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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece,
+Complete, by John Symonds
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete
+       Series I, II, and III
+
+Author: John Symonds
+
+Release Date: July 22, 2006 [EBook #18893]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SKETCHES AND STUDIES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Turgut Dincer, Ted Garvin, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY AND GREECE, COMPLETE
+
+
+
+
+
+  BY JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS
+
+  AUTHOR OF "RENAISSANCE IN ITALY", "STUDIES OF THE GREEK POETS," ETC
+
+
+
+  NEW EDITION
+
+  LONDON
+  JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
+  1914
+
+
+
+
+
+  FIRST SERIES
+
+
+PREFATORY NOTE
+
+
+In preparing this new edition of the late J.A. Symonds's three volumes
+of travels, 'Sketches in Italy and Greece,' 'Sketches and Studies
+in Italy,' and 'Italian Byways,' nothing has been changed except the
+order of the Essays. For the convenience of travellers a topographical
+arrangement has been adopted. This implied a new title to cover the
+contents of all three volumes, and 'Sketches and Studies in Italy
+and Greece' has been chosen as departing least from the author's own
+phraseology.
+
+HORATIO F. BROWN.
+Venice: _June_ 1898.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  CONTENTS
+
+
+  THE LOVE OF THE ALPS
+
+  WINTER NIGHTS AT DAVOS
+
+  BACCHUS IN GRAUBUeNDEN
+
+  OLD TOWNS OF PROVENCE
+
+  THE CORNICE
+
+  AJACCIO
+
+  MONTE GENEROSO
+
+  LOMBARD VIGNETTES
+
+  COMO AND IL MEDEGHINO
+
+  BERGAMO AND BARTOLOMMEO COLLEONI
+
+  CREMA AND THE CRUCIFIX
+
+  CHERUBINO AT THE SCALA THEATRE
+
+  A VENETIAN MEDLEY
+
+  THE GONDOLIER'S WEDDING
+
+  A CINQUE CENTO BRUTUS
+
+  TWO DRAMATISTS OF THE LAST CENTURY
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  SKETCHES AND STUDIES
+
+  IN
+
+  ITALY AND GREECE
+
+
+
+
+
+
+_THE LOVE OF THE ALPS_[1]
+
+
+Of all the joys in life, none is greater than the joy of arriving on
+the outskirts of Switzerland at the end of a long dusty day's journey
+from Paris. The true epicure in refined pleasures will never travel
+to Basle by night. He courts the heat of the sun and the monotony
+of French plains,--their sluggish streams and never-ending poplar
+trees--for the sake of the evening coolness and the gradual approach
+to the great Alps, which await him at the close of the day. It is
+about Mulhausen that he begins to feel a change in the landscape.
+The fields broaden into rolling downs, watered by clear and running
+streams; the green Swiss thistle grows by riverside and cowshed; pines
+begin to tuft the slopes of gently rising hills; and now the sun has
+set, the stars come out, first Hesper, then the troop of lesser lights;
+and he feels--yes, indeed, there is now no mistake--the well-known,
+well-loved magical fresh air, that never fails to blow from snowy
+mountains and meadows watered by perennial streams. The last hour is
+one of exquisite enjoyment, and when he reaches Basle, he scarcely
+sleeps all night for hearing the swift Rhine beneath the balconies,
+and knowing that the moon is shining on its waters, through the town,
+beneath the bridges, between pasture-lands and copses, up the still
+mountain-girdled valleys to the ice-caves where the water springs.
+There is nothing in all experience of travelling like this. We may
+greet the Mediterranean at Marseilles with enthusiasm; on entering
+Rome by the Porta del Popolo, we may reflect with pride that we
+have reached the goal of our pilgrimage, and are at last among
+world-shaking memories. But neither Rome nor the Riviera wins our
+hearts like Switzerland. We do not lie awake in London thinking of
+them; we do not long so intensely, as the year comes round, to revisit
+them. Our affection is less a passion than that which we cherish for
+Switzerland.
+
+Why, then, is this? What, after all, is the love of the Alps, and when
+and where did it begin? It is easier to ask these questions than to
+answer them. The classic nations hated mountains. Greek and Roman
+poets talk of them with disgust and dread. Nothing could have been
+more depressing to a courtier of Augustus than residence at Aosta,
+even though he found his theatres and triumphal arches there. Wherever
+classical feeling has predominated, this has been the case. Cellini's
+Memoirs, written in the height of pagan Renaissance, well express
+the aversion which a Florentine or Roman felt for the inhospitable
+wildernesses of Switzerland.[2] Dryden, in his dedication to 'The
+Indian Emperor,' says, 'High objects, it is true, attract the sight;
+but it looks up with pain on craggy rocks and barren mountains, and
+continues not intent on any object which is wanting in shades and
+green to entertain it.' Addison and Gray had no better epithets than
+'rugged,' 'horrid,' and the like for Alpine landscape. The classic
+spirit was adverse to enthusiasm for mere nature. Humanity was too
+prominent, and city life absorbed all interests,--not to speak of what
+perhaps is the weightiest reason--that solitude, indifferent
+accommodation, and imperfect means of travelling, rendered mountainous
+countries peculiarly disagreeable. It is impossible to enjoy art or
+nature while suffering from fatigue and cold, dreading the attacks of
+robbers, and wondering whether you will find food and shelter at the
+end of your day's journey. Nor was it different in the Middle Ages.
+Then individuals had either no leisure from war or strife with the
+elements, or else they devoted themselves to the salvation of their
+souls. But when the ideas of the Middle Ages had decayed, when
+improved arts of life had freed men from servile subjection to daily
+needs, when the bondage of religious tyranny had been thrown off and
+political liberty allowed the full development of tastes and
+instincts, when, moreover, the classical traditions had lost their
+power, and courts and coteries became too narrow for the activity of
+man,--then suddenly it was discovered that Nature in herself possessed
+transcendent charms. It may seem absurd to class them all together;
+yet there is no doubt that the French Revolution, the criticism of the
+Bible, Pantheistic forms of religious feeling, landscape-painting,
+Alpine travelling, and the poetry of Nature, are all signs of the same
+movement--of a new Renaissance. Limitations of every sort have been
+shaken off during the last century; all forms have been destroyed, all
+questions asked. The classical spirit loved to arrange, model,
+preserve traditions, obey laws. We are intolerant of everything that
+is not simple, unbiassed by prescription, liberal as the wind, and
+natural as the mountain crags. We go to feed this spirit of freedom
+among the Alps. What the virgin forests of America are to the
+Americans, the Alps are to us. What there is in these huge blocks and
+walls of granite crowned with ice that fascinates us, it is hard to
+analyse. Why, seeing that we find them so attractive, they should have
+repelled our ancestors of the fourth generation and all the world
+before them, is another mystery. We cannot explain what rapport there
+is between our human souls and these inequalities in the surface of
+the earth which we call Alps. Tennyson speaks of
+
+  Some vague emotion of delight
+  In gazing up an Alpine height,
+
+and its vagueness eludes definition. The interest which physical
+science has created for natural objects has something to do with it.
+Curiosity and the charm of novelty increase this interest. No towns,
+no cultivated tracts of Europe however beautiful, form such a contrast
+to our London life as Switzerland. Then there is the health and joy
+that comes from exercise in open air; the senses freshened by good
+sleep; the blood quickened by a lighter and rarer atmosphere. Our
+modes of life, the breaking down of class privileges, the extension of
+education, which contribute to make the individual greater and society
+less, render the solitude of mountains refreshing. Facilities of
+travelling and improved accommodation leave us free to enjoy the
+natural beauty which we seek. Our minds, too, are prepared to
+sympathise with the inanimate world; we have learned to look on the
+universe as a whole, and ourselves as a part of it, related by close
+ties of friendship to all its other members Shelley's, Wordsworth's,
+Goethe's poetry has taught us this; we are all more or less
+Pantheists, worshippers of 'God in Nature,' convinced of the
+omnipresence of the informing mind.
+
+Thus, when we admire the Alps, we are after all but children of
+the century. We follow its inspiration blindly; and while we think
+ourselves spontaneous in our ecstasy, perform the part for which we
+have been trained from childhood by the atmosphere in which we live.
+It is this very unconsciousness and universality of the impulse we
+obey which makes it hard to analyse. Contemporary history is difficult
+to write; to define the spirit of the age in which we live is still
+more difficult; to account for 'impressions which owe all their force
+to their identity with themselves' is most difficult of all. We must
+be content to feel, and not to analyse.
+
+Rousseau has the credit of having invented the love of Nature. Perhaps
+he first expressed, in literature, the pleasures of open life among
+the mountains, of walking tours, of the '_ecole buissonniere_,'
+away from courts, and schools, and cities, which it is the fashion now
+to love. His bourgeois birth and tastes, his peculiar religious
+and social views, his intense self-engrossment,--all favoured the
+development of Nature-worship. But Rousseau was not alone, nor yet
+creative, in this instance. He was but one of the earliest to seize
+and express a new idea of growing humanity. For those who seem to be
+the most original in their inauguration of periods are only such
+as have been favourably placed by birth and education to imbibe the
+floating creeds of the whole race. They resemble the first cases of an
+epidemic, which become the centres of infection and propagate disease.
+At the time of Rousseau's greatness the French people were initiative.
+In politics, in literature, in fashions, and in philosophy, they had
+for some time led the taste of Europe. But the sentiment which first
+received a clear and powerful expression in the works of Rousseau,
+soon declared itself in the arts and literature of other nations.
+Goethe, Wordsworth, and the earlier landscape-painters, proved that
+Germany and England were not far behind the French. In England this
+love of Nature for its own sake is indigenous, and has at all times
+been peculiarly characteristic of our genius. Therefore it is not
+surprising that our life and literature and art have been foremost
+in developing the sentiment of which we are speaking. Our poets,
+painters, and prose writers gave the tone to European thought in this
+respect. Our travellers in search of the adventurous and picturesque,
+our Alpine Club, have made of Switzerland an English playground.
+
+The greatest period in our history was but a foreshadowing of this.
+To return to Nature-worship was but to reassume the habits of the
+Elizabethan age, altered indeed by all the changes of religion,
+politics, society, and science which the last three centuries have
+wrought, yet still, in its original love of free open life among the
+fields and woods, and on the sea, the same. Now the French national
+genius is classical. It reverts to the age of Louis XIV., and
+Rousseauism in their literature is as true an innovation and
+parenthesis as Pope-and-Drydenism was in ours. As in the age of the
+Reformation, so in this, the German element of the modern character
+predominates. During the two centuries from which we have emerged, the
+Latin element had the upper hand. Our love of the Alps is a Gothic, a
+Teutonic, instinct; sympathetic with all that is vague, infinite, and
+insubordinate to rules, at war with all that is defined and systematic
+in our genius. This we may perceive in individuals as well as in the
+broader aspects of arts and literatures. The classically minded man,
+the reader of Latin poets, the lover of brilliant conversation,
+the frequenter of clubs and drawing-rooms, nice in his personal
+requirements, scrupulous in his choice of words, averse to unnecessary
+physical exertion, preferring town to country life, _cannot_
+deeply feel the charm of the Alps. Such a man will dislike German art,
+and however much he may strive to be Catholic in his tastes, will find
+as he grows older that his liking for Gothic architecture and modern
+painting diminish almost to aversion before an increasing admiration
+for Greek peristyles and the Medicean Venus. If in respect of
+speculation all men are either Platonists or Aristotelians, in respect
+of taste all men are either Greek or German.
+
+At present the German, the indefinite, the natural, commands; the
+Greek, the finite, the cultivated, is in abeyance. We who talk so
+much about the feeling of the Alps, are creatures, not creators of our
+_cultus_,--a strange reflection, proving how much greater man is
+than men, the common reason of the age in which we live than our own
+reasons, its constituents and subjects.
+
+Perhaps it is our modern tendency to 'individualism' which makes the
+Alps so much to us. Society is there reduced to a vanishing point--no
+claims are made on human sympathies--there is no need to toil in
+yoke-service with our fellows. We may be alone, dream our own
+dreams, and sound the depths of personality without the reproach of
+selfishness, without a restless wish to join in action or money-making
+or the pursuit of fame. To habitual residents among the Alps this
+absence of social duties and advantages may be barbarising, even
+brutalising. But to men wearied with too much civilisation,
+and deafened by the noise of great cities, it is beyond measure
+refreshing. Then, again, among the mountains history finds no place.
+The Alps have no past nor present nor future. The human beings who
+live upon their sides are at odds with nature, clinging on for bare
+existence to the soil, sheltering themselves beneath protecting rocks
+from avalanches, damming up destructive streams, all but annihilated
+every spring. Man, who is paramount in the plain, is nothing here. His
+arts and sciences, and dynasties, and modes of life, and mighty works,
+and conquests and decays, demand our whole attention in Italy or
+Egypt. But here the mountains, immemorially the same, which were,
+which are, and which are to be, present a theatre on which the soul
+breathes freely and feels herself alone. Around her on all sides is
+God, and Nature, who is here the face of God and not the slave of man.
+The spirit of the world hath here not yet grown old. She is as young
+as on the first day; and the Alps are a symbol of the self-creating,
+self-sufficing, self-enjoying universe which lives for its own ends.
+For why do the slopes gleam with flowers, and the hillsides deck
+themselves with grass, and the inaccessible ledges of black rock bear
+their tufts of crimson primroses and flaunting tiger-lilies? Why,
+morning after morning, does the red dawn flush the pinnacles of Monte
+Rosa above cloud and mist unheeded? Why does the torrent shout, the
+avalanche reply in thunder to the music of the sun, the trees and
+rocks and meadows cry their 'Holy, Holy, Holy'? Surely not for us.
+We are an accident here, and even the few men whose eyes are fixed
+habitually upon these things are dead to them--the peasants do not
+even know the names of their own flowers, and sigh with envy when you
+tell them of the plains of Lincolnshire or Russian steppes.
+
+But indeed there is something awful in the Alpine elevation above
+human things. We do not love Switzerland merely because we associate
+its thought with recollections of holidays and joyfulness. Some of
+the most solemn moments of life are spent high up above among the
+mountains, on the barren tops of rocky passes, where the soul has
+seemed to hear in solitude a low controlling voice. It is almost
+necessary for the development of our deepest affections that some sad
+and sombre moments should be interchanged with hours of merriment and
+elasticity. It is this variety in the woof of daily life which endears
+our home to us; and perhaps none have fully loved the Alps who have
+not spent some days of meditation, or it may be of sorrow, among their
+solitudes. Splendid scenery, like music, has the power to make 'of
+grief itself a fiery chariot for mounting above the sources of grief,'
+to ennoble and refine our passions, and to teach us that our lives
+are merely moments in the years of the eternal Being. There are many,
+perhaps, who, within sight of some great scene among the Alps, upon
+the height of the Stelvio or the slopes of Muerren, or at night in
+the valley of Courmayeur, have felt themselves raised above cares
+and doubts and miseries by the mere recognition of unchangeable
+magnificence; have found a deep peace in the sense of their own
+nothingness. It is not granted to us everyday to stand upon these
+pinnacles of rest and faith above the world. But having once stood
+there, how can we forget the station? How can we fail, amid the
+tumult of our common cares, to feel at times the hush of that far-off
+tranquillity? When our life is most commonplace, when we are ill or
+weary in city streets, we can remember the clouds upon the mountains
+we have seen, the sound of innumerable waterfalls, and the scent of
+countless flowers. A photograph of Bisson's or of Braun's, the name of
+some well-known valley, the picture of some Alpine plant, rouses the
+sacred hunger in our souls, and stirs again the faith in beauty and
+in rest beyond ourselves which no man can take from us. We owe a
+deep debt of gratitude to everything which enables us to rise above
+depressing and enslaving circumstances, which brings us nearer in some
+way or other to what is eternal in the universe, and which makes us
+know that, whether we live or die, suffer or enjoy, life and gladness
+are still strong in the world. On this account, the proper attitude
+of the soul among the Alps is one of silence. It is almost impossible
+without a kind of impiety to frame in words the feelings they inspire.
+Yet there are some sayings, hallowed by long usage, which throng
+the mind through a whole summer's day, and seem in harmony with its
+emotions--some portions of the Psalms or lines of greatest poets,
+inarticulate hymns of Beethoven and Mendelssohn, waifs and strays not
+always apposite, but linked by strong and subtle chains of feeling
+with the grandeur of the mountains. This reverential feeling for
+the Alps is connected with the Pantheistic form of our religious
+sentiments to which I have before alluded. It is a trite remark, that
+even devout men of the present generation prefer temples _not_
+made with hands to churches, and worship God in the fields more
+contentedly than in their pews. What Mr. Ruskin calls 'the instinctive
+sense of the divine presence not formed into distinct belief' lies at
+the root of our profound veneration for the nobler aspects of mountain
+scenery. This instinctive sense has been very variously expressed by
+Goethe in Faust's celebrated confession of faith, by Shelley in the
+stanzas of 'Adonais,' which begin 'He is made one with nature,' by
+Wordsworth in the lines on Tintern Abbey, and lately by Mr. Roden Noel
+in his noble poems of Pantheism. It is more or less strongly felt by
+all who have recognised the indubitable fact that religious belief is
+undergoing a sure process of change from the dogmatic distinctness of
+the past to some at present dimly descried creed of the future. Such
+periods of transition are of necessity full of discomfort, doubt, and
+anxiety, vague, variable, and unsatisfying. The men in whose spirits
+the fermentation of the change is felt, who have abandoned their
+old moorings, and have not yet reached the haven for which they are
+steering, cannot but be indistinct and undecided in their faith. The
+universe of which they form a part becomes important to them in its
+infinite immensity. The principles of beauty, goodness, order and law,
+no longer connected in their minds with definite articles of faith,
+find symbols in the outer world. They are glad to fly at certain
+moments from mankind and its oppressive problems, for which religion
+no longer provides a satisfactory solution, to Nature, where they
+vaguely localise the spirit that broods over us controlling all our
+being. To such men Goethe's hymn is a form of faith, and born of such
+a mood are the following far humbler verses:--
+
+  At Muerren let the morning lead thee out
+  To walk upon the cold and cloven hills,
+  To hear the congregated mountains shout
+  Their paean of a thousand foaming rills.
+  Raimented with intolerable light
+  The snow-peaks stand above thee, row on row
+  Arising, each a seraph in his might;
+  An organ each of varied stop doth blow.
+  Heaven's azure dome trembles through all her spheres,
+  Feeling that music vibrate; and the sun
+  Raises his tenor as he upward steers,
+  And all the glory-coated mists that run
+  Below him in the valley, hear his voice,
+  And cry unto the dewy fields, Rejoice!
+
+There is a profound sympathy between music and fine scenery: they both
+affect us in the same way, stirring strong but undefined emotions,
+which express themselves in 'idle tears,' or evoking thoughts 'which
+lie,' as Wordsworth says, 'too deep for tears,' beyond the reach
+of any words. How little we know what multitudes of mingling
+reminiscences, held in solution by the mind, and colouring its fancy
+with the iridescence of variable hues, go to make up the sentiments
+which music or which mountains stir! It is the very vagueness,
+changefulness, and dreamlike indistinctness of these feelings which
+cause their charm; they harmonise with the haziness of our beliefs and
+seem to make our very doubts melodious. For this reason it is obvious
+that unrestrained indulgence in the pleasures of music or of scenery
+may tend to destroy habits of clear thinking, sentimentalise the mind,
+and render it more apt to entertain embryonic fancies than to bring
+ideas to definite perfection.
+
+If hours of thoughtfulness and seclusion are necessary to the
+development of a true love for the Alps, it is no less essential to a
+right understanding of their beauty that we should pass some wet and
+gloomy days among the mountains. The unclouded sunsets and sunrises
+which often follow one another in September in the Alps, have
+something terrible. They produce a satiety of splendour, and oppress
+the mind with a sense of perpetuity. I remember spending such a season
+in one of the Oberland valleys, high up above the pine-trees, in
+a little chalet. Morning after morning I awoke to see the sunbeams
+glittering on the Eiger and the Jungfrau; noon after noon the
+snow-fields blazed beneath a steady fire; evening after evening they
+shone like beacons in the red light of the setting sun. Then peak by
+peak they lost the glow; the soul passed from them, and they stood
+pale yet weirdly garish against the darkened sky. The stars came out,
+the moon shone, but not a cloud sailed over the untroubled heavens.
+Thus day after day for several weeks there was no change, till I was
+seized with an overpowering horror of unbroken calm. I left the valley
+for a time; and when I returned to it in wind and rain, I found that
+the partial veiling of the mountain heights restored the charm which
+I had lost and made me feel once more at home. The landscape takes a
+graver tone beneath the mist that hides the higher peaks, and
+comes drifting, creeping, feeling, through the pines upon their
+slopes--white, silent, blinding vapour-wreaths around the sable
+spires. Sometimes the cloud descends and blots out everything. Again
+it lifts a little, showing cottages and distant Alps beneath its
+skirts. Then it sweeps over the whole valley like a veil, just broken
+here and there above a lonely chalet or a thread of distant dangling
+torrent foam. Sounds, too, beneath the mist are more strange. The
+torrent seems to have a hoarser voice and grinds the stones more
+passionately against its boulders. The cry of shepherds through the
+fog suggests the loneliness and danger of the hills. The bleating
+of penned sheep or goats, and the tinkling of the cowbells, are
+mysteriously distant and yet distinct in the dull dead air. Then,
+again, how immeasurably high above our heads appear the domes and
+peaks of snow revealed through chasms in the drifting cloud; how
+desolate the glaciers and the avalanches in gleams of light that
+struggle through the mist! There is a leaden glare peculiar to clouds,
+which makes the snow and ice more lurid. Not far from the house where
+I am writing, the avalanche that swept away the bridge last winter is
+lying now, dripping away, dank and dirty, like a rotting whale. I can
+see it from my window, green beech-boughs nodding over it, forlorn
+larches bending their tattered branches by its side, splinters of
+broken pine protruding from its muddy caves, the boulders on its
+flank, and the hoarse hungry torrent tossing up its tongues to lick
+the ragged edge of snow. Close by, the meadows, spangled with yellow
+flowers and red and blue, look even more brilliant than if the sun
+were shining on them. Every cup and blade of grass is drinking. But
+the scene changes; the mist has turned into rain-clouds, and the
+steady rain drips down, incessant, blotting out the view. Then, too,
+what a joy it is if the clouds break towards evening with a north
+wind, and a rainbow in the valley gives promise of a bright to-morrow!
+We look up to the cliffs above our heads, and see that they have just
+been powdered with the snow that is a sign of better weather.
+
+Such rainy days ought to be spent in places like Seelisberg and
+Muerren, at the edge of precipices, in front of mountains, or above a
+lake. The cloud-masses crawl and tumble about the valleys like a brood
+of dragons; now creeping along the ledges of the rock with sinuous
+self-adjustment to its turns and twists; now launching out into
+the deep, repelled by battling winds, or driven onward in a coil of
+twisted and contorted serpent curls. In the midst of summer these wet
+seasons often end in a heavy fall of snow. You wake some morning to
+see the meadows which last night were gay with July flowers huddled
+up in snow a foot in depth. But fair weather does not tarry long to
+reappear. You put on your thickest boots and sally forth to find the
+great cups of the gentians full of snow, and to watch the rising of
+the cloud-wreaths under the hot sun. Bad dreams or sickly thoughts,
+dissipated by returning daylight or a friend's face, do not fly away
+more rapidly and pleasantly than those swift glory-coated mists that
+lose themselves we know not where in the blue depths of the sky.
+
+In contrast with these rainy days nothing can be more perfect than
+clear moonlight nights. There is a terrace upon the roof of the inn at
+Courmayeur where one may spend hours in the silent watches, when all
+the world has gone to sleep beneath. The Mont Chetif and the Mont
+de la Saxe form a gigantic portal not unworthy of the pile that lies
+beyond. For Mont Blanc resembles a vast cathedral; its countless
+spires are scattered over a mass like that of the Duomo at Milan,
+rising into one tower at the end. By night the glaciers glitter in the
+steady moon; domes, pinnacles, and buttresses stand clear of clouds.
+Needles of every height and most fantastic shapes rise from the
+central ridge, some solitary, like sharp arrows shot against the sky,
+some clustering into sheaves. On every horn of snow and bank of grassy
+hill stars sparkle, rising, setting, rolling round through the long
+silent night. Moonlight simplifies and softens the landscape. Colours
+become scarcely distinguishable, and forms, deprived of half their
+detail, gain in majesty and size. The mountains seem greater far by
+night than day--higher heights and deeper depths, more snowy pyramids,
+more beetling crags, softer meadows, and darker pines. The whole
+valley is hushed, but for the torrent and the chirping grasshopper and
+the striking of the village clocks. The black tower and the houses of
+Courmayeur in the foreground gleam beneath the moon until she reaches
+the edge of the Cramont, and then sinks quietly away, once more
+to reappear among the pines, then finally to leave the valley dark
+beneath the shadow of the mountain's bulk. Meanwhile the heights of
+snow still glitter in the steady light: they, too, will soon be dark,
+until the dawn breaks, tinging them with rose.
+
+But it is not fair to dwell exclusively upon the more sombre aspect of
+Swiss beauty when there are so many lively scenes of which to speak.
+The sunlight and the freshness and the flowers of Alpine meadows form
+more than half the charm of Switzerland. The other day we walked to a
+pasture called the Col de Checruit, high up the valley of Courmayeur,
+where the spring was still in its first freshness. Gradually we
+climbed, by dusty roads and through hot fields where the grass had
+just been mown, beneath the fierce light of the morning sun. Not a
+breath of air was stirring, and the heavy pines hung overhead upon
+their crags, as if to fence the gorge from every wandering breeze.
+There is nothing more oppressive than these scorching sides of narrow
+rifts, shut in by woods and precipices. But suddenly the valley
+broadened, the pines and larches disappeared, and we found ourselves
+upon a wide green semicircle of the softest meadows. Little rills of
+water went rushing through them, rippling over pebbles, rustling under
+dock leaves, and eddying against their wooden barriers. Far and wide
+'you scarce could see the grass for flowers,' while on every side
+the tinkling of cow-bells, and the voices of shepherds calling to one
+another from the Alps, or singing at their work, were borne across the
+fields. As we climbed we came into still fresher pastures, where the
+snow had scarcely melted. There the goats and cattle were collected,
+and the shepherds sat among them, fondling the kids and calling them
+by name. When they called, the creatures came, expecting salt and
+bread. It was pretty to see them lying near their masters, playing and
+butting at them with their horns, or bleating for the sweet rye-bread.
+The women knitted stockings, laughing among themselves, and singing
+all the while. As soon as we reached them, they gathered round to
+talk. An old herdsman, who was clearly the patriarch of this Arcadia,
+asked us many questions in a slow deliberate voice. We told him who
+we were, and tried to interest him in the cattle-plague, which he
+appeared to regard as an evil very unreal and far away--like the
+murrain upon Pharaoh's herds which one reads about in Exodus. But
+he was courteous and polite, doing the honours of his pasture with
+simplicity and ease. He took us to his chalet and gave us bowls of
+pure cold milk. It was a funny little wooden house, clean and dark.
+The sky peeped through its tiles, and if shepherds were not in the
+habit of sleeping soundly all night long, they might count the setting
+and rising stars without lifting their heads from the pillow. He told
+us how far pleasanter they found the summer season than the long cold
+winter which they have to spend in gloomy houses in Courmayeur. This,
+indeed, is the true pastoral life which poets have described--a happy
+summer holiday among the flowers, well occupied with simple cares, and
+harassed by 'no enemy but winter and rough weather.'
+
+Very much of the charm of Switzerland belongs to simple things--to
+greetings from the herdsmen, the 'Guten Morgen,' and 'Guten Abend,'
+that are invariably given and taken upon mountain paths; to the tame
+creatures, with their large dark eyes, who raise their heads one
+moment from the pasture while you pass; and to the plants that grow
+beneath your feet. The latter end of May is the time when spring
+begins in the high Alps. Wherever sunlight smiles away a patch of
+snow, the brown turf soon becomes green velvet, and the velvet stars
+itself with red and white and gold and blue. You almost see the grass
+and lilies grow. First come pale crocuses and lilac soldanellas. These
+break the last dissolving clods of snow, and stand upon an island,
+with the cold wall they have thawed all round them. It is the fate
+of these poor flowers to spring and flourish on the very skirts
+of retreating winter; they soon wither--the frilled chalice of the
+soldanella shrivels up and the crocus fades away before the grass
+has grown; the sun, which is bringing all the other plants to life,
+scorches their tender petals. Often when summer has fairly come,
+you still may see their pearly cups and lilac bells by the side of
+avalanches, between the chill snow and the fiery sun, blooming and
+fading hour by hour. They have as it were but a Pisgah view of the
+promised land, of the spring which they are foremost to proclaim. Next
+come the clumsy gentians and yellow anemones, covered with soft
+down like fledgling birds. These are among the earliest and hardiest
+blossoms that embroider the high meadows with a diaper of blue and
+gold. About the same time primroses and auriculas begin to tuft the
+dripping rocks, while frail white fleur-de-lis, like flakes of
+snow forgotten by the sun, and golden-balled ranunculuses join with
+forget-me-nots and cranesbill in a never-ending dance upon the grassy
+floor. Happy, too, is he who finds the lilies-of-the-valley clustering
+about the chestnut boles upon the Colma, or in the beechwood by
+the stream at Macugnaga, mixed with garnet-coloured columbines and
+fragrant white narcissus, which the people of the villages call
+'Angiolini.' There, too, is Solomon's seal, with waxen bells and
+leaves expanded like the wings of hovering butterflies. But these
+lists of flowers are tiresome and cold; it would be better to draw
+the portrait of one which is particularly fascinating. I think that
+botanists have called it _Saxifraga cotyledon_; yet, in spite
+of its long name, it is beautiful and poetic. London-pride is the
+commonest of all the saxifrages; but the one of which I speak is as
+different from London-pride as a Plantagenet upon his throne from that
+last Plantagenet who died obscure and penniless some years ago. It is
+a great majestic flower, which plumes the granite rocks of Monte Rosa
+in the spring. At other times of the year you see a little tuft of
+fleshy leaves set like a cushion on cold ledges and dark places of
+dripping cliffs. You take it for a stonecrop--one of those weeds
+doomed to obscurity, and safe from being picked because they are so
+uninviting--and you pass it by incuriously. But about June it puts
+forth its power, and from the cushion of pale leaves there springs a
+strong pink stem, which rises upward for a while, and then curves
+down and breaks into a shower of snow-white blossoms. Far away the
+splendour gleams, hanging like a plume of ostrich-feathers from the
+roof of rock, waving to the wind, or stooping down to touch the water
+of the mountain stream that dashes it with dew. The snow at evening,
+glowing with a sunset flush, is not more rosy-pure than this cascade
+of pendent blossoms. It loves to be alone--inaccessible ledges, chasms
+where winds combat, or moist caverns overarched near thundering falls,
+are the places that it seeks. I will not compare it to a spirit of the
+mountains or to a proud lonely soul, for such comparisons desecrate
+the simplicity of nature, and no simile can add a glory to the flower.
+It seems to have a conscious life of its own, so large and glorious
+it is, so sensitive to every breath of air, so nobly placed upon its
+bending stem, so royal in its solitude. I first saw it years ago on
+the Simplon, feathering the drizzling crags above Isella. Then we
+found it near Baveno, in a crack of sombre cliff beneath the mines.
+The other day we cut an armful opposite Varallo, by the Sesia, and
+then felt like murderers; it was so sad to hold in our hands the
+triumph of those many patient months, the full expansive life of
+the flower, the splendour visible from valleys and hillsides, the
+defenceless creature which had done its best to make the gloomy places
+of the Alps most beautiful.
+
+After passing many weeks among the high Alps it is a pleasure to
+descend into the plains. The sunset, and sunrise, and the stars of
+Lombardy, its level horizons and vague misty distances, are a source
+of absolute relief after the narrow skies and embarrassed prospects of
+a mountain valley. Nor are the Alps themselves ever more imposing than
+when seen from Milan or the church-tower of Chivasso or the terrace
+of Novara, with a foreground of Italian cornfields and old city towers
+and rice-ground, golden-green beneath a Lombard sun. Half veiled
+by clouds, the mountains rise like visionary fortress walls of a
+celestial city--unapproachable, beyond the range of mortal feet.
+But those who know by old experience what friendly chalets, and cool
+meadows, and clear streams are hidden in their folds and valleys,
+send forth fond thoughts and messages, like carrier-pigeons, from the
+marble parapets of Milan, crying, 'Before another sun has set, I too
+shall rest beneath the shadow of their pines!' It is in truth not more
+than a day's journey from Milan to the brink of snow at Macugnaga. But
+very sad it is to _leave_ the Alps, to stand upon the terraces
+of Berne and waft ineffectual farewells. The unsympathising Aar
+rushes beneath; and the snow-peaks, whom we love like friends, abide
+untroubled by the coming and the going of the world. The clouds drift
+over them--the sunset warms them with a fiery kiss. Night comes, and
+we are hurried far away to wake beside the Seine, remembering, with a
+pang of jealous passion, that the flowers on Alpine meadows are still
+blooming, and the rivulets still flowing with a ceaseless song, while
+Paris shops are all we see, and all we hear is the dull clatter of a
+Paris crowd.
+
+
+_THE ALPS IN WINTER_
+
+
+The gradual approach of winter is very lovely in the high Alps. The
+valley of Davos, where I am writing, more than five thousand feet
+above the sea, is not beautiful, as Alpine valleys go, though it has
+scenery both picturesque and grand within easy reach. But when summer
+is passing into autumn, even the bare slopes of the least romantic
+glen are glorified. Golden lights and crimson are cast over the
+grey-green world by the fading of innumerable plants. Then the larches
+begin to put on sallow tints that deepen into orange, burning against
+the solid blue sky like amber. The frosts are severe at night, and the
+meadow grass turns dry and wan. The last lilac crocuses die upon the
+fields. Icicles, hanging from watercourse or mill-wheel, glitter in
+the noonday sunlight. The wind blows keenly from the north, and now
+the snow begins to fall and thaw and freeze, and fall and thaw again.
+The seasons are confused; wonderful days of flawless purity are
+intermingled with storm and gloom. At last the time comes when a great
+snowfall has to be expected. There is hard frost in the early morning,
+and at nine o'clock the thermometer stands at 2 deg.. The sky is clear,
+but it clouds rapidly with films of cirrus and of stratus in the south
+and west. Soon it is covered over with grey vapour in a level sheet,
+all the hill-tops standing hard against the steely heavens. The cold
+wind from the west freezes the moustache to one's pipe-stem. By noon
+the air is thick with a coagulated mist; the temperature meanwhile has
+risen, and a little snow falls at intervals. The valleys are filled
+with a curious opaque blue, from which the peaks rise, phantom-like
+and pallid, into the grey air, scarcely distinguishable from their
+background. The pine-forests on the mountain-sides are of darkest
+indigo. There is an indescribable stillness and a sense of incubation.
+The wind has fallen. Later on, the snow-flakes flutter silently and
+sparely through the lifeless air. The most distant landscape is quite
+blotted out. After sunset the clouds have settled down upon the hills,
+and the snow comes in thick, impenetrable fleeces. At night our hair
+crackles and sparkles when we brush it. Next morning there is a foot
+and a half of finely powdered snow, and still the snow is falling.
+Strangely loom the chalets through the semi-solid whiteness. Yet the
+air is now dry and singularly soothing. The pines are heavy with their
+wadded coverings; now and again one shakes himself in silence, and his
+burden falls in a white cloud, to leave a black-green patch upon the
+hillside, whitening again as the imperturbable fall continues. The
+stakes by the roadside are almost buried. No sound is audible. Nothing
+is seen but the snow-plough, a long raft of planks with a heavy stone
+at its stem and a sharp prow, drawn by four strong horses, and driven
+by a young man erect upon the stem.
+
+So we live through two days and nights, and on the third a north wind
+blows. The snow-clouds break and hang upon the hills in scattered
+fleeces; glimpses of blue sky shine through, and sunlight glints along
+the heavy masses. The blues of the shadows are everywhere intense. As
+the clouds disperse, they form in moulded domes, tawny like sunburned
+marble in the distant south lands. Every chalet is a miracle of
+fantastic curves, built by the heavy hanging snow. Snow lies mounded
+on the roads and fields, writhed into loveliest wreaths, or outspread
+in the softest undulations. All the irregularities of the hills are
+softened into swelling billows like the mouldings of Titanic statuary.
+
+It happened once or twice last winter that such a clearing after
+snowfall took place at full moon. Then the moon rose in a swirl of
+fleecy vapour--clouds above, beneath, and all around. The sky was
+blue as steel, and infinitely deep with mist-entangled stars. The horn
+above which she first appears stood carved of solid black, and through
+the valley's length from end to end yawned chasms and clefts of liquid
+darkness. As the moon rose, the clouds were conquered, and massed into
+rolling waves upon the ridges of the hills. The spaces of open sky
+grew still more blue. At last the silver light came flooding over all,
+and here and there the fresh snow glistened on the crags. There is
+movement, palpitation, life of light through earth and sky. To walk
+out on such a night, when the perturbation of storm is over and the
+heavens are free, is one of the greatest pleasures offered by this
+winter life. It is so light that you can read the smallest print with
+ease. The upper sky looks quite black, shading by violet and sapphire
+into turquoise upon the horizon. There is the colour of ivory upon
+the nearest snow-fields, and the distant peaks sparkle like silver,
+crystals glitter in all directions on the surface of the snow, white,
+yellow, and pale blue. The stars are exceedingly keen, but only a few
+can shine in the intensity of moonlight. The air is perfectly still,
+and though icicles may be hanging from beard and moustache to the furs
+beneath one's chin, there is no sensation of extreme cold.
+
+During the earlier frosts of the season, after the first snows have
+fallen, but when there is still plenty of moisture in the ground,
+the loveliest fern-fronds of pure rime may be found in myriads on the
+meadows. They are fashioned like perfect vegetable structures, opening
+fan-shaped upon crystal stems, and catching the sunbeams with the
+brilliancy of diamonds. Taken at certain angles, they decompose light
+into iridescent colours, appearing now like emeralds, rubies, or
+topazes, and now like Labrador spar, blending all hues in a wondrous
+sheen. When the lake freezes for the first time, its surface is of
+course quite black, and so transparent that it is easy to see the
+fishes swimming in the deep beneath; but here and there, where rime
+has fallen, there sparkle these fantastic flowers and ferns and mosses
+made of purest frost. Nothing, indeed, can be more fascinating than
+the new world revealed by frost. In shaded places of the valley you
+may walk through larches and leafless alder thickets by silent farms,
+all silvered over with hoar spangles--fairy forests, where the flowers
+and foliage are rime. The streams are flowing half-frozen over rocks
+sheeted with opaque green ice. Here it is strange to watch the swirl
+of water freeing itself from these frost-shackles, and to see it
+eddying beneath the overhanging eaves of frailest crystal-frosted
+snow. All is so silent, still, and weird in this white world, that one
+marvels when the spirit of winter will appear, or what shrill voices
+in the air will make his unimaginable magic audible. Nothing happens,
+however, to disturb the charm, save when a sunbeam cuts the chain of
+diamonds on an alder bough, and down they drift in a thin cloud of
+dust. It may be also that the air is full of floating crystals,
+like tiniest most restless fire-flies rising and falling and passing
+crosswise in the sun-illumined shade of tree or mountain-side.
+
+It is not easy to describe these beauties of the winter-world; and yet
+one word must be said about the sunsets. Let us walk out, therefore,
+towards the lake at four o'clock in mid-December. The thermometer is
+standing at 3 deg., and there is neither breath of wind nor cloud. Venus
+is just visible in rose and sapphire, and the thin young moon is
+beside her. To east and south the snowy ranges burn with yellow fire,
+deepening to orange and crimson hues, which die away and leave a
+greenish pallor. At last, the higher snows alone are livid with a last
+faint tinge of light, and all beneath is quite white. But the tide
+of glory turns. While the west grows momently more pale, the eastern
+heavens flush with afterglow, suffuse their spaces with pink and
+violet. Daffodil and tenderest emerald intermingle; and these colours
+spread until the west again has rose and primrose and sapphire
+wonderfully blent, and from the burning skies a light is cast upon the
+valley--a phantom light, less real, more like the hues of molten
+gems, than were the stationary flames of sunset. Venus and the moon
+meanwhile are silvery clear. Then the whole illumination fades like
+magic.
+
+All the charms of which I have been writing are combined in a
+sledge-drive. With an arrowy gliding motion one passes through the
+snow-world as through a dream. In the sunlight the snow surface
+sparkles with its myriad stars of crystals. In the shadow it ceases
+to glitter, and assumes a blueness scarcely less blue than the sky.
+So the journey is like sailing through alternate tracts of light
+irradiate heavens, and interstellar spaces of the clearest and most
+flawless ether. The air is like the keen air of the highest glaciers.
+As we go, the bells keep up a drowsy tinkling at the horse's head.
+The whole landscape is transfigured--lifted high up out of
+commonplaceness. The little hills are Monte Rosas and Mont Blancs.
+Scale is annihilated, and nothing tells but form. There is hardly
+any colour except the blue of sky and shadow. Everything is traced in
+vanishing tints, passing from the almost amber of the distant sunlight
+through glowing white into pale greys and brighter blues and deep
+ethereal azure. The pines stand in black platoons upon the hillsides,
+with a tinge of red or orange on their sable. Some carry masses of
+snow. Others have shaken their plumes free. The chalets are like fairy
+houses or toys, waist-deep in stores of winter fuel. With their mellow
+tones of madder and umber on the weather-beaten woodwork relieved
+against the white, with fantastic icicles and folds of snow depending
+from their eaves, or curled like coverlids from roof and window-sill,
+they are far more picturesque than in the summer. Colour, wherever it
+is found, whether in these cottages or in a block of serpentine by
+the roadside, or in the golden bulrush blades by the lake shore, takes
+more than double value. It is shed upon the landscape like a spiritual
+and transparent veil. Most beautiful of all are the sweeping lines of
+pure untroubled snow, fold over fold of undulating softness, billowing
+along the skirts of the peaked hills. There is no conveying the
+charm of immaterial, aerial, lucid beauty, the feeling of purity and
+aloofness from sordid things, conveyed by the fine touch on all our
+senses of light, colour, form, and air, and motion, and rare tinkling
+sound. The magic is like a spirit mood of Shelley's lyric verse. And,
+what is perhaps most wonderful, this delicate delight may be enjoyed
+without fear in the coldest weather. It does not matter how low the
+temperature may be, if the sun is shining, the air dry, and the wind
+asleep.
+
+Leaving the horse-sledges on the verge of some high hill-road, and
+trusting oneself to the little hand-sledge which the people of the
+Grisons use, and which the English have christened by the Canadian
+term 'toboggan,' the excitement becomes far greater. The hand-sledge
+is about three feet long, fifteen inches wide, and half a foot above
+the ground, on runners shod with iron. Seated firmly at the back,
+and guiding with the feet in front, the rider skims down precipitous
+slopes and round perilous corners with a rapidity that beats a horse's
+pace. Winding through sombre pine-forests, where the torrent roars
+fitfully among caverns of barbed ice, and the glistening mountains
+tower above in their glory of sun-smitten snow, darting round the
+frozen ledges at the turnings of the road, silently gliding at a speed
+that seems incredible, it is so smooth, he traverses two or three
+miles without fatigue, carried onward by the mere momentum of his
+weight. It is a strange and great joy. The toboggan, under these
+conditions, might be compared to an enchanted boat shooting the rapids
+of a river; and what adds to its fascination is the entire loneliness
+in which the rider passes through those weird and ever-shifting scenes
+of winter radiance. Sometimes, when the snow is drifting up the pass,
+and the world is blank behind, before, and all around, it seems like
+plunging into chaos. The muffled pines loom fantastically through
+the drift as we rush past them, and the wind, ever and anon, detaches
+great masses of snow in clouds from their bent branches. Or again at
+night, when the moon is shining, and the sky is full of flaming
+stars, and the snow, frozen to the hardness of marble, sparkles with
+innumerable crystals, a new sense of strangeness and of joy is given
+to the solitude, the swiftness, and the silence of the exercise.
+No other circumstances invest the poetry of rapid motion with more
+fascination. Shelley, who so loved the fancy of a boat inspired with
+its own instinct of life, would have delighted in the game, and would
+probably have pursued it recklessly. At the same time, as practised
+on a humbler scale nearer home, in company, and on a run selected for
+convenience rather than for picturesqueness, tobogganing is a very
+Bohemian amusement. No one who indulges in it can count on avoiding
+hard blows and violent upsets, nor will his efforts to maintain his
+equilibrium at the dangerous corners be invariably graceful.
+
+Nothing, it might be imagined, could be more monotonous than an Alpine
+valley covered up with snow. And yet to one who has passed many months
+in that seclusion Nature herself presents no monotony; for the changes
+constantly wrought by light and cloud and alternations of weather
+on this landscape are infinitely various. The very simplicity of the
+conditions seems to assist the supreme artist. One day is wonderful
+because of its unsullied purity; not a cloud visible, and the pines
+clothed in velvet of rich green beneath a faultless canopy of light.
+The next presents a fretwork of fine film, wrought by the south wind
+over the whole sky, iridescent with delicate rainbow tints within the
+influences of the sun, and ever-changing shape. On another, when the
+turbulent Foehn is blowing, streamers of snow may be seen flying from
+the higher ridges against a pallid background of slaty cloud, while
+the gaunt ribs of the hills glisten below with fitful gleams of lurid
+light. At sunrise, one morning, stealthy and mysterious vapours clothe
+the mountains from their basement to the waist, while the peaks are
+glistening serenely in clear daylight. Another opens with silently
+falling snow. A third is rosy through the length and breadth of the
+dawn-smitten valley. It is, however, impossible to catalogue the
+indescribable variety of those beauties, which those who love nature
+may enjoy by simply waiting on the changes of the winter in a single
+station of the Alps.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+_WINTER NIGHTS AT DAVOS_
+
+
+I
+
+Light, marvellously soft yet penetrating, everywhere diffused,
+everywhere reflected without radiance, poured from the moon high above
+our heads in a sky tinted through all shades and modulations of blue,
+from turquoise on the horizon to opaque sapphire at the zenith--_dolce
+color_. (It is difficult to use the word _colour_ for this scene
+without suggesting an exaggeration. The blue is almost indefinable,
+yet felt. But if possible, the total effect of the night landscape
+should be rendered by careful exclusion of tints from the
+word-palette. The art of the etcher is more needed than that of the
+painter.) Heaven overhead is set with stars, shooting intensely,
+smouldering with dull red in Aldeboran, sparkling diamond-like in
+Sirius, changing from orange to crimson and green in the swart fire of
+yonder double star. On the snow this moonlight falls tenderly, not in
+hard white light and strong black shadow, but in tones of cream and
+ivory, rounding the curves of drift. The mountain peaks alone glisten
+as though they were built of silver burnished by an agate. Far away
+they rise diminished in stature by the all-pervading dimness of bright
+light, that erases the distinctions of daytime. On the path before our
+feet lie crystals of many hues, the splinters of a thousand gems. In
+the wood there are caverns of darkness, alternating with spaces of
+star-twinkled sky, or windows opened between russet stems and solid
+branches for the moony sheen. The green of the pines is felt, although
+invisible, so soft in substance that it seems less like velvet than
+some materialised depth of dark green shadow.
+
+II
+
+Snow falling noiseless and unseen. One only knows that it is falling
+by the blinking of our eyes as the flakes settle on their lids and
+melt. The cottage windows shine red, and moving lanterns of belated
+wayfarers define the void around them. Yet the night is far from dark.
+The forests and the mountain-bulk beyond the valley loom softly large
+and just distinguishable through a pearly haze. The path is purest
+trackless whiteness, almost dazzling though it has no light. This was
+what Dante felt when he reached the lunar sphere:
+
+  Parova a me, che nube ne coprisse
+  Lucida, spessa, solida e pulita.
+
+Walking silent, with insensible footfall, slowly, for the snow is deep
+above our ankles, we wonder what the world would be like if this were
+all. Could the human race be acclimatised to this monotony (we say)
+perhaps emotion would be rarer, yet more poignant, suspended brooding
+on itself, and wakening by flashes to a quintessential mood. Then
+fancy changes, and the thought occurs that even so must be a planet,
+not yet wholly made, nor called to take her place among the sisterhood
+of light and song.
+
+III
+
+Sunset was fading out upon the Rhaetikon and still reflected from the
+Seehorn on the lake, when we entered the gorge of the Fluela--dense
+pines on either hand, a mounting drift of snow in front, and faint
+peaks, paling from rose to saffron, far above, beyond. There was
+no sound but a tinkling stream and the continual jingle of our
+sledge-bells. We drove at a foot's pace, our horse finding his own
+path. When we left the forest, the light had all gone except for some
+almost imperceptible touches of primrose on the eastern horns. It was
+a moonless night, but the sky was alive with stars, and now and then
+one fell. The last house in the valley was soon passed, and we entered
+those bleak gorges where the wind, fine, noiseless, penetrating like
+an edge of steel, poured slantwise on us from the north. As we rose,
+the stars to west seemed far beneath us, and the Great Bear sprawled
+upon the ridges of the lower hills outspread. We kept slowly moving
+onward, upward, into what seemed like a thin impalpable mist, but
+was immeasurable tracts of snow. The last cembras were left behind,
+immovable upon dark granite boulders on our right. We entered a
+formless and unbillowed sea of greyness, from which there rose dim
+mountain-flanks that lost themselves in air. Up, ever up, and
+still below us westward sank the stars. We were now 7500 feet above
+sea-level, and the December night was rigid with intensity of frost.
+The cold, and movement, and solemnity of space, drowsed every sense.
+
+IV
+
+The memory of things seen and done in moonlight is like the memory of
+dreams. It is as a dream that I recall the night of our tobogganing to
+Klosters, though it was full enough of active energy. The moon was in
+her second quarter, slightly filmed with very high thin clouds, that
+disappeared as night advanced, leaving the sky and stars in all their
+lustre. A sharp frost, sinking to three degrees above zero Fahrenheit,
+with a fine pure wind, such wind as here they call 'the mountain
+breath.' We drove to Wolfgang in a two-horse sledge, four of us
+inside, and our two Christians on the box. Up there, where the Alps of
+Death descend to join the Lakehorn Alps, above the Wolfswalk, there
+is a world of whiteness--frozen ridges, engraved like cameos of aerial
+onyx upon the dark, star-tremulous sky; sculptured buttresses of snow,
+enclosing hollows filled with diaphanous shadow, and sweeping aloft
+into the upland fields of pure clear drift. Then came the swift
+descent, the plunge into the pines, moon-silvered on their frosted
+tops. The battalions of spruce that climb those hills defined the
+dazzling snow from which they sprang, like the black tufts upon an
+ermine robe. At the proper moment we left our sledge, and the big
+Christian took his reins in hand to follow us. Furs and greatcoats
+were abandoned. Each stood forth tightly accoutred, with short coat,
+and clinging cap, and gaitered legs for the toboggan. Off we started
+in line, with but brief interval between, at first slowly, then
+glidingly, and when the impetus was gained, with darting, bounding,
+almost savage swiftness--sweeping round corners, cutting the hard
+snow-path with keen runners, avoiding the deep ruts, trusting to
+chance, taking advantage of smooth places, till the rush and swing and
+downward swoop became mechanical. Space was devoured. Into the massy
+shadows of the forest, where the pines joined overhead, we pierced
+without a sound, and felt far more than saw the great rocks with their
+icicles; and out again, emerging into moonlight, met the valley spread
+beneath our feet, the mighty peaks of the Silvretta and the vast blue
+sky. On, on, hurrying, delaying not, the woods and hills rushed by.
+Crystals upon the snow-banks glittered to the stars. Our souls would
+fain have stayed to drink these marvels of the moon-world, but our
+limbs refused. The magic of movement was upon us, and eight minutes
+swallowed the varying impressions of two musical miles. The village
+lights drew near and nearer, then the sombre village huts, and soon
+the speed grew less, and soon we glided to our rest into the sleeping
+village street.
+
+V
+
+It was just past midnight. The moon had fallen to the western horns.
+Orion's belt lay bar-like on the opening of the pass, and Sirius shot
+flame on the Seehorn. A more crystalline night, more full of fulgent
+stars, was never seen, stars everywhere, but mostly scattered in large
+sparkles on the snow. Big Christian went in front, tugging toboggans
+by their strings, as Gulliver, in some old woodcut, drew the fleets
+of Lilliput. Through the brown wood-chalets of Selfrangr, up to the
+undulating meadows, where the snow slept pure and crisp, he led us.
+There we sat awhile and drank the clear air, cooled to zero, but
+innocent and mild as mother Nature's milk. Then in an instant, down,
+down through the hamlet, with its chalets, stables, pumps, and logs,
+the slumbrous hamlet, where one dog barked, and darkness dwelt upon
+the path of ice, down with the tempest of a dreadful speed, that
+shot each rider upward in the air, and made the frame of the toboggan
+tremble--down over hillocks of hard frozen snow, dashing and bounding,
+to the river and the bridge. No bones were broken, though the race was
+thrice renewed, and men were spilt upon the roadside by some furious
+plunge. This amusement has the charm of peril and the unforeseen. In
+no wise else can colder, keener air be drunken at such furious speed.
+The joy, too, of the engine-driver and the steeplechaser is upon us.
+Alas, that it should be so short! If only roads were better made for
+the purpose, there would be no end to it; for the toboggan cannot lose
+his wind. But the good thing fails at last, and from the silence of
+the moon we pass into the silence of the fields of sleep.
+
+VI
+
+The new stable is a huge wooden building, with raftered lofts to stow
+the hay, and stalls for many cows and horses. It stands snugly in an
+angle of the pine-wood, bordering upon the great horse-meadow. Here
+at night the air is warm and tepid with the breath of kine. Returning
+from my forest walk, I spy one window yellow in the moonlight with a
+lamp. I lift the latch. The hound knows me, and does not bark. I enter
+the stable, where six horses are munching their last meal. Upon the
+corn-bin sits a knecht. We light our pipes and talk. He tells me of
+the valley of Arosa (a hawk's flight westward over yonder hills), how
+deep in grass its summer lawns, how crystal-clear its stream, how blue
+its little lakes, how pure, without a taint of mist, 'too beautiful to
+paint,' its sky in winter! This knecht is an Ardueser, and the valley
+of Arosa lifts itself to heaven above his Langwies home. It is his
+duty now to harness a sleigh for some night-work. We shake hands and
+part--I to sleep, he for the snow.
+
+VII
+
+The lake has frozen late this year, and there are places in it where
+the ice is not yet firm. Little snow has fallen since it froze--about
+three inches at the deepest, driven by winds and wrinkled like the
+ribbed sea-sand. Here and there the ice-floor is quite black and
+clear, reflecting stars, and dark as heaven's own depths. Elsewhere it
+is of a suspicious whiteness, blurred in surface, with jagged cracks
+and chasms, treacherously mended by the hand of frost. Moving slowly,
+the snow cries beneath our feet, and the big crystals tinkle. These
+are shaped like fern-fronds, growing fan-wise from a point, and set
+at various angles, so that the moonlight takes them with capricious
+touch. They flash, and are quenched, and flash again, light darting to
+light along the level surface, while the sailing planets and the stars
+look down complacent at this mimicry of heaven. Everything above,
+around, beneath, is very beautiful--the slumbrous woods, the snowy
+fells, and the far distance painted in faint blue upon the tender
+background of the sky. Everything is placid and beautiful; and yet the
+place is terrible. For, as we walk, the lake groans, with throttled
+sobs, and sudden cracklings of its joints, and sighs that shiver,
+undulating from afar, and pass beneath our feet, and die away in
+distance when they reach the shore. And now and then an upper crust
+of ice gives way; and will the gulfs then drag us down? We are in
+the very centre of the lake. There is no use in thinking or in taking
+heed. Enjoy the moment, then, and march. Enjoy the contrast between
+this circumambient serenity and sweetness, and the dreadful sense of
+insecurity beneath. Is not, indeed, our whole life of this nature?
+A passage over perilous deeps, roofed by infinity and sempiternal
+things, surrounded too with evanescent forms, that like these
+crystals, trodden underfoot, or melted by the Foehn-wind into dew,
+flash, in some lucky moment, with a light that mimics stars! But to
+allegorise and sermonise is out of place here. It is but the expedient
+of those who cannot etch sensation by the burin of their art of words.
+
+VIII
+
+It is ten o'clock upon Sylvester Abend, or New Year's Eve. Herr Buol
+sits with his wife at the head of his long table. His family and
+serving folk are round him. There is his mother, with little Ursula,
+his child, upon her knee. The old lady is the mother of four comely
+daughters and nine stalwart sons, the eldest of whom is now a grizzled
+man. Besides our host, four of the brothers are here to-night; the
+handsome melancholy Georg, who is so gentle in his speech; Simeon,
+with his diplomatic face; Florian, the student of medicine; and
+my friend, colossal-breasted Christian. Palmy came a little later,
+worried with many cares, but happy to his heart's core. No optimist
+was ever more convinced of his philosophy than Palmy. After them,
+below the salt, were ranged the knechts and porters, the marmiton
+from the kitchen, and innumerable maids. The board was tesselated with
+plates of birnen-brod and eier-brod, kuechli and cheese and butter; and
+Georg stirred grampampuli in a mighty metal bowl. For the uninitiated,
+it may be needful to explain these Davos delicacies. Birnen-brod
+is what the Scotch would call a 'bun,' or massive cake, composed of
+sliced pears, almonds, spices, and a little flour. Eier-brod is a
+saffron-coloured sweet bread, made with eggs; and kuechli is a kind
+of pastry, crisp and flimsy, fashioned into various devices of cross,
+star, and scroll. Grampampuli is simply brandy burnt with sugar, the
+most unsophisticated punch I ever drank from tumblers. The frugal
+people of Davos, who live on bread and cheese and dried meat all the
+year, indulge themselves but once with these unwonted dainties in the
+winter.
+
+The occasion was cheerful, and yet a little solemn. The scene was
+feudal. For these Buols are the scions of a warrior race:
+
+  A race illustrious for heroic deeds;
+  Humbled, but not degraded.
+
+During the six centuries through which they have lived nobles in
+Davos, they have sent forth scores of fighting men to foreign lands,
+ambassadors to France and Venice and the Milanese, governors to
+Chiavenna and Bregaglia and the much-contested Valtelline. Members of
+their house are Counts of Buol-Schauenstein in Austria, Freiherrs of
+Muhlingen and Berenberg in the now German Empire. They keep the patent
+of nobility conferred on them by Henri IV. Their ancient coat--parted
+per pale azure and argent, with a dame of the fourteenth century
+bearing in her hand a rose, all counterchanged--is carved in wood and
+monumental marble on the churches and old houses hereabouts. And from
+immemorial antiquity the Buol of Davos has sat thus on Sylvester Abend
+with family and folk around him, summoned from alp and snowy field to
+drink grampampuli and break the birnen-brod.
+
+These rites performed, the men and maids began to sing--brown arms
+lounging on the table, and red hands folded in white aprons--serious
+at first in hymn-like cadences, then breaking into wilder measures
+with a jodel at the close. There is a measured solemnity in the
+performance, which strikes the stranger as somewhat comic. But the
+singing was good; the voices strong and clear in tone, no hesitation
+and no shirking of the melody. It was clear that the singers enjoyed
+the music for its own sake, with half-shut eyes, as they take dancing,
+solidly, with deep-drawn breath, sustained and indefatigable. But
+eleven struck; and the two Christians, my old friend, and Palmy, said
+we should be late for church. They had promised to take me with them
+to see bell-ringing in the tower. All the young men of the village
+meet, and draw lots in the Stube of the Rathhaus. One party tolls the
+old year out; the other rings the new year in. He who comes last is
+sconced three litres of Veltliner for the company. This jovial fine
+was ours to pay to-night.
+
+When we came into the air, we found a bitter frost; the whole sky
+clouded over; a north wind whirling snow from alp and forest through
+the murky gloom. The benches and broad walnut tables of the Bathhaus
+were crowded with men, in shaggy homespun of brown and grey frieze.
+Its low wooden roof and walls enclosed an atmosphere of smoke, denser
+than the external snow-drift. But our welcome was hearty, and we found
+a score of friends. Titanic Fopp, whose limbs are Michelangelesque in
+length; spectacled Morosani; the little tailor Kramer, with a French
+horn on his knees; the puckered forehead of the Baumeister; the
+Troll-shaped postman; peasants and woodmen, known on far excursions
+upon pass and upland valley. Not one but carried on his face the
+memory of winter strife with avalanche and snow-drift, of horses
+struggling through Fluela whirlwinds, and wine-casks tugged across
+Bernina, and haystacks guided down precipitous gullies at thundering
+speed 'twixt pine and pine, and larches felled in distant glens beside
+the frozen watercourses. Here we were, all met together for one hour
+from our several homes and occupations, to welcome in the year with
+clinked glasses and cries of _Prosit Neujahr!_
+
+The tolling bells above us stopped. Our turn had come. Out into the
+snowy air we tumbled, beneath the row of wolves' heads that adorn the
+pent-house roof. A few steps brought us to the still God's acre,
+where the snow lay deep and cold upon high-mounded graves of many
+generations. We crossed it silently, bent our heads to the low Gothic
+arch, and stood within the tower. It was thick darkness there. But
+far above, the bells began again to clash and jangle confusedly, with
+volleys of demonic joy. Successive flights of ladders, each ending in
+a giddy platform hung across the gloom, climb to the height of some
+hundred and fifty feet; and all their rungs were crusted with frozen
+snow, deposited by trampling boots. For up and down these stairs,
+ascending and descending, moved other than angels--the friezejacketed
+Buerschen, Grisons bears, rejoicing in their exercise, exhilarated with
+the tingling noise of beaten metal. We reached the first room safely,
+guided by firm-footed Christian, whose one candle just defined the
+rough walls and the slippery steps. There we found a band of boys,
+pulling ropes that set the bells in motion. But our destination
+was not reached. One more aerial ladder, perpendicular in darkness,
+brought us swiftly to the home of sound. It is a small square chamber,
+where the bells are hung, filled with the interlacement of enormous
+beams, and pierced to north and south by open windows, from whose
+parapets I saw the village and the valley spread beneath. The fierce
+wind hurried through it, charged with snow, and its narrow space was
+thronged with men. Men on the platform, men on the window-sills,
+men grappling the bells with iron arms, men brushing by to reach the
+stairs, crossing, recrossing, shouldering their mates, drinking
+red wine from gigantic beakers, exploding crackers, firing squibs,
+shouting and yelling in corybantic chorus. They yelled and shouted,
+one could see it by their open mouths and glittering eyes; but not
+a sound from human lungs could reach our ears. The overwhelming
+incessant thunder of the bells drowned all. It thrilled the tympanum,
+ran through the marrow of the spine, vibrated in the inmost entrails.
+Yet the brain was only steadied and excited by this sea of brazen
+noise. After a few moments I knew the place and felt at home in it.
+Then I enjoyed a spectacle which sculptors might have envied. For they
+ring the bells in Davos after this fashion:--The lads below set them
+going with ropes. The men above climb in pairs on ladders to the beams
+from which they are suspended. Two mighty pine-trees, roughly squared
+and built into the walls, extend from side to side across the belfry.
+Another from which the bells hang, connects these massive trunks
+at right angles. Just where the central beam is wedged into the
+two parallel supports, the ladders reach them from each side of the
+belfry, so that, bending from the higher rung of the ladder, and
+leaning over, stayed upon the lateral beam, each pair of men can keep
+one bell in movement with their hands. Each comrade plants one leg
+upon the ladder, and sets the other knee firmly athwart the horizontal
+pine. Then round each other's waist they twine left arm and right. The
+two have thus become one man. Right arm and left are free to grasp the
+bell's horns, sprouting at its crest beneath the beam. With a grave
+rhythmic motion, bending sideward in a close embrace, swaying and
+returning to their centre from the well-knit loins, they drive the
+force of each strong muscle into the vexed bell. The impact is earnest
+at first, but soon it becomes frantic. The men take something from
+each other of exalted enthusiasm. This efflux of their combined
+energies inspires them and exasperates the mighty resonance of metal
+which they rule. They are lost in a trance of what approximates to
+dervish passion--so thrilling is the surge of sound, so potent are the
+rhythms they obey. Men come and tug them by the heels. One grasps
+the starting thews upon their calves. Another is impatient for their
+place. But they strain still, locked together, and forgetful of the
+world. At length they have enough: then slowly, clingingly unclasp,
+turn round with gazing eyes, and are resumed, sedately, into the
+diurnal round of common life. Another pair is in their room upon the
+beam.
+
+The Englishman who saw these things stood looking up, enveloped in his
+ulster with the grey cowl thrust upon his forehead, like a monk. One
+candle cast a grotesque shadow of him on the plastered wall. And when
+his chance came, though he was but a weakling, he too climbed and for
+some moments hugged the beam, and felt the madness of the swinging
+bell. Descending, he wondered long and strangely whether he
+ascribed too much of feeling to the men he watched. But no, that was
+impossible. There are emotions deeply seated in the joy of exercise,
+when the body is brought into play, and masses move in concert, of
+which the subject is but half conscious. Music and dance, and the
+delirium of battle or the chase, act thus upon spontaneous natures.
+The mystery of rhythm and associated energy and blood tingling
+in sympathy is here. It lies at the root of man's most tyrannous
+instinctive impulses.
+
+It was past one when we reached home, and now a meditative man might
+well have gone to bed. But no one thinks of sleeping on Sylvester
+Abend. So there followed bowls of punch in one friend's room, where
+English, French, and Germans blent together in convivial Babel; and
+flasks of old Montagner in another. Palmy, at this period, wore an
+archdeacon's hat, and smoked a churchwarden's pipe; and neither were
+his own, nor did he derive anything ecclesiastical or Anglican from
+the association. Late in the morning we must sally forth, they said,
+and roam the town. For it is the custom here on New Year's night to
+greet acquaintances, and ask for hospitality, and no one may
+deny these self-invited guests. We turned out again into the grey
+snow-swept gloom, a curious Comus--not at all like Greeks, for we had
+neither torches in our hands nor rose-wreaths to suspend upon a lady's
+door-posts. And yet I could not refrain, at this supreme moment
+of jollity, in the zero temperature, amid my Grisons friends, from
+humming to myself verses from the Greek Anthology:--
+
+  The die is cast! Nay, light the torch!
+  I'll take the road! Up, courage, ho!
+  Why linger pondering in the porch?
+  Upon Love's revel we will go!
+
+  Shake off those fumes of wine! Hang care
+  And caution! What has Love to do
+  With prudence? Let the torches flare!
+  Quick, drown the doubts that hampered you!
+
+  Cast weary wisdom to the wind!
+  One thing, but one alone, I know:
+  Love bent e'en Jove and made him blind
+  Upon Love's revel we will go!
+
+And then again:--
+
+  I've drunk sheer madness! Not with wine,
+  But old fantastic tales, I'll arm
+  My heart in heedlessness divine,
+  And dare the road, nor dream of harm!
+
+  I'll join Love's rout! Let thunder break,
+  Let lightning blast me by the way!
+  Invulnerable Love shall shake
+  His aegis o'er my head to-day.
+
+This last epigram was not inappropriate to an invalid about to begin
+the fifth act in a roystering night's adventure. And still once
+more:--
+
+  Cold blows the winter wind; 'tis Love,
+  Whose sweet eyes swim with honeyed tears,
+  That bears me to thy doors, my love,
+  Tossed by the storm of hopes and fears.
+
+  Cold blows the blast of aching Love;
+  But be thou for my wandering sail,
+  Adrift upon these waves of love,
+  Safe harbour from the whistling gale!
+
+However, upon this occasion, though we had winter-wind enough, and
+cold enough, there was not much love in the business. My arm was
+firmly clenched in Christian Buol's, and Christian Palmy came
+behind, trolling out songs in Italian dialect, with still recurring
+_canaille_ choruses, of which the facile rhymes seemed mostly
+made on a prolonged _amu-u-u-r_. It is noticeable that Italian
+ditties are specially designed for fellows shouting in the streets at
+night. They seem in keeping there, and nowhere else that I could ever
+see. And these Davosers took to them naturally when the time for Comus
+came. It was between four and five in the morning, and nearly all the
+houses in the place were dark. The tall church-tower and spire loomed
+up above us in grey twilight. The tireless wind still swept thin
+snow from fell and forest. But the frenzied bells had sunk into their
+twelvemonth's slumber, which shall be broken only by decorous tollings
+at less festive times. I wondered whether they were tingling still
+with the heart-throbs and with the pressure of those many arms? Was
+their old age warmed, as mine was, with that gust of life--the young
+men who had clung to them like bees to lily-bells, and shaken all
+their locked-up tone and shrillness into the wild winter air? Alas!
+how many generations of the young have handled them; and they are
+still there, frozen in their belfry; and the young grow middle-aged,
+and old, and die at last; and the bells they grappled in their lust
+of manhood toll them to their graves, on which the tireless wind will,
+winter after winter, sprinkle snow from alps and forests which they
+knew.
+
+'There is a light,' cried Christian, 'up in Anna's window!' 'A light!
+a light!' the Comus shouted. But how to get at the window, which is
+pretty high above the ground, and out of reach of the most ardent
+revellers? We search a neighbouring shed, extract a stable-ladder, and
+in two seconds Palmy has climbed to the topmost rung, while Christian
+and Georg hold it firm upon the snow beneath. Then begins a passage
+from some comic opera of Mozart's or Cimarosa's--an escapade familiar
+to Spanish or Italian students, which recalls the stage. It is an
+episode from 'Don Giovanni,' translated to this dark-etched scene
+of snowy hills, and Gothic tower, and mullioned windows deep embayed
+beneath their eaves and icicles. _Deh vieni alla finestra!_ sings
+Palmy-Leporello; the chorus answers: _Deh vieni! Perche non vieni
+ancora?_ pleads Leporello; the chorus shouts: _Perche? Mio
+amu-u-u-r_, sighs Leporello; and Echo cries, _amu-u-u-r!_ All
+the wooing, be it noticed, is conducted in Italian. But the actors
+murmur to each other in Davoser Deutsch, 'She won't come, Palmy! It is
+far too late; she is gone to bed. Come down; you'll wake the village
+with your caterwauling!' But Leporello waves his broad archdeacon's
+hat, and resumes a flood of flexible Bregaglian. He has a shrewd
+suspicion that the girl is peeping from behind the window curtain;
+and tells us, bending down from the ladder, in a hoarse stage-whisper,
+that we must have patience; 'these girls are kittle cattle, who take
+long to draw: but if your lungs last out, they're sure to show.' And
+Leporello is right. Faint heart ne'er won fair lady. From the summit
+of his ladder, by his eloquent Italian tongue, he brings the shy bird
+down at last. We hear the unbarring of the house door, and a comely
+maiden, in her Sunday dress, welcomes us politely to her ground-floor
+sitting-room. The Comus enters, in grave order, with set speeches,
+handshakes, and inevitable _Prosits_! It is a large low chamber,
+with a huge stone stove, wide benches fixed along the walls, and a
+great oval table. We sit how and where we can. Red wine is produced,
+and eier-brod and kuechli. Fraeulein Anna serves us sedately, holding
+her own with decent self-respect against the inrush of the revellers.
+She is quite alone; but are not her father and mother in bed above,
+and within earshot? Besides, the Comus, even at this abnormal hour and
+after an abnormal night, is well conducted. Things seem slipping into
+a decorous wine-party, when Leporello readjusts the broad-brimmed
+hat upon his head, and very cleverly acts a little love-scene for our
+benefit. Fraeulein Anna takes this as a delicate compliment, and the
+thing is so prettily done in truth, that not the sternest taste could
+be offended. Meanwhile another party of night-wanderers, attracted by
+our mirth, break in. More _Prosits_ and clinked glasses follow;
+and with a fair good-morning to our hostess, we retire.
+
+It is too late to think of bed. 'The quincunx of heaven,' as Sir
+Thomas Browne phrased it on a dissimilar occasion, 'runs low.... The
+huntsmen are up in America; and not in America only, for the huntsmen,
+if there are any this night in Graubuenden, have long been out upon the
+snow, and the stable-lads are dragging the sledges from their sheds
+to carry down the mails to Landquart. We meet the porters from the
+various hotels, bringing letter-bags and luggage to the post. It is
+time to turn in and take a cup of black coffee against the rising sun.
+
+IX
+
+Some nights, even in Davos, are spent, even by an invalid, in bed.
+A leaflet, therefore, of 'Sleep-chasings' may not inappropriately
+be flung, as envoy to so many wanderings on foot and sledge upon the
+winter snows.
+
+The first is a confused medley of things familiar and things strange.
+I have been dreaming of far-away old German towns, with gabled houses
+deep in snow; dreaming of chalets in forgotten Alpine glens, where
+wood-cutters come plunging into sleepy light from gloom, and sinking
+down beside the stove to shake the drift from their rough shoulders;
+dreaming of vast veils of icicles upon the gaunt black rocks in places
+where no foot of man will pass, and where the snow is weaving eyebrows
+over the ledges of grey whirlwind-beaten precipices; dreaming
+of Venice, forlorn beneath the windy drip of rain, the gas lamps
+flickering on the swimming piazzetta, the barche idle, the gondolier
+wrapped in his thread-bare cloak, alone; dreaming of Apennines, with
+world-old cities, brown, above the brown sea of dead chestnut boughs;
+dreaming of stormy tides, and watchers aloft in lighthouses when day
+is finished; dreaming of dead men and women and dead children in the
+earth, far down beneath the snow-drifts, six feet deep. And then
+I lift my face, awaking, from my pillow; the pallid moon is on the
+valley, and the room is filled with spectral light.
+
+I sleep, and change my dreaming. This is a hospice in an unfrequented
+pass, between sad peaks, beside a little black lake, overdrifted with
+soft snow. I pass into the house-room, gliding silently. An old man
+and an old woman are nodding, bowed in deepest slumber, by the stove.
+A young man plays the zither on a table. He lifts his head, still
+modulating with his fingers on the strings. He looks right through me
+with wide anxious eyes. He does not see me, but sees Italy, I know,
+and some one wandering on a sandy shore.
+
+I sleep, and change my dreaming. This is S. Stephen's Church in Wien.
+Inside, the lamps are burning dimly in the choir. There is fog in the
+aisles; but through the sleepy air and over the red candles flies a
+wild soprano's voice, a boy's soul in its singing sent to heaven.
+
+I sleep, and change my dreaming. From the mufflers in which his
+father, the mountebank, has wrapped the child, to carry him across
+the heath, a little tumbling-boy emerges in soiled tights. He is half
+asleep. His father scrapes the fiddle. The boy shortens his red belt,
+kisses his fingers to us, and ties himself into a knot among the
+glasses on the table.
+
+I sleep, and change my dreaming. I am on the parapet of a huge
+circular tower, hollow like a well, and pierced with windows at
+irregular intervals. The parapet is broad, and slabbed with red
+Verona marble. Around me are athletic men, all naked, in the strangest
+attitudes of studied rest, down-gazing, as I do, into the depths
+below. There comes a confused murmur of voices, and the tower is
+threaded and rethreaded with great cables. Up these there climb to us
+a crowd of young men, clinging to the ropes and flinging their bodies
+sideways on aerial trapezes. My heart trembles with keen joy and
+terror. For nowhere else could plastic forms be seen more beautiful,
+and nowhere else is peril more apparent. Leaning my chin upon the
+utmost verge, I wait. I watch one youth, who smiles and soars to me;
+and when his face is almost touching mine, he speaks, but what he says
+I know not.
+
+I sleep, and change my dreaming. The whole world rocks to its
+foundations. The mountain summits that I know are shaken. They bow
+their bristling crests. They are falling, falling on us, and the earth
+is riven. I wake in terror, shouting: INSOLITIS TREMUERUNT MOTIBUS
+ALPES! An earthquake, slight but real, has stirred the ever-wakeful
+Vesta of the brain to this Virgilian quotation.
+
+I sleep, and change my dreaming. Once more at night I sledge alone
+upon the Klosters road. It is the point where the woods close over it
+and moonlight may not pierce the boughs. There come shrill cries of
+many voices from behind, and rushings that pass by and vanish. Then
+on their sledges I behold the phantoms of the dead who died in Davos,
+longing for their homes; and each flies past me, shrieking in the
+still cold air; and phosphorescent like long meteors, the pageant
+turns the windings of the road below and disappears.
+
+I sleep, and change my dreaming. This is the top of some high
+mountain, where the crags are cruelly tortured and cast in enormous
+splinters on the ledges of cliffs grey with old-world ice. A ravine,
+opening at my feet, plunges down immeasurably to a dim and distant
+sea. Above me soars a precipice embossed with a gigantic ice-bound
+shape. As I gaze thereon, I find the lineaments and limbs of a Titanic
+man chained and nailed to the rock. His beard has grown for centuries,
+and flowed this way and that, adown his breast and over to the stone
+on either side; and the whole of him is covered with a greenish ice,
+ancient beyond the memory of man. 'This is Prometheus,' I whisper to
+myself, 'and I am alone on Caucasus.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+BACCHUS IN GRAUBUeNDEN
+
+
+I
+
+Some years' residence in the Canton of the Grisons made me familiar
+with all sorts of Valtelline wine; with masculine but rough _Inferno_,
+generous _Forzato_, delicate _Sassella_, harsher _Montagner_, the
+raspberry flavour of _Grumello_, the sharp invigorating twang of
+_Villa_. The colour, ranging from garnet to almandine or ruby, told me
+the age and quality of wine; and I could judge from the crust it forms
+upon the bottle, whether it had been left long enough in wood to
+ripen. I had furthermore arrived at the conclusion that the best
+Valtelline can only be tasted in cellars of the Engadine or Davos,
+where this vintage matures slowly in the mountain air, and takes a
+flavour unknown at lower levels. In a word, it had amused my leisure
+to make or think myself a connoisseur. My literary taste was tickled
+by the praise bestowed in the Augustan age on Rhaetic grapes by Virgil:
+
+  Et quo te carmine dicam,
+  Rhaetica? nec cellis ideo contende Falernis.
+
+I piqued myself on thinking that could the poet but have drank
+one bottle at Samaden--where Stilicho, by the way, in his famous
+recruiting expedition may perhaps have drank it--he would have been
+less chary in his panegyric. For the point of inferiority on which he
+seems to insist, namely, that Valtelline wine does not keep well
+in cellar, is only proper to this vintage in Italian climate. Such
+meditations led my fancy on the path of history. Is there truth,
+then, in the dim tradition that this mountain land was colonised
+by Etruscans? Is _Ras_ the root of Rhaetia? The Etruscans were
+accomplished wine-growers, we know. It was their Montepulciano which
+drew the Gauls to Rome, if Livy can be trusted. Perhaps they first
+planted the vine in Valtelline. Perhaps its superior culture in that
+district may be due to ancient use surviving in a secluded Alpine
+valley. One thing is certain, that the peasants of Sondrio and Tirano
+understand viticulture better than the Italians of Lombardy.
+
+Then my thoughts ran on to the period of modern history, when the
+Grisons seized the Valtelline in lieu of war-pay from the Dukes of
+Milan. For some three centuries they held it as a subject province.
+From the Rathhaus at Davos or Chur they sent their nobles--Von
+Salis and Buol, Planta and Sprecher von Bernegg--across the hills as
+governors or podestas to Poschiavo, Sondrio, Tirano, and Morbegno.
+In those old days the Valtelline wines came duly every winter over
+snow-deep passes to fill the cellars of the Signori Grigioni. That
+quaint traveller Tom Coryat, in his so-called 'Crudities,' notes
+the custom early in the seventeenth century. And as that custom
+then obtained, it still subsists with little alteration. The
+wine-carriers--Weinfuehrer, as they are called--first scaled
+the Bernina pass, halting then as now, perhaps at Poschiavo and
+Pontresina. Afterwards, in order to reach Davos, the pass of the
+Scaletta rose before them--a wilderness of untracked snow-drifts. The
+country-folk still point to narrow, light hand-sledges, on which the
+casks were charged before the last pitch of the pass. Some wine came,
+no doubt, on pack-saddles. A meadow in front of the Dischma-Thal,
+where the pass ends, still bears the name of the Ross-Weid, or
+horse-pasture. It was here that the beasts of burden used for this
+wine-service, rested after their long labours. In favourable weather
+the whole journey from Tirano would have occupied at least four days,
+with scanty halts at night.
+
+The Valtelline slipped from the hands of the Grisons early in this
+century. It is rumoured that one of the Von Salis family negotiated
+matters with Napoleon more for his private benefit than for the
+interests of the state. However this may have been, when the
+Graubuenden became a Swiss Canton, after four centuries of sovereign
+independence, the whole Valtelline passed to Austria, and so
+eventually to Italy. According to modern and just notions of
+nationality, this was right. In their period of power, the Grisons
+masters had treated their Italian dependencies with harshness. The
+Valtelline is an Italian valley, connected with the rest of
+the peninsula by ties of race and language. It is, moreover,
+geographically linked to Italy by the great stream of the Adda, which
+takes its rise upon the Stelvio, and after passing through the Lake of
+Como, swells the volume of the Po.
+
+But, though politically severed from the Valtelline, the Engadiners
+and Davosers have not dropped their old habit of importing its best
+produce. What they formerly levied as masters, they now acquire by
+purchase. The Italian revenue derives a large profit from the frontier
+dues paid at the gate between Tirano and Poschiavo on the Bernina
+road. Much of the same wine enters Switzerland by another route,
+travelling from Sondrio to Chiavenna and across the Spluegen. But until
+quite recently, the wine itself could scarcely be found outside the
+Canton. It was indeed quoted upon Lombard wine-lists. Yet no one drank
+it; and when I tasted it at Milan, I found it quite unrecognisable.
+The fact seems to be that the Graubuendeners alone know how to deal
+with it; and, as I have hinted, the wine requires a mountain climate
+for its full development.
+
+II
+
+The district where the wine of Valtellina is grown extends, roughly
+speaking, from Tirano to Morbegno, a distance of some fifty-four
+miles. The best sorts come from the middle of this region. High up
+in the valley, soil and climate are alike less favourable. Low down
+a coarser, earthier quality springs from fat land where the valley
+broadens. The northern hillsides to a very considerable height above
+the river are covered with vineyards. The southern slopes on the left
+bank of the Adda, lying more in shade, yield but little. Inferno,
+Grumello, and Perla di Sassella are the names of famous vineyards.
+Sassella is the general name for a large tract. Buying an Inferno,
+Grumello, or Perla di Sassella wine, it would be absurd to suppose
+that one obtained it precisely from the eponymous estate. But as each
+of these vineyards yields a marked quality of wine, which is taken
+as standard-giving, the produce of the whole district may be broadly
+classified as approaching more or less nearly to one of these accepted
+types. The Inferno, Grumello, and Perla di Sassella of commerce are
+therefore three sorts of good Valtelline, ticketed with famous names
+to indicate certain differences of quality. Montagner, as the
+name implies, is a somewhat lighter wine, grown higher up in the
+hill-vineyards. And of this class there are many species, some
+approximating to Sassella in delicacy of flavour, others approaching
+the tart lightness of the Villa vintage. This last takes its title
+from a village in the neighbourhood of Tirano, where a table-wine is
+chiefly grown.
+
+Forzato is the strongest, dearest, longest-lived of this whole family
+of wines. It is manufactured chiefly at Tirano; and, as will be
+understood from its name, does not profess to belong to any one of the
+famous localities. Forzato or Sforzato, forced or enforced, is in fact
+a wine which has undergone a more artificial process. In German the
+people call it Strohwein, which also points to the method of its
+preparation. The finest grapes are selected and dried in the sun
+(hence the _Stroh_) for a period of eight or nine weeks. When
+they have almost become raisins, they are pressed. The must is heavily
+charged with sugar, and ferments powerfully. Wine thus made requires
+several years to ripen. Sweet at first, it takes at last a very fine
+quality and flavour, and is rough, almost acid, on the tongue. Its
+colour too turns from a deep rich crimson to the tone of tawny port,
+which indeed it much resembles.
+
+Old Forzato, which has been long in cask, and then perhaps three years
+in bottle, will fetch at least six francs, or may rise to even ten
+francs a flask. The best Sassella rarely reaches more than five
+francs. Good Montagner and Grumello can be had perhaps for four
+francs; and Inferno of a special quality for six francs. Thus the
+average price of old Valtelline wine may be taken as five francs a
+bottle. These, I should observe, are hotel prices.
+
+Valtelline wines bought in the wood vary, of course, according to
+their age and year of vintage. I have found that from 2.50 fr. to 3.50
+fr. per litre is a fair price for sorts fit to bottle. The new wine of
+1881 sold in the following winter at prices varying from 1.05 fr. to
+1.80 fr. per litre.
+
+It is customary for the Graubuenden wine-merchants to buy up the whole
+produce of a vineyard from the peasants at the end of the vintage.
+They go in person or depute their agents to inspect the wine, make
+their bargains, and seal the cellars where the wine is stored. Then,
+when the snow has fallen, their own horses with sleighs and trusted
+servants go across the passes to bring it home. Generally they have
+some local man of confidence at Tirano, the starting-point for the
+homeward journey, who takes the casks up to that place and sees them
+duly charged. Merchants of old standing maintain relations with the
+same peasants, taking their wine regularly; so that from Lorenz Gredig
+at Pontresina or Andreas Gredig at Davos Doerfli, from Fanconi at
+Samaden, or from Giacomi at Chiavenna, special qualities of wine, the
+produce of certain vineyards, are to be obtained. Up to the present
+time this wine trade has been conducted with simplicity and honesty by
+both the dealers and the growers. One chief merit of Valtelline wine
+is that it is pure. How long so desirable a state of things will
+survive the slow but steady development of an export business may be
+questioned.
+
+III
+
+With so much practical and theoretical interest in the produce of
+the Valtelline to stimulate my curiosity, I determined to visit the
+district at the season when the wine was leaving it. It was the winter
+of 1881-82, a winter of unparalleled beauty in the high Alps. Day
+succeeded day without a cloud. Night followed night with steady
+stars, gliding across clear mountain ranges and forests of dark pines
+unstirred by wind. I could not hope for a more prosperous season; and
+indeed I made such use of it, that between the months of January and
+March I crossed six passes of the Alps in open sleighs--the Fluela
+Bernina, Spluegen, Julier, Maloja, and Albula--with less difficulty and
+discomfort in mid-winter than the traveller may often find on them in
+June.
+
+At the end of January, my friend Christian and I left Davos long
+before the sun was up, and ascended for four hours through the
+interminable snow-drifts of the Fluela in a cold grey shadow. The
+sun's light seemed to elude us. It ran along the ravine through which
+we toiled; dipped down to touch the topmost pines above our heads;
+rested in golden calm upon the Schiahorn at our back; capriciously
+played here and there across the Weisshorn on our left, and made the
+precipices of the Schwartzhorn glitter on our right. But athwart our
+path it never fell until we reached the very summit of the pass.
+Then we passed quietly into the full glory of the winter morning--a
+tranquil flood of sunbeams, pouring through air of crystalline purity,
+frozen and motionless. White peaks and dark brown rocks soared up,
+cutting a sky of almost purple blueness. A stillness that might be
+felt brooded over the whole world; but in that stillness there was
+nothing sad, no suggestion of suspended vitality. It was the stillness
+rather of untroubled health, of strength omnipotent but unexerted.
+
+From the Hochspitz of the Fluela the track plunges at one bound into
+the valley of the Inn, following a narrow cornice carved from the
+smooth bank of snow, and hung, without break or barrier, a
+thousand feet or more above the torrent. The summer road is lost in
+snow-drifts. The galleries built as a protection from avalanches,
+which sweep in rivers from those grim, bare fells above, are blocked
+with snow. Their useless arches yawn, as we glide over or outside
+them, by paths which instinct in our horse and driver traces. As a fly
+may creep along a house-roof, slanting downwards we descend. One whisk
+from the swinged tail of an avalanche would hurl us, like a fly, into
+the ruin of the gaping gorge. But this season little snow has fallen
+on the higher hills; and what still lies there, is hard frozen.
+Therefore we have no fear, as we whirl fast and faster from the
+snow-fields into the black forests of gnarled cembras and wind-wearied
+pines. Then Suess is reached, where the Inn hurries its shallow waters
+clogged with ice-floes through a sleepy hamlet. The stream is pure and
+green; for the fountains of the glaciers are locked by winter frosts;
+and only clear rills from perennial sources swell its tide. At Suess
+we lost the sun, and toiled in garish gloom and silence, nipped by the
+ever-deepening cold of evening, upwards for four hours to Samaden.
+
+The next day was spent in visiting the winter colony at San Moritz,
+where the Kulm Hotel, tenanted by some twenty guests, presented in its
+vastness the appearance of a country-house. One of the prettiest spots
+in the world is the ice-rink, fashioned by the skill of Herr Caspar
+Badrutt on a high raised terrace, commanding the valley of the Inn and
+the ponderous bulwarks of Bernina. The silhouettes of skaters, defined
+against that landscape of pure white, passed to and fro beneath a
+cloudless sky. Ladies sat and worked or read on seats upon the ice.
+Not a breath of wind was astir, and warm beneficent sunlight flooded
+the immeasurable air. Only, as the day declined, some iridescent films
+overspread the west; and just above Maloja the apparition of a
+mock sun--a well-defined circle of opaline light, broken at regular
+intervals by four globes--seemed to portend a change of weather. This
+forecast fortunately proved delusive. We drove back to Samaden across
+the silent snow, enjoying those delicate tints of rose and violet and
+saffron which shed enchantment for one hour over the white monotony of
+Alpine winter.
+
+At half-past eight next morning, the sun was rising from behind Pitz
+Languard, as we crossed the Inn and drove through Pontresina in the
+glorious light, with all its huge hotels quite empty and none but a
+few country-folk abroad. Those who only know the Engadine in summer
+have little conception of its beauty. Winter softens the hard details
+of bare rock, and rounds the melancholy grassless mountain flanks,
+suspending icicles to every ledge and spangling the curved surfaces
+of snow with crystals. The landscape gains in purity, and, what sounds
+unbelievable, in tenderness. Nor does it lose in grandeur. Looking
+up the valley of the Morteratsch that morning, the glaciers were
+distinguishable in hues of green and sapphire through their veil of
+snow; and the highest peaks soared in a transparency of amethystine
+light beneath a blue sky traced with filaments of windy cloud. Some
+storm must have disturbed the atmosphere in Italy, for fan-shaped
+mists frothed out around the sun, and curled themselves above the
+mountains in fine feathery wreaths, melting imperceptibly into air,
+until, when we had risen above the cembras, the sky was one deep solid
+blue.
+
+All that upland wilderness is lovelier now than in the summer; and on
+the morning of which I write, the air itself was far more summery than
+I have ever known it in the Engadine in August. We could scarcely
+bear to place our hands upon the woodwork of the sleigh because of
+the fierce sun's heat. And yet the atmosphere was crystalline with
+windless frost. As though to increase the strangeness of these
+contrasts, the pavement of beaten snow was stained with red drops
+spilt from wine-casks which pass over it.
+
+The chief feature of the Bernina--what makes it a dreary pass enough
+in summer, but infinitely beautiful in winter--is its breadth;
+illimitable undulations of snow-drifts; immensity of open sky;
+unbroken lines of white, descending in smooth curves from glittering
+ice-peaks.
+
+A glacier hangs in air above the frozen lakes, with all its green-blue
+ice-cliffs glistening in intensest light. Pitz Palu shoots aloft
+like sculptured marble, delicately veined with soft aerial shadows of
+translucent blue. At the summit of the pass all Italy seems to burst
+upon the eyes in those steep serried ranges, with their craggy crests,
+violet-hued in noonday sunshine, as though a bloom of plum or grape
+had been shed over them, enamelling their jagged precipices.
+
+The top of the Bernina is not always thus in winter. It has a bad
+reputation for the fury of invading storms, when falling snow
+hurtles together with snow scooped from the drifts in eddies, and the
+weltering white sea shifts at the will of whirlwinds. The Hospice then
+may be tenanted for days together by weather-bound wayfarers; and a
+line drawn close beneath its roof shows how two years ago the whole
+building was buried in one snow-shroud. This morning we lounged about
+the door, while our horses rested and postillions and carters pledged
+one another in cups of new Veltliner.
+
+The road takes an awful and sudden dive downwards, quite irrespective
+of the carefully engineered post-track. At this season the path is
+badly broken into ruts and chasms by the wine traffic. In some places
+it was indubitably perilous: a narrow ledge of mere ice skirting
+thinly clad hard-frozen banks of snow, which fell precipitately
+sideways for hundreds of sheer feet. We did not slip over this
+parapet, though we were often within an inch of doing so. Had our
+horse stumbled, it is not probable that I should have been writing
+this.
+
+When we came to the galleries which defend the road from avalanches,
+we saw ahead of us a train of over forty sledges ascending, all
+charged with Valtelline wine. Our postillions drew up at the inner
+side of the gallery, between massive columns of the purest ice
+dependent from the rough-hewn roof and walls of rock. A sort of open
+_loggia_ on the farther side framed vignettes of the Valtelline
+mountains in their hard cerulean shadows and keen sunlight. Between
+us and the view defiled the wine-sledges; and as each went by, the
+men made us drink out of their _trinketti_. These are oblong,
+hexagonal wooden kegs, holding about fourteen litres, which the carter
+fills with wine before he leaves the Valtelline, to cheer him on the
+homeward journey. You raise it in both hands, and when the bung has
+been removed, allow the liquor to flow stream-wise down your throat.
+It was a most extraordinary Bacchic procession--a pomp which, though
+undreamed of on the banks of the Ilissus, proclaimed the deity of
+Dionysos in authentic fashion. Struggling horses, grappling at the
+ice-bound floor with sharp-spiked shoes; huge, hoarse drivers, some
+clad in sheepskins from Italian valleys, some brown as bears in rough
+Graubuenden homespun; casks, dropping their spilth of red wine on the
+snow; greetings, embracings; patois of Bergamo, Romansch, and German
+roaring around the low-browed vaults and tingling ice pillars;
+pourings forth of libations of the new strong Valtelline on breasts
+and beards;--the whole made up a scene of stalwart jollity and
+manful labour such as I have nowhere else in such wild circumstances
+witnessed. Many Davosers were there, the men of Andreas Gredig, Valaer,
+and so forth; and all of these, on greeting Christian, forced us to
+drain a _Schluck_ from their unmanageable cruses. Then on they
+went, crying, creaking, struggling, straining through the corridor,
+which echoed deafeningly, the gleaming crystals of those hard Italian
+mountains in their winter raiment building a background of still
+beauty to the savage Bacchanalian riot of the team.
+
+How little the visitors who drink Valtelline wine at S. Moritz or
+Davos reflect by what strange ways it reaches them. A sledge can
+scarcely be laden with more than one cask of 300 litres on the ascent;
+and this cask, according to the state of the road, has many times to
+be shifted from wheels to runners and back again before the journey
+is accomplished. One carter will take charge of two horses, and
+consequently of two sledges and two casks, driving them both by voice
+and gesture rather than by rein. When they leave the Valtelline, the
+carters endeavour, as far as possible, to take the pass in gangs, lest
+bad weather or an accident upon the road should overtake them singly.
+At night they hardly rest three hours, and rarely think of sleeping,
+but spend the time in drinking and conversation. The horses are fed
+and littered; but for them too the night-halt is little better than
+a baiting-time. In fair weather the passage of the mountain is not
+difficult, though tiring. But woe to men and beasts alike if they
+encounter storms! Not a few perish in the passes; and it frequently
+happens that their only chance is to unyoke the horses and leave the
+sledges in a snow-wreath, seeking for themselves such shelter as
+may possibly be gained, frost-bitten, after hours of battling with
+impermeable drifts. The wine is frozen into one solid mass of rosy ice
+before it reaches Pontresina. This does not hurt the young vintage,
+but it is highly injurious to wine of some years' standing. The perils
+of the journey are aggravated by the savage temper of the drivers.
+Jealousies between the natives of rival districts spring up; and there
+are men alive who have fought the whole way down from Fluela Hospice
+to Davos Platz with knives and stones, hammers and hatchets, wooden
+staves and splintered cart-wheels, staining the snow with blood, and
+bringing broken pates, bruised limbs, and senseless comrades home to
+their women to be tended.
+
+Bacchus Alpinus shepherded his train away from us to northward, and we
+passed forth into noonday from the gallery. It then seemed clear that
+both conductor and postillion were sufficiently merry. The plunge they
+took us down those frozen parapets, with shriek and _jauchzen_
+and cracked whips, was more than ever dangerous. Yet we reached La
+Rosa safely. This is a lovely solitary spot, beside a rushing stream,
+among grey granite boulders grown with spruce and rhododendron: a
+veritable rose of Sharon blooming in the desert. The wastes of the
+Bernina stretch above, and round about are leaguered some of the most
+forbidding sharp-toothed peaks I ever saw. Onwards, across the silent
+snow, we glided in immitigable sunshine, through opening valleys and
+pine-woods, past the robber-huts of Pisciadella, until at evenfall we
+rested in the roadside inn at Poschiavo.
+
+IV
+
+The snow-path ended at Poschiavo; and when, as usual, we started on
+our journey next day at sunrise, it was in a carriage upon wheels.
+Yet even here we were in full midwinter. Beyond Le Prese the lake
+presented one sheet of smooth black ice, reflecting every peak and
+chasm of the mountains, and showing the rocks and water-weeds in the
+clear green depths below. The glittering floor stretched away for
+acres of untenanted expanse, with not a skater to explore those dark
+mysterious coves, or strike across the slanting sunlight poured
+from clefts in the impendent hills. Inshore the substance of the
+ice sparkled here and there with iridescence like the plumelets of
+a butterfly's wing under the microscope, wherever light happened to
+catch the jagged or oblique flaws that veined its solid crystal.
+
+From the lake the road descends suddenly for a considerable distance
+through a narrow gorge, following a torrent which rushes among granite
+boulders. Chestnut trees begin to replace the pines. The sunnier
+terraces are planted with tobacco, and at a lower level vines appear
+at intervals in patches. One comes at length to a great red gate
+across the road, which separates Switzerland from Italy, and where the
+export dues on wine are paid. The Italian custom-house is
+romantically perched above the torrent. Two courteous and elegant
+_finanzieri_, mere boys, were sitting wrapped in their military
+cloaks and reading novels in the sun as we drove up. Though they made
+some pretence of examining the luggage, they excused themselves with
+sweet smiles and apologetic eyes--it was a disagreeable duty!
+
+A short time brought us to the first village in the Valtelline,
+where the road bifurcates northward to Bormio and the Stelvio pass,
+southward to Sondrio and Lombardy. It is a little hamlet, known by
+the name of La Madonna di Tirano, having grown up round a pilgrimage
+church of great beauty, with tall Lombard bell-tower, pierced with
+many tiers of pilastered windows, ending in a whimsical spire, and
+dominating a fantastic cupola building of the earlier Renaissance.
+Taken altogether, this is a charming bit of architecture,
+picturesquely set beneath the granite snow-peaks of the Valtelline.
+The church, they say, was raised at Madonna's own command to stay the
+tide of heresy descending from the Engadine; and in the year 1620, the
+bronze statue of S. Michael, which still spreads wide its wings above
+the cupola, looked down upon the massacre of six hundred Protestants
+and foreigners, commanded by the patriot Jacopo Robustelli.
+
+From Madonna the road leads up the valley through a narrow avenue of
+poplar-trees to the town of Tirano. We were now in the district where
+Forzato is made, and every vineyard had a name and history. In Tirano
+we betook ourself to the house of an old acquaintance of the Buol
+family, Bernardo da Campo, or, as the Graubuendeners call him, Bernard
+Campbell. We found him at dinner with his son and grandchildren in a
+vast, dark, bare Italian chamber. It would be difficult to find a more
+typical old Scotchman of the Lowlands than he looked, with his clean
+close-shaven face, bright brown eyes, and snow-white hair escaping
+from a broad-brimmed hat. He might have sat to a painter for some
+Covenanter's portrait, except that there was nothing dour about him,
+or for an illustration to Burns's 'Cotter's Saturday Night.' The air
+of probity and canniness combined with a twinkle of dry humour was
+completely Scotch; and when he tapped his snuff-box, telling stories
+of old days, I could not refrain from asking him about his pedigree.
+It should be said that there is a considerable family of Campells or
+Campbells in the Graubuenden, who are fabled to deduce their stock from
+a Scotch Protestant of Zwingli's time; and this made it irresistible
+to imagine that in our friend Bernardo I had chanced upon a notable
+specimen of atavism. All he knew, however, was, that his first
+ancestor had been a foreigner, who came across the mountains to Tirano
+two centuries ago.[3]
+
+This old gentleman is a considerable wine-dealer. He sent us with his
+son, Giacomo, on a long journey underground through his cellars, where
+we tasted several sorts of Valtelline, especially the new Forzato,
+made a few weeks since, which singularly combines sweetness with
+strength, and both with a slight effervescence. It is certainly the
+sort of wine wherewith to tempt a Polyphemus, and not unapt to turn a
+giant's head.
+
+Leaving Tirano, and once more passing through the poplars by Madonna,
+we descended the valley all along the vineyards of Villa and the vast
+district of Sassella. Here and there, at wayside inns, we stopped to
+drink a glass of some particular vintage; and everywhere it seemed as
+though god Bacchus were at home. The whole valley on the right side of
+the Adda is one gigantic vineyard, climbing the hills in tiers and
+terraces, which justify its Italian epithet of _Teatro di Bacco_. The
+rock is a greyish granite, assuming sullen brown and orange tints
+where exposed to sun and weather. The vines are grown on stakes, not
+trellised over trees or carried across boulders, as is the fashion at
+Chiavenna or Terlan. Yet every advantage of the mountain is adroitly
+used; nooks and crannies being specially preferred, where the sun's
+rays are deflected from hanging cliffs. The soil seems deep, and is of
+a dull yellow tone. When the vines end, brushwood takes up the growth,
+which expires at last in crag and snow. Some alps and chalets, dimly
+traced against the sky, are evidences that a pastoral life prevails
+above the vineyards. Pan there stretches the pine-thyrsus down to
+vine-garlanded Dionysos.
+
+The Adda flows majestically among willows in the midst, and the valley
+is nearly straight. The prettiest spot, perhaps, is at Tresenda or
+S. Giacomo, where a pass from Edolo and Brescia descends from the
+southern hills. But the Valtelline has no great claim to beauty of
+scenery. Its chief town, Sondrio, where we supped and drank some
+special wine called _il vino de' Signori Grigioni_, has been
+modernised in dull Italian fashion.
+
+V
+
+The hotel at Sondrio, La Maddalena, was in carnival uproar of
+masquers, topers, and musicians all night through. It was as much as
+we could do to rouse the sleepy servants and get a cup of coffee
+ere we started in the frozen dawn. 'Verfluchte Maddalena!' grumbled
+Christian as he shouldered our portmanteaus and bore them in hot haste
+to the post. Long experience only confirms the first impression, that,
+of all cold, the cold of an Italian winter is most penetrating. As
+we lumbered out of Sondrio in a heavy diligence, I could have fancied
+myself back once again at Radicofani or among the Ciminian hills. The
+frost was penetrating. Fur-coats would not keep it out; and we longed
+to be once more in open sledges on Bernina rather than enclosed in
+that cold coupe. Now we passed Grumello, the second largest of the
+renowned vine districts; and always keeping the white mass of Monte di
+Disgrazia in sight, rolled at last into Morbegno. Here the Valtelline
+vintage properly ends, though much of the ordinary wine is probably
+supplied from the inferior produce of these fields. It was past
+noon when we reached Colico, and saw the Lake of Como glittering in
+sunlight, dazzling cloaks of snow on all the mountains, which look as
+dry and brown as dead beech-leaves at this season. Our Bacchic journey
+had reached its close; and it boots not here to tell in detail how we
+made our way across the Spluegen, piercing its avalanches by low-arched
+galleries scooped from the solid snow, and careering in our sledges
+down perpendicular snow-fields, which no one who has crossed that
+pass from the Italian side in winter will forget. We left the refuge
+station at the top together with a train of wine-sledges, and passed
+them in the midst of the wild descent. Looking back, I saw two of
+their horses stumble in the plunge and roll headlong over. Unluckily
+in one of these somersaults a man was injured. Flung ahead into the
+snow by the first lurch, the sledge and wine-cask crossed him like a
+garden-roller. Had his bed not been of snow, he must have been crushed
+to death; and as it was, he presented a woeful appearance when he
+afterwards arrived at Spluegen.
+
+VI
+
+Though not strictly connected with the subject of this paper, I shall
+conclude these notes of winter wanderings in the high Alps with an
+episode which illustrates their curious vicissitudes.
+
+It was late in the month of March, and nearly all the mountain roads
+were open for wheeled vehicles. A carriage and four horses came to
+meet us at the termination of a railway journey in Bagalz. We spent
+one day in visiting old houses of the Grisons aristocracy at Mayenfeld
+and Zizers, rejoicing in the early sunshine, which had spread the
+fields with spring flowers--primroses and oxlips, violets, anemones,
+and bright blue squills. At Chur we slept, and early next morning
+started for our homeward drive to Davos. Bad weather had declared
+itself in the night. It blew violently, and the rain soon changed to
+snow, frozen by a bitter north blast. Crossing the dreary heath of
+Lenz was both magnificent and dreadful. By the time we reached Wiesen,
+all the forests were laden with snow, the roads deep in snow-drifts,
+the whole scene wintrier than it had been the winter through.
+
+At Wiesen we should have stayed, for evening was fast setting in. But
+in ordinary weather it is only a two hours drive from Wiesen to Davos.
+Our coachman made no objections to resuming the journey, and our four
+horses had but a light load to drag. So we telegraphed for supper to
+be prepared, and started between five and six.
+
+A deep gorge has to be traversed, where the torrent cleaves its way
+between jaws of limestone precipices. The road is carried along ledges
+and through tunnels in the rock. Avalanches, which sweep this passage
+annually from the hills above, give it the name of Zuege, or the
+Snow-Paths. As we entered the gorge darkness fell, the horses dragged
+more heavily, and it soon became evident that our Tyrolese driver was
+hopelessly drunk. He nearly upset us twice by taking sharp turns in
+the road, banged the carriage against telegraph posts and jutting
+rocks, shaved the very verge of the torrent in places where there
+was no parapet, and, what was worst of all, refused to leave his box
+without a fight. The darkness by this time was all but total, and a
+blinding snow-storm swept howling through the ravine. At length we
+got the carriage to a dead-stop, and floundered out in deep wet
+snow toward some wooden huts where miners in old days made their
+habitation. The place, by a curious, perhaps unconscious irony, is
+called Hoffnungsau, or the Meadow of Hope. Indeed, it is not ill
+named; for many wanderers, escaping, as we did, from the dreadful
+gorge of Avalanches on a stormy night, may have felt, as we now felt,
+their hope reviving when they reached this shelter.
+
+There was no light; nothing above, beneath, around, on any side, but
+tearing tempest and snow whirled through the ravine. The horses
+were taken out of the carriage; on their way to the stable, which
+fortunately in these mountain regions will be always found beside the
+poorest habitation, one of them fell back across a wall and nearly
+broke his spine. Hoffnungsau is inhabited all through the year. In its
+dismal dark kitchen we found a knot of workmen gathered together, and
+heard there were two horses on the premises besides our own. It then
+occurred to us that we might accomplish the rest of the journey with
+such sledges as they bring the wood on from the hills in winter, if
+coal-boxes or boxes of any sort could be provided. These should be
+lashed to the sledges and filled with hay. We were only four persons;
+my wife and a friend should go in one, myself and my little girl in
+the other. No sooner thought of than put into practice. These original
+conveyances were improvised, and after two hours' halt on the Meadow
+of Hope, we all set forth again at half-past eight.
+
+I have rarely felt anything more piercing than the grim cold of that
+journey. We crawled at a foot's pace through changeful snow-drifts.
+The road was obliterated, and it was my duty to keep a petroleum
+stable-lamp swinging to illuminate the untracked wilderness. My little
+girl was snugly nested in the hay, and sound asleep with a deep white
+covering of snow above her. Meanwhile, the drift clave in frozen
+masses to our faces, lashed by a wind so fierce and keen that it
+was difficult to breathe it. My forehead-bone ached, as though with
+neuralgia, from the mere mask of icy snow upon it, plastered on with
+frost. Nothing could be seen but millions of white specks, whirled
+at us in eddying concentric circles. Not far from the entrance to the
+village we met our house-folk out with lanterns to look for us. It was
+past eleven at night when at last we entered warm rooms and refreshed
+ourselves for the tiring day with a jovial champagne supper. Horses,
+carriage, and drunken driver reached home next morning.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+OLD TOWNS OF PROVENCE
+
+
+Travellers journeying southward from Paris first meet with olive-trees
+near Montdragon or Monselimart--little towns, with old historic names,
+upon the road to Orange. It is here that we begin to feel ourselves
+within the land of Provence, where the Romans found a second Italy,
+and where the autumn of their antique civilisation was followed,
+almost without an intermediate winter of barbarism, by the light and
+delicate springtime of romance. Orange itself is full of Rome. Indeed,
+the ghost of the dead empire seems there to be more real and living
+than the actual flesh and blood of modern time, as represented by
+narrow dirty streets and mean churches. It is the shell of the huge
+theatre, hollowed from the solid hill, and fronted with a wall that
+seems made rather to protect a city than to form a sounding-board for
+a stage, which first tells us that we have reached the old Arausio. Of
+all theatres this is the most impressive, stupendous, indestructible,
+the Colosseum hardly excepted; for in Rome herself we are prepared
+for something gigantic, while in the insignificant Arausio--a sort
+of antique Tewkesbury--to find such magnificence, durability, and
+vastness, impresses one with a nightmare sense that the old lioness
+of Empire can scarcely yet be dead. Standing before the colossal,
+towering, amorphous precipice which formed the background of the
+scena, we feel as if once more the 'heart-shaking sound of Consul
+Romanus' might be heard; as if Roman knights and deputies, arisen from
+the dead, with faces hard and stern as those of the warriors carved on
+Trajan's frieze, might take their seats beneath us in the orchestra,
+and, after proclamation made, the mortmain of imperial Rome be laid
+upon the comforts, liberties, and little gracefulnesses of our modern
+life. Nor is it unpleasant to be startled from such reverie by the
+voice of the old guardian upon the stage beneath, sonorously devolving
+the vacuous Alexandrines with which he once welcomed his ephemeral
+French emperor from Algiers. The little man is dim with distance,
+eclipsed and swallowed up by the shadows and grotesque fragments of
+the ruin in the midst of which he stands. But his voice--thanks to the
+inimitable constructive art of the ancient architect, which, even
+in the desolation of at least thirteen centuries, has not lost its
+cunning-emerges from the pigmy throat, and fills the whole vast hollow
+with its clear, if tiny, sound. Thank heaven, there is no danger of
+Roman resurrection here! The illusion is completely broken, and we
+turn to gather the first violets of February, and to wonder at the
+quaint postures of a praying mantis on the grass grown tiers and
+porches fringed with fern.
+
+The sense of Roman greatness which is so oppressive in Orange and in
+many other parts of Provence, is not felt at Avignon. Here we exchange
+the ghost of Imperial for the phantom of Ecclesiastical Rome. The
+fixed epithet of Avignon is Papal; and as the express train rushes
+over its bleak and wind-tormented plain, the heavy dungeon-walls and
+battlemented towers of its palace fortress seem to warn us off, and
+bid us quickly leave the Babylon of exiled impious Antichrist. Avignon
+presents the bleakest, barest, greyest scene upon a February morning,
+when the incessant mistral is blowing, and far and near, upon desolate
+hillside and sandy plain, the scanty trees are bent sideways, the
+crumbling castle turrets shivering like bleached skeletons in the dry
+ungenial air. Yet inside the town, all is not so dreary. The Papal
+palace, with its terrible Glaciere, its chapel painted by Simone
+Memmi, its endless corridors and staircases, its torture-chamber,
+funnel-shaped to drown and suffocate--so runs tradition--the shrieks
+of wretches on the rack, is now a barrack, filled with lively little
+French soldiers, whose politeness, though sorely taxed, is never
+ruffled by the introduction of inquisitive visitors into their
+dormitories, eating-places, and drill-grounds. And strange, indeed,
+it is to see the lines of neat narrow barrack beds, between which the
+red-legged little men are shaving, polishing their guns, or mending
+their trousers, in those vaulted halls of popes and cardinals, those
+vast presence-chambers and audience-galleries, where Urban entertained
+S. Catherine, where Rienzi came, a prisoner, to be stared at. Pass by
+the Glaciere with a shudder, for it has still the reek of blood about
+it; and do not long delay in the cheerless dungeon of Rienzi. Time and
+regimental whitewash have swept these lurking-places of old crime very
+bare; but the parable of the seven devils is true in more senses than
+one, and the ghosts that return to haunt a deodorised, disinfected,
+garnished sepulchre are almost more ghastly than those which have
+never been disturbed from their old habitations.
+
+Little by little the eye becomes accustomed to the bareness and
+greyness of this Provencal landscape; and then we find that the
+scenery round Avignon is eminently picturesque. The view from Les
+Doms--which is a hill above the Pope's palace, the Acropolis, as it
+were, of Avignon--embraces a wide stretch of undulating champaign,
+bordered by low hills, and intersected by the flashing waters of the
+majestic Rhone. Across the stream stands Villeneuve, like a castle
+of romance, with its round stone towers fronting the gates and
+battlemented walls of the Papal city. A bridge used to connect the two
+towns, but it is now broken. The remaining fragment is of solid build,
+resting on great buttresses, one of which rises fantastically above
+the bridge into a little chapel. Such, one might fancy, was the
+bridge which Ariosto's Rodomonte kept on horse against the Paladins of
+Charlemagne, when angered by the loss of his love. Nor is it difficult
+to imagine Bradamante spurring up the slope against him with her magic
+lance in rest, and tilting him into the tawny waves beneath.
+
+On a clear October morning, when the vineyards are taking their last
+tints of gold and crimson, and the yellow foliage of the poplars by
+the river mingles with the sober greys of olive-trees and willows,
+every square inch of this landscape, glittering as it does with light
+and with colour, the more beautiful for its subtlety and rarity, would
+make a picture. Out of many such vignettes let us choose one. We are
+on the shore close by the ruined bridge, the rolling muddy Rhone in
+front; beyond it, by the towing-path, a tall strong cypress-tree rises
+beside a little house, and next to it a crucifix twelve feet or more
+in height, the Christ visible afar, stretched upon His red cross;
+arundo donax is waving all around, and willows near; behind, far off,
+soar the peaked hills, blue and pearled with clouds; past the cypress,
+on the Rhone, comes floating a long raft, swift through the stream,
+its rudder guided by a score of men: one standing erect upon the prow
+bends forward to salute the cross; on flies the raft, the tall reeds
+rustle, and the cypress sleeps.
+
+For those who have time to spare in going to or from the south it
+is worth while to spend a day or two in the most comfortable and
+characteristic of old French inns, the Hotel de l'Europe, at Avignon.
+Should it rain, the museum of the town is worth a visit. It contains
+Horace Vernet's not uncelebrated picture of Mazeppa, and another, less
+famous, but perhaps more interesting, by swollen-cheeked David, the
+'genius in convulsion,' as Carlyle has christened him. His canvas
+is unfinished. Who knows what cry of the Convention made the painter
+fling his palette down and leave the masterpiece he might have
+spoiled? For in its way the picture is a masterpiece. There lies Jean
+Barrad, drummer, aged fourteen, slain in La Vendee, a true patriot,
+who, while his life-blood flowed away, pressed the tricolor cockade
+to his heart, and murmured 'Liberty!' David has treated his subject
+classically. The little drummer-boy, though French enough in feature
+and in feeling, lies, Greek-like, naked on the sand--a very Hyacinth
+of the Republic, La Vendee's Ilioneus. The tricolor cockade and the
+sentiment of upturned patriotic eyes are the only indications of his
+being a hero in his teens, a citizen who thought it sweet to die for
+France.
+
+In fine weather a visit to Vaucluse should by no means be omitted,
+not so much, perhaps, for Petrarch's sake as for the interest of the
+drive, and for the marvel of the fountain of the Sorgues. For some
+time after leaving Avignon you jog along the level country between
+avenues of plane-trees; then comes a hilly ridge, on which the olives,
+mulberries, and vineyards join their colours and melt subtly into
+distant purple. After crossing this we reach L'Isle, an island
+village girdled by the gliding Sorgues, overshadowed with gigantic
+plane-boughs, and echoing to the plash of water dripped from mossy
+fern-tufted millwheels. Those who expect Petrarch's Sorgues to be
+some trickling poet's rill emerging from a damp grotto, may well be
+astounded at the rush and roar of this azure river so close upon
+its fountain-head. It has a volume and an arrow-like rapidity that
+communicate the feeling of exuberance and life. In passing, let it not
+be forgotten that it was somewhere or other in this 'chiaro fondo di
+Sorga,' as Carlyle describes, that Jourdain, the hangman-hero of the
+Glaciere, stuck fast upon his pony when flying from his foes, and had
+his accursed life, by some diabolical providence, spared for future
+butcheries. On we go across the austere plain, between fields of
+madder, the red roots of the 'garance' lying in swathes along the
+furrows. In front rise ash-grey hills of barren rock, here and there
+crimsoned with the leaves of the dwarf sumach. A huge cliff stands up
+and seems to bar all passage. Yet the river foams in torrents at our
+side. Whence can it issue? What pass or cranny in that precipice is
+cloven for its escape? These questions grow in interest as we enter
+the narrow defile of limestone rocks which leads to the cliff-barrier,
+and find ourselves among the figs and olives of Vaucluse. Here is the
+village, the little church, the ugly column to Petrarch's memory,
+the inn, with its caricatures of Laura, and its excellent trout, the
+bridge and the many-flashing, eddying Sorgues, lashed by millwheels,
+broken by weirs, divided in its course, channelled and dyked, yet
+flowing irresistibly and undefiled. Blue, purple, greened by moss and
+water-weeds, silvered by snow-white pebbles, on its pure smooth bed
+the river runs like elemental diamond, so clear and fresh. The rocks
+on either side are grey or yellow, terraced into oliveyards, with here
+and there a cypress, fig, or mulberry tree. Soon the gardens cease,
+and lentisk, rosemary, box, and ilex--shrubs of Provence--with here
+and there a sumach out of reach, cling to the hard stone. And so at
+last we are brought face to face with the sheer impassable precipice.
+At its basement sleeps a pool, perfectly untroubled; a lakelet in
+which the sheltering rocks and nestling wild figs are glassed as in a
+mirror--a mirror of blue-black water, like amethyst or fluor-spar--so
+pure, so still, that where it laps the pebbles you can scarcely say
+where air begins and water ends. This, then, is Petrarch's 'grotto;'
+this is the fountain of Vaucluse. Up from its deep reservoirs, from
+the mysterious basements of the mountain, wells the silent stream;
+pauseless and motionless it fills its urn, rises unruffled, glides
+until the brink is reached, then overflows, and foams, and dashes
+noisily, a cataract, among the boulders of the hills. Nothing at
+Vaucluse is more impressive than the contrast between the tranquil
+silence of the fountain and the roar of the released impetuous river.
+Here we can realise the calm clear eyes of sculptured water-gods,
+their brimming urns, their gushing streams, the magic of the
+mountain-born and darkness-cradled flood. Or again, looking up at the
+sheer steep cliff, 800 feet in height, and arching slightly roofwise,
+so that no rain falls upon the cavern of the pool, we seem to see the
+stroke of Neptune's trident, the hoof of Pegasus, the force of Moses'
+rod, which cleft rocks and made water gush forth in the desert. There
+is a strange fascination in the spot. As our eyes follow the white
+pebble which cleaves the surface and falls visibly, until the veil
+of azure is too thick for sight to pierce, we feel as if some glamour
+were drawing us, like Hylas, to the hidden caves. At least, we long to
+yield a prized and precious offering to the spring, to grace the nymph
+of Vaucluse with a pearl of price as token of our reverence and love.
+
+Meanwhile nothing has been said about Petrarch, who himself said much
+about the spring, and complained against those very nymphs to whom we
+have in wish, at least, been scattering jewels, that they broke his
+banks and swallowed up his gardens every winter. At Vaucluse Petrarch
+loved, and lived, and sang. He has made Vaucluse famous, and will
+never be forgotten there. But for the present the fountain is even
+more attractive than the memory of the poet.[4]
+
+The change from Avignon to Nismes is very trying to the latter place;
+for Nismes is not picturesquely or historically interesting. It is a
+prosperous modern French town with two almost perfect Roman
+monuments--Les Arenes and the Maison Carree. The amphitheatre is a
+complete oval, visible at one glance. Its smooth white stone, even
+where it has not been restored, seems unimpaired by age; and Charles
+Martel's conflagration, when he burned the Saracen hornet's nest
+inside it, has only blackened the outer walls and arches venerably.
+Utility and perfect adaptation of means to ends form the beauty of
+Roman buildings. The science of construction and large intelligence
+displayed in them, their strength, simplicity, solidity, and purpose,
+are their glory. Perhaps there is only one modern edifice--Palladio's
+Palazzo della Ragione at Vicenza--which approaches the dignity and
+loftiness of Roman architecture; and this it does because of its
+absolute freedom from ornament, the vastness of its design, and the
+durability of its material. The temple, called the Maison Carree, at
+Nismes, is also very perfect, and comprehended at one glance. Light,
+graceful, airy, but rather thin and narrow, it reminds one of the
+temple of Fortuna Virilis at Rome.
+
+But if Nismes itself is not picturesque, its environs contain the
+wonderful Pont du Gard. A two or three hours' drive leads through a
+desolate country to the valley of the Cardon, where suddenly, at a
+turn of the road, one comes upon the aqueduct. It is not within the
+scope of words to describe the impression produced by those vast
+arches, row above row, cutting the deep blue sky. The domed summer
+clouds sailing across them are comprehended in the gigantic span of
+their perfect semicircles, which seem rather to have been described
+by Miltonic compasses of Deity than by merely human mathematics. Yet,
+standing beneath one of the vaults and looking upward, you may read
+Roman numerals in order from I. to X., which prove their human origin
+well enough. Next to their strength, regularity, and magnitude, the
+most astonishing point about this triple tier of arches, piled one
+above the other to a height of 180 feet above a brawling stream
+between two barren hills, is their lightness. The arches are not
+thick; the causeway on the top is only just broad enough for three men
+to walk abreast. So smooth and perpendicular are the supporting walls
+that scarcely a shrub or tuft of grass has grown upon the aqueduct
+in all these years. And yet the huge fabric is strengthened by no
+buttress, has needed no repair. This lightness of structure, combined
+with such prodigious durability, produces the strongest sense of
+science and self-reliant power in the men who designed it. None but
+Romans could have built such a monument, and have set it in such a
+place--a wilderness of rock and rolling hill, scantily covered with
+low brushwood, and browsed over by a few sheep--for such a purpose,
+too, in order to supply Nemausus with pure water. The modern town does
+pretty well without its water; but here subsists the civilisation
+of eighteen centuries past intact: the human labour yet remains,
+the measuring, contriving mind of man, shrinking from no obstacles,
+spanning the air, and in one edifice combining gigantic strength and
+perfect beauty. It is impossible not to echo Rousseau's words in such
+a place, and to say with him: 'Le retentissement de mes pas dans ces
+immenses voutes me faisait croire entendre la forte voix de ceux
+qui les avaient baties. Je me perdais comme un insecte dans cette
+immensite. Je sentais, tout en me faisant petit, je ne sais quoi
+qui m'elevait l'ame; et je me disais en soupirant, Que ne suis-je ne
+Romain!'
+
+There is nothing at Arles which produces the same deep and indelible
+impression. Yet Arles is a far more interesting town than Nismes,
+partly because of the Rhone delta which begins there, partly because
+of its ruinous antiquity, and partly also because of the strong local
+character of its population. The amphitheatre of Arles is vaster and
+more sublime in its desolation than the tidy theatre at Nismes; the
+crypts, and dens, and subterranean passages suggest all manner of
+speculation as to the uses to which they may have been appropriated;
+while the broken galleries outside, intricate and black and cavernous,
+like Piranesi's etchings of the 'Carceri,' present the wildest
+pictures of greatness in decay, fantastic dilapidation. The ruins of
+the smaller theatre, again, with their picturesquely grouped fragments
+and their standing columns, might be sketched for a frontispiece to
+some dilettante work on classical antiquities. For the rest, perhaps
+the Aliscamps, or ancient Roman burial-ground, is the most interesting
+thing at Arles, not only because of Dante's celebrated lines in the
+canto of 'Farinata:'--
+
+  Si come ad Arli ove 'l Rodano stagna,
+  Fanno i sepolcri tutto 'l loco varo;
+
+but also because of the intrinsic picturesqueness of this avenue of
+sepulchres beneath green trees upon a long soft grassy field.
+
+But as at Avignon and Nismes, so also at Arles, one of the chief
+attractions of the place lies at a distance, and requires a special
+expedition. The road to Les Baux crosses a true Provencal desert where
+one realises the phrase, 'Vieux comme les rochers de Provence,'--a
+wilderness of grey stone, here and there worn into cart-tracks, and
+tufted with rosemary, box, lavender, and lentisk. On the way it passes
+the Abbaye de Mont Majeur, a ruin of gigantic size, embracing all
+periods of architecture; where nothing seems to flourish now but
+henbane and the wild cucumber, or to breathe but a mumble-toothed and
+terrible old hag. The ruin stands above a desolate marsh, its vast
+Italian buildings of Palladian splendour looking more forlorn in their
+decay than the older and austerer mediaeval towers, which rise up proud
+and patient and defiantly erect beneath the curse of time. When at
+length what used to be the castle town of Les Baux is reached, you
+find a naked mountain of yellow sandstone, worn away by nature into
+bastions and buttresses and coigns of vantage, sculptured by ancient
+art into palaces and chapels, battlements and dungeons. Now art and
+nature are confounded in one ruin. Blocks of masonry lie cheek by jowl
+with masses of the rough-hewn rock; fallen cavern vaults are heaped
+round fragments of fan-shaped spandrel and clustered column-shaft; the
+doors and windows of old pleasure-rooms are hung with ivy and wild fig
+for tapestry; winding staircases start midway upon the cliff, and lead
+to vacancy. High overhead suspended in mid-air hang chambers--lady's
+bower or poet's singing-room--now inaccessible, the haunt of hawks and
+swallows. Within this rocky honeycomb--'cette ville en monolithe,'
+as it has been aptly called, for it is literally scooped out of one
+mountain block--live about two hundred poor people, foddering their
+wretched goats at carved piscina and stately sideboards, erecting mud
+beplastered hovels in the halls of feudal princes. Murray is wrong in
+calling the place a mediaeval town in its original state, for anything
+more purely ruinous, more like a decayed old cheese, cannot possibly
+be conceived. The living only inhabit the tombs of the dead. At
+the end of the last century, when revolutionary effervescence was
+beginning to ferment, the people of Arles swept all its feudality
+away, defacing the very arms upon the town gate, and trampling the
+palace towers to dust.
+
+The castle looks out across a vast extent of plain over Arles, the
+stagnant Rhone, the Camargue, and the salt pools of the lingering sea.
+In old days it was the eyrie of an eagle race called Seigneurs of Les
+Baux; and whether they took their title from the rock, or whether,
+as genealogists would have it, they gave the name of Oriental
+Balthazar--their reputed ancestor, one of the Magi--to the rock
+itself, remains a mystery not greatly worth the solving.
+
+Anyhow, here they lived and flourished, these feudal princes, bearing
+for their ensign a silver comet of sixteen rays upon a field of
+gules--themselves a comet race, baleful to the neighbouring lowlands,
+blazing with lurid splendour over wide tracts of country, a burning,
+raging, fiery-souled, swift-handed tribe, in whom a flame unquenchable
+glowed from son to sire through twice five hundred years until, in
+the sixteenth century, they were burned out, and nothing remained but
+cinders--these broken ruins of their eyrie, and some outworn and dusty
+titles. Very strange are the fate and history of these same titles:
+King of Arles, for instance, savouring of troubadour and high romance;
+Prince of Tarentum, smacking of old plays and Italian novels; Prince
+of Orange, which the Nassaus, through the Chalons, seized in all its
+emptiness long after the real principality had passed away, and came
+therewith to sit on England's throne.
+
+The Les Baux in their heyday were patterns of feudal nobility. They
+warred incessantly with Counts of Provence, archbishops and burghers
+of Arles, Queens of Naples, Kings of Aragon. Crusading, pillaging,
+betraying, spending their substance on the sword, and buying it again
+by deeds of valour or imperial acts of favour, tuning troubadour
+harps, presiding at courts of love,--they filled a large page in the
+history of Southern France. The Les Baux were very superstitious. In
+the fulness of their prosperity they restricted the number of their
+dependent towns, or _places baussenques_, to seventy-nine,
+because these numbers in combination were thought to be of good omen
+to their house. Beral des Baux, Seigneur of Marseilles, was one day
+starting on a journey with his whole force to Avignon. He met an old
+woman herb-gathering at daybreak, and said, 'Mother, hast thou seen
+a crow or other bird?' 'Yea,' answered the crone, 'on the trunk of a
+dead willow.' Beral counted upon his fingers the day of the year, and
+turned bridle. With troubadours of name and note they had dealings,
+but not always to their own advantage, as the following story
+testifies. When the Baux and Berengers were struggling for the
+countship of Provence, Raymond Berenger, by his wife's counsel, went,
+attended by troubadours, to meet the Emperor Frederick at Milan.
+There he sued for the investiture and ratification of Provence. His
+troubadours sang and charmed Frederick; and the Emperor, for the joy
+he had in them, wrote his celebrated lines beginning--
+
+  Plas mi cavalier Francez.
+
+And when Berenger made his request he met with no refusal. Hearing
+thereof, the lords of Baux came down in wrath with a clangour of armed
+men. But music had already gained the day; and where the Phoebus of
+Provence had shone, the AEolus of storm-shaken Les Baux was powerless.
+Again, when Blacas, a knight of Provence, died, the great Sordello
+chanted one of his most fiery hymns, bidding the princes of
+Christendom flock round and eat the heart of the dead lord. 'Let
+Rambaude des Baux,' cries the bard, with a sarcasm that is clearly
+meant, but at this distance almost unintelligible, 'take also a good
+piece, for she is fair and good and truly virtuous; let her keep it
+well who knows so well to husband her own weal.' But the poets were
+not always adverse to the house of Baux. Fouquet, the beautiful and
+gentle melodist whom Dante placed in paradise, served Adelaisie, wife
+of Berald, with long service of unhappy love, and wrote upon her
+death 'The Complaint of Berald des Baux for Adelaisie.' Guillaume de
+Cabestan loved Berangere des Baux, and was so loved by her that she
+gave him a philtre to drink, whereof he sickened and grew mad. Many
+more troubadours are cited as having frequented the castle of Les
+Baux, and among the members of the princely house were several poets.
+
+Some of them were renowned for beauty. We hear of a Cecile, called
+Passe Rose, because of her exceeding loveliness; also of an unhappy
+Francois, who, after passing eighteen years in prison, yet won the
+grace and love of Joan of Naples by his charms. But the real temper of
+this fierce tribe was not shown among troubadours, or in the courts of
+love and beauty. The stern and barren rock from which they sprang, and
+the comet of their scutcheon, are the true symbols of their nature.
+History records no end of their ravages and slaughters. It is a
+tedious catalogue of blood--how one prince put to fire and sword the
+whole town of Courthezon; how another was stabbed in prison by his
+wife; how a third besieged the castle of his niece, and sought to
+undermine her chamber, knowing her the while to be in childbed; how a
+fourth was flayed alive outside the walls of Avignon. There is nothing
+terrible, splendid, and savage, belonging to feudal history, of which
+an example may not be found in the annals of Les Baux, as narrated by
+their chronicler, Jules Canonge.
+
+However abrupt may seem the transition from these memories of
+the ancient nobles of Les Baux to mere matters of travel and
+picturesqueness, it would be impossible to take leave of the old
+towns of Provence without glancing at the cathedrals of S. Trophime
+at Arles, and of S. Gilles--a village on the border of the dreary
+flamingo-haunted Camargue. Both of these buildings have porches
+splendidly encrusted with sculptures, half classical, half mediaeval,
+marking the transition from ancient to modern art. But that of S.
+Gilles is by far the richer and more elaborate. The whole facade of
+this church is one mass of intricate decoration; Norman arches
+and carved lions, like those of Lombard architecture, mingling
+fantastically with Greek scrolls of fruit and flowers, with elegant
+Corinthian columns jutting out upon the church steps, and with the old
+conventional wave-border that is called Etruscan in our modern jargon.
+From the midst of florid fret and foliage lean mild faces of saints
+and Madonnas. Symbols of evangelists with half-human, half-animal
+eyes and wings, are interwoven with the leafy bowers of cupids. Grave
+apostles stand erect beneath acanthus wreaths that ought to crisp the
+forehead of a laughing Faun or Bacchus. And yet so full, exuberant,
+and deftly chosen are these various elements, that there remains no
+sense of incongruity or discord. The mediaeval spirit had much trouble
+to disentangle itself from classic reminiscences; and fortunately for
+the picturesqueness of S. Gilles, it did not succeed. How strangely
+different is the result of this transition in the south from those
+severe and rigid forms which we call Romanesque in Germany and
+Normandy and England!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE CORNICE
+
+
+It was a dull afternoon in February when we left Nice, and drove
+across the mountains to Mentone. Over hill and sea hung a thick mist.
+Turbia's Roman tower stood up in cheerless solitude, wreathed round
+with driving vapour, and the rocky nest of Esa seemed suspended in
+a chaos between sea and sky. Sometimes the fog broke and showed us
+Villafranca, lying green and flat in the deep blue below: sometimes a
+distant view of higher peaks swam into sight from the shifting cloud.
+But the whole scene was desolate. Was it for this that we had left our
+English home, and travelled from London day and night? At length we
+reached the edge of the cloud, and jingled down by Roccabruna and the
+olive-groves, till one by one Mentone's villas came in sight, and at
+last we found ourselves at the inn door. That night, and all next day
+and the next night, we heard the hoarse sea beat and thunder on the
+beach. The rain and wind kept driving from the south, but we consoled
+ourselves with thinking that the orange-trees and every kind of flower
+were drinking in the moisture and waiting to rejoice in sunlight which
+would come.
+
+It was a Sunday morning when we woke and found that the rain had gone,
+the sun was shining brightly on the sea, and a clear north wind was
+blowing cloud and mist away. Out upon the hills we went, not caring
+much what path we took; for everything was beautiful, and hill
+and vale were full of garden walks. Through lemon-groves,--pale,
+golden-tender trees,--and olives, stretching their grey boughs against
+the lonely cottage tiles, we climbed, until we reached the pines and
+heath above. Then I knew the meaning of Theocritus for the first time.
+We found a well, broad, deep, and clear, with green herbs growing at
+the bottom, a runlet flowing from it down the rocky steps, maidenhair,
+black adiantum, and blue violets, hanging from the brink and mirrored
+in the water. This was just the well in _Hylas_. Theocritus
+has been badly treated. They call him a court poet, dead to Nature,
+artificial in his pictures. Yet I recognised this fountain by his
+verse, just as if he had showed me the very spot. Violets grow
+everywhere, of every shade, from black to lilac. Their stalks are
+long, and the flowers 'nod' upon them, so that I see how the Greeks
+could make them into chaplets--how Lycidas wore his crown of white
+violets[5] lying by the fireside elbow-deep in withered asphodel,
+watching the chestnuts in the embers, and softly drinking deep healths
+to Ageanax far off upon the waves. It is impossible to go wrong in
+these valleys. They are cultivated to the height of about five hundred
+feet above the sea, in terraces laboriously built up with walls,
+earthed and manured, and irrigated by means of tanks and aqueducts.
+Above this level, where the virgin soil has not been yet reclaimed,
+or where the winds of winter bring down freezing currents from the
+mountains through a gap or gully of the lower hills, a tangled growth
+of heaths and arbutus, and pines, and rosemarys, and myrtles, continue
+the vegetation, till it finally ends in bare grey rocks and peaks some
+thousand feet in height. Far above all signs of cultivation on these
+arid peaks, you still may see villages and ruined castles, built
+centuries ago for a protection from the Moorish pirates. To these
+mountain fastnesses the people of the coast retreated when they
+descried the sails of their foes on the horizon. In Mentone, not very
+long ago, old men might be seen who in their youth were said to have
+been taken captive by the Moors; and many Arabic words have found
+their way into the patois of the people.
+
+There is something strangely fascinating in the sight of these ruins
+on the burning rocks, with their black sentinel cypresses, immensely
+tall and far away. Long years and rain and sunlight have made these
+castellated eyries one with their native stone. It is hard to trace
+in their foundations where Nature's workmanship ends and where man's
+begins. What strange sights the mountain villagers must see! The vast
+blue plain of the unfurrowed deep, the fairy range of Corsica hung
+midway between the sea and sky at dawn or sunset, the stars so close
+above their heads, the deep dew-sprinkled valleys, the green pines! On
+penetrating into one of these hill-fortresses, you find that it is
+a whole village, with a church and castle and piazza, some few feet
+square, huddled together on a narrow platform. We met one day three
+magnates of Gorbio taking a morning stroll backwards and forwards,
+up and down their tiny square. Vehemently gesticulating, loudly
+chattering, they talked as though they had not seen each other for ten
+years, and were but just unloading their budgets of accumulated news.
+Yet these three men probably had lived, eaten, drunk, and talked
+together from the cradle to that hour: so true it is that use
+and custom quicken all our powers, especially of gossiping and
+scandal-mongering. S. Agnese is the highest and most notable of all
+these villages. The cold and heat upon its absolutely barren rock
+must be alike intolerable. In appearance it is not unlike the Etruscan
+towns of Central Italy; but there is something, of course, far more
+imposing in the immense antiquity and the historical associations of
+a Narni, a Fiesole, a Chiusi, or an Orvieto. Sea-life and rusticity
+strike a different note from that of those Apennine-girdled seats of
+dead civilisation, in which nations, arts, and religions have gone by
+and left but few traces,--some wrecks of giant walls, some excavated
+tombs, some shrines, where monks still sing and pray above the relics
+of the founders of once world-shaking, now almost forgotten, orders.
+Here at Mentone there is none of this; the idyllic is the true note,
+and Theocritus is still alive.
+
+We do not often scale these altitudes, but keep along the terraced
+glades by the side of olive-shaded streams. The violets, instead of
+peeping shyly from hedgerows, fall in ripples and cascades over mossy
+walls among maidenhair and spleen-worts. They are very sweet, and the
+sound of trickling water seems to mingle with their fragrance in a
+most delicious harmony. Sound, smell, and hue make up one chord, the
+sense of which is pure and perfect peace. The country-people are
+kind, letting us pass everywhere, so that we make our way along their
+aqueducts and through their gardens, under laden lemon-boughs, the
+pale fruit dangling at our ears, and swinging showers of scented dew
+upon us as we pass. Far better, however, than lemon or orange trees,
+are the olives. Some of these are immensely old, numbering, it is
+said, five centuries, so that Petrarch may almost have rested beneath
+their shade on his way to Avignon. These veterans are cavernous with
+age: gnarled, split, and twisted trunks, throwing out arms that break
+into a hundred branches; every branch distinct, and feathered with
+innumerable sparks and spikelets of white, wavy, greenish light.
+These are the leaves, and the stems are grey with lichens. The sky and
+sea--two blues, one full of sunlight and the other purple--set these
+fountains of perennial brightness like gems in lapis-lazuli. At a
+distance the same olives look hoary and soft--a veil of woven light
+or luminous haze. When the wind blows their branches all one way,
+they ripple like a sea of silver. But underneath their covert, in
+the shade, grey periwinkles wind among the snowy drift of allium. The
+narcissus sends its arrowy fragrance through the air, while, far and
+wide, red anemones burn like fire, with interchange of blue and lilac
+buds, white arums, orchises, and pink gladiolus. Wandering there, and
+seeing the pale flowers, stars white and pink and odorous, we dream
+of Olivet, or the grave Garden of the Agony, and the trees seem always
+whispering of sacred things. How people can blaspheme against the
+olives, and call them imitations of the willow, or complain that they
+are shabby shrubs, I do not know.[6]
+
+This shore would stand for Shelley's Island of Epipsychidion, or
+the golden age which Empedocles describes, when the mild nations
+worshipped Aphrodite with incense and the images of beasts and
+yellow honey, and no blood was spilt upon her altars--when 'the trees
+flourished with perennial leaves and fruit, and ample crops adorned
+their boughs through all the year.' This even now is literally true of
+the lemon-groves, which do not cease to flower and ripen. Everything
+fits in to complete the reproduction of Greek pastoral life. The goats
+eat cytisus and myrtle on the shore; a whole flock gathered round me
+as I sat beneath a tuft of golden green euphorbia the other day, and
+nibbled bread from my hands. The frog still croaks by tank and
+fountain, 'whom the Muses have ordained to sing for aye,' in
+spite of Bion's death. The narcissus, anemone, and hyacinth still tell
+their tales of love and death. Hesper still gazes on the shepherd
+from the mountain-head. The slender cypresses still vibrate, the pines
+murmur. Pan sleeps in noontide heat, and goat-herds and wayfaring
+men lie down to slumber by the roadside, under olive-boughs in which
+cicadas sing. The little villages high up are just as white, the
+mountains just as grey and shadowy when evening falls. Nothing is
+changed--except ourselves. I expect to find a statue of Priapus or
+pastoral Pan, hung with wreaths of flowers--the meal cake, honey, and
+spilt wine upon his altar, and young boys and maidens dancing round.
+Surely, in some far-off glade, by the side of lemon-grove or garden,
+near the village, there must be still a pagan remnant of glad
+Nature-worship. Surely I shall chance upon some Thyrsis piping in the
+pine-tree shade, or Daphne flying from the arms of Phoebus. So I dream
+until I come upon the Calvary set on a solitary hillock, with its
+prayer-steps lending a wide prospect across the olives and the
+orange-trees, and the broad valleys, to immeasurable skies and purple
+seas. There is the iron cross, the wounded heart, the spear, the reed,
+the nails, the crown of thorns, the cup of sacrificial blood, the
+title, with its superscription royal and divine. The other day we
+crossed a brook and entered a lemon-field, rich with blossoms
+and carpeted with red anemones. Everything basked in sunlight and
+glittered with exceeding brilliancy of hue. A tiny white chapel stood
+in a corner of the enclosure. Two iron-grated windows let me
+see inside: it was a bare place, containing nothing but a wooden
+praying-desk, black and worm-eaten, an altar with its candles and no
+flowers, and above the altar a square picture brown with age. On the
+floor were scattered several pence, and in a vase above the holy-water
+vessel stood some withered hyacinths. As my sight became accustomed to
+the gloom, I could see from the darkness of the picture a pale Christ
+nailed to the cross with agonising upward eyes and ashy aureole above
+the bleeding thorns. Thus I stepped suddenly away from the outward
+pomp and bravery of nature to the inward aspirations, agonies,
+and martyrdoms of man--from Greek legends of the past to the real
+Christian present--and I remembered that an illimitable prospect has
+been opened to the world, that in spite of ourselves we must turn our
+eyes heavenward, inward, to the infinite unseen beyond us and within
+our souls. Nothing can take us back to Phoebus or to Pan. Nothing
+can again identify us with the simple natural earth. '_Une immense
+esperance a traverse la terre_,' and these chapels, with their deep
+significances, lurk in the fair landscape like the cares of real life
+among our dreams of art, or like a fear of death and the hereafter in
+the midst of opera music. It is a strange contrast. The worship of men
+in those old times was symbolised by dances in the evening, banquets,
+libations, and mirth-making. 'Euphrosyne' was alike the goddess of
+the righteous mind and of the merry heart. Old withered women telling
+their rosaries at dusk; belated shepherds crossing themselves beneath
+the stars when they pass the chapel; maidens weighed down with
+Margaret's anguish of unhappy love; youths vowing their life to
+contemplation in secluded cloisters,--these are the human forms which
+gather round such chapels; and the motto of the worshippers consists
+in this, 'Do often violence to thy desire.' In the Tyrol we have seen
+whole villages praying together at daybreak before their day's work,
+singing their _Miserere_ and their _Gloria_ and their _Dies Irae_, to
+the sound of crashing organs and jangling bells; appealing in the
+midst of Nature's splendour to the Spirit which is above Nature, which
+dwells in darkness rather than light, and loves the yearnings and
+contentions of our soul more than its summer gladness and peace. Even
+the olives here tell more to us of Olivet and the Garden than of the
+oil-press and the wrestling-ground. The lilies carry us to the Sermon
+on the Mount, and teach humility, instead of summoning up some legend
+of a god's love for a mortal. The hillside tanks and running streams,
+and water-brooks swollen by sudden rain, speak of Palestine. We call
+the white flowers stars of Bethlehem. The large sceptre-reed; the
+fig-tree, lingering in barrenness when other trees are full of fruit;
+the locust-beans of the Caruba:--for one suggestion of Greek idylls
+there is yet another, of far deeper, dearer power.
+
+But who can resist the influence of Greek ideas at the Cap S. Martin?
+Down to the verge of the sea stretch the tall, twisted stems of Levant
+pines, and on the caverned limestone breaks the deep blue water.
+Dazzling as marble are these rocks, pointed and honeycombed with
+constant dashing of the restless sea, tufted with corallines and grey
+and purple seaweeds in the little pools, but hard and dry and rough
+above tide level. Nor does the sea always lap them quietly; for the
+last few days it has come tumbling in, roaring and raging on the beach
+with huge waves crystalline in their transparency, and maned with
+fleecy spray. Such were the rocks and such the swell of breakers when
+Ulysses grasped the shore after his long swim. Samphire, very salt and
+fragrant, grows in the rocky honeycomb; then lentisk and beach-loving
+myrtle, both exceeding green and bushy; then rosemary and euphorbia
+above the reach of spray. Fishermen, with their long reeds, sit lazily
+perched upon black rocks above blue waves, sunning themselves as much
+as seeking sport. One distant tip of snow, seen far away behind the
+hills, reminds us of an alien, unremembered winter. While dreaming
+there, this fancy came into my head: Polyphemus was born yonder in
+the Gorbio Valley. There he fed his sheep and goats, and on the hills
+found scanty pasture for his kine. He and his mother lived in the
+white house by the cypress near the stream where tulips grow. Young
+Galatea, nursed in the caverns of these rocks, white as the foam, and
+shy as the sea fishes, came one morning up the valley to pick mountain
+hyacinths, and little Polyphemus led the way. He knew where violets
+and sweet narcissus grew, as well as Galatea where pink coralline
+and spreading sea-flowers with their waving arms. But Galatea, having
+filled her lap with bluebells, quite forgot the leaping kids, and
+piping Cyclops, and cool summer caves, and yellow honey, and black
+ivy, and sweet vine, and water cold as Alpine snow. Down the swift
+streamlet she danced laughingly, and made herself once more bitter
+with the sea. But Polyphemus remained,--hungry, sad, gazing on the
+barren sea, and piping to the mockery of its waves.
+
+Filled with these Greek fancies, it is strange to come upon a little
+sandstone dell furrowed by trickling streams and overgrown with
+English primroses; or to enter the village of Roccabruna, with its
+mediaeval castle and the motto on its walls, _Tempora labuntur
+tacitisque senescimus annis_. A true motto for the town, where the
+butcher comes but once a week, and where men and boys, and dogs, and
+palms, and lemon-trees grow up and flourish and decay in the same
+hollow of the sunny mountain-side. Into the hard conglomerate of the
+hill the town is built; house walls and precipices mortised into one
+another, dovetailed by the art of years gone by, and riveted by
+age. The same plants grow from both alike--spurge, cistus, rue, and
+henbane, constant to the desolation of abandoned dwellings. From the
+castle you look down on roofs, brown tiles and chimney-pots, set one
+above the other like a big card-castle. Each house has its foot on a
+neighbour's neck, and its shoulder set against the native stone. The
+streets meander in and out, and up and down, overarched and balconied,
+but very clean. They swarm with children, healthy, happy, little
+monkeys, who grow fat on salt fish and yellow polenta, with oil and
+sun _ad libitum_.
+
+At night from Roccabruna you may see the flaring gas-lamps of the
+gaming-house at Monaco, that Armida's garden of the nineteenth
+century. It is the sunniest and most sheltered spot of all the coast.
+Long ago Lucan said of Monaco, '_Non Corus in illum jus habet aut
+Zephyrus_;' winter never comes to nip its tangled cactuses, and
+aloes, and geraniums. The air swoons with the scent of lemon-groves;
+tall palm-trees wave their graceful branches by the shore; music of
+the softest and the loudest swells from the palace; cool corridors
+and sunny seats stand ready for the noontide heat or evening calm;
+without, are olive-gardens, green and fresh and full of flowers. But
+the witch herself holds her high court and never-ending festival of
+sin in the painted banquet-halls and among the green tables.
+
+Let us leave this scene and turn with the country-folk of Roccabruna
+to S. Michael's Church at Mentone. High above the sea it stands,
+and from its open doors you look across the mountains with their
+olive-trees. Inside the church is a seething mass of country-folk and
+townspeople, mostly women, and these almost all old, but picturesque
+beyond description; kerchiefs of every colour, wrinkles of every shape
+and depth, skins of every tone of brown and yellow, voices of every
+gruffness, shrillness, strength, and weakness. Wherever an empty
+corner can be found, it is soon filled by tottering babies and
+mischievous children. The country-women come with their large dangling
+earrings of thin gold, wearing pink tulips or lemon-buds in their
+black hair. A low buzz of gossiping and mutual recognition keeps the
+air alive. The whole service seems a holiday--a general enjoyment of
+gala dresses and friendly greetings, very different from the
+silence, immobility, and _noli me tangere_ aspect of an English
+congregation. Over all drones, rattles, snores, and shrieks the organ;
+wailing, querulous, asthmatic, incomplete, its everlasting nasal
+chant--always beginning, never ending, through a range of two or three
+notes ground into one monotony. The voices of the congregation
+rise and sink above it. These southern people, like the Arabs, the
+Apulians, and the Spaniards, seem to find their music in a hurdy-gurdy
+swell of sound. The other day we met a little girl, walking and
+spinning, and singing all the while, whose song was just another
+version of this chant. It has a discontented plaintive wail, as if it
+came from some vast age, and were a cousin of primeval winds.
+
+At first sight, by the side of Mentone, San Remo is sadly prosaic. The
+valleys seem to sprawl, and the universal olives are monotonously grey
+upon their thick clay soil. Yet the wealth of flowers in the fat
+earth is wonderful. One might fancy oneself in a weedy farm flower-bed
+invaded by stray oats and beans and cabbages and garlic from the
+kitchen-garden. The country does not suggest a single Greek idea.
+It has no form or outline--no barren peaks, no spare and difficult
+vegetation. The beauty is rich but tame--valleys green with oats and
+corn, blossoming cherry-trees, and sweet bean-fields, figs coming into
+leaf, and arrowy bay-trees by the side of sparkling streams: here and
+there a broken aqueduct or rainbow bridge hung with maidenhair and
+briar and clematis and sarsaparilla.
+
+In the cathedral church of San Siro on Good Friday they hang the
+columns and the windows with black; they cover the pictures and deface
+the altar; above the high altar they raise a crucifix, and below they
+place a catafalque with the effigy of the dead Christ. To this sad
+symbol they address their prayers and incense, chant their 'litanies
+and lurries,' and clash the rattles, which commemorate their rage
+against the traitor Judas. So far have we already passed away from the
+Greek feeling of Mentone. As I listened to the hideous din, I could
+not but remember the Theocritean burial of Adonis. Two funeral beds
+prepared: two feasts recurring in the springtime of the year. What a
+difference beneath this superficial similarity--[Greek: kalos nekus
+oia katheudon]--_attritus aegra macie_. But the fast of Good
+Friday is followed by the festival of Easter. That, after all, is the
+chief difference.
+
+After leaving the cathedral we saw a pretty picture in a dull old
+street of San Remo--three children leaning from a window, blowing
+bubbles. The bubbles floated down the street, of every colour, round
+and trembling, like the dreams of life which children dream. The town
+is certainly most picturesque. It resembles a huge glacier of houses
+poured over a wedge of rock, running down the sides and along the
+ridge, and spreading itself into a fan between two torrents on the
+shore below. House over house, with balcony and staircase, convent
+turret and church tower, palm-trees and olives, roof gardens and
+clinging creepers--this white cataract of buildings streams downward
+from the lazar-house, and sanctuary, and sandstone quarries on the
+hill. It is a mass of streets placed close above each other, and
+linked together with arms and arches of solid masonry, as a protection
+from the earthquakes, which are frequent at San Remo. The walls are
+tall, and form a labyrinth of gloomy passages and treacherous blind
+alleys, where the Moors of old might meet with a ferocious welcome.
+Indeed, San Remo is a fortress as well as a dwelling-place. Over its
+gateways may still be traced the pipes for molten lead, and on its
+walls the eyeloops for arrows, with brackets for the feet of archers.
+Masses of building have been shaken down by earthquakes. The ruins of
+what once were houses gape with blackened chimneys and dark forlorn
+cellars; mazes of fungus and unhealthy weeds among the still secure
+habitations. Hardly a ray of light penetrates the streets; one learns
+the meaning of the Italian word _uggia_ from their cold and
+gloom. During the day they are deserted by every one but babies and
+witchlike old women--some gossiping, some sitting vacant at the house
+door, some spinning or weaving, or minding little children--ugly and
+ancient as are their own homes, yet clean as are the streets. The
+younger population goes afield; the men on mules laden for the hills,
+the women burdened like mules with heavy and disgusting loads. It is
+an exceptionally good-looking race; tall, well-grown, and strong.--But
+to the streets again. The shops in the upper town are few, chiefly
+wine-booths and stalls for the sale of salt fish, eggs, and bread,
+or cobblers' and tinkers' ware. Notwithstanding the darkness of their
+dwellings, the people have a love of flowers; azaleas lean from their
+windows, and vines, carefully protected by a sheath of brickwork,
+climb the six stories, to blossom out into a pergola upon the roof.
+Look at that mass of greenery and colours, dimly seen from beneath,
+with a yellow cat sunning herself upon the parapet! To reach such a
+garden and such sunlight who would not mount six stories and thread
+a labyrinth of passages? I should prefer a room upon the east side of
+the town, looking southward to the Molo and the sea, with a sound
+of water beneath, and a palm soaring up to fan my window with his
+feathery leaves.
+
+The shrines are little spots of brightness in the gloomy streets.
+Madonna with a sword; Christ holding His pierced and bleeding heart;
+l'Eterno Padre pointing to the dead Son stretched upon His knee; some
+souls in torment; S. Roch reminding us of old plagues by the spot upon
+his thigh;--these are the symbols of the shrines. Before them stand
+rows of pots filled with gillyflowers, placed there by pious, simple,
+praying hands--by maidens come to tell their sorrows to our Lady rich
+in sorrow, by old women bent and shrivelled, in hopes of paradise or
+gratitude for happy days, when Madonna kept Cecchino faithful to his
+home, or saved the baby from the fever.
+
+Lower down, between the sea and the hill, is the municipal,
+aristocratic, ecclesiastical quarter of San Remo. There stands the
+Palace Borea--a truly princely pile, built in the last Renaissance
+style of splendour, with sea-nymphs and dolphins, and satyric heads,
+half lips, half leafage, round about its doors and windows. Once it
+formed the dwelling of a feudal family, but now it is a roomy
+anthill of a hundred houses, shops, and offices, the Boreas of to-day
+retaining but a portion of one flat, and making profit of the rest.
+There, too, are the barracks and the syndic's hall; the Jesuits'
+school, crowded with boys and girls; the shops for clothes,
+confectionery, and trinkets; the piazza, with its fountain and
+tasselled planes, and flowery chestnut-trees, a mass of greenery.
+Under these trees the idlers lounge, boys play at leap-frog, men at
+bowls. Women in San Remo work all day, but men and boys play for the
+most part at bowls or toss-penny or leap-frog or morra. San Siro, the
+cathedral, stands at one end of the square. Do not go inside; it has
+a sickly smell of immemorial incense and garlic, undefinable and
+horrible. Far better looks San Siro from the parapet above the
+torrent. There you see its irregular half-Gothic outline across a
+tangle of lemon-trees and olives. The stream rushes by through high
+walls, covered with creepers, spanned by ferny bridges, feathered by
+one or two old tufty palms. And over all rises the ancient turret of
+San Siro, like a Spanish giralda, a minaret of pinnacles and pyramids
+and dome bubbles, with windows showing heavy bells, old clocks, and
+sundials painted on the walls, and a cupola of green and yellow tiles
+like serpent-scales, to crown the whole. The sea lies beyond, and
+the house-roofs break it with grey horizontal lines. Then there are
+convents, legions of them, large white edifices, Jesuitical apparently
+for the most part, clanging importunate bells, leaning rose-blossoms
+and cypress-boughs over their jealous walls.
+
+Lastly, there is the port--the mole running out into the sea, the quay
+planted with plane-trees, and the fishing-boats--by which San Remo is
+connected with the naval glory of the past--with the Riviera that gave
+birth to Columbus--with the Liguria that the Dorias ruled--with the
+great name of Genoa. The port is empty enough now; but from the pier
+you look back on San Remo and its circling hills, a jewelled town
+set in illimitable olive greyness. The quay seems also to be the
+cattle-market. There the small buff cows of North Italy repose after
+their long voyage or march, kneeling on the sandy ground or rubbing
+their sides against the wooden cross awry with age and shorn of all
+its symbols. Lambs frisk among the boats; impudent kids nibble
+the drooping ears of patient mules. Hinds in white jackets and
+knee-breeches made of skins, lead shaggy rams and fiercely bearded
+goats, ready to butt at every barking dog, and always seeking
+opportunities of flight. Farmers and parish priests in black
+petticoats feel the cattle and dispute about the price, or whet their
+bargains with a draught of wine. Meanwhile the nets are brought on
+shore glittering with the fry of sardines, which are cooked like
+whitebait, with cuttlefish--amorphous objects stretching shiny feelers
+on the hot dry sand--and prickly purple eggs of the sea-urchin. Women
+go about their labour through the throng, some carrying stones upon
+their heads, or unloading boats and bearing planks of wood in single
+file, two marching side by side beneath one load of lime, others
+scarcely visible under a stack of oats, another with her baby in its
+cradle fast asleep.
+
+San Remo has an elder brother among the hills, which is called San
+Romolo, after one of the old bishops of Genoa. Who San Remo was is
+buried in remote antiquity; but his town has prospered, while of San
+Romolo nothing remains but a ruined hill-convent among pine-trees. The
+old convent is worth visiting. Its road carries you into the heart of
+the sierra which surrounds San Remo, a hill-country something like
+the Jura, undulating and green to the very top with maritime pines and
+pinasters. Riding up, you hear all manner of Alpine sounds; brawling
+streams, tinkling cowbells, and herdsmen calling to each other on the
+slopes. Beneath you lies San Remo, scarcely visible; and over it the
+great sea rises ever so far into the sky, until the white sails hang
+in air, and cloud and sea-line melt into each other indistinguishably.
+Spanish chestnuts surround the monastery with bright blue gentians,
+hepaticas, forget-me-nots, and primroses about their roots. The house
+itself is perched on a knoll with ample prospect to the sea and to
+the mountains, very near to heaven, within a theatre of noble
+contemplations and soul-stirring thoughts. If Mentone spoke to me of
+the poetry of Greek pastoral life, this convent speaks of mediaeval
+monasticism--of solitude with God, above, beneath, and all around, of
+silence and repose from agitating cares, of continuity in prayer, and
+changelessness of daily life. Some precepts of the _Imitatio_
+came into my mind: 'Be never wholly idle; read or write, pray or
+meditate, or work with diligence for the common needs.' 'Praiseworthy
+is it for the religious man to go abroad but seldom, and to seem to
+shun, and keep his eyes from men.' 'Sweet is the cell when it is often
+sought, but if we gad about, it wearies us by its seclusion.' Then I
+thought of the monks so living in this solitude; their cell windows
+looking across the valley to the sea, through summer and winter, under
+sun and stars. Then would they read or write, what long melodious
+hours! or would they pray, what stations on the pine-clad hills! or
+would they toil, what terraces to build and plant with corn, what
+flowers to tend, what cows to milk and pasture, what wood to cut,
+what fir-cones to gather for the winter fire! or should they yearn for
+silence, silence from their comrades of the solitude, what whispering
+galleries of God, where never human voice breaks loudly, but winds
+and streams and lonely birds disturb the awful stillness! In such a
+hermitage as this, only more wild, lived S. Francis of Assisi, among
+the Apennines.[7] It was there that he learned the tongues of beasts
+and birds, and preached them sermons. Stretched for hours motionless
+on the bare rocks, coloured like them and rough like them in his brown
+peasant's serge, he prayed and meditated, saw the vision of Christ
+crucified, and planned his order to regenerate a vicious age. So still
+he lay, so long, so like a stone, so gentle were his eyes, so kind
+and low his voice, that the mice nibbled breadcrumbs from his wallet,
+lizards ran over him, and larks sang to him in the air. There, too, in
+those long, solitary vigils, the Spirit of God came upon him, and the
+spirit of Nature was even as God's Spirit, and he sang: 'Laudato sia
+Dio mio Signore, con tutte le creature, specialmente messer lo frate
+sole; per suor luna, e per le stelle; per frate vento e per l'aire, e
+nuvolo, e sereno e ogni tempo.' Half the value of this hymn would
+be lost were we to forget how it was written, in what solitudes and
+mountains far from men, or to ticket it with some abstract word
+like Pantheism. Pantheism it is not; but an acknowledgment of that
+brotherhood, beneath the love of God, by which the sun and moon and
+stars, and wind and air and cloud, and clearness and all weather, and
+all creatures, are bound together with the soul of man.
+
+Few, of course, were like S. Francis. Probably no monk of San Romolo
+was inspired with his enthusiasm for humanity, or had his revelation
+of the Divine Spirit inherent in the world. Still fewer can have felt
+the aesthetic charm of Nature but most vaguely. It was as much as they
+could boast, if they kept steadily to the rule of their order, and
+attended to the concerns each of his own soul. A terrible selfishness,
+if rightly considered; but one which accorded with the delusion that
+this world is a cave of care, the other world a place of torture or
+undying bliss, death the prime object of our meditation, and lifelong
+abandonment of our fellow-men the highest mode of existence. Why,
+then, should monks, so persuaded of the riddle of the earth, have
+placed themselves in scenes so beautiful? Why rose the Camaldolis and
+Chartreuses over Europe? white convents on the brows of lofty hills,
+among the rustling boughs of Vallombrosas, in the grassy meadows of
+Engelbergs,--always the eyries of Nature's lovers, men smitten with
+the loveliness of earth? There is surely some meaning in these poetic
+stations.
+
+Here is a sentence of the _Imitatio_ which throws some light upon
+the hymn of S. Francis and the sites of Benedictine monasteries, by
+explaining the value of natural beauty for monks who spent their life
+in studying death: 'If thy heart were right, then would every creature
+be to thee a mirror of life, and a book of holy doctrine. There is no
+creature so small and vile that does not show forth the goodness
+of God.' With this sentence bound about their foreheads, walked Fra
+Angelico and S. Francis. To men like them the mountain valleys and the
+skies, and all that they contained, were full of deep significance.
+Though they reasoned '_de conditione humanae miseriae_,' and '_de
+contemptu mundi_,' yet the whole world was a pageant of God's
+glory, a testimony to His goodness. Their chastened senses, pure
+hearts, and simple wills were as wings by which they soared above the
+things of earth, and sent the music of their souls aloft with every
+other creature in the symphony of praise. To them, as to Blake, the
+sun was no mere blazing disc or ball, but 'an innumerable company
+of the heavenly host singing, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God
+Almighty."' To them the winds were brothers, and the streams were
+sisters--brethren in common dependence upon God their Father, brethren
+in common consecration to His service, brethren by blood, brethren by
+vows of holiness. Unquestioning faith rendered this world no puzzle;
+they overlooked the things of sense because the spiritual things
+were ever present, and as clear as day. Yet did they not forget
+that spiritual things are symbolised by things of sense; and so the
+smallest herb of grass was vital to their tranquil contemplations.
+We who have lost sight of the invisible world, who set our affections
+more on things of earth, fancy that because these monks despised the
+world, and did not write about its landscapes, therefore they were
+dead to its beauty. This is mere vanity: the mountains, stars, seas,
+fields, and living things were only swallowed up in the one thought of
+God, and made subordinate to the awfulness of human destinies. We
+to whom hills are hills, and seas are seas, and stars are ponderable
+quantities, speak, write, and reason of them as of objects interesting
+in themselves. The monks were less ostensibly concerned about such
+things, because they only found in them the vestibules and symbols of
+a hidden mystery.
+
+The contrast between the Greek and mediaeval modes of regarding
+Nature is not a little remarkable. Both Greeks and monks, judged by
+nineteenth-century standards, were unobservant of natural beauties.
+They make but brief and general remarks upon landscapes and the like.
+The [Greek: pontion te kumaton anerithmon gelasma] is very
+rare. But the Greeks stopped at the threshold of Nature; the forces
+they found there, the gods, were inherent in Nature, and distinct.
+They did not, like the monks, place one spiritual power, omnipotent
+and omnipresent, above all, and see in Nature lessons of Divine
+government. We ourselves having somewhat overstrained the latter point
+of view, are now apt to return vaguely to Greek fancies. Perhaps, too,
+we talk so much about scenery because it is scenery to us, and the
+life has gone out of it.
+
+I cannot leave the Cornice without one word about a place which lies
+between Mentone and San Remo. Bordighera has a beauty which is quite
+distinct from both. Palms are its chief characteristics. They lean
+against the garden walls, and feather the wells outside the town,
+where women come with brazen pitchers to draw water. In some of the
+marshy tangles of the plain, they spring from a thick undergrowth of
+spiky leaves, and rear their tall aerial arms against the deep blue
+background of the sea or darker purple of the distant hills. White
+pigeons fly about among their branches, and the air is loud with
+cooings and with rustlings, and the hoarser croaking of innumerable
+frogs. Then, in the olive-groves that stretch along the level shore,
+are labyrinths of rare and curious plants, painted tulips and white
+periwinkles, flinging their light of blossoms and dark glossy leaves
+down the swift channels of the brawling streams. On each side of the
+rivulets they grow, like sister cataracts of flowers instead of spray.
+At night fresh stars come out along the coast, beneath the stars
+of heaven; for you can see the lamps of Ventimiglia and Mentone
+and Monaco, and, far away, the lighthouses upon the promontories of
+Antibes and the Estrelles. At dawn, a vision of Corsica grows from
+the sea. The island lies eighty miles away, but one can trace the
+dark strip of irregular peaks glowing amid the gold and purple of the
+rising sun. If the air is clear and bright, the snows and overvaulting
+clouds which crown its mountains shine all day, and glitter like an
+apparition in the bright blue sky. 'Phantom fair,' half raised above
+the sea, it stands, as unreal and transparent as the moon when seen in
+April sunlight, yet not to be confounded with the shape of any cloud.
+If Mentone speaks of Greek legends, and San Romolo restores the
+monastic past, we feel ourselves at Bordighera transported to the
+East; and lying under its tall palms can fancy ourselves at Tyre or
+Daphne, or in the gardens of a Moslem prince.
+
+    Note.--Dec. 1873. My old impressions are renewed and confirmed
+    by a third visit, after seven years, to this coast. For purely
+    idyllic loveliness, the Cornice is surpassed by nothing in
+    the South. A very few spots in Sicily, the road between
+    Castellammare and Amalfi, and the island of Corfu, are its
+    only rivals in this style of scenery. From Cannes to Sestri is
+    one continuous line of exquisitely modulated landscape beauty,
+    which can only be fully appreciated by travellers in carriage
+    or on foot.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+_AJACCIO_
+
+
+It generally happens that visitors to Ajaccio pass over from the
+Cornice coast, leaving Nice at night, and waking about sunrise to find
+themselves beneath the frowning mountains of Corsica. The difference
+between the scenery of the island and the shores which they have
+left is very striking. Instead of the rocky mountains of the Cornice,
+intolerably dry and barren at their summits, but covered at their base
+with villages and ancient towns and olive-fields, Corsica presents a
+scene of solitary and peculiar grandeur. The highest mountain-tops are
+covered with snow, and beneath the snow-level to the sea they are
+as green as Irish or as English hills, but nearly uninhabited and
+uncultivated. Valleys of almost Alpine verdure are succeeded by
+tracts of chestnut wood and scattered pines, or deep and flowery
+brushwood--the 'maquis' of Corsica, which yields shelter to its
+traditional outlaws and bandits. Yet upon these hillsides there
+are hardly any signs of life; the whole country seems abandoned to
+primeval wildness and the majesty of desolation. Nothing can possibly
+be more unlike the smiling Riviera, every square mile of which is
+cultivated like a garden, and every valley and bay dotted over with
+white villages. After steaming for a few hours along this savage
+coast, the rocks which guard the entrance to the bay of Ajaccio,
+murderous-looking teeth and needles ominously christened Sanguinari,
+are passed, and we enter the splendid land-locked harbour, on the
+northern shore of which Ajaccio is built. About three centuries ago
+the town, which used to occupy the extreme or eastern end of the bay,
+was removed to a more healthy point upon the northern coast, so that
+Ajaccio is quite a modern city. Visitors who expect to find in it
+the picturesqueness of Genoa or San Remo, or even of Mentone, will
+be sadly disappointed. It is simply a healthy, well-appointed town of
+recent date, the chief merits of which are, that it has wide streets,
+and is free, externally at least, from the filth and rubbish of most
+southern seaports.
+
+But if Ajaccio itself is not picturesque, the scenery which
+it commands, and in the heart of which it lies, is of the most
+magnificent. The bay of Ajaccio resembles a vast Italian lake--a Lago
+Maggiore, with greater space between the mountains and the shore.
+From the snow-peaks of the interior, huge granite crystals clothed in
+white, to the southern extremity of the bay, peak succeeds peak and
+ridge rises behind ridge in a line of wonderful variety and beauty.
+The atmospheric changes of light and shadow, cloud and colour, on this
+upland country, are as subtle and as various as those which lend their
+beauty to the scenery of the lakes, while the sea below is blue and
+rarely troubled. One could never get tired with looking at this view.
+Morning and evening add new charms to its sublimity and beauty. In the
+early morning Monte d'Oro sparkles like a Monte Rosa with its fresh
+snow, and the whole inferior range puts on the crystal blueness of
+dawn among the Alps. In the evening, violet and purple tints and
+the golden glow of Italian sunset lend a different lustre to the
+fairyland. In fact, the beauties of Switzerland and Italy are
+curiously blended in this landscape.
+
+In soil and vegetation the country round Ajaccio differs much from the
+Cornice. There are very few olive-trees, nor is the cultivated ground
+backed up so immediately by stony mountains; but between the seashore
+and the hills there is plenty of space for pasture-land, and orchards
+of apricot and peach-trees, and orange gardens. This undulating
+champaign, green with meadows and watered with clear streams, is very
+refreshing to the eyes of Northern people, who may have wearied of the
+bareness and greyness of Nice or Mentone. It is traversed by excellent
+roads, recently constructed on a plan of the French Government, which
+intersect the country in all directions, and offer an infinite variety
+of rides or drives to visitors. The broken granite of which these
+roads are made is very pleasant for riding over. Most of the hills
+through which they strike, after starting from Ajaccio, are
+clothed with a thick brushwood of box, ilex, lentisk, arbutus,
+and laurustinus, which stretches down irregularly into vineyards,
+olive-gardens, and meadows. It is, indeed, the native growth of the
+island; for wherever a piece of ground is left untilled, the macchi
+grow up, and the scent of their multitudinous aromatic blossoms is so
+strong that it may be smelt miles out at sea. Napoleon, at S. Helena,
+referred to this fragrance when he said that he should know Corsica
+blindfold by the smell of its soil. Occasional woods of holm oak make
+darker patches on the landscape, and a few pines fringe the side of
+enclosure walls or towers. The prickly pear runs riot in and out
+among the hedges and upon the walls, diversifying the colours of the
+landscape with its strange grey-green masses and unwieldy fans. In
+spring, when peach and almond trees are in blossom, and when the
+roadside is starred with asphodels, this country is most beautiful in
+its gladness. The macchi blaze with cistus flowers of red and silver.
+Golden broom mixes with the dark purple of the great French lavender,
+and over the whole mass of blossom wave plumes of Mediterranean heath
+and sweet-scented yellow coronilla. Under the stems of the ilex peep
+cyclamens, pink and sweet; the hedgerows are a tangle of vetches,
+convolvuluses, lupines, orchises, and alliums, with here and there a
+purple iris. It would be difficult to describe all the rare and lovely
+plants which are found here in a profusion that surpasses even the
+flower-gardens of the Cornice, and reminds one of the most favoured
+Alpine valleys in their early spring.
+
+Since the French occupied Corsica they have done much for the island
+by improving its harbours and making good roads, and endeavouring
+to mitigate the ferocity of the people. But they have many things to
+contend against, and Corsica is still behind the other provinces of
+France. The people are idle, haughty, umbrageous, fiery, quarrelsome,
+fond of gipsy life, and retentive through generations of old feuds and
+prejudices to an almost inconceivable extent. Then the nature of the
+country itself offers serious obstacles to its proper colonisation
+and cultivation. The savage state of the island and its internal feuds
+have disposed the Corsicans to quit the seaboard for their mountain
+villages and fortresses, so that the great plains at the foot of the
+hills are unwholesome for want of tillage and drainage. Again,
+the mountains themselves have in many parts been stripped of their
+forests, and converted into mere wildernesses of macchi stretching
+up and down their slopes for miles and miles of useless desolation.
+Another impediment to proper cultivation is found in the old habit of
+what is called free pasturage. The highland shepherds are allowed
+by the national custom to drive down their flocks and herds to the
+lowlands during the winter, so that fences are broken, young crops
+are browsed over and trampled down, and agriculture becomes a mere
+impossibility. The last and chief difficulty against which the French
+have had to contend, and up to this time with apparent success, is
+brigandage. The Corsican system of brigandage is so very different
+from that of the Italians, Sicilians, and Greeks, that a word may be
+said about its peculiar character. In the first place, it has nothing
+at all to do with robbery and thieving. The Corsican bandit took to a
+free life among the macchi, not for the sake of supporting himself by
+lawless depredation, but because he had put himself under a legal and
+social ban by murdering some one in obedience to the strict code of
+honour of his country. His victim may have been the hereditary foe of
+his house for generations, or else the newly made enemy of yesterday.
+But in either case, if he had killed him fairly, after a due
+notification of his intention to do so, he was held to have fulfilled
+a duty rather than to have committed a crime. He then betook himself
+to the dense tangles of evergreens which I have described, where he
+lived upon the charity of countryfolk and shepherds. In the eyes of
+those simple people it was a sacred duty to relieve the necessities of
+the outlaws, and to guard them from the bloodhounds of justice. There
+was scarcely a respectable family in Corsica who had not one or more
+of its members thus _alla campagna_, as it was euphemistically
+styled. The Corsicans themselves have attributed this miserable state
+of things to two principal causes. The first of these was the ancient
+bad government of the island: under its Genoese rulers no justice was
+administered, and private vengeance for homicide or insult became a
+necessary consequence among the haughty and warlike families of
+the mountain villages. Secondly, the Corsicans have been from time
+immemorial accustomed to wear arms in everyday life. They used to sit
+at their house doors and pace the streets with musket, pistol, dagger,
+and cartouch-box on their persons; and on the most trivial occasion
+of merriment or enthusiasm they would discharge their firearms. This
+habit gave a bloody termination to many quarrels, which might have
+ended more peaceably had the parties been unarmed; and so the seeds
+of _vendetta_ were constantly being sown. Statistics published
+by the French Government present a hideous picture of the state of
+bloodshed in Corsica even during this century. In one period of thirty
+years (between 1821 and 1850) there were 4319 murders in the island.
+Almost every man was watching for his neighbour's life, or seeking how
+to save his own; and agriculture and commerce were neglected for this
+grisly game of hide-and-seek. In 1853 the French began to take strong
+measures, and, under the Prefect Thuillier, they hunted the bandits
+from the macchi, killing between 200 and 300 of them. At the same time
+an edict was promulgated against bearing arms. It is forbidden to sell
+the old Corsican stiletto in the shops, and no one may carry a gun,
+even for sporting purposes, unless he obtains a special licence. These
+licences, moreover, are only granted for short and precisely measured
+periods.
+
+In order to appreciate the stern and gloomy character of the
+Corsicans, it is necessary to leave the smiling gardens of Ajaccio,
+and to visit some of the more distant mountain villages--Vico, Cavro,
+Bastelica, or Bocognano, any of which may easily be reached from the
+capital. Immediately after quitting the seaboard, we enter a country
+austere in its simplicity, solemn without relief, yet dignified by its
+majesty and by the sense of freedom it inspires. As we approach the
+mountains, the macchi become taller, feathering man-high above the
+road, and stretching far away upon the hills. Gigantic masses of
+granite, shaped like buttresses and bastions, seem to guard the
+approaches to these hills; while, looking backward over the green
+plain, the sea lies smiling in a haze of blue among the rocky horns
+and misty headlands of the coast. There is a stateliness about the
+abrupt inclination of these granite slopes, rising from their frowning
+portals by sharp _aretes_ to the snows piled on their summits,
+which contrasts in a strange way with the softness and beauty of
+the mingling sea and plain beneath. In no landscape are more various
+qualities combined; in none are they so harmonised as to produce so
+strong a sense of majestic freedom and severe power. Suppose that we
+are on the road to Corte, and have now reached Bocognano, the first
+considerable village since we left Ajaccio. Bocognano might be chosen
+as typical of Corsican hill-villages, with its narrow street, and
+tall tower-like houses of five or six stories high, faced with
+rough granite, and pierced with the smallest windows and very narrow
+doorways. These buildings have a mournful and desolate appearance.
+There is none of the grandeur of antiquity about them; no sculptured
+arms or castellated turrets, or balconies or spacious staircases,
+such as are common in the poorest towns of Italy. The signs of warlike
+occupation which they offer, and their sinister aspect of vigilance,
+are thoroughly prosaic. They seem to suggest a state of society in
+which feud and violence were systematised into routine. There is no
+relief to the savage austerity of their forbidding aspect; no signs
+of wealth or household comfort; no trace of art, no liveliness and
+gracefulness of architecture. Perched upon their coigns of vantage,
+these villages seem always menacing, as if Saracen pirates, or Genoese
+marauders, or bandits bent on vengeance, were still for ever on the
+watch. Forests of immensely old chestnut-trees surround Bocognano on
+every side, so that you step from the village streets into the shade
+of woods that seem to have remained untouched for centuries. The
+country-people support themselves almost entirely upon the fruit of
+these chestnuts; and there is a large department of Corsica called
+Castagniccia, from the prevalence of these trees and the sustenance
+which the inhabitants derive from them. Close by the village brawls
+a torrent, such as one may see in the Monte Rosa valleys or the
+Apennines, but very rarely in Switzerland. It is of a pure green
+colour, absolutely like Indian jade, foaming round the granite
+boulders, and gliding over smooth slabs of polished stone, and eddying
+into still, deep pools fringed with fern. Monte d'Oro, one of the
+largest mountains of Corsica, soars above, and from his snows the
+purest water, undefiled by glacier mud or the _debris_ of
+avalanches, melts away. Following the stream, we rise through the
+macchi and the chestnut woods, which grow more sparely by degrees,
+until we reach the zone of beeches. Here the scene seems suddenly
+transferred to the Pyrenees; for the road is carried along abrupt
+slopes, thickly set with gigantic beech-trees, overgrown with pink and
+silver lichens. In the early spring their last year's leaves are still
+crisp with hoar-frost; one morning's journey has brought us from the
+summer of Ajaccio to winter on these heights, where no flowers are
+visible but the pale hellebore and tiny lilac crocuses. Snow-drifts
+stretch by the roadside, and one by one the pioneers of the vast
+pine-woods of the interior appear. A great portion of the pine-forest
+(_Pinus larix_, or Corsican pine, not larch) between Bocognano
+and Corte had recently been burned by accident when we passed by.
+Nothing could be more forlorn than the black leafless stems and
+branches emerging from the snow. Some of these trees were mast-high,
+and some mere saplings. Corte itself is built among the mountain
+fastnesses of the interior. The snows and granite cliffs of Monte
+Rotondo overhang it to the north-west, while two fair valleys lead
+downward from its eyrie to the eastern coast. The rock on which it
+stands rises to a sharp point, sloping southward, and commanding the
+valleys of the Golo and the Tavignano. Remembering that Corte was the
+old capital of Corsica, and the centre of General Paoli's government,
+we are led to compare the town with Innsprueck, Meran, or Grenoble.
+In point of scenery and situation it is hardly second to any of these
+mountain-girdled cities; but its poverty and bareness are scarcely
+less striking than those of Bocognano.
+
+The whole Corsican character, with its stern love of justice, its
+furious revengefulness and wild passion for freedom, seems to be
+illustrated by the peculiar elements of grandeur and desolation in
+this landscape. When we traverse the forest of Vico or the rocky
+pasture-lands of Niolo, the history of the Corsican national heroes,
+Giudice della Rocca and Sampiero, becomes intelligible, nor do we fail
+to understand some of the mysterious attraction which led the more
+daring spirits of the island to prefer a free life among the macchi
+and pine-woods to placid lawful occupations in farms and villages.
+The lives of the two men whom I have mentioned are so prominent in
+Corsican history, and are so often still upon the lips of the common
+people, that it may be well to sketch their outlines in the foreground
+of the Salvator Rosa landscape just described. Giudice was the
+governor of Corsica, as lieutenant for the Pisans, at the end of the
+thirteenth century. At that time the island belonged to the republic
+of Pisa, but the Genoese were encroaching on them by land and sea,
+and the whole life of their brave champion was spent in a desperate
+struggle with the invaders, until at last he died, old, blind, and in
+prison, at the command of his savage foes. Giudice was the title which
+the Pisans usually conferred upon their governor, and Della Rocca
+deserved it by right of his own inexorable love of justice. Indeed,
+justice seems to have been with him a passion, swallowing up all other
+feelings of his nature. All the stories which are told of him turn
+upon this point in his character; and though they may not be strictly
+true, they illustrate the stern virtues for which he was celebrated
+among the Corsicans, and show what kind of men this harsh and gloomy
+nation loved to celebrate as heroes. This is not the place either to
+criticise these legends or to recount them at full length. The most
+famous and the most characteristic may, however, be briefly told. On
+one occasion, after a victory over the Genoese, he sent a message
+that the captives in his hands should be released if their wives and
+sisters came to sue for them. The Genoese ladies embarked, and
+arrived in Corsica, and to Giudice's nephew was intrusted the duty
+of fulfilling his uncle's promise. In the course of executing his
+commission, the youth was so smitten with the beauty of one of the
+women that he dishonoured her. Thereupon Giudice had him at once put
+to death. Another story shows the Spartan justice of this hero in
+a less savage light. He was passing by a cowherd's cottage, when he
+heard some young calves bleating. On inquiring what distressed them,
+he was told that the calves had not enough milk to drink after the
+farm people had been served. Then Giudice made it a law that the
+calves throughout the land should take their fill before the cows were
+milked.
+
+Sampiero belongs to a later period of Corsican history. After a long
+course of misgovernment the Genoese rule had become unbearable. There
+was no pretence of administering justice, and private vengeance had
+full sway in the island. The sufferings of the nation were so great
+that the time had come for a new judge or saviour to rise among them.
+Sampiero was the son of obscure parents who lived at Bastelica. But
+his abilities very soon declared themselves, and made a way for him in
+the world. He spent his youth in the armies of the Medici and of the
+French Francis, gaining great renown as a brave soldier. Bayard became
+his friend, and Francis made him captain of his Corsican bands. But
+Sampiero did not forget the wrongs of his native land while thus on
+foreign service. He resolved, if possible, to undermine the power
+of Genoa, and spent the whole of his manhood and old age in one
+long struggle with their great captain, Stephen Doria. Of his stern
+patriotism and Roman severity of virtue the following story is a
+terrible illustration. Sampiero, though a man of mean birth, had
+married an heiress of the noble Corsican house of the Ornani. His
+wife, Vannina, was a woman of timid and flexible nature, who, though
+devoted to her husband, fell into the snares of his enemies. During
+his absence on an embassy to Algiers the Genoese induced her to leave
+her home at Marseilles and to seek refuge in their city, persuading
+her that this step would secure the safety of her child. She was
+starting on her journey when a friend of Sampiero arrested her, and
+brought her back to Aix, in Provence. Sampiero, when he heard of these
+events, hurried to France, and was received by a relative of his,
+who hinted that he had known of Vannina's projected flight. 'E tu hai
+taciuto?' was Sampiero's only answer, accompanied by a stroke of his
+poignard that killed the lukewarm cousin. Sampiero now brought his
+wife from Aix to Marseilles, preserving the most absolute silence on
+the way, and there, on entering his house, he killed her with his own
+hand. It is said that he loved Vannina passionately; and when she was
+dead, he caused her to be buried with magnificence in the church of S.
+Francis. Like Giudice, Sampiero fell at last a prey to treachery. The
+murder of Vannina had made the Ornani his deadly foes. In order to
+avenge her blood, they played into the hands of the Genoese, and laid
+a plot by which the noblest of the Corsicans was brought to death.
+First, they gained over to their scheme a monk of Bastelica, called
+Ambrogio, and Sampiero's own squire and shield-bearer, Vittolo. By
+means of these men, in whom he trusted, he was drawn defenceless and
+unattended into a deeply wooded ravine near Cavro, not very far from
+his birthplace, where the Ornani and their Genoese troops surrounded
+him. Sampiero fired his pistols in vain, for Vittolo had loaded them
+with the shot downwards. Then he drew his sword, and began to lay
+about him, when the same Vittolo, the Judas, stabbed him from
+behind, and the old lion fell dead by his friend's hand. Sampiero was
+sixty-nine when he died, in the year 1567. It is satisfactory to know
+that the Corsicans have called traitors and foes to their country
+Vittoli for ever. These two examples of Corsican patriots are enough;
+we need not add to theirs the history of Paoli--a milder and more
+humane, but scarcely less heroic leader. Paoli, however, in the
+hour of Corsica's extremest peril, retired to England, and died in
+philosophic exile. Neither Giudice nor Sampiero would have acted thus.
+The more forlorn the hope, the more they struggled.
+
+Among the old Corsican customs which are fast dying out, but
+which still linger in the remote valleys of Niolo and Vico, is the
+_vocero_, or funeral chant, improvised by women at funerals over
+the bodies of the dead. Nothing illustrates the ferocious temper and
+savage passions of the race better than these _voceri_, many of
+which have been written down and preserved. Most of them are songs
+of vengeance and imprecation, mingled with hyperbolical laments and
+utterances of extravagant grief, poured forth by wives and sisters at
+the side of murdered husbands and brothers. The women who sing them
+seem to have lost all milk of human kindness, and to have exchanged
+the virtues of their sex for Spartan fortitude and the rage of furies.
+While we read their turbid lines we are carried in imagination to one
+of the cheerless houses of Bastelica or Bocognano, overshadowed by its
+mournful chestnut-tree, on which the blood of the murdered man is yet
+red. The _gridata_, or wake, is assembled in a dark room. On the
+wooden board, called _tola_, the corpse lies stretched; and round
+it are women, veiled in the blue-black mantle of Corsican costume,
+moaning and rocking themselves upon their chairs. The _pasto_ or
+_conforto_, food supplied for mourners, stands upon a side table,
+and round the room are men with savage eyes and bristling beards,
+armed to the teeth, keen for vengeance. The dead man's musket and
+pocket-pistol lie beside him, and his bloody shirt is hung up at his
+head. Suddenly, the silence, hitherto only disturbed by suppressed
+groans and muttered curses, is broken by a sharp cry. A woman rises:
+it is the sister of the dead man; she seizes his shirt, and holding
+it aloft with Maenad gestures and frantic screams, gives rhythmic
+utterance to her grief and rage. 'I was spinning, when I heard a great
+noise: it was a gunshot, which went into my heart, and seemed a voice
+that cried, "Run, thy brother is dying." I ran into the room above;
+I took the blow into my breast; I said, "Now he is dead, there is
+nothing to give me comfort. Who will undertake thy vengeance? When I
+show thy shirt, who will vow to let his beard grow till the murderer
+is slain? Who is there left to do it? A mother near her death? A
+sister? Of all our race there is only left a woman, without kin, poor,
+orphan, and a girl. Yet, O my brother! never fear. For thy vengeance
+thy sister is enough!
+
+  '"Ma per fa la to bindetta,
+  Sta siguru, basta anch ella!
+
+Give me the pistol; I will shoulder the gun; I will away to the
+hills. My brother, heart of thy sister, thou shalt be avenged!"' A
+_vocero_ declaimed upon the bier of Giammatteo and Pasquale,
+two cousins, by the sister of the former, is still fiercer and more
+energetic in its malediction. This Erinnys of revenge prays Christ and
+all the saints to extirpate the murderer's whole race, to shrivel it
+up till it passes from the earth. Then, with a sudden and vehement
+transition to the pathos of her own sorrow, she exclaims:--
+
+  'Halla mai bista nissunu
+  Tumba l'omi pe li canti?'
+
+It appears from these words that Giammatteo's enemies had killed him
+because they were jealous of his skill in singing. Shortly after,
+she curses the curate of the village, a kinsman of the murderer, for
+refusing to toll the funeral bells; and at last, all other threads of
+rage and sorrow being twined and knotted into one, she gives loose
+to her raging thirst for blood: 'If only I had a son, to train like
+a sleuth-hound, that he might track the murderer! Oh, if I had a son!
+Oh, if I had a lad!' Her words seem to choke her, and she swoons, and
+remains for a short time insensible. When the Bacchante of revenge
+awakes, it is with milder feelings in her heart: 'O brother mine,
+Matteo! art thou sleeping? Here I will rest with thee and weep till
+daybreak.' It is rare to find in literature so crude and intense
+an expression of fiery hatred as these untranslatable _voceri_
+present. The emotion is so simple and so strong that it becomes
+sublime by mere force, and affects us with a strange pathos when
+contrasted with the tender affection conveyed in such terms of
+endearment as 'my dove,' 'my flower,' 'my pheasant,' 'my bright
+painted orange,' addressed to the dead. In the _voceri_ it often
+happens that there are several interlocutors: one friend questions and
+another answers; or a kinswoman of the murderer attempts to justify
+the deed, and is overwhelmed with deadly imprecations. Passionate
+appeals are made to the corpse: 'Arise! Do you not hear the women cry?
+Stand up. Show your wounds, and let the fountains of your blood flow!
+Alas! he is dead; he sleeps; he cannot hear!' Then they turn again to
+tears and curses, feeling that no help or comfort can come from the
+clay-cold form. The intensity of grief finds strange language for its
+utterance. A girl, mourning over her father, cries:--
+
+  'Mi l'hannu crucifissatu
+  Cume Ghiesu Cristu in croce.'
+
+Once only, in Viale's collection, does any friend of the dead remember
+mercy. It is an old woman, who points to the crucifix above the bier.
+
+But all the _voceri_ are not so murderous. Several are composed
+for girls who died unwedded and before their time, by their mothers
+or companions. The language of these laments is far more tender and
+ornate. They praise the gentle virtues and beauty of the girl, her
+piety and helpful household ways. The most affecting of these dirges
+is that which celebrates the death of Romana, daughter of Dariola
+Danesi. Here is a pretty picture of the girl: 'Among the best and
+fairest maidens you were like a rose among flowers, like the moon
+among stars; so far more lovely were you than the loveliest. The
+youths in your presence were like lighted torches, but full of
+reverence; you were courteous to all, but with none familiar. In
+church they gazed at you, but you looked at none of them; and after
+mass you said, "Mother, let us go." Oh! who will console me for your
+loss? Why did the Lord so much desire you? But now you rest in heaven,
+all joy and smiles; for the world was not worthy of so fair a face.
+Oh, how far more beautiful will Paradise be now!' Then follows a
+piteous picture of the old bereaved mother, to whom a year will seem
+a thousand years, who will wander among relatives without affection,
+neighbours without love; and who, when sickness comes, will have no
+one to give her a drop of water, or to wipe the sweat from her brow,
+or to hold her hand in death. Yet all that is left for her is to wait
+and pray for the end, that she may join again her darling.
+
+But it is time to return to Ajaccio itself. At present the attractions
+and ornaments of the town consist of a good public library, Cardinal
+Fesch's large but indifferent collection of pictures, two monuments
+erected to Napoleon, and Napoleon's house. It will always be the chief
+pride of Ajaccio that she gave birth to the great emperor. Close to
+the harbour, in a public square by the sea-beach, stands an equestrian
+statue of the conqueror, surrounded by his four brothers on foot. They
+are all attired in Roman fashion, and are turned seaward, to the west,
+as if to symbolise the emigration of this family to subdue Europe.
+There is something ludicrous and forlorn in the stiffness of the
+group--something even pathetic, when we think how Napoleon gazed
+seaward from another island, no longer on horseback, no longer
+laurel-crowned, an unthroned, unseated conqueror, on S. Helena. His
+father's house stands close by. An old Italian waiting-woman, who had
+been long in the service of the Murats, keeps it and shows it. She
+has the manners of a lady, and can tell many stories of the various
+members of the Buonaparte family. Those who fancy that Napoleon was
+born in a mean dwelling of poor parents will be surprised to find so
+much space and elegance in these apartments. Of course his family was
+not rich by comparison with the riches of French or English nobles.
+But for Corsicans they were well-to-do, and their house has an air of
+antique dignity. The chairs of the entrance-saloon have been literally
+stripped of their coverings by enthusiastic visitors; the horse-hair
+stuffing underneath protrudes itself with a sort of comic pride, as
+if protesting that it came to be so tattered in an honourable service.
+Some of the furniture seems new; but many old presses, inlaid with
+marbles, agates, and lapis-lazuli, such as Italian families preserve
+for generations, have an air of respectable antiquity about them. Nor
+is there any doubt that the young Napoleon led his minuets beneath
+the stiff girandoles of the formal dancing-room. There, too, in a
+dark back chamber, is the bed in which he was born. At its foot is a
+photograph of the Prince Imperial sent by the Empress Eugenie, who,
+when she visited the room, wept much _pianse molto_ (to use the
+old lady's phrase)--at seeing the place where such lofty destinies
+began. On the wall of the same room is a portrait of Napoleon himself
+as the young general of the republic--with the citizen's unkempt
+hair, the fierce fire of the Revolution in his eyes, a frown upon his
+forehead, lips compressed, and quivering nostrils; also one of his
+mother, the pastille of a handsome woman, with Napoleonic eyes
+and brows and nose, but with a vacant simpering mouth. Perhaps
+the provincial artist knew not how to seize the expression of this
+feature, the most difficult to draw. For we cannot fancy that Letizia
+had lips without the firmness or the fulness of a majestic nature.
+
+The whole first story of this house belonged to the Buonaparte family.
+The windows look out partly on a little court and partly on narrow
+streets. It was, no doubt, the memory of this home that made Napoleon,
+when emperor, design schemes for the good of Corsica--schemes that
+might have brought him more honour than many conquests, but which
+he had no time or leisure to carry out. On S. Helena his mind often
+reverted to them, and he would speak of the gummy odours of the macchi
+wafted from the hillsides to the seashore.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+_MONTE GENEROSO_
+
+The long hot days of Italian summer were settling down on plain and
+country when, in the last week of May, we travelled northward from
+Florence and Bologna seeking coolness. That was very hard to find in
+Lombardy. The days were long and sultry, the nights short, without a
+respite from the heat. Milan seemed a furnace, though in the Duomo and
+the narrow shady streets there was a twilight darkness which at least
+looked cool. Long may it be before the northern spirit of improvement
+has taught the Italians to despise the wisdom of their forefathers,
+who built those sombre streets of palaces with overhanging eaves,
+that, almost meeting, form a shelter from the fiercest sun. The lake
+country was even worse than the towns; the sunlight lay all day asleep
+upon the shining waters, and no breeze came to stir their surface or
+to lift the tepid veil of haze, through which the stony mountains,
+with their yet unmelted patches of winter snow, glared as if in
+mockery of coolness.
+
+Then we heard of a new inn, which had just been built by an
+enterprising Italian doctor below the very top of Monte Generoso.
+There was a picture of it in the hotel at Cadenabbia, but this gave
+but little idea of any particular beauty. A big square house,
+with many windows, and the usual ladies on mules, and guides with
+alpenstocks, advancing towards it, and some round bushes growing near,
+was all it showed. Yet there hung the real Monte Generoso above our
+heads, and we thought it must be cooler on its height than by the
+lake-shore. To find coolness was the great point with us just then.
+Moreover, some one talked of the wonderful plants that grew among its
+rocks, and of its grassy slopes enamelled with such flowers as make
+our cottage gardens at home gay in summer, not to speak of others
+rarer and peculiar to the region of the Southern Alps. Indeed, the
+Generoso has a name for flowers, and it deserves it, as we presently
+found.
+
+This mountain is fitted by its position for commanding one of the
+finest views in the whole range of the Lombard Alps. A glance at the
+map shows that. Standing out pre-eminent among the chain of lower
+hills to which it belongs, the lakes of Lugano and Como with their
+long arms enclose it on three sides, while on the fourth the plain of
+Lombardy with its many cities, its rich pasture-lands and cornfields
+intersected by winding river-courses and straight interminable
+roads, advances to its very foot. No place could be better chosen for
+surveying that contrasted scene of plain and mountain, which forms
+the great attraction of the outlying buttresses of the central Alpine
+mass. The superiority of the Monte Generoso to any of the similar
+eminences on the northern outskirts of Switzerland is great. In
+richness of colour, in picturesqueness of suggestion, in sublimity and
+breadth of prospect, its advantages are incontestable. The reasons for
+this superiority are obvious. On the Italian side the transition from
+mountain to plain is far more abrupt; the atmosphere being clearer,
+a larger sweep of distance is within our vision; again, the sunlight
+blazes all day long upon the very front and forehead of the distant
+Alpine chain, instead of merely slanting along it, as it does upon the
+northern side.
+
+From Mendrisio, the village at the foot of the mountain, an easy
+mule-path leads to the hotel, winding first through English-looking
+hollow lanes with real hedges, which are rare in this country,
+and English primroses beneath them. Then comes a forest region of
+luxuriant chestnut-trees, giants with pink boles just bursting into
+late leafage, yellow and tender, but too thin as yet for shade.
+A little higher up, the chestnuts are displaced by wild laburnums
+bending under their weight of flowers. The graceful branches meet
+above our heads, sweeping their long tassels against our faces as we
+ride beneath them, while the air for a good mile is full of fragrance.
+It is strange to be reminded in this blooming labyrinth of the dusty
+suburb roads and villa gardens of London. The laburnum is pleasant
+enough in S. John's Wood or the Regent's Park in May--a tame
+domesticated thing of brightness amid smoke and dust. But it is
+another joy to see it flourishing in its own home, clothing acres of
+the mountain-side in a very splendour of spring-colour, mingling its
+paler blossoms with the golden broom of our own hills, and with
+the silver of the hawthorn and wild cherry. Deep beds of
+lilies-of-the-valley grow everywhere beneath the trees; and in the
+meadows purple columbines, white asphodels, the Alpine spiraea, tall,
+with feathery leaves, blue scabious, golden hawkweeds, turkscap
+lilies, and, better than all, the exquisite narcissus poeticus, with
+its crimson-tipped cup, and the pure pale lilies of San Bruno, are
+crowded in a maze of dazzling brightness. Higher up the laburnums
+disappear, and flaunting crimson peonies gleam here and there upon
+the rocks, until at length the gentians and white ranunculuses of the
+higher Alps displace the less hardy flowers of Italy.
+
+About an hour below the summit of the mountain we came upon the inn,
+a large clean building, with scanty furniture and snowy wooden floors,
+guiltless of carpets. It is big enough to hold about a hundred guests;
+and Doctor Pasta, who built it, a native of Mendrisio, was gifted
+either with much faith or with a real prophetic instinct.[8] Anyhow he
+deserves commendation for his spirit of enterprise. As yet the house
+is little known to English travellers: it is mostly frequented by
+Italians from Milan, Novara, and other cities of the plain, who call
+it the Italian Righi, and come to it, as cockneys go to Richmond,
+for noisy picnic excursions, or at most for a few weeks'
+_villeggiatura_ in the summer heats. When we were there in May
+the season had scarcely begun, and the only inmates besides ourselves
+were a large party from Milan, ladies and gentlemen in holiday guise,
+who came, stayed one night, climbed the peak at sunrise, and departed
+amid jokes and shouting and half-childish play, very unlike the doings
+of a similar party in sober England. After that the stillness of
+nature descended on the mountain, and the sun shone day after day upon
+that great view which seemed created only for ourselves. And what
+a view it was! The plain stretching up to the high horizon, where a
+misty range of pink cirrus-clouds alone marked the line where earth
+ended and the sky began, was islanded with cities and villages
+innumerable, basking in the hazy shimmering heat. Milan, seen through
+the doctor's telescope, displayed its Duomo perfect as a microscopic
+shell, with all its exquisite fretwork, and Napoleon's arch of triumph
+surmounted by the four tiny horses, as in a fairy's dream. Far off,
+long silver lines marked the lazy course of Po and Ticino, while
+little lakes like Varese and the lower end of Maggiore spread
+themselves out, connecting the mountains with the plain. Five minutes'
+walk from the hotel brought us to a ridge where the precipice fell
+suddenly and almost sheer over one arm of Lugano Lake. Sullenly
+outstretched asleep it lay beneath us, coloured with the tints of
+fluor-spar, or with the changeful green and azure of a peacock's
+breast. The depth appeared immeasurable. San Salvadore had receded
+into insignificance: the houses and churches and villas of Lugano
+bordered the lake-shore with an uneven line of whiteness. And over all
+there rested a blue mist of twilight and of haze, contrasting with the
+clearness of the peaks above. It was sunset when we first came here;
+and, wave beyond wave, the purple Italian hills tossed their crested
+summits to the foot of a range of stormy clouds that shrouded the high
+Alps. Behind the clouds was sunset, clear and golden; but the
+mountains had put on their mantle for the night, and the hem of their
+garment was all we were to see. And yet--over the edge of the topmost
+ridge of cloud, what was that long hard line of black, too solid and
+immovable for cloud, rising into four sharp needles clear and well
+defined? Surely it must be the familiar outline of Monte Rosa itself,
+the form which every one who loves the Alps knows well by heart, which
+picture-lovers know from Ruskin's woodcut in the 'Modern Painters.'
+For a moment only the vision stayed: then clouds swept over it again,
+and from the place where the empress of the Alps had been, a pillar of
+mist shaped like an angel's wing, purple and tipped with gold, shot up
+against the pale green sky. That cloud-world was a pageant in itself,
+as grand and more gorgeous perhaps than the mountains would have been.
+Deep down through the hollows of the Simplon a thunderstorm was
+driving; and we saw forked flashes once and again, as in a distant
+world, lighting up the valleys for a moment, and leaving the darkness
+blacker behind them as the storm blurred out the landscape forty miles
+away. Darkness was coming to us too, though our sky was clear and the
+stars were shining brightly. At our feet the earth was folding itself
+to sleep; the plain was wholly lost; little islands of white mist had
+formed themselves, and settled down upon the lakes and on their marshy
+estuaries; the birds were hushed; the gentian-cups were filling to the
+brim with dew. Night had descended on the mountain and the plain; the
+show was over.
+
+The dawn was whitening in the east next morning, when we again
+scrambled through the dwarf beechwood to the precipice above the lake.
+Like an ink-blot it lay, unruffled, slumbering sadly. Broad sheets of
+vapour brooded on the plain, telling of miasma and fever, of which we
+on the mountain, in the pure cool air, knew nothing. The Alps were
+all there now--cold, unreal, stretching like a phantom line of snowy
+peaks, from the sharp pyramids of Monte Viso and the Grivola in the
+west to the distant Bernina and the Ortler in the east. Supreme among
+them towered Monte Rosa--queenly, triumphant, gazing down in proud
+pre-eminence, as she does when seen from any point of the Italian
+plain. There is no mountain like her. Mont Blanc himself is scarcely
+so regal; and she seems to know it, for even the clouds sweep humbled
+round her base, girdling her at most, but leaving her crown clear and
+free. Now, however, there were no clouds to be seen in all the sky.
+The mountains had a strange unshriven look, as if waiting to be
+blessed. Above them, in the cold grey air, hung a low black arch
+of shadow, the shadow of the bulk of the huge earth, which still
+concealed the sun. Slowly, slowly this dark line sank lower, till,
+one by one, at last, the peaks caught first a pale pink flush; then
+a sudden golden glory flashed from one to the other, as they leapt
+joyfully into life. It is a supreme moment this first burst of life
+and light over the sleeping world, as one can only see it on rare days
+and in rare places like the Monte Generoso. The earth--enough of it at
+least for us to picture to ourselves the whole--lies at our feet; and
+we feel as the Saviour might have felt, when from the top of that
+high mountain He beheld the kingdoms of the world and all the glory of
+them. Strangely and solemnly may we image to our fancy the lives that
+are being lived down in those cities of the plain: how many are waking
+at this very moment to toil and a painful weariness, to sorrow, or to
+'that unrest which men miscall delight;' while we upon our mountain
+buttress, suspended in mid-heaven and for a while removed from daily
+cares, are drinking in the beauty of the world that God has made so
+fair and wonderful. From this same eyrie, only a few years ago, the
+hostile armies of France, Italy, and Austria might have been watched
+moving in dim masses across the plains, for the possession of which
+they were to clash in mortal fight at Solferino and Magenta. All is
+peaceful now. It is hard to picture the waving cornfields trodden
+down, the burning villages and ransacked vineyards, all the horrors of
+real war to which that fertile plain has been so often the prey. But
+now these memories of
+
+  Old, unhappy, far-off things,
+  And battles long ago,
+
+do but add a calm and beauty to the radiant scene that lies before us.
+And the thoughts which it suggests, the images with which it stores
+our mind, are not without their noblest uses. The glory of the world
+sinks deeper into our shallow souls than we well know; and the spirit
+of its splendour is always ready to revisit us on dark and dreary days
+at home with an unspeakable refreshment. Even as I write, I seem to
+see the golden glow sweeping in broad waves over the purple hills
+nearer and nearer, till the lake brightens at our feet, and the
+windows of Lugano flash with sunlight, and little boats creep forth
+across the water like spiders on a pond, leaving an arrowy track of
+light upon the green behind them, while Monte Salvadore with its tiny
+chapel and a patch of the further landscape are still kept in darkness
+by the shadow of the Generoso itself. The birds wake into song as the
+sun's light comes; cuckoo answers cuckoo from ridge to ridge; dogs
+bark; and even the sounds of human life rise up to us: children's
+voices and the murmurs of the market-place ascending faintly from the
+many villages hidden among the chestnut-trees beneath our feet; while
+the creaking of a cart we can but just see slowly crawling along the
+straight road by the lake, is heard at intervals.
+
+The full beauty of the sunrise is but brief. Already the low lakelike
+mists we saw last night have risen and spread, and shaken themselves
+out into masses of summer clouds, which, floating upward, threaten to
+envelop us upon our vantage-ground. Meanwhile they form a changeful
+sea below, blotting out the plain, surging up into the valleys with
+the movement of a billowy tide, attacking the lower heights like the
+advance-guard of a besieging army, but daring not as yet to invade the
+cold and solemn solitudes of the snowy Alps. These, too, in time, when
+the sun's heat has grown strongest, will be folded in their midday
+pall of sheltering vapour.
+
+The very summit of Monte Generoso must not be left without a word of
+notice. The path to it is as easy as the sheep-walks on an English
+down, though cut along grass-slopes descending at a perilously sharp
+angle. At the top the view is much the same, as far as the grand
+features go, as that which is commanded from the cliff by the hotel.
+But the rocks here are crowded with rare Alpine flowers--delicate
+golden auriculas with powdery leaves and stems, pale yellow cowslips,
+imperial purple saxifrages, soldanellas at the edge of lingering
+patches of the winter snow, blue gentians, crocuses, and the frail,
+rosy-tipped ranunculus, called glacialis. Their blooming time is
+brief. When summer comes the mountain will be bare and burned, like
+all Italian hills. The Generoso is a very dry mountain, silent and
+solemn from its want of streams. There is no sound of falling waters
+on its crags; no musical rivulets flow down its sides, led carefully
+along the slopes, as in Switzerland, by the peasants, to keep their
+hay-crops green and gladden the thirsty turf throughout the heat
+and drought of summer. The soil is a Jurassic limestone: the rain
+penetrates the porous rock, and sinks through cracks and fissures, to
+reappear above the base of the mountain in a full-grown stream. This
+is a defect in the Generoso, as much to be regretted as the want of
+shade upon its higher pastures. Here, as elsewhere in Piedmont, the
+forests are cut for charcoal; the beech-scrub, which covers large
+tracts of the hills, never having the chance of growing into trees
+much higher than a man. It is this which makes an Italian mountain
+at a distance look woolly, like a sheep's back. Among the brushwood,
+however, lilies-of-the-valley and Solomon's seals delight to grow;
+and the league-long beds of wild strawberries prove that when the
+laburnums have faded, the mountain will become a garden of feasting.
+
+It was on the crest of Monte Generoso, late one afternoon in May, that
+we saw a sight of great beauty. The sun had yet about an hour before
+it sank behind the peaks of Monte Rosa, and the sky was clear, except
+for a few white clouds that floated across the plain of Lombardy. Then
+as we sat upon the crags, tufted with soldanellas and auriculas,
+we could see a fleecy vapour gliding upward from the hollows of the
+mountain, very thin and pale, yet dense enough to blot the landscape
+to the south and east from sight. It rose with an imperceptible
+motion, as the Oceanides might have soared from the sea to comfort
+Prometheus in the tragedy of AEschylus. Already the sun had touched its
+upper edge with gold, and we were expecting to be enveloped in a mist;
+when suddenly upon the outspread sheet before us there appeared two
+forms, larger than life, yet not gigantic, surrounded with haloes of
+such tempered iridescence as the moon half hidden by a summer cloud is
+wont to make. They were the glorified figures of ourselves; and what
+we did, the phantoms mocked, rising or bowing, or spreading wide their
+arms. Some scarce-felt breeze prevented the vapour from passing across
+the ridge to westward, though it still rose from beneath, and kept
+fading away into thin air above our heads. Therefore the vision lasted
+as long as the sun stayed yet above the Alps; and the images with
+their aureoles shrank and dilated with the undulations of the mist.
+I could not but think of that old formula for an anthropomorphic
+Deity--'the Brocken-spectre of the human spirit projected on the mists
+of the Non-ego.' Even like those cloud-phantoms are the gods made in
+the image of man, who have been worshipped through successive ages of
+the world, gods dowered with like passions to those of the races
+who have crouched before them, gods cruel and malignant and lustful,
+jealous and noble and just, radiant or gloomy, the counterparts of men
+upon a vast and shadowy scale. But here another question rose. If
+the gods that men have made and ignorantly worshipped be really
+but glorified copies of their own souls, where is the sun in this
+parallel? Without the sun's rays the mists of Monte Generoso could
+have shown, no shadowy forms. Without some other power than the mind
+of man, could men have fashioned for themselves those ideals that they
+named their gods? Unseen by Greek, or Norseman, or Hindoo, the potent
+force by which alone they could externalise their image, existed
+outside them, independent of their thought. Nor does the trite epigram
+touch the surface of the real mystery. The sun, the human beings on
+the mountain, and the mists are all parts of one material universe:
+the transient phenomenon we witnessed was but the effect of a chance
+combination. Is, then, the anthropomorphic God as momentary and as
+accidental in the system of the world as that vapoury spectre? The
+God in whom we live and move and have our being must be far more
+all-pervasive, more incognisable by the souls of men, who doubt not
+for one moment of His presence and His power. Except for purposes of
+rhetoric the metaphor that seemed so clever fails. Nor, when once such
+thoughts have been stirred in us by such a sight, can we do better
+than repeat Goethe's sublime profession of a philosophic mysticism.
+This translation I made one morning on the Pasterze Gletscher beneath
+the spires of the Gross Glockner:--
+
+  To Him who from eternity, self-stirred,
+  Himself hath made by His creative word!
+  To Him, supreme, who causeth Faith to be,
+  Trust, Hope, Love, Power, and endless Energy!
+  To Him, who, seek to name Him as we will,
+  Unknown within Himself abideth still!
+
+  Strain ear and eye, till sight and sense be dim;
+  Thou'lt find but faint similitudes of Him:
+  Yea, and thy spirit in her flight of flame
+  Still strives to gauge the symbol and the name:
+  Charmed and compelled thou climb'st from height to height,
+  And round thy path the world shines wondrous bright;
+  Time, Space, and Size, and Distance cease to be,
+  And every step is fresh infinity.
+  What were the God who sat outside to scan
+  The spheres that 'neath His finger circling ran?
+  God dwells within, and moves the world and moulds,
+  Himself and Nature in one form enfolds:
+  Thus all that lives in Him and breathes and is,
+  Shall ne'er His puissance, ne'er His spirit miss.
+
+  The soul of man, too, is an universe:
+  Whence follows it that race with race concurs
+  In naming all it knows of good and true
+  God,--yea, its own God; and with homage due
+  Surrenders to His sway both earth and heaven;
+  Fears Him, and loves, where place for love is given.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+_LOMBARD VIGNETTES_
+
+
+ON THE SUPERGA
+
+This is the chord of Lombard colouring in May. Lowest in the scale:
+bright green of varied tints, the meadow-grasses mingling with willows
+and acacias, harmonised by air and distance. Next, opaque blue--the
+blue of something between amethyst and lapis-lazuli--that belongs
+alone to the basements of Italian mountains. Higher, the roseate
+whiteness of ridged snow on Alps or Apennines. Highest, the blue of
+the sky, ascending from pale turquoise to transparent sapphire filled
+with light. A mediaeval mystic might have likened this chord to the
+spiritual world. For the lowest region is that of natural life, of
+plant and bird and beast, and unregenerate man; it is the place of
+faun and nymph and satyr, the plain where wars are fought and cities
+built, and work is done. Thence we climb to purified humanity, the
+mountains of purgation, the solitude and simplicity of contemplative
+life not yet made perfect by freedom from the flesh. Higher comes that
+thin white belt, where are the resting places of angelic feet, the
+points whence purged souls take their flight toward infinity. Above
+all is heaven, the hierarchies ascending row on row to reach the light
+of God.
+
+This fancy occurred to me as I climbed the slope of the Superga,
+gazing over acacia hedges and poplars to the mountains bare in morning
+light. The occasional occurrence of bars across this chord--poplars
+shivering in sun and breeze, stationary cypresses as black as night,
+and tall campanili with the hot red shafts of glowing brick--adds just
+enough of composition to the landscape. Without too much straining of
+the allegory, the mystic might have recognised in these aspiring bars
+the upward effort of souls rooted in the common life of earth.
+
+The panorama, unrolling as we ascend, is enough to overpower a lover
+of beauty. There is nothing equal to it for space and breadth and
+majesty. Monte Rosa, the masses of Mont Blanc blent with the Grand
+Paradis, the airy pyramid of Monte Viso, these are the battlements of
+that vast Alpine rampart, in which the vale of Susa opens like a gate.
+To west and south sweep the Maritime Alps and the Apennines. Beneath,
+glides the infant Po; and where he leads our eyes, the plain is only
+limited by pearly mist.
+
+A BRONZE BUST OF CALIGULA AT TURIN
+
+The Albertina bronze is one of the most precious portraits of
+antiquity, not merely because it confirms the testimony of the green
+basalt bust in the Capitol, but also because it supplies an even more
+emphatic and impressive illustration to the narrative of Suetonius.
+
+Caligula is here represented as young and singularly beautiful. It is
+indeed an ideal Roman head, with the powerful square modelling, the
+crisp short hair, low forehead and regular firm features, proper to
+the noblest Roman type. The head is thrown backward from the throat;
+and there is a something of menace or defiance or suffering in the
+suggestion of brusque movement given to the sinews of the neck. This
+attitude, together with the tension of the forehead, and the fixed
+expression of pain and strain communicated by the lines of the
+mouth--strong muscles of the upper lip and abruptly chiselled under
+lip--in relation to the small eyes, deep set beneath their cavernous
+and level brows, renders the whole face a monument of spiritual
+anguish. I remember that the green basalt bust of the Capitol has the
+same anxious forehead, the same troubled and overburdened eyes; but
+the agony of this fretful mouth, comparable to nothing but the mouth
+of Pandolfo Sigismondo Malatesta, and, like that, on the verge
+of breaking into the spasms of delirium, is quite peculiar to the
+Albertina bronze. It is just this which the portrait of the Capitol
+lacks for the completion of Caligula. The man who could be so
+represented in art had nothing wholly vulgar in him. The brutality
+of Caracalla, the overblown sensuality of Nero, the effeminacy of
+Commodus or Heliogabalus, are all absent here. This face idealises
+the torture of a morbid soul. It is withal so truly beautiful that it
+might easily be made the poem of high suffering or noble passion.
+If the bronze were plastic, I see how a great sculptor, by but few
+strokes, could convert it into an agonising Stephen or Sebastian. As
+it is, the unimaginable touch of disease, the unrest of madness, made
+Caligula the genius of insatiable appetite; and his martyrdom was the
+torment of lust and ennui and everlasting agitation. The accident of
+empire tantalised him with vain hopes of satisfying the Charybdis
+of his soul's sick cravings. From point to point he passed of empty
+pleasure and unsatisfying cruelty, for ever hungry; until the malady
+of his spirit, unrestrained by any limitations, and with the right
+medium for its development, became unique--the tragic type of
+pathological desire. What more than all things must have plagued a man
+with that face was probably the unavoidable meanness of his career.
+When we study the chapters of Suetonius, we are forced to feel that,
+though the situation and the madness of Caligula were dramatically
+impressive, his crimes were trivial and, small. In spite of the vast
+scale on which he worked his devilish will, his life presents a total
+picture of sordid vice, differing only from pot-house dissipation and
+schoolboy cruelty in point of size. And this of a truth is the Nemesis
+of evil. After a time, mere tyrannous caprice must become commonplace
+and cloying, tedious to the tyrant, and uninteresting to the student
+of humanity: nor can I believe that Caligula failed to perceive this
+to his own infinite disgust.
+
+Suetonius asserts that he was hideously ugly. How are we to square
+this testimony with the witness of the bronze before us? What changed
+the face, so beautiful and terrible in youth, to ugliness that shrank
+from sight in manhood? Did the murderers find it blurred in its fine
+lineaments, furrowed with lines of care, hollowed with the soul's
+hunger? Unless a life of vice and madness had succeeded in making
+Caligula's face what the faces of some maniacs are--the bloated ruin
+of what was once a living witness to the soul within--I could fancy
+that death may have sanctified it with even more beauty than this
+bust of the self-tormented young man shows. Have we not all seen the
+anguish of thought-fretted faces smoothed out by the hands of the
+Deliverer?
+
+FERRARI AT VERCELLI
+
+It is possible that many visitors to the Cathedral of Como have
+carried away the memory of stately women with abundant yellow hair and
+draperies of green and crimson, in a picture they connect thereafter
+with Gaudenzio Ferrari. And when they come to Milan, they are probably
+both impressed and disappointed by a Martyrdom of S. Catherine in the
+Brera, bearing the same artist's name. If they wish to understand this
+painter, they must seek him at Varallo, at Saronno, and at Vercelli.
+In the Church of S. Cristoforo in Vercelli, Gaudenzio Ferrari at the
+full height of his powers showed what he could do to justify Lomazzo's
+title chosen for him of the Eagle. He has indeed the strong wing and
+the swiftness of the king of birds. And yet the works of few really
+great painters--and among the really great we place Ferrari--leave
+upon the mind a more distressing sense of imperfection. Extraordinary
+fertility of fancy, vehement dramatic passion, sincere study of
+nature, and great command of technical resources are here (as
+elsewhere in Ferrari's frescoes) neutralised by an incurable defect of
+the combining and harmonising faculty, so essential to a masterpiece.
+There is stuff enough of thought and vigour and imagination to make
+a dozen artists. And yet we turn away disappointed from the crowded,
+dazzling, stupefying wilderness of forms and faces on these mighty
+walls.
+
+All that Ferrari derived from actual life--the heads of single
+figures, the powerful movement of men and women in excited action, the
+monumental pose of two praying nuns--is admirably rendered. His angels
+too, in S. Cristoforo as elsewhere, are quite original; not only in
+their type of beauty, which is terrestrial and peculiar to Ferrari,
+without a touch of Correggio's sensuality; but also in the intensity
+of their emotion, the realisation of their vitality. Those which hover
+round the Cross in the fresco of the 'Crucifixion' are as passionate
+as any angels of the Giottesque masters in Assisi. Those again which
+crowd the Stable of Bethlehem in the 'Nativity' yield no point of
+idyllic charm to Gozzoli's in the Riccardi Chapel.
+
+The 'Crucifixion' and the 'Assumption of Madonna' are very tall
+and narrow compositions, audacious in their attempt to fill almost
+unmanageable space with a connected action. Of the two frescoes the
+'Crucifixion,' which has points of strong similarity to the same
+subject at Varallo, is by far the best. Ferrari never painted anything
+at once truer to life and nobler in tragic style than the fainting
+Virgin. Her face expresses the very acme of martyrdom--not exaggerated
+nor spasmodic, but real and sublime--in the suffering of a stately
+matron. In points like this Ferrari cannot be surpassed. Raphael could
+scarcely have done better; besides, there is an air of sincerity, a
+stamp of popular truth, in this episode, which lies beyond Raphael's
+sphere. It reminds us rather of Tintoretto.
+
+After the 'Crucifixion,' I place the 'Adoration of the Magi,' full
+of fine mundane motives and gorgeous costumes; then the 'Sposalizio'
+(whose marriage, I am not certain), the only grandly composed picture
+of the series, and marked by noble heads; then the 'Adoration of
+the Shepherds,' with two lovely angels holding the bambino. The
+'Assumption of the Magdalen'--for which fresco there is a valuable
+cartoon in the Albertina Collection at Turin--must have been a fine
+picture; but it is ruined now. An oil altar-piece in the choir of the
+same church struck me less than the frescoes. It represents Madonna
+and a crowd of saints under an orchard of apple-trees, with cherubs
+curiously flung about almost at random in the air. The motive of the
+orchard is prettily conceived and carried out with spirit.
+
+What Ferrari possessed was rapidity of movement, fulness and richness
+of reality, exuberance of invention, excellent portraiture, dramatic
+vehemence, and an almost unrivalled sympathy with the swift and
+passionate world of angels. What he lacked was power of composition,
+simplicity of total effect, harmony in colouring, control over his
+own luxuriance, the sense of tranquillity. He seems to have sought
+grandeur in size and multitude, richness, eclat, contrast. Being the
+disciple of Lionardo and Raphael, his defects are truly singular. As
+a composer, the old leaven of Giovenone remained in him; but he felt
+the dramatic tendencies of a later age, and in occasional episodes he
+realised them with a force and _furia_ granted to very few of the
+Italian painters.
+
+LANINI AT VERCELLI
+
+The Casa Mariano is a palace which belonged to a family of that name.
+Like many houses of the sort in Italy, it fell to vile uses; and
+its hall of audience was turned into a lumber-room. The Operai of
+Vercelli, I was told, bought the palace a few years ago, restored the
+noble hall, and devoted a smaller room to a collection of pictures
+valuable for students of the early Vercellese style of painting. Of
+these there is no need to speak. The great hall is the gem of the Casa
+Mariano. It has a coved roof, with a large flat oblong space in
+the centre of the ceiling. The whole of this vault and the lunettes
+beneath were painted by Lanini; so runs the tradition of the
+fresco-painter's name; and though much injured by centuries of
+outrage, and somewhat marred by recent restoration, these frescoes
+form a precious monument of Lombard art. The object of the painter's
+design seems to have been the glorification of Music. In the central
+compartment of the roof is an assembly of the gods, obviously borrowed
+from Raphael's 'Marriage of Cupid and Psyche' in the Farnesina
+at Rome. The fusion of Roman composition with Lombard execution
+constitutes the chief charm of this singular work, and makes it, so
+far as I am aware, unique. Single figures of the goddesses, and the
+whole movement of the scene upon Olympus, are transcribed without
+attempt at concealment. And yet the fresco is not a barefaced copy.
+The manner of feeling and of execution is quite different from that of
+Raphael's school. The poetry and sentiment are genuinely Lombard. None
+of Raphael's pupils could have carried out his design with a delicacy
+of emotion and a technical skill in colouring so consummate. What,
+we think, as we gaze upward, would the Master have given for such a
+craftsman? The hardness, coarseness, and animal crudity of the Roman
+School are absent: so also is their vigour. But where the grace of
+form and colour is so soft and sweet, where the high-bred calm of
+good company is so sympathetically rendered, where the atmosphere of
+amorous languor and of melody is so artistically diffused, we cannot
+miss the powerful modelling and rather vulgar _tours de force_ of
+Giulio Romano. The scale of tone is silvery golden. There are no hard
+blues, no coarse red flesh-tints, no black shadows. Mellow lights,
+the morning hues of primrose, or of palest amber, pervade the whole
+society. It is a court of gentle and harmonious souls; and though
+this style of beauty might cloy, at first sight there is something
+ravishing in those yellow-haired white-limbed, blooming deities. No
+movement of lascivious grace as in Correggio, no perturbation of
+the senses as in some of the Venetians, disturbs the rhythm of their
+music; nor is the pleasure of the flesh, though felt by the painter
+and communicated to the spectator, an interruption to their divine
+calm. The white, saffron-haired goddesses are grouped together
+like stars seen in the topaz light of evening, like daffodils half
+smothered in snowdrops, and among them, Diana, with the crescent
+on her forehead, is the fairest. Her dream-like beauty need fear
+no comparison with the Diana of the Camera di S. Paolo. Apollo and
+Bacchus are scarcely less lovely in their bloom of earliest manhood;
+honey-pale, as Greeks would say; like statues of living electron;
+realising Simaetha's picture of her lover and his friend:
+
+[Greek:
+
+  tois d' en xanthotera men elichrysoio geneias,
+  stethea de stilbonta poly pleon e tu Selana.[9]]
+
+It was thus that the almost childlike spirit of the Milanese painters
+felt the antique: how differently from their Roman brethren! It was
+thus that they interpreted the lines of their own poets:--
+
+  E i tuoi capei piu volte ho somigliati
+  Di Cerere a le paglie secche o bionde
+  Dintorno crespi al tuo capo legati.[10]
+
+Yet the painter of this hall--whether we are to call him Lanini or
+another--was not a composer. Where he has not robbed the motives and
+the distribution of the figures from Raphael, he has nothing left but
+grace of detail. The intellectual feebleness of his style may be seen
+in many figures of women playing upon instruments of music, ranged
+around the walls. One girl at the organ is graceful; another with a
+tambourine has a sort of Bassarid beauty. But the group of Apollo,
+Pegasus, and a Muse upon Parnassus, is a failure in its meaningless
+frigidity, while few of these subordinate compositions show power of
+conception or vigour of design.
+
+Lanini, like Sodoma, was a native of Vercelli; and though he was
+Ferrari's pupil, there is more in him of Luini or of Sodoma than of
+his master. He does not rise at any point to the height of these
+three great masters, but he shares some of Luini's and Sodoma's fine
+qualities, without having any of Ferrari's force. A visit to the
+mangled remnants of his frescoes in S. Caterina will repay the student
+of art. This was once, apparently, a double church, or a church with
+the hall and chapel of a _confraternita_ appended to it. One portion
+of the building was painted with the history of the Saint; and very
+lovely must this work have been, to judge by the fragments which have
+recently been rescued from whitewash, damp, and ruthless mutilation.
+What wonderful Lombard faces, half obliterated on the broken wall and
+mouldering plaster, smile upon us like drowned memories swimming up
+from the depths of oblivion! Wherever three or four are grouped
+together, we find an exquisite little picture--an old woman and two
+young women in a doorway, for example, telling no story, but touching
+us with simple harmony of form. Nothing further is needed to render
+their grace intelligible. Indeed, knowing the faults of the school, we
+may seek some consolation by telling ourselves that these incomplete
+fragments yield Lanini's best. In the coved compartments of the roof,
+above the windows, ran a row of dancing boys; and these are still most
+beautifully modelled, though the pallor of recent whitewash is upon
+them. All the boys have blonde hair. They are naked, with scrolls or
+ribbons wreathed around them, adding to the airiness of their
+continual dance. Some of the loveliest are in a room used to stow away
+the lumber of the church--old boards and curtains, broken lanterns,
+candle-ends in tin sconces, the musty apparatus of festival
+adornments, and in the midst of all a battered, weather-beaten bier.
+
+THE PIAZZA OF PIACENZA
+
+The great feature of Piacenza is its famous piazza--romantically,
+picturesquely perfect square, surpassing the most daring attempts
+of the scene-painter, and realising a poet's dreams. The space is
+considerable, and many streets converge upon it at irregular angles.
+Its finest architectural feature is the antique Palace of the Commune:
+Gothic arcades of stone below, surmounted by a brick building with
+wonderfully delicate and varied terra-cotta work in the round-arched
+windows. Before this facade, on the marble pavement, prance the bronze
+equestrian statues of two Farnesi--insignificant men, exaggerated
+horses, flying drapery--as _barocco_ as it is possible to be
+in style, but so splendidly toned with verdigris, so superb in their
+_bravura_ attitude, and so happily placed in the line of two
+streets lending far vistas from the square into the town beyond, that
+it is difficult to criticise them seriously. They form, indeed, an
+important element in the pictorial effect, and enhance the terra-cotta
+work of the facade by the contrast of their colour.
+
+The time to see this square is in evening twilight--that wonderful
+hour after sunset--when the people are strolling on the pavement,
+polished to a mirror by the pacing of successive centuries, and
+when the cavalry soldiers group themselves at the angles under the
+lamp-posts or beneath the dimly lighted Gothic arches of the Palace.
+This is the magical mellow hour to be sought by lovers of the
+picturesque in all the towns of Italy, the hour which, by its tender
+blendings of sallow western lights with glimmering lamps, casts the
+veil of half shadow over any crudeness and restores the injuries
+of Time; the hour when all the tints of these old buildings are
+intensified, etherealised, and harmonised by one pervasive glow. When
+I last saw Piacenza, it had been raining all day; and ere sundown a
+clearing had come from the Alps, followed by fresh threatenings of
+thunderstorms. The air was very liquid. There was a tract of yellow
+sunset sky to westward, a faint new moon half swathed in mist above,
+and over all the north a huge towered thundercloud kept flashing
+distant lightnings. The pallid primrose of the West, forced down and
+reflected back from that vast bank of tempest, gave unearthly beauty
+to the hues of church and palace--tender half-tones of violet and
+russet paling into greys and yellows on what in daylight seemed but
+dull red brick. Even the uncompromising facade of S. Francesco helped;
+and the Dukes were like statues of the 'Gran Commendatore,' waiting
+for Don Giovanni's invitation.
+
+MASOLINO AT CASTIGLIONE D'OLONA
+
+Through the loveliest Arcadian scenery of woods and fields and
+rushing waters the road leads downward from Varese to Castiglione.
+The Collegiate Church stands on a leafy hill above the town, with fair
+prospect over groves and waterfalls and distant mountains. Here in the
+choir is a series of frescoes by Masolino da Panicale, the master
+of Masaccio, who painted them about the year 1428. 'Masolinus de
+Florentia pinxit' decides their authorship. The histories of the
+Virgin, S. Stephen and S. Lawrence, are represented: but the injuries
+of time and neglect have been so great that it is difficult to judge
+them fairly. All we feel for certain is that Masolino had not yet
+escaped from the traditional Giottesque mannerism. Only a group of
+Jews stoning Stephen, and Lawrence before the tribunal, remind us by
+dramatic energy of the Brancacci Chapel.
+
+The Baptistery frescoes, dealing with the legend of S. John, show a
+remarkable advance; and they are luckily in better preservation. A
+soldier lifting his two-handed sword to strike off the Baptist's head
+is a vigorous figure, full of Florentine realism. Also in the Baptism
+in Jordan we are reminded of Masaccio by an excellent group of
+bathers--one man taking off his hose, another putting them on again,
+a third standing naked with his back turned, and a fourth shivering
+half-dressed with a look of curious sadness on his face. The nude has
+been carefully studied and well realised. The finest composition of
+this series is a large panel representing a double action--Salome at
+Herod's table begging for the Baptist's head, and then presenting
+it to her mother Herodias. The costumes are quattrocento Florentine,
+exactly rendered. Salome is a graceful slender creature; the two women
+who regard her offering to Herodias with mingled curiosity and horror,
+are well conceived. The background consists of a mountain landscape
+in Masaccio's simple manner, a rich Renaissance villa, and an open
+loggia. The architecture perspective is scientifically accurate, and
+a frieze of boys with garlands on the villa is in the best manner of
+Florentine sculpture. On the mountain side, diminished in scale, is
+a group of elders, burying the body of S. John. These are massed
+together and robed in the style of Masaccio, and have his virile
+dignity of form and action. Indeed this interesting wall-painting
+furnishes an epitome of Florentine art, in its intentions and
+achievements, during the first half of the fifteenth century. The
+colour is strong and brilliant, and the execution solid.
+
+The margin of the Salome panel has been used for scratching the
+Chronicle of Castiglione. I read one date, 1568, several of the
+next century, the record of a duel between two gentlemen, and many
+inscriptions to this effect, 'Erodiana Regina,' 'Omnia praetereunt,'
+&c. A dirty one-eyed fellow keeps the place. In my presence he swept
+the frescoes over with a scratchy broom, flaying their upper surface
+in profound unconsciousness of mischief. The armour of the executioner
+has had its steel colours almost rubbed off by this infernal process.
