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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 40394 ***
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+
+  Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
+  been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
+
+  Italic text is denoted by _underscores_ and bold text by =equal
+  signs=. This book uses the ~ over occasional letters to represent
+  scribal abbreviations. This is indicated as (for example) p[~r]b.
+
+
+
+
+     _BY THE SAME AUTHOR._
+
+     Historical and Architectural Sketches;
+     CHIEFLY ITALIAN.
+
+     ILLUSTRATED BY THE AUTHOR.
+
+     BEING A
+     _Companion Volume to 'Subject and Neighbour Lands of Venice.'_
+     Crown 8vo. 10_s._ 6_d._
+
+
+"A historian is not always an antiquary, even less frequently is an
+antiquary a historian; by combining the two characters, he thereby
+redeems his historical writings from the dangers of shallowness and
+inaccuracy, and his antiquarianism from pedantry and dryness.... From
+the information afforded by the essays themselves, we may gather much
+which should heighten the enjoyment of visits to the inexhaustible
+architectural treasures of the Italian Peninsula."--_The Times._
+
+"For these essays we have only words of unqualified praise; they are
+full of valuable information, and are delightfully interesting."
+--_Westminster Review._
+
+"Full of valuable teachings and suggestions to all who are ready to
+profit by them."--_Academy._
+
+"Those who know Italy will retrace their steps with delight in Mr.
+Freeman's company, and find him a most interesting guide and
+instructor, not merely in the architectural, but in the history of the
+various Italian towns that he deals with.... One of the most
+interesting features of the volume are the illustrations, twenty-two
+in number, from the author's own pencil."--_Examiner._
+
+
+     MACMILLAN & CO., LONDON, W.C.
+
+
+
+
+     WORKS BY E. A. FREEMAN, D.C.L., LL.D.
+
+
+     HISTORY OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT FROM THE FOUNDATION of the
+     ACHAIAN LEAGUE TO THE DISRUPTION of the UNITED STATES. Vol.
+     I. General Introduction.--History of the Greek Federations.
+     8vo. 21_s._
+
+     HISTORY OF THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF WELLS, as illustrating
+     the History of the Cathedral Churches of the Old Foundation.
+     Crown 8vo. 3_s._ 6_d._
+
+     OLD ENGLISH HISTORY. With Five Coloured Maps. _New Edition,
+     Revised._ Extra fcap. 8vo. 6_s._
+
+     HISTORICAL ESSAYS. _Third Edition._ 8vo. 10_s._ 6_d._
+
+     CONTENTS:--The Mythical and Romantic Elements in Early
+     English History--The Continuity of English History--The
+     Relations between the Crown of England and Scotland--St.
+     Thomas of Canterbury and his Biographers, &c.
+
+     HISTORICAL ESSAYS. _Second Series. Second Edition_, with
+     additional Essays. 8vo. 10_s._ 6_d._
+
+     CONTENTS:--Ancient Greece and Mediæval Italy--Mr.
+     Gladstone's Homer and the Homeric Ages--The Historians of
+     Athens--The Athenian Democracy--Alexander the Great--Greece
+     during the Macedonian Period--Mommsen's History of
+     Rome--Lucius Cornelius Sulla--The Flavian Cæsars, &c.
+
+     HISTORICAL ESSAYS. _Third Series._ 8vo. 12_s._
+
+     CONTENTS:--First Impressions of Rome--The Illyrian Emperors
+     and their Land--Augusta Treverorum--The Goths at
+     Ravenna--Race and Language--The Byzantine Empire--First
+     Impressions of Athens--Mediæval and Modern Greece--The
+     Southern Slaves--Sicilian Cycles--The Normans at Palermo.
+
+     THE GROWTH OF THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION FROM THE EARLIEST
+     TIMES. _Third Edition._ Crown 8vo. 5_s._
+
+     THE HISTORY AND CONQUESTS OF THE SARACENS. Six Lectures.
+     _Third Edition_, with New Preface. Crown 8vo. 3_s._ 6_d._
+
+     THE OTTOMAN POWER IN EUROPE: its Nature, its Growth, and its
+     Decline. With Coloured Maps. Crown 8vo. 7_s._ 6_d._
+
+     GENERAL SKETCH OF EUROPEAN HISTORY. _New Edition._ Enlarged,
+     with Maps, &c. 18mo. 3_s._ 6_d._ (Vol. I. of Historical
+     Course for Schools.)
+
+     COMPARATIVE POLITICS. Lectures at the Royal Institution. To
+     which is added "The Unity of History." 8vo. 14_s._
+
+
+     MACMILLAN & CO., LONDON, W.C.
+
+
+
+
+     SKETCHES
+     FROM THE
+     SUBJECT AND NEIGHBOUR LANDS
+     OF
+     VENICE.
+
+
+
+
+  [Illustration: PERISTYLE AND CATHEDRAL TOWER, SPALATO.]
+
+
+
+
+     SKETCHES
+     FROM THE
+     SUBJECT AND NEIGHBOUR LANDS
+     OF
+     VENICE.
+
+     BY
+     EDWARD A. FREEMAN, D.C.L., LL.D.,
+     HONORARY FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, OXFORD.
+
+     WITH ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+     London:
+     MACMILLAN AND CO.
+     1881.
+
+     [_All Rights reserved._]
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+This volume is designed as a companion and sequel to my former volume
+called "Architectural and Historical Sketches, chiefly Italian." Its
+general plan is the same. But more of the papers in the present volume
+appear for the first time than was the case with the earlier one, and
+most of those which are reprinted have been more largely changed in
+reprinting than those which appeared in the former book. This could
+hardly be otherwise with the pieces relating to the lands east of the
+Hadriatic, where I have had to work in remarks made during later
+journeys, and where great events have happened since I first saw those
+lands.
+
+The papers are chiefly the results of three journeys. The first, in
+the autumn of 1875, took in Dalmatia and Istria, with Trieste and
+Aquileia. At that time the revolt of Herzegovina had just begun, and
+Ragusa was crowded with refugees. Some of the papers contained
+references to the state of things at the moment, and those references
+I saw no reason to alter. But I may as well say that the time of my
+first visit to the South-Slavonic lands was not chosen with reference
+to any political or military object. The journey was planned before
+the revolt began; it was in fact the accomplishment of a thirty years'
+yearning after the architectural wonders of Spalato, which till that
+year I had been unable to gratify. If that visit taught me some things
+with regard to our own times as well as to earlier times, it is not, I
+think, either wonderful or blameworthy.
+
+In 1877 I visited Dalmatia for the second time, and Greece for the
+first. I should be well pleased some day to put together some out of
+many papers on the more distant Greek lands. In this volume I have
+brought in those on Corfu only, as that island forms an essential part
+of my present subject.
+
+In the present year 1881 I again visited Dalmatia and some parts of
+Istria and Albania, as also a large part of Italy. This has enabled me
+to add some papers on the Venetian possessions both in northern and
+southern Italy, as also one on the Dalmatian island of Curzola, which
+on former visits I had seen only in passing.
+
+The papers headed "Treviso," "Gorizia," "Spalato revisited," "Trani,"
+"Otranto," "Corfu to Durazzo," and "Antivari," are all due to this
+last journey, and have never been in print before. That on "Curzola"
+appeared in _Macmillan's Magazine_ for September 1881. Those headed
+"Udine and Cividale," "Aquileia," "Trieste to Spalato," "Spalato to
+Cattaro," "A trudge to Trebinje," appeared in the _Pall Mall Gazette_
+in 1875. The rest appeared in the _Saturday Review_ in 1875 and 1876.
+But many of them have been so much altered that they can hardly be
+called mere reprints; they are rather recastings, with large
+additions, omissions, and changes, such as the light of second and
+third visits seemed to call for.
+
+I made none of these journeys alone, and I have much for which to
+thank the companions with whom I made them. In 1877 I was with the
+Earl of Morley and Mr. J. F. F. Horner. And I must not forget to
+mention that it was Lord Morley who at once read and explained the
+inscription in the basilica of Parenzo, when Mr. Horner and I had seen
+that Mr. Neale's explanation was nonsense, but had not yet hit upon
+anything better for ourselves. In a great part of my two later
+journeys I had the companionship of Mr. Arthur Evans, my friend of
+1877, my son-in-law of 1881. How much I owe to his knowledge of
+South-Slavonic matters, words would fail me to tell. I had seen
+Dalmatia for the first time, and I had begun to write about it, before
+I knew him and, I believe, before he had published anything; otherwise
+I should almost feel myself an intruder in a province which he has
+made his own. One out of many points I may specially mention. It was
+Mr. Evans who found and explained the two missing capitals from the
+palace at Ragusa, which are at once so remarkable in themselves and
+which throw so much light on the history of the building.
+
+The illustrations to my former volume met with some severe criticism.
+But I am bound to say that of that severe criticism I agreed to every
+word. Only I thought that the critics would perhaps have been less
+severe if they had seen my original drawings themselves. The
+illustrations to the present volume have been made by a new process,
+partly, as before, from my own sketches, but partly also from
+photographs. I trust that they will be found less unsatisfactory than
+those that went before them.
+
+As there are in these papers a good many historical references, some
+of them to rather out-of-the-way matters, but matters which could not
+always be explained at length in the text, I have drawn up a
+chronological table of the chief events in the history of the lands
+and cities of which I have had to speak.
+
+I need hardly say that this volume, though I hope it may be useful to
+travellers on the spot, is not strictly a guide-book. But a good
+guide-book to Istria and Dalmatia is much needed. I am not joking when
+I say that the best guide to those parts is still the account written
+by the Emperor Constantino Porphyrogenitus more than nine hundred
+years back. But it is surely high time that there should be another.
+The attempts made in one or two of Murray's Handbooks are very poor.
+Sir Gardner Wilkinson's "Dalmatia and Montenegro," published more than
+thirty years ago, is an admirable book, and one to which I owe a very
+deep debt of gratitude. It first taught me what there was to see in
+the East-Hadriatic lands. But it is over-big for a guide-book. Mr.
+Neale's book contains some information, and, even in its ecclesiastical
+grotesqueness, it is sometimes instructive as well as amusing. But we
+can hardly take as our guide one who leaves out the Ragusan palace and
+who, when at Spalato, does not think of Diocletian. It would be in
+itself well if Gsel-fels, the prince of guide-book-makers, would do
+for Dalmatia as he has done for Sicily; but one would rather see it
+done in our own tongue.
+
+     SOMERLEAZE, WELLS,
+     _September 20th, 1881_.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+     THE LOMBARD AUSTRIA:--                     PAGE
+
+       TREVISO                                              3
+
+       UDINE AND CIVIDALE                                  24
+
+       GORIZIA                                             41
+
+       AQUILEIA                                            52
+
+       TRIESTE                                             70
+
+
+     TRIESTE TO SPALATO:--
+
+       TRIESTE TO SPALATO                                  85
+
+       PARENZO                                             97
+
+       POLA                                               109
+
+       ZARA                                               121
+
+
+     SPALATO AND ITS NEIGHBOURS:--
+
+       SPALATO                                            137
+
+       SPALATO REVISITED                                  149
+
+       SALONA                                             156
+
+       TRAÜ                                               175
+
+
+     SPALATO TO CATTARO:--
+
+       SPALATO TO CATTARO                                 189
+
+       CURZOLA                                            200
+
+       RAGUSA                                             218
+
+       RAGUSAN ARCHITECTURE                               240
+
+       A TRUDGE TO TREBINJE                               260
+
+       CATTARO                                            271
+
+
+     VENICE IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE NORMANS:--
+
+       TRANI                                              287
+
+       OTRANTO                                            313
+
+       FIRST GLIMPSES OF HELLAS                           332
+
+       CORFU AND ITS NAMES                                343
+
+       CORFU AND ITS HISTORY                              353
+
+       CORFU TO DURAZZO                                   365
+
+       ANTIVARI                                           381
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                                         PAGE
+
+     PERISTYLE AND CATHEDRAL TOWER, SPALATO    _Frontispiece_
+
+     PORTA GEMINA, POLA                                   113
+
+     TOWER OF SAINT MARY'S, ZARA                          132
+
+     SAINT VITUS, ZARA, AND THE ORTHODOX CHURCH, CATTARO  133
+
+     THE TOWER, SPALATO                                   145
+
+     CATHEDRAL, TRAÜ                                      182
+
+     SAINT JOHN BAPTIST, TRAÜ                             185
+
+     TOWER OF FRANCISCAN CHURCH, RAGUSA                   242
+
+     PALACE, RAGUSA                                       245
+
+     DOGANA, RAGUSA                                       253
+
+     CABOGA HOUSE, GRAVOSA                                255
+
+     CATHEDRAL, TRANI                                     299
+
+     CATHEDRAL, TRANI, INSIDE                             305
+
+     CHURCHES AT CORFU                                    358
+
+     SAINT JASON AND SAINT SOSIPATROS, CORFU, INSIDE      363
+
+
+
+
+CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE.
+
+
+                                                         B.C.
+     Foundation of Korkyra                           _c._ 734
+
+     Foundation of Epidamnos                         _c._ 627
+
+     War between Corinth and Korkyra about Epidamnos      435
+
+     Colonization of Pharos and Issa                      385
+
+     Korkyra held by Agathoklês                           300
+
+     Korkyra held by Pyrrhos                              287
+
+     First Roman war with Illyria, time of Queen Teuta
+       and Demetrios of Pharos                            229
+
+     Korkyra, Epidamnos, and Apollonia become allies of
+       Rome                                               229
+
+     Second Illyrian War                                  219
+
+     Foundation of Aquileia                               181
+
+     First Roman Conquest of Illyria                      168
+
+     First mention of Tragyrion (Traü)                    158
+
+     First Dalmatian War                                  156
+
+     Salona the head of Dalmatia                          117
+
+     Roman Conquest of Istria                             107
+
+     Foundation of Forum Julii                        _c._ 45
+
+     Colony of Tergeste fortified by Augustus              32
+
+     Foundation of Pietas Julia                       _c._ 30
+
+                                                         A.D.
+     Final conquest of Dalmatia                             6
+
+     Martyrdom of Saint Caius                            296?
+
+     Diocletian retires to Salona                         305
+
+     Crispus put to death at Pola                         326
+
+     First church of Aquileia built by Fortunatian   _c._ 347
+
+     Gallus put to death at Pola                          354
+
+     Aquileia destroyed by Attila                         452
+
+     Dalmatia under Marcellian                        454-468
+
+     Dalmatia under Odoacer                          _c._ 480
+
+     Dalmatia under Theodoric                             488
+
+     The Emperor Glycerius Bishop of Salona               474
+
+     Nepos killed near Salona                             480
+
+     Salona recovered to the Empire                       535
+
+     Building of the church of Parenzo                535-543
+
+     Belisarius sails from Salona                         544
+
+     Narses sails from Salona                             552
+
+     Schism in the church of Aquileia                     557
+
+     Beginning of the Patriarchate of Grado               606
+
+     Lombard conquest of Italy begins                     568
+
+     Slavonic settlements under Heraclius            _c._ 620
+
+     Salona destroyed by the Avars                        639
+
+     Inland Dalmatia under Charles the Great; the
+       coast cities left to the Eastern Empire            806
+
+     The church of Pola built by Bishop Handegis          857
+
+     Cattaro taken by the Saracens                        867
+
+     Saracen siege of Ragusa                              867
+
+     First Venetian conquest of Dalmatia                  997
+
+     Poppo Patriarch of Aquileia; rebuilding of the
+       church                                       1019-1042
+
+     First authentic mention of Gorizia                  1051
+
+     Croatian kingdom of Dalmatia                        1062
+
+     Foundation of Saint Nicolas at Traü                 1064
+
+     Corfu conquered by Robert Wiscard                   1081
+
+     Corfu recovered by the Empire                       1085
+
+     Exploits of the English exiles at Durazzo           1086
+
+     Magyar kingdom of Dalmatia                          1102
+
+     The tower of Saint Mary's at Zara built by Coloman
+       of Hungary                                        1105
+
+     Beginning of the Counts of Gorizia                  1120
+
+     Corfu held by Roger of Sicily                  1147-1150
+
+     Dalmatia restored to the Eastern Empire             1171
+
+     Corfu conquered by William the Good                 1186
+
+     Corfu, Durazzo, etc., held by Margarito as a
+       kingdom dependent on Sicily                       1186
+
+     Richard the First at Ragusa                         1192
+
+     Taking of Zara by the Crusaders                     1202
+
+     Venetian Counts at Ragusa                           1204
+
+     Corfu and Durazzo first occupied by Venice          1206
+
+     Building of Traü cathedral                     1215-1321
+
+     Corfu and Durazzo recovered by Michael of Epeiros   1216
+
+     Durazzo recovered by the Empire                     1259
+
+     Corfu and Durazzo ceded to Manfred                  1268
+
+     Consecration of Saint Anastasia at Zara             1285
+
+     Durazzo under Servia                                1322
+
+     Durazzo restored to the Kings of Naples             1322
+
+     Pola submits to Venice                              1331
+
+     Neapolitan duchy of Durazzo                    1333-1360
+
+     Treviso first occupied by Venice                    1338
+
+     Building of the Archbishop's castle at Salona       1347
+
+     Treviso besieged by Lewis of Hungary                1356
+
+     Dalmatia ceded to Lewis of Hungary                  1358
+
+     Durazzo the capital of an Albanian kingdom     1358-1392
+
+     Complete independence of Ragusa                     1359
+
+     Markquard, Patriarch of Aquileia; recasting
+       of the church                                1365-1381
+
+     Gradual advance of Venice in Dalmatia          1378-1444
+
+     Treviso ceded to Leopold of Austria                 1381
+
+     Trieste commends itself to Austria                  1381
+
+     Final acquisition of Corfu by Venice                1386
+
+     Venetian occupation of Argos                        1388
+
+     Treviso restored to Venice                          1388
+
+     Second Venetian acquisition of Durazzo              1392
+
+     Building of the palace at Ragusa               1388-1435
+
+     Butrinto and Parga commend themselves to Venice     1407
+
+     Consecration of Saint Chrysogonos at Zara           1407
+
+     Sebenico annexed by Venice                          1412
+
+     Building of the cathedral at Sebenico          1415-1555
+
+     Cattaro becomes Venetian                            1419
+
+     Traü annexed by Venice                              1420
+
+     Curzola finally submits to Venice                   1420
+
+     Dominions of the Patriarch of Aquileia annexed
+       by Venice                                         1420
+
+     Udine annexed by Venice                             1420
+
+     Lesina occupied by Venice                           1424
+
+     The city of Aquileia left to the Patriarchs         1451
+
+     Argos ceded by Venice                               1463
+
+     Fluctuations between Venice and the Turk in
+       Dalmatia                                     1465-1718
+
+     Date of the cloister at Badia                       1477
+
+     Otranto taken by the Turks                          1480
+
+     Otranto recovered by Alfonso                        1481
+
+     Veglia annexed by Venice                            1481
+
+     Monopoli stormed by the Venetians                   1495
+
+     Trani, Otranto, and other cities pledged to Venice
+       by Ferdinand of Naples                            1496
+
+     Durazzo and Butrinto lost by Venice                 1500
+
+     Gorizia annexed to Austria by Maximilian            1500
+
+     Treviso besieged by Maximilian                      1508
+
+     Trani, etc., recovered by Ferdinand of Aragon       1509
+
+     Building of the Dogana at Ragusa                    1520
+
+     Trani, etc., recovered by Venice                    1528
+
+     Trani, etc., restored to Charles the Fifth          1530
+
+     Aquileia annexed to Austria                         1544
+
+     Mark Anthony de Dominis Archbishop of Spalato       1622
+
+     Building of the gate at Curzola                     1643
+
+     The great earthquake at Ragusa                      1667
+
+     Prevesa won and Butrinto recovered by Venice   1685-1699
+
+     The Emperor Leopold repairs the castle of Gorizia   1660
+
+     Athens taken by Morosini                            1687
+
+     Abolition of the patriarchate of Aquileia; Udine
+       and Gorizia become metropolitan sees              1751
+
+     Peace of Campo Formio; fall of Venice: Venetia,
+       Istria, and Dalmatia, except Ragusa, occupied
+       by Austria                                      1797-8
+
+     The Ionian Islands and the Venetian outposts
+       ceded to France                                   1797
+
+     Septinsular Republic under Ottoman overlordship     1798
+
+     Prevesa stormed by Ali of Jôannina                  1798
+
+     Venetia, Istria, Trieste, and Dalmatia ceded
+       to the French kingdom of Italy; Dalmatia partly
+       occupied                                          1805
+
+     The Republic of Ragusa suppressed by Buonaparte     1808
+
+     Various points occupied by England             1810-1814
+
+     Cattaro delivered from France by England and
+       Montenegro; Cattaro, capital of Montenegro        1813
+
+     Dalmatia recovered by Austria, Ragusa also
+       occupied by Austria for the first time            1814
+
+     Venetia, Istria, and Trieste recovered by Austria   1814
+
+     English occupation of Curzola                  1813-1815
+
+     The Ionian Islands under British protection         1815
+
+     Surrender of Parga to the Turk                      1819
+
+     Liberation of Venice and recovery by Austria      1848-9
+
+     The Ionian Islands added to free Greece             1864
+
+     Final liberation of Venetia                         1866
+
+     Austrian attempt to infringe the liberties of the
+       Bocchesi; defeat of the Austrians                 1869
+
+     Beginning of the war in Herzegovina                 1875
+
+     Servian and Montenegrin war; recovery of Antivari,
+       Dulcigno, and Spizza by Montenegro              1876-7
+
+     Congress of Berlin; Dulcigno restored to the Turk;
+       Spizza taken by Austria; Antivari left to
+       Montenegro; the Turk "invited" to cede Epeiros
+       to free Greece                                    1878
+
+     The liberation of Epeiros decreed the second time   1880
+
+     Dulcigno recovered for Montenegro                   1880
+
+     Liberation of Thessaly, but not of Epeiros          1881
+
+
+
+
+THE LOMBARD AUSTRIA.
+
+
+
+
+TREVISO.
+
+1881.
+
+
+The north-eastern corner of Italy is one of those parts of the world
+which have gone through the most remarkable changes. That it has often
+changed its political masters is only common to it with the rest of
+Italy, and with many other lands as well. The physical changes too
+which the soil and its waters have gone through are remarkable, but
+they are not unparalleled. The Po may perhaps be reckoned as the
+frontier stream of the region towards the south, and the many paths by
+which the Po has found its way into the Hadriatic need not be dwelled
+on. We are more concerned with rivers further to the north-east. The
+Isonzo no longer represents the course of the ancient Sontius; the
+Natisone no longer flows by fallen Aquileia. The changes of the
+coast-line which have made what is left of Aquileia inland have their
+counterparts at Pisa and at Ravenna. In the range of historical
+geography, the most curious feature is the way in which certain
+political names have kept on an abiding life in this region, though
+with singular changes of meaning. The land has constantly been either
+Venetian or Austrian; sometimes it has been Venetian and Austrian at
+once. But it has been Venetian and Austrian in various meanings. It
+was Venetian long before the name of Venice was heard of in its present
+sense; it was Austrian long before the name of Austria was heard of in
+its present sense. The land of the old Veneti bore the Venetian name
+ages before the city of Venice was in being, and it keeps it now that
+Venice has ceased to be a political power. Venetian then the land has
+ever been in one sense, while a large part of it was for some centuries
+Venetian in another sense, in the days when so many of its cities
+bowed to Saint Mark and his commonwealth as its rulers. Austrian the
+land was in the old geographical sense, when it formed the Lombard
+_Austria_--the eastern half, the _Eastrice_--that form would, we
+suspect, come nearer to Lombard speech than _Oesterreich_--of the
+Lombard realm. But if the Lombard realm had its Austria and its
+Neustria, so also had the Frankish realm. Wherever a land could be
+easily divided into east and west, there was an _Austria_, and its
+negative a _Neustria_. Lombardy then had its Austria, and its
+_Austria_ was found in the old and the new Venetian land. No one
+perhaps ever spoke of the Karlings as the House of Austria, or of
+their Empire as the dominions of the House of Austria. And yet the
+name would not have been out of place. Their dominion marked the
+predominance of the eastern part of the Frankish realm--its
+_Oesterreich_, its _Austrasia_, its _Austria_--over the Neustrian
+power of the earlier dynasty. The Lombard Austria became part of the
+dominions of those who were before all things lords of the Frankish
+Austria. And in later times, when the Lombard and the Frankish Austria
+were both forgotten, when the name clave only to a third Austria, the
+more modern Austria of Germany--the Eastern mark called into being to
+guard Germany from the Magyar--the Venetian land has more than once
+become Austrian in another sense; some of it in that sense remains
+Austrian still. Dukes of the most modern Austria--plain dukes who were
+satisfied with being dukes--archdukes who were Emperors by lawful
+election--archdukes who have had a strange fancy for calling
+themselves Emperors of their archduchy--have all of them at various
+times borne rule over the whole or part of the older Austria of
+Lombardy. To-day the north-eastern corner of Italy, land of Venetia,
+the once Lombard Austria, is parted asunder by an artificial boundary
+between the dominions of the Italian King and the lord of the later
+Austria. And, what a passing traveller might not easily find out, in
+this old Venetian land, in both parts of it, alike under modern
+Italian and under modern Austrian rule, besides the Latin speech which
+everywhere meets the eye and the ear, the speech of Slavonic settlers
+still lingers. Settlers they are in the Venetian land, no less than
+its Roman or its German masters. It is hard to say who the old Veneti
+were, perhaps nearer akin to the Albanians than to any other European
+people. At all events there is no reason for thinking that they were
+Slaves. The presence of a Slavonic speech in this region is a fruit of
+the same migration which made the land beyond Hadria Slavonic. But to
+hear the Slavonic and the Italian tongues side by side is so familiar
+a phænomenon under modern Austrian rule, that its appearance at
+Aquileia or Gorizia may with some minds seem to give the land a
+specially Austrian character, and may help to shut out the remembrance
+that at Aquileia and Gorizia we are within the ancient kingdom of
+Italy. Nay it may be a new and strange thing to many to hear that,
+even within the bounds of the modern kingdom of Italy, there are
+districts where, though Italian is the cultivated tongue, yet Slave is
+the common peasant speech.
+
+But besides physical changes, changes of name, changes of inhabitants,
+we are perhaps yet more deeply struck with the fluctuations in the
+history of the cities of this region. In this matter, throughout the
+Venetian land, the first do indeed become last and the last first. No
+city in this region has kept on that enduring life through all changes
+which has belonged to many cities in other parts of Europe. We do not
+here find the Roman walls, or the walls yet earlier than Roman days,
+fencing in dwelling-places of man which have been continuously
+inhabited, which have sometimes been continuously flourishing, through
+all times of which history has anything to tell us. We need not take
+our examples from Rome or Athens or Argos or the Phoenician Gades.
+It is enough to look to one or two of the capitals of modern Europe.
+At the beginning of the fifth century, London and Paris, not yet
+indeed capitals of kingdoms, were already in being, and had been in
+being for some centuries. But far above either ranked the great city
+of north-eastern Italy, then one of the foremost cities of the world,
+the ancient colony of Aquileia, keeper of one of the great lines of
+approach towards Italy and Rome. No one city had then taken the name
+of the Venetian land; no wanderers from the mainland had as yet
+settled down like sea-fowl, as Cassiodorus puts it, on the islands of
+the lagoons. By the end of the fifth century both London and Paris had
+passed from Roman rule to the rule of Teutonic conquerors. London, we
+may conceive, was still inhabited; at all events its walls stood
+ready to receive a fresh colony before long. Paris had received one of
+those momentary lifts of which she went through several before her
+final exaltation; the city which had been favoured by Roman Julian was
+favoured also by Frankish Chlodwig. But Aquileia had felt the full
+fury of invaders who came, not to occupy or to settle, but simply to
+destroy. As a city, as a bulwark of Italy, she had passed away for
+ever. But out of her fall several cities had, in the course of that
+century, risen to increased greatness, and the greatest of all had
+come into being. The city was born which, simply as a city, as a city
+bearing rule over distant lands, must rank as the one historic peer of
+Rome. Not yet Queen of the Hadriatic, not yet the chosen sanctuary of
+Saint Mark, not yet enthroned on her own Rialto, the settlement which
+was to grow into Venice had already made its small beginnings.
+
+But the fall of Aquileia, the rise of Venice, are only the greatest
+examples of a general law. A nearer neighbour of Aquileia at once
+profited by her overthrow; Grado, on her own coast, almost at her own
+gates, sprang up as her rival; but the greatness of Grado has passed
+away only less thoroughly than the greatness of Aquileia. So the
+Venetian Forum Julii gave way to its more modern neighbour Udine. It
+lost the name which it had given to the land around it. Its shortened
+form _Friuli_ lived on as one of the names of the surrounding
+district, but Forum Julii itself was forgotten under the vaguer
+description of _Cividale_. Gorizia has been for ages the head of a
+principality; in later times it has been the head of an ecclesiastical
+province. But Gorizia is absolutely unknown till the beginning of the
+eleventh century, and it does not seem even to have supplanted any
+earlier city. It is thus a marked peculiarity of this district that
+the chief towns, with Venice itself at their head, have not lived on
+continuously as chief towns from Roman or earlier times. West of
+Venice the rule does not apply. Padua and Verona are old enough for
+the warmest lover of antiquity, and Vicenza, going back at least to
+the second century B.C., must be allowed to be of a respectable age.
+
+That the chief cities of a district should date from early mediæval,
+and not from Roman times, is a feature which at once suggests
+analogies with our own island. Both in Venetia and in Britain we are
+struck with the prevalence of places which arose after the fall of the
+elder Roman power, in opposition to most parts of Italy and Gaul,
+where nearly every town can trace back to Roman days or earlier. But
+the likeness cannot be carried out in detail. In the district which we
+have just marked out it is absolutely the greatest cities--one of them
+so great as to be put out of all comparison with the others--which
+are of this comparatively recent date. In England, though the great
+mass of the local centres are places of English foundation and bearing
+English names, yet the greatest and most historic cities still carry
+the marks of Roman origin about them. Some Roman cities in Britain
+passed utterly away; others lived on, or soon came to life again, in
+the forms of York, London, and Winchester. But in Venetia it is the
+cities which answer to York and London which have lost their
+greatness, though they have not utterly passed away. This last fact is
+one of the characteristics of the district; the fallen cities have
+simply fallen from their greatness; they have not ceased to be
+dwelling-places of man. Aquileia and Forum Julii have ceased for ages
+to be what Aquileia and Forum Julii once were, but they have not
+become as Silchester, or even as Salona. Of the position of all these
+places there is no manner of doubt. They are there to speak for
+themselves; even Julium Carnacum, whose site has had to be looked for,
+still abides, though those who have reached it describe it as a small
+village. Aquileia under its old name, Forum Julii under its new name,
+are still inhabited, they still hold the rank of towns; but while they
+still abide, the rule that the first should become last and the last
+first is carried out among them. As ancient Aquileia was far greater
+than ancient Forum Julii, so modern Aquileia, though it keeps its
+name, is now far less than modern Cividale, from which the name of
+Forum Julii has passed away.
+
+Aquileia then, once the greatest city of all, is the city that has
+come nearest to being altogether wiped out of being. Venice,
+afterwards the greatest of all, is the city which may most truly be
+said to have been called out of nothing in after-times. Among the
+other cities the change has been rather a change of relation and
+proportion, than a case of absolute birth and death. Cividale is still
+there, though it is but a poor representative of Forum Julii. Udine
+has taken its place. But Udine, though its importance belongs wholly
+to mediæval times, was not strictly a mediæval creation. It is just
+possible to prove the existence of _Vedinum_ in Roman days, though it
+is only its existence which can be proved; it plays no part whatever
+in early history. The case is slightly different with another
+neighbouring city, the Roman Tarvisium, whose name gradually changed
+to _Treviso_. Tarvisium was of more account than Vedinum, but it first
+comes into notice in the wars of Belisarius, and its position as an
+important city playing a part in Italian history dates only from the
+days of the Lombard League. And its general history is one in which
+the shifting nomenclature of the district may be read with almost
+grotesque accuracy. It has not only been, like its neighbours,
+Venetian and Austrian in two widely different senses--it has not only
+been Venetian in the old geographical sense, and Venetian in the sense
+of being subject to the commonwealth of Venice--it has not only been
+Austrian in the old Lombard sense, and Austrian in the sense of being
+subject to the Dukes of the German Austria--but it has also shifted
+backwards and forwards between the rule of the Serene Republic and the
+rule of the Austrian Dukes, in a way to which it would not be easy to
+find a parallel even among the old revolutions of its neighbours.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Treviso and its district, the march which bears its name, was the
+first possession of Venice on the true mainland of Italy, as
+distinguished from that mere fringe of coast along the lagoons which
+may be more truly counted as part of her dominion by sea. That Treviso
+lay near to Venice was a truth which came home to Venetian minds at a
+very early stage of Venetian history. Even in the eleventh century,
+the earliest authentic chronicler of Venice, that John whose work will
+be found in the seventh volume of Pertz, speaks with some
+significance, even when recording events of the time of Charles the
+Great, of "quædam civitas non procul a Venetia, nomine Tarvisium."
+When strictly Italian history begins, Treviso runs through the
+ordinary course of a Lombard city; it takes its share in resistance to
+the imperial power, it falls into the hands of tyrants of the house of
+Romano and of the house of Scala. Along with Padua, it is the city
+which is fullest of memories of the terrible Eccelinò. Won by the
+Republic in 1338 from its lord Mastino della Scala, the special
+strangeness of its fortunes begins. The modern House of Austria was
+already in being; but its Dukes had not yet grown into Emperors, one
+only had grown into an acknowledged King. They had not won for
+themselves the crowns of Bohemia or Hungary, though, by the opposite
+process, one Bohemian king, the mighty Ottocar, had counted Austria in
+the long list of his conquered lands. But presently Treviso becomes
+the centre of events in which Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, and the
+Empire, all play their parts. It is perhaps not wonderful when the
+maritime republic, mistress of the Trevisan march, vainly seeks to
+obtain the confirmation of her right from the overlord of Treviso
+though not of Venice, Charles of Bohemia, King of the Romans and
+future Emperor. But the old times when Huns, Avars, Magyars,
+barbarians of every kind, poured into this devoted corner of Italy,
+seem to have come back, when in 1356 we find Treviso besieged by a
+Hungarian king. But the Hungarian king is no longer an outside
+barbarian; he is a prince of the house of Anjou and Paris. If Lewis
+the Great besieged Treviso, it was not in the character of a new
+Attila or Arpad; he attacked the now Venetian city as part of the war
+which he so successfully waged against the Republic in her Dalmatian
+lands. Not thirty years later we find the Doge Andrew Contarini, with
+more wisdom perhaps than the more famous Foscari of the next age,
+considering that to Venice the sea was greater than the land, and
+therefore commending her new conquest on the mainland to Duke Leopold
+of Austria. The words of the chronicler Andrew Dandolo are worth
+remembering. They express the truest policy of the Republic, from
+which she ought never to have gone astray.
+
+     "Ducalis excellentia prudentissima, meditatione considerans
+     proprium Venetorum esse mare colere, terramque postergare;
+     hinc enim divitiis et honoribus abundat, inde sæpe sibi
+     proveniunt scandala et errores."
+
+But Leopold, he who fell at Sempach, had not the same passion for
+dominion south of the Alps as some of his successors. He wisely sold
+Treviso to the lord of Padua, Francesco Carrara, from whom, after a
+moment of doubt whether the prize would not pass to the tyrant of
+Milan, the Republic won it back after eight years' separation.
+Henceforward Treviso shared the fate of the other Venetian possessions
+which gradually gathered on each side of her. Having had for a moment
+its share of Austrian dominion in the fourteenth century, Treviso was
+able, in the wars of the sixteenth century, to withstand the same
+power in a new shape, the power of Maximilian, Austrian Archduke and
+Roman King. In later times nothing distinguishes the city from the
+common course by which Treviso and her neighbours became Austrian,
+French, and Austrian again, till, by the happiest change of all, they
+became members of a free and united Italy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the aspect of the city itself, the Roman Tarvisium has left but
+small signs of its former being. All that we see is the Treviso of
+mediæval and later times. The walls, the bell-towers, the slenderer
+tower of the municipal palace, the arcaded streets, the houses too,
+though they are not rich in the more elaborate forms of Italian
+domestic art, have all the genuine character of a mediæval Italian
+town. Not placed in any striking position, not a hill-city, not in any
+strictness a river-city, but a city of the plain looking towards the
+distant mountains--not adorned by any building of conspicuous
+splendour--Treviso is still far from being void of objects which
+deserve study. As we look on the city, either from the lofty walk into
+which so large a part of its walls have been turned, or else from the
+neighbourhood of its railway station, its aspect, without rivalling
+that of the great cities of Italy, is far from unsatisfactory. But
+the character of the city differs widely in the two views. From the
+station the ecclesiastical element prevails. The main object in the
+view from this side is the Dominican church of Saint Nicolas, one of
+those vast brick friars' churches so characteristic of Italy, and to
+which the praise of a certain stateliness cannot be denied. Saint
+Nicolas, with its great bell-tower, groups well with the smaller
+church and smaller tower of a neighbouring Benedictine house. In
+short, the towers of Treviso form its leading feature, and that,
+though several of the greatest, above all the huge campanile designed
+for the cathedral church, have never been finished. In the view from
+the railway Saint Nicolas' tower is dominant; the tall slender tower
+of the municipal palace, loftier, we suspect, in positive height,
+fails to balance it. In the other view, from the wall on the other
+side, the municipal tower is the leading object, which it certainly
+would not have been if the bell-tower of the _duomo_ had ever been
+carried up. There is a great friars' church on this side too, the
+desecrated church of Saint Francis; but, though a large building with
+marked outline, it does not stand out at all so conspicuously as its
+Dominican rival on the other side. The _duomo_ itself, with its
+eccentric cupolas, goes for less in the general view than either. On
+the whole, the aspect of Treviso is very characteristically Italian;
+it would be yet more so if it sent up its one great campanile to mark
+its site from afar. Still, even as it is, this city of the Lombard
+Austria proclaims itself as one of the same group as those cities
+further to the west which we look down on side by side from the
+castle-hill of Brescia.
+
+Treviso, so near a neighbour of Venice, the earliest of her subject
+cities of the mainland, does not fail to proclaim the relation between
+the subject and the ruling commonwealth in the usual fashion. The
+winged lion, the ensign which we are to follow along so many shores,
+appears on not a few points of her defences. Over the gate of Saint
+Thomas the badge of the Evangelist appears in special size and
+majesty, accompanied, it would seem, by several younger members of his
+family whose wings have not yet had time to grow. And Treviso too in
+some sort calls up the memory of its mistress in the abundance of
+streams, canals, and bridges. It has at least more right than some of
+the towns to which the guide-books give the name, to be called a
+little Venice. But the contrast is indeed great between the still
+waters of the lagoons and the rushing torrents which pass under the
+walls and turn the mills of Treviso. Venice, in short, though her name
+has been rather freely scattered about hither and thither, remains
+without likeness or miniature among either subjects, rivals, or
+strangers.
+
+The heart of an Italian city is to be looked for in its town-house and
+the open space before it. It is characteristic of the mistress of
+Treviso that her palace, the palace of her rulers, not of her people,
+stands somewhat aside from the great centre of Venetian life. The
+church of the patron saint who had become identified with the
+commonwealth takes in some sort the place which in more democratic
+states belongs to the home of the commonwealth itself. Technically
+indeed Saint Mark's is itself part of the palace; it answers to Saint
+Stephen's at Westminster, not to Saint Peter's; but nowhere else among
+commonwealths does the chapel of the palace in this sort surpass or
+rival the palace itself. The less famous Saint Liberalis, patron of
+the city and diocese of Tarvisium, does not venture, after the manner
+of the Evangelist, thus to supplant Tarvisium itself. The commonwealth
+fully proclaims its being in the group of municipal buildings which
+surround the irregular space which forms the municipal centre of the
+city. One alone of these, at once in some sort the oldest and the
+newest, calls for special notice. The former _palazzo della Signoria_,
+now the palace, the centre, in the new arrangement of things, not only
+of the city of Treviso but of the whole province of which it is the
+head, has been clearly renewed, perhaps rebuilt. But it keeps the true
+character of a Lombard building of the kind, the simpler and truer
+forms which were in vogue before the Venetian Gothic set in. It marks
+the true position of that style that, though we cannot help admiring
+many of its buildings when we look at them, we find it a relief when
+we come to something earlier and more real. The buildings of which
+Venice set the type are very rich, very elegant; but we feel that,
+after all, England, France, Germany, could all do better in the way of
+windows, and that Italy left to herself could do better in the way of
+columns and arches. Old or new, rebuilt or simply repaired, there is
+nothing very wonderful in the municipal palace of Treviso; but in
+either case it is pleasing as an example of the genuine native style
+of Italy. It has arcades below, groups of round-headed windows above,
+and the tower looks over the palace with the more effect, because it
+is not parallel to it. The arcades of the palace, continued in the
+form of the arcades of the streets, are a feature of Treviso, as of
+all other southern cities that were built by rational men in rational
+times, and were designed, unlike Venice and Curzola, for the passage
+of carriages and horses. At Treviso we have arcades of all kinds, all
+shapes, all dates, some rude enough, some really elegant, but all of
+them better than the portentous folly which has offered up modern Rome
+and modern Athens as helpless victims to whatever powers may be
+conceived to preside over heat, dust, and their consequences. Treviso
+is not a first-class Italian city; it is hardly one of the second
+class; but it is pleasant to thread one's way through the arcades, to
+try to spell out the geography of the streams that are crossed by many
+bridges; it is pleasant to mount here and there on the wall, to look
+down on the broad foss below, and across it on the rich plain with its
+wall of mountains in the distance.
+
+In the ecclesiastical department what there is of any value above
+ground belongs mainly to the friars. The interest of the _duomo_, as a
+building, lies wholly in its crypt, a grand and spacious one,
+certainly not later than the twelfth century. It may be that some of
+the smaller marble shafts which support its vault had already done
+duty in some earlier building, and there is no doubt as to the
+classical date of a fragment of a large fluted column which in this
+same crypt serves the purpose of a well. The church above has been
+mercilessly Jesuited; yet, as it keeps more than one cupola, those
+cupolas give it a certain dignity; the stamp of Constantinople and
+Venice, of Périgueux and Angoulême, is hard wholly to wipe out.
+Otherwise a few tombs and a fine piece of mediæval gilded wood-carving
+are about all that the church of Treviso has to show. The great
+Dominican church has been more lucky. The guide-book of Gsel-fels,
+commonly the best of guide-books, but which cuts Treviso a little
+short, rather sets one against it by saying that it has been wholly
+modernized within. Repaired and freshened up it certainly has been;
+but it can hardly be said to have been modernized; the old lines seem
+not to have been tampered with. And there is something far from
+lacking in dignity in the effect of its vast interior, even though its
+style be the corrupt Gothic of Italy. One merit is that the arches
+which spring from the huge pillars, though wide, are not
+sprawling--not like those which those who do not dare to think for
+themselves are called on to admire in the nave of the Florentine
+_duomo_. Unlike the work of Arnolfo, the Dominican church of Treviso
+does not look one inch shorter or lower than it is. It has too the
+interest of much contemporary painting and other ornamental work. The
+smaller Benedictine church hard by, whose bell-tower groups so well
+with Saint Nicolas, employs in that bell-tower a trefoil arch, a
+strange form to spring from mid-wall shafts. Within there is not much
+to look at, beyond a tablet setting forth the glories of the
+Benedictine order, how many emperors, empresses, kings, queens, popes,
+cardinals, archbishops, bishops, and so forth, belonged to it. Dukes,
+marquesses, counts, and knights, were unnumbered. It is a strange
+thought that to that countless band Bec added the full manhood and
+long monastic life of Herlwin, that Saint Peter of Shrewsbury and
+Saint Werburh of Chester had severally the privilege of enrolling Earl
+Roger and Earl Hugh, each for a few days only, as members of the
+brotherhood of Benedict and Anselm.
+
+The other friars' church, that of Saint Francis, has been less lucky
+than its Dominican rival. Desecrated and partitioned, its inside is
+now inaccessible; the outside promises well for a church of its own
+type. Yet how feeble after all are the very best of these Italian
+buildings which forsook their own native forms for a hopeless attempt
+to reproduce the forms of other lands. We are always told that Italian
+Gothic cannot be Northern Gothic, because Italy is not like Northern
+lands. True enough; but what that argument proves is that Italy should
+have kept to her own natural Romanesque, the true fruit of her own
+soil, and should never have meddled with forms which could not be
+transplanted in their purity. The great fact of Italian architectural
+history is that the native style never was thoroughly driven out, but
+that, alongside of the sham Gothic, true Romanesque lived on to lose
+itself in the earlier and better kind of _Renaissance_. The open
+arcades of streets and houses, and the bell-towers of the churches,
+largely remain really Romanesque in style at all dates. For the
+working out of the same law in greater buildings we must make our way
+south-eastward. The chronicler of the eleventh century hinted that
+Treviso was near to Venice, and the men of the fourteenth century
+acted on the hint. But the wise Doge, who a generation later told his
+people to stick to the sea and leave the land behind, knew better
+where the true subject and neighbour lands of Venice lay. We cannot
+fully obey him as yet, as we have still points on the Italian mainland
+to visit. But we may still keep the true goal of our pilgrimage before
+our eyes, and we may remember that the lands which were most truly
+near to Venice were those lands, subject and hostile, to which the
+path lay by her own element. The lessons of which we begin to get a
+glimpse at Treviso we shall not learn in their fulness till we have
+reached the other side of Hadria.
+
+
+
+
+UDINE AND CIVIDALE.
+
+1875--1881.
+
+
+Ought the antiquarian traveller who has taken up his quarters at Udine
+and has thence made an expedition to Cividale to counsel his
+fellow-inquirers to follow his example in so doing or not? The answer
+to this question may be well made largely to depend on the state of
+the weather. It would be dangerous to say, from an experience of two
+visits only, that at Udine and Cividale it always either rains or has
+very lately rained; but those are the only two conditions in which we
+can speak of those places from personal knowledge. Now it is wonderful
+how a heavy rain damps the zeal of the most inquiring spirit,
+especially if he be carrying on his inquiries by himself. If he has
+companions, a good deal of wet may be shaken off by the process of
+talking and laughing at the common bad luck. If he be alone, every
+drop sticks; he has nothing to do but to grumble, and he has nobody to
+listen to his grumblings but himself. The land may be beautiful, but
+its beauties are half hid; the buildings may have the most taking
+outlines, but it is impossible to make a drawing of them. Even
+interiors lose their cheerfulness; the general gloom makes half their
+details invisible; and his own depression of spirit makes the inquirer
+less able than usual to understand and appreciate what he can see.
+Udine and Cividale on a fine day are something quite unlike Udine and
+Cividale in the rain. But even in this more cheerful state of things,
+when the rain has to be spoken of in the past tense, it may happen
+that the past puts serious difficulties in the way of the enjoyment of
+the present. Cividale is undoubtedly more pleasant and more profitable
+to see when the rain is past than when the rain is actually falling.
+But then, to judge from our two experiences, Cividale is easier to get
+at while the rain is actually falling than when it has ceased to fall.
+What in the one state of things is the half-dry _ghiara_ of an Alpine
+stream becomes a flood covering the road for no small distance, and
+suggesting, to all but the most zealous, the thought of turning back.
+It is only those for whom the attractions of the spot which once was
+the Forum Julii are strong indeed, who will pluck up heart to go on
+when their carriage has sometimes to be helped on by men who are used
+to wade through the flood, or else is forced to leave what should have
+been the high road for a narrow and difficult path across the fields.
+It is well to record these things, that those who stay at home may be
+put in mind that, even in perfectly civilized lands, topographical
+knowledge is not always to be got without going to some little trouble
+in the search after it. We have seen Udine and Cividale wet, and we
+have seen them dry, but then it was when they had been wet only a very
+short time before. We are tempted to think that we might understand
+them better at some time when the rainfall was neither of the present
+nor of the very recent past.
+
+One thing however is certain, that, wet or dry, not many Englishmen
+make the experiment of trying to find out what this corner of Italy
+may have to show. Not an English name, save that of one specially
+famous and adventurous traveller, was to be seen in the visitors'
+book, either in Albergo dell' Italia at Udine or in the Museum at
+Cividale. The true traveller is always in a doubtful state of mind
+when he finds a place of interest neglected by his own countrymen. On
+the one hand he is personally relieved, as being set free from the
+gabble of English tourists at _tables d'hôte_ and the like. But how
+far ought he to proclaim to the world the merits of the place which he
+has found out for himself? How can he draw the line, so as to lead
+travellers to come, without holding out the least inducement to mere
+tourists? But perhaps the danger is not great; tourists will go only
+where it is the fashion to go, and the historical traveller must not
+think of himself more highly than he ought to think or fancy that it
+is for such as he to create a fashion.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We will suppose then that our traveller has started from Treviso, and
+has reached the frontier town of Italy in the modern sense of the
+name. We have seen that the existence of the place in Roman times
+under the name of Vedinum can be proved and no more. The importance
+and history of Udine, _Utinum_, are wholly mediæval. It takes the
+place of Forum Julii as the capital of Friuli the district which keeps
+the name which has passed away from the city. It is one of the
+eccentricities of nomenclature that the other Forum Julii in southern
+Gaul has kept its name, but in the still more corrupted shape of
+_Fréjus_. The new head of the Venetian borderland--Venetia in the
+older sense--went through the usual course of the neighbouring cities
+with one feature peculiar to itself. Not a patriarchal see, Udine was
+a patriarchal capital, the capital of the patriarchs of Aquileia in
+that temporal character which for a long while made the bishops of the
+forsaken city the chief princes of that corner of Italy.
+
+Like Treviso, but somewhat later, Udine had to undergo a Hungarian
+siege, when the Magyar crown had passed by marriage from the house of
+Anjou to the house of Luxemburg. But we may mark how the different
+powers which had something to do with the lands with which we are
+concerned are already beginning to gather from the same hands. Lewis,
+the enemy of Treviso in 1356, purely western in origin, was purely
+eastern in power--King of Hungary and of the lands round about
+Hungary, King of Poland by a personal union. Siegmund, the enemy of
+Udine in 1411, was already King of Hungary, Margrave of Brandenburg
+also, in days when, as Hungary had nothing to do with Austria, so
+Brandenburg had nothing to do with Prussia. He was already chosen but
+not crowned King of the Romans; he was to be, before he had done, King
+of Bohemia, reformer of the Church, and Emperor, last crowned Emperor
+not of the Austrian house. Presently the city passed away from the
+rule of the patriarchs, but it could hardly be said to pass from a
+spiritual to a temporal lord when it came under the direct superiority
+of the Evangelist and his Lion. In the war of the League of Cambray it
+passed for a moment into the hands of an Austrian Archduke, but one
+who wore the crown of Aachen, and bore the titles of Rome without her
+crown. The first momentary master saw from the German Austria that
+Udine was Maximilian, King of Germany and Emperor-elect. In the
+eighteenth century the patriarchs of Aquileia had become harmless
+indeed, so harmless that their dignity could be altogether swept away,
+and their immediate province divided between the two new
+archbishoprics of Udine and Gorizia. Thus Udine, having once been the
+temporal seat of an ecclesiastical prince of the highest rank, came,
+as a subject city, to hold the highest ecclesiastical rank short of
+that which was swept away to make room for its elevation.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Udine is one of those places which keep fortifications of what we may
+call the intermediate period, what, in this part of the world, is
+specially the Venetian period. Such walls stand removed alike from
+those which, even when not Roman in date, closely follow the Roman
+type of defences, and from fortifications of the purely modern kind.
+The walls of Udine are well preserved and defended with ditches, and,
+as they fence in a large space and as there is comparatively little
+suburb, they form a prominent feature in the aspect of the town.
+Within the town, towering over every other object, is the castle or
+citadel, as unpicturesque a military structure as can be conceived,
+but perched on a huge mound, like so many of the castles of our own
+land. Here is work for Mr. Clark. Is the mound natural or artificial?
+Tradition says that it was thrown up by Attila, that he might stand on
+it and see the burning of Aquileia. Legendary as such a tale is on the
+face of it, it may perhaps be taken as some traditional witness to the
+artificial nature of the mound. It would be dangerous to say anything
+more positively without minute knowledge both of the geology and of
+the præ-historic antiquities of Venetia; but analogy always suggests
+that such mounds are artificial, or at least largely improved by art.
+Anyhow there the mound is, an earthwork which, if artificial it be,
+the Lady of the Mercians herself need not have been ashamed of.
+
+Some of the guide-books call Udine "a miniature Venice;" it is not
+easy to see why. There are some canals and bridges in Udine, but so
+there are in Milan, Amiens, and countless other towns. There is even a
+Rialto; but one hardly sees how it came by its name. The true "piccola
+Venezia" is far away in Dalmatia, floating on its islands in the bay
+of Salona. The point of likeness to Venice is probably found in the
+civic palace and the two neighbouring columns. But these last are only
+the usual badges of Venetian rule, and the palace, though it may
+suggest the dwelling of the Doges, has no more likeness to it than is
+shared by many other buildings of the same kind in Italy. But, like or
+unlike to Venice, there is no doubt, even on a rainy day, that the
+palace of Udine is a building of no small merit; on a fine day it
+might perhaps make us say that it was worth going to Udine to see it.
+It is, of course, far smaller than the Doges' palace; and if it lacks
+the wonderful intermediate story of the Venetian building, it also
+lacks the ugly story above it. The point of likeness, if any, lies in
+the arcades, with their columns of true Italian type, slenderer than
+those at Venice, and using the pointed arch in the outer and the round
+arch in the inner range. But the columns at Udine are not a mere range
+like those at Venice. They stand row behind row, almost like the
+columns of a crypt, and they supply a profitable study in their
+floriated capitals. The pillared space forms the market-place of the
+city, and a busy place it is at the times of buying and selling,
+filled with the characteristic merchandise of the district, the golden
+balls of silk, for whose presence the Venetian land may thank the
+adventurous monks of Justinian's day. Some of the columns, and a large
+part of the rest of the building, had been renewed between 1875 and
+1881. Between those years the palace had been nearly destroyed by
+fire. Here was a case of necessary restoration. No rational person
+could have been better pleased, either if the palace had been left in
+ruins or if it had been repaired in some incongruous fashion. In such
+a case as this, the new work is as much in its place as the old, and
+the new work at Udine is as worthy as any new work is ever likely to
+be to stand side by side with the old. At Udine again, as in many
+other places, the thought cannot fail to strike us how thoroughly
+these grand public palaces of Italy do but set before us, on a grand
+scale and in a more ornamented style, a kind of building of which a
+humble variety is familiar enough among ourselves. Many an English
+market-town has an open market-house with arches, with a room above
+for the administration of justice or any other public purpose. Enlarge
+and enrich a building of this kind, and we come by easy steps to the
+palace of Udine and to the palace of Venice.
+
+The civic palace is the only building of any great architectural value
+in Udine. The metropolitan church contains little that is attractive
+for antiquity or for beauty of the higher kind. But the interior,
+though of mixed and corrupt style, is not without a certain
+stateliness, and its huge octagonal tower would have been a grand
+object if its upper stages had been carried up in a manner worthy of
+its basement. The streets are largely arcaded; and if the arcades of
+Udine supply less detail than those of some other Italian cities, any
+arcade is better than none. Udine can at least hold its head higher
+than modern Bari, modern Athens, modern Rome. Still at best Udine in
+itself holds but a secondary place among Italian cities, and its main
+historic interest consists in the way in which the utterly obscure
+_Vedinum_ contrived to supplant both Aquileia and Forum Julii. As
+things now are, Forum Julii, dwindled to Cividale, has become a kind
+of appendage to Udine, and we must make our way thither from what is
+now the greater city.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Let us here put on record the memories of an actual journey, as
+strengthened and corrected by a later one made under more favourable
+circumstances. The accounts in the common guide-books are so meagre,
+and it is so impossible to get any topographical books in Udine, that
+our inquirer sets out, it must be confessed, with the vaguest notions
+of what he is going to see. Gsel-fels was not in those days, and, now
+that he has come into being, he has treated the lands at the head of
+the Hadriatic a good deal less fully than he has done most other parts
+of Italy. The traveller then is promised a store of Roman remains by
+one guide-book, and an early Romanesque church by another. He knows
+that the greatness of Forum Julii has gone elsewhere, and he is
+perhaps led to the belief that he is going to see a fallen city,
+perhaps another Aquileia, perhaps even another Salona. One thing is
+clear, even in the rain--namely, that the natural surroundings of
+Forum Julii are of the noblest kind. The grand position of the place
+itself he will not find out till later; but the mist half hides, half
+brings out, the fact that Udine lies near, and Cividale lies nearer,
+to the great range of the Julian Alps. Here and there their outlines
+can be made out; here and there a snowy peak shows itself for a moment
+in the further distance. A fertile plain with a mountain barrier, with
+broad and rushing rivers to water it--it was clearly a goodly land in
+which the old Veneti had fixed themselves, and in which Rome fixed the
+Forum of Julius as a colony and garrison to keep their land in
+obedience.
