
Ana-Capri and the Salto di Tiberio, exploring the remains of his
favourite twelve villas, and gliding over the smooth waters paved with
the white marbles of his baths, we are for ever attended by the 272
same forbidding spectre. Here, perchance, were the _sedes arcanarum
libidinum_ whereof Suetonius speaks; the Spintrian medals, found in
these recesses, still bear witness that the biographer trusted no mere
fables for the picture he has drawn. Here, too, below the Villa Jovis,
gazing 700 feet sheer down into the waves, we tread the very parapet
whence fell the victims of that maniac lust for blood. 'After long and
exquisite torments,' says the Roman writer, 'he ordered condemned
prisoners to be cast into the sea before his eyes; marines were
stationed near to pound the fallen corpses with poles and oars, lest
haply breath should linger in their limbs.' The Neapolitan Museum
contains a little basrelief representing Tiberius, with the well-known
features of the Claudian house, seated astride upon a donkey, with a
girl before him. A slave is leading the beast and its burden to a
terminal statue under an olive-tree. This curious relic, discovered
some while since at Capri, haunted my fancy as I climbed the
olive-planted slopes to his high villa on the Arx Tiberii. It is some
relief, amid so much that is tragic in the associations of this place,
to have the horrible Tiberius burlesqued and brought into donkey-riding
relation with the tourist of to-day. And what an ironical revenge of
time it is that his famous Salto should be turned into a restaurant,
where the girls dance tarantella for a few coppers; that a toothless
hermit should occupy a cell upon the very summit of his Villa Jovis;
and that the Englishwoman's comfortable hotel should be called
_Timberio_ by the natives! A spiritualist might well believe that the
emperor's ghost was forced to haunt the island, and to expiate his old
atrocities by gazing on these modern vulgarisms.

Few problems suggested by history are more darkly fascinating than the
madness of despots; and of this madness, whether inherent in their
blood or encouraged by the 273 circumstance of absolute autocracy, the
emperors of the Claudian and Julian houses furnish the most memorable
instance.[101] It is this that renders Tiberius ever present to our
memory at Capri. Nor will the student of Suetonius forget his even more
memorable grand-nephew Caligula. The following passage is an episode
from the biography of that imperial maniac, whose portrait in green
basalt, with the strain of dire mental tension on the forehead, is
still so beautiful that we are able at this distance of time to pity
more than loathe him. 'Above all, he was tormented with nervous
irritation, by sleeplessness; for he enjoyed not more than three hours
of nocturnal repose, nor even these in pure untroubled rest, but
agitated by phantasmata of portentous augury; as, for example, upon one
occasion, among other spectral visions, he fancied that he saw the sea,
under some definite impersonation, conversing with himself. Hence it
was, and from this incapacity of sleeping, and from weariness of lying
awake, that he had fallen into habits of ranging all night long through
the palace, sometimes throwing himself on a couch, sometimes wandering
along the vast corridors, watching for the earliest dawn, and anxiously
wishing its approach.' Those corridors, or loggie, where Caligula spent
his wakeful hours, opened perchance upon this Bay of Naples, if not
upon the sea-waves of his favourite Porto d'Anzio; for we know that one
of his great follies was a palace built above the sea on piles at Baiæ;
and where else could _Pelagus_, with his cold azure eyes and briny
locks, have more appropriately terrified his sleep with prophecy
conveyed in dreams? The very nature of this vision, selected for such
special comment 274 by Suetonius as to show that it had troubled
Caligula profoundly, proves the fantastic nature of the man, and
justifies the hypothesis of insanity.

 [101] De Quincey, in his essay on _The Cæsars_, has worked out this
 subject with such artistic vividness that no more need be said. From
 his pages I have quoted the paraphrastic version of Suetonius that
 follows.

But it is time to shake off the burden of the past. Only students,
carrying superfluity of culture in their knapsacks, will ponder over
the imperial lunatics who made Capri and Baiæ fashionable in the days
of ancient Rome. Neither Tiberius nor Caligula, nor yet Ferdinand of
Aragon or Bomba for that matter, has been able to leave trace of vice
or scar of crime on nature in this Eden. A row round the island, or a
supper-party in the loggia above the sea at sunset-time, is no less
charming now, in spite of Roman or Spanish memories, than when the
world was young.

Sea-mists are frequent in the early summer mornings, swathing the
cliffs of Capri in impenetrable wool and brooding on the perfectly
smooth water till the day-wind rises. Then they disappear like magic,
rolling in smoke-wreaths from the surface of the sea, condensing into
clouds and climbing the hillsides like Oceanides in quest of
Prometheus, or taking their station on the watch-towers of the world,
as in the chorus of the _Nephelai_. Such a morning may be chosen for
the _giro_ of the island. The blue grotto loses nothing of its beauty,
but rather gains by contrast, when passing from dense fog you find
yourself transported to a world of wavering subaqueous sheen. It is
only through the opening of the very topmost arch that a boat can glide
into this cavern; the arch itself spreads downward through the water,
so that all the light is transmitted from beneath and coloured by the
sea. The grotto is domed in many chambers; and the water is so clear
that you can see the bottom, silvery, with black-finned fishes diapered
upon the blue white sand. The flesh of a diver in this water showed
like the faces of children playing at snapdragon; all around him the
spray leapt up with 275 living fire; and when the oars struck the
surface, it was as though a phosphorescent sea had been smitten, and
the drops ran from the blades in blue pearls. I have only once seen
anything (outside the magic-world of a pantomime) to equal these
effects of blue and silver; and that was when I made my way into an
ice-cave in the Great Aletsch glacier—not an artificial gallery such as
they cut at Grindelwald, but a natural cavern, arched, hollowed into
fanciful recesses, and hung with stalactites of pendent ice. The
difference between the glacier-cavern and the sea-grotto was that in
the former all the light was transmitted through transparent sides, so
that the whole was one uniform azure, except in rare places where
little chinks opened upwards to the air, and the light of day came
glancing with a roseate flush. In the latter the light sent from
beneath through the water played upon a roof of rock; reflections
intermingled with translucence; and a greater variety of light and
shadow compensated the lack of that strange sense of being shut within
a solid gem.

Numberless are the caves at Capri. The so-called green grotto has the
beauty of moss-agate in its liquid floor; the red grotto shows a warmer
chord of colour; and where there is no other charm to notice, endless
beauty may be found in the play of sunlight upon roofs of limestone,
tinted with yellow, orange, and pale pink, mossed over, hung with fern,
and catching tones of blue or green from the still deeps beneath.

Sheets of water, wherever found, are the most subtle heighteners of
colour. To those who are familiar with Venetian or Mantuan sunsets, who
have seen the flocks of flamingoes reflected on the lagoons of Tunis,
or who have watched stormy red flakes tossed from crest to crest of
great Atlantic waves on our own coasts, this need hardly be said. Yet I
cannot leave this beauty of the sea at Capri without 276 touching on a
melodrama of light and colour I once saw at Castellammare. It was a
festa night, when the people sent up rockets and fireworks of every hue
from the harbour-breakwater. The surf rolled shoreward like a bath of
molten metals, all confused of blue, and red, and green, and gold—dying
dolphin tints that burned strangely beneath the purple skies and
tranquil stars. Boats at sea hung out their crimson cressets,
flickering in long lines on the bay; and larger craft moved slowly with
rows of lamps defining their curves; while the full moon shed over all
her 'vitreous pour, just tinged with blue.' To some tastes this
mingling of natural and artificial effects would seem unworthy of sober
notice; but I confess to having enjoyed it with childish eagerness like
music never to be forgotten.

After a day upon the water it is pleasant to rest at sunset in the
loggia above the sea. The Bay of Naples stretches far and wide in
front, beautiful by reason chiefly of the long fine line descending
from Vesuvius, dipping almost to a level and then gliding up to join
the highlands of the north. Now sun and moon begin to mingle: waning
and waxing splendours. The cliffs above our heads are still blushing a
deep flame-colour, like the heart of some tea-rose; when lo, the touch
of the huntress is laid upon those eastern pinnacles, and the horizon
glimmers with her rising. Was it on such a night that Ferdinand of
Aragon fled from his capital before the French, with eyes turned ever
to the land he loved, chanting, as he leaned from his galley's stern,
that melancholy psalm—'Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman
waketh but in vain'—and seeing Naples dwindle to a white blot on the
purple shore?

Our journey takes the opposite direction. Farewell to Capri, welcome to
Sorrento! The roads are sweet with scent of acacia and orange flowers.
When you walk in a garden at 277 night, the white specks beneath your
feet are fallen petals of lemon blossoms. Over the walls hang cataracts
of roses, honey-pale clusters of the Banksia rose, and pink bushes of
the China rose, growing as we never see them grow with us. The grey
rocks wave with gladiolus—feathers of crimson, set amid tufts of
rosemary, and myrtle, and tree-spurge. In the clefts of the sandstone,
and behind the orchard walls, sleeps a dark green night of foliage, in
the midst of which gleam globed oranges, and lemons dropping like great
pearls of palest amber dew. It is difficult to believe that the lemons
have not grown into length by their own weight, as though mere hanging
on the bough prevented them from being round—so waxen are they.
Overhead soar stone-pines—a roof of sombre green, a lattice-work of
strong red branches, through which the moon peers wonderfully. One part
of this marvellous _piano_ is bare rock tufted with keen-scented herbs,
and sparsely grown with locust-trees and olives. Another waves from sea
to summit with beech-copses and oak-woods, as verdant as the most
abundant English valley. Another region turns its hoary raiment of
olive-gardens to the sun and sea, or flourishes with fig and vine.
Everywhere, the houses of men are dazzling white, perched on natural
coigns of vantage, clustered on the brink of brown cliffs, nestling
under mountain eaves, or piled up from the sea-beach in ascending
tiers, until the broad knees of the hills are reached, and great Pan,
the genius of solitude in nature, takes unto himself a region yet
untenanted by man. The occupations of the sea and land are blent
together on this shore; and the people are both blithe and gentle. It
is true that their passions are upon the surface, and that the knife is
ready to their hand. But the combination of fierceness and softness in
them has an infinite charm when one has learned by observation that
their lives are laborious and frugal, and that 278 their honesty is
hardly less than their vigour. Happy indeed are they—so happy that, but
for crimes accumulated through successive generations by bad governors,
and but for superstitions cankering the soul within, they might deserve
what Shelley wrote of his imagined island in 'Epipsychidion.'

279




ETNA


The eruptions of Etna have blackened the whole land for miles in every
direction. That is the first observation forced upon one in the
neighbourhood of Catania, or Giarre, or Bronte. From whatever point of
view you look at Etna, it is always a regular pyramid, with long and
gradually sloping sides, broken here and there by the excrescence of
minor craters and dotted over with villages; the summit crowned with
snow, divided into peak and cone, girdled with clouds, and capped with
smoke, that shifts shape as the wind veers, dominates a blue-black
monstrous mass of outpoured lava. From the top of Monte Rosso, a
subordinate volcano which broke into eruption in 1669, you can trace
the fountain from which 'the unapproachable river of purest fire,' that
nearly destroyed Catania, issued. You see it still, bubbling up like a
frozen geyser from the flank of the mountain, whence the sooty torrent
spreads, or rather sprawls, with jagged edges to the sea. The plain of
Catania lies at your feet, threaded by the Simeto, bounded by the
promontory of Syracuse and the mountains of Castro Giovanni. This huge
amorphous blot upon the landscape may be compared to an ink-stain on a
variegated tablecloth, or to the coal districts marked upon a
geological atlas, or to the heathen in a missionary map—the green and
red and grey colours standing for Christians and Mahommedans and Jews
of different shades and qualities. The lava, where it has been
cultivated, is reduced to fertile 280 sand, in which vines and
fig-trees are planted—their tender green foliage contrasting strangely
with the sinister soil that makes them flourish. All the roads are
black as jet, like paths leading to coal-pits, and the country-folk on
mule-back plodding along them look like Arabs on an infernal Sahara.
The very lizards which haunt the rocks are swart and smutty. Yet the
flora of the district is luxuriant. The gardens round Catania, nestling
into cracks and ridges of the stiffened flood, are marvellously
brilliant with spurge and fennel and valerian. It is impossible to form
a true conception of flower-brightness till one has seen these golden
and crimson tints upon their ground of ebony, or to realise the
blueness of the Mediterranean except in contrast with the lava where it
breaks into the sea. Copses of frail oak and ash, undergrown with ferns
of every sort; cactus-hedges, orange-trees grafted with lemons and
laden with both fruits; olives of scarce two centuries' growth, and
fig-trees knobbed with their sweet produce, overrun the sombre soil,
and spread their boughs against the deep blue sea and the translucent
amethyst of the Calabrian mountains. Underfoot, a convolvulus with
large white blossoms, binding dingy stone to stone, might be compared
to a rope of Desdemona's pearls upon the neck of Othello.

The villages are perhaps the most curious feature of this scenery.
Their houses, rarely more than one story high, are walled, paved, and
often roofed with the inflexible material which once was ruinous fire,
and is now the servant of the men it threatened to destroy. The
churches are such as might be raised in Hades to implacable Proserpine,
such as one might dream of in a vision of the world turned into hell,
such as Baudelaire in his fiction of a metallic landscape might have
imagined under the influence of hasheesh. Their flights of steps are
built of sharply cut black lava blocks no 281 feet can wear. Their
door-jambs and columns and pediments and carved work are wrought and
sculptured of the same gloomy masonry. How forbidding are the acanthus
scrolls, how grim the skulls and cross-bones on these portals! The
bell-towers, again, are ribbed and beamed with black lava. A certain
amount of the structure is whitewashed, which serves to relieve the
funereal solemnity of the rest. In an Indian district each of these
churches would be a temple, raised in vain propitiation to the demon of
the fire above and below. Some pictures made by their spires in
combination with the sad village-hovels, the snowy dome of Etna, and
the ever-smiling sea, are quite unique in their variety of suggestion
and wild beauty.

The people have a sorrow-smitten and stern aspect. Some of the men in
the prime of life are grand and haughty, with the cast-bronze
countenance of Roman emperors. But the old men bear rigid faces of
carved basalt, gazing fixedly before them as though at some time or
other in their past lives they had met Medusa: and truly Etna in
eruption is a Gorgon, which their ancestors have oftentimes seen
shuddering, and fled from terror-frozen. The white-haired old women,
plying their spindle or distaff, or meditating in grim solitude, sit
with the sinister set features of Fates by their doorways. The young
people are very rarely seen to smile: they open hard, black, beaded
eyes upon a world in which there is little for them but endurance or
the fierceness of passions that delight in blood. Strangely different
are these dwellers on the sides of Etna from the voluble, lithe sailors
of Sciacca or Mazara, with their sunburnt skins and many-coloured
garments.

The Val del Bove—a vast chasm in the flank of Etna, where the very
heart of the volcano has been riven and its entrails bared—is the most
impressive spot of all this region. 282 The road to it leads from
Zafferana (so called because of its crocus-flowers) along what looks
like a series of black moraines, where the lava torrents pouring from
the craters of Etna have spread out, and reared themselves in stiffened
ridges against opposing mountain buttresses. After toiling for about
three hours over the dismal waste, a point between the native rock of
Etna and the dead sea of lava is reached, which commands a prospect of
the cone with its curling smoke surmounting a caldron of some four
thousand feet in depth and seemingly very wide. The whole of this space
is filled with billows of blackness, wave on wave, crest over crest,
and dyke by dyke, precisely similar to a gigantic glacier, swarthy and
immovable. The resemblance of the lava flood to a glacier is
extraordinarily striking. One can fancy oneself standing on the
Belvedere at Macugnaga, or the Tacul point upon the Mer de Glace, in
some nightmare, and finding to one's horror that the radiant snows and
river-breeding ice-fields have been turned by a malignant deity to
sullen, stationary cinders. It is a most hideous place, like a pit in
Dante's Hell, disused for some unexplained reason, and left untenanted
by fiends. The scenery of the moon, without atmosphere and without
life, must be of this sort; and such, rolling round in space, may be
some planet that has survived its own combustion. When the clouds,
which almost always hang about the Val del Bove, are tumbling at their
awful play around its precipices, veiling the sweet suggestion of
distant sea and happier hills that should be visible, the horror of
this view is aggravated. Breaking here and there, the billows of mist
disclose forlorn tracts of jet-black desolation, wicked, unutterable,
hateful in their hideousness, with patches of smutty snow above, and
downward-rolling volumes of murky smoke. Shakspere, when he imagined
the damned spirits confined to 'thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice,'
283 divined the nature of a glacier; but what line could he have
composed, adequate to shadow forth the tortures of a soul condemned to
palpitate for ever between the ridges of this thirsty and intolerable
sea of dead fire? If the world-spirit chose to assume for itself the
form and being of a dragon, of like substance to this, impenetrable,
invulnerable, unapproachable would be its hide. It requires no great
stretch of the imagination to picture these lava lakes glowing, as they
must have been, when first outpoured, the bellowing of the crater, the
heaving and surging of the solid earth, the air obstructed with cinders
and whizzing globes of molten rock. Yet in these throes of devilish
activity, the Val del Bove would be less insufferable than in its
present state of suspension, asleep, but threatening, ready to
regurgitate its flame, but for a moment inert.

An hour's drive from Nicolosi or Zafferana, seaward, brings one into
the richest land of 'olive and aloe and maize and vine' to be found
upon the face of Europe. Here, too, are laughing little towns, white,
prosperous, and gleeful, the very opposite of those sad stations on the
mountain-flank. Every house in Aci Reale has its courtyard garden
filled with orange-trees, and nespole, and fig-trees, and oleanders.
From the grinning corbels that support the balconies hang tufts of
gem-bright ferns and glowing clove-pinks. Pergolas of vines, bronzed in
autumn, and golden green like chrysoprase beneath an April sun, fling
their tendrils over white walls and shady loggie. Gourds hang ripening
in the steady blaze. Far and wide stretches a landscape rich with tilth
and husbandry, boon Nature paying back to men tenfold for all their
easy toil. The terrible great mountain sleeps in the distance innocent
of fire. I know not whether this land be more delightful in spring or
autumn. The little flamelike flakes of brightness upon vines and
fig-trees in April have their 284 own peculiar charm. But in November
the whole vast flank of Etna glows with the deep-blue tone of steel;
the russet woods are like a film of rust; the vine-boughs thrust living
carbuncles against the sun. To this season, when the peculiar
earth-tints of Etna, its strong purples and tawny browns, are
harmonised with the decaying wealth of forest and of orchard, I think
the palm of beauty must be given in this land.

The sea is an unchangeable element of charm in all this landscape. Aci
Castello should be visited, and those strange rocks, called the
Ciclopidi, forced by volcanic pressure from beneath the waves. They are
made of black basalt like the Giant's Causeway; and on their top can be
traced the caps of calcareous stone they carried with them in the fret
and fury of their upheaval from the sea-bed. Samphire, wild fennel,
cactus, and acanthus clothe them now from crest to basement where the
cliff is not too sheer. By the way, there are few plants more
picturesque than the acanthus in full flower. Its pale lilac spikes of
blossom stand waist-high above a wilderness of feathering, curving,
delicately indented, burnished leaves—deep, glossy, cool, and green.

This is the place for a child's story of the one-eyed giant Polyphemus,
who fed his flocks among the oak-woods of Etna, and who, strolling by
the sea one summer evening, saw and loved the fair girl Galatea. She
was afraid of him, and could not bear his shaggy-browed round rolling
eye. But he forgot his sheep and goats, and sat upon the cliffs and
piped to her. Meanwhile she loved the beautiful boy Acis, who ran down
from the copse to play with her upon the sea-beach. They hid together
from Polyphemus in a fern-curtained cavern of the shore. But Polyphemus
spied them out and heard them laughing together at their games. Then he
grew wroth, and stamped with his huge feet upon the 285 earth, and made
it shake and quiver. He roared and bellowed in his rage, and tore up
rocks and flung them at the cavern where the children were in hiding,
and his eye shot fire beneath the grisly pent-house of his wrinkled
brows. They, in their sore distress, prayed to heaven; and their
prayers were heard: Galatea became a mermaid, so that she might swim
and sport like foam upon the crests of the blue sea; and Acis was
changed into a stream that leapt from the hills to play with her amid
bright waters. But Polyphemus, in punishment for his rage, and spite,
and jealousy, was forced to live in the mid-furnaces of Etna. There he
growled and groaned and shot forth flame in impotent fury; for though
he remembered the gladness of those playfellows, and sought to harm
them by tossing red-hot rocks upon the shore, yet the light sea ever
laughed, and the radiant river found its way down from the copsewood to
the waves. The throes of Etna in convulsion are the pangs of his great
giant's heart, pent up and sick with love for the bright sea and
gladsome sun; for, as an old poet sings:—

There's love when holy heaven doth wound the earth;
And love still prompts the land to yearn for bridals:
The rain that falls in rivers from the sky,
Impregnates earth: and she brings forth for men
The flocks and herds and life of teeming Ceres.


To which let us add:—

But sometimes love is barren, when broad hills,
Rent with the pangs of passion, yearn in vain,
Pouring fire tears adown their furrowed cheeks,
And heaving in the impotence of anguish.


There are few places in Europe where the poetic truth of Greek
mythology is more apparent than here upon the coast between Etna and
the sea. Of late, philosophers have been eager to tell us that the
beautiful legends of the Greeks, which 286 contain in the coloured haze
of fancy all the thoughts afterwards expressed by that divine race in
poetry and sculpture, are but decayed phrases, dead sentences, and
words whereof the meaning was forgotten. In this theory there is a
certain truth; for mythology stands midway between the first lispings
of a nation in its language, and its full-developed utterances in art.
Yet we have only to visit the scenes which gave birth to some Hellenic
myth, and we perceive at once that, whatever philology may affirm, the
legend was a living poem, a drama of life and passion transferred from
human experience to the inanimate world by those early myth-makers, who
were the first and the most fertile of all artists. Persephone was the
patroness of Sicily, because amid the billowy cornfields of her mother
Demeter and the meadow flowers she loved in girlhood, are ever found
sulphurous ravines and chasms breathing vapour from the pit of Hades.
What were the Cyclops—that race of one-eyed giants—but the many minor
cones of Etna? Observed from the sea by mariners, or vaguely spoken of
by the natives, who had reason to dread their rage, these hillocks
became lawless and devouring giants, each with one round burning eye.
Afterwards the tales of Titans who had warred with Zeus were realised
in this spot. Typhoeus or Enceladus made the mountain heave and snort;
while Hephæstus not unnaturally forged thunder-bolts in the central
caverns of a volcano that never ceased to smoke. To the student of art
and literature, mythology is chiefly interesting in its latest stages,
when, the linguistic origin of special legends being utterly forgotten,
the poets of the race played freely with its rich material. Who cares
to be told that Achilles was the sun, when the child of Thetis and the
lover of Patroclus has been sung for us by Homer? Are the human agonies
of the doomed house of Thebes made less appalling by tracing back the
tale of OEdipus to some 287 prosaic source in old astronomy? The incest
of Jocasta is the subject of supreme tragic art. It does not improve
the matter, or whitewash the imagination of the Greeks, as some have
fondly fancied, to unravel the fabric wrought by Homer and by
Sophocles, into its raw material in Aryan dialects. Indeed, this new
method of criticism bids fair to destroy for young minds the human
lessons of pathos and heroism in Greek poetry, and to create an obscure
conviction that the greatest race of artists the world has ever
produced were but dotards, helplessly dreaming over distorted forms of
speech and obsolete phraseology.

Let us bid farewell to Etna from Taormina. All along the coast between
Aci and Giardini the mountain towers distinct against a sunset
sky—divested of its robe of cloud, translucent and blue as some dark
sea-built crystal. The Val del Bove is shown to be a circular crater in
which the lava has boiled and bubbled over to the fertile land beneath.
As we reach Giardini, the young moon is shining, and the night is alive
with stars so large and bright that they seem leaning down to whisper
in the ears of our soul. The sea is calm, touched here and there on the
fringes of the bays and headlands with silvery light; and impendent
crags loom black and sombre against the feeble azure of the moonlit
sky. _Quale per incertam lunam et sub luce malignâ_: such is our
journey, with Etna, a grey ghost, behind our path, and the reflections
of stars upon the sea, and glow-worms in the hedges, and the mystical
still splendour of the night, that, like Death, liberates the soul,
raising it above all common things, simplifying the outlines of the
earth as well as our own thoughts to one twilight hush of aë;rial
tranquillity. It is a strange compliment to such a landscape to say
that it recalls a scene from an opera. Yet so it is. What the arts of
the scene-painter and the musician strive to 288 suggest is here
realised in fact; the mood of the soul created by music and by passion
is natural here, spontaneous, prepared by the divine artists of earth,
air, and sea.

Was there ever such another theatre as this of Taormina? Turned to the
south, hollowed from the crest of a promontory 1000 feet above the sea,
it faces Etna with its crown of snow: below, the coast sweeps onward to
Catania and the distant headland of Syracuse. From the back the shore
of Sicily curves with delicately indented bays towards Messina: then
come the straits, and the blunt mass of the Calabrian mountains
terminating Italy at Spartivento. Every spot on which the eye can rest
is rife with reminiscences. It was there, we say, looking northward to
the straits, that Ulysses tossed between Scylla and Charybdis; there,
turning towards the flank of Etna, that he met with Polyphemus and
defied the giant from his galley. From yonder snow-capped eyrie, Αιτνας
σκοπία, the rocks were hurled on Acis. And all along that shore, after
Persephone was lost, went Demeter, torch in hand, wailing for the
daughter she could no more find among Sicilian villages. Then, leaving
myths for history, we remember how the ships of Nikias set sail from
Reggio, and coasted the forelands at our feet, past Naxos, on their way
to Catania and Syracuse. Gylippus afterwards in his swift galley took
the same course: and Dion, when he came to destroy his nephew's empire.
Here too Timoleon landed, resolute in his firm will to purge the isle
of tyrants.

What scenes, more spirit-shaking than any tragic shows—pageants of fire
and smoke, and mountains in commotion—are witnessed from these grassy
benches, when the earth rocks, and the sea is troubled, and the side of
Etna flows with flame, and night grows horrible with bellowings that
forebode changes in empires!—

289

    Quoties Cyclopum effervere in agros
Vidimus undantem ruptis fornacibus Ætnam,
Flammarumque globos liquefactaque volvere saxa.

The stage of these tremendous pomps is very calm and peaceful now.
Lying among acanthus leaves and asphodels, bound together by wreaths of
white and pink convolvulus, we only feel that this is the loveliest
landscape on which our eyes have ever rested or can rest. The whole
scene is a symphony of blues—gemlike lapis-lazuli in the sea, aë;rial
azure in the distant headlands, light-irradiated sapphire in the sky,
and impalpable vapour-mantled purple upon Etna. The grey tones of the
neighbouring cliffs, and the glowing brickwork of the ruined theatre,
through the arches of which shine sea and hillside, enhance by contrast
these modulations of the one prevailing hue. Etna is the dominant
feature of the landscape—Αιτνας ματερ εμά—πολυδένδρεος Αιτνας— than
which no other mountain is more sublimely solitary, more worthy of
Pindar's praise, 'The pillar of heaven, the nurse of sharp eternal
snow.' It is Etna that gives its unique character of elevated beauty to
this coast scenery, raising it to a grander and more tragic level than
the landscape of the Cornice and the Bay of Naples.

290




PALERMO


THE NORMANS IN SICILY

Sicily, in the centre of the Mediterranean, has been throughout all
history the meeting-place and battle-ground of the races that
contributed to civilise the West. It was here that the Greeks measured
their strength against Phoenicia, and that Carthage fought her first
duel with Rome. Here the bravery of Hellenes triumphed over barbarian
force in the victories of Gelon and Timoleon. Here, in the harbour of
Syracuse, the Athenian Empire succumbed to its own intemperate
ambition. Here, in the end, Rome laid her mortmain upon Greek,
Phoenician, and Sikeliot alike, turning the island into a granary and
reducing its inhabitants to serfdom. When the classic age had closed,
when Belisarius had vainly reconquered from the Goths for the empire of
the East the fair island of Persephone and Zeus Olympius, then came the
Mussulman, filling up with an interval of Oriental luxury and Arabian
culture the period of utter deadness between the ancient and the modern
world. To Islam succeeded the conquerors of the house of Hauteville,
Norman knights who had but lately left their Scandinavian shores, and
settled in the northern provinces of France. The Normans flourished for
a season, and were merged in a line of Suabian princes, old
Barbarossa's progeny. German rulers thus came to sway the corn-lands of
Trinacria, until the bitter hatred of the Popes extinguished the house
of Hohenstauffen upon the battlefield 291 of Grandella and the scaffold
of Naples. Frenchmen had the next turn—for a brief space only; since
Palermo cried to the sound of her tocsins, 'Mora, Mora,' and the
tyranny of Anjou was expunged with blood. Spain, the tardy and patient
power, which inherited so much from the failure of more brilliant
races, came at last, and tightened so firm a hold upon the island, that
from the end of the thirteenth to the beginning of the nineteenth
century, with one brief exception, Sicily belonged to the princes of
Aragon, Castile, and Bourbon. These vicissitudes have left their traces
everywhere. The Greek temples of Segeste and Girgenti and Selinus, the
Roman amphitheatre of Syracuse, the Byzantine mosaics and Saracenic
villas of Palermo, the Norman cathedrals of Monreale and Cefalú, and
the Spanish habits which still characterise the life of Sicilian
cities, testify to the successive strata of races which have been
deposited upon the island. Amid its anarchy of tongues, the Latin alone
has triumphed. In the time of the Greek colonists Sicily was polyglot.
During the Saracenic occupation it was trilingual. It is now, and
during modern history it has always been, Italian. Differences of
language and of nationality have gradually been fused into one
substance, by the spirit which emanates from Rome, and vivifies the
Latin race.

