Pictures from Italy




THE READER'S PASSPORT



IF the readers of this volume will be so kind as to take their 
credentials for the different places which are the subject of its 
author's reminiscences, from the Author himself, perhaps they may 
visit them, in fancy, the more agreeably, and with a better 
understanding of what they are to expect.

Many books have been written upon Italy, affording many means of 
studying the history of that interesting country, and the 
innumerable associations entwined about it.  I make but little 
reference to that stock of information; not at all regarding it as 
a necessary consequence of my having had recourse to the storehouse 
for my own benefit, that I should reproduce its easily accessible 
contents before the eyes of my readers.

Neither will there be found, in these pages, any grave examination 
into the government or misgovernment of any portion of the country.  
No visitor of that beautiful land can fail to have a strong 
conviction on the subject; but as I chose when residing there, a 
Foreigner, to abstain from the discussion of any such questions 
with any order of Italians, so I would rather not enter on the 
inquiry now.  During my twelve months' occupation of a house at 
Genoa, I never found that authorities constitutionally jealous were 
distrustful of me; and I should be sorry to give them occasion to 
regret their free courtesy, either to myself or any of my 
countrymen.

There is, probably, not a famous Picture or Statue in all Italy, 
but could be easily buried under a mountain of printed paper 
devoted to dissertations on it.  I do not, therefore, though an 
earnest admirer of Painting and Sculpture, expatiate at any length 
on famous Pictures and Statues.

This Book is a series of faint reflections - mere shadows in the 
water - of places to which the imaginations of most people are 
attracted in a greater or less degree, on which mine had dwelt for 
years, and which have some interest for all.  The greater part of 
the descriptions were written on the spot, and sent home, from time 
to time, in private letters.  I do not mention the circumstance as 
an excuse for any defects they may present, for it would be none; 
but as a guarantee to the Reader that they were at least penned in 
the fulness of the subject, and with the liveliest impressions of 
novelty and freshness.

If they have ever a fanciful and idle air, perhaps the reader will 
suppose them written in the shade of a Sunny Day, in the midst of 
the objects of which they treat, and will like them none the worse 
for having such influences of the country upon them.

I hope I am not likely to be misunderstood by Professors of the 
Roman Catholic faith, on account of anything contained in these 
pages.  I have done my best, in one of my former productions, to do 
justice to them; and I trust, in this, they will do justice to me.  
When I mention any exhibition that impressed me as absurd or 
disagreeable, I do not seek to connect it, or recognise it as 
necessarily connected with, any essentials of their creed.  When I 
treat of the ceremonies of the Holy Week, I merely treat of their 
effect, and do not challenge the good and learned Dr. Wiseman's 
interpretation of their meaning.  When I hint a dislike of 
nunneries for young girls who abjure the world before they have 
ever proved or known it; or doubt the EX OFFICIO sanctity of all 
Priests and Friars; I do no more than many conscientious Catholics 
both abroad and at home.

I have likened these Pictures to shadows in the water, and would 
fain hope that I have, nowhere, stirred the water so roughly, as to 
mar the shadows.  I could never desire to be on better terms with 
all my friends than now, when distant mountains rise, once more, in 
my path.  For I need not hesitate to avow, that, bent on correcting 
a brief mistake I made, not long ago, in disturbing the old 
relations between myself and my readers, and departing for a moment 
from my old pursuits, I am about to resume them, joyfully, in 
Switzerland; where during another year of absence, I can at once 
work out the themes I have now in my mind, without interruption:  
and while I keep my English audience within speaking distance, 
extend my knowledge of a noble country, inexpressibly attractive to 
me.

This book is made as accessible as possible, because it would be a 
great pleasure to me if I could hope, through its means, to compare 
impressions with some among the multitudes who will hereafter visit 
the scenes described with interest and delight.

And I have only now, in passport wise, to sketch my reader's 
portrait, which I hope may be thus supposititiously traced for 
either sex:

Complexion           Fair.
Eyes                 Very cheerful.
Nose                 Not supercilious.
Mouth                Smiling.
Visage               Beaming.
General Expression   Extremely agreeable.



CHAPTER I - GOING THROUGH FRANCE



ON a fine Sunday morning in the Midsummer time and weather of 
eighteen hundred and forty-four, it was, my good friend, when - 
don't be alarmed; not when two travellers might have been observed 
slowly making their way over that picturesque and broken ground by 
which the first chapter of a Middle Aged novel is usually attained 
- but when an English travelling-carriage of considerable 
proportions, fresh from the shady halls of the Pantechnicon near 
Belgrave Square, London, was observed (by a very small French 
soldier; for I saw him look at it) to issue from the gate of the 
Hotel Meurice in the Rue Rivoli at Paris.

I am no more bound to explain why the English family travelling by 
this carriage, inside and out, should be starting for Italy on a 
Sunday morning, of all good days in the week, than I am to assign a 
reason for all the little men in France being soldiers, and all the 
big men postilions; which is the invariable rule.  But, they had 
some sort of reason for what they did, I have no doubt; and their 
reason for being there at all, was, as you know, that they were 
going to live in fair Genoa for a year; and that the head of the 
family purposed, in that space of time, to stroll about, wherever 
his restless humour carried him.

And it would have been small comfort to me to have explained to the 
population of Paris generally, that I was that Head and Chief; and 
not the radiant embodiment of good humour who sat beside me in the 
person of a French Courier - best of servants and most beaming of 
men!  Truth to say, he looked a great deal more patriarchal than I, 
who, in the shadow of his portly presence, dwindled down to no 
account at all.

There was, of course, very little in the aspect of Paris - as we 
rattled near the dismal Morgue and over the Pont Neuf - to reproach 
us for our Sunday travelling.  The wine-shops (every second house) 
were driving a roaring trade; awnings were spreading, and chairs 
and tables arranging, outside the cafes, preparatory to the eating 
of ices, and drinking of cool liquids, later in the day; shoe-
blacks were busy on the bridges; shops were open; carts and waggons 
clattered to and fro; the narrow, up-hill, funnel-like streets 
across the River, were so many dense perspectives of crowd and 
bustle, parti-coloured night-caps, tobacco-pipes, blouses, large 
boots, and shaggy heads of hair; nothing at that hour denoted a day 
of rest, unless it were the appearance, here and there, of a family 
pleasure-party, crammed into a bulky old lumbering cab; or of some 
contemplative holiday-maker in the freest and easiest dishabille, 
leaning out of a low garret window, watching the drying of his 
newly polished shoes on the little parapet outside (if a 
gentleman), or the airing of her stockings in the sun (if a lady), 
with calm anticipation.

Once clear of the never-to-be-forgotten-or-forgiven pavement which 
surrounds Paris, the first three days of travelling towards 
Marseilles are quiet and monotonous enough.  To Sens.  To Avallon.  
To Chalons.  A sketch of one day's proceedings is a sketch of all 
three; and here it is.

We have four horses, and one postilion, who has a very long whip, 
and drives his team, something like the Courier of Saint 
Petersburgh in the circle at Astley's or Franconi's:  only he sits 
his own horse instead of standing on him.  The immense jack-boots 
worn by these postilions, are sometimes a century or two old; and 
are so ludicrously disproportionate to the wearer's foot, that the 
spur, which is put where his own heel comes, is generally halfway 
up the leg of the boots.  The man often comes out of the stable-
yard, with his whip in his hand and his shoes on, and brings out, 
in both hands, one boot at a time, which he plants on the ground by 
the side of his horse, with great gravity, until everything is 
ready.  When it is - and oh Heaven! the noise they make about it! - 
he gets into the boots, shoes and all, or is hoisted into them by a 
couple of friends; adjusts the rope harness, embossed by the 
labours of innumerable pigeons in the stables; makes all the horses 
kick and plunge; cracks his whip like a madman; shouts 'En route - 
Hi!' and away we go.  He is sure to have a contest with his horse 
before we have gone very far; and then he calls him a Thief, and a 
Brigand, and a Pig, and what not; and beats him about the head as 
if he were made of wood.

There is little more than one variety in the appearance of the 
country, for the first two days.  From a dreary plain, to an 
interminable avenue, and from an interminable avenue to a dreary 
plain again.  Plenty of vines there are in the open fields, but of 
a short low kind, and not trained in festoons, but about straight 
sticks.  Beggars innumerable there are, everywhere; but an 
extraordinarily scanty population, and fewer children than I ever 
encountered.  I don't believe we saw a hundred children between 
Paris and Chalons.  Queer old towns, draw-bridged and walled:  with 
odd little towers at the angles, like grotesque faces, as if the 
wall had put a mask on, and were staring down into the moat; other 
strange little towers, in gardens and fields, and down lanes, and 
in farm-yards:  all alone, and always round, with a peaked roof, 
and never used for any purpose at all; ruinous buildings of all 
sorts; sometimes an hotel de ville, sometimes a guard-house, 
sometimes a dwelling-house, sometimes a chateau with a rank garden, 
prolific in dandelion, and watched over by extinguisher-topped 
turrets, and blink-eyed little casements; are the standard objects, 
repeated over and over again.  Sometimes we pass a village inn, 
with a crumbling wall belonging to it, and a perfect town of out-
houses; and painted over the gateway, 'Stabling for Sixty Horses;' 
as indeed there might be stabling for sixty score, were there any 
horses to be stabled there, or anybody resting there, or anything 
stirring about the place but a dangling bush, indicative of the 
wine inside:  which flutters idly in the wind, in lazy keeping with 
everything else, and certainly is never in a green old age, though 
always so old as to be dropping to pieces.  And all day long, 
strange little narrow waggons, in strings of six or eight, bringing 
cheese from Switzerland, and frequently in charge, the whole line, 
of one man, or even boy - and he very often asleep in the foremost 
cart - come jingling past:  the horses drowsily ringing the bells 
upon their harness, and looking as if they thought (no doubt they 
do) their great blue woolly furniture, of immense weight and 
thickness, with a pair of grotesque horns growing out of the 
collar, very much too warm for the Midsummer weather.

Then, there is the Diligence, twice or thrice a-day; with the dusty 
outsides in blue frocks, like butchers; and the insides in white 
nightcaps; and its cabriolet head on the roof, nodding and shaking, 
like an idiot's head; and its Young-France passengers staring out 
of window, with beards down to their waists, and blue spectacles 
awfully shading their warlike eyes, and very big sticks clenched in 
their National grasp.  Also the Malle Poste, with only a couple of 
passengers, tearing along at a real good dare-devil pace, and out 
of sight in no time.  Steady old Cures come jolting past, now and 
then, in such ramshackle, rusty, musty, clattering coaches as no 
Englishman would believe in; and bony women dawdle about in 
solitary places, holding cows by ropes while they feed, or digging 
and hoeing or doing field-work of a more laborious kind, or 
representing real shepherdesses with their flocks - to obtain an 
adequate idea of which pursuit and its followers, in any country, 
it is only necessary to take any pastoral poem, or picture, and 
imagine to yourself whatever is most exquisitely and widely unlike 
the descriptions therein contained.

You have been travelling along, stupidly enough, as you generally 
do in the last stage of the day; and the ninety-six bells upon the 
horses - twenty-four apiece - have been ringing sleepily in your 
ears for half an hour or so; and it has become a very jog-trot, 
monotonous, tiresome sort of business; and you have been thinking 
deeply about the dinner you will have at the next stage; when, down 
at the end of the long avenue of trees through which you are 
travelling, the first indication of a town appears, in the shape of 
some straggling cottages:  and the carriage begins to rattle and 
roll over a horribly uneven pavement.  As if the equipage were a 
great firework, and the mere sight of a smoking cottage chimney had 
lighted it, instantly it begins to crack and splutter, as if the 
very devil were in it.  Crack, crack, crack, crack.  Crack-crack-
crack.  Crick-crack.  Crick-crack.  Helo!  Hola!  Vite!  Voleur!  
Brigand!  Hi hi hi!  En r-r-r-r-r-route!  Whip, wheels, driver, 
stones, beggars, children, crack, crack, crack; helo! hola! charite 
pour l'amour de Dieu! crick-crack-crick-crack; crick, crick, crick; 
bump, jolt, crack, bump, crick-crack; round the corner, up the 
narrow street, down the paved hill on the other side; in the 
gutter; bump, bump; jolt, jog, crick, crick, crick; crack, crack, 
crack; into the shop-windows on the left-hand side of the street, 
preliminary to a sweeping turn into the wooden archway on the 
right; rumble, rumble, rumble; clatter, clatter, clatter; crick, 
crick, crick; and here we are in the yard of the Hotel de l'Ecu 
d'Or; used up, gone out, smoking, spent, exhausted; but sometimes 
making a false start unexpectedly, with nothing coming of it - like 
a firework to the last!

The landlady of the Hotel de l'Ecu d'Or is here; and the landlord 
of the Hotel de l'Ecu d'Or is here; and the femme de chambre of the 
Hotel de l'Ecu d'Or is here; and a gentleman in a glazed cap, with 
a red beard like a bosom friend, who is staying at the Hotel de 
l'Ecu d'Or, is here; and Monsieur le Cure is walking up and down in 
a corner of the yard by himself, with a shovel hat upon his head, 
and a black gown on his back, and a book in one hand, and an 
umbrella in the other; and everybody, except Monsieur le Cure, is 
open-mouthed and open-eyed, for the opening of the carriage-door.  
The landlord of the Hotel de l'Ecu d'Or, dotes to that extent upon 
the Courier, that he can hardly wait for his coming down from the 
box, but embraces his very legs and boot-heels as he descends.  'My 
Courier!  My brave Courier!  My friend!  My brother!'  The landlady 
loves him, the femme de chambre blesses him, the garcon worships 
him.  The Courier asks if his letter has been received?  It has, it 
has.  Are the rooms prepared?  They are, they are.  The best rooms 
for my noble Courier.  The rooms of state for my gallant Courier; 
the whole house is at the service of my best of friends!  He keeps 
his hand upon the carriage-door, and asks some other question to 
enhance the expectation.  He carries a green leathern purse outside 
his coat, suspended by a belt.  The idlers look at it; one touches 
it.  It is full of five-franc pieces.  Murmurs of admiration are 
heard among the boys.  The landlord falls upon the Courier's neck, 
and folds him to his breast.  He is so much fatter than he was, he 
says!  He looks so rosy and so well!

The door is opened.  Breathless expectation.  The lady of the 
family gets out.  Ah sweet lady!  Beautiful lady!  The sister of 
the lady of the family gets out.  Great Heaven, Ma'amselle is 
charming!  First little boy gets out.  Ah, what a beautiful little 
boy!  First little girl gets out.  Oh, but this is an enchanting 
child!  Second little girl gets out.  The landlady, yielding to the 
finest impulse of our common nature, catches her up in her arms!  
Second little boy gets out.  Oh, the sweet boy!  Oh, the tender 
little family!  The baby is handed out.  Angelic baby!  The baby 
has topped everything.  All the rapture is expended on the baby!  
Then the two nurses tumble out; and the enthusiasm swelling into 
madness, the whole family are swept up-stairs as on a cloud; while 
the idlers press about the carriage, and look into it, and walk 
round it, and touch it.  For it is something to touch a carriage 
that has held so many people.  It is a legacy to leave one's 
children.

The rooms are on the first floor, except the nursery for the night, 
which is a great rambling chamber, with four or five beds in it:  
through a dark passage, up two steps, down four, past a pump, 
across a balcony, and next door to the stable.  The other sleeping 
apartments are large and lofty; each with two small bedsteads, 
tastefully hung, like the windows, with red and white drapery.  The 
sitting-room is famous.  Dinner is already laid in it for three; 
and the napkins are folded in cocked-hat fashion.  The floors are 
of red tile.  There are no carpets, and not much furniture to speak 
of; but there is abundance of looking-glass, and there are large 
vases under glass shades, filled with artificial flowers; and there 
are plenty of clocks.  The whole party are in motion.  The brave 
Courier, in particular, is everywhere:  looking after the beds, 
having wine poured down his throat by his dear brother the 
landlord, and picking up green cucumbers - always cucumbers; Heaven 
knows where he gets them - with which he walks about, one in each 
hand, like truncheons.

Dinner is announced.  There is very thin soup; there are very large 
loaves - one apiece; a fish; four dishes afterwards; some poultry 
afterwards; a dessert afterwards; and no lack of wine.  There is 
not much in the dishes; but they are very good, and always ready 
instantly.  When it is nearly dark, the brave Courier, having eaten 
the two cucumbers, sliced up in the contents of a pretty large 
decanter of oil, and another of vinegar, emerges from his retreat 
below, and proposes a visit to the Cathedral, whose massive tower 
frowns down upon the court-yard of the inn.  Off we go; and very 
solemn and grand it is, in the dim light:  so dim at last, that the 
polite, old, lanthorn-jawed Sacristan has a feeble little bit of 
candle in his hand, to grope among the tombs with - and looks among 
the grim columns, very like a lost ghost who is searching for his 
own.

Underneath the balcony, when we return, the inferior servants of 
the inn are supping in the open air, at a great table; the dish, a 
stew of meat and vegetables, smoking hot, and served in the iron 
cauldron it was boiled in.  They have a pitcher of thin wine, and 
are very merry; merrier than the gentleman with the red beard, who 
is playing billiards in the light room on the left of the yard, 
where shadows, with cues in their hands, and cigars in their 
mouths, cross and recross the window, constantly.  Still the thin 
Cure walks up and down alone, with his book and umbrella.  And 
there he walks, and there the billiard-balls rattle, long after we 
are fast asleep.

We are astir at six next morning.  It is a delightful day, shaming 
yesterday's mud upon the carriage, if anything could shame a 
carriage, in a land where carriages are never cleaned.  Everybody 
is brisk; and as we finish breakfast, the horses come jingling into 
the yard from the Post-house.  Everything taken out of the carriage 
is put back again.  The brave Courier announces that all is ready, 
after walking into every room, and looking all round it, to be 
certain that nothing is left behind.  Everybody gets in.  Everybody 
connected with the Hotel de l'Ecu d'Or is again enchanted.  The 
brave Courier runs into the house for a parcel containing cold 
fowl, sliced ham, bread, and biscuits, for lunch; hands it into the 
coach; and runs back again.

What has he got in his hand now?  More cucumbers?  No.  A long 
strip of paper.  It's the bill.

The brave Courier has two belts on, this morning:  one supporting 
the purse:  another, a mighty good sort of leathern bottle, filled 
to the throat with the best light Bordeaux wine in the house.  He 
never pays the bill till this bottle is full.  Then he disputes it.

He disputes it now, violently.  He is still the landlord's brother, 
but by another father or mother.  He is not so nearly related to 
him as he was last night.  The landlord scratches his head.  The 
brave Courier points to certain figures in the bill, and intimates 
that if they remain there, the Hotel de l'Ecu d'Or is thenceforth 
and for ever an hotel de l'Ecu de cuivre.  The landlord goes into a 
little counting-house.  The brave Courier follows, forces the bill 
and a pen into his hand, and talks more rapidly than ever.  The 
landlord takes the pen.  The Courier smiles.  The landlord makes an 
alteration.  The Courier cuts a joke.  The landlord is 
affectionate, but not weakly so.  He bears it like a man.  He 
shakes hands with his brave brother, but he don't hug him.  Still, 
he loves his brother; for he knows that he will be returning that 
way, one of these fine days, with another family, and he foresees 
that his heart will yearn towards him again.  The brave Courier 
traverses all round the carriage once, looks at the drag, inspects 
the wheels, jumps up, gives the word, and away we go!

It is market morning.  The market is held in the little square 
outside in front of the cathedral.  It is crowded with men and 
women, in blue, in red, in green, in white; with canvassed stalls; 
and fluttering merchandise.  The country people are grouped about, 
with their clean baskets before them.  Here, the lace-sellers; 
there, the butter and egg-sellers; there, the fruit-sellers; there, 
the shoe-makers.  The whole place looks as if it were the stage of 
some great theatre, and the curtain had just run up, for a 
picturesque ballet.  And there is the cathedral to boot:  scene-
like:  all grim, and swarthy, and mouldering, and cold:  just 
splashing the pavement in one place with faint purple drops, as the 
morning sun, entering by a little window on the eastern side, 
struggles through some stained glass panes, on the western.

In five minutes we have passed the iron cross, with a little ragged 
kneeling-place of turf before it, in the outskirts of the town; and 
are again upon the road.



CHAPTER II - LYONS, THE RHONE, AND THE GOBLIN OF AVIGNON



CHALONS is a fair resting-place, in right of its good inn on the 
bank of the river, and the little steamboats, gay with green and 
red paint, that come and go upon it:  which make up a pleasant and 
refreshing scene, after the dusty roads.  But, unless you would 
like to dwell on an enormous plain, with jagged rows of irregular 
poplars on it, that look in the distance like so many combs with 
broken teeth:  and unless you would like to pass your life without 
the possibility of going up-hill, or going up anything but stairs:  
you would hardly approve of Chalons as a place of residence.

You would probably like it better, however, than Lyons:  which you 
may reach, if you will, in one of the before-mentioned steamboats, 
in eight hours.

What a city Lyons is!  Talk about people feeling, at certain 
unlucky times, as if they had tumbled from the clouds!  Here is a 
whole town that is tumbled, anyhow, out of the sky; having been 
first caught up, like other stones that tumble down from that 
region, out of fens and barren places, dismal to behold!  The two 
great streets through which the two great rivers dash, and all the 
little streets whose name is Legion, were scorching, blistering, 
and sweltering.  The houses, high and vast, dirty to excess, rotten 
as old cheeses, and as thickly peopled.  All up the hills that hem 
the city in, these houses swarm; and the mites inside were lolling 
out of the windows, and drying their ragged clothes on poles, and 
crawling in and out at the doors, and coming out to pant and gasp 
upon the pavement, and creeping in and out among huge piles and 
bales of fusty, musty, stifling goods; and living, or rather not 
dying till their time should come, in an exhausted receiver.  Every 
manufacturing town, melted into one, would hardly convey an 
impression of Lyons as it presented itself to me:  for all the 
undrained, unscavengered qualities of a foreign town, seemed 
grafted, there, upon the native miseries of a manufacturing one; 
and it bears such fruit as I would go some miles out of my way to 
avoid encountering again.

In the cool of the evening:  or rather in the faded heat of the 
day:  we went to see the Cathedral, where divers old women, and a 
few dogs, were engaged in contemplation.  There was no difference, 
in point of cleanliness, between its stone pavement and that of the 
streets; and there was a wax saint, in a little box like a berth 
aboard ship, with a glass front to it, whom Madame Tussaud would 
have nothing to say to, on any terms, and which even Westminster 
Abbey might be ashamed of.  If you would know all about the 
architecture of this church, or any other, its dates, dimensions, 
endowments, and history, is it not written in Mr. Murray's Guide-
Book, and may you not read it there, with thanks to him, as I did!

For this reason, I should abstain from mentioning the curious clock 
in Lyons Cathedral, if it were not for a small mistake I made, in 
connection with that piece of mechanism.  The keeper of the church 
was very anxious it should be shown; partly for the honour of the 
establishment and the town; and partly, perhaps, because of his 
deriving a percentage from the additional consideration.  However 
that may be, it was set in motion, and thereupon a host of little 
doors flew open, and innumerable little figures staggered out of 
them, and jerked themselves back again, with that special 
unsteadiness of purpose, and hitching in the gait, which usually 
attaches to figures that are moved by clock-work.  Meanwhile, the 
Sacristan stood explaining these wonders, and pointing them out, 
severally, with a wand.  There was a centre puppet of the Virgin 
Mary; and close to her, a small pigeon-hole, out of which another 
and a very ill-looking puppet made one of the most sudden plunges I 
ever saw accomplished:  instantly flopping back again at sight of 
her, and banging his little door violently after him.  Taking this 
to be emblematic of the victory over Sin and Death, and not at all 
unwilling to show that I perfectly understood the subject, in 
anticipation of the showman, I rashly said, 'Aha!  The Evil Spirit.  
To be sure.  He is very soon disposed of.'  'Pardon, Monsieur,' 
said the Sacristan, with a polite motion of his hand towards the 
little door, as if introducing somebody - 'The Angel Gabriel!'

Soon after daybreak next morning, we were steaming down the Arrowy 
Rhone, at the rate of twenty miles an hour, in a very dirty vessel 
full of merchandise, and with only three or four other passengers 
for our companions:  among whom, the most remarkable was a silly, 
old, meek-faced, garlic-eating, immeasurably polite Chevalier, with 
a dirty scrap of red ribbon hanging at his button-hole, as if he 
had tied it there to remind himself of something; as Tom Noddy, in 
the farce, ties knots in his pocket-handkerchief.

For the last two days, we had seen great sullen hills, the first 
indications of the Alps, lowering in the distance.  Now, we were 
rushing on beside them:  sometimes close beside them:  sometimes 
with an intervening slope, covered with vineyards.  Villages and 
small towns hanging in mid-air, with great woods of olives seen 
through the light open towers of their churches, and clouds moving 
slowly on, upon the steep acclivity behind them; ruined castles 
perched on every eminence; and scattered houses in the clefts and 
gullies of the hills; made it very beautiful.  The great height of 
these, too, making the buildings look so tiny, that they had all 
the charm of elegant models; their excessive whiteness, as 
contrasted with the brown rocks, or the sombre, deep, dull, heavy 
green of the olive-tree; and the puny size, and little slow walk of 
the Lilliputian men and women on the bank; made a charming picture.  
There were ferries out of number, too; bridges; the famous Pont 
d'Esprit, with I don't know how many arches; towns where memorable 
wines are made; Vallence, where Napoleon studied; and the noble 
river, bringing at every winding turn, new beauties into view.

There lay before us, that same afternoon, the broken bridge of 
Avignon, and all the city baking in the sun; yet with an under-
done-pie-crust, battlemented wall, that never will be brown, though 
it bake for centuries.

The grapes were hanging in clusters in the streets, and the 
brilliant Oleander was in full bloom everywhere.  The streets are 
old and very narrow, but tolerably clean, and shaded by awnings 
stretched from house to house.  Bright stuffs and handkerchiefs, 
curiosities, ancient frames of carved wood, old chairs, ghostly 
tables, saints, virgins, angels, and staring daubs of portraits, 
being exposed for sale beneath, it was very quaint and lively.  All 
this was much set off, too, by the glimpses one caught, through a 
rusty gate standing ajar, of quiet sleepy court-yards, having 
stately old houses within, as silent as tombs.  It was all very 
like one of the descriptions in the Arabian Nights.  The three one-
eyed Calenders might have knocked at any one of those doors till 
the street rang again, and the porter who persisted in asking 
questions - the man who had the delicious purchases put into his 
basket in the morning - might have opened it quite naturally.

After breakfast next morning, we sallied forth to see the lions.  
Such a delicious breeze was blowing in, from the north, as made the 
walk delightful:  though the pavement-stones, and stones of the 
walls and houses, were far too hot to have a hand laid on them 
comfortably.

We went, first of all, up a rocky height, to the cathedral:  where 
Mass was performing to an auditory very like that of Lyons, namely, 
several old women, a baby, and a very self-possessed dog, who had 
marked out for himself a little course or platform for exercise, 
beginning at the altar-rails and ending at the door, up and down 
which constitutional walk he trotted, during the service, as 
methodically and calmly, as any old gentleman out of doors.

It is a bare old church, and the paintings in the roof are sadly 
defaced by time and damp weather; but the sun was shining in, 
splendidly, through the red curtains of the windows, and glittering 
on the altar furniture; and it looked as bright and cheerful as 
need be.

Going apart, in this church, to see some painting which was being 
executed in fresco by a French artist and his pupil, I was led to 
observe more closely than I might otherwise have done, a great 
number of votive offerings with which the walls of the different 
chapels were profusely hung.  I will not say decorated, for they 
were very roughly and comically got up; most likely by poor sign-
painters, who eke out their living in that way.  They were all 
little pictures:  each representing some sickness or calamity from 
which the person placing it there, had escaped, through the 
interposition of his or her patron saint, or of the Madonna; and I 
may refer to them as good specimens of the class generally.  They 
are abundant in Italy.

In a grotesque squareness of outline, and impossibility of 
perspective, they are not unlike the woodcuts in old books; but 
they were oil-paintings, and the artist, like the painter of the 
Primrose family, had not been sparing of his colours.  In one, a 
lady was having a toe amputated - an operation which a saintly 
personage had sailed into the room, upon a couch, to superintend.  
In another, a lady was lying in bed, tucked up very tight and prim, 
and staring with much composure at a tripod, with a slop-basin on 
it; the usual form of washing-stand, and the only piece of 
furniture, besides the bedstead, in her chamber.  One would never 
have supposed her to be labouring under any complaint, beyond the 
inconvenience of being miraculously wide awake, if the painter had 
not hit upon the idea of putting all her family on their knees in 
one corner, with their legs sticking out behind them on the floor, 
like boot-trees.  Above whom, the Virgin, on a kind of blue divan, 
promised to restore the patient.  In another case, a lady was in 
the very act of being run over, immediately outside the city walls, 
by a sort of piano-forte van.  But the Madonna was there again.  
Whether the supernatural appearance had startled the horse (a bay 
griffin), or whether it was invisible to him, I don't know; but he 
was galloping away, ding dong, without the smallest reverence or 
compunction.  On every picture 'Ex voto' was painted in yellow 
capitals in the sky.

Though votive offerings were not unknown in Pagan Temples, and are 
evidently among the many compromises made between the false 
religion and the true, when the true was in its infancy, I could 
wish that all the other compromises were as harmless.  Gratitude 
and Devotion are Christian qualities; and a grateful, humble, 
Christian spirit may dictate the observance.

Hard by the cathedral stands the ancient Palace of the Popes, of 
which one portion is now a common jail, and another a noisy 
barrack:  while gloomy suites of state apartments, shut up and 
deserted, mock their own old state and glory, like the embalmed 
bodies of kings.  But we neither went there, to see state rooms, 
nor soldiers' quarters, nor a common jail, though we dropped some 
money into a prisoners' box outside, whilst the prisoners, 
themselves, looked through the iron bars, high up, and watched us 
eagerly.  We went to see the ruins of the dreadful rooms in which 
the Inquisition used to sit.

A little, old, swarthy woman, with a pair of flashing black eyes, - 
proof that the world hadn't conjured down the devil within her, 
though it had had between sixty and seventy years to do it in, - 
came out of the Barrack Cabaret, of which she was the keeper, with 
some large keys in her hands, and marshalled us the way that we 
should go.  How she told us, on the way, that she was a Government 
Officer (CONCIERGE DU PALAIS A APOSTOLIQUE), and had been, for I 
don't know how many years; and how she had shown these dungeons to 
princes; and how she was the best of dungeon demonstrators; and how 
she had resided in the palace from an infant, - had been born 
there, if I recollect right, - I needn't relate.  But such a 
fierce, little, rapid, sparkling, energetic she-devil I never 
beheld.  She was alight and flaming, all the time.  Her action was 
violent in the extreme.  She never spoke, without stopping 
expressly for the purpose.  She stamped her feet, clutched us by 
the arms, flung herself into attitudes, hammered against walls with 
her keys, for mere emphasis:  now whispered as if the Inquisition 
were there still:  now shrieked as if she were on the rack herself; 
and had a mysterious, hag-like way with her forefinger, when 
approaching the remains of some new horror - looking back and 
walking stealthily, and making horrible grimaces - that might alone 
have qualified her to walk up and down a sick man's counterpane, to 
the exclusion of all other figures, through a whole fever.

Passing through the court-yard, among groups of idle soldiers, we 
turned off by a gate, which this She-Goblin unlocked for our 
admission, and locked again behind us:  and entered a narrow court, 
rendered narrower by fallen stones and heaps of rubbish; part of it 
choking up the mouth of a ruined subterranean passage, that once 
communicated (or is said to have done so) with another castle on 
the opposite bank of the river.  Close to this court-yard is a 
dungeon - we stood within it, in another minute - in the dismal 
tower DES OUBLIETTES, where Rienzi was imprisoned, fastened by an 
iron chain to the very wall that stands there now, but shut out 
from the sky which now looks down into it.  A few steps brought us 
to the Cachots, in which the prisoners of the Inquisition were 
confined for forty-eight hours after their capture, without food or 
drink, that their constancy might be shaken, even before they were 
confronted with their gloomy judges.  The day has not got in there 
yet.  They are still small cells, shut in by four unyielding, 
close, hard walls; still profoundly dark; still massively doored 
and fastened, as of old.

Goblin, looking back as I have described, went softly on, into a 
vaulted chamber, now used as a store-room:  once the chapel of the 
Holy Office.  The place where the tribunal sat, was plain.  The 
platform might have been removed but yesterday.  Conceive the 
parable of the Good Samaritan having been painted on the wall of 
one of these Inquisition chambers!  But it was, and may be traced 
there yet.

High up in the jealous wall, are niches where the faltering replies 
of the accused were heard and noted down.  Many of them had been 
brought out of the very cell we had just looked into, so awfully; 
along the same stone passage.  We had trodden in their very 
footsteps.

I am gazing round me, with the horror that the place inspires, when 
Goblin clutches me by the wrist, and lays, not her skinny finger, 
but the handle of a key, upon her lip.  She invites me, with a 
jerk, to follow her.  I do so.  She leads me out into a room 
adjoining - a rugged room, with a funnel-shaped, contracting roof, 
open at the top, to the bright day.  I ask her what it is.  She 
folds her arms, leers hideously, and stares.  I ask again.  She 
glances round, to see that all the little company are there; sits 
down upon a mound of stones; throws up her arms, and yells out, 
like a fiend, 'La Salle de la Question!'

The Chamber of Torture!  And the roof was made of that shape to 
stifle the victim's cries!  Oh Goblin, Goblin, let us think of this 
awhile, in silence.  Peace, Goblin!  Sit with your short arms 
crossed on your short legs, upon that heap of stones, for only five 
minutes, and then flame out again.

Minutes!  Seconds are not marked upon the Palace clock, when, with 
her eyes flashing fire, Goblin is up, in the middle of the chamber, 
describing, with her sunburnt arms, a wheel of heavy blows.  Thus 
it ran round! cries Goblin.  Mash, mash, mash!  An endless routine 
of heavy hammers.  Mash, mash, mash! upon the sufferer's limbs.  
See the stone trough! says Goblin.  For the water torture!  Gurgle, 
swill, bloat, burst, for the Redeemer's honour!  Suck the bloody 
rag, deep down into your unbelieving body, Heretic, at every breath 
you draw!  And when the executioner plucks it out, reeking with the 
smaller mysteries of God's own Image, know us for His chosen 
servants, true believers in the Sermon on the Mount, elect 
disciples of Him who never did a miracle but to heal:  who never 
struck a man with palsy, blindness, deafness, dumbness, madness, 
any one affliction of mankind; and never stretched His blessed hand 
out, but to give relief and ease!

See! cries Goblin.  There the furnace was.  There they made the 
irons red-hot.  Those holes supported the sharp stake, on which the 
tortured persons hung poised:  dangling with their whole weight 
from the roof.  'But;' and Goblin whispers this; 'Monsieur has 
heard of this tower?  Yes?  Let Monsieur look down, then!'

A cold air, laden with an earthy smell, falls upon the face of 
Monsieur; for she has opened, while speaking, a trap-door in the 
wall.  Monsieur looks in.  Downward to the bottom, upward to the 
top, of a steep, dark, lofty tower:  very dismal, very dark, very 
cold.  The Executioner of the Inquisition, says Goblin, edging in 
her head to look down also, flung those who were past all further 
torturing, down here.  'But look! does Monsieur see the black 
stains on the wall?'  A glance, over his shoulder, at Goblin's keen 
eye, shows Monsieur - and would without the aid of the directing 
key - where they are.  'What are they?'  'Blood!'

In October, 1791, when the Revolution was at its height here, sixty 
persons:  men and women ('and priests,' says Goblin, 'priests'):  
were murdered, and hurled, the dying and the dead, into this 
dreadful pit, where a quantity of quick-lime was tumbled down upon 
their bodies.  Those ghastly tokens of the massacre were soon no 
more; but while one stone of the strong building in which the deed 
was done, remains upon another, there they will lie in the memories 
of men, as plain to see as the splashing of their blood upon the 
wall is now.

Was it a portion of the great scheme of Retribution, that the cruel 
deed should be committed in this place!  That a part of the 
atrocities and monstrous institutions, which had been, for scores 
of years, at work, to change men's nature, should in its last 
service, tempt them with the ready means of gratifying their 
furious and beastly rage!  Should enable them to show themselves, 
in the height of their frenzy, no worse than a great, solemn, legal 
establishment, in the height of its power!  No worse!  Much better.  
They used the Tower of the Forgotten, in the name of Liberty - 
their liberty; an earth-born creature, nursed in the black mud of 
the Bastile moats and dungeons, and necessarily betraying many 
evidences of its unwholesome bringing-up - but the Inquisition used 
it in the name of Heaven.

Goblin's finger is lifted; and she steals out again, into the 
Chapel of the Holy Office.  She stops at a certain part of the 
flooring.  Her great effect is at hand.  She waits for the rest.  
She darts at the brave Courier, who is explaining something; hits 
him a sounding rap on the hat with the largest key; and bids him be 
silent.  She assembles us all, round a little trap-door in the 
floor, as round a grave.

'Voila!' she darts down at the ring, and flings the door open with 
a crash, in her goblin energy, though it is no light weight.  
'Voila les oubliettes!  Voila les oubliettes!  Subterranean! 
Frightful!  Black!  Terrible!  Deadly!  Les oubliettes de 
l'Inquisition!'

My blood ran cold, as I looked from Goblin, down into the vaults, 
where these forgotten creatures, with recollections of the world 
outside:  of wives, friends, children, brothers:  starved to death, 
and made the stones ring with their unavailing groans.  But, the 
thrill I felt on seeing the accursed wall below, decayed and broken 
through, and the sun shining in through its gaping wounds, was like 
a sense of victory and triumph.  I felt exalted with the proud 
delight of living in these degenerate times, to see it.  As if I 
were the hero of some high achievement!  The light in the doleful 
vaults was typical of the light that has streamed in, on all 
persecution in God's name, but which is not yet at its noon!  It 
cannot look more lovely to a blind man newly restored to sight, 
than to a traveller who sees it, calmly and majestically, treading 
down the darkness of that Infernal Well.



CHAPTER III - AVIGNON TO GENOA



GOBLIN, having shown LES OUBLIETTES, felt that her great COUP was 
struck.  She let the door fall with a crash, and stood upon it with 
her arms a-kimbo, sniffing prodigiously.

When we left the place, I accompanied her into her house, under the 
outer gateway of the fortress, to buy a little history of the 
building.  Her cabaret, a dark, low room, lighted by small windows, 
sunk in the thick wall - in the softened light, and with its forge-
like chimney; its little counter by the door, with bottles, jars, 
and glasses on it; its household implements and scraps of dress 
against the wall; and a sober-looking woman (she must have a 
congenial life of it, with Goblin,) knitting at the door - looked 
exactly like a picture by OSTADE.

I walked round the building on the outside, in a sort of dream, and 
yet with the delightful sense of having awakened from it, of which 
the light, down in the vaults, had given me the assurance.  The 
immense thickness and giddy height of the walls, the enormous 
strength of the massive towers, the great extent of the building, 
its gigantic proportions, frowning aspect, and barbarous 
irregularity, awaken awe and wonder.  The recollection of its 
opposite old uses:  an impregnable fortress, a luxurious palace, a 
horrible prison, a place of torture, the court of the Inquisition:  
at one and the same time, a house of feasting, fighting, religion, 
and blood:  gives to every stone in its huge form a fearful 
interest, and imparts new meaning to its incongruities.  I could 
think of little, however, then, or long afterwards, but the sun in 
the dungeons.  The palace coming down to be the lounging-place of 
noisy soldiers, and being forced to echo their rough talk, and 
common oaths, and to have their garments fluttering from its dirty 
windows, was some reduction of its state, and something to rejoice 
at; but the day in its cells, and the sky for the roof of its 
chambers of cruelty - that was its desolation and defeat!  If I had 
seen it in a blaze from ditch to rampart, I should have felt that 
not that light, nor all the light in all the fire that burns, could 
waste it, like the sunbeams in its secret council-chamber, and its 
prisons.

Before I quit this Palace of the Popes, let me translate from the 
little history I mentioned just now, a short anecdote, quite 
appropriate to itself, connected with its adventures.

'An ancient tradition relates, that in 1441, a nephew of Pierre de 
Lude, the Pope's legate, seriously insulted some distinguished 
ladies of Avignon, whose relations, in revenge, seized the young 
man, and horribly mutilated him.  For several years the legate kept 
HIS revenge within his own breast, but he was not the less resolved 
upon its gratification at last.  He even made, in the fulness of 
time, advances towards a complete reconciliation; and when their 
apparent sincerity had prevailed, he invited to a splendid banquet, 
in this palace, certain families, whole families, whom he sought to 
exterminate.  The utmost gaiety animated the repast; but the 
measures of the legate were well taken.  When the dessert was on 
the board, a Swiss presented himself, with the announcement that a 
strange ambassador solicited an extraordinary audience.  The 
legate, excusing himself, for the moment, to his guests, retired, 
followed by his officers.  Within a few minutes afterwards, five 
hundred persons were reduced to ashes:  the whole of that wing of 
the building having been blown into the air with a terrible 
explosion!'

After seeing the churches (I will not trouble you with churches 
just now), we left Avignon that afternoon.  The heat being very 
great, the roads outside the walls were strewn with people fast 
asleep in every little slip of shade, and with lazy groups, half 
asleep and half awake, who were waiting until the sun should be low 
enough to admit of their playing bowls among the burnt-up trees, 
and on the dusty road.  The harvest here was already gathered in, 
and mules and horses were treading out the corn in the fields.  We 
came, at dusk, upon a wild and hilly country, once famous for 
brigands; and travelled slowly up a steep ascent.  So we went on, 
until eleven at night, when we halted at the town of Aix (within 
two stages of Marseilles) to sleep.

The hotel, with all the blinds and shutters closed to keep the 
light and heat out, was comfortable and airy next morning, and the 
town was very clean; but so hot, and so intensely light, that when 
I walked out at noon it was like coming suddenly from the darkened 
room into crisp blue fire.  The air was so very clear, that distant 
hills and rocky points appeared within an hour's walk; while the 
town immediately at hand - with a kind of blue wind between me and 
it - seemed to be white hot, and to be throwing off a fiery air 
from the surface.

We left this town towards evening, and took the road to Marseilles.  
A dusty road it was; the houses shut up close; and the vines 
powdered white.  At nearly all the cottage doors, women were 
peeling and slicing onions into earthen bowls for supper.  So they 
had been doing last night all the way from Avignon.  We passed one 
or two shady dark chateaux, surrounded by trees, and embellished 
with cool basins of water:  which were the more refreshing to 
behold, from the great scarcity of such residences on the road we 
had travelled.  As we approached Marseilles, the road began to be 
covered with holiday people.  Outside the public-houses were 
parties smoking, drinking, playing draughts and cards, and (once) 
dancing.  But dust, dust, dust, everywhere.  We went on, through a 
long, straggling, dirty suburb, thronged with people; having on our 
left a dreary slope of land, on which the country-houses of the 
Marseilles merchants, always staring white, are jumbled and heaped 
without the slightest order:  backs, fronts, sides, and gables 
towards all points of the compass; until, at last, we entered the 
town.

I was there, twice or thrice afterwards, in fair weather and foul; 
and I am afraid there is no doubt that it is a dirty and 
disagreeable place.  But the prospect, from the fortified heights, 
of the beautiful Mediterranean, with its lovely rocks and islands, 
is most delightful.  These heights are a desirable retreat, for 
less picturesque reasons - as an escape from a compound of vile 
smells perpetually arising from a great harbour full of stagnant 
water, and befouled by the refuse of innumerable ships with all 
sorts of cargoes:  which, in hot weather, is dreadful in the last 
degree.

There were foreign sailors, of all nations, in the streets; with 
red shirts, blue shirts, buff shirts, tawny shirts, and shirts of 
orange colour; with red caps, blue caps, green caps, great beards, 
and no beards; in Turkish turbans, glazed English hats, and 
Neapolitan head-dresses.  There were the townspeople sitting in 
clusters on the pavement, or airing themselves on the tops of their 
houses, or walking up and down the closest and least airy of 
Boulevards; and there were crowds of fierce-looking people of the 
lower sort, blocking up the way, constantly.  In the very heart of 
all this stir and uproar, was the common madhouse; a low, 
contracted, miserable building, looking straight upon the street, 
without the smallest screen or court-yard; where chattering mad-men 
and mad-women were peeping out, through rusty bars, at the staring 
faces below, while the sun, darting fiercely aslant into their 
little cells, seemed to dry up their brains, and worry them, as if 
they were baited by a pack of dogs.

We were pretty well accommodated at the Hotel du Paradis, situated 
in a narrow street of very high houses, with a hairdresser's shop 
opposite, exhibiting in one of its windows two full-length waxen 
ladies, twirling round and round:  which so enchanted the 
hairdresser himself, that he and his family sat in arm-chairs, and 
in cool undresses, on the pavement outside, enjoying the 
gratification of the passers-by, with lazy dignity.  The family had 
retired to rest when we went to bed, at midnight; but the 
hairdresser (a corpulent man, in drab slippers) was still sitting 
there, with his legs stretched out before him, and evidently 
couldn't bear to have the shutters put up.