+
+A long and flat road, but with the mountains ever in front, leads on
+by several villages with their bell-towers, over what, according to
+the accidents of weather, may be either a half-dry _ghiara_ or a deep
+flood, till the traveller reaches the place which was Forum Julii, and
+which is Cividale. Here he finds himself--a little to his
+amazement--in a living town, with walls and gates and towers, with
+streets and houses and churches, none of them certainly of the Julian
+æra. The town is not very large; it is not a local capital like Udine;
+still it is a town, not a village among ruins and fragments like
+Aquileia and Salona. But it is plain that Cividale has not forgotten
+what she once was; the traveller is set down at the _Grande Albergo al
+Friuli_, and the _albergo_ stands in the _Piazza Giulio Cesare_. He
+remembers the like name at Rimini, and he begins to cherish hopes that
+the treasures of Rimini may have their like at Cividale. In utter
+ignorance of what the place may really contain, he seeks for a
+bookseller's shop, hoping that some guide-book or plan of some kind
+may still be found. The bookseller is soon found, but his shop
+contains nothing of the least profit to an inquirer into the remains
+of Forum Julii. But the traveller hears that there is a museum; that
+promises something: besides the treasures which the museum itself may
+contain, such a place commonly implies an intelligent keeper, who
+sometimes proves to be a scholar of a high order. But he takes a wrong
+turn; no great harm however, as he thereby learns sooner than he
+otherwise would have learned the noble natural site of Cividale,
+planted on the rocky banks of the rushing stream of the Natisone. He
+sees two or three unpromising churches, and looks into the chief of
+them, a building of strange and mixed style, but not without a certain
+stateliness of general effect. He sees the _Via Cornelio Gallo_, which
+promises something, and the _Via del Tempio_, which promises more.
+Visions of Nîmes, Vienne, and Pola rise before him; he follows the
+track, but he finds nothing in the least savouring of Jupiter or
+Diana, and he learns afterwards that the _Tempio_ from which the
+street is called is the great church, known, it seems, in a special
+way, as _Templum Maximum_. Still the museum is not reached; but a
+second inquiry, a second journey to quite another end of the town,
+leads to it. The museum is examined; it contains a considerable stock
+of objects of the usual kind, fragments of architecture and sculpture,
+which witness to the former greatness of Forum Julii. More remarkable
+are the specimens of Lombard workmanship, in various forms of armour
+and ornament, to say nothing of the actual tomb of the Lombard Duke
+Gisulf. At the museum he is put under the friendly guidance of a
+kindly priest, by whose care many matters are cleared up. Roman
+remains, strictly so called, there are none to see. There have been
+diggings, and the walls have been traced out, but all has been covered
+up again; outside the museum there is nothing in the pagan line left.
+But of Romanesque work the remains, though neither large nor many, are
+of high interest. Buried in an Ursuline nunnery, of which the good
+father opens the door, is a small Romanesque church of most singular
+design, built, so he tells us, in 764, but which, if so, must have
+received some further enrichment in the twelfth century. The
+sculptures in the western wall are surely of the later date; but the
+shell, parts of which in their coupled Corinthian columns strongly
+call to mind some of the ancient churches of Rome, may well be of the
+earlier date, of the last days of the Lombard kingdom.
+
+Here at last something of no small value has been lighted on. As a
+matter of architecture, this church is by far the best thing in
+Cividale. Indeed, as a matter of architecture strictly so called, it
+is the only thing of any importance. But let the other churches be
+gone through again, perhaps only with that relief of the mind which
+follows the discovery of an intelligible clue, yet more when old
+memories are revived and strengthened by a second visit, and, though
+they are of no great value as buildings, they are found to be of no
+small interest in other ways. The _Templum Maximum_ indeed, late and
+corrupt as is its style, is not without a certain grandeur of internal
+effect, and it contains more than one object which calls up historic
+memories. There is the chair which cannot in strictness be called
+patriarchal, but which was doubtless used by patriarchs when the
+spiritual shepherds of Aquileia fled from their wasted home to the
+safer shelter of Forum Julii, and ruled its chief church as provosts.
+There too on the altar we may see the silver image work of the twelfth
+century, the gift of one of the two patriarchs who bore the name of
+Peregrinus. And there too is a wonderful object, the indoor
+baptistery--for it is more than a font--repaired two years after
+Charles the Great had added the style of King of the Lombards to his
+Frankish kingship and his Roman patriciate. We may then believe that,
+in the columns and round arches of its octagon, we see work of the
+date when the land of Forum Julii was still the Austria of an
+independent Lombard realm. Other objects of early days are to be found
+in even the less promising churches, specially an altar, rich with the
+goldsmith's craft, which suggests, though it does not rival, the altar
+of Saint Ambrose at Milan. But first among the treasures of Cividale
+must rank the precious volume which is still guarded in the treasury
+of the great church. This is an ancient book of the gospels, now of
+three gospels only, for some zealous Venetian, eager for the honour of
+Saint Mark, deemed that the pages which contained his writings were
+out of place anywhere except in the Evangelist's own city. The highest
+historical value of the book consists in the crowds of signatures
+scattered through its margin, signatures of persons great and small,
+known and unknown, from the days of the Lombard princes to the
+Empress-Queen of the last age and the Bourbon pretender of the
+present. When we have grasped the fact that the popular speech of the
+surrounding district is Slavonic, we are less surprised than we
+otherwise might be to find that a large proportion of the signatures
+come from eastern Europe. Among them are a crowd of signatures from
+Bulgaria, headed by Michael their king. It is for palæographers to
+judge of the date by the writing. And palæographers say that, of the
+ancient names, none are earlier than the end of the eighth century or
+later than the end of the tenth. Otherwise we might have been driven
+to see in this Michael nothing greater than a fourteenth century king
+of an already divided Bulgaria. But the great Simeon of an earlier day
+left a son Michael, a monk, who left his monastery to strive vainly
+for his father's crown. Yet, if the witness of wise men as to the
+dates of the writing may be trusted, it must be either the signature
+of this Michael or else an utter forgery. But the unenlightened in
+such matters asks how the signatures of men of so many lands and ages
+got there. Did those whose names were written--for of course few, if
+any, would write them themselves--come to the book, or did the book go
+to them? The earlier signatures at least are said to be the names of
+reconciled enemies who took the holy book to witness that their
+enmities were laid aside. This we can neither affirm nor deny, but it
+surely cannot apply to all the signatures in the book. The treasury
+contains other ancient books, and other objects which are well worth
+notice, but this strange and precious relic is the chiefest of them
+all.
+
+Altogether then there turns out to be a good deal to see on the site
+which once was Forum Julii. What is to be seen is perhaps not exactly
+of the kind which the traveller may have fancied in his dreams. He can
+hardly have come expecting to find a stately mediæval or modern city.
+He may have come expecting to find the walls of a Roman city
+sheltering here and there either Roman fragments or modern cottages.
+He will find neither of these; but he will find a town whose natural
+position is far more striking than could have been looked for in the
+approach from Udine, and whose chief merit is that it shelters here
+and there, in corners where they have to be sought for, several
+objects, neither Roman nor mediæval, but of the darker, and therefore
+most instructive, period which lies between the two.
+
+
+
+
+GORIZIA.
+
+1881.
+
+
+At Udine and at Cividale we are still in Italy in every sense which
+that name has borne since the days of Augustus Cæsar. But the fact
+which may have startled us at the last stage of our course, the fact
+that a Slavonic tongue is to be heard within the borders of both the
+old and the new Italian kingdom, may suggest the thought that we are
+drawing near to parts of the world which are in some respects
+different from Treviso and the lands to the west of it. We are about
+to pass from the subject lands of Venice to the neighbour lands. We
+shall presently reach the borders which modern diplomacy has decreed
+for the Italian kingdom, seemingly because they were the borders of
+the territory of the Venetian commonwealth on the mainland. Venice, as
+Venice, has passed away, but it is strange to see how one of the most
+artificial of her boundaries survives. The present arrangements of the
+European map seem to lay down as the rule on this frontier that
+nothing that was not Venetian can be Italian. The rule is purely
+negative; no weight at all is given to the converse doctrine that
+whatever was Venetian should be Italian. Nor is it necessary to plead
+for any such doctrine, a doctrine which nationality and geography, as
+well as practical possibility, would all decline to support. Still it
+is hard to see why the negative doctrine should be so strictly
+pressed, and why Italian lands should be forced to remain under a
+foreign dominion, simply because they never came under the dominion of
+Venice. If any argument grounded in this way on facts which have long
+since ceased to have a meaning were urged on the Italian side, it
+would be at once scouted as pedantic and antiquarian. But it would
+seem that even pedantry and antiquarianism are welcomed when they tell
+on behalf of the other side. For surely it is the height of pedantry
+and antiquarianism to argue that, because a land was never numbered
+among the subject provinces of Venice, it therefore may not be
+numbered among the equal members of a free Italian kingdom. It is
+certainly hard to find any other reason, except that the advance of
+Venice stopped at a certain point, to account for the fact that the
+dominions of a foreign prince come so awkwardly near to Verona, for
+the fact that Trent and Roveredo look to Vienna and not to Rome. Such
+are our thoughts on one line of journey; on our present course the
+same question suggests itself again. We pass a frontier where it is
+not at first sight easy to see why any frontier should be there. We
+journey from Udine to Gorizia, still keeping within the old Lombard
+Austria, but between Udine and Gorizia lies Cormons, and after Cormons
+we find ourselves in a new Austria. We speak with geographical
+accuracy. We might not say, as some would, that we were in Austria if
+we were at Cattaro or at Tzernovitz, but in the land which we have now
+entered, we are, not indeed in the archduchy of Austria, but within
+the circle of Austria according to the arrangements of Maximilian. And
+in truth we do soon mark a change. We soon come to feel more
+distinctly than before that we are in a land where more tongues than
+one are spoken. We may have found out that round about Cividale all is
+not Italian in speech; but the Slavonic tongue of those parts is
+modest and retiring. It does not thrust itself into print or show
+itself flauntingly on doors or windows. But when we pass the border,
+when we are in the land which is Austrian both in the oldest and the
+newest sense, the presence of a twofold, even of a three-fold, speech
+makes itself very clear. At Cividale, if Slavonic was to be heard, it
+was at least not to be seen. In the city which we next reach, Italian
+and Slavonic are both to be seen openly, and a third tongue is to be
+seen alongside of them. Are we to seek here for the justification of
+the frontier which struck us as artificial and needless? Is the fact
+that the Slavonic tongue is spoken in or close by the city which we
+next reach a proof that that city ought to remain outside the Italian
+kingdom? If so, the argument might be thought to prove too much; it
+might be thought to prove that Cividale ought not to be counted to
+Italy any more than its neighbour. But any one who took up this line
+of argument would hardly be led by it to approval of things as they
+are. The Panslavist who should go the length of arguing that neither
+Gorizia nor Cividale ought to look to Rome as its head would hardly
+argue that either of them ought to look to Vienna.
+
+We have written the name _Gorizia_; but we have written it with fear
+and trembling. For we have now reached a city where we have three
+names to choose from. Shall we say _Görz_, _Gorizia_, or _Gorici_? All
+three names will be found carefully displayed side by side in public
+notices. One is tempted, by the analogy of a crowd of Slavonic names
+in other places, to suggest _Goritaz_ instead of any of them. But
+_Gorici_ is the Slavonic form as by law established, and to that rule
+both natives and visitors may do well to bow. In any case there is
+little doubt that on this spot of many names we have reached a place
+which, though Italian in geography, though for ages German in
+allegiance, was in truth Slavonic in origin. A charter of Otto the
+Third speaks of "una villa quæ Sclavonica lingua vocatur Gorizia."
+This is the earliest certain mention of the place. There is indeed a
+document which tells us how in the year 949 Bishop John of Trieste was
+borne down by many troubles, and how one source of his troubles was a
+heavy debt to David the Jew of Gorizia. But wise men reject the
+document which asserts this piece of episcopal mismanagement. And the
+way in which the place is spoken of in the eleventh century does not
+sound as if it could have been a spot whose wealth could have drawn
+Jews thither in the tenth. In any case the Slavonic _villa_ grew into
+a town and a county of the Empire, and late in the fifteenth century
+the Counts of Gorizia became the same persons as the Archdukes of
+Austria. But long after the beginning of that union, the distinction
+between Austria and Gorizia was still strongly drawn. How much Gorizia
+still thought of itself, how much its prince still thought of himself
+in his local character, is made plain by the most prominent feature of
+the chief building of the place. Over the gateway of the castle is an
+inscription recording repairs done in the year 1660 by the reigning
+Count Leopold. That Count bore higher titles, and he does not fail to
+record them on the stone; but they are recorded in an almost
+incidental way. Letters boldly cut, letters which catch the eye at
+some distance, proclaim that the work was done by LEOPOLDUS COMES
+GORITIÆ. Go near, and you may literally read between the lines, in
+smaller letters and abbreviated words, that this Count Leopold
+happened to be also Emperor of the Romans, King of Germany, Hungary,
+and Bohemia, Archduke of Austria, and--in his own eyes at least--Duke
+of Burgundy. But here at Gorizia he reigned and built directly as
+Count of Gorizia, and he proclaimed himself primarily by his local
+title. In an inscription such things could be done; heraldry hardly
+admitted of any such ingenious devices. The bird of Cæsar must bear
+the hereditary shield of the prince who has been chosen to the
+imperial office, and on that hereditary shield the bearings of the
+Gorizian county cannot displace those of duchies and kingdoms. While
+therefore the legend proclaims the doer of the repairs of 1660 as
+before all things a hereditary local count, the shield proclaims him
+as before all things a Roman Emperor-elect. Yet one may believe that
+most of those who pass under the imperial bird over the gateway deem
+him all one with his bastard likeness over the tobacco-shops. Some may
+even fail to see that, among the many hereditary bearings of the
+elective Cæsar, the lion of the Austrian duchy keeps his proper place.
+That lion is so apt to pass out of sight, men are so ready to cry
+"Austria" when they see the eagle of Rome, so little ready to cry
+"Austria" when they see Austria's own bearing, that it may be kind to
+point out one place where his form and his occasional destiny may best
+be studied. The true Austrian beast is plainly to be seen on the walls
+of the _Schlachtkapelle_ near Sempach, and his presence there is
+explained by the legend, thrilling to the federal and democratic mind,
+"Das Panier von Oestreich ist gefangen, und ist nach Uri gekommen."
+
+The eagle of Rome over the gateway, in a place where in these regions
+we look almost mechanically for the lion of Saint Mark, reminds us yet
+again that we have passed from the subject into the neighbour lands of
+Venice. And various inscriptions, public and private, bring no less
+clearly home to our minds that we are in a land of more than one
+tongue. Of the three names of the town, that by which we have hitherto
+spoken of it, that which it bears in the earliest trustworthy charter,
+that which differs by one letter only from its more ordinary Latin
+shape as seen over the gate, is also the name which the traveller will
+most frequently hear in its streets and will see universally written
+over its shops. As far as one can see at a glance, German is at _Görz_
+the tongue of hôtels, _cafés_, public departments of all kinds.
+Italian is the tongue of the citizens of _Gorizia_ whose shops are
+sheltered by its street arcades. Slavonic, we conceive, will some day
+be the tongue of the little children who, in all the joy of a state of
+nature, as naked as any other mammals, creep, as merrily though more
+slowly than the lizards, over the grass and stones of the castle-hill
+of _Gorici_. Anyhow Gorizia is, like Palermo of old, the city of the
+threefold tongue. But the place itself is, considering its history, a
+little disappointing. Nothing indeed is lacking in the way of
+position. Mountains on all sides, except where the rich plain of the
+swift Isonzo stretches away to the sea, fence in the city, without
+hemming it close in as in a prison. One hill is crowned by the castle,
+whence we look out on another crowned by the long white line of the
+Franciscan convent, suggesting memories of the banished king who was
+the last to receive the consecrating oil of Rheims. Houses, churches,
+villages, are thickly scattered over the plain and the hill sides. The
+vines and the mulberry-trees, the food of the silkworm whose endless
+cocoons choke up the market-place, witness to the richness of the
+land. But there is a strange lack of buildings of any importance in
+this capital of an ancient county, this resort which boasts itself as
+the "Nizza Austriaca," the "Oesterreichische Nizza"--in such formulæ
+the third tongue of the spot is not called into play. A Nizza without
+any Mediterranean may seem as strange as the Rialto which we saw at
+Udine without any Grand Canal. But Gorizia as a modern town is not
+striking. Its best features are the old arcades in some of its streets
+and markets. Such arcades must be bad indeed to be wholly
+unsatisfactory, and some of those at Gorizia are very fairly done. But
+there is no grand church, no grand municipal palace; the castle itself
+is not what on such a site it ought to be. The castle is the kernel of
+the whole place. Gorizia is not a hill-town, nor can we call it a
+river-town. There is the castle on the hill, and the town seems to
+have gathered at its foot. The castle soars so commandingly over the
+country round that we wish here, as at Udine, that there was something
+better to soar than the ugly barrack which forms its uppermost stage.
+There are indeed better things within Count Leopold's gateway. The
+outer court is laid out in streets, and contains several houses with
+architectural features. One, bearing date 1475, with respectable
+columns and round arches below, and with windows of the Venetian type
+above, might pass for a very humble following, not of the palaces of
+Venice or Udine, but of the far nobler pile which is in store for us
+at Ragusa. A small church too strikes us, with its windows projecting
+like oriels, one of them indeed rising from the ground. This last,
+when we enter, proves to be the smallest of side-chapels set on this
+fashion. In some cities such a small eccentricity would hardly deserve
+any notice; but at Gorizia we learn to become thankful for rather
+small mercies.
+
+In the lower town what little interest there is gathers round the
+pieces of street arcades; the churches go for next to nothing. Yet
+Gorizia ranks as an ecclesiastical metropolis, and it has its
+metropolitan church no less than Canterbury or Lyons. Nor is this
+merely one of those arrangements of the present century which have
+stripped Mainz and Trier of their immemorial dignity, and which have
+given us archbishops of such unexpected places as Munich and
+Freiburg-im-Breisgau. The style of Archbishop of Gorizia is at least
+several generations older than the style of Emperor of Austria. The
+church of Gorizia rose to metropolitan rank, at the same time as the
+church of Udine, when the patriarchate of Aquileia came to an end, and
+its province was divided between the two new metropolitans thus called
+into being. But the seat of the modern primacy is hardly worthy of a
+simple bishopric. There is nothing in the building of any antiquity
+but a choir, German rather than Italian, and of no great antiquity
+either. The rest of the church is of a gaudy _Renaissance_; yet it
+deserves some notice from the boldness of its construction. It is
+designed, within and without, of two stories: that is, the upper
+gallery is an essential part of the building. The principle is the
+same as in Saint Agnes and Saint Laurence at Rome, and as in German
+churches like the Great Minster at Zürich; but the feeling is quite
+different. Still, if a church is to be built in a _Renaissance_ style
+and to receive two sets of worshippers, one over the heads of the
+other, it must be allowed that the object is thoroughly attained in
+the metropolitan church of Gorizia, and its architect is entitled to
+the credit of having successfully grappled with the problem
+immediately set before him.
+
+Gorizia then can hardly claim, on the ground either of its history or
+its buildings, to rank among cities of the first, or even of the
+second class. Its natural position far surpasses all that has been
+done in it, and all that has been built in it. But there is no spot on
+which men have lived for eight or nine hundred years which does not
+teach us something, and Gorizia has its lessons as well as other
+places. It would hardly be worth making a journey thither from any
+distant point to see Gorizia only; but the place should be seen by any
+one whose course takes him through the lands at the head of the
+Hadriatic. Udine, Cividale, and Gorizia are places which have in some
+sort partitioned among them the position of fallen Aquileia. From the
+children, we might perhaps say the rebellious children, we must go on
+to the ancient mother.
+
+
+
+
+AQUILEIA.
+
+1875--1881.
+
+
+We have already, in our course through the lands at the head of the
+Hadriatic, had need constantly to refer to the fallen city which once
+was the acknowledged head of those lands, the city whose fame began as
+a great Roman colony, the bulwark of Italy at her north-eastern
+corner, and which lived on, after the fall of its first greatness, in
+the character of the nominal head alike of a considerable temporal
+power and of an ecclesiastical power whose position and history were
+altogether unique. We have noticed that, while the cities of this
+region rise and fall, still even those which fall are not wholly swept
+away. Aquileia has always lived, though, since the days of Attila, the
+life of the actual city of Aquileia has been a very feeble one indeed.
+But though Aquileia, as a city, practically perished in the fifth
+century, yet it continued till the eighteenth to give its name to a
+power of some kind. Its temporal position passed to Forum Julii, and
+Udine succeeded to the position alike of Forum Julii and of Aquileia.
+But the patriarchs grew into temporal princes, and their style
+continued to be taken from Aquileia, and not from Forum Julii or
+Udine. On the ecclesiastical side, the patriarchal title itself arose
+out of a theological and a local schism. And, while the bishops of
+Aquileia thus rose to the same nominal rank as those of Constantinople
+and Alexandria, they had, as the result of the same chain of events,
+to see--at least, if they had gone on living at Aquileia they would
+have seen--a rival power of the same rank spring up, at their own
+gates, in the form of the patriarchs of Grado. This last was surely
+the greatest anomaly in all ecclesiastical geography. He who is not
+familiar with the Italian ecclesiastical map may be surprised to find
+Fiesole a separate bishopric from Florence. Even he who is familiar
+with such matters may still be surprised to find Monreale a separate
+archbishopric from Palermo. But even this last real anomaly seems a
+small matter, compared with the arrangement which placed one patriarch
+at Aquileia itself, and another almost within a stone's throw at
+Aquileia's port of Grado. At every step we have lighted on something
+to suggest the thought of the ancient capital of the Venetian
+borderland; we have now to look at what is left of the fallen city
+itself. Setting aside the actual seats of Imperial power, Rome Old and
+New, Milan, Trier, and Ravenna, few cities stand out more
+conspicuously than Aquileia both in general and in ecclesiastical
+history. The stronghold by which Rome first secured her power over the
+borderland of Illyria and Cisalpine Gaul--the city which grew under
+the fostering hand of Augustus into one of the great cities of the
+Empire--the city whose overthrow by Attila was one of the causes of
+the birth of Venice--might have claimed for itself no mean place in
+history, even if it had never become one of the special seats of
+ecclesiastical rule and ecclesiastical controversy. To see such a city
+sunk to a mean village, to trace out the remains of its ancient
+greatness and splendour, is indeed a worthy work for the historical
+traveller.
+
+But how shall the traveller find his way to Aquileia? Let us confess
+to a certain degree of pious fraud in our notices of Treviso, Udine,
+and Gorizia. We have, for the general purposes of the series,
+conceived the traveller as starting from Venice, while in truth those
+notices contained the impressions of journeys made the other way, with
+Trieste as their starting-point. The mask must be thrown off, if only
+because the journey to Aquileia always calls up the memory of an
+earlier visit to Aquileia when it was also from Trieste that another
+traveller set forth. We have before us a record of travel from Trieste
+to Aquileia, in which the pilgrim, finding himself on the road "in a
+capital barouche behind two excellent horses," tells us that "the
+idea of thus visiting a church city, which seemed a mere existence of
+the past, had something so singular and inappropriate as to seem an
+ecclesiastical joke. When at the octroi," he continues, "our driver
+gave out his destination, the whole arrangement produced the same
+effect in my mind as if Saint Augustine had asked me to have a bottle
+of soda-water, or Saint Jerome to procure for him a third-class
+ticket." Without professing altogether to throw ourselves into
+enthusiasm of this kind, the ecclesiastical history of the city, its
+long line of patriarchs, schismatical and orthodox, is of itself
+enough to give Aquileia a high place among the cities of the earth.
+But why Aquileia should be called "a church city" as if it were Wells
+or Lichfield or Saint David's, cities to which that name would very
+well apply--why going thither should seem an "ecclesiastical
+joke"--why Saint Augustine, if he were still on earth, should be
+debarred from the use of soda-water--why Saint Jerome should be
+condemned to a third-class ticket, while his modern admirer goes in a
+capital barouche behind two excellent horses--all these are mysteries
+into which it would not do for the profane to peer too narrowly. But
+the traveller from whom we quote was one in whose mind the first sight
+of Spalato called up no memory of Diocletian, but who wandered off
+from the organizer of the Roman power to an ecclesiastical squabble
+in which the British Solomon was a chief actor. We quote his own
+words. As he first saw the mighty bell-tower, he asks, "What were our
+thoughts? What but of poor Mark Antony de Dominis?"
+
+Our ecclesiastical traveller who went straight from Trieste to
+Aquileia in the barouche with the excellent horses made his pilgrimage
+before the railway was opened. As it is, the more modern inquirer is
+more likely to take the train to Monfalcone--perhaps humbly, like
+Saint Jerome, by the third class, perhaps otherwise, according to
+circumstances. He will pass through a land of specially stony hills
+coming down near to the sea, but leaving ever and anon, in the most
+utter contrast, green marshy places between the stones and the water.
+Some may find an interest in passing by Miramar, the dwelling of the
+Maximilian who perished in Mexico; some may prefer to speculate about
+Antenor, and to wonder where he found the nine mouths of Timavus. But
+it is still possible to go by the same path as our predecessor, and
+that antiquated course has something to be said for it. The road from
+Trieste to Aquileia is, for some while at least, not rich in specially
+striking objects, but it passes over lofty ground whence the traveller
+will better understand the geography of the Hadriatic, and will come
+in for some glimpses of the inland parts of this region of many
+tongues. For here it is not quite enough to say that native Italian
+and Slave and official German all meet side by side. We are not far
+off from the march-land of two forms of the Slavonic speech; the
+tongue of Rome too is represented at no great distance by another of
+its children, distinct from the more classic speech of Italy. We
+remember that the Vlach, the Rouman, the Latin-speaking remnant of the
+East, has settled or has lingered at not very distant points. We are
+tempted to fancy--wrongly, it may be--that some of them must almost
+come within the distant landscape. One thing is certain; bearers far
+more strange of the Roman name, though no speakers of the Roman
+tongue, are there in special abundance. Those whom sixteenth century
+Acts of Parliament spoke of as "outlandish persons calling themselves
+Egyptians," though they certainly now at least no more call themselves
+Egyptians than Englishmen ever called themselves Saxons, are there as
+a distinct element in the land. The traveller who comes on the right
+day may come in for a gipsy fair at Duino; he may hear philologers
+whose studies have lain that way talking to them in their own branch
+of the common Aryan tongue. He himself meanwhile, driven to look at
+their outsides only, perhaps thinks that after all gipsies do not look
+so very different from other ragged people. Certainly if he chances
+to be making his way, as it is possible that he may be, from Dalmatia
+and Montenegro, he will miss, both among the gipsies and the other
+inhabitants of the land, the picturesque costumes to which he has
+become used further south. Duino itself, a very small haven, but which
+once believed that it could rival Trieste, will, to the antiquary at
+least, be more interesting than its gipsy visitors. A castle on rocks,
+overhanging the sea--a castle, so to speak, in two parts, one of which
+contains a tower which claims a Roman date, while the other is said to
+have sheltered Dante--will reward the traveller who still keeps to the
+barouche and the horses on his journey to the "church city," instead
+of making use of the swifter means which modern skill has provided for
+him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At last, by whichever road he goes, the traveller finds himself at the
+little town of Monfalcone, and there he who comes by the railway must
+now look for the capital barouche and the excellent horses, or such
+substitutes for them as Monfalcone can supply. A small castle frowns
+on the hill above the station, but the town contains nothing but an
+utterly worthless _duomo_ and some street arcades, to remind us once
+more that, if we are under the political rule of the Apostolic King,
+we are on soil which is Italian in history and in architecture. After
+a railway journey which has mainly skirted the sea, perhaps even after
+a journey over the hills during a great part of which we have looked
+down on the sea, we are a little surprised at finding that the road
+which leads us to what once was a great haven takes us wholly inland.
+We pass through a flat and richly cultivated country, broken here and
+there by a village with its campanile, till two Corinthian columns
+catch the eye in front of a modern building, which otherwise might be
+passed by without notice. Those two columns, standing forsaken, away
+from their fellows, mark that we have reached Monastero; in the days
+before Attila we should have reached Aquileia. We are now within the
+circuit of the ancient colony. But mediæval Aquileia was shut up
+within far narrower limits; modern Aquileia is shut up within narrower
+limits still. Within the courtyard of the building which is fronted by
+the two columns, we find a large collection, a kind of outdoor museum,
+of scraps of architecture and sculpture, the fragments of the great
+city that once was. We go on, and gradually our approach to the centre
+is marked by further fragments of columns lying here and there, as at
+Rome or Ravenna. A little farther, and we are in modern Aquileia,
+"città Aquileia," as it still proudly calls itself in the official
+description, which, as usual, proclaims to the traveller the name of
+the place where he is, and in what administrative division of the
+"Imperial and Royal" dominions he finds himself.
+
+Of the village into which the ancient colony has shrunk up we must
+allow that the main existing interest is ecclesiastical. So far as
+Aquileia is a city at all, it is now a "church city." The patriarchal
+church, with its tall but certainly not beautiful campanile, soars
+above all. But, if it soars above all, it still is not all. Here and
+there a fragment of a column, or an inscription built into the wall,
+reminds us of what Aquileia once was. One ingenious man has even built
+himself an outhouse wholly out of such scraps, here a capital, there a
+bit of sculpture, there inscriptions of various dates, with letters of
+the best and of the worst kinds of Roman lettering. Queer and confused
+as the collection is, the bits out of which it is put together are at
+least safe, which they would not be if they were left lying about in
+the streets. Another more regularly assorted collection will be found
+in the local museum, which has the advantage of containing several
+plans, showing the extent of the city in earlier times. At last we
+approach the church, now, and doubtless for many ages past, the one
+great object in Aquileia. In front of it a single shattered column
+marks the place of the ancient forum. To climb the tower is the best
+way of studying the geography of Aquileia, just as to climb the tower
+of Saint Apollinaris is the best way of studying the geography of
+Ravenna. In both cases the first feeling that comes upon the mind is
+that the sea has become a distant object. Now the eye ranges over a
+wide flat, and the sea, which once brought greatness to Aquileia, is
+far away. A map of Aquileia in the fifteenth century is to be had, and
+it is wise to take it to the top of the tower. There we may trace out
+the churches, gates, and other buildings, which have perished since
+the date of the map, remembering always that the Aquileia of the
+fifteenth century was the merest fragment of the vast city of earlier
+times. A good deal of the town wall of the mediæval date may still be
+traced. It runs near to the east end of the church, acting, as at
+Exeter and Chichester, as the wall at once of the town and of the
+ecclesiastical precinct. The church itself, the patriarchal basilica
+of Aquileia, is a study indeed, though the first feeling on seeing it
+either within or without is likely to be one of disappointment. We do
+not expect outline, strictly so called, in an Italian church; when we
+come in for any grouping of towers, such as we see at Saint Abbondio
+at Como and at more wonderful Vercelli, we accept with thankfulness
+the boon which we had not looked for. So we do not complain that the
+basilica of Aquileia, with its vast length and its lofty tower, is
+still, as judged by a northern eye, somewhat shapeless. But in such a
+place we might have expected to find a front such as those which form
+the glory of Pisa and Lucca, such a tower as may be found at Pisa and
+Lucca and at a crowd of places of less renown. We enter the church,
+and we find ourselves in a vast and stately basilica; but one feature
+in its architecture at once amazes us. There are the long rows of
+columns with which we have become familiar at Pisa and Lucca, at Rome
+and Ravenna; but all the main arches are pointed. And the pointed
+arches are not, as at Palermo and indeed at Pisa also, trophies of the
+vanquished Saracen; their details at once show that they are actual
+mediæval work. We search the history, for which no great book-learning
+is needed, as inscriptions on the walls and floor supply the most
+important facts. The church was twice recast, once early in the
+eleventh century, and again in the fourteenth. The pointed work in the
+main building is of course due to this last change; the crypt, with
+its heavy columns and rude capitals, looks like work of the eleventh
+century, though it has been assigned to the fifth, and though
+doubtless materials of that date have been used up again. And in the
+upper church also, the columns of the elder building have, as so often
+happens, lived through all repairs. Their capitals for the most part
+are mediæval imitations of classical forms rather than actual relics
+of the days before Attila. But two among them, one in each transept,
+still keep shattered Corinthian capitals of the very finest work.
+
+The fittings of the church are largely of _Renaissance_ date, but the
+patriarchal throne remains, and there are one or two fragments of
+columns and the like put to new uses. On the north side of the nave is
+a singular building, known as the _sacrario_, of which it is not easy
+to guess the original purpose. It is a round building supporting a
+miniature colonnade with a conical roof above, so that it looks more
+like a model of a baptistery than anything else. Those who see
+Cividale before Aquileia may be reminded of the baptistery within the
+_Templum Maximum_. But the Forojulian work is larger than the
+Aquileian, and we can hardly fancy that this last was really designed
+to be used for baptism; at all events there is a notable baptistery
+elsewhere.
+
+In the basilica of Aquileia we have three marked dates, but we may
+call it on the whole a church of the eleventh century, keeping
+portions of a church of the fourth, and itself largely recast in the
+fourteenth. Thus, setting aside later changes, the existing church
+shows portions of work a thousand years apart, and spans nearly the
+whole of Aquileian history. When the rich capitals of the transepts
+were carved, the days of persecution were still of recent memory;
+when pointed arches were set on the ancient columns, the temporal
+power of the patriarchate was within a century of its fall. The first
+church of Aquileia is assigned to the bishop Fortunatian, who
+succeeded in 347, the last prelate who held Aquileia as a simple
+bishopric without metropolitan rank. The builder and consecrator of
+the present church--for present we may call it, though it shows less
+detail of his work than of either earlier or later times--was Poppo or
+Wolfgang, patriarch from 1019 to 1042, a man famous in local history
+as the chief founder of the temporal power of the patriarchate. His
+influence was great with the Emperors Henry the Second and Conrad the
+Second; he accompanied the latter prince to his Roman coronation, and
+must therefore have stood face to face with our own Cnut. The name of
+this magnificent prelate suggests his namesake, who at the very same
+moment filled the metropolitan throne of Trier, and was engaged in the
+same work of transforming a great church of an older day. If we
+compare Trier and Aquileia, we see how men's minds are worked on by
+local circumstances and local associations. Poppo of Aquileia and
+Poppo of Trier were alike German prelates, but one was working in
+Germany and the other in Italy. The northern Poppo therefore gave the
+remodelled church of Trier a German character, while the remodelled
+church of Aquileia remained, under the hands of the southern Poppo, a
+church thoroughly Italian. We may even say that the essential
+character of the building was not changed, even by the still later
+remodelling which brought in the pointed arches; these were the work
+of Markquard of Randeck, who was translated from Augsburg to the
+patriarchal see in 1365, and who held it till 1381. He brought in the
+received constructive form of his day, but he did not by bringing in
+pointed arches turn the building into Italian Gothic. The church of
+Markquard remained within and without a true basilica, keeping the
+general effect of the church of Poppo, perhaps even of the church of
+Fortunatian. The walls of the church moreover show inscriptions of
+much later date, recording work done in the church of Aquileia in the
+days of Apostolic sovereigns of our own time. The newest of all, which
+was not there in 1875, but which was there in 1881, bears the name of
+the prince who has ceased to be lord of Forum Julii, but who still
+remains lord of Aquileia.
+
+But the basilica itself is not all. A succession of buildings join on
+to the west: first a _loggia_, then a plain vaulted building, called,
+but without much likelihood, an older church, which leads to the
+ruined baptistery. The old map shows this last with a high roof or
+cupola, and then the range from the western baptistery to the great
+eastern apse must have been striking indeed. Fragments of every kind,
+columns, capitals, bits of entablature, lie around; and to the south
+of the church stand up two great pillars, the object of which it is
+for some local antiquary to explain. The old map shows that they stood
+just within the court of the patriarchal palace, which was then a
+ruin, and which has now utterly vanished. They are not of classical
+work; they are not columns in the strict sense; they are simply built
+up of stones, like the pillars of Gloucester or Tewkesbury. Standing
+side by side, they remind us of the columns which in towns which were
+subject to Venice commonly bear the badges of the dominion of Saint
+Mark. But can we look for such badges at Aquileia? The lands of the
+patriarchate, in by far the greater part of their extent, did indeed
+pass from the patriarch to the Evangelist. But had the Evangelist ever
+such a settled possession of the city itself as to make it likely that
+columns should be set up at Aquileia as well as at Udine? The treaty
+which confirmed Venice in the possession of the patriarchal state left
+the patriarchal city to its own bishop and prince. Was the winged lion
+ever set up, and then taken down again? The old map which represents
+Aquileia in the fifteenth century shows that, as the pillars carry
+nothing now, so they carried nothing then. Again, would Venetian taste
+have allowed such clumsy substitutes for columns as these? And, if
+they had been meant as badges of dominion, would they not have stood
+in the forum rather than in the court of the Patriarch's palace?
+
+We are far from having exhausted even the existing antiquities of
+Aquileia, further still from exhausted its long and varied history.
+Within the bounds of the fallen city pleasant walks may be taken,
+which here and there bring us among memories of the past. Here is a
+fine street pavement brought to light, here a fragment of a theatre.
+But men do not dig at Aquileia with the same vigour with which they
+dig at Silchester and at Solunto. The difference between the diggings
+at the beginning and the end of a term of six years is less than it
+should be. But we have perhaps done enough to point out the claims of
+so wonderful a spot on those who look on travelling as something more
+than a way either of killing time or of conforming to fashion.
+Aquileia has a character of its own; it is not a ruined or buried
+city; nor is it altogether like Trier or Ravenna, which, though fallen
+from their ancient greatness, are cities still. In the general feeling
+of the spot it has more in common with such a place as Saint David's
+in our own island, that thorough "church city," where a great minster
+and its ecclesiastical establishment still live on amid surrounding
+desolation. But there is no reason to believe that Saint David's, as
+a town, was ever greater than it is now. Still Saint David's keeps its
+bishopric, it keeps its chapter; at Aquileia the patriarch with his
+fifty canons are altogether things of the past. We must seek for their
+surviving fragments at Udine and Gorizia. Aquileia then, as regards
+its present state, has really fallen lower than Saint David's. But
+then at Aquileia we see at every step, what could never at any time
+have been seen at Saint David's, the signs of the days when it ranked
+among the great cities of the earth. Aquileia, in short, is unique. We
+turn away from it with the feeling that we have seen one of the most
+remarkable spots that Europe can show us. It may be that our horses,
+excellent or otherwise, take us back to Monfalcone, and that from
+Monfalcone the train takes us back to Trieste. In theory, it must be
+remembered, we have not been at Trieste at all; we are going thither
+from Venice, by way of Treviso, Udine, Gorizia, and Aquileia. In going
+thither, we shall outstrip the strict boundary of the Lombard Austria,
+though we shall keep within the Italy of Augustus and the Italy of
+Charles the Great. On the other hand, in matter of fact it may be
+that, as we have come by the older mode of going from Trieste to
+Aquileia, we go on to make our way by the same mode from Aquileia to
+Gorizia. In favourable states of the astronomical world, we may even
+be lighted on our way by a newly-risen comet. We follow the precedent
+of our forefathers: "Isti mirant stellam." Such a phænomenon must,
+according to all ancient belief, imply the coming of some great
+shaking among the powers of the world. In such a frame of mind, the
+gazer may be excused if he dreams that the portent may be sent to show
+that the boundary which parts Aquileia and Gorizia from Udine and
+Treviso need not be eternal.
+
+
+
+
+TRIESTE.
+
+1875--1877--1881.
+
+
+We have already learned, at Gorizia and at Aquileia, that, whether in
+real travel or on the map, the subject lands of Venice cannot be kept
+apart from those neighbour lands which were not her subjects. The
+Queen of the Hadriatic could at no time boast of the possession of the
+whole Hadriatic coast; could she now be called up again to her old
+life, to her old dominion, she would feel very sensibly that she had
+only a divided rule over her own sea. She would find her peer in a
+city, a haven, all claim to dominion over which she had formally
+resigned more than four hundred years before her fall. Facing her from
+the other side of her own watery kingdom, she would see a city too far
+off to be an eyesore, but quite near enough to be a rival. She is
+fronted by a city which hardly comes within the old Venetian land,
+though it comes within the bounds of the old Italian kingdom, a city
+which for five hundred years has been parted from Venetian or Italian
+rule, emphatically a city of the present, which has swallowed up no
+small share of the wealth and prosperity of the city of the past.
+
+_Tergeste_, Trieste, stands forth as a rival of Venice, which has, in
+a low practical view of things, outstripped her. Italian zeal
+naturally cries for the recovery of a great city, once part of the old
+Italian kingdom, and whose speech is largely, perhaps chiefly, Italian
+to this day. But, cry of _Italia Irredenta_, however far it may go, he
+must not go so far as this. Trieste, a cosmopolitan city on a Slavonic
+shore, cannot be called Italian in the same sense as the lands and
+towns so near Verona which yearn to be as Verona is. Let Trieste be
+the rival, even the eyesore, of Venice, still Southern Germany must
+have a mouth. We might indeed be better pleased to see Trieste a free
+city, the southern fellow of Lübeck, Bremen, and Hamburg; but it must
+not be forgotten that the Archduke of Austria and Lord of Trieste
+reigns at Trieste by a far better right than that by which he reigns
+at Cattaro and Spizza. The present people of Trieste did not choose
+him, but the people of Trieste five hundred years back did choose the
+forefather of his great-grandmother. Compared with the grounds on
+which kingdoms, duchies, counties, and lordships, are commonly held in
+that neighbourhood, such a claim as this must be allowed to be
+respectable indeed.
+
+The great haven of Trieste may almost at pleasure be quoted as either
+confirming or contradicting the rule that it is not in the great
+commercial cities of Europe that we are to look for the choicest or
+the most plentiful remains of antiquity. Sometimes the cities
+themselves are of modern foundation; in other cases the cities
+themselves, as habitations of men and seats of commerce, are of the
+hoariest antiquity, but the remains of their early days have perished
+through their very prosperity. Massalia, with her long history, with
+her double wreath of freedom, the city which withstood Cæsar and which
+withstood Charles of Anjou, is bare of monuments of her early days.
+She has been the victim of her abiding good fortune. We can look down
+from the height on the Phôkaian harbour; but for actual memorials of
+the men who fled from the Persian, of the men who defied the Roman and
+the Angevin, we might look as well at Liverpool or at Havre. Genoa,
+Venice herself, are hardly real exceptions; they were indeed
+commercial cities, but they were ruling cities also, and, as ruling
+cities, they reared monuments which could hardly pass away. What are
+we to say to the modern rival of Venice, the upstart rebel, one is
+tempted to say, against the supremacy of the Hadriatic Queen? Trieste,
+at the head of her gulf, with the hills looking down to her haven,
+with the snowy mountains which seem to guard the approach from the
+other side of her inland sea, with her harbour full of the ships of
+every nation, her streets echoing with every tongue, is she to be
+reckoned as an example of the rule or an exception to it?
+
+No city at first sight seems more thoroughly modern; old town and new,
+wide streets and narrow, we search them in vain for any of those
+vestiges of past times which in some cities meet us at every step.
+Compare Trieste with Ancona; we miss the arch of Trajan on the haven;
+we miss the cupola of Saint Cyriacus soaring in triumph above the
+triumphal monument of the heathen. We pass through the stately streets
+of the newer town, we thread the steep ascents which lead us to the
+older town above, and we nowhere light on any of those little scraps
+of ornamental architecture, a window, a doorway, a column, which meet
+us at every step in so many of the cities of Italy. Yet the monumental
+wealth of Trieste is all but equal to the monumental wealth of Ancona.
+At Ancona we have the cathedral church and the triumphal arch; so we
+have at Trieste; though at Trieste we have nothing to set against the
+grand front of the lower and smaller church of Ancona. But at Ancona
+arch and _duomo_ both stand out before all eyes; at Trieste both have
+to be looked for. The church of Saint Justus at Trieste crowns the
+hill as well as the church of Saint Cyriacus at Ancona; but it does
+not in the same way proclaim its presence. The castle, with its ugly
+modern fortifications, rises again above the church; and the _duomo_
+of Trieste, with its shapeless outline and its low, heavy, unsightly
+campanile, does not catch the eyes like the Greek cross and cupola of
+Ancona. Again at Trieste the arch could never, in its best days, have
+been a rival to the arch at Ancona; and now either we have to hunt it
+out by an effort, or else it comes upon us suddenly, standing, as it
+does, at the head of a mean street on the ascent to the upper town. Of
+a truth it cannot compete with Ancona or with Rimini, with Orange or
+with Aosta. But the _duomo_, utterly unsightly as it is in a general
+view, puts on quite a new character when we first see the remains of
+pagan times imprisoned in the lower stage of the heavy campanile,
+still more so when we take our first glance of its wonderful interior.
+At the first glimpse we see that here there is a mystery to be
+unravelled; and as we gradually find the clue to the marvellous
+changes which it has undergone, we feel that outside show is not
+everything, and that, in point both of antiquity and of interest,
+though not of actual beauty, the double basilica of Trieste may claim
+no mean place among buildings of its own type. Even after the glories
+of Rome and Ravenna, the Tergestine church may be studied with no
+small pleasure and profit, as an example of a kind of transformation
+of which neither Rome nor Ravenna can supply another example.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Whatever was the first origin of Tergeste, whoever, among the varied
+and perplexing inhabitants of this corner of the Hadriatic coast, were
+the first to pitch on the spot for a dwelling-place of man, it is
+plain that it ranks among the cities which have grown up out of
+hill-forts. Trieste in this affords a marked contrast to Marseilles,
+as it supplies a marked analogy to Cumæ and Ancona. The site of the
+Phôkaian settlement marks a distinct advance in civilization. The
+_castellieri_, the primitive forts, in the neighbouring land of
+Istria, were, according to Captain Burton, often made into places of
+Roman occupation, and something of the same kind may have been the
+case with Tergeste itself. The position of the cathedral church,
+occupying the site of the capitol of the Roman colony, shows of itself
+that Tergeste was thoroughly a hill-city. It has spread itself
+downwards, like so many others, though this time, not into the plain,
+but towards the sea. Standing on the border-land of Italy and Illyria,
+its destiny has been in some things the same as that of its
+neighbours, in others peculiar to itself. It must not be forgotten
+that, setting aside the coast cities, the land in which Trieste stands
+has for ages been a Slavonic land, except so far as it is also partly
+a Rouman land. How far the Italian and the Rouman elements may have
+been originally the same, is a puzzling question on which it would be
+dangerous to enter here. But one thing is certain, that, if the
+present inhabitants of the Tergestine city had obeyed the call of
+Garibaldi, "Men of Trieste, to your mountains," they would have found
+Slavonic possessors claiming those mountains by the strongest of all
+titles. For we have now distinctly passed the national border. We have
+come to the lands where the body is Slavonic, where the Italian
+element, greater or smaller, is at most only a fringe along the coast.
+Tergeste with the neighbouring lands formed part of the dominion of
+Theodoric and of the recovered Empire of Justinian; but it never came
+under the rule of the Lombard. Its allegiance to the lords of
+Constantinople and Ravenna, lords whose abiding power in this region
+is shown in the foundation of the Istrian Justinopolis, lasted
+unshaken till the Frank conquest, when Tergeste became part of the
+Italian kingdom of the Karlings. From that time to the fourteenth
+century, its history is the common history of an Italian city. It is
+sometimes a free commonwealth, sometimes subject to, or claimed by,
+the Patriarch of Aquileia or to the Serene Republic itself. By the
+treaty of Turin in 1381, the independence of the commonwealth of
+Trieste was formally acknowledged by all the contending powers. The
+next year the liberated city took the seemingly strange step of
+submitting itself to the lordship of a foreign prince. Leopold, Duke
+of Austria, he who died at Sempach, he to whom Venice resigned
+Treviso, was received by a solemn act as Lord of Trieste, and that
+lordship passed on to the Dukes, Archdukes, Kings, and Emperors of his
+house, and from them to their Lotharingian successors. Thus, unlike
+Treviso and Udine, Trieste has been Austrian in one sense only. Never
+forming a part of the Austria of Lombardy, it has had a far more
+abiding connexion with the Austria of Germany. The lordship which
+Trieste acknowledged was of course at first only an overlordship, and
+the Council and Commons of the city still continued to act as a
+separate commonwealth. But an union of this kind is one of those fatal
+partnerships between the stronger and the weaker which can lead only
+to bondage. Trieste has ever since remained Austrian in allegiance,
+save during the chaos of the days of the elder Buonaparte. Those days
+are commemorated by an inscription on the _duomo_, which tells of the
+expulsion of the French from the castle by an allied force, whose name
+of "Austro-Angli" might almost suggest some unrecorded tribe in our
+own island.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is certainly hard to conceive a building more uninviting without
+than the cathedral church of Saint Justus. But Sokratês was not to be
+judged by his outside, neither is the _duomo_ of Trieste. A broad and
+almost shapeless west front is flanked by a low, heavy tower, not
+standing detached as a campanile, as it should stand in Italy, not
+worked into the church as it would be worked in England or Germany,
+but standing forward in a kind of Scotch fashion, like Dunkeld. The
+only architectural feature seems to be a large wheel window, which it
+would be unfair to compare to that of Saint Zeno. But the next moment
+will show, built in at the angle of the church and the tower, a noble
+fluted column with its half-defaced Corinthian capital, which is
+enough to show what has been. We are carried back to Rome, to Saint
+Mary _in Cosmedin_ and Saint Nicolas _in Carcere_, as we trace out in
+the lower stage of the tower the remains of the temple of Jupiter
+which has given way to the church of Justus. Imbedded in its walls are
+pilasters, columns, and their basement, showing that Jupiter of
+Tergeste must have lifted his pillared portico above the sea as
+proudly as Aphroditê of the Doric Ankón. Fragments of entablatures,
+trophies, sepulchral monuments, are built up in the wall. The western
+doorway of the church is made out of a huge tomb of the Barbii--a
+_gens_ which we do not elsewhere remember--deliberately cut in two,
+and set up the wrong way. The building or rebuilding of the tower in
+1337 is commemorated by an inscription in letters of that
+date--"Gothic" letters, as some call them--out of a mutilated part of
+which the earlier Tergestine antiquaries spelled out that the tower
+was rebuilt, in 556, after a destruction by the Goths. As the letters
+..LVM.. were enough to create the new saint Philumena, the letters
+..OT... could easily be filled up into "a Gothis eversa"--quite
+evidence enough to lead a zealous Italian to lay the destroying deeds
+of his own forefathers on the Gothic preservers of the works of the
+elder day.
+
+As soon as we pass the doorway with the heads of the Barbii on either
+side, we forget the wrongs alike of Jupiter and of the Goths. The
+wonderful interior of the double basilica opens upon us. The first
+feeling is simply puzzledom. A nave of vast width seems to be flanked
+by two ranges of columns on either side, columns varying even more
+than is usual in their height and in the width of the arches which
+they support. When we look within the two lateral ranges, we are not
+surprised to find each ending in an apse with a noble mosaic; we are
+surprised to find the southern range interrupted by a cupola. This
+last phænomenon will help us to the explanation of the whole mystery.
+The church is in fact two churches thrown into one. When they were
+distinct, they must have stood even nearer than the old and new
+minsters at Winchester; indeed a plan in a local work shows, with
+every probability, their walls as actually touching in one point. The
+northern church was a basilica of the ordinary type, made up of
+columns--some of them of very fine marble--put together, as usual,
+without much regard to uniformity. All bear Corinthian capitals of
+different varieties, and all carry the Ravenna stilt in a rude form
+without the cross. The wall rose high above the arcade, and was
+pierced with a range of narrow clerestory windows, but with nothing
+else to relieve its blankness. This church the Tergestine antiquaries
+attribute, but, as far as we can see, without any direct evidence, to
+the reign of Theodosius. The southern church is, in its original
+parts, the same in style as the northern, but it is much smaller and,
+in its plan at least, thoroughly Byzantine. It was a small cross
+church, with a central cupola, and its north transept seems to have
+touched the south aisle of its northern neighbour. It is perhaps on
+the strength of the plan that the church is assigned to the reign of
+Justinian. But there is nothing Byzantine in the details; where the
+original capitals remain, they are of the same somewhat rude
+Corinthian character as those in the northern church; they have the
+same stilt, and under the cupola there is even a bit or two of
+entablature built up again. But the building went through much greater
+changes than the northern church did in the work of throwing the two
+into one whole. The date of this change seems to be fixed by a
+consecration recorded in the local annals in 1262. The south aisle of
+the northern church, the north aisle and north transept of the
+southern one, were pulled down, and the space which they had covered
+was roofed in to form the nave of the united building, while the two
+earlier basilicas sank into the position of its aisles. In the
+northern church this involved no change beyond the disappearance of
+the south aisle and the blocking of its clerestory; the smaller church
+to the south had to suffer far more. It had to be raised and
+lengthened; a quadrangular pier on the south side marks the original
+length, and the increase of height of course destroys the proper
+effect of the cupola. Then, as the cupola of course rested on columns
+with wider arches, its northern arch was filled up with two smaller
+arches and an inserted column, so as to make something like a
+continuous range. Still, late in the thirteenth century, they again
+used up the old marble columns; but they now used a flat capital, by
+which the additions of this time may be distinguished from the genuine
+basilican work.
+
+Probably no church anywhere has undergone a more singular change than
+this. It is puzzling indeed at first sight; but, when the key is once
+caught, the signs of each alteration are so easily seen. The other
+ancient relic at Trieste is the small triumphal arch. On one side it
+keeps its Corinthian pilasters; on the other they are imbedded in a
+house. The arch is in a certain sense double; but the two are close
+together and touch in the keystone. The Roman date of this arch cannot
+be doubted; but legends connect it both with Charles the Great and
+with Richard of Poitou and of England, a prince about whom Tergestine
+fancy has been very busy. The popular name of the arch is _Arco
+Riccardo_.
+
+Such, beside some fragments in the museum, are all the remains that
+the antiquary will find in Trieste; not much in point of number, but,
+in the case of the _duomo_ at least, of surpassing interest in their
+own way. But the true merit of Trieste is not in anything that it has
+in itself, its church, its arch, its noble site. Placed there at the
+head of the gulf, on the borders of two great portions of the Empire,
+it leads to the land which produced that line of famous Illyrian
+Emperors who for a while checked the advance of our own race in the
+world's history, and it leads specially to the chosen home of the
+greatest among them. The chief glory of Trieste, after all, is that it
+is the way to Spalato.
+
+
+
+
+TRIESTE TO SPALATO.
+
+
+
+
+TRIESTE TO SPALATO.
+
+1875.
+
+
+Given such weather as suits fair-weather sailors, there can hardly be
+any enjoyment more thoroughly unmixed than a sail along the coast of
+Dalmatia. First of all, there is a freshness about everything. Here is
+a portion of land which is thoroughly unhackneyed; the coasts, the
+islands, the channels, of Dalmatia are as yet uninvaded by the British
+tourist. No Cook's ticket can be taken for Spalato; no hotel coupon
+would be of the slightest use at Sebenico. The land is whatever its
+long and strange history, old and new, has made it. It has gone
+through many changes and it has put on many shapes, but it has escaped
+the fate of being changed into a "playground of Europe."
+
+The narrow strip of land on the eastern side of the Hadriatic on which
+the name of Dalmatia has settled down has a history which is
+strikingly analogous to its scenery. A coast for the most part barren
+and rocky, but with its barrenness and rockiness diversified by a
+series of noble havens, is fenced off by a range of mountains from a
+boundless inland region. Each of these havens, with the cities which
+from early days have sprung up on each, has always been an isolated
+centre of civilization in a backward land. As a rule, broken only
+during a few centuries of the universal sway of Rome, the coast and
+the inland country have been the possession, by no means always of
+different nations, but most commonly of different governments. On the
+coast the rule of the Venetian has been succeeded by the rule of the
+Austrian, while in the inland region the rule of native Slavonic
+princes has been succeeded by the rule of the Turk. Yet the Slave,
+though an earlier settler than the Turk or the Venetian, was himself
+only a settler in comparatively recent times. Native Illyrians, Greek
+colonists, Roman colonists, the rule of the Goth from Ravenna, the
+rule of the Eastern Roman from Constantinople, had all to take their
+turn before the land put on its present character of a more or less
+Italianized fringe on a Slavonic body, of a narrow rim of Christendom
+hemming in the north-eastern conquests of the once advancing and now
+receding Mussulman.