The geographical position of Sicily has always influenced its history
in a very marked way. The eastern coast, which is turned towards Greece
and Italy, has been the centre of Aryan civilisation in the island, so
that during Greek and Roman ascendency Syracuse was held the capital.
The western end, which projects into the African sea, was occupied in
the time of the Hellenes by Phoenicians, and afterwards by Mussulmans:
consequently Panormus, the ancient seat of Punic colonists, now called
Palermo, became the centre of the Moslem rule, which, inherited entire
by the Norman chieftains, 292 was transmitted eventually to Spain.
Palermo, devoid of classic monuments, and unknown except as a name to
the historians of Greek civilisation, is therefore the modern capital
of the island. 'Prima sedes, corona regis, et regni caput,' is the
motto inscribed upon the cathedral porch and the archiepiscopal throne
of Palermo: nor has any other city, except Messina,[102] presumed to
contest this title.

 [102] Messina, owing to its mercantile position between the Levant,
 Italy, and France, and as the key to Sicily from the mainland, might
 probably have become the modern capital had not the Normans found a
 state machinery ready to their use centralised at Palermo.

Perhaps there are few spots upon the surface of the globe more
beautiful than Palermo. The hills on either hand descend upon the sea
with long-drawn delicately broken outlines, so exquisitely tinted with
aë;rial hues, that at early dawn or beneath the blue light of a full
moon the panorama seems to be some fabric of the fancy, that must fade
away, 'like shapes of clouds we form,' to nothing. Within the cradle of
these hills, and close upon the tideless water, lies the city. Behind
and around on every side stretches the famous _Conca d'Oro_, or golden
shell, a plain of marvellous fertility, so called because of its
richness and also because of its shape; for it tapers to a fine point
where the mountains meet, and spreads abroad, where they diverge, like
a cornucopia, toward the sea. The whole of this long vega is a garden,
thick with olive-groves and orange-trees, with orchards of nespole and
palms and almonds, with fig-trees and locust-trees, with judas-trees
that blush in spring, and with flowers as multitudinously brilliant as
the fretwork of sunset clouds. It was here that in the days of the
Kelbite dynasty, the sugar-cane and cotton-tree and mulberry supplied
both East and West with produce for the banquet and the paper-mill and
the silk-loom; and though these industries are now neglected, vast
gardens of 293 cactuses still give a strangely Oriental character to
the scenery of Palermo, while the land flows with honey-sweet wine
instead of sugar. The language in which Arabian poets extolled the
charms of this fair land is even now nowise extravagant: 'Oh how
beautiful is the lakelet of the twin palms, and the island where the
spacious palace stands! The limpid water of the double springs
resembles liquid pearls, and their basin is a sea: you would say that
the branches of the trees stretched down to see the fishes in the pool
and smile at them. The great fishes swim in those clear waters, and the
birds among the gardens tune their songs. The ripe oranges of the
island are like fire that burns on boughs of emerald; the pale lemon
reminds me of a lover who has passed the night in weeping for his
absent darling. The two palms may be compared to lovers who have gained
an inaccessible retreat against their enemies, or raise themselves
erect in pride to confound the murmurs and ill thoughts of jealous men.
O palms of the two lakelets of Palermo, may ceaseless, undisturbed, and
plenteous dews for ever keep your freshness!' Such is the poetry which
suits the environs of Palermo, where the Moorish villas of La Zisa and
La Cuba and La Favara still stand, and where the modern gardens, though
wilder, are scarcely less delightful than those beneath which King
Roger discoursed with Edrisi, and Gian da Procida surprised his
sleeping mistress.[103] The groves of oranges and lemons are an
inexhaustible source of joy: not only because of their 'golden lamps in
a green night,' but also because of their silvery constellations,
nebulæ, and drifts of stars, in the same green night, and milky ways of
blossoms on the ground beneath. As in all southern scenery, the
transition from these perfumed thickly clustering gardens to the bare
unirrigated hillsides is very striking. There the dwarf-palm 294 tufts
with its spiky foliage the clefts of limestone rock, and the lizards
run in and out among bushes of tree-spurge and wild cactus and grey
asphodels. The sea-shore is a tangle of lilac and oleander and
laurustinus and myrtle and lentisk and cytisus and geranium. The
flowering plants that make our shrubberies gay in spring with blossoms,
are here wild, running riot upon the sand-heaps of Mondello or beneath
the barren slopes of Monte Pellegrino.

It was into this terrestrial paradise, cultivated through two preceding
centuries by the Arabs, who of all races were wisest in the arts of
irrigation and landscape-gardening, that the Norsemen entered as
conquerors, and lay down to pass their lives.[104]

 [103] Boccaccio, Giorn. v. Nov. 6.


 [104] The Saracens possessed themselves of Sicily by a gradual
 conquest, which began about 827 A.D. Disembarking on the little isle
 of Pantellaria and the headland of Lilyboeum, where of old the
 Carthaginians used to enter Sicily, they began by overrunning the
 island for the first four years. In 831 they took Palermo; during the
 next ten years they subjugated the Val di Mazara; between 841 and 859
 they possessed themselves of the Val di Noto; after this they extended
 their conquest over the seaport towns of the Val Demone, but neglected
 to reduce the whole of the N.E. district. Syracuse was stormed and
 reduced to ruins after a desperate defence in 878, while Leo, the heir
 of the Greek Empire, contented himself with composing two Anacreontic
 elegies on the disaster at Byzantium. In 895 Sicily was wholly lost to
 the Greeks, by a treaty signed between the Saracens and the remaining
 Christian towns. The Christians during the Mussulman occupation were
 divided into four classes—(1) A few independent municipalities
 obedient loosely to the Greek Empire; (2) tributaries who paid the
 Arabs what they would otherwise have sent to Byzantium; (3) vassals,
 whose towns had fallen by arms or treaty into the hands of the
 conquerors, and who, though their property was respected and religion
 tolerated, were called 'dsimmi' or 'humbled;' (4) serfs, prisoners of
 war, sold as slaves or attached to the soil (_Amari_, vol. i.).

No chapter of history more resembles a romance than that which records
the sudden rise and brief splendour of the house of Hauteville. In one
generation the sons of Tancred passed from the condition of squires in
the Norman vale of 295 Cotentin, to kinghood in the richest island of
the southern sea. The Norse adventurers became Sultans of an Oriental
capital. The sea-robbers assumed together with the sceptre the culture
of an Arabian court. The marauders whose armies burned Rome, received
at papal hands the mitre and dalmatic as symbols of ecclesiastical
jurisdiction.[105] The brigands who on their first appearance in Italy
had pillaged stables and farmyards to supply their needs, lived to mate
their daughters with princes and to sway the politics of Europe with
gold. The freebooters, whose skill consisted in the use of sword and
shield, whose brains were vigorous in strategy or statecraft, and whose
pleasures were confined to the hunting-field and the wine-cup, raised
villas like the Zisa and encrusted the cathedral of Monreale with
mosaics. Finally, while the race was yet vigorous, after giving two
heroes to the first Crusade, it transmitted its titles, its temper, and
its blood to the great Emperor, who was destined to fight out upon the
battlefield of Italy the strife of Empire against Papacy, and to
bequeath to mediæval Europe the tradition of cosmopolitan culture. The
physical energy of this brood of heroes was such as can scarcely be
paralleled in history. Tancred de Hauteville begat two families by
different wives. Of his children twelve were sons; two of whom stayed
with their father in Normandy, while ten sought fame and found a
kingdom in the south. Of these, William Iron Arm, the first Count of
Apulia; Robert Guiscard, who united Calabria and Apulia under one
dukedom, and carried victorious arms against both Emperors of East and
West; and Roger the Great Count, who added Sicily to the conquests of
the Normans and bequeathed the kingdom of South Italy to his son, rose
to the highest name. But all the brothers shared 296 the great
qualities of the house; and two of them, Humphrey and Drogo, also wore
a coronet. Large of limb and stout of heart, persevering under
difficulties, crafty yet gifted with the semblance of sincerity,
combining the piety of pilgrims with the morals of highwaymen, the
sturdiness of barbarians with the plasticity of culture, eloquent in
the council-chamber and the field, dear to their soldiers for their
bravery and to women for their beauty, equally eminent as generals and
as rulers, restrained by no scruples but such as policy suggested,
restless in their energy, yet neither fickle nor rash, comprehensive in
their views, but indefatigable in detail, these lions among men were
made to conquer in the face of overwhelming obstacles, and to hold
their conquests with a grasp of iron. What they wrought, whether wisely
or not for the ultimate advantage of Italy, endures to this day, while
the work of so many emperors, republics, and princes has passed and
shifted like the scenes in a pantomime. Through them the Greeks, the
Lombards, and the Moors were extinguished in the south. The Papacy was
checked in its attempt to found a province of S. Peter below the Tiber.
The republics of Naples, Gaeta, Amalfi, which might have rivalled
perchance with Milan, Genoa, and Florence, were subdued to a master's
hand. In short, to the Normans Italy owed that kingdom of the Two
Sicilies which formed one-third of her political balance, and which
proved the cause of all her most serious revolutions.

 [105] King Roger in the mosaics of the Martorana Church at Palermo
 wears the dalmatic, and receives his crown from the hands of Christ.

Roger, the youngest of the Hauteville family, and the founder of the
kingdom of Sicily, showed by his untamable spirit and sound intellect
that his father's vigour remained unexhausted. Each of Tancred's sons
was physically speaking a masterpiece, and the last was the prime work
of all. This Roger, styled the Great Count, begat a second Roger, the
first King of Sicily, whose son and grandson, both named William, ruled
in succession at Palermo. With them the 297 direct line of the house of
Hauteville expired. It would seem as if the energy and fertility of the
stock had been drained by its efforts in the first three generations.
Constance, the heiress of the family, who married Henry VI. and gave
birth to the Emperor Frederick II., was daughter of King Roger, and
therefore third in descent from Tancred. Drawing her blood more
immediately from the parent stem, she thus transmitted to the princes
of the race of Hohenstauffen the vigour of her Norman ancestry
unweakened. This was a circumstance of no small moment in the history
of Europe. Upon the fierce and daring Suabian stem were grafted the
pertinacity, the cunning, the versatility of the Norman adventurers.
Young Frederick, while strong and subtle enough to stand for himself
against the world, was so finely tempered by the blended strains of his
parentage that he received the polish of an Oriental education without
effeminacy. Called upon to administer the affairs of Germany, to govern
Italy, to contend with the Papacy, and to settle by arms and treaties
the great Oriental question of his days, Frederick, cosmopolitan from
the cradle, was equal to the task. Had Europe been but ready, the
Renaissance would have dated from his reign, and a universal empire, if
not of political government, yet of intellectual culture, might have
been firmly instituted.

Of the personal appearance of the Norman chiefs—their fair hair, clear
eyes, and broad shoulders—we hear much from the chroniclers. One
minutely studied portrait will serve to bring the whole race vividly
before us. Bohemond, Prince of Tarentum, the son of Robert Guiscard,
and first cousin to Tancred of Montferrat, was thus described by Anna
Comnena, who saw him at her father's court during the first Crusade:
'Neither amongst our own nation (the Greeks), nor amongst foreigners,
is there in our age a man equal to Bohemond. His presence dazzled the
eyes, as his reputation the fancy. 298 He was one cubit taller than the
tallest man known. In his waist he was thin, but broad in his shoulders
and chest, without being either too thin or too fat. His arms were
strong, his hands full and large, his feet firm and solid. He stooped a
little, but through habit only, and not on account of any deformity. He
was fair, but on his cheeks there was an agreeable mixture of
vermilion. His hair was not loose over his shoulders, according to the
fashion of the barbarians, but was cut above his ears. His eyes were
blue, and full of wrath and fierceness. His nostrils were large,
inasmuch as having a wide chest and a great heart, his lungs required
an unusual quantity of air to moderate the warmth of his blood. His
handsome face had in itself something gentle and softening, but the
height of his person and the fierceness of his looks had something wild
and terrible. He was more dreadful in his smiles than others in their
rage.' When we read this description, remembering the romance of
Bohemond's ancestry and his own life, we do not wonder at the tales of
chivalry. Those 'knights of Logres and of Lyoness, Lancelot or Pelleas
or Pellenore,' with whose adventures our tawny-haired magnificent
Plantagenets amused their leisure, become realities. The manly beauty,
described by the Byzantine princess in words which seem to betray a
more than common interest in her handsome foe, was hereditary in the
house of Hauteville. They transmitted it to the last of the Suabian
dynasty, to Manfred and Conradin, and to the king Enzio, whose long
golden hair fell down from his shoulders to his saddle-bow as he rode,
a captive, into Bologna.

The story of the Norman conquest is told by two chroniclers—William of
Apulia, who received his materials from Robert Guiscard, and Godfrey
Malaterra, who wrote down the oral narrative of Roger. Thus we possess
what is tantamount to personal memoirs of the Norman chiefs.
Nevertheless, a veil 299 of legendary romance obscures the first
appearance of the Scandinavian warriors upon the scene of history.
William of Apulia tells how, in the course of a pilgrimage to S.
Michael's shrine on Monte Gargano, certain knights of Normandy were
accosted by a stranger of imposing aspect, who persuaded them to draw
their swords in the quarrel of the Lombard towns of South Italy against
the Greeks. This man was Melo of Bari. Whether his invitation were so
theatrically conveyed or not, it is probable that the Norsemen made
their first acquaintance with Apulia on a pilgrimage to the Italian
Michael's mount; and it is certain that Melo, whom we dimly descry as a
patriot of enlarged views and indomitable constancy, provided them with
arms and horses, raised troops in Salerno and Benevento to assist them,
and directed them against the Greeks. This happened in 1017. Twelve
years later we find the town of Aversa built and occupied by Normans
under the control of their Count Rainulf; while another band, headed by
Ardoin, a Lombard of Milan, lived at large upon the country, selling
its services to the Byzantine Greeks. In the anarchy of Southern Italy
at this epoch, when the decaying Empire of the East was relaxing its
hold upon the Apulian provinces, when the Papacy was beginning to lift
up its head after the ignominy of Theodora and Marozia, and the Lombard
power was slowly dissolving upon its ill-established foundations, the
Norman adventurers pursued a policy which, however changeful, was
invariably self-advantageous. On whatever side they fought, they took
care that the profits of war should accrue to their own colony. Quarrel
as they might among themselves, they were always found at one against a
common foe. And such was their reputation in the field, that the
hardiest soldiers errant of all nations joined their standard. Thus it
fell out that when Ardoin and his Normans had helped Maniaces to wrest
the eastern districts of Sicily from 300 the Moors, they returned, upon
an insult offered by the Greek general, to extend the right hand of
fellowship to Rainulf and his Normans of Aversa. 'Why should you stay
here like a rat in his hole, when with our help you might rule those
fertile plains, expelling the women in armour who keep guard over
them?' The agreement of Ardoin and Rainulf formed the basis of the
future Norman power. Their companies joined forces. Melfi was chosen as
the centre of their federal government. The united Norman colony
elected twelve chiefs or counts of equal authority; and henceforth they
thought only of consolidating their ascendency over the effete races
which had hitherto pretended to employ their arms. The genius of their
race and age, however, was unfavourable to federations. In a short time
the ablest man among them, the true king, by right of personal vigour
and mental cunning, showed himself. It was at this point that the house
of Hauteville rose to the altitude of its romantic destiny. William
Iron Arm was proclaimed Count of Apulia. Two of his brothers succeeded
him in the same dignity. His half-brother, Robert Guiscard, imprisoned
one Pope,[106] Leo IX., and wrested from another, Nicholas II., the
title of Duke of Apulia and Calabria. By the help of his youngest
brother, Roger, he gradually completed the conquest of Italy below the
Tiber, and then addressed himself to the task of subduing Sicily. The
Papacy, incapable of opposing the military vigour of the Northmen, was
distracted between jealousy of their growing importance and desire to
utilise them for its own advantage.[107] The temptation to employ these
filial 301 pirates as a catspaw for restoring Sicily to the bosom of
the Church, was too strong to be resisted. In spite of many ebbs and
flows of policy, the favour which the Popes accorded to the Normans
gilded the might and cunning of the adventurers with the specious
splendour of acknowledged sanctity. The time might come for casting off
these powerful allies and adding their conquests to the patrimony of S.
Peter. Meanwhile it costs nothing to give away what does not belong to
one, particularly when by doing so a title to the same is gradually
formed. So the Popes reckoned. Robert and Roger went forth with banners
blessed by Rome to subjugate the island of the Greek and Moor.

 [106] The Normans were lucky in getting hold of Popes. King Roger
 caught Innocent II. at San Germano in 1139, and got from him the
 confirmation of all his titles.


 [107] Even the great Hildebrand wavered in his policy toward Robert
 Guiscard. Having raised an army by the help of the Countess Matilda in
 1074, he excommunicated Robert and made war against him. Robert proved
 more than his match in force and craft; and Hildebrand had to confirm
 his title as duke, and designate him Knight of S. Peter in 1080. When
 Robert drove the Emperor Henry IV. from Rome, and burned the city of
 the Coelian, Hildebrand retired with his terrible defender to Salerno,
 and died there in 1085. Robert and both Rogers were good sons of the
 Church, deserving the titles of 'Terror of the faithless,' 'Sword of
 the Lord drawn from the scabbard of Sicily,' as long as they were
 suffered to pursue their own schemes of empire. They respected the
 Pope's person and his demesne of Benevento; they were largely liberal
 in donations to churches and abbeys. But they did not suffer their
 piety to interfere with their ambition.

The honours of this conquest, paralleled for boldness only by the
achievements of Cortes and Pizarro, belong to Roger. It is true that
since the fall of the Kelbite dynasty Sicily had been shaken by anarchy
and despotism, by the petty quarrels of princes and party leaders, and
to some extent also by the invasion of Maniaces. Yet on the approach of
Roger with a handful of Norman knights, 'the island was guarded,' to
quote Gibbon's energetic phrase, 'to the water's edge.' For some years
he had to content himself with raids and harrying excursions, making
Messina, which he won from the Moors by the aid of their Christian
serfs and vassals, the basis of his operations, and retiring from time
to time across the Faro 302 with booty to Reggio. The Mussulmans had
never thoroughly subdued the north-eastern highlands of Sicily.
Satisfied with occupying the whole western and southern sections of the
island, with planting their government firmly at Palermo, destroying
Syracuse, and establishing a military fort on the heights of Castro
Giovanni, they had somewhat neglected the Christian populations of the
Val Demone. Thus the key to Sicily upon the Italian side fell into the
hands of the invaders. From Messina Roger advanced by Rametta and
Centorbi to Troina, a hill-town raised high above the level of the sea,
within view of the solemn blue-black pyramid of Etna. There he planted
a garrison in 1062, two years after his first incursion into the
island. The interval had been employed in marches and countermarches,
descents upon the vale of Catania, and hurried expeditions as far as
Girgenti, on the southern coast. One great battle is recorded beneath
the walls of Castro Giovanni, when six hundred Norman knights, so say
the chroniclers, engaged with fifteen thousand of the Arabian chivalry
and one hundred thousand foot soldiers. However great the exaggeration
of these numbers, it is certain that the Christians fought at fearful
odds that day, and that all the eloquence of Roger, who wrought on
their fanaticism in his speech before the battle, was needed to raise
their courage to the sticking-point. The scene of the great rout of
Saracens which followed, is in every respect memorable. Castro
Giovanni, the old Enna of the Greeks and Romans, stands on the top of a
precipitous mountain, two thousand feet above a plain which waves with
corn. A sister height, Calascibetta, raised nearly to an equal
altitude, keeps ward over the same valley; and from their summits the
whole of Sicily is visible. Here in old days Demeter from her
rock-built temple could survey vast tracts of hill and dale, breaking
downwards to the sea and undulating everywhere with harvest. 303 The
much praised lake and vale of Enna[108] are now a desolate sulphur
district, void of beauty, with no flowers to tempt Proserpine. Yet the
landscape is eminently noble because of its breadth—bare naked hills
stretching in every direction to the sea that girdles Sicily—peak
rising above peak and town-capped eyrie over eyrie—while Etna, wreathed
with snow, and purple with the peculiar colour of its coal-black lava
seen through light-irradiated air, sleeps far off beneath a crown of
clouds. Upon the cornfields in the centre of this landscape the
multitudes of the Infidels were smitten hip and thigh by the handful of
Christian warriors. Yet the victory was by no means a decisive one. The
Saracens swarmed round the Norman fortress of Troina; where, during a
severe winter, Roger and his young wife, Judith of Evreux, whom he had
loved in Normandy, and who journeyed to marry him amid the din of
battles, had but one cloak to protect them both from the cold. The
traveller, who even in April has experienced the chill of a high-set
Sicilian village, will not be 304 inclined to laugh at the hardships
revealed by this little incident. Yet the Normans, one and all, were
stanch. A victory over their assailants in the spring gave them courage
to push their arms as far as the river Himera and beyond the Simeto,
while a defeat of fifty thousand Saracens by four hundred Normans at
Cerami opened the way at last to Palermo. Reading of these engagements,
we are led to remember how Gelon smote his Punic foes upon the Himera,
and Timoleon arrayed Greeks by the ten against Carthaginians by the
thousand on the Crimisus. The battlefields are scarcely altered; the
combatants are as unequally matched, and represent analogous races. It
is still the combat of a few heroic Europeans against the hordes of
Asia. In the battle of Cerami it is said that S. George fought visibly
on horseback before the Christian band, like that wide-winged
chivalrous archangel whom Spinello Aretino painted beside Sant' Efeso
in the press of men upon the walls of the Pisan Campo Santo.

 [108] Cicero's description of Enna is still accurate: 'Enna is placed
 in a very lofty and exposed situation, at the top of which is a
 tableland and never-failing supply of springs. The whole site is cut
 off from access, and precipitous.' But when he proceeds to say, 'many
 groves and lakes surround it and luxuriant flowers through all the
 year,' we cannot follow him. The only quality which Enna has not lost
 is the impregnable nature of its cliffs. A few poplars and thorns are
 all that remain of its forests. Did we not know that the myth of
 Demeter and Persephone was a poem of seed-time and harvest, we might
 be tempted, while sitting on the crags of Castro Giovanni and looking
 toward the lake, to fancy that in old days a village dependent upon
 Enna, and therefore called her daughter, might have occupied the site
 of the lake, and that this village might have been withdrawn into the
 earth by the volcanic action which produced the cavity. Then people
 would have said that Demeter had lost Persephone and sought her vainly
 through all the cities of Sicily: and if this happened in spring
 Persephone might well have been thought to have been gathering flowers
 at the time when Hades took her to himself. So easy and yet so
 dangerous is it to rationalise a legend.

The capture of Palermo cost the Normans another eight years, part of
which was spent according to their national tactics in plundering
expeditions, part in the subjugation of Catania and other districts,
part in the blockade of the capital by sea and land. After the fall of
Palermo, it only remained for Roger to reduce isolated cities—Taormina,
Syracuse,[109] Girgenti, and Castro Giovanni—to his sway. The
last-named and strongest hold of the Saracens fell into his hands by
the treason of Ibn-Hamûud in 1087, and thus, after thirty years'
continual effort, the two brothers were at last able to divide the
island between them. The lion's share, as was due, fell to Roger, who
styled himself Great Count of Sicily and Calabria. In 1098, Urban II.,
a politician of the school of 305 Cluny, who well understood the scope
of Hildebrand's plan for subjecting Europe to the Court of Rome,
rewarded Roger for his zeal in the service of the Church with the title
of Hereditary Apostolical Legate. The Great Count was now on a par with
the most powerful monarchs of Europe. In riches he exceeded all; so
that he was able to wed one daughter to the King of Hungary, another to
Conrad, King of Italy, a third to Raimond, Count of Provence and
Toulouse, dowering them all with imperial munificence.

 [109] In this siege, as in that of the Athenians, and of the Saracens
 878 A.D., decisive engagements took place in the great harbour.

Hale and vigorous, his life was prolonged through a green old age until
his seventieth year; when he died in 1101, he left two sons by his
third wife, Adelaide. Roger, the younger of the two, destined to
succeed his father, and (on the death of his cousin, William, Duke of
Apulia, in 1127) to unite South Italy and Sicily under one crown, was
only four years old at the death of the Great Count. Inheriting all the
valour and intellectual qualities of his family, he rose to even higher
honour than his predecessors. In 1130 he assumed the style of King of
Sicily, no doubt with the political purpose of impressing his Mussulman
subjects; and nine years later, when he took Innocent captive at San
Germano, he forced from the half-willing pontiff a confirmation of this
title as well as the investiture of Apulia, Calabria, and Capua. The
extent of his sway is recorded in the line engraved upon his sword:—

Appulus et Calaber Siculus mihi servit et Afer.


King Roger died in 1154, and bequeathed his kingdoms to his son
William, surnamed the Bad; who in his turn left them to a William,
called the Good, in 1166. The second William died in 1189, transmitting
his possessions by will to Constance, wife of the Suabian emperor.
These two Williams, the last of the Hauteville monarchs of Sicily, were
not altogether unworthy of their Norman origin. William the Bad could
rouse 306 himself from the sloth of his seraglio to head an army;
William the Good, though feeble in foreign policy, and no general,
administered the state with clemency and wisdom.

Sicily under the Normans offered the spectacle of a singularly hybrid
civilisation. Christians and Northmen, adopting the habits and imbibing
the culture of their Mussulman subjects, ruled a mixed population of
Greeks, Arabs, Berbers, and Italians. The language of the princes was
French; that of the Christians in their territory, Greek and Latin;
that of their Mahommedan subjects, Arabic. At the same time the
Scandinavian Sultans of Palermo did not cease to play an active part in
the affairs, both civil and ecclesiastical, of Europe. The children of
the Vikings, though they spent their leisure in harems, exercised, as
hereditary Legates of the Holy See, a peculiar jurisdiction in the
Church of Sicily. They dispensed benefices to the clergy, and assumed
the mitre and dalmatic, together with the sceptre, and the crown, as
symbols of their authority in Church as well as State. As a consequence
of this confusion of nationalities in Sicily, we find French and
English ecclesiastics[110] mingling at court with Moorish freedmen and
Oriental odalisques, Apulian captains fraternising with Greek corsairs,
Jewish physicians in attendance on the person of the prince, and
Arabian poets eloquent in his praises. The very money with which Roger
subsidised his Italian allies was stamped with Cuphic letters,[111] and
there is 307 reason to believe that the reproach against Frederick of
being a false coiner arose from his adopting the Eastern device of
plating copper pieces to pass for silver. The commander of Roger's
navies and his chief minister of state was styled, according to
Oriental usage, Emir or Ammiraglio. George of Antioch, who swept the
shores of Africa, the Morea, and the Black Sea, in his service, was a
Christian of the Greek Church, who had previously held an office of
finance under Temin Prince of Mehdia. The workers in his silk factories
were slaves from Thebes and Corinth. The pages of his palace were
Sicilian or African eunuchs. His charters ran in Arabic as well as
Greek and Latin. His jewellers engraved the rough gems of the Orient
with Christian mottoes in Semitic characters.[112] His architects were
Mussulmans who adapted their native style to the requirements of
Christian ritual, and inscribed the walls of cathedrals with Catholic
legends in the Cuphic language. The predominant characteristic of
Palermo was Orientalism. Religious toleration was extended to the
Mussulmans, so that the two creeds, Christian and Mahommedan,
flourished side by side. The Saracens had their own quarters in the
towns, their mosques and schools, and Cadis for the administration of
petty justice. French and Italian women in Palermo adopted the Oriental
fashions of dress. The administration of law and government was
conducted on Eastern principles. In nothing had the Mussulmans shown
greater genius than in their system of internal statecraft. Count Roger
found a machinery of taxation in full working order, officers
acquainted with the resources of the country, books and schedules
constructed 308 on the principles of strictest accuracy, a whole
bureaucracy, in fact, ready to his use. By applying this machinery he
became the richest potentate in Europe, at a time when the northern
monarchs were dependent upon feudal aids and precarious revenues from
crown lands. In the same way, the Saracens bequeathed to the Normans
the court system, which they in turn had derived from the princes of
Persia and the example of Constantinople. Roger found it convenient to
continue that organisation of pages, chamberlains, ushers, secretaries,
viziers, and masters of the wardrobe, invested each with some authority
of state according to his rank, which confined the administration of an
Eastern kingdom to the walls of the palace.[113] At Palermo Europe saw
the first instance of a court not wholly unlike that which Versailles
afterwards became. The intrigues which endangered the throne and
liberty of William the Bad, and which perplexed the policy of William
the Good, were court-conspiracies of a kind common enough at
Constantinople. In this court life men of letters and erudition played
a first part three centuries before Petrarch taught the princes of
Italy to respect the pen of a poet.