Next day we went down to the harbour, where the sailors of all 
nations were discharging and taking in cargoes of all kinds:  
fruits, wines, oils, silks, stuffs, velvets, and every manner of 
merchandise.  Taking one of a great number of lively little boats 
with gay-striped awnings, we rowed away, under the sterns of great 
ships, under tow-ropes and cables, against and among other boats, 
and very much too near the sides of vessels that were faint with 
oranges, to the MARIE ANTOINETTE, a handsome steamer bound for 
Genoa, lying near the mouth of the harbour.  By-and-by, the 
carriage, that unwieldy 'trifle from the Pantechnicon,' on a flat 
barge, bumping against everything, and giving occasion for a 
prodigious quantity of oaths and grimaces, came stupidly alongside; 
and by five o'clock we were steaming out in the open sea.  The 
vessel was beautifully clean; the meals were served under an awning 
on deck; the night was calm and clear; the quiet beauty of the sea 
and sky unspeakable.

We were off Nice, early next morning, and coasted along, within a 
few miles of the Cornice road (of which more in its place) nearly 
all day.  We could see Genoa before three; and watching it as it 
gradually developed its splendid amphitheatre, terrace rising above 
terrace, garden above garden, palace above palace, height upon 
height, was ample occupation for us, till we ran into the stately 
harbour.  Having been duly astonished, here, by the sight of a few 
Cappucini monks, who were watching the fair-weighing of some wood 
upon the wharf, we drove off to Albaro, two miles distant, where we 
had engaged a house.

The way lay through the main streets, but not through the Strada 
Nuova, or the Strada Balbi, which are the famous streets of 
palaces.  I never in my life was so dismayed!  The wonderful 
novelty of everything, the unusual smells, the unaccountable filth 
(though it is reckoned the cleanest of Italian towns), the 
disorderly jumbling of dirty houses, one upon the roof of another; 
the passages more squalid and more close than any in St. Giles's or 
old Paris; in and out of which, not vagabonds, but well-dressed 
women, with white veils and great fans, were passing and repassing; 
the perfect absence of resemblance in any dwelling-house, or shop, 
or wall, or post, or pillar, to anything one had ever seen before; 
and the disheartening dirt, discomfort, and decay; perfectly 
confounded me.  I fell into a dismal reverie.  I am conscious of a 
feverish and bewildered vision of saints and virgins' shrines at 
the street corners - of great numbers of friars, monks, and 
soldiers - of vast red curtains, waving in the doorways of the 
churches - of always going up hill, and yet seeing every other 
street and passage going higher up - of fruit-stalls, with fresh 
lemons and oranges hanging in garlands made of vine-leaves - of a 
guard-house, and a drawbridge - and some gateways - and vendors of 
iced water, sitting with little trays upon the margin of the kennel 
- and this is all the consciousness I had, until I was set down in 
a rank, dull, weedy court-yard, attached to a kind of pink jail; 
and was told I lived there.

I little thought, that day, that I should ever come to have an 
attachment for the very stones in the streets of Genoa, and to look 
back upon the city with affection as connected with many hours of 
happiness and quiet!  But these are my first impressions honestly 
set down; and how they changed, I will set down too.  At present, 
let us breathe after this long-winded journey.



CHAPTER IV - GENOA AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD



THE first impressions of such a place as ALBARO, the suburb of 
Genoa, where I am now, as my American friends would say, 'located,' 
can hardly fail, I should imagine, to be mournful and 
disappointing.  It requires a little time and use to overcome the 
feeling of depression consequent, at first, on so much ruin and 
neglect.  Novelty, pleasant to most people, is particularly 
delightful, I think, to me.  I am not easily dispirited when I have 
the means of pursuing my own fancies and occupations; and I believe 
I have some natural aptitude for accommodating myself to 
circumstances.  But, as yet, I stroll about here, in all the holes 
and corners of the neighbourhood, in a perpetual state of forlorn 
surprise; and returning to my villa:  the Villa Bagnerello (it 
sounds romantic, but Signor Bagnerello is a butcher hard by):  have 
sufficient occupation in pondering over my new experiences, and 
comparing them, very much to my own amusement, with my 
expectations, until I wander out again.

The Villa Bagnerello:  or the Pink Jail, a far more expressive name 
for the mansion:  is in one of the most splendid situations 
imaginable.  The noble bay of Genoa, with the deep blue 
Mediterranean, lies stretched out near at hand; monstrous old 
desolate houses and palaces are dotted all about; lofty hills, with 
their tops often hidden in the clouds, and with strong forts 
perched high up on their craggy sides, are close upon the left; and 
in front, stretching from the walls of the house, down to a ruined 
chapel which stands upon the bold and picturesque rocks on the sea-
shore, are green vineyards, where you may wander all day long in 
partial shade, through interminable vistas of grapes, trained on a 
rough trellis-work across the narrow paths.

This sequestered spot is approached by lanes so very narrow, that 
when we arrived at the Custom-house, we found the people here had 
TAKEN THE MEASURE of the narrowest among them, and were waiting to 
apply it to the carriage; which ceremony was gravely performed in 
the street, while we all stood by in breathless suspense.  It was 
found to be a very tight fit, but just a possibility, and no more - 
as I am reminded every day, by the sight of various large holes 
which it punched in the walls on either side as it came along.  We 
are more fortunate, I am told, than an old lady, who took a house 
in these parts not long ago, and who stuck fast in HER carriage in 
a lane; and as it was impossible to open one of the doors, she was 
obliged to submit to the indignity of being hauled through one of 
the little front windows, like a harlequin.

When you have got through these narrow lanes, you come to an 
archway, imperfectly stopped up by a rusty old gate - my gate.  The 
rusty old gate has a bell to correspond, which you ring as long as 
you like, and which nobody answers, as it has no connection 
whatever with the house.  But there is a rusty old knocker, too - 
very loose, so that it slides round when you touch it - and if you 
learn the trick of it, and knock long enough, somebody comes.  The 
brave Courier comes, and gives you admittance.  You walk into a 
seedy little garden, all wild and weedy, from which the vineyard 
opens; cross it, enter a square hall like a cellar, walk up a 
cracked marble staircase, and pass into a most enormous room with a 
vaulted roof and whitewashed walls:  not unlike a great Methodist 
chapel.  This is the SALA.  It has five windows and five doors, and 
is decorated with pictures which would gladden the heart of one of 
those picture-cleaners in London who hang up, as a sign, a picture 
divided, like death and the lady, at the top of the old ballad:  
which always leaves you in a state of uncertainty whether the 
ingenious professor has cleaned one half, or dirtied the other.  
The furniture of this SALA is a sort of red brocade.  All the 
chairs are immovable, and the sofa weighs several tons.

On the same floor, and opening out of this same chamber, are 
dining-room, drawing-room, and divers bed-rooms:  each with a 
multiplicity of doors and windows.  Up-stairs are divers other 
gaunt chambers, and a kitchen; and down-stairs is another kitchen, 
which, with all sorts of strange contrivances for burning charcoal, 
looks like an alchemical laboratory.  There are also some half-
dozen small sitting-rooms, where the servants in this hot July, may 
escape from the heat of the fire, and where the brave Courier plays 
all sorts of musical instruments of his own manufacture, all the 
evening long.  A mighty old, wandering, ghostly, echoing, grim, 
bare house it is, as ever I beheld or thought of.

There is a little vine-covered terrace, opening from the drawing-
room; and under this terrace, and forming one side of the little 
garden, is what used to be the stable.  It is now a cow-house, and 
has three cows in it, so that we get new milk by the bucketful.  
There is no pasturage near, and they never go out, but are 
constantly lying down, and surfeiting themselves with vine-leaves - 
perfect Italian cows enjoying the DOLCE FAR' NIENTE all day long.  
They are presided over, and slept with, by an old man named 
Antonio, and his son; two burnt-sienna natives with naked legs and 
feet, who wear, each, a shirt, a pair of trousers, and a red sash, 
with a relic, or some sacred charm like the bonbon off a twelfth-
cake, hanging round the neck.  The old man is very anxious to 
convert me to the Catholic faith, and exhorts me frequently.  We 
sit upon a stone by the door, sometimes in the evening, like 
Robinson Crusoe and Friday reversed; and he generally relates, 
towards my conversion, an abridgment of the History of Saint Peter 
- chiefly, I believe, from the unspeakable delight he has in his 
imitation of the cock.

The view, as I have said, is charming; but in the day you must keep 
the lattice-blinds close shut, or the sun would drive you mad; and 
when the sun goes down you must shut up all the windows, or the 
mosquitoes would tempt you to commit suicide.  So at this time of 
the year, you don't see much of the prospect within doors.  As for 
the flies, you don't mind them.  Nor the fleas, whose size is 
prodigious, and whose name is Legion, and who populate the coach-
house to that extent that I daily expect to see the carriage going 
off bodily, drawn by myriads of industrious fleas in harness.  The 
rats are kept away, quite comfortably, by scores of lean cats, who 
roam about the garden for that purpose.  The lizards, of course, 
nobody cares for; they play in the sun, and don't bite.  The little 
scorpions are merely curious.  The beetles are rather late, and 
have not appeared yet.  The frogs are company.  There is a preserve 
of them in the grounds of the next villa; and after nightfall, one 
would think that scores upon scores of women in pattens were going 
up and down a wet stone pavement without a moment's cessation.  
That is exactly the noise they make.

The ruined chapel, on the picturesque and beautiful seashore, was 
dedicated, once upon a time, to Saint John the Baptist.  I believe 
there is a legend that Saint John's bones were received there, with 
various solemnities, when they were first brought to Genoa; for 
Genoa possesses them to this day.  When there is any uncommon 
tempest at sea, they are brought out and exhibited to the raging 
weather, which they never fail to calm.  In consequence of this 
connection of Saint John with the city, great numbers of the common 
people are christened Giovanni Baptista, which latter name is 
pronounced in the Genoese patois 'Batcheetcha,' like a sneeze.  To 
hear everybody calling everybody else Batcheetcha, on a Sunday, or 
festa-day, when there are crowds in the streets, is not a little 
singular and amusing to a stranger.

The narrow lanes have great villas opening into them, whose walls 
(outside walls, I mean) are profusely painted with all sorts of 
subjects, grim and holy.  But time and the sea-air have nearly 
obliterated them; and they look like the entrance to Vauxhall 
Gardens on a sunny day.  The court-yards of these houses are 
overgrown with grass and weeds; all sorts of hideous patches cover 
the bases of the statues, as if they were afflicted with a 
cutaneous disorder; the outer gates are rusty; and the iron bars 
outside the lower windows are all tumbling down.  Firewood is kept 
in halls where costly treasures might be heaped up, mountains high; 
waterfalls are dry and choked; fountains, too dull to play, and too 
lazy to work, have just enough recollection of their identity, in 
their sleep, to make the neighbourhood damp; and the sirocco wind 
is often blowing over all these things for days together, like a 
gigantic oven out for a holiday.

Not long ago, there was a festa-day, in honour of the VIRGIN'S 
MOTHER, when the young men of the neighbourhood, having worn green 
wreaths of the vine in some procession or other, bathed in them, by 
scores.  It looked very odd and pretty.  Though I am bound to 
confess (not knowing of the festa at that time), that I thought, 
and was quite satisfied, they wore them as horses do - to keep the 
flies off.

Soon afterwards, there was another festa-day, in honour of St. 
Nazaro.  One of the Albaro young men brought two large bouquets 
soon after breakfast, and coming up-stairs into the great SALA, 
presented them himself.  This was a polite way of begging for a 
contribution towards the expenses of some music in the Saint's 
honour, so we gave him whatever it may have been, and his messenger 
departed:  well satisfied.  At six o'clock in the evening we went 
to the church - close at hand - a very gaudy place, hung all over 
with festoons and bright draperies, and filled, from the altar to 
the main door, with women, all seated.  They wear no bonnets here, 
simply a long white veil - the 'mezzero;' and it was the most 
gauzy, ethereal-looking audience I ever saw.  The young women are 
not generally pretty, but they walk remarkably well, and in their 
personal carriage and the management of their veils, display much 
innate grace and elegance.  There were some men present:  not very 
many:  and a few of these were kneeling about the aisles, while 
everybody else tumbled over them.  Innumerable tapers were burning 
in the church; the bits of silver and tin about the saints 
(especially in the Virgin's necklace) sparkled brilliantly; the 
priests were seated about the chief altar; the organ played away, 
lustily, and a full band did the like; while a conductor, in a 
little gallery opposite to the band, hammered away on the desk 
before him, with a scroll; and a tenor, without any voice, sang.  
The band played one way, the organ played another, the singer went 
a third, and the unfortunate conductor banged and banged, and 
flourished his scroll on some principle of his own:  apparently 
well satisfied with the whole performance.  I never did hear such a 
discordant din.  The heat was intense all the time.

The men, in red caps, and with loose coats hanging on their 
shoulders (they never put them on), were playing bowls, and buying 
sweetmeats, immediately outside the church.  When half-a-dozen of 
them finished a game, they came into the aisle, crossed themselves 
with the holy water, knelt on one knee for an instant, and walked 
off again to play another game at bowls.  They are remarkably 
expert at this diversion, and will play in the stony lanes and 
streets, and on the most uneven and disastrous ground for such a 
purpose, with as much nicety as on a billiard-table.  But the most 
favourite game is the national one of Mora, which they pursue with 
surprising ardour, and at which they will stake everything they 
possess.  It is a destructive kind of gambling, requiring no 
accessories but the ten fingers, which are always - I intend no pun 
- at hand.  Two men play together.  One calls a number - say the 
extreme one, ten.  He marks what portion of it he pleases by 
throwing out three, or four, or five fingers; and his adversary 
has, in the same instant, at hazard, and without seeing his hand, 
to throw out as many fingers, as will make the exact balance.  
Their eyes and hands become so used to this, and act with such 
astonishing rapidity, that an uninitiated bystander would find it 
very difficult, if not impossible, to follow the progress of the 
game.  The initiated, however, of whom there is always an eager 
group looking on, devour it with the most intense avidity; and as 
they are always ready to champion one side or the other in case of 
a dispute, and are frequently divided in their partisanship, it is 
often a very noisy proceeding.  It is never the quietest game in 
the world; for the numbers are always called in a loud sharp voice, 
and follow as close upon each other as they can be counted.  On a 
holiday evening, standing at a window, or walking in a garden, or 
passing through the streets, or sauntering in any quiet place about 
the town, you will hear this game in progress in a score of wine-
shops at once; and looking over any vineyard walk, or turning 
almost any corner, will come upon a knot of players in full cry.  
It is observable that most men have a propensity to throw out some 
particular number oftener than another; and the vigilance with 
which two sharp-eyed players will mutually endeavour to detect this 
weakness, and adapt their game to it, is very curious and 
entertaining.  The effect is greatly heightened by the universal 
suddenness and vehemence of gesture; two men playing for half a 
farthing with an intensity as all-absorbing as if the stake were 
life.

Hard by here is a large Palazzo, formerly belonging to some member 
of the Brignole family, but just now hired by a school of Jesuits 
for their summer quarters.  I walked into its dismantled precincts 
the other evening about sunset, and couldn't help pacing up and 
down for a little time, drowsily taking in the aspect of the place:  
which is repeated hereabouts in all directions.

I loitered to and fro, under a colonnade, forming two sides of a 
weedy, grass-grown court-yard, whereof the house formed a third 
side, and a low terrace-walk, overlooking the garden and the 
neighbouring hills, the fourth.  I don't believe there was an 
uncracked stone in the whole pavement.  In the centre was a 
melancholy statue, so piebald in its decay, that it looked exactly 
as if it had been covered with sticking-plaster, and afterwards 
powdered.  The stables, coach-houses, offices, were all empty, all 
ruinous, all utterly deserted.

Doors had lost their hinges, and were holding on by their latches; 
windows were broken, painted plaster had peeled off, and was lying 
about in clods; fowls and cats had so taken possession of the out-
buildings, that I couldn't help thinking of the fairy tales, and 
eyeing them with suspicion, as transformed retainers, waiting to be 
changed back again.  One old Tom in particular:  a scraggy brute, 
with a hungry green eye (a poor relation, in reality, I am inclined 
to think):  came prowling round and round me, as if he half 
believed, for the moment, that I might be the hero come to marry 
the lady, and set all to-rights; but discovering his mistake, he 
suddenly gave a grim snarl, and walked away with such a tremendous 
tail, that he couldn't get into the little hole where he lived, but 
was obliged to wait outside, until his indignation and his tail had 
gone down together.

In a sort of summer-house, or whatever it may be, in this 
colonnade, some Englishmen had been living, like grubs in a nut; 
but the Jesuits had given them notice to go, and they had gone, and 
THAT was shut up too.  The house:  a wandering, echoing, thundering 
barrack of a place, with the lower windows barred up, as usual, was 
wide open at the door:  and I have no doubt I might have gone in, 
and gone to bed, and gone dead, and nobody a bit the wiser.  Only 
one suite of rooms on an upper floor was tenanted; and from one of 
these, the voice of a young-lady vocalist, practising bravura 
lustily, came flaunting out upon the silent evening.

I went down into the garden, intended to be prim and quaint, with 
avenues, and terraces, and orange-trees, and statues, and water in 
stone basins; and everything was green, gaunt, weedy, straggling, 
under grown or over grown, mildewy, damp, redolent of all sorts of 
slabby, clammy, creeping, and uncomfortable life.  There was 
nothing bright in the whole scene but a firefly - one solitary 
firefly - showing against the dark bushes like the last little 
speck of the departed Glory of the house; and even it went flitting 
up and down at sudden angles, and leaving a place with a jerk, and 
describing an irregular circle, and returning to the same place 
with a twitch that startled one:  as if it were looking for the 
rest of the Glory, and wondering (Heaven knows it might!) what had 
become of it.


In the course of two months, the flitting shapes and shadows of my 
dismal entering reverie gradually resolved themselves into familiar 
forms and substances; and I already began to think that when the 
time should come, a year hence, for closing the long holiday and 
turning back to England, I might part from Genoa with anything but 
a glad heart.

It is a place that 'grows upon you' every day.  There seems to be 
always something to find out in it.  There are the most 
extraordinary alleys and by-ways to walk about in.  You can lose 
your way (what a comfort that is, when you are idle!) twenty times 
a day, if you like; and turn up again, under the most unexpected 
and surprising difficulties.  It abounds in the strangest 
contrasts; things that are picturesque, ugly, mean, magnificent, 
delightful, and offensive, break upon the view at every turn.

They who would know how beautiful the country immediately 
surrounding Genoa is, should climb (in clear weather) to the top of 
Monte Faccio, or, at least, ride round the city walls:  a feat more 
easily performed.  No prospect can be more diversified and lovely 
than the changing views of the harbour, and the valleys of the two 
rivers, the Polcevera and the Bizagno, from the heights along which 
the strongly fortified walls are carried, like the great wall of 
China in little.  In not the least picturesque part of this ride, 
there is a fair specimen of a real Genoese tavern, where the 
visitor may derive good entertainment from real Genoese dishes, 
such as Tagliarini; Ravioli; German sausages, strong of garlic, 
sliced and eaten with fresh green figs; cocks' combs and sheep-
kidneys, chopped up with mutton chops and liver; small pieces of 
some unknown part of a calf, twisted into small shreds, fried, and 
served up in a great dish like white-bait; and other curiosities of 
that kind.  They often get wine at these suburban Trattorie, from 
France and Spain and Portugal, which is brought over by small 
captains in little trading-vessels.  They buy it at so much a 
bottle, without asking what it is, or caring to remember if anybody 
tells them, and usually divide it into two heaps; of which they 
label one Champagne, and the other Madeira.  The various opposite 
flavours, qualities, countries, ages, and vintages that are 
comprised under these two general heads is quite extraordinary.  
The most limited range is probably from cool Gruel up to old 
Marsala, and down again to apple Tea.

The great majority of the streets are as narrow as any thoroughfare 
can well be, where people (even Italian people) are supposed to 
live and walk about; being mere lanes, with here and there a kind 
of well, or breathing-place.  The houses are immensely high, 
painted in all sorts of colours, and are in every stage and state 
of damage, dirt, and lack of repair.  They are commonly let off in 
floors, or flats, like the houses in the old town of Edinburgh, or 
many houses in Paris.  There are few street doors; the entrance 
halls are, for the most part, looked upon as public property; and 
any moderately enterprising scavenger might make a fine fortune by 
now and then clearing them out.  As it is impossible for coaches to 
penetrate into these streets, there are sedan chairs, gilded and 
otherwise, for hire in divers places.  A great many private chairs 
are also kept among the nobility and gentry; and at night these are 
trotted to and fro in all directions, preceded by bearers of great 
lanthorns, made of linen stretched upon a frame.  The sedans and 
lanthorns are the legitimate successors of the long strings of 
patient and much-abused mules, that go jingling their little bells 
through these confined streets all day long.  They follow them, as 
regularly as the stars the sun.

When shall I forget the Streets of Palaces:  the Strada Nuova and 
the Strada Balbi! or how the former looked one summer day, when I 
first saw it underneath the brightest and most intensely blue of 
summer skies:  which its narrow perspective of immense mansions, 
reduced to a tapering and most precious strip of brightness, 
looking down upon the heavy shade below!  A brightness not too 
common, even in July and August, to be well esteemed:  for, if the 
Truth must out, there were not eight blue skies in as many 
midsummer weeks, saving, sometimes, early in the morning; when, 
looking out to sea, the water and the firmament were one world of 
deep and brilliant blue.  At other times, there were clouds and 
haze enough to make an Englishman grumble in his own climate.

The endless details of these rich Palaces:  the walls of some of 
them, within, alive with masterpieces by Vandyke!  The great, 
heavy, stone balconies, one above another, and tier over tier:  
with here and there, one larger than the rest, towering high up - a 
huge marble platform; the doorless vestibules, massively barred 
lower windows, immense public staircases, thick marble pillars, 
strong dungeon-like arches, and dreary, dreaming, echoing vaulted 
chambers:  among which the eye wanders again, and again, and again, 
as every palace is succeeded by another - the terrace gardens 
between house and house, with green arches of the vine, and groves 
of orange-trees, and blushing oleander in full bloom, twenty, 
thirty, forty feet above the street - the painted halls, 
mouldering, and blotting, and rotting in the damp corners, and 
still shining out in beautiful colours and voluptuous designs, 
where the walls are dry - the faded figures on the outsides of the 
houses, holding wreaths, and crowns, and flying upward, and 
downward, and standing in niches, and here and there looking 
fainter and more feeble than elsewhere, by contrast with some fresh 
little Cupids, who on a more recently decorated portion of the 
front, are stretching out what seems to be the semblance of a 
blanket, but is, indeed, a sun-dial - the steep, steep, up-hill 
streets of small palaces (but very large palaces for all that), 
with marble terraces looking down into close by-ways - the 
magnificent and innumerable Churches; and the rapid passage from a 
street of stately edifices, into a maze of the vilest squalor, 
steaming with unwholesome stenches, and swarming with half-naked 
children and whole worlds of dirty people - make up, altogether, 
such a scene of wonder:  so lively, and yet so dead:  so noisy, and 
yet so quiet:  so obtrusive, and yet so shy and lowering:  so wide 
awake, and yet so fast asleep:  that it is a sort of intoxication 
to a stranger to walk on, and on, and on, and look about him.  A 
bewildering phantasmagoria, with all the inconsistency of a dream, 
and all the pain and all the pleasure of an extravagant reality!

The different uses to which some of these Palaces are applied, all 
at once, is characteristic.  For instance, the English Banker (my 
excellent and hospitable friend) has his office in a good-sized 
Palazzo in the Strada Nuova.  In the hall (every inch of which is 
elaborately painted, but which is as dirty as a police-station in 
London), a hook-nosed Saracen's Head with an immense quantity of 
black hair (there is a man attached to it) sells walking-sticks.  
On the other side of the doorway, a lady with a showy handkerchief 
for head-dress (wife to the Saracen's Head, I believe) sells 
articles of her own knitting; and sometimes flowers.  A little 
further in, two or three blind men occasionally beg.  Sometimes, 
they are visited by a man without legs, on a little go-cart, but 
who has such a fresh-coloured, lively face, and such a respectable, 
well-conditioned body, that he looks as if he had sunk into the 
ground up to his middle, or had come, but partially, up a flight of 
cellar-steps to speak to somebody.  A little further in, a few men, 
perhaps, lie asleep in the middle of the day; or they may be 
chairmen waiting for their absent freight.  If so, they have 
brought their chairs in with them, and there THEY stand also.  On 
the left of the hall is a little room:  a hatter's shop.  On the 
first floor, is the English bank.  On the first floor also, is a 
whole house, and a good large residence too.  Heaven knows what 
there may be above that; but when you are there, you have only just 
begun to go up-stairs.  And yet, coming down-stairs again, thinking 
of this; and passing out at a great crazy door in the back of the 
hall, instead of turning the other way, to get into the street 
again; it bangs behind you, making the dismallest and most lonesome 
echoes, and you stand in a yard (the yard of the same house) which 
seems to have been unvisited by human foot, for a hundred years.  
Not a sound disturbs its repose.  Not a head, thrust out of any of 
the grim, dark, jealous windows, within sight, makes the weeds in 
the cracked pavement faint of heart, by suggesting the possibility 
of there being hands to grub them up.  Opposite to you, is a giant 
figure carved in stone, reclining, with an urn, upon a lofty piece 
of artificial rockwork; and out of the urn, dangles the fag end of 
a leaden pipe, which, once upon a time, poured a small torrent down 
the rocks.  But the eye-sockets of the giant are not drier than 
this channel is now.  He seems to have given his urn, which is 
nearly upside down, a final tilt; and after crying, like a 
sepulchral child, 'All gone!' to have lapsed into a stony silence.

In the streets of shops, the houses are much smaller, but of great 
size notwithstanding, and extremely high.  They are very dirty:  
quite undrained, if my nose be at all reliable:  and emit a 
peculiar fragrance, like the smell of very bad cheese, kept in very 
hot blankets.  Notwithstanding the height of the houses, there 
would seem to have been a lack of room in the City, for new houses 
are thrust in everywhere.  Wherever it has been possible to cram a 
tumble-down tenement into a crack or corner, in it has gone.  If 
there be a nook or angle in the wall of a church, or a crevice in 
any other dead wall, of any sort, there you are sure to find some 
kind of habitation:  looking as if it had grown there, like a 
fungus.  Against the Government House, against the old Senate 
House, round about any large building, little shops stick so close, 
like parasite vermin to the great carcase.  And for all this, look 
where you may:  up steps, down steps, anywhere, everywhere:  there 
are irregular houses, receding, starting forward, tumbling down, 
leaning against their neighbours, crippling themselves or their 
friends by some means or other, until one, more irregular than the 
rest, chokes up the way, and you can't see any further.

One of the rottenest-looking parts of the town, I think, is down by 
the landing-wharf:  though it may be, that its being associated 
with a great deal of rottenness on the evening of our arrival, has 
stamped it deeper in my mind.  Here, again, the houses are very 
high, and are of an infinite variety of deformed shapes, and have 
(as most of the houses have) something hanging out of a great many 
windows, and wafting its frowsy fragrance on the breeze.  
Sometimes, it is a curtain; sometimes, it is a carpet; sometimes, 
it is a bed; sometimes, a whole line-full of clothes; but there is 
almost always something.  Before the basement of these houses, is 
an arcade over the pavement:  very massive, dark, and low, like an 
old crypt.  The stone, or plaster, of which it is made, has turned 
quite black; and against every one of these black piles, all sorts 
of filth and garbage seem to accumulate spontaneously.  Beneath 
some of the arches, the sellers of macaroni and polenta establish 
their stalls, which are by no means inviting.  The offal of a fish-
market, near at hand - that is to say, of a back lane, where people 
sit upon the ground and on various old bulk-heads and sheds, and 
sell fish when they have any to dispose of - and of a vegetable 
market, constructed on the same principle - are contributed to the 
decoration of this quarter; and as all the mercantile business is 
transacted here, and it is crowded all day, it has a very decided 
flavour about it.  The Porto Franco, or Free Port (where goods 
brought in from foreign countries pay no duty until they are sold 
and taken out, as in a bonded warehouse in England), is down here 
also; and two portentous officials, in cocked hats, stand at the 
gate to search you if they choose, and to keep out Monks and 
Ladies.  For, Sanctity as well as Beauty has been known to yield to 
the temptation of smuggling, and in the same way:  that is to say, 
by concealing the smuggled property beneath the loose folds of its 
dress.  So Sanctity and Beauty may, by no means, enter.

The streets of Genoa would be all the better for the importation of 
a few Priests of prepossessing appearance.  Every fourth or fifth 
man in the streets is a Priest or a Monk; and there is pretty sure 
to be at least one itinerant ecclesiastic inside or outside every 
hackney carriage on the neighbouring roads.  I have no knowledge, 
elsewhere, of more repulsive countenances than are to be found 
among these gentry.  If Nature's handwriting be at all legible, 
greater varieties of sloth, deceit, and intellectual torpor, could 
hardly be observed among any class of men in the world.

MR. PEPYS once heard a clergyman assert in his sermon, in 
illustration of his respect for the Priestly office, that if he 
could meet a Priest and angel together, he would salute the Priest 
first.  I am rather of the opinion of PETRARCH, who, when his pupil 
BOCCACCIO wrote to him in great tribulation, that he had been 
visited and admonished for his writings by a Carthusian Friar who 
claimed to be a messenger immediately commissioned by Heaven for 
that purpose, replied, that for his own part, he would take the 
liberty of testing the reality of the commission by personal 
observation of the Messenger's face, eyes, forehead, behaviour, and 
discourse.  I cannot but believe myself, from similar observation, 
that many unaccredited celestial messengers may be seen skulking 
through the streets of Genoa, or droning away their lives in other 
Italian towns.

Perhaps the Cappuccini, though not a learned body, are, as an 
order, the best friends of the people.  They seem to mingle with 
them more immediately, as their counsellors and comforters; and to 
go among them more, when they are sick; and to pry less than some 
other orders, into the secrets of families, for the purpose of 
establishing a baleful ascendency over their weaker members; and to 
be influenced by a less fierce desire to make converts, and once 
made, to let them go to ruin, soul and body.  They may be seen, in 
their coarse dress, in all parts of the town at all times, and 
begging in the markets early in the morning.  The Jesuits too, 
muster strong in the streets, and go slinking noiselessly about, in 
pairs, like black cats.

In some of the narrow passages, distinct trades congregate.  There 
is a street of jewellers, and there is a row of booksellers; but 
even down in places where nobody ever can, or ever could, penetrate 
in a carriage, there are mighty old palaces shut in among the 
gloomiest and closest walls, and almost shut out from the sun.  
Very few of the tradesmen have any idea of setting forth their 
goods, or disposing them for show.  If you, a stranger, want to buy 
anything, you usually look round the shop till you see it; then 
clutch it, if it be within reach, and inquire how much.  Everything 
is sold at the most unlikely place.  If you want coffee, you go to 
a sweetmeat shop; and if you want meat, you will probably find it 
behind an old checked curtain, down half-a-dozen steps, in some 
sequestered nook as hard to find as if the commodity were poison, 
and Genoa's law were death to any that uttered it.

Most of the apothecaries' shops are great lounging-places.  Here, 
grave men with sticks, sit down in the shade for hours together, 
passing a meagre Genoa paper from hand to hand, and talking, 
drowsily and sparingly, about the News.  Two or three of these are 
poor physicians, ready to proclaim themselves on an emergency, and 
tear off with any messenger who may arrive.  You may know them by 
the way in which they stretch their necks to listen, when you 
enter; and by the sigh with which they fall back again into their 
dull corners, on finding that you only want medicine.  Few people 
lounge in the barbers' shops; though they are very numerous, as 
hardly any man shaves himself.  But the apothecary's has its group 
of loungers, who sit back among the bottles, with their hands 
folded over the tops of their sticks.  So still and quiet, that 
either you don't see them in the darkened shop, or mistake them - 
as I did one ghostly man in bottle-green, one day, with a hat like 
a stopper - for Horse Medicine.

On a summer evening the Genoese are as fond of putting themselves, 
as their ancestors were of putting houses, in every available inch 
of space in and about the town.  In all the lanes and alleys, and 
up every little ascent, and on every dwarf wall, and on every 
flight of steps, they cluster like bees.  Meanwhile (and especially 
on festa-days) the bells of the churches ring incessantly; not in 
peals, or any known form of sound, but in a horrible, irregular, 
jerking, dingle, dingle, dingle:  with a sudden stop at every 
fifteenth dingle or so, which is maddening.  This performance is 
usually achieved by a boy up in the steeple, who takes hold of the 
clapper, or a little rope attached to it, and tries to dingle 
louder than every other boy similarly employed.  The noise is 
supposed to be particularly obnoxious to Evil Spirits; but looking 
up into the steeples, and seeing (and hearing) these young 
Christians thus engaged, one might very naturally mistake them for 
the Enemy.

Festa-days, early in the autumn, are very numerous.  All the shops 
were shut up, twice within a week, for these holidays; and one 
night, all the houses in the neighbourhood of a particular church 
were illuminated, while the church itself was lighted, outside, 
with torches; and a grove of blazing links was erected, in an open 
space outside one of the city gates.  This part of the ceremony is 
prettier and more singular a little way in the country, where you 
can trace the illuminated cottages all the way up a steep hill-
side; and where you pass festoons of tapers, wasting away in the 
starlight night, before some lonely little house upon the road.

On these days, they always dress the church of the saint in whose 
honour the festa is holden, very gaily.  Gold-embroidered festoons 
of different colours, hang from the arches; the altar furniture is 
set forth; and sometimes, even the lofty pillars are swathed from 
top to bottom in tight-fitting draperies.  The cathedral is 
dedicated to St. Lorenzo.  On St. Lorenzo's day, we went into it, 
just as the sun was setting.  Although these decorations are 
usually in very indifferent taste, the effect, just then, was very 
superb indeed.  For the whole building was dressed in red; and the 
sinking sun, streaming in, through a great red curtain in the chief 
doorway, made all the gorgeousness its own.  When the sun went 
down, and it gradually grew quite dark inside, except for a few 
twinkling tapers on the principal altar, and some small dangling 
silver lamps, it was very mysterious and effective.  But, sitting 
in any of the churches towards evening, is like a mild dose of 
opium.

With the money collected at a festa, they usually pay for the 
dressing of the church, and for the hiring of the band, and for the 
tapers.  If there be any left (which seldom happens, I believe), 
the souls in Purgatory get the benefit of it.  They are also 
supposed to have the benefit of the exertions of certain small 
boys, who shake money-boxes before some mysterious little buildings 
like rural turnpikes, which (usually shut up close) fly open on 
Red-letter days, and disclose an image and some flowers inside.

Just without the city gate, on the Albara road, is a small house, 
with an altar in it, and a stationary money-box:  also for the 
benefit of the souls in Purgatory.  Still further to stimulate the 
charitable, there is a monstrous painting on the plaster, on either 
side of the grated door, representing a select party of souls, 
frying.  One of them has a grey moustache, and an elaborate head of 
grey hair:  as if he had been taken out of a hairdresser's window 
and cast into the furnace.  There he is:  a most grotesque and 
hideously comic old soul:  for ever blistering in the real sun, and 
melting in the mimic fire, for the gratification and improvement 
(and the contributions) of the poor Genoese.

They are not a very joyous people, and are seldom seen to dance on 
their holidays:  the staple places of entertainment among the 
women, being the churches and the public walks.  They are very 
good-tempered, obliging, and industrious.  Industry has not made 
them clean, for their habitations are extremely filthy, and their 
usual occupation on a fine Sunday morning, is to sit at their 
doors, hunting in each other's heads.  But their dwellings are so 
close and confined that if those parts of the city had been beaten 
down by Massena in the time of the terrible Blockade, it would have 
at least occasioned one public benefit among many misfortunes.

The Peasant Women, with naked feet and legs, are so constantly 
washing clothes, in the public tanks, and in every stream and 
ditch, that one cannot help wondering, in the midst of all this 
dirt, who wears them when they are clean.  The custom is to lay the 
wet linen which is being operated upon, on a smooth stone, and 
hammer away at it, with a flat wooden mallet.  This they do, as 
furiously as if they were revenging themselves on dress in general 
for being connected with the Fall of Mankind.

It is not unusual to see, lying on the edge of the tank at these 
times, or on another flat stone, an unfortunate baby, tightly 
swathed up, arms and legs and all, in an enormous quantity of 
wrapper, so that it is unable to move a toe or finger.  This custom 
(which we often see represented in old pictures) is universal among 
the common people.  A child is left anywhere without the 
possibility of crawling away, or is accidentally knocked off a 
shelf, or tumbled out of bed, or is hung up to a hook now and then, 
and left dangling like a doll at an English rag-shop, without the 
least inconvenience to anybody.

I was sitting, one Sunday, soon after my arrival, in the little 
country church of San Martino, a couple of miles from the city, 
while a baptism took place.  I saw the priest, and an attendant 
with a large taper, and a man, and a woman, and some others; but I 
had no more idea, until the ceremony was all over, that it was a 
baptism, or that the curious little stiff instrument, that was 
passed from one to another, in the course of the ceremony, by the 
handle - like a short poker - was a child, than I had that it was 
my own christening.  I borrowed the child afterwards, for a minute 
or two (it was lying across the font then), and found it very red 
in the face but perfectly quiet, and not to be bent on any terms.  
The number of cripples in the streets, soon ceased to surprise me.

There are plenty of Saints' and Virgin's Shrines, of course; 
generally at the corners of streets.  The favourite memento to the 
Faithful, about Genoa, is a painting, representing a peasant on his 
knees, with a spade and some other agricultural implements beside 
him; and the Madonna, with the Infant Saviour in her arms, 
appearing to him in a cloud.  This is the legend of the Madonna 
della Guardia:  a chapel on a mountain within a few miles, which is 
in high repute.  It seems that this peasant lived all alone by 
himself, tilling some land atop of the mountain, where, being a 
devout man, he daily said his prayers to the Virgin in the open 
air; for his hut was a very poor one.  Upon a certain day, the 
Virgin appeared to him, as in the picture, and said, 'Why do you 
pray in the open air, and without a priest?'  The peasant explained 
because there was neither priest nor church at hand - a very 
uncommon complaint indeed in Italy.  'I should wish, then,' said 
the Celestial Visitor, 'to have a chapel built here, in which the 
prayers of the Faithful may be offered up.'  'But, Santissima 
Madonna,' said the peasant, 'I am a poor man; and chapels cannot be 
built without money.  They must be supported, too, Santissima; for 
to have a chapel and not support it liberally, is a wickedness - a 
deadly sin.'  This sentiment gave great satisfaction to the 
visitor.  'Go!' said she.  'There is such a village in the valley 
on the left, and such another village in the valley on the right, 
and such another village elsewhere, that will gladly contribute to 
the building of a chapel.  Go to them!  Relate what you have seen; 
and do not doubt that sufficient money will be forthcoming to erect 
my chapel, or that it will, afterwards, be handsomely maintained.'  
All of which (miraculously) turned out to be quite true.  And in 
proof of this prediction and revelation, there is the chapel of the 
Madonna della Guardia, rich and flourishing at this day.

The splendour and variety of the Genoese churches, can hardly be 
exaggerated.  The church of the Annunciata especially:  built, like 
many of the others, at the cost of one noble family, and now in 
slow progress of repair:  from the outer door to the utmost height 
of the high cupola, is so elaborately painted and set in gold, that 
it looks (as SIMOND describes it, in his charming book on Italy) 
like a great enamelled snuff-box.  Most of the richer churches 
contain some beautiful pictures, or other embellishments of great 
price, almost universally set, side by side, with sprawling 
effigies of maudlin monks, and the veriest trash and tinsel ever 
seen.

It may be a consequence of the frequent direction of the popular 
mind, and pocket, to the souls in Purgatory, but there is very 
little tenderness for the BODIES of the dead here.  For the very 
poor, there are, immediately outside one angle of the walls, and 
behind a jutting point of the fortification, near the sea, certain 
common pits - one for every day in the year - which all remain 
closed up, until the turn of each comes for its daily reception of 
dead bodies.  Among the troops in the town, there are usually some 
Swiss:  more or less.  When any of these die, they are buried out 
of a fund maintained by such of their countrymen as are resident in 
Genoa.  Their providing coffins for these men is matter of great 
astonishment to the authorities.

Certainly, the effect of this promiscuous and indecent splashing 
down of dead people in so many wells, is bad.  It surrounds Death 
with revolting associations, that insensibly become connected with 
those whom Death is approaching.  Indifference and avoidance are 
the natural result; and all the softening influences of the great 
sorrow are harshly disturbed.

There is a ceremony when an old Cavaliere or the like, expires, of 
erecting a pile of benches in the cathedral, to represent his bier; 
covering them over with a pall of black velvet; putting his hat and 
sword on the top; making a little square of seats about the whole; 
and sending out formal invitations to his friends and acquaintances 
to come and sit there, and hear Mass:  which is performed at the 
principal Altar, decorated with an infinity of candles for that 
purpose.

When the better kind of people die, or are at the point of death, 
their nearest relations generally walk off:  retiring into the 
country for a little change, and leaving the body to be disposed 
of, without any superintendence from them.  The procession is 
usually formed, and the coffin borne, and the funeral conducted, by 
a body of persons called a Confraternita, who, as a kind of 
voluntary penance, undertake to perform these offices, in regular 
rotation, for the dead; but who, mingling something of pride with 
their humility, are dressed in a loose garment covering their whole 
person, and wear a hood concealing the face; with breathing-holes 
and apertures for the eyes.  The effect of this costume is very 
ghastly:  especially in the case of a certain Blue Confraternita 
belonging to Genoa, who, to say the least of them, are very ugly 
customers, and who look - suddenly encountered in their pious 
ministration in the streets - as if they were Ghoules or Demons, 
bearing off the body for themselves.

Although such a custom may be liable to the abuse attendant on many 
Italian customs, of being recognised as a means of establishing a 
current account with Heaven, on which to draw, too easily, for 
future bad actions, or as an expiation for past misdeeds, it must 
be admitted to be a good one, and a practical one, and one 
involving unquestionably good works.  A voluntary service like 
this, is surely better than the imposed penance (not at all an 
infrequent one) of giving so many licks to such and such a stone in 
the pavement of the cathedral; or than a vow to the Madonna to wear 
nothing but blue for a year or two.  This is supposed to give great 
delight above; blue being (as is well known) the Madonna's 
favourite colour.  Women who have devoted themselves to this act of 
Faith, are very commonly seen walking in the streets.

There are three theatres in the city, besides an old one now rarely 
opened.  The most important - the Carlo Felice:  the opera-house of 
Genoa - is a very splendid, commodious, and beautiful theatre.  A 
company of comedians were acting there, when we arrived:  and soon 
after their departure, a second-rate opera company came.  The great 
season is not until the carnival time - in the spring.  Nothing 
impressed me, so much, in my visits here (which were pretty 
numerous) as the uncommonly hard and cruel character of the 
audience, who resent the slightest defect, take nothing good-
humouredly, seem to be always lying in wait for an opportunity to 
hiss, and spare the actresses as little as the actors.

But, as there is nothing else of a public nature at which they are 
allowed to express the least disapprobation, perhaps they are 
resolved to make the most of this opportunity.

There are a great number of Piedmontese officers too, who are 
allowed the privilege of kicking their heels in the pit, for next 
to nothing:  gratuitous, or cheap accommodation for these gentlemen 
being insisted on, by the Governor, in all public or semi-public 
entertainments.  They are lofty critics in consequence, and 
infinitely more exacting than if they made the unhappy manager's 
fortune.

The TEATRO DIURNO, or Day Theatre, is a covered stage in the open 
air, where the performances take place by daylight, in the cool of 
the afternoon; commencing at four or five o'clock, and lasting, 
some three hours.  It is curious, sitting among the audience, to 
have a fine view of the neighbouring hills and houses, and to see 
the neighbours at their windows looking on, and to hear the bells 
of the churches and convents ringing at most complete cross-
purposes with the scene.  Beyond this, and the novelty of seeing a 
play in the fresh pleasant air, with the darkening evening closing 
in, there is nothing very exciting or characteristic in the 
performances.  The actors are indifferent; and though they 
sometimes represent one of Goldoni's comedies, the staple of the 
Drama is French.  Anything like nationality is dangerous to 
despotic governments, and Jesuit-beleaguered kings.

The Theatre of Puppets, or Marionetti - a famous company from Milan 
- is, without any exception, the drollest exhibition I ever beheld 
in my life.  I never saw anything so exquisitely ridiculous.  They 
LOOK between four and five feet high, but are really much smaller; 
for when a musician in the orchestra happens to put his hat on the 
stage, it becomes alarmingly gigantic, and almost blots out an 
actor.  They usually play a comedy, and a ballet.  The comic man in 
the comedy I saw one summer night, is a waiter in an hotel.  There 
never was such a locomotive actor, since the world began.  Great 
pains are taken with him.  He has extra joints in his legs:  and a 
practical eye, with which he winks at the pit, in a manner that is 
absolutely insupportable to a stranger, but which the initiated 
audience, mainly composed of the common people, receive (so they do 
everything else) quite as a matter of course, and as if he were a 
man.  His spirits are prodigious.  He continually shakes his legs, 
and winks his eye.  And there is a heavy father with grey hair, who 
sits down on the regular conventional stage-bank, and blesses his 
daughter in the regular conventional way, who is tremendous.  No 
one would suppose it possible that anything short of a real man 
could be so tedious.  It is the triumph of art.