+Damp and cobwebs are far kinder.
+
+THE CERTOSA
+
+The Certosa of Pavia leaves upon the mind an impression of bewildering
+sumptuousness: nowhere else are costly materials so combined with a
+lavish expenditure of the rarest art. Those who have only once been
+driven round together with the crew of sightseers, can carry little
+away but the memory of lapis-lazuli and bronze-work, inlaid agates and
+labyrinthine sculpture, cloisters tenantless in silence, fair painted
+faces smiling from dark corners on the senseless crowd, trim gardens
+with rows of pink primroses in spring, and of begonia in autumn,
+blooming beneath colonnades of glowing terra-cotta. The striking
+contrast between the Gothic of the interior and the Renaissance
+facade, each in its own kind perfect, will also be remembered; and
+thoughts of the two great houses, Visconti and Sforza, to whose pride
+of power it is a monument, may be blended with the recollection of
+art-treasures alien to their spirit.
+
+Two great artists, Ambrogio Borgognone and Antonio Amadeo, are the
+presiding genii of the Certosa. To minute criticism, based upon the
+accurate investigation of records and the comparison of styles,
+must be left the task of separating their work from that of numerous
+collaborators. But it is none the less certain that the keynote of
+the whole music is struck by them, Amadeo, the master of the Colleoni
+chapel at Bergamo, was both sculptor and architect. If the facade
+of the Certosa be not absolutely his creation, he had a hand in the
+distribution of its masses and the detail of its ornaments. The only
+fault in this otherwise faultless product of the purest quattrocento
+inspiration, is that the facade is a frontispiece, with hardly any
+structural relation to the church it masks: and this, though serious
+from the point of view of architecture, is no abatement of its
+sculpturesque and picturesque refinement. At first sight it seems
+a wilderness of loveliest reliefs and statues--of angel faces,
+fluttering raiment, flowing hair, love-laden youths, and stationary
+figures of grave saints, mid wayward tangles of acanthus and wild vine
+and cupid-laden foliage; but the subordination of these decorative
+details to the main design, clear, rhythmical, and lucid, like a
+chaunt of Pergolese or Stradella, will enrapture one who has the
+sense for unity evoked from divers elements, for thought subduing all
+caprices to the harmony of beauty. It is not possible elsewhere in
+Italy to find the instinct of the earlier Renaissance, so amorous in
+its expenditure of rare material, so lavish in its bestowal of the
+costliest workmanship on ornamental episodes, brought into truer
+keeping with a pure and simple structural effect.
+
+All the great sculptor-architects of Lombardy worked in succession
+on this miracle of beauty; and this may account for the sustained
+perfection of style, which nowhere suffers from the languor of
+exhaustion in the artist or from repetition of motives. It remains the
+triumph of North Italian genius, exhibiting qualities of tenderness
+and self-abandonment to inspiration, which we lack in the severer
+masterpieces of the Tuscan school.
+
+To Borgognone is assigned the painting of the roof in nave and
+choir--exceeding rich, varied, and withal in sympathy with stately
+Gothic style. Borgognone again is said to have designed the saints and
+martyrs worked in _tarsia_ for the choir-stalls. His frescoes are
+in some parts well preserved, as in the lovely little Madonna at the
+end of the south chapel, while the great fresco above the window in
+the south transept has an historical value that renders it interesting
+in spite of partial decay. Borgognone's oil pictures throughout
+the church prove, if such proof were needed after inspection of the
+altar-piece in our National Gallery, that he was one of the most
+powerful and original painters of Italy, blending the repose of the
+earlier masters and their consummate workmanship with a profound
+sensibility to the finest shades of feeling and the rarest forms of
+natural beauty. He selected an exquisite type of face for his young
+men and women; on his old men he bestowed singular gravity and
+dignity. His saints are a society of strong, pure, restful, earnest
+souls, in whom the passion of deepest emotion is transfigured by
+habitual calm. The brown and golden harmonies he loved, are gained
+without sacrifice of lustre: there is a self-restraint in his
+colouring which corresponds to the reserve of his emotion; and though
+a regret sometimes rises in our mind that he should have modelled the
+light and shade upon his faces with a brusque, unpleasing hardness,
+their pallor dwells within our memory as something delicately sought
+if not consummately attained. In a word, Borgognone was a true Lombard
+of the best time. The very imperfection of his flesh-painting repeats
+in colour what the greatest Lombard sculptors sought in stone--a
+sharpness of relief that passes over into angularity. This brusqueness
+was the counterpoise to tenderness of feeling and intensity of fancy
+in these northern artists. Of all Borgognone's pictures in the Certosa
+I should select the altar-piece of S. Siro with S. Lawrence and S.
+Stephen and two Fathers of the Church, for its fusion of this master's
+qualities.
+
+The Certosa is a wilderness of lovely workmanship. From Borgognone's
+majesty we pass into the quiet region of Luini's Christian grace, or
+mark the influence of Lionardo on that rare Assumption of Madonna by
+his pupil, Andrea Solari. Like everything touched by the Lionardesque
+spirit, this great picture was left unfinished: yet Northern Italy
+has nothing finer to show than the landscape, outspread in its
+immeasurable purity of calm, behind the grouped Apostles and the
+ascendant Mother of Heaven. The feeling of that happy region between
+the Alps and Lombardy, where there are many waters--_et tacitos sine
+labe laous sine murmure rivos_--and where the last spurs of the
+mountains sink in undulations to the plain, has passed into this azure
+vista, just as all Umbria is suggested in a twilight background of
+young Raphael or Perugino.
+
+The portraits of the Dukes of Milan and their families carry us into
+a very different realm of feeling. Medallions above the doors of
+sacristy and chancel, stately figures reared aloft beneath gigantic
+canopies, men and women slumbering with folded hands upon their marble
+biers--we read in all those sculptured forms a strange record of human
+restlessness, resolved into the quiet of the tomb. The iniquities of
+Gian Galeazzo Visconti, _il gran Biscione_, the blood-thirst
+of Gian Maria, the dark designs of Filippo and his secret vices,
+Francesco Sforza's treason, Galeazzo Maria's vanities and lusts;
+their tyrants' dread of thunder and the knife; their awful deaths by
+pestilence and the assassin's poignard; their selfishness, oppression,
+cruelty and fraud; the murders of their kinsmen; their labyrinthine
+plots and acts of broken faith;--all is tranquil now, and we can
+say to each what Bosola found for the Duchess of Malfi ere her
+execution:--
+
+  Much you had of land and rent;
+  Your length in clay's now competent:
+  A long war disturbed your mind;
+  Here your perfect peace is signed!
+
+Some of these faces are commonplace, with _bourgeois_ cunning
+written on the heavy features; one is bluff, another stolid, a third
+bloated, a fourth stately. The sculptors have dealt fairly with
+all, and not one has the lineaments of utter baseness. To Cristoforo
+Solari's statues of Lodovico Sforza and his wife, Beatrice d'Este, the
+palm of excellence in art and of historical interest must be awarded.
+Sculpture has rarely been more dignified and true to life than here.
+The woman with her short clustering curls, the man with his strong
+face, are resting after that long fever which brought woe to Italy, to
+Europe a new age, and to the boasted minion of Fortune a slow death
+in the prison palace of Loches. Attired in ducal robes, they lie in
+state; and the sculptor has carved the lashes on their eyelids, heavy
+with death's marmoreal sleep. He at least has passed no judgment
+on their crimes. Let us too bow and leave their memories to the
+historian's pen, their spirits to God's mercy.
+
+After all wanderings in this Temple of Art, we return to Antonio
+Amadeo, to his long-haired seraphs playing on the lutes of Paradise,
+to his angels of the Passion with their fluttering robes and arms
+outspread in agony, to his saints and satyrs mingled on pilasters of
+the marble doorways, his delicate _Lavabo_ decorations, and his
+hymns of piety expressed in noble forms of weeping women and dead
+Christs. Wherever we may pass, this master-spirit of the Lombard style
+enthralls attention. His curious treatment of drapery as though it
+|were made of crumpled paper, and his trick of enhancing relief by
+sharp angles and attenuated limbs, do not detract from his peculiar
+charm. That is his way, very different from Donatello's, of attaining
+to the maximum of life and lightness in the stubborn vehicle of
+stone. Nor do all the riches of the choir--those multitudes of singing
+angels, those Ascensions and Assumptions, and innumerable
+basreliefs of gleaming marble moulded into softest wax by mastery of
+art--distract our eyes from the single round medallion, not larger
+than a common plate, inscribed by him upon the front of the high
+altar. Perhaps, if one who loved Amadeo were bidden to point out
+his masterpiece, he would lead the way at once to this. The space is
+small: yet it includes the whole tragedy of the Passion. Christ is
+lying dead among the women on his mother's lap, and there are pitying
+angels in the air above. One woman lifts his arm, another makes her
+breast a pillow for his head. Their agony is hushed, but felt in
+every limb and feature; and the extremity of suffering is seen in each
+articulation of the worn and wounded form just taken from the cross.
+It would be too painful, were not the harmony of art so rare, the
+interlacing of those many figures in a simple round so exquisite. The
+noblest tranquillity and the most passionate emotion are here fused in
+a manner of adorable naturalness.
+
+From the church it is delightful to escape into the cloisters, flooded
+with sunlight, where the swallows skim, and the brown hawks circle,
+and the mason bees are at work upon their cells among the carvings.
+The arcades of the two cloisters are the final triumph of Lombard
+terra-cotta. The memory fails before such infinite invention, such
+facility and felicity of execution. Wreaths of cupids gliding round
+the arches among grape-bunches and bird-haunted foliage of vine; rows
+of angels, like rising and setting planets, some smiling and
+some grave, ascending and descending by the Gothic curves; saints
+stationary on their pedestals, and faces leaning from the rounds
+above; crowds of cherubs, and courses of stars, and acanthus leaves in
+woven lines, and ribands incessantly inscribed with Ave Maria! Then,
+over all, the rich red light and purple shadows of the brick, than
+which no substance sympathises more completely with the sky of solid
+blue above, the broad plain space of waving summer grass beneath our
+feet.
+
+It is now late afternoon, and when evening comes, the train will take
+us back to Milan. There is yet a little while to rest tired eyes and
+strained spirits among the willows and the poplars by the monastery
+wall. Through that grey-green leafage, young with early spring,
+the pinnacles of the Certosa leap like flames into the sky. The
+rice-fields are under water, far and wide, shining like burnished
+gold beneath the level light now near to sun-down. Frogs are croaking;
+those persistent frogs, whom the Muses have ordained to sing for aye,
+in spite of Bion and all tuneful poets dead. We sit and watch the
+water-snakes, the busy rats, the hundred creatures swarming in the fat
+well-watered soil. Nightingales here and there, new-comers, tune their
+timid April song: but, strangest of all sounds in such a place, my
+comrade from the Grisons jodels forth an Alpine cowherd's melody.
+_Auf den Alpen droben ist ein herrliches Leben!_
+
+Did the echoes of Gian Galeazzo's convent ever wake to such a tune as
+this before?
+
+SAN MAURIZIO
+
+The student of art in Italy, after mastering the characters of
+different styles and epochs, finds a final satisfaction in the
+contemplation of buildings designed and decorated by one master, or
+by groups of artists interpreting the spirit of a single period. Such
+supreme monuments of the national genius are not very common, and they
+are therefore the more precious. Giotto's Chapel at Padua; the Villa
+Farnesina at Rome, built by Peruzzi and painted in fresco by Raphael
+and Sodoma; the Palazzo del Te at Mantua, Giulio Romano's masterpiece;
+the Scuola di San Rocco, illustrating the Venetian Renaissance at its
+climax, might be cited among the most splendid of these achievements.
+In the church of the Monastero Maggiore at Milan, dedicated to S.
+Maurizio, Lombard architecture and fresco-painting may be studied
+in this rare combination. The monastery itself, one of the oldest in
+Milan, formed a retreat for cloistered virgins following the rule of
+S. Benedict. It may have been founded as early as the tenth century;
+but its church was rebuilt in the first two decades of the sixteenth,
+between 1503 and 1519, and was immediately afterwards decorated with
+frescoes by Luini and his pupils. Gian Giacomo Dolcebono, architect
+and sculptor, called by his fellow-craftsmen _magistro di taliare
+pietre_, gave the design, at once simple and harmonious, which was
+carried out with hardly any deviation from his plan. The church is a
+long parallelogram, divided into two unequal portions, the first and
+smaller for the public, the second for the nuns. The walls are pierced
+with rounded and pilastered windows, ten on each side, four of which
+belong to the outer and six to the inner section. The dividing wall or
+septum rises to the point from which the groinings of the roof spring;
+and round three sides of the whole building, north, east, and south,
+runs a gallery for the use of the convent. The altars of the inner and
+outer church are placed against the septum, back to back, with certain
+differences of structure that need not be described. Simple and
+severe, S. Maurizio owes its architectural beauty wholly and entirely
+to purity of line and perfection of proportion. There is a prevailing
+spirit of repose, a sense of space, fair, lightsome, and adapted
+to serene moods of the meditative fancy in this building, which is
+singularly at variance with the religious mysticism and imaginative
+grandeur of a Gothic edifice. The principal beauty of the church,
+however, is its tone of colour. Every square inch is covered with
+fresco or rich woodwork, mellowed by time into that harmony of tints
+which blends the work of greater and lesser artists in one golden
+hue of brown. Round the arcades of the convent-loggia run delicate
+arabesques with faces of fair female saints--Catherine, Agnes, Lucy,
+Agatha,--gem-like or star-like, gazing from their gallery upon the
+church below. The Luinesque smile is on their lips and in their eyes,
+quiet, refined, as though the emblems of their martyrdom brought back
+no thought of pain to break the Paradise of rest in which they dwell.
+There are twenty-six in all, a sisterhood of stainless souls, the
+lilies of Love's garden planted round Christ's throne. Soldier saints
+are mingled with them in still smaller rounds above the windows,
+chosen to illustrate the virtues of an order which renounced the
+world. To decide whose hand produced these masterpieces of Lombard
+suavity and grace, or whether more than one, would not be easy. Near
+the altar we can perhaps trace the style of Bartolommeo Suardi in an
+Annunciation painted on the spandrils--that heroic style, large and
+noble, known to us by the chivalrous S. Martin and the glorified
+Madonna of the Brera frescoes. It is not impossible that the male
+saints of the loggia may be also his, though a tenderer touch, a
+something more nearly Lionardesque in its quietude, must be discerned
+in Lucy and her sisters. The whole of the altar in this inner church
+belongs to Luini. Were it not for darkness and decay, we should
+pronounce this series of the Passion in nine great compositions, with
+saints and martyrs and torch-bearing genii, to be one of his most
+ambitious and successful efforts. As it is, we can but judge in part;
+the adolescent beauty of Sebastian, the grave compassion of S.
+Rocco, the classical perfection of the cupid with lighted tapers, the
+gracious majesty of women smiling on us sideways from their Lombard
+eyelids--these remain to haunt our memory, emerging from the shadows
+of the vault above.
+
+The inner church, as is fitting, excludes all worldly elements. We
+are in the presence of Christ's agony, relieved and tempered by the
+sunlight of those beauteous female faces. All is solemn here, still as
+the convent, pure as the meditations of a novice. We pass the septum,
+and find ourselves in the outer church appropriated to the laity.
+Above the high altar the whole wall is covered with Luini's loveliest
+work, in excellent light and far from ill preserved. The space divides
+into eight compartments. A Pieta, an Assumption, Saints and Founders
+of the church, group themselves under the influence of Luini's
+harmonising colour into one symphonious whole. But the places of
+distinction are reserved for two great benefactors of the convent,
+Alessandro de' Bentivogli and his wife, Ippolita Sforza. When the
+Bentivogli were expelled from Bologna by the Papal forces, Alessandro
+settled at Milan, where he dwelt, honoured by the Sforzas and allied
+to them by marriage, till his death in 1532. He was buried in the
+monastery by the side of his sister Alessandra, a nun of the order.
+Luini has painted the illustrious exile in his habit as he lived. He
+is kneeling, as though in ever-during adoration of the altar mystery,
+attired in a long black senatorial robe trimmed with furs. In his left
+hand he holds a book; and above his pale, serenely noble face is a
+little black berretta. Saints attend him, as though attesting to his
+act of faith. Opposite kneels Ippolita, his wife, the brilliant queen
+of fashion, the witty leader of society, to whom Bandello dedicated
+his Novelle, and whom he praised as both incomparably beautiful and
+singularly learned. Her queenly form is clothed from head to foot in
+white brocade, slashed and trimmed with gold lace, and on her forehead
+is a golden circlet. She has the proud port of a princess, the beauty
+of a woman past her prime but stately, the indescribable dignity of
+attitude which no one but Luini could have rendered so majestically
+sweet. In her hand is a book; and she, like Alessandro, has her
+saintly sponsors, Agnes and Catherine and S. Scolastica.
+
+Few pictures bring the splendid Milanese Court so vividly before us as
+these portraits of the Bentivogli: they are, moreover, very precious
+for the light they throw on what Luini could achieve in the secular
+style so rarely touched by him. Great, however, as are these frescoes,
+they are far surpassed both in value and interest by his paintings in
+the side chapel of S. Catherine. Here more than anywhere else, more
+even than at Saronno or Lugano, do we feel the true distinction
+of Luini--his unrivalled excellence as a colourist, his power over
+pathos, the refinement of his feeling, and the peculiar beauty of his
+favourite types. The chapel was decorated at the expense of a Milanese
+advocate, Francesco Besozzi, who died in 1529. It is he who is
+kneeling, grey-haired and bareheaded, under the protection of S.
+Catherine of Alexandria, intently gazing at Christ unbound from the
+scourging pillar. On the other side stand S. Lawrence and S. Stephen,
+pointing to the Christ and looking at us, as though their lips were
+framed to say: 'Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto
+his sorrow.' Even the soldiers who have done their cruel work, seem
+softened. They untie the cords tenderly, and support the fainting
+form, too weak to stand alone. What sadness in the lovely faces of S.
+Catherine and Lawrence! What divine anguish in the loosened limbs
+and bending body of Christ; what piety in the adoring old man! All the
+moods proper to this supreme tragedy of the faith are touched as in
+some tenor song with low accompaniment of viols; for it was Luini's
+special province to feel profoundly and to express musically. The very
+depth of the Passion is there; and yet there is no discord.
+
+Just in proportion to this unique faculty for yielding a melodious
+representation of the most intense moments of stationary emotion, was
+his inability to deal with a dramatic subject. The first episode of S.
+Catherine's execution, when the wheel was broken and the executioners
+struck by lightning, is painted in this chapel without energy and with
+a lack of composition that betrays the master's indifference to his
+subject. Far different is the second episode when Catherine is about
+to be beheaded. The executioner has raised his sword to strike. She,
+robed in brocade of black and gold, so cut as to display the curve of
+neck and back, while the bosom is covered, leans her head above
+her praying hands, and waits the blow in sweetest resignation. Two
+soldiers stand at some distance in a landscape of hill and meadow; and
+far up are seen the angels carrying her body to its tomb upon Mount
+Sinai. I cannot find words or summon courage to describe the beauty
+of this picture; its atmosphere of holy peace, the dignity of its
+composition, the golden richness of its colouring. The most tragic
+situation has here again been alchemised by Luini's magic into a
+pure idyll, without the loss of power, without the sacrifice of
+edification.
+
+S. Catherine in this incomparable fresco is a portrait, the history of
+which so strikingly illustrates the relation of the arts to religion
+on the one hand, and to life on the other, in the age of the
+Renaissance, that it cannot be omitted. At the end of his fourth
+Novella, having related the life of the Contessa di Cellant, Bandello
+says: 'And so the poor woman was beheaded; such was the end of her
+unbridled desires; and he who would fain see her painted to the life,
+let him go to the Church of the Monistero Maggiore, and there will he
+behold her portrait.' The Contessa di Cellant was the only child of a
+rich usurer who lived at Casal Monferrato. Her mother was a Greek;
+and she was a girl of such exquisite beauty, that, in spite of her
+low origin, she became the wife of the noble Ermes Visconti in her
+sixteenth year. He took her to live with him at Milan, where she
+frequented the house of the Bentivogli, but none other. Her husband
+told Bandello that he knew her temper better than to let her visit
+with the freedom of the Milanese ladies. Upon his death, while she
+was little more than twenty, she retired to Casale and led a gay
+life among many lovers. One of these, the Count of Cellant in the Val
+d'Aosta, became her second husband, conquered by her extraordinary
+loveliness. They could not, however, agree together. She left him, and
+established herself at Pavia. Rich with her father's wealth and still
+of most seductive beauty, she now abandoned herself to a life of
+profligacy. Three among her lovers must be named: Ardizzino Valperga,
+Count of Masino; Roberto Sanseverino, of the princely Naples family;
+and Don Pietro di Cardona, a Sicilian. With each of the two first she
+quarrelled, and separately besought each to murder the other. They
+were friends and frustrated her plans by communicating them to one
+another. The third loved her with the insane passion of a very young
+man. What she desired, he promised to do blindly; and she bade him
+murder his two predecessors in her favour. At this time she was living
+at Milan, where the Duke of Bourbon was acting as viceroy for the
+Emperor. Don Pietro took twenty-five armed men of his household, and
+waylaid the Count of Masino, as he was returning with his brother and
+eight or nine servants, late one night from supper. Both the brothers
+and the greater part of their suite were killed: but Don Pietro was
+caught. He revealed the atrocity of his mistress; and she was sent
+to prison. Incapable of proving her innocence, and prevented from
+escaping, in spite of 15,000 golden crowns with which she hoped to
+bribe her jailors, she was finally beheaded. Thus did a vulgar and
+infamous Messalina, distinguished only by rare beauty, furnish Luini
+with a S. Catherine for this masterpiece of pious art! The thing seems
+scarcely credible. Yet Bandello lived in Milan while the Church of
+S. Maurizio was being painted; nor does he show the slightest sign of
+disgust at the discord between the Contessa's life and her artistic
+presentation in the person of a royal martyr.
+
+A HUMANIST'S MONUMENT
+
+In the Sculpture Gallery of the Brera is preserved a fair white marble
+tomb, carved by that excellent Lombard sculptor, Agostino Busti. The
+epitaph runs as follows:--
+
+  En Virtutem Mortis nesciam.
+  Vivet Lancinus Curtius
+  Saecula per omnia
+  Quascunque lustrans oras,
+  Tantum possunt Camoenae.
+
+'Look here on Virtue that knows nought of Death! Lancinus Curtius
+shall live through all the centuries, and visit every shore of earth.
+Such power have the Muses.' The timeworn poet reclines, as though
+sleeping or resting, ready to be waked; his head is covered with
+flowing hair, and crowned with laurel; it leans upon his left hand. On
+either side of his couch stand cupids or genii with torches turned to
+earth. Above is a group of the three Graces, flanked by winged Pegasi.
+Higher up are throned two Victories with palms, and at the top a naked
+Fame. We need not ask who was Lancinus Curtius. He is forgotten, and
+his virtue has not saved him from oblivion; though he strove in his
+lifetime, _pro virili parte_, for the palm that Busti carved upon
+his grave. Yet his monument teaches in short compass a deep lesson;
+and his epitaph sums up the dream which lured the men of Italy in the
+Renaissance to their doom. We see before us sculptured in this marble
+the ideal of the humanistic poet-scholar's life: Love, Grace, the
+Muse, and Nakedness, and Glory. There is not a single intrusive
+thought derived from Christianity. The end for which the man lived
+was Pagan. His hope was earthly fame. Yet his name survives, if this
+indeed be a survival, not in those winged verses which were to carry
+him abroad across the earth, but in the marble of a cunning craftsman,
+scanned now and then by a wandering scholar's eye in the half-darkness
+of a vault.
+
+THE MONUMENT OF GASTON DE FOIX IN THE BRERA
+
+The hero of Ravenna lies stretched upon his back in the hollow of
+a bier covered with laced drapery; and his head rests on richly
+ornamented cushions. These decorative accessories, together with the
+minute work of his scabbard, wrought in the fanciful mannerism of the
+_cinquecento_, serve to enhance the statuesque simplicity of the
+young soldier's effigy. The contrast between so much of richness in
+the merely subordinate details, and this sublime severity of treatment
+in the person of the hero, is truly and touchingly dramatic. There is
+a smile as of content in death, upon his face; and the features are
+exceedingly beautiful--with the beauty of a boy, almost of a woman.
+The heavy hair is cut straight above the forehead and straight over
+the shoulders, falling in massive clusters. A delicately sculptured
+laurel branch is woven into a victor's crown, and laid lightly on the
+tresses it scarcely seems to clasp. So fragile is this wreath that
+it does not break the pure outline of the boy-conqueror's head. The
+armour is quite plain. So is the surcoat. Upon the swelling bust,
+that seems fit harbour for a hero's heart, there lies the collar of an
+order composed of cockle-shells; and this is all the ornament given
+to the figure. The hands are clasped across a sword laid flat upon the
+breast, and placed between the legs. Upon the chin is a little tuft of
+hair, parted, and curling either way; for the victor of Ravenna, like
+the Hermes of Homer, was [Greek: proton hypenetes], 'a youth of
+princely blood, whose beard hath just begun to grow, for whom the
+season of bloom is in its prime of grace.' The whole statue is the
+idealisation of _virtu_--that quality so highly prized by the
+Italians and the ancients, so well fitted for commemoration in the
+arts. It is the apotheosis of human life resolved into undying memory
+because of one great deed. It is the supreme portrait in modern times
+of a young hero, chiselled by artists belonging to a race no longer
+heroic, but capable of comprehending and expressing the aesthetic charm
+of heroism. Standing before it, we may say of Gaston what Arrian wrote
+to Hadrian of Achilles:--'That he was a hero, if hero ever lived,
+I cannot doubt; for his birth and blood were noble, and he was
+beautiful, and his spirit was mighty, and he passed in youth's
+prime away from men.' Italian sculpture, under the condition of the
+_cinquecento_, had indeed no more congenial theme than this
+of bravery and beauty, youth and fame, immortal honour and untimely
+death; nor could any sculptor of death have poetised the theme more
+thoroughly than Agostino Busti, whose simple instinct, unlike that of
+Michelangelo, led him to subordinate his own imagination to the pathos
+of reality.
+
+SARONNO
+
+The church of Saronno is a pretty building with a Bramantesque cupola,
+standing among meadows at some distance from the little town. It
+is the object of a special cult, which draws pilgrims from the
+neighbouring country-side; but the concourse is not large enough to
+load the sanctuary with unnecessary wealth. Everything is very quiet
+in the holy place, and the offerings of the pious seem to have been
+only just enough to keep the building and its treasures of art in
+repair. The church consists of a nave, a central cupola, a vestibule
+leading to the choir, the choir itself, and a small tribune behind the
+choir. No other single building in North Italy can boast so much that
+is first-rate of the work of Luini and Gandenzio Ferrari.
+
+The cupola is raised on a sort of drum composed of twelve pieces,
+perforated with round windows and supported on four massive piers. On
+the level of the eye are frescoes by Luini of S. Rocco, S. Sebastian,
+S. Christopher, and S. Antony--by no means in his best style, and
+inferior to all his other paintings in this church. The Sebastian,
+for example, shows an effort to vary the traditional treatment of this
+saint. He is tied in a sprawling attitude to a tree; and little of
+Luini's special pathos or sense of beauty--the melody of idyllic grace
+made spiritual--appears in him. These four saints are on the piers.
+Above are frescoes from the early Bible history by Lanini, painted in
+continuation of Ferrari's medallions from the story of Adam expelled
+from Paradise, which fill the space beneath the cupola, leading the
+eye upward to Ferrari's masterpiece.
+
+The dome itself is crowded with a host of angels singing and playing
+upon instruments of music. At each of the twelve angles of the drum
+stands a coryphaeus of this celestial choir, full length, with waving
+drapery. Higher up, the golden-haired, broad-winged, divine creatures
+are massed together, filling every square inch of the vault with
+colour. Yet there is no confusion. The simplicity of the selected
+motive and the necessities of the place acted like a check on
+Ferrari, who, in spite of his dramatic impulse, could not tell a story
+coherently or fill a canvas with harmonised variety. There is no trace
+of his violence here. Though the motion of music runs through the
+whole multitude like a breeze, though the joy expressed is a real
+_tripudio celeste_, not one of all these angels flings his arms
+abroad or makes a movement that disturbs the rhythm. We feel that they
+are keeping time and resting quietly, each in his appointed seat, as
+though the sphere was circling with them round the throne of God, who
+is their centre and their source of gladness. Unlike Correggio and his
+imitators, Ferrari has introduced no clouds, and has in no case made
+the legs of his angels prominent. It is a mass of noble faces and
+voluminously robed figures, emerging each above the other like flowers
+in a vase. Bach too has specific character, while all are robust and
+full of life, intent upon the service set them. Their instruments
+of music are all the lutes and viols, flutes, cymbals, drums, fifes,
+citherns, organs, and harps that Ferrari's day could show. The scale
+of colour, as usual with Ferrari, is a little heavy; nor are the tints
+satisfactorily harmonised. But the vigour and invention of the whole
+work would atone for minor defects of far greater consequence.
+
+It is natural, beneath this dome, to turn aside and think one
+moment of Correggio at Parma. Before the _macchinisti_ of the
+seventeenth century had vulgarised the motive, Correggio's bold
+attempt to paint heaven in flight from earth--earth left behind in the
+persons of the Apostles standing round the empty tomb, heaven soaring
+upward with a spiral vortex into the abyss of light above--had an
+originality which set at nought all criticism. There is such ecstasy
+of jubilation, such rapturous rapidity of flight, that we who strain
+our eyes from below, feel we are in the darkness of the grave which
+Mary left. A kind of controlling rhythm for the composition is gained
+by placing Gabriel, Madonna, and Christ at three points in the swirl
+of angels. Nevertheless, composition--the presiding all-controlling
+intellect--is just what makes itself felt by absence; and Correggio's
+special qualities of light and colour have now so far vanished
+from the cupola of the Duomo that the, constructive poverty is
+not disguised. Here if anywhere in painting, we may apply Goethe's
+words--_Gefuehl ist Alles._
+
+If then we return to Ferrari's angels at Saronno, we find that the
+painter of Varallo chose a safer though a far more modest theme. Nor
+did he expose himself to that most cruel of all degradations which the
+ethereal genius of Correggio has suffered from incompetent imitators.
+To daub a tawdry and superficial reproduction of those Parmese
+frescoes, to fill the cupolas of Italy with veritable _guazzetti
+di rane_, was comparatively easy; and between our intelligence
+and what remains of that stupendous masterpiece of boldness, crowd a
+thousand memories of such ineptitude. On the other hand, nothing but
+solid work and conscientious inspiration could enable any workman,
+however able, to follow Ferrari in the path struck out by him at
+Saronno. His cupola has had no imitator; and its only rival is the
+noble pendant painted at Varallo by his own hand, of angels in adoring
+anguish round the Cross.
+
+In the ante-choir of the sanctuary are Luini's priceless frescoes of
+the 'Marriage of the Virgin,' and the 'Dispute with the Doctors.'[11]
+Their execution is flawless, and they are perfectly preserved. If
+criticism before such admirable examples of so excellent a master
+be permissible, it may be questioned whether the figures are not too
+crowded, whether the groups are sufficiently varied and connected by
+rhythmic lines. Yet the concords of yellow and orange with blue in
+the 'Sposalizio,' and the blendings of dull violet and red in the
+'Disputa,' make up for much of stiffness. Here, as in the Chapel of
+S. Catherine at Milan, we feel that Luini was the greatest colourist
+among _frescanti._ In the 'Sposalizio' the female heads are singularly
+noble and idyllically graceful. Some of the young men too have Luini's
+special grace and abundance of golden hair. In the 'Disputa' the
+gravity and dignity of old men are above all things striking.
+
+Passing into the choir, we find on either hand the 'Adoration
+of the Magi' and the 'Purification of the Virgin,' two of Luini's
+divinest frescoes. Above them in lunettes are four Evangelists and
+four Latin Fathers, with four Sibyls. Time and neglect have done no
+damage here: and here, again, perforce we notice perfect mastery of
+colour in fresco. The blues detach themselves too much, perhaps, from
+the rest of the colouring; and that is all a devil's advocate could
+say. It is possible that the absence of blue makes the S. Catherine
+frescoes in the Monastero Maggiore at Milan surpass all other works of
+Luini. But nowhere else has he shown more beauty and variety in detail
+than here. The group of women led by Joseph, the shepherd carrying
+the lamb upon his shoulder, the girl with a basket of white doves,
+the child with an apple on the altar-steps, the lovely youth in the
+foreground heedless of the scene; all these are idyllic incidents
+treated with the purest, the serenest, the most spontaneous, the
+truest, most instinctive sense of beauty. The landscape includes a
+view of Saronno, and an episodical picture of the 'Flight into Egypt'
+where a white-robed angel leads the way. All these lovely things
+are in the 'Purification,' which is dated _Bernardinus Lovinus
+pinxit_, MDXXV.
+
+The fresco of the 'Magi' is less notable in detail, and in general
+effect is more spoiled by obtrusive blues. There is, however, one
+young man of wholly Lionardesque loveliness, whose divine innocence
+of adolescence, unalloyed by serious thought, unstirred by passions,
+almost forces a comparison with Sodoma. The only painter who
+approaches Luini in what may be called the Lombard, to distinguish it
+from the Venetian idyll, is Sodoma; and the work of his which comes
+nearest to Luini's masterpieces is the legend of S. Benedict, at
+Monte Oliveto, near Siena. Yet Sodoma had not all Luini's innocence or
+_naivete._ If he added something slightly humorous which has an
+indefinite charm, he lacked that freshness as of 'cool, meek-blooded
+flowers' and boyish voices, which fascinates us in Luini. Sodoma
+was closer to the earth, and feared not to impregnate what he saw
+of beauty with the fiercer passions of his nature. If Luini had felt
+passion, who shall say? It appears nowhere in his work, where life is
+toned to a religious joyousness. When Shelley compared the poetry of
+the Theocritean amourists to the perfume of the tuberose, and that of
+the earlier Greek poets to 'a meadow-gale of June, which mingles
+the fragrance of all the flowers of the field,' he supplied us
+with critical images which may not unfairly be used to point the
+distinction between Sodoma at Monte Oliveto and Luini at Saronno.
+
+THE CASTELLO OF FERRARA
+
+Is it possible that the patron saints of cities should mould the
+temper of the people to their own likeness? S. George, the chivalrous,
+is champion of Ferrara. His is the marble group above the Cathedral
+porch, so feudal in its medieval pomp. He and S. Michael are painted
+in fresco over the south portcullis of the Castle. His lustrous armour
+gleams with Giorgionesque brilliancy from Dossi's masterpiece in
+the Pinacoteca. That Ferrara, the only place in Italy where chivalry
+struck any root, should have had S. George for patron, is at any rate
+significant.
+
+The best preserved relic of princely feudal life in Italy is
+this Castello of the Este family, with its sombre moat, chained
+drawbridges, doleful dungeons, and unnumbered tragedies, each one of
+which may be compared with Parisina's history. I do not want to dwell
+on these things now. It is enough to remember the Castello, built of
+ruddiest brick, time-mellowed with how many centuries of sun and soft
+sea-air, as it appeared upon the close of one tempestuous day. Just
+before evening the rain-clouds parted and the sun flamed out across
+the misty Lombard plain. The Castello burned like a hero's funeral
+pyre, and round its high-built turrets swallows circled in the warm
+blue air. On the moat slept shadows, mixed with flowers of sunset,
+tossed from pinnacle and gable. Then the sky changed. A roof of
+thunder-cloud spread overhead with the rapidity of tempest. The dying
+sun gathered his last strength against it, fretting those steel-blue
+arches with crimson; and all the fierce light, thrown from vault to
+vault of cloud, was reflected back as from a shield, and cast in
+blots and patches on the buildings. The Castle towered up rosy-red
+and shadowy sombre, enshrined, embosomed in those purple clouds; and
+momently ran lightning forks like rapiers through the growing mass.
+Everything around, meanwhile, was quiet in the grass-grown streets.
+The only sound was a high, clear boy's voice chanting an opera tune.
+
+PETRARCH'S TOMB AT ARQUA
+
+The drive from Este along the skirts of the Euganean Hills to Arqua
+takes one through a country which is tenderly beautiful, because of
+its contrast between little peaked mountains and the plain. It is
+not a grand landscape. It lacks all that makes the skirts of Alps
+and Apennines sublime. Its charm is a certain mystery and
+repose--an undefined sense of the neighbouring Adriatic, a pervading
+consciousness of Venice unseen, but felt from far away. From the
+terraces of Arqua the eye ranges across olive-trees, laurels, and
+pomegranates on the southern slopes, to the misty level land that
+melts into the sea, with churches and tall campanili like gigantic
+galleys setting sail for fairyland over 'the foam of perilous seas
+forlorn.' Let a blue-black shadow from a thunder-cloud be cast
+upon this plain, and let one ray of sunlight strike a solitary
+bell-tower;--it burns with palest flame of rose against the steely
+dark, and in its slender shaft and shell-like tint of pink all Venice
+is foreseen.
+
+The village church of Arqua stands upon one of these terraces, with a
+full stream of clearest water flowing by. On the little square before
+the church-door, where the peasants congregate at mass-time--open to
+the skies with all their stars and storms, girdled by the hills,
+and within hearing of the vocal stream--is Petrarch's sepulchre. Fit
+resting-place for what remains to earth of such a poet's clay! It is
+as though archangels, flying, had carried the marble chest and set it
+down here on the hillside, to be a sign and sanctuary for after-men. A
+simple rectilinear coffin, of smooth Verona _mandorlato_, raised
+on four thick columns, and closed by a heavy cippus-cover. Without
+emblems, allegories, or lamenting genii, this tomb of the great poet,
+the great awakener of Europe from mental lethargy, encircled by the
+hills, beneath the canopy of heaven, is impressive beyond the power of
+words. Bending here, we feel that Petrarch's own winged thoughts
+and fancies, eternal and aerial, 'forms more real than living man,
+nurslings of immortality,' have congregated to be the ever-ministering
+and irremovable attendants on the shrine of one who, while he lived,
+was purest spirit in a veil of flesh.
+
+ON A MOUNTAIN
+
+Milan is shining in sunset on those purple fields; and a score of
+cities flash back the last red light, which shows each inequality
+and undulation of Lombardy outspread four thousand feet beneath. Both
+ranges, Alps and Apennines, are clear to view; and all the silvery
+lakes are over-canopied and brought into one picture by flame-litten
+mists. Monte Rosa lifts her crown of peaks above a belt of clouds into
+light of living fire. The Mischabelhoerner and the Dom rest stationary
+angel-wings upon the rampart, which at this moment is the wall of
+heaven. The pyramid of distant Monte Viso burns like solid amethyst
+far, far away. Mont Cervin beckons to his brother, the gigantic
+Finsteraarhorn, across tracts of liquid ether. Bells are rising from
+the villages, now wrapped in gloom, between me and the glimmering
+lake. A hush of evening silence falls upon the ridges, cliffs, and
+forests of this billowy hill, ascending into wave-like crests, and
+toppling with awful chasms over the dark waters of Lugano. It is good
+to be alone here at this hour. Yet I must rise and go--passing through
+meadows, where white lilies sleep in silvery drifts, and asphodel is
+pale with spires of faintest rose, and narcissus dreams of his own
+beauty, loading the air with fragrance sweet as some love-music of
+Mozart. These fields want only the white figure of Persephone to make
+them poems: and in this twilight one might fancy that the queen had
+left her throne by Pluto's side, to mourn for her dead youth among the
+flowers uplifted between earth and heaven. Nay, they are poems now,
+these fields; with that unchanging background of history, romance,
+and human life--the Lombard plain, against whose violet breadth the
+blossoms bend their faint heads to the evening air. Downward we
+hurry, on pathways where the beeches meet, by silent farms, by meadows
+honey-scented, deep in dew. The columbine stands tall and still on
+those green slopes of shadowy grass. The nightingale sings now, and
+now is hushed again. Streams murmur through the darkness, where the
+growth of trees, heavy with honeysuckle and wild rose, is thickest.
+Fireflies begin to flit above the growing corn. At last the plain is
+reached, and all the skies are tremulous with starlight. Alas, that
+we should vibrate so obscurely to these harmonies of earth and
+heaven! The inner finer sense of them seems somehow unattainable--that
+spiritual touch of soul evoking soul from nature, which should
+transfigure our dull mood of self into impersonal delight. Man needs
+to be a mytho-poet at some moments, or, better still, to be a mystic
+steeped through half-unconsciousness in the vast wonder of the world.
+Gold and untouched to poetry or piety by scenes that ought to blend
+the spirit in ourselves with spirit in the world without, we can but
+wonder how this phantom show of mystery and beauty will pass away from
+us--how soon--and we be where, see what, use all our sensibilities on
+aught or nought?
+
+SIC GENIUS
+
+In the picture-gallery at Modena there is a masterpiece of Dosso
+Dossi. The frame is old and richly carved; and the painting, bordered
+by its beautiful dull gold, shines with the lustre of an emerald. In
+his happy moods Dosso set colour upon canvas, as no other painter out
+of Venice ever did; and here he is at his happiest. The picture is the
+portrait of a jester, dressed in courtly clothes and with a feathered
+cap upon his head. He holds a lamb in his arms, and carries the
+legend, _Sic Genius_. Behind him is a landscape of exquisite
+brilliancy and depth. His face is young and handsome. Dosso has made
+it one most wonderful laugh. Even so perhaps laughed Yorick. Nowhere
+else have I seen a laugh thus painted: not violent, not loud, although
+the lips are opened to show teeth of dazzling whiteness;--but fine and
+delicate, playing over the whole face like a ripple sent up from the
+depths of the soul within. Who was he? What does the lamb mean? How
+should the legend be interpreted? We cannot answer these questions. He
+may have been the court-fool of Ferrara; and his genius, the spiritual
+essence of the man, may have inclined him to laugh at all things.
+That at least is the value he now has for us. He is the portrait of
+perpetual irony, the spirit of the golden Sixteenth Century which
+delicately laughed at the whole world of thoughts and things, the
+quintessence of the poetry of Ariosto, the wit of Berni, all condensed
+into one incarnation and immortalised by truthfullest art. With the
+Gaul, the Spaniard, and the German at her gates, and in her cities,
+and encamped upon her fields, Italy still laughed; and when the voice
+of conscience sounding through Savonarola asked her why, she only
+smiled--_Sic Genius_.
+
+One evening in May we rowed from Venice to Torcello, and at sunset
+broke bread and drank wine together among the rank grasses just
+outside that ancient church. It was pleasant to sit in the so-called
+chair of Attila and feel the placid stillness of the place. Then there
+came lounging by a sturdy young fellow in brown country clothes, with
+a marvellous old wide-awake upon his head, and across his shoulders a
+bunch of massive church-keys. In strange contrast to his uncouth garb
+he flirted a pink Japanese fan, gracefully disposing it to cool his
+sunburned olive cheeks. This made us look at him. He was not ugly.
+Nay, there was something of attractive in his face--the smooth-curved
+chin, the shrewd yet sleepy eyes, and finely cut thin lips--a curious
+mixture of audacity and meekness blent upon his features. Yet this
+impression was but the prelude to his smile. When that first dawned,
+some breath of humour seeming to stir in him unbidden, the true
+meaning was given to his face. Each feature helped to make a smile
+that was the very soul's life of the man expressed. I broadened,
+showing brilliant teeth, and grew into a noiseless laugh; and then I
+saw before me Dosso's jester, the type of Shakspere's fools, the life
+of that wild irony, now rude, now fine, which once delighted Courts.
+The laughter of the whole world and of all the centuries was silent in
+his face. What he said need not be repeated. The charm was less in his
+words than in his personality; for Momus-philosophy lay deep in every
+look and gesture of the man. The place lent itself to irony: parties
+of Americans and English parsons, the former agape for any
+rubbishy old things, the latter learned in the lore of obsolete
+Church-furniture, had thronged Torcello; and now they were all gone,
+and the sun had set behind the Alps, while an irreverent stranger
+drank his wine in Attila's chair, and nature's jester smiled--_Sic
+Genius_.
+
+When I slept that night I dreamed of an altar-piece in the Temple of
+Folly. The goddess sat enthroned beneath a canopy hung with bells
+and corals. On her lap was a beautiful winged smiling genius, who
+flourished two bright torches. On her left hand stood the man of
+Modena with his white lamb, a new S. John. On her right stood the man
+of Torcello with his keys, a new S. Peter. Both were laughing after
+their all-absorbent, divine, noiseless fashion; and under both was
+written, _Sic Genius_. Are not all things, even profanity,
+permissible in dreams?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+COMO AND IL MEDEGHINO
+
+To which of the Italian lakes should the palm of beauty be accorded?
+This question may not unfrequently have moved the idle minds of
+travellers, wandering through that loveliest region from Orta to
+Garda--from little Orta, with her gemlike island, rosy granite crags,
+and chestnut-covered swards above the Colma; to Garda, bluest of all
+waters, surveyed in majestic length from Desenzano or poetic Sirmione,
+a silvery sleeping haze of hill and cloud and heaven and clear waves
+bathed in modulated azure. And between these extreme points what
+varied lovelinesses lie in broad Maggiore, winding Como, Varese with
+the laughing face upturned to heaven, Lugano overshadowed by the
+crested crags of Monte Generoso, and Iseo far withdrawn among the
+rocky Alps! He who loves immense space, cloud shadows slowly sailing
+over purple slopes, island gardens, distant glimpses of snow-capped
+mountains, breadth, air, immensity, and flooding sunlight, will choose
+Maggiore. But scarcely has he cast his vote for this, the Juno of the
+divine rivals, when he remembers the triple lovelinesses of the
+Larian Aphrodite, disclosed in all their placid grace from Villa
+Serbelloni;--the green blue of the waters, clear as glass, opaque
+through depth; the _millefleurs_ roses clambering into cypresses
+by Cadenabbia; the laburnums hanging their yellow clusters from the
+clefts of Sasso Eancio; the oleander arcades of Varenna; the wild
+white limestone crags of San Martiuo, which he has climbed to feast
+his eyes with the perspective, magical, serene, Lionardesquely
+perfect, of the distant gates of Adda. Then while this modern Paris
+is yet doubting, perhaps a thought may cross his mind of sterner,
+solitary Lake Iseo--the Pallas of the three. She offers her own
+attractions. The sublimity of Monte Adamello, dominating Lovere and
+all the lowland like Hesiod's hill of Virtue reared aloft above the
+plain of common life, has charms to tempt heroic lovers. Nor can
+Varese be neglected. In some picturesque respects, Varese is the most
+perfect of the lakes. Those long lines of swelling hills that lead
+into the level, yield an infinite series of placid foregrounds,
+pleasant to the eye by contrast with the dominant snow-summits, from
+Monte Viso to Monte Leone: the sky is limitless to southward; the low
+horizons are broken by bell-towers and farmhouses; while armaments of
+clouds are ever rolling in the interval of Alps and plain.
+
+Of a truth, to decide which is the queen of the Italian lakes, is but
+an _infinita quaestio_; and the mere raising of it is folly. Still
+each lover of the beautiful may give his vote; and mine, like that of
+shepherd Paris, is already given to the Larian goddess. Words fail
+in attempting to set forth charms which have to be enjoyed, or can at
+best but lightly be touched with most consummate tact, even as great
+poets have already touched on Como Lake--from Virgil with his 'Lari
+maxume,' to Tennyson and the Italian Manzoni. The threshold of the
+shrine is, however, less consecrated ground; and the Cathedral of Como
+may form a vestibule to the temple where silence is more golden than
+the speech of a describer.
+
+The Cathedral of Como is perhaps the most perfect building in Italy
+for illustrating the fusion of Gothic and Renaissance styles, both of
+a good type and exquisite in their sobriety. The Gothic ends with the
+nave. The noble transepts and the choir, each terminating in a rounded
+tribune of the same dimensions, are carried out in a simple and
+decorous Bramantesque manner. The transition from the one style to the
+other is managed so felicitously, and the sympathies between them are
+so well developed, that there is no discord. What we here call
+Gothic, is conceived in a truly southern spirit, without fantastic
+efflorescence or imaginative complexity of multiplied parts; while
+the Renaissance manner, as applied by Tommaso Rodari, has not yet
+stiffened into the lifeless neo-Latinism of the later _cinquecento_:
+it is still distinguished by delicate inventiveness, and beautiful
+subordination of decorative detail to architectural effect. Under
+these happy conditions we feel that the Gothic of the nave, with its
+superior severity and sombreness, dilates into the lucid harmonies of
+choir and transepts like a flower unfolding. In the one the mind is
+tuned to inner meditation and religious awe; in the other the
+worshipper passes into a temple of the clear explicit faith--as an
+initiated neophyte might be received into the meaning of the
+mysteries.
+
+After the collapse of the Roman Empire the district of Como seems
+to have maintained more vividly than the rest of Northern Italy some
+memory of classic art. _Magistri Comacini_ is a title frequently
+inscribed upon deeds and charters of the earlier middle ages, as
+synonymous with sculptors and architects. This fact may help to
+account for the purity and beauty of the Duomo. It is the work of a
+race in which the tradition of delicate artistic invention had
+never been wholly interrupted. To Tommaso Rodari and his brothers,
+Bernardino and Jacopo, the world owes this sympathetic fusion of the
+Gothic and the Bramantesque styles; and theirs too is the sculpture
+with which the Duomo is so richly decorated. They were natives of
+Maroggia, a village near Mendrisio, beneath the crests of Monte
+Generoso, close to Campione, which sent so many able craftsmen out
+into the world between the years 1300 and 1500. Indeed the name of
+Campionesi would probably have been given to the Rodari, had they left
+their native province for service in Eastern Lombardy. The body of the
+Duomo had been finished when Tommaso Rodari was appointed master of
+the fabric in 1487. To complete the work by the addition of a tribune
+was his duty. He prepared a wooden model and exposed it, after the
+fashion of those times, for criticism in his _bottega_; and
+the usual difference of opinion arose among the citizens of Como
+concerning its merits. Cristoforo Solaro, surnamed Il Gobbo, was
+called in to advise. It may be remembered that when Michelangelo first
+placed his Pieta in S. Peter's, rumour gave it to this celebrated
+Lombard sculptor, and the Florentine was constrained to set his own
+signature upon the marble. The same Solaro carved the monument of
+Beatrice Sforza in the Certosa of Pavia. He was indeed in all
+points competent to criticise or to confirm the design of his
+fellow-craftsman. Il Gobbo disapproved of the proportions chosen by
+Rodari, and ordered a new model to be made; but after much discussion,
+and some concessions on the part of Rodari, who is said to have
+increased the number of the windows and lightened the orders of his
+model, the work was finally entrusted to the master of Maroggia.
+
+Not less creditable than the general design of the tribune is
+the sculpture executed by the brothers. The north side door is a
+master-work of early Renaissance chiselling, combining mixed Christian
+and classical motives with a wealth of floral ornament. Inside, over
+the same door, is a procession of children seeming to represent the
+Triumph of Bacchus, with perhaps some Christian symbolism. Opposite,
+above the south door, is a frieze of fighting Tritons--horsed sea
+deities pounding one another with bunches of fish and splashing the
+water, in Mantegna's spirit. The doorways of the facade are decorated
+with the same rare workmanship; and the canopies, supported by naked
+fauns and slender twisted figures, under which the two Plinies are
+seated, may be reckoned among the supreme achievements of delicate
+Renaissance sculpture. The Plinies are not like the work of the same
+master. They are older, stiffer, and more Gothic. The chief interest
+attaching to them is that they are habited and seated after the
+fashion of Humanists. This consecration of the two Pagan saints beside
+the portals of the Christian temple is truly characteristic of
+the fifteenth century in Italy. Beneath, are little basreliefs
+representing scenes from their respective lives, in the style of
+carved predellas on the altars of saints.
+
+The whole church is peopled with detached statues, among which a
+Sebastian in the Chapel of the Madonna must be mentioned as singularly
+beautiful. It is a finely modelled figure, with the full life and
+exuberant adolescence of Venetian inspiration. A peculiar feature of
+the external architecture is the series of Atlantes, bearing on their
+shoulders urns, heads of lions, and other devices, and standing on
+brackets round the upper cornice just below the roof. They are of all
+sorts; young and old, male and female; classically nude, and boldly
+outlined. These water-conduits, the work of Bernardo Bianco and
+Francesco Rusca, illustrate the departure of the earlier Renaissance
+from the Gothic style. They are gargoyles; but they have lost the
+grotesque element. At the same time the sculptor, while discarding
+Gothic tradition, has not betaken himself yet to a servile imitation
+of the antique. He has used invention, and substituted for grinning
+dragons' heads something wild and bizarre of his own in harmony with
+classic taste.
+
+The pictures in the chapels, chiefly by Luini and Ferrari--an idyllic
+Nativity, with faun-like shepherds and choirs of angels--a sumptuous
+adoration of the Magi--a jewelled Sposalizio with abundance of golden
+hair flowing over draperies of green and crimson--will interest
+those who are as yet unfamiliar with Lombard painting. Yet their
+architectural setting, perhaps, is superior to their intrinsic merit
+as works of art; and their chief value consists in adding rare dim
+flakes of colour to the cool light of the lovely church. More curious,
+because less easily matched, is the gilded woodwork above the altar of
+S. Abondio, attributed to a German carver, but executed for the
+most part in the purest Luinesque manner. The pose of the enthroned
+Madonna, the type and gesture of S. Catherine, and the treatment of
+the Pieta above, are thoroughly Lombard, showing how Luini's ideal of
+beauty could be expressed in carving. Some of the choicest figures in
+the Monastero Maggiore at Milan seem to have descended from the walls
+and stepped into their tabernacles on this altar. Yet the style is not
+maintained consistently. In the reliefs illustrating the life of S.
+Abondio we miss Luini's childlike grace, and find instead a something
+that reminds us of Donatello--a seeking after the classical in dress,
+carriage, and grouping of accessory figures. It may have been that the
+carver, recognising Luini's defective composition, and finding nothing
+in that master's manner adapted to the spirit of relief, had the good
+taste to render what was Luinesquely lovely in his female figures, and
+to fall back on a severer model for his basreliefs.
+
+The building-fund for the Duomo was raised in Como and its districts.
+Boxes were placed in all the churches to receive the alms of those who
+wished to aid the work. The clergy begged in Lent, and preached the
+duty of contributing on special days. Presents of lime and bricks
+and other materials were thankfully received. Bishops, canons, and
+municipal magistrates were expected to make costly gifts on taking
+office. Notaries, under penalty of paying 100 soldi if they neglected
+their engagement, were obliged to persuade testators, _cum bonis
+modis dulciter_, to inscribe the Duomo on their wills. Fines for
+various offences were voted to the building by the city. Each new
+burgher paid a certain sum; while guilds and farmers of the taxes
+bought monopolies and privileges at the price of yearly subsidies.
+A lottery was finally established for the benefit of the fabric.
+Of course each payment to the good work carried with it spiritual
+privileges; and so willingly did the people respond to the call of the
+Church, that during the sixteenth century the sums subscribed amounted
+to 200,000 golden crowns. Among the most munificent donators are
+mentioned the Marchese Giacomo Gallio, who bequeathed 290,000 lire,
+and a Benzi, who gave 10,000 ducats.
+
+While the people of Como were thus straining every nerve to complete
+a pious work, which at the same time is one of the most perfect
+masterpieces of Italian art, their lovely lake was turned into a
+pirate's stronghold, and its green waves stained with slaughter of
+conflicting navies. So curious is this episode in the history of the
+Larian lake that it is worth while to treat of it at some length.
+Moreover, the lives of few captains of adventure offer matter more
+rich in picturesque details and more illustrative of their times than
+that of Gian Giacomo de' Medici, the Larian corsair, long known and
+still remembered as Il Medeghino. He was born in Milan in 1498, at
+the beginning of that darkest and most disastrous period of Italian
+history, when the old fabric of social and political existence went to
+ruin under the impact of conflicting foreign armies. He lived on until
+the year 1555, witnessing and taking part in the dismemberment of the
+Milanese Duchy, playing a game of hazard at high stakes for his own
+profit with the two last Sforzas, the Empire, the French, and the
+Swiss. At the beginning of the century, while he was still a youth,
+the rich valley of the Valtelline, with Bormio and Chiavenna, had
+been assigned to the Grisons. The Swiss Cantons at the same time had
+possessed themselves of Lugano and Bellinzona. By these two acts of
+robbery the mountaineers tore a portion of its fairest territory from
+the Duchy; and whoever ruled in Milan, whether a Sforza, or a Spanish
+viceroy, or a French general, was impatient to recover the lost jewel
+of the ducal crown. So much has to be premised, because the scene of
+our hero's romantic adventures was laid upon the borderland between
+the Duchy and the Cantons. Intriguing at one time with the Duke of
+Milan, at another with his foes the French or Spaniards, Il Medeghino
+found free scope for his peculiar genius in a guerilla warfare,
+carried on with the avowed purpose of restoring the Valtelline to
+Milan. To steer a plain course through that chaos of politics, in
+which the modern student, aided by the calm clear lights of history
+and meditation, cannot find a clue, was of course impossible for an
+adventurer whose one aim was to gratify his passions and exalt himself
+at the expense of others. It is therefore of little use to seek
+motives of statecraft or of patriotism in the conduct of Il Medeghino.
+He was a man shaped according to Machiavelli's standard of political
+morality--self-reliant, using craft and force with cold indifference
+to moral ends, bent only upon wringing for himself the largest share
+of this world's power for men who, like himself, identified virtue
+with unflinching and immitigable egotism.
+
+Il Medeghino's father was Bernardo de' Medici, a Lombard, who neither
+claimed nor could have proved cousinship with the great Medicean
+family of Florence. His mother was Cecilia Serbelloni. The boy was
+educated in the fashionable humanistic studies, nourishing his young
+imagination with the tales of Roman heroes. The first exploit by which
+he proved his _virtu_, was the murder of a man he hated, at the
+age of sixteen. This 'virile act of vengeance,' as it was called,
+brought him into trouble, and forced him to choose the congenial
+profession of arms. At a time when violence and vigour passed for
+manliness, a spirited assassination formed the best of introductions
+to the captains of mixed mercenary troops. Il Medeghino rose in
+favour with his generals, helped to reinstate Francesco Sforza in his
+capital, and, returning himself to Milan, inflicted severe vengeance
+on the enemies who had driven him to exile. It was his ambition, at
+this early period of his life, to be made governor of the Castle of
+Musso, on the Lake of Como. While fighting in the neighbourhood, he
+had observed the unrivalled capacities for defence presented by its
+site; and some pre-vision of his future destinies now urged him to
+acquire it, as the basis for the free marauding life he planned. The
+headland of Musso lies about halfway between Gravedona and Menaggio,
+on the right shore of the Lake of Como. Planted on a pedestal of
+rock, and surmounted by a sheer cliff, there then stood a very ancient
+tower, commanding this promontory on the side of the land. Between it
+and the water the Visconti, in more recent days, had built a square
+fort; and the headland had been further strengthened by the addition
+of connecting walls and bastions pierced for cannon. Combining
+precipitous cliffs, strong towers, and easy access from the lake
+below, this fortress of Musso was exactly the fit station for a
+pirate. So long as he kept the command of the lake, he had little
+to fear from land attacks, and had a splendid basis for aggressive
+operations. Il Medeghino made his request to the Duke of Milan; but
+the foxlike Sforza would not grant him a plain answer. At length he
+hinted that if his suitor chose to rid him of a troublesome subject,
+the noble and popular Astore Visconti, he should receive Musso
+for payment. Crimes of bloodshed and treason sat lightly on the
+adventurer's conscience. In a short time he compassed the young
+Visconti's death, and claimed his reward. The Duke despatched him
+thereupon to Musso, with open letters to the governor, commanding him
+to yield the castle to the bearer. Private advice, also entrusted to
+Il Medeghino, bade the governor, on the contrary, cut the bearer's
+throat. The young man, who had the sense to read the Duke's letter,
+destroyed the secret document, and presented the other, or, as one
+version of the story goes, forged a ducal order in his own favour.[12]
+At any rate, the castle was placed in his hands; and affecting to know
+nothing of the Duke's intended treachery, Il Medeghino took possession
+of it as a trusted servant of the ducal crown.
+
+As soon as he was settled in his castle, the freebooter devoted all
+his energies to rendering it still more impregnable by strengthening
+the walls and breaking the cliffs into more horrid precipices. In this
+work he was assisted by his numerous friends and followers; for Musso
+rapidly became, like ancient Rome, an asylum for the ruffians and
+outlaws of neighbouring provinces. It is even said that his sisters,
+Clarina and Margherita, rendered efficient aid with manual labour. The
+mention of Clarina's name justifies a parenthetical side-glance at Il
+Medeghino's pedigree, which will serve to illustrate the exceptional
+conditions of Italian society during this age. She was married to
+the Count Giberto Borromeo, and became the mother of the pious Carlo
+Borromeo, whose shrine is still adored at Milan in the Duomo. Il
+Medeghino's brother, Giovan Angelo, rose to the Papacy, assuming the
+title of Pius IV. Thus this murderous marauder was the brother of a
+Pope and the uncle of a Saint; and these three persons of one family
+embraced the various degrees and typified the several characters which
+flourished with peculiar lustre in Renaissance Italy--the captain of
+adventure soaked in blood, the churchman unrivalled for intrigue, and
+the saint aflame with holiest enthusiasm. Il Medeghino was short of
+stature, but well made and powerful; broad-chested; with a penetrating
+voice and winning countenance. He dressed simply, like one of his own
+soldiers; slept but little; was insensible to carnal pleasure; and
+though he knew how to win the affection of his men by jovial speech,
+he maintained strict discipline in his little army. In all points he
+was an ideal bandit chief, never happy unless fighting or planning
+campaigns, inflexible of purpose, bold and cunning in the execution of
+his schemes, cruel to his enemies, generous to his followers,
+sacrificing all considerations, human and divine, to the one aim of
+his life, self-aggrandisement by force and intrigue. He knew well how
+to make himself both feared and respected. One instance of his dealing
+will suffice. A gentleman of Bellano, Polidoro Boldoni, in return to
+his advances, coldly replied that he cared for neither amity nor
+relationship with thieves and robbers; whereupon Il Medeghino
+extirpated his family, almost to a man.
+
+Soon after his settlement in Musso, Il Medeghino, wishing to secure
+the gratitude of the Duke, his master, began war with the Grisons.
+From Coire, from the Engadine, and from Davos, the Alpine pikemen were
+now pouring down to swell the troops of Francis I.; and their road lay
+through the Lake of Como. Il Medeghino burned all the boats upon the
+lake, except those which he took into his own service, and thus made
+himself master of the water passage. He then swept the 'length of
+lordly Lario' from Colico to Lecco, harrying the villages upon
+the shore, and cutting off the bands of journeying Switzers at his
+pleasure. Not content with this guerilla, he made a descent upon
+the territory of the Trepievi, and pushed far up towards Chiavenna,
+forcing the Grisons to recall their troops from the Milanese. These
+acts of prowess convinced the Duke that he had found a strong ally
+in the pirate chief. When Francis I. continued his attacks upon the
+Duchy, and the Grisons still adhered to their French paymaster, the
+Sforza formally invested Gian Giacomo de' Medici with the perpetual
+governorship of Musso, the Lake of Como, and as much as he could wrest
+from the Grisons above the lake. Furnished now with a just title for
+his depredations, Il Medeghino undertook the siege of Chiavenna. That
+town is the key to the valleys of the Spluegen and Bregaglia. Strongly
+fortified and well situated for defence, the burghers of the Grisons
+well knew that upon its possession depended their power in the Italian
+valleys. To take it by assault was impossible, Il Medeghino used
+craft, entered the castle, and soon had the city at his disposition.
+Nor did he lose time in sweeping Val Bregaglia. The news of this
+conquest recalled the Switzers from the Duchy; and as they hurried
+homeward just before the battle of Pavia, it may be affirmed that Gian
+Giacomo de' Medici was instrumental in the defeat and capture of the
+French King. The mountaineers had no great difficulty in dislodging
+their pirate enemy from Chiavenna, the Valtelline, and Val Bregaglia.
+But he retained his hold on the Trepievi, occupied the Valsassina,
+took Porlezza, and established himself still more strongly in Musso as
+the corsair monarch of the lake.
+
+The tyranny of the Sforzas in Milan was fast going to pieces between
+France and Spain; and in 1526 the Marquis of Pescara occupied the
+capital in the name of Charles V. The Duke, meanwhile, remained a
+prisoner in his Castello. Il Medeghino was now without a master; for
+he refused to acknowledge the Spaniards, preferring to watch events
+and build his own power on the ruins of the dukedom. At the head of
+4,000 men, recruited from the lakes and neighbouring valleys, he
+swept the country far and wide, and occupied the rich champaign of the
+Brianza. He was now lord of the lakes of Como and Lugano, and absolute
+in Lecco and the adjoining valleys. The town of Como itself alone
+belonged to the Spaniards; and even Como was blockaded by the navy of
+the corsair. Il Medeghino had a force of seven big ships, with three
+sails and forty-eight oars, bristling with guns and carrying marines.
+His flagship was a large brigantine, manned by picked rowers, from
+the mast of which floated the red banner with the golden palle of the
+Medicean arms. Besides these larger vessels, he commanded a flotilla
+of countless small boats. It is clear that to reckon with him was a
+necessity. If he could not be put down with force, he might be bought
+over by concessions. The Spaniards adopted the second course, and Il
+Medeghino, judging that the cause of the Sforza family was desperate,
+determined in 1528 to attach himself to the Empire. Charles V.
+invested him with the Castle of Musso and the larger part of Como
+Lake, including the town of Lecco. He now assumed the titles of
+Marquis of Musso and Count of Lecco: and in order to prove his
+sovereignty before the world, he coined money with his own name and
+devices.
+
+It will be observed that Gian Giacomo de' Medici had hitherto acted
+with a single-hearted view to his own interests. At the age of thirty
+he had raised himself from nothing to a principality, which, though
+petty, might compare with many of some name in Italy--with Carpi, for
+example, or Mirandola, or Camerino. Nor did he mean to remain quiet
+in the prime of life. He regarded Como Lake as the mere basis for more
+arduous undertakings. Therefore, when the whirligig of events restored
+Francesco Sforza to his duchy in 1529, Il Medeghino refused to obey
+his old lord. Pretending to move under the Duke's orders, but really
+acting for himself alone, he proceeded to attack his ancient
+enemies, the Grisons. By fraud and force he worked his way into
+their territory, seized Morbegno, and overran the Valtelline. He
+was destined, however, to receive a serious check. Twelve thousand
+Switzers rose against him on the one hand, on the other the Duke of
+Milan sent a force by land and water to subdue his rebel subject,
+while Alessandro Gonzaga marched upon his castles in the Brianza. He
+was thus assailed by formidable forces from three quarters, converging
+upon the Lake of Como, and driving him to his chosen element, the
+water. Hastily quitting the Valtelline, he fell back to the Castle of
+Mandello on the lake, collected his navy, and engaged the ducal ships
+in a battle off Menaggio. In this battle he was worsted. But he did
+not lose his courage. From Bellagio, from Varenna, from Bellano he
+drove forth his enemies, rolled the cannon of the Switzers into the
+lake, regained Lecco, defeated the troops of Alessandro Gonzaga, and
+took the Duke of Mantua prisoner. Had he but held Como, it is probable
+that he might have obtained such terms at this time as would have
+consolidated his tyranny. The town of Como, however, now belonged
+to the Duke of Milan, and formed an excellent basis for operations
+against the pirate. Overmatched, with an exhausted treasury and broken
+forces, Il Medeghino was at last compelled to give in. Yet he retired
+with all the honours of war. In exchange for Musso and the lake, the
+Duke agreed to give him 35,000 golden crowns, together with the feud
+and marquisate of Marignano. A free pardon was promised not only
+to himself and his brothers, but to all his followers; and the Duke
+further undertook to transport his artillery and munitions of war at
+his own expense to Marignano. Having concluded this treaty under the
+auspices of Charles V. and his lieutenant, Il Medeghino, in March
+1532, set sail from Musso, and turned his back upon the lake for
+ever. The Switzers immediately destroyed the towers, forts, walls, and
+bastions of the Musso promontory, leaving in the midst of their ruins
+the little chapel of S. Eufemia.
+
+Gian Giacomo de' Medici, henceforth known to Europe as the Marquis
+of Marignano, now took service under Spain; and through the favour
+of Anton de Leyva, Viceroy for the Duchy, rose to the rank of
+Field Marshal. When the Marquis del Vasto succeeded to the Spanish
+governorship of Milan in 1536, he determined to gratify an old grudge
+against the ex-pirate, and, having invited him to a banquet, made him
+prisoner. II Medeghino was not, however, destined to languish in a
+dungeon. Princes and kings interested themselves in his fate. He
+was released, and journeyed to the court of Charles V. in Spain.
+The Emperor received him kindly, and employed him first in the Low
+Countries, where he helped to repress the burghers of Ghent, and at
+the siege of Landrecy commanded the Spanish artillery against other
+Italian captains of adventure: for, Italy being now dismembered and
+enslaved, her sons sought foreign service where they found best pay
+and widest scope for martial science. Afterwards the Medici ruled
+Bohemia as Spanish Viceroy; and then, as general of the league formed
+by the Duke of Florence, the Emperor, and the Pope to repress the
+liberties of Tuscany, distinguished himself in that cruel war of
+extermination, which turned the fair Contado of Siena into a poisonous
+Maremma. To the last Il Medeghino preserved the instincts and the
+passions of a brigand chief. It was at this time that, acting for the
+Grand Duke of Tuscany, he first claimed open kinship with the Medici
+of Florence. Heralds and genealogists produced a pedigree, which
+seemed to authorise this pretension; he was recognised, together with
+his brother, Pius IV., as an offshoot of the great house which had
+already given Dukes to Florence, Kings to France, and two Popes to
+the Christian world. In the midst of all this foreign service he never
+forgot his old dream of conquering the Valtelline; and in 1547 he
+made proposals to the Emperor for a new campaign against the Grisons.
+Charles V. did not choose to engage in a war, the profits of which
+would have been inconsiderable for the master of half the civilised
+world, and which might have proved troublesome by stirring up the
+tameless Switzers. Il Medeghino was obliged to abandon a project
+cherished from the earliest dawn of his adventurous manhood.
+
+When Gian Giacomo died in 1555, his brother Battista succeeded to his
+claims upon Lecco and the Trepievi. His monument, magnificent with
+five bronze figures, the masterpiece of Leone Lioni, from Menaggio,
+Michelangelesque in style, and of consummate workmanship, still adorns
+the Duomo of Milan. It stands close by the door that leads to the
+roof. This mausoleum, erected to the memory of Gian Giacomo and
+his brother Gabrio, is said to have cost 7800 golden crowns. On the
+occasion of the pirate's funeral the Senate of Milan put on mourning,
+and the whole city followed the great robber, the hero of Renaissance
+_virtu_, to the grave.
+
+Between the Cathedral of Como and the corsair Medeghino there is but
+a slight link. Yet so extraordinary were the social circumstances of
+Renaissance Italy, that almost at every turn, on her seaboard, in her
+cities, from her hill-tops, we are compelled to blend our admiration
+for the loveliest and purest works of art amid the choicest scenes
+of nature with memories of execrable crimes and lawless characters.
+Sometimes, as at Perugia, the _nexus_ is but local. At others,
+one single figure, like that of Cellini, unites both points of view in
+a romance of unparalleled dramatic vividness. Or, again, beneath
+the vaults of the Certosa, near Pavia, a masterpiece of the serenest
+beauty carries our thoughts perforce back to the hideous cruelties
+and snake-like frauds of its despotic founder. This is the excuse
+for combining two such diverse subjects in one study.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+_BERGAMO AND BARTOLOMMEO COLLEONI_
+
+
+From the new town of commerce to the old town of history upon the
+hill, the road is carried along a rampart lined, with horse-chestnut
+trees--clumps of massy foliage, and snowy pyramids of bloom, expanded
+in the rapture of a southern spring. Each pair of trees between their
+stems and arch of intermingling leaves includes a space of plain,
+checkered with cloud-shadows, melting blue and green in amethystine
+haze. To right and left the last spurs of the Alps descend, jutting
+like promontories, heaving like islands from the misty breadth below:
+and here and there are towers, half-lost in airy azure; and cities
+dwarfed to blots; and silvery lines where rivers flow; and distant,
+vapour-drowned, dim crests of Apennines. The city walls above us wave
+with snapdragons and iris among fig-trees sprouting from the riven
+stones. There are terraces over-rioted with pergolas of vine, and
+houses shooting forward into balconies and balustrades, from which a
+Romeo might launch himself at daybreak, warned by the lark's song.
+A sudden angle in the road is turned, and we pass from airspace and
+freedom into the old town, beneath walls of dark brown masonry, where
+wild valerians light their torches of red bloom in immemorial shade.
+Squalor and splendour live here side by side. Grand Renaissance
+portals grinning with Satyr masks are flanked by tawdry frescoes
+shamming stonework, or by doorways where the withered bush hangs out
+a promise of bad wine. The Cappella Colleoni is our destination, that
+masterpiece of the sculptor-architect's craft, with its variegated
+marbles,--rosy and white and creamy yellow and jet-black,--in
+patterns, basreliefs, pilasters, statuettes, encrusted on the fanciful
+domed shrine. Upon the facade are mingled, in the true Renaissance
+spirit of genial acceptance, motives Christian and Pagan with supreme
+impartiality. Medallions of emperors and gods alternate with virtues,
+angels and cupids in a maze of loveliest arabesque; and round the
+base of the building are told two stories--the one of Adam from his
+creation to his fall, the other of Hercules and his labours. Italian
+craftsmen of the _quattrocento_ were not averse to setting
+thus together, in one framework, the myths of our first parents and
+Alemena's son: partly perhaps because both subjects gave scope to
+the free treatment of the nude; but partly also, we may venture to
+surmise, because the heroism of Hellas counterbalanced the sin of
+Eden. Here then we see how Adam and Eve were made and tempted and
+expelled from Paradise and set to labour, how Cain killed Abel, and
+Lamech slew a man to his hurt, and Isaac was offered on the mountain.
+The tale of human sin and the promise of redemption are epitomised
+in twelve of the sixteen basreliefs. The remaining four show Hercules
+wrestling with Antaeus, taming the Nemean lion, extirpating the Hydra,
+and bending to his will the bull of Crete. Labour, appointed for a
+punishment to Adam, becomes a title to immortality for the hero.
+The dignity of man is reconquered by prowess for the Greek, as it is
+repurchased for the Christian by vicarious suffering. Many may think
+this interpretation of Amadeo's basreliefs far-fetched; yet, such as
+it is, it agrees with the spirit of Humanism, bent ever on harmonising
+the two great traditions of the past. Of the workmanship little need
+be said, except that it is wholly Lombard, distinguished from the
+similar work of Della Quercia at Bologna and Siena by a more imperfect
+feeling for composition, and a lack of monumental gravity, yet
+graceful, rich in motives, and instinct with a certain wayward
+_improvvisatore_ charm.
+
+This Chapel was built by the great Condottiere Bartolommeo Colleoni,
+to be the monument of his puissance even in the grave. It had been
+the Sacristy of S. Maria Maggiore, which, when the Consiglio della
+Misericordia refused it to him for his half-proud, half-pious purpose,
+he took and held by force. The structure, of costliest materials,
+reared by Gian Antonio Amadeo, cost him 50,000 golden florins. An
+equestrian statue of gilt wood, voted to him by the town of Bergamo,
+surmounts his monument inside the Chapel. This was the work of two
+German masters, called 'Sisto figlio di Enrico Syri da Norimberga'
+and 'Leonardo Tedesco.' The tomb itself is of marble, executed for the
+most part in a Lombard style resembling Amadeo's, but scarcely
+worthy of his genius. The whole effect is disappointing. Five figures
+representing Mars, Hercules, and three sons-in-law of Colleoni, who
+surround the sarcophagus of the buried general, are indeed almost
+grotesque. The angularity and crumpled draperies of the Milanese
+manner, when so exaggerated, produce an impression of caricature. Yet
+many subordinate details--a row of _putti_ in a _cinquecento_ frieze,
+for instance--and much of the low relief work--especially the
+Crucifixion with its characteristic episodes of the fainting Maries
+and the soldiers casting dice--are lovely in their unaffected
+Lombardism.
+
+There is another portrait of Colleoni in a round above the great door,
+executed with spirit, though in a _bravura_ style that curiously
+anticipates the decline of Italian sculpture. Gaunt, hollow-eyed,
+with prominent cheek bones and strong jaws, this animated, half-length
+statue of the hero bears the stamp of a good likeness; but when or by
+whom it was made, I do not know.
+
+Far more noteworthy than Colleoni's own monument is that of his
+daughter Medea. She died young in 1470, and her father caused her
+tomb, carved of Carrara marble, to be placed in the Dominican Church
+of Basella, which he had previously founded. It was not until 1842
+that this most precious masterpiece of Antonio Amadeo's skill was
+transferred to Bergamo. _Hic jacet Medea virgo._ Her hands are
+clasped across her breast. A robe of rich brocade, gathered to the
+waist and girdled, lies in simple folds upon the bier. Her throat,
+exceedingly long and slender, is circled with a string of pearls.
+Her face is not beautiful, for the features, especially the nose,
+are large and prominent; but it is pure and expressive of vivid
+individuality. The hair curls in crisp short clusters, and the ear,
+fine and shaped almost like a Faun's, reveals the scrupulous fidelity
+of the sculptor. Italian art has, in truth, nothing more exquisite
+than this still sleeping figure of the girl, who, when she lived, must
+certainly have been so rare of type and lovable in personality. If
+Busti's Lancinus Curtius be the portrait of a humanist, careworn with
+study, burdened by the laurel leaves that were so dry and dusty--if
+Gaston de Foix in the Brera, smiling at death and beautiful in
+the cropped bloom of youth, idealise the hero of romance--if
+Michelangelo's Penseroso translate in marble the dark broodings of a
+despot's soul--if Della Porta's Julia Farnese be the Roman courtesan
+magnificently throned in nonchalance at a Pope's footstool--if
+Verocchio's Colleoni on his horse at Venice impersonate the pomp
+and circumstance of scientific war--surely this Medea exhales the
+flower-like graces, the sweet sanctities of human life, that even in
+that turbid age were found among high-bred Italian ladies. Such power
+have mighty sculptors, even in our modern world, to make the mute
+stone speak in poems and clasp the soul's life of a century in some
+five or six transcendent forms.
+
+The Colleoni, or Coglioni, family were of considerable antiquity and
+well-authenticated nobility in the town of Bergamo. Two lions' heads
+conjoined formed one of their canting ensigns; another was borrowed
+from the vulgar meaning of their name. Many members of the house held
+important office during the three centuries preceding the birth of the
+famous general, Bartolommeo. He was born in the year 1400 at Solza, in
+the Bergamasque Contado. His father Paolo, or Puho as he was commonly
+called, was poor and exiled from the city, together with the rest of
+the Guelf nobles, by the Visconti. Being a man of daring spirit, and
+little inclined to languish in a foreign state as the dependent on
+some patron, Puho formed the bold design of seizing the Castle of
+Trezzo. This he achieved in 1405 by fraud, and afterwards held it as
+his own by force. Partly with the view of establishing himself more
+firmly in his acquired lordship, and partly out of family affection,
+Puho associated four of his first-cousins in the government of Trezzo.
+They repaid his kindness with an act of treason and cruelty, only too
+characteristic of those times in Italy. One day while he was playing
+at draughts in a room of the Castle, they assaulted him and killed
+him, seized his wife and the boy Bartolommeo, and flung them into
+prison. The murdered Puho had another son, Antonio, who escaped and
+took refuge with Giorgio Benzone, the tyrant of Crema. After a short
+time the Colleoni brothers found means to assassinate him also;
+therefore Bartolommeo alone, a child of whom no heed was taken,
+remained to be his father's avenger. He and his mother lived together
+in great indigence at Solza, until the lad felt strong enough to enter
+the service of one of the numerous petty Lombard princes, and to
+make himself if possible a captain of adventure. His name alone was a
+sufficient introduction, and the Duchy of Milan, dismembered upon the
+death of Gian Maria Visconti, was in such a state that all the minor
+despots were increasing their forces and preparing to defend by arms
+the fragments they had seized from the Visconti heritage. Bartolommeo
+therefore had no difficulty in recommending himself to Filippo
+d'Arcello, sometime general in the pay of the Milanese, but now the
+new lord of Piacenza. With this master he remained as page for two or
+three years, learning the use of arms, riding, and training himself
+in the physical exercises which were indispensable to a young Italian
+soldier. Meanwhile Filippo Maria Visconti reacquired his hereditary
+dominions; and at the age of twenty, Bartolommeo found it prudent
+to seek a patron stronger than d'Arcello. The two great Condottieri,
+Sforza Attendolo and Braccio, divided the military glories of Italy at
+this period; and any youth who sought to rise in his profession,
+had to enrol himself under the banners of the one or the other.
+Bartolommeo chose Braccio for his master, and was enrolled among his
+men as a simple trooper, or _ragazzo_, with no better prospects
+than he could make for himself by the help of his talents and his
+borrowed horse and armour. Braccio at this time was in Apulia,
+prosecuting the war of the Neapolitan Succession disputed between
+Alfonso of Aragon and Louis of Anjou under the weak sovereignty of
+Queen Joan. On which side of a quarrel a Condottiere fought mattered
+but little: so great was the confusion of Italian politics, and so
+complete was the egotism of these fraudful, violent, and treacherous
+party leaders. Yet it may be mentioned that Braccio had espoused
+Alfonso's cause. Bartolommeo Colleoni early distinguished himself
+among the ranks of the Bracceschi. But he soon perceived that he
+could better his position by deserting to another camp. Accordingly
+he offered his services to Jacopo Caldora, one of Joan's generals, and
+received from him a commission of twenty men-at-arms. It may here
+be parenthetically said that the rank and pay of an Italian captain
+varied with the number of the men he brought into the field. His title
+'Condottiere' was derived from the circumstance that he was said to
+have received a _Condotta di venti cavalli_, and so forth.
+Each _cavallo_ was equal to one mounted man-at-arms and two
+attendants, who were also called _ragazzi_. It was his business
+to provide the stipulated number of men, to keep them in good
+discipline, and to satisfy their just demands. Therefore an Italian
+army at this epoch consisted of numerous small armies varying in
+size, each held together by personal engagements to a captain, and all
+dependent on the will of a general-in-chief, who had made a bargain
+with some prince or republic for supplying a fixed contingent of
+fighting-men. The _Condottiere_ was in other words a contractor
+or _impresario_, undertaking to do a certain piece of work for a
+certain price, and to furnish the requisite forces for the business
+in good working order. It will be readily seen upon this system how
+important were the personal qualities of the captain, and what great
+advantages those Condottieri had, who, like the petty princes
+of Romagna and the March, the Montefeltri, Ordelaffi, Malatesti,
+Manfredi, Orsini, and Vitelli, could rely upon a race of hardy vassals
+for their recruits.
+
+It is not necessary to follow Colleoni's fortunes in the Regno, at
+Aquila, Ancona, and Bologna. He continued in the service of Caldora,
+who was now General of the Church, and had his _Condotta_
+gradually increased. Meanwhile his cousins, the murderers of his
+father, began to dread his rising power, and determined, if possible,
+to ruin him. He was not a man to be easily assassinated; so they sent
+a hired ruffian to Caldora's camp to say that Bartolommeo had taken
+his name by fraud, and that he was himself the real son of Puho
+Colleoni. Bartolommeo defied the liar to a duel; and this would have
+taken place before the army, had not two witnesses appeared, who knew
+the fathers of both Colleoni and the _bravo_, and who gave such
+evidence that the captains of the army were enabled to ascertain the
+truth. The impostor was stripped and drummed out of the camp.
+
+At the conclusion of a peace between the Pope and the Bolognese,
+Bartolommeo found himself without occupation. He now offered himself
+to the Venetians, and began to fight again under the great Carmagnola
+against Filippo Visconti. His engagement allowed him forty men,
+which, after the judicial murder of Carmagnola at Venice in 1432, were
+increased to eighty. Erasmo da Narni, better known as Gattamelata, was
+now his general-in-chief--a man who had risen from the lowest fortunes
+to one of the most splendid military positions in Italy. Colleoni
+spent the next years of his life, until 1443, in Lombardy, manoeuvring
+against Il Piccinino, and gradually rising in the Venetian service,
+until his Condotta reached the number of 800 men. Upon Gattamelata's
+death at Padua in 1440, Colleoni became the most important of the
+generals who had fought with Caldora in the March. The lordships of
+Romano in the Bergamasque and of Covo and Antegnate in the Cremonese
+had been assigned to him; and he was in a position to make independent
+engagements with princes. What distinguished him as a general, was a
+combination of caution with audacity. He united the brilliant system
+of his master Braccio with the more prudent tactics of the Sforzeschi;
+and thus, though he often surprised his foes by daring stratagems
+and vigorous assaults, he rarely met with any serious check. He was a
+captain who could be relied upon for boldly seizing an advantage,
+no less than for using a success with discretion. Moreover he had
+acquired an almost unique reputation for honesty in dealing with his
+masters, and for justice combined with humane indulgence to his men.
+His company was popular, and he could always bring capital troops into
+the field.
+
+In the year 1443 Colleoni quitted the Venetian service on account of a
+quarrel with Gherardo Dandolo, the Provoditore of the Republic. He
+now took a commission from Filippo Maria Visconti, who received him at
+Milan with great honour, bestowed on him the Castello Adorno at Pavia,
+and sent him into the March of Ancona upon a military expedition. Of
+all Italian tyrants this Visconti was the most difficult to serve.
+Constitutionally timid, surrounded with a crowd of spies and base
+informers, shrinking from the sight of men in the recesses of his
+palace, and controlling the complicated affairs of his Duchy by means
+of correspondents and intelligencers, this last scion of the Milanese
+despots lived like a spider in an inscrutable network of suspicion
+and intrigue. His policy was one of endless plot and counterplot. He
+trusted no man; his servants were paid to act as spies on one another;
+his bodyguard consisted of mutually hostile mercenaries; his captains
+in the field were watched and thwarted by commissioners appointed to
+check them at the point of successful ambition or magnificent victory.
+The historian has a hard task when he tries to fathom the Visconti's
+schemes, or to understand his motives. Half the Duke's time seems to
+have been spent in unravelling the webs that he had woven, in undoing
+his own work, and weakening the hands of his chosen ministers.
+Conscious that his power was artificial, that the least breath might
+blow him back into the nothingness from which he had arisen on the
+wrecks of his father's tyranny, he dreaded the personal eminence of
+his generals above all things. His chief object was to establish a
+system of checks, by means of which no one whom he employed should
+at any moment be great enough to threaten him. The most formidable
+of these military adventurers, Francesco Sforza, had been secured by
+marriage with Bianca Maria Visconti, his master's only daughter, in
+1441; but the Duke did not even trust his son-in-law. The last six
+years of his life were spent in scheming to deprive Sforza of his
+lordships; and the war in the March, on which he employed Colleoni,
+had the object of ruining the principality acquired by this daring
+captain from Pope Eugenius IV. in 1443.
+
+Colleoni was by no means deficient in those foxlike qualities which
+were necessary to save the lion from the toils spread for him by
+Italian intriguers. He had already shown that he knew how to push his
+own interests, by changing sides and taking service with the highest
+bidder, as occasion prompted. Nor, though his character for probity
+and loyalty stood exceptionally high among the men of his profession,
+was he the slave to any questionable claims of honour or of duty. In
+that age of confused politics and extinguished patriotism, there
+was not indeed much scope for scrupulous honesty. But Filippo Maria
+Visconti proved more than a match for him in craft. While Colleoni
+was engaged in pacifying the revolted population of Bologna, the Duke
+yielded to the suggestion of his parasites at Milan, who whispered
+that the general was becoming dangerously powerful. He recalled him,
+and threw him without trial into the dungeons of the Forni at Monza.
+Here Colleoni remained a prisoner more than a year, until the
+Duke's death in 1447, when he made his escape, and profited by the
+disturbance of the Duchy to reacquire his lordships in the Bergamasque
+territory. The true motive for his imprisonment remains still buried
+in obscure conjecture. Probably it was not even known to the Visconti,
+who acted on this, as on so many other occasions, by a mere spasm of
+suspicious jealousy, for which he could have given no account.
+
+From the year 1447 to the year 1455, it is difficult to follow
+Colleoni's movements, or to trace his policy. First, we find
+him employed by the Milanese Republic, during its brief space of
+independence; then he is engaged by the Venetians, with a commission
+for 1500 horse; next, he is in the service of Francesco Sforza; once
+more in that of the Venetians, and yet again in that of the Duke of
+Milan. His biographer relates with pride that, during this period,
+he was three times successful against French troops in Piedmont and
+Lombardy. It appears that he made short engagements, and changed his
+paymasters according to convenience. But all this time he rose in
+personal importance, acquired fresh lordships in the Bergamasque, and
+accumulated wealth. He reached the highest point of his prosperity
+in 1455, when the Republic of S. Mark elected him General-in-Chief of
+their armies, with the fullest powers, and with a stipend of 100,000
+florins. For nearly twenty-one years, until the day of his death, in
+1475, Colleoni held this honourable and lucrative office. In his will
+he charged the Signory of Venice that they should never again commit
+into the hands of a single captain such unlimited control over their
+military resources. It was indeed no slight tribute to Colleoni's
+reputation for integrity, that the jealous Republic, which had
+signified its sense of Carmagnola's untrustworthiness by capital
+punishment, should have left him so long in the undisturbed disposal
+of their army. The Standard and the Baton of S. Mark were conveyed to
+Colleoni by two ambassadors, and presented to him at Brescia on June
+24, 1455. Three years later he made a triumphal entry into Venice, and
+received the same ensigns of military authority from the hands of the
+new Doge, Pasquale Malipiero. On this occasion his staff consisted of
+some two hundred officers, splendidly armed, and followed by a train
+of serving-men. Noblemen from Bergamo, Brescia, and other cities of
+the Venetian territory, swelled the cortege. When they embarked on the
+lagoons, they found the water covered with boats and gondolas, bearing
+the population of Venice in gala attire, to greet the illustrious
+guest with instruments of music. Three great galleys of the Republic,
+called Bucentaurs, issued from the crowd of smaller craft. On the
+first was the Doge in his state robes, attended by the government in
+office, or the Signoria of S. Mark. On the second were members of the
+Senate and minor magistrates. The third carried the ambassadors of
+foreign powers. Colleoni was received into the first state-galley,
+and placed by the side of the Doge. The oarsmen soon cleared the
+space between the land and Venice, passed the small canals, and
+swept majestically up the Canalozzo among the plaudits of the crowds
+assembled on both sides to cheer their General. Thus they reached the
+piazzetta, where Colleoni alighted between the two great pillars,
+and, conducted by the Doge in person, walked to the Church of S.
+Mark. Here, after Mass had been said, and a sermon had been preached,
+kneeling before the high altar he received the truncheon from the
+Doge's hands. The words of his commission ran as follows:--
+
+'By authority and decree of this most excellent City of Venice, of
+us the Prince, and of the Senate, you are to be Commander and Captain
+General of all our forces and armaments on terra firma. Take from
+our hands this truncheon, with good augury and fortune, as sign and
+warrant of your power. Be it your care and effort, with dignity and
+splendour to maintain and to defend the Majesty, the Loyalty, and the
+Principles of this Empire. Neither provoking, not yet provoked, unless
+at our command, shall you break into open warfare with our enemies.
+Free jurisdiction and lordship over each one of our soldiers, except
+in cases of treason, we hereby commit to you.'
+
+After the ceremony of his reception, Colleoni was conducted with
+no less pomp to his lodgings, and the next ten days were spent in
+festivities of all sorts.
+
+The commandership-in-chief of the Venetian forces was perhaps the
+highest military post in Italy. It placed Colleoni on the pinnacle
+of his profession, and made his camp the favourite school of young
+soldiers. Among his pupils or lieutenants we read of Ercole d'Este,
+the future Duke of Ferrara; Alessandro Sforza, lord of Pesaro;
+Boniface, Marquis of Montferrat; Cicco and Pino Ordelaffi, princes
+of Forli; Astorre Manfredi, the lord of Faenza; three Counts of
+Mirandola; two princes of Carpi; Deifobo, the Count of Anguillara;
+Giovanni Antonio Caldora, lord of Jesi in the March; and many others
+of less name. Honours came thick upon him. When one of the many
+ineffectual leagues against the infidel was formed in 1468, during the
+pontificate of Paul II., he was named Captain-General for the Crusade.
+Pius II. designed him for the leader of the expedition he had planned
+against the impious and savage despot, Sigismondo Malatesta. King Rene
+of Anjou, by special patent, authorised him to bear his name and
+arms, and made him a member of his family. The Duke of Burgundy, by
+a similar heraldic fiction, conferred upon him his name and armorial
+bearings. This will explain why Colleoni is often styled 'di Andegavia
+e Borgogna.' In the case of Rene, the honour was but a barren show.
+But the patent of Charles the Bold had more significance. In 1473 he
+entertained the project of employing the great Italian General against
+his Swiss foes; nor does it seem reasonable to reject a statement made
+by Colleoni's biographer, to the effect that a secret compact had been
+drawn up between him and the Duke of Burgundy, for the conquest and
+partition of the Duchy of Milan. The Venetians, in whose service
+Colleoni still remained, when they became aware of this project, met
+it with peaceful but irresistible opposition.
+
+Colleoni had been engaged continually since his earliest boyhood in
+the trade of war. It was not therefore possible that he should have
+gained a great degree of literary culture. Yet the fashion of the
+times made it necessary that a man in his position should seek the
+society of scholars. Accordingly his court and camp were crowded with
+students, in whose wordy disputations he is said to have delighted. It
+will be remembered that his contemporaries, Alfonso the Magnanimous,
+Francesco Sforza, Federigo of Urbino, and Sigismondo Pandolfo
+Malatesta, piqued themselves at least as much upon their patronage of
+letters, as upon their prowess in the field.
+
+Colleoni's court, like that of Urbino, was a model of good manners. As
+became a soldier, he was temperate in food and moderate in slumber. It
+was recorded of him that he had never sat more than one hour at meat
+in his own house, and that he never overslept the sunrise. After
+dinner he would converse with his friends, using commonly his native
+dialect of Bergamo, and entertaining the company now with stories of
+adventure, and now with pithy sayings. In another essential point he
+resembled his illustrious contemporary, the Duke of Urbino; for he was
+sincerely pious in an age which, however it preserved the decencies
+of ceremonial religion, was profoundly corrupt at heart. His principal
+lordships in the Bergamasque territory owed to his munificence their
+fairest churches and charitable institutions. At Martinengo, for
+example, he rebuilt and re-endowed two monasteries, the one dedicated
+to S. Chiara, the other to S. Francis. In Bergamo itself he founded an
+establishment named' La Pieta,' for the good purpose of dowering and
+marrying poor girls. This house he endowed with a yearly income of
+3000 ducats. The Sulphur baths of Trescorio, at some distance from the
+city, were improved and opened to poor patients by a hospital which
+he provided. At Rumano he raised a church to S. Peter, and erected
+buildings of public utility, which on his death he bequeathed to
+the society of the Misericordia in that town. All the places of his
+jurisdiction owed to him such benefits as good water, new walls, and
+irrigation works. In addition to these munificent foundations must
+be mentioned the Basella, or Monastery of Dominican friars, which he
+established not far from Bergamo, upon the river Serio, in memory of
+his beloved daughter Medea. Last, not least, was the Chapel of S. John
+the Baptist, attached to the Church of S. Maria Maggiore, which he
+endowed with fitting maintenance for two priests and deacons.
+
+The one defect acknowledged by his biographer was his partiality
+for women. Early in life he married Tisbe, of the noble house of the
+Brescian Martinenghi, who bore him one daughter, Caterina, wedded to
+Gasparre Martinengo. Two illegitimate daughters, Ursina and Isotta,
+were recognised and treated by him as legitimate. The first he gave in
+marriage to Gherardo Martinengo, and the second to Jacopo of the
+same family. Two other natural children, Doratina and Ricardona, were
+mentioned in his will: he left them four thousand ducats a piece for
+dowry. Medea, the child of his old age (for she was born to him when
+he was sixty), died before her father, and was buried, as we have
+seen, in the Chapel of Basella.
+
+Throughout his life he was distinguished for great physical strength
+and agility. When he first joined the troop of Braccio, he could race,
+with his corselet on, against the swiftest runner of the army; and
+when he was stripped, few horses could beat him in speed. Far on into
+old age he was in the habit of taking long walks every morning for the
+sake of exercise, and delighted in feats of arms and jousting matches.
+'He was tall, straight, and full of flesh, well proportioned, and
+excellently made in all his limbs. His complexion inclined somewhat to
+brown, but was coloured with sanguine and lively carnation. His eyes
+were black; in look and sharpness of light, they were vivid, piercing,
+and terrible. The outlines of his nose and all his countenance
+expressed a certain manly nobleness, combined with goodness and
+prudence.' Such is the portrait drawn of Colleoni by his biographer;
+and it well accords with the famous bronze statue of the general at
+Venice.
+
+Colleoni lived with a magnificence that suited his rank. His favourite
+place of abode was Malpaga, a castle built by him at the distance of
+about an hour's drive from Bergamo. The place is worth a visit, though
+its courts and gates and galleries have now been turned into a monster
+farm, and the southern rooms, where Colleoni entertained his guests,
+are given over to the silkworms. Half a dozen families, employed upon
+a vast estate of the Martinengo family, occupy the still substantial
+house and stables. The moat is planted with mulberry-trees; the upper
+rooms are used as granaries for golden maize; cows, pigs, and horses
+litter in the spacious yard. Yet the walls of the inner court and of
+the ancient state rooms are brilliant with frescoes, executed by some
+good Venetian hand, which represent the chief events of Colleoni's
+life--his battles, his reception by the Signory of Venice,
+his tournaments and hawking parties, and the great series of
+entertainments with which he welcomed Christiern of Denmark. This king
+had made his pilgrimage to Rome and was returning westward, when the
+fame of Colleoni and his princely state at Malpaga induced him to turn
+aside and spend some days as the general's guest. In order to do
+him honour, Colleoni left his castle at the king's disposal and
+established himself with all his staff and servants in a camp at some
+distance from Malpaga. The camp was duly furnished with tents and
+trenches, stockades, artillery, and all the other furniture of war. On
+the king's approach, Colleoni issued with trumpets blowing and banners
+flying to greet his guest, gratifying him thus with a spectacle of the
+pomp and circumstance of war as carried on in Italy. The visit
+was further enlivened by sham fights, feats of arms, and trials of
+strength. When it ended, Colleoni presented the king with one of
+his own suits of armour, and gave to each of his servants a complete
+livery of red and white, his colours. Among the frescoes at Malpaga
+none are more interesting, and none, thanks to the silkworms rather
+than to any other cause, are fortunately in a better state of
+preservation, than those which represent this episode in the history
+of the Castle.
+
+Colleoni died in the year 1475, at the age of seventy-five. Since he
+left no male representative, he constituted the Republic of S. Mark
+his heir-in-chief, after properly providing for his daughters and his
+numerous foundations. The Venetians received under this testament a
+sum of 100,000 ducats, together with all arrears of pay due to him,
+and 10,000 ducats owed him by the Duke of Ferrara. It set forth the
+testator's intention that this money should be employed in defence of
+the Christian faith against the Turk. One condition was attached to
+the bequest. The legatees were to erect a statue to Colleoni on the
+Piazza of S. Mark. This, however, involved some difficulty; for the
+proud Republic had never accorded a similar honour, nor did they
+choose to encumber their splendid square with a monument. They evaded
+the condition by assigning the Campo in front of the Scuola di S.
+Marco, where also stands the Church of S. Zanipolo, to the purpose.
+Here accordingly the finest bronze equestrian statue in Italy, if we
+except the Marcus Aurelius of the Capitol, was reared upon its marble
+pedestal by Andrea Verocchio and Alessandro Leopardi.
+
+Colleoni's liberal expenditure of wealth found its reward in the
+immortality conferred by art. While the names of Braccio, his master
+in the art of war, and of Piccinino, his great adversary, are familiar
+to few but professed students, no one who has visited either Bergamo
+or Venice can fail to have learned something about the founder of the
+Chapel of S. John and the original of Leopardi's bronze. The annals
+of sculpture assign to Verocchio, of Florence, the principal share in
+this statue: but Verocchio died before it was cast; and even granting
+that he designed the model, its execution must be attributed to his
+collaborator, the Venetian Leopardi. For my own part, I am loth to
+admit that the chief credit of this masterpiece belongs to a man whose
+undisputed work at Florence shows but little of its living spirit and
+splendour of suggested motion. That the Tuscan science of Verocchio
+secured conscientious modelling for man and horse may be assumed; but
+I am fain to believe that the concentrated fire which animates them
+both is due in no small measure to the handling of his northern
+fellow-craftsman.
+
+While immersed in the dreary records of crimes, treasons, cruelties,
+and base ambitions, which constitute the bulk of fifteenth-century
+Italian history, it is refreshing to meet with a character so frank
+and manly, so simply pious and comparatively free from stain, as
+Colleoni. The only general of his day who can bear comparison with
+him for purity of public life and decency in conduct, was Federigo di
+Montefeltro. Even here, the comparison redounds to Colleoni's credit;
+for he, unlike the Duke of Urbino, rose to eminence by his own
+exertion in a profession fraught with peril to men of ambition and
+energy. Federigo started with a principality sufficient to satisfy
+his just desires for power. Nothing but his own sense of right and
+prudence restrained Colleoni upon the path which brought Francesco
+Sforza to a duchy by dishonourable dealings, and Carmagnola to the
+scaffold by questionable practice against his masters.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+_CREMA AND THE CRUCIFIX_
+
+
+Few people visit Crema. It is a little country town of Lombardy,
+between Cremona and Treviglio, with no historic memories but very
+misty ones belonging to the days of the Visconti dynasty. On every
+side around the city walls stretch smiling vineyards and rich meadows,
+where the elms are married to the mulberry-trees by long festoons of
+foliage hiding purple grapes, where the sunflowers droop their heavy
+golden heads among tall stems of millet and gigantic maize, and here
+and there a rice-crop ripens in the marshy loam. In vintage time
+the carts, drawn by their white oxen, come creaking townward in
+the evening, laden with blue bunches. Down the long straight roads,
+between rows of poplars, they creep on; and on the shafts beneath
+the pyramid of fruit lie contadini stained with lees of wine. Far off
+across that 'waveless sea' of Lombardy, which has been the battlefield
+of countless generations, rise the dim grey Alps, or else pearled
+domes of thunder-clouds in gleaming masses over some tall solitary
+tower. Such backgrounds, full of peace, suggestive of almost infinite
+distance, and dignified with colours of incomparable depth and
+breadth, the Venetian painters loved. No landscape in Europe is more
+wonderful than this--thrice wonderful in the vastness of its arching
+heavens, in the stillness of its level plain, and in the bulwark of
+huge crested mountains, reared afar like bastions against the northern
+sky. The little town is all alive in this September weather. At every
+corner of the street, under rustling abeles and thick-foliaged planes,
+at the doors of palaces and in the yards of inns, men, naked from the
+thighs downward, are treading the red must into vats and tuns; while
+their mild-eyed oxen lie beneath them in the road, peaceably chewing
+the cud between one journey to the vineyard and another. It must not
+be imagined that the scene of Alma Tadema's 'Roman Vintage,' or what
+we fondly picture to our fancy of the Athenian Lenaea, is repeated in
+the streets of Crema. This modern treading of the wine-press is a
+very prosaic affair. The town reeks with a sour smell of old casks and
+crushed grape-skins, and the men and women at work bear no resemblance
+whatever to Bacchus and his crew. Yet even as it is, the Lombard
+vintage, beneath floods of sunlight and a pure blue sky, is beautiful;
+and he who would fain make acquaintance with Crema, should time his
+entry into the old town, if possible, on some still golden afternoon
+of autumn. It is then, if ever, that he will learn to love the glowing
+brickwork of its churches and the quaint terra-cotta traceries that
+form its chief artistic charm.
+
+How the unique brick architecture of the Lombard cities took its
+origin--whether from the precepts of Byzantine aliens in the earliest
+middle ages, or from the native instincts of a mixed race composed of
+Gallic, Ligurian, Roman, and Teutonic elements, under the leadership
+of Longobardic rulers--is a question for antiquarians to decide.
+There can, however, be no doubt that the monuments of the Lombard
+style, as they now exist, are no less genuinely local, no less
+characteristic of the country they adorn, no less indigenous to the
+soil they sprang from, than the Attic colonnades of Mnesicles and
+Ictinus. What the marble quarries of Pentelicus were to the Athenian
+builders, the clay beneath their feet was to those Lombard craftsmen.
+From it they fashioned structures as enduring, towers as majestic, and
+cathedral aisles as solemn, as were ever wrought from chiselled stone.
+There is a true sympathy between those buildings and the Lombard
+landscape, which by itself might suffice to prove the originality
+of their almost unknown architects. The rich colour of the baked
+clay--finely modulated from a purplish red, through russet, crimson,
+pink, and orange, to pale yellow and dull grey--harmonises with the
+brilliant greenery of Lombard vegetation and with the deep azure
+of the distant Alpine range. Reared aloft above the flat expanse of
+plain, those square _torroni_, tapering into octagons and
+crowned with slender cones, break the long sweeping lines and
+infinite horizons with a contrast that affords relief, and yields a
+resting-place to tired eyes; while, far away, seen haply from some
+bridge above Ticino, or some high-built palace loggia, they gleam like
+columns of pale rosy fire against the front of mustering storm-clouds
+blue with rain. In that happy orchard of Italy, a pergola of vines
+in leaf, a clump of green acacias, and a campanile soaring above its
+church roof, brought into chance combination with the reaches of the
+plain and the dim mountain range, make up a picture eloquent in its
+suggestive beauty.
+
+Those ancient builders wrought cunningly with their material. The
+bricks are fashioned and fixed to last for all time. Exposed to the
+icy winds of a Lombard winter, to the fierce fire of a Lombard summer,
+and to the moist vapours of a Lombard autumn; neglected by unheeding
+generations; with flowers clustering in their crannies, and birds
+nesting in their eaves, and mason-bees filling the delicate network of
+their traceries--they still present angles as sharp as when they were
+but finished, and joints as nice as when the mortar dried in the first
+months of their building. This immunity from age and injury they owe
+partly to the imperishable nature of baked clay; partly to the care of
+the artists who selected and mingled the right sorts of earth, burned
+them with scrupulous attention, and fitted them together with a
+patience born of loving service. Each member of the edifice was
+designed with a view to its ultimate place. The proper curve was
+ascertained for cylindrical columns and for rounded arches. Larger
+bricks were moulded for the supporting walls, and lesser pieces were
+adapted to the airy vaults and lanterns. In the brickfield and the
+kiln the whole church was planned and wrought out in its details,
+before the hands that made a unity of all these scattered elements
+were set to the work of raising it in air. When they came to put the
+puzzle together, they laid each brick against its neighbour, filling
+up the almost imperceptible interstices with liquid cement composed
+of quicklime and fine sand in water. After five centuries the seams
+between the layers of bricks that make the bell-tower of S. Gottardo
+at Milan, yield no point of vantage to the penknife or the chisel.
+
+Nor was it in their welding of the bricks alone that these craftsmen
+showed their science. They were wont to enrich the surface with
+marble, sparingly but effectively employed--as in those slender
+detached columns, which add such beauty to the octagon of S. Gottardo,
+or in the string-courses of strange beasts and reptiles that adorn the
+church fronts of Pavia. They called to their aid the _mandorlato_
+of Verona, supporting their porch pillars on the backs of couchant
+lions, inserting polished slabs on their facades, and building huge
+sarcophagi into their cloister alleys. Between terra-cotta and this
+marble of Verona there exists a deep and delicate affinity. It took
+the name of _mandorlato_, I suppose, from a resemblance to almond
+blossoms. But it is far from having the simple beauty of a single hue.
+Like all noble veined stones, it passes by a series of modulations and
+gradations through a gamut of associated rather than contrasted tints.
+Not the pink of the almond blossom only, but the creamy whiteness of
+the almond kernel, and the dull yellow of the almond nut may be found
+in it; and yet these colours are so blent and blurred to all-pervading
+mellowness, that nowhere is there any shock of contrast or violence of
+a preponderating tone. The veins which run in labyrinths of crossing,
+curving, and contorted lines all over its smooth surface add, no
+doubt, to this effect of unity. The polish, lastly, which it takes,
+makes the _mandorlato_ shine like a smile upon the sober face
+of the brickwork: for, serviceable as terra-cotta is for nearly all
+artistic purposes, it cannot reflect light or gain the illumination
+which comes from surface brightness.
+
+What the clay can do almost better than any crystalline material, may
+be seen in the mouldings so characteristic of Lombard architecture.
+Geometrical patterns of the rarest and most fanciful device; scrolls
+of acanthus foliage, and traceries of tendrils; Cupids swinging in
+festoons of vines; angels joining hands in dance, with fluttering
+skirts and windy hair, and mouths that symbol singing; grave faces of
+old men and beautiful profiles of maidens leaning from medallions;
+wide-winged genii filling the spandrils of cloister arches, and
+cherubs clustered in the rondure of rose-windows--ornaments like
+these, wrought from the plastic clay, and adapted with true taste to
+the requirements of the architecture, are familiar to every one who
+has studied the church front of Crema, the cloisters of the Certosa,
+the courts of the Ospedale Maggiore at Milan, or the public palace of
+Cremona.
+
+If the _mandorlato_ gives a smile to those majestic Lombard
+buildings, the terra-cotta decorations add the element of life
+and movement. The thought of the artist in its first freshness
+and vivacity is felt in them. They have all the spontaneity of
+improvisation, the seductive melody of unpremeditated music.
+Moulding the supple earth with 'hand obedient to the brain,' the
+_plasticatore_ has impressed his most fugitive dreams of beauty
+on it without effort; and what it cost him but a few fatigueless
+hours to fashion, the steady heat of the furnace has gifted with
+imperishable life. Such work, no doubt, has the defects of its
+qualities. As there are few difficulties to overcome, it suffers
+from a fatal facility--_nec pluteum coedit nec demorsos sapit
+ungues_. It is therefore apt to be unequal, touching at times the
+highest point of inspiration, as in the angels of Guccio at Perugia,
+and sinking not unfrequently into the commonplace of easygoing
+triviality, as in the common floral traceries of Milanese windows.
+But it is never laboured, never pedantic, never dulled by the painful
+effort to subdue an obstinate material to the artist's will. If marble
+is required to develop the strength of the few supreme sculptors,
+terra-cotta saves intact the fancies of a crowd of lesser men.
+
+When we reflect that all the force, solemnity, and beauty of the
+Lombard buildings was evoked from clay, we learn from them this
+lesson: that the thought of man needs neither precious material nor
+yet stubborn substance for the production of enduring masterpieces.
+The red earth was enough for God when He made man in His own image;
+and mud dried in the sun suffices for the artist, who is next to God
+in his creative faculty--since _non merita nome di creatore se
+non Iddio ed il poeta_. After all, what is more everlasting than
+terra-cotta? The hobnails of the boys who ran across the brickfields
+in the Roman town of Silchester, may still be seen, mingled with
+the impress of the feet of dogs and hoofs of goats, in the tiles
+discovered there. Such traces might serve as a metaphor for the
+footfall of artistic genius, when the form-giver has stamped his
+thought upon the moist clay, and fire has made that imprint permanent.
+
+Of all these Lombard edifices, none is more beautiful than the
+Cathedral of Crema, with its delicately finished campanile, built
+of choicely tinted yellow bricks, and ending in a lantern of the
+gracefullest, most airily capricious fancy. This bell-tower does not
+display the gigantic force of Cremona's famous torrazzo, shooting
+396 feet into blue ether from the city square; nor can it rival the
+octagon of S. Gottardo for warmth of hue. Yet it has a character of
+elegance, combined with boldness of invention, that justifies the
+citizens of Crema in their pride. It is unique; and he who has not
+seen it does not know the whole resources of the Lombard style. The
+facade of the Cathedral displays that peculiar blending of Byzantine
+or Romanesque round arches with Gothic details in the windows,
+and with the acute angle of the central pitch, which forms the
+characteristic quality of the late _trecento_ Lombard manner. In
+its combination of purity and richness it corresponds to the best age
+of decorated work in English Gothic. What, however, strikes a Northern
+observer is the strange detachment of this elaborate facade from the
+main structure of the church. Like a frontispiece cut out of cardboard
+and pierced with ornamental openings, it shoots far above the low
+roof of the nave; so that at night the moon, rising above the southern
+aisle, shines through its topmost window, and casts the shadow of
+its tracery upon the pavement of the square. This is a constructive
+blemish to which the Italians in no part of the peninsula were
+sensitive. They seem to have regarded their church fronts as
+independent of the edifice, capable of separate treatment, and worthy
+in themselves of being made the subject of decorative skill.
+
+In the so-called Santuario of Crema--a circular church dedicated to
+S. Maria della Croce, outside the walls--the Lombard style has been
+adapted to the manner of the Mid-Renaissance. This church was raised
+in the last years of the fifteenth century by Gian Battista Battagli,
+an architect of Lodi, who followed the pure rules of taste, bequeathed
+to North Italian builders by Bramante. The beauty of the edifice
+is due entirely to its tranquil dignity and harmony of parts, the
+lightness of its circling loggia, and the just proportion maintained
+between the central structure and the four projecting porticoes. The
+sharp angles of these vestibules afford a contrast to the simplicity
+of the main building, while their clustered cupolas assist the general
+effect of roundness aimed at by the architect. Such a church as
+this proves how much may be achieved by the happy distribution of
+architectural masses. It was the triumph of the best Renaissance style
+to attain lucidity of treatment, and to produce beauty by geometrical
+proportion. When Leo Battista Alberti complained to his friend, Matteo
+di Bastia, that a slight alteration of the curves in his design for
+S. Francesco at Rimini would 'spoil his music,' _cio che tu muti
+discorda tutta quella musica_, this is what he meant. The melody
+of lines and the harmony of parts made a symphony to his eyes no less
+agreeable than a concert of tuned lutes and voices to his ears; and to
+this concord he was so sensitive that any deviation was a discord.
+
+After visiting the churches of Crema and sauntering about the streets
+awhile, there is nothing left to do but to take refuge in the old
+Albergo del Pozzo. This is one of those queer Italian inns, which
+carry you away at once into a scene of Goldoni. It is part of some
+palace, where nobles housed their _bravi_ in the sixteenth
+century, and which the lesser people of to-day have turned into a
+dozen habitations. Its great stone staircase leads to a saloon upon
+which the various bedchambers open; and round its courtyard runs an
+open balcony, and from the court grows up a fig-tree poking ripe fruit
+against a bedroom window. Oleanders in tubs and red salvias in pots,
+and kitchen herbs in boxes, flourish on the pavement, where the ostler
+comes to wash his carriages, and where the barber shaves the poodle of
+the house. Visitors to the Albergo del Pozzo are invariably asked if
+they have seen the Museo; and when they answer in the negative, they
+are conducted with some ceremony to a large room on the ground-floor
+of the inn, looking out upon the courtyard and the fig-tree. It was
+here that I gained the acquaintance of Signor Folcioni, and became
+possessor of an object that has made the memory of Crema doubly
+interesting to me ever since.
+
+When we entered the Museo, we found a little old man, gentle, grave,
+and unobtrusive, varnishing the ugly portrait of some Signor of the
+_cinquecento_. Round the walls hung pictures, of mediocre value,
+in dingy frames; but all of them bore sounding titles. Titians,
+Lionardos, Guido Renis, and Luinis, looked down and waited for a
+purchaser. In truth this museum was a _bric-a-brac_ shop of a
+sort that is common enough in Italy, where treasures of old lace,
+glass, armour, furniture, and tapestry, may still be met with. Signor
+Folcioni began by pointing out the merits of his pictures; and after
+making due allowance for his zeal as amateur and dealer, it was
+possible to join in some of his eulogiums. A would-be Titian, for
+instance, bought in Verona from a noble house in ruins, showed
+Venetian wealth of colour in its gemmy greens and lucid crimsons
+shining from a background deep and glowing. Then he led us to a
+walnut-wood bureau of late Renaissance work, profusely carved with
+nymphs and Cupids, and armed men, among festoons of fruits embossed
+in high relief. Deeply drilled worm-holes set a seal of antiquity upon
+the blooming faces and luxuriant garlandslike the touch of Time who
+'delves the parallels in beauty's brow.' On the shelves of an ebony
+cabinet close by he showed us a row of cups cut out of rock-crystal
+and mounted in gilt silver, with heaps of engraved gems, old
+snuff-boxes, coins, medals, sprays of coral, and all the indescribable
+lumber that one age flings aside as worthless for the next to pick
+up from the dust-heap and regard as precious. Surely the genius of
+culture in our century might be compared to a chiffonnier of Paris,
+who, when the night has fallen, goes into the streets, bag on back
+and lantern in hand, to rake up the waifs and strays a day of whirling
+life has left him.
+
+The next curiosity was an ivory carving of S. Anthony preaching to the
+fishes, so fine and small you held it on your palm, and used a lens
+to look at it. Yet there stood the Santo gesticulating, and there
+were the fishes in rows--the little fishes first, and then the
+middle-sized, and last of all the great big fishes almost out at sea,
+with their heads above the water and their mouths wide open, just as
+the _Fioretti di San Francesco_ describes them. After this
+came some original drawings of doubtful interest, and then a case of
+fifty-two _nielli_. These were of unquestionable value; for has
+not Cicognara engraved them on a page of his classic monograph?
+The thin silver plates, over which once passed the burin of Maso
+Finiguerra, cutting lines finer than hairs, and setting here a shadow
+in dull acid-eaten grey, and there a high light of exquisite polish,
+were far more delicate than any proofs impressed from them. These
+frail masterpieces of Florentine art--the first beginnings of line
+engraving--we held in our hands while Signor Folcioni read out
+Cicognara's commentary in a slow impressive voice, breaking off now
+and then to point at the originals before us.
+
+The sun had set, and the room was almost dark, when he laid his book
+down, and said: 'I have not much left to show--yet stay! Here are
+still some little things of interest.' He then opened the door
+into his bedroom, and took down from a nail above his bed a
+wooden Crucifix. Few things have fascinated me more than this
+Crucifix--produced without parade, half negligently, from the dregs of
+his collection by a dealer in old curiosities at Crema. The cross was,
+or is--for it is lying on the table now before me--twenty-one inches
+in length, made of strong wood, covered with coarse yellow parchment,
+and shod at the four ends with brass. The Christ is roughly hewn in
+reddish wood, coloured scarlet, where the blood streams from the five
+wounds. Over the head an oval medallion, nailed into the cross, serves
+as framework to a miniature of the Madonna, softly smiling with a
+Correggiesque simper. The whole Crucifix is not a work of art, but
+such as may be found in every convent. Its date cannot be earlier than
+the beginning of the eighteenth century. As I held it in my hand, I
+thought--perhaps this has been carried to the bedside of the sick
+and dying; preachers have brandished it from the pulpit over
+conscience-stricken congregations; monks have knelt before it on the
+brick floor of their cells, and novices have kissed it in the vain
+desire to drown their yearnings after the relinquished world; perhaps
+it has attended criminals to the scaffold, and heard the secrets
+of repentant murderers; but why should it be shown me as a thing of
+rarity? These thoughts passed through my mind, while Signor Folcioni
+quietly remarked: 'I bought this Cross from the Frati when their
+convent was dissolved in Crema.' Then he bade me turn it round, and
+showed a little steel knob fixed into the back between the arms. This
+was a spring. He pressed it, and the upper and lower parts of the
+cross came asunder; and holding the top like a handle, I drew out as
+from a scabbard a sharp steel blade, concealed in the thickness of the
+wood, behind the very body of the agonising Christ. What had been a
+crucifix became a deadly poniard in my grasp, and the rust upon it in
+the twilight looked like blood. 'I have often wondered,' said Signor
+Folcioni, 'that the Frati cared to sell me this.'
+
+There is no need to raise the question of the genuineness of this
+strange relic, though I confess to having had my doubts about it,
+or to wonder for what nefarious purposes the impious weapon was
+designed--whether the blade was inserted by some rascal monk who never
+told the tale, or whether it was used on secret service by the
+friars. On its surface the infernal engine carries a dark certainty of
+treason, sacrilege, and violence. Yet it would be wrong to incriminate
+the Order of S. Francis by any suspicion, and idle to seek the actual
+history of this mysterious weapon. A writer of fiction could indeed
+produce some dark tale in the style of De Stendhal's 'Nouvelles,' and
+christen it 'The Crucifix of Crema.' And how delighted would Webster
+have been if he had chanced to hear of such a sword-sheath! He might
+have placed it in the hands of Bosola for the keener torment of his
+Duchess. Flamineo might have used it; or the disguised friars, who
+made the deathbed of Bracciano hideous, might have plunged it in the
+Duke's heart after mocking his eyes with the figure of the suffering
+Christ. To imagine such an instrument of moral terror mingled with
+material violence, lay within the scope of Webster's sinister and
+powerful genius. But unless he had seen it with his eyes, what poet
+would have ventured to devise the thing and display it even in the
+dumb show of a tragedy? Fact is more wonderful than romance. No
+apocalypse of Antichrist matches what is told of Roderigo Borgia; and
+the crucifix of Crema exceeds the sombre fantasy of Webster.
+
+Whatever may be the truth about this cross, it has at any rate the
+value of a symbol or a metaphor. The idea which it materialises, the
+historical events of which it is a sign, may well arrest attention. A
+sword concealed in the crucifix--what emblem brings more forcibly
+to mind than this that two-edged glaive of persecution which Dominic
+unsheathed to mow down the populations of Provence and to make Spain
+destitute of men? Looking upon the crucifix of Crema, we may seem
+to see pestilence-stricken multitudes of Moors and Jews dying on the
+coasts of Africa and Italy. The Spaniards enter Mexico; and this is
+the cross they carry in their hands. They take possession of Peru; and
+while the gentle people of the Incas come to kiss the bleeding brows
+of Christ, they plunge this dagger in their sides. What, again, was
+the temporal power of the Papacy but a sword embedded in a cross?
+Each Papa Re, when he ascended the Holy Chair, was forced to take the
+crucifix of Crema and to bear it till his death. A long procession of
+war-loving Pontiffs, levying armies and paying captains with the pence
+of S. Peter, in order to keep by arms the lands they had acquired by
+fraud, defiles before our eyes. First goes the terrible Sixtus IV.,
+who died of grief when news was brought him that the Italian princes
+had made peace. He it was who sanctioned the conspiracy to murder
+the Medici in church, at the moment of the elevation of the Host.
+The brigands hired to do this work refused at the last moment. The
+sacrilege appalled them. 'Then,' says the chronicler, 'was found a
+priest, who, being used to churches, had no scruple.' The poignard
+this priest carried was this crucifix of Crema. After Sixtus came the
+blood-stained Borgia; and after him Julius II., whom the Romans
+in triumphal songs proclaimed a second Mars, and who turned, as
+Michelangelo expressed it, the chalices of Rome into swords and helms.
+Leo X., who dismembered Italy for his brother and nephew; and Clement
+VII., who broke the neck of Florence and delivered the Eternal City to
+the spoiler, follow. Of the antinomy between the Vicariate of Christ
+and an earthly kingdom, incarnated by these and other Holy Fathers,
+what symbol could be found more fitting than a dagger with a crucifix
+for case and covering?
+
+It is not easy to think or write of these matters without rhetoric.
+When I laid my head upon my pillow that night in the Albergo del Pozzo
+at Crema, it was full of such thoughts; and when at last sleep came,
+it brought with it a dream begotten doubtless by the perturbation of
+my fancy. For I thought that a brown Franciscan, with hollow cheeks,
+and eyes aflame beneath his heavy cowl, sat by my bedside, and, as he
+raised the crucifix in his lean quivering hands, whispered a tale of
+deadly passion and of dastardly revenge. His confession carried me
+away to a convent garden of Palermo; and there was love in the story,
+and hate that is stronger than love, and, for the ending of the whole
+matter, remorse which dies not even in the grave. Each new possessor
+of the crucifix of Crema, he told me, was forced to hear from him in
+dreams his dreadful history. But, since it was a dream and nothing
+more, why should I repeat it? I have wandered far enough already
+from the vintage and the sunny churches of the little Lombard town.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+_CHERUBINO AT THE SCALA THEATRE_
+
+
+I
+
+It was a gala night. The opera-house of Milan was one blaze of light
+and colour. Royalty in field-marshal's uniform and diamonds, attended
+by decorated generals and radiant ladies of the court, occupied the
+great box opposite the stage. The tiers from pit to gallery were
+filled with brilliantly dressed women. From the third row, where we
+were fortunately placed, the curves of that most beautiful of theatres
+presented to my gaze a series of retreating and approaching lines,
+composed of noble faces, waving feathers, sparkling jewels, sculptured
+shoulders, uniforms, robes of costly stuffs and every conceivable
+bright colour. Light poured from the huge lustre in the centre of the
+roof, ran along the crimson velvet cushions of the boxes, and flashed
+upon the gilded frame of the proscenium--satyrs and acanthus scrolls
+carved in the manner of a century ago. Pit and orchestra scarcely
+contained the crowd of men who stood in lively conversation, their
+backs turned to the stage, their lorgnettes raised from time to time
+to sweep the boxes. This surging sea of faces and sober costumes
+enhanced by contrast the glitter, variety, and luminous tranquillity
+of the theatre above it.
+
+No one took much thought of the coming spectacle, till the conductor's
+rap was heard upon his desk, and the orchestra broke into the overture
+to Mozart's _Nozze_. Before they were half through, it was clear
+that we should not enjoy that evening the delight of perfect music
+added to the enchantment of so brilliant a scene. The execution of the
+overture was not exactly bad. But it lacked absolute precision, the
+complete subordination of all details to the whole. In rendering
+German music Italians often fail through want of discipline, or
+through imperfect sympathy with a style they will not take the pains
+to master. Nor, when the curtain lifted and the play began, was the
+vocalisation found in all parts satisfactory. The Contessa had a
+meagre _mezza voce_. Susanna, though she did not sing false,
+hovered on the verge of discords, owing to the weakness of an organ
+which had to be strained in order to make any effect on that enormous
+stage. On the other hand, the part of Almaviva was played with
+dramatic fire, and Figaro showed a truly Southern sense of comic
+fun. The scenes were splendidly mounted, and something of a princely
+grandeur--the largeness of a noble train of life--was added to the
+drama by the vast proportions of the theatre. It was a performance
+which, in spite of drawbacks, yielded pleasure.
+
+And yet it might have left me frigid but for the artist who played
+Cherubino. This was no other than Pauline Lucca, in the prime of youth
+and petulance. From her first appearance to the last note she sang,
+she occupied the stage. The opera seemed to have been written for her.
+The mediocrity of the troupe threw her commanding merits--the richness
+of her voice, the purity of her intonation, her vivid conception of
+character, her indescribable brusquerie of movement and emotion--into
+that relief which a sapphire gains from a setting of pearls. I can see
+her now, after the lapse of nearly twenty years, as she stood there
+singing in blue doublet and white mantle, with the slouched Spanish
+hat and plume of ostrich feathers, a tiny rapier at her side, and blue
+rosettes upon her white silk shoes! The _Nozze di Figaro_ was
+followed by a Ballo. This had for its theme the favourite legend of
+a female devil sent from the infernal regions to ruin a young man.
+Instead of performing the part assigned her, Satanella falls in love
+with the hero, sacrifices herself, and is claimed at last by the
+powers of goodness. _Quia multum amavit_, her lost soul is saved.
+If the opera left much to be desired, the Ballo was perfection. That
+vast stage of the Scala Theatre had almost overwhelmed the actors
+of the play. Now, thrown open to its inmost depths, crowded with
+glittering moving figures, it became a fairyland of fantastic
+loveliness. Italians possess the art of interpreting a serious
+dramatic action by pantomime. A Ballo with them is no mere affair of
+dancing--fine dresses, evolutions performed by brigades of pink-legged
+women with a fixed smile on their faces. It takes the rank of high
+expressive art. And the motive of this Ballo was consistently worked
+out in an intelligible sequence of well-ordered scenes. To moralise
+upon its meaning would be out of place. It had a conflict of passions,
+a rhythmical progression of emotions, a tragic climax in the triumph
+of good over evil.
+
+II
+
+At the end of the performance there were five persons in our box--the
+beautiful Miranda, and her husband, a celebrated English man of
+letters; a German professor of biology; a young Milanese gentleman,
+whom we called Edoardo; and myself. Edoardo and the professor had
+joined us just before the ballet. I had occupied a seat behind Miranda
+and my friend the critic from the commencement. We had indeed dined
+together first at their hotel, the Rebecchino; and they now proposed
+that we should all adjourn together there on foot for supper. From the
+Scala Theatre to the Rebecchino is a walk of some three minutes.
+
+When we were seated at the supper-table and had talked some while upon
+indifferent topics, the enthusiasm roused in me by Pauline Lucca burst
+out. I broke a moment's silence by exclaiming, 'What a wonder-world
+music creates! I have lived this evening in a sphere of intellectual
+enjoyment raised to rapture. I never lived so fast before!' 'Do
+you really think so?' said Miranda. She had just finished a
+_beccafico_, and seemed disposed for conversation. 'Do you really
+think so? For my part, music is in a wholly different region from
+experience, thought, or feeling. What does it communicate to you?' And
+she hummed to herself the _motif_ of Cherubino's 'Non so piu
+cosa son cosa faccio.'--'What does it teach me?' I broke in upon the
+melody. 'Why, to-night, when I heard the music, and saw her there, and
+felt the movement of the play, it seemed to me that a new existence
+was revealed. For the first time I understood what love might be in
+one most richly gifted for emotion.' Miranda bent her eyes on the
+table-cloth and played with her wineglass. 'I don't follow you at all.
+I enjoyed myself to-night. The opera, indeed, might have been better
+rendered. The ballet, I admit, was splendid. But when I remember the
+music--even the best of it--even Pauline Lucca's part'--here she
+looked up, and shot me a quick glance across the table--'I have mere
+music in my ears. Nothing more. Mere music!' The professor of
+biology, who was gifted with, a sense of music and had studied it
+scientifically, had now crunched his last leaf of salad. Wiping his
+lips with his napkin, he joined our _tete-a-tete_. 'Gracious
+madam, I agree with you. He who seeks from music more than music
+gives, is on the quest--how shall I put it?--of the Holy Grail.' 'And
+what,' I struck in, 'is this minimum or maximum that music gives?'
+'Dear young friend,' replied the professor, 'music gives melodies,
+harmonies, the many beautiful forms to which sound shall be fashioned.
+Just as in the case of shells and fossils, lovely in themselves,
+interesting for their history and classification, so is it with
+music. You must not seek an intellectual meaning. No; there is no
+_Inhalt_ in music' And he hummed contentedly the air of 'Voi
+che sapete.' While he was humming, Miranda whispered to me across the
+table, 'Separate the Lucca from the music.' 'But,' I answered rather
+hotly, for I was nettled by Miranda's argument _ad hominem_, 'But
+it is not possible in an opera to divide the music from the words, the
+scenery, the play, the actor. Mozart, when he wrote the score to Da
+Ponte's libretto, was excited to production by the situations. He did
+not conceive his melodies out of connection with a certain cast of
+characters, a given ethical environment.' 'I do not know, my dear
+young friend,' responded the professor, 'whether you have read
+Mozart's Life and letters. It is clearly shown in them how he composed
+airs at times and seasons when he had no words to deal with. These he
+afterwards used as occasion served. Whence I conclude that music was
+for him a free and lovely play of tone. The words of our excellent
+Da Ponte were a scaffolding to introduce his musical creations to the
+public. But without that carpenter's work, the melodies of Cherubino
+are _Selbst-staendig_, sufficient in themselves to vindicate their
+place in art. Do I interpret your meaning, gracious lady?' This he
+said bending to Miranda. 'Yes,' she replied. But she still played with
+her wineglass, and did not look as though she were quite satisfied.
+I meanwhile continued: 'Of course I have read Mozart's Life, and know
+how he went to work. But Mozart was a man of feeling, of experience,
+of ardent passions. How can you prove to me that the melodies he gave
+to Cherubino had not been evolved from situations similar to those
+in which Cherubino finds himself? How can you prove he did not feel
+a natural appropriateness in the _motifs_ he selected from his
+memory for Cherubino? How can you be certain that the part itself did
+not stimulate his musical faculty to fresh and still more appropriate
+creativeness? And if we must fall back on documents, do you remember
+what he said himself about the love-music in _Die Entfuehrung?_ I
+think he tells us that he meant it to express his own feeling for the
+woman who had just become his wife.' Miranda looked up as though she
+were almost half-persuaded. Yet she hummed again 'Non so piu,' then
+said to herself, 'Yes, it is wiser to believe with the professor that
+these are sequences of sounds, and nothing more.' Then she sighed. In
+the pause which followed, her husband, the famous critic, filled his
+glass, stretched his legs out, and began: 'You have embarked, I see,
+upon the ocean of aesthetics. For my part, to-night I was thinking
+how much better fitted for the stage Beaumarchais' play was than this
+musical mongrel--this operatic adaptation. The wit, observe, is lost.
+And Cherubino--that sparkling little _enfant terrible_--becomes a
+sentimental fellow--a something I don't know what--between a girl and
+a boy--a medley of romance and impudence--anyhow a being quite unlike
+the sharply outlined playwright's page. I confess I am not a musician;
+the drama is my business, and I judge things by their fitness for
+the stage. My wife agrees with me to differ. She likes music, I like
+plays. To-night she was better pleased than I was; for she got good
+music tolerably well rendered, while I got nothing but a mangled
+comedy.'
+
+We bore the critic's monologue with patience. But once again the
+spirit, seeking after something which neither Miranda, nor her
+husband, nor the professor could be got to recognise, moved within me.
+I cried out at a venture, 'People who go to an opera must forget
+music pure and simple, must forget the drama pure and simple. You
+must welcome a third species of art, in which the play, the music, the
+singers with their voices, the orchestra with its instruments--Pauline
+Lucca, if you like, with her fascination' (and here I shot a
+side-glance at Miranda), 'are so blent as to create a world beyond the
+scope of poetry or music or acting taken by themselves. I give Mozart
+credit for having had insight into this new world, for having brought
+it near to us. And I hold that every fresh representation of his work
+is a fresh revelation of its possibilities.'
+
+To this the critic answered, 'You now seem to me to be confounding the
+limits of the several arts.' 'What!' I continued, 'is the drama but
+emotion presented in its most external forms as action? And what is
+music but emotion, in its most genuine essence, expressed by sound?
+Where then can a more complete artistic harmony be found than in the
+opera?'
+
+'The opera,' replied our host, 'is a hybrid. You will probably learn
+to dislike artistic hybrids, if you have the taste and sense I give
+you credit for. My own opinion has been already expressed. In the
+_Nozze_, Beaumarchais' _Mariage de Figaro_ is simply spoiled. My
+friend the professor declares Mozart's music to be sufficient by
+itself, and the libretto to be a sort of machinery for its display.
+Miranda, I think, agrees with him. You plead eloquently for the
+hybrid. You have a right to your own view. These things are matters,
+in the final resort, of individual taste rather than of demonstrable
+principles. But I repeat that you are very young.' The critic drained
+his Lambrusco, and smiled at me.
+
+'Yes, he is young,' added Miranda. 'He must learn to distinguish
+between music, his own imagination, and a pretty woman. At present he
+mixes them all up together. It is a sort of transcendental omelette.
+But I think the pretty woman has more to do with it than metaphysics!'
+
+All this while Edoardo had bestowed devout attention on his supper.
+But it appeared that the drift of our discourse had not been lost by
+him. 'Well,' he said, 'you finely fibred people dissect and analyse.
+I am content with the _spettacolo_. That pleases. What does a man
+want more? The _Nozze_ is a comedy of life and manners. The music
+is adorable. To-night the women were not bad to look at--the Lucca
+was divine; the scenes--ingenious. I thought but little. I came away
+delighted. You could have a better play, Caro Signore!' (with a bow
+to our host). 'That is granted. You might have better music, Cara
+Signora!' (with a bow to Miranda). 'That too is granted. But when the
+play and the music come together--how shall I say?--the music helps
+the play, and the play helps the music; and we--well we, I suppose,
+must help both!'
+
+Edoardo's little speech was so ingenuous, and, what is more, so true
+to his Italian temperament, that it made us all laugh and leave the
+argument just where we found it. The bottles of Lambrusco supplied us
+each with one more glass; and while we were drinking them, Miranda,
+woman-like, taking the last word, but contradicting herself, softly
+hummed 'Non so piu cosa son,' and 'Ah!' she said, 'I shall dream of
+love to-night!'
+
+We rose and said good-night. But when I had reached my bedroom in the
+Hotel de la Ville, I sat down, obstinate and unconvinced, and penned
+this rhapsody, which I have lately found among papers of nearly twenty
+years ago. I give it as it stands.
+
+III
+
+Mozart has written the two melodramas of love--the one a melo-tragedy,
+the other a melo-comedy. But in really noble art, Comedy and Tragedy
+have faces of equal serenity and beauty. In the Vatican there
+are marble busts of the two Muses, differing chiefly in their
+head-dresses: that of Tragedy is an elaborately built-up structure of
+fillets and flowing hair, piled high above the forehead and descending
+in long curls upon the shoulders; while Comedy wears a similar
+adornment, with the addition of a wreath of vine-leaves and
+grape-bunches. The expression of the sister goddesses is no less
+finely discriminated. Over the mouth of Comedy plays a subtle smile,
+and her eyes are relaxed in a half-merriment. A shadow rests upon
+the slightly heavier brows of Tragedy, and her lips, though not
+compressed, are graver. So delicately did the Greek artist indicate
+the division between two branches of one dramatic art. And since all
+great art is classical, Mozart's two melodramas, _Don Giovanni_
+and the _Nozze di Figaro_, though the one is tragic and the other
+comic, are twin-sisters, similar in form and feature.
+
+The central figure of the melo-tragedy is Don Juan, the hero
+of unlimited desire, pursuing the unattainable through tortuous
+interminable labyrinths, eager in appetite yet never satisfied, 'for
+ever following and for ever foiled.' He is the incarnation of lust
+that has become a habit of the soul--rebellious, licentious, selfish,
+even cruel. His nature, originally noble and brave, has assumed the
+qualities peculiar to lust--rebellion, license, cruelty, defiant
+egotism. Yet, such as he is, doomed to punishment and execration,
+Don Juan remains a fit subject for poetry and music, because he is
+complete, because he is impelled by some demonic influence, spurred on
+by yearnings after an unsearchable delight. In his death, the spirit
+of chivalry survives, metamorphosed, it is true, into the spirit of
+revolt, yet still tragic, such as might animate the desperate sinner
+of a haughty breed.
+
+The central figure of the melo-comedy is Cherubino, the genius of
+love, no less insatiable, but undetermined to virtue or to vice. This
+is the point of Cherubino, that the ethical capacities in him are
+still potential. His passion still hovers on the borderland of good
+and bad. And this undetermined passion is beautiful because of extreme
+freshness; of infinite, immeasurable expansibility. Cherubino is the
+epitome of all that belongs to the amorous temperament in a state of
+still ascendant adolescence. He is about sixteen years of age--a boy
+yesterday, a man to-morrow--to-day both and neither--something
+beyond boyhood, but not yet limited by man's responsibility and man's
+absorbing passions. He partakes of both ages in the primal awakening
+to self-consciousness. Desire, which in Don Juan has become a fiend,
+hovers before him like a fairy. His are the sixteen years, not of a
+Northern climate, but of Spain or Italy, where manhood appears in a
+flash, and overtakes the child with sudden sunrise of new faculties.
+_Nondum amabam, sed amare amabam, quaerebam quod amarem, amans
+amare_--'I loved not yet, but was in love with loving; I sought
+what I should love, being in love with loving.' That sentence, penned
+by S. Augustine and consecrated by Shelley, describes the mood of
+Cherubino. He loves at every moment of his life, with every pulse of
+his being. His object is not a beloved being, but love itself--the
+satisfaction of an irresistible desire, the paradise of bliss which
+merely loving has become for him. What love means he hardly knows. He
+only knows that he must love. And women love him--half as a plaything
+to be trifled with, half as a young god to be wounded by. This rising
+of the star of love as it ascends into the heaven of youthful fancy,
+is revealed in the melodies Mozart has written for him. How shall we
+describe their potency? Who shall translate those curiously perfect
+words to which tone and rhythm have been indissolubly wedded? _E
+pur mi piace languir cosi.... E se non ho chi m' oda, parlo d'amor con
+me._
+
+But if this be so, it may be asked, Who shall be found worthy to act
+Cherubino on the stage? You cannot have seen and heard Pauline Lucca,
+or you would not ask this question.
+
+Cherubino is by no means the most important person in the plot of the
+_Nozze_. But he strikes the keynote of the opera. His love is the
+standard by which we measure the sad, retrospective, stately love of
+the Countess, who tries to win back an alienated husband. By Cherubino
+we measure the libertine love of the Count, who is a kind of Don Juan
+without cruelty, and the humorous love of Figaro and his sprightly
+bride Susanna. Each of these characters typifies one of the many
+species of love. But Cherubino anticipates and harmonises all. They
+are conscious, experienced, world-worn, disillusioned, trivial. He is
+all love, foreseen, foreshadowed in a dream of life to be; all love,
+diffused through brain and heart and nerves like electricity; all
+love, merging the moods of ecstasy, melancholy, triumph, regret,
+jealousy, joy, expectation, in a hazy sheen, as of some Venetian
+sunrise. What will Cherubino be after three years? A Romeo, a
+Lovelace, a Lothario, a Juan? a disillusioned rake, a sentimentalist,
+an effete fop, a romantic lover? He may become any one of these, for
+he contains the possibilities of all. As yet, he is the dear glad
+angel of the May of love, the nightingale of orient emotion.
+This moment in the unfolding of character Mozart has arrested and
+eternalised for us in Cherubino's melodies; for it is the privilege of
+art to render things most fugitive and evanescent fixed imperishably
+in immortal form.
+
+IV
+
+This is indeed a rhapsodical production. Miranda was probably right.
+Had it not been for Pauline Lucca, I might not have philosophised the
+_Nozze_ thus. Yet, in the main, I believe that my instinct was
+well grounded. Music, especially when wedded to words, more especially
+when those words are dramatic, cannot separate itself from emotion. It
+will not do to tell us that a melody is a certain sequence of sounds;
+that the composer chose it for its beauty of rhythm, form, and tune,
+and only used the words to get it vocalised. We are forced to go
+farther back, and ask ourselves, What suggested it in the first place
+to the composer? why did he use it precisely in connection with
+this dramatic situation? How can we answer these questions except by
+supposing that music was for him the utterance through art of some
+emotion? The final fact of human nature is emotion, crystallising
+itself in thought and language, externalising itself in action and
+art. 'What,' said Novalis, 'are thoughts but pale dead feelings?'
+Admitting this even in part, we cannot deny to music an emotional
+content of some kind. I would go farther, and assert that, while a
+merely mechanical musician may set inappropriate melodies to words,
+and render music inexpressive of character, what constitutes a musical
+dramatist is the conscious intention of fitting to the words of his
+libretto such melody as shall interpret character, and the power to do
+this with effect.
+
+That the Cherubino of Mozart's _Nozze_ is quite different from
+Beaumarchais' Cherubin does not affect this question. He is a new
+creation, just because Mozart could not, or would not, conceive the
+character of the page in Beaumarchais' sprightly superficial spirit.
+He used the part to utter something unutterable except by music about
+the soul of the still adolescent lover. The libretto-part and the
+melodies, taken together, constitute a new romantic ideal, consistent
+with experience, but realised with the intensity and universality
+whereby art is distinguished from life. Don Juan was a myth before
+Mozart touched him with the magic wand of music. Cherubino became
+a myth by the same Prospero's spell. Both characters have the
+universality, the symbolic potency, which belongs to legendary beings.
+That there remains a discrepancy between the boy-page and the music
+made for him, can be conceded without danger to my theory; for
+the music made for Cherubino is meant to interpret his psychical
+condition, and is independent of his boyishness of conduct.
+
+This further explains why there may be so many renderings of
+Cherubino's melodies. Mozart idealised an infinite emotion. The
+singer is forced to define; the actor also is forced to define. Each
+introduces his own limit on the feeling. When the actor and the singer
+meet together in one personality, this definition of emotion becomes
+of necessity doubly specific. The condition of all music is that it
+depends in a great measure on the temperament of the interpreter for
+its momentary shade of expression, and this dependence is of course
+exaggerated when the music is dramatic. Furthermore, the subjectivity
+of the audience enters into the problem as still another element of
+definition. It may therefore be fairly said that, in estimating any
+impression produced by Cherubino's music, the original character of
+the page, transplanted from French comedy to Italian opera, Mozart's
+conception of that character, Mozart's specific quality of emotion
+and specific style of musical utterance, together with the contralto's
+interpretation of the character and rendering of the music, according
+to her intellectual capacity, artistic skill, and timbre of voice,
+have collaborated with the individuality of the hearer. Some of the
+constituents of the ever-varying product--a product which is new each
+time the part is played--are fixed. Da Ponte's Cherubino and Mozart's
+melodies remain unalterable. All the rest is undecided; the singer and
+the listener change on each occasion.
+
+To assert that the musician Mozart meant nothing by his music, to
+assert that he only cared about it _qua_ music, is the same as
+to say that the painter Tintoretto, when he put the Crucifixion upon
+canvas, the sculptor Michelangelo, when he carved Christ upon the lap
+of Mary, meant nothing, and only cared about the beauty of their
+forms and colours. Those who take up this position prove, not that the
+artist has no meaning to convey, but that for them the artist's nature
+is unintelligible, and his meaning is conveyed in an unknown tongue.
+It seems superfluous to guard against misinterpretation by saying that
+to expect clear definition from music--the definition which belongs
+to poetry--would be absurd. The sphere of music is in sensuous
+perception; the sphere of poetry is in intelligence. Music, dealing
+with pure sound, must always be vaguer in significance than poetry,
+dealing with words. Nevertheless, its effect upon the sentient subject
+may be more intense and penetrating for this very reason. We cannot
+fail to understand what words are intended to convey; we may very
+easily interpret in a hundred different ways the message of sound.
+But this is not because words are wider in their reach and more alive;
+rather because they are more limited, more stereotyped, more dead.
+They symbolise something precise and unmistakable; but this precision
+is itself attenuation of the something symbolised. The exact value of
+the counter is better understood when it is a word than when it is a
+chord, because all that a word conveys has already become a thought,
+while all that musical sounds convey remains within the region of
+emotion which has not been intellectualised. Poetry touches emotion
+through the thinking faculty. If music reaches the thinking faculty at
+all, it is through fibres of emotion. But emotion, when it has become
+thought, has already lost a portion of its force, and has taken to
+itself a something alien to its nature. Therefore the message of music
+can never rightly be translated into words. It is the very largeness
+and vividness of the sphere of simple feeling which makes its
+symbolical counterpart in sound so seeming vague. But in spite of this
+incontestable defect of seeming vagueness, emotion expressed by music
+is nearer to our sentient self, if we have ears to take it in, than
+the same emotion limited by language. It is intenser, it is more
+immediate, as compensation for being less intelligible, less
+unmistakable in meaning. It is an infinite, an indistinct, where each
+consciousness defines and sets a limitary form.
+
+V
+
+A train of thought which begins with the concrete not unfrequently
+finds itself finishing, almost against its will, in abstractions. This
+is the point to which the performance of Cherubino's part by Pauline
+Lucca at the Scala twenty years ago has led me--that I have to settle
+with myself what I mean by art in general, and what I take to be the
+proper function of music as one of the fine arts.
+
+'Art,' said Goethe, 'is but form-giving.' We might vary this
+definition, and say, 'Art is a method of expression or presentation.'
+Then comes the question: If art gives form, if it is a method of
+expression or presentation, to what does it give form, what does it
+express or present? The answer certainly must be: Art gives form to
+human consciousness; expresses or presents the feeling or the thought
+of man. Whatever else art may do by the way, in the communication
+of innocent pleasures, in the adornment of life and the softening of
+manners, in the creation of beautiful shapes and sounds, this, at all
+events, is its prime function.
+
+While investing thought, the spiritual subject-matter of all art, with
+form, or finding for it proper modes of presentation, each of the arts
+employs a special medium, obeying the laws of beauty proper to that
+medium. The vehicles of the arts, roughly speaking, are material
+substances (like stone, wood, metal), pigments, sounds, and words.
+The masterly handling of these vehicles and the realisation of
+their characteristic types of beauty have come to be regarded as the
+craftsman's paramount concern. And in a certain sense this is a right
+conclusion; for dexterity in the manipulation of the chosen vehicle
+and power to create a beautiful object, distinguish the successful
+artist from the man who may have had like thoughts and feelings. This
+dexterity, this power, are the properties of the artist _qua_
+artist. Yet we must not forget that the form created by the artist
+for the expression of a thought or feeling is not the final end of art
+itself. That form, after all, is but the mode of presentation through
+which the spiritual content manifests itself. Beauty, in like manner,
+is not the final end of art, but is the indispensable condition under
+which the artistic manifestation of the spiritual content must he
+made. It is the business of art to create an ideal world, in which
+perception, emotion, understanding, action, all elements of human life
+sublimed by thought, shall reappear in concrete forms as beauty. This
+being so, the logical criticism of art demands that we should not
+only estimate the technical skill of artists and their faculty for
+presenting beauty to the aesthetic sense, but that we should also ask
+ourselves what portion of the human spirit he has chosen to invest
+with form, and how he has conceived his subject. It is not necessary
+that the ideas embodied in a work of art should be the artist's
+own. They may be common to the race and age: as, for instance, the
+conception of sovereign deity expressed in the Olympian Zeus of
+Pheidias, or the conception of divine maternity expressed in Raphael's
+'Madonna di San Sisto.' Still the personality of the artist, his
+own intellectual and moral nature, his peculiar way of thinking and
+feeling, his individual attitude towards the material given to him in
+ideas of human consciousness, will modify his choice of subject and
+of form, and will determine his specific type of beauty. To take an
+example: supposing that an idea, common to his race and age, is given
+to the artist for treatment; this will be the final end of the work
+of art which he produces. But his personal qualities and technical
+performance determine the degree of success or failure to which he
+attains in presenting that idea and in expressing it with beauty.
+Signorelli fails where Perugino excels, in giving adequate and lovely
+form to the religious sentiment. Michelangelo is sure of the sublime,
+and Raphael of the beautiful.
+
+Art is thus the presentation of the human spirit by the artist to his
+fellow-men. The subject-matter of the arts is commensurate with what
+man thinks and feels and does. It is as deep as religion, as wide as
+life. But what distinguishes art from religion or from life is, that
+this subject-matter must assume beautiful form, and must be presented
+directly or indirectly to the senses. Art is not the school or the
+cathedral, but the playground, the paradise of humanity. It does not
+teach, it does not preach. Nothing abstract enters into art's domain.
+Truth and goodness are transmuted into beauty there, just as in
+science beauty and goodness assume the shape of truth, and in
+religion truth and beauty become goodness. The rigid definitions, the
+unmistakable laws of science, are not to be found in art. Whatever art
+has touched acquires a concrete sensuous embodiment, and thus ideas
+presented to the mind in art have lost a portion of their pure
+thought-essence. It is on this account that the religious conceptions
+of the Greeks were so admirably fitted for the art of sculpture, and
+certain portions of the mediaeval Christian mythology lent themselves
+so well to painting. For the same reason the metaphysics of
+ecclesiastical dogma defy the artist's plastic faculty. Art, in a
+word, is a middle term between reason and the senses. Its secondary
+aim, after the prime end of presenting the human spirit in beautiful
+form has been accomplished, is to give tranquil and innocent
+enjoyment.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+From what has gone before it will be seen that no human being can
+make or mould a beautiful form without incorporating in that form some
+portion of the human mind, however crude, however elementary. In other
+words, there is no work of art without a theme, without a motive,
+without a subject. The presentation of that theme, that motive, that
+subject, is the final end of art. The art is good or bad according as
+the subject has been well or ill presented, consistently with the laws
+of beauty special to the art itself. Thus we obtain two standards
+for aesthetic criticism. We judge a statue, for example, both by
+the sculptor's intellectual grasp upon his subject, and also by his
+technical skill and sense of beauty. In a picture of the Last Judgment
+by Fra Angelico we say that the bliss of the righteous has been more
+successfully treated than the torments of the wicked, because the
+former has been better understood, although the painter's skill in
+each is equal. In the Perseus of Cellini we admire the sculptor's
+spirit, finish of execution, and originality of design, while we
+deplore that want of sympathy with the heroic character which makes
+his type of physical beauty slightly vulgar and his facial expression
+vacuous. If the phrase 'Art for art's sake' has any meaning, this
+meaning is simply that the artist, having chosen a theme, thinks
+exclusively in working at it of technical dexterity or the quality of
+beauty. There are many inducements for the artist thus to narrow his
+function, and for the critic to assist him by applying the canons of
+a soulless connoisseurship to his work; for the conception of the
+subject is but the starting-point in art-production, and the artist's
+difficulties and triumphs as a craftsman lie in the region of
+technicalities. He knows, moreover, that, however deep or noble his
+idea may be, his work of art will be worthless if it fail in skill
+or be devoid of beauty. What converts a thought into a statue or
+a picture, is the form found for it; and so the form itself seems
+all-important. The artist, therefore, too easily imagines that he may
+neglect his theme; that a fine piece of colouring, a well-balanced
+composition, or, as Cellini put it, 'un bel corpo ignudo,' is enough.
+And this is especially easy in an age which reflects much upon the
+arts, and pursues them with enthusiasm, while its deeper thoughts and
+feelings are not of the kind which translate themselves readily
+into artistic form. But, after all, a fine piece of colouring, a
+well-balanced composition, a sonorous stanza, a learned essay in
+counterpoint, are not enough. They are all excellent good things,
+yielding delight to the artistic sense and instruction to the student.
+Yet when we think of the really great statues, pictures, poems, music
+of the world, we find that these are really great because of something
+more--and that more is their theme, their presentation of a noble
+portion of the human soul. Artists and art-students may be satisfied
+with perfect specimens of a craftsman's skill, independent of his
+theme; but the mass of men will not be satisfied; and it is as wrong
+to suppose that art exists for artists and art-students, as to talk
+of art for art's sake. Art exists for humanity. Art transmutes thought
+and feeling into terms of beautiful form. Art is great and lasting
+in proportion as it appeals to the human consciousness at large,
+presenting to it portions of itself in adequate and lovely form.
+
+VI
+
+It was necessary in the first place firmly to apprehend the truth that
+the final end of all art is the presentation of a spiritual content;
+it is necessary in the next place to remove confusions by considering
+the special circumstances of the several arts.
+
+Each art has its own vehicle of presentation. What it can present and
+how it must present it, depends upon the nature of this vehicle. Thus,
+though architecture, sculpture, painting, music, poetry, meet upon
+the common ground of spiritualised experience--though the works of art
+produced by the architect, sculptor, painter, musician, poet, emanate
+from the spiritual nature of the race, are coloured by the spiritual
+nature of the men who make them, and express what is spiritual in
+humanity under concrete forms invented for them by the artist--yet it
+is certain that all of these arts do not deal exactly with the same
+portions of this common material in the same way or with the same
+results. Each has its own department. Each exhibits qualities of
+strength and weakness special to itself. To define these several
+departments, to explain the relation of these several vehicles
+of presentation to the common subject-matter, is the next step in
+criticism.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Of the fine arts, architecture alone subserves utility. We build for
+use. But the geometrical proportions which the architect observes,
+contain the element of beauty and powerfully influence the soul. Into
+the language of arch and aisle and colonnade, of cupola and facade and
+pediment, of spire and vault, the architect translates emotion, vague
+perhaps but deep, mute but unmistakable. When we say that a building
+is sublime or graceful, frivolous or stern, we mean that sublimity
+or grace, frivolity or sternness, is inherent in it. The emotions
+connected with these qualities are inspired in us when we contemplate
+it, and are presented to us by its form. Whether the architect
+deliberately aimed at the sublime or graceful--whether the dignified
+serenity of the Athenian genius sought to express itself in the
+Parthenon, and the mysticism of mediaeval Christianity in the gloom of
+Chartres Cathedral--whether it was Renaissance paganism which gave its
+mundane pomp and glory to S. Peter's, and the refined selfishness of
+royalty its specious splendour to the palace of Versailles--need not
+be curiously questioned. The fact that we are impelled to raise these
+points, that architecture more almost than any art connects itself
+indissolubly with the life, the character, the moral being of a nation
+and an epoch, proves that we are justified in bringing it beneath
+our general definition of the arts. In a great measure because it
+subserves utility, and is therefore dependent upon the necessities of
+life, does architecture present to us through form the human spirit.
+Comparing the palace built by Giulio Romano for the Dukes of Mantua
+with the contemporary castle of a German prince, we cannot fail at
+once to comprehend the difference of spiritual conditions, as these
+displayed themselves in daily life, which then separated Italy from
+the Teutonic nations. But this is not all. Spiritual quality in
+the architect himself finds clear expression in his work. Coldness
+combined with violence marks Brunelleschi's churches; a certain
+suavity and well-bred taste the work of Bramante; while Michelangelo
+exhibits wayward energy in his Library of S. Lorenzo, and Amadeo
+self-abandonment to fancy in his Lombard chapels. I have chosen
+examples from one nation and one epoch in order that the point I seek
+to make, the demonstration of a spiritual quality in buildings, may be
+fairly stated.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sculpture and painting distinguish themselves from the other fine
+arts by the imitation of concrete existences in nature. They copy the
+bodies of men and animals, the aspects of the world around us, and the
+handiwork of men. Yet, in so far as they are rightly arts, they do
+not make imitation an object in itself. The grapes of Zeuxis at which
+birds pecked, the painted dog at which a cat's hair bristles--if such
+grapes or such a dog were ever put on canvas--are but evidences of the
+artist's skill, not of his faculty as artist. These two plastic, or,
+as I prefer to call them, figurative arts, use their imitation of
+the external world for the expression, the presentation of internal,
+spiritual things. The human form is for them the outward symbol of the
+inner human spirit, and their power of presenting spirit is limited by
+the means at their disposal.
+
+Sculpture employs stone, wood, clay, the precious metals, to model
+forms, detached and independent, or raised upon a flat surface
+in relief. Its domain is the whole range of human character and
+consciousness, in so far as these can be indicated by fixed facial
+expression, by physical type, and by attitude. If we dwell for an
+instant on the greatest historical epoch of sculpture, we shall
+understand the domain of this art in its range and limitation. At a
+certain point of Greek development the Hellenic Pantheon began to be
+translated by the sculptors into statues; and when the genius of the
+Greeks expired in Rome, the cycle of their psychological conceptions
+had been exhaustively presented through this medium. During that long
+period of time, the most delicate gradations of human personality,
+divinised, idealised, were presented to the contemplation of the
+consciousness which gave them being, in appropriate types. Strength
+and swiftness, massive force and airy lightness, contemplative repose
+and active energy, voluptuous softness and refined grace, intellectual
+sublimity and lascivious seductiveness--the whole rhythm of qualities
+which can be typified by bodily form--were analysed, selected,
+combined in various degrees, to incarnate the religious conceptions of
+Zeus, Aphrodite, Herakles, Dionysus, Pallas, Fauns and Satyrs, Nymphs
+of woods and waves, Tritons, the genius of Death, heroes and hunters,
+lawgivers and poets, presiding deities of minor functions, man's
+lustful appetites and sensual needs. All that men think, or do, or
+are, or wish for, or imagine in this world, had found exact corporeal
+equivalents. Not physiognomy alone, but all the portions of the body
+upon which the habits of the animating soul are wont to stamp
+themselves, were studied and employed as symbolism. Uranian Aphrodite
+was distinguished from her Pandemic sister by chastened lust-repelling
+loveliness. The muscles of Herakles were more ponderous than the tense
+sinews of Achilles. The Hermes of the palaestra bore a torso of
+majestic depth; the Hermes, who carried messages from heaven, had
+limbs alert for movement. The brows of Zeus inspired awe; the breasts
+of Dionysus breathed delight.
+
+A race accustomed, as the Greeks were, to read this symbolism,
+accustomed, as the Greeks were, to note the individuality of naked
+form, had no difficulty in interpreting the language of sculpture.
+Nor is there now much difficulty in the task. Our surest guide to
+the subject of a basrelief or statue is study of the physical type
+considered as symbolical of spiritual quality. From the fragment of
+a torso the true critic can say whether it belongs to the athletic or
+the erotic species. A limb of Bacchus differs from a limb of Poseidon.
+The whole psychological conception of Aphrodite Pandemos enters into
+every muscle, every joint, no less than into her physiognomy, her
+hair, her attitude.
+
+There is, however, a limit to the domain of sculpture. This art deals
+most successfully with personified generalities. It is also strong in
+the presentation of incarnate character. But when it attempts to tell
+a story, we often seek in vain its meaning. Battles of Amazons or
+Centaurs upon basreliefs, indeed, are unmistakable. The subject is
+indicated here by some external sign. The group of Laocoon appeals
+at once to a reader of Virgil, and the divine vengeance of Leto's
+children upon Niobe is manifest in the Uffizzi marbles. But who are
+the several heroes of the AEginetan pediment, and what was the subject
+of the Pheidian statues on the Parthenon? Do the three graceful
+figures of a basrelief which exists at Naples and in the Villa Albani,
+represent Orpheus, Hermes, and Eurydice, or Antiope and her two sons?
+Was the winged and sworded genius upon the Ephesus column meant for a
+genius of Death or a genius of Love?
+
+This dimness of significance indicates the limitation of sculpture,
+and inclines some of those who feel its charm to assert that the
+sculptor seeks to convey no intellectual meaning, that he is satisfied
+with the creation of beautiful form. There is sense in this revolt
+against the faith which holds that art is nothing but a mode of
+spiritual presentation. Truly the artist aims at producing beauty, is
+satisfied if he conveys delight. But it is impossible to escape from
+the certainty that, while he is creating forms of beauty, he means
+something; and that something, that theme for which he finds the form,
+is part of the world's spiritual heritage. Only the crudest works of
+plastic art, capricci and arabesques, have no intellectual content;
+and even these are good in so far as they convey the playfulness of
+fancy.
+
+Painting employs colours upon surfaces--walls, panels, canvas. What
+has been said about sculpture will apply in a great measure to this
+art. The human form, the world around us, the works of man's hands,
+are represented in painting, not for their own sake merely, but with
+a view to bringing thought, feeling, action, home to the consciousness
+of the spectator from the artist's consciousness on which they have
+been impressed. Painting can tell a story better than sculpture, can
+represent more complicated feelings, can suggest thoughts of a subtler
+intricacy. Through colour, it can play, like music, directly on
+powerful but vague emotion. It is deficient in fulness and roundness
+of concrete reality. A statue stands before us, the soul incarnate in
+ideal form, fixed and frozen for eternity. The picture is a reflection
+cast upon a magic glass; not less permanent, but reduced to a shadow
+of reality. To follow these distinctions farther would be alien from
+the present purpose. It is enough to repeat that, within their several
+spheres, according to their several strengths and weaknesses, both
+sculpture and painting present the spirit to us only as the spirit
+shows itself immersed in things of sense. The light of a lamp enclosed
+within an alabaster vase is still lamplight, though shorn of lustre
+and toned to coloured softness. Even thus the spirit, immersed in
+things of sense presented to us by the figurative arts, is still
+spirit, though diminished in its intellectual clearness and invested
+with hues not its own. To fashion that alabaster form of art with
+utmost skill, to make it beautiful, to render it transparent, is the
+artist's function. But he will have failed of the highest if the
+light within burns dim, or if he gives the world a lamp in which no
+spiritual flame is lighted.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Music transports us to a different region. It imitates nothing. It
+uses pure sound, and sound of the most wholly artificial kind--so
+artificial that the musical sounds of one race are unmusical, and
+therefore unintelligible, to another. Like architecture, music relies
+upon mathematical proportions. Unlike architecture, music serves no
+utility. It is the purest art of pleasure--the truest paradise and
+playground of the spirit. It has less power than painting, even less
+power than sculpture, to tell a story or to communicate an idea. For
+we must remember that when music is married to words, the words, and
+not the music, reach our thinking faculty. And yet, in spite of all,
+music presents man's spirit to itself through form. The domain of the
+spirit over which music reigns, is emotion--not defined emotion, not
+feeling even so defined as jealousy or anger--but those broad bases of
+man's being out of which emotions spring, defining themselves through
+action into this or that set type of feeling. Architecture, we have
+noticed, is so connected with specific modes of human existence, that
+from its main examples we can reconstruct the life of men who used
+it. Sculpture and painting, by limiting their presentation to the
+imitation of external things, have all the help which experience
+and, association render. The mere artificiality of music's vehicle
+separates it from life and makes its message untranslatable. Yet, as I
+have already pointed out, this very disability under which it labours
+is the secret of its extraordinary potency. Nothing intervenes between
+the musical work of art and the fibres of the sentient being it
+immediately thrills. We do not seek to say what music means. We feel
+the music. And if a man should pretend that the music has not passed
+beyond his ears, has communicated nothing but a musical delight, he
+simply tells us that he has not felt music. The ancients on this point
+were wiser than some moderns when, without pretending to assign an
+intellectual significance to music, they held it for an axiom that
+one type of music bred one type of character, another type another.
+A change in the music of a state, wrote Plato, will be followed by
+changes in its constitution. It is of the utmost importance, said
+Aristotle, to provide in education for the use of the ennobling and
+the fortifying moods. These philosophers knew that music creates a
+spiritual world, in which the spirit cannot live and move without
+contracting habits of emotion. In this vagueness of significance but
+intensity of feeling lies the magic of music. A melody occurs to the
+composer, which he certainly connects with no act of the reason, which
+he is probably unconscious of connecting with any movement of his
+feeling, but which nevertheless is the form in sound of an emotional
+mood. When he reflects upon the melody secreted thus impromptu, he
+is aware, as we learn from his own lips, that this work has
+correspondence with emotion. Beethoven calls one symphony Heroic,
+another Pastoral; of the opening of another he says, 'Fate knocks at
+the door.' Mozart sets comic words to the mass-music of a friend, in
+order to mark his sense of its inaptitude for religious sentiment. All
+composers use phrases like Maestoso, Pomposo, Allegro, Lagrimoso, Con
+Fuoco, to express the general complexion of the mood their music ought
+to represent.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Before passing to poetry, it may be well to turn aside and consider
+two subordinate arts, which deserve a place in any system of
+aesthetics. These are dancing and acting. Dancing uses the living human
+form, and presents feeling or action, the passions and the deeds of
+men, in artificially educated movements of the body. The element of
+beauty it possesses, independently of the beauty of the dancer, is
+rhythm. Acting or the art of mimicry presents the same subject-matter,
+no longer under the conditions of fixed rhythm but as an ideal
+reproduction of reality. The actor is what he represents, and the
+element of beauty in his art is perfection of realisation. It is his
+duty as an artist to show us Orestes or Othello, not perhaps exactly
+as Othello and Orestes were, but as the essence of their tragedies,
+ideally incorporate in action, ought to be. The actor can do this
+in dumb show. Some of the greatest actors of the ancient world were
+mimes. But he usually interprets a poet's thought, and attempts to
+present an artistic conception in a secondary form of art, which has
+for its advantage his own personality in play.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The last of the fine arts is literature; or, in the narrower sphere
+of which it will be well to speak here only, is poetry. Poetry employs
+words in fixed rhythms, which we call metres. Only a small portion of
+its effect is derived from the beauty of its sound. It appeals to the
+sense of hearing far less immediately than music does. It makes no
+appeal to the eyesight, and takes no help from the beauty of colour.
+It produces no tangible object. But language being the storehouse
+of all human experience, language being the medium whereby spirit
+communicates with spirit in affairs of life, the vehicle which
+transmits to us the thoughts and feelings of the past, and on which we
+rely for continuing our present to the future, it follows that, of all
+the arts, poetry soars highest, flies widest, and is most at home in
+the region of the spirit. What poetry lacks of sensuous fulness, it
+more than balances by intellectual intensity. Its significance is
+unmistakable, because it employs the very material men use in their
+exchange of thoughts and correspondence of emotions. To the bounds of
+its empire there is no end. It embraces in its own more abstract
+being all the arts. By words it does the work in turn of architecture,
+sculpture, painting, music. It is the metaphysic of the fine arts.
+Philosophy finds place in poetry; and life itself, refined to its last
+utterance, hangs trembling on this thread which joins our earth
+to heaven, this bridge between experience and the realms where
+unattainable and imperceptible will have no meaning.
+
+If we are right in defining art as the manifestation of the human
+spirit to man by man in beautiful form, poetry, more incontestably
+than any other art, fulfils this definition and enables us to gauge
+its accuracy. For words are the spirit, manifested to itself in
+symbols with no sensual alloy. Poetry is therefore the presentation,
+through words, of life and all that life implies. Perception, emotion,
+thought, action, find in descriptive, lyrical, reflective, dramatic,
+and epical poetry their immediate apocalypse. In poetry we are no
+longer puzzled with problems as to whether art has or has not of
+necessity a spiritual content. There cannot be any poetry whatsoever
+without a spiritual meaning of some sort: good or bad, moral,
+immoral, or non-moral, obscure or lucid, noble or ignoble, slight or
+weighty--such distinctions do not signify. In poetry we are not met by
+questions whether the poet intended to convey a meaning when he made
+it. Quite meaningless poetry (as some critics would fain find melody
+quite meaningless, or a statue meaningless, or a Venetian picture
+meaningless) is a contradiction in terms. In poetry, life, or a
+portion of life, lives again, resuscitated and presented to our mental
+faculty through art. The best poetry is that which reproduces the most
+of life, or its intensest moments. Therefore the extensive species of
+the drama and the epic, the intensive species of the lyric, have been
+ever held in highest esteem. Only a half-crazy critic flaunts the
+paradox that poetry is excellent in so far as it assimilates the
+vagueness of music, or estimates a poet by his power of translating
+sense upon the borderland of nonsense into melodious words. Where
+poetry falls short in the comparison with other arts, is in the
+quality of form-giving, in the quality of sensuous concreteness.
+Poetry can only present forms to the mental eye and to the
+intellectual sense, stimulate the physical senses by indirect
+suggestion. Therefore dramatic poetry, the most complicated kind of
+poetry, relies upon the actor; and lyrical poetry, the intensest kind
+of poetry, seeks the aid of music. But these comparative deficiencies
+are overbalanced, for all the highest purposes of art, by the
+width and depth, the intelligibility and power, the flexibility and
+multitudinous associations, of language. The other arts are limited in
+what they utter. There is nothing which has entered into the life of
+man which poetry cannot express. Poetry says everything in man's own
+language to the mind. The other arts appeal imperatively, each in its
+own region, to man's senses; and the mind receives art's message
+by the help of symbols from the world of sense. Poetry lacks this
+immediate appeal to sense. But the elixir which it offers to the mind,
+its quintessence extracted from all things of sense, reacts through
+intellectual perception upon all the faculties that make men what they
+are.
+
+VII
+
+I used a metaphor in one of the foregoing paragraphs to indicate the
+presence of the vital spirit, the essential element of thought or
+feeling, in the work of art. I said it radiated through the form, as
+lamplight through an alabaster vase. Now the skill of the artist is
+displayed in modelling that vase, in giving it shape, rich and rare,
+and fashioning its curves with subtlest workmanship. In so far as he
+is a craftsman, the artist's pains must be bestowed upon this precious
+vessel of the animating theme. In so far as he has power over beauty,
+he must exert it in this plastic act. It is here that he displays
+dexterity; here that he creates; here that he separates himself from
+other men who think and feel. The poet, more perhaps than any other
+artist, needs to keep this steadily in view; for words being our daily
+vehicle of utterance, it may well chance that the alabaster vase of
+language should be hastily or trivially modelled. This is the true
+reason why 'neither gods nor men nor the columns either suffer
+mediocrity in singers.' Upon the poet it is specially incumbent to see
+that he has something rare to say and some rich mode of saying it. The
+figurative arts need hardly be so cautioned. They run their risk in
+quite a different direction. For sculptor and for painter, the danger
+is lest he should think that alabaster vase his final task. He may too
+easily be satisfied with moulding a beautiful but empty form.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The last word on the topic of the arts is given in one sentence. Let
+us remember that every work of art enshrines a spiritual subject, and
+that the artist's power is shown in finding for that subject a form of
+ideal loveliness. Many kindred points remain to be discussed; as what
+we mean by beauty, which is a condition indispensable to noble art;
+and what are the relations of the arts to ethics. These questions
+cannot now be raised. It is enough in one essay to have tried to
+vindicate the spirituality of art in general.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+_A VENETIAN MEDLEY_
+
+
+I.--FIRST IMPRESSIONS AND FAMILIARITY
+
+It is easy to feel and to say something obvious about Venice. The
+influence of this sea-city is unique, immediate, and unmistakable. But
+to express the sober truth of those impressions which remain when the
+first astonishment of the Venetian revelation has subsided, when the
+spirit of the place has been harmonised through familiarity with our
+habitual mood, is difficult.
+
+Venice inspires at first an almost Corybantic rapture. From our
+earliest visits, if these have been measured by days rather than
+weeks, we carry away with us the memory of sunsets emblazoned in gold
+and crimson upon cloud and water; of violet domes and bell-towers
+etched against the orange of a western sky; of moonlight silvering
+breeze-rippled breadths of liquid blue; of distant islands shimmering
+in sun-litten haze; of music and black gliding boats; of labyrinthine
+darkness made for mysteries of love and crime; of statue-fretted
+palace fronts; of brazen clangour and a moving crowd; of pictures by
+earth's proudest painters, cased in gold on walls of council chambers
+where Venice sat enthroned a queen, where nobles swept the floors with
+robes of Tyrian brocade. These reminiscences will be attended by an
+ever-present sense of loneliness and silence in the world around; the
+sadness of a limitless horizon, the solemnity of an unbroken arch of
+heaven, the calm and greyness of evening on the lagoons, the pathos of
+a marble city crumbling to its grave in mud and brine.
+
+These first impressions of Venice are true. Indeed they are
+inevitable. They abide, and form a glowing background for all
+subsequent pictures, toned more austerely, and painted in more lasting
+hues of truth upon the brain. Those have never felt Venice at all who
+have not known this primal rapture, or who perhaps expected more of
+colour, more of melodrama, from a scene which nature and the art of
+man have made the richest in these qualities. Yet the mood engendered
+by this first experience is not destined to be permanent. It contains
+an element of unrest and unreality which vanishes upon familiarity.
+From the blare of that triumphal bourdon of brass instruments emerge
+the delicate voices of violin and clarinette. To the contrasted
+passions of our earliest love succeed a multitude of sweet and
+fanciful emotions. It is my present purpose to recapture some of the
+impressions made by Venice in more tranquil moods. Memory might
+be compared to a kaleidoscope. Far away from Venice I raise the
+wonder-working tube, allow the glittering fragments to settle as they
+please, and with words attempt to render something of the patterns I
+behold.
+
+II.--A LODGING IN SAN VIO
+
+I have escaped from the hotels with their bustle of tourists and
+crowded _tables-d'hote_. My garden stretches down to the Grand
+Canal, closed at the end with a pavilion, where I lounge and smoke and
+watch the cornice of the Prefettura fretted with gold in sunset light.
+My sitting-room and bed-room face the southern sun. There is a canal
+below, crowded with gondolas, and across its bridge the good folk
+of San Vio come and go the whole day long--men in blue shirts with
+enormous hats, and jackets slung on their left shoulder; women in
+kerchiefs of orange and crimson. Barelegged boys sit upon the parapet,
+dangling their feet above the rising tide. A hawker passes, balancing
+a basket full of live and crawling crabs. Barges filled with Brenta
+water or Mirano wine take up their station at the neighbouring steps,
+and then ensues a mighty splashing and hurrying to and fro of men with
+tubs upon their heads. The brawny fellows in the wine-barge are red
+from brows to breast with drippings of the vat. And now there is a
+bustle in the quarter. A _barca_ has arrived from S. Erasmo, the
+island of the market-gardens. It is piled with gourds and pumpkins,
+cabbages and tomatoes, pomegranates and pears--a pyramid of gold and
+green and scarlet. Brown men lift the fruit aloft, and women bending
+from the pathway bargain for it. A clatter of chaffering tongues, a
+ring of coppers, a Babel of hoarse sea-voices, proclaim the sharpness
+of the struggle. When the quarter has been served, the boat sheers
+off diminished in its burden. Boys and girls are left seasoning their
+polenta with a slice of _zucca_, while the mothers of a score of
+families go pattering up yonder courtyard with the material for their
+husbands' supper in their handkerchiefs. Across the canal, or more
+correctly the _Rio_, opens a wide grass-grown court. It is
+lined on the right hand by a row of poor dwellings, swarming with
+gondoliers' children. A garden wall runs along the other side, over
+which I can see pomegranate-trees in fruit and pergolas of vines. Far
+beyond are more low houses, and then the sky, swept with sea-breezes,
+and the masts of an ocean-going ship against the dome and turrets of
+Palladio's Redentore.
+
+This is my home. By day it is as lively as a scene in
+_Masaniello_. By night, after nine o'clock, the whole stir of the
+quarter has subsided. Far away I hear the bell of some church tell
+the hours. But no noise disturbs my rest, unless perhaps a belated
+gondolier moors his boat beneath the window. My one maid, Catina,
+sings at her work the whole day through. My gondolier, Francesco,
+acts as valet. He wakes me in the morning, opens the shutters, brings
+sea-water for my bath, and takes his orders for the day. 'Will it do
+for Chioggia, Francesco?' 'Sissignore! The Signorino has set off in
+his _sandolo_ already with Antonio. The Signora is to go with us
+in the gondola.' 'Then get three more men, Francesco, and see that all
+of them can sing.'
+
+III.--TO CHIOGGIA WITH OAR AND SAIL
+
+The _sandolo_ is a boat shaped like the gondola, but smaller
+and lighter, without benches, and without the high steel prow or
+_ferro_ which distinguishes the gondola. The gunwale is only just
+raised above the water, over which the little craft skims with a rapid
+bounding motion, affording an agreeable variation from the stately
+swanlike movement of the gondola. In one of these boats--called by
+him the _Fisolo_ or Seamew--my friend Eustace had started with
+Antonio, intending to row the whole way to Chioggia, or, if the breeze
+favoured, to hoist a sail and help himself along. After breakfast,
+when the crew for my gondola had been assembled, Francesco and I
+followed with the Signora. It was one of those perfect mornings which
+occur as a respite from broken weather, when the air is windless and
+the light falls soft through haze on the horizon. As we broke into the
+lagoon behind the Redentore, the islands in front of us, S. Spirito,
+Poveglia, Malamocco, seemed as though they were just lifted from the
+sea-line. The Euganeans, far away to westward, were bathed in mist,
+and almost blent with the blue sky. Our four rowers put their backs
+into their work; and soon we reached the port of Malamocco, where a
+breeze from the Adriatic caught us sideways for a while. This is
+the largest of the breaches in the Lidi, or raised sand-reefs, which
+protect Venice from the sea: it affords an entrance to vessels of
+draught like the steamers of the Peninsular and Oriental Company. We
+crossed the dancing wavelets of the port; but when we passed under the
+lee of Pelestrina, the breeze failed, and the lagoon was once again a
+sheet of undulating glass. At S. Pietro on this island a halt was made
+to give the oarsmen wine, and here we saw the women at their cottage
+doorways making lace. The old lace industry of Venice has recently
+been revived. From Burano and Pelestrina cargoes of hand-made
+imitations of the ancient fabrics are sent at intervals to Jesurun's
+magazine at S. Marco. He is the chief _impresario_ of the trade,
+employing hundreds of hands, and speculating for a handsome profit in
+the foreign market on the price he gives his workwomen.
+
+Now we are well lost in the lagoons--Venice no longer visible behind;
+the Alps and Euganeans shrouded in a noonday haze; the lowlands at the
+mouth of Brenta marked by clumps of trees ephemerally faint in silver
+silhouette against the filmy, shimmering horizon. Form and colour
+have disappeared in light-irradiated vapour of an opal hue. And yet
+instinctively we know that we are not at sea; the different quality
+of the water, the piles emerging here and there above the surface, the
+suggestion of coast-lines scarcely felt in this infinity of lustre,
+all remind us that our voyage is confined to the charmed limits of an
+inland lake. At length the jutting headland of Pelestrina was reached.
+We broke across the Porto di Chioggia, and saw Chioggia itself
+ahead--a huddled mass of houses low upon the water. One by one, as
+we rowed steadily, the fishing-boats passed by, emerging from their
+harbour for a twelve hours' cruise upon the open sea. In a long
+line they came, with variegated sails of orange, red, and saffron,
+curiously chequered at the corners, and cantled with devices in
+contrasted tints. A little land-breeze carried them forward. The
+lagoon reflected their deep colours till they reached the port. Then,
+slightly swerving eastward on their course, but still in single file,
+they took the sea and scattered, like beautiful bright-plumaged birds,
+who from a streamlet float into a lake, and find their way at large
+according as each wills.
+
+The Signorino and Antonio, though want of wind obliged them to row the
+whole way from Venice, had reached Chioggia an hour before, and stood
+waiting to receive us on the quay. It is a quaint town this Chioggia,
+which has always lived a separate life from that of Venice. Language
+and race and customs have held the two populations apart from those
+distant years when Genoa and the Republic of S. Mark fought their duel
+to the death out in the Chioggian harbours, down to these days, when
+your Venetian gondolier will tell you that the Chioggoto loves his
+pipe more than his _donna_ or his wife. The main canal is lined
+with substantial palaces, attesting to old wealth and comfort. But
+from Chioggia, even more than from Venice, the tide of modern luxury
+and traffic has retreated. The place is left to fishing folk and
+builders of the fishing craft, whose wharves still form the liveliest
+quarter. Wandering about its wide deserted courts and _calli_,
+we feel the spirit of the decadent Venetian nobility. Passages from
+Goldoni's and Casanova's Memoirs occur to our memory. It seems easy to
+realise what they wrote about the dishevelled gaiety and lawless
+license of Chioggia in the days of powder, sword-knot, and _soprani_.
+Baffo walks beside us in hypocritical composure of bag-wig and
+senatorial dignity, whispering unmentionable sonnets in his dialect of
+_Xe_ and _Ga_. Somehow or another that last dotage of S. Mark's
+decrepitude is more recoverable by our fancy than the heroism of
+Pisani in the fourteenth century. From his prison in blockaded Venice
+the great admiral was sent forth on a forlorn hope, and blocked
+victorious Doria here with boats on which the nobles of the Golden
+Book had spent their fortunes. Pietro Doria boasted that with his own
+hands he would bridle the bronze horses of S. Mark. But now he found
+himself between the navy of Carlo Zeno in the Adriatic and the
+flotilla led by Vittore Pisani across the lagoon. It was in vain that
+the Republic of S. George strained every nerve to send him succour
+from the Ligurian sea; in vain that the lords of Padua kept opening
+communications with him from the mainland. From the 1st of January
+1380 till the 21st of June the Venetians pressed the blockade ever
+closer, grappling their foemen in a grip that if relaxed one moment
+would have hurled him at their throats. The long and breathless
+struggle ended in the capitulation at Chioggia of what remained of
+Doria's forty-eight galleys and fourteen thousand men.
+
+These great deeds are far away and hazy. The brief sentences of
+mediaeval annalists bring them less near to us than the _chroniques
+scandaleuses_ of good-for-nothing scoundrels, whose vulgar adventures
+might be revived at the present hour with scarce a change of setting.
+Such is the force of _intimite_ in literature. And yet Baffo and
+Casanova are as much of the past as Doria and Pisani. It is only
+perhaps that the survival of decadence in all we see around us, forms
+a fitting framework for our recollections of their vividly described
+corruption.
+
+Not far from the landing-place a balustraded bridge of ample breadth
+and large bravura manner spans the main canal. Like everything at
+Chioggia, it is dirty and has fallen from its first estate. Yet
+neither time nor injury can obliterate style or wholly degrade marble.
+Hard by the bridge there are two rival inns. At one of these we
+ordered a seadinner--crabs, cuttlefishes, soles, and turbots--which
+we ate at a table in the open air. Nothing divided us from the street
+except a row of Japanese privet-bushes in hooped tubs. Our banquet
+soon assumed a somewhat unpleasant similitude to that of Dives; for
+the Chioggoti, in all stages of decrepitude and squalor, crowded round
+to beg for scraps--indescribable old women, enveloped in their own
+petticoats thrown over their heads; girls hooded with sombre black
+mantles; old men wrinkled beyond recognition by their nearest
+relatives; jabbering, half-naked boys; slow, slouching fishermen with
+clay pipes in their mouths and philosophical acceptance on their sober
+foreheads.
+
+That afternoon the gondola and sandolo were lashed together side
+by side. Two sails were raised, and in this lazy fashion we stole
+homewards, faster or slower according as the breeze freshened or
+slackened, landing now and then on islands, sauntering along the
+sea-walls which bulwark Venice from the Adriatic, and singing--those
+at least of us who had the power to sing. Four of our Venetians had
+trained voices and memories of inexhaustible music. Over the level
+water, with the ripple plashing at our keel, their songs went abroad,
+and mingled with the failing day. The barcaroles and serenades
+peculiar to Venice were, of course, in harmony with the occasion.
+But some transcripts from classical operas were even more attractive,
+through the dignity with which these men invested them. By the
+peculiarity of their treatment the _recitativo_ of the stage
+assumed a solemn movement, marked in rhythm, which removed it from
+the commonplace into antiquity, and made me understand how cultivated
+music may pass back by natural, unconscious transition into the realm
+of popular melody.
+
+The sun sank, not splendidly, but quietly in banks of clouds above
+the Alps. Stars came out, uncertainly at first, and then in strength,
+reflected on the sea. The men of the Dogana watch-boat challenged us
+and let us pass. Madonna's lamp was twinkling from her shrine upon the
+harbour-pile. The city grew before us. Stealing into Venice in that
+calm--stealing silently and shadowlike, with scarce a ruffle of the
+water, the masses of the town emerging out of darkness into twilight,
+till San Giorgio's gun boomed with a flash athwart our stern, and the
+gas-lamps of the Piazzetta swam into sight; all this was like a long
+enchanted chapter of romance. And now the music of our men had sunk to
+one faint whistling from Eustace of tunes in harmony with whispers at
+the prow.
+
+Then came the steps of the Palazzo Venier and the deep-scented
+darkness of the garden. As we passed through to supper, I plucked a
+spray of yellow Banksia rose, and put it in my buttonhole. The dew was
+on its burnished leaves, and evening had drawn forth its perfume.
+
+IV.--MORNING RAMBLES
+
+A story is told of Poussin, the French painter, that when he was asked
+why he would not stay in Venice, he replied, 'If I stay here, I
+shall become a colourist!' A somewhat similar tale is reported of a
+fashionable English decorator. While on a visit to friends in Venice,
+he avoided every building which contains a Tintoretto, averring that
+the sight of Tintoretto's pictures would injure his carefully trained
+taste. It is probable that neither anecdote is strictly true. Yet
+there is a certain epigrammatic point in both; and I have often
+speculated whether even Venice could have so warped the genius of
+Poussin as to shed one ray of splendour on his canvases, or whether
+even Tintoretto could have so sublimed the prophet of Queen Anne as to
+make him add dramatic passion to a London drawing-room. Anyhow, it is
+exceedingly difficult to escape from colour in the air of Venice, or
+from Tintoretto in her buildings. Long, delightful mornings may be
+spent in the enjoyment of the one and the pursuit of the other by folk
+who have no classical or pseudo-mediaeval theories to oppress them.
+
+Tintoretto's house, though changed, can still be visited. It formed
+part of the Fondamenta dei Mori, so called from having been the
+quarter assigned to Moorish traders in Venice. A spirited carving of a
+turbaned Moor leading a camel charged with merchandise, remains above
+the waterline of a neighbouring building; and all about the crumbling
+walls sprout flowering weeds--samphire and snapdragon and the spiked
+campanula, which shoots a spire of sea-blue stars from chinks of
+Istrian stone.
+
+The house stands opposite the Church of Santa Maria dell' Orto, where
+Tintoretto was buried, and where four of his chief masterpieces are
+to be seen. This church, swept and garnished, is a triumph of modern
+Italian restoration. They have contrived to make it as commonplace as
+human ingenuity could manage. Yet no malice of ignorant industry can
+obscure the treasures it contains--the pictures of Cima, Gian Bellini,
+Palma, and the four Tintorettos, which form its crowning glory. Here
+the master may be studied in four of his chief moods: as the painter
+of tragic passion and movement, in the huge 'Last Judgment;' as the
+painter of impossibilities, in the 'Vision of Moses upon Sinai;'
+as the painter of purity and tranquil pathos, in the 'Miracle of S.
+Agnes;' as the painter of Biblical history brought home to daily life,
+in the 'Presentation of the Virgin.' Without leaving the Madonna dell'
+Orto, a student can explore his genius in all its depth and breadth;
+comprehend the enthusiasm he excites in those who seek, as the
+essentials of art, imaginative boldness and sincerity; understand what
+is meant by adversaries who maintain that, after all, Tintoretto was
+but an inspired Gustave Dore. Between that quiet canvas of the
+'Presentation,' so modest in its cool greys and subdued gold, and the
+tumult of flying, running? doesn't make much sense, but can't figure
+out a plausible alternative, ascending figures in the 'Judgment,' what
+an interval there is! How strangely the white lamb-like maiden,
+kneeling beside her lamb in the picture of S. Agnes, contrasts with
+the dusky gorgeousness of the Hebrew women despoiling themselves of
+jewels for the golden calf! Comparing these several manifestations of
+creative power, we feel ourselves in the grasp of a painter who was
+essentially a poet, one for whom his art was the medium for expressing
+before all things thought and passion. Each picture is executed in the
+manner suited to its tone of feeling, the key of its conception.
+
+Elsewhere than in the Madonna dell' Orto there are more distinguished
+single examples of Tintoretto's realising faculty. The 'Last Supper'
+in San Giorgio, for instance, and the 'Adoration of the Shepherds'
+in the Scuola di San Rocco illustrate his unique power of presenting
+sacred history in a novel, romantic framework of familiar things.
+The commonplace circumstances of ordinary life have been employed to
+portray in the one case a lyric of mysterious splendour; in the other,
+an idyll of infinite sweetness. Divinity shines through the rafters
+of that upper chamber, where round a low large table the Apostles
+are assembled in a group translated from the social customs of the
+painter's days. Divinity is shed upon the straw-spread manger, where
+Christ lies sleeping in the loft, with shepherds crowding through the
+room beneath.
+
+A studied contrast between the simplicity and repose of the central
+figure and the tumult of passions in the multitude around, may be
+observed in the 'Miracle of S. Agnes.' It is this which gives dramatic
+vigour to the composition. But the same effect is carried to its
+highest fulfilment, with even a loftier beauty, in the episode of
+Christ before the judgment-seat of Pilate, at San Rocco. Of all
+Tintoretto's religious pictures, that is the most profoundly felt, the
+most majestic. No other artist succeeded as he has here succeeded in
+presenting to us God incarnate. For this Christ is not merely the
+just man, innocent, silent before his accusers. The stationary,
+white-draped figure, raised high above the agitated crowd, with
+tranquil forehead slightly bent, facing his perplexed and fussy judge,
+is more than man. We cannot say perhaps precisely why he is divine.
+But Tintoretto has made us feel that he is. In other words, his
+treatment of the high theme chosen by him has been adequate.
+
+We must seek the Scuola di San Rocco for examples of Tintoretto's
+liveliest imagination. Without ceasing to be Italian in his attention
+to harmony and grace, he far exceeded the masters of his nation in the
+power of suggesting what is weird, mysterious, upon the borderland
+of the grotesque. And of this quality there are three remarkable
+instances in the Scuola. No one but Tintoretto could have evoked
+the fiend in his 'Temptation of Christ.' It is an indescribable
+hermaphroditic genius, the genius of carnal fascination, with
+outspread downy rose-plumed wings, and flaming bracelets on the full
+but sinewy arms, who kneels and lifts aloft great stones, smiling
+entreatingly to the sad, grey Christ seated beneath a rugged
+pent-house of the desert. No one again but Tintoretto could have
+dashed the hot lights of that fiery sunset in such quivering flakes
+upon the golden flesh of Eve, half hidden among laurels, as she
+stretches forth the fruit of the Fall to shrinking Adam. No one but
+Tintoretto, till we come to Blake, could have imagined yonder Jonah,
+summoned by the beck of God from the whale's belly. The monstrous
+fish rolls over in the ocean, blowing portentous vapour from his
+trump-shaped nostril. The prophet's beard descends upon his naked
+breast in hoary ringlets to the girdle. He has forgotten the past
+peril of the deep, although the whale's jaws yawn around him. Between
+him and the outstretched finger of Jehovah calling him again to life,
+there runs a spark of unseen spiritual electricity.
+
+To comprehend Tintoretto's touch upon the pastoral idyll we must turn
+our steps to San Giorgio again, and pace those meadows by the
+running river in company with his Manna-Gatherers. Or we may seek the
+Accademia, and notice how he here has varied the 'Temptation of Adam
+by Eve,' choosing a less tragic motive of seduction than the one so
+powerfully rendered at San Rocco. Or in the Ducal Palace we may
+take our station, hour by hour, before the 'Marriage of Bacchus and
+Ariadne.' It is well to leave the very highest achievements of art
+untouched by criticism, undescribed. And in this picture we have the
+most perfect of all modern attempts to realise an antique myth--more
+perfect than Raphael's 'Galatea,' or Titian's 'Meeting of Bacchus
+with Ariadne,' or Botticelli's 'Birth of Venus from the Sea.' It may
+suffice to marvel at the slight effect which melodies so powerful and
+so direct as these produce upon the ordinary public. Sitting, as is my
+wont, one Sunday morning, opposite the 'Bacchus,' four Germans with a
+cicerone sauntered by. The subject was explained to them. They waited
+an appreciable space of time. Then the youngest opened his lips and
+spake: 'Bacchus war der Wein-Gott.' And they all moved heavily away.
+_Bos locutus est_. 'Bacchus was the wine-god!' This, apparently,
+is what a picture tells to one man. To another it presents divine
+harmonies, perceptible indeed in nature, but here by the painter-poet
+for the first time brought together and cadenced in a work of art. For
+another it is perhaps the hieroglyph of pent-up passions and desired
+impossibilities. For yet another it may only mean the unapproachable
+inimitable triumph of consummate craft.
+
+Tintoretto, to be rightly understood, must be sought all over
+Venice--in the church as well as the Scuola di San Rocco; in
+the 'Temptation of S. Anthony' at S. Trovaso no less than in the
+Temptations of Eve and Christ; in the decorative pomp of the Sala del
+Senato, and in the Paradisal vision of the Sala del Gran Consiglio.
+Yet, after all, there is one of his most characteristic moods, to
+appreciate which fully we return to the Madonna dell' Orto. I have
+called him 'the painter of impossibilities.' At rare moments he
+rendered them possible by sheer imaginative force. If we wish to
+realise this phase of his creative power, and to measure our own
+subordination to his genius in its most hazardous enterprise, we
+must spend much time in the choir of this church. Lovers of art who
+mistrust this play of the audacious fancy--aiming at sublimity in
+supersensual regions, sometimes attaining to it by stupendous effort
+or authentic revelation, not seldom sinking to the verge of bathos,
+and demanding the assistance of interpretative sympathy in the
+spectator--such men will not take the point of view required of them
+by Tintoretto in his boldest flights, in the 'Worship of the Golden
+Calf' and in the 'Destruction of the World by Water.' It is for them
+to ponder well the flying archangel with the scales of judgment in his
+hand, and the seraph-charioted Jehovah enveloping Moses upon Sinai in
+lightnings.
+
+The gondola has had a long rest. Were Francesco but a little more
+impatient, he might be wondering what had become of the padrone. I bid
+him turn, and we are soon gliding into the Sacca della Misericordia.
+This is a protected float, where the wood which comes from Cadore
+and the hills of the Ampezzo is stored in spring. Yonder square white
+house, standing out to sea, fronting Murano and the Alps, they call
+the Oasa degli Spiriti. No one cares to inhabit it; for here, in old
+days, it was the wont of the Venetians to lay their dead for a night's
+rest before their final journey to the graveyard of S. Michele. So
+many generations of dead folk had made that house their inn, that it
+is now no fitting home for living men. San Michele is the island close
+before Murano, where the Lombardi built one of their most romantically
+graceful churches of pale Istrian stone, and where the Campo Santo has
+for centuries received the dead into its oozy clay. The cemetery is at
+present undergoing restoration. Its state of squalor and abandonment
+to cynical disorder makes one feel how fitting for Italians would be
+the custom of cremation. An island in the lagoons devoted to funeral
+pyres is a solemn and ennobling conception. This graveyard, with
+its ruinous walls, its mangy riot of unwholesome weeds, its corpses
+festering in slime beneath neglected slabs in hollow chambers, and the
+mephitic wash of poisoned waters that surround it, inspires the horror
+of disgust.
+
+The morning has not lost its freshness. Antelao and Tofana, guarding
+the vale above Cortina, show faint streaks of snow upon their
+amethyst. Little clouds hang in the still autumn sky. There are men
+dredging for shrimps and crabs through shoals uncovered by the ebb.
+Nothing can be lovelier, more resting to eyes tired with pictures than
+this tranquil, sunny expanse of the lagoon. As we round the point of
+the Bersaglio, new landscapes of island and Alp and low-lying mainland
+move into sight at every slow stroke of the oar. A luggage-train
+comes lumbering along the railway bridge, puffing white smoke into
+the placid blue. Then we strike down Cannaregio, and I muse upon
+processions of kings and generals and noble strangers, entering Venice
+by this water-path from Mestre, before the Austrians built their
+causeway for the trains. Some of the rare scraps of fresco upon house
+fronts, still to be seen in Venice, are left in Cannaregio. They
+are chiaroscuro allegories in a bold bravura manner of the sixteenth
+century. From these and from a few rosy fragments on the Fondaco
+dei Tedeschi, the Fabbriche Nuove, and precious fading figures in a
+certain courtyard near San Stefano, we form some notion how Venice
+looked when all her palaces were painted. Pictures by Gentile Bellini,
+Mansueti, and Carpaccio help the fancy in this work of restoration.
+And here and there, in back canals, we come across coloured sections
+of old buildings, capped by true Venetian chimneys, which for a moment
+seem to realise our dream.
+
+A morning with Tintoretto might well be followed by a morning with
+Carpaccio or Bellini. But space is wanting in these pages. Nor would
+it suit the manner of this medley to hunt the Lombardi through palaces
+and churches, pointing out their singularities of violet and yellow
+panellings in marble, the dignity of their wide-opened arches, or the
+delicacy of their shallow chiselled traceries in cream-white
+Istrian stone. It is enough to indicate the goal of many a pleasant
+pilgrimage: warrior angels of Vivarini and Basaiti hidden in a dark
+chapel of the Frari; Fra Francesco's fantastic orchard of fruits and
+flowers in distant S. Francesco della Vigna; the golden Gian Bellini
+in S. Zaccaria; Palma's majestic S. Barbara in S. Maria Formosa; San
+Giobbe's wealth of sculptured frieze and floral scroll; the Ponte
+di Paradiso, with its Gothic arch; the painted plates in the Museo
+Civico; and palace after palace, loved for some quaint piece of
+tracery, some moulding full of mediaeval symbolism, some fierce
+impossible Renaissance freak of fancy.
+
+Bather than prolong this list, I will tell a story which drew me one
+day past the Public Gardens to the metropolitan Church of Venice, San
+Pietro di Castello. The novella is related by Bandello. It has, as
+will be noticed, points of similarity to that of 'Romeo and Juliet.'
+
+V.--A VENETIAN NOVELLA
+
+At the time when Carpaccio and Gentile Bellini were painting those
+handsome youths in tight jackets, parti-coloured hose, and little
+round caps placed awry upon their shocks of well-combed hair, there
+lived in Venice two noblemen, Messer Pietro and Messer Paolo, whose
+palaces fronted each other on the Grand Canal. Messer Paolo was a
+widower, with one married daughter, and an only son of twenty years or
+thereabouts, named Gerardo. Messer Pietro's wife was still living; and
+this couple had but one child, a daughter, called Elena, of exceeding
+beauty, aged fourteen. Gerardo, as is the wont of gallants, was paying
+his addresses to a certain lady; and nearly every day he had to cross
+the Grand Canal in his gondola, and to pass beneath the house of Elena
+on his way to visit his Dulcinea; for this lady lived some distance
+up a little canal on which the western side of Messer Pietro's palace
+looked.
+
+Now it so happened that at the very time when the story opens, Messer
+Pietro's wife fell ill and died, and Elena was left alone at home with
+her father and her old nurse. Across the little canal of which I spoke
+there dwelt another nobleman, with four daughters, between the years
+of seventeen and twenty-one. Messer Pietro, desiring to provide
+amusement for poor little Elena, besought this gentleman that his
+daughters might come on feast-days to play with her. For you must know
+that, except on festivals of the Church, the custom of Venice required
+that gentlewomen should remain closely shut within the private
+apartments of their dwellings. His request was readily granted; and on
+the next feast-day the five girls began to play at ball together for
+forfeits in the great saloon, which opened with its row of Gothic
+arches and balustraded balcony upon the Grand Canal. The four sisters,
+meanwhile, had other thoughts than for the game. One or other of them,
+and sometimes three together, would let the ball drop, and run to the
+balcony to gaze upon their gallants, passing up and down in gondolas
+below; and then they would drop flowers or ribands for tokens. Which
+negligence of theirs annoyed Elena much; for she thought only of the
+game. Wherefore she scolded them in childish wise, and one of them
+made answer, 'Elena, if you only knew how pleasant it is to play as we
+are playing on this balcony, you would not care so much for ball and
+forfeits!'
+
+On one of those feast-days the four sisters were prevented from
+keeping their little friend company. Elena, with nothing to do, and
+feeling melancholy, leaned upon the window-sill which overlooked the
+narrow canal. And it chanced that just then Gerardo, on his way to
+Dulcinea, went by; and Elena looked down at him, as she had seen those
+sisters look at passers-by. Gerardo caught her eye, and glances passed
+between them, and Gerardo's gondolier, bending from the poop, said
+to his master, 'O master! methinks that gentle maiden is better worth
+your wooing than Dulcinea.' Gerardo pretended to pay no heed to these
+words; but after rowing a little way, he bade the man turn, and they
+went slowly back beneath the window. This time Elena, thinking to play
+the game which her four friends had played, took from her hair a clove
+carnation and let it fall close to Gerardo on the cushion of the
+gondola. He raised the flower and put it to his lips, acknowledging
+the courtesy with a grave bow. But the perfume of the clove and the
+beauty of Elena in that moment took possession of his heart together,
+and straightway he forgot Dulcinea.
+
+As yet he knew not who Elena was. Nor is this wonderful; for the
+daughters of Venetian nobles were but rarely seen or spoken of.
+But the thought of her haunted him awake and sleeping; and every
+feast-day, when there was the chance of seeing her, he rowed his
+gondola beneath her windows. And there she appeared to him in company
+with her four friends; the five girls clustering together like sister
+roses beneath the pointed windows of the Gothic balcony. Elena, on her
+side, had no thought of love; for of love she had heard no one speak.
+But she took pleasure in the game those friends had taught her, of
+leaning from the balcony to watch Gerardo. He meanwhile grew love-sick
+and impatient, wondering how he might declare his passion. Until one
+day it happened that, talking through a lane or _calle_ which
+skirted Messer Pietro'a palace, he caught sight of Elena's nurse, who
+was knocking at the door, returning from some shopping she had
+made. This nurse had been his own nurse in childhood; therefore he
+remembered her, and cried aloud, 'Nurse, Nurse!' But the old woman did
+not hear him, and passed into the house and shut the door behind her.
+Whereupon Gerardo, greatly moved, still called to her, and when he
+reached the door, began to knock upon it violently. And whether it
+was the agitation of finding himself at last so near the wish of his
+heart, or whether the pains of waiting for his love had weakened him,
+I know not; but, while he knocked, his senses left him, and he fell
+fainting in the doorway. Then the nurse recognised the youth to whom
+she had given suck, and brought him into the courtyard by the help of
+handmaidens, and Elena came down and gazed upon him. The house was now
+full of bustle, and Messer Pietro heard the noise, and seeing the son
+of his neighbour in so piteous a plight, he caused Gerardo to be laid
+upon a bed. But for all they could do with him, he recovered not from
+his swoon. And after a while force was that they should place him in
+a gondola and ferry him across to his father's house. The nurse went
+with him, and informed Messer Paolo of what had happened. Doctors were
+sent for, and the whole family gathered round Gerardo's bed. After
+a while he revived a little; and thinking himself still upon the
+doorstep of Pietro's palace, called again, 'Nurse, Nurse!' She was
+near at hand, and would have spoken to him. But while he summoned his
+senses to his aid, he became gradually aware of his own kinsfolk
+and dissembled the secret of his grief. They beholding him in better
+cheer, departed on their several ways, and the nurse still sat alone
+beside him. Then he explained to her what he had at heart, and how he
+was in love with a maiden whom he had seen on feast-days in the
+house of Messer Pietro. But still he knew not Elena's name; and she,
+thinking it impossible that such a child had inspired this passion,
+began to marvel which of the four sisters it was Gerardo loved. Then
+they appointed the next Sunday, when all the five girls should be
+together, for Gerardo by some sign, as he passed beneath the window,
+to make known to the old nurse his lady.
+
+Elena, meanwhile, who had watched Gerardo lying still and pale in
+swoon beneath her on the pavement of the palace, felt the stirring
+of a new unknown emotion in her soul. When Sunday came, she devised
+excuses for keeping her four friends away, bethinking her that she
+might see him once again alone, and not betray the agitation which she
+dreaded. This ill suited the schemes of the nurse, who nevertheless
+was forced to be content. But after dinner, seeing how restless was
+the girl, and how she came and went, and ran a thousand times to the
+balcony, the nurse began to wonder whether Elena herself were not in
+love with some one. So she feigned to sleep, but placed herself within
+sight of the window. And soon Gerardo came by in his gondola; and
+Elena, who was prepared, threw to him her nosegay. The watchful nurse
+had risen, and peeping behind the girl's shoulder, saw at a glance how
+matters stood. Thereupon she began to scold her charge, and say, 'Is
+this a fair and comely thing, to stand all day at balconies and throw
+flowers at passers-by? Woe to you if your father should come to know
+of this! He would make you wish yourself among the dead!' Elena, sore
+troubled at her nurse's rebuke, turned and threw her arms about her
+neck, and called her 'Nanna!' as the wont is of Venetian children.
+Then she told the old woman how she had learned that game from the
+four sisters, and how she thought it was not different, but far
+more pleasant, than the game of forfeits; whereupon her nurse spoke
+gravely, explaining what love is, and how that love should lead to
+marriage, and bidding her search her own heart if haply she could
+choose Gerardo for her husband. There was no reason, as she knew, why
+Messer Paolo's son should not mate with Messer Pietro's daughter. But
+being a romantic creature, as many women are, she resolved to bring
+the match about in secret.
+
+Elena took little time to reflect, but told her nurse that she was
+willing, if Gerardo willed it too, to have him for her husband. Then
+went the nurse and made the young man know how matters stood, and
+arranged with him a day, when Messer Pietro should be in the Council
+of the Pregadi, and the servants of the palace otherwise employed,
+for him to come and meet his Elena. A glad man was Gerardo, nor did
+he wait to think how better it would be to ask the hand of Elena in
+marriage from her father. But when the day arrived, he sought the
+nurse, and she took him to a chamber in the palace, where there stood
+an image of the Blessed Virgin. Elena was there, pale and timid; and
+when the lovers clasped hands, neither found many words to say. But
+the nurse bade them take heart, and leading them before Our Lady,
+joined their hands, and made Gerardo place his ring on his bride's
+finger. After this fashion were Gerardo and Elena wedded. And for some
+while, by the assistance of the nurse, they dwelt together in much
+love and solace, meeting often as occasion offered.
+
+Messer Paolo, who knew nothing of these things, took thought meanwhile
+for his son's career. It was the season when the Signiory of Venice
+sends a fleet of galleys to Beirut with merchandise; and the noblemen
+may bid for the hiring of a ship, and charge it with wares, and
+send whomsoever they list as factor in their interest. One of these
+galleys, then, Messer Paolo engaged, and told his son that he had
+appointed him to journey with it and increase their wealth. 'On thy
+return, my son,' he said, 'we will bethink us of a wife for thee.'
+Gerardo, when he heard these words, was sore troubled, and first he
+told his father roundly that he would not go, and flew off in the
+twilight to pour out his perplexities to Elena. But she, who was
+prudent and of gentle soul, besought him to obey his father in this
+thing, to the end, moreover, that, having done his will and increased
+his wealth, he might afterwards unfold the story of their secret
+marriage. To these good counsels, though loth, Gerardo consented.
+His father was overjoyed at his son's repentance. The galley was
+straightway laden with merchandise, and Gerardo set forth on his
+voyage.
+
+The trip to Beirut and back lasted usually six months or at the most
+seven. Now when Gerardo had been some six months away, Messer Pietro,
+noticing how fair his daughter was, and how she had grown into
+womanhood, looked about him for a husband for her. When he had found a
+youth suitable in birth and wealth and years, he called for Elena, and
+told her that the day had been appointed for her marriage. She, alas!
+knew not what to answer. She feared to tell her father that she was
+already married, for she knew not whether this would please Gerardo.
+For the same reason she dreaded to throw herself upon the kindness of
+Messer Paolo. Nor was her nurse of any help in counsel; for the old
+woman repented her of what she had done, and had good cause to believe
+that, even if the marriage with Gerardo were accepted by the two
+fathers, they would punish her for her own part in the affair.
+Therefore she bade Elena wait on fortune, and hinted to her that, if
+the worst came to the worst, no one need know she had been wedded with
+the ring to Gerardo. Such weddings, you must know, were binding; but
+till they had been blessed by the Church, they had not taken the force
+of a religious sacrament. And this is still the case in Italy among
+the common folk, who will say of a man, 'Si, e ammogliato; ma il
+matrimonio non e stato benedetto.' 'Yes, he has taken a wife, but the
+marriage has not yet been blessed.'
+
+So the days flew by in doubt and sore distress for Elena. Then on the
+night before her wedding, she felt that she could bear this life no
+longer. But having no poison, and being afraid to pierce her bosom
+with a knife, she lay down on her bed alone, and tried to die by
+holding in her breath. A mortal swoon came over her; her senses fled;
+the life in her remained suspended. And when her nurse came next
+morning to call her, she found poor Elena cold as a corpse. Messer
+Pietro and all the household rushed, at the nurse's cries, into the
+room, and they all saw Elena stretched dead upon her bed undressed.
+Physicians were called, who made theories to explain the cause of
+death. But all believed that she was really dead, beyond all help
+of art or medicine. Nothing remained but to carry her to church for
+burial instead of marriage. Therefore, that very evening, a funeral
+procession was formed, which moved by torchlight up the Grand Canal,
+along the Riva, past the blank walls of the Arsenal, to the Campo
+before San Pietro in Castello. Elena lay beneath the black felze
+in one gondola, with a priest beside her praying, and other boats
+followed bearing mourners. Then they laid her in a marble chest
+outside the church, and all departed, still with torches burning, to
+their homes.
+
+Now it so fell out that upon that very evening Gerardo's galley had
+returned from Syria, and was anchoring within the port of Lido, which
+looks across to the island of Castello. It was the gentle custom of
+Venice at that time that, when a ship arrived from sea, the friends of
+those on board at once came out to welcome them, and take and give the
+news. Therefore many noble youths and other citizens were on the deck
+of Gerardo's galley, making merry with him over the safe conduct
+of his voyage. Of one of these he asked, 'Whose is yonder funeral
+procession returning from San Pietro?' The young man made answer,
+'Alas, for poor Elena, Messer Pietro's daughter! She should have been
+married this day. But death took her, and to-night they buried her
+in the marble monument outside the church.' A woeful man was Gerardo,
+hearing suddenly this news, and knowing what his dear wife must
+have suffered ere she died. Yet he restrained himself, daring not to
+disclose his anguish, and waited till his friends had left the galley.
+Then he called to him the captain of the oarsmen, who was his friend,
+and unfolded to him all the story of his love and sorrow, and said
+that he must go that night and see his wife once more, if even he
+should have to break her tomb. The captain tried to dissuade him, but
+in vain. Seeing him so obstinate, he resolved not to desert Gerardo.
+The two men took one of the galley's boats, and rowed together toward
+San Pietro. It was past midnight when they reached the Campo and broke
+the marble sepulchre asunder. Pushing back its lid, Gerardo descended
+into the grave and abandoned himself upon the body of his Elena. One
+who had seen them at that moment could not well have said which of the
+two was dead and which was living--Elena or her husband. Meantime the
+captain of the oarsmen, fearing lest the watch (set by the Masters of
+the Night to keep the peace of Venice) might arrive, was calling on
+Gerardo to come back. Gerardo heeded him no whit. But at the last,
+compelled by his entreaties, and as it were astonied, he arose,
+bearing his wife's corpse in his arms, and carried her clasped against
+his bosom to the boat, and laid her therein, and sat down by her
+side and kissed her frequently, and suffered not his friend's
+remonstrances. Force was for the captain, having brought himself into
+this scrape, that he should now seek refuge by the nearest way from
+justice. Therefore he hoved gently from the bank, and plied his oar,
+and brought the gondola apace into the open waters. Gerardo still
+clasped Elena, dying husband by dead wife. But the sea-breeze
+freshened towards daybreak; and the captain, looking down upon that
+pair, and bringing to their faces the light of his boat's lantern,
+judged their case not desperate at all. On Elena's cheek there was a
+flush of life less deadly even than the pallor of Gerardo's forehead.
+Thereupon the good man called aloud, and Gerardo started from his
+grief; and both together they chafed the hands and feet of Elena; and,
+the sea-breeze aiding with its saltness, they awoke in her the spark
+of life.
+
+Dimly burned the spark. But Gerardo, being aware of it, became a man
+again. Then, having taken counsel with the captain, both resolved
+to bear her to that brave man's mother's house. A bed was soon made
+ready, and food was brought; and after due time, she lifted up her
+face and knew Gerardo. The peril of the grave was past, but thought
+had now to be taken for the future. Therefore Gerardo, leaving his
+wife to the captain's mother, rowed back to the galley and prepared to
+meet his father. With good store of merchandise and with great gains
+from his traffic, he arrived in that old palace on the Grand Canal.
+Then having opened to Messer Paolo the matters of his journey, and
+shown him how he had fared, and set before him tables of disbursements
+and receipts, he seized the moment of his father's gladness. 'Father,'
+he said, and as he spoke he knelt upon his knees, 'Father, I bring you
+not good store of merchandise and bags of gold alone; I bring you also
+a wedded wife, whom I have saved this night from death.' And when
+the old man's surprise was quieted, he told him the whole story. Now
+Messer Paolo, desiring no better than that his son should wed the
+heiress of his neighbour, and knowing well that Messer Pietro would
+make great joy receiving back his daughter from the grave, bade
+Gerardo in haste take rich apparel and clothe Elena therewith, and
+fetch her home. These things were swiftly done; and after evenfall
+Messer Pietro was bidden to grave business in his neighbour's palace.
+With heavy heart he came, from a house of mourning to a house of
+gladness. But there, at the banquet-table's head he saw his dead child
+Elena alive, and at her side a husband. And when the whole truth had
+been declared, he not only kissed and embraced the pair who knelt
+before him, but of his goodness forgave the nurse, who in her
+turn came trembling to his feet. Then fell there joy and bliss in
+overmeasure that night upon both palaces of the Canal Grande. And with
+the morrow the Church blessed the spousals which long since had been
+on both sides vowed and consummated.
+
+VI.--ON THE LAGOONS
+
+The mornings are spent in study, sometimes among pictures, sometimes
+in the Marcian Library, or again in those vast convent chambers of
+the Frari, where the archives of Venice load innumerable shelves. The
+afternoons invite us to a further flight upon the water. Both sandolo
+and gondola await our choice, and we may sail or row, according as the
+wind and inclination tempt us.
+
+Yonder lies San Lazzaro, with the neat red buildings of the Armenian
+convent. The last oleander blossoms shine rosy pink above its walls
+against the pure blue sky as we glide into the little harbour. Boats
+piled with coal-black grapes block the landing-place, for the Padri
+are gathering their vintage from the Lido, and their presses run
+with new wine. Eustace and I have not come to revive memories of
+Byron--that curious patron saint of the Armenian colony--or to
+inspect the printing-press, which issues books of little value for
+our studies. It is enough to pace the terrace, and linger half an
+hour beneath the low broad arches of the alleys pleached with vines,
+through which the domes and towers of Venice rise more beautiful by
+distance.
+
+Malamocco lies considerably farther, and needs a full hour of stout
+rowing to reach it. Alighting there, we cross the narrow strip of
+land, and find ourselves upon the huge sea-wall--block piled
+on block--of Istrian stone in tiers and ranks, with cunning
+breathing-places for the waves to wreak their fury on and foam their
+force away in fretful waste. The very existence of Venice may be said
+to depend sometimes on these _murazzi_, which were finished at
+an immense cost by the Republic in the days of its decadence. The
+enormous monoliths which compose them had to be brought across the
+Adriatic in sailing vessels. Of all the Lidi, that of Malamocco is the
+weakest; and here, if anywhere, the sea might effect an entrance into
+the lagoon. Our gondoliers told us of some places where the _murazzi_
+were broken in a gale, or _sciroccale_, not very long ago. Lying awake
+in Venice, when the wind blows hard, one hears the sea thundering upon
+its sandy barrier, and blesses God for the _murazzi_. On such a night
+it happened once to me to dream a dream of Venice overwhelmed by
+water. I saw the billows roll across the smooth lagoon like a gigantic
+Eager. The Ducal Palace crumbled, and San Marco's domes went down. The
+Campanile rocked and shivered like a reed. And all along the Grand
+Canal the palaces swayed helpless, tottering to their fall, while
+boats piled high with men and women strove to stem the tide, and save
+themselves from those impending ruins. It was a mad dream, born of the
+sea's roar and Tintoretto's painting. But this afternoon no such
+visions are suggested. The sea sleeps, and in the moist autumn air we
+break tall branches of the seeded yellowing samphire from hollows of
+the rocks, and bear them homeward in a wayward bouquet mixed with cobs
+of Indian-corn.
+
+Fusina is another point for these excursions. It lies at the mouth
+of the Canal di Brenta, where the mainland ends in marsh and
+meadows, intersected by broad renes. In spring the ditches bloom with
+fleurs-de-lys; in autumn they take sober colouring from lilac daisies
+and the delicate sea-lavender. Scores of tiny plants are turning
+scarlet on the brown moist earth; and when the sun goes down behind
+the Euganean hills, his crimson canopy of cloud, reflected on these
+shallows, muddy shoals, and wilderness of matted weeds, converts the
+common earth into a fairyland of fabulous dyes. Purple, violet, and
+rose are spread around us. In front stretches the lagoon, tinted
+with a pale light from the east, and beyond this pallid mirror shines
+Venice--a long low broken line, touched with the softest roseate
+flush. Ere we reach the Giudecca on our homeward way, sunset has
+faded. The western skies have clad themselves in green, barred with
+dark fire-rimmed clouds. The Euganean hills stand like stupendous
+pyramids, Egyptian, solemn, against a lemon space on the horizon. The
+far reaches of the lagoons, the Alps, and islands assume those tones
+of glowing lilac which are the supreme beauty of Venetian evening.
+Then, at last, we see the first lamps glitter on the Zattere. The
+quiet of the night has come.
+
+Words cannot be formed to express the endless varieties of Venetian
+sunset. The most magnificent follow after wet stormy days, when the
+west breaks suddenly into a labyrinth of fire, when chasms of clear
+turquoise heavens emerge, and horns of flame are flashed to the
+zenith, and unexpected splendours scale the fretted clouds, step over
+step, stealing along the purple caverns till the whole dome throbs.
+Or, again, after a fair day, a change of weather approaches, and
+high, infinitely high, the skies are woven over with a web of
+half-transparent cirrus-clouds. These in the afterglow blush crimson,
+and through their rifts the depth of heaven is of a hard and gemlike
+blue, and all the water turns to rose beneath them. I remember one
+such evening on the way back from Torcello. We were well out at sea
+between Mazzorbo and Murano. The ruddy arches overhead were reflected
+without interruption in the waveless ruddy lake below. Our black boat
+was the only dark spot in this sphere of splendour. We seemed to hang
+suspended; and such as this, I fancied, must be the feeling of an
+insect caught in the heart of a fiery-petalled rose. Yet not these
+melodramatic sunsets alone are beautiful. Even more exquisite,
+perhaps, are the lagoons, painted in monochrome of greys, with just
+one touch of pink upon a western cloud, scattered in ripples here and
+there on the waves below, reminding us that day has passed and evening
+come. And beautiful again are the calm settings of fair weather, when
+sea and sky alike are cheerful, and the topmost blades of the lagoon
+grass, peeping from the shallows, glance like emeralds upon the
+surface. There is no deep stirring of the spirit in a symphony of
+light and colour; but purity, peace, and freshness make their way into
+our hearts.
+
+VII.--AT THE LIDO
+
+Of all these afternoon excursions, that to the Lido is most frequent.
+It has two points for approach. The more distant is the little station
+of San Nicoletto, at the mouth of the Porto. With an ebb-tide, the
+water of the lagoon runs past the mulberry gardens of this hamlet like
+a river. There is here a grove of acacia-trees, shadowy and dreamy,
+above deep grass, which even an Italian summer does not wither. The
+Riva is fairly broad, forming a promenade, where one may conjure
+up the personages of a century ago. For San Nicoletto used to be a
+fashionable resort before the other points of Lido had been occupied
+by pleasure-seekers. An artist even now will select its old-world
+quiet, leafy shade, and prospect through the islands of Vignole and
+Sant' Erasmo to snow-touched peaks of Antelao and Tofana, rather than
+the glare and bustle and extended view of Venice which its rival Sant'
+Elisabetta offers.
+
+But when we want a plunge into the Adriatic, or a stroll along smooth
+sands, or a breath of genuine sea-breeze, or a handful of horned
+poppies from the dunes, or a lazy half-hour's contemplation of a
+limitless horizon flecked with russet sails, then we seek Sant'
+Elisabetta. Our boat is left at the landing-place. We saunter across
+the island and back again. Antonio and Francesco wait and order wine,
+which we drink with them in the shade of the little _osteria's_
+wall.
+
+A certain afternoon in May I well remember, for this visit to the Lido
+was marked by one of those apparitions which are as rare as they are
+welcome to the artist's soul. I have always held that in our modern
+life the only real equivalent for the antique mythopoeic sense--that
+sense which enabled the Hellenic race to figure for themselves the
+powers of earth and air, streams and forests, and the presiding genii
+of places, under the forms of living human beings, is supplied by
+the appearance at some felicitous moment of a man or woman who
+impersonates for our imagination the essence of the beauty that
+environs us. It seems, at such a fortunate moment, as though we had
+been waiting for this revelation, although perchance the want of it
+had not been previously felt. Our sensations and perceptions test
+themselves at the touchstone of this living individuality. The keynote
+of the whole music dimly sounding in our ears is struck. A melody
+emerges, clear in form and excellent in rhythm. The landscapes we have
+painted on our brain, no longer lack their central figure. The life
+proper to the complex conditions we have studied is discovered, and
+every detail, judged by this standard of vitality, falls into its
+right relations.
+
+I had been musing long that day and earnestly upon the mystery of the
+lagoons, their opaline transparencies of air and water, their fretful
+risings and sudden subsidence into calm, the treacherousness of their
+shoals, the sparkle and the splendour of their sunlight. I had asked
+myself how would a Greek sculptor have personified the elemental deity
+of these salt-water lakes, so different in quality from the AEgean
+or Ionian sea? What would he find distinctive of their spirit? The
+Tritons of these shallows must be of other form and lineage than the
+fierce-eyed youth who blows his conch upon the curled crest of a wave,
+crying aloud to his comrades, as he bears the nymph away to caverns
+where the billows plunge in tideless instability.
+
+We had picked up shells and looked for sea-horses on the Adriatic
+shore. Then we returned to give our boatmen wine beneath the vine-clad
+_pergola_. Four other men were there, drinking, and eating from a
+dish of fried fish set upon the coarse white linen cloth. Two of
+them soon rose and went away. Of the two who stayed, one was a large,
+middle-aged man; the other was still young. He was tall and sinewy,
+but slender, for these Venetians are rarely massive in their strength.
+Each limb is equally developed by the exercise of rowing upright,
+bending all the muscles to their stroke. Their bodies are elastically
+supple, with free sway from the hips and a mercurial poise upon the
+ankle. Stefano showed these qualities almost in exaggeration. The type
+in him was refined to its artistic perfection. Moreover, he was
+rarely in repose, but moved with a singular brusque grace. A black
+broad-brimmed hat was thrown back upon his matted _zazzera_ of
+dark hair tipped with dusky brown. This shock of hair, cut in flakes,
+and falling wilfully, reminded me of the lagoon grass when it darkens
+in autumn upon uncovered shoals, and sunset gilds its sombre edges.
+Fiery grey eyes beneath it gazed intensely, with compulsive effluence
+of electricity. It was the wild glance of a Triton. Short blonde
+moustache, dazzling teeth, skin bronzed, but showing white and
+healthful through open front and sleeves of lilac shirt. The dashing
+sparkle of this animate splendour, who looked to me as though the
+sea-waves and the sun had made him in some hour of secret and unquiet
+rapture, was somehow emphasised by a curious dint dividing his square
+chin--a cleft that harmonised with smile on lip and steady flame in
+eyes. I hardly know what effect it would have upon a reader to compare
+eyes to opals. Yet Stefano's eyes, as they met mine, had the vitreous
+intensity of opals, as though the colour of Venetian waters were
+vitalised in them. This noticeable being had a rough, hoarse voice,
+which, to develop the parallel with a sea-god, might have screamed in
+storm or whispered raucous messages from crests of tossing billows.
+
+I felt, as I looked, that here, for me at least, the mythopoem of the
+lagoons was humanised; the spirit of the saltwater lakes had appeared
+to me; the final touch of life emergent from nature had been given. I
+was satisfied; for I had seen a poem.
+
+Then we rose, and wandered through the Jews' cemetery. It is a quiet
+place, where the flat grave-stones, inscribed in Hebrew and Italian,
+lie deep in Lido sand, waved over with wild grass and poppies. I would
+fain believe that no neglect, but rather the fashion of this folk, had
+left the monuments of generations to be thus resumed by nature. Yet,
+knowing nothing of the history of this burial-ground, I dare not
+affirm so much. There is one outlying piece of the cemetery which
+seems to contradict my charitable interpretation. It is not far from
+San Nicoletto. No enclosure marks it from the unconsecrated dunes.
+Acacia-trees sprout amid the monuments, and break the tablets with
+their thorny shoots upthrusting from the soil. Where patriarchs and
+rabbis sleep for centuries, the fishers of the sea now wander, and
+defile these habitations of the dead:
+
+  Corruption most abhorred
+  Mingling itself with their renowned ashes.
+
+Some of the grave-stones have been used to fence the towing-path; and
+one I saw, well carved with letters legible of Hebrew on fair Istrian
+marble, which roofed an open drain leading from the stable of a
+Christian dog.
+
+VIII.--A VENETIAN RESTAURANT
+
+At the end of a long glorious day, unhappy is that mortal whom the
+Hermes of a cosmopolitan hotel, white-chokered and white-waistcoated,
+marshals to the Hades of the _table-d'hote_. The world has often
+been compared to an inn; but on my way down to this common meal I
+have, not unfrequently, felt fain to reverse the simile. From their
+separate stations, at the appointed hour, the guests like ghosts flit
+to a gloomy gas-lit chamber. They are of various speech and race,
+preoccupied with divers interests and cares. Necessity and the
+waiter drive them all to a sepulchral syssition, whereof the cook too
+frequently deserves that old Greek comic epithet--[Greek: hadou
+mageiros]--cook of the Inferno. And just as we are told that in
+Charon's boat we shall not be allowed to pick our society, so here
+we must accept what fellowship the fates provide. An English spinster
+retailing paradoxes culled to-day from Ruskin's handbooks; an American
+citizen describing his jaunt in a gondola from the railway station;
+a German shopkeeper descanting in one breath on Baur's Bock and the
+beauties of the Marcusplatz; an intelligent aesthete bent on working
+into clearness his own views of Carpaccio's genius: all these in turn,
+or all together, must be suffered gladly through well-nigh two long
+hours. Uncomforted in soul we rise from the expensive banquet; and how
+often rise from it unfed!
+
+Far other be the doom of my own friends--of pious bards and genial
+companions, lovers of natural and lovely things! Nor for these do
+I desire a seat at Florian's marble tables, or a perch in Quadri's
+window, though the former supply dainty food, and the latter command
+a bird's-eye view of the Piazza. Rather would I lead them to a certain
+humble tavern on the Zattere. It is a quaint, low-built, unpretending
+little place, near a bridge, with a garden hard by which sends a
+cataract of honeysuckles sunward over a too-jealous wall. In front
+lies a Mediterranean steamer, which all day long has been discharging
+cargo. Gazing westward up Giudecca, masts and funnels bar the
+sunset and the Paduan hills; and from a little front room of the
+_trattoria_ the view is so marine that one keeps fancying oneself
+in some ship's cabin. Sea-captains sit and smoke beside their glass
+of grog in the pavilion and the _caffe_. But we do not seek their
+company at dinner-time. Our way lies under yonder arch, and up the
+narrow alley into a paved court. Here are oleanders in pots, and
+plants of Japanese spindle-wood in tubs; and from the walls beneath
+the window hang cages of all sorts of birds--a talking parrot, a
+whistling blackbird, goldfinches, canaries, linnets. Athos, the fat
+dog, who goes to market daily in a _barchetta_ with his master,
+snuffs around. 'Where are Porthos and Aramis, my friend?' Athos does
+not take the joke; he only wags his stump of tail and pokes his nose
+into my hand. What a Tartufe's nose it is! Its bridge displays the
+full parade of leather-bound brass-nailed muzzle. But beneath, this
+muzzle is a patent sham. The frame does not even pretend to close
+on Athos' jaw, and the wise dog wears it like a decoration. A little
+farther we meet that ancient grey cat, who has no discoverable name,
+but is famous for the sprightliness and grace with which she bears her
+eighteen years. Not far from the cat one is sure to find Carlo--the
+bird-like, bright-faced, close-cropped Venetian urchin, whose duty
+it is to trot backwards and forwards between the cellar and the
+dining-tables. At the end of the court we walk into the kitchen, where
+the black-capped little _padrone_ and the gigantic white-capped
+chef are in close consultation. Here we have the privilege of
+inspecting the larder--fish of various sorts, meat, vegetables,
+several kinds of birds, pigeons, tordi, beccafichi, geese, wild
+ducks, chickens, woodcock, &c., according to the season. We select
+our dinner, and retire to eat it either in the court among the birds
+beneath the vines, or in the low dark room which occupies one side of
+it. Artists of many nationalities and divers ages frequent this house;
+and the talk arising from the several little tables, turns upon points
+of interest and beauty in the life and landscape of Venice. There
+can be no difference of opinion about the excellence of
+the _cuisine_, or about the reasonable charges of this
+_trattoria_. A soup of lentils, followed by boiled turbot or
+fried soles, beefsteak or mutton cutlets, tordi or beccafichi, with
+a salad, the whole enlivened with good red wine or Florio's Sicilian
+Marsala from the cask, costs about four francs. Gas is unknown in the
+establishment. There is no noise, no bustle, no brutality of waiters,
+no _ahurissement_ of tourists. And when dinner is done, we can
+sit awhile over our cigarette and coffee, talking until the night
+invites us to a stroll along the Zattere or a _giro_ in the
+gondola.
+
+IX.--NIGHT IN VENICE
+
+Night in Venice! Night is nowhere else so wonderful, unless it be in
+winter among the high Alps. But the nights of Venice and the nights of
+the mountains are too different in kind to be compared.
+
+There is the ever-recurring miracle of the full moon rising, before
+day is dead, behind San Giorgio, spreading a path of gold on the
+lagoon which black boats traverse with the glow-worm lamp upon their
+prow; ascending the cloudless sky and silvering the domes of the
+Salute; pouring vitreous sheen upon the red lights of the Piazzetta;
+flooding the Grand Canal, and lifting the Rialto higher in ethereal
+whiteness; piercing but penetrating not the murky labyrinth of
+_rio_ linked with _rio_, through which we wind in light and
+shadow, to reach once more the level glories and the luminous expanse
+of heaven beyond the Misericordia.
+
+This is the melodrama of Venetian moonlight; and if a single
+impression of the night has to be retained from one visit to Venice,
+those are fortunate who chance upon a full moon of fair weather. Yet
+I know not whether some quieter and soberer effects are not more
+thrilling. To-night, for example, the waning moon will rise late
+through veils of _scirocco_. Over the bridges of San Cristoforo
+and San Gregorio, through the deserted Calle di Mezzo, my friend and
+I walk in darkness, pass the marble basements of the Salute, and push
+our way along its Riva to the point of the Dogana. We are out at sea
+alone, between the Canalozzo and the Giudecca. A moist wind ruffles
+the water and cools our forehead. It is so dark that we can only see
+San Giorgio by the light reflected on it from the Piazzetta. The same
+light climbs the Campanile of S. Mark, and shows the golden angel in
+a mystery of gloom. The only noise that reaches us is a confused hum
+from the Piazza. Sitting and musing there, the blackness of the water
+whispers in our ears a tale of death. And now we hear a plash of oars,
+and gliding through the darkness comes a single boat. One man leaps
+upon the landing-place without a word and disappears. There is another
+wrapped in a military cloak asleep. I see his face beneath me, pale
+and quiet. The _barcaruolo_ turns the point in silence. From the
+darkness they came; into the darkness they have gone. It is only an
+ordinary incident of coastguard service. But the spirit of the night
+has made a poem of it.