+
+So it is with Dalmatian history. As the cultivation and civilization
+of the land lies in patches, as harbours and cities alternate with
+barren hills, so Dalmatia has played a part in history only by fits
+and starts. This fitful kind of history goes on from the days of Greek
+colonies and Illyrian piracy to the last war between Italy and
+Austria. But of continuous history, steadily influencing the course of
+the world's progress, Dalmatia has none to show. Salona plays its part
+in the wars both of Cæsar and of Belisarius; Zara reminds us of the
+fourth crusade; the whole history of Ragusa claims a high place among
+the histories of independent and isolated cities; Lissa recalls the
+memory of two times of warfare within our own century. But if there
+was any time when Dalmatia really influenced the history of the world,
+it was when Dalmatia had no national being, when it was merely a
+province of an universal dominion along with Britain and Egypt. Of the
+great Emperors of the third century, who called the Roman power into
+new life and checked the ever-advancing wave of Teutonic invasion,
+many came from the Illyrian lands, several came from the actual
+Dalmatian coast. And the most famous among them--Docles, Diocletian,
+Jovius--not only came forth from Dalmatia to rule the world, but went
+back to Dalmatia to seek rest when weary of the toil of ruling it.
+
+But in our immediate point of view we must never forget that our
+course now lies wholly, not only by subject lands of Venice, but by
+lands where Venice appears in her highest character as the bulwark of
+Christendom against the misbeliever. The shores and cities by which we
+pass, were subject to the Serene Republic, but subjection to the
+Serene Republic was their only chance of escaping subjection to the
+Ottoman Sultan. Every town, every fortress, almost every point of
+ground along this whole coast, has been fought for, most of them have
+been won and lost, over and over again, in the long crusade which
+Venice waged, if for herself, yet for Europe also. Her rule was an
+alien rule, but it was still European and Christian; it shut out the
+rule of the barbarian. It was a rule better and worse in different
+times and places, but it had always the merit of shutting out a worse
+rule than itself, which was ever ready to take its place. Whenever we
+see the winged lion keeping guard, the thought should rise that he
+kept guard over spots which he alone kept for Christendom, which he
+alone saved from barbarian bondage.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The visitor to Dalmatia may be conceived as setting forth from the
+harbour of Trieste--from Trieste with its houses climbing up to the
+church and castle on the hill, with the background of mountains
+growing in the far distance into snowy Alps. From the Dalmatian coast
+itself no snowy Alps are seen; but the whole land is only a mountain
+slope, and the cities are cities on a smaller scale than Trieste, and
+which seldom run so high as Trieste does up the hill-side. But we must
+not forget that, even at Trieste, Dalmatia is still a distant land.
+There is the Istrian peninsula to be skirted, the peninsula whose
+coast was so long counted among the subject lands of Venice, while the
+inland region, under the rule of counts of Gorizia and dukes of
+Austria, counted only among the neighbours of the Republic. The
+Istrian coast, largely flat, is marked here and there by small towns
+standing well on high points over the sea, or seen more faintly in the
+more distant inland region. But we know that inland Istria is a hilly
+land, and, even from the sea, the mountain wall may still be seen
+skirting the horizon. Darkness has come on by the time we reach the
+harbour of Pola, once Pietas Julia, now the chief station of the
+infant navy of Austria. But the darkness is not so great but that the
+dim outline of the vast amphitheatre can be seen, and the arrangements
+of the Austrian Lloyd's steamers allow time enough to go on shore and
+take in the general effect both of the amphitheatre and the other
+buildings of Pola. We here get our first impression of the Venetian
+towns beyond the Hadriatic, all of which seem to attempt in some sort
+to reproduce their mistress, so far as Venice can be reproduced where
+there are no canals and therefore no gondolas. But all have the same
+narrow, paved streets, the same little squares, and, if the passage
+of horses and wheels is not so utterly unknown as it is at Venice,
+their presence is, to say the least, rare. The lion of Saint Mark is
+to be seen everywhere else; by daylight therefore he is to be seen at
+Pola also. But the Lloyd's arrangements condemn Pola, in the early
+part of October at least, to be seen only by dim glimpses, while Zara
+has an ample measure of daylight. Let no one however blame a
+time-table which will bring him into Spalato with the setting sun, and
+will allow him to take his first glance of Diocletian's palace by the
+rising moon.
+
+In the night we pass by several islands, but none are of any historic
+importance. Veglia lies out of our path, or we might muse on the evil
+deeds of the last independent Count, at least as they were reported by
+his Venetian enemies, who were eager to get possession of his island.
+The tale will be found in Sir Gardner Wilkinson's "Dalmatia and
+Montenegro," a book which no traveller in these lands should be
+without. The next morning's light shows us genuine Dalmatia, its coast
+at this stage marked by the barren hills coming down to the sea and
+the range of higher mountains further inland. We skirt among endless
+islands, most of which seem barren and uninhabited; we pass along the
+channel of Zara, and come to anchor off the city itself, standing on
+its peninsula crowned with its walls--Venetian and later--and with
+the towers of its churches rising above them. Here a stay of several
+hours allows a pretty full examination of our first Dalmatian city--a
+city however more Italian and far less thoroughly Dalmatian than other
+cities to which our further course will lead us. There is time to
+visit the _duomo_ and the smaller churches--to mark the two surviving
+Roman columns--to thread the narrow streets, with their occasional
+scraps of Venetian architecture--to stroll by the harbour, under the
+gateways marked by the lion of Saint Mark, one of which so oddly
+proves to be really a Roman gate with a Venetian casing. We may even,
+if we so think good, climb the mound which, though crowned by a not
+attractive Chinese pagoda, nevertheless supplies the best view of Zara
+and her two seas. The _Albergo al Cappello_--the sign of the
+Hat--supplies food certainly not worse than an Italian town of the
+same class would set before a passing traveller. The meal done, to sit
+out of doors in a _café_ is nothing new to any one who has crossed the
+straits, not of Zara but of Calais; but it is a new feeling to do so
+in the narrow streets of a Dalmatian town, and to add the further
+luxury of maraschino drunk in its native land.
+
+Night is now passed on board, and Zara is left by sunrise. Islands and
+hills again succeed on either side, till we enter a narrow strait and
+find ourselves in a noble harbour with a town in front, lying, like
+most Dalmatian towns except Zara, at the foot of the mountains. We are
+in the haven of Sebenico, but the haven of Sebenico is by no means the
+whole of the inlet, which runs much further inland in the shape of a
+narrow creek. We land, and give such time as is allowed us to a sight
+of the little hill-side city. Shall we give Sebenico the last place
+among the cities which we stay and examine in detail, or the first
+place among the lesser cities to which we give such time as we can in
+passing by? We are driven to this last course, not forgetting, if we
+are minded to turn away from history and art to look for a while on a
+striking natural object, that it is from Sebenico that we may best
+make our way to the great waterfall of Kerka. And, as far as those who
+have made no special study of Alpine matters may speak, the falls of
+Kerka, rushing down in a company of torrents side by side, look as if
+they had a right to take a high place among the falls at least of the
+old world. But Sebenico is not simply the way to Kerka; there is
+something to see in Sebenico itself. It is a hill city, but it is
+emphatically not a hill-top city, but a hill-side city. We climb up
+through the inhabited town to the castle, and when we reach the
+castle, we are far from having reached the hill top. And to those who
+make Sebenico their second halting-place on the strictly Dalmatian
+coast it will have a special interest. Much smaller than Zara, it is
+far more thoroughly Dalmatian; costume is more marked, and its
+position gives it that peculiar air of quaintness which is shared by
+all places where narrow streets run up a steep hill. And those streets
+moreover are rich with architectural features, graceful windows and
+the like, which witness to the influence of the ruling city. And there
+is something not a little taking in the small _piazza_ of
+Sebenico--the arcaded _loggia_ on the one side, the cathedral on the
+other, with its mixed but stately architecture, its waggon-roof of
+stone standing out boldly without either buttress or external roof.
+Mr. Neale, whom, as he does not rule Sebenico to be a "church city,"
+we may now quote seriously, holds that the cathedral of Sebenico is
+"in an exclusively architectural view the most interesting church in
+Dalmatia." He adds that "in truth it is one of the noblest, most
+striking, most simple, most Christian of churches." This is high
+praise, especially when bestowed by Mr. Neale on a church which was
+consecrated so lately as 1555. But there is no denying that, strangely
+confused as is its style, the church of Sebenico is, both inside and
+out, not only a most remarkable, but a thoroughly effective building.
+The internal proportions are noble; the height is great; the columns,
+though their arches are pointed, might have stood in any basilica at
+Rome or Ravenna; the barrel vaulting carries us away to Saint Sernin
+at Toulouse and to the Conqueror's Tower. The details are a strange
+mixture of late Gothic and _Renaissance_, very rich and somehow very
+effective. It is not exactly like that class of French churches of
+which Saint Eustache at Paris is the grandest example, where a
+thoroughly mediæval outline is carried out with _Renaissance_ detail.
+At Sebenico we see side by side, a bit in one style and a bit in the
+other, and yet the two contrive to harmonize. We go down again to the
+haven; we mark a few classical capitals preserved, as we here preserve
+ammonites and pieces of rock-work; we start again to make the second
+portion of our second day's voyage, and to reach the most marked and
+memorable spot in our whole course.
+
+After Sebenico the coast is for a while almost free from islands.
+Presently we pass along among a few small ones, and Lissa, famous for
+piracies two thousand years back and for more regular warfare in our
+own century and in our own day, shows itself in the distance. Our
+course has by this time turned nearly due east. We pass by Bua, hardly
+conscious that it is an island. We pass by the mouth of the bay which
+Bua guards, hardly conscious of the depth of the inlet into which it
+leads, or that two cities--Traü and fallen Salona--are washed by its
+waters. For the child of Salona, the great object of a Dalmatian
+voyage, is coming within sight far away. The mighty campanile of
+Spalato rises, kindled with the last rays of sunlight; presently the
+cupola of the metropolitan church, the long line of the palace wall,
+the buildings of what is plainly no inconsiderable city, stand out
+against their mountain background. The sun has gone down behind the
+western headland, but we can get our first glimpse of the city, its
+arcades and tower and temples, by that moonlight which is as good at
+Spalato as at Melrose. We have been in the home of Diocletian, and we
+go back to our ship, for the next day to bring us to the one city
+along these shores which the might of Venice could never bring into
+subjection.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In such a voyage as this many points necessarily escape notice, and
+the great objects of study are well reserved for the return journey.
+In all travelling for instruction's sake, it is a point specially to
+be insisted on that every place should, whenever it is possible, be
+seen twice. Nothing fixes a thing so well in the memory as going
+through the process of recollection. And, in such a voyage as this, it
+is no bad way to go at once to the furthest point, to see on the way
+so much of the several points as the arrangements of the steamers
+allow, and to stop a longer time at the important places coming back.
+In this way a general notion of Dalmatia and its cities is gained
+first of all--a notion which may be enlarged and corrected by more
+minute examination of the chief places, and of course, foremost among
+them, of Spalato itself. But Spalato, though the great object of a
+Dalmatian voyage, is by no means its final object. When we have
+reached Spalato, we have not yet gone through half our course. Before
+we can come back to study its wonders more worthily, we have to spend
+a day in the archipelago of larger islands, nearly each of which,
+unlike their northern fellows, has some old historical memory. We have
+for part of another day to sail along that still narrower strip of
+Christendom which fences off Ragusa from the Mussulman, to thread our
+way through the lovely Bocche of Cattaro, till we reach the furthest
+of Dalmatian cities, with the path to unconquered Montenegro over our
+heads.
+
+
+
+
+PARENZO.
+
+1875.
+
+
+Parenzo, the ancient colony of Parentium, is likely to be, for many
+travellers in Istria and Dalmatia, their first point of stoppage after
+leaving Trieste. To such travellers it will be the beginning of the
+dominion of Venice in spots lying wholly beyond the Hadriatic, the
+first glimpse of the long series of lands and cities, from Istria to
+Cyprus, which once "looked to the winged lion's marble piles," and
+where the winged lion still abides in stone to keep up the memory of
+his old dominion. The short voyage is a lovely one. Looking back,
+there is Trieste on her hill-side, with her suburbs and detached
+houses spreading far away in both directions, and backed by the vast
+semicircle of the Julian Alps, with the snowy peaks of their higher
+summits soaring above all. The northern part of the Istrian peninsula,
+as we see it from the sea, has a strikingly rich and picturesque look,
+which is lost as we follow the coast towards the south. The small
+Istrian towns, each one of which has its civil and ecclesiastical
+history, jut out, each one on its own smaller peninsula; and in this
+part of the voyage the spaces between them are not lacking in signs of
+human dwelling and cultivation. Capo d'Istria, once Justinopolis, lies
+in its gulf to the left, to remind us that we have passed into the
+dominions of the Cæsars of the East. Forwards, Pirano stands on its
+headland, its _duomo_ rising above the water on arcades built up to
+save it from the further effects of the stripping process which is so
+clearly seen along the coast. The castle, with its many towers capped
+with their Scala battlements, rises over town and church, with a
+picturesqueness not common in Italian buildings. The church, on the
+other hand, is as far from picturesque as most Italian churches are
+without, and the detached campanile is simply, like many other Istrian
+bell-towers, a miniature of the great tower of the ruling city. But
+neither Capo d'Istria nor Pirano is so likely to cause the traveller
+bound for Dalmatia to halt as the other and more famous peninsular
+town of Parenzo. Long before Parenzo is reached, the Istrian shore has
+lost its beauty, though the Istrian hills, now and then capped by a
+hill-side town, and the higher mountains beyond them, tell us
+something of the character of the inland scenery. At last the
+Parentine headland is reached; the temples which crowned it are no
+longer to be seen, but the campanile of the famous _duomo_, with its
+Veronese spire, and one or two smaller towers, have taken their place
+as the prominent objects of the little city. On the side which would
+otherwise be open to the Hadriatic, the isle of Saint Nicolas shuts in
+the haven guarded by a round Venetian tower. The other side of the
+peninsula is washed by the mouth--here we must not say the estuary--of
+a stream yellow as Tiber, which comes rushing down by a small
+waterfall from the high ground where the Parentine peninsula joins the
+mainland. On this peninsula stood the older _municipium_ of Parentium,
+and the colony, some say the Julian Colony of Augustus, others the
+Ulpian Colony of Trajan. The zeal of Dr. Kandler, the great master of
+Istrian antiquities, made out the position of the forum, patrician and
+plebeian, of the capitol, the theatre, and the temples. The traveller
+will probably need a guide even to the temples, though one of them
+keeps the greater part of its stylobate, and the other one has two
+broken fluted columns left. A single inscribed stone in the ancient
+forum he can hardly fail to see; but the truth is that the Roman
+remains of Parentium are such as concern only immediate inquirers into
+local Parentine history. At Pola it is otherwise; there the Roman
+remains stand out as the great object, utterly overshadowing the
+buildings of later times; but at Parenzo the main interest, as it is
+not mediæval so neither is it pagan Roman. As at Ravenna, so at
+Parenzo, the real charm is to be found in the traces which it keeps of
+the great transitional ages when Roman and Teuton stood side by side.
+Against the many objects of Ravenna Parenzo has only to set its one.
+It has no palace, no kingly tomb--though the thought cannot fail to
+suggest itself that it was from Istrian soil that the mighty stone was
+brought which once covered the resting-place of Theodoric. Parenzo has
+but a single church of moment, but that church is one which would hold
+no mean place even among the glories of Ravenna. The capitol of
+Parentium has given way to the episcopal precinct, and the temple of
+the capitoline god has given way to the great basilica of Saint
+Maurus, the building which now gives Parenzo its chief claim to the
+study of those for whom the days of the struggle of Goth and Roman
+have a special charm.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As to the date of the church of Parenzo there seems little doubt. It
+is a basilica of the reign of Justinian, which has been preserved with
+remarkably little change, and which will hardly find, out of Rome and
+Ravenna, any building of its own class to surpass it. With the
+buildings of Ravenna it stands in immediate connexion, being actually
+contemporary with the work both at Saint Vital and at Saint
+Apollinaris in Classe. Its foundation is a little later, as the
+church of Parenzo seems to have been begun after the reconquest of
+Italy and Istria by Belisarius, while both Saint Vital and Saint
+Apollinaris, though finished under the rule of the Emperor, were begun
+under the rule of the Goth. There are points at Parenzo which connect
+it with both the contemporary churches of Ravenna. The pure basilican
+form, the shape of the apse, hexagonal without, though round within,
+are common to Parenzo and Classis; the capitals too have throughout
+the Ravenna stilt above them; but of the capitals themselves many take
+that specially Byzantine shape which at Ravenna is found only in Saint
+Vital. That the founder was a Bishop Euphrasius is shown by his
+monogram on many of the stilts, by the great mosaic of the apse, in
+which he appears holding the church in his hand as founder, and by the
+inscription on the disused tabernacle, which is engraved in Mr.
+Neale's book on Dalmatia and Istria. At Parenzo, as at Sebenico, Mr.
+Neale was in a serious mood; but, though he copied the inscription
+rightly or nearly so, he misunderstood it in the strangest fashion,
+and thereby led himself into much needless puzzledom. Euphrasius,
+according to Dr. Kandler, having been before a decurion of the town,
+became the first bishop in 524, when the Istrian bishoprics were
+founded under Theodoric. The church would seem to have been built
+between 535 and 543. The inscription runs thus:--
+
+     Famul[us] . D[e]i . Eufrasius . Antis[tes] . temporib[us] .
+     suis . ag[ens] an[num] . xi. hunc. loc[um] . fondamen[tis] .
+     D[e]o . jobant[e] . s[an]c[t]e . æc[c]l[esie] Catholec[e] .
+     cond[idit].
+
+The church was therefore begun in the eleventh year of the episcopate
+of Euphrasius; that is, in 535. Dr. Kandler prints, unluckily only in
+an Italian translation, a document of 543, the sixteenth year of
+Justinian, who appears with his usual titles, in which Euphrasius
+makes regulations for the Chapter, and speaks of the church as
+something already in being. Mr. Neale quotes from Coletti, the editor
+of Ughelli's _Italia Sacra_, part of a document in Latin which is
+obviously the same, but which is assigned to 796, the sixteenth year
+of Constantine the Sixth. The difference is strange; but the date of
+the document does not directly affect the date of the church, and,
+whatever be the date of either, Mr. Neale needlessly perplexed himself
+with the inscription. He says that the inscription commemorates a
+certain Pope John, and wonders that Euphrasius, who took part in the
+Aquileian schism about the Three Chapters--the Three Chapters which
+readers of Gibbon will remember--should record the name of a Pope with
+whom he was not in communion. But this difficulty is got rid of by the
+simple fact that there is nothing about any Pope John in the
+inscription. Mr. Neale strangely read the two words DO . IOBANT .--the
+words are carefully marked off by stops--that is, in the barbarous
+spelling of the inscription, DEO IVVANTE, into the four words "Domino
+Johanne Beatissimo Antistite." We therefore need not, in fixing the
+date of the church of Parenzo, trouble ourselves about any Popes.
+There can be no doubt that it is the work of Euphrasius, and that
+Euphrasius was one of those who opposed Rome about the Three Chapters.
+In any case, the _duomo_ of Parenzo has the interest which attaches to
+any church built while our own forefathers were still worshipping
+Woden; and we may safely add that it has the further interest of being
+built by a prelate who threw off all allegiance to the see of Rome.
+
+The church is indeed a noble one, and its long arcades preserve to us
+one of the most speaking examples of the forms of a great basilica.
+Every arch deserves careful study, because at Parenzo the capitals
+seem not to have been the spoil of earlier buildings, but to have been
+made for the church itself. Some still cleave to the general
+Corinthian type, though without any slavish copying of classical
+models. Animal forms are freely introduced; bulls, swans, and other
+creatures, are made to do duty as volutes; and when bulls and swans
+are set on that work, we may be sure that the Imperial bird is not
+left idle. Others altogether forsake the earlier types; it perhaps
+became a church built in the dominions of Justinian while Saint Sophia
+was actually rising, that some of its capitals should adopt the square
+Byzantine form enwreathed with its basket-work of foliage. But all,
+whatever may be their form in other ways, carry the Ravenna stilt,
+marked, in some cases at least, with the monogram of the founder
+Euphrasius. Happily the love of red rags which is so rampant on either
+side of Parenzo, at Trieste and at Zara, seems not to have spread to
+Parenzo itself, and the whole of this noble series of capitals may be
+studied with ease. The upper part, including the arches, has been more
+or less Jesuited within and without, but enough remains to make out
+the original arrangements. The soffits on the north side are
+ornamented like those in the basilica of Theodoric, a style of
+ornament identical with that of so many Roman roofs; above was a
+simple round-headed clerestory, and outside are the same slight
+beginnings of ornamental arcades which are to be seen at Saint
+Apollinaris in Classe. The apse, with its happily untouched windows
+and its grand mosaic, also carries us across to Ravenna. Besides the
+founder Euphrasius, we see the likeness of the Archdeacon Claudius and
+his son, a younger Euphrasius, besides Saint Maurus the patron and
+other saintly personages. Below is a rich ornament, but which surely
+must be of somewhat later date, formed largely of the actual shells of
+mother-of-pearl. The Bishop's throne is in its place; and, as at
+Ravenna and in the great Roman basilicas, mass is celebrated by the
+priest standing behind the altar with his face westward. Such was
+doubtless the usage of the days of Euphrasius, and in such an
+old-world place as Parenzo it still goes on.
+
+But if, in this matter, Parenzo clings to a very ancient use, we may
+doubt whether, at Parenzo or anywhere else, the men who made these
+great apses and covered them with these splendid mosaics designed them
+to be, as they so often are, half hidden by the _baldacchini_ which
+cover the high altar. Even in Saint Ambrose at Milan, where the apse
+is so high above the altar and where apse and _baldacchino_ are of the
+same date, we feel that the view of the east end is in some measure
+interfered with. Much more is this the case at Parenzo, where the apse
+is lower and the _baldacchino_ more lofty. But the Parenzo
+_baldacchino_, dating from 1277, is a noble work of its kind, and it
+is wonderful how little change the course of seven hundred years has
+made in some of its details as compared with those of the great
+arcades. The pointed arch is used, and the Ravenna stilt is absent;
+but the capitals, with their animal volutes, are almost the same as
+some of those of Euphrasius. Between the date of Euphrasius and the
+date of the _baldacchino_ we hear of more than one consecration, one
+of which, in 961, is said to have followed a destroying Slavonic
+inroad; but it is clear that any works done then must have been works
+of mere repair, not of rebuilding. No one can doubt that the columns
+and their capitals are the work of Euphrasius, and by diligently
+peeping round among the mass of buildings by which the church is
+encumbered, the original design may be seen outside as well as in.
+
+But the church of Parenzo is not merely a basilica; it has all the
+further accompaniments of an Italian episcopal church. West of the
+church stands the atrium, with the windows of the west front and the
+remains of mosaic enrichment rising above it. An arcade of three on
+each side surrounds the court, a court certainly far smaller than that
+of Saint Ambrose. Two columns with Byzantine capitals stand on each
+side; the rest are ancient, but those of the west side are a repair of
+the present king, or by whatever title it is that the King of Dalmatia
+and Lord of Trieste reigns on the intermediate Istrian shore. To the
+west of the atrium is the roofless baptistery, to the west of that the
+not remarkable campanile. We have thus reached the extreme west of
+this great pile of building, which, after all--such is the difference
+of scale between the churches of northern and southern Europe--reaches
+only the measure of one of our smallest minsters or greatest parish
+churches. The basilica of Parenzo, with all its accompaniments,
+measures, according to Mr. Neale's plan, only about 240 feet in
+length. But, if we have traced out those accompaniments towards the
+west, we have not yet done with those towards the east. A modern
+quasi-transept has been thrown out on each side, of which the northern
+one strangely forms the usual choir, much as in St. Peter's at Rome.
+These additions have columns with Byzantine capitals, like those in
+the atrium, copied from the old ones. But beyond this choir, and
+connected with the original church, is a low vaulted building of the
+plainest round-arched work, called, as usual, the "old church," the
+"pagan temple," and what not, which leads again into two chapels, the
+furthest having an eastern apse. Now these chapels have a mosaic
+pavement, and it is most remarkable that, below the pavement of the
+church, is a pavement some feet lower, which evidently belongs to some
+earlier building, and which is on the same level as the pavement of
+these chapels. It is therefore quite possible that we have here some
+remains of a building, perhaps a church, earlier than the time of
+Euphrasius. Between Constantine and Justinian there was time enough
+for a church to be built at Parentium and for Euphrasius to think it
+needful to rebuild it. Lastly, among the canonical buildings on the
+south side of the church is one, said to have been a tithe barn, with
+a grand range of Romanesque coupled windows, bearing date 1250. They
+remind us somewhat of the so-called John of Gaunt's stables, the real
+Saint Mary's Guild, at Lincoln. In short, so long as any traces are
+left of the style once common to all Western Europe, England and Italy
+are ever reminding us of one another.
+
+Such is the church of Parenzo, and at Parenzo the church is the main
+thing. As we pass away, and catch the last traces of the church of
+Euphrasius rising above the little peninsular city, our thoughts fly
+back to the other side of the Hadriatic, and it seems as if the men
+who came to fetch the great stone from Istria to Ravenna had left one
+of the noblest basilicas of their own city behind them on the Istrian
+shore.
+
+
+
+
+POLA.
+
+1875--1881.
+
+
+After Parenzo the most obvious stopping-place on the Istrian shore
+will be Pola; and at Pola the main objects of interest for the
+historical student will be classed in an order of merit exactly
+opposite to those which he has seen at Parenzo. At Parenzo the main
+attraction is the great basilica, none the less attractive as being a
+monument of early opposition to the claims of the Roman see. Beside
+this ecclesiastical treasure the remains of the Parentine colony are
+felt to be quite secondary. At Pola things are the other way; the
+monuments of Pietas Julia claim the first place; the basilica, though
+not without a certain special interest, comes long after them. The
+character of the place is fixed by the first sight of it; we see the
+present and we see the more distant past; the Austrian navy is to be
+seen, and the amphitheatre is to be seen. But intermediate times have
+little to show; if the duomo strikes the eye at all, it strikes it
+only by the extreme ugliness of its outside, nor is there anything
+very taking, nothing like the picturesque castle of Pirano, in the
+works which occupy the site of the colonial capitol. The _duomo_
+should not be forgotten; even the church of Saint Francis is worth a
+glance; but it is in the remains of the Roman colony, in the
+amphitheatre, the arches, the temples, the fragments preserved in that
+temple which serves, as at Nîmes, for a museum, that the real
+antiquarian wealth of Pola lies.
+
+There is no need to go into the mythical history of the place. Tales
+about Thracians and Argonauts need not be seriously discussed at this
+time of day. Nor can there be any need to show that the name Pola is
+not a contraction of Pietas Julia. Save for the slight accidental
+likeness of letters, so to say is about as reasonable as to say that
+London is a corruption of Augusta, or Jerusalem of Ælia. In all these
+cases the older, native, familiar, name outlived the later, foreign,
+official, name. When we have thoroughly cleared up the origin of the
+Illyrians and the old Veneti, we may know something of the earliest
+inhabitants of Pola, and possibly of the origin of its name. But the
+known history of Pola begins with the Roman conquest of Istria in 178
+B.C. The town became a Roman colony and a flourishing seat of
+commerce. Its action on the republican side in the civil war brought
+on it the vengeance of the second Cæsar. But the destroyer became the
+restorer, and Pietas Julia, in the height of its greatness, far
+surpassed the extent either of the elder or the younger Pola. Like all
+cities of this region, Pola kept up its importance down to the days of
+the Carolingian Empire, the specially flourishing time of the whole
+district being that of Gothic and Byzantine dominion at Ravenna. A
+barbarian king, the Roxolan Rasparasanus, is said to have withdrawn to
+Pola after the submission of his nation to Hadrian; and the
+panegyrists of the Flavian house rank Pola along with Trier and Autun
+among the cities which the princes of that house had adorned or
+strengthened. But in the history of their dynasty the name of the city
+chiefly stands out as the chosen place for the execution of princes
+whom it was convenient to put out of the way. Here Crispus died at the
+bidding of Constantine, and Gallus at the bidding of Constantius.
+Under Theodoric, Pola doubtless shared that general prosperity of the
+Istrian land on which Cassiodorus grows eloquent when writing to its
+inhabitants. In the next generation Pola appears in somewhat of the
+same character which has come back to it in our own times; it was
+there that Belisarius gathered the Imperial fleet for his second and
+less prosperous expedition against the Gothic lords of Italy. But,
+after the break up of the Frankish Empire, the history of mediæval
+Pola is but a history of decline. It was, in the geography of Dante,
+the furthest city of Italy; but, like most of the other cities of its
+own neighbourhood, its day of greatness had passed away when Dante
+sang. Tossed to and fro between the temporal and spiritual lords who
+claimed to be marquesses of Istria, torn by the dissensions of
+aristocratic and popular parties among its own citizens, Pola found
+rest, the rest of bondage, in submission to the dominion of Saint Mark
+in 1331. Since then, till its new birth in our own times, Pola has
+been a falling city. Like the other Istrian and Dalmatian towns,
+modern revolutions have handed it over from Venice to Austria, from
+Austria to France, from France to Austria again. It is under its
+newest masters that Pola has at last begun to live a fresh life, and
+the haven whence Belisarius sailed forth has again become a haven in
+more than name, the cradle of the rising navy of the united Austrian
+and Hungarian realm.
+
+  [Illustration: PORTA GEMINA, POLA.]
+
+That haven is indeed a noble one. Few sights are more striking than to
+see the huge mass of the amphitheatre at Pola seeming to rise at once
+out of the land-locked sea. As Pola is seen now, the amphitheatre is
+the one monument of its older days which strikes the eye in the
+general view, and which divides attention with signs that show how
+heartily the once forsaken city has entered on its new career. But
+in the old time Pola could show all the buildings which befitted its
+rank as a colony of Rome. The amphitheatre of course stood without the
+walls; the city itself stood at the foot and on the slope of the hill
+which was crowned by the capitol of the colony, where the modern
+fortress rises above the Franciscan church. Parts of the Roman wall
+still stand; one of its gates is left; another has left a neighbour
+and a memory. At the north side of the capitol stands the _Porta
+Gemina_, leading from it to the amphitheatre. The outer gateway
+remains, a double gate-way, as its name implies, with three Corinthian
+half-columns between and on each side of the two arches. But here
+steps in a singular architectural peculiarity, one which reminds us
+that we are on the road to Spalato, and which already points to the
+arcades of Diocletian. The columns support an entablature with its
+frieze and cornice, but the architrave is wanting. Does not this show
+a lurking sign of what was coming, a lurking feeling that the arch
+itself was the true architrave? Be this as it may, there it stands,
+sinning, like so many other ancient works, against pedantic rules, but
+perhaps thereby winning its place in the great series of architectural
+strivings which the palace of Spalato shows us the crowning-point. The
+other arch, which is commonly known as _Porta Aurea_ or _Porta
+Aurata_, conforms more nearly to ordinary rules. Here we have the
+arch with the coupled Corinthian columns on each side of it,
+supporting, as usual, their bit of broken entablature, and leaving
+room for a spandril filled in much the same fashion as in the arch of
+Severus at Rome. Compared with other arches of the same kind, this
+arch of Pola may certainly claim to rank amongst the most graceful of
+its class. With Trajan's arch at Ancona it can hardly be compared.
+That tallest and slenderest of monumental arches palpably stands on
+the haven to be looked at; while the arch of Pola, like its fellows at
+Rimini and Aosta, and like the arch of Drusus at Rome, is a real
+thoroughfare, which the citizens of Pietas Julia must have been in the
+daily habit of passing under. And, as compared with the arches of
+Rimini and Aosta, its design is perhaps the most pleasing of the
+three. Its proportions are better designed; the coupled columns on
+each side are more graceful than either the single columns at Rimini
+or the pair of columns which at Aosta are placed so much further
+apart. The idolater of minute rules will not be offended, as at Aosta,
+with Doric triglyphs placed over Corinthian capitals, and the lover of
+consistent design will not regret the absence of the sham pediment of
+Rimini. But it must be borne in mind that the arch of Pola did not
+originally stand alone, and that its usual name of _Porta Aurea_ is a
+misnomer. It was built close against the _golden gate_ of the city,
+whose name it has usurped. But it is, in truth, the family arch of the
+Sergii, raised in honour of one of that house by his wife Salvia
+Postuma. As such, it has a special interest in the local history of
+Pola. Ages afterwards, as late as the thirteenth century, Sergii
+appear again at Pola, as one of the chief families by whose
+dissensions the commonwealth was torn in pieces. If there is authentic
+evidence to connect these latter Sergii with the Sergii of the arch,
+and these again with the great Patrician _gens_ which played such a
+part in the history of the Roman commonwealth, here would indeed be a
+pedigree before which that of the house of Paris itself might stand
+abashed.
+
+A curious dialogue of the year 1600 is printed by Dr. Kandler in his
+little book, _Cenni al Forrestiere che visita Pola_, which, with a
+later little book, _Pola und seine nächste Umgebung_, by A. Gareis,
+form together a very sufficient guide for the visitor to Pola. From
+this evidence it is plain that, as late as the end of the sixteenth
+century, the ancient buildings of Pola were in a far more perfect
+state than they are now. Even late in the next century, in the days of
+Spon and Wheler, a great deal was standing that is no longer there.
+Wheler's view represents the city surrounded with walls, and with at
+least one gate. The amphitheatre stands without the wall; the arch of
+the Sergii stands within it; but the theatre must have utterly
+vanished, because in the references to the plan its name is given to
+the amphitheatre. And it must have been before this time that the
+amphitheatre had begun to be mutilated in order to supply materials
+for the fortress on the capitoline hill. Indeed it is even said that
+there was at one time a scheme for carrying off the amphitheatre
+bodily to Venice and setting it up on the Lido. This scheme, never
+carried out, almost beats one which actually was carried out, when the
+people of Jersey gave a _cromlech_ as a mark of respect to a popular
+governor, by whom it was carried off and set up in his grounds in
+England. Of the two temples in the forum, that which is said to have
+been dedicated to Diana is utterly masked by the process which turned
+it into the palace of the Venetian governor. A decent Venetian arcade
+has supplanted its portico; but some of the original details can be
+made out on the other sides. But the temple of Augustus, the restorer
+of Pietas Julia, with its portico of unfluted Corinthian columns,
+still fittingly remains almost untouched. Fragments and remains of all
+dates are gathered together within and without the temple, and new
+stores are constantly brought to light in digging the foundations for
+the buildings of the growing town. But the chief wonder of Pola, after
+all, is its amphitheatre. Travellers are sometimes apt to complain,
+and that not wholly without reason, that all amphitheatres are very
+like one another. At Pola this remark is less true than elsewhere, as
+the amphitheatre there has several marked peculiarities of its own. We
+do not pretend to expound all its details scientifically; but this we
+may say, that those who dispute--if the dispute still goes on--about
+various points as regards the Coliseum at Rome will do well to go and
+look for some further lights in the amphitheatre of Pola. The outer
+range, which is wonderfully perfect, while the inner arrangements are
+fearfully ruined, consists, on the side towards the town, of two rows
+of arches, with a third story with square-headed openings above them.
+But the main peculiarity in the outside is to be found in four
+tower-like projections, not, as at Arles and Nîmes, signs of Saracenic
+occupation, but clearly parts of the original design. Many conjectures
+have been made about them; they look as if they were means of approach
+to the upper part of the building; but it is wisest not to be
+positive. But the main peculiarity of this amphitheatre is that it
+lies on the slope of a hill, which thus supplied a natural basement
+for the seats on one side only. But this same position swallowed up
+the lower arcade on this side, and it hindered the usual works
+underneath the seats from being carried into this part of the
+building. In the other part the traces of the underground arrangements
+are very clear, especially those which seem to have been meant for
+the _naumachiæ_. These we specially recommend to any disputants about
+the underground works of the Flavian amphitheatre.
+
+The Roman antiquities of Pola are thus its chief attraction, and they
+are enough to give Pietas Julia a high place among Roman colonies. But
+the ecclesiastical side of the city must not be wholly forgotten. The
+_duomo_, if a small matter after that of Parenzo, if absolutely
+unsightly as seen from without, is not without its importance. It may
+briefly be described as a church of the fifteenth century, built on
+the lines of an ancient basilica, some parts of whose materials have
+been used up again. There is, we believe, no kind of doubt as to the
+date, and we do not see why Mr. Neale should have wondered at Murray's
+Handbook for assigning the building to the time to which it really
+belongs. No one could surely have placed a church with pointed arches,
+and with capitals of the kind so common in Venetian buildings, more
+than a century or two earlier. There is indeed an inscription built
+into the south wall which has a special interest from another point of
+view, but which, one would have thought, could hardly have led any one
+to mistake the date of the existing church. It records the building of
+the church by Bishop Handegis in 857, "Regnante Ludowico Imperatore
+Augusto in Italia." The minute accuracy of the phrase--"the Emperor
+Lewis being King in Italy"--is in itself something amazing; and this
+inscription shares the interest which attaches to any memorial of that
+gallant prince, the most truly Roman Emperor of his line. And it is
+something to mark that the stonecutter doubted between "L_o_dowico"
+and "L_u_dowico," and wrote both letters, one over the other. But the
+inscription of course refers to a reconstruction some hundred years
+earlier than the time when the church took its present shape. Yet
+these basilican churches were so constantly reconstructed over and
+over again, and largely out of the same materials, that the building
+of the fifteenth century may very well reproduce the general effect,
+both of the building of the eighth and of the far earlier church,
+parts of which have lived on through both recastings.
+
+The ten arches on each side of the Polan basilica are all pointed, but
+the width of the arches differs. Some of them are only just pointed,
+and it is only in the most eastern pair of arches that the pointed
+form comes out at all prominently. For here the arches are the
+narrowest of the series, and the columns the slightest, that on the
+south side being banded. The arch of triumph, which is round, looks
+very much as if it had been preserved from the earlier church; and
+such is clearly the case with two columns and one capital, whose
+classical Corinthian foliage stands in marked contrast with the
+Venetian imitations on each side of it. The church, on the whole,
+though not striking after such a marvel as Parenzo, is really one of
+high interest, as an example of the way in which the general effect of
+an early building was sometimes reproduced at a very late time. Still
+at Pola, among such wealth of earlier remains, it is quite secondary,
+and its beauties are, even more than is usual in churches of its type,
+altogether confined to the inside. The campanile is modern and
+worthless, and the outside of the church itself is disfigured, after
+the usual fashion of Italian ugliness, with stable-windows and the
+like. Yet even they are better than the red rags of Trieste and Zara
+within.
+
+Such is Pola, another step on the road to the birthplace of true grace
+and harmony in the building art. Yet, among the straits and islands of
+the Dalmatian coast, there is more than one spot at which the
+traveller bound for Spalato must stop. The first and most famous one
+is the city where Venetians and Crusaders once stopped with such
+deadly effect on that voyage which was to have led them to Jerusalem,
+but which did lead them only to New Rome. After the glimpses of Istria
+taken at Parenzo and Pola, the first glimpse, not of Dalmatia itself,
+but of the half-Italian cities which fringe its coast, may well be
+taken at Zara.
+
+
+
+
+ZARA.
+
+1875--1877--1881.
+
+
+The name of Zara is familiar to every one who has read the history of
+the Fourth Crusade, and its fate in the Fourth Crusade is undoubtedly
+the one point in its history which makes Zara stand out prominently
+before the eyes of the world. Of all the possessions of Venice along
+this coast, it is the one whose connexion with Venice is stamped for
+ever on the pages of universal history. Those who know nothing else of
+Zara, who perhaps know nothing at all of the other cities, at least
+know that, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, the possession
+of Zara was claimed by Venice, and that the claim of Venice was made
+good by the help of warriors of the Cross who thus turned aside from
+their course, not for the last time, to wield their arms against a
+Christian city. It is as Zara that the city is famous, because it is
+as Zara that its name appears in the pages of the great English teller
+of the tale. And perhaps those who may casually light on some mention
+of the city by any of its earlier names may not at once recognize Zara
+under the form either of _Jadera_ or of _Diadora_. One is curious to
+know how a city which under the first Augustus became a Roman colony
+by the name of _Jadera_ had, in the time of his orthodox successors in
+the tenth century, changed its name into anything with such a
+heathenish sound as _Diadora_. Yet such was its name in the days of
+Constantine Porphyrogenitus; and the Imperial historian does not make
+matters much clearer when he tells us that the true Roman name of the
+city was "Jam erat," implying that the city so called was older than
+Rome. Let us quote him in his own Greek, if only to show how oddly his
+Latin words look in their Greek dress.
+
+[Greek: To kastron tôn Diadôrôn kaleitai tê Rhômaiôn dialektô iam
+erat, hoper hermêneuetai aparti êton; dêlonoti hote hê Rhômê ektisthê,
+proektismenon ên to toiouton kastron. esti de to kastron mega; hê de
+koinê synêtheia kalei auto Diadôra.]
+
+Yet the name of the colony of Augustus lived on through these strange
+changes and stranger etymologies, and even in the narrative of the
+Crusade it appears as _Jadres_ in the text of Villehardouin.
+
+The history of the city in the intermediate ages is the usual history
+of the towns on the Dalmatian coast. They all for a while keep on
+their formal allegiance to the Eastern Empire, sometimes being really
+its subjects, sometimes being practically independent, sometimes
+tributary to the neighbouring Slaves. Still, under all changes, they
+clave to the character of Roman cities, just as they still remain
+seats of Italian influence in a Slavonic land. Then came a second time
+of confusion, in which Zara and her sister cities are tossed to and
+fro between another set of contending disputants. The Eastern Empire
+hardly keeps even a nominal claim to the Dalmatian towns; the Slavonic
+settlements have grown into regular kingdoms; Hungary on one side,
+Venice on the other, are claiming the dominion of the Dalmatian coast.
+The history of Zara now consists of conquests and reconquests between
+the Republic of Saint Mark and the Hungarian and Croatian kings. The
+one moment when Zara stands out in general history is the famous time
+when one of the Venetian reconquests was made by the combined arms of
+the Republic and the Frank Crusaders. The tale is a strange episode in
+a greater episode--the episode of the conquest of the New Rome by the
+united powers which first tried their 'prentice hand on Zara. But the
+siege, as described by the Marshal of Champagne and the many writers
+who have followed him, is not easy to understand, except by those who
+have either seen the place itself or have maps before them such as are
+not easily to be had. Like so many other Istrian and Dalmatian towns,
+Zara stands on a narrow peninsula, lying east and west. It has on its
+north side an inlet of the sea, which forms its harbour; to the south
+is the main sea, or, more strictly, the channel of Zara lying between
+the Dalmatian coast and the barren islands which at this point lie off
+it. Villehardouin describes the port as being guarded by a chain,
+which was broken by the galleys of the Crusaders. They presently
+landed on the opposite coast, so as to have the haven between them and
+the town ("et descendirent à terre, si que di porz fu entr' aus et la
+ville"). That is to say, they landed on the mainland north of the
+haven. The Frank army then besieged the city by land--that is, from
+the isthmus on the east, and perhaps also from the shore of the haven;
+while the Venetians, though their ships anchored in the haven ("le
+port ou les nés estoient"), made their assault on the side of the open
+sea ("devers la mer"). On the spot, or in reading the narrative of
+Villehardouin by the light of remembrance of the spot, the description
+becomes perfectly clear.
+
+Zara still keeps its peninsular site, and the traveller, as he draws
+near, still marks the fortifications, old and new, the many towers, no
+one of which so predominates over its fellows as to make itself the
+chief object in the view. Either however the modern Venetian and
+Austrian fortifications of Zara are less formidable, in appearance at
+least, than those which the Crusaders found there, or else they seemed
+more terrible to those who had actually to undertake the business of
+attacking them. Villehardouin had never seen such high walls and
+towers, nor, though he had just come from Venice, could he conceive a
+city fairer or more rich. The pilgrims were amazed at the sight, and
+wondered how they could ever become masters of such a place, unless
+God specially put it into their hands. The modern traveller, as he
+draws nearer, soon sees the signs of the success which the pilgrims so
+little hoped for. He sees the badge of Venetian rule over the
+water-gate, and most likely he little suspects that the outer arch, of
+manifest Venetian date, masks a plain Roman arch which is to be seen
+on the inner side. There is another large Venetian gate towards the
+inlet; and the traveller who at Zara first lands on Dalmatian ground
+will find on landing much to remind him that Dalmatian ground once was
+Venetian ground. The streets are narrow and paved; they are not quite
+as narrow as in Venice, nor is the passage of horses and all that
+horses draw so absolutely unknown as it is in Venice. Still the
+subject city comes near enough to its mistress to remind us under
+whose dominion Zara stayed for so many ages. And the traveller who
+begins his Dalmatian studies at Zara will perhaps think Dalmatia is
+not so strange and out-of-the-way a land as he had fancied before
+going thither. He may be tempted to look on Zara simply as an Italian
+town, and to say that an Italian town east of the Hadriatic is not
+very unlike an Italian town on the other side. This feeling, not
+wholly true even at Zara, will become more and more untrue as the
+traveller makes his way further along the coast. Each town, as he goes
+on, will become less Italian and more Slavonic. In street architecture
+Zara certainly stands behind some of the other Dalmatian towns. We see
+fewer of those windows of Venetian and Veronese type which in some
+places meet us in almost every house. The Roman remains are not very
+extensive. We have said that Jadera still keeps a Roman arch under a
+Venetian mask. That arch keeps its pilasters and its inscription, but
+the statues which, according to that inscription, once crowned it,
+have given way to another inscription of Venetian times. Besides the
+_Porta Marina_, two other visible memorials of earlier days still
+exist in the form of two ancient columns standing solitary, one near
+the church of Saint Simeon, presently to be spoken of, the other in
+the herb-market between the _duomo_ and the haven. But the main
+interest of Zara, apart from its general and special history, and
+apart from the feeling of freshness in treading a land so famous and
+so little known, is undoubtedly to be found in its ecclesiastical
+buildings.
+
+The churches of Zara are certainly very much such churches as might be
+looked for in any Italian city of the same size. But they specially
+remind us of Lucca. The cathedral, now metropolitan, church of Saint
+Anastasia, has had its west front engraved in more than one book, from
+Sir Gardner Wilkinson downwards; it is a pity that local art has not
+been stirred up to produce some better memorial of this and the other
+buildings of Zara than the wretched little photographs which are all
+that is to be had on the spot. But perhaps not much in the way of art
+is to be looked for in a city where, as at Trieste and Ancona and Rome
+herself, it seems to be looked on as adding beauty to the inside of a
+church to swathe marble columns and Corinthian capitals in ugly
+wrappings of red cloth. This at least seems to be an innovation since
+the days of the Imperial topographer. Constantine speaks of the church
+of Saint Anastasia as being of oblong, that is, basilican,
+shape--[Greek: dromikos] is his Greek word--with columns of green and
+white marble, enriched with much ancient woodwork, and having a
+tesselated pavement, which the Emperor, or those from whom he drew his
+report of Zara, looked on as wonderful. It is very likely that some of
+the columns which in the tenth century were clearly allowed to stand
+naked and to be seen have been used up again in the present church.
+This was built in the thirteenth century, after the destruction
+wrought in the Frank and Venetian capture, and it is said to have been
+consecrated in 1285. It is, on the whole, a witness to the way in
+which the Romanesque style so long stood its ground, though here and
+there is a touch of the coming pseudo-Gothic, and, what is far more
+interesting to note, here and there is a touch of the Romanesque forms
+of the lands beyond the Alps. The church is, in its architectural
+arrangements, a great and simple basilica; but, as might be expected
+from its date, it shows somewhat of that more elaborate way of
+treating exteriors which had grown up at Pisa and Lucca. The west
+front has surface arcades broken in upon by two wheel windows, the
+lower arcade with round, the upper with pointed, arches. Along the
+north aisle runs an open gallery, which, oddly enough, is not carried
+round the apse. The narrow windows below it are round in the eastern
+part, trefoiled in the western, showing a change of design as the work
+went on. Near the east end stands the unfinished campanile; a stage or
+two of good Romanesque design is all that is finished. The one perfect
+ancient tower in Zara is not that of the _duomo_.
+
+On entering the church, we at once feel how much the building has
+suffered from puzzling and disfiguring modern changes. But this is
+not all; the general effect of the inside has been greatly altered by
+a change which we cannot bring ourselves wholly to condemn. The choir
+is lifted up above the crypt as at Saint Zeno and Saint Ambrose; the
+stone chair still remains in the apse; but the object which chiefly
+strikes the eye is one which is hardly in harmony with these. The
+choir is fitted up with a range of splendid _cinque cento_
+stalls--reminding one of King's College chapel or of Wimborne as it
+once was--placed in the position usual in Western churches. This last
+feature, grand in itself, takes away from the perfection of the
+basilican design, and carries us away into Northern lands.
+
+Of the church which preceded the Venetian rebuilding, the church
+described by Constantine, little remains above ground, allowing of
+course for the great likelihood that the columns were used up again.
+There is nothing to which one is even tempted to give an early date,
+except some small and plain buildings clinging on to the north side of
+the choir, and containing the tomb of an early bishop. But in the
+crypt, though it has unluckily lost two of its ranges of columns, two
+rows, together with those of the apse, are left, columns with finished
+bases but with capitals which are perfectly rude, but whose shape
+would allow them to be carved into the most elaborate Byzantine
+forms. The main arcades of the church form a range of ten bays or five
+pair of arches, showing a most singular collection of shapes which are
+not often seen together. Some are simple Corinthian; in others
+Corinthian columns are clustered--after the example of Vespasian's
+temple at Brescia; others have twisted fluting; one pair has a
+section, differing in the two opposite columns, which might pass for
+genuine Northern work; while--here in Dalmatia in the thirteenth
+century--not a few shafts are crowned with our familiar Norman cushion
+capital. Yet the effect of the whole range would be undoubtedly fine,
+if we were only allowed to see it. The hideous red rags have covered
+even the four columns of the _baldacchino_, columns fluted and
+channelled in various ways and supporting pointed arches. They have
+also diligently swathed the floriated cornice above the arcade; in
+short, wherever there is any fine work, Jaderan taste seems at once to
+hide it; but nothing hides the clerestory with its stable windows or
+the flat plastered ceiling which crowns all. The triforium has an air
+of Jesuitry; but it seems to be genuine, only more or less plastered;
+six small arches, with channelled square piers, which would not look
+out of place at Rome, at Autun, or at Deerhurst, stand over each pair
+of arches. With all its original inconsistencies and its later
+changes, the _duomo_ of Zara, if it were only stripped of its
+swaddling-clothes, would be no contemptible specimen of its own style.
+
+  [Illustration: TOWER OF ST. MARY'S ZARA.]
+
+But Saint Anastasia is not the only, it is hardly the most
+interesting, church in Zara. Saint Chrysogonos, monk and martyr, was
+held in reverence at Diadora in the days of Constantine, where his
+tomb and his holy chain were to be seen. Perhaps they are to be seen
+still; certainly his name is still preserved in an admirable church of
+the same general Lucchese type as the _duomo_, but which surpasses it
+in the exquisite grace of the three apses at its east end, after the
+best models of the type common to Italy and Germany. Within, the
+arrangement of the triapsidal basilica is perfect; the range of
+columns is, as is so often found, interrupted by two pairs of more
+massive piers, making groups of three, two, and two arches. It is
+almost startling to find that the date of the consecration of this
+exquisite Romanesque church is as late as 1407; but the fact is only
+one example out of many of the way in which in some districts, in
+Dalmatia above all, the true style of the land stood its ground. In
+Dalmatia the Italian pseudo-Gothic, common in houses, is but little
+seen in churches at any time. Another church, Saint Simeon, called
+after the Prophet of _Nunc dimittis_, boasts of its gorgeous shrine
+borne aloft behind the high altar, the gift of Elizabeth of Bosnia,
+the wife of Lewis the Great. The church itself is of the same
+basilican type as the other, but in less good preservation. Saint
+Mary's, a church of nuns, is itself of a rather good kind of
+_Renaissance_, but its chief merit is that it keeps the only finished
+ancient tower in Zara, a noble campanile of the best Italian type,
+thick with midwall shafts, which every Englishman will feel to be the
+true kinsman of our own towers at Lincoln and Oxford. Its date is
+known; it is the work of King Coloman of Hungary, in 1105. But, after
+all, the most interesting architectural work in Zara is one which, as
+far as we have seen, is not noticed in any English book, but which was
+described by the Imperial pen in the tenth century, and which has in
+our own days been more fully illustrated in the excellent work of
+Eitelberger on the Dalmatian buildings. Close by Saint Anastasia there
+stood in the days of Constantine, and there still stands, a round
+church, lately desecrated, now simply disused, which was then called
+by the name of the Trinity ([Greek: heteros naos plêsion autou
+eilêmatikos, hê hagia Trias]), but which now bears that of Saint
+Donatus. Its dome and the tower of Saint Mary's are the two objects
+which first catch the eye in the general view of Zara. Tradition, as
+usual, calls the building a pagan temple, in this case of Juno; but it
+has in no way the look of a temple, nor does the Emperor who
+describes it with some minuteness give any hint of its having been
+such. Yet it is plain that, if it was not itself a pagan building, the
+spoils of pagan buildings contributed to its materials. Formed of two
+arcaded stages, the whole pile rises to a vast height, and the height
+of the lower stage alone is very considerable. The arches of the round
+rest on heavy rectangular piers of truly Roman strength, save only two
+vast columns with splendid Composite capitals--which mark the approach
+to the triapsidal east end. This building, lately cleared from the
+disfigurements and partition of its profane use, forms one of the
+noblest round churches to be found; the so-called house of Juno at
+Zara is almost a rival of the so-called house of Jupiter at Spalato.
+The upper stage is of the same general type as the lower, having again
+two columns left free and uninjured, but not rivalling the splendour
+of those which are in bondage below. Zara had lately another
+desecrated church of extreme interest, but of quite another type from
+Saint Donatus. This was the little church of Saint Vitus, a perfect
+example of the genuine Byzantine arrangement on a very small scale.
+The ground-plan was square; four arms, square-ended without,
+quasi-apsidal within, bore up the cupola on perfectly plain
+square-edged piers. Between our first and second visits to Zara,
+between 1875 and 1877, this charming little piece of Byzantine work
+was swept away to make a smart shop-front. It was a recompense no more
+than was due to find on our third visit that the round church had been
+cleared out.
+
+  [Illustration: SAINT VITUS, ZARA, AND THE ORTHODOX CHURCH, CATTARO.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Such is Zara, a city in which, as at Parenzo, the ecclesiastical
+element distinctly prevails, as contrasted with the mainly pagan
+interest of Pola. Such is equally the case in our next Dalmatian city
+also. But the main interest of Sebenico is of a different kind from
+that of any of its fellows. We go there to study a church, but, as we
+have seen, a church which has little in common with other churches in
+Dalmatia or anywhere else. At Zara, at Spalato, at Ragusa, we study
+buildings which all in some sort hang together. At Sebenico we stop
+our course to study something which stands altogether aloof from all.
+
+
+
+
+SPALATO AND ITS NEIGHBOURS.
+
+
+
+
+SPALATO.
+
+1875.
+
+
+The main object and centre of all historical and architectural
+inquiries on the Dalmatian coast is of course the home of Diocletian,
+the still abiding palace of Spalato. From a local point of view, it is
+the spot which the greatest of the long line of renowned Illyrian
+Emperors chose as his resting-place from the toils of warfare and
+government, and where he reared the vastest and noblest dwelling that
+ever arose at the bidding of a single man. From an oecumenical point
+of view, Spalato is yet more. If it does not rank with Rome, Old and
+New, with Ravenna and with Trier, it is because it never was, like
+them, an actual seat of empire. But it not the less marks a stage, and
+one of the greatest stages, in the history of the Empire. On his own
+Dalmatian soil, Docles of Salona, Diocletian of Rome, was the man who
+had won fame for his own land, and who, on the throne of the world,
+did not forget his provincial birthplace. In the sight of Rome and of
+the world Jovius Augustus was more than this. Alike in the history of
+politics and in the history of art, he has left his mark on all time
+that has come after him, and it is on his own Spalato that his mark
+has been most deeply stamped. The polity of Rome and the architecture
+of Rome alike received a new life at his hands. In each alike he cast
+away shams and pretences, and made the true construction of the fabric
+stand out before men's eyes. Master of the Roman world, if not King,
+yet more than King, he let the true nature of his power be seen, and,
+first among the Cæsars, arrayed himself with the outward pomp of
+sovereignty. In a smaller man we might have deemed the change a mark
+of weakness, a sign of childish delight in gewgaws, titles, and
+trappings. Such could hardly have been the motive in the man who, when
+he deemed that his work was done, could cast away both the form and
+the substance of power, and could so steadily withstand all
+temptations to take them up again. It was simply that the change was
+fully wrought; that the chief magistrate of the commonwealth had
+gradually changed into the sovereign of the Empire; that Imperator,
+Cæsar, and Augustus, once titles lowlier than that of King, had now
+become, as they have ever since remained, titles far loftier. The
+change was wrought, and all that Diocletian did was to announce the
+fact of the change to the world. So again, now that the Roman city had
+grown into the Roman world, a hill by the Tiber had long ceased to be
+a fit dwelling-place for rulers who had to keep back hostile inroads
+from the Rhine and the Euphrates. This fact too Diocletian announced
+to the world. He planted his Augusti and his Cæsars on spots better
+suited for defence against the German and the Persian than the spot
+which had been chosen for defence against the Sabine and the Etruscan.