In the ballet, an Enchanter runs away with the Bride, in the very 
hour of her nuptials, He brings her to his cave, and tries to 
soothe her.  They sit down on a sofa (the regular sofa! in the 
regular place, O. P. Second Entrance!) and a procession of 
musicians enters; one creature playing a drum, and knocking himself 
off his legs at every blow.  These failing to delight her, dancers 
appear.  Four first; then two; THE two; the flesh-coloured two.  
The way in which they dance; the height to which they spring; the 
impossible and inhuman extent to which they pirouette; the 
revelation of their preposterous legs; the coming down with a 
pause, on the very tips of their toes, when the music requires it; 
the gentleman's retiring up, when it is the lady's turn; and the 
lady's retiring up, when it is the gentleman's turn; the final 
passion of a pas-de-deux; and the going off with a bound! - I shall 
never see a real ballet, with a composed countenance again.

I went, another night, to see these Puppets act a play called 'St. 
Helena, or the Death of Napoleon.'  It began by the disclosure of 
Napoleon, with an immense head, seated on a sofa in his chamber at 
St. Helena; to whom his valet entered with this obscure 
announcement:

'Sir Yew ud se on Low?' (the OW, as in cow).

Sir Hudson (that you could have seen his regimentals!) was a 
perfect mammoth of a man, to Napoleon; hideously ugly, with a 
monstrously disproportionate face, and a great clump for the lower-
jaw, to express his tyrannical and obdurate nature.  He began his 
system of persecution, by calling his prisoner 'General 
Buonaparte;' to which the latter replied, with the deepest tragedy, 
'Sir Yew ud se on Low, call me not thus.  Repeat that phrase and 
leave me!  I am Napoleon, Emperor of France!'  Sir Yew ud se on, 
nothing daunted, proceeded to entertain him with an ordinance of 
the British Government, regulating the state he should preserve, 
and the furniture of his rooms:  and limiting his attendants to 
four or five persons.  'Four or five for ME!' said Napoleon.  'Me!  
One hundred thousand men were lately at my sole command; and this 
English officer talks of four or five for ME!'  Throughout the 
piece, Napoleon (who talked very like the real Napoleon, and was, 
for ever, having small soliloquies by himself) was very bitter on 
'these English officers,' and 'these English soldiers;' to the 
great satisfaction of the audience, who were perfectly delighted to 
have Low bullied; and who, whenever Low said 'General Buonaparte' 
(which he always did:  always receiving the same correction), quite 
execrated him.  It would be hard to say why; for Italians have 
little cause to sympathise with Napoleon, Heaven knows.

There was no plot at all, except that a French officer, disguised 
as an Englishman, came to propound a plan of escape; and being 
discovered, but not before Napoleon had magnanimously refused to 
steal his freedom, was immediately ordered off by Low to be hanged.  
In two very long speeches, which Low made memorable, by winding up 
with 'Yas!' - to show that he was English - which brought down 
thunders of applause.  Napoleon was so affected by this 
catastrophe, that he fainted away on the spot, and was carried out 
by two other puppets.  Judging from what followed, it would appear 
that he never recovered the shock; for the next act showed him, in 
a clean shirt, in his bed (curtains crimson and white), where a 
lady, prematurely dressed in mourning, brought two little children, 
who kneeled down by the bedside, while he made a decent end; the 
last word on his lips being 'Vatterlo.'

It was unspeakably ludicrous.  Buonaparte's boots were so 
wonderfully beyond control, and did such marvellous things of their 
own accord:  doubling themselves up, and getting under tables, and 
dangling in the air, and sometimes skating away with him, out of 
all human knowledge, when he was in full speech - mischances which 
were not rendered the less absurd, by a settled melancholy depicted 
in his face.  To put an end to one conference with Low, he had to 
go to a table, and read a book:  when it was the finest spectacle I 
ever beheld, to see his body bending over the volume, like a boot-
jack, and his sentimental eyes glaring obstinately into the pit.  
He was prodigiously good, in bed, with an immense collar to his 
shirt, and his little hands outside the coverlet.  So was Dr. 
Antommarchi, represented by a puppet with long lank hair, like 
Mawworm's, who, in consequence of some derangement of his wires, 
hovered about the couch like a vulture, and gave medical opinions 
in the air.  He was almost as good as Low, though the latter was 
great at all times - a decided brute and villain, beyond all 
possibility of mistake.  Low was especially fine at the last, when, 
hearing the doctor and the valet say, 'The Emperor is dead!' he 
pulled out his watch, and wound up the piece (not the watch) by 
exclaiming, with characteristic brutality, 'Ha! ha!  Eleven minutes 
to six!  The General dead! and the spy hanged!'  This brought the 
curtain down, triumphantly.


There is not in Italy, they say (and I believe them), a lovelier 
residence than the Palazzo Peschiere, or Palace of the Fishponds, 
whither we removed as soon as our three months' tenancy of the Pink 
Jail at Albaro had ceased and determined.

It stands on a height within the walls of Genoa, but aloof from the 
town:  surrounded by beautiful gardens of its own, adorned with 
statues, vases, fountains, marble basins, terraces, walks of 
orange-trees and lemon-trees, groves of roses and camellias.  All 
its apartments are beautiful in their proportions and decorations; 
but the great hall, some fifty feet in height, with three large 
windows at the end, overlooking the whole town of Genoa, the 
harbour, and the neighbouring sea, affords one of the most 
fascinating and delightful prospects in the world.  Any house more 
cheerful and habitable than the great rooms are, within, it would 
be difficult to conceive; and certainly nothing more delicious than 
the scene without, in sunshine or in moonlight, could be imagined.  
It is more like an enchanted place in an Eastern story than a grave 
and sober lodging.

How you may wander on, from room to room, and never tire of the 
wild fancies on the walls and ceilings, as bright in their fresh 
colouring as if they had been painted yesterday; or how one floor, 
or even the great hall which opens on eight other rooms, is a 
spacious promenade; or how there are corridors and bed-chambers 
above, which we never use and rarely visit, and scarcely know the 
way through; or how there is a view of a perfectly different 
character on each of the four sides of the building; matters 
little.  But that prospect from the hall is like a vision to me.  I 
go back to it, in fancy, as I have done in calm reality a hundred 
times a day; and stand there, looking out, with the sweet scents 
from the garden rising up about me, in a perfect dream of 
happiness.

There lies all Genoa, in beautiful confusion, with its many 
churches, monasteries, and convents, pointing up into the sunny 
sky; and down below me, just where the roofs begin, a solitary 
convent parapet, fashioned like a gallery, with an iron across at 
the end, where sometimes early in the morning, I have seen a little 
group of dark-veiled nuns gliding sorrowfully to and fro, and 
stopping now and then to peep down upon the waking world in which 
they have no part.  Old Monte Faccio, brightest of hills in good 
weather, but sulkiest when storms are coming on, is here, upon the 
left.  The Fort within the walls (the good King built it to command 
the town, and beat the houses of the Genoese about their ears, in 
case they should be discontented) commands that height upon the 
right.  The broad sea lies beyond, in front there; and that line of 
coast, beginning by the light-house, and tapering away, a mere 
speck in the rosy distance, is the beautiful coast road that leads 
to Nice.  The garden near at hand, among the roofs and houses:  all 
red with roses and fresh with little fountains:  is the Acqua Sola 
- a public promenade, where the military band plays gaily, and the 
white veils cluster thick, and the Genoese nobility ride round, and 
round, and round, in state-clothes and coaches at least, if not in 
absolute wisdom.  Within a stone's-throw, as it seems, the audience 
of the Day Theatre sit:  their faces turned this way.  But as the 
stage is hidden, it is very odd, without a knowledge of the cause, 
to see their faces changed so suddenly from earnestness to 
laughter; and odder still, to hear the rounds upon rounds of 
applause, rattling in the evening air, to which the curtain falls.  
But, being Sunday night, they act their best and most attractive 
play.  And now, the sun is going down, in such magnificent array of 
red, and green, and golden light, as neither pen nor pencil could 
depict; and to the ringing of the vesper bells, darkness sets in at 
once, without a twilight.  Then, lights begin to shine in Genoa, 
and on the country road; and the revolving lanthorn out at sea 
there, flashing, for an instant, on this palace front and portico, 
illuminates it as if there were a bright moon bursting from behind 
a cloud; then, merges it in deep obscurity.  And this, so far as I 
know, is the only reason why the Genoese avoid it after dark, and 
think it haunted.

My memory will haunt it, many nights, in time to come; but nothing 
worse, I will engage.  The same Ghost will occasionally sail away, 
as I did one pleasant autumn evening, into the bright prospect, and 
sniff the morning air at Marseilles.

The corpulent hairdresser was still sitting in his slippers outside 
his shop-door there, but the twirling ladies in the window, with 
the natural inconstancy of their sex, had ceased to twirl, and were 
languishing, stock still, with their beautiful faces addressed to 
blind corners of the establishment, where it was impossible for 
admirers to penetrate.

The steamer had come from Genoa in a delicious run of eighteen 
hours, and we were going to run back again by the Cornice road from 
Nice:  not being satisfied to have seen only the outsides of the 
beautiful towns that rise in picturesque white clusters from among 
the olive woods, and rocks, and hills, upon the margin of the Sea.

The Boat which started for Nice that night, at eight o'clock, was 
very small, and so crowded with goods that there was scarcely room 
to move; neither was there anything to cat on board, except bread; 
nor to drink, except coffee.  But being due at Nice at about eight 
or so in the morning, this was of no consequence; so when we began 
to wink at the bright stars, in involuntary acknowledgment of their 
winking at us, we turned into our berths, in a crowded, but cool 
little cabin, and slept soundly till morning.

The Boat, being as dull and dogged a little boat as ever was built, 
it was within an hour of noon when we turned into Nice Harbour, 
where we very little expected anything but breakfast.  But we were 
laden with wool.  Wool must not remain in the Custom-house at 
Marseilles more than twelve months at a stretch, without paying 
duty.  It is the custom to make fictitious removals of unsold wool 
to evade this law; to take it somewhere when the twelve months are 
nearly out; bring it straight back again; and warehouse it, as a 
new cargo, for nearly twelve months longer.  This wool of ours, had 
come originally from some place in the East.  It was recognised as 
Eastern produce, the moment we entered the harbour.  Accordingly, 
the gay little Sunday boats, full of holiday people, which had come 
off to greet us, were warned away by the authorities; we were 
declared in quarantine; and a great flag was solemnly run up to the 
mast-head on the wharf, to make it known to all the town.

It was a very hot day indeed.  We were unshaved, unwashed, 
undressed, unfed, and could hardly enjoy the absurdity of lying 
blistering in a lazy harbour, with the town looking on from a 
respectful distance, all manner of whiskered men in cocked hats 
discussing our fate at a remote guard-house, with gestures (we 
looked very hard at them through telescopes) expressive of a week's 
detention at least:  and nothing whatever the matter all the time.  
But even in this crisis the brave Courier achieved a triumph.  He 
telegraphed somebody (I saw nobody) either naturally connected with 
the hotel, or put EN RAPPORT with the establishment for that 
occasion only.  The telegraph was answered, and in half an hour or 
less, there came a loud shout from the guard-house.  The captain 
was wanted.  Everybody helped the captain into his boat.  Everybody 
got his luggage, and said we were going.  The captain rowed away, 
and disappeared behind a little jutting corner of the Galley-
slaves' Prison:  and presently came back with something, very 
sulkily.  The brave Courier met him at the side, and received the 
something as its rightful owner.  It was a wicker basket, folded in 
a linen cloth; and in it were two great bottles of wine, a roast 
fowl, some salt fish chopped with garlic, a great loaf of bread, a 
dozen or so of peaches, and a few other trifles.  When we had 
selected our own breakfast, the brave Courier invited a chosen 
party to partake of these refreshments, and assured them that they 
need not be deterred by motives of delicacy, as he would order a 
second basket to be furnished at their expense.  Which he did - no 
one knew how - and by-and-by, the captain being again summoned, 
again sulkily returned with another something; over which my 
popular attendant presided as before:  carving with a clasp-knife, 
his own personal property, something smaller than a Roman sword.

The whole party on board were made merry by these unexpected 
supplies; but none more so than a loquacious little Frenchman, who 
got drunk in five minutes, and a sturdy Cappuccino Friar, who had 
taken everybody's fancy mightily, and was one of the best friars in 
the world, I verily believe.

He had a free, open countenance; and a rich brown, flowing beard; 
and was a remarkably handsome man, of about fifty.  He had come up 
to us, early in the morning, and inquired whether we were sure to 
be at Nice by eleven; saying that he particularly wanted to know, 
because if we reached it by that time he would have to perform 
Mass, and must deal with the consecrated wafer, fasting; whereas, 
if there were no chance of his being in time, he would immediately 
breakfast.  He made this communication, under the idea that the 
brave Courier was the captain; and indeed he looked much more like 
it than anybody else on board.  Being assured that we should arrive 
in good time, he fasted, and talked, fasting, to everybody, with 
the most charming good humour; answering jokes at the expense of 
friars, with other jokes at the expense of laymen, and saying that, 
friar as he was, he would engage to take up the two strongest men 
on board, one after the other, with his teeth, and carry them along 
the deck.  Nobody gave him the opportunity, but I dare say he could 
have done it; for he was a gallant, noble figure of a man, even in 
the Cappuccino dress, which is the ugliest and most ungainly that 
can well be.

All this had given great delight to the loquacious Frenchman, who 
gradually patronised the Friar very much, and seemed to commiserate 
him as one who might have been born a Frenchman himself, but for an 
unfortunate destiny.  Although his patronage was such as a mouse 
might bestow upon a lion, he had a vast opinion of its 
condescension; and in the warmth of that sentiment, occasionally 
rose on tiptoe, to slap the Friar on the back.

When the baskets arrived:  it being then too late for Mass:  the 
Friar went to work bravely:  eating prodigiously of the cold meat 
and bread, drinking deep draughts of the wine, smoking cigars, 
taking snuff, sustaining an uninterrupted conversation with all 
hands, and occasionally running to the boat's side and hailing 
somebody on shore with the intelligence that we MUST be got out of 
this quarantine somehow or other, as he had to take part in a great 
religious procession in the afternoon.  After this, he would come 
back, laughing lustily from pure good humour:  while the Frenchman 
wrinkled his small face into ten thousand creases, and said how 
droll it was, and what a brave boy was that Friar!  At length the 
heat of the sun without, and the wine within, made the Frenchman 
sleepy.  So, in the noontide of his patronage of his gigantic 
protege, he lay down among the wool, and began to snore.

It was four o'clock before we were released; and the Frenchman, 
dirty and woolly, and snuffy, was still sleeping when the Friar 
went ashore.  As soon as we were free, we all hurried away, to wash 
and dress, that we might make a decent appearance at the 
procession; and I saw no more of the Frenchman until we took up our 
station in the main street to see it pass, when he squeezed himself 
into a front place, elaborately renovated; threw back his little 
coat, to show a broad-barred velvet waistcoat, sprinkled all over 
with stars; then adjusted himself and his cane so as utterly to 
bewilder and transfix the Friar, when he should appear.

The procession was a very long one, and included an immense number 
of people divided into small parties; each party chanting nasally, 
on its own account, without reference to any other, and producing a 
most dismal result.  There were angels, crosses, Virgins carried on 
flat boards surrounded by Cupids, crowns, saints, missals, 
infantry, tapers, monks, nuns, relics, dignitaries of the church in 
green hats, walking under crimson parasols:  and, here and there, a 
species of sacred street-lamp hoisted on a pole.  We looked out 
anxiously for the Cappuccini, and presently their brown robes and 
corded girdles were seen coming on, in a body.

I observed the little Frenchman chuckle over the idea that when the 
Friar saw him in the broad-barred waistcoat, he would mentally 
exclaim, 'Is that my Patron!  THAT distinguished man!' and would be 
covered with confusion.  Ah! never was the Frenchman so deceived.  
As our friend the Cappuccino advanced, with folded arms, he looked 
straight into the visage of the little Frenchman, with a bland, 
serene, composed abstraction, not to be described.  There was not 
the faintest trace of recognition or amusement on his features; not 
the smallest consciousness of bread and meat, wine, snuff, or 
cigars.  'C'est lui-meme,' I heard the little Frenchman say, in 
some doubt.  Oh yes, it was himself.  It was not his brother or his 
nephew, very like him.  It was he.  He walked in great state:  
being one of the Superiors of the Order:  and looked his part to 
admiration.  There never was anything so perfect of its kind as the 
contemplative way in which he allowed his placid gaze to rest on 
us, his late companions, as if he had never seen us in his life and 
didn't see us then.  The Frenchman, quite humbled, took off his hat 
at last, but the Friar still passed on, with the same imperturbable 
serenity; and the broad-barred waistcoat, fading into the crowd, 
was seen no more.

The procession wound up with a discharge of musketry that shook all 
the windows in the town.  Next afternoon we started for Genoa, by 
the famed Cornice road.

The half-French, half-Italian Vetturino, who undertook, with his 
little rattling carriage and pair, to convey us thither in three 
days, was a careless, good-looking fellow, whose light-heartedness 
and singing propensities knew no bounds as long as we went on 
smoothly.  So long, he had a word and a smile, and a flick of his 
whip, for all the peasant girls, and odds and ends of the 
Sonnambula for all the echoes.  So long, he went jingling through 
every little village, with bells on his horses and rings in his 
ears:  a very meteor of gallantry and cheerfulness.  But, it was 
highly characteristic to see him under a slight reverse of 
circumstances, when, in one part of the journey, we came to a 
narrow place where a waggon had broken down and stopped up the 
road.  His hands were twined in his hair immediately, as if a 
combination of all the direst accidents in life had suddenly fallen 
on his devoted head.  He swore in French, prayed in Italian, and 
went up and down, beating his feet on the ground in a very ecstasy 
of despair.  There were various carters and mule-drivers assembled 
round the broken waggon, and at last some man of an original turn 
of mind, proposed that a general and joint effort should be made to 
get things to-rights again, and clear the way - an idea which I 
verily believe would never have presented itself to our friend, 
though we had remained there until now.  It was done at no great 
cost of labour; but at every pause in the doing, his hands were 
wound in his hair again, as if there were no ray of hope to lighten 
his misery.  The moment he was on his box once more, and clattering 
briskly down hill, he returned to the Sonnambula and the peasant 
girls, as if it were not in the power of misfortune to depress him.

Much of the romance of the beautiful towns and villages on this 
beautiful road, disappears when they are entered, for many of them 
are very miserable.  The streets are narrow, dark, and dirty; the 
inhabitants lean and squalid; and the withered old women, with 
their wiry grey hair twisted up into a knot on the top of the head, 
like a pad to carry loads on, are so intensely ugly, both along the 
Riviera, and in Genoa, too, that, seen straggling about in dim 
door-ways with their spindles, or crooning together in by-corners, 
they are like a population of Witches - except that they certainly 
are not to be suspected of brooms or any other instrument of 
cleanliness.  Neither are the pig-skins, in common use to hold 
wine, and hung out in the sun in all directions, by any means 
ornamental, as they always preserve the form of very bloated pigs, 
with their heads and legs cut off, dangling upside-down by their 
own tails.

These towns, as they are seen in the approach, however:  nestling, 
with their clustering roofs and towers, among trees on steep hill-
sides, or built upon the brink of noble bays:  are charming.  The 
vegetation is, everywhere, luxuriant and beautiful, and the Palm-
tree makes a novel feature in the novel scenery.  In one town, San 
Remo - a most extraordinary place, built on gloomy open arches, so 
that one might ramble underneath the whole town - there are pretty 
terrace gardens; in other towns, there is the clang of shipwrights' 
hammers, and the building of small vessels on the beach.  In some 
of the broad bays, the fleets of Europe might ride at anchor.  In 
every case, each little group of houses presents, in the distance, 
some enchanting confusion of picturesque and fanciful shapes.

The road itself - now high above the glittering sea, which breaks 
against the foot of the precipice:  now turning inland to sweep the 
shore of a bay:  now crossing the stony bed of a mountain stream:  
now low down on the beach:  now winding among riven rocks of many 
forms and colours:  now chequered by a solitary ruined tower, one 
of a chain of towers built, in old time, to protect the coast from 
the invasions of the Barbary Corsairs - presents new beauties every 
moment.  When its own striking scenery is passed, and it trails on 
through a long line of suburb, lying on the flat seashore, to 
Genoa, then, the changing glimpses of that noble city and its 
harbour, awaken a new source of interest; freshened by every huge, 
unwieldy, half-inhabited old house in its outskirts:  and coming to 
its climax when the city gate is reached, and all Genoa with its 
beautiful harbour, and neighbouring hills, bursts proudly on the 
view.



CHAPTER V - TO PARMA, MODENA, AND BOLOGNA



I STROLLED away from Genoa on the 6th of November, bound for a good 
many places (England among them), but first for Piacenza; for which 
town I started in the COUPE of a machine something like a 
travelling caravan, in company with the brave Courier, and a lady 
with a large dog, who howled dolefully, at intervals, all night.  
It was very wet, and very cold; very dark, and very dismal; we 
travelled at the rate of barely four miles an hour, and stopped 
nowhere for refreshment.  At ten o'clock next morning, we changed 
coaches at Alessandria, where we were packed up in another coach 
(the body whereof would have been small for a fly), in company with 
a very old priest; a young Jesuit, his companion - who carried 
their breviaries and other books, and who, in the exertion of 
getting into the coach, had made a gash of pink leg between his 
black stocking and his black knee-shorts, that reminded one of 
Hamlet in Ophelia's closet, only it was visible on both legs - a 
provincial Avvocato; and a gentleman with a red nose that had an 
uncommon and singular sheen upon it, which I never observed in the 
human subject before.  In this way we travelled on, until four 
o'clock in the afternoon; the roads being still very heavy, and the 
coach very slow.  To mend the matter, the old priest was troubled 
with cramps in his legs, so that he had to give a terrible yell 
every ten minutes or so, and be hoisted out by the united efforts 
of the company; the coach always stopping for him, with great 
gravity.  This disorder, and the roads, formed the main subject of 
conversation.  Finding, in the afternoon, that the COUPE had 
discharged two people, and had only one passenger inside - a 
monstrous ugly Tuscan, with a great purple moustache, of which no 
man could see the ends when he had his hat on - I took advantage of 
its better accommodation, and in company with this gentleman (who 
was very conversational and good-humoured) travelled on, until 
nearly eleven o'clock at night, when the driver reported that he 
couldn't think of going any farther, and we accordingly made a halt 
at a place called Stradella.

The inn was a series of strange galleries surrounding a yard where 
our coach, and a waggon or two, and a lot of fowls, and firewood, 
were all heaped up together, higgledy-piggledy; so that you didn't 
know, and couldn't have taken your oath, which was a fowl and which 
was a cart.  We followed a sleepy man with a flaring torch, into a 
great, cold room, where there were two immensely broad beds, on 
what looked like two immensely broad deal dining-tables; another 
deal table of similar dimensions in the middle of the bare floor; 
four windows; and two chairs.  Somebody said it was my room; and I 
walked up and down it, for half an hour or so, staring at the 
Tuscan, the old priest, the young priest, and the Avvocato (Red-
Nose lived in the town, and had gone home), who sat upon their 
beds, and stared at me in return.

The rather dreary whimsicality of this stage of the proceedings, is 
interrupted by an announcement from the Brave (he had been cooking) 
that supper is ready; and to the priest's chamber (the next room 
and the counterpart of mine) we all adjourn.  The first dish is a 
cabbage, boiled with a great quantity of rice in a tureen full of 
water, and flavoured with cheese.  It is so hot, and we are so 
cold, that it appears almost jolly.  The second dish is some little 
bits of pork, fried with pigs' kidneys.  The third, two red fowls.  
The fourth, two little red turkeys.  The fifth, a huge stew of 
garlic and truffles, and I don't know what else; and this concludes 
the entertainment.

Before I can sit down in my own chamber, and think it of the 
dampest, the door opens, and the Brave comes moving in, in the 
middle of such a quantity of fuel that he looks like Birnam Wood 
taking a winter walk.  He kindles this heap in a twinkling, and 
produces a jorum of hot brandy and water; for that bottle of his 
keeps company with the seasons, and now holds nothing but the 
purest EAU DE VIE.  When he has accomplished this feat, he retires 
for the night; and I hear him, for an hour afterwards, and indeed 
until I fall asleep, making jokes in some outhouse (apparently 
under the pillow), where he is smoking cigars with a party of 
confidential friends.  He never was in the house in his life 
before; but he knows everybody everywhere, before he has been 
anywhere five minutes; and is certain to have attracted to himself, 
in the meantime, the enthusiastic devotion of the whole 
establishment.

This is at twelve o'clock at night.  At four o'clock next morning, 
he is up again, fresher than a full-blown rose; making blazing 
fires without the least authority from the landlord; producing mugs 
of scalding coffee when nobody else can get anything but cold 
water; and going out into the dark streets, and roaring for fresh 
milk, on the chance of somebody with a cow getting up to supply it.  
While the horses are 'coming,' I stumble out into the town too.  It 
seems to be all one little Piazza, with a cold damp wind blowing in 
and out of the arches, alternately, in a sort of pattern.  But it 
is profoundly dark, and raining heavily; and I shouldn't know it 
to-morrow, if I were taken there to try.  Which Heaven forbid.

The horses arrive in about an hour.  In the interval, the driver 
swears; sometimes Christian oaths, sometimes Pagan oaths.  
Sometimes, when it is a long, compound oath, he begins with 
Christianity and merges into Paganism.  Various messengers are 
despatched; not so much after the horses, as after each other; for 
the first messenger never comes back, and all the rest imitate him.  
At length the horses appear, surrounded by all the messengers; some 
kicking them, and some dragging them, and all shouting abuse to 
them.  Then, the old priest, the young priest, the Avvocato, the 
Tuscan, and all of us, take our places; and sleepy voices 
proceeding from the doors of extraordinary hutches in divers parts 
of the yard, cry out 'Addio corriere mio!  Buon' viaggio, 
corriere!'  Salutations which the courier, with his face one 
monstrous grin, returns in like manner as we go jolting and 
wallowing away, through the mud.

At Piacenza, which was four or five hours' journey from the inn at 
Stradella, we broke up our little company before the hotel door, 
with divers manifestations of friendly feeling on all sides.  The 
old priest was taken with the cramp again, before he had got half-
way down the street; and the young priest laid the bundle of books 
on a door-step, while he dutifully rubbed the old gentleman's legs.  
The client of the Avvocato was waiting for him at the yard-gate, 
and kissed him on each cheek, with such a resounding smack, that I 
am afraid he had either a very bad case, or a scantily-furnished 
purse.  The Tuscan, with a cigar in his mouth, went loitering off, 
carrying his hat in his hand that he might the better trail up the 
ends of his dishevelled moustache.  And the brave Courier, as he 
and I strolled away to look about us, began immediately to 
entertain me with the private histories and family affairs of the 
whole party.

A brown, decayed, old town, Piacenza is.  A deserted, solitary, 
grass-grown place, with ruined ramparts; half filled-up trenches, 
which afford a frowsy pasturage to the lean kine that wander about 
them; and streets of stern houses, moodily frowning at the other 
houses over the way.  The sleepiest and shabbiest of soldiery go 
wandering about, with the double curse of laziness and poverty, 
uncouthly wrinkling their misfitting regimentals; the dirtiest of 
children play with their impromptu toys (pigs and mud) in the 
feeblest of gutters; and the gauntest of dogs trot in and out of 
the dullest of archways, in perpetual search of something to eat, 
which they never seem to find.  A mysterious and solemn Palace, 
guarded by two colossal statues, twin Genii of the place, stands 
gravely in the midst of the idle town; and the king with the marble 
legs, who flourished in the time of the thousand and one Nights, 
might live contentedly inside of it, and never have the energy, in 
his upper half of flesh and blood, to want to come out.

What a strange, half-sorrowful and half-delicious doze it is, to 
ramble through these places gone to sleep and basking in the sun!  
Each, in its turn, appears to be, of all the mouldy, dreary, God-
forgotten towns in the wide world, the chief.  Sitting on this 
hillock where a bastion used to be, and where a noisy fortress was, 
in the time of the old Roman station here, I became aware that I 
have never known till now, what it is to be lazy.  A dormouse must 
surely be in very much the same condition before he retires under 
the wool in his cage; or a tortoise before he buries himself.

I feel that I am getting rusty.  That any attempt to think, would 
be accompanied with a creaking noise.  That there is nothing, 
anywhere, to be done, or needing to be done.  That there is no more 
human progress, motion, effort, or advancement, of any kind beyond 
this.  That the whole scheme stopped here centuries ago, and laid 
down to rest until the Day of Judgment.

Never while the brave Courier lives!  Behold him jingling out of 
Piacenza, and staggering this way, in the tallest posting-chaise 
ever seen, so that he looks out of the front window as if he were 
peeping over a garden wall; while the postilion, concentrated 
essence of all the shabbiness of Italy, pauses for a moment in his 
animated conversation, to touch his hat to a blunt-nosed little 
Virgin, hardly less shabby than himself, enshrined in a plaster 
Punch's show outside the town.

In Genoa, and thereabouts, they train the vines on trellis-work, 
supported on square clumsy pillars, which, in themselves, are 
anything but picturesque.  But, here, they twine them around trees, 
and let them trail among the hedges; and the vineyards are full of 
trees, regularly planted for this purpose, each with its own vine 
twining and clustering about it.  Their leaves are now of the 
brightest gold and deepest red; and never was anything so 
enchantingly graceful and full of beauty.  Through miles of these 
delightful forms and colours, the road winds its way.  The wild 
festoons, the elegant wreaths, and crowns, and garlands of all 
shapes; the fairy nets flung over great trees, and making them 
prisoners in sport; the tumbled heaps and mounds of exquisite 
shapes upon the ground; how rich and beautiful they are!  And every 
now and then, a long, long line of trees, will be all bound and 
garlanded together:  as if they had taken hold of one another, and 
were coming dancing down the field!

Parma has cheerful, stirring streets, for an Italian town; and 
consequently is not so characteristic as many places of less note.  
Always excepting the retired Piazza, where the Cathedral, 
Baptistery, and Campanile - ancient buildings, of a sombre brown, 
embellished with innumerable grotesque monsters and dreamy-looking 
creatures carved in marble and red stone - are clustered in a noble 
and magnificent repose.  Their silent presence was only invaded, 
when I saw them, by the twittering of the many birds that were 
flying in and out of the crevices in the stones and little nooks in 
the architecture, where they had made their nests.  They were busy, 
rising from the cold shade of Temples made with hands, into the 
sunny air of Heaven.  Not so the worshippers within, who were 
listening to the same drowsy chaunt, or kneeling before the same 
kinds of images and tapers, or whispering, with their heads bowed 
down, in the selfsame dark confessionals, as I had left in Genoa 
and everywhere else.

The decayed and mutilated paintings with which this church is 
covered, have, to my thinking, a remarkably mournful and depressing 
influence.  It is miserable to see great works of art - something 
of the Souls of Painters - perishing and fading away, like human 
forms.  This cathedral is odorous with the rotting of Correggio's 
frescoes in the Cupola.  Heaven knows how beautiful they may have 
been at one time.  Connoisseurs fall into raptures with them now; 
but such a labyrinth of arms and legs:  such heaps of fore-
shortened limbs, entangled and involved and jumbled together:  no 
operative surgeon, gone mad, could imagine in his wildest delirium.

There is a very interesting subterranean church here:  the roof 
supported by marble pillars, behind each of which there seemed to 
be at least one beggar in ambush:  to say nothing of the tombs and 
secluded altars.  From every one of these lurking-places, such 
crowds of phantom-looking men and women, leading other men and 
women with twisted limbs, or chattering jaws, or paralytic 
gestures, or idiotic heads, or some other sad infirmity, came 
hobbling out to beg, that if the ruined frescoes in the cathedral 
above, had been suddenly animated, and had retired to this lower 
church, they could hardly have made a greater confusion, or 
exhibited a more confounding display of arms and legs.

There is Petrarch's Monument, too; and there is the Baptistery, 
with its beautiful arches and immense font; and there is a gallery 
containing some very remarkable pictures, whereof a few were being 
copied by hairy-faced artists, with little velvet caps more off 
their heads than on.  There is the Farnese Palace, too; and in it 
one of the dreariest spectacles of decay that ever was seen - a 
grand, old, gloomy theatre, mouldering away.

It is a large wooden structure, of the horse-shoe shape; the lower 
seats arranged upon the Roman plan, but above them, great heavy 
chambers; rather than boxes, where the Nobles sat, remote in their 
proud state.  Such desolation as has fallen on this theatre, 
enhanced in the spectator's fancy by its gay intention and design, 
none but worms can be familiar with.  A hundred and ten years have 
passed, since any play was acted here.  The sky shines in through 
the gashes in the roof; the boxes are dropping down, wasting away, 
and only tenanted by rats; damp and mildew smear the faded colours, 
and make spectral maps upon the panels; lean rags are dangling down 
where there were gay festoons on the Proscenium; the stage has 
rotted so, that a narrow wooden gallery is thrown across it, or it 
would sink beneath the tread, and bury the visitor in the gloomy 
depth beneath.  The desolation and decay impress themselves on all 
the senses.  The air has a mouldering smell, and an earthy taste; 
any stray outer sounds that straggle in with some lost sunbeam, are 
muffled and heavy; and the worm, the maggot, and the rot have 
changed the surface of the wood beneath the touch, as time will 
seam and roughen a smooth hand.  If ever Ghosts act plays, they act 
them on this ghostly stage.

It was most delicious weather, when we came into Modena, where the 
darkness of the sombre colonnades over the footways skirting the 
main street on either side, was made refreshing and agreeable by 
the bright sky, so wonderfully blue.  I passed from all the glory 
of the day, into a dim cathedral, where High Mass was performing, 
feeble tapers were burning, people were kneeling in all directions 
before all manner of shrines, and officiating priests were crooning 
the usual chant, in the usual, low, dull, drawling, melancholy 
tone.

Thinking how strange it was, to find, in every stagnant town, this 
same Heart beating with the same monotonous pulsation, the centre 
of the same torpid, listless system, I came out by another door, 
and was suddenly scared to death by a blast from the shrillest 
trumpet that ever was blown.  Immediately, came tearing round the 
corner, an equestrian company from Paris:  marshalling themselves 
under the walls of the church, and flouting, with their horses' 
heels, the griffins, lions, tigers, and other monsters in stone and 
marble, decorating its exterior.  First, there came a stately 
nobleman with a great deal of hair, and no hat, bearing an enormous 
banner, on which was inscribed, MAZEPPA!  TO-NIGHT!  Then, a 
Mexican chief, with a great pear-shaped club on his shoulder, like 
Hercules.  Then, six or eight Roman chariots:  each with a 
beautiful lady in extremely short petticoats, and unnaturally pink 
tights, erect within:  shedding beaming looks upon the crowd, in 
which there was a latent expression of discomposure and anxiety, 
for which I couldn't account, until, as the open back of each 
chariot presented itself, I saw the immense difficulty with which 
the pink legs maintained their perpendicular, over the uneven 
pavement of the town:  which gave me quite a new idea of the 
ancient Romans and Britons.  The procession was brought to a close, 
by some dozen indomitable warriors of different nations, riding two 
and two, and haughtily surveying the tame population of Modena:  
among whom, however, they occasionally condescended to scatter 
largesse in the form of a few handbills.  After caracolling among 
the lions and tigers, and proclaiming that evening's entertainments 
with blast of trumpet, it then filed off, by the other end of the 
square, and left a new and greatly increased dulness behind.

When the procession had so entirely passed away, that the shrill 
trumpet was mild in the distance, and the tail of the last horse 
was hopelessly round the corner, the people who had come out of the 
church to stare at it, went back again.  But one old lady, kneeling 
on the pavement within, near the door, had seen it all, and had 
been immensely interested, without getting up; and this old lady's 
eye, at that juncture, I happened to catch:  to our mutual 
confusion.  She cut our embarrassment very short, however, by 
crossing herself devoutly, and going down, at full length, on her 
face, before a figure in a fancy petticoat and a gilt crown; which 
was so like one of the procession-figures, that perhaps at this 
hour she may think the whole appearance a celestial vision.  
Anyhow, I must certainly have forgiven her her interest in the 
Circus, though I had been her Father Confessor.

There was a little fiery-eyed old man with a crooked shoulder, in 
the cathedral, who took it very ill that I made no effort to see 
the bucket (kept in an old tower) which the people of Modena took 
away from the people of Bologna in the fourteenth century, and 
about which there was war made and a mock-heroic poem by TASSONE, 
too.  Being quite content, however, to look at the outside of the 
tower, and feast, in imagination, on the bucket within; and 
preferring to loiter in the shade of the tall Campanile, and about 
the cathedral; I have no personal knowledge of this bucket, even at 
the present time.

Indeed, we were at Bologna, before the little old man (or the 
Guide-Book) would have considered that we had half done justice to 
the wonders of Modena.  But it is such a delight to me to leave new 
scenes behind, and still go on, encountering newer scenes - and, 
moreover, I have such a perverse disposition in respect of sights 
that are cut, and dried, and dictated - that I fear I sin against 
similar authorities in every place I visit.

Be this as it may, in the pleasant Cemetery at Bologna, I found 
myself walking next Sunday morning, among the stately marble tombs 
and colonnades, in company with a crowd of Peasants, and escorted 
by a little Cicerone of that town, who was excessively anxious for 
the honour of the place, and most solicitous to divert my attention 
from the bad monuments:  whereas he was never tired of extolling 
the good ones.  Seeing this little man (a good-humoured little man 
he was, who seemed to have nothing in his face but shining teeth 
and eyes) looking wistfully at a certain plot of grass, I asked him 
who was buried there.  'The poor people, Signore,' he said, with a 
shrug and a smile, and stopping to look back at me - for he always 
went on a little before, and took off his hat to introduce every 
new monument.  'Only the poor, Signore!  It's very cheerful.  It's 
very lively.  How green it is, how cool!  It's like a meadow!  
There are five,' - holding up all the fingers of his right hand to 
express the number, which an Italian peasant will always do, if it 
be within the compass of his ten fingers, - 'there are five of my 
little children buried there, Signore; just there; a little to the 
right.  Well!  Thanks to God!  It's very cheerful.  How green it 
is, how cool it is!  It's quite a meadow!'

He looked me very hard in the face, and seeing I was sorry for him, 
took a pinch of snuff (every Cicerone takes snuff), and made a 
little bow; partly in deprecation of his having alluded to such a 
subject, and partly in memory of the children and of his favourite 
saint.  It was as unaffected and as perfectly natural a little bow, 
as ever man made.  Immediately afterwards, he took his hat off 
altogether, and begged to introduce me to the next monument; and 
his eyes and his teeth shone brighter than before.



CHAPTER VI - THROUGH BOLOGNA AND FERRARA



THERE was such a very smart official in attendance at the Cemetery 
where the little Cicerone had buried his children, that when the 
little Cicerone suggested to me, in a whisper, that there would be 
no offence in presenting this officer, in return for some slight 
extra service, with a couple of pauls (about tenpence, English 
money), I looked incredulously at his cocked hat, wash-leather 
gloves, well-made uniform, and dazzling buttons, and rebuked the 
little Cicerone with a grave shake of the head.  For, in splendour 
of appearance, he was at least equal to the Deputy Usher of the 
Black Rod; and the idea of his carrying, as Jeremy Diddler would 
say, 'such a thing as tenpence' away with him, seemed monstrous.  
He took it in excellent part, however, when I made bold to give it 
him, and pulled off his cocked hat with a flourish that would have 
been a bargain at double the money.

It seemed to be his duty to describe the monuments to the people - 
at all events he was doing so; and when I compared him, like 
Gulliver in Brobdingnag, 'with the Institutions of my own beloved 
country, I could not refrain from tears of pride and exultation.'  
He had no pace at all; no more than a tortoise.  He loitered as the 
people loitered, that they might gratify their curiosity; and 
positively allowed them, now and then, to read the inscriptions on 
the tombs.  He was neither shabby, nor insolent, nor churlish, nor 
ignorant.  He spoke his own language with perfect propriety, and 
seemed to consider himself, in his way, a kind of teacher of the 
people, and to entertain a just respect both for himself and them.  
They would no more have such a man for a Verger in Westminster 
Abbey, than they would let the people in (as they do at Bologna) to 
see the monuments for nothing.

Again, an ancient sombre town, under the brilliant sky; with heavy 
arcades over the footways of the older streets, and lighter and 
more cheerful archways in the newer portions of the town.  Again, 
brown piles of sacred buildings, with more birds flying in and out 
of chinks in the stones; and more snarling monsters for the bases 
of the pillars.  Again, rich churches, drowsy Masses, curling 
incense, tinkling bells, priests in bright vestments:  pictures, 
tapers, laced altar cloths, crosses, images, and artificial 
flowers.

There is a grave and learned air about the city, and a pleasant 
gloom upon it, that would leave it, a distinct and separate 
impression in the mind, among a crowd of cities, though it were not 
still further marked in the traveller's remembrance by the two 
brick leaning towers (sufficiently unsightly in themselves, it must 
be acknowledged), inclining cross-wise as if they were bowing 
stiffly to each other - a most extraordinary termination to the 
perspective of some of the narrow streets.  The colleges, and 
churches too, and palaces:  and above all the academy of Fine Arts, 
where there are a host of interesting pictures, especially by 
GUIDO, DOMENICHINO, and LUDOVICO CARACCI:  give it a place of its 
own in the memory.  Even though these were not, and there were 
nothing else to remember it by, the great Meridian on the pavement 
of the church of San Petronio, where the sunbeams mark the time 
among the kneeling people, would give it a fanciful and pleasant 
interest.

Bologna being very full of tourists, detained there by an 
inundation which rendered the road to Florence impassable, I was 
quartered up at the top of an hotel, in an out-of-the-way room 
which I never could find:  containing a bed, big enough for a 
boarding-school, which I couldn't fall asleep in.  The chief among 
the waiters who visited this lonely retreat, where there was no 
other company but the swallows in the broad eaves over the window, 
was a man of one idea in connection with the English; and the 
subject of this harmless monomania, was Lord Byron.  I made the 
discovery by accidentally remarking to him, at breakfast, that the 
matting with which the floor was covered, was very comfortable at 
that season, when he immediately replied that Milor Beeron had been 
much attached to that kind of matting.  Observing, at the same 
moment, that I took no milk, he exclaimed with enthusiasm, that 
Milor Beeron had never touched it.  At first, I took it for 
granted, in my innocence, that he had been one of the Beeron 
servants; but no, he said, no, he was in the habit of speaking 
about my Lord, to English gentlemen; that was all.  He knew all 
about him, he said.  In proof of it, he connected him with every 
possible topic, from the Monte Pulciano wine at dinner (which was 
grown on an estate he had owned), to the big bed itself, which was 
the very model of his.  When I left the inn, he coupled with his 
final bow in the yard, a parting assurance that the road by which I 
was going, had been Milor Beeron's favourite ride; and before the 
horse's feet had well begun to clatter on the pavement, he ran 
briskly up-stairs again, I dare say to tell some other Englishman 
in some other solitary room that the guest who had just departed 
was Lord Beeron's living image.

I had entered Bologna by night - almost midnight - and all along 
the road thither, after our entrance into the Papal territory:  
which is not, in any part, supremely well governed, Saint Peter's 
keys being rather rusty now; the driver had so worried about the 
danger of robbers in travelling after dark, and had so infected the 
brave Courier, and the two had been so constantly stopping and 
getting up and down to look after a portmanteau which was tied on 
behind, that I should have felt almost obliged to any one who would 
have had the goodness to take it away.  Hence it was stipulated, 
that, whenever we left Bologna, we should start so as not to arrive 
at Ferrara later than eight at night; and a delightful afternoon 
and evening journey it was, albeit through a flat district which 
gradually became more marshy from the overflow of brooks and rivers 
in the recent heavy rains.

At sunset, when I was walking on alone, while the horses rested, I 
arrived upon a little scene, which, by one of those singular mental 
operations of which we are all conscious, seemed perfectly familiar 
to me, and which I see distinctly now.  There was not much in it.  
In the blood red light, there was a mournful sheet of water, just 
stirred by the evening wind; upon its margin a few trees.  In the 
foreground was a group of silent peasant girls leaning over the 
parapet of a little bridge, and looking, now up at the sky, now 
down into the water; in the distance, a deep bell; the shade of 
approaching night on everything.  If I had been murdered there, in 
some former life, I could not have seemed to remember the place 
more thoroughly, or with a more emphatic chilling of the blood; and 
the mere remembrance of it acquired in that minute, is so 
strengthened by the imaginary recollection, that I hardly think I 
could forget it.