 [110] The English Gualterio Offamilio, or Walter of the Mill,
 Archbishop of Palermo during the reign of William the Good, by his
 intrigues brought about the match between Constance and Henry VI.
 Richard Palmer at the same time was Bishop of Syracuse. Stephen des
 Rotrous, a Frenchman of the Counts of Perche, preceded Walter of the
 Mill in the Arch See of Palermo.


 [111] Frederick Barbarossa's soldiers are said to have bidden the
 Romans: 'Take this German iron in change for Arab gold. This pay your
 master gives you, and this is how Franks win empire.'—_Amari_, vol.
 iii. p. 468.


 [112] The embroidered skullcap of Constance of Aragon, wife of
 Frederick II., in the sacristy of the cathedral at Palermo, is made of
 gold thread thickly studded with pearls and jewels—rough sapphires and
 carbuncles, among which may be noticed a red cornelian engraved in
 Arabic with this sentence, 'In Christ, God, I put my hope.'


 [113] The Arabic title of _Kâid_, which originally was given to a
 subordinate captain of the guard, took a wide significance at the
 Norman Court. Latinised to _gaytus_, and Grecised under the form of
 κάιτος, it frequently occurs in chronicles and diplomas to denote a
 high minister of state. Matteo of Ajello, who exercised so powerful an
 influence over the policy of William the Good, heading the Mussulman
 and national party against the great ecclesiastics who were intriguing
 to draw Sicily into the entanglements of European diplomacy, was a
 Kâid. Matteo favoured the cause of Tancred, Walter of the Mill
 espoused that of the Germans, during the war of succession which
 followed upon William's death. The barons of the realm had to range
 themselves under these two leaders—to such an extent were the affairs
 of state in Sicily within the grasp of courtiers and churchmen.

King Roger, of whom the court geographer Edrisi writes 309 that 'he did
more sleeping than any other man waking,' was surrounded during his
leisure moments, beneath the palm-groves of Favara, with musicians,
historians, travellers, mathematicians, poets, and astrologers of
Oriental breeding. At his command Ptolemy's Optics were translated into
Latin from the Arabic. The prophecies of the Erythrean Sibyl were
rendered accessible in the same way. His respect for the occult
sciences was proved by his disinterring the bones of Virgil from their
resting-place at Posilippo, and placing them in the Castel dell' Uovo
in order that he might have access through necromancy to the spirit of
the Roman wizard. It may be remembered in passing, that Palermo in one
of her mosques already held suspended between earth and air the
supposed relics of Aristotle. Such were the saints of modern culture in
its earliest dawning. While Venice was robbing Alexandria of the body
of S. Mark, Palermo and Naples placed themselves beneath the protection
of a philosopher and a poet. But Roger's greatest literary work was the
compilation of a treatise of universal geography. Fifteen years were
devoted to the task; and the manuscript, in Arabic, drawn up by the
philosopher Edrisi, appeared only six weeks before the king's death in
1154. This book, called 'The Book of Roger, or the Delight of whoso
loves to make the Circuit of the World,' was based upon the previous
labours of twelve geographers, classical and Mussulman. But aiming at
greater accuracy than could be obtained by a merely literary
compilation, Roger caused pilgrims, travellers, and merchants of all
countries to be assembled for conference and examination before him.
Their accounts were sifted and collated. Edrisi held the pen while
Roger questioned. Measurements and distances were carefully compared;
and a vast silver disc was constructed, on which all the seas, islands,
continents, plains, rivers, mountain ranges, cities, roads, and
harbours of the 310 known world were delineated. The text supplied an
explanatory description of this map, with tables of the products,
habits, races, religions, and qualities, both physical and moral, of
all climates. The precious metal upon which the map was drawn proved
its ruin, and the Geography remained in the libraries of Arab scholars.
Yet this was one of the first great essays of practical exploration and
methodical statistic, to which the genius of the Norseman and the Arab
each contributed a quota. The Arabians, by their primitive nomadic
habits, by the necessities of their system of taxation, by their
predilection for astrology, by their experience as pilgrims, merchants,
and poets errant, were specially qualified for the labour of
geographical investigation. Roger supplied the unbounded curiosity and
restless energy of his Scandinavian temper, the kingly comprehensive
intellect of his race, and the authority of a prince who was powerful
enough to compel the service of qualified collaborators.

The architectural works of the Normans in Palermo reveal the same
ascendency of Arab culture. San Giovanni degli Eremiti, with its low
white rounded domes, is nothing more or less than a little mosque
adapted to the rites of Christians.[114] The country palaces of the
Zisa and the Cuba, built by the two Williams, retain their ancient
Moorish character. Standing beneath the fretted arches of the hall of
the Zisa, through which a fountain flows within a margin of carved
marble, and looking on the landscape from its open porch, we only need
to reconstruct in fancy the green gardens and orange-groves, where
fair-haired Normans whiled away their hours among black-eyed odalisques
and graceful singing boys from Persia. Amid a wild tangle of olive and
lemon trees overgrown with scarlet passion-flowers, the pavilion of the
Cubola, built of 311 hewn stone and open at each of its four sides,
still stands much as it stood when William II. paced through flowers
from his palace of the Cuba, to enjoy the freshness of the evening by
the side of its fountain. The views from all these Saracenic villas
over the fruitful valley of the Golden Horn, and the turrets of
Palermo, and the mountains and the distant sea, are ineffably
delightful. When the palaces were new—when the gilding and the frescoes
still shone upon their honeycombed ceilings, when their mosaics
glittered in noonday twilight, and their amber-coloured masonry was set
in shade of pines and palms, and the cool sound of rivulets made music
in their courts and gardens, they must have well deserved their Arab
titles of 'Sweet Waters' and 'The Glory' and 'The Paradise of Earth.'

 [114] Tradition asserts that the tocsin of this church gave the signal
 in Palermo to the massacre of the Sicilian Vespers.

But the true splendour of Palermo, that which makes this city one of
the most glorious of the south, is to be sought in its churches—in the
mosaics of the Cappella Palatina founded by King Roger, in the vast
aisles and cloisters of Monreale built by King William the Good at the
instance of his Chancellor Matteo,[115] in the Cathedral of Palermo
begun by Offamilio, and in the Martorana dedicated by George the
Admiral. These triumphs of ecclesiastical architecture, none the less
splendid because they cannot be reduced to rule or assigned to any
single style, were the work of Saracen builders assisted by Byzantine,
Italian, and Norman craftsmen. The genius of Latin Christianity
determined the basilica shape of the Cathedral of Monreale. Its bronze
doors were wrought by smiths of Trani and Pisa. Its walls were
incrusted with the mosaics of Constantinople. The woodwork of its roof,
and the emblazoned patterns in porphyry and serpentine and glass and
smalto, which cover its whole surface, were designed 312 by Oriental
decorators. Norman sculptors added their dog-tooth and chevron to the
mouldings of its porches; Greeks, Frenchmen, and Arabs may have tried
their skill in turn upon the multitudinous ornaments of its cloister
capitals. 'The like of which church,' said Lucius III. in 1182, 'hath
not been constructed by any king even from ancient times, and such an
one as must compel all men to admiration.' These words remain literally
and emphatically true. Other cathedrals may surpass that of Monreale in
sublimity, simplicity, bulk, strength, or unity of plan. None can
surpass it in the strange romance with which the memory of its many
artificers invests it. None again can exceed it in richness and glory,
in the gorgeousness of a thousand decorative elements subservient to
one controlling thought. 'It is evident,' says Fergusson in his
'History of Architecture,' 'that all the architectural features in the
building were subordinate in the eyes of the builders to the mosaic
decorations, which cover every part of the interior, and are in fact
the glory and the pride of the edifice, and alone entitle it to rank
among the finest of mediæval churches.' The whole of the Christian
history is depicted in this series of mosaics; but on first entering,
one form alone compels attention. The semi-dome of the eastern apse
above the high altar is entirely filled with a gigantic half-length
figure of Christ. He raises His right hand to bless, and with His left
holds an open book on which is written in Greek and Latin, 'I am the
Light of the world.' His face is solemn and severe, rather than mild or
piteous; and round His nimbus runs the legend Ιησους Χριστος 'ο
παντοκράτωρ. Below Him on a smaller scale are ranged the archangels and
the mother of the Lord, who holds the child upon her knees. Thus Christ
appears twice upon this wall, once as the Omnipotent Wisdom, the Word
by whom all things were made, and once as God deigning to assume a 313
shape of flesh and dwell with men. The magnificent image of supreme
Deity seems to fill with a single influence and to dominate the whole
building. The house with all its glory is His. He dwells there like
Pallas in her Parthenon or Zeus in his Olympian temple. To left and
right over every square inch of the cathedral blaze mosaics, which
portray the story of God's dealings with the human race from the
Creation downwards, together with those angelic beings and saints who
symbolise each in his own degree some special virtue granted to
mankind. The walls of the fane are therefore an open book of history,
theology, and ethics for all men to read.

 [115] Matteo of Ajello induced William to found an archbishopric at
 Monreale in order to spite his rival Offamilio.

The superiority of mosaics over fresco as an architectural adjunct on
this gigantic scale is apparent at a glance in Monreale. Permanency of
splendour and glowing richness of tone are all on the side of the
mosaics. Their true rival is painted glass. The jewelled churches of
the south are constructed for the display of coloured surfaces
illuminated by sunlight falling on them from narrow windows, just as
those of the north—Rheims, for example, or Le Mans—are built for the
transmission of light through a variegated medium of transparent hues.
The painted windows of a northern cathedral find their proper
counterpart in the mosaics of the south. The Gothic architect strove to
obtain the greatest amount of translucent surface. The Byzantine
builder directed his attention to securing just enough light for the
illumination of his glistening walls. The radiance of the northern
church was similar to that of flowers or sunset clouds or jewels. The
glory of the southern temple was that of dusky gold and gorgeous
needlework. The north needed acute brilliancy as a contrast to external
greyness. The south found rest from the glare and glow of noonday in
these sombre splendours. Thus Christianity, both of the south and of
the north, decked 314 her shrines with colour. Not so the Paganism of
Hellas. With the Greeks, colour, though used in architecture, was
severely subordinated to sculpture; toned and modified to a calculated
harmony with actual nature, it did not, as in a Christian church,
create a world beyond the world, a paradise of supersensual ecstasy,
but remained within the limits of the known. Light falling upon carved
forms of gods and heroes, bathing clear-cut columns and sharp
basreliefs in simple lustre, was enough for the Phoebean rites of
Hellas. Though we know that red and blue and green and gilding were
employed to accentuate the mouldings of Greek temples, yet neither the
gloomy glory of mosaics nor the gemmed fretwork of storied windows was
needed to attune the souls of Hellenic worshippers to devotion.

Less vast than Monreale, but even more beautiful, because the charm of
mosaic increases in proportion as the surface it covers may be compared
to the interior of a casket, is the Cappella Palatina of the royal
palace in Palermo. Here, again, the whole design and ornament are
Arabo-Byzantine. Saracenic pendentives with Cuphic legends incrust the
richly painted ceiling of the nave. The roofs of the apses and the
walls are coated with mosaics, in which the Bible history, from the
dove that brooded over Chaos to the lives of S. Peter and S. Paul,
receives a grand though formal presentation. Beneath the mosaics are
ranged slabs of grey marble, edged and divided with delicate patterns
of inserted glass, resembling drapery with richly embroidered fringes.
The floor is inlaid with circles of serpentine and porphyry encased in
white marble, and surrounded by winding bands of Alexandrine work. Some
of these patterns are restricted to the five tones of red, green,
white, black, and pale yellow. Others add turquoise blue, and emerald,
and scarlet, and gold. Not a square inch of the surface—floor, roof,
walls, or 315 cupola—is free from exquisite gemmed work of precious
marbles. A candelabrum of fanciful design, combining lions devouring
men and beasts, cranes, flowers, and winged genii, stands by the
pulpit. Lamps of chased silver hang from the roof. The cupola blazes
with gigantic archangels, stationed in a ring beneath the supreme
figure and face of Christ. Some of the Ravenna churches are more
historically interesting, perhaps, than this little masterpiece of the
mosaic art. But none is so rich in detail and lustrous in effect. It
should be seen at night, when the lamps are lighted in a pyramid around
the sepulchre of the dead Christ on Holy Thursday, when partial gleams
strike athwart the tawny gold of the arches, and fall upon the profile
of a priest declaiming in voluble Italian to a listening crowd.

Such are a few of the monuments which still remain to show of what sort
was the mixed culture of Normans, Saracens, Italians, and Greeks at
Palermo. In scenes like these the youth of Frederick II. was
passed:—for at the end, while treating of Palermo, we are bound to
think again of the Emperor who inherited from his German father the
ambition of the Hohenstauffens, and from his Norman mother the fair
fields and Oriental traditions of Sicily. The strange history of
Frederick—an intellect of the eighteenth century born out of date, a
cosmopolitan spirit in the age of Saint Louis, the crusader who
conversed with Moslem sages on the threshold of the Holy Sepulchre, the
Sultan of Lucera[116] who persecuted 316 Paterini while he respected
the superstition of Saracens, the anointed successor of Charlemagne,
who carried his harem with him to the battlefields of Lombardy, and
turned Infidels loose upon the provinces of Christ's Vicar—would be
inexplicable, were it not that Palermo still reveals in all her
monuments the _genius loci_ which gave spiritual nurture to this
phoenix among kings. From his Mussulman teachers Frederick derived the
philosophy to which he gave a vogue in Europe. From his Arabian
predecessors he learnt the arts of internal administration and finance,
which he transmitted to the princes of Italy. In imitation of Oriental
courts, he adopted the practice of verse composition, which gave the
first impulse to Italian literature. His Grand Vizier, Piero Delle
Vigne, set an example to Petrarch, not only by composing the first
sonnet in Italian, but also by showing to what height a low-born
secretary versed in art and law might rise. In a word, the zeal for
liberal studies, the luxury of life, the religious indifferentism, the
bureaucratic system of state government, which mark the age of the
Italian Renaissance, found their first manifestation within the bosom
of the Middle Ages in Frederick. While our King John was signing Magna
Charta, Frederick had already lived long enough to comprehend, at least
in outline, what is meant by the spirit of modern culture.[117] It is
true that the so-called Renaissance followed slowly and by tortuous
paths upon the death of Frederick. The Church obtained a complete
victory over his family, and succeeded in extinguishing the
civilisation of Sicily. Yet the fame of the Emperor who transmitted 317
questions of sceptical philosophy to Arab sages, who conversed
familiarly with men of letters, who loved splendour and understood the
arts of refined living, survived both long and late in Italy. His
power, his wealth, his liberality of soul and lofty aspirations, formed
the theme of many a tale and poem. Dante places him in hell among the
heresiarchs; and truly the splendour of his supposed infidelity found
for him a goodly following. Yet Dante dated the rise of Italian
literature from the blooming period of the Sicilian court. Frederick's
unorthodoxy proved no drawback to his intellectual influence. More than
any other man of mediæval times he contributed, if only as the memory
of a mighty name, to the progress of civilised humanity.

 [116] Charles of Anjou gave this nickname to Manfred, who carried on
 the Siculo-Norman tradition. Frederick, it may here be mentioned, had
 transferred his Saracen subjects of the vale of Mazara to Lucera in
 the Capitanate. He employed them as trusty troops in his warfare with
 the Popes and preaching friars. Nothing shows the confusion of the
 century in matters ecclesiastical and religious more curiously than
 that Frederick, who conducted a crusade and freed the Holy Sepulchre,
 should not only have tolerated the religion of Mussulmans, but also
 have armed them against the Head of the Church. What we are apt to
 regard as religious questions really belonged at that period to the
 sphere of politics.


 [117] It is curious to note that in this year 1215, the date of Magna
 Charta, Frederick took the Cross at Aix-la-Chapelle.

Let us take leave both of Frederick and of Palermo, that centre of
converging influences which was his cradle, in the cathedral where he
lies gathered to his fathers. This church, though its rich sunbrowned
yellow[118] reminds one of the tone of Spanish buildings, is like
nothing one has seen elsewhere. Here even more than at Monreale the eye
is struck with a fusion of styles. The western towers are grouped into
something like the clustered sheafs of the Caen churches: the windows
present Saracenic arches: the southern porch is covered with foliated
incrustations of a late and decorative Gothic style: the exterior of
the apse combines Arabic inlaid patterns of black and yellow with the
Greek honeysuckle: the western door adds Norman dog-tooth and chevron
to the 318 Saracenic billet. Nowhere is any one tradition firmly
followed. The whole wavers and yet is beautiful—like the immature
eclecticism of the culture which Frederick himself endeavoured to
establish in his southern kingdoms. Inside there is no such harmony of
blended voices: all the strange tongues, which speak together on the
outside, making up a music in which the far North, and ancient Byzance,
and the delicate East sound each a note, are hushed. The frigid silence
of the Palladian style reigns there—simple indeed and dignified, but
lifeless as the century in which it flourished.

 [118] Nearly all cities have their own distinctive colour. That of
 Venice is a pearly white suggestive of every hue in delicate abeyance,
 and that of Florence is a sober brown. Palermo displays a rich yellow
 ochre passing at the deepest into orange, and at the lightest into
 primrose. This is the tone of the soil, of sun-stained marble, and of
 the rough ashlar masonry of the chief buildings. Palermo has none of
 the glaring whiteness of Naples, nor yet of that particoloured
 gradation of tints which adds gaiety to the grandeur of Genoa.

Yet there, in a side chapel near the western door, stand the porphyry
sarcophagi which shrine the bones of the Hautevilles and their
representatives. There sleeps King Roger—'Dux strenuus et primus Rex
Siciliæ'—with his daughter Constance in her purple chest beside him.
Henry VI. and Frederick II. and Constance of Aragon complete the group,
which surpasses for interest all sepulchral monuments—even the tombs of
the Scaligers at Verona—except only, perhaps, the statues of the nave
of Innspruck. Very sombre and stately are these porphyry resting-places
of princes born in the purple, assembled here from lands so
distant—from the craggy heights of Hohenstauffen, from the green
orchards of Cotentin, from the dry hills of Aragon. They sleep, and the
centuries pass by. Rude hands break open the granite lids of their
sepulchres, to find tresses of yellow hair and fragments of imperial
mantles, embroidered with the hawks and stags the royal hunter loved.
The church in which they lie changes with the change of taste in
architecture and the manners of successive ages. But the huge stone
arks remain unmoved, guarding their freight of mouldering dust beneath
gloomy canopies of stone that temper the sunlight as it streams from
the chapel windows.

319




SYRACUSE AND GIRGENTI


The traveller in Sicily is constantly reminded of classical history and
literature. While tossing, it may be, at anchor in the port of Trapani,
and wondering when the tedious Libeccio will release him, he must
perforce remember that here Æneas instituted the games for Anchises.
Here Mnestheus and Gyas and Sergestus and Cloanthus raced their
galleys: on yonder little isle the Centaur struck; and that was the
rock which received the dripping Menoetes:—

Illum et labentem Teucri et risere natantem,
Et salsos rident revomentem pectore fluctus.

Or crossing a broken bridge at night in the lumbering diligence,
guarded by infantry with set bayonets, and wondering on which side of
the ravine the brigands are in ambush, he suddenly calls to mind that
this torrent was the ancient Halycus, the border between Greeks and
Carthaginians, established of old, and ratified by Timoleon after the
battle of the Crimisus. Among the bare grey hills of Segeste his
thoughts revert to that strange story told by Herodotus of Philippus,
the young soldier of Crotona, whose beauty was so great, that when the
Segesteans found him slain among their foes, they raised the corpse and
burned it on a pyre of honour, and built a hero's temple over the urn
that held his ashes. The first sight of Etna makes us cry with
Theocritus, Αιτνα 320 ματερ εμά....πολυδένδρεος Αιτνα. The solemn
heights of Castro Giovanni bring lines of Ovid to our lips:—

Haud procul Hennæis lacus est a moenibu altæ
Nomine Pergus aquæ. Non illo plura Caystros
Carmina cygnorum labentibus audit in undis.
Silva coronat aquas, cingens latus omne; suisque
Frondibus ut velo Phoebeos summovet ignes.
Frigora dant rami, Tyrios humus humida flores.
Perpetnum ver est.


We look indeed in vain for the leafy covert and the purple flowers that
tempted Proserpine. The place is barren now: two solitary cypress-trees
mark the road which winds downwards from a desolate sulphur mine, and
the lake is clearly the crater of an extinct volcano. Yet the voices of
old poets are not mute. 'The rich Virgilian rustic measure' recalls a
long-since buried past. Even among the wavelets of the Faro we remember
Homer, scanning the shore if haply somewhere yet may linger the wild
fig-tree which saved Ulysses from the whirlpool of Charybdis. At any
rate we cannot but exclaim with Goethe, 'Now all these coasts, gulfs,
and creeks, islands and peninsulas, rocks and sand-banks, wooded hills,
soft meadows, fertile fields, neat gardens, hanging grapes, cloudy
mountains, constant cheerfulness of plains, cliffs and ridges, and the
surrounding sea, with such manifold variety are present in my mind; now
is the "Odyssey" for the first time become to me a living world.'

But rich as the whole of Sicily may be in classical associations, two
places, Syracuse and Girgenti, are pre-eminent for the power of
bringing the Greek past forcibly before us. Their interest is of two
very different kinds. Girgenti still displays the splendour of temples
placed upon a rocky cornice between sea and olive-groves. Syracuse has
nothing to show but the scene of world-important actions. Yet the great
deeds 321 recorded by Thucydides, the conflict between eastern and
western Hellas which ended in the annihilation of the bright, brief,
brilliant reality of Athenian empire, remain so clearly written on the
hills and harbours and marshlands of Syracuse that no place in the
world is topographically more memorable. The artist, whether architect,
or landscape-painter, or poet, finds full enjoyment at Girgenti. The
historian must be exacting indeed in his requirements if he is not
satisfied with Syracuse.

What has become of Syracuse, 'the greatest of Greek cities and the
fairest of all cities' even in the days of Cicero? Scarcely one stone
stands upon another of all those temples and houses. The five towns
which were included by the walls have now shrunk to the little island
which the first settlers named Ortygia, where the sacred fountain of
Arethusa seemed to their home-loving hearts to have followed them from
Hellas.[119] Nothing survives but a few columns of Athene's temple
built into a Christian church, with here and there the marble masonry
of a bath or the Roman stonework of an amphitheatre. There are not even
any mounds or deep deposits of rubble mixed with pottery to show here
once a town had been.[120] _Etiam periere ruinæ._ The vast city,
devastated for the last time by the Saracens in 878 A.D., has been
reduced to dust and swept by the scirocco into the sea. This is the
explanation of its utter ruin. The stone of Syracuse is friable and
easily disintegrated. The petulant moist wind of the south-east
corrodes its surface; and when it falls, it crumbles to 322 powder.
Here, then, the elements have had their will unchecked by such
sculptured granite as in Egypt resists the mounded sand of the desert,
or by such marble colonnades as in Athens have calmly borne the insults
of successive sieges. What was hewn out of the solid rock—the
semicircle of the theatre, the street of the tombs with its deeply
dented chariot-ruts, the gigantic quarries from which the material of
the metropolis was scooped, the catacombs which burrow for miles
underground—alone prove how mighty must have been the Syracuse of
Dionysius. Truly 'the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her
poppy, and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of
perpetuity.' Standing on the beach of the Great Harbour or the Bay of
Thapsus, we may repeat almost word by word Antipater's solemn lament
over Corinth:—

Where is thy splendour now, thy crown of towers,
    Thy beauty visible to all men's eyes,
    The gold and silver of thy treasuries,
Thy temples of blest gods, thy woven bowers
Where long-stoled ladies walked in tranquil hours,
    Thy multitudes like stars that crowd the skies?
    All, all are gone. Thy desolation lies
Bare to the night. The elemental powers
Resume their empire: on this lonely shore
    Thy deathless Nereids, daughters of the sea,
    Wailing 'mid broken stones unceasingly,
Like halcyons when the restless south winds roar,
Sing the sad story of thy woes of yore:
    These plunging waves are all that's left to thee.


Time, however, though he devours his children, cannot utterly destroy
either the written record of illustrious deeds or the theatre of their
enactment. Therefore, with Thucydides in hand, we may still follow the
events of that Syracusan siege which decided the destinies of Greece,
and by the fall of 323 Athens, raised Sparta, Macedonia, and finally
Rome to the hegemony of the civilised world.

 [119] The fountain of Arethusa, recently rescued from the washerwomen
 of Syracuse, is shut off from the Great Harbour by a wall and planted
 with papyrus. Taste has not been displayed in the bear-pit
 architecture of its circular enclosure.


 [120] This is not strictly true of Achradina, where some _débris_ may
 still be found worth excavating.

There are few students of Thucydides and Grote who would not be
surprised by the small scale of the cliffs, and the gentle incline of
Epipolæ—the rising ground above the town of Syracuse, upon the slope of
which the principal operations of the Athenian siege took place.[121]
Maps, and to some extent also the language of Thucydides, who talks of
the προσβάσεις or practicable approaches to Epipolæ, and the κρημνοι,
or precipices by which it was separated from the plain, would lead one
to suppose that the whole region was on each hand rocky and abrupt. In
reality it is extremely difficult to distinguish the rising ground of
Epipolæ upon the southern side from the plain, so very gradual is the
line of ascent and so comparatively even is the rocky surface of the
hill. Thucydides, in narrating the night attack of Demosthenes upon the
lines of Gylippus (book vii. 43-45), lays stress upon the necessity of
approaching Epipolæ from the western side by Euryâlus, and again
asserts that during the hurried retreat of the Athenians great numbers
died by leaping from the cliffs, while still more had to throw away
their armour. At this time the Athenian army was encamped upon the
shore of the Great Harbour, and held trenches and a wall that stretched
from that side at least halfway across Epipolæ. It seems therefore
strange that, unless their movements were impeded by counterworks and
lines of walls, of which we have no information, the troops of
Demosthenes should not, at least in their retreat, have been able to
pour down over the gentle 324 descent of Epipolæ toward the Anapus,
instead of returning to Euryâlus. Anyhow, we can scarcely discern
cliffs of more than ten feet upon the southern slope of Epipolæ, nor
can we understand why the Athenians should have been forced to take
these in their line of retreat. There must have been some artificial
defences of which we read nothing, and of which no traces now remain,
but which were sufficient to prevent them from choosing their ground.
Slight difficulties of this kind raise the question whether the
wonderful clearness of Thucydides in detail was really the result of
personal observation, or whether his graphic style enabled him to give
the appearance of scrupulous accuracy. I incline to think that the
author of the sixth and seventh books of the History must have visited
Syracuse, and that if we could see his own map of Epipolæ, we should
better be able to understand the difficulties of the backward night
march of Demosthenes, by discovering that there was some imperative
necessity for not descending, as seems natural, upon the open slope of
the hill to the south. The position of Euryâlus at the extreme point
called Mongibellisi is clear enough. Here the ground, which has been
continually rising from the plateau of Achradina (the northern suburb
of Syracuse), comes to an abrupt finish. Between Mongibellisi and the
Belvedere hill beyond there is a deep depression, and the slope to
Euryâlus either from the south or north is gradual. It was a gross
piece of neglect on the part of Nikias not to have fortified this spot
on his first investment of Epipolæ, instead of choosing Labdalum,
which, wherever we may place it, must have been lower down the hill to
the east. For Euryâlus is the key to Epipolæ. It was here that Nikias
himself ascended in the first instance, and that afterwards he
permitted Gylippus to enter and raise the siege, and lastly that
Demosthenes, by overpowering the insufficient Syracusan guard, got at
night within the lines of 325 the Spartan general. Thus the three most
important movements of the siege were made upon Euryâlus. Dionysius,
when he enclosed Epipolæ with walls, recognised the value of the point,
and fortified it with the castle which remains, and to which, as
Colonel Leake believes, Archimedes, at the order of Hiero II., made
subsequent additions. This castle is one of the most interesting Greek
ruins extant. A little repair would make it even now a substantial
place of defence, according to Greek tactics. Its deep foss is cut in
the solid rock, and furnished with subterranean magazines for the
storage of provisions. The three piles of solid masonry on which the
drawbridge rested, still stand in the centre of this ditch. The oblique
grand entrance to the foss descends by a flight of well-cut steps. The
rock itself over which the fort was raised is honeycombed with
excavated passages for infantry and cavalry, of different width and
height, so that one sort can be assigned to mounted horsemen and
another to foot soldiers. The trap-doors which led from these galleries
into the fortress are provided with rests for ladders that could be let
down to help a sallying force or drawn up to impede an advancing enemy.
The inner court for stabled horses and the stations for the catapults
are still in tolerable preservation. Thus the whole arrangement of the
stronghold can be traced not dimly but distinctly. Being placed on the
left side of the chief gate of Epipolæ, the occupants of the fort could
issue to attack a foe advancing toward that gate in the rear. At the
same time the subterranean galleries enabled them to pour out upon the
other side, if the enemy had forced an entrance, while the minor
passages and trap-doors provided a retreat in case the garrison were
overpowered in one of their offensive operations. The view from
Euryâlus is extensive. To the left rises Etna, snowy, solitary, broadly
vast, above the plain of Catania, the curving shore, Thapsus, 326 and
the sea. Syracuse itself, a thin white line between the harbour and the
open sea, a dazzling streak between two blues, terminates the slope of
Epipolæ, and on the right hand stretch the marshes of Anapus rich with
vines and hoary with olives.