+Jupiter of the Capitol and his representatives on earth were to be
+equally at home in every corner of their dominions. Nor is it
+wonderful if, with such aims before him, he deemed that a faith which
+taught that Jupiter of the Capitol was a thing of naught was a faith
+which it became his votary to root out from all the lands that bowed
+to Jove and to Jovius. What if his work in some sort failed? what if
+his system of fourfold rule broke up before his own eyes--if his
+Bithynian capital soon gave way to the wiser choice of a successor, if
+the faith which he persecuted became, almost on the morrow, the faith
+of his Empire? Still his work did not wholly fail. He taught that
+Empire was more than kingship, a lesson never forgotten by those who,
+for fifteen hundred years after him, wore the diadem of Diocletian
+rather than of Augustus. In some sort he founded the Roman Empire.
+What Constantine did was at once to undo and to complete his work by
+making that Empire Holy.
+
+Such a man, if not actually a creator, yet so pre-eminently one who
+moulded the creations of others into new shapes, might well take to
+himself a name from the supreme deity of his creed, the deity of whom
+he loved to be deemed the special votary. The conception which had
+grown up in the mind, and had been carried out by the hand, of the
+peasant of Salona might well entitle him to his proud surname. Nor did
+the organizing hand of Jovius confine its sphere to the polity of the
+Empire only. He built himself an house, and, above all builders, he
+might boast himself of the house that he had builded. Fast by his own
+birthplace--a meaner soul might have chosen some distant
+spot--Diocletian reared the palace which marks a still greater epoch
+in Roman art than his political changes mark in Roman polity. On the
+inmost shore of one of the lake-like inlets of the Hadriatic, an inlet
+guarded almost from sight by the great island of Bua at its mouth, lay
+his own Salona, now desolate, then one of the great cities of the
+Roman world. But it was not in the city, it was not close under its
+walls, that Diocletian fixed his home. An isthmus between the bay of
+Salona and the outer sea cuts off a peninsula, which again throws out
+two horns into the water to form the harbour which has for ages
+supplanted Salona. There, not on any hill-top, but on a level spot by
+the coast, with the sea in front, with a background of more distant
+mountains, and with one peaked hill rising between the two seas like a
+watch-tower, did Diocletian build the house to which he withdrew when
+he deemed that his work of empire was over. And in building that
+house, he won for himself, or for the nameless genius whom he set at
+work, a place in the history of art worthy to rank alongside of
+Iktinos of Athens and Anthemios of Byzantium, of William of Durham and
+of Hugh of Lincoln.
+
+And now the birthplace of Jovius is forsaken, but his house still
+abides, and abides in a shape marvellously little shorn of its ancient
+greatness. The name which it still bears comes straight from the name
+of the elder home of the Cæsars. The fates of the two spots have been
+in a strange way the converse of one another. By the banks of the
+Tiber the city of Romulus became the house of a single man; by the
+shores of the Hadriatic the house of a single man became a city. The
+Palatine hill became the _Palatium_ of the Cæsars, and _Palatium_ was
+the name which was borne by the house of Cæsar by the Dalmatian shore.
+The house became a city; but its name still clave to it, and the house
+of Jovius still, at least in the mouths of its own inhabitants, keeps
+its name in the slightly altered form of Spálato.
+
+He placed his home in a goodly land, on a spot whose first sight is
+striking at any moment; but special indeed is the good luck of him who
+for the first time draws near to Spalato at the hour of sunset. It is
+a moment to be marked in a life, as we round the island headland, one
+of the stony Dalmatian hills rising bleak and barren from the sea, and
+catch the first glimpse of the city, the tall bell-tower, the proud
+rampart of mountains which forms its background. But the sight is more
+spirit-stirring still if we come on that sight at the very moment
+when--in sight of the home of the great persecutor we may use the
+language of mythology--the sun-god has just sunk into its golden cup.
+The sinking sun seems no unfit symbol, as we look on the spot where
+the lord of the world withdrew to seek for rest after his toils.
+Another moment, the headland is rounded; its top is kindled like
+Vesuvius in the last rays of the sunlight; the lesser light is kindled
+before the greater has wholly failed us, and, by the light of sun and
+moon together, we can trace out the long line of the sea-front of the
+palace which became a city. No nobler site could surely have been
+found within the bounds of the Empire of the two Augusti and their
+Cæsars. The sea in front, the mountains behind, the headlands, the
+bays, the islands scattered around, might indeed have formed a realm
+from which the prince who had there fixed his home would have been
+unwise to go forth again to wrestle with the storms of the world which
+lay beyond its borders. The mountains have drawn nearer to the shore;
+the islands have gathered round the entrance of the haven, as if to
+shut out all but the noble bay and its immediate surroundings, as if
+to fence in a dominion worthy of Jovius himself.
+
+We land with the moon lighting up the water, with the stars above us,
+the northern wain shining on the Hadriatic, as if, while Diocletian
+was seeking rest by Salona, the star of Constantine was rising over
+York and Trier. Dimly rising above us we see, disfigured indeed, but
+not destroyed, the pillared front of the palace, reminding us of the
+Tabularium of Rome's own Capitol. We pass under gloomy arches, through
+dark passages, and presently we find ourselves in the centre of palace
+and city, between those two renowned rows of arches which mark the
+greatest of all epochs in the history of the building art. We think
+how the man who re-organized the Empire of Rome was also the man who
+first put harmony and consistency into the architecture of Rome. We
+think that, if it was in truth the crown of Diocletian which passed to
+every Cæsar from the first Constantius to the last Francis, it was no
+less in the pile which rose into being at his word that the germ was
+planted which grew into Pisa and Durham, into Westminster and Saint
+Ouen's. There is light enough to mark the columns put for the first
+time to their true Roman use, and to think how strange was the fate
+which called up on this spot the happy arrangement which had entered
+the brain of no earlier artist--the arrangement which, but a few years
+later, was to be applied to another use in the basilica of the Lateran
+and in Saint Paul without the walls. Yes, it is in the court of the
+persecutor, the man who boasted that he had wiped out the Christian
+superstition from the world, that we see the noblest forestalling of
+the long arcades of the Christian basilica. It is with thoughts like
+these, thoughts pressing all the more upon us where every outline is
+clear and every detail is invisible, that we tread for the first time
+the Court of Jovius--the columns with their arches on either side of
+us, the vast bell-tower rising to the sky, as if to mock the art of
+those whose mightiest works might still seem only to grovel upon
+earth. Nowhere within the compass of the Roman world do we find
+ourselves more distinctly in the presence of one of the great minds of
+the world's history; we see that, alike in politics and in art,
+Diocletian breathed a living soul into a lifeless body. In the bitter
+irony of the triumphant faith, his mausoleum has become a church,
+his temple has become a baptistery, the great bell-tower rises proudly
+over his own work; his immediate dwelling-place is broken down and
+crowded with paltry houses; but the sea-front and the Golden Gate are
+still there amid all disfigurements, and the great peristyle stands
+almost unhurt, to remind us of the greatest advance that a single mind
+ever made in the progress of the building art.
+
+  [Illustration: THE TOWER, SPALATO.]
+
+At the present time the city into which the house of Diocletian has
+grown is the largest and most growing town of the Dalmatian coast. It
+has had to yield both spiritual and temporal precedence to Zara, but,
+both in actual population and all that forms the life of a city,
+Spalato greatly surpasses Zara and all its other neighbours. The
+youngest of the Dalmatian towns, which could boast neither of any
+mythical origin nor of any Imperial foundation, the city which, as it
+were, became a city by mere chance, has outstripped the colonies of
+Epidauros, of Corinth, and of Rome. The palace of Diocletian had but
+one occupant; after the founder no Emperor had dwelled in it, unless
+we hold that this was the villa near Salona where the deposed Emperor
+Nepos was slain, during the patriciate of Odoacer. The forsaken palace
+seems, while still almost new, to have become a cloth factory, where
+women worked, and which therefore appears in the Notitia as a
+Gynæcium. But when Salona was overthrown, the palace stood ready to
+afford shelter to those who were driven from their homes. The palace,
+in the widest sense of the word--for of course its vast circuit took
+in quarters for soldiers and officials of various kinds, as well as
+the rooms actually occupied by the Emperor--stood ready to become a
+city. It was a _chester_ ready made, with its four streets, its four
+gates, all but that towards the sea flanked with octagonal towers, and
+with four greater square towers at the corners. To this day the
+circuit of the walls is nearly perfect; and the space contained within
+them must be as large as that contained within some of the oldest
+_chesters_ in our own island. The walls, the towers, the gates, are
+those of a city rather than of a house. Two of the gates, though their
+towers are gone, are nearly perfect: the _porta aurea_, with its
+graceful ornament; the _porta ferrea_ in its stern plainness,
+strangely crowned with its small campanile of later days perched on
+its top. Within the walls, besides the splendid buildings which still
+remain, besides the broken-down walls and chambers which formed the
+immediate dwelling-place of the founder, the main streets were lined
+with massive arcades, large parts of which still remain. Diocletian,
+in short, in building a house, had built a city. In the days of
+Constantine Porphyrogenitus it was a [Greek: kastron]--Greek and
+English had by his day alike borrowed the Latin name; but it was a
+[Greek: kastron] which Diocletian had built as his own house, and
+within which was his hall and palace. In his day the city bore the
+name of Aspalathon, which he explains to mean [Greek: palation
+mikron]. When the palace had thus become a common habitation of men,
+it is not wonderful that all the more private buildings whose use had
+passed away were broken down, disfigured, and put to mean uses. The
+work of building over the site must have gone on from that day to
+this. The view in Wheler shows several parts of the enclosure occupied
+by ruins which are now covered with houses. The real wonder is that so
+much has been spared and has survived to our own days. And we are
+rather surprised to find Constantine saying that in his time the
+greater part had been destroyed. For the parts which must always have
+been the stateliest remain still. The great open court, the peristyle,
+with its arcades, have become the public piazza of the town; the
+mausoleum on one side of it and the temple on the other were preserved
+and put to Christian uses. We say the mausoleum, for we fully accept
+the suggestion made by Professor Glavinich, the curator of the museum
+of Spalato, that the present _duomo_, traditionally called the temple
+of Jupiter, was not a temple, but a mausoleum. These must have been
+the great public buildings of the palace, and, with the addition of
+the bell-tower, they remain the chief public buildings of the modern
+city. But, though the ancient square of the palace remains wonderfully
+perfect, the modern city, with its Venetian defences, its Venetian and
+later buildings, has spread itself far beyond the walls of Diocletian.
+But those walls have made the history of Spalato, and it is the great
+buildings which stand within them that give Spalato its special place
+in the history of architecture. In the face of them we hardly stop to
+think of the remains of Venetian or even of earlier times. Yet both
+within and without the palace walls, scraps of Venetian work may be
+found which would attract the eye on any other spot, and hard by the
+north-western tower of Diocletian there remains a small desecrated
+church of the Byzantine type, which out of Spalato might be set down
+as a treasure. But, as we stand beneath the arcades of Jovius, things
+which would elsewhere be treasures seem as nothing. They, and the
+other buildings which stand in artistic connexion with them, form an
+epoch in the history of art, apart from the general history and
+general impression of the city which they have at once created and
+made famous.
+
+
+
+
+SPALATO REVISITED.
+
+1877--1881.
+
+
+I thought it right to reprint the foregoing sketch of Spalato, the
+record of my first visit there in 1875, exactly as it was first
+written, with the change of two or three words only. It seemed worth
+while to keep the first impressions of such a place as they were set
+down at once after the first sight of it. Instead therefore of
+recasting this piece, as I have done several of the others, I will
+mention a few points on which later visits and further reading might
+have led to some change in what I first wrote nearly on the spot.
+Another paper of a strictly architectural character, headed
+"Diocletian's Place in Architectural History," has been reprinted in
+the third series of my Historical Essays, as an appendix to the essay
+headed "The Illyrian Emperors and their Land."
+
+First, with regard to the name of the place itself. I seem, when I
+wrote my paper of first impressions, to have had no doubt as to the
+received derivation from _Palatium_. That derivation is wonderfully
+tempting, and it enables one to make an epigrammatic contrast between
+the _Palatium_ of Rome and the _Palatium_ of Spalato, between the city
+which became a house and the house which became a city. But the fact
+remains the same, whatever may be the name. The city did become a
+house, and the house did become a city, whether the two were called by
+the same name or not. And I am now convinced, chiefly by Mr. Arthur
+Evans, that the name of Spalato has nothing to do with _Palatium_. I
+began to doubt rather early, as I did not see how the =s= could have
+got into the name; in a Greek name the origin of the =s= would have
+been plain enough, but it seemed to have no place in a Latin name.
+And I was staggered by the form _Aspalato_ found as early as the
+Notitia Imperii. Nothing goes for less than the etymologies of
+Constantine Porphyrogenitus, and anyhow it is hard to see how [Greek:
+Aspalathon], the form which he uses, could mean [Greek: mikron
+palation]. But, as I had nothing better to propose, I thought it
+better, when I wrote the fuller paper which appears in the Historical
+Essays, to say nothing about the matter either way. I need not stop to
+dispute against the intrusive r in the vulgar form _Spalatro_, as both
+Sir Gardner Wilkinson and Mr. Neale have done that before me. But it
+is wonderful to see how early it got in. It is as old as the Ravenna
+Geographer, who has three forms--_Spalathon_, _Spalathron_, and
+_Spalatrum_. I need hardly say that the _r_ is unknown in the country,
+unless perhaps now and then in the mouth of some one who thinks it
+fine. So one has known people in England destroy etymology, by
+sounding _Waltham_ as if it had a _thorn_, and _Bosham_ with the sound
+of the German _sch_. I am now fully convinced that the name has
+nothing to do with _Palatium_. It is plain that the oldest form that
+we can find is _Aspalathum_, and I am inclined to accept the view of
+Mr. Evans, who connects the name with _Aspalathus_, or perhaps with
+[Greek: asphaltos]. But I must not venture myself in any quarter which
+savours of botany or geology.
+
+With the newer lights which I have made use of in Historical Essays, I
+think I should no longer speak of Diocletian as "the great
+persecutor." Galerius ought in fairness to take that name off his
+shoulders. Mr. A. J. Mason has certainly proved thus much; and it is a
+great comfort to think so in visiting Spalato. Nor should I have
+spoken of him as a native of Salona. He was of Doclea, Dioclea,
+however we are to spell it, within the present bounds of Tzernagora.
+Those who at various times have spoken of Saint Alban as "protomartyr
+_Anglorum_," and of King Lucius as becoming "a _Swiss_ bishop," might
+also speak of Diocletian as a Montenegrin.
+
+I was doubtless right in saying that no Emperor, strictly so called,
+inhabited the Palace after Diocletian. In strictness indeed no Emperor
+ever inhabited it at all, as Diocletian had ceased to be Emperor when
+he went there. But I think that, at the time of my first visit, I had
+not fully taken in the story of Nepos and his father Count Marcellian.
+One is strongly tempted to think that, when Nepos was killed "haud
+longe a Salonis, sua in villa," the place meant is the palace of
+Spalato. On the other hand, we have the earlier entry in the Notitia,
+which certainly looks as if the palace had already become a kind of
+Imperial factory. But Nepos would hardly live in the same style as
+Jovius, and the palace is quite big enough to lodge the deposed
+Emperor and the work-women at the same time.
+
+On the special importance of Spalato in the history of architecture I
+have spoken in several places, specially in the paper in my Historical
+Essays to which I have already referred. My main position is that, in
+the palace at Spalato, after a series of approaches, many of which may
+be seen in the building itself, Diocletian or his architect hit on the
+happy device of making the arch spring directly from the capital of
+the column. To merely classical critics this seems to mark the depth
+of degradation into which art had fallen in Diocletian's day. To me it
+seems to be the greatest step ever taken, the beginning of all later
+forms of consistent arched architecture, Romanesque, Gothic, or any
+other. The importance of the step is of course the same whoever took
+it; and if the same feature can be shown in any building earlier than
+Spalato, we must transfer our praises from, the designer of Spalato to
+the designer of that building. Spalato would in that case lose
+something of its strictly architectural interest; but that would be
+all. But, as far as I know, no such rival has appeared. If the same
+form really was used in the baths of Diocletian at Rome, that would
+not be a rival building, but a case of the same mind working in the
+same way in two places. And to establish an earlier use of the form,
+it would be needful to show that it was deliberately employed in some
+considerable building. There is nothing commoner in the history of
+architecture than the casual and isolated appearance of some form,
+which the designer had not so much chosen as stumbled on, long before
+the time when it really came into use. I put in this caution, because
+I know that there is a kind of feeble approach to the arrangement at
+Spalato in one or two buildings at Pompeii. And, great as was the
+advance at Spalato, it had, like many other cases of advance, its weak
+side. The Ravenna stilt and the Byzantine double capital were both of
+them shifts to relieve, as it were, the light abacus of the Corinthian
+capital from the weight which the arch laid upon it. The heavy abacus
+of Pisa and Lucca was a better escape from this difficulty. Again, the
+lightness of the columns used at Spalato and in the basilicas which
+followed its model forbade the use of the vault, and condemned the
+roofs of the basilicas to be among their poorest features. In the
+peristyle itself of course no roof was needed, though to an eye used
+to Rome and Ravenna it has so much the air of an unroofed basilica
+that it is really hard to believe that it was always open. But, though
+the basilican arrangement forbade the use of the vault, yet the step
+taken at Spalato was not without its effect on later vaulted
+buildings. When the vault came in again, as in the heavier forms of
+the German Romanesque, men had learned that the arch and its pier,
+whether that pier was a light column or a massive piece of wall, were
+enough for all artistic purposes, without bringing in, as in the
+classical Roman, purely ornamental features from a style which
+followed another system of construction. I came to my belief in the
+architectural importance of Spalato thirty years before I saw the
+building itself, and, now that repeated visits have made the peristyle
+of Diocletian as familiar to me as Wells cathedral, I admire and
+approve just as much, though of course I cannot undertake to be quite
+as enthusiastic now as I was on the evening when I first saw it.
+
+When I was last at Spalato, a process was going on which always makes
+one tremble. The peristyle and the inside of the mausoleum were
+surrounded by scaffoldings. As for the mausoleum, it was perhaps a
+mistake ever to make it into a church; but, as it has been made into a
+church, the additions and changes which were needed for that purpose
+have become part of the history, and ought not to be meddled with. It
+must always have been nearly the smallest, and quite the darkest,
+metropolitan church in Christendom; but that it is so is part of the
+wonder of the place. And, if some of the details were restored in
+plaster at the time of a certain famous royal visit, it seems hardly
+worth while to knock them away, with the chance of knocking away some
+of the genuine stone along with them. That royal visit is commemorated
+in a tablet at the end of the peristyle, which professes great loyalty
+to a personage described as "Franciscus Primus, Austriæ Imperator et
+Dalmatiæ Rex." The man so labelled in Diocletian's own house had been
+the last successor to Diocletian's empire.
+
+In the changes which are being made in the peristyle, it is said that
+this tablet was first taken down as being modern, and then set up
+again, because official loyalty overrode all considerations of what
+was old and what was new. But some care should be taken in removing
+what is modern in such a place as Spalato. It is very well to get rid
+of some mean excrescences; but, where the arches have been filled up
+by Venetian buildings of respectable work, it would seem to be a great
+mistake to open them, to say nothing of the chance that such opening
+may endanger the columns and arches themselves. Though built up, they
+are not so blocked as to hinder a full study of their details. Indeed
+the building up, both of the arches of the peristyle and of the
+heavier arches in the other parts of the palace, is really a part of
+the history which should be preserved. It marks the distinctive
+character of Spalato as the house which became a city.
+
+That city, as it now stands, stretches, I need hardly say again, a
+long way beyond the bounds of the ancient house. Yet one cannot
+conceive Spalato without Diocletian's palace. It is something much
+more than the chief object and ornament of Spalato, as this or that
+building is the chief object and ornament of any other city. It is
+more than the castle or monastery round which a city has often grown.
+It is not merely that, but for the existence of the palace, the city
+would never have come into being; the palace still is the city in a
+sense in which we could hardly use those words of any other building
+elsewhere. Yet there are things to see at Spalato besides the palace.
+The museum is eminently a thing to see; but then it is within the
+palace, and moreover, though it is locally placed at Spalato, it
+belongs historically to Salona. There is a good deal of pretty
+Venetian work scattered up and down, both within the walls of
+Diocletian and without them. The piazza just outside the gate of iron,
+where the traveller will most likely seek his breakfast, his coffee,
+and his maraschino, would have some attractions in itself, if it did
+not lie just outside the gate of iron. The eye naturally turns to the
+gate, and to the little campanile perched on it; otherwise it might
+very fairly rest on the Venetian _loggia_, with its columns and their
+wide--yet not sprawling--pointed arches. It might rest none the less
+because the building so strongly suggests that class of English
+town-halls or market-houses of which I said something when speaking of
+Udine. The octagonal tower too, and the remains of the Venetian
+fortifications generally, are worth a glance. The difficulty is, in
+the home of Jovius, to give even a glance to anything but the works of
+Jovius.
+
+The mausoleum, now the once metropolitan church, and the temple, now
+the baptistery, have both of them become churches by accident. Besides
+these, the first impression is that Spalato has little to show in the
+ecclesiastical line. And further examination will not take away that
+impression as to quantity, though it will modify it somewhat as to
+quality. The little desecrated church which in 1875 I saw just within
+the palace walls, embodied in military buildings, I could not find in
+1881. I was told that it had been burned, and there certainly was a
+burned building thereabouts; but I did not feel quite sure that I had
+hit upon the right site, and whether the church that I was looking for
+might not still be there, imprisoned in some of the queer devices of
+Austrian occupation. But in 1881 I and my companion lighted by way of
+recompense on one most curious building which neither of us had seen
+in earlier visits. This is the little church of Saint Nicolas in the
+suburb on the slope of the hill. It is very small, of a rude kind of
+Byzantine type, with four of the very strangest columns I ever saw.
+Save that they have a mighty _entasis_, they really have more of an
+Egyptian cut than anything Greek, Roman, Gothic, or any of the forms
+to which Aryan eyes are used. The Franciscan church at the foot of the
+hill, with its cloister, would be worth a glance for its own sake; and
+it is worth much more than a glance on account of the precious
+sarcophagus which the cloister shelters. But this, like the objects
+in the museum, is an outlying fragment of Salona, to be talked of
+there. To the modern church on the other side of the city it would be
+only kindness to shut our eyes. But we cannot help looking at it; it
+aims at the style of the place, and clearly fancies itself to be
+Romanesque, if not Roman. We look at its tower, and we look back to
+the mighty campanile within the walls. Somehow the fourteenth century
+could adapt itself to the fourth; but the nineteenth cannot adapt
+itself to the fourteenth. Yet it is something for Spalato to say that
+it contains the noblest and the most ignoble of all towers that do
+profess and call themselves Romanesque.
+
+Eitelberger has well hit off the character of the three chief
+Dalmatian cities in three pithy epithets. Zara is _bureaukratisch_;
+Spalato is _bürgerlich_; Ragusa is _alt-aristokratisch_. The burghers
+seem to make more progress than either the foreign officials or the
+native patricians. Both better quarters and better dinners can be had
+at Spalato in 1881 than were to be had there in 1875. In 1881 we can
+walk on shore, while in 1877 boats were needed. And in 1881 the
+railway--a wonder in Dalmatia--was ready to carry us to Salona or even
+to Sebenico, but not to Traü. On the other hand in some other
+respects, if not Spalato, at least its foreign rulers, seem to advance
+backwards, if they advance at all. Those who dwell under the shadow of
+Apostolic Majesty are used to the daily suppression of such newspapers
+as venture to proclaim inconvenient truths. At Spalato that Apostolic
+and constitutional power has gone a step further by suppressing the
+municipality. With us, when a Stewart king suppressed an ancient
+corporation, he at least set up another of a new Stewart fashion. But
+at Spalato the _podestà_--the _potestas_ still lingers in Dalmatia,
+while in Italy only syndics are tolerated--and the other elders of the
+city seem to have become altogether things of the past, no less than
+Jovius and his Empire.
+
+
+
+
+SALONA.
+
+1875--1877--1881.
+
+
+The strictly classical student will perhaps be offended if any one, on
+reading the name at the head of this article, should ask him where the
+place is, and how its name is to be pronounced. Salona, he will
+answer, is in Dalmatia, and how can there be more than one way of
+sounding the _omega_ in the second syllable? And so far he will be
+right. The Salona of which we speak is in Dalmatia, and, as its most
+usual Greek forms are [Greek: Salôna] and [Greek: Salônai], there can
+be no doubt as to the rights of that particular _omega_. But those who
+have gone a little deeper into the geography of south-eastern Europe
+will know that, besides the Dalmatian Salona, there is another within
+the Greek kingdom, which has taken the place of the Lokrian Amphissa.
+As we write the names of the two, we make no difference between them,
+and we fear that most Englishmen will make as little difference in
+sounding the two names as in writing them. Yet, as Boughton in
+Northamptonshire and Boughton in Kent are, by those who have local
+knowledge, sounded in two different ways, so it is with the Lokrian
+and the Dalmatian Salona. [Greek: Sálona] and [Greek: Salôna] differ
+to the eye; and, among those with whom Greek is a living tongue, they
+differ to the ear also. But it is not with the Lokrian Sálona, but
+with the Dalmatian Salóna, that we are here concerned. We need not
+disturb the feelings of the late Bishop Monk, whose one notion of
+accentual reading was that those who follow it must "make some strange
+false quantities." The classical purist may make the _omega_ in the
+Dalmatian Salóna as long as he pleases. Only, if he pronounces the
+Lokrian Sálona in the same fashion, he will wound the ears of those to
+whom the chief notion of (so-called) quantitative reading is that
+those who follow it must make some strange false accents.
+
+At Salona we are in one of the subject lands of Venice, but we cannot
+say that we are in one of her subject cities. For Salona, as a city,
+had passed away before the Serene Republic bore rule on these coasts,
+in truth before the Serene Republic was, while the lagoons still
+sheltered only those few settlers whom the minister of Theodoric
+likened to waterfowl on their nests. As a city, it passed away as few
+cities have passed away. Others indeed have perished more thoroughly;
+of some the very sites have been lost; but there is no city whose name
+survives which has left so little trace of what it was in the time of
+its greatness. For it is not like those cities whose very name and
+memory have perished, which are wholly ruined or buried, which have no
+modern representatives, or whose modern representatives bear wholly
+different names. Salona is still an existing name, marked on at least
+the local map; but, instead of the head of Dalmatia, one of the great
+cities of the Roman Empire, a city which was said to have reached half
+the size and population of the New Rome itself, we find only a few
+scattered houses, which hardly deserve the name of a village. By the
+side of modern Salona, modern Aquileia looks flourishing, and modern
+Forum Julii might pass for a great city. For Aquileia is not wholly
+dead as long as the patriarchal basilica still stands, if only to
+discharge the functions of a village church. But at Salona the
+traveller hardly notices whether there be any church in use or not. Of
+modern objects the one which is most likely to catch his eye is the
+building which at least proclaims, in the name of "Caffè Diocleziano,"
+that Salona in her fall has not forgotten the man who commonly passes
+for her greatest son, who, according to some, was her second founder,
+and who, in any case, was her most renowned neighbour. By a strange
+piece of good luck, the citizen and sovereign of Salona who came back
+to spend his last days in his own land had reared at no great distance
+from her the house which, when Salona fell, stood ready to receive
+her inhabitants, and to take her place as a new city.
+
+There is a marked difference between the position of the older and
+that of the newer city. Spalato stands indeed on a bay, but it is a
+bay which, in that region of channels and islands, may pass for the
+open sea. Salona lay at the innermost point of the deep gulf which
+bears her own name, the gulf which forms one side of the peninsula on
+which Spalato stands, and which is shielded from the main sea by the
+island of Bua. It is curious to compare the real geography with the
+way in which the land and sea are laid down in the Peutinger Table,
+where Bua seems nearer to the coast of Italy than it is to Salona. Sir
+Gardner Wilkinson appositely quotes the lines of Lucan:--
+
+     "Qua maris Hadriaci longas ferit unda Salonas,
+     Et tepidum in molles Zephyros excurrit Iader."
+
+_Longæ_ certainly well expresses the way in which the city must have
+spread itself along the mouth of the river, and the northern side of
+the bay. And, more than this, the idea of length must have been deeply
+impressed on Salona by the long walls which, as we shall presently
+see, yoked the city to something or other beyond her own immediate
+defences. Salona, like most of the older cities, was not at all like
+one of our square _chesters_ which rose up at once out of some
+military necessity. The Dalmatian capital had grown up bit by bit,
+and its walls formed a circuit almost as irregular as that of Rome
+herself. The site was a striking one. As we set forth from the
+comparatively flourishing daughter to visit the fallen mother, the
+road from Spalato leads us over a slight hill, from the descent of
+which we look on the bay with its background of mountains, a view
+which brings before us two strongly contrasted sites of human
+habitation. In advance of the mountain range stands the stronghold of
+Clissa, so famous in later wars--a stronghold most tempting in a
+distant view, but utterly disappearing when we come near to it. The
+seat of the Uscocs has nothing to show but its site and an ugly
+fortress; yet the hill is well worth going up, for the site and the
+view from it, a most instructive geographical prospect over mainland,
+sea, and islands. We turn to our Imperial guide, and we find that
+[Greek: Kleisa] was so called because it kept the key of the passage
+over the mountains. It was the [Greek: Kleisoura], so called
+[Greek: dia to synkleiein tous dierchomenous ekeithen]. He has to
+tell us how it was taken by invaders, whom he speaks of as the Slaves
+who were called Avars ([Greek: Slaboi, hoi kai Abaroi kaloumenoi]).
+The ethnological confusion is like that of another self-styled
+Imperial personage, who thought that he could get at a Tartar by
+scratching a Russian. But in both cases the confusion is instructive,
+as pointing to the way in which Slavonic and Turanian nations were
+mixed up together, as allies and as enemies, in the history of these
+lands. Far below, on the bosom of the bay, a group of small islands
+are covered by a small village, which seems to float on the water, and
+which well deserves its name of _Piccola Venezia_. Between the height
+and the sea lay Salona, on a slight elevation gently sloping down to
+the water; here, as so often on the Dalmatian coast, it needs somewhat
+of an effort to believe that the water is the sea. To the right of the
+road, we see the ruins of the aqueduct which brought water to the
+house of Diocletian--an aqueduct lately repaired, and again set to
+discharge its ancient duties. Ancient fragments of one kind or another
+begin to line the road; an ancient bridge presently leads us across
+the main stream of the Giadro, Lucan's Iader, which we might rather
+have looked for at Zara. We mark to the right the marshy ground
+divided by the many channels of the river; we pass by a square castle
+with turreted corners, in which a mediæval archbishop tried to
+reproduce the wonder of his own city; and we at last find ourselves
+close by one of the gates of Salona, ready to begin our examination of
+the fallen city in due order.
+
+The city distinctly consists of two parts. A large suburb has at some
+time or another been taken in within the walls of the city. This is
+plain, because part of a cross wall with a gate still remains, which
+must have divided the space contained within the outer walls into two.
+This wall runs in a direction which, without professing to be
+mathematically correct, we may call north and south. That is, it runs
+from the hills down towards the bay or the river. Now, which was the
+elder part of the two? that to the east or that to the west? In other
+words, which represents the præ-Roman city, and which represents its
+enlargement in Roman times? By putting the question in this shape, we
+do not mean to imply that any part of the existing walls is of earlier
+than Roman date. The Roman city would arise on the site of the earlier
+settlement, and, as it grew and as its circuit was found too narrow,
+it would itself be further enlarged. The cross wall with the gate in
+it must of course have been at some time external; it marks the extent
+of the city at the time when it was built; but in which way has the
+enlargement taken place? It used to be thought that the eastern, the
+most inland division, was the elder, and that the city was extended to
+the west. And it certainly at first sight looks in favour of this view
+that, in the extreme north-west corner, an amphitheatre has clearly
+been worked into the wall, exactly in the same way in which the
+_Amphitheatrum Castrense_ at Rome is worked into the wall of Aurelian.
+How so keen an observer as Sir Gardner Wilkinson could have doubted
+about this building being an amphitheatre, still more how his doubts
+ended in his positively deciding that it was not, seems really
+wonderful. It has all the unmistakeable features of an amphitheatre,
+and we can only suppose that a good deal has been brought to light
+since Sir Gardner Wilkinson's visit, and that what is seen now was not
+so clearly to be seen then. As amphitheatres were commonly without the
+walls, this certainly looks as if the eastern part were the old city,
+and as if those who enlarged it to the west had made use of the
+amphitheatre in drawing out their new line of fortification, exactly
+as Aurelian in the like case made use of amphitheatre, aqueducts,
+anything that came conveniently in his way. But, on the other hand,
+Professor Glavinivc, whom we have already referred to when speaking
+of Spalato, and whose keener observation has come usefully in the wake
+of the praiseworthy researches of Dr. Carrara, has pointed out with
+unanswerable force that the gate has two towers on its eastern side,
+showing that that side was external, and that therefore the western
+part must be the older and the eastern the addition. This is evidence
+which it is impossible to get over. Clearly then the space to the west
+of it was once the whole city, and the far greater space to the east
+once lay beyond the walls. The gate must have been a grand one; but
+unluckily its arches have perished. There was a central opening,
+along which the wheel-tracks may still be traced, and a passage for
+foot-passengers on each side. The large rectangular blocks of
+limestone of which it is built have been encrusted in a singular way
+with some natural formation, which might almost be mistaken either for
+plaster or for some peculiarity of the stone itself. In the northern
+wall of the eastern part is an inscription commemorating the building
+or repair of the wall in the time of the Antonines. This by itself
+would not be conclusive; for the wall might very well have been
+rebuilt in their day and the city might have been enlarged to the west
+in a still later time. But the position of the gate is decisive, and
+the position of the amphitheatre is a difficulty that can easily be
+got over. If, besides the great enlargement to the east, we also
+suppose an enlargement to the west which would take the amphitheatre
+within the city walls, this will be quite enough.
+
+We may rule then that the Illyrian city, the earlier Roman city, stood
+to the west of the cross wall, and that it was enlarged at some time
+earlier than the reigns of the Antonines by taking in an eastern
+suburb larger than the original town. The walls of both parts may be
+traced through a large part of their extent. The outer gate to the
+east was flanked by octagonal towers, and both a square and an octagon
+tower may be traced near the north-east corner. But the most
+remarkable thing about the walls of Salona is that, besides the walls
+of the city itself, there are long walls, like those of Athens and
+Megara, reaching from the western side of the city for a mile and more
+nearly along the present road to Traü. They have not been traced to
+the end; but there can be no doubt that they were built to make long
+Salona yet longer by joining the town to some further point of the
+coast. Nothing is more natural; the water of the bay by Salona itself
+is very shallow; when the city became one of the great maritime
+stations of the world, it was an obvious undertaking to plant a dock
+at some point of the coast where the water was deeper. And to one who
+comes to Salona almost fresh from the hill-cities of central Italy,
+from the strongholds of Volscians, Hernicans, and Old-Latins, from
+Cora and Signia and Alatrium, it becomes matter of unfeigned surprise
+to find Dalmatian antiquaries speaking of these walls as "Cyclopean."
+The name "Cyclopean," though as old as Euripides, is as dangerous as
+"Pelasgian" or "Druid;" but, if it means anything, it must mean the
+first form of wall-building, the irregular stones heaped together,
+such as we see in the oldest work at Cora and Signia. Here we have
+nothing of the kind. The blocks are very large, and the outer surface
+is not smooth; but all of them are carefully cut to a rectangular
+shape, and they are laid with great regularity. There seems no kind of
+temptation to attribute them to any date earlier than the Roman
+conquest of Illyricum. The style of building is simply that which is
+made natural by the kind of stone. And the same kind of construction,
+though with smaller blocks, is that which prevails throughout the
+walls of Salona, except where later repairs have clearly been made.
+This has happened with the outer wall to the west, where some earlier
+fragments have even been built in. Otherwise, by far the greater part
+of the walls, towers, and gates of Salona, not forgetting a gate which
+has been made out in the long walls themselves, all belong to one
+general style of masonry.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Within the walls of Salona the general effect is somewhat strange. The
+city is pierced by the road from Spalato to Traü; in these later times
+it has been further pierced by the railway--strange object in
+Dalmatia, strangest of all at Salona--which starts from Spalato, but
+which does not find its way to Traü. The greater part of the space is
+still covered with vineyards and olive-trees; systematic digging would
+bring a vast deal to light; but a good deal positively has been made
+out already. The amphitheatre has been already spoken of; the road
+cuts through the theatre. But, as becomes the history of the city, the
+greater part of the discoveries belong to Christian times, to the
+days when the bishopric of Salona was a post great enough to be
+employed to break the fall of deposed emperors. But we may doubt
+whether the head church of Salona, the church which held the episcopal
+chair of Glycerius, has yet been brought to light.
+
+Near the north-western corner of the eastern division of the city the
+foundation of a Christian baptistery has been uncovered. The site of
+the baptistery, according to all rule, must be near to the site of the
+great church of the city. Now the baptistery stands near the wall; is
+it fanciful to think that at Salona, as well as at Rome, it was not
+thought prudent in the earliest days of the establishment of
+Christianity to build churches in the more central and prominent parts
+of the city? The baptistery of Salona keeps--the great basilica must
+therefore have kept--under the shadow of the wall of the extended
+city, exactly as the Lateran basilica and baptistery do at Rome. Of
+the baptistery it is easy to study the plan, as the foundations and
+the bases of the columns, both of the building itself and the portico
+in front of it, are plainly to be seen. Many of their splendid
+capitals are preserved among the rich treasures of the museum at
+Spalato. These are of a Composite variety, in which the part of the
+volute is played by griffins, while the lower part of the capital is
+rich with foliage of a Byzantine type. West of the baptistery, but
+hardly placed in any relation to it, are the remains of a small
+church, which seems to have been a square, with columns to the east
+and an apse to the north. Whatever this building was, it surely can
+never have been the great church of Salona. That must have been a
+basilica of the first class; and we may hope that future diggings may
+bring that to light also. But outside the city to the north,
+successive diggings have made precious discoveries in the way of
+Christian burying-places and churches. Since the last researches have
+been made, it is perfectly clear that here, outside the walls, like
+the basilicas of the apostles at Rome, there stood a church of
+considerable size, that it had supplanted a smaller predecessor, and
+that it had another smaller neighbour hard by. It is now easy--but it
+is only very lately that it has become easy--to see nearly the whole
+outline of a church measuring--speaking roughly--about 120 feet long.
+It ranged therefore with the smaller rather than the larger basilicas
+of Rome. It had two rows of large columns, which, from their nearness
+to one another, look as if they had supported an entablature rather
+than arches, with a transept, with the arch of triumph opening into
+it, and the apse beyond, to the east. There are also, in front of the
+arch of triumph, foundations which look most temptingly like those of
+_cancelli_, like those of Saint Clement's at Rome, but which seem too
+narrow for such a purpose. It is also plain, from the base of a
+smaller column at a lower level, that this comparatively large church
+was built on the remains of an earlier one. And this is borne out by
+the discovery of pavements at more than one level, which supported
+sarcophagi, which are still to be seen, and of which an inscription
+shows that the lowest level was of the time of Theodosius the Second
+and Valentinian the Third. This thrusts on the building of the upper
+and greater church to a later time, surely not earlier than the reign
+of Justinian. It must therefore have still been almost in its
+freshness when the last blow fell on Salona. And at such a time we can
+better take in the full force of the inscription which stood over the
+west door: "Dominus noster propitius esto reipublicæ Romanæ." The
+church, it should be noted, has been, at some time or other before it
+was quite swept away, patched up or applied to some other use. A later
+wall runs across the western face of the transept. An endless field
+for guessing is hereby opened; but it is more prudent not to enter
+upon it.
+
+Another smaller ruined church stands close by, with its apse pointing
+to the north. This and the eastern part of the larger church are
+filled with sarcophagi of all kinds and sizes, reminding us of the
+newly-opened basilica of Saint Petronilla by the Appian Way. Among
+these is the tomb of an early _Chorepiscopus_. A crowd of
+architectural fragments are scattered around, among which one splendid
+Corinthian capital bears witness to the magnificence of the upper
+church. But the real wealth of Salona, both sepulchral and
+architectural, is not to be looked for in Salona itself, but in the
+museum at Spalato. There are a crowd of superb tombs, pagan and
+Christian, and the splendid capitals from the baptistery. There are
+stores of inscriptions, Latin and Greek, which would make the place
+where they are preserved a place of no small interest, even if that
+place were not Spalato. But one sarcophagus of pagan date still stays
+in its place, a little way beyond the city, because, being hewn in the
+limestone rock, it could not be taken away. This is that which is
+described by Sir Gardner Wilkinson, which has some of the exploits of
+Hêraklês carved on its one face, and which has been so oddly changed
+in modern times into the altar of the canonized Pope Saint Caius. For
+he, like the Emperor under whom he suffered, passes for a native of
+Salona. And a no less precious sarcophagus of Christian days is
+preserved in the cloister of the Franciscan church at Spalato. This
+represents the crossing of the Red Sea. The Pharaoh looks very much as
+if he were in a Roman triumphal chariot, trampling a genius or two of
+the waters under his wheels. His warriors follow, looking, according
+to the eyes with which we look at them, like Romans in military dress
+or like Albanians in the immemorial fustanella. The Aryan mind is
+offended at seeing men of another continent clothed in such a very
+European garb; it is for Egyptologers to say whether the sculpture is
+correct. The sea is very narrow; it swallows up the Egyptian chariots
+with great force, and the rescued Hebrews stand on the other side,
+Miriam just about to begin her hymn of victory. The subject of the
+sculpture is obvious; but it seems that nobody understood it till it
+was expounded by an exalted lady at that royal visit of 1818 which at
+Spalato is commemorated oftener than enough. The expounder was the
+wife of the man who had once been the last successor of Diocletian and
+Augustus; whether his queen had any claim to rank either as a
+successor of Prisca and Livia or as the doubtful mother-in-law of a
+conqueror from Ajaccio, we have not looked in any pedigree-book to
+find out. One would really have thought that the loosing of the knot
+was so easy that it might have been unravelled by the hand of a
+subject; but a book which we have before us by a local antiquary goes
+off into raptures at the surprising keenness of Imperial, Royal, and
+Apostolic eyes.
+
+The chapel of Saint Caius, with its heathenish altar, brings our
+thoughts back to the long walls below it, the walls which yoked the
+ancient Salona to the deeper sea. It must not be forgotten that, in
+the days of its greatness, Salona was one of the chief ports of the
+Hadriatic, the greatest on its own side of it. After shifting to and
+fro from one port to another, that position has come back, if not to
+Salona itself, yet to its modern representative. If we distinguish the
+Hadriatic from the Gulf of Trieste, Spalato is undoubtedly its chief
+port; but the smallness of Spalato, as compared with the greatness of
+ancient Salona, is a speaking historical lesson. We see the difference
+between the place in Europe which is held by the Illyrian lands now
+and the place which they held in the days of the Roman peace. Then
+Salona was one of the chief cities of the Roman world, placed on one
+of the most central sites in the Roman world, the chief port of one of
+the great divisions of the Empire, and one of the main highways
+between its eastern and western halves. Such could be the position of
+a Dalmatian city when Dalmatia had a civilized mainland to the back of
+it. Salona therefore kept up its position as long as the Empire still
+kept any strength on its Illyrian frontier. It played its part in both
+the civil wars. Cæsar himself enlarges on the strength of the
+city--"oppidum et loci natura et colle munitum." In after-times it was
+a special object of the regard of its own great citizen, who took up
+his abode so near to its neighbourhood. According to Constantino
+Porphyrogenitus, Salona was pretty well rebuilt by Diocletian. Its
+importance went on in the time of transition, as is witnessed by the
+growth of its ecclesiastical buildings, and by the high position held
+by its bishopric. Like the rest of the neighbouring lands, it passed
+under the dominion, first of Odoacer and then of Theodoric, and it was
+the first place which was won back to the Empire in the wars of
+Justinian. Lost again and won back again, it appears throughout those
+wars as the chief point of embarcation for the Imperial armies on
+their voyages to Italy. This was the last century of its greatness; in
+the next century the modern history of Illyria begins. The Slaves were
+moving, and the Avars were moving with them. Salona fell into the
+hands of these last barbarians; it was ruined and pillaged, and sank
+to the state in which it has remained till our own time. Since the
+seventh century Salona has ceased to rank among the cities of the
+earth, but the house which had been raised by its greatest citizen
+stood ready hard by to supply a shelter to some at least of its
+homeless inhabitants. Things were wholly turned about on the bay of
+Salona and on the neighbouring peninsula. Down to the days of
+Heraclius, Salona had been a great city, with the vastest house that
+one man ever reared standing useless in its neighbourhood. From his
+day onwards the house grew into a city, and the city became a petty
+village, where, of all the places along that historic coast, the
+traveller finds least to disturb him in the pious contemplation of
+ruins. The only danger is that his meditations may be broken in upon
+by sellers of coins and scraps of all ages, dates, and values. Coins
+at Salona hardly need the process once known at the Mercian Dorchester
+as "going a-Cæsaring." Cæsars seem to be picked up from under and off
+the ground with much less trouble than hunting for truffles. And even
+he who is no professed numismatist or collector of gems will be
+pleased to give a few _soldi_, perhaps even for a very clear image and
+superscription of "Constantinus Junior Nob[ilissimus] C[æsar]," much
+more for any image and superscription of Jovius himself. It may have
+neither rarity nor value in the eyes of the numismatically learned;
+but it is something to carry away from Salona itself the head of the
+foremost local worthy in Salona's long annals.
+
+
+
+
+TRAÜ.
+
+1875--1877--1881.
+
+
+The visitor to Spalato and Salona should, if possible, not fail to pay
+a visit to Traü. To most readers the very name will doubtless be
+strange. Yet Tragurium is an old city, a city old enough to be named
+by Polybios, to say nothing of later Greek and Latin writers. As in
+countless other cases, many readers may have passed by the name
+without any notice at all; others may have turned to the map, and,
+having once found Tragurium, may have presently forgotten that
+Tragurium was anywhere recorded. The case may be different with those
+who carry on their studies so far as to have dealings with the
+Imperial topographer. In his pages the name of the city has got
+lengthened into [Greek: Tetrangourion], and we are told that it was so
+called [Greek: dia to einai auto mikron dikên angouriou]. We are not
+ashamed to confess that the word [Greek: angouriou] gave us no meaning
+whatever, and that we had to turn to our dictionary to find that
+[Greek: angourion] means a water-melon. But where the point of
+likeness is between the town of Traü and a water-melon, and why the
+name should have been lengthened, so as to suggest, if anything, the
+notion of four water-melons, we are as much in the dark as before.
+Those therefore who have made acquaintance with the city in the shape
+of [Greek: Tetrangourion] will have a chance of keeping it in their
+minds. But with those who light only either on Tragurium or on Traü,
+it will most likely happen as most commonly happens with places which
+play no great part in general history. The name passes away as a mere
+name, till something happens to clothe it with a special meaning.
+Salona the parent and Spalato the child are names which never can
+become meaningless to any one who has a decent knowledge of the
+history of the world. But the name of Tragurium, Traü, will probably
+always be purely meaningless, save to those whom anything may have led
+to take a special interest in Dalmatian matters. Tragurium has a
+history--no place is without one--but its history is purely local and
+Dalmatian. As far as one can venture to judge, the great course of
+human affairs would have been much the same if Tragurium had never
+become a city. But there it stands, and, as it stands, its position,
+its buildings, even its local history, combine to give it no small
+interest. They make it no contemptible appendage even to the famous
+spots in its immediate neighbourhood. Whatever was its origin,
+Tragurium became a Roman town, and it was one of those places on the
+Dalmatian coast which so long and steadily clave to their allegiance
+to the Eastern Cæsars. As the Byzantine power declined, the town was
+disputed between the Kings of Hungary and the commonwealth of Venice,
+and once at least it is said to have felt the hand of Saracen
+plunderers. By each of the Christian powers by which it was disputed
+it was won and lost more than once, till it finally became Venetian in
+1420. Perhaps the point of greatest interest in these dates is that
+Traü was a Hungarian possession at the time of the building of its
+cathedral church in the thirteenth century. It is said to have points
+of likeness to other great Hungarian churches of the same date.
+
+The approach to Traü is a speaking commentary on the state of things
+in days when no one but the lord of a private fortress could be safe
+anywhere except within a walled town. The road from Spalato to Traü
+goes through Salona, through the heart of the ruined city, as does the
+railway which the traveller may use for part of his journey. The
+railway turns off; the road keeps on alongside of the bay, with the
+water on one side and the mountains on the other. This road passes
+through the district of the _castelli_, forts with surrounding
+villages, which various lords, spiritual and temporal, held of the
+Serene Republic by a feudal tenure. Things were under the oligarchy of
+Venice as they were under the democracy of Athens. A private fortress
+within either city was unheard of; neither Demos nor the Council of
+Ten would for a moment have endured the existence of such towers as we
+still see at Rome and at Bologna. But in the outlying possessions of
+either commonwealth greater licence was allowed. Alkibiadês had his
+private forts in the Thracian Chersonêsos, and a string of Venetian
+nobles and subjects of the Republic were allowed to have their private
+forts along the shores of the bay of Salona. The points which they
+occupied still remain as small towns and villages, some of them with
+their little havens on the lake-like sea, where the traveller whom the
+railway has forsaken may haply light on a small steamer to take him
+on. But none of those among the _castelli_ which we can ourselves
+speak of from our own knowledge possess any architectural interest.
+When at last we reach Traü, we see further how needful it was, even in
+the case of a walled city, to plant it in the position best suited for
+defence. Traü, now at least, belongs to the class of island cities. At
+the point where the large island of Bua comes nearest to the mainland,
+a small island lies between it and the shore, leaving only a narrow
+channel on each side, spanned in each case by a bridge. But the
+language of the Emperor who likens the city to a water-melon might
+suggest the idea that the site was once, not insular, but peninsular.
+Constantine places his [Greek: Tetrangourion] on a small island, but
+the small island has a neck like a bridge which joins it to the
+mainland ([Greek: mikron esti nêsion en tê thalassê, echon kai
+trachêlon heôs tês gês stenôtaton dikên gephyriou, en hô dierchontai
+hoi katoikountes es to auto kastron]). This somewhat contradictory way
+of speaking sounds as if, as in the case of some other peninsular
+cities, a narrow isthmus had been cut through. In the Peutinger Table
+too, "Ragurio" is made distinctly peninsular. Now at least the
+likeness of a bridge is exchanged for the reality; the island is an
+island, and on this island is built the main part of the city of Traü.
+A small part only spreads itself on to Bua, where it begins to climb
+the hills, though it goes up only a very little way, by paths almost
+as rugged as though they were in Montenegro. This outlying part, which
+contains two churches, may pass as a suburb, a _Peraia_; for Bua may
+reckon as a mainland when compared with the neighbouring islet, and
+the real mainland of Dalmatia seems to have been carefully avoided by
+the builders of Tragurium. The view in Wheler would give no one any
+idea of the size of Bua, any more than the Peutinger Table would give
+any idea of its position. But Wheler's view well brings out the
+relative positions of mainland, islet, and island, and it shows how
+strongly Traü was fortified in his day. Such a site as this was a
+valuable one in days when security was the main object; but it hardly
+tends to prosperity in modern times, and Tragurium must be reckoned
+among the cities whose day is past. While Spalato is putting on the
+likeness of a busy modern town, Traü has nothing to show but its
+ancient memories.
+
+Traü, as we now see it, is indeed an old-world place. Even the
+new-made railway, which has appeared long since our first visit, and
+which startles the quiet of Salona and some of the _castelli_, keeps
+away from the city of the four water-melons. Strangers come but
+seldom, and they are remembered when they do come; a visitor showing
+himself again after some years is greeted in friendly guise as "one of
+the three Englishmen with red beards." And the city looks like one of
+the ends of the world. Owing to the peculiar position of Traü, the
+fashion of narrow streets, common to all the Dalmatian towns, is here
+carried to an extreme point. Indeed the crooked alleys through which
+the visitor has to thread his way, and the dark arches and vaults
+under which he has to pass, give the place a Turkish rather than a
+Venetian look. The explorer of Traü might almost fancy himself at
+Trebinje. One wonders how the Tragurians manage to live; it is only on
+the quay and in the open place by the cathedral that there seems room
+to breathe. Yet, uninviting as the streets of Traü are in their
+general effect, they are far from being void of objects of interest.
+As elsewhere in Dalmatia, we ever and anon light on ornamental
+doorways and windows. In Traü some of these show better forms than
+those of the familiar Venetian Gothic; one or two windows are in
+style, whatever they may be in date, genuine Romanesque. Of the
+Venetian defences some considerable portions remain; close by the
+water, at the south-western point of the smaller island, is a castle
+bearing the badge of Saint Mark, whose chief feature is a tower of
+irregular octagonal shape, singularly and ingeniously vaulted within.
+Of civic buildings the chief is the Venetian _loggia_, now dirty and
+uncared for. But it still keeps at its east end what at first sight
+seems like an altar, dedicated, not to the Evangelist but to his lion,
+but which really marks the judgment-seat of the representative of the
+Republic in Traü. The building was repaired over and over again, the
+last renovation dating early in the seventeenth century; but it keeps
+a colonnade, which, whenever it was put together, was put together out
+of materials of far earlier date. Some of the capitals seem to be
+late; but there is one of true Corinthian form, which seems closely
+akin to those in Diocletian's peristyle; another capital is covered
+with rich foliage of a type rather Byzantine than classical. And on
+either side of the _loggia_, forming a strange contrast to one
+another, one of them utterly hidden from view, the other proclaiming
+itself as the main ornament of the town, stand the two most important
+ecclesiastical buildings of Traü.
+
+  [Illustration: CATHEDRAL, TRAÜ.]
+
+The chief architectural ornament of the city is undoubtedly the
+formerly cathedral, now only collegiate, church. This is a work of the
+thirteenth century, with a stately bell-tower of the fourteenth or
+fifteenth. But the tower of Traü is no detached campanile, such as we
+have seen at Zara and Spalato. It forms part of the building; it
+occupies its north-western corner, and was designed to be one of a
+pair, after the usage of more northern lands. The inscription on the
+southern doorway gives 1215 as its date; one on the great western
+doorway names 1240, and adds the name of Raduanus as its artist.
+Looked at from the outside, the work is of the best and most finished
+kind of Italian Romanesque; and we have here, what is by no means
+uncommon in Dalmatia, an example of the late retention of the forms of
+that admirable style. The tower palpably belongs to a later date, as
+it shows the distinct forms of the Venetian Gothic, though, as usual
+in Dalmatia, in a not unpleasing form. Eitelberger quotes an
+inscription which gives the date as 1321, while in his text he speaks
+of it as 1421, just after the Venetian capture of the town. And the
+course of Dalmatian architecture is so capricious, forms are found at
+dates when one would so little have looked for them, that we really
+cannot undertake to decide between the two. The inside of the church
+is striking, with its round arches resting on massive square piers of
+German rather than Italian character, and with its clerestory and
+vault, in which the round and pointed arch are struggling for the
+mastery. By a freak almost more unaccountable than the red rags of
+Zara, the piers have very lately been taught to discharge the perhaps
+useful, but rather incongruous, function of a catalogue of the bishops
+of Traü, bishops whose succession has come to an end. The pulpit, the
+stalls, and other fittings, are also striking in many ways, and the
+triapsidal east end shows us a rather simple Romanesque style in all
+its purity. But the glory of Traü is at the other end. The stately
+portico veils the still more stately western doorway, in which, if the
+purity of the architectural style is somewhat forsaken, we forgive it
+for the richness and variety of its sculpture. The scriptural scenes
+in the tympanum, the animal forms, the statues of Adam and Eve, the
+crouching turbaned figures, the strange blending together of sculpture
+and architectural forms, make together a wonderful whole, none the
+less wonderful because it is clear that everything is not exactly in
+its right place, but that there has been a change or removal of some
+kind at some time. The details of this splendid doorway, and of the
+church in general, must be studied in the elaborate memoir of
+Eitelberger, which, with its illustrations, goes further than most
+memoirs of the kind to make the building really intelligible at a
+distance. The turbaned figures are far older than the appearance of
+the Ottoman in the neighbourhood of Traü, or indeed in any part of
+Europe. Are they Saracens whose forms record the memories of some
+returning Crusader? Or are we to believe that the Morlacchi used the
+turban as their head-dress before the Ottoman came?