More solitary, more depopulated, more deserted, old Ferrara, than 
any city of the solemn brotherhood!  The grass so grows up in the 
silent streets, that any one might make hay there, literally, while 
the sun shines.  But the sun shines with diminished cheerfulness in 
grim Ferrara; and the people are so few who pass and re-pass 
through the places, that the flesh of its inhabitants might be 
grass indeed, and growing in the squares.

I wonder why the head coppersmith in an Italian town, always lives 
next door to the Hotel, or opposite:  making the visitor feel as if 
the beating hammers were his own heart, palpitating with a deadly 
energy!  I wonder why jealous corridors surround the bedroom on all 
sides, and fill it with unnecessary doors that can't be shut, and 
will not open, and abut on pitchy darkness!  I wonder why it is not 
enough that these distrustful genii stand agape at one's dreams all 
night, but there must also be round open portholes, high in the 
wall, suggestive, when a mouse or rat is heard behind the wainscot, 
of a somebody scraping the wall with his toes, in his endeavours to 
reach one of these portholes and look in!  I wonder why the faggots 
are so constructed, as to know of no effect but an agony of heat 
when they are lighted and replenished, and an agony of cold and 
suffocation at all other times!  I wonder, above all, why it is the 
great feature of domestic architecture in Italian inns, that all 
the fire goes up the chimney, except the smoke!

The answer matters little.  Coppersmiths, doors, portholes, smoke, 
and faggots, are welcome to me.  Give me the smiling face of the 
attendant, man or woman; the courteous manner; the amiable desire 
to please and to be pleased; the light-hearted, pleasant, simple 
air - so many jewels set in dirt - and I am theirs again to-morrow!

ARIOSTO'S house, TASSO'S prison, a rare old Gothic cathedral, and 
more churches of course, are the sights of Ferrara.  But the long 
silent streets, and the dismantled palaces, where ivy waves in lieu 
of banners, and where rank weeds are slowly creeping up the long-
untrodden stairs, are the best sights of all.

The aspect of this dreary town, half an hour before sunrise one 
fine morning, when I left it, was as picturesque as it seemed 
unreal and spectral.  It was no matter that the people were not yet 
out of bed; for if they had all been up and busy, they would have 
made but little difference in that desert of a place.  It was best 
to see it, without a single figure in the picture; a city of the 
dead, without one solitary survivor.  Pestilence might have ravaged 
streets, squares, and market-places; and sack and siege have ruined 
the old houses, battered down their doors and windows, and made 
breaches in their roofs.  In one part, a great tower rose into the 
air; the only landmark in the melancholy view.  In another, a 
prodigious castle, with a moat about it, stood aloof:  a sullen 
city in itself.  In the black dungeons of this castle, Parisina and 
her lover were beheaded in the dead of night.  The red light, 
beginning to shine when I looked back upon it, stained its walls 
without, as they have, many a time, been stained within, in old 
days; but for any sign of life they gave, the castle and the city 
might have been avoided by all human creatures, from the moment 
when the axe went down upon the last of the two lovers:  and might 
have never vibrated to another sound


Beyond the blow that to the block
Pierced through with forced and sullen shock.


Coming to the Po, which was greatly swollen, and running fiercely, 
we crossed it by a floating bridge of boats, and so came into the 
Austrian territory, and resumed our journey:  through a country of 
which, for some miles, a great part was under water.  The brave 
Courier and the soldiery had first quarrelled, for half an hour or 
more, over our eternal passport.  But this was a daily relaxation 
with the Brave, who was always stricken deaf when shabby 
functionaries in uniform came, as they constantly did come, 
plunging out of wooden boxes to look at it - or in other words to 
beg - and who, stone deaf to my entreaties that the man might have 
a trifle given him, and we resume our journey in peace, was wont to 
sit reviling the functionary in broken English:  while the 
unfortunate man's face was a portrait of mental agony framed in the 
coach window, from his perfect ignorance of what was being said to 
his disparagement.

There was a postilion, in the course of this day's journey, as wild 
and savagely good-looking a vagabond as you would desire to see.  
He was a tall, stout-made, dark-complexioned fellow, with a 
profusion of shaggy black hair hanging all over his face, and great 
black whiskers stretching down his throat.  His dress was a torn 
suit of rifle green, garnished here and there with red; a steeple-
crowned hat, innocent of nap, with a broken and bedraggled feather 
stuck in the band; and a flaming red neckerchief hanging on his 
shoulders.  He was not in the saddle, but reposed, quite at his 
ease, on a sort of low foot-board in front of the postchaise, down 
amongst the horses' tails - convenient for having his brains kicked 
out, at any moment.  To this Brigand, the brave Courier, when we 
were at a reasonable trot, happened to suggest the practicability 
of going faster.  He received the proposal with a perfect yell of 
derision; brandished his whip about his head (such a whip! it was 
more like a home-made bow); flung up his heels, much higher than 
the horses; and disappeared, in a paroxysm, somewhere in the 
neighbourhood of the axletree.  I fully expected to see him lying 
in the road, a hundred yards behind, but up came the steeple-
crowned hat again, next minute, and he was seen reposing, as on a 
sofa, entertaining himself with the idea, and crying, 'Ha, ha! what 
next!  Oh the devil!  Faster too!  Shoo - hoo - o - o!'  (This last 
ejaculation, an inexpressibly defiant hoot.)  Being anxious to 
reach our immediate destination that night, I ventured, by-and-by, 
to repeat the experiment on my own account.  It produced exactly 
the same effect.  Round flew the whip with the same scornful 
flourish, up came the heels, down went the steeple-crowned hat, and 
presently he reappeared, reposing as before and saying to himself, 
'Ha ha! what next!  Faster too!  Oh the devil!  Shoo - hoo - o - 
o!'



CHAPTER VII - AN ITALIAN DREAM



I HAD been travelling, for some days; resting very little in the 
night, and never in the day.  The rapid and unbroken succession of 
novelties that had passed before me, came back like half-formed 
dreams; and a crowd of objects wandered in the greatest confusion 
through my mind, as I travelled on, by a solitary road.  At 
intervals, some one among them would stop, as it were, in its 
restless flitting to and fro, and enable me to look at it, quite 
steadily, and behold it in full distinctness.  After a few moments, 
it would dissolve, like a view in a magic-lantern; and while I saw 
some part of it quite plainly, and some faintly, and some not at 
all, would show me another of the many places I had lately seen, 
lingering behind it, and coming through it.  This was no sooner 
visible than, in its turn, it melted into something else.

At one moment, I was standing again, before the brown old rugged 
churches of Modena.  As I recognised the curious pillars with grim 
monsters for their bases, I seemed to see them, standing by 
themselves in the quiet square at Padua, where there were the staid 
old University, and the figures, demurely gowned, grouped here and 
there in the open space about it.  Then, I was strolling in the 
outskirts of that pleasant city, admiring the unusual neatness of 
the dwelling-houses, gardens, and orchards, as I had seen them a 
few hours before.  In their stead arose, immediately, the two 
towers of Bologna; and the most obstinate of all these objects, 
failed to hold its ground, a minute, before the monstrous moated 
castle of Ferrara, which, like an illustration to a wild romance, 
came back again in the red sunrise, lording it over the solitary, 
grass-grown, withered town.  In short, I had that incoherent but 
delightful jumble in my brain, which travellers are apt to have, 
and are indolently willing to encourage.  Every shake of the coach 
in which I sat, half dozing in the dark, appeared to jerk some new 
recollection out of its place, and to jerk some other new 
recollection into it; and in this state I fell asleep.

I was awakened after some time (as I thought) by the stopping of 
the coach.  It was now quite night, and we were at the waterside.  
There lay here, a black boat, with a little house or cabin in it of 
the same mournful colour.  When I had taken my seat in this, the 
boat was paddled, by two men, towards a great light, lying in the 
distance on the sea.

Ever and again, there was a dismal sigh of wind.  It ruffled the 
water, and rocked the boat, and sent the dark clouds flying before 
the stars.  I could not but think how strange it was, to be 
floating away at that hour:  leaving the land behind, and going on, 
towards this light upon the sea.  It soon began to burn brighter; 
and from being one light became a cluster of tapers, twinkling and 
shining out of the water, as the boat approached towards them by a 
dreamy kind of track, marked out upon the sea by posts and piles.

We had floated on, five miles or so, over the dark water, when I 
heard it rippling in my dream, against some obstruction near at 
hand.  Looking out attentively, I saw, through the gloom, a 
something black and massive - like a shore, but lying close and 
flat upon the water, like a raft - which we were gliding past.  The 
chief of the two rowers said it was a burial-place.

Full of the interest and wonder which a cemetery lying out there, 
in the lonely sea, inspired, I turned to gaze upon it as it should 
recede in our path, when it was quickly shut out from my view.  
Before I knew by what, or how, I found that we were gliding up a 
street - a phantom street; the houses rising on both sides, from 
the water, and the black boat gliding on beneath their windows.  
Lights were shining from some of these casements, plumbing the 
depth of the black stream with their reflected rays, but all was 
profoundly silent.

So we advanced into this ghostly city, continuing to hold our 
course through narrow streets and lanes, all filled and flowing 
with water.  Some of the corners where our way branched off, were 
so acute and narrow, that it seemed impossible for the long slender 
boat to turn them; but the rowers, with a low melodious cry of 
warning, sent it skimming on without a pause.  Sometimes, the 
rowers of another black boat like our own, echoed the cry, and 
slackening their speed (as I thought we did ours) would come 
flitting past us like a dark shadow.  Other boats, of the same 
sombre hue, were lying moored, I thought, to painted pillars, near 
to dark mysterious doors that opened straight upon the water.  Some 
of these were empty; in some, the rowers lay asleep; towards one, I 
saw some figures coming down a gloomy archway from the interior of 
a palace:  gaily dressed, and attended by torch-bearers.  It was 
but a glimpse I had of them; for a bridge, so low and close upon 
the boat that it seemed ready to fall down and crush us:  one of 
the many bridges that perplexed the Dream:  blotted them out, 
instantly.  On we went, floating towards the heart of this strange 
place - with water all about us where never water was elsewhere - 
clusters of houses, churches, heaps of stately buildings growing 
out of it - and, everywhere, the same extraordinary silence.  
Presently, we shot across a broad and open stream; and passing, as 
I thought, before a spacious paved quay, where the bright lamps 
with which it was illuminated showed long rows of arches and 
pillars, of ponderous construction and great strength, but as light 
to the eye as garlands of hoarfrost or gossamer - and where, for 
the first time, I saw people walking - arrived at a flight of steps 
leading from the water to a large mansion, where, having passed 
through corridors and galleries innumerable, I lay down to rest; 
listening to the black boats stealing up and down below the window 
on the rippling water, till I fell asleep.

The glory of the day that broke upon me in this Dream; its 
freshness, motion, buoyancy; its sparkles of the sun in water; its 
clear blue sky and rustling air; no waking words can tell.  But, 
from my window, I looked down on boats and barks; on masts, sails, 
cordage, flags; on groups of busy sailors, working at the cargoes 
of these vessels; on wide quays, strewn with bales, casks, 
merchandise of many kinds; on great ships, lying near at hand in 
stately indolence; on islands, crowned with gorgeous domes and 
turrets:  and where golden crosses glittered in the light, atop of 
wondrous churches, springing from the sea!  Going down upon the 
margin of the green sea, rolling on before the door, and filling 
all the streets, I came upon a place of such surpassing beauty, and 
such grandeur, that all the rest was poor and faded, in comparison 
with its absorbing loveliness.

It was a great Piazza, as I thought; anchored, like all the rest, 
in the deep ocean.  On its broad bosom, was a Palace, more majestic 
and magnificent in its old age, than all the buildings of the 
earth, in the high prime and fulness of their youth.  Cloisters and 
galleries:  so light, they might have been the work of fairy hands:  
so strong that centuries had battered them in vain:  wound round 
and round this palace, and enfolded it with a Cathedral, gorgeous 
in the wild luxuriant fancies of the East.  At no great distance 
from its porch, a lofty tower, standing by itself, and rearing its 
proud head, alone, into the sky, looked out upon the Adriatic Sea.  
Near to the margin of the stream, were two ill-omened pillars of 
red granite; one having on its top, a figure with a sword and 
shield; the other, a winged lion.  Not far from these again, a 
second tower:  richest of the rich in all its decorations:  even 
here, where all was rich:  sustained aloft, a great orb, gleaming 
with gold and deepest blue:  the Twelve Signs painted on it, and a 
mimic sun revolving in its course around them:  while above, two 
bronze giants hammered out the hours upon a sounding bell.  An 
oblong square of lofty houses of the whitest stone, surrounded by a 
light and beautiful arcade, formed part of this enchanted scene; 
and, here and there, gay masts for flags rose, tapering, from the 
pavement of the unsubstantial ground.

I thought I entered the Cathedral, and went in and out among its 
many arches:  traversing its whole extent.  A grand and dreamy 
structure, of immense proportions; golden with old mosaics; 
redolent of perfumes; dim with the smoke of incense; costly in 
treasure of precious stones and metals, glittering through iron 
bars; holy with the bodies of deceased saints; rainbow-hued with 
windows of stained glass; dark with carved woods and coloured 
marbles; obscure in its vast heights, and lengthened distances; 
shining with silver lamps and winking lights; unreal, fantastic, 
solemn, inconceivable throughout.  I thought I entered the old 
palace; pacing silent galleries and council-chambers, where the old 
rulers of this mistress of the waters looked sternly out, in 
pictures, from the walls, and where her high-prowed galleys, still 
victorious on canvas, fought and conquered as of old.  I thought I 
wandered through its halls of state and triumph - bare and empty 
now! - and musing on its pride and might, extinct:  for that was 
past; all past:  heard a voice say, 'Some tokens of its ancient 
rule and some consoling reasons for its downfall, may be traced 
here, yet!'

I dreamed that I was led on, then, into some jealous rooms, 
communicating with a prison near the palace; separated from it by a 
lofty bridge crossing a narrow street; and called, I dreamed, The 
Bridge of Sighs.

But first I passed two jagged slits in a stone wall; the lions' 
mouths - now toothless - where, in the distempered horror of my 
sleep, I thought denunciations of innocent men to the old wicked 
Council, had been dropped through, many a time, when the night was 
dark.  So, when I saw the council-room to which such prisoners were 
taken for examination, and the door by which they passed out, when 
they were condemned - a door that never closed upon a man with life 
and hope before him - my heart appeared to die within me.

It was smitten harder though, when, torch in hand, I descended from 
the cheerful day into two ranges, one below another, of dismal, 
awful, horrible stone cells.  They were quite dark.  Each had a 
loop-hole in its massive wall, where, in the old time, every day, a 
torch was placed - I dreamed - to light the prisoner within, for 
half an hour.  The captives, by the glimmering of these brief rays, 
had scratched and cut inscriptions in the blackened vaults.  I saw 
them.  For their labour with a rusty nail's point, had outlived 
their agony and them, through many generations.

One cell, I saw, in which no man remained for more than four-and-
twenty hours; being marked for dead before he entered it.  Hard by, 
another, and a dismal one, whereto, at midnight, the confessor came 
- a monk brown-robed, and hooded - ghastly in the day, and free 
bright air, but in the midnight of that murky prison, Hope's 
extinguisher, and Murder's herald.  I had my foot upon the spot, 
where, at the same dread hour, the shriven prisoner was strangled; 
and struck my hand upon the guilty door - low-browed and stealthy - 
through which the lumpish sack was carried out into a boat, and 
rowed away, and drowned where it was death to cast a net.

Around this dungeon stronghold, and above some part of it:  licking 
the rough walls without, and smearing them with damp and slime 
within:  stuffing dank weeds and refuse into chinks and crevices, 
as if the very stones and bars had mouths to stop:  furnishing a 
smooth road for the removal of the bodies of the secret victims of 
the State - a road so ready that it went along with them, and ran 
before them, like a cruel officer - flowed the same water that 
filled this Dream of mine, and made it seem one, even at the time.

Descending from the palace by a staircase, called, I thought, the 
Giant's - I had some imaginary recollection of an old man 
abdicating, coming, more slowly and more feebly, down it, when he 
heard the bell, proclaiming his successor - I glided off, in one of 
the dark boats, until we came to an old arsenal guarded by four 
marble lions.  To make my Dream more monstrous and unlikely, one of 
these had words and sentences upon its body, inscribed there, at an 
unknown time, and in an unknown language; so that their purport was 
a mystery to all men.

There was little sound of hammers in this place for building ships, 
and little work in progress; for the greatness of the city was no 
more, as I have said.  Indeed, it seemed a very wreck found 
drifting on the sea; a strange flag hoisted in its honourable 
stations, and strangers standing at its helm.  A splendid barge in 
which its ancient chief had gone forth, pompously, at certain 
periods, to wed the ocean, lay here, I thought, no more; but, in 
its place, there was a tiny model, made from recollection like the 
city's greatness; and it told of what had been (so are the strong 
and weak confounded in the dust) almost as eloquently as the 
massive pillars, arches, roofs, reared to overshadow stately ships 
that had no other shadow now, upon the water or the earth.

An armoury was there yet.  Plundered and despoiled; but an armoury.  
With a fierce standard taken from the Turks, drooping in the dull 
air of its cage.  Rich suits of mail worn by great warriors were 
hoarded there; crossbows and bolts; quivers full of arrows; spears; 
swords, daggers, maces, shields, and heavy-headed axes.  Plates of 
wrought steel and iron, to make the gallant horse a monster cased 
in metal scales; and one spring-weapon (easy to be carried in the 
breast) designed to do its office noiselessly, and made for 
shooting men with poisoned darts.

One press or case I saw, full of accursed instruments of torture 
horribly contrived to cramp, and pinch, and grind and crush men's 
bones, and tear and twist them with the torment of a thousand 
deaths.  Before it, were two iron helmets, with breast-pieces:  
made to close up tight and smooth upon the heads of living 
sufferers; and fastened on to each, was a small knob or anvil, 
where the directing devil could repose his elbow at his ease, and 
listen, near the walled-up ear, to the lamentations and confessions 
of the wretch within.  There was that grim resemblance in them to 
the human shape - they were such moulds of sweating faces, pained 
and cramped - that it was difficult to think them empty; and 
terrible distortions lingering within them, seemed to follow me, 
when, taking to my boat again, I rowed off to a kind of garden or 
public walk in the sea, where there were grass and trees.  But I 
forgot them when I stood upon its farthest brink - I stood there, 
in my dream - and looked, along the ripple, to the setting sun; 
before me, in the sky and on the deep, a crimson flush; and behind 
me the whole city resolving into streaks of red and purple, on the 
water.

In the luxurious wonder of so rare a dream, I took but little heed 
of time, and had but little understanding of its flight.  But there 
were days and nights in it; and when the sun was high, and when the 
rays of lamps were crooked in the running water, I was still 
afloat, I thought:  plashing the slippery walls and houses with the 
cleavings of the tide, as my black boat, borne upon it, skimmed 
along the streets.

Sometimes, alighting at the doors of churches and vast palaces, I 
wandered on, from room to room, from aisle to aisle, through 
labyrinths of rich altars, ancient monuments; decayed apartments 
where the furniture, half awful, half grotesque, was mouldering 
away.  Pictures were there, replete with such enduring beauty and 
expression:  with such passion, truth and power:  that they seemed 
so many young and fresh realities among a host of spectres.  I 
thought these, often intermingled with the old days of the city:  
with its beauties, tyrants, captains, patriots, merchants, 
counters, priests:  nay, with its very stones, and bricks, and 
public places; all of which lived again, about me, on the walls.  
Then, coming down some marble staircase where the water lapped and 
oozed against the lower steps, I passed into my boat again, and 
went on in my dream.

Floating down narrow lanes, where carpenters, at work with plane 
and chisel in their shops, tossed the light shaving straight upon 
the water, where it lay like weed, or ebbed away before me in a 
tangled heap.  Past open doors, decayed and rotten from long 
steeping in the wet, through which some scanty patch of vine shone 
green and bright, making unusual shadows on the pavement with its 
trembling leaves.  Past quays and terraces, where women, gracefully 
veiled, were passing and repassing, and where idlers were reclining 
in the sun-shine, on flag-stones and on flights of steps.  Past 
bridges, where there were idlers too; loitering and looking over.  
Below stone balconies, erected at a giddy height, before the 
loftiest windows of the loftiest houses.  Past plots of garden, 
theatres, shrines, prodigious piles of architecture - Gothic - 
Saracenic - fanciful with all the fancies of all times and 
countries.  Past buildings that were high, and low, and black, and 
white, and straight, and crooked; mean and grand, crazy and strong.  
Twining among a tangled lot of boats and barges, and shooting out 
at last into a Grand Canal!  There, in the errant fancy of my 
dream, I saw old Shylock passing to and fro upon a bridge, all 
built upon with shops and humming with the tongues of men; a form I 
seemed to know for Desdemona's, leaned down through a latticed 
blind to pluck a flower.  And, in the dream, I thought that 
Shakespeare's spirit was abroad upon the water somewhere:  stealing 
through the city.

At night, when two votive lamps burnt before an image of the 
Virgin, in a gallery outside the great cathedral, near the roof, I 
fancied that the great piazza of the Winged Lion was a blaze of 
cheerful light, and that its whole arcade was thronged with people; 
while crowds were diverting themselves in splendid coffee-houses 
opening from it - which were never shut, I thought, but open all 
night long.  When the bronze giants struck the hour of midnight on 
the bell, I thought the life and animation of the city were all 
centred here; and as I rowed away, abreast the silent quays, I only 
saw them dotted, here and there, with sleeping boatmen wrapped up 
in their cloaks, and lying at full length upon the stones.

But close about the quays and churches, palaces and prisons sucking 
at their walls, and welling up into the secret places of the town:  
crept the water always.  Noiseless and watchful:  coiled round and 
round it, in its many folds, like an old serpent:  waiting for the 
time, I thought, when people should look down into its depths for 
any stone of the old city that had claimed to be its mistress.

Thus it floated me away, until I awoke in the old market-place at 
Verona.  I have, many and many a time, thought since, of this 
strange Dream upon the water:  half-wondering if it lie there yet, 
and if its name be VENICE.



CHAPTER VIII - BY VERONA, MANTUA, AND MILAN, ACROSS THE PASS OF THE 
SIMPLON INTO SWITZERLAND



I HAD been half afraid to go to Verona, lest it should at all put 
me out of conceit with Romeo and Juliet.  But, I was no sooner come 
into the old market-place, than the misgiving vanished.  It is so 
fanciful, quaint, and picturesque a place, formed by such an 
extraordinary and rich variety of fantastic buildings, that there 
could be nothing better at the core of even this romantic town:  
scene of one of the most romantic and beautiful of stories.

It was natural enough, to go straight from the Market-place, to the 
House of the Capulets, now degenerated into a most miserable little 
inn.  Noisy vetturini and muddy market-carts were disputing 
possession of the yard, which was ankle-deep in dirt, with a brood 
of splashed and bespattered geese; and there was a grim-visaged 
dog, viciously panting in a doorway, who would certainly have had 
Romeo by the leg, the moment he put it over the wall, if he had 
existed and been at large in those times.  The orchard fell into 
other hands, and was parted off many years ago; but there used to 
be one attached to the house - or at all events there may have, 
been, - and the hat (Cappello) the ancient cognizance of the 
family, may still be seen, carved in stone, over the gateway of the 
yard.  The geese, the market-carts, their drivers, and the dog, 
were somewhat in the way of the story, it must be confessed; and it 
would have been pleasanter to have found the house empty, and to 
have been able to walk through the disused rooms.  But the hat was 
unspeakably comfortable; and the place where the garden used to be, 
hardly less so.  Besides, the house is a distrustful, jealous-
looking house as one would desire to see, though of a very moderate 
size.  So I was quite satisfied with it, as the veritable mansion 
of old Capulet, and was correspondingly grateful in my 
acknowledgments to an extremely unsentimental middle-aged lady, the 
Padrona of the Hotel, who was lounging on the threshold looking at 
the geese; and who at least resembled the Capulets in the one 
particular of being very great indeed in the 'Family' way.

From Juliet's home, to Juliet's tomb, is a transition as natural to 
the visitor, as to fair Juliet herself, or to the proudest Juliet 
that ever has taught the torches to burn bright in any time.  So, I 
went off, with a guide, to an old, old garden, once belonging to an 
old, old convent, I suppose; and being admitted, at a shattered 
gate, by a bright-eyed woman who was washing clothes, went down 
some walks where fresh plants and young flowers were prettily 
growing among fragments of old wall, and ivy-coloured mounds; and 
was shown a little tank, or water-trough, which the bright-eyed 
woman - drying her arms upon her 'kerchief, called 'La tomba di 
Giulietta la sfortunata.'  With the best disposition in the world 
to believe, I could do no more than believe that the bright-eyed 
woman believed; so I gave her that much credit, and her customary 
fee in ready money.  It was a pleasure, rather than a 
disappointment, that Juliet's resting-place was forgotten.  However 
consolatory it may have been to Yorick's Ghost, to hear the feet 
upon the pavement overhead, and, twenty times a day, the repetition 
of his name, it is better for Juliet to lie out of the track of 
tourists, and to have no visitors but such as come to graves in 
spring-rain, and sweet air, and sunshine.

Pleasant Verona!  With its beautiful old palaces, and charming 
country in the distance, seen from terrace walks, and stately, 
balustraded galleries.  With its Roman gates, still spanning the 
fair street, and casting, on the sunlight of to-day, the shade of 
fifteen hundred years ago.  With its marble-fitted churches, lofty 
towers, rich architecture, and quaint old quiet thoroughfares, 
where shouts of Montagues and Capulets once resounded,


And made Verona's ancient citizens
Cast by their grave, beseeming ornaments,
To wield old partizans.


With its fast-rushing river, picturesque old bridge, great castle, 
waving cypresses, and prospect so delightful, and so cheerful!  
Pleasant Verona!

In the midst of it, in the Piazza di Bra - a spirit of old time 
among the familiar realities of the passing hour - is the great 
Roman Amphitheatre.  So well preserved, and carefully maintained, 
that every row of seats is there, unbroken.  Over certain of the 
arches, the old Roman numerals may yet be seen; and there are 
corridors, and staircases, and subterranean passages for beasts, 
and winding ways, above ground and below, as when the fierce 
thousands hurried in and out, intent upon the bloody shows of the 
arena.  Nestling in some of the shadows and hollow places of the 
walls, now, are smiths with their forges, and a few small dealers 
of one kind or other; and there are green weeds, and leaves, and 
grass, upon the parapet.  But little else is greatly changed.

When I had traversed all about it, with great interest, and had 
gone up to the topmost round of seats, and turning from the lovely 
panorama closed in by the distant Alps, looked down into the 
building, it seemed to lie before me like the inside of a 
prodigious hat of plaited straw, with an enormously broad brim and 
a shallow crown; the plaits being represented by the four-and-forty 
rows of seats.  The comparison is a homely and fantastic one, in 
sober remembrance and on paper, but it was irresistibly suggested 
at the moment, nevertheless.

An equestrian troop had been there, a short time before - the same 
troop, I dare say, that appeared to the old lady in the church at 
Modena - and had scooped out a little ring at one end of the area; 
where their performances had taken place, and where the marks of 
their horses' feet were still fresh.  I could not but picture to 
myself, a handful of spectators gathered together on one or two of 
the old stone seats, and a spangled Cavalier being gallant, or a 
Policinello funny, with the grim walls looking on.  Above all, I 
thought how strangely those Roman mutes would gaze upon the 
favourite comic scene of the travelling English, where a British 
nobleman (Lord John), with a very loose stomach:  dressed in a 
blue-tailed coat down to his heels, bright yellow breeches, and a 
white hat:  comes abroad, riding double on a rearing horse, with an 
English lady (Lady Betsy) in a straw bonnet and green veil, and a 
red spencer; and who always carries a gigantic reticule, and a put-
up parasol.

I walked through and through the town all the rest of the day, and 
could have walked there until now, I think.  In one place, there 
was a very pretty modern theatre, where they had just performed the 
opera (always popular in Verona) of Romeo and Juliet.  In another 
there was a collection, under a colonnade, of Greek, Roman, and 
Etruscan remains, presided over by an ancient man who might have 
been an Etruscan relic himself; for he was not strong enough to 
open the iron gate, when he had unlocked it, and had neither voice 
enough to be audible when he described the curiosities, nor sight 
enough to see them:  he was so very old.  In another place, there 
was a gallery of pictures:  so abominably bad, that it was quite 
delightful to see them mouldering away.  But anywhere:  in the 
churches, among the palaces, in the streets, on the bridge, or down 
beside the river:  it was always pleasant Verona, and in my 
remembrance always will be.

I read Romeo and Juliet in my own room at the inn that night - of 
course, no Englishman had ever read it there, before - and set out 
for Mantua next day at sunrise, repeating to myself (in the COUPE 
of an omnibus, and next to the conductor, who was reading the 
Mysteries of Paris),


There is no world without Verona's walls
But purgatory, torture, hell itself.
Hence-banished is banished from the world,
And world's exile is death -


which reminded me that Romeo was only banished five-and-twenty 
miles after all, and rather disturbed my confidence in his energy 
and boldness.

Was the way to Mantua as beautiful, in his time, I wonder!  Did it 
wind through pasture land as green, bright with the same glancing 
streams, and dotted with fresh clumps of graceful trees!  Those 
purple mountains lay on the horizon, then, for certain; and the 
dresses of these peasant girls, who wear a great, knobbed, silver 
pin like an English 'life-preserver' through their hair behind, can 
hardly be much changed.  The hopeful feeling of so bright a 
morning, and so exquisite a sunrise, can have been no stranger, 
even to an exiled lover's breast; and Mantua itself must have 
broken on him in the prospect, with its towers, and walls, and 
water, pretty much as on a common-place and matrimonial omnibus.  
He made the same sharp twists and turns, perhaps, over two rumbling 
drawbridges; passed through the like long, covered, wooden bridge; 
and leaving the marshy water behind, approached the rusty gate of 
stagnant Mantua.

If ever a man were suited to his place of residence, and his place 
of residence to him, the lean Apothecary and Mantua came together 
in a perfect fitness of things.  It may have been more stirring 
then, perhaps.  If so, the Apothecary was a man in advance of his 
time, and knew what Mantua would be, in eighteen hundred and forty-
four.  He fasted much, and that assisted him in his foreknowledge.

I put up at the Hotel of the Golden Lion, and was in my own room 
arranging plans with the brave Courier, when there came a modest 
little tap at the door, which opened on an outer gallery 
surrounding a court-yard; and an intensely shabby little man looked 
in, to inquire if the gentleman would have a Cicerone to show the 
town.  His face was so very wistful and anxious, in the half-opened 
doorway, and there was so much poverty expressed in his faded suit 
and little pinched hat, and in the thread-bare worsted glove with 
which he held it - not expressed the less, because these were 
evidently his genteel clothes, hastily slipped on - that I would as 
soon have trodden on him as dismissed him.  I engaged him on the 
instant, and he stepped in directly.

While I finished the discussion in which I was engaged, he stood, 
beaming by himself in a corner, making a feint of brushing my hat 
with his arm.  If his fee had been as many napoleons as it was 
francs, there could not have shot over the twilight of his 
shabbiness such a gleam of sun, as lighted up the whole man, now 
that he was hired.

'Well!' said I, when I was ready, 'shall we go out now?'

'If the gentleman pleases.  It is a beautiful day.  A little fresh, 
but charming; altogether charming.  The gentleman will allow me to 
open the door.  This is the Inn Yard.  The court-yard of the Golden 
Lion!  The gentleman will please to mind his footing on the 
stairs.'

We were now in the street.

'This is the street of the Golden Lion.  This, the outside of the 
Golden Lion.  The interesting window up there, on the first Piano, 
where the pane of glass is broken, is the window of the gentleman's 
chamber!'

Having viewed all these remarkable objects, I inquired if there 
were much to see in Mantua.

'Well!  Truly, no.  Not much!  So, so,' he said, shrugging his 
shoulders apologetically.

'Many churches?'

'No.  Nearly all suppressed by the French.'

'Monasteries or convents?'

'No.  The French again!  Nearly all suppressed by Napoleon.'

'Much business?'

'Very little business.'

'Many strangers?'

'Ah Heaven!'

I thought he would have fainted.

'Then, when we have seen the two large churches yonder, what shall 
we do next?' said I.

He looked up the street, and down the street, and rubbed his chin 
timidly; and then said, glancing in my face as if a light had 
broken on his mind, yet with a humble appeal to my forbearance that 
was perfectly irresistible:

'We can take a little turn about the town, Signore!'  (Si puo far 
'un piccolo giro della citta).

It was impossible to be anything but delighted with the proposal, 
so we set off together in great good-humour.  In the relief of his 
mind, he opened his heart, and gave up as much of Mantua as a 
Cicerone could.

'One must eat,' he said; 'but, bah! it was a dull place, without 
doubt!'

He made as much as possible of the Basilica of Santa Andrea - a 
noble church - and of an inclosed portion of the pavement, about 
which tapers were burning, and a few people kneeling, and under 
which is said to be preserved the Sangreal of the old Romances.  
This church disposed of, and another after it (the cathedral of San 
Pietro), we went to the Museum, which was shut up.  'It was all the 
same,' he said.  'Bah!  There was not much inside!'  Then, we went 
to see the Piazza del Diavolo, built by the Devil (for no 
particular purpose) in a single night; then, the Piazza Virgiliana; 
then, the statue of Virgil - OUR Poet, my little friend said, 
plucking up a spirit, for the moment, and putting his hat a little 
on one side.  Then, we went to a dismal sort of farm-yard, by which 
a picture-gallery was approached.  The moment the gate of this 
retreat was opened, some five hundred geese came waddling round us, 
stretching out their necks, and clamouring in the most hideous 
manner, as if they were ejaculating, 'Oh! here's somebody come to 
see the Pictures!  Don't go up!  Don't go up!'  While we went up, 
they waited very quietly about the door in a crowd, cackling to one 
another occasionally, in a subdued tone; but the instant we 
appeared again, their necks came out like telescopes, and setting 
up a great noise, which meant, I have no doubt, 'What, you would 
go, would you!  What do you think of it!  How do you like it!' they 
attended us to the outer gate, and cast us forth, derisively, into 
Mantua.

The geese who saved the Capitol, were, as compared to these, Pork 
to the learned Pig.  What a gallery it was!  I would take their 
opinion on a question of art, in preference to the discourses of 
Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Now that we were standing in the street, after being thus 
ignominiouly escorted thither, my little friend was plainly reduced 
to the 'piccolo giro,' or little circuit of the town, he had 
formerly proposed.  But my suggestion that we should visit the 
Palazzo Te (of which I had heard a great deal, as a strange wild 
place) imparted new life to him, and away we went.

The secret of the length of Midas's ears, would have been more 
extensively known, if that servant of his, who whispered it to the 
reeds, had lived in Mantua, where there are reeds and rushes enough 
to have published it to all the world.  The Palazzo Te stands in a 
swamp, among this sort of vegetation; and is, indeed, as singular a 
place as I ever saw.

Not for its dreariness, though it is very dreary.  Not for its 
dampness, though it is very damp.  Nor for its desolate condition, 
though it is as desolate and neglected as house can be.  But 
chiefly for the unaccountable nightmares with which its interior 
has been decorated (among other subjects of more delicate 
execution), by Giulio Romano.  There is a leering Giant over a 
certain chimney-piece, and there are dozens of Giants (Titans 
warring with Jove) on the walls of another room, so inconceivably 
ugly and grotesque, that it is marvellous how any man can have 
imagined such creatures.  In the chamber in which they abound, 
these monsters, with swollen faces and cracked cheeks, and every 
kind of distortion of look and limb, are depicted as staggering 
under the weight of falling buildings, and being overwhelmed in the 
ruins; upheaving masses of rock, and burying themselves beneath; 
vainly striving to sustain the pillars of heavy roofs that topple 
down upon their heads; and, in a word, undergoing and doing every 
kind of mad and demoniacal destruction.  The figures are immensely 
large, and exaggerated to the utmost pitch of uncouthness; the 
colouring is harsh and disagreeable; and the whole effect more like 
(I should imagine) a violent rush of blood to the head of the 
spectator, than any real picture set before him by the hand of an 
artist.  This apoplectic performance was shown by a sickly-looking 
woman, whose appearance was referable, I dare say, to the bad air 
of the marshes; but it was difficult to help feeling as if she were 
too much haunted by the Giants, and they were frightening her to 
death, all alone in that exhausted cistern of a Palace, among the 
reeds and rushes, with the mists hovering about outside, and 
stalking round and round it continually.

Our walk through Mantua showed us, in almost every street, some 
suppressed church:  now used for a warehouse, now for nothing at 
all:  all as crazy and dismantled as they could be, short of 
tumbling down bodily.  The marshy town was so intensely dull and 
flat, that the dirt upon it seemed not to have come there in the 
ordinary course, but to have settled and mantled on its surface as 
on standing water.  And yet there were some business-dealings going 
on, and some profits realising; for there were arcades full of 
Jews, where those extraordinary people were sitting outside their 
shops, contemplating their stores of stuffs, and woollens, and 
bright handkerchiefs, and trinkets:  and looking, in all respects, 
as wary and business-like, as their brethren in Houndsditch, 
London.

Having selected a Vetturino from among the neighbouring Christians, 
who agreed to carry us to Milan in two days and a half, and to 
start, next morning, as soon as the gates were opened, I returned 
to the Golden Lion, and dined luxuriously in my own room, in a 
narrow passage between two bedsteads:  confronted by a smoky fire, 
and backed up by a chest of drawers.  At six o'clock next morning, 
we were jingling in the dark through the wet cold mist that 
enshrouded the town; and, before noon, the driver (a native of 
Mantua, and sixty years of age or thereabouts) began TO ASK THE WAY 
to Milan.

It lay through Bozzolo; formerly a little republic, and now one of 
the most deserted and poverty-stricken of towns:  where the 
landlord of the miserable inn (God bless him! it was his weekly 
custom) was distributing infinitesimal coins among a clamorous herd 
of women and children, whose rags were fluttering in the wind and 
rain outside his door, where they were gathered to receive his 
charity.  It lay through mist, and mud, and rain, and vines trained 
low upon the ground, all that day and the next; the first sleeping-
place being Cremona, memorable for its dark brick churches, and 
immensely high tower, the Torrazzo - to say nothing of its violins, 
of which it certainly produces none in these degenerate days; and 
the second, Lodi.  Then we went on, through more mud, mist, and 
rain, and marshy ground:  and through such a fog, as Englishmen, 
strong in the faith of their own grievances, are apt to believe is 
nowhere to be found but in their own country, until we entered the 
paved streets of Milan.

The fog was so dense here, that the spire of the far-famed 
Cathedral might as well have been at Bombay, for anything that 
could be seen of it at that time.  But as we halted to refresh, for 
a few days then, and returned to Milan again next summer, I had 
ample opportunities of seeing the glorious structure in all its 
majesty and beauty.

All Christian homage to the saint who lies within it!  There are 
many good and true saints in the calendar, but San Carlo Borromeo 
has - if I may quote Mrs. Primrose on such a subject - 'my warm 
heart.'  A charitable doctor to the sick, a munificent friend to 
the poor, and this, not in any spirit of blind bigotry, but as the 
bold opponent of enormous abuses in the Romish church, I honour his 
memory.  I honour it none the less, because he was nearly slain by 
a priest, suborned, by priests, to murder him at the altar:  in 
acknowledgment of his endeavours to reform a false and hypocritical 
brotherhood of monks.  Heaven shield all imitators of San Carlo 
Borromeo as it shielded him!  A reforming Pope would need a little 
shielding, even now.

The subterranean chapel in which the body of San Carlo Borromeo is 
preserved, presents as striking and as ghastly a contrast, perhaps, 
as any place can show.  The tapers which are lighted down there, 
flash and gleam on alti-rilievi in gold and silver, delicately 
wrought by skilful hands, and representing the principal events in 
the life of the saint.  Jewels, and precious metals, shine and 
sparkle on every side.  A windlass slowly removes the front of the 
altar; and, within it, in a gorgeous shrine of gold and silver, is 
seen, through alabaster, the shrivelled mummy of a man:  the 
pontifical robes with which it is adorned, radiant with diamonds, 
emeralds, rubies:  every costly and magnificent gem.  The shrunken 
heap of poor earth in the midst of this great glitter, is more 
pitiful than if it lay upon a dung-hill.  There is not a ray of 
imprisoned light in all the flash and fire of jewels, but seems to 
mock the dusty holes where eyes were, once.  Every thread of silk 
in the rich vestments seems only a provision from the worms that 
spin, for the behoof of worms that propagate in sepulchres.

In the old refectory of the dilapidated Convent of Santa Maria 
delle Grazie, is the work of art, perhaps, better known than any 
other in the world:  the Last Supper, by Leonardo da Vinci - with a 
door cut through it by the intelligent Dominican friars, to 
facilitate their operations at dinner-time.

I am not mechanically acquainted with the art of painting, and have 
no other means of judging of a picture than as I see it resembling 
and refining upon nature, and presenting graceful combinations of 
forms and colours.  I am, therefore, no authority whatever, in 
reference to the 'touch' of this or that master; though I know very 
well (as anybody may, who chooses to think about the matter) that 
few very great masters can possibly have painted, in the compass of 
their lives, one-half of the pictures that bear their names, and 
that are recognised by many aspirants to a reputation for taste, as 
undoubted originals.  But this, by the way.  Of the Last Supper, I 
would simply observe, that in its beautiful composition and 
arrangement, there it is, at Milan, a wonderful picture; and that, 
in its original colouring, or in its original expression of any 
single face or feature, there it is not.  Apart from the damage it 
has sustained from damp, decay, or neglect, it has been (as Barry 
shows) so retouched upon, and repainted, and that so clumsily, that 
many of the heads are, now, positive deformities, with patches of 
paint and plaster sticking upon them like wens, and utterly 
distorting the expression.  Where the original artist set that 
impress of his genius on a face, which, almost in a line or touch, 
separated him from meaner painters and made him what he was, 
succeeding bunglers, filling up, or painting across seams and 
cracks, have been quite unable to imitate his hand; and putting in 
some scowls, or frowns, or wrinkles, of their own, have blotched 
and spoiled the work.  This is so well established as an historical 
fact, that I should not repeat it, at the risk of being tedious, 
but for having observed an English gentleman before the picture, 
who was at great pains to fall into what I may describe as mild 
convulsions, at certain minute details of expression which are not 
left in it.  Whereas, it would be comfortable and rational for 
travellers and critics to arrive at a general understanding that it 
cannot fail to have been a work of extraordinary merit, once:  
when, with so few of its original beauties remaining, the grandeur 
of the general design is yet sufficient to sustain it, as a piece 
replete with interest and dignity.

We achieved the other sights of Milan, in due course, and a fine 
city it is, though not so unmistakably Italian as to possess the 
characteristic qualities of many towns far less important in 
themselves.  The Corso, where the Milanese gentry ride up and down 
in carriages, and rather than not do which, they would half starve 
themselves at home, is a most noble public promenade, shaded by 
long avenues of trees.  In the splendid theatre of La Scala, there 
was a ballet of action performed after the opera, under the title 
of Prometheus:  in the beginning of which, some hundred or two of 
men and women represented our mortal race before the refinements of 
the arts and sciences, and loves and graces, came on earth to 
soften them.  I never saw anything more effective.  Generally 
speaking, the pantomimic action of the Italians is more remarkable 
for its sudden and impetuous character than for its delicate 
expression, but, in this case, the drooping monotony:  the weary, 
miserable, listless, moping life:  the sordid passions and desires 
of human creatures, destitute of those elevating influences to 
which we owe so much, and to whose promoters we render so little:  
were expressed in a manner really powerful and affecting.  I should 
have thought it almost impossible to present such an idea so 
strongly on the stage, without the aid of speech.

Milan soon lay behind us, at five o'clock in the morning; and 
before the golden statue on the summit of the cathedral spire was 
lost in the blue sky, the Alps, stupendously confused in lofty 
peaks and ridges, clouds and snow, were towering in our path.

Still, we continued to advance toward them until nightfall; and, 
all day long, the mountain tops presented strangely shifting 
shapes, as the road displayed them in different points of view.  
The beautiful day was just declining, when we came upon the Lago 
Maggiore, with its lovely islands.  For however fanciful and 
fantastic the Isola Bella may be, and is, it still is beautiful.  
Anything springing out of that blue water, with that scenery around 
it, must be.

It was ten o'clock at night when we got to Domo d'Ossola, at the 
foot of the Pass of the Simplon.  But as the moon was shining 
brightly, and there was not a cloud in the starlit sky, it was no 
time for going to bed, or going anywhere but on.  So, we got a 
little carriage, after some delay, and began the ascent.

It was late in November; and the snow lying four or five feet thick 
in the beaten road on the summit (in other parts the new drift was 
already deep), the air was piercing cold.  But, the serenity of the 
night, and the grandeur of the road, with its impenetrable shadows, 
and deep glooms, and its sudden turns into the shining of the moon 
and its incessant roar of falling water, rendered the journey more 
and more sublime at every step.