 [121] Epipolæ is in shape a pretty regular isosceles triangle, of
 which the apex is Mongibellisi or Euryâlus, and the base Achradina or
 the northern quarter of the ancient city. Thucydides describes it as
 χωρίου αποκρήμνου τε και υπερ της πόλεως ευθυς κειμένου... εξήρτηται
 γαρ το αλλο χωρίον και μέχρι της πόλεως επικλινές τέ εστι και επιφανες
 παν εισο και ωνομαστα υπυ τον Συρακοσίων δια το επιπολης του αλλου
 ειναι Επιπολαι (vi. 96).]

By far the most interesting localities of Syracuse are the Great
Harbour and the stone quarries. When the sluggish policy and faint
heart of Nikias had brought the Athenians to the verge of ruin, when
Gylippus had entered the besieged city, and Plemmyrium had been wrested
from the invaders, and Demosthenes had failed in his attack upon
Epipolæ, and the blockading trenches had been finally evacuated, no
hope remained for the armament of Athens except only in retreat by
water. They occupied a palisaded encampment upon the shore of the
harbour, between the mouth of the Anapus and the city; whence they
attempted to force their way with their galleys to the open sea.
Hitherto the Athenians had been supreme upon their own element; but now
the Syracusans adopted tactics suited to the narrow basin in which the
engagements had to take place. Building their vessels with heavy beaks,
they crushed the lighter craft of the Athenians, which had no room for
flank movements and rapid evolutions. A victory was thus obtained by
the Syracusan navy; the harbour was blockaded with chains by the order
of Gylippus; the Athenians were driven back to their palisades upon the
fever-haunted shore. Their only chance seemed to depend upon a renewal
of the sea-fight in the harbour. The supreme moment arrived. What
remained of the Athenian fleet, in numbers still superior to that of
their enemies, steered straight for the mouth of the harbour. The
Syracusans advanced from the naval stations of Ortygia to meet them.
The shore was thronged with spectators, Syracusans tremulous with the
expectation of a decisive success, Athenians on the tenter-hooks 327 of
hope and dread. In a short time the harbour became a confused mass of
clashing triremes; the water beaten into bloody surf by banks of oars;
the air filled with shouts from the combatants and exclamations from
the lookers-on: ολοφυρμός, βοή, νικοντες, κρατούμενοι, αλλα οσα εν
μεγάλω κινδύνω μέγα στρατόπεδον πολυειδη αναγκάζοιτο φθέγγεσθαι. Then
after a struggle, in which desperation gave energy to the Athenians,
and ambitious hope inspired their foes with more than wonted vigour,
the fleet of the Athenians was finally overwhelmed. The whole scene can
be reproduced with wonderful distinctness; for the low shores of
Plemmyrium, the city of Ortygia, the marsh of Lysimeleia, the hills
above the Anapus, and the distant dome of Etna, are the same as they
were upon that memorable day. Nothing has disappeared except the temple
of Zeus Olympius and the buildings of Temenitis.

What followed upon the night of that defeat is less easily realised.
Thucydides, however, by one touch reveals the depth of despair to which
the Athenians had sunk. They neglected to rescue the bodies of their
dead from the Great Harbour, or to ask for a truce, according to
hallowed Greek usage, in order that they might perform the funeral
rites. To such an extent was the army demoralised. Meanwhile within the
city the Syracusans kept high festival, honouring their patron
Herakles, upon whose day it happened that the battle had been fought.
Nikias neglected this opportunity of breaking up his camp and retiring
unmolested into the interior of the island. When after the delay of two
nights and a day he finally began to move, the Syracusans had blockaded
the roads. How his own division capitulated by the blood-stained banks
of the Asinarus after a six days' march of appalling misery, and how
that of Demosthenes surrendered in the olive-field of Polyzelus, is too
well known.

328 One of the favourite excursions from modern Syracuse takes the
traveller in a boat over the sandy bar of the Anapus, beneath the old
bridge which joined the Helorine road to the city, and up the river to
its junction with the Cyane. This is the ground traversed by the army
first in their attempted flight and then in their return as captives to
Syracuse. Few, perhaps, who visit the spot, think as much of that last
act in a world-historical tragedy, as of the picturesque compositions
made by arundo donax, castor-oil plant, yellow flags, and papyrus, on
the river-banks and promontories. Like miniature palm-groves these
water-weeds stand green and golden against the bright blue sky,
feathering above the boat which slowly pushes its way through clinging
reeds. The huge red oxen of Sicily in the marsh on either hand toss
their spreading horns and canter off knee-deep in ooze. Then comes the
fountain of Cyane, a broad round well of water, thirty feet in depth,
but quite clear, so that you can see the pebbles at the bottom and
fishes swimming to and fro among the weeds. Papyrus plants edge the
pool; thick and tufted, they are exactly such as one sees carved or
painted upon Egyptian architecture of the Ptolemaic period.

With Thucydides still in hand, before quitting Syracuse we must follow
the Athenian captives to their prison-grave. The Latomia de' Cappuccini
is a place which it is impossible to describe in words, and of which no
photographs give any notion. Sunk to the depth of a hundred feet below
the level of the soil, with sides perpendicular and in many places as
smooth as though the chisel had just passed over them, these vast
excavations produce the impression of some huge subterranean gallery,
widening here and there into spacious halls, the whole of which has
been unroofed and opened to the air of heaven. It is a solemn and
romantic labyrinth, where no wind blows rudely, and where orange-trees
shoot 329 upward luxuriantly to meet the light. The wild fig bursts
from the living rock, mixed with lentisk-shrubs and pendent
caper-plants. Old olives split the masses of fallen cliff with their
tough, snakelike, slowly corded and compacted roots. Thin flames of
pomegranate-flowers gleam amid foliage of lustrous green; and lemons
drop unheeded from femininely fragile branches. There too the ivy hangs
in long festoons, waving like tapestry to the breath of stealthy
breezes; while under foot is a tangle of acanthus, thick curling leaves
of glossiest green, surmounted by spikes of dull lilac blossoms. Wedges
and columns and sharp teeth of the native rock rear themselves here and
there in the midst of the open spaces to the sky, worn fantastically
into notches and saws by the action of scirocco. A light yellow
calcined by the sun to white is the prevailing colour of the quarries.
But in shady places the limestone takes a curious pink tone of great
beauty, like the interior of some sea-shells. The reflected lights too,
and half-shadows in their scooped-out chambers, make a wonderful
natural chiaroscuro. The whole scene is now more picturesque in a
sublime and grandiose style than forbidding. There is even one spot
planted with magenta-coloured mesembrianthemums of dazzling brightness;
and the air is loaded with the drowsy perfume of lemon-blossoms. Yet
this is the scene of a great agony. This garden was once the Gethsemane
of a nation, where 9000 free men of the proudest city of Greece were
brought by an unexampled stroke of fortune to slavery, shame, and a
miserable end. Here they dwindled away, worn out by wounds, disease,
thirst, hunger, heat by day and cold by night, heart-sickness, and the
insufferable stench of putrefying corpses. The pupils of Socrates, the
admirers of Euripides, the orators of the Pnyx, the athletes of the
Lyceum, lovers and comrades and philosophers, died here like dogs; and
the dames of Syracuse stood doubtless on those parapets 330 above, and
looked upon them like wild beasts. What the Gorgo of Theocritus might
have said to her friend Praxinoe on the occasion would be the subject
for an idyll _à la_ Browning! How often, pining in those great glaring
pits, which were not then curtained with ivy or canopied by
olive-trees, must the Athenians have thought with vain remorse of their
own Rhamnusian Nemesis, the goddess who held scales adverse to the
hopes of men, and bore the legend 'Be not lifted up'! How often must
they have watched the dawn walk forth fire-footed upon the edge of
those bare crags, or the stars slide from east to west across the
narrow space of sky! How they must have envied the unfettered clouds
sailing in liquid ether, or traced the far flight of hawk and swallow,
sighing, 'Oh that I too had the wings of a bird!' The weary eyes turned
upwards found no change or respite, save what the frost of night
brought to the fire of day, and the burning sun to the pitiless cold
constellations.

A great painter, combining Doré's power over space and distance with
the distinctness of Flaxman's design and the colouring of Alma Tadema,
might possibly realise this agony of the Athenian captives in the stone
quarries. The time of day chosen for the picture should be full noon,
with its glare of light and sharply defined vertical shadows. The
crannies in the straight sides of the quarry should here and there be
tufted with a few dusty creepers and wild fig-trees. On the edge of the
sky-line stand parties of Syracusan citizens with their wives and
children, shaded by umbrellas, richly dressed, laughing and triumphing
over the misery beneath. In the full foreground there are placed two
figures. A young Athenian has just died of fever. His body lies
stretched along the ground, the head resting on a stone, and the face
turned to the sky. Beside him kneels an older warrior, sunburned and
dry with thirst, but full as yet of vigour. He stares with 331 wide
despair-smitten eyes straight out, as though he had lately been
stretched upon the corpse, but had risen at the sound of movement, or
some supposed word of friends close by. His bread lies untasted near
him, and the half-pint of water—his day's portion—has been given to
bathe the forehead of his dying friend. They have stood together
through the festival of leave-taking from Peiræus, through the battles
of Epipolæ, through the retreat and the slaughter at the passage of the
Asinarus. But now it has come to this, and death has found the younger.
Perhaps the friend beside him remembers some cool wrestling-ground in
far-off Athens, or some procession up the steps of the Acropolis, where
first they met. Anyhow his fixed gaze now shows that he has passed in
thought at least beyond the hell around him. Not far behind should be
ranged groups of haggard men, with tattered clothes and dulled or
tigerish eyes, some dignified, some broken down by grief; while here
and there newly fallen corpses, and in one hideous corner a great heap
of abandoned dead, should point the ghastly words of Thucydides: τον
νεκρον ομου επ' αλλήλοις ξυννενημένων.

Every landscape has some moment of its own at which it should be seen
for the first time. Mediæval cities, with their narrow streets and
solemn spires, demand the twilight of a summer night. Mediterranean
islands show their best in the haze of afternoon, when sea and sky and
headland are bathed in aë;rial blue, and the mountains seem to be made
of transparent amethyst. The first sight of the Alps should be taken at
sunset from some point of vantage, like the terrace at Berne, or the
castle walls of Salzburg. If these fortunate moments be secured, all
after knowledge of locality and detail serves to fortify and deepen the
impression of picturesque harmony. The mind has then conceived a
leading thought, which gives ideal unity to scattered memories and
invests the 332 crude reality with an æsthetic beauty. The lucky moment
for the landscape of Girgenti is half an hour past sunset in a golden
afterglow. Landing at the port named after Empedocles, having caught
from the sea some glimpses of temple-fronts emergent on green
hill-slopes among almond-trees, with Pindar's epithet of
'splendour-loving' in my mind, I rode on such an evening up the path
which leads across the Drago to Girgenti. The way winds through
deep-sunk lanes of rich amber sandstone, hedged with cactus and
dwarf-palm, and set with old gnarled olive-trees. As the sunlight
faded, Venus shone forth in a luminous sky, and the deep yellows and
purples overhead seemed to mingle with the heavy scent of
orange-flowers from scarcely visible groves by the roadside. Saffron in
the west and violet in the east met midway, composing a translucent
atmosphere of mellow radiance, like some liquid gem—_dolce color d'
oriental berillo_. Girgenti, far off and far up, gazing seaward, and
rearing her topaz-coloured bastions into that gorgeous twilight, shone
like the aë;rial vision of cities seen in dreams or imaged in the
clouds. Hard and sharp against the sallow line of sunset, leaned
grotesque shapes of cactuses like hydras, and delicate silhouettes of
young olive-trees like sylphs: the river ran silver in the hollow, and
the mountain-side on which the town is piled was solid gold. Then came
the dirty dull interior of Girgenti, misnamed the magnificent. But no
disenchantment could destroy the memory of that vision, and Pindar's
φιλάγλαος Ακράγας remains in my mind a reality.[122]

 [122] Lest I should seem to have overstated the splendour of this
 sunset view, I must remark that the bare dry landscape of the south is
 peculiarly fortunate in such effects. The local tint of the Girgenti
 rock is yellow. The vegetation on the hillside is sparse. There is
 nothing to prevent the colours of the sky being reflected upon the
 vast amber-tinted surface, which then glows with indescribable glory.

The temples of Girgenti are at the distance of two miles 333 from the
modern town. Placed upon the edge of an irregular plateau which breaks
off abruptly into cliffs of moderate height below them, they stand in a
magnificent row between the sea and plain on one side, and the city and
the hills upon the other. Their colour is that of dusky honey or dun
amber; for they are not built of marble, but of sandstone, which at
some not very distant geological period must have been a sea-bed.
Oyster and scallop shells are embedded in the roughly hewn masonry,
while here and there patches of a red deposit, apparently of broken
coralline, make the surface crimson. The vegetation against which the
ruined colonnades are relieved consists almost wholly of almond and
olive trees, the bright green foliage of the one mingling with the
greys of the other, and both enhancing the warm tints of the stone.
This contrast of colours is very agreeable to the eye; yet when the
temples were perfect it did not exist. There is no doubt that their
surface was coated with a fine stucco, wrought to smoothness, toned
like marble, and painted over with the blue and red and green
decorations proper to the Doric style. This fact is a practical answer
to those æsthetic critics who would fain establish that the Greeks
practised no deception in their arts. The whole effect of the
colonnades of Selinus and Girgenti must have been an illusion, and
their surface must have needed no less constant reparation than the
exterior of a Gothic cathedral. The sham jewellery frequently found in
Greek tombs, and the curious mixture of marble with sandstone in the
sculptures from Selinus, are other instances that Greeks no less than
modern artists condescended to trickery for the sake of effect. In the
series of the metopes from Selinus now preserved in the museum at
Palermo, the flesh of the female persons is represented by white
marble, while that of the men, together with the dresses and other
accessories, is wrought of common 334 stone. Yet the basreliefs in
which this peculiarity occurs belong to the best period of Greek
sculpture, and the groups are not unworthy for spirit and design to be
placed by the side of the metopes of the Parthenon. Most beautiful, for
example, is the contrast between the young unarmed Hercules and the
Amazon he overpowers. His naked man's foot grasps with the muscular
energy of an athlete her soft and helpless woman's foot, the roughness
of the sandstone and the smoothness of the marble really heightening
the effect of difference.

Though ranged in a row along the same cornice, the temples of Girgenti,
originally at least six in number, were not so disposed that any of
their architectural lines should be exactly parallel. The Greeks
disliked formality; the carefully calculated _asymmetreia_ in the
disposition of their groups of buildings secured variety of effect as
well as a broken surface for the display of light and shadow. This is
very noticeable on the Acropolis of Athens, where, however regular may
be the several buildings, all are placed at different angles to each
other and the hill. Only two of the Girgenti temples survive in any
degree of perfection—the so-called Concordia and the Juno Lacinia. The
rest are but mere heaps of mighty ruins, with here and there a broken
column, and in one place an angle of a pediment raised upon a group of
pillars. The foundations of masonry which supported them and the drums
of their gigantic columns are tufted with wild palm, aloe, asphodel,
and crimson snapdragon. Yellow blossoming sage, and mint, and lavender,
and mignonette, sprout in the crevices where snakes and lizards
harbour. The grass around is gemmed with blue pimpernel and
convolvulus. Gladiolus springs amid the young corn-blades beneath the
almond-trees; while a beautiful little iris makes the most unpromising
dry places brilliant with its delicate greys and blues. In cooler 335
and damper hollows, around the boles of old olives and under ruined
arches, flourishes the tender acanthus, and the road-sides are gaudy
with a yellow daisy flower, which may perchance be the ελίχρυσος of
Theocritus. Thus the whole scene is a wilderness of brightness, less
radiant but more touching than when processions of men and maidens
bearing urns and laurel-branches, crowned with ivy or with myrtle,
paced along those sandstone roads, chanting pæans and prosodial hymns,
toward the glistening porches and hypæthral cells.

The only temple about the name of which there can be no doubt is that
of Zeus Olympius. A prostrate giant who once with nineteen of his
fellows helped to support the roof of this enormous fane, and who now
lies in pieces among the asphodels, remains to prove that this was the
building begun by the Agrigentines after the defeat of the Phoenicians
at the Himera, when slaves were many and spoil was abundant, and Hellas
both in Sicily and on the mainland felt a more than usual thrill of
gratitude to their ancestral deity. The greatest architectural works of
the island, the temples of Segeste and Selinus, as well as those of
Girgenti, were begun between this period and the Carthaginian invasion
of 409 B.C. The victory of the Hellenes over the barbarians in 480
B.C., symbolised in the victory of Zeus over the enslaved Titans of
this temple, gave a vast impulse to their activity and wealth. After
the disastrous incursion of the same foes seventy years later, the
western Greek towns of the island received a check from which they
never recovered. Many of their noblest buildings remained unfinished.
The question which rises to the lips of all who contemplate the ruins
of this gigantic temple and its compeer dedicated to Herakles is this:
Who wrought the destruction of works so solid and enduring? For what
purpose of spite or interest were those vast columns—in the very
flutings of which a man can stand with ease—felled like 336 forest
pines? One sees the mighty pillars lying as they sank, like swathes
beneath the mower's scythe. Their basements are still in line. The
drums which composed them have fallen asunder, but maintain their
original relation to each other on the ground. Was it earthquake or the
hand of man that brought them low? Poggio Bracciolini tells us that in
the fifteenth century they were burning the marble buildings of the
Roman Campagna for lime. We know that the Senator Brancaleone made
havoc among the classic monuments occupied as fortresses by Frangipani
and Savelli and Orsini. We understand how the Farnesi should have
quarried the Coliseum for their palace. But here, at the distance of
three miles from Girgenti, in a comparative desert, what army, or what
band of ruffians, or what palace-builders could have found it worth
their while to devastate mere mountains of sculptured sandstone? The
Romans invariably respected Greek temples. The early Christians used
them for churches:—and this accounts for the comparative perfection of
the Concordia. It was in the age of the Renaissance that the ruin of
Girgenti's noblest monuments occurred. The temple of Zeus Olympius was
shattered in the fifteenth century, and in the next its fragments were
used to build a breakwater. The demolition of such substantial edifices
is as great a wonder as their construction. We marvel at the energy
which must have been employed on their overthrow, no less than at the
art which raised such blocks of stone and placed them in position.

While so much remains both at Syracuse and at Girgenti to recall the
past, we are forced here, as at Athens, to feel how very little we
really know about Greek life. We cannot bring it up before our fancy
with any clearness, but rather in a sort of hazy dream, from which some
luminous points emerge. The entrance of an Olympian victor through the
337 breach in the city walls of Girgenti, the procession of citizens
conducting old Timoleon in his chariot to the theatre, the conferences
of the younger Dionysius with Plato in his guarded palace-fort, the
stately figure of Empedocles presiding over incantations in the marshes
of Selinus, the austerity of Dion and his mystic dream, the first
appearance of stubborn Gylippus with long Lacedæmonian hair in the
theatre of Syracuse,—such picturesque pieces of history we may fairly
well recapture. But what were the daily occupations of the Simætha of
Theocritus? What was the state dress of the splendid Queen Philistis,
whose name may yet be read upon her seat, and whose face adorns the
coins of Syracuse? How did the great altar of Zeus look, when the oxen
were being slaughtered there by hundreds, in a place which must have
been shambles and meat-market and temple all in one? What scene of
architectural splendour met the eyes of the swimmers in the Piscina of
Girgenti? How were the long hours of so many days of leisure occupied
by the Greeks, who had each three pillows to his head in
'splendour-loving Acragas'? Of what sort was the hospitality of
Gellias? Questions like these rise up to tantalise us with the
hopelessness of ever truly recovering the life of a lost race. After
all the labour of antiquary and the poet, nothing remains to be uttered
but such moralisings as Sir Thomas Browne poured forth over the urns
discovered at Old Walsingham: 'What time the persons of these ossuaries
entered the famous nations of the dead, and slept with princes and
counsellors, might admit a wide solution. But who were the
proprietaries of these bones, or what bodies these ashes made up, were
a question above antiquarism; not to be resolved by man, nor easily
perhaps by spirits except we consult the provincial guardians, or
tutelary observators.' Death reigns over the peoples of the past, and
we must fain be satisfied to cry with 338 Raleigh: 'O eloquent, just,
and mighty death! whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded; what
none hath dared, thou hast done; and whom all the world hath flattered,
thou only hast cast out of the world and despised: thou hast drawn
together all the far-stretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, and
ambition of men, and covered it all over with these two narrow words,
_hic jacet_.' Even so. Yet while the cadence of this august rhetoric is
yet in our ears, another voice is heard as of the angel seated by a
void and open tomb, 'Why seek ye the living among the dead?' The spirit
of Hellas is indestructible, however much the material existence of the
Greeks be lost beyond recovery; for the life of humanity is not many
but one, not parcelled into separate moments but continuous.

339




ATHENS


Athens, by virtue of scenery and situation, was predestined to be the
motherland of the free reason of mankind, long before the Athenians had
won by their great deeds the right to name their city the ornament and
the eye of Hellas. Nothing is more obvious to one who has seen many
lands and tried to distinguish their essential characters, than the
fact that no one country exactly resembles another, but that, however
similar in climate and locality, each presents a peculiar and
well-marked property belonging to itself alone. The specific quality of
Athenian landscape is light—not richness or sublimity or romantic
loveliness or grandeur of mountain outline, but luminous beauty, serene
exposure to the airs of heaven. The harmony and balance of the scenery,
so varied in its details and yet so comprehensible, are sympathetic to
the temperance of Greek morality, the moderation of Greek art. The
radiance with which it is illuminated has all the clearness and
distinction of the Attic intellect. From whatever point the plain of
Athens with its semicircle of greater and lesser hills may be surveyed,
it always presents a picture of dignified and lustrous beauty. The
Acropolis is the centre of this landscape, splendid as a work of art
with its crown of temples; and the sea, surmounted by the long low
hills of the Morea, is the boundary to which the eye is irresistibly
led. Mountains and islands and plain alike are made of limestone,
hardening here and there into marble, broken 340 into delicate and
varied forms, and sprinkled with a vegetation of low shrubs and
brushwood so sparse and slight that the naked rock in every direction
meets the light. This rock is grey and colourless: viewed in the
twilight of a misty day, it shows the dull, tame uniformity of bone.
Without the sun it is asleep and sorrowful. But by reason of this very
deadness, the limestone of Athenian landscape is always ready to take
the colours of the air and sun. In noonday it smiles with silvery
lustre, fold upon fold of the indented hills and islands melting from
the brightness of the sea into the untempered brilliance of the sky. At
dawn and sunset the same rocks array themselves with a celestial robe
of rainbow-woven hues: islands, sea, and mountains, far and near, burn
with saffron, violet, and rose, with the tints of beryl and topaz,
sapphire and almandine and amethyst, each in due order and at proper
distances. The fabled dolphin in its death could not have showed a more
brilliant succession of splendours waning into splendours through the
whole chord of prismatic colours. This sensitiveness of the Attic
limestone to every modification of the sky's light gives a peculiar
spirituality to the landscape. The hills remain in form and outline
unchanged; but the beauty breathed upon them lives or dies with the
emotions of the air from whence it emanates: the spirit of light abides
with them and quits them by alternations that seem to be the pulses of
an ethereally communicated life. No country, therefore, could be better
fitted for the home of a race gifted with exquisite sensibilities, in
whom humanity should first attain the freedom of self-consciousness in
art and thought. Αει δια λαμπροτάτου βαίνοντες αβρος αιθέρος—ever
delicately moving through most translucent air—said Euripides of the
Athenians: and truly the bright air of Attica was made to be breathed
by men in whom the light of culture should begin to shine. Ιοστέφανος
is an epithet 341 of Aristophanes for his city; and if not crowned with
other violets, Athens wears for her garland the air-empurpled
hills—Hymettus, Lycabettus, Pentelicus, and Parnes.[123] Consequently,
while still the Greeks of Homer's age were Achaians, while Argos was
the titular seat of Hellenic empire, and the mythic deeds of the heroes
were being enacted in Thebes or Mycenæ, Athens did but bide her time,
waiting to manifest herself as the true godchild of Pallas, who sprang
perfect from the brain of Zeus, Pallas, who is the light of cloudless
heaven emerging after storms. And Pallas, when she planted her chosen
people in Attica, knew well what she was doing. To the far-seeing eyes
of the goddess, although the first-fruits of song and science and
philosophy might be reaped upon the shores of the Ægean and the
islands, yet the days were clearly descried when Athens should stretch
forth her hand to hold the lamp of all her founder loved for Europe. As
the priest of Egypt told Solon: 'She chose the spot of earth in which
you were born, because she saw that the happy temperament of the
seasons in that land would produce the wisest of men. Wherefore the
goddess, who was a lover both of war and wisdom, selected and first of
all settled that spot which was the most likely to produce men likest
herself.' This sentence from the 'Timæus' of Plato[124] reveals the
consciousness possessed by the Greeks of that intimate connection which
subsists between a country and the temper of its race. To us the name
Athenai—the fact that Athens by its title even in the prehistoric age
was marked out as the appanage of her 342 who was the patroness of
culture—seems a fortunate accident, an undesigned coincidence of the
most striking sort. To the Greeks, steeped in mythologic faith,
accustomed to regard their lineage as autochthonous and their polity as
the fabric of a god, nothing seemed more natural than that Pallas
should have selected for her own exactly that portion of Hellas where
the arts and sciences might flourish best. Let the Boeotians grow fat
and stagnant upon their rich marshlands: let the Spartans form
themselves into a race of soldiers in their mountain fortress: let
Corinth reign, the queen of commerce, between her double seas: let the
Arcadians in their oak woods worship pastoral Pan: let the plains of
Elis be the meeting-place of Hellenes at their sacred games: let Delphi
boast the seat of sooth oracular from Phoebus. Meanwhile the sunny but
barren hills of Attica, open to the magic of the sky, and beautiful by
reason of their nakedness, must be the home of a people powerful by
might of intelligence rather than strength of limb, wealthy not so much
by natural resources as by enterprise. Here, and here only, could stand
the city sung by Milton:—

Built nobly, pure the air, and light the soil,
Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts
And eloquence, native to famous wits
Or hospitable, in her sweet recess,
City or suburban, studious walks and shades.


 [123] This interpretation of the epithet Ιοστέφανος is not, I think,
 merely fanciful. It seems to occur naturally to those who visit Athens
 with the language of Greek poets in their memory. I was glad to find,
 on reading a paper by the Dean of Westminster on the topography of
 Greece, that the same thought had struck him. Ovid, too, gives the
 adjective _purpureus_ to Hymettus.


 [124] Jowett's translation, vol. ii. p. 520.

We who believe in no authentic Pallas, child of Zeus, may yet pause
awhile, when we contemplate Athens, to ponder whether those old
mythologic systems, which ascribed to godhead the foundation of states
and the patronage of peoples, had not some glimpse of truth beyond a
mere blind guess. Is not, in fact, this Athenian land the promised and
predestined home of a peculiar people, in the same sense as that 343 in
which Palestine was the heritage by faith of a tribe set apart by
Jehovah for His own?