+
+But the _duomo_ is not all that Traü has to show in the way of
+churches. On the other side of the Venetian loggia stands, hidden
+among other buildings, a church which is in its way of equal interest
+with its greater neighbour, which certainly shows us a purer form of
+Romanesque. This is the little desecrated church of Saint Martin, now
+called Saint Barbara, one of those domical buildings on a small scale
+of which we have seen other varieties at Zara and at Spalato. Its
+height and the tall stilts on its columns would, if the building were
+cleared out, make it one of the most striking instances of its style
+and scale. Nearer to the water, south-east from the cathedral, is
+another small Romanesque church, almost as striking without as Saint
+Barbara is within. This is the small church of Saint John Baptist,
+which, except that it has a square east end, might pass for an almost
+typical Romanesque church on a small scale. Nearly opposite to Saint
+Barbara is the most striking house in Traü, with an open galleried
+court; and not very far off, hidden in the narrow streets, is the
+Benedictine monastery of Saint Nicolas, the foundation of the local
+saint John Orsini in 1064. The points to be noticed are not in the
+church but in the adjoining buildings. There, besides some pretty
+Venetian windows and doorways, is an arcade which looks as if it were
+of genuine Romanesque date, though perhaps hardly so old as the saint
+himself. A walk outside the walls in the direction of the Venetian
+castle leads to other churches, one of which, attached to a house of
+Dominican nuns, surprises the visitor, like the ruined chapel of the
+Gaetani by the tomb of Cæcilia Metella, by its almost English look. A
+few hours may well be spent in examining the antiquities of this
+strange little island city, and in taking in the varied views of land
+and sea which are to be had alike from the lofty bell-tower and from
+the higher ground on Bua. The journey back again shows us objects
+which have become familiar to us, but which are now seen in a reverse
+order. We mark the ever shifting outlines of the hills, the islands
+and the bay which they surround, the ruins of fallen Salona, Clissa
+on its peak, the stream of Giadro, the aqueduct of Diocletian, till we
+again mount and descend the little hill on the neck of the isthmus,
+and find ourselves once more under the shadow of the palace-walls of
+Spalato and of the bell-tower which soars so proudly over them.
+
+  [Illustration: SAINT JOHN BAPTIST, TRAÜ.]
+
+
+
+
+SPALATO TO CATTARO.
+
+
+
+
+SPALATO TO CATTARO.
+
+1875.
+
+
+     [I have not thought it needful to strike out of this paper a
+     few allusions to the times when it was written, the early
+     days of the revolt in Herzegovina with which the war of
+     1875-1878 began.]
+
+As Spalato must be looked on as the great object of a Dalmatian
+voyage, it may also be looked on as its centre. After Spalato the
+coast scenery changes its character in a marked way. Hitherto hills,
+comparatively low and utterly barren, come down straight to the sea,
+while the higher mountains are seen only farther inland. From this
+point the great mountains themselves come nearer to the water. We are
+thus reminded of the change in the political boundary, how from this
+point the Hadriatic territory of Austria and of Christendom becomes
+narrower and narrower, till we reach the stage when the old dominion
+of Ragusa becomes a mere fringe between the sea and the Turk, fenced
+in from the former land of Saint Mark by the two points at either end
+where the less dangerous infidel was allowed to spread himself to the
+actual sea-board. But as the mountains come nearer to the sea, a
+fringe of cultivation, narrower or wider, now spreads itself between
+them and the water. Small towns and villages, detached houses, land
+tilled with the vine and the olive, now skirt the bases of the
+mountains, in marked contrast to the mere stony hills of the earlier
+part of the voyage. The islands too among whose narrow channels we
+have to make our way change their character also. After Spalato,
+instead of mere uninhabited rocks, we come to islands of greater size,
+some of them thirty or forty miles long, islands several of which have
+a distinct place in history, islands containing towns and cities, and
+which are still seats of industry and cultivation. These are the
+islands which give such a marked character to the map of this part of
+the Hadriatic, and they form the most marked feature in the fourth
+day's voyage of the course from Trieste to Cattaro. The endless
+islands which we have seen along the northern part of the Dalmatian
+shore, bare and uninhabited rocks as many of them are, are without
+history. Some of the Croatian islands indeed have somewhat of a
+history; but with these we are not dealing; the barren archipelago of
+Zara could never have had any tale to tell. First we pass through the
+channel which divides the mainland from the large island of Brazza,
+distinguished at a glance by its solid shape from its endless long
+and narrow fellows. Dreary and rocky as it seems, it is the most
+populous and industrious of the group, and at one point of its coast,
+San Pietro, the steamer makes a short halt. So it does at the
+picturesque little port of Almissa on the mainland, a nest of houses
+and trees at the mountain's foot, standing so invitingly as to make
+the traveller wish for a longer sojourn. Then comes Makarska, where we
+are allowed a short glimpse of the little hill-side town, smaller and
+more Dalmatian than any that we have yet seen. Presently we plunge
+into the full intricacies of the Dalmatian seas. We pass through the
+narrow channel which parts the mainland from the eastern promontory of
+the long, slender island of Lesina--the _awl_. Here we come within old
+Hellenic memories. We are now within the full range of Greek
+colonization, though of Greek colonization only in its latest stage.
+Issa, now Lissa, Black Korkyra, now Curzola, amongst the islands, and
+Epidauros on the mainland, were all of them undoubted Greek
+settlements. But Issa and Pharos, the only ones to which we can fix a
+positive date, were colonized only in the first half of the fourth
+century, and Dionysios of Syracuse had a hand in their colonization.
+Lesina is Pharos, the ancient colony of the Ægæan Paros, whose name
+still lives on Slavonic lips in the shape of _Far_ or _Hvar_. It
+plays a considerable part in the history of Polybios, as the island of
+that Dêmêtrios whose crooked policy formed an important element in the
+affairs of mankind in the days when Greek and Roman history began to
+flow together into one stream. These islands form one of the highways
+by which Rome advanced to the possession of Illyricum, Macedonia, and
+Greece. But we see neither the ancient nor the modern city, neither
+Pharos nor Lesina; we merely skirt the island to find ourselves in the
+channel of Narenta. That name suggests yet another pirate power, later
+than that of Tenta and Dêmêtrios, that power of the old Pagania against
+which Venice, in her early days, had to wage so hard a struggle. We
+seem to be pressing on between the mainland and a long, slender,
+mountainous island; but our course suddenly turns; the seeming island
+is no other than the long peninsula of Sabioncello, a peninsula not
+Venetian but Ragusan. We get merely a glimpse down the gulf, at the
+end of which Turkish Klek once divided the possessions of the two
+maritime commonwealths, and still, nominally at least, breaks the
+continuity of Austrian dominion. But, if the peninsula was Ragusan, a
+narrow channel only parts it from an island which was a chief seat of
+the power of the rival city. We skirt the western horn of Sabioncello,
+and another turn leads us through the channel--narrower than any
+through which we have passed--which divides it from Curzola, Black
+Korkyra of old. We stop for a little while off the island capital, the
+fortress of Curzola, which was to the declining navy of Venice what
+Pola now is to the rising navy of Austria. This channel passed, we
+come to the last of the great islands. For miles and miles we skirt
+the Ragusan island of Meleda, long, slender, with its endless hills of
+no great height standing up like the teeth of a saw--a true sierra in
+miniature. Here volumes of scriptural controversy are open to us. As
+we are not tossed up and down in Hadria, but are floating along as on
+a lake or a river, we muse on the claims which all local and some
+independent authorities have set up for Illyrian Meleda, as against
+Phoenician Malta, to be the true seat of the shipwreck of Saint Paul.
+But Meleda can have its claims admitted only on the condition of being
+shut out from Hellenic fellowship, even though its barbarians were of
+a mood which led them to show no little kindness to strangers. It is
+hard also to understand how those who were making their way from
+Meleda to any point of Italy could have any possible business at
+Syracuse. At all events, with Meleda the island history ends, though
+the island scenery does not end as yet. Several islands, smaller than
+these more famous ones, but not so small as they look on the map,
+fringe the coast till we enter the haven of Gravosa, the port of
+modern Ragusa, with its thickly wooded shores, a marked contrast to
+the bleakness and barrenness of so many other points of the Dalmatian
+coast.
+
+Ragusa, the city of argosies, the commonwealth which so long was the
+rival of Venice and which never stooped to be her subject, so
+thoroughly suggests maritime enterprise by her very name, that we are
+surprised to find that Ragusa herself has ceased to be a port of any
+moment. Her mighty walls, her castles, her more distant forts, still
+rise out of the sea, and the mightier wall of mountains just behind
+her still fence off her land, as the narrowest rim of Christendom,
+from the land of the infidel beyond. All this is as it was; modern
+military art has added to the defences of Ragusa, but it has not taken
+away her elder bulwarks. But her haven is now of the very smallest,
+and admits only vessels of the smallest size. The modern haven is at
+Gravosa, and the road which Sir Gardner Wilkinson describes as so well
+kept, but as useless because no carriages went upon it, is still as
+good and more useful. At this moment Ragusa bears the honourable
+character of a city of refuge for the unhappy ones who seek shelter
+under the government of a civilized state from the barbarian rule
+beyond the mountains. Her suburbs are crowded with women and children
+flying from the seat of war, for whom the charity both of the state
+and of private persons is doing much, but whose sufferings--as one who
+has seen them can bear witness--cry for the sympathy and help of all
+who have hearts and who have not invested in Turkish bonds. As we pass
+by and look on the city--no city surely fronts the sea more proudly
+than Ragusa--as we turn round to the island of La Croma, lying off
+what was Ragusa's harbour, the island which suggests the names of
+Richard of Poitou and of Maximilian of Mexico--the scene is so
+peaceful and lovely, the warlike defences look such mere things of the
+past, that it is hard indeed to believe that, just beyond the mountain
+barrier, warfare is going on in its bitterest and yet its noblest
+form--the struggle of an oppressed people to cast off the yoke of
+ages. This form of speech may grate somewhat on the received phrases
+of Western diplomacy; but, however we might be bound to write in
+England, in Dalmatia--so close to the facts--we may be allowed to
+write as all men in Dalmatia think and speak. We pass La Croma, and
+our time among the islands is over; no other that can be called more
+than a mere rock meets us between Ragusa and Cattaro. At last we enter
+the loveliest of inlets of the sea, the _Bocche di Cattaro_. A narrow
+strait leads us between points of land which were once Ragusan on the
+west and Venetian to the east, into the winding gulf, girded by
+mountains, and now for nearly its whole extent fringed by towns,
+villages, houses, cultivation in every form--a land where the
+sublimity of the rugged mountain has come into close partnership with
+the loveliness of the smiling dwelling-places of man. As we pass
+through the strait, a piece of barren mountain to the left marks the
+second piece of territory where the Turk was allowed to isolate the
+two commonwealths, and where, in name, his dominion still reaches to
+the shore of the lovely gulf. We pass on, as on the smoothest of
+lakes, round mountain headlands, with their rich fringe of life, by
+towns and villages, many of which have their own local history both in
+earlier and later times, till we reach the most distant of Dalmatian
+cities, Cattaro at the innermost point of her own unrivalled _Bocche_.
+Hemmed in between the mountains and the sea--though it seems almost
+strange to apply the word sea to the gentle waters of her
+harbour--with the mountains again rising on the other side, Cattaro
+seems indeed to be the end of its own world. Yet in the days of
+Venetian greatness, Cattaro was far indeed from being the last point
+of the dominion of Saint Mark. Climb the heights above the city, and
+the eye stretches far away along the Albanian coast, a coast along
+which many a city and island once bowed to the winged lion, till in
+fancy we track our course, as by stepping stones along the sea, to
+distant Crete and to more distant Cyprus.
+
+Cattaro, the end of the outward journey, will also be the beginning of
+the journey back again. The little town, with its narrow paved
+streets, its little piazze, still keeps up the same Venetian tradition
+as elsewhere. And the walls of the fortress climbing far up the
+mountain show how firm was the grasp of the ruling city over its
+subjects. But at Cattaro and throughout the Bocche another feature
+strikes us which we do not see either at Spalato or at Ragusa. The
+churches do not all belong to one denomination; the Eastern, the
+Orthodox, Church, holds its own in this corner of Venetian or Austrian
+rule at least as firmly as its Latin rival. The fact is, what is
+forced upon our notice at every step, that, the further we go along
+this coast, the Italian element dies out and the Slavonic element
+grows. It is so in language, in dress, in everything. Zara, Spalato,
+Ragusa, Cattaro, each city is less and less Italian according to its
+geographical position. The inland country is, of course, Slave
+throughout. But at Cattaro the Slave element distinctly predominates,
+even in the town; Italian can hardly be said to be more than the best
+known among foreign languages. The pistol and yataghan worn in the
+belt, a general costume essentially the same as that of the
+Montenegrin, has gradually been growing upon us; here in Cattaro it is
+the rule, almost more than the rule. In short, the Bocchese, the
+Montenegrin, the Turkish rayah of Herzegovina, really differ in
+nothing but the difference of their political destinies. They are
+members of the same immediate family, whose fortunes have led them in
+three different directions. Now the religious tendency of the
+south-eastern Slaves, as is only natural from their geographical
+position, has always been towards the Eastern Church rather than the
+Western, towards the New Rome rather than towards the Old. Here, where
+the Slavonic element is so distinctly the stronger, the religious
+developement has taken its natural course, and the Orthodox population
+in Cattaro and all the coasts thereof is always a large minority, and
+in some places it actually outnumbers the Latins.
+
+We have professed to give only the impressions of the outward voyage,
+though our account may have here and there been influenced by later
+impressions drawn from fuller observation on the way back. But the way
+back, and the fuller knowledge gained in its course, only brings out
+more strongly the intense charm of Dalmatian coast and mountain
+scenery, fitly united with the deep historic interest of cities which,
+though they seem to form a world apart by themselves, have played
+their part in the world's history none the less. No one can visit
+Dalmatia once without a wish that his first visit may not be his last;
+no one can take a glimpse of any of her cities without the desire that
+the glimpse may be only the forerunner of more perfect knowledge.
+
+
+
+
+CURZOLA.
+
+1881.
+
+
+We part from Spalato; by the time that we have made two or three
+voyages in these seas, we shall find that there are several ways of
+reaching and parting from Spalato. We speak of course of ways by sea;
+by land there is but one way, and that way leads only to and from
+places at no great distance, and it does not lead to or from any place
+in the direction in which we are now bent. By sea the steamer takes
+two courses. One keeps along the mainland, that which allows a glimpse
+of the little towns of Almissa and Makarska, both nestling by the
+water's edge at the mountain's foot. Of these Almissa at least has an
+historical interest. Here Saint Mark was no direct sovereign; his
+lion, if we rightly remember, is nowhere to be seen, a distinction
+which, along this whole line of coast, Almissa alone shares with
+greater Ragusa. Was it a commonwealth by itself, cradled on the
+channel of Brazza like Gersau on the Lake of the Four Cantons? Or was
+it the haven of the inland commonwealth of Polizza, which, like
+Gersau and a crowd of other commonwealths, perished at the hands of
+their newborn French sister for the unpardonable crime of being old?
+But far more interesting is the other route of the steamers, that
+which leads us among the greater islands. Here, as soon as we pass
+Spalato, as soon as we pass the greatest monument of the dominion of
+Rome, we presently find ourselves in a manner within the borders of
+Hellas. We pass between Brazza and Solta, we skirt Lesina and think
+once more of its old Parian memories. We look out on Lissa, where the
+Hellenic name lives on with slighter change, but we are more inclined
+to dwell on those later memories which have made its name an unlucky
+one in our own day, a far luckier one in the days of our grandfathers.
+At last we make our first halt for study where a narrow strait divides
+the mainland, itself all but an island, from another ancient seat of
+Greek settlement, the once renowned isle of Curzola.
+
+Curzola--such is its familiar Italian form--is the ancient Black
+Korkyra, and on Slavonic lips it still keeps the elder name in the
+shape of _Kerker_. But the sight of [Greek: hê melaina Korkyra]
+suggests a question of the same kind as that which the visitor is
+driven to ask on his first sight of Montenegro. How does a mass of
+white limestone come to be called the Black Mountain? Curzola can
+hardly be called a mass of white limestone; but the first glance
+shows nothing specially black about it, nothing to make us choose this
+epithet rather than any other to distinguish this Hadriatic Korkyra
+from the more famous Korkyra to the south. That some distinguishing
+epithet is needed is shown by the fact that, not so very long ago, a
+special correspondent of the _Times_ took the whole history of Corfu
+and transferred it bodily to Curzola. The reason given for the name is
+the same in Curzola and in Montenegro. The blackness both of the
+island and of the mountain is the blackness of the woods with which
+they are covered. True the traveller from Cattaro to Tzetinje sees no
+woods, black or otherwise; but he is told that the name comes from
+thick woods on the other side of the principality. So he is told that
+Black Korkyra was called from its thick woods, its distinctive feature
+as compared with the many bare islands in its neighbourhood. But no
+black woods are now to be seen in that part of the island which the
+traveller is most likely to see anything of. There were such, he is
+told; but they have been cut down on this side, while on the other
+side they still flourish. As things are now, Curzola is certainly less
+bare than most of its fellows; but the impression which it gives us
+is, of the two, rather that of a green island than of a black one. It
+is not green in the sense of rich verdure, but such trees as show
+themselves give it a look rather green than black. At any rate, the
+island looks both low and well-covered, as compared with the lofty and
+rocky mountains of the opposite peninsula of Sabioncello. The two are
+at one point, and that a point close by the town of Curzola, separated
+by a very narrow strait. And the nearness of the two formed no
+inconsiderable part of their history. There was a time when Curzola
+must have been, before all things, a standing menace to Sabioncello,
+and to the state of which Sabioncello formed an outpost. Sabioncello,
+the long, narrow, stony peninsula, all backbone and nothing else,
+formed part of the dominions of the commonwealth of Ragusa. Curzola
+was for three centuries and a half a stronghold of that other
+commonwealth which Ragusa so dreaded that she preferred the Turk as
+her neighbour. Nowhere does the winged lion meet us more often or more
+prominently than on the towers and over the gates of Curzola. And no
+wonder; for Curzola was the choice seat of Venetian power in these
+waters, her strong arsenal, the place for the building of her galleys.
+If Aigina was the eyesore of Peiraieus, Curzola must have been yet
+more truly the eyesore of Sabioncello.
+
+It is only of what must have been the special eyesore of its Ragusan
+neighbours, of the fortified town of Curzola and of a few points in
+its near neighbourhood, that we can now speak. Curzola is one of the
+larger Dalmatian islands; and it is an island of some zoological
+interest. It is one of the few spots in Europe where the jackal still
+lingers. Perhaps there is no other, but, as we have heard rumours of
+like phænomenon in Epeiros, a decided negative is dangerous. We
+believe that, according to the best scientific opinion, "lingered" is
+the right word. The jackal is not an importation from anywhere else
+into Curzola; he is an old inhabitant of Europe, who has kept his
+ground in Curzola after he has been driven out of other places. But he
+who gives such time as the steamer allows him in the island to the
+antiquities of the town of Curzola need cherish no hope or fear of
+meeting jackals. He might as soon expect to meet with a horse. For,
+true child of Venice, Curzola knows neither horse nor carriage. Horses
+and carriages are not prominent features in any of the Dalmatian
+towns; but they may be seen here and there. They are faintly tolerated
+within the walls of Ragusa, and we have certainly seen a cart in the
+streets of Zara. But at Curzola they are as impossible as at Venice
+itself, though not for the same reason. Curzola does not float upon
+the waters; it soars above them. The Knidian emigrants chose the site
+of their town in the true spirit of Greek colonists. It is such
+another site as the Sicilian Naxos, as the Epidauros of the
+Hadriatic, as Zara too and Parenzo, though Zara and Parenzo can lay
+no claim to a Greek foundation. The town occupies a peninsula, which
+is joined to the main body of the island by a narrow isthmus. The
+positive elevation is slight, but the slope close to the water on each
+side is steep. From the narrow ridge where stands the once cathedral
+church, the streets run down on each side, narrow and steep, for the
+most part ascended by steps. The horses of the wave are the only
+steeds for the men of Black Korkyra, and those steeds they have at all
+times managed with much skill. The seafaring habits of the people take
+off in some measure from the picturesque effect of the place. There is
+much less to be seen, among men at least, of local costume at Curzola
+than at other Dalmatian towns. We miss the Morlacchian turbans which
+become familiar at Spalato; we miss the Montenegrin coats of the brave
+_Bocchesi_, which fill the streets of Cattaro, not without a meaning.
+Seafaring folk are apt to wear the dress of their calling rather than
+that of their race, and the island city cannot be made such a centre
+for a large rural population as the cities on the mainland. But, if
+the men to be seen at Curzola are less picturesque than the men to be
+seen at Spalato or Ragusa, their dwellings make up for the lack.
+Curzola is a perfect specimen of a Venetian town. It is singular how
+utterly everything earlier than the final Venetian occupation of 1420
+has passed away. The Greek colonist has left no sign of himself but
+the site. Of Roman, of earlier mediæval, times there is nothing to be
+seen beyond an inscription or two, one of which, a fragment worked
+into the pavement of one of the steep streets, records the connexion
+which once was between Curzola and Hungary. With præ-Venetian
+inscriptions we may class one which is post-Venetian, and which
+records another form of foreign dominion, one which may be classed
+with that of Lewis the Great as at least better than those which went
+between them. From 1813 to 1815--a time memorable at Curzola as well
+as at Cattaro--the island was under English rule, and the time of
+English rule was looked on as a time of freedom, compared with French
+rule before or with Austrian rule both before and after. It is not
+only that an official inscription speaks of the island as "libertate
+fruens" at the moment when the connexion was severed; we believe that
+we are justified in saying that those two years live in
+Black-Korkyraian memory as the one time for many ages when the people
+of Black Korkyra were let alone.
+
+The formerly cathedral church is the only building in the town of
+Curzola which suggests any thought that it can be older than 1420.
+Documentary evidence, we believe, is scanty, and contains no mention
+of the church earlier than the thirteenth century. In England we
+should at first sight be tempted to assign the internal arcades to the
+latter days of the twelfth; but the long retention of earlier forms
+which is so characteristic of the architecture of this whole region
+makes it quite possible that they may be no earlier than the Venetian
+times to which we must certainly attribute the west front. Setting
+aside a later addition to the north, which is no improvement, this
+little _duomo_ consists of a nave and aisles of five bays, ending in
+three round apses. Five bays we say, though on the north side there
+are only four arches; for the tower occupies one at the west end. The
+inner arcades and the west doorway are worthy of real study, as
+contributions to the stock of what is at any rate singular in
+architecture; indeed a more honourable word might fairly be used. The
+arcades consist of plain pointed arches rising from columns with
+richly carved capitals, and, like so many columns of all ages in this
+region, with tongues of foliage at their bases. Above is a small
+triforium, a pair of round arches over each bay; above that is a
+clerestory of windows which within seem to be square, but which
+outside are found to be broad pointed lancets with their heads cut
+off. In England or France such a composition as this would certainly,
+at the first sight of its general effect, be set down as belonging to
+the time of transition between Romanesque and Gothic, to the days of
+Richard of Poitou and Philip Augustus. And the proportions are just as
+good as they would be in England or France; there is not a trace of
+that love of ungainly sprawling arches which ruins half the so-called
+Gothic churches of Italy. But, when we look at the capitals, we begin
+to doubt. They are singularly rich and fine; but they are not rich and
+fine according to any received pattern. They are eminently not
+classical; they have nothing more than that faint Corinthian stamp
+which no floriated capital seems able quite to throw away; they do not
+come anything like so near to the original model as the capitals at
+Canterbury, at Sens, or even at Lisieux. But neither do they approach
+to any of the received Romanesque or Byzantine types, nor have they a
+trace of the freedom which belongs to the English foliage of days only
+a little later. They are more like, though still not very much like,
+our foliage of the fourteenth century; there is a massiveness about
+them, a kind of cleaving to the shape of the block, which after all
+has something Byzantine about it. Those on the north side have figures
+wrought among the foliage; the four responds have the four
+evangelistic symbols. Here then we cannot fail to find the lion of
+Saint Mark, but we find him only in his place as one of a company of
+four. Would the devotion of the Most Serene Republic have allowed its
+patron anywhere so lowly a place as this to occupy? Otherwise the
+character of the capitals, which extends to the small shafts in the
+triforium, might tempt us to assign a far later date to these columns
+and arches than their general effect would suggest. But at all events
+they are thoroughly mediæval; there is not the faintest trace of
+_Renaissance_ about them.
+
+Outside the church, the usual mixed character of the district comes
+out more strongly. The addition to the north, and the tower worked in
+instead of standing detached, go far to spoil what would otherwise be
+a simple and well-proportioned Italian front. Both the round
+window--of course there is a round window--and the great doorway are
+worthy of notice. The window is not a mere wheel; the diverging lines
+run off into real tracery, such as we might see in either England or
+France. The doorway is a curious example of the way in which for a
+long time in these regions, the square head, the round arch, and the
+pointed arch, were for some purposes used almost indifferently. The
+tradition of the square-headed doorway with the arched tympanum over
+it never died out. We may believe that the mighty gateways and
+doorways of Diocletian's palace set the general model for all ages.
+But when the pointed arch came in, the tympanum might be as well
+pointed as round. Sometimes the pointed tympanum crowns a thoroughly
+round-headed doorway, and is itself crowned with a square spandril,
+looking wonderfully like a piece of English Perpendicular. In the west
+doorway at Curzola things do not go quite to such lengths as this; but
+they go a good way. The square doorway is crowned by a pointed
+tympanum, containing the figure of a bishop; over that again is a kind
+of canopy. This is formed of a round arch, springing from a pair of
+lions supported on projections such as those which are constantly
+used, specially at Curzola, for the support of balconies. The lions
+which in many places would have supported the columns of the doorway
+seem, though wingless, to have flown up to this higher post. For here
+the doorway has nothing to be called columns, nothing but small
+shafts, twisted and otherwise, continued in the mouldings of the arch.
+The cornice under the low gable is very rich; the tower is of no great
+account, except the parapet, and the octagon and cupola which crown
+it, a rich and graceful piece of work of that better kind of
+_Renaissance_ which we claim as really Romanesque.
+
+In the general view of the town from the sea this tower counts for
+more than it does when we come close up to it in the nearest approach
+to a _piazza_ which Curzola can boast. It is the crown of the whole
+mass of buildings rising from the water. At Curzola the fortifications
+are far more to the taste of the antiquary than they are at Ragusa;
+they fence things round at the bottom, instead of hiding everything
+from the top. We may shut our eyes to a modern fort or two on the
+hills; the walls of the town itself, where they are left, are
+picturesque mediæval walls broken by round towers, on some of which
+the winged lion does not fail to show himself. He presides again over
+a _loggia_ by the seashore, one of those buildings with nondescript
+columns, which may be of any date, which most likely are of very late
+date, but which, because they are simply straightforward and sensible,
+are pleasing, whatever may be their date. Here they simply support a
+wooden roof, without either arch or entablature. And while we are
+seated under the lion in the _loggia_, we may look down at another
+lion in a sculptured fragment by the shore, in company with a female
+half-figure, something of the nature of a siren, Nereid, or mermaid,
+who seems an odd yoke-fellow for the Evangelist. He seems more in his
+natural place over the gate by which we shall most likely enter the
+town, a gate of 1643, itself square-headed, but with pointed vaulting
+within. Its inscriptions do not fail to commemorate the Trojan Antênor
+as founder of Black Korkyra, along with a more modern ruler, the
+Venetian John-Baptist Grimani. To the right hand, curiosity is raised
+by a series of inscriptions which have been carefully scratched out.
+About them there are many guesses and many traditions. One cannot help
+thinking that the deed was more likely to be done by the French than
+by the Austrian intruder. To scratch out an inscription is a foolish
+and barbarous act; but it implies an understanding of its meaning and
+a misapplied kind of vigour, which, of the two stolen eagles, was more
+likely to flourish under the single-headed one. The double-headed
+pretender, by the way, though he is seen rather too often in these
+parts, is seldom wrought in such lasting materials as Saint Mark's
+lion. So, when the good time comes, the stolen badge of Empire may, at
+Curzola as at Venice and Verona, pass away and be no more seen,
+without any destruction of monuments, old or new.
+
+We are now fairly in the town. The best way to see Curzola thoroughly
+is for the traveller to make his way how he will to the ridge of the
+peninsula, and then systematically to visit the steep and narrow
+streets, going in regular order down one and up another. There is not
+one which does not contain some bit of domestic architecture which is
+well worth looking at. But he should first walk along the ridge itself
+from the gate by the isthmus to the point where the ground begins to
+slope to the sea opposite Sabioncello. Hard by the gate is the
+town-hall, _Obcina_, as it is now marked in the native speech. The
+mixed style--most likely of the seventeenth century--of these parts
+comes out here in its fulness. Columns and round arches which would
+satisfy any reasonable Romanesque ideal, support square windows which
+are relieved from ugliness by a slight moulding, the dentel--akin to
+our Romanesque billet--which is seen everywhere. But in a projecting
+building, which is clearly of a piece with the rest, columns with
+nondescript capitals support pointed arches. Opposite to the town-hall
+is one of the smaller churches, most of which are of but little
+importance. This one bears the name of Saint Michael, and is said to
+have formerly been dedicated to Orthodox worship. It shows however no
+sign of such use, unless we are to count the presence of a little
+cupola over the altar. We pass along the ridge, by a house where the
+projection for balconies, so abundant everywhere, puts on a specially
+artistic shape, being wrought into various forms, human and animal.
+Opposite the cathedral the houses display some characteristic forms of
+the local style, and we get more fully familiar with them, as we
+plunge into the steep streets, following the regular order which has
+been already prescribed. Some graceful scrap meets us at every step;
+the pity is that the streets are so narrow that it needs some
+straining of the neck to see those windows which are set at all high
+in the walls. For it is chiefly windows which we light upon: very
+little care seems to have been bestowed on the doorways. A square or
+segmental-headed doorway, with no attempt at ornament, was thought
+quite enough for a house for whose windows the finest work of the
+style was not deemed too good. Indeed the contrasts are so odd that,
+in the finest house in Curzola, in one of the streets leading down
+eastward from the cathedral, a central story for which _magnificent_
+would not be too strong a word is placed between these simple doorways
+below and no less simple square-headed windows above. This is one of
+the few houses in Curzola where the windows are double or triple
+divided by shafts. Most of the windows are of a single light, with a
+pointed, an ogee, or even a round head, but always, we think, with the
+eminently Venetian trefoil, and with the jambs treated as a kind of
+pilaster. With windows of this kind the town of Curzola is thick-set
+in every quarter. We may be sure that there is nothing older than the
+Venetian occupation, and that most of the houses are of quite late
+date, of the sixteenth and even the seventeenth century. The Venetian
+style clave to mediæval forms of window long after the _Renaissance_
+had fully set in in everything else. And for an obvious reason;
+whatever attractions the _Renaissance_ might have from any other point
+of view, in the matter of windows at least it hopelessly failed. In
+the streets of Curzola therefore we meet with an endless store of
+windows, but with little else. Yet here and there there are other
+details. The visitor will certainly be sent to see a door-knocker in a
+house in one of the streets on the western slope. There Daniel between
+two lions is represented in fine bronze work. And some Venetian
+effigies, which would doubtless prove something for local history, may
+be seen in the same court. Of the houses in Curzola not a few are
+roofless; not a few have their rich windows blocked; not a few stand
+open for the visitor to see their simple inside arrangements. The town
+can still make some show on a day of festival; but it is plain that
+the wealth and life of Curzola passed away when it ceased to be the
+arsenal of Venice. And poverty has one incidental advantage; it lets
+things fall to ruin, but it does not improve or restore.
+
+Two monasteries may be seen within an easy distance of the town. That
+of Saint Nicolas, approached by a short walk along the shore to the
+north-west, makes rather an imposing feature in the general view from
+the sea; but it is disappointing when we come near. Yet it
+illustrates some of the local tendencies; a very late building, as it
+clearly is, it still keeps some traces of earlier ideas. Two equal
+bodies, each with a pointed barrel-vault, might remind us of some
+districts of our own island, and, with nothing else that can be called
+mediæval detail, the round window does not fail to appear. The other
+monastery, best known as the _Badia_, once a house of Benedictines,
+afterwards of Franciscans, stands on a separate island, approached by
+a pleasant sail. The church has not much more to show than the other;
+but it too illustrates the prevalent mixture of styles which comes out
+very instructively in the cloister. This bears date 1477, as appears
+from an inscription over one of its doors. But this doorway is
+flat-headed and has lost all mediæval character, while the cloister
+itself is a graceful design with columns and trefoil arches, which in
+other lands one would attribute to a much earlier date. The library
+contains some early printed books and some Greek manuscripts, none
+seemingly of any great intrinsic value. A manuscript of Dionysios
+Periêgêtês is described as the property of the Korkyraian Nicolas and
+his friends. ([Greek: Nikolaou Kerkyraiou kai tôn philôn.]) Nicolas
+had a surname, but unluckily it has passed away from our memory and
+from our notes. But the local description which he has given of
+himself makes us ask, Did the book come from Corfu, or did any
+citizen of Black Korkyra think it had a learned look so to describe
+himself?
+
+On the staircase of the little inn at Curzola still hangs a print of
+the taking of the arsenal of Venice by the patriots of 1848. Strange
+that no Imperial, Royal, and Apostolic official has taken away so
+speaking a memorial of a deed which those who commemorate it would
+doubtless be glad to follow.
+
+
+
+
+RAGUSA.
+
+1875--1877--1881.
+
+
+The voyage onward from Curzola will lead, as its next natural
+stopping-place, to Ragusa. At Curzola, or before he reaches Curzola,
+the traveller will have made acquaintance with what was once the
+territory of the Ragusan commonwealth, in the shape of the long
+peninsula of Sabioncello. He will have seen how all the winged lions
+of Curzola look out so threateningly towards the narrow tongue of land
+which bowed to Saint Blaise and not to Saint Mark. He will pass by
+Meleda, that one among the larger islands which obeyed Ragusan and not
+Venetian rule. After Meleda the islands cease to be the most important
+features in the geography or in the prospect. They end, so far as they
+give any character to the scene, in the group which lies off the mouth
+of the inlet of Gravosa and Ombla, the ordinary path to Ragusa. But he
+who would really take in the peculiar position of Ragusa will do well
+to pass by the city on his outward voyage, to go on to Cattaro, and
+to take Ragusa on the way back. The wisdom of so doing springs
+directly out of the history of the city. The haven, which is said--and
+we have no better derivation to suggest--to have given its name to
+_argosies_, could certainly not give shelter to a modern argosy.
+Nothing but smaller craft now make their way to Ragusa herself;
+steamers and everything else stop at the port of Gravosa. It has been
+only quite lately, long since the earlier visits which gave birth to
+the present sketches, that Ragusan enterprise has so far again
+awakened as to send a single steamer at long intervals from the true
+Ragusan haven to Trieste. He therefore who visits Ragusa on his
+outward voyage has to land at Gravosa and to make his way to Ragusa by
+land. He thus loses the first sight of the city from the sea which he
+has had at Zara and Spalato, and which at Ragusa is, setting special
+associations aside, even more striking than at Zara and Spalato.
+Before he sees Ragusa from the water, as Ragusa was made to be seen,
+he has already made acquaintance with the city in a more prosaic
+fashion. He will not indeed have had his temper soured by the
+inconveniences which Sir Gardner Wilkinson had to put up with more
+than thirty years ago. There is no more delay at the gate of Ragusa,
+there is no more difficulty in finding a carriage to take the
+traveller from Gravosa to Ragusa, than there is in the most
+frequented regions of the West. Still, in such a case, the traveller
+sees Ragusa for the first time from the land, and Ragusa of all places
+ought to be seen for the first time from the sea. Seen in this way,
+the general effect of Ragusa is certainly more striking than that of
+any other Dalmatian city; and it is so in some measure because the
+effect of Ragusa, whether looked at with the bodily eye or seen in the
+pages of its history, is above all things a general effect. There is
+not, as there is at Zara and at Spalato, any particular moment in the
+history of the city, any particular object in the city itself, which
+stands out prominently above all others. We draw near to Zara, and
+say, "There is the city that was stormed by the Crusaders," and,
+though we find much at Zara to awaken interest on other grounds, the
+crusading siege still remains the first thing. We draw near to
+Spalato; we see the palace and the campanile, and round the palace and
+the campanile everything gathers. We draw near to Ragusa; the eye is
+struck by no such prominent object; the memory seizes on no such
+prominent fact. But there is Ragusa; there is the one spot along that
+whole coast from the Croatian border to Cape Tainaros itself, which
+never came under the dominion either of the Venetian or of the Turk.
+Ragusa will be found at different times standing in something like a
+tributary or dependent relation to both those powers, but it never
+was actually incorporated with the dominions of either. In this Ragusa
+stands alone among the cities of the whole coast, Dalmatian, Albanian,
+and Greek. Among all the endless confusions and fluctuations of power
+in those regions, Ragusa stands alone as having ever kept its place,
+always as a separate, commonly as an independent, commonwealth. It
+lived on from the break-up of the Byzantine power on those coasts till
+the day when the elder Buonaparte, in the mere caprice of tyranny,
+without provocation of any kind, declared one day that the Republic of
+Ragusa had ceased to exist. This is the history of Ragusa, a history
+whose general effect is as striking as any history can be. It is a
+history too which, if we dig into its minute details, is full of
+exciting incidents, but not of incidents which, like the one incident
+in the history of Zara, stand out in the general history of Europe.
+There is, to be sure, one incident in Ragusan history which may claim
+some attention at the hands of Englishmen, and ought to claim more at
+the hands of Poitevins. Count Richard of Poitou, who was also by a
+kind of accident King of England, and who in the course of his reign
+paid England two very short visits, paid also a visit to Ragusa which
+was perhaps still shorter. But this again is an incident of mere
+curiosity. The homeward voyage and captivity of Richard had some
+effect on the general affairs of the world; his special visit to
+Ragusa affected only the local affairs of Ragusa. Ragusan history then
+may either be taken in at a glance, and a most striking glance it is;
+or else it may be studied with the minute zeal of a local antiquary.
+There is no intermediate point from which it can be looked at. In the
+general history of Europe Ragusa stands out, as the city itself stands
+out to the eye of the traveller, as that one among the famous cities
+of the Dalmatian and Albanian coast where the Lion of Saint Mark is
+not to be seen.
+
+As is the history, so is the general effect. As we sail past Ragusa,
+as we look at the city from any of the several points which the voyage
+opens to us, we say at once, Here is one of the most striking sights
+of our whole voyage; but we cannot at once point our finger to any one
+specially striking object. There are good campaniles, but there is
+nothing very special about them; there are castles and towers in
+abundance, but each by itself on any other site would be passed by
+without any special remark. What does call for special remark and
+special admiration is the city itself, at once rising from the sea and
+fenced in from the sea by its lofty walls. It is the shore, with its
+rocks and its small inlets, each rock seized on as the site of a
+fortress. It is the background of hills, forming themselves a natural
+rampart, but with the artificial defences carried up and along them
+to their very crest. Here we are not tempted, as we are tempted at
+some points of our voyage, to forget that our voyage is one by sea,
+and to fancy that we are floating gently on some Swiss or Italian
+lake. Ragusa does not stand on a deep inlet like Cattaro, on a bay
+like Spalato, on a peninsula like Zara, fenced in by islands on one
+side and by the opposite shore of its haven on the other. Ragusa does
+indeed stand on a peninsula, but it is a peninsula of quite another
+kind; a peninsula of hills and rocks and inlets, offering a bold front
+to the full force of the open sea. One island indeed, La Croma, lies
+like a guard-ship anchored in front of the city, but we feel that La
+Croma is strictly an island of the sea. The islands of the more
+northern coast form as it were a wall to shelter the coast itself. And
+such a function seems specially to be laid upon the small islands
+which lie off the mouth of Ragusa's modern haven at Gravosa. Covered
+indeed as they are with modern fortifications, it is not merely in a
+figure that it is laid upon them. But La Croma fills no such function.
+The city of argosies boldly fronts the sea on which her argosies were
+to sail, and fiercely do the waves of that sea sometimes dash upon her
+rocks. Ragusa seems the type of a city which has to struggle with the
+element on which her life is cast, while Venice is the type of a city
+which has, in the sense of her own yearly ceremony, brought that
+element wholly under her dominion.
+
+As we look up from the sea to the mountains, we feel yet more strongly
+how purely Ragusa was a city of the sea. Venice was an inland power on
+that Italian land off which she herself lay anchored. She might pass
+for an inland power even on the Ragusan side of the Hadriatic. The
+Dalmatian territory of Venice looks on the map like a narrow strip;
+but, compared with the Ragusan coast, the Venetian coast has a wide
+Venetian mainland to the back of it. But Ragusa lies at the foot of
+the mountains, and the crest of the mountains was her boundary. She
+has always sat on a little ledge of civilization, for four centuries
+on a little ledge of Christendom, with a measureless background of
+barbarism behind her. Those hills, the slopes of which begin in the
+streets of the city, once fenced in a ledge of Hellenic land from the
+native barbarians of Illyricum. Then they fenced in a ledge of Roman
+land from the Slavonic invader. Lastly, when we first looked on them,
+when we first crossed them, they still fenced in a ledge of Christian
+land from the dominion of the Infidel. And the newest arrangements of
+diplomacy make it still not wholly impossible to use the language
+which we used then. The Archduke of Austria and King of Dalmatia is
+immediate sovereign of Ragusa and her ancient territory; when we
+cross the line between Ragusa and Herzegovina, he rules only in the
+character familiar to some even of his Imperial forefathers, that of
+the man of the Turk. The Christian prince simply "administers;" it is
+the Infidel Sultan who is still held to reign. To form such a boundary
+as this has been no mean calling for the heights which look down upon
+Ragusa. It is well to climb those heights, best of all to climb them
+by the road which so lately led, which we might almost say still
+leads, from civilization to barbarism, from Christendom to Islam, and
+to look down on the city nestling between the sea and the mountains.
+The view is of the same kind as the view of the city from the sea.
+Rocks, inlets, walls, and towers, come out in new and varied
+groupings, but there is still no one prominent object. La Croma
+indeed, with its fallen monastery--its fortress is not seen--now comes
+in as a prominent object. But it shows by its very prominence the
+difference between this part of the Dalmatian coast, with its one
+island, all but invisible on the map, lying close to the shore, and
+the two archipelagos, one of small and obscure, one of great and
+historic islands, which the voyager has already passed by.
+
+It would thus be well if we could look on Ragusa both from the sea and
+from the mountains before we approach the city by the one possible to
+reach it, by the road which leads from its port of Gravosa. This last
+is a picturesque haven of thoroughly Dalmatian character, lying on a
+smooth inlet with a small fertile fringe between the water and the
+mountains. The road, rising and falling, looking out on both the
+mountains and the sea, leads along among villas and chapels which
+gradually grow into a suburb till we reach the gate. Here we see not a
+few ruined houses, houses which have remained ruined for nearly
+seventy years, houses whose ruin was wrought by Montenegrin hands in
+the days when Ragusa was an unwilling possession of France and
+Montenegro a valued ally of England. But, before we reach the gate, we
+see what there was not in the time of Sir Gardner Wilkinson, carriages
+standing for hire, carriages no very long drive in which will take us
+over the late borders of Christendom. In that suburb too the traveller
+will most likely take up his quarters--quarters, it may be, looking
+down straight on the rocks and waves. And there, when war was raging
+at no great distance, and when Ragusa was the special centre of the
+purveyors of news, he was sure to hear both the latest truths and the
+latest fables. But he is still outside the city. No city brings better
+home to us than Ragusa the Eastern hyperbole of cities great and
+fenced up to heaven. We must leave the military architect to discuss
+their military merits or demerits. To the non-professional observer
+they seem to belong to that type of fortification, between mediæval
+and modern, which in these lands we naturally call Venetian,
+inapplicable as that name is at Ragusa. But they have clearly been
+strengthened and extended in more modern times. The city lies in a
+kind of hollow between the lower slopes of the mountain on one side,
+and a ridge which lies between the mountain and the sea, and which
+thus adds greatly to the appearance of the fortifications as seen from
+the sea. The one main street of Ragusa, the _Stradone_, thus lies in a
+valley with narrow streets running down towards it on both sides.
+Indeed, before the great earthquake of 1667 which destroyed so much of
+old Ragusa, part at least of this wide street was covered with water
+as a canal. It is so pent in with buildings that we hardly feel how
+near we are to the sea; yet the small port, the true port of Ragusa,
+is very near at hand. The two ends of the Stradone are guarded by
+gates, which lead up--for the ascent is considerable--to the outer
+gates at either end, still strong and still guarded, reminding us that
+we are in what is still really a border city. And over those gates we
+see, not the winged lion for which we have learned to look almost
+instinctively everywhere on these coasts, but the figure of Saint
+Blaise, _San Biagio_, the patron of Ragusa, whose relics form some of
+the choicest treasures in the rich hoard of her once metropolitan
+church. We pass under the saintly effigy, and we find that within the
+walls the general aspect of the city is comparatively modern. Most of
+the buildings, the metropolitan church among them, were rebuilt after
+a great earthquake in 1667. Such remains however of old Ragusa as are
+still left are of such surpassing interest in the history of
+architecture that we must keep them for a more special examination.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The history of Ragusa, as we have already said, is of a kind which
+must either be taken in at a glance or else dealt with in the minutest
+detail. All Dalmatian history for a good many centuries wants a more
+thorough sifting than has ever been brought to bear upon it. It wants
+it all the more because it is so closely connected with early Venetian
+history, than which no history is more utterly untrustworthy. But we
+may safely gather that Ragusa had its origin in the destruction of the
+Greek city of Epidauros, now _Ragusa Vecchia_. The old Epidaurian
+colony fell, like Salona, before the barbarians. Its inhabitants had
+no ready-made city to flee to, but they founded a city on the rocks
+which became Raousion or Ragusa. Whether any part of the Ragusan
+peninsula had ever become a dwelling-place of men at any earlier time
+it is needless to inquire. It is enough that Ragusa now became a city.
+As to the name of the city, our Imperial guide helps us to one of his
+strange etymologies. With him Epidauros has sunk into [Greek:
+Pitaura]--the _t_ seems to have supplanted the _d_ at a much earlier
+time--and the city on the rocks which its exiles founded was first
+called from its site [Greek: Lausion], which by vulgar use ([Greek: hê
+koinê synêtheia, hê pollakis metaphtheirousa ta onomata tê enallagê tôn
+grammatôn]) became [Greek: Rhaousion]. He tells us that, [Greek: epei
+epanô tôn krêmnôn histatai legetai de Rhômaisti ho krêmnos lau,
+eklêthêsan ek toutou Lausaioi, êgoun hoi kathezomenoi eis ton
+krêmnon]. What tongue is meant by [Greek: Rhômaisti]? It is only
+because the strange form [Greek: lau] seems to come one degree nearer
+to [Greek: laas anaidês] than to anything in Latin, that it dawns on
+us that it means Greek. But, under whatever name, the city on the
+rocks, small at first, strengthened by refugees from Salona, grew and
+prospered, and remained one of the outlying Roman or Greek posts which
+in the days of Constantine, as now, fringed the already barbarian
+land.
+
+For some centuries after the time of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, the
+history of Ragusa defies abridgement. It is one web of intricate
+complications between the Emperors of the East and West, the Republic
+of Venice, the Kings of Hungary, Dalmatia, and Bosnia. Somewhat later
+the story begins to be more intelligible, when the actors get pretty
+well reduced to Venice, the Turk, and the Empire in a new form, that
+of Charles the Fifth. The republic of Ragusa contrived, which must
+surely have needed a good deal of skill, to keep on good terms at once
+with Charles and his son Philip and with their Turkish enemies. Yet
+Ragusa, though never incorporated by anything earlier than the
+dominion of Buonaparte, stood at different times in a kind of
+dependent relation both to Venice and to the Turk. At an earlier time
+the commonwealth for a short time received a Venetian Count. He was
+doubtless only meant to be like a foreign _podestà_, but Venice was a
+very dangerous place for Ragusa to bring a _podestà_ from. In her
+later days Ragusa must be looked on as being under the protection of
+the Porte; but it was a protection which in no way interfered with her
+full internal freedom--such freedom at least as is consistent with the
+rule of an oligarchy. The geography of Dalmatia keeps to this day a
+curious memorial of the feeling which made Ragusa dread the Turk less
+than she dreaded Venice. To this day the Dalmatian kingdom does not
+extend continuously along the Dalmatian coast. At two points territory
+which till late changes was nominally Turkish, which is still only
+"administered," not "governed," by its actual ruler, comes down to the
+Hadriatic coast. These are at Klek, at the bottom of the gulf formed
+by the long Ragusan peninsula of Sabioncello, and at Sutorina on the
+_Bocche_ di Cattaro. These two points mark the two ends of the narrow
+strip of coast which formed the territory of Ragusa. Rather than have
+a common frontier with Venice at either end, Ragusa willingly allowed
+the dominions of the Infidel to come down to her own sea on either
+side of her.
+
+At last all dread from Venice passed away, but only because Saint Mark
+gave way to a more dangerous neighbour. The base conspiracy of
+Campoformio gave Venetian Dalmatia to an Austrian master, and the
+strips of Turkish territory which had once sheltered Ragusa from the
+Venetian now for a while sheltered her from the Austrian. Then the
+dividers of the spoil quarrelled; the master of France took to himself
+what France had betrayed to Austria. Presently he disliked the small
+oasis of independence, and added Ragusa to the dominion which was
+presently to take in Rome and Lübeck. Lastly, when the days of
+confusion were over, and order came back to the world, order at Ragusa
+took the form of a new foreign master. The Austrian, who had reigned
+for a moment at Zara and Cattaro, but who had never reigned at Ragusa,
+put forth his hand to filch Ragusa as he has since filched Spizza. The
+motive need not be asked. The pleasure of seizing the goods of a
+weaker neighbour is doubtless enough in either case.
+
+One point in the history of Ragusa which needs a more thorough
+explanation than it has yet found is the fact that the Roman or Greek
+city, founded by men who had escaped from barbarian invaders--who must
+surely have been largely Slavonic--has become so pre-eminently a
+Slavonic city. There is no Italian party at Ragusa. Not that the city
+is strongly Panslavonic; the memory of local freedom has survived
+through both forms of foreign rule. The Ragusan aristocracy is
+Slavonic, and the Slavonic language holds quite another position at
+Ragusa from what it holds, for example, at Spalato. There all that
+claims to be literature and cultivation is Italian; at Ragusa, though
+Italian is familiarly spoken, the native literature and cultivation is
+distinctly Slave. The difference is marked in the very names of the
+two cities. Spalato is in Slavonic _Spljet_, a mere corruption of the
+corrupt Latin name. But Ragusa, on Slavonic lips--that is on the lips
+of its own citizens speaking their own language--is _Dubrovnik_, a
+perfectly independent Slavonic name. It may be the name of some
+Slavonic suburb or neighbouring settlement--like the _Wendisches Dorf_
+at Lüneburg--but at all events it is no corruption, no translation, of
+Latin _Ragusa_ or of Constantine's _Raousion_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As for King Richard, the Ragusan story is that he built the cathedral
+which was destroyed in 1667. It is said that he vowed to build a
+church on the island of La Croma, and that this purpose was changed
+into building one in the city instead of the former cathedral, while
+the commonwealth of Ragusa built a church on the island. La Croma thus
+becomes connected with the memory of two princes who died of thrusting
+themselves in matters which did not concern them. Richard, Count and
+King, might have lived longer if he had not quarrelled with his vassal
+at Limoges; Maximilian, Archduke and self-styled Emperor, was
+perfectly safe at La Croma, but when he took up the trade of a
+party-leader in Mexico, he could hardly look for anything but a
+Mexican party-leader's end. Of the monastery which formed his
+dwelling-place the great church is so utterly desecrated and spoiled
+that hardly anything can be made out. But a good deal remains of the
+cloister, and at a little distance stand the ruins of a beautiful
+little triapsidal basilica, which surely, all save a few additions,
+belongs to the age of the Lion-hearted King. Indeed we should be
+tempted to fix on this, rather than any other church of Ragusa or its
+island, as the work of Richard himself. It looks greatly as if a Count
+of Poitiers and Duke of Aquitaine had had a hand in it. A single wide
+body, with three apses opening into it, is not a Dalmatian idea, as it
+is not an English idea. But something like it might easily be found in
+Richard's own land of southern Gaul.
+
+That Richard did come to Ragusa and to La Croma seems plain from the
+narrative in Roger of Howden. He hired a ship at Corfu expressly to
+take him to Ragusa. He landed "prope _Gazere_ apud Ragusam." _Gazere_
+suggests Jadera or Zara, but "Gazere apud Ragusam" can hardly fail to
+mean La Croma. "_Gazere_" is the Arabic name for _island_--the same
+which appears in _Algesiras_--one of the Eastern words which passed
+into the _lingua franca_ of the Crusaders. After all, Ragusa gives
+more interest to Richard than any that it takes from him. Born and
+twice crowned in England, he had little else to do with England than
+to squeeze money out of it. It mattered little to Englishmen--or to
+Normans either--whether their Poitevin lord was astounding the world
+at Acre, at Chaluz, or at La Croma.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two other rather longer excursions than that to La Croma may be
+profitably made from Ragusa. There is, first of all, the short voyage
+to the site of the city which Ragusa supplanted, the Dalmatian
+Epidauros, now known by the odd name of _Ragusa Vecchia_. Beyond a few
+inscriptions, there is really next to nothing to be seen of the
+ancient city besides its site; but the site is well worthy of study.
+It is thoroughly the site for a Greek colony, and it has much in
+common with the more famous site of Korkyra and Epidamnos. The city
+occupied a peninsula, sheltered on the one hand by the mainland, on
+the other by another promontory, forming the outer horn of a small
+bay. In this position the town had the sea on every side; it had a
+double harbour, and was at the same time thoroughly sheltered on both
+sides. Such a site was the perfection of Greek colonial ideas. We have
+now got far away indeed from the earliest type of city--the hill-fort
+which dreads the sea, and which finds the need of the haven, and of
+the long walls to join the haven to the city, only in later times. The
+highest point of the promontory, the akropolis--if we can use that
+name in a city of such late date--is now forsaken, crowned only by a
+burying-ground and sepulchral church. The view is a noble one, looking
+out on the mainland and the sea, with the neighbouring island crowned
+by a forsaken monastery, and directly in front Ragusa herself on her
+rocks, with the beginnings of the Dalmatian archipelago rising in the
+distance. The modern town, which is hardly more than a village, with
+two or three churches and a small amount of fortification, covers the
+isthmus and the lower ground of the promontory. Such is all that is
+left of the northern city of Asklêpios, the city which played its part
+alike in the wars of Cæsar and in the wars of Belisarius, which in the
+great revolution that followed the Slavonic inroads perished to give
+birth to the more abiding city from which it has strangely borrowed
+its later name. That Ragusa Vecchia has so little to show is no ground
+for despising it or passing it by; the very lack of remains in some
+sort adds to the interest of the spot.
+
+The voyage from New to Old Ragusa is not a long one. A shorter land
+journey on the same side of the city will lead to the sea-side village
+of Breno, which will not supply the traveller with anything in the
+antiquarian line, but which will reward him with a good deal of
+Dalmatian mountain and land scenery, especially with a waterfall,
+though one not quite on the scale of Kerka. And, to those who peer
+pryingly into all corners, the little inn of the place will suggest
+some memories of very modern history. That piece of history it has
+been the interest of exalted personages to keep unknown, and their
+efforts have been crowned with a remarkable degree of success. As the
+inn at Curzola contains picture memories of an unsuccessful struggle
+for freedom in 1848, so the inn at Breno contains picture memories of
+a more successful struggle waged twenty-one years later in the same
+cause and against the same enemy. When in 1869 the present ruler of
+Austria and Dalmatia strove, in defiance of every chartered right and
+every royal promise, to trample under foot the ancient rights of the
+freemen of the Bocche di Cattaro, the troops of the foreign intruder
+were driven back in ignominious defeat by the brave men of the
+mountains, and the master who had sent them was forced to renew the
+promises which he had striven to break. People still chatter about the
+mythical exploits of Tell, but hardly any one has heard of this little
+piece of successful resistance to oppression done only twelve years
+back. The deed is not forgotten by the neighbours of those who did it,
+and in the inn at Breno rude pictures may be seen showing the
+victorious Bocchese driving the troops of the stranger down those
+heights which at Vienna or at Budapest it seemed so easy a matter to
+bring into bondage. Strange to say, the pictures which record this
+Slavonic triumph have the legend beneath them in the High-Dutch
+tongue. Stranger still, it is the eye only and not the ear by which
+any knowledge of the matter is to be picked up. The wary native, even
+when spoken to in his own tongue, will not enlarge on the subjects of
+those pictures to a man in Western garb. It is perhaps not without
+reason if a stranger in Western garb is suspected in those parts to be
+a spy of the enemy.