Soon leaving the calm Italian villages below us, sleeping in the 
moonlight, the road began to wind among dark trees, and after a 
time emerged upon a barer region, very steep and toilsome, where 
the moon shone bright and high.  By degrees, the roar of water grew 
louder; and the stupendous track, after crossing the torrent by a 
bridge, struck in between two massive perpendicular walls of rock 
that quite shut out the moonlight, and only left a few stars 
shining in the narrow strip of sky above.  Then, even this was 
lost, in the thick darkness of a cavern in the rock, through which 
the way was pierced; the terrible cataract thundering and roaring 
close below it, and its foam and spray hanging, in a mist, about 
the entrance.  Emerging from this cave, and coming again into the 
moonlight, and across a dizzy bridge, it crept and twisted upward, 
through the Gorge of Gondo, savage and grand beyond description, 
with smooth-fronted precipices, rising up on either hand, and 
almost meeting overhead.  Thus we went, climbing on our rugged way, 
higher and higher all night, without a moment's weariness:  lost in 
the contemplation of the black rocks, the tremendous heights and 
depths, the fields of smooth snow lying, in the clefts and hollows, 
and the fierce torrents thundering headlong down the deep abyss.

Towards daybreak, we came among the snow, where a keen wind was 
blowing fiercely.  Having, with some trouble, awakened the inmates 
of a wooden house in this solitude:  round which the wind was 
howling dismally, catching up the snow in wreaths and hurling it 
away:  we got some breakfast in a room built of rough timbers, but 
well warmed by a stove, and well contrived (as it had need to be) 
for keeping out the bitter storms.  A sledge being then made ready, 
and four horses harnessed to it, we went, ploughing, through the 
snow.  Still upward, but now in the cold light of morning, and with 
the great white desert on which we travelled, plain and clear.

We were well upon the summit of the mountain:  and had before us 
the rude cross of wood, denoting its greatest altitude above the 
sea:  when the light of the rising sun, struck, all at once, upon 
the waste of snow, and turned it a deep red.  The lonely grandeur 
of the scene was then at its height.

As we went sledging on, there came out of the Hospice founded by 
Napoleon, a group of Peasant travellers, with staves and knapsacks, 
who had rested there last night:  attended by a Monk or two, their 
hospitable entertainers, trudging slowly forward with them, for 
company's sake.  It was pleasant to give them good morning, and 
pretty, looking back a long way after them, to see them looking 
back at us, and hesitating presently, when one of our horses 
stumbled and fell, whether or no they should return and help us.  
But he was soon up again, with the assistance of a rough waggoner 
whose team had stuck fast there too; and when we had helped him out 
of his difficulty, in return, we left him slowly ploughing towards 
them, and went slowly and swiftly forward, on the brink of a steep 
precipice, among the mountain pines.

Taking to our wheels again, soon afterwards, we began rapidly to 
descend; passing under everlasting glaciers, by means of arched 
galleries, hung with clusters of dripping icicles; under and over 
foaming waterfalls; near places of refuge, and galleries of shelter 
against sudden danger; through caverns over whose arched roofs the 
avalanches slide, in spring, and bury themselves in the unknown 
gulf beneath.  Down, over lofty bridges, and through horrible 
ravines:  a little shifting speck in the vast desolation of ice and 
snow, and monstrous granite rocks; down through the deep Gorge of 
the Saltine, and deafened by the torrent plunging madly down, among 
the riven blocks of rock, into the level country, far below.  
Gradually down, by zig-zag roads, lying between an upward and a 
downward precipice, into warmer weather, calmer air, and softer 
scenery, until there lay before us, glittering like gold or silver 
in the thaw and sunshine, the metal-covered, red, green, yellow, 
domes and church-spires of a Swiss town.

The business of these recollections being with Italy, and my 
business, consequently, being to scamper back thither as fast as 
possible, I will not recall (though I am sorely tempted) how the 
Swiss villages, clustered at the feet of Giant mountains, looked 
like playthings; or how confusedly the houses were heaped and piled 
together; or how there were very narrow streets to shut the howling 
winds out in the winter-time; and broken bridges, which the 
impetuous torrents, suddenly released in spring, had swept away.  
Or how there were peasant women here, with great round fur caps:  
looking, when they peeped out of casements and only their heads 
were seen, like a population of Sword-bearers to the Lord Mayor of 
London; or how the town of Vevey, lying on the smooth lake of 
Geneva, was beautiful to see; or how the statue of Saint Peter in 
the street at Fribourg, grasps the largest key that ever was 
beheld; or how Fribourg is illustrious for its two suspension 
bridges, and its grand cathedral organ.

Or how, between that town and Bale, the road meandered among 
thriving villages of wooden cottages, with overhanging thatched 
roofs, and low protruding windows, glazed with small round panes of 
glass like crown-pieces; or how, in every little Swiss homestead, 
with its cart or waggon carefully stowed away beside the house, its 
little garden, stock of poultry, and groups of red-cheeked 
children, there was an air of comfort, very new and very pleasant 
after Italy; or how the dresses of the women changed again, and 
there were no more sword-bearers to be seen; and fair white 
stomachers, and great black, fan-shaped, gauzy-looking caps, 
prevailed instead.

Or how the country by the Jura mountains, sprinkled with snow, and 
lighted by the moon, and musical with falling water, was 
delightful; or how, below the windows of the great hotel of the 
Three Kings at Bale, the swollen Rhine ran fast and green; or how, 
at Strasbourg, it was quite as fast but not as green:  and was said 
to be foggy lower down:  and, at that late time of the year, was a 
far less certain means of progress, than the highway road to Paris.

Or how Strasbourg itself, in its magnificent old Gothic Cathedral, 
and its ancient houses with their peaked roofs and gables, made a 
little gallery of quaint and interesting views; or how a crowd was 
gathered inside the cathedral at noon, to see the famous mechanical 
clock in motion, striking twelve.  How, when it struck twelve, a 
whole army of puppets went through many ingenious evolutions; and, 
among them, a huge puppet-cock, perched on the top, crowed twelve 
times, loud and clear.  Or how it was wonderful to see this cock at 
great pains to clap its wings, and strain its throat; but obviously 
having no connection whatever with its own voice; which was deep 
within the clock, a long way down.

Or how the road to Paris, was one sea of mud, and thence to the 
coast, a little better for a hard frost.  Or how the cliffs of 
Dover were a pleasant sight, and England was so wonderfully neat - 
though dark, and lacking colour on a winter's day, it must be 
conceded.

Or how, a few days afterwards, it was cool, re-crossing the 
channel, with ice upon the decks, and snow lying pretty deep in 
France.  Or how the Malle Poste scrambled through the snow, 
headlong, drawn in the hilly parts by any number of stout horses at 
a canter; or how there were, outside the Post-office Yard in Paris, 
before daybreak, extraordinary adventurers in heaps of rags, 
groping in the snowy streets with little rakes, in search of odds 
and ends.

Or how, between Paris and Marseilles, the snow being then exceeding 
deep, a thaw came on, and the mail waded rather than rolled for the 
next three hundred miles or so; breaking springs on Sunday nights, 
and putting out its two passengers to warm and refresh themselves 
pending the repairs, in miserable billiard-rooms, where hairy 
company, collected about stoves, were playing cards; the cards 
being very like themselves - extremely limp and dirty.

Or how there was detention at Marseilles from stress of weather; 
and steamers were advertised to go, which did not go; or how the 
good Steam-packet Charlemagne at length put out, and met such 
weather that now she threatened to run into Toulon, and now into 
Nice, but, the wind moderating, did neither, but ran on into Genoa 
harbour instead, where the familiar Bells rang sweetly in my ear.  
Or how there was a travelling party on board, of whom one member 
was very ill in the cabin next to mine, and being ill was cross, 
and therefore declined to give up the Dictionary, which he kept 
under his pillow; thereby obliging his companions to come down to 
him, constantly, to ask what was the Italian for a lump of sugar - 
a glass of brandy and water - what's o'clock? and so forth:  which 
he always insisted on looking out, with his own sea-sick eyes, 
declining to entrust the book to any man alive.

Like GRUMIO, I might have told you, in detail, all this and 
something more - but to as little purpose - were I not deterred by 
the remembrance that my business is with Italy.  Therefore, like 
GRUMIO'S story, 'it shall die in oblivion.'



CHAPTER IX - TO ROME BY PISA AND SIENA



THERE is nothing in Italy, more beautiful to me, than the coast-
road between Genoa and Spezzia.  On one side:  sometimes far below, 
sometimes nearly on a level with the road, and often skirted by 
broken rocks of many shapes:  there is the free blue sea, with here 
and there a picturesque felucca gliding slowly on; on the other 
side are lofty hills, ravines besprinkled with white cottages, 
patches of dark olive woods, country churches with their light open 
towers, and country houses gaily painted.  On every bank and knoll 
by the wayside, the wild cactus and aloe flourish in exuberant 
profusion; and the gardens of the bright villages along the road, 
are seen, all blushing in the summer-time with clusters of the 
Belladonna, and are fragrant in the autumn and winter with golden 
oranges and lemons.

Some of the villages are inhabited, almost exclusively, by 
fishermen; and it is pleasant to see their great boats hauled up on 
the beach, making little patches of shade, where they lie asleep, 
or where the women and children sit romping and looking out to sea, 
while they mend their nets upon the shore.  There is one town, 
Camoglia, with its little harbour on the sea, hundreds of feet 
below the road; where families of mariners live, who, time out of 
mind, have owned coasting-vessels in that place, and have traded to 
Spain and elsewhere.  Seen from the road above, it is like a tiny 
model on the margin of the dimpled water, shining in the sun.  
Descended into, by the winding mule-tracks, it is a perfect 
miniature of a primitive seafaring town; the saltest, roughest, 
most piratical little place that ever was seen.  Great rusty iron 
rings and mooring-chains, capstans, and fragments of old masts and 
spars, choke up the way; hardy rough-weather boats, and seamen's 
clothing, flutter in the little harbour or are drawn out on the 
sunny stones to dry; on the parapet of the rude pier, a few 
amphibious-looking fellows lie asleep, with their legs dangling 
over the wall, as though earth or water were all one to them, and 
if they slipped in, they would float away, dozing comfortably among 
the fishes; the church is bright with trophies of the sea, and 
votive offerings, in commemoration of escape from storm and 
shipwreck.  The dwellings not immediately abutting on the harbour 
are approached by blind low archways, and by crooked steps, as if 
in darkness and in difficulty of access they should be like holds 
of ships, or inconvenient cabins under water; and everywhere, there 
is a smell of fish, and sea-weed, and old rope.

The coast-road whence Camoglia is descried so far below, is famous, 
in the warm season, especially in some parts near Genoa, for fire-
flies.  Walking there on a dark night, I have seen it made one 
sparkling firmament by these beautiful insects:  so that the 
distant stars were pale against the flash and glitter that spangled 
every olive wood and hill-side, and pervaded the whole air.

It was not in such a season, however, that we traversed this road 
on our way to Rome.  The middle of January was only just past, and 
it was very gloomy and dark weather; very wet besides.  In crossing 
the fine pass of Bracco, we encountered such a storm of mist and 
rain, that we travelled in a cloud the whole way.  There might have 
been no Mediterranean in the world, for anything that we saw of it 
there, except when a sudden gust of wind, clearing the mist before 
it, for a moment, showed the agitated sea at a great depth below, 
lashing the distant rocks, and spouting up its foam furiously.  The 
rain was incessant; every brook and torrent was greatly swollen; 
and such a deafening leaping, and roaring, and thundering of water, 
I never heard the like of in my life.

Hence, when we came to Spezzia, we found that the Magra, an 
unbridged river on the high-road to Pisa, was too high to be safely 
crossed in the Ferry Boat, and were fain to wait until the 
afternoon of next day, when it had, in some degree, subsided.  
Spezzia, however, is a good place to tarry at; by reason, firstly, 
of its beautiful bay; secondly, of its ghostly Inn; thirdly, of the 
head-dress of the women, who wear, on one side of their head, a 
small doll's straw hat, stuck on to the hair; which is certainly 
the oddest and most roguish head-gear that ever was invented.

The Magra safely crossed in the Ferry Boat - the passage is not by 
any means agreeable, when the current is swollen and strong - we 
arrived at Carrara, within a few hours.  In good time next morning, 
we got some ponies, and went out to see the marble quarries.

They are four or five great glens, running up into a range of lofty 
hills, until they can run no longer, and are stopped by being 
abruptly strangled by Nature.  The quarries, 'or caves,' as they 
call them there, are so many openings, high up in the hills, on 
either side of these passes, where they blast and excavate for 
marble:  which may turn out good or bad:  may make a man's fortune 
very quickly, or ruin him by the great expense of working what is 
worth nothing.  Some of these caves were opened by the ancient 
Romans, and remain as they left them to this hour.  Many others are 
being worked at this moment; others are to be begun to-morrow, next 
week, next month; others are unbought, unthought of; and marble 
enough for more ages than have passed since the place was resorted 
to, lies hidden everywhere:  patiently awaiting its time of 
discovery.

As you toil and clamber up one of these steep gorges (having left 
your pony soddening his girths in water, a mile or two lower down) 
you hear, every now and then, echoing among the hills, in a low 
tone, more silent than the previous silence, a melancholy warning 
bugle, - a signal to the miners to withdraw.  Then, there is a 
thundering, and echoing from hill to hill, and perhaps a splashing 
up of great fragments of rock into the air; and on you toil again 
until some other bugle sounds, in a new direction, and you stop 
directly, lest you should come within the range of the new 
explosion.

There were numbers of men, working high up in these hills - on the 
sides - clearing away, and sending down the broken masses of stone 
and earth, to make way for the blocks of marble that had been 
discovered.  As these came rolling down from unseen hands into the 
narrow valley, I could not help thinking of the deep glen (just the 
same sort of glen) where the Roc left Sindbad the Sailor; and where 
the merchants from the heights above, flung down great pieces of 
meat for the diamonds to stick to.  There were no eagles here, to 
darken the sun in their swoop, and pounce upon them; but it was as 
wild and fierce as if there had been hundreds.

But the road, the road down which the marble comes, however immense 
the blocks! The genius of the country, and the spirit of its 
institutions, pave that road:  repair it, watch it, keep it going!  
Conceive a channel of water running over a rocky bed, beset with 
great heaps of stone of all shapes and sizes, winding down the 
middle of this valley; and THAT being the road - because it was the 
road five hundred years ago!  Imagine the clumsy carts of five 
hundred years ago, being used to this hour, and drawn, as they used 
to be, five hundred years ago, by oxen, whose ancestors were worn 
to death five hundred years ago, as their unhappy descendants are 
now, in twelve months, by the suffering and agony of this cruel 
work!  Two pair, four pair, ten pair, twenty pair, to one block, 
according to its size; down it must come, this way.  In their 
struggling from stone to stone, with their enormous loads behind 
them, they die frequently upon the spot; and not they alone; for 
their passionate drivers, sometimes tumbling down in their energy, 
are crushed to death beneath the wheels.  But it was good five 
hundred years ago, and it must be good now:  and a railroad down 
one of these steeps (the easiest thing in the world) would be flat 
blasphemy.

When we stood aside, to see one of these cars drawn by only a pair 
of oxen (for it had but one small block of marble on it), coming 
down, I hailed, in my heart, the man who sat upon the heavy yoke, 
to keep it on the neck of the poor beasts - and who faced 
backwards:  not before him - as the very Devil of true despotism.  
He had a great rod in his hand, with an iron point; and when they 
could plough and force their way through the loose bed of the 
torrent no longer, and came to a stop, he poked it into their 
bodies, beat it on their heads, screwed it round and round in their 
nostrils, got them on a yard or two, in the madness of intense 
pain; repeated all these persuasions, with increased intensity of 
purpose, when they stopped again; got them on, once more; forced 
and goaded them to an abrupter point of the descent; and when their 
writhing and smarting, and the weight behind them, bore them 
plunging down the precipice in a cloud of scattered water, whirled 
his rod above his head, and gave a great whoop and hallo, as if he 
had achieved something, and had no idea that they might shake him 
off, and blindly mash his brains upon the road, in the noon-tide of 
his triumph.

Standing in one of the many studii of Carrara, that afternoon - for 
it is a great workshop, full of beautifully-finished copies in 
marble, of almost every figure, group, and bust, we know - it 
seemed, at first, so strange to me that those exquisite shapes, 
replete with grace, and thought, and delicate repose, should grow 
out of all this toil, and sweat, and torture!  But I soon found a 
parallel to it, and an explanation of it, in every virtue that 
springs up in miserable ground, and every good thing that has its 
birth in sorrow and distress.  And, looking out of the sculptor's 
great window, upon the marble mountains, all red and glowing in the 
decline of day, but stern and solemn to the last, I thought, my 
God! how many quarries of human hearts and souls, capable of far 
more beautiful results, are left shut up and mouldering away:  
while pleasure-travellers through life, avert their faces, as they 
pass, and shudder at the gloom and ruggedness that conceal them!

The then reigning Duke of Modena, to whom this territory in part 
belonged, claimed the proud distinction of being the only sovereign 
in Europe who had not recognised Louis-Philippe as King of the 
French!  He was not a wag, but quite in earnest.  He was also much 
opposed to railroads; and if certain lines in contemplation by 
other potentates, on either side of him, had been executed, would 
have probably enjoyed the satisfaction of having an omnibus plying 
to and fro across his not very vast dominions, to forward 
travellers from one terminus to another.

Carrara, shut in by great hills, is very picturesque and bold.  Few 
tourists stay there; and the people are nearly all connected, in 
one way or other, with the working of marble.  There are also 
villages among the caves, where the workmen live.  It contains a 
beautiful little Theatre, newly built; and it is an interesting 
custom there, to form the chorus of labourers in the marble 
quarries, who are self-taught and sing by ear.  I heard them in a 
comic opera, and in an act of 'Norma;' and they acquitted 
themselves very well; unlike the common people of Italy generally, 
who (with some exceptions among the Neapolitans) sing vilely out of 
tune, and have very disagreeable singing voices.

From the summit of a lofty hill beyond Carrara, the first view of 
the fertile plain in which the town of Pisa lies - with Leghorn, a 
purple spot in the flat distance - is enchanting.  Nor is it only 
distance that lends enchantment to the view; for the fruitful 
country, and rich woods of olive-trees through which the road 
subsequently passes, render it delightful.

The moon was shining when we approached Pisa, and for a long time 
we could see, behind the wall, the leaning Tower, all awry in the 
uncertain light; the shadowy original of the old pictures in 
school-books, setting forth 'The Wonders of the World.'  Like most 
things connected in their first associations with school-books and 
school-times, it was too small.  I felt it keenly.  It was nothing 
like so high above the wall as I had hoped.  It was another of the 
many deceptions practised by Mr. Harris, Bookseller, at the corner 
of St. Paul's Churchyard, London.  HIS Tower was a fiction, but 
this was a reality - and, by comparison, a short reality.  Still, 
it looked very well, and very strange, and was quite as much out of 
the perpendicular as Harris had represented it to be.  The quiet 
air of Pisa too; the big guard-house at the gate, with only two 
little soldiers in it; the streets with scarcely any show of people 
in them; and the Arno, flowing quaintly through the centre of the 
town; were excellent.  So, I bore no malice in my heart against Mr. 
Harris (remembering his good intentions), but forgave him before 
dinner, and went out, full of confidence, to see the Tower next 
morning.

I might have known better; but, somehow, I had expected to see it, 
casting its long shadow on a public street where people came and 
went all day.  It was a surprise to me to find it in a grave 
retired place, apart from the general resort, and carpeted with 
smooth green turf.  But, the group of buildings, clustered on and 
about this verdant carpet:  comprising the Tower, the Baptistery, 
the Cathedral, and the Church of the Campo Santo:  is perhaps the 
most remarkable and beautiful in the whole world; and from being 
clustered there, together, away from the ordinary transactions and 
details of the town, they have a singularly venerable and 
impressive character.  It is the architectural essence of a rich 
old city, with all its common life and common habitations pressed 
out, and filtered away.

SIMOND compares the Tower to the usual pictorial representations in 
children's books of the Tower of Babel.  It is a happy simile, and 
conveys a better idea of the building than chapters of laboured 
description.  Nothing can exceed the grace and lightness of the 
structure; nothing can be more remarkable than its general 
appearance.  In the course of the ascent to the top (which is by an 
easy staircase), the inclination is not very apparent; but, at the 
summit, it becomes so, and gives one the sensation of being in a 
ship that has heeled over, through the action of an ebb-tide.  The 
effect UPON THE LOW SIDE, so to speak - looking over from the 
gallery, and seeing the shaft recede to its base - is very 
startling; and I saw a nervous traveller hold on to the Tower 
involuntarily, after glancing down, as if he had some idea of 
propping it up.  The view within, from the ground - looking up, as 
through a slanted tube - is also very curious.  It certainly 
inclines as much as the most sanguine tourist could desire.  The 
natural impulse of ninety-nine people out of a hundred, who were 
about to recline upon the grass below it, to rest, and contemplate 
the adjacent buildings, would probably be, not to take up their 
position under the leaning side; it is so very much aslant.

The manifold beauties of the Cathedral and Baptistery need no 
recapitulation from me; though in this case, as in a hundred 
others, I find it difficult to separate my own delight in recalling 
them, from your weariness in having them recalled.  There is a 
picture of St. Agnes, by Andrea del Sarto, in the former, and there 
are a variety of rich columns in the latter, that tempt me 
strongly.

It is, I hope, no breach of my resolution not to be tempted into 
elaborate descriptions, to remember the Campo Santo; where grass-
grown graves are dug in earth brought more than six hundred years 
ago, from the Holy Land; and where there are, surrounding them, 
such cloisters, with such playing lights and shadows falling 
through their delicate tracery on the stone pavement, as surely the 
dullest memory could never forget.  On the walls of this solemn and 
lovely place, are ancient frescoes, very much obliterated and 
decayed, but very curious.  As usually happens in almost any 
collection of paintings, of any sort, in Italy, where there are 
many heads, there is, in one of them, a striking accidental 
likeness of Napoleon.  At one time, I used to please my fancy with 
the speculation whether these old painters, at their work, had a 
foreboding knowledge of the man who would one day arise to wreak 
such destruction upon art:  whose soldiers would make targets of 
great pictures, and stable their horses among triumphs of 
architecture.  But the same Corsican face is so plentiful in some 
parts of Italy at this day, that a more commonplace solution of the 
coincidence is unavoidable.

If Pisa be the seventh wonder of the world in right of its Tower, 
it may claim to be, at least, the second or third in right of its 
beggars.  They waylay the unhappy visitor at every turn, escort him 
to every door he enters at, and lie in wait for him, with strong 
reinforcements, at every door by which they know he must come out.  
The grating of the portal on its hinges is the signal for a general 
shout, and the moment he appears, he is hemmed in, and fallen on, 
by heaps of rags and personal distortions.  The beggars seem to 
embody all the trade and enterprise of Pisa.  Nothing else is 
stirring, but warm air.  Going through the streets, the fronts of 
the sleepy houses look like backs.  They are all so still and 
quiet, and unlike houses with people in them, that the greater part 
of the city has the appearance of a city at daybreak, or during a 
general siesta of the population.  Or it is yet more like those 
backgrounds of houses in common prints, or old engravings, where 
windows and doors are squarely indicated, and one figure (a beggar 
of course) is seen walking off by itself into illimitable 
perspective.

Not so Leghorn (made illustrious by SMOLLETT'S grave), which is a 
thriving, business-like, matter-of-fact place, where idleness is 
shouldered out of the way by commerce.  The regulations observed 
there, in reference to trade and merchants, are very liberal and 
free; and the town, of course, benefits by them.  Leghorn had a bad 
name in connection with stabbers, and with some justice it must be 
allowed; for, not many years ago, there was an assassination club 
there, the members of which bore no ill-will to anybody in 
particular, but stabbed people (quite strangers to them) in the 
streets at night, for the pleasure and excitement of the 
recreation.  I think the president of this amiable society was a 
shoemaker.  He was taken, however, and the club was broken up.  It 
would, probably, have disappeared in the natural course of events, 
before the railroad between Leghorn and Pisa, which is a good one, 
and has already begun to astonish Italy with a precedent of 
punctuality, order, plain dealing, and improvement - the most 
dangerous and heretical astonisher of all.  There must have been a 
slight sensation, as of earthquake, surely, in the Vatican, when 
the first Italian railroad was thrown open.

Returning to Pisa, and hiring a good-tempered Vetturino, and his 
four horses, to take us on to Rome, we travelled through pleasant 
Tuscan villages and cheerful scenery all day.  The roadside crosses 
in this part of Italy are numerous and curious.  There is seldom a 
figure on the cross, though there is sometimes a face, but they are 
remarkable for being garnished with little models in wood, of every 
possible object that can be connected with the Saviour's death.  
The cock that crowed when Peter had denied his Master thrice, is 
usually perched on the tip-top; and an ornithological phenomenon he 
generally is.  Under him, is the inscription.  Then, hung on to the 
cross-beam, are the spear, the reed with the sponge of vinegar and 
water at the end, the coat without seam for which the soldiers cast 
lots, the dice-box with which they threw for it, the hammer that 
drove in the nails, the pincers that pulled them out, the ladder 
which was set against the cross, the crown of thorns, the 
instrument of flagellation, the lanthorn with which Mary went to 
the tomb (I suppose), and the sword with which Peter smote the 
servant of the high priest, - a perfect toy-shop of little objects, 
repeated at every four or five miles, all along the highway.

On the evening of the second day from Pisa, we reached the 
beautiful old city of Siena.  There was what they called a 
Carnival, in progress; but, as its secret lay in a score or two of 
melancholy people walking up and down the principal street in 
common toy-shop masks, and being more melancholy, if possible, than 
the same sort of people in England, I say no more of it.  We went 
off, betimes next morning, to see the Cathedral, which is 
wonderfully picturesque inside and out, especially the latter - 
also the market-place, or great Piazza, which is a large square, 
with a great broken-nosed fountain in it:  some quaint Gothic 
houses:  and a high square brick tower; OUTSIDE the top of which - 
a curious feature in such views in Italy - hangs an enormous bell.  
It is like a bit of Venice, without the water.  There are some 
curious old Palazzi in the town, which is very ancient; and without 
having (for me) the interest of Verona, or Genoa, it is very dreamy 
and fantastic, and most interesting.

We went on again, as soon as we had seen these things, and going 
over a rather bleak country (there had been nothing but vines until 
now:  mere walking-sticks at that season of the year), stopped, as 
usual, between one and two hours in the middle of the day, to rest 
the horses; that being a part of every Vetturino contract.  We then 
went on again, through a region gradually becoming bleaker and 
wilder, until it became as bare and desolate as any Scottish moors.  
Soon after dark, we halted for the night, at the osteria of La 
Scala:  a perfectly lone house, where the family were sitting round 
a great fire in the kitchen, raised on a stone platform three or 
four feet high, and big enough for the roasting of an ox.  On the 
upper, and only other floor of this hotel, there was a great, wild, 
rambling sala, with one very little window in a by-corner, and four 
black doors opening into four black bedrooms in various directions.  
To say nothing of another large black door, opening into another 
large black sala, with the staircase coming abruptly through a kind 
of trap-door in the floor, and the rafters of the roof looming 
above:  a suspicious little press skulking in one obscure corner:  
and all the knives in the house lying about in various directions.  
The fireplace was of the purest Italian architecture, so that it 
was perfectly impossible to see it for the smoke.  The waitress was 
like a dramatic brigand's wife, and wore the same style of dress 
upon her head.  The dogs barked like mad; the echoes returned the 
compliments bestowed upon them; there was not another house within 
twelve miles; and things had a dreary, and rather a cut-throat, 
appearance.

They were not improved by rumours of robbers having come out, 
strong and boldly, within a few nights; and of their having stopped 
the mail very near that place.  They were known to have waylaid 
some travellers not long before, on Mount Vesuvius itself, and were 
the talk at all the roadside inns.  As they were no business of 
ours, however (for we had very little with us to lose), we made 
ourselves merry on the subject, and were very soon as comfortable 
as need be.  We had the usual dinner in this solitary house; and a 
very good dinner it is, when you are used to it.  There is 
something with a vegetable or some rice in it which is a sort of 
shorthand or arbitrary character for soup, and which tastes very 
well, when you have flavoured it with plenty of grated cheese, lots 
of salt, and abundance of pepper.  There is the half fowl of which 
this soup has been made.  There is a stewed pigeon, with the 
gizzards and livers of himself and other birds stuck all round him.  
There is a bit of roast beef, the size of a small French roll.  
There are a scrap of Parmesan cheese, and five little withered 
apples, all huddled together on a small plate, and crowding one 
upon the other, as if each were trying to save itself from the 
chance of being eaten.  Then there is coffee; and then there is 
bed.  You don't mind brick floors; you don't mind yawning doors, 
nor banging windows; you don't mind your own horses being stabled 
under the bed:  and so close, that every time a horse coughs or 
sneezes, he wakes you.  If you are good-humoured to the people 
about you, and speak pleasantly, and look cheerful, take my word 
for it you may be well entertained in the very worst Italian Inn, 
and always in the most obliging manner, and may go from one end of 
the country to the other (despite all stories to the contrary) 
without any great trial of your patience anywhere.  Especially, 
when you get such wine in flasks, as the Orvieto, and the Monte 
Pulciano.

It was a bad morning when we left this place; and we went, for 
twelve miles, over a country as barren, as stony, and as wild, as 
Cornwall in England, until we came to Radicofani, where there is a 
ghostly, goblin inn:  once a hunting-seat, belonging to the Dukes 
of Tuscany.  It is full of such rambling corridors, and gaunt 
rooms, that all the murdering and phantom tales that ever were 
written might have originated in that one house.  There are some 
horrible old Palazzi in Genoa:  one in particular, not unlike it, 
outside:  but there is a winding, creaking, wormy, rustling, door-
opening, foot-on-staircase-falling character about this Radicofani 
Hotel, such as I never saw, anywhere else.  The town, such as it 
is, hangs on a hill-side above the house, and in front of it.  The 
inhabitants are all beggars; and as soon as they see a carriage 
coming, they swoop down upon it, like so many birds of prey.

When we got on the mountain pass, which lies beyond this place, the 
wind (as they had forewarned us at the inn) was so terrific, that 
we were obliged to take my other half out of the carriage, lest she 
should be blown over, carriage and all, and to hang to it, on the 
windy side (as well as we could for laughing), to prevent its 
going, Heaven knows where.  For mere force of wind, this land-storm 
might have competed with an Atlantic gale, and had a reasonable 
chance of coming off victorious.  The blast came sweeping down 
great gullies in a range of mountains on the right:  so that we 
looked with positive awe at a great morass on the left, and saw 
that there was not a bush or twig to hold by.  It seemed as if, 
once blown from our feet, we must be swept out to sea, or away into 
space.  There was snow, and hail, and rain, and lightning, and 
thunder; and there were rolling mists, travelling with incredible 
velocity.  It was dark, awful, and solitary to the last degree; 
there were mountains above mountains, veiled in angry clouds; and 
there was such a wrathful, rapid, violent, tumultuous hurry, 
everywhere, as rendered the scene unspeakably exciting and grand.

It was a relief to get out of it, notwithstanding; and to cross 
even the dismal, dirty Papal Frontier.  After passing through two 
little towns; in one of which, Acquapendente, there was also a 
'Carnival' in progress:  consisting of one man dressed and masked 
as a woman, and one woman dressed and masked as a man, walking 
ankle-deep, through the muddy streets, in a very melancholy manner:  
we came, at dusk, within sight of the Lake of Bolsena, on whose 
bank there is a little town of the same name, much celebrated for 
malaria.  With the exception of this poor place, there is not a 
cottage on the banks of the lake, or near it (for nobody dare sleep 
there); not a boat upon its waters; not a stick or stake to break 
the dismal monotony of seven-and-twenty watery miles.  We were late 
in getting in, the roads being very bad from heavy rains; and, 
after dark, the dulness of the scene was quite intolerable.

We entered on a very different, and a finer scene of desolation, 
next night, at sunset.  We had passed through Montefiaschone 
(famous for its wine) and Viterbo (for its fountains):  and after 
climbing up a long hill of eight or ten miles' extent, came 
suddenly upon the margin of a solitary lake:  in one part very 
beautiful, with a luxuriant wood; in another, very barren, and shut 
in by bleak volcanic hills.  Where this lake flows, there stood, of 
old, a city.  It was swallowed up one day; and in its stead, this 
water rose.  There are ancient traditions (common to many parts of 
the world) of the ruined city having been seen below, when the 
water was clear; but however that may be, from this spot of earth 
it vanished.  The ground came bubbling up above it; and the water 
too; and here they stand, like ghosts on whom the other world 
closed suddenly, and who have no means of getting back again.  They 
seem to be waiting the course of ages, for the next earthquake in 
that place; when they will plunge below the ground, at its first 
yawning, and be seen no more.  The unhappy city below, is not more 
lost and dreary, than these fire-charred hills and the stagnant 
water, above.  The red sun looked strangely on them, as with the 
knowledge that they were made for caverns and darkness; and the 
melancholy water oozed and sucked the mud, and crept quietly among 
the marshy grass and reeds, as if the overthrow of all the ancient 
towers and house-tops, and the death of all the ancient people born 
and bred there, were yet heavy on its conscience.

A short ride from this lake, brought us to Ronciglione; a little 
town like a large pig-sty, where we passed the night.  Next morning 
at seven o'clock, we started for Rome.

As soon as we were out of the pig-sty, we entered on the Campagna 
Romana; an undulating flat (as you know), where few people can 
live; and where, for miles and miles, there is nothing to relieve 
the terrible monotony and gloom.  Of all kinds of country that 
could, by possibility, lie outside the gates of Rome, this is the 
aptest and fittest burial-ground for the Dead City.  So sad, so 
quiet, so sullen; so secret in its covering up of great masses of 
ruin, and hiding them; so like the waste places into which the men 
possessed with devils used to go and howl, and rend themselves, in 
the old days of Jerusalem.  We had to traverse thirty miles of this 
Campagna; and for two-and-twenty we went on and on, seeing nothing 
but now and then a lonely house, or a villainous-looking shepherd:  
with matted hair all over his face, and himself wrapped to the chin 
in a frowsy brown mantle, tending his sheep.  At the end of that 
distance, we stopped to refresh the horses, and to get some lunch, 
in a common malaria-shaken, despondent little public-house, whose 
every inch of wall and beam, inside, was (according to custom) 
painted and decorated in a way so miserable that every room looked 
like the wrong side of another room, and, with its wretched 
imitation of drapery, and lop-sided little daubs of lyres, seemed 
to have been plundered from behind the scenes of some travelling 
circus.

When we were fairly going off again, we began, in a perfect fever, 
to strain our eyes for Rome; and when, after another mile or two, 
the Eternal City appeared, at length, in the distance; it looked 
like - I am half afraid to write the word - like LONDON!!!  There 
it lay, under a thick cloud, with innumerable towers, and steeples, 
and roofs of houses, rising up into the sky, and high above them 
all, one Dome.  I swear, that keenly as I felt the seeming 
absurdity of the comparison, it was so like London, at that 
distance, that if you could have shown it me, in a glass, I should 
have taken it for nothing else.



CHAPTER X - ROME



WE entered the Eternal City, at about four o'clock in the 
afternoon, on the thirtieth of January, by the Porta del Popolo, 
and came immediately - it was a dark, muddy day, and there had been 
heavy rain - on the skirts of the Carnival.  We did not, then, know 
that we were only looking at the fag end of the masks, who were 
driving slowly round and round the Piazza until they could find a 
promising opportunity for falling into the stream of carriages, and 
getting, in good time, into the thick of the festivity; and coming 
among them so abruptly, all travel-stained and weary, was not 
coming very well prepared to enjoy the scene.

We had crossed the Tiber by the Ponte Molle two or three miles 
before.  It had looked as yellow as it ought to look, and hurrying 
on between its worn-away and miry banks, had a promising aspect of 
desolation and ruin.  The masquerade dresses on the fringe of the 
Carnival, did great violence to this promise.  There were no great 
ruins, no solemn tokens of antiquity, to be seen; - they all lie on 
the other side of the city.  There seemed to be long streets of 
commonplace shops and houses, such as are to be found in any 
European town; there were busy people, equipages, ordinary walkers 
to and fro; a multitude of chattering strangers.  It was no more MY 
Rome:  the Rome of anybody's fancy, man or boy; degraded and fallen 
and lying asleep in the sun among a heap of ruins:  than the Place 
de la Concorde in Paris is.  A cloudy sky, a dull cold rain, and 
muddy streets, I was prepared for, but not for this:  and I confess 
to having gone to bed, that night, in a very indifferent humour, 
and with a very considerably quenched enthusiasm.

Immediately on going out next day, we hurried off to St. Peter's.  
It looked immense in the distance, but distinctly and decidedly 
small, by comparison, on a near approach.  The beauty of the 
Piazza, on which it stands, with its clusters of exquisite columns, 
and its gushing fountains - so fresh, so broad, and free, and 
beautiful - nothing can exaggerate.  The first burst of the 
interior, in all its expansive majesty and glory:  and, most of 
all, the looking up into the Dome:  is a sensation never to be 
forgotten.  But, there were preparations for a Festa; the pillars 
of stately marble were swathed in some impertinent frippery of red 
and yellow; the altar, and entrance to the subterranean chapel:  
which is before it:  in the centre of the church:  were like a 
goldsmith's shop, or one of the opening scenes in a very lavish 
pantomime.  And though I had as high a sense of the beauty of the 
building (I hope) as it is possible to entertain, I felt no very 
strong emotion.  I have been infinitely more affected in many 
English cathedrals when the organ has been playing, and in many 
English country churches when the congregation have been singing.  
I had a much greater sense of mystery and wonder, in the Cathedral 
of San Mark at Venice.

When we came out of the church again (we stood nearly an hour 
staring up into the dome:  and would not have 'gone over' the 
Cathedral then, for any money), we said to the coachman, 'Go to the 
Coliseum.'  In a quarter of an hour or so, he stopped at the gate, 
and we went in.

It is no fiction, but plain, sober, honest Truth, to say:  so 
suggestive and distinct is it at this hour:  that, for a moment - 
actually in passing in - they who will, may have the whole great 
pile before them, as it used to be, with thousands of eager faces 
staring down into the arena, and such a whirl of strife, and blood, 
and dust going on there, as no language can describe.  Its 
solitude, its awful beauty, and its utter desolation, strike upon 
the stranger the next moment, like a softened sorrow; and never in 
his life, perhaps, will he be so moved and overcome by any sight, 
not immediately connected with his own affections and afflictions.

To see it crumbling there, an inch a year; its walls and arches 
overgrown with green; its corridors open to the day; the long grass 
growing in its porches; young trees of yesterday, springing up on 
its ragged parapets, and bearing fruit:  chance produce of the 
seeds dropped there by the birds who build their nests within its 
chinks and crannies; to see its Pit of Fight filled up with earth, 
and the peaceful Cross planted in the centre; to climb into its 
upper halls, and look down on ruin, ruin, ruin, all about it; the 
triumphal arches of Constantine, Septimus Severus, and Titus; the 
Roman Forum; the Palace of the Caesars; the temples of the old 
religion, fallen down and gone; is to see the ghost of old Rome, 
wicked, wonderful old city, haunting the very ground on which its 
people trod.  It is the most impressive, the most stately, the most 
solemn, grand, majestic, mournful sight, conceivable.  Never, in 
its bloodiest prime, can the sight of the gigantic Coliseum, full 
and running over with the lustiest life, have moved one's heart, as 
it must move all who look upon it now, a ruin.  GOD be thanked:  a 
ruin!

As it tops the other ruins:  standing there, a mountain among 
graves:  so do its ancient influences outlive all other remnants of 
the old mythology and old butchery of Rome, in the nature of the 
fierce and cruel Roman people.  The Italian face changes as the 
visitor approaches the city; its beauty becomes devilish; and there 
is scarcely one countenance in a hundred, among the common people 
in the streets, that would not be at home and happy in a renovated 
Coliseum to-morrow.

Here was Rome indeed at last; and such a Rome as no one can imagine 
in its full and awful grandeur!  We wandered out upon the Appian 
Way, and then went on, through miles of ruined tombs and broken 
walls, with here and there a desolate and uninhabited house:  past 
the Circus of Romulus, where the course of the chariots, the 
stations of the judges, competitors, and spectators, are yet as 
plainly to be seen as in old time:  past the tomb of Cecilia 
Metella:  past all inclosure, hedge, or stake, wall or fence:  away 
upon the open Campagna, where on that side of Rome, nothing is to 
be beheld but Ruin.  Except where the distant Apennines bound the 
view upon the left, the whole wide prospect is one field of ruin.  
Broken aqueducts, left in the most picturesque and beautiful 
clusters of arches; broken temples; broken tombs.  A desert of 
decay, sombre and desolate beyond all expression; and with a 
history in every stone that strews the ground.


On Sunday, the Pope assisted in the performance of High Mass at St. 
Peter's.  The effect of the Cathedral on my mind, on that second 
visit, was exactly what it was at first, and what it remains after 
many visits.  It is not religiously impressive or affecting.  It is 
an immense edifice, with no one point for the mind to rest upon; 
and it tires itself with wandering round and round.  The very 
purpose of the place, is not expressed in anything you see there, 
unless you examine its details - and all examination of details is 
incompatible with the place itself.  It might be a Pantheon, or a 
Senate House, or a great architectural trophy, having no other 
object than an architectural triumph.  There is a black statue of 
St. Peter, to be sure, under a red canopy; which is larger than 
life and which is constantly having its great toe kissed by good 
Catholics.  You cannot help seeing that:  it is so very prominent 
and popular.  But it does not heighten the effect of the temple, as 
a work of art; and it is not expressive - to me at least - of its 
high purpose.

A large space behind the altar, was fitted up with boxes, shaped 
like those at the Italian Opera in England, but in their decoration 
much more gaudy.  In the centre of the kind of theatre thus railed 
off, was a canopied dais with the Pope's chair upon it.  The 
pavement was covered with a carpet of the brightest green; and what 
with this green, and the intolerable reds and crimsons, and gold 
borders of the hangings, the whole concern looked like a stupendous 
Bonbon.  On either side of the altar, was a large box for lady 
strangers.  These were filled with ladies in black dresses and 
black veils.  The gentlemen of the Pope's guard, in red coats, 
leather breeches, and jack-boots, guarded all this reserved space, 
with drawn swords that were very flashy in every sense; and from 
the altar all down the nave, a broad lane was kept clear by the 
Pope's Swiss guard, who wear a quaint striped surcoat, and striped 
tight legs, and carry halberds like those which are usually 
shouldered by those theatrical supernumeraries, who never CAN get 
off the stage fast enough, and who may be generally observed to 
linger in the enemy's camp after the open country, held by the 
opposite forces, has been split up the middle by a convulsion of 
Nature.

I got upon the border of the green carpet, in company with a great 
many other gentlemen, attired in black (no other passport is 
necessary), and stood there at my ease, during the performance of 
Mass.  The singers were in a crib of wirework (like a large meat-
safe or bird-cage) in one corner; and sang most atrociously.  All 
about the green carpet, there was a slowly moving crowd of people:  
talking to each other:  staring at the Pope through eye-glasses; 
defrauding one another, in moments of partial curiosity, out of 
precarious seats on the bases of pillars:  and grinning hideously 
at the ladies.  Dotted here and there, were little knots of friars 
(Frances-cani, or Cappuccini, in their coarse brown dresses and 
peaked hoods) making a strange contrast to the gaudy ecclesiastics 
of higher degree, and having their humility gratified to the 
utmost, by being shouldered about, and elbowed right and left, on 
all sides.  Some of these had muddy sandals and umbrellas, and 
stained garments:  having trudged in from the country.  The faces 
of the greater part were as coarse and heavy as their dress; their 
dogged, stupid, monotonous stare at all the glory and splendour, 
having something in it, half miserable, and half ridiculous.

Upon the green carpet itself, and gathered round the altar, was a 
perfect army of cardinals and priests, in red, gold, purple, 
violet, white, and fine linen.  Stragglers from these, went to and 
fro among the crowd, conversing two and two, or giving and 
receiving introductions, and exchanging salutations; other 
functionaries in black gowns, and other functionaries in court-
dresses, were similarly engaged.  In the midst of all these, and 
stealthy Jesuits creeping in and out, and the extreme restlessness 
of the Youth of England, who were perpetually wandering about, some 
few steady persons in black cassocks, who had knelt down with their 
faces to the wall, and were poring over their missals, became, 
unintentionally, a sort of humane man-traps, and with their own 
devout legs, tripped up other people's by the dozen.

There was a great pile of candles lying down on the floor near me, 
which a very old man in a rusty black gown with an open-work 
tippet, like a summer ornament for a fireplace in tissue-paper, 
made himself very busy in dispensing to all the ecclesiastics:  one 
a-piece.  They loitered about with these for some time, under their 
arms like walking-sticks, or in their hands like truncheons.  At a 
certain period of the ceremony, however, each carried his candle up 
to the Pope, laid it across his two knees to be blessed, took it 
back again, and filed off.  This was done in a very attenuated 
procession, as you may suppose, and occupied a long time.  Not 
because it takes long to bless a candle through and through, but 
because there were so many candles to be blessed.  At last they 
were all blessed:  and then they were all lighted; and then the 
Pope was taken up, chair and all, and carried round the church.