+
+Even tempestuous and rainy weather, though melancholy enough, is never
+sordid here. There is no noise from carriage traffic in Venice, and
+the sea-wind preserves the purity and transparency of the atmosphere.
+It had been raining all day, but at evening came a partial clearing.
+I went down to the Molo, where the large reach of the lagoon was all
+moon-silvered, and San Giorgio Maggiore dark against the bluish sky,
+and Santa Maria della Salute domed with moon-irradiated pearl, and the
+wet slabs of the Riva shimmering in moonlight, the whole misty sky,
+with its clouds and stellar spaces, drenched in moonlight, nothing but
+moonlight sensible except the tawny flare of gas-lamps and the orange
+lights of gondolas afloat upon the waters. On such a night the very
+spirit of Venice is abroad. We feel why she is called Bride of the
+Sea.
+
+Take yet another night. There had been a representation of Verdi's
+'Forza del Destino' at the Teatro Malibran. After midnight we walked
+homeward through the Merceria, crossed the Piazza, and dived into the
+narrow _calle_ which leads to the _traghetto_ of the Salute.
+It was a warm moist starless night, and there seemed no air to breathe
+in those narrow alleys. The gondolier was half asleep. Eustace called
+him as we jumped into his boat, and rang our _soldi_ on the
+gunwale. Then he arose and turned the _ferro_ round, and stood
+across towards the Salute. Silently, insensibly, from the oppression
+of confinement in the airless streets to the liberty and immensity
+of the water and the night we passed. It was but two minutes ere we
+touched the shore and said good-night, and went our way and left
+the ferryman. But in that brief passage he had opened our souls to
+everlasting things--the freshness, and the darkness, and the kindness
+of the brooding, all-enfolding night above the sea.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+_THE GONDOLIER'S WEDDING_
+
+The night before the wedding we had a supper-party in my rooms. We
+were twelve in all. My friend Eustace brought his gondolier Antonio
+with fair-haired, dark-eyed wife, and little Attilio, their eldest
+child. My own gondolier, Francesco, came with his wife and two
+children. Then there was the handsome, languid Luigi, who, in his best
+clothes, or out of them, is fit for any drawing-room. Two gondoliers,
+in dark blue shirts, completed the list of guests, if we exclude the
+maid Catina, who came and went about the table, laughing and joining
+in the songs, and sitting down at intervals to take her share of wine.
+The big room looking across the garden to the Grand Canal had been
+prepared for supper; and the company were to be received in the
+smaller, which has a fine open space in front of it to southwards. But
+as the guests arrived, they seemed to find the kitchen and the cooking
+that was going on quite irresistible. Catina, it seems, had lost her
+head with so many cuttlefishes, _orai_, cakes, and fowls, and
+cutlets to reduce to order. There was, therefore, a great bustle below
+stairs; and I could hear plainly that all my guests were lending their
+making, or their marring, hands to the preparation of the supper. That
+the company should cook their own food on the way to the dining-room,
+seemed a quite novel arrangement, but one that promised well for their
+contentment with the banquet. Nobody could be dissatisfied with what
+was everybody's affair.
+
+When seven o'clock struck, Eustace and I, who had been entertaining
+the children in their mothers' absence, heard the sound of steps upon
+the stairs. The guests arrived, bringing their own _risotto_ with
+them. Welcome was short, if hearty. We sat down in carefully appointed
+order, and fell into such conversation as the quarter of San Vio and
+our several interests supplied. From time to time one of the matrons
+left the table and descended to the kitchen, when a finishing stroke
+was needed for roast pullet or stewed veal. The excuses they made
+their host for supposed failure in the dishes, lent a certain grace
+and comic charm to the commonplace of festivity. The entertainment
+was theirs as much as mine; and they all seemed to enjoy what took the
+form by degrees of curiously complicated hospitality. I do not think
+a well-ordered supper at any _trattoria_, such as at first
+suggested itself to my imagination, would have given any of us an
+equal pleasure or an equal sense of freedom. The three children had
+become the guests of the whole party. Little Attilio, propped upon an
+air-cushion, which puzzled him exceedingly, ate through his supper and
+drank his wine with solid satisfaction, opening the large brown eyes
+beneath those tufts of clustering fair hair which promise much beauty
+for him in his manhood. Francesco's boy, who is older and begins to
+know the world, sat with a semi-suppressed grin upon his face, as
+though the humour of the situation was not wholly hidden from him.
+Little Teresa, too, was happy, except when her mother, a severe
+Pomona, with enormous earrings and splendid _fazzoletto_ of
+crimson and orange dyes, pounced down upon her for some supposed
+infraction of good manners--_creanza_, as they vividly express it
+here. Only Luigi looked a trifle bored. But Luigi has been a soldier,
+and has now attained the supercilious superiority of young-manhood,
+which smokes its cigar of an evening in the piazza and knows the
+merits of the different cafes. The great business of the evening began
+when the eating was over, and the decanters filled with new wine of
+Mirano circulated freely. The four best singers of the party drew
+together; and the rest prepared themselves to make suggestions, hum
+tunes, and join with fitful effect in choruses. Antonio, who is a
+powerful young fellow, with bronzed cheeks and a perfect tempest of
+coal-black hair in flakes upon his forehead, has a most extraordinary
+soprano--sound as a bell, strong as a trumpet, well trained, and
+true to the least shade in intonation. Piero, whose rugged Neptunian
+features, sea-wrinkled, tell of a rough water-life, boasts a bass of
+resonant, almost pathetic quality. Francesco has a _mezzo voce_,
+which might, by a stretch of politeness, be called baritone. Piero's
+comrade, whose name concerns us not, has another of these nondescript
+voices. They sat together with their glasses and cigars before them,
+sketching part-songs in outline, striking the keynote--now higher and
+now lower--till they saw their subject well in view. Then they burst
+into full singing, Antonio leading with a metal note that thrilled
+one's ears, but still was musical. Complicated contrapuntal pieces,
+such as we should call madrigals, with ever-recurring refrains of
+'Venezia, gemma Triatica, sposa del mar,' descending probably from
+ancient days, followed each other in quick succession. Barcaroles,
+serenades, love-songs, and invitations to the water were interwoven
+for relief. One of these romantic pieces had a beautiful burden,
+'Dormi, o bella, o fingi di dormir,' of which the melody was fully
+worthy. But the most successful of all the tunes were two with a sad
+motive. The one repeated incessantly 'Ohime! mia madre mori;' the
+other was a girl's love lament: 'Perche tradirmi, perche lasciarmi!
+prima d'amarmi non eri cosi!' Even the children joined in these; and
+Catina, who took the solo part in the second, was inspired to a great
+dramatic effort. All these were purely popular songs. The people of
+Venice, however, are passionate for operas. Therefore we had duets
+and solos from 'Ernani,' the 'Ballo in Maschera,' and the 'Forza del
+Destino,' and one comic chorus from 'Boccaccio,' which seemed to make
+them wild with pleasure. To my mind, the best of these more formal
+pieces was a duet between Attila and Italia from some opera unknown to
+me, which Antonio and Piero performed with incomparable spirit. It
+was noticeable how, descending to the people, sung by them for love
+at sea, or on excursions to the villages round Mestre, these operatic
+reminiscences had lost something of their theatrical formality, and
+assumed instead the serious gravity, the quaint movement, and marked
+emphasis which belong to popular music in Northern and Central Italy.
+An antique character was communicated even to the recitative of Verdi
+by slight, almost indefinable, changes of rhythm and accent. There was
+no end to the singing. 'Siamo appassionati per il canto,' frequently
+repeated, was proved true by the profusion and variety of songs
+produced from inexhaustible memories, lightly tried over, brilliantly
+performed, rapidly succeeding each other. Nor were gestures
+wanting--lifted arms, hands stretched to hands, flashing eyes, hair
+tossed from the forehead--unconscious and appropriate action--which
+showed how the spirit of the music and words alike possessed the men.
+One by one the children fell asleep. Little Attilio and Teresa were
+tucked up beneath my Scotch shawl at two ends of a great sofa; and not
+even his father's clarion voice, in the character of Italia defying
+Attila to harm 'le mie superbe citta,' could wake the little boy up.
+The night wore on. It was past one. Eustace and I had promised to be
+in the church of the Gesuati at six next morning. We therefore gave
+the guests a gentle hint, which they as gently took. With exquisite,
+because perfectly unaffected, breeding they sank for a few moments
+into common conversation, then wrapped the children up, and took
+their leave. It was an uncomfortable, warm, wet night of sullen
+_scirocco_.
+
+The next day, which was Sunday, Francesco called me at five. There
+was no visible sunrise that cheerless damp October morning. Grey dawn
+stole somehow imperceptibly between the veil of clouds and leaden
+waters, as my friend and I, well sheltered by our _felze_, passed
+into the Giudecca, and took our station before the church of the
+Gesuati. A few women from the neighbouring streets and courts crossed
+the bridges in draggled petticoats on their way to first mass. A few
+men, shouldering their jackets, lounged along the Zattere, opened the
+great green doors, and entered. Then suddenly Antonio cried out that
+the bridal party was on its way, not as we had expected, in boats, but
+on foot. We left our gondola, and fell into the ranks, after shaking
+hands with Francesco, who is the elder brother of the bride. There was
+nothing very noticeable in her appearance, except her large dark eyes.
+Otherwise both face and figure were of a common type; and her bridal
+dress of sprigged grey silk, large veil and orange blossoms, reduced
+her to the level of a _bourgeoise_. It was much the same with
+the bridegroom. His features, indeed, proved him a true Venetian
+gondolier; for the skin was strained over the cheekbones, and the
+muscles of the throat beneath the jaws stood out like cords, and the
+bright blue eyes were deep-set beneath a spare brown forehead. But
+he had provided a complete suit of black for the occasion, and wore
+a shirt of worked cambric, which disguised what is really splendid in
+the physique of these oarsmen, at once slender and sinewy. Both bride
+and bridegroom looked uncomfortable in their clothes. The light that
+fell upon them in the church was dull and leaden. The ceremony, which
+was very hurriedly performed by an unctuous priest, did not appear to
+impress either of them. Nobody in the bridal party, crowding together
+on both sides of the altar, looked as though the service was of the
+slightest interest and moment. Indeed, this was hardly to be wondered
+at; for the priest, so far as I could understand his gabble, took
+the larger portion for read, after muttering the first words of the
+rubric. A little carven image of an acolyte--a weird boy who seemed to
+move by springs, whose hair had all the semblance of painted wood,
+and whose complexion was white and red like a clown's--did not make
+matters more intelligible by spasmodically clattering responses.
+
+After the ceremony we heard mass and contributed to three distinct
+offertories. Considering how much account even two _soldi_ are to
+these poor people, I was really angry when I heard the copper shower.
+Every member of the party had his or her pennies ready, and dropped
+them into the boxes. Whether it was the effect of the bad morning, or
+the ugliness of a very ill-designed _barocco_ building, or the
+fault of the fat oily priest, I know not. But the _sposalizio_
+struck me as tame and cheerless, the mass as irreverent and vulgarly
+conducted. At the same time there is something too impressive in
+the mass for any perfunctory performance to divest its symbolism of
+sublimity. A Protestant Communion Service lends itself more easily to
+degradation by unworthiness in the minister.
+
+We walked down the church in double file, led by the bride and
+bridegroom, who had knelt during the ceremony with the best
+man--_compare_, as he is called--at a narrow _prie-dieu_ before the
+altar. The _compare_ is a person of distinction at these weddings. He
+has to present the bride with a great pyramid of artificial flowers,
+which is placed before her at the marriage-feast, a packet of candles,
+and a box of bonbons. The comfits, when the box is opened, are found
+to include two magnificent sugar babies lying in their cradles. I was
+told that a _compare_, who does the thing handsomely, must be prepared
+to spend about a hundred francs upon these presents, in addition to
+the wine and cigars with which he treats his friends. On this occasion
+the women were agreed that he had done his duty well. He was a fat,
+wealthy little man, who lived by letting market-boats for hire on the
+Rialto.
+
+From the church to the bride's house was a walk of some three minutes.
+On the way we were introduced to the father of the bride--a very
+magnificent personage, with points of strong resemblance to Vittorio
+Emmanuele. He wore an enormous broad-brimmed hat and emerald-green
+earrings, and looked considerably younger than his eldest son,
+Francesco. Throughout the _nozze_ he took the lead in a grand
+imperious fashion of his own. Wherever he went, he seemed to fill the
+place, and was fully aware of his own importance. In Florence I think
+he would have got the nickname of _Tacchin_, or turkey-cock.
+Here at Venice the sons and daughters call their parent briefly
+_Vecchio_. I heard him so addressed with a certain amount of awe,
+expecting an explosion of bubbly-jock displeasure. But he took it, as
+though it was natural, without disturbance. The other _Vecchio_,
+father of the bridegroom, struck me as more sympathetic. He was a
+gentle old man, proud of his many prosperous, laborious sons.
+They, like the rest of the gentlemen, were gondoliers. Both the
+_Vecchi_, indeed, continue to ply their trade, day and night, at
+the _traghetto_.
+
+_Traghetti_ are stations for gondolas at different points of the
+canals. As their name implies, it is the first duty of the gondoliers
+upon them to ferry people across. This they do for the fixed fee of
+five centimes. The _traghetti_ are in fact Venetian cab-stands.
+And, of course, like London cabs, the gondolas may be taken off them
+for trips. The municipality, however, makes it a condition, under
+penalty of fine to the _traghetto_, that each station should
+always be provided with two boats for the service of the ferry. When
+vacancies occur on the _traghetti_, a gondolier who owns or hires
+a boat makes application to the municipality, receives a number, and
+is inscribed as plying at a certain station. He has now entered a sort
+of guild, which is presided over by a _Capo-traghetto_, elected
+by the rest for the protection of their interests, the settlement of
+disputes, and the management of their common funds. In the old acts
+of Venice this functionary is styled _Gastaldo di traghetto_. The
+members have to contribute something yearly to the guild. This payment
+varies upon different stations, according to the greater or less
+amount of the tax levied by the municipality on the _traghetto_.
+The highest subscription I have heard of is twenty-five francs; the
+lowest, seven. There is one _traghetto_, known by the name
+of Madonna del Giglio or Zobenigo, which possesses near its
+_pergola_ of vines a nice old brown Venetian picture. Some
+stranger offered a considerable sum for this. But the guild refused to
+part with it.
+
+As may be imagined, the _traghetti_ vary greatly in the amount
+and quality of their custom. By far the best are those in the
+neighbourhood of the hotels upon the Grand Canal. At any one of these
+a gondolier during the season is sure of picking up some foreigner or
+other who will pay him handsomely for comparatively light service.
+A _traghetto_ on the Giudecca, on the contrary, depends upon
+Venetian traffic. The work is more monotonous, and the pay is reduced
+to its tariffed minimum. So far as I can gather, an industrious
+gondolier, with a good boat, belonging to a good _traghetto_, may
+make as much as ten or fifteen francs in a single day. But this cannot
+be relied on. They therefore prefer a fixed appointment with a private
+family, for which they receive by tariff five francs a day, or by
+arrangement for long periods perhaps four francs a day, with certain
+perquisites and small advantages. It is great luck to get such an
+engagement for the winter. The heaviest anxieties which beset a
+gondolier are then disposed of. Having entered private service, they
+are not allowed to ply their trade on the _traghetto_, except
+by stipulation with their masters. Then they may take their place one
+night out of every six in the rank and file. The gondoliers have
+two proverbs, which show how desirable it is, while taking a fixed
+engagement, to keep their hold on the _traghetto_. One is to this
+effect: _il traghetto e un buon padrone_. The other satirises
+the meanness of the poverty-stricken Venetian nobility: _pompa di
+servitu, misera insegna_. When they combine the _traghetto_
+with private service, the municipality insists on their retaining
+the number painted on their gondola; and against this their employers
+frequently object. It is therefore a great point for a gondolier to
+make such an arrangement with his master as will leave him free to
+show his number. The reason for this regulation is obvious. Gondoliers
+are known more by their numbers and their _traghetti_ than
+their names. They tell me that though there are upwards of a
+thousand registered in Venice, each man of the trade knows the
+whole confraternity by face and number. Taking all things into
+consideration, I think four francs a day the whole year round are
+very good earnings for a gondolier. On this he will marry and rear a
+family, and put a little money by. A young unmarried man, working at
+two and a half or three francs a day, is proportionately well-to-do.
+If he is economical, he ought upon these wages to save enough in
+two or three years to buy himself a gondola. A boy from fifteen to
+nineteen is called a _mezz' uomo_, and gets about one franc a day. A
+new gondola with all its fittings is worth about a thousand francs. It
+does not last in good condition more than six or seven years. At the
+end of that time the hull will fetch eighty francs. A new hull can be
+had for three hundred francs. The old fittings--brass sea-horses or
+_cavalli_, steel prow or _ferro_, covered cabin or _felze_, cushions
+and leather-covered back-board or _stramazetto_, maybe transferred to
+it. When a man wants to start a gondola, he will begin by buying one
+already half past service--a _gondola da traghetto_ or _di mezza eta_.
+This should cost him something over two hundred francs. Little by
+little, he accumulates the needful fittings; and when his first
+purchase is worn out, he hopes to set up with a well-appointed
+equipage. He thus gradually works his way from the rough trade which
+involves hard work and poor earnings to that more profitable industry
+which cannot be carried on without a smart boat. The gondola is a
+source of continual expense for repairs. Its oars have to be replaced.
+It has to be washed with sponges, blacked, and varnished. Its bottom
+needs frequent cleaning. Weeds adhere to it in the warm brackish
+water, growing rapidly through the summer months, and demanding to be
+scrubbed off once in every four weeks. The gondolier has no place
+where he can do this for himself. He therefore takes his boat to a
+wharf, or _squero_, as the place is called. At these _squeri_ gondolas
+are built as well as cleaned. The fee for a thorough setting to rights
+of the boat is five francs. It must be done upon a fine day. Thus in
+addition to the cost, the owner loses a good day's work.
+
+These details will serve to give some notion of the sort of people
+with whom Eustace and I spent our day. The bride's house is in an
+excellent position on an open canal leading from the Canalozzo to the
+Giudecca. She had arrived before us, and received her friends in the
+middle of the room. Each of us in turn kissed her cheek and murmured
+our congratulations. We found the large living-room of the house
+arranged with chairs all round the walls, and the company were
+marshalled in some order of precedence, my friend and I taking place
+near the bride. On either hand airy bedrooms opened out, and two
+large doors, wide open, gave a view from where we sat of a good-sized
+kitchen. This arrangement of the house was not only comfortable, but
+pretty; for the bright copper pans and pipkins ranged on shelves
+along the kitchen walls had a very cheerful effect. The walls were
+whitewashed, but literally covered with all sorts of pictures. A great
+plaster cast from some antique, an Atys, Adonis, or Paris, looked down
+from a bracket placed between the windows. There was enough furniture,
+solid and well kept, in all the rooms. Among the pictures were
+full-length portraits in oils of two celebrated gondoliers--one in
+antique costume, the other painted a few years since. The original of
+the latter soon came and stood before it. He had won regatta prizes;
+and the flags of four discordant colours were painted round him by the
+artist, who had evidently cared more to commemorate the triumphs of
+his sitter and to strike a likeness than to secure the tone of his own
+picture. This champion turned out a fine fellow--Corradini--with one
+of the brightest little gondoliers of thirteen for his son.
+
+After the company were seated, lemonade and cakes were handed round
+amid a hubbub of chattering women. Then followed cups of black coffee
+and more cakes. Then a glass of Cyprus and more cakes. Then a glass
+of curacoa and more cakes. Finally, a glass of noyau and still more
+cakes. It was only a little after seven in the morning. Yet politeness
+compelled us to consume these delicacies. I tried to shirk my duty;
+but this discretion was taken by my hosts for well-bred modesty; and
+instead of being let off, I had the richest piece of pastry and the
+largest maccaroon available pressed so kindly on me, that, had they
+been poisoned, I would not have refused to eat them. The conversation
+grew more, and more animated, the women gathering together in their
+dresses of bright blue and scarlet, the men lighting cigars and
+puffing out a few quiet words. It struck me as a drawback that these
+picturesque people had put on Sunday-clothes to look as much like
+shopkeepers as possible. But they did not all of them succeed. Two
+handsome women, who handed the cups round--one a brunette, the other
+a blonde--wore skirts of brilliant blue, with a sort of white jacket,
+and white kerchief folded heavily about their shoulders. The brunette
+had a great string of coral, the blonde of amber, round her throat.
+Gold earrings and the long gold chains Venetian women wear, of all
+patterns and degrees of value, abounded. Nobody appeared without
+them; but I could not see any of an antique make. The men seemed to be
+contented with rings--huge, heavy rings of solid gold, worked with
+a rough flower pattern. One young fellow had three upon his fingers.
+This circumstance led me to speculate whether a certain portion at
+least of this display of jewellery around me had not been borrowed for
+the occasion.
+
+Eustace and I were treated quite like friends. They called us _I
+Signori_. But this was only, I think, because our English names
+are quite unmanageable. The women fluttered about us and kept
+asking whether we really liked it all? whether we should come to the
+_pranzo_? whether it was true we danced? It seemed to give them
+unaffected pleasure to be kind to us; and when we rose to go away, the
+whole company crowded round, shaking hands and saying: 'Si divertira
+bene stasera!' Nobody resented our presence; what was better, no one
+put himself out for us. 'Vogliono veder il nostro costume,' I heard
+one woman say.
+
+We got home soon after eight, and, as our ancestors would have said,
+settled our stomachs with a dish of tea. It makes me shudder now to
+think of the mixed liquids and miscellaneous cakes we had consumed at
+that unwonted hour.
+
+At half-past three, Eustace and I again prepared ourselves for action.
+His gondola was in attendance, covered with the _felze_, to take us to
+the house of the _sposa_. We found the canal crowded with poor people
+of the quarter--men, women, and children lining the walls along its
+side, and clustering like bees upon the bridges. The water itself was
+almost choked with gondolas. Evidently the folk of San Vio thought our
+wedding procession would be a most exciting pageant. We entered the
+house, and were again greeted by the bride and bridegroom, who
+consigned each of us to the control of a fair tyrant. This is the most
+fitting way of describing our introduction to our partners of the
+evening; for we were no sooner presented, than the ladies swooped upon
+us like their prey, placing their shawls upon our left arms, while
+they seized and clung to what was left available of us for locomotion.
+There was considerable giggling and tittering throughout the company
+when Signora Fenzo, the young and comely wife of a gondolier, thus
+took possession of Eustace, and Signora dell' Acqua, the widow of
+another gondolier, appropriated me. The affair had been arranged
+beforehand, and their friends had probably chaffed them with the
+difficulty of managing two mad Englishmen. However, they proved equal
+to the occasion, and the difficulties were entirely on our side.
+Signora Fenzo was a handsome brunette, quiet in her manners, who meant
+business. I envied Eustace his subjection to such a reasonable being.
+Signora dell' Acqua, though a widow, was by no means disconsolate; and
+I soon perceived that it would require all the address and diplomacy I
+possessed, to make anything out of her society. She laughed
+incessantly; darted in the most diverse directions, dragging me along
+with her; exhibited me in triumph to her cronies; made eyes at me over
+a fan, repeated my clumsiest remarks, as though they gave her
+indescribable amusement; and all the while jabbered Venetian at
+express rate, without the slightest regard for my incapacity to follow
+her vagaries. The _Vecchio_ marshalled us in order. First went the
+_sposa_ and _comare_ with the mothers of bride and bridegroom. Then
+followed the _sposo_ and the bridesmaid. After them I was made to lead
+my fair tormentor. As we descended the staircase there arose a hubbub
+of excitement from the crowd on the canals. The gondolas moved
+turbidly upon the face of the waters. The bridegroom kept muttering to
+himself, 'How we shall be criticised! They will tell each other who
+was decently dressed, and who stepped awkwardly into the boats, and
+what the price of my boots was!' Such exclamations, murmured at
+intervals, and followed by chest-drawn sighs, expressed a deep
+preoccupation. With regard to his boots, he need have had no anxiety.
+They were of the shiniest patent leather, much too tight, and without
+a speck of dust upon them. But his nervousness infected me with a
+cruel dread. All those eyes were going to watch how we comported
+ourselves in jumping from the landing-steps into the boat! If this
+operation, upon a ceremonious occasion, has terrors even for a
+gondolier, how formidable it ought to be to me! And here is the
+Signora dell' Acqua's white cachemire shawl dangling on one arm, and
+the Signora herself languishingly clinging to the other; and the
+gondolas are fretting in a fury of excitement, like corks, upon the
+churned green water! The moment was terrible. The _sposa_ and her
+three companions had been safely stowed away beneath their _felze_.
+The _sposo_ had successfully handed the bridesmaid into the second
+gondola. I had to perform the same office for my partner. Off she
+went, like a bird, from the bank. I seized a happy moment, followed,
+bowed, and found myself to my contentment gracefully ensconced in a
+corner opposite the widow. Seven more gondolas were packed. The
+procession moved. We glided down the little channel, broke away into
+the Grand Canal, crossed it, and dived into a labyrinth from which we
+finally emerged before our destination, the Trattoria di San Gallo.
+The perils of the landing were soon over; and, with the rest of the
+guests, my mercurial companion and I slowly ascended a long flight of
+stairs leading to a vast upper chamber. Here we were to dine.
+
+It had been the gallery of some palazzo in old days, was above one
+hundred feet in length, fairly broad, with a roof of wooden rafters
+and large windows opening on a courtyard garden. I could see the tops
+of three cypress-trees cutting the grey sky upon a level with us.
+A long table occupied the centre of this room. It had been laid for
+upwards of forty persons, and we filled it. There was plenty of
+light from great glass lustres blazing with gas. When the ladies had
+arranged their dresses, and the gentlemen had exchanged a few polite
+remarks, we all sat down to dinner--I next my inexorable widow,
+Eustace beside his calm and comely partner. The first impression
+was one of disappointment. It looked so like a public dinner of
+middle-class people. There was no local character in costume or
+customs. Men and women sat politely bored, expectant, trifling with
+their napkins, yawning, muttering nothings about the weather or their
+neighbours. The frozen commonplaceness of the scene was made for
+me still more oppressive by Signora dell' Acqua. She was evidently
+satirical, and could not be happy unless continually laughing at or
+with somebody. 'What a stick the woman will think me!' I kept saying
+to myself. 'How shall I ever invent jokes in this strange land? I
+cannot even flirt with her in Venetian! And here I have condemned
+myself--and her too, poor thing--to sit through at least three hours
+of mortal dulness!' Yet the widow was by no means unattractive.
+Dressed in black, she had contrived by an artful arrangement of lace
+and jewellery to give an air of lightness to her costume. She had
+a pretty little pale face, a _minois chiffonne_, with slightly
+turned-up nose, large laughing brown eyes, a dazzling set of teeth,
+and a tempestuously frizzled mop of powdered hair. When I managed to
+get a side-look at her quietly, without being giggled at or driven
+half mad by unintelligible incitements to a jocularity I could
+not feel, it struck me that, if we once found a common term of
+communication we should become good friends. But for the moment that
+_modus vivendi_ seemed unattainable. She had not recovered from
+the first excitement of her capture of me. She was still showing
+me off and trying to stir me up. The arrival of the soup gave me
+a momentary relief; and soon the serious business of the afternoon
+began. I may add that before dinner was over, the Signora dell' Acqua
+and I were fast friends. I had discovered the way of making jokes, and
+she had become intelligible. I found her a very nice, though flighty,
+little woman; and I believe she thought me gifted with the faculty of
+uttering eccentric epigrams in a grotesque tongue. Some of my remarks
+were flung about the table, and had the same success as uncouth
+Lombard carvings have with connoisseurs in _naivetes_ of art. By that
+time we had come to be _compare_ and _comare_ to each other--the
+sequel of some clumsy piece of jocularity.
+
+It was a heavy entertainment, copious in quantity, excellent in
+quality, plainly but well cooked. I remarked there was no fish. The
+widow replied that everybody present ate fish to satiety at home. They
+did not join a marriage feast at the San Gallo, and pay their nine
+francs, for that! It should be observed that each guest paid for his
+own entertainment. This appears to be the custom. Therefore attendance
+is complimentary, and the married couple are not at ruinous charges
+for the banquet. A curious feature in the whole proceeding had its
+origin in this custom. I noticed that before each cover lay an empty
+plate, and that my partner began with the first course to heap upon
+it what she had not eaten. She also took large helpings, and kept
+advising me to do the same. I said: 'No; I only take what I want to
+eat; if I fill that plate in front of me as you are doing, it will be
+great waste.' This remark elicited shrieks of laughter from all who
+heard it; and when the hubbub had subsided, I perceived an apparently
+official personage bearing down upon Eustace, who was in the same
+perplexity. It was then circumstantially explained to us that the
+empty plates were put there in order that we might lay aside what we
+could not conveniently eat, and take it home with us. At the end
+of the dinner the widow (whom I must now call my _comare_) had
+accumulated two whole chickens, half a turkey, and a large assortment
+of mixed eatables. I performed my duty and won her regard by placing
+delicacies at her disposition.
+
+Crudely stated, this proceeding moves disgust. But that is only
+because one has not thought the matter out. In the performance there
+was nothing coarse or nasty. These good folk had made a contract at
+so much a head--so many fowls, so many pounds of beef, &c, to be
+supplied; and what they had fairly bought, they clearly had a right
+to. No one, so far as I could notice, tried to take more than his
+proper share; except, indeed, Eustace and myself. In our first
+eagerness to conform to custom, we both overshot the mark, and grabbed
+at disproportionate helpings. The waiters politely observed that we
+were taking what was meant for two; and as the courses followed in
+interminable sequence, we soon acquired the tact of what was due to
+us.
+
+Meanwhile the room grew warm. The gentlemen threw off their coats--a
+pleasant liberty of which I availed myself, and was immediately more
+at ease. The ladies divested themselves of their shoes (strange
+to relate!) and sat in comfort with their stockinged feet upon the
+_scagliola_ pavement. I observed that some cavaliers by special
+permission were allowed to remove their partners' slippers. This was
+not my lucky fate. My _comare_ had not advanced to that point of
+intimacy. Healths began to be drunk. The conversation took a lively
+turn; and women went fluttering round the table, visiting their
+friends, to sip out of their glass, and ask each other how they
+were getting on. It was not long before the stiff veneer of
+_bourgeoisie_ which bored me had worn off. The people emerged in
+their true selves: natural, gentle, sparkling with enjoyment, playful.
+Playful is, I think, the best word to describe them. They played with
+infinite grace and innocence, like kittens, from the old men of sixty
+to the little boys of thirteen. Very little wine was drunk. Each guest
+had a litre placed before him. Many did not finish theirs; and for
+very few was it replenished. When at last the dessert arrived, and the
+bride's comfits had been handed round, they began to sing. It was very
+pretty to see a party of three or four friends gathering round some
+popular beauty, and paying her compliments in verse--they grouped
+behind her chair, she sitting back in it and laughing up to them,
+and joining in the chorus. The words, 'Brunetta mia simpatica, ti amo
+sempre piu,' sung after this fashion to Eustace's handsome partner,
+who puffed delicate whiffs from a Russian cigarette, and smiled her
+thanks, had a peculiar appropriateness. All the ladies, it may be
+observed in passing, had by this time lit their cigarettes. The men
+were smoking Toscani, Sellas, or Cavours, and the little boys were
+dancing round the table breathing smoke from their pert nostrils.
+
+The dinner, in fact, was over. Other relatives of the guests arrived,
+and then we saw how some of the reserved dishes were to be bestowed. A
+side-table was spread at the end of the gallery, and these late-comers
+were regaled with plenty by their friends. Meanwhile, the big table
+at which we had dined was taken to pieces and removed. The
+_scagliola_ floor was swept by the waiters. Musicians came
+streaming in and took their places. The ladies resumed their shoes.
+Every one prepared to dance.
+
+My friend and I were now at liberty to chat with the men. He knew
+some of them by sight, and claimed acquaintance with others. There
+was plenty of talk about different boats, gondolas, and sandolos and
+topos, remarks upon the past season, and inquiries as to chances of
+engagements in the future. One young fellow told us how he had been
+drawn for the army, and should be obliged to give up his trade just
+when he had begun to make it answer. He had got a new gondola, and
+this would have to be hung up during the years of his service. The
+warehousing of a boat in these circumstances costs nearly one hundred
+francs a year, which is a serious tax upon the pockets of a private in
+the line. Many questions were put in turn to us, but all of the same
+tenor. 'Had we really enjoyed the _pranzo_? Now, really, were we
+amusing ourselves? And did we think the custom of the wedding _un
+bel costume_?' We could give an unequivocally hearty response to
+all these interrogations. The men seemed pleased. Their interest in
+our enjoyment was unaffected. It is noticeable how often the word
+_divertimento_ is heard upon the lips of the Italians. They have
+a notion that it is the function in life of the _Signori_ to
+amuse themselves.
+
+The ball opened, and now we were much besought by the ladies. I had to
+deny myself with a whole series of comical excuses. Eustace performed
+his duty after a stiff English fashion--once with his pretty partner
+of the _pranzo_, and once again with a fat gondolier. The band
+played waltzes and polkas, chiefly upon patriotic airs--the Marcia
+Reale, Garibaldi's Hymn, &c. Men danced with men, women with women,
+little boys and girls together. The gallery whirled with a laughing
+crowd. There was plenty of excitement and enjoyment--not an unseemly
+or extravagant word or gesture. My _comare_ careered about with a
+light maenadic impetuosity, which made me regret my inability to accept
+her pressing invitations. She pursued me into every corner of the
+room, but when at last I dropped excuses and told her that my real
+reason for not dancing was that it would hurt my health, she waived
+her claims at once with an _Ah, poverino!_
+
+Some time after midnight we felt that we had had enough of
+_divertimento_. Francesco helped us to slip out unobserved. With
+many silent good wishes we left the innocent playful people who had
+been so kind to us. The stars were shining from a watery sky as we
+passed into the piazza beneath the Campanile and the pinnacles of
+S. Mark. The Riva was almost empty, and the little waves fretted the
+boats moored to the piazzetta, as a warm moist breeze went fluttering
+by. We smoked a last cigar, crossed our _traghetto_, and were
+soon sound asleep at the end of a long pleasant day. The ball, we
+heard next morning, finished about four.
+
+Since that evening I have had plenty of opportunities for seeing my
+friends the gondoliers, both in their own homes and in my apartment.
+Several have entertained me at their mid-day meal of fried fish
+and amber-coloured polenta. These repasts were always cooked with
+scrupulous cleanliness, and served upon a table covered with coarse
+linen. The polenta is turned out upon a wooden platter, and cut with
+a string called _lassa_. You take a large slice of it on the
+palm of the left hand, and break it with the fingers of the right.
+Wholesome red wine of the Paduan district and good white bread were
+never wanting. The rooms in which we met to eat looked out on narrow
+lanes or over pergolas of yellowing vines. Their whitewashed walls
+were hung with photographs of friends and foreigners, many of them
+souvenirs from English or American employers. The men, in broad
+black hats and lilac shirts, sat round the table, girt with the red
+waist-wrapper, or _fascia_, which marks the ancient faction of
+the Castellani. The other faction, called Nicolotti, are distinguished
+by a black _assisa_. The quarters of the town are divided
+unequally and irregularly into these two parties. What was once a
+formidable rivalry between two sections of the Venetian populace,
+still survives in challenges to trials of strength and skill upon the
+water. The women, in their many-coloured kerchiefs, stirred polenta at
+the smoke-blackened chimney, whose huge pent-house roof projects two
+feet or more across the hearth. When they had served the table they
+took their seat on low stools, knitted stockings, or drank out of
+glasses handed across the shoulder to them by their lords. Some of
+these women were clearly notable housewives, and I have no reason to
+suppose that they do not take their full share of the housework. Boys
+and girls came in and out, and got a portion of the dinner to consume
+where they thought best. Children went tottering about upon the
+red-brick floor, the playthings of those hulking fellows, who handled
+them very gently and spoke kindly in a sort of confidential whisper
+to their ears. These little ears were mostly pierced for earrings, and
+the light blue eyes of the urchins peeped maliciously beneath shocks
+of yellow hair. A dog was often of the party. He ate fish like his
+masters, and was made to beg for it by sitting up and rowing with
+his paws. _Voga, Azzo, voga!_ The Anzolo who talked thus to
+his little brown Spitz-dog has the hoarse voice of a Triton and the
+movement of an animated sea-wave. Azzo performed his trick, swallowed
+his fish-bones, and the fiery Anzolo looked round approvingly.
+
+On all these occasions I have found these gondoliers the same
+sympathetic, industrious, cheery affectionate folk. They live in many
+respects a hard and precarious life. The winter in particular is a
+time of anxiety, and sometimes of privation, even to the well-to-do
+among them. Work then is scarce, and what there is, is rendered
+disagreeable to them by the cold. Yet they take their chance with
+facile temper, and are not soured by hardships. The amenities of the
+Venetian sea and air, the healthiness of the lagoons, the cheerful
+bustle of the poorer quarters, the brilliancy of this Southern
+sunlight, and the beauty which is everywhere apparent, must be
+reckoned as important factors in the formation of their character. And
+of that character, as I have said, the final note is playfulness.
+In spite of difficulties, their life has never been stern enough to
+sadden them. Bare necessities are marvellously cheap, and the pinch
+of real bad weather--such frost as locked the lagoons in ice two years
+ago, or such south-western gales as flooded the basement floors of
+all the houses on the Zattere--is rare and does not last long. On the
+other hand, their life has never been so lazy as to reduce them to
+the savagery of the traditional Neapolitan lazzaroni. They have had
+to work daily for small earnings, but under favourable conditions,
+and their labour has been lightened by much good-fellowship among
+themselves, by the amusements of their _feste_ and their singing
+clubs.
+
+Of course it is not easy for a stranger in a very different social
+position to feel that he has been admitted to their confidence.
+Italians have an ineradicable habit of making themselves externally
+agreeable, of bending in all indifferent matters to the whims and
+wishes of superiors, and of saying what they think _Signori_
+like. This habit, while it smoothes the surface of existence, raises
+up a barrier of compliment and partial insincerity, against which the
+more downright natures of us Northern folk break in vain efforts. Our
+advances are met with an imperceptible but impermeable resistance by
+the very people who are bent on making the world pleasant to us. It
+is the very reverse of that dour opposition which a Lowland Scot or
+a North English peasant offers to familiarity; but it is hardly less
+insurmountable. The treatment, again, which Venetians of the lower
+class have received through centuries from their own nobility, makes
+attempts at fraternisation on the part of gentlemen unintelligible to
+them. The best way, here and elsewhere, of overcoming these obstacles
+is to have some bond of work or interest in common--of service on the
+one side rendered, and goodwill on the other honestly displayed. The
+men of whom I have been speaking will, I am convinced, not shirk their
+share of duty or make unreasonable claims upon the generosity of their
+employers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+_A CINQUE CENTO BRUTUS_
+
+
+I.--THE SESTIERE DI SAN POLO
+
+There is a quarter of Venice not much visited by tourists, lying as
+it does outside their beat, away from the Rialto, at a considerable
+distance from the Frari and San Rocco, in what might almost pass for a
+city separated by a hundred miles from the Piazza. This is the quarter
+of San Polo, one corner of which, somewhere between the back of
+the Palazzo Foscari and the Campo di San Polo, was the scene of
+a memorable act of vengeance in the year 1546. Here Lorenzino de'
+Medici, the murderer of his cousin Alessandro, was at last tracked
+down and put to death by paid cut-throats. How they succeeded in their
+purpose, we know in every detail from the narrative dictated by the
+chief assassin. His story so curiously illustrates the conditions of
+life in Italy three centuries ago, that I have thought it worthy of
+abridgment. But, in order to make it intelligible, and to paint the
+manners of the times more fully, I must first relate the series of
+events which led to Lorenzino's murder of his cousin Alessandro, and
+from that to his own subsequent assassination. Lorenzino de' Medici,
+the Florentine Brutus of the sixteenth century, is the hero of the
+tragedy. Some of his relatives, however, must first appear upon the
+scene before he enters with a patriot's knife concealed beneath a
+court-fool's bauble.
+
+II.--THE MURDER OF IPPOLITO DE' MEDICI
+
+After the final extinction of the Florentine Republic, the hopes of
+the Medici, who now aspired to the dukedom of Tuscany, rested on three
+bastards--Alessandro, the reputed child of Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino;
+Ippolito, the natural son of Giuliano, Duke of Nemours; and Giulio,
+the offspring of an elder Giuliano, who was at this time Pope, with
+the title of Clement VII. Clement had seen Rome sacked in 1527 by a
+horde of freebooters fighting under the Imperial standard, and had
+used the remnant of these troops, commanded by the Prince of Orange,
+to crush his native city in the memorable siege of 1529-30. He now
+determined to rule Florence from the Papal chair by the help of the
+two bastard cousins I have named. Alessandro was created Duke of
+Civita di Penna, and sent to take the first place in the city.
+Ippolito was made a cardinal; since the Medici had learned that Rome
+was the real basis of their power, and it was undoubtedly in Clement's
+policy to advance this scion of his house to the Papacy. The sole
+surviving representative of the great Lorenzo de' Medici's legitimate
+blood was Catherine, daughter of the Duke of Urbino by Madeleine de la
+Tour d'Auvergne. She was pledged in marriage to the Duke of Orleans,
+who was afterwards Henry II. of France. A natural daughter of
+the Emperor Charles V. was provided for her putative half-brother
+Alessandro. By means of these alliances the succession of Ippolito
+to the Papal chair would have been secured, and the strength of the
+Medici would have been confirmed in Tuscany, but for the disasters
+which have now to be related.
+
+Between the cousins Alessandro and Ippolito there was no love lost. As
+boys, they had both played the part of princes in Florence under the
+guardianship of the Cardinal Passerini da Cortona. The higher rank
+had then been given to Ippolito, who bore the title of Magnifico, and
+seemed thus designated for the lordship of the city. Ippolito, though
+only half a Medici, was of more authentic lineage than Alessandro; for
+no proof positive could be adduced that the latter was even a spurious
+child of the Duke of Urbino. He bore obvious witness to his mother's
+blood upon his mulatto's face; but this mother was the wife of a
+groom, and it was certain that in the court of Urbino she had not been
+chary of her favours. The old magnificence of taste, the patronage
+of art and letters, and the preference for liberal studies which
+distinguished Casa Medici, survived in Ippolito; whereas Alessandro
+manifested only the brutal lusts of a debauched tyrant. It was
+therefore with great reluctance that, moved by reasons of state and
+domestic policy, Ippolito saw himself compelled to accept the scarlet
+hat. Alessandro having been recognised as a son of the Duke of Urbino,
+had become half-brother to the future Queen of France. To treat him as
+the head of the family was a necessity thrust, in the extremity of
+the Medicean fortunes, upon Clement. Ippolito, who more entirely
+represented the spirit of the house, was driven to assume the position
+of a cadet, with all the uncertainties of an ecclesiastical career.
+
+In these circumstances Ippolito had not strength of character to
+sacrifice himself for the consolidation of the Medicean power, which
+could only have been effected by maintaining a close bond of union
+between its members. The death of Clement in 1534 obscured his
+prospects in the Church. He was still too young to intrigue for the
+tiara. The new Pope, Alessandro Farnese, soon after his election,
+displayed a vigour which was unexpected from his age, together with
+a nepotism which his previous character had scarcely warranted. The
+Cardinal de' Medici felt himself excluded and oppressed. He joined the
+party of those numerous Florentine exiles, headed by Filippo Strozzi,
+and the Cardinals Salviati and Ridolfi, all of whom were connected
+by marriage with the legitimate Medici, and who unanimously hated and
+were jealous of the Duke of Civita di Penna. On the score of policy it
+is difficult to condemn this step. Alessandro's hold upon Florence was
+still precarious, nor had he yet married Margaret of Austria. Perhaps
+Ippolito was right in thinking he had less to gain from his cousin
+than from the anti-Medicean faction and the princes of the Church who
+favoured it. But he did not play his cards well. He quarrelled with
+the new Pope, Paul III., and by his vacillations led the Florentine
+exiles to suspect he might betray them.
+
+In the summer of 1535 Ippolito was at Itri, a little town not far
+from Gaeta and Terracina, within easy reach of Fondi, where dwelt the
+beautiful Giulia Gonzaga. To this lady the Cardinal paid assiduous
+court, passing his time with her in the romantic scenery of that
+world-famous Capuan coast. On the 5th of August his seneschal,
+Giovann' Andrea, of Borgo San Sepolcro, brought him a bowl of
+chicken-broth, after drinking which he exclaimed to one of his
+attendants, 'I have been poisoned, and the man who did it is Giovann'
+Andrea.' The seneschal was taken and tortured, and confessed that he
+had mixed a poison with the broth. Four days afterwards the Cardinal
+died, and a post-mortem examination showed that the omentum had been
+eaten by some corrosive substance. Giovann' Andrea was sent in chains
+to Rome; but in spite of his confession, more than once repeated, the
+court released him. He immediately took refuge with Alessandro de'
+Medici in Florence, whence he repaired to Borgo San Sepolcro, and
+was, at the close of a few months, there murdered by the people of the
+place. From these circumstances it was conjectured, not without good
+reason, that Alessandro had procured his cousin's death; and a certain
+Captain Pignatta, of low birth in Florence, a bravo and a coward,
+was believed to have brought the poison to Itri from the Duke. The
+Medicean courtiers at Florence did not disguise their satisfaction;
+and one of them exclaimed, with reference to the event, 'We know how
+to brush flies from our noses!'
+
+III.--THE MURDER OF ALESSANDRO DE' MEDICI
+
+Having removed his cousin and rival from the scene, Alessandro de'
+Medici plunged with even greater effrontery into the cruelties and
+debaucheries which made him odious in Florence. It seemed as though
+fortune meant to smile on him; for in this same year (1535) Charles
+V. decided at Naples in his favour against the Florentine exiles,
+who were pleading their own cause and that of the city injured by his
+tyrannies; and in February of the following year he married Margaret
+of Austria, the Emperor's natural daughter. Francesco Guicciardini,
+the first statesman and historian of his age, had undertaken his
+defence, and was ready to support him by advice and countenance in
+the conduct of his government. Within the lute of this prosperity,
+however, there was one little rift. For some months past he had
+closely attached to his person a certain kinsman, Lorenzo de' Medici,
+who was descended in the fourth generation from Lorenzo, the brother
+of Cosimo Pater Patriae. This Lorenzo, or Lorenzino, or Lorenzaccio,
+as his most intimate acquaintances called him, was destined to murder
+Alessandro; and it is worthy of notice that the Duke had received
+frequent warnings of his fate. A Perugian page, for instance, who
+suffered from some infirmity, saw in a dream that Lorenzino would kill
+his master. Astrologers predicted that the Duke must die by having his
+throat cut. One of them is said to have named Lorenzo de' Medici as
+the assassin; and another described him so accurately that there was
+no mistaking the man. Moreover, Madonna Lucrezia Salviati wrote to the
+Duke from Rome that he should beware of a certain person, indicating
+Lorenzino; and her daughter, Madonna Maria, told him to his face
+she hated the young man, 'because I know he means to murder you,
+and murder you he will.' Nor was this all. The Duke's favourite
+body-servants mistrusted Lorenzino. On one occasion, when Alessandro
+and Lorenzino, attended by a certain Giomo, were escalading a wall at
+night, as was their wont upon illicit love-adventures, Giomo whispered
+to his master: 'Ah, my lord, do let me cut the rope, and rid ourselves
+of him!' To which the Duke replied: 'No, I do not want this; but if he
+could, I know he'd twist it round my neck.'
+
+In spite, then, of these warnings and the want of confidence he felt,
+the Duke continually lived with Lorenzino, employing him as pander in
+his intrigues, and preferring his society to that of simpler men. When
+he rode abroad, he took this evil friend upon his crupper; although
+he knew for certain that Lorenzino had stolen a tight-fitting vest of
+mail he used to wear, and, while his arms were round his waist, was
+always meditating how to stick a poignard in his body. He trusted,
+so it seems, to his own great strength and to the other's physical
+weakness.
+
+At this point, since Lorenzino is the principal actor in the two-act
+drama which follows, it will be well to introduce him to the reader in
+the words of Varchi, who was personally acquainted with him. Born at
+Florence in 1514, he was left early by his father's death to the
+sole care of his mother, Maria Soderini, 'a lady of rare prudence
+and goodness, who attended with the utmost pains and diligence to his
+education. No sooner, however, had he acquired the rudiments of humane
+learning, which, being of very quick parts, he imbibed with incredible
+facility, than he began to display a restless mind, insatiable and
+appetitive of vice. Soon afterwards, under the rule and discipline of
+Filippo Strozzi, he made open sport of all things human and divine;
+and preferring the society of low persons, who not only flattered him
+but were congenial to his tastes, he gave free rein to his desires,
+especially in affairs of love, without regard for sex or age or
+quality, and in his secret soul, while he lavished feigned caresses
+upon every one he saw, felt no esteem for any living being. He
+thirsted strangely for glory, and omitted no point of deed or word
+that might, he thought, procure him the reputation of a man of spirit
+or of wit. He was lean of person, somewhat slightly built, and on
+this account people called him Lorenzino. He never laughed, but had a
+sneering smile; and although he was rather distinguished by grace than
+beauty, his countenance being dark and melancholy, still in the flower
+of his age he was beloved beyond all measure by Pope Clement; in spite
+of which he had it in his mind (according to what he said himself
+after killing the Duke Alessandro) to have murdered him. He brought
+Francesco di Raffaello de' Medici, the Pope's rival, who was a young
+man of excellent attainments and the highest hope, to such extremity
+that he lost his wits, and became the sport of the whole court at
+Rome, and was sent back, as a lesser evil, as a confirmed madman to
+Florence.' Varchi proceeds to relate how Lorenzino fell
+into disfavour with the Pope and the Romans by chopping the heads off
+statues from the arch of Constantine and other monuments; for which
+act of vandalism Molsa impeached him in the Roman Academy, and a price
+was set upon his head. Having returned to Florence, he proceeded
+to court Duke Alessandro, into whose confidence he wormed himself,
+pretending to play the spy upon the exiles, and affecting a personal
+timidity which put the Prince off his guard. Alessandro called him
+'the philosopher,' because he conversed in solitude with his own
+thoughts and seemed indifferent to wealth and office. But all this
+while Lorenzino was plotting how to murder him.
+
+Giovio's account of this strange intimacy may be added, since it
+completes the picture I have drawn from Varchi:--'Lorenzo made himself
+the accomplice and instrument of those amorous amusements for which
+the Duke had an insatiable appetite, with the object of deceiving him.
+He was singularly well furnished with all the scoundrelly arts and
+trained devices of the pander's trade; composed fine verses to incite
+to lust; wrote and represented comedies in Italian; and pretended
+to take pleasure only in such tricks and studies. Therefore he never
+carried arms like other courtiers, and feigned to be afraid of blood,
+a man who sought tranquillity at any price. Besides, he bore a pallid
+countenance and melancholy brow, walking alone, talking very little
+and with few persons. He haunted solitary places apart from the city,
+and showed such plain signs of hypochondria that some began covertly
+to pass jokes on him. Certain others, who were more acute, suspected
+that he was harbouring and devising in his mind some terrible
+enterprise.' The Prologue to Lorenzino's own comedy of 'Aridosiso'
+brings the sardonic, sneering, ironical man vividly before us.
+He calls himself 'un certo omiciatto, che non e nessun di voi che
+veggendolo non l'avesse a noia, pensando che egli abbia fatto una
+commedia;' and begs the audience to damn his play to save him the
+tedium of writing another. Criticised by the light of his subsequent
+actions, this prologue may even be understood to contain a covert
+promise of the murder he was meditating.
+
+'In this way,' writes Varchi, 'the Duke had taken such familiarity
+with Lorenzo, that, not content with making use of him as a ruffian
+in his dealings with women, whether religious or secular, maidens
+or wives or widows, noble or plebeian, young or elderly, as it might
+happen, he applied to him to procure for his pleasure a half-sister of
+Lorenzo's own mother, a young lady of marvellous beauty, but not less
+chaste than beautiful, who was the wife of Lionardo Ginori, and lived
+not far from the back entrance to the palace of the Medici.' Lorenzino
+undertook this odious commission, seeing an opportunity to work his
+designs against the Duke. But first he had to form an accomplice,
+since he could not hope to carry out the murder without help. A bravo,
+called Michele del Tavolaccino, but better known by the nickname of
+Scoronconcolo, struck him as a fitting instrument. He had procured
+this man's pardon for a homicide, and it appears that the fellow
+retained a certain sense of gratitude. Lorenzino began by telling the
+man there was a courtier who put insults upon him, and Scoronconcolo
+professed his readiness to kill the knave. 'Sia chi si voglia; io
+l'ammazzero, se fosse Cristo.' Up to the last minute the name of
+Alessandro was not mentioned. Having thus secured his assistant,
+Lorenzino chose a night when he knew that Alessandro Vitelli, captain
+of the Duke's guard, would be from home. Then, after supper, he
+whispered in Alessandro's ear that at last he had seduced his aunt
+with an offer of money, and that she would come to his, Lorenzo's
+chamber at the service of the Duke that night. Only the Duke must
+appear at the rendezvous alone, and when he had arrived, the lady
+should be fetched. 'Certain it is,' says Varchi, 'that the Duke,
+having donned a cloak of satin in the Neapolitan style, lined with
+sable, when he went to take his gloves, and there were some of mail
+and some of perfumed leather, hesitated awhile and said: "Which shall
+I choose, those of war, or those of love-making?"' He took the latter
+and went out with only four attendants, three of whom he dismissed
+upon the Piazza di San Marco, while one was stationed just opposite
+Lorenzo's house, with strict orders not to stir if he should see folk
+enter or issue thence. But this fellow, called the Hungarian, after
+waiting a great while, returned to the Duke's chamber, and there went
+to sleep.
+
+Meanwhile Lorenzino received Alessandro in his bedroom, where there
+was a good fire. The Duke unbuckled his sword, which Lorenzino took,
+and having entangled the belt with the hilt, so that it should not
+readily be drawn, laid it on the pillow. The Duke had flung himself
+already on the bed, and hid himself among the curtains--doing this, it
+is supposed, to save himself from the trouble of paying compliments to
+the lady when she should arrive. For Caterina Ginori had the fame of
+a fair speaker, and Alessandro was aware of his own incapacity to play
+the part of a respectful lover. Nothing could more strongly point the
+man's brutality than this act, which contributed in no small measure
+to his ruin.
+
+Lorenzino left the Duke upon the bed, and went at once for
+Scoronconcolo. He told him that the enemy was caught, and bade him
+only mind the work he had to do. 'That will I do,' the bravo answered,
+'even though it were the Duke himself.' 'You've hit the mark,' said
+Lorenzino with a face of joy; 'he cannot slip through our fingers.
+Come!' So they mounted to the bedroom, and Lorenzino, knowing where
+the Duke was laid, cried: 'Sir, are you asleep?' and therewith ran
+him through the back. Alessandro was sleeping, or pretending to
+sleep, face downwards, and the sword passed through his kidneys and
+diaphragm. But it did not kill him. He slipped from the bed, and
+seized a stool to parry the next blow. Scoronconcolo now stabbed him
+in the face, while Lorenzino forced him back upon the bed; and then
+began a hideous struggle. In order to prevent his cries, Lorenzino
+doubled his fist into the Duke's mouth. Alessandro seized the thumb
+between his teeth, and held it in a vice until he died. This disabled
+Lorenzino, who still lay upon his victim's body, and Scoronconcolo
+could not strike for fear of wounding his master. Between the writhing
+couple he made, however, several passes with his sword, which only
+pierced the mattress. Then he drew a knife and drove it into the
+Duke's throat, and bored about till he had severed veins and windpipe.
+
+
+IV.--THE FLIGHT OF LORENZINO DE' MEDICI
+
+Alessandro was dead. His body fell to earth. The two murderers,
+drenched with blood, lifted it up, and placed it on the bed, wrapped
+in the curtains, as they had found him first. Then Lorenzino went to
+the window, which looked out upon the Via Larga, and opened it to rest
+and breathe a little air. After this he called for Scoronconcolo's
+boy, Il Freccia, and bade him look upon the dead man. Il Freccia
+recognised the Duke. But why Lorenzino did this, no one knew. It
+seemed, as Varchi says, that, having planned the murder with great
+ability, and executed it with daring, his good sense and good luck
+forsook him. He made no use of the crime he had committed; and from
+that day forward till his own assassination, nothing prospered with
+him. Indeed, the murder of Alessandro appears to have been almost
+motiveless, considered from the point of view of practical politics.
+Varchi assumes that Lorenzino's burning desire of glory prompted the
+deed; and when he had acquired the notoriety he sought, there was an
+end to his ambition. This view is confirmed by the Apology he wrote
+and published for his act. It remains one of the most pregnant,
+bold, and brilliant pieces of writing which we possess in favour of
+tyrannicide from that epoch of insolent crime and audacious rhetoric.
+So energetic is the style, and so biting the invective of this
+masterpiece, in which the author stabs a second time his victim, that
+both Giordani and Leopardi affirmed it to be the only true monument of
+eloquence in the Italian language. If thirst for glory was Lorenzino's
+principal incentive, immediate glory was his guerdon. He escaped that
+same night with Scoronconcolo and Freccia to Bologna, where he stayed
+to dress his thumb, and then passed forward to Venice. Filippo Strozzi
+there welcomed him as the new Brutus, gave him money, and promised to
+marry his two sons to the two sisters of the tyrant-killer. Poems were
+written and published by the most famous men of letters, including
+Benedetto Varchi and Francesco Maria Molsa, in praise of the Tuscan
+Brutus, the liberator of his country from a tyrant. A bronze medal
+was struck bearing his name, with a profile copied from Michelangelo's
+bust of Brutus. On the obverse are two daggers and a cup, and the date
+viii. id. Jan.
+
+The immediate consequence of Alessandro's murder was the elevation
+of Cosimo, son of Giovanni delle Bande Nere, and second cousin of
+Lorenzino, to the duchy. At the ceremony of his investiture with
+the ducal honours, Cosimo solemnly undertook to revenge Alessandro's
+murder. In the following March he buried his predecessor with pomp
+in San Lorenzo. The body was placed beside the bones of the Duke of
+Urbino in the marble chest of Michelangelo, and here not many years
+ago it was discovered. Soon afterwards Lorenzino was declared a rebel.
+His portrait was painted according to old Tuscan precedent, head
+downwards, and suspended by one foot, upon the wall of the fort built
+by Alessandro. His house was cut in twain from roof to pavement, and
+a narrow lane was driven through it, which received the title of
+Traitor's Alley, _Chiasso del Traditore_. The price of four
+thousand golden florins was put upon his head, together with the
+further sum of one hundred florins per annum in perpetuity to be paid
+to the murderer and his direct heirs in succession, by the Otto di
+Balia. Moreover, the man who killed Lorenzino was to enjoy all civic
+privileges; exemption from all taxes, ordinary and extraordinary; the
+right of carrying arms, together with two attendants, in the city and
+the whole domain of Florence; and the further prerogative of restoring
+ten outlaws at his choice. If Lorenzino could be captured and brought
+alive to Florence, the whole of this reward would be doubled.
+
+This decree was promulgated in April 1537, and thenceforward Lorenzino
+de' Medici lived a doomed man. The assassin, who had been proclaimed a
+Brutus by Tuscan exiles and humanistic enthusiasts, was regarded as a
+Judas by the common people. Ballads were written on him with the title
+of the 'Piteous and sore lament made unto himself by Lorenzino de'
+Medici, who murdered the most illustrious Duke Alessandro.' He had
+become a wild beast, whom it was honourable to hunt down, a pest which
+it was righteous to extirpate. Yet fate delayed nine years to overtake
+him. What remains to be told about his story must be extracted
+from the narrative of the bravo who succeeded, with the aid of an
+accomplice, in despatching him at Venice.[13] So far as possible,
+I shall use the man's own words, translating them literally, and
+omitting only unimportant details. The narrative throws brilliant
+light upon the manners and movements of professional cut-throats at
+that period in Italy. It seems to have been taken down from the hero
+Francesco, or Cecco, Bibboni's lips; and there is no doubt that we
+possess in it a valuable historical document for the illustration of
+contemporary customs. It offers in all points a curious parallel
+to Cellini's account of his own homicides and hair-breadth escapes.
+Moreover, it is confirmed in its minutest circumstances by the records
+of the criminal courts of Venice in the sixteenth century. This I can
+attest from recent examination of MSS. relating to the _Signori
+di Notte_ and the _Esecutori contro la Bestemmia_, which are
+preserved among the Archives at the Frari.
+
+V.--THE MURDER OF LORENZINO DE' MEDICI
+
+'When I returned from Germany,' begins Bibboni, 'where I had been in
+the pay of the Emperor, I found at Vicenza Bebo da Volterra, who was
+staying in the house of M. Antonio da Roma, a nobleman of that city.
+This gentleman employed him because of a great feud he had; and he was
+mighty pleased, moreover, at my coming, and desired that I too should
+take up my quarters in his palace.'
+
+This paragraph strikes the keynote of the whole narrative, and
+introduces us to the company we are about to keep. The noblemen of
+that epoch, if they had private enemies, took into their service
+soldiers of adventure, partly to protect their persons, but also to
+make war, when occasion offered, on their foes. The _bravi_, as
+they were styled, had quarters assigned them in the basement of
+the palace, where they might be seen swaggering about the door or
+flaunting their gay clothes behind the massive iron bars of the
+windows which opened on the streets. When their master went abroad
+at night they followed him, and were always at hand to perform secret
+services in love affairs, assassination, and espial. For the rest,
+they haunted taverns, and kept up correspondence with prostitutes. An
+Italian city had a whole population of such fellows, the offscourings
+of armies, drawn from all nations, divided by their allegiance of the
+time being into hostile camps, but united by community of interest and
+occupation, and ready to combine against the upper class, upon whose
+vices, enmities, and cowardice they throve.
+
+Bibboni proceeds to say how another gentleman of Vicenza, M. Francesco
+Manente, had at this time a feud with certain of the Guazzi and the
+Laschi, which had lasted several years, and cost the lives of many
+members of both parties and their following. M. Francesco being a
+friend of M. Antonio, besought that gentleman to lend him Bibboni and
+Bebo for a season; and the two _bravi_ went together with their
+new master to Celsano, a village in the neighbourhood. 'There both
+parties had estates, and all of them kept armed men in their houses,
+so that not a day passed without feats of arms, and always there was
+some one killed or wounded. One day, soon afterwards, the leaders of
+our party resolved to attack the foe in their house, where we killed
+two, and the rest, numbering five men, entrenched themselves in
+a ground-floor apartment; whereupon we took possession of their
+harquebuses and other arms, which forced them to abandon the villa and
+retire to Vicenza; and within a short space of time this great feud
+was terminated by an ample peace.' After this Bebo took service with
+the Rector of the University in Padua, and was transferred by his new
+patron to Milan. Bibboni remained at Vicenza with M. Galeazzo della
+Seta, who stood in great fear of his life, notwithstanding the peace
+which had been concluded between the two factions. At the end of ten
+months he returned to M. Antonio da Roma and his six brothers, 'all of
+whom being very much attached to me, they proposed that I should
+live my life with them, for good or ill, and be treated as one of the
+family; upon the understanding that if war broke out and I wanted to
+take part in it, I should always have twenty-five crowns and arms and
+horse, with welcome home, so long as I lived; and in case I did not
+care to join the troops, the same provision for my maintenance.'
+
+From these details we comprehend the sort of calling which a bravo
+of Bibboni's species followed. Meanwhile Bebo was at Milan. 'There it
+happened that M. Francesco Vinta, of Volterra, was on embassy from
+the Duke of Florence. He saw Bebo, and asked him what he was doing in
+Milan, and Bebo answered that he was a knight errant.' This phrase,
+derived no doubt from the romantic epics then in vogue, was a pretty
+euphemism for a rogue of Bebo's quality. The ambassador now began
+cautiously to sound his man, who seems to have been outlawed from the
+Tuscan duchy, telling him he knew a way by which he might return with
+favour to his home, and at last disclosing the affair of Lorenzo. Bebo
+was puzzled at first, but when he understood the matter, he professed
+his willingness, took letters from the envoy to the Duke of Florence,
+and, in a private audience with Cosimo, informed him that he was ready
+to attempt Lorenzino's assassination. He added that 'he had a comrade
+fit for such a job, whose fellow for the business could not easily be
+found.'
+
+Bebo now travelled to Vicenza, and opened the whole matter to Bibboni,
+who weighed it well, and at last, being convinced that the Duke's
+commission to his comrade was _bona fide_, determined to take his
+share in the undertaking. The two agreed to have no accomplices.
+They went to Venice, and 'I,' says Bibboni, 'being most intimately
+acquainted with all that city, and provided there with many friends,
+soon quietly contrived to know where Lorenzino lodged, and took a room
+in the neighbourhood, and spent some days in seeing how we best might
+rule our conduct.' Bibboni soon discovered that Lorenzino never left
+his palace; and he therefore remained in much perplexity, until, by
+good luck, Ruberto Strozzi arrived from France in Venice, bringing in
+his train a Navarrese servant, who had the nickname of Spagnoletto.
+This fellow was a great friend of the bravo. They met, and Bibboni
+told him that he should like to go and kiss the hands of Messer
+Ruberto, whom he had known in Rome. Strozzi inhabited the same palace
+as Lorenzino. 'When we arrived there, both Messer Ruberto and Lorenzo
+were leaving the house, and there were around them so many gentlemen
+and other persons, that I could not present myself, and both
+straightway stepped into the gondola. Then I, not having seen Lorenzo
+for a long while past, and because he was very quietly attired, could
+not recognise the man exactly, but only as it were between certainty
+and doubt. Wherefore I said to Spagnoletto, "I think I know that
+gentleman, but don't remember where I saw him." And Messer Ruberto was
+giving him his right hand. Then Spagnoletto answered, "You know him
+well enough; he is Messer Lorenzo. But see you tell this to nobody. He
+goes by the name of Messer Dario, because he lives in great fear
+for his safety, and people don't know that he is now in Venice." I
+answered that I marvelled much, and if I could have helped him, would
+have done so willingly. Then I asked where they were going, and he
+said, to dine with Messer Giovanni della Casa, who was the Pope's
+Legate. I did not leave the man till I had drawn from him all I
+required.'
+
+Thus spoke the Italian Judas. The appearance of La Casa on the
+scene is interesting. He was the celebrated author of the scandalous
+'Capitolo del Forno,' the author of many sublime and melancholy
+sonnets, who was now at Venice, prosecuting a charge of heresy against
+Pier Paolo Vergerio, and paying his addresses to a noble lady of the
+Quirini family. It seems that on the territory of San Marco he made
+common cause with the exiles from Florence, for he was himself by
+birth a Florentine, and he had no objection to take Brutus-Lorenzino
+by the hand.
+
+After the noblemen had rowed off in their gondola to dine with the
+Legate, Bibboni and his friend entered their palace, where he found
+another old acquaintance, the house-steward, or _spenditore_ of
+Lorenzo. From him he gathered much useful information. Pietro Strozzi,
+it seems, had allowed the tyrannicide one thousand five hundred crowns
+a year, with the keep of three brave and daring companions (_tre
+compagni bravi e facinorosi_), and a palace worth fifty crowns on
+lease. But Lorenzo had just taken another on the Campo di San Polo at
+three hundred crowns a year, for which swagger (_altura_) Pietro
+Strozzi had struck a thousand crowns off his allowance. Bibboni also
+learned that he was keeping house with his uncle, Alessandro Soderini,
+another Florentine outlaw, and that he was ardently in love with a
+certain beautiful Barozza. This woman was apparently one of the grand
+courtesans of Venice. He further ascertained the date when he was
+going to move into the palace at San Polo, and, 'to put it briefly,
+knew everything he did, and, as it were, how many times a day he
+spit.' Such were the intelligences of the servants' hall, and of such
+value were they to men of Bibboni's calling.
+
+In the Carnival of 1546 Lorenzo meant to go masqued in the habit of
+a gipsy woman to the square of San Spirito, where there was to be a
+joust. Great crowds of people would assemble, and Bibboni hoped to
+do his business there. The assassination, however, failed on this
+occasion, and Lorenzo took up his abode in the palace he had hired
+upon the Campo di San Polo. This Campo is one of the largest open
+places in Venice, shaped irregularly, with a finely curving line upon
+the western side, where two of the noblest private houses in the city
+are still standing. Nearly opposite these, in the south-western angle,
+stands, detached, the little old church of San Polo. One of its side
+entrances opens upon the square; the other on a lane, which leads
+eventually to the Frari. There is nothing in Bibboni's narrative to
+make it clear where Lorenzo hired his dwelling. But it would seem
+from certain things which he says later on, that in order to enter the
+church his victim had to cross the square. Meanwhile Bibboni took the
+precaution of making friends with a shoemaker, whose shop commanded
+the whole Campo, including Lorenzo's palace. In this shop he began to
+spend much of his time; 'and oftentimes I feigned to be asleep;
+but God knows whether I was sleeping, for my mind, at any rate, was
+wide-awake.'
+
+A second convenient occasion for murdering Lorenzo soon seemed to
+offer. He was bidden to dine with Monsignor della Casa; and Bibboni,
+putting a bold face on, entered the Legate's palace, having left
+Bebo below in the loggia, fully resolved to do the business. 'But we
+found,' he says, 'that, they had gone to dine at Murano, so that we
+remained with our tabors in their bag.' The island of Murano at that
+period was a favourite resort of the Venetian nobles, especially of
+the more literary and artistic, who kept country-houses there, where
+they enjoyed the fresh air of the lagoons and the quiet of their
+gardens.
+
+The third occasion, after all these weeks of watching, brought success
+to Bibboni's schemes. He had observed how Lorenzo occasionally so far
+broke his rules of caution as to go on foot, past the church of San
+Polo, to visit the beautiful Barozza; and he resolved, if possible,
+to catch him on one of these journeys. 'It so chanced on the 28th of
+February, which was the second Sunday of Lent, that having gone, as
+was my wont, to pry out whether Lorenzo would give orders for going
+abroad that day, I entered the shoemaker's shop, and stayed awhile,
+until Lorenzo came to the window with a napkin round his neck for he
+was combing his hair--and at the same moment I saw a certain Giovan
+Battista Martelli, who kept his sword for the defence of Lorenzo's
+person, enter and come forth again. Concluding that they would
+probably go abroad, I went home to get ready and procure the necessary
+weapons, and there I found Bebo asleep in bed, and made him get up at
+once, and we came to our accustomed post of observation, by the church
+of San Polo, where our men would have to pass.' Bibboni now retired to
+his friend the shoemaker's, and Bebo took up his station at one of
+the side-doors of San Polo; 'and, as good luck would have it, Giovan
+Battista Martelli came forth, and walked a piece in front, and then
+Lorenzo came, and then Alessandro Soderini, going the one behind the
+other, like storks, and Lorenzo, on entering the church, and lifting
+up the curtain of the door, was seen from the opposite door by Bebo,
+who at the same time noticed how I had left the shop, and so we met
+upon the street as we had agreed, and he told me that Lorenzo was
+inside the church.'
+
+To any one who knows the Campo di San Polo, it will be apparent that
+Lorenzo had crossed from the western side of the piazza and entered
+the church by what is technically called its northern door. Bebo,
+stationed at the southern door, could see him when he pushed the heavy
+_stoia_ or leather curtain aside, and at the same time could
+observe Bibboni's movements in the cobbler's shop. Meanwhile Lorenzo
+walked across the church and came to the same door where Bebo had been
+standing. 'I saw him issue from the church and take the main street;
+then came Alessandro Soderini, and I walked last of all; and when
+we reached the point we had determined on, I jumped in front
+of Alessandro with the poignard in my hand, crying, "Hold hard,
+Alessandro, and get along with you in God's name, for we are not here
+for you!" He then threw himself around my waist, and grasped my arms,
+and kept on calling out. Seeing how wrong I had been to try to spare
+his life, I wrenched myself as well as I could from his grip, and with
+my lifted poignard struck him, as God willed, above the eyebrow, and a
+little blood trickled from the wound. He, in high fury, gave me such a
+thrust that I fell backward, and the ground besides was slippery
+from having rained a little. Then Alessandro drew his sword, which he
+carried in its scabbard, and thrust at me in front, and struck me on
+the corslet, which for my good fortune was of double mail. Before I
+could get ready I received three passes, which, had I worn a doublet
+instead of that mailed corslet, would certainly have run me through.
+At the fourth pass I had regained my strength and spirit, and closed
+with him, and stabbed him four times in the head, and being so close
+he could not use his sword, but tried to parry with his hand and hilt,
+and I, as God willed, struck him at the wrist below the sleeve of
+mail, and cut his hand off clean, and gave him then one last stroke on
+his head. Thereupon he begged for God's sake spare his life, and I, in
+trouble about Bebo, left him in the arms of a Venetian nobleman, who
+held him back from jumping into the canal.'
+
+Who this Venetian nobleman, found unexpectedly upon the scene, was,
+does not appear. Nor, what is still more curious, do we hear anything
+of that Martelli, the bravo, 'who kept his sword for the defence of
+Lorenzo's person.' The one had arrived accidentally, it seems. The
+other must have been a coward and escaped from the scuffle.
+
+'When I turned,' proceeds Bibboni, 'I found Lorenzo on his knees. He
+raised himself, and I, in anger, gave him a great cut across the head,
+which split it in two pieces, and laid him at my feet, and he never
+rose again.'
+
+VI.--THE ESCAPE OF THE BRAVI
+
+Bebo, meanwhile, had made off from the scene of action. And Bibboni,
+taking to his heels, came up with him in the little square of San
+Marcello. They now ran for their lives till they reached the traghetto
+di San Spirito, where they threw their poignards into the water,
+remembering that no man might carry these in Venice under penalty
+of the galleys. Bibboni's white hose were drenched with blood. He
+therefore agreed to separate from Bebo, having named a rendezvous.
+Left alone, his ill luck brought him face to face with twenty
+constables (_sbirri_). 'In a moment I conceived that they knew
+everything, and were come to capture me, and of a truth I saw that it
+was over with me. As swiftly as I could I quickened pace and got into
+a church, near to which was the house of a Compagnia, and the one
+opened into the other, and knelt down and prayed, commending myself
+with fervour to God for my deliverance and safety. Yet while I prayed,
+I kept my eyes well open and saw the whole band pass the church,
+except one man who entered, and I strained my sight so that I seemed
+to see behind as well as in front, and then it was I longed for my
+poignard, for I should not have heeded being in a church.' But the
+constable, it soon appeared, was not looking for Bibboni. So he
+gathered up his courage, and ran for the Church of San Spirito, where
+the Padre Andrea Volterrano was preaching to a great congregation.
+He hoped to go in by one door and out by the other, but the crowd
+prevented him, and he had to turn back and face the _sbirri_. One
+of them followed him, having probably caught sight of the blood upon
+his hose. Then Bibboni resolved to have done with the fellow, and
+rushed at him, and flung him down with his head upon the pavement,
+and ran like mad and came at last, all out of breath, to San Marco. It
+seems clear that before Bibboni separated from Bebo they had crossed
+the water, for the Sestiere di San Polo is separated from the Sestiere
+di San Marco by the Grand Canal. And this they must have done at the
+traghetto di San Spirito. Neither the church nor the traghetto are
+now in existence, and this part of the story is therefore obscure.[14]
+Having reached San Marco, he took a gondola at the Ponte della Paglia,
+where tourists are now wont to stand and contemplate the Ducal Palace
+and the Bridge of Sighs. First, he sought the house of a woman of the
+town who was his friend; then changed purpose, and rowed to the palace
+of the Count Salici da Collalto. 'He was a great friend and intimate
+of ours, because Bebo and I had done him many and great services in
+times passed. There I knocked; and Bebo opened the door, and when he
+saw me dabbled with blood, he marvelled that I had not come to grief
+and fallen into the hands of justice, and, indeed, had feared as much
+because I had remained so long away.' It appears, therefore, that the
+Palazzo Collalto was their rendezvous. 'The Count was from home; but
+being known to all his people, I played the master and went into the
+kitchen to the fire, and with soap and water turned my hose, which had
+been white, to a grey colour.' This is a very delicate way of saying
+that he washed out the blood of Alessandro and Lorenzo!
+
+Soon after the Count returned, and 'lavished caresses' upon Bebo and
+his precious comrade. They did not tell him what they had achieved
+that morning, but put him off with a story of having settled a
+_sbirro_ in a quarrel about a girl. Then the Count invited them to
+dinner; and being himself bound to entertain the first physician of
+Venice, requested them to take it in an upper chamber. He and his
+secretary served them with their own hands at table. When the
+physician arrived, the Count went downstairs; and at this moment a
+messenger came from Lorenzo's mother, begging the doctor to go at once
+to San Polo, for that her son had been murdered and Soderini wounded
+to the death. It was now no longer possible to conceal their doings
+from the Count, who told them to pluck up courage and abide in
+patience. He had himself to dine and take his siesta, and then to
+attend a meeting of the Council.
+
+About the hour of vespers, Bibboni determined to seek better refuge.
+Followed at a discreet distance by Bebo, he first called at their
+lodgings and ordered supper. Two priests came in and fell into
+conversation with them. But something in the behaviour of one of
+these good men roused his suspicions. So they left the house, took a
+gondola, and told the man to row hard to S. Maria Zobenigo. On the way
+he bade him put them on shore, paid him well, and ordered him to wait
+for them. They landed near the palace of the Spanish embassy; and here
+Bibboni meant to seek sanctuary. For it must be remembered that the
+houses of ambassadors, no less than of princes of the Church, were
+inviolable. They offered the most convenient harbouring-places to
+rascals. Charles V., moreover, was deeply interested in the vengeance
+taken on Alessandro de' Medici's murderer, for his own natural
+daughter was Alessandro's widow and Duchess of Florence. In the palace
+they were met with much courtesy by about forty Spaniards, who showed
+considerable curiosity, and told them that Lorenzo and Alessandro
+Soderini had been murdered that morning by two men whose description
+answered to their appearance. Bibboni put their questions by and asked
+to see the ambassador. He was not at home. In that case, said Bibboni,
+take us to the secretary. Attended by some thirty Spaniards, 'with
+great joy and gladness,' they were shown into the secretary's chamber.
+He sent the rest of the folk away, 'and locked the door well, and then
+embraced and kissed us before we had said a word, and afterwards bade
+us talk freely without any fear.' When Bibboni had told the whole
+story, he was again embraced and kissed by the secretary, who
+thereupon left them and went to the private apartment of the
+ambassador. Shortly after he returned and led them by a winding
+staircase into the presence of his master. The ambassador greeted
+them with great honour, told them he would strain all the power of
+the empire to hand them in safety over to Duke Cosimo, and that he had
+already sent a courier to the Emperor with the good news.
+
+So they remained in hiding in the Spanish embassy; and in ten days'
+time commands were received from Charles himself that everything
+should be done to convey them safely to Florence. The difficulty was
+how to smuggle them out of Venice, where the police of the Republic
+were on watch, and Florentine outlaws were mounting guard on sea and
+shore to catch them. The ambassador began by spreading reports on the
+Rialto every morning of their having been seen at Padua, at Verona, in
+Friuli. He then hired a palace at Malghera, near Mestre, and went out
+daily with fifty Spaniards, and took carriage or amused himself with
+horse exercise and shooting. The Florentines, who were on watch, could
+only discover from his people that he did this for amusement. When
+he thought that he had put them sufficiently off their guard, the
+ambassador one day took Bibboni and Bebo out by Canaregio and Mestre
+to Malghera, concealed in his own gondola, with the whole train of
+Spaniards in attendance. And though, on landing, the Florentines
+challenged them, they durst not interfere with an ambassador or come
+to battle with his men. So Bebo and Bibboni were hustled into a coach,
+and afterwards provided with two comrades and four horses. They rode
+for ninety miles without stopping to sleep, and on the day following
+this long journey reached Trento, having probably threaded the
+mountain valleys above Bassano, for Bibboni speaks of a certain
+village where the people talked half German. The Imperial Ambassador
+at Trento forwarded them next day to Mantua; from Mantua they came to
+Piacenza; thence, passing through the valley of the Taro, crossing
+the Apennines at Cisa, descending on Pontremoli, and reaching Pisa at
+night, the fourteenth day after their escape from Venice.
+
+When they arrived at Pisa, Duke Cosimo was supping. So they went to
+an inn, and next morning presented themselves to his Grace. Cosimo
+received them kindly, assured them of his gratitude, confirmed them
+in the enjoyment of their rewards and privileges, and swore that they
+might rest secure of his protection in all parts of his dominion. We
+may imagine how the men caroused together after this reception. As
+Bibboni adds, 'We were now able for the whole time of life left us
+to live splendidly, without a thought or care.' The last words of his
+narrative are these: 'Bebo from Pisa, at what date I know not, went
+home to Volterra, his native town, and there finished his days; while
+I abode in Florence, where I have had no further wish to hear of wars,
+but to live my life in holy peace.'
+
+So ends the story of the two _bravi_. We have reason to believe,
+from some contemporary documents which Cantu has brought to light,
+that Bibboni exaggerated his own part in the affair. Luca Martelli,
+writing to Varchi, says that it was Bebo who clove Lorenzo's skull
+with a cutlass. He adds this curious detail, that the weapons of
+both men were poisoned, and that the wound inflicted by Bibboni on
+Soderini's hand was a slight one. Yet, the poignard being poisoned,
+Soderini died of it. In other respects Martelli's brief account agrees
+with that given by Bibboni, who probably did no more, his comrade
+being dead, than claim for himself, at some expense of truth, the
+lion's share of their heroic action.
+
+VII.--LORENZINO BRUTUS
+
+It remains to ask ourselves, What opinion can be justly formed of
+Lorenzino's character and motives? When he murdered his cousin, was
+he really actuated by the patriotic desire to rid his country of a
+monster? Did he imitate the Roman Brutus in the noble spirit of
+his predecessors, Olgiati and Boscoli, martyrs to the creed of
+tyrannicide? Or must this crowning action of a fretful life be
+explained, like his previous mutilation of the statues on the Arch
+of Constantine, by a wild thirst for notoriety? Did he hope that the
+exiles would return to Florence, and that he would enjoy an honourable
+life, an immortality of glorious renown? Did envy for his cousin's
+greatness and resentment of his undisguised contempt--the passions of
+one who had been used for vile ends--conscious of self-degradation and
+the loss of honour, yet mindful of his intellectual superiority--did
+these emotions take fire in him and mingle with a scholar's
+reminiscences of antique heroism, prompting him to plan a deed
+which should at least assume the show of patriotic zeal, and prove
+indubitable courage in its perpetrator? Did he, again, perhaps
+imagine, being next in blood to Alessandro and direct heir to the
+ducal crown by the Imperial Settlement of 1530, that the city would
+elect her liberator for her ruler? Alfieri and Niccolini, having
+taken, as it were, a brief in favour of tyrannicide, praised Lorenzino
+as a hero. De Musset, who wrote a considerable drama on his story,
+painted him as a _roue_ corrupted by society, enfeebled by
+circumstance, soured by commerce with an uncongenial world, who hides
+at the bottom of his mixed nature enough of real nobility to make him
+the leader of a forlorn hope for the liberties of Florence. This is
+the most favourable construction we can put upon Lorenzo's conduct.
+Yet some facts of the case warn us to suspend our judgment. He seems
+to have formed no plan for the liberation of his fellow-citizens. He
+gave no pledge of self-devotion by avowing his deed and abiding by its
+issues. He showed none of the qualities of a leader, whether in the
+cause of freedom or of his own dynastic interests, after the murder.
+He escaped as soon as he was able, as secretly as he could manage,
+leaving the city in confusion, and exposing himself to the obvious
+charge of abominable treason. So far as the Florentines knew, his
+assassination of their Duke was but a piece of private spite, executed
+with infernal craft. It is true that when he seized the pen in exile,
+he did his best to claim the guerdon of a patriot, and to throw the
+blame of failure on the Florentines. In his Apology, and in a letter
+written to Francesco de' Medici, he taunts them with lacking the
+spirit to extinguish tyranny when he had slain the tyrant. He summons
+plausible excuses to his aid--the impossibility of taking persons of
+importance into his confidence, the loss of blood he suffered from
+his wound, the uselessness of rousing citizens whom events proved
+over-indolent for action. He declares that he has nothing to regret.
+Having proved by deeds his will to serve his country, he has saved
+his life in order to spend it for her when occasion offered. But these
+arguments, invented after the catastrophe, these words, so bravely
+penned when action ought to have confirmed his resolution, do not
+meet the case. It was no deed of a true hero to assassinate a despot,
+knowing or half knowing that the despot's subjects would immediately
+elect another. Their languor could not, except rhetorically, be
+advanced in defence of his own flight.
+
+The historian is driven to seek both the explanation and palliation of
+Lorenzo's failure in the temper of his times. There was enough
+daring left in Florence to carry through a plan of brilliant treason,
+modelled on an antique Roman tragedy. But there was not moral force
+in the protagonist to render that act salutary, not public energy
+sufficient in his fellow-citizens to accomplish his drama of
+deliverance. Lorenzo was corrupt. Florence was flaccid. Evil manners
+had emasculated the hero. In the state the last spark of independence
+had expired with Ferrucci.
+
+Still I have not without forethought dubbed this man a Cinque Cento
+Brutus. Like much of the art and literature of his century, his action
+may be regarded as a _bizarre_ imitation of the antique manner.
+Without the force and purpose of a Roman, Lorenzo set himself to copy
+Plutarch's men--just as sculptors carved Neptunes and Apollos without
+the dignity and serenity of the classic style. The antique faith
+was wanting to both murderer and craftsman in those days. Even as
+Renaissance work in art is too often aimless, decorative, vacant of
+intention, so Lorenzino's Brutus tragedy seems but the snapping of
+a pistol in void air. He had the audacity but not the ethical
+consistency of his crime. He played the part of Brutus like a Roscius,
+perfect in its histrionic details. And it doubtless gave to this
+skilful actor a supreme satisfaction--salving over many wounds of
+vanity, quenching the poignant thirst for things impossible and
+draughts of fame--that he could play it on no mimic stage, but on
+the theatre of Europe. The weakness of his conduct was the central
+weakness of his age and country. Italy herself lacked moral purpose,
+sense of righteous necessity, that consecration of self to a noble
+cause, which could alone have justified Lorenzo's perfidy. Confused
+memories of Judith, Jael, Brutus, and other classical tyrannicides,
+exalted his imagination. Longing for violent emotions, jaded with
+pleasure which had palled, discontented with his wasted life, jealous
+of his brutal cousin, appetitive to the last of glory, he conceived
+his scheme. Having conceived, he executed it with that which never
+failed in Cinque Cento Italy--the artistic spirit of perfection. When
+it was over, he shrugged his shoulders, wrote his magnificent Apology
+with a style of adamant upon a plate of steel, and left it for the
+outlaws of Filippo Strozzi's faction to deal with the crisis he
+had brought about. For some years he dragged out an ignoble life
+in obscurity, and died at last, as Varchi puts it, more by his own
+carelessness than by the watchful animosity of others. Over the wild,
+turbid, clever, incomprehensible, inconstant hero-artist's grave we
+write our _Requiescat_. Clio, as she takes the pen in hand to
+record this prayer, smiles disdainfully and turns to graver business.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+_TWO DRAMATISTS OF THE LAST CENTURY_
+
+
+There are few contrasts more striking than that which is presented
+by the memoirs of Goldoni and Alfieri. Both of these men bore names
+highly distinguished in the history of Italian literature. Both of
+them were framed by nature with strongly marked characters, and fitted
+to perform a special work in the world. Both have left behind them
+records of their lives and literary labours, singularly illustrative
+of their peculiar differences. There is no instance in which we see
+more clearly the philosophical value of autobiographies, than in these
+vivid pictures which the great Italian tragedian and comic author have
+delineated. Some of the most interesting works of Lionardo da Vinci,
+Giorgione, Albert Duerer, Rembrandt, Rubens, and Andrea del Sarto, are
+their portraits painted by themselves. These pictures exhibit not only
+the lineaments of the masters, but also their art. The hand which drew
+them was the hand which drew the 'Last Supper,' or the 'Madonna of
+the Tribune:' colour, method, chiaroscuro, all that makes up manner in
+painting, may be studied on the same canvas as that which faithfully
+represents the features of the man whose genius gave his style its
+special character. We seem to understand the clear calm majesty of
+Lionardo's manner, the silver-grey harmonies and smooth facility of
+Andrea's Madonnas, the better for looking at their faces drawn by
+their own hands at Florence. And if this be the case with a dumb
+picture, how far higher must be the interest and importance of the
+written life of a known author! Not only do we recognise in its
+composition the style and temper and habits of thought which are
+familiar to us in his other writings; but we also hear from his
+own lips how these were formed, how his tastes took their peculiar
+direction, what circumstances acted on his character, what hopes he
+had, and where he failed. Even should his autobiography not bear
+the marks of uniform candour, it probably reveals more of the actual
+truth, more of the man's real nature in its height and depth, than
+any memoir written by friend or foe. Its unconscious admissions, its
+general spirit, and the inferences which we draw from its perusal,
+are far more valuable than any mere statement of facts or external
+analysis, however scientific. When we become acquainted with
+the series of events which led to the conception or attended the
+production of some masterpiece of literature, a new light is thrown
+upon its beauties, fresh life bursts forth from every chapter, and we
+seem to have a nearer and more personal interest in its success. What
+a powerful sensation, for instance, is that which we experience when,
+after studying the 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,' Gibbon
+tells us how the thought of writing it came to him upon the Capitol,
+among the ruins of dead Rome, and within hearing of the mutter of the
+monks of Ara Coeli, and how he finished it one night by Lake Geneva,
+and laid his pen down and walked forth and saw the stars above his
+terrace at Lausanne!
+
+The memoirs of Alfieri and Goldoni are not deficient in any of the
+characteristics of good autobiography. They seem to bear upon their
+face the stamp of truthfulness, they illustrate their authors' lives
+with marvellous lucidity, and they are full of interest as stories.
+But it is to the contrast which they present that our attention should
+be chiefly drawn. Other biographies may be as interesting and amusing.
+None show in a more marked manner two distinct natures endowed with
+genius for one art, and yet designed in every possible particular for
+different branches of that art. Alfieri embodies Tragedy; Goldoni
+is the spirit of Comedy. They are both Italians: their tragedies and
+comedies are by no means cosmopolitan; but this national identity of
+character only renders more remarkable the individual divergences by
+which they were impelled into their different paths. Thalia seems to
+have made the one, body, soul, and spirit; and Melpomene the other;
+each goddess launched her favourite into circumstances suited to the
+evolution of his genius, and presided over his development, so that at
+his death she might exclaim,--Behold the living model of my Art!
+
+Goldoni was born at Venice in the year 1707; he had already reached
+celebrity when Alfieri saw the light for the first time, in 1749, at
+Asti. Goldoni's grandfather was a native of Modena, who had settled
+in Venice, and there lived with the prodigality of a rich and
+ostentatious 'bourgeois.' 'Amid riot and luxury did I enter the
+world,' says the poet, after enumerating the banquets and theatrical
+displays with which the old Goldoni entertained his guests in his
+Venetian palace and country-house. Venice at that date was certainly
+the proper birthplace for a comic poet. The splendour of the
+Renaissance had thoroughly habituated her nobles to pleasures of the
+sense, and had enervated their proud, maritime character, while the
+great name of the republic robbed them of the caution for which they
+used to be conspicuous. Yet the real strength of Venice was almost
+spent, and nothing remained but outward insolence and prestige.
+Everything was gay about Goldoni in his earliest childhood.
+Puppet-shows were built to amuse him by his grandfather. 'My
+mother,' he says, 'took charge of my education, and my father of my
+amusements.' Let us turn to the opening scene in Alfieri's life,
+and mark the difference. A father above sixty, 'noble, wealthy, and
+respectable,' who died before his son had reached the age of one year
+old. A mother devoted to religion, the widow of one marquis, and after
+the death of a second husband, Alfieri's father, married for the third
+time to a nobleman of ancient birth. These were Alfieri's parents. He
+was born in a solemn palazzo in the country town of Asti, and at the
+age of five already longed for death as an escape from disease and
+other earthly troubles. So noble and so wealthy was the youthful poet
+that an abbe was engaged to carry out his education, but not to teach
+him more than a count should know. Except this worthy man he had no
+companions whatever. Strange ideas possessed the boy. He ruminated on
+his melancholy, and when eight years old attempted suicide. At this
+age he was sent to the academy at Turin, attended, as befitted a lad
+of his rank, by a man-servant, who was to remain and wait on him at
+school. Alfieri stayed here several years without revisiting his home,
+tyrannised over by the valet who added to his grandeur, constantly
+subject to sickness, and kept in almost total ignorance by his
+incompetent preceptors. The gloom and pride and stoicism of his
+temperament were augmented by this unnatural discipline. His spirit
+did not break, but took a haughtier and more disdainful tone. He
+became familiar with misfortunes. He learned to brood over and
+intensify his passions. Every circumstance of his life seemed strung
+up to a tragic pitch. This at least is the impression which remains
+upon our mind after reading in his memoirs the narrative of what must
+in many of its details have been a common schoolboy's life at that
+time.
+
+Meanwhile, what had become of young Goldoni? His boyhood was as
+thoroughly plebeian, various, and comic as Alfieri's had been
+patrician, monotonous, and tragical. Instead of one place of
+residence, we read of twenty. Scrape succeeds to scrape, adventure to
+adventure. Knowledge of the world, and some book learning also, flow
+in upon the boy, and are eagerly caught up by him and heterogeneously
+amalgamated in his mind. Alfieri learned nothing, wrote nothing, in
+his youth, and heard his parents say--'A nobleman need never strive to
+be a doctor of the faculties.' Goldoni had a little medicine and much
+law thrust upon him. At eight he wrote a comedy, and ere long began
+to read the plays of Plautus, Terence, Aristophanes, and Machiavelli.
+Between the nature of the two poets there was a marked and
+characteristic difference as to their mode of labour and of acquiring
+knowledge. Both of them loved fame, and wrought for it; but Alfieri
+did so from a sense of pride and a determination to excel;
+while Goldoni loved the approbation of his fellows, sought their
+compliments, and basked in the sunshine of smiles. Alfieri wrote with
+labour. Each tragedy he composed went through a triple process of
+composition, and received frequent polishing when finished. Goldoni
+dashed off his pieces with the greatest ease on every possible
+subject. He once produced sixteen comedies in one theatrical season.
+Alfieri's were like lion's whelps--brought forth with difficulty,
+and at long intervals; Goldoni's, like the brood of a hare--many,
+frequent, and as agile as their parent. Alfieri amassed knowledge
+scrupulously, but with infinite toil. He mastered Greek and Hebrew
+when he was past forty. Goldoni never gave himself the least trouble
+to learn anything, but trusted to the ready wit, good memory, and
+natural powers, which helped him in a hundred strange emergencies.
+Power of will and pride sustained the one; facility and a
+good-humoured vanity the other. This contrast was apparent at a very
+early age. We have seen how Alfieri passed his time at Turin, in
+a kind of aristocratic prison of educational ignorance. Goldoni's
+grandfather died when he was five years old, and left his family in
+great embarrassment. The poet's father went off to practise medicine
+at Perugia. His son followed him, acquired the rudiments of knowledge
+in that town, and then proceeded to study philosophy alone at Rimini.
+There was no man-servant or academy in his case. He was far too
+plebeian and too free. The boy lodged with a merchant, and got some
+smattering of Thomas Aquinas and the Peripatetics into his small
+brain, while he contrived to form a friendship with an acting company.
+They were on the wing for Venice in a coasting boat, which would touch
+at Chiozza, where Goldoni's mother then resided. The boy pleased them.
+Would he like the voyage? This offer seemed too tempting, and away
+he rushed, concealed himself on board, and made one of a merry motley
+shipload. 'Twelve persons, actors as well as actresses, a prompter,
+a machinist, a storekeeper, eight domestics, four chambermaids, two
+nurses, children of every age, cats, dogs, monkeys, parrots, birds,
+pigeons, and a lamb; it was another Noah's ark.' The young poet felt
+at home; how could a comic poet feel otherwise? They laughed, they
+sang, they danced; they ate and drank, and played at cards. 'Macaroni!
+Every one fell on it, and three dishes were devoured. We had also
+alamode beef, cold fowl, a loin of veal, a dessert, and excellent
+wine. What a charming dinner! No cheer like a good appetite.' Their
+harmony, however, was disturbed. The 'premiere amoureuse,' who, in
+spite of her rank and title, was ugly and cross, and required to be
+coaxed with cups of chocolate, lost her cat. She tried to kill the
+whole boat-load of beasts--cats, dogs, monkeys, parrots, pigeons, even
+the lamb stood in danger of her wrath. A regular quarrel ensued, was
+somehow set at peace, and all began to laugh again. This is a sample
+of Goldoni's youth. Comic pleasures, comic dangers; nothing deep or
+lasting, but light and shadow cheerfully distributed, clouds lowering
+with storm, a distant growl of thunder, then a gleam of light and
+sunshine breaking overhead. He gets articled to an attorney at Venice,
+then goes to study law at Pavia; studies society instead, and flirts,
+and finally is expelled for writing satires. Then he takes a turn at
+medicine with his father in Friuli, and acts as clerk to the criminal
+chancellor at Chiozza.
+
+Every employment seems easy to him, but he really cares for none but
+literature. He spends all his spare time in reading and in amusements,
+and begins to write a tragic opera. This proves, however, eminently
+unsuccessful, and he burns it in a comic fit of anger. One laughable
+love-affair in which he engaged at Udine exhibits his adventures
+in their truly comic aspect. It reminds us of the scene in 'Don
+Giovanni,' where Leporello personates the Don and deceives Donna
+Elvira. Goldoni had often noticed a beautiful young lady at church
+and on the public drives: she was attended by a waiting-maid, who soon
+perceived that her mistress had excited the young man's admiration,
+and who promised to befriend him in his suit. Goldoni was told to
+repair at night to the palace of his mistress, and to pour his passion
+forth beneath her window. Impatiently he waited for the trysting
+hour, conned his love-sentences, and gloried in the romance of the
+adventure. When night came, he found the window, and a veiled figure
+of a lady in the moonlight, whom he supposed at once to be his
+mistress. Her he eloquently addressed in the true style of Romeo's
+rapture, and she answered him. Night after night this happened,
+but sometimes he was a little troubled by a sound of ill-suppressed
+laughter interrupting the _tete-a-tete_. Meanwhile Teresa,
+the waiting-maid, received from his hands costly presents for her
+mistress, and made him promises on her part in exchange. As she proved
+unable to fulfil them, Goldoni grew suspicious, and at last discovered
+that the veiled figure to whom he had poured out his tale of love was
+none other than Teresa, and that the laughter had proceeded from
+her mistress, whom the faithless waiting-maid regaled at her lover's
+expense. Thus ended this ridiculous matter. Goldoni was not, however,
+cured by his experience. One other love-affair rendered Udine too hot
+to hold him, and in consequence of a third he had to fly from Venice
+just when he was beginning to flourish there. At length he married
+comfortably and suitably, settling down into a quiet life with a woman
+whom, if he did not love her with passion, he at least respected and
+admired. Goldoni, in fact, had no real passion in his nature.
+
+Alfieri, on the other hand, was given over to volcanic ebullitions of
+the most ungovernable hate and affection, joy and sorrow. The chains
+of love which Goldoni courted so willingly, Alfieri regarded with
+the greatest shyness. But while Goldoni healed his heart of all its
+bruises in a week or so, the tragic poet bore about him wounds that
+would not close. He enumerates three serious passions which possessed
+his whole nature, and at times deprived him almost of his reason. A
+Dutch lady first won his heart, and when he had to leave her, Alfieri
+suffered so intensely that he never opened his lips during the course
+of a long journey through Germany, Switzerland, and Piedmont. Fevers,
+and suicides attempted but interrupted, marked the termination of this
+tragic amour. His second passion had for its object an English lady,
+with whose injured husband he fought a duel, although his collarbone
+was broken at the time. The lady proved unworthy of Alfieri as well
+as of her husband, and the poet left her in a most deplorable state
+of hopelessness and intellectual prostration. At last he formed
+a permanent affection for the wife of Prince Charles Edward, the
+Countess of Albany, in close friendship with whom he lived after her
+husband's death. The society of this lady gave him perfect happiness;
+but it was founded on her lofty beauty, the pathos of her situation,
+and her intellectual qualities. Melpomene presided at this union,
+while Thalia blessed the nuptials of Goldoni. How characteristic
+also were the adventures which these two pairs of lovers encountered!
+Goldoni once carried his wife upon his back across two rivers in their
+flight from the Spanish to the Austrian camp at Rimini, laughing and
+groaning, and perceiving the humour of his situation all the time.
+Alfieri, on an occasion of even greater difficulty, was stopped with
+his illustrious friend at the gates of Paris in 1792. They were flying
+in post-chaises, with their servants and their baggage, from the
+devoted city, when a troop of _sansculottes_ rushed on them,
+surged around the carriage, called them aristocrats, and tried to drag
+them off to prison. Alfieri, with his tall gaunt figure, pallid face,
+and red voluminous hair, stormed, raged, and raised his deep bass
+voice above the tumult. For half an hour he fought with them, then
+made his coachmen gallop through the gates, and scarcely halted till
+they got to Gravelines. By this prompt movement they escaped arrest
+and death at Paris. These two scenes would make agreeable companion
+pictures: Goldoni staggering beneath his wife across the muddy bed
+of an Italian stream--the smiling writer of agreeable plays, with his
+half-tearful helpmate ludicrous in her disasters; Alfieri mad with
+rage among Parisian Maenads, his princess quaking in her carriage, the
+air hoarse with cries, and death and safety trembling in the balance.
+It is no wonder that the one man wrote 'La Donna di Garbo' and the
+'Cortese Veneziano,' while the other was inditing essays on Tyranny
+and dramas of 'Antigone,' 'Timoleon,' and 'Brutus.'
+
+The difference between the men is seen no less remarkably in regard
+to courage. Alfieri was a reckless rider, and astonished even English
+huntsmen by his desperate leaps. In one of them he fell and broke
+his collar-bone, but not the less he held his tryst with a fair lady,
+climbed her park gates, and fought a duel with her husband. Goldoni
+was a pantaloon for cowardice. In the room of an inn at Desenzano
+which he occupied together with a female fellow-traveller, an attempt
+was made to rob them by a thief at night. All Goldoni was able to do
+consisted in crying out for help, and the lady called him 'M. l'Abbe'
+ever after for his want of pluck. Goldoni must have been by far the
+more agreeable of the two. In all his changes from town to town of
+Italy he found amusement and brought gaiety. The sights, the theatres,
+the society aroused his curiosity. He trembled with excitement at the
+performance of his pieces, made friends with the actors, taught them,
+and wrote parts to suit their qualities. At Pisa he attended as
+a stranger the meeting of the Arcadian Academy, and at its close
+attracted all attention to himself by his clever improvisation. He was
+in truth a ready-witted man, pliable, full of resource, bred half a
+valet, half a Roman _graeculus_. Alfieri saw more of Europe than
+Goldoni. France, Germany, Holland, Switzerland, England, Spain, all
+parts of Italy he visited with restless haste. From land to land he
+flew, seeking no society, enjoying nothing, dashing from one inn door
+to another with his servants and his carriages, and thinking chiefly
+of the splendid stud of horses which he took about with him upon his
+travels. He was a lonely, stiff, self-engrossed, indomitable man. He
+could not rest at home: he could not bear to be the vassal of a king
+and breathe the air of courts. So he lived always on the wing, and
+ended by exiling himself from Sardinia in order to escape the trammels
+of paternal government. As for his tragedies, he wrote them to win
+laurels from posterity. He never cared to see them acted; he bullied
+even his printers and correctors; he cast a glove down in defiance
+of his critics. Goldoni sought the smallest meed of approbation. It
+pleased him hugely in his old age to be Italian master to a French
+princess. Alfieri openly despised the public. Goldoni wrote because he
+liked to write; Alfieri, for the sake of proving his superior powers.
+Against Alfieri's hatred of Turin and its trivial solemnities, we
+have to set Goldoni's love of Venice and its petty pleasures. He would
+willingly have drunk chocolate and played at dominoes or picquet all
+his life on the Piazza di San Marco, when Alfieri was crossing the
+sierras on his Andalusian horse, and devouring a frugal meal of rice
+in solitude. Goldoni glided through life an easy man, with genial,
+venial thoughts; with a clear, gay, gentle temper; a true sense of
+what is good and just; and a heart that loved diffusively, if not too
+warmly. Many were the checks and obstacles thrown on his path; but
+round them or above them he passed nimbly, without scar or scathe.
+Poverty went close behind him, but he kept her off, and never felt
+the pinch of need. Alfieri strained and strove against the barriers
+of fate; a sombre, rugged man, proud, candid, and self-confident, who
+broke or bent all opposition; now moving solemnly with tragic pomp,
+now dashing passionately forward by the might of will. Goldoni drew
+his inspirations from the moment and surrounding circumstances.
+Alfieri pursued an ideal, slowly formed, but strongly fashioned and
+resolutely followed. Of wealth he had plenty and to spare, but
+he disregarded it, and was a Stoic in his mode of life. He was an
+unworldly man, and hated worldliness. Goldoni, but for his authorship,
+would certainly have grown a prosperous advocate, and died of gout
+in Venice. Goldoni liked smart clothes; Alfieri went always in
+black. Goldoni's fits of spleen--for he _was_ melancholy now and
+then--lasted a day or two, and disappeared before a change of place.
+Alfieri dragged his discontent about with him all over Europe, and let
+it interrupt his work and mar his intellect for many months together.
+Alfieri was a patriot, and hated France. Goldoni never speaks
+of politics, and praises Paris as a heaven on earth. The genial
+moralising of the latter appears childish by the side of Alfieri's
+terse philosophy and pregnant remarks on the development of character.
+What suits the page of Plautus would look poor in 'Oedipus' or
+'Agamemnon.' Goldoni's memoirs are diffuse and flippant in their light
+French dress. They seem written to please. Alfieri's Italian style
+marches with dignity and Latin terseness. He rarely condescends to
+smile. He writes to instruct the world and to satisfy himself. Grim
+humour sometimes flashes out, as when he tells the story of the Order
+of Homer, which he founded. How different from Goldoni's naive account
+of his little ovation in the theatre at Paris!
+
+But it would be idle to carry on this comparison, already tedious. The
+life of Goldoni was one long scene of shifts and jests, of frequent
+triumphs and some failures, of lessons hard at times, but kindly.
+Passions and _ennui_, flashes of heroic patriotism, constant
+suffering and stoical endurance, art and love idealised, fill up the
+life of Alfieri. Goldoni clung much to his fellow-men, and shared
+their pains and pleasures. Alfieri spent many of his years in almost
+absolute solitude. On the whole character and deeds of the one man was
+stamped Comedy: the other was own son of Tragedy.
+
+If, after reading the autobiographies of Alfieri and Goldoni, we turn
+to the perusal of their plays, we shall perceive that there is no
+better commentary on the works of an artist than his life, and no
+better life than one written by himself. The old style of criticism,
+which strove to separate an author's productions from his life, and
+even from the age in which he lived, to set up an arbitrary canon
+of taste, and to select one or two great painters or poets as ideals
+because they seemed to illustrate that canon, has passed away. We are
+beginning to feel that art is a part of history and of physiology.
+That is to say, the artist's work can only be rightly understood by
+studying his age and temperament. Goldoni's versatility and want of
+depth induced him to write sparkling comedies. The merry life men
+passed at Venice in its years of decadence proved favourable to his
+genius. Alfieri's melancholy and passionate qualities, fostered in
+solitude, and aggravated by a tyranny he could not bear, led him
+irresistibly to tragic composition. Though a noble, his nobility only
+added to his pride, and insensibly his intellect had been imbued with
+the democratic sentiments which were destined to shake Europe in his
+lifetime. This, in itself, was a tragic circumstance, bringing him
+into close sympathy with the Brutus, the Prometheus, the Timoleon of
+ancient history. Goldoni's _bourgeoisie_, in the atmosphere of
+which he was born and bred, was essentially comic. The true comedy
+of manners, which is quite distinct from Shakspere's fancy or from
+Aristophanic satire, is always laid in middle life. Though Goldoni
+tried to write tragedies, they were unimpassioned, dull, and tame. He
+lacked altogether the fire, high-wrought nobility of sentiment, and
+sense of form essential for tragic art. On the other hand, Alfieri
+composed some comedies before his death which were devoid of humour,
+grace, and lightness. A strange elephantine eccentricity is their
+utmost claim to comic character. Indeed, the temper of Alfieri, ever
+in extremes, led him even to exaggerate the qualities of tragedy.
+He carried its severity to a pitch of dulness and monotony. His
+chiaroscuro was too strong; virtue and villany appearing in pure
+black and white upon his pages. His hatred of tyrants induced him to
+transgress the rules of probability, so that it has been well said
+that if his wicked kings had really had such words of scorn and hatred
+thrown at them by their victims, they were greatly to be pitied. On
+the other hand, his pithy laconisms have often a splendidly tragical
+effect. There is nothing in the modern drama more rhetorically
+impressive, though spasmodic, than the well-known dialogue between
+Antigone and Creon:--
+
+'_Cr_. Scegliesti?
+
+'_Ant_. Ho scelto.
+
+'_Cr_. Emon?
+
+'_Ant_. Morte.
+
+'_Cr_. L'avrai!'
+
+Goldoni's comedies, again, have not enough of serious thought or of
+true creative imagination to be works of high art. They lean too much
+to the side of farce; they have none of the tragic salt which gives
+a dignity to Tartuffe. They are, in a word, almost too enethistically
+comic.
+
+The contrast between these authors might lead us to raise the question
+long ago discussed by Socrates at Agathon's banquet--Can the same man
+write both comedies and tragedies? We in England are accustomed to
+read the serious and comic plays of Shakspere, Fletcher, Jonson, and
+to think that one poet could excel in either branch. The custom of
+the Elizabethan theatre obliged this double authorship; yet it must be
+confessed that Shakspere's comedies are not such comedies as Greek
+or Romnan or French critics would admit. They are works of the purest
+imagination, wholly free from the laws of this world; while the
+tragedies of Fletcher have a melodramatic air equally at variance with
+the classical Melpomene. It may very seriously be doubted whether the
+same mind could produce, with equal power, a comedy like the 'Cortese
+Veneziano' and a tragedy like Alfieri's 'Brutus.' At any rate,
+returning to our old position, we find in these two men the very
+opposite conditions of dramatic genius. They are, as it were,
+specimens prepared by Nature for the instruction of those who analyse
+genius in its relations to temperament, to life, and to external
+circumstances.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+     FOOTNOTES:
+
+     [Footnote 1: This Essay was written in 1866, and published
+     in 1867. Reprinting it in 1879, after eighteen months spent
+     continuously in one high valley of the Grisons, I feel how
+     slight it is. For some amends, I take this opportunity of
+     printing at the end of it a description of Davos in winter.]
+
+     [Footnote 2: See, however, what is said about Leo Battista
+     Alberti in the sketch of Rimini in the second series.]
+
+     [Footnote 3: The Grisons surname Campell may derive from the
+     Romansch Campo Bello. The founder of the house was one
+     Kaspar Campell, who in the first half of the sixteenth
+     century preached the Reformed religion in the Engadine.]
+
+     [Footnote 4: I have translated and printed at the end of the
+     second volume some sonnets of Petrarch as a kind of palinode
+     for this impertinence.]
+
+     [Footnote 5: This begs the question whether [Greek:
+     leukoion] does not properly mean snowflake, or some such
+     flower. Violets in Greece, however, were often used for
+     crowns: [Greek: iostephanos] is the epithet of Homer for
+     Aphrodite, and of Aristophanes for Athens.]
+
+     [Footnote 6: Olive-trees must be studied at Mentone or San
+     Remo, in Corfu, at Tivoli, on the coast between Syracuse and
+     Catania, or on the lowlands of Apulia. The stunted but
+     productive trees of the Rhone valley, for example, are no
+     real measure of the beauty they can exhibit.]
+
+     [Footnote 7: Dante, Par. xi. 106.]
+
+     [Footnote 8: It is but just to Doctor Pasta to remark that
+     the above sentence was written more than ten years ago.
+     Since then he has enlarged and improved his house in many
+     ways, furnished it more luxuriously, made paths through the
+     beechwoods round it, and brought excellent water at a great
+     cost from a spring near the summit of the mountain. A more
+     charming residence from early spring to late autumn can
+     scarcely be discovered.]
+
+     [Footnote 9: 'The down upon their cheeks and chin was
+     yellower than helichrysus, and their breasts gleamed whiter
+     far than thou, O Moon.']
+
+     [Footnote 10: 'Thy tresses have I oftentimes compared to
+     Ceres' yellow autumn sheaves, wreathed in curled bands
+     around thy head.']
+
+     [Footnote 11: Both these and the large frescoes in the choir
+     have been chromolithographed by the Arundel Society.]
+
+     [Footnote 12: I cannot see clearly through these
+     transactions, the muddy waters of decadent Italian plot and
+     counterplot being inscrutable to senses assisted by nothing
+     more luminous than mere tradition.]
+
+     [Footnote 13: Those who are interested in such matters may
+     profitably compare this description of a planned murder in
+     the sixteenth century with the account written by Ambrogio
+     Tremazzi of the way in which he tracked and slew Troilo
+     Orsini in Paris in the year 1577. It is given by Gnoli in
+     his _Vittoria Accoramboni_, pp. 404-414.]
+
+     [Footnote 14: So far as I can discover, the only church of
+     San Spirito in Venice was a building on the island of San
+     Spirito, erected by Sansavino, which belonged to the
+     Sestiere di S. Croce, and which was suppressed in 1656. Its
+     plate and the fine pictures which Titian painted there were
+     transferred at that date to S.M. della Salute. I cannot help
+     inferring that either Bibboni's memory failed him, or that
+     his words were wrongly understood by printer or amanuensis.
+     If for S. Spirito we substitute S. Stefano, the account
+     would be intelligible.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY AND GREECE
+
+
+
+
+
+
+BY JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS
+
+
+AUTHOR OF "RENAISSANCE IN ITALY" "STUDIES OF THE GREEK POETS," ETC
+
+
+
+
+
+
+SECOND SERIES
+
+LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
+
+1914
+
+_All rights reserved_
+
+
+
+
+  FIRST EDITION (_Smith, Elder & Co._)    _October, 1898_
+  _Reprinted_                                 _May, 1900_
+  _Reprinted_                                _June, 1902_
+  _Reprinted_                            _November, 1905_
+  _Reprinted_                            _December, 1907_
+  _Reprinted_                            _February, 1914_
+  _Taken over by John Murray_             _January, 1917_
+
+
+
+_Printed in Great Britain at_ THE BALLANTYNE PRESS _by_ SPOTTISWOODE,
+BALLANTYNE & Co. LTD. _Colchester, London & Eton_
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+                                                   PAGE
+
+  RAVENNA                                            1
+  RIMINI                                            14
+  MAY IN UMBRIA                                     32
+  THE PALACE OF URBINO                              50
+  VITTORIA ACCORAMBONI                              88
+  AUTUMN WANDERINGS                                127
+  PARMA                                            147
+  CANOSSA                                          163
+  FORNOVO                                          180
+  FLORENCE AND THE MEDICI                          201
+  THE DEBT OF ENGLISH TO ITALIAN LITERATURE        258
+  POPULAR SONGS OF TUSCANY                         276
+  POPULAR ITALIAN POETRY OF THE RENAISSANCE        305
+  THE 'ORFEO' OF POLIZIANO                         345
+  EIGHT SONNETS OF PETRARCH                        365
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY AND GREECE
+
+
+
+
+_RAVENNA_
+
+
+The Emperor Augustus chose Ravenna for one of his two naval stations,
+and in course of time a new city arose by the sea-shore, which
+received the name of Portus Classis. Between this harbour and the
+mother city a third town sprang up, and was called Caesarea. Time and
+neglect, the ravages of war, and the encroaching powers of Nature have
+destroyed these settlements, and nothing now remains of the three
+cities but Ravenna. It would seem that in classical times Ravenna
+stood, like modern Venice, in the centre of a huge lagune, the fresh
+waters of the Ronco and the Po mixing with the salt waves of the
+Adriatic round its very walls. The houses of the city were built on
+piles; canals instead of streets formed the means of communication,
+and these were always filled with water artificially conducted from
+the southern estuary of the Po. Round Ravenna extended a vast morass,
+for the most part under shallow water, but rising at intervals into
+low islands like the Lido or Murano or Torcello which surround Venice.
+These islands were celebrated for their fertility: the vines and
+fig-trees and pomegranates, springing from a fat and fruitful soil,
+watered with constant moisture, and fostered by a mild sea-wind and
+liberal sunshine, yielded crops that for luxuriance and quality
+surpassed the harvests of any orchards on the mainland. All the
+conditions of life in old Ravenna seem to have resembled those of
+modern Venice; the people went about in gondolas, and in the early
+morning barges laden with fresh fruit or meat and vegetables flocked
+from all quarters to the city of the sea.[1] Water also had to be
+procured from the neighbouring shore, for, as Martial says, a well at
+Ravenna was more valuable than a vineyard. Again, between the city and
+the mainland ran a long low causeway all across the lagune like that
+on which the trains now glide into Venice. Strange to say, the air of
+Ravenna was remarkably salubrious: this fact, and the ease of life
+that prevailed there, and the security afforded by the situation of
+the town, rendered it a most desirable retreat for the monarchs of
+Italy during those troublous times in which the empire nodded to its
+fall. Honorius retired to its lagunes for safety; Odoacer, who
+dethroned the last Caesar of the West, succeeded him; and was in turn,
+supplanted by Theodoric the Ostrogoth. Ravenna, as we see it now,
+recalls the peaceful and half-Roman rule of the great Gothic king. His
+palace, his churches, and the mausoleums in which his daughter
+Amalasuntha laid the hero's bones, have survived the sieges of
+Belisarius and Astolphus, the conquest of Pepin, the bloody quarrels
+of Iconoclasts with the children of the Roman Church, the mediaeval
+wars of Italy, the victory of Gaston de Foix, and still stand gorgeous
+with marbles and mosaics in spite of time and the decay of all around
+them.
+
+As early as the sixth century, the sea had already retreated to such a
+distance from Ravenna that orchards and gardens were cultivated on
+the spot where once the galleys of the Caesars rode at anchor. Groves
+of pines sprang up along the shore, and in their lofty tops the music
+of the wind moved like the ghost of waves and breakers plunging upon
+distant sands. This Pinetum stretches along the shore of the Adriatic
+for about forty miles, forming a belt of variable width between the
+great marsh and the tumbling sea. From a distance the bare stems and
+velvet crowns of the pine-trees stand up like palms that cover an
+oasis on Arabian sands; but at a nearer view the trunks detach
+themselves from an inferior forest-growth of juniper and thorn and ash
+and oak, the tall roofs of the stately firs shooting their breadth of
+sheltering greenery above the lower and less sturdy brushwood. It is
+hardly possible to imagine a more beautiful and impressive scene than
+that presented by these long alleys of imperial pines. They grow so
+thickly one behind another, that we might compare them to the pipes of
+a great organ, or the pillars of a Gothic church, or the basaltic
+columns of the Giant's Causeway. Their tops are evergreen and laden
+with the heavy cones, from which Ravenna draws considerable wealth.
+Scores of peasants are quartered on the outskirts of the forest, whose
+business it is to scale the pines and rob them of their fruit at
+certain seasons of the year. Afterwards they dry the fir-cones in the
+sun, until the nuts which they contain fall out. The empty husks are
+sold for firewood, and the kernels in their stony shells reserved for
+exportation. You may see the peasants, men, women, and boys, sorting
+them by millions, drying and sifting them upon the open spaces of the
+wood, and packing them in sacks to send abroad through Italy. The
+_pinocchi_ or kernels of the stone-pine are largely used in cookery,
+and those of Ravenna are prized for their good quality and aromatic
+flavour. When roasted or pounded, they taste like a softer and more
+mealy kind of almonds. The task of gathering this harvest is not a
+little dangerous. Men have to cut notches in the straight shafts, and
+having climbed, often to the height of eighty feet, to lean upon the
+branches, and detach the fir-cones with a pole--and this for every
+tree. Some lives, they say, are yearly lost in the business.
+
+As may be imagined, the spaces of this great forest form the haunt of
+innumerable living creatures. Lizards run about by myriads in the
+grass. Doves coo among the branches of the pines, and nightingales
+pour their full-throated music all day and night from thickets of
+white-thorn and acacia. The air is sweet with aromatic scents: the
+resin of the pine and juniper, the mayflowers and acacia-blossoms, the
+violets that spring by thousands in the moss, the wild roses and faint
+honeysuckles which throw fragrant arms from bough to bough of ash or
+maple, join to make one most delicious perfume. And though the air
+upon the neighbouring marsh is poisonous, here it is dry, and spreads
+a genial health. The sea-wind murmuring through these thickets at
+nightfall or misty sunrise, conveys no fever to the peasants stretched
+among their flowers. They watch the red rays of sunset flaming through
+the columns of the leafy hall, and flaring on its fretted rafters of
+entangled boughs; they see the stars come out, and Hesper gleam, an
+eye of brightness, among dewy branches; the moon walks silver-footed
+on the velvet tree-tops, while they sleep beside the camp-fires; fresh
+morning wakes them to the sound of birds and scent of thyme and
+twinkling of dewdrops on the grass around. Meanwhile ague, fever, and
+death have been stalking all night long about the plain, within a few
+yards of their couch, and not one pestilential breath has reached the
+charmed precincts of the forest.
+
+You may ride or drive for miles along green aisles between the pines
+in perfect solitude; and yet the creatures of the wood, the sunlight
+and the birds, the flowers and tall majestic columns at your side,
+prevent all sense of loneliness or fear. Huge oxen haunt the
+wilderness--grey creatures, with mild eyes and spreading horns and
+stealthy tread. Some are patriarchs of the forest, the fathers and
+the mothers of many generations who have been carried from their sides
+to serve in ploughs or waggons on the Lombard plain. Others are
+yearling calves, intractable and ignorant of labour. In order to
+subdue them to the yoke, it is requisite to take them very early from
+their native glades, or else they chafe and pine away with weariness.
+Then there is a sullen canal, which flows through the forest from the
+marshes to the sea; it is alive with frogs and newts and snakes. You
+may see these serpents basking on the surface among thickets of the
+flowering rush, or coiled about the lily leaves and flowers--lithe
+monsters, slippery and speckled, the tyrants of the fen.
+
+It is said that when Dante was living at Ravenna he would spend whole
+days alone among the forest glades, thinking of Florence and her civil
+wars, and meditating cantos of his poem. Nor have the influences of
+the pine-wood failed to leave their trace upon his verse. The charm of
+its summer solitude seems to have sunk into his soul; for when he
+describes the whispering of winds and singing birds among the boughs
+of his terrestrial paradise, he says:--
+
+  Non pero dal lor esser dritto sparte
+    Tanto, che gli augelletti per le cime
+    Lasciasser d' operare ogni lor arte:
+  Ma con piena letizia l' aure prime,
+    Cantando, ricevano intra le foglie,
+    Che tenevan bordone alle sue rime
+  Tal, qual di ramo in ramo si raccoglie
+    Per la pineta in sul lito di Chiassi
+    Quand' Eolo Scirocco fuor discioglie.
+
+With these verses in our minds, while wandering down the grassy
+aisles, beside the waters of the solitary place, we seem to meet that
+lady singing as she went, and plucking flower by flower, 'like
+Proserpine when Ceres lost a daughter, and she lost her spring.'
+There, too, the vision of the griffin and the car, of singing
+maidens, and of Beatrice descending to the sound of Benedictus and of
+falling flowers, her flaming robe and mantle green as grass, and veil
+of white, and olive crown, all flashed upon the poet's inner eye, and
+he remembered how he bowed before her when a boy. There is yet another
+passage in which it is difficult to believe that Dante had not the
+pine-forest in his mind. When Virgil and the poet were waiting in
+anxiety before the gates of Dis, when the Furies on the wall were
+tearing their breasts and crying, 'Venga Medusa, e si 'l farem di
+smalto,' suddenly across the hideous river came a sound like that
+which whirlwinds make among the shattered branches and bruised stems
+of forest-trees; and Dante, looking out with fear upon the foam and
+spray and vapour of the flood, saw thousands of the damned flying
+before the face of one who forded Styx with feet unwet. 'Like frogs,'
+he says, 'they fled, who scurry through the water at the sight of
+their foe, the serpent, till each squats and hides himself close to
+the ground.' The picture of the storm among the trees might well have
+occurred to Dante's mind beneath the roof of pine-boughs. Nor is there
+any place in which the simile of the frogs and water-snake attains
+such dignity and grandeur. I must confess that till I saw the ponds
+and marshes of Ravenna, I used to fancy that the comparison was
+somewhat below the greatness of the subject; but there so grave a note
+of solemnity and desolation is struck, the scale of Nature is so
+large, and the serpents coiling in and out among the lily leaves and
+flowers are so much in their right place, that they suggest a scene by
+no means unworthy of Dante's conception.
+
+Nor is Dante the only singer who has invested this wood with poetical
+associations. It is well known that Boccaccio laid his story of
+'Honoria' in the pine-forest, and every student of English literature
+must be familiar with the noble tale in verse which Dryden has founded
+on this part of the 'Decameron.' We all of us have followed Theodore,
+and watched with him the tempest swelling in the grove, and seen the
+hapless ghost pursued by demon hounds and hunter down the glades. This
+story should be read while storms are gathering upon the distant sea,
+or thunderclouds descending from the Apennines, and when the pines
+begin to rock and surge beneath the stress of labouring winds. Then
+runs the sudden flash of lightning like a rapier through the boughs,
+the rain streams hissing down, and the thunder 'breaks like a whole
+sea overhead.'
+
+With the Pinetum the name of Byron will be for ever associated. During
+his two years' residence in Ravenna he used to haunt its wilderness,
+riding alone or in the company of friends. The inscription placed
+above the entrance to the house he occupied alludes to it as one of
+the objects which principally attracted the poet to the neighbourhood
+of Ravenna: 'Impaziente di visitare l' antica selva, che inspiro gia
+il Divino e Giovanni Boccaccio.' We know, however, that a more
+powerful attraction, in the person of the Countess Guiccioli,
+maintained his fidelity to 'that place of old renown, once in the
+Adrian Sea, Ravenna.'
+
+Between the Bosco, as the people of Ravenna call this pine-wood, and
+the city, the marsh stretches for a distance of about three miles. It
+is a plain intersected by dykes and ditches, and mapped out into
+innumerable rice-fields. For more than half a year it lies under
+water, and during the other months exhales a pestilential vapour,
+which renders it as uninhabitable as the Roman Campagna; yet in
+springtime this dreary flat is even beautiful. The young blades of the
+rice shoot up above the water, delicately green and tender. The
+ditches are lined with flowering rush and golden flags, while white
+and yellow lilies sleep in myriads upon the silent pools. Tamarisks
+wave their pink and silver tresses by the road, and wherever a plot of
+mossy earth emerges from the marsh, it gleams with purple orchises and
+flaming marigolds; but the soil beneath is so treacherous and spongy,
+that these splendid blossoms grow like flowers in dreams or fairy
+stories. You try in vain to pick them; they elude your grasp, and
+flourish in security beyond the reach of arm or stick.
+
+Such is the sight of the old town of Classis. Not a vestige of the
+Roman city remains, not a dwelling or a ruined tower, nothing but the
+ancient church of S. Apollinare in Classe. Of all desolate buildings
+this is the most desolate. Not even the deserted grandeur of S. Paolo
+beyond the walls of Rome can equal it. Its bare round campanile gazes
+at the sky, which here vaults only sea and plain--a perfect dome,
+star-spangled like the roof of Galla Placidia's tomb. Ravenna lies low
+to west, the pine-wood stretches away in long monotony to east. There
+is nothing else to be seen except the spreading marsh, bounded by dim
+snowy Alps and purple Apennines, so very far away that the level rack
+of summer clouds seem more attainable and real. What sunsets and
+sunrises that tower must see; what glaring lurid afterglows in August,
+when the red light scowls upon the pestilential fen; what sheets of
+sullen vapour rolling over it in autumn; what breathless heats, and
+rainclouds big with thunder; what silences; what unimpeded blasts of
+winter winds! One old monk tends this deserted spot. He has the huge
+church, with its echoing aisles and marble columns and giddy
+bell-tower and cloistered corridors, all to himself. At rare
+intervals, priests from Ravenna come to sing some special mass at
+these cold altars; pious folk make vows to pray upon their mouldy
+steps and kiss the relics which are shown on great occasions. But no
+one stays; they hurry, after muttering their prayers, from the
+fever-stricken spot, reserving their domestic pieties and customary
+devotions for the brighter and newer chapels of the fashionable
+churches in Ravenna. So the old monk is left alone to sweep the marsh
+water from his church floor, and to keep the green moss from growing
+too thickly on its monuments. A clammy conferva covers everything
+except the mosaics upon tribune, roof, and clerestory, which defy the
+course of age. Christ on His throne _sedet aternumque sedebit_: the
+saints around him glitter with their pitiless uncompromising eyes and
+wooden gestures, as if twelve centuries had not passed over them, and
+they were nightmares only dreamed last night, and rooted in a sick
+man's memory. For those gaunt and solemn forms there is no change of
+life or end of days. No fever touches them; no dampness of the wind
+and rain loosens their firm cement. They stare with senseless faces in
+bitter mockery of men who live and die and moulder away beneath. Their
+poor old guardian told us it was a weary life. He has had the fever
+three times, and does not hope to survive many more Septembers. The
+very water that he drinks is brought him from Ravenna; for the vast
+fen, though it pours its overflow upon the church floor, and spreads
+like a lake around, is death to drink. The monk had a gentle woman's
+voice and mild brown eyes. What terrible crime had consigned him to
+this living tomb? For what past sorrow is he weary of his life? What
+anguish of remorse has driven him to such a solitude? Yet he looked
+simple and placid; his melancholy was subdued and calm, as if life
+were over for him, and he were waiting for death to come with a
+friend's greeting upon noiseless wings some summer night across the
+fen-lands in a cloud of soft destructive fever-mist.
+
+Another monument upon the plain is worthy of a visit. It is the
+so-called Colonna dei Francesi, a _cinquecento_ pillar of Ionic
+design, erected on the spot where Gaston de Foix expired victorious
+after one of the bloodiest battles ever fought. The Ronco, a straight
+sluggish stream, flows by the lonely spot; mason bees have covered
+with laborious stucco-work the scrolls and leafage of its ornaments,
+confounding epitaphs and trophies under their mud houses. A few
+cypress-trees stand round it, and the dogs and chickens of a
+neighbouring farmyard make it their rendezvous. Those mason bees are
+like posterity, which settles down upon the ruins of a Baalbec or a
+Luxor, setting up its tents, and filling the fair spaces of Hellenic
+or Egyptian temples with clay hovels. Nothing differs but the scale;
+and while the bees content themselves with filling up and covering,
+man destroys the silent places of the past which he appropriates.
+
+In Ravenna itself, perhaps what strikes us most is the abrupt
+transition everywhere discernible from monuments of vast antiquity to
+buildings of quite modern date. There seems to be no interval between
+the marbles and mosaics of Justinian or Theodoric and the
+insignificant frippery of the last century. The churches of
+Ravenna--S. Vitale, S. Apollinare, and the rest--are too well known,
+and have been too often described by enthusiastic antiquaries, to need
+a detailed notice in this place. Every one is aware that the
+ecclesiastical customs and architecture of the early Church can be
+studied in greater perfection here than elsewhere. Not even the
+basilicas and mosaics of Rome, nor those of Palermo and Monreale, are
+equal for historical interest to those of Ravenna. Yet there is not
+one single church which remains entirely unaltered and unspoiled. The
+imagination has to supply the atrium or outer portico from one
+building, the vaulted baptistery with its marble font from another,
+the pulpits and ambones from a third the tribune from a fourth, the
+round brick bell-tower from a fifth, and then to cover all the concave
+roofs and chapel walls with grave and glittering mosaics.
+
+There is nothing more beautiful in decorative art than the mosaics of
+such tiny buildings as the tomb of Galla Placidia or the chapel of the
+Bishop's Palace. They are like jewelled and enamelled cases; not an
+inch of wall can be seen which is not covered with elaborate patterns
+of the brightest colours. Tall date-palms spring from the floor with
+fruit and birds among their branches, and between them stand the
+pillars and apostles of the Church. In the spandrels and lunettes
+above the arches and the windows angels fly with white extended wings.
+On every vacant place are scrolls and arabesques of foliage,--birds
+and beasts, doves drinking from the vase, and peacocks spreading
+gorgeous plumes--a maze of green and gold and blue. Overhead, the
+vault is powdered with stars gleaming upon the deepest azure, and in
+the midst is set an aureole embracing the majestic head of Christ, or
+else the symbol of the sacred fish, or the hand of the Creator
+pointing from a cloud. In Galla Placidia's tomb these storied vaults
+spring above the sarcophagi of empresses and emperors, each lying in
+the place where he was laid more than twelve centuries ago. The light
+which struggles through the narrow windows serves to harmonise the
+brilliant hues and make a gorgeous gloom.
+
+Besides these more general and decorative subjects, many of the
+churches are adorned with historical mosaics, setting forth the Bible
+narrative or incidents from the life of Christian emperors and kings.
+In S. Apollinare Nuovo there is a most interesting treble series of
+such mosaics extending over both walls of the nave. On the left hand,
+as we enter, we see the town of Classis; on the right the palace of
+Theodoric, its doors and loggie rich with curtains, and its friezes
+blazing with coloured ornaments. From the city gate of Classis virgins
+issue, and proceed in a long line until they reach Madonna seated on a
+throne, with Christ upon her knees, and the three kings in adoration
+at her feet. From Theodoric's palace door a similar procession of
+saints and martyrs carry us to Christ surrounded by archangels. Above
+this double row of saints and virgins stand the fathers and prophets
+of the Church, and highest underneath the roof are pictures from the
+life of our Lord. It will be remembered in connection with these
+subjects that the women sat upon the left and the men upon the right
+side of the church. Above the tribune, at the east end of the church,
+it was customary to represent the Creative Hand, or the monogram of
+the Saviour, or the head of Christ with the letters A and [Greek O].
+Moses and Elijah frequently stand on either side to symbolise the
+transfiguration, while the saints and bishops specially connected with
+the church appeared upon a lower row. Then on the side walls were
+depicted such subjects as Justinian and Theodora among their
+courtiers, or the grant of the privileges of the church to its first
+founder from imperial patrons, with symbols of the old Hebraic
+ritual--Abel's lamb, the sacrifice of Isaac, Melchisedec's offering of
+bread and wine,--which were regarded as the types of Christian
+ceremonies. The baptistery was adorned with appropriate mosaics
+representing Christ's baptism in Jordan.
+
+Generally speaking, one is struck with the dignity of these designs,
+and especially with the combined majesty and sweetness of the face of
+Christ. The sense for harmony of hue displayed in their composition is
+marvellous. It would be curious to trace in detail the remnants of
+classical treatment which may be discerned--Jordan, for instance,
+pours his water from an urn like a river-god crowned with sedge--or to
+show what points of ecclesiastical tradition are established these
+ancient monuments. We find Mariolatry already imminent, the names of
+the three kings, Kaspar, Melchior, and Balthazar, the four evangelists
+as we now recognise them, and many of the rites and vestments which
+Ritualists of all denominations regard with superstitious reverence.
+
+There are two sepulchral monuments in Ravenna which cannot be passed
+over unnoticed. The one is that of Theodoric the Goth, crowned by its
+semisphere of solid stone, a mighty tomb, well worthy of the conqueror
+and king. It stands in a green field, surrounded by acacias, where the
+nightingales sing ceaselessly in May. The mason bees have covered it,
+and the water has invaded its sepulchral vaults. In spite of many
+trials, it seems that human art is unable to pump out the pond and
+clear the frogs and efts from the chamber where the great Goth was
+laid by Amalasuntha.
+
+The other is Dante's temple, with its basrelief and withered garlands.
+The story of his burial, and of the discovery of his real tomb, is
+fresh in the memory of every one. But the 'little cupola, more neat
+than solemn,' of which Lord Byron speaks, will continue to be the goal
+of many a pilgrimage. For myself--though I remember Chateaubriand's
+bareheaded genuflection on its threshold, Alfieri's passionate
+prostration at the altar-tomb, and Byron's offering of poems on the
+poet's shrine--I confess that a single canto of the 'Inferno,' a
+single passage of the 'Vita Nuova,' seems more full of soul-stirring
+associations than the place where, centuries ago, the mighty dust was
+laid. It is the spirit that lives and makes alive. And Dante's spirit
+seems more present with us under the pine-branches of the Bosco than
+beside his real or fancied tomb. 'He is risen,'--'Lo, I am with you
+alway'--these are the words that ought to haunt us in a
+burying-ground. There is something affected and self-conscious in
+overpowering grief or enthusiasm or humiliation at a tomb.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+_RIMINI_
+
+SIGISMONDO PANDOLFO MALATESTA AND LEO BATTISTA ALBERTI
+
+
+Rimini is a city of about 18,000 souls, famous for its Stabilmento de'
+Bagni and its antiquities, seated upon the coast of the Adriatic, a
+little to the south-east of the world-historical Rubicon. It is our
+duty to mention the baths first among its claims to distinction,
+since the prosperity and cheerfulness of the little town depend on
+them in a great measure. But visitors from the north will fly from
+these, to marvel at the bridge which Augustus built and Tiberius
+completed, and which still spans the Marecchia with five gigantic
+arches of white Istrian limestone, as solidly as if it had not borne
+the tramplings of at least three conquests. The triumphal arch, too,
+erected in honour of Augustus, is a notable monument of Roman
+architecture. Broad, ponderous, substantial, tufted here and there
+with flowering weeds, and surmounted with mediaeval machicolations,
+proving it to have sometimes stood for city gate or fortress, it
+contrasts most favourably with the slight and somewhat gimcrack arch
+of Trajan in the sister city of Ancona. Yet these remains of the
+imperial pontifices, mighty and interesting as they are, sink into
+comparative insignificance beside the one great wonder of Rimini, the
+cathedral remodelled for Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta by Leo Battista
+Alberti in 1450. This strange church, one of the earliest extant
+buildings in which the Neopaganism of the Renaissance showed itself in
+full force, brings together before our memory two men who might be
+chosen as typical in their contrasted characters of the transitional
+age which gave them birth.
+
+No one with any tincture of literary knowledge is ignorant of the fame
+at least of the great Malatesta family--the house of the Wrongheads,
+as they were rightly called by some prevision of their future part in
+Lombard history. The readers of the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth
+cantos of the 'Inferno' have all heard of
+
+  E il mastin vecchio e il nuovo da Verucchio
+      Che fecer di Montagna il mal governo,
+
+while the story of Francesca da Polenta, who was wedded to the
+hunchback Giovanni Malatesta and murdered by him with her lover Paolo,
+is known not merely to students of Dante, but to readers of Byron and
+Leigh Hunt, to admirers of Flaxman, Ary Scheffer, Dore--to all, in
+fact, who have of art and letters any love.
+
+The history of these Malatesti, from their first establishment under
+Otho III. as lieutenants for the Empire in the Marches of Ancona, down
+to their final subjugation by the Papacy in the age of the
+Renaissance, is made up of all the vicissitudes which could befall a
+mediaeval Italian despotism. Acquiring an unlawful right over the
+towns of Rimini, Cesena, Sogliano, Ghiacciuolo, they ruled their petty
+principalities like tyrants by the help of the Guelf and Ghibelline
+factions, inclining to the one or the other as it suited their humour
+or their interest, wrangling among themselves, transmitting the
+succession of their dynasty through bastards and by deeds of force,
+quarrelling with their neighbours the Counts of Urbino, alternately
+defying and submitting to the Papal legates in Romagna, serving as
+condottieri in the wars of the Visconti and the state of Venice, and
+by their restlessness and genius for military intrigues contributing
+in no slight measure to the general disturbance of Italy. The
+Malatesti were a race of strongly marked character: more, perhaps,
+than any other house of Italian tyrants, they combined for generations
+those qualities of the fox and the lion, which Machiavelli thought
+indispensable to a successful despot. Son after son, brother with
+brother, they continued to be fierce and valiant soldiers, cruel in
+peace, hardy in war, but treasonable and suspicious in all
+transactions that could not be settled by the sword. Want of union,
+with them as with the Baglioni and many other of the minor noble
+families in Italy, prevented their founding a substantial dynasty.
+Their power, based on force, was maintained by craft and crime, and
+transmitted through tortuous channels by intrigue. While false in
+their dealings with the world at large, they were diabolical in the
+perfidy with which they treated one another. No feudal custom, no
+standard of hereditary right, ruled the succession in their family.
+Therefore the ablest Malatesta for the moment clutched what he could
+of the domains that owned his house for masters. Partitions among sons
+or brothers, mutually hostile and suspicious, weakened the whole
+stock. Yet they were great enough to hold their own for centuries
+among the many tyrants who infested Lombardy. That the other princely
+families of Romagna, Emilia, and the March were in the same state of
+internal discord and dismemberment, was probably one reason why the
+Malatesti stood their ground so firmly as they did.
+
+So far as Rimini is concerned, the house of Malatesta culminated in
+Sigismondo Pandolfo, son of Gian Galeazzo Visconti's general, the
+perfidious Pandolfo. It was he who built the Rocca, or castle of the
+despots, which stands a little way outside the town, commanding a fair
+view of Apennine tossed hill-tops and broad Lombard plain, and who
+remodelled the Cathedral of S. Francis on a plan suggested by the
+greatest genius of the age. Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta was one of
+the strangest products of the earlier Renaissance. To enumerate the
+crimes which he committed within the sphere of his own family,
+mysterious and inhuman outrages which render the tale of the Cenci
+credible, would violate the decencies of literature. A thoroughly
+bestial nature gains thus much with posterity that its worst qualities
+must be passed by in silence. It is enough to mention that he murdered
+three wives in succession,[2] Bussoni di Carmagnuola, Guinipera
+d'Este, and Polissena Sforza, on various pretexts of infidelity, and
+carved horns upon his own tomb with this fantastic legend
+underneath:--
+
+  Porto le corna ch' ognuno le vede,
+  E tal le porta che non se lo crede.
+
+He died in wedlock with the beautiful and learned Isotta degli Atti,
+who had for some time been his mistress. But, like most of the
+Malatesti, he left no legitimate offspring. Throughout his life he was
+distinguished for bravery and cunning, for endurance of fatigue and
+rapidity of action, for an almost fretful rashness in the execution of
+his schemes, and for a character terrible in its violence. He was
+acknowledged as a great general; yet nothing succeeded with him. The
+long warfare which he carried on against the Duke of Montefeltro ended
+in his discomfiture. Having begun by defying the Holy See, he was
+impeached at Rome for heresy, parricide, incest, adultery, rape, and
+sacrilege, burned in effigy by Pope Pius II., and finally restored to
+the bosom of the Church, after suffering the despoliation of almost
+all his territories, in 1463. The occasion on which this fierce and
+turbulent despiser of laws human and divine was forced to kneel as a
+penitent before the Papal legate in the gorgeous temple dedicated to
+his own pride, in order that the ban of excommunication might be
+removed from Rimini, was one of those petty triumphs, interesting
+chiefly for their picturesqueness, by which the Popes confirmed their
+questionable rights over the cities of Romagna. Sigismondo, shorn of
+his sovereignty, took the command of the Venetian troops against the
+Turks in the Morea, and returned in 1465, crowned with laurels, to die
+at Rimini in the scene of his old splendour.
+
+A very characteristic incident belongs to this last act of his life.
+Dissolute, treacherous, and inhuman as he was, the tyrant of Rimini
+had always encouraged literature, and delighted in the society of
+artists. He who could brook no contradiction from a prince or soldier,
+allowed the pedantic scholars of the sixteenth century to dictate to
+him in matters of taste, and sat with exemplary humility at the feet
+of Latinists like Porcellio, Basinio, and Trebanio. Valturio, the
+engineer, and Alberti, the architect, were his familiar friends; and
+the best hours of his life were spent in conversation with these men.
+Now that he found himself upon the sacred soil of Greece, he was
+determined not to return to Italy empty-handed. Should he bring
+manuscripts or marbles, precious vases or inscriptions in half-legible
+Greek character? These relics were greedily sought for by the
+potentates of Italian cities; and no doubt Sigismondo enriched his
+library with some such treasures. But he obtained a nobler
+prize--nothing less than the body of a saint of scholarship, the
+authentic bones of the great Platonist, Gemisthus Pletho.[3] These he
+exhumed from their Greek grave and caused them to be deposited in a
+stone sarcophagus outside the cathedral of his building in Rimini. The
+Venetians, when they stole the body of S. Mark from Alexandria, were
+scarcely more pleased than was Sigismondo with the acquisition of this
+Father of the Neopagan faith. Upon the tomb we still may read this
+legend: 'Jemisthii Bizantii philosopher sua temp principis reliquum
+Sig. Pan. Mal. Pan. F. belli Pelop adversus Turcor regem Imp ob
+ingentem eruditorum quo flagrat amorem huc afferendum introque
+mittendum curavit MCCCCLXVI.' Of the Latinity of the inscription much
+cannot be said; but it means that 'Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta,
+having served as general against the Turks in the Morea, induced by
+the great love with which he burns for all learned men, brought and
+placed here the remains of Gemisthus of Byzantium, the prince of the
+philosophers of his day.'
+
+Sigismondo's portrait, engraved on medals, and sculptured upon every
+frieze and point of vantage in the Cathedral of Rimini, well denotes
+the man. His face is seen in profile. The head, which is low and flat
+above the forehead, rising swiftly backward from the crown, carries a
+thick bushy shock of hair curling at the ends, such as the Italians
+call a _zazzera_. The eye is deeply sunk, with long venomous flat
+eyelids, like those which Leonardo gives to his most wicked faces. The
+nose is long and crooked, curved like a vulture's over a petulant
+mouth, with lips deliberately pressed together, as though it were
+necessary to control some nervous twitching. The cheek is broad, and
+its bone is strongly marked. Looking at these features in repose, we
+cannot but picture to our fancy what expression they might assume
+under a sudden fit of fury, when the sinews of the face were
+contracted with quivering spasms, and the lips writhed in sympathy
+with knit forehead and wrinkled eyelids.
+
+Allusion has been made to the Cathedral of S. Francis at Rimini, as
+the great ornament of the town, and the chief monument of Sigismondo's
+fame. It is here that all the Malatesti lie. Here too is the chapel
+consecrated to Isotta, 'Divae Isottae Sacrum;' and the tombs of the
+Malatesta ladies, 'Malatestorum domus heroidum sepulchrum;' and
+Sigismondo's own grave with the cuckold's horns and scornful epitaph.
+Nothing but the fact that the church is duly dedicated to S. Francis,
+and that its outer shell of classic marble encases an old Gothic
+edifice, remains to remind us that it is a Christian place of
+worship.[4] It has no sanctity, no spirit of piety. The pride of the
+tyrant whose legend--'Sigismundus Pandulphus Malatesta Pan. F. Fecit
+Anno Gratiae MCCCCL'--occupies every arch and stringcourse of the
+architecture, and whose coat-of-arms and portrait in medallion, with
+his cipher and his emblems of an elephant and a rose, are wrought in
+every piece of sculptured work throughout the building, seems so to
+fill this house of prayer that there is no room left for God. Yet the
+Cathedral of Rimini remains a monument of first-rate importance for
+all students who seek to penetrate the revived Paganism of the
+fifteenth century. It serves also to bring a far more interesting
+Italian of that period than the tyrant of Rimini himself, before our
+notice.
+
+In the execution of his design, Sigismondo received the assistance of
+one of the most remarkable men of this or any other age. Leo Battista
+Alberti, a scion of the noble Florentine house of that name, born
+during the exile of his parents, and educated in the Venetian
+territory, was endowed by nature with aptitudes, faculties, and
+sensibilities so varied, as to deserve the name of universal genius.
+Italy in the Renaissance period was rich in natures of this sort, to
+whom nothing that is strange or beautiful seemed unfamiliar, and who,
+gifted with a kind of divination, penetrated the secrets of the world
+by sympathy. To Pico della Mirandola, Lionardo da Vinci, and Michel
+Agnolo Buonarroti may be added Leo Battista Alberti. That he achieved
+less than his great compeers, and that he now exists as the shadow of
+a mighty name, was the effect of circumstances. He came half a century
+too early into the world, and worked as a pioneer rather than a
+settler of the realm which Lionardo ruled as his demesne. Very early
+in his boyhood Alberti showed the versatility of his talents. The use
+of arms, the management of horses, music, painting, modelling for
+sculpture, mathematics, classical and modern literature, physical
+science as then comprehended, and all the bodily exercises proper to
+the estate of a young nobleman, were at his command. His biographer
+asserts that he was never idle, never subject to ennui or fatigue. He
+used to say that books at times gave him the same pleasure as
+brilliant jewels or perfumed flowers: hunger and sleep could not keep
+him from them then. At other times the letters on the page appeared to
+him like twining and contorted scorpions, so that he preferred to gaze
+on anything but written scrolls. He would then turn to music or
+painting, or to the physical sports in which he excelled. The language
+in which this alternation of passion and disgust for study is
+expressed, bears on it the stamp of Alberti's peculiar temperament,
+his fervid and imaginative genius, instinct with subtle sympathies and
+strange repugnances. Flying from his study, he would then betake
+himself to the open air. No one surpassed him in running, in
+wrestling, in the force with which he cast his javelin or discharged
+his arrows. So sure was his aim and so skilful his cast, that he could
+fling a farthing from the pavement of the square, and make it ring
+against a church roof far above. When he chose to jump, he put his
+feet together and bounded over the shoulders of men standing erect
+upon the ground. On horseback he maintained perfect equilibrium, and
+seemed incapable of fatigue. The most restive and vicious animals
+trembled under him and became like lambs. There was a kind of
+magnetism in the man. We read, besides these feats of strength and
+skill, that he took pleasure in climbing mountains, for no other
+purpose apparently than for the joy of being close to nature.
+
+In this, as in many other of his instincts, Alberti was before his
+age. To care for the beauties of landscape unadorned by art, and to
+sympathise with sublime or rugged scenery, was not in the spirit of
+the Renaissance. Humanity occupied the attention of poets and
+painters; and the age was yet far distant when the pantheistic feeling
+for the world should produce the art of Wordsworth and of Turner. Yet
+a few great natures even then began to comprehend the charm and
+mystery which the Greeks had imaged in their Pan, the sense of an
+all-pervasive spirit in wild places, the feeling of a hidden want, the
+invisible tie which makes man a part of rocks and woods and streams
+around him. Petrarch had already ascended the summit of Mont Ventoux,
+to meditate, with an exaltation of the soul he scarcely understood,
+upon the scene spread at his feet and above his head. AEneas Sylvius
+Piccolomini delighted in wild places for no mere pleasure of the
+chase, but for the joy he took in communing with nature. How S.
+Francis found God in the sun and the air, the water and the stars, we
+know by his celebrated hymn; and of Dante's acute observation, every
+canto of the 'Divine Comedy' is witness.
+
+Leo Alberti was touched in spirit by even a deeper and a stranger
+pathos than any of these men: 'In the early spring, when he beheld the
+meadows and hills covered with flowers, and saw the trees and plants
+of all kinds bearing promise of fruit, his heart became exceeding
+sorrowful; and when in autumn he looked on fields heavy with harvest
+and orchards apple-laden, he felt such grief that many even saw him
+weep for the sadness of his soul.' It would seem that he scarcely
+understood the source of this sweet trouble: for at such times he
+compared the sloth and inutility of men with the industry and
+fertility of nature; as though this were the secret of his melancholy.
+A poet of our century has noted the same stirring of the spirit, and
+has striven to account for it:--
+
+  Tears from the depth of some divine despair
+  Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
+  In looking on the happy autumn fields,
+  And thinking of the days that are no more.
+
+Both Alberti and Tennyson have connected the _mal du pays_ of the
+human soul for that ancient country of its birth, the mild Saturnian
+earth from which we sprang, with a sense of loss. It is the waste of
+human energy that affects Alberti; the waste of human life touches the
+modern poet. Yet both perhaps have scarcely interpreted their own
+spirit; for is not the true source of tears deeper and more secret?
+Man is a child of nature in the simplest sense; and the stirrings of
+the secular breasts that gave him suck, and on which he even now must
+hang, have potent influences over his emotions.
+
+Of Alberti's extraordinary sensitiveness to all such impressions many
+curious tales are told. The sight of refulgent jewels, of flowers, and
+of fair landscapes, had the same effect upon his nerves as the sound
+of the Dorian mood upon the youths whom Pythagoras cured of passion by
+music. He found in them an anodyne for pain, a restoration from
+sickness. Like Walt Whitman, who adheres to nature by closer and more
+vital sympathy than any other poet of the modern world, Alberti felt
+the charm of excellent old age no less than that of florid youth. 'On
+old men gifted with a noble presence and hale and vigorous, he gazed
+again and again, and said that he revered in them the delights of
+nature (_naturae delitias_).' Beasts and birds and all living creatures
+moved him to admiration for the grace with which they had been gifted,
+each in his own kind. It is even said that he composed a funeral
+oration for a dog which he had loved and which died.
+
+To this sensibility for all fair things in nature, Alberti added the
+charm of a singularly sweet temper and graceful conversation. The
+activity of his mind, which was always being exercised on subjects of
+grave speculation, removed him from the noise and bustle of
+commonplace society. He was somewhat silent, inclined to solitude,
+and of a pensive countenance; yet no man found him difficult of
+access: his courtesy was exquisite, and among familiar friends he was
+noted for the flashes of a delicate and subtle wit. Collections were
+made of his apophthegms by friends, and some are recorded by his
+anonymous biographer.[5] Their finer perfume, as almost always happens
+with good sayings which do not certain the full pith of a proverb, but
+owe their force, in part at least, to the personality of their author,
+and to the happy moment of their production, has evanesced. Here,
+however, is one which seems still to bear the impress of Alberti's
+genius: 'Gold is the soul of labour, and labour the slave of
+pleasure.' Of women he used to say that their inconstancy was an
+antidote to their falseness; for if a woman could but persevere in
+what she undertook, all the fair works of men would be ruined. One of
+his strongest moral sentences is aimed at envy, from which he suffered
+much in his own life, and against which he guarded with a curious
+amount of caution. His own family grudged the distinction which his
+talents gained for him, and a dark story is told of a secret attempt
+made by them to assassinate him through his servants. Alberti met
+these ignoble jealousies with a stately calm and a sweet dignity of
+demeanour, never condescending to accuse his relatives, never seeking
+to retaliate, but acting always for the honour of his illustrious
+house. In the same spirit of generosity he refused to enter into wordy
+warfare with detractors and calumniators, sparing the reputation even
+of his worst enemy when chance had placed him in his power. This
+moderation both of speech and conduct was especially distinguished in
+an age which tolerated the fierce invectives of Filelfo, and applauded
+the vindictive courage of Cellini. To money Alberti showed a calm
+indifference. He committed his property to his friends and shared with
+them in common. Nor was he less careless about vulgar fame, spending
+far more pains in the invention of machinery and the discovery of
+laws, than in their publication to the world. His service was to
+knowledge, not to glory. Self-control was another of his eminent
+qualities. With the natural impetuosity of a large heart, and the
+vivacity of a trained athlete, he yet never allowed himself to be
+subdued by anger or by sensual impulses, but took pains to preserve
+his character unstained and dignified before the eyes of men. A story
+is told of him which may remind us of Goethe's determination to
+overcome his giddiness. In his youth his head was singularly sensitive
+to changes of temperature; but by gradual habituation he brought
+himself at last to endure the extremes of heat and cold bareheaded. In
+like manner he had a constitutional disgust for onions and honey; so
+powerful, that the very sight of these things made him sick. Yet by
+constantly viewing and touching what was disagreeable, he conquered
+these dislikes; and proved that men have a complete mastery over what
+is merely instinctive in their nature. His courage corresponded to his
+splendid physical development. When a boy of fifteen, he severely
+wounded himself in the foot. The gash had to be probed and then sewn
+up. Alberti not only bore the pain of this operation without a groan,
+but helped the surgeon with his own hands; and effected a cure of the
+fever which succeeded by the solace of singing to his cithern. For
+music he had a genius of the rarest order; and in painting he is said
+to have achieved success. Nothing, however, remains of his work and
+from what Vasari says of it, we may fairly conclude that he gave less
+care to the execution of finished pictures, than to drawings
+subsidiary to architectural and mechanical designs. His biographer
+relates that when he had completed a painting, he called children and
+asked them what it meant. If they did not know, he reckoned it a
+failure. He was also in the habit of painting from memory. While at
+Venice, he put on canvas the faces of friends at Florence whom he had
+not seen for months. That the art of painting was subservient in his
+estimation to mechanics, is indicated by what we hear about the
+camera, in which he showed landscapes by day and the revolutions of
+the stars by night, so lively drawn that the spectators were affected
+with amazement. The semi-scientific impulse to extend man's mastery
+over nature, the magician's desire to penetrate secrets, which so
+powerfully influenced the development of Lionardo's genius, seems to
+have overcome the purely aesthetic instincts of Alberti, so that he
+became in the end neither a great artist like Raphael, nor a great
+discoverer like Galileo, but rather a clairvoyant to whom the miracles
+of nature and of art lie open.
+
+After the first period of youth was over, Leo Battista Alberti devoted
+his great faculties and all his wealth of genius to the study of the
+law--then, as now, the quicksand of the noblest natures. The industry
+with which he applied himself to the civil and ecclesiastical codes
+broke his health. For recreation he composed a Latin comedy called
+'Philodoxeos,' which imposed upon the judgment of scholars, and was
+ascribed as a genuine antique to Lepidus, the comic poet. Feeling
+stronger, Alberti returned at the age of twenty to his law studies,
+and pursued them in the teeth of disadvantages. His health was still
+uncertain, and the fortune of an exile reduced him to the utmost want.
+It was no wonder that under these untoward circumstances even his
+Herculean strength gave way. Emaciated and exhausted, he lost the
+clearness of his eyesight, and became subject to arterial
+disturbances, which filled his ears with painful sounds. This nervous
+illness is not dissimilar to that which Rousseau describes in the
+confessions of his youth. In vain, however, his physicians warned
+Alberti of impending peril. A man of so much stanchness, accustomed
+to control his nature with an iron will, is not ready to accept
+advice. Alberti persevered in his studies, until at last the very seat
+of intellect was invaded. His memory began to fail him for names,
+while he still retained with wonderful accuracy whatever he had seen
+with his eyes. It was now impossible to think of law as a profession.
+Yet since he could not live without severe mental exercise, he had
+recourse to studies which tax the verbal memory less than the
+intuitive faculties of the reason. Physics and mathematics became his
+chief resource; and he devoted his energies to literature. His
+'Treatise on the Family' may be numbered among the best of those
+compositions on social and speculative subjects in which the Italians
+of the Renaissance sought to rival Cicero. His essays on the arts are
+mentioned by Vasari with sincere approbation. Comedies, interludes,
+orations, dialogues, and poems flowed with abundance from his facile
+pen. Some were written in Latin, which he commanded more than fairly;
+some in the Tuscan tongue, of which owing to the long exile of his
+family in Lombardy, he is said to have been less a master. It was
+owing to this youthful illness, from which apparently his constitution
+never wholly recovered, that Alberti's genius was directed to
+architecture.
+
+Through his friendship with Flavio Biondo, the famous Roman antiquary,
+Alberti received an introduction to Nicholas V. at the time when this,
+the first great Pope of the Renaissance, was engaged in rebuilding the
+palaces and fortifications of Rome. Nicholas discerned the genius of
+the man, and employed him as his chief counsellor in all matters of
+architecture. When the Pope died, he was able, while reciting his long
+Latin will upon his deathbed, to boast that he had restored the Holy
+See to its due dignity, and the Eternal City to the splendour worthy
+of the seat of Christendom. The accomplishment of the second part of
+his work he owed to the genius of Alberti. After doing thus much for
+Rome under Thomas of Sarzana, and before beginning to beautify
+Florence at the instance of the Rucellai family, Alberti entered the
+service of the Malatesta, and undertook to remodel the Cathedral of S.
+Francis at Rimini. He found it a plain Gothic structure with apse and
+side chapels. Such churches are common enough in Italy, where pointed
+architecture never developed its true character of complexity and
+richness, but was doomed to the vast vacuity exemplified in S.
+Petronio of Bologna. He left it a strange medley of mediaeval and
+Renaissance work, a symbol of that dissolving scene in the world's
+pantomime, when the spirit of classic art, as yet but little
+comprehended, was encroaching on the early Christian taste. Perhaps
+the mixture of styles so startling in S. Francesco ought not to be
+laid to the charge of Alberti, who had to execute the task of turning
+a Gothic into a classic building. All that he could do was to alter
+the whole exterior of the church, by affixing a screen-work of Roman
+arches and Corinthian pilasters, so as to hide the old design and yet
+to leave the main features of the fabric, the windows and doors
+especially, _in statu quo_. With the interior he dealt upon the same
+general principle, by not disturbing its structure, while he covered
+every available square inch of surface with decorations alien to the
+Gothic manner. Externally, S. Francesco is perhaps the most original
+and graceful of the many attempts made by Italian builders to fuse the
+mediaeval and the classic styles. For Alberti attempted nothing less. A
+century elapsed before Palladio, approaching the problem from a
+different point of view, restored the antique in its purity, and
+erected in the Palazzo della Ragione of Vicenza an almost unique
+specimen of resuscitated Roman art.
+
+Internally, the beauty of the church is wholly due to its exquisite
+wall-ornaments. These consist for the most part of low reliefs in a
+soft white stone, many of them thrown out upon a blue ground in the
+style of Della Robbia. Allegorical figures designed with the purity of
+outline we admire in Botticelli, draperies that Burne-Jones might
+copy, troops of singing boys in the manner of Donatello, great angels
+traced upon the stone so delicately that they seem to be rather drawn
+than sculptured, statuettes in niches, personifications of all arts
+and sciences alternating with half-bestial shapes of satyrs and
+sea-children:--such are the forms which fill the spaces of the chapel
+walls, and climb the pilasters, and fret the arches, in such abundance
+that had the whole church been finished as it was designed, it would
+have presented one splendid though bizarre effect of incrustation.
+Heavy screens of Verona marble, emblazoned in open arabesques with the
+ciphers of Sigismondo and Isotta, with coats-of-arms, emblems, and
+medallion portraits, shut the chapels from the nave. Who produced all
+this sculpture it is difficult to say. Some of it is very good: much
+is indifferent. We may hazard the opinion that, besides Bernardo
+Ciuffagni, of whom Vasari speaks, some pupils of Donatello and
+Benedetto da Majano worked at it. The influence of the sculptors of
+Florence is everywhere perceptible.
+
+Whatever be the merit of these reliefs, there is no doubt that they
+fairly represent one of the most interesting moments in the history of
+modern art. Gothic inspiration had failed; the early Tuscan style of
+the Pisani had been worked out; Michelangelo was yet far distant, and
+the abundance of classic models had not overwhelmed originality. The
+sculptors of the school of Ghiberti and Donatello, who are represented
+in this church, were essentially pictorial, preferring low to high
+relief, and relief in general to detached figures. Their style, like
+the style of Boiardo in poetry, of Botticelli in painting, is specific
+to Italy in the middle of the fifteenth century. Mediaeval standards of
+taste were giving way to classical, Christian sentiment to Pagan; yet
+the imitation of the antique had not been carried so far as to efface
+the spontaneity of the artist, and enough remained of Christian
+feeling to tinge the fancy with a grave and sweet romance. The
+sculptor had the skill and mastery to express his slightest shade of
+thought with freedom, spirit, and precision. Yet his work showed no
+sign of conventionality, no adherence to prescribed rules. Every
+outline, every fold of drapery, every attitude was pregnant, to the
+artist's own mind at any rate, with meaning. In spite of its
+symbolism, what he wrought was never mechanically figurative, but
+gifted with the independence of its own beauty, vital with an
+inbreathed spirit of life. It was a happy moment, when art had reached
+consciousness, and the artist had not yet become self-conscious. The
+hand and the brain then really worked together for the procreation of
+new forms of grace, not for the repetition of old models, or for the
+invention of the strange and startling. 'Delicate, sweet, and
+captivating,' are good adjectives to express the effect produced upon
+the mind by the contemplation even of the average work of this period.
+
+To study the flowing lines of the great angels traced upon the walls
+of the Chapel of S. Sigismund in the Cathedral of Rimini, to follow
+the undulations of their drapery that seems to float, to feel the
+dignified urbanity of all their gestures, is like listening to one of
+those clear early Italian compositions for the voice, which surpasses
+in suavity of tone and grace of movement all that Music in her
+full-grown vigour has produced. There is indeed something infinitely
+charming in the crepuscular moments of the human mind. Whether it be
+the rathe loveliness of an art still immature, or the beauty of art
+upon the wane--whether, in fact, the twilight be of morning or of
+evening, we find in the masterpieces of such periods a placid calm and
+chastened pathos, as of a spirit self-withdrawn from vulgar cares,
+which in the full light of meridian splendour is lacking. In the
+Church of S. Francesco at Rimini the tempered clearness of the dawn is
+just about to broaden into day.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+_MAY IN UMBRIA_
+
+FROM ROME TO TERNI
+
+
+We left Rome in clear sunset light. The Alban Hills defined themselves
+like a cameo of amethyst upon a pale blue distance; and over the
+Sabine Mountains soared immeasurable moulded domes of alabaster
+thunderclouds, casting deep shadows, purple and violet, across the
+slopes of Tivoli. To westward the whole sky was lucid, like some
+half-transparent topaz, flooded with slowly yellowing sunbeams. The
+Campagna has often been called a garden of wild-flowers. Just now
+poppy and aster, gladiolus and thistle, embroider it with patterns
+infinite and intricate beyond the power of art. They have already mown
+the hay in part; and the billowy tracts of greyish green, where no
+flowers are now in bloom, supply a restful groundwork to those
+brilliant patches of diapered _fioriture_. These are like
+praying-carpets spread for devotees upon the pavement of a mosque
+whose roof is heaven. In the level light the scythes of the mowers
+flash as we move past. From their bronzed foreheads the men toss
+masses of dark curls. Their muscular flanks and shoulders sway
+sideways from firm yet pliant reins. On one hill, fronting the sunset,
+there stands a herd of some thirty huge grey oxen, feeding and raising
+their heads to look at us, with just a flush of crimson on their
+horns and dewlaps. This is the scale of Mason's and of Costa's
+colouring. This is the breadth and magnitude of Rome.
+
+Thus, through dells of ilex and oak, yielding now a glimpse of Tiber
+and S. Peter's, now opening on a purple section of the distant Sabine
+Hills, we came to Monte Rotondo. The sun sank; and from the flames
+where he had perished, Hesper and the thin moon, very white and keen,
+grew slowly into sight. Now we follow the Tiber, a swollen, hurrying,
+turbid river, in which the mellowing Western sky reflects itself. This
+changeful mirror of swift waters spreads a dazzling foreground to
+valley, hill, and lustrous heaven. There is orange on the far horizon,
+and a green ocean above, in which sea-monsters fashioned from the
+clouds are floating. Yonder swims an elf with luminous hair astride
+upon a sea-horse, and followed by a dolphin plunging through the fiery
+waves. The orange deepens into dying red. The green divides into
+daffodil and beryl. The blue above grows fainter, and the moon and
+stars shine stronger.
+
+Through these celestial changes we glide into a landscape fit for
+Francia and the early Umbrian painters. Low hills to right and left;
+suavely modelled heights in the far distance; a very quiet width of
+plain, with slender trees ascending into the pellucid air; and down in
+the mystery of the middle distance a glimpse of heaven-reflecting
+water. The magic of the moon and stars lends enchantment to this
+scene. No painting could convey their influences. Sometimes both
+luminaries tremble, all dispersed and broken, on the swirling river.
+Sometimes they sleep above the calm cool reaches of a rush-grown mere.
+And here and there a ruined turret, with a broken window and a tuft
+of shrubs upon the rifted battlement, gives value to the fading pallor
+of the West. The last phase in the sunset is a change to blue-grey
+monochrome, faintly silvered with starlight; hills, Tiber, fields and
+woods, all floating in aerial twilight. There is no definition of
+outline now. The daffodil of the horizon has faded into scarcely
+perceptible pale greenish yellow.
+
+We have passed Stimigliano. Through the mystery of darkness we hurry
+past the bridges of Augustus and the lights of Narni.
+
+
+THE CASCADES OF TERNI
+
+
+The Velino is a river of considerable volume which rises in the
+highest region of the Abruzzi, threads the upland valley of Rieti, and
+precipitates itself by an artificial channel over cliffs about seven
+hundred feet in height into the Nera. The water is densely charged
+with particles of lime. This calcareous matter not only tends
+continually to choke its bed, but clothes the precipices over which
+the torrent thunders with fantastic drapery of stalactite; and,
+carried on the wind in foam, incrusts the forests that surround the
+falls with fine white dust. These famous cascades are undoubtedly the
+most sublime and beautiful which Europe boasts; and their situation is
+worthy of so great a natural wonder. We reach them through a noble
+mid-Italian landscape, where the mountain forms are austere and boldly
+modelled, but the vegetation, both wild and cultivated, has something
+of the South-Italian richness. The hillsides are a labyrinth of box
+and arbutus, with coronilla in golden bloom. The turf is starred with
+cyclamens and orchises. Climbing the staircase paths beside the falls
+in morning sunlight, or stationed on the points of vantage that
+command their successive cataracts, we enjoyed a spectacle which might
+be compared in its effect upon the mind to the impression left by a
+symphony or a tumultuous lyric. The turbulence and splendour, the
+swiftness and resonance, the veiling of the scene in smoke of
+shattered water-masses, the withdrawal of these veils according as the
+volume of the river slightly shifted in its fall, the rainbows
+shimmering on the silver spray, the shivering of poplars hung above
+impendent precipices, the stationary grandeur of the mountains keeping
+watch around, the hurry and the incoherence of the cataracts, the
+immobility of force and changeful changelessness in nature, were all
+for me the elements of one stupendous poem. It was like an ode of
+Shelley translated into symbolism, more vivid through inarticulate
+appeal to primitive emotion than any words could be.
+
+
+MONTEFALCO
+
+
+The rich land of the Clitumnus is divided into meadows by transparent
+watercourses, gliding with a glassy current over swaying reeds.
+Through this we pass, and leave Bevagna to the right, and ascend one
+of those long gradual roads which climb the hills where all the cities
+of the Umbrians perch. The view expands, revealing Spello, Assisi,
+Perugia on its mountain buttress, and the far reaches northward of the
+Tiber valley. Then Trevi and Spoleto came into sight, and the severe
+hill-country above Gubbio in part disclosed itself. Over Spoleto the
+fierce witch-haunted heights of Norcia rose forbidding. This is the
+kind of panorama that dilates the soul. It is so large, so dignified,
+so beautiful in tranquil form. The opulent abundance of the plain
+contrasts with the severity of mountain ranges desolately grand; and
+the name of each of all those cities thrills the heart with memories.
+
+The main object of a visit to Montefalco is to inspect its many
+excellent frescoes; painted histories of S. Francis and S. Jerome, by
+Benozzo Gozzoli; saints, angels, and Scripture episodes by the gentle
+Tiberio d'Assisi. Full justice had been done to these, when a little
+boy, seeing us lingering outside the church of S. Chiara, asked
+whether we should not like to view the body of the saint. This
+privilege could be purchased at the price of a small fee. It was only
+necessary to call the guardian of her shrine at the high altar.
+Indolent, and in compliant mood, with languid curiosity and half an
+hour to spare, we assented. A handsome young man appeared, who
+conducted us with decent gravity into a little darkened chamber behind
+the altar. There he lighted wax tapers, opened sliding doors in what
+looked like a long coffin, and drew curtains. Before us in the dim
+light there lay a woman covered with a black nun's dress. Only her
+hands, and the exquisitely beautiful pale contour of her face
+(forehead, nose, mouth, and chin, modelled in purest outline, as
+though the injury of death had never touched her) were visible. Her
+closed eyes seemed to sleep. She had the perfect peace of Luini's S.
+Catherine borne by the angels to her grave on Sinai. I have rarely
+seen anything which surprised and touched me more. The religious
+earnestness of the young custode, the hushed adoration of the
+country-folk who had silently assembled round us, intensified the
+sympathy-inspiring beauty of the slumbering girl. Could Julia,
+daughter of Claudius, have been fairer than this maiden, when the
+Lombard workmen found her in her Latin tomb, and brought her to be
+worshipped on the Capitol? S. Chiara's shrine was hung round with her
+relics; and among these the heart extracted from her body was
+suspended. Upon it, apparently wrought into the very substance of the
+mummied flesh, were impressed a figure of the crucified Christ, the
+scourge, and the five stigmata. The guardian's faith in this
+miraculous witness to her sainthood, the gentle piety of the men and
+women who knelt before it, checked all expressions of incredulity. We
+abandoned ourselves to the genius of the place; forgot even to ask
+what Santa Chiara was sleeping here; and withdrew, toned to a not
+unpleasing melancholy. The world-famous S. Clair, the spiritual sister
+of S. Francis, lies in Assisi. I have often asked myself, Who, then,
+was this nun? What history had she? And I think now of this girl as of
+a damsel of romance, a Sleeping Beauty in the wood of time, secluded
+from intrusive elements of fact, and folded in the love and faith of
+her own simple worshippers. Among the hollows of Arcadia, how many
+rustic shrines in ancient days held saints of Hellas, apocryphal,
+perhaps, like this, but hallowed by tradition and enduring homage![6]
+
+
+FOLIGNO
+
+
+In the landscape of Raphael's votive picture, known as the Madonna di
+Foligno, there is a town with a few towers, placed upon a broad plain
+at the edge of some blue hills. Allowing for that license as to
+details which imaginative masters permitted themselves in matters of
+subordinate importance, Raphael's sketch is still true to Foligno. The
+place has not materially changed since the beginning of the sixteenth
+century. Indeed, relatively to the state of Italy at large, it is
+still the same as in the days of ancient Rome. Foligno forms a station
+of commanding interest between Rome and the Adriatic upon the great
+Flaminian Way. At Foligno the passes of the Apennines debouch into the
+Umbrian plain, which slopes gradually toward the valley of the Tiber,
+and from it the valley of the Nera is reached by an easy ascent
+beneath the walls of Spoleto. An army advancing from the north by the
+Metaurus and the Furlo Pass must find itself at Foligno; and the level
+champaign round the city is well adapted to the maintenance and
+exercises of a garrison. In the days of the Republic and the Empire,
+the value of this position was well understood; but Foligno's
+importance, as the key to the Flaminian Way, was eclipsed by two
+flourishing cities in its immediate vicinity, Hispellum and Mevania,
+the modern Spello and Bevagna. We might hazard a conjecture that the
+Lombards, when they ruled the Duchy of Spoleto, following their usual
+policy of opposing new military centres to the ancient Roman
+municipia, encouraged Fulginium at the expense of her two neighbours.
+But of this there is no certainty to build upon. All that can be
+affirmed with accuracy is that in the Middle Ages, while Spello and
+Bevagna declined into the inferiority of dependent burghs, Foligno
+grew in power and became the chief commune of this part of Umbria. It
+was famous during the last centuries of struggle between the Italian
+burghers and their native despots, for peculiar ferocity in civil
+strife. Some of the bloodiest pages in mediaeval Italian history are
+those which relate the vicissitudes of the Trinci family, the
+exhaustion of Foligno by internal discord, and its final submission to
+the Papal power. Since railways have been carried from Rome through
+Narni and Spoleto to Ancona and Perugia, Foligno has gained
+considerably in commercial and military status. It is the point of
+intersection for three lines; the Italian government has made it a
+great cavalry depot, and there are signs of reviving traffic in its
+decayed streets. Whether the presence of a large garrison has already
+modified the population, or whether we may ascribe something to the
+absence of Roman municipal institutions in the far past, and to the
+savagery of the mediaeval period, it is difficult to say. Yet the
+impression left by Foligno upon the mind is different from that of
+Assisi, Spello, and Montefalco, which are distinguished for a certain
+grace and gentleness in their inhabitants.
+
+My window in the city wall looks southward across the plain to
+Spoleto, with Montefalco perched aloft upon the right, and Trevi on
+its mountain-bracket to the left. From the topmost peaks of the Sabine
+Apennines, gradual tender sloping lines descend to find their quiet in
+the valley of Clitumnus. The space between me and that distance is
+infinitely rich with every sort of greenery, dotted here and there
+with towers and relics of baronial houses. The little town is in
+commotion; for the working men of Foligno and its neighbourhood have
+resolved to spend their earnings on a splendid festa--horse-races, and
+two nights of fireworks. The acacias and paulownias on the ramparts
+are in full bloom of creamy white and lilac. In the glare of Bengal
+lights these trees, with all their pendulous blossoms, surpassed the
+most fantastic of artificial decorations. The rockets sent aloft into
+the sky amid that solemn Umbrian landscape were nowise out of harmony
+with nature. I never sympathised with critics who resent the intrusion
+of fireworks upon scenes of natural beauty. The Giessbach, lighted up
+at so much per head on stated evenings, with a band playing and a
+crowd of cockneys staring, presents perhaps an incongruous spectacle.
+But where, as here at Foligno, a whole city has made itself a
+festival, where there are multitudes of citizens and soldiers and
+country-people slowly moving and gravely admiring, with the decency
+and order characteristic of an Italian crowd, I have nothing but a
+sense of satisfaction.
+
+It is sometimes the traveller's good fortune in some remote place to
+meet with an inhabitant who incarnates and interprets for him the
+_genius loci_ as he has conceived it. Though his own subjectivity will
+assuredly play a considerable part in such an encounter, transferring
+to his chance acquaintance qualities he may not possess, and
+connecting this personality in some purely imaginative manner with
+thoughts derived from study, or impressions made by nature; yet the
+stranger will henceforth become the meeting-point of many memories,
+the central figure in a composition which derives from him its
+vividness. Unconsciously and innocently he has lent himself to the
+creation of a picture, and round him, as around the hero of a myth,
+have gathered thoughts and sentiments of which he had himself no
+knowledge. On one of these nights I had been threading the aisles of
+acacia-trees, now glaring red, now azure, as the Bengal lights kept
+changing. My mind instinctively went back to scenes of treachery and
+bloodshed in the olden time, when Gorrado Trinci paraded the mangled
+remnants of three hundred of his victims, heaped on mule-back, through
+Foligno, for a warning to the citizens. As the procession moved along
+the ramparts, I found myself in contest with a young man, who readily
+fell into conversation. He was very tall, with enormous breadth of
+shoulders, and long sinewy arms, like Michelangelo's favourite models.
+His head was small, curled over with crisp black hair. Low forehead,
+and thick level eyebrows absolutely meeting over intensely bright
+fierce eyes. The nose descending straight from the brows, as in a
+statue of Hadrian's age. The mouth full-lipped, petulant, and
+passionate above a firm round chin. He was dressed in the shirt, white
+trousers, and loose white jacket of a contadino; but he did not move
+with a peasant's slouch, rather with the elasticity and alertness of
+an untamed panther. He told me that he was just about to join a
+cavalry regiment; and I could well imagine, when military dignity was
+added to that gait, how grandly he would go. This young man, of whom I
+heard nothing more after our half-hour's conversation among the
+crackling fireworks and roaring cannon, left upon my mind an
+indescribable impression of dangerousness--of 'something fierce and
+terrible, eligible to burst forth.' Of men like this, then, were
+formed the Companies of Adventure who flooded Italy with villany,
+ambition, and lawlessness in the fifteenth century. Gattamelata, who
+began life as a baker's boy at Narni and ended it with a bronze statue
+by Donatello on the public square in Padua, was of this breed. Like
+this were the Trinci and their bands of murderers. Like this were the
+bravi who hunted Lorenzaccio to death at Venice. Like this was Pietro
+Paolo Baglioni, whose fault, in the eyes of Machiavelli, was that he
+could not succeed in being 'perfettamente tristo.' Beautiful, but
+inhuman; passionate, but cold; powerful, but rendered impotent for
+firm and lofty deeds by immorality and treason; how many centuries of
+men like this once wasted Italy and plunged her into servitude! Yet
+what material is here, under sterner discipline, and with a nobler
+national ideal, for the formation of heroic armies. Of such stuff,
+doubtless, were the Roman legionaries. When will the Italians learn to
+use these men as Fabius or as Caesar, not as the Vitelli and the Trinci
+used them? In such meditations, deeply stirred by the meeting of my
+own reflections with one who seemed to represent for me in life and
+blood the spirit of the place which had provoked them, I said farewell
+to Cavallucci, and returned to my bedroom on the city wall. The last
+rockets had whizzed and the last cannons had thundered ere I fell
+asleep.
+
+
+SPELLO
+
+
+Spello contains some not inconsiderable antiquities--the remains of a
+Roman theatre, a Roman gate with the heads of two men and a woman
+leaning over it, and some fragments of Roman sculpture scattered
+through its buildings. The churches, especially those of S.M. Maggiore
+and S. Francesco, are worth a visit for the sake of Pinturicchio.
+Nowhere, except in the Piccolomini Library at Siena, can that master's
+work in fresco be better studied than here. The satisfaction with
+which he executed the wall paintings in S. Maria Maggiore is testified
+by his own portrait introduced upon a panel in the decoration of the
+Virgin's chamber. The scrupulously rendered details of books, chairs,
+window seats, &c., which he here has copied, remind one of Carpaccio's
+study of S. Benedict at Venice. It is all sweet, tender, delicate, and
+carefully finished; but without depth, not even the depth of
+Perugino's feeling. In S. Francesco, Pinturicchio, with the same
+meticulous refinement, painted a letter addressed to him by Gentile
+Baglioni. It lies on a stool before Madonna and her court of saints.
+Nicety of execution, technical mastery of fresco as a medium for Dutch
+detail-painting, prettiness of composition, and cheerfulness of
+colouring, are noticeable throughout his work here rather than either
+thought or sentiment. S. Maria Maggiore can boast a fresco of Madonna
+between a young episcopal saint and Catherine of Alexandria from the
+hand of Perugino. The rich yellow harmony of its tones, and the
+graceful dignity of its emotion, conveyed no less by a certain
+Raphaelesque pose and outline than by suavity of facial expression,
+enable us to measure the distance between this painter and his
+quasi-pupil Pinturicchio.
+
+We did not, however, drive to Spello to inspect either Roman
+antiquities or frescoes, but to see an inscription on the city walls
+about Orlando. It is a rude Latin elegiac couplet, saying that, 'from
+the sign below, men may conjecture the mighty members of Roland,
+nephew of Charles; his deeds are written in history.' Three agreeable
+old gentlemen of Spello, who attended us with much politeness, and
+were greatly interested in my researches, pointed out a mark
+waist-high upon the wall, where Orlando's knee is reported to have
+reached. But I could not learn anything about a phallic monolith,
+which is said by Guerin or Panizzi to have been identified with the
+Roland myth at Spello. Such a column either never existed here, or
+had been removed before the memory of the present generation.
+
+
+EASTER MORNING AT ASSISI
+
+
+We are in the lower church of S. Francesco. High mass is being sung,
+with orchestra and organ and a choir of many voices. Candles are
+lighted on the altar, over-canopied with Giotto's allegories. From the
+low southern windows slants the sun, in narrow bands, upon the
+many-coloured gloom and embrowned glory of these painted aisles. Women
+in bright kerchiefs kneel upon the stones, and shaggy men from the
+mountains stand or lean against the wooden benches. There is no moving
+from point to point. Where we have taken our station, at the
+north-western angle of the transept, there we stay till mass be over.
+The whole low-vaulted building glows duskily; the frescoed roof, the
+stained windows, the figure-crowded pavements blending their rich but
+subdued colours, like hues upon some marvellous moth's wings, or like
+a deep-toned rainbow mist discerned in twilight dreams, or like such
+tapestry as Eastern queens, in ancient days, wrought for the pavilion
+of an empress. Forth from this maze of mingling tints, indefinite in
+shade and sunbeams, lean earnest, saintly faces--ineffably
+pure--adoring, pitying, pleading; raising their eyes in ecstasy to
+heaven, or turning them in ruth toward earth. Men and women of whom
+the world was not worthy--at the hands of those old painters they have
+received the divine grace, the dovelike simplicity, whereof Italians
+in the fourteenth century possessed the irrecoverable secret. Each
+face is a poem; the counterpart in painting to a chapter from the
+Fioretti di San Francesco. Over the whole scene--in the architecture,
+in the frescoes, in the coloured windows, in the gloom, on the
+people, in the incense, from the chiming bells, through the
+music--broods one spirit: the spirit of him who was 'the co-espoused,
+co-transforate with Christ;' the ardent, the radiant, the beautiful in
+soul; the suffering, the strong, the simple, the victorious over self
+and sin; the celestial who trampled upon earth and rose on wings of
+ecstasy to heaven; the Christ-inebriated saint of visions supersensual
+and life beyond the grave. Far down below the feet of those who
+worship God through him, S. Francis sleeps; but his soul, the
+incorruptible part of him, the message he gave the world, is in the
+spaces round us. This is his temple. He fills it like an unseen god.
+Not as Phoebus or Athene, from their marble pedestals; but as an
+abiding spirit, felt everywhere, nowhere seized, absorbing in itself
+all mysteries, all myths, all burning exaltations, all abasements, all
+love, self-sacrifice, pain, yearning, which the thought of Christ,
+sweeping the centuries, hath wrought for men. Let, therefore, choir
+and congregation raise their voices on the tide of prayers and
+praises; for this is Easter morning--Christ is risen! Our sister,
+Death of the Body, for whom S. Francis thanked God in his hymn, is
+reconciled to us this day, and takes us by the hand, and leads us to
+the gate whence floods of heavenly glory issue from the faces of a
+multitude of saints. Pray, ye poor people; chant and pray. If all be
+but a dream, to wake from this were loss for you indeed!
+
+
+PERUSIA AUGUSTA
+
+
+The piazza in front of the Prefettura is my favourite resort on these
+nights of full moon. The evening twilight is made up partly of sunset
+fading over Thrasymene and Tuscany; partly of moonrise from the
+mountains of Gubbio and the passes toward Ancona. The hills are capped
+with snow, although the season is so forward. Below our parapets the
+bulk of S. Domenico, with its gaunt perforated tower, and the finer
+group of S. Pietro, flaunting the arrowy 'Pennacchio di Perugia,' jut
+out upon the spine of hill which dominates the valley of the Tiber. As
+the night gloom deepens, and the moon ascends the sky, these buildings
+seem to form the sombre foreground to some French etching. Beyond them
+spreads the misty moon-irradiated plain of Umbria. Over all rise
+shadowy Apennines, with dim suggestions of Assisi, Spello, Foligno,
+Montefalco, and Spoleto on their basements. Little thin whiffs of
+breezes, very slight and searching, flit across, and shiver as they
+pass from Apennine to plain. The slowly moving population--women in
+veils, men winter-mantled--pass to and fro between the buildings and
+the grey immensity of sky. Bells ring. The bugles of the soldiers blow
+retreat in convents turned to barracks. Young men roam the streets
+beneath, singing May songs. Far, far away upon the plain, red through
+the vitreous moonlight ringed with thundery gauze, fires of unnamed
+castelli smoulder. As we lean from ledges eighty feet in height, gas
+vies with moon in chequering illuminations on the ancient walls;
+Etruscan mouldings, Roman letters, high-piled hovels, suburban
+world-old dwellings plastered like martins' nests against the masonry.
+
+Sunlight adds more of detail to this scene. To the right of Subasio,
+where the passes go from Foligno towards Urbino and Ancona, heavy
+masses of thundercloud hang every day; but the plain and
+hill-buttresses are clear in transparent blueness. First comes Assisi,
+with S.M. degli Angeli below; then Spello; then Foligno; then Trevi;
+and, far away, Spoleto; with, reared against those misty battlements,
+the village height of Montefalco--the 'ringhiera dell' Umbria,' as
+they call it in this country. By daylight, the snow on yonder peaks is
+clearly visible, where the Monti della Sibilla tower up above the
+sources of the Nera and Velino from frigid wastes of Norcia. The lower
+ranges seem as though painted, in films of airiest and palest azure,
+upon china; and then comes the broad green champaign, flecked with
+villages and farms. Just at the basement of Perugia winds Tiber,
+through sallows and grey poplar-trees, spanned by ancient arches of
+red brick, and guarded here and there by castellated towers. The mills
+beneath their dams and weirs are just as Raphael drew them; and the
+feeling of air and space reminds one, on each coign of vantage, of
+some Umbrian picture. Every hedgerow is hoary with May-bloom and
+honeysuckle. The oaks hang out their golden-dusted tassels. Wayside
+shrines are decked with laburnum boughs and iris blossoms plucked from
+the copse-woods, where spires of purple and pink orchis variegate the
+thin, fine grass. The land waves far and wide with young corn, emerald
+green beneath the olive-trees, which take upon their under-foliage
+tints reflected from this verdure or red tones from the naked earth. A
+fine race of _contadini_, with large, heroically graceful forms, and
+beautiful dark eyes and noble faces, move about this garden, intent on
+ancient, easy tillage of the kind Saturnian soil.
+
+
+LA MAGIONE
+
+
+On the road from Perugia to Cortona, the first stage ends at La
+Magione, a high hill-village commanding the passage from the Umbrian
+champaign to the lake of Thrasymene.
+
+It has a grim square fortalice above it, now in ruins, and a stately
+castle to the south-east, built about the time of Braccio. Here took
+place that famous diet of Cesare Borgia's enemies, when the son of
+Alexander VI. was threatening Bologna with his arms, and bidding fair
+to make himself supreme tyrant of Italy in 1502. It was the policy of
+Cesare to fortify himself by reducing the fiefs of the Church to
+submission, and by rooting out the dynasties which had acquired a
+sort of tyranny in Papal cities. The Varani of Camerino and the
+Manfredi of Faenza had been already extirpated. There was only too
+good reason to believe that the turn of the Vitelli at Citta di
+Castello, of the Baglioni at Perugia, and of the Bentivogli at Bologna
+would come next. Pandolfo Petrucci at Siena, surrounded on all sides
+by Cesare's conquests, and specially menaced by the fortification of
+Piombino, felt himself in danger. The great house of the Orsini, who
+swayed a large part of the Patrimony of S. Peter's, and were closely
+allied to the Vitelli, had even graver cause for anxiety. But such was
+the system of Italian warfare, that nearly all these noble families
+lived by the profession of arms, and most of them were in the pay of
+Cesare. When, therefore, the conspirators met at La Magione, they were
+plotting against a man whose money they had taken, and whom they had
+hitherto aided in his career of fraud and spoliation.
+
+The diet consisted of the Cardinal Orsini, an avowed antagonist of
+Alexander VI.; his brother Paolo, the chieftain of the clan;
+Vitellozzo Vitelli, lord of Citta di Castello; Gian-Paolo Baglioni,
+made undisputed master of Perugia by the recent failure of his cousin
+Grifonetto's treason; Oliverotto, who had just acquired the March of
+Fermo by the murder of his uncle Giovanni da Fogliani; Ermes
+Bentivoglio, the heir of Bologna; and Antonio da Venafro, the
+secretary of Pandolfo Petrueci. These men vowed hostility on the basis
+of common injuries and common fear against the Borgia. But they were
+for the most part stained themselves with crime, and dared not trust
+each other, and could not gain the confidence of any respectable power
+in Italy except the exiled Duke of Urbino. Procrastination was the
+first weapon used by the wily Cesare, who trusted that time would sow
+among his rebel captains suspicion and dissension. He next made
+overtures to the leaders separately, and so far succeeded in his
+perfidious policy as to draw Vitellozzo Vitelli, Oliverotto da Fermo,
+Paolo Orsini, and Francesco Orsini, Duke of Gravina, into his nets at
+Sinigaglia. Under pretext of fair conference and equitable settlement
+of disputed claims, he possessed himself of their persons, and had
+them strangled--two upon December 31, and two upon January 18, 1503.
+Of all Cesare's actions, this was the most splendid for its successful
+combination of sagacity and policy in the hour of peril, of persuasive
+diplomacy, and of ruthless decision when the time to strike his blow
+arrived.
+
+
+CORTONA
+
+
+After leaving La Magione, the road descends upon the lake of
+Thrasymene through oak-woods full of nightingales. The lake lay
+basking, leaden-coloured, smooth and waveless, under a misty,
+rain-charged, sun-irradiated sky. At Passignano, close beside its
+shore, we stopped for mid-day. This is a little fishing village of
+very poor people, who live entirely by labour on the waters. They
+showed us huge eels coiled in tanks, and some fine specimens of the
+silver carp--Reina del Lago. It was off one of the eels that we made
+our lunch; and taken, as he was, alive from his cool lodging, he
+furnished a series of dishes fit for a king.
+
+Climbing the hill of Cortona seemed a quite interminable business. It
+poured a deluge. Our horses were tired, and one lean donkey, who,
+after much trouble, was produced from a farmhouse and yoked in front
+of them, rendered but little assistance.
+
+Next day we duly saw the Muse and Lamp in the Museo, the Fra
+Angelicos, and all the Signorellis. One cannot help thinking that too
+much fuss is made nowadays about works of art--running after them for
+their own sakes, exaggerating their importance, and detaching them as
+objects of study, instead of taking them with sympathy and
+carelessness as pleasant or instructive adjuncts to our actual life.
+Artists, historians of art, and critics are forced to isolate
+pictures; and it is of profit to their souls to do so. But simple
+folk, who have no aesthetic vocation, whether creative or critical,
+suffer more than is good for them by compliance with mere fashion.
+Sooner or later we shall return to the spirit of the ages which
+produced these pictures, and which regarded them with less of an
+industrious bewilderment than they evoke at present.
+
+I am far indeed from wishing to decry art, the study of art, or the
+benefits to be derived from its intelligent enjoyment. I only mean to
+suggest that we go the wrong way to work at present in this matter.
+Picture and sculpture galleries accustom us to the separation of art
+from life. Our methods of studying art, making a beginning of
+art-study while traveling, tend to perpetuate this separation. It is
+only on reflection, after long experience, that we come to perceive
+that the most fruitful moments in our art education have been casual
+and unsought, in quaint nooks and unexpected places, where nature,
+art, and life are happily blent.
+
+The Palace of the Commune at Cortona is interesting because of the
+shields of Florentine governors, sculptured on blocks of grey stone,
+and inserted in its outer walls--Peruzzi, Albizzi, Strozzi, Salviati,
+among the more ancient--de' Medici at a later epoch. The revolutions
+in the Republic of Florence may be read by a herald from these
+coats-of-arms and the dates beneath them.
+
+The landscape of this Tuscan highland satisfies me more and more with
+sense of breadth and beauty. From S. Margherita above the town the
+prospect is immense and wonderful and wild--up into those brown,
+forbidding mountains; down to the vast plain; and over to the cities
+of Chiusi, Montepulciano, and Foiano. The jewel of the view is
+Trasimeno, a silvery shield encased with serried hills, and set upon
+one corner of the scene, like a precious thing apart and meant for
+separate contemplation. There is something in the singularity and
+circumscribed completeness of the mountain-girded lake, diminished by
+distance, which would have attracted Lionardo da Vinci's pencil, had
+he seen it.
+
+Cortona seems desperately poor, and the beggars are intolerable. One
+little blind boy, led by his brother, both frightfully ugly and ragged
+urchins, pursued us all over the city, incessantly whining 'Signore
+Padrone!' It was only on the threshold of the inn that I ventured to
+give them a few coppers, for I knew well that any public beneficence
+would raise the whole swarm of the begging population round us.
+Sitting later in the day upon the piazza of S. Domenico, I saw the
+same blind boy taken by his brother to play. The game consists, in the
+little creature throwing his arms about the trunk of a big tree, and
+running round and round it, clasping it. This seemed to make him quite
+inexpressibly happy. His face lit up and beamed with that inner
+beatitude blind people show--a kind of rapture shining over it, as
+though nothing could be more altogether delightful. This little boy
+had the smallpox at eight months, and has never been able to see
+since. He looks sturdy, and may live to be of any age--doomed always,
+is that possible, to beg?
+
+
+CHIUSI
+
+
+What more enjoyable dinner can be imagined than a flask of excellent
+Montepulciano, a well-cooked steak, and a little goat's cheese in the
+inn of the Leone d'Oro at Chiusi? The windows are open, and the sun is
+setting. Monte Cetona bounds the view to the right, and the wooded
+hills of Citta della Pieve to the left. The deep green dimpled valley
+goes stretching away toward Orvieto; and at its end a purple mountain
+mass, distinct and solitary, which may peradventure be Soracte! The
+near country is broken into undulating hills, forested with fine
+olives and oaks; and the composition of the landscape, with its
+crowning villages, is worthy of a background to an Umbrian picture.
+The breadth and depth and quiet which those painters loved, the space
+of lucid sky, the suggestion of winding waters in verdant fields, all
+are here. The evening is beautiful--golden light streaming softly from
+behind us on this prospect, and gradually mellowing to violet and blue
+with stars above.
+
+At Chiusi we visited several Etruscan tombs, and saw their red and
+black scrawled pictures. One of the sepulchres was a well-jointed
+vault of stone with no wall-paintings. The rest had been scooped out
+of the living tufa. This was the excuse for some pleasant hours spent
+in walking and driving through the country. Chiusi means for me the
+mingling of grey olives and green oaks in limpid sunlight; deep leafy
+lanes; warm sandstone banks; copses with nightingales and cyclamens
+and cuckoos; glimpses of a silvery lake; blue shadowy distances; the
+bristling ridge of Monte Cetona; the conical towers, Becca di Questo
+and Becca di Quello, over against each other on the borders; ways
+winding among hedgerows like some bit of England in June, but not so
+full of flowers. It means all this, I fear, for me far more than
+theories about Lars Porsenna and Etruscan ethnology.
+
+
+GUBBIO
+
+
+Gubbio ranks among the most ancient of Italian hill-towns. With its
+back set firm against the spine of central Apennines, and piled, house
+over house, upon the rising slope, it commands a rich tract of upland
+champaign, bounded southward toward Perugia and Foligno by peaked and
+rolling ridges. This amphitheatre, which forms its source of wealth
+and independence, is admirably protected by a chain of natural
+defences; and Gubbio wears a singularly old-world aspect of antiquity
+and isolation. Houses climb right to the crests of gaunt bare peaks;
+and the brown mediaeval walls with square towers which protected them
+upon the mountain side, following the inequalities of the ground, are
+still a marked feature in the landscape. It is a town of steep streets
+and staircases, with quaintly framed prospects, and solemn vistas
+opening at every turn across the lowland. One of these views might be
+selected for especial notice. In front, irregular buildings losing
+themselves in country as they straggle by the roadside; then the open
+post-road with a cypress to the right; afterwards, the rich green
+fields, and on a bit of rising ground an ancient farmhouse with its
+brown dependencies; lastly, the blue hills above Fossato, and far away
+a wrack of tumbling clouds. All this enclosed by the heavy archway of
+the Porta Romana, where sunlight and shadow chequer the mellow tones
+of a dim fresco, indistinct with age, but beautiful.
+
+Gubbio has not greatly altered since the middle ages. But poor people
+are now living in the palaces of noblemen and merchants. These new
+inhabitants have walled up the fair arched windows and slender portals
+of the ancient dwellers, spoiling the beauty of the streets without
+materially changing the architectural masses. In that witching hour
+when the Italian sunset has faded, and a solemn grey replaces the
+glowing tones of daffodil and rose, it is not difficult, here dreaming
+by oneself alone, to picture the old noble life--the ladies moving
+along those open loggias, the young men in plumed caps and curling
+hair with one foot on those doorsteps, the knights in armour and the
+sumpter mules and red-robed Cardinals defiling through those gates
+into the courts within. The modern bricks and mortar with which that
+picturesque scene has been overlaid, the ugly oblong windows and
+bright green shutters which now interrupt the flowing lines of arch
+and gallery; these disappear beneath the fine remembered touch of a
+sonnet sung by Folgore, when still the Parties had their day, and this
+deserted city was the centre of great aims and throbbing aspirations.
+
+The names of the chief buildings in Gubbio are strongly suggestive of
+the middle ages. They abut upon a Piazza de' Signori. One of them, the
+Palazzo del Municipio, is a shapeless unfinished block of masonry. It
+is here that the Eugubine tables, plates of brass with Umbrian and
+Roman incised characters, are shown. The Palazzo de' Consoli has
+higher architectural qualities, and is indeed unique among Italian
+palaces for the combination of massiveness with lightness in a
+situation of unprecedented boldness. Rising from enormous
+substructures mortised into the solid hillside, it rears its vast
+rectangular bulk to a giddy height above the town; airy loggias
+imposed on great forbidding masses of brown stone, shooting aloft into
+a light aerial tower. The empty halls inside are of fair proportions
+and a noble size, and the views from the open colonnades in all
+directions fascinate. But the final impression made by the building is
+one of square, tranquil, massive strength--perpetuity embodied in
+masonry--force suggesting facility by daring and successful addition
+of elegance to hugeness. Vast as it is, this pile is not forbidding,
+as a similarly weighty structure in the North would be. The fine
+quality of the stone and the delicate though simple mouldings of the
+windows give it an Italian grace.
+
+These public palaces belong to the age of the Communes, when Gubbio
+was a free town, with a policy of its own, and an important part to
+play in the internecine struggles of Pope and Empire, Guelf and
+Ghibelline. The ruined, deserted, degraded Palazzo Ducale reminds us
+of the advent of the despots. It has been stripped of all its
+tarsia-work and sculpture. Only here and there a Fe.D., with the
+cupping-glass of Federigo di Montefeltro, remains to show that Gubbio
+once became the fairest fief of the Urbino duchy. S. Ubaldo, who gave
+his name to this duke's son, was the patron of Gubbio, and to him the
+cathedral is dedicated--one low enormous vault, like a cellar or
+feudal banqueting hall, roofed with a succession of solid Gothic
+arches. This strange old church, and the House of Canons, buttressed
+on the hill beside it, have suffered less from modernisation than most
+buildings in Gubbio. The latter, in particular, helps one to
+understand what this city of grave palazzi must have been, and how the
+mere opening of old doors and windows would restore it to its
+primitive appearance. The House of the Canons has, in fact, not yet
+been given over to the use of middle-class and proletariate.
+
+At the end of a day in Gubbio, it is pleasant to take our ease in the
+primitive hostelry, at the back of which foams a mountain-torrent,
+rushing downward from the Apennines. The Gubbio wine is very fragrant,
+and of a rich ruby colour. Those to whom the tints of wine and jewels
+give a pleasure not entirely childish, will take delight in its
+specific blending of tawny hues with rose. They serve the table still,
+at Gubbio, after the antique Italian fashion, covering it with a
+cream-coloured linen cloth bordered with coarse lace--the creases of
+the press, the scent of old herbs from the wardrobe, are still upon
+it--and the board is set with shallow dishes of warm, white
+earthenware, basket-worked in open lattice at the edge, which contain
+little separate messes of meat, vegetables, cheese, and comfits. The
+wine stands in strange, slender phials of smooth glass, with stoppers;
+and the amber-coloured bread lies in fair round loaves upon the cloth.
+Dining thus is like sitting down to the supper at Emmaus, in some
+picture of Gian Bellini or of Masolino. The very bareness of the
+room--its open rafters, plastered walls, primitive settees, and
+red-brick floor, on which a dog sits waiting for a bone--enhances the
+impression of artistic delicacy in the table.
+
+
+FROM GUBBIO TO FANO
+
+
+The road from Gubbio, immediately after leaving the city, enters a
+narrow Alpine ravine, where a thin stream dashes over dark, red rocks,
+and pendent saxifrages wave to the winds. The carriage in which we
+travelled at the end of May, one morning, had two horses, which our
+driver soon supplemented with a couple of white oxen. Slowly and
+toilsomely we ascended between the flanks of barren hills--gaunt
+masses of crimson and grey crag, clothed at their summits with short
+turf and scanty pasture. The pass leads first to the little town of
+Scheggia, and is called the Monte Calvo, or bald mountain. At
+Scheggia, it joins the great Flaminian Way, or North road of the Roman
+armies. At the top there is a fine view over the conical hills that
+dominate Gubbio, and, far away, to noble mountains above the Furlo and
+the Foligno line of railway to Ancona. Range rises over range,
+crossing at unexpected angles, breaking into sudden precipices, and
+stretching out long, exquisitely modelled outlines, as only Apennines
+can do, in silvery sobriety of colours toned by clearest air. Every
+square piece of this austere, wild landscape forms a varied picture,
+whereof the composition is due to subtle arrangements of lines always
+delicate; and these lines seem somehow to have been determined in
+their beauty by the vast antiquity of the mountain system, as though
+they all had taken time to choose their place and wear down into
+harmony. The effect of tempered sadness was heightened for us by
+stormy lights and dun clouds, high in air, rolling vapours and flying
+shadows, over all the prospect, tinted in ethereal grisaille.
+
+After Scheggia, one enters a land of meadow and oak-trees. This is the
+sacred central tract of Jupiter Apenninus, whose fane--
+
+        Delubra Jovis saxoque minantes
+  Apenninigenis cultae pastoribus arae
+
+--once rose behind us on the bald Iguvian summits. A second little
+pass leads from this region to the Adriatic side of the Italian
+watershed, and the road now follows the Barano downward toward the
+sea. The valley is fairly green with woods, where mistletoe may here
+and there be seen on boughs of oak, and rich with cornfields. Cagli is
+the chief town of the district, and here they show one of the best
+pictures left to us by Raphael's father, Giovanni Santi. It is a
+Madonna, attended by S. Peter, S. Francis, S. Dominic, S. John, and
+two angels. One of the angels is traditionally supposed to have been
+painted from the boy Raphael, and the face has something which reminds
+us of his portraits. The whole composition, excellent in modelling,
+harmonious in grouping, soberly but strongly coloured, with a peculiar
+blending of dignity and sweetness, grace and vigour, makes one wonder
+why Santi thought it necessary to send his son from his own workshop
+to study under Perugino. He was himself a master of his art, and this,
+perhaps the most agreeable of his paintings, has a masculine sincerity
+which is absent from at least the later works of Perugino.
+
+Some miles beyond Cagli, the real pass of the Furlo begins. It owes
+its name to a narrow tunnel bored by Vespasian in the solid rock,
+where limestone crags descend on the Barano. The Romans called this
+gallery Petra Pertusa, or Intercisa, or more familiarly Forulus,
+whence comes the modern name. Indeed, the stations on the old
+Flaminian Way are still well marked by Latin designations; for Cagli
+is the ancient Calles, and Fossombrone is Forum Sempronii, and Fano
+the Fanum Fortunae. Vespasian commemorated this early achievement in
+engineering by an inscription carved on the living stone, which still
+remains; and Claudian, when he sang the journey of his Emperor
+Honorius from Rimini to Rome, speaks thus of what was even then an
+object of astonishment to travellers:--
+
+  Laetior hinc fano recipit fortuna vetusto,
+  Despiciturque vagus praerupta valle Metaurus,
+  Qua mons arte patens vivo se perforat arcu
+  Admittitque viam sectae per viscera rupis.
+
+The Forulus itself may now be matched, on any Alpine pass, by several
+tunnels of far mightier dimensions; for it is narrow, and does not
+extend more than 126 feet in length. But it occupies a fine position
+at the end of a really imposing ravine. The whole Furlo Pass might,
+without too much exaggeration, be described as a kind of Cheddar on
+the scale of the Via Mala. The limestone rocks, which rise on either
+hand above the gorge to an enormous height, are noble in form and
+solemn, like a succession of gigantic portals, with stupendous
+flanking obelisks and pyramids. Some of these crag-masses rival the
+fantastic cliffs of Capri, and all consist of that southern mountain
+limestone which changes from pale yellow to blue grey and dusky
+orange. A river roars precipitately through the pass, and the
+roadsides wave with many sorts of campanulas--a profusion of azure and
+purple bells upon the hard white stone. Of Roman remains there is
+still enough (in the way of Roman bridges and bits of broken masonry)
+to please an antiquary's eye. But the lover of nature will dwell
+chiefly on the picturesque qualities of this historic gorge, so alien
+to the general character of Italian scenery, and yet so remote from
+anything to which Swiss travelling accustoms one.
+
+The Furlo breaks out into a richer land of mighty oaks and waving
+cornfields, a fat pastoral country, not unlike Devonshire in detail,
+with green uplands, and wild-rose tangled hedgerows, and much running
+water, and abundance of summer flowers. At a point above Fossombrone,
+the Barano joins the Metauro, and here one has a glimpse of faraway
+Urbino, high upon its mountain eyrie. It is so rare, in spite of
+immemorial belief, to find in Italy a wilderness of wild flowers, that
+I feel inclined to make a list of those I saw from our carriage
+windows as we rolled down lazily along the road to Fossombrone. Broom,
+and cytisus, and hawthorn mingled with roses, gladiolus, and sainfoin.
+There were orchises, and clematis, and privet, and wild-vine, vetches
+of all hues, red poppies, sky-blue cornflowers, and lilac pimpernel.
+In the rougher hedges, dogwood, honeysuckle, pyracanth, and acacia
+made a network of white bloom and blushes. Milk-worts of all bright
+and tender tints combined with borage, iris, hawkweeds, harebells,
+crimson clover, thyme, red snap-dragon, golden asters, and dreamy
+love-in-a-mist, to weave a marvellous carpet such as the looms of
+Shiraz or of Cashmere never spread. Rarely have I gazed on Flora in
+such riot, such luxuriance, such self-abandonment to joy. The air was
+filled with fragrances. Songs of cuckoos and nightingales echoed from
+the copses on the hillsides. The sun was out, and dancing over all the
+landscape.
+
+After all this, Fano was very restful in the quiet sunset. It has a
+sandy stretch of shore, on which the long, green-yellow rollers of the
+Adriatic broke into creamy foam, beneath the waning saffron light over
+Pesaro and the rosy rising of a full moon. This Adriatic sea carries
+an English mind home to many a little watering-place upon our coast.
+In colour and the shape of waves it resembles our Channel.
+
+The sea-shore is Fano's great attraction; but the town has many
+churches, and some creditable pictures, as well as Roman antiquities.
+Giovanni Santi may here be seen almost as well as at Cagli; and of
+Perugino there is one truly magnificent altar-piece--lunette, great
+centre panel, and predella--dusty in its present condition, but
+splendidly painted, and happily not yet restored or cleaned. It is
+worth journeying to Fano to see this. Still better would the journey
+be worth the traveller's while if he could be sure to witness such a
+game of _Pallone_ as we chanced upon in the Via dell' Arco di
+Augusto--lads and grown-men, tightly girt, in shirt sleeves, driving
+the great ball aloft into the air with cunning bias and calculation of
+projecting house-eaves. I do not understand the game; but it was
+clearly played something after the manner of our football, that is to
+say; with sides, and front and back players so arranged as to cover
+the greatest number of angles of incidence on either wall.
+
+Fano still remembers that it is the Fane of Fortune. On the fountain
+in the market-place stands a bronze Fortuna, slim and airy, offering
+her veil to catch the wind. May she long shower health and prosperity
+upon the modern watering-place of which she is the patron saint!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+_THE PALACE OF URBINO_
+
+
+I
+
+At Rimini, one spring, the impulse came upon my wife and me to make
+our way across San Marino to Urbino. In the Piazza, called
+apocryphally after Julius Caesar, I found a proper _vetturino_, with a
+good carriage and two indefatigable horses. He was a splendid fellow,
+and bore a great historic name, as I discovered when our bargain was
+completed. 'What are you called?' I asked him. '_Filippo Visconti, per
+servirla!_' was the prompt reply. Brimming over with the darkest
+memories of the Italian Renaissance, I hesitated when I heard this
+answer. The associations seemed too ominous. And yet the man himself
+was so attractive--tall, stalwart, and well looking--no feature of his
+face or limb of his athletic form recalling the gross tyrant who
+concealed worse than Caligula's ugliness from sight in secret
+chambers--that I shook this preconception from my mind. As it turned
+out, Filippo Visconti had nothing in common with his infamous namesake
+but the name. On a long and trying journey, he showed neither sullen
+nor yet ferocious tempers; nor, at the end of it, did he attempt by
+any master-stroke of craft to wheedle from me more than his fair pay;
+but took the meerschaum pipe I gave him for a keepsake, with the frank
+goodwill of an accomplished gentleman. The only exhibition of his hot
+Italian blood which I remember did his humanity credit.
+
+While we were ascending a steep hillside, he jumped from his box to
+thrash a ruffian by the roadside for brutal treatment to a little boy.
+He broke his whip, it is true, in this encounter; risked a dangerous
+quarrel; and left his carriage, with myself and wife inside it, to the
+mercy of his horses in a somewhat perilous position. But when he came
+back, hot and glowing, from this deed of justice, I could only applaud
+his zeal.
+
+An Italian of this type, handsome as an antique statue, with the
+refinement of a modern gentleman and that intelligence which is innate
+in a race of immemorial culture, is a fascinating being. He may be
+absolutely ignorant in all book-learning. He may be as ignorant as a
+Bersagliere from Montalcino with whom I once conversed at Rimini, who
+gravely said that he could walk in three months to North America, and
+thought of doing it when his term of service was accomplished. But he
+will display, as this young soldier did, a grace and ease of address
+which are rare in London drawing-rooms; and by his shrewd remarks upon
+the cities he has visited, will show that he possesses a fine natural
+taste for things of beauty. The speech of such men, drawn from the
+common stock of the Italian people, is seasoned with proverbial
+sayings, the wisdom of centuries condensed in a few nervous words.
+When emotion fires their brain, they break into spontaneous eloquence,
+or suggest the motive of a poem by phrases pregnant with imagery.
+
+For the first stage of the journey out of Rimini, Filippo's two horses
+sufficed. The road led almost straight across the level between
+quickset hedges in white bloom. But when we reached the long steep
+hill which ascends to San Marino, the inevitable oxen were called out,
+and we toiled upwards leisurely through cornfields bright with red
+anemones and sweet narcissus. At this point pomegranate hedges
+replaced the May-thorns of the plain. In course of time our _bovi_
+brought us to the Borgo, or lower town, whence there is a further
+ascent of seven hundred feet to the topmost hawk's-nest or acropolis
+of the republic. These we climbed on foot, watching the view expand
+around us and beneath. Crags of limestone here break down abruptly to
+the rolling hills, which go to lose themselves in field and shore.
+Misty reaches of the Adriatic close the world to eastward. Cesena,
+Rimini, Verucchio, and countless hill-set villages, each isolated on
+its tract of verdure conquered from the stern grey soil, define the
+points where Montefeltri wrestled with Malatestas in long bygone
+years. Around are marly mountain-flanks in wrinkles and gnarled
+convolutions like some giant's brain, furrowed by rivers crawling
+through dry wasteful beds of shingle. Interminable ranges of gaunt
+Apennines stretch, tier by tier, beyond; and over all this landscape,
+a grey-green mist of rising crops and new-fledged oak-trees lies like
+a veil upon the nakedness of Nature's ruins.
+
+Nothing in Europe conveys a more striking sense of geological
+antiquity than such a prospect. The denudation and abrasion of
+innumerable ages, wrought by slow persistent action of weather and
+water on an upheaved mountain mass, are here made visible. Every wave
+in that vast sea of hills, every furrow in their worn flanks, tells
+its tale of a continuous corrosion still in progress. The dominant
+impression is one of melancholy. We forget how Romans, countermarching
+Carthaginians, trod the land beneath us. The marvel of San Marino,
+retaining independence through the drums and tramplings of the last
+seven centuries, is swallowed in a deeper sense of wonder. We turn
+instinctively in thought to Leopardi's musings on man's destiny at war
+with unknown nature-forces and malignant rulers of the universe.
+
+
+              Omai disprezza
+  Te, la natura, il brutto
+  Poter che, ascoso, a comun danno impera,
+  E l' infinita vanita del tutto.
+
+And then, straining our eyes southward, we sweep the dim blue distance
+for Recanati, and remember that the poet of modern despair and
+discouragement was reared in even such a scene as this.
+
+The town of San Marino is grey, narrow-streeted, simple; with a great,
+new, decent, Greek-porticoed cathedral, dedicated to the eponymous
+saint. A certain austerity defines it from more picturesque
+hill-cities with a less uniform history. There is a marble statue of
+S. Marino in the choir of his church; and in his cell is shown the
+stone bed and pillow on which he took austere repose. One narrow
+window near the saint's abode commands a proud but melancholy
+landscape of distant hills and seaboard. To this, the great absorbing
+charm of San Marino, our eyes instinctively, recurrently, take
+flight. It is a landscape which by variety and beauty thralls
+attention, but which by its interminable sameness might grow almost
+overpowering. There is no relief. The gladness shed upon far humbler
+Northern lands in May is ever absent here. The German word
+_Gemuethlichkeit_, the English phrase 'a home of ancient peace,' are
+here alike by art and nature untranslated into visibilities. And yet
+(as we who gaze upon it thus are fain to think) if peradventure the
+intolerable _ennui_ of this panorama should drive a citizen of San
+Marino into out-lands, the same view would haunt him whithersoever he
+went--the swallows of his native eyrie would shrill through his
+sleep--he would yearn to breathe its fine keen air in winter, and to
+watch its iris-hedges deck themselves with blue in spring;--like
+Virgil's hero, dying, he would think of San Marino: _Aspicit, et
+dulces moriens reminiscitur Argos_. Even a passing stranger may feel
+the mingled fascination and oppression of this prospect--the monotony
+which maddens, the charm which at a distance grows upon the mind,
+environing it with memories.
+
+Descending to the Borgo, we found that Filippo Visconti had ordered a
+luncheon of excellent white bread, pigeons, and omelette, with the
+best red muscat wine I ever drank, unless the sharp air of the hills
+deceived my appetite. An Italian history of San Marino, including its
+statutes, in three volumes, furnished intellectual food. But I confess
+to having learned from these pages little else than this: first, that
+the survival of the Commonwealth through all phases of European
+politics had been semi-miraculous; secondly, that the most eminent San
+Marinesi had been lawyers. It is possible on a hasty deduction from
+these two propositions (to which, however, I am far from wishing to
+commit myself), that the latter is a sufficient explanation of the
+former.
+
+From San Marino the road plunges at a break-neck pace. We are now in
+the true Feltrian highlands, whence the Counts of Montefeltro issued
+in the twelfth century. Yonder eyrie is San Leo, which formed the key
+of entrance to the duchy of Urbino in campaigns fought many hundred
+years ago. Perched on the crest of a precipitous rock, this fortress
+looks as though it might defy all enemies but famine. And yet San Leo
+was taken and re-taken by strategy and fraud, when Montefeltro,
+Borgia, Malatesta, Rovere, contended for dominion in these valleys.
+Yonder is Sta. Agata, the village to which Guidobaldo fled by night
+when Valentino drove him from his dukedom. A little farther towers
+Carpegna, where one branch of the Montefeltro house maintained a
+countship through seven centuries, and only sold their fief to Rome in
+1815. Monte Coppiolo lies behind, Pietra Rubia in front: two other
+eagles' nests of the same brood. What a road it is!
+
+It beats the tracks on Exmoor. The uphill and downhill of Devonshire
+scorns compromise or mitigation by _detour_ and zigzag. But here
+geography is on a scale so far more vast, and the roadway is so far
+worse metalled than with us in England--knotty masses of talc and
+nodes of sandstone cropping up at dangerous turnings--that only
+Dante's words describe the journey:--
+
+  Vassi in Sanleo, e discendesi in Noli,
+  Montasi su Bismantova in cacume
+  Con esso i pie; ma qui convien ch' uom voli.
+
+Of a truth, our horses seemed rather to fly than scramble up and down
+these rugged precipices; Visconti cheerily animating them with the
+brave spirit that was in him, and lending them his wary driver's help
+of hand and voice at need.
+
+We were soon upon a cornice-road between the mountains and the
+Adriatic: following the curves of gulch and cleft ravine; winding
+round ruined castles set on points of vantage; the sea-line high
+above their grass-grown battlements, the shadow-dappled champaign
+girdling their bastions mortised on the naked rock. Except for the
+blue lights across the distance, and the ever-present sea, these
+earthy Apennines would be too grim. Infinite air and this spare veil
+of spring-tide greenery on field and forest soothe their sternness.
+Two rivers, swollen by late rains, had to be forded. Through one of
+these, the Foglia, bare-legged peasants led the way. The horses waded
+to their bellies in the tawny water. Then more hills and vales; green
+nooks with rippling corn-crops; secular oaks attired in golden
+leafage. The clear afternoon air rang with the voices of a thousand
+larks overhead. The whole world seemed quivering with light and
+delicate ethereal sound. And yet my mind turned irresistibly to
+thoughts of war, violence, and pillage. How often has this
+intermediate land been fought over by Montefeltro and Brancaleoni, by
+Borgia and Malatesta, by Medici and Della Rovere! Its _contadini_ are
+robust men, almost statuesque in build, and beautiful of feature. No
+wonder that the Princes of Urbino, with such materials to draw from,
+sold their service and their troops to Florence, Rome, S. Mark, and
+Milan. The bearing of these peasants is still soldierly and proud. Yet
+they are not sullen or forbidding like the Sicilians, whose habits of
+life, for the rest, much resemble theirs. The villages, there as here,
+are few and far between, perched high on rocks, from which the folk
+descend to till the ground and reap the harvest. But the southern
+_brusquerie_ and brutality are absent from this district. The men have
+something of the dignity and slow-eyed mildness of their own huge
+oxen. As evening fell, more solemn Apennines upreared themselves to
+southward. The Monte d'Asdrubale, Monte Nerone, and Monte Catria hove
+into sight. At last, when light was dim, a tower rose above the
+neighbouring ridge, a broken outline of some city barred the sky-line.
+Urbino stood before us. Our long day's march was at an end.
+
+The sunset was almost spent, and a four days' moon hung above the
+western Apennines, when we took our first view of the palace. It is a
+fancy-thralling work of wonder seen in that dim twilight; like some
+castle reared by Atlante's magic for imprisonment of Ruggiero, or
+palace sought in fairyland by Astolf winding his enchanted horn. Where
+shall we find its like, combining, as it does, the buttressed
+battlemented bulk of mediaeval strongholds with the airy balconies,
+suspended gardens, and fantastic turrets of Italian pleasure-houses?
+This unique blending of the feudal past with the Renaissance spirit of
+the time when it was built, connects it with the art of Ariosto--or
+more exactly with Boiardo's epic. Duke Federigo planned his palace at
+Urbino just at the moment when the Count of Scandiano had began to
+chaunt his lays of Roland in the Castle of Ferrara. Chivalry,
+transmuted by the Italian genius into something fanciful and quaint,
+survived as a frail work of art. The men-at-arms of the Condottieri
+still glittered in gilded hauberks. Their helmets waved with plumes
+and bizarre crests. Their surcoats blazed with heraldries; their
+velvet caps with medals bearing legendary emblems. The pomp and
+circumstance of feudal war had not yet yielded to the cannon of the
+Gascon or the Switzer's pike. The fatal age of foreign invasions had
+not begun for Italy. Within a few years Charles VIII.'s holiday
+excursion would reveal the internal rottenness and weakness of her
+rival states, and the peninsula for half a century to come would be
+drenched in the blood of Frenchmen, Germans, Spaniards, fighting for
+her cities as their prey. But now Lorenzo de' Medici was still alive.
+The famous policy which bears his name held Italy suspended for a
+golden time in false tranquillity and independence. The princes who
+shared his culture and his love of art were gradually passing into
+modern noblemen, abandoning the savage feuds and passions of more
+virile centuries, yielding to luxury and scholarly enjoyments. The
+castles were becoming courts, and despotisms won by force were
+settling into dynasties.
+
+It was just at this epoch that Duke Federigo built his castle at
+Urbino. One of the ablest and wealthiest Condottieri of his time, one
+of the best instructed and humanest of Italian princes, he combined in
+himself the qualities which mark that period of transition. And these
+he impressed upon his dwelling-house, which looks backward to the
+mediaeval fortalice and forward to the modern palace. This makes it the
+just embodiment in architecture of Italian romance, the perfect
+analogue of the 'Orlando Innamorato.' By comparing it with the castle
+of the Estes at Ferrara and the Palazzo del Te of the Gonzagas at
+Mantua, we place it in its right position between mediaeval and
+Renaissance Italy, between the age when principalities arose upon the
+ruins of commercial independence and the age when they became dynastic
+under Spain.
+
+The exigencies of the ground at his disposal forced Federigo to give
+the building an irregular outline. The fine facade, with its embayed
+_loggie_ and flanking turrets, is placed too close upon the city
+ramparts for its due effect. We are obliged to cross the deep ravine
+which separates it from a lower quarter of the town, and take our
+station near the Oratory of S. Giovanni Battista, before we can
+appreciate the beauty of its design, or the boldness of the group it
+forms with the cathedral dome and tower and the square masses of
+numerous out-buildings. Yet this peculiar position of the palace,
+though baffling to a close observer of its details, is one of singular
+advantage to the inhabitants. Set on the verge of Urbino's towering
+eminence, it fronts a wave-tossed sea of vales and mountain summits
+toward the rising and the setting sun. There is nothing but
+illimitable air between the terraces and loggias of the Duchess's
+apartments and the spreading pyramid of Monte Catria.
+
+A nobler scene is nowhere swept from palace windows than this, which
+Castiglione touched in a memorable passage at the end of his
+'Cortegiano.' To one who in our day visits Urbino, it is singular how
+the slight indications of this sketch, as in some silhouette, bring
+back the antique life, and link the present with the past--a hint,
+perhaps, for reticence in our descriptions. The gentlemen and ladies
+of the court had spent a summer night in long debate on love, rising
+to the height of mystical Platonic rapture on the lips of Bembo, when
+one of them exclaimed, 'The day has broken!' 'He pointed to the light
+which was beginning to enter by the fissures of the windows. Whereupon
+we flung the casements wide upon that side of the palace which looks
+toward the high peak of Monte Catria, and saw that a fair dawn of rosy
+hue was born already in the eastern skies, and all the stars had
+vanished except the sweet regent of the heaven of Venus, who holds the
+borderlands of day and night; and from her sphere it seemed as though
+a gentle wind were breathing, filling the air with eager freshness,
+and waking among the numerous woods upon the neighbouring hills the
+sweet-toned symphonies of joyous birds.'
+
+
+II
+
+The House of Montefeltro rose into importance early in the twelfth
+century. Frederick Barbarossa erected their fief into a county in
+1160. Supported by imperial favour, they began to exercise an
+undefined authority over the district, which they afterwards converted
+into a duchy. But, though Ghibelline for several generations, the
+Montefeltri were too near neighbours of the Papal power to free
+themselves from ecclesiastical vassalage. Therefore in 1216 they
+sought and obtained the title of Vicars of the Church. Urbino
+acknowledged them as semi-despots in their double capacity of Imperial
+and Papal deputies. Cagli and Gubbio followed in the fourteenth
+century. In the fifteenth, Castel Durante was acquired from the
+Brancaleoni by warfare, and Fossombrone from the Malatestas by
+purchase. Numerous fiefs and villages fell into their hands upon the
+borders of Rimini in the course of a continued struggle with the House
+of Malatesta: and when Fano and Pesaro were added at the opening of
+the sixteenth century, the domain over which they ruled was a compact
+territory, some forty miles square, between the Adriatic and the
+Apennines. From the close of the thirteenth century they bore the
+title of Counts of Urbino. The famous Conte Guido, whom Dante placed
+among the fraudulent in hell, supported the honours of the house and
+increased its power by his political action, at this epoch. But it was
+not until the year 1443 that the Montefeltri acquired their ducal
+title. This was conferred by Eugenius IV. upon Oddantonio, over whose
+alleged crimes and indubitable assassination a veil of mystery still
+hangs. He was the son of Count Guidantonio, and at his death the
+Montefeltri of Urbino were extinct in the legitimate line. A natural
+son of Guidantonio had been, however, recognised in his father's
+lifetime, and married to Gentile, heiress of Mercatello. This was
+Federigo, a youth of great promise, who succeeded his half-brother in
+1444 as Count of Urbino. It was not until 1474 that the ducal title
+was revived for him.
+
+Duke Frederick was a prince remarkable among Italian despots for
+private virtues and sober use of his hereditary power. He spent his
+youth at Mantua, in that famous school of Vittorino da Feltre, where
+the sons and daughters of the first Italian nobility received a model
+education in humanities, good manners, and gentle physical
+accomplishments. More than any of his fellow-students Frederick
+profited by this rare scholar's discipline. On leaving school he
+adopted the profession of arms, as it was then practised, and joined
+the troop of the Condottiere Niccolo Piccinino. Young men of his own
+rank, especially the younger sons and bastards of ruling families,
+sought military service under captains of adventure. If they
+succeeded they were sure to make money. The coffers of the Church and
+the republics lay open to their not too scrupulous hands; the wealth
+of Milan and Naples was squandered on them in retaining-fees and
+salaries for active service. There was always the further possibility
+of placing a coronet upon their brows before they died, if haply they
+should wrest a town from their employers, or obtain the cession of a
+province from a needy Pope. The neighbours of the Montefeltri in
+Umbria, Romagna, and the Marches of Ancona were all of them
+Condottieri. Malatestas of Rimini and Pesaro, Vitelli of Citta di
+Castello, Varani of Camerino, Baglioni of Perugia, to mention only a
+few of the most eminent nobles, enrolled themselves under the banners
+of plebeian adventurers like Piccinino and Sforza Attendolo. Though
+their family connections gave them a certain advantage, the system was
+essentially democratic. Gattamelata and Carmagnola sprang from
+obscurity by personal address and courage to the command of armies.
+Colleoni fought his way up from the grooms to princely station and the
+_baton_ of S. Mark. Francesco Sforza, whose father had begun life as a
+tiller of the soil, seized the ducal crown of Milan, and founded a
+house which ranked among the first in Europe.
+
+It is not needful to follow Duke Frederick in his military career. We
+may briefly remark that when he succeeded to Urbino by his brother's
+death in 1444, he undertook generalship on a grand scale. His own
+dominions supplied him with some of the best troops in Italy. He was
+careful to secure the goodwill of his subjects by attending personally
+to their interests, relieving them of imposts, and executing equal
+justice. He gained the then unique reputation of an honest prince,
+paternally disposed toward his dependents. Men flocked to his
+standards willingly, and he was able to bring an important contingent
+into any army. These advantages secured for him alliances with
+Francesco Sforza, and brought him successively into connection with
+Milan, Venice, Florence, the Church of Naples. As a tactician in the
+field he held high rank among the generals of the age, and so
+considerable were his engagements that he acquired great wealth in the
+exercise of his profession. We find him at one time receiving 8000
+ducats a month as war-pay from Naples, with a peace pension of 6000.
+While Captain-General of the League, he drew for his own use in war
+45,000 ducats of annual pay. Retaining-fees and pensions in the name
+of past services swelled his income, the exact extent of which has
+not, so far as I am aware, been estimated, but which must have made
+him one of the richest of Italian princes. All this wealth he spent
+upon his duchy, fortifying and beautifying its cities, drawing youths
+of promise to his court, maintaining a great train of life, and
+keeping his vassals in good-humour by the lightness of a rule which
+contrasted favourably with the exactions of needier despots.
+
+While fighting for the masters who offered him _condotta_ in the
+complicated wars of Italy, Duke Frederick used his arms, when occasion
+served, in his own quarrels. Many years of his life were spent in a
+prolonged struggle with his neighbour Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta,
+the bizarre and brilliant tyrant of Rimini, who committed the fatal
+error of embroiling himself beyond all hope of pardon with the Church,
+and who died discomfited in the duel with his warier antagonist.
+Urbino profited by each mistake of Sigismondo, and the history of this
+long desultory strife with Rimini is a history of gradual
+aggrandisement and consolidation for the Montefeltrian duchy.
+
+In 1459 Duke Frederick married his second wife, Battista, daughter of
+Alessandro Sforza, Lord of Pesaro. Their portraits, painted by Piero
+della Francesca, are to be seen in the Uffizzi at Florence. Some years
+earlier, Frederick lost his right eye and had the bridge of his nose
+broken in a jousting match outside the town-gate of Urbino. After this
+accident, he preferred to be represented in profile--the profile so
+well known to students of Italian art on medals and basreliefs. It was
+not without medical aid and vows fulfilled by a mother's
+self-sacrifice to death, if we may trust the diarists of Urbino, that
+the ducal couple got an heir. In 1472, however, a son was born to
+them, whom they christened Guido Paolo Ubaldo. He proved a youth of
+excellent parts and noble nature--apt at study, perfect in all
+chivalrous accomplishments. But he inherited some fatal physical
+debility, and his life was marred with a constitutional disease, which
+then received the name of gout, and which deprived him of the free use
+of his limbs. After his father's death in 1482, Naples, Florence, and
+Milan continued Frederick's war engagements to Guidobaldo. The prince
+was but a boy of ten. Therefore these important _condotte_ must be
+regarded as compliments and pledges for the future. They prove to what
+a pitch Duke Frederick had raised the credit of his state and war
+establishment. Seven years later, Guidobaldo married Elisabetta,
+daughter of Francesco Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua. This union, though a
+happy one, was never blessed with children; and in the certainty of
+barrenness, the young Duke thought it prudent to adopt a nephew as
+heir to his dominions. He had several sisters, one of whom, Giovanna,
+had been married to a nephew of Sixtus IV., Giovanni della Rovere,
+Lord of Sinigaglia and Prefect of Rome. They had a son, Francesco
+Maria, who, after his adoption by Guidobaldo, spent his boyhood at
+Urbino.