+
+If the voyage from New to Old Ragusa is not a long one, the sail on
+the other side of the city up the river's mouth to Ombla is shorter
+still. Its starting-point will be, not Ragusa itself but its port of
+Gravosa. Here the main object is scenery; but several houses, one at
+least of which will deserve some further mention, a nearly forsaken
+monastery with a good bell-tower and a not ungraceful church, and one
+or two living or forsaken chapels may be taken in, and they help us to
+complete some inferences as to the architecture of the district. But
+our business at this moment is mainly with the basin which lies at the
+foot of the limestone rock. The hills of Greece and Dalmatia
+constantly suggest, to one who knows the West of England, the kindred,
+though far lowlier, hills of Mendip. As the gorge under the akropolis
+of Mykênê at once suggests the gorge of Cheddar, so the basin of the
+Trebenitza at Ombla suggests, though the scale is larger, the basin of
+the Axe at Wookey Hole. The river runs out from the bottom of the
+rocks, and, to those who have been adventurous enough to cross the
+heights and to make their way through the desolate land of
+Herzegovina--the very land of limestone in all forms--as far as
+Trebinje, the river that reappears at Ombla is an old friend. There
+seems no doubt that it is the Trebenitza which, after hiding itself in
+a _katabothra_, comes out again to light in the Ombla basin. The
+journey to Trebinje itself is in its own nature less exciting now than
+it was in 1875. What it was when the drive thither from Ragusa enabled
+the traveller to say that he had been into "Turkey," and that he had
+seen a little of a land in a state of warfare, may perhaps be worth
+some separate mention. At present it is reported that Trebinje is
+cleaner than it was then, that it has been adorned with a
+_Rudolfsplatz_, and that justice is there administered to its Slavonic
+folk, Christian and Mussulman, in the tongue of which _Rudolfsplatz_
+is a specimen. It would therefore seem that the direct rule of the
+stranger is at least better than his "administration." At Ragusa men
+are allowed to speak their own tongue in which they were born.
+
+
+
+
+RAGUSAN ARCHITECTURE.
+
+1875--1877--1881.
+
+
+We have spoken in a former article of the general aspect and the
+historical position of the city and commonwealth of Ragusa, her hills,
+her walls, her havens, her union of freedom from the lion of Saint
+Mark with half dependence on the crescent of Mahomet. But this ancient
+and isolated city has yet something more to tell of. There are several
+of the municipal and domestic buildings of the fallen republic,
+buildings which, as far as we know, have never been described or
+illustrated in detail in any English work, and of which no worthy
+representation can be found on the spot. In the work of Eitelberger
+much will be found; but for the ordinary English student there is no
+help at all. Yet, on the strength of these buildings, Ragusa may
+really claim a place among those cities which stand foremost in the
+history of architectural progress. And this fact is the more
+remarkable, and the more to be insisted on, because of the seemingly
+general belief that there is little or nothing to see at Ragusa in
+the way of architecture. But the truth is that far more of the old
+city escaped the earthquake of 1667 than would be thought at first
+sight. Because the cathedral is later, because the general aspect of
+the main street is later, the idea is suggested that nothing is left
+but the municipal palace. That alone would be a most important
+exception, but it is by no means the only one. If the traveller leaves
+the main street and turns up the narrow alleys which run from it up
+the hills on either side, alleys many of them which, at present at
+least, lead to nothing, he will find many scraps of domestic
+architecture which must belong to times earlier than the great blow of
+the seventeenth century. Signs of that blow are seen in many places in
+the form of scraps of detail of various kinds irregularly built up in
+the wall; but there are a great number of pointed doorways still in
+their places which no man can think are later than 1667. Some of these
+are simply pointed; others combine the pointed arch with the tympanum,
+sometimes with both the tympanum and the spandril. There is also a not
+unpleasing type of _Renaissance_ doorway, a lintel resting on two
+pilasters with floriated capitals, which one can hardly believe are
+due to a time so late as the days after the earthquake. At all events,
+if they are later than the earthquake, they only go to strengthen the
+general position which we have to lay down, namely the way in which
+early forms lived on at Ragusa to an amazingly late date. This same
+examination of the narrow streets will also bring to light a few, but
+only a few, windows of the Venetian Gothic. The strength of Ragusa, as
+far as scraps of this kind are concerned, undoubtedly lies in its
+doorways.
+
+  [Illustration: TOWER OF FRANCISCAN CHURCH, RAGUSA.]
+
+In the churches too there is more left than the mere scraps which are
+built up again. Parts at least of the tall towers--neither of them
+detached--of the Franciscan and Dominican churches, the former in the
+main street, the latter near the eastern gate, are also earlier. In
+the former the line of junction between the older tower and the ugly
+church which has been built up against it is clearly to be seen. The
+upper stage of this tower, and the small cupola which crowns it, _may_
+be later than the earthquake; but if so, they have caught the spirit
+of earlier work in an unusual degree, and all the lower part is in a
+form of Italian Gothic less unpleasing than usual. Both this tower and
+that of the Dominican church show how long the general type of the
+earliest Romanesque campaniles went on. Save in the small cupola, this
+tower has the perfect air, and almost the details, of a tower of the
+eleventh century: three ranges of windows with mid-wall shafts rise
+over one another; only they are grouped under containing arches in
+what in England we should call a Norman fashion. But, as this tower
+forms part of a Dominican monastery, it cannot be earlier than the
+thirteenth century, and its smaller details also cannot belong to any
+earlier date. Yet the general effect of this tower, even more than of
+the other, is that of a tower of the Primitive type. The Dominican
+church also keeps some details of Italian Gothic which must be older
+than the earthquake, and the cloister is one of the best specimens of
+that style. Its groupings of tracery under round arches, the poverty
+of design in the tracery itself, strike us as weak, if our thoughts go
+back to Salisbury or to Zürich; but the general effect is good, and
+the cloister--as distinguished from the buildings above it--may almost
+be called beautiful. Of more importance in the history of Ragusan
+architecture is the Franciscan cloister. Being Franciscan, it cannot
+be earlier than the thirteenth century, and it may well be much later.
+But it is essentially Romanesque in style. The general effect of the
+tall shafts which support its narrow round arches differs indeed a
+good deal from the general effect of the more massive Romanesque
+cloisters to which we are used elsewhere. But it is essentially one
+with them in style, and it is one of the many witnesses to the way in
+which at Ragusa early forms were kept in use till a late time.
+
+But the architectural glory of Ragusa is certainly not to be looked
+for among its churches. The most truly instructive work that Ragusa
+has to show in any of its ecclesiastical buildings does not show
+itself at first sight, and its full significance is not likely to be
+understood till the civic and domestic buildings of the city and its
+suburbs have been well studied. When this has been done, it will be
+easily seen that certain arches and capitals in the subordinate
+buildings of the Dominican church have their part in the history of
+Ragusan art; but the great civic buildings must be seen and mastered
+first. Of these two of the highest interest escaped the common
+overthrow. They both show the Italian Gothic in its best shape; but
+they also show something else which is of far higher value. They show
+that peculiar form of _Renaissance_ which can hardly be called
+_Renaissance_ in any bad sense, which is in truth a last outburst of
+Romanesque, a living child of classical forms, not a dead imitation of
+them. Examples of this kind often meet us in Italy; we see something
+of it in the north side of the great _piazza_ at Venice as compared
+with the southern side; but the Ragusan examples go beyond anything
+that we know of elsewhere. Give the palace of Ragusa--the palace, not
+of a Doge, but of a Rector--the same size, the same position, as the
+building which answers to it at Venice, and we should soon see that
+the city which so long held her own against Venice in other ways could
+hold her own in art also. The Venetian arcade cannot for a moment be
+compared to the Ragusan; the main front of the Ragusan building has
+escaped the addition of the ugly upper story which disfigures the
+Venetian. As wholes, of course no one can compare the two in general
+effect. Saint Blaise must yield to Saint Mark. But set Saint Blaise's
+palace on Saint Mark's site; carry out his arcade to the same
+boundless extent, and there is little doubt which would be the grander
+pile. The Venetian building overwhelms by its general effect; the
+Ragusan building will better stand the test of minute study.
+
+  [Illustration: PALACE, RAGUSA.]
+
+The palace of the Ragusan commonwealth was begun in 1388, and finished
+in 1435, in the reign, as an inscription takes care to announce, of
+the Emperor Siegmund. What name shall we give to the style of this
+most remarkable building, at all events to the style of its admirable
+arcade? Here are six arches--why did not the architect carry on the
+design through the whole length of the building?--which show what, as
+late as the fifteenth century, a round-arched style could still do
+when it followed its natural promptings, instead of either binding
+itself by slavish precedents or striving after a helpless imitation of
+foreign forms. Never mind the date; here is Romanesque in all its
+truth and beauty; here, in the land which gave Rome so many of her
+greatest Cæsars, the arcade of Ragusa may worthily end the series
+which began with the arcades of Spalato. Siegmund, the last but one to
+wear the crown of Diocletian in the Eternal City, has his name not
+quite unworthily engraved on a building less removed in style than a
+distance of more than eleven centuries would have led us to expect
+from the everlasting house of Jovius. Does some pedantic Vitruvian
+brand the columns as too short? The architect has grasped the truth
+that, as the arch takes the place of the entablature, the height of
+the arch may fairly be taken out of the height of the column. Does he
+blame the massive abaci? They are wrought to bear the greater
+immediate weight which the arch brings upon the capital, and they
+avoid such shifts as the Ravenna stilt and the Byzantine double
+capital. Does he blame the capitals, which certainly do not follow the
+exact pattern of any Vitruvian order? Let us answer boldly, Why should
+art be put in fetters? A Corinthian capital is a beautiful form; but
+why should the hand of man be kept back from devising other beautiful
+forms? The Ragusan architect has ventured to cover some of his
+capitals with foliage which does not obey any pedantic rule; in others
+he has ventured--like the artists of the noble capitals which may
+still be seen in the Capitol and in Caracalla's baths--to bring in
+the forms of animal and of human, as well as of vegetable, life. In
+one point his taste seems slightly to have failed him; on some of the
+capitals the winged figures with which they are wrought savour a
+little of the vulgar _Renaissance_. But who shall blame the capital
+long ago engraved and commented on by Sir Gardner Wilkinson, in which
+however a neighbouring inscription shows that tradition was right in
+seeing the form of Asklêpios, and not that of a mere mortal alchemist,
+though tradition was certainly wrong in believing that Asklêpios had
+been brought ready made from his old home at Epidauros? And the
+capitals bear arches worthy of them, round arches with mouldings and
+ornaments, which thoroughly fit their shape, though, like the
+capitals, they do not servilely follow any prescribed rule. Altogether
+this arcade only makes us wish for more, for a longer range from the
+same hand. Compare it with the vulgar Italian work of the two
+neighbouring churches. Pisa and Durham might have stretched out the
+right hand of fellowship to Romanesque Ragusa before the earthquake;
+they would have held it back from Jesuited Ragusa after it.
+
+The rest of the front cannot be called worthy of this admirable
+arcade. The windows behind the arcade are of the worse, those above it
+are of the better, kind of Italian Gothic. These last in fact are
+about as good as Italian Gothic can be. They are well proportioned
+two-light windows with Geometrical tracery, and in the general effect
+they really agree better than could have been looked for with the
+admirable arches below. Still they are Italian Gothic, and at Ragusa
+we should not welcome the loveliest form of tracery that Carlisle or
+Selby could give us. A Pisan arcade, pierced for light wherever light
+was wanted, would have been the right thing for the columns and arches
+to bear aloft. He who duly admires the arcade will do well to shut his
+eyes as he turns round the corner by the west front of the cathedral;
+but let him go inside, and the court, if not altogether worthy of the
+outer arcade, is no contemptible specimen of the same style. It
+contains one or two monuments of Ragusan worthies. The figure of
+Roland, which lay there neglected when we first saw Ragusa, has since
+been set up again in the open _piazza_. And, strange to say in these
+lands, it ventures to proclaim itself as having been set up, as it
+might have been in the old time, by the free act of the _commune_ of
+Ragusa, without any of those cringing references to a foreign power
+which are commonly found expedient under foreign rule. The court is
+entered by a side door with two ancient knockers, one of them a worthy
+fellow of the great one at Durham or of that which we saw more lately
+at Curzola. But its chief interest comes from its strictly
+architectural forms, and from the comparison of them with those which
+are made use of on the outside. The court is very small, and it is
+surrounded on all sides, save that which is filled by the grand
+staircase, by an arcade of two, supporting a second upper range. The
+composition is thus better than that of the front itself, as there are
+two harmonious stages in the same style, without any intrusion of
+foreign elements, like the pointed windows in the front; but the
+arcades themselves, though very good and simple, do not carry out the
+wonderful boldness and originality of the outer range. Columns with
+tongues to their base with flowered capitals, showing a remembrance,
+but not a servile remembrance, of Corinthian models, support round
+arches. Over these is the upper range of two round arches over each
+one below, resting on coupled shafts, the arrangement which, from the
+so-called tomb of Saint Constantia, has spread to so many Romanesque
+cloisters and to so many works of the Saracen. Were this range open,
+instead of being foolishly glazed, this design of two stages of a true
+Romanesque, simpler, but perhaps more classical, than the outer
+arcade, would form a design thoroughly harmonious and satisfactory.
+
+Now when we come to examine this inner court more minutely, we shall
+find that it is certainly of later date than the outer arcade, and
+that it supplanted earlier work which formed part of the same design
+as the outer arcade. It is impossible to believe that the court is
+later than the great earthquake; but 1667 was not the only year in
+which Ragusa underwent visitations of that kind; and it is an
+allowable guess that a rebuilding took place after an earlier
+earthquake in the beginning of the sixteenth century. That some change
+took place at some time is certain. There are preparations for
+spanning arches at one point of the outer wall of the court, which
+could never have agreed with the position of the present columns. And
+we have a most interesting piece of documentary evidence which carries
+us further. In a manuscript account of the building of the palace, it
+is mentioned that at the entrance were two columns, on the capital of
+one of which was carved the Judgement of Solomon, while the other
+showed the Rector of Ragusa sitting to administer justice after the
+model of Solomon. Now this cannot refer to the outer arcade, where
+none of the capitals show those subjects. Still less is there anything
+like it in the arcade of the court, nor can there have been since the
+present arrangement was made. But the description is no freak of the
+imagination; both capitals are in being; one of them is still within
+the palace. The capital showing the Rector in his chair dispensing
+justice to his fellow-citizens is built in at a corner in the upper
+story of the court. And a capital of exactly the same style, and with
+the Judgement of Solomon carved on one face of it, may still be seen
+in the garden of a house outside the city of which we shall have
+presently to speak. It is thus perfectly plain that the inner court
+was rebuilt at some time later than the days of Siegmund, and that
+this rebuilding displaced an inner design more in harmony with the
+outer arcade, and of which these two capitals formed a part.
+
+To our mind this palace, to which Sir Gardner Wilkinson hardly does
+justice, and of which Mr. Neale takes no notice at all, really
+deserves no small place in the history of Romanesque art. It shows how
+late the genuine tradition lingered on, and what vigorous offshoots
+the old style could throw off, even when it might be thought to be
+dead. One or two capitals show that the Ragusan architect knew of the
+actual _Renaissance_. But it was only in that one detail that he went
+astray. In everything else he started from sound principles, and from
+them vigorously developed for himself. And the fruit of his work was a
+building which thoroughly satisfies every requirement of criticism,
+and on which the eye gazes with ever increased delight, as one of the
+fairest triumphs of human skill within the range of the builder's art.
+
+But the palace must not be spoken of as if it stood altogether alone
+among the buildings of the city. There is another civic building,
+which, though it does not reach the full perfection of its great
+neighbour, must also be treated as a true fruit, in some sort a more
+remarkable fruit, of the same spirit which called its greater
+neighbour into being. This is the building which acted at once in the
+characters of mint and custom-house, the second character being set
+forth by its name wrought in nails on the great door. This building
+stands just where the main street and the _piazza_ join, close by the
+arch leading to the town-gate. Here we have an arcade of five, the
+columns of which are crowned with capitals, Composite in their general
+shape, but not slavishly following technical precedents, nor all of
+them exactly alike. They have a heavy abacus, which, as well as the
+soffit of the round arch, is enriched with flowered work. One or two
+of them are none the better for being new chiselled in modern times.
+Here is something which is quite unlike Northern Romanesque, but which
+still is absolutely identical with it in principle. The column and the
+round arch are there in their purity, and the enrichment is of a kind
+which we instinctively feel is in place at Ragusa, though it would be
+out of place at Caen or Mainz or Durham. Whatever the date may be, the
+thing is thoroughly good, incomparably better than either the Italian
+Gothic or the cosmopolite Jesuit style. Above the arcade are
+windows with the usual Venetian attempt at tracery, a large square
+window between two with ogee arches; above is a stage with square
+windows, which we may hope is a later addition. The merits of the
+three stages lessen as they get higher. Yet from the date, when we
+come to find it out, it seems not impossible that the arcade and both
+the stages above it may really be of the same date. In the inner court
+there are no such discordant elements as there are without, though the
+forms of different styles are quite as much mingled. Octagonal piers
+support round arches; pointed doorways with thoroughly Ragusan tympana
+open into the chamber behind them. On this arcade rests another, with
+round arches on the short sides of the court, and pointed arches on
+the long sides, rising from columns and square piers alternately.
+Above is a range which might as well be away. Square windows, round
+Ragusan windows, might well be endured; but _Renaissance_ shields and
+_Renaissance_ angels show that the infection had begun. Now this
+beautiful piece of Romanesque work--we give it that name in defiance
+of dates--was finished in 1520, when the world on the southern side of
+the Alps was, for the most part, running after the dreariest forms of
+the mere revived Italian. This amazingly late date makes this building
+even more wonderful than the palace, though it certainly is not its
+rival in beauty. The arcades, good as they are, cannot be compared to
+those of the palace, and the Venetian work above is still more
+inferior. Still, the later the date, the more honour to the architect
+who designed such a work at such a time. And the later the date, the
+more likely that he built his arcade according to the promptings of
+his own genius, and added the two ranges of windows in deference to
+the two rival fashions of his time.
+
+  [Illustration: DOGANA, RAGUSA.]
+
+The arcade of this building, taken alone without reference to the
+windows above, is the last link in a chain which shows that the
+preservation of good architectural ideas at so late a time is no mere
+accident. Indeed, if we pass from public buildings within the city to
+private buildings outside of it, we shall begin to doubt whether the
+_dogana_ is the last chain, and whether there are not still later
+buildings which are fairly entitled to the Romanesque name. The best
+of the houses of the Ragusan patricians are to be found, not within
+the city, but by the port at Gravosa, and further on on the way to
+Ombla. Several of those, while their other features are Venetian
+Gothic, or even later still, have--commonly in their upper _loggie_--a
+column or two supporting a round arch, which are certainly not vulgar
+_Renaissance_, and which keep on the sound tradition of the palace and
+the _dogana_. The finest of these is the house of the Counts Caboga,
+known as Batahovina, on the coast on the way to Ombla. Here, as in
+the palace, as in the _dogana_, an arcade of this late local
+Romanesque supports an upper story of Venetian Gothic, very inferior
+and most likely much later than that in either of the civic buildings.
+It has however at each end an open _loggia_ matching the arcade below.
+The columns, plain and with twisted flutes--distant kinsfolk of
+Waltham, Durham, Dunfermline, and Lindisfarn--have capitals such as we
+might look for in much earlier Romanesque.
+
+  [Illustration: CABOGA HOUSE, GRAVOSA.]
+
+This, we may note by the way, is the house in whose garden the column
+from the palace, wrought with the Judgement of Solomon, still lies
+hid. Indeed we might go further away from the palace than the _loggie_
+of the houses. At Ragusa art extends itself to objects which might
+have been thought hardly capable of artistic treatment. Stone is
+common, and it is used for all manner of purposes. Among other things
+stone vine-props are common. In not a few cases these take the form of
+columns, slenderer doubtless than the rules of classical proportion,
+realizing the description of Cassiodorus about the tall columns like
+reeds, the lofty buildings propped as it were on the shafts of spears.
+Sometimes the columns are fluted or twisted; in a great many cases
+they have real capitals, with various forms according to taste. It
+often happens that a row of such columns, whether on a house-top or in
+a vineyard, really becomes an architectural object, a genuine
+colonnade. Here the style, the construction at least, is Greek rather
+than Romanesque; but the principle is the same. A good and rational
+artistic form is kept in use, and is applied to a purpose for which it
+is fitted.
+
+All these examples, the palace, the _dogana_, the houses, the remains
+in the Dominican church, we might almost say the vine-props, look one
+way. All point to the existence of a Ragusan style, to an unbroken
+Romanesque tradition, which could not wholly withstand the inroads of
+the _pseudo_-Gothic of Italy, but which could at least keep its place
+alongside of the intruder. All help us to see how instructive must
+have been the course of architectural developement at Ragusa, and how
+much has been lost to the history of art by the destruction of so many
+of the buildings of the city in the great earthquake. It is easy to
+see that for a long time the struggle between the genuine Romanesque
+tradition, the Italian Gothic, and the new ideas of the _Renaissance_,
+must have been very hard. How long real Romanesque went on, bringing
+in new developements of its own, but remaining still as truly
+Romanesque by unbroken succession as anything at Pisa or Durham, is
+shown by the noble arches of the palace, and the still later _dogana_.
+The slight touch of _Renaissance_ in some of the capitals of the
+palace in no sort takes away from the general purity of the style.
+Still over these noble arcades are windows of Venetian Gothic, and one
+of the most characteristic features of the Ragusan streets are the
+flat-headed doorways. But these, alternating as they do with pointed
+ones, help to make out our case. On the other hand, it is equally
+plain that in some cases the _Renaissance_ came in early. A little
+chapel by the basin at Ombla, bearing date 1480, is in a confirmed
+_Renaissance_ style, and looks more like 1580. Yet of true
+_Renaissance_ there is very little. One large house in the city, older
+than the earthquake, stands quite alone as the kind of thing which
+might easily have been built in Italy or copied in England. But at
+Ragusa, in the near neighbourhood of several native doorways of
+different shapes, of many native vine-props, of several native
+wells--for wells too take an artistic style and copy the form of a
+capital--the regular trim Palladian building looks strangely out of
+place. Even in the _Stradone_, where in the houses there is little
+architecture of any kind, a touch of ancient effect is kept in the
+form of the shops, with their arches and stone dressers, thoroughly
+after the mediæval pattern. And some architectural features never died
+out. The round window with tracery goes on long after every other
+feature of Romanesque or Gothic is forgotten. It is to be seen in
+endless little chapels of very late date in the city and suburbs,
+sometimes standing apart, sometimes attached to private houses.
+
+The plain conclusion from all this is that at Ragusa the use of the
+round arch for the chief arcades never went out of use; that it always
+remained as a constructive feature, passing from Romanesque to
+_Renaissance_, if fully developed _Renaissance_ can at Ragusa be said
+to exist at all, without any intermediate Gothic stage, and continuing
+to invent and adopt any kind of ornament which suited its constructive
+form. In windows and doorways, on the other hand, the forms of the
+Italian Gothic came in and stood their ground till a very late date.
+In most cases we wish the Venetian features away; in the upper story
+of the palace they may be endured; but conceive palace, _dogana_,
+Caboga house, with smaller arcades and windows to match the great
+constructive arches. Such buildings as these, now so few, make us sigh
+over the effects of the great earthquake, and over the treasures of
+art which it must have swallowed up. If Ragusa, in her earlier day,
+contained a series of churches to match her civic arcades, she might
+claim, in strictly artistic interest, to stand alongside of Rome,
+Ravenna, Pisa, and Lucca. Her churches of the fifteenth century must
+have been worthy to rank with anything from the fourth century to the
+twelfth. One longs to be able to study the Ragusan style in more than
+these few examples. It is not indeed absolutely peculiar either to
+Ragusa or to Dalmatia. Many buildings in Italy and Sicily show a good
+native Romanesque tradition, holding its own against the sham Gothic,
+and showing a good fight against the _Renaissance_. Not a few arcades,
+not a few cloisters, of this kind may be found here and there. But it
+would be hard to light on another such group of buildings as the
+palace, the _dogana_, and their fellows. In any case the Dalmatian
+coast may hold its head high among the artistic regions of the world.
+It is no small matter that the harmonious and consistent use of the
+arch and column should have begun at Spalato, and that identically the
+same constructive form should still be found, eleven ages later,
+putting forth fresh and genuine shapes of beauty at Ragusa.
+
+
+
+
+A TRUDGE TO TREBINJE.
+
+1875.
+
+     [This paper, as giving the impressions of a first visit to
+     the soil of Herzegovina, during an early stage of the war,
+     has been reprinted, with the change of a few words, as it
+     was first written.]
+
+
+The first step which any man takes beyond the bounds of Christendom
+can hardly fail to mark a kind of epoch in his life. And the epoch
+becomes more memorable when the first step is taken into an actual
+"seat of war," where the old strife between Christian and Moslem is
+still going on with all the bitterness of crusading days. In Europe it
+is now in one quarter only that such a step can be made by land with
+somewhat less of formality than is often needed in passing from one
+Christian state to another. It is now only in the great south-eastern
+peninsula that the frontier of the Turk marches upon the dominions of
+any Christian power; and, now that Russia and the Turk are no longer
+immediate neighbours, the powers on which his frontier marches are,
+with one exception, states which have been more or less fully
+liberated from his real or asserted dominion. That exception is to be
+found in the Hadriatic dominions of Austria; and certainly no more
+striking contrast can be imagined than that which strikes the
+traveller as he passes on this side from Christian to Moslem dominion.
+Let us suppose him to be at Ragusa, with his ears full of tales from
+the seat of war, all of which cannot be true, but all of which may
+possibly be false. The insurgents have burned a Turkish village. No;
+it was a Christian village, and the Turks burned it. The Turks have
+murdered seven Roman Catholics. The Turks have murdered seventy Roman
+Catholics--a difference this last which may throw light on some cases
+of disputed numbers in various parts of history. The Turks have
+threatened Austrian subjects. Austrian subjects have attacked the
+Turks. An Italian has had his head cut off by the Turks just beyond
+the frontier. A Turkish soldier has been found lying dead in the road
+a little further on. These two last stories come on the authority of
+men who have seen the bodies, so that we have got within the bounds of
+credible testimony. Meanwhile the one thing about which there is no
+doubt is the presence and the wretchedness of the unhappy
+Herzegovinese women and children whose homes have been destroyed
+either by friends or by enemies, and who are seeking such shelter as
+public and private charity can give in hospitable Ragusa. All these
+things kindle a certain desire to get at least a glimpse of the land
+where something is certainly going on, though it may not be easy to
+know exactly what. Between Ragusa and Trebinje there is just now no
+actual fighting; the road is reported to be perfectly safe; only it is
+advisable to get a passport _visé_ by the Turkish consul. The
+passports are _visé_, but, so far for the credit of the Turks, it must
+be added that, though duly carried, they were never asked for. The
+party, four in number--three English and one Russian--presently set
+forth from Ragusa. It is now as easy to get a carriage at Ragusa as in
+any other European town. So our party sets out behind two of the small
+but strong and sure-footed horses of the country, to get a glimpse of
+what, to two at least of their number, were the hitherto unknown lands
+of Paynimrie.
+
+As long as we are on Austrian territory there is nothing to fear or to
+complain of but those evils which no kings or laws can cure. The day
+was rainy--so rainy that a word was once or twice murmured in favour
+of turning back; but it was deemed faint-hearted to turn again in an
+undertaking which had been once begun. On the Austrian side the rain
+was certainly to be regretted, as damping the charm of the glorious
+prospect from the zigzag road which winds up from Ragusa to the
+frontier point of Drino. Ragusa, nestling among hills and forts and
+castles, the isle of La Croma keeping guard over the haven which has
+ceased to be a haven, the wide Hadriatic stretching to the horizon,
+form a picture surpassed by but few pictures even in the glorious
+scenery of the Dalmatian coast. On the other side, it was perhaps no
+great harm if the rain made the savage land between Drino and Trebinje
+seem more savage still. At the top of the height the Austrian
+guard-house is reached, a guard-house which the line of the frontier
+causes to be overlooked by a Turkish fort above it. The guardians of
+the borders of Christendom look wild enough in their local dress; but
+the wildness is all outside, though one certainly does not envy them
+their watch on so dreary a spot. Hard by is the place where the
+Italian lost his head; but the Italian was openly in the ranks of the
+insurgents; so, though the thought is a little thrilling, our present
+travellers feel no real danger for their heads. The frontier is now
+passed; we are in the land where the Asiatic and Mahometan invader
+still holds European and Christian nations in bondage. We see no
+immediate sign of his presence. The Turkish guard-house is at some
+distance from the Austrian, in order to watch the pass on the other
+side, where the road begins to go down towards Trebinje, as the
+Austrian guards the road immediately up from Ragusa. But, if as yet we
+see not the Turk, we feel his presence in another way. In one point
+at least we have suddenly changed from civilization to barbarism. The
+excellently kept Austrian road at once stops--that is to say, its
+excellent keeping stops; the road goes on, only it is no longer mended
+in Austrian but in Turkish fashion--a fashion of which the dullest
+English highway board would perhaps be ashamed. We presently begin to
+see something cf the land of Herzegovina, or at least of that part of
+it which lies between Ragusa and Trebinje. It may be most simply
+described as a continuous mass of limestone. The town lies in a plain
+surrounded by hills, and it would be untrue to say that that plain is
+altogether without trees or without cultivation. Close to the town
+tobacco grows freely, and before we reach the town, as we draw near to
+the river Trebenitza, the dominion of utter barrenness has come to an
+end. But the first general impression of the land is one of utter
+barrenness, and for a great part of our course, long after we have
+come down into the lower ground, this first general impression remains
+literally true. It is not like a mountain valley or a mountain coast,
+with a fringe of inhabited and cultivated land at the foot of the
+heights. All is barren; all is stone; stone which, if it serves no
+other human purpose, might at least be used to make the road better.
+That road, in all its Turkish wretchedness, goes on and on, through
+masses of limestone of every size, from the mountains which form the
+natural wall of Trebinje down to lumps which nature has broken nearly
+small enough for the purposes of MacAdam. Through the greater part of
+the route not a house is to be seen; there are one or two near the
+frontier; there is hardly another till we draw near to the town, when
+we pass a small village or two, of which more anon. Through the
+greater part of the route not a living being is to be seen. In such a
+wilderness we might at least have looked for birds of prey; but no
+flight of vultures, no solitary eagle, shows itself. As for man, he
+seems absent also, save for one great exception, which exception gives
+the journey to Trebinje its marked character, and which brings
+thoroughly home to us that we are passing through a seat of war.
+
+It will be remembered that, early in the war, the insurgents were
+attacking the town of Trebinje, and, among later rumours, were tales
+of renewed attacks in that quarter. But at the time of our travellers'
+journey the road was perfectly open, and no actual fighting was going
+on in the neighbourhood. Trebinje however was on the watch: the plain
+before the town was full of tents, and, long before the town or the
+tents were within sight, the sight of actual campaigners gave a keen
+feeling of what was going on. Flour is to be had in the stony land
+only by seeking it within the Austrian frontier, and to the Austrian
+frontier accordingly the packhorses go, with a strong convoy of
+Turkish soldiers to guard them. Twice therefore in the course of their
+journey, going and coming back, did our travellers fall in with the
+Turkish troops on their way to and from the land of food. For men who
+had never before seen anything of actual warfare there was something
+striking in the first sight of soldiers, not neat and trim as for some
+day of parade, but ragged, dirty, and weather-stained with the actual
+work of war. And there was something more striking still in the
+thought that these were the old enemies of Europe and of Christendom,
+the representatives of the men who stormed the gates of the New Rome
+and who overthrew the chivalry of Burgundy and Poland at Nikopolis and
+at Varna. But the Turk in a half-European uniform has lost both his
+picturesqueness and his terrors, and the best troops in Europe would
+be seen to no great advantage on such a day and on such a march. And
+perhaps Turkish soldiers, like all other men and things, look
+differently according to the eyes with which they are looked at. Some
+eyes noticed them as being, under all their disadvantages, well-made
+and powerful-looking men. Other eyes looked with less pleasure on the
+countenances of the barbarians who were brought to spread havoc over
+Christian lands. All however agreed that, as the armed votaries of
+the Prophet passed before them, the unmistakeable features of the
+Æthiop were not lacking among the many varieties of countenance which
+they displayed. But the Paynim force, though it did no actual deed of
+arms before the eyes of our party, did something more than simply
+march along the road. The realities of warfare came out more vividly
+when, at every fitting point, skirmishers were thrown off to occupy
+each of the peaked hills and other prominent points which line the
+road like so many watchtowers.
+
+The armed force went and came back that day without any need for
+actually using their arms. Insurgent attacks on the convoys are a
+marked feature of the present war; but our travellers had not the
+opportunity of seeing such a skirmish. Still before long they did see
+one most speaking sign of war and its horrors. By the banks of the
+Trebenitza a burned village first came in sight. The sight gives a
+kind of turn to the whole man; still a burned village is not quite so
+ugly in reality as it sounds in name. The stone walls of the houses
+are standing; it is only the roofs that are burned off. But who burned
+the village, and why? He would be a very rash man who should venture
+to say, without the personal witness of those who burned it, or saw it
+burned. Was it a Christian village burned by Turks? Was it a Turkish
+village burned by Christians? Was it a Christian village burned by
+the insurgents because its inhabitants refused to join in the
+insurrection? Was it a Christian village burned by its own inhabitants
+rather than leave anything to fall into the hands of the Turks? If
+rumour is to be trusted, cases of all these four kinds have happened
+in the course of the war. All that can be said is that the village has
+a church and shows no signs of a mosque, and that, while the houses
+were burned, the church was not. The burned village lay near a point
+of the river which it is usually possible to ford in a carriage. This
+time however, the Trebenitza--a river which, like so many Greek
+rivers, loses itself in a _katabothra_--was far too full to be crossed
+in this way, and our travellers had to leave their carriage and horses
+and get to Trebinje as they could. After some scrambling over stones,
+a boat was found, which strongly suggested those legends of Charon
+which are far from having died out of the memory of the Christians of
+the East. A primitive punt it was, with much water in it, which Charon
+slowly ladled out with a weapon which suggested the notion of a
+gigantic spoon. Charon himself was a ragged object enough, but, as
+became his craft, he seemed master of many tongues. We may guess that
+his native speech would be Slave, but one of the company recognized
+some of his talk for Turkish, and the demand for the two oboli of old
+was translated into the strange phrase of "dieci groschen." To our
+travellers the words suggested was the expiring coinage of the German
+Empire; they did not then take it how widely the _groat_ had spread
+its name in the south-eastern lands. At first hearing, the name
+sounded strange on the banks of the Trebenitza; but in the absence of
+literal _groats_ or _groschen_, the currency of the Austro-Hungarian
+monarchy was found in practice to do just as well. Then our four
+pilgrims crossed and crossed again, the second time with much gladness
+of heart, as for a while things looked as if no means of getting back
+again were forthcoming, and it was not every one of the party that had
+a heart stout enough even to think of trying to swim or wade. Charon's
+second appearance was therefore hailed with special pleasure.
+
+From the crossing-place to Trebinje itself our travellers had to
+trudge as they could along a fearfully rough Turkish path--not rougher
+though than some Dalmatian and Montenegrin paths--till they reached
+the town itself, which this delay gave them but little time to
+examine. The suburbs stretched along the hillside; below, the tents of
+the Turkish troops were pitched on one side; the Mahometan
+burial-ground lay on the other. After so much time and pains had been
+spent in getting to Trebinje, a glimpse of Trebinje itself was all
+that was to be had. But even a glimpse of Eastern life was something,
+particularly a glimpse of Eastern life where Eastern life should not
+be, in a land which once was European. It is the rule of the Turk, it
+is the effect of his four hundred years of oppression, which makes
+Trebinje to differ alike from Tzetinje and from Cattaro. The dark,
+dingy, narrow, streets, the dim arches and vaults, the bazaar, with
+the Turk--more truly the renegade Slave--squatting in his shop, the
+gate with its Arabic inscription, the mosques with their minarets
+contrasting with the church with its disused campanile, all come home
+to us with a feeling not only of mere strangeness, but of something
+which is where it ought not to be. It is with a feeling of relief
+that, after our second trudge, our second voyage, our second meeting
+with the convoy, we reach the heights, we pass the guard-houses, and
+find ourselves again in Christendom. Presently Ragusa comes within
+sight; we are in no mood to discuss the respective merits of the
+fallen aristocratic commonwealths and of the rule of the Apostolic
+King. King or Doge or Rector, we may be thankful for the rule of any
+of them, so as it be not the rule of the Sultan. The difference
+between four hundred years of civilized government and four hundred
+years of barbarian tyranny has made the difference between Ragusa and
+Trebinje.
+
+
+
+
+CATTARO.
+
+1875.
+
+     [I have left this paper, with a few needful corrections, as
+     it was published in March 1876. Since then, it must be
+     remembered, much has changed, especially in the way of
+     boundaries--to say nothing of a carriage-way to Tzetinje.
+     Neither Cattaro nor Budua is any longer either the end of
+     Christendom or the end of the Dalmatian kingdom of the
+     Austrian. That kingdom has been enlarged by the harbour of
+     Spizza, won from the Turk by Montenegrin valour and won from
+     the Montenegrin by Austrian diplomacy. But Christendom must
+     now be looked on as enlarged by the whole Montenegrin
+     sea-coast, a form of words which I could not have used
+     either in 1875 or in 1877. Of this sea-coast I shall have
+     something to say in another paper.]
+
+
+The end of a purely Dalmatian pilgrimage will be Cattaro. He who goes
+further along the coast will pass into lands that have a history, past
+and present, which is wholly distinct from that of the coast which he
+has hitherto traced from Zara--we might say from Capo d'Istria--onwards.
+We have not reached the end of the old Venetian dominion--for that we
+must carry on our voyage to Crete and Cyprus. But we have reached the
+end of the nearly continuous Venetian dominion--the end of the coast
+which, save at two small points, was either Venetian or Ragusan--the
+end of that territory of the two maritime commonwealths which they
+kept down to their fall in modern times, and in which they have been
+succeeded by the modern Dalmatian kingdom. After Cattaro and the small
+district of Budua beyond it, the Venetian territory did indeed once go
+on continuously as far as Epidamnos, Dyrrhachion, or Durazzo, while,
+down to the fall of the Republic, it went on, in the form of scattered
+outposts, much farther. But, for a long time past, Venice had held
+beyond Budua only islands and outlying points; and most of these,
+except the seven so-called Ionian Islands and a few memorable points
+on the neighbouring mainland, had passed away from her before her
+fall. Cattaro is the last city of the present Austrian dominion; it
+is, till we reach the frontier of the modern Greek kingdom, the last
+city of Christendom. The next point at which the steamer stops will
+land the traveller on what is now Turkish ground. But the distinction
+is older than that; he will now change from a Slavonic mainland with a
+half-Italian fringe on its coast to an Albanian, that is an
+Old-Illyrian, land, with a few points here and there which once came
+under Italian influences. It is not at an arbitrary point that the
+dominion in which the Apostolic King has succeeded the Serene Republic
+comes to an end. With Cattaro then the Dalmatian journey and the
+series of Dalmatian cities will naturally end.
+
+Cattaro is commonly said to have been the Ascrivium or Askrourion of
+Pliny and Ptolemy, one of the Roman towns which Pliny places after
+Epidauros--that Epidauros which was the parent of Ragusa--towards the
+south-east. And, as it is placed between Rhizinion and Butua, which
+must be Risano and Budua, one can hardly doubt that the identification
+is right. But though Ascrivium is described as a town of Roman
+citizens, it has not, like some of its neighbours, any history in
+purely Roman times. It first comes into notice in the pages of
+Constantine Porphyrogenitus, and it will therefore give us for the
+last time the privilege of studying topography in company with an
+Emperor. In his pages the city bears a name which is evidently the
+same as the name which it bears still, but which the august geographer
+seizes on as the subject of one of his wonderful bits of etymology.
+Cattaro with him is Dekatera, and we read:
+
+    [Greek: hoti to kastron tôn Dekaterôn hermêneuetai tê
+    Rhômaiôn dialektô estenômenon kai peplêgmenon.]
+
+We are again driven to ask, Which is the dialect of the Romans? What
+word either of Greek or of Latin can the Emperor have got hold of? At
+the same time he had got a fair notion of the general position of
+Cattaro, though he runs off into bits of exaggeration which remind us
+of Giraldus' description of Llanthony. The city stands at the end of
+an inlet of the sea fifteen or twenty miles long, and it has mountains
+around it so high that it is only in fair summer weather that the sun
+can be seen; in winter Dekatera never enjoys his presence. There
+certainly is no place where it is harder to believe that the smooth
+waters of the narrow, lake-like inlet, with mountains on each side
+which it seems as if one could put out one's hand and touch, are
+really part of the same sea which dashes against the rocks of Ragusa.
+They end in a meadow-like coast which makes one think of Bourget or
+Trasimenus rather than of Hadria. The Dalmatian voyage is well ended
+by the sail along the _Bocche_, the loveliest piece of inland sea
+which can be conceived, and whose shores are as rich in curious bits
+of political history as they are in scenes of surpassing natural
+beauty. The general history of the district consists in the usual
+tossing to and fro between the various powers which have at different
+times been strong in the neighbourhood. Cattaro--[Greek: ta katô
+Dekatera]--was in the reign of Basil the Macedonian besieged and taken
+by Saracens, who presently went on unsuccessfully to besiege Ragusa.
+And, as under Byzantine rule it was taken by Saracens, so under
+Venetian rule it was more than once besieged by Turks. In the
+intermediate stages we get the usual alternations of independence and
+of subjection to all the neighbouring powers in turn, till in 1419
+Cattaro finally became Venetian. At the fall of the Republic it became
+part of the Austrian share of the spoil. When the spoilers quarrelled,
+it fell to France. When England, Russia, and Montenegro were allies,
+the city joined the land of which it naturally forms the head, and
+Cattaro became the Montenegrin haven and capital. When France was no
+longer dangerous, and the powers of Europe came together to part out
+other men's goods, Austria calmly asked for Cattaro back again, and
+easily got it. To this day the land keeps many signs of the endless
+changes which it has undergone. We enter the mouth of the gulf, where,
+eighty years ago, the land was Ragusan on the left hand and Venetian
+on the right. But Ragusa and Venice between them did not occupy the
+whole shore of the _Bocche_; neither at this day does the whole of it
+belong to that Dalmatian kingdom which has taken the place of both the
+old republics. We soon reach the further of the two points where
+Ragusan jealousy preferred an infidel to a Christian neighbour. At
+Sutorina the Turkish territory nominally comes down to the sea;
+nominally we say, for if the soil belongs to the Sultan, the road, the
+most important thing upon it, belongs to the Dalmatian King. And if
+the Turk comes down to the _Bocche_ at this end, at the other end the
+Montenegrin, if he does not come down to the water, at least looks
+down upon it. In this furthest corner of Dalmatia political elements,
+old and new, come in which do not show themselves at Zara and Spalato.
+In short, on the _Bocche_ we have really got into another region,
+national and religious, from the nearer parts of the country. We have
+hitherto spoken of an Italian fringe on a Slavonic mainland; we might
+be tempted to speak of Italian cities with a surrounding Slavonic
+country. On the shores of the _Bocche_ we may drop those forms of
+speech. We can hardly say that here there is so much as an Italian
+fringe. We feel at last we have reached the land which is thoroughly
+Slavonic. The _Bocchesi_ at once proclaim themselves as the near
+kinsmen of the unconquered race above them, from whom indeed they
+differ only in the accidents of their political history. For all
+purposes but those of war and government, Cattaro is more truly the
+capital of Montenegro than Tzetinje. In one sense indeed Cattaro is
+more Italian than Ragusa. All Ragusa, though it has an Italian
+varnish, is Slavonic at heart. At Cattaro it would be truer to speak
+of a Slavonic majority and an Italian minority. And along these
+coasts, together with this distinct predominance of the Slavonic
+nationality, we come also, if not to the predominance, at all events
+to the greatly increased prominence, of that form of Christianity to
+which the Eastern Slave naturally tends. Elsewhere in Dalmatia, as we
+have on the Slavonic body a narrow fringe of Italian speech, art, and
+manners, so we have a narrow fringe of the religion of the Old Rome
+skirting a body belonging to the New. Here, along with the Slavonic
+nationality, the religion of Eastern Christendom makes itself
+distinctly seen. In the city of Cattaro the Orthodox Church is still
+in a minority, but it is a minority not far short of a majority.
+Outside its walls, the Orthodox outnumber the Catholics. In short,
+when we reach Cattaro, we have very little temptation to fancy
+ourselves in Italy or in any part of Western Christendom. We not only
+know, but feel, that we are on the Byzantine side of the Hadriatic;
+that we have, in fact, made our way into Eastern Europe.
+
+And East and West, Slave and Italian, New Rome and Old, might well
+struggle for the possession of the land and of the water through which
+we pass from Ragusa to our final goal at Cattaro. The strait leads us
+into a gulf; another narrow strait leads us into an inner gulf; and on
+an inlet again branching out of that inner gulf lies the furthest of
+Dalmatian cities. The lower city, Cattaro itself, [Greek: ta katô
+Dekatera], seems to lie so quietly, so peacefully, as if in a world of
+its own from which nothing beyond the shores of its own _Bocche_
+could enter, that we are tempted to forget, not only that the spot has
+been the scene of so many revolutions through so many ages, but that
+it is even now a border city, a city on the marchland of contending
+powers, creeds, and races. But, if we once look up to the mountains,
+we see signs both of the past and of the present, which may remind us
+of the true nature and history of the land in which we are. In some of
+the other smaller Dalmatian towns, and at other points along the
+coast, we see castles perched on mountain peaks or ledges at a height
+which seems almost frightful; but the castle of Cattaro and the walls
+leading up to it, walls which seem to leap from point to point of the
+almost perpendicular hill, form surely the most striking of all the
+mountain fortresses of the land. The castle is perhaps all the more
+striking, nestling as it does among the rocks, than if it actually
+stood, like some others, on a peak or crest of the mountain. One
+thinks of Alexander's Aornos, and indeed the name of Aornos might be
+given to any of these Dalmatian heights. The lack of birds, great and
+small, especially the lack of the eagles and vultures that one sees in
+other mountain lands, is a distinct feature in the aspect of the
+Dalmatian hills and of their immediate borders, Montenegrin and
+Turkish. But, while the castle stands as if no human power could reach
+it, much less fight against it, there are other signs of more modern
+date which remind us that there are points higher still where no one
+can complain that the art of fighting has been unknown in any age. Up
+the mountain, during part of its course skirting the castle walls,
+climbs the winding road--the staircase rather--which leads from
+Cattaro to Tzetinje. On it climbs, up and up, till it is lost in the
+higher peaks; long before the traveller reaches the frontier line
+which divides Dalmatia and Montenegro, long before he reaches the
+ridge to which he looks up from Cattaro and its gulf, he has begun to
+look down, not only on the gulf and the city, but on the mountain
+castle itself, as something lying far below his feet. From below,
+Cattaro seems like the end of the world. As we climb the mountain
+paths, we soon find that it is but a border post on the frontier of a
+vast world beyond it, a world in whose past history Cattaro has had
+some share, a world whose history is not yet over.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The city of Cattaro itself is small, standing on a narrow ledge
+between the gulf and the base of the mountain. It carries the features
+of the Dalmatian cities to what any one who has not seen Traü will
+call their extreme point. But, though the streets of Cattaro are
+narrow, yet they are civilized and airy-looking compared with those of
+Traü, and the little paved squares, as so often along this coast,
+suggest the memory of the ruling city. The memory of Venice is again
+called up by the graceful little scraps of its characteristic
+architecture which catch the eye ever and anon among the houses of
+Cattaro. The landing-place, the _marina_, the space between the coast
+and the Venetian wall, where we pass for the last time under the
+winged lion over the gate, has put on the air of a _boulevard_. But
+the forms and costume of _Bocchesi_ and Montenegrins, the men of the
+gulf, with their arms in their girdles, no less than the men of the
+Black Mountain, banish all thought that we are anywhere but where we
+really are, at one of the border points of Christian and civilized
+Europe. If in the sons of the mountains we see the men who have in all
+ages held out against the invading Turk, we see in their brethren of
+the coast the men who, but a few years back, brought Imperial, Royal,
+and Apostolic Majesty to its knees. The same thought is brought home
+to us in another form. The antiquities of Cattaro are mainly
+ecclesiastical, and among them the Orthodox church, standing well in
+one of the open places, claims a rank second only to the _duomo_. Here
+some may see for the first time the ecclesiastical arrangements of
+Eastern Christendom; and those who do not wish to see a church thrown
+wide open from end to end, those who would cleave alike to the
+rood-beam of Lübeck, the _jubé_ of Albi, and the _cancelli_ of Saint
+Clement, to the old screen which once was at Wimborne and to the new
+screen which now is at Lichfield, may be startled at the first sight
+of the Eastern _eikonostasis_ blocking off apse and altar utterly from
+sight. The arrangements of the Eastern Church may indeed be seen in
+places much nearer than Cattaro, at Trieste, at Wiesbaden, in London
+itself; but in all these places the Eastern Church is an exotic,
+standing as a stranger on Western ground. At Cattaro the Orthodox
+Church is on its own ground, standing side by side on equal terms with
+its Latin rival, pointing to lands where the _Filioque_ is unknown and
+where the Bishop of the Old Rome has ever been deemed an intruder. The
+building itself is a small Byzantine church, less Byzantine in fact in
+its outline than the small churches of the Byzantine type at Zara,
+Spalato, and Traü. The single dome rises, not from the intersection of
+a Greek cross, but from the middle of a single body, and, resting as
+it does on pointed arches, it suggests the thought of Périgueux and
+Angoulême. But this arrangement, which is shared by a neighbouring
+Latin church, is well known throughout the East. The Latin _duomo_,
+which has been minutely described by Mr. Neale, is of quite another
+type, and is by no means Dalmatian in its general look. A modern west
+front with two western towers does not go for much; but it reminds us
+that a design of the same kind was begun at Traü in better times. The
+inside is quite unlike anything of later Italian work. It seems like a
+cross between a basilica and an Aquitanian church. It is small, but
+the inside is lofty and solemn. The body of the church, not counting
+the apses and the western portico, has seven narrow arches, the six
+eastern ones grouped in pairs forming, as in so many German examples,
+three bays only in the vaulting. The principal pillars are rectangular
+with flat pilasters; the intermediate piers are Corinthian columns
+with a heavy Lucchese abacus, enriched with more mouldings than is
+usual at Lucca. As there is no triforium, and only a blank clerestory,
+the whole effect comes from the tall columns and their narrow arches,
+the last offshoots of Spalato that we have to record. For the
+ecclesiologist proper there is a prodigious _baldacchino_, and a grand
+display of metal-work behind the high altar. A good deal too, as Mr.
+Neale has shown, may be gleaned from the inscriptions and records. The
+traveller whose objects are of a more general kind turns away from
+this border church of Christendom as the last stage of a pilgrimage
+unsurpassed either for natural beauty or for historic interest. And,
+as he looks up at the mountain which rises almost close above the east
+end of the _duomo_ of Cattaro, and thinks of the land and the men to
+which the path over that mountain leads, he feels that, on this
+frontier at least, the spirit still lives which led English warriors
+to the side of Manuel Komnênos, and which steeled the heart of the
+last Constantine to die in the breach for the Roman name and the faith
+of Christendom.
+
+
+
+
+VENICE IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE NORMANS.
+
+
+
+
+TRANI.
+
+1881.
+
+
+The solemn yearly marriage between the Venetian commonwealth and the
+Hadriatic sea had much more effect on the eastern shore of that sea
+than on the western. On the eastern side of the long gulf there are
+few points which have not at some time or other "looked to the winged
+lion's marble piles," and for many ages a long and nearly continuous
+dominion looked steadily to that quarter. On the western shore Venice
+never established any lasting dominion very far from her own lagoons.
+Ravenna was the furthest point on that side which she held for any
+considerable time, and at Ravenna we are hardly clear of the delta of
+the Po. In the northern region of Italy her power struck inland, till
+at last, defying the precepts of the wise Doge who could not keep even
+Treviso, she held an unbroken dominion from Bergamo to Cividale. That
+she kept that dominion down to her fall, that that dominion could live
+through the fearful trial of the League of Cambray, may perhaps show
+that Venice, after all, was not so unfitted to become a land-power as
+she seems at first sight, and as Andrew Contarini deemed her in the
+fourteenth century. Yet one might have thought that the occupation of
+this or that point along the long coast from Ravenna to the heel of
+the boot would have better suited her policy than the lordship over
+Bergamo and Brescia. And one might have thought too that, amid the
+endless changes that went on among the small commonwealths and
+tyrannies of that region, it would have been easier for the Republic
+to establish its dominion there than to establish it over great cities
+like Padua and Verona. Yet Venice did not establish even a temporary
+dominion along these coasts till she was already a great land power in
+Lombardy and Venetia. And then the few outlying points which she held
+for a while lay, not among the small towns of the marches, but within
+the solid kingdom which the Norman had made, and which had passed from
+him to kings from Swabia, from Anjou, and from Aragon. It is this last
+thought which gives the short Venetian occupation of certain cities
+within what the Italians called _the Kingdom_ a higher interest in
+itself, and withal a certain connexion in idea with more lasting
+possessions of the commonwealth elsewhere. At Trani and at Otranto, no
+less than in Corfu and at Durazzo, the Venetian was treading in the
+footsteps of the Norman. Only, on the eastern side of Hadria the
+Republic won firm and long possession of places where the Norman had
+been seen only for a moment; on the western side, the Republic held
+only for a moment places which the Norman had firmly grasped, and
+which he handed on to his successors of other races. And, if we pass
+on from the Norman himself to those successors, we shall find the
+connexion between the Venetian dominion on the eastern and the western
+side of the gulf become yet stronger. The Venetian occupation of
+Neapolitan towns within the actual Neapolitan kingdom seems less
+strange, if we look on it as a continuation of the process by which
+many points on the eastern coast had passed to and fro between the
+Republic and the Kings of Sicily and afterwards of Naples. The
+connexion between Sicily and southern Italy on the one hand and the
+coasts and islands of western Greece on the other, is as old as the
+days of the Greek colonies, perhaps as old as the days of Homer. The
+singer of the Odyssey seems to know of Sikels in Epeiros; but, if his
+Sikels were in Italy, we only get the same connexion in another shape.
+A crowd of rulers from one side and from the other have ruled on both
+sides of the lower waters of Hadria. Agathoklês, Pyrrhos, Robert
+Wiscard, King Roger, William the Good, strove alike either to add
+Epeiros and Korkyra to a Sicilian dominion or to add Sicily to a
+dominion which already took in Epeiros and Korkyra. So did Manfred; so
+did Charles of Anjou. And after the division of the Sicilian kingdom,
+the kings of the continental realm held a considerable dominion on the
+Greek side of the sea. And that dominion largely consisted of places
+which had been Venetian and which were to become Venetian again. To go
+no further into detail, if we remember that Corfu and Durazzo were
+held by Norman Dukes and Kings of Apulia and Sicily--that they were
+afterwards possessions of Venice--that they were possessions of the
+Angevin kings at Naples, and then possessions of Venice again--it may
+perhaps seem less wonderful to find the Republic at a later time
+occupying outposts on the coasts of the Neapolitan kingdom itself.