I must say, that I never saw anything, out of November, so like the 
popular English commemoration of the fifth of that month.  A bundle 
of matches and a lantern, would have made it perfect.  Nor did the 
Pope, himself, at all mar the resemblance, though he has a pleasant 
and venerable face; for, as this part of the ceremony makes him 
giddy and sick, he shuts his eyes when it is performed:  and having 
his eyes shut and a great mitre on his head, and his head itself 
wagging to and fro as they shook him in carrying, he looked as if 
his mask were going to tumble off.  The two immense fans which are 
always borne, one on either side of him, accompanied him, of 
course, on this occasion.  As they carried him along, he blessed 
the people with the mystic sign; and as he passed them, they 
kneeled down.  When he had made the round of the church, he was 
brought back again, and if I am not mistaken, this performance was 
repeated, in the whole, three times.  There was, certainly nothing 
solemn or effective in it; and certainly very much that was droll 
and tawdry.  But this remark applies to the whole ceremony, except 
the raising of the Host, when every man in the guard dropped on one 
knee instantly, and dashed his naked sword on the ground; which had 
a fine effect.

The next time I saw the cathedral, was some two or three weeks 
afterwards, when I climbed up into the ball; and then, the hangings 
being taken down, and the carpet taken up, but all the framework 
left, the remnants of these decorations looked like an exploded 
cracker.

The Friday and Saturday having been solemn Festa days, and Sunday 
being always a DIES NON in carnival proceedings, we had looked 
forward, with some impatience and curiosity, to the beginning of 
the new week:  Monday and Tuesday being the two last and best days 
of the Carnival.

On the Monday afternoon at one or two o'clock, there began to be a 
great rattling of carriages into the court-yard of the hotel; a 
hurrying to and fro of all the servants in it; and, now and then, a 
swift shooting across some doorway or balcony, of a straggling 
stranger in a fancy dress:  not yet sufficiently well used to the 
same, to wear it with confidence, and defy public opinion.  All the 
carriages were open, and had the linings carefully covered with 
white cotton or calico, to prevent their proper decorations from 
being spoiled by the incessant pelting of sugar-plums; and people 
were packing and cramming into every vehicle as it waited for its 
occupants, enormous sacks and baskets full of these confetti, 
together with such heaps of flowers, tied up in little nosegays, 
that some carriages were not only brimful of flowers, but literally 
running over:  scattering, at every shake and jerk of the springs, 
some of their abundance on the ground.  Not to be behindhand in 
these essential particulars, we caused two very respectable sacks 
of sugar-plums (each about three feet high) and a large clothes-
basket full of flowers to be conveyed into our hired barouche, with 
all speed.  And from our place of observation, in one of the upper 
balconies of the hotel, we contemplated these arrangements with the 
liveliest satisfaction.  The carriages now beginning to take up 
their company, and move away, we got into ours, and drove off too, 
armed with little wire masks for our faces; the sugar-plums, like 
Falstaff's adulterated sack, having lime in their composition.

The Corso is a street a mile long; a street of shops, and palaces, 
and private houses, sometimes opening into a broad piazza.  There 
are verandahs and balconies, of all shapes and sizes, to almost 
every house - not on one story alone, but often to one room or 
another on every story - put there in general with so little order 
or regularity, that if, year after year, and season after season, 
it had rained balconies, hailed balconies, snowed balconies, blown 
balconies, they could scarcely have come into existence in a more 
disorderly manner.

This is the great fountain-head and focus of the Carnival.  But all 
the streets in which the Carnival is held, being vigilantly kept by 
dragoons, it is necessary for carriages, in the first instance, to 
pass, in line, down another thoroughfare, and so come into the 
Corso at the end remote from the Piazza del Popolo; which is one of 
its terminations.  Accordingly, we fell into the string of coaches, 
and, for some time, jogged on quietly enough; now crawling on at a 
very slow walk; now trotting half-a-dozen yards; now backing fifty; 
and now stopping altogether:  as the pressure in front obliged us.  
If any impetuous carriage dashed out of the rank and clattered 
forward, with the wild idea of getting on faster, it was suddenly 
met, or overtaken, by a trooper on horseback, who, deaf as his own 
drawn sword to all remonstrances, immediately escorted it back to 
the very end of the row, and made it a dim speck in the remotest 
perspective.  Occasionally, we interchanged a volley of confetti 
with the carriage next in front, or the carriage next behind; but 
as yet, this capturing of stray and errant coaches by the military, 
was the chief amusement.

Presently, we came into a narrow street, where, besides one line of 
carriages going, there was another line of carriages returning.  
Here the sugar-plums and the nosegays began to fly about, pretty 
smartly; and I was fortunate enough to observe one gentleman 
attired as a Greek warrior, catch a light-whiskered brigand on the 
nose (he was in the very act of tossing up a bouquet to a young 
lady in a first-floor window) with a precision that was much 
applauded by the bystanders.  As this victorious Greek was 
exchanging a facetious remark with a stout gentleman in a doorway - 
one-half black and one-half white, as if he had been peeled up the 
middle - who had offered him his congratulations on this 
achievement, he received an orange from a house-top, full on his 
left ear, and was much surprised, not to say discomfited.  
Especially, as he was standing up at the time; and in consequence 
of the carriage moving on suddenly, at the same moment, staggered 
ignominiously, and buried himself among his flowers.

Some quarter of an hour of this sort of progress, brought us to the 
Corso; and anything so gay, so bright, and lively as the whole 
scene there, it would be difficult to imagine.  From all the 
innumerable balconies:  from the remotest and highest, no less than 
from the lowest and nearest:  hangings of bright red, bright green, 
bright blue, white and gold, were fluttering in the brilliant 
sunlight.  From windows, and from parapets, and tops of houses, 
streamers of the richest colours, and draperies of the gaudiest and 
most sparkling hues, were floating out upon the street.  The 
buildings seemed to have been literally turned inside out, and to 
have all their gaiety towards the highway.  Shop-fronts were taken 
down, and the windows filled with company, like boxes at a shining 
theatre; doors were carried off their hinges, and long tapestried 
groves, hung with garlands of flowers and evergreens, displayed 
within; builders' scaffoldings were gorgeous temples, radiant in 
silver, gold, and crimson; and in every nook and corner, from the 
pavement to the chimney-tops, where women's eyes could glisten, 
there they danced, and laughed, and sparkled, like the light in 
water.  Every sort of bewitching madness of dress was there.  
Little preposterous scarlet jackets; quaint old stomachers, more 
wicked than the smartest bodices; Polish pelisses, strained and 
tight as ripe gooseberries; tiny Greek caps, all awry, and clinging 
to the dark hair, Heaven knows how; every wild, quaint, bold, shy, 
pettish, madcap fancy had its illustration in a dress; and every 
fancy was as dead forgotten by its owner, in the tumult of 
merriment, as if the three old aqueducts that still remain entire 
had brought Lethe into Rome, upon their sturdy arches, that 
morning.

The carriages were now three abreast; in broader places four; often 
stationary for a long time together, always one close mass of 
variegated brightness; showing, the whole street-full, through the 
storm of flowers, like flowers of a larger growth themselves.  In 
some, the horses were richly caparisoned in magnificent trappings; 
in others they were decked from head to tail, with flowing ribbons.  
Some were driven by coachmen with enormous double faces:  one face 
leering at the horses:  the other cocking its extraordinary eyes 
into the carriage:  and both rattling again, under the hail of 
sugar-plums.  Other drivers were attired as women, wearing long 
ringlets and no bonnets, and looking more ridiculous in any real 
difficulty with the horses (of which, in such a concourse, there 
were a great many) than tongue can tell, or pen describe.  Instead 
of sitting IN the carriages, upon the seats, the handsome Roman 
women, to see and to be seen the better, sit in the heads of the 
barouches, at this time of general licence, with their feet upon 
the cushions - and oh, the flowing skirts and dainty waists, the 
blessed shapes and laughing faces, the free, good-humoured, gallant 
figures that they make! There were great vans, too, full of 
handsome girls - thirty, or more together, perhaps - and the 
broadsides that were poured into, and poured out of, these fairy 
fire-shops, splashed the air with flowers and bon-bons for ten 
minutes at a time.  Carriages, delayed long in one place, would 
begin a deliberate engagement with other carriages, or with people 
at the lower windows; and the spectators at some upper balcony or 
window, joining in the fray, and attacking both parties, would 
empty down great bags of confetti, that descended like a cloud, and 
in an instant made them white as millers.  Still, carriages on 
carriages, dresses on dresses, colours on colours, crowds upon 
crowds, without end.  Men and boys clinging to the wheels of 
coaches, and holding on behind, and following in their wake, and 
diving in among the horses' feet to pick up scattered flowers to 
sell again; maskers on foot (the drollest generally) in fantastic 
exaggerations of court-dresses, surveying the throng through 
enormous eye-glasses, and always transported with an ecstasy of 
love, on the discovery of any particularly old lady at a window; 
long strings of Policinelli, laying about them with blown bladders 
at the ends of sticks; a waggon-full of madmen, screaming and 
tearing to the life; a coach-full of grave mamelukes, with their 
horse-tail standard set up in the midst; a party of gipsy-women 
engaged in terrific conflict with a shipful of sailors; a man-
monkey on a pole, surrounded by strange animals with pigs' faces, 
and lions' tails, carried under their arms, or worn gracefully over 
their shoulders; carriages on carriages, dresses on dresses, 
colours on colours, crowds upon crowds, without end.  Not many 
actual characters sustained, or represented, perhaps, considering 
the number dressed, but the main pleasure of the scene consisting 
in its perfect good temper; in its bright, and infinite, and 
flashing variety; and in its entire abandonment to the mad humour 
of the time - an abandonment so perfect, so contagious, so 
irresistible, that the steadiest foreigner fights up to his middle 
in flowers and sugar-plums, like the wildest Roman of them all, and 
thinks of nothing else till half-past four o'clock, when he is 
suddenly reminded (to his great regret) that this is not the whole 
business of his existence, by hearing the trumpets sound, and 
seeing the dragoons begin to clear the street.

How it ever IS cleared for the race that takes place at five, or 
how the horses ever go through the race, without going over the 
people, is more than I can say.  But the carriages get out into the 
by-streets, or up into the Piazza del Popolo, and some people sit 
in temporary galleries in the latter place, and tens of thousands 
line the Corso on both sides, when the horses are brought out into 
the Piazza - to the foot of that same column which, for centuries, 
looked down upon the games and chariot-races in the Circus Maximus.

At a given signal they are started off.  Down the live lane, the 
whole length of the Corso, they fly like the wind:  riderless, as 
all the world knows:  with shining ornaments upon their backs, and 
twisted in their plaited manes:  and with heavy little balls stuck 
full of spikes, dangling at their sides, to goad them on.  The 
jingling of these trappings, and the rattling of their hoofs upon 
the hard stones; the dash and fury of their speed along the echoing 
street; nay, the very cannon that are fired - these noises are 
nothing to the roaring of the multitude:  their shouts:  the 
clapping of their hands.  But it is soon over - almost 
instantaneously.  More cannon shake the town.  The horses have 
plunged into the carpets put across the street to stop them; the 
goal is reached; the prizes are won (they are given, in part, by 
the poor Jews, as a compromise for not running foot-races 
themselves); and there is an end to that day's sport.

But if the scene be bright, and gay, and crowded, on the last day 
but one, it attains, on the concluding day, to such a height of 
glittering colour, swarming life, and frolicsome uproar, that the 
bare recollection of it makes me giddy at this moment.  The same 
diversions, greatly heightened and intensified in the ardour with 
which they are pursued, go on until the same hour.  The race is 
repeated; the cannon are fired; the shouting and clapping of hands 
are renewed; the cannon are fired again; the race is over; and the 
prizes are won.  But the carriages:  ankle-deep with sugar-plums 
within, and so be-flowered and dusty without, as to be hardly 
recognisable for the same vehicles that they were, three hours ago:  
instead of scampering off in all directions, throng into the Corso, 
where they are soon wedged together in a scarcely moving mass.  For 
the diversion of the Moccoletti, the last gay madness of the 
Carnival, is now at hand; and sellers of little tapers like what 
are called Christmas candles in England, are shouting lustily on 
every side, 'Moccoli, Moccoli!  Ecco Moccoli!' - a new item in the 
tumult; quite abolishing that other item of ' Ecco Fiori!  Ecco 
Fior-r-r!' which has been making itself audible over all the rest, 
at intervals, the whole day through.

As the bright hangings and dresses are all fading into one dull, 
heavy, uniform colour in the decline of the day, lights begin 
flashing, here and there:  in the windows, on the housetops, in the 
balconies, in the carriages, in the hands of the foot-passengers:  
little by little:  gradually, gradually:  more and more:  until the 
whole long street is one great glare and blaze of fire.  Then, 
everybody present has but one engrossing object; that is, to 
extinguish other people's candles, and to keep his own alight; and 
everybody:  man, woman, or child, gentleman or lady, prince or 
peasant, native or foreigner:  yells and screams, and roars 
incessantly, as a taunt to the subdued, 'Senza Moccolo, Senza 
Moccolo!'  (Without a light!  Without a light!) until nothing is 
heard but a gigantic chorus of those two words, mingled with peals 
of laughter.

The spectacle, at this time, is one of the most extraordinary that 
can be imagined.  Carriages coming slowly by, with everybody 
standing on the seats or on the box, holding up their lights at 
arms' length, for greater safety; some in paper shades; some with a 
bunch of undefended little tapers, kindled altogether; some with 
blazing torches; some with feeble little candles; men on foot, 
creeping along, among the wheels, watching their opportunity, to 
make a spring at some particular light, and dash it out; other 
people climbing up into carriages, to get hold of them by main 
force; others, chasing some unlucky wanderer, round and round his 
own coach, to blow out the light he has begged or stolen somewhere, 
before he can ascend to his own company, and enable them to light 
their extinguished tapers; others, with their hats off, at a 
carriage-door, humbly beseeching some kind-hearted lady to oblige 
them with a light for a cigar, and when she is in the fulness of 
doubt whether to comply or no, blowing out the candle she is 
guarding so tenderly with her little hand; other people at the 
windows, fishing for candles with lines and hooks, or letting down 
long willow-wands with handkerchiefs at the end, and flapping them 
out, dexterously, when the bearer is at the height of his triumph, 
others, biding their time in corners, with immense extinguishers 
like halberds, and suddenly coming down upon glorious torches; 
others, gathered round one coach, and sticking to it; others, 
raining oranges and nosegays at an obdurate little lantern, or 
regularly storming a pyramid of men, holding up one man among them, 
who carries one feeble little wick above his head, with which he 
defies them all!  Senza Moccolo!  Senza Moccolo!  Beautiful women, 
standing up in coaches, pointing in derision at extinguished 
lights, and clapping their hands, as they pass on, crying, 'Senza 
Moccolo!  Senza Moccolo!'; low balconies full of lovely faces and 
gay dresses, struggling with assailants in the streets; some 
repressing them as they climb up, some bending down, some leaning 
over, some shrinking back - delicate arms and bosoms - graceful 
figures -glowing lights, fluttering dresses, Senza Moccolo, Senza 
Moccoli, Senza Moc-co-lo-o-o-o! - when in the wildest enthusiasm of 
the cry, and fullest ecstasy of the sport, the Ave Maria rings from 
the church steeples, and the Carnival is over in an instant - put 
out like a taper, with a breath!

There was a masquerade at the theatre at night, as dull and 
senseless as a London one, and only remarkable for the summary way 
in which the house was cleared at eleven o'clock:  which was done 
by a line of soldiers forming along the wall, at the back of the 
stage, and sweeping the whole company out before them, like a broad 
broom.  The game of the Moccoletti (the word, in the singular, 
Moccoletto, is the diminutive of Moccolo, and means a little lamp 
or candlesnuff) is supposed by some to be a ceremony of burlesque 
mourning for the death of the Carnival:  candles being 
indispensable to Catholic grief.  But whether it be so, or be a 
remnant of the ancient Saturnalia, or an incorporation of both, or 
have its origin in anything else, I shall always remember it, and 
the frolic, as a brilliant and most captivating sight:  no less 
remarkable for the unbroken good-humour of all concerned, down to 
the very lowest (and among those who scaled the carriages, were 
many of the commonest men and boys), than for its innocent 
vivacity.  For, odd as it may seem to say so, of a sport so full of 
thoughtlessness and personal display, it is as free from any taint 
of immodesty as any general mingling of the two sexes can possibly 
be; and there seems to prevail, during its progress, a feeling of 
general, almost childish, simplicity and confidence, which one 
thinks of with a pang, when the Ave Maria has rung it away, for a 
whole year.


Availing ourselves of a part of the quiet interval between the 
termination of the Carnival and the beginning of the Holy Week:  
when everybody had run away from the one, and few people had yet 
begun to run back again for the other:  we went conscientiously to 
work, to see Rome.  And, by dint of going out early every morning, 
and coming back late every evening, and labouring hard all day, I 
believe we made acquaintance with every post and pillar in the 
city, and the country round; and, in particular, explored so many 
churches, that I abandoned that part of the enterprise at last, 
before it was half finished, lest I should never, of my own accord, 
go to church again, as long as I lived.  But, I managed, almost 
every day, at one time or other, to get back to the Coliseum, and 
out upon the open Campagna, beyond the Tomb of Cecilia Metella.

We often encountered, in these expeditions, a company of English 
Tourists, with whom I had an ardent, but ungratified longing, to 
establish a speaking acquaintance.  They were one Mr. Davis, and a 
small circle of friends.  It was impossible not to know Mrs. 
Davis's name, from her being always in great request among her 
party, and her party being everywhere.  During the Holy Week, they 
were in every part of every scene of every ceremony.  For a 
fortnight or three weeks before it, they were in every tomb, and 
every church, and every ruin, and every Picture Gallery; and I 
hardly ever observed Mrs. Davis to be silent for a moment.  Deep 
underground, high up in St. Peter's, out on the Campagna, and 
stifling in the Jews' quarter, Mrs. Davis turned up, all the same.  
I don't think she ever saw anything, or ever looked at anything; 
and she had always lost something out of a straw hand-basket, and 
was trying to find it, with all her might and main, among an 
immense quantity of English halfpence, which lay, like sands upon 
the sea-shore, at the bottom of it.  There was a professional 
Cicerone always attached to the party (which had been brought over 
from London, fifteen or twenty strong, by contract), and if he so 
much as looked at Mrs. Davis, she invariably cut him short by 
saying, 'There, God bless the man, don't worrit me!  I don't 
understand a word you say, and shouldn't if you was to talk till 
you was black in the face!'  Mr. Davis always had a snuff-coloured 
great-coat on, and carried a great green umbrella in his hand, and 
had a slow curiosity constantly devouring him, which prompted him 
to do extraordinary things, such as taking the covers off urns in 
tombs, and looking in at the ashes as if they were pickles - and 
tracing out inscriptions with the ferrule of his umbrella, and 
saying, with intense thoughtfulness, 'Here's a B you see, and 
there's a R, and this is the way we goes on in; is it!'  His 
antiquarian habits occasioned his being frequently in the rear of 
the rest; and one of the agonies of Mrs. Davis, and the party in 
general, was an ever-present fear that Davis would be lost.  This 
caused them to scream for him, in the strangest places, and at the 
most improper seasons.  And when he came, slowly emerging out of 
some sepulchre or other, like a peaceful Ghoule, saying 'Here I 
am!' Mrs. Davis invariably replied, 'You'll be buried alive in a 
foreign country, Davis, and it's no use trying to prevent you!'

Mr. and Mrs. Davis, and their party, had, probably, been brought 
from London in about nine or ten days.  Eighteen hundred years ago, 
the Roman legions under Claudius, protested against being led into 
Mr. and Mrs. Davis's country, urging that it lay beyond the limits 
of the world.

Among what may be called the Cubs or minor Lions of Rome, there was 
one that amused me mightily.  It is always to be found there; and 
its den is on the great flight of steps that lead from the Piazza 
di Spagna, to the church of Trinita del Monte.  In plainer words, 
these steps are the great place of resort for the artists' 
'Models,' and there they are constantly waiting to be hired.  The 
first time I went up there, I could not conceive why the faces 
seemed familiar to me; why they appeared to have beset me, for 
years, in every possible variety of action and costume; and how it 
came to pass that they started up before me, in Rome, in the broad 
day, like so many saddled and bridled nightmares.  I soon found 
that we had made acquaintance, and improved it, for several years, 
on the walls of various Exhibition Galleries.  There is one old 
gentleman, with long white hair and an immense beard, who, to my 
knowledge, has gone half through the catalogue of the Royal 
Academy.  This is the venerable, or patriarchal model.  He carries 
a long staff; and every knot and twist in that staff I have seen, 
faithfully delineated, innumerable times.  There is another man in 
a blue cloak, who always pretends to be asleep in the sun (when 
there is any), and who, I need not say, is always very wide awake, 
and very attentive to the disposition of his legs.  This is the 
DOLCE FAR' NIENTE model.  There is another man in a brown cloak, 
who leans against a wall, with his arms folded in his mantle, and 
looks out of the corners of his eyes:  which are just visible 
beneath his broad slouched hat.  This is the assassin model.  There 
is another man, who constantly looks over his own shoulder, and is 
always going away, but never does.  This is the haughty, or 
scornful model.  As to Domestic Happiness, and Holy Families, they 
should come very cheap, for there are lumps of them, all up the 
steps; and the cream of the thing is, that they are all the falsest 
vagabonds in the world, especially made up for the purpose, and 
having no counterparts in Rome or any other part of the habitable 
globe.

My recent mention of the Carnival, reminds me of its being said to 
be a mock mourning (in the ceremony with which it closes), for the 
gaieties and merry-makings before Lent; and this again reminds me 
of the real funerals and mourning processions of Rome, which, like 
those in most other parts of Italy, are rendered chiefly remarkable 
to a Foreigner, by the indifference with which the mere clay is 
universally regarded, after life has left it.  And this is not from 
the survivors having had time to dissociate the memory of the dead 
from their well-remembered appearance and form on earth; for the 
interment follows too speedily after death, for that:  almost 
always taking place within four-and-twenty hours, and, sometimes, 
within twelve.

At Rome, there is the same arrangement of Pits in a great, bleak, 
open, dreary space, that I have already described as existing in 
Genoa.  When I visited it, at noonday, I saw a solitary coffin of 
plain deal:  uncovered by any shroud or pall, and so slightly made, 
that the hoof of any wandering mule would have crushed it in:  
carelessly tumbled down, all on one side, on the door of one of the 
pits - and there left, by itself, in the wind and sunshine.  'How 
does it come to be left here?' I asked the man who showed me the 
place.  'It was brought here half an hour ago, Signore,' he said.  
I remembered to have met the procession, on its return:  straggling 
away at a good round pace.  'When will it be put in the pit?' I 
asked him.  'When the cart comes, and it is opened to-night,' he 
said.  'How much does it cost to be brought here in this way, 
instead of coming in the cart?' I asked him.  'Ten scudi,' he said 
(about two pounds, two-and-sixpence, English).  'The other bodies, 
for whom nothing is paid, are taken to the church of the Santa 
Maria della Consolazione,' he continued, 'and brought here 
altogether, in the cart at night.'  I stood, a moment, looking at 
the coffin, which had two initial letters scrawled upon the top; 
and turned away, with an expression in my face, I suppose, of not 
much liking its exposure in that manner:  for he said, shrugging 
his shoulders with great vivacity, and giving a pleasant smile, 
'But he's dead, Signore, he's dead.  Why not?'


Among the innumerable churches, there is one I must select for 
separate mention.  It is the church of the Ara Coeli, supposed to 
be built on the site of the old Temple of Jupiter Feretrius; and 
approached, on one side, by a long steep flight of steps, which 
seem incomplete without some group of bearded soothsayers on the 
top.  It is remarkable for the possession of a miraculous Bambino, 
or wooden doll, representing the Infant Saviour; and I first saw 
this miraculous Bambino, in legal phrase, in manner following, that 
is to say:

We had strolled into the church one afternoon, and were looking 
down its long vista of gloomy pillars (for all these ancient 
churches built upon the ruins of old temples, are dark and sad), 
when the Brave came running in, with a grin upon his face that 
stretched it from ear to ear, and implored us to follow him, 
without a moment's delay, as they were going to show the Bambino to 
a select party.  We accordingly hurried off to a sort of chapel, or 
sacristy, hard by the chief altar, but not in the church itself, 
where the select party, consisting of two or three Catholic 
gentlemen and ladies (not Italians), were already assembled:  and 
where one hollow-cheeked young monk was lighting up divers candles, 
while another was putting on some clerical robes over his coarse 
brown habit.  The candles were on a kind of altar, and above it 
were two delectable figures, such as you would see at any English 
fair, representing the Holy Virgin, and Saint Joseph, as I suppose, 
bending in devotion over a wooden box, or coffer; which was shut.

The hollow-cheeked monk, number One, having finished lighting the 
candles, went down on his knees, in a corner, before this set-
piece; and the monk number Two, having put on a pair of highly 
ornamented and gold-bespattered gloves, lifted down the coffer, 
with great reverence, and set it on the altar.  Then, with many 
genuflexions, and muttering certain prayers, he opened it, and let 
down the front, and took off sundry coverings of satin and lace 
from the inside.  The ladies had been on their knees from the 
commencement; and the gentlemen now dropped down devoutly, as he 
exposed to view a little wooden doll, in face very like General Tom 
Thumb, the American Dwarf:  gorgeously dressed in satin and gold 
lace, and actually blazing with rich jewels.  There was scarcely a 
spot upon its little breast, or neck, or stomach, but was sparkling 
with the costly offerings of the Faithful.  Presently, he lifted it 
out of the box, and carrying it round among the kneelers, set its 
face against the forehead of every one, and tendered its clumsy 
foot to them to kiss - a ceremony which they all performed down to 
a dirty little ragamuffin of a boy who had walked in from the 
street.  When this was done, he laid it in the box again:  and the 
company, rising, drew near, and commended the jewels in whispers.  
In good time, he replaced the coverings, shut up the box, put it 
back in its place, locked up the whole concern (Holy Family and 
all) behind a pair of folding-doors; took off his priestly 
vestments; and received the customary 'small charge,' while his 
companion, by means of an extinguisher fastened to the end of a 
long stick, put out the lights, one after another.  The candles 
being all extinguished, and the money all collected, they retired, 
and so did the spectators.

I met this same Bambino, in the street a short time afterwards, 
going, in great state, to the house of some sick person.  It is 
taken to all parts of Rome for this purpose, constantly; but, I 
understand that it is not always as successful as could be wished; 
for, making its appearance at the bedside of weak and nervous 
people in extremity, accompanied by a numerous escort, it not 
unfrequently frightens them to death.  It is most popular in cases 
of child-birth, where it has done such wonders, that if a lady be 
longer than usual in getting through her difficulties, a messenger 
is despatched, with all speed, to solicit the immediate attendance 
of the Bambino.  It is a very valuable property, and much confided 
in - especially by the religious body to whom it belongs.

I am happy to know that it is not considered immaculate, by some 
who are good Catholics, and who are behind the scenes, from what 
was told me by the near relation of a Priest, himself a Catholic, 
and a gentleman of learning and intelligence.  This Priest made my 
informant promise that he would, on no account, allow the Bambino 
to be borne into the bedroom of a sick lady, in whom they were both 
interested.  'For,' said he, 'if they (the monks) trouble her with 
it, and intrude themselves into her room, it will certainly kill 
her.'  My informant accordingly looked out of the window when it 
came; and, with many thanks, declined to open the door.  He 
endeavoured, in another case of which he had no other knowledge 
than such as he gained as a passer-by at the moment, to prevent its 
being carried into a small unwholesome chamber, where a poor girl 
was dying.  But, he strove against it unsuccessfully, and she 
expired while the crowd were pressing round her bed.

Among the people who drop into St. Peter's at their leisure, to 
kneel on the pavement, and say a quiet prayer, there are certain 
schools and seminaries, priestly and otherwise, that come in, 
twenty or thirty strong.  These boys always kneel down in single 
file, one behind the other, with a tall grim master in a black 
gown, bringing up the rear:  like a pack of cards arranged to be 
tumbled down at a touch, with a disproportionately large Knave of 
clubs at the end.  When they have had a minute or so at the chief 
altar, they scramble up, and filing off to the chapel of the 
Madonna, or the sacrament, flop down again in the same order; so 
that if anybody did stumble against the master, a general and 
sudden overthrow of the whole line must inevitably ensue.

The scene in all the churches is the strangest possible.  The same 
monotonous, heartless, drowsy chaunting, always going on; the same 
dark building, darker from the brightness of the street without; 
the same lamps dimly burning; the self-same people kneeling here 
and there; turned towards you, from one altar or other, the same 
priest's back, with the same large cross embroidered on it; however 
different in size, in shape, in wealth, in architecture, this 
church is from that, it is the same thing still.  There are the 
same dirty beggars stopping in their muttered prayers to beg; the 
same miserable cripples exhibiting their deformity at the doors; 
the same blind men, rattling little pots like kitchen pepper-
castors:  their depositories for alms; the same preposterous crowns 
of silver stuck upon the painted heads of single saints and Virgins 
in crowded pictures, so that a little figure on a mountain has a 
head-dress bigger than the temple in the foreground, or adjacent 
miles of landscape; the same favourite shrine or figure, smothered 
with little silver hearts and crosses, and the like:  the staple 
trade and show of all the jewellers; the same odd mixture of 
respect and indecorum, faith and phlegm:  kneeling on the stones, 
and spitting on them, loudly; getting up from prayers to beg a 
little, or to pursue some other worldly matter:  and then kneeling 
down again, to resume the contrite supplication at the point where 
it was interrupted.  In one church, a kneeling lady got up from her 
prayer, for a moment, to offer us her card, as a teacher of Music; 
and in another, a sedate gentleman with a very thick walking-staff, 
arose from his devotions to belabour his dog, who was growling at 
another dog:  and whose yelps and howls resounded through the 
church, as his master quietly relapsed into his former train of 
meditation - keeping his eye upon the dog, at the same time, 
nevertheless.

Above all, there is always a receptacle for the contributions of 
the Faithful, in some form or other.  Sometimes, it is a money-box, 
set up between the worshipper, and the wooden life-size figure of 
the Redeemer; sometimes, it is a little chest for the maintenance 
of the Virgin; sometimes, an appeal on behalf of a popular Bambino; 
sometimes, a bag at the end of a long stick, thrust among the 
people here and there, and vigilantly jingled by an active 
Sacristan; but there it always is, and, very often, in many shapes 
in the same church, and doing pretty well in all.  Nor, is it 
wanting in the open air - the streets and roads - for, often as you 
are walking along, thinking about anything rather than a tin 
canister, that object pounces out upon you from a little house by 
the wayside; and on its top is painted, 'For the Souls in 
Purgatory;' an appeal which the bearer repeats a great many times, 
as he rattles it before you, much as Punch rattles the cracked bell 
which his sanguine disposition makes an organ of.

And this reminds me that some Roman altars of peculiar sanctity, 
bear the inscription, 'Every Mass performed at this altar frees a 
soul from Purgatory.'  I have never been able to find out the 
charge for one of these services, but they should needs be 
expensive.  There are several Crosses in Rome too, the kissing of 
which, confers indulgences for varying terms.  That in the centre 
of the Coliseum, is worth a hundred days; and people may be seen 
kissing it from morning to night.  It is curious that some of these 
crosses seem to acquire an arbitrary popularity:  this very one 
among them.  In another part of the Coliseum there is a cross upon 
a marble slab, with the inscription, 'Who kisses this cross shall 
be entitled to Two hundred and forty days' indulgence.'  But I saw 
no one person kiss it, though, day after day, I sat in the arena, 
and saw scores upon scores of peasants pass it, on their way to 
kiss the other.

To single out details from the great dream of Roman Churches, would 
be the wildest occupation in the world.  But St. Stefano Rotondo, a 
damp, mildewed vault of an old church in the outskirts of Rome, 
will always struggle uppermost in my mind, by reason of the hideous 
paintings with which its walls are covered.  These represent the 
martyrdoms of saints and early Christians; and such a panorama of 
horror and butchery no man could imagine in his sleep, though he 
were to eat a whole pig raw, for supper.  Grey-bearded men being 
boiled, fried, grilled, crimped, singed, eaten by wild beasts, 
worried by dogs, buried alive, torn asunder by horses, chopped up 
small with hatchets:  women having their breasts torn with iron 
pinchers, their tongues cut out, their ears screwed off, their jaws 
broken, their bodies stretched upon the rack, or skinned upon the 
stake, or crackled up and melted in the fire:  these are among the 
mildest subjects.  So insisted on, and laboured at, besides, that 
every sufferer gives you the same occasion for wonder as poor old 
Duncan awoke, in Lady Macbeth, when she marvelled at his having so 
much blood in him.

There is an upper chamber in the Mamertine prisons, over what is 
said to have been - and very possibly may have been - the dungeon 
of St. Peter.  This chamber is now fitted up as an oratory, 
dedicated to that saint; and it lives, as a distinct and separate 
place, in my recollection, too.  It is very small and low-roofed; 
and the dread and gloom of the ponderous, obdurate old prison are 
on it, as if they had come up in a dark mist through the floor.  
Hanging on the walls, among the clustered votive offerings, are 
objects, at once strangely in keeping, and strangely at variance, 
with the place - rusty daggers, knives, pistols, clubs, divers 
instruments of violence and murder, brought here, fresh from use, 
and hung up to propitiate offended Heaven:  as if the blood upon 
them would drain off in consecrated air, and have no voice to cry 
with.  It is all so silent and so close, and tomb-like; and the 
dungeons below are so black and stealthy, and stagnant, and naked; 
that this little dark spot becomes a dream within a dream:  and in 
the vision of great churches which come rolling past me like a sea, 
it is a small wave by itself, that melts into no other wave, and 
does not flow on with the rest.

It is an awful thing to think of the enormous caverns that are 
entered from some Roman churches, and undermine the city.  Many 
churches have crypts and subterranean chapels of great size, which, 
in the ancient time, were baths, and secret chambers of temples, 
and what not:  but I do not speak of them.  Beneath the church of 
St. Giovanni and St. Paolo, there are the jaws of a terrific range 
of caverns, hewn out of the rock, and said to have another outlet 
underneath the Coliseum - tremendous darknesses of vast extent, 
half-buried in the earth and unexplorable, where the dull torches, 
flashed by the attendants, glimmer down long ranges of distant 
vaults branching to the right and left, like streets in a city of 
the dead; and show the cold damp stealing down the walls, drip-
drop, drip-drop, to join the pools of water that lie here and 
there, and never saw, or never will see, one ray of the sun.  Some 
accounts make these the prisons of the wild beasts destined for the 
amphitheatre; some the prisons of the condemned gladiators; some, 
both.  But the legend most appalling to the fancy is, that in the 
upper range (for there are two stories of these caves) the Early 
Christians destined to be eaten at the Coliseum Shows, heard the 
wild beasts, hungry for them, roaring down below; until, upon the 
night and solitude of their captivity, there burst the sudden noon 
and life of the vast theatre crowded to the parapet, and of these, 
their dreaded neighbours, bounding in!

Below the church of San Sebastiano, two miles beyond the gate of 
San Sebastiano, on the Appian Way, is the entrance to the catacombs 
of Rome - quarries in the old time, but afterwards the hiding-
places of the Christians.  These ghastly passages have been 
explored for twenty miles; and form a chain of labyrinths, sixty 
miles in circumference.

A gaunt Franciscan friar, with a wild bright eye, was our only 
guide, down into this profound and dreadful place.  The narrow ways 
and openings hither and thither, coupled with the dead and heavy 
air, soon blotted out, in all of us, any recollection of the track 
by which we had come:  and I could not help thinking 'Good Heaven, 
if, in a sudden fit of madness, he should dash the torches out, or 
if he should be seized with a fit, what would become of us!'  On we 
wandered, among martyrs' graves:  passing great subterranean 
vaulted roads, diverging in all directions, and choked up with 
heaps of stones, that thieves and murderers may not take refuge 
there, and form a population under Rome, even worse than that which 
lives between it and the sun.  Graves, graves, graves; Graves of 
men, of women, of their little children, who ran crying to the 
persecutors, 'We are Christians!  We are Christians!' that they 
might be murdered with their parents; Graves with the palm of 
martyrdom roughly cut into their stone boundaries, and little 
niches, made to hold a vessel of the martyrs' blood; Graves of some 
who lived down here, for years together, ministering to the rest, 
and preaching truth, and hope, and comfort, from the rude altars, 
that bear witness to their fortitude at this hour; more roomy 
graves, but far more terrible, where hundreds, being surprised, 
were hemmed in and walled up:  buried before Death, and killed by 
slow starvation.

'The Triumphs of the Faith are not above ground in our splendid 
churches,' said the friar, looking round upon us, as we stopped to 
rest in one of the low passages, with bones and dust surrounding us 
on every side.  'They are here!  Among the Martyrs' Graves!'  He 
was a gentle, earnest man, and said it from his heart; but when I 
thought how Christian men have dealt with one another; how, 
perverting our most merciful religion, they have hunted down and 
tortured, burnt and beheaded, strangled, slaughtered, and oppressed 
each other; I pictured to myself an agony surpassing any that this 
Dust had suffered with the breath of life yet lingering in it, and 
how these great and constant hearts would have been shaken - how 
they would have quailed and drooped - if a foreknowledge of the 
deeds that professing Christians would commit in the Great Name for 
which they died, could have rent them with its own unutterable 
anguish, on the cruel wheel, and bitter cross, and in the fearful 
fire.

Such are the spots and patches in my dream of churches, that remain 
apart, and keep their separate identity.  I have a fainter 
recollection, sometimes of the relics; of the fragments of the 
pillar of the Temple that was rent in twain; of the portion of the 
table that was spread for the Last Supper; of the well at which the 
woman of Samaria gave water to Our Saviour; of two columns from the 
house of Pontius Pilate; of the stone to which the Sacred hands 
were bound, when the scourging was performed; of the grid-iron of 
Saint Lawrence, and the stone below it, marked with the frying of 
his fat and blood; these set a shadowy mark on some cathedrals, as 
an old story, or a fable might, and stop them for an instant, as 
they flit before me.  The rest is a vast wilderness of consecrated 
buildings of all shapes and fancies, blending one with another; of 
battered pillars of old Pagan temples, dug up from the ground, and 
forced, like giant captives, to support the roofs of Christian 
churches; of pictures, bad, and wonderful, and impious, and 
ridiculous; of kneeling people, curling incense, tinkling bells, 
and sometimes (but not often) of a swelling organ:  of Madonne, 
with their breasts stuck full of swords, arranged in a half-circle 
like a modern fan; of actual skeletons of dead saints, hideously 
attired in gaudy satins, silks, and velvets trimmed with gold:  
their withered crust of skull adorned with precious jewels, or with 
chaplets of crushed flowers; sometimes of people gathered round the 
pulpit, and a monk within it stretching out the crucifix, and 
preaching fiercely:  the sun just streaming down through some high 
window on the sail-cloth stretched above him and across the church, 
to keep his high-pitched voice from being lost among the echoes of 
the roof.  Then my tired memory comes out upon a flight of steps, 
where knots of people are asleep, or basking in the light; and 
strolls away, among the rags, and smells, and palaces, and hovels, 
of an old Italian street.


On one Saturday morning (the eighth of March), a man was beheaded 
here.  Nine or ten months before, he had waylaid a Bavarian 
countess, travelling as a pilgrim to Rome - alone and on foot, of 
course - and performing, it is said, that act of piety for the 
fourth time.  He saw her change a piece of gold at Viterbo, where 
he lived; followed her; bore her company on her journey for some 
forty miles or more, on the treacherous pretext of protecting her; 
attacked her, in the fulfilment of his unrelenting purpose, on the 
Campagna, within a very short distance of Rome, near to what is 
called (but what is not) the Tomb of Nero; robbed her; and beat her 
to death with her own pilgrim's staff.  He was newly married, and 
gave some of her apparel to his wife:  saying that he had bought it 
at a fair.  She, however, who had seen the pilgrim-countess passing 
through their town, recognised some trifle as having belonged to 
her.  Her husband then told her what he had done.  She, in 
confession, told a priest; and the man was taken, within four days 
after the commission of the murder.

There are no fixed times for the administration of justice, or its 
execution, in this unaccountable country; and he had been in prison 
ever since.  On the Friday, as he was dining with the other 
prisoners, they came and told him he was to be beheaded next 
morning, and took him away.  It is very unusual to execute in Lent; 
but his crime being a very bad one, it was deemed advisable to make 
an example of him at that time, when great numbers of pilgrims were 
coming towards Rome, from all parts, for the Holy Week.  I heard of 
this on the Friday evening, and saw the bills up at the churches, 
calling on the people to pray for the criminal's soul.  So, I 
determined to go, and see him executed.

The beheading was appointed for fourteen and a-half o'clock, Roman 
time:  or a quarter before nine in the forenoon.  I had two friends 
with me; and as we did not know but that the crowd might be very 
great, we were on the spot by half-past seven.  The place of 
execution was near the church of San Giovanni decollato (a doubtful 
compliment to Saint John the Baptist) in one of the impassable back 
streets without any footway, of which a great part of Rome is 
composed - a street of rotten houses, which do not seem to belong 
to anybody, and do not seem to have ever been inhabited, and 
certainly were never built on any plan, or for any particular 
purpose, and have no window-sashes, and are a little like deserted 
breweries, and might be warehouses but for having nothing in them.  
Opposite to one of these, a white house, the scaffold was built.  
An untidy, unpainted, uncouth, crazy-looking thing of course:  some 
seven feet high, perhaps:  with a tall, gallows-shaped frame rising 
above it, in which was the knife, charged with a ponderous mass of 
iron, all ready to descend, and glittering brightly in the morning 
sun, whenever it looked out, now and then, from behind a cloud.

There were not many people lingering about; and these were kept at 
a considerable distance from the scaffold, by parties of the Pope's 
dragoons.  Two or three hundred foot-soldiers were under arms, 
standing at ease in clusters here and there; and the officers were 
walking up and down in twos and threes, chatting together, and 
smoking cigars.

At the end of the street, was an open space, where there would be a 
dust-heap, and piles of broken crockery, and mounds of vegetable 
refuse, but for such things being thrown anywhere and everywhere in 
Rome, and favouring no particular sort of locality.  We got into a 
kind of wash-house, belonging to a dwelling-house on this spot; and 
standing there in an old cart, and on a heap of cartwheels piled 
against the wall, looked, through a large grated window, at the 
scaffold, and straight down the street beyond it until, in 
consequence of its turning off abruptly to the left, our 
perspective was brought to a sudden termination, and had a 
corpulent officer, in a cocked hat, for its crowning feature.

Nine o'clock struck, and ten o'clock struck, and nothing happened.  
All the bells of all the churches rang as usual.  A little 
parliament of dogs assembled in the open space, and chased each 
other, in and out among the soldiers.  Fierce-looking Romans of the 
lowest class, in blue cloaks, russet cloaks, and rags uncloaked, 
came and went, and talked together.  Women and children fluttered, 
on the skirts of the scanty crowd.  One large muddy spot was left 
quite bare, like a bald place on a man's head.  A cigar-merchant, 
with an earthen pot of charcoal ashes in one hand, went up and 
down, crying his wares.  A pastry-merchant divided his attention 
between the scaffold and his customers.  Boys tried to climb up 
walls, and tumbled down again.  Priests and monks elbowed a passage 
for themselves among the people, and stood on tiptoe for a sight of 
the knife:  then went away.  Artists, in inconceivable hats of the 
middle-ages, and beards (thank Heaven!) of no age at all, flashed 
picturesque scowls about them from their stations in the throng.  
One gentleman (connected with the fine arts, I presume) went up and 
down in a pair of Hessian-boots, with a red beard hanging down on 
his breast, and his long and bright red hair, plaited into two 
tails, one on either side of his head, which fell over his 
shoulders in front of him, very nearly to his waist, and were 
carefully entwined and braided!

Eleven o'clock struck and still nothing happened.  A rumour got 
about, among the crowd, that the criminal would not confess; in 
which case, the priests would keep him until the Ave Maria 
(sunset); for it is their merciful custom never finally to turn the 
crucifix away from a man at that pass, as one refusing to be 
shriven, and consequently a sinner abandoned of the Saviour, until 
then.  People began to drop off.  The officers shrugged their 
shoulders and looked doubtful.  The dragoons, who came riding up 
below our window, every now and then, to order an unlucky hackney-
coach or cart away, as soon as it had comfortably established 
itself, and was covered with exulting people (but never before), 
became imperious, and quick-tempered.  The bald place hadn't a 
straggling hair upon it; and the corpulent officer, crowning the 
perspective, took a world of snuff.

Suddenly, there was a noise of trumpets.  'Attention!' was among 
the foot-soldiers instantly.  They were marched up to the scaffold 
and formed round it.  The dragoons galloped to their nearer 
stations too.  The guillotine became the centre of a wood of 
bristling bayonets and shining sabres.  The people closed round 
nearer, on the flank of the soldiery.  A long straggling stream of 
men and boys, who had accompanied the procession from the prison, 
came pouring into the open space.  The bald spot was scarcely 
distinguishable from the rest.  The cigar and pastry-merchants 
resigned all thoughts of business, for the moment, and abandoning 
themselves wholly to pleasure, got good situations in the crowd.  
The perspective ended, now, in a troop of dragoons.  And the 
corpulent officer, sword in hand, looked hard at a church close to 
him, which he could see, but we, the crowd, could not.