Unlike Rome, Athens leaves upon the memory one simple and ineffaceable
impression. There is here no conflict between Paganism and
Christianity, no statues of Hellas baptised by popes into the company
of saints, no blending of the classical and mediæval and Renaissance
influences in a bewilderment of vast antiquity. Rome, true to her
historical vocation, embraces in her ruins all ages, all creeds, all
nations. Her life has never stood still, but has submitted to many
transformations, of which the traces are still visible. Athens, like
the Greeks of history, is isolated in a sort of self-completion: she is
a thing of the past, which still exists, because the spirit never dies,
because beauty is a joy for ever. What is truly remarkable about the
city is just this, that while the modern town is an insignificant
mushroom of the present century, the monuments of Greek art in the best
period—the masterpieces of Ictinus and Mnesicles, and the theatre on
which the plays of the tragedians were produced—survive in comparative
perfection, and are so far unencumbered with subsequent edifices that
the actual Athens of Pericles absorbs our attention. There is nothing
of any consequence intermediate between us and the fourth century B.C..
Seen from a distance the Acropolis presents nearly the same appearance
as it offered to Spartan guardsmen when they paced the ramparts of
Deceleia. Nature around is all unaltered. Except that more villages,
enclosed with olive-groves and vineyards, were sprinkled over those
bare hills in classic days, no essential change in the landscape has
taken place, no transformation, for example, of equal magnitude with
that which converted the Campagna of Rome from a plain of cities to a
poisonous solitude. All through the centuries which divide us from the
age of Hadrian—centuries unfilled, as far as Athens is concerned, 344
with memorable deeds or national activity—the Acropolis has stood
uncovered to the sun. The tones of the marble of Pentelicus have daily
grown more golden; decay has here and there invaded frieze and capital;
war too has done its work, shattering the Parthenon in 1687 by the
explosion of a powder magazine, and the Propylæa in 1656 by a similar
accident, and seaming the colonnades that still remain with
cannon-balls in 1827. Yet in spite of time and violence the Acropolis
survives, a miracle of beauty: like an everlasting flower, through all
that lapse of years it has spread its coronal of marbles to the air,
unheeded. And now, more than ever, its temples seem to be incorporate
with the rock they crown. The slabs of column and basement have grown
together by long pressure or molecular adhesion into a coherent whole.
Nor have weeds or creeping ivy invaded the glittering fragments that
strew the sacred hill. The sun's kiss alone has caused a change from
white to amber-hued or russet. Meanwhile, the exquisite adaptation of
Greek building to Greek landscape has been enhanced rather than
impaired by that 'unimaginable touch of time,' which has broken the
regularity of outline, softened the chisel-work of the sculptor, and
confounded the painter's fretwork in one tint of glowing gold. The
Parthenon, the Erechtheum, and the Propylæa have become one with the
hill on which they cluster, as needful to the scenery around them as
the everlasting mountains, as sympathetic as the rest of nature to the
successions of morning and evening, which waken them to passionate life
by the magic touch of colour.

Thus there is no intrusive element in Athens to distract the mind from
memories of its most glorious past. Walk into the theatre of Dionysus.
The sculptures that support the stage—Sileni bending beneath the weight
of cornices, and lines of graceful youths and maidens—are still in
their 345 ancient station.[125] The pavement of the orchestra, once
trodden by Athenian choruses, presents its tessellated marbles to our
feet; and we may choose the seat of priest or archon or herald or
thesmothetes, when we wish to summon before our mind's eye the pomp of
the 'Agamemnon' or the dances of the 'Birds' and 'Clouds.' Each seat
still bears some carven name—ΙΕΡΕΩΣ ΤΩΝ ΜΟΥΣΩΝ or ΙΕΡΕΩΣ ΑΣΚΛΗΠΙΟΥ—and
that of the priest of Dionysus is beautifully wrought with Bacchic
basreliefs. One of them, inscribed ΙΕΡΕΩΣ ΑΝΤΙΝΟΟΥ, proves indeed that
the extant chairs were placed here in the age of Hadrian, who completed
the vast temple of Zeus Olympius, and filled its precincts with statues
of his favourite, and named a new Athens after his own name.[126] Yet
we need not doubt that their position round the orchestra is
traditional, and that even in their form they do not differ from those
which the priests and officers of Athens used from the time of Æschylus
downward. Probably a slave brought cushion and footstool to complete
the comfort of these stately armchairs. Nothing else is wanted to
render them fit now for their august occupants; and we may imagine the
long-stoled greybearded men throned in state, each with his wand and
with appropriate fillets on his head. As we rest here in the light of
the full moon, which simplifies all outlines and heals with tender
touch the wounds of ages, it is easy enough to dream ourselves into the
belief that the ghosts of dead actors may once more glide across the
stage. 346 Fiery-hearted Medea, statuesque Antigone, Prometheus silent
beneath the hammer-strokes of Force and Strength, Orestes hounded by
his mother's Furies, Cassandra aghast before the palace of Mycenæ,
pure-souled Hippolytus, ruthful Alcestis, the divine youth of Helen,
and Clytemnestra in her queenliness, emerge like faint grey films
against the bluish background of Hymettus. The night air seems vocal
with echoes of old Greek, more felt than heard, like voices wafted to
our sense in sleep, the sound whereof we do not seize, though the
burden lingers in our memory.

 [125] It is true, however, that these sculptures belong to a
 comparatively late period, and that the theatre underwent some
 alterations in Roman days, so that the stage is now probably a few
 yards farther from the seats than in the time of Sophocles.


 [126] It is not a little surprising to come upon this relic of the
 worship of the young Bithynian at Athens in the theatre still
 consecrated by the memories of Æschylus and Sophocles.

In like manner, when moonlight, falling aslant upon the Propylæa,
restores the marble masonry to its original whiteness, and the
shattered heaps of ruined colonnades are veiled in shadow, and every
form seems larger, grander, and more perfect than by day, it is well to
sit upon the lowest steps, and looking upwards, to remember what
processions passed along this way bearing the sacred peplus to Athene.
The Panathenaic pomp, which Pheidias and his pupils carved upon the
friezes of the Parthenon, took place once in five years, on one of the
last days of July.[127] All the citizens joined in the honour paid to
their patroness. Old men bearing olive-branches, young men clothed in
bronze, chapleted youths singing the praise of Pallas in prosodial
hymns, maidens carrying holy vessels, aliens bending beneath the weight
of urns, servants of the temple leading oxen crowned with fillets,
troops of horsemen reining in impetuous steeds: all these pass before
us in the frieze of Pheidias. But to our imagination must be left what
he has refrained from sculpturing, the chariot formed like a ship, in
which the most illustrious nobles of Athens sat, splendidly arrayed,
beneath the crocus-coloured curtain or 347 peplus outspread upon a
mast. Some concealed machinery caused this car to move; but whether it
passed through the Propylæa, and entered the Acropolis, admits of
doubt. It is, however, certain that the procession which ascended those
steep slabs, and before whom the vast gates of the Propylæa swang open
with the clangour of resounding bronze, included not only the citizens
of Athens and their attendant aliens, but also troops of cavalry and
chariots; for the mark of chariot-wheels can still be traced upon the
rock. The ascent is so abrupt that this multitude moved but slowly.
Splendid indeed, beyond any pomp of modern ceremonial, must have been
the spectacle of the well-ordered procession, advancing through those
giant colonnades to the sound of flutes and solemn chants—the shrill
clear voices of boys in antiphonal chorus rising above the confused
murmurs of such a crowd, the chafing of horses' hoofs upon the stone,
and the lowing of bewildered oxen.

 [127] My purpose being merely picturesque, I have ignored the grave
 antiquarian difficulties which beset the interpretation of this
 frieze.

To realise by fancy the many-coloured radiance of the temples, and the
rich dresses of the votaries illuminated by that sharp light of a Greek
sun, which defines outline and shadow and gives value to the faintest
hue, would be impossible. All we can know for positive about the
chromatic decoration of the Greeks is, that whiteness artificially
subdued to the tone of ivory prevailed throughout the stonework of the
buildings, while blue and red and green in distinct, yet interwoven
patterns, added richness to the fretwork and the sculpture of pediment
and frieze. The sacramental robes of the worshippers accorded doubtless
with this harmony, wherein colour was subordinate to light, and light
was toned to softness.

Musing thus upon the staircase of the Propylæa, we may say with truth
that all our modern art is but child's play to that of the Greeks. Very
soul-subduing is the gloom of a 348 cathedral like the Milanese Duomo,
when the incense rises in blue clouds athwart the bands of sunlight
falling from the dome, and the crying of choirs upborne upon the wings
of organ music fills the whole vast space with a mystery of melody. Yet
such ceremonial pomps as this are as dreams and the shapes of visions,
when compared with the clearly defined splendours of a Greek procession
through marble peristyles in open air beneath the sun and sky. That
spectacle combined the harmonies of perfect human forms in movement
with the divine shapes of statues, the radiance of carefully selected
vestments with hues inwrought upon pure marble. The rhythms and the
melodies of the Doric mood were sympathetic to the proportions of the
Doric colonnades. The grove of pillars through which the pageant passed
grew from the living rock into shapes of beauty, fulfilling by the
inbreathed spirit of man Nature's blind yearning after absolute
completion. The sun himself—not thwarted by artificial gloom, or
tricked with alien colours of stained glass—was made to minister in all
his strength to a pomp, the pride of which was the display of form in
manifold magnificence. The ritual of the Greeks was the ritual of a
race at one with Nature, glorying in its affiliation to the mighty
mother of all life, and striving to add by human art the coping-stone
and final touch to her achievement. The ritual of the Catholic Church
is the ritual of a race shut out from Nature, holding no communion with
the powers of earth and air, but turning the spirit inwards and aiming
at the concentration of the whole soul upon an unseen God. The temple
of the Greeks was the house of a present deity; its cell his chamber;
its statue his reality. The Christian cathedral is the fane where God
who is a spirit is worshipped; no statue fills the choir from wall to
wall and lifts its forehead to the roof; but the vacant aisles, with
their convergent arches soaring upwards 349 to the dome, are made to
suggest the brooding of infinite and omnipresent Godhead. It was the
object of the Greek artist to preserve a just proportion between the
god's statue and his house, in order that the worshipper might approach
him as a subject draws near to his monarch's throne. The Christian
architect seeks to affect the emotions of the votary with a sense of
vastness filled with unseen power. Our cathedrals are symbols of the
universe where God is everywhere pavilioned and invisible. The Greek
temple was a practical, utilitarian dwelling-house, made beautiful
enough to suit divinity. The modern church is an idea expressed in
stone, an aspiration of the spirit, shooting up from arch and pinnacle
and spire into illimitable fields of air.

It follows from these differences between the religious aims of Pagan
and Christian architecture, that the former was far more favourable to
the plastic arts. No beautiful or simple incident of human life was an
inappropriate subject for the sculptor, in adorning the houses of gods
who were themselves but human on a higher level; and the ritual whereby
the gods were honoured was merely an exhibition, in its strength and
joyfulness, of mortal beauty. Therefore the Panathenaic procession
furnished Pheidias with a series of sculptural motives, which he had
only to express according to the principles of his art. The frieze,
three feet and four inches in height, raised forty feet above the
pavement of the peristyle, ran for five hundred and twenty-four
continuous feet round the outside wall of the cella of the Parthenon.
The whole of this long line was wrought with carving of exquisite
delicacy and supreme vigour, in such low relief as its peculiar
position, far above the heads of the spectators, and only illuminated
by light reflected from below, required. Each figure, each attitude,
and each fold of drapery in its countless groups is a study; yet the
whole was a transcript from actual contemporary 350 Athenian life.
Truly in matters of art we are but infants to the Greeks.

The topographical certainty which invests the ruins of the Acropolis
with such peculiar interest, belongs in a less degree to the whole of
Athens. Although the most recent researches have thrown fresh doubt
upon the exact site of the Pnyx, and though no traces of the agora
remain, yet we may be sure that the Bema from which Pericles sustained
the courage of the Athenians during the Peloponnesian war, was placed
upon the northern slope looking towards the Propylæa, while the wide
irregular space between this hill, the Acropolis, the Areopagus, and
the Theseum, must have formed the meeting-ground for amusement and
discussion of the citizens at leisure. About Areopagus, with its
tribunal hollowed in the native rock, and the deep cleft beneath, where
the shrine of the Eumenides was built, there is no question. The
extreme insignificance of this little mound may at first indeed excite
incredulity and wonder; but a few hours in Athens accustom the
traveller to a smallness of scale which at first sight seemed
ridiculous. Colonus, for example, the Colonus which every student of
Sophocles has pictured to himself in the solitude of unshorn meadows,
where groves of cypresses and olives bent unpruned above wild tangles
of narcissus flowers and crocuses, and where the nightingale sang
undisturbed by city noise or labour of the husbandman, turns out to be
a scarcely appreciable mound, gently swelling from the cultivated land
of the Cephissus. The Cephissus even in a rainy season may be crossed
dryshod by an active jumper; and the Ilissus, where it flows beneath
the walls of the Olympieion, is now dedicated to washerwomen instead of
water-nymphs. Nature herself remains, on the whole, unaltered. Most
notable are still the white poplars dedicated of old to Herakles, and
the spreading planes which whisper to the 351 limes in spring. In the
midst of so arid and bare a landscape, these umbrageous trees are
singularly grateful to the eye and to the sense oppressed with heat and
splendour. Nightingales have not ceased to crowd the gardens in such
numbers as to justify the tradition of their Attic origin, nor have the
bees of Hymettus forgotten their labours: the honey of Athens can still
boast a quality superior to that of Hybla or any other famous haunt of
hives.

Tradition points out one spot which commands a beautiful distant view
of Athens and the hills, as the garden of the Academy. The place is not
unworthy of Plato and his companions. Very old olives grow in
abundance, to remind us of those sacred trees beneath which the boys of
Aristophanes ran races; and reeds with which they might crown their
foreheads are thickly scattered through the grass. Abeles interlace
their murmuring branches overhead, and the planes are as leafy as that
which invited Socrates and Phædrus on the morning when they talked of
love. In such a place we comprehend how philosophy went hand in hand at
Athens with gymnastics, and why the poplar and the plane were dedicated
to athletic gods. For the wrestling-grounds were built in groves like
these, and their cool peristyles, the meeting-places of young men and
boys, supplied the sages not only with an eager audience, but also with
the leisure and the shade that learning loves.

It was very characteristic of Greek life that speculative philosophy
should not have chosen 'to walk the studious cloister pale,' but should
rather have sought out places where 'the busy hum of men' was loudest,
and where youthful voices echoed. The Athenian transacted no business,
and pursued but few pleasures, under a private roof. He conversed and
bargained in the agora, debated on the open rocks of the Pnyx, and
enjoyed discussion in the courts of the 352 gymnasium. It is also far
from difficult to understand beneath this over-vaulted and grateful
gloom of bee-laden branches, what part love played in the haunts of
runners and of wrestlers, why near the statue of Hermes stood that of
Erôs, and wherefore Socrates surnamed his philosophy the Science of
Love. Φιλοσοφουμεν ανευ μαλακίας is the boast of Pericles in his
description of the Athenian spirit. Φιλοσοφία μετα παιδεραστίας is
Plato's formula for the virtues of the most distinguished soul. These
two mottoes, apparently so contradictory, found their point of meeting
and their harmony in the gymnasium.

The mere contemplation of these luxuriant groves, set in the luminous
Attic landscape, and within sight of Athens, explains a hundred
passages of poets and philosophers. Turn to the opening scenes of the
'Lysis' and the 'Charmides.' The action of the latter dialogue is laid
in the palæstra of Taureas. Socrates has just returned from the camp at
Potidæa, and after answering the questions of his friends, has begun to
satisfy his own curiosity:[128]—

When there had been enough of this, I, in my turn, began to make
inquiries about matters at home—about the present state of philosophy,
and about the youth. I asked whether any of them were remarkable for
beauty or sense—or both. Critias, glancing at the door, invited my
attention to some youths who were coming in, and talking noisily to one
another, followed by a crowd. 'Of the beauties, Socrates,' he said, 'I
fancy that you will soon be able to form a judgment. For those who are
just entering are the advanced guard of the great beauty of the day—and
he is likely not to be far off himself.'

'Who is he?' I said; 'and who is his father?'

'Charmides,' he replied, 'is his name; he is my cousin, and the son of
my uncle Glaucon: I rather think that you know him, although he was not
grown up at the time of your departure.'

'Certainly I know him,' I said; 'for he was remarkable even 353 then
when he was still a child, and now I should imagine that he must be
almost a young man.'

'You will see,' he said, 'in a moment what progress he has made, and
what he is like.' He had scarcely said the word, when Charmides
entered.

Now you know, my friend, that I cannot measure anything, and of the
beautiful, I am simply such a measure as a white line is of chalk; for
almost all young persons are alike beautiful in my eyes. But at that
moment, when I saw him coming in, I must admit that I was quite
astonished at his beauty and stature; all the world seemed to be
enamoured of him; amazement and confusion reigned when he entered; and
a troop of lovers followed him. That grown-up men like ourselves should
have been affected in this way was not surprising, but I observed that
there was the same feeling among the boys; all of them, down to the
very least child, turned and looked at him as if he had been a statue.

Chaerephon called me and said: 'What do you think of him, Socrates? Has
he not a beautiful face?'

'That he has indeed,' I said.

'But you would think nothing of his face,' he replied, 'if you could
see his naked form: he is absolutely perfect.'

 [128] I quote from Professor Jowett's translation.

This Charmides is a true Greek of the perfect type. Not only is he the
most beautiful of Athenian youths; he is also temperate, modest, and
subject to the laws of moral health. His very beauty is a harmony of
well-developed faculties in which the mind and body are at one. How a
young Greek managed to preserve this balance in the midst of the
admiring crowds described by Socrates is a marvel. Modern conventions
unfit our minds for realising the conditions under which he had to
live. Yet it is indisputable that Plato has strained no point in the
animated picture he presents of the palæstra. Aristophanes and Xenophon
bear him out in all the details of the scene. We have to imagine a
totally different system of social morality from ours, with virtues and
vices, temptations and triumphs, unknown to our young men. The next
scene from the 'Lysis' introduces us to another wrestling-ground 354 in
the neighbourhood of Athens. Here Socrates meets with Hippothales, who
is a devoted lover but a bad poet. Hippothales asks the philosopher's
advice as to the best method of pleasing the boy Lysis:—

'Will you tell me by what words or actions I may become endeared to my
love?'

'That is not easy to determine,' I said; 'but if you will bring your
love to me, and will let me talk with him, I may perhaps be able to
show you how to converse with him, instead of singing and reciting in
the fashion of which you are accused.'

'There will be no difficulty in bringing him,' he replied; 'if you will
only go into the house with Ctesippus, and sit down and talk, he will
come of himself; for he is fond of listening, Socrates. And as this is
the festival of the Hermæa, there is no separation of young men and
boys, but they are all mixed up together. He will be sure to come. But
if he does not come, Ctesippus, with whom he is familiar, and whose
relation Menexenus is, his great friend, shall call him.'

'That will be the way,' I said. Thereupon I and Ctesippus went towards
the Palæstra, and the rest followed.

Upon entering we found that the boys had just been sacrificing; and
this part of the festival was nearly come to an end. They were all in
white array, and games at dice were going on among them. Most of them
were in the outer court amusing themselves; but some were in a corner
of the Apodyterium playing at odd-and-even with a number of dice, which
they took out of little wicker baskets. There was also a circle of
lookers-on, one of whom was Lysis. He was standing among the other boys
and youths, having a crown upon his head, like a fair vision, and not
less worthy of praise for his goodness than for his beauty. We left
them, and went over to the opposite side of the room, where we found a
quiet place, and sat down; and then we began to talk. This attracted
Lysis, who was constantly turning round to look at us—he was evidently
wanting to come to us. For a time he hesitated and had not the courage
to come alone; but first of all, his friend Menexenus came in out of
the court in the interval of his play, and when he saw Ctesippus and
myself, came and sat by us; and then Lysis, seeing him, followed and
sat down with him; and the other boys joined. I should observe that
Hippothales, when he saw the 355 crowd, got behind them, where he
thought that he would be out of sight of Lysis, lest he should anger
him; and there he stood and listened.

Enough has been quoted to show that beneath the porches of a Greek
palæstra, among the youths of Athens, who wrote no exercises in dead
languages, and thought chiefly of attaining to perfect manhood by the
harmonious exercise of mind and body in temperate leisure, divine
philosophy must indeed have been charming both to teachers and to
learners:—

Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose,
But musical as is Apollo's lute,
And a perpetual feast of nectared sweets
Where no crude surfeit reigns.

There are no remains above ground of the buildings which made the Attic
gymnasia splendid. Nor are there in Athens itself many statues of the
noble human beings who paced their porches and reclined beneath their
shade. The galleries of Italy and the verses of the poets can alone
help us to repeople the Academy with its mixed multitude of athletes
and of sages. The language of Simætha, in Theocritus, brings the
younger men before us: their cheeks are yellower than helichrysus with
the down of youth, and their breasts shine brighter far than the moon,
as though they had but lately left the 'fair toils of the
wrestling-ground.' Upon some of the monumental tablets exposed in the
burying-ground of Cerameicus and in the Theseum may be seen portraits
of Athenian citizens. A young man holding a bird, with a boy beside him
who carries a lamp or strigil; a youth, naked, and scraping himself
after the games; a boy taking leave with clasped hands of his mother,
while a dog leaps up to fawn upon his knee; a wine-party; a soul in
Charon's boat; a husband parting from his wife: such are the simple 356
subjects of these monuments; and under each is written ΧΡΗΣΤΕ
ΧΑΙΡΕ—Friend, farewell! The tombs of the women are equally plain in
character: a nurse brings a baby to its mother, or a slave helps her
mistress at the toilette table. There is nothing to suggest either the
gloom of the grave or the hope of heaven in any of these sculptures.
Their symbolism, if it at all exist, is of the least mysterious kind.
Our attention is rather fixed upon the commonest affairs of life than
on the secrets of death.

As we wander through the ruins of Athens, among temples which are all
but perfect, and gardens which still keep their ancient greenery, we
must perforce reflect how all true knowledge of Greek life has passed
away. To picture to ourselves its details, so as to become quite
familiar with the way in which an Athenian thought and felt and
occupied his time, is impossible. Such books as the 'Charicles' of
Becker or Wieland's 'Agathon' only increase our sense of hopelessness,
by showing that neither a scholar's learning nor a poet's fancy can
pierce the mists of antiquity. We know that it was a strange and
fascinating life, passed for the most part beneath the public eye, at
leisure, without the society of free women, without what we call a
home, in constant exercise of body and mind, in the duties of the
law-courts and the assembly, in the toils of the camp and the perils of
the sea, in the amusements of the wrestling-ground and the theatre, in
sportful study and strenuous play. We also know that the citizens of
Athens, bred up under the peculiar conditions of this artificial life,
became impassioned lovers of their city;[129] that the greatest
generals, statesmen, poets, orators, artists, historians, and
philosophers that the world can boast, were produced in the short space
of a century and a half by a city 357 numbering about 20,000 burghers.
It is scarcely an exaggeration to say with the author of 'Hereditary
Genius,' that the population of Athens, taken as a whole, was as
superior to us as we are to the Australian savages. Long and earnest,
therefore, should be our hesitation before we condemn as pernicious or
unprofitable the instincts and the customs of such a race.

 [129] Την της πόλεως δύναμιν καθ' εμεραν εργω θεωμένους και εραστας
 γιγνομένους αυτης.—Thuc. ii. 43.

The permanence of strongly marked features in of Greece, and the small
scale of the whole country, add a vivid charm to the scenery of its
great events. In the harbour of Peiræus we can scarcely fail to picture
to ourselves the pomp which went forth to Sicily that solemn morning,
when the whole host prayed together and made libations at the signal of
the herald's trumpet. The nation of athletes and artists and
philosophers were embarked on what seemed to some a holiday excursion,
and for others bid fair to realise unbounded dreams of ambition or
avarice. Only a few were heavy-hearted; but the heaviest of all was the
general who had vainly dissuaded his countrymen from the endeavour, and
fruitlessly refused the command thrust upon him. That was 'the morning
of a mighty day, a day of crisis' for the destinies of Athens. Of all
that multitude, how few would come again; of the empire which they made
so manifest in its pride of men and arms, how little but a shadow would
be left, when war and fever and the quarries of Syracuse had done their
fore-appointed work! Yet no commotion of the elements, no eclipse or
authentic oracle from heaven, was interposed between the arrogance of
Athens and sure-coming Nemesis. The sun shone, and the waves laughed,
smitten by the oars of galleys racing to Ægina. Meanwhile Zeus from the
watchtower of the world held up the scales of fate, and the balance of
Athens was wavering to its fall.

A few strokes of the oar carry us away from Peiræus to a 358 scene
fraught with far more thrilling memories. That little point of rock
emergent from the water between Salamis and the mainland, bare,
insignificant, and void of honour among islands to the natural eye, is
Psyttaleia. A strange tightening at the heart assails us when we
approach the centre-point of the most memorable battlefield of history.
It was again 'the morning of a mighty day, a day of crisis' for the
destinies, not of Athens alone, but of humanity, when the Persian
fleet, after rowing all night up and down the channel between Salamis
and the shore, beheld the face of Phoebus flash from behind Pentelicus
and flood the Acropolis of Athens with fire. The Peiræius recalls a
crisis in the world's drama whereof the great actors were unconscious:
fair winds and sunny waves bore light hearts to Sicily. But Psyttaleia
brings before us the heroism of a handful of men, who knew that the
supreme hour of ruin or of victory for their nation and themselves had
come. Terrible therefore was the energy with which they prayed and
joined their pæan to the trumpet-blast of dawn that blazed upon them
from the Attic hills. And this time Zeus, when he heard their cry, saw
the scale of Hellas mount to the stars. Let Æschylus tell the tale; for
he was there. A Persian is giving an account of the defeat of Salamis
to Atossa:—

The whole disaster, O my queen, began
With some fell fiend or devil,—I know not whence:
For thus it was; from the Athenian host
A man of Hellas came to thy son, Xerxes,
Saying that when black night shall fall in gloom,
The Hellenes would no longer stay, but leap
Each on the benches of his bark, and save
Hither and thither by stolen flight their lives.
He, when he heard thereof, discerning not
The Hellene's craft, no, nor the spite of heaven,
To all his captains gives this edict forth:
When as the sun doth cease to light the world,
359 And darkness holds the precincts of the sky,
They should dispose the fleet in three close ranks,
To guard the outlets and the water-ways;
Others should compass Ajax' isle around:
Seeing that if the Hellenes 'scaped grim death
By finding for their ships some privy exit,
It was ordained that all should lose their heads.
So spake he, led by a mad mind astray,
Nor knew what should be by the will of heaven.
They, like well-ordered vassals, with assent
Straightway prepared their food, and every sailor
Fitted his oar-blade to the steady rowlock.
But when the sunlight waned and night apace
Descended, every man who swayed an oar
Went to the boats with him who wielded armour.
Then through the ship's length rank cheered rank in concert,
Sailing as each was set in order due:
And all night long the tyrants of the ships
Kept the whole navy cruising to and fro.
Night passed: yet never did the host of Hellene
At any point attempt their stolen sally;
Until at length, when day with her white steeds
Forth shining, held the whole world under sway.
First from the Hellenes with a loud clear cry
Song-like, a shout made music, and therewith
The echo of the rocky isle rang back
Shrill triumph: but the vast barbarian host
Shorn of their hope trembled; for not for flight
The Hellenes hymned their solemn pæan then—
Nay, rather as for battle with stout heart.
Then too the trumpet speaking fired our foes,
And with a sudden rush of oars in time
They smote the deep sea at that clarion cry;
And in a moment you might see them all.
The right wing in due order well arrayed
First took the lead; then came the serried squadron
Swelling against us, and from many voices
One cry arose: Ho! sons of Hellenes, up!
Now free your fatherland, now free your sons,
Your wives, the fanes of your ancestral gods,
360 Your fathers' tombs! Now fight you for your all.
Yea, and from our side brake an answering hum
Of Persian voices. Then, no more delay,
Ship upon ship her beak of biting brass
Struck stoutly. 'Twas a bark, I ween, of Hellas
First charged, dashing from a Tyrrhenian galleon
Her prow-gear; then ran hull on hull pell-mell.
At first the torrent of the Persian navy
Bore up: but when the multitude of ships
Were straitly jammed, and none could help another,
Huddling with brazen-mouthed beaks they clashed
And brake their serried banks of oars together;
Nor were the Hellenes slow or slack to muster
And pound them in a circle. Then ships' hulks
Floated keel upwards, and the sea was covered
With shipwreck multitudinous and with slaughter.
The shores and jutting reefs were full of corpses.
In indiscriminate rout, with straining oar,
The whole barbarian navy turned and fled.
Our foes, like men 'mid tunnies, draughts of fishes,
With splintered oars and spokes of shattered spars
Kept striking, grinding, smashing us: shrill shrieks
With groanings mingled held the hollow deep,
Till night's dark eye set limit to the slaughter.
But for our mass of miseries, could I speak
Straight on for ten days, I should never sum it:
For know this well, never in one day died
Of men so many multitudes before.