+
+It was not till the last years of the fifteenth century, when so many
+of her Greek and Albanian possessions had passed away, that the
+Republic appeared as a ruler on the coasts of Apulia and of that land
+of Otranto, the heel of the boot, from which the name of Calabria had
+long before wandered to the toe. It was in 1495, when Charles of
+France went into southern Italy to receive for himself a kingdom and
+to return,--only to return without the kingdom,--that the Venetians,
+as allies of his rival Ferdinand, took the town of Monopoli by storm,
+and one or two smaller places by capitulation. What they took they
+kept, and in the next year their ally pledged to them other cities,
+among them Trani, Brindisi, Otranto, and Taranto, in return for help
+in men and money. These cities were thus won by Venice as the ally of
+the Aragonese King against the French. But at a later time, when
+France and Aragon were allied against Venice, the Aragonese King of
+the Sicilies, a more famous Ferdinand than the first, took them as his
+share in 1509. We cannot wonder at this; no king, or commonwealth
+either, can be pleased to see a string of precious coast towns in the
+hands of a foreign power. Again in 1528 Venice is allied with France
+against Aragon and Naples, and Aragon and Naples are now only two of
+the endless kingdoms of Charles of Austria. For a moment the lost
+cities are again Venetian. Two years later, as part of the great
+pageant of Bologna, they passed back from the rule of Saint Mark to
+the last prince who ever wore the crown of Rome.
+
+So short an occupation cannot be expected to have left any marked
+impress on the cities which Venice thus held for a few years at a late
+time as isolated outposts. These Apulian towns are not Venetian in the
+same sense in which the Istrian and Dalmatian towns are. In those
+regions, even the cities which were merely neighbours and not subjects
+of Venice may be called Venetian in an artistic sense; they were in
+some sort members of a body of which Venice was the chief. Here we see
+next to nothing which recalls Venice in any way. The difference is
+most likely owing, not so much in the late date at which these towns
+became Venetian possessions, as to the shortness of time by which they
+were held, and to the precarious tenure by which the Republic held
+them. As far as mere dates go, Cattaro and Trani were won by Venice
+within the same century. But, as we have seen, the architectural
+features which give the Dalmatian towns their Venetian character
+belong to the most part to times even later than the occupation of
+Trani. Men must have gone on building at Cattaro in the Venetian
+fashion for fully a century and a half after Trani was again lost by
+Venice. There are few Venetian memorials to be seen in these towns;
+and if the winged lion ever appeared over their gates, he has been
+carefully thrust aside by kings and emperors. More truly perhaps,
+kings and emperors rebuilt the walls of these towns after the Venetian
+power had passed away. Still the occupation of these towns forms part
+of Venetian history, and they may be visited so as to bring them
+within the range of Venetian geography. Brindisi is the natural
+starting point for Corfu and the Albanian coast, and Brindisi is one
+of the towns which Venice thus held for a season. The two opposite
+coasts are thus brought into direct connexion. The lands which owned,
+first the Norman and the Angevin, and then the Venetian, as their
+masters, may thus naturally become part of a single journey. We may
+have passed through the hilly lands, we may have seen the hill-cities,
+of central Italy; we may have gone through lands too far from the sea
+to suggest any memories of Venice, but which are full of the memories
+of the Norman and the Swabian. We find ourselves in the great Apulian
+plain, the great sheep-feeding plain so memorable in the wars of Anjou
+and Aragon, and we tarry to visit some of the cities of the Apulian
+coast. The contrast indeed is great between the land in which we are
+and either the land from which we have come, or the land whither we
+are going. Bari, Trani, and their fellows, planted on the low coast
+where the great plain joins the sea, are indeed unlike, either the
+Latin and Volscian towns on their hill-tops, or the Dalmatian towns
+nestling between the sea and the mountains. The greatest of these
+towns, the greatest at least in its present state, never came under
+Venetian rule. Bari, the city which it needed the strength of both
+Empires to win from the Saracen, is said to have been defended by a
+Venetian fleet early in the eleventh century, when Venetian fleets
+still sailed at the bidding of the Eastern Emperor. Further than this,
+we can find few or no points of connexion between Venice and these
+cities, till their first occupation at the end of the fifteenth
+century. But that short occupation brings them within our range. We
+are passing, it may be, from Benevento to fishy Bari, as two stages of
+the "iter ad Brundisium." Thence we may go on, in the wake of so many
+travellers and conquerors, to those lands beyond the sea where the
+Lords of one-fourth and one-eighth of the Empire of Romania, and the
+Norman lords of Apulia and Sicily, the conquerors of Corfu and
+Albania, were alike at home. Between Benevento and Bari the eye is
+caught by the great tower of Trani. Such a city cannot be passed by;
+or, if we are driven to pass it by, we must go back to get something
+more than a glimpse of it. And Trani is one of the towns pledged to
+Venice by Ferdinand of Naples. In the midst of cities whose chief
+memories later than old Imperial times carry us back to the Norman and
+Swabian days of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, we
+find ourselves suddenly plunged into the Venetian history of the end
+of the fifteenth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Trani then will be our introduction to the group of towns with which
+we are at present concerned. At the present moment, it is undoubtedly
+the foremost among them; but it is hard to call up any distinct memory
+of its history till we reach the times which made it for a moment a
+Venetian possession. Trani, like other places, doubtless has its
+history known to local inquirers; but the more general inquirer will
+very seldom light upon its name. It is hard to find any sure sign of
+its being in Roman times, but it must be the "Tirhennium quæ et Trana"
+of the geographer Guido. Let us take such a common-place test as
+looking through the indices to several volumes of Muratori and Pertz
+till the task becomes wearisome. Such a task will show us the name of
+Trani here and there, but only here and there. We do by searching find
+it mentioned in the days of King Roger and in the days of the Emperor
+Lothar, but it is only by searching that we find it. The name of Trani
+does not stand out without searching, like so many of the cities even
+of southern Italy. Yet Trani is no inconsiderable place; it is an
+archæpiscopal see with a noble metropolitan church; and in our own
+day, though much smaller than its neighbour Bari, it seems to share in
+the present prosperity of which the signs at Bari are unmistakeable.
+The visitor to Trani will find much to see there, but he will not find
+the stamp of Venice on the city. Trani, like its fellows, had received
+its distinctive character long before it had to do with Venice, and
+that character was not one that was at all marked by Venetian
+influences. The city is not without Venetian monuments; the memory of
+its Venetian days is not forgotten even in its modern street
+nomenclature. There is a _Piazza Gradenigo_, and an inscription near
+one of the later churches records the name of Giuliano Gradenigo as
+the Venetian governor of Trani in 1503, and as having had a hand in
+its building. The castle might be suspected of containing work of the
+days of the Republic; but a threatening man of the sword forbids any
+study of its walls even with a distant spy-glass; not however till the
+chief inscription has been read, and has been found to belong to days
+later than those of Venetian rule. There is no knowing what may not
+happen to places when they have once fallen into the hands of
+soldiers; to the civilian mind it might seem that, when a king writes
+up an inscription to record his buildings, he wishes that inscription
+to be read of all men for all time. It is hard too to see how an
+antiquary's spy-glass can do anything to help prisoners confined
+within massive walls to break forth, as Italian--at least
+Sicilian--prisoners sometimes know how to break forth. The
+metropolitan church of Trani is happily not in military hands; neither
+are the streets and lanes of the city, the houses, the smaller
+churches, the arcades by the haven, the buildings of the town in
+general. All these may therefore be studied without let or hindrance;
+civil officials, even cloistered nuns, see no danger to Church or
+State if the stranger draws the outside of a window or copies an
+inscription on an outer wall. But though we may find at Trani bits of
+work which might have stood in Venice, it is only as they might have
+stood in any other city of Italy. There is nothing in Trani, besides
+the memorial of Gradenigo, which brings the Serene Republic specially
+before the mind. The great church, the glory of Trani, bears the
+impress of that mixed style of art which is characteristic of Norman
+rule in Apulia, but which is quite different from anything to be found
+in Norman Sicily. It has some points in common with its neighbours at
+Bitonto and Bari, and some points very distinctive of itself. It is
+undoubtedly one of the noblest churches of its own class. If we were
+to call it one of the noblest churches of Christendom, the phrase
+would be misleading, because, to an English ear at least, it would
+suggest the thought of something on a much greater scale, something
+more nearly approaching the boundless length of an English minster or
+the boundless height of a French one. In southern Italy bishops and
+archbishops were so thick upon the ground that even a metropolitan
+church was not likely to reach, in point of mere size, to the measure
+of a second-class cathedral or conventual church in England or even in
+Normandy. But mere size is not everything, and, as an example of a
+particular form of Romanesque, as an example of difficulties ably
+grappled with and thoroughly overcome, the church of Trani might
+almost claim to rank beside the church of Pisa and the church of
+Durham. And higher praise than that no building can have.
+
+  [Illustration: CATHEDRAL, TRANI.]
+
+Fully to take in the effect of this grand church, it will be well not
+to hurry towards it on reaching the city. Go straight from the
+railway-station towards another bell-tower, not to that of the
+_duomo_. That course will lead to the so-called _villa_ or public
+garden. The suppressed Dominican convent close by its gate has no
+attractive feature except its tower, one of the usual Italian type,
+only with pointed arches. But the grounds of the _villa_, raised on
+the ancient walls of the monastic precinct, look down at once on the
+waves of Hadria. In the northern view we look out on lands and hills
+beyond the water; but no man must dream that the eastern peninsula of
+Europe is to be seen from Trani. We look out only over the gulf of
+Manfredonia--the name of the Hohenstaufen king is as it were stamped
+upon the waters--to the Italian peninsula of Mount Garganus. Hence, on
+our way to the metropolitan church, we pass by the basin which forms
+the haven of Trani, a basin which reminds us of the _cala_ which is
+all that is left of the many waters of Palermo. The distant view
+clearly brings out its main outline; above all, it brings out those
+arrangements of the eastern end which form the most characteristic
+feature. We see the tall tower at the south-west corner; we see the
+line of the clerestory with its small round-headed windows; above all,
+we see--so unlike anything in Northern architecture--the tall transept
+seeming to soar far above the rest of the church, with the three
+apses, strangely narrow and lofty, treated simply, as it would seem,
+as appendages to the transept itself. Those who have not seen Bitonto
+and Bari will not guess how great a danger these soaring apses have
+escaped. The Norman of Apulia did not, like the native Italian, deal
+in detached bell-towers; he clave to the use of his native land which
+made the tower or towers an integral part of the church. But he seems
+to have specially chosen a place for them which is German rather than
+Norman, and then to have treated them in a way which is neither
+German, Norman, nor Italian. At Bitonto and in the two great churches
+of Bari, a pair of towers flanks the east end. In Italy it might be
+safer to say the apse end; but we think that in all these cases the
+apse end is the east end or nearly so. Such pairs of eastern towers
+are common in Germany; but there the great apse projects between them.
+At Bari and Bitonto the whole apsidal arrangement is masked by a flat
+wall. The towers rise above the side apses; the great central apse is
+hidden by the wall carried in front of it. We thus get at the east end
+a flat front, like a west front; we lose the curves of the apses, and
+with them the arcades and grouped windows which form so marked a
+feature in the ordinary Romanesque of Germany and Italy. A single
+window, of larger size than Romanesque taste commonly allows, marks
+the place of the high altar. And this window is adorned with shafts
+and mouldings of special richness, and with animal figures above and
+below the shafts. Now here at Trani, though all the apses stand out,
+yet a like arrangement is followed. The central apse has only a single
+window of the same enriched type; the side apses have also only a
+single window each, but of a much plainer kind. Thus much, without
+taking in every detail, we can mark in our distant view; we can mark
+too somewhat of the unusually rich and heavy cornice of the transept,
+and the upper part of the transept front, the wheel window and the two
+rich coupled windows beneath it. We can mark too the arrangements of
+the great square tower, crowned with its small octagonal finish; and
+even here we can see that, with all its majesty of outline, it is far
+from ranking in the first class of Italian bell-towers. Its
+composition lacks boldness and simplicity, while it has nothing
+remarkable in the way of ornament. Saint Zeno among the simpler
+towers, Spalato among the more elaborate, stand indeed unrivalled. But
+the cathedral tower of Trani, when closely examined, is less
+satisfactory than its own majestic neighbour at Bari. It is not merely
+that the pointed arch, always out of place in an Italian bell-tower,
+is used in the upper stages. The pointed arch is used with better
+effect, both far away in the noble tower of Velletri, and close by at
+Trani itself, in the far humbler tower of the Dominican church. The
+fault lies in this, that the windows, instead of being spread over the
+whole face of each stage, are gathered together in the centre of each,
+while two of them have rather awkward pointed canopies over the groups
+of windows. Still, seen from far or near, it is a grand and majestic
+tower, though its faults, which catch the eye at a distance, become
+more distinct as we draw nearer.
+
+The road by which we approach the _duomo_ will give us no view of it
+from the west, and, till we come quite near to the church, we shall
+hardly see how closely it overhangs the sea. We take our course by the
+harbour, for part of the way is under heavy and dark arcades which
+remind us of Genoa. Presently, before we reach the great church, we
+come across the east end of a smaller one, with which we shall
+afterwards become better acquainted from its western side. At this end
+it seems to be called _Purgatorio_; at the other end we shall find
+that its true name is _Ogni Santi_--All Hallows. Here there is no
+transept; still the three apses may pass for a miniature of those in
+the metropolitan church; there is the same single large and elaborate
+window in the mid apse, the same smaller single windows in the side
+apses. We go landwards for a short way, and we presently find
+ourselves on a terrace overlooking the sea, close under the east end
+of the _duomo_. We now better take in both the grandeur and the
+singularity of the building whose general effect we have studied from
+a distance. We take in some fresh features, as the tall blank arcades
+along the walls, a feature shared by Trani with Bari, and we guess
+that the extraordinary height of the apses must be owing to the
+presence of a lofty under-church. We see signs too at the east end
+which seem to show that at some time or other there was a design for
+some other form of east end, inconsistent with the present design. The
+visitor will now perhaps be tempted to go at once within, though he
+ought in strictness to pass under the tower in order to finish his
+outside survey at the west end. It is curious to see how the same
+feeling which prevails in the east end prevails in the west front
+also. Here we have no continuous arcades like Pisa, Lucca, and
+Zara--happily we have no sham gables like the great one at Lucca; we
+have again the single great window with the small ones on each side.
+Only here the mid window has over it a rich wheel, the favourite form
+of the country, a form which the apsidal east end would not allow. And
+it is treated in exactly the same way, with the same kind of
+surrounding ornaments, as the single-light windows.
+
+This west front, as it now stands, has a rather bare look; the windows
+have too much the air of being cut through the wall without any
+artistic design, and there is too great a gap between the windows and
+the west doorway with its flanking arcades below. But this last fault
+at least is not to be charged on the original design, which clearly
+took in a projecting portico. We may doubt however whether the portico
+could have been high enough to have much dignity, and we shall find
+this feature far more skilfully treated in the other smaller church of
+which we have already spoken. And here we must confess that it is
+possible to make two visits to Trani, and each time to make a somewhat
+careful examination of its great church, and yet to miss--not at all
+to forget to look for, but to fail to find--the bronze doors which
+form one of the wonders of Trani. This may seem incredible at a
+distance; it will be found on the spot not to be wonderful. We will
+not describe the doors at second-hand; we will rather hasten within to
+gaze on the surpassing grandeur of an interior, which, as an example
+of architectural design, may, as we have already hinted, rank beside
+the church by the Arno and the church by the Wear, beside the
+Conqueror's abbey at Caen and King Roger's chapel at Palermo.
+
+We say King Roger's chapel advisedly; for the palace chapel of
+Palermo, were every scrap of its gorgeous mosaics whitewashed over,
+would still rank, simply as an architectural design, among the most
+successful in the world. And the chapel of Palermo has points which at
+once suggest comparison and contrast with the great church of Trani.
+We see the traces of the Saracen in both; but at Palermo the building
+itself is thoroughly Saracenic, at Trani the Saracen contributes only
+one element among others. In Sicily, where the Saracen was thoroughly
+at home, the Norman kings simply built their churches and palaces in
+the received style of the island, a style of which the pointed arch
+was a main feature. In southern Italy, where the Saracen was only an
+occasional visitor, a style arose in which elements from Normandy
+itself--elements, that is, perhaps brought first of all from northern
+Italy--are mixed with other elements to be found on the spot, Italian,
+Saracenic, and Byzantine. The churches of Bari, Bitonto, and Trani,
+all show this mixture in different shapes. One feature of it is to
+take the detached Italian bell-tower, and to make it, Norman fashion,
+part of the church itself. In such cases the general character of the
+tower is kept, but Norman touches are often brought into the details;
+for instance, the common Norman coupled window, such as we are used to
+in Normandy and England, often displaces the oecumenical
+_mid-wall_ shaft which the older England shared with Italy. Thus here
+at Trani, the tower joins the church, though it is not made so
+completely part of its substance as it is at Bari and Bitonto. The
+inside of the church shows us another form of the same tendency. The
+Norman in Apulia could hardly fail to adopt the columnar forms of the
+land in which he was settled; but he could not bring himself to give
+up the threefold division of height and the bold triforium of his own
+land. An upper floor was not unknown in Italy, as we see in more than
+one of the Roman churches, as in Saint Agnes, Saint Laurence, and the
+church known as _Quattro Coronati_, to say nothing of Modena and Pisa,
+and _Sta. Maria della Pieve_ at Arezzo. But in some of these cases the
+arrangement is widely different from the genuine Norman triforium, and
+the threefold division certainly cannot be called characteristically
+Italian, any more than characteristically Greek. But it is
+characteristically Norman; and when we find it systematically
+appearing in churches built under Norman rule, we must set it down as
+a result of special Norman taste. At Trani each of the seven arches of
+the nave has a triplet of round arches over it, and a single
+clerestory window above that. The Norman in his own land would have
+made more of the clerestory; he would have drawn a string underneath
+it to part it off from the triforium; he would have carried up shafts
+to the roof to mark the division into bays. But the triforium itself,
+as it stands at Trani, might have been set up at Caen or Bayeux, with
+only the smallest changes in detail. But where in Normandy, where in
+England, where, we may add, in Sicily, is there anything at all like
+the arcades which in the church of Trani support this all but
+thoroughly Norman triforium? These have no fellow at Bitonto; they
+have hardly a fellow at Bari. In those cities the Norman adopted the
+columnar arcades of the basilica, while in Sicily the Saracen still at
+his bidding placed the pointed arch on the Roman column. At Trani too
+we see the work, or at least the influence, of the Saracen; but it
+takes quite another form. The pointed arch would have been out of
+place; in Normandy and England it is ever a mark of the coming Gothic,
+and there is certainly no sign of coming Gothic at Trani. But the
+coupling of two columns with their capitals under a single
+abacus--sometimes rather a bit of entablature--to form the support of
+an arch, is a well-known Saracenic feature. Not that it was any
+Saracen invention. In architecture, as in everything else, the Saracen
+was, as regards the main forms, only a pupil of Rome, Old and New;
+but, exactly like the Norman, he knew how to develope and to throw a
+new character into the forms which he borrowed. The coupled columns
+may truly be called a Saracenic feature, though the Saracen must have
+learned it in the first instance from such buildings as the sepulchral
+church known as Saint Constantia at Rome. We may fairly see a
+Saracenic influence in a crowd of Christian examples where this form
+is used in cloisters and other smaller buildings where the arches and
+columns are of no great size. It is even not uncommon in strictly
+Norman buildings in positions where the shafts are merely part of the
+decorative construction, and do not actually support the weight of the
+building. It was a bolder risk to take a pair of such columns, and bid
+them bear up the real weight of the three stages of what we may fairly
+call a Norman minster.
+
+  [Illustration: CATHEDRAL, TRANI, INSIDE.]
+
+But the daring attempt is thoroughly successful; there is not, what we
+might well have looked for, any feeling of weakness; the twin columns
+yoked together to bear all that would have been laid on the massive
+round piers of England or their square fellows of Germany, seem fully
+equal to their work. It may be that the appearance of strength is
+partly owing to the use of real half-columns, and not mere slender
+vaulting-shafts, to support the roofs of the aisles. But the slender
+shaft comes in with good effect to support both the arch between the
+nave and the transept, and the arch between the transept and the great
+apse. The lofty transept is wholly an Italian idea; but the general
+idea of these two tall arches is thoroughly Norman.
+
+In looking at such a church as this, so widely different from any of
+the many forms with which we are already familiar, there is always a
+certain doubt as to our own feelings. We admire; as to that there is
+no doubt. But how far is that admiration the result of mere wonder at
+something which in any case is strange and striking? how far is it a
+really intelligent approval of beauty or artistic skill? Both
+feelings, we may be pretty sure, come in; but it is not easy to say
+which is the leading one, till we are better acquainted with the
+building than we are likely to become in an ordinary journey. It is
+familiarity which is the real test. It is the building which we admire
+as much the thousandth time as the first which really approves itself
+to our critical judgement. We have not seen Trani for the thousandth
+time; but we did what we could; we were so struck with a first visit
+to Trani that, at the cost of some disturbance of travelling
+arrangements, we went there again, and we certainly did not admire it
+less the second time than the first. And, whatever may be the exact
+relation of the two feelings of mere wonder and of strictly critical
+approval, it is certain that a third feeling comes in by no means
+small a measure. This is a kind of feeling of historic fitness. The
+church of Trani is the kind of church which ought to have been built
+by Normans building on Apulian ground, with Greek and Saracen skill at
+their disposal.
+
+But at Trani, as commonly in these Apulian churches, it is not enough
+to look at the building from above ground. The great height of the
+apses will have already suggested that there is a lower building of no
+small size; and so we find it, conspicuously tall and stately, even in
+this land of tall and stately under-churches--crypt is a word hardly
+worthy of them. The under-church at Trani shows us a forest of tall
+columns, some of them fluted, with a vast variety of capitals of
+foliage. A few only can be called classical; some have the punched
+ornament characteristic of Ravenna. A good many of the bases have
+leaves at the corners, a fashion which in England is commonly a mark
+of the thirteenth century, but which in Sicily and Dalmatia goes on at
+least till the seventeenth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But the metropolitan church is not all that Trani has to show. In some
+of the buildings which we pass by in its narrow streets, we see some
+good windows of the style which it is most easy to call Venetian,
+though it might be rash hastily to refer them to the days of Venetian
+occupation. And there are other windows seemingly of earlier date,
+certainly of earlier character, which bear about them signs of the
+genuine Norman impress. But the strength of Trani, even setting aside
+the great church, lies in its ecclesiastical buildings; the best
+pieces even of domestic work are found in one of the monasteries. Two
+smaller churches deserve notice; one of them deserves special notice.
+This is the church of All Saints, of which we saw the east end on our
+way to the great minster, and on whose west end we shall most likely
+light as we come away from it. That west end is covered by a portico,
+or rather something more than a portico, as it contains a double row
+of arches. The front to the street forms part of a long and
+picturesque range of building, of which the actual arcade consists of
+four arches. One only of these is pointed, and that is the only one
+which rests on a column, the others being supported by square piers.
+But beyond this outer range, the vaulted approach to the church
+displays a grand series of columns and half-columns, with capitals of
+various forms. One is of extraordinary grandeur, with the volutes
+formed of crowned angels; the forms of the man and the eagle, either
+of them good for a volute, are here pressed into partnership. Within,
+the church is a small but graceful basilica, which, notwithstanding
+some disfigurements in 1853 which are boastfully recorded, pretty well
+keeps its ancient character, its columns with their capitals of
+foliage. He who visits Trani will doubtless also visit Bari, and such
+an one will do well both to compare the great church of Trani with
+the two great churches of Bari, and to compare and contrast this
+smaller building with the smaller church at Bari, that of Saint
+Gregory. Besides this little basilica, Trani possesses, not in one of
+its narrow streets, but in its widest _piazza_, a church, now of Saint
+Francis, but which, among many disfigurements, still keeps the form of
+the Greek cross within, and some Romanesque fragments without. Here,
+as also at Bari and at Bitonto, oriental influences--something we mean
+more oriental than Greeks or even than Sicilian Saracens--may be seen
+in the pierced tracery with which some of the windows are filled. In
+these cases this kind of work suggests a mosque; with other details,
+it might have carried our thoughts far away, to the great towers of
+the West of England.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Among the other members of this group of cities we might have expected
+to find Brindisi, so famous as a haven of the voyager in Roman days,
+and no less famous in our own, fill a high, if not the highest, place
+among its fellows. And Brindisi has its points of interest also, one
+of them of an almost unique interest. Over the haven rises a
+commemorative column--its fellow has left only its pedestal--which
+records, not the dominion of Saint Mark, but the restoration of the
+city by the Protospatharius Lupus. Is this he whose name has been
+rightly or wrongly added to certain annals of Bari? Anyhow there the
+column stands, one of the few direct memorials of Byzantine rule in
+Italy. There is the round church also, the mosaic in the otherwise
+worthless cathedral, and one or two fragments of domestic work. The
+lie of the city and its haven is truly a sight to be studied; we see
+that in whatever language it is that _Brentesion_ means a stag's horn,
+the name was not unfittingly given to the antler-like fiords of this
+little inland sea. We trace out too the walls of Charles the Fifth,
+and we see how Brindisi has shrunk up since his day. But we are
+perhaps tempted to do injustice to Brindisi, to hurry over its
+monuments, when we are driven to choose between Brindisi and the
+greater attractions of the furthest city of our group, in some sort
+the furthest city of Europe. We pass by Lecce, which lies outside our
+group, as between Trani and Brindisi we have been driven to pass
+Monopoli, the spot which saw the first beginnings of the short
+Venetian rule in these parts. Everything cannot be seen, and we shall
+hardly regret sacrificing something to hasten to a spot which may well
+call itself the end of the world, and which forms the most fitting
+link between the central and the eastern peninsulas of Europe.
+
+
+
+
+OTRANTO.
+
+1881.
+
+
+Hydrous, Hydruntum, Otranto, has as good a claim as a city can well
+have to be looked on as the end of the world. It is very nearly the
+physical end of the world in that part of the world with which it has
+most concern. When we have reached Otranto, we can go no further by
+any common means of going. It may pass for the south-eastern point of
+the peninsula of Italy: it is the point where that central peninsula
+comes nearest to the peninsula which lies beyond it. It is the point
+where Western and Eastern Europe are parted by the smallest amount of
+sea. It has therefore been in all times one of the main points of
+communication between Eastern and Western Europe. The old Hydrous
+appears as a Greek colony, placed, as one of the old geographers
+happily puts it, on the mouth either of the Hadriatic or of the Ionian
+sea. Hydruntum appears in Roman days as a rival route to Brundisium
+for those who wish to pass from Italy into Greece. A city so placed
+naturally plays its part in the wars of Belisarius and in the wars of
+Roger. Held by the Eastern Emperors as long as they held anything west
+of the Hadriatic, it passed, when the Norman came, into the hands of
+Apulian Dukes and Sicilian Kings, and it remained part of the
+continental Sicilian kingdom, save for the two moments in its history
+which bring it within our immediate range. Otranto is the one city of
+Western Europe in which the Turk has really reigned, though happily
+for a moment only. It is one of the cities in this corner of Italy
+which formed, for a somewhat longer time, outlying posts of Venetian
+dominion; and it is a spot where the memory of the Turk and the memory
+of the Venetian are mingled together in a strange, an unusual, and a
+shameful way. In most of the other spots which have seen the presence
+of the Turk and the Venetian, the commonwealth which was the
+temple-keeper of the Evangelist shows itself only in its nobler
+calling, as "Europe's bulwark 'gainst the Ottomite." At Otranto,
+Venice appears in a character which is more commonly taken by the Most
+Christian King. Before Francis and Lewis had conspired with the
+barbarian against their Christian rivals, the Serene Republic had
+already stirred him up to make havoc of a Christian city.
+
+At Otranto then we finish our journey by land, and from Otranto, as
+Otranto is now, we have no means of continuing it by sea. We cannot
+sail straight, as men did in old times, either to Corfu or to Aulona.
+To make our way from the central to the south-eastern peninsula, we
+have to make the "iter ad Brundisium" back again from the other side.
+It is the natural consequence of being at the end of the world, that
+when we reach the point which holds that place, we have to go back
+again. And when we find ourselves at Otranto, the fact that we are at
+the end of the world, that we have reached the end, not only of our
+actual journey, but of any possible journey of the same kind, is
+forcibly set before us as a kind of symbol. We have come to an end, to
+a very marked end, of the great railway system of central Europe. From
+any place within that system we can find our way to Otranto by the
+power of steam. Beyond Otranto that power can take us no further;
+indeed we have so nearly reached the heel of the boot that there is
+not much further to go by the help of any other power. We are at the
+end of Italy, at the end, that is, of the central peninsula of Europe,
+in a sense in which we are not even at more distant Reggio. For Reggio
+is before all things the way to Sicily, and Sicily we must allow to be
+geographically an appendage to Italy, strongly as we must assert the
+right of that great island to be looked on historically in quite
+another light. And that at Otranto we have distinctly reached the end
+of something is clearly set forth by the arrangements of the railway
+station itself. The rails come to an end; the buildings of the
+station are placed, not at the side of the line, but straight across
+it, a speaking sign that we can go no further, and that the thought of
+taking us further has not entered the most speculative mind.
+
+At Otranto then we have come to the end of one of the great divisions
+of the European world; it is therefore a fitting point to form a main
+point of connexion between that division and another. Otranto and its
+neighbourhood are the only points of the central peninsula from which
+we can, as a matter of ordinary course, look across into the eastern
+peninsula. We say as a matter of ordinary course. There are Albanian
+or Dalmatian heights from which it is said that, in unusually
+favourable weather, the Garganian peninsula may be descried; so it may
+be that the Garganian peninsula is favoured back again with occasional
+glimpses of south-eastern Europe. But a stay of even a few hours at
+Otranto shows that there south-eastern Europe comes within the gazer's
+ordinary ken. It is easy to see that it does not so much need good
+weather to show it as bad weather to hinder it from being shown.
+Before we reach Otranto, while we are still on the railway, the
+mountains of Albania rise clearly before our eyes; from the hill of
+Otranto itself they rise more clearly still. And even to those to whom
+those heights are no unfamiliar objects from nearer points of view,
+it is a thrilling and a saddening thought, when we look forth for the
+first time from a land of which every inch belongs to the free and
+Christian world, and gaze on the once kindred land that has passed
+away from freedom and from Christendom. From the soil of free Italy we
+look on shores which are still left under the barbarian yoke, shores
+where so many whose fathers were sharers in the European and Christian
+heritage have fallen away to the creed of the barbarian and to all
+that that creed brings with it. On the other hand, it is said that
+there are more favourable moments when it is possible to look from
+free Italy into free Greece. It is said that, sometimes perhaps Corfu
+itself, more certainly the smaller islands which lie off it to the
+west, may be seen from the hill of Otranto. If so, we look out from
+that one spot of the central peninsula, from that one spot of the
+general western world, where the Turk can be said to have really
+ruled, for however short a time, and not simply to have harried. And
+we look out on that one among the many islands which gird the eastern
+peninsula, which has gone through many changes and has bowed to many
+masters, but where alone the Turk has never ruled as a master, but has
+shown himself only as a momentary besieger.
+
+The Turk then was never lord of Corfu; he was for a while, though only
+for a very little while, lord of Otranto. The winged lion floated
+over Corfu while the crescent floated for a season over Otranto. It
+was therefore perhaps not wholly unfitting that, for another somewhat
+longer season, the winged lion should float over Corfu and Otranto
+together. But it was not in his nobler character that the winged lion
+floated over Otranto. It would have been a worthy exploit indeed, if
+the arms of Venice, by that time a great Italian power, had driven out
+the Turk from his first lodgement on Italian soil. But instead of
+Venice driving the Turk out of Otranto, it was the common belief of
+the time that it was Venetian intrigue which had let him in. Nay more,
+if there was any truth in other suspicions of the time, the good old
+prayer of our forefathers, which prayed for deliverance from "Pope and
+Turk," might well have been put up by the people of Otranto and all
+Apulia in the year 1480. Not only the commonwealth of Venice, but the
+Holy Father himself, Pope Sixtus the Fourth, was believed to be an
+accomplice in the intrigues which enabled the infidel to establish
+himself on the shores of Italy. A time came, almost within our own
+day, when Pope and Turk were really leagued together, and when the
+Latin Bishop of the Old Rome owed his restoration to his seat to the
+joint help of the Mussulman Sultan of Constantinople and the Orthodox
+Tzar of Moscow. But in the fifteenth century we need hardly expect
+even such a Pope as Sixtus of deliberately bringing the Turk into
+Italy. His own interests both as priest and as prince were too
+directly threatened. But it is hard to acquit the Venetian
+commonwealth, under the dogeship of Giovanni Mocenigo, of risking the
+lasting interests of all Christendom, and of their own Eastern
+dominion as part of it, to serve the momentary calls of a petty
+Italian policy. We even read that Venetian envoys worked on the mind
+of the Sultan by the argument that it was the part of the new lord of
+Constantinople to assert his claim to all that the older lords of
+Constantinople had held east of the Hadriatic. No argument could be
+more self-destructive in Venetian mouths. If the Turk had inherited
+the rights of Eastern Cæsar in the Western lands, how cruelly was
+Venice defrauding him of a large part of the rights of the Eastern
+Cæsar in his own Eastern lands.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The conquest of Otranto was the last of the conquests of him who
+rightly stands out in Ottoman history as pre-eminently the Conqueror.
+The second Mahomet, he who completed the conquest of Christian Asia by
+the taking of Trebizond, who crowned the work of Ottoman conquest in
+Europe by the taking of Constantinople, who by the taking of Euboia
+dealt the heaviest blow to the Venetian power in the Ægæan, who
+brought under his power, as a gleaning after the vintage, the Frank
+lordship of Attica and the Greek lordship of Peloponnêsos, in his last
+days stretched forth his hand to vex Western Europe as he had so long
+vexed Eastern Europe and what was left of Christian Asia. He was in
+truth attacking both at the same time; he won Otranto almost at the
+moment when he was beaten back from Rhodes. Each scene of his warfare
+illustrates the nature of the Ottoman power at that moment, how it was
+by the hands of her own apostate sons that Christendom was brought
+into bondage. Against Rhodes the infidel host was led by a Greek,
+against Otranto by an Albanian, both renegades or sons of renegades.
+And under the first Ferdinand of Aragon such was the state of things
+in the land which had once been ruled by good King William that
+soldiers of the Neapolitan King were willing to pass into the service
+of the Turk. Nay, the inhabitants in general seemed ready to believe
+the Turk's promises and to accept his dominion as likely to be milder
+than that of their own stranger king. The invader was his own worst
+enemy. A contemporary writer witnesses that the prisoners taken by
+Achmet _Break-Tooth_--such is said to be the meaning of his surname
+_Giédek_--pointed out to him that by his cruelties at Otranto he was
+losing for his master a province which otherwise might have been won
+with little effort.
+
+But happily things took another turn. Otranto was in the Western world
+what Kallipolis--the Kallipolis of the Thracian Chersonêsos--had been
+in the Eastern. It was the first foothold of the barbarian, the gate
+by which he seemed likely to open his way to the possession of the
+central peninsula of Europe, as he had by the gate of Kallipolis
+opened his way to the possession of the eastern peninsula. Otranto was
+the last of the conquests of the great Conqueror; what if he had been
+longer-lived? what if the second Bajazet had deserved the name of
+Thunderbolt like the first? Would the threat of the first Sultan have
+been carried out, and would the Turk have fed his horse on the high
+altar of Saint Peter's? The eastern peninsula fell by internal
+division, and the central peninsula, as his very entrance into it
+shows, was fully as divided as the eastern. The French conquests
+presently showed how little prepared Italy was to withstand a vigorous
+attack, and Mahomet the Conqueror would have been another kind of
+enemy from Charles the Eighth. But all such dangers were warded off.
+The Turk still showed himself once and again in northern Italy, but
+only as a momentary plunderer. Otranto remained his only conquest on
+Italian ground, and that a conquest held for thirteen months only.
+Alfonso, who bears so unfavourable a character from other sides, must
+be at least allowed the merit of winning back the lost city for his
+father's realm. Otranto, and Otranto alone of Italian cities, belongs
+to, and heads, the list on which we inscribe the names of Buda and
+Belgrade and Athens and Sofia, on which it may now inscribe the names
+of Arta and Larissa, but from which hapless Jôannina and
+twice-forsaken Parga are still for a while shut out.
+
+It was not therefore till the Turk had been driven out, not until
+southern Italy had been more thoroughly but not much more lastingly
+overrun by the armies of France, that Otranto passed for a while under
+the rule of Venice. The Serene Republic hardly deserved to rule in a
+city which she had so lately betrayed; the place seems never to have
+recovered from the frightful blow of the Turkish capture. The town now
+shows no sign either of the short Venetian occupation or of the
+shorter Turkish occupation. From the side of military history, this
+last fact is to be regretted. We must remember that in that day the
+Ottomans, pressing and hiring into their service the best skill of
+Europe, were in advance of all other people in all warlike arts. So
+Guiccardini remarks that the Turks, during their short occupation of
+Otranto, strengthened the city with works of a kind hitherto unknown
+in Italy, and which, as he seems to hint, Italian engineers would
+have done well to copy, but did not. The present fortifications date
+from the time of Charles the Fifth. Their extent shows at once how far
+the Otranto of his day had shrunk up within the bounds of the ancient
+city, and how far again modern Otranto has shrunk up within the walls
+of the Emperor. It is said that, before the Turkish capture, Otranto
+numbered twenty-two thousand inhabitants; it has now hardly above a
+tenth part of that number. As the military importance of the place has
+passed away, military precautions seemed to have passed away with it;
+the castle stands free and open; no sentinel hinders the traveller
+from wandering as he will within its walls. But the traveller will
+gain little by such wanderings except the look-out over land and sea.
+The town stands close upon the sea, on a small height with a valley
+between it and the railway station. It is entered by a gateway of late
+date, but of some dignity; but it is not much that the frowning
+entrance leads to. The visitor soon finds that Otranto, which gave its
+name of old to the surrounding land, which still ranks as a
+metropolitan city, has sunk to little more than a village. It seems to
+have had no share in the revived prosperity of the other towns along
+this coast. Its one object of any importance is the metropolitan
+church, and this is at once the only monument of the ancient
+greatness of the place, and also in a strange way the chief memorial
+of its momentary bondage to the barbarian.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In order thoroughly to take in the position of the great church of
+Otranto in its second character, as a memorial of bondage and
+deliverance, it may be well to pass it by for a moment and to go first
+to the castle, and look out on one of the points of view which it
+commands. Any local guide will be able to show the traveller the Hill
+of the Martyrs. It stands at no great distance beyond the town, and is
+held to mark the site of a pagan temple. There the Turks, after their
+capture of the city, did as they have done in later times. Some eight
+or nine hundred of the people of Otranto were massacred. Their bodies
+lay unburied so long as the Turk kept possession; on the recovery of
+the city, the bodies of the martyrs, as they were now deemed, were
+gathered together, and a special chapel was added to the metropolitan
+church to receive them. There they may still be seen, piled together
+in cases, with inscriptions telling the story. There are skulls, legs,
+arms, bones of every part of the human body, some still showing the
+dents of barbarian weapons, some with barbarian weapons still cleaving
+to them. There we look on them, ghastly witnesses that, neither in
+their days nor in ours, is the Æthiopian at all disposed to change
+his skin or the leopard his spots. What the Turk did at Otranto he has
+done at Batak; he may, if the freak seizes him, do the like at
+Jôannina. Only the deeds of Otranto were at least done by the Turk as
+a mere outside barbarian; he was not licensed to do them by the united
+voice of Europe. It is only in these latest times that the Turk has
+been fully authorized, under all the sanctions of so-called
+international right, to renew at pleasure the deeds of Otranto and of
+Batak in lands to which Europe has twice promised freedom.
+
+The martyrs of 1480, their sufferings, their honours, have made so
+deep an impression on the mind of Otranto that the metropolitan
+basilica has popularly lost its name of _Annunziata_, and is more
+commonly spoken of as the church of the martyrs. But the great church
+of Otranto, the church of the prelate whose style runs as
+"archiepiscopus Hydrutinus et primas Salentinorum," is a building of
+deep interest on other grounds. Like so many Italian churches, it is
+not very attractive without, nor is there anything specially to tarry
+over in its bell-tower. But even outside we may mark one or two signs
+of the restoration which the church underwent after its deliverance
+from the Turk. The west window is of that date, one of those
+rose-windows to which Italian, and still more Dalmatian, taste clave
+so long, even when all other mediæval fashions had vanished away. Of
+the same date is the north door, showing, like the great doors at
+Benevento, the Primate of the Salentines attended by the bishops and
+chief abbots of his province. As we go within, our first feeling is
+one of wonder that so much should have lived through the infidel storm
+and occupation. But, according to the usual practice of Mussulman
+conquerors, the head church of the city was turned into a mosque;
+there was therefore, after the first moment of havoc had passed by, no
+temptation on the part of the new occupants to damage the essential
+features of a building which had become a temple of their own worship.
+It is therefore not wonderful that the main features of the basilica
+are still there, either untouched or most skilfully restored. Seven
+arches rise from columns, perhaps of classical date, with capitals,
+mostly of different kinds of foliage, but one of which brings in human
+figures, after the type which was so well set in Caracalla's baths.
+But a more interesting study is supplied by the great crypt, or rather
+under-church. At Otranto, as in some of its neighbours, the craftsmen
+who worked below clearly allowed themselves a freer choice of forms in
+the carving of capitals than they ventured on above ground. The vault
+of the under-church rests on ranges of slender columns, with heavy
+abaci and with an amazing variety in the capitals. None perhaps can
+be called classical; but very few are simply grotesque. The few that
+are so are found--one does not quite see the reason of the
+distinction--among the half-columns against the walls. Most of them
+show various forms of foliage and animal figures; the old law that
+almost any kind of man, beast, or bird, can be pressed to serve as the
+volute at the corner of a capital is here most fully carried out. But
+the further law, that that duty is most worthily discharged by the
+imperial eagle, can be nowhere better studied than in the Hydrantine
+under-church. In some capitals again, especially in the columns of the
+apses, the bird of Cæsar is perched as it were on Byzantine
+basket-work, clearly showing which Augustus it was to whom the
+Salentine Primate bowed as his temporal lord. Other capitals again are
+much simpler, but also savouring of the East; the plain square block
+has mere carving on the surface. Then, of the columns themselves, some
+are plain, some are fluted, some are themselves carved out with
+various patterns. In short a rich and wonderful variety reigns in
+every feature of the under-church of Otranto.
+
+Our comparison of the columns and capitals has carried us underground;
+but the really distinctive feature of the basilica of Otranto is
+above. Other churches of southern Italy have wonderful crypts; none,
+we may feel sure, has so wonderful a pavement. And here we do wonder
+that the Turks did not do incomparably more mischief than they did do.
+Some mischief they did; but the archbishops and canons of Otranto
+seem--perhaps unavoidably--to have done a great deal more by
+destroying or covering the rich pavement to make room for the
+furniture of the church. It would surely be hard to find another
+example of a pavement whose design is spread over the whole
+ground-floor of a great church. The pictures are in mosaic, rough
+mosaic certainly, of the second half of the twelfth century, when
+Otranto formed part of the Sicilian realm, and when that realm was
+ruled by William the Bad. Luckily inscriptions in the pavement itself
+have preserved to us the exact date, and the names of the giver and
+the artist. One tells us in leonine rimes:
+
+     "Ex Ionathi donis per dexteram Pantaleonis
+     Hoc opus insigne est superans impendia digne."
+
+Another stoops to prose: "Humilis servus Ionathas Hydruntinus
+archieps. jussit hoc [~o]p fieri per manus Pantaleonis p[~r]b. Anno ab
+Incarnatione Dn[~i] Nr[~i] Ihu. Xr[~i] MCLXV indictione XIV, regnante
+Dn[~o] nostro W. Rege Magnif." The design of the priest Pantaleon,
+wrought at the bidding of Archbishop Jonathan in the last year of the
+first William, is of a most extensive and varied kind. Scriptural
+scenes and persons, figures which seem purely fanciful, the favourite
+subject of the signs of the zodiac, all find their place. We meet also
+with one or two heroes of earlier and later times whom we should
+hardly have looked for. The main design starts, not far from the west
+end, with a tree rising from the backs of two elephants. The huge
+earth-shaking beast, the Lucanian ox, is, it must be remembered, a
+favourite in southern Italy; he finds a marked place among the
+sculptures of the great churches of Bari. The tree--one is tempted to
+see in it the mystic ash of Northern mythology--sends its vast trunk
+along the central line of the nave, throwing forth its branches, and
+what we may call their fruit, on either side. Here are strange beasts
+which may pass either for the fancies of the herald or for the
+discoveries of the palæontologist; but in the lion with four bodies
+and a single head we must surely look for a symbolical meaning of some
+kind. He is balanced, to be sure, by other strange forms, in which two
+or three heads rise from a single body. Here are figures with musical
+instruments, here a huntress aiming at a stag; and in the midst of all
+this, not very far from the west end, we find the figure of "Alexander
+Rex." To the left we have Noah, making ready to build the ark--the
+story begins at the beginning, like the building of the Norman fleet
+in the Bayeux Tapestry. Four figures are cutting down trees, and the
+patriarch himself is sawing up the wood, with a saw of the type still
+used in the country. The centre of the pavement is occupied by the
+zodiac; each month has its befitting work assigned to it according to
+the latitude of Otranto. Thus June cuts the corn. July threshes it,
+neither with a modern machine, nor with the feet of primitive oxen,
+but with the flail which many of us will remember in our youth.
+August, with his feet in the wine-press, gathers the grapes. December
+carries a boar, as if for the Yule feast of Queen Philippa's scholars.
+Each month has its celestial sign attached; but it would seem that the
+priest Pantaleon was in a hurry in putting together his kalendar, and
+that he put each of the signs a month in advance. Beyond the zodiac,
+near the entrance of the choir, and partly covered by its furniture,
+is a figure, which startles us with the legend "Arturus Rex." If we
+were to have Alexander and Arthur, why not the rest of the nine
+worthies? If only a selection, why are the Hebrews defrauded of their
+representative?--unless indeed Samson, who appears in the form of a
+mutilated figure, not far from the left of Arthur, has taken the place
+of the more familiar Joshua, David, and Judas. Here is a witness to
+the early spread of the Arthurian legends; here, in 1165, within the
+Sicilian kingdom, the legendary British hero receives a place of
+honour, alongside of the Macedonian. Nor is this our only witness to
+the currency in these regions of the tales which had been not so long
+before spread abroad by Walter Map. By this time, or not long after,
+the name of Arthur had already found a local habitation on Ætna
+itself. Among other scriptural pieces in different parts, we find of
+course Adam and Eve, and Cain and Abel; there is Jonah too, far to the
+east; and in the eastern part of the north aisle, the imagination of
+Jonathan or Pantaleon has forestalled somewhat of the Dantesque
+conception of the _Inferno_. "Satanas" is vividly drawn, riding on a
+serpent, and other figures armed with serpents are doing their
+terrible work in the train of the "duke of that dark place." The whole
+work is strictly mosaic, and the design, though everywhere rude, is
+carried out with wonderful spirit. We may indeed rejoice that the
+hoofs of Turkish horses and the improvements of modern canons have
+left so much of a work which, even if it stood by itself, it would be
+worth while going to the end of railways at Otranto to see.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Such is now the one city in which the Turk ever ruled on our side of
+Hadria. In earlier times we might have passed straight from Otranto to
+the lands where he still rules, or to the island where he never ruled.
+But now he who looks out for Otranto on the heights of Albania, and
+whose objects call him to the nearer neighbourhood of those heights,
+must go back to Brindisi to find his way to reach them.
+
+
+
+
+FIRST GLIMPSES OF HELLAS.
+
+1875--1881.
+
+
+In our present journey we draw near to the eastern peninsula, to the
+Hellenic parts of that peninsula, by way of the great island--great as
+compared with the mass of Greek islands, though small as compared with
+Sicily or Britain--which keeps guard, as a strictly Hellenic outpost,
+over a mainland which was and is less purely Hellenic. From Brindisi
+we sail to Corfu, the elder Korkyra, as distinguished from the black
+isle of the same name off the Dalmatian shore. In so sailing, we
+specially feel ourselves to be sailing in the wake of the conquerors
+who made Corfu an appendage to the Sicilian realm; we are passing
+between spots on either side which have known both a Norman and
+Venetian master. But it may be that we may have already drawn near to
+Greece by another path. It is easy to prolong the voyage which took us
+from Trieste to Spalato, from Spalato to Cattaro, by a third stage
+which will take us from Cattaro to Corfu. In this case we may have
+already studied the Albanian coast, and that with no small pleasure
+and profit. We may have marked a point not long after we had left
+Dalmatia behind us, and that where a line may well be drawn. There is
+a geographical change in the direction of the coast, from the shore of
+Dalmatia, with its islands and inland seas, its coast-line stretching
+away to the south-east, to the nearly direct southern line of the
+shore of Albania. In modern political geography we pass from the
+dominion of Austria to the dominion of the Turk. In the map of an
+earlier day, we pass from the all but wholly continuous dominion of
+the two commonwealths of Venice and Ragusa. In modern ethnology we
+pass from the Slave under a certain amount of Italian influence to the
+Albanian under a certain, though smaller, amount of influence, Italian
+or Greek, according to his local position and his religious creed. In
+modern religious geography we pass from a land which is wholly
+Christian, but where the Eastern form of Christianity, though still in
+the minority, makes itself more deeply felt at every step, to a land
+where Islam and the two great ancient forms of Christianity are all
+found side by side. In the geography of earlier times this point marks
+the frontier of a land intermediate between the barbaric land to the
+north, with only a few Greek colonies scattered here and there, and
+the purely Greek lands, the "continuous Hellas," to the south. We
+find on this western shore of the south-eastern peninsula the same
+feature which is characteristic of so large a part of the Ægæan and
+Euxine coasts, both of the south-eastern peninsula itself and of the
+neighbouring land of Asia. The great mainland is barbarian; the
+islands and a fringe of sea-coast are Greek. As we draw nearer to the
+boundary of Greece proper, the Hellenic element is strengthened.
+Thesprotians, Molossians, Chaonians, were at least capable of becoming
+Greeks. Epeiros, [Greek: Êpeiros], _terra firma_, once the vague name
+of an undefined barbarian region, became the name of a Greek federal
+commonwealth with definite boundaries. And the character of a
+barbarian land, fringed with European settlements and looking out on
+European islands, did not wholly pass away till almost our own day. A
+few still living men may remember the storming of Prevesa; many can
+remember the cession--some might call it the betrayal--of Parga. It
+was only when Parga was yielded to the Turk that this ancient feature
+of the Illyrian and Epeirot lands passed away. What Corinth had once
+been Venice was. Corinth first studded that coast with outposts of the
+civilized world. Venice held those outposts, sadly lessened in number,
+down to her fall. And the men of Parga deemed, though they were
+mistaken in the thought, that to the mission of Corinth and Venice
+England had succeeded.
+
+From whichever side our traveller draws near to Corfu, he comes from
+lands where Greek influence and Greek colonization spread in ancient
+times, but from which the Greek elements have been gradually driven
+out, partly by the barbarism of the East, partly by the rival
+civilization of the West. Whether we come from Otranto and Brindisi or
+from the Illyrian Pharos and the Illyrian Korkyra, we are coming from
+lands which once were Greek. But Otranto and Brindisi, Pharos and
+Black Korkyra, even Epidamnos and Apollonia, were scattered outposts
+of Greek life among barbarian neighbours; as the traveller draws near
+to the elder Korkyra, he finds himself for the first time within the
+bounds of "continuous Hellas." He may have seen in other lands greater
+and more speaking monuments of old Hellenic life than any that the
+island has to show him; he may have seen the lonely hill of Kymê, the
+hardly less lonely temples of Poseidônia; but those were Greece in
+Italy; now for the first time he sees Greece itself. Whatever we may
+say of the mainland to the left, there can be no doubt, either now or
+in ancient times, of the Hellenic character of the island to the
+right. There are the small attendant isles; there are the great peaks
+of Korkyra--not the lowlier peaks which gave city and island their
+later name--but the far mightier mountains which catch the eye as we
+approach the great island from the north. That island at least is
+Hellas--less purely Hellenic, it may be, than some other lands and
+islands, but still Hellenic, part of the immediate Hellenic world of
+both ancient and modern days. It was and is the most distant part of
+the immediate Hellenic world; but it forms an integral part of it. The
+land which we see is Hellenic in a sense in which not even Sicily, not
+even the Great Hellas of Southern Italy, much less then the Dalmatian
+archipelago, ever became Hellenic. From the first historic glimpse
+which we get of Korkyra, it is not merely a land fringed by Hellenic
+colonies; it is a Hellenic island, the dominion of a single Hellenic
+city, a territory the whole of whose inhabitants were, at the
+beginning of recorded history, either actually Hellenic or so
+thoroughly hellenized that no one thought of calling their Hellenic
+position in question. Modern policy has restored it to its old
+position by making it an integral portion of the modern Greek kingdom.
+And, if in some things it is less purely Greek than the rest of that
+kingdom, what is the cause? It is because, if Corfu may be thought for
+a while to have ceased to be part of Greece, it never ceased to be
+part of Christendom. It was for ages under alien dominion, but it
+never was under the dominion of the Turk. The Venetian could to some
+extent modify and assimilate his Greek subjects; the Turk could
+modify or assimilate none but actual renegades. And, after all, the
+main influence has been the other way. If Italian became the
+fashionable speech, even for men of Greek descent, men on the other
+hand whose names distinctly show their Italian descent have cast in
+their lot with their own country rather than with the country of their
+forefathers. Shallow critics have mocked because men with Venetian
+names have been strong political assertors of Greek nationality. They
+might as well mock whenever a man of Norman descent shows himself a
+patriotic Englishman. They might as well hint that Presidents and
+Ministers of France and Spain, who have borne names which proclaim
+their Irish origin, were bound or likely to follow an Irish policy
+rather than a French or a Spanish one.
+
+The first aspect, indeed every aspect, of the island of Corfu and the
+neighbouring coast of Epeiros is deeply instructive. The island and
+the mainland come so close together that, till the eye has got well
+used to the outline of particular mountains, it is not easy to tell
+how much is island and how much mainland. A statesman of the last
+generation twice told the House of Lords that Corfu lay within a mile
+of the coast of Thessaly. We cannot say, without looking carefully to
+the scale on the map, how many miles Corfu lies from the coast of
+Thessaly, any more than we can say offhand how many miles Anglesey
+lies from the coast of Norfolk. It is a more practical fact that some
+parts of Corfu lie very near indeed to the coast of Epeiros, though
+not quite so near as Anglesey lies to the coast of Caernarvonshire.
+The channel must surely be everywhere more than a mile in width;
+certainly it could nowhere be bridged, as in the case of Anglesey, or
+in the cases of Euboia and nearer Leukas. Both coasts are irregular,
+both coasts are mountainous, and the mountains on both sides fuse into
+one general mass. Above all, prominent from many points, soars the
+famous range where, with a singular disregard of later geography,
+
+         "Arethusa arose
+         From her couch of snows
+     In the Acroceraunian mountains."
+
+Snow of course is in these lands to be had only at a much higher level
+than the snow-line of the Alps, so that the couch of Arethousa stands
+out yet more conspicuously over the neighbouring heights than it might
+have done in a more northern region. The inhabitants of Corfu are fond
+of pointing to the contrast between the well-wooded hills and valleys
+of their own fertile island and the bare, almost uninhabited, land
+which lies opposite to them. And of course they do not fail to point
+the inevitable moral. As in most such cases, there is truth in the
+boast, but truth that needs some qualifications. Corfu, through all
+its changes of masters, has always been under governments which were
+civilized according to the standard of their own times. It has fared
+accordingly. Epeiros has been handed over to a barbarian master, and
+it has also been largely colonized by the least advanced of European
+races. Besides having the Turk as a ruler, it has had the Albanian,
+Christian and Mussulman, as a settler. In Corfu the Albanian is a
+frequent visitor; his sheepskin and _fustanella_ may be constantly
+seen in the streets of Corfu; but he has not--unless possibly in the
+shape of refugees from Parga--formed any distinct element in her
+population. It is only in the nature of things that Greeks under
+successive Venetian, French, and English rule should do more for their
+land than Albanians under Turkish rule. But we may doubt whether any
+people under any government could have made the land opposite to Corfu
+like Corfu itself. Had the mainland shared the successive destinies of
+the island, it would doubtless have been far better off than it has
+been. But it could hardly have been as the island. One point of
+advantage for the island was the mere fact that it was an island. In
+all but the highest states of civilization, this is an advantage
+beyond words; and the ancient colonists fully understood the fact.