After a short delay, some monks were seen approaching to the 
scaffold from this church; and above their heads, coming on slowly 
and gloomily, the effigy of Christ upon the cross, canopied with 
black.  This was carried round the foot of the scaffold, to the 
front, and turned towards the criminal, that he might see it to the 
last.  It was hardly in its place, when he appeared on the 
platform, bare-footed; his hands bound; and with the collar and 
neck of his shirt cut away, almost to the shoulder.  A young man - 
six-and-twenty - vigorously made, and well-shaped.  Face pale; 
small dark moustache; and dark brown hair.

He had refused to confess, it seemed, without first having his wife 
brought to see him; and they had sent an escort for her, which had 
occasioned the delay.

He immediately kneeled down, below the knife.  His neck fitting 
into a hole, made for the purpose, in a cross plank, was shut down, 
by another plank above; exactly like the pillory.  Immediately 
below him was a leathern bag.  And into it his head rolled 
instantly.

The executioner was holding it by the hair, and walking with it 
round the scaffold, showing it to the people, before one quite knew 
that the knife had fallen heavily, and with a rattling sound.

When it had travelled round the four sides of the scaffold, it was 
set upon a pole in front - a little patch of black and white, for 
the long street to stare at, and the flies to settle on.  The eyes 
were turned upward, as if he had avoided the sight of the leathern 
bag, and looked to the crucifix.  Every tinge and hue of life had 
left it in that instant.  It was dull, cold, livid, wax.  The body 
also.

There was a great deal of blood.  When we left the window, and went 
close up to the scaffold, it was very dirty; one of the two men who 
were throwing water over it, turning to help the other lift the 
body into a shell, picked his way as through mire.  A strange 
appearance was the apparent annihilation of the neck.  The head was 
taken off so close, that it seemed as if the knife had narrowly 
escaped crushing the jaw, or shaving off the ear; and the body 
looked as if there were nothing left above the shoulder.

Nobody cared, or was at all affected.  There was no manifestation 
of disgust, or pity, or indignation, or sorrow.  My empty pockets 
were tried, several times, in the crowd immediately below the 
scaffold, as the corpse was being put into its coffin.  It was an 
ugly, filthy, careless, sickening spectacle; meaning nothing but 
butchery beyond the momentary interest, to the one wretched actor.  
Yes!  Such a sight has one meaning and one warning.  Let me not 
forget it.  The speculators in the lottery, station themselves at 
favourable points for counting the gouts of blood that spirt out, 
here or there; and buy that number.  It is pretty sure to have a 
run upon it.

The body was carted away in due time, the knife cleansed, the 
scaffold taken down, and all the hideous apparatus removed.  The 
executioner:  an outlaw EX OFFICIO (what a satire on the 
Punishment!) who dare not, for his life, cross the Bridge of St. 
Angelo but to do his work:  retreated to his lair, and the show was 
over.


At the head of the collections in the palaces of Rome, the Vatican, 
of course, with its treasures of art, its enormous galleries, and 
staircases, and suites upon suites of immense chambers, ranks 
highest and stands foremost.  Many most noble statues, and 
wonderful pictures, are there; nor is it heresy to say that there 
is a considerable amount of rubbish there, too.  When any old piece 
of sculpture dug out of the ground, finds a place in a gallery 
because it is old, and without any reference to its intrinsic 
merits:  and finds admirers by the hundred, because it is there, 
and for no other reason on earth:  there will be no lack of 
objects, very indifferent in the plain eyesight of any one who 
employs so vulgar a property, when he may wear the spectacles of 
Cant for less than nothing, and establish himself as a man of taste 
for the mere trouble of putting them on.

I unreservedly confess, for myself, that I cannot leave my natural 
perception of what is natural and true, at a palace-door, in Italy 
or elsewhere, as I should leave my shoes if I were travelling in 
the East.  I cannot forget that there are certain expressions of 
face, natural to certain passions, and as unchangeable in their 
nature as the gait of a lion, or the flight of an eagle.  I cannot 
dismiss from my certain knowledge, such commonplace facts as the 
ordinary proportion of men's arms, and legs, and heads; and when I 
meet with performances that do violence to these experiences and 
recollections, no matter where they may be, I cannot honestly 
admire them, and think it best to say so; in spite of high critical 
advice that we should sometimes feign an admiration, though we have 
it not.

Therefore, I freely acknowledge that when I see a jolly young 
Waterman representing a cherubim, or a Barclay and Perkins's 
Drayman depicted as an Evangelist, I see nothing to commend or 
admire in the performance, however great its reputed Painter.  
Neither am I partial to libellous Angels, who play on fiddles and 
bassoons, for the edification of sprawling monks apparently in 
liquor.  Nor to those Monsieur Tonsons of galleries, Saint Francis 
and Saint Sebastian; both of whom I submit should have very 
uncommon and rare merits, as works of art, to justify their 
compound multiplication by Italian Painters.

It seems to me, too, that the indiscriminate and determined 
raptures in which some critics indulge, is incompatible with the 
true appreciation of the really great and transcendent works.  I 
cannot imagine, for example, how the resolute champion of 
undeserving pictures can soar to the amazing beauty of Titian's 
great picture of the Assumption of the Virgin at Venice; or how the 
man who is truly affected by the sublimity of that exquisite 
production, or who is truly sensible of the beauty of Tintoretto's 
great picture of the Assembly of the Blessed in the same place, can 
discern in Michael Angelo's Last Judgment, in the Sistine chapel, 
any general idea, or one pervading thought, in harmony with the 
stupendous subject.  He who will contemplate Raphael's masterpiece, 
the Transfiguration, and will go away into another chamber of that 
same Vatican, and contemplate another design of Raphael, 
representing (in incredible caricature) the miraculous stopping of 
a great fire by Leo the Fourth - and who will say that he admires 
them both, as works of extraordinary genius - must, as I think, be 
wanting in his powers of perception in one of the two instances, 
and, probably, in the high and lofty one.

It is easy to suggest a doubt, but I have a great doubt whether, 
sometimes, the rules of art are not too strictly observed, and 
whether it is quite well or agreeable that we should know 
beforehand, where this figure will be turning round, and where that 
figure will be lying down, and where there will be drapery in 
folds, and so forth.  When I observe heads inferior to the subject, 
in pictures of merit, in Italian galleries, I do not attach that 
reproach to the Painter, for I have a suspicion that these great 
men, who were, of necessity, very much in the hands of monks and 
priests, painted monks and priests a great deal too often.  I 
frequently see, in pictures of real power, heads quite below the 
story and the painter:  and I invariably observe that those heads 
are of the Convent stamp, and have their counterparts among the 
Convent inmates of this hour; so, I have settled with myself that, 
in such cases, the lameness was not with the painter, but with the 
vanity and ignorance of certain of his employers, who would be 
apostles - on canvas, at all events.

The exquisite grace and beauty of Canova's statues; the wonderful 
gravity and repose of many of the ancient works in sculpture, both 
in the Capitol and the Vatican; and the strength and fire of many 
others; are, in their different ways, beyond all reach of words.  
They are especially impressive and delightful, after the works of 
Bernini and his disciples, in which the churches of Rome, from St. 
Peter's downward, abound; and which are, I verily believe, the most 
detestable class of productions in the wide world.  I would 
infinitely rather (as mere works of art) look upon the three 
deities of the Past, the Present, and the Future, in the Chinese 
Collection, than upon the best of these breezy maniacs; whose every 
fold of drapery is blown inside-out; whose smallest vein, or 
artery, is as big as an ordinary forefinger; whose hair is like a 
nest of lively snakes; and whose attitudes put all other 
extravagance to shame.  Insomuch that I do honestly believe, there 
can be no place in the world, where such intolerable abortions, 
begotten of the sculptor's chisel, are to be found in such 
profusion, as in Rome.

There is a fine collection of Egyptian antiquities, in the Vatican; 
and the ceilings of the rooms in which they are arranged, are 
painted to represent a starlight sky in the Desert.  It may seem an 
odd idea, but it is very effective.  The grim, half-human monsters 
from the temples, look more grim and monstrous underneath the deep 
dark blue; it sheds a strange uncertain gloomy air on everything - 
a mystery adapted to the objects; and you leave them, as you find 
them, shrouded in a solemn night.

In the private palaces, pictures are seen to the best advantage.  
There are seldom so many in one place that the attention need 
become distracted, or the eye confused.  You see them very 
leisurely; and are rarely interrupted by a crowd of people.  There 
are portraits innumerable, by Titian, and Rembrandt, and Vandyke; 
heads by Guido, and Domenichino, and Carlo Dolci; various subjects 
by Correggio, and Murillo, and Raphael, and Salvator Rosa, and 
Spagnoletto - many of which it would be difficult, indeed, to 
praise too highly, or to praise enough; such is their tenderness 
and grace; their noble elevation, purity, and beauty.

The portrait of Beatrice di Cenci, in the Palazzo Berberini, is a 
picture almost impossible to be forgotten.  Through the 
transcendent sweetness and beauty of the face, there is a something 
shining out, that haunts me.  I see it now, as I see this paper, or 
my pen.  The head is loosely draped in white; the light hair 
falling down below the linen folds.  She has turned suddenly 
towards you; and there is an expression in the eyes - although they 
are very tender and gentle - as if the wildness of a momentary 
terror, or distraction, had been struggled with and overcome, that 
instant; and nothing but a celestial hope, and a beautiful sorrow, 
and a desolate earthly helplessness remained.  Some stories say 
that Guido painted it, the night before her execution; some other 
stories, that he painted it from memory, after having seen her, on 
her way to the scaffold.  I am willing to believe that, as you see 
her on his canvas, so she turned towards him, in the crowd, from 
the first sight of the axe, and stamped upon his mind a look which 
he has stamped on mine as though I had stood beside him in the 
concourse.  The guilty palace of the Cenci:  blighting a whole 
quarter of the town, as it stands withering away by grains:  had 
that face, to my fancy, in its dismal porch, and at its black, 
blind windows, and flitting up and down its dreary stairs, and 
growing out of the darkness of the ghostly galleries.  The History 
is written in the Painting; written, in the dying girl's face, by 
Nature's own hand.  And oh! how in that one touch she puts to 
flight (instead of making kin) the puny world that claim to be 
related to her, in right of poor conventional forgeries!

I saw in the Palazzo Spada, the statue of Pompey; the statue at 
whose base Caesar fell.  A stern, tremendous figure!  I imagined 
one of greater finish:  of the last refinement:  full of delicate 
touches:  losing its distinctness, in the giddy eyes of one whose 
blood was ebbing before it, and settling into some such rigid 
majesty as this, as Death came creeping over the upturned face.

The excursions in the neighbourhood of Rome are charming, and would 
be full of interest were it only for the changing views they 
afford, of the wild Campagna.  But, every inch of ground, in every 
direction, is rich in associations, and in natural beauties.  There 
is Albano, with its lovely lake and wooded shore, and with its 
wine, that certainly has not improved since the days of Horace, and 
in these times hardly justifies his panegyric.  There is squalid 
Tivoli, with the river Anio, diverted from its course, and plunging 
down, headlong, some eighty feet in search of it.  With its 
picturesque Temple of the Sibyl, perched high on a crag; its minor 
waterfalls glancing and sparkling in the sun; and one good cavern 
yawning darkly, where the river takes a fearful plunge and shoots 
on, low down under beetling rocks.  There, too, is the Villa 
d'Este, deserted and decaying among groves of melancholy pine and 
cypress trees, where it seems to lie in state.  Then, there is 
Frascati, and, on the steep above it, the ruins of Tusculum, where 
Cicero lived, and wrote, and adorned his favourite house (some 
fragments of it may yet be seen there), and where Cato was born.  
We saw its ruined amphitheatre on a grey, dull day, when a shrill 
March wind was blowing, and when the scattered stones of the old 
city lay strewn about the lonely eminence, as desolate and dead as 
the ashes of a long extinguished fire.

One day we walked out, a little party of three, to Albano, fourteen 
miles distant; possessed by a great desire to go there by the 
ancient Appian way, long since ruined and overgrown.  We started at 
half-past seven in the morning, and within an hour or so were out 
upon the open Campagna.  For twelve miles we went climbing on, over 
an unbroken succession of mounds, and heaps, and hills, of ruin.  
Tombs and temples, overthrown and prostrate; small fragments of 
columns, friezes, pediments; great blocks of granite and marble; 
mouldering arches, grass-grown and decayed; ruin enough to build a 
spacious city from; lay strewn about us.  Sometimes, loose walls, 
built up from these fragments by the shepherds, came across our 
path; sometimes, a ditch between two mounds of broken stones, 
obstructed our progress; sometimes, the fragments themselves, 
rolling from beneath our feet, made it a toilsome matter to 
advance; but it was always ruin.  Now, we tracked a piece of the 
old road, above the ground; now traced it, underneath a grassy 
covering, as if that were its grave; but all the way was ruin.  In 
the distance, ruined aqueducts went stalking on their giant course 
along the plain; and every breath of wind that swept towards us, 
stirred early flowers and grasses, springing up, spontaneously, on 
miles of ruin.  The unseen larks above us, who alone disturbed the 
awful silence, had their nests in ruin; and the fierce herdsmen, 
clad in sheepskins, who now and then scowled out upon us from their 
sleeping nooks, were housed in ruin.  The aspect of the desolate 
Campagna in one direction, where it was most level, reminded me of 
an American prairie; but what is the solitude of a region where men 
have never dwelt, to that of a Desert, where a mighty race have 
left their footprints in the earth from which they have vanished; 
where the resting-places of their Dead, have fallen like their 
Dead; and the broken hour-glass of Time is but a heap of idle dust!  
Returning, by the road, at sunset! and looking, from the distance, 
on the course we had taken in the morning, I almost feel (as I had 
felt when I first saw it, at that hour) as if the sun would never 
rise again, but looked its last, that night, upon a ruined world.

To come again on Rome, by moonlight, after such an expedition, is a 
fitting close to such a day.  The narrow streets, devoid of foot-
ways, and choked, in every obscure corner, by heaps of dunghill-
rubbish, contrast so strongly, in their cramped dimensions, and 
their filth, and darkness, with the broad square before some 
haughty church:  in the centre of which, a hieroglyphic-covered 
obelisk, brought from Egypt in the days of the Emperors, looks 
strangely on the foreign scene about it; or perhaps an ancient 
pillar, with its honoured statue overthrown, supports a Christian 
saint:  Marcus Aurelius giving place to Paul, and Trajan to St. 
Peter.  Then, there are the ponderous buildings reared from the 
spoliation of the Coliseum, shutting out the moon, like mountains:  
while here and there, are broken arches and rent walls, through 
which it gushes freely, as the life comes pouring from a wound.  
The little town of miserable houses, walled, and shut in by barred 
gates, is the quarter where the Jews are locked up nightly, when 
the clock strikes eight - a miserable place, densely populated, and 
reeking with bad odours, but where the people are industrious and 
money-getting.  In the day-time, as you make your way along the 
narrow streets, you see them all at work:  upon the pavement, 
oftener than in their dark and frouzy shops:  furbishing old 
clothes, and driving bargains.

Crossing from these patches of thick darkness, out into the moon 
once more, the fountain of Trevi, welling from a hundred jets, and 
rolling over mimic rocks, is silvery to the eye and ear.  In the 
narrow little throat of street, beyond, a booth, dressed out with 
flaring lamps, and boughs of trees, attracts a group of sulky 
Romans round its smoky coppers of hot broth, and cauliflower stew; 
its trays of fried fish, and its flasks of wine.  As you rattle 
round the sharply-twisting corner, a lumbering sound is heard.  The 
coachman stops abruptly, and uncovers, as a van comes slowly by, 
preceded by a man who bears a large cross; by a torch-bearer; and a 
priest:  the latter chaunting as he goes.  It is the Dead Cart, 
with the bodies of the poor, on their way to burial in the Sacred 
Field outside the walls, where they will be thrown into the pit 
that will be covered with a stone to-night, and sealed up for a 
year.

But whether, in this ride, you pass by obelisks, or columns ancient 
temples, theatres, houses, porticoes, or forums:  it is strange to 
see, how every fragment, whenever it is possible, has been blended 
into some modern structure, and made to serve some modern purpose - 
a wall, a dwelling-place, a granary, a stable - some use for which 
it never was designed, and associated with which it cannot 
otherwise than lamely assort.  It is stranger still, to see how 
many ruins of the old mythology:  how many fragments of obsolete 
legend and observance:  have been incorporated into the worship of 
Christian altars here; and how, in numberless respects, the false 
faith and the true are fused into a monstrous union.

From one part of the city, looking out beyond the walls, a squat 
and stunted pyramid (the burial-place of Caius Cestius) makes an 
opaque triangle in the moonlight.  But, to an English traveller, it 
serves to mark the grave of Shelley too, whose ashes lie beneath a 
little garden near it.  Nearer still, almost within its shadow, lie 
the bones of Keats, 'whose name is writ in water,' that shines 
brightly in the landscape of a calm Italian night.

The Holy Week in Rome is supposed to offer great attractions to all 
visitors; but, saving for the sights of Easter Sunday, I would 
counsel those who go to Rome for its own interest, to avoid it at 
that time.  The ceremonies, in general, are of the most tedious and 
wearisome kind; the heat and crowd at every one of them, painfully 
oppressive; the noise, hubbub, and confusion, quite distracting.  
We abandoned the pursuit of these shows, very early in the 
proceedings, and betook ourselves to the Ruins again.  But, we 
plunged into the crowd for a share of the best of the sights; and 
what we saw, I will describe to you.

At the Sistine chapel, on the Wednesday, we saw very little, for by 
the time we reached it (though we were early) the besieging crowd 
had filled it to the door, and overflowed into the adjoining hall, 
where they were struggling, and squeezing, and mutually 
expostulating, and making great rushes every time a lady was 
brought out faint, as if at least fifty people could be 
accommodated in her vacant standing-room.  Hanging in the doorway 
of the chapel, was a heavy curtain, and this curtain, some twenty 
people nearest to it, in their anxiety to hear the chaunting of the 
Miserere, were continually plucking at, in opposition to each 
other, that it might not fall down and stifle the sound of the 
voices.  The consequence was, that it occasioned the most 
extraordinary confusion, and seemed to wind itself about the 
unwary, like a Serpent.  Now, a lady was wrapped up in it, and 
couldn't be unwound.  Now, the voice of a stifling gentleman was 
heard inside it, beseeching to be let out.  Now, two muffled arms, 
no man could say of which sex, struggled in it as in a sack.  Now, 
it was carried by a rush, bodily overhead into the chapel, like an 
awning.  Now, it came out the other way, and blinded one of the 
Pope's Swiss Guard, who had arrived, that moment, to set things to 
rights.

Being seated at a little distance, among two or three of the Pope's 
gentlemen, who were very weary and counting the minutes - as 
perhaps his Holiness was too - we had better opportunities of 
observing this eccentric entertainment, than of hearing the 
Miserere.  Sometimes, there was a swell of mournful voices that 
sounded very pathetic and sad, and died away, into a low strain 
again; but that was all we heard.

At another time, there was the Exhibition of Relics in St. Peter's, 
which took place at between six and seven o'clock in the evening, 
and was striking from the cathedral being dark and gloomy, and 
having a great many people in it.  The place into which the relics 
were brought, one by one, by a party of three priests, was a high 
balcony near the chief altar.  This was the only lighted part of 
the church.  There are always a hundred and twelve lamps burning 
near the altar, and there were two tall tapers, besides, near the 
black statue of St. Peter; but these were nothing in such an 
immense edifice.  The gloom, and the general upturning of faces to 
the balcony, and the prostration of true believers on the pavement, 
as shining objects, like pictures or looking-glasses, were brought 
out and shown, had something effective in it, despite the very 
preposterous manner in which they were held up for the general 
edification, and the great elevation at which they were displayed; 
which one would think rather calculated to diminish the comfort 
derivable from a full conviction of their being genuine.

On the Thursday, we went to see the Pope convey the Sacrament from 
the Sistine chapel, to deposit it in the Capella Paolina, another 
chapel in the Vatican; - a ceremony emblematical of the entombment 
of the Saviour before His Resurrection.  We waited in a great 
gallery with a great crowd of people (three-fourths of them 
English) for an hour or so, while they were chaunting the Miserere, 
in the Sistine chapel again.  Both chapels opened out of the 
gallery; and the general attention was concentrated on the 
occasional opening and shutting of the door of the one for which 
the Pope was ultimately bound.  None of these openings disclosed 
anything more tremendous than a man on a ladder, lighting a great 
quantity of candles; but at each and every opening, there was a 
terrific rush made at this ladder and this man, something like (I 
should think) a charge of the heavy British cavalry at Waterloo.  
The man was never brought down, however, nor the ladder; for it 
performed the strangest antics in the world among the crowd - where 
it was carried by the man, when the candles were all lighted; and 
finally it was stuck up against the gallery wall, in a very 
disorderly manner, just before the opening of the other chapel, and 
the commencement of a new chaunt, announced the approach of his 
Holiness.  At this crisis, the soldiers of the guard, who had been 
poking the crowd into all sorts of shapes, formed down the gallery:  
and the procession came up, between the two lines they made.

There were a few choristers, and then a great many priests, walking 
two and two, and carrying - the good-looking priests at least - 
their lighted tapers, so as to throw the light with a good effect 
upon their faces:  for the room was darkened.  Those who were not 
handsome, or who had not long beards, carried THEIR tapers anyhow, 
and abandoned themselves to spiritual contemplation.  Meanwhile, 
the chaunting was very monotonous and dreary.  The procession 
passed on, slowly, into the chapel, and the drone of voices went 
on, and came on, with it, until the Pope himself appeared, walking 
under a white satin canopy, and bearing the covered Sacrament in 
both hands; cardinals and canons clustered round him, making a 
brilliant show.  The soldiers of the guard knelt down as he passed; 
all the bystanders bowed; and so he passed on into the chapel:  the 
white satin canopy being removed from over him at the door, and a 
white satin parasol hoisted over his poor old head, in place of it.  
A few more couples brought up the rear, and passed into the chapel 
also.  Then, the chapel door was shut; and it was all over; and 
everybody hurried off headlong, as for life or death, to see 
something else, and say it wasn't worth the trouble.

I think the most popular and most crowded sight (excepting those of 
Easter Sunday and Monday, which are open to all classes of people) 
was the Pope washing the feet of Thirteen men, representing the 
twelve apostles, and Judas Iscariot.  The place in which this pious 
office is performed, is one of the chapels of St. Peter's, which is 
gaily decorated for the occasion; the thirteen sitting, 'all of a 
row,' on a very high bench, and looking particularly uncomfortable, 
with the eyes of Heaven knows how many English, French, Americans, 
Swiss, Germans, Russians, Swedes, Norwegians, and other foreigners, 
nailed to their faces all the time.  They are robed in white; and 
on their heads they wear a stiff white cap, like a large English 
porter-pot, without a handle.  Each carries in his hand, a nosegay, 
of the size of a fine cauliflower; and two of them, on this 
occasion, wore spectacles; which, remembering the characters they 
sustained, I thought a droll appendage to the costume.  There was a 
great eye to character.  St. John was represented by a good-looking 
young man.  St. Peter, by a grave-looking old gentleman, with a 
flowing brown beard; and Judas Iscariot by such an enormous 
hypocrite (I could not make out, though, whether the expression of 
his face was real or assumed) that if he had acted the part to the 
death and had gone away and hanged himself, he would have left 
nothing to be desired.

As the two large boxes, appropriated to ladies at this sight, were 
full to the throat, and getting near was hopeless, we posted off, 
along with a great crowd, to be in time at the Table, where the 
Pope, in person, waits on these Thirteen; and after a prodigious 
struggle at the Vatican staircase, and several personal conflicts 
with the Swiss guard, the whole crowd swept into the room.  It was 
a long gallery hung with drapery of white and red, with another 
great box for ladies (who are obliged to dress in black at these 
ceremonies, and to wear black veils), a royal box for the King of 
Naples and his party; and the table itself, which, set out like a 
ball supper, and ornamented with golden figures of the real 
apostles, was arranged on an elevated platform on one side of the 
gallery.  The counterfeit apostles' knives and forks were laid out 
on that side of the table which was nearest to the wall, so that 
they might be stared at again, without let or hindrance.

The body of the room was full of male strangers; the crowd immense; 
the heat very great; and the pressure sometimes frightful.  It was 
at its height, when the stream came pouring in, from the feet-
washing; and then there were such shrieks and outcries, that a 
party of Piedmontese dragoons went to the rescue of the Swiss 
guard, and helped them to calm the tumult.

The ladies were particularly ferocious, in their struggles for 
places.  One lady of my acquaintance was seized round the waist, in 
the ladies' box, by a strong matron, and hoisted out of her place; 
and there was another lady (in a back row in the same box) who 
improved her position by sticking a large pin into the ladies 
before her.

The gentlemen about me were remarkably anxious to see what was on 
the table; and one Englishman seemed to have embarked the whole 
energy of his nature in the determination to discover whether there 
was any mustard.  'By Jupiter there's vinegar!' I heard him say to 
his friend, after he had stood on tiptoe an immense time, and had 
been crushed and beaten on all sides.  'And there's oil!  I saw 
them distinctly, in cruets!  Can any gentleman, in front there, see 
mustard on the table?  Sir, will you oblige me!  DO you see a 
Mustard-Pot?'

The apostles and Judas appearing on the platform, after much 
expectation, were marshalled, in line, in front of the table, with 
Peter at the top; and a good long stare was taken at them by the 
company, while twelve of them took a long smell at their nosegays, 
and Judas - moving his lips very obtrusively - engaged in inward 
prayer.  Then, the Pope, clad in a scarlet robe, and wearing on his 
head a skull-cap of white satin, appeared in the midst of a crowd 
of Cardinals and other dignitaries, and took in his hand a little 
golden ewer, from which he poured a little water over one of 
Peter's hands, while one attendant held a golden basin; a second, a 
fine cloth; a third, Peter's nosegay, which was taken from him 
during the operation.  This his Holiness performed, with 
considerable expedition, on every man in the line (Judas, I 
observed, to be particularly overcome by his condescension); and 
then the whole Thirteen sat down to dinner.  Grace said by the 
Pope.  Peter in the chair.

There was white wine, and red wine:  and the dinner looked very 
good.  The courses appeared in portions, one for each apostle:  and 
these being presented to the Pope, by Cardinals upon their knees, 
were by him handed to the Thirteen.  The manner in which Judas grew 
more white-livered over his victuals, and languished, with his head 
on one side, as if he had no appetite, defies all description.  
Peter was a good, sound, old man, and went in, as the saying is, 
'to win;' eating everything that was given him (he got the best:  
being first in the row) and saying nothing to anybody.  The dishes 
appeared to be chiefly composed of fish and vegetables.  The Pope 
helped the Thirteen to wine also; and, during the whole dinner, 
somebody read something aloud, out of a large book - the Bible, I 
presume - which nobody could hear, and to which nobody paid the 
least attention.  The Cardinals, and other attendants, smiled to 
each other, from time to time, as if the thing were a great farce; 
and if they thought so, there is little doubt they were perfectly 
right.  His Holiness did what he had to do, as a sensible man gets 
through a troublesome ceremony, and seemed very glad when it was 
all over.

The Pilgrims' Suppers:  where lords and ladies waited on the 
Pilgrims, in token of humility, and dried their feet when they had 
been well washed by deputy:  were very attractive.  But, of all the 
many spectacles of dangerous reliance on outward observances, in 
themselves mere empty forms, none struck me half so much as the 
Scala Santa, or Holy Staircase, which I saw several times, but to 
the greatest advantage, or disadvantage, on Good Friday.

This holy staircase is composed of eight-and-twenty steps, said to 
have belonged to Pontius Pilate's house and to be the identical 
stair on which Our Saviour trod, in coming down from the judgment-
seat.  Pilgrims ascend it, only on their knees.  It is steep; and, 
at the summit, is a chapel, reported to be full of relics; into 
which they peep through some iron bars, and then come down again, 
by one of two side staircases, which are not sacred, and may be 
walked on.

On Good Friday, there were, on a moderate computation, a hundred 
people, slowly shuffling up these stairs, on their knees, at one 
time; while others, who were going up, or had come down - and a few 
who had done both, and were going up again for the second time - 
stood loitering in the porch below, where an old gentleman in a 
sort of watch-box, rattled a tin canister, with a slit in the top, 
incessantly, to remind them that he took the money.  The majority 
were country-people, male and female.  There were four or five 
Jesuit priests, however, and some half-dozen well-dressed women.  A 
whole school of boys, twenty at least, were about half-way up - 
evidently enjoying it very much.  They were all wedged together, 
pretty closely; but the rest of the company gave the boys as wide a 
berth as possible, in consequence of their betraying some 
recklessness in the management of their boots.

I never, in my life, saw anything at once so ridiculous, and so 
unpleasant, as this sight - ridiculous in the absurd incidents 
inseparable from it; and unpleasant in its senseless and unmeaning 
degradation.  There are two steps to begin with, and then a rather 
broad landing.  The more rigid climbers went along this landing on 
their knees, as well as up the stairs; and the figures they cut, in 
their shuffling progress over the level surface, no description can 
paint.  Then, to see them watch their opportunity from the porch, 
and cut in where there was a place next the wall!  And to see one 
man with an umbrella (brought on purpose, for it was a fine day) 
hoisting himself, unlawfully, from stair to stair!  And to observe 
a demure lady of fifty-five or so, looking back, every now and 
then, to assure herself that her legs were properly disposed!

There were such odd differences in the speed of different people, 
too.  Some got on as if they were doing a match against time; 
others stopped to say a prayer on every step.  This man touched 
every stair with his forehead, and kissed it; that man scratched 
his head all the way.  The boys got on brilliantly, and were up and 
down again before the old lady had accomplished her half-dozen 
stairs.  But most of the penitents came down, very sprightly and 
fresh, as having done a real good substantial deed which it would 
take a good deal of sin to counterbalance; and the old gentleman in 
the watch-box was down upon them with his canister while they were 
in this humour, I promise you.

As if such a progress were not in its nature inevitably droll 
enough, there lay, on the top of the stairs, a wooden figure on a 
crucifix, resting on a sort of great iron saucer:  so rickety and 
unsteady, that whenever an enthusiastic person kissed the figure, 
with more than usual devotion, or threw a coin into the saucer, 
with more than common readiness (for it served in this respect as a 
second or supplementary canister), it gave a great leap and rattle, 
and nearly shook the attendant lamp out:  horribly frightening the 
people further down, and throwing the guilty party into unspeakable 
embarrassment.

On Easter Sunday, as well as on the preceding Thursday, the Pope 
bestows his benediction on the people, from the balcony in front of 
St. Peter's.  This Easter Sunday was a day so bright and blue:  so 
cloudless, balmy, wonderfully bright:  that all the previous bad 
weather vanished from the recollection in a moment.  I had seen the 
Thursday's Benediction dropping damply on some hundreds of 
umbrellas, but there was not a sparkle then, in all the hundred 
fountains of Rome - such fountains as they are! - and on this 
Sunday morning they were running diamonds.  The miles of miserable 
streets through which we drove (compelled to a certain course by 
the Pope's dragoons:  the Roman police on such occasions) were so 
full of colour, that nothing in them was capable of wearing a faded 
aspect.  The common people came out in their gayest dresses; the 
richer people in their smartest vehicles; Cardinals rattled to the 
church of the Poor Fishermen in their state carriages; shabby 
magnificence flaunted its thread-bare liveries and tarnished cocked 
hats, in the sun; and every coach in Rome was put in requisition 
for the Great Piazza of St. Peter's.

One hundred and fifty thousand people were there at least!  Yet 
there was ample room.  How many carriages were there, I don't know; 
yet there was room for them too, and to spare.  The great steps of 
the church were densely crowded.  There were many of the Contadini, 
from Albano (who delight in red), in that part of the square, and 
the mingling of bright colours in the crowd was beautiful.  Below 
the steps the troops were ranged.  In the magnificent proportions 
of the place they looked like a bed of flowers.  Sulky Romans, 
lively peasants from the neighbouring country, groups of pilgrims 
from distant parts of Italy, sight-seeing foreigners of all 
nations, made a murmur in the clear air, like so many insects; and 
high above them all, plashing and bubbling, and making rainbow 
colours in the light, the two delicious fountains welled and 
tumbled bountifully.

A kind of bright carpet was hung over the front of the balcony; and 
the sides of the great window were bedecked with crimson drapery.  
An awning was stretched, too, over the top, to screen the old man 
from the hot rays of the sun.  As noon approached, all eyes were 
turned up to this window.  In due time, the chair was seen 
approaching to the front, with the gigantic fans of peacock's 
feathers, close behind.  The doll within it (for the balcony is 
very high) then rose up, and stretched out its tiny arms, while all 
the male spectators in the square uncovered, and some, but not by 
any means the greater part, kneeled down.  The guns upon the 
ramparts of the Castle of St. Angelo proclaimed, next moment, that 
the benediction was given; drums beat; trumpets sounded; arms 
clashed; and the great mass below, suddenly breaking into smaller 
heaps, and scattering here and there in rills, was stirred like 
parti-coloured sand.

What a bright noon it was, as we rode away!  The Tiber was no 
longer yellow, but blue.  There was a blush on the old bridges, 
that made them fresh and hale again.  The Pantheon, with its 
majestic front, all seamed and furrowed like an old face, had 
summer light upon its battered walls.  Every squalid and desolate 
hut in the Eternal City (bear witness every grim old palace, to the 
filth and misery of the plebeian neighbour that elbows it, as 
certain as Time has laid its grip on its patrician head!) was fresh 
and new with some ray of the sun.  The very prison in the crowded 
street, a whirl of carriages and people, had some stray sense of 
the day, dropping through its chinks and crevices:  and dismal 
prisoners who could not wind their faces round the barricading of 
the blocked-up windows, stretched out their hands, and clinging to 
the rusty bars, turned THEM towards the overflowing street:  as if 
it were a cheerful fire, and could be shared in, that way.

But, when the night came on, without a cloud to dim the full moon, 
what a sight it was to see the Great Square full once more, and the 
whole church, from the cross to the ground, lighted with 
innumerable lanterns, tracing out the architecture, and winking and 
shining all round the colonnade of the piazza!  And what a sense of 
exultation, joy, delight, it was, when the great bell struck half-
past seven - on the instant - to behold one bright red mass of 
fire, soar gallantly from the top of the cupola to the extremest 
summit of the cross, and the moment it leaped into its place, 
become the signal of a bursting out of countless lights, as great, 
and red, and blazing as itself, from every part of the gigantic 
church; so that every cornice, capital, and smallest ornament of 
stone, expressed itself in fire:  and the black, solid groundwork 
of the enormous dome seemed to grow transparent as an egg-shell!

A train of gunpowder, an electric chain - nothing could be fired, 
more suddenly and swiftly, than this second illumination; and when 
we had got away, and gone upon a distant height, and looked towards 
it two hours afterwards, there it still stood, shining and 
glittering in the calm night like a jewel!  Not a line of its 
proportions wanting; not an angle blunted; not an atom of its 
radiance lost.

The next night - Easter Monday - there was a great display of 
fireworks from the Castle of St. Angelo.  We hired a room in an 
opposite house, and made our way, to our places, in good time, 
through a dense mob of people choking up the square in front, and 
all the avenues leading to it; and so loading the bridge by which 
the castle is approached, that it seemed ready to sink into the 
rapid Tiber below.  There are statues on this bridge (execrable 
works), and, among them, great vessels full of burning tow were 
placed:  glaring strangely on the faces of the crowd, and not less 
strangely on the stone counterfeits above them.

The show began with a tremendous discharge of cannon; and then, for 
twenty minutes or half an hour, the whole castle was one incessant 
sheet of fire, and labyrinth of blazing wheels of every colour, 
size, and speed:  while rockets streamed into the sky, not by ones 
or twos, or scores, but hundreds at a time.  The concluding burst - 
the Girandola - was like the blowing up into the air of the whole 
massive castle, without smoke or dust.

In half an hour afterwards, the immense concourse had dispersed; 
the moon was looking calmly down upon her wrinkled image in the 
river; and half-a-dozen men and boys, with bits of lighted candle 
in their hands:  moving here and there, in search of anything worth 
having, that might have been dropped in the press:  had the whole 
scene to themselves.

By way of contrast we rode out into old ruined Rome, after all this 
firing and booming, to take our leave of the Coliseum.  I had seen 
it by moonlight before (I could never get through a day without 
going back to it), but its tremendous solitude that night is past 
all telling.  The ghostly pillars in the Forum; the Triumphal 
Arches of Old Emperors; those enormous masses of ruins which were 
once their palaces; the grass-grown mounds that mark the graves of 
ruined temples; the stones of the Via Sacra, smooth with the tread 
of feet in ancient Rome; even these were dimmed, in their 
transcendent melancholy, by the dark ghost of its bloody holidays, 
erect and grim; haunting the old scene; despoiled by pillaging 
Popes and fighting Princes, but not laid; wringing wild hands of 
weed, and grass, and bramble; and lamenting to the night in every 
gap and broken arch - the shadow of its awful self, immovable!

As we lay down on the grass of the Campagna, next day, on our way 
to Florence, hearing the larks sing, we saw that a little wooden 
cross had been erected on the spot where the poor Pilgrim Countess 
was murdered.  So, we piled some loose stones about it, as the 
beginning of a mound to her memory, and wondered if we should ever 
rest there again, and look back at Rome.



CHAPTER XI - A RAPID DIORAMA



WE are bound for Naples!  And we cross the threshold of the Eternal 
City at yonder gate, the Gate of San Giovanni Laterano, where the 
two last objects that attract the notice of a departing visitor, 
and the two first objects that attract the notice of an arriving 
one, are a proud church and a decaying ruin - good emblems of Rome.

Our way lies over the Campagna, which looks more solemn on a bright 
blue day like this, than beneath a darker sky; the great extent of 
ruin being plainer to the eye:  and the sunshine through the arches 
of the broken aqueducts, showing other broken arches shining 
through them in the melancholy distance.  When we have traversed 
it, and look back from Albano, its dark, undulating surface lies 
below us like a stagnant lake, or like a broad, dull Lethe flowing 
round the walls of Rome, and separating it from all the world!  How 
often have the Legions, in triumphant march, gone glittering across 
that purple waste, so silent and unpeopled now!  How often has the 
train of captives looked, with sinking hearts, upon the distant 
city, and beheld its population pouring out, to hail the return of 
their conqueror!  What riot, sensuality and murder, have run mad in 
the vast palaces now heaps of brick and shattered marble!  What 
glare of fires, and roar of popular tumult, and wail of pestilence 
and famine, have come sweeping over the wild plain where nothing is 
now heard but the wind, and where the solitary lizards gambol 
unmolested in the sun!

The train of wine-carts going into Rome, each driven by a shaggy 
peasant reclining beneath a little gipsy-fashioned canopy of sheep-
skin, is ended now, and we go toiling up into a higher country 
where there are trees.  The next day brings us on the Pontine 
Marshes, wearily flat and lonesome, and overgrown with brushwood, 
and swamped with water, but with a fine road made across them, 
shaded by a long, long avenue.  Here and there, we pass a solitary 
guard-house; here and there a hovel, deserted, and walled up.  Some 
herdsmen loiter on the banks of the stream beside the road, and 
sometimes a flat-bottomed boat, towed by a man, comes rippling idly 
along it.  A horseman passes occasionally, carrying a long gun 
cross-wise on the saddle before him, and attended by fierce dogs; 
but there is nothing else astir save the wind and the shadows, 
until we come in sight of Terracina.

How blue and bright the sea, rolling below the windows of the inn 
so famous in robber stories!  How picturesque the great crags and 
points of rock overhanging to-morrow's narrow road, where galley-
slaves are working in the quarries above, and the sentinels who 
guard them lounge on the sea-shore!  All night there is the murmur 
of the sea beneath the stars; and, in the morning, just at 
daybreak, the prospect suddenly becoming expanded, as if by a 
miracle, reveals - in the far distance, across the sea there! - 
Naples with its islands, and Vesuvius spouting fire!  Within a 
quarter of an hour, the whole is gone as if it were a vision in the 
clouds, and there is nothing but the sea and sky.

The Neapolitan frontier crossed, after two hours' travelling; and 
the hungriest of soldiers and custom-house officers with difficulty 
appeased; we enter, by a gateless portal, into the first Neapolitan 
town - Fondi.  Take note of Fondi, in the name of all that is 
wretched and beggarly.

A filthy channel of mud and refuse meanders down the centre of the 
miserable streets, fed by obscene rivulets that trickle from the 
abject houses.  There is not a door, a window, or a shutter; not a 
roof, a wall, a post, or a pillar, in all Fondi, but is decayed, 
and crazy, and rotting away.  The wretched history of the town, 
with all its sieges and pillages by Barbarossa and the rest, might 
have been acted last year.  How the gaunt dogs that sneak about the 
miserable streets, come to be alive, and undevoured by the people, 
is one of the enigmas of the world.

A hollow-cheeked and scowling people they are!  All beggars; but 
that's nothing.  Look at them as they gather round.  Some, are too 
indolent to come down-stairs, or are too wisely mistrustful of the 
stairs, perhaps, to venture:  so stretch out their lean hands from 
upper windows, and howl; others, come flocking about us, fighting 
and jostling one another, and demanding, incessantly, charity for 
the love of God, charity for the love of the Blessed Virgin, 
charity for the love of all the Saints.  A group of miserable 
children, almost naked, screaming forth the same petition, discover 
that they can see themselves reflected in the varnish of the 
carriage, and begin to dance and make grimaces, that they may have 
the pleasure of seeing their antics repeated in this mirror.  A 
crippled idiot, in the act of striking one of them who drowns his 
clamorous demand for charity, observes his angry counterpart in the 
panel, stops short, and thrusting out his tongue, begins to wag his 
head and chatter.  The shrill cry raised at this, awakens half-a-
dozen wild creatures wrapped in frowsy brown cloaks, who are lying 
on the church-steps with pots and pans for sale.  These, scrambling 
up, approach, and beg defiantly.  'I am hungry.  Give me something.  
Listen to me, Signor.  I am hungry!'  Then, a ghastly old woman, 
fearful of being too late, comes hobbling down the street, 
stretching out one hand, and scratching herself all the way with 
the other, and screaming, long before she can be heard, 'Charity, 
charity!  I'll go and pray for you directly, beautiful lady, if 
you'll give me charity!'  Lastly, the members of a brotherhood for 
burying the dead:  hideously masked, and attired in shabby black 
robes, white at the skirts, with the splashes of many muddy 
winters:  escorted by a dirty priest, and a congenial cross-bearer:  
come hurrying past.  Surrounded by this motley concourse, we move 
out of Fondi:  bad bright eyes glaring at us, out of the darkness 
of every crazy tenement, like glistening fragments of its filth and 
putrefaction.

A noble mountain-pass, with the ruins of a fort on a strong 
eminence, traditionally called the Fort of Fra Diavolo; the old 
town of Itri, like a device in pastry, built up, almost 
perpendicularly, on a hill, and approached by long steep flights of 
steps; beautiful Mola di Gaeta, whose wines, like those of Albano, 
have degenerated since the days of Horace, or his taste for wine 
was bad:  which is not likely of one who enjoyed it so much, and 
extolled it so well; another night upon the road at St. Agatha; a 
rest next day at Capua, which is picturesque, but hardly so 
seductive to a traveller now, as the soldiers of Praetorian Rome 
were wont to find the ancient city of that name; a flat road among 
vines festooned and looped from tree to tree; and Mount Vesuvius 
close at hand at last! - its cone and summit whitened with snow; 
and its smoke hanging over it, in the heavy atmosphere of the day, 
like a dense cloud.  So we go, rattling down hill, into Naples.

A funeral is coming up the street, towards us.  The body, on an 
open bier, borne on a kind of palanquin, covered with a gay cloth 
of crimson and gold.  The mourners, in white gowns and masks.  If 
there be death abroad, life is well represented too, for all Naples 
would seem to be out of doors, and tearing to and fro in carriages.  
Some of these, the common Vetturino vehicles, are drawn by three 
horses abreast, decked with smart trappings and great abundance of 
brazen ornament, and always going very fast.  Not that their loads 
are light; for the smallest of them has at least six people inside, 
four in front, four or five more hanging on behind, and two or 
three more, in a net or bag below the axle-tree, where they lie 
half-suffocated with mud and dust.  Exhibitors of Punch, buffo 
singers with guitars, reciters of poetry, reciters of stories, a 
row of cheap exhibitions with clowns and showmen, drums, and 
trumpets, painted cloths representing the wonders within, and 
admiring crowds assembled without, assist the whirl and bustle.  
Ragged lazzaroni lie asleep in doorways, archways, and kennels; the 
gentry, gaily dressed, are dashing up and down in carriages on the 
Chiaji, or walking in the Public Gardens; and quiet letter-writers, 
perched behind their little desks and inkstands under the Portico 
of the Great Theatre of San Carlo, in the public street, are 
waiting for clients.