+
+The last years of the fifteenth century were marked by the sudden rise
+of Cesare Borgia to a power which threatened the liberties of Italy.
+Acting as General for the Church, he carried his arms against the
+petty tyrants of Romagna, whom he dispossessed and extirpated. His
+next move was upon Camerino and Urbino. He first acquired Camerino,
+having lulled Guidobaldo into false security by treacherous
+professions of goodwill. Suddenly the Duke received intelligence that
+the Borgia was marching on him over Cagli. This was in the middle of
+June 1502. It is difficult to comprehend the state of weakness in
+which Guidobaldo was surprised, or the panic which then seized him. He
+made no efforts to rouse his subjects to resistance, but fled by night
+with his nephew through rough mountain roads, leaving his capital and
+palace to the marauder. Cesare Borgia took possession without striking
+a blow, and removed the treasures of Urbino to the Vatican. His
+occupation of the duchy was not undisturbed, however; for the people
+rose in several places against him, proving that Guidobaldo had
+yielded too hastily to alarm. By this time the fugitive was safe in
+Mantua, whence he returned, and for a short time succeeded in
+establishing himself again at Urbino. But he could not hold his own
+against the Borgias, and in December, by a treaty, he resigned his
+claims and retired to Venice, where he lived upon the bounty of S.
+Mark. It must be said, in justice to the Duke, that his constitutional
+debility rendered him unfit for active operations in the field.
+Perhaps he could not have done better than thus to bend beneath the
+storm.
+
+The sudden death of Alexander VI. and the election of a Della Rovere
+to the Papacy in 1503 changed Guidobaldo's prospects. Julius II. was
+the sworn foe of the Borgias and the close kinsman of Urbino's heir.
+It was therefore easy for the Duke to walk into his empty palace on
+the hill, and to reinstate himself in the domains from which he had so
+recently been ousted. The rest of his life was spent in the retirement
+of his court, surrounded with the finest scholars and the noblest
+gentlemen of Italy. The ill-health which debarred him from the active
+pleasures and employments of his station, was borne with uniform
+sweetness of temper and philosophy.
+
+When he died, in 1508, his nephew, Francesco Maria della Rovere,
+succeeded to the duchy, and once more made the palace of Urbino the
+resort of men-at-arms and captains. He was a prince of very violent
+temper: of its extravagance history has recorded three remarkable
+examples. He murdered the Cardinal of Pavia with his own hand in the
+streets of Ravenna; stabbed a lover of his sister to death at Urbino;
+and in a council of war knocked Francesco Guicciardini down with a
+blow of his fist. When the history of Italy came to be written,
+Guicciardini was probably mindful of that insult, for he painted
+Francesco Maria's character and conduct in dark colours. At the same
+time this Duke of Urbino passed for one of the first generals of the
+age. The greatest stain upon his memory is his behaviour in the year
+1527, when, by dilatory conduct of the campaign in Lombardy, he
+suffered the passage of Frundsberg's army unopposed, and afterwards
+hesitated to relieve Rome from the horrors of the sack. He was the
+last Italian Condottiere of the antique type; and the vices which
+Machiavelli exposed in that bad system of mercenary warfare were
+illustrated on these occasions. During his lifetime, the conditions of
+Italy were so changed by Charles V.'s imperial settlement in 1530,
+that the occupation of Condottiere ceased to have any meaning. Strozzi
+and Farnesi, who afterwards followed this profession, enlisted in the
+ranks of France or Spain, and won their laurels in Northern Europe.
+
+While Leo X. held the Papal chair, the duchy of Urbino was for a while
+wrested from the house of Della Rovere, and conferred upon Lorenzo de'
+Medici. Francesco Maria made a better fight for his heritage than
+Guidobaldo had done. Yet he could not successfully resist the power of
+Rome. The Pope was ready to spend enormous sums of money on this petty
+war; the Duke's purse was shorter, and the mercenary troops he was
+obliged to use, proved worthless in the field. Spaniards, for the
+most part, pitted against Spaniards, they suffered the campaigns to
+degenerate into a guerilla warfare of pillage and reprisals. In 1517
+the duchy was formally ceded to Lorenzo. But this Medici did not live
+long to enjoy it, and his only child Catherine, the future Queen of
+France, never exercised the rights which had devolved upon her by
+inheritance. The shifting scene of Italy beheld Francesco Maria
+reinstated in Urbino after Leo's death in 1522.
+
+This Duke married Leonora Gonzaga, a princess of the House of Mantua.
+Their portraits, painted by Titian, adorn the Venetian room of the
+Uffizzi. Of their son, Guidobaldo II., little need be said. He was
+twice married, first to Giulia Varano, Duchess by inheritance of
+Camerino; secondly, to Vittoria Farnese, daughter of the Duke of
+Parma. Guidobaldo spent a lifetime in petty quarrels with his
+subjects, whom he treated badly, attempting to draw from their pockets
+the wealth which his father and the Montefeltri had won in military
+service. He intervened at an awkward period of Italian politics. The
+old Italy of despots, commonwealths, and Condottieri, in which his
+predecessors played substantial parts, was at an end. The new Italy of
+Popes and Austro-Spanish dynasties had hardly settled into shape.
+Between these epochs, Guidobaldo II., of whom we have a dim and hazy
+presentation on the page of history, seems somehow to have fallen
+flat. As a sign of altered circumstances, he removed his court to
+Pesaro, and built the great palace of the Della Roveres upon the
+public square.
+
+Guidobaldaccio, as he was called, died in 1574, leaving an only son,
+Francesco Maria II., whose life and character illustrate the new age
+which had begun for Italy. He was educated in Spain at the court of
+Philip II., where he spent more than two years. When he returned, his
+Spanish haughtiness, punctilious attention to etiquette, and
+superstitious piety attracted observation. The violent temper of the
+Della Roveres, which Francesco Maria I. displayed in acts of
+homicide, and which had helped to win his bad name for Guidobaldaccio,
+took the form of sullenness in the last Duke. The finest episode in
+his life was the part he played in the battle of Lepanto, under his
+old comrade, Don John of Austria. His father forced him to an
+uncongenial marriage with Lucrezia d'Este, Princess of Ferrara. She
+left him, and took refuge in her native city, then honoured by the
+presence of Tasso and Guarini. He bore her departure with
+philosophical composure, recording the event in his diary as something
+to be dryly grateful for. Left alone, the Duke abandoned himself to
+solitude, religious exercises, hunting, and the economy of his
+impoverished dominions. He became that curious creature, a man of
+narrow nature and mediocre capacity, who, dedicated to the cult of
+self, is fain to pass for saint and sage in easy circumstances. He
+married, for the second time, a lady, Livia della Rovere, who belonged
+to his own family, but had been born in private station. She brought
+him one son, the Prince Federigo-Ubaldo. This youth might have
+sustained the ducal honours of Urbino, but for his sage-saint father's
+want of wisdom. The boy was a spoiled child in infancy. Inflated with
+Spanish vanity from the cradle, taught to regard his subjects as
+dependents on a despot's will, abandoned to the caprices of his own
+ungovernable temper, without substantial aid from the paternal piety
+or stoicism, he rapidly became a most intolerable princeling. His
+father married him, while yet a boy, to Claudia de' Medici, and
+virtually abdicated in his favour. Left to his own devices, Federigo
+chose companions from the troupes of players whom he drew from Venice.
+He filled his palaces with harlots, and degraded himself upon the
+stage in parts of mean buffoonery. The resources of the duchy were
+racked to support these parasites. Spanish rules of etiquette and
+ceremony were outraged by their orgies. His bride brought him one
+daughter, Vittoria, who afterwards became the wife of Ferdinand, Grand
+Duke of Tuscany. Then in the midst of his low dissipation and
+offences against ducal dignity, he died of apoplexy at the early age
+of eighteen--the victim, in the severe judgment of history, of his
+father's selfishness and want of practical ability.
+
+This happened in 1623. Francesco Maria was stunned by the blow. His
+withdrawal from the duties of the sovereignty in favour of such a son
+had proved a constitutional unfitness for the duties of his station.
+The life he loved was one of seclusion in a round of pious exercises,
+petty studies, peddling economies, and mechanical amusements. A
+powerful and grasping Pope was on the throne of Rome. Urban at this
+juncture pressed Francesco Maria hard; and in 1624 the last Duke of
+Urbino devolved his lordships to the Holy See. He survived the formal
+act of abdication seven years; when he died, the Pontiff added his
+duchy to the Papal States, which thenceforth stretched from Naples to
+the bounds of Venice on the Po.
+
+
+III
+
+Duke Frederick began the palace at Urbino in 1454, when he was still
+only Count. The architect was Luziano of Lauranna, a Dalmatian; and
+the beautiful white limestone, hard as marble, used in the
+construction, was brought from the Dalmatian coast. This stone, like
+the Istrian stone of Venetian buildings, takes and retains the chisel
+mark with wonderful precision. It looks as though, when fresh, it must
+have had the pliancy of clay, so delicately are the finest curves in
+scroll or foliage scooped from its substance. And yet it preserves
+each cusp and angle of the most elaborate pattern with the crispness
+and the sharpness of a crystal.
+
+When wrought by a clever craftsman, its surface has neither the
+waxiness of Parian, nor the brittle edge of Carrara marble; and it
+resists weather better than marble of the choicest quality. This may
+be observed in many monuments of Venice, where the stone has been long
+exposed to sea-air. These qualities of the Dalmatian limestone, no
+less than its agreeable creamy hue and smooth dull polish, adapt it to
+decoration in low relief. The most attractive details in the palace at
+Urbino are friezes carved of this material in choice designs of early
+Renaissance dignity and grace. One chimney-piece in the Sala degli
+Angeli deserves especial comment. A frieze of dancing Cupids, with
+gilt hair and wings, their naked bodies left white on a ground of
+ultramarine, is supported by broad flat pilasters. These are engraved
+with children holding pots of flowers; roses on one side, carnations
+on the other. Above the frieze another pair of angels, one at each
+end, hold lighted torches; and the pyramidal cap of the chimney is
+carved with two more, flying, and supporting the eagle of the
+Montefeltri on a raised medallion. Throughout the palace we notice
+emblems appropriate to the Houses of Montefeltro and Della Rovere:
+their arms, three golden bends upon a field of azure: the Imperial
+eagle, granted when Montefeltro was made a fief of the Empire: the
+Garter of England, worn by the Dukes Federigo and Guidobaldo: the
+ermine of Naples: the _ventosa_, or cupping-glass, adopted for a
+private badge by Frederick: the golden oak-tree on an azure field of
+Della Rovere: the palm-tree, bent beneath a block of stone, with its
+accompanying motto, _Inclinata Resurgam_: the cipher, FE DX. Profile
+medallions of Federigo and Guidobaldo, wrought in the lowest possible
+relief, adorn the staircases. Round the great courtyard runs a frieze
+of military engines and ensigns, trophies, machines, and implements of
+war, alluding to Duke Frederick's profession of Condottiere. The
+doorways are enriched with scrolls of heavy-headed flowers, acanthus
+foliage, honeysuckles, ivy-berries, birds and boys and sphinxes, in
+all the riot of Renaissance fancy.
+
+This profusion of sculptured _rilievo_ is nearly all that remains to
+show how rich the palace was in things of beauty. Castiglione, writing
+in the reign of Guidobaldo, says that 'in the opinion of many it is
+the fairest to be found in Italy; and the Duke filled it so well with
+all things fitting its magnificence, that it seemed less like a palace
+than a city. Not only did he collect articles of common use, vessels
+of silver, and trappings for chambers of rare cloths of gold and silk,
+and suchlike furniture, but he added multitudes of bronze and marble
+statues, exquisite pictures, and instruments of music of all sorts.
+There was nothing but was of the finest and most excellent quality to
+be seen there. Moreover, he gathered together at a vast cost a large
+number of the best and rarest books in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, all
+of which he adorned with gold and silver, esteeming them the chiefest
+treasure of his spacious palace.' When Cesare Borgia entered Urbino as
+conqueror in 1502, he is said to have carried off loot to the value of
+150,000 ducats, or perhaps about a quarter of a million sterling.
+Vespasiano, the Florentine bookseller, has left us a minute account of
+the formation of the famous library of manuscripts, which he valued at
+considerably over 30,000 ducats. Yet wandering now through these
+deserted halls, we seek in vain for furniture or tapestry or works of
+art. The books have been removed to Rome. The pictures are gone, no
+man knows whither. The plate has long been melted down. The
+instruments of music are broken. If frescoes adorned the corridors,
+they have been whitewashed; the ladies' chambers have been stripped of
+their rich arras. Only here and there we find a raftered ceiling,
+painted in fading colours, which, taken with the stonework of the
+chimney, and some fragments of inlaid panel-work on door or window,
+enables us to reconstruct the former richness of these princely rooms.
+
+Exception must be made in favour of two apartments between the towers
+upon the southern facade. These were apparently the private rooms of
+the Duke and Duchess, and they are still approached by a great winding
+staircase in one of the _torricini_. Adorned in indestructible or
+irremovable materials, they retain some traces of their ancient
+splendour. On the first floor, opening on the vaulted loggia, we find
+a little chapel encrusted with lovely work in stucco and marble;
+friezes of bulls, sphinxes, sea-horses, and foliage; with a low relief
+of Madonna and Child in the manner of Mino da Fiesole. Close by is a
+small study with inscriptions to the Muses and Apollo. The cabinet
+connecting these two cells has a Latin legend, to say that Religion
+here dwells near the temple of the liberal arts:
+
+  Bina vides parvo discrimine juncta sacella,
+    Altera pars Musis altera sacra Deo est.
+
+On the floor above, corresponding in position to this apartment, is a
+second, of even greater interest, since it was arranged by the Duke
+Frederick for his own retreat. The study is panelled in tarsia of
+beautiful design and execution. Three of the larger compartments show
+Faith, Hope, and Charity; figures not unworthy of a Botticelli or a
+Filippino Lippi. The occupations of the Duke are represented on a
+smaller scale by armour, _batons_ of command, scientific instruments,
+lutes, viols, and books, some open and some shut. The Bible, Homer,
+Virgil, Seneca, Tacitus, and Cicero, are lettered; apparently to
+indicate his favourite authors. The Duke himself, arrayed in his state
+robes, occupies a fourth great panel; and the whole of this elaborate
+composition is harmonised by emblems, badges, and occasional devices
+of birds, articles of furniture, and so forth. The tarsia, or inlaid
+wood of different kinds and colours, is among the best in this kind of
+art to be found in Italy, though perhaps it hardly deserves to rank
+with the celebrated choir-stalls of Bergamo and Monte Oliveto. Hard by
+is a chapel, adorned, like the lower one, with excellent reliefs. The
+loggia to which these rooms have access looks across the Apennines,
+and down on what was once a private garden. It is now enclosed and
+paved for the exercise of prisoners who are confined in one part of
+the desecrated palace!
+
+A portion of the pile is devoted to more worthy purposes; for the
+Academy of Raphael here holds its sittings, and preserves a collection
+of curiosities and books illustrative of the great painter's life and
+works. They have recently placed in a tiny oratory, scooped by
+Guidobaldo II. from the thickness of the wall, a cast of Raphael's
+skull, which will be studied with interest and veneration. It has the
+fineness of modelling combined with shapeliness of form and smallness
+of scale which is said to have characterised Mozart and Shelley.
+
+The impression left upon the mind after traversing this palace in its
+length and breadth is one of weariness and disappointment. How shall
+we reconstruct the long-past life which filled its rooms with sound,
+the splendour of its pageants, the thrill of tragedies enacted here?
+It is not difficult to crowd its doors and vacant spaces with liveried
+servants, slim pages in tight hose, whose well-combed hair escapes
+from tiny caps upon their silken shoulders. We may even replace the
+tapestries of Troy which hung one hall, and build again the sideboards
+with their embossed gilded plate. But are these chambers really those
+where Emilia Pia held debate on love with Bembo and Castiglione; where
+Bibbiena's witticisms and Fra Serafino's pranks raised smiles on
+courtly lips; where Bernardo Accolti, 'the Unique,' declaimed his
+verses to applauding crowds? Is it possible that into yonder hall,
+where now the lion of S. Mark looks down alone on staring desolation,
+strode the Borgia in all his panoply of war, a gilded glittering
+dragon, and from the dais tore the Montefeltri's throne, and from the
+arras stripped their ensigns, replacing these with his own Bull and
+Valentinus Dux? Here Tasso tuned his lyre for Francesco Maria's
+wedding-feast, and read 'Aminta' to Lucrezia d'Este. Here Guidobaldo
+listened to the jests and whispered scandals of the Aretine. Here
+Titian set his easel up to paint; here the boy Raphael, cap in hand,
+took signed and sealed credentials from his Duchess to the Gonfalonier
+of Florence. Somewhere in these huge chambers, the courtiers sat
+before a torch-lit stage, when Bibbiena's 'Calandria' and
+Caetiglione's 'Tirsi,' with their miracles of masques and mummers,
+whiled the night away. Somewhere, we know not where, Giuliano de'
+Medici made love in these bare rooms to that mysterious mother of
+ill-fated Cardinal Ippolito; somewhere, in some darker nook, the
+bastard Alessandro sprang to his strange-fortuned life of tyranny and
+license, which Brutus-Lorenzino cut short with a traitor's
+poignard-thrust in Via Larga. How many men, illustrious for arts and
+letters, memorable by their virtues or their crimes, have trod these
+silent corridors, from the great Pope Julius down to James III.,
+self-titled King of England, who tarried here with Clementina Sobieski
+through some twelve months of his ex-royal exile! The memories of all
+this folk, flown guests and masters of the still-abiding
+palace-chambers, haunt us as we hurry through. They are but filmy
+shadows. We cannot grasp them, localise them, people surrounding
+emptiness with more than withering cobweb forms.
+
+Death takes a stronger hold on us than bygone life. Therefore,
+returning to the vast Throne-room, we animate it with one scene it
+witnessed on an April night in 1508. Duke Guidobaldo had died at
+Fossombrone, repeating to his friends around his bed these lines of
+Virgil:
+
+     Me circum limus niger et deformis arundo Cocyti tardaque
+     palus inamabilis unda Alligat, et novies Styx interfusa
+     coercet.
+
+His body had been carried on the shoulders of servants through those
+mountain ways at night, amid the lamentations of gathering multitudes
+and the baying of dogs from hill-set farms alarmed by flaring
+flambeaux. Now it is laid in state in the great hall. The dais and the
+throne are draped in black. The arms and _batons_ of his father hang
+about the doorways. His own ensigns are displayed in groups and
+trophies, with the banners of S. Mark, the Montefeltrian eagle, and
+the cross keys of S. Peter. The hall itself is vacant, save for the
+high-reared catafalque of sable velvet and gold damask, surrounded
+with wax candles burning steadily. Round it passes a ceaseless stream
+of people, coming and going, gazing at their Duke. He is attired in
+crimson hose and doublet of black damask. Black velvet slippers are on
+his feet, and his ducal cap is of black velvet. The mantle of the
+Garter, made of dark-blue Alexandrine velvet, hooded with crimson,
+lined with white silk damask, and embroidered with the badge, drapes
+the stiff sleeping form.
+
+It is easier to conjure up the past of this great palace, strolling
+round it in free air and twilight; perhaps because the landscape and
+the life still moving on the city streets bring its exterior into
+harmony with real existence. The southern facade, with its vaulted
+balconies and flanking towers, takes the fancy, fascinates the eye,
+and lends itself as a fit stage for puppets of the musing mind. Once
+more imagination plants trim orange-trees in giant jars of Gubbio ware
+upon the pavement where the garden of the Duchess lay--the pavement
+paced in these bad days by convicts in grey canvas jackets--that
+pavement where Monsignor Bombo courted 'dear dead women' with
+Platonic phrase, smothering the Menta of his natural man in lettuce
+culled from Academe and thyme of Mount Hymettus. In yonder loggia,
+lifted above the garden and the court, two lovers are in earnest
+converse. They lean beneath the coffered arch, against the marble of
+the balustrade, he fingering his dagger under the dark velvet doublet,
+she playing with a clove carnation, deep as her own shame. The man is
+Giannandrea, broad-shouldered bravo of Verona, Duke Guidobaldo's
+favourite and carpet-count. The lady is Madonna Maria, daughter of
+Rome's Prefect, widow of Venanzio Varano, whom the Borgia strangled.
+On their discourse a tale will hang of woman's frailty and man's
+boldness--Camerino's Duchess yielding to a low-born suitor's stalwart
+charms. And more will follow, when that lady's brother, furious
+Francesco Maria della Rovere, shall stab the bravo in torch-litten
+palace rooms with twenty poignard strokes 'twixt waist and throat, and
+their Pandarus shall be sent down to his account by a varlet's
+_coltellata_ through the midriff. Imagination shifts the scene, and
+shows in that same loggia Rome's warlike Pope, attended by his
+cardinals and all Urbino's chivalry. The snowy beard of Julius flows
+down upon his breast, where jewels clasp the crimson mantle, as in
+Raphael's picture. His eyes are bright with wine; for he has come to
+gaze on sunset from the banquet-chamber, and to watch the line of
+lamps which soon will leap along that palace cornice in his honour.
+Behind him lies Bologna humbled. The Pope returns, a conqueror, to
+Rome. Yet once again imagination is at work. A gaunt, bald man,
+close-habited in Spanish black, his spare, fine features carved in
+purest ivory, leans from that balcony. Gazing with hollow eyes, he
+tracks the swallows in their flight, and notes that winter is at hand.
+This is the last Duke of Urbino, Francesco Maria II., he whose young
+wife deserted him, who made for himself alone a hermit-pedant's round
+of petty cares and niggard avarice and mean-brained superstition. He
+drew a second consort from the convent, and raised up seed unto his
+line by forethought, but beheld his princeling fade untimely in the
+bloom of boyhood. Nothing is left but solitude. To the mortmain of the
+Church reverts Urbino's lordship, and even now he meditates the terms
+of devolution. Jesuits cluster in the rooms behind, with comfort for
+the ducal soul and calculations for the interests of Holy See.
+
+A farewell to these memories of Urbino's dukedom should be taken in
+the crypt of the cathedral, where Francesco Maria II., the last Duke,
+buried his only son and all his temporal hopes. The place is scarcely
+solemn. Its dreary _barocco_ emblems mar the dignity of death. A bulky
+_Pieta_ by Gian Bologna, with Madonna's face unfinished, towers up and
+crowds the narrow cell. Religion has evanished from this late
+Renaissance art, nor has the afterglow of Guido Reni's hectic piety
+yet overflushed it. Chilled by the stifling humid sense of an extinct
+race here entombed in its last representative, we gladly emerge from
+the sepulchral vault into the air of day.
+
+Filippo Visconti, with a smile on his handsome face, is waiting for us
+at the inn. His horses, sleek, well fed, and rested, toss their heads
+impatiently. We take our seats in the carriage, open wide beneath a
+sparkling sky, whirl past the palace and its ghost-like recollections,
+and are halfway on the road to Fossombrone in a cloud of dust and
+whirr of wheels before we think of looking back to greet Urbino. There
+is just time. The last decisive turning lies in front. We stand
+bareheaded to salute the grey mass of buildings ridged along the sky.
+Then the open road invites us with its varied scenery and movement.
+From the shadowy past we drive into the world of human things, for
+ever changefully unchanged, unrestfully the same. This interchange
+between dead memories and present life is the delight of travel.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+_VITTORIA ACCORAMBONI_
+
+AND THE TRAGEDY OF WEBSTER
+
+
+I
+
+During the pontificate of Gregory XIII. (1572-85), Papal authority in
+Rome reached its lowest point of weakness, and the ancient splendour
+of the Papal court was well-nigh eclipsed. Art and learning had died
+out. The traditions of the days of Leo, Julius, and Paul III. were
+forgotten. It seemed as though the genius of the Renaissance had
+migrated across the Alps. All the powers of the Papacy were directed
+to the suppression of heresies and to the re-establishment of
+spiritual supremacy over the intellect of Europe. Meanwhile society in
+Rome returned to mediaeval barbarism. The veneer of classical
+refinement and humanistic urbanity, which for a time had hidden the
+natural savagery of the Roman nobles, wore away. The Holy City became
+a den of bandits; the territory of the Church supplied a battle-ground
+for senseless party strife, which the weak old man who wore the triple
+crown was quite unable to control. It is related how a robber
+chieftain, Marianazzo, refused the offer of a general pardon from the
+Pope, alleging that the profession of brigand was far more lucrative,
+and offered greater security of life, than any trade within the walls
+of Rome. The Campagna, the ruined citadels about the basements of the
+Sabine and Ciminian hills, the quarters of the aristocracy within the
+city, swarmed with bravos, who were protected by great nobles and fed
+by decent citizens for the advantages to be derived from the
+assistance of abandoned and courageous ruffians. Life, indeed, had
+become impossible without fixed compact with the powers of
+lawlessness. There was hardly a family in Rome which did not number
+some notorious criminal among the outlaws. Murder, sacrilege, the love
+of adventure, thirst for plunder, poverty, hostility to the ascendant
+faction of the moment, were common causes of voluntary or involuntary
+outlawry; nor did public opinion regard a bandit's calling as other
+than honourable.
+
+It may readily be imagined that in such a state of society the
+grisliest tragedies were common enough in Rome. The history of some of
+these has been preserved to us in documents digested from public
+trials and personal observation by contemporary writers. That of the
+Cenci, in which a notorious act of parricide furnished the plot of a
+popular novella, is well known. And such a tragedy, even more rife in
+characteristic incidents, and more distinguished by the quality of its
+_dramatis personae_, is that of Vittoria Accoramboni.
+
+Vittoria was born in 1557, of a noble but impoverished family, at
+Gubbio, among the hills of Umbria. Her biographers are rapturous in
+their praises of her beauty, grace, and exceeding charm of manner. Not
+only was her person most lovely, but her mind shone at first with all
+the amiable lustre of a modest, innocent, and winning youth. Her
+father, Claudio Accoramboni, removed to Rome, where his numerous
+children were brought up under the care of their mother, Tarquinia, an
+ambitious and unscrupulous woman, bent on rehabilitating the decayed
+honours of their house. Here Vittoria in early girlhood soon became
+the fashion. She exercised an irresistible influence over all who saw
+her, and many were the offers of marriage she refused. At length a
+suitor appeared whose condition and connection with the Roman
+ecclesiastical nobility rendered him acceptable in the eyes of the
+Accoramboni. Francesco Peretti was welcomed as the successful
+candidate for Vittoria's hand. His mother, Camilla, was sister to
+Felice, Cardinal of Montalto; and her son, Francesco Mignucci, had
+changed his surname in compliment to this illustrious relative. The
+Peretti were of humble origin. The cardinal himself had tended swine
+in his native village; but, supported by an invincible belief in his
+own destinies, and gifted with a powerful intellect and determined
+character, he passed through all grades of the Franciscan Order to its
+generalship, received the bishoprics of Fermo and S. Agata, and
+lastly, in the year 1570, assumed the scarlet with the title of
+Cardinal Montalto. He was now upon the high way to the Papacy,
+amassing money by incessant care, studying the humours of surrounding
+factions, effacing his own personality, and by mixing but little in
+the intrigues of the court, winning the reputation of a prudent,
+inoffensive old man. These were his tactics for securing the Papal
+throne; nor were his expectations frustrated; for in 1585 he was
+chosen Pope, the parties of the Medici and the Farnesi agreeing to
+accept him as a compromise. When Sixtus V. was once firmly seated on
+S. Peter's chair, he showed himself in his true colours. An implacable
+administrator of severest justice, a rigorous economist, an
+iconoclastic foe to paganism, the first act of his reign was to
+declare a war of extirpation against the bandits who had reduced Rome
+in his predecessor's rule to anarchy.
+
+It was the nephew, then, of this man, whom historians have judged the
+greatest personage of his own times, that Vittoria Accoramboni married
+on the 28th of June 1573. For a short while the young couple lived
+happily together. According to some accounts of their married life,
+the bride secured the favour of her powerful uncle-in-law, who
+indulged her costly fancies to the full. It is, however, more probable
+that the Cardinal Montalto treated her follies with a grudging
+parsimony; for we soon find the Peretti household hopelessly involved
+in debt. Discord, too, arose between Vittoria and her husband on the
+score of a certain levity in her behaviour; and it was rumoured that
+even during the brief space of their union she had proved a faithless
+wife. Yet she contrived to keep Francesco's confidence, and it is
+certain that her family profited by their connection with the Peretti.
+Of her six brothers, Mario, the eldest, was a favourite courtier of
+the great Cardinal d'Este. Ottavio was in orders, and through
+Montalto's influence obtained the See of Fossombrone. The same
+eminent protector placed Scipione in the service of the Cardinal
+Sforza. Camillo, famous for his beauty and his courage, followed the
+fortunes of Filibert of Savoy, and died in France. Flaminio was still
+a boy, dependent, as the sequel of this story shows, upon his sister's
+destiny. Of Marcello, the second in age and most important in the
+action of this tragedy, it is needful to speak with more
+particularity. He was young, and, like the rest of his breed,
+singularly handsome--so handsome, indeed, that he is said to have
+gained an infamous ascendency over the great Duke of Bracciano, whose
+privy chamberlain he had become. Marcello was an outlaw for the murder
+of Matteo Pallavicino, the brother of the Cardinal of that name. This
+did not, however, prevent the chief of the Orsini house from making
+him his favourite and confidential friend. Marcello, who seems to have
+realised in actual life the worst vices of those Roman courtiers
+described for us by Aretino, very soon conceived the plan of exalting
+his own fortunes by trading on his sister's beauty. He worked upon the
+Duke of Bracciano's mind so cleverly, that he brought this haughty
+prince to the point of an insane passion for Peretti's young wife; and
+meanwhile so contrived to inflame the ambition of Vittoria and her
+mother, Tarquinia, that both were prepared to dare the worst of crimes
+in expectation of a dukedom. The game was a difficult one to play. Not
+only had Francesco Peretti first to be murdered, but the inequality of
+birth and wealth and station between Vittoria and the Duke of
+Bracciano rendered a marriage almost impossible. It was also an affair
+of delicacy to stimulate without satisfying the Duke's passion. Yet
+Marcello did not despair. The stakes were high enough to justify great
+risks; and all he put in peril was his sister's honour, the fame of
+the Accoramboni, and the favour of Montalto. Vittoria, for her part,
+trusted in her power to ensnare and secure the noble prey both had in
+view.
+
+Paolo Giordano Orsini, born about the year 1537, was reigning Duke of
+Bracciano. Among Italian princes he ranked at least upon a par with
+the Dukes of Urbino, and his family, by its alliances, was more
+illustrious than any of that time in Italy. He was a man of gigantic
+stature, prodigious corpulence, and marked personal daring; agreeable
+in manners, but subject to uncontrollable fits of passion, and
+incapable of self-restraint when crossed in any whim or fancy. Upon
+the habit of his body it is needful to insist, in order that the part
+he played in this tragedy of intrigue, crime, and passion may be well
+defined. He found it difficult to procure a charger equal to his
+weight, and he was so fat that a special dispensation relieved him
+from the duty of genuflexion in the Papal presence. Though lord of a
+large territory, yielding princely revenues, he laboured under heavy
+debts; for no great noble of the period lived more splendidly, with
+less regard for his finances. In the politics of that age and country,
+Paolo Giordano leaned toward France. Yet he was a grandee of Spain,
+and had played a distinguished part in the battle of Lepanto. Now the
+Duke of Bracciano was a widower. He had been married in 1553 to
+Isabella de' Medici, daughter of the Grand Duke Cosimo, sister of
+Francesco, Bianca Capello's lover, and of the Cardinal Ferdinando.
+Suspicion of adultery with Troilo Orsini had fallen on Isabella, and
+her husband, with the full concurrence of her brothers, removed her in
+1576 from this world.[7] No one thought the worse of Bracciano for
+this murder of his wife. In those days of abandoned vice and intricate
+villany, certain points of honour were maintained with scrupulous
+fidelity. A wife's adultery was enough to justify the most savage and
+licentious husband in an act of semi-judicial vengeance; and the shame
+she brought upon his head was shared by the members of her own house,
+so that they stood by, consenting to her death. Isabella, it may be
+said, left one son, Virginio, who became in due time Duke of
+Bracciano.
+
+It appears that in the year 1581, four years after Vittoria's
+marriage, the Duke of Bracciano had satisfied Marcello of his
+intention to make her his wife, and of his willingness to countenance
+Francesco Peretti's murder. Marcello, feeling sure of his game,
+introduced the Duke in private to his sister, and induced her to
+overcome any natural repugnance she may have felt for the unwieldy and
+gross lover. Having reached this point, it was imperative to push
+matters quickly on toward matrimony.
+
+But how should the unfortunate Francesco be entrapped? They caught him
+in a snare of peculiar atrocity, by working on the kindly feelings
+which his love for Vittoria had caused him to extend to all the
+Acooramboni. Marcello, the outlaw, was her favourite brother, and
+Marcello at that time lay in hiding, under the suspicion of more than
+ordinary crime, beyond the walls of Rome. Late in the evening of the
+18th of April, while the Peretti family were retiring to bed, a
+messenger from Marcello arrived, entreating Francesco to repair at
+once to Monte Cavallo. Marcello had affairs of the utmost importance
+to communicate, and begged his brother-in-law not to fail him at a
+grievous pinch. The letter containing this request was borne by one
+Dominico d'Aquaviva, _alias_ Il Mancino, a confederate of Vittoria's
+waiting-maid. This fellow, like Marcello, was an outlaw; but when he
+ventured into Rome he frequented Peretti's house, and had made himself
+familiar with its master as a trusty bravo. Neither in the message,
+therefore, nor in the messenger was there much to rouse suspicion. The
+time, indeed, was oddly chosen, and Marcello had never made a similar
+appeal on any previous occasion. Yet his necessities might surely have
+obliged him to demand some more than ordinary favour from a brother.
+Francesco immediately made himself ready to set out, armed only with
+his sword and attended by a single servant. It was in vain that his
+wife and his mother reminded him of the dangers of the night, the
+loneliness of Monte Cavallo, its ruinous palaces and robber-haunted
+caves. He was resolved to undertake the adventure, and went forth,
+never to return. As he ascended the hill, he fell to earth, shot with
+three harquebuses. His body was afterwards found on Monte Cavallo,
+stabbed through and through, without a trace that could identify the
+murderers. Only, in the course of subsequent investigations, Il
+Mancino (on the 24th of February 1582) made the following
+statements:--That Vittoria's mother, assisted by the waiting woman,
+had planned the trap; that Marchionne of Gubbio and Paolo Barca of
+Bracciano, two of the Duke's men, had despatched the victim. Marcello
+himself, it seems, had come from Bracciano to conduct the whole
+affair. Suspicion fell immediately upon Vittoria and her kindred,
+together with the Duke of Bracciano; nor was this diminished when the
+Accoramboni, fearing the pursuit of justice, took refuge in a villa of
+the Duke's at Magnanapoli a few days after the murder.
+
+A cardinal's nephew, even in those troublous times, was not killed
+without some noise being made about the matter. Accordingly Pope
+Gregory XIII. began to take measures for discovering the authors of
+the crime. Strange to say, however, the Cardinal Montalto,
+notwithstanding the great love he was known to bear his nephew, begged
+that the investigation might be dropped. The coolness with which he
+first received the news of Francesco Peretti's death, the
+dissimulation with which he met the Pope's expression of sympathy in a
+full consistory, his reserve in greeting friends on ceremonial visits
+of condolence, and, more than all, the self-restraint he showed in the
+presence of the Duke of Bracciano, impressed the society of Rome with
+the belief that he was of a singularly moderate and patient temper. It
+was thought that the man who could so tamely submit to his nephew's
+murder, and suspend the arm of justice when already raised for
+vengeance, must prove a mild and indulgent ruler. When, therefore, in
+the fifth year after this event, Montalto was elected Pope, men
+ascribed his elevation in no small measure to his conduct at the
+present crisis. Some, indeed, attributed his extraordinary moderation
+and self-control to the right cause. _'Veramente costui e un gran
+frate!_' was Gregory's remark at the close of the consistory when
+Montalto begged him to let the matter of Peretti's murder rest. '_Of a
+truth, that fellow is a consummate hypocrite!_' How accurate this
+judgment was, appeared when Sixtus V. assumed the reins of power. The
+same man who, as monk and cardinal, had smiled on Bracciano, though he
+knew him to be his nephew's assassin, now, as Pontiff and sovereign,
+bade the chief of the Orsini purge his palace and dominions of the
+scoundrels he was wont to harbour, adding significantly, that if
+Felice Peretti forgave what had been done against him in a private
+station, he would exact uttermost vengeance for disobedience to the
+will of Sixtus. The Duke of Bracciano judged it best, after that
+warning, to withdraw from Rome.
+
+Francesco Peretti had been murdered on the 16th of April 1581. Sixtus
+V. was proclaimed on the 24th of April 1585. In this interval Vittoria
+underwent a series of extraordinary perils and adventures. First of
+all, she had been secretly married to the Duke in his gardens of
+Magnanapoli at the end of April 1581. That is to say, Marcello and she
+secured their prize, as well as they were able, the moment after
+Francesco had been removed by murder. But no sooner had the marriage
+become known, than the Pope, moved by the scandal it created, no less
+than by the urgent instance of the Orsini and Medici, declared it
+void. After some while spent in vain resistance, Bracciano submitted,
+and sent Vittoria back to her father's house. By an order issued under
+Gregory's own hand, she was next removed to the prison of Corte
+Savella, thence to the monastery of S. Cecilia in Trastevere, and
+finally to the Castle of S. Angelo. Here, at the end of December 1581,
+she was put on trial for the murder of her first husband. In prison
+she seems to have borne herself bravely, arraying her beautiful person
+in delicate attire, entertaining visitors, exacting from her friends
+the honours due to a duchess, and sustaining the frequent examinations
+to which she was submitted with a bold, proud front. In the middle of
+the month of July her constancy was sorely tried by the receipt of a
+letter in the Duke's own handwriting, formally renouncing his
+marriage. It was only by a lucky accident that she was prevented on
+this occasion from committing suicide. The Papal court meanwhile kept
+urging her either to retire to a monastery or to accept another
+husband. She firmly refused to embrace the religious life, and
+declared that she was already lawfully united to a living husband, the
+Duke of Bracciano. It seemed impossible to deal with her; and at last,
+on the 8th of November, she was released from prison under the
+condition of retirement to Gubbio. The Duke had lulled his enemies to
+rest by the pretence of yielding to their wishes. But Marcello was
+continually beside him at Bracciano, where we read of a mysterious
+Greek enchantress whom he hired to brew love-philters for the
+furtherance of his ambitious plots. Whether Bracciano was stimulated
+by the brother's arguments or by the witch's potions need not be too
+curiously questioned. But it seems in any case certain that absence
+inflamed his passion instead of cooling it.
+
+Accordingly, in September 1583, under the excuse of a pilgrimage to
+Loreto, he contrived to meet Vittoria at Trevi, whence he carried her
+in triumph to Bracciano. Here he openly acknowledged her as his wife,
+installing her with all the splendour due to a sovereign duchess. On
+the 10th of October following, he once more performed the marriage
+ceremony in the principal church of his fief; and in the January of
+1584 he brought her openly to Rome. This act of contumacy to the Pope,
+both as feudal superior and as supreme Pontiff, roused all the former
+opposition to his marriage. Once more it was declared invalid. Once
+more the Duke pretended to give way. But at this juncture Gregory
+died; and while the conclave was sitting for the election of the new
+Pope, he resolved to take the law into his own hands, and to ratify
+his union with Vittoria by a third and public marriage in Rome. On the
+morning of the 24th of April 1585, their nuptials were accordingly
+once more solemnised in the Orsini palace. Just one hour after the
+ceremony, as appears from the marriage register, the news arrived of
+Cardinal Montalto's election to the Papacy, Vittoria lost no time in
+paying her respects to Camilla, sister of the new Pope, her former
+mother-in-law. The Duke visited Sixtus V. in state to compliment him
+on his elevation. But the reception which both received proved that
+Rome was no safe place for them to live in. They consequently made up
+their minds for flight.
+
+A chronic illness from which Bracciano had lately suffered furnished a
+sufficient pretext. This seems to have been something of the nature of
+a cancerous ulcer, which had to be treated by the application of raw
+meat to open sores. Such details are only excusable in the present
+narrative on the ground that Bracciano's disease considerably affects
+our moral judgment of the woman who could marry a man thus physically
+tainted, and with her husband's blood upon his hands. At any rate,
+the Duke's _lupa_ justified his trying what change of air, together
+with the sulphur waters of Abano, would do for him.
+
+The Duke and Duchess arrived in safety at Venice, where they had
+engaged the Dandolo palace on the Zuecca. There they only stayed a few
+days, removing to Padua, where they had hired palaces of the Foscari
+in the Arena and a house called De' Cavalli. At Salo, also, on the
+Lake of Garda, they provided themselves with fit dwellings for their
+princely state and their large retinues, intending to divide their
+time between the pleasures which the capital of luxury afforded and
+the simpler enjoyments of the most beautiful of the Italian lakes. But
+_la gioia dei profani e un fumo passaggier_. Paolo Giordano Orsini,
+Duke of Bracciano, died suddenly at Salo on the 10th of November 1585,
+leaving the young and beautiful Vittoria helpless among enemies. What
+was the cause of his death? It is not possible to give a clear and
+certain answer. We have seen that he suffered from a horrible and
+voracious disease, which after his removal from Rome seems to have
+made progress. Yet though this malady may well have cut his life
+short, suspicion of poison was not, in the circumstances, quite
+unreasonable. The Grand Duke of Tuscany, the Pope, and the Orsini
+family were all interested in his death. Anyhow, he had time to make a
+will in Vittoria's favour, leaving her large sums of money, jewels,
+goods, and houses--enough, in fact, to support her ducal dignity with
+splendour. His hereditary fiefs and honours passed by right to his
+only son, Virginio.
+
+Vittoria, accompanied by her brother, Marcello, and the whole court of
+Bracciano, repaired at once to Padua, where she was soon after joined
+by Flaminio, and by the Prince Lodovico Orsini. Lodovico Orsini
+assumed the duty of settling Vittoria's affairs under her dead
+husband's will. In life he had been the Duke's ally as well as
+relative. His family pride was deeply wounded by what seemed to him an
+ignoble, as it was certainly an unequal, marriage. He now showed
+himself the relentless enemy of the Duchess. Disputes arose between
+them as to certain details, which seem to have been legally decided in
+the widow's favour. On the night of the 22nd of December, however,
+forty men disguised in black and fantastically tricked out to elude
+detection, surrounded her palace. Through the long galleries and
+chambers hung with arras, eight of them went, bearing torches, in
+search of Vittoria and her brothers. Marcello escaped, having fled the
+house under suspicion of the murder of one of his own followers.
+Flaminio, the innocent and young, was playing on his lute and singing
+_Miserere_ in the great hall of the palace. The murderers surprised
+him with a shot from one of their harquebuses. He ran, wounded in the
+shoulder, to his sister's room. She, it is said, was telling her beads
+before retiring for the night. When three of the assassins entered,
+she knelt before the crucifix, and there they stabbed her in the left
+breast, turning the poignard in the wound, and asking her with savage
+insults if her heart was pierced. Her last words were, 'Jesus, I
+pardon you.' Then they turned to Flaminio, and left him pierced with
+seventy-four stiletto wounds.
+
+The authorities of Padua identified the bodies of Vittoria and
+Flaminio, and sent at once for further instructions to Venice.
+Meanwhile it appears that both corpses were laid out in one open
+coffin for the people to contemplate. The palace and the church of the
+Eremitani, to which they had been removed, were crowded all through
+the following day with a vast concourse of the Paduans. Vittoria's
+wonderful dead body, pale yet sweet to look upon, the golden hair
+flowing around her marble shoulders, the red wound in her breast
+uncovered, the stately limbs arrayed in satin as she died, maddened
+the populace with its surpassing loveliness. '_Dentibus fremebant_,'
+says the chronicler, when they beheld that gracious lady stiff in
+death. And of a truth, if her corpse was actually exposed in the
+chapel of the Eremitani, as we have some right to assume, the
+spectacle must have been impressive. Those grim gaunt frescoes of
+Mantegna looked down on her as she lay stretched upon her bier, solemn
+and calm, and, but for pallor, beautiful as though in life. No wonder
+that the folk forgot her first husband's murder, her less than comely
+marriage to the second. It was enough for them that this flower of
+surpassing loveliness had been cropped by villains in its bloom.
+Gathering in knots around the torches placed beside the corpse, they
+vowed vengeance against the Orsini; for suspicion, not unnaturally,
+fell on Prince Lodovico.
+
+The Prince was arrested and interrogated before the court of Padua. He
+entered their hall attended by forty armed men, responded haughtily to
+their questions, and demanded free passage for his courier to Virginio
+Orsini, then at Florence. To this demand the court acceded; but the
+precaution of way-laying the courier and searching his person was
+very wisely taken. Besides some formal dispatches which announced
+Vittoria's assassination, they found in this man's boot a compromising
+letter, declaring Virginio a party to the crime, and asserting that
+Lodovico had with his own poignard killed their victim. Padua placed
+itself in a state of defence, and prepared to besiege the palace of
+Prince Lodovico, who also got himself in readiness for battle.
+Engines, culverins, and firebrands were directed against the
+barricades which he had raised. The militia was called out and the
+Brenta was strongly guarded. Meanwhile the Senate of S. Mark had
+dispatched the Avogadore, Aloisio Bragadin, with full power to the
+scene of action. Lodovico Orsini, it may be mentioned, was in their
+service; and had not this affair intervened, he would in a few weeks
+have entered on his duties as Governor for Venice of Corfu.
+
+The bombardment of Orsini's palace began on Christmas Day. Three of
+the Prince's men were killed in the first assault; and since the
+artillery brought to bear upon him threatened speedy ruin to the house
+and its inhabitants, he made up his mind to surrender. 'The Prince
+Luigi,' writes one-chronicler of these events, 'walked attired in
+brown, his poignard at his side, and his cloak slung elegantly under
+his arm. The weapon being taken from him, he leaned upon a balustrade,
+and began to trim his nails with a little pair of scissors he happened
+to find there.' On the 27th he was strangled in prison by order of the
+Venetian Republic. His body was carried to be buried, according to his
+own will, in the church of S. Maria dell' Orto at Venice. Two of his
+followers were hung next day. Fifteen were executed on the following
+Monday; two of these were quartered alive; one of them, the Conte
+Paganello, who confessed to having slain Vittoria, had his left side
+probed with his own cruel dagger. Eight were condemned to the galleys,
+six to prison, and eleven were acquitted. Thus ended this terrible
+affair, which brought, it is said, good credit and renown to the lords
+of Venice through all nations of the civilised world. It only remains
+to be added that Marcello Accoramboni was surrendered to the Pope's
+vengeance and beheaded at Ancona, where also his mysterious
+accomplice, the Greek sorceress, perished.
+
+
+II
+
+This story of Vittoria Accoramboni's life and tragic ending is drawn,
+in its main details, from a narrative published by Henri Beyle in his
+'Chroniques et Novelles.'[8] He professes to have translated it
+literally from a manuscript communicated to him by a nobleman of
+Mantua; and there are strong internal evidences of the truth of this
+assertion. Such compositions are frequent in Italian libraries, nor is
+it rare for one of them to pass into the common market--as Mr.
+Browning's famous purchase of the tale on which he based his 'Ring
+and the Book' sufficiently proves. These pamphlets were produced, in
+the first instance, to gratify the curiosity of the educated public in
+an age which had no newspapers, and also to preserve the memory of
+famous trials. How far the strict truth was represented, or whether,
+as in the case of Beatrice Cenci, the pathetic aspect of the tragedy
+was unduly dwelt on, depended, of course, upon the mental bias of the
+scribe, upon his opportunities of obtaining exact information, and
+upon the taste of the audience for whom he wrote. Therefore, in
+treating such documents as historical data, we must be upon our
+guard. Professor Gnoli, who has recently investigated the whole of
+Vittoria's eventful story by the light of contemporary documents,
+informs us that several narratives exist in manuscript, all dealing
+more or less accurately with the details of the tragedy. One of these
+was published in Italian at Brescia in 1586. A Frenchman, De Rosset,
+printed the same story in its main outlines at Lyons in 1621. Our own
+dramatist, John Webster, made it the subject of a tragedy, which he
+gave to the press in 1612. What were his sources of information we do
+not know for certain. But it is clear that he was well acquainted with
+the history. He has changed some of the names and redistributed some
+of the chief parts. Vittoria's first husband, for example, becomes
+Camillo; her mother, named Cornelia instead of Tarquinia, is so far
+from abetting Peretti's murder and countenancing her daughter's shame,
+that she acts the _role_ of a domestic Cassandra. Flaminio and not
+Marcello is made the main instrument of Vittoria's crime and
+elevation. The Cardinal Montalto is called Monticelso, and his papal
+title is Paul IV. instead of Sixtus V. These are details of
+comparative indifference, in which a playwright may fairly use his
+liberty of art. On the other hand, Webster shows a curious knowledge
+of the picturesque circumstances of the tale. The garden in which
+Vittoria meets Bracciano is the villa of Magnanapoli; Zanche, the
+Moorish slave, combines Vittoria's waiting-woman, Caterina, and the
+Greek sorceress who so mysteriously dogged Marcello's footsteps to the
+death. The suspicion of Bracciano's murder is used to introduce a
+quaint episode of Italian poisoning.
+
+Webster exercised the dramatist's privilege of connecting various
+threads of action in one plot, disregarding chronology, and hazarding
+an ethical solution of motives which mere fidelity to fact hardly
+warrants. He shows us Vittoria married to Camillo, a low-born and
+witless fool, whose only merit consists in being nephew to the
+Cardinal Monticelso, afterwards Pope Paul IV.[9] Paulo Giordano
+Ursini, Duke of Brachiano, loves Vittoria, and she suggests to him
+that, for the furtherance of their amours, his wife, the Duchess
+Isabella, sister to Francesco de' Medici, Grand Duke of Florence,
+should be murdered at the same time as her own husband, Camillo.
+Brachiano is struck by this plan, and with the help of Vittoria's
+brother, Flamineo, he puts it at once into execution. Flamineo hires a
+doctor who poisons Brachiano's portrait, so that Isabella dies after
+kissing it. He also with his own hands twists Camillo's neck during a
+vaulting-match, making it appear that he came by his death
+accidentally. Suspicion of the murder attaches, however, to Vittoria.
+She is tried for her life before Monticelso and De' Medici; acquitted,
+and relegated to a house of Convertites or female reformatory.
+Brachiano, on the accession of Monticelso to the Papal throne,
+resolves to leave Rome with Vittoria. They escape, together with her
+mother Cornelia, and her brothers Flamineo and Marcello, to Padua; and
+it is here that the last scenes of the tragedy are laid.
+
+The use Webster made of Lodovico Orsini deserves particular attention.
+He introduces this personage in the very first scene as a spendthrift,
+who, having run through his fortune, has been outlawed. Count
+Lodovico, as he is always called, has no relationship with the Orsini,
+but is attached to the service of Francesco de' Medici, and is an old
+lover of the Duchess Isabella. When, therefore, the Grand Duke
+meditates vengeance on Brachiano, he finds a fitting instrument in the
+desperate Lodovico. Together, in disguise, they repair to Padua.
+Lodovico poisons the Duke of Brachiano's helmet, and has the
+satisfaction of ending his last struggles by the halter. Afterwards,
+with companions, habited as a masquer, he enters Vittoria's palace and
+puts her to death together with her brother Flamineo. Just when the
+deed of vengeance has been completed, young Giovanni Orsini, heir of
+Brachiano, enters and orders the summary execution of Lodovico for
+this deed of violence. Webster's invention in this plot is confined to
+the fantastic incidents attending on the deaths of Isabella, Camillo,
+and Brachiano, and to the murder of Marcello by his brother Flamineo,
+with the further consequence of Cornelia's madness and death. He has
+heightened our interest in Isabella, at the expense of Brachiano's
+character, by making her an innocent and loving wife instead of an
+adulteress. He has ascribed different motives from the real ones to
+Lodovico in order to bring this personage into rank with the chief
+actors, though this has been achieved with only moderate success.
+Vittoria is abandoned to the darkest interpretation. She is a woman
+who rises to eminence by crime, as an unfaithful wife, the murderess
+of her husband, and an impudent defier of justice. Her brother,
+Flamineo, becomes under Webster's treatment one of those worst human
+infamies--a court dependent; ruffian, buffoon, pimp, murderer by
+turns. Furthermore, and without any adequate object beyond that of
+completing this study of a type he loved, Webster makes him murder his
+own brother Marcello by treason. The part assigned to Marcello, it
+should be said, is a genial and happy one; and Cornelia, the mother of
+the Accoramboni, is a dignified character, pathetic in her suffering.
+Webster, it may be added, treats the Cardinal Monticelso as allied in
+some special way to the Medici. Yet certain traits in his character,
+especially his avoidance of bloodshed and the tameness of his temper
+after Camillo has been murdered, seem to have been studied from the
+historical Sixtus.
+
+III
+
+The character of the 'White Devil, or Vittoria Corombona,' is perhaps
+the most masterly creation of Webster's genius. Though her history is
+a true one in its leading incidents, the poet, while portraying a real
+personage, has conceived an original individuality. It is impossible
+to know for certain how far the actual Vittoria was guilty of her
+first husband's murder. Her personality fails to detach itself from
+the romance of her biography by any salient qualities. But Webster,
+with true playwright's instinct, casts aside historical doubts, and
+delineates in his heroine a woman of a very marked and terrible
+nature. Hard as adamant, uncompromising, ruthless, Vittoria follows
+ambition as the loadstar of her life. It is the ambition to reign as
+Duchess, far more than any passion for a paramour, which makes her
+plot Camillo's and Isabella's murders, and throws her before marriage
+into Brachiano's arms. Added to this ambition, she is possessed with
+the cold demon of her own imperial and victorious beauty. She has the
+courage of her criminality in the fullest sense; and much of the
+fascination with which Webster has invested her, depends upon her
+dreadful daring. Her portrait is drawn with full and firm touches.
+Although she appears but five times on the scene, she fills it from
+the first line of the drama to the last. Each appearance adds
+effectively to the total impression. We see her first during a
+criminal interview with Brachiano, contrived by her brother Flamineo.
+The plot of the tragedy is developed in this scene; Vittoria
+suggesting, under the metaphor of a dream, that her lover should
+compass the deaths of his duchess and her husband. The dream is told
+with deadly energy and ghastly picturesqueness. The cruel sneer at its
+conclusion, murmured by a voluptuous woman in the ears of an
+impassioned paramour, chills us with the sense of concentrated vice.
+Her next appearance is before the court, on trial for her husband's
+murder. The scene is celebrated, and has been much disputed by
+critics. Relying on her own dauntlessness, on her beauty, and on the
+protection of Brachiano, Vittoria hardly takes the trouble to plead
+innocence or to rebut charges. She stands defiant, arrogant, vigilant,
+on guard; flinging the lie in the teeth of her arraigners; quick to
+seize the slightest sign of feebleness in their attack; protesting her
+guiltlessness so loudly that she shouts truth down by brazen strength
+of lung; retiring at the close with taunts; blazing throughout with
+the intolerable lustre of some baleful planet. When she enters for the
+third time, it is to quarrel with her paramour. He has been stung to
+jealousy by a feigned love-letter. She knows that she has given him no
+cause; it is her game to lure him by fidelity to marriage. Therefore
+she resolves to make his mistake the instrument of her exaltation.
+Beginning with torrents of abuse, hurling reproaches at him for her
+own dishonour and the murder of his wife, working herself by studied
+degrees into a tempest of ungovernable rage, she flings herself upon
+the bed, refuses his caresses, spurns and tramples on him, till she
+has brought Brachiano, terrified, humbled, fascinated, to her feet.
+Then she gradually relents beneath his passionate protestations and
+repeated promises of marriage. At this point she speaks but little.
+We only feel her melting humour in the air, and long to see the scene
+played by such an actress as Madame Bernhardt. When Vittoria next
+appears, it is as Duchess by the deathbed of the Duke, her husband.
+Her attendance here is necessary, but it contributes little to the
+development of her character. We have learned to know her, and expect
+neither womanish tears nor signs of affection at a crisis which
+touches her heart less than her self-love. Webster, among his other
+excellent qualities, knew how to support character by reticence.
+Vittoria's silence in this act is significant; and when she retires
+exclaiming, 'O me! this place is hell!' we know that it is the outcry,
+not of a woman who has lost what made life dear, but of one who sees
+the fruits of crime imperilled by a fatal accident. The last scene of
+the play is devoted to Vittoria. It begins with a notable altercation
+between her and Flamineo. She calls him 'ruffian' and 'villain,'
+refusing him the reward of his vile service. This quarrel emerges in
+one of Webster's grotesque contrivances to prolong a poignant
+situation. Flamineo quits the stage and reappears with pistols. He
+affects a kind of madness; and after threatening Vittoria, who never
+flinches, he proposes they should end their lives by suicide. She
+humours him, but manages to get the first shot. Flamineo falls,
+wounded apparently to death. Then Vittoria turns and tramples on him
+with her feet and tongue, taunting him in his death agony with the
+enumeration of his crimes. Her malice and her energy are equally
+infernal. Soon, however, it appears that the whole device was but a
+trick of Flamineo's to test his sister. The pistol was not loaded. He
+now produces a pair which are properly charged, and proceeds in good
+earnest to the assassination of Vittoria. But at this critical moment
+Lodovico and his masquers appear; brother and sister both die
+unrepentant, defiant to the end. Vittoria's customary pride and her
+familiar sneers impress her speech in these last moments with a
+trenchant truth to nature:
+
+                _You_ my death's-man!
+  Methinks thou dost not look horrid enough,
+  Thou hast too good a face to be a hangman:
+  If thou be, do thy office in right form;
+  Fall down upon thy knees, and ask forgiveness!
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  I will be waited on in death; my servant
+  Shall never go before me.
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+                Yes, I shall welcome death
+  As princes do some great ambassadors:
+  I'll meet thy weapon half-way.
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+                 'Twas a manly blow!
+  The next thou giv'st, murder some sucking infant;
+  And then thou wilt be famous.
+
+So firmly has Webster wrought the character of this white devil, that
+we seem to see her before us as in a picture. 'Beautiful as the
+leprosy, dazzling as the lightning,' to use a phrase of her
+enthusiastic admirer Hazlitt, she takes her station like a lady in
+some portrait by Paris Bordone, with gleaming golden hair twisted into
+snakelike braids about her temples, with skin white as cream, bright
+cheeks, dark dauntless eyes, and on her bosom, where it has been
+chafed by jewelled chains, a flush of rose. She is luxurious, but not
+so abandoned to the pleasures of the sense as to forget the purpose of
+her will and brain. Crime and peril add zest to her enjoyment. When
+arraigned in open court before the judgment-seat of deadly and
+unscrupulous foes, she conceals the consciousness of guilt, and stands
+erect, with fierce front, unabashed, relying on the splendour of her
+irresistible beauty and the subtlety of her piercing wit. Chafing with
+rage, the blood mounts and adds a lustre to her cheek. It is no flush
+of modesty, but of rebellious indignation. The Cardinal, who hates
+her, brands her emotion with the name of shame. She rebukes him,
+hurling a jibe at his own mother. And when they point with spiteful
+eagerness to the jewels blazing on her breast, to the silks and satins
+that she rustles in, her husband lying murdered, she retorts:
+
+     Had I foreknown his death, as you suggest, I would have
+     bespoke my mourning.
+
+She is condemned, but not vanquished, and leaves the court with a
+stinging sarcasm. They send her to a house of Convertites:
+
+     _V.C_. A house of Convertites! what's that?
+
+     _M_. A house of penitent whores.
+
+     _V.C_. Do the noblemen of Rome Erect it for their wives,
+     that I am sent To lodge there?
+
+Charles Lamb was certainly in error? when he described Vittoria's
+attitude as one of 'innocence-resembling boldness.' In the trial
+scene, no less than in the scenes of altercation with Brachiano and
+Flamineo, Webster clearly intended her to pass for a magnificent
+vixen, a beautiful and queenly termagant. Her boldness is the audacity
+of impudence, which does not condescend to entertain the thought of
+guilt. Her egotism is so hard and so profound that the very victims
+whom she sacrifices to ambition seem in her sight justly punished. Of
+Camillo and Isabella, her husband and his wife, she says to Brachiano:
+
+     And both were struck dead by that sacred yew, In that base
+     shallow grave that was their due.
+
+IV
+
+It is tempting to pass from this analysis of Vittoria's life to a
+consideration of Webster's drama as a whole, especially in a book
+dedicated to Italian byways. For that mysterious man of genius had
+explored the dark and devious paths of Renaissance vice, and had
+penetrated the secrets of Italian wickedness with truly appalling
+lucidity. His tragedies, though worthless as historical documents,
+have singular value as commentaries upon history, as revelations to us
+of the spirit of the sixteenth century in its deepest gloom.
+
+Webster's plays, owing to the condensation of their thought and the
+compression of their style, are not easy to read for the first time.
+He crowds so many fantastic incidents into one action, and burdens his
+discourse with so much profoundly studied matter, that we rise from
+the perusal of his works with a blurred impression of the fables, a
+deep sense of the poet's power and personality, and an ineffaceable
+recollection of one or two resplendent scenes. His Roman history-play
+of 'Appius and Virginia' proves that he understood the value of a
+simple plot, and that he was able, when he chose, to work one out with
+conscientious calmness. But the two Italian dramas upon which his fame
+is justly founded, by right of which he stands alone among the
+playwrights of all literatures, are marked by a peculiar and wayward
+mannerism. Each part is etched with equal effort after luminous effect
+upon a back-ground of lurid darkness; and the whole play is made up
+of these parts, without due concentration on a master-motive. The
+characters are definite in outline, but, taken together in the conduct
+of a single plot, they seem to stand apart, like figures in a _tableau
+vivant_; nor do they act and react each upon the other in the play of
+interpenetrative passions. That this mannerism was deliberately
+chosen, we have a right to believe. 'Willingly, and not ignorantly, in
+this kind have I faulted,' is the answer Webster gives to such as may
+object that he has not constructed his plays upon the classic model.
+He seems to have had a certain sombre richness of tone and intricacy
+of design in view, combining sensational effect and sententious
+pregnancy of diction in works of laboured art, which, when adequately
+represented to the ear and eye upon the stage, might at a touch obtain
+the animation they now lack for chamber-students.
+
+When familiarity has brought us acquainted with his style, when we
+have disentangled the main characters and circumstances from their
+adjuncts, we perceive that he treats poignant and tremendous
+situations with a concentrated vigour special to his genius; that he
+has studied each word and trait of character, and that he has prepared
+by gradual approaches and degrees of horror for the culmination of his
+tragedies. The sentences which seem at first sight copied from a
+commonplace book, are found to be appropriate. Brief lightning flashes
+of acute perception illuminate the midnight darkness of his all but
+unimaginably depraved characters. Sharp unexpected touches evoke
+humanity in the _fantoccini_ of his wayward art. No dramatist has
+shown more consummate ability in heightening terrific effects, in
+laying bare the innermost mysteries of crime, remorse, and pain,
+combined to make men miserable. It has been said of Webster that,
+feeling himself deficient in the first poetic qualities, he
+concentrated his powers upon one point, and achieved success by sheer
+force of self-cultivation. There is perhaps some truth in this. At any
+rate, his genius was of a narrow and peculiar order, and he knew well
+how to make the most of its limitations. Yet we must not forget that
+he felt a natural bias toward the dreadful stuff with which he deals.
+The mystery of iniquity had an irresistible attraction for his mind.
+He was drawn to comprehend and reproduce abnormal elements of
+spiritual anguish. The materials with which he builds his tragedies
+are sought for in the ruined places of lost souls, in the agonies of
+madness and despair, in the sarcasms of criminal and reckless atheism,
+in slow tortures, griefs beyond endurance, the tempests of remorseful
+death, the spasms of fratricidal bloodshed. He is often melodramatic
+in the means employed to bring these psychological conditions home to
+us. He makes too free use of poisoned engines, daggers, pistols,
+disguised murderers, and so forth. Yet his firm grasp upon the
+essential qualities of diseased and guilty human nature saves him,
+even at his wildest, from the unrealities and extravagances into which
+less potent artists of the _drame sanglant_--Marston, for
+example--blundered.
+
+With Webster, the tendency to brood on horrors was no result of
+calculation. It belonged to his idiosyncrasy. He seems to have been
+suckled from birth at the breast of that _Mater Tenebrarum_, our Lady
+of Darkness, whom De Quincey in one of his 'Suspiria de Profundis'
+describes among the Semnai Theai, the august goddesses, the mysterious
+foster-nurses of suffering humanity. He cannot say the simplest thing
+without giving it a ghastly or sinister turn. If one of his characters
+draws a metaphor from pie-crust, he must needs use language of the
+churchyard:
+
+                         You speak as if a man
+  Should know what fowl is coffined in a baked meat
+  Afore you cut it open.
+
+Hideous similes are heaped together in illustration of the commonest
+circumstances:
+
+     Places at court are but like beds in the hospital, where
+     this man's head lies at that man's foot, and so lower and
+     lower.
+
+     When knaves come to preferment, they rise as gallowses are
+     raised in the Low Countries, one upon another's shoulders.
+
+     I would sooner eat a dead pigeon taken from the soles of the
+     feet of one sick of the plague than kiss one of you fasting.
+
+A soldier is twitted with serving his master:
+
+  As witches do their serviceable spirits,
+  Even with thy prodigal blood.
+
+An adulterous couple get this curse:
+
+  Like mistletoe on sear elms spent by weather,
+  Let him cleave to her, and both rot together.
+
+A bravo is asked:
+
+  Dost thou imagine thou canst slide on blood,
+  And not be tainted with a shameful fall?
+  Or, like the black and melancholic yew-tree,
+  Dost think to root thyself in dead men's graves,
+  And yet to prosper?
+
+It is dangerous to extract philosophy of life from any dramatist. Yet
+Webster so often returns to dark and doleful meditations, that we may
+fairly class him among constitutional pessimists. Men, according to
+the grimness of his melancholy, are:
+
+           Only like dead walls or vaulted graves,
+  That, ruined, yield no echo.
+                O this gloomy world!
+  In what a shadow or deep pit of darkness
+  Doth womanish and fearful mankind live!
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  We are merely the stars' tennis-balls, struck and banded
+  Which way please them.
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Pleasure of life! what is't? only the good hours of an ague.
+
+A Duchess is 'brought to mortification,' before her strangling by the
+executioner, in this high fantastical oration:
+
+     Thou art a box of worm-seed, at best but a salvatory of
+     green mummy. What's this flesh? A little crudded milk,
+     fantastical puff-paste, &c. &c.
+
+Man's life in its totality is summed up with monastic cynicism in
+these lyric verses:
+
+  Of what is't fools make such vain keeping?
+  Sin their conception, their birth weeping,
+  Their life a general mist of error,
+  Their death a hideous storm of terror.
+
+The greatness of the world passes by with all its glory:
+
+  Vain the ambition of kings,
+  Who seek by trophies and dead things
+  To leave a living name behind,
+  And weave but nets to catch the wind.
+
+It would be easy to surfeit criticism with similar examples; where
+Webster is writing in sarcastic, meditative, or deliberately
+terror-stirring moods. The same dark dye of his imagination shows
+itself even more significantly in circumstances where, in the work of
+any other artist, it would inevitably mar the harmony of the picture.
+A lady, to select one instance, encourages her lover to embrace her at
+the moment of his happiness. She cries:
+
+                         Sir, be confident!
+  What is't distracts you? This is flesh and blood, sir;
+  'Tis not the figure cut in alabaster,
+  Kneels at my husband's tomb.
+
+Yet so sustained is Webster's symphony of sombre tints, that we do not
+feel this sepulchral language, this 'talk fit for a charnel' (to use
+one of his own phrases), to be out of keeping. It sounds like a
+presentiment of coming woes, which, as the drama grows to its
+conclusion, gather and darken on the wretched victims of his bloody
+plot.
+
+It was with profound sagacity, or led by some deep-rooted instinct,
+that Webster sought the fables of his two great tragedies, 'The White
+Devil' and 'The Duchess of Malfi,' in Italian annals. Whether he had
+visited Italy in his youth, we cannot say; for next to nothing is
+known about Webster's life. But that he had gazed long and earnestly
+into the mirror held up by that enchantress of the nations in his age,
+is certain. Aghast and fascinated by the sins he saw there flaunting
+in the light of day--sins on whose pernicious glamour Ascham, Greene,
+and Howell have insisted with impressive vehemence--Webster discerned
+in them the stuff he needed for philosophy and art. Withdrawing from
+that contemplation, he was like a spirit 'loosed out of hell to speak
+of horrors.' Deeper than any poet of the time, deeper than any even of
+the Italians, he read the riddle of the sphinx of crime. He found
+there something akin to his own imaginative mood, something which he
+alone could fully comprehend and interpret. From the superficial
+narratives of writers like Bandello he extracted a spiritual essence
+which was, if not the literal, at least the ideal, truth involved in
+them.
+
+The enormous and unnatural vices, the domestic crimes of cruelty,
+adultery, and bloodshed, the political scheming and the subtle arts of
+vengeance, the ecclesiastical tyranny and craft, the cynical
+scepticism and lustre of luxurious godlessness, which made Italy in
+the midst of her refinement blaze like 'a bright and ominous star'
+before the nations; these were the very elements in which the genius
+of Webster--salamander-like in flame--could live and flourish. Only
+the incidents of Italian history, or of French history in its
+Italianated epoch, were capable of supplying him with the proper type
+of plot. It was in Italy alone, or in an Italianated country, such as
+England for a brief space in the reign of the first Stuart threatened
+to become, that the well-nigh diabolical wickedness of his characters
+might have been realised. An audience familiar with Italian novels
+through Belleforest and Painter, inflamed by the long struggle of the
+Reformation against the scarlet abominations of the Papal See,
+outraged in their moral sense by the political paradoxes of
+Machiavelli, horror-stricken at the still recent misdoings of Borgias
+and Medici and Farnesi, alarmed by that Italian policy which had
+conceived the massacre of S. Bartholomew in France, and infuriated by
+that ecclesiastical hypocrisy which triumphed in the same; such an
+audience were at the right point of sympathy with a poet who undertook
+to lay the springs of Southern villany before them bare in a dramatic
+action. But, as the old proverb puts it, 'Inglese Italianato e un
+diavolo incarnato.' 'An Englishman assuming the Italian habit is a
+devil in the flesh.' The Italians were depraved, but spiritually
+feeble. The English playwright, when he brought them on the stage,
+arrayed with intellectual power and gleaming with the lurid splendour
+of a Northern fancy, made them tenfold darker and more terrible. To
+the subtlety and vices of the South he added the melancholy,
+meditation, and sinister insanity of his own climate. He deepened the
+complexion of crime and intensified lawlessness by robbing the Italian
+character of levity. Sin, in his conception of that character, was
+complicated with the sense of sin, as it never had been in a
+Florentine or a Neapolitan. He had not grasped the meaning of the
+Machiavellian conscience, in its cold serenity and disengagement from
+the dread of moral consequence. Not only are his villains stealthy,
+frigid, quick to evil, merciless, and void of honour; but they brood
+upon their crimes and analyse their motives. In the midst of their
+audacity they are dogged by dread of coming retribution. At the crisis
+of their destiny they look back upon their better days with
+intellectual remorse. In the execution of their bloodiest schemes they
+groan beneath the chains of guilt they wear, and quake before the
+phantoms of their haunted brains.
+
+Thus passion and reflection, superstition and profanity, deliberate
+atrocity and fear of judgment, are united in the same nature; and to
+make the complex still more strange, the play-wright has gifted these
+tremendous personalities with his own wild humour and imaginative
+irony. The result is almost monstrous, such an ideal of character as
+makes earth hell. And yet it is not without justification. To the
+Italian text has been added the Teutonic commentary, and both are
+fused by a dramatic genius into one living whole.
+
+One of these men is Flamineo, the brother of Vittoria Corombona, upon
+whose part the action of the 'White Devil' depends. He has been bred
+in arts and letters at the university of Padua; but being poor and of
+luxurious appetites, he chooses the path of crime in courts for his
+advancement. A duke adopts him for his minion, and Flamineo acts the
+pander to this great man's lust. He contrives the death of his
+brother-in-law, suborns a doctor to poison the Duke's wife, and
+arranges secret meetings between his sister and the paramour who is to
+make her fortune and his own. His mother appears like a warning Ate to
+prevent her daughter's crime. In his rage he cries:
+
+  What fury raised _thee_ up? Away, away!
+
+And when she pleads the honour of their house he answers:
+
+                        Shall I,
+  Having a path so open and so free
+  To my preferment, still retain your milk
+  In my pale forehead?
+
+Later on, when it is necessary to remove another victim, he runs his
+own brother through the body and drives his mother to madness. Yet, in
+the midst of these crimes, we are unable to regard him as a simple
+cut-throat. His irony and reckless courting of damnation open-eyed to
+get his gust of life in this world, make him no common villain. He can
+be brave as well as fierce. When the Duke insults him he bandies taunt
+for taunt:
+
+     _Brach_. No, you pander?
+
+     _Flam_. What, me, my lord?
+      Am I your dog?
+
+     _B_. A bloodhound; do you brave, do you stand me?
+
+     _F_. Stand you! let those that have diseases run;
+     I need no plasters.
+
+     _B_. Would you be kicked?
+
+     _F_. Would you have your neck broke?
+     I tell you, duke, I am not in Russia;
+     My shins must be kept whole.
+
+     _B_. Do you know me?
+
+     _F_. Oh, my lord, methodically:
+     As in this world there are degrees of evils,
+     So in this world there are degrees of devils.
+     You're a great duke, I your poor secretary.
+
+When the Duke dies and his prey escapes him, the rage of
+disappointment breaks into this fierce apostrophe:
+
+     I cannot conjure; but if prayers or oaths. Will get the
+     speech of him, though forty devils Wait on him in his livery
+     of flames, I'll speak to him and shake him by the hand,
+     Though I be blasted.
+
+As crimes thicken round him, and he still despairs of the reward for
+which he sold himself, conscience awakes:
+
+                              I have lived
+     Riotously ill, like some that live in court,
+     And sometimes when my face was full of smiles Have felt the
+     maze of conscience in my breast.
+
+The scholar's scepticism, which lies at the root of his perversity,
+finds utterance in this meditation upon death:
+
+     Whither shall I go now? O Lucian, thy ridiculous purgatory!
+     to find Alexander the Great cobbling shoes, Pompey tagging
+     points, and Julius Caesar making hair-buttons!
+
+     Whether I resolve to fire, earth, water, air, or all the
+     elements by scruples, I know not, nor greatly care.
+
+At the last moment he yet can say:
+
+     We cease to grieve, cease to be Fortune's slaves, Nay, cease
+     to die, by dying.
+
+And again, with the very yielding of his spirit:
+
+     My life was a black charnel.
+
+It will be seen that in no sense does Flamineo resemble Iago. He is
+not a traitor working by craft and calculating ability to
+well-considered ends. He is the desperado frantically clutching at an
+uncertain and impossible satisfaction. Webster conceives him as a
+self-abandoned atheist, who, maddened by poverty and tainted by
+vicious living, takes a fury to his heart, and, because the goodness
+of the world has been for ever lost to him, recklessly seeks the bad.
+
+Bosola, in the 'Duchess of Malfi,' is of the same stamp. He too has
+been a scholar. He is sent to the galleys 'for a notorious murder,'
+and on his release he enters the service of two brothers, the Duke of
+Calabria and the Cardinal of Aragon, who place him as their
+intelligencer at the court of their sister.
+
+
+     _Bos_. It seems you would create me
+     One of your familiars.
+
+     _Ferd_. Familiar! what's that?
+
+     _Bos_. Why, a very quaint invisible devil in flesh,
+     An intelligencer.
+
+     _Ferd_. Such a kind of thriving thing
+      I would wish thee; and ere long thou may'st arrive
+      At a higher place by it.
+
+Lured by hope of preferment, Bosola undertakes the office of spy,
+tormentor, and at last of executioner. For:
+
+    Discontent and want
+  Is the best clay to mould a villain of.
+
+But his true self, though subdued to be what he quaintly styles 'the
+devil's quilted anvil,' on which 'all sins are fashioned and the blows
+never heard,' continually rebels against this destiny. Compared with
+Flamineo, he is less unnaturally criminal. His melancholy is more
+fantastic, his despair more noble. Throughout the course of craft and
+cruelty on which he is goaded by a relentless taskmaster, his nature,
+hardened as it is, revolts.
+
+At the end, when Bosola presents the body of the murdered Duchess to
+her brother, Webster has wrought a scene of tragic savagery that
+surpasses almost any other that the English stage can show. The
+sight, of his dead sister maddens Ferdinand, who, feeling the eclipse
+of reason gradually absorb his faculties, turns round with frenzied
+hatred on the accomplice of his fratricide. Bosola demands the price
+of guilt. Ferdinand spurns him with the concentrated eloquence of
+despair and the extravagance of approaching insanity. The murderer
+taunts his master coldly and laconically, like a man whose life is
+wrecked, who has waded through blood to his reward, and who at the
+last moment discovers the sacrifice of his conscience and masculine
+freedom to be fruitless. Remorse, frustrated hopes, and thirst for
+vengeance convert Bosola from this hour forward into an instrument of
+retribution. The Duke and his brother the Cardinal are both brought to
+bloody deaths by the hand which they had used to assassinate their
+sister.
+
+It is fitting that something should be said about Webster's conception
+of the Italian despot. Brachiano and Ferdinand, the employers of
+Flamineo and Bosola, are tyrants such as Savonarola described, and as
+we read of in the chronicles of petty Southern cities. Nothing is
+suffered to stand between their lust and its accomplishment. They
+override the law by violence, or pervert its action to their own
+advantage:
+
+    The law to him
+  Is like a foul black cobweb to a spider;
+  He makes it his dwelling and a prison
+  To entangle those shall feed him.
+
+They are eaten up with parasites, accomplices, and all the creatures
+of their crimes:
+
+     He and his brother are like plum-trees that grow crooked
+     over standing pools; they are rich and over-laden with
+     fruit, but none but crows, pies, and caterpillars feed on
+     them.
+
+In their lives they are without a friend; for society in guilt brings
+nought of comfort, and honours are but emptiness:
+
+     Glories, like glow-worms, afar off shine bright;
+     But looked to near, have neither heat nor light.
+
+Their plots and counterplots drive repose far from them:
+
+     There's but three furies found in spacious hell;
+     But in a great man's breast three thousand dwell.
+
+Fearful shapes afflict their fancy; shadows of ancestral crime or
+ghosts of their own raising:
+
+                      For these many years
+  None of our family dies, but there is seen
+  The shape of an old woman; which is given
+  By tradition to us to have been murdered
+  By her nephews for her riches.
+
+Apparitions haunt them:
+
+    How tedious is a guilty conscience!
+  When I look into the fish-ponds in my garden,
+  Methinks I see a thing armed with a rake
+  That seems to strike at me.
+
+Continually scheming against the objects of their avarice and hatred,
+preparing poisons or suborning bravoes, they know that these same arts
+will be employed against them. The wine-cup hides arsenic; the
+headpiece is smeared with antimony; there is a dagger behind every
+arras, and each shadow is a murderer's. When death comes, they meet it
+trembling. What irony Webster has condensed in Brachiano's outcry:
+
+  On pain of death, let no man name death to me;
+  It is a word infinitely horrible.
+
+And how solemn are the following reflections on the death of princes:
+
+  O thou soft natural death, that art joint-twin
+  To sweetest slumber! no rough-bearded comet
+  Stares on thy mild departure; the dull owl
+  Beats not against thy casement, the hoarse wolf
+  Scents not thy carrion: pity winds thy corse,
+  Whilst horror waits on princes.
+
+After their death, this is their epitaph:
+
+               These wretched eminent things
+  Leave no more fame behind'em than should one
+  Fall in a frost and leave his print in snow.
+
+Of Webster's despots, the finest in conception and the firmest in
+execution is Ferdinand of Aragon. Jealousy of his sister and avarice
+take possession of him and torment him like furies. The flash of
+repentance over her strangled body is also the first flash of
+insanity. He survives to present the spectacle of a crazed lunatic,
+and to be run through the body by his paid assassin. In the Cardinal
+of Aragon, Webster paints a profligate Churchman, no less voluptuous,
+blood-guilty, and the rest of it, than his brother the Duke of
+Calabria. It seems to have been the poet's purpose in each of his
+Italian tragedies to unmask Rome as the Papal city really was. In the
+lawless desperado, the intemperate tyrant, and the godless
+ecclesiastic, he portrayed the three curses from which Italian society
+was actually suffering.
+
+It has been needful to dwell upon the gloomy and fantastic side of
+Webster's genius. But it must not be thought that he could touch no
+finer chord. Indeed, it might be said that in the domain of pathos he
+is even more powerful than in that of horror. His mastery in this
+region is displayed in the creation of that dignified and beautiful
+woman, the Duchess of Malfi, who, with nothing in her nature, had she
+but lived prosperously, to divide her from the sisterhood of gentle
+ladies, walks, shrined in love and purity and conscious rectitude,
+amid the snares and pitfalls of her persecutors, to die at last the
+victim of a brother's fevered avarice and a desperado's egotistical
+ambition. The apparatus of infernal cruelty, the dead man's hand, the
+semblances of murdered sons and husband, the masque of madmen, the
+dirge and doleful emblems of the tomb with which she is environed in
+her prison by the torturers who seek to goad her into lunacy, are
+insufficient to disturb the tranquillity and tenderness of her nature.
+When the rope is being fastened to her throat, she does not spend her
+breath in recriminations, but turns to the waiting-woman and says:
+
+                        Farewell, Cariola!
+  I pray thee look thou givest my little boy
+  Some syrup for his cold, and let the girl
+  Say her prayers ere she sleep.
+
+In the preceding scenes we have had enough, nay, over-much, of
+madness, despair, and wrestling with doom. This is the calm that comes
+when death is present, when the tortured soul lays down its burden of
+the flesh with gladness. But Webster has not spared another touch of
+thrilling pathos.
+
+The death-struggle is over; the fratricide has rushed away, a maddened
+man; the murderer is gazing with remorse upon the beautiful dead body
+of his lady, wishing he had the world wherewith to buy her back to
+life again; when suddenly she murmurs 'Mercy!' Our interest, already
+overstrained, revives with momentary hope. But the guardians of the
+grave will not be exorcised; and 'Mercy!' is the last groan of the
+injured Duchess.
+
+Webster showed great skill in his delineation of the Duchess. He had
+to paint a woman in a hazardous situation: a sovereign stooping in her
+widowhood to wed a servant; a lady living with the mystery of this
+unequal marriage round her like a veil. He dowered her with no salient
+qualities of intellect or heart or will; but he sustained our sympathy
+with her, and made us comprehend her. To the last she is a Duchess;
+and when she has divested state and bowed her head to enter the low
+gate of heaven--too low for coronets--her poet shows us, in the lines
+already quoted, that the woman still survives.
+
+The same pathos surrounds the melancholy portrait of Isabella in
+'Vittoria Corombona.' But Isabella, in that play, serves chiefly to
+enhance the tyranny of her triumphant rival. The main difficulty under
+which these scenes of rarest pathos would labour, were they brought
+upon the stage, is their simplicity in contrast with the ghastly and
+contorted horrors that envelop them. A dialogue abounding in the
+passages I have already quoted--a dialogue which bandies 'O you
+screech-owl!' and 'Thou foul black cloud!'--in which a sister's
+admonition to her brother to think twice of suicide assumes a form so
+weird as this:
+
+                 I prithee, yet remember,
+  Millions are now in graves, which at last day
+  Like mandrakes shall rise shrieking.--
+
+such a dialogue could not be rendered save by actors strung up to a
+pitch of almost frenzied tension. To do full justice to what in
+Webster's style would be spasmodic were it not so weighty, and at the
+same time to maintain the purity of outline and melodious rhythm of
+such characters as Isabella, demands no common histrionic power.
+
+In attempting to define Webster's touch upon Italian tragic story, I
+have been led perforce to concentrate attention on what is painful and
+shocking to our sense of harmony in art. He was a vigorous and
+profoundly imaginative playwright. But his most enthusiastic admirers
+will hardly contend that good taste or moderation determined the
+movement of his genius. Nor, though his insight into the essential
+dreadfulness of Italian tragedy was so deep, is it possible to
+maintain that his portraiture of Italian life was true to its more
+superficial aspects. What place would there be for a Correggio or a
+Raphael in such a world as Webster's? Yet we know that the art of
+Raphael and Correggio is in exact harmony with the Italian temperament
+of the same epoch which gave birth to Cesare Borgia and Bianca
+Gapello. The comparatively slighter sketch of Iachimo in 'Cymbeline'
+represents the Italian as he felt and lived, better than the laboured
+portrait of Flamineo. Webster's Italian tragedies are consequently
+true, not so much to the actual conditions of Italy, as to the moral
+impression made by those conditions on a Northern imagination.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+_AUTUMN WANDERINGS_
+
+I.--ITALIAM PETIMUS
+
+
+_Italiam Petimus!_ We left our upland home before daybreak on a clear
+October morning. There had been a hard frost, spangling the meadows
+with rime-crystals, which twinkled where the sun's rays touched them.
+Men and women were mowing the frozen grass with thin short Alpine
+scythes; and as the swathes fell, they gave a crisp, an almost
+tinkling sound. Down into the gorge, surnamed of Avalanche, our horses
+plunged; and there we lost the sunshine till we reached the Bear's
+Walk, opening upon the vales of Albula, and Julier, and Schyn. But up
+above, shone morning light upon fresh snow, and steep torrent-cloven
+slopes reddening with a hundred fading plants; now and then it caught
+the grey-green icicles that hung from cliffs where summer streams had
+dripped. There is no colour lovelier than the blue of an autumn sky in
+the high Alps, defining ridges powdered with light snow, and melting
+imperceptibly downward into the warm yellow of the larches and the
+crimson of the bilberry. Wiesen was radiantly beautiful: those aerial
+ranges of the hills that separate Albula from Julier soared
+crystal-clear above their forests; and for a foreground, on the green
+fields starred with lilac crocuses, careered a group of children on
+their sledges. Then came the row of giant peaks--Pitz d'Aela,
+Tinzenhorn, and Michelhorn, above the deep ravine of Albula--all seen
+across wide undulating golden swards, close-shaven and awaiting
+winter. Carnations hung from cottage windows in full bloom, casting
+sharp angular black shadows on white walls.
+
+_Italiam petimus!_ We have climbed the valley of the Julier, following
+its green, transparent torrent. A night has come and gone at Muehlen.
+The stream still leads us up, diminishing in volume as we rise, up
+through the fleecy mists that roll asunder for the sun, disclosing
+far-off snowy ridges and blocks of granite mountains. The lifeless,
+soundless waste of rock, where only thin winds whistle out of silence
+and fade suddenly into still air, is passed. Then comes the descent,
+with its forests of larch and cembra, golden and dark green upon a
+ground of grey, and in front the serried shafts of the Bernina, and
+here and there a glimpse of emerald lake at turnings of the road.
+Autumn is the season for this landscape. Through the fading of
+innumerable leaflets, the yellowing of larches, and something
+vaporous in the low sun, it gains a colour not unlike that of the
+lands we seek. By the side of the lake at Silvaplana the light was
+strong and warm, but mellow. Pearly clouds hung over the Maloja, and
+floating overhead cast shadows on the opaque water, which may
+literally be compared to chrysoprase. The breadth of golden, brown,
+and russet tints upon the valley at this moment adds softness to its
+lines of level strength. Devotees of the Engadine contend that it
+possesses an austere charm beyond the common beauty of Swiss
+landscape; but this charm is only perfected in autumn. The fresh snow
+on the heights that guard it helps. And then there are the forests of
+dark pines upon those many knolls and undulating mountain-flanks
+beside the lakes. Sitting and dreaming there in noonday sun, I kept
+repeating to myself _Italiam petimus!_
+
+A hurricane blew upward from the pass as we left Silvaplana, ruffling
+the lake with gusts of the Italian wind. By Silz Maria we came in
+sight of a dozen Italian workmen, arm linked in arm in two rows,
+tramping in rhythmic stride, and singing as they went. Two of them
+were such nobly built young men, that for a moment the beauty of the
+landscape faded from my sight, and I was saddened. They moved to their
+singing, like some of Mason's or Frederick Walker's figures, with the
+free grace of living statues, and laughed as we drove by. And yet,
+with all their beauty, industry, sobriety, intelligence, these
+Italians of the northern valleys serve the sterner people of the
+Grisons like negroes, doing their roughest work at scanty wages.
+
+So we came to the vast Alpine wall, and stood on a bare granite slab,
+and looked over into Italy, as men might lean from the battlements of
+a fortress. Behind lies the Alpine valley, grim, declining slowly
+northward, with wind-lashed lakes and glaciers sprawling from
+storm-broken pyramids of gneiss. Below spread the unfathomable depths
+that lead to Lombardy, flooded with sunlight, filled with swirling
+vapour, but never wholly hidden from our sight. For the blast kept
+shifting the cloud-masses, and the sun streamed through in spears and
+bands of sheeny rays. Over the parapet our horses dropped, down
+through sable spruce and amber larch, down between tangles of rowan
+and autumnal underwood. Ever as we sank, the mountains rose--those
+sharp embattled precipices, toppling spires, impendent chasms blurred
+with mist, that make the entrance into Italy sublime. Nowhere do the
+Alps exhibit their full stature, their commanding puissance, with such
+majesty as in the gates of Italy; and of all those gates I think there
+is none to compare with Maloja, none certainly to rival it in
+abruptness of initiation into the Italian secret. Below Vico Soprano
+we pass already into the violets and blues of Titian's landscape. Then
+come the purple boulders among chestnut trees; then the double
+dolomite-like peak of Pitz Badin and Promontogno.
+
+It is sad that words can do even less than painting could to bring
+this window-scene at Promontogno before another eye. The casement just
+frames it. In the foreground are meadow slopes, thinly, capriciously
+planted with chestnut trees and walnuts, each standing with its shadow
+cast upon the sward. A little farther falls the torrent, foaming down
+between black jaws of rain-stained granite, with the wooden buildings
+of a rustic mill set on a ledge of rock. Suddenly above this landscape
+soars the valley, clothing its steep sides on either hand with pines;
+and there are emerald isles of pasture on the wooded flanks; and then
+cliffs, where the red-stemmed larches glow; and at the summit,
+shooting into ether with a swathe of mist around their basement, soar
+the double peaks, the one a pyramid, the other a bold broken crystal
+not unlike the Finsteraarhorn seen from Furka. These are connected by
+a snowy saddle, and snow is lying on their inaccessible crags in
+powdery drifts. Sunlight pours between them into the ravine. The green
+and golden forests now join from either side, and now recede,
+according as the sinuous valley brings their lines together or
+disparts them. There is a sound of cow-bells on the meadows; and the
+roar of the stream is dulled or quickened as the gusts of this October
+wind sweep by or slacken. _Italiam petimus!_
+
+_Tangimus Italiam!_ Chiavenna is a worthy key to this great gate
+Italian. We walked at night in the open galleries of the cathedral
+cloister--white, smoothly curving, well-proportioned loggie, enclosing
+a green space, whence soars the campanile to the stars. The moon had
+sunk, but her light still silvered the mountains that stand at watch
+round Chiavenna; and the castle rock was flat and black against that
+dreamy background. Jupiter, who walked so lately for us on the long
+ridge of the Jacobshorn above our pines, had now an ample space of sky
+over Lombardy to light his lamp in. Why is it, we asked each other, as
+we smoked our pipes and strolled, my friend and I;--why is it that
+Italian beauty does not leave the spirit so untroubled as an Alpine
+scene? Why do we here desire the flower of some emergent feeling to
+grow from the air, or from the soil, or from humanity to greet us?
+This sense of want evoked by Southern beauty is perhaps the antique
+mythopoeic yearning. But in our perplexed life it takes another form,
+and seems the longing for emotion, ever fleeting, ever new,
+unrealised, unreal, insatiable.
+
+
+II.--OVER THE APENNINES
+
+
+
+At Parma we slept in the Albergo della Croce Bianca, which is more a
+bric-a-brac shop than an inn; and slept but badly, for the good folk
+of Parma twanged guitars and exercised their hoarse male voices all
+night in the street below. We were glad when Christian called us, at 5
+A.M., for an early start across the Apennines. This was the day of a
+right Roman journey. In thirteen and a half hours, leaving Parma at 6,
+and arriving in Sarzana at 7.30, we flung ourselves across the spine
+of Italy, from the plains of Eridanus to the seashore of Etruscan
+Luna. I had secured a carriage and extra post-horses the night before;
+therefore we found no obstacles upon the road, but eager drivers,
+quick relays, obsequious postmasters, change, speed, perpetual
+movement. The road itself is a noble one, and nobly entertained in all
+things but accommodation for travellers. At Berceto, near the summit
+of the pass, we stopped just half an hour, to lunch off a mouldy hen
+and six eggs; but that was all the halt we made.
+
+As we drove out of Parma, striking across the plain to the _ghiara_ of
+the Taro, the sun rose over the austere autumnal landscape, with its
+withered vines and crimson haws. Christian, the mountaineer, who at
+home had never seen the sun rise from a flat horizon, stooped from the
+box to call attention to this daily recurring miracle, which on the
+plain of Lombardy is no less wonderful than on a rolling sea. From the
+village of Fornovo, where the Italian League was camped awaiting
+Charles VIII. upon that memorable July morn in 1495, the road strikes
+suddenly aside, gains a spur of the descending Apennines, and keeps
+this vantage till the pass of La Cisa is reached. Many windings are
+occasioned by thus adhering to aretes, but the total result is a
+gradual ascent with free prospect over plain and mountain. The
+Apennines, built up upon a smaller scale than the Alps, perplexed in
+detail and entangled with cross sections and convergent systems, lend
+themselves to this plan of carrying highroads along their ridges
+instead of following the valley.
+
+What is beautiful in the landscape of that northern watershed is the
+subtlety, delicacy, variety, and intricacy of the mountain outlines.
+There is drawing wherever the eye falls. Each section of the vast
+expanse is a picture of tossed crests and complicated undulations. And
+over the whole sea of stationary billows, light is shed like an
+ethereal raiment, with spare colour--blue and grey, and parsimonious
+green--in the near foreground. The detail is somewhat dry and
+monotonous; for these so finely moulded hills are made up of washed
+earth, the immemorial wrecks of earlier mountain ranges. Brown
+villages, not unlike those of Midland England, low houses built of
+stone and tiled with stone, and square-towered churches, occur at rare
+intervals in cultivated hollows, where there are fields and fruit
+trees. Water is nowhere visible except in the wasteful river-beds. As
+we rise, we break into a wilder country, forested with oak, where oxen
+and goats are browsing. The turf is starred with lilac gentian and
+crocus bells, but sparely. Then comes the highest village, Berceto,
+with keen Alpine air. After that, broad rolling downs of yellowing
+grass and russet beech-scrub lead onward to the pass La Cisa. The
+sense of breadth in composition is continually satisfied through this
+ascent by the fine-drawn lines, faint tints, and immense air-spaces of
+Italian landscape. Each little piece reminds one of England; but the
+geographical scale is enormously more grandiose, and the effect of
+majesty proportionately greater.
+
+From La Cisa the road descends suddenly; for the southern escarpment
+of the Apennine, as of the Alpine, barrier is pitched at a far steeper
+angle than the northern. Yet there is no view of the sea. That is
+excluded by the lower hills which hem the Magra. The upper valley is
+beautiful, with verdant lawns and purple hillsides breaking down into
+thick chestnut woods, through which we wound at a rapid pace for
+nearly an hour. The leaves were still green, mellowing to golden; but
+the fruit was ripe and heavy, ready at all points to fall. In the
+still October air the husks above our heads would loosen, and the
+brown nuts rustle through the foliage, and with a dull short thud,
+like drops of thunder-rain, break down upon the sod. At the foot of
+this rich forest, wedged in between huge buttresses, we found
+Pontremoli, and changed our horses here for the last time. It was
+Sunday, and the little town was alive with country-folk; tall stalwart
+fellows wearing peacock's feathers in their black slouched hats, and
+nut-brown maids.
+
+From this point the valley of the Magra is exceeding rich with fruit
+trees, vines, and olives. The tendrils of the vine are yellow now, and
+in some places hued like generous wine; through their thick leaves the
+sun shot crimson. In one cool garden, as the day grew dusk, I noticed
+quince trees laden with pale fruit entangled with pomegranates--green
+spheres and ruddy amid burnished leaves. By the roadside too were many
+berries of bright hues; the glowing red of haws and hips, the amber of
+the pyracanthus, the rose tints of the spindle-wood. These make autumn
+even lovelier than spring. And then there was a wood of chestnuts
+carpeted with pale pinkling, a place to dream of in the twilight. But
+the main motive of this landscape was the indescribable Carrara range,
+an island of pure form and shooting peaks, solid marble, crystalline
+in shape and texture, faintly blue against the blue sky, from which
+they were but scarce divided. These mountains close the valley to
+south-east, and seem as though they belonged to another and more
+celestial region.
+
+Soon the sunlight was gone, and moonrise came to close the day, as we
+rolled onward to Sarzana, through arundo donax and vine-girdled olive
+trees and villages, where contadini lounged upon the bridges. There
+was a stream of sound in our ears, and in my brain a rhythmic dance of
+beauties caught through the long-drawn glorious golden autumn-day.
+
+
+III.--FOSDINOVO
+
+
+The hamlet and the castle of Fosdinovo stand upon a mountain-spur
+above Sarzana, commanding the valley of the Magra and the plains of
+Luni. This is an ancient fief of the Malaspina House, and is still in
+the possession of the Marquis of that name.
+
+The road to Fosdinovo strikes across the level through an avenue of
+plane trees, shedding their discoloured leaves. It then takes to the
+open fields, bordered with tall reeds waving from the foss on either
+hand, where grapes are hanging to the vines. The country-folk allow
+their vines to climb into the olives, and these golden festoons are a
+great ornament to the grey branches. The berries on the trees are
+still quite green, and it is a good olive season. Leaving the main
+road, we pass a villa of the Malaspini, shrouded in immense thickets
+of sweet bay and ilex, forming a grove for the Nymphs or Pan. Here may
+you see just such clean stems and lucid foliage as Gian Bellini
+painted, inch by inch, in his Peter Martyr picture. The place is
+neglected now; the semicircular seats of white Carrara marble are
+stained with green mosses, the altars chipped, the fountains choked
+with bay leaves; and the rose trees, escaped from what were once trim
+garden alleys, have gone wandering a-riot into country hedges. There
+is no demarcation between the great man's villa and the neighbouring
+farms. From this point the path rises, and the barren hillside is
+a-bloom with late-flowering myrtles. Why did the Greeks consecrate
+these myrtle-rods to Death as well as Love? Electra complained that
+her father's tomb had not received the honour of the myrtle branch;
+and the Athenians wreathed their swords with myrtle in memory of
+Harmodius. Thinking of these matters, I cannot but remember lines of
+Greek, which have themselves the rectitude and elasticity of myrtle
+wands:
+
+(Greek:)
+
+  kai prospeson eklaus' eremias tuchon
+  spondas te lusas askon hon phero xenois
+  espeisa tumbo d'amphetheka mursinas.
+
+As we approach Fosdinovo, the hills above us gain sublimity; the
+prospect over plain and sea--the fields where Luna was, the widening
+bay of Spezzia--grows ever grander. The castle is a ruin, still
+capable of partial habitation, and now undergoing repair--the state in
+which a ruin looks most sordid and forlorn. How strange it is, too,
+that, to enforce this sense of desolation, sad dishevelled weeds cling
+ever to such antique masonry! Here are the henbane, the sow-thistle,
+the wild cucumber. At Avignon, at Orvieto, at Dolce Acqua, at Les
+Baux, we never missed them. And they have the dusty courtyards, the
+massive portals, where portcullises still threaten, of Fosdinovo to
+themselves. Over the gate, and here and there on corbels, are carved
+the arms of Malaspina--a barren thorn-tree, gnarled with the
+geometrical precision of heraldic irony.
+
+Leaning from the narrow windows of this castle, with the spacious view
+to westward, I thought of Dante. For Dante in this castle was the
+guest of Moroello Malaspina, what time he was yet finishing the
+'Inferno.' There is a little old neglected garden, full to south,
+enclosed upon a rampart which commands the Borgo, where we found frail
+canker-roses and yellow amaryllis. Here, perhaps, he may have sat
+with ladies--for this was the Marchesa's pleasaunce; or may have
+watched through a short summer's night, until he saw that _tremolar
+della marina_, portending dawn, which afterwards he painted in the
+'Purgatory.'
+
+From Fosdinovo one can trace the Magra work its way out seaward, not
+into the plain where once the _candentia moenia Lunae_ flashed sunrise
+from their battlements, but close beside the little hills which back
+the southern arm of the Spezzian gulf. At the extreme end of that
+promontory, called Del Corvo, stood the Benedictine convent of S.
+Croce; and it was here in 1309, if we may trust to tradition, that
+Dante, before his projected journey into France, appeared and left the
+first part of his poem with the Prior. Fra Ilario, such was the good
+father's name, received commission to transmit the 'Inferno' to
+Uguccione della Faggiuola; and he subsequently recorded the fact of
+Dante's visit in a letter which, though its genuineness has been
+called in question, is far too interesting to be left without
+allusion. The writer says that on occasion of a journey into lands
+beyond the Riviera, Dante visited this convent, appearing silent and
+unknown among the monks. To the Prior's question what he wanted, he
+gazed upon the brotherhood, and only answered, 'Peace!' Afterwards, in
+private conversation, he communicated his name and spoke about his
+poem. A portion of the 'Divine Comedy' composed in the Italian tongue
+aroused Ilario's wonder, and led him to inquire why his guest had not
+followed the usual course of learned poets by committing his thoughts
+to Latin. Dante replied that he had first intended to write in that
+language, and that he had gone so far as to begin the poem in
+Virgilian hexameters. Reflection upon the altered conditions of
+society in that age led him, however, to reconsider the matter; and he
+was resolved to tune another lyre, 'suited to the sense of modern
+men.' 'For,' said he, 'it is idle to set solid food before the lips
+of sucklings.'
+
+If we can trust Fra Ilario's letter as a genuine record, which is
+unhappily a matter of some doubt, we have in this narration not only a
+picturesque, almost a melodramatically picturesque glimpse of the
+poet's apparition to those quiet monks in their seagirt house of
+peace, but also an interesting record of the destiny which presided
+over the first great work of literary art in a distinctly modern
+language.
+
+
+IV.--LA SPEZZIA
+
+
+While we were at Fosdinovo the sky filmed over, and there came a halo
+round the sun. This portended change; and by evening, after we had
+reached La Spezzia, earth, sea, and air were conscious of a coming
+tempest. At night I went down to the shore, and paced the sea-wall
+they have lately built along the Rada. The moon was up, but overdriven
+with dry smoky clouds, now thickening to blackness over the whole bay,
+now leaving intervals through which the light poured fitfully and
+fretfully upon the wrinkled waves; and ever and anon they shuddered
+with electric gleams which were not actual lightning. Heaven seemed to
+be descending on the sea; one might have fancied that some powerful
+charms were drawing down the moon with influence malign upon those
+still resisting billows. For not as yet the gulf was troubled to its
+depth, and not as yet the breakers dashed in foam against the
+moonlight-smitten promontories. There was but an uneasy murmuring of
+wave to wave; a whispering of wind, that stooped its wing and hissed
+along the surface, and withdrew into the mystery of clouds again; a
+momentary chafing of churned water round the harbour piers, subsiding
+into silence petulant and sullen. I leaned against an iron stanchion
+and longed for the sea's message. But nothing came to me, and the
+drowned secret of Shelley's death those waves which were his grave
+revealed not.
+
+  Howler and scooper of storms! capricious and dainty sea!
+
+Meanwhile the incantation swelled in shrillness, the electric shudders
+deepened. Alone in this elemental overture to tempest I took no note
+of time, but felt, through self-abandonment to the symphonic
+influence, how sea and air, and clouds akin to both, were dealing with
+each other complainingly, and in compliance to some maker of unrest
+within them. A touch upon my shoulder broke this trance; I turned and
+saw a boy beside me in a coastguard's uniform. Francesco was on patrol
+that night; but my English accent soon assured him that I was no
+_contrabbandiere_, and he too leaned against the stanchion and told me
+his short story. He was in his nineteenth year, and came from
+Florence, where his people live in the Borgo Ognissanti. He had all
+the brightness of the Tuscan folk, a sort of innocent malice mixed
+with _espieglerie_. It was diverting to see the airs he gave himself
+on the strength of his new military dignity, his gun, and uniform, and
+night duty on the shore. I could not help humming to myself _Non piu
+andrai_; for Francesco was a sort of Tuscan Cherubino. We talked about
+picture galleries and libraries in Florence, and I had to hear his
+favourite passages from the Italian poets. And then there came the
+plots of Jules Verne's stories and marvellous narrations about _l'
+uomo cavallo, l' uomo volante, l' uomo pesce_. The last of these
+personages turned out to be Paolo Boynton (so pronounced), who had
+swam the Arno in his diving dress, passing the several bridges, and
+when he came to the great weir 'allora tutti stare con bocca aperta.'
+Meanwhile the storm grew serious, and our conversation changed.
+Francesco told me about the terrible sun-stricken sand shores of the
+Riviera, burning in summer noon, over which the coast-guard has to
+tramp, their perils from falling stones in storm, and the trains that
+come rushing from those narrow tunnels on the midnight line of march.
+It is a hard life; and the thirst for adventure which drove this
+boy--'il piu matto di tutta la famiglia'--to adopt it, seems well-nigh
+quenched. And still, with a return to Giulio Verne, he talked
+enthusiastically of deserting, of getting on board a merchant ship,
+and working his way to southern islands where wonders are.
+
+A furious blast swept the whole sky for a moment almost clear. The
+moonlight fell, with racing cloud-shadows, upon sea and hills, the
+lights of Lerici, the great _fanali_ at the entrance of the gulf, and
+Francesco's upturned handsome face. Then all again was whirled in mist
+and foam; one breaker smote the sea wall in a surge of froth, another
+plunged upon its heels; with inconceivable swiftness came rain;
+lightning deluged the expanse of surf, and showed the windy trees bent
+landward by the squall. It was long past midnight now, and the storm
+was on us for the space of three days.
+
+
+V.--PORTO VENERE
+
+
+For the next three days the wind went worrying on, and a line of surf
+leapt on the sea-wall always to the same height. The hills all around
+were inky black and weary.
+
+At night the wild libeccio still rose, with floods of rain and
+lightning poured upon the waste. I thought of the Florentine patrol.
+Is he out in it, and where?
+
+At last there came a lull. When we rose on the fourth morning, the
+sky was sulky, spent and sleepy after storm--the air as soft and tepid
+as boiled milk or steaming flannel. We drove along the shore to Porto
+Venere, passing the arsenals and dockyards, which have changed the
+face of Spezzia since Shelley knew it. This side of the gulf is not so
+rich in vegetation as the other, probably because it lies open to the
+winds from the Carrara mountains. The chestnuts come down to the shore
+in many places, bringing with them the wild mountain-side. To make up
+for this lack of luxuriance, the coast is furrowed with a succession
+of tiny harbours, where the fishing-boats rest at anchor. There are
+many villages upon the spurs of hills, and on the headlands naval
+stations, hospitals, lazzaretti, and prisons. A prickly bindweed (the
+_Smilax Sarsaparilla_) forms a feature in the near landscape, with its
+creamy odoriferous blossoms, coral berries, and glossy thorned leaves.
+
+A turn of the road brought Porto Venere in sight, and on its grey
+walls flashed a gleam of watery sunlight. The village consists of one
+long narrow street, the houses on the left side hanging sheer above
+the sea. Their doors at the back open on to cliffs which drop about
+fifty feet upon the water. A line of ancient walls, with mediaeval
+battlements and shells of chambers suspended midway between earth and
+sky, runs up the rock behind the town; and this wall is pierced with a
+deep gateway above which the inn is piled. We had our lunch in a room
+opening upon the town-gate, adorned with a deep-cut Pisan arch
+enclosing images and frescoes--a curious episode in a place devoted to
+the jollity of smugglers and seafaring folk. The whole house was such
+as Tintoretto loved to paint--huge wooden rafters; open chimneys with
+pent-house canopies of stone, where the cauldrons hung above logs of
+chestnut; rude low tables spread with coarse linen embroidered at the
+edges, and laden with plates of fishes, fruit, quaint glass,
+big-bellied jugs of earthenware, and flasks of yellow wine. The people
+of the place were lounging round in lazy attitudes. There were odd
+nooks and corners everywhere; unexpected staircases with windows
+slanting through the thickness of the town-wall; pictures of saints;
+high-zoned serving women, on whose broad shoulders lay big coral
+beads; smoke-blackened roofs, and balconies that opened on the sea.
+The house was inexhaustible in motives for pictures.
+
+We walked up the street, attended by a rabble rout of boys--_diavoli
+scatenati_--clean, grinning, white-teethed, who kept incessantly
+shouting, 'Soldo, soldo!' I do not know why these sea-urchins are so
+far more irrepressible than their land brethren. But it is always thus
+in Italy. They take an imperturbable delight in noise and mere
+annoyance. I shall never forget the sea-roar of Porto Venere, with
+that shrill obligate, 'Soldo, soldo, soldo!' rattling like a dropping
+fire from lungs of brass.
+
+At the end of Porto Venere is a withered and abandoned city, climbing
+the cliffs of S. Pietro; and on the headland stands the ruined church,
+built by Pisans with alternate rows of white and black marble, upon
+the site of an old temple of Venus. This is a modest and pure piece of
+Gothic architecture, fair in desolation, refined and dignified, and
+not unworthy in its grace of the dead Cyprian goddess. Through its
+broken lancets the sea-wind whistles and the vast reaches of the
+Tyrrhene gulf are seen. Samphire sprouts between the blocks of marble,
+and in sheltered nooks the caper hangs her beautiful purpureal snowy
+bloom.
+
+The headland is a bold block of white limestone stained with red. It
+has the pitch of Exmoor stooping to the sea near Lynton. To north, as
+one looks along the coast, the line is broken by Porto Fino's
+amethystine promontory; and in the vaporous distance we could trace
+the Riviera mountains, shadowy and blue. The sea came roaring, rolling
+in with tawny breakers; but, far out, it sparkled in pure azure, and
+the cloud-shadows over it were violet. Where Corsica should have been
+seen, soared banks of fleecy, broad-domed alabaster clouds.
+
+This point, once dedicated to Venus, now to Peter--both, be it
+remembered, fishers of men--is one of the most singular in Europe. The
+island of Palmaria, rich in veined marbles, shelters the port; so that
+outside the sea rages, while underneath the town, reached by a narrow
+strait, there is a windless calm. It was not without reason that our
+Lady of Beauty took this fair gulf to herself; and now that she has
+long been dispossessed, her memory lingers yet in names. For Porto
+Venere remembers her, and Lerici is only Eryx. There is a grotto here,
+where an inscription tells us that Byron once 'tempted the Ligurian
+waves.' It is just such a natural sea-cave as might have inspired
+Euripides when he described the refuge of Orestes in 'Iphigenia.'
+
+
+VI.--LERICI
+
+
+Libeccio at last had swept the sky clear. The gulf was ridged with
+foam-fleeced breakers, and the water churned into green, tawny wastes.
+But overhead there flew the softest clouds, all silvery, dispersed in
+flocks. It is the day for pilgrimage to what was Shelley's home.
+
+After following the shore a little way, the road to Lerici breaks into
+the low hills which part La Spezzia from Sarzana. The soil is red, and
+overgrown with arbutus and pinaster, like the country around Cannes.
+Through the scattered trees it winds gently upwards, with frequent
+views across the gulf, and then descends into a land rich with
+olives--a genuine Riviera landscape, where the mountain-slopes are
+hoary, and spikelets of innumerable light-flashing leaves twinkle
+against a blue sea, misty-deep. The walls here are not unfrequently
+adorned with basreliefs of Carrara marble--saints and madonnas very
+delicately wrought, as though they were love-labours of sculptors who
+had passed a summer on this shore. San Terenzio is soon discovered low
+upon the sands to the right, nestling under little cliffs; and then
+the high-built castle of Lerici comes in sight, looking across, the bay
+to Porto Venere--one Aphrodite calling to the other, with the foam
+between. The village is piled around its cove with tall and
+picturesquely coloured houses; the molo and the fishing-boats lie just
+beneath the castle. There is one point of the descending carriage road
+where all this gracefulness is seen, framed by the boughs of olive
+branches, swaying, wind-ruffled, laughing the many-twinkling smiles of
+ocean back from their grey leaves. Here _Erycina ridens_ is at home.
+And, as we stayed to dwell upon the beauty of the scene, came women
+from the bay below--barefooted, straight as willow wands, with
+burnished copper bowls upon their heads. These women have the port of
+goddesses, deep-bosomed, with the length of thigh and springing ankles
+that betoken strength no less than elasticity and grace. The hair of
+some of them was golden, rippling in little curls around brown brows
+and glowing eyes. Pale lilac blent with orange on their dress, and
+coral beads hung from their ears.
+
+At Lerici we took a boat and pushed into the rolling breakers.
+Christian now felt the movement of the sea for the first time. This
+was rather a rude trial, for the grey-maned monsters played, as it
+seemed, at will with our cockle-shell, tumbling in dolphin curves to
+reach the shore. Our boatmen knew all about Shelley and the Casa
+Magni. It is not at Lerici, but close to San Terenzio, upon the south
+side of the village. Looking across the bay from the molo, one could
+clearly see its square white mass, tiled roof, and terrace built on
+rude arcades with a broad orange awning. Trelawny's description hardly
+prepares one for so considerable a place. I think the English exiles
+of that period must have been exacting if the Casa Magni seemed to
+them no better than a bathing-house.
+
+We left our boat at the jetty, and walked through some gardens to the
+villa. There we were kindly entertained by the present occupiers,
+who, when I asked them whether such visits as ours were not a great
+annoyance, gently but feelingly replied: 'It is not so bad now as it
+used to be.' The English gentleman who rents the Casa Magni has known
+it uninterruptedly since Shelley's death, and has used it for
+_villeggiatura_ during the last thirty years. We found him in the
+central sitting-room, which readers of Trelawny's 'Recollections' have
+so often pictured to themselves. The large oval table, the settees
+round the walls, and some of the pictures are still unchanged. As we
+sat talking, I laughed to think of that luncheon party, when Shelley
+lost his clothes, and came naked, dripping with sea-water, into the
+room, protected by the skirts of the sympathising waiting-maid. And
+then I wondered where they found him on the night when he stood
+screaming in his sleep, after the vision of his veiled self, with its
+question, '_Siete soddisfatto_?'
+
+There were great ilexes behind the house in Shelley's time, which have
+been cut down, and near these he is said to have sat and written the
+'Triumph of Life.' Some new houses, too, have been built between the
+villa and the town; otherwise the place is unaltered. Only an awning
+has been added to protect the terrace from the sun. I walked out on
+this terrace, where Shelley used to listen to Jane's singing. The sea
+was fretting at its base, just as Mrs. Shelley says it did when the
+Don Juan disappeared.
+
+From San Terenzio we walked back to Lerici through olive woods,
+attended by a memory which toned the almost overpowering beauty of the
+place to sadness.
+
+
+VII.--VIAREGGIO
+
+
+The same memory drew us, a few days later, to the spot where
+Shelley's body was burned. Viareggio is fast becoming a fashionable
+watering-place for the people of Florence and Lucca, who seek fresher
+air and simpler living than Livorno offers. It has the usual new inns
+and improvised lodging-houses of such places, built on the outskirts
+of a little fishing village, with a boundless stretch of noble sands.
+There is a wooden pier on which we walked, watching the long roll of
+waves, foam-flaked, and quivering with moonlight. The Apennines faded
+into the grey sky beyond, and the sea-wind was good to breathe. There
+is a feeling of 'immensity, liberty, action' here, which is not common
+in Italy. It reminds us of England; and to-night the Mediterranean had
+the rough force of a tidal sea.
+
+Morning revealed beauty enough in Viareggio to surprise even one who
+expects from Italy all forms of loveliness. The sand-dunes stretch for
+miles between the sea and a low wood of stone pines, with the Carrara
+hills descending from their glittering pinnacles by long lines to the
+headlands of the Spezzian Gulf. The immeasurable distance was all
+painted in sky-blue and amethyst; then came the golden green of the
+dwarf firs; and then dry yellow in the grasses of the dunes; and then
+the many-tinted sea, with surf tossed up against the furthest cliffs.
+It is a wonderful and tragic view, to which no painter but the Roman
+Costa has done justice; and he, it may be said, has made this
+landscape of the Carrarese his own. The space between sand and
+pine-wood was covered with faint, yellow, evening primroses. They
+flickered like little harmless flames in sun and shadow, and the
+spires of the Carrara range were giant flames transformed to marble.
+The memory of that day described by Trelawny in a passage of immortal
+English prose, when he and Byron and Leigh Hunt stood beside the
+funeral pyre, and libations were poured, and the 'Cor Cordium' was
+found inviolate among the ashes, turned all my thoughts to flame
+beneath the gentle autumn sky.
+
+Still haunted by these memories, we took the carriage road to Pisa,
+over which Shelley's friends had hurried to and fro through those last
+days. It passes an immense forest of stone-pines--aisles and avenues;
+undergrowth of ilex, laurustinus, gorse, and myrtle; the crowded
+cyclamens, the solemn silence of the trees; the winds hushed in their
+velvet roof and stationary domes of verdure.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+_PARMA_
+
+
+Parma is perhaps the brightest _Residenzstadt_ of the second class in
+Italy. Built on a sunny and fertile tract of the Lombard plain, within
+view of the Alps, and close beneath the shelter of the Apennines, it
+shines like a well-set gem with stately towers and cheerful squares in
+the midst of verdure. The cities of Lombardy are all like large
+country houses: walking out of their gates, you seem to be stepping
+from a door or window that opens on a trim and beautiful garden, where
+mulberry-tree is married to mulberry by festoons of vines, and where
+the maize and sunflower stand together in rows between patches of flax
+and hemp. But it is not in order to survey the union of well-ordered
+husbandry with the civilities of ancient city-life that we break the
+journey at Parma between Milan and Bologna. We are attracted rather by
+the fame of one great painter, whose work, though it may be studied
+piecemeal in many galleries of Europe, in Parma has a fulness,
+largeness, and mastery that can nowhere else be found. In Parma alone
+Correggio challenges comparison with Raphael, with Tintoret, with all
+the supreme decorative painters who have deigned to make their art the
+handmaid of architecture. Yet even in the cathedral and the church of
+S. Giovanni, where Correggio's frescoes cover cupola and chapel wall,
+we could scarcely comprehend his greatness now--so cruelly have time
+and neglect dealt with those delicate dream-shadows of celestial
+fairyland--were it not for an interpreter, who consecrated a lifetime
+to the task of translating his master's poetry of fresco into the
+prose of engraving. That man was Paolo Toschi--a name to be ever
+venerated by all lovers of the arts; since without his guidance we
+should hardly know what to seek for in the ruined splendours of the
+domes of Parma, or even seeking, how to find the object of our search.
+Toschi's labour was more effectual than that of a restorer however
+skilful, more loving than that of a follower however faithful. He
+respected Correggio's handiwork with religious scrupulousness, adding
+not a line or tone or touch of colour to the fading frescoes; but he
+lived among them, aloft on scaffoldings, and face to face with the
+originals which he designed to reproduce. By long and close
+familiarity, by obstinate and patient interrogation, he divined
+Correggio's secret, and was able at last to see clearly through the
+mist of cobweb and mildew and altar smoke, and through the still more
+cruel travesty of so-called restoration. What he discovered, he
+faithfully committed first to paper in water colours, and then to
+copperplate with the burin, so that we enjoy the privilege of seeing
+Correggio's masterpieces as Toschi saw them, with the eyes of genius
+and of love and of long scientific study. It is not too much to say
+that some of Correggio's most charming compositions--for example, the
+dispute of S. Augustine and S. John--have been resuscitated from the
+grave by Toschi's skill. The original offers nothing but a mouldering
+surface from which the painter's work has dropped in scales. The
+engraving presents a design which we doubt not was Correggio's, for it
+corresponds in all particulars to the style and spirit of the master.
+To be critical in dealing with so successful an achievement of
+restoration and translation is difficult. Yet it may be admitted once
+and for all that Toschi has not unfrequently enfeebled his original.
+Under his touch Correggio loses somewhat of his sensuous audacity, his
+dithyrambic ecstasy, and approaches the ordinary standard of
+prettiness and graceful beauty. The Diana of the Camera di S. Paolo,
+for instance, has the strong calm splendour of a goddess: the same
+Diana in Toschi's engraving seems about to smile with girlish joy. In
+a word, the engraver was a man of a more common stamp--more timid and
+more conventional than the painter. But this is after all a trifling
+deduction from the value of his work.
+
+Our debt to Paolo Toschi is such that it would be ungrateful not to
+seek some details of his life. The few that can be gathered even at
+Parma are brief and bald enough. The newspaper articles and funeral
+panegyrics which refer to him are as barren as all such occasional
+notices in Italy have always been; the panegyrist seeming more anxious
+about his own style than eager to communicate information. Yet a bare
+outline of Toschi's biography may be supplied. He was born at Parma in
+1788. His father was cashier of the post-office, and his mother's name
+was Anna Maria Brest. Early in his youth he studied painting at Parma
+under Biagio Martini; and in 1809 he went to Paris, where he learned
+the art of engraving from Bervic and of etching from Oortman. In Paris
+he contracted an intimate friendship with the painter Gerard. But
+after ten years he returned to Parma, where he established a company
+and school of engravers in concert with his friend Antonio Isac. Maria
+Louisa, the then Duchess, under whose patronage the arts flourished at
+Parma (witness Bodoni's exquisite typography), soon recognised his
+merit, and appointed him Director of the Ducal Academy. He then formed
+the project of engraving a series of the whole of Correggio's
+frescoes. The undertaking was a vast one. Both the cupolas of S. John
+and the cathedral, together with the vault of the apse of S.
+Giovanni[10] and various portions of the side aisles, and the
+so-called Camera di S. Paolo, are covered by frescoes of Correggio and
+his pupil Parmegiano. These frescoes have suffered so much from
+neglect and time, and from unintelligent restoration, that it is
+difficult in many cases to determine their true character. Yet Toschi
+did not content himself with selections, or shrink from the task of
+deciphering and engraving the whole. He formed a school of disciples,
+among whom were Carlo Raimondi of Milan, Antonio Costa of Venice,
+Edward Eichens of Berlin, Aloisio Juvara of Naples, Antonio Dalco,
+Giuseppe Magnani, and Lodovico Bisola of Parma, and employed them as
+assistants in his work. Death overtook him in 1854, before it was
+finished, and now the water-colour drawings which are exhibited in the
+Gallery of Parma prove to what extent the achievement fell short of
+his design. Enough, however, was accomplished to place the chief
+masterpieces of Correggio beyond the possibility of utter oblivion.
+
+To the piety of his pupil Carlo Raimondi, the bearer of a name
+illustrious in the annals of engraving, we owe a striking portrait of
+Toschi. The master is represented on his seat upon the scaffold in the
+dizzy half-light of the dome. The shadowy forms of saints and angels
+are around him. He has raised his eyes from his cartoon to study one
+of these. In his right hand is the opera-glass with which he
+scrutinises the details of distant groups. The upturned face, with its
+expression of contemplative intelligence, is like that of an
+astronomer accustomed to commerce with things above the sphere of
+common life, and ready to give account of all that he has gathered
+from his observation of a world not ours. In truth the world created
+by Correggio and interpreted by Toschi is very far removed from that
+of actual existence. No painter has infused a more distinct
+individuality into his work, realising by imaginative force and
+powerful projection an order of beauty peculiar to himself, before
+which it is impossible to remain quite indifferent. We must either
+admire the manner of Correggio, or else shrink from it with the
+distaste which sensual art is apt to stir in natures of a severe or
+simple type.
+
+What, then, is the Correggiosity of Correggio? In other words, what is
+the characteristic which, proceeding from the personality of the
+artist, is impressed on all his work? The answer to this question,
+though by no means simple, may perhaps be won by a process of gradual
+analysis. The first thing that strikes us in the art of Correggio is,
+that he has aimed at the realistic representation of pure unrealities.
+His saints and angels are beings the like of whom we have hardly seen
+upon the earth. Yet they are displayed before us with all the movement
+and the vivid truth of nature. Next we feel that what constitutes the
+superhuman, visionary quality of these creatures, is their uniform
+beauty of a merely sensuous type. They are all created for pleasure,
+not for thought or passion or activity or heroism. The uses of their
+brains, their limbs, their every feature, end in enjoyment; innocent
+and radiant wantonness is the condition of their whole existence.
+Correggio conceived the universe under the one mood of sensuous joy:
+his world was bathed in luxurious light; its inhabitants were capable
+of little beyond a soft voluptuousness. Over the domain of tragedy he
+had no sway, and very rarely did he attempt to enter on it: nothing,
+for example, can be feebler than his endeavour to express anguish in
+the distorted features of Madonna, S. John, and the Magdalen, who are
+bending over the dead body of a Christ extended in the attitude of
+languid repose. In like manner he could not deal with subjects which
+demand a pregnancy of intellectual meaning. He paints the three Fates
+like young and joyous Bacchantes, places rose-garlands and
+thyrsi in their hands instead of the distaff and the thread of human
+destinies, and they might figure appropriately upon the panels of a
+banquet-chamber in Pompeii. In this respect Correggio might be termed
+the Rossini of painting. The melodies of the 'Stabat Mater'--_Fac ut
+portem_ or _Quis est homo_--are the exact analogues in music of
+Correggio's voluptuous renderings of grave or mysterious motives. Nor,
+again, did he possess that severe and lofty art of composition which
+subordinates the fancy to the reason, and which seeks for the highest
+intellectual beauty in a kind of architectural harmony supreme above
+the melodies of gracefulness in detail. The Florentines and those who
+shared their spirit--Michelangelo and Lionardo and Raphael--deriving
+this principle of design from the geometrical art of the Middle Ages,
+converted it to the noblest uses in their vast well-ordered
+compositions. But Correggio ignored the laws of scientific
+construction. It was enough for him to produce a splendid and
+brilliant effect by the life and movement of his figures, and by the
+intoxicating beauty of his forms. His type of beauty, too, is by no
+means elevated. Lionardo painted souls whereof the features and the
+limbs are but an index. The charm of Michelangelo's ideal is like a
+flower upon a tree of rugged strength. Raphael aims at the loveliness
+which cannot be disjoined from goodness. But Correggio is contented
+with bodies 'delicate and desirable.' His angels are genii
+disimprisoned from the perfumed chalices of flowers, houris of an
+erotic paradise, elemental spirits of nature wantoning in Eden in her
+prime. To accuse the painter of conscious immorality or of what is
+stigmatised as sensuality, would be as ridiculous as to class his
+seraphic beings among the products of the Christian imagination. They
+belong to the generation of the fauns; like fauns, they combine a
+certain savage wildness, a dithyrambic ecstasy of inspiration, a
+delight in rapid movement as they revel amid clouds or flowers, with
+the permanent and all-pervading sweetness of the master's style. When
+infantine or childlike, these celestial sylphs are scarcely to be
+distinguished for any noble quality of beauty from Murillo's cherubs,
+and are far less divine than the choir of children who attend Madonna
+in Titian's 'Assumption.' But in their boyhood and their prime of
+youth, they acquire a fulness of sensuous vitality and a radiance that
+are peculiar to Correggio. The lily-bearer who helps to support S.
+Thomas beneath the dome of the cathedral at Parma, the groups of
+seraphs who crowd behind the Incoronata of S. Giovanni, and the two
+wild-eyed open-mouthed S. Johns stationed at each side of the
+celestial throne, are among the most splendid instances of the
+adolescent loveliness conceived by Correggio. Where the painter found
+their models may be questioned but not answered; for he has made them
+of a different fashion from the race of mortals: no court of Roman
+emperor or Turkish sultan, though stocked with the flowers of
+Bithynian and Circassian youth, have seen their like. Mozart's
+Cherubino seems to have sat for all of them. At any rate they
+incarnate the very spirit of the songs he sings.
+
+As a consequence of this predilection for sensuous and voluptuous
+forms, Correggio had no power of imagining grandly or severely.
+Satisfied with material realism in his treatment even of sublime
+mysteries, he converts the hosts of heaven into a 'fricassee of
+frogs,' according to the old epigram. His apostles, gazing after the
+Virgin who has left the earth, are thrown into attitudes so violent
+and so dramatically foreshortened, that seen from below upon the
+pavement of the cathedral, little of their form is distinguishable
+except legs and arms in vehement commotion. Very different is Titian's
+conception of this scene. To express the spiritual meaning, the
+emotion of Madonna's transit, with all the pomp which colour and
+splendid composition can convey, is Titian's sole care; whereas
+Correggio appears to have been satisfied with realising the tumult of
+heaven rushing to meet earth, and earth straining upwards to ascend to
+heaven in violent commotion--a very orgasm of frenetic rapture. The
+essence of the event is forgotten: its external manifestation alone is
+presented to the eye; and only the accessories of beardless angels and
+cloud-encumbered cherubs are really beautiful amid a surge of limbs in
+restless movement. More dignified, because designed with more repose,
+is the Apocalypse of S. John painted upon the cupola of S. Giovanni.
+The apostles throned on clouds, with which the dome is filled, gaze
+upward to one point. Their attitudes are noble; their form is heroic;
+in their eyes there is the strange ecstatic look by which Correggio
+interpreted his sense of supernatural vision: it is a gaze not of
+contemplation or deep thought, but of wild half-savage joy, as if
+these saints also had become the elemental genii of cloud and air,
+spirits emergent from ether, the salamanders of an empyrean
+intolerable to mortal sense. The point on which their eyes converge,
+the culmination of their vision, is the figure of Christ. Here all the
+weakness of Correggio's method is revealed. He had undertaken to
+realise by no ideal allegorical suggestion, by no symbolism of
+architectural grouping, but by actual prosaic measurement, by
+corporeal form in subjection to the laws of perspective and
+foreshortening, things which in their very essence admit of only a
+figurative revelation. Therefore his Christ, the centre of all those
+earnest eyes, is contracted to a shape in which humanity itself is
+mean, a sprawling figure which irresistibly reminds one of a frog. The
+clouds on which the saints repose are opaque and solid; cherubs in
+countless multitudes, a swarm of merry children, crawl about upon
+these feather-beds of vapour, creep between the legs of the apostles,
+and play at bopeep behind their shoulders. There is no propriety in
+their appearance there. They take no interest in the beatific vision.
+They play no part in the celestial symphony; nor are they capable of
+more than merely infantine enjoyment. Correggio has sprinkled them
+lavishly like living flowers about his cloudland, because he could not
+sustain a grave and solemn strain of music, but was forced by his
+temperament to overlay the melody with roulades. Gazing at these
+frescoes, the thought came to me that Correggio was like a man
+listening to sweetest flute-playing, and translating phrase after
+phrase as they passed through his fancy into laughing faces, breezy
+tresses, and rolling mists. Sometimes a grander cadence reached his
+ear; and then S. Peter with the keys, or S. Augustine of the mighty
+brow, or the inspired eyes of S. John, took form beneath his pencil.
+But the light airs returned, and rose and lily faces bloomed again for
+him among the clouds. It is not therefore in dignity or sublimity that
+Correggio excels, but in artless grace and melodious tenderness. The
+Madonna della Scala clasping her baby with a caress which the little
+child returns, S. Catherine leaning in a rapture of ecstatic love to
+wed the infant Christ, S. Sebastian in the bloom of almost boyish
+beauty, are the so-called sacred subjects to which the painter was
+adequate, and which he has treated with the voluptuous tenderness we
+find in his pictures of Leda and Danae and Io. Could these saints and
+martyrs descend from Correggio's canvas, and take flesh, and breathe,
+and begin to live; of what high action, of what grave passion, of what
+exemplary conduct in any walk of life would they be capable? That is
+the question which they irresistibly suggest; and we are forced to
+answer, None! The moral and religious world did not exist for
+Correggio. His art was but a way of seeing carnal beauty in a dream
+that had no true relation to reality.
+
+Correggio's sensibility to light and colour was exactly on a par with
+his feeling for form. He belongs to the poets of chiaroscuro and the
+poets of colouring; but in both regions he maintains the individuality
+so strongly expressed in his choice of purely sensuous beauty.
+Tintoretto makes use of light and shade for investing his great
+compositions with dramatic intensity. Rembrandt interprets sombre and
+fantastic moods of the mind by golden gloom and silvery irradiation,
+translating thought into the language of penumbral mystery. Lionardo
+studies the laws of light scientifically, so that the proper roundness
+and effect of distance should be accurately rendered, and all the
+subtleties of nature's smiles be mimicked. Correggio is content with
+fixing on his canvas the [Greek: anerithmon gelasma], the
+many-twinkling laughter of light in motion, rained down through fleecy
+clouds or trembling foliage, melting into half-shadows, bathing and
+illuminating every object with a soft caress. There are no tragic
+contrasts of splendour sharply defined on blackness, no mysteries of
+half-felt and pervasive twilight, no studied accuracies of noonday
+clearness in his work. Light and shadow are woven together on his
+figures like an impalpable Coan gauze, aerial and transparent,
+enhancing the palpitations of voluptuous movement which he loved. His
+colouring, in like manner, has none of the superb and mundane pomp
+which the Venetians affected; it does not glow or burn or beat the
+fire of gems into our brain; joyous and wanton, it seems to be exactly
+such a beauty-bloom as sense requires for its satiety. There is
+nothing in his hues to provoke deep passion or to stimulate the
+yearnings of the soul: the pure blushes of the dawn and the crimson
+pyres of sunset are nowhere in the world that he has painted. But that
+chord of jocund colour which may fitly be married to the smiles of
+light, the blues which are found in laughing eyes, the pinks that
+tinge the cheeks of early youth, and the warm yet silvery tones of
+healthy flesh, mingle as in a marvellous pearl-shell on his pictures.
+Both chiaroscuro and colouring have this supreme purpose in art, to
+effect the sense like music, and like music to create a mood in the
+soul of the spectator. Now the mood which Correggio stimulates is one
+of natural and thoughtless pleasure. To feel his influence, and at the
+same moment to be the subject of strong passion, or fierce lust, or
+heroic resolve, or profound contemplation, or pensive melancholy, is
+impossible. Wantonness, innocent because unconscious of sin, immoral
+because incapable of any serious purpose, is the quality which
+prevails in all that he has painted. The pantomimes of a Mohammedan
+paradise might be put upon the stage after patterns supplied by this
+least spiritual of painters.
+
+It follows from this analysis that the Correggiosity of Correggio,
+that which sharply distinguished him from all previous artists, was
+the faculty of painting a purely voluptuous dream of beautiful beings
+in perpetual movement, beneath the laughter of morning light, in a
+world of never-failing April hues. When he attempts to depart from the
+fairyland of which he was the Prospero, and to match himself with the
+masters of sublime thought or earnest passion, he proves his weakness.
+But within his own magic circle he reigns supreme, no other artist
+having blended the witcheries of colouring, chiaroscuro,and faunlike
+loveliness of form into a harmony so perfect in its sensuous charm.
+Bewitched by the strains of the siren, we pardon affectations of
+expression, emptiness of meaning, feebleness of composition,
+exaggerated and melodramatic attitudes. There is what Goethe called a
+demonic influence in the art of Correggio: 'In poetry,' said Goethe to
+Eckermann, 'especially in that which is unconscious, before which
+reason and understanding fall short, and which therefore produces
+effects so far surpassing all conception, there is always something
+demonic.' It is not to be wondered that Correggio, possessed of this
+demonic power in the highest degree, and working to a purely sensuous
+end, should have exercised a fatal influence over art. His successors,
+attracted by an intoxicating loveliness which they could not analyse,
+which had nothing in common with the reason or the understanding, but
+was like a glamour cast upon the soul in its most secret
+sensibilities, threw themselves blindly into the imitation of
+Correggio's faults. His affectation, his want of earnest thought, his
+neglect of composition, his sensuous realism, his all-pervading
+sweetness, his infantine prettiness, his substitution of
+thaumaturgical effects for conscientious labour, admitted only too
+easy imitation, and were but too congenial with the spirit of the late
+Renaissance. Cupolas through the length and breadth of Italy began to
+be covered with clouds and simpering cherubs in the convulsions of
+artificial ecstasy. The attenuated elegance of Parmigiano, the
+attitudinising of Anselmi's saints and angels, and a general sacrifice
+of what is solid and enduring to sentimental gewgaws on the part of
+all painters who had submitted to the magic of Correggio, proved how
+easy it was to go astray with the great master. Meanwhile no one could
+approach him in that which was truly his own--the delineation of a
+transient moment in the life of sensuous beauty, the painting of a
+smile on Nature's face, when light and colour tremble in harmony with
+the movement of joyous living creatures. Another demonic nature of a
+far more powerful type contributed his share to the ruin of art in
+Italy. Michelangelo's constrained attitudes and muscular anatomy were
+imitated by painters and sculptors, who thought that the grand style
+lay in the presentation of theatrical athletes, but who could not
+seize the secret whereby the great master made even the bodies of men
+and women--colossal trunks and writhen limbs--interpret the meanings
+of his deep and melancholy soul.
+
+It is a sad law of progress in art, that when the aesthetic impulse is
+on the wane, artists should perforce select to follow the weakness
+rather than the vigour, of their predecessors. While painting was in
+the ascendant, Raphael could take the best of Perugino and discard the
+worst; in its decadence Parmigiano reproduces the affectations of
+Correggio, and Bernini carries the exaggerations of Michelangelo to
+absurdity. All arts describe a parabola. The force which produces
+them causes them to rise throughout their growth up to a certain
+point, and then to descend more gradually in a long and slanting line
+of regular declension. There is no real break of continuity. The end
+is the result of simple exhaustion. Thus the last of our Elizabethan
+dramatists, Shirley and Crowne and Killigrew, pushed to its ultimate
+conclusion the principle inherent in Marlowe, not attempting to break
+new ground, nor imitating the excellences so much as the defects of
+their forerunners. Thus too the Pointed style of architecture in
+England gave birth first to what is called the Decorated, next to the
+Perpendicular, and finally expired in the Tudor. Each step was a step
+of progress--at first for the better--at last for the worse--but
+logical, continuous, necessitated.[11]
+
+It is difficult to leave Correggio without at least posing the
+question of the difference between moralised and merely sensual art.
+Is all art excellent in itself and good in its effect that is
+beautiful and earnest? There is no doubt that Correggio's work is in a
+way most beautiful; and it bears unmistakable signs of the master
+having given himself with single-hearted devotion to the expression of
+that phase of loveliness which he could apprehend. In so far we must
+admit that his art is both excellent and solid. Yet we are unable to
+conceive that any human being could be made better--stronger for
+endurance, more fitted for the uses of the world, more sensitive to
+what is noble in nature--by its contemplation. At the best Correggio
+does but please us in our lighter moments, and we are apt to feel that
+the pleasure he has given is of an enervating kind. To expect obvious
+morality of any artist is confessedly absurd. It is not the artist's
+province to preach, or even to teach, except by remote suggestion. Yet
+the mind of the artist may be highly moralised, and then he takes rank
+not merely with the ministers to refined pleasure, but also with the
+educators of the world. He may, for example, be penetrated with a just
+sense of humanity like Shakspere, or with a sublime temperance like
+Sophocles, instinct with prophetic intuition like Michelangelo, or
+with passionate experience like Beethoven. The mere sight of the work
+of Pheidias is like breathing pure health-giving air. Milton and Dante
+were steeped in religious patriotism; Goethe was pervaded with
+philosophy, and Balzac with scientific curiosity. Ariosto, Cervantes,
+and even Boccaccio are masters in the mysteries of common life. In all
+these cases the tone of the artist's mind is felt throughout his work:
+what he paints, or sings, or writes, conveys a lesson while it
+pleases. On the other hand, depravity in an artist or a poet
+percolates through work which has in it nothing positive of evil, and
+a very miasma of poisonous influence may rise from the apparently
+innocuous creations of a tainted soul. Now Correggio is moralised in
+neither way--neither as a good nor as a bad man, neither as an acute
+thinker nor as a deliberate voluptuary. He is simply sensuous. On his
+own ground he is even very fresh and healthy: his delineation of
+youthful maternity, for example, is as true as it is beautiful; and
+his sympathy with the gleefulness of children is devoid of
+affectation. We have then only to ask ourselves whether the defect in
+him of all thought and feeling which is not at once capable of
+graceful fleshly incarnation, be sufficient to lower him in the scale
+of artists. This question must of course be answered according to our
+definition of the purposes of art. There is no doubt that the most
+highly organised art--that which absorbs the most numerous human
+qualities and effects a harmony between the most complex elements--is
+the noblest. Therefore the artist who combines moral elevation and
+power of thought with a due appreciation of sensual beauty, is more
+elevated and more beneficial than one whose domain is simply that of
+carnal loveliness. Correggio, if this be so, must take a comparatively
+low rank. Just as we welcome the beautiful athlete for the radiant
+life that is in him, but bow before the personality of Sophocles,
+whose perfect form enshrined a noble and highly educated soul, so we
+gratefully accept Correggio for his grace, while we approach the
+consummate art of Michelangelo with reverent awe. It is necessary in
+aesthetics as elsewhere to recognise a hierarchy of excellence, the
+grades of which are determined by the greater or less
+comprehensiveness of the artist's nature expressed in his work. At the
+same time, the calibre of the artist's genius must be estimated; for
+eminent greatness even of a narrow kind will always command our
+admiration: and the amount of his originality has also to be taken
+into account. What is unique has, for that reason alone, a claim on
+our consideration. Judged in this way, Correggio deserves a place,
+say, in the sweet planet Venus, above the moon and above Mercury,
+among the artists who have not advanced beyond the contemplations
+which find their proper outcome in love. Yet, even thus, he aids the
+culture of humanity. 'We should take care,' said Goethe, apropos of
+Byron, to Eckermann, 'not to be always looking for culture in the
+decidedly pure and moral. Everything that is great promotes
+cultivation as soon as we are aware of it.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+_CANOSSA_
+
+
+Italy is less the land of what is venerable in antiquity, than of
+beauty, by divine right young eternally in spite of age. This is due
+partly to her history and art and literature, partly to the temper of
+the races who have made her what she is, and partly to her natural
+advantages. Her oldest architectural remains, the temples of Paestum
+and Girgenti, or the gates of Perugia and Volterra, are so adapted to
+Italian landscape and so graceful in their massive strength, that we
+forget the centuries which have passed over them. We leap as by a
+single bound from the times of Roman greatness to the new birth of
+humanity in the fourteenth century, forgetting the many years during
+which Italy, like the rest of Europe, was buried in what our ancestors
+called Gothic barbarism. The illumination cast upon the classic period
+by the literature of Rome and by the memory of her great men is so
+vivid, that we feel the days of the Republic and the Empire to be near
+us; while the Italian Renaissance is so truly a revival of that former
+splendour, a resumption of the music interrupted for a season, that it
+is extremely difficult to form any conception of the five long
+centuries which elapsed between the Lombard invasion in 568 and the
+accession of Hildebrand to the Pontificate in 1073. So true is it that
+nothing lives and has reality for us but what is spiritual,
+intellectual, self-possessed in personality and consciousness. When
+the Egyptian priest said to Solon, 'You Greeks are always children,'
+he intended a gentle sarcasm, but he implied a compliment; for the
+quality of imperishable youth belonged to the Hellenic spirit, and has
+become the heritage of every race which partook of it. And this spirit
+in no common degree has been shared by the Italians of the earlier and
+the later classic epoch. The land is full of monuments pertaining to
+those two brilliant periods; and whenever the voice of poet has spoken
+or the hand of artist has been at work, that spirit, as distinguished
+from the spirit of mediaevalism, has found expression.
+
+Yet it must be remembered that during the five centuries above
+mentioned Italy was given over to Lombards, Franks, and Germans.
+Feudal institutions, alien to the social and political ideals of the
+classic world, took a tolerably firm hold on the country. The Latin
+element remained silent, passive, in abeyance, undergoing an important
+transformation. It was in the course of those five hundred years that
+the Italians as a modern people, separable from their Roman ancestors,
+were formed. At the close of this obscure passage in Italian history,
+their communes, the foundation of Italy's future independence, and the
+source of her peculiar national development, appeared in all the
+vigour and audacity of youth. At its close the Italian genius
+presented Europe with its greatest triumph of constructive ability,
+the Papacy. At its close again the series of supreme artistic
+achievements, starting with the architecture of churches and public
+palaces, passing on to sculpture and painting, and culminating in
+music, which only ended with the temporary extinction of national
+vitality in the seventeenth century, was simultaneously begun in all
+the provinces of the peninsula.
+
+So important were these five centuries of incubation for Italy, and so
+little is there left of them to arrest the attention of the student,
+dazzled as he is by the ever-living glories of Greece, Rome, and the
+Renaissance, that a visit to the ruins of Canossa is almost a duty.
+There, in spite of himself, by the very isolation and forlorn
+abandonment of what was once so formidable a seat of feudal despotism
+and ecclesiastical tyranny, he is forced to confront the obscure but
+mighty spirit of the middle ages. There, if anywhere, the men of those
+iron-hearted times anterior to the Crusades will acquire distinctness
+for his imagination, when he recalls the three main actors in the
+drama enacted on the summit of Canossa's rock in the bitter winter of
+1077.
+
+Canossa lies almost due south of Reggio d'Emilia, upon the slopes of
+the Apennines. Starting from Reggio, the carriage-road keeps to the
+plain for some while in a westerly direction, and then bends away
+towards the mountains. As we approach their spurs, the ground begins
+to rise. The rich Lombard tilth of maize and vine gives place to
+English-looking hedgerows, lined with oaks, and studded with handsome
+dark tufts of green hellebore. The hills descend in melancholy
+earth-heaps on the plain, crowned here and there with ruined castles.
+Four of these mediaeval strongholds, called Bianello, Montevetro,
+Monteluzzo, and Montezano, give the name of Quattro Castelli to the
+commune. The most important of them, Bianello, which, next to Canossa,
+was the strongest fortress possessed by the Countess Matilda and her
+ancestors, still presents a considerable mass of masonry, roofed and
+habitable. The group formed a kind of advance-guard for Canossa
+against attack from Lombardy. After passing Quattro Castelli we enter
+the hills, climbing gently upwards between barren slopes of ashy grey
+earth--the _debris_ of most ancient Apennines--crested at favourable
+points with lonely towers. In truth the whole country bristles with
+ruined forts, making it clear that during the middle ages Canossa was
+but the centre of a great military system, the core and kernel of a
+fortified position which covered an area to be measured by scores of
+square miles, reaching far into the mountains, and buttressed on the
+plain. As yet, however, after nearly two hours' driving, Canossa has
+not come in sight. At last a turn in the road discloses an opening in
+the valley of the Enza to the left: up this lateral gorge we see first
+the Castle of Rossena on its knoll of solid red rock, flaming in the
+sunlight; and then, further withdrawn, detached from all surrounding
+objects, and reared aloft as though to sweep the sea of waved and
+broken hills around it, a sharp horn of hard white stone. That is
+Canossa--the _alba Canossa_, the _candida petra_ of its rhyming
+chronicler. There is no mistaking the commanding value of its
+situation. At the same time the brilliant whiteness of Canossa's
+rocky hill, contrasted with the red gleam of Rossena, and outlined
+against the prevailing dulness of these earthy Apennines, secures a
+picturesque individuality concordant with its unique history and
+unrivalled strength.
+
+There is still a journey of two hours before the castle can be
+reached: and this may be performed on foot or horseback. The path
+winds upward over broken ground; following the _arete_ of curiously
+jumbled and thwarted hill-slopes; passing beneath the battlements of
+Rossena, whence the unfortunate Everelina threw herself in order to
+escape the savage love of her lord and jailor; and then skirting those
+horrid earthen _balze_ which are so common and so unattractive a
+feature of Apennine scenery. The most hideous _balze_ to be found in
+the length and breadth of Italy are probably those of Volterra, from
+which the citizens themselves recoil with a kind of terror, and which
+lure melancholy men by intolerable fascination on to suicide. For ever
+crumbling, altering with frost and rain, discharging gloomy glaciers
+of slow-crawling mud, and scarring the hillside with tracts of
+barrenness, these earth-precipices are among the most ruinous and
+discomfortable failures of nature. They have not even so much of
+wildness or grandeur as forms, the saving merit of nearly all wasteful
+things in the world, and can only be classed with the desolate
+_ghiare_ of Italian river-beds.
+
+Such as they are, these _balze_ form an appropriate preface to the
+gloomy and repellent isolation of Canossa. The rock towers from a
+narrow platform to the height of rather more than 160 feet from its
+base. The top is fairly level, forming an irregular triangle, of which
+the greatest length is about 260 feet, and the width about 100 feet.
+Scarcely a vestige of any building can be traced either upon the
+platform or the summit, with the exception of a broken wall and
+windows supposed to belong to the end of the sixteenth century. The
+ancient castle, with its triple circuit of walls, enclosing barracks
+for the garrison, lodgings for the lord and his retainers, a stately
+church, a sumptuous monastery, storehouses, stables, workshops, and
+all the various buildings of a fortified stronghold, have utterly
+disappeared. The very passage of approach cannot be ascertained; for
+it is doubtful whether the present irregular path that scales the
+western face of the rock be really the remains of some old staircase,
+corresponding to that by which Mont S. Michel in Normandy is ascended.
+One thing is tolerably certain--that the three walls of which we hear
+so much from the chroniclers, and which played so picturesque a part
+in the drama of Henry IV.'s penance, surrounded the cliff at its base,
+and embraced a large acreage of ground. The citadel itself must have
+been but the acropolis or keep of an extensive fortress.
+
+There has been plenty of time since the year 1255, when the people of
+Reggio sacked and destroyed Canossa, for Nature to resume her
+undisputed sway by obliterating the handiwork of men; and at present
+Nature forms the chief charm of Canossa. Lying one afternoon of May on
+the crisp short grass at the edge of a precipice purple with iris in
+full blossom, I surveyed, from what were once the battlements of
+Matilda's castle, a prospect than which there is none more
+spirit-stirring by reason of its beauty and its manifold associations
+in Europe. The lower castle-crowded hills have sunk. Reggio lies at
+our feet, shut in between the crests of Monte Carboniano and Monte
+delle Celle. Beyond Reggio stretches Lombardy--the fairest and most
+memorable battlefield of nations, the richest and most highly
+cultivated garden of civilised industry. Nearly all the Lombard cities
+may be seen, some of them faint like bluish films of vapour, some
+clear with dome and spire. There is Modena and her Ghirlandina. Carpi,
+Parma, Mirandola, Verona, Mantua, lie well defined and russet on the
+flat green map; and there flashes a bend of lordly Po; and there the
+Euganeans rise like islands, telling us where Padua and Ferrara nestle
+in the amethystine haze Beyond and above all to the northward sweep
+the Alps, tossing their silvery crests up into the cloudless sky from
+the violet mist that girds their flanks and drowns their basements.
+Monte Adamello and the Ortler, the cleft of the Brenner, and the sharp
+peaks of the Venetian Alps are all distinctly visible. An eagle flying
+straight from our eyrie might traverse Lombardy and light among the
+snow-fields of the Valtelline between sunrise and sundown. Nor is the
+prospect tame to southward. Here the Apennines roll, billow above
+billow, in majestic desolation, soaring to snow summits in the
+Pellegrino region. As our eye attempts to thread that labyrinth of
+hill and vale, we tell ourselves that those roads wind to Tuscany, and
+yonder stretches Garfagnana, where Ariosto lived and mused in
+honourable exile from the world he loved.
+
+It was by one of the mountain passes that lead from Lucca northward
+that the first founder of Canossa is said to have travelled early in
+the tenth century. Sigifredo, if the tradition may be trusted, was
+very wealthy; and with his money he bought lands and signorial rights
+at Reggio, bequeathing to his children, when he died about 945, a
+patrimony which they developed into a petty kingdom. Azzo, his second
+son, fortified Canossa, and made it his principal place of residence.
+When Lothair, King of Italy, died in 950, leaving his beautiful widow
+to the ill-treatment of his successor, Berenger, Adelaide found a
+protector in this Azzo. She had been imprisoned on the Lake of Garda;
+but managing to escape in man's clothes to Mantua, she thence sent
+news of her misfortunes to Canossa. Azzo lost no time in riding with
+his knights to her relief, and brought her back in safety to his
+mountain fastness. It is related that Azzo was afterwards instrumental
+in calling Otho into Italy and procuring his marriage with Adelaide,
+in consequence of which events Italy became a fief of the Empire.
+Owing to the part he played at this time, the Lord of Canossa was
+recognised as one of the most powerful vassals of the German Emperor
+in Lombardy. Honours were heaped upon him; and he grew so rich and
+formidable that Berenger, the titular King of Italy, laid siege to his
+fortress of Canossa. The memory of this siege, which lasted for three
+years and a half, is said still to linger in the popular traditions of
+the place. When Azzo died at the end of the tenth century, he left to
+his son Tedaldo the title of Count of Reggio and Modena; and this
+title was soon after raised to that of Marquis. The Marches governed
+as Vicar of the Empire by Tedaldo included Reggio, Modena, Ferrara,
+Brescia, and probably Mantua. They stretched, in fact, across the
+north of Italy, forming a quadrilateral between the Alps and
+Apennines. Like his father, Tedaldo adhered consistently to the
+Imperial party; and when he died and was buried at Canossa, he in his
+turn bequeathed to his son Bonifazio a power and jurisdiction
+increased by his own abilities. Bonifazio held the state of a
+sovereign at Canossa, adding the duchy of Tuscany to his father's
+fiefs, and meeting the allied forces of the Lombard barons in the
+field of Coviolo like an independent potentate. His power and
+splendour were great enough to rouse the jealousy of the Emperor; but
+Henry III. seems to have thought it more prudent to propitiate this
+proud vassal, and to secure his kindness, than to attempt his
+humiliation. Bonifazio married Beatrice, daughter of Frederick, Duke
+of Lorraine--her whose marble sarcophagus in the Campo Santo at Pisa
+is said to have inspired Niccola Pisano with his new style of
+sculpture. Their only child, Matilda, was born, probably at Lucca, in
+1046; and six years after her birth, Bonifazio, who had swayed his
+subjects like an iron-handed tyrant, was murdered. To the great House
+of Canossa, the rulers of one-third of Italy, there now remained only
+two women, Bonifazio's widow Beatrice, and his daughter Matilda.
+Beatrice married Godfrey, Duke of Lorraine, who was recognised by
+Henry IV. as her husband and as feudatory of the Empire in the full
+place of Boniface. He died about 1070; and in this year Matilda was
+married by proxy to his son, Godfrey the Hunchback, whom, however,
+she did not see till the year 1072. The marriage was not a happy one;
+and the question has even been disputed among Matilda's biographers
+whether it was ever consummated. At any rate it did not last long; for
+Godfrey was killed at Antwerp in 1076. In this year Matilda also lost
+her mother, Beatrice, who died at Pisa, and was buried in the
+cathedral.
+
+By this rapid enumeration of events it will be seen how the power and
+honours of the House of Canossa, including Tuscany, Spoleto, and the
+fairest portions of Lombardy, had devolved upon a single woman of the
+age of thirty at the moment when the fierce quarrel between Pope and
+Emperor began in the year 1076. Matilda was destined to play a great,
+a striking, and a tragic part in the opening drama of Italian history.
+Her decided character and uncompromising course of action have won for
+her the name of 'la gran donna d'Italia,' and have caused her memory
+to be blessed or execrated, according as the temporal pretensions and
+spiritual tyranny of the Papacy may have found supporters or opponents
+in posterity. She was reared from childhood in habits of austerity and
+unquestioning piety. Submission to the Church became for her not
+merely a rule of conduct, but a passionate enthusiasm. She identified
+herself with the cause of four successive Popes, protected her idol,
+the terrible and iron-hearted Hildebrand, in the time of his
+adversity; remained faithful to his principles after his death; and
+having served the Holy See with all her force and all that she
+possessed through all her lifetime, she bequeathed her vast dominions
+to it on her deathbed. Like some of the greatest mediaeval
+characters--like Hildebrand himself--Matilda was so thoroughly of one
+piece, that she towers above the mists of ages with the massive
+grandeur of an incarnated idea. She is for us the living statue of a
+single thought, an undivided impulse, the more than woman born to
+represent her age. Nor was it without reason that Dante symbolised in
+her the love of Holy Church; though students of the 'Purgatory' will
+hardly recognise the lovely maiden, singing and plucking flowers
+beside the stream of Lethe, in the stern and warlike chatelaine of
+Canossa. Unfortunately we know but little of Matilda's personal
+appearance. Her health was not strong; and it is said to have been
+weakened, especially in her last illness, by ascetic observances. Yet
+she headed her own troops, armed with sword and cuirass, avoiding
+neither peril nor fatigue in the quarrels of her master Gregory. Up to
+the year 1622 two strong suits of mail were preserved at Quattro
+Castelli, which were said to have been worn by her in battle, and
+which were afterwards sold on the market-place at Reggio. This habit
+of donning armour does not, however, prove that Matilda was
+exceptionally vigorous; for in those savage times she could hardly
+have played the part of heroine without participating personally in
+the dangers of warfare.
+
+No less monumental in the plastic unity of his character was the monk
+Hildebrand, who for twenty years before his elevation to the Papacy
+had been the maker of Popes and the creator of the policy of Rome.
+When he was himself elected in the year 1073, and had assumed the name
+of Gregory VII., he immediately began to put in practice the plans for
+Church aggrandisement he had slowly matured during the previous
+quarter of a century. To free the Church from its subservience to the
+Empire, to assert the Pope's right to ratify the election of the
+Emperor and to exercise the right of jurisdiction over him, to place
+ecclesiastical appointments in the sole power of the Roman See, and to
+render the celibacy of the clergy obligatory, were the points he had
+resolved to carry. Taken singly and together, these chief aims of
+Hildebrand's policy had but one object--the magnification of the
+Church at the expense both of the people and of secular authorities,
+and the further separation of the Church from the ties and sympathies
+of common life that bound it to humanity. To accuse Hildebrand of
+personal ambition would be but shallow criticism, though it is clear
+that his inflexible and puissant nature found a savage selfish
+pleasure in trampling upon power and humbling pride at warfare with
+his own. Yet his was in no sense an egotistic purpose like that which
+moved the Popes of the Renaissance to dismember Italy for their
+bastards. Hildebrand, like Matilda, was himself the creature of a
+great idea. These two potent personalities completely understood each
+other, and worked towards a single end. Tho mythopoeic fancy might
+conceive of them as the male and female manifestations of one dominant
+faculty, the spirit of ecclesiastical dominion incarnate in a man and
+woman of almost super-human mould.
+
+Opposed to them, as the third actor in the drama of Canossa, was a man
+of feebler mould. Henry IV., King of Italy, but not yet crowned
+Emperor, had none of his opponents' unity of purpose or monumental
+dignity of character. At war with his German feudatories, browbeaten
+by rebellious sons, unfaithful and cruel to his wife, vacillating in
+the measures he adopted to meet his divers difficulties, at one time
+tormented by his conscience into cowardly submission, and at another
+treasonably neglectful of the most solemn obligations, Henry was no
+match for the stern wills against which he was destined to break in
+unavailing passion. Early disagreements with Gregory had culminated in
+his excommunication. The German nobles abandoned his cause; and Henry
+found it expedient to summon a council in Augsburg for the settlement
+of matters in dispute between the Empire and the Papacy. Gregory
+expressed his willingness to attend this council, and set forth from
+Rome accompanied by the Countess Matilda in December 1076. He did not,
+however, travel further than Vercelli, for news here reached him that
+Henry was about to enter Italy at the head of a powerful army. Matilda
+hereupon persuaded the Holy Father to place himself in safety among
+her strongholds of Canossa. Thither accordingly Gregory retired before
+the ending of that year; and bitter were the sarcasms uttered by the
+imperial partisans in Italy upon this protection offered by a fair
+countess to the monk who had been made a Pope. The foul calumnies of
+that bygone age would be unworthy of even so much as this notice, if
+we did not trace in them the ineradicable Italian tendency to cynical
+insinuation--a tendency which has involved the history of the
+Renaissance Popes in an almost impenetrable mist of lies and
+exaggerations. Henry was in truth upon his road to Italy, but with a
+very different attendance from that which Gregory expected.
+Accompanied by Bertha, his wife, and his boy son Conrad, the Emperor
+elect left Spires in the condition of a fugitive, crossed Burgundy,
+spent Christmas at Besancon, and journeyed to the foot of Mont Cenis.
+It is said that he was followed by a single male servant of mean
+birth; and if the tale of his adventures during the passage of the
+Alps can be credited, history presents fewer spectacles more
+picturesque than the straits to which this representative of the
+Caesars, this supreme chief of feudal civility, this ruler destined
+still to be the leader of mighty armies and the father of a line of
+monarchs, was exposed. Concealing his real name and state, he induced
+some shepherds to lead him and his escort through the thick snows to
+the summit of Mont Cenis; and by the help of these men the imperial
+party were afterwards let down the snow-slopes on the further side by
+means of ropes. Bertha and her women were sewn up in hides and dragged
+across the frozen surface of the winter drifts. It was a year
+memorable for its severity. Heavy snow had fallen in October, which
+continued ice-bound and unyielding till the following April.
+
+No sooner had Henry reached Turin, than he set forward again in the
+direction of Canossa. The fame of his arrival had preceded him, and
+he found that his party was far stronger in Italy than he had ventured
+to expect. Proximity to the Church of Rome divests its fulminations of
+half their terrors. The Italian bishops and barons, less superstitious
+than the Germans, and with greater reason to resent the domineering
+graspingness of Gregory, were ready to espouse the Emperor's cause.
+Henry gathered a formidable force as he marched onward across
+Lombardy; and some of the most illustrious prelates and nobles of the
+South were in his suite. A more determined leader than Henry proved
+himself to be, might possibly have forced Gregory to some
+accommodation, in spite of the strength of Canossa and the Pope's
+invincible obstinacy, by proper use of these supporters. Meanwhile the
+adherents of the Church were mustered in Matilda's fortress; among
+whom may be mentioned Azzo, the progenitor of Este and Brunswick;
+Hugh, Abbot of Clugny; and the princely family of Piedmont. 'I am
+become a second Rome,' exclaims Canossa, in the language of Matilda's
+rhyming chronicler; 'all honours are mine; I hold at once both Pope
+and King, the princes of Italy and those of Gaul, those of Rome, and
+those from far beyond the Alps.' The stage was ready; the audience had
+assembled; and now the three great actors were about to meet.
+Immediately upon his arrival at Canossa, Henry sent for his cousin,
+the Countess Matilda, and besought her to intercede for him with
+Gregory. He was prepared to make any concessions or to undergo any
+humiliations, if only the ban of excommunication might be removed;
+nor, cowed as he was by his own superstitious conscience, and by the
+memory of the opposition he had met with from his German vassals, does
+he seem to have once thought of meeting force with force, and of
+returning to his northern kingdom triumphant in the overthrow of
+Gregory's pride. Matilda undertook to plead his cause before the
+Pontiff. But Gregory was not to be moved so soon to mercy. 'If Henry
+has in truth repented,' he replied, 'let him lay down crown and
+sceptre, and declare himself unworthy of the name of king.' The only
+point conceded to the suppliant was that he should be admitted in the
+garb of a penitent within the precincts of the castle. Leaving his
+retinue outside the walls, Henry entered the first series of outworks,
+and was thence conducted to the second, so that between him and the
+citadel itself there still remained the third of the surrounding
+bastions. Here he was bidden to wait the Pope's pleasure; and here, in
+the midst of that bitter winter weather, while the fierce winds of the
+Apennines were sweeping sleet upon him in their passage from Monte
+Pellegrino to the plain, he knelt barefoot, clothed in sackcloth,
+fasting from dawn till eve, for three whole days. On the morning of
+the fourth day, judging that Gregory was inexorable, and that his suit
+would not be granted, Henry retired to the Chapel of S. Nicholas,
+which stood within this second precinct. There he called to his aid
+the Abbot of Clugny and the Countess, both of whom were his relations,
+and who, much as they might sympathise with Gregory, could hardly be
+supposed to look with satisfaction on their royal kinsman's outrage.
+The Abbot told Henry that nothing in the world could move the Pope;
+but Matilda, when in turn he fell before her knees and wept, engaged
+to do for him the utmost. She probably knew that the moment for
+unbending had arrived, and that her imperious guest could not with
+either decency or prudence prolong the outrage offered to the civil
+chief of Christendom. It was the 25th of January when the Emperor
+elect was brought, half dead with cold and misery, into the Pope's
+presence. There he prostrated himself in the dust, crying aloud for
+pardon. It is said that Gregory first placed his foot upon Henry's
+neck, uttering these words of Scripture: 'Super aspidem et basiliscum
+ambulabis, et conculcabis leonem et draconem,' and that then he raised
+him from the earth and formally pronounced his pardon. The prelates
+and nobles who took part in this scene were compelled to guarantee
+with their own oaths the vows of obedience pronounced by Henry; so
+that in the very act of reconciliation a new insult was offered to
+him. After this Gregory said mass, and permitted Henry to communicate;
+and at the close of the day a banquet was served, at which the King
+sat down to meat with the Pope and the Countess.
+
+It is probable that, while Henry's penance was performed in the castle
+courts beneath the rock, his reception by the Pope, and all that
+subsequently happened, took place in the citadel itself. But of this
+we have no positive information. Indeed the silence of the chronicles
+as to the topography of Canossa is peculiarly unfortunate for lovers
+of the picturesque in historic detail, now that there is no
+possibility of tracing the outlines of the ancient building. Had the
+author of the 'Vita Mathildis' (Muratori, vol. v.) foreseen that his
+beloved Canossa would one day be nothing but a mass of native rock, he
+would undoubtedly have been more explicit on these points; and much
+that is vague about an event only paralleled by our Henry II.'s
+penance before Becket's shrine at Canterbury, might now be clear.
+
+Very little remains to be told about Canossa. During the same year,
+1077, Matilda made the celebrated donation of her fiefs to Holy
+Church. This was accepted by Gregory in the name of S. Peter, and it
+was confirmed by a second deed during the pontificate of Urban IV. in
+1102. Though Matilda subsequently married Guelfo d'Este, son of the
+Duke of Bavaria, she was speedily divorced from him; nor was there any
+heir to a marriage ridiculous by reason of disparity of age, the
+bridegroom being but eighteen, while the bride was forty-three in the
+year of her second nuptials. During one of Henry's descents into
+Italy, he made an unsuccessful attack upon Canossa, assailing it at
+the head of a considerable force one October morning in 1092.
+Matilda's biographer informs us that the mists of autumn veiled his
+beloved fortress from the eyes of the beleaguerers. They had not even
+the satisfaction of beholding the unvanquished citadel; and, what was
+more, the banner of the Emperor was seized and dedicated as a trophy
+in the Church of S. Apollonio. In the following year the Countess
+opened her gates of Canossa to an illustrious fugitive, Adelaide, the
+wife of her old foeman, Henry, who had escaped with difficulty from
+the insults and the cruelty of her husband. After Henry's death, his
+son, the Emperor Henry V., paid Matilda a visit in her castle of
+Bianello, addressed her by the name of mother, and conferred upon her
+the vice-regency of Liguria. At the age of sixty-nine she died, in
+1115, at Bondeno de' Roncori, and was buried, not among her kinsmen at
+Canossa, but in an abbey of S. Benedict near Mantua. With her expired
+the main line of the noble house she represented; though Canossa, now
+made a fief of the Empire in spite of Matilda's donation, was given to
+a family which claimed descent from Bonifazio's brother Conrad--a
+young man killed in the battle of Coviolo. This family, in its turn,
+was extinguished in the year 1570; but a junior branch still exists at
+Verona. It will be remembered that Michelangelo Buonarroti claimed
+kinship with the Count of Canossa; and a letter from the Count is
+extant acknowledging the validity of his pretension.
+
+As far back as 1255 the people of Reggio destroyed the castle; nor did
+the nobles of Canossa distinguish themselves in subsequent history
+among those families who based their despotisms on the _debris_ of the
+Imperial power in Lombardy. It seemed destined that Canossa and all
+belonging to it should remain as a mere name and memory of the
+outgrown middle ages. Estensi, Carraresi, Visconti, Bentivogli, and
+Gonzaghi belong to a later period of Lombard history, and mark the
+dawn of the Renaissance.
+
+As I lay and mused that afternoon of May upon the short grass, cropped
+by two grey goats, whom a little boy was tending, it occurred to me to
+ask the woman who had served me as guide, whether any legend remained
+in the country concerning the Countess Matilda. She had often,
+probably, been asked this question by other travellers. Therefore she
+was more than usually ready with an answer, which, as far as I could
+understand her dialect, was this. Matilda was a great and potent
+witch, whose summons the devil was bound to obey. One day she aspired,
+alone of all her sex, to say mass; but when the moment came for
+sacring the elements, a thunderbolt fell from the clear sky, and
+reduced her to ashes.[12] That the most single-hearted handmaid of the
+Holy Church, whose life was one long devotion to its ordinances,
+should survive in this grotesque myth, might serve to point a satire
+upon the vanity of earthly fame. The legend in its very extravagance
+is a fanciful distortion of the truth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+_FORNOVO_
+
+
+In the town of Parma there is one surpassingly strange relic of the
+past. The palace of the Farnesi, like many a haunt of upstart tyranny
+and beggared pride on these Italian plains, rises misshapen and
+disconsolate above the stream that bears the city's name. The squalor
+of this grey-brown edifice of formless brick, left naked like the
+palace of the same Farnesi at Piacenza, has something even horrid in
+it now that only vague memory survives of its former uses. The
+princely _sprezzatura_ of its ancient occupants, careless of these
+unfinished courts and unroofed galleries amid the splendour of their
+purfled silks and the glitter of their torchlight pageantry, has
+yielded to sullen cynicism--the cynicism of arrested ruin and
+unreverend age. All that was satisfying to the senses and distracting
+to the eyesight in their transitory pomp has passed away, leaving a
+sinister and naked shell. Remembrance can but summon up the crimes,
+the madness, the trivialities of those dead palace-builders. An
+atmosphere of evil clings to the dilapidated walls, as though the
+tainted spirit of the infamous Pier Luigi still possessed the spot, on
+which his toadstool brood of princelings sprouted in the mud of their
+misdeeds. Enclosed in this huge labyrinth of brickwork is the relic of
+which I spoke. It is the once world-famous Teatro Farnese, raised in
+the year 1618 by Ranunzio Farnese for the marriage of Odoardo Farnese
+with Margaret of Austria. Giambattista Aleotti, a native of
+pageant-loving Ferrara, traced the stately curves and noble orders of
+the galleries, designed the columns that support the raftered roof,
+marked out the orchestra, arranged the stage, and breathed into the
+whole the spirit of Palladio's most heroic neo-Latin style. Vast,
+built of wood, dishevelled, with broken statues and blurred coats of
+arms, with its empty scene, its uncurling frescoes, its hangings all
+in rags, its cobwebs of two centuries, its dust and mildew and
+discoloured gold--this theatre, a sham in its best days, and now that
+ugliest of things, a sham unmasked and naked to the light of day, is
+yet sublime, because of its proportioned harmony, because of its grand
+Roman manner. The sight and feeling of it fasten upon the mind and
+abide in the memory like a nightmare,--like one of Piranesi's weirdest
+and most passion-haunted etchings for the _Carceri_. Idling there at
+noon in the twilight of the dust-bedarkened windows, we fill the tiers
+of those high galleries with ladies, the space below with grooms and
+pages; the stage is ablaze with torches, and an Italian Masque, such
+as our Marlowe dreamed of, fills the scene. But it is impossible to
+dower these fancies with even such life as in healthier, happier
+ruins phantasy may lend to imagination's figments. This theatre is
+like a maniac's skull, empty of all but unrealities and mockeries of
+things that are. The ghosts we raise here could never have been living
+men and women: _questi sciaurati non fur mai vivi._ So clinging is the
+sense of instability that appertains to every fragment of that dry-rot
+tyranny which seized by evil fortune in the sunset of her golden day
+on Italy.
+
+In this theatre I mused one morning after visiting Fornovo; and the
+thoughts suggested by the battlefield found their proper atmosphere in
+the dilapidated place. What, indeed, is the Teatro Farnese but a
+symbol of those hollow principalities which the despot and the
+stranger built in Italy after the fatal date of 1494, when national
+enthusiasm and political energy were expiring in a blaze of art, and
+when the Italians as a people had ceased to be; but when the phantom
+of their former life, surviving in high works of beauty, was still
+superb by reason of imperishable style! How much in Italy of the
+Renaissance was, like this plank-built plastered theatre, a glorious
+sham! The sham was seen through then; and now it stands unmasked: and
+yet, strange to say, so perfect is its form that we respect the sham
+and yield our spirits to the incantation of its music.
+
+The battle of Fornovo, as modern battles go, was a paltry affair; and
+even at the time it seemed sufficiently without result. Yet the
+trumpets which rang on July 6, 1495, for the onset, sounded the
+_reveil_ of the modern world; and in the inconclusive termination of
+the struggle of that day, the Italians were already judged and
+sentenced as a nation. The armies who met that morning represented
+Italy and France,--Italy, the Sibyl of Renaissance; France, the Sibyl
+of Revolution. At the fall of evening Europe was already looking
+northward; and the last years of the fifteenth century were opening
+an act which closed in blood at Paris on the ending of the eighteenth.
+
+If it were not for thoughts like these, no one, I suppose, would take
+the trouble to drive for two hours out of Parma to the little village
+of Fornovo--a score of bare grey hovels on the margin of a pebbly
+river-bed beneath the Apennines. The fields on either side, as far as
+eye can see, are beautiful indeed in May sunlight, painted here with
+flax, like shallow sheets of water reflecting a pale sky, and there
+with clover red as blood. Scarce unfolded leaves sparkle like
+flamelets of bright green upon the knotted vines, and the young corn
+is bending all one way beneath a western breeze. But not less
+beautiful than this is the whole broad plain of Lombardy; nor are the
+nightingales louder here than in the acacia trees around Pavia. As we
+drive, the fields become less fertile, and the hills encroach upon the
+level, sending down their spurs upon that waveless plain like blunt
+rocks jutting out into a tranquil sea. When we reach the bed of the
+Taro, these hills begin to narrow on either hand, and the road rises.
+Soon they open out again with gradual curving lines, forming a kind of
+amphitheatre filled up from flank to flank with the _ghiara_ or pebbly
+bottom of the Taro. The Taro is not less wasteful than any other of
+the brotherhood of streams that pour from Alp or Apennine to swell the
+Po. It wanders, an impatient rivulet, through a wilderness of
+boulders, uncertain of its aim, shifting its course with the season of
+the year, unless the jaws of some deep-cloven gully hold it tight and
+show how insignificant it is. As we advance, the hills approach again;
+between their skirts there is nothing but the river-bed; and now on
+rising ground above the stream, at the point of juncture between the
+Ceno and the Taro, we find Fornovo. Beyond the village the valley
+broadens out once more, disclosing Apennines capped with winter snow.
+To the right descends the Ceno. To the left foams the Taro, following
+whose rocky channel we should come at last to Pontremoli and the
+Tyrrhenian sea beside Sarzana. On a May-day of sunshine like the
+present, the Taro is a gentle stream. A waggon drawn by two white oxen
+has just entered its channel, guided by a contadino with goat-skin
+leggings, wielding a long goad. The patient creatures stem the water,
+which rises to the peasant's thighs and ripples round the creaking
+wheels. Swaying to and fro, as the shingles shift upon the river-bed,
+they make their way across; and now they have emerged upon the stones;
+and now we lose them in a flood of sunlight.
+
+It was by this pass that Charles VIII. in 1495 returned from Tuscany,
+when the army of the League was drawn up waiting to intercept and
+crush him in the mousetrap of Fornovo. No road remained for Charles
+and his troops but the rocky bed of the Taro, running, as I have
+described it, between the spurs of steep hills. It is true that the
+valley of the Baganza leads, from a little higher up among the
+mountains, into Lombardy. But this pass runs straight to Parma; and to
+follow it would have brought the French upon the walls of a strong
+city. Charles could not do otherwise than descend upon the village of
+Fornovo, and cut his way thence in the teeth of the Italian army over
+stream and boulder between the gorges of throttling mountain. The
+failure of the Italians to achieve what here upon the ground appears
+so simple, delivered Italy hand-bound to strangers. Had they but
+succeeded in arresting Charles and destroying his forces at Fornovo,
+it is just possible that then--even then, at the eleventh hour--Italy
+might have gained the sense of national coherence, or at least have
+proved herself capable of holding by her leagues the foreigner at bay.
+As it was, the battle of Fornovo, in spite of Venetian bonfires and
+Mantuan Madonnas of Victory, made her conscious of incompetence and
+convicted her of cowardice. After Fornovo, her sons scarcely dared to
+hold their heads up in the field against invaders; and the battles
+fought upon her soil were duels among aliens for the prize of Italy.
+
+In order to comprehend the battle of Fornovo in its bearings on
+Italian history, we must go back to the year 1492, and understand the
+conditions of the various States of Italy at that date. On April 8 in
+that year, Lorenzo de' Medici, who had succeeded in maintaining a
+political equilibrium in the peninsula, expired, and was succeeded by
+his son Piero, a vain and foolhardy young man, from whom no guidance
+could be expected. On July 25, Innocent VIII. died, and was succeeded
+by the very worst Pope who has ever occupied S. Peter's chair,
+Roderigo Borgia, Alexander VI. It was felt at once that the old order
+of things had somehow ended, and that a new era, the destinies of
+which as yet remained incalculable, was opening for Italy. The chief
+Italian powers, hitherto kept in equipoise by the diplomacy of Lorenzo
+de' Medici, were these--the Duchy of Milan, the Republic of Venice,
+the Republic of Florence, the Papacy, and the kingdom of Naples.
+Minor States, such as the Republics of Genoa and Siena, the Duchies of
+Urbino and Ferrara, the Marquisate of Mantua, the petty tyrannies of
+Romagna, and the wealthy city of Bologna, were sufficiently important
+to affect the balance of power, and to produce new combinations. For
+the present purpose it is, however, enough to consider the five great
+Powers.
+
+After the peace of Constance, which freed the Lombard Communes from
+Imperial interference in the year 1183, Milan, by her geographical
+position, rose rapidly to be the first city of North Italy. Without
+narrating the changes by which she lost her freedom as a Commune, it
+is enough to state that, earliest of all Italian cities, Milan passed
+into the hands of a single family. The Visconti managed to convert
+this flourishing commonwealth, with all its dependencies, into their
+private property, ruling it exclusively for their own profit, using
+its municipal institutions as the machinery of administration, and
+employing the taxes which they raised upon its wealth for purely
+selfish ends. When the line of the Visconti ended in the year 1447,
+their tyranny was continued by Francesco Sforza, the son of a poor
+soldier of adventure, who had raised himself by his military genius,
+and had married Bianca, the illegitimate daughter of the last
+Visconti. On the death of Francesco Sforza in 1466, he left two sons,
+Galeazzo Maria and Lodovico, surnamed Il Moro, both of whom were
+destined to play a prominent part in history. Galeazzo Maria,
+dissolute, vicious, and cruel to the core, was murdered by his injured
+subjects in the year 1476. His son, Giovanni Galeazzo, aged eight,
+would in course of time have succeeded to the Duchy, had it not been
+for the ambition of his uncle Lodovico. Lodovico contrived to name
+himself as Regent for his nephew, whom he kept, long after he had come
+of age, in a kind of honourable prison. Virtual master in Milan, but
+without a legal title to the throne, unrecognised in his authority by
+the Italian powers, and holding it from day to day by craft and fraud,
+Lodovico at last found his situation untenable; and it was this
+difficulty of an usurper to maintain himself in his despotism which,
+as we shall see, brought the French into Italy.
+
+Venice, the neighbour and constant foe of Milan, had become a close
+oligarchy by a process of gradual constitutional development, which
+threw her government into the hands of a few nobles. She was
+practically ruled by the hereditary members of the Grand Council. Ever
+since the year 1453, when Constantinople fell beneath the Turk, the
+Venetians had been more and more straitened in their Oriental
+commerce, and were thrown back upon the policy of territorial
+aggrandisement in Italy, from which they had hitherto refrained as
+alien to the temperament of the Republic. At the end of the fifteenth
+century Venice therefore became an object of envy and terror to the
+Italian States. They envied her because she alone was tranquil,
+wealthy, powerful, and free. They feared her because they had good
+reason to suspect her of encroachment; and it was foreseen that if she
+got the upper hand in Italy, all Italy would be the property of the
+families inscribed upon the Golden Book. It was thus alone that the
+Italians comprehended government. The principle of representation
+being utterly unknown, and the privileged burghers in each city being
+regarded as absolute and lawful owners of the city and of everything
+belonging to it, the conquest of a town by a republic implied the
+political extinction of that town and the disfranchisement of its
+inhabitants in favour of the conquerors.
+
+Florence at this epoch still called itself a Republic; and of all
+Italian commonwealths it was by far the most democratic. Its history,
+unlike that of Venice, had been the history of continual and brusque
+changes, resulting in the destruction of the old nobility, in the
+equalisation of the burghers, and in the formation of a new
+aristocracy of wealth. Prom this class of _bourgeois_ nobles sprang
+the Medici, who, by careful manipulation of the State machinery, by
+the creation of a powerful party devoted to their interests, by
+flattery of the people, by corruption, by taxation, and by constant
+scheming, raised themselves to the first place in the commonwealth,
+and became its virtual masters. In the year 1492 Lorenzo de' Medici,
+the most remarkable chief of this despotic family, died, bequeathing
+his supremacy in the Republic to a son of marked incompetence.
+
+Since the Pontificate of Nicholas V. the See of Rome had entered upon
+a new period of existence. The Popes no longer dreaded to reside in
+Rome, but were bent upon making the metropolis of Christendom both
+splendid as a seat of art and learning, and also potent as the capital
+of a secular kingdom. Though their fiefs in Romagna and the March were
+still held but loosely, though their provinces swarmed with petty
+despots who defied the Papal authority, and though the princely Roman
+houses of Colonna and Orsini were still strong enough to terrorise the
+Holy Father in the Vatican, it was now clear that the Papal See must
+in the end get the better of its adversaries, and consolidate itself
+into a first-rate Power. The internal spirit of the Papacy at this
+time corresponded to its external policy. It was thoroughly
+secularised by a series of worldly and vicious pontiffs, who had clean
+forgotten what their title, Vicar of Christ, implied. They
+consistently used their religious prestige to enforce their secular
+authority, while by their temporal power they caused their religious
+claims to be respected. Corrupt and shameless, they indulged
+themselves in every vice, openly acknowledged their children, and
+turned Italy upside down in order to establish favourites and bastards
+in the principalities they seized as spoils of war.
+
+The kingdom of Naples differed from any other state of Italy. Subject
+continually to foreign rulers since the decay of the Greek Empire,
+governed in succession by the Normans, the Hohenstauffens, and the
+House of Anjou, it had never enjoyed the real independence, or the
+free institutions, of the northern provinces; nor had it been
+Italianised in the same sense as the rest of the peninsula. Despotism,
+which assumed so many forms in Italy, was here neither the tyranny of
+a noble house, nor the masked autocracy of a burgher, nor yet the
+forceful sway of a condottiere. It had a dynastic character,
+resembling the monarchy of one of the great European nations, but
+modified by the peculiar conditions of Italian statecraft. Owing to
+this dynastic and monarchical complexion of the Neapolitan kingdom,
+semi-feudal customs flourished in the south far more than in the north
+of Italy. The barons were more powerful; and the destinies of the
+Regno often turned upon their feuds and quarrels with the Crown. At
+the same time the Neapolitan despots shared the uneasy circumstances
+of all Italian potentates, owing to the uncertainty of their tenure,
+both as conquerors and aliens, and also as the nominal vassals of the
+Holy See. The rights of suzerainty which the Normans had yielded to
+the Papacy over their southern conquests, and which the Popes had
+arbitrarily exercised in favour of the Angevine princes, proved a
+constant source of peril to the rest of Italy by rendering the
+succession to the crown of Naples doubtful. On the extinction of the
+Angevine line, however, the throne was occupied by a prince who had no
+valid title but that of the sword to its possession. Alfonso of Aragon
+conquered Naples in 1442, and neglecting his hereditary dominion,
+settled in his Italian capital. Possessed with the enthusiasm for
+literature which was then the ruling passion of the Italians, and very
+liberal to men of learning, Alfonso won for himself the surname of
+Magnanimous. On his death, in 1458, he bequeathed his Spanish
+kingdom, together with Sicily and Sardinia, to his brother, and left
+the fruits of his Italian conquest to his bastard, Ferdinand. This
+Ferdinand, whose birth was buried in profound obscurity, was the
+reigning sovereign in the year 1492. Of a cruel and sombre
+temperament, traitorous and tyrannical, Ferdinand was hated by his
+subjects as much as Alfonso had been loved. He possessed, however, to
+a remarkable degree, the qualities which at that epoch constituted a
+consummate statesman; and though the history of his reign is the
+history of plots and conspiracies, of judicial murders and forcible
+assassinations, of famines produced by iniquitous taxation, and of
+every kind of diabolical tyranny, Ferdinand contrived to hold his own,
+in the teeth of a rebellious baronage or a maddened population. His
+political sagacity amounted almost to a prophetic instinct in the last
+years of his life, when he became aware that the old order was
+breaking up in Italy, and had cause to dread that Charles VIII. of
+France would prove his title to the kingdom of Naples by force of
+arms.[13]
+
+Such were the component parts of the Italian body politic, with the
+addition of numerous petty principalities and powers, adhering more or
+less consistently to one or other of the greater States. The whole
+complex machine was bound together by no sense of common interest,
+animated by no common purpose, amenable to no central authority. Even
+such community of feeling as one spoken language gives, was lacking.
+And yet Italy distinguished herself clearly from the rest of Europe,
+not merely as a geographical fact, but also as a people intellectually
+and spiritually one. The rapid rise of humanism had aided in producing
+this national self-consciousness. Every State and every city was
+absorbed in the recovery of culture and in the development of art and
+literature. Far in advance of the other European nations, the Italians
+regarded the rest of the world as barbarous, priding themselves the
+while, in spite of mutual jealousies and hatreds, on their Italic
+civilisation. They were enormously wealthy. The resources of the Papal
+treasury, the private fortunes of the Florentine bankers, the riches
+of the Venetian merchants might have purchased all that France or
+Germany possessed of value. The single Duchy of Milan yielded to its
+masters 700,000 golden florins of revenue, according to the
+computation of De Comines. In default of a confederative system, the
+several States were held in equilibrium by diplomacy. By far the most
+important people, next to the despots and the captains of adventure,
+were ambassadors and orators. War itself had become a matter of
+arrangement, bargain, and diplomacy. The game of stratagem was played
+by generals who had been friends yesterday and might be friends again
+to-morrow, with troops who felt no loyalty whatever for the standards
+under which they listed. To avoid slaughter and to achieve the ends of
+warfare by parade and demonstration was the interest of every one
+concerned. Looking back upon Italy of the fifteenth century, taking
+account of her religious deadness and moral corruption, estimating the
+absence of political vigour in the republics and the noxious tyranny
+of the despots, analysing her lack of national spirit, and comparing
+her splendid life of cultivated ease with the want of martial energy,
+we can see but too plainly that contact with a simpler and stronger
+people could not but produce a terrible catastrophe. The Italians
+themselves, however, were far from comprehending this. Centuries of
+undisturbed internal intrigue had accustomed them to play the game of
+forfeits with each other, and nothing warned them that the time was
+come at which diplomacy, finesse, and craft would stand them in ill
+stead against rapacious conquerors.
+
+The storm which began to gather over Italy in the year 1492 had its
+first beginning in the North. Lodovico Sforza's position in the Duchy
+of Milan was becoming every day more difficult, when a slight and to
+all appearances insignificant incident converted his apprehension of
+danger into panic. It was customary for the States of Italy to
+congratulate a new Pope on his election by their ambassadors; and this
+ceremony had now to be performed for Roderigo Borgia. Lodovico
+proposed that his envoys should go to Rome together with those of
+Venice, Naples, and Florence; but Piero de' Medici, whose vanity made
+him wish to send an embassy in his own name, contrived that Lodovico's
+proposal should be rejected both by Florence and the King of Naples.
+So strained was the situation of Italian affairs that Lodovico saw in
+this repulse a menace to his own usurped authority. Feeling himself
+isolated among the princes of his country, rebuffed by the Medici, and
+coldly treated by the King of Naples, he turned in his anxiety to
+France, and advised the young king, Charles VIII., to make good his
+claim upon the Regno. It was a bold move to bring the foreigner thus
+into Italy; and even Lodovico, who prided himself upon his sagacity,
+could not see how things would end. He thought his situation so
+hazardous, however, that any change must be for the better. Moreover,
+a French invasion of Naples would tie the hands of his natural foe,
+King Ferdinand, whose granddaughter, Isabella of Aragon, had married
+Giovanni Galeazzo Sforza, and was now the rightful Duchess of Milan.
+When the Florentine ambassador at Milan asked him how he had the
+courage to expose Italy to such peril, his reply betrayed the egotism
+of his policy: 'You talk to me of Italy; but when have I looked Italy
+in the face? No one ever gave a thought to my affairs. I have,
+therefore, had to give them such security as I could.'
+
+Charles VIII. was young, light-brained, romantic, and ruled by
+_parvenus_, who had an interest in disturbing the old order of the
+monarchy. He lent a willing ear to Lodovico's invitation, backed as
+this was by the eloquence and passion of numerous Italian refugees and
+exiles. Against the advice of his more prudent counsellors, he taxed
+all the resources of his kingdom, and concluded treaties on
+disadvantageous terms with England, Germany, and Spain, in order that
+he might be able to concentrate all his attention upon the Italian
+expedition. At the end of the year 1493, it was known that the
+invasion was resolved upon. Gentile Becchi, the Florentine envoy at
+the Court of France, wrote to Piero de' Medici: 'If the King succeeds,
+it is all over with Italy--_tutta a bordello._' The extraordinary
+selfishness of the several Italian States at this critical moment
+deserves to be noticed. The Venetians, as Paolo Antonio Soderini
+described them to Piero de' Medici, 'are of opinion that to keep
+quiet, and to see other potentates of Italy spending and suffering,
+cannot but be to their advantage. They trust no one, and feel sure
+they have enough money to be able at any moment to raise sufficient
+troops, and so to guide events according to their inclinations.' As
+the invasion was directed against Naples, Ferdinand of Aragon
+displayed the acutest sense of the situation. 'Frenchmen,' he
+exclaimed, in what appears like a prophetic passion when contrasted
+with the cold indifference of others no less really menaced, 'have
+never come into Italy without inflicting ruin; and this invasion, if
+rightly considered, cannot but bring universal ruin, although it seems
+to menace us alone.' In his agony Ferdinand applied to Alexander VI.
+But the Pope looked coldly upon him, because the King of Naples, with
+rare perspicacity, had predicted that his elevation to the Papacy
+would prove disastrous to Christendom. Alexander preferred to ally
+himself with Venice and Milan. Upon this Ferdinand wrote as follows:
+'It seems fated that the Popes should leave no peace in Italy. We are
+compelled to fight; but the Duke of Bari (_i.e._ Lodovico Sforza)
+should think what may ensue from the tumult he is stirring up. He who
+raises this wind will not be able to lay the tempest when he likes.
+Let him look to the past, and he will see how every time that our
+internal quarrels have brought Powers from beyond the Alps into Italy,
+these have oppressed and lorded over her.'
+
+Terribly verified as these words were destined to be,--and they were
+no less prophetic in their political sagacity than Savonarola's
+prediction of the Sword and bloody Scourge,--it was now too late to
+avert the coming ruin. On March 1, 1494, Charles was with his army at
+Lyons. Early in September he had crossed the pass of Mont Genevre and
+taken up his quarters in the town of Asti. There is no need to
+describe in detail the holiday march of the French troops through
+Lombardy, Tuscany, and Rome, until, without having struck a blow of
+consequence, the gates of Naples opened to receive the conqueror upon
+February 22, 1495. Philippe de Comines, who parted from the King at
+Asti and passed the winter as his envoy at Venice, has more than once
+recorded his belief that nothing but the direct interposition of
+Providence could have brought so mad an expedition to so successful a
+conclusion. 'Dieu monstroit conduire l'entreprise,' No sooner,
+however, was Charles installed in Naples than the States of Italy
+began to combine against him. Lodovico Sforza had availed himself of
+the general confusion consequent upon the first appearance of the
+French, to poison his nephew. He was, therefore, now the titular, as
+well as virtual, Lord of Milan. So far, he had achieved what he
+desired, and had no further need of Charles. The overtures he now made
+to the Venetians and the Pope terminated in a League between these
+Powers for the expulsion of the French from Italy. Germany and Spain
+entered into the same alliance; and De Comines, finding himself
+treated with marked coldness by the Signory of Venice, despatched a
+courier to warn Charles in Naples of the coming danger. After a stay
+of only fifty days in his new capital, the French King hurried
+northward. Moving quickly through the Papal States and Tuscany, he
+engaged his troops in the passes of the Apennines near Pontremoli, and
+on July 5, 1495, took up his quarters in the village of Fornovo. De
+Comines reckons that his whole fighting force at this time did not
+exceed 9,000 men, with fourteen pieces of artillery. Against him at
+the opening of the valley was the army of the League, numbering some
+35,000 men, of whom three-fourths were supplied by Venice, the rest by
+Lodovico Sforza and the German Emperor. Francesco Gonzaga, Marquis of
+Mantua, was the general of the Venetian forces; and on him, therefore,
+fell the real responsibility of the battle.
+
+De Comines remarks on the imprudence of the allies, who allowed
+Charles to advance as far as Fornovo, when it was their obvious policy
+to have established themselves in the village and so have caught the
+French troops in a trap. It was a Sunday when the French marched down
+upon Fornovo. Before them spread the plain of Lombardy, and beyond it
+the white crests of the Alps. 'We were,' says De Comines, 'in a valley
+between two little mountain flanks, and in that valley ran a river
+which could easily be forded on foot, except when it is swelled with
+sudden rains. The whole valley was a bed of gravel and big stones,
+very difficult for horses, about a quarter of a league in breadth, and
+on the right bank lodged our enemies.' Any one who has visited Fornovo
+can understand the situation of the two armies. Charles occupied the
+village on the right bank of the Taro. On the same bank, extending
+downward toward the plain, lay the host of the allies; and in order
+that Charles should escape them, it was necessary that he should cross
+the Taro, just below its junction with the Ceno, and reach Lombardy by
+marching in a parallel line with his foes.
+
+All through the night of Sunday it thundered and rained incessantly;
+so that on the Monday morning the Taro was considerably swollen. At
+seven o'clock the King sent for De Comines, who found him already
+armed and mounted on the finest horse he had ever seen. The name of
+this charger was _Savoy_. He was black, one-eyed, and of middling
+height; and to his great courage, as we shall see, Charles owed life
+upon that day. The French army, ready for the march, now took to the
+gravelly bed of the Taro, passing the river at a distance of about a
+quarter of a league from the allies. As the French left Fornovo, the
+light cavalry of their enemies entered the village and began to attack
+the baggage. At the same time the Marquis of Mantua, with the flower
+of his men-at-arms, crossed the Taro and harassed the rear of the
+French host; while raids from the right bank to the left were
+constantly being made by sharpshooters and flying squadrons. 'At this
+moment,' says De Comines, 'not a single man of us could have escaped
+if our ranks had once been broken.' The French army was divided into
+three main bodies. The vanguard consisted of some 350 men-at-arms,
+3000 Switzers, 300 archers of the Guard, a few mounted crossbow-men,
+and the artillery. Next came the Battle, and after this the rearguard.
+At the time when the Marquis of Mantua made his attack, the French
+rearguard had not yet crossed the river. Charles quitted the van, put
+himself at the head of his chivalry, and charged the Italian horsemen,
+driving them back, some to the village and others to their camp. De
+Comines observes, that had the Italian knights been supported in this
+passage of arms by the light cavalry of the Venetian force, called
+Stradiots, the French must have been outnumbered, thrown into
+confusion, and defeated. As it was, these Stradiots were engaged in
+plundering the baggage of the French; and the Italians, accustomed to
+bloodless encounters, did not venture, in spite of their immense
+superiority of numbers, to renew the charge. In the pursuit of
+Gonzaga's horsemen Charles outstripped his staff, and was left almost
+alone to grapple with a little band of mounted foemen. It was here
+that his noble horse, Savoy, saved his person by plunging and charging
+till assistance came up from the French, and enabled the King to
+regain his van.
+
+It is incredible, considering the nature of the ground and the number
+of the troops engaged, that the allies should not have returned to the
+attack and have made the passage of the French into the plain
+impossible. De Comines, however, assures us that the actual engagement
+only lasted a quarter of an hour, and the pursuit of the Italians
+three quarters of an hour. After they had once resolved to fly, they
+threw away their lances and betook themselves to Reggio and Parma. So
+complete was their discomfiture, that De Comines gravely blames the
+want of military genius and adventure in the French host. If, instead
+of advancing along the left bank of the Taro and there taking up his
+quarters for the night, Charles had recrossed the stream and pursued
+the army of the allies, he would have had the whole of Lombardy at his
+discretion. As it was, the French army encamped not far from the scene
+of the action in great discomfort and anxiety. De Comines had to
+bivouac in a vineyard, without even a mantle to wrap round him, having
+lent his cloak to the King in the morning; and as it had been pouring
+all day, the ground could not have afforded very luxurious quarters.
+The same extraordinary luck which had attended the French in their
+whole expedition, now favoured their retreat; and the same
+pusillanimity which the allies had shown at Fornovo, prevented them
+from re-forming and engaging with the army of Charles upon the plain.
+One hour before daybreak on Tuesday morning, the French broke up their
+camp and succeeded in clearing the valley. That night they lodged at
+Fiorenzuola, the next at Piacenza, and so on; till on the eighth day
+they arrived at Asti without having been so much as incommoded by the
+army of the allies in their rear.
+
+Although the field of Fornovo was in reality so disgraceful to the
+Italians, they reckoned it a victory upon the technical pretence that
+the camp and baggage of the French had been seized. Illuminations and
+rejoicings made the piazza of S. Mark in Venice gay, and Francesco da
+Gonzaga had the glorious Madonna della Vittoria painted for him by
+Mantegna, in commemoration of what ought only to have been remembered
+with shame.
+
+A fitting conclusion to this sketch, connecting its close with the
+commencement, may be found in some remarks upon the manner of warfare
+to which the Italians of the Renaissance had become accustomed, and
+which proved so futile on the field of Fornovo. During the middle
+ages, and in the days of the Communes, the whole male population of
+Italy had fought light-armed on foot. Merchant and artisan left the
+counting-house and the workshop, took shield and pike, and sallied
+forth to attack the barons in their castles, or to meet the Emperor's
+troops upon the field. It was with this national militia that the
+citizens of Florence freed their _Contado_ of the nobles, and the
+burghers of Lombardy gained the battle of Legnano. In course of time,
+by a process of change which it is not very easy to trace, heavily
+armed cavalry began to take the place of infantry in mediaeval warfare.
+Men-at-arms, as they were called, encased from head to foot in iron,
+and mounted upon chargers no less solidly caparisoned, drove the
+foot-soldiers before them at the points of their long lances. Nowhere
+in Italy do they seem to have met with the fierce resistance which the
+bears of the Swiss Oberland and the bulls of Uri offered to the
+knights of Burgundy. No Tuscan Arnold von Winkelried clasped a dozen
+lances to his bosom that the foeman's ranks might thus be broken at
+the cost of his own life; nor did it occur to the Italian burghers to
+meet the charge of the horsemen with squares protected by bristling
+spears. They seem, on the contrary, to have abandoned military service
+with the readiness of men whose energies were already absorbed in the
+affairs of peace. To become a practised and efficient man-at-arms
+required long training and a life's devotion. So much time the
+burghers of the free towns could not spare to military service, while
+the petty nobles were only too glad to devote themselves to so
+honourable a calling. Thus it came to pass that a class of
+professional fighting-men was gradually formed in Italy, whose
+services the burghers and the princes bought, and by whom the wars of
+the peninsula were regularly farmed by contract. Wealth and luxury in
+the great cities continued to increase; and as the burghers grew more
+comfortable, they were less inclined to take the field in their own
+persons, and more disposed to vote large sums of money for the
+purchase of necessary aid. At the same time this system suited the
+despots, since it spared them the peril of arming their own subjects,
+while they taxed them to pay the services of foreign captains. War
+thus became a commerce. Romagna, the Marches of Ancona, and other
+parts of the Papal dominions, supplied a number of petty nobles whose
+whole business in life it was to form companies of trained horsemen,
+and with these bands to hire themselves out to the republics and the
+despots. Gain was the sole purpose of these captains. They sold their
+service to the highest bidder, fighting irrespectively of principle or
+patriotism, and passing with the coldest equanimity from the camp of
+one master to that of his worst foe. It was impossible that true
+military spirit should survive this prostitution of the art of war. A
+species of mock warfare prevailed in Italy. Battles were fought with a
+view to booty more than victory; prisoners were taken for the sake of
+ransom; bloodshed was carefully avoided, for the men who fought on
+either side in any pitched field had been comrades with their present
+foemen in the last encounter, and who could tell how soon the general
+of the one host might not need his rival's troops to recruit his own
+ranks? Like every genuine institution of the Italian Renaissance,
+warfare was thus a work of fine art, a masterpiece of intellectual
+subtlety; and like the Renaissance itself, this peculiar form of
+warfare was essentially transitional. The cannon and the musket were
+already in use; and it only required one blast of gunpowder to turn
+the sham-fight of courtly, traitorous, finessing captains of adventure
+into something terribly more real. To men like the Marquis of Mantua
+war had been a highly profitable game of skill; to men like the
+Marechal de Gie it was a murderous horseplay; and this difference the
+Italians were not slow to perceive. When they cast away their lances
+at Fornovo, and fled--in spite of their superior numbers--never to
+return, one fair-seeming sham of the fifteenth century became a vision
+of the past.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+_FLORENCE AND THE MEDICI_
+
+     Di Firenze in prima si divisono intra loro i nobili, dipoi i
+     nobili e il popolo, e in ultimo il popolo e la plebe; e
+     molte volte occorse che una di queste parti rimasa
+     superiore, si divise in due.--MACHIAVELLI.
+
+
+I
+
+Florence, like all Italian cities, owed her independence to the duel
+of the Papacy and Empire. The transference of the imperial authority
+beyond the Alps had enabled the burghs of Lombardy and Tuscany to
+establish a form of self-government. This government was based upon
+the old municipal organisation of duumvirs and decemvirs. It was, in
+fact, nothing more or less than a survival from the ancient Roman
+system. The proof of this was, that while vindicating their rights as
+towns, the free cities never questioned the validity of the imperial
+title. Even after the peace of Constance in 1183, when Frederick
+Barbarossa acknowledged their autonomy, they received within their
+walls a supreme magistrate, with power of life and death and ultimate
+appeal in all decisive questions, whose title of Potesta indicated
+that he represented the imperial power--Potestas. It was not by the
+assertion of any right, so much as by the growth of custom, and by the
+weakness of the Emperors, that in course of time each city became a
+sovereign State. The theoretical supremacy of the Empire prevented any
+other authority from taking the first place in Italy. On the other
+hand, the practical inefficiency of the Emperors to play their part
+encouraged the establishment of numerous minor powers amenable to no
+controlling discipline.
+
+The free cities derived their strength from industry, and had nothing
+in common with the nobles of the surrounding country. Broadly
+speaking, the population of the towns included what remained in Italy
+of the old Roman people. This Roman stock was nowhere stronger than in
+Florence and Venice--Florence defended from barbarian incursions by
+her mountains and marshes, Venice by the isolation of her lagoons. The
+nobles, on the contrary, were mostly of foreign origin--Germans,
+Franks, and Lombards, who had established themselves as feudal lords
+in castles apart from the cities. The force which the burghs acquired
+as industrial communities was soon turned against these nobles. The
+larger cities, like Milan and Florence, began to make war upon the
+lords of castles, and to absorb into their own territory the small
+towns and villages around them. Thus in the social economy of the
+Italians there were two antagonistic elements ready to range
+themselves beneath any banners that should give the form of legitimate
+warfare to their mutual hostility. It was the policy of the Church in
+the twelfth century to support the cause of the cities, using them as
+a weapon against the Empire, and stimulating the growing ambition of
+the burghers. In this way Italy came to be divided into the two
+world-famous factions known as Guelf and Ghibelline. The struggle
+between Guelf and Ghibelline was the struggle of the Papacy for the
+depression of the Empire, the struggle of the great burghs face to
+face with feudalism, the struggle of the old Italie stock enclosed in
+cities with the foreign nobles established in fortresses. When the
+Church had finally triumphed by the extirpation of the House of
+Hohenstaufen, this conflict of Guelf and Ghibelline was really ended.
+Until the reign of Charles V. no Emperor interfered to any purpose in
+Italian affairs. At the same time the Popes ceased to wield a
+formidable power. Having won the battle by calling in the French, they
+suffered the consequences of this policy by losing their hold on Italy
+during the long period of their exile at Avignon. The Italians, left
+without either Pope or Emperor, were free to pursue their course of
+internal development, and to prosecute their quarrels among
+themselves. But though the names of Guelf and Ghibelline lost their
+old significance after the year 1266 (the date of King Manfred's
+death), these two factions had so divided Italy that they continued to
+play a prominent part in her annals. Guelf still meant constitutional
+autonomy, meant the burgher as against the noble, meant industry as
+opposed to feudal lordship. Ghibelline meant the rule of the few over
+the many, meant tyranny, meant the interest of the noble as against
+the merchant and the citizen. These broad distinctions must be borne
+in mind, if we seek to understand how it was that a city like Florence
+continued to be governed by parties, the European force of which had
+passed away.
+
+
+II
+
+
+Florence first rose into importance during the papacy of Innocent III.
+Up to this date she had been a town of second-rate distinction even in
+Tuscany. Pisa was more powerful by arms and commerce. Lucca was the
+old seat of the dukes and marquises of Tuscany. But between the years
+1200 and 1250 Florence assumed the place she was to hold
+thenceforward, by heading the league of Tuscan cities formed to
+support the Guelf party against the Ghibellines. Formally adopting the
+Guelf cause, the Florentines made themselves the champions of
+municipal liberty in Central Italy; and while they declared war
+against the Ghibelline cities, they endeavoured to stamp out the very
+name of noble in their State. It is not needful to describe the
+varying fortunes of the Guelfs and Ghibellines, the burghers and the
+nobles, during the thirteenth and the first half of the fourteenth
+centuries. Suffice it to say that through all the vicissitudes of that
+stormy period the name Guelf became more and more associated with
+republican freedom in Florence. At last, after the final triumph of
+that party in 1253, the Guelfs remained victors in the city.
+Associating the glory of their independence with Guelf principles, the
+citizens of Florence perpetuated within their State a faction that, in
+its turn, was destined to prove perilous to liberty.
+
+When it became clear that the republic was to rule itself henceforth
+untrammelled by imperial interference, the people divided themselves
+into six districts, and chose for each district two Ancients, who
+administered the government in concert with the Potesta and the
+Captain of the People. The Ancients were a relic of the old Roman
+municipal organisation. The Potesta who was invariably a noble
+foreigner selected by the people, represented the extinct imperial
+right, and exercised the power of life and death within the city. The
+Captain of the People, who was also a foreigner, headed the burghers
+in their military capacity, for at that period the troops were levied
+from the citizens themselves in twenty companies. The body of the
+citizens, or the _popolo_, were ultimately sovereigns in the State.
+Assembled under the banners of their several companies, they formed a
+_parlamento_ for delegating their own power to each successive
+government. Their representatives, again, arranged in two councils,
+called the Council of the People and the Council of the Commune, under
+the presidency of the Captain of the People and the Potesta, ratified
+the measures which had previously been proposed and carried by the
+executive authority or Signoria. Under this simple State system the
+Florentines placed themselves at the head of the Tuscan League, fought
+the battles of the Church, asserted their sovereignty by issuing the
+golden florin of the republic, and flourished until 1266.
+
+
+III
+
+
+In that year an important change was effected in the Constitution.
+The whole population of Florence consisted, on the one hand, of nobles
+or Grandi, as they were called in Tuscany, and on the other hand of
+working people. The latter, divided into traders and handicraftsmen,
+were distributed in guilds called Arti; and at that time there were
+seven Greater and five Lesser Arti, the most influential of all being
+the Guild of the Wool Merchants. These guilds had their halls for
+meeting, their colleges of chief officers, their heads, called Consoli
+or Priors, and their flags. In 1266 it was decided that the
+administration of the commonwealth should be placed simply and wholly
+in the hands of the Arti, and the Priors of these industrial companies
+became the lords or Signory of Florence. No inhabitant of the city who
+had not enrolled himself as a craftsman in one of the guilds could
+exercise any function of burghership. To be _scioperato_, or without
+industry, was to be without power, without rank or place of honour in
+the State. The revolution which placed the Arts at the head of the
+republic had the practical effect of excluding the Grandi altogether
+from the government. Violent efforts were made by these noble
+families, potent through their territorial possessions and foreign
+connections, and trained from boyhood in the use of arms, to recover
+the place from which the new laws thrust them: but their menacing
+attitude, instead of intimidating the burghers, roused their anger and
+drove them to the passing of still more stringent laws. In 1293, after
+the Ghibellines had been defeated in the great battle of Campaldino, a
+series of severe enactments, called the Ordinances of Justice, were
+decreed against the unruly Grandi. All civic rights were taken from
+them; the severest penalties were attached to their slightest
+infringement of municipal law; their titles to land were limited; the
+privilege of living within the city walls was allowed them only under
+galling restrictions; and, last not least, a supreme magistrate, named
+the Gonfalonier of Justice, was created for the special purpose of
+watching them and carrying out the penal code against them.
+Henceforward Florence was governed exclusively by merchants and
+artisans. The Grandi hastened to enrol themselves in the guilds,
+exchanging their former titles and dignities for the solid privilege
+of burghership. The exact parallel to this industrial constitution for
+a commonwealth, carrying on wars with emperors and princes, holding
+haughty captains in its pay, and dictating laws to subject cities,
+cannot, I think, be elsewhere found in history. It is as unique as the
+Florence of Dante and Giotto is unique. While the people was guarding
+itself thus stringently against the Grandi, a separate body was
+created for the special purpose of extirpating the Ghibellines. A
+permanent committee of vigilance, called the College or the Captains
+of the Guelf Party, was established. It was their function to
+administer the forfeited possessions of Ghibelline rebels, to hunt out
+suspected citizens, to prosecute them for Ghibellinism, to judge them,
+and to punish them as traitors to the commonwealth. This body, like a
+little State within the State, proved formidable to the republic
+itself through the unlimited and undefined sway it exercised over
+burghers whom it chose to tax with treason. In course of time it
+became the oligarchical element within the Florentine democracy, and
+threatened to change the free constitution of the city into a
+government conducted by a few powerful families.
+
+There is no need to dwell in detail on the internal difficulties of
+Florence during the first half of the fourteenth century. Two main
+circumstances, however, require to be briefly noticed. These are (i)
+the contest of the Blacks and Whites, so famous through the part
+played in it by Dante; and (ii) the tyranny of the Duke[1] of Athens,
+Walter de Brienne. The feuds of the Blacks and Whites broke up the
+city into factions, and produced such anarchy that at last it was
+found necessary to place the republic under the protection of foreign
+potentates. Charles of Valois was first chosen, and after him the Duke
+of Athens, who took up his residence in the city. Entrusted with
+dictatorial authority, he used his power to form a military despotism.
+Though his reign of violence lasted rather less than a year, it bore
+important fruits; for the tyrant, seeking to support himself upon the
+favour of the common people, gave political power to the Lesser Arts
+at the expense of the Greater, and confused the old State-system by
+enlarging the democracy. The net result of these events for Florence
+was, first, that the city became habituated to rancorous party-strife,
+involving exiles and proscriptions; and, secondly, that it lost its
+primitive social hierarchy of classes.
+
+
+IV
+
+
+After the Guelfs had conquered the Ghibellines, and the people had
+absorbed the Grandi in their guilds, the next chapter in the troubled
+history of Florence was the division of the Popolo against itself.
+Civil strife now declared itself as a conflict between labour and
+capital. The members of the Lesser Arts, craftsmen who plied trades
+subordinate to those of the Greater Arts, rose up against their social
+and political superiors, demanding a larger share in the government, a
+more equal distribution of profits, higher wages, and privileges that
+should place them on an absolute equality with the wealthy merchants.
+It was in the year 1378 that the proletariate broke out into
+rebellion. Previous events had prepared the way for this revolt. First
+of all, the republic had been democratised through the destruction of
+the Grandi and through the popular policy pursued to gain his own ends
+by the Duke of Athens. Secondly, society had been shaken to its very
+foundation by the great plague of 1348. Both Boccaccio and Matteo
+Villani draw lively pictures of the relaxed morality and loss of order
+consequent upon this terrible disaster; nor had thirty years sufficed
+to restore their relative position to grades and ranks confounded by
+an overwhelming calamity. We may therefore reckon the great plague of
+1348 among the causes which produced the anarchy of 1378. Rising in a
+mass to claim their privileges, the artisans ejected the Signory from
+the Public Palace, and for awhile Florence was at the mercy of the
+mob. It is worthy of notice that the Medici, whose name is scarcely
+known before this epoch, now came for one moment to the front.
+Salvestro de' Medici was Gonfalonier of Justice at the time when the
+tumult first broke out. He followed the faction of the handicraftsmen,
+and became the hero of the day. I cannot discover that he did more
+than extend a sort of passive protection to their cause. Yet there is
+no doubt that the attachment of the working classes to the House of
+Medici dates from this period. The rebellion of 1378 is known in
+Florentine history as the Tumult of the Ciompi. The name Ciompi
+strictly means the Wool-Carders. One set of operatives in the city,
+and that the largest, gave its title to the whole body of the
+labourers. For some months these craftsmen governed the republic,
+appointing their own Signory and passing laws in their own interest;
+but, as is usual, the proletariate found itself incapable of sustained
+government. The ambition and discontent of the Ciompi foamed
+themselves away, and industrious working men began to see that trade
+was languishing and credit on the wane. By their own act at last they
+restored the government to the Priors of the Greater Arti. Still the
+movement had not been without grave consequences. It completed the
+levelling of classes, which had been steadily advancing from the first
+in Florence. After the Ciompi riot there was no longer not only any
+distinction between noble and burgher, but the distinction between
+greater and lesser guilds was practically swept away. The classes,
+parties, and degrees in the republic were so broken up, ground down,
+and mingled, that thenceforth the true source of power in the State
+was wealth combined with personal ability. In other words, the proper
+political conditions had been formed for unscrupulous adventurers.
+Florence had become a democracy without social organisation, which
+might fall a prey to oligarchs or despots. What remained of deeply
+rooted feuds or factions--animosities against the Grandi, hatred for
+the Ghibellines, jealousy of labour and capital--offered so many
+points of leverage for stirring the passions of the people and for
+covering personal ambition with a cloak of public zeal. The time was
+come for the Albizzi to attempt an oligarchy, and for the Medici to
+begin the enslavement of the State.
+
+
+V
+
+
+The Constitution of Florence offered many points of weakness to the
+attacks of such intriguers. In the first place it was in its origin
+not a political but an industrial organisation--a simple group of
+guilds invested with the sovereign authority. Its two most powerful
+engines, the Gonfalonier of Justice and the Guelf College, had been
+formed, not with a view to the preservation of the government, but
+with the purpose of quelling the nobles and excluding a detested
+faction. It had no permanent head, like the Doge of Venice; no fixed
+senate like the Venetian Grand Council; its chief magistrates, the
+Signory, were elected for short periods of two months, and their mode
+of election was open to the gravest criticism. Supposed to be chosen
+by lot, they were really selected from lists drawn up by the factions
+in power from time to time. These factions contrived to exclude the
+names of all but their adherents from the bags, or _borse_, in which
+the burghers eligible for election had to be inscribed. Furthermore,
+it was not possible for this shifting Signory to conduct affairs
+requiring sustained effort and secret deliberation; therefore recourse
+was being continually had to dictatorial Commissions. The people,
+summoned in parliament upon the Great Square, were asked to confer
+plenipotentiary authority upon a committee called _Balia_, who
+proceeded to do what they chose in the State, and who retained power
+after the emergency for which they were created passed away. The same
+instability in the supreme magistracy led to the appointment of
+special commissioners for war, and special councils, or _Pratiche_,
+for the management of each department. Such supplementary commissions
+not only proved the weakness of the central authority, but they were
+always liable to be made the instruments of party warfare. The Guelf
+College was another and a different source of danger to the State. Not
+acting under the control of the Signory, but using its own initiative,
+this powerful body could proscribe and punish burghers on the mere
+suspicion of Ghibellinism. Though the Ghibelline faction had become an
+empty name, the Guelf College excluded from the franchise all and
+every whom they chose on any pretext to admonish. Under this mild
+phrase, _to admonish_, was concealed a cruel exercise of tyranny--it
+meant to warn a man that he was suspected of treason, and that he had
+better relinquish the exercise of his burghership. By free use of this
+engine of Admonition, the Guelf College rendered their enemies
+voiceless in the State, and were able to pack the Signory and the
+councils with their own creatures. Another important defect in the
+Florentine Constitution was the method of imposing taxes. This was
+done by no regular system. The party in power made what estimate it
+chose of a man's capacity to bear taxation, and called upon him for
+extraordinary loans. In this way citizens were frequently driven into
+bankruptcy and exile; and since to be a debtor to the State deprived a
+burgher of his civic rights, severe taxation was one of the best ways
+of silencing and neutralising a dissentient.
+
+I have enumerated these several causes of weakness in the Florentine
+State-system, partly because they show how irregularly the
+Constitution had been formed by the patching and extension of a simple
+industrial machine to suit the needs of a great commonwealth; partly
+because it was through these defects that the democracy merged
+gradually into a despotism. The art of the Medici consisted in a
+scientific comprehension of these very imperfections, a methodic use
+of them for their own purposes, and a steady opposition to any
+attempts made to substitute a stricter system. The Florentines had
+determined to be an industrial community, governing themselves on the
+co-operative principle, dividing profits, sharing losses, and exposing
+their magistrates to rigid scrutiny. All this in theory was excellent.
+Had they remained an unambitious and peaceful commonwealth, engaged in
+the wool and silk trade, it might have answered. Modern Europe might
+have admired the model of a communistic and commercial democracy. But
+when they engaged in aggressive wars, and sought to enslave
+sister-cities like Pisa and Lucca, it was soon found that their simple
+trading constitution would not serve. They had to piece it out with
+subordinate machinery, cumbrous, difficult to manage, ill-adapted to
+the original structure. Each limb of this subordinate machinery,
+moreover, was a _point d'appui_ for insidious and self-seeking party
+leaders.
+
+Florence, in the middle of the fourteenth century, was a vast beehive
+of industry. Distinctions of rank among burghers, qualified to vote
+and hold office, were theoretically unknown. Highly educated men, of
+more than princely wealth, spent their time in shops and
+counting-houses, and trained their sons to follow trades. Military
+service at this period was abandoned by the citizens; they preferred
+to pay mercenary troops for the conduct of their wars. Nor was there,
+as in Venice, any outlet for their energies upon the seas. Florence
+had no navy, no great port--she only kept a small fleet for the
+protection of her commerce. Thus the vigour of the commonwealth was
+concentrated on itself; while the influence of the citizens, through
+their affiliated trading-houses, correspondents, and agents, extended
+like a network over Europe. In a community of this kind it was natural
+that wealth--rank and titles being absent--should alone confer
+distinction. Accordingly we find that out of the very bosom of the
+people a new plutocratic aristocracy begins to rise. The Grandi are
+no more; but certain families achieve distinction by their riches,
+their numbers, their high spirit, and their ancient place of honour in
+the State. These nobles of the purse obtained the name of _Popolani
+Nobili_; and it was they who now began to play at high stakes for the
+supreme power. In all the subsequent vicissitudes of Florence every
+change takes place by intrigue and by clever manipulation of the
+political machine. Recourse is rarely had to violence of any kind, and
+the leaders of revolutions are men of the yard-measure, never of the
+sword. The despotism to which the republic eventually succumbed was no
+less commercial than the democracy had been. Florence in the days of
+her slavery remained a _Popolo_.
+
+
+VI
+
+
+The opening of the second half of the fourteenth century had been
+signalised by the feuds of two great houses, both risen from the
+people. These were the Albizzi and the Ricci. At this epoch there had
+been a formal closing of the lists of burghers;--henceforth no new
+families who might settle in the city could claim the franchise, vote
+in the assemblies, or hold magistracies. The Guelf College used their
+old engine of admonition to persecute _novi homines_, whom they
+dreaded as opponents. At the head of this formidable organisation the
+Albizzi placed themselves, and worked it with such skill that they
+succeeded in driving the Ricci out of all participation in the
+government. The tumult of the Ciompi formed but an episode in their
+career toward oligarchy; indeed, that revolution only rendered the
+political material of the Florentine republic more plastic in the
+hands of intriguers, by removing the last vestiges of class
+distinctions and by confusing the old parties of the State.
+
+When the Florentines in 1387 engaged in their long duel with Gian
+Galeazzo Visconti, the difficulty of conducting this war without some
+permanent central authority still further confirmed the power of the
+rising oligarchs. The Albizzi became daily more autocratic, until in
+1393 their chief, Maso degli Albizzi, a man of strong will and prudent
+policy, was chosen Gonfalonier of Justice. Assuming the sway of a
+dictator he revised the list of burghers capable of holding office,
+struck out the private opponents of his house, and excluded all names
+but those of powerful families who were well affected towards an
+aristocratic government. The great house of the Alberti were exiled in
+a body, declared rebels, and deprived of their possessions, for no
+reason except that they seemed dangerous to the Albizzi. It was in
+vain that the people murmured against these arbitrary acts. The new
+rulers were omnipotent in the Signory, which they packed with their
+own men, in the great guilds, and in the Guelf College. All the
+machinery invented by the industrial community for its self-management
+and self-defence was controlled and manipulated by a close body of
+aristocrats, with the Albizzi at their head. It seemed as though
+Florence, without any visible alteration in her forms of government,
+was rapidly becoming an oligarchy even less open than the Venetian
+republic. Meanwhile the affairs of the State were most flourishing.
+The strong-handed masters of the city not only held the Duke of Milan
+in check, and prevented him from turning Italy into a kingdom; they
+furthermore acquired the cities of Pisa, Livorno, Arezzo,
+Montepulciano, and Cortona, for Florence, making her the mistress of
+all Tuscany, with the exception of Siena, Lucca, and Volterra. Maso
+degli Albizzi was the ruling spirit of the commonwealth, spending the
+enormous sum of 11,500,000 golden florins on war, raising sumptuous
+edifices, protecting the arts, and acting in general like a powerful
+and irresponsible prince.
+
+In spite of public prosperity there were signs, however, that this
+rule of a few families could not last. Their government was only
+maintained by continual revision of the lists of burghers, by
+elimination of the disaffected, and by unremitting personal industry.
+They introduced no new machinery into the Constitution whereby the
+people might be deprived of its titular sovereignty, or their own
+dictatorship might be continued with a semblance of legality. Again,
+they neglected to win over the new nobles (_nobili popolani_) in a
+body to their cause; and thus they were surrounded by rivals ready to
+spring upon them when a false step should be made. The Albizzi
+oligarchy was a masterpiece of art, without any force to sustain it
+but the craft and energy of its constructors. It had not grown up,
+like the Venetian oligarchy, by the gradual assimilation to itself of
+all the vigour in the State. It was bound, sooner or later, to yield
+to the renascent impulse of democracy inherent in Florentine
+institutions.
+
+
+VII
+
+
+Maso degli Albizzi died in 1417. He was succeeded in the government by
+his old friend, Niccolo da Uzzano, a man of great eloquence and
+wisdom, whose single word swayed the councils of the people as he
+listed. Together with him acted Maso's son, Rinaldo, a youth of even
+more brilliant talents than his father, frank, noble, and
+high-spirited, but far less cautious.
+
+The oligarchy, which these two men undertook to manage, had
+accumulated against itself the discontent of overtaxed, disfranchised,
+jealous burghers. The times, too, were bad. Pursuing the policy of
+Maso, the Albizzi engaged the city in a tedious and unsuccessful war
+with Filippo Maria Visconti, which cost 350,000 golden florins, and
+brought no credit. In order to meet extraordinary expenses they raised
+new public loans, thereby depreciating the value of the old Florentine
+funds. "What was worse, they imposed forced subsidies with grievous
+inequality upon the burghers, passing over their friends and
+adherents, and burdening their opponents with more than could be
+borne. This imprudent financial policy began the ruin of the Albizzi.
+It caused a clamour in the city for a new system of more just
+taxation, which was too powerful to be resisted. The voice of the
+people made itself loudly heard; and with the people on this occasion
+sided Giovanni de' Medici. This was in 1427.
+
+It is here that the Medici appear upon that memorable scene where in
+the future they are to play the first part. Giovanni de' Medici did
+not belong to the same branch of his family as the Salvestro who
+favoured the people at the time of the Ciompi Tumult. But he adopted
+the same popular policy. To his sons Cosimo and Lorenzo he bequeathed
+on his deathbed the rule that they should invariably adhere to the
+cause of the multitude, found their influence on that, and avoid the
+arts of factious and ambitious leaders. In his own life he had pursued
+this course of conduct, acquiring a reputation for civic moderation
+and impartiality that endeared him to the people and stood his
+children in good stead. Early in his youth Giovanni found himself
+almost destitute by reason of the imposts charged upon him by the
+oligarchs. He possessed, however, the genius for money-making to a
+rare degree, and passed his manhood as a banker, amassing the largest
+fortune of any private citizen in Italy. In his old age he devoted
+himself to the organisation of his colossal trading business, and
+abstained, as far as possible, from political intrigues. Men observed
+that they rarely met him in the Public Palace or on the Great Square.
+
+Cosimo de' Medici was thirty years old when his father Giovanni died,
+in 1429. During his youth he had devoted all his time and energy to
+business, mastering the complicated affairs of Giovanni's
+banking-house, and travelling far and wide through Europe to extend
+its connections. This education made him a consummate financier; and
+those who knew him best were convinced that his ambition was set on
+great things. However quietly he might begin, it was clear that he
+intended to match himself, as a leader of the plebeians, against the
+Albizzi. The foundations he prepared for future action were equally
+characteristic of the man, of Florence, and of the age. Commanding the
+enormous capital of the Medicean bank he contrived, at any sacrifice
+of temporary convenience, to lend money to the State for war expenses,
+engrossing in his own hands a large portion of the public debt of
+Florence. At the same time his agencies in various European capitals
+enabled him to keep his own wealth floating far beyond the reach of
+foes within the city. A few years of this system ended in so complete
+a confusion between Cosimo's trade and the finances of Florence that
+the bankruptcy of the Medici, however caused, would have compromised
+the credit of the State and the fortunes of the fund-holders. Cosimo,
+in a word, made himself necessary to Florence by the wise use of his
+riches. Furthermore, he kept his eye upon the list of burghers,
+lending money to needy citizens, putting good things in the way of
+struggling traders, building up the fortunes of men who were disposed
+to favour his party in the State, ruining his opponents by the
+legitimate process of commercial competition, and, when occasion
+offered, introducing new voters into the Florentine Council by paying
+off the debts of those who were disqualified by poverty from using the
+franchise. While his capital was continually increasing he lived
+frugally, and employed his wealth solely for the consolidation of his
+political influence. By these arts Cosimo became formidable to the
+oligarchs and beloved by the people. His supporters were numerous, and
+held together by the bonds of immediate necessity or personal
+cupidity. The plebeians and the merchants were all on his side. The
+Grandi and the Ammoniti, excluded from the State by the practices of
+the Albizzi, had more to hope from the Medicean party than from the
+few families who still contrived to hold the reins of government. It
+was clear that a conflict to the death must soon commence between the
+oligarchy and this new faction.
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+At last, in 1433, war was declared. The first blow was struck by
+Rinaldo degli Albizzi, who put himself in the wrong by attacking a
+citizen indispensable to the people at large, and guilty of no
+unconstitutional act. On September 7th of that year, a year decisive
+for the future destinies of Florence, he summoned Cosimo to the Public
+Palace, which he had previously occupied with troops at his command.
+There he declared him a rebel to the State, and had him imprisoned in
+a little square room in the central tower. The tocsin was sounded; the
+people were assembled in parliament upon the piazza. The Albizzi held
+the main streets with armed men, and forced the Florentines to place
+plenipotentiary power for the administration of the commonwealth at
+this crisis in the hands of a Balia, or committee selected by
+themselves. It was always thus that acts of high tyranny were effected
+in Florence. A show of legality was secured by gaining the compulsory
+sanction of the people, driven by soldiery into the public square, and
+hastily ordered to recognise the authority of their oppressors.
+
+The bill of indictment against the Medici accused them of sedition in
+the year 1378--that is, in the year of the Ciompi Tumult--and of
+treasonable practice during the whole course of the Albizzi
+administration. It also strove to fix upon them the odium of the
+unsuccessful war against the town of Lucca. As soon as the Albizzi had
+unmasked their batteries, Lorenzo de' Medici managed to escape from
+the city, and took with him his brother Cosimo's children to Venice.
+Cosimo remained shut up within the little room called Barberia in
+Arnolfo's tower. From that high eagle's nest the sight can range
+Valdarno far and wide. Florence with her towers and domes lies below;
+and the blue peaks of Carrara close a prospect westward than
+which, with its villa-jewelled slopes and fertile gardens, there is
+nought more beautiful upon the face of earth. The prisoner can have
+paid but little heed to this fair landscape. He heard the frequent
+ringing of the great bell that called the Florentines to council, the
+tramp of armed men on the piazza, the coming and going of the burghers
+in the palace halls beneath. On all sides lurked anxiety and fear of
+death. Each mouthful he tasted might be poisoned. For many days he
+partook of only bread and water, till his gaoler restored his
+confidence by sharing all his meals. In this peril he abode
+twenty-four days. The Albizzi, in concert with the Balia they had
+formed, were consulting what they might venture to do with him. Some
+voted for his execution. Others feared the popular favour, and thought
+that if they killed Cosimo this act would ruin their own power. The
+nobler natures among them determined to proceed by constitutional
+measures. At last, upon September 29th, it was settled that Cosimo
+should be exiled to Padua for ten years. The Medici were declared
+Grandi, by way of excluding them from political rights. But their
+property remained untouched; and on October 3rd, Cosimo was released.
+
+On the same day Cosimo took his departure. His journey northward
+resembled a triumphant progress. He left Florence a simple burgher; he
+entered Venice a powerful prince. Though the Albizzi seemed to have
+gained the day, they had really cut away the ground beneath their
+feet. They committed the fatal mistake of doing both too much and too
+little--too much because they declared war against an innocent man,
+and roused the sympathies of the whole people in his behalf; too
+little, because they had not the nerve to complete their act by
+killing him outright and extirpating his party. Machiavelli, in one of
+his profoundest and most cynical critiques, remarks that few men know
+how to be thoroughly bad with honour to themselves. Their will is
+evil; but the grain of good in them--some fear of public opinion,
+some repugnance to committing a signal crime--paralyses their arm at
+the moment when it ought to have been raised to strike. He instances
+Gian Paolo Baglioni's omission to murder Julius II., when that Pope
+placed himself within his clutches at Perugia. He might also have
+instanced Rinaldo degli Albizzi's refusal to push things to
+extremities by murdering Cosimo. It was the combination of despotic
+violence in the exile of Cosimo with constitutional moderation in the
+preservation of his life, that betrayed the weakness of the oligarchs
+and restored confidence to the Medicean party.
+
+
+IX
+
+
+In the course of the year 1434 this party began to hold up its head.
+Powerful as the Albizzi were, they only retained the government by
+artifice; and now they had done a deed which put at nought their
+former arts and intrigues. A Signory favourable to the Medici came
+into office, and on September 26th, 1434, Rinaldo in his turn was
+summoned to the palace and declared a rebel. He strove to raise the
+forces of his party, and entered the piazza at the head of eight
+hundred men. The menacing attitude of the people, however, made
+resistance perilous. Rinaldo disbanded his troops, and placed himself
+under the protection of Pope Eugenius IV., who was then resident in
+Florence. This act of submission proved that Rinaldo had not the
+courage or the cruelty to try the chance of civil war. Whatever his
+motives may have been, he lost his hold upon the State beyond
+recovery. On September 29th, a new parliament was summoned; on October
+2nd, Cosimo was recalled from exile and the Albizzi were banished. The
+intercession of the Pope procured for them nothing but the liberty to
+leave Florence unmolested. Einaldo turned his back upon the city he
+had governed, never to set foot in it again. On October 6th, Cosimo,
+having passed through Padua, Ferrara, and Modena like a conqueror,
+reentered the town amid the plaudits of the people, and took up his
+dwelling as an honoured guest in the Palace of the Republic. The
+subsequent history of Florence is the history of his family. In after
+years the Medici loved to remember this return of Cosimo. His
+triumphal reception was painted in fresco on the walls of their villa
+at Cajano under the transparent allegory of Cicero's entrance into
+Rome.