After a pause he resumes his narrative by describing Psyttaleia:—

There lies an island before Salamis,
Small, with scant harbour, which dance-loving Pan
Is wont to tread, haunting the salt sea-beaches.
There Xerxes placed his chiefs, that when the foes
Chased from their ships should seek the sheltering isle,
They might with ease destroy the host of Hellas,
Saving their own friends from the briny straits.
Ill had he learned what was to hap; for when
God gave the glory to the Greeks at sea,
361 That same day, having fenced their flesh with brass,
They leaped from out their ships; and in a circle
Enclosed the whole girth of the isle, that so
None knew where he should turn; but many fell
Crushed with sharp stones in conflict, and swift arrows
Flew from the quivering bowstrings winged with murder.
At last in one fierce onset with one shout
They strike, hack, hew the wretches' limbs asunder,
Till every man alive had fallen beneath them.
Then Xerxes groaned, seeing the gulf unclose
Of grief below him; for his throne was raised
High in the sight of all by the sea-shore.
Rending his robes, and shrieking a shrill shriek,
He hurriedly gave orders to his host;
Then headlong rushed in rout and heedless ruin.


Atossa makes appropriate exclamations of despair and horror. Then the
messenger proceeds:—

The captains of the ships that were not shattered,
Set speedy sail in flight as the winds blew.
The remnant of the host died miserably,
Some in Boeotia round the glimmering springs
Tired out with thirst; some of us scant of breath
Escaped, with bare life to the Phocian bounds,
And land of Doris, and the Melian Gulf,
Where with kind draughts Spercheius soaks the soil.
Thence in our flight Achaia's ancient plain
And Thessaly's stronghold received us worn
For want of food. Most died in that fell place
Of thirst and famine; for both deaths were there.
Yet to Magnesia came we and the coast
Of Macedonia, to the ford of Axius,
And Bolbe's canebrakes and the Pangæan range,
Edonian borders. Then in that grim night
God sent unseasonable frost, and froze
The stream of holy Strymon. He who erst
Recked nought of gods, now prayed with supplication,
Bowing before the powers of earth and sky.
But when the hosts from lengthy orisons
Surceased, it crossed the ice-incrusted ford.
362 And he among us who set forth before
The sun-god's rays were scattered, now was saved.
For blazing with sharp beams the sun's bright circle
Pierced the mid-stream, dissolving it with fire.
There were they huddled. Happy then was he
Who soonest cut the breath of life asunder.
Such as survived and had the luck of living,
Crossed Thrace with pain and peril manifold,
'Scaping mischance, a miserable remnant,
Into the dear land of their homes. Wherefore
Persia may wail, wanting in vain her darlings.
This is the truth. Much I omit to tell
Of woes by God wrought on the Persian race.


Upon this triumphal note it were well, perhaps, to pause. Yet since the
sojourner in Athens must needs depart by sea, let us advance a little
way farther beyond Salamis. The low shore of the isthmus soon appears;
and there is the hill of Corinth and the site of the city, as desolate
now as when Antipater of Sidon made the sea-waves utter a threnos over
her ruins. 'The deathless Nereids, daughters of Oceanus,' still lament
by the shore, and the Isthmian pines are as green as when their boughs
were plucked to bind a victor's forehead. Feathering the grey rock now
as then, they bear witness to the wisdom and the moderation of the
Greeks, who gave to the conquerors in sacred games no wreath of gold,
or title of nobility, or land, or jewels, but the honour of an
illustrious name, the guerdon of a mighty deed, and branches taken from
the wild pine of Corinth, or the olive of Olympia, or the bay that
flourished like a weed at Delphi. What was indigenous and
characteristic of his native soil, not rare and costly things from
foreign lands, was precious to the Greek. This piety, after the lapse
of centuries and the passing away of mighty cities, still bears fruit.
Oblivion cannot wholly efface the memory of those great games while the
fir-trees rustle to the sea-wind as of old. Down the gulf we pass,
between mountain 363 range and mountain. On one hand, two peaked
Parnassus rears his cope of snow aloft over Delphi; on the other,
Erymanthus and Hermes' home, Cyllene, bar the pastoral glades of
Arcady. Greece is the land of mountains, not of rivers or of plains.
The titles of the hills of Hellas smite our ears with echoes of ancient
music—Olympus and Cithæron, Taygetus, Othrys, Helicon, and Ida. The
headlands of the mainland are mountains, and the islands are mountain
summits of a submerged continent. Austerely beautiful, not wild with an
Italian luxuriance, nor mournful with Sicilian monotony of outline, nor
yet again overwhelming with the sublimity of Alps, they seem the proper
home of a race which sought its ideal of beauty in distinction of shape
and not in multiplicity of detail, in light and not in richness of
colouring, in form and not in size.

At length the open sea is reached. Past Zante and Cephalonia we glide
'under a roof of blue Ionian weather;' or, if the sky has been troubled
with storm, we watch the moulding of long glittering cloud-lines,
processions and pomps of silvery vapour, fretwork and frieze of
alabaster piled above the islands, pearled promontories and domes of
rounded snow. Soon Santa Maura comes in sight:—

Leucatæ nimbosa cacumina montis,
Et formidatus nautis aperitur Apollo.

Here Sappho leapt into the waves to cure love-longing, according to the
ancient story; and he who sees the white cliffs chafed with breakers
and burning with fierce light, as it was once my luck to see them, may
well with Childe Harold 'feel or deem he feels no common glow.' All
through the afternoon it had been raining, and the sea was running high
beneath a petulant west wind. But just before evening, while yet there
remained a hand's-breadth between the sea and the 364 sinking sun, the
clouds were rent and blown in masses about the sky. Rain still fell
fretfully in scuds and fleeces; but where for hours there had been
nothing but a monotone of greyness, suddenly fire broke and radiance
and storm-clouds in commotion. Then, as if built up by music, a rainbow
rose and grew above Leucadia, planting one foot on Actium and the other
on Ithaca, and spanning with a horseshoe arch that touched the zenith,
the long line of roseate cliffs. The clouds upon which this bow was
woven were steel-blue beneath and crimson above; and the bow itself was
bathed in fire—its violets and greens and yellows visibly ignited by
the liquid flame on which it rested. The sea beneath, stormily dancing,
flashed back from all its crest the same red glow, shining like a
ridged lava-torrent in its first combustion. Then as the sun sank, the
crags burned deeper with scarlet blushes as of blood, and with
passionate bloom as of pomegranate or oleander flowers. Could Turner
rise from the grave to paint a picture that should bear the name of
'Sappho's Leap,' he might strive to paint it thus: and the world would
complain that he had dreamed the poetry of his picture. But who could
_dream_ anything so wild and yet so definite? Only the passion of
orchestras, the fire-flight of the last movement of the C minor
symphony, can in the realms of art give utterance to the spirit of
scenes like this.




INDEX


Aar, the, i. 20

Abano, ii. 98

Abruzzi, the, ii. 34; iii. 230, 235, 236

Acciaiuoli, Agnolo, ii. 226

Acciauoli, the, iii. 98

Accolti, Bernardo, ii. 83

Accona, iii. 72, 74

Accoramboni, Camillo, ii. 91:

Claudio, ii. 89:


Flaminio, ii. 91, 99, 100, 103 foll., 118 foll., 126:

Marcello, ii. 91 foll., 99, 102, 103, 105:

Mario, ii. 91:

Ottavio, ii. 91:

Scipione, ii. 91:

Tarquinia, ii. 89, 92, 103:

Vittoria, ii. 89-125


Achilles, iii. 286

Achradina, iii. 321, 324

Aci, iii. 287

Aci Castello, iii. 284

Acis and Galatea, iii. 284, 285

Acropolis, the, iii. 339, 344, 347

Actium, iii. 364

Adda, the, i. 50, 51, 62, 63, 174

Addison, i. 3

Adelaide, Queen of Lothair, King of Italy, ii. 169, 178

Adelaisie (wife of Berald des Baux), i. 80

Adrian VI. (Pope), ii. 251

Adriatic, the, ii. 1, 3, 56, 59

Æ, iii. 319

Æschylus, iii. 162, 271, 345, 358-362

Affò, Padre Ireneo, ii. 363 _note_

Agrigentines, the, iii. 335

Agrigentum, iii. 266

Ajaccio, i. 104-120

Alamanni, Antonio, ii. 328

Alban Hills, ii. 32

Albany, Countess of, i. 352

Alberti, house of the, ii. 213

Alberti, Leo Battista, i. 216; ii. 14, 18, 21-29; iii. 102

Albizzi, the, ii. 50, 209, 213 foll., 221, 224

Albizzi, Maso degli, ii. 213-215

Albizzi, Rinaldo degli, ii. 215, 218, 220, 221, 256

Albula, ii. 127, 128;


Pass of, i. 53


Aleotti, Giambattista, ii. 180

Alexander the Great, iii. 262

Alexander VI., ii. 47, 74, 184, 191, 193, 237, 363 _note_

Alexandria, ii. 19; iii. 189, 190, 201, 253

Alfieri, i. 342, 345-359

Alfonso of Aragon, i. 195, 203; ii. 189, 235

Alps, the, i. 1-67, 122, 123, 126, 133, 209, 258; ii. 8, 129, 168 _et
passim_

Amadeo, Gian Antonio, i. 146, 150, 151, 191-193, 243

Amalasuntha, daughter of Theodoric the Ostrogoth, ii. 2, 13

Amalfi, i. 103 _note_; iii. 250-261

Ambrogini family, iii. 101

Ambrogini, Angelo. (_See_ Poliziano, Angelo)

Ambrogini, Benedetto, iii. 101, 102

Ampezzo, the, i. 268

Ana-Capri, iii. 231, 232, 271

Anapus, the, iii. 326, 328

Anchises, iii. 319

Ancona, i. 196, 198; ii. 14, 38, 45, 55, 102, 199; iii. 111

Ancona, Professor d', ii. 276 _note_

Andrea, Giovann', i. 318

Andreini, ii. 269

Angeli, Niccolo, iii. 151

Angelico, Fra, i. 100, 240; ii. 49; iii. 35, 61, 147-149, 151, 248

Angelo, S., ii. 96

Angelo, Giovan. (_See_ Pius IV.)

Angiolieri, Cecco, iii. 1 2

Anguillara, Deifobo, Count of, i. 202

Anjou, house of, ii. 188

Ansano, S., iii. 70

Anselmi, ii. 158

Antegnate, i. 197

Antelao, i. 268, 283

Antibes, i. 102

Antinoë, iii. 191, 205

Antinoopolis, iii. 191, 205

Antinous, iii. 184-197, 200-229

Antipater, iii. 322, 362

Antiquari, Jacobo, iii. 126 _note_

Antonio da Venafro, ii. 47

Aosta, i. 2

Apennines, the, i. 45, 99, 133; ii. 7, 8, 37, 45, 56, 62, 65, 66, 132
foll., 145, 168; iii. 91 _et passim_

Apollonius of Tyana, iii. 216

Apulia, i. 87 _note_; iii. 305

Aquaviva, Dominico d', ii. 94

Aquila, i. 196

Aragazzi, Bartolommeo, iii. 95-100

Aragon, Kings of, i. 79

Arausio, i. 68

Archimedes, iii. 325

Arcipreti family, the, iii. 113

Ardoin of Milan, iii. 299, 300

Aretine, the, ii. 83

Aretino, Pietro, ii. 91

Aretino, Spinello, iii. 304

Aretusi, Cesare, ii. 149 _note_

Arezzo, ii. 214; iii. 7, 91, 96, 151 _note_;


Bishop of, iii. 74


Ariosto, i. 71; ii. 66, 160, 168, 261, 264, 265, 267, 269, 273, 280,
336, 343

Aristides, iii. 196

Aristophanes, i. 84 _note_; iii. 161, 341, 351, 353

Aristotle, i. 249; ii. 74; iii. 309

Aristoxenus, iii. 262, 263

Arles, i. 76-81;


King of, i. 79


Arno, the, iii. 91;


valley of, iii. 41


Arosa, valley of, i. 33

Arqua, i. 167, 168

Arrian, iii. 205

Aruns, iii. 94

Ascham, Roger, ii. 265, 266

Asciano, iii. 86, 87

Asinarus, iii. 327

Assisi, i. 137; ii. 35, 39, 43, 44, 46; iii. 35, 68, 111, 114, 140

Asso, the, iii. 108

Asti, i. 347, 348; ii. 193, 197

Astolphus, ii. 2

Athens, i. 243; iii. 156, 169, 182, 188, 207, 323, 339-364

Athens, Duke of, ii. 207, 208, 233 _note_

Atrani, iii. 251, 254

Attendolo, Sforza, i. 195; ii. 71

Atti, Isotta degli, ii. 17 and _note_, 20

Augustine, S., i. 232

Augustus, Emperor, ii. 1, 14; iii. 215

Aurelius, Marcus, iii. 164, 200

Ausonias, iii. 268

Aversa, iii. 253, 299, 300

Avignon, i. 69-71, 77, 81, 86; ii. 136; iii. 51, 74

Azzo (progenitor of Este and Brunswick), ii. 175

Azzo (son of Sigifredo), ii. 169


Badrutt, Herr Caspar, i. 55

Baffo, i. 259, 260

Baganza, the, ii. 184

Baglioni, the, ii. 16, 47, 71, 236; iii. 81, 113-115, 119-136

Baglioni, Annibale, iii. 132:

Astorre, iii. 113, 114, 121, 122, 125, 126:

Atalanta, iii. 116, 124, 127-129:

Braccio, iii. 134:

Carlo Barciglia, iii. 124:

Constantino, iii. 131:

Eusebio, iii. 131:

Filene, iii. 132:

Galeotto, iii. 124, 132:

Gentile, ii. 42, iii. 122, 132:

Gian-Paolo, ii. 47, 220, iii. 116, 117, 122, 125, 127, 128, 130-132:

Gismondo, iii. 122, 126, 127:

Grifone, iii. 124:

Grifonetto, ii. 47, iii. 113, 114, 124-129:

Guido, iii. 121, 126, 127:

Ippolita, iii. 131:

Malatesta, ii. 253, 254, iii. 127, 132:

Marcantonio, iii. 122, 125, 130:

Morgante, iii. 119 _note_ 2:

Niccolo, iii. 120:

Orazio, iii. 127, 132:

Pandolfo, iii. 120:

Pietro Paolo, ii. 41:

Ridolfo (1), iii. 120, 121:

Ridolfo (2), iii. 133, 134:

Simonetto, iii. 123, 124, 126:

Taddeo, iii. 131:

Troilo, iii. 122, 127


Baiæ, iii. 242

Balzac, ii. 160

Bandello, i. 155, 157, 158, 270; ii. 116, 265, 271, 277

Bandinelli, Messer Francesco, iii. 10-12

Barano, the, ii. 56-58

Barbarossa, Frederick, ii. 69, 201; iii. 7, 271, 290, 306 _note_ 2

Bari, Duke of. (_See_ Sforza, Lodovico)

Bartolo, San, iii. 59

Bartolommeo, Fra, iii. 63, 99

Basaiti, i. 269

Basella, i. 193

Basinio, ii. 18

Basle, i. 1, 2

Bassano, i. 340

Bastelica, i. 109, 113, 115

Bastia, Matteo di, i. 216

Battagli, Gian Battista, i. 216

Battifolle, Count Simone da, iii. 11

Baudelaire, iii. 280

Baveno, i. 19

Bayard, i. 113

Bazzi, Giovannantonio. (_See_ Sodoma)

Beatrice, Countess, iii. 144

Beatrice, Dante's, ii. 6

Beatrice of Lorraine, ii. 170

Beaumarchais, i. 228, 229, 234

Beaumont and Fletcher, ii. 267, 269

Becchi, Gentile, ii. 192

Beethoven, i. 10, 249; ii. 160

Belcari, Feo, ii. 305

Belcaro, iii. 66, 68

Belisarius, ii. 2; iii. 290

Bellagio, i. 186

Bellano, i. 186

Belleforest, ii. 116

Bellini, Gentile, i. 269, 270

Bellini, Gian, i. 263, 269; ii. 55, 135

Bellinzona, i. 180

Bembo, Pietro, ii. 82, 85

Benci, Spinello, iii. 94

Benedict, S., iii. 73, 81, 85, 248

Benevento, iii. 251, 252, 299

Benincasa, Jacopo (father of S. Catherine of Siena), iii. 50

Benivieni, ii. 305

Bentivogli, the, ii. 47, 178, 224

Bentivogli, Alessandro de', i. 155, 156

Bentivogli, Ercole de', ii. 224

Bentivoglio, Ermes, ii. 47

Benzone, Giorgio, i. 194

Beral des Baux, i. 79, 80

Berangère des Baux, i. 80

Berceto, ii. 131, 133

Berenger, King of Italy, ii. 169

Berenger, Raymond, i. 80

Bergamo, i. 190-207; ii. 82

Bernardino, S., iii. 69, 113

Bernardo, iii. 69-75

Bernardo da Campo, i. 61

Berne, i. 20

Bernhardt, Madame, ii. 108

Berni, ii. 270

Bernina, the, i. 37, 55-57, 60, 64, 126; ii. 128

Bernini, ii. 159

Bersaglio, i. 268

Bervic, ii. 149

Besa, iii. 190, 191, 205

Besozzi, Francesco, i. 156

Bevagna, ii. 35, 38

Beyle, Henri, ii. 102

Bianco, Bernardo, i. 177

Bibbiena, Cardinal, ii. 82, 83

Bibboni, Francesco, or Cecco, i. 327-341

Bion, i. 152; ii. 303

Biondo, Flavio, ii. 28

Bisola, Lodovico, ii. 150

Bithynia, iii. 208

Bithynium, iii. 187, 208

Blacas (a knight of Provence), i. 80

Blake, the poet, i. 101, 265; ii. 273; iii. 166, 260

Boccaccio, ii. 7, 160, 208, 260, 261, 265, 270, 272, 273, 277, 334;
iii. 16, 50, 248, 293

Bocognano, i. 109-111, 115

Bohemond, Prince of Tarentum, iii. 297, 298

Boiardo, Matteo Maria, ii. 30, 66, 269, 343

Boldoni, Polidoro, i. 183

Bologna, i. 121, 155, 192, 196, 326; ii. 29, 47, 85, 185, 224

Bologna, Gian, ii. 86

Bolsena, iii. 140, 141;

Lake of, iii. 22


Bona of Savoy (wife of Galeazzo Maria Sforza), ii. 230

Bondeno de' Roncori, ii. 178

Bonifazio (of Canossa), ii. 169, 170

Bordighera, i. 102, 103

Bordone, Paris, ii. 109

Borgia family, ii. 66, 117, 363 _note_

Borgia, Cesare, ii. 47, 48, 73, 74, 80, 83, 126, 363 _note_; iii. 131

Borgia, Lucrezia, ii. 363 _note_

Borgia, Roderigo, i. 220. (_See also_ Alexander VI.)

Borgognone, Ambrogio, i. 146-148; iii. 64

Bormio, i. 61, 180

Borromeo family, iii. 14

Borromeo, Carlo, i. 182

Borromeo, Count Giberto, i. 182

Boscoli, i. 341; ii. 246

Bosola, i. 149

Botticelli, Sandro, i. 266; ii. 29, 30; iii. 180 _note_

Bötticher, Charles, iii. 225

Bourbon, Duke of, i. 158;

Constable of, ii. 252


Bracciano, Duke of, ii. 91 foll., 104

Bracciano, second Duke of, ii. 93, 99, 101

Braccio, i. 195, 197, 204, 207; ii. 47; iii. 81

Braccio, Filippo da, iii. 124-126

Bracciolini, Poggio, iii. 96, 336

Bragadin, Aloisio, ii. 101

Bramante, i. 216, 243

Brancacci, Cardinal, iii. 96

Brancaleone, Senator, iii. 336

Brancaleoni family, ii. 66, 69

Bregaglia, i. 35;

valley of, i. 184


Brenner, the, ii. 168

Brenta, the, i. 258

Brescia, i. 63, 200; ii. 103, 169

Brest, Anna Maria, ii. 149

Brianza, the, i. 185, 186

Brolio, iii. 94

Bronte, iii. 279

Browne, Sir Thomas, i. 44; iii. 337

Browning, Robert, ii. 102, 270, 273, 281; iii. 173

Browning, Mrs., ii. 270, 271; iii. 173

Bruni, Lionardo, iii. 96, 98, 99

Buol family, the, i. 35, 36, 40, 41, 49, 61

Buol, Herr, i. 34-36

Buonaparte family, the, i. 119, 120

Buonarroti, Michel Angelo, i. 176, 193, 221, 236, 243, 326; ii. 21, 30,
40, 152, 158, 160, 161, 178, 253, 332; iii. 20, 22, 145, 146, 150, 154,
161

Buonconvento, iii. 72, 76

Burano, i. 258

Burgundy, Duke of, i. 202, 203

Burne-Jones, ii. 29

Busti, Agostino, i. 159, 161, 193

Byron, i. 280; ii. 7, 13, 15, 146, 162, 270, 271


Cadenabbia, i. 121, 173

Cadore, i. 267

Cæsarea, ii. 1

Cagli, ii. 56, 69, 74

Cajano, ii. 221

Calabria, iii. 305;

mountains of, iii.? 288


Calabria, Duke of, iii. 11

Calascibetta, iii. 302

Caldora, Giovanni Antonio, i. 202

Caldora, Jacopo, i. 196

Caligula, i. 134-136; iii. 2, 156, 163, 197, 273, 274

Calles (Cagli), ii. 57

Camargue, the, i. 78, 81

Camerino, Duchy of, i. 185; ii. 47, 73

Campagna, the, ii. 32

Campaldino, ii. 206

Campanella, iii. 20, 270

Campèll (or Campbèll) family, the i. 61, 62 and _note_

Campione, i. 175

Canale, Messer Carlo, ii. 363 _note_

Cannaregio, i. 268, 269, 339

Cannes, i. 103 _note_; ii. 143

Canonge, Jules, i. 81

Canossa, ii. 163-179

Cantù, i. 340

Cap S. Martin, i. 90

Capello, Bianca, ii. 93, 126

Capponi, Agostino, ii. 246

Capponi, Niccolo, ii. 253

Capri, ii. 58; iii. 242, 256, 269-276

Caracalla, i. 135; iii. 197

Cardona, Viceroy, ii. 244

Carducci, Francesco, ii. 253, 325

Carini, Baronessa di, ii. 276

Carlyle (quoted), i. 72

Carmagnola, i. 197, 200, 208; ii. 71

Carmagnuola, Bussoni di, ii. 17 and _note_

Carpaccio, Vittore, i. 269, 270; ii. 42

Carpegna, ii. 64

Carpi, Duchy of, i. 185; ii. 168

Carpi, the princes of, i. 202

Carrara range, the, ii. 134, 146, 218, 238

Casamicciola, iii. 234, 239

Casanova, i. 259, 260

Cascese, Santi da, ii. 224

Casentino, iii. 92

Cassinesi, the, iii. 248

Cassius, Dion, iii. 191, 193, 195-197, 219

Castagniccia, i. 110

Castagno, Andrea del, ii. 233

Castellammare, i. 103 _note_; iii. 232, 250, 276

Casti, Abbé, ii. 270

Castiglione, i. 144, 145; ii. 68, 80, 82; iii. 106, 108

Castro Giovanni, mountains of, iii. 279, 302, 304, 320

Catania, i. 87 _note_; iii. 279, 280, 288, 302, 304, 325

Catherine, S. (of Alexandria), i. 136, 142, 153, 155-157, 178; iii. 55,
61

Catherine, S. (of Sienna), i. 70; iii. 48-65

Catria, iii. 73

Catullus, iii. 180

Cavalcanti, Guido, ii. 261, 308, 325, 343

Cavicciuoli, Messer Guerra, iii. 2

Cavro, i. 109

Cécile (Passe Rose), i. 81

Cefalú, iii. 291

Cellant, Contessa di, i. 157-159

Cellant, Count of, i. 158

Cellini, Benvenuto, i. 2, 189, 240, 241, 328; ii. 25

Celsano, i. 329

Celsus, iii. 211, 219, 220

Cenci, the, ii. 17, 89

Cenci, Beatrice, ii. 102, 270

Ceno, the, ii. 183, 195

Centorbi, iii. 302

Cephalonia, iii. 363

Cephissus, the, iii. 350

Cerami, iii. 304

Cervantes, ii. 160

Cesena, ii. 15, 62

Cetona, iii. 103

Chalcedon, iii. 212

Châlons, the, i. 79

Chapman, George, ii. 268

Charles IV., iii. 6

Charles V., i. 184, 185, 187, 188, 319, 338, 339; ii. 75, 202, 255, 257

Charles VIII., ii. 67, 132, 183, 189 and _note_, 191-197, 238, 328

Charles of Anjou, iii. 315 _note_

Charles the Bold, i. 202

Charles Martel, i. 75

Charles of Valois, ii. 207

Chartres, i. 243

Chateaubriand, ii. 13

Chatterton, ii. 273

Chaucer, ii. 258, 260, 261, 270, 272

Chiana, the, iii. 91; valley of, iii. 90, 97

Chianti, iii. 94

Chiara, S., ii. 36, 37

Chiarelli, the, of Fabriano, ii. 236

Chiavari, iii. 256

Chiavenna, i. 35, 53, 63, 180, 184; ii. 130, 131

Chioggia, i. 257-261

Chiozzia, i. 350, 351

Chiusi, i. 86; ii. 50, 51, 52; iii. 22, 90, 92;

Lake of, iii. 91, 94, 101


Chiusure, iii. 77, 78, 80

Chivasso, i. 19

Christiern of Denmark, i. 205

Chur, i. 49, 65

Cicero, iii. 321

Ciclopidi rocks, iii. 284

Cima, i. 263

Cimabue, iii. 35, 144

Ciminian Hills, ii. 88; iii. 22

Cini family. (_See_ Ambrogini)

Cinthio, ii. 265, 272, 277

Ciompi, the, ii. 208, 209

Cisa, i. 340

Città della Pieve, ii. 51

Città di Castello, ii. 47, 71

Ciuffagni, Bernardo, ii. 30

Clair, S., ii. 37 and _note_

Clairvaux, Abbot of, iii. 70

Claudian, ii. 57, 343, 344

Clemens Alexandrinus, iii. 204, 217, 219

Clement VI., iii. 74, 132

Clement VII., i. 221, 316, 317, 321; ii. 233, 239, 247 foll.; iii. 138
_note_, 247

Climmnus, the, ii. 35, 39

Cloanthus, iii. 319

Clough, the poet, ii. 273

Clusium, iii. 93, 94

Coire, i. 183

Col de Checruit, the, i. 15

Coleridge, S.T., ii. 273; iii. 173

Colico, i. 64, 183

Collalto, Count Salici da, i. 337

Colleoni family, the, i. 194

Colleoni, Bartolommeo, i. 192-208; ii. 71

Colleoni, Medea, i. 193, 204

Collona family, ii. 187

Colma, the, i. 18

Colombini, iii. 69

Colonna, Francesco, iii. 103

Colonna, Giovanni, iii. 125, 254

Colonus, the, iii. 350

Columbus, i. 97; ii. 237

Commodus, i. 135; iii. 164

Comnena, Anna, iii. 297

Como, i. 136, 174-189

Como, Lake of, i. 50, 64, 122, 173, 174, 179, 181, 183-186

Conrad (of Canossa), ii. 178

Conrad, King of Italy, iii. 305

Conradin, iii. 298

Constance, daughter of King Roger of Sicily, iii. 297, 318

Constance of Aragon, wife of Frederick II., iii. 307 _note_

Constantinople, ii. 186; iii. 311

Contado, iii. 90

Copton, iii. 205

Corfu, i. 87 _note_, 103 _note_

Corgna, Bernardo da, iii. 125

Corinth, iii. 212, 322, 342, 362

Cormayeur, valley of, i. 9, 14-16

Correggio, i. 137, 140, 163; ii. 126, 147-162

Corsica, i. 85, 102-120; ii. 286

Corte, i. 110, 111

Corte Savella, ii. 96

Cortina, i. 268

Cortona, ii. 48-51, 214; iii. 90, 92, 151 _note_

Cortusi, the, iii. 6

Corviolo, ii. 170, 178

Coryat, Tom, i. 49

Costa (of Venice), Antonio, ii. 150

Costa (of Rome), ii. 33, 146

Courthezon, i. 81

Covo, i. 197

Cramont, the, i. 15

Credi, Lorenzo di, iii. 35

Crema, i. 194, 209-222

Cremona, i. 209, 213, 215; iii. 6

Crimisus, the, iii. 304, 319

Crotona, iii. 319

Crowne, the dramatist, ii. 159

Cuma, iii. 212

Curtius, Lancinus, i. 159, 193

Cyane, the, iii. 328

Cybo, Franceschetto, ii. 239


Dalcò, Antonio, ii. 150

Dandolo, Gherardo, i. 198

Dandolo, Matteo, iii. 133

Daniel, Samuel (the poet), ii. 263

Dante, i. 29, 80; ii. 5, 6, 13, 15, 23, 65, 70, 136, 137, 160, 170,
206, 207, 261, 262, 269, 273, 277, 305, 343; iii. 2, 19, 25, 36, 43
_note_, 67, 69, 73, 111, 144, 149, 173, 241, 317

D'Arcello, Filippo, i. 195

Davenant, Sir William, ii. 267

David, Jacques Louis, i. 71, 72

Davos, i. 20, 28-47, 49, 53, 58, 65, 183

Davos Dörfli, i. 53

De Comines, Philippe, ii. 190, 193-197; iii. 45 _note_, 69

De Gié, Maréchal, ii. 199

De Musset, iii. 163, 235

De Quincey, ii. 113; iii. 273 _note_

De Rosset, ii. 103

Dekker, Thomas, ii. 267

Del Corvo, ii. 136

Della Casa, Giovanni, i. 331, 333

Della Porta, i. 193

Della Quercia, i. 192

Della Rocca, Giudice, i. 112, 113

Della Rovere family, ii. 66 (_see also_ Rovere)

Della Seta, Galeazzo, i. 329

Demetrius, iii. 113

Demosthenes, iii. 323, 324, 326, 327

Desenzano, i. 173

Dickens, Charles, iii. 39

Dionysius, iii. 322, 325

Dischma-Thal, the, i. 49

Dolce Acqua, ii. 136

Dolcebono, Gian Giacomo, i. 153

Domenico da Leccio, Fra, iii. 83

Dominic, S., i. 221; iii. 61

Donatello, i. 150, 178; ii. 29, 30, 41; iii. 96, 97, 100

Doni, Adone, iii. 114

Doré, Gustave, i. 264; ii. 15

Doria, Pietro, i. 260

Doria, Stephen, i. 113

Dorias, the, i. 97

Dossi, Dosso, i. 166, 170, 172

Drayton, Michael, ii. 263

Druids, the, iii. 29

Drummond, William (the poet), ii. 263

Dryden, i. 2, 6; ii. 7, 270

Duccio, iii. 144, 145

Dürer, Albert, i. 345; ii. 275; iii. 260


Eckermann, ii. 157, 162

Edolo, i. 63

Edrisi, iii. 308, 309

Egypt, iii. 189, 190, 192, 210 foll.