Here is a galley-slave in chains, who wants a letter written to a 
friend.  He approaches a clerkly-looking man, sitting under the 
corner arch, and makes his bargain.  He has obtained permission of 
the sentinel who guards him:  who stands near, leaning against the 
wall and cracking nuts.  The galley-slave dictates in the ear of 
the letter-writer, what he desires to say; and as he can't read 
writing, looks intently in his face, to read there whether he sets 
down faithfully what he is told.  After a time, the galley-slave 
becomes discursive - incoherent.  The secretary pauses and rubs his 
chin.  The galley-slave is voluble and energetic.  The secretary, 
at length, catches the idea, and with the air of a man who knows 
how to word it, sets it down; stopping, now and then, to glance 
back at his text admiringly.  The galley-slave is silent.  The 
soldier stoically cracks his nuts.  Is there anything more to say? 
inquires the letter-writer.  No more.  Then listen, friend of mine.  
He reads it through.  The galley-slave is quite enchanted.  It is 
folded, and addressed, and given to him, and he pays the fee.  The 
secretary falls back indolently in his chair, and takes a book.  
The galley-slave gathers up an empty sack.  The sentinel throws 
away a handful of nut-shells, shoulders his musket, and away they 
go together.

Why do the beggars rap their chins constantly, with their right 
hands, when you look at them?  Everything is done in pantomime in 
Naples, and that is the conventional sign for hunger.  A man who is 
quarrelling with another, yonder, lays the palm of his right hand 
on the back of his left, and shakes the two thumbs - expressive of 
a donkey's ears - whereat his adversary is goaded to desperation.  
Two people bargaining for fish, the buyer empties an imaginary 
waistcoat pocket when he is told the price, and walks away without 
a word:  having thoroughly conveyed to the seller that he considers 
it too dear.  Two people in carriages, meeting, one touches his 
lips, twice or thrice, holding up the five fingers of his right 
hand, and gives a horizontal cut in the air with the palm.  The 
other nods briskly, and goes his way.  He has been invited to a 
friendly dinner at half-past five o'clock, and will certainly come.

All over Italy, a peculiar shake of the right hand from the wrist, 
with the forefinger stretched out, expresses a negative - the only 
negative beggars will ever understand.  But, in Naples, those five 
fingers are a copious language.

All this, and every other kind of out-door life and stir, and 
macaroni-eating at sunset, and flower-selling all day long, and 
begging and stealing everywhere and at all hours, you see upon the 
bright sea-shore, where the waves of the bay sparkle merrily.  But, 
lovers and hunters of the picturesque, let us not keep too 
studiously out of view the miserable depravity, degradation, and 
wretchedness, with which this gay Neapolitan life is inseparably 
associated!  It is not well to find Saint Giles's so repulsive, and 
the Porta Capuana so attractive.  A pair of naked legs and a ragged 
red scarf, do not make ALL the difference between what is 
interesting and what is coarse and odious?  Painting and poetising 
for ever, if you will, the beauties of this most beautiful and 
lovely spot of earth, let us, as our duty, try to associate a new 
picturesque with some faint recognition of man's destiny and 
capabilities; more hopeful, I believe, among the ice and snow of 
the North Pole, than in the sun and bloom of Naples.

Capri - once made odious by the deified beast Tiberius - Ischia, 
Procida, and the thousand distant beauties of the Bay, lie in the 
blue sea yonder, changing in the mist and sunshine twenty times a-
day:  now close at hand, now far off, now unseen.  The fairest 
country in the world, is spread about us.  Whether we turn towards 
the Miseno shore of the splendid watery amphitheatre, and go by the 
Grotto of Posilipo to the Grotto del Cane and away to Baiae:  or 
take the other way, towards Vesuvius and Sorrento, it is one 
succession of delights.  In the last-named direction, where, over 
doors and archways, there are countless little images of San 
Gennaro, with his Canute's hand stretched out, to check the fury of 
the Burning Mountain, we are carried pleasantly, by a railroad on 
the beautiful Sea Beach, past the town of Torre del Greco, built 
upon the ashes of the former town destroyed by an eruption of 
Vesuvius, within a hundred years; and past the flat-roofed houses, 
granaries, and macaroni manufactories; to Castel-a-Mare, with its 
ruined castle, now inhabited by fishermen, standing in the sea upon 
a heap of rocks.  Here, the railroad terminates; but, hence we may 
ride on, by an unbroken succession of enchanting bays, and 
beautiful scenery, sloping from the highest summit of Saint Angelo, 
the highest neighbouring mountain, down to the water's edge - among 
vineyards, olive-trees, gardens of oranges and lemons, orchards, 
heaped-up rocks, green gorges in the hills - and by the bases of 
snow-covered heights, and through small towns with handsome, dark-
haired women at the doors - and pass delicious summer villas - to 
Sorrento, where the Poet Tasso drew his inspiration from the beauty 
surrounding him.  Returning, we may climb the heights above Castel-
a-Mare, and looking down among the boughs and leaves, see the crisp 
water glistening in the sun; and clusters of white houses in 
distant Naples, dwindling, in the great extent of prospect, down to 
dice.  The coming back to the city, by the beach again, at sunset:  
with the glowing sea on one side, and the darkening mountain, with 
its smoke and flame, upon the other:  is a sublime conclusion to 
the glory of the day.

That church by the Porta Capuana - near the old fisher-market in 
the dirtiest quarter of dirty Naples, where the revolt of 
Masaniello began - is memorable for having been the scene of one of 
his earliest proclamations to the people, and is particularly 
remarkable for nothing else, unless it be its waxen and bejewelled 
Saint in a glass case, with two odd hands; or the enormous number 
of beggars who are constantly rapping their chins there, like a 
battery of castanets.  The cathedral with the beautiful door, and 
the columns of African and Egyptian granite that once ornamented 
the temple of Apollo, contains the famous sacred blood of San 
Gennaro or Januarius:  which is preserved in two phials in a silver 
tabernacle, and miraculously liquefies three times a-year, to the 
great admiration of the people.  At the same moment, the stone 
(distant some miles) where the Saint suffered martyrdom, becomes 
faintly red.  It is said that the officiating priests turn faintly 
red also, sometimes, when these miracles occur.

The old, old men who live in hovels at the entrance of these 
ancient catacombs, and who, in their age and infirmity, seem 
waiting here, to be buried themselves, are members of a curious 
body, called the Royal Hospital, who are the official attendants at 
funerals.  Two of these old spectres totter away, with lighted 
tapers, to show the caverns of death - as unconcerned as if they 
were immortal.  They were used as burying-places for three hundred 
years; and, in one part, is a large pit full of skulls and bones, 
said to be the sad remains of a great mortality occasioned by a 
plague.  In the rest there is nothing but dust.  They consist, 
chiefly, of great wide corridors and labyrinths, hewn out of the 
rock.  At the end of some of these long passages, are unexpected 
glimpses of the daylight, shining down from above.  It looks as 
ghastly and as strange; among the torches, and the dust, and the 
dark vaults:  as if it, too, were dead and buried.

The present burial-place lies out yonder, on a hill between the 
city and Vesuvius.  The old Campo Santo with its three hundred and 
sixty-five pits, is only used for those who die in hospitals, and 
prisons, and are unclaimed by their friends.  The graceful new 
cemetery, at no great distance from it, though yet unfinished, has 
already many graves among its shrubs and flowers, and airy 
colonnades.  It might be reasonably objected elsewhere, that some 
of the tombs are meretricious and too fanciful; but the general 
brightness seems to justify it here; and Mount Vesuvius, separated 
from them by a lovely slope of ground, exalts and saddens the 
scene.

If it be solemn to behold from this new City of the Dead, with its 
dark smoke hanging in the clear sky, how much more awful and 
impressive is it, viewed from the ghostly ruins of Herculaneum and 
Pompeii!

Stand at the bottom of the great market-place of Pompeii, and look 
up the silent streets, through the ruined temples of Jupiter and 
Isis, over the broken houses with their inmost sanctuaries open to 
the day, away to Mount Vesuvius, bright and snowy in the peaceful 
distance; and lose all count of time, and heed of other things, in 
the strange and melancholy sensation of seeing the Destroyed and 
the Destroyer making this quiet picture in the sun.  Then, ramble 
on, and see, at every turn, the little familiar tokens of human 
habitation and every-day pursuits; the chafing of the bucket-rope 
in the stone rim of the exhausted well; the track of carriage-
wheels in the pavement of the street; the marks of drinking-vessels 
on the stone counter of the wine-shop; the amphorae in private 
cellars, stored away so many hundred years ago, and undisturbed to 
this hour - all rendering the solitude and deadly lonesomeness of 
the place, ten thousand times more solemn, than if the volcano, in 
its fury, had swept the city from the earth, and sunk it in the 
bottom of the sea.

After it was shaken by the earthquake which preceded the eruption, 
workmen were employed in shaping out, in stone, new ornaments for 
temples and other buildings that had suffered.  Here lies their 
work, outside the city gate, as if they would return to-morrow.

In the cellar of Diomede's house, where certain skeletons were 
found huddled together, close to the door, the impression of their 
bodies on the ashes, hardened with the ashes, and became stamped 
and fixed there, after they had shrunk, inside, to scanty bones.  
So, in the theatre of Herculaneum, a comic mask, floating on the 
stream when it was hot and liquid, stamped its mimic features in it 
as it hardened into stone; and now, it turns upon the stranger the 
fantastic look it turned upon the audiences in that same theatre 
two thousand years ago.

Next to the wonder of going up and down the streets, and in and out 
of the houses, and traversing the secret chambers of the temples of 
a religion that has vanished from the earth, and finding so many 
fresh traces of remote antiquity:  as if the course of Time had 
been stopped after this desolation, and there had been no nights 
and days, months, years, and centuries, since:  nothing is more 
impressive and terrible than the many evidences of the searching 
nature of the ashes, as bespeaking their irresistible power, and 
the impossibility of escaping them.  In the wine-cellars, they 
forced their way into the earthen vessels:  displacing the wine and 
choking them, to the brim, with dust.  In the tombs, they forced 
the ashes of the dead from the funeral urns, and rained new ruin 
even into them.  The mouths, and eyes, and skulls of all the 
skeletons, were stuffed with this terrible hail.  In Herculaneum, 
where the flood was of a different and a heavier kind, it rolled 
in, like a sea.  Imagine a deluge of water turned to marble, at its 
height - and that is what is called 'the lava' here.

Some workmen were digging the gloomy well on the brink of which we 
now stand, looking down, when they came on some of the stone 
benches of the theatre - those steps (for such they seem) at the 
bottom of the excavation - and found the buried city of 
Herculaneum.  Presently going down, with lighted torches, we are 
perplexed by great walls of monstrous thickness, rising up between 
the benches, shutting out the stage, obtruding their shapeless 
forms in absurd places, confusing the whole plan, and making it a 
disordered dream.  We cannot, at first, believe, or picture to 
ourselves, that THIS came rolling in, and drowned the city; and 
that all that is not here, has been cut away, by the axe, like 
solid stone.  But this perceived and understood, the horror and 
oppression of its presence are indescribable.

Many of the paintings on the walls in the roofless chambers of both 
cities, or carefully removed to the museum at Naples, are as fresh 
and plain, as if they had been executed yesterday.  Here are 
subjects of still life, as provisions, dead game, bottles, glasses, 
and the like; familiar classical stories, or mythological fables, 
always forcibly and plainly told; conceits of cupids, quarrelling, 
sporting, working at trades; theatrical rehearsals; poets reading 
their productions to their friends; inscriptions chalked upon the 
walls; political squibs, advertisements, rough drawings by 
schoolboys; everything to people and restore the ancient cities, in 
the fancy of their wondering visitor.  Furniture, too, you see, of 
every kind - lamps, tables, couches; vessels for eating, drinking, 
and cooking; workmen's tools, surgical instruments, tickets for the 
theatre, pieces of money, personal ornaments, bunches of keys found 
clenched in the grasp of skeletons, helmets of guards and warriors; 
little household bells, yet musical with their old domestic tones.

The least among these objects, lends its aid to swell the interest 
of Vesuvius, and invest it with a perfect fascination.  The 
looking, from either ruined city, into the neighbouring grounds 
overgrown with beautiful vines and luxuriant trees; and remembering 
that house upon house, temple on temple, building after building, 
and street after street, are still lying underneath the roots of 
all the quiet cultivation, waiting to be turned up to the light of 
day; is something so wonderful, so full of mystery, so captivating 
to the imagination, that one would think it would be paramount, and 
yield to nothing else.  To nothing but Vesuvius; but the mountain 
is the genius of the scene.  From every indication of the ruin it 
has worked, we look, again, with an absorbing interest to where its 
smoke is rising up into the sky.  It is beyond us, as we thread the 
ruined streets:  above us, as we stand upon the ruined walls, we 
follow it through every vista of broken columns, as we wander 
through the empty court-yards of the houses; and through the 
garlandings and interlacings of every wanton vine.  Turning away to 
Paestum yonder, to see the awful structures built, the least aged 
of them, hundreds of years before the birth of Christ, and standing 
yet, erect in lonely majesty, upon the wild, malaria-blighted plain 
- we watch Vesuvius as it disappears from the prospect, and watch 
for it again, on our return, with the same thrill of interest:  as 
the doom and destiny of all this beautiful country, biding its 
terrible time.

It is very warm in the sun, on this early spring-day, when we 
return from Paestum, but very cold in the shade:  insomuch, that 
although we may lunch, pleasantly, at noon, in the open air, by the 
gate of Pompeii, the neighbouring rivulet supplies thick ice for 
our wine.  But, the sun is shining brightly; there is not a cloud 
or speck of vapour in the whole blue sky, looking down upon the bay 
of Naples; and the moon will be at the full to-night.  No matter 
that the snow and ice lie thick upon the summit of Vesuvius, or 
that we have been on foot all day at Pompeii, or that croakers 
maintain that strangers should not be on the mountain by night, in 
such an unusual season.  Let us take advantage of the fine weather; 
make the best of our way to Resina, the little village at the foot 
of the mountain; prepare ourselves, as well as we can, on so short 
a notice, at the guide's house; ascend at once, and have sunset 
half-way up, moon-light at the top, and midnight to come down in!

At four o'clock in the afternoon, there is a terrible uproar in the 
little stable-yard of Signior Salvatore, the recognised head-guide, 
with the gold band round his cap; and thirty under-guides who are 
all scuffling and screaming at once, are preparing half-a-dozen 
saddled ponies, three litters, and some stout staves, for the 
journey.  Every one of the thirty, quarrels with the other twenty-
nine, and frightens the six ponies; and as much of the village as 
can possibly squeeze itself into the little stable-yard, 
participates in the tumult, and gets trodden on by the cattle.

After much violent skirmishing, and more noise than would suffice 
for the storming of Naples, the procession starts.  The head-guide, 
who is liberally paid for all the attendants, rides a little in 
advance of the party; the other thirty guides proceed on foot.  
Eight go forward with the litters that are to be used by-and-by; 
and the remaining two-and-twenty beg.

We ascend, gradually, by stony lanes like rough broad flights of 
stairs, for some time.  At length, we leave these, and the 
vineyards on either side of them, and emerge upon a bleak bare 
region where the lava lies confusedly, in enormous rusty masses; as 
if the earth had been ploughed up by burning thunderbolts.  And 
now, we halt to see the sun set.  The change that falls upon the 
dreary region, and on the whole mountain, as its red light fades, 
and the night comes on - and the unutterable solemnity and 
dreariness that reign around, who that has witnessed it, can ever 
forget!

It is dark, when after winding, for some time, over the broken 
ground, we arrive at the foot of the cone:  which is extremely 
steep, and seems to rise, almost perpendicularly, from the spot 
where we dismount.  The only light is reflected from the snow, 
deep, hard, and white, with which the cone is covered.  It is now 
intensely cold, and the air is piercing.  The thirty-one have 
brought no torches, knowing that the moon will rise before we reach 
the top.  Two of the litters are devoted to the two ladies; the 
third, to a rather heavy gentleman from Naples, whose hospitality 
and good-nature have attached him to the expedition, and determined 
him to assist in doing the honours of the mountain.  The rather 
heavy gentleman is carried by fifteen men; each of the ladies by 
half-a-dozen.  We who walk, make the best use of our staves; and so 
the whole party begin to labour upward over the snow, - as if they 
were toiling to the summit of an antediluvian Twelfth-cake.

We are a long time toiling up; and the head-guide looks oddly about 
him when one of the company - not an Italian, though an habitue of 
the mountain for many years:  whom we will call, for our present 
purpose, Mr. Pickle of Portici - suggests that, as it is freezing 
hard, and the usual footing of ashes is covered by the snow and 
ice, it will surely be difficult to descend.  But the sight of the 
litters above, tilting up and down, and jerking from this side to 
that, as the bearers continually slip and tumble, diverts our 
attention; more especially as the whole length of the rather heavy 
gentleman is, at that moment, presented to us alarmingly 
foreshortened, with his head downwards.

The rising of the moon soon afterwards, revives the flagging 
spirits of the bearers.  Stimulating each other with their usual 
watchword, 'Courage, friend!  It is to eat macaroni!' they press 
on, gallantly, for the summit.

From tingeing the top of the snow above us, with a band of light, 
and pouring it in a stream through the valley below, while we have 
been ascending in the dark, the moon soon lights the whole white 
mountain-side, and the broad sea down below, and tiny Naples in the 
distance, and every village in the country round.  The whole 
prospect is in this lovely state, when we come upon the platform on 
the mountain-top - the region of Fire - an exhausted crater formed 
of great masses of gigantic cinders, like blocks of stone from some 
tremendous waterfall, burnt up; from every chink and crevice of 
which, hot, sulphurous smoke is pouring out:  while, from another 
conical-shaped hill, the present crater, rising abruptly from this 
platform at the end, great sheets of fire are streaming forth:  
reddening the night with flame, blackening it with smoke, and 
spotting it with red-hot stones and cinders, that fly up into the 
air like feathers, and fall down like lead.  What words can paint 
the gloom and grandeur of this scene!

The broken ground; the smoke; the sense of suffocation from the 
sulphur:  the fear of falling down through the crevices in the 
yawning ground; the stopping, every now and then, for somebody who 
is missing in the dark (for the dense smoke now obscures the moon); 
the intolerable noise of the thirty; and the hoarse roaring of the 
mountain; make it a scene of such confusion, at the same time, that 
we reel again.  But, dragging the ladies through it, and across 
another exhausted crater to the foot of the present Volcano, we 
approach close to it on the windy side, and then sit down among the 
hot ashes at its foot, and look up in silence; faintly estimating 
the action that is going on within, from its being full a hundred 
feet higher, at this minute, than it was six weeks ago.

There is something in the fire and roar, that generates an 
irresistible desire to get nearer to it.  We cannot rest long, 
without starting off, two of us, on our hands and knees, 
accompanied by the head-guide, to climb to the brim of the flaming 
crater, and try to look in.  Meanwhile, the thirty yell, as with 
one voice, that it is a dangerous proceeding, and call to us to 
come back; frightening the rest of the party out of their wits.

What with their noise, and what with the trembling of the thin 
crust of ground, that seems about to open underneath our feet and 
plunge us in the burning gulf below (which is the real danger, if 
there be any); and what with the flashing of the fire in our faces, 
and the shower of red-hot ashes that is raining down, and the 
choking smoke and sulphur; we may well feel giddy and irrational, 
like drunken men.  But, we contrive to climb up to the brim, and 
look down, for a moment, into the Hell of boiling fire below.  
Then, we all three come rolling down; blackened, and singed, and 
scorched, and hot, and giddy:  and each with his dress alight in 
half-a-dozen places.

You have read, a thousand times, that the usual way of descending, 
is, by sliding down the ashes:  which, forming a gradually-
increasing ledge below the feet, prevent too rapid a descent.  But, 
when we have crossed the two exhausted craters on our way back and 
are come to this precipitous place, there is (as Mr. Pickle has 
foretold) no vestige of ashes to be seen; the whole being a smooth 
sheet of ice.

In this dilemma, ten or a dozen of the guides cautiously join 
hands, and make a chain of men; of whom the foremost beat, as well 
as they can, a rough track with their sticks, down which we prepare 
to follow.  The way being fearfully steep, and none of the party:  
even of the thirty:  being able to keep their feet for six paces 
together, the ladies are taken out of their litters, and placed, 
each between two careful persons; while others of the thirty hold 
by their skirts, to prevent their falling forward - a necessary 
precaution, tending to the immediate and hopeless dilapidation of 
their apparel.  The rather heavy gentleman is abjured to leave his 
litter too, and be escorted in a similar manner; but he resolves to 
be brought down as he was brought up, on the principle that his 
fifteen bearers are not likely to tumble all at once, and that he 
is safer so, than trusting to his own legs.

In this order, we begin the descent:  sometimes on foot, sometimes 
shuffling on the ice:  always proceeding much more quietly and 
slowly, than on our upward way:  and constantly alarmed by the 
falling among us of somebody from behind, who endangers the footing 
of the whole party, and clings pertinaciously to anybody's ankles.  
It is impossible for the litter to be in advance, too, as the track 
has to be made; and its appearance behind us, overhead - with some 
one or other of the bearers always down, and the rather heavy 
gentleman with his legs always in the air - is very threatening and 
frightful.  We have gone on thus, a very little way, painfully and 
anxiously, but quite merrily, and regarding it as a great success - 
and have all fallen several times, and have all been stopped, 
somehow or other, as we were sliding away - when Mr. Pickle of 
Portici, in the act of remarking on these uncommon circumstances as 
quite beyond his experience, stumbles, falls, disengages himself, 
with quick presence of mind, from those about him, plunges away 
head foremost, and rolls, over and over, down the whole surface of 
the cone!

Sickening as it is to look, and be so powerless to help him, I see 
him there, in the moonlight - I have had such a dream often - 
skimming over the white ice, like a cannon-ball.  Almost at the 
same moment, there is a cry from behind; and a man who has carried 
a light basket of spare cloaks on his head, comes rolling past, at 
the same frightful speed, closely followed by a boy.  At this 
climax of the chapter of accidents, the remaining eight-and-twenty 
vociferate to that degree, that a pack of wolves would be music to 
them!

Giddy, and bloody, and a mere bundle of rags, is Pickle of Portici 
when we reach the place where we dismounted, and where the horses 
are waiting; but, thank God, sound in limb!  And never are we 
likely to be more glad to see a man alive and on his feet, than to 
see him now - making light of it too, though sorely bruised and in 
great pain.  The boy is brought into the Hermitage on the Mountain, 
while we are at supper, with his head tied up; and the man is heard 
of, some hours afterwards.  He too is bruised and stunned, but has 
broken no bones; the snow having, fortunately, covered all the 
larger blocks of rock and stone, and rendered them harmless.

After a cheerful meal, and a good rest before a blazing fire, we 
again take horse, and continue our descent to Salvatore's house - 
very slowly, by reason of our bruised friend being hardly able to 
keep the saddle, or endure the pain of motion.  Though it is so 
late at night, or early in the morning, all the people of the 
village are waiting about the little stable-yard when we arrive, 
and looking up the road by which we are expected.  Our appearance 
is hailed with a great clamour of tongues, and a general sensation 
for which in our modesty we are somewhat at a loss to account, 
until, turning into the yard, we find that one of a party of French 
gentlemen who were on the mountain at the same time is lying on 
some straw in the stable, with a broken limb:  looking like Death, 
and suffering great torture; and that we were confidently supposed 
to have encountered some worse accident.

So 'well returned, and Heaven be praised!' as the cheerful 
Vetturino, who has borne us company all the way from Pisa, says, 
with all his heart!  And away with his ready horses, into sleeping 
Naples!

It wakes again to Policinelli and pickpockets, buffo singers and 
beggars, rags, puppets, flowers, brightness, dirt, and universal 
degradation; airing its Harlequin suit in the sunshine, next day 
and every day; singing, starving, dancing, gaming, on the sea-
shore; and leaving all labour to the burning mountain, which is 
ever at its work.

Our English dilettanti would be very pathetic on the subject of the 
national taste, if they could hear an Italian opera half as badly 
sung in England as we may hear the Foscari performed, to-night, in 
the splendid theatre of San Carlo.  But, for astonishing truth and 
spirit in seizing and embodying the real life about it, the shabby 
little San Carlino Theatre - the rickety house one story high, with 
a staring picture outside:  down among the drums and trumpets, and 
the tumblers, and the lady conjurer - is without a rival anywhere.

There is one extraordinary feature in the real life of Naples, at 
which we may take a glance before we go - the Lotteries.

They prevail in most parts of Italy, but are particularly obvious, 
in their effects and influences, here.  They are drawn every 
Saturday.  They bring an immense revenue to the Government; and 
diffuse a taste for gambling among the poorest of the poor, which 
is very comfortable to the coffers of the State, and very ruinous 
to themselves.  The lowest stake is one grain; less than a 
farthing.  One hundred numbers - from one to a hundred, inclusive - 
are put into a box.  Five are drawn.  Those are the prizes.  I buy 
three numbers.  If one of them come up, I win a small prize.  If 
two, some hundreds of times my stake.  If three, three thousand 
five hundred times my stake.  I stake (or play as they call it) 
what I can upon my numbers, and buy what numbers I please.  The 
amount I play, I pay at the lottery office, where I purchase the 
ticket; and it is stated on the ticket itself.

Every lottery office keeps a printed book, an Universal Lottery 
Diviner, where every possible accident and circumstance is provided 
for, and has a number against it.  For instance, let us take two 
carlini - about sevenpence.  On our way to the lottery office, we 
run against a black man.  When we get there, we say gravely, 'The 
Diviner.'  It is handed over the counter, as a serious matter of 
business.  We look at black man.  Such a number.  'Give us that.'  
We look at running against a person in the street.  'Give us that. 
' We look at the name of the street itself.  'Give us that.'  Now, 
we have our three numbers.

If the roof of the theatre of San Carlo were to fall in, so many 
people would play upon the numbers attached to such an accident in 
the Diviner, that the Government would soon close those numbers, 
and decline to run the risk of losing any more upon them.  This 
often happens.  Not long ago, when there was a fire in the King's 
Palace, there was such a desperate run on fire, and king, and 
palace, that further stakes on the numbers attached to those words 
in the Golden Book were forbidden.  Every accident or event, is 
supposed, by the ignorant populace, to be a revelation to the 
beholder, or party concerned, in connection with the lottery.  
Certain people who have a talent for dreaming fortunately, are much 
sought after; and there are some priests who are constantly 
favoured with visions of the lucky numbers.

I heard of a horse running away with a man, and dashing him down, 
dead, at the corner of a street.  Pursuing the horse with 
incredible speed, was another man, who ran so fast, that he came 
up, immediately after the accident.  He threw himself upon his 
knees beside the unfortunate rider, and clasped his hand with an 
expression of the wildest grief.  'If you have life,' he said, 
'speak one word to me!  If you have one gasp of breath left, 
mention your age for Heaven's sake, that I may play that number in 
the lottery.'

It is four o'clock in the afternoon, and we may go to see our 
lottery drawn.  The ceremony takes place every Saturday, in the 
Tribunale, or Court of Justice - this singular, earthy-smelling 
room, or gallery, as mouldy as an old cellar, and as damp as a 
dungeon.  At the upper end is a platform, with a large horse-shoe 
table upon it; and a President and Council sitting round - all 
judges of the Law.  The man on the little stool behind the 
President, is the Capo Lazzarone, a kind of tribune of the people, 
appointed on their behalf to see that all is fairly conducted:  
attended by a few personal friends.  A ragged, swarthy fellow he 
is:  with long matted hair hanging down all over his face:  and 
covered, from head to foot, with most unquestionably genuine dirt.  
All the body of the room is filled with the commonest of the 
Neapolitan people:  and between them and the platform, guarding the 
steps leading to the latter, is a small body of soldiers.

There is some delay in the arrival of the necessary number of 
judges; during which, the box, in which the numbers are being 
placed, is a source of the deepest interest.  When the box is full, 
the boy who is to draw the numbers out of it becomes the prominent 
feature of the proceedings.  He is already dressed for his part, in 
a tight brown Holland coat, with only one (the left) sleeve to it, 
which leaves his right arm bared to the shoulder, ready for 
plunging down into the mysterious chest.

During the hush and whisper that pervade the room, all eyes are 
turned on this young minister of fortune.  People begin to inquire 
his age, with a view to the next lottery; and the number of his 
brothers and sisters; and the age of his father and mother; and 
whether he has any moles or pimples upon him; and where, and how 
many; when the arrival of the last judge but one (a little old man, 
universally dreaded as possessing the Evil Eye) makes a slight 
diversion, and would occasion a greater one, but that he is 
immediately deposed, as a source of interest, by the officiating 
priest, who advances gravely to his place, followed by a very dirty 
little boy, carrying his sacred vestments, and a pot of Holy Water.

Here is the last judge come at last, and now he takes his place at 
the horse-shoe table.

There is a murmur of irrepressible agitation.  In the midst of it, 
the priest puts his head into the sacred vestments, and pulls the 
same over his shoulders.  Then he says a silent prayer; and dipping 
a brush into the pot of Holy Water, sprinkles it over the box - and 
over the boy, and gives them a double-barrelled blessing, which the 
box and the boy are both hoisted on the table to receive.  The boy 
remaining on the table, the box is now carried round the front of 
the platform, by an attendant, who holds it up and shakes it 
lustily all the time; seeming to say, like the conjurer, 'There is 
no deception, ladies and gentlemen; keep your eyes upon me, if you 
please!'

At last, the box is set before the boy; and the boy, first holding 
up his naked arm and open hand, dives down into the hole (it is 
made like a ballot-box) and pulls out a number, which is rolled up, 
round something hard, like a bonbon.  This he hands to the judge 
next him, who unrolls a little bit, and hands it to the President, 
next to whom he sits.  The President unrolls it, very slowly.  The 
Capo Lazzarone leans over his shoulder.  The President holds it up, 
unrolled, to the Capo Lazzarone.  The Capo Lazzarone, looking at it 
eagerly, cries out, in a shrill, loud voice, 'Sessantadue!' (sixty-
two), expressing the two upon his fingers, as he calls it out.  
Alas! the Capo Lazzarone himself has not staked on sixty-two.  His 
face is very long, and his eyes roll wildly.

As it happens to be a favourite number, however, it is pretty well 
received, which is not always the case.  They are all drawn with 
the same ceremony, omitting the blessing.  One blessing is enough 
for the whole multiplication-table.  The only new incident in the 
proceedings, is the gradually deepening intensity of the change in 
the Cape Lazzarone, who has, evidently, speculated to the very 
utmost extent of his means; and who, when he sees the last number, 
and finds that it is not one of his, clasps his hands, and raises 
his eyes to the ceiling before proclaiming it, as though 
remonstrating, in a secret agony, with his patron saint, for having 
committed so gross a breach of confidence.  I hope the Capo 
Lazzarone may not desert him for some other member of the Calendar, 
but he seems to threaten it.

Where the winners may be, nobody knows.  They certainly are not 
present; the general disappointment filling one with pity for the 
poor people.  They look:  when we stand aside, observing them, in 
their passage through the court-yard down below:  as miserable as 
the prisoners in the gaol (it forms a part of the building), who 
are peeping down upon them, from between their bars; or, as the 
fragments of human heads which are still dangling in chains 
outside, in memory of the good old times, when their owners were 
strung up there, for the popular edification.

Away from Naples in a glorious sunrise, by the road to Capua, and 
then on a three days' journey along by-roads, that we may see, on 
the way, the monastery of Monte Cassino, which is perched on the 
steep and lofty hill above the little town of San Germano, and is 
lost on a misty morning in the clouds.

So much the better, for the deep sounding of its bell, which, as we 
go winding up, on mules, towards the convent, is heard mysteriously 
in the still air, while nothing is seen but the grey mist, moving 
solemnly and slowly, like a funeral procession.  Behold, at length 
the shadowy pile of building close before us:  its grey walls and 
towers dimly seen, though so near and so vast:  and the raw vapour 
rolling through its cloisters heavily.

There are two black shadows walking to and fro in the quadrangle, 
near the statues of the Patron Saint and his sister; and hopping on 
behind them, in and out of the old arches, is a raven, croaking in 
answer to the bell, and uttering, at intervals, the purest Tuscan.  
How like a Jesuit he looks!  There never was a sly and stealthy 
fellow so at home as is this raven, standing now at the refectory 
door, with his head on one side, and pretending to glance another 
way, while he is scrutinizing the visitors keenly, and listening 
with fixed attention.  What a dull-headed monk the porter becomes 
in comparison!

'He speaks like us!' says the porter:  'quite as plainly.'  Quite 
as plainly, Porter.  Nothing could be more expressive than his 
reception of the peasants who are entering the gate with baskets 
and burdens.  There is a roll in his eye, and a chuckle in his 
throat, which should qualify him to be chosen Superior of an Order 
of Ravens.  He knows all about it.  'It's all right,' he says.  'We 
know what we know.  Come along, good people.  Glad to see you!'  
How was this extraordinary structure ever built in such a 
situation, where the labour of conveying the stone, and iron, and 
marble, so great a height, must have been prodigious?  'Caw!' says 
the raven, welcoming the peasants.  How, being despoiled by 
plunder, fire and earthquake, has it risen from its ruins, and been 
again made what we now see it, with its church so sumptuous and 
magnificent?  'Caw!' says the raven, welcoming the peasants.  These 
people have a miserable appearance, and (as usual) are densely 
ignorant, and all beg, while the monks are chaunting in the chapel.  
'Caw!' says the raven, 'Cuckoo!'

So we leave him, chuckling and rolling his eye at the convent gate, 
and wind slowly down again through the cloud.  At last emerging 
from it, we come in sight of the village far below, and the flat 
green country intersected by rivulets; which is pleasant and fresh 
to see after the obscurity and haze of the convent - no disrespect 
to the raven, or the holy friars.

Away we go again, by muddy roads, and through the most shattered 
and tattered of villages, where there is not a whole window among 
all the houses, or a whole garment among all the peasants, or the 
least appearance of anything to eat, in any of the wretched 
hucksters' shops.  The women wear a bright red bodice laced before 
and behind, a white skirt, and the Neapolitan head-dress of square 
folds of linen, primitively meant to carry loads on.  The men and 
children wear anything they can get.  The soldiers are as dirty and 
rapacious as the dogs.  The inns are such hobgoblin places, that 
they are infinitely more attractive and amusing than the best 
hotels in Paris.  Here is one near Valmontone (that is Valmontone 
the round, walled town on the mount opposite), which is approached 
by a quagmire almost knee-deep.  There is a wild colonnade below, 
and a dark yard full of empty stables and lofts, and a great long 
kitchen with a great long bench and a great long form, where a 
party of travellers, with two priests among them, are crowding 
round the fire while their supper is cooking.  Above stairs, is a 
rough brick gallery to sit in, with very little windows with very 
small patches of knotty glass in them, and all the doors that open 
from it (a dozen or two) off their hinges, and a bare board on 
tressels for a table, at which thirty people might dine easily, and 
a fireplace large enough in itself for a breakfast-parlour, where, 
as the faggots blaze and crackle, they illuminate the ugliest and 
grimmest of faces, drawn in charcoal on the whitewashed chimney-
sides by previous travellers.  There is a flaring country lamp on 
the table; and, hovering about it, scratching her thick black hair 
continually, a yellow dwarf of a woman, who stands on tiptoe to 
arrange the hatchet knives, and takes a flying leap to look into 
the water-jug.  The beds in the adjoining rooms are of the 
liveliest kind.  There is not a solitary scrap of looking-glass in 
the house, and the washing apparatus is identical with the cooking 
utensils.  But the yellow dwarf sets on the table a good flask of 
excellent wine, holding a quart at least; and produces, among half-
a-dozen other dishes, two-thirds of a roasted kid, smoking hot.  
She is as good-humoured, too, as dirty, which is saying a great 
deal.  So here's long life to her, in the flask of wine, and 
prosperity to the establishment.

Rome gained and left behind, and with it the Pilgrims who are now 
repairing to their own homes again - each with his scallop shell 
and staff, and soliciting alms for the love of God - we come, by a 
fair country, to the Falls of Terni, where the whole Velino river 
dashes, headlong, from a rocky height, amidst shining spray and 
rainbows.  Perugia, strongly fortified by art and nature, on a 
lofty eminence, rising abruptly from the plain where purple 
mountains mingle with the distant sky, is glowing, on its market-
day, with radiant colours.  They set off its sombre but rich Gothic 
buildings admirably.  The pavement of its market-place is strewn 
with country goods.  All along the steep hill leading from the 
town, under the town wall, there is a noisy fair of calves, lambs, 
pigs, horses, mules, and oxen.  Fowls, geese, and turkeys, flutter 
vigorously among their very hoofs; and buyers, sellers, and 
spectators, clustering everywhere, block up the road as we come 
shouting down upon them.

Suddenly, there is a ringing sound among our horses.  The driver 
stops them.  Sinking in his saddle, and casting up his eyes to 
Heaven, he delivers this apostrophe, 'Oh Jove Omnipotent! here is a 
horse has lost his shoe!'

Notwithstanding the tremendous nature of this accident, and the 
utterly forlorn look and gesture (impossible in any one but an 
Italian Vetturino) with which it is announced, it is not long in 
being repaired by a mortal Farrier, by whose assistance we reach 
Castiglione the same night, and Arezzo next day.  Mass is, of 
course, performing in its fine cathedral, where the sun shines in 
among the clustered pillars, through rich stained-glass windows:  
half revealing, half concealing the kneeling figures on the 
pavement, and striking out paths of spotted light in the long 
aisles.

But, how much beauty of another kind is here, when, on a fair clear 
morning, we look, from the summit of a hill, on Florence!  See 
where it lies before us in a sun-lighted valley, bright with the 
winding Arno, and shut in by swelling hills; its domes, and towers, 
and palaces, rising from the rich country in a glittering heap, and 
shining in the sun like gold!

Magnificently stern and sombre are the streets of beautiful 
Florence; and the strong old piles of building make such heaps of 
shadow, on the ground and in the river, that there is another and a 
different city of rich forms and fancies, always lying at our feet.  
Prodigious palaces, constructed for defence, with small distrustful 
windows heavily barred, and walls of great thickness formed of huge 
masses of rough stone, frown, in their old sulky state, on every 
street.  In the midst of the city - in the Piazza of the Grand 
Duke, adorned with beautiful statues and the Fountain of Neptune - 
rises the Palazzo Vecchio, with its enormous overhanging 
battlements, and the Great Tower that watches over the whole town.  
In its court-yard - worthy of the Castle of Otranto in its 
ponderous gloom - is a massive staircase that the heaviest waggon 
and the stoutest team of horses might be driven up.  Within it, is 
a Great Saloon, faded and tarnished in its stately decorations, and 
mouldering by grains, but recording yet, in pictures on its walls, 
the triumphs of the Medici and the wars of the old Florentine 
people.  The prison is hard by, in an adjacent court-yard of the 
building - a foul and dismal place, where some men are shut up 
close, in small cells like ovens; and where others look through 
bars and beg; where some are playing draughts, and some are talking 
to their friends, who smoke, the while, to purify the air; and some 
are buying wine and fruit of women-vendors; and all are squalid, 
dirty, and vile to look at.  'They are merry enough, Signore,' says 
the jailer.  'They are all blood-stained here,' he adds, 
indicating, with his hand, three-fourths of the whole building.  
Before the hour is out, an old man, eighty years of age, 
quarrelling over a bargain with a young girl of seventeen, stabs 
her dead, in the market-place full of bright flowers; and is 
brought in prisoner, to swell the number.

Among the four old bridges that span the river, the Ponte Vecchio - 
that bridge which is covered with the shops of Jewellers and 
Goldsmiths - is a most enchanting feature in the scene.  The space 
of one house, in the centre, being left open, the view beyond is 
shown as in a frame; and that precious glimpse of sky, and water, 
and rich buildings, shining so quietly among the huddled roofs and 
gables on the bridge, is exquisite.  Above it, the Gallery of the 
Grand Duke crosses the river.  It was built to connect the two 
Great Palaces by a secret passage; and it takes its jealous course 
among the streets and houses, with true despotism:  going where it 
lists, and spurning every obstacle away, before it.

The Grand Duke has a worthier secret passage through the streets, 
in his black robe and hood, as a member of the Compagnia della 
Misericordia, which brotherhood includes all ranks of men.  If an 
accident take place, their office is, to raise the sufferer, and 
bear him tenderly to the Hospital.  If a fire break out, it is one 
of their functions to repair to the spot, and render their 
assistance and protection.  It is, also, among their commonest 
offices, to attend and console the sick; and they neither receive 
money, nor eat, nor drink, in any house they visit for this 
purpose.  Those who are on duty for the time, are all called 
together, on a moment's notice, by the tolling of the great bell of 
the Tower; and it is said that the Grand Duke has been seen, at 
this sound, to rise from his seat at table, and quietly withdraw to 
attend the summons.

In this other large Piazza, where an irregular kind of market is 
held, and stores of old iron and other small merchandise are set 
out on stalls, or scattered on the pavement, are grouped together, 
the Cathedral with its great Dome, the beautiful Italian Gothic 
Tower the Campanile, and the Baptistery with its wrought bronze 
doors.  And here, a small untrodden square in the pavement, is 'the 
Stone of DANTE,' where (so runs the story) he was used to bring his 
stool, and sit in contemplation.  I wonder was he ever, in his 
bitter exile, withheld from cursing the very stones in the streets 
of Florence the ungrateful, by any kind remembrance of this old 
musing-place, and its association with gentle thoughts of little 
Beatrice!

The chapel of the Medici, the Good and Bad Angels, of Florence; the 
church of Santa Croce where Michael Angelo lies buried, and where 
every stone in the cloisters is eloquent on great men's deaths; 
innumerable churches, often masses of unfinished heavy brickwork 
externally, but solemn and serene within; arrest our lingering 
steps, in strolling through the city.

In keeping with the tombs among the cloisters, is the Museum of 
Natural History, famous through the world for its preparations in 
wax; beginning with models of leaves, seeds, plants, inferior 
animals; and gradually ascending, through separate organs of the 
human frame, up to the whole structure of that wonderful creation, 
exquisitely presented, as in recent death.  Few admonitions of our 
frail mortality can be more solemn and more sad, or strike so home 
upon the heart, as the counterfeits of Youth and Beauty that are 
lying there, upon their beds, in their last sleep.

Beyond the walls, the whole sweet Valley of the Arno, the convent 
at Fiesole, the Tower of Galileo, BOCCACCIO'S house, old villas and 
retreats; innumerable spots of interest, all glowing in a landscape 
of surpassing beauty steeped in the richest light; are spread 
before us.  Returning from so much brightness, how solemn and how 
grand the streets again, with their great, dark, mournful palaces, 
and many legends:  not of siege, and war, and might, and Iron Hand 
alone, but of the triumphant growth of peaceful Arts and Sciences.

What light is shed upon the world, at this day, from amidst these 
rugged Palaces of Florence!  Here, open to all comers, in their 
beautiful and calm retreats, the ancient Sculptors are immortal, 
side by side with Michael Angelo, Canova, Titian, Rembrandt, 
Raphael, Poets, Historians, Philosophers - those illustrious men of 
history, beside whom its crowned heads and harnessed warriors show 
so poor and small, and are so soon forgotten.  Here, the 
imperishable part of noble minds survives, placid and equal, when 
strongholds of assault and defence are overthrown; when the tyranny 
of the many, or the few, or both, is but a tale; when Pride and 
Power are so much cloistered dust.  The fire within the stern 
streets, and among the massive Palaces and Towers, kindled by rays 
from Heaven, is still burning brightly, when the flickering of war 
is extinguished and the household fires of generations have 
decayed; as thousands upon thousands of faces, rigid with the 
strife and passion of the hour, have faded out of the old Squares 
and public haunts, while the nameless Florentine Lady, preserved 
from oblivion by a Painter's hand, yet lives on, in enduring grace 
and youth.

Let us look back on Florence while we may, and when its shining 
Dome is seen no more, go travelling through cheerful Tuscany, with 
a bright remembrance of it; for Italy will be the fairer for the 
recollection.  The summer-time being come:  and Genoa, and Milan, 
and the Lake of Como lying far behind us:  and we resting at Faido, 
a Swiss village, near the awful rocks and mountains, the 
everlasting snows and roaring cataracts, of the Great Saint 
Gothard:  hearing the Italian tongue for the last time on this 
journey:  let us part from Italy, with all its miseries and wrongs, 
affectionately, in our admiration of the beauties, natural and 
artificial, of which it is full to overflowing, and in our 
tenderness towards a people, naturally well-disposed, and patient, 
and sweet-tempered.  Years of neglect, oppression, and misrule, 
have been at work, to change their nature and reduce their spirit; 
miserable jealousies, fomented by petty Princes to whom union was 
destruction, and division strength, have been a canker at their 
root of nationality, and have barbarized their language; but the 
good that was in them ever, is in them yet, and a noble people may 
be, one day, raised up from these ashes.  Let us entertain that 
hope!  And let us not remember Italy the less regardfully, because, 
in every fragment of her fallen Temples, and every stone of her 
deserted palaces and prisons, she helps to inculcate the lesson 
that the wheel of Time is rolling for an end, and that the world 
is, in all great essentials, better, gentler, more forbearing, and 
more hopeful, as it rolls!