+
+
+X
+
+
+By their brief exile the Medici had gained the credit of injured
+innocence, the fame of martyrdom in the popular cause. Their foes had
+struck the first blow, and in striking at them had seemed to aim
+against the liberties of the republic. The mere failure of their
+adversaries to hold the power they had acquired, handed over this
+power to the Medici; and the reprisals which the Medici began to take
+had the show of justice, not of personal hatred, or petty vengeance.
+Cosimo was a true Florentine. He disliked violence, because he knew
+that blood spilt cries for blood. His passions, too, were cool and
+temperate. No gust of anger, no intoxication of success, destroyed his
+balance. His one object, the consolidation of power for his family on
+the basis of popular favour, was kept steadily in view; and he would
+do nothing that might compromise that end. Yet he was neither generous
+nor merciful. We therefore find that from the first moment of his
+return to Florence he instituted a system of pitiless and unforgiving
+persecution against his old opponents. The Albizzi were banished, root
+and branch, with all their followers, consigned to lonely and often to
+unwholesome stations through the length and breadth of Italy. If they
+broke the bonds assigned them, they were forthwith declared traitors
+and their property was confiscated. After a long series of years, by
+merely keeping in force the first sentence pronounced upon them,
+Cosimo had the cruel satisfaction of seeing the whole of that proud
+oligarchy die out by slow degrees in the insufferable tedium of
+solitude and exile. Even the high-souled Palla degli Strozzi, who had
+striven to remain neutral, and whose wealth and talents were devoted
+to the revival of classical studies, was proscribed because to Cosimo
+he seemed too powerful. Separated from his children, he died in
+banishment at Padua. In this way the return of the Medici involved the
+loss to Florence of some noble citizens, who might perchance have
+checked the Medicean tyranny if they had stayed to guide the State.
+The plebeians, raised to wealth and influence by Cosimo before his
+exile, now took the lead in the republic. He used these men as
+catspaws, rarely putting himself forward or allowing his own name to
+appear, but pulling the wires of government in privacy by means of
+intermediate agents. The Medicean party was called at first _Puccini_
+from a certain Puccio, whose name was better known in caucus or
+committee than that of his real master.
+
+To rule through these creatures of his own making taxed all the
+ingenuity of Cosimo; but his profound and subtle intellect was suited
+to the task, and he found unlimited pleasure in the exercise of his
+consummate craft. We have already seen to what extent he used his
+riches for the acquisition of political influence. Now that he had
+come to power, he continued the same method, packing the Signory and
+the Councils with men whom he could hold by debt between his thumb and
+finger. His command of the public moneys enabled him to wink at
+peculation in State offices; it was part of his system to bind
+magistrates and secretaries to his interest by their consciousness of
+guilt condoned but not forgotten. Not a few, moreover, owed their
+living to the appointments he procured for them. While he thus
+controlled the wheel-work of the commonwealth by means of organised
+corruption, he borrowed the arts of his old enemies to oppress
+dissentient citizens. If a man took an independent line in voting,
+and refused allegiance to the Medicean party, he was marked out for
+persecution. No violence was used; but he found himself hampered in
+his commerce--money, plentiful for others, became scarce for him; his
+competitors in trade were subsidised to undersell him. And while the
+avenues of industry were closed, his fortune was taxed above its
+value, until he had to sell at a loss in order to discharge his public
+obligations. In the first twenty years of the Medicean rule, seventy
+families had to pay 4,875,000 golden florins of extraordinary imposts,
+fixed by arbitrary assessment.
+
+The more patriotic members of his party looked with dread and loathing
+on this system of corruption and exclusion. To their remonstrances
+Cosimo replied in four memorable sayings: 'Better the State spoiled
+than the State not ours.' 'Governments cannot be carried on with
+paternosters.' 'An ell of scarlet makes a burgher.' 'I aim at finite
+ends.' These maxims represent the whole man,--first, in his egotism,
+eager to gain Florence for his family, at any risk of her ruin;
+secondly, in his cynical acceptance of base means to selfish ends;
+thirdly, in his bourgeois belief that money makes a man, and fine
+clothes suffice for a citizen; fourthly, in his worldly ambition bent
+on positive success. It was, in fact, his policy to reduce Florence to
+the condition of a rotten borough: nor did this policy fail. One
+notable sign of the influence he exercised was the change which now
+came over the foreign relations of the republic. Up to the date of his
+dictatorship Florence had uniformly fought the battle of freedom in
+Italy. It was the chief merit of the Albizzi oligarchy that they
+continued the traditions of the mediaeval State, and by their vigorous
+action checked the growth of the Visconti. Though they engrossed the
+government they never forgot that they were first of all things
+Florentines, and only in the second place men who owed their power and
+influence to office. In a word, they acted like patriotic Tories, like
+republican patricians. Therefore they would not ally themselves with
+tyrants or countenance the enslavement of free cities by armed
+despots. Their subjugation of the Tuscan burghs to Florence was itself
+part of a grand republican policy. Cosimo changed all this. When the
+Visconti dynasty ended by the death of Filippo Maria in 1447, there
+was a chance of restoring the independence of Lombardy. Milan in
+effect declared herself a republic, and by the aid of Florence she
+might at this moment have maintained her liberty. Cosimo, however,
+entered into treaty with Francesco Sforza, supplied him with money,
+guaranteed him against Florentine interference, and saw with
+satisfaction how he reduced the duchy to his military tyranny. The
+Medici were conscious that they, selfishly, had most to gain by
+supporting despots who in time of need might help them to confirm
+their own authority. With the same end in view, when the legitimate
+line of the Bentivogli was extinguished, Cosimo hunted out a bastard
+pretender of that family, presented him to the chiefs of the
+Bentivogli faction, and had him placed upon the seat of his supposed
+ancestors at Bologna. This young man, a certain Santi da Cascese,
+presumed to be the son of Ercole de' Bentivogli, was an artisan in a
+wool factory when Cosimo set eyes upon him. At first Santi refused the
+dangerous honour of governing a proud republic; but the intrigues of
+Cosimo prevailed, and the obscure craftsman ended his days a powerful
+prince.
+
+By the arts I have attempted to describe, Cosimo in the course of his
+long life absorbed the forces of the republic into himself. While he
+shunned the external signs of despotic power he made himself the
+master of the State. His complexion was of a pale olive; his stature
+short; abstemious and simple in his habits, affable in conversation,
+sparing of speech, he knew how to combine that burgher-like civility
+for which the Romans praised Augustus, with the reality of a despotism
+all the more difficult to combat because it seemed nowhere and was
+everywhere. When he died, at the age of seventy-five, in 1464, the
+people whom he had enslaved, but whom he had neither injured nor
+insulted, honoured him with the title of _Pater Patriae_. This was
+inscribed upon his tomb in S. Lorenzo. He left to posterity the fame
+of a great and generous patron,[14] the infamy of a cynical,
+self-seeking, bourgeois tyrant. Such combinations of contradictory
+qualities were common enough at the time of the Renaissance. Did not
+Machiavelli spend his days in tavern-brawls and low amours, his nights
+among the mighty spirits of the dead, with whom, when he had changed
+his country suit of homespun for the habit of the Court, he found
+himself an honoured equal?
+
+
+XI
+
+
+Cosimo had shown consummate skill by governing Florence through a
+party created and raised to influence by himself. The jealousy of
+these adherents formed the chief difficulty with which his son Piero
+had to contend. Unless the Medici could manage to kick down the ladder
+whereby they had risen, they ran the risk of losing all. As on a
+former occasion, so now they profited by the mistakes of their
+antagonists. Three chief men of their own party, Diotisalvi Neroni,
+Agnolo Acciaiuoli, and Luca Pitti, determined to shake off the yoke of
+their masters, and to repay the Medici for what they owed by leading
+them to ruin. Niccolo Soderini, a patriot, indignant at the slow
+enslavement of his country, joined them. At first they strove to
+undermine the credit of the Medici with the Florentines by inducing
+Piero to call in the moneys placed at interest by his father in the
+hands of private citizens. This act was unpopular; but it did not
+suffice to move a revolution. To proceed by constitutional measures
+against the Medici was judged impolitic. Therefore the conspirators
+decided to take, if possible, Piero's life. The plot failed, chiefly
+owing to the coolness and the cunning of the young Lorenzo, Piero's
+eldest son. Public sympathy was strongly excited against the
+aggressors. Neroni, Acciaiuoli, and Soderini were exiled. Pitti was
+allowed to stay, dishonoured, powerless, and penniless, in Florence.
+Meanwhile, the failure of their foes had only served to strengthen the
+position of the Medici. The ladder had saved them the trouble of
+kicking it down.
+
+The congratulations addressed on this occasion to Piero and Lorenzo by
+the ruling powers of Italy show that the Medici were already regarded
+as princes outside Florence. Lorenzo and Giuliano, the two sons of
+Piero, travelled abroad to the Courts of Milan and Ferrara with the
+style and state of more than simple citizens. At home they occupied
+the first place on all occasions of public ceremony, receiving royal
+visitors on terms of equality, and performing the hospitalities of the
+republic like men who had been born to represent its dignities.
+Lorenzo's marriage to Clarice Orsini, of the noble Roman house, was
+another sign that the Medici were advancing on the way toward
+despotism. Cosimo had avoided foreign alliances for his children. His
+descendants now judged themselves firmly planted enough to risk the
+odium of a princely match for the sake of the support outside the city
+they might win.
+
+
+XII
+
+
+
+Piero de' Medici died in December 1469. His son Lorenzo was then
+barely twenty-two years of age. The chiefs of the Medicean party,
+all-powerful in the State, held a council, in which they resolved to
+place him in the same position as his father and grandfather. This
+resolve seems to have been formed after mature deliberation, on the
+ground that the existing conditions of Italian politics rendered it
+impossible to conduct the government without a presidential head.
+Florence, though still a democracy, required a permanent chief to
+treat on an equality with the princes of the leading cities. Here we
+may note the prudence of Cosimo's foreign policy. When he helped to
+establish despots in Milan and Bologna he was rendering the presidency
+of his own family in Florence necessary.
+
+Lorenzo, having received this invitation, called attention to his
+youth and inexperience. Yet he did not refuse it; and, after a
+graceful display of diffidence, he accepted the charge, entering thus
+upon that famous political career, in the course of which he not only
+established and maintained a balance of power in Italy, with Florence
+for the central city, but also contrived to remodel the government of
+the republic in the interest of his own family and to strengthen the
+Medici by relations with the Papal See.
+
+The extraordinary versatility of this man's intellectual and social
+gifts, his participation in all the literary and philosophical
+interests of his century, his large and liberal patronage of art, and
+the gaiety with which he joined the people of Florence in their
+pastimes--Mayday games and Carnival festivities--strengthened his hold
+upon the city in an age devoted to culture and refined pleasure.
+Whatever was most brilliant in the spirit of the Italian Benaissance
+seemed to be incarnate in Lorenzo. Not merely as a patron and a
+dilettante, but as a poet and a critic, a philosopher and scholar, he
+proved himself adequate to the varied intellectual ambitions of his
+country. Penetrated with the passion for erudition which distinguished
+Florence in the fifteenth century, familiar with her painters and her
+sculptors, deeply read in the works of her great poets, he conceived
+the ideal of infusing the spirit of antique civility into modern life,
+and of effecting for society what the artists were performing in their
+own sphere. To preserve the native character of the Florentine genius,
+while he added the grace of classic form, was the aim to which his
+tastes and instincts led him. At the same time, while he made himself
+the master of Florentine revels and the Augustus of Renaissance
+literature, he took care that beneath his carnival masks and
+ball-dress should be concealed the chains which he was forging for the
+republic.
+
+What he lacked, with so much mental brilliancy, was moral greatness.
+The age he lived in was an age of selfish despots, treacherous
+generals, godless priests. It was an age of intellectual vigour and
+artistic creativeness; but it was also an age of mean ambition, sordid
+policy, and vitiated principles. Lorenzo remained true in all respects
+to the genius of this age: true to its enthusiasm for antique culture,
+true to its passion for art, true to its refined love of pleasure; but
+true also to its petty political intrigues, to its cynical
+selfishness, to its lack of heroism. For Florence he looked no higher
+and saw no further than Cosimo had done. If culture was his pastime,
+the enslavement of the city by bribery and corruption was the hard
+work of his manhood. As is the case with much Renaissance art, his
+life was worth more for its decorative detail than for its
+constructive design. In richness, versatility, variety, and
+exquisiteness of execution, it left little to be desired; yet, viewed
+at a distance, and as a whole, it does not inspire us with a sense of
+architectonic majesty.
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+Lorenzo's chief difficulties arose from the necessity under which,
+like Cosimo, he laboured of governing the city through its old
+institutions by means of a party. To keep the members of this party in
+good temper, and to gain their approval for the alterations he
+effected in the State machinery of Florence, was the problem of his
+life. The successful solution of this problem was easier now, after
+two generations of the Medicean ascendency, than it had been at first.
+Meanwhile the people were maintained in good humour by public shows,
+ease, plenty, and a general laxity of discipline. The splendour of
+Lorenzo's foreign alliances and the consideration he received from all
+the Courts of Italy contributed in no small measure to his popularity
+and security at home. By using his authority over Florence to inspire
+respect abroad, and by using his foreign credit to impose upon the
+burghers, Lorenzo displayed the tact of a true Italian diplomatist.
+His genius for statecraft, as then understood, was indeed of a rare
+order, equally adapted to the conduct of a complicated foreign policy
+and to the control of a suspicious and variable Commonwealth. In one
+point alone he was inferior to his grandfather. He neglected commerce,
+and allowed his banking business to fall into disorder so hopeless
+that in course of time he ceased to be solvent. Meanwhile his personal
+expenses, both as a prince in his own palace, and as the
+representative of majesty in Florence, continually increased. The
+bankruptcy of the Medici, it had long been foreseen, would involve the
+public finances in serious confusion. And now, in order to retrieve
+his fortunes, Lorenzo was not only obliged to repudiate his debts to
+the exchequer, but had also to gain complete disposal of the State
+purse. It was this necessity that drove him to effect the
+constitutional revolution of 1480, by which he substituted a Privy
+Council of seventy members for the old Councils of the State,
+absorbing the chief functions of the commonwealth into this single
+body, whom he practically nominated at pleasure. The same want of
+money led to the great scandal of his reign--the plundering of the
+Monte delle Doti, or State Insurance Office Fund for securing dowers
+to the children of its creditors.
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+While tracing the salient points of Lorenzo de' Medici's
+administration I have omitted to mention the important events which
+followed shortly after his accession to power in 1469. What happened
+between that date and 1480 was not only decisive for the future
+fortunes of the Casa Medici, but it was also eminently characteristic
+of the perils and the difficulties which beset Italian despots. The
+year 1471 was signalised by a visit by the Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza
+of Milan, and his wife Bona of Savoy, to the Medici in Florence. They
+came attended by their whole Court--body guards on horse and foot,
+ushers, pages, falconers, grooms, kennel-varlets, and huntsmen.
+Omitting the mere baggage service, their train counted two thousand
+horses. To mention this incident would be superfluous, had not so
+acute an observer as Machiavelli marked it out as a turning-point in
+Florentine history. Now, for the first time, the democratic
+commonwealth saw its streets filled with a mob of courtiers. Masques,
+balls, and tournaments succeeded each other with magnificent variety;
+and all the arts of Florence were pressed into the service of these
+festivals. Machiavelli says that the burghers lost the last remnant of
+their old austerity of manners, and became, like the degenerate
+Romans, ready to obey the masters who provided them with brilliant
+spectacles. They gazed with admiration on the pomp of Italian
+princes, their dissolute and godless living, their luxury and prodigal
+expenditure; and when the Medici affected similar habits in the next
+generation, the people had no courage to resist the invasion of their
+pleasant vices.
+
+In the same year, 1471, Volterra was reconquered for the Florentines
+by Frederick of Urbino. The honours of this victory, disgraced by a
+brutal sack of the conquered city, in violation of its articles of
+capitulation, were reserved for Lorenzo, who returned in triumph to
+Florence. More than ever he assumed the prince, and in his person
+undertook to represent the State.
+
+In the same year, 1471, Francesco della Rovere was raised to the
+Papacy with the memorable name of Sixtus IV. Sixtus was a man of
+violent temper and fierce passions, restless and impatiently
+ambitious, bent on the aggrandisement of the beautiful and wanton
+youths, his nephews. Of these the most aspiring was Girolamo Riario,
+for whom Sixtus bought the town of Imola from Taddeo Manfredi, in
+order that he might possess the title of count and the nucleus of a
+tyranny in the Romagna. This purchase thwarted the plans of Lorenzo,
+who wished to secure the same advantages for Florence. Smarting with
+the sense of disappointment, he forbade the Roman banker, Francesco
+Pazzi, to guarantee the purchase-money. By this act Lorenzo made two
+mortal foes--the Pope and Francesco Pazzi. Francesco was a thin, pale,
+atrabilious fanatic, all nerve and passion, with a monomaniac
+intensity of purpose, and a will inflamed and guided by imagination--a
+man formed by nature for conspiracy, such a man, in fact, as Shakspere
+drew in Cassius. Maddened by Lorenzo's prohibition, he conceived the
+notion of overthrowing the Medici in Florence by a violent blow.
+Girolamo Riario entered into his views. So did Francesco Salviati,
+Archbishop of Pisa, who had private reasons for hostility. These men
+found no difficulty in winning over Sixtus to their plot; nor is it
+possible to purge the Pope of participation in what followed. I need
+not describe by what means Francesco drew the other members of his
+family into the scheme, and how he secured the assistance of armed
+cut-throats. Suffice it to say that the chief conspirators, with the
+exception of the Count Girolamo, betook themselves to Florence, and
+there, after the failure of other attempts, decided to murder Lorenzo
+and his brother Giuliano in the cathedral on Sunday, April 26th, 1478.
+The moment when the priest at the high altar finished the mass, was
+fixed for the assassination. Everything was ready. The conspirators,
+by Judas kisses and embracements, had discovered that the young men
+wore no protective armour under their silken doublets. Pacing the
+aisle behind the choir, they feared no treason. And now the lives of
+both might easily have been secured, if at the last moment the courage
+of the hired assassins had not failed them. Murder, they said, was
+well enough; but they could not bring themselves to stab men before
+the newly consecrated body of Christ. In this extremity a priest was
+found who, 'being accustomed to churches,' had no scruples. He and
+another reprobate were told off to Lorenzo. Francesco de' Pazzi
+himself undertook Giuliano. The moment for attack arrived. Francesco
+plunged his dagger into the heart of Giuliano. Then, not satisfied
+with this death-blow, he struck again, and in his heat of passion
+wounded his own thigh. Lorenzo escaped with a flesh-wound from the
+poniard of the priest, and rushed into the sacristy, where his friend
+Poliziano shut and held the brazen door. The plot had failed; for
+Giuliano, of the two brothers, was the one whom the conspirators would
+the more willingly have spared. The whole church was in an uproar. The
+city rose in tumult. Rage and horror took possession of the people.
+They flew to the Palazzo Pubblico and to the houses of the Pazzi,
+hunted the conspirators from place to place, hung the archbishop by
+the neck from the palace windows, and, as they found fresh victims
+for their fury, strung them one by one in a ghastly row at his side
+above the Square. About one hundred in all were killed. None who had
+joined in the plot escaped; for Lorenzo had long arms, and one man,
+who fled to Constantinople, was delivered over to his agents by the
+Sultan. Out of the whole Pazzi family only Guglielmo, the husband of
+Bianca de' Medici, was spared. When the tumult was over, Andrea del
+Castagno painted the portraits of the traitors head-downwards upon the
+walls of the Bargello Palace, in order that all men might know what
+fate awaited the foes of the Medici and of the State of Florence.[15]
+Meanwhile a bastard son of Giuliano's was received into the Medicean
+household, to perpetuate his lineage. This child, named Giulio, was
+destined to be famous in the annals of Italy and Florence under the
+title of Pope Clement VII.
+
+
+XV
+
+
+As is usual when such plots miss their mark, the passions excited
+redounded to the profit of the injured party. The commonwealth felt
+that the blow struck at Lorenzo had been aimed at their majesty.
+Sixtus, on the other hand, could not contain his rage at the failure
+of so ably planned a _coup de main_. Ignoring that he had sanctioned
+the treason, that a priest had put his hand to the dagger, that the
+impious deed had been attempted in a church before the very Sacrament
+of Christ, whose vicar on earth he was, the Pope now excommunicated
+the republic. The reason he alleged was, that the Florentines had
+dared to hang an archbishop.
+
+Thus began a war to the death between Sixtus and Florence. The Pope
+inflamed the whole of Italy, and carried on a ruinous campaign in
+Tuscany. It seemed as though the republic might lose her subject
+cities, always ready to revolt when danger threatened the sovereign
+State. Lorenzo's position became critical. Sixtus made no secret of
+the hatred he bore him personally, declaring that he fought less with
+Florence than with the Medici. To support the odium of this long war
+and this heavy interdict alone, was more than he could do. His allies
+forsook him. Naples was enlisted on the Pope's side. Milan and the
+other States of Lombardy were occupied with their own affairs, and
+held aloof. In this extremity he saw that nothing but a bold step
+could save him. The league formed by Sixtus must be broken up at any
+risk, and, if possible, by his own ability. On December 6th, 1479,
+Lorenzo left Florence, unarmed and unattended, took ship at Leghorn,
+and proceeded to the court of the enemy, King Ferdinand, at Naples.
+Ferdinand was a cruel and treacherous sovereign, who had murdered his
+guest, Jacopo Piccinino, at a banquet given in his honour. But
+Ferdinand was the son of Alfonso, who, by address and eloquence, had
+gained a kingdom from his foe and jailor, Filippo Maria Visconti.
+Lorenzo calculated that he too, following Alfonso's policy, might
+prove to Ferdinand how little there was to gain from an alliance with
+Rome, how much Naples and Florence, firmly united together for offence
+and defence, might effect in Italy.
+
+Only a student of those perilous times can appreciate the courage and
+the genius, the audacity combined with diplomatic penetration,
+displayed by Lorenzo at this crisis. He calmly walked into the lion's
+den, trusting he could tame the lion and teach it, and all in a few
+days. Nor did his expectation fail. Though Lorenzo was rather ugly
+than handsome, with a dark skin, heavy brows, powerful jaws, and nose
+sharp in the bridge and broad at the nostrils, without grace of
+carriage or melody of voice, he possessed what makes up for personal
+defects--the winning charm of eloquence in conversation, a subtle wit,
+profound knowledge of men, and tact allied to sympathy, which placed
+him always at the centre of the situation. Ferdinand received him
+kindly. The Neapolitan nobles admired his courage and were fascinated
+by his social talents. On March 1st, 1480, he left Naples again,
+having won over the King by his arguments. When he reached Florence he
+was able to declare that he brought home a treaty of peace and
+alliance signed by the most powerful foe of the republic. The success
+of this bold enterprise endeared Lorenzo more than ever to his
+countrymen. In the same year they concluded a treaty with Sixtus, who
+was forced against his will to lay down arms by the capture of Otranto
+and the extreme peril of Turkish invasion. After the year 1480 Lorenzo
+remained sole master in Florence, the arbiter and peacemaker of the
+rest of Italy.
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+The conjuration of the Pazzi was only one in a long series of similar
+conspiracies. Italian despots gained their power by violence and
+wielded it with craft. Violence and craft were therefore used against
+them. When the study of the classics had penetrated the nation with
+antique ideas of heroism, tyrannicide became a virtue. Princes were
+murdered with frightful frequency. Thus Gian Maria Visconti was put to
+death at Milan in 1412; Galeazzo Maria Sforza in 1484; the Chiarelli
+of Fabriano were massacred in 1435; the Baglioni of Perugia in 1500;
+Girolamo Gentile planned the assassination of Galeazzo Sforza at Genoa
+in 1476; Niccolo d'Este conspired against his uncle Ercole in 1476;
+Stefano Porcari attempted the life of Nicholas V. at Rome in 1453;
+Lodovico Sforza narrowly escaped a violent death in 1453. I might
+multiply these instances beyond satiety. As it is, I have selected
+but a few examples falling, all but one, within the second half of the
+fifteenth century. Nearly all these attempts upon the lives of princes
+were made in church during the celebration of sacred offices. There
+was no superfluity of naughtiness, no wilful sacrilege, in this choice
+of an occasion. It only testified to the continual suspicion and
+guarded watchfulness maintained by tyrants. To strike at them except
+in church was almost impossible. Meanwhile the fate of the
+tyrannicides was uniform. Successful or not, they perished. Yet so
+grievous was the pressure of Italian despotism, so glorious was the
+ideal of Greek and Roman heroism, so passionate the temper of the
+people, that to kill a prince at any cost to self appeared the crown
+of manliness. This bloodshed exercised a delirious fascination: pure
+and base, personal and patriotic motives combined to add intensity of
+fixed and fiery purpose to the murderous impulse. Those then who, like
+the Medici, aspired to tyranny and sought to found a dynasty of
+princes, entered the arena against a host of unknown and unseen
+gladiators.
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+On his deathbed, in 1492, Lorenzo lay between two men--Angelo
+Poliziano and Girolamo Savonarola. Poliziano incarnated the genial,
+radiant, godless spirit of fifteenth-century humanism. Savonarola
+represented the conscience of Italy, self-convicted, amid all her
+greatness, of crimes that called for punishment. It is said that when
+Lorenzo asked the monk for absolution, Savonarola bade him first
+restore freedom to Florence. Lorenzo, turned his face to the wall and
+was silent. How indeed could he make this city in a moment free, after
+sixty years of slow and systematic corruption? Savonarola left him,
+and he died unshriven. This legend is doubtful, though it rests on
+excellent if somewhat partial authority. It has, at any rate, the
+value of a mythus, since it epitomises the attitude assumed by the
+great preacher to the prince. Florence enslaved, the soul of Lorenzo
+cannot lay its burden down, but must go with all its sins upon it to
+the throne of God.
+
+The year 1492 was a memorable year for Italy. In this year Lorenzo's
+death removed the keystone of the arch that had sustained the fabric
+of Italian federation. In this year Roderigo Borgia was elected Pope.
+In this year Columbus discovered America; Vasco de Gama soon after
+opened a new way to the Indies, and thus the commerce of the world
+passed from Italy to other nations. In this year the conquest of
+Granada gave unity to the Spanish nation. In this year France, through
+the lifelong craft of Louis XI., was for the first time united under a
+young hot-headed sovereign. On every side of the political horizon
+storms threatened. It was clear that a new chapter of European history
+had been opened. Then Savonarola raised his voice, and cried that the
+crimes of Italy, the abominations of the Church, would speedily be
+punished. Events led rapidly to the fulfilment of this prophecy.
+Lorenzo's successor, Piero de' Medici, was a vain, irresolute, and
+hasty princeling, fond of display, proud of his skill in fencing and
+football-playing, with too much of the Orsini blood in his hot veins,
+with too little of the Medicean craft in his weak head. The Italian
+despots felt they could not trust Piero, and this want of confidence
+was probably the first motive that impelled Lodovico Sforza to call
+Charles VIII. into Italy in 1494.
+
+It will not be necessary to dwell upon this invasion of the French,
+except in so far as it affected Florence. Charles passed rapidly
+through Lombardy, engaged his army in the passes of the Apennines, and
+debouched upon the coast where the Magra divided Tuscany from Liguria.
+Here the fortresses of Sarzana and Pietra Santa, between the marble
+bulwark of Carrara and the Tuscan sea, stopped his further progress.
+The keys were held by the Florentines. To force these strong positions
+and to pass beyond them seemed impossible. It might have been
+impossible if Piero de' Medici had possessed a firmer will. As it was,
+he rode off to the French camp, delivered up the forts to Charles,
+bound the King by no engagements, and returned not otherwise than
+proud of his folly to Florence. A terrible reception awaited him. The
+Florentines, in their fury, had risen and sacked the Medicean palace.
+It was as much as Piero, with his brothers, could do to escape beyond
+the hills to Venice. The despotism of the Medici, so carefully built
+up, so artfully sustained and strengthened, was overthrown in a single
+day.
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+Before considering what happened in Florence after the expulsion of
+the Medici, it will be well to pause a moment and review the state in
+which Lorenzo had left his family. Piero, his eldest son, recognised
+as chief of the republic after his father's death, was married to
+Alfonsina Orsini, and was in his twenty-second year. Giovanni, his
+second son, a youth of seventeen, had just been made cardinal. This
+honour, of vast importance for the Casa Medici in the future, he owed
+to his sister Maddalena's marriage to Franceschetto Cybo, son of
+Innocent VIII. The third of Lorenzo's sons, named Giuliano, was a boy
+of thirteen. Giulio, the bastard son of the elder Giuliano, was
+fourteen. These four princes formed the efficient strength of the
+Medici, the hope of the house; and for each of them, with the
+exception of Piero, who died in exile, and of whom no more notice need
+be taken, a brilliant destiny was still in store. In the year 1495,
+however, they now wandered, homeless and helpless, through the cities
+of Italy, each of which was shaken to its foundations by the French
+invasion.
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+Florence, left without the Medici, deprived of Pisa and other subject
+cities by the passage of the French army, with no leader but the monk
+Savonarola, now sought to reconstitute her liberties. During the
+domination of the Albizzi and the Medici the old order of the
+commonwealth had been completely broken up. The Arti had lost their
+primitive importance. The distinctions between the Grandi and the
+Popolani had practically passed away. In a democracy that has
+submitted to a lengthened course of tyranny, such extinction of its
+old life is inevitable. Yet the passion for liberty was still
+powerful; and the busy brains of the Florentines were stored with
+experience gained from their previous vicissitudes, from \ the study
+of antique history, and from the observation of existing constitutions
+in the towns of Italy. They now determined to reorganise the State
+upon the model of the Venetian republic. The Signory was to remain,
+with its old institution of Priors, Gonfalonier, and College, elected
+for brief periods. These magistrates were to take the initiative in
+debate, to propose measures, and to consider plans of action. The real
+power of the State, for voting supplies and ratifying the measures of
+the Signory, was vested in a senate of one thousand members, called
+the Grand Council, from whom a smaller body of forty, acting as
+intermediates between the Council and the Signory, were elected. It is
+said that the plan of this constitution originated with Savonarola;
+nor is there any doubt that he used all his influence in the pulpit of
+the Duomo to render it acceptable to the people. Whoever may have been
+responsible for its formation, the new government was carried in
+1495, and a large hall for the assembly of the Grand Council was
+opened in the Public Palace.
+
+Savonarola, meanwhile, had become the ruling spirit of Florence. He
+gained his great power as a preacher: he used it like a monk. The
+motive principle of his action was the passion for reform. To bring
+the Church back to its pristine state of purity, without altering its
+doctrine or suggesting any new form of creed; to purge Italy of
+ungodly customs; to overthrow the tyrants who encouraged evil living,
+and to place the power of the State in the hands of sober citizens:
+these were his objects. Though he set himself in bold opposition to
+the reigning Pope, he had no desire to destroy the spiritual supremacy
+of S. Peter's see. Though he burned with an enthusiastic zeal for
+liberty, and displayed rare genius for administration, he had no
+ambition to rule Florence like a dictator. Savonarola was neither a
+reformer in the northern sense of the word, nor yet a political
+demagogue. His sole wish was to see purity of manners and freedom of
+self-government re-established. With this end in view he bade the
+Florentines elect Christ as their supreme chief; and they did so. For
+the same end he abstained from appearing in the State Councils, and
+left the Constitution to work by its own laws. His personal influence
+he reserved for the pulpit; and here he was omnipotent. The people
+believed in him as a prophet. They turned to him as the man who knew
+what he wanted--as the voice of liberty, the soul of the new regime,
+the genius who could breathe into the commonwealth a breath of fresh
+vitality. When, therefore, Savonarola preached a reform of manners, he
+was at once obeyed. Strict laws were passed enforcing sobriety,
+condemning trades of pleasure, reducing the gay customs of Florence to
+puritanical austerity.
+
+Great stress has been laid upon this reaction of the monk-led populace
+against the vices of the past. Yet the historian is bound to pronounce
+that the reform effected by Savonarola was rather picturesque than
+vital. Like all violent revivals of pietism, it produced a no less
+violent reaction. The parties within the city who resented the
+interference of a preaching friar, joined with the Pope in Rome, who
+hated a contumacious schismatic in Savonarola. Assailed by these two
+forces at the same moment, and driven upon perilous ground by his own
+febrile enthusiasm, Savonarola succumbed. He was imprisoned, tortured,
+and burned upon the public square in 1498.
+
+What Savonarola really achieved for Florence was not a permanent
+reform of morality, but a resuscitation of the spirit of freedom. His
+followers, called in contempt _I Piagnoni_, or the Weepers, formed the
+path of the commonwealth in future; and the memory of their martyr
+served as a common bond of sympathy to unite them in times of trial.
+It was a necessary consequence of the peculiar part he played that the
+city was henceforth divided into factions representing mutually
+antagonistic principles. These factions were not created by
+Savonarola; but his extraordinary influence accentuated, as it were,
+the humours that lay dormant in the State. Families favourable to the
+Medici took the name of _Palleschi_. Men who chafed against
+puritanical reform, and who were eager for any government that should
+secure them their old licence, were known as _Compagnacci_. Meanwhile
+the oligarchs, who disliked a democratic Constitution, and thought it
+possible to found an aristocracy without the intervention of the
+Medici, came to be known as _Gli Ottimati_. Florence held within
+itself, from this epoch forward to the final extinction of liberty,
+four great parties: the _Piagnoni_, passionate for political freedom
+and austerity of life; the _Palleschi_, favourable to the Medicean
+cause, and regretful of Lorenzo's pleasant rule; the _Compagnacci_,
+intolerant of the reformed republic, neither hostile nor loyal to the
+Medici, but desirous of personal licence; the _Ottimati_, astute and
+selfish, watching their own advantage, ever-mindful to form a narrow
+government of privileged families, disinclined to the Medici, except
+when they thought the Medici might be employed as instruments in their
+intrigues.
+
+
+XX
+
+
+During the short period of Savonarola's ascendency, Florence was in
+form at least a Theocracy, without any titular head but Christ; and as
+long as the enthusiasm inspired by the monk lasted, as long as his
+personal influence endured, the Constitution of the Grand Council
+worked well. After his death it was found that the machinery was too
+cumbrous. While adopting the Venetian form of government, the
+Florentines had omitted one essential element--the Doge. By referring
+measures of immediate necessity to the Grand Council, the republic
+lost precious time. Dangerous publicity, moreover, was incurred; and
+so large a body often came to no firm resolution. There was no
+permanent authority in the State; no security that what had been
+deliberated would be carried out with energy; no titular chief, who
+could transact affairs with foreign potentates and their ambassadors.
+Accordingly, in 1502, it was decreed that the Gonfalonier should hold
+office for life--should be in fact a Doge. To this important post of
+permanent president Piero Soderini was appointed; and in his hands
+were placed the chief affairs of the republic.
+
+At this point Florence, after all her vicissitudes, had won her way to
+something really similar to the Venetian Constitution. Yet the
+similarity existed more in form than in fact. The government of
+burghers in a Grand Council, with a Senate of forty, and a Gonfalonier
+for life, had not grown up gradually and absorbed into itself the
+vital forces of the commonwealth. It was a creation of inventive
+intelligence, not of national development, in Florence. It had against
+it the jealousy of the Ottimati, who felt themselves overshadowed by
+the Gonfalonier; the hatred of the Palleschi, who yearned for the
+Medici; the discontent of the working classes, who thought the
+presence of a Court in Florence would improve trade; last, but not
+least, the disaffection of the Compagnacci, who felt they could not
+flourish to their heart's content in a free commonwealth. Moreover,
+though the name of liberty was on every lip, though the Florentines
+talked, wrote, and speculated more about constitutional independence
+than they had ever done, the true energy of free institutions had
+passed from the city. The corrupt government of Cosimo and Lorenzo
+bore its natural fruit now. Egotistic ambition and avarice supplanted
+patriotism and industry. It is necessary to comprehend these
+circumstances, in order that the next revolution may be clearly
+understood.
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+During the ten years which elapsed between 1502 and 1512, Piero
+Soderini administered Florence with an outward show of great
+prosperity. He regained Pisa, and maintained an honourable foreign
+policy in the midst of the wars stirred up by the League of Cambray.
+Meanwhile the young princes of the House of Medici had grown to
+manhood in exile. The Cardinal Giovanni was thirty-seven in 1512. His
+brother Giuliano was thirty-three. Both of these men were better
+fitted than their brother Piero to fight the battles of the family.
+Giovanni, in particular, had inherited no small portion of the
+Medicean craft. During the troubled reign of Julius II. he kept very
+quiet, cementing his connections with powerful men in Rome, but making
+no effort to regain his hold on Florence. Now the moment for striking
+a decisive blow had come. After the battle of Ravenna in 1512, the
+French were driven out of Italy, and the Sforzas returned to Milan;
+the Spanish troops, under the Viceroy Cardona, remained masters of the
+country. Following the camp of these Spaniards, Giovanni de' Medici
+entered Tuscany in August, and caused the restoration of the Medici
+to be announced in Florence. The people, assembled by Soderini,
+resolved to resist to the uttermost. No foreign army should force them
+to receive the masters whom they had expelled. Yet their courage
+failed on August 29th, when news reached them of the capture and the
+sack of Prato. Prato is a sunny little city a few miles distant from
+the walls of Florence, famous for the beauty of its women, the
+richness of its gardens, and the grace of its buildings. Into this gem
+of cities the savage soldiery of Spain marched in the bright autumnal
+weather, and turned the paradise into a hell. It is even now
+impossible to read of what they did in Prato without shuddering.[16]
+Cruelty and lust, sordid greed for gold, and cold delight in
+bloodshed, could go no further. Giovanni de' Medici, by nature mild
+and voluptuous, averse to violence of all kinds, had to smile
+approval, while the Spanish Viceroy knocked thus with mailed hand for
+him at the door of Florence. The Florentines were paralysed with
+terror. They deposed Soderini and received the Medici. Giovanni and
+Giuliano entered their devastated palace in the Via Larga, abolished
+the Grand Council, and dealt with the republic as they listed.
+
+
+XXII
+
+
+There was no longer any medium in Florence possible between either
+tyranny or some such government as the Medici had now destroyed. The
+State was too rotten to recover even the modified despotism of
+Lorenzo's days. Each transformation had impaired some portion of its
+framework, broken down some of its traditions, and sowed new seeds of
+egotism in citizens who saw all things round them change but
+self-advantage. Therefore Giovanni and Giuliano felt themselves secure
+in flattering the popular vanity by an empty parade of the old
+institutions. They restored the Signory and the Gonfalonier, elected
+for intervals of two months by officers appointed for this purpose by
+the Medici. Florence had the show of a free government. But the Medici
+managed all things; and soldiers, commanded by their creature, Paolo
+Vettori, held the Palace and the Public Square. The tyranny thus
+established was less secure, inasmuch as it openly rested upon
+violence, than Lorenzo's power had been; nor were there signs wanting
+that the burghers could ill brook their servitude. The conspiracy of
+Pietro Paolo Boscoli and Agostino Capponi proved that the Medicean
+brothers ran daily risk of life. Indeed, it is not likely that they
+would have succeeded in maintaining their authority--for they were
+poor and ill-supported by friends outside the city--except for one
+most lucky circumstance: that was the election of Giovanni de' Medici
+to the Papacy in 1513.
+
+The creation of Leo X. spread satisfaction throughout Italy.
+Politicians trusted that he would display some portion of his father's
+ability, and restore peace to the nation. Men of arts and letters
+expected everything from a Medicean Pope, who had already acquired the
+reputation of polite culture and open-handed generosity. They at any
+rate were not deceived. Leo's first words on taking his place in the
+Vatican were addressed to his brother Giuliano: 'Let us enjoy the
+Papacy, now that God has given it to us;' and his notion of enjoyment
+was to surround himself with court-poets, jesters, and musicians, to
+adorn his Roman palaces with frescoes, to collect statues and
+inscriptions, to listen to Latin speeches, and to pass judgment upon
+scholarly compositions. Any one and every one who gave him sensual or
+intellectual pleasure, found his purse always open. He lived in the
+utmost magnificence, and made Rome the Paris of the Renaissance for
+brilliance, immorality, and self-indulgent ease. The politicians had
+less reason to be satisfied. Instead of uniting the Italians and
+keeping the great Powers of Europe in check, Leo carried on a series
+of disastrous petty wars, chiefly with the purpose of establishing the
+Medici as princes. He squandered the revenues of the Church, and left
+enormous debts behind him--an exchequer ruined and a foreign policy so
+confused that peace for Italy could only be obtained by servitude.
+
+Florence shared in the general rejoicing which greeted Leo's accession
+to the Papacy. He was the first Florentine citizen who had received
+the tiara, and the popular vanity was flattered by this honour to the
+republic. Political theorists, meanwhile, began to speculate what
+greatness Florence, in combination with Rome, might rise to. The Pope
+was young; he ruled a large territory, reduced to order by his warlike
+predecessors. It seemed as though the republic, swayed by him, might
+make herself the first city in Italy, and restore the glories of her
+Guelf ascendency upon the platform of Renaissance statecraft. There
+was now no overt opposition to the Medici in Florence. How to govern
+the city from Rome, and how to advance the fortunes of his brother
+Giuliano and his nephew Lorenzo (Piero's son, a young man of
+twenty-one), occupied the Pope's most serious attention. For Lorenzo
+Leo obtained the Duchy of Urbino and the hand of a French princess.
+Giuliano was named Gonfalonier of the Church. He also received the
+French title of Duke of Nemours and the hand of Filiberta, Princess of
+Savoy. Leo entertained a further project of acquiring the crown of
+Southern Italy for his brother, and thus of uniting Rome, Florence,
+and Naples under the headship of his house. Nor were the Medicean
+interests neglected in the Church. Giulio, the Pope's bastard cousin,
+was made cardinal. He remained in Rome, acting as vice-chancellor and
+doing the hard work of the Papal Government for the pleasure-loving
+pontiff.
+
+To Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, the titular head of the family, was
+committed the government of Florence. During their exile, wandering
+from court to court in Italy, the Medici had forgotten what it was to
+be burghers, and had acquired the manners of princes. Leo alone
+retained enough of caution to warn his nephew that the Florentines
+must still be treated as free people. He confirmed the constitution of
+the Signory and the Privy Council of seventy established by his
+father, bidding Lorenzo, while he ruled this sham republic, to avoid
+the outer signs of tyranny. The young duke at first behaved with
+moderation, but he could not cast aside his habits of a great lord.
+Florence now for the first time saw a regular court established in her
+midst, with a prince, who, though he bore a foreign title, was in fact
+her master. The joyous days of Lorenzo the Magnificent returned.
+Masquerades and triumphs filled the public squares. Two clubs of
+pleasure, called the Diamond and the Branch--badges adopted by the
+Medici to signify their firmness in disaster and their power of
+self-recovery--were formed to lead the revels. The best sculptors and
+painters devoted their genius to the invention of costumes and cars.
+The city affected to believe that the age of gold had come again.
+
+
+XXIII
+
+
+Fortune had been very favourable to the Medici. They had returned as
+princes to Florence. Giovanni was Pope. Giuliano was Gonfalonier of
+the Church. Giulio was Cardinal and Archbishop of Florence. Lorenzo
+ruled the city like a sovereign. But this prosperity was no less brief
+than it was brilliant. A few years sufficed to sweep off all the
+chiefs of the great house. Giuliano died in 1516, leaving only a
+bastard son Ippolito. Lorenzo died in 1519, leaving a bastard son
+Alessandro, and a daughter, six days old, who lived to be the Queen of
+France. Leo died in 1521. There remained now no legitimate male
+descendants from the stock of Cosimo. The honours and pretensions of
+the Medici devolved upon three bastards--on the Cardinal Giulio, and
+the two boys, Alessandro and Ippolito. Of these, Alessandro was a
+mulatto, his mother having been a Moorish slave in the Palace of
+Urbino; and whether his father was Giulio, or Giuliano, or a base
+groom, was not known for certain. To such extremities were the Medici
+reduced. In order to keep their house alive, they were obliged to
+adopt this foundling. It is true that the younger branch of the
+family, descended from Lorenzo, the brother of Cosimo, still
+flourished. At this epoch it was represented by Giovanni, the great
+general known as the Invincible, whose bust so strikingly resembles
+that of Napoleon. But between this line of the Medici and the elder
+branch there had never been true cordiality. The Cardinal mistrusted
+Giovanni. It may, moreover, be added, that Giovanni was himself doomed
+to death in the year 1526.
+
+Giulio de' Medici was left in 1521 to administer the State of Florence
+single-handed. He was archbishop, and he resided in the city, holding
+it with the grasp of an absolute ruler. Yet he felt his position
+insecure. The republic had no longer any forms of self-government; nor
+was there a magistracy to whom the despot could delegate his power in
+his absence. Giulio's ambition was fixed upon the Papal crown. The
+bastards he was rearing were but children. Florence had therefore to
+be furnished with some political machinery that should work of itself.
+The Cardinal did not wish to give freedom to the city, but clockwork.
+He was in the perilous situation of having to rule a commonwealth
+without life, without elasticity, without capacity of self-movement,
+yet full of such material as, left alone, might ferment, and breed a
+revolution. In this perplexity, he had recourse to advisers. The most
+experienced politicians, philosophical theorists, practical
+diplomatists, and students of antique history were requested to
+furnish him with plans for a new constitution, just as you ask an
+architect to give you the plan of a new house. This was the field-day
+of the doctrinaires. Now was seen how much political sagacity the
+Florentines had gained while they were losing liberty. We possess
+these several drafts of constitutions. Some recommend tyranny; some
+incline to aristocracy, or what Italians called _Governo Stretto_;
+some to democracy, or _Governo Largo_; some to an eclectic compound of
+the other forms, or _Governo Misto_. More consummate masterpieces of
+constructive ingenuity can hardly be imagined. What is omitted in all,
+is just what no doctrinaire, no nostrum can communicate--the breath of
+life, the principle of organic growth. Things had come, indeed, to a
+melancholy pass for Florence when her tyrant, in order to confirm his
+hold upon her, had to devise these springs and irons to support her
+tottering limbs.
+
+
+XXIV
+
+
+While the archbishop and the doctors were debating, a plot was
+hatching in the Rucellai Gardens. It was here that the Florentine
+Academy now held their meetings. For this society Machiavelli wrote
+his 'Treatise on the Art of War,' and his 'Discourses upon Livy.' The
+former was an exposition of Machiavelli's scheme for creating a
+national militia, as the only safeguard for Italy, exposed at this
+period to the invasions of great foreign armies. The latter is one of
+the three or four masterpieces produced by the Florentine school of
+critical historians. Stimulated by the daring speculations of
+Machiavelli, and fired to enthusiasm by their study of antiquity, the
+younger academicians formed a conspiracy for murdering Giulio de'
+Medici, and restoring the republic on a Roman model. An intercepted
+letter betrayed their plans. Two of the conspirators were taken and
+beheaded. Others escaped. But the discovery of this conjuration put a
+stop to Giulio's scheme of reforming the State. Henceforth he ruled
+Florence like a despot, mild in manners, cautious in the exercise of
+arbitrary power, but firm in his autocracy. The Condottiere.
+Alessandro Vitelli, with a company of soldiers, was taken into service
+for the protection of his person and the intimidation of the citizens.
+
+In 1523, the Pope, Adrian VI., expired after a short papacy, from
+which he gained no honour and Italy no profit. Giulio hurried to Rome,
+and, by the clever use of his large influence, caused himself to be
+elected with the title of Clement VII. In Florence he left Silvio
+Passerini, Cardinal of Cortona, as his vicegerent and the guardian of
+the two boys Alessandro and Ippolito. The discipline of many years had
+accustomed the Florentines to a government of priests. Still the
+burghers, mindful of their ancient liberties, were galled by the yoke
+of a Cortonese, sprung up from one of their subject cities; nor could
+they bear the bastards who were being reared to rule them. Foreigners
+threw it in their teeth that Florence, the city glorious of art and
+freedom, was become a stable for mules--_stalla da muli_, in the
+expressive language of popular sarcasm. Bastardy, it may be said in
+passing, carried with it small dishonour among the Italians. The
+Estensi were all illegitimate; the Aragonese house in Naples sprang
+from Alfonso's natural son; and children of Popes ranked among the
+princes. Yet the uncertainty of Alessandro's birth and the base
+condition of his mother made the prospect of this tyrant peculiarly
+odious; while the primacy of a foreign cardinal in the midst of
+citizens whose spirit was still unbroken, embittered the cup of
+humiliation. The Casa Medici held its authority by a slender thread,
+and depended more upon the disunion of the burghers than on any power
+of its own. It could always reckon on the favour of the lower
+populace, who gained profit and amusement from the presence of a
+court. The Ottimati again hoped more from a weak despotism than from a
+commonwealth, where their privileges would have been merged in the
+mass of the Grand Council. Thus the sympathies of the plebeians and
+the selfishness of the rich patricians prevented the republic from
+asserting itself. On this meagre basis of personal cupidity the Medici
+sustained themselves. What made the situation still more delicate, and
+at the same time protracted the feeble rule of Clement, was that
+neither the Florentines nor the Medici had any army. Face to face with
+a potentate so considerable as the Pope, a free State could not be
+established without military force. On the other hand, the Medici,
+supported by a mere handful of mercenaries, had no power to resist a
+popular rising if any external event should inspire the middle classes
+with a hope of liberty.
+
+
+XXV
+
+
+Clement assumed the tiara at a moment of great difficulty. Leo had
+ruined the finance of Rome. France and Spain were still contending for
+the possession of Italy. While acting as Vice-Chancellor, Giulio de'
+Medici had seemed to hold the reins with a firm grasp, and men
+expected that he would prove a powerful Pope; but in those days he had
+Leo to help him; and Leo, though indolent, was an abler man than his
+cousin. He planned, and Giulio executed. Obliged to act now for
+himself, Clement revealed the weakness of his nature. That weakness
+was irresolution, craft without wisdom, diplomacy without knowledge of
+men. He raised the storm, and showed himself incapable of guiding it.
+This is not the place to tell by what a series of crooked schemes and
+cross purposes he brought upon himself the ruin of the Church and
+Rome, to relate his disagreement with the Emperor, or to describe
+again the sack of the Eternal City by the rabble of the Constable de
+Bourbon's army. That wreck of Rome in 1527 was the closing scene of
+the Italian Renaissance--the last of the Apocalyptic tragedies
+foretold by Savonarola--the death of the old age.
+
+When the Florentines knew what was happening in Rome, they rose and
+forced the Cardinal Passerini to depart with the Medicean bastards
+from the city. The youth demanded arms for the defence of the town,
+and they received them. The whole male population was enrolled in a
+militia. The Grand Council was reformed, and the republic was restored
+upon the basis of 1495. Niccolo Capponi was elected Gonfalonier. The
+name of Christ was again registered as chief of the commonwealth--to
+such an extent did the memory of Savonarola still sway the popular
+imagination. The new State hastened to form an alliance with France,
+and Malatesta Baglioni was chosen as military Commander-in-Chief.
+Meanwhile the city armed itself for siege--Michel Angelo Buonarroti
+and Francesco da San Gallo undertaking the construction of new forts
+and ramparts. These measures were adopted with sudden decision,
+because it was soon known that Clement had made peace with the
+Emperor, and that the army which had sacked Rome was going to be
+marched on Florence.
+
+
+XXVI
+
+
+In the month of August 1529 the Prince of Orange assembled his forces
+at Terni, and thence advanced by easy stages into Tuscany. As he
+approached, the Florentines laid waste their suburbs, and threw down
+their wreath of towers, in order that the enemy might have no
+harbourage or points of vantage for attack. Their troops were
+concentrated within the city, where a new Gonfalonier, Francesco
+Carducci, furiously opposed to the Medici, and attached to the
+Piagnoni party, now ruled. On September 4th the Prince of Orange
+appeared before the walls, and opened the memorable siege. It lasted
+eight months, at the end of which time, betrayed by their generals,
+divided among themselves, and worn out with delays, the Florentines
+capitulated. Florence was paid as compensation for the insult offered
+to the pontiff in the sack of Rome.
+
+The long yoke of the Medici had undermined the character of the
+Florentines. This, their last glorious struggle for liberty, was but a
+flash in the pan--a final flare-up of the dying lamp. The city was not
+satisfied with slavery; but it had no capacity for united action. The
+Ottimati were egotistic and jealous of the people. The Palleschi
+desired to restore the Medici at any price--some of them frankly
+wishing for a principality, others trusting that the old
+quasi-republican government might still be reinstated. The Red
+Republicans, styled Libertini and Arrabbiati, clung together in blind
+hatred of the Medicean party; but they had no further policy to guide
+them. The Piagnoni, or Frateschi, stuck to the memory of Savonarola,
+and believed that angels would descend to guard the battlements when
+human help had failed. These enthusiasts still formed the true nerve
+of the nation--the class that might have saved the State, if salvation
+had been possible. Even as it was, the energy of their fanaticism
+prolonged the siege until resistance seemed no longer physically
+possible. The hero developed by the crisis was Francesco Ferrucci, a
+plebeian who had passed his youth in manual labour, and who now
+displayed rare military genius. He fell fighting outside the walls of
+Florence. Had he commanded the troops from the beginning, and remained
+inside the city, it is just possible that the fate of the war might
+have been less disastrous. As it was, Malatesta Baglioni, the
+Commander-in-Chief, turned out an arrant scoundrel. He held secret
+correspondence with Clement and the Prince of Orange. It was he who
+finally sold Florence to her foes, 'putting on his head,' as the Doge
+of Venice said before the Senate, 'the cap of the biggest traitor upon
+record.'
+
+
+XXVII
+
+
+What remains of Florentine history may be briefly told. Clement, now
+the undisputed arbiter of power and honour in the city, chose
+Alessandro de' Medici to be prince. Alessandro was created Duke of
+Civita di Penna, and married to a natural daughter of Charles V.
+Ippolito was made a cardinal. Ippolito would have preferred a secular
+to a priestly kingdom; nor did he conceal his jealousy for his cousin.
+Therefore Alessandro had him poisoned. Alessandro in his turn was
+murdered by his kinsman, Lorenzino de' Medici. Lorenzino paid the
+usual penalty of tyrannicide some years later. When Alessandro was
+killed in 1539, Clement had himself been dead five years. Thus the
+whole posterity of Cosimo de' Medici, with the exception of Catherine,
+Queen of France, was utterly extinguished. But the Medici had struck
+root so firmly in the State, and had so remodelled it upon the type of
+tyranny, that the Florentines were no longer able to do without them.
+The chiefs of the Ottimati selected Cosimo, the representative of
+Giovanni the Invincible, for their prince, and thus the line of the
+elder Lorenzo came at last to power. This Cosimo was a boy of
+eighteen, fond of field-sports, and unused to party intrigues. When
+Francesco Guicciardini offered him a privy purse of one hundred and
+twenty thousand ducats annually, together with the presidency of
+Florence, this wily politician hoped that he would rule the State
+through Cosimo, and realise at last that dream of the Ottimati, a
+_Governo Stretto_ or _di Pochi_. He was notably mistaken in his
+calculations. The first days of Cosimo's administration showed that
+he possessed the craft of his family and the vigour of his immediate
+progenitors, and that he meant to be sole master in Florence. He it
+was who obtained the title of Grand Duke of Tuscany from the Pope--a
+title confirmed by the Emperor, fortified by Austrian alliances, and
+transmitted through his heirs to the present century.
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+
+In this sketch of Florentine history, I have purposely omitted all
+details that did not bear upon the constitutional history of the
+republic, or on the growth of the Medici as despots; because I wanted
+to present a picture of the process whereby that family contrived to
+fasten itself upon the freest and most cultivated State in Italy. This
+success the Medici owed mainly to their own obstinacy, and to the
+weakness of republican institutions in Florence. Their power was
+founded upon wealth in the first instance, and upon the ingenuity with
+which they turned the favour of the proletariate to use. It was
+confirmed by the mistakes and failures of their enemies, by Rinaldo
+degli Albizzi's attack on Cosimo, by the conspiracy of Neroni and
+Pitti against Piero, and by Francesco de' Pazzi's attempt to
+assassinate Lorenzo. It was still further strengthened by the Medicean
+sympathy for arts and letters--a sympathy which placed both Cosimo and
+Lorenzo at the head of the Renaissance movement, and made them worthy
+to represent Florence, the city of genius, in the fifteenth century.
+While thus founding and cementing their dynastic influence upon the
+basis of a widespread popularity, the Medici employed persistent
+cunning in the enfeeblement of the Republic. It was their policy not
+to plant themselves by force or acts of overt tyranny, but to corrupt
+ambitious citizens, to secure the patronage of public officers, and to
+render the spontaneous working of the State machinery impossible. By
+pursuing this policy over a long series of years they made the revival
+of liberty in 1494, and again in 1527, ineffectual. While exiled from
+Florence, they never lost the hope of returning as masters, so long as
+the passions they had excited, and they alone could gratify, remained
+in full activity. These passions were avarice and egotism, the greed
+of the grasping Ottimati, the jealousy of the nobles, the
+self-indulgence of the proletariate. Yet it is probable they might
+have failed to recover Florence, on one or other of these two
+occasions, but for the accident which placed Giovanni de' Medici on
+the Papal chair, and enabled him to put Giulio in the way of the same
+dignity. From the accession of Leo in 1513 to the year 1527 the Medici
+ruled Florence from Rome, and brought the power of the Church into the
+service of their despotism. After that date they were still further
+aided by the imperial policy of Charles V., who chose to govern Italy
+through subject princes, bound to himself by domestic alliances and
+powerful interests. One of these was Cosimo, the first Grand Duke of
+Tuscany.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+_THE DEBT OF ENGLISH TO ITALIAN LITERATURE_
+
+
+To an Englishman one of the chief interests of the study of Italian
+literature is derived from the fact that, between England and Italy,
+an almost uninterrupted current of intellectual intercourse has been
+maintained throughout the last five centuries. The English have never,
+indeed, at any time been slavish imitators of the Italians; but Italy
+has formed the dreamland of the English fancy, inspiring poets with
+their most delightful thoughts, supplying them with subjects, and
+implanting in their minds that sentiment of Southern beauty which,
+engrafted on our more passionately imaginative Northern nature, has
+borne rich fruit in the works of Chaucer, Spenser, Marlowe, Shakspere,
+Milton, and the poets of this century.
+
+It is not strange that Italy should thus in matters of culture have
+been the guide and mistress of England. Italy, of all the European
+nations, was the first to produce high art and literature in the dawn
+of modern civilisation. Italy was the first to display refinement in
+domestic life, polish of manners, civilities of intercourse. In Italy
+the commerce of courts first developed a society of men and women,
+educated by the same traditions of humanistic culture. In Italy the
+principles of government were first discussed and reduced to theory.
+In Italy the zeal for the classics took its origin; and scholarship,
+to which we owe our mental training, was at first the possession of
+none almost but Italians. It therefore followed that during the age of
+the Renaissance any man of taste or genius, who desired to share the
+newly discovered privileges of learning, had to seek Italy. Every one
+who wished to be initiated into the secrets of science or philosophy,
+had to converse with Italians in person or through books. Every one
+who was eager to polish his native language, and to render it the
+proper vehicle of poetic thought, had to consult the masterpieces of
+Italian literature. To Italians the courtier, the diplomatist, the
+artist, the student of statecraft and of military tactics, the
+political theorist, the merchant, the man of laws, the man of arms,
+and the churchman turned for precedents and precepts. The nations of
+the North, still torpid and somnolent in their semi-barbarism, needed
+the magnetic touch of Italy before they could awake to intellectual
+life. Nor was this all. Long before the thirst for culture possessed
+the English mind, Italy had appropriated and assimilated all that
+Latin literature contained of strong or splendid to arouse the thought
+and fancy of the modern world; Greek, too, was rapidly becoming the
+possession of the scholars of Florence and Rome; so that English men
+of letters found the spirit of the ancients infused into a modern
+literature; models of correct and elegant composition existed for them
+in a language easy, harmonious, and not dissimilar in usage to their
+own.
+
+The importance of this service, rendered by Italians to the rest of
+Europe, cannot be exaggerated. By exploring, digesting, and
+reproducing the classics, Italy made the labour of scholarship
+comparatively light for the Northern nations, and extended to us the
+privilege of culture without the peril of losing originality in the
+enthusiasm for erudition. Our great poets could handle lightly, and
+yet profitably, those masterpieces of Greece and Rome, beneath the
+weight of which, when first discovered, the genius of the Italians had
+wavered. To the originality of Shakspere an accession of wealth
+without weakness was brought by the perusal of Italian works, in which
+the spirit of the antique was seen as in a modern mirror. Then, in
+addition to this benefit of instruction, Italy gave to England a gift
+of pure beauty, the influence of which, in refining our national
+taste, harmonising the roughness of our manners and our language, and
+stimulating our imagination, has been incalculable. It was a not
+unfrequent custom for young men of ability to study at the Italian
+universities, or at least to undertake a journey to the principal
+Italian cities. From their sojourn in that land of loveliness and
+intellectual life they returned with their Northern brains most
+powerfully stimulated. To produce, by masterpieces of the imagination,
+some work of style that should remain as a memento of that glorious
+country, and should vie on English soil with the art of Italy, was
+their generous ambition. Consequently the substance of the stories
+versified by our poets, the forms of our metres, and the cadences of
+our prose periods reveal a close attention to Italian originals.
+
+This debt of England to Italy in the matter of our literature began
+with Chaucer. Truly original and national as was the framework of the
+'Canterbury Tales,' we can hardly doubt but that Chaucer was
+determined in the form adopted for his poem by the example of
+Boccaccio. The subject-matter, also, of many of his tales was taken
+from Boccaccio's prose or verse. For example, the story of Patient
+Grizzel is founded upon one of the legends of the 'Decameron,' while
+the Knight's Tale is almost translated from the 'Teseide' of
+Boccaccio, and Troilus and Creseide is derived from the 'Filostrato'
+of the same author. The Franklin's Tale and the Reeve's Tale
+are also based either on stories of Boccaccio or else on French
+'Fabliaux,' to which Chaucer, as well as Boccaccio, had access. I do
+not wish to lay too much stress upon Chaucer's direct obligations to
+Boccaccio, because it is incontestable that the French 'Fabliaux,'
+which supplied them both with subjects, were the common property of
+the mediaeval nations. But his indirect debt in all that concerns
+elegant handling of material, and in the fusion of the romantic with
+the classic spirit, which forms the chief charm of such tales as the
+Palamon and Arcite, can hardly be exaggerated. Lastly, the seven-lined
+stanza, called _rime royal_, which Chaucer used with so much effect in
+narrative poetry, was probably borrowed from the earlier Florentine
+'Ballata,' the last line rhyming with its predecessor being
+substituted for the recurrent refrain. Indeed, the stanza itself, as
+used by our earliest poets, may be found in Guido Cavalcanti's
+'Ballatetta,' beginning, _Posso degli occhi miei_.
+
+Between Chaucer and Surrey the Muse of England fell asleep; but when
+in the latter half of the reign of Henry VIII. she awoke again, it was
+as a conscious pupil of the Italian that she attempted new strains and
+essayed fresh metres. 'In the latter end of Henry VIII.'s reign,' says
+Puttenham, 'sprang up a new company of courtly makers, of whom Sir T.
+Wyatt the elder, and Henry Earl of Surrey, were the two chieftains,
+who, having travelled into Italy, and there tasted the sweet and
+stately measures and style of the Italian poesy, as novices newly
+crept out of the schools of Dante, Ariosto, and Petrarch, they greatly
+polished our rude and homely manner of vulgar poesy, from that it had
+been before, and for that cause may justly be said the first reformers
+of our English metre and style.' The chief point in which Surrey
+imitated his 'master, Francis Petrarcha,' was in the use of the
+sonnet. He introduced this elaborate form of poetry into our
+literature; and how it has thriven with us, the masterpieces of
+Spenser, Shakspere, Milton, Wordsworth, Keats, Rossetti attest. As
+practised by Dante and Petrarch, the sonnet is a poem of fourteen
+lines, divided into two quatrains and two triplets, so arranged that
+the two quatrains repeat one pair of rhymes, while the two triplets
+repeat another pair. Thus an Italian sonnet of the strictest form is
+composed upon four rhymes, interlaced with great art. But much
+divergence from this rigid scheme of rhyming was admitted even by
+Petrarch, who not unfrequently divided the six final lines of the
+sonnet into three couplets, interwoven in such a way that the two last
+lines never rhymed.[17]
+
+It has been necessary to say thus much about the structure of the
+Italian sonnet, in order to make clear the task which lay before
+Surrey and Wyatt, when they sought to transplant it into English.
+Surrey did not adhere to the strict fashion of Petrarch: his sonnets
+consist either of three regular quatrains concluded with a couplet,
+or else of twelve lines rhyming alternately and concluded with a
+couplet. Wyatt attempted to follow the order and interlacement of the
+Italian rhymes more closely, but he too concluded his sonnet with a
+couplet. This introduction of the final couplet was a violation of the
+Italian rule, which may be fairly considered as prejudicial to the
+harmony of the whole structure, and which has insensibly caused the
+English sonnet to terminate in an epigram. The famous sonnet of Surrey
+on his love, Geraldine, is an excellent example of the metrical
+structure as adapted to the supposed necessities of English rhyming,
+and as afterwards adhered to by Shakspere in his long series of
+love-poems. Surrey, while adopting the form of the sonnet, kept quite
+clear of the Petrarchist's mannerism. His language is simple and
+direct: there is no subtilising upon far-fetched conceits, no
+wire-drawing of exquisite sentimentalism, although he celebrates in
+this, as in his other sonnets, a lady for whom he appears to have
+entertained no more than a Platonic or imaginary passion. Surrey was a
+great experimentalist in metre. Besides the sonnet, he introduced into
+England blank verse, which he borrowed from the Italian _versi
+sciolti_, fixing that decasyllable iambic rhythm for English
+versification in which our greatest poetical triumphs have been
+achieved.
+
+Before quitting the subject of the sonnet it would, however, be well
+to mention the changes which were wrought in its structure by early
+poets desirous of emulating the Italians. Shakspere, as already
+hinted, adhered to the simple form introduced by Surrey: his stanzas
+invariably consist of three separate quatrains followed by a couplet.
+But Sir Philip Sidney, whose familiarity with Italian literature was
+intimate, and who had resided long in Italy, perceived that without a
+greater complexity and interweaving of rhymes the beauty of the poem
+was considerably impaired. He therefore combined the rhymes of the two
+quatrains, as the Italians had done, leaving himself free to follow
+the Italian fashion in the conclusion, or else to wind up after
+English usage with a couplet. Spenser and Drummond follow the rule of
+Sidney; Drayton and Daniel, that of Surrey and Shakspere. It was not
+until Milton that an English poet preserved the form of the Italian
+sonnet in its strictness; but, after Milton, the greatest
+sonnet-writers--Wordsworth, Keats, and Rossetti--have aimed at
+producing stanzas as regular as those of Petrarch.
+
+The great age of our literature--the age of Elizabeth--was essentially
+one of Italian influence. In Italy the Renaissance had reached its
+height: England, feeling the new life which had been infused into arts
+and letters, turned instinctively to Italy, and adopted her canons of
+taste. 'Euphues' has a distinct connection with the Italian discourses
+of polite culture. Sidney's 'Arcadia' is a copy of what Boccaccio had
+attempted in his classical romances, and Sanazzaro in his
+pastorals.[18] Spenser approached the subject of the 'Faery Queen'
+with his head full of Ariosto and the romantic poets of Italy. His
+sonnets are Italian; his odes embody the Platonic philosophy of the
+Italians.[19] The extent of Spenser's deference to the Italians in
+matters of poetic art may be gathered from this passage in the
+dedication to Sir Walter Raleigh of the 'Faery Queen:'
+
+     I have followed all the antique poets historical: first
+     Homer, who in the persons of Agamemnon and Ulysses hath
+     ensampled a good governor and a virtuous man, the one in his
+     Ilias, the other in his Odysseis; then Virgil, whose like
+     intention was to do in the person of AEneas; after him
+     Ariosto comprised them both in his Orlando; and lately Tasso
+     dissevered them again, and formed both parts in two persons,
+     namely, that part which they in Philosophy call Ethice, or
+     virtues of a private man, coloured in his Rinaldo, the other
+     named Politico in his Goffredo.
+
+From this it is clear that, to the mind of Spenser, both Ariosto and
+Tasso were authorities of hardly less gravity than Homer and Virgil.
+Raleigh, in the splendid sonnet with which he responds to this
+dedication, enhances the fame of Spenser by affecting to believe that
+the great Italian, Petrarch, will be jealous of him in the grave. To
+such an extent were the thoughts of the English poets occupied with
+their Italian masters in the art of song.
+
+It was at this time, again, that English literature was enriched by
+translations of Ariosto and Tasso--the one from the pen of Sir John
+Harrington, the other from that of Fairfax. Both were produced in the
+metre of the original--the octave stanza, which, however, did not at
+that period take root in England. At the same period the works of many
+of the Italian novelists, especially Bandello and Cinthio and
+Boccaccio, were translated into English; Painter's 'Palace of
+Pleasure' being a treasure-house of Italian works of fiction. Thomas
+Hoby translated Castiglione's 'Courtier' in 1561. As a proof of the
+extent to which Italian books were read in England at the end of the
+sixteenth century, we may take a stray sentence from a letter of
+Harvey, in which he disparages the works of Robert Greene:--'Even
+Guicciardine's silver histories and Ariosto's golden cantos grow out
+of request: and the Countess of Pembroke's "Arcadia" is not green
+enough for queasy stomachs; but they must have seen Greene's
+"Arcadia," and I believe most eagerly longed for Greene's "Faery
+Queen."'
+
+Still more may be gathered on the same topic from the indignant
+protest uttered by Roger Ascham in his 'Schoolmaster' (pp. 78-91, date
+1570) against the prevalence of Italian customs, the habit of Italian
+travel, and the reading of Italian books translated into English.
+Selections of Italian stories rendered into English were extremely
+popular; and Greene's tales, which had such vogue that Nash says of
+them, 'glad was that printer that might be so blest to pay him dear
+for the very dregs of his wit,' were all modelled on the Italian. The
+education of a young man of good family was not thought complete
+unless he had spent some time in Italy, studied its literature,
+admired its arts, and caught at least some tincture of its manners.
+Our rude ancestors brought back with them from these journeys many
+Southern vices, together with the culture they had gone to seek. The
+contrast between the plain dealing of the North and the refined
+Machiavellism of the South, between Protestant earnestness in religion
+and Popish scepticism, between the homely virtues of England and the
+courtly libertinism of Venice or Florence, blunted the moral sense,
+while it stimulated the intellectual activity of the English
+travellers, and too often communicated a fatal shock to their
+principles. _Inglese Italianato e un diavolo incarnato_ passed into a
+proverb: we find it on the lips of Parker, of Howell, of Sidney, of
+Greene, and of Ascham; while Italy itself was styled by severe
+moralists the court of Circe. In James Howell's 'Instructions for
+forreine travell' we find this pregnant sentence: 'And being now in
+Italy, that great limbique of working braines, he must be very
+circumspect in his carriage, for she is able to turne a Saint into a
+devill, and deprave the best natures, if one will abandon himselfe,
+and become a prey to dissolut courses and wantonesse.' Italy, in
+truth, had already become corrupt, and the fruit of her contact with
+the nations of the North was seen in the lives of such scholars as
+Robert Greene, who confessed that he returned from his travels
+instructed 'in all the villanies under the sun.' Many of the scandals
+of the Court of James might be ascribed to this aping of Southern
+manners.
+
+Yet, together with the evil of depraved morality, the advantage of
+improved culture was imported from Italy into England; and the
+constitution of the English genius was young and healthy enough to
+purge off the mischief, while it assimilated what was beneficial. This
+is very manifest in the history of our drama, which, taking it
+altogether, is at the same time the purest and the most varied that
+exists in literature; while it may be affirmed without exaggeration
+that one of the main impulses to free dramatic composition in England
+was communicated by the attraction everything Italian possessed for
+the English fancy. It was in the drama that the English displayed the
+richness and the splendour of the Renaissance, which had blazed so
+gorgeously and at times so balefully below the Alps. The Italy of the
+Renaissance fascinated our dramatists with a strange wild glamour--the
+contrast of external pageant and internal tragedy, the alternations of
+radiance and gloom, the terrible examples of bloodshed, treason, and
+heroism emergent from ghastly crimes. Our drama began with a
+translation of Ariosto's 'Suppositi' and ended with Davenant's 'Just
+Italian.' In the very dawn of tragic composition Greene versified a
+portion of the 'Orlando Furioso,' and Marlowe devoted one of his most
+brilliant studies to the villanies of a Maltese Jew. Of Shakspere's
+plays five are incontestably Italian: several of the rest are
+furnished with Italian names to suit the popular taste. Ben Jonson
+laid the scene of his most subtle comedy of manners, 'Volpone,' in
+Venice, and sketched the first cast of 'Every Man in his Humour' for
+Italian characters. Tourneur, Ford, and Webster were so dazzled by the
+tragic lustre of the wickedness of Italy that their finest dramas,
+without exception, are minute and carefully studied psychological
+analyses of great Italian tales of crime. The same, in a less degree,
+is true of Middleton and Dekker. Massinger makes a story of the Sforza
+family the subject of one of his best plays. Beaumont and Fletcher
+draw the subjects of comedies and tragedies alike from the Italian
+novelists. Fletcher in his 'Faithful Shepherdess' transfers the
+pastoral style of Tasso and Guarini to the North. So close is the
+connection between our tragedy and Italian novels that Marston and
+Ford think fit to introduce passages of Italian dialogue into the
+plays of 'Giovanni and Annabella' and 'Antonio and Mellida.' But the
+best proof of the extent to which Italian life and literature had
+influenced our dramatists, may be easily obtained by taking down
+Halliwell's 'Dictionary of Old Plays,' and noticing that about every
+third drama has an Italian title. Meanwhile the poems composed by the
+chief dramatists--Shakspere's 'Venus and Adonis,' Marlowe's 'Hero and
+Leander,' Marston's 'Pygmalion,' and Beaumont's 'Hermaphrodite'--are
+all of them conceived in the Italian style, by men who had either
+studied Southern literature, or had submitted to its powerful aesthetic
+influences. The Masques, moreover, of Jonson, of Lyly, of Fletcher,
+and of Chapman are exact reproductions upon the English court theatres
+of such festival pageants as were presented to the Medici at Florence
+or to the Este family at Ferrara.[20] Throughout our drama the
+influence of Italy, direct or indirect, either as supplying our
+playwrights with subjects or as stimulating their imagination, may
+thus be traced. Yet the Elizabethan drama is in the highest sense
+original. As a work of art pregnant with deepest wisdom, and
+splendidly illustrative of the age which gave it birth, it far
+transcends anything that Italy produced in the same department. Our
+poets have a more masculine judgment, more fiery fancy, nobler
+sentiment, than the Italians of any age but that of Dante. What Italy
+gave, was the impulse toward creation, not patterns to be
+imitated--the excitement of the imagination by a spectacle of so much
+grandeur, not rules and precepts for production--the keen sense of
+tragic beauty, not any tradition of accomplished art.
+
+The Elizabethan period of our literature was, in fact, the period
+during which we derived most from the Italian nation.
+
+The study of the Italian language went hand in hand with the study of
+Greek and Latin, so that the three together contributed to form the
+English taste. Between us and the ancient world stood the genius of
+Italy as an interpreter. Nor was this connection broken until far on
+into the reign of Charles II. What Milton owed to Italy is clear not
+only from his Italian sonnets, but also from the frequent mention of
+Dante and Petrarch in his prose works, from his allusions to Boiardo
+and Ariosto in the 'Paradise Lost,' and from the hints which he
+probably derived from Pulci, Tasso and Andreini. It would, indeed, be
+easy throughout his works to trace a continuous vein of Italian
+influence in detail. But, more than this, Milton's poetical taste in
+general seems to have been formed and ripened by familiarity with the
+harmonies of the Italian language. In his Tractate on Education
+addressed to Mr. Hartlib, he recommends that boys should be instructed
+in the Italian pronunciation of vowel sounds, in order to give
+sonorousness and dignity to elocution. This slight indication supplies
+us with a key to the method of melodious structure employed by Milton
+in his blank verse. Those who have carefully studied the harmonies of
+the 'Paradise Lost,' know how all-important are the assonances of the
+vowel sounds of _o_ and _a_ in its most musical passages. It is just
+this attention to the liquid and sonorous recurrences of open vowels
+that we should expect from a poet who proposed to assimilate his
+diction to that of the Italians.
+
+After the age of Milton the connection between Italy and England is
+interrupted. In the seventeenth century Italy herself had sunk into
+comparative stupor, and her literature was trivial. France not only
+swayed the political destinies of Europe, but also took the lead in
+intellectual culture. Consequently, our poets turned from Italy to
+France, and the French spirit pervaded English literature throughout
+the period of the Restoration and the reigns of William and Queen Anne.
+Yet during this prolonged reaction against the earlier movement of
+English literature, as manifested in Elizabethanism, the influence of
+Italy was not wholly extinct. Dryden's 'Tales from Boccaccio' are no
+insignificant contribution to our poetry, and his 'Palamon and
+Arcite,' through Chaucer, returns to the same source. But when, at the
+beginning of this century, the Elizabethan tradition was revived, then
+the Italian influence reappeared more vigorous than ever. The metre of
+'Don Juan,' first practised by Frere and then adopted by Lord Byron,
+is Pulci's octave stanza; the manner is that of Berni, Folengo, and
+the Abbe Casti, fused and heightened by the brilliance of Byron's
+genius into a new form. The subject of Shelley's strongest work of art
+is Beatrice Cenci. Rogers's poem is styled 'Italy.' Byron's dramas are
+chiefly Italian. Leigh Hunt repeats the tale of Francesca da Rimini.
+Keats versifies Boccaccio's 'Isabella.' Passing to contemporary poets,
+Rossetti has acclimatised in English the metres and the manner of the
+earliest Italian lyrists. Swinburne dedicates his noblest song to the
+spirit of liberty in Italy. Even George Eliot and Tennyson have each
+of them turned stories of Boccaccio into verse. The best of Mrs.
+Browning's poems, 'Casa Guidi Windows' and 'Aurora Leigh,' are steeped
+in Italian thought and Italian imagery. Browning's longest poem is a
+tale of Italian crime; his finest studies in the 'Men and Women' are
+portraits of Italian character of the Renaissance period. But there is
+more than any mere enumeration of poets and their work can set forth,
+in the connection between Italy and England. That connection, so far
+as the poetical imagination is concerned, is vital. As poets in the
+truest sense of the word, we English live and breathe through sympathy
+with the Italians. The magnetic touch which is required to inflame the
+imagination of the North, is derived from Italy. The nightingales of
+English song who make our oak and beech copses resonant in spring with
+purest melody, are migratory birds, who have charged their souls in
+the South with the spirit of beauty, and who return to warble native
+wood-notes in a tongue which is their own.
+
+What has hitherto been said about the debt of the English poets to
+Italy, may seem to imply that our literature can be regarded as to
+some extent a parasite on that of the Italians. Against such a
+conclusion no protest too energetic could be uttered. What we have
+derived directly from the Italian poets are, first, some
+metres--especially the sonnet and the octave stanza, though the latter
+has never taken firm root in England. 'Terza rima,' attempted by
+Shelley, Byron, Morris, and Mrs. Browning, has not yet become
+acclimatised. Blank verse, although originally remodelled by Surrey
+upon the _versi sciolti_ of the Italians, has departed widely from
+Italian precedent, first by its decasyllabic structure, whereas
+Italian verse consists of hendecasyllables; and, secondly, by its
+greater force, plasticity, and freedom. The Spenserian stanza, again,
+is a new and original metre peculiar to our literature; though it is
+possible that but for the complex structures of Italian lyric verse,
+it might not have been fashioned for the 'Faery Queen.' Lastly, the
+so-called heroic couplet is native to England; at any rate, it is in
+no way related to Italian metre. Therefore the only true Italian
+exotic adopted without modification into our literature is the sonnet.
+
+In the next place, we owe to the Italians the subject-matter of many
+of our most famous dramas and our most delightful tales in verse. But
+the English treatment of these histories and fables has been uniformly
+independent and original. Comparing Shakspere's 'Romeo and Juliet'
+with Bandello's tale, Webster's 'Duchess of Malfy' with the version
+given from the Italian in Painter's 'Palace of Pleasure,' and
+Chaucer's Knight's Tale with the 'Teseide' of Boccaccio, we perceive
+at once that the English poets have used their Italian models merely
+as outlines to be filled in with freedom, as the canvas to be
+embroidered with a tapestry of vivid groups. Nothing is more manifest
+than the superiority of the English genius over the Italian in all
+dramatic qualities of intense passion, profound analysis, and living
+portrayal of character in action. The mere rough detail of Shakspere's
+'Othello' is to be found in Cinthio's Collection of Novelle; but let
+an unprejudiced reader peruse the original, and he will be no more
+deeply affected by it than by any touching story of treachery,
+jealousy, and hapless innocence. The wily subtleties of Iago, the
+soldierly frankness of Cassio, the turbulent and volcanic passions of
+Othello, the charm of Desdemona, and the whole tissue of vivid
+incidents which make 'Othello' one of the most tremendous extant
+tragedies of characters in combat, are Shakspere's, and only
+Shakspere's. This instance, indeed, enables us exactly to indicate
+what the English owed to Italy and what was essentially their own.
+From that Southern land of Circe about which they dreamed, and which
+now and then they visited, came to their imaginations a
+spirit-stirring breath of inspiration. It was to them the country of
+marvels, of mysterious crimes, of luxurious gardens and splendid
+skies, where love was more passionate and life more picturesque, and
+hate more bloody and treachery more black, than in our Northern
+climes. Italy was a spacious grove of wizardry, which mighty poets, on
+the quest of fanciful adventure, trod with fascinated senses and
+quickened pulses. But the strong brain which converted what they heard
+and read and saw of that charmed land into the stuff of golden romance
+or sable tragedy, was their own.
+
+English literature has been defined a literature of genius.
+
+Our greatest work in art has been achieved not so much by inspiration,
+subordinate to sentiments of exquisite good taste or guided by
+observance of classical models, as by audacious sallies of pure
+inventive power. This is true as a judgment of that constellation
+which we call our drama, of the meteor Byron, of Milton and Dryden,
+who are the Jupiter and Mars of our poetic system, and of the stars
+which stud our literary firmament under the names of Shelley, Keats,
+Wordsworth, Chatterton, Scott, Coleridge, Clough, Blake, Browning,
+Swinburne, Tennyson. There are only a very few of the English poets,
+Pope and Gray, for example, in whom the free instincts of genius are
+kept systematically in check by the laws of the reflective
+understanding. Now Italian literature is in this respect all unlike
+our own. It began, indeed, with Dante, as a literature pre-eminently
+of genius; but the spirit of scholarship assumed the sway as early as
+the days of Petrarch and Boccaccio, and after them Italian has been
+consistently a literature of taste. By this I mean that even the
+greatest Italian poets have sought to render their style correct, have
+endeavoured to subordinate their inspiration to what they considered
+the rules of sound criticism, and have paid serious attention to their
+manner as independent of the matter they wished to express. The
+passion for antiquity, so early developed in Italy, delivered the
+later Italian poets bound hand and foot into the hands of Horace.
+Poliziano was content to reproduce the classic authors in a mosaic
+work of exquisite translations. Tasso was essentially a man of talent,
+producing work of chastened beauty by diligent attention to the rule
+and method of his art. Even Ariosto submitted the liberty of his swift
+spirit to canons of prescribed elegance. While our English poets have
+conceived and executed without regard for the opinion of the learned
+and without obedience to the usages of language--Shakspere, for
+example, producing tragedies which set Aristotle at defiance, and
+Milton engrafting Latinisms on the native idiom--the Italian poets
+thought and wrote with the fear of Academies before their eyes, and
+studied before all things to maintain the purity of the Tuscan tongue.
+The consequence is that the Italian and English literatures are
+eminent for very different excellences. All that is forcible in the
+dramatic presentation of life and character and action, all that is
+audacious in imagination and capricious in fancy, whatever strength
+style can gain from the sallies of original and untrammelled
+eloquence, whatever beauty is derived from spontaneity and native
+grace, belong in abundant richness to the English. On the other hand,
+the Italian poets present us with masterpieces of correct and studied
+diction, with carefully elaborated machinery, and with a style
+maintained at a uniform level of dignified correctness. The weakness
+of the English proceeds from inequality and extravagance; it is the
+weakness of self-confident vigour, intolerant of rule, rejoicing in
+its own exuberant resources. The weakness of the Italian is due to
+timidity and moderation; it is the weakness that springs not so much
+from a lack of native strength as from the over-anxious expenditure of
+strength upon the attainment of finish, polish, and correctness. Hence
+the two nations have everything to learn from one another. Modern
+Italian poets may seek by contact with Shakspere and Milton to gain a
+freedom from the trammels imposed upon them by the slavish followers
+of Petrarch; while the attentive perusal of Tasso should be
+recommended to all English people who have no ready access to the
+masterpieces of Greek and Latin literature.
+
+Another point of view may be gained by noticing the pre-dominant tone
+of the two literatures. Whenever English poetry is really great, it
+approximates to the tragic and the stately; whereas the Italians are
+peculiarly felicitous in the smooth and pleasant style, which combines
+pathos with amusement, and which does not trespass beyond the region
+of beauty into the domain of sublimity or terror. Italian poetry is
+analogous to Italian painting and Italian music: it bathes the soul in
+a plenitude of charms, investing even the most solemn subjects with
+loveliness. Rembrandt and Albert Duerer depict the tragedies of the
+Sacred History with a serious and awful reality: Italian painters,
+with a few rare but illustrious exceptions, shrink from approaching
+them from any point of view but that of harmonious melancholy. Even so
+the English poets stir the soul to its very depths by their profound
+and earnest delineations of the stern and bitter truths of the world:
+Italian poets environ all things with the golden haze of an artistic
+harmony; so that the soul is agitated by no pain at strife with the
+persuasions of pure beauty.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+_POPULAR SONGS OF TUSCANY_
+
+
+It is a noticeable fact about the popular songs of Tuscany that they
+are almost exclusively devoted to love. The Italians in general have
+no ballad literature resembling that of our Border or that of Spain.
+The tragic histories of their noble families, the great deeds of their
+national heroes, and the sufferings of their country during centuries
+of warfare, have left but few traces in their rustic poetry. It is
+true that some districts are less utterly barren than others in these
+records of the past. The Sicilian people's poetry, for example,
+preserves a memory of the famous Vespers; and one or two terrible
+stories of domestic tragedy, like the tale of Rosmunda in 'La Donna
+Lombarda,' the romance of the Baronessa di Carini, and the so-called
+Caso di Sciacca, may still be heard upon the lips of the people. But
+these exceptions are insignificant in comparison with the vast mass of
+songs which deal with love; and I cannot find that Tuscany, where the
+language of this minstrelsy is purest, and where the artistic
+instincts of the race are strongest, has anything at all approaching
+to our ballads.[21] Though the Tuscan contadini are always singing, it
+rarely happens that
+
+    The plaintive numbers flow
+  For old, unhappy, far-off things,
+    And battles long ago.
+
+On the contrary, we may be sure, when we hear their voices ringing
+through the olive-groves or macchi, that they are chanting
+
+    Some more humble lay,
+  Familiar matter of to-day,--
+  Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
+  That has been, and may be again;
+
+or else, since their melodies are by no means uniformly sad, some
+ditty of the joyousness of springtime or the ecstasy of love.
+
+This defect of anything corresponding to our ballads of 'Chevy Chase,'
+or 'Sir Patrick Spens,' or 'Gil Morrice,' in a poetry which is still
+so vital with the life of past centuries, is all the more remarkable
+because Italian history is distinguished above that of other nations
+by tragic episodes peculiarly suited to poetic treatment. Many of
+these received commemoration in the fourteenth century from Dante;
+others were embodied in the _novelle_ of Boccaccio and Cinthio and
+Bandello, whence they passed into the dramas of Shakspere, Webster,
+Ford, and their contemporaries. But scarcely an echo can be traced
+through all the volumes of the recently collected popular songs. We
+must seek for an explanation of this fact partly in the conditions of
+Italian life, and partly in the nature of the Italian imagination.
+Nowhere in Italy do we observe that intimate connection between the
+people at large and the great nobles which generates the sympathy of
+clanship. Politics in most parts of the peninsula fell at a very
+early period into the hands either of irresponsible princes, who ruled
+like despots, or else of burghers, who administered the state within
+the walls of their Palazzo Pubblico. The people remained passive
+spectators of contemporary history. The loyalty of subjects to their
+sovereign which animates the Spanish ballads, the loyalty of retainers
+to their chief which gives life to the tragic ballads of the Border,
+did not exist in Italy. Country-folk felt no interest in the doings of
+Visconti or Medici or Malatesti sufficient to arouse the enthusiasm of
+local bards or to call forth the celebration of their princely
+tragedies in verse. Amid the miseries of foreign wars and home
+oppression, it seemed better to demand from verse and song some
+mitigation of the woes of life, some expression of personal emotion,
+than to record the disasters which to us at a distance appear poetic
+in their grandeur.
+
+These conditions of popular life, although unfavourable to the
+production of ballad poetry, would not, however, have been sufficient
+by themselves to check its growth, if the Italians had been strongly
+impelled to literature of this type by their nature. The real reason
+why their _Volkslieder_ are amorous and personal is to be found in the
+quality of their imagination. The Italian genius is not creatively
+imaginative in the highest sense. The Italians have never, either in
+the ancient or the modern age, produced a great drama or a national
+epic, the 'AEneid' and the 'Divine Comedy' being obviously of different
+species from the 'Iliad' or the 'Nibelungen Lied.' Modern Italians,
+again, are distinguished from the French, the Germans, and the English
+in being the conscious inheritors of an older, august, and strictly
+classical civilisation. The great memories of Rome weigh down their
+faculties of invention. It would also seem as though they shrank in
+their poetry from the representation of what is tragic and
+spirit-stirring. They incline to what is cheerful, brilliant, or
+pathetic. The dramatic element in human life, external to the
+personality of the poet, which exercised so strong a fascination over
+our ballad-bards and playwrights, has but little attraction for the
+Italian. When he sings, he seeks to express his own individual
+emotions--his love, his joy, his jealousy, his anger, his despair. The
+language which he uses is at the same time direct in its intensity,
+and hyperbolical in its display of fancy; but it lacks those
+imaginative touches which exalt the poetry of personal passion into a
+sublimer region. Again, the Italians are deficient in a sense of the
+supernatural. The wraiths that cannot rest because their love is still
+unsatisfied, the voices which cry by night over field and fell, the
+water-spirits and forest fairies, the second-sight of coming woes, the
+presentiment of death, the warnings and the charms and spells, which
+fill the popular poetry of all Northern nations, are absent in Italian
+songs. In the whole of Tigri's collection I only remember one mention
+of a ghost. It is not that the Italians are deficient in superstitions
+of all kinds. Every one has heard of their belief in the evil eye, for
+instance. But they do not connect this kind of fetichism with their
+poetry; and even their greatest poets, with the exception of Dante,
+have shown no capacity or no inclination for enhancing the imaginative
+effect of their creations by an appeal to the instinct of mysterious
+awe.
+
+The truth is that the Italians as a race are distinguished as much by
+a firm grasp upon the practical realities of existence as by powerful
+emotions. They have but little of that dreamy _Schwaermerei_ with which
+the people of the North are largely gifted. The true sphere of their
+genius is painting. What appeals to the imagination through the eyes,
+they have expressed far better than any other modern nation. But
+their poetry, like their music, is deficient in tragic sublimity and
+in the higher qualities of imaginative creation.
+
+It may seem paradoxical to say this of the nation which produced
+Dante. But we must remember not to judge races by single and
+exceptional men of genius. Petrarch, the Troubadour of exquisite
+emotions, Boccaccio, who touches all the keys of life so lightly,
+Ariosto, with the smile of everlasting April on his lips, and Tasso,
+excellent alone when he confines himself to pathos or the picturesque,
+are no exceptions to what I have just said. Yet these poets pursued
+their art with conscious purpose. The tragic splendour of Greece, the
+majesty of Rome, were not unknown to them. Far more is it true that
+popular poetry in Italy, proceeding from the hearts of uncultivated
+peasants and expressing the national character in its simplicity,
+displays none of the stuff from which the greatest works of art in
+verse, epics and dramas, can be wrought. But within its own sphere of
+personal emotion, this popular poetry is exquisitely melodious,
+inexhaustibly rich, unique in modern literature for the direct
+expression which it has given to every shade of passion.
+
+Signor Tigri's collection,[22] to which I shall confine my attention
+in this paper, consists of eleven hundred and eighty-five _rispetti_,
+with the addition of four hundred and sixty-one _stornelli_. Rispetto,
+it may be said in passing, is the name commonly given throughout Italy
+to short poems, varying from six to twelve lines, constructed on the
+principle of the octave stanza. That is to say, the first part of the
+rispetto consists of four or six lines with alternate rhymes, while
+one or more couplets, called the _ripresa_, complete the poem.[23]
+The stornello, or ritournelle, never exceeds three lines, and owes
+its name to the return which it makes at the end of the last line to
+the rhyme given by the emphatic word of the first. Browning, in his
+poem of 'Fra Lippo Lippi,' has accustomed English ears to one common
+species of the stornello,[24] which sets out with the name of a
+flower, and rhymes with it, as thus:
+
+    Fior di narciso.
+  Prigionero d'amore mi son reso,
+  Nel rimirare il tuo leggiadro viso.
+
+The divisions of those two sorts of songs, to which Tigri gives names
+like The Beauty of Women, The Beauty of Men, Falling in Love,
+Serenades, Happy Love, Unhappy Love, Parting, Absence, Letters, Return
+to Home, Anger and Jealousy, Promises, Entreaties and Reproaches,
+Indifference, Treachery and Abandonment, prove with what fulness the
+various phases of the tender passion are treated. Through the whole
+fifteen hundred the one theme of Love is never relinquished. Only two
+persons, 'I' and 'thou,' appear upon the scene; yet so fresh and so
+various are the moods of feeling, that one can read them from first to
+last without too much satiety.
+
+To seek for the authors of these ditties would be useless. Some of
+them may be as old as the fourteenth century; others may have been
+made yesterday. Some are the native product of the Tuscan mountain
+villages, especially of the regions round Pistoja and Siena, where on
+the spurs of the Apennines the purest Italian is vernacular. Some,
+again, are importations from other provinces, especially from Sicily
+and Naples, caught up by the peasants of Tuscany and adapted to their
+taste and style; for nothing travels faster than a _Volkslied_. Born
+some morning in a noisy street of Naples, or on the solitary slopes of
+Radicofani, before the week is out, a hundred voices are repeating it.
+Waggoners and pedlars carry it across the hills to distant towns. It
+floats with the fishermen from bay to bay, and marches with the
+conscript to his barrack in a far-off province. Who was the first to
+give it shape and form? No one asks, and no one cares. A student well
+acquainted with the habits of the people in these matters says, 'If
+they knew the author of a ditty, they would not learn it, far less if
+they discovered that it was a scholar's.' If the cadence takes their
+ear, they consecrate the song at once by placing it upon the honoured
+list of 'ancient lays.' Passing from lip to lip and from district to
+district, it receives additions and alterations, and becomes the
+property of a score of provinces. Meanwhile the poet from whose soul
+it blossomed that first morning like a flower, remains contented with
+obscurity. The wind has carried from his lips the thistledown of song,
+and sown it on a hundred hills and meadows, far and wide. After such
+wise is the birth of all truly popular compositions. Who knows, for
+instance, the veritable author of many of those mighty German chorals
+which sprang into being at the period of the Reformation? The first
+inspiration was given, probably, to a single mind; but the melody, as
+it has reached us, is the product of a thousand. This accounts for the
+variations which in different dialects and districts the same song
+presents. Meanwhile, it is sometimes possible to trace the authorship
+of a ballad with marked local character to an improvisatore famous in
+his village, or to one of those professional rhymesters whom the
+country-folk employ in the composition of love-letters to their
+sweethearts at a distance.[25] Tommaseo, in the preface to his 'Canti
+Popolari,' mentions in particular a Beatrice di Pian degli Ontani,
+whose poetry was famous through the mountains of Pistoja; and Tigri
+records by name a little girl called Cherubina, who made rispetti by
+the dozen as she watched her sheep upon the hills. One of the songs in
+his collection (p. 181) contains a direct reference to the village
+letter-writer:--
+
+  Salutatemi, bella, lo scrivano;
+  Non lo conosco e non so chi si sia.
+  A me mi pare un poeta sovrano,
+  Tanto gli e sperto nella poesia.[26]
+
+While I am writing thus about the production and dissemination of
+these love-songs, I cannot help remembering three days and nights
+which I once spent at sea between Genoa and Palermo, in the company of
+some conscripts who were going to join their regiment in Sicily. They
+were lads from the Milanese and Liguria, and they spent a great
+portion of their time in composing and singing poetry. One of them had
+a fine baritone voice; and when the sun had set, his comrades gathered
+round him and begged him to sing to them 'Con quella patetica tua
+voce.' Then followed hours of singing, the low monotonous melodies of
+his ditties harmonising wonderfully with the tranquillity of night, so
+clear and calm that the sky and all its stars were mirrored on the
+sea, through which we moved as if in a dream. Sometimes the songs
+provoked conversation, which, as is usual in Italy, turned mostly upon
+'le bellezze delle donne.' I remember that once an animated discussion
+about the relative merits of blondes and brunettes nearly ended in a
+quarrel, when the youngest of the whole band, a boy of about
+seventeen, put a stop to the dispute by theatrically raising his eyes
+and arms to heaven and crying, 'Tu sei innamorato d' una grande Diana
+cacciatrice nera, ed io d' una bella Venere bionda.' Though they were
+but village lads, they supported their several opinions with arguments
+not unworthy of Firenzuola, and showed the greatest delicacy of
+feeling in the treatment of a subject which could scarcely have failed
+to reveal any latent coarseness.
+
+The purity of all the Italian love-songs collected by Tigri is very
+remarkable.[27] Although the passion expressed in them is Oriental in
+its vehemence, not a word falls which could offend a virgin's ear. The
+one desire of lovers is lifelong union in marriage. The _damo_--for so
+a sweetheart is termed in Tuscany--trembles until he has gained the
+approval of his future mother-in-law, and forbids the girl he is
+courting to leave her house to talk to him at night:--
+
+  Dice che tu ti affacci alia finestra;
+  Ma non ti dice che tu vada fuora,
+  Perche, la notte, e cosa disonesta.
+
+All the language of his love is respectful. _Signore_, or master of my
+soul, _madonna, anima mia, dolce mio ben, nobil persona,_ are the
+terms of adoration with which he approaches his mistress. The
+elevation of feeling and perfect breeding which Manzoni has so well
+delineated in the loves of Renzo and Lucia are traditional among
+Italian country-folk. They are conscious that true gentleness is no
+matter of birth or fortune:--
+
+  E tu non mi lasciar per poverezza,
+  Che poverta non guasta gentilezza.[28]
+
+
+This in itself constitutes an important element of culture, and
+explains to some extent the high romantic qualities of their
+impassioned poetry. The beauty of their land reveals still more. 'O
+fortunatos nimium sua si bona norint!' Virgil's exclamation is as true
+now as it was when he sang the labours of Italian country-folk some
+nineteen centuries ago. To a traveller from the north there is a
+pathos even in the contrast between the country in which these
+children of a happier climate toil, and those bleak, winter-beaten
+fields where our own peasants pass their lives. The cold nights and
+warm days of Tuscan springtime are like a Swiss summer. They make rich
+pasture and a hardy race of men. Tracts of corn and oats and rye
+alternate with patches of flax in full flower, with meadows yellow
+with buttercups or pink with ragged robin; the young vines, running
+from bough to bough of elm and mulberry, are just coming into leaf.
+The poplars are fresh with bright green foliage. On the verge of this
+blooming plain stand ancient cities ringed with hills, some rising to
+snowy Apennines, some covered with white convents and sparkling with
+villas. Cypresses shoot, black and spirelike, amid grey clouds of
+olive-boughs upon the slopes; and above, where vegetation borders on
+the barren rock, are masses of ilex and arbutus interspersed with
+chestnut-trees not yet in leaf. Men and women are everywhere at work,
+ploughing with great white oxen, or tilling the soil with spades six
+feet in length--Sabellian ligones. The songs of nightingales among
+acacia-trees, and the sharp scream of swallows wheeling in air, mingle
+with the monotonous chant that always rises from the country-people at
+their toil. Here and there on points of vantage, where the hill-slopes
+sink into the plain, cluster white villages with flower-like
+campanili. It is there that the veglia, or evening rendezvous of
+lovers, the serenades and balls and feste, of which one hears so much
+in the popular minstrelsy, take place. Of course it would not be
+difficult to paint the darker shades of this picture. Autumn comes,
+when the contadini of Lucca and Siena and Pistoja go forth to work in
+the unwholesome marshes of the Maremma, or of Corsica and Sardinia.
+Dismal superstitions and hereditary hatreds cast their blight over a
+life externally so fair. The bad government of centuries has perverted
+in many ways the instincts of a people naturally mild and cheerful and
+peace-loving. But as far as nature can make men happy, these
+husbandmen are surely to be reckoned fortunate, and in their songs we
+find little to remind us of what is otherwise than sunny in their lot.
+
+A translator of these _Volkslieder_ has to contend with difficulties
+of no ordinary kind. The freshness of their phrases, the spontaneity
+of their sentiments, and the melody of their unstudied cadences, are
+inimitable. So again is the peculiar effect of their frequent
+transitions from the most fanciful imagery to the language of prose.
+No mere student can hope to rival, far less to reproduce, in a foreign
+tongue, the charm of verse which sprang untaught from the hearts of
+simple folk, which lives unwritten on the lips of lovers, and which
+should never be dissociated from singing.[29] There are, besides,
+peculiarities in the very structure of the popular rispetto. The
+constant repetition of the same phrase with slight variations,
+especially in the closing lines of the _ripresa_ of the Tuscan
+rispetto, gives an antique force and flavour to these ditties, like
+that which we appreciate in our own ballads, but which may easily, in
+the translation, degenerate into weakness and insipidity. The Tuscan
+rhymester, again, allows himself the utmost licence. It is usual to
+find mere assonances like _bene_ and _piacere, oro_ and _volo, ala_
+and _alata_, in the place of rhymes; while such remote resemblances of
+sound as _colli_ and _poggi_, _lascia_ and _piazza_, are far from
+uncommon. To match these rhymes by joining 'home' and 'alone,' 'time'
+and 'shine,' &c, would of course be a matter of no difficulty; but it
+has seemed to me on the whole best to preserve, with some exceptions,
+such accuracy as the English ear requires. I fear, however, that,
+after all, these wild-flowers of song, transplanted to another climate
+and placed in a hothouse, will appear but pale and hectic by the side
+of their robuster brethren of the Tuscan hills.
+
+In the following serenade many of the peculiarities which
+I have just noticed occur. I have also adhered to the irregularity of
+rhyme which may be usually observed about the middle of the poem (p.
+103):--
+
+  Sleeping or waking, thou sweet face,
+  Lift up thy fair and tender brow:
+  List to thy love in this still place;
+  He calls thee to thy window now:
+  But bids thee not the house to quit,
+  Since in the night this were not meet.
+  Come to thy window, stay within;
+  I stand without, and sing and sing:
+  Come to thy window, stay at home;
+  I stand without, and make my moan.
+
+Here is a serenade of a more impassioned character (p. 99):--
+
+  I come to visit thee, my beauteous queen,
+  Thee and the house where thou art harboured:
+  All the long way upon my knees, my queen,
+  I kiss the earth where'er thy footsteps tread.
+  I kiss the earth, and gaze upon the wall,
+  Whereby thou goest, maid imperial!
+  I kiss the earth, and gaze upon the house,
+  Whereby thou farest, queen most beauteous!
+
+In the next the lover, who has passed the whole night beneath his
+sweetheart's window, takes leave at the break of day. The feeling of
+the half-hour before dawn, when the sound of bells rises to meet the
+growing light, and both form a prelude to the glare and noise of day,
+is expressed with much unconscious poetry (p. 105):--
+
+  I see the dawn e'en now begin to peer:
+  Therefore I take my leave, and cease to sing,
+  See how the windows open far and near,
+  And hear the bells of morning, how they ring!
+  Through heaven and earth the sounds of ringing swell;
+  Therefore, bright jasmine flower, sweet maid, farewell!
+  Through heaven and Rome the sound of ringing goes;
+  Farewell, bright jasmine flower, sweet maiden rose!
+The next is more quaint (p. 99):--
+
+  I come by night, I come, my soul aflame;
+  I come in this fair hour of your sweet sleep;
+  And should I wake you up, it were a shame.
+  I cannot sleep, and lo! I break your sleep.
+  To wake you were a shame from your deep rest;
+  Love never sleeps, nor they whom Love hath blest.
+
+A very great many rispetti are simple panegyrics of the beloved, to
+find similitude for whose beauty heaven and earth are ransacked. The
+compliment of the first line in the following song is perfect (p.
+23):--
+
+  Beauty was born with you, fair maid:
+  The sun and moon inclined to you;
+  On you the snow her whiteness laid
+  The rose her rich and radiant hue:
+  Saint Magdalen her hair unbound,
+  And Cupid taught you how to wound--
+  How to wound hearts Dan Cupid taught:
+  Your beauty drives me love-distraught.
+
+The lady in the next was December's child (p. 25):--
+
+  O beauty, born in winter's night,
+  Born in the month of spotless snow:
+  Your face is like a rose so bright;
+  Your mother may be proud of you!
+  She may be proud, lady of love,
+  Such sunlight shines her house above:
+  She may be proud, lady of heaven,
+  Such sunlight to her home is given.
+
+The sea wind is the source of beauty to another (p. 16):--
+
+  Nay, marvel not you are so fair;
+  For you beside the sea were born:
+  The sea-waves keep you fresh and fair,
+  Like roses on their leafy thorn.
+  If roses grow on the rose-bush,
+  Your roses through midwinter blush;
+  If roses bloom on the rose-bed,
+  Your face can show both white and red.
+
+The eyes of a fourth are compared, after quite a new and original
+fashion, to stars (p. 210):--
+
+  The moon hath risen her plaint to lay
+  Before the face of Love Divine.
+  Saying in heaven she will not stay,
+  Since you have stolen what made her shine:
+  Aloud she wails with sorrow wan,--
+  She told her stars and two are gone:
+  They are not there; you have them now;
+  They are the eyes in your bright brow.
+
+Nor are girls less ready to praise their lovers, but that they do not
+dwell so much on physical perfection. Here is a pleasant greeting (p.
+124):--
+
+  O welcome, welcome, lily white,
+  Thou fairest youth of all the valley!
+  When I'm with you, my soul is light;
+  I chase away dull melancholy.
+  I chase all sadness from my heart:
+  Then welcome, dearest that thou art!
+  I chase all sadness from my side:
+  Then welcome, O my love, my pride!
+  I chase all sadness far away:
+  Then welcome, welcome, love, to-day!
+
+The image of a lily is very prettily treated in the next (p 79):--
+
+  I planted a lily yestreen at my window;
+  I set it yestreen, and to-day it sprang up:
+  When I opened the latch and leaned out of my window,
+  It shadowed my face with its beautiful cup.
+  O lily, my lily, how tall you are grown!
+  Remember how dearly I loved you, my own.
+  O lily, my lily, you'll grow to the sky!
+  Remember I love you for ever and aye.
+
+The same thought of love growing like a flower receives another turn
+(p. 69):--
+
+  On yonder hill I saw a flower;
+  And, could it thence be hither borne,
+  I'd plant it here within my bower,
+  And water it both eve and morn.
+  Small water wants the stem so straight;
+  'Tis a love-lily stout as fate.
+  Small water wants the root so strong:
+  'Tis a love-lily lasting long.
+  Small water wants the flower so sheen:
+  'Tis a love-lily ever green.
+
+Envious tongues have told a girl that her complexion is not good. She
+replies, with imagery like that of Virgil's 'Alba ligustra cadunt,
+vaccinia nigra leguntur' (p. 31):--
+
+  Think it no grief that I am brown,
+  For all brunettes are born to reign:
+  White is the snow, yet trodden down;
+  Black pepper kings need not disdain:
+  White snow lies mounded on the vales
+  Black pepper's weighed in brazen scales.
+
+Another song runs on the same subject (p. 38):--
+
+  The whole world tells me that I'm brown,
+  The brown earth gives us goodly corn:
+  The clove-pink too, however brown,
+  Yet proudly in the hand 'tis borne.
+  They say my love is black, but he
+  Shines like an angel-form to me:
+  They say my love is dark as night;
+  To me he seems a shape of light.
+
+The freshness of the following spring song recalls the ballads of the
+Val de Vire in Normandy (p. 85):--
+
+  It was the morning of the first of May,
+  Into the close I went to pluck a flower;
+  And there I found a bird of woodland gay,
+  Who whiled with songs of love the silent hour.
+  O bird, who fliest from fair Florence, how
+  Dear love begins, I prithee teach me now!--
+  Love it begins with music and with song,
+  And ends with sorrow and with sighs ere long.
+
+Love at first sight is described (p. 79):--
+
+  The very moment that we met,
+  That moment love began to beat:
+  One glance of love we gave, and swore
+  Never to part for evermore;
+  We swore together, sighing deep,
+  Never to part till Death's long sleep.
+
+Here too is a memory of the first days of love (p. 79):--
+
+  If I remember, it was May
+  When love began between us two:
+  The roses in the close were gay,
+  The cherries blackened on the bough.
+  O cherries black and pears so green!
+  Of maidens fair you are the queen.
+  Fruit of black cherry and sweet pear!
+  Of sweethearts you're the queen, I swear.
+
+The troth is plighted with such promises as these (p. 230):--
+
+  Or ere I leave you, love divine,
+  Dead tongues shall stir and utter speech,
+  And running rivers flow with wine,
+  And fishes swim upon the beach;
+  Or ere I leave or shun you, these
+  Lemons shall grow on orange-trees.
+
+The girl confesses her love after this fashion (p. 86):--
+
+  Passing across the billowy sea,
+  I let, alas, my poor heart fall;
+  I bade the sailors bring it me;
+  They said they had not seen it fall.
+  I asked the sailors, one and two;
+  They said that I had given it you.
+  I asked the sailors, two and three;
+  They said that I had given it thee.
+It is not uncommon to speak of love as a sea. Here is a curious play
+upon this image (p. 227):--
+
+  Ho, Cupid! Sailor Cupid, ho!
+  Lend me awhile that bark of thine;
+  For on the billows I will go,
+  To find my love who once was mine:
+  And if I find her, she shall wear
+  A chain around her neck so fair,
+  Around her neck a glittering bond,
+  Four stars, a lily, a diamond.
+
+It is also possible that the same thought may occur in the second line
+of the next ditty (p. 120):--
+
+  Beneath the earth I'll make a way
+  To pass the sea and come to you.
+  People will think I'm gone away;
+  But, dear, I shall be seeing you.
+  People will say that I am dead;
+  But we'll pluck roses white and red:
+  People will think I'm lost for aye;
+  But we'll pluck roses, you and I.
+
+All the little daily incidents are beautified by love. Here is a
+lover who thanks the mason for making his window so close upon the
+road that he can see his sweetheart as she passes (p. 118):--
+
+  Blest be the mason's hand who built
+  This house of mine by the roadside,
+  And made my window low and wide
+  For me to watch my love go by.
+  And if I knew when she went by,
+  My window should be fairly gilt;
+  And if I knew what time she went,
+  My window should be flower-besprent.
+
+Here is a conceit which reminds one of the pretty epistle of
+Philostratus, in which the footsteps of the beloved are called
+_[Greek: erereismena philempta]_ (p. 117):--
+
+  What time I see you passing by;
+  I sit and count the steps you take:
+  You take the steps; I sit and sigh:
+  Step after step, my sighs awake.
+  Tell me, dear love, which more abound,
+  My sighs or your steps on the ground?
+  Tell me, dear love, which are the most,
+  Your light steps or the sighs they cost?
+
+A girl complains that she cannot see her lover's house (p. 117):-
+
+  I lean upon the lattice, and look forth
+  To see the house where my lover dwells.
+  There grows an envious tree that spoils my mirth:
+  Cursed be the man who set it on these hills!
+  But when those jealous boughs are all unclad,
+  I then shall see the cottage of my lad:
+  When once that tree is rooted from the hills,
+  I'll see the house wherein my lover dwells.
+
+In the same mood a girl who has just parted from her sweetheart is
+angry with the hill beyond which he is travelling (p. 167):--
+
+  I see and see, yet see not what I would:
+  I see the leaves atremble on the tree:
+  I saw my love where on the hill he stood,
+  Yet see him not drop downward to the lea.
+     O traitor hill, what will you do?
+     I ask him, live or dead, from you.
+     O traitor hill, what shall it be?
+     I ask him, live or dead, from thee.
+
+All the songs of love in absence are very quaint. Here is one which
+calls our nursery rhymes to mind (p. 119):--
+
+I would I were a bird so free,
+That I had wings to fly away:
+Unto that window I would flee,
+Where stands my love and grinds all day.
+Grind, miller, grind; the water's deep!
+I cannot grind; love makes me weep.
+Grind, miller, grind; the waters flow!
+I cannot grind; love wastes me so.
+
+The next begins after the same fashion, but breaks into a very shower
+of benedictions (p. 118):--
+
+  Would God I were a swallow free,
+  That I had wings to fly away:
+  Upon the miller's door I'd be,
+  Where stands my love and grinds all day:
+  Upon the door, upon the sill,
+  Where stays my love;--God bless him still!
+  God bless my love, and blessed be
+  His house, and bless my house for me;
+  Yea, blest be both, and ever blest
+  My lover's house, and all the rest!
+
+The girl alone at home in her garden sees a wood-dove flying by and
+calls to it (p. 179):--
+
+ O dove, who fliest far to yonder hill,
+  Dear dove, who in the rock hast made thy nest,
+  Let me a feather from thy pinion pull,
+  For I will write to him who loves me best.
+  And when I've written it and made it clear,
+  I'll give thee back thy feather, dove so dear:
+  And when I've written it and sealed it, then
+  I'll give thee back thy feather love-laden.
+
+A swallow is asked to lend the same kind service (p. 179):--
+
+ O swallow, swallow, flying through the air,
+  Turn, turn, I prithee, from thy flight above!
+  Give me one feather from thy wing so fair,
+  For I will write a letter to my love.
+  When I have written it and made it clear,
+  I'll give thee back thy feather, swallow dear;
+  When I have written it on paper white,
+  I'll make, I swear, thy missing feather right;
+  When once 'tis written on fair leaves of gold,
+  I'll give thee back thy wing and flight so bold.
+
+
+Long before Tennyson's song in the 'Princess,' it would seem that
+swallows were favourite messengers of love. In the next song which I
+translate, the repetition of one thought with delicate variation is
+full of character (p. 178):--
+
+  O swallow, flying over hill and plain,
+  If thou shouldst find my love, oh bid him come!
+  And tell him, on these mountains I remain
+  Even as a lamb who cannot find her home:
+  And tell him, I am left all, all alone,
+  Even as a tree whose flowers are overblown:
+  And tell him, I am left without a mate
+  Even as a tree whose boughs are desolate:
+  And tell him, I am left uncomforted
+  Even as the grass upon the meadows dead.
+
+The following is spoken by a girl who has been watching the lads of
+the village returning from their autumn service in the plain, and
+whose damo comes the last of all (p. 240):--
+
+  O dear my love, you come too late!
+  What found you by the way to do?
+  I saw your comrades pass the gate,
+  But yet not you, dear heart, not you!
+  If but a little more you'd stayed,
+  With sighs you would have found me dead;
+  If but a while you'd keep me crying,
+  With sighs you would have found me dying.
+
+The _amantium irae_ find a place too in these rustic ditties. A girl
+explains to her sweetheart (p. 240):--
+
+  'Twas told me and vouchsafed for true,
+  Your kin are wroth as wroth can be;
+  For loving me they swear at you,
+  They swear at you because of me;
+  Your father, mother, all your folk,
+  Because you love me, chafe and choke!
+  Then set your kith and kin at ease;
+  Set them at ease and let me die:
+  Set the whole clan of them at ease;
+  Set them at ease and see me die!
+
+Another suspects that her damo has paid his suit to a rival (p.
+200):--
+
+  On Sunday morning well I knew
+  Where gaily dressed you turned your feet;
+  And there were many saw it too,
+  And came to tell me through the street:
+  And when they spoke, I smiled, ah me!
+  But in my room wept privately;
+  And when they spoke, I sang for pride,
+  But in my room alone I sighed.
+
+Then come reconciliations (p. 223):--
+
+  Let us make peace, my love, my bliss!
+  For cruel strife can last no more.
+  If you say nay, yet I say yes:
+  'Twixt me and you there is no war.
+  Princes and mighty lords make peace;
+  And so may lovers twain, I wis:
+  Princes and soldiers sign a truce;
+  And so may two sweethearts like us:
+  Princes and potentates agree;
+  And so may friends like you and me.
+
+There is much character about the following, which is spoken by the
+damo (p. 223):--
+
+  As yonder mountain height I trod,
+  I chanced to think of your dear name;
+  I knelt with clasped hands on the sod,
+  And thought of my neglect with shame:
+  I knelt upon the stone, and swore
+  Our love should bloom as heretofore.
+
+Sometimes the language of affection takes a more imaginative tone, as
+in the following (p. 232):--
+
+  Dearest, what time you mount to heaven above,
+  I'll meet you holding in my hand my heart:
+  You to your breast shall clasp me full of love,
+  And I will lead you to our Lord apart.
+
+  Our Lord, when he our love so true hath known,
+  Shall make of our two hearts one heart alone;
+  One heart shall make of our two hearts, to rest
+  In heaven amid the splendours of the blest.
+
+This was the woman's. Here is the man's (p. 113):--
+
+  If I were master of all loveliness,
+  I'd make thee still more lovely than thou art:
+  If I were master of all wealthiness,
+  Much gold and silver should be thine, sweetheart:
+  If I were master of the house of hell,
+  I'd bar the brazen gates in thy sweet face;
+  Or ruled the place where purging spirits dwell,
+  I'd free thee from that punishment apace.
+  Were I in paradise and thou shouldst come,
+  I'd stand aside, my love, to make thee room;
+  Were I in paradise, well seated there,
+  I'd quit my place to give it thee, my fair!
+
+Sometimes, but very rarely, weird images are sought to clothe passion,
+as in the following (p. 136):--
+
+  Down into hell I went and thence returned:
+  Ah me! alas! the people that were there!
+  I found a room where many candles burned,
+  And saw within my love that languished there.
+  When as she saw me, she was glad of cheer,
+  And at the last she said: Sweet soul of mine;
+  Dost thou recall the time long past, so dear,
+  When thou didst say to me, Sweet soul of mine?
+  Now kiss me on the mouth, my dearest, here;
+  Kiss me that I for once may cease to pine!
+  So sweet, ah me, is thy dear mouth, so dear,
+  That of thy mercy prithee sweeten mine!
+  Now, love, that thou hast kissed me, now, I say,
+  Look not to leave this place again for aye.
+
+Or again in this (p. 232):--
+
+  Methinks I hear, I hear a voice that cries:
+  Beyond the hill it floats upon the air.
+  It is my lover come to bid me rise,
+  If I am fain forthwith toward heaven to fare.
+  But I have answered him, and said him No!
+  I've given my paradise, my heaven, for you:
+  Till we together go to paradise,
+  I'll stay on earth and love your beauteous eyes.
+
+But it is not with such remote and eerie thoughts that the rustic muse
+of Italy can deal successfully. Far better is the following
+half-playful description of love-sadness (p. 71):--
+
+  Ah me, alas! who know not how to sigh!
+  Of sighs I now full well have learned the art:
+  Sighing at table when to eat I try,
+  Sighing within my little room apart,
+  Sighing when jests and laughter round me fly,
+  Sighing with her and her who know my heart:
+  I sigh at first, and then I go on sighing;
+  'Tis for your eyes that I am ever sighing:
+  I sigh at first, and sigh the whole year through;
+  And 'tis your eyes that keep me sighing so.
+
+The next two rispetti, delicious in their naivete, might seem to have
+been extracted from the libretto of an opera, but that they lack the
+sympathising chorus, who should have stood at hand, ready to chime in
+with 'he,' 'she,' and 'they,' to the 'I,' 'you,' and 'we' of the
+lovers (p. 123):--
+
+  Ah, when will dawn that glorious day
+  When you will softly mount my stair?
+  My kin shall bring you on the way;
+  I shall be first to greet you there.
+  Ah, when will dawn that day of bliss
+  When we before the priest say Yes?
+
+  Ah, when will dawn that blissful day
+  When I shall softly mount your stair,
+  Your brothers meet me on the way,
+  And one by one I greet them there?
+  When comes the day, my staff, my strength,
+  To call your mother mine at length?
+  When will the day come, love of mine,
+  I shall be yours and you be mine?
+
+Hitherto the songs have told only of happy love, or of love returned.
+Some of the best, however, are unhappy. Here is one, for instance,
+steeped in gloom (p. 142):--
+
+  They have this custom in fair Naples town;
+  They never mourn a man when he is dead:
+  The mother weeps when she has reared a son
+  To be a serf and slave by love misled;
+  The mother weeps when she a son hath born
+  To be the serf and slave of galley scorn;
+  The mother weeps when she a son gives suck
+  To be the serf and slave of city luck.
+
+The following contains a fine wild image, wrought out with strange
+passion in detail (p. 300):--
+
+  I'll spread a table brave for revelry,
+  And to the feast will bid sad lovers all.
+  For meat I'll give them my heart's misery;
+  For drink I'll give these briny tears that fall.
+  Sorrows and sighs shall be the varletry,
+  To serve the lovers at this festival:
+  The table shall be death, black death profound;
+  Weep, stones, and utter sighs, ye walls around!
+  The table shall be death, yea, sacred death;
+  Weep, stones, and sigh as one that sorroweth!
+
+Nor is the next a whit less in the vein of mad Jeronimo (p. 304):--
+
+  High up, high up, a house I'll rear,
+  High up, high up, on yonder height;
+  At every window set a snare,
+  With treason, to betray the night;
+  With treason, to betray the stars,
+  Since I'm betrayed by my false feres;
+  With treason, to betray the day,
+  Since Love betrayed me, well away!
+
+The vengeance of an Italian reveals itself in the energetic song which
+I quote next (p. 303):--
+
+  I have a sword; 'twould cut a brazen bell,
+  Tough steel 'twould cut, if there were any need:
+  I've had it tempered in the streams of hell
+  By masters mighty in the mystic rede:
+  I've had it tempered by the light of stars;
+  Then let him come whose skin is stout as Mars;
+  I've had it tempered to a trenchant blade;
+  Then let him come who stole from me my maid.
+
+More mild, but brimful of the bitterness of a soul to whom the whole
+world has become but ashes in the death of love, is the following
+lament (p. 143):--
+
+  Call me the lovely Golden Locks no more,
+  But call me Sad Maid of the golden hair.
+  If there be wretched women, sure I think
+  I too may rank among the most forlorn.
+  I fling a palm into the sea; 'twill sink:
+  Others throw lead, and it is lightly borne.
+  What have I done, dear Lord, the world to cross?
+  Gold in my hand forthwith is turned to dross.
+  How have I made, dear Lord, dame Fortune wroth?
+  Gold in my hand forthwith is turned to froth.
+  What have I done, dear Lord, to fret the folk?
+  Gold in my hand forthwith is turned to smoke.
+
+Here is pathos (p. 172):--
+
+  The wood-dove who hath lost her mate,
+  She lives a dolorous life, I ween;
+  She seeks a stream and bathes in it,
+  And drinks that water foul and green:
+  With other birds she will not mate,
+  Nor haunt, I wis, the flowery treen;
+  She bathes her wings and strikes her breast;
+  Her mate is lost: oh, sore unrest!
+
+And here is fanciful despair (p. 168):--
+
+  I'll build a house of sobs and sighs,
+    With tears the lime I'll slack;
+  And there I'll dwell with weeping eyes
+    Until my love come back:
+  And there I'll stay with eyes that burn
+  Until I see my love return.
+
+The house of love has been deserted, and the lover comes to moan
+beneath its silent eaves (p. 171):--
+
+  Dark house and window desolate!
+  Where is the sun which shone so fair?
+  'Twas here we danced and laughed at fate:
+  Now the stones weep; I see them there.
+  They weep, and feel a grievous chill:
+  Dark house and widowed window-sill!
+
+And what can be more piteous than this prayer? (p. 809):--
+
+  Love, if you love me, delve a tomb,
+  And lay me there the earth beneath;
+  After a year, come see my bones,
+  And make them dice to play therewith.
+  But when you're tired of that game,
+  Then throw those dice into the flame;
+  But when you're tired of gaming free,
+  Then throw those dice into the sea.
+
+The simpler expression of sorrow to the death is, as usual, more
+impressive. A girl speaks thus within sight of the grave (p. 808):--
+
+  Yes, I shall die: what wilt thou gain?
+  The cross before my bier will go;
+  And thou wilt hear the bells complain,
+  The _Misereres_ loud and low.
+  Midmost the church thou'lt see me lie
+  With folded hands and frozen eye;
+  Then say at last, I do repent!--
+  Nought else remains when fires are spent.
+
+Here is a rustic Oenone (p. 307):--
+
+  Fell death, that fliest fraught with woe!
+  Thy gloomy snares the world ensphere:
+  Where no man calls, thou lov'st to go;
+  But when we call, thou wilt not hear.
+  Fell death, false death of treachery,
+  Thou makest all content but me.
+
+Another is less reproachful, but scarcely less sad (p. 308):--
+
+  Strew me with blossoms when I die,
+  Nor lay me 'neath the earth below;
+  Beyond those walls, there let me lie,
+  Where oftentimes we used to go.
+  There lay me to the wind and rain;
+  Dying for you, I feel no pain:
+  There lay me to the sun above;
+  Dying for you, I die of love.
+
+Yet another of these pitiful love-wailings displays much poetry of
+expression (p. 271):--
+
+  I dug the sea, and delved the barren sand:
+  I wrote with dust and gave it to the wind:
+  Of melting snow, false Love, was made thy band,
+  Which suddenly the day's bright beams unbind.
+  Now am I ware, and know my own mistake--
+  How false are all the promises you make;
+  Now am I ware, and know the fact, ah me!
+  That who confides in you, deceived will be.
+
+It would scarcely be well to pause upon these very doleful ditties.
+Take, then, the following little serenade, in which the lover on his
+way to visit his mistress has unconsciously fallen on the same thought
+as Bion (p. 85):--
+
+     Yestreen I went my love to greet,
+     By yonder village path below:
+     Night in a coppice found my feet;
+     I called the moon her light to show--
+  O moon, who needs no flame to fire thy face,
+  Look forth and lend me light a little space!
+
+Enough has been quoted to illustrate the character of the Tuscan
+popular poetry. These village rispetti bear the same relation to the
+canzoniere of Petrarch as the 'savage drupe' to the 'suave plum.' They
+are, as it were, the wild stock of that highly artificial flower of
+art. Herein lies, perhaps, their chief importance. As in our ballad
+literature we may discern the stuff of the Elizabethan drama
+undeveloped, so in the Tuscan people's songs we can trace the crude
+form of that poetic instinct which produced the sonnets to Laura. It
+is also very probable that some such rustic minstrelsy preceded the
+Idylls of Theocritus and the Bucolics of Virgil; for coincidences of
+thought and imagery, which can scarcely be referred to any conscious
+study of the ancients, are not a few. Popular poetry has this great
+value for the student of literature: it enables him to trace those
+forms of fancy and of feeling which are native to the people, and
+which must ultimately determine the character of national art, however
+much that may be modified by culture.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+_POPULAR ITALIAN POETRY OF THE RENAISSANCE_
+
+
+The semi-popular poetry of the Italians in the fifteenth century
+formed an important branch of their national literature, and
+flourished independently of the courtly and scholastic studies which
+gave a special character to the golden age of the revival. While the
+latter tended to separate the people from the cultivated classes, the
+former established a new link of connection between them, different
+indeed from that which existed when smiths and carters repeated the
+Canzoni of Dante by heart in the fourteenth century, but still
+sufficiently real to exercise a weighty influence over the national
+development. Scholars like Angelo Poliziano, princes like Lorenzo de'
+Medici, men of letters like Feo Belcari and Benivieni, borrowed from
+the people forms of poetry, which they handled with refined taste, and
+appropriated to the uses of polite literature. The most important of
+these forms, native to the people but assimilated by the learned
+classes, were the Miracle Play or 'Sacra Rappresentazione;' the
+'Ballata' or lyric to be sung while dancing; the 'Canto
+Carnascialesco' or Carnival Chorus; the 'Rispetto' or short
+love-ditty; the 'Lauda' or hymn; the 'Maggio' or May-song; and the
+'Madrigale' or little part-song.
+
+At Florence, where even under the despotism of the Medici a show of
+republican life still lingered, all classes joined in the amusements
+of carnival and spring time; and this poetry of the dance, the
+pageant, and the villa flourished side by side with the more serious
+efforts of the humanistic muse. It is not my purpose in this place to
+inquire into the origins of each lyrical type, to discuss the
+alterations they may have undergone at the hands of educated
+versifiers, or to define their several characteristics; but only to
+offer translations of such as seem to me best suited to represent the
+genius of the people and the age.
+
+In the composition of the poetry in question, Angelo Poliziano was
+indubitably the most successful. This giant of learning, who filled
+the lecture-rooms of Florence with students of all nations, and whose
+critical and rhetorical labours marked an epoch in the history of
+scholarship, was by temperament a poet, and a poet of the people.
+Nothing was easier for him than to throw aside his professor's mantle,
+and to improvise 'Ballate' for the girls to sing as they danced their
+'Carola' upon the Piazza di Santa Trinita in summer evenings. The
+peculiarity of this lyric is that it starts with a couplet, which also
+serves as refrain, supplying the rhyme to each successive stanza. The
+stanza itself is identical with our rime royal, if we count the
+couplet in the place of the seventh line. The form is in itself so
+graceful and is so beautifully treated by Poliziano that I cannot
+content myself with fewer than four of his _Ballate_.[30] The first is
+written on the world-old theme of 'Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.'
+
+
+  I went a roaming, maidens, one bright day,
+  In a green garden in mid month of May.
+
+  Violets and lilies grew on every side
+    Mid the green grass, and young flowers wonderful,
+  Golden and white and red and azure-eyed;
+    Toward which I stretched my hands, eager to pull
+    Plenty to make my fair curls beautiful,
+  To crown my rippling curls with garlands gay.
+
+  I went a roaming, maidens, one bright day,
+  In a green garden in mid month of May.
+
+  But when my lap was full of flowers I spied
+    Roses at last, roses of every hue;
+  Therefore I ran to pluck their ruddy pride,
+    Because their perfume was so sweet and true
+    That all my soul went forth with pleasure new,
+  With yearning and desire too soft to say.
+
+  I went a roaming, maidens, one bright day,
+  In a green garden in mid month of May.
+
+  I gazed and gazed. Hard task it were to tell
+    How lovely were the roses in that hour:
+  One was but peeping from her verdant shell,
+    And some were faded, some were scarce in flower:
+    Then Love said: Go, pluck from the blooming bower
+  Those that thou seest ripe upon the spray.
+
+  I went a roaming, maidens, one bright day,
+  In a green garden in mid month of May.
+
+  For when the full rose quits her tender sheath,
+    When she is sweetest and most fair to see,
+  Then is the time to place her in thy wreath,
+    Before her beauty and her freshness flee.
+    Gather ye therefore roses with great glee,
+  Sweet girls, or ere their perfume pass away.
+
+  I went a roaming, maidens, one bright day,
+  In a green garden in mid month of May.
+
+The next Ballata is less simple, but is composed with the same
+intention. It may here be parenthetically mentioned that the courtly
+poet, when he applied himself to this species of composition, invented
+a certain rusticity of incident, scarcely in keeping with the spirit
+of his art. It was in fact a conventional feature of this species of
+verse that the scene should be laid in the country, where the burgher,
+on a visit to his villa, is supposed to meet with a rustic beauty who
+captivates his eyes and heart. Guido Cavalcanti, in his celebrated
+Ballata, 'In un boschetto trovai pastorella,' struck the keynote of
+this music, which, it may be reasonably conjectured, was imported into
+Italy through Provencal literature from the pastorals of Northern
+France. The lady so quaintly imaged by a bird in the following Ballata
+of Poliziano is supposed to have been Monna Ippolita Leoncina of
+Prato, white-throated, golden-haired, and dressed in crimson silk.
+
+  I found myself one day all, all alone,
+  For pastime in a field with blossoms strewn.
+
+  I do not think the world a field could show
+    With herbs of perfume so surpassing rare;
+  But when I passed beyond the green hedge-row,
+    A thousand flowers around me flourished fair,
+    White, pied and crimson, in the summer air;
+  Among the which I heard a sweet bird's tone.
+
+  I found myself one day all, all alone,
+  For pastime in a field with blossoms strewn.
+
+  Her song it was so tender and so clear
+    That all the world listened with love; then I
+  With stealthy feet a-tiptoe drawing near,
+    Her golden head and golden wings could spy,
+    Her plumes that flashed like rubies 'neath the sky,
+  Her crystal beak and throat and bosom's zone.
+
+  I found myself one day all, all alone,
+  For pastime in a field with blossoms strewn.
+
+  Fain would I snare her, smit with mighty love;
+    But arrow-like she soared, and through the air
+  Fled to her nest upon the boughs above;
+    Wherefore to follow her is all my care,
+    For haply I might lure her by some snare
+  Forth from the woodland wild where she is flown.
+
+  I found myself one day all, all alone,
+  For pastime in a field with blossoms strewn.
+
+  Yea, I might spread some net or woven wile;
+    But since of singing she doth take such pleasure,
+  Without or other art or other guile
+    I seek to win her with a tuneful measure;
+    Therefore in singing spend I all my leisure,
+  To make by singing this sweet bird my own.
+
+  I found myself one day all, all alone,
+  For pastime in a field with blossoms strewn.
+
+The same lady is more directly celebrated in the next Ballata, where
+Poliziano calls her by her name, Ippolita. I have taken the liberty of
+substituting Myrrha for this somewhat unmanageable word.
+
+  He who knows not what thing is Paradise,
+  Let him look fixedly on Myrrha's eyes.
+
+  From Myrrha's eyes there flieth, girt with fire,
+    An angel of our lord, a laughing boy,
+  Who lights in frozen hearts a flaming pyre,
+    And with such sweetness doth the soul destroy,
+    That while it dies, it murmurs forth its joy;
+  Oh blessed am I to dwell in Paradise!
+
+  He who knows not what thing is Paradise,
+  Let him look fixedly on Myrrha's eyes.
+
+  From Myrrha's eyes a virtue still doth move,
+    So swift and with so fierce and strong a flight,
+  That it is like the lightning of high Jove,
+    Riving of iron and adamant the might;
+    Nathless the wound doth carry such delight
+  That he who suffers dwells in Paradise.
+
+  He who knows not what thing is Paradise,
+  Let him look fixedly on Myrrha's eyes.
+
+  From Myrrha's eyes a lovely messenger
+    Of joy so grave, so virtuous, doth flee,
+  That all proud souls are bound to bend to her;
+    So sweet her countenance, it turns the key
+    Of hard hearts locked in cold security:
+  Forth flies the prisoned soul to Paradise.
+
+  He who knows not what thing is Paradise,
+  Let him look fixedly on Myrrha's eyes.
+
+  In Myrrha's eyes beauty doth make her throne,
+    And sweetly smile and sweetly speak her mind:
+  Such grace in her fair eyes a man hath known
+    As in the whole wide world he scarce may find:
+    Yet if she slay him with a glance too kind,
+  He lives again beneath her gazing eyes.
+
+  He who knows not what thing is Paradise,
+  Let him look fixedly on Myrrha's eyes.
+
+The fourth Ballata sets forth the fifteenth-century Italian code of
+love, the code of the Novelle, very different in its avowed laxity
+from the high ideal of the trecentisti poets.
+
+  I ask no pardon if I follow Love;
+  Since every gentle heart is thrall thereof.
+
+  From those who feel the fire I feel, what use
+    Is there in asking pardon? These are so
+  Gentle, kind-hearted, tender, piteous,
+    That they will have compassion, well I know.
+    From such as never felt that honeyed woe,
+  I seek no pardon: nought they know of Love.
+
+  I ask no pardon if I follow Love;
+  Since every gentle heart is thrall thereof.
+
+  Honour, pure love, and perfect gentleness,
+    Weighed in the scales of equity refined,
+  Are but one thing: beauty is nought or less,
+    Placed in a dame of proud and scornful mind.
+    Who can rebuke me then if I am kind
+  So far as honesty comports and Love?
+
+  I ask no pardon if I follow Love;
+  Since every gentle heart is thrall thereof.
+
+  Let him rebuke me whose hard heart of stone
+    Ne'er felt of Love the summer in his vein!
+  I pray to Love that who hath never known
+    Love's power, may ne'er be blessed with Love's great gain;
+    But he who serves our lord with might and main,
+  May dwell for ever in the fire of Love!
+
+  I ask no pardon if I follow Love;
+  Since every gentle heart is thrall thereof.
+
+  Let him rebuke me without cause who will;
+    For if he be not gentle, I fear nought:
+  My heart obedient to the same love still
+    Hath little heed of light words envy-fraught:
+    So long as life remains, it is my thought
+  To keep the laws of this so gentle Love.
+
+  I ask no pardon if I follow Love;
+  Since every gentle heart is thrall thereof.
+
+This Ballata is put into a woman's mouth. Another, ascribed to Lorenzo
+de' Medici, expresses the sadness of a man who has lost the favour of
+his lady. It illustrates the well-known use of the word _Signore_ for
+mistress in Florentine poetry.
+
+  How can I sing light-souled and fancy-free,
+  When my loved lord no longer smiles on me?
+
+  Dances and songs and merry wakes I leave
+    To lovers fair, more fortunate and gay;
+  Since to my heart so many sorrows cleave
+    That only doleful tears are mine for aye:
+    Who hath heart's ease, may carol, dance, and play
+  While I am fain to weep continually.
+
+  How can I sing light-souled and fancy-free,
+  When my loved lord no longer smiles on me?
+
+  I too had heart's ease once, for so Love willed,
+    When my lord loved me with love strong and great:
+  But envious fortune my life's music stilled,
+    And turned to sadness all my gleeful state.
+    Ah me! Death surely were less desolate
+  Than thus to live and love-neglected be!
+
+  How can I sing light-souled and fancy-free,
+  When my loved lord no longer smiles on me?
+
+  One only comfort soothes my heart's despair,
+    And mid this sorrow lends my soul some cheer;
+  Unto my lord I ever yielded fair
+    Service of faith untainted pure and clear;
+    If then I die thus guiltless, on my bier
+  It may be she will shed one tear for me.
+
+  How can I sing light-souled and fancy-free,
+  When my loved lord no longer smiles on me?
+
+The Florentine _Rispetto_ was written for the most part in octave
+stanzas, detached or continuous. The octave stanza in Italian
+literature was an emphatically popular form; and it is still largely
+used in many parts of the peninsula for the lyrical expression of
+emotion.[31] Poliziano did no more than treat it with his own
+facility, sacrificing the unstudied raciness of his popular models to
+literary elegance.
+
+Here are a few of these detached stanzas or _Rispetti Spicciolati_:--
+
+  Upon that day when first I saw thy face,
+    I vowed with loyal love to worship thee.
+  Move, and I move; stay, and I keep my place:
+    Whate'er thou dost, will I do equally.
+
+  In joy of thine I find most perfect grace,
+    And in thy sadness dwells my misery:
+  Laugh, and I laugh; weep, and I too will weep.
+  Thus Love commands, whose laws I loving keep.
+
+  Nay, be not over-proud of thy great grace,
+    Lady! for brief time is thy thief and mine.
+  White will he turn those golden curls, that lace
+    Thy forehead and thy neck so marble-fine.
+  Lo! while the flower still flourisheth apace,
+    Pluck it: for beauty but awhile doth shine.
+  Fair is the rose at dawn; but long ere night
+    Her freshness fades, her pride hath vanished quite.
+
+  Fire, fire! Ho, water! for my heart's afire!
+    Ho, neighbours! help me, or by God I die!
+  See, with his standard, that great lord, Desire!
+    He sets my heart aflame: in vain I cry.
+  Too late, alas! The flames mount high and higher.
+    Alack, good friends! I faint, I fail, I die.
+  Ho! water, neighbours mine! no more delay I
+  My heart's a cinder if you do but stay.
+
+  Lo, may I prove to Christ a renegade,
+    And, dog-like, die in pagan Barbary;
+  Nor may God's mercy on my soul be laid,
+    If ere for aught I shall abandon thee:
+  Before all-seeing God this prayer be made--
+    When I desert thee, may death feed on me:
+  Now if thy hard heart scorn these vows, be sure
+  That without faith none may abide secure.
+
+  I ask not, Love, for any other pain
+    To make thy cruel foe and mine repent,
+  Only that thou shouldst yield her to the strain
+    Of these my arms, alone, for chastisement;
+  Then would I clasp her so with might and main,
+    That she should learn to pity and relent,
+  And, in revenge for scorn and proud despite,
+  A thousand times I'd kiss her forehead white.
+
+  Not always do fierce tempests vex the sea,
+    Nor always clinging clouds offend the sky;
+  Cold snows before the sunbeams haste to flee,
+    Disclosing flowers that 'neath their whiteness lie;
+  The saints each one doth wait his day to see,
+    And time makes all things change; so, therefore, I
+  Ween that 'tis wise to wait my turn, and say,
+  That who subdues himself, deserves to sway.
+
+It will be observed that the tone of these poems is not passionate nor
+elevated. Love, as understood in Florence of the fifteenth century,
+was neither; nor was Poliziano the man to have revived Platonic
+mysteries or chivalrous enthusiasms. When the octave stanzas, written
+with this amorous intention, were strung together into a continuous
+poem, this form of verse took the title of _Rispetto Gontinuato_. In
+the collection of Poliziano's poems there are several examples of the
+long Rispetto, carelessly enough composed, as may be gathered from the
+recurrence of the same stanzas in several poems. All repeat the old
+arguments, the old enticements to a less than lawful love. The one
+which I have chosen for translation, styled _Serenata ovvero Lettera
+in Istrambotti_, might be selected as an epitome of Florentine
+convention in the matter of love-making.
+
+  O thou of fairest fairs the first and queen,
+    Most courteous, kind, and honourable dame,
+  Thine ear unto thy servant's singing lean,
+    Who loves thee more than health, or wealth, or fame;
+  For thou his shining planet still hast been,
+    And day and night he calls on thy fair name:
+  First wishing thee all good the world can give,
+  Next praying in thy gentle thoughts to live.
+
+  He humbly prayeth that thou shouldst be kind
+    To think upon his pure and perfect faith,
+  And that such mercy in thy heart and mind
+    Should reign, as so much beauty argueth:
+  A thousand, thousand hints, or he were blind,
+    Of thy great courtesy he reckoneth:
+  Wherefore thy loyal subject now doth sue
+  Such guerdon only as shall prove them true.
+
+  He knows himself unmeet for love from thee,
+    Unmeet for merely gazing on thine eyes;
+  Seeing thy comely squires so plenteous be,
+    That there is none but 'neath thy beauty sighs:
+  Yet since thou seekest fame and bravery,
+    Nor carest aught for gauds that others prize,
+  And since he strives to honour thee alway,
+  He still hath hope to gain thy heart one day.
+
+  Virtue that dwells untold, unknown, unseen,
+    Still findeth none to love or value it;
+  Wherefore his faith, that hath so perfect been,
+    Not being known, can profit him no whit:
+  He would find pity in thine eyes, I ween,
+    If thou shouldst deign to make some proof of it;
+  The rest may flatter, gape, and stand agaze;
+  Him only faith above the crowd doth raise.
+
+  Suppose that he might meet thee once alone,
+    Face unto face, without or jealousy,
+  Or doubt or fear from false misgiving grown,
+    And tell his tale of grievous pain to thee,
+  Sure from thy breast he'd draw full many a moan.
+    And make thy fair eyes weep right plenteously:
+  Yea, if he had but skill his heart to show,
+  He scarce could fail to win thee by its woe.
+
+  Now art thou in thy beauty's blooming hour;
+    Thy youth is yet in pure perfection's prime:
+  Make it thy pride to yield thy fragile flower,
+    Or look to find it paled by envious time:
+  For none to stay the flight of years hath power,
+    And who culls roses caught by frosty rime?
+  Give therefore to thy lover, give, for they
+  Too late repent who act not while they may.
+
+  Time flies: and lo! thou let'st it idly fly:
+    There is not in the world a thing more dear;
+  And if thou wait to see sweet May pass by,
+    Where find'st thou roses in the later year?
+  He never can, who lets occasion die:
+    Now that thou canst, stay not for doubt or fear;
+  But by the forelock take the flying hour,
+  Ere change begins, and clouds above thee lower.
+
+  Too long 'twixt yea and nay he hath been wrung;
+    Whether he sleep or wake he little knows,
+  Or free or in the bands of bondage strung:
+    Nay, lady, strike, and let thy lover loose!
+  What joy hast thou to keep a captive hung?
+    Kill him at once, or cut the cruel noose:
+  No more, I prithee, stay; but take thy part:
+  Either relax the bow, or speed the dart.
+
+  Thou feedest him on words and windiness,
+    On smiles, and signs, and bladders light as air;
+  Saying, thou fain wouldst comfort his distress,
+    But dar'st not, canst not: nay, dear lady fair,
+  All things are possible beneath the stress
+    Of will, that flames above the soul's despair!
+  Dally no longer: up, set to thy hand;
+  Or see his love unclothed and naked stand.
+
+  For he hath sworn, and by this oath will bide,
+    E'en though his life be lost in the endeavour,
+  To leave no way, nor art, nor wile untried,
+    Until he pluck the fruit he sighs for ever:
+  And, though he still would spare thy honest pride,
+    The knot that binds him he must loose or sever;
+  Thou too, O lady, shouldst make sharp thy knife,
+  If thou art fain to end this amorous strife.
+
+  Lo! if thou lingerest still in dubious dread,
+    Lest thou shouldst lose fair fame of honesty,
+  Here hast thou need of wile and warihead,
+    To test thy lover's strength in screening thee;
+  Indulge him, if thou find him well bestead,
+    Knowing that smothered love flames outwardly:
+  Therefore, seek means, search out some privy way;
+    Keep not the steed too long at idle play.
+
+  Or if thou heedest what those friars teach,
+    I cannot fail, lady, to call thee fool:
+  Well may they blame our private sins and preach;
+    But ill their acts match with their spoken rule;
+  The same pitch clings to all men, one and each.
+    There, I have spoken: set the world to school
+  With this true proverb, too, be well acquainted
+  The devil's ne'er so black as he is painted.
+
+  Nor did our good Lord give such grace to thee
+    That thou shouldst keep it buried in thy breast,
+  But to reward thy servant's constancy,
+    Whose love and loyal faith thou hast repressed:
+  Think it no sin to be some trifle free,
+    Because thou livest at a lord's behest;
+  For if he take enough to feed his fill,
+  To cast the rest away were surely ill.
+
+  They find most favour in the sight of heaven
+    Who to the poor and hungry are most kind;
+  A hundred-fold shall thus to thee be given
+    By God, who loves the free and generous mind;
+  Thrice strike thy breast, with pure contrition riven,
+    Crying: I sinned; my sin hath made me blind!--
+  He wants not much: enough if he be able
+  To pick up crumbs that fall beneath thy table.
+
+  Wherefore, O lady, break the ice at length;
+    Make thou, too, trial of love's fruits and flowers:
+  When in thine arms thou feel'st thy lover's strength,
+    Thou wilt repent of all these wasted hours;
+  Husbands, they know not love, its breadth and length,
+    Seeing their hearts are not on fire like ours:
+  Things longed for give most pleasure; this I tell thee:
+  If still thou doubtest let the proof compel thee.
+
+  What I have spoken is pure gospel sooth;
+   I have told all my mind, withholding nought:
+  And well, I ween, thou canst unhusk the truth,
+   And through the riddle read the hidden thought:
+  Perchance if heaven still smile upon my youth,
+   Some good effect for me may yet be wrought:
+  Then fare thee well; too many words offend:
+  She who is wise is quick to comprehend.
+
+The levity of these love-declarations and the fluency of their vows
+show them to be 'false as dicers' oaths,' mere verses of the moment,
+made to please a facile mistress. One long poem, which cannot be
+styled a Rispetto, but is rather a Canzone of the legitimate type,
+stands out with distinctness from the rest of Poliziano's love-verses.
+It was written by him for Giuliano de' Medici, in praise of the fair
+Simonetta. The following version attempts to repeat its metrical
+effects in some measure:--
+
+  My task it is, since thus Love wills, who strains
+    And forces all the world beneath his sway,
+    In lowly verse to say
+  The great delight that in my bosom reigns.
+  For if perchance I took but little pains
+    To tell some part of all the joy I find,
+    I might be deem'd unkind
+  By one who knew my heart's deep happiness.
+  He feels but little bliss who hides his bliss;
+    Small joy hath he whose joy is never sung;
+    And he who curbs his tongue
+  Through cowardice, knows but of love the name.
+  Wherefore to succour and augment the fame
+    Of that pure, virtuous, wise, and lovely may,
+    Who like the star of day
+  Shines mid the stars, or like the rising sun,
+  Forth from my burning heart the words shall run.
+    Far, far be envy, far be jealous fear,
+    With discord dark and drear,
+  And all the choir that is of love the foe.--
+  The season had returned when soft winds blow,
+    The season friendly to young lovers coy,
+    Which bids them clothe their joy
+  In divers garbs and many a masked disguise.
+  Then I to track the game 'neath April skies
+    Went forth in raiment strange apparelled,
+    And by kind fate was led
+  Unto the spot where stayed my soul's desire.
+  The beauteous nymph who feeds my soul with fire,
+    I found in gentle, pure, and prudent mood,
+    In graceful attitude,
+  Loving and courteous, holy, wise, benign.
+  So sweet, so tender was her face divine,
+    So gladsome, that in those celestial eyes
+    Shone perfect paradise,
+  Yea, all the good that we poor mortals crave.
+  Around her was a band so nobly brave
+    Of beauteous dames, that as I gazed at these
+    Methought heaven's goddesses
+  That day for once had deigned to visit earth.
+  But she who gives my soul sorrow and mirth,
+    Seemed Pallas in her gait, and in her face
+    Venus; for every grace
+  And beauty of the world in her combined.
+  Merely to think, far more to tell my mind
+    Of that most wondrous sight, confoundeth me,
+    For mid the maidens she
+  Who most resembled her was found most rare.
+  Call ye another first among the fair;
+    Not first, but sole before my lady set:
+    Lily and violet
+  And all the flowers below the rose must bow.
+  Down from her royal head and lustrous brow
+    The golden curls fell sportively unpent,
+    While through the choir she went
+  With feet well lessoned to the rhythmic sound.
+  Her eyes, though scarcely raised above the ground,
+    Sent me by stealth a ray divinely fair;
+    But still her jealous hair
+  Broke the bright beam, and veiled her from my gaze.
+  She, born and nursed in heaven for angels' praise,
+    No sooner saw this wrong, than back she drew,
+    With hand of purest hue,
+  Her truant curls with kind and gentle mien.
+  Then from her eyes a soul so fiery keen,
+    So sweet a soul of love she cast on mine,
+    That scarce can I divine
+  How then I 'scaped from burning utterly.
+  These are the first fair signs of love to be,
+    That bound my heart with adamant, and these
+    The matchless courtesies
+  Which, dreamlike, still before mine eyes must hover.
+  This is the honeyed food she gave her lover,
+    To make him, so it pleased her, half-divine;
+    Nectar is not so fine,
+  Nor ambrosy, the fabled feast of Jove.
+  Then, yielding proofs more clear and strong of love,
+    As though to show the faith within her heart,
+    She moved, with subtle art,
+  Her feet accordant to the amorous air.
+  But while I gaze and pray to God that ne'er
+    Might cease that happy dance angelical,
+    O harsh, unkind recall!
+  Back to the banquet was she beckoned.
+  She, with her face at first with pallor spread,
+    Then tinted with a blush of coral dye,
+    'The ball is best!' did cry,
+  Gentle in tone and smiling as she spake.
+  But from her eyes celestial forth did break
+    Favour at parting; and I well could see
+    Young love confusedly
+  Enclosed within the furtive fervent gaze,
+  Heating his arrows at their beauteous rays,
+    For war with Pallas and with Dian cold.
+    Fairer than mortal mould,
+  She moved majestic with celestial gait;
+  And with her hand her robe in royal state
+    Raised, as she went with pride ineffable.
+    Of me I cannot tell,
+  Whether alive or dead I there was left.
+  Nay, dead, methinks! since I of thee was reft,
+    Light of my life! and yet, perchance, alive--
+    Such virtue to revive
+  My lingering soul possessed thy beauteous face,
+  But if that powerful charm of thy great grace
+    Could then thy loyal lover so sustain,
+    Why comes there not again
+  More often or more soon the sweet delight?
+  Twice hath the wandering moon with borrowed light
+    Stored from her brother's rays her crescent horn,
+    Nor yet hath fortune borne
+  Me on the way to so much bliss again.
+  Earth smiles anew; fair spring renews her reign:
+    The grass and every shrub once more is green;
+    The amorous birds begin,
+  From winter loosed, to fill the field with song.
+  See how in loving pairs the cattle throng;
+    The bull, the ram, their amorous jousts enjoy:
+    Thou maiden, I a boy,
+  Shall we prove traitors to love's law for aye?
+  Shall we these years that are so fair let fly?
+    Wilt thou not put thy flower of youth to use?
+    Or with thy beauty choose
+  To make him blest who loves thee best of all?
+  Haply I am some hind who guards the stall,
+    Or of vile lineage, or with years outworn,
+    Poor, or a cripple born,
+  Or faint of spirit that you spurn me so?
+  Nay, but my race is noble and doth grow
+    With honour to our land, with pomp and power;
+    My youth is yet in flower,
+  And it may chance some maiden sighs for me.
+  My lot it is to deal right royally
+    With all the goods that fortune spreads around,
+    For still they more abound,
+  Shaken from her full lap, the more I waste.
+  My strength is such as whoso tries shall taste;
+    Circled with friends, with favours crowned am I:
+    Yet though I rank so high
+  Among the blest, as men may reckon bliss,
+  Still without thee, my hope, my happiness,
+    It seems a sad, and bitter thing to live!
+    Then stint me not, but give
+  That joy which holds all joys enclosed in one.
+  Let me pluck fruits at last, not flowers alone!
+
+With much that is frigid, artificial, and tedious in this
+old-fashioned love-song, there is a curious monotony of sweetness
+which commends it to our ears; and he who reads it may remember the
+profile portrait of Simonetta from the hand of Piero della Francesca
+in the Pitti Palace at Florence.
+
+It is worth comparing Poliziano's treatment of popular or semi-popular
+verse-forms with his imitations of Petrarch's manner. For this purpose
+I have chosen a _Canzone_, clearly written in competition with the
+celebrated 'Chiare, fresche e dolci acque,' of Laura's lover. While
+closely modelled upon Petrarch's form and similar in motive, this
+Canzone preserves Poliziano's special qualities of fluency and
+emptiness of content.
+
+  Hills, valleys, caves and fells,
+    With flowers and leaves and herbage spread;
+    Green meadows; shadowy groves where light is low;
+    Lawns watered with the rills
+    That cruel Love hath made me shed,
+    Cast from these cloudy eyes so dark with woe;
+    Thou stream that still dost know
+    What fell pangs pierce my heart,
+    So dost thou murmur back my moan;
+    Lone bird that chauntest tone for tone,
+    While in our descant drear Love sings his part:
+    Nymphs, woodland wanderers, wind and air;
+    List to the sound out-poured from my despair!
+  Seven times and once more seven
+    The roseate dawn her beauteous brow
+    Enwreathed with orient jewels hath displayed;
+    Cynthia once more in heaven
+    Hath orbed her horns with silver now;
+    While in sea waves her brother's light was laid;
+    Since this high mountain glade
+    Felt the white footsteps fall
+    Of that proud lady, who to spring
+    Converts whatever woodland thing
+    She may o'ershadow, touch, or heed at all.
+    Here bloom the flowers, the grasses spring
+    From her bright eyes, and drink what mine must bring.
+  Yea, nourished with my tears
+    Is every little leaf I see,
+    And the stream rolls therewith a prouder wave.
+    Ah me! through what long years
+    Will she withhold her face from me,
+    Which stills the stormy skies howe'er they rave?
+    Speak! or in grove or cave
+    If one hath seen her stray,
+    Plucking amid those grasses green
+    Wreaths for her royal brows serene,
+    Flowers white and blue and red and golden gay!
+    Nay, prithee, speak, if pity dwell
+    Among these woods, within this leafy dell!
+  O Love! 'twas here we saw,
+    Beneath the new-fledged leaves that spring
+    From this old beech, her fair form lowly laid:--
+    The thought renews my awe!
+    How sweetly did her tresses fling
+    Waves of wreathed gold unto the winds that strayed
+    Fire, frost within me played,
+    While I beheld the bloom
+    Of laughing flowers--O day of bliss!--
+    Around those tresses meet and kiss,
+    And roses in her lap of Love the home!
+    Her grace, her port divinely fair,
+    Describe it, Love! myself I do not dare.
+  In mute intent surprise
+    I gazed, as when a hind is seen
+    To dote upon its image in a rill;
+    Drinking those love-lit eyes,
+    Those hands, that face, those words serene,
+    That song which with delight the heaven did fill,
+    That smile which thralls me still,
+    Which melteth stones unkind,
+    Which in this woodland wilderness
+    Tames every beast and stills the stress
+    Of hurrying waters. Would that I could find
+    Her footprints upon field or grove!
+    I should not then be envious of Jove.
+  Thou cool stream rippling by,
+    Where oft it pleased her to dip
+    Her naked foot, how blest art thou!
+    Ye branching trees on high,
+    That spread your gnarled roots on the lip
+    Of yonder hanging rock to drink heaven's dew!
+    She often leaned on you,
+    She who is my life's bliss!
+    Thou ancient beech with moss o'ergrown,
+    How do I envy thee thy throne,
+    Found worthy to receive such happiness!
+    Ye winds, how blissful must ye be,
+    Since ye have borne to heaven her harmony!
+  The winds that music bore,
+    And wafted it to God on high,
+    That Paradise might have the joy thereof.
+    Flowers here she plucked, and wore
+    Wild roses from the thorn hard by:
+    This air she lightened with her look of love:
+    This running stream above,
+    She bent her face!--Ah me!
+    Where am I? What sweet makes me swoon?
+    What calm is in the kiss of noon?
+    Who brought me here? Who speaks? What melody?
+    Whence came pure peace into my soul?
+    What joy hath rapt me from my own control?
+
+Poliziano's refrain is always: 'Gather ye rosebuds while ye may. It is
+spring-time now and youth. Winter and old age are coming!' A _Maggio_,
+or May-day song, describing the games, dances, and jousting matches of
+the Florentine lads upon the morning of the first of May, expresses
+this facile philosophy of life with a quaintness that recalls Herrick.
+It will be noticed that the Maggio is built, so far as rhymes go, on
+the same system as Poliziano's Ballata. It has considerable historical
+interest, for the opening couplet is said to be Guido Cavalcanti's,
+while the whole poem is claimed by Roscoe for Lorenzo de' Medici, and
+by Carducci with better reason for Poliziano.
+
+    Welcome in the May
+    And the woodland garland gay!
+
+  Welcome in the jocund spring
+    Which bids all men lovers be!
+  Maidens, up with carolling,
+    With your sweethearts stout and free,
+    With roses and with blossoms ye
+  Who deck yourselves this first of May!
+
+  Up, and forth into the pure
+    Meadows, mid the trees and flowers!
+  Every beauty is secure
+    With so many bachelors:
+    Beasts and birds amid the bowers
+  Burn with love this first of May.
+
+  Maidens, who are young and fair,
+    Be not harsh, I counsel you;
+  For your youth cannot repair
+    Her prime of spring, as meadows do:
+    None be proud, but all be true
+  To men who love, this first of May.
+
+  Dance and carol every one
+    Of our band so bright and gay!
+  See your sweethearts how they run
+    Through the jousts for you to-day!
+    She who saith her lover nay,
+  Will deflower the sweets of May,
+
+  Lads in love take sword and shield
+    To make pretty girls their prize:
+  Yield ye, merry maidens, yield
+    To your lovers' vows and sighs:
+    Give his heart back ere it dies:
+  Wage not war this first of May.
+
+  He who steals another's heart,
+    Let him give his own heart too:
+  Who's the robber? 'Tis the smart
+    Little cherub Cupid, who
+    Homage comes to pay with you,
+  Damsels, to the first of May.
+
+  Love comes smiling; round his head
+    Lilies white and roses meet:
+  'Tis for you his flight is sped.
+    Fair one, haste our king to greet:
+    Who will fling him blossoms sweet
+  Soonest on this first of May?
+
+  Welcome, stranger! welcome, king!
+    Love, what hast thou to command?
+  That each girl with wreaths should ring
+    Her lover's hair with loving hand,
+    That girls small and great should band
+  In Love's ranks this first of May.
+
+The _Canto Carnascialesco_, for the final development if not for the
+invention of which all credit must be given to Lorenzo de' Medici,
+does not greatly differ from the Maggio in structure. It admitted,
+however, of great varieties, and was generally more complex in its
+interweaving of rhymes. Yet the essential principle of an exordium
+which should also serve for a refrain, was rarely, if ever, departed
+from. Two specimens of the Carnival Song will serve to bring into
+close contrast two very different aspects of Florentine history. The
+earlier was composed by Lorenzo de' Medici at the height of his power
+and in the summer of Italian independence. It was sung by masquers
+attired in classical costume, to represent Bacchus and his crew.
+
+  Fair is youth and void of sorrow;
+    But it hourly flies away.--
+    Youths and maids, enjoy to-day;
+  Nought ye know about to-morrow.
+
+  This is Bacchus and the bright
+    Ariadne, lovers true!
+  They, in flying time's despite,
+    Each with each find pleasure new;
+  These their Nymphs, and all their crew
+    Keep perpetual holiday.--
+    Youths and maids, enjoy to-day;
+  Nought ye know about to-morrow.
+
+  These blithe Satyrs, wanton-eyed,
+    Of the Nymphs are paramours:
+  Through the caves and forests wide
+    They have snared them mid the flowers;
+  Warmed with Bacchus, in his bowers,
+    Now they dance and leap alway.--
+    Youths and maids, enjoy to-day;
+  Nought ye know about to-morrow.
+
+  These fair Nymphs, they are not loth
+    To entice their lovers' wiles.
+  None but thankless folk and rough
+    Can resist when Love beguiles.
+  Now enlaced, with wreathed smiles,
+    All together dance and play.--
+    Youths and maids, enjoy to-day;
+  Nought ye know about to-morrow.
+
+  See this load behind them plodding
+    On the ass! Silenus he,
+  Old and drunken, merry, nodding,
+    Full of years and jollity;
+  Though he goes so swayingly,
+    Yet he laughs and quaffs alway.--
+    Youths and maids, enjoy to-day;
+  Nought ye know about to-morrow.
+
+  Midas treads a wearier measure:
+    All he touches turns to gold:
+  If there be no taste of pleasure,
+    What's the use of wealth untold?
+  What's the joy his fingers hold,
+    When he's forced to thirst for aye?--
+    Youths and maids, enjoy to-day;
+  Nought ye know about to-morrow.
+
+  Listen well to what we're saying;
+    Of to-morrow have no care!
+  Young and old together playing,
+    Boys and girls, be blithe as air!
+  Every sorry thought forswear!
+    Keep perpetual holiday.---
+    Youths and maids, enjoy to-day;
+  Nought ye know about to-morrow.
+
+  Ladies and gay lovers young!
+    Long live Bacchus, live Desire!
+  Dance and play; let songs be sung;
+    Let sweet love your bosoms fire;
+  In the future come what may!---
+  Youths and maids, enjoy to-day!
+  Nought ye know about to-morrow.
+
+  Fair is youth and void of sorrow;
+    But it hourly flies away.
+
+The next, composed by Antonio Alamanni, after Lorenzo's death and the
+ominous passage of Charles VIII., was sung by masquers habited as
+skeletons. The car they rode on, was a Car of Death designed by Piero
+di Cosimo, and their music was purposely gloomy. If in the jovial days
+of the Medici the streets of Florence had rung to the thoughtless
+refrain, 'Nought ye know about to-morrow,' they now re-echoed with a
+cry of 'Penitence;' for times had strangely altered, and the heedless
+past had brought forth a doleful present. The last stanza of
+Alamanni's chorus is a somewhat clumsy attempt to adapt the too real
+moral of his subject to the customary mood of the Carnival.
+
+
+  Sorrow, tears, and penitence
+  Are our doom of pain for aye;
+  This dead concourse riding by
+  Hath no cry but penitence!
+
+  E'en as you are, once were we:
+  You shall be as now we are:
+  We are dead men, as you see:
+  We shall see you dead men, where
+  Nought avails to take great care,
+  After sins, of penitence.
+
+  We too in the Carnival
+  Sang our love-songs through the town;
+  Thus from sin to sin we all
+  Headlong, heedless, tumbled down:--
+  Now we cry, the world around,
+  Penitence! oh, Penitence!
+
+  Senseless, blind, and stubborn fools!
+  Time steals all things as he rides:
+  Honours, glories, states, and schools,
+  Pass away, and nought abides;
+  Till the tomb our carcase hides,
+  And compels this penitence.
+
+  This sharp scythe you see us bear,
+  Brings the world at length to woe:
+  But from life to life we fare;
+  And that life is joy or woe:
+  All heaven's bliss on him doth flow
+  Who on earth does penitence.
+
+  Living here, we all must die;
+  Dying, every soul shall live:
+  For the King of kings on high
+  This fixed ordinance doth give:
+  Lo, you all are fugitive!
+  Penitence! Cry Penitence!
+
+  Torment great and grievous dole
+  Hath the thankless heart mid you;
+  But the man of piteous soul
+  Finds much honour in our crew:
+  Love for loving is the due
+  That prevents this penitence.
+
+  Sorrow, tears, and penitence
+  Are our doom of pain for aye:
+  This dead concourse riding by
+  Hath no cry but Penitence!
+
+One song for dancing, composed less upon the type of the Ballata than
+on that of the Carnival Song, may here be introduced, not only in
+illustration of the varied forms assumed by this style of poetry, but
+also because it is highly characteristic of Tuscan town-life. This
+poem in the vulgar style has been ascribed to Lorenzo de' Medici, but
+probably without due reason. It describes the manners and customs of
+female street gossips.
+
+  Since you beg with such a grace,
+      How can I refuse a song,
+      Wholesome, honest, void of wrong,
+      On the follies of the place?
+
+  Courteously on you I call;
+      Listen well to what I sing:
+      For my roundelay to all
+      May perchance instruction bring,
+      And of life good lessoning.--
+      When in company you meet,
+      Or sit spinning, all the street
+      Clamours like a market-place.
+
+  Thirty of you there may be;
+      Twenty-nine are sure to buzz,
+      And the single silent she
+      Racks her brains about her coz:--
+      Mrs. Buzz and Mrs. Huzz,
+      Mind your work, my ditty saith;
+      Do not gossip till your breath
+      Fails and leaves you black of face!
+
+  Governments go out and in:--
+      You the truth must needs discover.
+      Is a girl about to win
+      A brave husband in her lover?--
+      Straight you set to talk him over:
+      'Is he wealthy?' 'Does his coat
+      Fit?' 'And has he got a vote?'
+      'Who's his father?' 'What's his race?'
+
+  Out of window one head pokes;
+      Twenty others do the same:--
+      Chatter, clatter!--creaks and croaks
+      All the year the same old game!--
+      'See my spinning!' cries one dame,
+      'Five long ells of cloth, I trow!'
+      Cries another, 'Mine must go,
+      Drat it, to the bleaching base!'
+
+  'Devil take the fowl!' says one:
+      'Mine are all bewitched, I guess;
+      Cocks and hens with vermin run,
+      Mangy, filthy, featherless.'
+      Says another: 'I confess
+      Every hair I drop, I keep--
+      Plague upon it, in a heap
+      Falling off to my disgrace!'
+
+  If you see a fellow walk
+      Up or down the street and back,
+      How you nod and wink and talk,
+      Hurry-skurry, cluck and clack!--
+      'What, I wonder, does he lack
+      Here about?'--'There's something wrong!'
+      Till the poor man's made a song
+      For the female populace.
+
+  It were well you gave no thought
+      To such idle company;
+      Shun these gossips, care for nought
+      But the business that you ply.
+      You who chatter, you who cry,
+      Heed my words; be wise, I pray:
+      Fewer, shorter stories say:
+      Bide at home, and mind your place.
+
+  Since you beg with such a grace,
+      How can I refuse a song,
+      Wholesome, honest, void of wrong,
+      On the follies of the place?
+
+The _Madrigale_, intended to be sung in parts, was another species of
+popular poetry cultivated by the greatest of Italian writers. Without
+seeking examples from such men as Petrarch, Michelangelo, or Tasso,
+who used it as a purely literary form, I will content myself with a
+few Madrigals by anonymous composers, more truly popular in style, and
+more immediately intended for music.[32] The similarity both of manner
+and matter, between these little poems and the Ballate, is obvious.
+There is the same affectation of rusticity in both.
+
+  _Cogliendo per un prato._
+
+  Plucking white lilies in a field I saw
+    Fair women, laden with young Love's delight:
+    Some sang, some danced; but all were fresh and bright.
+  Then by the margin of a fount they leaned,
+    And of those flowers made garlands for their hair--
+    Wreaths for their golden tresses quaint and rare.
+  Forth from the field I passed, and gazed upon
+  Their loveliness, and lost my heart to one.
+
+  _Togliendo l' una all' altra._
+
+  One from the other borrowing leaves and flowers,
+    I saw fair maidens 'neath the summer trees,
+    Weaving bright garlands with low love-ditties.
+  Mid that sweet sisterhood the loveliest
+    Turned her soft eyes to me, and whispered, 'Take!'
+    Love-lost I stood, and not a word I spake.
+  My heart she read, and her fair garland gave:
+  Therefore I am her servant to the grave.
+
+  _Appress' un fiume chiaro_.
+
+  Hard by a crystal stream
+    Girls and maids were dancing round
+    A lilac with fair blossoms crowned.
+  Mid these I spied out one
+    So tender-sweet, so love-laden,
+    She stole my heart with singing then:
+  Love in her face so lovely-kind
+  And eyes and hands my soul did bind.
+
+  _Di riva in riva_.
+
+  From lawn to lea Love led me down the valley,
+    Seeking my hawk, where 'neath a pleasant hill
+    I spied fair maidens bathing in a rill.
+  Lina was there all loveliness excelling;
+    The pleasure of her beauty made me sad,
+    And yet at sight of her my soul was glad.
+  Downward I cast mine eyes with modest seeming,
+    And all a tremble from the fountain fled:
+    For each was naked as her maidenhead.
+  Thence singing fared I through a flowery plain,
+  Where bye and bye I found my hawk again!
+
+  _Nel chiaro fiume_.
+
+  Down a fair streamlet crystal-clear and pleasant
+    I went a fishing all alone one day,
+    And spied three maidens bathing there at play.
+  Of love they told each other honeyed stories,
+    While with white hands they smote the stream, to wet
+    Their sunbright hair in the pure rivulet.
+  Gazing I crouched among thick flowering leafage,
+    Till one who spied a rustling branch on high,
+    Turned to her comrades with a sudden cry,
+  And 'Go! Nay, prithee go!' she called to me:
+    'To stay were surely but scant courtesy.'
+
+  _Quel sole che nutrica._
+
+  The sun which makes a lily bloom,
+    Leans down at times on her to gaze--
+    Fairer, he deems, than his fair rays:
+  Then, having looked a little while,
+    He turns and tells the saints in bliss
+    How marvellous her beauty is.
+  Thus up in heaven with flute and string
+  Thy loveliness the angels sing.
+
+  _Di novo e giunt'._
+
+  Lo: here hath come an errant knight
+    On a barbed charger clothed in mail:
+  His archers scatter iron hail.
+  At brow and breast his mace he aims;
+    Who therefore hath not arms of proof,
+    Let him live locked by door and roof;
+  Until Dame Summer on a day
+  That grisly knight return to slay.
+
+Poliziano's treatment of the octave stanza for Rispetti was
+comparatively popular. But in his poem of 'La Giostra,' written to
+commemorate the victory of Giuliano de' Medici in a tournament and to
+celebrate his mistress, he gave a new and richer form to the metre
+which Boccaccio had already used for epic verse. The slight and
+uninteresting framework of this poem, which opened a new sphere for
+Italian literature, and prepared the way for Ariosto's golden cantos,
+might be compared to one of those wire baskets which children steep in
+alum water, and incrust with crystals, sparkling, artificial,
+beautiful with colours not their own. The mind of Poliziano held, as
+it were, in solution all the images and thoughts of antiquity, all the
+riches of his native literature. In that vast reservoir of poems and
+mythologies and phrases, so patiently accumulated, so tenaciously
+preserved, so thoroughly assimilated, he plunged the trivial subject
+he had chosen, and triumphantly presented to the world the _spolia
+opima_ of scholarship and taste. What mattered it that the theme was
+slight? The art was perfect, the result splendid. One canto of 125
+stanzas describes the youth of Giuliano, who sought to pass his life
+among the woods, a hunter dead to love, but who was doomed to be
+ensnared by Cupid. The chase, the beauty of Simonetta, the palace of
+Venus, these are the three subjects of a book as long as the first
+Iliad. The second canto begins with dreams and prophecies of glory to
+be won by Giuliano in the tournament. But it stops abruptly. The
+tragic catastrophe of the Pazzi Conjuration cut short Poliziano's
+panegyric by the murder of his hero. Meanwhile the poet had achieved
+his purpose. His torso presented to Italy a model of style, a piece of
+written art adequate to the great painting of the Renaissance period,
+a double star of poetry which blent the splendours of the ancient and
+the modern world. To render into worthy English the harmonies of
+Poliziano is a difficult task. Yet this must be attempted if an
+English reader is to gain any notion of the scope and substance of the
+Italian poet's art. In the first part of the poem we are placed, as it
+were, at the mid point between the 'Hippolytus' of Euripides and
+Shakspere's 'Venus and Adonis.' The cold hunter Giuliano is to see
+Simonetta, and seeing, is to love her. This is how he first discovers
+the triumphant beauty:[33]
+
+  White is the maid, and white the robe around her,
+    With buds and roses and thin grasses pied;
+  Enwreathed folds of golden tresses crowned her,
+  Shadowing her forehead fair with modest pride:
+
+  The wild wood smiled; the thicket where he found her,
+    To ease his anguish, bloomed on every side:
+  Serene she sits, with gesture queenly mild,
+  And with her brow tempers the tempests wild.
+
+After three stanzas of this sort, in which the poet's style is more
+apparent than the object he describes, occurs this charming picture:--
+
+  Reclined he found her on the swarded grass
+    In jocund mood; and garlands she had made
+  Of every flower that in the meadow was,
+    Or on her robe of many hues displayed;
+  But when she saw the youth before her pass,
+    Raising her timid head awhile she stayed;
+  Then with her white hand gathered up her dress,
+    And stood, lap-full of flowers, in loveliness.
+
+  Then through the dewy field with footstep slow
+    The lingering maid began to take her way,
+  Leaving her lover in great fear and woe,
+    For now he longs for nought but her alway:
+  The wretch, who cannot bear that she should go,
+    Strives with a whispered prayer her feet to stay;
+  And thus at last, all trembling, all afire,
+  In humble wise he breathes his soul's desire:
+
+  'Whoe'er thou art, maid among maidens queen,
+    Goddess, or nymph--nay, goddess seems most clear--
+  If goddess, sure my Dian I have seen;
+    If mortal, let thy proper self appear!
+  Beyond terrestrial beauty is thy mien;
+    I have no merit that I should be here!
+  What grace of heaven, what lucky star benign
+  Yields me the sight of beauty so divine?'
+
+A conversation ensues, after which Giuliano departs utterly lovesick,
+and Cupid takes wing exultingly for Cyprus, where his mother's palace
+stands. In the following picture of the house of Venus, who shall say
+how much of Ariosto's Alcina and Tasso's Armida is contained? Cupid
+arrives, and the family of Love is filled with joy at Giuliano's
+conquest. From the plan of the poem it is clear that its beauties are
+chiefly those of detail. They are, however, very great. How perfect,
+for example, is the richness combined with delicacy of the following
+description of a country life:--
+
+BOOK I. STANZAS 17-21.
+
+  How far more safe it is, how far more fair,
+    To chase the flying deer along the lea;
+  Through ancient woods to track their hidden lair,
+    Far from the town, with long-drawn subtlety:
+  To scan the vales, the hills, the limpid air,
+    The grass and flowers, clear ice, and streams so free;
+  To hear the birds wake from their winter trance,
+  The wind-stirred leaves and murmuring waters dance.
+
+  How sweet it were to watch the young goats hung
+    From toppling crags, cropping the tender shoot,
+  While in thick pleached shade the shepherd sung
+    His uncouth rural lay and woke his flute;
+  To mark, mid dewy grass, red apples flung,
+    And every bough thick set with ripening fruit,
+  The butting rams, kine lowing o'er the lea,
+  And cornfields waving like the windy sea.
+
+  Lo! how the rugged master of the herd
+    Before his flock unbars the wattled cote;
+  Then with his rod and many a rustic word
+    He rules their going: or 'tis sweet to note
+  The delver, when his toothed rake hath stirred
+    The stubborn clod, his hoe the glebe hath smote;
+  Barefoot the country girl, with loosened zone,
+  Spins, while she keeps her geese 'neath yonder stone.
+
+  After such happy wise, in ancient years,
+    Dwelt the old nations in the age of gold;
+  Nor had the fount been stirred of mothers' tears
+    For sons in war's fell labour stark and cold;
+  Nor trusted they to ships the wild wind steers,
+    Nor yet had oxen groaning ploughed the wold;
+  Their houses were huge oaks, whose trunks had store
+  Of honey, and whose boughs thick acorns bore.
+
+  Nor yet, in that glad time, the accursed thirst
+    Of cruel gold had fallen on this fair earth:
+  Joyous in liberty they lived at first;
+    Unploughed the fields sent forth their teeming birth;
+  Till fortune, envious of such concord, burst
+    The bond of law, and pity banned and worth;
+  Within their breasts sprang luxury and that rage
+  Which men call love in our degenerate age.
+
+We need not be reminded that these stanzas are almost a cento from
+Virgil, Hesiod, and Ovid. The merits of the translator, adapter, and
+combiner, who knew so well how to cull their beauties and adorn them
+with a perfect dress of modern diction, are so eminent that we cannot
+deny him the title of a great poet. It is always in picture-painting
+more than in dramatic presentation that Poliziano excels. Here is a
+basrelief of Venus rising from the Ocean foam:--
+
+
+STANZAS 99-107.
+
+  In Thetis' lap, upon the vexed Egean,
+    The seed deific from Olympus sown,
+  Beneath dim stars and cycling empyrean
+    Drifts like white foam across the salt waves blown;
+  Thence, born at last by movements hymenean,
+    Rises a maid more fair than man hath known;
+  Upon her shell the wanton breezes waft her;
+    She nears the shore, while heaven looks down with laughter
+
+  Seeing the carved work you would cry that real
+    Were shell and sea, and real the winds that blow;
+  The lightning of the goddess' eyes you feel,
+    The smiling heavens, the elemental glow:
+  White-vested Hours across the smooth sands steal,
+    With loosened curls that to the breezes flow;
+  Like, yet unlike, are all their beauteous faces,
+  E'en as befits a choir of sister Graces.
+
+  Well might you swear that on those waves were riding
+   The goddess with her right hand on her hair,
+  And with the other the sweet apple hiding;
+    And that beneath her feet, divinely fair,
+  Fresh flowers sprang forth, the barren sands dividing;
+    Then that, with glad smiles and enticements rare,
+  The three nymphs round their queen, embosoming her,
+  Threw the starred mantle soft as gossamer.
+
+  The one, with hands above her head upraised,
+    Upon her dewy tresses fits a wreath,
+  With ruddy gold and orient gems emblazed;
+    The second hangs pure pearls her ears beneath;
+  The third round shoulders white and breast hath placed
+    Such wealth of gleaming carcanets as sheathe
+  Their own fair bosoms, when the Graces sing
+  Among the gods with dance and carolling.
+
+  Thence might you see them rising toward the spheres,
+    Seated upon a cloud of silvery white;
+  The trembling of the cloven air appears
+    Wrought in the stone, and heaven serenely bright;
+  The gods drink in with open eyes and ears
+    Her beauty, and desire her bed's delight;
+  Each seems to marvel with a mute amaze--
+  Their brows and foreheads wrinkle as they gaze.
+
+The next quotation shows Venus in the lap of Mars, and Visited by
+Cupid:--
+
+  STANZAS 122--124.
+
+  Stretched on a couch, outside the coverlid,
+    Love found her, scarce unloosed from Mars' embrace;
+  He, lying back within her bosom, fed
+    His eager eyes on nought but her fair face;
+
+  Roses above them like a cloud were shed,
+    To reinforce them in the amorous chace;
+  While Venus, quick with longings unsuppressed,
+    A thousand times his eyes and forehead kissed.
+
+  Above, around, young Loves on every side
+    Played naked, darting birdlike to and fro;
+  And one, whose plumes a thousand colours dyed,
+    Fanned the shed roses as they lay arow;
+  One filled his quiver with fresh flowers, and hied
+    To pour them on the couch that lay below;
+  Another, poised upon his pinions, through
+  The falling shower soared shaking rosy dew:
+
+  For, as he quivered with his tremulous wing,
+    The wandering roses in their drift were stayed;--
+  Thus none was weary of glad gambolling;
+    Till Cupid came, with dazzling plumes displayed,
+  Breathless; and round his mother's neck did fling
+    His languid arms, and with his winnowing made
+  Her heart burn:--very glad and bright of face,
+  But, with his flight, too tired to speak apace.
+
+These pictures have in them the very glow of Italian painting.
+Sometimes we seem to see a quaint design of Piero di Cosimo, with
+bright tints and multitudinous small figures in a spacious landscape.
+Sometimes it is the languid grace of Botticelli, whose soul became
+possessed of classic inspiration as it were in dreams, and who has
+painted the birth of Venus almost exactly as Poliziano imagined it.
+Again, we seize the broader beauties of the Venetian masters, or the
+vehemence of Giulio Romano's pencil. To the last class belong the two
+next extracts:--
+
+  STANZAS 104--107.
+
+
+  In the last square the great artificer
+    Had wrought himself crowned with Love's perfect palm;
+  Black from his forge and rough, he runs to her,
+    Leaving all labour for her bosom's calm:
+  Lips joined to lips with deep love-longing stir,
+    Fire in his heart, and in his spirit balm;
+  Far fiercer flames through breast and marrow fly
+    Than those which heat his forge in Sicily.
+
+  Jove, on the other side, becomes a bull,
+    Goodly and white, at Love's behest, and rears
+  His neck beneath his rich freight beautiful:
+    She turns toward the shore that disappears,
+  With frightened gesture; and the wonderful
+    Gold curls about her bosom and her ears
+  Float in the wind; her veil waves, backward borne;
+  This hand still clasps his back, and that his horn.
+
+  With naked feet close-tucked beneath her dress,
+    She seems to fear the sea that dares not rise:
+  So, imaged in a shape of drear distress,
+    In vain unto her comrades sweet she cries;
+  They left amid the meadow-flowers, no less
+    For lost Europa wail with weeping eyes:
+  Europa, sounds the shore, bring back our bliss
+  But the bull swims and turns her feet to kiss.
+
+  Here Jove is made a swan, a golden shower,
+    Or seems a serpent, or a shepherd-swain,
+  To work his amorous will in secret hour;
+    Here, like an eagle, soars he o'er the plain,
+  Love-led, and bears his Ganymede, the flower
+    Of beauty, mid celestial peers to reign;
+  The boy with cypress hath his fair locks crowned,
+  Naked, with ivy wreathed his waist around.
+
+
+  STANZAS 110--112.
+
+
+  Lo! here again fair Ariadne lies,
+    And to the deaf winds of false Theseus plains.
+  And of the air and slumber's treacheries;
+    Trembling with fear even as a reed that strain.
+  And quivers by the mere 'neath breezy skies:
+    Her very speechless attitude complains--
+  No beast there is so cruel as thou art,
+  No beast less loyal to my broken heart.
+
+  Throned on a car, with ivy crowned and vine,
+    Rides Bacchus, by two champing tigers driven:
+  Around him on the sand deep-soaked with brine
+    Satyrs and Bacchantes rush; the skies are riven
+  With shouts and laughter; Fauns quaff bubbling wine
+    From horns and cymbals; Nymphs, to madness driven,
+  Trip, skip, and stumble; mixed in wild enlacements,
+  Laughing they roll or meet for glad embracements.
+
+  Upon his ass Silenus, never sated,
+    With thick, black veins, wherethrough the must is soaking,
+  Nods his dull forehead with deep sleep belated;
+    His eyes are wine-inflamed, and red, and smoking:
+  Bold Maenads goad the ass so sorely weighted,
+    With stinging thyrsi; he sways feebly poking
+  The mane with bloated fingers; Fauns behind him,
+  E'en as he falls, upon the crupper bind him.
+
+We almost seem to be looking at the frescoes in some Trasteverine
+palace, or at the canvas of one of the sensual Genoese painters. The
+description of the garden of Venus has the charm of somewhat
+artificial elegance, the exotic grace of style, which attracts us in
+the earlier Renaissance work:--
+
+  The leafy tresses of that timeless garden
+    Nor fragile brine nor fresh snow dares to whiten;
+  Frore winter never comes the rills to harden,
+    Nor winds the tender shrubs and herbs to frighten;
+  Glad Spring is always here, a laughing warden;
+    Nor do the seasons wane, but ever brighten;
+  Here to the breeze young May, her curls unbinding,
+  With thousand flowers her wreath is ever winding.
+
+Indeed it may be said with truth that Poliziano's most eminent faculty
+as a descriptive poet corresponded exactly to the genius of the
+painters of his day. To produce pictures radiant with Renaissance
+colouring, and vigorous with Renaissance passion, was the function of
+his art, not to express profound thought or dramatic situations. This
+remark might be extended with justice to Ariosto, and Tasso, and
+Boiardo. The great narrative poets of the Renaissance in Italy were
+not dramatists; nor were their poems epics: their forte lay in the
+inexhaustible variety and beauty of their pictures.
+
+Of Poliziano's plagiarism--if this be the right word to apply to the
+process of assimilation and selection, by means of which the
+poet-scholar of Florence taught the Italians how to use the riches of
+the ancient languages and their own literature--here are some
+specimens. In stanza 42 of the 'Giostra' he says of Simonetta:--
+
+  E 'n lei discerne un non so che divino.
+
+
+Dante has the line:--
+
+  Vostri risplende un non so che divino.
+
+In the 44th he speaks about the birds:--
+
+  E canta ogni augelletto in suo latino.
+
+This comes from Cavalcanti's:--
+
+  E cantinne gli augelli.
+  Ciascuno in suo latino.
+
+Stanza 45 is taken bodily from Claudian, Dante, and Cavalcanti. It
+would seem as though Poliziano wished to show that the classic and
+medieval literature of Italy was all one, and that a poet of the
+Renaissance could carry on the continuous tradition in his own style.
+A, line in stanza 54 seems perfectly original:--
+
+  E gia dall'alte ville il fumo esala.
+
+It comes straight from Virgil:--
+
+  Et jam summa pocul villarum culmina fumant.
+
+In the next stanza the line--
+
+  Tal che 'l ciel tutto rassereno d'intorno,
+
+is Petrarch's. So in the 56th, is the phrase 'il dolce andar
+celeste.' In stanza 57--
+
+  Par che 'l cor del petto se gli schianti,
+
+belongs to Boccaccio. In stanza 60 the first line:--
+
+  La notte che le cose ci nasconde,
+
+together with its rhyme, 'sotto le amate fronde,' is borrowed from the
+23rd canto of the 'Paradiso.' In the second line, 'Stellato ammanto'
+is Claudian's 'stellantes sinus' applied to the heaven. When we reach
+the garden of Venus we find whole passages translated from Claudian's
+'Marriage of Honorius,' and from the 'Metamorphoses' of Ovid.
+
+Poliziano's second poem of importance, which indeed may historically
+be said to take precedence of 'La Giostra,' was the so-called tragedy
+of 'Orfeo.' The English version of this lyrical drama must be reserved
+for a separate study: yet it belongs to the subject of this, inasmuch
+as the 'Orfeo' is a classical legend treated in a form already
+familiar to the Italian people. Nearly all the popular kinds of poetry
+of which specimens have been translated in this chapter, will be found
+combined in its six short scenes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+_ORFEO_
+
+
+The 'Orfeo' of Messer Angelo Poliziano ranks amongst the most
+important poems of the fifteenth century. It was composed at Mantua in
+the short space of two days, on the occasion of Cardinal Francesco
+Gonzaga's visit to his native town in 1472. But, though so hastily put
+together, the 'Orfeo' marks an epoch in the evolution of Italian
+poetry. It is the earliest example of a secular drama, containing
+within the compass of its brief scenes the germ of the opera, the
+tragedy, and the pastoral play. In form it does not greatly differ
+from the 'Sacre Rappresentazioni' of the fifteenth century, as those
+miracle plays were handled by popular poets of the earlier
+Renaissance. But while the traditional octave stanza is used for the
+main movement of the piece, Poliziano has introduced episodes of
+_terza rima_, madrigals, a carnival song, a _ballata_, and, above all,
+choral passages which have in them the future melodrama of the musical
+Italian stage. The lyrical treatment of the fable, its capacity for
+brilliant and varied scenic effects, its combination of singing with
+action, and the whole artistic keeping of the piece, which never
+passes into genuine tragedy, but stays within the limits of romantic
+pathos, distinguish the 'Orfeo' as a typical production of Italian
+genius. Thus, though little better than an improvisation, it combines
+the many forms of verse developed by the Tuscans at the close of the
+Middle Ages, and fixes the limits beyond which their dramatic poets,
+with a few exceptions, were not destined to advance. Nor was the
+choice of the fable without significance. Quitting the Bible stories
+and the Legends of Saints, which supplied the mediaeval playwright
+with material, Poliziano selects a classic story: and this story might
+pass for an allegory of Italy, whose intellectual development the
+scholar-poet ruled. Orpheus is the power of poetry and art, softening
+stubborn nature, civilising men, and prevailing over Hades for a
+season. He is the right hero of humanism, the genius of the
+Renaissance, the tutelary god of Italy, who thought she could resist
+the laws of fate by verse and elegant accomplishments. To press this
+kind of allegory is unwise; for at a certain moment it breaks in our
+hands. And yet in Eurydice the fancy might discover Freedom, the true
+spouse of poetry and art; Orfeo's last resolve too vividly depicts the
+vice of the Renaissance; and the Maenads are those barbarous armies
+destined to lay waste the plains of Italy, inebriate with wine and
+blood, obeying a new lord of life on whom the poet's harp exerts no
+charm. But a truce to this spinning of pedantic cobwebs. Let Mercury
+appear, and let the play begin.
+
+
+_THE FABLE OF ORPHEUS_
+
+  MERCURY _announces the show_.
+
+  Ho, silence! Listen! There was once a hind,
+    Son of Apollo, Aristaeus hight,
+    Who loved with so untamed and fierce a mind
+    Eurydice, the wife of Orpheus wight,
+    That chasing her one day with will unkind
+    He wrought her cruel death in love's despite;
+    For, as she fled toward the mere hard by,
+    A serpent stung her, and she had to die.
+
+  Now Orpheus, singing, brought her back from hell,
+    But could not keep the law the fates ordain:
+    Poor wretch, he backward turned and broke the spell;
+    So that once more from him his love was ta'en.
+    Therefore he would no more with women dwell,
+    And in the end by women he was slain.
+
+  _Enter_ A SHEPHERD, _who says_--
+
+  Nay, listen, friends! Fair auspices are given,
+  Since Mercury to earth hath come from heaven.
+
+
+
+  SCENE I
+
+  MOPSUS, _an old shepherd_.
+
+
+  Say, hast thou seen a calf of mine, all white
+    Save for a spot of black upon her front,
+    Two feet, one flank, and one knee ruddy-bright?
+
+  ARISTAEUS, _a young shepherd_.
+
+  Friend Mopsus, to the margin of this fount
+    No herds have come to drink since break of day;
+  Yet may'st thou hear them low on yonder mount.
+    Go, Thyrsis, search the upland lawn, I pray!
+  Thou Mopsus shalt with me the while abide;
+    For I would have thee listen to my lay.
+
+                                  _[Exit_ THYRSIS.
+
+  'Twas yester morn where trees yon cavern hide,
+    I saw a nymph more fair than Dian, who
+    Had a young lusty lover at her side:
+  But when that more than woman met my view,
+    The heart within my bosom leapt outright,
+    And straight the madness of wild Love I knew.
+  Since then, dear Mopsus, I have no delight;
+    But weep and weep: of food and drink I tire,
+    And without slumber pass the weary night.
+
+  MOPSUS.
+
+  Friend Aristaeus, if this amorous fire
+      Thou dost not seek to quench as best may be,
+      Thy peace of soul will vanish in desire.
+  Thou know'st that love is no new thing to me:
+      I've proved how love grown old brings bitter pain:
+      Cure it at once, or hope no remedy;
+  For if thou find thee in Love's cruel chain,
+      Thy bees, thy blossoms will be out of mind,
+      Thy fields, thy vines, thy flocks, thy cotes, thy grain
+
+  ARISTAEUS.
+
+  Mopsus, thou speakest to the deaf and blind:
+      Waste not on me these winged words, I pray,
+      Lest they be scattered to the inconstant wind,
+  I love, and cannot wish to say love nay;
+      Nor seek to cure so charming a disease:
+      They praise Love best who most against him say.
+  Yet if thou fain wouldst give my heart some ease,
+      Forth from thy wallet take thy pipe, and we
+      Will sing awhile beneath the leafy trees;
+  For well my nymph is pleased with melody.
+
+  THE SONG.
+
+  Listen, ye wild woods, to my roundelay;
+  Since the fair nymph will hear not, though I pray.
+
+  The lovely nymph is deaf to my lament,
+      Nor heeds the music of this rustic reed;
+  Wherefore my flocks and herds are ill content,
+      Nor bathe their hoof where grows the water weed,
+      Nor touch the tender herbage on the mead;
+  So sad, because their shepherd grieves, are they.
+
+  Listen, ye wild woods, to my roundelay;
+  Since the fair nymph will hear not, though I pray.
+
+  The herds are sorry for their master's moan;
+      The nymph heeds not her lover though he die,
+  The lovely nymph, whose heart is made of stone--
+    Nay steel, nay adamant! She still doth fly
+    Far, far before me, when she sees me nigh,
+  Even as a lamb flies fern the wolf away.
+
+  Listen, ye wild woods, to my roundelay;
+  Since the fair nymph will hear not, though I pray.
+
+  Nay, tell her, pipe of mine, how swift doth flee
+    Beauty together with our years amain;
+  Tell her how time destroys all rarity,
+    Nor youth once lost can be renewed again;
+    Tell her to use the gifts that yet remain:
+  Roses and violets blossom not alway.
+
+  Listen, ye wild woods, to my roundelay;
+  Since the fair nymph will hear not, though I pray.
+
+  Carry, ye winds, these sweet words to her ears,
+    Unto the ears of my loved nymph, and tell
+  How many tears I shed, what bitter tears!
+    Beg her to pity one who loves so well:
+    Say that my life is frail and mutable,
+  And melts like rime before the rising day.
+
+  Listen, ye wild woods, to my roundelay;
+  Since the fair nymph will hear not, though I pray.
+
+  MOPSUS.
+
+  Less sweet, methinks the voice of waters falling
+    From cliffs that echo back their murmurous song;
+    Less sweet the summer sound of breezes calling
+    Through pine-tree tops sonorous all day long;
+    Than are thy rhymes, the soul of grief enthralling,
+    Thy rhymes o'er field and forest borne along:
+  If she but hear them, at thy feet she'll fawn.--
+  Lo, Thyrsis, hurrying homeward from the lawn!
+
+  [_Re-enters_ THYRSIS.
+
+  ARISTAEUS.
+
+  What of the calf? Say, hast thou seen her now?
+
+  THYRSIS, _the cowherd_.
+
+  I have, and I'd as lief her throat were cut!
+  She almost ripped my bowels up, I vow,
+  Running amuck with horns well set to butt:
+  Nathless I've locked her in the stall below:
+  She's blown with grass, I tell you, saucy slut!
+
+  ARISTAEUS.
+
+  Now, prithee, let me hear what made you stay
+  So long upon the upland lawns away?
+
+  THYRSIS.
+
+  Walking, I spied a gentle maiden there,
+    Who plucked wild flowers upon the mountain side:
+    I scarcely think that Venus is more fair,
+    Of sweeter grace, most modest in her pride:
+    She speaks, she sings, with voice so soft and rare,
+    That listening streams would backward roll their tide:
+    Her face is snow and roses; gold her head;
+    All, all alone she goes, white-raimented,
+
+  ARISTAEUS.
+
+  Stay, Mopsus! I must follow: for 'tis she
+    Of whom I lately spoke. So, friend, farewell!
+
+  MOPSUS.
+
+  Hold, Aristaeus, lest for her or thee
+  Thy boldness be the cause of mischief fell!
+
+  ARISTAEUS.
+
+  Nay, death this day must be my destiny,
+  Unless I try my fate and break the spell.
+  Stay therefore, Mopsus, by the fountain stay!
+  I'll follow her, meanwhile, yon mountain way.
+
+  [_Exit_ ARISTAEUS.
+
+  MOPSUS.
+
+  Thyrsis, what thinkest thou of thy loved lord?
+    See'st thou that all his senses are distraught?
+    Couldst thou not speak some seasonable word,
+    Tell him what shame this idle love hath wrought?
+
+  THYRSIS.
+
+  Free speech and servitude but ill accord,
+  Friend Mopsus, and the hind is folly-fraught
+  Who rates his lord! He's wiser far than I.
+  To tend these kine is all my mastery.
+
+
+
+  SCENE II
+
+  ARISTAEUS, _in pursuit of_ EURYDICE.
+
+  Flee not from me, maiden!
+    Lo, I am thy friend!
+    Dearer far than life I hold thee.
+    List, thou beauty-laden,
+    To these prayers attend:
+    Flee not, let my arms enfold thee!
+    Neither wolf nor bear will grasp thee:
+    That I am thy friend I've told thee:
+    Stay thy course then; let me clasp thee!--
+    Since thou'rt deaf and wilt not heed me,
+    Since thou'rt still before me flying,
+    While I follow panting, dying,
+    Lend me wings, Love, wings to speed me!
+
+  [_Exit_ ARISTAEUS, _pursuing_ EURYDICE.
+
+
+
+  SCENE III
+
+  A DRYAD.
+
+  Sad news of lamentation and of pain,
+    Dear sisters, hath my voice to bear to you:
+    I scarcely dare to raise the dolorous strain.
+  Eurydice by yonder stream lies low;
+    The flowers are fading round her stricken head,
+    And the complaining waters weep their woe.
+  The stranger soul from that fair house hath fled;
+    And she, like privet pale, or white May-bloom
+    Untimely plucked, lies on the meadow, dead.
+  Hear then the cause of her disastrous doom!
+    A snake stole forth and stung her suddenly.
+    I am so burdened with this weight of gloom
+  That, lo, I bid you all come weep with me!
+
+  CHORUS OF DRYADS.
+
+  Let the wide air with our complaint resound!
+    For all heaven's light is spent.
+    Let rivers break their bound,
+    Swollen with tears outpoured from our lament!
+
+  Fell death hath ta'en their splendour from the skies:
+    The stars are sunk in gloom.
+    Stern death hath plucked the bloom
+    Of nymphs:--Eurydice down-trodden lies.
+  Weep, Love! The woodland cries.
+    Weep, groves and founts;
+    Ye craggy mounts; you leafy dell,
+    Beneath whose boughs she fell,
+    Bend every branch in time with this sad sound.
+
+  Let the wide air with our complaint resound!
+
+  Ah, fortune pitiless! Ah, cruel snake!
+    Ah, luckless doom of woes!
+    Like a cropped summer rose,
+    Or lily cut, she withers on the brake.
+  Her face, which once did make
+    Our age so bright
+    With beauty's light, is faint and pale;
+    And the clear lamp doth fail,
+    Which shed pure splendour all the world around
+
+  Let the wide air with our complaint resound!
+
+  Who e'er will sing so sweetly, now she's gone?
+      Her gentle voice to hear,
+      The wild winds dared not stir;
+      And now they breathe but sorrow, moan for moan:
+  So many joys are flown,
+      Such jocund days
+      Doth Death erase with her sweet eyes!
+      Bid earth's lament arise,
+      And make our dirge through heaven and sea rebound!
+
+  Let the wide air with our complaint resound!
+
+  A DRYAD.
+
+  'Tis surely Orpheus, who hath reached the hill,
+      With harp in hand, glad-eyed and light of heart!
+      He thinks that his dear love is living still.
+  My news will stab him with a sudden smart:
+      An unforeseen and unexpected blow
+      Wounds worst and stings the bosom's tenderest part.
+  Death hath disjoined the truest love, I know,
+      That nature yet to this low world revealed,
+      And quenched the flame in its most charming glow.
+  Go, sisters, hasten ye to yonder field,
+      Where on the sward lies slain Eurydice;
+      Strew her with flowers and grasses! I must yield
+  This man the measure of his misery.
+
+  [_Exeunt_ DRYADS. _Enter_ ORPHEUS, _singing_.
+
+  ORPHEUS.
+
+  _Musa, triumphales titulos et gesta canamus
+      Herculis, et forti monstra subacta manu;
+  Ut timidae malri pressos ostenderit angues,
+      Intrepidusque fero riserit ore puer._
+
+  A DRYAD.
+
+  Orpheus, I bring thee bitter news. Alas!
+      Thy nymph who was so beautiful, is slain!
+      flying from Aristaeus o'er the grass,
+      What time she reached yon stream that threads the plain,
+
+    A snake which lurked mid flowers where she did pass,
+    Pierced her fair foot with his envenomed bane:
+    So fierce, so potent was the sting, that she
+    Died in mid course. Ah, woe that this should be!
+
+  [ORPHEUS _turns to go in silence._
+
+  MNESILLUS, _the satyr_.
+
+  Mark ye how sunk in woe
+    The poor wretch forth doth pass,
+    And may not answer, for his grief, one word?
+    On some lone shore, unheard,
+    Far, far away, he'll go,
+    And pour his heart forth to the winds, alas!
+    I'll follow and observe if he
+    Moves with his moan the hills to sympathy.
+
+  [_Follows_ ORPHEUS.
+
+  ORPHEUS.
+
+  Let us lament, O lyre disconsolate!
+    Our wonted music is in tune no more.
+    Lament we while the heavens revolve, and let
+    The nightingale be conquered on Love's shore!
+    O heaven, O earth, O sea, O cruel fate!
+    How shall I bear a pang so passing sore?
+    Eurydice, my love! O life of mine!
+    On earth I will no more without thee pine!
+  I will go down unto the doors of Hell,
+    And see if mercy may be found below:
+    Perchance we shall reverse fate's spoken spell
+    With tearful songs and words of honeyed woe:
+    Perchance will Death be pitiful; for well
+    With singing have we turned the streams that flow;
+    Moved stones, together hind and tiger drawn,
+    And made trees dance upon the forest lawn.
+
+  [_Passes from sight on his way to Hades._
+
+  MNESILLUS.
+
+  The staff of Fate is strong
+    And will not lightly bend,
+    Nor yet the stubborn gates of steely Hell.
+    Nay, I can see full well
+    His life will not be long:
+    Those downward feet no more will earthward wend.
+    What marvel if they lose the light,
+    Who make blind Love their guide by day and night!
+
+
+
+  SCENE IV
+
+  ORPHEUS, _at the gate of Hell._
+
+  Pity, nay pity for a lover's moan!
+    Ye Powers of Hell, let pity reign in you!
+    To your dark regions led me Love alone:
+    Downward upon his wings of light I flew.
+    Hush, Cerberus! Howl not by Pluto's throne!
+    For when you hear my tale of misery, you,
+    Nor you alone, but all who here abide
+    In this blind world, will weep by Lethe's tide.
+  There is no need, ye Furies, thus to rage;
+    To dart those snakes that in your tresses twine:
+    Knew ye the cause of this my pilgrimage,
+    Ye would lie down and join your moans with mine.
+    Let this poor wretch but pass, who war doth wage
+    With heaven, the elements, the powers divine!
+    I beg for pity or for death. No more!
+    But open, ope Hell's adamantine door!
+
+  [ORPHEUS _enters Hell._
+
+  PLUTO.
+
+  What man is he who with his golden lyre
+    Hath moved the gates that never move,
+    While the dead folk repeat his dirge of love?
+  The rolling stone no more doth tire
+    Swart Sisyphus on yonder hill;
+    And Tantalus with water slakes his fire;
+  The groans of mangled Tityos are still;
+    Ixion's wheel forgets to fly;
+    The Danaids their urns can fill:
+  I hear no more the tortured spirits cry;
+  But all find rest in that sweet harmony.
+
+  PROSERPINE.
+
+  Dear consort, since, compelled by love of thee,
+    I left the light of heaven serene,
+    And came to reign in hell, a sombre queen;
+  The charm of tenderest sympathy
+    Hath never yet had power to turn
+    My stubborn heart, or draw forth tears from me.
+  Now with desire for yon sweet voice I yearn;
+    Nor is there aught so dear
+    As that delight. Nay, be not stern
+  To this one prayer! Relax thy brows severe,
+  And rest awhile with me that song to hear!
+
+  [ORPHEUS _stands before the throne._
+
+  ORPHEUS.
+
+  Ye rulers of the people lost in gloom,
+    Who see no more the jocund light of day!
+    Ye who inherit all things that the womb
+    Of Nature and the elements display!
+    Hear ye the grief that draws me to the tomb!
+    Love, cruel Love, hath led me on this way:
+    Not to chain Cerberus I hither come,
+    But to bring back my mistress to her home.
+  A serpent hidden among flowers and leaves
+    Stole my fair mistress--nay, my heart--from me:
+    Wherefore my wounded life for ever grieves,
+    Nor can I stand against this agony.
+    Still, if some fragrance lingers yet and cleaves
+    Of your famed love unto your memory,
+    If of that ancient rape you think at all,
+    Give back Eurydice!--On you I call.
+  All things ere long unto this bourne descend:
+    All mortal lives to you return at last:
+    Whate'er the moon hath circled, in the end
+    Must fade and perish in your empire vast:
+    Some sooner and some later hither wend;
+    Yet all upon this pathway shall have passed:
+    This of our footsteps is the final goal;
+    And then we dwell for aye in your control.
+  Therefore the nymph I love is left for you
+    When nature leads her deathward in due time:
+    But now you've cropped the tendrils as they grew,
+    The grapes unripe, while yet the sap did climb:
+    Who reaps the young blades wet with April dew,
+    Nor waits till summer hath o'erpassed her prime?
+    Give back, give back my hope one little day!--
+    Not for a gift, but for a loan I pray.
+  I pray not to you by the waves forlorn
+    Of marshy Styx or dismal Acheron,
+    By Chaos where the mighty world was born,
+    Or by the sounding flames of Phlegethon;
+    But by the fruit which charmed thee on that morn
+    When thou didst leave our world for this dread throne!
+    O queen! if thou reject this pleading breath,
+    I will no more return, but ask for death!
+
+  PROSERPINE.
+
+  Husband, I never guessed
+    That in our realm oppressed
+    Pity could find a home to dwell:
+    But now I know that mercy teems in Hell.
+    I see Death weep; her breast
+    Is shaken by those tears that faultless fell.
+    Let then thy laws severe for him be swayed
+    By love, by song, by the just prayers he prayed!
+
+  PLUTO.
+
+  She's thine, but at this price:
+    Bend not on her thine eyes,
+    Till mid the souls that live she stay.
+    See that thou turn not back upon the way!
+    Check all fond thoughts that rise!
+    Else will thy love be torn from thee away.
+    I am well pleased that song so rare as thine
+    The might of my dread sceptre should incline.
+
+
+
+  SCENE V
+
+  ORPHEUS, _sings._
+
+  _Ite tritumphales circum mea tempora lauri.
+    Vicimus Eurydicen: reddita vita mihi est,
+  Haec mea praecipue victoria digna corona.
+    Oredimus? an lateri juncta puella meo?_
+
+  EURYDICE.
+
+  All me! Thy love too great
+    Hath lost not thee alone!
+    I am torn from thee by strong Fate.
+    No more I am thine own.
+    In vain I stretch these arms. Back, back to Hell
+    I'm drawn, I'm drawn. My Orpheus, fare thee well!
+
+  [EURYDICE _disappears._
+
+  ORPHEUS.
+
+  Who hath laid laws on Love?
+    Will pity not be given
+    For one short look so full thereof?
+    Since I am robbed of heaven,
+    Since all my joy so great is turned to pain,
+    I will go back and plead with Death again!
+
+  [TISIPHONE _blocks his way._
+
+  TISIPHONE.
+
+  Nay, seek not back to turn!
+    Vain is thy weeping, all thy words are vain.
+    Eurydice may not complain
+    Of aught but thee--albeit her grief is great.
+    Vain are thy verses 'gainst the voice of Fate!
+    How vain thy song! For Death is stern!
+    Try not the backward path: thy feet refrain!
+    The laws of the abyss are fixed and firm remain.
+
+
+
+  SCENE VI
+
+  ORPHEUS.
+
+  What sorrow-laden song shall e'er be found
+    To match the burden of my matchless woe?
+    How shall I make the fount of tears abound,
+    To weep apace with grief's unmeasured flow?
+    Salt tears I'll waste upon the barren ground,
+    So long as life delays me here below;
+    And since my fate hath wrought me wrong so sore,
+    I swear I'll never love a woman more!
+  Henceforth I'll pluck the buds of opening spring,
+    The bloom of youth when life is loveliest,
+    Ere years have spoiled the beauty which they bring:
+    This love, I swear, is sweetest, softest, best!
+    Of female charms let no one speak or sing;
+    Since she is slain who ruled within my breast.
+    He who would seek my converse, let him see
+    That ne'er he talk of woman's love to me!
+  How pitiful is he who changes mind
+    For woman! for her love laments or grieves!
+    Who suffers her in chains his will to bind,
+    Or trusts her words lighter than withered leaves,
+    Her loving looks more treacherous than the wind!
+    A thousand times she veers; to nothing cleaves:
+    Follows who flies; from him who follows, flees;
+    And comes and goes like waves on stormy seas!
+  High Jove confirms the truth of what I said,
+    Who, caught and bound in love's delightful snare,
+    Enjoys in heaven his own bright Ganymed:
+    Phoebus on earth had Hyacinth the fair:
+    Hercules, conqueror of the world, was led
+    Captive to Hylas by this love so rare.--
+    Advice for husbands! Seek divorce, and fly
+    Far, far away from female company!
+
+  [_Enter a_ MAENAD _leading a train of_ BACCHANTES.
+
+  A MAENAD.
+
+  Ho! Sisters! Up! Alive!
+    See him who doth our sex deride!
+    Hunt him to death, the slave!
+  Thou snatch the thyrsus! Thou this oak-tree rive!
+    Cast down this doeskin and that hide!
+    We'll wreak our fury on the knave!
+  Yea, he shall feel our wrath, the knave!
+    He shall yield up his hide
+    Riven as woodmen fir-trees rive!
+    No power his life can save;
+    Since women he hath dared deride!
+    Ho! To him, sisters! Ho! Alive!
+
+  [ORPHEUS _is chased off the scene and slain: the_ MAENADS
+  _then return._
+
+  A MAENAD.
+
+  Ho! Bacchus! Ho! I yield thee thanks for this!
+    Through all the woodland we the wretch have borne:
+    So that each root is slaked with blood of his:
+    Yea, limb from limb his body have we torn
+    Through the wild forest with a fearful bliss:
+    His gore hath bathed the earth by ash and thorn!--
+    Go then! thy blame on lawful wedlock fling!
+    Ho! Bacchus! take the victim that we bring!
+
+  CHORUS OF MAENADS.
+
+    Bacchus! we all must follow thee!
+    Bacchus! Bacchus! Ohe! Ohe!
+
+  With ivy coronals, bunch and berry,
+    Crown we our heads to worship thee!
+  Thou hast bidden us to make merry
+    Day and night with jollity!
+  Drink then! Bacchus is here! Drink free,
+  And hand ye the drinking-cup to me!
+    Bacchus! we all must follow thee!
+    Bacchus! Bacchus! Ohe! Ohe!
+
+  See, I have emptied my horn already:
+    Stretch hither your beaker to me, I pray:
+  Are the hills and the lawns where we roam unsteady?
+    Or is it my brain that reels away?
+  Let every one run to and fro through the hay,
+  As ye see me run! Ho! after me!
+    Bacchus! we all must follow thee!
+    Bacchus! Bacchus! Ohe! Ohe!
+
+  Methinks I am dropping in swoon or slumber:
+    Am I drunken or sober, yes or no?
+  What are these weights my feet encumber?
+    You too are tipsy, well I know!
+  Let every one do as ye see me do,
+  Let every one drink and quaff like me!
+    Bacchus! we all must follow thee!
+    Bacchus! Bacchus! Ohe! Ohe!
+
+  Cry Bacchus! Cry Bacchus! Be blithe and merry,
+    Tossing wine down your throats away!
+  Let sleep then come and our gladness bury:
+    Drink you, and you, and you, while ye may!
+  Dancing is over for me to-day.
+  Let every one cry aloud Evohe!
+    Bacchus! we all must follow thee!
+    Bacchus! Bacchus! Ohe! Ohe!
+
+Though an English translation can do little toward rendering the
+facile graces of Poliziano's style, that 'roseate fluency' for which
+it has been praised by his Italian admirers, the main qualities of the
+'Orfeo' as a composition may be traced in this rough copy. Of dramatic
+power, of that mastery over the deeper springs of human nature which
+distinguished the first effort of the English muse in Marlowe's
+plays, there is but little. A certain adaptation of the language to
+the characters, as in the rudeness of Thyrsis when contrasted with the
+rustic elegance of Aristaeus, a touch of simple feeling in Eurydice's
+lyrical outcry of farewell, a discrimination between the tender
+sympathy of Proserpine and Pluto's stern relenting, a spirited
+presentation of the Bacchanalian _furore_ in the Maenads, an attempt to
+model the Satyr Mnesillus as apart from human nature and yet
+sympathetic to its anguish, these points constitute the chief dramatic
+features of the melodrama. Orpheus himself is a purely lyrical
+personage. Of character, he can scarcely be said to have anything
+marked; and his part rises to its height precisely in that passage
+where the lyrist has to be displayed. Before the gates of Hades and
+the throne of Proserpine he sings, and his singing is the right
+outpouring of a poet's soul; each octave resumes the theme of the last
+stanza with a swell of utterance, a crescendo of intonation that
+recalls the passionate and unpremeditated descant of a bird upon the
+boughs alone. To this true quality of music is added the
+persuasiveness of pleading. That the violin melody of his incomparable
+song is lost, must be reckoned a great misfortune. We have good reason
+to believe that the part of Orpheus was taken by Messer Baccio
+Ugolini, singing to the viol. Here too it may be mentioned that a
+_tondo_ in monochrome, painted by Signorelli among the arabesques at
+Orvieto, shows Orpheus at the throne of Plato, habited as a poet with
+the laurel crown and playing on a violin of antique form. It would be
+interesting to know whether a rumour of the Mantuan pageant had
+reached the ears of the Cortonese painter.
+
+If the whole of the 'Orfeo' had been conceived and executed with the
+same artistic feeling as the chief act, it would have been a really
+fine poem independently of its historical interest. But we have only
+to turn the page and read the lament uttered for the loss of Eurydice,
+in order to perceive Poliziano's incapacity for dealing with his hero
+in a situation of greater difficulty. The pathos which might have made
+us sympathise with Orpheus in his misery, the passion, approaching to
+madness, which might have justified his misogyny, are absent. It is
+difficult not to feel that in this climax of his anguish he was a poor
+creature, and that the Maenads served him right. Nothing illustrates
+the defect of real dramatic imagination better than this failure to
+dignify the catastrophe. Gifted with a fine lyrical inspiration,
+Poliziano seems to have already felt the Bacchic chorus which forms so
+brilliant a termination to his play, and to have forgotten his duty
+to the unfortunate Orpheus, whose sorrow for Eurydice is stultified
+and made unmeaning by the prosaic expression of a base resolve. It may
+indeed be said in general that the 'Orfeo' is a good poem only where
+the situation is not so much dramatic as lyrical, and that its finest
+passage--the scene in Hades--was fortunately for its author one in
+which the dramatic motive had to be lyrically expressed. In this
+respect, as in many others, the 'Orfeo' combines the faults and merits
+of the Italian attempts at melo-tragedy. To break a butterfly upon the
+wheel is, however, no fit function of criticism: and probably no one
+would have smiled more than the author of this improvisation, at the
+thought of its being gravely dissected just four hundred years after
+the occasion it was meant to serve had long been given over to
+oblivion.
+
+_NOTE_
+
+Poliziano's 'Orfeo' was dedicated to Messer Carlo Canale, the husband
+of that famous Vannozza who bore Lucrezia and Cesare Borgia to
+Alexander VI. As first published in 1494, and as republished from time
+to time up to the year 1776, it carried the title of 'La Favola di
+Orfeo,' and was not divided into acts. Frequent stage-directions
+sufficed, as in the case of Florentine 'Sacre Rappresentazioni,' for
+the indication of the scenes. In this earliest redaction of the
+'Orfeo' the chorus of the Dryads, the part of Mnesillus, the lyrical
+speeches of Proserpine and Pluto, and the first lyric of the Maenads
+are either omitted or represented by passages in _ottava rima_. In the
+year 1776 the Padre Ireneo Affo printed at Venice a new version of
+'Orfeo, Tragedia di Messer Angelo Poliziano,' collated by him from two
+MSS. This play is divided into five acts, severally entitled
+'Pastoricus,' 'Nymphas Habet,' 'Heroicus,' 'Necromanticus,' and
+'Bacchanalis.' The stage-directions are given partly in Latin, partly
+in Italian; and instead of the 'Announcement of the Feast' by Mercury,
+a prologue consisting of two octave stanzas is appended. A Latin
+Sapphic ode in praise of the Cardinal Gonzaga, which was interpolated
+in the first version, is omitted, and certain changes are made in the
+last soliloquy of Orpheus. There is little doubt, I think, that the
+second version, first given to the press by the Padre Affo, was
+Poliziano's own recension of his earlier composition. I have therefore
+followed it in the main, except that I have not thought it necessary
+to observe the somewhat pedantic division into acts, and have
+preferred to use the original 'Announcement of the Feast,' which
+proves the integral connection between this ancient secular play and
+the Florentine Mystery or 'Sacra Rappresentazione.' The last soliloquy
+of Orpheus, again, has been freely translated by me from both versions
+for reasons which will be obvious to students of the original. I have
+yet to make a remark upon one detail of my translation. In line 390
+(part of the first lyric of the Maenads) the Italian gives us:--
+
+  Spezzata come il fabbro il cribro spezza.
+
+This means literally: 'Riven as a blacksmith rives a sieve or
+boulter.' Now sieves are made in Tuscany of a plate of iron, pierced
+with holes; and the image would therefore be familiar to an Italian. I
+have, however, preferred to translate thus:--
+
+  Riven as woodmen fir-trees rive,
+
+instead of giving:--
+
+  Riven as blacksmiths boulters rive,
+
+because I thought that the second and faithful version would be
+unintelligible as well as unpoetical for English readers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+_EIGHT SONNETS OF PETRARCH_
+
+
+ON THE PAPAL COURT AT AVIGNON
+
+  Fountain of woe! Harbour of endless ire!
+    Thou school of errors, haunt of heresies!
+    Once Rome, now Babylon, the world's disease,
+    That maddenest men with fears and fell desire!
+  O forge of fraud! O prison dark and dire,
+    Where dies the good, where evil breeds increase!
+    Thou living Hell! Wonders will never cease
+    If Christ rise not to purge thy sins with fire.
+  Founded in chaste and humble poverty,
+    Against thy founders thou dost raise thy horn,
+    Thou shameless harlot! And whence flows this pride?
+  Even from foul and loathed adultery,
+    The wage of lewdness. Constantine, return!
+    Not so: the felon world its fate must bide.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+TO STEFANO COLONNA
+
+WRITTEN FROM VAUCLUSE
+
+  Glorius Colonna, thou on whose high head
+    Rest all our hopes and the great Latin name,
+    Whom from the narrow path of truth and fame
+    The wrath of Jove turned not with stormful dread:
+  Here are no palace-courts, no stage to tread;
+    But pines and oaks the shadowy valleys fill
+    Between the green fields and the neighbouring hill,
+    Where musing oft I climb by fancy led.
+  These lift from earth to heaven our soaring soul,
+    While the sweet nightingale, that in thick bowers
+    Through darkness pours her wail of tuneful woe,
+  Doth bend our charmed breast to love's control;
+    But thou alone hast marred this bliss of ours,
+    Since from our side, dear lord, thou needs must go.
+
+
+
+IN VITA DI MADONNA LAURA. XI
+
+ON LEAVING AVIGNON
+
+
+  Backward at every weary step and slow
+    These limbs I turn which with great pain I bear;
+    Then take I comfort from the fragrant air
+    That breathes from thee, and sighing onward go.
+  But when I think how joy is turned to woe,
+    Remembering my short life and whence I fare,
+    I stay my feet for anguish and despair,
+    And cast my tearful eyes on earth below.
+  At times amid the storm of misery
+    This doubt assails me: how frail limbs and poor
+    Can severed from their spirit hope to live.
+  Then answers Love: Hast thou no memory
+    How I to lovers this great guerdon give,
+    Free from all human bondage to endure?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+IN VITA DI MADONNA LAURA. XII
+
+THOUGHTS IN ABSENCE
+
+  The wrinkled sire with hair like winter snow
+    Leaves the beloved spot where he hath passed his years,
+    Leaves wife and children, dumb with bitter tears,
+    To see their father's tottering steps and slow.
+  Dragging his aged limbs with weary woe,
+    In these last days of life he nothing fears,
+    But with stout heart his fainting spirit cheers,
+    And spent and wayworn forward still doth go;
+  Then comes to Rome, following his heart's desire,
+    To gaze upon the portraiture of Him
+    Whom yet he hopes in heaven above to see:
+  Thus I, alas! my seeking spirit tire,
+    Lady, to find in other features dim
+    The longed for, loved, true lineaments of thee.
+
+
+IN VITA DI MADONNA LAURA. LII
+
+OH THAT I HAD WINGS LIKE A DOVE!
+
+  I am so tired beneath the ancient load
+    Of my misdeeds and custom's tyranny,
+    That much I fear to fail upon the road
+    And yield my soul unto mine enemy.
+  'Tis true a friend from whom all splendour flowed,
+    To save me came with matchless courtesy:
+    Then flew far up from sight to heaven's abode,
+    So that I strive in vain his face to see.
+  Yet still his voice reverberates here below:
+    Oh ye who labour, lo! the path is here;
+    Come unto me if none your going stay!
+  What grace, what love, what fate surpassing fear
+    Shall give me wings like dove's wings soft as snow,
+    That I may rest and raise me from the clay?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+IN MORTE DI MADONNA LAURA. XXIV
+
+
+  The eyes whereof I sang my fervid song,
+    The arms, the hands, the feet, the face benign,
+    Which severed me from what was rightly mine,
+    And made me sole and strange amid the throng,
+  The crisped curls of pure gold beautiful,
+    And those angelic smiles which once did shine
+    Imparadising earth with joy divine,
+    Are now a little dust--dumb, deaf, and dull.
+  And yet I live! wherefore I weep and wail,
+    Left alone without the light I loved so long,
+    Storm-tossed upon a bark that hath no sail.
+  Then let me here give o'er my amorous song;
+    The fountains of old inspiration fail,
+    And nought but woe my dolorous chords prolong.
+
+
+IN MORTE DI MADONNA LAURA. XXXIV
+
+
+  In thought I raised me to the place where she
+    Whom still on earth I seek and find not, shines;
+    There 'mid the souls whom the third sphere confines,
+    More fair I found her and less proud to me.
+  She took my hand and said: Here shalt thou be
+    With me ensphered, unless desires mislead;
+    Lo! I am she who made thy bosom bleed,
+    Whose day ere eve was ended utterly:
+  My bliss no mortal heart can understand;
+    Thee only do I lack, and that which thou
+    So loved, now left on earth, my beauteous veil.
+  Ah! wherefore did she cease and loose my hand?
+    For at the sound of that celestial tale
+    I all but stayed in paradise till now.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+IN MORTE DI MADONNA LAURA. LXXIV
+
+
+  The flower of angels and the spirits blest,
+    Burghers of heaven, on that first day when she
+    Who is my lady died, around her pressed
+    Fulfilled with wonder and with piety.
+  What light is this? What beauty manifest?
+    Marvelling they cried: for such supremacy
+    Of splendour in this age to our high rest
+    Hath never soared from earth's obscurity.
+  She, glad to have exchanged her spirit's place,
+    Consorts with those whose virtues most exceed;
+    At times the while she backward turns her face
+  To see me follow--seems to wait and plead:
+    Therefore toward heaven my will and soul I raise,
+    Because I hear her praying me to speed.
+
+       *      *       *       *       *
+
+     FOOTNOTES:
+
+
+     [Footnote 1: We may compare with Venice what is known about
+     the ancient Hellenic city of Sybaris. Sybaris and Ravenna
+     were the Greek and Roman Venice of antiquity.]
+
+     [Footnote 2: His first wife was a daughter of the great
+     general of the Venetians against Francesco Sforza. Whether
+     Sigismondo murdered her, as Sansovino seems to imply in his
+     _Famiglie Illustri_, or whether he only repudiated her after
+     her father's execution on the Piazza di San Marco, admits of
+     doubt. About the question of Sigismondo's marriage with
+     Isotta there is also some uncertainty. At any rate she had
+     been some time his mistress before she became his wife.]
+
+     [Footnote 3: For the place occupied in the evolution of
+     Italian scholarship by this Greek sage, see my 'Revival of
+     Learning,' _Renaissance in Italy_, part 2.]
+
+     [Footnote 4: The account of this church given by AEneas
+     Sylvius Piccolomini (Pii Secondi, Comment., ii. 92)
+     deserves quotation: 'AEdificavit tamen nobile templum
+     Arimini in honorem divi Francisci, verum ita gentilibus
+     operibus implevit, ut non tam Christianorum quam infidelium
+     daemones adorantium templum esse videatur.']
+
+     [Footnote 5: Almost all the facts of Alberti's life are to
+     be found in the Latin biography included in Muratori. It has
+     been conjectured, and not without plausibility, by the last
+     editor of Alberti's complete works, Bonucci, that this Latin
+     life was penned by Alberti himself.]
+
+     [Footnote 6: There is in reality no doubt or problem about
+     this Saint Clair. She was born in 1275, and joined the
+     Augustinian Sisterhood, dying young, in 1308, as Abbess of
+     her convent. Continual and impassioned meditation on the
+     Passion of our Lord impressed her heart with the signs of
+     His suffering which have been described above. I owe this
+     note to the kindness of an anonymous correspondent, whom I
+     here thank.]
+
+     [Footnote 7: The balance of probability leans against
+     Isabella in this affair. At the licentious court of the
+     Medici she lived with unpardonable freedom. Troilo Orsini
+     was himself assassinated in Paris by Bracciano's orders a
+     few years afterwards.]
+
+     [Footnote 8: I have amplified and corrected this chronicle
+     by the light of Professor Gnoli's monograph, _Vittoria
+     Accoramboni_, published by Le Monnier at Florence in 1870.]
+
+     [Footnote 9: In dealing with Webster's tragedy, I have
+     adhered to his use and spelling of names.]
+
+     [Footnote 10: The fresco of the Coronation of the Virgin
+     upon the semi-dome of S. Giovanni is the work of a copyist,
+     Cesare Aretusi. But part of the original fresco, which was
+     removed in 1684, exists in a good state of preservation at
+     the end of the long gallery of the library.]
+
+     [Footnote 11: See the chapter on Euripides in my _Studies of
+     Greek Poets_, First Series, for a further development of
+     this view of artistic evolution.]
+
+     [Footnote 12: I find that this story is common in the
+     country round Canossa. It is mentioned by Professor A.
+     Ferretti in his monograph entitled _Canossa, Studi e
+     Ricerche_, Reggio, 1876, a work to which I am indebted, and
+     which will repay careful study.]
+
+     [Footnote 13: Charles claimed under the will of Rene of
+     Anjou, who in turn claimed under the will of Joan II.]
+
+     [Footnote 14: For an estimate of Cosimo's services to art
+     and literature, his collection of libraries, his great
+     buildings, his generosity to scholars, and his promotion of
+     Greek studies, I may refer to my _Renaissance in Italy_:
+     'The Revival of Learning,' chap. iv.]
+
+     [Footnote 15: Giottino had painted the Duke of Athens, in
+     like manner, on the same walls.]
+
+     [Footnote 16: See _Archivio Storico_.]
+
+     [Footnote 17: The order of rhymes runs thus: _a, b, b, a, a,
+     b, b, a, c, d, c, d, c, d_; or in the terzets, _c, d, e, c,
+     d, e_, or _c, d, e, d, c, e_, and so forth.]
+
+     [Footnote 18: It has extraordinary interest for the student
+     of our literary development, inasmuch as it is full of
+     experiments in metres, which have never thriven on English
+     soil. Not to mention the attempt to write in asclepiads and
+     other classical rhythms, we might point to Sidney's _terza
+     rima_, poems with _sdrucciolo_ or treble rhymes. This
+     peculiar and painful form he borrowed from Ariosto and
+     Sanazzaro; but even in Italian it cannot be handled without
+     sacrifice of variety, without impeding the metrical movement
+     and marring the sense.]
+
+     [Footnote 19: The stately structure of the _Prothalamion_
+     and _Epithalamion_ is a rebuilding of the Italian Canzone.
+     His Eclogues, with their allegories, repeat the manner of
+     Petrarch's minor Latin poems.]
+
+     [Footnote 20: Marlowe makes Gaveston talk of 'Italian
+     masques.' At the same time, in the prologue to
+     _Tamburlaine_, he shows that he was conscious of the new and
+     nobler direction followed by the drama in England.]
+
+     [Footnote 21: This sentence requires some qualification. In
+     his _Poesia Popolare Italiana_, 1878, Professor d'Ancona
+     prints a Pisan, a Venetian, and two Lombard versions of our
+     Border ballad 'Where hae ye been, Lord Randal, my son,' so
+     close in general type and minor details to the English,
+     German, Swedish, and Finnish versions of this Volkslied as
+     to suggest a very ancient community of origin. It remains as
+     yet, however, an isolated fact in the history of Italian
+     popular poetry.]
+
+     [Footnote 22: _Canti Popolari Toscani_, raccolti e annotati
+     da Giuseppe Tigri. Volume unico. Firenze: G. Barbera, 1869.]
+
+     [Footnote 23: This is a description of the Tuscan rispetto.
+     In Sicily the stanza generally consists of eight lines
+     rhyming alternately throughout, while in the North of Italy
+     it is normally a simple quatrain. The same poetical material
+     assumes in Northern, Central, and Southern Italy these
+     diverge but associated forms.]
+
+     [Footnote 24: This song, called Ciure (Sicilian for _fiore_)
+     in Sicily, is said by Signor Pitre to be in disrepute there.
+     He once asked an old dame of Palermo to repeat him some of
+     these ditties. Her answer was, 'You must get them from light
+     women; I do not know any. They sing them in bad houses and
+     prisons, where, God be praised, I have never been.' In
+     Tuscany there does not appear to be so marked a distinction
+     between the flower song and the rispetto.]
+
+     [Footnote 25: Much light has lately been thrown on the
+     popular poetry of Italy; and it appears that contemporary
+     improvisatori trust more to their richly stocked memories
+     and to their power of recombination than to original or
+     novel inspiration. It is in Sicily that the vein of truly
+     creative lyric utterance is said to flow most freely and
+     most copiously at the present time.]
+
+     [Footnote 26: 'Remember me, fair one, to the scrivener. I do
+     not know him or who he is, but he seems to me a sovereign
+     poet, so cunning is he in his use of verse.']
+
+     [Footnote 27: It must be remarked that Tigri draws a strong
+     contrast in this respect between the songs of the mountain
+     districts which he has printed and those of the towns, and
+     that Pitre, in his edition of Sicilian _Volkslieder_,
+     expressly alludes to the coarseness of a whole class which
+     he had omitted. The MSS. of Sicilian and Tuscan songs,
+     dating from the fifteenth century and earlier, yield a fair
+     proportion of decidedly obscene compositions. Yet the fact
+     stated above is integrally correct. When acclimatised in the
+     large towns, the rustic Muse not unfrequently assumes a garb
+     of grossness. At home, among the fields and on the
+     mountains, she remains chaste and romantic.]
+
+     [Footnote 28: In a rispetto, of which I subjoin a
+     translation, sung by a poor lad to a mistress of higher
+     rank, love itself is pleaded as the sign of a gentle soul:--
+
+  My state is poor: I am not meet
+    To court so nobly born a love;
+  For poverty hath tied my feet,
+    Trying to climb too far above.