Eichens, Edward, ii. 150

Eiger, the, i. 12

Electra, ii. 135

'Eliot, George,' ii. 270

Emilia, ii. 16

Emilia Pia, ii. 82

Empedocles, i. 87; iii. 172, 173, 174, 181, 337

Empoli, iii. 41, 87

Engadine, the, i. 48, 55, 56, 61, 183; ii. 128

Enna, iii. 302, 303 and _note_

Ennius, iii. 173, 181

Enza, the, ii. 166

Enzio, King, iii. 298

Epicurus, iii. 173, 174, 181

Eridanus, ii. 131

Eryx (Lerici), ii. 142

Este, i. 167

Este family, the, i. 166; ii. 68, 251, 268

Este, Azzo d', iii. 6:

Beatrice d', i. 150:

Cardinal d', ii. 91:

Ercole d', i. 202, ii. 236:

Guelfo d', ii. 177:

Guinipera d', ii. 17;

Lucrezia d', ii. 77, 83:

Niccolo d', ii. 236


Estrelles, the, i. 102

Etna, iii. 93, 103, 198, 279-287, 319, 325, 327

Etruscans, the, i. 49

Euganeans, the, i. 258, 281, 282; ii. 168

Eugénie, Empress, i. 119

Eugenius IV., i. 199; ii. 70, 220

Euhemerus, iii. 173

Euripides, ii. 142, 159 _note_, 335; iii. 89, 215, 340

Eusebius, iii. 197, 219

Everelina, ii. 166


Fabretti, Raffaello, iii. 209

Faenza, ii. 47

Fairfax, Edward, translator of Tasso, ii. 265

Fano, ii. 57, 59, 69

Fanum Fortunæ (Fano), ii. 57

Farnese, Alessandro, i. 317:

Julia, i. 193:

Odoardo, ii. 180:

Pier Luigi, iii. 133:

Ranunzio, ii. 180:

Vittoria, ii. 76


Farnesi family, ii. 75, 90, 117, 180; iii. 336

Faro, the, iii. 301, 320

Favara, iii. 309

Federighi, Antonio, iii. 62

Federigo of Urbino. (_See_ Urbino)

Feltre, Vittorino da, ii. 70

Ferdinand, Grand Duke of Tuscany, ii. 78

Ferdinand of Aragon, ii. 189, 191, 192, 193, 234; iii. 274, 276

Fermo, ii. 47, 90

Ferrara, i. 166, 167, 171; ii. 67, 68, 168, 169, 185, 221; iii. 6

Ferrara, Duke of, i. 206

Ferrari, Gaudenzio, i. 137-139, 141, 162-164, 177

Ferretti, Professor, ii. 179

Ferrucci, Francesco, i. 343; ii. 254

Fesch, Cardinal, i. 118

Fiesole, i. 86

Filelfo, Francesco, ii. 25

Filibert of Savoy, ii. 91

Filiberta, Princess of Savoy, ii. 247

Filippo, i. 149

Filonardi, Cinzio, iii. 133

Fina, Santa, iii. 59

Finiguerra, Maso, i. 218

Finsteraarhorn, the, ii. 130

Fiorenzuola, ii. 197, 284

Flaminian Way, ii. 55, 57

Flaxman, ii. 15

Fletcher, the dramatist, i. 358; ii. 267

Florence, i. 121, 316, 318, 319; ii. 5, 50, 145, 185, 187, 198,
201-257, 259, 305, 306; iii. 7, 10, 21, 132, 151 _note_, 317 _note_,
_et passim_

Florence, Duke of, i. 187

Fluela, the, i. 29, 37, 54

Fluela Bernina Pass, the, i. 53

Fluela Hospice, i. 59

Foglia, the, ii. 65

Foiano, ii. 50

Folcioni, Signor, i. 217

Folengo, ii. 270

Folgore da San Gemignano, ii. 53; iii. 1-20, 67, 70

Foligno, ii. 37-41, 45, 46, 52

Fondi, i. 318

Ford, John (the dramatist), ii, 267, 277

Forio, iii. 236, 237

Fornovo, ii. 132, 180-200

Fortini, iii. 68

Forulus (Furlo), ii. 57

Forum Sempronii (Fossombrone), ii. 57

Foscari, the, ii. 98

Fosdinovo, ii. 134-137

Fossato, ii. 52

Fossombrone, ii. 57, 58, 69, 85, 91

Fouquet, i. 80

Francesco, Fra, i. 269

Francesco da Carrara, iii. 6

Francesco Maria I. of Urbino. (_See_ Urbino)

Francesco Maria II. of Urbino. (_See_ Urbino)

Francia, Francesco, ii. 33

Francis I. of France, i. 113, 183, 184

Francis of Assisi, S., i. 99, 100; ii. 23, 44; iii. 57, 58, 61, 113

François des Baux, i. 81

Frederick, Emperor, i. 80

Frederick II., Emperor, iii. 297, 315 and _note_, 316-318

Frere, J.H., ii. 270

Friedrichs, ----, iii. 224

Frisingensis, Otto, iii. 7

Friuli, i. 351

Furka, ii. 130

Furlo, ii. 55

Furlo Pass, ii. 57, 58

Fusina, i. 281


Gaeta, i. 318; iii. 235

Galatea, i. 91

Galileo, ii. 27

Galli Islands, iii. 270

Gallio, Marchese Giacomo, i. 179

Gallo, Antonio di San, iii. 90, 102

Gallo, Francesco da San, ii. 253; iii. 247

Garda, i. 173;

Lake of, ii. 98, 169


Gardon, the, valley of, i. 75

Garfagnana, ii. 168

Garigliano, iii. 247

Gaston de Foix, i. 160, 161, 193; ii. 2, 10

Gattamelata (Erasmo da Narni), i. 197; ii. 41, 71

Gellias, iii. 337

Gelon, iii. 290, 304

Genoa, i. 97, 105, 113, 259; ii. 185; iii. 250, 253, 317 _note_

Gentile, Girolamo, ii. 236

George of Antioch, iii. 307, 311

Gérard, ii. 149

Gerardo da Camino, iii. 6

Ghiacciuolo, ii. 15

Ghibellines, ii. 15, 54, 69, 202 foll.; iii. 17, 43 _note_, 73, 110

Ghiberti, Lorenzo di Cino, ii. 30; iii. 145, 146

Giannandrea, bravo of Verona, ii. 85

Giardini, iii. 287

Giarre, iii. 279

Gibbon, Edward (cited), i. 346

Ginori, Caterina, i. 323, 324

Ginori, Lionardo, i. 323

Giordani, i. 326

Giorgione, i. 345; iii. 247

Giottino, ii. 233 _note_

Giotto, i. 152; ii. 43, 206; iii. 35, 145, 248

Giovanni da Fogliani, ii. 47

Giovenone, i. 139

Giovio, i. 322

Girgenti, iii. 266, 291, 302, 304, 320, 321, 332-338

Giulio Romano, i. 140, 152

Glastonbury, iii. 29, 47

Gnoli, Professor, i. 327 _note_; ii. 102 _note_, 103

Godfrey, the Hunchback, ii. 170

Godfrey, Duke of Lorraine, ii. 170

Goethe, i. 5, 6, 10, 11, 131, 164, 237; ii. 26, 157, 160, 162; iii.
172, 173, 320

Goldoni, i. 259, 345-359

Golo, the, valley of, i. 111

Gonfalonier of Florence, ii. 83, 206, 209, 243, 245, 253

Gonzaga family, ii. 68

Gonzaga, Alessandro, i. 186:

Elisabetta, ii. 73:

Grancesco, ii. 73, 194, 196, 197, 345, 363 _note_:

Giulia, i. 318:

Leonora, ii. 76


Gorbio, i. 85, 91

Gozzoli, Benozzo, i. 137; ii. 35

Graubünden, the, i. 50

Gravedona, i. 181

Gray, the poet, i. 3; ii. 273

Greece, and the Greeks, i. 101, 102, 240, 244; ii. 18; iii. 155 foll.,
260 foll., 285-287, 290-292, 320 foll., 339-364

Greene, Robert, ii. 265, 266, 267

Gregory VII., ii. 172, 173-176 (_see also_ Hildebrand)

Gregory XI., iii. 51

Gregory XIII., ii. 88, 95, 96, 97

Grenoble, i. 111

Grigioni, the, i. 49

Grindelwald, iii. 275

Grisons, Canton of the, i. 48, 49, 50, 183, 184, 186, 188

Grivola, the, i. 126

Grosseto, iii. 66

Grote, the historian, iii. 323

Grumello, i. 48, 64

Guarini, ii. 267

Guazzi, the, i. 329

Gubbio, ii. 35, 45, 52-55, 69, 85, 89, 97

Guelfs, ii. 15, 54, 202 foll.; iii. 17, 110, 112

Guérin, ii. 43

Guicciardini, Francesco, i. 319; ii. 75, 255

Guiccioli, Countess, ii. 7

Guidantonio, Count, ii. 70

Guido, iii. 184

Guidobaldo I. (_See_ Urbino)

Guidobaldo II. (_See_ Urbino)

Guillaume de Cabestan, i. 80

Guiscard, Robert, iii. 262, 297, 298, 300

Gyas, iii. 319

Gylippus, iii. 323, 324, 326, 337


Hadrian, iii. 164, 185, 187-205, 208, 210, 212, 224, 225, 226, 228,
343, 345

Halycus, the, iii. 319

Handel, iii. 40

Harmodius, ii. 135; iii. 155

Harrington, Sir John, ii. 265

Harvey, Gabriel, ii. 265

Hauteville, house of, iii. 252, 253, 254, 290, 294 foll.

Hazlitt, ii. 109

Hegesippus, iii. 188

Helbig, iii. 187

Heliogabalus, i. 135; iii. 164

Henry II. of France, i. 316

Henry III., ii. 170

Henry IV., King of Italy, ii. 170, 173-177; iii. 300 _note_

Henry V., Emperor, ii. 178

Henry VI. (of Sicily), iii. 297, 318

Henry VII., Emperor, iii. 72, 76

Hermopolis, iii. 205

Herodotus, iii. 319

Herrick, Robert, ii. 324

Hesiod, ii. 338; iii. 172, 173

Hiero II., iii. 325

Hildebrand, ii. 163, 171, 172; iii. 300 _note_ 2, 305

Himera, the, iii. 304

Hispellum (Spello), ii. 38

Hoby, Thomas, ii. 265

Hoffnungsau, i. 66

Hohenstauffen, house of, ii. 188, 202; iii. 290, 297, 315

Homer, i. 84 _note_; iii. 155, 226, 286, 287, 320

Honorius, Emperor, ii. 2, 57

Horace, ii. 273; iii. 180

Howell, James, ii. 266

Hugh, Abbot of Clugny, ii. 175, 176

Hugo, Victor, iii. 164

Hunt, Leigh, ii. 15, 146, 270

Hymettus, iii. 351


Ibn-Hamûd, iii. 304

Ictinus, iii. 267, 343

Il Medeghino. (_See_ Medici, Gian Giacomo de')

Ilaria del Caretto, iii. 98

Ilario, Fra, ii. 136, 137

Ilissus, the, iii. 350

Imola, ii. 231

Imperial, Prince, i. 119

Inn river, the, i, 54, 55

Innocent III., ii. 203

Innocent VIII., ii. 184

Innsprück, i. 111

Isabella of Aragon, ii. 192

Isac, Antonio, ii. 149

Ischia, iii. 233, 234, 236, 238, 241

Isella, i. 19

Iseo, Lake, i. 173, 174

Ithaca, iii. 364

Itri, i. 318, 319


Jacobshorn, the, ii. 131

James 'III. of England,' ii. 83

Joachim, Abbot, iii. 141, 142

Joan of Naples, i. 81, 195

John XXII., iii. 74

John XXIII., iii. 96

John of Austria, Don, ii. 77

Jonson, Ben, ii. 267, 268

Jourdain (the hangman of the Glacière), i. 72

Judith of Evreux, iii. 303

Julia, daughter of Claudius, ii. 36

Julian, iii. 197

Julier, ii. 127, 128

Julius II., i. 221; ii. 74, 83, 220; iii. 131

Jungfrau, the, i. 12

Justin Martyr, iii. 197, 219

Justinian, ii. 10, 12

Juvara, Aloisio, ii. 150

Juvenal, iii. 181, 199


Keats, the poet, ii. 262, 263, 270, 273

Kelbite dynasty, iii. 292, 301

Killigrew, the dramatist, ii. 159

Klosters, i. 30, 46


La Cisa, the pass, ii. 132, 133

La Madonna di Tirano, i. 61, 62

La Magione, ii. 46-48

La Rosa, i. 59

La Spezzia, ii. 137-139, 143

La Staffa family, the, iii. 113

Lacca, iii. 236

Lamb, Charles, ii. 110

Lampridius, iii. 197

Landona, iii. 127

Lanini, i. 139-142, 162

Lanuvium, iii. 209

Lars Porsena, ii. 52, 93

Laschi, the, i. 329

Le Prese, i. 60

Leake, Colonel, iii. 325

Lecco, i. 183, 185, 186, 188

Legnano, ii. 198

Lenz, i. 65

Leo IX., iii. 300

Leo X., i. 221; ii. 75, 88, 246; iii. 132

Leonardo. (_See_ Vinci, Leonardo da)

Leoncina, Monna Ippolita, ii. 308

Leopardi, Alessandro, i. 207, 326; ii. 62

Lepanto, ii. 77, 93

Lepidus, ii. 27

Lerici, ii. 139, 142-145

Les Baux, i. 77-81; ii. 136

Leucadia, iii. 364

Levezow, Von, iii. 211

Leyva, Anton de, i. 187

Lido, the, i. 280, 283-286; ii. 1

Liguria, the, i. 97; ii. 178, 283

Lilyboeum, iii. 294 _note_

Lioni, Leone, i. 188

L'Isle, i. 72

Livorno, ii. 145, 214

Livy, iii. 94, 171

Lo Spagna, iii. 114

Lodi, i. 216

Lomazzo, i. 137

Lombardy, i. 19, 49, 61, 121, 122, 129, 133-172, 209; ii. 129, 132,
147, 165, 168, 182

Lorenzaccio, ii. 41

Lorenzetti, Ambrogio, iii. 8, 36, 43, 44

Lorenzo, Bernardo di, iii. 105

Loreto, ii. 97

Lothair, King of Italy, ii. 169

Louis XI, ii. 237

Louis of Anjou, i. 195

Lovere, i. 174

Loyola, Ignatius, iii. 61

Lucan (quoted), i. 92

Lucca, ii. 145, 168, 170, 203, 211, 214, 218, 286; iii. 4, 98

Lucca, Pauline, i. 224, 226, 227, 229, 233, 234, 237

Lucera, iii. 315 and _note_

Lucius III., iii. 312

Lucretius, iii. 157-183

Lugano, i. 125, 128, 156, 180

Lugano, Lake, i. 122, 125, 169, 185

Luigi, Pier, ii. 180

Luini, i. 141, 148, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 162, 164-166, 177, 178;
iii. 184

Luna, Etruscan, ii. 131

Luziano of Lauranna, ii. 78

Lyly, John, ii. 268

Lysimeleia, iii. 327


Macedonia, iii. 323

Machiavelli, ii. 16, 41, 75, 117, 219, 220, 225, 231, 250; iii. 131

Macugnaga, i. 18, 20; iii. 282

Madrid, iii. 223

Magenta, i. 127

Maggiore, Lake, i. 124, 173

Magnanapoli, ii. 95, 96, 103

Magnani, Giuseppe, ii. 150

Magra, the, ii. 133, 134, 136, 238

Maitani, Lorenzo, iii. 142

Majano, Benedetto da, ii. 30

Malamocco, i. 257, 280, 281

Malaspina family, ii. 134, 136

Malaspina, Moroello, ii. 136

Malaterra, Godfrey, iii. 298

Malatesta family, ii. 15-17, 62, 66, 69, 71, 278; iii. 121

Malatesta, Gian Galeazzo, ii. 16

Malatesta, Giovanni, ii. 15

Malatesta, Sigismondo Pandolfo, i. 135, 202, 203; ii. 14, 16-21, 72;
iii. 7

Malfi, Duchess of, i. 149

Malghera, i. 339

Malipiero, Pasquale, i. 200

Maloja, i. 55, ii. 128, 129;

the Pass of, i. 53


Malpaga, i. 205, 206

Manente, M. Francesco, i. 329

Manfred, King, ii. 203

Manfredi, the, ii. 47

Manfredi, Astorre, i. 202; iii. 197

Manfredi, Taddeo, ii. 231

Maniaces, iii. 299, 301

Mansueti, i. 269

Mantegna, i. 176; ii. 100, 197; iii. 180

Mantinea, iii. 207

Mantua, i. 340; ii. 68, 70, 74, 168, 185, 345

Mantua, Dukes of, i. 186, 243

Mantua, Marquis of, ii. 194-196, 199

Marcellinus, Ammianus, iii. 197, 205

Marcellus, iii. 186

March, the, ii. 16, 187

Marches of Ancona, ii. 199

Marecchia, the, ii. 14

Maremma, the, ii. 286; iii. 69, 103

Marenzio, iii. 37

Margaret of Austria, ii. 180

Maria, Galeazzo, i. 149

Maria, Gian, i. 149

Maria Louisa, Duchess of Parma, ii. 149

Marianazzo, robber chieftain, ii. 88

Mariano family, the, i. 139

Marignano, i. 186

Marignano, Marquis of. (_See_ Medici, Gian Giacomo de')

Mark, S., ii. 19

Marlowe, Christopher, ii. 159, 181, 258, 267, 268 and _note_; iii. 228

Maroggia, i. 175

Marseilles, i. 2

Marston, the dramatist, ii. 113, 267, 268

Martelli, Giovan Battista, i. 334, 335

Martelli, Luca, i. 340

Martial, i. 2; iii. 268

Martin V., iii. 95

Martinengo, i. 203

Martinengo family, i. 204

Martini, Biagio, ii. 149

Masaccio, i. 144, 145

Masolino da Panicale, i. 144, 145; ii. 55

Mason (artist), ii. 32, 129

Massinger, Philip, ii. 267

Matarazzo, iii. 121, 122, 128, 130, 134

Matilda, Countess, ii. 165, 168, 170-173, 179; iii. 300 _note_ 2

Matteo of Ajello, iii. 308 _note_, 311

Mauro, S., iii. 248

Mayenfeld, i. 65

Mazara, iii. 281

Mazzorbo, i. 282

Medici family, i. 187, 315-344; ii. 66, 90, 117, 187, 208, 209 foll.,
245, 247, 278

Medici, Alessandro de', i. 315-327, ii. 83, 248, 251, 255:

Battista de', i. 188:

Bernardo de', i. 180:

Bianca de', ii. 233:

Casa de', i. 317:

Catherine de', i. 316, ii. 76, 255:

Clarina de', i. 182:

Claudia de', ii. 77:

Cosimo de', i. 319, ii. 225 _note_, iii. 67, 247:

Cosimo (the younger) de', i. 326, 330, 340, ii. 255, 257:

Ferdinand de', (Cardinal), ii. 93:

Francesco di Raffaello de', i. 321, ii. 93, 104:

Gabrio de', i. 188:

Gian Giacomo de' (Il Medeghino), i. 179-188, iii. 67:

Giovanni de', ii. 215, 216, 239, 244, 245, 246 (_see also_ Leo X.):

Giovanni de' (general), ii. 249:

Giuliano, son of Piero de', ii. 83, 226, 232, 233, 239, 318, 334:

Giuliano de' (Duke of Nemours), ii. 239, 244, 245, 247:

Giulio dei (_see_ Clement VII.):

Ippolito de', i. 316-319, ii. 83, 248, 251, 255:

Isabella de', ii. 93, 104, 105:

Lorenzino de', i. 315, 319-335, 338, 341-344, ii. 83, 255:

Lorenzo de' (the Magnificent), ii. 67, 184, 185, 187, 216, 218, 226
foll., 305, 311, 325, 326, 330, iii. 101:

Lorenzo de' (Duke of Urbino) (_see_ Urbino):

Maddalena de', ii. 239:

Piero de', ii. 184, 191, 192, 226, 227, 238, 328, iii. 101:

Pietro de', iii. 247:

Salvestro de', ii. 208


Mediterranean, the, i. 2; ii. 145

Melfi, iii. 300

Melo of Bari, iii. 299

Meloria, the, iii. 253

Menaggio, i. 181, 186, 188

Menander, iii. 72

Mendelssohn, i. 10

Mendrisio, i. 122, 175

Menoetes, iii. 319

Mentone, i. 83-93, 94, 98, 102, 103, 106; iii. 250

Menzoni, ii. 285

Mer de Glace, iii. 282

Meran, i. 111

Mercatello, Gentile, ii. 70

Mesomedes, iii. 201

Messina, iii. 288, 292 and _note_, 301

Mestre, i. 339

Metaurus, or Metauro, the, ii. 38, 58

Mevania (Bevagna), ii. 38

Michelangelo. (_See_ Buonarroti, Michel Angelo)

Michelhorn, ii. 127

Michelozzi, Michelozzo, iii. 96

Middleton, Thomas, ii. 267

Mignucci, Francesco, ii. 90

Milan, i. 14, 19, 20, 50, 121, 124, 136, 152-161, 168, 178, 180, 184,
195, 203, 212, 213, 223 foll.; ii. 185, 186, 190, 191, 224; iii. 151
_note_, 253, 348

Milan, Dukes of, i. 49, 149, 180, 186, 200; ii. 214

Millet, iii. 77

Milton, ii. 160, 258, 262, 263, 269, 274; iii. 25, 35, 37, 38, 158,
169, 342

Mino da Fiesole, ii. 81

Mirandola, Duchy of, i. 185; ii. 168

Mirandola, the Counts of, i. 202

Mirandola, Pico della, ii. 21

Mirano, i. 294

Miseno, iii. 238, 239, 242

Mnesicles, iii. 343

Mnestheus, iii. 319

Modena, i. 170, 172; ii. 168, 169, 221

Molsa, Francesco Maria, i. 326

Monaco, i. 92, 102

Mondello, iii. 294

Monreale, ii. 10; iii. 291, 311-314

Mont Blanc, i. 14, 126, 134:

Cenis, ii. 174:

Cervin, i. 169:

Chétif, i. 14:

Finsteraarhorn, i. 169:

Genêvre, ii. 193:

S. Michel, ii. 167:

de la Saxe, i. 14:

Solaro, iii. 230:

Ventoux, ii. 22


Montalcino, iii. 76, 79, 92

Montalembert, iii. 249

Montalto, Cardinal, ii. 90, 91, 95, 98, 103 (_see also_ Sixtus V.)

Montdragon, i. 68

Monte Adamello, i. 174, ii. 168:

Amiata, iii. 42, 69, 76, 80, 90, 91, 93, 103, 104, 106, 108:

d'Asdrubale, ii. 66:

Aureo, iii. 253:

Calvo, ii. 55:

Carboniano, ii. 168:

Cassino, iii. 248:

Catini, iii. 4:

Catria, ii. 66, 68, 69, iii. 111:

Cavallo, ii. 94:

Cetona, ii. 51, iii. 90, 91:

Coppiolo, ii. 64:

Delle Celle, ii. 168:

di Disgrazia, i. 64:

Epomeo, iii. 234, 236, 237-240, 241:

Fallonica, iii. 103, 110:

Gargano, iii. 299:

Generoso, i. 121-132, 173:

Leone, i. 174:

Nerone, ii. 66:

Nuovo, iii. 242:

Oliveto, i. 166, ii. 82, iii. 8, 69, 73, 74 foll., 151 _note_:

d'Oro, i. 105, 111:

Pellegrino, ii. 176, iii. 294:

Rosa, i. 8, 18, 105, 125, 126, 129, 134, 169:

Rosso, iii. 279:

Rotondo, i. 111, ii. 33:

Salvadore, i. 125, 128:

Soracte, ii. 51:

Viso, i. 126, 134, 169, 174


Montefalco, ii. 35-37, 39, 45, 46

Montefeltro family, ii. 62, 64, 66, 69-72

Montefeltro, Federigo di, i. 207, 208

Montefeltro, Giovanna, ii. 73

Montélimart, i. 68

Montepulciano, ii. 50, 214; iii. 68, 69, 77, 87-102, 109, 110

Montferrat, Boniface, Marquis of, i. 202

Monti della Sibilla, ii. 46

Monza, i. 199

Moors, the, i. 85, 94; iii. 296, 299, 301

Morbegno, i. 49, 51, 64, 186

Morea, the, ii. 18; iii. 339

Morris, William, ii. 271

Morteratsch, the, i. 56

Mozart, i. 223, 227, 229, 231-237, 249; ii. 153

Mühlen, ii. 128

Mulhausen, i. 1

Murano, i. 268, 282, 333; ii. 1

Murillo, ii. 153

Mürren, i. 9, 11, 14

Musset, De, i. 342

Mussulmans, iii. 290, 291, 294 _note_, 302, 305, 307, 316


Naples, ii. 185, 188, 189, 191, 193, 234, 282; iii. 221, 231, 239, 243,
253, 254, 256, 270, 276, 289, 317 _note_

Naples, Queens of, i. 79

Napoleon Buonaparte, i. 50, 106, 118, 119, 120

Narni, i. 86; ii. 34, 38

Nash, Thomas, ii. 265

Nassaus, the, i. 79

Navone, Signor Giulio, iii. 4 _note_

Naxos, iii. 288

Negro, Abbate de, iii. 78, 79

Nera, the, ii. 34, 37, 46

Nero, i. 135; iii. 156, 164

Neroni, Diotisalvi, ii. 226, 256

Niccolini, i. 342

Niccolo da Bari, S., iii. 238

Niccolo da Uzzano, ii. 215

Nice, i. 83, 106; iii. 250

Nicholas II., iii. 300

Nicholas V., ii. 28, 187, 236

Nicholas the Pisan, iii. 260

Nicolosi, iii. 283

Nikias, iii. 288, 324, 326, 327

Nile, the, iii. 190, 201, 205

Niolo, i. 112, 115

Nisi, Messer Nicholò di, iii. 2, 3

Nismes, i. 74-77

Noel, Mr. Roden, i. 10

Norcia, ii. 35, 46; iii. 92

Normans (in Sicily), iii. 290 foll.