+  Yet am I gentle, loving thee;
+  Nor need thou shun my poverty.
+
+     [Footnote 29: When the Cherubina, of whom mention has been
+     made above, was asked by Signor Tigri to dictate some of her
+     rispetti, she answered, 'O signore! ne dico tanti quando li
+     canto! . . . ma ora . . . bisognerebbe averli tutti in
+     visione; se no, proprio non vengono.']
+
+     [Footnote 30: I need hardly guard myself against being
+     supposed to mean that the form of _Ballata_ in question was
+     the only one of its kind in Italy.]
+
+     [Footnote 31: See my _Sketches in Italy and Greece_, p.
+     114.]
+
+     [Footnote 32: The originals will be found in Carducci's
+     _Studi Letterari_, p. 273 _et seq._ I have preserved their
+     rhyming structure.]
+
+     [Footnote 33: Stanza XLIII. All references are made to
+     Carducci's excellent edition, _Le Stanze, l'Orfeo e le Rime
+     di Messer Angelo Ambrogini Poliziano._ Firenze: G. Barbera.
+     1863.]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+SKETCHES AND STUDIES
+
+IN ITALY AND GREECE
+
+BY JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS
+
+AUTHOR OF "RENAISSANCE IN ITALY," "STUDIES OF THE GREEK POETS," ETC.
+
+
+THIRD SERIES
+
+WITH A FRONTISPIECE
+
+LONDON
+
+JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
+
+1910
+
+
+
+First Edition (Smith, Elder & Co.) _December 1898_
+_Reprinted December 1907_
+_Reprinted October  1910_
+Taken Over by John Murray _January  1917_
+
+_All rights reserved_
+
+_Printed in Great Britain by_
+
+Spottiswoode, Ballantyne & Co. Ltd.
+
+_London, Colchester & Eton_
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+FOLGORE DA SAN GEMIGNANO
+
+THOUGHTS IN ITALY ABOUT CHRISTMAS
+
+SIENA
+
+MONTE OLIVETO
+
+MONTEPULCIANO
+
+PERUGIA
+
+ORVIETO
+
+LUCRETIUS
+
+ANTINOUS
+
+SPRING WANDERINGS
+
+AMALFI, PAESTUM, CAPRI
+
+ETNA
+
+PALERMO
+
+SYRACUSE AND GIRGENTI
+
+ATHENS
+
+INDEX
+
+The Ildefonso Group     _Frontispiece_
+
+
+
+
+SKETCHES AND STUDIES
+
+IN
+
+ITALY AND GREECE
+
+
+
+
+_FOLGORE DA SAN GEMIGNANO_
+
+
+Students of Mr. Dante Gabriel Rossetti's translations from the early
+Italian poets (_Dante and his Circle_. Ellis & White, 1874) will not
+fail to have noticed the striking figure made among those jejune
+imitators of Provencal mannerism by two rhymesters, Cecco Angiolieri
+and Folgore da San Gemignano. Both belong to the school of Siena,
+and both detach themselves from the metaphysical fashion of their
+epoch by clearness of intention and directness of style. The sonnets
+of both are remarkable for what in the critical jargon of to-day
+might be termed realism. Cecco is even savage and brutal. He
+anticipates Villon from afar, and is happily described by Mr.
+Rossetti as the prodigal, or 'scamp' of the Dantesque circle. The
+case is different with Folgore. There is no poet who breathes a
+fresher air of gentleness. He writes in images, dealing but little
+with ideas. Every line presents a picture, and each picture has the
+charm of a miniature fancifully drawn and brightly coloured on a
+missal-margin. Cecco and Folgore alike have abandoned the mediaeval
+mysticism which sounds unreal on almost all Italian lips but
+Dante's. True Italians, they are content to live for life's sake,
+and to take the world as it presents itself to natural senses. But
+Cecco is perverse and impious. His love has nothing delicate; his
+hatred is a morbid passion. At his worst or best (for his best
+writing is his worst feeling) we find him all but rabid. If
+Caligula, for instance, had written poetry, he might have piqued
+himself upon the following sonnet; only we must do Cecco the justice
+of remembering that his rage is more than half ironical and
+humorous:--
+
+  An I were fire, I would burn up the world;
+      An I were wind, with tempest I'd it break;
+      An I were sea, I'd drown it in a lake;
+      An I were God, to hell I'd have it hurled;
+  An I were Pope, I'd see disaster whirled
+      O'er Christendom, deep joy thereof to take;
+      An I were Emperor, I'd quickly make
+      All heads of all folk from their necks be twirled;
+  An I were death, I'd to my father go;
+      An I were life, forthwith from him I'd fly;
+      And with my mother I'd deal even so;
+  An I were Cecco, as I am but I,
+      Young girls and pretty for myself I'd hold,
+      But let my neighbours take the plain and old.
+
+Of all this there is no trace in Folgore. The worst a moralist could
+say of him is that he sought out for himself a life of pure
+enjoyment. The famous Sonnets on the Months give particular
+directions for pastime in a round of pleasure suited to each season.
+The Sonnets on the Days are conceived in a like hedonistic spirit.
+But these series are specially addressed to members of the Glad
+Brigades and Spending Companies, which were common in the great
+mercantile cities of mediaeval Italy. Their tone is doubtless due to
+the occasion of their composition, as compliments to Messer Nicholo
+di Nisi and Messer Guerra Cavicciuoli.
+
+The mention of these names reminds me that a word need be said about
+the date of Folgore. Mr. Rossetti does not dispute the commonly
+assigned date of 1260, and takes for granted that the Messer Nicolo
+of the Sonnets on the Months was the Sienese gentleman referred to
+by Dante in a certain passage of the 'Inferno':[1]--
+
+  And to the Poet said I: 'Now was ever
+      So vain a people as the Sienese?
+      Not for a certainty the French by far.'
+  Whereat the other leper, who had heard me,
+      Replied unto my speech: 'Taking out Stricca,
+      Who knew the art of moderate expenses,
+  And Nicolo, who the luxurious use
+      Of cloves discovered earliest of all
+      Within that garden where such seed takes root.
+  And taking out the band, among whom squandered
+      Caccia d' Ascian his vineyards and vast woods,
+      And where his wit the Abbagliato proffered.'
+
+Now Folgore refers in his political sonnets to events of the years
+1314 and 1315; and the correct reading of a line in his last sonnet
+on the Months gives the name of Nicholo di Nisi to the leader of
+Folgore's 'blithe and lordly Fellowship.' The first of these facts
+leads us to the conclusion that Folgore flourished in the first
+quarter of the fourteenth, instead of in the third quarter of the
+thirteenth century. The second prevents our identifying Nicholo di
+Nisi with the Niccolo de' Salimbeni, who is thought to have been the
+founder of the Fellowship of the Carnation. Furthermore, documents
+have recently been brought to light which mention at San Gemignano,
+in the years 1305 and 1306, a certain Folgore. There is no
+sufficient reason to identify this Folgore with the poet; but the
+name, to say the least, is so peculiar that its occurrence in the
+records of so small a town as San Gemignano gives some confirmation
+to the hypothesis of the poet's later date. Taking these several
+considerations together, I think we must abandon the old view that
+Folgore was one of the earliest Tuscan poets, a view which is,
+moreover, contradicted by his style. Those critics, at any rate, who
+still believe him to have been a predecessor of Dante's, are forced
+to reject as spurious the political sonnets referring to Monte
+Catini and the plunder of Lucca by Uguccione della Faggiuola. Yet
+these sonnets rest on the same manuscript authority as the Months
+and Days, and are distinguished by the same qualities.[2]
+
+    [1] _Inferno_, xxix. 121.--_Longfellow_.
+
+    [2] The above points are fully discussed by Signor Giulio
+    Navone, in his recent edition of _Le Rime di Folgore da
+    San Gemignano e di Cene da la Chitarra d' Arezzo_.
+    Bologna: Romagnoli, 1880. I may further mention that in
+    the sonnet on the Pisans, translated on p. 18, which
+    belongs to the political series, Folgore uses his own
+    name.
+
+Whatever may be the date of Folgore, whether we assign his period to
+the middle of the thirteenth or the beginning of the fourteenth
+century, there is no doubt but that he presents us with a very
+lively picture of Italian manners, drawn from the point of view of
+the high bourgeoisie. It is on this account that I have thought it
+worth while to translate five of his Sonnets on Knighthood, which
+form the fragment that remains to us from a series of seventeen. Few
+poems better illustrate the temper of Italian aristocracy when the
+civil wars of two centuries had forced the nobles to enroll
+themselves among the burghers, and when what little chivalry had
+taken root in Italy was fast decaying in a gorgeous over-bloom of
+luxury. The institutions of feudal knighthood had lost their sterner
+meaning for our poet. He uses them for the suggestion of delicate
+allegories fancifully painted. Their mysterious significance is
+turned to gaiety, their piety to amorous delight, their grimness to
+refined enjoyment. Still these changes are effected with perfect
+good taste and in perfect good faith. Something of the perfume of
+true chivalry still lingered in a society which was fast becoming
+mercantile and diplomatic. And this perfume is exhaled by the petals
+of Folgore's song-blossom. He has no conception that to readers of
+Mort Arthur, or to Founders of the Garter, to Sir Miles Stapleton,
+Sir Richard Fitz-Simon, or Sir James Audley, his ideal knight would
+have seemed but little better than a scented civet-cat. Such knights
+as his were all that Italy possessed, and the poet-painter was
+justly proud of them, since they served for finished pictures of the
+beautiful in life.
+
+The Italians were not a feudal race. During the successive reigns of
+Lombard, Frankish, and German masters, they had passively accepted,
+stubbornly resisted feudalism, remaining true to the conviction that
+they themselves were Roman. In Roman memories they sought the
+traditions which give consistency to national consciousness. And
+when the Italian communes triumphed finally over Empire, counts,
+bishops, and rural aristocracy; then Roman law was speedily
+substituted for the 'asinine code' of the barbarians, and Roman
+civility gave its tone to social customs in the place of Teutonic
+chivalry. Yet just as the Italians borrowed, modified, and
+misconceived Gothic architecture, so they took a feudal tincture
+from the nations of the North with whom they came in contact. Their
+noble families, those especially who followed the Imperial party,
+sought the honour of knighthood; and even the free cities arrogated
+to themselves the right of conferring this distinction by diploma on
+their burghers. The chivalry thus formed in Italy was a decorative
+institution. It might be compared to the ornamental frontispiece
+which masks the structural poverty of such Gothic buildings as the
+Cathedral of Orvieto.
+
+On the descent of the German Emperor into Lombardy, the great
+vassals who acknowledged him, made knighthood, among titles of more
+solid import, the price of their allegiance.[1] Thus the chronicle
+of the Cortusi for the year 1354 tells us that when Charles IV. 'was
+advancing through the March, and had crossed the Oglio, and was at
+the borders of Cremona, in his camp upon the snow, he, sitting upon
+his horse, did knight the doughty and noble man, Francesco da
+Carrara, who had constantly attended him with a great train, and
+smiting him upon the neck with his palm, said: "Be thou a good
+knight, and loyal to the Empire." Thereupon the noble German peers
+dismounted, and forthwith buckled on Francesco's spurs. To them the
+Lord Francesco gave chargers and horses of the best he had.'
+Immediately afterwards Francesco dubbed several of his own retainers
+knights. And this was the customary fashion of these Lombard lords.
+For we read how in the year 1328 Can Grande della Scala, after the
+capture of Padua, 'returned to Verona, and for the further
+celebration of his victory upon the last day of October held a
+court, and made thirty-eight knights with his own hand of the divers
+districts of Lombardy.' And in 1294 Azzo d'Este 'was knighted by
+Gerardo da Camino, who then was Lord of Treviso, upon the piazza of
+Ferrara, before the gate of the Bishop's palace. And on the same day
+at the same hour the said Lord Marquis Azzo made fifty-two knights
+with his own hand, namely, the Lord Francesco, his brother, and
+others of Ferrara, Modena, Bologna, Florence, Padua, and Lombardy;
+and on this occasion was a great court held in Ferrara.' Another
+chronicle, referring to the same event, says that the whole expenses
+of the ceremony, including the rich dresses of the new knights, were
+at the charge of the Marquis. It was customary, when a noble house
+had risen to great wealth and had abundance of fighting men, to
+increase its prestige and spread abroad its glory by a wholesale
+creation of knights. Thus the Chronicle of Rimini records a high
+court held by Pandolfo Malatesta in the May of 1324, when he and his
+two sons, with two of his near relatives and certain strangers from
+Florence, Bologna, and Perugia, received this honour. At Siena, in
+like manner, in the year 1284, 'thirteen of the house of Salimbeni
+were knighted with great pomp.'
+
+    [1] The passages used in the text are chiefly drawn from
+    Muratori's fifty-third Dissertation.
+
+It was not on the battlefield that the Italians sought this honour.
+They regarded knighthood as a part of their signorial parade.
+Therefore Republics, in whom perhaps, according to strict feudal
+notions, there was no fount of honour, presumed to appoint
+procurators for the special purpose of making knights. Florence,
+Siena, and Arezzo, after this fashion gave the golden spurs to men
+who were enrolled in the arts of trade or commerce. The usage was
+severely criticised by Germans who visited Italy in the Imperial
+train. Otto Frisingensis, writing the deeds of Frederick Barbarossa,
+speaks with bitterness thereof: 'To the end that they may not lack
+means of subduing their neighbours, they think it no shame to gird
+as knights young men of low birth, or even handicraftsmen in
+despised mechanic arts, the which folk other nations banish like the
+plague from honourable and liberal pursuits.' Such knights, amid the
+chivalry of Europe, were not held in much esteem; nor is it easy to
+see what the cities, which had formally excluded nobles from their
+government, thought to gain by aping institutions which had their
+true value only in a feudal society. We must suppose that the
+Italians were not firmly set enough in their own type to resist an
+enthusiasm which inflamed all Christendom. At the same time they
+were too Italian to comprehend the spirit of the thing they
+borrowed. The knights thus made already contained within themselves
+the germ of those Condottieri who reduced the service of arms to a
+commercial speculation. But they lent splendour to the Commonwealth,
+as may be seen in the grave line of mounted warriors, steel-clad,
+with open visors, who guard the commune of Siena in Ambrogio
+Lorenzetti's fresco. Giovanni Villani, in a passage of his Chronicle
+which deals with the fair state of Florence just before the outbreak
+of the Black and White parties, says the city at that epoch numbered
+'three hundred Cavalieri di Corredo, with many clubs of knights and
+squires, who morning and evening went to meat with many men of the
+court, and gave away on high festivals many robes of vair.' It is
+clear that these citizen knights were leaders of society, and did
+their duty to the commonwealth by adding to its joyous cheer. Upon
+the battlefields of the civil wars, moreover, they sustained at
+their expense the charges of the cavalry.
+
+Siena was a city much given to parade and devoted to the Imperial
+cause, in which the institution of chivalry flourished. Not only did
+the burghers take knighthood from their procurators, but the more
+influential sought it by a special dispensation from the Emperor.
+Thus we hear how Nino Tolomei obtained a Caesarean diploma of
+knighthood for his son Giovanni, and published it with great pomp to
+the people in his palace. This Giovanni, when he afterwards entered
+religion, took the name of Bernard, and founded the Order of Monte
+Oliveto.
+
+Owing to the special conditions of Italian chivalry, it followed
+that the new knight, having won his spurs by no feat of arms upon
+the battlefield, was bounden to display peculiar magnificence in the
+ceremonies of his investiture. His honour was held to be less the
+reward of courage than of liberality. And this feeling is strongly
+expressed in a curious passage of Matteo Villani's Chronicle. 'When
+the Emperor Charles had received the crown in Rome, as we have said,
+he turned towards Siena, and on the 19th day of April arrived at
+that city; and before he entered the same, there met him people of
+the commonwealth with great festivity upon the hour of vespers; in
+the which reception eight burghers, given to display but miserly, to
+the end they might avoid the charges due to knighthood, did cause
+themselves then and there to be made knights by him. And no sooner
+had he passed the gates than many ran to meet him without order in
+their going or provision for the ceremony, and he, being aware of
+the vain and light impulse of that folk, enjoined upon the Patriarch
+to knight them in his name. The Patriarch could not withstay from
+knighting as many as offered themselves; and seeing the thing so
+cheap, very many took the honour, who before that hour had never
+thought of being knighted, nor had made provision of what is
+required from him who seeketh knighthood, but with light impulse did
+cause themselves to be borne upon the arms of those who were around
+the Patriarch; and when they were in the path before him, these
+raised such an one on high, and took his customary cap off, and
+after he had had the cheek-blow which is used in knighting, put a
+gold-fringed cap upon his head, and drew him from the press, and so
+he was a knight. And after this wise were made four-and-thirty on
+that evening, of the noble and lesser folk. And when the Emperor had
+been attended to his lodging, night fell, and all returned home; and
+the new knights without preparation or expense celebrated their
+reception into chivalry with their families forthwith. He who
+reflects with a mind not subject to base avarice upon the coming of
+a new-crowned Emperor into so famous a city, and bethinks him how so
+many noble and rich burghers were promoted to the honour of
+knighthood in their native land, men too by nature fond of pomp,
+without having made any solemn festival in common or in private to
+the fame of chivalry, may judge this people little worthy of the
+distinction they received.'
+
+This passage is interesting partly as an instance of Florentine
+spite against Siena, partly as showing that in Italy great
+munificence was expected from the carpet-knights who had not won
+their spurs with toil, and partly as proving how the German
+Emperors, on their parade expeditions through Italy, debased the
+institutions they were bound to hold in respect. Enfeebled by the
+extirpation of the last great German house which really reigned in
+Italy, the Empire was now no better than a cause of corruption and
+demoralisation to Italian society. The conduct of a man like Charles
+disgusted even the most fervent Ghibellines; and we find Fazio degli
+Uberti flinging scorn upon his avarice and baseness in such lines as
+these:--
+
+  Sappi ch' i' son Italia che ti parlo,
+  Di Lusimburgo _ignominioso Carlo_ ...
+  Veggendo te aver tese tue arti
+  _A tor danari e gir con essi a casa_ ...
+  Tu dunque, Giove, perche 'l Santo uccello
+  Da questo Carlo quarto
+  Imperador non togli e dalle mani
+  _Degli altri, lurchi moderni Germani_
+  _Che d' aquila un allocco n' hanno fatto_?
+
+From a passage in a Sienese chronicle we learn what ceremonies of
+bravery were usual in that city when the new knights understood
+their duty. It was the year 1326. Messer Francesco Bandinelli was
+about to be knighted on the morning of Christmas Day. The friends of
+his house sent peacocks and pheasants by the dozen, and huge pies of
+marchpane, and game in quantities. Wine, meat, and bread were
+distributed to the Franciscan and other convents, and a fair and
+noble court was opened to all comers. Messer Sozzo, father of the
+novice, went, attended by his guests, to hear high mass in the
+cathedral; and there upon the marble pulpit, which the Pisans
+carved, the ceremony was completed. Tommaso di Nello bore his sword
+and cap and spurs before him upon horseback. Messer Sozzo girded the
+sword upon the loins of Messer Francesco, his son aforesaid. Messer
+Pietro Ridolfi, of Rome, who was the first vicar that came to Siena,
+and the Duke of Calabria buckled on his right spur. The Captain of
+the People buckled on his left. The Count Simone da Battifolle then
+undid his sword and placed it in the hands of Messer Giovanni di
+Messer Bartolo de' Fibenzi da Rodi, who handed it to Messer Sozzo,
+the which sword had previously been girded by the father on his son.
+After this follows a list of the illustrious guests, and an
+inventory of the presents made to them by Messer Francesco. We find
+among these 'a robe of silken cloth and gold, skirt, and fur, and
+cap lined with vair, with a silken cord.' The description of the
+many costly dresses is minute; but I find no mention of armour. The
+singers received golden florins, and the players upon instruments
+'good store of money.' A certain Salamone was presented with the
+clothes which the novice doffed before he took the ceremonial bath.
+The whole catalogue concludes with Messer Francesco's furniture and
+outfit. This, besides a large wardrobe of rich clothes and furs,
+contains armour and the trappings for charger and palfrey. The
+_Corte Bandita_, or open house held upon this occasion, lasted for
+eight days, and the charges on the Bandinelli estates must have been
+considerable.
+
+Knights so made were called in Italy _Cavalieri Addobbati_, or _di
+Corredo_, probably because the expense of costly furniture was borne
+by them--_addobbo_ having become a name for decorative trappings,
+and _Corredo_ for equipment. The latter is still in use for a
+bride's trousseau. The former has the same Teutonic root as our verb
+'to dub.' But the Italians recognised three other kinds of knights,
+the _Cavalieri Bagnati_, _Cavalieri di Scudo_, and _Cavalieri
+d'Arme_. Of the four sorts Sacchetti writes in one of his
+novels:--'Knights of the Bath are made with the greatest ceremonies,
+and it behoves them to be bathed and washed of all impurity. Knights
+of Equipment are those who take the order with a mantle of dark
+green and the gilded garland. Knights of the Shield are such as are
+made knights by commonwealths or princes, or go to investiture
+armed, and with the casque upon their head. Knights of Arms are
+those who in the opening of a battle, or upon a foughten field, are
+dubbed knights.' These distinctions, however, though concordant with
+feudal chivalry, were not scrupulously maintained in Italy. Messer
+Francesco Bandinelli, for example, was certainly a _Cavaliere di
+Corredo_. Yet he took the bath, as we have seen. Of a truth, the
+Italians selected those picturesque elements of chivalry which lent
+themselves to pageant and parade. The sterner intention of the
+institution, and the symbolic meaning of its various ceremonies,
+were neglected by them.
+
+In the foregoing passages, which serve as a lengthy preamble to
+Folgore's five sonnets, I have endeavoured to draw illustrations
+from the history of Siena, because Folgore represents Sienese
+society at the height of mediaeval culture. In the first of the
+series he describes the preparation made by the aspirant after
+knighthood. The noble youth is so bent on doing honour to the order
+of chivalry, that he raises money by mortgage to furnish forth the
+banquets and the presents due upon the occasion of his institution.
+He has made provision also of equipment for himself and all his
+train. It will be noticed that Folgore dwells only on the fair and
+joyous aspect of the ceremony. The religious enthusiasm of
+knighthood has disappeared, and already, in the first decade of the
+fourteenth century, we find the spirit of Jehan de Saintre prevalent
+in Italy. The word _donzello_, derived from the Latin _domicellus_,
+I have translated _squire_, because the donzel was a youth of gentle
+birth awaiting knighthood.
+
+  This morn a young squire shall be made a knight;
+    hereof he fain would be right worthy found,
+    And therefore pledgeth lands and castles round
+    To furnish all that fits a man of might.
+  Meat, bread and wine he gives to many a wight;
+    Capons and pheasants on his board abound,
+    Where serving men and pages march around;
+    Choice chambers, torches, and wax candle light.
+  Barbed steeds, a multitude, are in his thought,
+    Mailed men at arms and noble company,
+    Spears, pennants, housing cloths, bells richly wrought.
+  Musicians following with great barony
+    And jesters through the land his state have brought,
+    With dames and damsels whereso rideth he.
+
+The subject having thus been introduced, Folgore treats the
+ceremonies of investiture by an allegorical method, which is quite
+consistent with his own preference of images to ideas. Each of the
+four following sonnets presents a picture to the mind, admirably
+fitted for artistic handling. We may imagine them to ourselves
+wrought in arras for a sumptuous chamber. The first treats of the
+bath, in which, as we have seen already from Sacchetti's note, the
+aspirant after knighthood puts aside all vice, and consecrates
+himself anew. Prodezza, or Prowess, must behold him nude from head
+to foot, in order to assure herself that the neophyte bears no
+blemish; and this inspection is an allegory of internal wholeness.
+
+  Lo Prowess, who despoileth him straightway,
+    And saith: 'Friend, now beseems it thee to strip;
+    For I will see men naked, thigh and hip,
+    And thou my will must know and eke obey;
+  And leave what was thy wont until this day,
+    And for new toil, new sweat, thy strength equip;
+    This do, and thou shalt join my fellowship,
+    If of fair deeds thou tire not nor cry nay.'
+  And when she sees his comely body bare,
+    Forthwith within her arms she him doth take,
+    And saith: 'These limbs thou yieldest to my prayer;
+  I do accept thee, and this gift thee make,
+    So that thy deeds may shine for ever fair;
+    My lips shall never more thy praise forsake.'
+
+After courage, the next virtue of the knightly character is
+gentleness or modesty, called by the Italians humility. It is this
+quality which makes a strong man pleasing to the world, and wins him
+favour. Folgore's sonnet enables us to understand the motto of the
+great Borromeo family--_Humilitas_, in Gothic letters underneath the
+coronet upon their princely palace fronts.
+
+  Humility to him doth gently go,
+    And saith: 'I would in no wise weary thee;
+    Yet must I cleanse and wash thee thoroughly,
+    And I will make thee whiter than the snow.
+  Hear what I tell thee in few words, for so
+    Fain am I of thy heart to hold the key;
+    Now must thou sail henceforward after me;
+    And I will guide thee as myself do go.
+  But one thing would I have thee straightway leave;
+    Well knowest thou mine enemy is pride;
+    Let her no more unto thy spirit cleave:
+  So leal a friend with thee will I abide
+    That favour from all folk thou shalt receive;
+    This grace hath he who keepeth on my side.'
+
+The novice has now bathed, approved himself to the searching eyes of
+Prowess, and been accepted by Humility. After the bath, it was
+customary for him to spend a night in vigil; and this among the
+Teutons should have taken place in church, alone before the altar.
+But the Italian poet, after his custom, gives a suave turn to the
+severe discipline. His donzel passes the night in bed, attended by
+Discretion, or the virtue of reflection. She provides fair
+entertainment for the hours of vigil, and leaves him at the morning
+with good counsel. It is not for nothing that he seeks knighthood,
+and it behoves him to be careful of his goings. The last three lines
+of the sonnet are the gravest of the series, showing that something
+of true chivalrous feeling survived even among the Cavalieri di
+Corredo of Tuscany.
+
+  Then did Discretion to the squire draw near,
+    And drieth him with a fair cloth and clean,
+    And straightway putteth him the sheets between,
+    Silk, linen, counterpane, and minevere.
+  Think now of this! Until the day was clear,
+    With songs and music and delight the queen,
+    And with new knights, fair fellows well-beseen,
+    To make him perfect, gave him goodly cheer.
+  Then saith she: 'Rise forthwith, for now 'tis due,
+    Thou shouldst be born into the world again;
+    Keep well the order thou dost take in view.'
+  Unfathomable thoughts with him remain
+    Of that great bond he may no more eschew,
+    Nor can he say, 'I'll hide me from this chain.'
+
+The vigil is over. The mind of the novice is prepared for his new
+duties. The morning of his reception into chivalry has arrived. It
+is therefore fitting that grave thoughts should be abandoned; and
+seeing that not only prowess, humility, and discretion are the
+virtues of a knight, but that he should also be blithe and debonair,
+Gladness comes to raise him from his bed and equip him for the
+ceremony of institution.
+
+  Comes Blithesomeness with mirth and merriment,
+    All decked in flowers she seemeth a rose-tree;
+    Of linen, silk, cloth, fur, now beareth she
+    To the new knight a rich habiliment;
+  Head-gear and cap and garland flower-besprent,
+    So brave they were May-bloom he seemed to be;
+    With such a rout, so many and such glee,
+    That the floor shook. Then to her work she went;
+  And stood him on his feet in hose and shoon;
+    And purse and gilded girdle 'neath the fur
+    That drapes his goodly limbs, she buckles on;
+  Then bids the singers and sweet music stir,
+    And showeth him to ladies for a boon
+    And all who in that following went with her.
+
+At this point the poem is abruptly broken. The manuscript from which
+these sonnets are taken states they are a fragment. Had the
+remaining twelve been preserved to us, we should probably have
+possessed a series of pictures in which the procession to church
+would have been portrayed, the investiture with the sword, the
+accolade, the buckling on of the spurs, and the concluding sports
+and banquets. It is very much to be regretted that so interesting,
+so beautiful, and so unique a monument of Italian chivalry survives
+thus mutilated. But students of art have to arm themselves
+continually with patience, repressing the sad thoughts engendered in
+them by the spectacle of time's unconscious injuries.
+
+It is certain that Folgore would have written at least one sonnet on
+the quality of courtesy, which in that age, as we have learned from
+Matteo Villani, identified itself in the Italian mind with
+liberality. This identification marks a certain degradation of the
+chivalrous ideal, which is characteristic of Italian manners. One of
+Folgore's miscellaneous sonnets shows how sorely he felt the
+disappearance of this quality from the midst of a society bent daily
+more and more upon material aims. It reminds us of the lamentable
+outcries uttered by the later poets of the fourteenth century,
+Sacchetti, Boccaccio, Uberti, and others of less fame, over the
+decline of their age.
+
+  Courtesy! Courtesy! Courtesy! I call:
+    But from no quarter comes there a reply.
+    They who should show her, hide her; wherefore I
+    And whoso needs her, ill must us befall.
+  Greed with his hook hath ta'en men one and all,
+    And murdered every grace that dumb doth lie:
+    Whence, if I grieve, I know the reason why;
+    From you, great men, to God I make my call:
+  For you my mother Courtesy have cast
+    So low beneath your feet she there must bleed;
+    Your gold remains, but you're not made to last:
+  Of Eve and Adam we are all the seed:
+    Able to give and spend, you hold wealth fast:
+    Ill is the nature that rears such a breed!
+
+Folgore was not only a poet of occasion and compliment, but a
+political writer, who fully entertained the bitter feeling of the
+Guelphs against their Ghibelline opponents.
+
+Two of his sonnets addressed to the Guelphs have been translated by
+Mr. Rossetti. In order to complete the list I have made free
+versions of two others in which he criticised the weakness of his
+own friends. The first is addressed, in the insolent impiety of
+rage, to God:--
+
+  I praise thee not, O God, nor give thee glory,
+    Nor yield thee any thanks, nor bow the knee,
+    Nor pay thee service; for this irketh me
+    More than the souls to stand in purgatory;
+  Since thou hast made us Guelphs a jest and story
+    Unto the Ghibellines for all to see:
+    And if Uguccion claimed tax of thee,
+    Thou'dst pay it without interrogatory.
+  Ah, well I wot they know thee! and have stolen
+    St. Martin from thee, Altopascio,
+    St. Michael, and the treasure thou hast lost;
+  And thou that rotten rabble so hast swollen
+    That pride now counts for tribute; even so
+    Thou'st made their heart stone-hard to thine own cost.
+
+About the meaning of some lines in this sonnet I am not clear. But
+the feeling and the general drift of it are manifest. The second is
+a satire on the feebleness and effeminacy of the Pisans.
+
+  Ye are more silky-sleek than ermines are,
+    Ye Pisan counts, knights, damozels, and squires,
+    Who think by combing out your hair like wires
+    To drive the men of Florence from their car.
+  Ye make the Ghibellines free near and far,
+    Here, there, in cities, castles, huts, and byres,
+    Seeing how gallant in your brave attires,
+    How bold you look, true paladins of war.
+  Stout-hearted are ye as a hare in chase,
+    To meet the sails of Genoa on the sea;
+    And men of Lucca never saw your face.
+  Dogs with a bone for courtesy are ye:
+    Could Folgore but gain a special grace,
+    He'd have you banded 'gainst all men that be.
+
+Among the sonnets not translated by Mr. Rossetti two by Folgore
+remain, which may be classified with the not least considerable
+contributions to Italian gnomic poetry in an age when literature
+easily assumed a didactic tone. The first has for its subject the
+importance of discernment and discrimination. It is written on the
+wisdom of what the ancient Greeks called [Greek: Kairos], or the
+right occasion in all human conduct.
+
+  Dear friend, not every herb puts forth a flower;
+    Nor every flower that blossoms fruit doth bear;
+    Nor hath each spoken word a virtue rare;
+    Nor every stone in earth its healing power:
+  This thing is good when mellow, that when sour;
+    One seems to grieve, within doth rest from care;
+    Not every torch is brave that flaunts in air;
+    There is what dead doth seem, yet flame doth shower.
+  Wherefore it ill behoveth a wise man
+    His truss of every grass that grows to bind,
+    Or pile his back with every stone he can,
+  Or counsel from each word to seek to find,
+    Or take his walks abroad with Dick and Dan:
+    Not without cause I'm moved to speak my mind.
+
+The second condemns those men of light impulse who, as Dante put it,
+discoursing on the same theme, 'subject reason to inclination.'[1]
+
+  What time desire hath o'er the soul such sway
+    That reason finds nor place nor puissance here,
+    Men oft do laugh at what should claim a tear,
+    And over grievous dole are seeming gay.
+  He sure would travel far from sense astray
+    Who should take frigid ice for fire; and near
+    Unto this plight are those who make glad cheer
+    For what should rather cause their soul dismay.
+  But more at heart might he feel heavy pain
+    Who made his reason subject to mere will,
+    And followed wandering impulse without rein;
+  Seeing no lordship is so rich as still
+    One's upright self unswerving to sustain,
+    To follow worth, to flee things vain and ill.
+
+The sonnets translated by me in this essay, taken together with
+those already published by Mr. Rossetti, put the English reader in
+possession of all that passes for the work of Folgore da San
+Gemignano.
+
+    [1] The line in Dante runs:
+
+         'Che la ragion sommettono al talento.'
+
+    In Folgore's sonnet we read:
+
+         'Chi sommette rason a volontade.'
+
+    On the supposition that Folgore wrote in the second decade
+    of the fourteenth century, it is not impossible that he
+    may have had knowledge of this line from the fifth canto
+    of the _Inferno_.
+
+Since these words were written, England has lost the poet-painter,
+to complete whose work upon the sonnet-writer of mediaeval Siena I
+attempted the translations in this essay. One who has trodden the
+same path as Rossetti, at however a noticeable interval, and has
+attempted to present in English verse the works of great Italian
+singers, doing inadequately for Michelangelo and Campanella what he
+did supremely well for Dante, may here perhaps be allowed to lay the
+tribute of reverent recognition at his tomb.
+
+
+
+
+_THOUGHTS IN ITALY ABOUT CHRISTMAS_
+
+
+What is the meaning of our English Christmas? What makes it seem so
+truly Northern, national, and homely, that we do not like to keep
+the feast upon a foreign shore? These questions grew upon me as I
+stood one Advent afternoon beneath the Dome of Florence. A priest
+was thundering from the pulpit against French scepticism, and
+exalting the miracle of the Incarnation. Through the whole dim
+church blazed altar candles. Crowds of men and women knelt or sat
+about the transepts, murmuring their prayers of preparation for the
+festival. At the door were pedlars selling little books, in which
+were printed the offices for Christmas-tide, with stories of S.
+Felix and S. Catherine, whose devotion to the infant Christ had
+wrought them weal, and promises of the remission of four purgatorial
+centuries to those who zealously observed the service of the Church
+at this most holy time. I knew that the people of Florence were
+preparing for Christmas in their own way. But it was not our way. It
+happened that outside the church the climate seemed as wintry as our
+own--snowstorms and ice, and wind and chilling fog, suggesting
+Northern cold. But as the palaces of Florence lacked our comfortable
+firesides, and the greetings of friends lacked our hearty handshakes
+and loud good wishes, so there seemed to be a want of the home
+feeling in those Christmas services and customs. Again I asked
+myself, 'What do we mean by Christmas?'
+
+The same thought pursued me as I drove to Rome: by Siena, still and
+brown, uplifted, mid her russet hills and wilderness of rolling
+plain; by Chiusi, with its sepulchral city of a dead and unknown
+people; through the chestnut forests of the Apennines; by Orvieto's
+rock, Viterbo's fountains, and the oak-grown solitudes of the
+Ciminian heights, from which one looks across the broad lake of
+Bolsena and the Roman plain. Brilliant sunlight, like that of a day
+in late September, shone upon the landscape, and I thought--Can this
+be Christmas? Are they bringing mistletoe and holly on the country
+carts into the towns in far-off England? Is it clear and frosty
+there, with the tramp of heels upon the flag, or snowing silently,
+or foggy with a round red sun and cries of warning at the corners of
+the streets?
+
+I reached Rome on Christmas Eve, in time to hear midnight services
+in the Sistine Chapel and S. John Lateran, to breathe the dust of
+decayed shrines, to wonder at doting cardinals begrimed with snuff,
+and to resent the open-mouthed bad taste of my countrymen who made a
+mockery of these palsy-stricken ceremonies. Nine cardinals going to
+sleep, nine train-bearers talking scandal, twenty huge, handsome
+Switzers in the dress devised by Michelangelo, some ushers, a choir
+caged off by gilded railings, the insolence and eagerness of
+polyglot tourists, plenty of wax candles dripping on people's heads,
+and a continual nasal drone proceeding from the gilded cage, out of
+which were caught at intervals these words, and these only,--'Saecula
+saeculorum, amen.' Such was the celebrated Sistine service. The
+chapel blazed with light, and very strange did Michelangelo's Last
+Judgment, his Sibyls, and his Prophets, appear upon the roof and
+wall above this motley and unmeaning crowd.
+
+Next morning I put on my dress-clothes and white tie, and repaired,
+with groups of Englishmen similarly attired, and of Englishwomen in
+black crape--the regulation costume--to S. Peter's. It was a
+glorious and cloudless morning; sunbeams streamed in columns from
+the southern windows, falling on the vast space full of soldiers and
+a mingled mass of every kind of people. Up the nave stood double
+files of the Pontifical guard. Monks and nuns mixed with the Swiss
+cuirassiers and halberds. Contadini crowded round the sacred images,
+and especially round the toe of S. Peter. I saw many mothers lift
+their swaddled babies up to kiss it. Valets of cardinals, with the
+invariable red umbrellas, hung about side chapels and sacristies.
+Purple-mantled monsignori, like emperor butterflies, floated down
+the aisles from sunlight into shadow. Movement, colour, and the stir
+of expectation, made the church alive. We showed our dress-clothes
+to the guard, were admitted within their ranks, and solemnly walked
+up toward the dome. There under its broad canopy stood the altar,
+glittering with gold and candles. The choir was carpeted and hung
+with scarlet. Two magnificent thrones rose ready for the Pope:
+guards of honour, soldiers, attaches, and the elite of the residents
+and visitors in Rome, were scattered in groups picturesquely varied
+by ecclesiastics of all orders and degrees. At ten a stirring took
+place near the great west door. It opened, and we saw the procession
+of the Pope and his cardinals. Before him marched the singers and
+the blowers of the silver trumpets, making the most liquid melody.
+Then came his Cap of Maintenance, and three tiaras; then a company
+of mitred priests; next the cardinals in scarlet; and last, aloft
+beneath a canopy, upon the shoulders of men, and flanked by the
+mystic fans, advanced the Pope himself, swaying to and fro like a
+Lama, or an Aztec king. Still the trumpets blew most silverly, and
+still the people knelt; and as he came, we knelt and had his
+blessing. Then he took his state and received homage. After this the
+choir began to sing a mass of Palestrina's, and the deacons robed
+the Pope. Marvellous putting on and taking off of robes and tiaras
+and mitres ensued, during which there was much bowing and praying
+and burning of incense. At last, when he had reached the highest
+stage of sacrificial sanctity, he proceeded to the altar, waited on
+by cardinals and bishops. Having censed it carefully, he took a
+higher throne and divested himself of part of his robes. Then the
+mass went on in earnest, till the moment of consecration, when it
+paused, the Pope descended from his throne, passed down the choir,
+and reached the altar. Every one knelt; the shrill bell tinkled; the
+silver trumpets blew; the air became sick and heavy with incense, so
+that sun and candle light swooned in an atmosphere of odorous
+cloud-wreaths. The whole church trembled, hearing the strange subtle
+music vibrate in the dome, and seeing the Pope with his own hands
+lift Christ's body from the altar and present it to the people. An
+old parish priest, pilgrim from some valley of the Apennines, who
+knelt beside me, cried and quivered with excess of adoration. The
+great tombs around, the sculptured saints and angels, the dome, the
+volumes of light and incense and unfamiliar melody, the hierarchy
+ministrant, the white and central figure of the Pope, the
+multitude--made up an overpowering scene. What followed was
+comparatively tedious. My mind again went back to England, and I
+thought of Christmas services beginning in all village churches and
+all cathedrals throughout the land--their old familiar hymn, their
+anthem of Handel, their trite and sleepy sermons. How different the
+two feasts are--Christmas in Rome, Christmas in England--Italy and
+the North--the spirit of Latin and the spirit of Teutonic
+Christianity.
+
+What, then, constitutes the essence of our Christmas as different
+from that of more Southern nations? In their origin they are the
+same. The stable of Bethlehem, the star-led kings, the shepherds,
+and the angels--all the beautiful story, in fact, which S. Luke
+alone of the Evangelists has preserved for us--are what the whole
+Christian world owes to the religious feeling of the Hebrews. The
+first and second chapters of S. Luke are most important in the
+history of Christian mythology and art. They are far from containing
+the whole of what we mean by Christmas; but the religious poetry
+which gathers round that season must be sought upon their pages.
+Angels, ever since the Exodus, played a first part in the visions of
+the Hebrew prophets and in the lives of their heroes. We know not
+what reminiscences of old Egyptian genii, what strange shadows of
+the winged beasts of Persia, flitted through their dreams. In the
+desert, or under the boundless sky of Babylon, these shapes became
+no less distinct than the precise outlines of Oriental scenery. They
+incarnated the vivid thoughts and intense longings of the prophets,
+who gradually came to give them human forms and titles. We hear of
+them by name, as servants and attendants upon God, as guardians of
+nations, and patrons of great men. To the Hebrew mind the whole
+unseen world was full of spirits, active, strong, and swift of
+flight, of various aspect, and with power of speech. It is hard to
+imagine what the first Jewish disciples and the early Greek and
+Roman converts thought of these great beings. To us, the hierarchies
+of Dionysius, the services of the Church, the poetry of Dante and
+Milton, and the forms of art, have made them quite familiar.
+Northern nations have appropriated the Angels, and invested them
+with attributes alien to their Oriental origin. They fly through our
+pine-forests, and the gloom of cloud or storm; they ride upon our
+clanging bells, and gather in swift squadrons among the arches of
+Gothic cathedrals; we see them making light in the cavernous depth
+of woods, where sun or moon beams rarely pierce, and ministering to
+the wounded or the weary; they bear aloft the censers of the mass;
+they sing in the anthems of choristers, and live in strains of
+poetry and music; our churches bear their names; we call our
+children by their titles; we love them as our guardians, and the
+whole unseen world is made a home to us by their imagined presence.
+All these things are the growth of time and the work of races whose
+myth-making imagination is more artistic than that of the Hebrews.
+Yet this rich legacy of romance is bound up in the second chapter of
+S. Luke; and it is to him we must give thanks when at Christmas-tide
+we read of the shepherds and the angels in English words more
+beautiful than his own Greek.
+
+The angels in the stable of Bethlehem, the kings who came from the
+far East, and the adoring shepherds, are the gift of Hebrew legend
+and of the Greek physician Luke to Christmas. How these strange and
+splendid incidents affect modern fancy remains for us to examine; at
+present we must ask, What did the Romans give to Christmas? The
+customs of the Christian religion, like everything that belongs to
+the modern world, have nothing pure and simple in their nature. They
+are the growth of long ages, and of widely different systems, parts
+of which have been fused into one living whole. In this respect they
+resemble our language, our blood, our literature, and our modes of
+thought and feeling. We find Christianity in one sense wholly
+original; in another sense composed of old materials; in both senses
+universal and cosmopolitan. The Roman element in Christmas is a
+remarkable instance of this acquisitive power of Christianity. The
+celebration of the festival takes place at the same time as that of
+the Pagan Saturnalia; and from the old customs of that holiday,
+Christmas absorbed much that was consistent with the spirit of the
+new religion. During the Saturnalia the world enjoyed, in thought at
+least, a perfect freedom. Men who had gone to bed as slaves, rose
+their own masters. From the _ergastula_ and dismal sunless cages
+they went forth to ramble in the streets and fields. Liberty of
+speech was given them, and they might satirise those vices of their
+lords to which, on other days, they had to minister. Rome on this
+day, by a strange negation of logic, which we might almost call a
+prompting of blind conscience, negatived the philosophic dictum that
+barbarians were by law of nature slaves, and acknowledged the higher
+principle of equality. The Saturnalia stood out from the whole year
+as a protest in favour of universal brotherhood, and the right that
+all men share alike to enjoy life after their own fashion, within
+the bounds that nature has assigned them. We do not know how far the
+Stoic school, which was so strong in Rome, and had so many points of
+contact with the Christians, may have connected its own theories of
+equality with this old custom of the Saturnalia. But it is possible
+that the fellowship of human beings, and the temporary abandonment
+of class prerogatives, became a part of Christmas through the habit
+of the Saturnalia. We are perhaps practising a Roman virtue to this
+day when at Christmas-time our hand is liberal, and we think it
+wrong that the poorest wretch should fail to feel the pleasure of
+the day.
+
+Of course Christianity inspired the freedom of the Saturnalia with a
+higher meaning. The mystery of the Incarnation, or the deification
+of human nature, put an end to slavery through all the year, as well
+as on this single day. What had been a kind of aimless licence
+became the most ennobling principle by which men are exalted to a
+state of self-respect and mutual reverence. Still in the Saturnalia
+was found, ready-made, an easy symbol of unselfish enjoyment. It is,
+however, dangerous to push speculations of this kind to the very
+verge of possibility.
+
+The early Roman Christians probably kept Christmas with no special
+ceremonies. Christ was as yet too close to them. He had not become
+the glorious creature of their fancy, but was partly an historic
+being, partly confused in their imagination with reminiscences of
+Pagan deities. As the Good Shepherd, and as Orpheus, we find him
+painted in the Catacombs; and those who thought of him as God, loved
+to dwell upon his risen greatness more than on the idyll of his
+birth. To them his entry upon earth seemed less a subject of
+rejoicing than his opening of the heavens; they suffered, and looked
+forward to a future happiness; they would not seem to make this
+world permanent by sharing its gladness with the Heathens. Theirs,
+in truth, was a religion of hope and patience, not of triumphant
+recollection or of present joyfulness.
+
+The Northern converts of the early Church added more to the peculiar
+character of our Christmas. Who can tell what Pagan rites were half
+sanctified by their association with that season, or how much of our
+cheerfulness belonged to Heathen orgies and the banquets of grim
+warlike gods? Certainly nothing strikes one more in reading
+Scandinavian poetry, than the strange mixture of Pagan and Christian
+sentiments which it presents. For though the missionaries of the
+Church did all they could to wean away the minds of men from their
+old superstitions; yet, wiser than their modern followers, they saw
+that some things might remain untouched, and that even the great
+outlines of the Christian faith might be adapted to the habits of
+the people whom they studied to convert. Thus, on the one hand, they
+destroyed the old temples one by one, and called the idols by the
+name of devils, and strove to obliterate the songs which sang great
+deeds of bloody gods and heroes; while, on the other, they taught
+the Northern sea-kings that Jesus was a Prince surrounded by twelve
+dukes, who conquered all the world. Besides, they left the days of
+the week to their old patrons. It is certain that the imagination of
+the people preserved more of heathendom than even such missionaries
+could approve; mixing up the deeds of the Christian saints with old
+heroic legends; seeing Balder's beauty in Christ and the strength of
+Thor in Samson; attributing magic to S. John; swearing, as of old,
+bloody oaths in God's name, over the gilded boar's-head; burning the
+yule-log, and cutting sacred boughs to grace their new-built
+churches.
+
+The songs of choirs and sound of holy bells, and superstitious
+reverence for the mass, began to tell upon the people; and soon the
+echo of their old religion only swelled upon the ear at intervals,
+attaching itself to times of more than usual sanctity. Christmas was
+one of these times, and the old faith threw around its celebration a
+fantastic light. Many customs of the genial Pagan life remained;
+they seemed harmless when the sense of joy was Christian. The
+Druid's mistletoe graced the church porches of England and of
+France, and no blood lingered on its berries. Christmas thus became
+a time of extraordinary mystery. The people loved it as connecting
+their old life with the new religion, perhaps unconsciously, though
+every one might feel that Christmas was no common Christian feast.
+On its eve strange wonders happened: the thorn that sprang at
+Glastonbury from the sacred crown which Joseph brought with him from
+Palestine, when Avalon was still an island, blossomed on that day.
+The Cornish miners seemed to hear the sound of singing men arise
+from submerged churches by the shore, and others said that bells,
+beneath the ground where villages had been, chimed yearly on that
+eve. No evil thing had power, as Marcellus in 'Hamlet' tells us, and
+the bird of dawning crowed the whole night through. One might
+multiply folklore about the sanctity of Christmas, but enough has
+been said to show that round it lingered long the legendary spirit
+of old Paganism. It is not to Jews, or Greeks, or Romans only that
+we owe our ancient Christmas fancies, but also to those half-heathen
+ancestors who lovingly looked back to Odin's days, and held the old
+while they embraced the new.
+
+Let us imagine Christmas Day in a mediaeval town of Northern England.
+The cathedral is only partly finished. Its nave and transepts are
+the work of Norman architects, but the choir has been destroyed in
+order to be rebuilt by more graceful designers and more skilful
+hands. The old city is full of craftsmen, assembled to complete the
+church. Some have come as a religious duty, to work off their tale
+of sins by bodily labour. Some are animated by a love of art--simple
+men, who might have rivalled with the Greeks in ages of more
+cultivation. Others, again, are well-known carvers, brought for hire
+from distant towns and countries beyond the sea. But to-day, and for
+some days past, the sound of hammer and chisel has been silent in
+the choir. Monks have bustled about the nave, dressing it up with
+holly-boughs and bushes of yew, and preparing a stage for the sacred
+play they are going to exhibit on the feast day. Christmas is not
+like Corpus Christi, and now the market-place stands inches deep in
+snow, so that the Miracles must be enacted beneath a roof instead of
+in the open air. And what place so appropriate as the cathedral,
+where poor people may have warmth and shelter while they see the
+show? Besides, the gloomy old church, with its windows darkened by
+the falling snow, lends itself to candlelight effects that will
+enhance the splendour of the scene. Everything is ready. The incense
+of morning mass yet lingers round the altar. The voice of the friar
+who told the people from the pulpit the story of Christ's birth, has
+hardly ceased to echo. Time has just been given for a mid-day
+dinner, and for the shepherds and farm lads to troop in from the
+country-side. The monks are ready at the wooden stage to draw its
+curtain, and all the nave is full of eager faces. There you may see
+the smith and carpenter, the butcher's wife, the country priest, and
+the grey cowled friar. Scores of workmen, whose home the cathedral
+for the time is made, are also here, and you may know the artists by
+their thoughtful foreheads and keen eyes. That young monk carved
+Madonna and her Son above the southern porch. Beside him stands the
+master mason, whose strong arms have hewn gigantic images of
+prophets and apostles for the pinnacles outside the choir; and the
+little man with cunning eyes between the two is he who cuts such
+quaint hobgoblins for the gargoyles. He has a vein of satire in him,
+and his humour overflows into the stone. Many and many a grim beast
+and hideous head has he hidden among vine-leaves and trellis-work
+upon the porches. Those who know him well are loth to anger him, for
+fear their sons and sons' sons should laugh at them for ever
+caricatured in solid stone.
+
+Hark! there sounds the bell. The curtain is drawn, and the candles
+blaze brightly round the wooden stage. What is this first scene? We
+have God in Heaven, dressed like a Pope with triple crown, and
+attended by his court of angels. They sing and toss up censers till
+he lifts his hand and speaks. In a long Latin speech he unfolds the
+order of creation and his will concerning man. At the end of it up
+leaps an ugly buffoon, in goatskin, with rams' horns upon his head.
+Some children begin to cry; but the older people laugh, for this is
+the Devil, the clown and comic character, who talks their common
+tongue, and has no reverence before the very throne of Heaven. He
+asks leave to plague men, and receives it; then, with many a curious
+caper, he goes down to Hell, beneath the stage. The angels sing and
+toss their censers as before, and the first scene closes to a sound
+of organs. The next is more conventional, in spite of some grotesque
+incidents. It represents the Fall; the monks hurry over it quickly,
+as a tedious but necessary prelude to the birth of Christ. That is
+the true Christmas part of the ceremony, and it is understood that
+the best actors and most beautiful dresses are to be reserved for
+it. The builders of the choir in particular are interested in the
+coming scenes, since one of their number has been chosen, for his
+handsome face and tenor voice, to sing the angel's part. He is a
+young fellow of nineteen, but his beard is not yet grown, and long
+hair hangs down upon his shoulders. A chorister of the cathedral,
+his younger brother, will act the Virgin Mary. At last the curtain
+is drawn.
+
+We see a cottage-room, dimly lighted by a lamp, and Mary spinning
+near her bedside. She sings a country air, and goes on working, till
+a rustling noise is heard, more light is thrown upon the stage, and
+a glorious creature, in white raiment, with broad golden wings,
+appears. He bears a lily, and cries,--'Ave Maria, Gratia Plena!' She
+does not answer, but stands confused, with down-dropped eyes and
+timid mien. Gabriel rises from the ground and comforts her, and
+sings aloud his message of glad tidings. Then Mary gathers courage,
+and, kneeling in her turn, thanks God; and when the angel and his
+radiance disappears, she sings the song of the Magnificat clearly
+and simply, in the darkened room. Very soft and silver sounds this
+hymn through the great church. The women kneel, and children are
+hushed as by a lullaby. But some of the hinds and 'prentice lads
+begin to think it rather dull. They are not sorry when the next
+scene opens with a sheepfold and a little camp-fire. Unmistakable
+bleatings issue from the fold, and five or six common fellows are
+sitting round the blazing wood. One might fancy they had stepped
+straight from the church floor to the stage, so natural do they
+look. Besides, they call themselves by common names--Colin, and Tom
+Lie-a-bed, and nimble Dick. Many a round laugh wakes echoes in the
+church when these shepherds stand up, and hold debate about a stolen
+sheep. Tom Lie-a-bed has nothing to remark but that he is very
+sleepy, and does not want to go in search of it to-night; Colin cuts
+jokes, and throws out shrewd suspicions that Dick knows something of
+the matter; but Dick is sly, and keeps them off the scent, although
+a few of his asides reveal to the audience that he is the real
+thief. While they are thus talking, silence falls upon the
+shepherds. Soft music from the church organ breathes, and they
+appear to fall asleep.
+
+The stage is now quite dark, and for a few moments the aisles echo
+only to the dying melody. When, behold, a ray of light is seen, and
+splendour grows around the stage from hidden candles, and in the
+glory Gabriel appears upon a higher platform made to look like
+clouds. The shepherds wake in confusion, striving to shelter their
+eyes from this unwonted brilliancy. But Gabriel waves his lily,
+spreads his great gold wings, and bids good cheer with clarion
+voice. The shepherds fall to worship, and suddenly round Gabriel
+there gathers a choir of angels, and a song of 'Gloria in Excelsis'
+to the sound of a deep organ is heard far off. From distant aisles
+it swells, and seems to come from heaven. Through a long resonant
+fugue the glory flies, and as it ceases with complex conclusion, the
+lights die out, the angels disappear, and Gabriel fades into the
+darkness. Still the shepherds kneel, rustically chanting a carol
+half in Latin, half in English, which begins 'In dulci Jubilo.' The
+people know it well, and when the chorus rises with 'Ubi sunt
+gaudia?' its wild melody is caught by voices up and down the nave.
+This scene makes deep impression upon many hearts; for the beauty of
+Gabriel is rare, and few who see him in his angel's dress would know
+him for the lad who daily carves his lilies and broad water-flags
+about the pillars of the choir. To that simple audience he
+interprets Heaven, and little children will see him in their dreams.
+Dark winter nights and awful forests will be trodden by his feet,
+made musical by his melodious voice, and parted by the rustling of
+his wings. The youth himself may return to-morrow to the workman's
+blouse and chisel, but his memory lives in many minds and may form a
+part of Christmas for the fancy of men as yet unborn.
+
+The next drawing of the curtain shows us the stable of Bethlehem
+crowned by its star. There kneels Mary, and Joseph leans upon his
+staff. The ox and ass are close at hand, and Jesus lies in jewelled
+robes on straw within the manger. To right and left bow the
+shepherds, worshipping in dumb show, while voices from behind chant
+a solemn hymn. In the midst of the melody is heard a flourish of
+trumpets, and heralds step upon the stage, followed by the three
+crowned kings. They have come from the far East, led by the star.
+The song ceases, while drums and fifes and trumpets play a stately
+march. The kings pass by, and do obeisance one by one. Each gives
+some costly gift; each doffs his crown and leaves it at the
+Saviour's feet. Then they retire to a distance and worship in
+silence like the shepherds. Again the angel's song is heard, and
+while it dies away the curtain closes, and the lights are put out.
+
+The play is over, and evening has come. The people must go from the
+warm church into the frozen snow, and crunch their homeward way
+beneath the moon. But in their minds they carry a sense of light and
+music and unearthly loveliness. Not a scene of this day's pageant
+will be lost. It grows within them and creates the poetry of
+Christmas. Nor must we forget the sculptors who listen to the play.
+We spoke of them minutely, because these mysteries sank deep into
+their souls and found a way into their carvings on the cathedral
+walls. The monk who made Madonna by the southern porch, will
+remember Gabriel, and place him bending low in lordly salutation by
+her side. The painted glass of the chapter-house will glow with
+fiery choirs of angels learned by heart that night. And who does not
+know the mocking devils and quaint satyrs that the humorous sculptor
+will carve among his fruits and flowers? Some of the misereres of
+the stalls still bear portraits of the shepherd thief, and of the ox
+and ass who blinked so blindly when the kings, by torchlight,
+brought their dazzling gifts. Truly these old miracle-plays, and the
+carved work of cunning hands that they inspired, are worth to us
+more than all the delicate creations of Italian pencils. Our homely
+Northern churches still retain, for the child who reads their bosses
+and their sculptured fronts, more Christmas poetry than we can find
+in Fra Angelico's devoutness or the liveliness of Giotto. Not that
+Southern artists have done nothing for our Christmas. Cimabue's
+gigantic angels at Assisi, and the radiant seraphs of Raphael or of
+Signorelli, were seen by Milton in his Italian journey. He gazed in
+Romish churches on graceful Nativities, into which Angelico and
+Credi threw their simple souls. How much they tinged his fancy we
+cannot say. But what we know of heavenly hierarchies we later men
+have learned from Milton; and what he saw he spoke, and what he
+spoke in sounding verse lives for us now and sways our reason, and
+controls our fancy, and makes fine art of high theology.
+
+Thus have I attempted rudely to recall a scene of mediaeval
+Christmas. To understand the domestic habits of that age is not so
+easy, though one can fancy how the barons in their halls held
+Christmas, with the boar's head and the jester and the great
+yule-log. On the dais sat lord and lady, waited on by knight and
+squire and page; but down the long hall feasted yeomen and hinds and
+men-at-arms. Little remains to us of those days, and we have outworn
+their jollity. It is really from the Elizabethan poets that our
+sense of old-fashioned festivity arises. They lived at the end of
+one age and the beginning of another. Though born to inaugurate the
+new era, they belonged by right of association and sympathy to the
+period that was fleeting fast away. This enabled them to represent
+the poetry of past and present. Old customs and old states of
+feeling, when they are about to perish, pass into the realm of art.
+For art is like a flower, which consummates the plant and ends its
+growth, while it translates its nature into loveliness. Thus Dante
+and Lorenzetti and Orcagna enshrined mediaeval theology in works of
+imperishable beauty, and Shakspere and his fellows made immortal the
+life and manners that were decaying in their own time. Men do not
+reflect upon their mode of living till they are passing from one
+state to another, and the consciousness of art implies a beginning
+of new things. Let one who wishes to appreciate the ideal of an
+English Christmas read Shakspere's song, 'When icicles hang by the
+wall;' and if he knows some old grey grange, far from the high-road,
+among pastures, with a river flowing near, and cawing rooks in
+elm-trees by the garden-wall, let him place Dick and Joan and Marian
+there.
+
+We have heard so much of pensioners, and barons of beef, and
+yule-logs, and bay, and rosemary, and holly boughs cut upon the
+hillside, and crab-apples bobbing in the wassail bowl, and masques
+and mummers, and dancers on the rushes, that we need not here
+describe a Christmas Eve in olden times. Indeed, this last half of
+the nineteenth century is weary of the worn-out theme. But one
+characteristic of the age of Elizabeth may be mentioned: that is its
+love of music. Fugued melodies, sung by voices without instruments,
+were much in vogue. We call them madrigals, and their half-merry,
+half-melancholy music yet recalls the time when England had her gift
+of art, when she needed not to borrow of Marenzio and Palestrina,
+when her Wilbyes and her Morlands and her Dowlands won the praise of
+Shakspere and the court. We hear the echo of those songs; and in
+some towns at Christmas or the New Year old madrigals still sound in
+praise of Oriana and of Phyllis and the country life. What are
+called 'waits' are but a poor travesty of those well-sung
+Elizabethan carols. We turn in our beds half pitying, half angered
+by harsh voices that quaver senseless ditties in the fog, or by
+tuneless fiddles playing popular airs without propriety or interest.
+
+It is a strange mixture of picturesquely blended elements which the
+Elizabethan age presents. We see it afar off like the meeting of a
+hundred streams that grow into a river. We are sailing on the flood
+long after it has shrunk into a single tide, and the banks are dull
+and tame, and the all-absorbing ocean is before us. Yet sometimes we
+hear a murmur of the distant fountains, and Christmas is a day on
+which for some the many waters of the age of great Elizabeth sound
+clearest.
+
+The age which followed was not poetical. The Puritans restrained
+festivity and art, and hated music. Yet from this period stands out
+the hymn of Milton, written when he was a youth, but bearing promise
+of his later muse. At one time, as we read it, we seem to be looking
+on a picture by some old Italian artist. But no picture can give
+Milton's music or make the 'base of heaven's deep organ blow.' Here
+he touches new associations, and reveals the realm of poetry which
+it remains for later times to traverse. Milton felt the true
+sentiment of Northern Christmas when he opened his poem with the
+'winter wild,' in defiance of historical probability and what the
+French call local colouring. Nothing shows how wholly we people of
+the North have appropriated Christmas, and made it a creature of our
+own imagination, more than this dwelling on winds and snows and
+bitter frosts, so alien from the fragrant nights of Palestine. But
+Milton's hymn is like a symphony, embracing many thoughts and
+periods of varying melody. The music of the seraphim brings to his
+mind the age of gold, and that suggests the judgment and the
+redemption of the world. Satan's kingdom fails, the false gods go
+forth, Apollo leaves his rocky throne, and all the dim Phoenician
+and Egyptian deities, with those that classic fancy fabled, troop
+away like ghosts into the darkness. What a swell of stormy sound is
+in those lines! It recalls the very voice of Pan, which went abroad
+upon the waters when Christ died, and all the utterances of God on
+earth, feigned in Delphian shrines, or truly spoken on the sacred
+hills, were mute for ever.
+
+After Milton came the age which, of all others, is the prosiest in
+our history. We cannot find much novelty of interest added to
+Christmas at this time. But there is one piece of poetry that
+somehow or another seems to belong to the reign of Anne and of the
+Georges--the poetry of bells. Great civic corporations reigned in
+those days; churchwardens tyrannised and were rich; and many a
+goodly chime of bells they hung in our old church-steeples. Let us
+go into the square room of the belfry, where the clock ticks all
+day, and the long ropes hang dangling down, with fur upon their hemp
+for ringers' hands above the socket set for ringers' feet. There we
+may read long lists of gilded names, recording mountainous
+bob-majors, rung a century ago, with special praise to him who
+pulled the tenor-bell, year after year, until he died, and left it
+to his son. The art of bell-ringing is profound, and requires a long
+apprenticeship. Even now, in some old cities, the ringers form a
+guild and mystery. Suppose it to be Christmas Eve in the year 1772.
+It is now a quarter before twelve, and the sexton has unlocked the
+church-gates and set the belfry door ajar. Candles are lighted in
+the room above, and jugs of beer stand ready for the ringers. Up
+they bustle one by one, and listen to the tickings of the clock that
+tells the passing minutes. At last it gives a click; and now they
+throw off coat and waistcoat, strap their girdles tighter round the
+waist, and each holds his rope in readiness. Twelve o'clock strikes,
+and forth across the silent city go the clamorous chimes. The
+steeple rocks and reels, and far away the night is startled. Damp
+turbulent west winds, rushing from the distant sea, and swirling up
+the inland valleys, catch the sound, and toss it to and fro, and
+bear it by gusts and snatches to watchers far away, upon bleak
+moorlands and the brows of woody hills. Is there not something dim
+and strange in the thought of these eight men meeting, in the heart
+of a great city, in the narrow belfry-room, to stir a mighty sound
+that shall announce to listening ears miles, miles away, the birth
+of a new day, and tell to dancers, mourners, students, sleepers, and
+perhaps to dying men, that Christ is born?
+
+Let this association suffice for the time. And of our own Christmas
+so much has been said and sung by better voices, that we may leave
+it to the feelings and the memories of those who read the fireside
+tales of Dickens, and are happy in their homes. The many elements
+which I have endeavoured to recall, mix all of them in the Christmas
+of the present, partly, no doubt, under the form of vague and
+obscure sentiment; partly as time-honoured reminiscences, partly as
+a portion of our own life. But there is one phase of poetry which we
+enjoy more fully than any previous age. That is music. Music is of
+all the arts the youngest, and of all can free herself most readily
+from symbols. A fine piece of music moves before us like a living
+passion, which needs no form or colour, no interpreting
+associations, to convey its strong but indistinct significance. Each
+man there finds his soul revealed to him, and enabled to assume a
+cast of feeling in obedience to the changeful sound. In this manner
+all our Christmas thoughts and emotions have been gathered up for us
+by Handel in his drama of the 'Messiah.' To Englishmen it is almost
+as well known and necessary as the Bible. But only one who has heard
+its pastoral episode performed year after year from childhood in the
+hushed cathedral, where pendent lamps or sconces make the gloom of
+aisle and choir and airy column half intelligible, can invest this
+music with long associations of accumulated awe. To his mind it
+brings a scene at midnight of hills clear in the starlight of the
+East, with white flocks scattered on the down. The breath of winds
+that come and go, the bleating of the sheep, with now and then a
+tinkling bell, and now and then the voice of an awakened shepherd,
+is all that breaks the deep repose. Overhead shimmer the bright
+stars, and low to west lies the moon, not pale and sickly (he
+dreams) as in our North, but golden, full, and bathing distant
+towers and tall aerial palms with floods of light. Such is a child's
+vision, begotten by the music of the symphony; and when he wakes
+from trance at its low silver close, the dark cathedral seems
+glowing with a thousand angel faces, and all the air is tremulous
+with angel wings. Then follow the solitary treble voice and the
+swift chorus.
+
+
+
+
+_SIENA_
+
+
+After leaving the valley of the Arno at Empoli, the railway enters a
+country which rises into earthy hills of no great height, and
+spreads out at intervals into broad tracts of cultivated lowland.
+Geologically speaking, this portion of Tuscany consists of loam and
+sandy deposits, forming the basin between two mountain-ranges--the
+Apennines and the chalk hills of the western coast of Central Italy.
+Seen from the eminence of some old Tuscan turret, this champaign
+country has a stern and arid aspect. The earth is grey and dusty,
+the forms of hill and valley are austere and monotonous; even the
+vegetation seems to sympathise with the uninteresting soil from
+which it springs. A few spare olives cast their shadows on the lower
+slopes; here and there a copse of oakwood and acacia marks the
+course of some small rivulet; rye-fields, grey beneath the wind,
+clothe the hillsides with scanty verdure. Every knoll is crowned
+with a village--brown roofs and white house-fronts clustered
+together on the edge of cliffs, and rising into the campanile or
+antique tower, which tells so many stories of bygone wars and
+decayed civilisations.
+
+Beneath these villages stand groups of stone pines clearly visible
+upon the naked country, cypresses like spires beside the square
+white walls of convent or of villa, patches of dark foliage, showing
+where the ilex and the laurel and the myrtle hide thick tangles of
+rose-trees and jessamines in ancient gardens. Nothing can exceed the
+barren aspect of this country in midwinter: it resembles an
+exaggerated Sussex, without verdure to relieve the rolling lines of
+down, and hill, and valley; beautiful yet, by reason of its frequent
+villages and lucid air and infinitely subtle curves of
+mountain-ridges. But when spring comes, a light and beauty break
+upon this gloomy soil; the whole is covered with a delicate green
+veil of rising crops and fresh foliage, and the immense distances
+which may be seen from every height are blue with cloud-shadows, or
+rosy in the light of sunset.
+
+Of all the towns of Lower Tuscany, none is more celebrated than
+Siena. It stands in the very centre of the district which I have
+attempted to describe, crowning one of its most considerable
+heights, and commanding one of its most extensive plains. As a city
+it is a typical representative of those numerous Italian towns,
+whose origin is buried in remote antiquity, which have formed the
+seat of three civilisations, and which still maintain a vigorous
+vitality upon their ancient soil. Its site is Etruscan, its name is
+Roman, but the town itself owes all its interest and beauty to the
+artists and the statesmen and the warriors of the middle ages. A
+single glance at Siena from one of the slopes on the northern side,
+will show how truly mediaeval is its character. A city wall follows
+the outline of the hill, from which the towers of the cathedral and
+the palace, with other cupolas and red-brick campanili, spring;
+while cypresses and olive-gardens stretch downwards to the plain.
+There is not a single Palladian facade or Renaissance portico to
+interrupt the unity of the effect. Over all, in the distance, rises
+Monte Amiata melting imperceptibly into sky and plain.
+
+The three most striking objects of interest in Siena maintain the
+character of mediaeval individuality by which the town is marked.
+They are the public palace, the cathedral, and the house of S.
+Catherine. The civil life, the arts, and the religious tendencies of
+Italy during the ascendency of mediaeval ideas, are strongly set
+before us here. High above every other building in the town soars
+the straight brick tower of the Palazzo Pubblico, the house of the
+republic, the hearth of civil life within the State. It guards an
+irregular Gothic building in which the old government of Siena used
+to be assembled, but which has now for a long time been converted
+into prisons, courts of law, and showrooms. Let us enter one chamber
+of the Palazzo--the Sala della Pace, where Ambrogio Lorenzetti, the
+greatest, perhaps, of Sienese painters, represented the evils of
+lawlessness and tyranny, and the benefits of peace and justice, in
+three noble allegories. They were executed early in the fourteenth
+century, in the age of allegories and symbolism, when poets and
+painters strove to personify in human shape all thoughts and
+sentiments. The first great fresco represents Peace--the peace of
+the Republic of Siena. Ambrogio has painted the twenty-four
+councillors who formed the Government, standing beneath the thrones
+of Concord, Justice, and Wisdom. From these controlling powers they
+stretch in a long double line to a seated figure, gigantic in size,
+and robed with the ensigns of baronial sovereignty. This figure is
+the State and Majesty of Siena.[1] Around him sit Peace, Fortitude,
+and Prudence, Temperance, Magnanimity, and Justice, inalienable
+assessors of a powerful and righteous lord. Faith, Hope, and
+Charity, the Christian virtues, float like angels in the air above.
+Armed horsemen guard his throne, and captives show that he has laid
+his enemy beneath his feet. Thus the mediaeval artist expressed, by
+painting, his theory of government. The rulers of the State are
+subordinate to the State itself; they stand between the State and
+the great animating principles of wisdom, justice, and concord,
+incarnating the one, and receiving inspiration from the others. The
+pagan qualities of prudence, magnanimity, and courage give stability
+and greatness to good government, while the spirit of Christianity
+must harmonise and rule the whole. Arms, too, are needful to
+maintain by force what right and law demand, and victory in a just
+quarrel proclaims the power and vigour of the commonwealth. On
+another wall Ambrogio has depicted the prosperous city of Siena,
+girt by battlements and moat, with tower and barbican and
+drawbridge, to insure its peace. Through the gates stream
+country-people, bringing the produce of their farms into the town.
+The streets are crowded with men and women intent on business or
+pleasure; craftsmen at their trade, merchants with laden mules, a
+hawking party, hunters scouring the plain, girls dancing, and
+children playing in the open square. A school-master watching his
+class, together with the sculptured figures of Geometry, Astronomy,
+and Philosophy, remind us that education and science flourish under
+the dominion of well-balanced laws. The third fresco exhibits the
+reverse of this fair spectacle. Here Tyranny presides over a scene
+of anarchy and wrong. He is a hideous monster, compounded of all the
+bestial attributes which indicate force, treason, lechery, and fear.
+Avarice and Fraud and Cruelty and War and Fury sit around him. At
+his feet lies Justice, and above are the effigies of Nero,
+Caracalla, and like monsters of ill-regulated power. Not far from
+the castle of Tyranny we see the same town as in the other fresco;
+but its streets are filled with scenes of quarrel, theft, and
+bloodshed. Nor are these allegories merely fanciful. In the middle
+ages the same city might more than once during one lifetime present
+in the vivid colours of reality the two contrasted pictures.[2]
+
+    [1] It is probable that the firm Ghibelline sympathies of
+    the Sienese people for the Empire were allegorised in this
+    figure; so that the fresco represented by form and colour
+    what Dante had expressed in his treatise 'De Monarchia.'
+    Among the virtues who attend him, Peace distinguishes
+    herself by rare and very remarkable beauty. She is dressed
+    in white and crowned with olive; the folds of her drapery,
+    clinging to the delicately modelled limbs beneath,
+    irresistibly suggest a classic statue. So again does the
+    monumental pose of her dignified, reclining, and yet
+    languid figure. It seems not unreasonable to believe that
+    Lorenzetti copied Peace from the antique Venus which
+    belonged to the Sienese, and which in a fit of
+    superstitious malice they subsequently destroyed and
+    buried in Florentine soil.
+
+    [2] Siena, of all Italian cities, was most subject to
+    revolutions. Comines describes it as a city which 'se
+    gouverne plus follement que ville d'Italie.' Varchi calls
+    it 'un guazzabuglio ed una confusione di repubbliche
+    piuttosto che bene ordinata e instituta repubblica.' See
+    my 'Age of the Despots' (_Renaissance in Italy_, Part I.),
+    pp. 141, 554, for some account of the Sienese
+    constitution, and of the feuds and reconciliations of the
+    burghers.
+
+Quitting the Palazzo, and threading narrow streets, paved with brick
+and overshadowed with huge empty palaces, we reach the highest of
+the three hills on which Siena stands, and see before us the Duomo.
+This church is the most purely Gothic of all Italian cathedrals
+designed by national architects. Together with that of Orvieto, it
+stands to show what the unassisted genius of the Italians could
+produce, when under the empire of mediaeval Christianity and before
+the advent of the neopagan spirit. It is built wholly of marble, and
+overlaid, inside and out, with florid ornaments of exquisite beauty.
+There are no flying buttresses, no pinnacles, no deep and fretted
+doorways, such as form the charm of French and English architecture;
+but instead of this, the lines of parti-coloured marbles, the
+scrolls and wreaths of foliage, the mosaics and the frescoes which
+meet the eye in every direction, satisfy our sense of variety,
+producing most agreeable combinations of blending hues and
+harmoniously connected forms. The chief fault which offends against
+our Northern taste is the predominance of horizontal lines, both in
+the construction of the facade, and also in the internal decoration.
+This single fact sufficiently proves that the Italians had never
+seized the true idea of Gothic or aspiring architecture. But,
+allowing for this original defect, we feel that the Cathedral of
+Siena combines solemnity and splendour to a degree almost
+unrivalled. Its dome is another point in which the instinct of
+Italian architects has led them to adhere to the genius of their
+ancestral art rather than to follow the principles of Gothic design.
+The dome is Etruscan and Roman, native to the soil, and only by a
+kind of violence adapted to the character of pointed architecture.
+Yet the builders of Siena have shown what a glorious element of
+beauty might have been added to our Northern cathedrals, had the
+idea of infinity which our ancestors expressed by long continuous
+lines, by complexities of interwoven aisles, and by multitudinous
+aspiring pinnacles, been carried out into vast spaces of aerial
+cupolas, completing and embracing and covering the whole like
+heaven. The Duomo, as it now stands, forms only part of a vast
+design. On entering we are amazed to hear that this church, which
+looks so large, from the beauty of its proportions, the intricacy of
+its ornaments, and the interlacing of its columns, is but the
+transept of the intended building lengthened a little, and
+surmounted by a cupola and campanile.[1] Yet such is the fact. Soon
+after its commencement a plague swept over Italy, nearly depopulated
+Siena, and reduced the town to penury for want of men. The
+cathedral, which, had it been accomplished, would have surpassed all
+Gothic churches south of the Alps, remained a ruin. A fragment of
+the nave still stands, enabling us to judge of its extent. The
+eastern wall joins what was to have been the transept, measuring the
+mighty space which would have been enclosed by marble vaults and
+columns delicately wrought. The sculpture on the eastern door shows
+with what magnificence the Sienese designed to ornament this portion
+of their temple; while the southern facade rears itself aloft above
+the town, like those high arches which testify to the past splendour
+of Glastonbury Abbey; but the sun streams through the broken
+windows, and the walls are encumbered with hovels and stables and
+the refuse of surrounding streets.
+
+    [1] The present church was begun about 1229. In 1321 the
+    burghers fancied it was too small for the fame and
+    splendour of their city. So they decreed a new _ecclesia
+    pulcra, magna, et magnifica_, for which the older but as
+    yet unfinished building was to be the transept.
+
+One most remarkable feature of the internal decoration is a line of
+heads of the Popes carried all round the church above the lower
+arches. Larger than life, white solemn faces they lean, each from
+his separate niche, crowned with the triple tiara, and labelled with
+the name he bore. Their accumulated majesty brings the whole past
+history of the Church into the presence of its living members. A
+bishop walking up the nave of Siena must feel as a Roman felt among
+the waxen images of ancestors renowned in council or in war. Of
+course these portraits are imaginary for the most part; but the
+artists have contrived to vary their features and expression with
+great skill.
+
+Not less peculiar to Siena is the pavement of the cathedral. It is
+inlaid with a kind of _tarsia_ work in stone, setting forth a
+variety of pictures in simple but eminently effective mosaic. Some
+of these compositions are as old as the cathedral; others are the
+work of Beccafumi and his scholars. They represent, in the liberal
+spirit of mediaeval Christianity, the history of the Church before
+the Incarnation. Hermes Trismegistus and the Sibyls meet us at the
+doorway: in the body of the church we find the mighty deeds of the
+old Jewish heroes--of Moses and Samson and Joshua and Judith.
+Independently of the artistic beauty of the designs, of the skill
+with which men and horses are drawn in the most difficult attitudes,
+of the dignity of some single figures, and of the vigour and
+simplicity of the larger compositions, a special interest attaches
+to this pavement in connection with the twelfth canto of the
+'Purgatorio.' Dante cannot have trodden these stones and meditated
+upon their sculptured histories. Yet when we read how he journeyed
+through the plain of Purgatory with eyes intent upon its storied
+floor, how 'morti i morti, e i vivi parean vivi,' how he saw 'Nimrod
+at the foot of his great work, confounded, gazing at the people who
+were proud with him,' we are irresistibly led to think of the Divine
+comedy. The strong and simple outlines of the pavement correspond to
+the few words of the poet. Bending over these pictures and trying to
+learn their lesson, with the thought of Dante in our mind, the tones
+of an organ, singularly sweet and mellow, fall upon our ears, and we
+remember how he heard _Te Deum_ sung within the gateway of
+repentance.
+
+Continuing our walk, we descend the hill on which the Duomo stands,
+and reach a valley lying between the ancient city of Siena and a
+western eminence crowned by the church of San Domenico. In this
+depression there has existed from old time a kind of suburb or
+separate district of the poorer people known by the name of the
+Contrada d' Oca. To the Sienese it has especial interest, for here
+is the birthplace of S. Catherine, the very house in which she
+lived, her father's workshop, and the chapel which has been erected
+in commemoration of her saintly life. Over the doorway is written in
+letters of gold 'Sponsa Christi Katherinae domus.' Inside they show
+the room she occupied, and the stone on which she placed her head to
+sleep; they keep her veil and staff and lantern and enamelled
+vinaigrette, the bag in which her alms were placed, the sackcloth
+that she wore beneath her dress, the crucifix from which she took
+the wounds of Christ. It is impossible to conceive, even after the
+lapse of several centuries, that any of these relics are fictitious.
+Every particular of her life was remembered and recorded with
+scrupulous attention by devoted followers. Her fame was universal
+throughout Italy before her death; and the house from which she went
+forth to preach and heal the sick and comfort plague-stricken
+wretches whom kith and kin had left alone to die, was known and well
+beloved by all her citizens. From the moment of her death it became,
+and has continued to be, the object of superstitious veneration to
+thousands. From the little loggia which runs along one portion of
+its exterior may be seen the campanile and the dome of the
+cathedral; on the other side rises the huge brick church of San
+Domenico, in which she spent the long ecstatic hours that won for
+her the title of Christ's spouse. In a chapel attached to the church
+she watched and prayed, fasting and wrestling with the fiends of a
+disordered fancy. There Christ appeared to her and gave her His own
+heart, there He administered to her the sacrament with His own
+hands, there she assumed the robe of poverty, and gave her Lord the
+silver cross and took from Him the crown of thorns.
+
+To some of us these legends may appear the flimsiest web of fiction:
+to others they may seem quite explicable by the laws of semi-morbid
+psychology; but to Catherine herself, her biographers, and her
+contemporaries, they were not so. The enthusiastic saint and
+reverent people believed firmly in these things; and, after the
+lapse of five centuries, her votaries still kiss the floor and steps
+on which she trod, still say, 'This was the wall on which she leant
+when Christ appeared; this was the corner where she clothed Him,
+naked and shivering like a beggar-boy; here He sustained her with
+angels' food.'
+
+S. Catherine was one of twenty-five children born in wedlock to
+Jacopo and Lapa Benincasa, citizens of Siena. Her father exercised
+the trade of dyer and fuller. In the year of her birth, 1347, Siena
+reached the climax of its power and splendour. It was then that the
+plague of Boccaccio began to rage, which swept off 80,000 citizens,
+and interrupted the building of the great Duomo. In the midst of so
+large a family, and during these troubled times, Catherine grew
+almost unnoticed; but it was not long before she manifested her
+peculiar disposition. At six years old she already saw visions and
+longed for a monastic life: about the same time she used to collect
+her childish companions together and preach to them. As she grew,
+her wishes became stronger; she refused the proposals which her
+parents made that she should marry, and so vexed them by her
+obstinacy that they imposed on her the most servile duties in their
+household. These she patiently fulfilled, pursuing at the same time
+her own vocation with unwearied ardour. She scarcely slept at all,
+and ate no food but vegetables and a little bread, scourged herself,
+wore sackcloth, and became emaciated, weak, and half delirious. At
+length the firmness of her character and the force of her
+hallucinations won the day. Her parents consented to her assuming
+the Dominican robe, and at the age of thirteen she entered the
+monastic life. From this moment till her death we see in her the
+ecstatic, the philanthropist, and the politician combined to a
+remarkable degree. For three whole years she never left her cell
+except to go to church, maintaining an almost unbroken silence. Yet
+when she returned to the world, convinced at last of having won by
+prayer and pain the favour of her Lord, it was to preach to
+infuriated mobs, to toil among men dying of the plague, to execute
+diplomatic negotiations, to harangue the republic of Florence, to
+correspond with queens, and to interpose between kings and popes. In
+the midst of this varied and distracting career she continued to see
+visions and to fast and scourge herself. The domestic virtues and
+the personal wants and wishes of a woman were annihilated in her:
+she lived for the Church, for the poor, and for Christ, whom she
+imagined to be constantly supporting her. At length she died, worn
+out by inward conflicts, by the tension of religious ecstasy, by
+want of food and sleep, and by the excitement of political life. To
+follow her in her public career is not my purpose. It is well known
+how, by the power of her eloquence and the ardour of her piety, she
+succeeded as a mediator between Florence and her native city, and
+between Florence and the Pope; that she travelled to Avignon, and
+there induced Gregory XI. to put an end to the Babylonian captivity
+of the Church by returning to Rome; that she narrowly escaped
+political martyrdom during one of her embassies from Gregory to the
+Florentine republic; that she preached a crusade against the Turks;
+that her last days were clouded with sorrow for the schism which
+then rent the Papacy; and that she aided by her dying words to keep
+Pope Urban on the Papal throne. When we consider her private and
+spiritual life more narrowly, it may well move our amazement to
+think that the intricate politics of Central Italy, the counsels of
+licentious princes and ambitious Popes, were in any measure guided
+and controlled by such a woman. Alone, and aided by nothing but a
+reputation for sanctity, she dared to tell the greatest men in
+Europe of their faults; she wrote in words of well-assured command,
+and they, demoralised, worldly, sceptical, or indifferent as they
+might be, were yet so bound by superstition that they could not
+treat with scorn the voice of an enthusiastic girl.
+
+Absolute disinterestedness, the belief in her own spiritual mission,
+natural genius, and that vast power which then belonged to all
+energetic members of the monastic orders, enabled her to play this
+part. She had no advantages to begin with. The daughter of a
+tradesman overwhelmed with an almost fabulously numerous progeny,
+Catherine grew up uneducated. When her genius had attained maturity,
+she could not even read or write. Her biographer asserts that she
+learned to do so by a miracle. Anyhow, writing became a most potent
+instrument in her hands; and we possess several volumes of her
+epistles, as well as a treatise of mystical theology. To conquer
+self-love as the root of all evil, and to live wholly for others,
+was the cardinal axiom of her morality. She pressed this principle
+to its most rigorous conclusions in practice; never resting day or
+night from some kind of service, and winning by her unselfish love
+the enthusiastic admiration of the people. In the same spirit of
+exalted self-annihilation, she longed for martyrdom, and courted
+death. There was not the smallest personal tie or afterthought of
+interest to restrain her in the course of action which she had
+marked out. Her personal influence seems to have been immense. When
+she began her career of public peacemaker and preacher in Siena,
+Raymond, her biographer, says that whole families devoted to
+_vendetta_ were reconciled, and that civil strifes were quelled by
+her letters and addresses. He had seen more than a thousand people
+flock to hear her speak; the confessionals crowded with penitents,
+smitten by the force of her appeals; and multitudes, unable to catch
+the words which fell from her lips, sustained and animated by the
+light of holiness which beamed from her inspired countenance.[1] She
+was not beautiful, but her face so shone with love, and her
+eloquence was so pathetic in its tenderness, that none could hear or
+look on her without emotion. Her writings contain abundant proofs of
+this peculiar suavity. They are too sweet and unctuous in style to
+suit our modern taste. When dwelling on the mystic love of Christ
+she cries, 'O blood! O fire! O ineffable love!' When interceding
+before the Pope, she prays for 'Pace, pace, pace, babbo mio dolce;
+pace, e non piu guerra.' Yet clear and simple thoughts, profound
+convictions, and stern moral teaching underlie her ecstatic
+exclamations. One prayer which she wrote, and which the people of
+Siena still use, expresses the prevailing spirit of her creed: 'O
+Spirito Santo, o Deita eterna Cristo Amore! vieni nel mio cuore; per
+la tua potenza trailo a Te, mio Dio, e concedemi carita con timore.
+Liberami, o Amore ineffabile, da ogni mal pensiero; riscaldami ed
+infiammami del tuo dolcissimo amore, sicche ogni pena mi sembri
+leggiera. Santo mio Padre e dolce mio Signore, ora aiutami in ogni
+mio ministero. Cristo amore. Cristo amore.' The reiteration of the
+word 'love' is most significant. It was the key-note of her whole
+theology, the mainspring of her life. In no merely figurative sense
+did she regard herself as the spouse of Christ, but dwelt upon the
+bliss, beyond all mortal happiness, which she enjoyed in
+supersensual communion with her Lord. It is easy to understand how
+such ideas might be, and have been, corrupted, when impressed on
+natures no less susceptible, but weaker and less gifted than S.
+Catherine's.
+
+    [1] The part played in Italy by preachers of repentance
+    and peace is among the most characteristic features of
+    Italian history. On this subject see the Appendix to my
+    'Age of the Despots,' _Renaissance in Italy_, Part I.
+
+One incident related by Catherine in a letter to Raymond, her
+confessor and biographer, exhibits the peculiar character of her
+influence in the most striking light. Nicola Tuldo, a citizen of
+Perugia, had been condemned to death for treason in the flower of
+his age. So terribly did the man rebel against his sentence, that he
+cursed God, and refused the consolations of religion. Priests
+visited him in vain; his heart was shut and sealed by the despair of
+leaving life in all the vigour of its prime. Then Catherine came and
+spoke to him: 'whence,' she says, 'he received such comfort that he
+confessed, and made me promise, by the love of God, to stand at the
+block beside him on the day of his execution.' By a few words, by
+the tenderness of her manner, and by the charm which women have, she
+had already touched the heart no priest could soften, and no threat
+of death or judgment terrify into contrition. Nor was this strange.
+In our own days we have seen men open the secrets of their hearts to
+women, after repelling the advances of less touching sympathy.
+Youths, cold and cynical enough among their brethren, have stood
+subdued like little children before her who spoke to them of love
+and faith and penitence and hope. The world has not lost its ladies
+of the race of S. Catherine, beautiful and pure and holy, who have
+suffered and sought peace with tears, and who have been appointed
+ministers of mercy for the worst and hardest of their fellow-men.
+Such saints possess an efficacy even in the imposition of their
+hands; many a devotee, like Tuldo, would more willingly greet death
+if his S. Catherine were by to smile and lay her hands upon his
+head, and cry, 'Go forth, my servant, and fear not!' The chivalrous
+admiration for women mixes with religious awe to form the reverence
+which these saints inspire. Human and heavenly love, chaste and
+ecstatic, constitute the secret of their power. Catherine then
+subdued the spirit of Tuldo and led him to the altar, where he
+received the communion for the first time in his life. His only
+remaining fear was that he might not have strength to face death
+bravely. Therefore he prayed Catherine, 'Stay with me, do not leave
+me; so it shall be well with me, and I shall die contented;' 'and,'
+says the saint, 'he laid his head in the prison on my breast, and I
+said, "Comfort thee, my brother, the block shall soon become thy
+marriage altar, the blood of Christ shall bathe thy sins away, and I
+will stand beside thee."' When the hour came, she went and waited
+for him by the scaffold, meditating on Madonna and Catherine the
+saint of Alexandria. She laid her own neck on the block, and tried
+to picture to herself the pains and ecstasies of martyrdom. In her
+deep thought, time and place became annihilated; she forgot the
+eager crowd, and only prayed for Tuldo's soul and for herself. At
+length he came, walking 'like a gentle lamb,' and Catherine received
+him with the salutation of 'sweet brother.' She placed his head upon
+the block, and laid her hands upon him, and told him of the Lamb of
+God. The last words he uttered were the names of Jesus and of
+Catherine. Then the axe fell, and Catherine beheld his soul borne by
+angels into the regions of eternal love. When she recovered from her
+trance, she held his head within her hands; her dress was saturated
+with his blood, which she could scarcely bear to wash away, so
+deeply did she triumph in the death of him whom she had saved. The
+words of S. Catherine herself deserve to be read. The simplicity,
+freedom from self-consciousness, and fervent faith in the reality of
+all she did and said and saw, which they exhibit, convince us of her
+entire sincerity.
+
+The supernatural element in the life of S. Catherine may be
+explained partly by the mythologising adoration of the people ready
+to find a miracle in every act of her they worshipped--partly by her
+own temperament and modes of life, which inclined her to ecstasy and
+fostered the faculty of seeing visions--partly by a pious
+misconception of the words of Christ and Bible phraseology.
+
+To the first kind belong the wonders which are related of her early
+years, the story of the candle which burnt her veil without injuring
+her person, and the miracles performed by her body after death. Many
+childish incidents were treasured up which, had her life proved
+different, would have been forgotten, or have found their proper
+place among the catalogue of common things. Thus on one occasion,
+after hearing of the hermits of the Thebaid, she took it into her
+head to retire into the wilderness, and chose for her dwelling one
+of the caverns in the sandstone rock which abound in Siena near the
+quarter where her father lived. We merely see in this event a sign
+of her monastic disposition, and a more than usual aptitude for
+realising the ideas presented to her mind. But the old biographers
+relate how one celestial vision urged the childish hermit to forsake
+the world, and another bade her return to the duties of her home.
+
+To the second kind we may refer the frequent communings with Christ
+and with the fathers of the Church, together with the other visions
+to which she frequently laid claim: nor must we omit the stigmata
+which she believed she had received from Christ. Catherine was
+constitutionally inclined to hallucinations. At the age of six,
+before it was probable that a child should have laid claim to
+spiritual gifts which she did not possess, she burst into loud
+weeping because her little brother rudely distracted her attention
+from the brilliant forms of saints and angels which she traced among
+the clouds. Almost all children of a vivid imagination are apt to
+transfer the objects of their fancy to the world without them.
+Goethe walked for hours in his enchanted gardens as a boy, and
+Alfieri tells us how he saw a company of angels in the choristers at
+Asti. Nor did S. Catherine omit any means of cultivating this
+faculty, and of preventing her splendid visions from fading away, as
+they almost always do, beneath the discipline of intellectual
+education and among the distractions of daily life. Believing simply
+in their heavenly origin, and receiving no secular training
+whatsoever, she walked surrounded by a spiritual world, environed,
+as her legend says, by angels. Her habits were calculated to foster
+this disposition: it is related that she took but little sleep,
+scarcely more than two hours at night, and that too on the bare
+ground; she ate nothing but vegetables and the sacred wafer of the
+host, entirely abjuring the use of wine and meat. This diet,
+combined with frequent fasts and severe ascetic discipline,
+depressed her physical forces, and her nervous system was thrown
+into a state of the highest exaltation. Thoughts became things, and
+ideas were projected from her vivid fancy upon the empty air around
+her. It was therefore no wonder that, after spending long hours in
+vigils and meditating always on the thought of Christ, she should
+have seemed to take the sacrament from His hands, to pace the chapel
+in communion with Him, to meet Him in the form of priest and beggar,
+to hear Him speaking to her as a friend. Once when the anguish of
+sin had plagued her with disturbing dreams, Christ came and gave her
+His own heart in exchange for hers. When lost in admiration before
+the cross at Pisa, she saw His five wounds stream with blood--five
+crimson rays smote her, passed into her soul, and left their marks
+upon her hands and feet and side. The light of Christ's glory shone
+round about her, she partook of His martyrdom, and awaking from her
+trance she cried to Raymond, 'Behold! I bear in my body the marks of
+the Lord Jesus!'
+
+This miracle had happened to S. Francis. It was regarded as the sign
+of fellowship with Christ, of worthiness to drink His cup, and to be
+baptised with His baptism. We find the same idea at least in the old
+Latin hymns:
+
+  Fac me plagis vulnerari--
+  Cruce hac inebriari--
+  Fac ut portem Christi mortem,
+  Passionis fac consortem,
+  Et plagas recolere.
+
+These are words from the 'Stabat Mater;' nor did S. Francis and S.
+Catherine do more than carry into the vividness of actual
+hallucination what had been the poetic rapture of many less
+ecstatic, but not less ardent, souls. They desired to be _literally_
+'crucified with Christ;' they were not satisfied with metaphor or
+sentiment, and it seemed to them that their Lord had really
+vouchsafed to them the yearning of their heart. We need not here
+raise the question whether the stigmata had ever been actually
+self-inflicted by delirious saint or hermit: it was not pretended
+that the wounds of S. Catherine were visible during her lifetime.
+After her death the faithful thought that they had seen them on her
+corpse, and they actually appeared in the relics of her hands and
+feet. The pious fraud, if fraud there must have been, should be
+ascribed, not to the saint herself, but to devotees and
+relic-mongers.[1] The order of S. Dominic would not be behind that
+of S. Francis. If the latter boasted of their stigmata, the former
+would be ready to perforate the hand or foot of their dead saint.
+Thus the ecstasies of genius or devotion are brought to earth, and
+rendered vulgar by mistaken piety and the rivalry of sects. The
+people put the most material construction on all tropes and
+metaphors: above the door of S. Catherine's chapel at Siena, for
+example, it is written--
+
+  Haec tenet ara caput Catharinae; corda requiris?
+    Haec imo Christus pectore clausa tenet.
+
+The frequent conversations which she held with S. Dominic and other
+patrons of the Church, and her supernatural marriage, must be
+referred to the same category. Strong faith, and constant
+familiarity with one order of ideas, joined with a creative power of
+fancy, and fostered by physical debility, produced these miraculous
+colloquies. Early in her career, her injured constitution, resenting
+the violence with which it had been forced to serve the ardours of
+her piety, troubled her with foul phantoms, haunting images of sin
+and seductive whisperings, which clearly revealed a morbid condition
+of the nervous system. She was on the verge of insanity. The reality
+of her inspiration and her genius are proved by the force with which
+her human sympathies, and moral dignity, and intellectual vigour
+triumphed over these diseased hallucinations of the cloister, and
+converted them into the instruments for effecting patriotic and
+philanthropic designs. There was nothing savouring of mean
+pretension or imposture in her claim to supernatural enlightenment.
+Whatever we may think of the wisdom of her public policy with regard
+to the Crusades and to the Papal Sovereignty, it is impossible to
+deny that a holy and high object possessed her from the earliest to
+the latest of her life--that she lived for ideas greater than
+self-aggrandisement or the saving of her soul, for the greatest,
+perhaps, which her age presented to an earnest Catholic.
+
+    [1] It is not impossible that the stigmata may have been
+    naturally produced in the person of S. Francis or S.
+    Catherine. There are cases on record in which grave
+    nervous disturbances have resulted in such modifications
+    of the flesh as may have left the traces of wounds in
+    scars and blisters.
+
+The abuses to which the indulgence of temperaments like that of S.
+Catherine must in many cases have given rise, are obvious.
+Hysterical women and half-witted men, without possessing her
+abilities and understanding her objects, beheld unmeaning visions,
+and dreamed childish dreams. Others won the reputation of sanctity
+by obstinate neglect of all the duties of life and of all the
+decencies of personal cleanliness. Every little town in Italy could
+show its saints like the Santa Fina of whom San Gemignano boasts--a
+girl who lay for seven years on a back-board till her mortified
+flesh clung to the wood; or the San Bartolo, who, for hideous
+leprosy, received the title of the Job of Tuscany. Children were
+encouraged in blasphemous pretensions to the special power of
+Heaven, and the nerves of weak women were shaken by revelations in
+which they only half believed. We have ample evidence to prove how
+the trade of miracles is still carried on, and how in the France of
+our days, when intellectual vigour has been separated from old forms
+of faith, such vision-mongering undermines morality, encourages
+ignorance, and saps the force of individuals. But S. Catherine must
+not be confounded with those sickly shams and make-believes. Her
+enthusiasms were real; they were proper to her age; they inspired
+her with unrivalled self-devotion and unwearied energy; they
+connected her with the political and social movements of her
+country.
+
+Many of the supernatural events in S. Catherine's life were founded
+on a too literal acceptation of biblical metaphors. The Canticles,
+perhaps, inspired her with the belief in a mystical marriage. An
+enigmatical sentence of S. Paul's suggested the stigmata. When the
+saint bestowed her garment upon Christ in the form of a beggar and
+gave Him the silver cross of her rosary, she was but realising His
+own words: 'Inasmuch as ye shall do it unto the least of these
+little ones, ye shall do it unto Me.' Charity, according to her
+conception, consisted in giving to Christ. He had first taught this
+duty; He would make it the test of all duty at the last day.
+Catherine was charitable for the love of Christ. She thought less of
+the beggar than of her Lord. How could she do otherwise than see the
+aureole about His forehead, and hear the voice of Him who had
+declared, 'Behold, I am with you, even to the end of the world.'
+Those were times of childlike simplicity when the eye of love was
+still unclouded, when men could see beyond the phantoms of this
+world, and stripping off the accidents of matter, gaze upon the
+spiritual and eternal truths that lie beneath. Heaven lay around
+them in that infancy of faith; nor did they greatly differ from the
+saints and founders of the Church--from Paul, who saw the vision of
+the Lord, or Magdalen, who cried, 'He is risen!' An age accustomed
+to veil thought in symbols, easily reversed the process and
+discerned essential qualities beneath the common or indifferent
+objects of the outer world. It was therefore Christ whom S.
+Christopher carried in the shape of a child; Christ whom Fra
+Angelico's Dominicans received in pilgrim's garb at their convent
+gate; Christ with whom, under a leper's loathsome form, the flower
+of Spanish chivalry was said to have shared his couch.
+
+In all her miracles it will be noticed that S. Catherine showed no
+originality. Her namesake of Alexandria had already been proclaimed
+the spouse of Christ. S. Francis had already received the stigmata;
+her other visions were such as had been granted to all fervent
+mystics; they were the growth of current religious ideas and
+unbounded faith. It is not as an innovator in religious ecstasy, or
+as the creator of a new kind of spiritual poetry, that we admire S.
+Catherine. Her inner life was simply the foundation of her
+character, her visions were a source of strength to her in times of
+trial, or the expression of a more than usually exalted mood; but
+the means by which she moved the hearts of men belonged to that
+which she possessed in common with all leaders of
+mankind--enthusiasm, eloquence, the charm of a gracious nature, and
+the will to do what she designed. She founded no religious order,
+like S. Francis or S. Dominic, her predecessors, or Loyola, her
+successor. Her work was a woman's work--to make peace, to succour
+the afflicted, to strengthen the Church, to purify the hearts of
+those around her; not to rule or organise. When she died she left
+behind her a memory of love more than of power, the fragrance of an
+unselfish and gentle life, the echo of sweet and earnest words. Her
+place is in the heart of the humble; children belong to her
+sisterhood, and the poor crowd her shrine on festivals.
+
+Catherine died at Rome on the 29th of April 1380, in her
+thirty-third year, surrounded by the most faithful of her friends
+and followers; but it was not until 1461 that she received the last
+honour of canonisation from the hands of Pius II., AEneas Sylvius,
+her countryman. AEeneas Sylvius Piccolomini was perhaps the most
+remarkable man that Siena has produced. Like S. Catherine, he was
+one of a large family; twenty of his brothers and sisters perished
+in a plague. The licentiousness of his early life, the astuteness of
+his intellect, and the worldliness of his aims, contrast with the
+singularly disinterested character of the saint on whom he conferred
+the highest honours of the Church. But he accomplished by diplomacy
+and skill what Catherine had begun. If she was instrumental in
+restoring the Popes to Rome, he ended the schism which had clouded
+her last days. She had preached a crusade; he lived to assemble the
+armies of Christendom against the Turks, and died at Ancona, while
+it was still uncertain whether the authority and enthusiasm of a
+pope could steady the wavering counsels and vacillating wills of
+kings and princes. The middle ages were still vital in S. Catherine;
+Pius II. belonged by taste and genius to the new period of
+Renaissance. The hundreds of the poorer Sienese who kneel before S.
+Catherine's shrine prove that her memory is still alive in the
+hearts of her fellow-citizens; while the gorgeous library of the
+cathedral, painted by the hand of Pinturicchio, the sumptuous palace
+and the Loggia del Papa designed by Bernardo Rossellino and Antonio
+Federighi, record the pride and splendour of the greatest of the
+Piccolomini. But honourable as it was for Pius to fill so high a
+place in the annals of his city; to have left it as a poor
+adventurer, to return to it first as bishop, then as pope: to have a
+chamber in its mother church adorned with the pictured history of
+his achievements for a monument, and a triumph of Renaissance
+architecture dedicated to his family, _gentilibus suis_--yet we
+cannot but feel that the better part remains with S. Catherine,
+whose prayer is still whispered by children on their mother's knee,
+and whose relics are kissed daily by the simple and devout.
+
+Some of the chief Italian painters have represented the incidents of
+S. Catherine's life and of her mystical experience. All the pathos
+and beauty which we admire in Sodoma's S. Sebastian at Florence, are
+surpassed by his fresco of S. Catherine receiving the stigmata. This
+is one of several subjects painted by him on the walls of her chapel
+in San Domenico. The tender unction, the sweetness, the languor, and
+the grace which he commanded with such admirable mastery, are all
+combined in the figure of the saint falling exhausted into the arms
+of her attendant nuns. Soft undulating lines rule the composition;
+yet dignity of attitude and feature prevails over mere loveliness.
+Another of Siena's greatest masters, Beccafumi, has treated the same
+subject with less pictorial skill and dramatic effect, but with an
+earnestness and simplicity that are very touching. Colourists always
+liked to introduce the sweeping lines of her white robes into their
+compositions. Fra Bartolommeo, who showed consummate art by
+tempering the masses of white drapery with mellow tones of brown or
+amber, painted one splendid picture of the marriage of S. Catherine,
+and another in which he represents her prostrate in adoration before
+the mystery of the Trinity. His gentle and devout soul sympathised
+with the spirit of the saint. The fervour of her devotion belonged
+to him more truly than the leonine power which he unsuccessfully
+attempted to express in his large figure of S. Mark. Other artists
+have painted the two Catherines together--the princess of
+Alexandria, crowned and robed in purple, bearing her palm of
+martyrdom, beside the nun of Siena, holding in her hand the lantern
+with which she went about by night among the sick. Ambrogio
+Borgognone makes them stand one on each side of Madonna's throne,
+while the infant Christ upon her lap extends His hands to both, in
+token of their marriage.
+
+The traditional type of countenance which may be traced in all these
+pictures is not without a real foundation. Not only does there exist
+at Siena, in the Church of San Domenico, a contemporary portrait of
+S. Catherine, but her head also, which was embalmed immediately
+after death, is still preserved. The skin of the face is fair and
+white, like parchment, and the features have more the air of sleep
+than death. We find in them the breadth and squareness of general
+outline, and the long, even eyebrows which give peculiar calm to the
+expression of her pictures. This relic is shown publicly once a year
+on the 6th of May. That is the Festa of the saint, when a procession
+of priests and acolytes, and pious people holding tapers, and little
+girls dressed out in white, carry a splendid silver image of their
+patroness about the city. Banners and crosses and censers go in
+front; then follows the shrine beneath a canopy: roses and leaves of
+box are scattered on the path. The whole Contrada d'Oca is decked
+out with such finery as the people can muster: red cloths hung from
+the windows, branches and garlands strewn about the doorsteps, with
+brackets for torches on the walls, and altars erected in the middle
+of the street. Troops of country-folk and townspeople and priests go
+in and out to visit the cell of S. Catherine; the upper and the
+lower chapel, built upon its site, and the hall of the
+_confraternita_ blaze with lighted tapers. The faithful, full of
+wonder, kneel or stand about the 'santi luoghi,' marvelling at the
+relics, and repeating to one another the miracles of the saint. The
+same bustle pervades the Church of San Domenico. Masses are being
+said at one or other chapel all the morning, while women in their
+flapping Tuscan hats crowd round the silver image of S. Catherine,
+and say their prayers with a continual undercurrent of responses to
+the nasal voice of priest or choir. Others gain entrance to the
+chapel of the saint, and kneel before her altar. There, in the blaze
+of sunlight and of tapers, far away behind the gloss and gilding of
+a tawdry shrine, is seen the pale, white face which spoke and
+suffered so much, years ago. The contrast of its rigid stillness and
+half-concealed corruption with the noise and life and light outside
+is very touching. Even so the remnant of a dead idea still stirs the
+souls of thousands, and many ages may roll by before time and
+oblivion assert their inevitable sway.
+
+
+
+
+_MONTE OLIVETO_
+
+
+I
+
+In former days the traveller had choice of two old hostelries in the
+chief street of Siena. Here, if he was fortunate, he might secure a
+prophet's chamber, with a view across tiled houseroofs to the
+distant Tuscan champaign--glimpses of russet field and olive-garden
+framed by jutting city walls, which in some measure compensated for
+much discomfort. He now betakes himself to the more modern Albergo
+di Siena, overlooking the public promenade La Lizza. Horse-chestnuts
+and acacias make a pleasant foreground to a prospect of considerable
+extent. The front of the house is turned toward Belcaro and the
+mountains between Grosseto and Volterra. Sideways its windows
+command the brown bulk of San Domenico, and the Duomo, set like a
+marble coronet upon the forehead of the town. When we arrived there
+one October afternoon the sun was setting amid flying clouds and
+watery yellow spaces of pure sky, with a wind blowing soft and humid
+from the sea. Long after he had sunk below the hills, a fading chord
+of golden and rose-coloured tints burned on the city. The cathedral
+bell tower was glistening with recent rain, and we could see right
+through its lancet windows to the clear blue heavens beyond. Then,
+as the day descended into evening, the autumn trees assumed that
+wonderful effect of luminousness self-evolved, and the red brick
+walls that crimson afterglow, which Tuscan twilight takes from
+singular transparency of atmosphere.
+
+It is hardly possible to define the specific character of each
+Italian city, assigning its proper share to natural circumstances,
+to the temper of the population, and to the monuments of art in
+which these elements of nature and of human qualities are blended.
+The fusion is too delicate and subtle for complete analysis; and the
+total effect in each particular case may best be compared to that
+impressed on us by a strong personality, making itself felt in the
+minutest details. Climate, situation, ethnological conditions, the
+political vicissitudes of past ages, the bias of the people to
+certain industries and occupations, the emergence of distinguished
+men at critical epochs, have all contributed their quota to the
+composition of an individuality which abides long after the locality
+has lost its ancient vigour.
+
+Since the year 1557, when Gian Giacomo de' Medici laid the country
+of Siena waste, levelled her luxurious suburbs, and delivered her
+famine-stricken citizens to the tyranny of the Grand Duke Cosimo,
+this town has gone on dreaming in suspended decadence. Yet the
+epithet which was given to her in her days of glory, the title of
+'Fair Soft Siena,' still describes the city. She claims it by right
+of the gentle manners, joyous but sedate, of her inhabitants, by the
+grace of their pure Tuscan speech, and by the unique delicacy of her
+architecture. Those palaces of brick, with finely moulded lancet
+windows, and the lovely use of sculptured marbles in pilastered
+colonnades, are fit abodes for the nobles who reared them five
+centuries ago, of whose refined and costly living we read in the
+pages of Dante or of Folgore da San Gemignano. And though the
+necessities of modern life, the decay of wealth, the dwindling of
+old aristocracy, and the absorption of what was once an independent
+state in the Italian nation, have obliterated that large signorial
+splendour of the Middle Ages, we feel that the modern Sienese are
+not unworthy of their courteous ancestry.
+
+Superficially, much of the present charm of Siena consists in the
+soft opening valleys, the glimpses of long blue hills and fertile
+country-side, framed by irregular brown houses stretching along the
+slopes on which the town is built, and losing themselves abruptly in
+olive fields and orchards. This element of beauty, which brings the
+city into immediate relation with the country, is indeed not
+peculiar to Siena. We find it in Perugia, in Assisi, in
+Montepulciano, in nearly all the hill towns of Umbria and Tuscany.
+But their landscape is often tragic and austere, while this is
+always suave. City and country blend here in delightful amity.
+Neither yields that sense of aloofness which stirs melancholy.
+
+The most charming district in the immediate neighbourhood of Siena
+lies westward, near Belcaro, a villa high up on a hill. It is a
+region of deep lanes and golden-green oak-woods, with cypresses and
+stone-pines, and little streams in all directions flowing over the
+brown sandstone. The country is like some parts of rural
+England--Devonshire or Sussex. Not only is the sandstone here, as
+there, broken into deep gullies; but the vegetation is much the
+same. Tufted spleenwort, primroses, and broom tangle the hedges
+under boughs of hornbeam and sweet-chestnut. This is the landscape
+which the two sixteenth-century novelists of Siena, Fortini and
+Sermini, so lovingly depicted in their tales. Of literature
+absorbing in itself the specific character of a country, and
+conveying it to the reader less by description than by sustained
+quality of style, I know none to surpass Fortini's sketches. The
+prospect from Belcaro is one of the finest to be seen in Tuscany.
+The villa stands at a considerable elevation, and commands an
+immense extent of hill and dale. Nowhere, except Maremma-wards, a
+level plain. The Tuscan mountains, from Monte Amiata westward to
+Volterra, round Valdelsa, down to Montepulciano and Radicofani, with
+their innumerable windings and intricacies of descending valleys,
+are dappled with light and shade from flying storm-clouds, sunshine
+here, and there cloud-shadows. Girdling the villa stands a grove of
+ilex-trees, cut so as to embrace its high-built walls with dark
+continuous green. In the courtyard are lemon-trees and pomegranates
+laden with fruit. From a terrace on the roof the whole wide view is
+seen; and here upon a parapet, from which we leaned one autumn
+afternoon, my friend discovered this _graffito_: '_E vidi e piansi
+il fato amaro!_'--'I gazed, and gazing, wept the bitterness of
+fate.'
+
+
+II
+
+The prevailing note of Siena and the Sienese seems, as I have said,
+to be a soft and tranquil grace; yet this people had one of the
+stormiest and maddest of Italian histories. They were passionate in
+love and hate, vehement in their popular amusements, almost frantic
+in their political conduct of affairs. The luxury, for which Dante
+blamed them, the levity De Comines noticed in their government,
+found counter-poise in more than usual piety and fervour. S.
+Bernardino, the great preacher and peacemaker of the Middle Ages; S.
+Catherine, the worthiest of all women to be canonised; the blessed
+Colombini, who founded the Order of the Gesuati or Brothers of the
+Poor in Christ; the blessed Bernardo, who founded that of Monte
+Oliveto; were all Sienese. Few cities have given four such saints to
+modern Christendom. The biography of one of these may serve as
+prelude to an account of the Sienese monastery of Oliveto Maggiore.
+
+The family of Tolomei was among the noblest of the Sienese
+aristocracy. On May 10, 1272, Mino Tolomei and his wife Fulvia, of
+the Tancredi, had a son whom they christened Giovanni, but who, when
+he entered the religious life, assumed the name of Bernard, in
+memory of the great Abbot of Clairvaux. Of this child, Fulvia is
+said to have dreamed, long before his birth, that he assumed the
+form of a white swan, and sang melodiously, and settled in the
+boughs of an olive-tree, whence afterwards he winged his way to
+heaven amid a flock of swans as dazzling white as he. The boy was
+educated in the Dominican Cloister at Siena, under the care of his
+uncle Cristoforo Tolomei. There, and afterwards in the fraternity of
+S. Ansano, he felt that impulse towards a life of piety, which after
+a short but brilliant episode of secular ambition, was destined to
+return with overwhelming force upon his nature. He was a youth of
+promise, and at the age of sixteen he obtained the doctorate in
+philosophy and both laws, civil and canonical. The Tolomei upon this
+occasion adorned their palaces and threw them open to the people of
+Siena. The Republic hailed with acclamation the early honours of a
+noble, born to be one of their chief leaders. Soon after this event
+Mino obtained for his son from the Emperor the title of Caesarian
+Knight; and when the diploma arrived, new festivities proclaimed the
+fortunate youth to his fellow-citizens. Bernardo cased his limbs in
+steel, and rode in procession with ladies and young nobles through
+the streets. The ceremonies of a knight's reception in Siena at that
+period were magnificent. From contemporary chronicles and from the
+sonnets written by Folgore da San Gemignano for a similar occasion,
+we gather that the whole resources of a wealthy family and all their
+friends were strained to the utmost to do honour to the order of
+chivalry. Open house was held for several days. Rich presents of
+jewels, armour, dresses, chargers were freely distributed.
+Tournaments alternated with dances. But the climax of the pageant
+was the novice's investiture with sword and spurs and belt in the
+cathedral. This, as it appears from a record of the year 1326,
+actually took place in the great marble pulpit carved by the Pisani;
+and the most illustrious knights of his acquaintance were summoned
+by the squire to act as sponsors for his fealty.
+
+It is said that young Bernardo Tolomei's head was turned to vanity
+by these honours showered upon him in his earliest manhood. Yet,
+after a short period of aberration, he rejoined his confraternity
+and mortified his flesh by discipline and strict attendance on the
+poor. The time had come, however, when he should choose a career
+suitable to his high rank. He devoted himself to jurisprudence, and
+began to lecture publicly on law. Already at the age of twenty-five
+his fellow-citizens admitted him to the highest political offices,
+and in the legend of his life it is written, not without
+exaggeration doubtless, that he ruled the State. There is, however,
+no reason to suppose that he did not play an important part in its
+government. Though a just and virtuous statesman, Bernardo now
+forgot the special service of God, and gave himself with heart and
+soul to mundane interests. At the age of forty, supported by the
+wealth, alliances, and reputation of his semi-princely house, he had
+become one of the most considerable party-leaders in that age of
+faction. If we may trust his monastic biographer, he was aiming at
+nothing less than the tyranny of Siena. But in that year, when he
+was forty, a change, which can only be described as conversion, came
+over him. He had advertised a public disputation, in which he
+proposed before all comers to solve the most arduous problems of
+scholastic science. The concourse was great, the assembly brilliant;
+but the hero of the day, who had designed it for his glory, was
+stricken with sudden blindness. In one moment he comprehended the
+internal void he had created for his soul, and the blindness of the
+body was illumination to the spirit. The pride, power, and splendour
+of this world seemed to him a smoke that passes. God, penitence,
+eternity appeared in all the awful clarity of an authentic vision.
+He fell upon his knees and prayed to Mary that he might receive his
+sight again. This boon was granted; but the revelation which had
+come to him in blindness was not withdrawn. Meanwhile the hall of
+disputation was crowded with an expectant audience. Bernardo rose
+from his knees, made his entry, and ascended the chair; but instead
+of the scholastic subtleties he had designed to treat, he pronounced
+the old text, 'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.'
+
+Afterwards, attended by two noble comrades, Patrizio Patrizzi and
+Ambrogio Piccolomini, he went forth into the wilderness. For the
+human soul, at strife with strange experience, betakes itself
+instinctively to solitude. Not only prophets of Israel, saints of
+the Thebaid, and founders of religions in the mystic East have done
+so; even the Greek Menander recognised, although he sneered at, the
+phenomenon. 'The desert, they say, is the place for discoveries.'
+For the mediaeval mind it had peculiar attractions. The wilderness
+these comrades chose was Accona, a doleful place, hemmed in with
+earthen precipices, some fifteen miles to the south of Siena. Of his
+vast possessions Bernardo retained but this--
+
+                    The lonesome lodge,
+  That stood so low in a lonely glen.
+
+The rest of his substance he abandoned to the poor. This was in
+1313, the very year of the Emperor Henry VII.'s death at
+Buonconvento, which is a little walled town between Siena and the
+desert of Accona. Whether Bernardo's retirement was in any way due
+to the extinction of immediate hope for the Ghibelline party by this
+event, we do not gather from his legend. That, as is natural, refers
+his action wholly to the operation of divine grace. Yet we may
+remember how a more illustrious refugee, the singer of the 'Divine
+Comedy,' betook himself upon the same occasion to the lonely convent
+of Fonte Avellana on the Alps of Catria, and meditated there the
+cantos of his Purgatory. While Bernardo Tolomei was founding the
+Order of Monte Oliveto, Dante penned his letter to the cardinals of
+Italy: _Quomodo sola sedet civitas plena populo: facta est quasi
+vidua domina gentium_.
+
+Bernardo and his friends hollowed with their own hands grottos in
+the rock, and strewed their stone beds with withered
+chestnut-leaves. For S. Scolastica, the sister of S. Benedict, they
+built a little chapel. Their food was wild fruit, and their drink
+the water of the brook. Through the day they delved, for it was in
+their mind to turn the wilderness into a land of plenty. By night
+they meditated on eternal truth. The contrast between their rude
+life and the delicate nurture of Sienese nobles, in an age when
+Siena had become a by-word for luxury, must have been cruel. But it
+fascinated the mediaeval imagination, and the three anchorites were
+speedily joined by recruits of a like temper. As yet the new-born
+order had no rules; for Bernardo, when he renounced the world,
+embraced humility. The brethren were bound together only by the ties
+of charity. They lived in common; and under their sustained efforts
+Accona soon became a garden.
+
+The society could not, however, hold together without further
+organisation. It began to be ill spoken of, inasmuch as vulgar minds
+can recognise no good except in what is formed upon a pattern they
+are familiar with. Then Bernardo had a vision. In his sleep he saw a
+ladder of light ascending to the heavens. Above sat Jesus with Our
+Lady in white raiment, and the celestial hierarchies around them
+were attired in white. Up the ladder, led by angels, climbed men in
+vesture of dazzling white; and among these Bernardo recognised his
+own companions. Soon after this dream, he called Ambrogio
+Piccolomini, and bade him get ready for a journey to the Pope at
+Avignon.
+
+John XXII. received the pilgrims graciously, and gave them letters
+to the Bishop of Arezzo, commanding him to furnish the new
+brotherhood with one of the rules authorised by Holy Church for
+governance of a monastic order. Guido Tarlati, of the great
+Pietra-mala house, was Bishop and despot of Arezzo at this epoch. A
+man less in harmony with coenobitical enthusiasm than this warrior
+prelate, could scarcely have been found. Yet attendance to such
+matters formed part of his business, and the legend even credits him
+with an inspired dream; for Our Lady appeared to him, and said: 'I
+love the valley of Accona and its pious solitaries. Give them the
+rule of Benedict. But thou shalt strip them of their mourning weeds,
+and clothe them in white raiment, the symbol of my virgin purity.
+Their hermitage shall change its name, and henceforth shall be
+called Mount Olivet, in memory of the ascension of my divine Son,
+the which took place upon the Mount of Olives. I take this family
+beneath my own protection; and therefore it is my will it should be
+called henceforth the congregation of S. Mary of Mount Olivet.'
+After this, the Blessed Virgin took forethought for the heraldic
+designs of her monks, dictating to Guido Tarlati the blazon they
+still bear; it is of three hills or, whereof the third and highest
+is surmounted with a cross gules, and from the meeting-point of the
+three hillocks upon either hand a branch of olive vert. This was in
+1319. In 1324 John XXII. confirmed the order, and in 1344 it was
+further approved by Clement VI. Affiliated societies sprang up in
+several Tuscan cities; and in 1347, Bernardo Tolomei, at that time
+General of the Order, held a chapter of its several houses. The next
+year was the year of the great plague or Black Death. Bernardo bade
+his brethren leave their seclusion, and go forth on works of mercy
+among the sick. Some went to Florence, some to Siena, others to the
+smaller hill-set towns of Tuscany. All were bidden to assemble on
+the Feast of the Assumption at Siena. Here the founder addressed his
+spiritual children for the last time. Soon afterwards he died
+himself, at the age of seventy-seven, and the place of his grave is
+not known. He was beatified by the Church for his great virtues.
+
+
+III
+
+At noon we started, four of us, in an open waggonette with a pair of
+horses, for Monte Oliveto, the luggage heaped mountain-high and tied
+in a top-heavy mass above us. After leaving the gateway, with its
+massive fortifications and frescoed arches, the road passes into a
+dull earthy country, very much like some parts--and not the best
+parts--of England. The beauty of the Sienese contado is clearly on
+the sandstone, not upon the clay. Hedges, haystacks, isolated
+farms--all were English in their details. Only the vines, and
+mulberries, and wattled waggons drawn by oxen, most Roman in aspect,
+reminded us we were in Tuscany. In such _carpenta_ may the vestal
+virgins have ascended the Capitol. It is the primitive war-chariot
+also, capable of holding four with ease; and Romulus may have
+mounted with the images of Roman gods in even such a vehicle to
+Latiarian Jove upon the Alban hill. Nothing changes in Italy. The
+wooden ploughs are those which Virgil knew. The sight of one of them
+would save an intelligent lad much trouble in mastering a certain
+passage of the Georgics.
+
+Siena is visible behind us nearly the whole way to Buonconvento, a
+little town where the Emperor Henry VII. died, as it was supposed,
+of poison, in 1313. It is still circled with the wall and gates
+built by the Sienese in 1366, and is a fair specimen of an intact
+mediaeval stronghold. Here we leave the main road, and break into a
+country-track across a bed of sandstone, with the delicate volcanic
+lines of Monte Amiata in front, and the aerial pile of Montalcino to
+our right. The pyracanthus bushes in the hedge yield their clusters
+of bright yellow berries, mingled with more glowing hues of red from
+haws and glossy hips. On the pale grey earthen slopes men and women
+are plying the long Sabellian hoes of their forefathers, and
+ploughmen are driving furrows down steep hills. The labour of the
+husbandmen in Tuscany is very graceful, partly, I think, because it
+is so primitive, but also because the people have an eminently noble
+carriage, and are fashioned on the lines of antique statues. I
+noticed two young contadini in one field, whom Frederick Walker
+might have painted with the dignity of Pheidian form. They were
+guiding their ploughs along a hedge of olive-trees, slanting
+upwards, the white-horned oxen moving slowly through the marl, and
+the lads bending to press the plough-shares home. It was a delicate
+piece of colour--the grey mist of olive branches, the warm smoking
+earth, the creamy flanks of the oxen, the brown limbs and dark eyes
+of the men, who paused awhile to gaze at us, with shadows cast upon
+the furrows from their tall straight figures. Then they turned to
+their work again, and rhythmic movement was added to the picture. I
+wonder when an Italian artist will condescend to pluck these flowers
+of beauty, so abundantly offered by the simplest things in his own
+native land. Each city has an Accademia delle Belle Arti, and there
+is no lack of students. But the painters, having learned their
+trade, make copies ten times distant from the truth of famous
+masterpieces for the American market. Few seem to look beyond their
+picture galleries. Thus the democratic art, the art of Millet, the
+art of life and nature and the people, waits.
+
+As we mount, the soil grows of a richer brown; and there are woods
+of oak where herds of swine are feeding on the acorns. Monte Oliveto
+comes in sight--a mass of red brick, backed up with cypresses, among
+dishevelled earthy precipices, _balze_ as they are called--upon the
+hill below the village of Chiusure. This Chiusure was once a
+promising town; but the life was crushed out of it in the throes of
+mediaeval civil wars, and since the thirteenth century it has been
+dwindling to a hamlet. The struggle for existence, from which the
+larger communes of this district, Siena and Montepulciano, emerged
+at the expense of their neighbours, must have been tragical. The
+_balze_ now grow sterner, drier, more dreadful. We see how deluges
+outpoured from thunder-storms bring down their viscous streams of
+loam, destroying in an hour the terraces it took a year to build,
+and spreading wasteful mud upon the scanty cornfields. The people
+call this soil _creta_; but it seems to be less like a chalk than a
+marl, or _marna_. It is always washing away into ravines and
+gullies, exposing the roots of trees, and rendering the tillage of
+the land a thankless labour. One marvels how any vegetation has the
+faith to settle on its dreary waste, or how men have the patience,
+generation after generation, to renew the industry, still beginning,
+never ending, which reclaims such wildernesses. Comparing Monte
+Oliveto with similar districts of cretaceous soil--with the country,
+for example, between Pienza and San Quirico--we perceive how much is
+owed to the perseverance of the monks whom Bernard Tolomei planted
+here. So far as it is clothed at all with crop and wood, this is
+their service.
+
+At last we climb the crowning hill, emerge from a copse of oak,
+glide along a terraced pathway through the broom, and find ourselves
+in front of the convent gateway. A substantial tower of red brick,
+machicolated at the top and pierced with small square windows,
+guards this portal, reminding us that at some time or other the
+monks found it needful to arm their solitude against a force
+descending from Chiusure. There is an avenue of slender cypresses;
+and over the gate, protected by a jutting roof, shines a fresco of
+Madonna and Child. Passing rapidly downwards, we are in the
+courtyard of the monastery, among its stables, barns, and
+out-houses, with the forlorn bulk of the huge red building,
+spreading wide, and towering up above us. As good luck ruled our
+arrival, we came face to face with the Abbate de Negro, who
+administers the domain of Monte Oliveto for the Government of Italy,
+and exercises a kindly hospitality to chance-comers. He was standing
+near the church, which, with its tall square campanile, breaks the
+long stern outline of the convent. The whole edifice, it may be
+said, is composed of a red-brick inclining to purple in tone, which
+contrasts not unpleasantly with the lustrous green of the cypresses,
+and the glaucous sheen of olives. Advantage has been taken of a
+steep crest; and the monastery, enlarged from time to time through
+the last five centuries, has here and there been reared upon
+gigantic buttresses, which jut upon the _balze_ at a sometimes giddy
+height.
+
+The Abbate received us with true courtesy, and gave us spacious
+rooms, three cells apiece, facing Siena and the western mountains.
+There is accommodation, he told us, for three hundred monks; but
+only three are left in it. As this order was confined to members of
+the nobility, each of the religious had his own apartment--not a
+cubicle such as the uninstructed dream of when they read of monks,
+but separate chambers for sleep and study and recreation.
+
+In the middle of the vast sad landscape, the place is still, with a
+silence that can be almost heard. The deserted state of those
+innumerable cells, those echoing corridors and shadowy cloisters,
+exercises overpowering tyranny over the imagination. Siena is so far
+away, and Montalcino is so faintly outlined on its airy parapet,
+that these cities only deepen our sense of desolation. It is a
+relief to mark at no great distance on the hillside a contadino
+guiding his oxen, and from a lonely farm yon column of ascending
+smoke. At least the world goes on, and life is somewhere resonant
+with song. But here there rests a pall of silence among the
+oak-groves and the cypresses and _balze_. As I leaned and mused,
+while Christian (my good friend and fellow-traveller from the
+Grisons) made our beds, a melancholy sunset flamed up from a rampart
+of cloud, built like a city of the air above the mountains of
+Volterra--fire issuing from its battlements, and smiting the fretted
+roof of heaven above. It was a conflagration of celestial rose upon
+the saddest purples and cavernous recesses of intensest azure.
+
+We had an excellent supper in the visitors' refectory--soup, good
+bread and country wine, ham, a roast chicken with potatoes, a nice
+white cheese made of sheep's milk, and grapes for dessert. The kind
+Abbate sat by, and watched his four guests eat, tapping his
+tortoiseshell snuff-box, and telling us many interesting things
+about the past and present state of the convent. Our company was
+completed with Lupo, the pet cat, and Pirro, a woolly Corsican dog,
+very good friends, and both enormously voracious. Lupo in particular
+engraved himself upon the memory of Christian, into whose large legs
+he thrust his claws, when the cheese-parings and scraps were not
+supplied him with sufficient promptitude. I never saw a hungrier and
+bolder cat. It made one fancy that even the mice had been exiled
+from this solitude. And truly the rule of the monastic order, no
+less than the habit of Italian gentlemen, is frugal in the matter of
+the table, beyond the conception of northern folk.
+
+Monte Oliveto, the Superior told us, owned thirty-two _poderi_, or
+large farms, of which five have recently been sold. They are worked
+on the _mezzeria_ system; whereby peasants and proprietors divide
+the produce of the soil; and which he thinks inferior for developing
+its resources to that of _affitto_, or leaseholding.
+
+The contadini live in scattered houses; and he says the estate would
+be greatly improved by doubling the number of these dwellings, and
+letting the subdivided farms to more energetic people. The village
+of Chiusure is inhabited by labourers. The contadini are poor: a
+dower, for instance, of fifty _lire_ is thought something: whereas
+near Genoa, upon the leasehold system, a farmer may sometimes
+provide a dower of twenty thousand _lire_. The country produces
+grain of different sorts, excellent oil, and timber. It also yields
+a tolerable red wine. The Government makes from eight to nine per
+cent. upon the value of the land, employing him and his two
+religious brethren as agents.
+
+In such conversation the evening passed. We rested well in large
+hard beds with dry rough sheets. But there was a fretful wind
+abroad, which went wailing round the convent walls and rattling the
+doors in its deserted corridors. One of our party had been placed by
+himself at the end of a long suite of apartments, with balconies
+commanding the wide sweep of hills that Monte Amiata crowns. He
+confessed in the morning to having passed a restless night,
+tormented by the ghostly noises of the wind, a wanderer, 'like the
+world's rejected guest,' through those untenanted chambers. The
+olives tossed their filmy boughs in twilight underneath his windows,
+sighing and shuddering, with a sheen in them as eerie as that of
+willows by some haunted mere.
+
+
+IV
+
+The great attraction to students of Italian art in the convent of
+Monte Oliveto is a large square cloister, covered with
+wall-paintings by Luca Signorelli and Giovannantonio Bazzi, surnamed
+Il Sodoma. These represent various episodes in the life of S.
+Benedict; while one picture, in some respects the best of the whole
+series, is devoted to the founder of the Olivetan Order, Bernardo
+Tolomei, dispensing the rule of his institution to a consistory of
+white-robed monks. Signorelli, that great master of Cortona, may be
+studied to better advantage elsewhere, especially at Orvieto and in
+his native city. His work in this cloister, consisting of eight
+frescoes, has been much spoiled by time and restoration. Yet it can
+be referred to a good period of his artistic activity (the year
+1497) and displays much which is specially characteristic of his
+manner. In Totila's barbaric train, he painted a crowd of fierce
+emphatic figures, combining all ages and the most varied attitudes,
+and reproducing with singular vividness the Italian soldiers of
+adventure of his day. We see before us the long-haired followers of
+Braccio and the Baglioni; their handsome savage faces; their brawny
+limbs clad in the particoloured hose and jackets of that period;
+feathered caps stuck sideways on their heads; a splendid swagger in
+their straddling legs. Female beauty lay outside the sphere of
+Signorelli's sympathy; and in the Monte Oliveto cloister he was not
+called upon to paint it. But none of the Italian masters felt more
+keenly, or more powerfully represented in their work, the muscular
+vigour of young manhood. Two of the remaining frescoes, different
+from these in motive, might be selected as no less characteristic of
+Signorelli's manner. One represents three sturdy monks, clad in
+brown, working with all their strength to stir a boulder, which has
+been bewitched, and needs a miracle to move it from its place. The
+square and powerfully outlined drawing of these figures is beyond
+all praise for its effect of massive solidity. The other shows us
+the interior of a fifteenth-century tavern, where two monks are
+regaling themselves upon the sly. A country girl, with shapely arms
+and shoulders, her upper skirts tucked round the ample waist to
+which broad sweeping lines of back and breasts descend, is serving
+wine. The exuberance of animal life, the freedom of attitude
+expressed in this, the mainly interesting figure of the composition,
+show that Signorelli might have been a great master of realistic
+painting. Nor are the accessories less effective. A wide-roofed
+kitchen chimney, a page-boy leaving the room by a flight of steps
+which leads to the house door, and the table at which the truant
+monks are seated, complete a picture of homely Italian life. It may
+still be matched out of many an inn in this hill district.
+
+Called to graver work at Orvieto, where he painted his gigantic
+series of frescoes illustrating the coming of Anti-christ, the
+Destruction of the World, the Resurrection, the Last Judgment, and
+the final state of souls in Paradise and Hell, Signorelli left his
+work at Monte Oliveto unaccomplished. Seven years later it was taken
+up by a painter of very different genius. Sodoma was a native of
+Vercelli, and had received his first training in the Lombard
+schools, which owed so much to Lionardo da Vinci's influence. He was
+about thirty years of age when chance brought him to Siena. Here he
+made acquaintance with Pandolfo Petrucci, who had recently
+established himself in a species of tyranny over the Republic. The
+work he did for this patron and other nobles of Siena, brought him
+into notice. Vasari observes that his hot Lombard colouring, a
+something florid and attractive in his style, which contrasted with
+the severity of the Tuscan school, rendered him no less agreeable as
+an artist than his free manners made him acceptable as a
+house-friend. Fra Domenico da Leccio, also a Lombard, was at that
+time General of the monks of Monte Oliveto. On a visit to this
+compatriot in 1505, Sodoma received a commission to complete the
+cloister; and during the next two years he worked there, producing
+in all twenty-five frescoes. For his pains he seemed to have
+received but little pay--Vasari says, only the expenses of some
+colour-grinders who assisted him; but from the books of the convent
+it appears that 241 ducats, or something over 60_l._ of our money,
+were disbursed to him.
+
+Sodoma was so singular a fellow, even in that age of piquant
+personalities, that it may be worth while to translate a fragment of
+Vasari's gossip about him. We must, however, bear in mind that, for
+some unknown reason, the Aretine historian bore a rancorous grudge
+against this Lombard whose splendid gifts and great achievements he
+did all he could by writing to depreciate. 'He was fond,' says
+Vasari, 'of keeping in his house all sorts of strange animals:
+badgers, squirrels, monkeys, cat-a-mountains, dwarf-donkeys, horses,
+racers, little Elba ponies, jackdaws, bantams, doves of India, and
+other creatures of this kind, as many as he could lay his hands on.
+Over and above these beasts, he had a raven, which had learned so
+well from him to talk, that it could imitate its master's voice,
+especially in answering the door when some one knocked, and this it
+did so cleverly that people took it for Giovannantonio himself, as
+all the folk of Siena know quite well. In like manner, his other
+pets were so much at home with him that they never left his house,
+but played the strangest tricks and maddest pranks imaginable, so
+that his house was like nothing more than a Noah's Ark.' He was a
+bold rider, it seems; for with one of his racers, ridden by himself,
+he bore away the prize in that wild horse-race they run upon the
+Piazza at Siena. For the rest, 'he attired himself in pompous
+clothes, wearing doublets of brocade, cloaks trimmed with gold lace,
+gorgeous caps, neck-chains, and other vanities of a like
+description, fit for buffoons and mountebanks.' In one of the
+frescoes of Monte Oliveto, Sodoma painted his own portrait, with
+some of his curious pets around him. He there appears as a young man
+with large and decidedly handsome features, a great shock of dark
+curled hair escaping from a yellow cap, and flowing down over a rich
+mantle which drapes his shoulders. If we may trust Vasari, he showed
+his curious humours freely to the monks. 'Nobody could describe the
+amusement he furnished to those good fathers, who christened him
+Mattaccio (the big madman), or the insane tricks he played there.'
+
+In spite of Vasari's malevolence, the portrait he has given us of
+Bazzi has so far nothing unpleasant about it. The man seems to have
+been a madcap artist, combining with his love for his profession a
+taste for fine clothes, and what was then perhaps rarer in people of
+his sort, a great partiality for living creatures of all kinds. The
+darker shades of Vasari's picture have been purposely omitted from
+these pages. We only know for certain, about Bazzi's private life,
+that he was married in 1510 to a certain Beatrice, who bore him two
+children, and who was still living with him in 1541. The further
+suggestion that he painted at Monte Oliveto subjects unworthy of a
+religious house, is wholly disproved by the frescoes which still
+exist in a state of very tolerable preservation. They represent
+various episodes in the legend of S. Benedict; all marked by that
+spirit of simple, almost childish piety which is a special
+characteristic of Italian religious history. The series forms, in
+fact, a painted _novella_ of monastic life; its petty jealousies,
+its petty trials, its tribulations and temptations, and its
+indescribably petty miracles. Bazzi was well fitted for the
+execution of this task. He had a swift and facile brush,
+considerable versatility in the treatment of monotonous subjects,
+and a never-failing sense of humour. His white-cowled monks, some of
+them with the rosy freshness of boys, some with the handsome brown
+faces of middle life, others astute and crafty, others again
+wrinkled with old age, have clearly been copied from real models. He
+puts them into action without the slightest effort, and surrounds
+them with landscapes, architecture, and furniture, appropriate to
+each successive situation. The whole is done with so much grace,
+such simplicity of composition, and transparency of style,
+corresponding to the _naif_ and superficial legend, that we feel a
+perfect harmony between the artist's mind and the motives he was
+made to handle. In this respect Bazzi's portion of the legend of S.
+Benedict is more successful than Signorelli's. It was fortunate,
+perhaps, that the conditions of his task confined him to
+uncomplicated groupings, and a scale of colour in which white
+predominates. For Bazzi, as is shown by subsequent work in the
+Farnesina Villa at Rome, and in the church of S. Domenico at Siena,
+was no master of composition; and the tone, even of his
+masterpieces, inclines to heat. Unlike Signorelli, Bazzi felt a deep
+artistic sympathy with female beauty; and the most attractive fresco
+in the whole series is that in which the evil monk Florentius brings
+a bevy of fair damsels to the convent. There is one group, in
+particular, of six women, so delicately varied in carriage of the
+head and suggested movement of the body, as to be comparable only to
+a strain of concerted music. This is perhaps the painter's
+masterpiece in the rendering of pure beauty, if we except his S.
+Sebastian of the Uffizzi.
+
+We tire of studying pictures, hardly less than of reading about
+them! I was glad enough, after three hours spent among the frescoes
+of this cloister, to wander forth into the copses which surround the
+convent. Sunlight was streaming treacherously from flying clouds;
+and though it was high noon, the oak-leaves were still a-tremble
+with dew. Pink cyclamens and yellow amaryllis starred the moist
+brown earth; and under the cypress-trees, where alleys had been cut
+in former time for pious feet, the short firm turf was soft and
+mossy. Before bidding the hospitable Padre farewell, and starting in
+our waggonette for Asciano, it was pleasant to meditate awhile in
+these green solitudes. Generations of white-stoled monks who had sat
+or knelt upon the now deserted terraces, or had slowly paced the
+winding paths to Calvaries aloft and points of vantage high above
+the wood, rose up before me. My mind, still full of Bazzi's
+frescoes, peopled the wilderness with grave monastic forms, and
+gracious, young-eyed faces of boyish novices.
+
+
+
+
+_MONTEPULCIANO_
+
+
+I
+
+For the sake of intending travellers to this, the lordliest of
+Tuscan hill-towns, it will be well to state at once and without
+circumlocution what does not appear upon the time-tables of the line
+from Empoli to Rome. Montepulciano has a station; but this railway
+station is at the distance of at least an hour and a half's drive
+from the mountain upon which the city stands.
+
+The lumbering train which brought us one October evening from
+Asciano crawled into this station after dark, at the very moment
+when a storm, which had been gathering from the south-west, burst in
+deluges of rain and lightning. There was, however, a covered
+carriage going to the town. Into this we packed ourselves, together
+with a polite Italian gentleman who, in answer to our questions,
+consulted his watch, and smilingly replied that a little half-hour
+would bring us easily to Montepulciano. He was a native of the
+place. He knew perfectly well that he would be shut up with us in
+that carriage for two mortal hours of darkness and downpour. And
+yet, such is the irresistible impulse in Italians to say something
+immediately agreeable, he fed us with false hopes and had no fear of
+consequences. What did it matter to him if we were pulling out our
+watches and chattering in well-contented undertone about _vino
+nobile_, _biftek_, and possibly a _polio arrosto_, or a dish of
+_tord_? At the end of the half-hour, as he was well aware,
+self-congratulations and visions of a hearty supper would turn to
+discontented wailings, and the querulous complaining of defrauded
+appetites. But the end of half an hour was still half an hour off;
+and we meanwhile were comfortable.
+
+The night was pitchy dark, and blazing flashes of lightning showed a
+white ascending road at intervals. Rain rushed in torrents,
+splashing against the carriage wheels, which moved uneasily, as
+though they could but scarcely stem the river that swept down upon
+them. Far away above us to the left, was one light on a hill, which
+never seemed to get any nearer. We could see nothing but a chasm of
+blackness below us on one side, edged with ghostly olive-trees, and
+a high bank on the other. Sometimes a star swam out of the drifting
+clouds; but then the rain hissed down again, and the flashes came in
+floods of livid light, illuminating the eternal olives and the
+cypresses which looked like huge black spectres. It seemed almost
+impossible for the horses to keep their feet, as the mountain road
+grew ever steeper and the torrent swelled around them. Still they
+struggled on. The promised half-hour had been doubled, trebled,
+quadrupled, when at last we saw the great brown sombre walls of a
+city tower above us. Then we entered one of those narrow lofty
+Tuscan gates, and rolled upon the pavement of a street.
+
+The inn at Montepulciano is called Marzocco, after the Florentine
+lion which stands upon its column in a little square before the
+house. The people there are hospitable, and more than once on
+subsequent occasions have they extended to us kindly welcome. But on
+this, our first appearance, they had scanty room at their disposal.
+Seeing us arrive so late, and march into their dining-room, laden
+with sealskins, waterproofs, and ulsters, one of the party hugging a
+complete Euripides in Didot's huge edition, they were confounded. At
+last they conducted the whole company of four into a narrow back
+bedroom, where they pointed to one fair-sized and one very little
+bed. This was the only room at liberty, they said; and could we not
+arrange to sleep here? _S' accomodi, Signore! S' accomodi, Signora!_
+These encouraging words, uttered in various tones of cheerful and
+insinuating politeness to each member of the party in succession,
+failed to make us comprehend how a gentleman and his wife, with a
+lean but rather lengthy English friend, and a bulky native of the
+Grisons, could 'accommodate themselves' collectively and undividedly
+with what was barely sufficient for their just moiety, however much
+it might afford a night's rest to their worse half. Christian was
+sent out into the storm to look for supplementary rooms in
+Montepulciano, which he failed to get. Meanwhile we ordered supper,
+and had the satisfaction of seeing set upon the board a huge red
+flask of _vino nobile_. In copious draughts of this the King of
+Tuscan wines, we drowned our cares; and when the cloth was drawn,
+our friend and Christian passed their night upon the supper table.
+The good folk of the inn had recovered from their surprise, and from
+the inner recesses of their house had brought forth mattresses and
+blankets. So the better and larger half of the company enjoyed sound
+sleep.
+
+It rained itself out at night, and the morning was clear, with the
+transparent atmosphere of storm-clouds hurrying in broken squadrons
+from the bad sea quarter. Yet this is just the weather in which
+Tuscan landscape looks its loveliest. Those immense expanses of grey
+undulating uplands need the luminousness of watery sunshine, the
+colour added by cloud-shadows, and the pearly softness of rising
+vapours, to rob them of a certain awful grimness. The main street of
+Montepulciano goes straight uphill for a considerable distance
+between brown palaces; then mounts by a staircase-zigzag under huge
+impending masses of masonry; until it ends in a piazza. On the
+ascent, at intervals, the eye is fascinated by prospects to the
+north and east over Val di Chiana, Cortona, Thrasymene, Chiusi; to
+south and west over Monte Cetona, Radicofani, Monte Amiata, the Val
+d' Ombrone, and the Sienese Contado. Grey walls overgrown with ivy,
+arcades of time-toned brick, and the forbidding bulk of houses hewn
+from solid travertine, frame these glimpses of aerial space. The
+piazza is the top of all things. Here are the Duomo; the Palazzo del
+Comune, closely resembling that of Florence, with the Marzocco on
+its front; the fountain, between two quaintly sculptured columns;
+and the vast palace Del Monte, of heavy Renaissance architecture,
+said to be the work of Antonio di San Gallo.
+
+We climbed the tower of the Palazzo del Comune, and stood at the
+altitude of 2000 feet above the sea. The view is finer in its kind
+than I have elsewhere seen, even in Tuscany, that land of panoramic
+prospects over memorable tracts of world-historic country. Such
+landscape cannot be described in words. But the worst is that, even
+while we gaze, we know that nothing but the faintest memory of our
+enjoyment will be carried home with us. The atmospheric conditions
+were perfect that morning. The sun was still young; the sky sparkled
+after the night's thunderstorm; the whole immensity of earth around
+lay lucid, smiling, newly washed in baths of moisture. Masses of
+storm-cloud kept rolling from the west, where we seemed to feel the
+sea behind those intervening hills. But they did not form in heavy
+blocks or hang upon the mountain summits. They hurried and dispersed
+and changed and flung their shadows on the world below.
+
+
+II
+
+The charm of this view is composed of so many different elements, so
+subtly blent, appealing to so many separate sensibilities; the sense
+of grandeur, the sense of space, the sense of natural beauty, and
+the sense of human pathos; that deep internal faculty we call
+historic sense; that it cannot be defined. First comes the immense
+surrounding space--a space measured in each arc of the circumference
+by sections of at least fifty miles, limited by points of
+exquisitely picturesque beauty, including distant cloud-like
+mountain ranges and crystals of sky-blue Apennines, circumscribing
+landscapes of refined loveliness in detail, always varied, always
+marked by objects of peculiar interest where the eye or memory may
+linger. Next in importance to this immensity of space, so powerfully
+affecting the imagination by its mere extent, and by the breadth of
+atmosphere attuning all varieties of form and colour to one harmony
+beneath illimitable heaven, may be reckoned the episodes of rivers,
+lakes, hills, cities, with old historic names. For there spreads the
+lordly length of Thrasymene, islanded and citadelled, in hazy
+morning mist, still dreaming of the shock of Roman hosts with
+Carthaginian legions. There is the lake of Chiusi, set like a jewel
+underneath the copse-clad hills which hide the dust of a dead Tuscan
+nation. The streams of Arno start far far away, where Arezzo lies
+enfolded in bare uplands. And there at our feet rolls Tiber's
+largest affluent, the Chiana. And there is the canal which joins
+their fountains in the marsh that Lionardo would have drained. Monte
+Cetona is yonder height which rears its bristling ridge defiantly
+from neighbouring Chiusi. And there springs Radicofani, the eagle's
+eyrie of a brigand brood. Next, Monte Amiata stretches the long
+lines of her antique volcano; the swelling mountain flanks,
+descending gently from her cloud-capped top, are russet with
+autumnal oak and chestnut woods. On them our eyes rest lovingly;
+imagination wanders for a moment through those mossy glades, where
+cyclamens are growing now, and primroses in spring will peep amid
+anemones from rustling foliage strewn by winter's winds. The heights
+of Casentino, the Perugian highlands, Volterra, far withdrawn amid a
+wilderness of rolling hills, and solemn snow-touched ranges of the
+Spolentino, Sibyl-haunted fastnesses of Norcia, form the most
+distant horizon-lines of this unending panorama. And then there are
+the cities placed each upon a point of vantage: Siena; olive-mantled
+Chiusi; Cortona, white upon her spreading throne; poetic Montalcino,
+lifted aloft against the vaporous sky; San Quirico, nestling in
+pastoral tranquillity; Pienza, where AEneas Sylvius built palaces and
+called his birthplace after his own Papal name. Still closer to the
+town itself of Montepulciano, stretching along the irregular ridge
+which gave it building ground, and trending out on spurs above deep
+orchards, come the lovely details of oak-copses, blending with grey
+tilth and fields rich with olive and vine. The gaze, exhausted with
+immensity, pierces those deeply cloven valleys, sheltered from wind
+and open to the sun--undulating folds of brown earth, where Bacchus,
+when he visited Tuscany, found the grape-juice that pleased him
+best, and crowned the wine of Montepulciano king. Here from our
+eyrie we can trace white oxen on the furrows, guided by
+brown-limbed, white-shirted contadini.
+
+The morning glory of this view from Montepulciano, though
+irrecoverable by words, abides in the memory, and draws one back by
+its unique attractiveness. On a subsequent visit to the town in
+springtime, my wife and I took a twilight walk, just after our
+arrival, through its gloomy fortress streets, up to the piazza,
+where the impendent houses lowered like bastions, and all the masses
+of their mighty architecture stood revealed in shadow and dim
+lamplight. Far and wide, the country round us gleamed with bonfires;
+for it was the eve of the Ascension, when every contadino lights a
+beacon of chestnut logs and straw and piled-up leaves. Each castello
+on the plain, each village on the hills, each lonely farmhouse at
+the skirt of forest or the edge of lake, smouldered like a red
+Cyclopean eye beneath the vault of stars. The flames waxed and
+waned, leapt into tongues, or disappeared. As they passed from gloom
+to brilliancy and died away again, they seemed almost to move. The
+twilight scene was like that of a vast city, filling the plain and
+climbing the heights in terraces. Is this custom, I thought, a relic
+of old Pales-worship?
+
+
+III
+
+The early history of Montepulciano is buried in impenetrable mists
+of fable. No one can assign a date to the foundation of these
+high-hill cities. The eminence on which it stands belongs to the
+volcanic system of Monte Amiata, and must at some time have formed a
+portion of the crater which threw that mighty mass aloft. But sons
+have passed since the _gran sasso di Maremma_ was a fire-vomiting
+monster, glaring like Etna in eruption on the Tyrrhene sea; and
+through those centuries how many races may have camped upon the
+summit we call Montepulciano! Tradition assigns the first
+quasi-historical settlement to Lars Porsena, who is said to have
+made it his summer residence, when the lower and more marshy air of
+Clusium became oppressive. Certainly it must have been a
+considerable town in the Etruscan period. Embedded in the walls of
+palaces may still be seen numerous fragments of sculptured
+basreliefs, the works of that mysterious people. Apropos of
+Montepulciano's importance in the early years of Roman history, I
+lighted on a quaint story related by its very jejune annalist,
+Spinello Benci. It will be remembered that Livy attributes the
+invasion of the Gauls, who, after besieging Clusium, advanced on
+Rome, to the persuasions of a certain Aruns. He was an exile from
+Clusium; and wishing to revenge himself upon his country-people, he
+allured the Senonian Gauls into his service by the promise of
+excellent wine, samples of which he had taken with him into
+Lombardy. Spinello Benci accepts the legend literally, and
+continues: 'These wines were so pleasing to the palate of the
+barbarians, that they were induced to quit the rich and teeming
+valley of the Po, to cross the Apennines, and move in battle array
+against Chiusi. And it is clear that the wine which Aruns selected
+for the purpose was the same as that which is produced to this day
+at Montepulciano. For nowhere else in the Etruscan district can
+wines of equally generous quality and fiery spirit be found, so
+adapted for export and capable of such long preservation.'
+
+We may smile at the historian's _naivete_. Yet the fact remains that
+good wine of Montepulciano can still allure barbarians of this epoch
+to the spot where it is grown. Of all Italian vintages, with the
+exception of some rare qualities of Sicily and the Valtellina, it
+is, in my humble opinion, the best. And when the time comes for
+Italy to develop the resources of her vineyards upon scientific
+principles, Montepulciano will drive Brolio from the field and take
+the same place by the side of Chianti which Volnay occupies by
+common Macon. It will then be quoted upon wine-lists throughout
+Europe, and find its place upon the tables of rich epicures in
+Hyperborean regions, and add its generous warmth to Trans-atlantic
+banquets. Even as it is now made, with very little care bestowed on
+cultivation and none to speak of on selection of the grape, the wine
+is rich and noble, slightly rough to a sophisticated palate, but
+clean in quality and powerful and racy. It deserves the enthusiasm
+attributed by Redi to Bacchus:[1]
+
+  Fill, fill, let us all have our will!
+  But with _what_, with _what_, boys, shall we fill.
+  Sweet Ariadne--no, not _that_ one--_ah_ no;
+  Fill me the manna of Montepulciano:
+  Fill me a magnum and reach it me.--Gods!
+  How it glides to my heart by the sweetest of roads!
+  Oh, how it kisses me, tickles me, bites me!
+  Oh, how my eyes loosen sweetly in tears!
+  I'm ravished! I'm rapt! Heaven finds me admissible!
+  Lost in an ecstasy! blinded! invisible!--
+  Hearken all earth!
+  We, Bacchus, in the might of our great mirth,
+  To all who reverence us, are right thinkers;
+  Hear, all ye drinkers!
+  Give ear and give faith to the edict divine;
+  Montepulciano's the King of all wine.
+
+It is necessary, however, that our modern barbarian should travel to
+Montepulciano itself, and there obtain a flask of _manna_ or _vino
+nobile_ from some trusty cellar-master. He will not find it bottled
+in the inns or restaurants upon his road.
+
+    [1] From Leigh Hunt's Translation.
+
+
+IV
+
+The landscape and the wine of Montepulciano are both well worth the
+trouble of a visit to this somewhat inaccessible city. Yet more
+remains to be said about the attractions of the town itself. In the
+Duomo, which was spoiled by unintelligent rebuilding at a dismal
+epoch of barren art, are fragments of one of the rarest monuments of
+Tuscan sculpture. This is the tomb of Bartolommeo Aragazzi. He was a
+native of Montepulciano, and secretary to Pope Martin V., that
+_Papa_ _Martino non vale un quattrino_, on whom, during his long
+residence in Florence, the street-boys made their rhymes. Twelve
+years before his death he commissioned Donatello and Michelozzo
+Michelozzi, who about that period were working together upon the
+monuments of Pope John XXIII. and Cardinal Brancacci, to erect his
+own tomb at the enormous cost of twenty-four thousand scudi. That
+thirst for immortality of fame, which inspired the humanists of the
+Renaissance, prompted Aragazzi to this princely expenditure. Yet,
+having somehow won the hatred of his fellow-students, he was
+immediately censured for excessive vanity. Lionardo Bruni makes his
+monument the theme of a ferocious onslaught. Writing to Poggio
+Bracciolini, Bruni tells a story how, while travelling through the
+country of Arezzo, he met a train of oxen dragging heavy waggons
+piled with marble columns, statues, and all the necessary details of
+a sumptuous sepulchre. He stopped, and asked what it all meant. Then
+one of the contractors for this transport, wiping the sweat from his
+forehead, in utter weariness of the vexatious labour, at the last
+end of his temper, answered: 'May the gods destroy all poets, past,
+present, and future.' I inquired what he had to do with poets, and
+how they had annoyed him. 'Just this,' he replied, 'that this poet,
+lately deceased, a fool and windy-pated fellow, has ordered a
+monument for himself; and with a view to erecting it, these marbles
+are being dragged to Montepulciano; but I doubt whether we shall
+contrive to get them up there. The roads are too bad.' 'But,' cried
+I, 'do you believe _that_ man was a poet--that dunce who had no
+science, nay, nor knowledge either? who only rose above the heads of
+men by vanity and doltishness?' 'I don't know,' he answered, 'nor
+did I ever hear tell, while he was alive, about his being called a
+poet; but his fellow-townsmen now decide he was one; nay, if he had
+but left a few more money-bags, they'd swear he was a god. Anyhow,
+but for his having been a poet, I would not have cursed poets in
+general.' Whereupon, the malevolent Bruni withdrew, and composed a
+scorpion-tailed oration, addressed to his friend Poggio, on the
+suggested theme of 'diuturnity in monuments,' and false ambition.
+Our old friends of humanistic learning--Cyrus, Alexander,
+Caesar--meet us in these frothy paragraphs. Cambyses, Xerxes,
+Artaxerxes, Darius, are thrown in to make the gruel of rhetoric
+'thick and slab.' The whole epistle ends in a long-drawn peroration
+of invective against 'that excrement in human shape,' who had had
+the ill-luck, by pretence to scholarship, by big gains from the
+Papal treasury, by something in his manners alien from the
+easy-going customs of the Roman Court, to rouse the rancour of his
+fellow-humanists.
+
+I have dwelt upon this episode, partly because it illustrates the
+peculiar thirst for glory in the students of that time, but more
+especially because it casts a thin clear thread of actual light upon
+the masterpiece which, having been transported with this difficulty
+from Donatello's workshop, is now to be seen by all lovers of fine
+art, in part at least, at Montepulciano. In part at least: the
+phrase is pathetic. Poor Aragazzi, who thirsted so for 'diuturnity
+in monuments,' who had been so cruelly assaulted in the grave by
+humanistic jealousy, expressing its malevolence with humanistic
+crudity of satire, was destined after all to be defrauded of his
+well-paid tomb. The monument, a master work of Donatello and his
+collaborator, was duly erected. The oxen and the contractors, it
+appears, had floundered through the mud of Valdichiana, and
+struggled up the mountain-slopes of Montepulciano. But when the
+church, which this triumph of art adorned, came to be repaired, the
+miracle of beauty was dismembered. The sculpture for which Aragazzi
+spent his thousands of crowns, which Donatello touched with his
+immortalising chisel, over which the contractors vented their curses
+and Bruni eased his bile; these marbles are now visible as mere
+_disjecta membra_ in a church which, lacking them, has little to
+detain a traveller's haste.
+
+On the left hand of the central door, as you enter, Aragazzi lies,
+in senatorial robes, asleep; his head turned slightly to the right
+upon the pillow, his hands folded over his breast. Very noble are
+the draperies, and dignified the deep tranquillity of slumber. Here,
+we say, is a good man fallen upon sleep, awaiting resurrection. The
+one commanding theme of Christian sculpture, in an age of Pagan
+feeling, has been adequately rendered. Bartolommeo Aragazzi, like
+Ilaria led Carretto at Lucca, like the canopied doges in S. Zanipolo
+at Venice, like the Acciauoli in the Florentine Certosa, like the
+Cardinal di Portogallo in Samminiato, is carved for us as he had
+been in life, but with that life suspended, its fever all smoothed
+out, its agitations over, its pettinesses dignified by death. This
+marmoreal repose of the once active man symbolises for our
+imagination the state into which he passed four centuries ago, but
+in which, according to the creed, he still abides, reserved for
+judgment and re-incarnation. The flesh, clad with which he walked
+our earth, may moulder in the vaults beneath. But it will one day
+rise again; and art has here presented it imperishable to our gaze.
+This is how the Christian sculptors, inspired by the majestic calm
+of classic art, dedicated a Christian to the genius of repose. Among
+the nations of antiquity this repose of death was eternal; and being
+unable to conceive of a man's body otherwise than for ever
+obliterated by the flames of funeral, they were perforce led back to
+actual life when they would carve his portrait on a tomb. But for
+Christianity the rest of the grave has ceased to be eternal.
+Centuries may pass, but in the end it must be broken. Therefore art
+is justified in showing us the man himself in an imagined state of
+sleep. Yet this imagined state of sleep is so incalculably long, and
+by the will of God withdrawn from human prophecy, that the ages
+sweeping over the dead man before the trumpets of archangels wake
+him, shall sooner wear away memorial stone than stir his slumber. It
+is a slumber, too, unterrified, unentertained by dreams. Suspended
+animation finds no fuller symbolism than the sculptor here presents
+to us in abstract form.
+
+The boys of Montepulciano have scratched Messer Aragazzi's sleeping
+figure with _graffiti_ at their own free will. Yet they have had no
+power to erase the poetry of Donatello's mighty style. That, in
+spite of Bruni's envy, in spite of injurious time, in spite of the
+still worse insult of the modernised cathedral and the desecrated
+monument, embalms him in our memory and secures for him the
+diuturnity for which he paid his twenty thousand crowns. Money,
+methinks, beholding him, was rarely better expended on a similar
+ambition. And ambition of this sort, relying on the genius of such a
+master to give it wings for perpetuity of time, is, _pace_ Lionardo
+Bruni, not ignoble.
+
+Opposite the figure of Messer Aragazzi are two square basreliefs
+from the same monument, fixed against piers of the nave. One
+represents Madonna enthroned among worshippers; members, it may be
+supposed, of Aragazzi's household. Three angelic children,
+supporting the child Christ upon her lap, complete that pyramidal
+form of composition which Fra Bartolommeo was afterwards to use with
+such effect in painting. The other basrelief shows a group of grave
+men and youths, clasping hands with loveliest interlacement; the
+placid sentiment of human fellowship translated into harmonies of
+sculptured form. Children below run up to touch their knees, and
+reach out boyish arms to welcome them. Two young men, with
+half-draped busts and waving hair blown off their foreheads,
+anticipate the type of adolescence which Andrea del Sarto perfected
+in his S. John. We might imagine that this masterly panel was
+intended to represent the arrival of Messer Aragazzi in his home. It
+is a scene from the domestic life of the dead man, duly subordinated
+to the recumbent figure, which, when the monument was perfect, would
+have dominated the whole composition.
+
+Nothing in the range of Donatello's work surpasses these two
+basreliefs for harmonies of line and grouping, for choice of form,
+for beauty of expression, and for smoothness of surface-working. The
+marble is of great delicacy, and is wrought to a wax-like surface.
+At the high altar are three more fragments from the mutilated tomb.
+One is a long low frieze of children bearing garlands, which
+probably formed the base of Aragazzi's monument, and now serves for
+a predella. The remaining pieces are detached statues of Fortitude
+and Faith. The former reminds us of Donatello's S. George; the
+latter is twisted into a strained attitude, full of character, but
+lacking grace. What the effect of these emblematic figures would
+have been when harmonised by the architectural proportions of the
+sepulchre, the repose of Aragazzi on his sarcophagus, the suavity of
+the two square panels and the rhythmic beauty of the frieze, it is
+not easy to conjecture. But rudely severed from their surroundings,
+and exposed in isolation, one at each side of the altar, they leave
+an impression of awkward discomfort on the memory. A certain
+hardness, peculiar to the Florentine manner, is felt in them. But
+this quality may have been intended by the sculptors for the sake of
+contrast with what is eminently graceful, peaceful, and melodious in
+the other fragments of the ruined masterpiece.
+
+
+V
+
+At a certain point in the main street, rather more than halfway from
+the Albergo del Marzocco to the piazza, a tablet has been let into
+the wall upon the left-hand side. This records the fact that here in
+1454 was born Angelo Ambrogini, the special glory of Montepulciano,
+the greatest classical scholar and the greatest Italian poet of the
+fifteenth century. He is better known in the history of literature
+as Poliziano, or Politianus, a name he took from his native city,
+when he came, a marvellous boy, at the age of ten, to Florence, and
+joined the household of Lorenzo de' Medici. He had already claims
+upon Lorenzo's hospitality. For his father, Benedetto, by adopting
+the cause of Piero de' Medici in Montepulciano, had exposed himself
+to bitter feuds and hatred of his fellow-citizens. To this animosity
+of party warfare he fell a victim a few years previously. We only
+know that he was murdered, and that he left a helpless widow with
+five children, of whom Angelo was the eldest. The Ambrogini or Cini
+were a family of some importance in Montepulciano; and their
+dwelling-house is a palace of considerable size. From its eastern
+windows the eye can sweep that vast expanse of country, embracing
+the lakes of Thrasymene and Chiusi, which has been already
+described. What would have happened, we wonder, if Messer Benedetto,
+the learned jurist, had not espoused the Medicean cause and
+embroiled himself with murderous antagonists? Would the little
+Angelo have grown up in this quiet town, and practised law, and
+lived and died a citizen of Montepulciano? In that case the
+lecture-rooms of Florence would never have echoed to the sonorous
+hexameters of the 'Rusticus' and 'Ambra.' Italian literature would
+have lacked the 'Stanze' and 'Orfeo.' European scholarship would
+have been defrauded of the impulse given to it by the 'Miscellanea.'
+The study of Roman law would have missed those labours on the
+Pandects, with which the name of Politian is honourably associated.
+From the Florentine society of the fifteenth century would have
+disappeared the commanding central figure of humanism, which now
+contrasts dramatically with the stern monastic Prior of S. Mark.
+Benedetto's tragic death gave Poliziano to Italy and to posterity.
+
+
+VI
+
+Those who have a day to spare at Montepulciano can scarcely spend it
+better than in an excursion to Pienza and San Quirico. Leaving the
+city by the road which takes a westerly direction, the first object
+of interest is the Church of San Biagio, placed on a fertile plateau
+immediately beneath the ancient acropolis. It was erected by Antonio
+di San Gallo in 1518, and is one of the most perfect specimens
+existing of the sober classical style. The Church consists of a
+Greek square, continued at the east end into a semicircular tribune,
+surmounted by a central cupola, and flanked by a detached
+bell-tower, ending in a pyramidal spire. The whole is built of solid
+yellow travertine, a material which, by its warmth of colour, is
+pleasing to the eye, and mitigates the mathematical severity of the
+design. Upon entering, we feel at once what Alberti called the music
+of this style; its large and simple harmonies, depending for effect
+upon sincerity of plan and justice of balance. The square masses of
+the main building, the projecting cornices and rounded tribune, meet
+together and soar up into the cupola; while the grand but austere
+proportions of the arches and the piers compose a symphony of
+perfectly concordant lines. The music is grave and solemn,
+architecturally expressed in terms of measured space and outlined
+symmetry. The whole effect is that of one thing pleasant to look
+upon, agreeably appealing to our sense of unity, charming us by
+grace and repose; not stimulative nor suggestive, not multiform nor
+mysterious. We are reminded of the temples imagined by Francesco
+Colonna, and figured in his _Hypnerotomachia Poliphili_. One of
+these shrines has, we feel, come into actual existence here; and the
+religious ceremonies for which it is adapted are not those of the
+Christian worship. Some more primitive, less spiritual rites,
+involving less of tragic awe and deep-wrought symbolism, should be
+here performed. It is better suited for Polifilo's lustration by
+Venus Physizoe than for the mass on Easter morning. And in this
+respect, the sentiment of the architecture is exactly faithful to
+that mood of religious feeling which appeared in Italy under the
+influences of the classical revival--when the essential doctrines of
+Christianity were blurred with Pantheism; when Jehovah became
+_Jupiter Optimus Maximus_; and Jesus was the _Heros_ of Calvary, and
+nuns were _Virgines Vestales_. In literature this mood often strikes
+us as insincere and artificial. But it admitted of realisation and
+showed itself to be profoundly felt in architecture.
+
+After leaving Madonna di San Biagio, the road strikes at once into
+an open country, expanding on the right towards the woody ridge of
+Monte Fallonica, on the left toward Cetona and Radicofani, with
+Monte Amiata full in front--its double crest and long volcanic slope
+recalling Etna; the belt of embrowned forest on its flank, made
+luminous by sunlight. Far away stretches the Sienese Maremma; Siena
+dimly visible upon her gentle hill; and still beyond, the pyramid of
+Volterra, huge and cloud-like, piled against the sky. The road, as
+is almost invariable in this district, keeps to the highest line of
+ridges, winding much, and following the dimplings of the earthy
+hills. Here and there a solitary castello, rusty with old age, and
+turned into a farm, juts into picturesqueness from some point of
+vantage on a mound surrounded with green tillage. But soon the dull
+and intolerable _creta_, ash-grey earth, without a vestige of
+vegetation, furrowed by rain, and desolately breaking into gullies,
+swallows up variety and charm. It is difficult to believe that this
+_creta_ of Southern Tuscany, which has all the appearance of
+barrenness, and is a positive deformity in the landscape, can be
+really fruitful. Yet we are frequently being told that it only needs
+assiduous labour to render it enormously productive.
+
+When we reached Pienza we were already in the middle of a country
+without cultivation, abandoned to the marl. It is a little place,
+perched upon the ledge of a long sliding hill, which commands the
+vale of Orcia; Monte Amiata soaring in aerial majesty beyond. Its
+old name was Cosignano. But it had the honour of giving birth to
+AEneas Sylvius Piccolomini, who, when he was elected to the Papacy
+and had assumed the title of Pius II., determined to transform and
+dignify his native village, and to call it after his own name. From
+that time forward Cosignano has been known as Pienza.
+
+Pius II. succeeded effectually in leaving his mark upon the town.
+And this forms its main interest at the present time. We see in
+Pienza how the most active-minded and intelligent man of his epoch,
+the representative genius of Italy in the middle of the fifteenth
+century, commanding vast wealth and the Pontifical prestige, worked
+out his whim of city-building. The experiment had to be made upon a
+small scale; for Pienza was then and was destined to remain a
+village. Yet here, upon this miniature piazza--in modern as in
+ancient Italy the meeting-point of civic life, the forum--we find a
+cathedral, a palace of the bishop, a palace of the feudal lord, and
+a palace of the commune, arranged upon a well-considered plan, and
+executed after one design in a consistent style. The religious,
+municipal, signorial, and ecclesiastical functions of the little
+town are centralised around the open market-place, on which the
+common people transacted business and discussed affairs. Pius
+entrusted the realisation of his scheme to a Florentine architect;
+whether Bernardo Rossellino, or a certain Bernardo di Lorenzo, is
+still uncertain. The same artist, working in the flat manner of
+Florentine domestic architecture, with rusticated basements, rounded
+windows and bold projecting cornices--the manner which is so nobly
+illustrated by the Rucellai and Strozzi palaces at
+Florence--executed also for Pius the monumental Palazzo Piccolomini
+at Siena. It is a great misfortune for the group of buildings he
+designed at Pienza, that they are huddled together in close quarters
+on a square too small for their effect. A want of space is
+peculiarly injurious to the architecture of this date, 1462, which,
+itself geometrical and spatial, demands a certain harmony and
+liberty in its surroundings, a proportion between the room occupied
+by each building and the masses of the edifice. The style is severe
+and prosaic. Those charming episodes and accidents of fancy, in
+which the Gothic style and the style of the earlier Lombard
+Renaissance abounded, are wholly wanting to the rigid, mathematical,
+hard-headed genius of the Florentine quattrocento. Pienza,
+therefore, disappoints us. Its heavy palace frontispieces shut the
+spirit up in a tight box. We seem unable to breathe, and lack that
+element of life and picturesqueness which the splendid retinues of
+nobles in the age of Pinturicchio might have added to the now
+forlorn Piazza.
+
+Yet the material is a fine warm travertine, mellowing to dark red,
+brightening to golden, with some details, especially the tower of
+the Palazzo Comunale, in red brick. This building, by the way, is
+imitated in miniature from that of Florence. The cathedral is a
+small church of three aisles, equally high, ending in what the
+French would call a _chevet_. Pius had observed this plan of
+construction somewhere in Austria, and commanded his architect,
+Bernardo, to observe it in his plan. He was attracted by the
+facilities for window-lighting which it offered; and what is very
+singular, he provided by the Bull of his foundation for keeping the
+walls of the interior free from frescoes and other coloured
+decorations. The result is that, though the interior effect is
+pleasing, the church presents a frigid aspect to eyes familiarised
+with warmth of tone in other buildings of that period. The details
+of the columns and friezes are classical; and the facade, strictly
+corresponding to the structure, and very honest in its decorative
+elements, is also of the earlier Renaissance style. But the vaulting
+and some of the windows are pointed.
+
+The Palazzo Piccolomini, standing at the right hand of the Duomo, is
+a vast square edifice. The walls are flat and even, pierced at
+regular intervals with windows, except upon the south-west side,
+where the rectangular design is broken by a noble double Loggiata,
+gallery rising above gallery--serene curves of arches, grandly
+proportioned columns, massive balustrades, a spacious corridor, a
+roomy vaulting--opening out upon the palace garden, and offering
+fair prospect over the wooded heights of Castiglione and Rocca d'
+Orcia, up to Radicofani and shadowy Amiata. It was in these double
+tiers of galleries, in the garden beneath and in the open inner
+square of the palazzo, that the great life of Italian aristocracy
+displayed itself. Four centuries ago these spaces, now so desolate
+in their immensity, echoed to the tread of serving-men, the songs of
+pages; horse-hooves struck upon the pavement of the court; spurs
+jingled on the staircases; the brocaded trains of ladies sweeping
+from their chambers rustled on the marbles of the loggia; knights
+let their hawks fly from the garden parapets; cardinals and
+abbreviators gathered round the doors from which the Pope would
+issue, when he rose from his siesta to take the cool of evening in
+those airy colonnades. How impossible it is to realise that scene
+amid this solitude! The palazzo still belongs to the Piccolomini
+family. But it has fallen into something worse than ruin--the
+squalor of half-starved existence, shorn of all that justified its
+grand proportions. Partition-walls have been run up across its halls
+to meet the requirements of our contracted modern customs. Nothing
+remains of the original decorations except one carved chimney-piece,
+an emblazoned shield, and a frescoed portrait of the founder. All
+movable treasures have been made away with. And yet the carved
+heraldics of the exterior, the coat of Piccolomini, 'argent, on a
+cross azure five crescents or,' the Papal ensigns, keys, and tiara,
+and the monogram of Pius, prove that this country dwelling of a Pope
+must once have been rich in details befitting its magnificence. With
+the exception of the very small portion reserved for the Signori,
+when they visit Pienza, the palace has become a granary for country
+produce in a starveling land. There was one redeeming point about it
+to my mind. That was the handsome young man, with earnest Tuscan
+eyes and a wonderfully sweet voice, the servant of the Piccolomini
+family, who lives here with his crippled father, and who showed us
+over the apartments.
+
+We left Pienza and drove on to S. Quirico, through the same wrinkled
+wilderness of marl; wasteful, uncultivated, bare to every wind that
+blows. A cruel blast was sweeping from the sea, and Monte Amiata
+darkened with rain-clouds. Still the pictures, which formed
+themselves at intervals, as we wound along these barren ridges, were
+very fair to look upon, especially one not far from S. Quirico. It
+had for fore-ground a stretch of tilth--olive-trees, honeysuckle
+hedges, and cypresses. Beyond soared Amiata in all its breadth and
+blue air-blackness, bearing on its mighty flanks the broken cliffs
+and tufted woods of Castiglione and the Rocca d'Orcia; eagles' nests
+emerging from a fertile valley-champaign, into which the eye was led
+for rest. It so chanced that a band of sunlight, escaping from filmy
+clouds, touched this picture with silvery greys and soft greens--a
+suffusion of vaporous radiance, which made it for one moment a
+Claude landscape.
+
+S. Quirico was keeping _festa_. The streets were crowded with
+healthy, handsome men and women from the contado. This village lies
+on the edge of a great oasis in the Sienese desert--an oasis formed
+by the waters of the Orcia and Asso sweeping down to join Ombrone,
+and stretching on to Montalcino. We put up at the sign of the 'Two
+Hares,' where a notable housewife gave us a dinner of all we could
+desire; _frittata di cervello_, good fish, roast lamb stuffed with
+rosemary, salad and cheese, with excellent wine and black coffee, at
+the rate of three _lire_ a head.
+
+The attraction of S. Quirico is its gem-like little collegiata, a
+Lombard church of the ninth century, with carved portals of the
+thirteenth. It is built of golden travertine; some details in brown
+sandstone. The western and southern portals have pillars resting on
+the backs of lions. On the western side these pillars are four
+slender columns, linked by snake-like ligatures. On the southern
+side they consist of two carved figures--possibly S. John and the
+Archangel Michael. There is great freedom and beauty in these
+statues, as also in the lions which support them, recalling the
+early French and German manner. In addition, one finds the usual
+Lombard grotesques--two sea-monsters, biting each other;
+harpy-birds; a dragon with a twisted tail; little men grinning and
+squatting in adaptation to coigns and angles of the windows. The
+toothed and chevron patterns of the north are quaintly blent with
+rude acanthus scrolls and classical egg-mouldings. Over the western
+porch is a Gothic rose window. Altogether this church must be
+reckoned one of the most curious specimens of that hybrid
+architecture, fusing and appropriating different manners, which
+perplexes the student in Central Italy. It seems strangely out of
+place in Tuscany. Yet, if what one reads of Toscanella, a village
+between Viterbo and Orbetello, be true, there exist examples of a
+similar fantastic Lombard style even lower down.
+
+The interior was most disastrously gutted and 'restored' in 1731:
+its open wooden roof masked by a false stucco vaulting. A few
+relics, spared by the eighteenth-century Vandals, show that the
+church was once rich in antique curiosities. A marble knight in
+armour lies on his back, half hidden by the pulpit stairs. And in
+the choir are half a dozen rarely beautiful panels of tarsia,
+executed in a bold style and on a large scale. One design--a man
+throwing his face back, and singing, while he plays a mandoline;
+with long thick hair and fanciful beretta; behind him a fine line of
+cypress and other trees--struck me as singularly lovely. In another
+I noticed a branch of peach, broad leaves and ripe fruit, not only
+drawn with remarkable grace and power, but so modelled as to stand
+out with the roundness of reality.
+
+The whole drive of three hours back to Montepulciano was one long
+banquet of inimitable distant views. Next morning, having to take
+farewell of the place, we climbed to the Castello, or _arx_ of the
+old city! It is a ruined spot, outside the present walls, upon the
+southern slope, where there is now a farm, and a fair space of short
+sheep-cropped turf, very green and grassy, and gemmed with little
+pink geraniums as in England in such places. The walls of the old
+castle, overgrown with ivy, are broken down to their foundations.
+This may possibly have been done when Montepulciano was dismantled
+by the Sienese in 1232. At that date the Commune succumbed to its
+more powerful neighbours. The half of its inhabitants were murdered,
+and its fortifications were destroyed. Such episodes are common
+enough in the history of that internecine struggle for existence
+between the Italian municipalities, which preceded the more famous
+strife of Guelfs and Ghibellines. Stretched upon the smooth turf of
+the Castello, we bade adieu to the divine landscape bathed in light
+and mountain air--to Thrasymene and Chiusi and Cetona; to Amiata,
+Pienza, and S. Quirico; to Montalcino and the mountains of Volterra;
+to Siena and Cortona; and, closer, to Monte Fallonica, Madonna di
+Biagio, the house-roofs and the Palazzo tower of Montepulciano.
+
+
+
+
+
+_PERUGIA_
+
+
+Perugia is the empress of hill-set Italian cities. Southward from
+her high-built battlements and church towers the eye can sweep a
+circuit of the Apennines unrivalled in its width. From cloudlike
+Radicofani, above Siena in the west, to snow-capped Monte Catria,
+beneath whose summit Dante spent those saddest months of solitude in
+1313, the mountains curve continuously in lines of austere dignity
+and tempered sweetness. Assisi, Spoleto, Todi, Trevi, crown lesser
+heights within the range of vision. Here and there the glimpse of
+distant rivers lights a silver spark upon the plain. Those hills
+conceal Lake Thrasymene; and there lies Orvieto, and Ancona there:
+while at our feet the Umbrian champaign, breaking away into the
+valley of the Tiber, spreads in all the largeness of majestically
+converging mountain-slopes. This is a landscape which can never lose
+its charm. Whether it be purple golden summer, or winter with sad
+tints of russet woods and faintly rosy snows, or spring attired in
+tenderest green of new-fledged trees and budding flowers, the air is
+always pure and light and finely tempered here. City gates, sombre
+as their own antiquity, frame vistas of the laughing fields.
+Terraces, flanked on either side by jutting masonry, cut clear
+vignettes of olive-hoary slopes, with cypress-shadowed farms in
+hollows of the hills. Each coign or point of vantage carries a
+bastion or tower of Etruscan, Roman, mediaeval architecture, tracing
+the limits of the town upon its mountain plateau. Everywhere art and
+nature lie side by side in amity beneath a sky so pure and delicate,
+that from its limpid depth the spirit seems to drink new life. What
+air-tints of lilac, orange, and pale amethyst are shed upon those
+vast ethereal hills and undulating plains! What wandering
+cloud-shadows sail across this sea of olives and of vines, with here
+and there a fleece of vapour or a column of blue smoke from charcoal
+burners on the mountain flank! To southward, far away beyond those
+hills, is felt the presence of eternal Rome, not seen, but clearly
+indicated by the hurrying of a hundred streams that swell the Tiber.
+
+In the neighbourhood of the town itself there is plenty to attract
+the student of antiquities, or art, or history. He may trace the
+walls of the Etruscan city, and explore the vaults where the dust of
+the Volumnii lies coffered in sarcophagi and urns. Mild faces of
+grave deities lean from the living tufa above those narrow alcoves,
+where the chisel-marks are still fresh, and where the vigilant lamps
+still hang suspended from the roof by leaden chains. Or, in the
+Museum, he may read on basreliefs and vases how gloomy and morose
+were the superstitions of those obscure forerunners of majestic
+Rome. The piazza offers one of the most perfect Gothic facades, in
+its Palazzo Pubblico, to be found in Italy. The flight of marble
+steps is guarded from above by the bronze griffin of Perugia and the
+Baglioni, with the bronze lion of the Guelf faction, to which the
+town was ever faithful. Upon their marble brackets they ramp in all
+the lean ferocity of feudal heraldry, and from their claws hang down
+the chains wrested in old warfare from some barricaded gateway of
+Siena. Below is the fountain, on the many-sided curves of which
+Giovanni Pisano sculptured, in quaint statuettes and basreliefs, all
+the learning of the middle ages, from the Bible history down to
+fables of AEsop and allegories of the several months. Facing the same
+piazza is the Sala del Cambio, a mediaeval Bourse, with its tribunal
+for the settlement of mercantile disputes, and its exquisite carved
+woodwork and frescoes, the masterpiece of Perugino's school. Hard by
+is the University, once crowded with native and foreign students,
+where the eloquence of Greek Demetrius in the first dawn of the
+Renaissance withdrew the gallants of Perugia--those slim youths with
+shocks of nut-brown hair beneath their tiny red caps, whose comely
+legs, encased in tight-fitting hose of two different colours, looked
+so strange to modern eyes upon the canvas of Signorelli--from their
+dice and wine-cups, and amours and daggers, to grave studies in the
+lore of Greece and Rome.
+
+This piazza, the scene of all the bloodiest tragedies in Perugian
+annals, is closed at the north end by the Cathedral, with the open
+pulpit in its wall from which S. Bernardino of Siena preached peace
+in vain. The citizens wept to hear his words: a bonfire of vanities
+was lighted on the flags beside Pisano's fountain: foe kissed foe:
+and the same cowl of S. Francis was set in token of repentance on
+heads that long had schemed destruction, each for each. But a few
+days passed, and the penitents returned to cut each other's throat.
+Often and often have those steps of the Duomo run with blood of
+Baglioni, Oddi, Arcipreti, and La Staffa. Once the whole church had
+to be washed with wine and blessed anew before the rites of
+Christianity could be resumed in its desecrated aisles. It was here
+that within the space of two days, in 1500, the catafalque was
+raised for the murdered Astorre, and for his traitorous cousin
+Grifonetto Baglioni. Here, too, if more ancient tradition does not
+err, were stretched the corpses of twenty-seven members of the same
+great house at the end of one of their grim combats.
+
+No Italian city illustrates more forcibly than Perugia the violent
+contrasts of the earlier Renaissance. This is perhaps its most
+essential characteristic--that which constitutes its chief aesthetic
+interest. To many travellers the name of Perugia suggests at once
+the painter who, more than any other, gave expression to devout
+emotions in consummate works of pietistic art. They remember how
+Raphael, when a boy, with Pinturicchio, Lo Spagna, and Adone Doni,
+in the workshop of Pietro Perugino, learned the secret of that style
+to which he gave sublimity and freedom in his Madonnas di San Sisto,
+di Foligno, and del Cardellino. But the students of mediaeval history
+in detail know Perugia far better as the lion's lair of one of the
+most ferocious broods of heroic ruffians Italy can boast. To them
+the name of Perugia suggests at once the great house of the
+Baglioni, who drenched Umbria with blood, and gave the broad fields
+of Assisi to the wolf, and who through six successive generations
+bred captains for the armies of Venice, Florence, Naples, and the
+Church.[1] That the trade of Perugino in religious pictures should
+have been carried on in the city which shared the factions of the
+Baglioni--that Raphael should have been painting Pietas while
+Astorre and Simonetto were being murdered by the beautiful young
+Grifonetto--is a paradox of the purest water in the history of
+civilisation.
+
+    [1] Most of the references in this essay are made to the
+    Perugian chronicles of Graziani, Matarazzo, Bontempi, and
+    Frolliere, in the _Archivio Storico Italiano_, vol. xvi.
+    parts 1 and 2. Ariodante Fabretti's _Biografie dei
+    Capitani Venturieri dell' Umbria_ supply some details.
+
+The art of Perugino implied a large number of devout and wealthy
+patrons, a public not only capable of comprehending him, but also
+eager to restrict his great powers within the limits of purely
+devotional delineation. The feuds and passions of the Baglioni, on
+the other hand, implied a society in which egregious crimes only
+needed success to be accounted glorious, where force, cruelty, and
+cynical craft reigned supreme, and where the animal instincts
+attained gigantic proportions in the persons of splendid young
+athletic despots. Even the names of these Baglioni, Astorre,
+Lavinia, Zenobia, Atalanta, Troilo, Ercole, Annibale, Ascanio,
+Penelope, Orazio, and so forth, clash with the sweet mild forms of
+Perugino, whose very executioners are candidates for Paradise, and
+kill their martyrs with compunction.
+
+In Italy of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries such
+contradictions subsisted in the same place and under the conditions
+of a common culture, because there was no limit to the development
+of personality. Character was far more absolute then than now. The
+force of the modern world, working in the men of those times like
+powerful wine, as yet displayed itself only as a spirit of freedom
+and expansion and revolt. The strait laces of mediaeval Christianity
+were loosened. The coercive action of public opinion had not yet
+made itself dominant. That was an age of adolescence, in which men
+were and dared to be _themselves_ for good or evil. Hypocrisy,
+except for some solid, well-defined, selfish purpose, was unknown:
+the deference to established canons of decorum which constitutes
+more than half of our so-called morality, would have been scarcely
+intelligible to an Italian. The outlines of individuality were
+therefore strongly accentuated. Life itself was dramatic in its
+incidents and motives, its catastrophes and contrasts. These
+conditions, eminently favourable to the growth of arts and the
+pursuit of science, were no less conducive to the hypertrophy of
+passions, and to the full development of ferocious and inhuman
+personalities. Every man did what seemed good in his own eyes. Far
+less restrained than we are by the verdict of his neighbours, but
+bound by faith more blind and fiercer superstitions, he displayed
+the contradictions of his character in picturesque chiaroscuro. What
+he could was the limit set on what he would. Therefore, considering
+the infinite varieties of human temperaments, it was not merely
+possible, but natural, for Pietro Perugino and Gianpaolo Baglioni to
+be inhabitants at the same time of the selfsame city, and for the
+pious Atalanta to mourn the bloodshed and the treason of her
+Achillean son, the young and terrible Grifone. Here, in a word, in
+Perugia, beneath the fierce blaze of the Renaissance, were brought
+into splendid contrast both the martial violence and the religious
+sentiment of mediaevalism, raised for a moment to the elevation of
+fine art.
+
+Some of Perugino's qualities can be studied better in Perugia than
+elsewhere. Of his purely religious pictures--altar-pieces of Madonna
+and Saints, martyrdoms of S. Sebastian, Crucifixions, Ascensions,
+Annunciations, and Depositions from the Cross,--fine specimens are
+exhibited in nearly all the galleries of Europe. A large number of
+his works and of those of his scholars may be seen assembled in the
+Pinacoteca of Perugia. Yet the student of his pietistic style finds
+little here of novelty to notice. It is in the Sala del Cambio that
+we gain a really new conception of his faculty. Upon the decoration
+of that little hall he concentrated all his powers of invention. The
+frescoes of the Transfiguration and the Nativity, which face the
+great door, are the triumphs of his devotional manner. On other
+panels of the chamber he has portrayed the philosophers of Greece
+and Rome, the kings and generals of antiquity, the prophets and the
+sibyls who announced Christ's advent. The roof is covered with
+arabesques of delicate design and dainty execution--labyrinths of
+fanciful improvisation, in which flowers and foliage and human forms
+are woven into a harmonious framework for the medallions of the
+seven planets. The woodwork with which the hall is lined below the
+frescoes, shows to what a point of perfection the art of
+intarsiatura had been carried in his school. All these decorative
+masterpieces are the product of one ingenuous style. Uninfluenced by
+the Roman frescoes imitated by Raphael in his Loggie of the Vatican,
+they breathe the spirit of the earlier Renaissance, which created
+for itself free forms of grace and loveliness without a pattern,
+divining by its innate sense of beauty what the classic artists had
+achieved. Take for an example the medallion of the planet Jupiter.
+The king of gods and men, hoary-headed and mild-eyed, is seated in
+his chariot drawn by eagles: before him kneels Ganymede, a
+fair-haired, exquisite, slim page, with floating mantle and ribbands
+fluttering round his tight hose and jerkin. Such were the
+cup-bearers of Galeazzo Sforza and Gianpaolo Baglioni. Then compare
+this fresco with the Jupiter in mosaic upon the cupola of the Chigi
+chapel in S. Maria del Popolo at Rome. A new age of experience had
+passed over Raphael between his execution of Perugino's design in
+the one and his conception of the other. He had seen the marbles of
+the Vatican, and had heard of Plato in the interval: the simple
+graces of the earlier Renaissance were no longer enough for him; but
+he must realise the thought of classic myths in his new manner. In
+the same way we may compare this Transfiguration with Raphael's last
+picture, these sibyls with those of S. Maria della Pace, these sages
+with the School of Athens, these warriors with the Battle of
+Maxentius. What is characteristic of the full-grown Raphael is his
+universal comprehension, his royal faculty for representing past and
+present, near and distant, things the most diverse, by forms ideal
+and yet distinctive. Each phase of the world's history and of human
+activity receives from him appropriate and elevated expression. What
+is characteristic of the frescoes in the Sala del Cambio, and indeed
+of the whole manner of Perugino, is that all subjects, sacred or
+secular, allegorical or real, are conceived in the same spirit of
+restrained and well-bred piety. There is no attempt at historical
+propriety or dramatic realism. Grave, ascetic, melancholy faces of
+saints are put on bodies of kings, generals, sages, sibyls, and
+deities alike. The same ribbands and studied draperies clothe and
+connect all. The same conventional attitudes of meditative
+gracefulness are repeated in each group. Yet, the whole effect, if
+somewhat feeble and insipid, is harmonious and thoughtful. We see
+that each part has proceeded from the same mind, in the same mood,
+and that the master's mind was no common one, the mood itself was
+noble. Good taste is everywhere apparent: the work throughout is a
+masterpiece of refined fancy.
+
+To Perugino the representative imagination was of less importance
+than a certain delicate and adequately ideal mode of feeling and
+conceiving. The consequent charm of his style is that everything is
+thought out and rendered visible in one decorous key. The worst that
+can be said of it is that its suavity inclines to mawkishness, and
+that its quietism borders upon sleepiness. We find it difficult not
+to accuse him of affectation. At the same time we are forced to
+allow that what he did, and what he refrained from doing, was
+determined by a purpose. A fresco of the Adoration of the Shepherds,
+and a picture of S. Sebastian in the Pinacoteca, where the archer on
+the right hand is drawn in a natural attitude with force and truth,
+show well enough what Perugino could do when he chose.
+
+The best way of explaining his conventionality, in which the supreme
+power of a master is always verging on the facile trick of a
+mannerist, is to suppose that the people of Perugia and the Umbrian
+highlands imposed on him this narrow mode of treatment. We may
+presume that he was always receiving orders for pictures to be
+executed in his well-known manner. Celestial insipidity in art was
+the fashion in that Umbria which the Baglioni and the Popes laid
+waste from time to time with fire and sword.[1]
+
+    [1] It will not be forgotten by students of Italian
+    history that Umbria was the cradle of the _Battuti_ or
+    Flagellants, who overspread Italy in the fourteenth
+    century, and to whose devotion were due the _Laude_, or
+    popular hymns of the religious confraternities, which in
+    course of time produced the _Sacre Rappresentazioni_ of
+    fifteenth-century Florentine literature. Umbria, and
+    especially Perugia and Assisi, seems to have been
+    inventive in piety between 1200 and 1400.
+
+Therefore the painter who had made his reputation by placing devout
+young faces upon twisted necks, with a back-ground of limpid
+twilight and calm landscape, was forced by the fervour of his
+patrons, and his own desire for money, to perpetuate pious
+prettinesses long after he had ceased to feel them. It is just this
+widespread popularity of a master unrivalled in one line of
+devotional sentimentalism which makes the contrast between Perugino
+and the Baglioni family so striking.
+
+The Baglioni first came into notice during the wars they carried on
+with the Oddi of Perugia in the fourteenth and fifteenth
+centuries.[1] This was one of those duels to the death, like that of
+the Visconti with the Torrensi of Milan, on which the fate of so
+many Italian cities in the middle ages hung. The nobles fought; the
+townsfolk assisted like a Greek chorus, sharing the passions of the
+actors, but contributing little to the catastrophe. The piazza was
+the theatre on which the tragedy was played. In this contest the
+Baglioni proved the stronger, and began to sway the state of Perugia
+after the irregular fashion of Italian despots. They had no legal
+right over the city, no hereditary magistracy, no title of princely
+authority.[2] The Church was reckoned the supreme administrator of
+the Perugian commonwealth. But in reality no man could set foot on
+the Umbrian plain without permission from the Baglioni. They elected
+the officers of state. The lives and goods of the citizens were at
+their discretion. When a Papal legate showed his face, they made the
+town too hot to hold him. One of Innocent VIII.'s nephews had been
+murdered by them.[3] Another cardinal had shut himself up in a box,
+and sneaked on mule-back like a bale of merchandise through the
+gates to escape their fury. It was in vain that from time to time
+the people rose against them, massacring Pandolfo Baglioni on the
+public square in 1393, and joining with Ridolfo and Braccio of the
+dominant house to assassinate another Pandolfo with his son Niccolo
+in 1460. The more they were cut down, the more they flourished. The
+wealth they derived from their lordships in the duchy of Spoleto and
+the Umbrian hill-cities, and the treasures they accumulated in the
+service of the Italian republics, made them omnipotent in their
+native town. There they built tall houses on the site which Paul
+III. chose afterwards for his _castello_, and which is now an open
+place above the Porta San Carlo. From the balconies and turrets of
+these palaces, swarming with their _bravi_, they surveyed the
+splendid land that felt their force--a land which, even in
+midsummer, from sunrise to sunset keeps the light of day upon its
+up-turned face. And from this eyrie they issued forth to prey upon
+the plain, or to take their lust of love or blood within the city
+streets. The Baglioni spent but short time in the amusements of
+peace. From father to son they were warriors, and we have records of
+few Italian houses, except perhaps the Malatesti of Rimini, who
+equalled them in hardihood and fierceness. Especially were they
+noted for the remorseless _vendette_ which they carried on among
+themselves, cousin tracking cousin to death with the ferocity and
+craft of sleuthhounds. Had they restrained these fratricidal
+passions, they might, perhaps, by following some common policy, like
+that of the Medici in Florence or the Bentivogli in Bologna, have
+successfully resisted the Papal authority and secured dynastic
+sovereignty.
+
+    [1] The Baglioni persecuted their rivals with persistent
+    fury to the very last. Matarazzo tells how Morgante
+    Baglioni gave a death-wound to his nephew, the young Carlo
+    de li Oddi, in 1501: 'Dielli una ferita nella formosa
+    faccia: el quale era in aspetto vago e bello giovane d'
+    anni 23 o 24, _al quale uscivano e bionde tresse sotto la
+    bella armadura_.' The same night his kinsman Pompeo was
+    murdered in prison with this last lament upon his lips: 'O
+    infelice casa degli Oddi, quale aveste tanta, fama di
+    conduttieri, capitanie, cavaliere, speron d' oro,
+    protonotarie, e abbate; et in uno solo tempo aveste homine
+    quarantadue; e oggie, per me quale son ultimo, se asconde
+    el nome de la magnifica e famosa casa degli Oddi, che mai
+    al mondo non sera piu nominata' (p. 175).
+
+    [2] The Baglioni were lords of Spello, Bettona, Montalera,
+    and other Umbrian burghs, but never of Perugia. Perugia
+    had a civic constitution similar to that of Florence and
+    other Guelf towns under the protection of the Holy See.
+    The power of the eminent house was based only on wealth
+    and prestige.
+
+    [3] See Matarazzo, p. 38. It is here that he relates the
+    covert threat addressed by Guido Baglioni to Alexander
+    VI., who was seeking to inveigle him into his clutches.
+
+It is not until 1495 that the history of the Baglioni becomes
+dramatic, possibly because till then they lacked the pen of
+Matarazzo.[1] But from this year forward to their final extinction,
+every detail of their doings has a picturesque and awful interest.
+Domestic furies, like the revel descried by Cassandra above the
+palace of Mycenae, seem to take possession of the fated house; and
+the doom which has fallen on them is worked out with pitiless
+exactitude to the last generation. In 1495 the heads of the Casa
+Baglioni were two brothers, Guido and Ridolfo, who had a numerous
+progeny of heroic sons. From Guido sprang Astorre, Adriano, called
+for his great strength Morgante,[2] Gismondo, Marcantonio, and
+Gentile. Ridolfo owned Troilo, Gianpaolo, and Simonetto. The first
+glimpse we get of these young athletes in Matarazzo's chronicle is
+on the occasion of a sudden assault upon Perugia, made by the Oddi
+and the exiles of their faction in September 1495. The foes of the
+Baglioni entered the gates, and began breaking the iron chains,
+_serragli_, which barred the streets against advancing cavalry. None
+of the noble house were on the alert except young Simonetto, a lad
+of eighteen, fierce and cruel, who had not yet begun to shave his
+chin.[3] In spite of all dissuasion, he rushed forth alone,
+bareheaded, in his shirt, with a sword in his right hand and a
+buckler on his arm, and fought against a squadron. There at the
+barrier of the piazza he kept his foes at bay, smiting men-at-arms
+to the ground with the sweep of his tremendous sword, and receiving
+on his gentle body twenty-two cruel wounds. While thus at fearful
+odds, the noble Astorre mounted his charger and joined him. Upon his
+helmet flashed the falcon of the Baglioni with the dragon's tail
+that swept behind. Bidding Simonetto tend his wounds, he in his turn
+held the square.
+
+    [1] His chronicle is a masterpiece of naive, unstudied
+    narrative. Few documents are so important for the student
+    of the sixteenth century in Italy. Whether it be really
+    the work of Matarazzo or Maturanzio, the distinguished
+    humanist, is more than doubtful. The writer seems to me as
+    yet unspoiled by classic studies and the pedantries of
+    imitation.
+
+    [2] This name, it may be incidentally mentioned, proves
+    the wide-spread popularity of Pulci's poem, the _Morgante
+    Maggiore_.
+
+    [3] 'Era costui al presente di anni 18 o 19; ancora non se
+    radeva barba; e mostrava tanta forza e tanto ardire, e era
+    tanto adatto nel fatto d' arme, che era gran maraveglia; e
+    iostrava cum tanta gintilezza e gagliardia, che homo del
+    mondo non l' aria mai creso; et aria dato con la punta de
+    la lancia in nel fondo d' uno bicchiere da la mattina a la
+    sera,' &c. (p. 50).
+
+Listen to Matarazzo's description of the scene; it is as good as any
+piece of the 'Mort Arthur:'--'According to the report of one who
+told me what he had seen with his own eyes, never did anvil take so
+many blows as he upon his person and his steed; and they all kept
+striking at his lordship in such crowds that the one prevented the
+other. And so many lances, partisans, and crossbow quarries, and
+other weapons, made upon his body a most mighty din, that above
+every other noise and shout was heard the thud of those great
+strokes. But he, like one who had the mastery of war, set his
+charger where the press was thickest, jostling now one, and now
+another; so that he ever kept at least ten men of his foes stretched
+on the ground beneath his horse's hoofs; which horse was a most
+fierce beast, and gave his enemies what trouble he best could. And
+now that gentle lord was all fordone with sweat and toil, he and his
+charger; and so weary were they that scarcely could they any longer
+breathe.'
+
+Soon after, the Baglioni mustered in force. One by one their heroes
+rushed from the palaces. The enemy were driven back with slaughter;
+and a war ensued, which made the fair land between Assisi and
+Perugia a wilderness for many months. It must not be forgotten that,
+at the time of these great feats of Simonetto and Astorre, young
+Raphael was painting in the studio of Perugino. What the whole city
+witnessed with astonishment and admiration, he, the keenly sensitive
+artist-boy, treasured in his memory. Therefore in the S. George of
+the Louvre, and in the mounted horseman trampling upon Heliodorus in
+the Stanze of the Vatican, victorious Astorre lives for ever,
+immortalised in all his splendour by the painter's art. The grinning
+griffin on the helmet, the resistless frown upon the forehead of the
+beardless knight, the terrible right arm, and the ferocious
+steed,--all are there as Raphael saw and wrote them on his brain.
+One characteristic of the Baglioni, as might be plentifully
+illustrated from their annalist, was their eminent beauty, which
+inspired beholders with an enthusiasm and a love they were far from
+deserving by their virtues. It is this, in combination with their
+personal heroism, which gives a peculiarly dramatic interest to
+their doings, and makes the chronicle of Matarazzo more fascinating
+than a novel. He seems unable to write about them without using the
+language of an adoring lover.
+
+In the affair of 1495 the Baglioni were at amity among themselves.
+When they next appear upon the scene, they are engaged in deadly
+feud. Cousin has set his hand to the throat of cousin, and the two
+heroes of the piazza are destined to be slain by foulest treachery
+of their own kin. It must be premised that besides the sons of Guido
+and Ridolfo already named, the great house counted among its most
+distinguished members a young Grifone, or Grifonetto, the son of
+Grifone and Atalanta Baglioni. Both his father and grandfather had
+died violent deaths in the prime of their youth; Galeotto, the
+father of Atalanta, by poison, and Grifone by the knife at Ponte
+Ricciolo in 1477. Atalanta was left a young widow with one only son,
+this Grifonetto, whom Matarazzo calls 'un altro Ganimede,' and who
+combined the wealth of two chief branches of the Baglioni. In 1500,
+when the events about to be related took place, he was quite a
+youth. Brave, rich, handsome, and married to a young wife, Zenobia
+Sforza, he was the admiration of Perugia. He and his wife loved each
+other dearly; and how, indeed, could it be otherwise, since 'l' uno
+e l' altro sembravano doi angioli di Paradiso?' At the same time he
+had fallen into the hands of bad and desperate counsellors. A
+bastard of the house, Filippo da Braccio, his half-uncle, was always
+at his side, instructing him not only in the accomplishments of
+chivalry, but also in wild ways that brought his name into
+disrepute. Another of his familiars was Carlo Barciglia Baglioni, an
+unquiet spirit, who longed for more power than his poverty and
+comparative obscurity allowed. With them associated Jeronimo della
+Penna, a veritable ruffian, contaminated from his earliest youth
+with every form of lust and violence, and capable of any crime.[1]
+These three companions, instigated partly by the Lord of Camerino
+and partly by their own cupidity, conceived a scheme for massacring
+the families of Guido and Ridolfo at one blow. As a consequence of
+this wholesale murder, Perugia would be at their discretion. Seeing
+of what use Grifonetto by his wealth and name might be to them, they
+did all they could to persuade him to join their conjuration. It
+would appear that the bait first offered him was the sovereignty of
+the city, but that he was at last gained over by being made to
+believe that his wife Zenobia had carried on an intrigue with
+Gianpaolo Baglioni. The dissolute morals of the family gave
+plausibility to an infernal trick which worked upon the jealousy of
+Grifonetto. Thirsting for revenge, he consented to the scheme. The
+conspirators were further fortified by the accession of Jeronimo
+della Staffa, and three members of the House of Corgna. It is
+noticeable that out of the whole number only two, Bernardo da Corgna
+and Filippo da Braccio, were above the age of thirty. Of the rest,
+few had reached twenty-five. At so early an age were the men of
+those times adepts in violence and treason. The execution of the
+plot was fixed for the wedding festivities of Astorre Baglioni with
+Lavinia, the daughter of Giovanni Colonna and Giustina Orsini. At
+that time the whole Baglioni family were to be assembled in Perugia,
+with the single exception of Marcantonio, who was taking baths at
+Naples for his health. It was known that the members of the noble
+house, nearly all of them condottieri by trade, and eminent for
+their great strength and skill in arms, took few precautions for
+their safety. They occupied several houses close together between
+the Porta San Carlo and the Porta Eburnea, set no regular guard over
+their sleeping chambers, and trusted to their personal bravery, and
+to the fidelity of their attendants.[2] It was thought that they
+might be assassinated in their beds. The wedding festivities began
+upon the 28th of July, and great is the particularity with which
+Matarazzo describes the doings of each successive day--processions,
+jousts, triumphal arches, banquets, balls, and pageants. The night
+of the 14th of August was finally set apart for the consummation of
+_el gran tradimento_: it is thus that Matarazzo always alludes to
+the crime of Grifonetto with a solemnity of reiteration that is most
+impressive. A heavy stone let fall into the courtyard of Guido
+Baglioni's palace was to be the signal: each conspirator was then to
+run to the sleeping chamber of his appointed prey. Two of the
+principals and fifteen bravi were told off to each victim: rams and
+crowbars were prepared to force the doors, if needful. All happened
+as had been anticipated. The crash of the falling stone was heard.
+The conspirators rushed to the scene of operations. Astorre, who was
+sleeping in the house of his traitorous cousin Grifonetto, was slain
+in the arms of his young bride, crying, as he vainly struggled,
+'Misero Astorre che more come poltrone!' Simonetto, who lay that
+night with a lad called Paolo he greatly loved, flew to arms,
+exclaiming to his brother, 'Non dubitare Gismondo, mio fratello!' He
+too was soon despatched, together with his bedfellow. Filippo da
+Braccio, after killing him, tore from a great wound in his side the
+still quivering heart, into which he drove his teeth with savage
+fury. Old Guido died groaning, 'Ora e gionto il ponto mio;' and
+Gismondo's throat was cut while he lay holding back his face that he
+might be spared the sight of his own massacre. The corpses of
+Astorre and Simonetto were stripped and thrown out naked into the
+streets. Men gathered round and marvelled to see such heroic forms,
+with faces so proud and fierce even in death. In especial the
+foreign students likened them to ancient Romans.[3] But on their
+fingers were rings, and these the ruffians of the place would fain
+have hacked off with their knives. From this indignity the noble
+limbs were spared; then the dead Baglioni were hurriedly consigned
+to an unhonoured tomb. Meanwhile the rest of the intended victims
+managed to escape. Gianpaolo, assailed by Grifonetto and
+Gianfrancesco della Corgna, took refuge with his squire and
+bedfellow, Maraglia, upon a staircase leading from his room. While
+the squire held the passage with his pike against the foe, Gianpaolo
+effected his flight over neighbouring house-roofs. He crept into the
+attic of some foreign students, who, trembling with terror, gave him
+food and shelter, clad him in a scholar's gown, and helped him to
+fly in this disguise from the gates at dawn. He then joined his
+brother Troilo at Marsciano, whence he returned without delay to
+punish the traitors. At the same time Grifonetto's mother, Atalanta,
+taking with her his wife Zenobia and the two young sons of
+Gianpaolo, Malatesta and Orazio, afterwards so celebrated in Italian
+history for their great feats of arms and their crimes, fled to her
+country-house at Landona. Grifonetto in vain sought to see her
+there. She drove him from her presence with curses for the treason
+and the fratricide that he had planned. It is very characteristic of
+these wild natures, framed of fierce instincts and discordant
+passions, that his mother's curse weighed like lead upon the
+unfortunate young man. Next day, when Gianpaolo returned to try the
+luck of arms, Grifonetto, deserted by the companions of his crime
+and paralysed by the sense of his guilt, went out alone to meet him
+on the public place. The semi-failure of their scheme had terrified
+the conspirators: the horrors of that night of blood unnerved them.
+All had fled except the next victim of the feud. Putting his sword
+to the youth's throat, Gianpaolo looked into his eyes and said, 'Art
+thou here, Grifonetto? Go with God's peace: I will not slay thee,
+nor plunge my hand in my own blood, as thou hast done in thine.'
+Then he turned and left the lad to be hacked in pieces by his guard.
+The untranslatable words which Matarazzo uses to describe his death
+are touching from the strong impression they convey of Grifonetto's
+goodliness: 'Qui ebbe sua signoria sopra sua nobile persona tante
+ferite che suoi membra leggiadre stese in terra.'[4] None but Greeks
+felt the charm of personal beauty thus. But while Grifonetto was
+breathing out his life upon the pavement of the piazza, his mother
+Atalanta and his wife Zenobia came to greet him through the
+awe-struck city. As they approached, all men fell aside and slunk
+away before their grief. None would seem to have had a share in
+Grifonetto's murder. Then Atalanta knelt by her dying son, and
+ceased from wailing, and prayed and exhorted him to pardon those who
+had caused his death. It appears that Grifonetto was too weak to
+speak, but that he made a signal of assent, and received his
+mother's blessing at the last: 'E allora porse el nobil giovenetto
+la dextra mano a la sua giovenile matre strengendo de sua matre la
+bianca mano; e poi incontinente spiro l' anima dal formoso corpo, e
+passo cum infinite benedizioni de sua matre in cambio de la
+maledictione che prima li aveva date.'[5] Here again the style of
+Matarazzo, tender and full of tears, conveys the keenest sense of
+the pathos of beauty and of youth in death and sorrow. He has
+forgotten _el gran tradimento_. He only remembers how comely
+Grifonetto was, how noble, how frank and spirited, how strong in
+war, how sprightly in his pleasures and his loves. And he sees the
+still young mother, delicate and nobly born, leaning over the
+athletic body of her bleeding son. This scene, which is perhaps a
+genuine instance of what we may call the neo-Hellenism of the
+Renaissance, finds its parallel in the 'Phoenissae' of Euripides.
+Jocasta and Antigone have gone forth to the battlefield and found
+the brothers Polynices and Eteocles drenched in blood:--
+
+                        From his chest
+  Heaving a heavy breath, King Eteocles heard
+  His mother, and stretched forth a cold damp hand
+  On hers, and nothing said, but with his eyes
+  Spake to her by his tears, showing kind thoughts
+  In symbols.
+
+It was Atalanta, we may remember, who commissioned Raphael to paint
+the so-called Borghese Entombment. Did she perhaps feel, as she
+withdrew from the piazza, soaking with young Grifonetto's blood,[6]
+that she too had some portion in the sorrow of that mother who had
+wept for Christ? The memory of the dreadful morning must have
+remained with her through life, and long communion with our Lady of
+Sorrows may have sanctified the grief that had so bitter and so
+shameful a root of sin.
+
+    [1] Matarazzo's description of the ruffians who surrounded
+    Grifonetto (pp. 104, 105, 113) would suit Webster's
+    Flamineo or Bosola. In one place he likens Filippo to
+    Achitophel and Grifonetto to Absalom. Villano Villani,
+    quoted by Fabretti (vol. iii. p. 125), relates the street
+    adventures of this clique. It is a curious picture of the
+    pranks of an Italian princeling in the fifteenth century.
+
+    [2] Jacobo Antiquari, the secretary of Lodovico Sforza, in
+    a curious letter, which gives an account of the massacre,
+    says that he had often reproved the Baglioni for 'sleeping
+    in their beds without any guard or watch, so that they
+    might easily be overcome by enemies.'
+    [3] 'Quelli che li vidino, e maxime li forastiere
+    studiante assimigliavano el magnifico Messer Astorre cosi
+    morto ad un antico Romano, perche prima era unanissimo;
+    tanto sua figura era degnia e magnia,' &c. This is a touch
+    exquisitely illustrative of the Renaissance enthusiasm for
+    classic culture.
+
+    [4] Here his lordship received upon his noble person so
+    many wounds that he stretched his graceful limbs upon the
+    earth.
+
+    [5] 'And then the noble stripling stretched his right hand
+    to his youthful mother, pressing the white hand of his
+    mother; and afterwards forthwith he breathed his soul
+    forth from his beauteous body, and died with numberless
+    blessings of his mother instead of the curses she had
+    given him before.'
+
+    [6] See Matarazzo, p. 134, for this detail.
+
+After the death of Grifonetto, and the flight of the conspirators,
+Gianpaolo took possession of Perugia. All who were suspected of
+complicity in the treason were massacred upon the piazza and in the
+Cathedral. At the expense of more than a hundred murders, the chief
+of the Baglioni found himself master of the city on the 17th of
+July. First he caused the Cathedral to be washed with wine and
+reconsecrated. Then he decorated the Palazzo with the heads of the
+traitors and with their portraits in fresco, painted hanging head
+downwards, as was the fashion in Italy.[1] Next he established
+himself in what remained of the palaces of his kindred, hanging the
+saloons with black, and arraying his retainers in the deepest
+mourning. Sad indeed was now the aspect of Perugia. Helpless and
+comparatively uninterested, the citizens had been spectators of
+these bloody broils. They were now bound to share the desolation of
+their masters. Matarazzo's description of the mournful palace and
+the silent town, and of the return of Marcantonio from Naples,
+presents a picture striking for its vividness.[2] In the true style
+of the Baglioni, Marcantonio sought to vent his sorrow not so much
+in tears as by new violence. He prepared and lighted torches,
+meaning to burn the whole quarter of Sant' Angelo; and from this
+design he was with difficulty dissuaded by his brother. To such mad
+freaks of rage and passion were the inhabitants of a mediaeval town
+in Italy exposed! They make us understand the _ordinanze di
+giustizia_, by which to be a noble was a crime in Florence.
+
+    [1] See Varchi (ed. Lemonnier, 1857), vol. ii. p. 265,
+    vol. iii. pp. 224, 652, and Corio (Venice, 1554), p. 326,
+    for instances of _dipinti per traditori_.
+
+    [2] P. 142. 'Pareva ogni cosa oscura e lacrimosa: tutte
+    loro servitore piangevano; et le camere de lo resto de li
+    magnifici Baglioni, e sale, e ognie cosa erano tutte
+    intorno cum pagnie negre. E per la citta non era piu
+    alcuno che sonasse ne cantasse; e poco si rideva,' &c.
+
+From this time forward the whole history of the Baglioni family is
+one of crime and bloodshed. A curse had fallen on the house, and to
+the last of its members the penalty was paid. Gianpaolo himself
+acquired the highest reputation throughout Italy for his courage and
+sagacity both as a general and a governor.[1] It was he who held
+Julius II. at his discretion in 1506, and was sneered at by
+Machiavelli for not consummating his enormities by killing the
+warlike Pope.[2] He again, after joining the diet of La Magione
+against Cesare Borgia, escaped by his acumen the massacre of
+Sinigaglia, which overthrew the other conspirators. But his name was
+no less famous for unbridled lust and deeds of violence. He boasted
+that his son Constantino was a true Baglioni, since he was his
+sister's child. He once told Machiavelli that he had it in his mind
+to murder four citizens of Perugia, his enemies. He looked calmly on
+while his kinsmen Eusebio and Taddeo Baglioni, who had been accused
+of treason, were hewn to pieces by his guard. His wife, Ippolita de'
+Conti, was poignarded in her Roman farm; on hearing the news, he
+ordered a festival in which he was engaged to proceed with redoubled
+merriment.[3] At last the time came for him to die by fraud and
+violence. Leo X., anxious to remove so powerful a rival from
+Perugia, lured him in 1520 to Rome under the false protection of a
+papal safe-conduct. After a short imprisonment he had him beheaded
+in the Castle of S. Angelo. It was thought that Gentile, his first
+cousin, sometime Bishop of Orvieto, but afterwards the father of two
+sons in wedlock with Giulia Vitelli--such was the discipline of the
+Church at this epoch--had contributed to the capture of Gianpaolo,
+and had exulted in his execution.[4] If so, he paid dear for his
+treachery; for Orazio Baglioni, the second son of Gianpaolo and
+captain of the Church under Clement VII., had him murdered in 1527,
+together with his two nephews Fileno and Annibale.[5] This Orazio
+was one of the most bloodthirsty of the whole brood. Not satisfied
+with the assassination of Gentile, he stabbed Galeotto, the son of
+Grifonetto, with his own hand in the same year.[6] Afterwards he
+died in the kingdom of Naples while leading the Black Bands in the
+disastrous war which followed the sack of Rome. He left no son.
+Malatesta, his elder brother, became one of the most celebrated
+generals of the age, holding the batons of the Venetian and
+Florentine republics, and managing to maintain his ascendency in
+Perugia in spite of the persistent opposition of successive popes.
+But his name is best known in history for one of the greatest public
+crimes--a crime which must be ranked with that of Marshal Bazaine.
+Intrusted with the defence of Florence during the siege of 1530, he
+sold the city to his enemy, Pope Clement, receiving for the price of
+this infamy certain privileges and immunities which fortified his
+hold upon Perugia for a season. All Italy was ringing with the great
+deeds of the Florentines, who for the sake of their liberty
+transformed themselves from merchants into soldiers, and withstood
+the united powers of Pope and Emperor alone. Meanwhile Malatesta,
+whose trade was war, and who was being largely paid for his services
+by the beleaguered city, contrived by means of diplomatic
+procrastination, secret communication with the enemy, and all the
+arts that could intimidate an army of recruits, to push affairs to a
+point at which Florence was forced to capitulate without inflicting
+the last desperate glorious blow she longed to deal her enemies. The
+universal voice of Italy condemned him. When Matteo Dandolo, the
+Doge of Venice, heard what he had done, he cried before the Pregadi
+in conclave, 'He has sold that people and that city, and the blood
+of those poor citizens ounce by ounce, and has donned the cap of the
+biggest traitor in the world.'[7] Consumed with shame, corroded by
+an infamous disease, and mistrustful of Clement, to whom he had sold
+his honour, Malatesta retired to Perugia, and died in 1531. He left
+one son, Ridolfo, who was unable to maintain himself in the lordship
+of his native city. After killing the Papal legate, Cinzio
+Filonardi, in 1534, he was dislodged four years afterwards, when
+Paul III. took final possession of the place as an appanage of the
+Church, razed the houses of the Baglioni to the ground, and built
+upon their site the Rocca Paolina. This fortress bore an
+inscription: 'Ad coercendam Perusinorum audaciam.' The city was
+given over to the rapacity of the abominable Pier Luigi Farnese, and
+so bad was this tyranny of priests and bastards, that, strange to
+say, the Perugians regretted the troublous times of the Baglioni.
+Malatesta in dying had exclaimed, 'Help me, if you can; since after
+me you will be set to draw the cart like oxen.' Frollieri, relating
+the speech, adds, 'And this has been fulfilled to the last letter,
+for all have borne not only the yoke but the burden and the goad.'
+Ridolfo Baglioni and his cousin Braccio, the eldest son of
+Grifonetto, were both captains of Florence. The one died in battle
+in 1554, the other in 1559. Thus ended the illustrious family. They
+are now represented by descendants from females, and by contadini
+who preserve their name and boast a pedigree of which they have no
+records.
+
+    [1] See Frollieri, p. 437, for a very curious account of
+    his character.
+
+    [2] Fabretti (vol. iii. pp. 193-202. and notes) discusses
+    this circumstance in detail. Machiavelli's critique runs
+    thus (_Discorsi_, lib. i. cap. 27): 'Ne si poteva credere
+    che si fosse astenuto o per bonta, o per coscienza che lo
+    ritenesse; perche in un petto d'un uomo facinoroso, che si
+    teneva la sorella, ch' aveva morti i cugini e i nipoti per
+    regnare, non poteva scendere alcuno pietoso rispetto: ma
+    si conchiuse che gli uomini non sanno essere onorevolmente
+    tristi, o perfettamente buoni,' &c.
+
+    [3] See Fabretti, vol. iii. p. 230. He is an authority for
+    the details of Gianpaolo's life. The circumstance alluded
+    to above justifies the terrible opening scene in Shelley's
+    tragedy, _The Cenci_.
+
+    [4] Fabretti, vol. iii. p. 230, vol. iv. p. 10.
+
+    [5] See Varchi, _Storie Florentine_, vol. i. p. 224.
+
+    [6] Ibid.
+
+    [7] Fabretti, vol. iv. p. 206.
+
+The history of the Baglioni needs no commentary. They were not worse
+than other Italian nobles, who by their passions and their parties
+destroyed the peace of the city they infested. It is with an odd
+mixture of admiration and discontent that the chroniclers of Perugia
+allude to their ascendency. Matarazzo, who certainly cannot be
+accused of hostility to the great house, describes the miseries of
+his country under their bad government in piteous terms:[1] 'As I
+wish not to swerve from the pure truth, I say that from the day the
+Oddi were expelled, our city went from bad to worse. All the young
+men followed the trade of arms. Their lives were disorderly; and
+every day divers excesses were divulged, and the city had lost all
+reason and justice. Every man administered right unto himself,
+_propria autoritate et manu regia_. Meanwhile the Pope sent many
+legates, if so be the city could be brought to order: but all who
+came returned in dread of being hewn in pieces; for they threatened
+to throw some from the windows of the palace, so that no cardinal or
+other legate durst approach Perugia, unless he were a friend of the
+Baglioni. And the city was brought to such misery, that the most
+wrongous men were most prized; and those who had slain two or three
+men walked as they listed through the palace, and went with sword or
+poignard to speak to the podesta and other magistrates. Moreover,
+every man of worth was down-trodden by bravi whom the nobles
+favoured; nor could a citizen call his property his own. The nobles
+robbed first one and then another of goods and land. All offices
+were sold or else suppressed; and taxes and extortions were so
+grievous that every one cried out. And if a man were in prison for
+his head, he had no reason to fear death, provided he had some
+interest with a noble.' Yet the same Matarazzo in another place
+finds it in his heart to say:[2] 'Though the city suffered great
+pains for these nobles, yet the illustrious house of Baglioni
+brought her honour throughout Italy, by reason of the great dignity
+and splendour of that house, and of their pomp and name. Wherefore
+through them our city was often set above the rest, and notably
+above the commonwealths of Florence and Siena.' Pride feels no pain.
+The gratified vanity of the Perugian burgher, proud to see his town
+preferred before its neighbours, blinds the annalist to all the
+violence and villany of the magnificent Casa Baglioni. So strong was
+the _esprit de ville_ which through successive centuries and amid
+all vicissitudes of politics divided the Italians against
+themselves, and proved an insuperable obstacle to unity.
+
+    [1] Pp. 102, 103.
+
+    [2] P. 139.
+
+After reading the chronicle of Matarazzo at Perugia through one winter
+day, I left the inn and walked at sunset to the blood-bedabbled
+cathedral square; for still those steps and pavements to my strained
+imagination seemed reeking with the outpoured blood of Baglioni; and on
+the ragged stonework of San Lorenzo red patches slanted from the dying
+day. Then by one of those strange freaks of the brain to which we are
+all subject, for a moment I lost sight of untidy Gothic facades and
+gaunt unfinished church walls; and as I walked, I was in the Close of
+Salisbury on a perfumed summer afternoon. The drowsy scent of
+lime-flowers and mignonette, the cawing of elm-cradled rooks, the hum of
+bees above, the velvet touch of smooth-shorn grass, and the breathless
+shadow of motionless green boughs made up one potent and absorbing mood
+of the charmed senses. Far overhead soared the calm grey spire into the
+infinite air, and the perfection of accomplished beauty slept beneath in
+those long lines of nave and choir and transepts. It was but a momentary
+dream, a thought that burned itself upon a fancy overtaxed by passionate
+images. Once more the puppet-scene of the brain was shifted; once more I
+saw the bleak bare flags of the Perugian piazza, the forlorn front of
+the Duomo, the bronze griffin, and Pisano's fountain, with here and
+there a flake of that tumultuous fire which the Italian sunset sheds.
+Who shall adequately compare the two pictures? Which shall we
+prefer--the Close of Salisbury, with its sleepy bells and cushioned ease
+of immemorial Deans--or this poor threadbare passion of Perugia, where
+every stone is stained with blood, and where genius in painters and
+scholars and prophets and ecstatic lovers has throbbed itself away to
+nothingness? It would be foolish to seek an answer to this question,
+idle to institute a comparison, for instance, between those tall young
+men with their broad winter cloaks who remind me of Grifonetto, and the
+vergers pottering in search of shillings along the gravel paths of
+Salisbury. It is more rational, perhaps, to reflect of what strange
+stuff our souls are made in this age of the world, when aesthetic
+pleasures, full, genuine, and satisfying, can be communicated alike by
+Perugia with its fascination of a dead irrevocable dramatic past, and
+Salisbury, which finds the artistic climax of its English comfort in the
+'Angel in the House.' From Matarazzo, smitten with a Greek love for the
+beautiful Grifonetto, to Mr. Patmore, is a wide step.
+
+
+
+
+_ORVIETO_
+
+
+On the road from Siena to Rome, halfway between Ficulle and Viterbo,
+is the town of Orvieto. Travellers often pass it in the night-time.
+Few stop there, for the place is old and dirty, and its inns are
+said to be indifferent. But none who see it even from a distance can
+fail to be struck with its imposing aspect, as it rises from the
+level plain upon that mass of rock among the Apennines.
+
+Orvieto is built upon the first of those huge volcanic blocks which
+are found like fossils embedded in the more recent geological
+formations of Central Italy, and which stretch in an irregular but
+unbroken line to the Campagna of Rome. Many of them, like that on
+which Civita Castellana is perched, are surrounded by rifts and
+chasms and ravines and fosses, strangely furrowed and twisted by the
+force of fiery convulsions. But their advanced guard, Orvieto,
+stands up definite and solid, an almost perfect cube, with walls
+precipitous to north and south and east, but slightly sloping to the
+westward. At its foot rolls the Paglia, one of those barren streams
+which swell in winter with the snows and rains of the Apennines, but
+which in summer-time shrink up, and leave bare beds of sand and
+pestilential canebrakes to stretch irregularly round their dwindled
+waters.
+
+The weary flatness and utter desolation of this valley present a
+sinister contrast to the broad line of the Apennines, swelling tier
+on tier, from their oak-girdled basements set with villages and
+towers, up to the snow and cloud that crown their topmost crags. The
+time to see this landscape is at sunrise; and the traveller should
+take his stand upon the rising ground over which the Roman road is
+carried from the town--the point, in fact, which Turner has selected
+for his vague and misty sketch of Orvieto in our Gallery. Thence he
+will command the whole space of the plain, the Apennines, and the
+river creeping in a straight line at the base; while the sun, rising
+to his right, will slant along the mountain flanks, and gild the
+leaden stream, and flood the castled crags of Orvieto with a haze of
+light. From the centre of this glory stand out in bold relief old
+bastions built upon the solid tufa, vast gaping gateways black in
+shadow, towers of churches shooting up above a medley of
+deep-corniced tall Italian houses, and, amid them all, the marble
+front of the Cathedral, calm and solemn in its unfamiliar Gothic
+state. Down to the valley from these heights there is a sudden fall;
+and we wonder how the few spare olive-trees that grow there can
+support existence on the steep slope of the cliff.
+
+Our mind, in looking at this landscape, is carried by the force of
+old association to Jerusalem. We could fancy ourselves to be
+standing on Mount Olivet, with the valley of Jehoshaphat between us
+and the Sacred City. As we approach the town, the difficulty of
+scaling its crags seems insurmountable. The road, though carried
+skilfully along each easy slope or ledge of quarried rock, still
+winds so much that nearly an hour is spent in the ascent. Those who
+can walk should take a footpath, and enter Orvieto by the mediaeval
+road, up which many a Pope, flying from rebellious subjects or
+foreign enemies, has hurried on his mule.[1]
+
+    [1] Clement VII., for example, escaped from Rome disguised
+    as a gardener after the sack in 1527, and, to quote the
+    words of Varchi (St. Flor., v. 17), 'Entro agli otto di
+    dicembre a due ore di notte in Orvieto, terra di sito
+    fortissimo, per lo essere ella sopra uno scoglio pieno di
+    tufi posta, d' ogni intorno scosceso e dirupato,' &c.
+
+To unaccustomed eyes there is something forbidding and terrible
+about the dark and cindery appearance of volcanic tufa. Where it is
+broken, the hard and gritty edges leave little space for vegetation;
+while at intervals the surface spreads so smooth and straight that
+one might take it for solid masonry erected by the architect of
+Pandemonium. Rubbish and shattered bits of earthenware and ashes,
+thrown from the city walls, cling to every ledge and encumber the
+broken pavement of the footway. Then as we rise, the castle
+battlements above appear more menacing, toppling upon the rough edge
+of the crag, and guarding each turn of the road with jealous
+loopholes or beetle-browed machicolations, until at last the gateway
+and portcullis are in view.
+
+On first entering Orvieto, one's heart fails to find so terrible a
+desolation, so squalid a solitude, and so vast a difference between
+the present and the past, between the beauty of surrounding nature
+and the misery of this home of men. A long space of unoccupied
+ground intervenes between the walls and the hovels which skirt the
+modern town. This, in the times of its splendour, may have served
+for oliveyards, vineyards, and pasturage, in case of siege. There
+are still some faint traces of dead gardens left upon its arid
+wilderness, among the ruins of a castellated palace, decorated with
+the cross-keys and tiara of an unremembered pope. But now it lies a
+mere tract of scorched grass, insufferably hot and dry and sandy,
+intersected by dirty paths, and covered with the loathliest offal of
+a foul Italian town. Should you cross this ground at mid-day, under
+the blinding sun, when no living thing, except perhaps some
+poisonous reptile, is about, you would declare that Orvieto had been
+stricken for its sins by Heaven. Your mind would dwell mechanically
+on all that you have read of Papal crimes, of fratricidal wars, of
+Pagan abominations in the high places of the Church, of tempestuous
+passions and refined iniquity--of everything, in fact, which renders
+Italy of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance dark and ominous amid
+the splendours of her art and civilisation. This is the natural
+result; this shrunken and squalid old age of poverty and
+self-abandonment is the end of that strong, prodigal, and vicious
+youth. Who shall restore vigour to these dead bones? we cry. If
+Italy is to live again, she must quit her ruined palace towers to
+build fresh dwellings elsewhere. Filth, lust, rapacity, treason,
+godlessness, and violence have made their habitation here; ghosts
+haunt these ruins; these streets still smell of blood and echo to
+the cries of injured innocence; life cannot be pure, or calm, or
+healthy, where this curse has settled.
+
+Occupied with such reflections, we reach the streets of Orvieto.
+They are not very different from those of most Italian villages,
+except that there is little gaiety about them. Like Assisi or Siena,
+Orvieto is too large for its population, and merriment flows better
+from close crowding than from spacious accommodation. Very dark, and
+big, and dirty, and deserted, is the judgment we pronounce upon the
+houses; very filthy and malodorous each passage; very long this
+central street; very few and sad and sullen the inhabitants; and
+where, we wonder, is the promised inn? In search of this one walks
+nearly through the city, until one enters the Piazza, where there is
+more liveliness. Here cafes may be found; soldiers, strong and
+sturdy, from the north, lounge at the corners; the shops present
+more show; and a huge hotel, not bad for such a place, and
+appropriately dedicated to the Belle Arti, standing in a courtyard
+of its own, receives the traveller weary with his climb. As soon as
+he has taken rooms, his first desire is to go forth and visit the
+Cathedral.
+
+The great Duomo was erected at the end of the thirteenth century to
+commemorate the Miracle of Bolsena. The value of this miracle
+consisted in its establishing unmistakably the truth of
+transubstantiation. The story runs that a young Bohemian priest who
+doubted the dogma was performing the office of the mass in a church
+at Bolsena, when, at the moment of consecration, blood issued from
+five gashes in the wafer, which resembled the five wounds of Christ.
+The fact was evident to all the worshippers, who saw blood falling
+on the linen of the altar; and the young priest no longer doubted,
+but confessed the miracle, and journeyed straightway with the
+evidence thereof to Pope Urban IV. The Pope, who was then at
+Orvieto, came out with all his retinue to meet the convert and do
+honour to the magic-working relics. The circumstances of this
+miracle are well known to students of art through Raphael's
+celebrated fresco in the Stanze of the Vatican. And it will be
+remembered by the readers of ecclesiastical history that Urban had
+in 1264 promulgated by a bull the strict observance of the Corpus
+Christi festival in connection with his strong desire to
+re-establish the doctrine of Christ's presence in the elements. Nor
+was it without reason that, while seeking miraculous support for
+this dogma, he should have treated the affair of Bolsena so
+seriously as to celebrate it by the erection of one of the most
+splendid cathedrals in Italy; for the peace of the Church had
+recently been troubled by the reforming ardour of the Fraticelli and
+by the promulgation of Abbot Joachim's Eternal Gospel. This new
+evangelist had preached the doctrine of progression in religious
+faith, proclaiming a kingdom of the Spirit which should transcend
+the kingdom of the Son, even as the Christian dispensation had
+superseded the Jewish supremacy of the Father. Nor did he fail at
+the same time to attack the political and moral abuses of the
+Papacy, attributing its degradation to the want of vitality which
+pervaded the old Christian system, and calling on the clergy to lead
+more simple and regenerate lives, consistently with the spiritual
+doctrine which he had received by inspiration. The theories of
+Joachim were immature and crude; but they were among the first signs
+of that liberal effort after self-emancipation which eventually
+stirred all Europe at the time of the Renaissance. It was,
+therefore, the obvious policy of the Popes to crush so dangerous an
+opposition while they could; and by establishing the dogma of
+transubstantiation, they were enabled to satisfy the craving
+mysticism of the people, while they placed upon a firmer basis the
+cardinal support of their own religious power.
+
+In pursuance of his plan, Urban sent for Lorenzo Maitani, the great
+Sienese architect, who gave designs for a Gothic church in the same
+style as the Cathedral of Siena, though projected on a smaller
+scale. These two churches, in spite of numerous shortcomings
+manifest to an eye trained in French or English architecture, are
+still the most perfect specimens of Pointed Gothic produced by the
+Italian genius. The Gottico Tedesco had never been received with
+favour in Italy. Remains of Roman architecture, then far more
+numerous and perfect than they are at present, controlled the minds
+of artists, and induced them to adopt the rounded rather than the
+pointed arch. Indeed, there would seem to be something peculiarly
+Northern in the spirit of Gothic architecture: its intricacies suit
+the gloom of Northern skies, its massive exterior is adapted to the
+severity of Northern weather, its vast windows catch the fleeting
+sunlight of the North, and the pinnacles and spires which constitute
+its beauty are better expressed in rugged stone than in the marbles
+of the South. Northern cathedrals do not depend for their effect
+upon the advantages of sunlight or picturesque situations. Many of
+them are built upon broad plains, over which for more than half the
+year hangs fog. But the cathedrals of Italy owe their charm to
+colour and brilliancy: their gilded sculpture and mosaics, the
+variegated marbles and shallow portals of their facades, the light
+aerial elegance of their campanili, are all adapted to the luminous
+atmosphere of a smiling land, where changing effects of natural
+beauty distract the attention from solidity of design and permanence
+of grandeur in the edifice itself.[1]
+
+    [1] In considering why Gothic architecture took so little
+    root in mediaeval Italy, we must remember that the Italians
+    had maintained an unbroken connection with Pagan Rome, and
+    that many of their finest churches were basilicas
+    appropriated to Christian rites. Add to this that the
+    commerce of their cities, which first acquired wealth in
+    the twelfth century, especially Pisa and Venice, kept them
+    in communication with the Levant, where they admired the
+    masterpieces of Byzantine architecture, and whence they
+    imported Greek artists in mosaic and stonework. Against
+    these external circumstances, taken in connection with the
+    hereditary leanings of an essentially Latin race, and with
+    the natural conditions of landscape and climate alluded to
+    above, the influence of a few imported German architects
+    could not have had sufficient power to effect a thorough
+    metamorphosis of the national taste. For further treatment
+    of this subject see my 'Fine Arts,' _Renaissance in
+    Italy_, Part III. chap. ii.
+
+The Cathedral of Orvieto will illustrate these remarks. Its design
+is very simple. It consists of a parallelogram, from which three
+chapels of equal size project, one at the east end, and one at the
+north and south. The windows are small and narrow, the columns
+round, and the roof displays none of that intricate groining we find
+in English churches. The beauty of the interior depends on surface
+decoration, on marble statues, woodwork, and fresco-paintings.
+Outside, there is the same simplicity of design, the same elaborated
+local ornament. The sides of the Cathedral are austere, their narrow
+windows cutting horizontal lines of black and white marble. But the
+facade is a triumph of decorative art. It is strictly what has often
+been described as a 'frontispiece;' for it bears no sincere relation
+to the construction of the building. The three gables rise high
+above the aisles. The pinnacles and parapets and turrets are stuck
+on to look agreeable. It is a screen such as might be completed or
+left unfinished at will by the architect. Finished as it is, the
+facade of Orvieto presents a wilderness of beauties. Its pure white
+marble has been mellowed by time to a rich golden hue, in which are
+set mosaics shining like gems or pictures of enamel. A statue stands
+on every pinnacle; each pillar has a different design; round some of
+them are woven wreaths of vine and ivy; acanthus leaves curl over
+the capitals, making nests for singing birds or Cupids; the doorways
+are a labyrinth of intricate designs, in which the utmost elegance
+of form is made more beautiful by incrustations of precious agates
+and Alexandrine glasswork. On every square inch of this wonderful
+facade have been lavished invention, skill, and precious material.
+But its chief interest centres in the sculptures executed by
+Giovanni and Andrea, sons and pupils of Nicola Pisano. The names of
+these three men mark an era in the history of art. They first
+rescued Italian sculpture from the grotesqueness of the Lombard and
+the wooden monotony of the Byzantine styles. Sculpture takes the
+lead of all the arts. And Nicola Pisano, before Cimabue, before
+Duccio, even before Dante, opened the gates of beauty, which for a
+thousand years had been shut up and overgrown with weeds. As Dante
+invoked the influence of Virgil when he began to write his mediaeval
+poem, and made a heathen bard his hierophant in Christian mysteries,
+just so did Nicola Pisano draw inspiration from a Graeco-Roman
+sarcophagus. He studied the basrelief of Phaedra and Hippolytus,
+which may still be seen upon the tomb of Countess Beatrice in the
+Campo Santo, and so learned by heart the beauty of its lines and the
+dignity expressed in its figures, that in all his subsequent works
+we trace the elevated tranquillity of Greek sculpture. This
+imitation never degenerated into servile copying; nor, on the other
+hand, did Nicola attain the perfect grace of an Athenian artist. He
+remained a truly mediaeval carver, animated with a Christian instead
+of a Pagan spirit, but caring for the loveliness of form which art
+in the dark ages failed to realise.[1]
+
+    [1] I am not inclined to reject the old legend mentioned
+    above about Pisano's study of the antique. For a full
+    discussion of the question see my 'Fine Arts,'
+    _Renaissance in Italy_, Part III. chap. iii.
+
+Whether it was Nicola or his scholars who designed the basreliefs at
+Orvieto is of little consequence. Vasari ascribes them to the
+father; but we know that he completed his pulpit at Pisa in 1230,
+and his death is supposed to have taken place fifteen years before
+the foundation of the cathedral. At any rate, they are imbued with
+his genius, and bear the strongest affinity to his sculptures at
+Pisa, Siena, and Bologna. To estimate the influence they exercised
+over the arts of sculpture and painting in Italy would be a
+difficult task. Duccio and Giotto studied here; Ghiberti closely
+followed them. Signorelli and Raphael made drawings from their
+compositions. And the spirit which pervades these sculptures may be
+traced in all succeeding works of art. It is not classic; it is
+modern, though embodied in a form of beauty modelled on the Greek.
+
+The basreliefs are carved on four marble tablets placed beside the
+porches of the church, and corresponding in size and shape with the
+chief doorways. They represent the course of Biblical history,
+beginning with the creation of the world, and ending with the last
+judgment. If it were possible here to compare them in detail with
+the similar designs of Ghiberti, Michel Angelo, and Raphael, it
+might be shown that the Pisani established modes of treating sacred
+subjects from which those mighty masters never deviated, though each
+stamped upon them his peculiar genius, making them more perfect as
+time added to the power of art. It would also be not without
+interest to show that, in their primitive conceptions of the
+earliest events in history, the works of the Pisan artists closely
+resemble some sculptures executed on the walls of Northern
+cathedrals, as well as early mosaics in the South of Italy. We might
+have noticed how all the grotesque elements which appear in Nicola
+Pisano, and which may still be traced in Ghiberti, are entirely lost
+in Michel Angelo, how the supernatural is humanised, how the
+symbolical receives an actual expression, and how intellectual types
+are substituted for mere local and individual representations. For
+instance, the Pisani represent the Creator as a young man standing
+on the earth, with a benign and dignified expression, and attended
+by two ministering angels. He is the Christ of the Creed, 'by whom
+all things were made.' In Ghiberti we find an older man, sometimes
+appearing in a whirlwind of clouds and attendant spirits, sometimes
+walking on the earth, but still far different in conception from the
+Creative Father of Michel Angelo. The latter is rather the Platonic
+Demiurgus than the Mosaic God. By every line and feature of his face
+and flowing hair, by each movement of his limbs, whether he ride on
+clouds between the waters and the firmament, or stand alone creating
+by a glance and by a motion of his hand Eve, the full-formed and
+conscious woman, he is proclaimed the Maker who from all eternity
+has held the thought of the material universe within his mind.
+Raphael does not depart from this conception. The profound
+abstraction of Michel Angelo ruled his intellect, and received from
+his genius a form of perhaps greater grace. A similar growth from
+the germinal designs of the Pisani may be traced in many groups.
+
+But we must not linger at the gate. Let us enter the cathedral and
+see some of the wonders it contains. Statues of gigantic size adorn
+the nave. Of these, the most beautiful 151 are the work of Ippolito
+Scalza, an artist whom Orvieto claims with pride as one of her own
+sons. The long line of saints and apostles whom they represent
+conduct us to the high altar, surrounded by its shadowy frescoes,
+and gleaming with the work of carvers in marble and bronze and
+precious metals. But our steps are drawn toward the chapel of the
+south transept, where now a golden light from the autumnal sunset
+falls across a crowd of worshippers. From far and near the poor
+people are gathered. Most of them are women. They kneel upon the
+pavement and the benches, sunburnt faces from the vineyards and the
+canebrakes of the valley. The old look prematurely aged and
+withered--their wrinkled cheeks bound up in scarlet and
+orange-coloured kerchiefs, their skinny fingers fumbling on the
+rosary, and their mute lips moving in prayer. The younger women have
+great listless eyes and large limbs used to labor. Some of them
+carry babies trussed up in tight swaddling-clothes. One kneels
+beside a dark-browed shepherd, on whose shoulder falls his shaggy
+hair; and little children play about, half hushed, half heedless of
+the place, among old men whose life has dwindled down into a
+ceaseless round of prayers. We wonder why this chapel, alone in the
+empty cathedral, is so crowded with worshippers. They surely are not
+turned towards that splendid Pieta of Scalza--a work in which the
+marble seems to live a cold, dead, shivering life. They do not heed
+Angelico's and Signorelli's frescoes on the roof and walls. The
+interchange of light and gloom upon the stalls and carved work of
+the canopies can scarcely rivet so intense a gaze. All eyes seem
+fixed upon a curtain of red silk above the altar. Votive pictures,
+and glass cases full of silver hearts, wax babies, hands and limbs
+of every kind, are hung round it. A bell rings. A jingling organ
+plays a little melody in triple time; and from the sacristy comes
+forth the priest. With much reverence, and with a show of
+preparation, he and the acolytes around him mount the altar steps
+and pull a string which draws the curtain. Behind the silken veil we
+behold Madonna and her child--a faint, old, ugly picture, blackened
+with the smoke and incense of five hundred years, a wonder-working
+image, cased in gold, and guarded from the common air by glass and
+draperies. Jewelled crowns are stuck upon the heads of the mother
+and the infant. In the efficacy of Madonna di San Brizio to ward off
+agues, to deliver from the pangs of childbirth or the fury of the
+storm, to keep the lover's troth and make the husband faithful to
+his home, these pious women of the marshes and the mountains put a
+simple trust.
+
+While the priest sings, and the people pray to the dance-music of
+the organ, let us take a quiet seat unseen, and picture to our minds
+how the chapel looked when Angelico and Signorelli stood before its
+plastered walls, and thought the thoughts with which they covered
+them. Four centuries have gone by since those walls were white and
+even to their brushes; and now you scarce can see the golden
+aureoles of saints, the vast wings of the angels, and the flowing
+robes of prophets through the gloom. Angelico came first, in monk's
+dress, kneeling before he climbed the scaffold to paint the angry
+judge, the Virgin crowned, the white-robed army of the Martyrs, and
+the glorious company of the Apostles. These he placed upon the roof,
+expectant of the Judgment. Then he passed away, and Luca Signorelli,
+the rich man who 'lived splendidly and loved to dress himself in
+noble clothes,' the liberal and courteous gentleman, took his place
+upon the scaffold. For all the worldliness of his attire and the
+worldliness of his living, his brain teemed with stern and terrible
+thoughts. He searched the secrets of sin and of the grave, of
+destruction and of resurrection, of heaven and hell. All these he
+has painted on the walls beneath the saints of Fra Angelico. First
+come the troubles of the last days, the preaching of Antichrist, and
+the confusion of the wicked. In the next compartment we see the
+Resurrection from the tomb; and side by side with that is painted
+Hell. Paradise occupies another portion of the chapel. On each side
+of the window, beneath the Christ of Fra Angelico, are delineated
+scenes from the Judgment. A wilderness of arabesques, enclosing
+medallion portraits of poets and chiaroscuro episodes selected from
+Dante and Ovid, occupies the lower portions of the chapel walls
+beneath the great subjects enumerated above; and here Signorelli has
+given free vein to his fancy and his mastery over anatomical design,
+accumulating naked human figures in the most fantastic and audacious
+variety of pose.
+
+Look at the 'Fulminati'--so the group of wicked men are called whose
+death precedes the Judgment. Huge naked angels, sailing upon vanlike
+wings, breathe columns of red flame upon a crowd of wicked men and
+women. In vain these sinners avoid the descending fire. It pursues
+and fells them to the earth. As they fly, their eyes are turned
+towards the dreadful faces in the air. Some hurry through a portico,
+huddled together, falling men, and women clasping to their arms dead
+babies scorched with flame. One old man stares straightforward,
+doggedly awaiting death. One woman scowls defiance as she dies. A
+youth has twisted both hands in his hair, and presses them against
+his ears to drown the screams and groans and roaring thunder. They
+trample upon prostrate forms already stiff. Every shape and attitude
+of sudden terror and despairing guilt are here. Next comes the
+Resurrection. Two angels of the Judgment--gigantic figures, with the
+plumeless wings that Signorelli loves--are seen upon the clouds.
+They blow trumpets with all their might, so that each naked muscle
+seems strained to make the blast, which bellows through the air and
+shakes the sepulchres beneath the earth. Thence rise the dead. All
+are naked, and a few are seen like skeletons. With painful effort
+they struggle from the soil that clasps them round, as if obeying an
+irresistible command. Some have their heads alone above the ground.
+Others wrench their limbs from the clinging earth; and as each man
+rises, it closes under him. One would think that they were being
+born again from solid clay, and growing into form with labour. The
+fully risen spirits stand and walk about, all occupied with the
+expectation of the Judgment; but those that are yet in the act of
+rising, have no thought but for the strange and toilsome process of
+this second birth. Signorelli here, as elsewhere, proves himself one
+of the greatest painters by the simple means with which he produces
+the most marvellous effects. His composition sways our souls with
+all the passion of the terrible scenes that he depicts. Yet what
+does it contain? Two stern angels on the clouds, a blank grey plain,
+and a multitude of naked men and women. In the next compartment Hell
+is painted. This is a complicated picture, consisting of a mass of
+human beings entangled with torturing fiends. Above hover demons
+bearing damned spirits, and three angels see that justice takes its
+course. Signorelli here degenerates into no mediaeval ugliness and
+mere barbarity of form. His fiends are not the bestial creatures of
+Pisano's basreliefs, but models of those monsters which Duppa has
+engraved from Michel Angelo's 'Last Judgment'--lean naked men, in
+whose hollow eyes glow the fires of hate and despair, whose nails
+have grown to claws, and from whose ears have started horns. They
+sail upon bats' wings; and only by their livid hue, which changes
+from yellow to the ghastliest green, and by the cruelty of their
+remorseless eyes, can you know them from the souls they torture. In
+Hell ugliness and power of mischief come with length of years.
+Continual growth in crime distorts the form which once was human;
+and the interchange of everlasting hatred degrades the tormentor and
+his victim to the same demoniac ferocity. To this design the science
+of foreshortening, and the profound knowledge of the human form in
+every posture, give its chief interest. Paradise is not less
+wonderful. Signorelli has contrived to throw variety and grace into
+the somewhat monotonous groups which this subject requires. Above
+are choirs of angels, not like Fra Angelico's, but tall male
+creatures clothed in voluminous drapery, with grave features and
+still, solemn eyes. Some are dancing, some are singing to the lute,
+and one, the most gracious of them all, bends down to aid a
+suppliant soul. The men beneath, who listen in a state of bliss, are
+all undraped. Signorelli, in this difficult composition, remains
+temperate, serene, and simple; a Miltonic harmony pervades the
+movement of his angelic choirs. Their beauty is the product of their
+strength and virtue. No floral ornaments or cherubs, or soft clouds,
+are found in his Paradise; yet it is fair and full of grace. Here
+Luca seems to have anticipated Raphael.
+
+It may be parenthetically observed, that Signorelli has introduced
+himself and Niccolo Angeli, treasurer of the cathedral building
+fund, in the corner of the fresco representing Antichrist, with the
+date 1503. They stand as spectators and solemn witnesses of the
+tragedy, set forth in all its acts by the great master.
+
+After viewing these frescoes, we muse and ask ourselves why
+Signorelli's fame is so inadequate to his deserts? Partly, no doubt,
+because he painted in obscure Italian towns, and left few
+easel-pictures.[1] Besides, the artists of the sixteenth century
+eclipsed all their predecessors, and the name of Signorelli has been
+swallowed up in that of Michel Angelo. Vasari said that 'esso Michel
+Angelo imito l'andar di Luca, come puo vedere ognuno.' Nor is it
+hard to see that what the one began at Orvieto the other completed
+in the Vatican. These great men had truly kindred spirits. Both
+struggled to express their intellectual conceptions in the simplest
+and most abstract forms. The works of both are distinguished by
+contempt for adventitious ornaments and for the grace of positive
+colour. Both chose to work in fresco, and selected subjects of the
+gravest and most elevated character. The study of anatomy, and the
+scientific drawing of the naked body, which Luca practised, were
+carried to perfection by Michel Angelo. Sublimity of thought and
+self-restraint pervade their compositions. He who would understand
+Buonarroti must first appreciate Signorelli. The latter, it is true,
+was confined to a narrower circle in his study of the beautiful and
+the sublime. He had not ascended to that pure idealism, superior to
+all the accidents of place and time, which is the chief distinction
+of Michel Angelo's work. At the same time, his manner had not
+suffered from too fervid an enthusiasm for the imperfectly
+comprehended antique. He painted the life he saw around him, and
+clothed his men and women in the dress of Italy.
+
+    [1] The Uffizzi and Pitti Galleries at Florence contain
+    one or two fine specimens of Luca Signorelli's Holy
+    Families, which show his influence over the early manner
+    of Michel Angelo. Into the background of one circular
+    picture he has introduced a group of naked figures, which
+    was imitated by Buonarroti in the Holy Family of the
+    Tribune. The Accademia has also a picture of saints and
+    angels illustrative of his large style and crowded
+    composition. The Brera at Milan can boast of a very
+    characteristic Flagellation, where the nude has been
+    carefully studied, and the brutality of an insolent
+    officer is forcibly represented. But perhaps the most
+    interesting of his works out of Orvieto are those in his
+    native place, Cortona. In the Church of the Gesu in that
+    town there is an altar-piece representing Madonna in glory
+    with saints, which also contains on a smaller scale than
+    the principal figures a little design of the Temptation in
+    Eden. You recognise the master's individuality in the
+    muscular and energetic Adam. The Duomo has a Communion of
+    the Apostles which shows Signorelli's independence of
+    tradition. It is the Cenacolo treated with freedom. Christ
+    stands in the midst of the twelve, who are gathered around
+    him, some kneeling and some upright, upon a marble
+    pavement. The whole scene is conceived in a truly grand
+    style--noble attitudes, broad draperies, sombre and rich
+    colouring, masculine massing of the figures in effective
+    groups. The Christ is especially noble. Swaying a little
+    to the right, he gives the bread to a kneeling apostle.
+    The composition is marked by a dignity and self-restraint
+    which Raphael might have envied. San Niccolo, again, has a
+    fine picture by this master. It is a Deposition with
+    saints and angels--those large-limbed and wide-winged
+    messengers of God whom none but Signorelli realised. The
+    composition of this picture is hazardous, and at first
+    sight it is even displeasing. The figures seem roughly
+    scattered in a vacant space. The dead Christ has but
+    little dignity, and the passion of S. Jerome in the
+    foreground is stiff in spite of its exaggeration. But long
+    study only serves to render this strange picture more and
+    more attractive. Especially noticeable is the youthful
+    angel clad in dark green who sustains Christ. He is a
+    young man in the bloom of strength and beauty, whose long
+    golden hair falls on each side of a sublimely lovely face.
+    Nothing in painting surpasses the modelling of the
+    vigorous but delicate left arm stretched forward to
+    support the heavy corpse. This figure is conceived and
+    executed in a style worthy of the Orvietan frescoes.
+    Signorelli, for whose imagination angels had a special
+    charm, has shown here that his too frequent contempt for
+    grace was not the result of insensibility to beauty.
+    Strength is the parent of sweetness in this wonderful
+    winged youth. But not a single sacrifice is made in the
+    whole picture to mere elegance.--Cortona is a place which,
+    independently of Signorelli, well deserves a visit. Like
+    all Etruscan towns, it is perched on the top of a high
+    hill, whence it commands a wonderful stretch of
+    landscape--Monte Amiata and Montepulciano to the south,
+    Chiusi with its lake, the lake of Thrasymene, and the
+    whole broad Tuscan plain. The city itself is built on a
+    projecting buttress of the mountain, to which it clings so
+    closely that, in climbing to the terrace of S. Margarita,
+    you lose sight of all but a few towers and house-roofs.
+    One can almost fancy that Signorelli gained his broad and
+    austere style from the habitual contemplation of a view so
+    severe in outline, and so vacant in its width. This
+    landscape has none of the variety which distinguishes the
+    prospect from Perugia, none of the suavity of Siena. It is
+    truly sympathetic in its bare simplicity to the style of
+    the great painter of Cortona. Try to see it on a winter
+    morning, when the mists are lying white and low and thin
+    upon the plain, when distant hills rise islanded into the
+    air, and the outlines of lakes are just discernible
+    through fleecy haze.--Next to Cortona in importance is the
+    Convent of Monte Oliveto in the neighbourhood of Siena,
+    where Signorelli painted eight frescoes from the story of
+    S. Benedict, distinguished by his customary vigour of
+    conception, masculine force of design, and martial
+    splendour in athletic disdainful young men. One scene in
+    this series, representing the interior of a country inn,
+    is specially interesting for a realism not usual in the
+    work of Signorelli. The frescoes painted for Petruccio at
+    Siena, one of which is now in the National Gallery, the
+    fresco in the Sistine Chapel, which has suffered sadly
+    from retouching, and the magnificent classical picture
+    called the 'School of Pan,' executed for Lorenzo de'
+    Medici, and now at Berlin, must not be forgotten, nor yet
+    the church-pictures scattered over Loreto, Arcevia, Citta
+    di Castello, Borgo San Sepolcro, Volterra, and other
+    cities of the Tuscan-Umbrian district. Arezzo, it may be
+    added in conclusion, has two altar-pieces of Signorelli's
+    in its Pinacoteca, neither of which adds much to our
+    conception of this painter's style. Noticeable as they may
+    be among the works of that period, they prove that his
+    genius was hampered by the narrow and traditional
+    treatment imposed on him in pictures of this kind.
+    Students may be referred to Robert Vischer's _Luca
+    Signorelli_ (Leipzig, 1879) for a complete list of the
+    master's works and an exhaustive biography. I have tried
+    to estimate his place in the history of Italian art in my
+    volume on the 'Fine Arts,' _Renaissance in Italy_, Part
+    III. I may also mention two able articles by Professor
+    Colvin published a few years since in the _Cornhill
+    Magazine_.
+
+Such reflections, and many more, pass through our mind as we sit and
+ponder in the chapel, which the daylight has deserted. The country
+people are still on their knees, still careless of the frescoed
+forms around them, still praying to Madonna of the Miracles. The
+service is well-nigh done. The benediction has been given, the
+organist strikes up his air of Verdi, and the congregation shuffles
+off, leaving the dimly lighted chapel for the vast sonorous dusky
+nave. How strange it is to hear that faint strain of a feeble opera
+sounding where, a short while since, the trumpet-blast of
+Signorelli's angels seemed to thrill our ears!
+
+
+
+
+_LUCRETIUS_
+
+
+In seeking to distinguish the Roman from the Greek genius we can
+find no surer guide than Virgil's famous lines in the Sixth AEneid.
+Virgil lived to combine the traditions of both races in a work of
+profoundly meditated art, and to their points of divergence he was
+sensitive as none but a poet bent upon resolving them could be. The
+real greatness of the Romans consisted in their capacity for
+government, law, practical administration. What they willed, they
+carried into effect with an iron indifference to everything but the
+object in view. What they acquired, they held with the firm grasp of
+force, and by the might of organised authority. Their architecture,
+in so far as it was original, subserved purposes of public utility.
+Philosophy with them ceased to be speculative, and applied itself to
+the ethics of conduct. Their religious conceptions--in so far as
+these were not adopted together with general culture from the
+Greeks, or together with sensual mysticism from the East--were
+practical abstractions. The Latin ideal was to give form to the
+state by legislation, and to mould the citizen by moral discipline.
+The Greek ideal was contained in the poetry of Homer, the sculpture
+of Pheidias, the heroism of Harmodius, the philosophy of Socrates.
+Hellas was held together by no system, but by the Delphic oracle and
+the Olympian games. The Greeks depended upon culture, as the Romans
+upon law. The national character determined by culture, and that
+determined by discipline, eventually broke down: but the ruin in
+either case was different. The Greek became servile, indolent, and
+slippery; the Roman became arrogant, bloodthirsty, tyrannous, and
+brutal. The Greeks in their best days attained to [Greek:
+sophrosyne], their regulative virtue, by a kind of instinct; and
+even in their worst debasement they never exhibited the extravagance
+of lust and cruelty and pompous prodigality displayed by Rome. The
+Romans, deficient in the aesthetic instinct, whether applied to
+morals or to art, were temperate upon compulsion; and when the
+strain of law relaxed, they gave themselves unchecked to profligacy.
+The bad taste of the Romans made them aspire to the huge and
+monstrous. Nero's whim to cut through the isthmus, Caligula's villa
+built upon the sea at Baiae, the acres covered by imperial palaces in
+Rome, are as Latin as the small scale of the Parthenon is Greek.
+Athens annihilates our notions of mere magnitude by the predominance
+of harmony and beauty, to which size is irrelevant. Rome dilates
+them to the full: it is the colossal greatness, the mechanical
+pride, of her monuments that win our admiration. By comparing the
+Dionysian theatre at Athens, during a representation of the
+'Antigone,' with the Flavian amphitheatre at Rome, while the
+gladiators sang their _Ave Caesar!_ we gain at once a measure for the
+differences between Greek and Latin taste. In spiritual matters,
+again, Rome, as distinguished from Hellas, was omnivorous. The
+cosmopolitan receptivity of Roman sympathies, absorbing Egypt and
+the Orient wholesale, is as characteristic as the exclusiveness of
+the Greeks, their sensitive anxiety about the [Greek: ethos]. We
+feel that it was in a Roman rather than a Greek atmosphere, where no
+middle term of art existed like a neutral ground between the moral
+law and sin, where no delicate intellectual sensibilities interfered
+with the assimilation of new creeds, that Christianity was destined
+to strike root and flourish.
+
+These remarks, familiar to students, form a proper prelude to the
+criticism of Lucretius: for in Lucretius the Roman character found
+its most perfect literary incarnation. He is at all points a true
+Roman, gifted with the strength, the conquering temper, the
+uncompromising haughtiness, and the large scale of his race.
+Holding, as it were, the thought of Greece in fee, he administers
+the Epicurean philosophy as though it were a province, marshalling
+his arguments like legionaries, and spanning the chasms of
+speculative insecurity with the masonry of hypotheses. As the arches
+of the Pont du Gard, suspended in their power amid that solitude,
+produce an overmastering feeling of awe; so the huge fabric of the
+Lucretian system, hung across the void of Nihilism, inspires a sense
+of terror, not so much on its own account as for the Roman sternness
+of the mind that made it. 'Le retentissement de mes pas dans ces
+immenses voutes me faisait croire entendre la forte voix de ceux qui
+les avait baties. Je me perdais comme un insecte dans cette
+immensite.' This is what Rousseau wrote about the aqueduct of
+Nismes. This is what we feel in pacing the corridors of the
+Lucretian poem. Sometimes it seems like walking through resounding
+caves of night and death, where unseen cataracts keep plunging down
+uncertain depths, and winds 'thwarted and forlorn' swell from an
+unknown distance, and rush by, and wail themselves to silence in the
+unexplored beyond. At another time the impression left upon the
+memory is different. We have been following a Roman road from the
+gate of the Eternal City, through field and vineyard, by lake and
+river-bed, across the broad intolerable plain and the barren tops of
+Alps, down into forests where wild beasts and barbarian tribes
+wander, along the marge of Rhine or Elbe, and over frozen fens, in
+one perpetual straight line, until the sea is reached and the road
+ends because it can go no further. All the while, the iron
+wheel-rims of our chariot have jarred upon imperishable paved work;
+there has been no stop nor stay; the visions of things beautiful and
+strange and tedious have flown past; at the climax we look forth
+across a waste of waves and tumbling wilderness of surf and foam,
+where the storm sweeps and hurrying mists drive eastward close above
+our heads. The want of any respite, breathing-space, or intermission
+in the poem, helps to force this image of a Roman journey on our
+mind. From the first line to the last there is no turning-point, no
+pause of thought, scarcely a comma, and the whole breaks off:--
+
+  rixantes potius quam corpora desererentur:
+
+as though a scythe-sweep from the arm of Death had cut the thread of
+singing short.
+
+Is, then, this poem truly song? Indeed it is. The brazen voice of
+Rome becomes tunable; a majestic rhythm sustains the progress of the
+singer, who, like Milton's Satan,
+
+  O'er bog or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare,
+  With head, hands, wings or feet, pursues his way,
+  And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies.
+
+It is only because, being so much a Roman, he insists on moving ever
+onward with unwavering march, that Lucretius is often wearisome and
+rough. He is too disdainful to care to mould the whole stuff of his
+poem to one quality. He is too truth-loving to condescend to
+rhetoric. The scoriae, the grit, the dross, the quartz, the gold, the
+jewels of his thought are hurried onward in one mighty lava-flood,
+that has the force to bear them all with equal ease--not altogether
+unlike that hurling torrent of the world painted by Tintoretto in
+his picture of the Last Day, which carries on its breast cities and
+forests and men with all their works, to plunge them in a bottomless
+abyss.
+
+Poems of the perfect Hellenic type may be compared to bronze
+statues, in the material of which many divers metals have been
+fused. Silver and tin and copper and lead and gold are there: each
+substance adds a quality to the mass; yet the whole is bronze. The
+furnace of the poet's will has so melted and mingled all these ores,
+that they have run together and filled the mould of his imagination.
+It is thus that Virgil chose to work. He made it his glory to
+realise artistic harmony, and to preserve a Greek balance in his
+style. Not so Lucretius. In him the Roman spirit, disdainful,
+uncompromising, and forceful, had full sway. We can fancy him
+accosting the Greek masters of the lyre upon Parnassus, deferring to
+none, conceding nought, and meeting their arguments with proud
+indifference:--
+
+  tu regere imperio populos Romane memento.
+
+The Roman poet, swaying the people of his thoughts, will stoop to no
+persuasion, adopt no middle course. It is not his business to
+please, but to command; he will not wait upon the [Greek: kairos],
+or court opportunity; Greeks may surprise the Muses in relenting
+moods, and seek out 'mollia tempora fandi;' all times and seasons
+must serve him; the terrible, the discordant, the sublime, and the
+magnificent shall drag his thundering car-wheels, as he lists, along
+the road of thought.
+
+At the very outset of the poem we feel ourselves within the grasp of
+the Roman imagination. It is no Aphrodite, risen from the waves and
+white as the sea-foam, that he invokes:--
+
+  AEneadum genetrix, hominum divomque voluptas,
+  alma Venus.
+
+This Venus is the mother of the brood of Rome, and at the same time
+an abstraction as wide as the universe. See her in the arms of
+Mavors:--
+
+                 in gremium qui saepe tuum se
+  reicit aeterno devictus volnere amoris,
+  atque ita suspiciens tereti cervice reposta
+  pascit amore avidos inhians in te, dea, visus,
+  eque tuo pendet resupini spiritus ore.
+  hunc tu, diva, tuo recubantem corpore sancto
+  circumfusa super, suavis ex ore loquelas
+  funde petens placidam Romanis, incluta, pacem.
+
+In the whole Lucretian treatment of love there is nothing really
+Greek. We do not hear of Eros, either as the mystic mania of Plato,
+or as the winged boy of Meleager. Love in Lucretius is something
+deeper, larger, and more elemental than the Greeks conceived; a
+fierce and overmastering force, a natural impulse which men share in
+common with the world of things.[1] Both the pleasures and the pains
+of love are conceived on a gigantic scale, and described with an
+irony that has the growl of a roused lion mingled with its
+laughter:--
+
+  ulcus enim vivescit et inveterascit alendo
+  inque dies gliscit furor atque aerumna gravescit.
+
+The acts of love and the insanities of passion are viewed from no
+standpoint of sentiment or soft emotion, but always in relation to
+philosophical ideas, or as the manifestation of something terrible
+in human life. Yet they lose nothing thereby in the voluptuous
+impression left upon the fancy:--
+
+  sic in amore Venus simulacris ludit amantis,
+  nec satiare queunt spectando corpora coram
+  nec manibus quicquam teneris abradere membris
+  possunt errantes incerti corpore toto.
+  denique cum membris conlatis flore fruuntur
+  aetatis, iam cum praesagit gaudia corpus
+  atque in eost Venus ut muliebria conserat arva,
+  adfigunt avide corpus iunguntque salivas
+  oris et inspirant pressantes dentibus ora,
+  nequiquam, quoniam nil inde abradere possunt
+  nec penetrare et abire in corpus corpore toto.
+
+The master-word in this passage is _nequiquam_. 'To desire the
+impossible,' says the Greek proverb, 'is a disease of the soul.'
+Lucretius, who treats of physical desire as a torment, asserts the
+impossibility of its perfect satisfaction. There is something almost
+tragic in these sighs and pantings and pleasure-throes, and
+incomplete fruitions of souls pent up within their frames of flesh.
+We seem to see a race of men and women such as have never lived,
+except perhaps in Rome or in the thought of Michel Angelo,[2]
+meeting in leonine embracements that yield pain, whereof the climax
+is, at best, relief from rage and respite for a moment from
+consuming fire. There is a life daemonic rather than human in those
+mighty limbs; and the passion that bends them on the marriage bed
+has in it the stress of storms, the rampings and the roarings of
+leopards at play. Or, take again this single line:--
+
+  et Venus in silvis iungebat corpora amantum.
+
+What a picture of primeval breadth and vastness! The _vice
+egrillard_ of Voltaire, the coarse animalism of Rabelais, even the
+large comic sexuality of Aristophanes, are in another region: for
+the forest is the world, and the bodies of the lovers are things
+natural and unashamed, and Venus is the tyrannous instinct that
+controls the blood in spring. Only a Roman poet could have conceived
+of passion so mightily and so impersonally, expanding its sensuality
+to suit the scale of Titanic existences, and purging from it both
+sentiment and spirituality as well as all that makes it mean.
+
+    [1] A fragment preserved from the _Danaides_ of AEschylus
+    has the thought of Aphrodite as the mistress of love in
+    earth and sky and sea and cloud; and this idea finds a
+    philosophical expression in Empedocles. But the tone of
+    these Greek poets is as different from that of Lucretius
+    as a Greek Hera is from a Roman Juno.
+
+    [2] See, for instance, his meeting of Ixion with the
+    phantom of Juno, or his design for Leda and the Swan.
+
+In like manner, the Lucretian conception of Ennui is wholly Roman:--
+
+  Si possent homines, proinde ac sentire videntur
+  pondus inesse animo quod se gravitate fatiget,
+  e quibus id fiat causis quoque noscere et unde
+  tanta mali tamquam moles in pectore constet,
+  haut ita vitam agerent, ut nunc plerumque videmus
+  quid sibi quisque velit nescire et quaerere semper
+  commutare locum quasi onus deponere possit.
+  exit saepe foras magnis ex aedibus ille,
+  esse domi quem pertaesumst, subitoque revertit,
+  quippe foris nilo melius qui sentiat esse.
+  currit agens mannos ad villam praecipitanter,
+  auxilium tectis quasi ferre ardentibus instans;
+  oscitat extemplo, tetigit cum limina villae,
+  aut abit in somnum gravis atque oblivia quaerit,
+  aut etiam properans urbem petit atque revisit,
+  hoc se quisque modo fugit (at quem scilicet, ut fit,
+  effugere haut potis est, ingratis haeret) et odit
+  propterea, morbi quia causam non tenet aeger;
+  quam bene si videat, iam rebus quisque relictis
+  naturam primum studeat cognoscere rerum,
+  temporis aeterni quoniam, non unius horae,
+  ambigitur status, in quo sit mortalibus omnis
+  aetas, post mortem quae restat cumque manenda.
+
+Virgil would not have written these lines. A Greek poet could not
+have conceived them: unless we imagine to ourselves what AEschylus or
+Pindar, oppressed by long illness, and forgetful of the gods, might
+possibly have felt. In its sense of spiritual vacancy, when the
+world and all its uses have become flat, stale, unprofitable, and
+the sentient soul oscillates like a pendulum between weariful
+extremes, seeking repose in restless movement, and hurling the ruins
+of a life into the gulf of its exhausted cravings, we perceive
+already the symptoms of that unnamed malady which was the plague of
+imperial Rome. The tyrants and the suicides of the Empire expand
+before our eyes a pageant of their lassitude, relieved in vain by
+festivals of blood and orgies of unutterable lust. It is not that
+_ennui_ was a specially Roman disease. Under certain conditions it
+is sure to afflict all overtaxed civilisation; and for the modern
+world no one has expressed its nature better than the slight and
+feminine De Musset.[1] Indeed, the Latin language has no one phrase
+denoting Ennui;--_livor_ and _fastidium_, and even _taedium vitae_,
+meaning something more specific and less all-pervasive as a moral
+agency. This in itself is significant, since it shows the
+unconsciousness of the race at large, and renders the intuition of
+Lucretius all the more remarkable. But in Rome there were the
+conditions favourable to its development--imperfect culture,
+vehement passions unabsorbed by commerce or by political life, the
+habituation to extravagant excitement in war and in the circus, and
+the fermentation of an age foredestined to give birth to new
+religious creeds. When the infinite but ill-assured power of the
+Empire was conferred on semi-madmen, Ennui in Rome assumed colossal
+proportions. Its victims sought for palliatives in cruelty and crime
+elsewhere unknown, except perhaps in Oriental courts. Lucretius, in
+the last days of the Republic, had discovered its deep significance
+for human nature. To all the pictures of Tacitus it forms a solemn
+tragic background, enhancing, as it were, by spiritual gloom the
+carnival of passions which gleam so brilliantly upon his canvas. In
+the person of Caligula, Ennui sat supreme upon the throne of the
+terraqueous globe. The insane desires and the fantastic deeds of the
+autocrat who wished one head for humanity that he might cut it off,
+sufficiently reveal the extent to which his spirit had been
+gangrened by this ulcer. There is a simple paragraph in Suetonius
+which lifts the veil from his imperial unrest more ruthlessly than
+any legend:--'Incitabatur insomniis maxime; neque enim plus tribus
+horis nocturnis quiescebat, ac ne his quidem placida quiete, at
+pavida, miris rerum imaginibus ... ideoque magna parte noctis,
+vigiliae cubandique taedio, nunc toro residens, nunc per longissimas
+porticus vagus, invocare identidem atque expectare lucem
+consueverat.' This is the very picture of Ennui that has become
+mortal disease. Nor was Nero different. 'Neron,' says Victor Hugo,
+'cherche tout simplement une distraction. Poete, comedien, chanteur,
+cocher, epuisant la ferocite pour trouver la volupte, essayant le
+changement de sexe, epoux de l'eunuque Sporus et epouse de l'esclave
+Pythagore, et se promenant dans les rues de Rome entre sa femme et
+son mari; ayant deux plaisirs: voir le peuple se jeter sur les
+pieces d'or, les diamants et les perles, et voir les lions se jeter
+sur le peuple; incendiaire par curiosite et parricide par
+desoeuvrement.' Nor need we stop at Nero. Over Vitellius at his
+banquets, over Hadrian in his Tiburtine villa calling in vain on
+Death, over Commodus in the arena, and Heliogabalus among the
+rose-leaves, the same livid shadow of imperial Ennui hangs. We can
+even see it looming behind the noble form of Marcus Aurelius, who,
+amid the ruins of empire and the revolutions of belief, penned in
+his tent among the Quadi those maxims of endurance which were
+powerless to regenerate the world.
+
+    [1] See the prelude to _Les Confessions d'un Enfant du
+    Siecle_ and _Les Nuits_.
+
+Roman again, in the true sense of the word, is the Lucretian
+philosophy of Conscience. Christianity has claimed the celebrated
+imprecation of Persius upon tyrants for her own, as though to her
+alone belonged the secret of the soul-tormenting sense of guilt. Yet
+it is certain that we owe to the Romans that conception of sin
+bearing its own fruit of torment which the Latin Fathers--Augustine
+and Tertullian--imposed with such terrific force upon the mediaeval
+consciousness. There is no need to conclude that Persius was a
+Christian because he wrote--
+
+  Magne pater divum, saevos punire tyrannos, etc.,
+
+when we know that he had before his eyes that passage in the third
+book of the 'De Rerum Natura,' (978-1023) which reduces the myths of
+Tityos and Sisyphus and Cerberus and the Furies to facts of the
+human soul:--
+
+  sed metus in vita poenarum pro male factis
+  est insignibus insignis, scelerisque luella,
+  carcer et horribilis de saxo iactu' deorsum,
+  verbera carnifices robur pix lammina taedae;
+  quae tamen etsi absunt, at mens sibi conscia facti
+  praemetuens adhibet stimulos terretque flagellis
+  nec videt interea qui terminus esse malorum
+  possit nec quae sit poenarum denique finis
+  atque eadem metuit magis haec ne in morte gravescant.
+
+The Greeks, by personifying those secret terrors, had removed them
+into a region of existences separate from man. They became dread
+goddesses, who might to some extent be propitiated by exorcisms or
+expiatory rites. This was in strict accordance with the mythopoeic
+and artistic quality of the Greek intellect. The stern and somewhat
+prosaic rectitude of the Roman broke through such figments of the
+fancy, and exposed the sore places of the soul itself. The theory of
+the Conscience, moreover, is part of the Lucretian polemic against
+false notions of the gods and the pernicious belief in hell.
+
+Positivism and Realism were qualities of Roman as distinguished from
+Greek culture. There was no self-delusion in Lucretius--no attempt,
+however unconscious, to compromise unpalatable truth, or to invest
+philosophy with the charm of myth. A hundred illustrations might be
+chosen to prove his method of setting forth thought with unadorned
+simplicity. These, however, are familiar to any one who has but
+opened the 'De Rerum Natura.' It is more profitable to trace this
+Roman ruggedness in the poet's treatment of the subject which more
+than any other seems to have preoccupied his intellect and
+fascinated his imagination--that is Death. His poem has been called
+by a great critic the 'poem of Death.' Shakspere's line--
+
+  And Death once dead, there's no more dying then,
+
+might be written as a motto on the title-page of the book, which is
+full of passages like this:--
+
+  scire licet nobis nil esse in morte timendum
+  nec miserum fieri qui non est posse neque hilum
+  differre anne ullo fuerit iam tempore natus,
+  mortalem vitam mors cum immortalis ademit.
+
+His whole mind was steeped in the thought of death; and though he
+can hardly be said to have written 'the words that shall make death
+exhilarating,' he devoted his genius, in all its energy, to removing
+from before men the terror of the doom that waits for all.
+Sometimes, in his attempt at consolation, he adduces images which,
+like the Delphian knife, are double-handled, and cut both ways:--
+
+  hinc indignatur se mortalem esse creatum
+  nec videt in vera nullum fore morte alium se
+  qui possit vivus sibi se lugere peremptum
+  stansque iacentem se lacerari urive dolere.
+
+This suggests, by way of contrast, Blake's picture of the soul that
+has just left the body and laments her separation. As we read, we
+are inclined to lay the book down, and wonder whether the argument
+is, after all, conclusive. May not the spirit, when she has quitted
+her old house, be forced to weep and wring her hands, and stretch
+vain shadowy arms to the limbs that were so dear? No one has felt
+more profoundly than Lucretius the pathos of the dead. The intensity
+with which he realised what we must lose in dying and what we leave
+behind of grief to those who loved us, reaches a climax of
+restrained passion in this well-known paragraph:--
+
+  'iam iam non domus accipiet te laeta, neque uxor
+  optima nec dulces occurrent oscula nati
+  praeripere et tacita pectus dulcedine tangent.
+  non poteris factis florentibus esse, tuisque
+  praesidium. misero misere' aiunt 'omnia ademit
+  una dies infesta tibi tot praemia vitae.'
+  illud in his rebus non addunt 'nec tibi earum
+  iam desiderium rerum super insidet una.'
+  quod bene si videant animo dictisque sequantur,
+  dissoluant animi magno se angore metuque.
+  'tu quidem ut es leto sopitus, sic eris aevi
+  quod superest cunctis privatu' doloribus aegris.
+  at nos horrifico cinefactum te prope busto
+  insatiabiliter deflevimus, aeternumque
+  nulla dies nobis maerorem e pectore demet.'
+
+Images, again, of almost mediaeval grotesqueness, rise in his mind
+when he contemplates the universality of Death. Simonides had dared
+to say: 'One horrible Charybdis waits for all.' That was as near a
+discord as a Greek could venture on. Lucretius describes the open
+gate and 'huge wide-gaping maw' which must devour heaven, earth, and
+sea, and all that they contain:--
+
+  haut igitur leti praeclusa est ianua caelo
+  nec soli terraeque neque altis aequoris undis,
+  sed patet immani et vasto respectat hiatu.
+
+The ever-during battle of life and death haunts his imagination.
+Sometimes he sets it forth in philosophical array of argument.
+Sometimes he touches on the theme with elegiac pity:--
+
+                          miscetur funere vagor
+  quem pueri tollunt visentis luminis oras;
+  nec nox ulla diem neque noctem aurora secutast
+  quae non audierit mixtos vagitibus aegris
+  ploratus mortis comites et funeris atri.
+
+Then again he returns, with obstinate persistence, to describe how
+the dread of death, fortified by false religion, hangs like a pall
+over humanity, and how the whole world is a cemetery overshadowed by
+cypresses. The most sustained, perhaps, of these passages is at the
+beginning of the third book (lines 31 to 93). The most profoundly
+melancholy is the description of the new-born child (v. 221):--
+
+               quare mors immatura vagatur?
+  tum porro puer, ut saevis proiectus ab undis
+  navita, nudus humi iacet, infans, indigus omni
+  vitali auxilio, cum primum in luminis oras
+  nixibus ex alvo matris natura profudit,
+  vagituque locum lugubri complet, ut aecumst
+  cui tantum in vita restet transire malorum.
+
+Disease and old age, as akin to Death, touch his imagination with
+the same force. He rarely alludes to either without some lines as
+terrible as these (iii. 472, 453):--
+
+  nam dolor ac morbus leti fabricator uterquest.
+  claudicat ingenium, delirat lingua, labat mens.
+
+Another kindred subject affects him with an equal pathos. He sees
+the rising and decay of nations, age following after age, like waves
+hurrying to dissolve upon a barren shore, and writes (ii. 75):--
+
+                    sic rerum summa novatur
+  semper, et inter se mortales mutua vivunt,
+  augescunt aliae gentes, aliae minuuntur,
+  inque brevi spatio mutantur saecla animantum
+  et quasi cursores vitai lampada tradunt.
+
+Although the theme is really the procession of life through
+countless generations, it obtains a tone of sadness from the sense
+of intervenient decay and change. No Greek had the heart thus to
+dilate his imagination with the very element of death. What the
+Greeks commemorated when they spoke of Death was the loss of the
+lyre and the hymeneal chaunt, and the passage across dim waves to a
+sunless land. Nor indeed does Lucretius, like the modern poet of
+Democracy, ascend into the regions of ecstatic trance:--
+
+  Lost in the loving, floating ocean of thee,
+  Laved in the flood of thy bliss, O Death.
+
+He keeps his reason cool, and sternly contemplates the thought of
+the annihilation which awaits all perishable combinations of eternal
+things. Like Milton, Lucretius delights in giving the life of his
+imagination to abstractions. Time, with his retinue of ages, sweeps
+before his vision, and he broods in fancy over the illimitable ocean
+of the universe. The fascination of the infinite is the quality
+which, more than any other, separates Lucretius as a Roman poet from
+the Greeks.
+
+Another distinctive feature of his poetry Lucretius inherited as
+part of his birthright. This is the sense of Roman greatness. It
+pervades the poem, and may be felt in every part; although to
+Athens, and the Greek sages, Democritus, Empedocles, Anaxagoras,
+Heraclitus, and Epicurus, as the fountain-heads of soul-delivering
+culture, he reserves his most magnificent periods of panegyric. Yet
+when he would fain persuade his readers that the fear of death is
+nugatory, and that the future will be to them even as the past, it
+is the shock of Rome with Carthage that he dwells upon as the
+critical event of the world's history (iii. 830):--
+
+    Nil igitur mors est ad nos neque pertinet hilum,
+  quandoquidem natura animi mortalis habetur.
+  et velut anteacto nil tempore sensimus aegri,
+  ad confligendum venientibus undique Poenis,
+  omnia cum belli trepido concussa tumultu
+  horrida contremuere sub altis aetheris oris,
+  _in dubioque fuere utrorum ad regna cadendum
+  omnibus humanis esset terraque marique_,
+  sic:
+
+The lines in italics could have been written by none but a Roman
+conscious that the conflict with Carthage had decided the absolute
+empire of the habitable world. In like manner the description of a
+military review (ii. 323) is Roman: so, too, is that of the
+amphitheatre (iv. 75):--
+
+  et volgo faciunt id lutea russaque vela
+  et ferrugina, cum magnis intenta theatris
+  per malos volgata trabesque trementia flutant.
+  namque ibi consessum caveai supter et omnem
+  scaenai speciem, patrum coetumque decorum
+  inficiunt coguntque suo fluitare colore.
+
+The imagination of Lucretius, however, was habitually less affected
+by the particular than by the universal. He loved to dwell upon the
+large and general aspects of things--on the procession of the
+seasons, for example, rather than upon the landscape of the Campagna
+in spring or autumn. Therefore it is only occasionally and by
+accident that we find in his verse touches peculiarly characteristic
+of the manners of his country. Therefore, again, it has happened
+that modern critics have detected a lack of patriotic interest in
+this most Roman of all Latin poets. Also may it here be remembered,
+that the single line which sums up all the history of Rome in one
+soul-shaking hexameter, is not Lucretian but Virgilian:--
+
+  Tantae molis erat Romanam condere gentem.
+
+The custode of the Baths of Titus, when he lifts his torch to
+explore those ruined arches, throws the wan light upon one place
+where a Roman hand has scratched that verse in gigantic letters on
+the cement. The colossal genius of Rome seems speaking to us, an
+oracle no lapse of time can render dumb.
+
+But Lucretius is not only the poet _par excellence_ of Rome. He will
+always rank also among the first philosophical poets of the world:
+and here we find a second standpoint for inquiry. The question how
+far it is practicable to express philosophy in verse, and to combine
+the accuracy of scientific language with the charm of rhythm and the
+ornaments of the fancy, is one which belongs rather to modern than
+to ancient criticism. In the progress of culture there has been an
+ever-growing separation between the several spheres of intellectual
+activity. What Livy said about the Roman Empire is true now of
+knowledge: _magnitudine laborat sua_; so that the labour of
+specialising and distinguishing has for many centuries been
+all-important. Not only do we disbelieve in the desirability of
+smearing honey upon the lip of the medicine-glass through which the
+draught of erudition has to be administered; but we know for certain
+that it is only at the meeting-points between science and emotion
+that the philosophic poet finds a proper sphere. Whatever
+subject-matter can be permeated or penetrated with strong human
+feeling is fit for verse. Then the rhythms and the forms of poetry
+to which high passions naturally move, become spontaneous. The
+emotion is paramount, and the knowledge conveyed is valuable as
+supplying fuel to the fire of feeling. There are, were, and always
+will be high imaginative points of vantage commanding the broad
+fields of knowledge, upon which the poet may take his station to
+survey the world and all that it contains. But it has long ceased to
+be his function to set forth, in any kind of metre, systems of
+speculative thought or purely scientific truths. This was not the
+case in the old world. There was a period in the development of the
+intellect when the abstractions of logic appeared like intuitions,
+and guesses about the structure of the universe still wore the garb
+of fancy. When physics and metaphysics were scarcely distinguished
+from mythology, it was natural to address the Muses at the outset of
+a treatise of ontology, and to cadence a theory of elemental
+substances in hexameter verse. Thus the philosophical poems of
+Xenophanes, Parmenides, and Empedocles belonged essentially to a
+transitional stage of human culture.
+
+There is a second species of poetry to which the name of
+philosophical may be given, though it better deserves that of
+mystical. Pantheism occupies a middle place between a scientific
+theory of the universe and a form of religious enthusiasm. It
+supplies an element in which the poetic faculty can move with
+freedom: for its conclusions, in so far as they pretend to
+philosophy, are large and general, and the emotions which it excites
+are co-extensive with the world. Therefore, Pantheistic mysticism,
+from the Bhagavadgita of the far East, through the Persian Soofis,
+down to the poets of our own century, Goethe, and Shelley, and
+Wordsworth, and Whitman, and many more whom it would be tedious to
+enumerate, has generated a whole tribe of philosophic singers.
+
+Yet a third class may be mentioned. Here we have to deal with what
+are called didactic poems. These, like the metaphysical epic, began
+to flourish in early Greece at the moment when exact thought was
+dividing itself laboriously from myths and fancies. Hesiod with his
+poem on the life of man leads the way; and the writers of moral
+sentences in elegiac verse, among whom Solon and Theognis occupy the
+first place, follow. Latin literature contributes highly artificial
+specimens of this kind in the 'Georgics' of Virgil, the stoical
+diatribes of Persius, and the 'Ars Poetica' of Horace. Didactic
+verse had a special charm for the genius of the Latin race. The name
+of such poems in the Italian literature of the Renaissance is
+legion. The French delighted in the same style under the same
+influences; nor can we fail to attribute the 'Essay on Man' and the
+'Essay on Criticism' of our own Pope to a similar revival in England
+of Latin forms of art. The taste for didactic verse has declined.
+Yet in its stead another sort of philosophical poetry has grown up
+in this century, which, for the want of a better term, may be called
+psychological. It deserves this title, inasmuch as the
+motive-interest of the art in question is less the passion or the
+action of humanity than the analysis of the same. The 'Faust' of
+Goethe, the 'Prelude' and 'Excursion' of Wordsworth, Browning's
+'Sordello' and Mrs. Browning's 'Aurora Leigh,' together with the
+'Musings' of Coleridge and the 'In Memoriam' of Tennyson, may be
+roughly reckoned in this class. It will be noticed that nothing has
+been said about professedly religious poetry, much of which attaches
+itself to mysticism, while some, like the 'Divine Comedy' of Dante,
+is philosophic in the truest sense of the word.
+
+Where, then, are we to place Lucretius? He was a Roman, imbued with
+the didactic predilections of the Latin race; and the didactic
+quality of the 'De Rerum Natura' is unmistakable. Yet it would be
+uncritical to place this poem in the class which derives from
+Hesiod. It belongs really to the succession of Xenophanes,
+Parmenides, and Empedocles. As such it was an anachronism. The
+specific moment in the development of thought at which the
+Parmenidean Epic was natural has been already described. The Romans
+of the age of Lucretius had advanced far beyond it. The idealistic
+metaphysics of the Socratic school, the positive ethics of the
+Stoics, and the profound materialism of Epicurus, had accustomed the
+mind to habits of exact and subtle thinking, prolonged from
+generation to generation upon the same lines of speculative inquiry.
+Philosophy expressed in verse was out of date. Moreover, the very
+myths had been rationalised. Euhemerus had even been translated into
+Latin by Ennius, and his prosaic explanations of Greek legend had
+found acceptance with the essentially positive Roman intellect.
+Lucretius himself, it may be said in passing, thought it worth while
+to offer a philosophical explanation of the Greek mythology. The
+Cybele of the poets is shown in one of his sublimest passages (ii.
+600-645) to be Earth. To call the sea Neptune, corn Ceres, and wine
+Bacchus, seems to him a simple folly (ii. 652-657). We have already
+seen how he reduces the fiends and spectres of the Greek Hades to
+facts of moral subjectivity (iii. 978-1023). In another place he
+attacks the worship of Phoebus and the stars (v. 110); in yet
+another he upsets the belief in the Centaurs, Scylla, and Chimaera
+(v. 877-924) with a gravity which is almost comic. Such arguments
+formed a necessary element in his polemic against foul religion
+(foeda religio--turpis religio); to deliver men from which (i.
+62-112), by establishing firmly in their minds the conviction that
+the gods exist far away from this world in unconcerned tranquillity
+(ii. 646), and by substituting the notion of Nature for that of
+deity (ii. 1090), was the object of his scientific demonstration.
+
+Lucretius, therefore, had outgrown mythology, was hostile to
+religion, and burned with unsurpassable enthusiasm to indoctrinate
+his Roman readers with the weighty conclusions of systematised
+materialism. Yet he chose the vehicle of hexameter verse, and
+trammelled his genius with limitations which Empedocles, four
+hundred years before, must have found almost intolerable. It needed
+the most ardent intellectual passion and the loftiest inspiration to
+sustain on his far flight a poet who had forged a hoplite's panoply
+for singing robes. Both passion and inspiration were granted to
+Lucretius in full measure. And just as there was something
+contradictory between the scientific subject-matter and the poetical
+form of his masterpiece, so the very sources of his poetic strength
+were such as are usually supposed to depress the soul. His passion
+was for death, annihilation, godlessness. It was not the eloquence,
+but the force of logic in Epicurus that roused his enthusiasm:--
+
+  ergo vivida vis animi pervicit et extra
+  processit longe flammantia moenia mundi.
+
+No other poet who ever lived in any age, or any shore, drew
+inspiration from founts more passionless and more impersonal.
+
+The 'De Rerum Natura' is therefore an attempt, unique in its kind,
+to combine philosophical exposition and poetry in an age when the
+requirements of the former had already outgrown the resources of the
+latter. Throughout the poem we trace a discord between the matter
+and the form. The frost of reason and the fire of fancy war in
+deadly conflict; for the Lucretian system destroyed nearly
+everything with which the classical imagination loved to play. It
+was only in some high ethereal region, before the majestic thought
+of Death or the new Myth of Nature, that the two faculties of the
+poet's genius met for mutual support. Only at rare intervals did he
+allow himself to make artistic use of mere mythology, as in the
+celebrated exordium of the first book, or the description of the
+Seasons in the fifth book (737-745). For the most part reason and
+fancy worked separately: after long passages of scientific
+explanation, Lucretius indulged his readers with those pictures of
+unparalleled sublimity and grace which are the charm of the whole
+poem; or dropping the phraseology of atoms, void, motion, chance, he
+spoke at times of Nature as endowed with reason and a will (v. 186,
+811, 846).
+
+It would be beyond the scope of this essay to discuss the particular
+form given by Lucretius to the Democritean philosophy. He believed
+the universe to be composed of atoms, infinite in number, and
+variable, to a finite extent, in form, which drift slantingly
+through an infinite void. Their combinations under the conditions of
+what we call space and time are transitory, while they remain
+themselves imperishable. Consequently, as the soul itself is
+corporeally constituted, and as thought and sensation depend on mere
+material idola, men may divest themselves of any fear of the
+hereafter. There is no such thing as providence, nor do the gods
+concern themselves with the kaleidoscopic medley of atoms in
+transient combination which we call our world. The latter were
+points of supreme interest to Lucretius. He seems to have cared for
+the cosmology of Epicurus chiefly as it touched humanity through
+ethics and religion. To impartial observers, the identity or the
+divergence of the forms assumed by scientific hypothesis at
+different periods of the world's history is not a matter of much
+importance. Yet a peculiar interest has of late been given to the
+Lucretian materialism by the fact that physical speculation has
+returned to what is substantially the same ground. The most modern
+theories of evolution and of molecular structure may be stated in
+language which, allowing for the progress made by exact thought
+during the last twenty centuries, is singularly like that of
+Lucretius. The Roman poet knew fewer facts than are familiar to our
+men of science, and was far less able to analyse one puzzle into a
+whole group of unexplained phenomena. He had besides but a feeble
+grasp upon those discoveries which subserve the arts of life and
+practical utility. But as regards _absolute knowledge_--knowledge,
+that is to say, of what the universe really is, and of how it became
+what it seems to us to be--Lucretius stood at the same point of
+ignorance as we, after the labours of Darwin and of Spencer, of
+Helmholtz and of Huxley, still do. Ontological speculation is as
+barren now as then, and the problems of existence still remain
+insoluble. The chief difference indeed between him and modern
+investigators is that they have been lessoned by the experience of
+the last two thousand years to know better the depths of human
+ignorance, and the directions in which it is possible to sound them.
+
+It may not be uninteresting to collect a few passages in which the
+Roman poet has expressed in his hexameters the lines of thought
+adopted by our most advanced theorists. Here is the general
+conception of Nature, working by her own laws toward the achievement
+of that result which we apprehend through the medium of the senses
+(ii. 1090):--
+
+    Quae bene cognita si teneas, natura videtur
+  libera continuo dominis privata superbis
+  ipsa sua per se sponte omnia dis agere expers.
+
+Here again is a demonstration of the absurdity of supposing that the
+world was made for the use of men (v. 156):--
+
+  dicere porro hominum causa voluisse parare
+  praeclaram mundi naturam proptereaque
+  adlaudabile opus divom laudare decere
+  aeternumque putare atque inmortale futurum
+  nec fas esse, deum quod sit ratione vetusta
+  gentibus humanis fundatum perpetuo aevo,
+  sollicitare suis ulla vi ex sedibus umquam
+  nec verbis vexare et ab imo evertere summa,
+  cetera de genere hoc adfingere et addere, Memmi
+  desiperest.
+
+A like cogent rhetoric is directed against the arguments of
+toleology (iv. 823):--
+
+    Illud in his rebus vitium vementer avessis
+  effugere, errorem vitareque praemetuenter,
+  lumina ne facias oculorum clara creata,
+  prospicere ut possemus, et ut proferre queamus
+  proceros passus, ideo fastigia posse
+  surarum ac feminum pedibus fundata plicari,
+  bracchia tum porro validis ex apta lacertis
+  esse manusque datas utraque ex parte ministras,
+  ut facere ad vitam possemus quae foret usus.
+  cetera de genere hoc inter quaecumque pretantur
+  omnia perversa praepostera sunt ratione,
+  nil ideo quoniam natumst in corpore ut uti
+  possemus, sed quod natumst id procreat usum.
+  nec fuit ante videre oculorum lumina nata
+  nec dictis orare prius quam lingua creatast,
+  sed potius longe linguae praecessit origo
+  sermonem multoque creatae sunt prius aures
+  quam sonus est auditus, et omnia denique membra
+  ante fuere, ut opinor, eorum quam foret usus.
+  haud igitur potuere utendi crescere causa.
+
+The ultimate dissolution and the gradual decay of the terrestrial
+globe is set forth in the following luminous passage (ii. 1148):--
+
+  Sic igitur magni quoque circum moenia mundi
+  expugnata dabunt labem putrisque ruinas.
+  iamque adeo fracta est aetas effetaque tellus
+  vix animalia parva creat quae cuncta creavit
+  saecla deditque ferarum ingentia corpora partu.[1]
+
+The same mind which recognised these probabilities knew also that
+our globe is not single, but that it forms one among an infinity of
+sister orbs (ii. 1084):--
+
+  quapropter caelum simili ratione fatendumst
+  terramque et solem lunam mare, cetera quae sunt
+  non esse unica, sed numero magis innumerali.[2]
+
+When Lucretius takes upon himself to describe the process of
+becoming which made the world what it now is, he seems to incline to
+a theory not at all dissimilar to that of unassisted evolution (v.
+419):--
+
+  nam certe neque consilio primordia rerum
+  ordine se suo quaeque sagaci mente locarunt
+  nec quos quaeque darent motus pepigere profecto,
+  sed quia multa modis multis primordia rerum
+  ex infinito iam tempore percita plagis
+  ponderibusque suis consuerunt concita ferri
+  omnimodisque coire atque omnia pertemptare,
+  quaecumque inter se possent congressa creare,
+  propterea fit uti magnum volgata per aevom
+  omne genus coetus et motus experiundo
+  tandem conveniant ea quae convecta repente
+  magnarum rerum fiunt exordia saepe,
+  terrai maris et caeli generisque animantum.
+
+    [1] Compare book v. 306-317 on the evidences of decay
+    continually at work in the fabric of the world.
+
+    [2] The same truth is insisted on with even greater force
+    of language in vi. 649-652.
+
+Entering into the details of the process, he describes the many
+ill-formed, amorphous beginnings of organised life upon the globe,
+which came to nothing, 'since nature set a ban upon their increase'
+(v. 837-848); and then proceeds to explain how, in the struggle for
+existence, the stronger prevailed over the weaker (v. 855-863). What
+is really interesting in this exposition is that Lucretius ascribes
+to nature the volition ('convertebat ibi natura foramina terrae;'
+'quoniam natura absterruit auctum') which has recently been
+attributed by materialistic speculators to the same maternal power.
+
+To press these points, and to neglect the gap which separates
+Lucretius from thinkers fortified by the discoveries of modern
+chemistry, astronomy, physiology, and so forth, would be childish.
+All we can do is to point to the fact that the circumambient
+atmosphere of human ignorance, with reference to the main matters of
+speculation, remains undissipated. The mass of experience acquired
+since the age of Lucretius is enormous, and is infinitely valuable;
+while our power of tabulating, methodising, and extending the sphere
+of experimental knowledge seems to be unlimited. Only ontological
+deductions, whether negative or affirmative, remain pretty much
+where they were then.
+
+The fame of Lucretius, however, rests not on this foundation of
+hypothesis. In his poetry lies the secret of a charm which he will
+continue to exercise as long as humanity chooses to read Latin
+verse. No poet has created a world of larger and nobler images,
+designed with the _sprezzatura_ of indifference to mere
+gracefulness, but all the more fascinating because of the artist's
+negligence. There is something monumental in the effect produced by
+his large-sounding single epithets and simple names. We are at home
+with the daemonic life of nature when he chooses to bring Pan and his
+following before our eyes (iv. 580). Or, again, the Seasons pass
+like figures on some frieze of Mantegna, to which, by divine
+accident, has been added the glow of Titian's colouring[1] (v.
+737):--
+
+  it ver et Venus, et veris praenuntius ante
+  pennatus graditur zephyrus, vestigia propter
+  Flora quibus mater praespargens ante viai
+  cuncta coloribus egregiis et odoribus opplet.
+  inde loci sequitur calor aridus et comes una
+  pulverulenta Ceres et etesia flabra aquilonum,
+  inde antumnus adit, graditur simul Eubius Euan,
+  inde aliae tempestates ventique secuntur,
+  altitonans Volturnus et auster fulmine pollens.
+  tandem bruma nives adfert pigrumque rigorem,
+  prodit hiemps, sequitur crepitans hanc dentibus algor.
+
+With what a noble style, too, are the holidays of the primeval
+pastoral folk described (v. 1379-1404). It is no mere celebration of
+the _bell' eta dell' oro_: but we see the woodland glades, and hear
+the songs of shepherds, and feel the hush of summer among rustling
+forest trees, while at the same time all is far away, in a better,
+simpler, larger age. The sympathy of Lucretius for every form of
+country life was very noticeable. It belonged to that which was most
+deeply and sincerely poetic in the Latin genius, whence Virgil drew
+his sweetest strain of melancholy, and Horace his most unaffected
+pictures, and Catullus the tenderness of his best lines on Sirmio.
+No Roman surpassed the pathos with which Lucretius described the
+separation of a cow from her calf (ii. 352-365). The same note
+indeed was touched by Virgil in his lines upon the forlorn
+nightingale, and in the peroration to the third 'Georgic.' But the
+style of Virgil is more studied, the feeling more artistically
+elaborated. It would be difficult to parallel such Lucretian
+passages in Greek poetry. The Greeks lacked an undefinable something
+of rusticity which dignified the Latin race. This quality was not
+altogether different from what we call homeliness. Looking at the
+busts of Romans, and noticing their resemblance to English country
+gentlemen, I have sometimes wondered whether the Latin genius, just
+in those points where it differed from the Greek, was not
+approximated to the English.
+
+    [1] The elaborate illustration of the first four lines of
+    this passage, painted by Botticelli (in the Florence
+    Academy of Fine Arts), proves Botticelli's incapacity or
+    unwillingness to deal with the subject in the spirit of
+    the original. It is graceful and 'subtle' enough, but not
+    Lucretian.
+
+All subjects needing a large style, brief and rapid, but at the same
+time luminous with imagination, were sure of the right treatment
+from Lucretius. This is shown by his enumeration of the celestial
+signs (v. 1188):--
+
+  in caeloque deum sedes et templa locarunt,
+  per caelum volvi quia nox et luna videtur,
+  luna dies et nox et noctis signa severa
+  noctivagaeque faces caeli flammaeque volantes,
+  nubila sol imbres nix venti fulmina grando
+  et rapidi fremitus et murmura magna minarum.
+
+Again, he never failed to rise to an occasion which required the
+display of fervid eloquence. The Roman eloquence, which in its
+energetic volubility was the chief force of Juvenal, added a tidal
+strength and stress of storm to the quick gathering thoughts of the
+greater poet. The exordia to the first and second books, the
+analysis of Love in the fourth, the praises of Epicurus in the third
+and fifth, the praises of Empedocles and Ennius in the first, the
+elaborate passage on the progress of civilisation in the fifth, and
+the description of the plague at Athens which closes the sixth, are
+noble instances of the sublimest poetry sustained and hurried onward
+by the volume of impassioned improvisation. It is difficult to
+imagine that Lucretius wrote slowly. The strange word _vociferari_,
+which he uses so often, and which the Romans of the Augustan age
+almost dropped from their poetic vocabulary, seems exactly made to
+suit his utterance. Yet at times he tempers the full torrent of
+resonant utterance with divine tranquillity, and leaves upon our
+mind that sense of powerful aloofness from his subject, which only
+belongs to the mightiest poets in their most majestic moments. One
+instance of this rare felicity of style shall end the list of our
+quotations (v. 1194):--
+
+  O genus infelix humanum, talia divis
+  cum tribuit facta atque iras adiunxit acerbas!
+  quantos tum gemitus ipsi sibi, quantaque nobis
+  volnera, quas lacrimas peperere minoribu' nostris!
+  nec pietas ullast velatum saepe videri
+  vertier ad lapidem atque omnis accedere ad aras
+  nec procumbere humi prostratum et pandere palmas
+  ante deum delubra nec aras sanguine multo
+  spargere quadrupedum nec votis nectere vota,
+  sed mage pacata posse omnia mente tueri.
+  nam cum suspicimus magni caelestia mundi
+  templa, super stellisque micantibus aethera fixum,
+  et venit in mentem solis lunaeque viarum,
+  tunc aliis oppressa malis in pectora cura
+  illa quoque expergefactum caput erigere infit,
+  ne quae forte deum nobis inmensa potestas
+  sit, vario motu quae candida sidera verset.
+  temptat enim dubiam mentem rationis egestas,
+  ecquaenam fuerit mundi genitalis origo,
+  et simul ecquae sit finis, quoad moenia mundi
+  solliciti motus hunc possint ferre laborem,
+  an divinitus aeterna donata salute
+  perpetuo possint aevi labentia tractu
+  inmensi validas aevi contemnere viris.
+
+It would be impossible to adduce from any other poet a passage in
+which the deepest doubts and darkest terrors and most vexing
+questions that beset the soul, are touched with an eloquence more
+stately and a pathos more sublime. Without losing the sense of
+humanity, we are carried off into the infinite. Such poetry is as
+imperishable as the subject of which it treats.
+
+
+
+
+_ANTINOUS_
+
+
+Visitors to picture and sculpture galleries are haunted by the forms
+of two handsome young men--Sebastian and Antinous. Both were saints:
+the one of decadent Paganism, the other of mythologising
+Christianity. According to the popular beliefs to which they owed
+their canonisation, both suffered death in the bloom of earliest
+manhood for the faith that burned in them. There is, however, this
+difference between the two--that whereas Sebastian is a shadowy
+creature of the pious fancy, Antinous preserves a marked and
+unmistakable personality. All his statues are distinguished by
+unchanging characteristics. The pictures of Sebastian vary according
+to the ideal of adolescent beauty conceived by each successive
+artist. In the frescoes of Perugino and Luini he shines with the
+pale pure light of saintliness. On the canvas of Sodoma he
+reproduces the voluptuous charm of youthful Bacchus, with so much of
+anguish in his martyred features as may serve to heighten his
+daemonic fascination. On the richer panels of the Venetian masters he
+glows with a flame of earthly passion aspiring heavenward. Under
+Guido's hand he is a model of mere carnal comeliness. And so forth
+through the whole range of the Italian painters. We know Sebastian
+only by his arrows. The case is very different with Antinous.
+Depicted under diverse attributes--as Hermes of the
+wrestling-ground, as Aristaeus or Vertumnus, as Dionysus, as
+Ganymede, as Herakles, or as a god of ancient Egypt--his
+individuality is always prominent. No metamorphosis of divinity can
+change the lineaments he wore on earth. And this difference, so
+marked in the artistic presentation of the two saints, is no less
+striking in their several histories. The legend of Sebastian tells
+us nothing to be relied upon, except that he was a Roman soldier
+converted to the Christian faith, and martyred. In spite of the
+perplexity and mystery that involve the death of Antinous in
+impenetrable gloom, he is a true historic personage, no phantom of
+myth, but a man as real as Hadrian, his master.
+
+Antinous, as he appears in sculpture, is a young man of eighteen or
+nineteen years, almost faultless in his form. His beauty is not of a
+pure Greek type. Though perfectly proportioned and developed by
+gymnastic exercises to the true athletic fulness, his limbs are
+round and florid, suggesting the possibility of early over-ripeness.
+The muscles are not trained to sinewy firmness, but yielding and
+elastic; the chest is broad and singularly swelling; and the
+shoulders are placed so far back from the thorax that the breasts
+project beyond them in a massive arch. It has been asserted that one
+shoulder is slightly lower than the other. Some of the busts seem to
+justify this statement; but the appearance is due probably to the
+different position of the two arms, one of which, if carried out,
+would be lifted and the other be depressed. The legs and arms are
+modelled with exquisite grace of outline; yet they do not show that
+readiness for active service which is noticeable in the statues of
+converging so closely as almost to meet above the deep-cut eyes. The
+nose is straight, but blunter than is consistent with the Greek
+ideal. Both cheeks and chin are delicately formed, but fuller than a
+severe taste approves: one might trace in their rounded contours
+either a survival of infantine innocence and immaturity, or else the
+sign of rapidly approaching over-bloom. The mouth is one of the
+loveliest ever carved; but here again the blending of the Greek and
+Oriental types is visible. The lips, half parted, seem to pout; and
+the distance between mouth and nostrils is exceptionally short. The
+undefinable expression of the lips, together with the weight of the
+brows and slumberous half-closed eyes, gives a look of sulkiness or
+voluptuousness to the whole face. This, I fancy, is the first
+impression which the portraits of Antinous produce; and Shelley has
+well conveyed it by placing the two following phrases, 'eager and
+impassioned tenderness' and 'effeminate sullenness,' in close
+juxtaposition.[1] But, after longer familiarity with the whole range
+of Antinous's portraits, and after study of his life, we are brought
+to read the peculiar expression of his face and form somewhat
+differently. A prevailing melancholy, sweetness of temperament
+overshadowed by resignation, brooding reverie, the innocence of
+youth, touched and saddened by a calm resolve or an accepted
+doom--such are the sentences we form to give distinctness to a still
+vague and uncertain impression. As we gaze, Virgil's lines upon the
+young Marcellus recur to our mind: what seemed sullen, becomes
+mournful; the unmistakable voluptuousness is transfigured in
+tranquillity.
+
+    [1] Fragment, _The Coliseum_.
+
+After all is said and written, the statues of Antinous do not render
+up their secret. Like some of the Egyptian gods with whom he was
+associated, he remains for us a sphinx, secluded in the shade of a
+'mild mystery.' His soul, like the Harpocrates he personated, seems
+to hold one finger on closed lips, in token of eternal silence. One
+thing, however, is certain. We have before us no figment of the
+artistic imagination, but a real youth of incomparable beauty, just
+as nature made him, with all the inscrutableness of undeveloped
+character, with all the pathos of a most untimely doom, with the
+almost imperceptible imperfections that render choice reality more
+permanently charming than the ideal. It has been disputed whether
+the Antinous statues are portraits or idealised works of inventive
+art; and it is usually conceded that the sculptors of Hadrian's age
+were not able to produce a new ideal type. Critics, therefore, like
+Helbig and Overbeck, arrive at the conclusion that Antinous was one
+of nature's masterpieces, modelled in bronze, marble, and granite
+with almost flawless technical dexterity. Without attaching too much
+weight to this kind of criticism, it is well to find the decisions
+of experts in harmony with the instincts of simple observers.
+Antinous is as real as any man who ever sat for his portrait to a
+modern sculptor.
+
+But who was Antinous, and what is known of him? He was a native of
+Bithynium or Claudiopolis, a Greek town claiming to have been a
+colony from Arcadia, which was situated near the Sangarius, in the
+Roman province of Bithynia; therefore he may have had pure Hellenic
+blood in his veins, or, what is more probable, his ancestry may have
+been hybrid between the Greek immigrants and the native populations
+of Asia Minor. Antinous was probably born in the first decade of the
+second century of our era. About his youth and education we know
+nothing. He first appears upon the scene of the world's history as
+Hadrian's friend. Whether the Emperor met with him during his
+travels in Asia Minor, whether he found him among the students of
+the University at Athens, or whether the boy had been sent to Rome
+in his childhood, must remain matter of the merest conjecture. We do
+not even know for certain whether Antinous was free or a slave. The
+report that he was one of the Emperor's pages rests upon the
+testimony of Hegesippus, quoted by a Christian Father, and cannot
+therefore be altogether relied upon. It receives, however, some
+confirmation from the fact that Antinous is more than once
+represented in the company of Hadrian and Trajan in a page's hunting
+dress upon the basreliefs which adorn the Arch of Constantine. The
+so-called Antinous-Castor of the Villa Albani is probably of a
+similar character. Winckelmann, who adopted the tradition as
+trustworthy, pointed out the similarity between the portraits of
+Antinous and some lines in Phaedrus, which describe a curly-haired
+_atriensis_. If Antinous took the rank of _atriensis_ in the
+imperial _paedagogium_, his position would have been, to say the
+least, respectable; for to these upper servants was committed the
+charge of the _atrium_, where the Romans kept their family archives,
+portraits, and works of art. Yet he must have quitted this kind of
+service some time before his death, since we find him in the company
+of Hadrian upon one of those long journeys in which an _atriensis_
+would have had no _atrium_ to keep. By the time of Hadrian's visit
+to Egypt, Antinous had certainly passed into the closest
+relationship with his imperial master; and what we know of the
+Emperor's inclination towards literary and philosophical society
+perhaps justifies the belief that the youth he admitted to his
+friendship had imbibed Greek culture, and had been initiated into
+those cloudy metaphysics which amused the leisure of semi-Oriental
+thinkers in the last age of decaying Paganism.
+
+It was a moment in the history of the human mind when East and West
+were blending their traditions to form the husk of Christian creeds
+and the fantastic visions of neo-Platonism. Rome herself had
+received with rapture the strange rites of Nilotic and of Syrian
+superstition. Alexandria was the forge of fanciful imaginations, the
+majority of which were destined to pass like vapours and leave not a
+wrack behind, while a few fastened with the force of dogma on the
+conscience of awakening Christendom. During Hadrian's reign it was
+still uncertain which among the many hybrid products of that motley
+age would live and flourish; and the Emperor, we know, dreamed
+fondly of reviving the cults and restoring the splendour of
+degenerate Hellas. At the same time he was not averse to the more
+mystic rites of Egypt: in his villa at Tivoli he built a Serapeum,
+and named one of its quarters Canopus. What part Antinous may have
+taken in the projects of his friend and master we know not; yet,
+when we come to consider the circumstances of his death, it may not
+be superfluous to have thus touched upon the intellectual conditions
+of the world in which he lived. The mixed blood of the boy, born and
+bred in a Greek city near the classic ground of Dindymean rites, and
+his beauty, blent of Hellenic and Eastern qualities, may also not
+unprofitably be remembered. In such a youth, nurtured between Greece
+and Asia, admitted to the friendship of an emperor for whom
+neo-Hellenism was a life's dream in the midst of grave state-cares,
+influenced by the dark and symbolical creeds of a dimly apprehended
+East, might there not have lurked some spark of enthusiasm combining
+the impulses of Atys and Aristogeiton, pathetic even in its
+inefficiency when judged by the light of modern knowledge, but
+heroic at that moment in its boundless vista of great deeds to be
+accomplished?
+
+After journeying through Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, and
+Arabia, Hadrian, attended by Antinous, came to Egypt. He there
+restored the tomb of Pompey, near Pelusium, with great magnificence,
+and shortly afterwards embarked from Alexandria upon the Nile,
+proceeding on his journey through Memphis into the Thebaid. When he
+had arrived near an ancient city named Besa, on the right bank of
+the river, he lost his friend. Antinous was drowned in the Nile. He
+had thrown himself, it was believed, into the water; seeking thus by
+a voluntary death to substitute his own life for Hadrian's, and to
+avert predicted perils from the Roman Empire. What these perils
+were, and whether Hadrian was ill, or whether an oracle had
+threatened him with approaching calamity, we do not know. Even
+supposition is at fault, because the date of the event is still
+uncertain; some authorities placing Hadrian's Egyptian journey in
+the year 122, and others in the year 130 A.D. Of the two dates, the
+second seems the more probable. We are left to surmise that, if the
+Emperor was in danger, the recent disturbances which followed a new
+discovery of Apis, may have exposed him to fanatical conspiracy. The
+same doubt affects an ingenious conjecture that rumours which
+reached the Roman court of a new rising in Judaea had disturbed the
+Emperor's mind, and led to the belief that he was on the verge of a
+mysterious doom. He had pacified the Empire and established its
+administration on a solid basis. Yet the revolt of the indomitable
+Jews--more dreaded since the days of Titus than any other
+perturbation of the imperial economy--would have been enough,
+especially in Egypt, to engender general uneasiness. However this
+may have been, the grief of the Emperor, intensified either by
+gratitude or remorse, led to the immediate canonisation of Antinous.
+The city where he died was rebuilt, and named after him. His worship
+as a hero and as a god spread far and wide throughout the provinces
+of the Mediterranean. A new star, which appeared about the time of
+his decease, was supposed to be his soul received into the company
+of the immortals. Medals were struck in his honour, and countless
+works of art were produced to make his memory undying. Great cities
+wore wreaths of red lotos on his feast-day in commemoration of the
+manner of his death. Public games were celebrated in his honour at
+the city Antinoe, and also in Arcadian Mantinea. This canonisation
+may probably have taken place in the fourteenth year of Hadrian's
+reign, A.D. 130.[1] Antinous continued to be worshipped until the
+reign of Valentinian.
+
+    [1] Overbeck, Hausrath, and Mommsen, following apparently
+    the conclusions arrived at by Flemmer in his work on
+    Hadrian's journeys, place it in 130 A.D. This would leave
+    an interval of only eight years between the deaths of
+    Antinous and Hadrian. It may here be observed that two
+    medals of Antinous, referred by Rasche with some
+    hesitation to the Egyptian series, bear the dates of the
+    eighth and ninth years of Hadrian's reign. If these coins
+    are genuine, and if we accept Flemmer's conclusions, they
+    must have been struck in the lifetime of Antinous. Neither
+    of them represents Antinous with the insignia of deity:
+    one gives the portrait of Hadrian upon the reverse.
+
+Thus far I have told a simple story, as though the details of the
+youth's last days were undisputed. Still we are as yet but on the
+threshold of the subject. All that we have any right to take for
+uncontested is that Antinous passed from this life near the city of
+Besa, called thereafter Antinoopolis or Antinoe. Whether he was
+drowned by accident, whether he drowned himself in order to save
+Hadrian by vicarious suffering, or whether Hadrian sacrificed him in
+order to extort the secrets of fate from blood-propitiated deities,
+remains a question buried in the deepest gloom. With a view to
+throwing such light as is possible upon the matter, we must proceed
+to summon in their order the most trustworthy authorities among the
+ancients.
+
+Dion Cassius takes precedence. In compiling his life of Hadrian, he
+had beneath his eyes the Emperor's own 'Commentaries,' published
+under the name of the freedman Phlegon. We therefore learn from him
+at least what the friend of Antinous wished the world to know about
+his death; and though this does not go for much, since Hadrian is
+himself an accused person in the suit before us, yet the whole Roman
+Empire may be said to have accepted his account, and based on it a
+pious cult that held its own through the next three centuries of
+growing Christianity. Dion, in the abstract of his history compiled
+by Xiphilinus, speaks then to this effect: 'In Egypt he also built
+the city named after Antinous. Now Antinous was a native of
+Bithynium, a city of Bithynia, which we also call Claudiopolis. He
+was Hadrian's favourite, and he died in Egypt: whether by having
+fallen into the Nile, as Hadrian writes, or by having been
+sacrificed, as the truth was. For Hadrian, as I have said, was in
+general over-much given to superstitious subtleties, and practised
+all kinds of sorceries and magic arts. At any rate he so honoured
+Antinous, whether because of the love he felt for him, or because he
+died voluntarily, since a willing victim was needed for his purpose,
+that he founded a city in the place where he met this fate, and
+called it after him, and dedicated statues, or rather images, of him
+in, so to speak, the whole inhabited world. Lastly, he affirmed that
+a certain star which he saw was the star of Antinous, and listened
+with pleasure to the myths invented by his companions about this
+star having really sprung from the soul of his favourite, and having
+then for the first time appeared. For which things he was laughed
+at.'
+
+We may now hear what Spartian, in his 'Vita Hadriani,' has to say:
+'He lost his favourite, Antinous, while sailing on the Nile, and
+lamented him like a woman. About Antinous reports vary, for some say
+that he devoted his life for Hadrian, while others hint what his
+condition seems to prove, as well as Hadrian's excessive inclination
+to luxury. Some Greeks, at the instance of Hadrian, canonised him,
+asserting that oracles were given by him, which Hadrian himself is
+supposed to have made up.'
+
+In the third place comes Aurelius Victor: 'Others maintain that this
+sacrifice of Antinous was both pious and religious; for when Hadrian
+was wishing to prolong his life, and the magicians required a
+voluntary vicarious victim, they say that, upon the refusal of all
+others, Antinous offered himself.'
+
+These are the chief authorities. In estimating them we must remember
+that, though Dion Cassius wrote less than a century after the event
+narrated, he has come down to us merely in fragments and in the
+epitome of a Byzantine of the twelfth century, when everything that
+could possibly be done to discredit the worship of Antinous, and to
+blacken the memory of Hadrian, had been attempted by the Christian
+Fathers. On the other hand, Spartianus and Aurelius Victor compiled
+their histories at too distant a date to be of first-rate value.
+Taking the three reports together, we find that antiquity differed
+about the details of Antinous's death. Hadrian himself averred that
+his friend was drowned; and it was surmised that he had drowned
+himself in order to prolong his master's life. The courtiers,
+however, who had scoffed at Hadrian's fondness for his favourite,
+and had laughed to see his sorrow for his death, somewhat
+illogically came to the conclusion that Antinous had been immolated
+by the Emperor, either because a victim was needed to prolong his
+life, or because some human sacrifice was required in order to
+complete a dark mysterious magic rite. Dion, writing not very long
+after the event, believed that Antinous had been immolated for some
+such purpose with his own consent. Spartian, who wrote at the
+distance of more than a century, felt uncertain about the question
+of self-devotion; but Aurelius Victor, following after the interval
+of another century, unhesitatingly adopted Dion's view, and gave it
+a fresh colour. This opinion he summarised in a compact,
+authoritative form, upon which we may perhaps found an assumption
+that the belief in Antinous, as a self-devoted victim, had been
+gradually growing through two centuries.
+
+There are therefore three hypotheses to be considered. The first is
+that Antinous died an accidental death by drowning; the second is,
+that Antinous, in some way or another, gave his life willingly for
+Hadrian's; the third is, that Hadrian ordered his immolation in the
+performance of magic rites.
+
+For the first of the three hypotheses we have the authority of
+Hadrian himself, as quoted by Dion. The simple words [Greek: eis ton
+Neilon ekpeson] imply no more than accidental death; and yet, if the
+Emperor had believed the story of his favourite's self-devotion, it
+is reasonable to suppose that he would have recorded it in his
+'Memoirs.' Accepting this view of the case, we must refer the
+deification of Antinous wholly to Hadrian's affection; and the tales
+of his _devotio_ may have been invented partly to flatter the
+Emperor's grief, partly to explain its violence to the Roman world.
+This hypothesis seems, indeed, by far the most natural of the three;
+and if we could strip the history of Antinous of its mysterious and
+mythic elements, it is rational to believe that we should find his
+death a simple accident. Yet our authorities prove that writers of
+history among the ancients wavered between the two other theories of
+(i) Self-Devotion and (ii) Immolation, with a bias toward the
+latter. These, then, have now to be considered with some attention.
+Both, it may parenthetically be observed, relieve Antinous from a
+moral stigma, since in either case a pure untainted victim was
+required.
+
+If we accept the former of the two remaining hypotheses, we can
+understand how love and gratitude, together with sorrow, led Hadrian
+to canonise Antinous. If we accept the latter, Hadrian's sorrow
+itself becomes inexplicable; and we must attribute the foundation of
+Antinoe and the deification of Antinous to remorse. It may be added,
+while balancing these two solutions of the problem, that cynical
+sophists, like Hadrian's Graeculi, were likely to have put the worst
+construction on the Emperor's passion, and to have invented the
+worst stories concerning the favourite's death. To perpetuate these
+calumnious reports was the real interest of the Christian
+apologists, who not unnaturally thought it scandalous that a
+handsome page should be deified. Thus, at first sight, the balance
+of probability inclines toward the former of the two solutions,
+while the second may be rejected as based upon court-gossip and
+religious animosity. Attention may also again be called to the fact
+that Hadrian ventured to publish an account of Antinous quite
+inconsistent with what Dion chose to call the truth, and that
+virtuous Emperors like the Antonines did not interfere with a cult,
+which, had it been paid to the mere victim of Hadrian's passion and
+his superstition, would have been an infamy even in Rome. Moreover,
+that cult was not, like the creations of the impious emperors,
+forgotten or destroyed by public acclamation. It took root and
+flourished apparently, as we shall see, because it satisfied some
+craving of the popular religious sense, and because the people
+believed that this man had died for his friend. It will not,
+however, do to dismiss the two hypotheses so lightly.
+
+The alternative of self-devotion presents itself under a double
+aspect. Antinous may either have committed suicide by drowning with
+the intention of prolonging the Emperor's life, or he may have
+offered himself as a voluntary victim to the magicians, who required
+a sacrifice for a similar purpose. Spartian's brief phrase, _aliis
+eum devotum pro Hadriano_, may seem to point to the first form of
+self-devotion; the testimony of Aurelius Victor clearly supports the
+second: yet it does not much matter which of the two explanations we
+adopt. The point is whether Antinous gave his life willingly to save
+the Emperor's, or whether he was murdered for the satisfaction of
+some superstitious curiosity. It was absolutely necessary that the
+vicarious victim should make a free and voluntary oblation of
+himself. That the notion of vicarious suffering was familiar to the
+ancients is sufficiently attested by the phrases [Greek:
+antipsychoi], [Greek: antandroi], and _hostia succidanea_. We find
+traces of it in the legend of Alcestis, who died for Admetus, and of
+Cheiron, who took the place of Prometheus in Hades. Suetonius
+records that in the first days of Caligula's popularity, when he was
+labouring under dangerous illness, many Romans of both sexes vowed
+their lives for his recovery in temples of the gods. That this
+superstition retained a strong hold on the popular imagination in
+the time of Hadrian is proved by the curious affirmation of
+Aristides, a contemporary of that Emperor. He says that once, when
+he was ill, a certain Philumene offered her soul for his soul, her
+body for his body, and that, upon his own recovery, she died. On the
+same testimony it appears that her brother Hermeas had also died for
+Aristides. This faith in the efficacy of substitution is persistent
+in the human race. Not long ago a Christian lady was supposed to
+have vowed her own life for the prolongation of that of Pope Pius
+IX., and good Catholics inclined to the belief that the sacrifice
+had been accepted. We shall see that in the first centuries of
+Christendom the popular conviction that Antinous had died for
+Hadrian brought him into inconvenient rivalry with Christ, whose
+vicarious suffering was the cardinal point of the new creed.
+
+The alternative of immolation has next to be considered. The
+question before us here is, Did Hadrian sacrifice Antinous for the
+satisfaction of a superstitious curiosity, and in the performance of
+magic rites? Dion Cassius uses the word [Greek: hierourgetheis], and
+explains it by saying that Hadrian needed a voluntary human victim
+for the accomplishment of an act of divination in which he was
+engaged. Both Spartian and Dion speak emphatically of the Emperor's
+proclivities to the black art; and all antiquity agreed about this
+trait in his character. Ammianus Marcellinus spoke of him as
+'_futurorum sciscitationi nimiae deditum_.' Tertullian described him
+as '_curiositatum omnium exploratorem_.' To multiply such phrases
+would, however, be superfluous, for they are probably mere
+repetitions from the text of Dion. That human victims were used by
+the Romans of the Empire seems certain. Lampridius, in the 'Life of
+Heliogabalus,' records his habit of slaying handsome and noble
+youths, in order that he might inspect their entrails. Eusebius, in
+his 'Life of Maxentius,' asserts the same of that Emperor. _Quum
+inspiceret exta puerilia_, [Greek: neognon splagchna brephon
+diereunomenou], are the words used by Lampridius and Eusebius.
+Justin Martyr speaks of [Greek: epopteuseis paidon adiaphthoron].
+Caracalla and Julian are credited with similar bloody sacrifices.
+Indeed, it may be affirmed in general that tyrants have ever been
+eager to foresee the future and to extort her secrets from Fate,
+stopping short at no crime in the attempt to quiet a corroding
+anxiety for their own safety. What we read about Italian
+despots--Ezzelino da Romano, Sigismondo Malatesta, Filippo Maria
+Visconti, and Pier Luigi Farnese--throws light upon the practice of
+their Imperial predecessors; while the mysterious murder of the
+beautiful Astorre Manfredi by the Borgias in Hadrian's Mausoleum has
+been referred by modern critics of authority to the same unholy
+curiosity. That Hadrian laboured under this moral disease, and that
+he deliberately used the body of Antinous for _extispicium_, is, I
+think, Dion's opinion. But are we justified in reckoning Hadrian
+among these tyrants? That must depend upon our view of his
+character.
+
+Hadrian was a man in whom the most conflicting qualities were blent.
+In his youth and through his whole life he was passionately fond of
+hunting; hardy, simple in his habits, marching bareheaded with his
+legions through German frost and Nubian heat, sharing the food of
+his soldiers, and exercising the most rigid military discipline. At
+the same time he has aptly been described as 'the most sumptuous
+character of antiquity.' He filled the cities of the empire with
+showy buildings, and passed his last years in a kind of classic
+Munich, where he had constructed imitations of every celebrated
+monument in Europe. He was so far fond of nature that, anticipating
+the most recently developed of modern tastes, he ascended Mount AEtna
+and the Mons Casius, in order to enjoy the spectacle of sunrise. In
+his villa at Tivoli he indulged a trivial fancy by christening one
+garden Tempe and another the Elysian Fields; and he had his name
+carved on the statue of the vocal Memnon with no less gusto than a
+modern tourist: _audivi voces divinas_. His memory was prodigious,
+his eloquence in the Latin language studied and yet forcible, his
+knowledge of Greek literature and philosophy far from contemptible.
+He enjoyed the society of Sophists and distinguished rhetoricians,
+and so far affected authorship as to win the unenviable title of
+_Graeculus_ in his own lifetime: yet he never neglected state
+affairs. Owing to his untiring energy and vast capacity for
+business, he not only succeeded in reorganising every department of
+the empire, social, political, fiscal, military, and municipal; but
+he also held in his own hands the threads of all its complicated
+machinery. He was strict in matters of routine, and appears to have
+been almost a martinet among his legions: yet in social intercourse
+he lived on terms of familiarity with inferiors, combining the
+graces of elegant conversation with the _bonhomie_ of boon
+companionship, displaying a warm heart to his friends, and using
+magnificent generosity. He restored the domestic as well as the
+military discipline of the Roman world; and his code of laws lasted
+till Justinian. Among many of his useful measures of reform he
+issued decrees restricting the power of masters over their slaves,
+and depriving them of their old capital jurisdiction. His
+biographers find little to accuse him of beyond a singular avidity
+for fame, addiction to magic arts and luxurious vices: yet they
+adduce no proof of his having, at any rate before the date of his
+final retirement to his Tiburtine villa, shared the crimes of a Nero
+or a Commodus. On the whole, we must recognise in Hadrian a nature
+of extraordinary energy, capacity for administrative government, and
+mental versatility. A certain superficiality, vulgarity, and
+commonplaceness seems to have been forced upon him by the
+circumstances of his age, no less than by his special temperament.
+This quality of the immitigable commonplace is clearly written on
+his many portraits. Their chief interest consists in a fixed
+expression of fatigue--as though the man were weary with much
+seeking and with little finding. In all things, he was somewhat of a
+dilettante; and the Nemesis of that sensibility to impressions which
+distinguishes the dilettante, came upon him ere he died. He ended
+his days in an appalling and persistent paroxysm of _ennui_,
+desiring the death which would not come to his relief.
+
+The whole creative and expansive force of Hadrian's century lay
+concealed in the despised Christian sect. Art was expiring in a
+sunset blaze of gorgeous imitation, tasteless grandeur, technical
+elaboration. Philosophy had become sophistical or mystic; its real
+life survived only in the phrase 'entbehren sollst du, sollst
+entbehren' of the Stoics. Literature was repetitive and scholastic.
+Tacitus, Suetonius, Plutarch, and Juvenal indeed were living; but
+their works formed the last great literary triumph of the age.
+Religion had degenerated under the twofold influences of scepticism
+and intrusive foreign cults. It was, in truth, an age in which, for
+a sound heart and manly intellect, there lay no proper choice except
+between the stoicism of Marcus Aurelius and the Christianity of the
+Catacombs. All else had passed into shams, unrealities, and visions.
+Now Hadrian was neither stoical nor Christian, though he so far
+coquetted with Christianity as to build temples dedicated to no
+Pagan deity, which passed in after times for unfinished churches. He
+was a _Graeculus_. In that contemptuous epithet, stripping it of its
+opprobrious significance, we find the real key to his character. In
+a failing age he lived a restless-minded, many-sided soldier-prince,
+whose inner hopes and highest aspirations were for Hellas. Hellas,
+her art, her history, her myths, her literature, her lovers, her
+young heroes filled him with enthusiasm. To rebuild her ruined
+cities, to restore her deities, to revive her golden life of blended
+poetry and science, to reconstruct her spiritual empire as he had
+re-organised the Roman world, was Hadrian's dream. It was indeed a
+dream; one which a far more creative genius than Hadrian's could not
+have realised.
+
+But now, returning to the two alternatives regarding his friend's
+death: was this philo-Hellenic Emperor the man to have immolated
+Antinous for _extispicium_ and then deified him? Probably not. The
+discord between this bloody act and subsequent hypocrisy upon the
+one hand, and Hadrian's Greek sympathies upon the other, must be
+reckoned too strong for even such a dipsychic character as his.
+There is nothing in either Spartian or Dion to justify the opinion
+that he was naturally cruel or fantastically deceitful. On the other
+hand, Hadrian's philo-Hellenic, splendour-loving, somewhat tawdry,
+fame-desiring nature was precisely of the sort to jump eagerly at
+the deification of a favourite who had either died a natural death
+or killed himself to save his master. Hadrian had loved Antinous
+with a Greek passion in his lifetime. The Roman Emperor was half a
+god. He remembered how Zeus had loved Ganymede, and raised him to
+Olympus; how Achilles had loved Patroclus, and performed his funeral
+rites at Troy; how the demi-god Alexander had loved Hephaestion, and
+lifted him into a hero's seat on high. He, Hadrian, would do the
+like, now that death had robbed him of his comrade. The Roman, who
+surrounded himself at Tivoli with copies of Greek temples, and who
+called his garden Tempe, played thus at being Zeus, Achilles,
+Alexander; and the civilised world humoured his whim. Though the
+Sophists scoffed at his real grief and honourable tears, they
+consecrated his lost favourite, found out a star for him, carved him
+in breathing brass, and told tales about his sacred flower.
+Pancrates was entertained in Alexandria at the public cost for his
+fable of the lotos; and the lyrist Mesomedes received so liberal a
+pension for his hymn to Antinous that Antoninus Pius found it
+needful to curtail it.
+
+After weighing the authorities, considering the circumstances of the
+age, and estimating Hadrian's character, I am thus led to reject the
+alternative of immolation. Spartian's own words, _quem muliebriter
+flevit_, as well as the subsequent acts of the Emperor and the
+acquiescence of the whole world in the new deity, prove to my mind
+that in the suggestion of _extispicium_ we have one of those covert
+calumnies which it is impossible to set aside at this distance of
+time, and which render the history of Roman Emperors and Popes
+almost impracticable.
+
+The case, then, stands before us thus. Antinous was drowned in the
+Nile, near Besa, either by accident or by voluntary suicide to save
+his master's life. Hadrian's love for him had been unmeasured, so
+was his grief. Both of them were genuine; but in the nature of the
+man there was something artificial. He could not be content to love
+and grieve alone; he must needs enact the part of Alexander, and
+realise, if only by a sort of makebelieve, a portion of his Greek
+ideal. Antinous, the beautiful servant, was to take the place of
+Ganymede, of Patroclus, of Hephaestion; never mind if Hadrian was a
+Roman and his friend a Bithynian, and if the love between them, as
+between an emperor of fifty and a boy of nineteen, had been less
+than heroic. The opportunity was too fair to be missed; the _role_
+too fascinating to be rejected. The world, in spite of covert
+sneers, lent itself to the sham, and Antinous became a god.
+
+The uniformly contemptuous tone of antique authorities almost
+obliges us to rank this deification of Antinous, together with the
+Tiburtine villa and the dream of a Hellenic Renaissance, among the
+part-shams, part-enthusiasms of Hadrian's 'sumptuous' character.
+Spartian's account of the consecration, and his hint that Hadrian
+composed the oracles delivered at his favourite's tomb; Arrian's
+letter to the Emperor describing the island Leuke and flattering him
+by an adroit comparison with Achilles; the poem by Pancrates
+mentioned in the 'Deipnosophistae,' which furnished the myth of a new
+lotos dedicated to Antinous; the invention of the star, and
+Hadrian's conversations with his courtiers on this subject--all
+converge to form the belief that something of consciously unreal
+mingled with this act of apotheosis by Imperial decree. Hadrian
+sought to assuage his grief by paying his favourite illustrious
+honours after death; he also desired to give the memory of his own
+love the most congenial and poetical environment, to feed upon it in
+the daintiest places, and to deck it with the prettiest flowers of
+fancy. He therefore canonised Antinous, and took measures for
+disseminating his cult throughout the world, careless of the element
+of imposture which might seem to mingle with the consecration of his
+true affection. Hadrian's superficial taste was not offended by the
+gimcrack quality of the new god; and Antinous was saved from being a
+merely pinchbeck saint by his own charming personality.
+
+This will not, however, wholly satisfy the conditions of the
+problem; and we are obliged to ask ourselves whether there was not
+something in the character of Antinous himself, something divinely
+inspired and irradiate with spiritual beauty, apparent to his
+fellows and remembered after his mysterious death, which justified
+his canonisation, and removed it from the region of Imperial
+makebelieve. If this was not the case, if Antinous died like a
+flower cropped from the seraglio garden of the court-pages, how
+should the Emperor in the first place have bewailed him with
+'unhusbanded passion,' and the people afterwards have received him
+as a god? May it not have been that he was a youth of more than
+ordinary promise, gifted with intellectual enthusiasms proportioned
+to his beauty and endowed with something of Phoebean inspiration,
+who, had he survived, might have even inaugurated a new age for the
+world, or have emulated the heroism of Hypatia in a hopeless cause?
+Was the link between him and Hadrian formed less by the boy's beauty
+than by his marvellous capacity for apprehending and his fitness for
+realising the Emperor's Greek dreams? Did the spirit of
+neo-Platonism find in him congenial incarnation? At any rate, was
+there not enough in the then current beliefs about the future of the
+soul, as abundantly set forth in Plutarch's writings, to justify a
+conviction that after death he had already passed into the lunar
+sphere, awaiting the final apotheosis of purged spirits in the sun?
+These questions may be asked--indeed, they must be asked--for,
+without suggesting them, we leave the worship of Antinous an almost
+inexplicable scandal, an almost unintelligible blot on human nature.
+Unless we ask them, we must be content to echo the coarse and
+violent diatribes of Clemens Alexandrinus against the vigils of the
+deified _exoletus_. But they cannot be answered, for antiquity is
+altogether silent about him; only here and there, in the indignant
+utterance of a Christian Father, stung to the quick by Pagan
+parallels between Antinous and Christ, do we catch a perverted echo
+of the popular emotion upon which his cult reposed, which recognised
+his godhood or his vicarious self-sacrifice, and which paid enduring
+tribute to the sublimity of his young life untimely quenched.
+
+The _senatus consultum_ required for the apotheosis of an Emperor
+was not, so far as we know, obtained in the case of Antinous.
+Hadrian's determination to exalt his favourite sufficed; and this is
+perhaps one of the earliest instances of those informal deifications
+which became common in the later Roman period. Antinous was
+canonised according to Greek ritual and by Greek priests: _Graeci
+quidam volente Hadriano eum consecraverunt_. How this was
+accomplished we know not; but forms of canonisation must have been
+in common usage, seeing that emperors and members of the Imperial
+family received the honour in due course. The star which was
+supposed to have appeared soon after his death, and which
+represented his soul admitted to Olympus, was somewhere near the
+constellation Aquila, according to Ptolemy, but not part of it. I
+believe the letters [Greek: e.th.i.k.l.] of Aquila now bear the name
+of Antinous; but this appropriation dates only from the time of
+Tycho Brahe. It was also asserted that as a new star had appeared in
+the skies, so a new flower had blossomed on the earth, at the moment
+of his death. This was the lotos, of a peculiar red colour, which
+the people of Lower Egypt used to wear in wreaths upon his festival.
+It received the name Antinoeian; and the Alexandrian sophist,
+Pancrates, seeking to pay a double compliment to Hadrian and his
+favourite, wrote a poem in which he pretended that this lily was
+stained with the blood of a Libyan lion slain by the Emperor. As
+Arrian compared his master to Achilles, so Pancrates flattered him
+with allusions to Herakles. The lotos, it is well known, was a
+sacred flower in Egypt. Both as a symbol of the all-nourishing
+moisture of the earth and of the mystic marriage of Isis and Osiris,
+and also as an emblem of immortality, it appeared on all the sacred
+places of the Egyptians, especially on tombs and funeral utensils.
+To dignify Antinous with the lotos emblem was to consecrate him; to
+find a new species of the revered blossom and to wear it in his
+honour, calling it by his name, was to exalt him to the company of
+gods. Nothing, as it seems, had been omitted that could secure for
+him the patent of divinity.
+
+He met his death near the city Besa, an ancient Egyptian town upon
+the eastern bank of the Nile, almost opposite to Hermopolis. Besa
+was the name of a local god, who gave oracles and predicted future
+events. But of this Besa we know next to nothing. Hadrian determined
+to rebuild the city, change its name, and let his favourite take the
+place of the old deity. Accordingly, he raised a splendid new town
+in the Greek style; furnished it with temples, agora, hippodrome,
+gymnasium, and baths; filled it with Greek citizens; gave it a Greek
+constitution, and named it Antinoe. This new town, whether called
+Antinoe, Antinoopolis, Antinous, Antinoeia, or even Besantinous (for
+its titles varied), continued long to flourish, and was mentioned by
+Ammianus Marcellinus, together with Copton and Hermopolis, as one of
+the three most distinguished cities of the Thebaid. In the age of
+Julian these three cities were perhaps the only still thriving towns
+of Upper Egypt. It has even been maintained on Ptolemy's authority
+that Antinoe was the metropolis of a nome, called Antinoeitis; but
+this is doubtful, since inscriptions discovered among the ruins of
+the town record no name of nomarch or strategus, while they prove
+the government to have consisted of a Boule and a Prytaneus, who was
+also the Eponymous Magistrate. Strabo reckons it, together with
+Ptolemais and Alexandria, as governed after the Greek municipal
+system.
+
+In this city Antinous was worshipped as a god. Though a Greek god,
+and the eponym of a Greek city, he inherited the place and functions
+of an Egyptian deity, and was here represented in the hieratic style
+of Ptolemaic sculpture. A fine specimen of this statuary is
+preserved in the Vatican, showing how the neo-Hellenic sculptors had
+succeeded in maintaining the likeness of Antinous without
+sacrificing the traditional manner of Egyptian piety. The sacred
+emblems of Egyptian deities were added: we read, for instance, in
+one passage, that his shrine contained a boat. This boat, like the
+mystic egg of Eros or the cista of Dionysos, symbolised the embryo
+of cosmic life. It was specially appropriated to Osiris, and
+suggested collateral allusions doubtless to immortality and the
+soul's journey in another world. Antinous had a college of priests
+appointed to his service; and oracles were delivered from the
+cenotaph inside his temple. The people believed him to be a genius
+of warning, gracious to his suppliants, but terrible to evil-doers,
+combining the qualities of the avenging and protective deities.
+Annual games were celebrated in Antinoe on his festival, with
+chariot races and gymnastic contests; and the fashion of keeping his
+day seems, from Athenaeus's testimony, to have spread through Egypt.
+An inscription in Greek characters discovered at Rome upon the
+Campus Martius entitles Antinous a colleague of the gods in Egypt--
+
+  [Greek: ANTINOOI SYNTHRONOI TON EN AIGUETOI THEON].
+
+The worship of Antinous spread rapidly through the Greek and Asian
+provinces, especially among the cities which owed debts of gratitude
+to Hadrian or expected from him future favours. At Athens, for
+example, the Emperor, attended perhaps by Antinous, had presided as
+Archon during his last royal progress, had built a suburb called
+after his name, and raised a splendid temple to Olympian Jove. The
+Athenians, therefore, founded games and a priesthood in honour of
+the new divinity. Even now, in the Dionysiac theatre, among the
+chairs above the orchestra assigned to priests of elder deities and
+more august tradition, may be found one bearing the name of
+Antinous--[Greek: IEREOS ANTINOOU]. A marble tablet has also been
+discovered inscribed with the names of agonothetai for the games
+celebrated in honour of Antinous; and a stele exists engraved with
+the crown of these contests together with the crowns of Severus,
+Commodus, and Antoninus. It appears that the games in honour of
+Antinous took place both at Eleusis and at Athens; and that the
+agonothetai, as also the priest of the new god, were chosen from the
+Ephebi. The Corinthians, the Argives, the Achaians, and the Epirots,
+as we know from coins issued by the priests of Antinous, adopted his
+cult;[1] but the region of Greece proper where it flourished most
+was Arcadia, the mother state of his Bithynian birthplace.
+Pausanias, who lived contemporaneously with Antinous, and might have
+seen him, though he tells us that he had not chanced to meet the
+youth alive, mentions the temple of Antinous at Mantinea as the
+newest in that city. 'The Mantineans,' he says, 'reckon Antinous
+among their gods.' He then describes the yearly festival and
+mysteries connected with his cult, the quinquennial games
+established in his honour, and his statues. The gymnasium had a cell
+dedicated to Antinous, adorned with pictures and fair stone-work.
+The new god was in the habit of Dionysus.
+
+    [1] For example: [Greek: OSTILIOS MARKELLOSOIEREUSTOU
+    ANTINOOU ANETHEKE TOIS ACHAIOIS] and a similar inscription
+    for Corinth.
+
+As was natural, his birthplace paid him special observance. Coins
+dedicated by the province of Bithynia, as well as by the town
+Bithynium, are common, with the epigraphs, [Greek: ANTINOOU E
+PATRIS] and [Greek: ANTINOON THEON E PATRIS]. Among the cities of
+Asia Minor and the vicinity the new cult seems to have been widely
+spread. Adramyttene in Mysia, Alabanda, Ancyra in Galatia,
+Chalcedon, Cuma in AEolis, Cyzicum in Mysia, the Ciani, the
+Hadrianotheritae of Bithynia, Hierapolis in Phrygia, Nicomedia,
+Philadelphia, Sardis, Smyrna, Tarsus, the Tianians of Paphlagonia,
+and a town Rhesaena in Mesopotamia, all furnish their quota of
+medals. On the majority of these medals he is entitled Heros, but on
+others he has the higher title of god; and he seems to have been
+associated in each place with some deity of local fame.
+
+Being essentially a Greek hero, or divinised man received into the
+company of immortals and worshipped with the attributes of god, his
+cult took firmer root among the neo-Hellenic provinces of the empire
+than in Italy. Yet there are signs that even in Italy he found his
+votaries. Among these may first be mentioned the comparative
+frequency of his name in Roman inscriptions, which have no immediate
+reference to him, but prove that parents gave it to their children.
+The discovery of his statues in various cities of the Roman Campagna
+shows that his cult was not confined to one or two localities.
+Naples in particular, which remained in all essential points a Greek
+city, seems to have received him with acclamation. A quarter of the
+town was called after his name, and a phratria of priests was
+founded in connection with his worship. The Neapolitans owed much to
+the patronage of Hadrian, and they repaid him after this fashion. At
+the beginning of the last century Raffaello Fabretti discovered an
+inscription near the Porta S. Sebastiano at Rome, which throws some
+light on the matter. It records the name of a Roman knight, Sufenas,
+who had held the office of Lupercus and had been a fellow of the
+Neapolitan phratria of Antinous--_fretriaco Neapoli Antinoiton et
+Eunostidon_. Eunostos was a hero worshipped at Tanagra in Boeotia,
+where he had a sacred grove no female foot might enter; and the
+wording of the inscription leaves it doubtful whether the Eunostidae
+and Antinoitae of Naples were two separate colleges; or whether the
+heroes were associated as the common patrons of one brotherhood.
+
+A valuable inscription discovered in 1816 near the Baths at Lanuvium
+or Lavigna shows that Antinous was here associated with Diana as the
+saint of a benefit club. The rules of the confraternity prescribe
+the payments and other contributions of its members, provide for
+their assembling on the feast days of their patrons, fix certain
+fines, and regulate the ceremonies and expenses of their funerals.
+This club seems to have resembled modern burial societies, as known
+to us in England; or still more closely to have been formed upon the
+same model as Italian confraternite of the Middle Ages. The Lex, or
+table of regulations, was drawn up in the year 133 A.D. It fixes the
+birthday of Antinous as v.k. Decembr., and alludes to the temple of
+Antinous--_Tetrastylo Antinoi_. Probably we cannot build much on the
+birthday as a genuine date, for the same table gives the birthday of
+Diana; and what was wanted was not accuracy in such matters, but a
+settled anniversary for banquets and pious celebrations. When we
+come to consider the divinity of Antinous, it will be of service to
+remember that at Lanuvium, together with Diana of the nether world,
+he was reckoned among the saints of sepulture. Could this thought
+have penetrated the imagination of his worshippers: that since
+Antinous had given his life for his friend, since he had faced death
+and triumphed over it, winning immortality and godhood for himself
+by sacrifice, the souls of his votaries might be committed to his
+charge and guidance on their journey through the darkness of the
+tomb? Could we venture to infer thus much from his selection by a
+confraternity existing for the purpose of securing decent burial or
+pious funeral rites, the date of its formation, so soon after his
+death, would confirm the hypothesis that he was known to have
+devoted his life for Hadrian.
+
+While speaking of Antinous as a divinised man, adscript to the gods
+of Egypt, accepted as hero and as god in Hellas, Italy, and Asia
+Minor, we have not yet considered the nature of his deity. The
+question is not so simple as it seems at first sight: and the next
+step to take, with a view to its solution, is to consider the
+various forms under which he was adored--the phases of his divinity.
+The coins already mentioned, and the numerous works of glyptic art
+surviving in the galleries of Europe, will help us to place
+ourselves at the same point of view as the least enlightened of his
+antique votaries. Reasoning upon these data by the light of classic
+texts, may afterwards enable us to assign him his true place in the
+Pantheon of decadent and uninventive Paganism.
+
+In Egypt, as we have already seen, Antinous was worshipped by the
+neo-Hellenes of Antinoopolis as their Eponymous Hero; but he took
+the place of an elder native god, and was represented in art
+according to the traditions of Egyptian sculpture. The marble statue
+of the Vatican is devoid of hieratic emblems. Antinous is attired
+with the Egyptian head-dress and waistband: he holds a short
+truncheon firmly clasped in each hand; and by his side is a
+palm-stump, such as one often finds in statues of the Greek Hermes.
+Two colossal statues of red granite discovered in the ruins of
+Hadrian's villa, at Tivoli, represent him in like manner with the
+usual Egyptian head-dress. They seem to have been designed for
+pillars supporting the architrave of some huge portal; and the wands
+grasped firmly in both hands are supposed to be symbolical of the
+genii called Dii Averrunci. Von Levezow, in his monograph upon
+Antinous in art, catalogues five statues of a similar description to
+the three already mentioned. From the indistinct character of all of
+them, it would appear that Antinous was nowhere identified with any
+one of the great Egyptian deities, but was treated as a Daemon
+powerful to punish and protect. This designation corresponds to the
+contemptuous rebuke addressed by Origen to Celsus, where he argues
+that the new saint was only a malignant and vengeful spirit. His
+Egyptian medals are few and of questionable genuineness: the
+majority of them seem to be purely Hellenic; but on one he bears a
+crown like that of Isis, and on another a lotos wreath. The dim
+records of his cult in Egypt, and the remnants of Graeco-Egyptian
+art, thus mark him out as one of the Averruncan deities, associated
+perhaps with Kneph or the Agathodaemon of Hellenic mythology, or
+approximated to Anubis, the Egyptian Hermes. Neither statues nor
+coins throw much light upon his precise place among those gods of
+Nile whose throne he is said to have ascended. Egyptian piety may
+not have been so accommodating as that of Hellas.
+
+With the Graeco-Roman world the case is different. We obtain a
+clearer conception of the Antinous divinity, and recognise him
+always under the mask of youthful gods already honoured with fixed
+ritual. To worship even living men under the names and attributes of
+well-known deities was no new thing in Hellas. We may remember the
+Ithyphallic hymn with which the Athenians welcomed Demetrius
+Poliorketes, the marriage of Anthony as Dionysus to Athene, and the
+deification of Mithridates as Bacchus. The Roman Emperors had
+already been represented in art with the characteristics of
+gods--Nero, for example, as Phoebus, and Hadrian as Mars. Such
+compliments were freely paid to Antinous. On the Achaian coins we
+find his portrait on the obverse, with different types of Hermes on
+the reverse, varied in one case by the figure of a ram, in another
+by the representation of a temple, in a third by a nude hero
+grasping a spear. One Mysian medal, bearing the epigraph 'Antinous
+Iacchus,' represents him crowned with ivy, and exhibits Demeter on
+the reverse. A single specimen from Ancyra, with the legend
+'Antinous Heros,' depicts the god Lunus carrying a crescent moon
+upon his shoulder. The Bithynian coins generally give youthful
+portraits of Antinous upon the obverse, with the title of 'Heros' or
+'Theos;' while the reverse is stamped with a pastoral figure,
+sometimes bearing the talaria, sometimes accompanied by a feeding ox
+or a boar or a star. This youth is supposed to be Philesius, the son
+of Hermes. In one specimen of the Bithynian series the reverse
+yields a head of Proserpine crowned with thorns. A coin of Chalcedon
+ornaments the reverse with a griffin seated near a naked figure.
+Another, from Corinth, bears the sun-god in a chariot; another, from
+Cuma, presents an armed Pallas. Bulls, with the crescent moon, occur
+in the Hadrianotheritan medals: a crescent moon in that of
+Hierapolis: a ram and star, a female head crowned with towers, a
+standing bull, and Harpocrates placing one finger on his lips, in
+those of Nicomedia; a horned moon and star in that of Epirot
+Nicopolis. One Philadelphian coin is distinguished by Antinous in a
+temple with four columns; another by an Aphrodite in her cella. The
+Sardian coins give Zeus with the thunderbolt, or Phoebus with the
+lyre; those of Smyrna are stamped with a standing ox, a ram, and the
+caduceus, a female panther and the thyrsus, or a hero reclining
+beneath a plane-tree; those of Tarsus with the Dionysian cista, the
+Phoebean tripod, the river Cydnus, and the epigraphs 'Neos
+Puthios,' 'Neos Iacchos;' those of the Tianians with Antinous as
+Bacchus on a panther, or, in one case, as Poseidon.
+
+It would be unsafe to suppose that the emblems of the reverse in
+each case had a necessary relation to Antinous, whose portrait is
+almost invariably represented on the obverse. They may refer, as in
+the case of the Tarsian river-god, to the locality in which the
+medal was struck. Yet the frequent occurrence of the well-known type
+with the attributes and sacred animals of various deities, and the
+epigraphs 'Neos Puthios' or 'Neos Iacchos,' justify us in assuming
+that he was associated with divinities in vogue among the people who
+accepted his cult--especially Apollo, Dionysus, and Hermes. On more
+than one coin he is described as Antinous-Pan, showing that his
+Arcadian compatriots of Peloponnese and Bithynia paid him the
+compliment of placing him beside their great local deity. In a Latin
+inscription discovered at Tibur, he is connected with the sun-god of
+Noricia, Pannonia and Illyria, who was worshipped under the title of
+Belenus:--
+
+  Antinoo et Beleno par aetas famaque par est;
+    Cur non Antinous sit quoque qui Belenus?
+
+This couplet sufficiently explains the ground of his adscription to
+the society of gods distinguished for their beauty. Both Belenus and
+Antinous are young and beautiful: why, therefore, should not
+Antinous be honoured equally with Belenus? The same reasoning would
+apply to all his impersonations. The pious imagination or the
+aesthetic taste tricked out this favourite of fortune in masquerade
+costumes, just as a wealthy lover may amuse himself by dressing his
+mistress after the similitude of famous beauties. The analogy of
+statues confirms this assumption. A considerable majority represent
+him as Dionysus Kisseus: in some of the best he is conceived as
+Hermes of the Palaestra or a simple hero: in one he is probably
+Dionysus Antheus; in another Vertumnus or Aristaeus; yet again he is
+the Agathos Daimon: while a fine specimen preserved in England shows
+him as Ganymede raising a goblet of wine: a little statue in the
+Louvre gives him the attributes of youthful Herakles; a basrelief of
+somewhat doubtful genuineness in the Villa Albani exhibits him with
+Romanised features in the character perhaps of Castor. Again, I am
+not sure whether the Endymion in the celebrated basrelief of the
+Capitol does not yield a portrait of Antinous.
+
+This rapid enumeration will suffice to show that Antinous was
+universally conceived as a young deity in bloom, and that preference
+was given to Phoebus and Iacchus, the gods of divination and
+enthusiasm, for his associates. In some cases he appears to have
+been represented as a simple hero without the attributes of any
+deity. Many of his busts, and the fine nude statues of the Capitol
+and the Neapolitan Museum, belong to this class, unless we recognise
+the two last as Antinous under the form of a young Hercules, or of
+the gymnastic Hermes. But when he comes before us with the title of
+Puthios, or with the attributes of Dionysus, distinct reference is
+probably intended in the one case to his oracular quality, in the
+other to the enthusiasm which led to his death. Allusions to
+Harpocrates, Lunus, Aristaeus, Philesius, Vertumnus, Castor,
+Herakles, Ganymedes, show how the divinising fancy played around the
+beauty of his youth, and sought to connect him with myths already
+honoured in the pious conscience. Lastly, though it would be
+hazardous to strain this point, we find in his chief impersonations
+a Chthonian character, a touch of the mystery that is shrouded in
+the world beyond the grave. The double nature of his Athenian cult
+may perhaps confirm this view. But, over and above all these
+symbolic illustrations, one artistic motive of immortal loveliness
+pervades and animates the series.
+
+It becomes at this point of some moment to determine what was the
+relation of Antinous to the gods with whom he blended, and whose
+attributes he shared. It seems tolerably certain that he had no
+special legend which could be idealised in art. The mythopoeic
+fancy invented no fable for him. His cult was parasitic upon elder
+cults. He was the colleague of greater well-established deities,
+from whom he borrowed a pale and evanescent lustre. Speaking
+accurately, he was a hero or divinised mortal, on the same grade as
+Helen immortalised for her beauty, as Achilles for his prowess, or
+as Herakles for his great deeds. But having no poet like Homer to
+sing his achievements, no myth fertile in emblems, he dwelt beneath
+the shadow of superior powers, and crept into a place with them.
+What was this place worth? What was the meaning attached by his
+votaries to the title [Greek: synthronos] or [Greek: paredros
+theos]? According to the simple meaning of both epithets, he
+occupied a seat together with or by the side of the genuine
+Olympians. In this sense Pindar called Dionysus the [Greek:
+paredros] of Demeter, because the younger god had been admitted to
+her worship on equal terms at Eleusis. In this sense Sophocles spoke
+of Himeros as [Greek: paredros] of the eternal laws, and of Justice
+as [Greek: synoikos] with the Chthonian deities. In this sense
+Euripides makes Helen [Greek: xynthakos] with her brethren, the
+Dioscuri. In this sense the three chief Archons at Athens were said
+to have two [Greek: paredroi] apiece. In this sense, again,
+Hephaestion was named a [Greek: theos paredros], and Alexander in his
+lifetime was voted a thirteenth in the company of the twelve
+Olympians. The divinised emperors were [Greek: paredroi] or [Greek:
+synthronoi]; nor did Virgil hesitate to flatter Augustus by
+questioning into which college of the immortals he would be adscript
+after death--
+
+  Tuque adeo, quem mox quae sint habitura deorum
+  Concilia, incertum est.
+
+Conscript deities of this heroic order were supposed to avert evils
+from their votaries, to pursue offenders with calamity, to inspire
+prophetic dreams, and to appear, as the phantom of Achilles appeared
+to Apollonius of Tyana, and answer questions put to them. They
+corresponded very closely and exactly to the saints of mediaevalism,
+acting as patrons of cities, confraternities, and persons, and
+interposing between the supreme powers of heaven and their especial
+devotees. As a [Greek: paredros] of this exalted quality, Antinous
+was the associate of Phoebus, Bacchus, and Hermes among the
+Olympians, and a colleague with the gods of Nile. The principal
+difficulty of grasping his true rank consists in the variety of his
+emblems and divine disguises.
+
+It must here be mentioned that the epithet [Greek: paredros] had a
+secondary and inferior signification. It was applied by later
+authors to the demons or familiar spirits who attended upon
+enchanters like Simon Magus or Apollonius; and such satellites were
+believed to be supplied by the souls of innocent young persons
+violently slain. Whether this secondary meaning of the title
+indicates a degeneration of the other, and forms the first step of
+the process whereby classic heroes were degraded into the foul
+fiends of mediaeval fancy, or whether we find in it a wholly new
+application of the word, is questionable. I am inclined to believe
+that, while [Greek: paredros theos] in the one case means an
+associate of the Olympian gods, [Greek: paredros daimon] in the
+other means a fellow-agent and assessor of the wizard. In other
+words, however they may afterwards have been confounded, the two
+uses of the same epithet were originally distinct: so that not every
+[Greek: paredros theos], Achilles, or Hephaestion or Antinous, was
+supposed to haunt and serve a sorcerer, but only some inferior
+spirit over whom his black art gave him authority. The [Greek:
+paredros theos] was so called because he sat with the great gods.
+The [Greek: paredros daimon] was so called because he sat beside the
+magician. At the same time there seems sufficient evidence that the
+two meanings came to be confounded; and as the divinities of Hellas,
+with all their lustrous train, paled before the growing splendour of
+Christ, they gradually fell beneath the necromantic ferule of the
+witch.
+
+Returning from this excursion, and determining that Antinous was a
+hero or divinised mortal, adscript to the college of the greater
+gods, and invested with many of their attributes, we may next ask
+the question, why this artificial cult, due in the first place to
+imperial passion and caprice, and nourished by the adulation of
+fawning provinces, was preserved from the rapid dissolution to which
+the flimsy products of court-flattery are subject. The mythopoetic
+faculty was extinct, or in its last phase of decadent vitality.
+There was nothing in the life of Antinous to create a legend or to
+stimulate the sense of awe; and yet this worship persisted long
+after the fear of Hadrian had passed away, long after the benefits
+to be derived by humouring a royal fancy had been exhausted, long
+after anything could be gained by playing out the farce. It is
+clear, from a passage in Clemens Alexandrinus, that the sacred
+nights of Antinous were observed, at least a century after the date
+of his deification, with an enthusiasm that roused the anger of the
+Christian Father. Again, it is worthy of notice that, while many of
+the noblest works of antiquity have perished, the statues of
+Antinous have descended to us in fair preservation and in very large
+numbers. From the contemptuous destruction which erased the
+monuments of base men in the Roman Empire they were safe; and the
+state in which we have them shows how little they had suffered from
+neglect. The most rational conclusion seems to be that Antinous
+became in truth a popular saint, and satisfied some new need in
+Paganism, for which none of the elder and more respectable deities
+sufficed. The novelty of his cult had, no doubt, something to do
+with the fascination it exercised; and something may be attributed
+to the impulse art received from the introduction of so rare and
+original a type of beauty into the exhausted cycle of mythical
+subjects. The blending of Greek and Egyptian elements was also
+attractive to an age remarkable for its eclecticism. But after
+allowing for the many adventitious circumstances which concurred to
+make Antinous the fashion, it is hardly unreasonable to assume that
+the spirit of poetry in the youth's story, the rumour of his
+self-devoted death, kept him alive in the memory of the people. It
+is just that element of romance in the tale of his last hours, that
+preservative association with the pathos of self-sacrifice, which
+forms the interest we still feel for him.
+
+The deified Antinous was therefore for the Roman world a charming
+but dimly felt and undeveloped personality, made perfect by
+withdrawal into an unseen world of mystery. The belief in the value
+of vicarious suffering attached itself to his beautiful and
+melancholy form. His sorrow borrowed something of the universal
+world-pain, more pathetic than the hero-pangs of Herakles, the
+anguish of Prometheus, or the passion of Iacchus-Zagreus, because
+more personal and less suggestive of a cosmic mystery. The ancient
+cries of Ah Linus, Ah Adonis, found in him an echo. For votaries
+ready to accept a new god as simply as we accept a new poet, he was
+the final manifestation of an old-world mystery, the rejuvenescence
+of a well-known incarnation, the semi-Oriental realisation of a
+recurring Avatar. And if we may venture on so bold a surmise, this
+last flower of antique mythology had taken up into itself a portion
+of the blood outpoured on Calvary. Planted in the conservatory of
+semi-philosophical yearnings, faintly tinctured with the colours of
+misapprehended Christianity, without inherent stamina, without the
+powerful nutrition which the earlier heroic fables had derived from
+the spiritual vigour of a truly mythopoeic age, the cult of
+Antinous subsisted as an echo, a reflection, the last serious effort
+of deifying but no longer potent Paganism, the last reverberation of
+its oracles, an aesthetic rather than a religious product, viewed
+even in its origin with sarcasm by the educated, and yet
+sufficiently attractive to enthral the minds of simple votaries, and
+to survive the circumstances of its first creation. It may be
+remembered that the century which witnessed the canonisation of
+Antinous, produced the myth of Cupid and Psyche--or, if this be too
+sweeping an assertion, gave it final form, and handed it, in its
+suggestive beauty, to the modern world. Thus at one and the same
+moment the dying spirit of Hellas seized upon those doctrines of
+self-devotion and immortality which, through the triumph of
+Christian teaching, were gaining novel and incalculable value for
+the world. According to its own laws of inspiration, it stamped both
+legends of Love victorious over Death, with beautiful form in myth
+and poem and statuary.
+
+That we are not altogether unjustified in drawing this conclusion
+may be gathered from the attitude assumed by the Christian
+apologists toward Antinous. There is more than the mere hatred of a
+Pagan hero, more than the bare indignation at a public scandal, in
+their acrimony. Accepting the calumnious insinuations of Dion
+Cassius, these gladiators of the new faith found a terrible
+rhetorical weapon ready to their hands in the canonisation of a
+court favourite. Prudentius, Clemens Alexandrinus, Tertullian,
+Eusebius, Justin Martyr, Athanasius, Tatian--all inveigh, in nearly
+the same terms, against the Emperor's Ganymede, exalted to the
+skies, and worshipped with base fear and adulation by abject slaves.
+But in Origen, arguing with Celsus, we find a somewhat different
+keynote struck. Celsus, it appears, had told the story of Antinous,
+and had compared his cult with that of Christ. Origen replies
+justly, that there was nothing in common between the lives of
+Antinous and of Christ, and that his supposed divinity is a fiction.
+We can discern in this response an echo of the faith which endeared
+Antinous to his Pagan votaries. Antinous was hated by the Christians
+as a rival; insignificant, it is true, and unworthy, but still of
+sufficient force to be regarded and persecuted. If Antinous had been
+utterly contemptible, if he had not gained some firm hold upon the
+piety of Graeco-Roman Paganism, Celsus could hardly have ventured to
+rest an argument upon his worship, nor would Origen have chosen to
+traverse that argument with solid reasoning, instead of passing it
+by in rhetorical silence. Nothing is more difficult than to
+understand the conditions of that age or to sympathise with its
+dominant passions. Educated as we have been in the traditions of the
+finally triumphant Christian faith, warmed through and through as we
+are by its summer glow and autumn splendour, believing as we do in
+the adequacy of its spirit to satisfy the cravings of the human
+heart, how can we comprehend a moment in its growth when the
+divinised Antinous was not merely an object offensive to the moral
+sense, but also a parody dangerous to the pure form of Christ?
+
+It remains to say somewhat of Antinous as he appears in art. His
+place in classic sculpture corresponds to his position in antique
+mythology. The Antinous statues and coins are reflections of earlier
+artistic masterpieces, executed with admirable skill, but lacking
+original faculty for idealisation in the artists. Yet there is so
+much personal attraction in his type, his statues are so manifestly
+faithful portraits, and we find so great a charm of novelty in his
+delicately perfect individuality, that the life-romance which they
+reveal, as through a veil of mystery, has force enough to make them
+rank among the valuable heirlooms of antiquity. We could almost
+believe that, while so many gods and heroes of Greece have perished,
+Antinous has been preserved in all his forms and phases for his own
+most lovely sake; as though, according to Ghiberti's exquisite
+suggestion, gentle souls in the first centuries of Christianity had
+spared this blameless youth, and hidden him away with tender hands,
+in quiet places, from the fury of iconoclasts. Nor is it impossible
+that the great vogue of his worship was due among the Pagan laity to
+this same fascination of pure beauty. Could a more graceful temple
+of the body have been fashioned, after the Platonic theory, for the
+habitation of a guileless, god-inspired, enthusiastic soul? The
+personality of Antinous, combined with the suggestion of his
+self-devoted death, made him triumphant in art as in the affections
+of the pious.
+
+It would be an interesting task to compose a _catalogue raisonne_ of
+Antinous statues and basreliefs, and to discuss the question of
+their mythological references. This is, however, not the place for
+such an inquiry. And yet I cannot quit Antinous without some
+retrospect upon the most important of his portraits. Among the
+simple busts, by far the finest, to my thinking, are the colossal
+head of the Louvre, and the ivy-crowned bronze at Naples. The latter
+is not only flawless in its execution, but is animated with a
+pensive beauty of expression. The former, though praised by
+Winckelmann, as among the two or three most precious masterpieces of
+antique art, must be criticised for a certain vacancy and
+lifelessness. Of the heroic statues, the two noblest are those of
+the Capitol and Naples. The identity of the Capitoline Antinous has
+only once, I think, been seriously questioned; and yet it may be
+reckoned more than doubtful. The head is almost certainly not his.
+How it came to be placed upon a body presenting so much resemblance
+to the type of Antinous I do not know. Careful comparison of the
+torso and the arms with an indubitable portrait will even raise the
+question whether this fine statue is not a Hermes or a hero of an
+earlier age. Its attitude suggests Narcissus or Adonis; and under
+either of these forms Antinous may properly have been idealised. The
+Neapolitan marble, on the contrary, yields the actual Antinous in
+all the exuberant fulness of his beauty. Head, body, pose, alike
+bring him vividly before us, forming an undoubtedly authentic
+portrait. The same personality, idealised, it is true, but rather
+suffering than gaining by the process, is powerfully impressed upon
+the colossal Dionysus of the Vatican. What distinguishes this great
+work is the inbreathed spirit of divinity, more overpowering here
+than in any other of the extant [Greek: andriantes kai agalmata].
+The basrelief of the Villa Albani, restored to suit the conception
+of a Vertumnus, has even more of florid beauty; but whether the
+restoration was wisely made may be doubted. It is curious to compare
+this celebrated masterpiece of technical dexterity with another
+basrelief in the Villa Albani, representing Antinous as Castor. He
+is standing, half clothed with the chlamys, by a horse. His hair is
+close-cropped, after the Roman fashion, cut straight above the
+forehead, but crowned with a fillet of lotos-buds. The whole face
+has a somewhat stern and frowning Roman look of resolution,
+contrasting with the mild benignity of the Bacchus statues, and the
+almost sulky voluptuousness of the busts. In the Lateran Museum
+Antinous appears as a god of flowers, holding in his lap a multitude
+of blossoms, and wearing on his head a wreath. The conception of
+this statue provokes comparison with the Flora of the Neapolitan
+Museum. I should like to recognise in it a Dionysus Antheus, rather
+than one of the more prosy Roman gods of horticulture. Not unworthy
+to rank with these first-rate portraits of Antinous is a Ganymede,
+engraved by the Dilettante Society, which represents him standing
+alert, in one hand holding the wine-jug and in the other lifting a
+cup aloft. It will be seen from even this brief enumeration of a few
+among the statues of Antinous, how many and how various they are.
+One, however, remains still to be discussed, which, so far as
+concerns the story of Antinous, is by far the most interesting of
+all. As a work of art, to judge by photographs, it is inferior to
+others in execution and design. Yet could we but understand its
+meaning clearly, the mystery of Antinous would be solved: the key to
+the whole matter probably lies here; but, alas! we know not how to
+use it. I speak of the Ildefonso Group at Madrid.[1]
+
+    [1] See Frontispiece.
+
+On one pedestal there are three figures in white marble. To the
+extreme right of the spectator stands a little female statue of a
+goddess, in archaistic style, crowned with the calathos, and holding
+a sphere, probably of pomegranate fruit, to her breast. To the left
+of this image are two young men, three times the height of the
+goddess, quite naked, standing one on each side of a low altar. Both
+are crowned with a wreath of leaves and berries--laurel or myrtle.
+The youth to the right, next the image, holds a torch in either
+hand: with the right he turns the flaming point downwards, till it
+lies upon the altar; with the left he lifts the other torch aloft,
+and rests it on his shoulder. He has a beautiful Graeco-Roman face,
+touched with sadness or ineffable reflection. The second youth leans
+against his comrade, resting his left arm across the other's back,
+and this hand is lightly placed upon the shoulder, close to the
+lifted torch. His right arm is bent, and so placed that the hand
+just cuts the line of the pelvis a little above the hip. The weight
+of his body is thrown principally upon the right leg; the left foot
+is drawn back, away from the altar. It is the attitude of the Apollo
+Sauroctonos. His beautiful face, bent downward, is intently gazing
+with a calm, collected, serious, and yet sad cast of earnest
+meditation. His eyes seem fixed on something beyond him and beneath
+him--as it were on an inscrutable abyss; and in this direction also
+looks his companion. The face is unmistakably the face of Antinous;
+yet the figure, and especially the legs, are not characteristic.
+They seem modelled after the conventional type of the Greek Ephebus.
+Parts of the two torches and the lower half of the right arm of
+Antinous are restorations.
+
+Such is the Ildefonso marble; and it may be said that its execution
+is hard and rough--the arms of both figures are carelessly designed;
+the hands and fingers are especially angular, elongated, and
+ill-formed. But there is a noble feeling in the whole group,
+notwithstanding. F. Tieck, the sculptor and brother of the poet, was
+the first to suggest that we have here Antinous, the Genius of
+Hadrian, and Persephone.[1] He also thought that the self-immolation
+of Antinous was indicated by the loving, leaning attitude of the
+younger man, and by his melancholy look of resolution. The same
+view, in all substantial points, is taken by Friedrichs, author of a
+work on Graeco-Roman sculpture. But Friedrichs, while admitting the
+identity of the younger figure with Antinous, and recognising
+Persephone in the archaic image, is not prepared to accept the elder
+as the Genius of Hadrian; and it must be confessed that this face
+does not bear any resemblance to the portraits of the Emperor.
+According to his interpretation, the Daemon is kindling the fire upon
+the sacrificial altar with the depressed torch; and the second or
+lifted torch must be supposed to have been needed for the
+performance of some obscure rite of immolation. What Friedrichs
+fails to elucidate is the trustful attitude of Antinous, who could
+scarcely have been conceived as thus affectionately reclining on the
+shoulder of a merely sacrificial daemon; nor is there anything upon
+the altar to kindle. It must, however, be conceded that the
+imperfection of the marble at this point leaves the restoration of
+the altar and the torch upon it doubtful.
+
+    [1] See the article on Antinous, by Victor Rydberg, in the
+    _Svensk Tidskrift foer Litteratur, Politik, och Ekonomi_.
+    1875, Stockholm. Also Karl Boetticher, _Koenigliches Museum,
+    Erklaerendes Verzeichniss_. Berlin, 1871.
+
+Charles Boetticher started a new solution of the principal problem.
+According to him, it was executed in the lifetime of Antinous; and
+it represents not a sacrifice of death, but a sacrifice of fidelity
+on the part of the two friends, Hadrian and Antinous, who have met
+together before Persephone to ratify a vow of love till death. He
+suggests that the wreaths are of stephanotis, that large-leaved
+myrtle, which was sacred to the Chthonian goddesses after the
+liberation of Semele from Hades by her son Dionysus. With reference
+to such ceremonies between Greek comrades, Boetticher cites a vase
+upon which Theseus and Peirithous are sacrificing in the temple of
+Persephone; and he assumes that there may have existed Athenian
+groups in marble representing similar vows of friendship, from which
+Hadrian had this marble copied. He believes that the Genius of
+Hadrian is kindling one torch at the sacred fire, which he will
+reach to Antinous, while he holds the other in readiness to kindle
+for himself. This explanation is both ingenious and beautiful. It
+has also the great merit of explaining the action of the right arm
+of Antinous. Yet it is hardly satisfactory. It throws no light upon
+the melancholy and solemnity of both figures, which irresistibly
+suggest a funereal rather than a joyous rite. Antinous is not even
+looking at the altar, and the meditative curves of his beautiful
+reclining form indicate anything rather than the spirited alacrity
+with which a friend would respond to his comrade's call at such a
+moment. Besides, why should not the likeness of Hadrian have been
+preserved as well as that of Antinous, if the group commemorated an
+act of their joint will? On the other hand, we must admit that the
+altar itself is not dressed for a funereal sacrifice.
+
+It has been pointed out that in the British Museum there exists a
+basrelief of Homer's apotheosis where we notice a figure holding two
+torches. Is it, then, possible that the Ildefonso marble may
+express, not the sacrifice, but the apotheosis of Antinous, and that
+the Genius who holds the two torches is conferring on him
+immortality? The lifted torch would symbolise his new life, and the
+depressed torch would stand for the life he had devoted. According
+to this explanation, the sorrowful expression of Antinous must
+indicate the agony of death through which he passed into the company
+of the undying. Against this interpretation is the fact that we have
+no precise authority for the symbolism of the torches, except only
+the common inversion of the life-brand by the Genius of Death.
+
+Yet another solution may be suggested. Assuming that we have before
+us a sacrificial ceremony, and that the group was executed after the
+self-devotion of Antinous had passed into the popular belief, we may
+regard the elder youth as either the Genius of the Emperor, separate
+in spirit from Hadrian himself and presiding over his destinies, who
+accepts the offer of Antinous with solemn calmness suited to so
+great a gift; or else as the Genius of the Roman people, witnessing
+the same act in the same majestic spirit. This view finds some
+support in the abstract ideality of the torch-bearer, who is clearly
+no historical personage as Antinous himself is, but rather a power
+controlling his fate. The interpretation of the two torches remains
+very difficult. In the torch flung down upon the flameless and
+barren altar we might recognise a symbol of Hadrian's life upon the
+point of extinction, but not yet extinguished; and in the torch
+lifted aloft we might find a metaphor of life resuscitated and
+exalted. Nor is it perhaps without significance that the arm of the
+self-immolating youth meets the upraised torch, as though to touch
+the life which he will purchase with his death. There is, however,
+the objection stated above to this bold use of symbolism.
+
+In support of any explanation which ascribes this group to a period
+later than the canonisation of Antinous, it may be repeated that the
+execution is inferior to that of almost all the other statues of the
+hero. Is it possible, then, that it belongs to a subsequent date,
+when art was further on the wane, but when the self-devotion of
+Antinous had become a dogma of his cult?
+
+After all is said, the Ildefonso marble, like the legend of
+Antinous, remains a mystery. Only hypotheses, more or less
+ingenious, more or less suited to our sympathies, varying between
+Casaubon's coarse vilification and Rydberg's roseate vision, are
+left us.
+
+As a last note on the subject of Antinous let me refer to Raphael's
+statue of Jonah in the Chigi Chapel of S. Maria del Popolo at Rome.
+Raphael, who handled the myth of Cupid and Psyche so magnificently
+in the Villa Farnesina of his patron Agostino Chigi, dedicated a
+statue of Antinous--the only statue he ever executed in
+marble--under the title of a Hebrew prophet in a Christian
+sanctuary. The fact is no less significant than strange. During the
+early centuries of Christianity, as is amply proved by the
+sarcophagi in the Lateran Museum, Jonah symbolised self-sacrifice
+and immortality. He was a type of Christ, an emblem of the
+Christian's hope beyond the grave. During those same centuries
+Antinous represented the same ideas, however inadequately, however
+dimly, for the unlettered laity of Paganism. It could scarcely have
+been by accident, or by mere admiration for the features of
+Antinous, that Raphael, in his marble, blent the Christian and the
+Pagan traditions. To unify and to transcend the double views of
+Christianity and Paganism in a work of pure art was Raphael's
+instinctive, if not his conscious, aim. Nor is there a more striking
+instance of this purpose than the youthful Jonah with the head of
+Hadrian's favourite. Leonardo's Dionysus-John-the-Baptist seems but
+a careless _jeu d'esprit_ compared with this profound and studied
+symbol of renascent humanism. Thus to regard the Jonah-Antinous of
+the Cappella Chigi as a type of immortality and self-devotion,
+fusing Christian and Graeco-Roman symbolism in one work of modern
+art, is the most natural interpretation; but it would not be
+impossible to trace in it a metaphor of the resurgent Pagan spirit
+also--as though, leaving Jonah and his Biblical associations in the
+background, the artist had determined that from the mouth of the
+monstrous grave should issue not a bearded prophet, but the
+victorious youth who had captivated with his beauty and his heroism
+the sunset age of the classic world. At any rate, whatever may have
+been Raphael's intention, the legend of Antinous, that last creation
+of antique mythology, shines upon us in this marble, just as the
+tale of Hero and Leander, that last blossom of antique literature,
+flowers afresh in the verses of our Marlowe. It would appear as
+though the Renaissance poets, hastening to meet the classic world
+with arms of welcome, had embraced its latest saints, as nearest to
+them, in the rapture of their first enthusiasm.
+
+Over all these questions, over all that concerns Antinous, there
+rests a cloud of darkness and impenetrable doubt. To pierce that
+cloud is now impossible. The utmost we can do is to indulge our
+fancy in dreams of greater or less probability, and to mark out
+clearly the limitations of the subject. It is indeed something to
+have shown that the stigma of slavery and disgrace attaching to his
+name has no solid historical justification, and something to have
+suggested plausible reasons for conjecturing that his worship had a
+genuine spiritual basis. Yet the sincere critic, at the end of the
+whole inquiry, will confess that he has only cast a plummet into the
+unfathomable sea of ignorance. What remains, immortal,
+indestructible, victorious, is Antinous in art. Against the gloomy
+background of doubt, calumny, contention, terrible surmise, his
+statues are illuminated with the dying glory of the classic
+genius--even as the towers and domes of a marble city shine forth
+from the purple banks of a thunder-cloud in sunset light. Here and
+here only does reality emerge from the chaos of conflicting
+phantoms. Front to front with them, it is allowed us to forget all
+else but the beauty of one who died young because the gods loved
+him. But when we question those wonderful mute features and beg them
+for their secret, they return no answer. There is not even a smile
+upon the parted lips. So profound is the mystery, so insoluble the
+enigma, that from its most importunate interrogation we derive
+nothing but an attitude of deeper reverence. This in itself,
+however, is worth the pains of study.[1]
+
+    [1] I must here express my indebtedness to my friend H.F.
+    Brown for a large portion of the materials used by me in
+    this essay on Antinous, which I had no means at Davos
+    Platz of accumulating for myself, and which he unearthed
+    from the libraries of Florence in the course of his own
+    work, and generously placed at my disposal.
+
+
+
+
+_SPRING WANDERINGS_
+
+
+Ana-Capri
+
+The storm-clouds at this season, though it is the bloom of May, are
+daily piled in sulky or menacing masses over Vesuvius and the
+Abruzzi, frothing out their curls of moulded mist across the bay,
+and climbing the heavens with toppling castle towers and domes of
+alabaster.
+
+We made the most of a tranquil afternoon, when there was an
+armistice of storm, to climb the bluff of Mount Solaro. A ruined
+fort caps that limestone bulwark; and there we lay together,
+drinking the influences of sea, sun, and wind. Immeasurably deep
+beneath us plunged the precipices, deep, deep descending to a bay
+where fisher boats were rocking, diminished to a scale that made the
+fishermen in them invisible. Low down above the waters wheeled white
+gulls, and higher up the hawks and ospreys of the cliff sailed out
+of sunlight into shadow. Immitigable strength is in the moulding of
+this limestone, and sharp, clear definiteness marks yon clothing of
+scant brushwood where the fearless goats are browsing. The sublime
+of sculpturesque in crag structure is here, refined and modulated by
+the sweetness of sea distances. For the air came pure and yielding
+to us over the unfooted sea; and at the basement of those
+fortress-cliffs the sea was dreaming in its caves; and far away, to
+east and south and west, soft light was blent with mist upon the
+surface of the shimmering waters.
+
+The distinction between prospects viewed from a mountain overlooking
+a great plain, or viewed from heights that, like this, dominate the
+sea, principally lies in this: that while the former only offer
+cloud shadows cast upon the fields below our feet, in the latter
+these shadows are diversified with cloud reflections. This gives
+superiority in qualities of colour, variety of tone, and luminous
+effect to the sea, compensating in some measure for the lack of
+those associations which render the outlook over a wide extent of
+populated land so thrilling. The emergence of towered cities into
+sunlight at the skirts of moving shadows, the liquid lapse of rivers
+half disclosed by windings among woods, the upturned mirrors of
+unruffled lakes, are wanting to the sea. For such episodes the white
+sails of vessels, with all their wistfulness of going to and fro on
+the mysterious deep, are but a poor exchange. Yet the sea-lover may
+justify his preference by appealing to the beauty of empurpled
+shadows, toned by amethyst or opal, or shining with violet light,
+reflected from the clouds that cross and find in those dark shields
+a mirror. There are suggestions, too, of immensity, of liberty, of
+action, presented by the boundless horizons and the changeful
+changeless tracts of ocean which no plain possesses.
+
+It was nigh upon sunset when we descended to Ana-Capri. That evening
+the clouds assembled suddenly. The armistice of storm was broken.
+They were terribly blue, and the sea grew dark as steel beneath
+them, till the moment when the sun's lip reached the last edge of
+the waters. Then a courier of rosy flame sent forth from him passed
+swift across the gulf, touching, where it trod, the waves with
+accidental fire. The messenger reached Naples; and in a moment, as
+by some diabolical illumination, the sinful city kindled into light
+like glowing charcoal. From Posilippo on the left, along the palaces
+of the Chiaja, up to S. Elmo on the hill, past Santa Lucia, down on
+the Marinella, beyond Portici, beyond Torre del Greco, where
+Vesuvius towered up aloof, an angry mount of amethystine gloom, the
+conflagration spread and reached Pompeii, and dwelt on Torre dell'
+Annunziata. Stationary, lurid, it smouldered while the day died
+slowly. The long, densely populated sea-line from Pozzuoli to
+Castellammare burned and smoked with intensest incandescence,
+sending a glare of fiery mist against the threatening blue behind,
+and fringing with pomegranate-coloured blots the water where no
+light now lingered. It is difficult to bend words to the use
+required. The scene, in spite of natural suavity and grace, had
+become like Dante's first glimpse of the City of Dis--like Sodom and
+Gomorrah when fire from heaven descended on their towers before they
+crumbled into dust.
+
+
+From Capri to Ischia
+
+After this, for several days, Libeccio blew harder. No boats could
+leave or come to Capri. From the piazza parapet we saw the wind
+scooping the surface of the waves, and flinging spray-fleeces in
+sheets upon the churning water. As they broke on Cape Campanella,
+the rollers climbed in foam--how many feet?--and blotted out the
+olive-trees above the headland. The sky was always dark with hanging
+clouds and masses of low-lying vapour, very moist, but scarcely
+raining--lightning without thunder in the night.
+
+Such weather is unexpected in the middle month of May, especially
+when the olives are blackened by December storms, and the
+orange-trees despoiled of foliage, and the tendrils of the vines
+yellow with cold. The walnut-trees have shown no sign of making
+leaves. Only the figs seem to have suffered little.
+
+It had been settled that we should start upon the first seafaring
+dawn for Ischia or Sorrento, according as the wind might set; and I
+was glad when, early one morning, the captain of the _Serena_
+announced a moderate sirocco. When we reached the little quay we
+found the surf of the Libeccio still rolling heavily into the gulf.
+A gusty south-easter crossed it, tearing spray-crests from the swell
+as it went plunging onward. The sea was rough enough; but we made
+fast sailing, our captain steering with a skill which it was
+beautiful to watch, his five oarsmen picturesquely grouped beneath
+the straining sail. The sea slapped and broke from time to time on
+our windward quarter, drenching the boat with brine; and now and
+then her gunwale scooped into the shoulder of a wave as she shot
+sidling up it. Meanwhile enormous masses of leaden-coloured clouds
+formed above our heads and on the sea-line; but these were always
+shifting in the strife of winds, and the sun shone through them
+petulantly. As we climbed the rollers, or sank into their trough,
+the outline of the bay appeared in glimpses, shyly revealed,
+suddenly withdrawn from sight; the immobility and majesty of
+mountains contrasted with the weltering waste of water round us--now
+blue and garish where the sunlight fell, now shrouded in squally
+rain-storms, and then again sullen beneath a vaporous canopy. Each
+of these vignettes was photographed for one brief second on the
+brain, and swallowed by the hurling drift of billows. The painter's
+art could but ill have rendered that changeful colour in the sea,
+passing from tawny cloud-reflections and surfaces of glowing violet
+to bright blue or impenetrable purple flecked with boiling foam,
+according as a light-illuminated or a shadowed facet of the moving
+mass was turned to sight.
+
+Halfway across the gulf the sirocco lulled; the sail was lowered,
+and we had to make the rest of the passage by rowing. Under the lee
+of Ischia we got into comparatively quiet water; though here the
+beautiful Italian sea was yellowish green with churned-up sand, like
+an unripe orange. We passed the castle on its rocky island, with the
+domed church which has been so often painted in _gouache_ pictures
+through the last two centuries, and soon after noon we came to
+Casamicciola.
+
+
+La Piccola Sentinella
+
+Casamicciola is a village on the north side of the island, in its
+centre, where the visitors to the mineral baths of Ischia chiefly
+congregate. One of its old-established inns is called La Piccola
+Sentinella. The first sight on entrance is an open gallery, with a
+pink wall on which bloom magnificent cactuses, sprays of
+thick-clustering scarlet and magenta flowers. This is a rambling
+house, built in successive stages against a hill, with terraces and
+verandahs opening on unexpected gardens to the back and front.
+Beneath its long irregular facade there spreads a wilderness of
+orange-trees and honeysuckles and roses, verbenas, geraniums and
+mignonette, snapdragons, gazanias and stocks, exceeding bright and
+fragrant, with the green slopes of Monte Epomeo for a background and
+Vesuvius for far distance. There are wonderful bits of detail in
+this garden. One dark, thick-foliaged olive, I remember, leaning
+from the tufa over a lizard-haunted wall, feathered waist-high in
+huge acanthus leaves. The whole rich orchard ground of Casamicciola
+is dominated by Monte Epomeo, the extinct volcano which may be
+called the _raison d'etre_ of Ischia; for this island is nothing but
+a mountain lifted by the energy of fire from the sea-basement. Its
+fantastic peaks and ridges, sulphur-coloured, dusty grey, and tawny,
+with brushwood in young leaf upon the cloven flanks, form a singular
+pendant to the austere but more artistically modelled limestone
+crags of Capri. No two islands that I know, within so short a space
+of sea, offer two pictures so different in style and quality of
+loveliness. The inhabitants are equally distinct in type. Here, in
+spite of what De Musset wrote somewhat affectedly about the peasant
+girls--
+
+  Ischia! c'est la qu'on a des yeux,
+  C'est la qu'un corsage amoureux
+                  Serre la hanche.
+  Sur un bas rouge bien tire
+  Brille, sous le jupon dore,
+                  La mule blanche--
+
+in spite of these lines I did not find the Ischian women eminent, as
+those of Capri are, for beauty. But the young men have fine, loose,
+faun-like figures, and faces that would be strikingly handsome but
+for too long and prominent noses. They are a singular race, graceful
+in movement.
+
+Evening is divine in Ischia. From the topmost garden terrace of the
+inn one looks across the sea towards Terracina, Gaeta, and those
+descending mountain buttresses, the Phlegraean plains, and the
+distant snows of the Abruzzi. Rain-washed and luminous, the sunset
+sky held Hesper trembling in a solid green of beryl. Fireflies
+flashed among the orange blossoms. Far away in the obscurity of
+eastern twilight glared the smouldering cone of Vesuvius--a crimson
+blot upon the darkness--a Cyclops' eye, bloodshot and menacing.
+
+The company in the Piccola Sentinella, young and old, were decrepit,
+with an odd, rheumatic, shrivelled look upon them. The dining-room
+reminded me, as certain rooms are apt to do, of a ship's saloon. I
+felt as though I had got into the cabin of the _Flying Dutchman_,
+and that all these people had been sitting there at meat a hundred
+years, through storm and shine, for ever driving onward over immense
+waves in an enchanted calm.
+
+
+Ischia and Forio
+
+One morning we drove along the shore, up hill, and down, by the
+Porto d'Ischia to the town and castle. This country curiously
+combines the qualities of Corfu and Catania. The near distance, so
+richly cultivated, with the large volcanic slopes of Monte Epomeo
+rising from the sea, is like Catania. Then, across the gulf, are the
+bold outlines and snowy peaks of the Abruzzi, recalling Albanian
+ranges. Here, as in Sicily, the old lava is overgrown with prickly
+pear and red valerian. Mesembrianthemums--I must be pardoned this
+word; for I cannot omit those fleshy-leaved creepers, with their
+wealth of gaudy blossoms, shaped like sea anemones, coloured like
+strawberry and pineapple cream-ices--mesembrianthemums, then, tumble
+in torrents from the walls, and large-cupped white convolvuluses
+curl about the hedges. The Castle Rock, with Capri's refined
+sky-coloured outline relieving its hard profile on the horizon, is
+one of those exceedingly picturesque objects just too theatrical to
+be artistic. It seems ready-made for a back scene in 'Masaniello,'
+and cries out to the chromo-lithographer, 'Come and make the most of
+me!' Yet this morning all things, in sea, earth, and sky, were so
+delicately tinted and bathed in pearly light that it was difficult
+to be critical.
+
+In the afternoon we took the other side of the island, driving
+through Lacca to Forio. One gets right round the bulk of Epomeo, and
+looks up into a weird region called Le Falange, where white lava
+streams have poured in two broad irregular torrents among broken
+precipices. Forio itself is placed at the end of a flat headland,
+boldly thrust into the sea; and its furthest promontory bears a
+pilgrimage church, intensely white and glaring.
+
+There is something arbitrary in the memories we make of places
+casually visited, dependent as they are upon our mood at the moment,
+or on an accidental interweaving of impressions which the _genius
+loci_ blends for us. Of Forio two memories abide with me. The one is
+of a young woman, with very fair hair, in a light blue dress,
+standing beside an older woman in a garden. There was a flourishing
+pomegranate-tree above them. The whiteness and the dreamy smile of
+the young woman seemed strangely out of tune with her strong-toned
+southern surroundings. I could have fancied her a daughter of some
+moist north-western isle of Scandinavian seas. My other memory is of
+a lad, brown, handsome, powerfully featured, thoughtful, lying
+curled up in the sun upon a sort of ladder in his house-court,
+profoundly meditating. He had a book in his hand, and his finger
+still marked the place where he had read. He looked as though a
+Columbus or a Campanella might emerge from his earnest, fervent,
+steadfast adolescence. Driving rapidly along, and leaving Forio in
+all probability for ever, I kept wondering whether those two lives,
+discerned as though in vision, would meet--whether she was destined
+to be his evil genius, whether posterity would hear of him and
+journey to his birthplace in this world-neglected Forio. Such
+reveries are futile. Yet who entirely resists them?
+
+
+Monte Epomeo
+
+About three on the morning which divides the month of May into two
+equal parts I woke and saw the waning moon right opposite my window,
+stayed in her descent upon the slope of Epomeo. Soon afterwards
+Christian called me, and we settled to ascend the mountain. Three
+horses and a stout black donkey, with their inevitable grooms, were
+ordered; and we took for guide a lovely faun-like boy, goat-faced,
+goat-footed, with gentle manners and pliant limbs swaying beneath
+the breath of impulse. He was called Giuseppe.
+
+The way leads past the mineral baths and then strikes uphill, at
+first through lanes cut deep in the black lava. The trees meet
+almost overhead. It is like Devonshire, except that one half hopes
+to see tropical foxgloves with violet bells and downy leaves
+sprouting among the lush grasses and sweet-scented ferns upon those
+gloomy, damp, warm walls. After this we skirted a thicket of
+arbutus, and came upon the long volcanic ridge, with divinest
+outlook over Procida and Miseno toward Vesuvius. Then once more we
+had to dive into brown sandstone gullies, extremely steep, where the
+horses almost burst their girths in scrambling, and the grooms
+screamed, exasperating their confusion with encouragements and
+curses. Straight or bending as a willow wand, Giuseppe kept in
+front. I could have imagined he had stepped to life from one of
+Lionardo's fancy-sprighted studies.
+
+After this fashion we gained the spine of mountain which composes
+Ischia--the smooth ascending ridge that grows up from those eastern
+waves to what was once the apex of fire-vomiting Inarime, and breaks
+in precipices westward, a ruin of gulfed lava, tortured by the
+violence of pent Typhoeus. Under a vast umbrella pine we
+dismounted, rested, and saw Capri. Now the road skirts slanting-wise
+along the further flank of Epomeo, rising by muddy earth-heaps and
+sandstone hollows to the quaint pinnacles which build the summit.
+There is no inconsiderable peril in riding over this broken ground;
+for the soil crumbles away, and the ravines open downward,
+treacherously masked with brushwood.
+
+On Epomeo's topmost cone a chapel dedicated to S. Niccolo da Bari,
+the Italian patron of seamen, has been hollowed from the rock.
+Attached to it is the dwelling of two hermits, subterranean, with
+long dark corridors and windows opening on the western seas. Church
+and hermitage alike are scooped, with slight expenditure of mason's
+skill, from solid mountain. The windows are but loopholes, leaning
+from which the town of Forio is seen, 2500 feet below; and the
+jagged precipices of the menacing Falange toss their contorted
+horror forth to sea and sky. Through gallery and grotto we wound in
+twilight under a monk's guidance, and came at length upon the face
+of the crags above Casamicciola. A few steps upward, cut like a
+ladder in the stone, brought us to the topmost peak--a slender spire
+of soft, yellowish tufa. It reminded me (with differences) of the
+way one climbs the spire at Strasburg, and stands upon that temple's
+final crocket, with nothing but a lightning conductor to steady
+swimming senses. Different indeed are the views unrolled beneath the
+peak of Epomeo and the pinnacle of Strasburg! Vesuvius, with the
+broken lines of Procida, Miseno, and Lago Fusaro for foreground; the
+sculpturesque beauty of Capri, buttressed in everlasting calm upon
+the waves; the Phlegraean plains and champaign of Volturno,
+stretching between smooth seas and shadowy hills; the mighty sweep
+of Naples' bay; all merged in blue; aerial, translucent, exquisitely
+frail. In this ethereal fabric of azure the most real of realities,
+the most solid of substances, seem films upon a crystal sphere.
+
+The hermit produced some flasks of amber-coloured wine from his
+stores in the grotto. These we drank, lying full-length upon the
+tufa in the morning sunlight. The panorama of sea, sky, and
+long-drawn lines of coast, breathless, without a ripple or a taint
+of cloud, spread far and wide around us. Our horses and donkey
+cropped what little grass, blent with bitter herbage, grew on that
+barren summit. Their grooms helped us out with the hermit's wine,
+and turned to sleep face downward. The whole scene was very quiet,
+islanded in immeasurable air. Then we asked the boy, Giuseppe,
+whether he could guide us on foot down the cliffs of Monte Epomeo to
+Casamicciola. This he was willing and able to do; for he told me
+that he had spent many months each year upon the hillside, tending
+goats. When rough weather came, he wrapped himself in a blanket from
+the snow that falls and melts upon the ledges. In summer time he
+basked the whole day long, and slept the calm ambrosial nights away.
+Something of this free life was in the burning eyes, long clustering
+dark hair, and smooth brown bosom of the faun-like creature. His
+graceful body had the brusque, unerring movement of the goats he
+shepherded. Human thought and emotion seemed a-slumber in this youth
+who had grown one with nature. As I watched his careless incarnate
+loveliness I remembered lines from an old Italian poem of romance,
+describing a dweller of the forest, who
+
+  Haunteth the woodland aye 'neath verdurous shade,
+  Eateth wild fruit, drinketh of running stream;
+  And such-like is his nature, as 'tis said,
+  That ever weepeth he when clear skies gleam,
+  Seeing of storms and rain he then hath dread,
+  And feareth lest the sun's heat fail for him;
+  But when on high hurl winds and clouds together,
+  Full glad is he and waiteth for fair weather.
+
+Giuseppe led us down those curious volcanic _balze_, where the soil
+is soft as marl, with tints splashed on it of pale green and rose
+and orange, and a faint scent in it of sulphur. They break away into
+wild chasms, where rivulets begin; and here the narrow watercourses
+made for us plain going. The turf beneath our feet was starred with
+cyclamens and wavering anemones. At last we reached the chestnut
+woods, and so by winding paths descended on the village. Giuseppe
+told me, as we walked, that in a short time he would be obliged to
+join the army. He contemplated this duty with a dim and undefined
+dislike. Nor could I, too, help dreading and misliking it for him.
+The untamed, gentle creature, who knew so little but his goats as
+yet, whose nights had been passed from childhood _a la belle
+etoile_, whose limbs had never been cumbered with broadcloth or
+belt--for him to be shut up in the barrack of some Lombard city,
+packed in white conscript's sacking, drilled, taught to read and
+write, and weighted with the knapsack and the musket! There was
+something lamentable in the prospect. But such is the burden of
+man's life, of modern life especially. United Italy demands of her
+children that by this discipline they should be brought into that
+harmony which builds a nation out of diverse elements.
+
+
+From Ischia to Naples
+
+Ischia showed a new aspect on the morning of our departure. A
+sea-mist passed along the skirts of the island, and rolled in heavy
+masses round the peaks of Monte Epomeo, slowly condensing into
+summer clouds, and softening each outline with a pearly haze,
+through which shone emerald glimpses of young vines and fig-trees.
+
+We left in a boat with four oarsmen for Pozzuoli. For about an hour
+the breeze carried us well, while Ischia behind grew ever lovelier,
+soft as velvet, shaped like a gem. The mist had become a great white
+luminous cloud--not dense and alabastrine, like the clouds of
+thunder; but filmy, tender, comparable to the atmosphere of Dante's
+moon. Porpoises and sea-gulls played and fished about our bows,
+dividing the dark brine in spray. The mountain distances were
+drowned in bluish vapour--Vesuvius quite invisible. About noon the
+air grew clearer, and Capri reared her fortalice of sculptured rock,
+aerially azure, into liquid ether. I know not what effect of
+atmosphere or light it is that lifts an island from the sea by
+interposing that thin edge of lustrous white between it and the
+water. But this phenomenon to-day was perfectly exhibited. Like a
+mirage on the wilderness, like Fata Morgana's palace ascending from
+the deep, the pure and noble vision stayed suspense 'twixt heaven
+and ocean. At the same time the breeze failed, and we rowed slowly
+between Procida and Capo Miseno--a space in old-world history
+athrong with Caesar's navies. When we turned the point, and came in
+sight of Baiae, the wind freshened and took us flying into Pozzuoli.
+The whole of this coast has been spoiled by the recent upheaval of
+Monte Nuovo with its lava floods and cindery deluges. Nothing
+remains to justify its fame among the ancient Romans and the
+Neapolitans of Boccaccio's and Pontano's age. It is quite wrecked,
+beyond the power even of hendecasyllables to bring again its breath
+of beauty:--
+
+  Mecum si sapies, Gravina, mecum
+  Baias, et placidos coles recessus,
+  Quos ipsae et veneres colunt, et illa
+  Quae mentes hominum regit voluptas.
+  Hic vina et choreae jocique regnant,
+  Regnant et charites facetiaeque.
+  Has sedes amor, has colit cupido.
+  His passim juvenes puellulaeque
+  Ludunt, et tepidis aquis lavantur,
+  Coenantque et dapibus leporibusque
+  Miscent delitias venustiores:
+  Miscent gaudia et osculationes,
+  Atque una sociis toris foventur,
+  Has te ad delitias vocant camoenae;
+  Invitat mare, myrteumque littus;
+  Invitant volueres canorae, et ipse
+  Gaurus pampineas parat corollas.[1]
+
+    [1] These verses are extracted from the second book of
+    Pontano's _Hendecasyllabi_ (Aldus, 1513, p. 208). They so
+    vividly paint the amusements of a watering-place in the
+    fifteenth century that I have translated them:--
+
+      With me, let but the mind be wise, Gravina,
+      With me haste to the tranquil haunts of Baiae,
+      Haunts that pleasure hath made her home, and she who
+      Sways all hearts, the voluptuous Aphrodite.
+      Here wine rules, and the dance, and games and laughter;
+      Graces reign in a round of mirthful madness;
+      Love hath built, and desire, a palace here too,
+      Where glad youths and enamoured girls on all sides
+      Play and bathe in the waves in sunny weather,
+      Dine and sup, and the merry mirth of banquets
+      Blend with dearer delights and love's embraces,
+      Blend with pleasures of youth and honeyed kisses,
+      Till, sport-tired, in the couch inarmed they slumber.
+      Thee our Muses invite to these enjoyments;
+      Thee those billows allure, the myrtled seashore,
+      Birds allure with a song, and mighty Gaurus
+      Twines his redolent wreath of vines and ivy.
+
+At Pozzuoli we dined in the Albergo del Ponte di Caligola (Heaven
+save the mark!), and drank Falernian wine of modern and indifferent
+vintage. Then Christian hired two open carriages for Naples. He and
+I sat in the second. In the first we placed the two ladies of our
+party. They had a large, fat driver. Just after we had all passed
+the gate a big fellow rushed up, dragged the corpulent coachman from
+his box, pulled out a knife, and made a savage thrust at the man's
+stomach. At the same moment a _guardia-porta_, with drawn cutlass,
+interposed and struck between the combatants. They were separated.
+Their respective friends assembled in two jabbering crowds, and the
+whole party, uttering vociferous objurgations, marched off, as I
+imagined, to the watch-house. A very shabby lazzarone, without more
+ado, sprang on the empty box, and we made haste for Naples. Being
+only anxious to get there, and not at all curious about the squabble
+which had deprived us of our fat driver, I relapsed into
+indifference when I found that neither of the men to whose lot we
+had fallen was desirous of explaining the affair. It was sufficient
+cause for self-congratulation that no blood had been shed, and that
+the Procuratore del Re would not require our evidence.
+
+The Grotta di Posilippo was a sight of wonder, with the afternoon
+sun slanting on its festoons of creeping plants above the western
+entrance--the gas lamps, dust, huge carts, oxen, and _contadini_ in
+its subterranean darkness--and then the sudden revelation of the bay
+and city as we jingled out into the summery air again by Virgil's
+tomb.
+
+
+Night at Pompeii
+
+On to Pompeii in the clear sunset, falling very lightly upon
+mountains, islands, little ports, and indentations of the bay.
+
+From the railway station we walked above half a mile to the Albergo
+del Sole under a lucid heaven of aqua-marine colour, with Venus
+large in it upon the border line between the tints of green and
+blue.
+
+The Albergo del Sole is worth commemorating. We stepped, without the
+intervention of courtyard or entrance hall, straight from the little
+inn garden into an open, vaulted room. This was divided into two
+compartments by a stout column supporting round arches. Wooden gates
+furnished a kind of fence between the atrium and what an old
+Pompeian would have styled the triclinium. For in the further part a
+table was laid for supper and lighted with suspended lamps. And here
+a party of artists and students drank and talked and smoked. A great
+live peacock, half asleep and winking his eyes, sat perched upon a
+heavy wardrobe watching them. The outer chamber, where we waited in
+armchairs of ample girth, had its _loggia_ windows and doors open to
+the air. There were singing-birds in cages; and plants of rosemary,
+iris, and arundo sprang carelessly from holes in the floor. A huge
+vase filled to overflowing with oranges and lemons, the very symbol
+of generous prodigality, stood in the midst, and several dogs were
+lounging round. The outer twilight, blending with the dim sheen of
+the lamps, softened this pretty scene to picturesqueness. Altogether
+it was a strange and unexpected place. Much experienced as the
+nineteenth-century nomad may be in inns, he will rarely receive a
+more powerful and refreshing impression, entering one at evenfall,
+than here.
+
+There was no room for us in the inn. We were sent, attended by a boy
+with a lantern, through fields of dew-drenched barley and folded
+poppies, to a farmhouse overshadowed by four spreading pines.
+Exceedingly soft and grey, with rose-tinted weft of steam upon its
+summit, stood Vesuvius above us in the twilight. Something in the
+recent impression of the dimly lighted supper-room, and in the
+idyllic simplicity of this lantern-litten journey through the
+barley, suggested, by one of those inexplicable stirrings of
+association which affect tired senses, a dim, dreamy thought of
+Palestine and Bible stories. The feeling of the _cenacolo_ blent
+here with feelings of Ruth's cornfields, and the white square houses
+with their flat roofs enforced the illusion. Here we slept in the
+middle of a _contadino_ colony. Some of the folk had made way for
+us; and by the wheezing, coughing, and snoring of several sorts and
+ages in the chamber next me, I imagine they must have endured
+considerable crowding. My bed was large enough to have contained a
+family. Over its bead there was a little shrine, hollowed in the
+thickness of the wall, with several sacred emblems and a shallow
+vase of holy water. On dressers at each end of the room stood glass
+shrines, occupied by finely dressed Madonna dolls and pots of
+artificial flowers. Above the doors S. Michael and S. Francis,
+roughly embossed in low relief and boldly painted, gave dignity and
+grandeur to the walls. These showed some sense for art in the first
+builders of the house. But the taste of the inhabitants could not be
+praised. There were countless gaudy prints of saints, and exactly
+five pictures of the Bambino, very big, and sprawling in a field
+alone. A crucifix, some old bottles, a gun, old clothes suspended
+from pegs, pieces of peasant pottery and china, completed the
+furniture of the apartment.
+
+But what a view it showed when Christian next morning opened the
+door! From my bed I looked across the red-tiled terrace to the
+stone-pines with their velvet roofage and the blue-peaked hills of
+Stabiae.
+
+
+San Germano
+
+No one need doubt about his quarters in this country town. The
+Albergo di Pompeii is a truly sumptuous place. Sofas, tables, and
+chairs in our sitting-room are made of buffalo horns, very cleverly
+pieced together, but torturing the senses with suggestions of
+impalement. Sitting or standing, one felt insecure. When would the
+points run into us? when should we begin to break these
+incrustations off? and would the whole fabric crumble at a touch
+into chaotic heaps of horns?
+
+It is market day, and the costumes in the streets are brilliant. The
+women wear a white petticoat, a blue skirt made straight and tightly
+bound above it, a white richly worked bodice, and the white
+square-folded napkin of the Abruzzi on their heads. Their jacket is
+of red or green--pure colour. A rug of striped red, blue, yellow,
+and black protects the whole dress from the rain. There is a very
+noble quality of green--sappy and gemmy--like some of Titian's or
+Giorgione's--in the stuffs they use. Their build and carriage are
+worthy of goddesses.
+
+Rain falls heavily, persistently. We must ride on donkeys, in
+waterproofs, to Monte Cassino. Mountain and valley, oak wood and
+ilex grove, lentisk thicket and winding river-bed, are drowned alike
+in soft-descending, soaking rain. Far and near the landscape swims
+in rain, and the hillsides send down torrents through their
+watercourses.
+
+The monastery is a square, dignified building, of vast extent and
+princely solidity. It has a fine inner court, with sumptuous
+staircases of slabbed stone leading to the church. This public
+portion of the edifice is both impressive and magnificent, without
+sacrifice of religious severity to parade. We acknowledge a
+successful compromise between the austerity of the order and the
+grandeur befitting the fame, wealth, prestige, and power of its
+parent foundation. The church itself is a tolerable structure of the
+Renaissance--costly marble incrustations and mosaics, meaningless
+Neapolitan frescoes. One singular episode in the mediocrity of art
+adorning it, is the tomb of Pietro de' Medici. Expelled from
+Florence in 1494, he never returned, but was drowned in the
+Garigliano. Clement VII. ordered, and Duke Cosimo I. erected, this
+marble monument--the handicraft, in part at least, of Francesco di
+San Gallo--to their relative. It is singularly stiff, ugly, out of
+place--at once obtrusive and insignificant.
+
+A gentle old German monk conducted Christian and me over the
+convent--boys' school, refectory, printing press, lithographic
+workshop, library, archives. We then returned to the church, from
+which we passed to visit the most venerable and sacred portion of
+the monastery. The cell of S. Benedict is being restored and painted
+in fresco by the Austrian Benedictines; a pious but somewhat frigid
+process of re-edification. This so-called cell is a many-chambered
+and very ancient building, with a tower which is now embedded in the
+massive superstructure of the modern monastery. The German artists
+adorning it contrive to blend the styles of Giotto, Fra Angelico,
+Egypt, and Byzance, not without force and a kind of intense frozen
+pietism. S. Mauro's vision of his master's translation to
+heaven--the ladder of light issuing between two cypresses, and the
+angels watching on the tower walls--might even be styled poetical.
+But the decorative angels on the roof and other places, being
+adapted from Egyptian art, have a strange, incongruous appearance.
+
+Monasteries are almost invariably disappointing to one who goes in
+search of what gives virtue and solidity to human life; and even
+Monte Cassino was no exception. This ought not to be otherwise,
+seeing what a peculiar sympathy with the monastic institution is
+required to make these cloisters comprehensible. The atmosphere of
+operose indolence, prolonged through centuries and centuries,
+stifles; nor can antiquity and influence impose upon a mind which
+resents monkery itself as an essential evil. That Monte Cassino
+supplied the Church with several potentates is incontestable. That
+mediaeval learning and morality would have suffered more without this
+brotherhood cannot be doubted. Yet it is difficult to name men of
+very eminent genius whom the Cassinesi claim as their alumni; nor,
+with Boccaccio's testimony to their carelessness, and with the
+evidence of their library before our eyes, can we rate their
+services to civilised erudition very highly. I longed to possess the
+spirit, for one moment, of Montalembert. I longed for what is called
+historical imagination, for the indiscriminate voracity of those men
+to whom world-famous sites are in themselves soul-stirring.
+
+
+
+
+_AMALFI, PAESTUM, CAPRI_
+
+
+The road between Vietri and Amalfi is justly celebrated as one of
+the most lovely pieces of coast scenery in Italy. Its only rivals
+are the roads from Castellammare to Sorrento, from Genoa to Sestri,
+and from Nice to Mentone. Each of these has its own charm; and yet
+their similarity is sufficient to invite comparison: under the spell
+of each in turn, we are inclined to say, This then, at all events,
+is the most beautiful. On first quitting Vietri, Salerno is left low
+down upon the sea-shore, nestling into a little corner of the bay
+which bears its name, and backed up by gigantic mountains. With each
+onward step these mountain-ranges expand in long aerial line,
+revealing reaches of fantastic peaks, that stretch away beyond the
+plain of Paestum, till they end at last in mist and sunbeams
+shimmering on the sea. On the left hand hangs the cliff above the
+deep salt water, with here and there a fig-tree spreading fanlike
+leaves against the blue beneath. On the right rises the hillside,
+clothed with myrtle, lentisk, cistus, and pale yellow coronilla--a
+tangle as sweet with scent as it is gay with blossom. Over the
+parapet that skirts the precipice lean heavy-foliaged locust-trees,
+and the terraces in sunny nooks are set with lemon-orchards. There
+are but few olives, and no pines. Meanwhile each turn in the road
+brings some change of scene--now a village with its little beach of
+grey sand, lapped by clearest sea-waves, where bare-legged fishermen
+mend their nets, and naked boys bask like lizards in the sun--now
+towering bastions of weird rock, broken into spires and pinnacles
+like those of Skye, and coloured with bright hues of red and
+orange--then a ravine, where the thin thread of a mountain streamlet
+seems to hang suspended upon ferny ledges in the limestone--or a
+precipice defined in profile against sea and sky, with a lad, half
+dressed in goat-skin, dangling his legs into vacuity and singing--or
+a tract of cultivation, where the orange, apricot, and lemon trees
+nestle together upon terraces with intermingled pergolas of vines.
+
+Amalfi and Atrani lie close together in two of these ravines, the
+mountains almost arching over them, and the sea washing their very
+house-walls. Each has its crowning campanile; but that of Amalfi is
+the stranger of the two, like a Moorish tower at the top, and
+coloured with green and yellow tiles that glitter in the sunlight.
+The houses are all dazzling white, plastered against the naked rock,
+rising on each other's shoulders to get a glimpse of earth and
+heaven, jutting out on coigns of vantage from the toppling cliff,
+and pierced with staircases as dark as night at noonday. Some
+frequented lanes lead through the basements of these houses; and as
+the donkeys pick their way from step to step in the twilight,
+bare-chested macaroni-makers crowd forth like ants to see us
+strangers pass. A myriad of swallows or a swarm of mason bees might
+build a town like this.
+
+It is not easy to imagine the time when Amalfi and Atrani were one
+town, with docks and arsenals and harbourage for their associated
+fleets, and when these little communities were second in importance
+to no naval power of Christian Europe. The Byzantine Empire lost its
+hold on Italy during the eighth century; and after this time the
+history of Calabria is mainly concerned with the republics of Naples
+and Amalfi, their conflict with the Lombard dukes of Benevento,
+their opposition to the Saracens, and their final subjugation by the
+Norman conquerors of Sicily. Between the year 839 A.D., when Amalfi
+freed itself from the control of Naples and the yoke of Benevento,
+and the year 1131, when Roger of Hauteville incorporated the
+republic in his kingdom of the Two Sicilies, this city was the
+foremost naval and commercial port of Italy. The burghers of Amalfi
+elected their own doge; founded the Hospital of Jerusalem, whence
+sprang the knightly order of S. John; gave their name to the richest
+quarter in Palermo; and owned trading establishments or factories in
+all the chief cities of the Levant. Their gold coinage of _tari_
+formed the standard of currency before the Florentines had stamped
+the lily and S. John upon the Tuscan florin. Their shipping
+regulations supplied Europe with a code of maritime laws. Their
+scholars, in the darkest depth of the dark ages, prized and conned a
+famous copy of the Pandects of Justinian; and their seamen deserved
+the fame of having first used, if they did not actually invent, the
+compass.
+
+To modern visitors those glorious centuries of Amalfitan power and
+independence cannot but seem fabulous; so difficult is it for us to
+imagine the conditions of society in Europe when a tiny city, shut
+in between barren mountains and a tideless sea, without a
+circumjacent territory, and with no resources but piracy or trade,
+could develop maritime supremacy in the Levant and produce the first
+fine flowers of liberty and culture.
+
+If the history of Amalfi's early splendour reads like a brilliant
+legend, the story of its premature extinction has the interest of a
+tragedy. The republic had grown and flourished on the decay of the
+Greek Empire. When the hard-handed race of Hauteville absorbed the
+heritage of Greeks and Lombards and Saracens in Southern Italy,
+these adventurers succeeded in annexing Amalfi. But it was not their
+interest to extinguish the state. On the contrary, they relied for
+assistance upon the navies and the armies of the little
+commonwealth. New powers had meanwhile arisen in the North of Italy,
+who were jealous of rivalry upon the open seas; and when the
+Neapolitans resisted King Roger in 1135, they called Pisa to their
+aid, and sent her fleet to destroy Amalfi. The ships of Amalfi were
+on guard with Roger's navy in the Bay of Naples. The armed citizens
+were, under Roger's orders, at Aversa. Meanwhile the home of the
+republic lay defenceless on its mountain-girdled seaboard. The
+Pisans sailed into the harbour, sacked the city, and carried off the
+famous Pandects of Justinian as a trophy. Two years later they
+returned, to complete the work of devastation. Amalfi never
+recovered from the injuries and the humiliation of these two
+attacks. It was ever thus that the Italians, like the children of
+the dragon's teeth which Cadmus sowed, consumed each other. Pisa cut
+the throat of her sister-port Amalfi, and Genoa gave a mortal wound
+to Pisa, when the waters of Meloria were dyed with blood in 1284.
+Venice fought a duel to the death with Genoa in the succeeding
+century; and what Venice failed to accomplish was completed by Milan
+and the lords of the Visconti dynasty, who crippled and enslaved the
+haughty queen of the Ligurian Riviera.
+
+The naval and commercial prosperity of Amalfi was thus put an end to
+by the Pisans in the twelfth century. But it was not then that the
+town assumed its present aspect. What surprises the student of
+history more than anything is the total absence of fortifications,
+docks, arsenals, and breakwaters, bearing witness to the ancient
+grandeur of a city which numbered 50,000 inhabitants, and traded
+with Alexandria, Syria, and the far East. Nothing of the sort, with
+the exception of a single solitary tower upon the Monte Aureo, is
+visible. Nor will he fail to remember that Amalfi and Atrani, which
+are now divided by a jutting mountain buttress, were once joined by
+a tract of sea-beach, where the galleys of the republic rested after
+sweeping the Levant, and where the fishermen drew up their boats
+upon the smooth grey sand. That also has disappeared. The violence
+of man was not enough to reduce Amalfi to its present state of
+insignificance. The forces of nature aided--partly by the gradual
+subsidence of the land, which caused the lower quarters of the city
+to be submerged, and separated Amalfi from her twin-port by covering
+the beach with water--partly by a fearful tempest, accompanied by
+earthquake, in 1343. Petrarch, then resident at Naples, witnessed
+the destructive fury of this great convulsion, and the description
+he wrote of it soon after its occurrence is so graphic that some
+notice may well be taken of it here.
+
+His letter, addressed to the noble Roman, Giovanni Colonna, begins
+with a promise to tell something of a storm which deserved the title
+of 'poetic,' and in a degree so superlative that no epithet but
+'Homeric' would suffice to do it justice. This exordium is
+singularly characteristic of Petrarch, who never forgot that he was
+a literary man, and lost no opportunity of dragging the great names
+of antiquity into his rhetorical compositions. The catastrophe was
+hardly unexpected; for it had been prophesied by an astrological
+bishop, whom Petrarch does not name, that Naples would be
+overwhelmed by a terrible disaster in December 1343. The people were
+therefore in a state of wild anxiety, repenting of their sins,
+planning a total change of life under the fear of imminent death,
+and neglecting their ordinary occupations. On the day of the
+predicted calamity women roamed in trembling crowds through the
+streets, pressing their babies to their breasts, and besieging the
+altars of the saints with prayers. Petrarch, who shared the general
+disquietude, kept watching the signs of the weather; but nothing
+happened to warrant an extraordinary panic. At sunset the sky was
+quieter than usual; and he could discern none of the symptoms of
+approaching tempest, to which his familiarity with the mountains of
+Vaucluse accustomed him. After dusk he stationed himself at a window
+to observe the moon until she went down, before midnight, obscured
+by clouds. Then he betook himself to bed; but scarcely had he fallen
+into his first sleep when a most horrible noise aroused him. The
+whole house shook; the night-light on his table was extinguished;
+and he was thrown with violence from his couch. He was lodging in a
+convent; and soon after this first intimation of the tempest he
+heard the monks calling to each other through the darkness. From
+cell to cell they hurried, the ghastly gleams of lightning falling
+on their terror-stricken faces. Headed by the Prior, and holding
+crosses and relics of the saints in their hands, they now assembled
+in Petrarch's chamber. Thence they proceeded in a body to the
+chapel, where they spent the night in prayer and expectation of
+impending ruin. It would be impossible, says the poet, to relate the
+terrors of that hellish night--the deluges of rain, the screaming of
+the wind, the earthquake, the thunder, the howling of the sea, and
+the shrieks of agonising human beings. All these horrors were
+prolonged, as though by some magician's spell, for what seemed twice
+the duration of a natural night. It was so dark that at last by
+conjecture rather than the testimony of their senses they knew that
+day had broken. A hurried mass was said. Then, as the noise in the
+town above them began to diminish, and a confused clamour from the
+sea-shore continually increased, their suspense became unendurable.
+They mounted their horses, and descended to the port--to see and
+perish. A fearful spectacle awaited them. The ships in the harbour
+had broken their moorings, and were crashing helplessly together.
+The strand was strewn with mutilated corpses. The breakwaters were
+submerged, and the sea seemed gaining momently upon the solid land.
+A thousand watery mountains surged up into the sky between the shore
+and Capri; and these massive billows were not black or purple, but
+hoary with a livid foam. After describing some picturesque
+episodes--such as the gathering of the knights of Naples to watch
+the ruin of their city, the procession of court ladies headed by the
+queen to implore the intercession of Mary, and the wreck of a vessel
+freighted with convicts bound for Sicily--Petrarch concludes with a
+fervent prayer that he may never have to tempt the sea, of whose
+fury he had seen so awful an example.
+
+The capital on this occasion escaped the ruin prophesied. But Amalfi
+was inundated; and what the waters then gained has never been
+restored to man. This is why the once so famous city ranks now upon
+a level with quiet little towns whose names are hardly heard in
+history--with San Remo, or Rapallo, or Chiavari--and yet it is still
+as full of life as a wasp's nest, especially upon the molo, or
+raised piazza paved with bricks, in front of the Albergo de'
+Cappuccini. The changes of scene upon this tiny square are so
+frequent as to remind one of a theatre. Looking down from the
+inn-balcony, between the glazy green pots gay with scarlet
+amaryllis-bloom, we are inclined to fancy that the whole has been
+prepared for our amusement. In the morning the corn for the
+macaroni-flour, after being washed, is spread out on the bricks to
+dry. In the afternoon the fishermen bring their nets for the same
+purpose. In the evening the city magnates promenade and whisper.
+Dark-eyed women, with orange or crimson kerchiefs for headgear,
+cross and re-cross, bearing baskets on their shoulders. Great lazy
+large-limbed fellows, girt with scarlet sashes and finished off with
+dark blue nightcaps (for a contrast to their saffron-coloured
+shirts, white breeches, and sunburnt calves), slouch about or sleep
+face downwards on the parapets. On either side of this same molo
+stretches a miniature beach of sand and pebble, covered with nets,
+which the fishermen are always mending, and where the big boats lade
+or unlade, trimming for the sardine fishery, or driving in to shore
+with a whirr of oars and a jabber of discordant voices. As the
+land-wind freshens, you may watch them set off one by one, like
+pigeons taking flight, till the sea is flecked with twenty sail, all
+scudding in the same direction. The torrent runs beneath the molo,
+and finds the sea beyond it; so that here too are the washerwomen,
+chattering like sparrows; and everywhere the naked boys, like brown
+sea-urchins, burrow in the clean warm sand, or splash the shallow
+brine. If you like the fun, you may get a score of them to dive
+together and scramble for coppers in the deeper places, their lithe
+bodies gleaming wan beneath the water in a maze of interlacing arms
+and legs.
+
+Over the whole busy scene rise the grey hills, soaring into blueness
+of air-distance, turreted here and there with ruined castles, capped
+with particoloured campanili and white convents, and tufted through
+their whole height with the orange and the emerald of the great
+tree-spurge, and with the live gold of the blossoming broom. It is
+difficult to say when this picture is most beautiful--whether in the
+early morning, when the boats are coming back from their night-toil
+upon the sea, and along the headlands in the fresh light lie swathes
+of fleecy mist, betokening a still, hot day--or at noontide, when
+the houses on the hill stand, tinted pink and yellow, shadowless
+like gems, and the great caruba-trees above the tangles of vines and
+figs are blots upon the steady glare--or at sunset, when violet and
+rose, reflected from the eastern sky, make all these terraces and
+peaks translucent with a wondrous glow. The best of all, perhaps, is
+night, with a full moon hanging high overhead. Who shall describe
+the silhouettes of boats upon the shore or sleeping on the misty
+sea? On the horizon lies a dusky film of brownish golden haze,
+between the moon and the glimmering water; and here and there a lamp
+or candle burns with a deep red. Then is the time to take a boat and
+row upon the bay, or better, to swim out into the waves and trouble
+the reflections from the steady stars. The mountains, clear and
+calm, with light-irradiated chasms and hard shadows cast upon the
+rock, soar up above a city built of alabaster, or sea-foam, or
+summer clouds. The whole is white and wonderful: no similes suggest
+an analogue for the lustre, solid and transparent, of Amalfi
+nestling in moonlight between the grey-blue sea and lucid hills.
+Stars stand on all the peaks, and twinkle, or keep gliding, as the
+boat moves, down the craggy sides. Stars are mirrored on the marble
+of the sea, until one knows not whether the oar has struck sparks
+from a star image or has scattered diamonds of phosphorescent brine.
+
+All this reads like a rhapsody; but indeed it is difficult not to be
+rhapsodical when a May night of Amalfi is in the memory, with the
+echo of rich baritone voices chanting Neapolitan songs to a
+mandoline. It is fashionable to complain that these Italian airs are
+opera-tunes; but this is only another way of saying that the Italian
+opera is the genuine outgrowth of national melody, and that Weber
+was not the first, as some German critics have supposed, to string
+together Volkslieder for the stage. Northerners, who have never seen
+or felt the beauty of the South, talk sad nonsense about the
+superiority of German over Italian music. It is true that much
+Italian music is out of place in Northern Europe, where we seem to
+need more travail of the intellect in art. But the Italians are
+rightly satisfied with such facile melody and such simple rhythms as
+harmonise with sea and sky and boon earth sensuously beautiful.
+'Perche pensa? Pensando s' invecchia,' expresses the same habit of
+mind as another celebrated saying, 'La musica e il lamento dell'
+amore o la preghiera agli Dei.' Whatever may be the value of Italian
+music, it is in concord with such a scene as Amalfi by moon-light;
+and he who does not appreciate this no less than some more
+artificial combination of sights and sounds in Wagner's theatre at
+Bayreuth, has scarcely learned the first lesson in the lore of
+beauty.
+
+There is enough and to spare for all tastes at Amalfi. The student
+of architecture may spend hours in the Cathedral, pondering over its
+high-built western front, and wondering whether there is more of
+Moorish or of Gothic in its delicate arcades. The painter may
+transfer its campanile, glittering like dragon's scales, to his
+canvas. The lover of the picturesque will wander through its aisle
+at mass-time, watching the sunlight play upon those upturned
+Southern faces with their ardent eyes; and happy is he who sees
+young men and maidens on Whit Sunday crowding round the chancel
+rails, to catch the marigolds and gillyflowers scattered from
+baskets which the priest has blessed. Is this a symbol of the Holy
+Spirit's gifts, or is it some quaint relic of Pagan _sparsiones_?
+This question, with the memory of Pompeian _graffiti_ in our mind,
+may well suggest itself in Southern Italy, where old and new faiths
+are so singularly blended. Then there is Ravello on the hills above.
+The path winds upward between stone walls tufted with maidenhair;
+and ever nearer grow the mountains, and the sea-line soars into the
+sky. An Englishman has made his home here in a ruined Moorish villa,
+with cool colonnaded cloisters and rose-embowered terraces, lending
+far prospect over rocky hills and olive-girdled villages to Paestum's
+plain. The churches of Ravello have rare mosaics, and bronze doors,
+and marble pulpits, older perhaps than those of Tuscany, which tempt
+the archaeologist to ask if Nicholas the Pisan learned his secret
+here. But who cares to be a sober antiquary at Amalfi? Far
+pleasanter is it to climb the staircase to the Capuchins, and linger
+in those caverns of the living rock, and pluck the lemons hanging by
+the mossy walls; or to row from cove to cove along the shore,
+watching the fishes swimming in the deeps beneath, and the medusas
+spreading their filmy bells; to land upon smooth slabs of rock,
+where corallines wave to and fro; or to rest on samphire-tufted
+ledges, when the shadows slant beneath the westering sun.
+
+There is no point in all this landscape which does not make a
+picture. Painters might even complain that the pictures are too easy
+and the poetry too facile, just as the musicians find the melodies
+of this fair land too simple. No effect, carefully sought and
+strenuously seized, could enhance the mere beauty of Amalfi bathed
+in sunlight. You have only on some average summer day to sit down
+and paint the scene. Little scope is afforded for suggestions of
+far-away weird thoughts, or for elaborately studied motives.
+Daubigny and Corot are as alien here as Blake or Duerer.
+
+What is wanted, and what no modern artist can successfully recapture
+from the wasteful past, is the mythopoeic sense--the apprehension of
+primeval powers akin to man, growing into shape and substance on the
+borderland between the world and the keen human sympathies it stirs
+in us. Greek mythology was the proper form of art for scenery like
+this. It gave the final touch to all its beauties, and added to its
+sensuous charm an inbreathed spiritual life. No exercise of the
+poetic faculty, far less that metaphysical mood of the reflective
+consciousness which 'leads from nature up to nature's God,' can now
+supply this need. From sea and earth and sky, in those creative ages
+when the world was young, there leaned to greet the men whose fancy
+made them, forms imagined and yet real--human, divine--the
+archetypes and everlasting patterns of man's deepest sense of what
+is wonderful in nature. Feeling them there, for ever there,
+inalienable, ready to start forth and greet successive
+generations--as the Hamadryad greeted Rhaicos from his father's
+oak--those mythopoets called them by immortal names. All their
+pent-up longings, all passions that consume, all aspirations that
+inflame--the desire for the impossible, which is disease, the
+day-dreams and visions of the night, which are spontaneous
+poems--were thus transferred to nature. And nature, responsive to
+the soul that loves her, gave them back transfigured and translated
+into radiant beings of like substance with mankind. It was thus, we
+feel, upon these southern shores that the gods of Greece came into
+being. The statues in the temples were the true fine flower of all
+this beauty, the culmination of the poetry which it evoked in hearts
+that feel and brains that think.
+
+In Italy, far more than in any other part of Europe, the life of the
+present is imposed upon the strata of successive past lives. Greek,
+Latin, Moorish, and mediaeval civilisations have arisen, flourished,
+and decayed on nearly the same soil; and it is common enough to find
+one city, which may have perished twenty centuries ago, neighbour to
+another that enjoyed its brief prosperity in the middle of our era.
+There is not, for example, the least sign of either Greek or Roman
+at Amalfi. Whatever may have been the glories of the republic in the
+early middle ages, they had no relation to the classic past. Yet a
+few miles off along the bay rise the ancient Greek temples of
+Paestum, from a desert--with no trace of any intervening occupants.
+Poseidonia was founded in the sixth century before Christ, by
+colonists from Sybaris. Three centuries later the Hellenic element
+in this settlement, which must already have become a town of no
+little importance, was submerged by a deluge of recurrent barbarism.
+Under the Roman rule it changed its name to Paestum, and was
+prosperous. The Saracens destroyed it in the ninth century of our
+era; and Robert Guiscard carried some of the materials of its
+buildings to adorn his new town of Salerno. Since then the ancient
+site has been abandoned to malaria and solitude. The very existence
+of Paestum was unknown, except to wandering herdsmen and fishers
+coasting near its ruined colonnades, until the end of the last
+century. Yet, strange to relate, after all these revolutions, and in
+the midst of this total desolation, the only relics of the antique
+city are three Greek temples, those very temples where the Hellenes,
+barbarised by their Lucanian neighbours, met to mourn for their lost
+liberty. It is almost impossible to trace more than the mere circuit
+of the walls of Poseidonia. Its port, if port it had in Roman days,
+has disappeared. Its theatre is only just discernible. Still not a
+column of the great hypaethral temple, built by the Sybarite
+colonists two thousand and five hundred years ago, to be a house for
+Zeus or for Poseidon, has been injured. The accidents that erased
+far greater cities, like Syracuse, from the surface of the
+earth--pillage, earthquake, the fury of fanatics, the slow decay of
+perishable stone, or the lust of palace builders in the middle
+ages--have spared those three houses of the gods, over whom, in the
+days of Alexander, the funeral hymn was chanted by the enslaved
+Hellenes.
+
+'We do the same,' said Aristoxenus in his Convivial Miscellanies,
+'as the men of Poseidonia, who dwell on the Tyrrhenian Gulf. It
+befell them, having been at first true Hellenes, to be utterly
+barbarised, changing to Tyrrhenes or Romans, and altering their
+language, together with their other customs. Yet they still observe
+one Hellenic festival, when they meet together and call to
+remembrance their old names and bygone institutions; and having
+lamented one to the other, and shed bitter tears, they afterwards
+depart to their own homes. Even thus a few of us also, now that our
+theatres have been barbarised, and this art of music has gone to
+ruin and vulgarity, meet together and remember what once music
+was.'[1]
+
+    [1] _Athenaeus_, xiv. 632.
+
+This passage has a strange pathos, considering how it was penned,
+and how it has come down to us, tossed by the dark indifferent
+stream of time. The Aristoxenus who wrote it was a pupil of the
+Peripatetic School, born at Tarentum, and therefore familiar with
+the vicissitudes of Magna Graecia. The study of music was his chief
+preoccupation; and he used this episode in the agony of an enslaved
+Greek city, to point his own conservative disgust for innovations in
+an art of which we have no knowledge left. The works of Aristoxenus
+have perished, and the fragment I have quoted is embedded in the
+gossip of Egyptian Athenaeus. In this careless fashion has been
+opened for us, as it were, a little window on a grief now buried in
+the oblivion of a hundred generations. After reading his words one
+May morning, beneath the pediment of Paestum's noblest ruin, I could
+not refrain from thinking that if the spirits of those captive
+Hellenes were to revisit their old habitations, they would change
+their note of wailing into a thin ghostly paean, when they found that
+Romans and Lucanians had passed away, that Christians and Saracens
+had left alike no trace behind, while the houses of their own
+[Greek: antelioi theoi]--dawn-facing deities--were still abiding in
+the pride of immemorial strength. Who knows whether buffalo-driver
+or bandit may not ere now have seen processions of these Poseidonian
+phantoms, bearing laurels and chaunting hymns on the spot where once
+they fell each on the other's neck to weep? Gathering his cloak
+around him and cowering closer to his fire of sticks, the
+night-watcher in those empty colonnades may have mistaken the
+Hellenic outlines of his shadowy visitants for fevered dreams, and
+the melody of their evanished music for the whistling of night winds
+or the cry of owls. So abandoned is Paestum in its solitude that we
+know not even what legends may have sprung up round those relics of
+a mightier age.
+
+  The shrine is ruined now; and far away
+  To east and west stretch olive groves, whose shade
+  Even at the height of summer noon is grey.
+
+  Asphodels sprout upon the plinth decayed
+  Of these low columns, and the snake hath found
+  Her haunt 'neath altar-steps with weeds o'erlaid.
+
+  Yet this was once a hero's temple, crowned
+  With myrtle-boughs by lovers, and with palm
+  By wrestlers, resonant with sweetest sound
+
+  Of flute and fife in summer evening's calm,
+  And odorous with incense all the year,
+  With nard and spice, and galbanum and balm.
+
+These lines sufficiently express the sense of desolation felt at
+Paestum, except that the scenery is more solemn and mournful, and the
+temples are too august to be the shrine of any simple hero. There
+are no olives. The sea plunges on its sandy shore within the space
+of half a mile to westward. Far and wide on either hand stretch
+dreary fever-stricken marshes. The plain is bounded to the north,
+and east, and south, with mountains, purple, snow-peaked, serrated,
+and grandly broken like the hills of Greece. Driving over this vast
+level where the Silarus stagnates, the monotony of the landscape is
+broken now and then by a group of buffaloes standing up to their
+dewlaps in reeds, by peasants on horseback, with goads in their
+hands, and muskets slung athwart their backs, or by patrols of
+Italian soldiers crossing and re-crossing on the brigand-haunted
+roads. Certain portions have been reclaimed from the swamp, and here
+may be seen white oxen in herds of fifty grazing; or gangs of women
+at field-labour, with a man to oversee them, cracking a long
+hunting-whip; or the mares and foals of a famous stud-farm browsing
+under spreading pines. There are no villages, and the few farmhouses
+are so widely scattered as to make us wonder where the herdsmen and
+field-workers, scanty as they are, can possibly be lodged.
+
+At last the three great temples come in sight. The rich orange of
+the central building contrasts with the paler yellow of its two
+companions, while the glowing colour of all three is splendidly
+relieved against green vegetation and blue mountain-flanks. Their
+material is travertine--a calcareous stone formed by the deposit of
+petrifying waters, which contains fragments of reeds, spiral shells,
+and other substances, embedded in the porous limestone. In the
+flourishing period of old Poseidonia these travertine columns were
+coated with stucco, worked to a smooth surface, and brilliantly
+tinted to harmonise with the gay costumes of a Greek festival. Even
+now this coating of fine sand, mingled with slaked lime and water,
+can be seen in patches on the huge blocks of the masonry. Thus
+treated, the travertine lacked little of the radiance of marble, for
+it must be remembered that the Greeks painted even the Pentelic
+cornice of the Parthenon with red and blue. Nor can we doubt that
+the general effect of brightness suited the glad and genial
+conditions of Greek life.
+
+All the surroundings are altered now, and the lover of the
+picturesque may be truly thankful that the hand of time, by
+stripping the buildings of this stucco, without impairing their
+proportions, has substituted a new harmony of tone between the
+native stone and the surrounding landscape, no less sympathetic to
+the present solitude than the old symphony of colours was to the
+animated circumstances of a populous Greek city. In this way those
+critics who defend the polychrome decorations of the classic
+architects, and those who contend that they cannot imagine any
+alteration from the present toning of Greek temples for the better,
+are both right.
+
+In point of colour the Paestum ruins are very similar to those of
+Girgenti; but owing to their position on a level plain, in front of
+a scarcely indented sea-shore, we lack the irregularity which adds
+so much charm to the row of temples on their broken cliff in the old
+town of Agrigentum. In like manner the celebrated _asymmetreia_ of
+the buildings of the Athenian Acropolis, which causes so much
+variety of light and shade upon the temple-fronts, and offers so
+many novel points of view when they are seen in combination, seems
+to have been due originally to the exigencies of the ground. At
+Paestum, in planning out the city, there can have been no utilitarian
+reasons for placing the temples at odd angles, either to each other
+or the shore. Therefore we see them now almost exactly in line and
+parallel, though at unequal distances. If something of picturesque
+effect is thus lost at Paestum through the flatness of the ground,
+something of impressive grandeur on the other hand is gained by the
+very regularity with which those phalanxes of massive Doric columns
+are drawn up to face the sea.
+
+Poseidonia, as the name betokens, was dedicated to the god of the
+sea; and the coins of the city are stamped with his effigy bearing a
+trident, and with his sacred animal, the bull. It has therefore been
+conjectured that the central of the three temples--which was
+hypaethral and had two entrances, east and west--belonged to
+Poseidon; and there is something fine in the notion of the god being
+thus able to pass to and fro from his cella through those sunny
+peristyles, down to his chariot, yoked with sea-horses, in the
+brine. Yet hypaethral temples were generally consecrated to Zeus, and
+it is therefore probable that the traditional name of this vast
+edifice is wrong. The names of the two other temples, _Tempio di
+Cerere_ and _Basilica_, are wholly unsupported by any proof or
+probability. The second is almost certainly founded on a mistake;
+and if we assign the largest of the three shrines to Zeus, one or
+other of the lesser belonged most likely to Poseidon.
+
+The style of the temples is severe and primitive. In general effect
+their Doric architecture is far sterner than that adapted by Ictinus
+to the Parthenon. The entablature seems somewhat disproportioned to
+the columns and the pediment; and, owing to this cause, there is a
+general effect of heaviness. The columns, again, are thick-set; nor
+is the effect of solidity removed by their gradual narrowing from
+the base upwards. The pillars of the _Neptune_ are narrowed in a
+straight line; those of the _Basilica_ and _Ceres_ by a gentle
+curve. Study of these buildings, so sublime in their massiveness, so
+noble in the parsimony of their decoration, so dignified in their
+employment of the simplest means for the attainment of an
+indestructible effect of harmony, heightens our admiration for the
+Attic genius which found in this grand manner of the elder Doric
+architects resources as yet undeveloped; creating, by slight and
+subtle alterations of outline, proportion, and rhythm of parts, what
+may fairly be classed as a style unique, because exemplified in only
+one transcendent building.
+
+It is difficult not to return again and again to the beauty of
+colouring at Paestum. Lying basking in the sun upon a flat slab of
+stone, and gazing eastward, we overlook a foreground of dappled
+light and shadow, across which the lizards run--quick streaks of
+living emerald--making the bunches of yellow rue and little white
+serpyllum in the fissures of the masonry nod as they hurry past.
+Then come two stationary columns, built, it seems, of solid gold,
+where the sunbeams strike along their russet surface. Between them
+lies the landscape, a medley first of brakefern and asphodel and
+feathering acanthus and blue spikes of bugloss; then a white farm in
+the middle distance, roofed with the reddest tiles and sheltered by
+a velvety umbrella pine. Beyond and above the farm, a glimpse of
+mountains purple almost to indigo with cloud shadows, and flecked
+with snow. Still higher--but for this we have to raise our head a
+little--the free heavens enclosed within the frame-work of the tawny
+travertine, across which sail hawks and flutter jackdaws, sharply
+cut against the solid sky. Down from the architrave, to make the
+vignette perfect, hang tufts of crimson snapdragons. Each opening in
+the peristyle gives a fresh picture.
+
+The temples are overgrown with snapdragons and mallows, yellow
+asters and lilac gillyflowers, white allium and wild fig. When a
+breeze passes, the whole of this many-coloured tapestry waves gently
+to and fro. The fields around are flowery enough; but where are the
+roses? I suppose no one who has read his Virgil at school, crosses
+the plain from Salerno to Paestum without those words of the
+'Georgics' ringing in his ears: _biferique rosaria Paesti_. They have
+that wonderful Virgilian charm which, by a touch, transforms mere
+daily sights and sounds, and adds poetic mystery to common things.
+The poets of ancient Rome seem to have felt the magic of this
+phrase; for Ovid has imitated the line in his 'Metamorphoses,'
+tamely substituting _tepidi_ for the suggestive _biferi_, while
+again in his 'Elegies' he uses the same termination with _odorati_
+for his epithet. Martial sings of _Paestanae rosae_ and _Paestani gloria
+ruris_. Even Ausonius, at the very end of Latin literature, draws
+from the rosaries of Paestum a pretty picture of beauty doomed to
+premature decline:--
+
+  Vidi Paestano gaudere rosaria cultu
+    Exoriente novo roscida Lucifero.
+
+  'I have watched the rose-beds that luxuriate on Paestum's well-tilled
+  soil, all dewy in the young light of the rising dawn-star.'
+
+What a place indeed was this for a rose-garden, spreading far and
+wide along the fertile plain, with its deep loam reclaimed from
+swamps and irrigated by the passing of perpetual streams! But where
+are the roses now? As well ask, _ou sont les neiges d'antan?_
+
+We left Amalfi for Capri in the freshness of an early morning at the
+end of May. As we stepped into our six-oared boat the sun rose above
+the horizon, flooding the sea with gold and flashing on the terraces
+above Amalfi. High up along the mountains hung pearly and empurpled
+mists, set like resting-places between a world too beautiful and
+heaven too far for mortal feet. Not a breath of any wind was
+stirring. The water heaved with a scarcely perceptible swell, and
+the vapours lifted gradually as the sun's rays grew in power. Here
+the hills descend abruptly on the sea, ending in cliffs where light
+reflected from the water dances. Huge caverns open in the limestone;
+on their edges hang stalactites like beards, and the sea within
+sleeps dark as night. For some of these caves the maidenhair fern
+makes a shadowy curtain; and all of them might be the home of
+Proteus, or of Calypso, by whose side her mortal lover passed his
+nights in vain home-sickness:--
+
+  [Greek: en spessi glaphyroisi par' ouk ethelon ethelouse].
+
+This is a truly Odyssean journey. Soon the islands of the Sirens come in
+sight,--bare bluffs of rock, shaped like galleys taking flight for the
+broad sea. As we row past in this ambrosial weather, the oarsmen keeping
+time and ploughing furrows in the fruitless fields of Nereus, it is not
+difficult to hear the siren voices--for earth and heaven and sea make
+melodies far above mortal singing. The water round the Galli--so the
+islands are now called, as antiquaries tell us, from an ancient fortress
+named Guallo--is very deep, and not a sign of habitation is to be seen
+upon them. In bygone ages they were used as prisons; and many doges of
+Amalfi languished their lives away upon those shadeless stones, watching
+the sea around them blaze like a burnished shield at noon, and the peaks
+of Capri deepen into purple when the west was glowing after sunset with
+the rose and daffodil of Southern twilight.
+
+The end of the Sorrentine promontory, Point Campanella, is absolutely
+barren--grey limestone, with the scantiest over-growth of rosemary and
+myrtle. A more desolate spot can hardly be imagined. But now the morning
+breeze springs up behind; sails are hoisted, and the boatmen ship their
+oars. Under the albatross wings of our lateen sails we scud across the
+freshening waves. The precipice of Capri soars against the sky, and the
+Bay of Naples expands before us with those sweeping curves and azure
+amplitude that all the poets of the world have sung. Even thus the
+mariners of ancient Hellas rounded this headland when the world was
+young. Rightly they named yon rising ground, beneath Vesuvius,
+Posilippo--rest from grief. Even now, after all those centuries of toil,
+though the mild mountain has been turned into a mouth of murderous fire,
+though Roman emperors and Spanish despots have done their worst to mar
+what nature made so perfect, we may here lay down the burden of our
+cares, gaining tranquillity by no mysterious lustral rites, no
+penitential prayers or offerings of holocausts, but by the influence of
+beauty in the earth and air, and by sympathy with a people unspoiled in
+their healthful life of labour alternating with simple joy.
+
+The last hour of the voyage was beguiled by stories of our boatmen, some
+of whom had seen service on distant seas, while others could tell of
+risks on shore and love adventures. They showed us how the tunny-nets
+were set, and described the solitary life of the tunny-watchers, in
+their open boats, waiting to spear the monsters of the deep entangled in
+the chambers made for them beneath the waves. How much of AEschylean
+imagery, I reflected, is drawn from this old fisher's art--the toils of
+Clytemnestra and the tragedy of Psyttaleia rising to my mind. One of the
+crew had his little son with him, a child of six years old; and when the
+boy was restless, his father spoke of Barbarossa and Timberio (_sic_) to
+keep him quiet; for the memory of the Moorish pirate and the mighty
+emperor is still alive here. The people of Capri are as familiar with
+Tiberius as the Bretons with King Arthur; and the hoof-mark of
+illustrious crime is stamped upon the island.
+
+Capri offers another example of the versatility of Southern Italy. If
+Amalfi brings back to us the naval and commercial prosperity of the
+early middle ages; if Paestuni remains a monument of the oldest Hellenic
+civilisation; Capri, at a few miles' distance, is dedicated to the Roman
+emperor who made it his favourite residence, when, life-weary with the
+world and all its shows, he turned these many peaks and slumbering caves
+into a summer palace for the nursing of his brain-sick phantasy. Already
+on landing, we are led to remember that from this shore was loosed the
+galley bearing that great letter--_verbosa et grandis epistola_--which
+undid Sejanus and shook Rome. Riding to Ana-Capri and the Salto di
+Tiberio, exploring the remains of his favourite twelve villas, and
+gliding over the smooth waters paved with the white marbles of his
+baths, we are for ever attended by the same forbidding spectre. Here,
+perchance, were the _sedes arcanarum libidinum_ whereof Suetonius
+speaks; the Spintrian medals, found in these recesses, still bear
+witness that the biographer trusted no mere fables for the picture he
+has drawn. Here, too, below the Villa Jovis, gazing 700 feet sheer down
+into the waves, we tread the very parapet whence fell the victims of
+that maniac lust for blood. 'After long and exquisite torments,' says
+the Roman writer, 'he ordered condemned prisoners to be cast into the
+sea before his eyes; marines were stationed near to pound the fallen
+corpses with poles and oars, lest haply breath should linger in their
+limbs.' The Neapolitan Museum contains a little basrelief representing
+Tiberius, with the well-known features of the Claudian house, seated
+astride upon a donkey, with a girl before him. A slave is leading the
+beast and its burden to a terminal statue under an olive-tree. This
+curious relic, discovered some while since at Capri, haunted my fancy as
+I climbed the olive-planted slopes to his high villa on the Arx Tiberii.
+It is some relief, amid so much that is tragic in the associations of
+this place, to have the horrible Tiberius burlesqued and brought into
+donkey-riding relation with the tourist of to-day. And what an ironical
+revenge of time it is that his famous Salto should be turned into a
+restaurant, where the girls dance tarantella for a few coppers; that a
+toothless hermit should occupy a cell upon the very summit of his Villa
+Jovis; and that the Englishwoman's comfortable hotel should be called
+_Timberio_ by the natives! A spiritualist might well believe that the
+emperor's ghost was forced to haunt the island, and to expiate his old
+atrocities by gazing on these modern vulgarisms.
+
+Few problems suggested by history are more darkly fascinating than the
+madness of despots; and of this madness, whether inherent in their blood
+or encouraged by the circumstance of absolute autocracy, the emperors of
+the Claudian and Julian houses furnish the most memorable instance.[1]
+It is this that renders Tiberius ever present to our memory at Capri.
+Nor will the student of Suetonius forget his even more memorable
+grand-nephew Caligula. The following passage is an episode from the
+biography of that imperial maniac, whose portrait in green basalt, with
+the strain of dire mental tension on the forehead, is still so beautiful
+that we are able at this distance of time to pity more than loathe him.
+'Above all, he was tormented with nervous irritation, by sleeplessness;
+for he enjoyed not more than three hours of nocturnal repose, nor even
+these in pure untroubled rest, but agitated by phantasmata of portentous
+augury; as, for example, upon one occasion, among other spectral
+visions, he fancied that he saw the sea, under some definite
+impersonation, conversing with himself. Hence it was, and from this
+incapacity of sleeping, and from weariness of lying awake, that he had
+fallen into habits of ranging all night long through the palace,
+sometimes throwing himself on a couch, sometimes wandering along the
+vast corridors, watching for the earliest dawn, and anxiously wishing
+its approach.' Those corridors, or loggie, where Caligula spent his
+wakeful hours, opened perchance upon this Bay of Naples, if not upon the
+sea-waves of his favourite Porto d'Anzio; for we know that one of his
+great follies was a palace built above the sea on piles at Baiae; and
+where else could _Pelagus_, with his cold azure eyes and briny locks,
+have more appropriately terrified his sleep with prophecy conveyed in
+dreams? The very nature of this vision, selected for such special
+comment by Suetonius as to show that it had troubled Caligula
+profoundly, proves the fantastic nature of the man, and justifies the
+hypothesis of insanity.
+
+    [1] De Quincey, in his essay on _The Caesars_, has worked
+    out this subject with such artistic vividness that no more
+    need be said. From his pages I have quoted the
+    paraphrastic version of Suetonius that follows.
+
+But it is time to shake off the burden of the past. Only students,
+carrying superfluity of culture in their knapsacks, will ponder over the
+imperial lunatics who made Capri and Baiae fashionable in the days of
+ancient Rome. Neither Tiberius nor Caligula, nor yet Ferdinand of Aragon
+or Bomba for that matter, has been able to leave trace of vice or scar
+of crime on nature in this Eden. A row round the island, or a
+supper-party in the loggia above the sea at sunset-time, is no less
+charming now, in spite of Roman or Spanish memories, than when the world
+was young.
+
+Sea-mists are frequent in the early summer mornings, swathing the
+cliffs of Capri in impenetrable wool and brooding on the perfectly
+smooth water till the day-wind rises. Then they disappear like
+magic, rolling in smoke-wreaths from the surface of the sea,
+condensing into clouds and climbing the hillsides like Oceanides in
+quest of Prometheus, or taking their station on the watch-towers of
+the world, as in the chorus of the _Nephelai_. Such a morning may be
+chosen for the _giro_ of the island. The blue grotto loses nothing
+of its beauty, but rather gains by contrast, when passing from dense
+fog you find yourself transported to a world of wavering subaqueous
+sheen. It is only through the opening of the very topmost arch that
+a boat can glide into this cavern; the arch itself spreads downward
+through the water, so that all the light is transmitted from beneath
+and coloured by the sea. The grotto is domed in many chambers; and
+the water is so clear that you can see the bottom, silvery, with
+black-finned fishes diapered upon the blue white sand. The flesh of
+a diver in this water showed like the faces of children playing at
+snapdragon; all around him the spray leapt up with living fire; and
+when the oars struck the surface, it was as though a phosphorescent
+sea had been smitten, and the drops ran from the blades in blue
+pearls. I have only once seen anything (outside the magic-world of a
+pantomime) to equal these effects of blue and silver; and that was
+when I made my way into an ice-cave in the Great Aletsch
+glacier--not an artificial gallery such as they cut at Grindelwald,
+but a natural cavern, arched, hollowed into fanciful recesses, and
+hung with stalactites of pendent ice. The difference between the
+glacier-cavern and the sea-grotto was that in the former all the
+light was transmitted through transparent sides, so that the whole
+was one uniform azure, except in rare places where little chinks
+opened upwards to the air, and the light of day came glancing with a
+roseate flush. In the latter the light sent from beneath through the
+water played upon a roof of rock; reflections intermingled with
+translucence; and a greater variety of light and shadow compensated
+the lack of that strange sense of being shut within a solid gem.
+
+Numberless are the caves at Capri. The so-called green grotto has
+the beauty of moss-agate in its liquid floor; the red grotto shows a
+warmer chord of colour; and where there is no other charm to notice,
+endless beauty may be found in the play of sunlight upon roofs of
+limestone, tinted with yellow, orange, and pale pink, mossed over,
+hung with fern, and catching tones of blue or green from the still
+deeps beneath.
+
+Sheets of water, wherever found, are the most subtle heighteners of
+colour. To those who are familiar with Venetian or Mantuan sunsets,
+who have seen the flocks of flamingoes reflected on the lagoons of
+Tunis, or who have watched stormy red flakes tossed from crest to
+crest of great Atlantic waves on our own coasts, this need hardly be
+said. Yet I cannot leave this beauty of the sea at Capri without
+touching on a melodrama of light and colour I once saw at
+Castellammare. It was a festa night, when the people sent up rockets
+and fireworks of every hue from the harbour-breakwater. The surf
+rolled shoreward like a bath of molten metals, all confused of blue,
+and red, and green, and gold--dying dolphin tints that burned
+strangely beneath the purple skies and tranquil stars. Boats at sea
+hung out their crimson cressets, flickering in long lines on the
+bay; and larger craft moved slowly with rows of lamps defining their
+curves; while the full moon shed over all her 'vitreous pour, just
+tinged with blue.' To some tastes this mingling of natural and
+artificial effects would seem unworthy of sober notice; but I
+confess to having enjoyed it with childish eagerness like music
+never to be forgotten.
+
+After a day upon the water it is pleasant to rest at sunset in the
+loggia above the sea. The Bay of Naples stretches far and wide in
+front, beautiful by reason chiefly of the long fine line descending
+from Vesuvius, dipping almost to a level and then gliding up to join
+the highlands of the north. Now sun and moon begin to mingle: waning
+and waxing splendours. The cliffs above our heads are still blushing
+a deep flame-colour, like the heart of some tea-rose; when lo, the
+touch of the huntress is laid upon those eastern pinnacles, and the
+horizon glimmers with her rising. Was it on such a night that
+Ferdinand of Aragon fled from his capital before the French, with
+eyes turned ever to the land he loved, chanting, as he leaned from
+his galley's stern, that melancholy psalm--'Except the Lord keep the
+city, the watchman waketh but in vain'--and seeing Naples dwindle to
+a white blot on the purple shore?
+
+Our journey takes the opposite direction. Farewell to Capri, welcome
+to Sorrento! The roads are sweet with scent of acacia and orange
+flowers. When you walk in a garden at night, the white specks
+beneath your feet are fallen petals of lemon blossoms. Over the
+walls hang cataracts of roses, honey-pale clusters of the Banksia
+rose, and pink bushes of the China rose, growing as we never see
+them grow with us. The grey rocks wave with gladiolus--feathers of
+crimson, set amid tufts of rosemary, and myrtle, and tree-spurge. In
+the clefts of the sandstone, and behind the orchard walls, sleeps a
+dark green night of foliage, in the midst of which gleam globed
+oranges, and lemons dropping like great pearls of palest amber dew.
+It is difficult to believe that the lemons have not grown into
+length by their own weight, as though mere hanging on the bough
+prevented them from being round--so waxen are they. Overhead soar
+stone-pines--a roof of sombre green, a lattice-work of strong red
+branches, through which the moon peers wonderfully. One part of this
+marvellous _piano_ is bare rock tufted with keen-scented herbs, and
+sparsely grown with locust-trees and olives. Another waves from sea
+to summit with beech-copses and oak-woods, as verdant as the most
+abundant English valley. Another region turns its hoary raiment of
+olive-gardens to the sun and sea, or flourishes with fig and vine.
+Everywhere, the houses of men are dazzling white, perched on natural
+coigns of vantage, clustered on the brink of brown cliffs, nestling
+under mountain eaves, or piled up from the sea-beach in ascending
+tiers, until the broad knees of the hills are reached, and great
+Pan, the genius of solitude in nature, takes unto himself a region
+yet untenanted by man. The occupations of the sea and land are blent
+together on this shore; and the people are both blithe and gentle.
+It is true that their passions are upon the surface, and that the
+knife is ready to their hand. But the combination of fierceness and
+softness in them has an infinite charm when one has learned by
+observation that their lives are laborious and frugal, and that
+their honesty is hardly less than their vigour. Happy indeed are
+they--so happy that, but for crimes accumulated through successive
+generations by bad governors, and but for superstitions cankering
+the soul within, they might deserve what Shelley wrote of his
+imagined island in 'Epipsychidion.'
+
+
+
+
+_ETNA_
+
+
+The eruptions of Etna have blackened the whole land for miles in
+every direction. That is the first observation forced upon one in
+the neighbourhood of Catania, or Giarre, or Bronte. From whatever
+point of view you look at Etna, it is always a regular pyramid, with
+long and gradually sloping sides, broken here and there by the
+excrescence of minor craters and dotted over with villages; the
+summit crowned with snow, divided into peak and cone, girdled with
+clouds, and capped with smoke, that shifts shape as the wind veers,
+dominates a blue-black monstrous mass of outpoured lava. From the
+top of Monte Rosso, a subordinate volcano which broke into eruption
+in 1669, you can trace the fountain from which 'the unapproachable
+river of purest fire,' that nearly destroyed Catania, issued. You
+see it still, bubbling up like a frozen geyser from the flank of the
+mountain, whence the sooty torrent spreads, or rather sprawls, with
+jagged edges to the sea. The plain of Catania lies at your feet,
+threaded by the Simeto, bounded by the promontory of Syracuse and
+the mountains of Castro Giovanni. This huge amorphous blot upon the
+landscape may be compared to an ink-stain on a variegated
+tablecloth, or to the coal districts marked upon a geological atlas,
+or to the heathen in a missionary map--the green and red and grey
+colours standing for Christians and Mahommedans and Jews of
+different shades and qualities. The lava, where it has been
+cultivated, is reduced to fertile sand, in which vines and fig-trees
+are planted--their tender green foliage contrasting strangely with
+the sinister soil that makes them flourish. All the roads are black
+as jet, like paths leading to coal-pits, and the country-folk on
+mule-back plodding along them look like Arabs on an infernal Sahara.
+The very lizards which haunt the rocks are swart and smutty. Yet the
+flora of the district is luxuriant. The gardens round Catania,
+nestling into cracks and ridges of the stiffened flood, are
+marvellously brilliant with spurge and fennel and valerian. It is
+impossible to form a true conception of flower-brightness till one
+has seen these golden and crimson tints upon their ground of ebony,
+or to realise the blueness of the Mediterranean except in contrast
+with the lava where it breaks into the sea. Copses of frail oak and
+ash, undergrown with ferns of every sort; cactus-hedges,
+orange-trees grafted with lemons and laden with both fruits; olives
+of scarce two centuries' growth, and fig-trees knobbed with their
+sweet produce, overrun the sombre soil, and spread their boughs
+against the deep blue sea and the translucent amethyst of the
+Calabrian mountains. Underfoot, a convolvulus with large white
+blossoms, binding dingy stone to stone, might be compared to a rope
+of Desdemona's pearls upon the neck of Othello.
+
+The villages are perhaps the most curious feature of this scenery.
+Their houses, rarely more than one story high, are walled, paved,
+and often roofed with the inflexible material which once was ruinous
+fire, and is now the servant of the men it threatened to destroy.
+The churches are such as might be raised in Hades to implacable
+Proserpine, such as one might dream of in a vision of the world
+turned into hell, such as Baudelaire in his fiction of a metallic
+landscape might have imagined under the influence of hasheesh. Their
+flights of steps are built of sharply cut black lava blocks no feet
+can wear. Their door-jambs and columns and pediments and carved work
+are wrought and sculptured of the same gloomy masonry. How
+forbidding are the acanthus scrolls, how grim the skulls and
+cross-bones on these portals! The bell-towers, again, are ribbed and
+beamed with black lava. A certain amount of the structure is
+whitewashed, which serves to relieve the funereal solemnity of the
+rest. In an Indian district each of these churches would be a
+temple, raised in vain propitiation to the demon of the fire above
+and below. Some pictures made by their spires in combination with
+the sad village-hovels, the snowy dome of Etna, and the ever-smiling
+sea, are quite unique in their variety of suggestion and wild
+beauty.
+
+The people have a sorrow-smitten and stern aspect. Some of the men
+in the prime of life are grand and haughty, with the cast-bronze
+countenance of Roman emperors. But the old men bear rigid faces of
+carved basalt, gazing fixedly before them as though at some time or
+other in their past lives they had met Medusa: and truly Etna in
+eruption is a Gorgon, which their ancestors have oftentimes seen
+shuddering, and fled from terror-frozen. The white-haired old women,
+plying their spindle or distaff, or meditating in grim solitude, sit
+with the sinister set features of Fates by their doorways. The young
+people are very rarely seen to smile: they open hard, black, beaded
+eyes upon a world in which there is little for them but endurance or
+the fierceness of passions that delight in blood. Strangely
+different are these dwellers on the sides of Etna from the voluble,
+lithe sailors of Sciacca or Mazara, with their sunburnt skins and
+many-coloured garments.