Novara, i. 19, 124


Oberland valleys, i. 12

Oddantonio, Duke of Urbino, ii. 70

Oddi family, the, iii. 113, 119, 122, 134

Odoacer, ii. 2

Offamilio, iii. 311

Oglio, the, iii. 6

Olgiati, i. 341

Oliverotto da Fermo, ii. 47, 48

Ombrone, the, iii. 108;

Val d', iii. 90


Oortman, ii. 149

Orange, i. 68, 69

Orange, Prince of, i. 79, 316; ii. 253, 254

Orcagna, iii. 36

Orcia, the, iii. 104, 108

Ordelaffi, Cicco and Pino, i. 202

Origen, iii. 211, 219, 220 Orlando, ii. 42, 43

Ornani, the, i. 114

Orpheus, ii. 346-364

Orsini, the, ii. 47, 91, 157

Orsini, Alfonsina, ii. 239:

Cardinal, ii. 47:

Clarice, ii. 227:

Francesco, ii. 48:

Giustina, iii. 125:

Lodovico, ii. 99, 100, 101, 104, 105, 108:

Paolo, ii. 47, 48:

Paolo Giordano (_see_ Bracciano, Duke of):

Troilo, i. 327 _note_, ii. 93 and _note_:

Virginio (_see_ Bracciano, second Duke of)


Orta, i. 173

Ortler, the, i. 126; ii. 168

Ortygia, iii. 321, 326, 327

Orvieto, i. 86; ii. 51, 136, 362; iii. 5, 82, 111, 137-154

Otho I., ii. 169

Otho III., ii. 15

Otranto, ii. 235

'Ottimati,' the, ii. 242 foll., 251, 254, 255, 257

Overbeck, iii. 187

Ovid, ii. 338, 344; iii. 149, 268, 320, 341 _note_ 1


Padua, i. 152, 197, 260; ii. 41, 98, 99, 101, 104, 168, 218, 221; iii.
6

Pæstum, iii. 250, 259, 261-269

Paganello, Conte, ii. 102

Paglia, the, iii. 137

Painter, William, ii. 117, 265, 272

Palermo, ii. 10; iii. 252, 290-318

Palestrina, iii. 37

Palladio, i. 75, 256; ii. 29

Pallavicino, Matteo, ii. 91

Palma, i. 263, 269

Palmaria, ii. 142

Palmer, Richard, Bishop of Syracuse, iii. 306 _note_

Pancrates, iii. 201, 204, 205

Panizzi, ii. 43

Panormus, iii. 291

Pantellaria, iii. 294 _note_

Paoli, General, i. 111, 115

Paris, i. 20

Parker, ----, ii. 266

Parma, i. 163; ii. 131, 147-162, 168, 180, 184, 196

Parma, Duke of, ii. 76

Parmegiano, ii. 150, 158, 159

Parmenides, iii. 171, 173

Passerini, Silvio (Cardinal of Cortona), ii. 251

Passerini da Cortona, Cardinal, i. 316

Passignano, ii. 48

Pasta, Dr., i. 123, 124 _note_

Patmore, Coventry, iii. 136

Patrizzi, Patrizio, iii. 72

Paul III., i. 318; ii. 88; iii. 120, 133

Pausanias, iii. 207

Pavia, i. 146-151, 158, 176, 184, 189, 198, 212, 351; ii. 182

Pavia, Cardinal of, ii. 75

Pazzi, Francesco, ii. 232, 233, 256, 335

Pazzi, Guglielmo, ii. 233

Peiræeus, iii. 357

Pelestrina, i. 258

Pelusium, iii. 189

Pembroke, Countess of, ii. 265

Penna, Jeronimo della, iii. 124

Pentelicus, i. 210

Pepin, ii. 2

Peretti family, ii. 90, 94

Peretti, Camilla, ii. 90, 98

Peretti, Francesco, ii. 90, 92 foll., 103

Pericles, iii. 343, 350

Persephone, iii. 290

Persius, iii. 165, 172

Perugia, i. 188, 214, 350; ii. 35, 38, 46, 52, 163; iii. 53, 68, 92,
111-136

Perugino, i. 149, 239; ii. 42, 57, 59, 159; iii. 114, 116, 117-119, 184

Perusia Augusta, ii. 45, 46

Peruzzi, i. 152; ii. 49

Pesaro, ii. 59, 69, 76

Pescara, Marquis of, i. 184

Petrarch, i. 72, 73, 74 and _note_, 86, 168; ii. 22, 261, 262, 269,
273, 280, 303, 332, 344, 365-368; iii. 254-256, 308, 316

Petrucci, Pandolfo, ii. 47; iii. 82

Phædrus, iii. 188, 351

Pheidias, i. 239, 246; iii. 155, 346, 349

Philippus, iii. 319

Philistis, Queen, iii. 337

Philostratus, ii. 293

Phlegræan plains, iii. 235, 239

Phoenicians, iii. 290, 291, 335

Piacenza, i. 142-144, 195, 340; ii. 180, 197

'Piagnoni,' the, ii. 253, 254

Piccinino, Jacopo, ii. 234

Piccinino, Niccolò, i. 207; ii. 70

Piccolomini family, iii. 107

Piccolomini, Æneas Sylvius, ii. 23 (_see also_ Pius II.)

Piccolomini, Ambrogio, iii. 72, 74

Piedmont, i. 129

Pienza, iii. 77, 92, 102, 104-107

Piero della Francesca, ii. 72, 322

Piero Delle Vigne, iii. 316

Pietra Rubia, ii. 64

Pietra Santa, ii. 238

Pietro di Cardona, Don, i. 158

Pignatta, Captain, i. 319

Pindar, iii. 162, 215, 289, 332

Pinturicchio, Bernardo, ii. 42; iii. 62, 105, 114

Piranesi, i. 77; ii. 181

Pisa, i. 340; ii. 170, 203, 211, 214, 239, 244; iii. 145, 253, 304, 311

Pisani, the, ii. 30; iii. 71

Pisani, Vittore, i. 259

Pisano, Andrea, iii. 144

Pisano, Giovanni, iii. 112, 144

Pisano, Niccola, ii. 170; iii. 144, 146

Pisciadella, i. 60

Pistoja, ii. 281, 283, 287

Pitré, Signor, ii. 281 _note_

Pitta, Luca, ii. 226, 256

Pitz d'Aela, ii. 127

Pitz Badin, ii. 130

Pitz Languard, i. 55

Pitz Palu, i. 56

Pius II., i. 202; ii. 18; iii. 62, 104, 105

Pius IV., i. 182, 188

Pius IX., iii. 196

Placidia, Galla, ii. 8, 11

Planta, i. 49

Plato, i. 249; iii. 337, 341, 351, 352, 353

Pletho, Gemisthus, ii. 19 and _note_

Plinies, the, i. 177

Plutarch, iii. 199

Po, the, i. 50, 124, 134; ii. 1, 168; iii. 94

Poggio. (_See_ Bracciolini, Poggio)

Polenta, Francesca da, ii. 15

Politian, iii. 102

Poliziano, Angelo, ii. 233, 237, 273, 305, 306, 308, 309, 312, 314,
318, 322, 323, 324, 334, 335, 338, 340, 342-344, 345-364; iii. 101

Polyphemus, i. 91

Pompeii, iii. 232, 244

Pompey, iii. 189

Pontano, iii. 242, 243 _note_

Ponte, Da, i. 227, 236

Pontremoli, i. 340; ii. 133, 183, 194

Pontresina, i. 49, 53, 55

Pope, Alexander, i. 6; ii. 273; iii. 172

Porcari, Stefano, ii. 236

Porcellio, ii. 18

Porlezza, i. 184

Portici, iii. 232

Porto d' Anzio, iii. 273

Porto Fino, ii. 142

Porto Venere, ii. 140-142

Portogallo, Cardinal di, iii. 98

Portus Classis, ii. 1, 8, 11, 12

Poschiavo, i. 49, 60

Poseidonia, iii. 261 foll.

Posilippo, iii. 231, 270, 309

Poussin (cited), i. 262

Poveglia, i. 257

Pozzuoli, iii. 232, 241, 242, 243

Prato, ii. 244, 245

Procida, iii. 238, 239, 242

Promontogno, ii. 130

Provence, i. 68-82

Provence, Counts of, i. 79

Psyttaleia, iii. 358

Ptolemy, iii. 205

Puccini (Medicean) party, the, ii. 222

Pulci, ii. 269, 270

Pythagoras, ii. 24


Quattro Castelli, ii. 165, 171

Quirini, the, i. 331


Rabelais, iii. 161

Radicofani, iii. 69, 90, 91, 103, 106, 111

Ragatz, i. 65

Raimond, Count of Provence, iii. 305

Raimondi, Carlo, ii. 150

Rainulf, Count, iii. 299, 300

Raleigh, Sir Walter, ii. 264

Rametta, iii. 302

Rapallo, iii. 256

Raphael, i. 138-140, 149, 152, 239, 266; ii. 27, 37, 46, 56, 82, 83,
85, 126, 147, 152, 159; iii. 35, 114, 117, 123, 129, 141, 145, 146,
227, 228

Ravello, iii. 259

Ravenna, i. 160; ii. 1-13, 75, 244; iii. 315

Raymond, iii. 52, 53

Recanati, ii. 63

Redi, iii. 95

Reggio d'Emilia, ii. 165, 167-169, 196; iii. 288

Regno, the, i. 196

Rembrandt, i. 345; ii. 156, 275

René of Anjou, King, i. 202

Reni, Guido, ii. 86

Rhætia, i. 49

Rhætikon, the, i. 29

Rhine, the, i. 2

Rhone, the, i. 70, 71, 76, 78

Riario, Girolamo, ii. 231, 232

Ricci, the, ii. 213

Ridolfi, Cardinal, i. 318

Ridolfi, Pietro, iii. 11

Rienzi, i. 70

Rieti, valley of, ii. 34

Rimini, i. 350, 353; ii. 14-31, 60, 70

Rimini, Francesca da, ii. 270

Riviera, the, i. 2, 97, 104; ii. 143

Riviera, mountains of, ii. 142

Robbia, Luca della, ii. 29

Robustelli, Jacopo, i. 61

Rocca d' Orcia, iii. 106, 108

Roccabruna, i. 83, 91, 92

Rodari, Bernardino, i. 175

Rodari, Jacopo, i. 175

Rodari, Tommaso, i. 175, 176

Roger of Hauteville, iii. 295 and _note_, 296 foll.

Roger (the younger) of Hauteville, King of Sicily, iii. 252, 253, 293,
305, 307-311, 318

Rogers, Samuel, ii. 270

Roland, ii. 42, 43

Roma, Antonio da, i. 328, 329

Romagna, ii. 16, 73, 185, 187, 199

Romano, i. 197

Romano, Giulio, i. 243

Rome, i. 2, 49, 68, 75, 139; ii. 10, 32, 88, 89, 187, 259; iii. 22
foll., 85, 156, 323

Ronco, the, ii. 1, 10

Rossellino, Bernardo, iii. 62, 105, 106

Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, ii. 262, 263, 270; iii. 1, 3, 17 foll.

Rousseau, i. 5, 6; ii. 27; iii. 157

Rovere, Francesco della. (_See_ Sixtus IV.)

Rovere, Francesco Maria (Duke of Urbino). (_See_ Urbino)

Rovere, Giovanni della, ii. 73

Rovere, Livia della, ii. 77

Rovere, Vittoria della, ii. 78

Rubens, i. 345

Rubicon, the, ii. 14

Rucellai family, ii. 28

Rumano, i. 204

Rusca, Francesco, i. 177

Ruskin, Mr., i. 10, 125

Rydberg, Victor, iii. 224 _note_, 227


Sabine Mountains, ii. 32, 33, 39, 88

Sacchetti, iii. 12, 13, 16

Saintrè, Jehan de, iii. 13

Salamis, iii. 358, 362

Salerno, iii. 250, 262, 268, 299

Salimbeni, house of, iii. 7

Salimbeni, Niccolò de', iii. 3

Salis, Von, family, i. 50

Salis, Von, i. 49

Salò, ii. 98

Salviati, Cardinal, i. 318

Salviati, Francesco (Archbishop of Pisa), ii. 232, 233

Salviati (Governor of Cortona), ii. 50

Salviati, Madonna Lucrezia, i. 320

Salviati, Madonna Maria, i. 320

Samaden, i. 48, 53, 55

Samminiato, iii. 98

Sampiero, i. 112, 113-115

Sanazzaro, ii. 264 and _note_ 1

S. Agnese, i. 85

S. Erasmo, i. 256, 283

S. Gilles, i. 81, 82

S. Pietro, i. 258

S. Spirito, i. 257

San Gemignano, iii. 3, 59

San Germano, iii. 246, 305

San Giacomo, i. 63

San Lazzaro, i. 280

San Leo, ii. 64

San Marino, ii. 60, 62-64

San Martino, i. 173

San Michele, i. 268

San Moritz, i. 55, 58

San Nicoletto, i. 283, 286

San Quirico, iii. 77, 92, 102, 107-110

San Remo, i. 87 _note_, 93-98, 105; iii. 256

San Rocco, i. 265

San Romolo, i. 98-100, 103

San Terenzio, ii. 143, 144

Sangarius, the, iii. 187

Sanseverino, Roberto, i. 158

Sansovino, i. 337 _note_, ii. 17 _note_

Sant' Elisabetta, i. 283

Santa Agata, ii. 64, 90

Santa Lucia, iii. 232

Santa Maura, iii. 363.

Santi, Giovanni, ii. 56, 59

Sappho, iii. 363

Saracens, iii. 252, 263, 294 _note_, 302 foll., 308, 321

Sardinia, ii. 189, 286

Saronno, i. 137, 156, 161-166

Sarto, Andrea del, i. 345; iii. 100

Sarzana, ii. 131, 134, 143, 183, 238

Sassella, i. 48, 62

Sasso Rancio, i. 173

Savonarola, i. 171; ii. 122, 193, 237, 238, 239-242

Scala, Can Grande della, iii. 6

Scaletta, pass of the, i. 49

Scaligers, the, iii. 318

Scalza, Ippolito, iii. 147

Scandiano, Count of. ii. 67

Scheffer, Ary, ii. 15

Scheggia, ii. 55

Schiahorn, the, i. 54

Schwartzhorn, the, i. 54

Schyn, ii. 127

Sciacca, iii. 281

Scolastica, S., iii. 73

Scott, Sir Walter, ii. 273

Sebastian, S., iii. 184, 185

Seehorn, the, i. 29

Seelisberg, i. 14

Segeste, iii. 291, 319, 335

Selinus, iii. 291, 333, 335, 337

Serafino, Fra, ii. 83

Serbelloni, Cecilia, i. 180

Sergestus, iii. 319

Serio, river, i. 204

Sermini, iii. 68

Sesia, the, i. 19

Sestri, i. 103 _note_; iii. 250

Sforza family, the, i. 146, 155, 179, 184, 185, 197, 244

Sforza, Alessandro, i. 202, ii. 72:

Battista, ii. 72:

Beatrice, i. 176:

Cardinal Ascanio, ii. 91:

Francesco, i. 149, 181, 186, 198, 200, 203, 208, ii. 1717 _note_, 71,
185, 224:

Galeazzo, ii. 236:

Galeazzo Maria, ii. 185, 230, 236, iii. 117:

Giovanni Galeazzo, ii. 185, 192:

Ippolita, i. 155:

Lodovico, i. 149, ii. 185, 186, 191, 193, 194, 236, 238:

Polissena, ii. 17:

Zenobia, iii. 124, 125, 128


Shakspere, ii. 258, 262, 263, 267, 268, 271-274, 277, 335; iii. 36, 37,
166, 280, 282

Shelley, i. 5, 10, 25, 26, 87, 166, 232; ii. 138, 140, 143-145, 270,
271, 273; iii. 172, 186

Shirley, the dramatist, ii. 159

Sicily, i. 103 _note_; ii. 66, 189, 276, 281 _note_, 282; iii. 252, 279
foll., 286, 288, 290 foll., 319 foll.

Sidney, Sir Philip, ii. 263, 264, 266

Siena, i. 166, 187, 192; ii. 42, 185, 214, 281, 286; iii. 1, 7, 10, 12,
41-65, 66 foll., 92, 105 _et passim_

Sigifredo, ii. 168

Signorelli, i. 239; ii. 49, 362; iii. 35, 81, 82, 85, 145, 147-152, 154

Silarus, the, iii. 264

Silchester, i. 214

Silvaplana, ii. 128, 129

Silvretta, the, i. 31

Silz Maria, ii. 129

Simaetha, i. 140

Simeto, the, iii. 279, 304

Simon Magus, iii. 216

Simonetta, La Bella, ii. 318, 322, 335, 343

Simonides, iii. 167

Simplon, the, i. 19, 125

Sinigaglia, ii. 48; iii. 131

Sirmione, i. 173

Sixtus IV., i. 221; ii. 73, 231, 232, 234, 235

Sixtus V., ii. 90, 95, 98

Smyrna, iii. 212

Sobieski, Clementina, ii. 83

Socrates, iii. 155, 329, 351, 352, 353, 354

Soderini, Alessandro, i. 332, 334, 335, 338, 341

Soderini, Maria, i. 320

Soderini, Niccolo, ii. 226

Soderini, Paolo Antonio, ii. 192

Soderini, Piero, ii. 243-245

Sodoma, i. 141, 152, 165, 166; iii. 63, 81, 82-84, 184

Sogliano, ii. 15

Solari, Andrea, i. 148

Solari, Cristoforo (Il Gobbo), i. 149, 176

Solferino, i. 127

Solon, ii. 163; iii. 172, 341

Solza, i. 194

Sondrio, i. 49, 61, 63

Sophocles, ii. 160, 161; iii. 215, 287, 345 _notes_ 1 and 2, 350

Sordello, i. 80

Sorgues river, i. 72

Sorrento, iii. 233, 250, 276-278

Sozzo, Messer, iii. 10, 11

Sparta, iii. 323

Spartian, iii. 192, 193, 197

Spartivento, iii. 288

Spello, ii. 35, 38, 39, 41-43, 45, 46

Spenser, Edmund, ii. 258, 262, 264

Spezzia, Bay of, ii. 135, 146

Splügen, i. 64

Splügen, the, i. 50, 53, 64;

valley of, i. 184


Spolentino, hills of, iii. 92

Spoleto, ii. 35, 38, 45, 46, 170; iii. 111, 120

Sprecher von Bernegg, i. 49

Stabiæ, iii. 246

Staffa, Jeronimo della, iii. 125

Stelvio, the, i. 9, 50, 61

Stephen des Rotrous, Archbishop of Palermo, iii. 306 _note_ 1

Stimigliano, ii. 34

Strabo, iii. 206

Strozzi family, ii. 75

Strozzi, Filippo, i. 318, 321, 326, 344

Strozzi (Governor of Cortona), ii. 50

Strozzi, Palla degli, ii. 222

Strozzi, Pietro, i. 332

Strozzi, Ruberto, i. 331

Suardi, Bartolommeo, i. 154

Subasio, ii. 45

Suetonius, i. 134-136; iii. 164, 196, 199, 272, 274

Sufenas, iii. 209

Superga, the, i. 133, 134

Surrey, Earl of, ii. 261-263, 271

Susa, vale of, i. 134

Süss, i. 55

Swinburne, Mr., ii. 270, 273

Switzerland, i. 1-67, 105, 129

Sybaris, ancient Hellenic city of, ii. 2 _note_; iii. 261

Syracuse, i. 87 _note_; iii. 262, 279, 288, 290, 291, 294 _note_, 304,
320-331


Tacitus, iii. 199

Tadema, Alma, i. 210

Tanagra, iii. 209

Tancred de Hauteville, iii. 294, 295

Taormina, iii. 287, 288, 304

Tarentum, iii. 263

Tarentum, Prince of, i. 79

Tarlati, Guido, iii. 74

Taro, the, i. 340; ii. 132, 183, 184, 195

Tarsus, iii. 212

Tasso, ii. 83, 264, 265, 267, 269, 273, 274, 280, 332, 337, 343

Tavignano, the, valley of, i. 111

Tedaldo, Count of Reggio and Modena, ii. 169

Tennyson, Lord, i. 4; ii. 23, 270, 273, 296; iii. 173

Terlan, i. 63

Terni, ii. 34, 253

Terracina, i. 318; iii. 235

Tertullian, iii. 219

Theocritus, i. 84, 94; ii. 304, 330, 335, 337, 355; iii. 319

Theodoric the Ostrogoth, ii. 2, 10, 11, 13

Theognis, iii. 172

Thomas à Kempis (quoted), i. 98, 100

Thomas of Sarzana, ii. 28

Thrasymene, ii. 45, 46, 48; iii. 90, 91, 101, 111

Thucydides, iii. 321-324, 327, 328, 331

Thuillier, Prefect, i. 109

Tiber, the, ii. 33, 46; iii. 112

Tiberio d'Assisi, ii. 35

Tiberius, ii. 14; iii. 271-274

Ticino, the, i. 124, 211

Tieck, R. iii. 224

Timoleon, iii. 288, 290, 304, 319, 337

Tintoretto, i. 138, 236, 262-267, 269, 281; ii. 147, 156; iii. 158

Tinzenhorn, ii. 127

Tirano, i. 49-53, 61, 62

Titian, i. 337 _note_; ii. 76, 83, 130, 153, 154; iii. 180, 247

Titus, iii. 190

Tivoli, i. 87 _note_; ii. 32; iii. 189, 198, 201, 210

Todi, iii. 111

Tofana, i. 268, 283

Tolomei family, iii. 69

Tolomei, Cristoforo, iii. 70

Tolomei, Fulvia, iii. 70

Tolomei, Giovanni, iii. 8, 70 (_see also_ Bernardo)

Tolomei, Nino, iii. 8, 70

Tommaseo, ii. 283

Tommaso di Nello, iii. 11

Torcello, i. 171, 172, 282; ii. 1

Torre dell' Annunziata, iii. 232

Torre del Greco, iii. 232

Torrensi family, the, iii. 119

Toscanella, iii. 109

Toschi, Paolo, ii. 148-150

Totila, iii. 81

Tourneur, ii. 267

Trajan, ii. 14; iii. 188

Trani, iii. 311

Trapani, iii. 319

Trasimeno, ii. 50

Trastevere, ii. 96

Trebanio, ii. 19

Trelawny, ii. 144, 146

Tremazzi, Ambrogio, i. 327 _note_

Trento, i. 340

Trepievi, the, i. 184, 188

Trescorio, i. 204

Tresenda, i. 63

Trevi, ii. 35, 39, 46, 97; iii. 111

Treviglio, i. 209

Treviso, iii. 6

Trezzo, i. 194

Trinacria, iii. 290

Trinci family, ii. 38, 41

Trinci, Corrado, ii. 40

Troina, iii. 302, 303

Tuldo, Nicola, iii. 53-55

Tunis, iii. 275

Turin, i. 134, 138, 348

Turner, J.M.W., iii. 138, 364

Tuscany, i. 187; ii. 45, 169, 234, 244, 276 foll.; iii. 41 foll., 68,
104

Tuscany, Grand Duke of, ii. 99, 170, 256

Tyrol, the, i. 89

Tyrrhenian sea, the, ii. 183


Ubaldo, S., ii. 54

Uberti, Fazio degli, iii. 10, 16

Udine, i. 351

Ugolini, Messer Baccio, ii. 362

Uguccione della Faggiuola, ii. 136; iii. 4

Ulysses, iii. 288, 320

Umbria, i. 149; ii. 32-59; iii. 68, 119 _note_ 1

Urban II., iii. 304

Urban IV., ii. 177; iii. 141, 142

Urban V., i. 70; ii. 78

Urbino, i. 203; ii. 45, 58, 66-69, 74, 78-87, 185

Urbino, Counts of, ii. 15, 70

Urbino, Federigo, Duke of, i. 203, 207, 316, 317, 326; ii. 48, 66-68,
70-73, 78-81, 231

Urbino, Prince Federigo-Ubaldo of, ii. 77, 78

Urbino, Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of, ii. 73-76, 85

Urbino, Francesco Maria II., Duke of, ii. 76-78, 86

Urbino, Guidobaldo, Duke of, ii. 73, 74, 79, 80, 83, 84

Urbino, Guidobaldo II., Duke of, ii. 76, 82

Urbino, Lorenzo de' Medici, Duke of, ii. 75, 76, 247


Valdarno, ii. 218

Valdelsa, iii. 69

Valentinian, iii. 191

Valentino, ii. 64

Valperga, Ardizzino, i. 158

Valsassina, the, i. 184

Valtelline, the, i. 35, 48-51, 53, 58, 61, 64, 180, 184, 186, 188; ii.
168; iii. 94

Valturio, ii. 18

Varallo, i. 19, 136, 138, 164

Varani, the, ii. 47, 71

Varano, Giulia, ii. 76

Varano, Madonna Maria, ii. 85

Varano, Venanzio, ii. 85

Varchi, i. 320-322, 325, 326; iii. 45 _note_

Varenna, i. 173, 186

Varese, i. 144;

Lake of, i. 124, 173, 174


Vasari, Giorgio, ii. 26, 28; iii. 83, 84, 145

Vasco de Gama, ii. 237

Vasto, Marquis del, i. 187

Vaucluse, i. 72-74

Velino, the, ii. 34, 46

Venice, i. 44, 167, 171, 200, 201, 206, 254-315; ii. 1, 2 and _note_,
16, 42, 102; iii. 253, 309, 317 _note_, _et passim_

Ventimiglia, i. 102

Vercelli, i. 136-142; ii. 173; iii. 82

Vergerio, Pier Paolo, i. 331

Verne, M. Jules, ii. 139

Vernet, Horace, i. 71

Verocchio, i. 193, 207

Verona, i. 212; ii. 168; iii. 6, 318

Verucchio, ii. 62

Vespasian, ii. 57

Vespasiano, Florentine bookseller, ii. 80

Vesuvius, iii. 230, 232, 234, 235, 239, 242, 245, 276

Vettori, Paolo, ii. 245

Via Mala, the, ii. 57

Viareggio, ii. 145, 146

Vicenza, i. 75, 328-330

Vico, i. 109, 112, 115

Vico Soprano, ii. 129

Victor, Aurelius, iii. 193, 195

Vietri, iii. 250

Vignole, i. 283

Villa, i. 48, 62

Villafranca, i. 83

Villani, Giovanni, iii. 8

Villani, Matteo, ii. 208; iii. 8, 16

Villeneuve, i. 70

Villon, iii. 1

Vinci, Leonardo da, i. 139, 148, 154, 349; ii. 19, 21, 27, 50, 152,
156; iii. 82, 228, 238

Vinta, M. Francesco, i. 330

Vire, Val de, ii. 291

Virgil, i. 246; ii. 6, 63, 285, 304, 338, 343; iii. 75, 144, 155, 162,
172, 180, 181, 186, 215, 268, 309, 320

Visconti family, the, i. 146, 181, 195; ii. 16, 178, 185, 224, 278;
iii. 119, 253

Visconti, Astore, i, 181, 182

Visconti, Bianca Maria, i. 199

Visconti, Ermes, i. 157

Visconti, Filippo Maria, i. 195, 197-199; ii. 215, 224, 235

Visconti, Gian Galeazzo, i. 149, 152; ii. 213

Visconti, Gian Maria, ii. 236

Vitelli, the, ii. 41, 47, 71

Vitelli, Alessandro, ii. 250

Vitelli, Giulia, iii. 132

Vitelli, Vitellozzo, ii. 47, 48

Vitellius, iii. 164

Vittoli, the, i. 114, 115

Vivarini, i. 269

Voltaire, iii. 161

Volterra, ii. 163, 214, 231; iii. 66, 69, 79, 92, 103

Volterra, Bebo da, i. 328-330, 333-341

Volterrano, Andrea, i. 336

Volturno, iii. 239

Volumnii, the, iii. 112


Walker, Frederick, ii. 129; iii. 76

Walter of Brienne. (_See_ Athens, Duke of)

Walter of the Mill, Archbishop of Palermo, iii. 306 _note_, 308

Webster, the dramatist, i. 220; ii. 103-126, 267, 271, 277

Weisshorn, the, i. 54

Whitman, Walt, ii. 24; iii. 172

Wien, i. 45

Wiesen, i. 65; ii. 127

William of Apulia, iii. 298, 299, 305

William the Bad and William the Good of Sicily, iii. 305, 306, 308, 311

Winckelman, iii. 188

Wolfgang, i. 30

Wolfswalk, the, i. 31

Wordsworth, i. 5, 6, 10, 11; ii. 262, 263, 273; iii. 172, 173

Wyatt, Sir Thomas, ii. 261, 262


Xenophanes, iii. 171, 173, 353

Xiphilinus, iii. 192


Zafferana, iii. 282, 283

Zante, iii. 363

Zeno, Carlo, i. 260

Zeus Olympius, iii. 290

Zizers, i. 65




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