+
+The Val del Bove--a vast chasm in the flank of Etna, where the very
+heart of the volcano has been riven and its entrails bared--is the
+most impressive spot of all this region. The road to it leads from
+Zafferana (so called because of its crocus-flowers) along what looks
+like a series of black moraines, where the lava torrents pouring
+from the craters of Etna have spread out, and reared themselves in
+stiffened ridges against opposing mountain buttresses. After toiling
+for about three hours over the dismal waste, a point between the
+native rock of Etna and the dead sea of lava is reached, which
+commands a prospect of the cone with its curling smoke surmounting a
+caldron of some four thousand feet in depth and seemingly very wide.
+The whole of this space is filled with billows of blackness, wave on
+wave, crest over crest, and dyke by dyke, precisely similar to a
+gigantic glacier, swarthy and immovable. The resemblance of the lava
+flood to a glacier is extraordinarily striking. One can fancy
+oneself standing on the Belvedere at Macugnaga, or the Tacul point
+upon the Mer de Glace, in some nightmare, and finding to one's
+horror that the radiant snows and river-breeding ice-fields have
+been turned by a malignant deity to sullen, stationary cinders. It
+is a most hideous place, like a pit in Dante's Hell, disused for
+some unexplained reason, and left untenanted by fiends. The scenery
+of the moon, without atmosphere and without life, must be of this
+sort; and such, rolling round in space, may be some planet that has
+survived its own combustion. When the clouds, which almost always
+hang about the Val del Bove, are tumbling at their awful play around
+its precipices, veiling the sweet suggestion of distant sea and
+happier hills that should be visible, the horror of this view is
+aggravated. Breaking here and there, the billows of mist disclose
+forlorn tracts of jet-black desolation, wicked, unutterable, hateful
+in their hideousness, with patches of smutty snow above, and
+downward-rolling volumes of murky smoke. Shakspere, when he imagined
+the damned spirits confined to 'thrilling regions of thick-ribbed
+ice,' divined the nature of a glacier; but what line could he have
+composed, adequate to shadow forth the tortures of a soul condemned
+to palpitate for ever between the ridges of this thirsty and
+intolerable sea of dead fire? If the world-spirit chose to assume
+for itself the form and being of a dragon, of like substance to
+this, impenetrable, invulnerable, unapproachable would be its hide.
+It requires no great stretch of the imagination to picture these
+lava lakes glowing, as they must have been, when first outpoured,
+the bellowing of the crater, the heaving and surging of the solid
+earth, the air obstructed with cinders and whizzing globes of molten
+rock. Yet in these throes of devilish activity, the Val del Bove
+would be less insufferable than in its present state of suspension,
+asleep, but threatening, ready to regurgitate its flame, but for a
+moment inert.
+
+An hour's drive from Nicolosi or Zafferana, seaward, brings one into
+the richest land of 'olive and aloe and maize and vine' to be found
+upon the face of Europe. Here, too, are laughing little towns,
+white, prosperous, and gleeful, the very opposite of those sad
+stations on the mountain-flank. Every house in Aci Reale has its
+courtyard garden filled with orange-trees, and nespole, and
+fig-trees, and oleanders. From the grinning corbels that support the
+balconies hang tufts of gem-bright ferns and glowing clove-pinks.
+Pergolas of vines, bronzed in autumn, and golden green like
+chrysoprase beneath an April sun, fling their tendrils over white
+walls and shady loggie. Gourds hang ripening in the steady blaze.
+Far and wide stretches a landscape rich with tilth and husbandry,
+boon Nature paying back to men tenfold for all their easy toil. The
+terrible great mountain sleeps in the distance innocent of fire. I
+know not whether this land be more delightful in spring or autumn.
+The little flamelike flakes of brightness upon vines and fig-trees
+in April have their own peculiar charm. But in November the whole
+vast flank of Etna glows with the deep-blue tone of steel; the
+russet woods are like a film of rust; the vine-boughs thrust living
+carbuncles against the sun. To this season, when the peculiar
+earth-tints of Etna, its strong purples and tawny browns, are
+harmonised with the decaying wealth of forest and of orchard, I
+think the palm of beauty must be given in this land.
+
+The sea is an unchangeable element of charm in all this landscape.
+Aci Castello should be visited, and those strange rocks, called the
+Ciclopidi, forced by volcanic pressure from beneath the waves. They
+are made of black basalt like the Giant's Causeway; and on their top
+can be traced the caps of calcareous stone they carried with them in
+the fret and fury of their upheaval from the sea-bed. Samphire, wild
+fennel, cactus, and acanthus clothe them now from crest to basement
+where the cliff is not too sheer. By the way, there are few plants
+more picturesque than the acanthus in full flower. Its pale lilac
+spikes of blossom stand waist-high above a wilderness of feathering,
+curving, delicately indented, burnished leaves--deep, glossy, cool,
+and green.
+
+This is the place for a child's story of the one-eyed giant
+Polyphemus, who fed his flocks among the oak-woods of Etna, and who,
+strolling by the sea one summer evening, saw and loved the fair girl
+Galatea. She was afraid of him, and could not bear his shaggy-browed
+round rolling eye. But he forgot his sheep and goats, and sat upon
+the cliffs and piped to her. Meanwhile she loved the beautiful boy
+Acis, who ran down from the copse to play with her upon the
+sea-beach. They hid together from Polyphemus in a fern-curtained
+cavern of the shore. But Polyphemus spied them out and heard them
+laughing together at their games. Then he grew wroth, and stamped
+with his huge feet upon the earth, and made it shake and quiver. He
+roared and bellowed in his rage, and tore up rocks and flung them at
+the cavern where the children were in hiding, and his eye shot fire
+beneath the grisly pent-house of his wrinkled brows. They, in their
+sore distress, prayed to heaven; and their prayers were heard:
+Galatea became a mermaid, so that she might swim and sport like foam
+upon the crests of the blue sea; and Acis was changed into a stream
+that leapt from the hills to play with her amid bright waters. But
+Polyphemus, in punishment for his rage, and spite, and jealousy, was
+forced to live in the mid-furnaces of Etna. There he growled and
+groaned and shot forth flame in impotent fury; for though he
+remembered the gladness of those playfellows, and sought to harm
+them by tossing red-hot rocks upon the shore, yet the light sea ever
+laughed, and the radiant river found its way down from the copsewood
+to the waves. The throes of Etna in convulsion are the pangs of his
+great giant's heart, pent up and sick with love for the bright sea
+and gladsome sun; for, as an old poet sings:--
+
+  There's love when holy heaven doth wound the earth;
+  And love still prompts the land to yearn for bridals:
+  The rain that falls in rivers from the sky,
+  Impregnates earth: and she brings forth for men
+  The flocks and herds and life of teeming Ceres.
+
+To which let us add:--
+
+  But sometimes love is barren, when broad hills,
+  Rent with the pangs of passion, yearn in vain,
+  Pouring fire tears adown their furrowed cheeks,
+  And heaving in the impotence of anguish.
+
+There are few places in Europe where the poetic truth of Greek
+mythology is more apparent than here upon the coast between Etna and
+the sea. Of late, philosophers have been eager to tell us that the
+beautiful legends of the Greeks, which contain in the coloured haze
+of fancy all the thoughts afterwards expressed by that divine race
+in poetry and sculpture, are but decayed phrases, dead sentences,
+and words whereof the meaning was forgotten. In this theory there is
+a certain truth; for mythology stands midway between the first
+lispings of a nation in its language, and its full-developed
+utterances in art. Yet we have only to visit the scenes which gave
+birth to some Hellenic myth, and we perceive at once that, whatever
+philology may affirm, the legend was a living poem, a drama of life
+and passion transferred from human experience to the inanimate world
+by those early myth-makers, who were the first and the most fertile
+of all artists. Persephone was the patroness of Sicily, because amid
+the billowy cornfields of her mother Demeter and the meadow flowers
+she loved in girlhood, are ever found sulphurous ravines and chasms
+breathing vapour from the pit of Hades. What were the Cyclops--that
+race of one-eyed giants--but the many minor cones of Etna? Observed
+from the sea by mariners, or vaguely spoken of by the natives, who
+had reason to dread their rage, these hillocks became lawless and
+devouring giants, each with one round burning eye. Afterwards the
+tales of Titans who had warred with Zeus were realised in this spot.
+Typhoeus or Enceladus made the mountain heave and snort; while
+Hephaestus not unnaturally forged thunder-bolts in the central
+caverns of a volcano that never ceased to smoke. To the student of
+art and literature, mythology is chiefly interesting in its latest
+stages, when, the linguistic origin of special legends being utterly
+forgotten, the poets of the race played freely with its rich
+material. Who cares to be told that Achilles was the sun, when the
+child of Thetis and the lover of Patroclus has been sung for us by
+Homer? Are the human agonies of the doomed house of Thebes made less
+appalling by tracing back the tale of OEdipus to some prosaic
+source in old astronomy? The incest of Jocasta is the subject of
+supreme tragic art. It does not improve the matter, or whitewash the
+imagination of the Greeks, as some have fondly fancied, to unravel
+the fabric wrought by Homer and by Sophocles, into its raw material
+in Aryan dialects. Indeed, this new method of criticism bids fair to
+destroy for young minds the human lessons of pathos and heroism in
+Greek poetry, and to create an obscure conviction that the greatest
+race of artists the world has ever produced were but dotards,
+helplessly dreaming over distorted forms of speech and obsolete
+phraseology.
+
+Let us bid farewell to Etna from Taormina. All along the coast
+between Aci and Giardini the mountain towers distinct against a
+sunset sky--divested of its robe of cloud, translucent and blue as
+some dark sea-built crystal. The Val del Bove is shown to be a
+circular crater in which the lava has boiled and bubbled over to the
+fertile land beneath. As we reach Giardini, the young moon is
+shining, and the night is alive with stars so large and bright that
+they seem leaning down to whisper in the ears of our soul. The sea
+is calm, touched here and there on the fringes of the bays and
+headlands with silvery light; and impendent crags loom black and
+sombre against the feeble azure of the moonlit sky. _Quale per
+incertam lunam et sub luce maligna_: such is our journey, with Etna,
+a grey ghost, behind our path, and the reflections of stars upon the
+sea, and glow-worms in the hedges, and the mystical still splendour
+of the night, that, like Death, liberates the soul, raising it above
+all common things, simplifying the outlines of the earth as well as
+our own thoughts to one twilight hush of aerial tranquillity. It is
+a strange compliment to such a landscape to say that it recalls a
+scene from an opera. Yet so it is. What the arts of the
+scene-painter and the musician strive to suggest is here realised in
+fact; the mood of the soul created by music and by passion is
+natural here, spontaneous, prepared by the divine artists of earth,
+air, and sea.
+
+Was there ever such another theatre as this of Taormina? Turned to
+the south, hollowed from the crest of a promontory 1000 feet above
+the sea, it faces Etna with its crown of snow: below, the coast
+sweeps onward to Catania and the distant headland of Syracuse. From
+the back the shore of Sicily curves with delicately indented bays
+towards Messina: then come the straits, and the blunt mass of the
+Calabrian mountains terminating Italy at Spartivento. Every spot on
+which the eye can rest is rife with reminiscences. It was there, we
+say, looking northward to the straits, that Ulysses tossed between
+Scylla and Charybdis; there, turning towards the flank of Etna, that
+he met with Polyphemus and defied the giant from his galley. From
+yonder snow-capped eyrie, [Greek: Aitnas skopia], the rocks were
+hurled on Acis. And all along that shore, after Persephone was lost,
+went Demeter, torch in hand, wailing for the daughter she could no
+more find among Sicilian villages. Then, leaving myths for history,
+we remember how the ships of Nikias set sail from Reggio, and
+coasted the forelands at our feet, past Naxos, on their way to
+Catania and Syracuse. Gylippus afterwards in his swift galley took
+the same course: and Dion, when he came to destroy his nephew's
+empire. Here too Timoleon landed, resolute in his firm will to purge
+the isle of tyrants.
+
+What scenes, more spirit-shaking than any tragic shows--pageants of
+fire and smoke, and mountains in commotion--are witnessed from these
+grassy benches, when the earth rocks, and the sea is troubled, and
+the side of Etna flows with flame, and night grows horrible with
+bellowings that forebode changes in empires!--
+
+          Quoties Cyclopum effervere in agros
+  Vidimus undantem ruptis fornacibus AEtnam,
+  Flammarumque globos liquefactaque volvere saxa.
+
+The stage of these tremendous pomps is very calm and peaceful now.
+Lying among acanthus leaves and asphodels, bound together by wreaths
+of white and pink convolvulus, we only feel that this is the
+loveliest landscape on which our eyes have ever rested or can rest.
+The whole scene is a symphony of blues--gemlike lapis-lazuli in the
+sea, aerial azure in the distant headlands, light-irradiated
+sapphire in the sky, and impalpable vapour-mantled purple upon Etna.
+The grey tones of the neighbouring cliffs, and the glowing brickwork
+of the ruined theatre, through the arches of which shine sea and
+hillside, enhance by contrast these modulations of the one
+prevailing hue. Etna is the dominant feature of the
+landscape--[Greek: Aitna mater ema--polydendreos Aitna]--than which
+no other mountain is more sublimely solitary, more worthy of
+Pindar's praise, 'The pillar of heaven, the nurse of sharp eternal
+snow.' It is Etna that gives its unique character of elevated beauty
+to this coast scenery, raising it to a grander and more tragic level
+than the landscape of the Cornice and the Bay of Naples.
+
+
+
+
+_PALERMO_
+
+
+THE NORMANS IN SICILY
+
+Sicily, in the centre of the Mediterranean, has been throughout all
+history the meeting-place and battle-ground of the races that
+contributed to civilise the West. It was here that the Greeks
+measured their strength against Phoenicia, and that Carthage
+fought her first duel with Rome. Here the bravery of Hellenes
+triumphed over barbarian force in the victories of Gelon and
+Timoleon. Here, in the harbour of Syracuse, the Athenian Empire
+succumbed to its own intemperate ambition. Here, in the end, Rome
+laid her mortmain upon Greek, Phoenician, and Sikeliot alike,
+turning the island into a granary and reducing its inhabitants to
+serfdom. When the classic age had closed, when Belisarius had vainly
+reconquered from the Goths for the empire of the East the fair
+island of Persephone and Zeus Olympius, then came the Mussulman,
+filling up with an interval of Oriental luxury and Arabian culture
+the period of utter deadness between the ancient and the modern
+world. To Islam succeeded the conquerors of the house of Hauteville,
+Norman knights who had but lately left their Scandinavian shores,
+and settled in the northern provinces of France. The Normans
+flourished for a season, and were merged in a line of Suabian
+princes, old Barbarossa's progeny. German rulers thus came to sway
+the corn-lands of Trinacria, until the bitter hatred of the Popes
+extinguished the house of Hohenstauffen upon the battlefield of
+Grandella and the scaffold of Naples. Frenchmen had the next
+turn--for a brief space only; since Palermo cried to the sound of
+her tocsins, 'Mora, Mora,' and the tyranny of Anjou was expunged
+with blood. Spain, the tardy and patient power, which inherited so
+much from the failure of more brilliant races, came at last, and
+tightened so firm a hold upon the island, that from the end of the
+thirteenth to the beginning of the nineteenth century, with one
+brief exception, Sicily belonged to the princes of Aragon, Castile,
+and Bourbon. These vicissitudes have left their traces everywhere.
+The Greek temples of Segeste and Girgenti and Selinus, the Roman
+amphitheatre of Syracuse, the Byzantine mosaics and Saracenic villas
+of Palermo, the Norman cathedrals of Monreale and Cefalu, and the
+Spanish habits which still characterise the life of Sicilian cities,
+testify to the successive strata of races which have been deposited
+upon the island. Amid its anarchy of tongues, the Latin alone has
+triumphed. In the time of the Greek colonists Sicily was polyglot.
+During the Saracenic occupation it was trilingual. It is now, and
+during modern history it has always been, Italian. Differences of
+language and of nationality have gradually been fused into one
+substance, by the spirit which emanates from Rome, and vivifies the
+Latin race.
+
+The geographical position of Sicily has always influenced its
+history in a very marked way. The eastern coast, which is turned
+towards Greece and Italy, has been the centre of Aryan civilisation
+in the island, so that during Greek and Roman ascendency Syracuse
+was held the capital. The western end, which projects into the
+African sea, was occupied in the time of the Hellenes by
+Phoenicians, and afterwards by Mussulmans: consequently Panormus,
+the ancient seat of Punic colonists, now called Palermo, became the
+centre of the Moslem rule, which, inherited entire by the Norman
+chieftains, was transmitted eventually to Spain. Palermo, devoid of
+classic monuments, and unknown except as a name to the historians of
+Greek civilisation, is therefore the modern capital of the island.
+'Prima sedes, corona regis, et regni caput,' is the motto inscribed
+upon the cathedral porch and the archiepiscopal throne of Palermo:
+nor has any other city, except Messina,[1] presumed to contest this
+title.
+
+    [1] Messina, owing to its mercantile position between the
+    Levant, Italy, and France, and as the key to Sicily from
+    the mainland, might probably have become the modern
+    capital had not the Normans found a state machinery ready
+    to their use centralised at Palermo.
+
+Perhaps there are few spots upon the surface of the globe more
+beautiful than Palermo. The hills on either hand descend upon the
+sea with long-drawn delicately broken outlines, so exquisitely
+tinted with aerial hues, that at early dawn or beneath the blue
+light of a full moon the panorama seems to be some fabric of the
+fancy, that must fade away, 'like shapes of clouds we form,' to
+nothing. Within the cradle of these hills, and close upon the
+tideless water, lies the city. Behind and around on every side
+stretches the famous _Conca d'Oro_, or golden shell, a plain of
+marvellous fertility, so called because of its richness and also
+because of its shape; for it tapers to a fine point where the
+mountains meet, and spreads abroad, where they diverge, like a
+cornucopia, toward the sea. The whole of this long vega is a garden,
+thick with olive-groves and orange-trees, with orchards of nespole
+and palms and almonds, with fig-trees and locust-trees, with
+judas-trees that blush in spring, and with flowers as
+multitudinously brilliant as the fretwork of sunset clouds. It was
+here that in the days of the Kelbite dynasty, the sugar-cane and
+cotton-tree and mulberry supplied both East and West with produce
+for the banquet and the paper-mill and the silk-loom; and though
+these industries are now neglected, vast gardens of cactuses still
+give a strangely Oriental character to the scenery of Palermo, while
+the land flows with honey-sweet wine instead of sugar. The language
+in which Arabian poets extolled the charms of this fair land is even
+now nowise extravagant: 'Oh how beautiful is the lakelet of the twin
+palms, and the island where the spacious palace stands! The limpid
+water of the double springs resembles liquid pearls, and their basin
+is a sea: you would say that the branches of the trees stretched
+down to see the fishes in the pool and smile at them. The great
+fishes swim in those clear waters, and the birds among the gardens
+tune their songs. The ripe oranges of the island are like fire that
+burns on boughs of emerald; the pale lemon reminds me of a lover who
+has passed the night in weeping for his absent darling. The two
+palms may be compared to lovers who have gained an inaccessible
+retreat against their enemies, or raise themselves erect in pride to
+confound the murmurs and ill thoughts of jealous men. O palms of the
+two lakelets of Palermo, may ceaseless, undisturbed, and plenteous
+dews for ever keep your freshness!' Such is the poetry which suits
+the environs of Palermo, where the Moorish villas of La Zisa and La
+Cuba and La Favara still stand, and where the modern gardens, though
+wilder, are scarcely less delightful than those beneath which King
+Roger discoursed with Edrisi, and Gian da Procida surprised his
+sleeping mistress.[1] The groves of oranges and lemons are an
+inexhaustible source of joy: not only because of their 'golden lamps
+in a green night,' but also because of their silvery constellations,
+nebulae, and drifts of stars, in the same green night, and milky ways
+of blossoms on the ground beneath. As in all southern scenery, the
+transition from these perfumed thickly clustering gardens to the
+bare unirrigated hillsides is very striking. There the dwarf-palm
+tufts with its spiky foliage the clefts of limestone rock, and the
+lizards run in and out among bushes of tree-spurge and wild cactus
+and grey asphodels. The sea-shore is a tangle of lilac and oleander
+and laurustinus and myrtle and lentisk and cytisus and geranium. The
+flowering plants that make our shrubberies gay in spring with
+blossoms, are here wild, running riot upon the sand-heaps of
+Mondello or beneath the barren slopes of Monte Pellegrino.
+
+It was into this terrestrial paradise, cultivated through two
+preceding centuries by the Arabs, who of all races were wisest in
+the arts of irrigation and landscape-gardening, that the Norsemen
+entered as conquerors, and lay down to pass their lives.[2]
+
+    [1] Boccaccio, Giorn. v. Nov. 6.
+
+    [2] The Saracens possessed themselves of Sicily by a
+    gradual conquest, which began about 827 A.D. Disembarking
+    on the little isle of Pantellaria and the headland of
+    Lilyboeum, where of old the Carthaginians used to enter
+    Sicily, they began by overrunning the island for the first
+    four years. In 831 they took Palermo; during the next ten
+    years they subjugated the Val di Mazara; between 841 and
+    859 they possessed themselves of the Val di Noto; after
+    this they extended their conquest over the seaport towns
+    of the Val Demone, but neglected to reduce the whole of
+    the N.E. district. Syracuse was stormed and reduced to
+    ruins after a desperate defence in 878, while Leo, the
+    heir of the Greek Empire, contented himself with composing
+    two Anacreontic elegies on the disaster at Byzantium. In
+    895 Sicily was wholly lost to the Greeks, by a treaty
+    signed between the Saracens and the remaining Christian
+    towns. The Christians during the Mussulman occupation were
+    divided into four classes--(1) A few independent
+    municipalities obedient loosely to the Greek Empire; (2)
+    tributaries who paid the Arabs what they would otherwise
+    have sent to Byzantium; (3) vassals, whose towns had
+    fallen by arms or treaty into the hands of the conquerors,
+    and who, though their property was respected and religion
+    tolerated, were called 'dsimmi' or 'humbled;' (4) serfs,
+    prisoners of war, sold as slaves or attached to the soil
+    (_Amari_, vol. i.).
+
+No chapter of history more resembles a romance than that which
+records the sudden rise and brief splendour of the house of
+Hauteville. In one generation the sons of Tancred passed from the
+condition of squires in the Norman vale of Cotentin, to kinghood in
+the richest island of the southern sea. The Norse adventurers became
+Sultans of an Oriental capital. The sea-robbers assumed together
+with the sceptre the culture of an Arabian court. The marauders
+whose armies burned Rome, received at papal hands the mitre and
+dalmatic as symbols of ecclesiastical jurisdiction.[1] The brigands
+who on their first appearance in Italy had pillaged stables and
+farmyards to supply their needs, lived to mate their daughters with
+princes and to sway the politics of Europe with gold. The
+freebooters, whose skill consisted in the use of sword and shield,
+whose brains were vigorous in strategy or statecraft, and whose
+pleasures were confined to the hunting-field and the wine-cup,
+raised villas like the Zisa and encrusted the cathedral of Monreale
+with mosaics. Finally, while the race was yet vigorous, after giving
+two heroes to the first Crusade, it transmitted its titles, its
+temper, and its blood to the great Emperor, who was destined to
+fight out upon the battlefield of Italy the strife of Empire against
+Papacy, and to bequeath to mediaeval Europe the tradition of
+cosmopolitan culture. The physical energy of this brood of heroes
+was such as can scarcely be paralleled in history. Tancred de
+Hauteville begat two families by different wives. Of his children
+twelve were sons; two of whom stayed with their father in Normandy,
+while ten sought fame and found a kingdom in the south. Of these,
+William Iron Arm, the first Count of Apulia; Robert Guiscard, who
+united Calabria and Apulia under one dukedom, and carried victorious
+arms against both Emperors of East and West; and Roger the Great
+Count, who added Sicily to the conquests of the Normans and
+bequeathed the kingdom of South Italy to his son, rose to the
+highest name. But all the brothers shared the great qualities of the
+house; and two of them, Humphrey and Drogo, also wore a coronet.
+Large of limb and stout of heart, persevering under difficulties,
+crafty yet gifted with the semblance of sincerity, combining the
+piety of pilgrims with the morals of highwaymen, the sturdiness of
+barbarians with the plasticity of culture, eloquent in the
+council-chamber and the field, dear to their soldiers for their
+bravery and to women for their beauty, equally eminent as generals
+and as rulers, restrained by no scruples but such as policy
+suggested, restless in their energy, yet neither fickle nor rash,
+comprehensive in their views, but indefatigable in detail, these
+lions among men were made to conquer in the face of overwhelming
+obstacles, and to hold their conquests with a grasp of iron. What
+they wrought, whether wisely or not for the ultimate advantage of
+Italy, endures to this day, while the work of so many emperors,
+republics, and princes has passed and shifted like the scenes in a
+pantomime. Through them the Greeks, the Lombards, and the Moors were
+extinguished in the south. The Papacy was checked in its attempt to
+found a province of S. Peter below the Tiber. The republics of
+Naples, Gaeta, Amalfi, which might have rivalled perchance with
+Milan, Genoa, and Florence, were subdued to a master's hand. In
+short, to the Normans Italy owed that kingdom of the Two Sicilies
+which formed one-third of her political balance, and which proved
+the cause of all her most serious revolutions.
+
+    [1] King Roger in the mosaics of the Martorana Church at
+    Palermo wears the dalmatic, and receives his crown from
+    the hands of Christ.
+
+Roger, the youngest of the Hauteville family, and the founder of the
+kingdom of Sicily, showed by his untamable spirit and sound
+intellect that his father's vigour remained unexhausted. Each of
+Tancred's sons was physically speaking a masterpiece, and the last
+was the prime work of all. This Roger, styled the Great Count, begat
+a second Roger, the first King of Sicily, whose son and grandson,
+both named William, ruled in succession at Palermo. With them the
+direct line of the house of Hauteville expired. It would seem as if
+the energy and fertility of the stock had been drained by its
+efforts in the first three generations. Constance, the heiress of
+the family, who married Henry VI. and gave birth to the Emperor
+Frederick II., was daughter of King Roger, and therefore third in
+descent from Tancred. Drawing her blood more immediately from the
+parent stem, she thus transmitted to the princes of the race of
+Hohenstauffen the vigour of her Norman ancestry unweakened. This was
+a circumstance of no small moment in the history of Europe. Upon the
+fierce and daring Suabian stem were grafted the pertinacity, the
+cunning, the versatility of the Norman adventurers. Young Frederick,
+while strong and subtle enough to stand for himself against the
+world, was so finely tempered by the blended strains of his
+parentage that he received the polish of an Oriental education
+without effeminacy. Called upon to administer the affairs of
+Germany, to govern Italy, to contend with the Papacy, and to settle
+by arms and treaties the great Oriental question of his days,
+Frederick, cosmopolitan from the cradle, was equal to the task. Had
+Europe been but ready, the Renaissance would have dated from his
+reign, and a universal empire, if not of political government, yet
+of intellectual culture, might have been firmly instituted.
+
+Of the personal appearance of the Norman chiefs--their fair hair,
+clear eyes, and broad shoulders--we hear much from the chroniclers.
+One minutely studied portrait will serve to bring the whole race
+vividly before us. Bohemond, Prince of Tarentum, the son of Robert
+Guiscard, and first cousin to Tancred of Montferrat, was thus
+described by Anna Comnena, who saw him at her father's court during
+the first Crusade: 'Neither amongst our own nation (the Greeks), nor
+amongst foreigners, is there in our age a man equal to Bohemond. His
+presence dazzled the eyes, as his reputation the fancy. He was one
+cubit taller than the tallest man known. In his waist he was thin,
+but broad in his shoulders and chest, without being either too thin
+or too fat. His arms were strong, his hands full and large, his feet
+firm and solid. He stooped a little, but through habit only, and not
+on account of any deformity. He was fair, but on his cheeks there
+was an agreeable mixture of vermilion. His hair was not loose over
+his shoulders, according to the fashion of the barbarians, but was
+cut above his ears. His eyes were blue, and full of wrath and
+fierceness. His nostrils were large, inasmuch as having a wide chest
+and a great heart, his lungs required an unusual quantity of air to
+moderate the warmth of his blood. His handsome face had in itself
+something gentle and softening, but the height of his person and the
+fierceness of his looks had something wild and terrible. He was more
+dreadful in his smiles than others in their rage.' When we read this
+description, remembering the romance of Bohemond's ancestry and his
+own life, we do not wonder at the tales of chivalry. Those 'knights
+of Logres and of Lyoness, Lancelot or Pelleas or Pellenore,' with
+whose adventures our tawny-haired magnificent Plantagenets amused
+their leisure, become realities. The manly beauty, described by the
+Byzantine princess in words which seem to betray a more than common
+interest in her handsome foe, was hereditary in the house of
+Hauteville. They transmitted it to the last of the Suabian dynasty,
+to Manfred and Conradin, and to the king Enzio, whose long golden
+hair fell down from his shoulders to his saddle-bow as he rode, a
+captive, into Bologna.
+
+The story of the Norman conquest is told by two chroniclers--William
+of Apulia, who received his materials from Robert Guiscard, and
+Godfrey Malaterra, who wrote down the oral narrative of Roger. Thus
+we possess what is tantamount to personal memoirs of the Norman
+chiefs. Nevertheless, a veil of legendary romance obscures the first
+appearance of the Scandinavian warriors upon the scene of history.
+William of Apulia tells how, in the course of a pilgrimage to S.
+Michael's shrine on Monte Gargano, certain knights of Normandy were
+accosted by a stranger of imposing aspect, who persuaded them to
+draw their swords in the quarrel of the Lombard towns of South Italy
+against the Greeks. This man was Melo of Bari. Whether his
+invitation were so theatrically conveyed or not, it is probable that
+the Norsemen made their first acquaintance with Apulia on a
+pilgrimage to the Italian Michael's mount; and it is certain that
+Melo, whom we dimly descry as a patriot of enlarged views and
+indomitable constancy, provided them with arms and horses, raised
+troops in Salerno and Benevento to assist them, and directed them
+against the Greeks. This happened in 1017. Twelve years later we
+find the town of Aversa built and occupied by Normans under the
+control of their Count Rainulf; while another band, headed by
+Ardoin, a Lombard of Milan, lived at large upon the country, selling
+its services to the Byzantine Greeks. In the anarchy of Southern
+Italy at this epoch, when the decaying Empire of the East was
+relaxing its hold upon the Apulian provinces, when the Papacy was
+beginning to lift up its head after the ignominy of Theodora and
+Marozia, and the Lombard power was slowly dissolving upon its
+ill-established foundations, the Norman adventurers pursued a policy
+which, however changeful, was invariably self-advantageous. On
+whatever side they fought, they took care that the profits of war
+should accrue to their own colony. Quarrel as they might among
+themselves, they were always found at one against a common foe. And
+such was their reputation in the field, that the hardiest soldiers
+errant of all nations joined their standard. Thus it fell out that
+when Ardoin and his Normans had helped Maniaces to wrest the eastern
+districts of Sicily from the Moors, they returned, upon an insult
+offered by the Greek general, to extend the right hand of fellowship
+to Rainulf and his Normans of Aversa. 'Why should you stay here like
+a rat in his hole, when with our help you might rule those fertile
+plains, expelling the women in armour who keep guard over them?' The
+agreement of Ardoin and Rainulf formed the basis of the future
+Norman power. Their companies joined forces. Melfi was chosen as the
+centre of their federal government. The united Norman colony elected
+twelve chiefs or counts of equal authority; and henceforth they
+thought only of consolidating their ascendency over the effete races
+which had hitherto pretended to employ their arms. The genius of
+their race and age, however, was unfavourable to federations. In a
+short time the ablest man among them, the true king, by right of
+personal vigour and mental cunning, showed himself. It was at this
+point that the house of Hauteville rose to the altitude of its
+romantic destiny. William Iron Arm was proclaimed Count of Apulia.
+Two of his brothers succeeded him in the same dignity. His
+half-brother, Robert Guiscard, imprisoned one Pope,[1] Leo IX., and
+wrested from another, Nicholas II., the title of Duke of Apulia and
+Calabria. By the help of his youngest brother, Roger, he gradually
+completed the conquest of Italy below the Tiber, and then addressed
+himself to the task of subduing Sicily. The Papacy, incapable of
+opposing the military vigour of the Northmen, was distracted between
+jealousy of their growing importance and desire to utilise them for
+its own advantage.[2] The temptation to employ these filial pirates
+as a catspaw for restoring Sicily to the bosom of the Church, was
+too strong to be resisted. In spite of many ebbs and flows of
+policy, the favour which the Popes accorded to the Normans gilded
+the might and cunning of the adventurers with the specious splendour
+of acknowledged sanctity. The time might come for casting off these
+powerful allies and adding their conquests to the patrimony of S.
+Peter. Meanwhile it costs nothing to give away what does not belong
+to one, particularly when by doing so a title to the same is
+gradually formed. So the Popes reckoned. Robert and Roger went forth
+with banners blessed by Rome to subjugate the island of the Greek
+and Moor.
+
+    [1] The Normans were lucky in getting hold of Popes. King
+    Roger caught Innocent II. at San Germano in 1139, and got
+    from him the confirmation of all his titles.
+
+    [2] Even the great Hildebrand wavered in his policy toward
+    Robert Guiscard. Having raised an army by the help of the
+    Countess Matilda in 1074, he excommunicated Robert and
+    made war against him. Robert proved more than his match in
+    force and craft; and Hildebrand had to confirm his title
+    as duke, and designate him Knight of S. Peter in 1080.
+    When Robert drove the Emperor Henry IV. from Rome, and
+    burned the city of the Coelian, Hildebrand retired with
+    his terrible defender to Salerno, and died there in 1085.
+    Robert and both Rogers were good sons of the Church,
+    deserving the titles of 'Terror of the faithless,' 'Sword
+    of the Lord drawn from the scabbard of Sicily,' as long as
+    they were suffered to pursue their own schemes of empire.
+    They respected the Pope's person and his demesne of
+    Benevento; they were largely liberal in donations to
+    churches and abbeys. But they did not suffer their piety
+    to interfere with their ambition.
+
+The honours of this conquest, paralleled for boldness only by the
+achievements of Cortes and Pizarro, belong to Roger. It is true that
+since the fall of the Kelbite dynasty Sicily had been shaken by
+anarchy and despotism, by the petty quarrels of princes and party
+leaders, and to some extent also by the invasion of Maniaces. Yet on
+the approach of Roger with a handful of Norman knights, 'the island
+was guarded,' to quote Gibbon's energetic phrase, 'to the water's
+edge.' For some years he had to content himself with raids and
+harrying excursions, making Messina, which he won from the Moors by
+the aid of their Christian serfs and vassals, the basis of his
+operations, and retiring from time to time across the Faro with
+booty to Reggio. The Mussulmans had never thoroughly subdued the
+north-eastern highlands of Sicily. Satisfied with occupying the
+whole western and southern sections of the island, with planting
+their government firmly at Palermo, destroying Syracuse, and
+establishing a military fort on the heights of Castro Giovanni, they
+had somewhat neglected the Christian populations of the Val Demone.
+Thus the key to Sicily upon the Italian side fell into the hands of
+the invaders. From Messina Roger advanced by Rametta and Centorbi to
+Troina, a hill-town raised high above the level of the sea, within
+view of the solemn blue-black pyramid of Etna. There he planted a
+garrison in 1062, two years after his first incursion into the
+island. The interval had been employed in marches and
+countermarches, descents upon the vale of Catania, and hurried
+expeditions as far as Girgenti, on the southern coast. One great
+battle is recorded beneath the walls of Castro Giovanni, when six
+hundred Norman knights, so say the chroniclers, engaged with fifteen
+thousand of the Arabian chivalry and one hundred thousand foot
+soldiers. However great the exaggeration of these numbers, it is
+certain that the Christians fought at fearful odds that day, and
+that all the eloquence of Roger, who wrought on their fanaticism in
+his speech before the battle, was needed to raise their courage to
+the sticking-point. The scene of the great rout of Saracens which
+followed, is in every respect memorable. Castro Giovanni, the old
+Enna of the Greeks and Romans, stands on the top of a precipitous
+mountain, two thousand feet above a plain which waves with corn. A
+sister height, Calascibetta, raised nearly to an equal altitude,
+keeps ward over the same valley; and from their summits the whole of
+Sicily is visible. Here in old days Demeter from her rock-built
+temple could survey vast tracts of hill and dale, breaking downwards
+to the sea and undulating everywhere with harvest. The much praised
+lake and vale of Enna[1] are now a desolate sulphur district, void
+of beauty, with no flowers to tempt Proserpine. Yet the landscape is
+eminently noble because of its breadth--bare naked hills stretching
+in every direction to the sea that girdles Sicily--peak rising above
+peak and town-capped eyrie over eyrie--while Etna, wreathed with
+snow, and purple with the peculiar colour of its coal-black lava
+seen through light-irradiated air, sleeps far off beneath a crown of
+clouds. Upon the cornfields in the centre of this landscape the
+multitudes of the Infidels were smitten hip and thigh by the handful
+of Christian warriors. Yet the victory was by no means a decisive
+one. The Saracens swarmed round the Norman fortress of Troina;
+where, during a severe winter, Roger and his young wife, Judith of
+Evreux, whom he had loved in Normandy, and who journeyed to marry
+him amid the din of battles, had but one cloak to protect them both
+from the cold. The traveller, who even in April has experienced the
+chill of a high-set Sicilian village, will not be inclined to laugh
+at the hardships revealed by this little incident. Yet the Normans,
+one and all, were stanch. A victory over their assailants in the
+spring gave them courage to push their arms as far as the river
+Himera and beyond the Simeto, while a defeat of fifty thousand
+Saracens by four hundred Normans at Cerami opened the way at last to
+Palermo. Reading of these engagements, we are led to remember how
+Gelon smote his Punic foes upon the Himera, and Timoleon arrayed
+Greeks by the ten against Carthaginians by the thousand on the
+Crimisus. The battlefields are scarcely altered; the combatants are
+as unequally matched, and represent analogous races. It is still the
+combat of a few heroic Europeans against the hordes of Asia. In the
+battle of Cerami it is said that S. George fought visibly on
+horseback before the Christian band, like that wide-winged
+chivalrous archangel whom Spinello Aretino painted beside Sant'
+Efeso in the press of men upon the walls of the Pisan Campo Santo.
+
+    [1] Cicero's description of Enna is still accurate: 'Enna
+    is placed in a very lofty and exposed situation, at the
+    top of which is a tableland and never-failing supply of
+    springs. The whole site is cut off from access, and
+    precipitous.' But when he proceeds to say, 'many groves
+    and lakes surround it and luxuriant flowers through all
+    the year,' we cannot follow him. The only quality which
+    Enna has not lost is the impregnable nature of its cliffs.
+    A few poplars and thorns are all that remain of its
+    forests. Did we not know that the myth of Demeter and
+    Persephone was a poem of seed-time and harvest, we might
+    be tempted, while sitting on the crags of Castro Giovanni
+    and looking toward the lake, to fancy that in old days a
+    village dependent upon Enna, and therefore called her
+    daughter, might have occupied the site of the lake, and
+    that this village might have been withdrawn into the earth
+    by the volcanic action which produced the cavity. Then
+    people would have said that Demeter had lost Persephone
+    and sought her vainly through all the cities of Sicily:
+    and if this happened in spring Persephone might well have
+    been thought to have been gathering flowers at the time
+    when Hades took her to himself. So easy and yet so
+    dangerous is it to rationalise a legend.
+
+The capture of Palermo cost the Normans another eight years, part of
+which was spent according to their national tactics in plundering
+expeditions, part in the subjugation of Catania and other districts,
+part in the blockade of the capital by sea and land. After the fall
+of Palermo, it only remained for Roger to reduce isolated
+cities--Taormina, Syracuse,[1] Girgenti, and Castro Giovanni--to his
+sway. The last-named and strongest hold of the Saracens fell into
+his hands by the treason of Ibn-Hamuud in 1087, and thus, after
+thirty years' continual effort, the two brothers were at last able
+to divide the island between them. The lion's share, as was due,
+fell to Roger, who styled himself Great Count of Sicily and
+Calabria. In 1098, Urban II., a politician of the school of Cluny,
+who well understood the scope of Hildebrand's plan for subjecting
+Europe to the Court of Rome, rewarded Roger for his zeal in the
+service of the Church with the title of Hereditary Apostolical
+Legate. The Great Count was now on a par with the most powerful
+monarchs of Europe. In riches he exceeded all; so that he was able
+to wed one daughter to the King of Hungary, another to Conrad, King
+of Italy, a third to Raimond, Count of Provence and Toulouse,
+dowering them all with imperial munificence.
+
+    [1] In this siege, as in that of the Athenians, and of the
+    Saracens 878 A.D., decisive engagements took place in the
+    great harbour.
+
+Hale and vigorous, his life was prolonged through a green old age
+until his seventieth year; when he died in 1101, he left two sons by
+his third wife, Adelaide. Roger, the younger of the two, destined to
+succeed his father, and (on the death of his cousin, William, Duke
+of Apulia, in 1127) to unite South Italy and Sicily under one crown,
+was only four years old at the death of the Great Count. Inheriting
+all the valour and intellectual qualities of his family, he rose to
+even higher honour than his predecessors. In 1130 he assumed the
+style of King of Sicily, no doubt with the political purpose of
+impressing his Mussulman subjects; and nine years later, when he
+took Innocent captive at San Germano, he forced from the
+half-willing pontiff a confirmation of this title as well as the
+investiture of Apulia, Calabria, and Capua. The extent of his sway
+is recorded in the line engraved upon his sword:--
+
+  Appulus et Calaber Siculus mihi servit et Afer.
+
+King Roger died in 1154, and bequeathed his kingdoms to his son
+William, surnamed the Bad; who in his turn left them to a William,
+called the Good, in 1166. The second William died in 1189,
+transmitting his possessions by will to Constance, wife of the
+Suabian emperor. These two Williams, the last of the Hauteville
+monarchs of Sicily, were not altogether unworthy of their Norman
+origin. William the Bad could rouse himself from the sloth of his
+seraglio to head an army; William the Good, though feeble in foreign
+policy, and no general, administered the state with clemency and
+wisdom.
+
+Sicily under the Normans offered the spectacle of a singularly
+hybrid civilisation. Christians and Northmen, adopting the habits
+and imbibing the culture of their Mussulman subjects, ruled a mixed
+population of Greeks, Arabs, Berbers, and Italians. The language of
+the princes was French; that of the Christians in their territory,
+Greek and Latin; that of their Mahommedan subjects, Arabic. At the
+same time the Scandinavian Sultans of Palermo did not cease to play
+an active part in the affairs, both civil and ecclesiastical, of
+Europe. The children of the Vikings, though they spent their leisure
+in harems, exercised, as hereditary Legates of the Holy See, a
+peculiar jurisdiction in the Church of Sicily. They dispensed
+benefices to the clergy, and assumed the mitre and dalmatic,
+together with the sceptre, and the crown, as symbols of their
+authority in Church as well as State. As a consequence of this
+confusion of nationalities in Sicily, we find French and English
+ecclesiastics[1] mingling at court with Moorish freedmen and
+Oriental odalisques, Apulian captains fraternising with Greek
+corsairs, Jewish physicians in attendance on the person of the
+prince, and Arabian poets eloquent in his praises. The very money
+with which Roger subsidised his Italian allies was stamped with
+Cuphic letters,[2] and there is reason to believe that the reproach
+against Frederick of being a false coiner arose from his adopting
+the Eastern device of plating copper pieces to pass for silver. The
+commander of Roger's navies and his chief minister of state was
+styled, according to Oriental usage, Emir or Ammiraglio. George of
+Antioch, who swept the shores of Africa, the Morea, and the Black
+Sea, in his service, was a Christian of the Greek Church, who had
+previously held an office of finance under Temin Prince of Mehdia.
+The workers in his silk factories were slaves from Thebes and
+Corinth. The pages of his palace were Sicilian or African eunuchs.
+His charters ran in Arabic as well as Greek and Latin. His jewellers
+engraved the rough gems of the Orient with Christian mottoes in
+Semitic characters.[3] His architects were Mussulmans who adapted
+their native style to the requirements of Christian ritual, and
+inscribed the walls of cathedrals with Catholic legends in the
+Cuphic language. The predominant characteristic of Palermo was
+Orientalism. Religious toleration was extended to the Mussulmans, so
+that the two creeds, Christian and Mahommedan, flourished side by
+side. The Saracens had their own quarters in the towns, their
+mosques and schools, and Cadis for the administration of petty
+justice. French and Italian women in Palermo adopted the Oriental
+fashions of dress. The administration of law and government was
+conducted on Eastern principles. In nothing had the Mussulmans shown
+greater genius than in their system of internal statecraft. Count
+Roger found a machinery of taxation in full working order, officers
+acquainted with the resources of the country, books and schedules
+constructed on the principles of strictest accuracy, a whole
+bureaucracy, in fact, ready to his use. By applying this machinery
+he became the richest potentate in Europe, at a time when the
+northern monarchs were dependent upon feudal aids and precarious
+revenues from crown lands. In the same way, the Saracens bequeathed
+to the Normans the court system, which they in turn had derived from
+the princes of Persia and the example of Constantinople. Roger found
+it convenient to continue that organisation of pages, chamberlains,
+ushers, secretaries, viziers, and masters of the wardrobe, invested
+each with some authority of state according to his rank, which
+confined the administration of an Eastern kingdom to the walls of
+the palace.[4] At Palermo Europe saw the first instance of a court
+not wholly unlike that which Versailles afterwards became. The
+intrigues which endangered the throne and liberty of William the
+Bad, and which perplexed the policy of William the Good, were
+court-conspiracies of a kind common enough at Constantinople. In
+this court life men of letters and erudition played a first part
+three centuries before Petrarch taught the princes of Italy to
+respect the pen of a poet.
+
+    [1] The English Gualterio Offamilio, or Walter of the
+    Mill, Archbishop of Palermo during the reign of William
+    the Good, by his intrigues brought about the match between
+    Constance and Henry VI. Richard Palmer at the same time
+    was Bishop of Syracuse. Stephen des Rotrous, a Frenchman
+    of the Counts of Perche, preceded Walter of the Mill in
+    the Arch See of Palermo.
+
+    [2] Frederick Barbarossa's soldiers are said to have
+    bidden the Romans: 'Take this German iron in change for
+    Arab gold. This pay your master gives you, and this is how
+    Franks win empire.'--_Amari_, vol. iii. p. 468.
+
+    [3] The embroidered skullcap of Constance of Aragon, wife
+    of Frederick II., in the sacristy of the cathedral at
+    Palermo, is made of gold thread thickly studded with
+    pearls and jewels--rough sapphires and carbuncles, among
+    which may be noticed a red cornelian engraved in Arabic
+    with this sentence, 'In Christ, God, I put my hope.'
+
+    [4] The Arabic title of _Kaid_, which originally was given
+    to a subordinate captain of the guard, took a wide
+    significance at the Norman Court. Latinised to _gaytus_,
+    and Grecised under the form of [Greek: kaitos], it
+    frequently occurs in chronicles and diplomas to denote a
+    high minister of state. Matteo of Ajello, who exercised so
+    powerful an influence over the policy of William the Good,
+    heading the Mussulman and national party against the great
+    ecclesiastics who were intriguing to draw Sicily into the
+    entanglements of European diplomacy, was a Kaid. Matteo
+    favoured the cause of Tancred, Walter of the Mill espoused
+    that of the Germans, during the war of succession which
+    followed upon William's death. The barons of the realm had
+    to range themselves under these two leaders--to such an
+    extent were the affairs of state in Sicily within the
+    grasp of courtiers and churchmen.
+
+King Roger, of whom the court geographer Edrisi writes that 'he did
+more sleeping than any other man waking,' was surrounded during his
+leisure moments, beneath the palm-groves of Favara, with musicians,
+historians, travellers, mathematicians, poets, and astrologers of
+Oriental breeding. At his command Ptolemy's Optics were translated
+into Latin from the Arabic. The prophecies of the Erythrean Sibyl
+were rendered accessible in the same way. His respect for the occult
+sciences was proved by his disinterring the bones of Virgil from
+their resting-place at Posilippo, and placing them in the Castel
+dell' Uovo in order that he might have access through necromancy to
+the spirit of the Roman wizard. It may be remembered in passing,
+that Palermo in one of her mosques already held suspended between
+earth and air the supposed relics of Aristotle. Such were the saints
+of modern culture in its earliest dawning. While Venice was robbing
+Alexandria of the body of S. Mark, Palermo and Naples placed
+themselves beneath the protection of a philosopher and a poet. But
+Roger's greatest literary work was the compilation of a treatise of
+universal geography. Fifteen years were devoted to the task; and the
+manuscript, in Arabic, drawn up by the philosopher Edrisi, appeared
+only six weeks before the king's death in 1154. This book, called
+'The Book of Roger, or the Delight of whoso loves to make the
+Circuit of the World,' was based upon the previous labours of twelve
+geographers, classical and Mussulman. But aiming at greater accuracy
+than could be obtained by a merely literary compilation, Roger
+caused pilgrims, travellers, and merchants of all countries to be
+assembled for conference and examination before him. Their accounts
+were sifted and collated. Edrisi held the pen while Roger
+questioned. Measurements and distances were carefully compared; and
+a vast silver disc was constructed, on which all the seas, islands,
+continents, plains, rivers, mountain ranges, cities, roads, and
+harbours of the known world were delineated. The text supplied an
+explanatory description of this map, with tables of the products,
+habits, races, religions, and qualities, both physical and moral, of
+all climates. The precious metal upon which the map was drawn proved
+its ruin, and the Geography remained in the libraries of Arab
+scholars. Yet this was one of the first great essays of practical
+exploration and methodical statistic, to which the genius of the
+Norseman and the Arab each contributed a quota. The Arabians, by
+their primitive nomadic habits, by the necessities of their system
+of taxation, by their predilection for astrology, by their
+experience as pilgrims, merchants, and poets errant, were specially
+qualified for the labour of geographical investigation. Roger
+supplied the unbounded curiosity and restless energy of his
+Scandinavian temper, the kingly comprehensive intellect of his race,
+and the authority of a prince who was powerful enough to compel the
+service of qualified collaborators.
+
+The architectural works of the Normans in Palermo reveal the same
+ascendency of Arab culture. San Giovanni degli Eremiti, with its low
+white rounded domes, is nothing more or less than a little mosque
+adapted to the rites of Christians.[1] The country palaces of the
+Zisa and the Cuba, built by the two Williams, retain their ancient
+Moorish character. Standing beneath the fretted arches of the hall
+of the Zisa, through which a fountain flows within a margin of
+carved marble, and looking on the landscape from its open porch, we
+only need to reconstruct in fancy the green gardens and
+orange-groves, where fair-haired Normans whiled away their hours
+among black-eyed odalisques and graceful singing boys from Persia.
+Amid a wild tangle of olive and lemon trees overgrown with scarlet
+passion-flowers, the pavilion of the Cubola, built of hewn stone and
+open at each of its four sides, still stands much as it stood when
+William II. paced through flowers from his palace of the Cuba, to
+enjoy the freshness of the evening by the side of its fountain. The
+views from all these Saracenic villas over the fruitful valley of
+the Golden Horn, and the turrets of Palermo, and the mountains and
+the distant sea, are ineffably delightful. When the palaces were
+new--when the gilding and the frescoes still shone upon their
+honeycombed ceilings, when their mosaics glittered in noonday
+twilight, and their amber-coloured masonry was set in shade of pines
+and palms, and the cool sound of rivulets made music in their courts
+and gardens, they must have well deserved their Arab titles of
+'Sweet Waters' and 'The Glory' and 'The Paradise of Earth.'
+
+    [1] Tradition asserts that the tocsin of this church gave
+    the signal in Palermo to the massacre of the Sicilian
+    Vespers.
+
+But the true splendour of Palermo, that which makes this city one of
+the most glorious of the south, is to be sought in its churches--in
+the mosaics of the Cappella Palatina founded by King Roger, in the
+vast aisles and cloisters of Monreale built by King William the Good
+at the instance of his Chancellor Matteo,[1] in the Cathedral of
+Palermo begun by Offamilio, and in the Martorana dedicated by George
+the Admiral. These triumphs of ecclesiastical architecture, none the
+less splendid because they cannot be reduced to rule or assigned to
+any single style, were the work of Saracen builders assisted by
+Byzantine, Italian, and Norman craftsmen. The genius of Latin
+Christianity determined the basilica shape of the Cathedral of
+Monreale. Its bronze doors were wrought by smiths of Trani and Pisa.
+Its walls were incrusted with the mosaics of Constantinople. The
+woodwork of its roof, and the emblazoned patterns in porphyry and
+serpentine and glass and smalto, which cover its whole surface, were
+designed by Oriental decorators. Norman sculptors added their
+dog-tooth and chevron to the mouldings of its porches; Greeks,
+Frenchmen, and Arabs may have tried their skill in turn upon the
+multitudinous ornaments of its cloister capitals. 'The like of which
+church,' said Lucius III. in 1182, 'hath not been constructed by any
+king even from ancient times, and such an one as must compel all men
+to admiration.' These words remain literally and emphatically true.
+Other cathedrals may surpass that of Monreale in sublimity,
+simplicity, bulk, strength, or unity of plan. None can surpass it in
+the strange romance with which the memory of its many artificers
+invests it. None again can exceed it in richness and glory, in the
+gorgeousness of a thousand decorative elements subservient to one
+controlling thought. 'It is evident,' says Fergusson in his 'History
+of Architecture,' 'that all the architectural features in the
+building were subordinate in the eyes of the builders to the mosaic
+decorations, which cover every part of the interior, and are in fact
+the glory and the pride of the edifice, and alone entitle it to rank
+among the finest of mediaeval churches.' The whole of the Christian
+history is depicted in this series of mosaics; but on first
+entering, one form alone compels attention. The semi-dome of the
+eastern apse above the high altar is entirely filled with a gigantic
+half-length figure of Christ. He raises His right hand to bless, and
+with His left holds an open book on which is written in Greek and
+Latin, 'I am the Light of the world.' His face is solemn and severe,
+rather than mild or piteous; and round His nimbus runs the legend
+[Greek: 'Iesous Christos ho pantokrator]. Below Him on a smaller
+scale are ranged the archangels and the mother of the Lord, who
+holds the child upon her knees. Thus Christ appears twice upon this
+wall, once as the Omnipotent Wisdom, the Word by whom all things
+were made, and once as God deigning to assume a shape of flesh and
+dwell with men. The magnificent image of supreme Deity seems to fill
+with a single influence and to dominate the whole building. The
+house with all its glory is His. He dwells there like Pallas in her
+Parthenon or Zeus in his Olympian temple. To left and right over
+every square inch of the cathedral blaze mosaics, which portray the
+story of God's dealings with the human race from the Creation
+downwards, together with those angelic beings and saints who
+symbolise each in his own degree some special virtue granted to
+mankind. The walls of the fane are therefore an open book of
+history, theology, and ethics for all men to read.
+
+    [1] Matteo of Ajello induced William to found an
+    archbishopric at Monreale in order to spite his rival
+    Offamilio.
+
+The superiority of mosaics over fresco as an architectural adjunct
+on this gigantic scale is apparent at a glance in Monreale.
+Permanency of splendour and glowing richness of tone are all on the
+side of the mosaics. Their true rival is painted glass. The jewelled
+churches of the south are constructed for the display of coloured
+surfaces illuminated by sunlight falling on them from narrow
+windows, just as those of the north--Rheims, for example, or Le
+Mans--are built for the transmission of light through a variegated
+medium of transparent hues. The painted windows of a northern
+cathedral find their proper counterpart in the mosaics of the south.
+The Gothic architect strove to obtain the greatest amount of
+translucent surface. The Byzantine builder directed his attention to
+securing just enough light for the illumination of his glistening
+walls. The radiance of the northern church was similar to that of
+flowers or sunset clouds or jewels. The glory of the southern temple
+was that of dusky gold and gorgeous needlework. The north needed
+acute brilliancy as a contrast to external greyness. The south found
+rest from the glare and glow of noonday in these sombre splendours.
+Thus Christianity, both of the south and of the north, decked her
+shrines with colour. Not so the Paganism of Hellas. With the Greeks,
+colour, though used in architecture, was severely subordinated to
+sculpture; toned and modified to a calculated harmony with actual
+nature, it did not, as in a Christian church, create a world beyond
+the world, a paradise of supersensual ecstasy, but remained within
+the limits of the known. Light falling upon carved forms of gods and
+heroes, bathing clear-cut columns and sharp basreliefs in simple
+lustre, was enough for the Phoebean rites of Hellas. Though we
+know that red and blue and green and gilding were employed to
+accentuate the mouldings of Greek temples, yet neither the gloomy
+glory of mosaics nor the gemmed fretwork of storied windows was
+needed to attune the souls of Hellenic worshippers to devotion.
+
+Less vast than Monreale, but even more beautiful, because the charm
+of mosaic increases in proportion as the surface it covers may be
+compared to the interior of a casket, is the Cappella Palatina of
+the royal palace in Palermo. Here, again, the whole design and
+ornament are Arabo-Byzantine. Saracenic pendentives with Cuphic
+legends incrust the richly painted ceiling of the nave. The roofs of
+the apses and the walls are coated with mosaics, in which the Bible
+history, from the dove that brooded over Chaos to the lives of S.
+Peter and S. Paul, receives a grand though formal presentation.
+Beneath the mosaics are ranged slabs of grey marble, edged and
+divided with delicate patterns of inserted glass, resembling drapery
+with richly embroidered fringes. The floor is inlaid with circles of
+serpentine and porphyry encased in white marble, and surrounded by
+winding bands of Alexandrine work. Some of these patterns are
+restricted to the five tones of red, green, white, black, and pale
+yellow. Others add turquoise blue, and emerald, and scarlet, and
+gold. Not a square inch of the surface--floor, roof, walls, or
+cupola--is free from exquisite gemmed work of precious marbles. A
+candelabrum of fanciful design, combining lions devouring men and
+beasts, cranes, flowers, and winged genii, stands by the pulpit.
+Lamps of chased silver hang from the roof. The cupola blazes with
+gigantic archangels, stationed in a ring beneath the supreme figure
+and face of Christ. Some of the Ravenna churches are more
+historically interesting, perhaps, than this little masterpiece of
+the mosaic art. But none is so rich in detail and lustrous in
+effect. It should be seen at night, when the lamps are lighted in a
+pyramid around the sepulchre of the dead Christ on Holy Thursday,
+when partial gleams strike athwart the tawny gold of the arches, and
+fall upon the profile of a priest declaiming in voluble Italian to a
+listening crowd.
+
+Such are a few of the monuments which still remain to show of what
+sort was the mixed culture of Normans, Saracens, Italians, and
+Greeks at Palermo. In scenes like these the youth of Frederick II.
+was passed:--for at the end, while treating of Palermo, we are bound
+to think again of the Emperor who inherited from his German father
+the ambition of the Hohenstauffens, and from his Norman mother the
+fair fields and Oriental traditions of Sicily. The strange history
+of Frederick--an intellect of the eighteenth century born out of
+date, a cosmopolitan spirit in the age of Saint Louis, the crusader
+who conversed with Moslem sages on the threshold of the Holy
+Sepulchre, the Sultan of Lucera[1] who persecuted Paterini while he
+respected the superstition of Saracens, the anointed successor of
+Charlemagne, who carried his harem with him to the battlefields of
+Lombardy, and turned Infidels loose upon the provinces of Christ's
+Vicar--would be inexplicable, were it not that Palermo still reveals
+in all her monuments the _genius loci_ which gave spiritual nurture
+to this phoenix among kings. From his Mussulman teachers Frederick
+derived the philosophy to which he gave a vogue in Europe. From his
+Arabian predecessors he learnt the arts of internal administration
+and finance, which he transmitted to the princes of Italy. In
+imitation of Oriental courts, he adopted the practice of verse
+composition, which gave the first impulse to Italian literature. His
+Grand Vizier, Piero Delle Vigne, set an example to Petrarch, not
+only by composing the first sonnet in Italian, but also by showing
+to what height a low-born secretary versed in art and law might
+rise. In a word, the zeal for liberal studies, the luxury of life,
+the religious indifferentism, the bureaucratic system of state
+government, which mark the age of the Italian Renaissance, found
+their first manifestation within the bosom of the Middle Ages in
+Frederick. While our King John was signing Magna Charta, Frederick
+had already lived long enough to comprehend, at least in outline,
+what is meant by the spirit of modern culture.[2] It is true that
+the so-called Renaissance followed slowly and by tortuous paths upon
+the death of Frederick. The Church obtained a complete victory over
+his family, and succeeded in extinguishing the civilisation of
+Sicily. Yet the fame of the Emperor who transmitted questions of
+sceptical philosophy to Arab sages, who conversed familiarly with
+men of letters, who loved splendour and understood the arts of
+refined living, survived both long and late in Italy. His power, his
+wealth, his liberality of soul and lofty aspirations, formed the
+theme of many a tale and poem. Dante places him in hell among the
+heresiarchs; and truly the splendour of his supposed infidelity
+found for him a goodly following. Yet Dante dated the rise of
+Italian literature from the blooming period of the Sicilian court.
+Frederick's unorthodoxy proved no drawback to his intellectual
+influence. More than any other man of mediaeval times he contributed,
+if only as the memory of a mighty name, to the progress of civilised
+humanity.
+
+    [1] Charles of Anjou gave this nickname to Manfred, who
+    carried on the Siculo-Norman tradition. Frederick, it may
+    here be mentioned, had transferred his Saracen subjects of
+    the vale of Mazara to Lucera in the Capitanate. He
+    employed them as trusty troops in his warfare with the
+    Popes and preaching friars. Nothing shows the confusion of
+    the century in matters ecclesiastical and religious more
+    curiously than that Frederick, who conducted a crusade and
+    freed the Holy Sepulchre, should not only have tolerated
+    the religion of Mussulmans, but also have armed them
+    against the Head of the Church. What we are apt to regard
+    as religious questions really belonged at that period to
+    the sphere of politics.
+
+    [2] It is curious to note that in this year 1215, the date
+    of Magna Charta, Frederick took the Cross at
+    Aix-la-Chapelle.
+
+Let us take leave both of Frederick and of Palermo, that centre of
+converging influences which was his cradle, in the cathedral where
+he lies gathered to his fathers. This church, though its rich
+sunbrowned yellow[1] reminds one of the tone of Spanish buildings,
+is like nothing one has seen elsewhere. Here even more than at
+Monreale the eye is struck with a fusion of styles. The western
+towers are grouped into something like the clustered sheafs of the
+Caen churches: the windows present Saracenic arches: the southern
+porch is covered with foliated incrustations of a late and
+decorative Gothic style: the exterior of the apse combines Arabic
+inlaid patterns of black and yellow with the Greek honeysuckle: the
+western door adds Norman dog-tooth and chevron to the Saracenic
+billet. Nowhere is any one tradition firmly followed. The whole
+wavers and yet is beautiful--like the immature eclecticism of the
+culture which Frederick himself endeavoured to establish in his
+southern kingdoms. Inside there is no such harmony of blended
+voices: all the strange tongues, which speak together on the
+outside, making up a music in which the far North, and ancient
+Byzance, and the delicate East sound each a note, are hushed. The
+frigid silence of the Palladian style reigns there--simple indeed
+and dignified, but lifeless as the century in which it flourished.
+
+    [1] Nearly all cities have their own distinctive colour.
+    That of Venice is a pearly white suggestive of every hue
+    in delicate abeyance, and that of Florence is a sober
+    brown. Palermo displays a rich yellow ochre passing at the
+    deepest into orange, and at the lightest into primrose.
+    This is the tone of the soil, of sun-stained marble, and
+    of the rough ashlar masonry of the chief buildings.
+    Palermo has none of the glaring whiteness of Naples, nor
+    yet of that particoloured gradation of tints which adds
+    gaiety to the grandeur of Genoa.
+
+Yet there, in a side chapel near the western door, stand the
+porphyry sarcophagi which shrine the bones of the Hautevilles and
+their representatives. There sleeps King Roger--'Dux strenuus et
+primus Rex Siciliae'--with his daughter Constance in her purple chest
+beside him. Henry VI. and Frederick II. and Constance of Aragon
+complete the group, which surpasses for interest all sepulchral
+monuments--even the tombs of the Scaligers at Verona--except only,
+perhaps, the statues of the nave of Innspruck. Very sombre and
+stately are these porphyry resting-places of princes born in the
+purple, assembled here from lands so distant--from the craggy
+heights of Hohenstauffen, from the green orchards of Cotentin, from
+the dry hills of Aragon. They sleep, and the centuries pass by. Rude
+hands break open the granite lids of their sepulchres, to find
+tresses of yellow hair and fragments of imperial mantles,
+embroidered with the hawks and stags the royal hunter loved. The
+church in which they lie changes with the change of taste in
+architecture and the manners of successive ages. But the huge stone
+arks remain unmoved, guarding their freight of mouldering dust
+beneath gloomy canopies of stone that temper the sunlight as it
+streams from the chapel windows.
+
+
+
+
+_SYRACUSE AND GIRGENTI_
+
+
+The traveller in Sicily is constantly reminded of classical history
+and literature. While tossing, it may be, at anchor in the port of
+Trapani, and wondering when the tedious Libeccio will release him,
+he must perforce remember that here AEneas instituted the games for
+Anchises. Here Mnestheus and Gyas and Sergestus and Cloanthus raced
+their galleys: on yonder little isle the Centaur struck; and that
+was the rock which received the dripping Menoetes:--
+
+  Illum et labentem Teucri et risere natantem,
+  Et salsos rident revomentem pectore fluctus.
+
+Or crossing a broken bridge at night in the lumbering diligence,
+guarded by infantry with set bayonets, and wondering on which side
+of the ravine the brigands are in ambush, he suddenly calls to mind
+that this torrent was the ancient Halycus, the border between Greeks
+and Carthaginians, established of old, and ratified by Timoleon
+after the battle of the Crimisus. Among the bare grey hills of
+Segeste his thoughts revert to that strange story told by Herodotus
+of Philippus, the young soldier of Crotona, whose beauty was so
+great, that when the Segesteans found him slain among their foes,
+they raised the corpse and burned it on a pyre of honour, and built
+a hero's temple over the urn that held his ashes. The first sight of
+Etna makes us cry with Theocritus, [Greek: Aitna mater
+ema ... polydendreos Aitna]. The solemn heights of Castro
+Giovanni bring lines of Ovid to our lips:--
+
+  Haud procul Hennaeis lacus est a moenibu altae
+  Nomine Pergus aquae. Non illo plura Caystros
+  Carmina cygnorum labentibus audit in undis.
+  Silva coronat aquas, cingens latus omne; suisque
+  Frondibus ut velo Phoebeos summovet ignes.
+  Frigora dant rami, Tyrios humus humida flores.
+  Perpetnum ver est.
+
+We look indeed in vain for the leafy covert and the purple flowers
+that tempted Proserpine. The place is barren now: two solitary
+cypress-trees mark the road which winds downwards from a desolate
+sulphur mine, and the lake is clearly the crater of an extinct
+volcano. Yet the voices of old poets are not mute. 'The rich
+Virgilian rustic measure' recalls a long-since buried past. Even
+among the wavelets of the Faro we remember Homer, scanning the shore
+if haply somewhere yet may linger the wild fig-tree which saved
+Ulysses from the whirlpool of Charybdis. At any rate we cannot but
+exclaim with Goethe, 'Now all these coasts, gulfs, and creeks,
+islands and peninsulas, rocks and sand-banks, wooded hills, soft
+meadows, fertile fields, neat gardens, hanging grapes, cloudy
+mountains, constant cheerfulness of plains, cliffs and ridges, and
+the surrounding sea, with such manifold variety are present in my
+mind; now is the "Odyssey" for the first time become to me a living
+world.'
+
+But rich as the whole of Sicily may be in classical associations,
+two places, Syracuse and Girgenti, are pre-eminent for the power of
+bringing the Greek past forcibly before us. Their interest is of two
+very different kinds. Girgenti still displays the splendour of
+temples placed upon a rocky cornice between sea and olive-groves.
+Syracuse has nothing to show but the scene of world-important
+actions. Yet the great deeds recorded by Thucydides, the conflict
+between eastern and western Hellas which ended in the annihilation
+of the bright, brief, brilliant reality of Athenian empire, remain
+so clearly written on the hills and harbours and marshlands of
+Syracuse that no place in the world is topographically more
+memorable. The artist, whether architect, or landscape-painter, or
+poet, finds full enjoyment at Girgenti. The historian must be
+exacting indeed in his requirements if he is not satisfied with
+Syracuse.
+
+What has become of Syracuse, 'the greatest of Greek cities and the
+fairest of all cities' even in the days of Cicero? Scarcely one
+stone stands upon another of all those temples and houses. The five
+towns which were included by the walls have now shrunk to the little
+island which the first settlers named Ortygia, where the sacred
+fountain of Arethusa seemed to their home-loving hearts to have
+followed them from Hellas.[1] Nothing survives but a few columns of
+Athene's temple built into a Christian church, with here and there
+the marble masonry of a bath or the Roman stonework of an
+amphitheatre. There are not even any mounds or deep deposits of
+rubble mixed with pottery to show here once a town had been.[2]
+_Etiam periere ruinae._ The vast city, devastated for the last time
+by the Saracens in 878 A.D., has been reduced to dust and swept by
+the scirocco into the sea. This is the explanation of its utter
+ruin. The stone of Syracuse is friable and easily disintegrated. The
+petulant moist wind of the south-east corrodes its surface; and when
+it falls, it crumbles to powder. Here, then, the elements have had
+their will unchecked by such sculptured granite as in Egypt resists
+the mounded sand of the desert, or by such marble colonnades as in
+Athens have calmly borne the insults of successive sieges. What was
+hewn out of the solid rock--the semicircle of the theatre, the
+street of the tombs with its deeply dented chariot-ruts, the
+gigantic quarries from which the material of the metropolis was
+scooped, the catacombs which burrow for miles underground--alone
+prove how mighty must have been the Syracuse of Dionysius. Truly
+'the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals
+with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity.'
+Standing on the beach of the Great Harbour or the Bay of Thapsus, we
+may repeat almost word by word Antipater's solemn lament over
+Corinth:--
+
+  Where is thy splendour now, thy crown of towers,
+    Thy beauty visible to all men's eyes,
+    The gold and silver of thy treasuries,
+  Thy temples of blest gods, thy woven bowers
+  Where long-stoled ladies walked in tranquil hours,
+    Thy multitudes like stars that crowd the skies?
+    All, all are gone. Thy desolation lies
+  Bare to the night. The elemental powers
+  Resume their empire: on this lonely shore
+    Thy deathless Nereids, daughters of the sea,
+    Wailing 'mid broken stones unceasingly,
+  Like halcyons when the restless south winds roar,
+  Sing the sad story of thy woes of yore:
+    These plunging waves are all that's left to thee.
+
+Time, however, though he devours his children, cannot utterly
+destroy either the written record of illustrious deeds or the
+theatre of their enactment. Therefore, with Thucydides in hand, we
+may still follow the events of that Syracusan siege which decided
+the destinies of Greece, and by the fall of Athens, raised Sparta,
+Macedonia, and finally Rome to the hegemony of the civilised world.
+
+    [1] The fountain of Arethusa, recently rescued from the
+    washerwomen of Syracuse, is shut off from the Great
+    Harbour by a wall and planted with papyrus. Taste has not
+    been displayed in the bear-pit architecture of its
+    circular enclosure.
+
+    [2] This is not strictly true of Achradina, where some
+    _debris_ may still be found worth excavating.
+
+There are few students of Thucydides and Grote who would not be
+surprised by the small scale of the cliffs, and the gentle incline
+of Epipolae--the rising ground above the town of Syracuse, upon the
+slope of which the principal operations of the Athenian siege took
+place.[1] Maps, and to some extent also the language of Thucydides,
+who talks of the [Greek: prosbaseis] or practicable approaches to
+Epipolae, and the [Greek: kremnoi], or precipices by which it was
+separated from the plain, would lead one to suppose that the whole
+region was on each hand rocky and abrupt. In reality it is extremely
+difficult to distinguish the rising ground of Epipolae upon the
+southern side from the plain, so very gradual is the line of ascent
+and so comparatively even is the rocky surface of the hill.
+Thucydides, in narrating the night attack of Demosthenes upon the
+lines of Gylippus (book vii. 43-45), lays stress upon the necessity
+of approaching Epipolae from the western side by Euryalus, and again
+asserts that during the hurried retreat of the Athenians great
+numbers died by leaping from the cliffs, while still more had to
+throw away their armour. At this time the Athenian army was encamped
+upon the shore of the Great Harbour, and held trenches and a wall
+that stretched from that side at least halfway across Epipolae. It
+seems therefore strange that, unless their movements were impeded by
+counterworks and lines of walls, of which we have no information,
+the troops of Demosthenes should not, at least in their retreat,
+have been able to pour down over the gentle descent of Epipolae
+toward the Anapus, instead of returning to Euryalus. Anyhow, we can
+scarcely discern cliffs of more than ten feet upon the southern
+slope of Epipolae, nor can we understand why the Athenians should
+have been forced to take these in their line of retreat. There must
+have been some artificial defences of which we read nothing, and of
+which no traces now remain, but which were sufficient to prevent
+them from choosing their ground. Slight difficulties of this kind
+raise the question whether the wonderful clearness of Thucydides in
+detail was really the result of personal observation, or whether his
+graphic style enabled him to give the appearance of scrupulous
+accuracy. I incline to think that the author of the sixth and
+seventh books of the History must have visited Syracuse, and that if
+we could see his own map of Epipolae, we should better be able to
+understand the difficulties of the backward night march of
+Demosthenes, by discovering that there was some imperative necessity
+for not descending, as seems natural, upon the open slope of the
+hill to the south. The position of Euryalus at the extreme point
+called Mongibellisi is clear enough. Here the ground, which has been
+continually rising from the plateau of Achradina (the northern
+suburb of Syracuse), comes to an abrupt finish. Between Mongibellisi
+and the Belvedere hill beyond there is a deep depression, and the
+slope to Euryalus either from the south or north is gradual. It was
+a gross piece of neglect on the part of Nikias not to have fortified
+this spot on his first investment of Epipolae, instead of choosing
+Labdalum, which, wherever we may place it, must have been lower down
+the hill to the east. For Euryalus is the key to Epipolae. It was
+here that Nikias himself ascended in the first instance, and that
+afterwards he permitted Gylippus to enter and raise the siege, and
+lastly that Demosthenes, by overpowering the insufficient Syracusan
+guard, got at night within the lines of the Spartan general. Thus
+the three most important movements of the siege were made upon
+Euryalus. Dionysius, when he enclosed Epipolae with walls, recognised
+the value of the point, and fortified it with the castle which
+remains, and to which, as Colonel Leake believes, Archimedes, at the
+order of Hiero II., made subsequent additions. This castle is one of
+the most interesting Greek ruins extant. A little repair would make
+it even now a substantial place of defence, according to Greek
+tactics. Its deep foss is cut in the solid rock, and furnished with
+subterranean magazines for the storage of provisions. The three
+piles of solid masonry on which the drawbridge rested, still stand
+in the centre of this ditch. The oblique grand entrance to the foss
+descends by a flight of well-cut steps. The rock itself over which
+the fort was raised is honeycombed with excavated passages for
+infantry and cavalry, of different width and height, so that one
+sort can be assigned to mounted horsemen and another to foot
+soldiers. The trap-doors which led from these galleries into the
+fortress are provided with rests for ladders that could be let down
+to help a sallying force or drawn up to impede an advancing enemy.
+The inner court for stabled horses and the stations for the
+catapults are still in tolerable preservation. Thus the whole
+arrangement of the stronghold can be traced not dimly but
+distinctly. Being placed on the left side of the chief gate of
+Epipolae, the occupants of the fort could issue to attack a foe
+advancing toward that gate in the rear. At the same time the
+subterranean galleries enabled them to pour out upon the other side,
+if the enemy had forced an entrance, while the minor passages and
+trap-doors provided a retreat in case the garrison were overpowered
+in one of their offensive operations. The view from Euryalus is
+extensive. To the left rises Etna, snowy, solitary, broadly vast,
+above the plain of Catania, the curving shore, Thapsus, and the sea.
+Syracuse itself, a thin white line between the harbour and the open
+sea, a dazzling streak between two blues, terminates the slope of
+Epipolae, and on the right hand stretch the marshes of Anapus rich
+with vines and hoary with olives.
+
+    [1] Epipolae is in shape a pretty regular isosceles
+    triangle, of which the apex is Mongibellisi or Euryalus,
+    and the base Achradina or the northern quarter of the
+    ancient city. Thucydides describes it as [Greek: chorion
+    apokremnou te kai hyper tes poleos euthus
+    keimenou ... exertetai gar to allo chorion kai mechri
+    tes poleos epiklines te esti kai epiphanes pan eiso' kai
+    onomasta hypo tos Syrakosion dia to epipoles tou allou
+    einai Epipolai] (vi. 96).
+
+By far the most interesting localities of Syracuse are the Great
+Harbour and the stone quarries. When the sluggish policy and faint
+heart of Nikias had brought the Athenians to the verge of ruin, when
+Gylippus had entered the besieged city, and Plemmyrium had been
+wrested from the invaders, and Demosthenes had failed in his attack
+upon Epipolae, and the blockading trenches had been finally
+evacuated, no hope remained for the armament of Athens except only
+in retreat by water. They occupied a palisaded encampment upon the
+shore of the harbour, between the mouth of the Anapus and the city;
+whence they attempted to force their way with their galleys to the
+open sea. Hitherto the Athenians had been supreme upon their own
+element; but now the Syracusans adopted tactics suited to the narrow
+basin in which the engagements had to take place. Building their
+vessels with heavy beaks, they crushed the lighter craft of the
+Athenians, which had no room for flank movements and rapid
+evolutions. A victory was thus obtained by the Syracusan navy; the
+harbour was blockaded with chains by the order of Gylippus; the
+Athenians were driven back to their palisades upon the fever-haunted
+shore. Their only chance seemed to depend upon a renewal of the
+sea-fight in the harbour. The supreme moment arrived. What remained
+of the Athenian fleet, in numbers still superior to that of their
+enemies, steered straight for the mouth of the harbour. The
+Syracusans advanced from the naval stations of Ortygia to meet them.
+The shore was thronged with spectators, Syracusans tremulous with
+the expectation of a decisive success, Athenians on the tenter-hooks
+of hope and dread. In a short time the harbour became a confused
+mass of clashing triremes; the water beaten into bloody surf by
+banks of oars; the air filled with shouts from the combatants and
+exclamations from the lookers-on: [Greek: olophurmos, boe, nikontes,
+kratoumenoi, alla hosa en megalo kinduno mega stratopedon polyeide
+anagkaizoito phthengesthai.] Then after a struggle, in which
+desperation gave energy to the Athenians, and ambitious hope
+inspired their foes with more than wonted vigour, the fleet of the
+Athenians was finally overwhelmed. The whole scene can be reproduced
+with wonderful distinctness; for the low shores of Plemmyrium, the
+city of Ortygia, the marsh of Lysimeleia, the hills above the
+Anapus, and the distant dome of Etna, are the same as they were upon
+that memorable day. Nothing has disappeared except the temple of
+Zeus Olympius and the buildings of Temenitis.
+
+What followed upon the night of that defeat is less easily realised.
+Thucydides, however, by one touch reveals the depth of despair to
+which the Athenians had sunk. They neglected to rescue the bodies of
+their dead from the Great Harbour, or to ask for a truce, according
+to hallowed Greek usage, in order that they might perform the
+funeral rites. To such an extent was the army demoralised. Meanwhile
+within the city the Syracusans kept high festival, honouring their
+patron Herakles, upon whose day it happened that the battle had been
+fought. Nikias neglected this opportunity of breaking up his camp
+and retiring unmolested into the interior of the island. When after
+the delay of two nights and a day he finally began to move, the
+Syracusans had blockaded the roads. How his own division capitulated
+by the blood-stained banks of the Asinarus after a six days' march
+of appalling misery, and how that of Demosthenes surrendered in the
+olive-field of Polyzelus, is too well known.
+
+One of the favourite excursions from modern Syracuse takes the
+traveller in a boat over the sandy bar of the Anapus, beneath the
+old bridge which joined the Helorine road to the city, and up the
+river to its junction with the Cyane. This is the ground traversed
+by the army first in their attempted flight and then in their return
+as captives to Syracuse. Few, perhaps, who visit the spot, think as
+much of that last act in a world-historical tragedy, as of the
+picturesque compositions made by arundo donax, castor-oil plant,
+yellow flags, and papyrus, on the river-banks and promontories. Like
+miniature palm-groves these water-weeds stand green and golden
+against the bright blue sky, feathering above the boat which slowly
+pushes its way through clinging reeds. The huge red oxen of Sicily
+in the marsh on either hand toss their spreading horns and canter
+off knee-deep in ooze. Then comes the fountain of Cyane, a broad
+round well of water, thirty feet in depth, but quite clear, so that
+you can see the pebbles at the bottom and fishes swimming to and fro
+among the weeds. Papyrus plants edge the pool; thick and tufted,
+they are exactly such as one sees carved or painted upon Egyptian
+architecture of the Ptolemaic period.
+
+With Thucydides still in hand, before quitting Syracuse we must
+follow the Athenian captives to their prison-grave. The Latomia de'
+Cappuccini is a place which it is impossible to describe in words,
+and of which no photographs give any notion. Sunk to the depth of a
+hundred feet below the level of the soil, with sides perpendicular
+and in many places as smooth as though the chisel had just passed
+over them, these vast excavations produce the impression of some
+huge subterranean gallery, widening here and there into spacious
+halls, the whole of which has been unroofed and opened to the air of
+heaven. It is a solemn and romantic labyrinth, where no wind blows
+rudely, and where orange-trees shoot upward luxuriantly to meet the
+light. The wild fig bursts from the living rock, mixed with
+lentisk-shrubs and pendent caper-plants. Old olives split the masses
+of fallen cliff with their tough, snakelike, slowly corded and
+compacted roots. Thin flames of pomegranate-flowers gleam amid
+foliage of lustrous green; and lemons drop unheeded from femininely
+fragile branches. There too the ivy hangs in long festoons, waving
+like tapestry to the breath of stealthy breezes; while under foot is
+a tangle of acanthus, thick curling leaves of glossiest green,
+surmounted by spikes of dull lilac blossoms. Wedges and columns and
+sharp teeth of the native rock rear themselves here and there in the
+midst of the open spaces to the sky, worn fantastically into notches
+and saws by the action of scirocco. A light yellow calcined by the
+sun to white is the prevailing colour of the quarries. But in shady
+places the limestone takes a curious pink tone of great beauty, like
+the interior of some sea-shells. The reflected lights too, and
+half-shadows in their scooped-out chambers, make a wonderful natural
+chiaroscuro. The whole scene is now more picturesque in a sublime
+and grandiose style than forbidding. There is even one spot planted
+with magenta-coloured mesembrianthemums of dazzling brightness; and
+the air is loaded with the drowsy perfume of lemon-blossoms. Yet
+this is the scene of a great agony. This garden was once the
+Gethsemane of a nation, where 9000 free men of the proudest city of
+Greece were brought by an unexampled stroke of fortune to slavery,
+shame, and a miserable end. Here they dwindled away, worn out by
+wounds, disease, thirst, hunger, heat by day and cold by night,
+heart-sickness, and the insufferable stench of putrefying corpses.
+The pupils of Socrates, the admirers of Euripides, the orators of
+the Pnyx, the athletes of the Lyceum, lovers and comrades and
+philosophers, died here like dogs; and the dames of Syracuse stood
+doubtless on those parapets above, and looked upon them like wild
+beasts. What the Gorgo of Theocritus might have said to her friend
+Praxinoe on the occasion would be the subject for an idyll _a la_
+Browning! How often, pining in those great glaring pits, which were
+not then curtained with ivy or canopied by olive-trees, must the
+Athenians have thought with vain remorse of their own Rhamnusian
+Nemesis, the goddess who held scales adverse to the hopes of men,
+and bore the legend 'Be not lifted up'! How often must they have
+watched the dawn walk forth fire-footed upon the edge of those bare
+crags, or the stars slide from east to west across the narrow space
+of sky! How they must have envied the unfettered clouds sailing in
+liquid ether, or traced the far flight of hawk and swallow, sighing,
+'Oh that I too had the wings of a bird!' The weary eyes turned
+upwards found no change or respite, save what the frost of night
+brought to the fire of day, and the burning sun to the pitiless cold
+constellations.
+
+A great painter, combining Dore's power over space and distance with
+the distinctness of Flaxman's design and the colouring of Alma
+Tadema, might possibly realise this agony of the Athenian captives
+in the stone quarries. The time of day chosen for the picture should
+be full noon, with its glare of light and sharply defined vertical
+shadows. The crannies in the straight sides of the quarry should
+here and there be tufted with a few dusty creepers and wild
+fig-trees. On the edge of the sky-line stand parties of Syracusan
+citizens with their wives and children, shaded by umbrellas, richly
+dressed, laughing and triumphing over the misery beneath. In the
+full foreground there are placed two figures. A young Athenian has
+just died of fever. His body lies stretched along the ground, the
+head resting on a stone, and the face turned to the sky. Beside him
+kneels an older warrior, sunburned and dry with thirst, but full as
+yet of vigour. He stares with wide despair-smitten eyes straight
+out, as though he had lately been stretched upon the corpse, but had
+risen at the sound of movement, or some supposed word of friends
+close by. His bread lies untasted near him, and the half-pint of
+water--his day's portion--has been given to bathe the forehead of
+his dying friend. They have stood together through the festival of
+leave-taking from Peiraeus, through the battles of Epipolae, through
+the retreat and the slaughter at the passage of the Asinarus. But
+now it has come to this, and death has found the younger. Perhaps
+the friend beside him remembers some cool wrestling-ground in
+far-off Athens, or some procession up the steps of the Acropolis,
+where first they met. Anyhow his fixed gaze now shows that he has
+passed in thought at least beyond the hell around him. Not far
+behind should be ranged groups of haggard men, with tattered clothes
+and dulled or tigerish eyes, some dignified, some broken down by
+grief; while here and there newly fallen corpses, and in one hideous
+corner a great heap of abandoned dead, should point the ghastly
+words of Thucydides: [Greek: ton nekron homou ep angelois
+zunnenemenon.]
+
+Every landscape has some moment of its own at which it should be
+seen for the first time. Mediaeval cities, with their narrow streets
+and solemn spires, demand the twilight of a summer night.
+Mediterranean islands show their best in the haze of afternoon, when
+sea and sky and headland are bathed in aerial blue, and the
+mountains seem to be made of transparent amethyst. The first sight
+of the Alps should be taken at sunset from some point of vantage,
+like the terrace at Berne, or the castle walls of Salzburg. If these
+fortunate moments be secured, all after knowledge of locality and
+detail serves to fortify and deepen the impression of picturesque
+harmony. The mind has then conceived a leading thought, which gives
+ideal unity to scattered memories and invests the crude reality with
+an aesthetic beauty. The lucky moment for the landscape of Girgenti
+is half an hour past sunset in a golden afterglow. Landing at the
+port named after Empedocles, having caught from the sea some
+glimpses of temple-fronts emergent on green hill-slopes among
+almond-trees, with Pindar's epithet of 'splendour-loving' in my
+mind, I rode on such an evening up the path which leads across the
+Drago to Girgenti. The way winds through deep-sunk lanes of rich
+amber sandstone, hedged with cactus and dwarf-palm, and set with old
+gnarled olive-trees. As the sunlight faded, Venus shone forth in a
+luminous sky, and the deep yellows and purples overhead seemed to
+mingle with the heavy scent of orange-flowers from scarcely visible
+groves by the roadside. Saffron in the west and violet in the east
+met midway, composing a translucent atmosphere of mellow radiance,
+like some liquid gem--_dolce color d' oriental berillo_. Girgenti,
+far off and far up, gazing seaward, and rearing her topaz-coloured
+bastions into that gorgeous twilight, shone like the aerial vision
+of cities seen in dreams or imaged in the clouds. Hard and sharp
+against the sallow line of sunset, leaned grotesque shapes of
+cactuses like hydras, and delicate silhouettes of young olive-trees
+like sylphs: the river ran silver in the hollow, and the
+mountain-side on which the town is piled was solid gold. Then came
+the dirty dull interior of Girgenti, misnamed the magnificent. But
+no disenchantment could destroy the memory of that vision, and
+Pindar's [Greek: philaglaos Akragas] remains in my mind a
+reality.[1]
+
+    [1] Lest I should seem to have overstated the splendour of
+    this sunset view, I must remark that the bare dry
+    landscape of the south is peculiarly fortunate in such
+    effects. The local tint of the Girgenti rock is yellow.
+    The vegetation on the hillside is sparse. There is nothing
+    to prevent the colours of the sky being reflected upon the
+    vast amber-tinted surface, which then glows with
+    indescribable glory.
+
+The temples of Girgenti are at the distance of two miles from the
+modern town. Placed upon the edge of an irregular plateau which
+breaks off abruptly into cliffs of moderate height below them, they
+stand in a magnificent row between the sea and plain on one side,
+and the city and the hills upon the other. Their colour is that of
+dusky honey or dun amber; for they are not built of marble, but of
+sandstone, which at some not very distant geological period must
+have been a sea-bed. Oyster and scallop shells are embedded in the
+roughly hewn masonry, while here and there patches of a red deposit,
+apparently of broken coralline, make the surface crimson. The
+vegetation against which the ruined colonnades are relieved consists
+almost wholly of almond and olive trees, the bright green foliage of
+the one mingling with the greys of the other, and both enhancing the
+warm tints of the stone. This contrast of colours is very agreeable
+to the eye; yet when the temples were perfect it did not exist.
+There is no doubt that their surface was coated with a fine stucco,
+wrought to smoothness, toned like marble, and painted over with the
+blue and red and green decorations proper to the Doric style. This
+fact is a practical answer to those aesthetic critics who would fain
+establish that the Greeks practised no deception in their arts. The
+whole effect of the colonnades of Selinus and Girgenti must have
+been an illusion, and their surface must have needed no less
+constant reparation than the exterior of a Gothic cathedral. The
+sham jewellery frequently found in Greek tombs, and the curious
+mixture of marble with sandstone in the sculptures from Selinus, are
+other instances that Greeks no less than modern artists condescended
+to trickery for the sake of effect. In the series of the metopes
+from Selinus now preserved in the museum at Palermo, the flesh of
+the female persons is represented by white marble, while that of the
+men, together with the dresses and other accessories, is wrought of
+common stone. Yet the basreliefs in which this peculiarity occurs
+belong to the best period of Greek sculpture, and the groups are not
+unworthy for spirit and design to be placed by the side of the
+metopes of the Parthenon. Most beautiful, for example, is the
+contrast between the young unarmed Hercules and the Amazon he
+overpowers. His naked man's foot grasps with the muscular energy of
+an athlete her soft and helpless woman's foot, the roughness of the
+sandstone and the smoothness of the marble really heightening the
+effect of difference.
+
+Though ranged in a row along the same cornice, the temples of
+Girgenti, originally at least six in number, were not so disposed
+that any of their architectural lines should be exactly parallel.
+The Greeks disliked formality; the carefully calculated
+_asymmetreia_ in the disposition of their groups of buildings
+secured variety of effect as well as a broken surface for the
+display of light and shadow. This is very noticeable on the
+Acropolis of Athens, where, however regular may be the several
+buildings, all are placed at different angles to each other and the
+hill. Only two of the Girgenti temples survive in any degree of
+perfection--the so-called Concordia and the Juno Lacinia. The rest
+are but mere heaps of mighty ruins, with here and there a broken
+column, and in one place an angle of a pediment raised upon a group
+of pillars. The foundations of masonry which supported them and the
+drums of their gigantic columns are tufted with wild palm, aloe,
+asphodel, and crimson snapdragon. Yellow blossoming sage, and mint,
+and lavender, and mignonette, sprout in the crevices where snakes
+and lizards harbour. The grass around is gemmed with blue pimpernel
+and convolvulus. Gladiolus springs amid the young corn-blades
+beneath the almond-trees; while a beautiful little iris makes the
+most unpromising dry places brilliant with its delicate greys and
+blues. In cooler and damper hollows, around the boles of old olives
+and under ruined arches, flourishes the tender acanthus, and the
+road-sides are gaudy with a yellow daisy flower, which may perchance
+be the [Greek: elichrysos] of Theocritus. Thus the whole scene is a
+wilderness of brightness, less radiant but more touching than when
+processions of men and maidens bearing urns and laurel-branches,
+crowned with ivy or with myrtle, paced along those sandstone roads,
+chanting paeans and prosodial hymns, toward the glistening porches
+and hypaethral cells.
+
+The only temple about the name of which there can be no doubt is
+that of Zeus Olympius. A prostrate giant who once with nineteen of
+his fellows helped to support the roof of this enormous fane, and
+who now lies in pieces among the asphodels, remains to prove that
+this was the building begun by the Agrigentines after the defeat of
+the Phoenicians at the Himera, when slaves were many and spoil was
+abundant, and Hellas both in Sicily and on the mainland felt a more
+than usual thrill of gratitude to their ancestral deity. The
+greatest architectural works of the island, the temples of Segeste
+and Selinus, as well as those of Girgenti, were begun between this
+period and the Carthaginian invasion of 409 B.C. The victory of the
+Hellenes over the barbarians in 480 B.C., symbolised in the victory
+of Zeus over the enslaved Titans of this temple, gave a vast impulse
+to their activity and wealth. After the disastrous incursion of the
+same foes seventy years later, the western Greek towns of the island
+received a check from which they never recovered. Many of their
+noblest buildings remained unfinished. The question which rises to
+the lips of all who contemplate the ruins of this gigantic temple
+and its compeer dedicated to Herakles is this: Who wrought the
+destruction of works so solid and enduring? For what purpose of
+spite or interest were those vast columns--in the very flutings of
+which a man can stand with ease--felled like forest pines? One sees
+the mighty pillars lying as they sank, like swathes beneath the
+mower's scythe. Their basements are still in line. The drums which
+composed them have fallen asunder, but maintain their original
+relation to each other on the ground. Was it earthquake or the hand
+of man that brought them low? Poggio Bracciolini tells us that in
+the fifteenth century they were burning the marble buildings of the
+Roman Campagna for lime. We know that the Senator Brancaleone made
+havoc among the classic monuments occupied as fortresses by
+Frangipani and Savelli and Orsini. We understand how the Farnesi
+should have quarried the Coliseum for their palace. But here, at the
+distance of three miles from Girgenti, in a comparative desert, what
+army, or what band of ruffians, or what palace-builders could have
+found it worth their while to devastate mere mountains of sculptured
+sandstone? The Romans invariably respected Greek temples. The early
+Christians used them for churches:--and this accounts for the
+comparative perfection of the Concordia. It was in the age of the
+Renaissance that the ruin of Girgenti's noblest monuments occurred.
+The temple of Zeus Olympius was shattered in the fifteenth century,
+and in the next its fragments were used to build a breakwater. The
+demolition of such substantial edifices is as great a wonder as
+their construction. We marvel at the energy which must have been
+employed on their overthrow, no less than at the art which raised
+such blocks of stone and placed them in position.
+
+While so much remains both at Syracuse and at Girgenti to recall the
+past, we are forced here, as at Athens, to feel how very little we
+really know about Greek life. We cannot bring it up before our fancy
+with any clearness, but rather in a sort of hazy dream, from which
+some luminous points emerge. The entrance of an Olympian victor
+through the breach in the city walls of Girgenti, the procession of
+citizens conducting old Timoleon in his chariot to the theatre, the
+conferences of the younger Dionysius with Plato in his guarded
+palace-fort, the stately figure of Empedocles presiding over
+incantations in the marshes of Selinus, the austerity of Dion and
+his mystic dream, the first appearance of stubborn Gylippus with
+long Lacedaemonian hair in the theatre of Syracuse,--such picturesque
+pieces of history we may fairly well recapture. But what were the
+daily occupations of the Simaetha of Theocritus? What was the state
+dress of the splendid Queen Philistis, whose name may yet be read
+upon her seat, and whose face adorns the coins of Syracuse? How did
+the great altar of Zeus look, when the oxen were being slaughtered
+there by hundreds, in a place which must have been shambles and
+meat-market and temple all in one? What scene of architectural
+splendour met the eyes of the swimmers in the Piscina of Girgenti?
+How were the long hours of so many days of leisure occupied by the
+Greeks, who had each three pillows to his head in 'splendour-loving
+Acragas'? Of what sort was the hospitality of Gellias? Questions
+like these rise up to tantalise us with the hopelessness of ever
+truly recovering the life of a lost race. After all the labour of
+antiquary and the poet, nothing remains to be uttered but such
+moralisings as Sir Thomas Browne poured forth over the urns
+discovered at Old Walsingham: 'What time the persons of these
+ossuaries entered the famous nations of the dead, and slept with
+princes and counsellors, might admit a wide solution. But who were
+the proprietaries of these bones, or what bodies these ashes made
+up, were a question above antiquarism; not to be resolved by man,
+nor easily perhaps by spirits except we consult the provincial
+guardians, or tutelary observators.' Death reigns over the peoples
+of the past, and we must fain be satisfied to cry with Raleigh: 'O
+eloquent, just, and mighty death! whom none could advise, thou hast
+persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and whom all the
+world hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and
+despised: thou hast drawn together all the far-stretched greatness,
+all the pride, cruelty, and ambition of men, and covered it all over
+with these two narrow words, _hic jacet_.' Even so. Yet while the
+cadence of this august rhetoric is yet in our ears, another voice is
+heard as of the angel seated by a void and open tomb, 'Why seek ye
+the living among the dead?' The spirit of Hellas is indestructible,
+however much the material existence of the Greeks be lost beyond
+recovery; for the life of humanity is not many but one, not
+parcelled into separate moments but continuous.
+
+
+
+
+_ATHENS_
+
+
+Athens, by virtue of scenery and situation, was predestined to be
+the motherland of the free reason of mankind, long before the
+Athenians had won by their great deeds the right to name their city
+the ornament and the eye of Hellas. Nothing is more obvious to one
+who has seen many lands and tried to distinguish their essential
+characters, than the fact that no one country exactly resembles
+another, but that, however similar in climate and locality, each
+presents a peculiar and well-marked property belonging to itself
+alone. The specific quality of Athenian landscape is light--not
+richness or sublimity or romantic loveliness or grandeur of mountain
+outline, but luminous beauty, serene exposure to the airs of heaven.
+The harmony and balance of the scenery, so varied in its details and
+yet so comprehensible, are sympathetic to the temperance of Greek
+morality, the moderation of Greek art. The radiance with which it is
+illuminated has all the clearness and distinction of the Attic
+intellect. From whatever point the plain of Athens with its
+semicircle of greater and lesser hills may be surveyed, it always
+presents a picture of dignified and lustrous beauty. The Acropolis
+is the centre of this landscape, splendid as a work of art with its
+crown of temples; and the sea, surmounted by the long low hills of
+the Morea, is the boundary to which the eye is irresistibly led.
+Mountains and islands and plain alike are made of limestone,
+hardening here and there into marble, broken into delicate and
+varied forms, and sprinkled with a vegetation of low shrubs and
+brushwood so sparse and slight that the naked rock in every
+direction meets the light. This rock is grey and colourless: viewed
+in the twilight of a misty day, it shows the dull, tame uniformity
+of bone. Without the sun it is asleep and sorrowful. But by reason
+of this very deadness, the limestone of Athenian landscape is always
+ready to take the colours of the air and sun. In noonday it smiles
+with silvery lustre, fold upon fold of the indented hills and
+islands melting from the brightness of the sea into the untempered
+brilliance of the sky. At dawn and sunset the same rocks array
+themselves with a celestial robe of rainbow-woven hues: islands,
+sea, and mountains, far and near, burn with saffron, violet, and
+rose, with the tints of beryl and topaz, sapphire and almandine and
+amethyst, each in due order and at proper distances. The fabled
+dolphin in its death could not have showed a more brilliant
+succession of splendours waning into splendours through the whole
+chord of prismatic colours. This sensitiveness of the Attic
+limestone to every modification of the sky's light gives a peculiar
+spirituality to the landscape. The hills remain in form and outline
+unchanged; but the beauty breathed upon them lives or dies with the
+emotions of the air from whence it emanates: the spirit of light
+abides with them and quits them by alternations that seem to be the
+pulses of an ethereally communicated life. No country, therefore,
+could be better fitted for the home of a race gifted with exquisite
+sensibilities, in whom humanity should first attain the freedom of
+self-consciousness in art and thought. [Greek: Aei dia lamprotatou
+bainontes habros aitheros]--ever delicately moving through most
+translucent air--said Euripides of the Athenians: and truly the
+bright air of Attica was made to be breathed by men in whom the
+light of culture should begin to shine. [Greek: Iostephanos] is an
+epithet of Aristophanes for his city; and if not crowned with other
+violets, Athens wears for her garland the air-empurpled
+hills--Hymettus, Lycabettus, Pentelicus, and Parnes.[1]
+Consequently, while still the Greeks of Homer's age were Achaians,
+while Argos was the titular seat of Hellenic empire, and the mythic
+deeds of the heroes were being enacted in Thebes or Mycenae, Athens
+did but bide her time, waiting to manifest herself as the true
+godchild of Pallas, who sprang perfect from the brain of Zeus,
+Pallas, who is the light of cloudless heaven emerging after storms.
+And Pallas, when she planted her chosen people in Attica, knew well
+what she was doing. To the far-seeing eyes of the goddess, although
+the first-fruits of song and science and philosophy might be reaped
+upon the shores of the AEgean and the islands, yet the days were
+clearly descried when Athens should stretch forth her hand to hold
+the lamp of all her founder loved for Europe. As the priest of Egypt
+told Solon: 'She chose the spot of earth in which you were born,
+because she saw that the happy temperament of the seasons in that
+land would produce the wisest of men. Wherefore the goddess, who was
+a lover both of war and wisdom, selected and first of all settled
+that spot which was the most likely to produce men likest herself.'
+This sentence from the 'Timaeus' of Plato[2] reveals the
+consciousness possessed by the Greeks of that intimate connection
+which subsists between a country and the temper of its race. To us
+the name Athenai--the fact that Athens by its title even in the
+prehistoric age was marked out as the appanage of her who was the
+patroness of culture--seems a fortunate accident, an undesigned
+coincidence of the most striking sort. To the Greeks, steeped in
+mythologic faith, accustomed to regard their lineage as
+autochthonous and their polity as the fabric of a god, nothing
+seemed more natural than that Pallas should have selected for her
+own exactly that portion of Hellas where the arts and sciences might
+flourish best. Let the Boeotians grow fat and stagnant upon their
+rich marshlands: let the Spartans form themselves into a race of
+soldiers in their mountain fortress: let Corinth reign, the queen of
+commerce, between her double seas: let the Arcadians in their oak
+woods worship pastoral Pan: let the plains of Elis be the
+meeting-place of Hellenes at their sacred games: let Delphi boast
+the seat of sooth oracular from Phoebus. Meanwhile the sunny but
+barren hills of Attica, open to the magic of the sky, and beautiful
+by reason of their nakedness, must be the home of a people powerful
+by might of intelligence rather than strength of limb, wealthy not
+so much by natural resources as by enterprise. Here, and here only,
+could stand the city sung by Milton:--
+
+  Built nobly, pure the air, and light the soil,
+  Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts
+  And eloquence, native to famous wits
+  Or hospitable, in her sweet recess,
+  City or suburban, studious walks and shades.
+
+We who believe in no authentic Pallas, child of Zeus, may yet pause
+awhile, when we contemplate Athens, to ponder whether those old
+mythologic systems, which ascribed to godhead the foundation of
+states and the patronage of peoples, had not some glimpse of truth
+beyond a mere blind guess. Is not, in fact, this Athenian land the
+promised and predestined home of a peculiar people, in the same
+sense as that in which Palestine was the heritage by faith of a
+tribe set apart by Jehovah for His own?
+
+    [1] This interpretation of the epithet [Greek:
+    iostephanos] is not, I think, merely fanciful. It seems to
+    occur naturally to those who visit Athens with the
+    language of Greek poets in their memory. I was glad to
+    find, on reading a paper by the Dean of Westminster on the
+    topography of Greece, that the same thought had struck
+    him. Ovid, too, gives the adjective _purpureus_ to
+    Hymettus.
+
+    [2] Jowett's translation, vol. ii. p. 520.
+
+Unlike Rome, Athens leaves upon the memory one simple and
+ineffaceable impression. There is here no conflict between Paganism
+and Christianity, no statues of Hellas baptised by popes into the
+company of saints, no blending of the classical and mediaeval and
+Renaissance influences in a bewilderment of vast antiquity. Rome,
+true to her historical vocation, embraces in her ruins all ages, all
+creeds, all nations. Her life has never stood still, but has
+submitted to many transformations, of which the traces are still
+visible. Athens, like the Greeks of history, is isolated in a sort
+of self-completion: she is a thing of the past, which still exists,
+because the spirit never dies, because beauty is a joy for ever.
+What is truly remarkable about the city is just this, that while the
+modern town is an insignificant mushroom of the present century, the
+monuments of Greek art in the best period--the masterpieces of
+Ictinus and Mnesicles, and the theatre on which the plays of the
+tragedians were produced--survive in comparative perfection, and are
+so far unencumbered with subsequent edifices that the actual Athens
+of Pericles absorbs our attention. There is nothing of any
+consequence intermediate between us and the fourth century B.C. Seen
+from a distance the Acropolis presents nearly the same appearance as
+it offered to Spartan guardsmen when they paced the ramparts of
+Deceleia. Nature around is all unaltered. Except that more villages,
+enclosed with olive-groves and vineyards, were sprinkled over those
+bare hills in classic days, no essential change in the landscape has
+taken place, no transformation, for example, of equal magnitude with
+that which converted the Campagna of Rome from a plain of cities to
+a poisonous solitude. All through the centuries which divide us from
+the age of Hadrian--centuries unfilled, as far as Athens is
+concerned, with memorable deeds or national activity--the Acropolis
+has stood uncovered to the sun. The tones of the marble of
+Pentelicus have daily grown more golden; decay has here and there
+invaded frieze and capital; war too has done its work, shattering
+the Parthenon in 1687 by the explosion of a powder magazine, and the
+Propylaea in 1656 by a similar accident, and seaming the colonnades
+that still remain with cannon-balls in 1827. Yet in spite of time
+and violence the Acropolis survives, a miracle of beauty: like an
+everlasting flower, through all that lapse of years it has spread
+its coronal of marbles to the air, unheeded. And now, more than
+ever, its temples seem to be incorporate with the rock they crown.
+The slabs of column and basement have grown together by long
+pressure or molecular adhesion into a coherent whole. Nor have weeds
+or creeping ivy invaded the glittering fragments that strew the
+sacred hill. The sun's kiss alone has caused a change from white to
+amber-hued or russet. Meanwhile, the exquisite adaptation of Greek
+building to Greek landscape has been enhanced rather than impaired
+by that 'unimaginable touch of time,' which has broken the
+regularity of outline, softened the chisel-work of the sculptor, and
+confounded the painter's fretwork in one tint of glowing gold. The
+Parthenon, the Erechtheum, and the Propylaea have become one with the
+hill on which they cluster, as needful to the scenery around them as
+the everlasting mountains, as sympathetic as the rest of nature to
+the successions of morning and evening, which waken them to
+passionate life by the magic touch of colour.
+
+Thus there is no intrusive element in Athens to distract the mind
+from memories of its most glorious past. Walk into the theatre of
+Dionysus. The sculptures that support the stage--Sileni bending
+beneath the weight of cornices, and lines of graceful youths and
+maidens--are still in their ancient station.[1] The pavement of the
+orchestra, once trodden by Athenian choruses, presents its
+tessellated marbles to our feet; and we may choose the seat of
+priest or archon or herald or thesmothetes, when we wish to summon
+before our mind's eye the pomp of the 'Agamemnon' or the dances of
+the 'Birds' and 'Clouds.' Each seat still bears some carven
+name--[Greek: IEREOS TON MOUSON] or [Greek: IEREOS ASKAEPIOU]--and
+that of the priest of Dionysus is beautifully wrought with Bacchic
+basreliefs. One of them, inscribed [Greek: IEREOS ANTINOOU], proves
+indeed that the extant chairs were placed here in the age of
+Hadrian, who completed the vast temple of Zeus Olympius, and filled
+its precincts with statues of his favourite, and named a new Athens
+after his own name.[2] Yet we need not doubt that their position
+round the orchestra is traditional, and that even in their form they
+do not differ from those which the priests and officers of Athens
+used from the time of AEschylus downward. Probably a slave brought
+cushion and footstool to complete the comfort of these stately
+armchairs. Nothing else is wanted to render them fit now for their
+august occupants; and we may imagine the long-stoled greybearded men
+throned in state, each with his wand and with appropriate fillets on
+his head. As we rest here in the light of the full moon, which
+simplifies all outlines and heals with tender touch the wounds of
+ages, it is easy enough to dream ourselves into the belief that the
+ghosts of dead actors may once more glide across the stage.
+Fiery-hearted Medea, statuesque Antigone, Prometheus silent beneath
+the hammer-strokes of Force and Strength, Orestes hounded by his
+mother's Furies, Cassandra aghast before the palace of Mycenae,
+pure-souled Hippolytus, ruthful Alcestis, the divine youth of Helen,
+and Clytemnestra in her queenliness, emerge like faint grey films
+against the bluish background of Hymettus. The night air seems vocal
+with echoes of old Greek, more felt than heard, like voices wafted
+to our sense in sleep, the sound whereof we do not seize, though the
+burden lingers in our memory.
+
+    [1] It is true, however, that these sculptures belong to a
+    comparatively late period, and that the theatre underwent
+    some alterations in Roman days, so that the stage is now
+    probably a few yards farther from the seats than in the
+    time of Sophocles.
+
+    [2] It is not a little surprising to come upon this relic
+    of the worship of the young Bithynian at Athens in the
+    theatre still consecrated by the memories of AEschylus and
+    Sophocles.
+
+In like manner, when moonlight, falling aslant upon the Propylaea,
+restores the marble masonry to its original whiteness, and the
+shattered heaps of ruined colonnades are veiled in shadow, and every
+form seems larger, grander, and more perfect than by day, it is well
+to sit upon the lowest steps, and looking upwards, to remember what
+processions passed along this way bearing the sacred peplus to
+Athene. The Panathenaic pomp, which Pheidias and his pupils carved
+upon the friezes of the Parthenon, took place once in five years, on
+one of the last days of July.[1] All the citizens joined in the
+honour paid to their patroness. Old men bearing olive-branches,
+young men clothed in bronze, chapleted youths singing the praise of
+Pallas in prosodial hymns, maidens carrying holy vessels, aliens
+bending beneath the weight of urns, servants of the temple leading
+oxen crowned with fillets, troops of horsemen reining in impetuous
+steeds: all these pass before us in the frieze of Pheidias. But to
+our imagination must be left what he has refrained from sculpturing,
+the chariot formed like a ship, in which the most illustrious nobles
+of Athens sat, splendidly arrayed, beneath the crocus-coloured
+curtain or peplus outspread upon a mast. Some concealed machinery
+caused this car to move; but whether it passed through the Propylaea,
+and entered the Acropolis, admits of doubt. It is, however, certain
+that the procession which ascended those steep slabs, and before
+whom the vast gates of the Propylaea swang open with the clangour of
+resounding bronze, included not only the citizens of Athens and
+their attendant aliens, but also troops of cavalry and chariots; for
+the mark of chariot-wheels can still be traced upon the rock. The
+ascent is so abrupt that this multitude moved but slowly. Splendid
+indeed, beyond any pomp of modern ceremonial, must have been the
+spectacle of the well-ordered procession, advancing through those
+giant colonnades to the sound of flutes and solemn chants--the
+shrill clear voices of boys in antiphonal chorus rising above the
+confused murmurs of such a crowd, the chafing of horses' hoofs upon
+the stone, and the lowing of bewildered oxen.
+
+    [1] My purpose being merely picturesque, I have ignored
+    the grave antiquarian difficulties which beset the
+    interpretation of this frieze.
+
+To realise by fancy the many-coloured radiance of the temples, and
+the rich dresses of the votaries illuminated by that sharp light of
+a Greek sun, which defines outline and shadow and gives value to the
+faintest hue, would be impossible. All we can know for positive
+about the chromatic decoration of the Greeks is, that whiteness
+artificially subdued to the tone of ivory prevailed throughout the
+stonework of the buildings, while blue and red and green in
+distinct, yet interwoven patterns, added richness to the fretwork
+and the sculpture of pediment and frieze. The sacramental robes of
+the worshippers accorded doubtless with this harmony, wherein colour
+was subordinate to light, and light was toned to softness.
+
+Musing thus upon the staircase of the Propylaea, we may say with
+truth that all our modern art is but child's play to that of the
+Greeks. Very soul-subduing is the gloom of a cathedral like the
+Milanese Duomo, when the incense rises in blue clouds athwart the
+bands of sunlight falling from the dome, and the crying of choirs
+upborne upon the wings of organ music fills the whole vast space
+with a mystery of melody. Yet such ceremonial pomps as this are as
+dreams and the shapes of visions, when compared with the clearly
+defined splendours of a Greek procession through marble peristyles
+in open air beneath the sun and sky. That spectacle combined the
+harmonies of perfect human forms in movement with the divine shapes
+of statues, the radiance of carefully selected vestments with hues
+inwrought upon pure marble. The rhythms and the melodies of the
+Doric mood were sympathetic to the proportions of the Doric
+colonnades. The grove of pillars through which the pageant passed
+grew from the living rock into shapes of beauty, fulfilling by the
+inbreathed spirit of man Nature's blind yearning after absolute
+completion. The sun himself--not thwarted by artificial gloom, or
+tricked with alien colours of stained glass--was made to minister in
+all his strength to a pomp, the pride of which was the display of
+form in manifold magnificence. The ritual of the Greeks was the
+ritual of a race at one with Nature, glorying in its affiliation to
+the mighty mother of all life, and striving to add by human art the
+coping-stone and final touch to her achievement. The ritual of the
+Catholic Church is the ritual of a race shut out from Nature,
+holding no communion with the powers of earth and air, but turning
+the spirit inwards and aiming at the concentration of the whole soul
+upon an unseen God. The temple of the Greeks was the house of a
+present deity; its cell his chamber; its statue his reality. The
+Christian cathedral is the fane where God who is a spirit is
+worshipped; no statue fills the choir from wall to wall and lifts
+its forehead to the roof; but the vacant aisles, with their
+convergent arches soaring upwards to the dome, are made to suggest
+the brooding of infinite and omnipresent Godhead. It was the object
+of the Greek artist to preserve a just proportion between the god's
+statue and his house, in order that the worshipper might approach
+him as a subject draws near to his monarch's throne. The Christian
+architect seeks to affect the emotions of the votary with a sense of
+vastness filled with unseen power. Our cathedrals are symbols of the
+universe where God is everywhere pavilioned and invisible. The Greek
+temple was a practical, utilitarian dwelling-house, made beautiful
+enough to suit divinity. The modern church is an idea expressed in
+stone, an aspiration of the spirit, shooting up from arch and
+pinnacle and spire into illimitable fields of air.
+
+It follows from these differences between the religious aims of
+Pagan and Christian architecture, that the former was far more
+favourable to the plastic arts. No beautiful or simple incident of
+human life was an inappropriate subject for the sculptor, in
+adorning the houses of gods who were themselves but human on a
+higher level; and the ritual whereby the gods were honoured was
+merely an exhibition, in its strength and joyfulness, of mortal
+beauty. Therefore the Panathenaic procession furnished Pheidias with
+a series of sculptural motives, which he had only to express
+according to the principles of his art. The frieze, three feet and
+four inches in height, raised forty feet above the pavement of the
+peristyle, ran for five hundred and twenty-four continuous feet
+round the outside wall of the cella of the Parthenon. The whole of
+this long line was wrought with carving of exquisite delicacy and
+supreme vigour, in such low relief as its peculiar position, far
+above the heads of the spectators, and only illuminated by light
+reflected from below, required. Each figure, each attitude, and each
+fold of drapery in its countless groups is a study; yet the whole
+was a transcript from actual contemporary Athenian life. Truly in
+matters of art we are but infants to the Greeks.
+
+The topographical certainty which invests the ruins of the Acropolis
+with such peculiar interest, belongs in a less degree to the whole
+of Athens. Although the most recent researches have thrown fresh
+doubt upon the exact site of the Pnyx, and though no traces of the
+agora remain, yet we may be sure that the Bema from which Pericles
+sustained the courage of the Athenians during the Peloponnesian war,
+was placed upon the northern slope looking towards the Propylaea,
+while the wide irregular space between this hill, the Acropolis, the
+Areopagus, and the Theseum, must have formed the meeting-ground for
+amusement and discussion of the citizens at leisure. About
+Areopagus, with its tribunal hollowed in the native rock, and the
+deep cleft beneath, where the shrine of the Eumenides was built,
+there is no question. The extreme insignificance of this little
+mound may at first indeed excite incredulity and wonder; but a few
+hours in Athens accustom the traveller to a smallness of scale which
+at first sight seemed ridiculous. Colonus, for example, the Colonus
+which every student of Sophocles has pictured to himself in the
+solitude of unshorn meadows, where groves of cypresses and olives
+bent unpruned above wild tangles of narcissus flowers and crocuses,
+and where the nightingale sang undisturbed by city noise or labour
+of the husbandman, turns out to be a scarcely appreciable mound,
+gently swelling from the cultivated land of the Cephissus. The
+Cephissus even in a rainy season may be crossed dryshod by an active
+jumper; and the Ilissus, where it flows beneath the walls of the
+Olympieion, is now dedicated to washerwomen instead of water-nymphs.
+Nature herself remains, on the whole, unaltered. Most notable are
+still the white poplars dedicated of old to Herakles, and the
+spreading planes which whisper to the limes in spring. In the midst
+of so arid and bare a landscape, these umbrageous trees are
+singularly grateful to the eye and to the sense oppressed with heat
+and splendour. Nightingales have not ceased to crowd the gardens in
+such numbers as to justify the tradition of their Attic origin, nor
+have the bees of Hymettus forgotten their labours: the honey of
+Athens can still boast a quality superior to that of Hybla or any
+other famous haunt of hives.
+
+Tradition points out one spot which commands a beautiful distant
+view of Athens and the hills, as the garden of the Academy. The
+place is not unworthy of Plato and his companions. Very old olives
+grow in abundance, to remind us of those sacred trees beneath which
+the boys of Aristophanes ran races; and reeds with which they might
+crown their foreheads are thickly scattered through the grass.
+Abeles interlace their murmuring branches overhead, and the planes
+are as leafy as that which invited Socrates and Phaedrus on the
+morning when they talked of love. In such a place we comprehend how
+philosophy went hand in hand at Athens with gymnastics, and why the
+poplar and the plane were dedicated to athletic gods. For the
+wrestling-grounds were built in groves like these, and their cool
+peristyles, the meeting-places of young men and boys, supplied the
+sages not only with an eager audience, but also with the leisure and
+the shade that learning loves.
+
+It was very characteristic of Greek life that speculative philosophy
+should not have chosen 'to walk the studious cloister pale,' but
+should rather have sought out places where 'the busy hum of men' was
+loudest, and where youthful voices echoed. The Athenian transacted
+no business, and pursued but few pleasures, under a private roof. He
+conversed and bargained in the agora, debated on the open rocks of
+the Pnyx, and enjoyed discussion in the courts of the gymnasium. It
+is also far from difficult to understand beneath this over-vaulted
+and grateful gloom of bee-laden branches, what part love played in
+the haunts of runners and of wrestlers, why near the statue of
+Hermes stood that of Eros, and wherefore Socrates surnamed his
+philosophy the Science of Love. [Greek: Philosophoumen aneu
+malakias] is the boast of Pericles in his description of the
+Athenian spirit. [Greek: Philosophia meta paiderastias] is Plato's
+formula for the virtues of the most distinguished soul. These two
+mottoes, apparently so contradictory, found their point of meeting
+and their harmony in the gymnasium.
+
+The mere contemplation of these luxuriant groves, set in the
+luminous Attic landscape, and within sight of Athens, explains a
+hundred passages of poets and philosophers. Turn to the opening
+scenes of the 'Lysis' and the 'Charmides.' The action of the latter
+dialogue is laid in the palaestra of Taureas. Socrates has just
+returned from the camp at Potidaea, and after answering the questions
+of his friends, has begun to satisfy his own curiosity:[1]--
+
+When there had been enough of this, I, in my turn, began to
+make inquiries about matters at home--about the present state of
+philosophy, and about the youth. I asked whether any of them
+were remarkable for beauty or sense--or both. Critias, glancing at
+the door, invited my attention to some youths who were coming
+in, and talking noisily to one another, followed by a crowd. 'Of
+the beauties, Socrates,' he said, 'I fancy that you will soon be able
+to form a judgment. For those who are just entering are the
+advanced guard of the great beauty of the day--and he is likely
+not to be far off himself.'
+
+  'Who is he?' I said; 'and who is his father?'
+
+  'Charmides,' he replied, 'is his name; he is my cousin, and
+  the son of my uncle Glaucon: I rather think that you know him,
+  although he was not grown up at the time of your departure.'
+
+  'Certainly I know him,' I said; 'for he was remarkable even
+  then when he was still a child, and now I should imagine that he
+  must be almost a young man.'
+
+  'You will see,' he said, 'in a moment what progress he has
+  made, and what he is like.' He had scarcely said the word, when
+  Charmides entered.
+
+  Now you know, my friend, that I cannot measure anything, and
+  of the beautiful, I am simply such a measure as a white line is of
+  chalk; for almost all young persons are alike beautiful in my eyes.
+  But at that moment, when I saw him coming in, I must admit
+  that I was quite astonished at his beauty and stature; all the world
+  seemed to be enamoured of him; amazement and confusion reigned
+  when he entered; and a troop of lovers followed him. That grown-up
+  men like ourselves should have been affected in this way was
+  not surprising, but I observed that there was the same feeling
+  among the boys; all of them, down to the very least child, turned
+  and looked at him as if he had been a statue.
+
+  Chaerephon called me and said: 'What do you think of him,
+  Socrates? Has he not a beautiful face?'
+
+  'That he has indeed,' I said.
+
+  'But you would think nothing of his face,' he replied, 'if you
+  could see his naked form: he is absolutely perfect.'
+
+    [1] I quote from Professor Jowett's translation.
+
+This Charmides is a true Greek of the perfect type. Not only is he
+the most beautiful of Athenian youths; he is also temperate, modest,
+and subject to the laws of moral health. His very beauty is a
+harmony of well-developed faculties in which the mind and body are
+at one. How a young Greek managed to preserve this balance in the
+midst of the admiring crowds described by Socrates is a marvel.
+Modern conventions unfit our minds for realising the conditions
+under which he had to live. Yet it is indisputable that Plato has
+strained no point in the animated picture he presents of the
+palaestra. Aristophanes and Xenophon bear him out in all the details
+of the scene. We have to imagine a totally different system of
+social morality from ours, with virtues and vices, temptations and
+triumphs, unknown to our young men. The next scene from the 'Lysis'
+introduces us to another wrestling-ground in the neighbourhood of
+Athens. Here Socrates meets with Hippothales, who is a devoted lover
+but a bad poet. Hippothales asks the philosopher's advice as to the
+best method of pleasing the boy Lysis:--
+
+  'Will you tell me by what words or actions I may become
+  endeared to my love?'
+
+  'That is not easy to determine,' I said; 'but if you will bring
+  your love to me, and will let me talk with him, I may perhaps be
+  able to show you how to converse with him, instead of singing
+  and reciting in the fashion of which you are accused.'
+
+  'There will be no difficulty in bringing him,' he replied; 'if you
+  will only go into the house with Ctesippus, and sit down and talk,
+  he will come of himself; for he is fond of listening, Socrates. And
+  as this is the festival of the Hermaea, there is no separation of
+  young men and boys, but they are all mixed up together. He will
+  be sure to come. But if he does not come, Ctesippus, with whom
+  he is familiar, and whose relation Menexenus is, his great friend,
+  shall call him.'
+
+  'That will be the way,' I said. Thereupon I and Ctesippus
+  went towards the Palaestra, and the rest followed.
+
+  Upon entering we found that the boys had just been sacrificing;
+  and this part of the festival was nearly come to an end. They
+  were all in white array, and games at dice were going on among
+  them. Most of them were in the outer court amusing themselves;
+  but some were in a corner of the Apodyterium playing at odd-and-even
+  with a number of dice, which they took out of little wicker
+  baskets. There was also a circle of lookers-on, one of whom was
+  Lysis. He was standing among the other boys and youths, having
+  a crown upon his head, like a fair vision, and not less worthy of
+  praise for his goodness than for his beauty. We left them, and
+  went over to the opposite side of the room, where we found a quiet
+  place, and sat down; and then we began to talk. This attracted
+  Lysis, who was constantly turning round to look at us--he was
+  evidently wanting to come to us. For a time he hesitated and had
+  not the courage to come alone; but first of all, his friend Menexenus
+  came in out of the court in the interval of his play, and when
+  he saw Ctesippus and myself, came and sat by us; and then Lysis,
+  seeing him, followed and sat down with him; and the other boys
+  joined. I should observe that Hippothales, when he saw the
+  crowd, got behind them, where he thought that he would be out of
+  sight of Lysis, lest he should anger him; and there he stood and
+  listened.
+
+Enough has been quoted to show that beneath the porches of a Greek
+palaestra, among the youths of Athens, who wrote no exercises in dead
+languages, and thought chiefly of attaining to perfect manhood by
+the harmonious exercise of mind and body in temperate leisure,
+divine philosophy must indeed have been charming both to teachers
+and to learners:--
+
+  Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose,
+  But musical as is Apollo's lute,
+  And a perpetual feast of nectared sweets
+  Where no crude surfeit reigns.
+
+There are no remains above ground of the buildings which made the
+Attic gymnasia splendid. Nor are there in Athens itself many statues
+of the noble human beings who paced their porches and reclined
+beneath their shade. The galleries of Italy and the verses of the
+poets can alone help us to repeople the Academy with its mixed
+multitude of athletes and of sages. The language of Simaetha, in
+Theocritus, brings the younger men before us: their cheeks are
+yellower than helichrysus with the down of youth, and their breasts
+shine brighter far than the moon, as though they had but lately left
+the 'fair toils of the wrestling-ground.' Upon some of the
+monumental tablets exposed in the burying-ground of Cerameicus and
+in the Theseum may be seen portraits of Athenian citizens. A young
+man holding a bird, with a boy beside him who carries a lamp or
+strigil; a youth, naked, and scraping himself after the games; a boy
+taking leave with clasped hands of his mother, while a dog leaps up
+to fawn upon his knee; a wine-party; a soul in Charon's boat; a
+husband parting from his wife: such are the simple subjects of these
+monuments; and under each is written [Greek: CHRESTE
+CHAIRE]--Friend, farewell! The tombs of the women are equally plain
+in character: a nurse brings a baby to its mother, or a slave helps
+her mistress at the toilette table. There is nothing to suggest
+either the gloom of the grave or the hope of heaven in any of these
+sculptures. Their symbolism, if it at all exist, is of the least
+mysterious kind. Our attention is rather fixed upon the commonest
+affairs of life than on the secrets of death.
+
+As we wander through the ruins of Athens, among temples which are
+all but perfect, and gardens which still keep their ancient
+greenery, we must perforce reflect how all true knowledge of Greek
+life has passed away. To picture to ourselves its details, so as to
+become quite familiar with the way in which an Athenian thought and
+felt and occupied his time, is impossible. Such books as the
+'Charicles' of Becker or Wieland's 'Agathon' only increase our sense
+of hopelessness, by showing that neither a scholar's learning nor a
+poet's fancy can pierce the mists of antiquity. We know that it was
+a strange and fascinating life, passed for the most part beneath the
+public eye, at leisure, without the society of free women, without
+what we call a home, in constant exercise of body and mind, in the
+duties of the law-courts and the assembly, in the toils of the camp
+and the perils of the sea, in the amusements of the wrestling-ground
+and the theatre, in sportful study and strenuous play. We also know
+that the citizens of Athens, bred up under the peculiar conditions
+of this artificial life, became impassioned lovers of their city;[1]
+that the greatest generals, statesmen, poets, orators, artists,
+historians, and philosophers that the world can boast, were produced
+in the short space of a century and a half by a city numbering about
+20,000 burghers. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say with the
+author of 'Hereditary Genius,' that the population of Athens, taken
+as a whole, was as superior to us as we are to the Australian
+savages. Long and earnest, therefore, should be our hesitation
+before we condemn as pernicious or unprofitable the instincts and
+the customs of such a race.
+
+    [1] [Greek: Ten tes poleos dunamin kath' hemeran ergo
+    theomenous kai erastas gignomenous autes].--Thuc. ii. 43.
+
+The permanence of strongly marked features in the landscape of
+Greece, and the small scale of the whole country, add a vivid charm
+to the scenery of its great events. In the harbour of Peiraeus we can
+scarcely fail to picture to ourselves the pomp which went forth to
+Sicily that solemn morning, when the whole host prayed together and
+made libations at the signal of the herald's trumpet. The nation of
+athletes and artists and philosophers were embarked on what seemed
+to some a holiday excursion, and for others bid fair to realise
+unbounded dreams of ambition or avarice. Only a few were
+heavy-hearted; but the heaviest of all was the general who had
+vainly dissuaded his countrymen from the endeavour, and fruitlessly
+refused the command thrust upon him. That was 'the morning of a
+mighty day, a day of crisis' for the destinies of Athens. Of all
+that multitude, how few would come again; of the empire which they
+made so manifest in its pride of men and arms, how little but a
+shadow would be left, when war and fever and the quarries of
+Syracuse had done their fore-appointed work! Yet no commotion of the
+elements, no eclipse or authentic oracle from heaven, was interposed
+between the arrogance of Athens and sure-coming Nemesis. The sun
+shone, and the waves laughed, smitten by the oars of galleys racing
+to AEgina. Meanwhile Zeus from the watchtower of the world held up
+the scales of fate, and the balance of Athens was wavering to its
+fall.
+
+A few strokes of the oar carry us away from Peiraeus to a scene
+fraught with far more thrilling memories. That little point of rock
+emergent from the water between Salamis and the mainland, bare,
+insignificant, and void of honour among islands to the natural eye,
+is Psyttaleia. A strange tightening at the heart assails us when we
+approach the centre-point of the most memorable battlefield of
+history. It was again 'the morning of a mighty day, a day of crisis'
+for the destinies, not of Athens alone, but of humanity, when the
+Persian fleet, after rowing all night up and down the channel
+between Salamis and the shore, beheld the face of Phoebus flash
+from behind Pentelicus and flood the Acropolis of Athens with fire.
+The Peiraeius recalls a crisis in the world's drama whereof the great
+actors were unconscious: fair winds and sunny waves bore light
+hearts to Sicily. But Psyttaleia brings before us the heroism of a
+handful of men, who knew that the supreme hour of ruin or of victory
+for their nation and themselves had come. Terrible therefore was the
+energy with which they prayed and joined their paean to the
+trumpet-blast of dawn that blazed upon them from the Attic hills.
+And this time Zeus, when he heard their cry, saw the scale of Hellas
+mount to the stars. Let AEschylus tell the tale; for he was there. A
+Persian is giving an account of the defeat of Salamis to Atossa:--
+
+  The whole disaster, O my queen, began
+  With some fell fiend or devil,--I know not whence:
+  For thus it was; from the Athenian host
+  A man of Hellas came to thy son, Xerxes,
+  Saying that when black night shall fall in gloom,
+  The Hellenes would no longer stay, but leap
+  Each on the benches of his bark, and save
+  Hither and thither by stolen flight their lives.
+  He, when he heard thereof, discerning not
+  The Hellene's craft, no, nor the spite of heaven,
+  To all his captains gives this edict forth:
+  When as the sun doth cease to light the world,
+  And darkness holds the precincts of the sky,
+  They should dispose the fleet in three close ranks,
+  To guard the outlets and the water-ways;
+  Others should compass Ajax' isle around:
+  Seeing that if the Hellenes 'scaped grim death
+  By finding for their ships some privy exit,
+  It was ordained that all should lose their heads.
+  So spake he, led by a mad mind astray,
+  Nor knew what should be by the will of heaven.
+  They, like well-ordered vassals, with assent
+  Straightway prepared their food, and every sailor
+  Fitted his oar-blade to the steady rowlock.
+  But when the sunlight waned and night apace
+  Descended, every man who swayed an oar
+  Went to the boats with him who wielded armour.
+  Then through the ship's length rank cheered rank in concert,
+  Sailing as each was set in order due:
+  And all night long the tyrants of the ships
+  Kept the whole navy cruising to and fro.
+  Night passed: yet never did the host of Hellene
+  At any point attempt their stolen sally;
+  Until at length, when day with her white steeds
+  Forth shining, held the whole world under sway.
+  First from the Hellenes with a loud clear cry
+  Song-like, a shout made music, and therewith
+  The echo of the rocky isle rang back
+  Shrill triumph: but the vast barbarian host
+  Shorn of their hope trembled; for not for flight
+  The Hellenes hymned their solemn paean then--
+  Nay, rather as for battle with stout heart.
+  Then too the trumpet speaking fired our foes,
+  And with a sudden rush of oars in time
+  They smote the deep sea at that clarion cry;
+  And in a moment you might see them all.
+  The right wing in due order well arrayed
+  First took the lead; then came the serried squadron
+  Swelling against us, and from many voices
+  One cry arose: Ho! sons of Hellenes, up!
+  Now free your fatherland, now free your sons,
+  Your wives, the fanes of your ancestral gods,
+  Your fathers' tombs! Now fight you for your all.
+  Yea, and from our side brake an answering hum
+  Of Persian voices. Then, no more delay,
+  Ship upon ship her beak of biting brass
+  Struck stoutly. 'Twas a bark, I ween, of Hellas
+  First charged, dashing from a Tyrrhenian galleon
+  Her prow-gear; then ran hull on hull pell-mell.
+  At first the torrent of the Persian navy
+  Bore up: but when the multitude of ships
+  Were straitly jammed, and none could help another,
+  Huddling with brazen-mouthed beaks they clashed
+  And brake their serried banks of oars together;
+  Nor were the Hellenes slow or slack to muster
+  And pound them in a circle. Then ships' hulks
+  Floated keel upwards, and the sea was covered
+  With shipwreck multitudinous and with slaughter.
+  The shores and jutting reefs were full of corpses.
+  In indiscriminate rout, with straining oar,
+  The whole barbarian navy turned and fled.
+  Our foes, like men 'mid tunnies, draughts of fishes,
+  With splintered oars and spokes of shattered spars
+  Kept striking, grinding, smashing us: shrill shrieks
+  With groanings mingled held the hollow deep,
+  Till night's dark eye set limit to the slaughter.
+  But for our mass of miseries, could I speak
+  Straight on for ten days, I should never sum it:
+  For know this well, never in one day died
+  Of men so many multitudes before.
+
+After a pause he resumes his narrative by describing Psyttaleia:--
+
+  There lies an island before Salamis,
+  Small, with scant harbour, which dance-loving Pan
+  Is wont to tread, haunting the salt sea-beaches.
+  There Xerxes placed his chiefs, that when the foes
+  Chased from their ships should seek the sheltering isle,
+  They might with ease destroy the host of Hellas,
+  Saving their own friends from the briny straits.
+  Ill had he learned what was to hap; for when
+  God gave the glory to the Greeks at sea,
+  That same day, having fenced their flesh with brass,
+  They leaped from out their ships; and in a circle
+  Enclosed the whole girth of the isle, that so
+  None knew where he should turn; but many fell
+  Crushed with sharp stones in conflict, and swift arrows
+  Flew from the quivering bowstrings winged with murder.
+  At last in one fierce onset with one shout
+  They strike, hack, hew the wretches' limbs asunder,
+  Till every man alive had fallen beneath them.
+  Then Xerxes groaned, seeing the gulf unclose
+  Of grief below him; for his throne was raised
+  High in the sight of all by the sea-shore.
+  Rending his robes, and shrieking a shrill shriek,
+  He hurriedly gave orders to his host;
+  Then headlong rushed in rout and heedless ruin.
+
+Atossa makes appropriate exclamations of despair and horror. Then
+the messenger proceeds:--
+
+  The captains of the ships that were not shattered,
+  Set speedy sail in flight as the winds blew.
+  The remnant of the host died miserably,
+  Some in Boeotia round the glimmering springs
+  Tired out with thirst; some of us scant of breath
+  Escaped, with bare life to the Phocian bounds,
+  And land of Doris, and the Melian Gulf,
+  Where with kind draughts Spercheius soaks the soil.
+  Thence in our flight Achaia's ancient plain
+  And Thessaly's stronghold received us worn
+  For want of food. Most died in that fell place
+  Of thirst and famine; for both deaths were there.
+  Yet to Magnesia came we and the coast
+  Of Macedonia, to the ford of Axius,
+  And Bolbe's canebrakes and the Pangaean range,
+  Edonian borders. Then in that grim night
+  God sent unseasonable frost, and froze
+  The stream of holy Strymon. He who erst
+  Recked nought of gods, now prayed with supplication,
+  Bowing before the powers of earth and sky.
+  But when the hosts from lengthy orisons
+  Surceased, it crossed the ice-incrusted ford.
+  And he among us who set forth before
+  The sun-god's rays were scattered, now was saved.
+  For blazing with sharp beams the sun's bright circle
+  Pierced the mid-stream, dissolving it with fire.
+  There were they huddled. Happy then was he
+  Who soonest cut the breath of life asunder.
+  Such as survived and had the luck of living,
+  Crossed Thrace with pain and peril manifold,
+  'Scaping mischance, a miserable remnant,
+  Into the dear land of their homes. Wherefore
+  Persia may wail, wanting in vain her darlings.
+  This is the truth. Much I omit to tell
+  Of woes by God wrought on the Persian race.
+
+Upon this triumphal note it were well, perhaps, to pause. Yet since
+the sojourner in Athens must needs depart by sea, let us advance a
+little way farther beyond Salamis. The low shore of the isthmus soon
+appears; and there is the hill of Corinth and the site of the city,
+as desolate now as when Antipater of Sidon made the sea-waves utter
+a threnos over her ruins. 'The deathless Nereids, daughters of
+Oceanus,' still lament by the shore, and the Isthmian pines are as
+green as when their boughs were plucked to bind a victor's forehead.
+Feathering the grey rock now as then, they bear witness to the
+wisdom and the moderation of the Greeks, who gave to the conquerors
+in sacred games no wreath of gold, or title of nobility, or land, or
+jewels, but the honour of an illustrious name, the guerdon of a
+mighty deed, and branches taken from the wild pine of Corinth, or
+the olive of Olympia, or the bay that flourished like a weed at
+Delphi. What was indigenous and characteristic of his native soil,
+not rare and costly things from foreign lands, was precious to the
+Greek. This piety, after the lapse of centuries and the passing away
+of mighty cities, still bears fruit. Oblivion cannot wholly efface
+the memory of those great games while the fir-trees rustle to the
+sea-wind as of old. Down the gulf we pass, between mountain range
+and mountain. On one hand, two peaked Parnassus rears his cope of
+snow aloft over Delphi; on the other, Erymanthus and Hermes' home,
+Cyllene, bar the pastoral glades of Arcady. Greece is the land of
+mountains, not of rivers or of plains. The titles of the hills of
+Hellas smite our ears with echoes of ancient music--Olympus and
+Cithaeron, Taygetus, Othrys, Helicon, and Ida. The headlands of the
+mainland are mountains, and the islands are mountain summits of a
+submerged continent. Austerely beautiful, not wild with an Italian
+luxuriance, nor mournful with Sicilian monotony of outline, nor yet
+again overwhelming with the sublimity of Alps, they seem the proper
+home of a race which sought its ideal of beauty in distinction of
+shape and not in multiplicity of detail, in light and not in
+richness of colouring, in form and not in size.
+
+At length the open sea is reached. Past Zante and Cephalonia we
+glide 'under a roof of blue Ionian weather;' or, if the sky has been
+troubled with storm, we watch the moulding of long glittering
+cloud-lines, processions and pomps of silvery vapour, fretwork and
+frieze of alabaster piled above the islands, pearled promontories
+and domes of rounded snow. Soon Santa Maura comes in sight:--
+
+  Leucatae nimbosa cacumina montis,
+  Et formidatus nautis aperitur Apollo.
+
+Here Sappho leapt into the waves to cure love-longing, according to
+the ancient story; and he who sees the white cliffs chafed with
+breakers and burning with fierce light, as it was once my luck to
+see them, may well with Childe Harold 'feel or deem he feels no
+common glow.' All through the afternoon it had been raining, and the
+sea was running high beneath a petulant west wind. But just before
+evening, while yet there remained a hand's-breadth between the sea
+and the sinking sun, the clouds were rent and blown in masses about
+the sky. Rain still fell fretfully in scuds and fleeces; but where
+for hours there had been nothing but a monotone of greyness,
+suddenly fire broke and radiance and storm-clouds in commotion.
+Then, as if built up by music, a rainbow rose and grew above
+Leucadia, planting one foot on Actium and the other on Ithaca, and
+spanning with a horseshoe arch that touched the zenith, the long
+line of roseate cliffs. The clouds upon which this bow was woven
+were steel-blue beneath and crimson above; and the bow itself was
+bathed in fire--its violets and greens and yellows visibly ignited
+by the liquid flame on which it rested. The sea beneath, stormily
+dancing, flashed back from all its crest the same red glow, shining
+like a ridged lava-torrent in its first combustion. Then as the sun
+sank, the crags burned deeper with scarlet blushes as of blood, and
+with passionate bloom as of pomegranate or oleander flowers. Could
+Turner rise from the grave to paint a picture that should bear the
+name of 'Sappho's Leap,' he might strive to paint it thus: and the
+world would complain that he had dreamed the poetry of his picture.
+But who could _dream_ anything so wild and yet so definite? Only the
+passion of orchestras, the fire-flight of the last movement of the C
+minor symphony, can in the realms of art give utterance to the
+spirit of scenes like this.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+Aar, the, i. 20
+
+Abano, ii. 98
+
+Abruzzi, the, ii. 34; iii. 230, 235, 236
+
+Acciaiuoli, Agnolo, ii. 226
+
+Acciauoli, the, iii. 98
+
+Accolti, Bernardo, ii. 83
+
+Accona, iii. 72, 74
+
+Accoramboni, Camillo, ii. 91:
+  Claudio, ii. 89:
+  Flaminio, ii. 91, 99, 100, 103 foll., 118 foll., 126:
+  Marcello, ii. 91 foll., 99, 102, 103, 105:
+  Mario, ii. 91:
+  Ottavio, ii. 91:
+  Scipione, ii. 91:
+  Tarquinia, ii. 89, 92, 103:
+  Vittoria, ii. 89-125
+
+Achilles, iii. 286
+
+Achradina, iii. 321, 324
+
+Aci, iii. 287
+
+Aci Castello, iii. 284
+
+Acis and Galatea, iii. 284, 285
+
+Acropolis, the, iii. 339, 344, 347
+
+Actium, iii. 364
+
+Adda, the, i. 50, 51, 62, 63, 174
+
+Addison, i. 3
+
+Adelaide, Queen of Lothair, King of Italy, ii. 169, 178
+
+Adelaisie (wife of Berald des Baux), i. 80
+
+Adrian VI. (Pope), ii. 251
+
+Adriatic, the, ii. 1, 3, 56, 59
+
+AEneas, iii. 319
+
+AEschylus, iii. 162, 271, 345, 358-362
+
+Affo, Padre Ireneo, ii. 363 _note_
+
+Agrigentines, the, iii. 335
+
+Agrigentum, iii. 266
+
+Ajaccio, i. 104-120
+
+Alamanni, Antonio, ii. 328
+
+Alban Hills, ii. 32
+
+Albany, Countess of, i. 352
+
+Alberti, house of the, ii. 213
+
+Alberti, Leo Battista, i. 216; ii. 14, 18, 21-29; iii. 102
+
+Albizzi, the, ii. 50, 209, 213 foll., 221, 224
+
+Albizzi, Maso degli, ii. 213-215
+
+Albizzi, Rinaldo degli, ii. 215, 218, 220, 221, 256
+
+Albula, ii. 127, 128;
+  Pass of, i. 53
+
+Aleotti, Giambattista, ii. 180
+
+Alexander the Great, iii. 262
+
+Alexander VI., ii. 47, 74, 184, 191, 193, 237, 363 _note_
+
+Alexandria, ii. 19; iii. 189, 190, 201, 253
+
+Alfieri, i. 342, 345-359
+
+Alfonso of Aragon, i. 195, 203; ii. 189, 235
+
+Alps, the, i. 1-67, 122, 123, 126, 133, 209, 258; ii. 8, 129, 168 _et
+  passim_
+
+Amadeo, Gian Antonio, i. 146, 150, 151, 191-193, 243
+
+Amalasuntha, daughter of Theodoric the Ostrogoth, ii. 2, 13
+
+Amalfi, i. 103 _note_; iii. 250-261
+
+Ambrogini family, iii. 101
+
+Ambrogini, Angelo. (_See_ Poliziano, Angelo)
+
+Ambrogini, Benedetto, iii. 101, 102
+
+Ampezzo, the, i. 268
+
+Ana-Capri, iii. 231, 232, 271
+
+Anapus, the, iii. 326, 328
+
+Anchises, iii. 319
+
+Ancona, i. 196, 198; ii. 14, 38, 45, 55, 102, 199; iii. 111
+
+Ancona, Professor d', ii. 276 _note_
+
+Andrea, Giovann', i. 318
+
+Andreini, ii. 269
+
+Angeli, Niccolo, iii. 151
+
+Angelico, Fra, i. 100, 240; ii. 49; iii. 35, 61, 147-149, 151, 248
+
+Angelo, S., ii. 96
+
+Angelo, Giovan. (_See_ Pius IV.)
+
+Angiolieri, Cecco, iii. 1, 2
+
+Anguillara, Deifobo, Count of, i. 202
+
+Anjou, house of, ii. 188
+
+Ansano, S., iii. 70
+
+Anselmi, ii. 158
+
+Antegnate, i. 197
+
+Antelao, i. 268, 283
+
+Antibes, i. 102
+
+Antinoe, iii. 191, 205
+
+Antinoopolis, iii. 191, 205
+
+Antinous, iii. 184-197, 200-229
+
+Antipater, iii. 322, 362
+
+Antiquari, Jacobo, iii. 126 _note_
+
+Antonio da Venafro, ii. 47
+
+Aosta, i. 2
+
+Apennines, the, i. 45, 99, 133; ii. 7, 8, 37, 45, 56, 62, 65, 66, 132
+  foll., 145, 168; iii. 91 _et passim_
+
+Apollonius of Tyana, iii. 216
+
+Apulia, i. 87 _note_; iii. 305
+
+Aquaviva, Dominico d', ii. 94
+
+Aquila, i. 196
+
+Aragazzi, Bartolommeo, iii. 95-100
+
+Aragon, Kings of, i. 79
+
+Arausio, i. 68
+
+Archimedes, iii. 325
+
+Arcipreti family, the, iii. 113
+
+Ardoin of Milan, iii. 299, 300
+
+Aretine, the, ii. 83
+
+Aretino, Pietro, ii. 91
+
+Aretino, Spinello, iii. 304
+
+Aretusi, Cesare, ii. 149 _note_
+
+Arezzo, ii. 214; iii. 7, 91, 96, 151 _note_;
+  Bishop of, iii. 74
+
+Ariosto, i. 71; ii. 66, 160, 168, 261, 264, 265, 267, 269, 273, 280,
+  336, 343
+
+Aristides, iii. 196
+
+Aristophanes, i. 84 _note_; iii. 161, 341, 351, 353
+
+Aristotle, i. 249; ii. 74; iii. 309
+
+Aristoxenus, iii. 262, 263
+
+Arles, i. 76-81;
+  King of, i. 79
+
+Arno, the, iii. 91;
+  valley of, iii. 41
+
+Arosa, valley of, i. 33
+
+Arqua, i. 167, 168
+
+Arrian, iii. 205
+
+Aruns, iii. 94
+
+Ascham, Roger, ii. 265, 266
+
+Asciano, iii. 86, 87
+
+Asinarus, iii. 327
+
+Assisi, i. 137; ii. 35, 39, 43, 44, 46; iii. 35, 68, 111, 114, 140
+
+Asso, the, iii. 108
+
+Asti, i. 347, 348; ii. 193, 197
+
+Astolphus, ii. 2
+
+Athens, i. 243; iii. 156, 169, 182, 188, 207, 323, 339-364
+
+Athens, Duke of, ii. 207, 208, 233 _note_
+
+Atrani, iii. 251, 254
+
+Attendolo, Sforza, i. 195; ii. 71
+
+Atti, Isotta degli, ii. 17 and _note_, 20
+
+Augustine, S., i. 232
+
+Augustus, Emperor, ii. 1, 14; iii. 215
+
+Aurelius, Marcus, iii. 164, 200
+
+Ausonias, iii. 268
+
+Aversa, iii. 253, 299, 300
+
+Avignon, i. 69-71, 77, 81, 86; ii. 136; iii. 51, 74
+
+Azzo (progenitor of Este and Brunswick), ii. 175
+
+Azzo (son of Sigifredo), ii. 169
+
+
+Badrutt, Herr Caspar, i. 55
+
+Baffo, i. 259, 260
+
+Baganza, the, ii. 184
+
+Baglioni, the, ii. 16, 47, 71, 236; iii. 81, 113-115, 119-136
+
+Baglioni, Annibale, iii. 132:
+  Astorre, iii. 113, 114, 121, 122,
+  125, 126:
+  Atalanta, iii. 116, 124, 127-129:
+  Braccio, iii. 134:
+  Carlo Barciglia, iii. 124:
+  Constantino, iii. 131:
+  Eusebio, iii. 131:
+  Filene, iii. 132:
+  Galeotto, iii. 124, 132:
+  Gentile, ii. 42, iii. 122, 132:
+  Gian-Paolo, ii. 47, 220, iii. 116, 117, 122, 125, 127, 128, 130-132:
+  Gismondo, iii. 122, 126, 127:
+  Grifone, iii. 124:
+  Grifonetto, ii. 47, iii. 113, 114, 124-129:
+  Guido, iii. 121, 126, 127:
+  Ippolita, iii. 131:
+  Malatesta, ii. 253, 254, iii. 127, 132:
+  Marcantonio, iii. 122, 125, 130:
+  Morgante, iii. 119 _note_ 2:
+  Niccolo, iii. 120:
+  Orazio, iii. 127, 132:
+  Pandolfo, iii. 120:
+  Pietro Paolo, ii. 41:
+  Ridolfo (1), iii. 120, 121:
+  Ridolfo (2), iii. 133, 134:
+  Simonetto, iii. 123, 124, 126:
+  Taddeo, iii. 131:
+  Troilo, iii. 122, 127
+
+Baiae, iii. 242
+
+Balzac, ii. 160
+
+Bandello, i. 155, 157, 158, 270; ii. 116, 265, 271, 277
+
+Bandinelli, Messer Francesco, iii. 10-12
+
+Barano, the, ii. 56-58
+
+Barbarossa, Frederick, ii. 69, 201; iii. 7, 271, 290, 306 _note_ 2
+
+Bari, Duke of. (_See_ Sforza, Lodovico)
+
+Bartolo, San, iii. 59
+
+Bartolommeo, Fra, iii. 63, 99
+
+Basaiti, i. 269
+
+Basella, i. 193
+
+Basinio, ii. 18
+
+Basle, i. 1, 2
+
+Bassano, i. 340
+
+Bastelica, i. 109, 113, 115
+
+Bastia, Matteo di, i. 216
+
+Battagli, Gian Battista, i. 216
+
+Battifolle, Count Simone da, iii. 11
+
+Baudelaire, iii. 280
+
+Baveno, i. 19
+
+Bayard, i. 113
+
+Bazzi, Giovannantonio. (_See_ Sodoma)
+
+Beatrice, Countess, iii. 144
+
+Beatrice, Dante's, ii. 6
+
+Beatrice of Lorraine, ii. 170
+
+Beaumarchais, i. 228, 229, 234
+
+Beaumont and Fletcher, ii. 267, 269
+
+Becchi, Gentile, ii. 192
+
+Beethoven, i. 10, 249; ii. 160
+
+Belcari, Feo, ii. 305
+
+Belcaro, iii. 66, 68
+
+Belisarius, ii. 2; iii. 290
+
+Bellagio, i. 186
+
+Bellano, i. 186
+
+Belleforest, ii. 116
+
+Bellini, Gentile, i. 269, 270
+
+Bellini, Gian, i. 263, 269; ii. 55, 135
+
+Bellinzona, i. 180
+
+Bembo, Pietro, ii. 82, 85
+
+Benci, Spinello, iii. 94
+
+Benedict, S., iii. 73, 81, 85, 248
+
+Benevento, iii. 251, 252, 299
+
+Benincasa, Jacopo (father of S. Catherine of Siena), iii. 50
+
+Benivieni, ii. 305
+
+Bentivogli, the, ii. 47, 178, 224
+
+Bentivogli, Alessandro de', i. 155, 156
+
+Bentivogli, Ercole de', ii. 224
+
+Bentivoglio, Ermes, ii. 47
+
+Benzone, Giorgio, i. 194
+
+Beral des Baux, i. 79, 80
+
+Berangere des Baux, i. 80
+
+Berceto, ii. 131, 133
+
+Berenger, King of Italy, ii. 169
+
+Berenger, Raymond, i. 80
+
+Bergamo, i. 190-207; ii. 82
+
+Bernardino, S., iii. 69, 113
+
+Bernardo, iii. 69-75
+
+Bernardo da Campo, i. 61
+
+Berne, i. 20
+
+Bernhardt, Madame, ii. 108
+
+Berni, ii. 270
+
+Bernina, the, i. 37, 55-57, 60, 64, 126; ii. 128
+
+Bernini, ii. 159
+
+Bersaglio, i. 268
+
+Bervic, ii. 149
+
+Besa, iii. 190, 191, 205
+
+Besozzi, Francesco, i. 156
+
+Bevagna, ii. 35, 38
+
+Beyle, Henri, ii. 102
+
+Bianco, Bernardo, i. 177
+
+Bibbiena, Cardinal, ii. 82, 83
+
+Bibboni, Francesco, or Cecco, i. 327-341
+
+Bion, i. 152; ii. 303
+
+Biondo, Flavio, ii. 28
+
+Bisola, Lodovico, ii. 150
+
+Bithynia, iii. 208
+
+Bithynium, iii. 187, 208
+
+Blacas (a knight of Provence), i. 80
+
+Blake, the poet, i. 101, 265; ii. 273; iii. 166, 260
+
+Boccaccio, ii. 7, 160, 208, 260, 261, 265, 270, 272, 273, 277, 334; iii.
+  16, 50, 248, 293
+
+Bocognano, i. 109-111, 115
+
+Bohemond, Prince of Tarentum, iii. 297, 298
+
+Boiardo, Matteo Maria, ii. 30, 66, 269, 343
+
+Boldoni, Polidoro, i. 183
+
+Bologna, i. 121, 155, 192, 196, 326; ii. 29, 47, 85, 185, 224
+
+Bologna, Gian, ii. 86
+
+Bolsena, iii. 140, 141;
+  Lake of, iii. 22
+
+Bona of Savoy (wife of Galeazzo Maria Sforza), ii. 230
+
+Bondeno de' Roncori, ii. 178
+
+Bonifazio (of Canossa), ii. 169, 170
+
+Bordighera, i. 102, 103
+
+Bordone, Paris, ii. 109
+
+Borgia family, ii. 66, 117, 363 _note_
+
+Borgia, Cesare, ii. 47, 48, 73, 74, 80, 83, 126, 363 _note_; iii. 131
+
+Borgia, Lucrezia, ii. 363 _note_
+
+Borgia, Roderigo, i. 220. (_See also_ Alexander VI.)
+
+Borgognone, Ambrogio, i. 146-148; iii. 64
+
+Bormio, i. 61, 180
+
+Borromeo family, iii. 14
+
+Borromeo, Carlo, i. 182
+
+Borromeo, Count Giberto, i. 182
+
+Boscoli, i. 341; ii. 246
+
+Bosola, i. 149
+
+Botticelli, Sandro, i. 266; ii. 29, 30; iii. 180 _note_
+
+Boetticher, Charles, iii. 225
+
+Bourbon, Duke of, i. 158;
+  Constable of, ii. 252
+
+Bracciano, Duke of, ii. 91 foll., 104
+
+Bracciano, second Duke of, ii. 93, 99, 101
+
+Braccio, i. 195, 197, 204, 207; ii. 47; iii. 81
+
+Braccio, Filippo da, iii. 124-126
+
+Bracciolini, Poggio, iii. 96, 336
+
+Bragadin, Aloisio, ii. 101
+
+Bramante, i. 216, 243
+
+Brancacci, Cardinal, iii. 96
+
+Brancaleone, Senator, iii. 336
+
+Brancaleoni family, ii. 66, 69
+
+Bregaglia, i. 35;
+  valley of, i. 184
+
+Brenner, the, ii. 168
+
+Brenta, the, i. 258
+
+Brescia, i. 63, 200; ii. 103, 169
+
+Brest, Anna Maria, ii. 149
+
+Brianza, the, i. 185, 186
+
+Brolio, iii. 94
+
+Bronte, iii. 279
+
+Browne, Sir Thomas, i. 44; iii. 337
+
+Browning, Robert, ii. 102, 270, 273, 281; iii. 173
+
+Browning, Mrs., ii. 270, 271; iii. 173
+
+Bruni, Lionardo, iii. 96, 98, 99
+
+Buol family, the, i. 35, 36, 40, 41, 49, 61
+
+Buol, Herr, i. 34-36
+
+Buonaparte family, the, i. 119, 120
+
+Buonarroti, Michel Angelo, i. 176, 193, 221, 236, 243, 326; ii. 21, 30,
+  40, 152, 158, 160, 161, 178, 253, 332; iii. 20, 22, 145, 146, 150, 154,
+  161
+
+Buonconvento, iii. 72, 76
+
+Burano, i. 258
+
+Burgundy, Duke of, i. 202, 203
+
+Burne-Jones, ii. 29
+
+Busti, Agostino, i. 159, 161, 193
+
+Byron, i. 280; ii. 7, 13, 15, 146, 162, 270, 271
+
+
+Cadenabbia, i. 121, 173
+
+Cadore, i. 267
+
+Caesarea, ii. 1
+
+Cagli, ii. 56, 69, 74
+
+Cajano, ii. 221
+
+Calabria, iii. 305;
+  mountains of, 288
+
+Calabria, Duke of, iii. 11
+
+Calascibetta, iii. 302
+
+Caldora, Giovanni Antonio, i. 202
+
+Caldora, Jacopo, i. 196
+
+Caligula, i. 134-136; iii. 2, 156, 163, 197, 273, 274
+
+Calles (Cagli), ii. 57
+
+Camargue, the, i. 78, 81
+
+Camerino, Duchy of, i. 185; ii. 47, 73
+
+Campagna, the, ii. 32
+
+Campaldino, ii. 206
+
+Campanella, iii. 20, 270
+
+Campell (or Campbell) family, the i. 61, 62 and _note_
+
+Campione, i. 175
+
+Canale, Messer Carlo, ii. 363 _note_
+
+Cannaregio, i. 268, 269, 339
+
+Cannes, i. 103 _note_; ii. 143
+
+Canonge, Jules, i. 81
+
+Canossa, ii. 163-179
+
+Cantu, i. 340
+
+Cap S. Martin, i. 90
+
+Capello, Bianca, ii. 93, 126
+
+Capponi, Agostino, ii. 246
+
+Capponi, Niccolo, ii. 253
+
+Capri, ii. 58; iii. 242, 256, 269-276
+
+Caracalla, i. 135; iii. 197
+
+Cardona, Viceroy, ii. 244
+
+Carducci, Francesco, ii. 253, 325
+
+Carini, Baronessa di, ii. 276
+
+Carlyle (quoted), i. 72
+
+Carmagnola, i. 197, 200, 208; ii. 71
+
+Carmagnuola, Bussoni di, ii. 17 and _note_
+
+Carpaccio, Vittore, i. 269, 270; ii. 42
+
+Carpegna, ii. 64
+
+Carpi, Duchy of, i. 185; ii. 168
+
+Carpi, the princes of, i. 202
+
+Carrara range, the, ii. 134, 146, 218, 238
+
+Casamicciola, iii. 234, 239
+
+Casanova, i. 259, 260
+
+Cascese, Santi da, ii. 224
+
+Casentino, iii. 92
+
+Cassinesi, the, iii. 248
+
+Cassius, Dion, iii. 191, 193, 195-197, 219
+
+Castagniccia, i. 110
+
+Castagno, Andrea del, ii. 233
+
+Castellammare, i. 103 _note_; iii. 232, 250, 276
+
+Casti, Abbe, ii. 270
+
+Castiglione, i. 144, 145; ii. 68, 80, 82; iii. 106, 108
+
+Castro Giovanni, mountains of, iii. 279, 302, 304, 320
+
+Catania, i. 87 _note_; iii. 279, 280, 288, 302, 304, 325
+
+Catherine, S. (of Alexandria), i. 136, 142, 153, 155-157, 178; iii. 55,
+  61
+
+Catherine, S. (of Sienna), i. 70; iii. 48-65
+
+Catria, iii. 73
+
+Catullus, iii. 180
+
+Cavalcanti, Guido, ii. 261, 308, 325, 343
+
+Cavicciuoli, Messer Guerra, iii. 2
+
+Cavro, i. 109
+
+Cecile (Passe Rose), i. 81
+
+Cefalu, iii. 291
+
+Cellant, Contessa di, i. 157-159
+
+Cellant, Count of, i. 158
+
+Cellini, Benvenuto, i. 2, 189, 240, 241, 328; ii. 25
+
+Celsano, i. 329
+
+Celsus, iii. 211, 219, 220
+
+Cenci, the, ii. 17, 89
+
+Cenci, Beatrice, ii. 102, 270
+
+Ceno, the, ii. 183, 195
+
+Centorbi, iii. 302
+
+Cephalonia, iii. 363
+
+Cephissus, the, iii. 350
+
+Cerami, iii. 304
+
+Cervantes, ii. 160
+
+Cesena, ii. 15, 62
+
+Cetona, iii. 103
+
+Chalcedon, iii. 212
+
+Chalons, the, i. 79
+
+Chapman, George, ii. 268
+
+Charles IV., iii. 6
+
+Charles V., i. 184, 185, 187, 188, 319, 338, 339; ii. 75, 202, 255, 257
+
+Charles VIII., ii. 67, 132, 183, 189 and _note_, 191-197, 238, 328
+
+Charles of Anjou, iii. 315 _note_
+
+Charles the Bold, i. 202
+
+Charles Martel, i. 75
+
+Charles of Valois, ii. 207
+
+Chartres, i. 243
+
+Chateaubriand, ii. 13
+
+Chatterton, ii. 273
+
+Chaucer, ii. 258, 260, 261, 270, 272
+
+Chiana, the, iii. 91; valley of, iii. 90, 97
+
+Chianti, iii. 94
+
+Chiara, S., ii. 36, 37
+
+Chiarelli, the, of Fabriano, ii. 236
+
+Chiavari, iii. 256
+
+Chiavenna, i. 35, 53, 63, 180, 184; ii. 130, 131
+
+Chioggia, i. 257-261
+
+Chiozzia, i. 350, 351
+
+Chiusi, i. 86; ii. 50, 51, 52; iii. 22, 90, 92;
+  Lake of, iii. 91, 94, 101
+
+Chiusure, iii. 77, 78, 80
+
+Chivasso, i. 19
+
+Christiern of Denmark, i. 205
+
+Chur, i. 49, 65
+
+Cicero, iii. 321
+
+Ciclopidi rocks, iii. 284
+
+Cima, i. 263
+
+Cimabue, iii. 35, 144
+
+Ciminian Hills, ii. 88; iii. 22
+
+Cini family. (_See_ Ambrogini)
+
+Cinthio, ii. 265, 272, 277
+
+Ciompi, the, ii. 208, 209
+
+Cisa, i. 340
+
+Citta della Pieve, ii. 51
+
+Citta di Castello, ii. 47, 71
+
+Ciuffagni, Bernardo, ii. 30
+
+Clair, S., ii. 37 and _note_
+
+Clairvaux, Abbot of, iii. 70
+
+Claudian, ii. 57, 343, 344
+
+Clemens Alexandrinus, iii. 204, 217, 219
+
+Clement VI., iii. 74, 132
+
+Clement VII., i. 221, 316, 317, 321; ii. 233, 239, 247 foll.; iii. 138
+  _note_, 247
+
+Climmnus, the, ii. 35, 39
+
+Cloanthus, iii. 319
+
+Clough, the poet, ii. 273
+
+Clusium, iii. 93, 94
+
+Coire, i. 183
+
+Col de Checruit, the, i. 15
+
+Coleridge, S.T., ii. 273; iii. 173
+
+Colico, i. 64, 183
+
+Collalto, Count Salici da, i. 337
+
+Colleoni family, the, i. 194
+
+Colleoni, Bartolommeo, i. 192-208; ii. 71
+
+Colleoni, Medea, i. 193, 204
+
+Collona family, ii. 187
+
+Colma, the, i. 18
+
+Colombini, iii. 69
+
+Colonna, Francesco, iii. 103
+
+Colonna, Giovanni, iii. 125, 254
+
+Colonus, the, iii. 350
+
+Columbus, i. 97; ii. 237
+
+Commodus, i. 135; iii. 164
+
+Comnena, Anna, iii. 297
+
+Como, i. 136, 174-189
+
+Como, Lake of, i. 50, 64, 122, 173, 174, 179, 181, 183-186
+
+Conrad (of Canossa), ii. 178
+
+Conrad, King of Italy, iii. 305
+
+Conradin, iii. 298
+
+Constance, daughter of King Roger of Sicily, iii. 297, 318
+
+Constance of Aragon, wife of Frederick II., iii. 307 _note_
+
+Constantinople, ii. 186; iii. 311
+
+Contado, iii. 90
+
+Copton, iii. 205
+
+Corfu, i. 87 _note_, 103 _note_
+
+Corgna, Bernardo da, iii. 125
+
+Corinth, iii. 212, 322, 342, 362
+
+Cormayeur, valley of, i. 9, 14-16
+
+Correggio, i. 137, 140, 163; ii. 126, 147-162
+
+Corsica, i. 85, 102-120; ii. 286
+
+Corte, i. 110, 111
+
+Corte Savella, ii. 96
+
+Cortina, i. 268
+
+Cortona, ii. 48-51, 214; iii. 90, 92, 151 _note_
+
+Cortusi, the, iii. 6
+
+Corviolo, ii. 170, 178
+
+Coryat, Tom, i. 49
+
+Costa (of Venice), Antonio, ii. 150
+
+Costa (of Rome), ii. 33, 146
+
+Courthezon, i. 81
+
+Covo, i. 197
+
+Cramont, the, i. 15
+
+Credi, Lorenzo di, iii. 35
+
+Crema, i. 194, 209-222
+
+Cremona, i. 209, 213, 215; iii. 6
+
+Crimisus, the, iii. 304, 319
+
+Crotona, iii. 319
+
+Crowne, the dramatist, ii. 159
+
+Cuma, iii. 212
+
+Curtius, Lancinus, i. 159, 193
+
+Cyane, the, iii. 328
+
+Cybo, Franceschetto, ii. 239
+
+
+Dalco, Antonio, ii. 150
+
+Dandolo, Gherardo, i. 198
+
+Dandolo, Matteo, iii. 133
+
+Daniel, Samuel (the poet), ii. 263
+
+Dante, i. 29, 80; ii. 5, 6, 13, 15, 23, 65, 70, 136, 137, 160, 170, 206,
+  207, 261, 262, 269, 273, 277, 305, 343; iii. 2, 19, 25, 36, 43 _note_,
+  67, 69, 73, 111, 144, 149, 173, 241, 317
+
+D'Arcello, Filippo, i. 195
+
+Davenant, Sir William, ii. 267
+
+David, Jacques Louis, i. 71, 72
+
+Davos, i. 20, 28-47, 49, 53, 58, 65, 183
+
+Davos Doerfli, i. 53
+
+De Comines, Philippe, ii. 190, 193-197; iii. 45 _note_, 69
+
+De Gie, Marechal, ii. 199
+
+De Musset, iii. 163, 235
+
+De Quincey, ii. 113; iii. 273 _note_
+
+De Rosset, ii. 103
+
+Dekker, Thomas, ii. 267
+
+Del Corvo, ii. 136
+
+Della Casa, Giovanni, i. 331, 333
+
+Della Porta, i. 193
+
+Della Quercia, i. 192
+
+Della Rocca, Giudice, i. 112, 113
+
+Della Rovere family, ii. 66 (_see also_ Rovere)
+
+Della Seta, Galeazzo, i. 329
+
+Demetrius, iii. 113
+
+Demosthenes, iii. 323, 324, 326, 327
+
+Desenzano, i. 173
+
+Dickens, Charles, iii. 39
+
+Dionysius, iii. 322, 325
+
+Dischma-Thal, the, i. 49
+
+Dolce Acqua, ii. 136
+
+Dolcebono, Gian Giacomo, i. 153
+
+Domenico da Leccio, Fra, iii. 83
+
+Dominic, S., i. 221; iii. 61
+
+Donatello, i. 150, 178; ii. 29, 30, 41; iii. 96, 97, 100
+
+Doni, Adone, iii. 114
+
+Dore, Gustave, i. 264; ii. 15
+
+Doria, Pietro, i. 260
+
+Doria, Stephen, i. 113
+
+Dorias, the, i. 97
+
+Dossi, Dosso, i. 166, 170, 172
+
+Drayton, Michael, ii. 263
+
+Druids, the, iii. 29
+
+Drummond, William (the poet), ii. 263
+
+Dryden, i. 2, 6; ii. 7, 270
+
+Duccio, iii. 144, 145
+
+Duerer, Albert, i. 345; ii. 275; iii. 260
+
+
+Eckermann, ii. 157, 162
+
+Edolo, i. 63
+
+Edrisi, iii. 308, 309
+
+Egypt, iii. 189, 190, 192, 210 foll.
+
+Eichens, Edward, ii. 150
+
+Eiger, the, i. 12
+
+Electra, ii. 135
+
+'Eliot, George,' ii. 270
+
+Emilia, ii. 16
+
+Emilia Pia, ii. 82
+
+Empedocles, i. 87; iii. 172, 173, 174, 181, 337
+
+Empoli, iii. 41, 87
+
+Engadine, the, i. 48, 55, 56, 61, 183; ii. 128
+
+Enna, iii. 302, 303 and _note_
+
+Ennius, iii. 173, 181
+
+Enza, the, ii. 166
+
+Enzio, King, iii. 298
+
+Epicurus, iii. 173, 174, 181
+
+Eridanus, ii. 131
+
+Eryx (Lerici), ii. 142
+
+Este, i. 167
+
+Este family, the, i. 166; ii. 68, 251, 268
+
+Este, Azzo d', iii. 6:
+  Beatrice d', i. 150:
+  Cardinal d', ii. 91:
+  Ercole d', i. 202, ii. 236:
+  Guelfo d', ii. 177:
+  Guinipera d', ii. 17;
+  Lucrezia d', ii. 77, 83:
+  Niccolo d', ii. 236
+
+Estrelles, the, i. 102
+
+Etna, iii. 93, 103, 198, 279-287, 319, 325, 327
+
+Etruscans, the, i. 49
+
+Euganeans, the, i. 258, 281, 282; ii. 168
+
+Eugenie, Empress, i. 119
+
+Eugenius IV., i. 199; ii. 70, 220
+
+Euhemerus, iii. 173
+
+Euripides, ii. 142, 159 _note_, 335; iii. 89, 215, 340
+
+Eusebius, iii. 197, 219
+
+Everelina, ii. 166
+
+
+Fabretti, Raffaello, iii. 209
+
+Faenza, ii. 47
+
+Fairfax, Edward, translator of Tasso, ii. 265
+
+Fano, ii. 57, 59, 69
+
+Fanum Fortunae (Fano), ii. 57
+
+Farnese, Alessandro, i. 317:
+  Julia, i. 193:
+  Odoardo, ii. 180:
+  Pier Luigi, iii. 133:
+  Ranunzio, ii. 180:
+  Vittoria, ii. 76
+
+Farnesi family, ii. 75, 90, 117, 180; iii. 336
+
+Faro, the, iii. 301, 320
+
+Favara, iii. 309
+
+Federighi, Antonio, iii. 62
+
+Federigo of Urbino. (_See_ Urbino)
+
+Feltre, Vittorino da, ii. 70
+
+Ferdinand, Grand Duke of Tuscany, ii. 78
+
+Ferdinand of Aragon, ii. 189, 191, 192, 193, 234; iii. 274, 276
+
+Fermo, ii. 47, 90
+
+Ferrara, i. 166, 167, 171; ii. 67, 68, 168, 169, 185, 221; iii. 6
+
+Ferrara, Duke of, i. 206
+
+Ferrari, Gaudenzio, i. 137-139, 141, 162-164, 177
+
+Ferretti, Professor, ii. 179
+
+Ferrucci, Francesco, i. 343; ii. 254
+
+Fesch, Cardinal, i. 118
+
+Fiesole, i. 86
+
+Filelfo, Francesco, ii. 25
+
+Filibert of Savoy, ii. 91
+
+Filiberta, Princess of Savoy, ii. 247
+
+Filippo, i. 149
+
+Filonardi, Cinzio, iii. 133
+
+Fina, Santa, iii. 59
+
+Finiguerra, Maso, i. 218
+
+Finsteraarhorn, the, ii. 136
+
+Fiorenzuola, ii. 197, 284
+
+Flaminian Way, ii. 55, 57
+
+Flaxman, ii. 15
+
+Fletcher, the dramatist, i. 358; ii. 267
+
+Florence, i. 121, 316, 318, 319; ii. 5, 50, 145, 185, 187, 198, 201-257,
+  259, 305, 306; iii. 7, 10, 21, 132, 151 _note_, 317 _note_, _et passim_
+
+Florence, Duke of, i. 187
+
+Fluela, the, i. 29, 37, 54
+
+Fluela Bernina Pass, the, i. 53
+
+Fluela Hospice, i. 59
+
+Foglia, the, ii. 65
+
+Foiano, ii. 50
+
+Folcioni, Signor, i. 217
+
+Folengo, ii. 270
+
+Folgore da San Gemignano, ii. 53; iii. 1-20, 67, 70
+
+Foligno, ii. 37-41, 45, 46, 52
+
+Fondi, i. 318
+
+Ford, John (the dramatist), ii, 267, 277
+
+Forio, iii. 236, 237
+
+Fornovo, ii. 132, 180-200
+
+Fortini, iii. 68
+
+Forulus (Furlo), ii. 57
+
+Forum Sempronii (Fossombrone), ii. 57
+
+Foscari, the, ii. 98
+
+Fosdinovo, ii. 134-137
+
+Fossato, ii. 52
+
+Fossombrone, ii. 57, 58, 69, 85, 91
+
+Fouquet, i. 80
+
+Francesco, Fra, i. 269
+
+Francesco da Carrara, iii. 6
+
+Francesco Maria I. of Urbino. (_See_ Urbino)
+
+Francesco Maria II. of Urbino. (_See_ Urbino)
+
+Francia, Francesco, ii. 33
+
+Francis I. of France, i. 113, 183, 184
+
+Francis of Assisi, S., i. 99, 100; ii. 23, 44; iii. 57, 58, 61, 113
+
+Francois des Baux, i. 81
+
+Frederick, Emperor, i. 80
+
+Frederick II., Emperor, iii. 297, 315 and _note_, 316-318
+
+Frere, J.H., ii. 270
+
+Friedrichs, iii. 224
+
+Frisingensis, Otto, iii. 7
+
+Friuli, i. 351
+
+Furka, ii. 130
+
+Furlo, ii. 55
+
+Furlo Pass, ii. 57, 58
+
+Fusina, i. 281
+
+
+Gaeta, i. 318; iii. 235
+
+Galatea, i. 91
+
+Galileo, ii. 27
+
+Galli Islands, iii. 270
+
+Gallio, Marchese Giacomo, i. 179
+
+Gallo, Antonio di San, iii. 90, 102
+
+Gallo, Francesco da San, ii. 253; iii. 247
+
+Garda, i. 173;
+  Lake of, ii. 98, 169
+
+Gardon, the, valley of, i. 75
+
+Garfagnana, ii. 168
+
+Garigliano, iii. 247
+
+Gaston de Foix, i. 160, 161, 193; ii. 2, 10
+
+Gattamelata (Erasmo da Narni), i. 197; ii. 41, 71
+
+Gellias, iii. 337
+
+Gelon, iii. 290, 304
+
+Genoa, i. 97, 105, 113, 259; ii. 185; iii. 250, 253, 317 _note_
+
+Gentile, Girolamo, ii. 236
+
+George of Antioch, iii. 307, 311
+
+Gerard, ii. 149
+
+Gerardo da Camino, iii. 6
+
+Ghiacciuolo, ii. 15
+
+Ghibellines, ii. 15, 54, 69, 202 foll.; iii. 17, 43 _note_, 73, 110
+
+Ghiberti, Lorenzo di Cino, ii. 30; iii. 145, 146
+
+Giannandrea, bravo of Verona, ii. 85
+
+Giardini, iii. 287
+
+Giarre, iii. 279
+
+Gibbon, Edward (cited), i. 346
+
+Ginori, Caterina, i. 323, 324
+
+Ginori, Lionardo, i. 323
+
+Giordani, i. 326
+
+Giorgione, i. 345; iii. 247
+
+Giottino, ii. 233 _note_
+
+Giotto, i. 152; ii. 43, 206; iii. 35, 145, 248
+
+Giovanni da Fogliani, ii. 47
+
+Giovenone, i. 139
+
+Giovio, i. 322
+
+Girgenti, iii. 266, 291, 302, 304, 320, 321, 332-338
+
+Giulio Romano, i. 140, 152
+
+Glastonbury, iii. 29, 47
+
+Gnoli, Professor, i. 327 _note_; ii. 102 _note_, 103
+
+Godfrey, the Hunchback, ii. 170
+
+Godfrey, Duke of Lorraine, ii. 170
+
+Goethe, i. 5, 6, 10, 11, 131, 164, 237; ii. 26, 157, 160, 162; iii. 172,
+  173, 320
+
+Goldoni, i. 259, 345-359
+
+Golo, the, valley of, i. 111
+
+Gonfalonier of Florence, ii. 83, 206, 209, 243, 245, 253
+
+Gonzaga family, ii. 68
+
+Gonzaga, Alessandro, i. 186:
+  Elisabetta, ii. 73:
+  Francesco, ii. 73, 194, 196, 197, 345, 363 _note_:
+  Giulia, i. 318:
+  Leonora, ii. 76
+
+Gorbio, i. 85, 91
+
+Gozzoli, Benozzo, i. 137; ii. 35
+
+Graubuenden, the, i. 50
+
+Gravedona, i. 181
+
+Gray, the poet, i. 3; ii. 273
+
+Greece, and the Greeks, i. 101, 102, 240, 244; ii. 18; iii. 155 foll.,
+  260 foll., 285-287, 290-292, 320 foll., 339-364
+
+Greene, Robert, ii. 265, 266, 267
+
+Gregory VII., ii. 172, 173-176 (_see also_ Hildebrand)
+
+Gregory XI., iii. 51
+
+Gregory XIII., ii. 88, 95, 96, 97
+
+Grenoble, i. 111
+
+Grigioni, the, i. 49
+
+Grindelwald, iii. 275
+
+Grisons, Canton of the, i. 48, 49, 50, 183, 184, 186, 188
+
+Grivola, the, i. 126
+
+Grosseto, iii. 66
+
+Grote, the historian, iii. 323
+
+Grumello, i. 48, 64
+
+Guarini, ii. 267
+
+Guazzi, the, i. 329
+
+Gubbio, ii. 35, 45, 52-55, 69, 85, 89, 97
+
+Guelfs, ii. 15, 54, 202 foll.; iii. 17, 110, 112
+
+Guerin, ii. 43
+
+Guicciardini, Francesco, i. 319; ii. 75, 255
+
+Guiccioli, Countess, ii. 7
+
+Guidantonio, Count, ii. 70
+
+Guido, iii. 184
+
+Guidobaldo I. (_See_ Urbino)
+
+Guidobaldo II. (_See_ Urbino)
+
+Guillaume de Cabestan, i. 80
+
+Guiscard, Robert, iii. 262, 297, 298, 300
+
+Gyas, iii. 319
+
+Gylippus, iii. 323, 324, 326, 337
+
+
+Hadrian, iii. 164, 185, 187-205, 208, 210, 212, 224, 225, 226, 228, 343,
+  345
+
+Halycus, the, iii. 319
+
+Handel, iii. 40
+
+Harmodius, ii. 135; iii. 155
+
+Harrington, Sir John, ii. 265
+
+Harvey, Gabriel, ii. 265
+
+Hauteville, house of, iii. 252, 253, 254, 290, 294 foll.
+
+Hazlitt, ii. 109
+
+Hegesippus, iii. 188
+
+Helbig, iii. 187
+
+Heliogabalus, i. 135; iii. 164
+
+Henry II. of France, i. 316
+
+Henry III., ii. 170
+
+Henry IV., King of Italy, ii. 170, 173-177; iii. 300 _note_
+
+Henry V., Emperor, ii. 178
+
+Henry VI. (of Sicily), iii. 297, 318
+
+Henry VII., Emperor, iii. 72, 76
+
+Hermopolis, iii. 205
+
+Herodotus, iii. 319
+
+Herrick, Robert, ii. 324
+
+Hesiod, ii. 338; iii. 172, 173
+
+Hiero II., iii. 325
+
+Hildebrand, ii. 163, 171, 172; iii. 300 _note_ 2, 305
+
+Himera, the, iii. 304
+
+Hispellum (Spello), ii. 38
+
+Hoby, Thomas, ii. 265
+
+Hoffnungsau, i. 66
+
+Hohenstauffen, house of, ii. 188, 202; iii. 290, 297, 315
+
+Homer, i. 84 _note_; iii. 155, 226, 286, 287, 320
+
+Honorius, Emperor, ii. 2, 57
+
+Horace, ii. 273; iii. 180
+
+Howell, James, ii. 266
+
+Hugh, Abbot of Clugny, ii. 175, 176
+
+Hugo, Victor, iii. 164
+
+Hunt, Leigh, ii. 15, 146, 270
+
+Hymettus, iii. 351
+
+
+Ibn-Hamud, iii. 304
+
+Ictinus, iii. 267, 343
+
+Il Medeghino. (_See_ Medici, Gian Giacomo de')
+
+Ilaria del Caretto, iii. 98
+
+Ilario, Fra, ii. 136, 137
+
+Ilissus, the, iii. 350
+
+Imola, ii. 231
+
+Imperial, Prince, i. 119
+
+Inn river, the, i, 54, 55
+
+Innocent III., ii. 203
+
+Innocent VIII., ii. 184
+
+Innsprueck, i. 111
+
+Isabella of Aragon, ii. 192
+
+Isac, Antonio, ii. 149
+
+Ischia, iii. 233, 234, 236, 238, 241
+
+Isella, i. 19
+
+Iseo, Lake, i. 173, 174
+
+Ithaca, iii. 364
+
+Itri, i. 318, 319
+
+
+Jacobshorn, the, ii. 131
+
+James 'III. of England,' ii. 83
+
+Joachim, Abbot, iii. 141, 142
+
+Joan of Naples, i. 81, 195
+
+John XXII., iii. 74
+
+John XXIII., iii. 96
+
+John of Austria, Don, ii. 77
+
+Jonson, Ben, ii. 267, 268
+
+Jourdain (the hangman of the Glaciere), i. 72
+
+Judith of Evreux, iii. 303
+
+Julia, daughter of Claudius, ii. 36
+
+Julian, iii. 197
+
+Julier, ii. 127, 128
+
+Julius II., i. 221; ii. 74, 83, 220; iii. 131
+
+Jungfrau, the, i. 12
+
+Justin Martyr, iii. 197, 219
+
+Justinian, ii. 10, 12
+
+Juvara, Aloisio, ii. 150
+
+Juvenal, iii. 181, 199
+
+
+Keats, the poet, ii. 262, 263, 270, 273
+
+Kelbite dynasty, iii. 292, 301
+
+Killigrew, the dramatist, ii. 159
+
+Klosters, i. 30, 46
+
+
+La Cisa, the pass, ii. 132, 133
+
+La Madonna di Tirano, i. 61, 62
+
+La Magione, ii. 46-48
+
+La Rosa, i. 59
+
+La Spezzia, ii. 137-139, 143
+
+La Staffa family, the, iii. 113
+
+Lacca, iii. 236
+
+Lamb, Charles, ii. 110
+
+Lampridius, iii. 197
+
+Landona, iii. 127
+
+Lanini, i. 139-142, 162
+
+Lanuvium, iii. 209
+
+Lars Porsena, ii. 52, 93
+
+Laschi, the, i. 329
+
+Le Prese, i. 60
+
+Leake, Colonel, iii. 325
+
+Lecco, i. 183, 185, 186, 188
+
+Legnano, ii. 198
+
+Lenz, i. 65
+
+Leo IX., iii. 300
+
+Leo X., i. 221; ii. 75, 88, 246; iii. 132
+
+Leonardo. (_See_ Vinci, Leonardo da)
+
+Leoncina, Monna Ippolita, ii. 308
+
+Leopardi, Alessandro, i. 207, 326; ii. 62
+
+Lepanto, ii. 77, 93
+
+Lepidus, ii. 27
+
+Lerici, ii. 139, 142-145
+
+Les Baux, i. 77-81; ii. 136
+
+Leucadia, iii. 364
+
+Levezow, Von, iii. 211
+
+Leyva, Anton de, i. 187
+
+Lido, the, i. 280, 283-286; ii. 1
+
+Liguria, the, i. 97; ii. 178, 283
+
+Lilyboeum, iii. 294 _note_
+
+Lioni, Leone, i. 188
+
+L'Isle, i. 72
+
+Livorno, ii. 145, 214
+
+Livy, iii. 94, 171
+
+Lo Spagna, iii. 114
+
+Lodi, i. 216
+
+Lomazzo, i. 137
+
+Lombardy, i. 19, 49, 61, 121, 122, 129, 133-172, 209; ii. 129, 132, 147,
+  165, 168, 182
+
+Lorenzaccio, ii. 41
+
+Lorenzetti, Ambrogio, iii. 8, 36, 43, 44
+
+Lorenzo, Bernardo di, iii. 105
+
+Loreto, ii. 97
+
+Lothair, King of Italy, ii. 169
+
+Louis XI, ii. 237
+
+Louis of Anjou, i. 195
+
+Lovere, i. 174
+
+Loyola, Ignatius, iii. 61
+
+Lucan (quoted), i. 92
+
+Lucca, ii. 145, 168, 170, 203, 211, 214, 218, 286; iii. 4, 98
+
+Lucca, Pauline, i. 224, 226, 227, 229, 233, 234, 237
+
+Lucera, iii. 315 and _note_
+
+Lucius III., iii. 312
+
+Lucretius, iii. 157-183
+
+Lugano, i. 125, 128, 156, 180
+
+Lugano, Lake, i. 122, 125, 169, 185
+
+Luigi, Pier, ii. 180
+
+Luini, i. 141, 148, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 162, 164-166, 177, 178;
+  iii. 184
+
+Luna, Etruscan, ii. 131
+
+Luziano of Lauranna, ii. 78
+
+Lyly, John, ii. 268
+
+Lysimeleia, iii. 327
+
+
+Macedonia, iii. 323
+
+Machiavelli, ii. 16, 41, 75, 117, 219, 220, 225, 231, 250; iii. 131
+
+Macugnaga, i. 18, 20; iii. 282
+
+Madrid, iii. 223
+
+Magenta, i. 127
+
+Maggiore, Lake, i. 124, 173
+
+Magnanapoli, ii. 95, 96, 103
+
+Magnani, Giuseppe, ii. 150
+
+Magra, the, ii. 133, 134, 136, 238
+
+Maitani, Lorenzo, iii. 142
+
+Majano, Benedetto da, ii. 30
+
+Malamocco, i. 257, 280, 281
+
+Malaspina family, ii. 134, 136
+
+Malaspina, Moroello, ii. 136
+
+Malaterra, Godfrey, iii. 298
+
+Malatesta family, ii. 15-17, 62, 66, 69, 71, 278; iii. 121
+
+Malatesta, Gian Galeazzo, ii. 16
+
+Malatesta, Giovanni, ii. 15
+
+Malatesta, Sigismondo Pandolfo, i. 135, 202, 203; ii. 14, 16-21, 72;
+  iii. 7
+
+Malfi, Duchess of, i. 149
+
+Malghera, i. 339
+
+Malipiero, Pasquale, i. 200
+
+Maloja, i. 55, ii. 128, 129;
+  the Pass of, i. 53
+
+Malpaga, i. 205, 206
+
+Manente, M. Francesco, i. 329
+
+Manfred, King, ii. 203
+
+Manfredi, the, ii. 47
+
+Manfredi, Astorre, i. 202; iii. 197
+
+Manfredi, Taddeo, ii. 231
+
+Maniaces, iii. 299, 301
+
+Mansueti, i. 269
+
+Mantegna, i. 176; ii. 100, 197; iii. 180
+
+Mantinea, iii. 207
+
+Mantua, i. 340; ii. 68, 70, 74, 168, 185, 345
+
+Mantua, Dukes of, i. 186, 243
+
+Mantua, Marquis of, ii. 194-196, 199
+
+Marcellinus, Ammianus, iii. 197, 205
+
+Marcellus, iii. 186
+
+March, the, ii. 16, 187
+
+Marches of Ancona, ii. 199
+
+Marecchia, the, ii. 14
+
+Maremma, the, ii. 286; iii. 69, 103
+
+Marenzio, iii. 37
+
+Margaret of Austria, ii. 180
+
+Maria, Galeazzo, i. 149
+
+Maria, Gian, i. 149
+
+Maria Louisa, Duchess of Parma, ii. 149
+
+Marianazzo, robber chieftain, ii. 88
+
+Mariano family, the, i. 139
+
+Marignano, i. 186
+
+Marignano, Marquis of. (_See_ Medici, Gian Giacomo de')
+
+Mark, S., ii. 19
+
+Marlowe, Christopher, ii. 159, 181, 258, 267, 268 and _note_; iii. 228
+
+Maroggia, i. 175
+
+Marseilles, i. 2
+
+Marston, the dramatist, ii. 113, 267, 268
+
+Martelli, Giovan Battista, i. 334, 335
+
+Martelli, Luca, i. 340
+
+Martial, i. 2; iii. 268
+
+Martin V., iii. 95
+
+Martinengo, i. 203
+
+Martinengo family, i. 204
+
+Martini, Biagio, ii. 149
+
+Masaccio, i. 144, 145
+
+Masolino da Panicale, i. 144, 145; ii. 55
+
+Mason (artist), ii. 32, 129
+
+Massinger, Philip, ii. 267
+
+Matarazzo, iii. 121, 122, 128, 130, 134
+
+Matilda, Countess, ii. 165, 168, 170-173, 179; iii. 300 _note_ 2
+
+Matteo of Ajello, iii. 308 _note_, 311
+
+Mauro, S., iii. 248
+
+Mayenfeld, i. 65
+
+Mazara, iii. 281
+
+Mazzorbo, i. 282
+
+Medici family, i. 187, 315-344; ii. 66, 90, 117, 187, 208, 209 foll.,
+  245, 247, 278
+
+Medici, Alessandro de', i. 315-327, ii. 83, 248, 251, 255:
+  Battista de', i. 188:
+  Bernardo de', i. 180:
+  Bianca de', ii. 233:
+  Casa de', i. 317:
+  Catherine de', i. 316, ii. 76, 255:
+  Clarina de', i. 182:
+  Claudia de', ii. 77:
+  Cosimo de', i. 319, ii. 225 _note_, iii. 67, 247:
+  Cosimo (the younger) de', i. 326, 330, 340, ii. 255, 257:
+  Ferdinand de', (Cardinal), ii. 93:
+  Francesco di Raffaello de', i. 321, ii. 93, 104:
+  Gabrio de', i. 188:
+  Gian Giacomo de' (Il Medeghino), i. 179-188, iii. 67:
+  Giovanni de', ii. 215, 216, 239, 244, 245, 246 (_see also_ Leo X.):
+  Giovanni de' (general), ii. 249:
+  Giuliano, son of Piero de', ii. 83, 226, 232, 233, 239, 318, 334:
+  Giuliano de' (Duke of Nemours), ii. 239, 244, 245, 247:
+  Giulio dei (_see_ Clement VII.):
+  Ippolito de', i. 316-319, ii. 83, 248, 251, 255:
+  Isabella de', ii. 93, 104, 105:
+  Lorenzino de', i. 315, 319-335, 338, 341-344, ii. 83, 255:
+  Lorenzo de' (the Magnificent), ii. 67, 184, 185, 187, 216, 218,
+    226 foll., 305, 311, 325, 326, 330, iii. 101:
+  Lorenzo de' (Duke of Urbino) (_see_ Urbino):
+  Maddalena de', ii. 239:
+  Piero de', ii. 184, 191, 192, 226, 227, 238, 328, iii. 101:
+  Pietro de', iii. 247:
+  Salvestro de', ii. 208
+
+Mediterranean, the, i. 2; ii. 145
+
+Melfi, iii. 300
+
+Melo of Bari, iii. 299
+
+Meloria, the, iii. 253
+
+Menaggio, i. 181, 186, 188
+
+Menander, iii. 72
+
+Mendelssohn, i. 10
+
+Mendrisio, i. 122, 175
+
+Menoetes, iii. 319
+
+Mentone, i. 83-93, 94, 98, 102, 103, 106; iii. 250
+
+Menzoni, ii. 285
+
+Mer de Glace, iii. 282
+
+Meran, i. 111
+
+Mercatello, Gentile, ii. 70
+
+Mesomedes, iii. 201
+
+Messina, iii. 288, 292 and _note_, 301
+
+Mestre, i. 339
+
+Metaurus, or Metauro, the, ii. 38, 58
+
+Mevania (Bevagna), ii. 38
+
+Michelangelo. (_See_ Buonarroti, Michel Angelo)
+
+Michelhorn, ii. 127
+
+Michelozzi, Michelozzo, iii. 96
+
+Middleton, Thomas, ii. 267
+
+Mignucci, Francesco, ii. 90
+
+Milan, i. 14, 19, 20, 50, 121, 124, 136, 152-161, 168, 178, 180, 184,
+  195, 203, 212, 213, 223 foll.; ii. 185, 186, 190, 191, 224; iii. 151
+  _note_, 253, 348
+
+Milan, Dukes of, i. 49, 149, 180, 186, 200; ii. 214
+
+Millet, iii. 77
+
+Milton, ii. 160, 258, 262, 263, 269, 274; iii. 25, 35, 37, 38, 158, 169,
+  342
+
+Mino da Fiesole, ii. 81
+
+Mirandola, Duchy of, i. 185; ii. 168
+
+Mirandola, the Counts of, i. 202
+
+Mirandola, Pico della, ii. 21
+
+Mirano, i. 294
+
+Miseno, iii. 238, 239, 242
+
+Mnesicles, iii. 343
+
+Mnestheus, iii. 319
+
+Modena, i. 170, 172; ii. 168, 169, 221
+
+Molsa, Francesco Maria, i. 326
+
+Monaco, i. 92, 102
+
+Mondello, iii. 294
+
+Monreale, ii. 10; iii. 291, 311-314
+
+Mont Blanc, i. 14, 126, 134:
+  Cenis, ii. 174:
+  Cervin, i. 169:
+  Chetif, i. 14:
+  Finsteraarhorn, i. 169:
+  Genevre, ii. 193:
+  S. Michel, ii. 167:
+  de la Saxe, i. 14:
+  Solaro, iii. 230:
+  Ventoux, ii. 22
+
+Montalcino, iii. 76, 79, 92
+
+Montalembert, iii. 249
+
+Montalto, Cardinal, ii. 90, 91, 95, 98, 103 (_see also_ Sixtus V.)
+
+Montdragon, i. 68
+
+Monte Adamello, i. 174, ii. 168:
+  Amiata, iii. 42, 69, 76, 80, 90, 91, 93, 103, 104, 106, 108:
+  d'Asdrubale, ii. 66:
+  Aureo, iii. 253:
+  Calvo, ii. 55:
+  Carboniano, ii. 168:
+  Cassino, iii. 248:
+  Catini, iii. 4:
+  Catria, ii. 66, 68, 69, iii. 111:
+  Cavallo, ii. 94:
+  Cetona, ii. 51, iii. 90, 91:
+  Coppiolo, ii. 64:
+  Delle Celle, ii. 168:
+  di Disgrazia, i. 64:
+  Epomeo, iii. 234, 236, 237-240, 241:
+  Fallonica, iii. 103, 110:
+  Gargano, iii. 299:
+  Generoso, i. 121-132, 173:
+  Leone, i. 174:
+  Nerone, ii. 66:
+  Nuovo, iii. 242:
+  Oliveto, i. 166, ii. 82, iii. 8, 69, 73, 74 foll., 151 _note_:
+  d'Oro, i. 105, 111:
+  Pellegrino, ii. 176, iii. 294:
+  Rosa, i. 8, 18, 105, 125, 126, 129, 134, 169:
+  Rosso, iii. 279:
+  Rotondo, i. 111, ii. 33:
+  Salvadore, i. 125, 128:
+  Soracte, ii. 51:
+  Viso, i. 126, 134, 169, 174
+
+Montefalco, ii. 35-37, 39, 45, 46
+
+Montefeltro family, ii. 62, 64, 66, 69-72
+
+Montefeltro, Federigo di, i. 207, 208
+
+Montefeltro, Giovanna, ii. 73
+
+Montelimart, i. 68
+
+Montepulciano, ii. 50, 214; iii. 68, 69, 77, 87-102, 109, 110
+
+Montferrat, Boniface, Marquis of, i. 202
+
+Monti della Sibilla, ii. 46
+
+Monza, i. 199
+
+Moors, the, i. 85, 94; iii. 296, 299, 301
+
+Morbegno, i. 49, 51, 64, 186
+
+Morea, the, ii. 18; iii. 339
+
+Morris, William, ii. 271
+
+Morteratsch, the, i. 56
+
+Mozart, i. 223, 227, 229, 231-237, 249; ii. 153
+
+Muehlen, ii. 128
+
+Mulhausen, i. 1
+
+Murano, i. 268, 282, 333; ii. 1
+
+Murillo, ii. 153
+
+Muerren, i. 9, 11, 14
+
+Musset, De, i. 342
+
+Mussulmans, iii. 290, 291, 294 _note_, 302, 305, 307, 316
+
+
+Naples, ii. 185, 188, 189, 191, 193, 234, 282; iii. 221, 231, 239, 243,
+  253, 254, 256, 270, 276, 289, 317 _note_
+
+Naples, Queens of, i. 79
+
+Napoleon Buonaparte, i. 50, 106, 118, 119, 120
+
+Narni, i. 86; ii. 34, 38
+
+Nash, Thomas, ii. 265
+
+Nassaus, the, i. 79
+
+Navone, Signor Giulio, iii. 4 _note_
+
+Naxos, iii. 288
+
+Negro, Abbate de, iii. 78, 79
+
+Nera, the, ii. 34, 37, 46
+
+Nero, i. 135; iii. 156, 164
+
+Neroni, Diotisalvi, ii. 226, 256
+
+Niccolini, i. 342
+
+Niccolo da Bari, S., iii. 238
+
+Niccolo da Uzzano, ii. 215
+
+Nice, i. 83, 106; iii. 250
+
+Nicholas II., iii. 300
+
+Nicholas V., ii. 28, 187, 236
+
+Nicholas the Pisan, iii. 260
+
+Nicolosi, iii. 283
+
+Nikias, iii. 288, 324, 326, 327
+
+Nile, the, iii. 190, 201, 205
+
+Niolo, i. 112, 115
+
+Nisi, Messer Nicholo di, iii. 2, 3
+
+Nismes, i. 74-77
+
+Noel, Mr. Roden, i. 10
+
+Norcia, ii. 35, 46; iii. 92
+
+Normans (in Sicily), iii. 290 foll.
+
+Novara, i. 19, 124
+
+
+Oberland valleys, i. 12
+
+Oddantonio, Duke of Urbino, ii. 70
+
+Oddi family, the, iii. 113, 119, 122, 134
+
+Odoacer, ii. 2
+
+Offamilio, iii. 311
+
+Oglio, the, iii. 6
+
+Olgiati, i. 341
+
+Oliverotto da Fermo, ii. 47, 48
+
+Ombrone, the, iii. 108; Val d', iii. 90
+
+Oortman, ii. 149
+
+Orange, i. 68, 69
+
+Orange, Prince of, i. 79, 316; ii. 253, 254
+
+Orcagna, iii. 36
+
+Orcia, the, iii. 104, 108
+
+Ordelaffi, Cicco and Pino, i. 202
+
+Origen, iii. 211, 219, 220
+
+Orlando, ii. 42, 43
+
+Ornani, the, i. 114
+
+Orpheus, ii. 346-364
+
+Orsini, the, ii. 47, 91, 157
+
+Orsini, Alfonsina, ii. 239:
+  Cardinal, ii. 47:
+  Clarice, ii. 227:
+  Francesco, ii. 48:
+  Giustina, iii. 125:
+  Lodovico, ii. 99, 100, 101, 104, 105, 108:
+  Paolo, ii. 47, 48:
+  Paolo Giordano (_see_ Bracciano, Duke of):
+  Troilo, i. 327 _note_, ii. 93 and _note_:
+  Virginio (_see_ Bracciano, second Duke of)
+
+Orta, i. 173
+
+Ortler, the, i. 126; ii. 168
+
+Ortygia, iii. 321, 326, 327
+
+Orvieto, i. 86; ii. 51, 136, 362; iii. 5, 82, 111, 137-154
+
+Otho I., ii. 169
+
+Otho III., ii. 15
+
+Otranto, ii. 235
+
+'Ottimati,' the, ii. 242 foll., 251, 254, 255, 257
+
+Overbeck, iii. 187
+
+Ovid, ii. 338, 344; iii. 149, 268, 320, 341 _note_ 1
+
+
+Padua, i. 152, 197, 260; ii. 41, 98, 99, 101, 104, 168, 218, 221; iii. 6
+
+Paestum, iii. 250, 259, 261-269
+
+Paganello, Conte, ii. 102
+
+Paglia, the, iii. 137
+
+Painter, William, ii. 117, 265, 272
+
+Palermo, ii. 10; iii. 252, 290-318
+
+Palestrina, iii. 37
+
+Palladio, i. 75, 256; ii. 29
+
+Pallavicino, Matteo, ii. 91
+
+Palma, i. 263, 269
+
+Palmaria, ii. 142
+
+Palmer, Richard, Bishop of Syracuse, iii. 306 _note_
+
+Pancrates, iii. 201, 204, 205
+
+Panizzi, ii. 43
+
+Panormus, iii. 291
+
+Pantellaria, iii. 294 _note_
+
+Paoli, General, i. 111, 115
+
+Paris, i. 20
+
+Parker, ii. 266
+
+Parma, i. 163; ii. 131, 147-162, 168, 180, 184, 196
+
+Parma, Duke of, ii. 76
+
+Parmegiano, ii. 150, 158, 159
+
+Parmenides, iii. 171, 173
+
+Passerini, Silvio (Cardinal of Cortona), ii. 251
+
+Passerini da Cortona, Cardinal, i. 316
+
+Passignano, ii. 48
+
+Pasta, Dr., i. 123, 124 _note_
+
+Patmore, Coventry, iii. 136
+
+Patrizzi, Patrizio, iii. 72
+
+Paul III., i. 318; ii. 88; iii. 120, 133
+
+Pausanias, iii. 207
+
+Pavia, i. 146-151, 158, 176, 184, 189, 198, 212, 351; ii. 182
+
+Pavia, Cardinal of, ii. 75
+
+Pazzi, Francesco, ii. 232, 233, 256, 335
+
+Pazzi, Guglielmo, ii. 233
+
+Peiraeeus, iii. 357
+
+Pelestrina, i. 258
+
+Pelusium, iii. 189
+
+Pembroke, Countess of, ii. 265
+
+Penna, Jeronimo della, iii. 124
+
+Pentelicus, i. 210
+
+Pepin, ii. 2
+
+Peretti family, ii. 90, 94
+
+Peretti, Camilla, ii. 90, 98
+
+Peretti, Francesco, ii. 90, 92 foll., 103
+
+Pericles, iii. 343, 350
+
+Persephone, iii. 290
+
+Persius, iii. 165, 172
+
+Perugia, i. 188, 214, 350; ii. 35, 38, 46, 52, 163; iii. 53, 68, 92,
+  111-136
+
+Perugino, i. 149, 239; ii. 42, 57, 59, 159; iii. 114, 116, 117-119, 184
+
+Perusia Augusta, ii. 45, 46
+
+Peruzzi, i. 152; ii. 49
+
+Pesaro, ii. 59, 69, 76
+
+Pescara, Marquis of, i. 184
+
+Petrarch, i. 72, 73, 74 and _note_, 86, 168; ii. 22, 261, 262, 269, 273,
+  280, 303, 332, 344, 365-368; iii. 254-256, 308, 316
+
+Petrucci, Pandolfo, ii. 47; iii. 82
+
+Phaedrus, iii. 188, 351
+
+Pheidias, i. 239, 246; iii. 155, 346, 349
+
+Philippus, iii. 319
+
+Philistis, Queen, iii. 337
+
+Philostratus, ii. 293
+
+Phlegraean plains, iii. 235, 239
+
+Phoenicians, iii. 290, 291, 335
+
+Piacenza, i. 142-144, 195, 340; ii. 180, 197
+
+'Piagnoni,' the, ii. 253, 254
+
+Piccinino, Jacopo, ii. 234
+
+Piccinino, Niccolo, i. 207; ii. 70
+
+Piccolomini family, iii. 107
+
+Piccolomini, AEneas Sylvius, ii. 23 (_see also_ Pius II.)
+
+Piccolomini, Ambrogio, iii. 72, 74
+
+Piedmont, i. 129
+
+Pienza, iii. 77, 92, 102, 104-107
+
+Piero della Francesca, ii. 72, 322
+
+Piero Delle Vigne, iii. 316
+
+Pietra Rubia, ii. 64
+
+Pietra Santa, ii. 238
+
+Pietro di Cardona, Don, i. 158
+
+Pignatta, Captain, i. 319
+
+Pindar, iii. 162, 215, 289, 332
+
+Pinturicchio, Bernardo, ii. 42; iii. 62, 105, 114
+
+Piranesi, i. 77; ii. 181
+
+Pisa, i. 340; ii. 170, 203, 211, 214, 239, 244; iii. 145, 253, 304, 311
+
+Pisani, the, ii. 30; iii. 71
+
+Pisani, Vittore, i. 259
+
+Pisano, Andrea, iii. 144
+
+Pisano, Giovanni, iii. 112, 144
+
+Pisano, Niccola, ii. 170; iii. 144, 146
+
+Pisciadella, i. 60
+
+Pistoja, ii. 281, 283, 287
+
+Pitre, Signor, ii. 281 _note_
+
+Pitta, Luca, ii. 226, 256
+
+Pitz d'Aela, ii. 127
+
+Pitz Badin, ii. 130
+
+Pitz Languard, i. 55
+
+Pitz Palu, i. 56
+
+Pius II., i. 202; ii. 18; iii. 62, 104, 105
+
+Pius IV., i. 182, 188
+
+Pius IX., iii. 196
+
+Placidia, Galla, ii. 8, 11
+
+Planta, i. 49
+
+Plato, i. 249; iii. 337, 341, 351, 352, 353
+
+Pletho, Gemisthus, ii. 19 and _note_
+
+Plinies, the, i. 177
+
+Plutarch, iii. 199
+
+Po, the, i. 50, 124, 134; ii. 1, 168; iii. 94
+
+Poggio. (_See_ Bracciolini, Poggio)
+
+Polenta, Francesca da, ii. 15
+
+Politian, iii. 102
+
+Poliziano, Angelo, ii. 233, 237, 273, 305, 306, 308, 309, 312, 314, 318,
+  322, 323, 324, 334, 335, 338, 340, 342-344, 345-364; iii. 101
+
+Polyphemus, i. 91
+
+Pompeii, iii. 232, 244
+
+Pompey, iii. 189
+
+Pontano, iii. 242, 243 _note_
+
+Ponte, Da, i. 227, 236
+
+Pontremoli, i. 340; ii. 133, 183, 194
+
+Pontresina, i. 49, 53, 55
+
+Pope, Alexander, i. 6; ii. 273; iii. 172
+
+Porcari, Stefano, ii. 236
+
+Porcellio, ii. 18
+
+Porlezza, i. 184
+
+Portici, iii. 232
+
+Porto d' Anzio, iii. 273
+
+Porto Fino, ii. 142
+
+Porto Venere, ii. 140-142
+
+Portogallo, Cardinal di, iii. 98
+
+Portus Classis, ii. 1, 8, 11, 12
+
+Poschiavo, i. 49, 60
+
+Poseidonia, iii. 261 foll.
+
+Posilippo, iii. 231, 270, 309
+
+Poussin (cited), i. 262
+
+Poveglia, i. 257
+
+Pozzuoli, iii. 232, 241, 242, 243
+
+Prato, ii. 244, 245
+
+Procida, iii. 238, 239, 242
+
+Promontogno, ii. 130
+
+Provence, i. 68-82
+
+Provence, Counts of, i. 79
+
+Psyttaleia, iii. 358
+
+Ptolemy, iii. 205
+
+Puccini (Medicean) party, the, ii. 222
+
+Pulci, ii. 269, 270
+
+Pythagoras, ii. 24
+
+
+Quattro Castelli, ii. 165, 171
+
+Quirini, the, i. 331
+
+
+Rabelais, iii. 161
+
+Radicofani, iii. 69, 90, 91, 103, 106, 111
+
+Ragatz, i. 65
+
+Raimond, Count of Provence, iii. 305
+
+Raimondi, Carlo, ii. 150
+
+Rainulf, Count, iii. 299, 300
+
+Raleigh, Sir Walter, ii. 264
+
+Rametta, iii. 302
+
+Rapallo, iii. 256
+
+Raphael, i. 138-140, 149, 152, 239, 266; ii. 27, 37, 46, 56, 82, 83, 85,
+  126, 147, 152, 159; iii. 35, 114, 117, 123, 129, 141, 145, 146, 227, 228
+
+Ravello, iii. 259
+
+Ravenna, i. 160; ii. 1-13, 75, 244; iii. 315
+
+Raymond, iii. 52, 53
+
+Recanati, ii. 63
+
+Redi, iii. 95
+
+Reggio d'Emilia, ii. 165, 167-169, 196; iii. 288
+
+Regno, the, i. 196
+
+Rembrandt, i. 345; ii. 156, 275
+
+Rene of Anjou, King, i. 202
+
+Reni, Guido, ii. 86
+
+Rhaetia, i. 49
+
+Rhaetikon, the, i. 29
+
+Rhine, the, i. 2
+
+Rhone, the, i. 70, 71, 76, 78
+
+Riario, Girolamo, ii. 231, 232
+
+Ricci, the, ii. 213
+
+Ridolfi, Cardinal, i. 318
+
+Ridolfi, Pietro, iii. 11
+
+Rienzi, i. 70
+
+Rieti, valley of, ii. 34
+
+Rimini, i. 350, 353; ii. 14-31, 60, 70
+
+Rimini, Francesca da, ii. 270
+
+Riviera, the, i. 2, 97, 104; ii. 143
+
+Riviera, mountains of, ii. 142
+
+Robbia, Luca della, ii. 29
+
+Robustelli, Jacopo, i. 61
+
+Rocca d' Orcia, iii. 106, 108
+
+Roccabruna, i. 83, 91, 92
+
+Rodari, Bernardino, i. 175
+
+Rodari, Jacopo, i. 175
+
+Rodari, Tommaso, i. 175, 176
+
+Roger of Hauteville, iii. 295 and _note_, 296 foll.
+
+Roger (the younger) of Hauteville, King of Sicily, iii. 252, 253, 293,
+  305, 307-311, 318
+
+Rogers, Samuel, ii. 270
+
+Roland, ii. 42, 43
+
+Roma, Antonio da, i. 328, 329
+
+Romagna, ii. 16, 73, 185, 187, 199
+
+Romano, i. 197
+
+Romano, Giulio, i. 243
+
+Rome, i. 2, 49, 68, 75, 139; ii. 10, 32, 88, 89, 187, 259; iii. 22
+  foll., 85, 156, 323
+
+Ronco, the, ii. 1, 10
+
+Rossellino, Bernardo, iii. 62, 105, 106
+
+Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, ii. 262, 263, 270; iii. 1, 3, 17 foll.
+
+Rousseau, i. 5, 6; ii. 27; iii. 157
+
+Rovere, Francesco della. (_See_ Sixtus IV.)
+
+Rovere, Francesco Maria (Duke of Urbino). (_See_ Urbino)
+
+Rovere, Giovanni della, ii. 73
+
+Rovere, Livia della, ii. 77
+
+Rovere, Vittoria della, ii. 78
+
+Rubens, i. 345
+
+Rubicon, the, ii. 14
+
+Rucellai family, ii. 28
+
+Rumano, i. 204
+
+Rusca, Francesco, i. 177
+
+Ruskin, Mr., i. 10, 125
+
+Rydberg, Victor, iii. 224 _note_, 227
+
+
+Sabine Mountains, ii. 32, 33, 39, 88
+
+Sacchetti, iii. 12, 13, 16
+
+Saintre, Jehan de, iii. 13
+
+Salamis, iii. 358, 362
+
+Salerno, iii. 250, 262, 268, 299
+
+Salimbeni, house of, iii. 7
+
+Salimbeni, Niccolo de', iii. 3
+
+Salis, Von, family, i. 50
+
+Salis, Von, i. 49
+
+Salo, ii. 98
+
+Salviati, Cardinal, i. 318
+
+Salviati, Francesco (Archbishop of Pisa), ii. 232, 233
+
+Salviati (Governor of Cortona), ii. 50
+
+Salviati, Madonna Lucrezia, i. 320
+
+Salviati, Madonna Maria, i. 320
+
+Samaden, i. 48, 53, 55
+
+Samminiato, iii. 98
+
+Sampiero, i. 112, 113-115
+
+Sanazzaro, ii. 264 and _note_ 1
+
+S. Agnese, i. 85
+
+S. Erasmo, i. 256, 283
+
+S. Gilles, i. 81, 82
+
+S. Pietro, i. 258
+
+S. Spirito, i. 257
+
+San Gemignano, iii. 3, 59
+
+San Germano, iii. 246, 305
+
+San Giacomo, i. 63
+
+San Lazzaro, i. 280
+
+San Leo, ii. 64
+
+San Marino, ii. 60, 62-64
+
+San Martino, i. 173
+
+San Michele, i. 268
+
+San Moritz, i. 55, 58
+
+San Nicoletto, i. 283, 286
+
+San Quirico, iii. 77, 92, 102, 107-110
+
+San Remo, i. 87 _note_, 93-98, 105; iii. 256
+
+San Rocco, i. 265
+
+San Romolo, i. 98-100, 103
+
+San Terenzio, ii. 143, 144
+
+Sangarius, the, iii. 187
+
+Sanseverino, Roberto, i. 158
+
+Sansovino, i. 337 _note_, ii. 17 _note_
+
+Sant' Elisabetta, i. 283
+
+Santa Agata, ii. 64, 90
+
+Santa Lucia, iii. 232
+
+Santa Maura, iii. 363.
+
+Santi, Giovanni, ii. 56, 59
+
+Sappho, iii. 363
+
+Saracens, iii. 252, 263, 294, _note_, 302 foll., 308, 321
+
+Sardinia, ii. 189, 286
+
+Saronno, i. 137, 156, 161-166
+
+Sarto, Andrea del, i. 345; iii. 100
+
+Sarzana, ii. 131, 134, 143, 183, 238
+
+Sassella, i. 48, 62
+
+Sasso Rancio, i. 173
+
+Savonarola, i. 171; ii. 122, 193, 237, 238, 239-242
+
+Scala, Can Grande della, iii. 6
+
+Scaletta, pass of the, i. 49
+
+Scaligers, the, iii. 318
+
+Scalza, Ippolito, iii. 147
+
+Scandiano, Count of, ii. 67
+
+Scheffer, Ary, ii. 15
+
+Scheggia, ii. 55
+
+Schiahorn, the, i. 54
+
+Schwartzhorn, the, i. 54
+
+Schyn, ii. 127
+
+Sciacca, iii. 281
+
+Scolastica, S., iii. 73
+
+Scott, Sir Walter, ii. 273
+
+Sebastian, S., iii. 184, 185
+
+Seehorn, the, i. 29
+
+Seelisberg, i. 14
+
+Segeste, iii. 291, 319, 335
+
+Selinus, iii. 291, 333, 335, 337
+
+Serafino, Fra, ii. 83
+
+Serbelloni, Cecilia, i. 180
+
+Sergestus, iii. 319
+
+Serio, river, i. 204
+
+Sermini, iii. 68
+
+Sesia, the, i. 19
+
+Sestri, i. 103 _note_; iii. 250
+
+Sforza family, the, i. 146, 155, 179, 184, 185, 197, 244
+
+Sforza, Alessandro, i. 202, ii. 72:
+  Battista, ii. 72:
+  Beatrice, i. 176:
+  Cardinal Ascanio, ii. 91:
+  Francesco, i. 149, 181, 186, 198, 200, 203, 208, ii. 17 _note_, 71,
+    185, 224:
+  Galeazzo, ii. 236:
+  Galeazzo Maria, ii. 185, 230, 236, iii. 117:
+  Giovanni Galeazzo, ii. 185, 192:
+  Ippolita, i. 155:
+  Lodovico, i. 149, ii. 185, 186, 191, 193, 194, 236, 238:
+  Polissena, ii. 17:
+  Zenobia, iii. 124, 125, 128
+
+Shakspere, ii. 258, 262, 263, 267, 268, 271-274, 277, 335; iii. 36, 37,
+  166, 280, 282
+
+Shelley, i. 5, 10, 25, 26, 87, 166, 232; ii. 138, 140, 143-145, 270,
+  271, 273; iii. 172, 186
+
+Shirley, the dramatist, ii. 159
+
+Sicily, i. 103 _note_; ii. 66, 189, 276, 281 _note_, 282; iii. 252, 279
+  foll., 286, 288, 290 foll., 319 foll.
+
+Sidney, Sir Philip, ii. 263, 264, 266
+
+Siena, i. 166, 187, 192; ii. 42, 185, 214, 281, 286; iii. 1, 7, 10, 12,
+  41-65, 66 foll., 92, 105 _et passim_
+
+Sigifredo, ii. 168
+
+Signorelli, i. 239; ii. 49, 362; iii. 35, 81, 82, 85, 145, 147-152, 154
+
+Silarus, the, iii. 264
+
+Silchester, i. 214
+
+Silvaplana, ii. 128, 129
+
+Silvretta, the, i. 31
+
+Silz Maria, ii. 129
+
+Simaetha, i. 140
+
+Simeto, the, iii. 279, 304
+
+Simon Magus, iii. 216
+
+Simonetta, La Bella, ii. 318, 322, 335, 343
+
+Simonides, iii. 167
+
+Simplon, the, i. 19, 125
+
+Sinigaglia, ii. 48; iii. 131
+
+Sirmione, i. 173
+
+Sixtus IV., i. 221; ii. 73, 231, 232, 234, 235
+
+Sixtus V., ii. 90, 95, 98
+
+Smyrna, iii. 212
+
+Sobieski, Clementina, ii. 83
+
+Socrates, iii. 155, 329, 351, 352, 353, 354
+
+Soderini, Alessandro, i. 332, 334, 335, 338, 341
+
+Soderini, Maria, i. 320
+
+Soderini, Niccolo, ii. 226
+
+Soderini, Paolo Antonio, ii. 192
+
+Soderini, Piero, ii. 243-245
+
+Sodoma, i. 141, 152, 165, 166; iii. 63, 81, 82-84, 184
+
+Sogliano, ii. 15
+
+Solari, Andrea, i. 148
+
+Solari, Cristoforo (Il Gobbo), i. 149, 176
+
+Solferino, i. 127
+
+Solon, ii. 163; iii. 172, 341
+
+Solza, i. 194
+
+Sondrio, i. 49, 61, 63
+
+Sophocles, ii. 160, 161; iii. 215, 287, 345 _notes_ 1 and 2, 350
+
+Sordello, i. 80
+
+Sorgues river, i. 72
+
+Sorrento, iii. 233, 250, 276-278
+
+Sozzo, Messer, iii. 10, 11
+
+Sparta, iii. 323
+
+Spartian, iii. 192, 193, 197
+
+Spartivento, iii. 288
+
+Spello, ii. 35, 38, 39, 41-43, 45, 46
+
+Spenser, Edmund, ii. 258, 262, 264
+
+Spezzia, Bay of, ii. 135, 146
+
+Spluegen, i. 64
+
+Spluegen, the, i. 50, 53, 64; valley of, i. 184
+
+Spolentino, hills of, iii. 92
+
+Spoleto, ii. 35, 38, 45, 46, 170; iii. 111, 120
+
+Sprecher von Bernegg, i. 49
+
+Stabiae, iii. 246
+
+Staffa, Jeronimo della, iii. 125
+
+Stelvio, the, i. 9, 50, 61
+
+Stephen des Rotrous, Archbishop of Palermo, iii. 306 _note_ 1
+
+Stimigliano, ii. 34
+
+Strabo, iii. 206
+
+Strozzi family, ii. 75
+
+Strozzi, Filippo, i. 318, 321, 326, 344
+
+Strozzi (Governor of Cortona), ii. 50
+
+Strozzi, Palla degli, ii. 222
+
+Strozzi, Pietro, i. 332
+
+Strozzi, Ruberto, i. 331
+
+Suardi, Bartolommeo, i. 154
+
+Subasio, ii. 45
+
+Suetonius, i. 134-136; iii. 164, 196, 199, 272, 274
+
+Sufenas, iii. 209
+
+Superga, the, i. 133, 134
+
+Surrey, Earl of, ii. 261-263, 271
+
+Susa, vale of, i. 134
+
+Suess, i. 55
+
+Swinburne, Mr., ii. 270, 273
+
+Switzerland, i. 1-67, 105, 129
+
+Sybaris, ancient Hellenic city of, ii. 2 _note_; iii. 261
+
+Syracuse, i. 87 _note_; iii. 262, 279, 288, 290, 291, 294 _note_, 304,
+  320-331
+
+
+Tacitus, iii. 199
+
+Tadema, Alma, i. 210
+
+Tanagra, iii. 209
+
+Tancred de Hauteville, iii. 294, 295
+
+Taormina, iii. 287, 288, 304
+
+Tarentum, iii. 263
+
+Tarentum, Prince of, i. 79
+
+Tarlati, Guido, iii. 74
+
+Taro, the, i. 340; ii. 132, 183, 184, 195
+
+Tarsus, iii. 212
+
+Tasso, ii. 83, 264, 265, 267, 269, 273, 274, 280, 332, 337, 343
+
+Tavignano, the, valley of, i. 111
+
+Tedaldo, Count of Reggio and Modena, ii. 169
+
+Tennyson, Lord, i. 4; ii. 23, 270, 273, 296; iii. 173
+
+Terlan, i. 63
+
+Terni, ii. 34, 253
+
+Terracina, i. 318; iii. 235
+
+Tertullian, iii. 219
+
+Theocritus, i. 84, 94; ii. 304, 330, 335, 337, 355; iii. 319
+
+Theodoric the Ostrogoth, ii. 2, 10, 11, 13
+
+Theognis, iii. 172
+
+Thomas a Kempis (quoted), i. 98, 100
+
+Thomas of Sarzana, ii. 28
+
+Thrasymene, ii. 45, 46, 48; iii. 90, 91, 101, 111
+
+Thucydides, iii. 321-324, 327, 328, 331
+
+Thuillier, Prefect, i. 109
+
+Tiber, the, ii. 33, 46; iii. 112
+
+Tiberio d'Assisi, ii. 35
+
+Tiberius, ii. 14; iii. 271-274
+
+Ticino, the, i. 124, 211
+
+Tieck, F., iii. 224
+
+Timoleon, iii. 288, 290, 304, 319, 337
+
+Tintoretto, i. 138, 236, 262-267, 269, 281; ii. 147, 156; iii. 158
+
+Tinzenhorn, ii. 127
+
+Tirano, i. 49-53, 61, 62
+
+Titian, i. 337 _note_; ii. 76, 83, 130, 153, 154; iii. 180, 247
+
+Titus, iii. 190
+
+Tivoli, i. 87 _note_; ii. 32; iii. 189, 198, 201, 210
+
+Todi, iii. 111
+
+Tofana, i. 268, 283
+
+Tolomei family, iii. 69
+
+Tolomei, Cristoforo, iii. 70
+
+Tolomei, Fulvia, iii. 70
+
+Tolomei, Giovanni, iii. 8, 70 (_see also_ Bernardo)
+
+Tolomei, Nino, iii. 8, 70
+
+Tommaseo, ii. 283
+
+Tommaso di Nello, iii. 11
+
+Torcello, i. 171, 172, 282; ii. 1
+
+Torre dell' Annunziata, iii. 232
+
+Torre del Greco, iii. 232
+
+Torrensi family, the, iii. 119
+
+Toscanella, iii. 109
+
+Toschi, Paolo, ii. 148-150
+
+Totila, iii. 81
+
+Tourneur, ii. 267
+
+Trajan, ii. 14; iii. 188
+
+Trani, iii. 311
+
+Trapani, iii. 319
+
+Trasimeno, ii. 50
+
+Trastevere, ii. 96
+
+Trebanio, ii. 19
+
+Trelawny, ii. 144, 146
+
+Tremazzi, Ambrogio, i. 327 _note_
+
+Trento, i. 340
+
+Trepievi, the, i. 184, 188
+
+Trescorio, i. 204
+
+Tresenda, i. 63
+
+Trevi, ii. 35, 39, 46, 97; iii. 111
+
+Treviglio, i. 209
+
+Treviso, iii. 6
+
+Trezzo, i. 194
+
+Trinacria, iii. 290
+
+Trinci family, ii. 38, 41
+
+Trinci, Corrado, ii. 40
+
+Troina, iii. 302, 303
+
+Tuldo, Nicola, iii. 53-55
+
+Tunis, iii. 275
+
+Turin, i. 134, 138, 348
+
+Turner, J.M.W., iii. 138, 364
+
+Tuscany, i. 187; ii. 45, 169, 234, 244, 276 foll.; iii. 41 foll., 68,
+  104
+
+Tuscany, Grand Duke of, ii. 99, 170, 256
+
+Tyrol, the, i. 89
+
+Tyrrhenian sea, the, ii. 183
+
+
+Ubaldo, S., ii. 54
+
+Uberti, Fazio degli, iii. 10, 16
+
+Udine, i. 351
+
+Ugolini, Messer Baccio, ii. 362
+
+Uguccione della Faggiuola, ii. 136; iii. 4
+
+Ulysses, iii. 288, 320
+
+Umbria, i. 149; ii. 32-59; iii. 68, 119 _note_ 1
+
+Urban II., iii. 304
+
+Urban IV., ii. 177; iii. 141, 142
+
+Urban V., i. 70; ii. 78
+
+Urbino, i. 203; ii. 45, 58, 66-69, 74, 78-87, 185
+
+Urbino, Counts of, ii. 15, 70
+
+Urbino, Federigo, Duke of, i. 203, 207, 316, 317, 326; ii. 48, 66-68,
+  70-73, 78-81, 231
+
+Urbino, Prince Federigo-Ubaldo of, ii. 77, 78
+
+Urbino, Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of, ii. 73-76, 85
+
+Urbino, Francesco Maria II., Duke of, ii. 76-78, 86
+
+Urbino, Guidobaldo, Duke of, ii. 73, 74, 79, 80, 83, 84
+
+Urbino, Guidobaldo II., Duke of, ii. 76, 82
+
+Urbino, Lorenzo de' Medici, Duke of, ii. 75, 76, 247
+
+
+Valdarno, ii. 218
+
+Valdelsa, iii. 69
+
+Valentinian, iii. 191
+
+Valentino, ii. 64
+
+Valperga, Ardizzino, i. 158
+
+Valsassina, the, i. 184
+
+Valtelline, the, i. 35, 48-51, 53, 58, 61, 64, 180, 184, 186, 188; ii.
+  168; iii. 94
+
+Valturio, ii. 18
+
+Varallo, i. 19, 136, 138, 164
+
+Varani, the, ii. 47, 71
+
+Varano, Giulia, ii. 76
+
+Varano, Madonna Maria, ii. 85
+
+Varano, Venanzio, ii. 85
+
+Varchi, i. 320-322, 325, 326; iii. 45 _note_
+
+Varenna, i. 173, 186
+
+Varese, i. 144;
+  Lake of, i. 124, 173, 174
+
+Vasari, Giorgio, ii. 26, 28; iii. 83, 84, 145
+
+Vasco de Gama, ii. 237
+
+Vasto, Marquis del, i. 187
+
+Vaucluse, i. 72-74
+
+Velino, the, ii. 34, 46
+
+Venice, i. 44, 167, 171, 200, 201, 206, 254-315; ii. 1, 2 and _note_,
+  16, 42, 102; iii. 253, 309, 317 _note_, _et passim_
+
+Ventimiglia, i. 102
+
+Vercelli, i. 136-142; ii. 173; iii. 82
+
+Vergerio, Pier Paolo, i. 331
+
+Verne, M. Jules, ii. 139
+
+Vernet, Horace, i. 71
+
+Verocchio, i. 193, 207
+
+Verona, i. 212; ii. 168; iii. 6, 318
+
+Verucchio, ii. 62
+
+Vespasian, ii. 57
+
+Vespasiano, Florentine bookseller, ii. 80
+
+Vesuvius, iii. 230, 232, 234, 235, 239, 242, 245, 276
+
+Vettori, Paolo, ii. 245
+
+Via Mala, the, ii. 57
+
+Viareggio, ii. 145, 146
+
+Vicenza, i. 75, 328-330
+
+Vico, i. 109, 112, 115
+
+Vico Soprano, ii. 129
+
+Victor, Aurelius, iii. 193, 195
+
+Vietri, iii. 250
+
+Vignole, i. 283
+
+Villa, i. 48, 62
+
+Villafranca, i. 83
+
+Villani, Giovanni, iii. 8
+
+Villani, Matteo, ii. 208; iii. 8, 16
+
+Villeneuve, i. 70
+
+Villon, iii. 1
+
+Vinci, Leonardo da, i. 139, 148, 154, 349; ii. 19, 21, 27, 50, 152, 156;
+  iii. 82, 228, 238
+
+Vinta, M. Francesco, i. 330
+
+Vire, Val de, ii. 291
+
+Virgil, i. 246; ii. 6, 63, 285, 304, 338, 343; iii. 75, 144, 155, 162,
+  172, 180, 181, 186, 215, 268, 309, 320
+
+Visconti family, the, i. 146, 181, 195; ii. 16, 178, 185, 224, 278; iii.
+  119, 253
+
+Visconti, Astore, i, 181, 182
+
+Visconti, Bianca Maria, i. 199
+
+Visconti, Ermes, i. 157
+
+Visconti, Filippo Maria, i. 195, 197-199; ii. 215, 224, 235
+
+Visconti, Gian Galeazzo, i. 149, 152; ii. 213
+
+Visconti, Gian Maria, ii. 236
+
+Vitelli, the, ii. 41, 47, 71
+
+Vitelli, Alessandro, ii. 250
+
+Vitelli, Giulia, iii. 132
+
+Vitelli, Vitellozzo, ii. 47, 48
+
+Vitellius, iii. 164
+
+Vittoli, the, i. 114, 115
+
+Vivarini, i. 269
+
+Voltaire, iii. 161
+
+Volterra, ii. 163, 214, 231; iii. 66, 69, 79, 92, 103
+
+Volterra, Bebo da, i. 328-330, 333-341
+
+Volterrano, Andrea, i. 336
+
+Volturno, iii. 239
+
+Volumnii, the, iii. 112
+
+
+Walker, Frederick, ii. 129; iii. 76
+
+Walter of Brienne. (_See_ Athens, Duke of)
+
+Walter of the Mill, Archbishop of Palermo, iii. 306 _note_, 308
+
+Webster, the dramatist, i. 220; ii. 103-126, 267, 271, 277
+
+Weisshorn, the, i. 54
+
+Whitman, Walt, ii. 24; iii. 172
+
+Wien, i. 45
+
+Wiesen, i. 65; ii. 127
+
+William of Apulia, iii. 298, 299, 305
+
+William the Bad and William the Good of Sicily, iii. 305, 306, 308, 311
+
+Winckelman, iii. 188
+
+Wolfgang, i. 30
+
+Wolfswalk, the, i. 31
+
+Wordsworth, i. 5, 6, 10, 11; ii. 262, 263, 273; iii. 172, 173
+
+Wyatt, Sir Thomas, ii. 261, 262
+
+
+Xenophanes, iii. 171, 173, 353
+
+Xiphilinus, iii. 192
+
+
+Zafferana, iii. 282, 283
+
+Zante, iii. 363
+
+Zeno, Carlo, i. 260
+
+Zeus Olympius, iii. 290
+
+Zizers, i. 65
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sketches and Studies in Italy and
+Greece, Complete, by John Symonds
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