+
+Still it is a striking contrast to pass across the narrow sea from
+Corfu to what was Butrinto. Buthrotum, the mythical city of the Trojan
+Helenos, has a more real being as a Roman colony, and as one of those
+outposts on the mainland in which Venice succeeded the Neapolitan
+Kings, and which she kept down to her own fall. Butrinto was once a
+city no less than Corfu; to Virgil's eyes it was the reproduction of
+Troy itself. Now we cross from the busy streets and harbour of Corfu
+to utter desolation at Butrinto. The desolation is greater in one way
+than any that Helenos or any other primitive settler could have found,
+because it is that form of desolation which consists in traces of what
+has been. We enter the mouth of the river, with rich trees and
+pasturage between its banks and the rugged mountains; we mark ruins of
+fortresses and buildings on either side, till we come to the ruined
+castle at the mouth of the lake. The lake is a carefully preserved
+fishery, and permission is needed to enter it. A few dirty-looking men
+assemble at the door of a tumble-down building standing against the
+ruined castle. But among them are personages of some local importance.
+One is the lessee of the fishery, whose good will is of special
+importance. There is also a Turkish officer of some kind--more likely
+a Mussulman Albanian than an Ottoman--with his small and not
+threatening following. There are one or two native Christians; and it
+brings the varied ethnology of the land more deeply home to learn that
+they are neither Greeks nor Albanians, but that they belong to the
+scattered race of the Vlachs, the Latin-speaking people of the East,
+whose greatest settlement, far away from Butrinto, has now grown into
+an European kingdom. It is well to be reminded at such a moment that
+the Rouman principality, though the greatest, is only one among many,
+and that the latest, of the settlements of this scattered people. And
+it brings home the fact to us when we see here, in a land where Greek
+and Albanian--that is, Hellên and Illyrian--are both at home, the
+third of the great primitive races of the peninsula, the widely spread
+Thracian kin, the people of Sitalkês and Kersobleptês, so far away
+from the land in which alone political geography acknowledges them.
+
+One feeling however the group, so small, but differing so widely in
+race and creed, seem all to share very deeply. This is a devout
+reverence for the image of George King of the Greeks, when graven on a
+five- (new) drachma piece, and held up in the hand of one of the
+representatives of Corfu in the Greek Parliament. We remember the
+ancient power of much smaller coins--[Greek: hôs mega dynasthon
+pantachou tô dy' obolô]--and we begin to doubt whether a smaller sum
+might not have done the work as well. Anyhow his Hellenic Majesty's
+countenance, in this attractive shape, acts as a talisman on all,
+private and official, Christian and Mussulman; it buys off all
+questions or searchings of any kind, and wins free access to the
+beautiful scenery of the lake, full licence to poke about among what
+little there is to poke about in the shattered castle. The thought
+cannot help coming into the mind that those who so greatly respect the
+image and superscription of King George would have no very violent
+dislike to become his subjects. Still it is not without a certain
+feeling of having escaped out of the mouth of the lion that we cross
+once more over the channel, and find ourselves at the hospitable door
+of a Greek gentleman of Koloura.
+
+
+
+
+CORFU AND ITS NAMES.
+
+1875.
+
+
+The great argument to establish the fact of a long-abiding Slavonic
+occupation in Greece has always been the changes in local
+nomenclature, the actual Slavonic names and the Greek names which have
+displaced older Greek names. The former class speak for themselves;
+the latter class are held to have been given during the process of
+Greek reconquest. Nor can there be any reasonable doubt that there is
+a large amount of truth in this doctrine, if only it is kept in
+moderation, and is not pressed to the extreme conclusions of
+Fallmerayer. But it is important to note that the change from one
+Greek name to another has taken place also in cases when there has
+been no foreign settlement, no reconquest, no violent change of any
+kind. One of the greatest of Greek islands has lost one Greek name and
+has taken another, without the operation of any of the causes which
+are said to have brought about the change of nomenclature in
+Peloponnêsos. Crete and Euboia, we may say in passing, seem to have
+changed their names, when in truth they have not; but Korkyra really
+has changed its name. It had, for all purposes, become Corfu--in some
+spelling or other--till the modern revival--unwisely, we must venture
+to think--brought back, not the true local _Korkyra_ ([Greek:
+Korkyra]), but the Attic and Byzantine _Kerkyra_ ([Greek: Kerkyra]).
+City and island alike are now again [Greek: Kerkyra]; or rather we
+cannot say that the city is again [Greek: Kerkyra], as the modern city
+never was [Greek: Kerkyra] at all, nor even [Greek: Korkyra]. The
+modern town of Corfu--in its best Greek form [Greek: Koryphô]--stands
+on a different site from the ancient town of Korkyra, and there can be
+little doubt that the change of name is connected with the change of
+site.
+
+The legendary history of the island goes up, we need not say, to the
+Homeric tales. That Korkyra was the Homeric Scheriê was an accepted
+article of faith as early as the days of Thucydides. His casual phrase
+goes for more than any direct statement. He connects the naval
+greatness of the Korkyraians of his day with the seafaring fame of the
+mythical Phaiakians ([Greek: nautikô poly proechein estin hote
+epairomenoi kai kata tên tôn Phaiakôn proenoikêsin tês Kerkyras kleos
+echontôn ta peri tas naus]). Nearly a thousand years later Prokopios
+is equally believing, though he goes into some doubts and speculations
+as to the position of the isle of Kalypsô. His way of describing the
+island should be noticed. With him the island is the Phaiakian land,
+which is now called _Korkyra_ ([Greek: hê Phaiakôn chôra, hê nyn
+Kerkyra epikaleitai]). Against this description we may fairly balance
+that of Nikêtas ([Greek: hê Kerkyraiôn akra, hê nyn epikeklêtai
+Koryphô]), with whom the promontory of the Kerkyraians is now called
+_Koryphô_. The two answer to each other. To talk of [Greek: Kerkyraiôn
+akra] was as much an archaism in the eleventh century as to talk of
+[Greek: Phaiakôn chôra] was in the sixth. The everyday name of the
+island in the days of Prokopios was still [Greek: Korkyra] or [Greek:
+Kerkyra]. In the days of Nikêtas it was already [Greek: Koryphô].
+
+We put the two phrases of Prokopios and Nikêtas together, because they
+are turned out as it were from the same mould. But there is no doubt
+that the change of name had happened a good while before Nikêtas, and
+there is some reason to believe that it was the result of causes which
+are set forth in the narrative of Prokopios. The earliest mention of
+Corfu by its present name seems to be that in Liudprand, who calls it
+"Coriphus" in the plural, the Greek [Greek: Koryphous]. The change
+therefore happened between the sixth century and the tenth, the change
+doubtless of site no less than the change of name. And no time seems
+more likely for either than the time which followed the wasting
+expedition of Totilas which Prokopios records. Then doubtless it was
+that the old city, if it did not at once perish, at least began to
+decay; a new site began to be occupied; a new town arose, and that new
+town took a new name from its most remarkable physical feature, the
+[Greek: koryphô], the two peaks crowned by the citadel, which form the
+most striking feature in the entrance to the harbour of modern Corfu.
+
+One argument alone need be mentioned the other way, and that is one
+which perhaps is not likely to present itself to any one out of Corfu
+itself. The local writer Quirini quotes a single line as from
+Dionysios Periêgêtês, which runs thus:--
+
+     [Greek: keinên nyn Korphyn nautai diephêmixanto.]
+
+Dionysios is a writer of uncertain date; but he may safely be set down
+as older than Prokopios. If then he used the later name, and used it
+in a form more modern than the [Greek: Koryphô] of Nikêtas, the whole
+argument would be set aside, and the name of Corfu would be carried
+back to a much earlier time. But where Quirini got his verse is by no
+means clear. We have looked in more than one edition of Dionysios, and
+no such verse can we find. The only mention of Korkyra is in a verse
+which runs thus:--
+
+     [Greek: kai liparê Kerkyra, philon pedon Alkinooio.]
+
+Nor does the commentator Eustathios say one word as to the change of
+name. We can only conceive that the line must have been added as a
+gloss in some copy, printed or manuscript, which was consulted by
+Quirini.
+
+We will assume then that, as far as the island is concerned, Korkyra
+and Corfu--in its various spellings--are two successive names, one of
+which supplanted the other, while, as far as the city is concerned,
+they are strictly the names of two distinct though neighbouring
+cities, one of which fell as the other rose. And now the question
+comes, Is the island of Korkyra the Scheriê of Homer? Is his
+description of Scheriê and the city of Alkinoos meant for the
+description of Korkyra or any part of it, whether the historical city
+or any other? We must remember that the general witness of antiquity
+in favour of Korkyra being Scheriê loses a good deal of its weight
+when we consider that the ancient writers felt bound to place Scheriê
+somewhere, while no such necessity is laid upon us. Bearing this in
+mind, the plain case seems to be that it is far more likely that
+Scheriê was nowhere at all. In dealing with Scheriê and its
+inhabitants, we are not dealing with an entry in the Catalogue of the
+Iliad, the Domesday of the Mykênaian empire; we are simply dealing
+with a piece of the romantic geography of the Odyssey. Everything
+about the Phaiakians and their land reads as if the whole thing was as
+purely a play of the imagination as the Kyklôpes and the
+Laistrygones. It is indeed quite possible that, even in describing
+purely imaginary lands, a poet may bring in his remembrance of real
+places, just as the features of a real person may be reproduced in the
+picture of an imaginary event. The poet, in painting Scheriê, may have
+brought in bits of local description from Korkyra or from any other
+place. But that is all. As we read the story, it seems quite as
+reasonable to look on the map for Nephelokokkygia as to look on the
+map for Scheriê. The thinkers of the days of Thucydides or of some
+time before Thucydides, deeming themselves bound to place Scheriê
+somewhere, fixed it at Korkyra. The reason doubtless was that the
+Phaiakians are spoken of as the most distant of mankind, far away from
+any others, and that Korkyra really was for a long time the most
+distant of Greek settlements in this region. When Korkyra was once
+ruled to be Scheriê, the process of identification naturally went on.
+Spots received Homeric names. Alkinoos had his grove and his harbour
+in the historical Korkyra. All this is the common course of legend,
+and proves nothing for either geography or history. Yet the tale of
+Scheriê, of Alkinoos, Arêtê, and the charming Nausikaa, is not simply
+one of the loveliest of tales. Scheriê knew the use of wheeled
+carriages; therefore Scheriê had roads. Alkinoos, the head king, was
+chief over twelve lesser kings. Here we get real history, though
+history neither personal nor local. Scheriê itself may safely be
+looked for in the moon; but the roads of Scheriê and the _Bretwalda_
+of Scheriê have their place in the early history of institutions.
+
+Other names of the island are spoken of, as Drepanê and Makris,
+descriptive names which perhaps never were in real use, and which, if
+they were, were supplanted by the historical name of Korkyra. We must
+again repeat that _Korkyra_, not _Kerkyra_, is the genuine local name.
+It is the spelling on the coins of the country; it is the spelling of
+the Latin writers, who would get the name from the island itself; it
+is the spelling of Strabo. But it is equally plain that in Greece
+generally the spelling [Greek: Kerkyra] prevailed. It is so in
+Herodotus and the Attic writers; it is so in Polybios; it is so in the
+Byzantine writers, who of course affect Attic forms. It must never be
+forgotten that, from the time of Polybios, perhaps from an earlier
+time than his, down to the present moment, written Greek has been one
+thing, and spoken Greek another. Polybios wrote [Greek: Kerkyra],
+while its own people called it [Greek: Korkyra], just as he wrote
+[Greek: Êlis], while its own people called it [Greek: Walis]. The
+difference has been thought to have its origin in some joke or
+sarcasm--some play on [Greek: kerkos, kerkouros], and the like. But
+the literary form may just as likely be simply a tempting softening
+of the local form. One point only is to be insisted on, that the
+syllable [Greek: Kor] in [Greek: Korkyra], and the syllable [Greek:
+Kor] in [Greek: Koryphô], have nothing to do with one another. The
+latter name is no corruption of the elder; it is a genuine case of one
+Greek name supplanting another--perhaps rather a case of a Greek name,
+after so many ages, supplanting a name which the first Greek colonists
+may have borrowed from earlier barbarian inhabitants. In this case the
+change implies no change of inhabitants, no change of language. It is
+a change within the Greek language itself, which can be fully
+accounted for by historical causes. It therefore teaches that changes
+of name, such as the Slavonic theory insists on in Peloponnêsos,
+though they do often arise from new settlements and reconquests, do
+also come about in other ways.
+
+It is for the mythologist to find out whether Homer had Korkyra in his
+eye when he described the mythic Scheriê. This, be it again noted, is
+a perfectly reasonable subject for inquiry, and in no way implies any
+historical belief in the legend. It is simply like asking whether the
+real Glastonbury at all suggested the mythic Avalon. History begins to
+deal with Korkyra in the eighth century B.C., when the settlement of
+the Corinthian Chersikratês added the island to the Greek world. From
+that day onward the island has a long and eventful story, reaching
+down to our own times. But, before that story begins, the historian
+may fairly ask of the ethnologist what evidence, what hints of any
+kind, there are as to the people whom the Corinthian colonists found
+settled in the island. It is not likely that they found so promising a
+site wholly uninhabited. Some branch of the great Illyrian race, the
+race which is still so near to the island, and which still supplies
+it, if not with inhabitants, at least with constant visitors, may well
+be supposed to have made their way into so tempting an island. The
+harbours of Corfu would surely attract the seafaring Liburnians. We
+are then brought to the common conditions of a Greek colony, planted,
+as usual, among pre-existing barbarian inhabitants, and, as Mr. Grote
+has so strongly enforced, sure to receive a dash of barbarian blood
+among some classes of its members. The _dêmos_ of Korkyra may well
+have been far from being of pure Hellenic descent--a fact which, if it
+be so, may go far to explain the wide difference between the _dêmos_
+of Korkyra and the _dêmos_ of Athens. Since the time of the Corinthian
+settlement, the island has undergone endless conquests and changes of
+masters, each of which has doubtless brought with it a fresh infusion
+into the blood of its inhabitants. But since the time of Chersikratês
+there has been nothing like extirpation, displacement, or
+resettlement. Korkyra has ever since been an Hellenic land, though a
+succession of foreign occupations may have marred the purity of its
+Hellenism. And one point at once distinguishes it from all the
+neighbouring lands. Among all the changes of masters which Korkyra or
+Corfu has undergone, they have always been European masters. It is the
+one land in those parts that has never seen the Turk as more than a
+momentary invader, to be speedily beaten back by European prowess.
+
+So much for the origin and the name of the greatest of the group which
+in modern geography has come by the strange name of the Ionian
+Islands. The only sense in which that name has any meaning is if it be
+taken as meaning the Islands of the Ionian Sea. It ought to be
+needless to remind any one that the word in that sense has nothing
+whatever to do with the real Ionians, with the Ionic dialect or the
+Ionic order. It certainly has an odd effect when one hears the people
+of Doric Korkyra spoken of as "Ionians;" and we have even seen the
+whole group of islands spoken of as "Ionia," to the great wrong of
+Chios, Samos, Ephesos, and others of the famous Ionian twelve. But
+having said so much about names, we must in another paper say
+something of the long series of revolutions which mark the history of
+Korkyra under its two names, and of their effect on its present state.
+
+
+
+
+CORFU AND ITS HISTORY.
+
+1875.
+
+
+We have already spoken of the singular change of name which has
+befallen the most famous and important, though not the largest in
+superficial extent, of the group known as the Ionian Islands. The change
+of name, as we hold, followed naturally on the change of site of the
+city. The new city took a new name, and the island has always followed
+the name of the city. The old city and the new both occupy neighbouring
+points in a system of small peninsulas and havens, which form the
+middle of the eastern coast of the long and irregularly-shaped island
+of Korkyra. There, to the south of the present town, connected with it
+by a favourite walk of the inhabitants of Corfu, a long and broad
+peninsula stretches boldly into the sea. Both from land and from sea,
+it chiefly strikes the eye as a wooded mass, thickly covered with the
+aged olive-trees which form so marked a feature in the scenery of the
+island. A few houses skirt the base, growing on the land side into
+the suburb of Kastrades, which may pass for a kind of connecting link
+between the old and the new city. And from the midst of the wood, on
+the side nearest to the modern town, stands out the villa of the King
+of the Greeks, the chief modern dwelling on the site of ancient
+Korkyra. This peninsular hill, still known as Palaiopolis, was the
+site of the old Corinthian city whose name is so familiar to every
+reader of Thucydides. On either side of it lies one of its two
+forsaken harbours. Between the old and the new city lies the so-called
+harbour of Alkinoos; beyond the peninsula, stretching far inland, lies
+the old Hyllaic harbour, bearing the name of one of the three tribes
+which seem to have been essential to the being of a Dorian
+commonwealth. But the physical features of the country have greatly
+changed since Chersikratês led thither his band of settlers twenty-six
+centuries back. It is plain that both harbours once came much further
+inland than they do now, that they covered a great deal of the low
+ground at the foot of the peninsular hill. The question indeed
+presents itself, whether the two did not once meet, whether the
+peninsula was not once an island, whether the original colony did not
+occupy a site standing to the mainland of Korkyra in exactly the same
+relation in which the original insular Syracuse, the sister Corinthian
+colony, stood to the mainland of Sicily. The physical aspect of the
+country certainly strongly suggests the belief. And though Thucydides
+does not directly speak of the city as insular, though his words do
+not at all suggest that it was so, yet we do not know that there is
+anything in his narrative which directly shuts out the idea. Anyhow,
+the great change which has happened is plain when we see how utterly
+the great Hyllaic haven has lost the character of a haven. It is now
+called a lake, and exists only for purposes of fishing. We may believe
+that these physical changes had a great deal to do with the removal of
+the city to another site, with the change from Korkyra to Corfu.
+
+The description which Thucydides gives of the great sedition brings
+out a fact which we should at first sight hardly have expected, the
+fact that the aristocratic quarter of Korkyra was on the lower ground
+by the harbour, while the upper part of the town was occupied by the
+_dêmos_. To one who thinks of Rome, Athens, and ancient cities
+generally, this seems strange. But arguments from the most ancient
+class of cities do not fully apply to cities of the colonial class.
+These, where commerce was so great an object, were no longer, as a
+rule, placed on heights; convenient access from the sea was a main
+point, and we can therefore understand that the ground by the coast
+would be first settled, and would remain the dwelling-place of the old
+citizens, the forefathers of the oligarchs of the great sedition.
+There on the lower ground was the _agora_, where the Epidamnian exiles
+craved for help, and pointed to the tombs of their forefathers. The
+impression of the scene becomes more lively when we see not far off an
+actual ancient tomb remaining in its place, though it could hardly
+have been the tomb of the forefather of any Epidamnian. This is the
+tomb of Menekratês of Oianthê, honoured in this way by the people of
+Korkyra on account of his friendship for their city, a plain round
+tomb with one of those archaic inscriptions in which Korkyra is rich.
+Archaic indeed it is, written from right to left, in characters which
+mere familiarity with the Greek of printed books or of later
+inscriptions will not enable any one to read off with much ease. It
+formed doubtless only one of a range of tombs, doubtless outside the
+city, but visible from the _agora_. An orator in the Roman forum could
+not have pointed to the tombs of forefathers by the Appian Way.
+
+The position of the quarter of the oligarchs by the modern suburb of
+Kastrades seems perfectly clear from Thucydides. The _dêmos_ took
+refuge in the upper part of the city and held the Hyllaic harbour; the
+other party held the _agora_, where most of them dwelled, and the
+harbour near it and towards the continent ([Greek: hoi de tên te
+agoran katelabon, houper hoi polloi ôkoun autôn, kai ton limena ton
+pros autê kai pros tên êpeiron êpeiron]). This district marks out the
+haven by Kastrades, looking out on the Albanian mountains, as
+distinguished from the Hyllaic haven shut in by the hills of Korkyra
+itself.
+
+But where was the Hêraion, the temple of Hêrê, which plays a part in
+more than one of the Thucydidean narratives? and where was the island
+opposite to the Hêraion--[Greek: pros to Hêraion]--and the isle of
+Ptychia, both of which appear in his history? The answer to the former
+question seems to turn on another. Was the present citadel, the true
+[Greek: Koryphô], itself always an island, as it is now? The present
+channel is artificial--that is to say, it is made artificial by
+fortifications--but it may after all have been a natural channel
+improved by art. And that is the belief of some of the best Corfiote
+antiquaries. If so, this may well be the [Greek: nêsos pros to
+Hêraion], and Ptychia may be the isle of Vido beyond. The Hêraion
+would thus stand on the north side of the old Korkyra, looking towards
+the modern city; it would stand in the oligarchic quarter on the low
+ground near the _agora_. It was therefore neither of the two temples
+of which traces remain. One, of which the walls can be traced out
+nearly throughout, and of which a single broken Doric column is
+standing, overlooks the open sea towards Epeiros. Another on the other
+side overlooked the Hyllaic harbour. This in course of time became a
+church, a now ruined church, but which keeps large parts of its
+Hellenic walls and some windows of beautiful Byzantine brickwork. It
+seems hardly possible in any case that the Hêraion could have been at
+quite the further end of the peninsula, and that the island [Greek:
+pros to Hêraion] could be either of the small islands, each containing
+a church, which keep the entrance of the Hyllaic harbour.
+
+Such then was old Korkyra, the colony of Chersikratês, the Korkyra
+which figures in the tale of Periandros, the Korkyra which played such
+a doubtful part in the Persian War, which gained so fearful a name in
+the Peloponnesian War, and which, within two generations, had so
+thoroughly recovered itself that in the days of Timotheos it struck
+both friends and enemies by its wealth and flourishing state. It is
+the Korkyra of Pyrrhos and Agathoklês, the Korkyra which formed one of
+the first stepping-stones for the Roman to make his way to the
+Hellenic continent, the Korkyra whose history goes on till the wasting
+inroad of Totilas. Then, as we hold, ancient Korkyra on its peninsula
+began to give way to Koryphô (Corfu) on another peninsula or island,
+that to which the two peaks which form its most marked feature gave
+its name.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  [Illustration: CHURCHES AT CORFU.]
+
+This last is the Corfu whose fate seems to have been to become the
+possession of every power which has ruled in that quarter of the
+world, with one exception. For fourteen hundred years the history of
+the island is the history of endless changes of masters. We see it
+first a nominal ally, then a direct possession, of Rome and of
+Constantinople; we then see it formed into a separate Byzantine
+principality, conquered by the Norman lord of Sicily, again a
+possession of the Empire, then a momentary possession of Venice, again
+a possession of the Sicilian kingdom under its Angevin kings, till at
+last it came back to Venetian rule, and abode for four hundred years
+under the Lion of Saint Mark. Then it became part of that first
+strange Septinsular Republic of which the Tzar was to be the protector
+and the Sultan the overlord. Then it was a possession of France; then
+a member of the second Septinsular Republic under the hardly disguised
+sovereignty of England; now at last it is the most distant, but one of
+the most valuable, of the provinces of the modern Greek kingdom. But
+Corfu has never for a moment been under the direct rule of the Turk.
+The proudest memory in the later history of the island is the defeat
+of the Turks in 1716. Peloponnêsos, the conquest of Morosini, had
+again been lost, and the Turk deemed that he might again carry his
+conquests into the Western seas. The city was besieged by land and
+sea; the two fleets, Christian and infidel, stretched across the
+narrow channel between the island and the mainland, the left wing of
+the Turkish fleet resting strangely enough on Venetian Butrinto, while
+the ships of Venice and her allies stretched from Vido to the Albanian
+shore. The statue of Schulemberg, set up as an unparalleled honour in
+his lifetime, adorns the esplanade of the city which he saved. Unless
+we count the Turkish acquisition of the Venetian points on the
+mainland, which, though done under the cover of a treaty, took at
+Prevesa at least the form of an actual conquest, this was the last
+great attempt of the Turk to extend his dominion by altogether fresh
+conquests at the expense of any Christian power.
+
+Korkyra thus gave way to Corfu, and the endless fortifications of
+Corfu of every date were largely built out of the remains of Korkyra
+which supplied so convenient a quarry. None but an accomplished
+military engineer could attempt to give an account of the remains of
+all the fortifications, Venetian and English, dismantled, ruined, or
+altogether blown up. But the kingdom of which Corfu now forms a part
+still keeps the insular citadel, the outline of the two peaks being
+sadly disfigured by the needs of modern military defence. Of the
+modern city there is but little to say. As becomes a city which was so
+long a Venetian possession, the older part of it has much of the
+character of an Italian town. It is rich in street arcades; but they
+present but few architectural features, and we find none of those
+various forms of ornamental window, so common, not only in Venice and
+Verona, but in Spalato, Cattaro, and Traü. The churches in the modern
+city are architecturally worthless. They are interesting so far as
+they will give to many their first impression of Orthodox arrangement
+and Orthodox ritual. The few ecclesiastical antiquities of the place
+belong to the elder city. The suburb of the lower slope of the hill
+contains three churches, all of them small, but each of which has an
+interest of its own. Of one, known as [Greek: hê Panagia tôn
+blachernôn], we have already spoken; another, known specially as Our
+Lady of _Oldbury_ ([Greek: hê Panagia palaiopoleôs]), is unattractive
+enough from any point from which the spectator is likely to see it.
+Its form is by courtesy called basilican; but, if so, it is like the
+basilica of Trier, without columns or arches. Within it is a dreary
+building enough, but it presents one object of interest in a
+side-altar, a Latin intrusion into the Orthodox fabric. But the west
+end is one of the most memorable things to be found in Corfu or
+anywhere else. Two columns, not of the usual early Doric of the
+island, but with floriated capitals, though not exactly Corinthian,
+are built into the wall with a piece of their entablature. On this is
+graven a Christian inscription, which is given in an inaccurate shape
+by Mustoxidi (_Delle cose Corciresi_, p. 405), who has further
+improved the spelling. The spelling is in truth after the manner of
+Liudprand and the modern shoe-makers of Corfu, and is therefore
+instructive. At the top come the words of the Psalmist; "This is the
+gate of the Lord; the _writeous_ shall enter into it":--[Greek: hautê
+hê pylê tou Kyriou, dikeoi eiseleusontai en autê.] Below come four
+hexameters:--
+
+     [Greek: pistin echôn basilian emôn meneôn sunerithon,
+     soi makar hypsimedon tond' hieron ektisa naon,
+     Hellênôn temenê kai bômous exalapaxas,
+     cheiros ap' outidanês Iobianos edôken anakti.]
+
+Who was this Jovianus? Clearly a Christian as zealous as his Imperial
+namesake; for he cannot be the Emperor himself, as some have thought.
+He thought it glory and not shame to destroy the works of the
+Gentiles--the [Greek: Hellênes]--and to turn them to the service of
+the royal faith. But are we to take the "royal faith" in the same
+sense as the "royal law" of the New Testament? or does it mean the
+"royal faith," as being set up under some orthodox Emperor, when the
+orthodoxy of Emperors was still a new thing? Anyhow the plunderer of
+Gentile temples and altars could not keep himself from something of
+the Gentile in the ring and the language of his verses. And had he
+made use of his spoil to rear a basilica like those of Constantine and
+Theodoric, we should, from a wider view than that of the mere
+classical antiquary, have but little right to blame him. The rest of
+the columns, besides the two that are left, would have well relieved
+the bareness of his interior; better still would it have been if Saint
+Peter _ad Vincula_ had found a rival in two arcades formed out of the
+Doric columns whose fragments lie about at Corfu, almost as Corinthian
+and Composite fragments lie about at Rome. The third church, that
+which professes to be the oldest in the island, that which bears the
+name of the alleged apostles of the island, the Jasôn and Sosipatros
+of the New Testament, is a more successful work. Brought to its
+present form about the twelfth century by the priest Stephen, as is
+recorded in two inscriptions on its west front, it is, allowing for
+some modern disfigurements, an admirable specimen of a small Byzantine
+church. It will remind him who comes by way of Dalmatia of old friends
+at Zara, Spalato, and Traü; but it has the advantage over them of
+somewhat greater size, and of standing free and detached, so that the
+outline of its cross, its single central cupola and its three apses,
+may be well seen. This church, like most in the neighbourhood, has a
+bell-gable--[Greek: kôdônostasion]--with arches for three bells, of a
+type which seems to be found of all ages from genuine Byzantine to
+late _Renaissance_.
+
+  [Illustration: SAINT JASON AND SAINT SOSIPATROS, CORFU.]
+
+To go back to earlier times, the museum of Corfu contains an
+inscription, [Greek: boustrophêdon] inscription, rivalling that of
+Menekratês in its archaism, attached to a Doric capital, of far later
+workmanship, one would have thought, than the inscription. The
+building art had clearly outstripped the writing art. The military
+cemetery contains some beautiful Greek sepulchral sculptures from
+various quarters, not all Korkyraian. And at some distance from the
+city, near the shore of Benizza--a name of Slavonic sound--is a Roman
+ruin with mosaics and hypocaust, whose bricks we think Mr. Parker
+would rule to be not older than Diocletian. In Corfu such a monument
+seems at first sight to be out of place. For Hellenic remains, for
+Venetian remains, we naturally look; still it is well to have
+something of an intermediate day, something to remind us of the long
+ages which passed between the revolutions recorded by Polybios and the
+revolutions recorded by Nikêtas.
+
+
+
+
+CORFU TO DURAZZO.
+
+1881.
+
+
+We start again from Corfu, and this time our course is northward. A
+survey of Greece as Greece would lead us southward and eastward. So
+would even a complete survey of the subject lands of Venice. For that
+we must go on to the rest of the western islands, to not a few points
+in the Ægæan, to the greater islands of Euboia and Crete, to Saint
+Mark's own realm of Cyprus, which the Evangelist so strangely
+inherited from his daughter and her son. Not a few points of
+Peloponnêsos for some ages, all Peloponnêsos for a few years, Athens
+itself for a moment, comes within the same range. We might write the
+history of Argos from the Venetian point of view, a point of view
+which would shut out the history of Mykênê, and would look on Tiryns
+only as _Palai-Nauplia_, the precursor of Napoli di Romania. But no
+man could journey through Greece itself with Venice in this way in his
+thoughts. Far older, far nobler, memories would press upon him at
+every moment. The mediæval history of Greece is a subject which
+deserves far more attention than it commonly gets, and in that history
+Venice plays a prominent part. But it is hard, in a Greek journey, to
+make the mediæval history primary, and even in the mediæval history
+Venice is only one element among others. A large part of Greece fairly
+comes under the head of the Subject and Neighbour Lands of Venice; but
+we cannot bring ourselves to make that the chief aspect in which we
+look at them. It is otherwise with the Dalmatian and Albanian
+possessions of the Republic. There, though other points of view are
+possible, yet the special Venetian point of view is one which may be
+both easily and fairly taken. So too with Corfu; thoroughly Greek as
+the island is, it still lies on the very verge of continuous Greece.
+In its history and geography it is closely connected with the more
+northern possessions of the Republic; its Venetian side is at least as
+important as any other side; we can without an effort bring ourselves
+to treat it in a way in which we could hardly bring ourselves to treat
+Argos. We can then fairly take Corfu into our special Venetian survey;
+but we can hardly venture to carry that survey further. The rest of
+Greece, though it has its Venetian side, though it is important that
+its Venetian side should not be forgotten, can never be looked on in
+this way as an appendage to the Hadriatic commonwealth. We cannot go
+through the earliest homes of European civilization and freedom, and
+keep our mind mainly fixed even on the days when Rome had made them
+members of her Empire, and when their influence had gone far to make
+the later power of Rome at least as much Greek as Roman. Still less
+can we go through them with our mind mainly fixed on the days when so
+large part of Greece had passed under the rule of a city which was in
+truth a revolted member of the Empire which it helped to split in
+pieces.
+
+We start then again from Corfu, with our faces turned towards our old
+haunts among the Illyrian coasts and islands. In so doing, we pass for
+a while out of the Christian and civilized world, to skirt along the
+coasts where Europe is still in bondage to Asia. The wrong is an old
+one, as old as the days when Herodotus put on record how Greek cities
+for the first time passed under the rule of a barbarian master. From
+his day, from times long before his day, from the days of Agamemnôn,
+perhaps from the days of the brave men who lived before him, the same
+long strife has been going on, the same "eternal Eastern question" has
+been awaiting its "solution." And nowhere does that abiding struggle
+come more fully home to us than in the lands where the Eastern
+question has become a Western question. The Greek cities whose bondage
+to the barbarian was recorded by Herodotus were Greek cities on
+barbarian ground. They were outposts of Europe on the soil of Asia;
+they were spots in winning which the Asiatic might deem that he was
+winning back his own. And after all, the barbarian whose conquest of
+the Greek cities of Asia marks one important stage in this long
+strife, was a barbarian of another kind from the barbarians whom
+European lands have in later times been driven to receive as masters.
+Croesus worshipped the Gods of Greece, and Greek poets sang his
+praises. It may even be that the Lydian, like the Persian who
+succeeded him, was not a barbarian at all in the strictest sense, but
+that there was some measure of kindred, however distant, between him
+and his European subjects. It is another kind of master, another kind
+of bondage, which has fallen to the lot of the lands along whose coast
+we are now sailing. Here we do indeed see the West in bondage to the
+East, we do indeed see Europe on her own soil bowed down beneath the
+yoke of Asia. We pass by coasts which look to the setting sun no less
+than our own island, but which the Asiatic intruder still holds
+beneath the yoke,--over some of which he has pressed the yoke for the
+first time within the memory of living men. On these coasts at least
+we think of Venice only in her nobler character. Here indeed every
+island, every headland, which owned her rule, was something saved from
+the grasp of the enemy; it was indeed a brand plucked from the
+burning. As we sail northward, we leave spots behind us, memorable in
+past times, memorable some of them in our own day. We leave behind us
+Prevesa, where, till almost within our own century, Saint Mark still
+held his own, hard by the City of Victory of the first Emperor. We
+remember how Prevesa was torn away from Christendom by the arms of Ali
+of Jôannina, and how within the last three years freedom has been
+twice promised to her but never given. We leave behind us more famous
+Parga, where, within the lifetime of many of us, stout hearts could
+still maintain their freedom, in the teeth alike of barbarian force
+and of European diplomacy--Parga, whose banished sons bore with them
+the bones of their fathers rather than leave them to be trampled on by
+the feet of the misbelievers. There must be men still living who had
+their share in that famous exodus, and who have lived to see Europe
+first decree that their land should be again set free, and then thrust
+it back again beneath the yoke. We leave behind us Butrinto, happier
+at least in this, that there no promise of later days has been broken.
+There we have passed the point beyond which assembled Europe ruled
+that even the dreams of freedom might go no further. And as we sail
+between the home of freedom and the house of bondage, our thoughts
+overleap the mountain wall. They fly to the heights where Souli,
+birth-place of Botzarês, is left to the foes against whom it so long
+and so stoutly strove. They fly to Jôannina, so long the home of light
+and comparative freedom amid surrounding darkness and bondage, but
+which now, instead of receiving the twice-promised deliverance, is
+again thrust back into bondage for a while. We pass on by the High
+Thunderpeaks, fencing in the land of Chimara, famous in the wars of
+Ali. We double the promontory of Glôssa, and find ourselves in the
+deep bay of Aulôn, Aulona, Valona, with the town itself high on its
+hill, guarding the entrance to the gulf from the other side. Here is a
+true hill-city, unlike Korkyra, unlike even Buthrotum; but while
+Korkyra and Buthrotum, each on its shore, has each its history, Aulôn
+on its height has none. We pass by the mouths of the great Illyrian
+rivers, by Aoos and Apsos, and we leave between them the place where
+once stood Apollonia, another of the paths by which Rome made her way
+into the Eastern world. At last we find ourselves in another bay,
+wider, but not so deep as the bay of Aulôn. Here we look out on what
+remains of a city whose earlier name dwells in the memory of every
+reader of the greatest of Greek historians, a city whose later name,
+famous through a long series of revolutions, ought to be ever fresh in
+the minds of Englishmen, as having become by a strange destiny the
+scene of one stage of the same struggle as Senlac and York and Ely.
+The city on which we look was, under its elder name of Epidamnos, that
+famous colony of Korkyra which gave an occasion for the Peloponnesian
+war. Under its later name of Dyrrhachion or Durazzo it beheld
+Englishmen and Normans meet in arms, when Englishmen driven from their
+homes had found a shelter and an honourable calling in the service of
+the Eastern Cæsar.
+
+The city on which we gaze, though it is only by a figure that we can
+be said to gaze on the original Epidamnos, is one of those cities
+which, without ever holding any great place themselves, without being
+widely ruling cities, without exercising any direct influence on the
+course of the world's history, have given occasion for the greatest
+events through their relations to cities and powers greater than
+themselves. Under none of its names was Epidamnos the peer of Corinth
+in the elder state of things, or of Venice in the later. Yet events of
+no small moment came of the relations between Epidamnos and Corinth,
+of the relations between Durazzo and Venice. Greater events still came
+of the relations between Dyrrhachion and Rome. The three names, though
+of course the third is a simple corruption of the second, are
+convenient to mark three periods in the history of the place, just as
+one of the great Sicilian cities is conveniently spoken of at three
+stages of its life as Akragas, Agrigentum, and Girgenti. When and how
+the name changed from Epidamnos to Dyrrhachion is not clear, nor are
+the reasons given for the change satisfactory. In practice, Epidamnos
+is its old Greek name, Dyrrhachion its Roman, Durazzo its mediæval
+name. But the name Dyrrhachion can be Roman only in usage; the word
+itself is palpably Greek. In strictness it seems that Epidamnos was
+the name of the city, and Dyrrhachion the name of the peninsula on
+which the city was built. The change then has some analogy with the
+process by which the tribal names in northern Gaul have displaced the
+elder names of their chief cities, or with the change among ourselves
+by which Kingston-on-Hull, as it is still always called in formal
+writings, is in common speech always spoken of as "Hull." Anyhow,
+under Roman rule, the name of Dyrrhachion altogether displaced
+Epidamnos. The new name gradually came to be mispelled or Latinized
+into _Durachium_ and _Duracium_, and, in that state, it supplied the
+material for more than one play upon words. When Robert Wiscard came
+against it, he said that the city might indeed be _Duracium_, but that
+he was a _dour_ man (_durus_) and knew how to _endure_ (_durare_). The
+Norman made his way by this path into the Eastern lands, as the Roman
+had done before him; but as his course was quicker, his stay was
+shorter. Epidamnos, along with Apollônia and Korkyra, were the first
+possessions of Rome east of the Hadriatic. They were possessions of
+the ruling city where dominion was for a long time disguised under the
+name of alliance. But, under whatever name, Rome, Old and New, held
+them till the Norman came. But the Norman did not hold them till the
+Venetian came. In a few years after the coming of Robert Wiscard,
+Durazzo and Corfu were again cities of the Eastern Empire.
+
+Amidst all the revolutions which this little peninsula has gone
+through, one law seems to hold. Under all its names, it has had in a
+marked way what we may call a colonial life, in the modern sense of
+the word _colonial_. It has ever been an outpost of some other power,
+of whatever power has been strongest in those seas, and it has been an
+outpost ever threatened by the elder races of the mainland. Herein
+comes one of the differences between this Albanian coast and the
+Dalmatian coast further north. The Roman Peace took in all; but in the
+days before and after the Roman Peace, the settlements of Corinth,
+Venice, or any other colonizing and civilizing power, along the coast
+of which Durazzo was the centre, were merely scattered outposts. There
+never was that continuous fringe of a higher culture, Italian or
+Greek, which spread along the whole coast further north. As a colony,
+an isolated colony, Epidamnos or Durazzo was always exposed to the
+attacks of barbarian neighbours. And in this land the barbarian
+neighbours have always been the same. The old Illyrian, the Albanian,
+the Arnaout, the Skipetar--call him by whichever name we will--has
+here lived on through all changes. He has indeed a right to look on
+Greek, Roman, Norman, Angevin, Servian, Venetian, and Ottoman, as
+alike intruders within his own immemorial land. It was danger from the
+Illyrian that led to the disputes which open the history of
+Thucydides, when Corinth and Korkyra fought over their common colony.
+It was danger from the Illyrian which drove Epidamnos into the arms of
+Rome. It was the Illyrian under his new name who in the fourteenth
+century for a moment made Durazzo the head of a national state, the
+capital of a short-lived kingdom of Albania. Twice conquered by the
+Normans of Apulia and Sicily, twice by their Angevin successors,
+granted as part of a vassal kingdom by the Norman and as a vassal
+duchy by the Angevin, twice won by the Venetian commonwealth, held by
+the despots of Epeiros, by the restored Emperors of Constantinople, by
+the kings of Servia, by the native kings of Albania, no city has had a
+more varied succession of foreign masters; but, save in the days of
+the old Epidamnian commonwealth and in the days of the momentary
+Albanian kingdom, it has always had a foreign master of some kind.
+But in the endless succession of strangers which this memorable spot
+has seen, as masters, as invaders, as defenders, it is the Englishman
+and the Venetian who can look with most satisfaction on their share in
+its long history. Englishmen had the honour of guarding the spot for
+the Eastern Cæsar; Venice had the honour of being the last Christian
+champion to guard it against the Ottoman Sultan.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We stand then gazing from our ship on what is left of the city which
+Robert Wiscard crossed the sea to conquer, which Alexios came with his
+motley host to defend, and to find that in all that host the men whom
+he could best trust were the English exiles. There, as in their own
+island, the English axe and the Norman lance clashed together; there
+the stout axemen alone stayed to die, while the other soldiers of the
+Eastern Rome, the Greek, the Turk, and the Slave, all turned to fly
+around their Emperor. We look out, and we long to know the site of the
+church of Saint Michael, which our countrymen so stoutly guarded, till
+the Normans, Norman-like, took to their favourite weapon of fire. But
+may we confess to the weakness of looking at all these things only
+from the deck of the steamer? Perhaps there are some who may be
+forgiven if they shrink from thrusting themselves alone, with no
+native or experienced guide, into the jaws of the present masters of
+Durazzo. They may be the more forgiven when those who have the care of
+their vessel and its temporary inhabitants utter warnings against any
+but the most stout-hearted trusting themselves to the boats which form
+the only means of reaching the Dyrrhachian peninsula. Strengthened in
+weakness by such counsels, there seems a kind of magnanimity in the
+resolution to abide in the ship, to say that we have landed at free
+Corfu, that we shall land at recovered Antivari, but that we will not
+betweenwhiles set foot on any soil where the Turk still reigns. And
+the time of distant gazing is not wasted. Without risking ourselves
+either on Turkish ground or on the rough waves of the Epidamnian bay,
+a fair general view of the city may be had from the steamer. The wide
+curve of the bay has for the most part a flat shore, with a background
+of mountains in the distant landscape. Towards the north-west corner,
+a promontory of a good height, backed by a comb-like range of peaks,
+rises at once from the water. This is the peninsula of Dyrrhachion,
+once crowned by the Epidamnian city. The modern town is seen on a
+small part of the tower slope of the hill. The walls can be traced
+through the greater part of their circuit; a huge round bastion by the
+sea, more than one tower, round and square, teach us that Durazzo has
+been strongly fortified. If we may eke out our own distant
+impressions by the help of an old print showing what Durazzo was in
+times past, we see that it was fortified indeed. We can recognize in
+the picture most of the towers which we have seen with our own eyes,
+and there is shown also another tower far greater, a huge square tower
+of many stages, which no imagination of the artist can have devised
+out of anything which now comes into the sea-view of the city. But
+that view enables us to trace out a few buildings within the wall. We
+mark the distinctive symbols of the two stranger forms of worship,
+from the East and from the West, which have, each in its turn,
+supplanted or dominated the native Church. The Latin church, with its
+conspicuous bell-tower, carries on the traditions of Angevin and
+Venetian rule; the mosque, with its more conspicuous minaret, speaks
+of the more abiding dominion of the representative of the False
+Prophet. The native church meanwhile lurks significantly unseen in the
+general view. Our teacher on board our ship assures us that Durazzo is
+not without an Orthodox place of worship; but he cannot point out its
+whereabouts.
+
+And it may be that it is no common anniversary on which we look out on
+the land which has passed into bondage. Looked at by the evening light
+of the twenty-ninth day of May, the group of buildings at Durazzo,
+alike by what is present to the eye and by what is absent, brings to
+the mind the fate of a greater city than Durazzo was in its proudest
+day. It makes us muse how, after four hundred and eight and twenty
+years, we have still to repeat the Psalmist's words: "O God, the
+heathen have come into thine inheritance; thy holy temple have they
+defiled, and made Jerusalem an heap of stones." Durazzo has not
+indeed, like some other cities under the yoke, sunk to a heap of
+stones; but it is easy to see how the Turkish town has shrunk up
+within the Venetian walls, and again how narrow must be the circuit of
+Venetian Durazzo compared with the Epidamnos of the days of
+Thucydides, or even with the Dyrrhachion beneath whose walls our
+banished kinsmen so well maintained the cause of the Eastern Augustus.
+For the church that they so stoutly defended we need not say that it
+is vain to look in such a Pisgah view of the city as is all that we
+can take. But to the left of the present wall, where the hill soars,
+one stage upon another, far above the height of Durazzo that now is,
+we must surely place the site of the akropolis of the old Korkyraian
+settlers. Such a post, looking over the wide bay and commanding its
+mouth, would be just what would commend itself to the Greek colonists
+for the site of their new stronghold, while the lower city would
+naturally be spread over the more sheltered ground which holds all
+that is left of Durazzo under the rule of the Turk. Pausanias indeed
+implies that there had been a change of site before his time, that the
+Dyrrhachion of his day did not stand on exactly the same ground as the
+elder Epidamnos. No doubt the loftier site was the older; men came
+down from the hill-top as they did at Athens and Corinth. Thus much
+the passing stranger can see of this historic spot, even without
+setting his foot on the soil which the barbarian has torn away from
+Christendom. His course will bear him on to the place of his next
+halt, to the spot which, only a few months back, was the last soil
+which Christendom had won back from the barbarian. Since then, if
+another land has been denied the promised freedom, in a third the boon
+has been actually bestowed. And we may comfort ourselves by thinking
+that, while the shame of what is left undone belongs to others, the
+praise of what is done belongs to our own land only. We may comfort
+ourselves too by further thinking that right and freedom are powers
+which have an awkward way, when they have taken the inch, of going on
+to take the ell. The wise men whose wisdom consists in living
+politically from hand to mouth, are again crying out against
+"re-opening the Eastern question." In sailing along the shores, in
+scanning their history in past and present times, we feel how deep a
+truth was casually uttered in the shallow sneer which called that
+question "eternal." We feel how vain is the dream of those who think
+that this or that half-measure has solved it. As we gaze on enslaved
+Durazzo, with free Greece behind us, with free Montenegro before
+us--as we run swiftly in our thoughts over the long history of the
+spot--as we specially call up the deeds of our own countrymen on the
+shore on which we look--we feel that something indeed has been done,
+but that there is yet much more to do. Before us, behind us, are lands
+to which England, and England only, has given freedom. A day must come
+when, what England has done for Corfu, for Arta, and for Dulcigno, she
+must do for Jôannina and for Durazzo.
+
+
+
+
+ANTIVARI.
+
+1881.
+
+
+We wind up our course with one more of the once subject cities of
+Venice, one where we can hardly say that we are any longer following
+in Norman footsteps, but whose history stands apart from the history
+of Dalmatia and Istria, while it has much in common with our last
+halting place. But here the main interest belongs to our own day. It
+is with new and strange feelings that we look out on a land which,
+when we last passed by it, was still clutched tight in the grasp of
+the barbarian, but to which we can now give the new and thrilling name
+of the sea-coast of Tzernagora. And yet it is with mingled feelings
+that we gaze. We rejoice in the victories, in the extension, of the
+unconquered principality, the land which has shown itself a surer
+"bulwark 'gainst the Ottomite" than Hungary or Poland, or even Venice,
+ever proved. We rejoice that the warriors of the mountain, long shut
+in by force and fraud, have again, with their own right hands, cut
+their way to their own sea. And yet we feel that, though the sea to
+which they have cut their way is truly their own sea, their own
+ancient heritage, yet the coast and the havens which they have won are
+not the coast and the havens which they should have won. If all had
+their own, Dulcigno, Antivari, and the ewe lamb which the rich man
+stole at Spizza, would be the havens of the free Albanian, while the
+free Slave would have his outlet to the Hadriatic waters at his own
+Cattaro and at Ragusa too. In such an ideal state of things, the
+present lord of Cattaro and Ragusa might reign peaceably and
+harmlessly in the duchy of his grandmothers, happy in deliverance from
+the curses of those whom he now keeps back from union with the
+brethren whom they love and with the one prince whom they acknowledge.
+The Montenegrin, in short, kept back by wrong from winning his way to
+the sea by peaceful union with those who yearn for his presence, has
+been driven to win his way to the sea by the conquest of lands which
+were once the heritage of his race, but from which his race has now
+passed away. Forbidden to be the deliverer of the Slave, he has been
+forced to be the conqueror of the Albanian. The Albanian Mussulman
+himself has practically gained by being conquered; still, as we said,
+if every one had his own, arrangements would be different. The blame
+indeed lies, not with the people who extend their borders when to
+extend their border is a matter of national life, but with those who,
+not in the interest of any people, nation, or language, but in the
+private interest of their own family estate, sit by to hinder them
+from extending their borders in the right way. We rejoice then as we
+look for the first time on the sea-coast of Montenegro; but we mourn
+that the sea-coast of Montenegro lies where it does and not elsewhere.
+We mourn too that the enlargement of Christendom, the falling back of
+Islam, has been bought only by the destruction of an ancient and
+beautiful city from which the memorials at least of Christendom had
+not wholly passed away.
+
+Antibaris, Antivari, in the tongues of the land, _Bar_ and _Tivari_,
+is perhaps rather to be understood as meaning "the Bari on the other
+side" than "the city opposite Bari." But there is no doubt that its
+name contains, in one way or another, a reference to the more famous
+Bari, "Barium piscosum," on the other side of the Hadriatic. And
+Antivari is the opposite to Bari in a sense which was certainly not
+meant; no two sites can well be more unlike one another than the sites
+of Bari and of Antivari. The Apulian Bari lies low on a flat shore,
+with not so much as a background of hills; the Albanian Bari crowns a
+height, with a wall of more soaring heights on each side of it. The
+Apulian Bari had no chance of occupying such a position as this; the
+marked difference between the two coasts of the Hadriatic forbade it.
+But the site of Antivari is hardly less unlike most of the other sites
+on its own coast. Zara, Salona and its successor Spalato, Epidauros
+and its successor Ragusa, Cattaro, Durazzo, and a crowd of others of
+lesser name, are none of them placed on heights. Some of them nestle
+immediately at the foot of the mountain; some have thrown out their
+defences, older or newer, some way up the side of the mountain; in
+none is the city itself perched high on the hills. For a parallel to
+Antivari on this coast we have to go back to the mountain citadel of
+Aulona. The position and the name of Antivari seem to point to a state
+of things differing both from the days of the Greek and Roman
+foundations, and from the days of the cities which arose to shelter
+their fugitives in the day of overthrow. Long Salona stood low on the
+shore; the house of Jovius stood low on the shore also; it did not
+come into the head of the founders of either to plant city or palace
+on the height of Clissa. When Antivari arose, it would seem that men
+had gone back to that earlier state of things which planted the oldest
+Argos, even the oldest Corinth, on mountain peaks some way from their
+own coasts. The inaccessible height had again come to be looked on as
+a source of strength. Antivari may take its place alongside of the
+mediæval Syra, the Latin town covering its own peaked hill--a _mons
+acutus_, a Montacute, by the shore--while the oldest and the newest
+Hermoupolis lies on the shore at its feet. The town does not even look
+down at once on the haven; it has to be reached in a manner sideways
+from the haven. It is true indeed that the sea has gone back, that the
+plain at the foot of the mountains between the town and the shore was
+smaller than it now is, even in times not far removed from our own.
+But Antivari was never as Cattaro; it always stood on a height, with
+some greater or less extent of level ground between the town and its
+own haven.
+
+The city thus placed has gone through its full share of the
+revolutions of the eastern coasts of the Hadriatic. Once a
+commonwealth under the protection of the Servian kings and tzars, it
+came late under Venetian rule. But it remained under that rule down to
+a later time than any other of the possessions of the Republic on this
+coast, save those which came within the actual Dalmatian border and
+those detached points further to the south which have a history of
+their own in common with the so-called Ionian Islands. It was for a
+while in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, what Budua was for so
+long afterwards, the furthest point of the continuous rule of Saint
+Mark, a city which remained part of Christendom after Durazzo and
+Skodra had passed into the hands of the infidel. In earlier times,
+when Antivari had a separate being, its tendency was rather to a
+connexion with Ragusa than with Venice. Ragusa, though the nearer of
+the rivals, was the weaker, the less likely to change alliance or
+protection into dominion. Antivari too, like most other
+city-commonwealths, had its patricians and plebeians, its disputes
+between the privileged and the non-privileged order. As the justice of
+either side at home was distrusted, it was agreed that the decision of
+some classes of causes should be referred to the courts of Ragusa.
+Such a settlement, though taking another and more dangerous form, is
+the same in principle as the favourite Italian custom of choosing a
+foreign _podestà_, as the earlier usage by which cities which had won
+their independence in all other points were still willing to receive a
+criminal judge of the Emperor's naming. In all these cases alike, the
+stranger is looked on as more likely than the native to deal out
+even-handed justice amid the disputes and rivalries of persons and
+parties.
+
+Though Antivari stands on a hill, it does not crown any such height as
+those of Cortona or Akrokorinthos, nor does it call for any such
+journey as that which leads to the spot which masters of the
+high-polite style will now doubtless call its "metropolis" at
+Tzetinje. It stands on an advanced point among the mountains, one
+easily commanded from higher points, as was soon found in the siege
+of 1877. A road of no astonishing steepness leads us up to the
+town--or more strictly to its ruins. We look down on a church in the
+valley, whose air proclaims it as belonging to the Orthodox communion;
+and that church seems to be the only untouched building within sight.
+It is not till we get within the walls that we take in the full
+measure of the destruction which has been wrought; but the first
+glance shows that Antivari has suffered not a little from the warfare
+of our own times. The walls and towers are there; but we see that they
+fence in only roofless buildings; the mosques, with their minarets,
+several of them shattered, remind us that we are drawing near to a
+city which has been won for Christendom from Islam, as a nearer view
+reminds us that it is a city which had before been won for Islam from
+Christendom. We halt at a small _café_ outside the walls, where we
+receive a friendly greeting from the representatives of Montenegrin
+authority in the new conquest. Here too is the club and reading-room
+of Antivari, supplied with newspapers in the Slavonic, Italian, and
+Turkish tongues; the really prevailing speech of the district, the
+immemorial Skipetar or Albanian, hardly boasts of a representative in
+the press. Here too are gathered a few fragments from the ruins, a few
+capitals, sculptures, and inscriptions, all or most of Venetian
+times. Among them is the winged lion himself, and the epitaph of a
+local dignitary who bears the very English-sounding title of "justitia
+pacis." Even among ourselves embodied righteousness sometimes takes
+the same abstract form, instead of the more mortal and fleshly
+"justitiarius." A slight descent and a steep ascent leads us through a
+rebuilt suburb, which now forms the only part of Antivari which serves
+as a dwelling-place of man. A line of shops, or rather booths,
+supplies the needs of the neighbouring people, among whom Christians
+and Mussulmans, Slaves and Albanians, seem pretty equally mingled. A
+Montenegrin sentinel, whose national coat must once have been whiter
+than it now is, guards the gate, a Venetian gate where inscriptions in
+the Arabic character record the dominion of the late masters of
+Antivari. We enter, we gaze around, we climb a tower for a better
+view, and we look on a scene of havoc which is startling to men of
+peaceful lives, and which, one would think, must be unusual even in
+the experience of men of the sword. We believe that we are speaking
+the truth when we say that every building within the enclosed space
+has become uninhabitable; certainly not one seemed to be inhabited.
+This destruction is indeed not wholly the immediate result of the
+siege. A powder-magazine was afterwards struck by lightning, and its
+explosion destroyed whatever the siege had spared. But the havoc
+wrought by the siege itself must have been fearful. Antivari is as
+strictly a collection of ruins, and of nothing but ruins, as Ninfa at
+the foot of the Volscian hills, looking up at the mighty walls of
+Norba. But Ninfa was simply forsaken some ages back. Its inhabitants
+fled from an unhealthy site, and left their houses, churches, and
+military defences, to crumble away. But at Antivari we see the work of
+destruction in our own day, almost at the present moment. Four years
+back, the traveller passing along the Albanian coast was shown where
+Antivari, then an inhabited town, nestled among its rocks. The war was
+then raging inland; the Montenegrin was then defending his own heights
+against Turkish invasion; he had not yet come down to win back a
+fragment of his ancient coast from one of the two intruders who kept
+him from it. The traveller comes again; this time he does not only
+look from afar, but examines on the spot with his own eyes. But he
+finds only the shattered fragments of what four years before was a
+city of men.
+
+And, small as Antivari must have been even in its most flourishing
+times, it is no mean city that it must have been. It must be
+remembered that Antivari, though it was a Mussulman town under Turkish
+rule, was never in any strict sense a Turkish town. Its history is
+that of Albania generally, as it is the history of large classes of
+men in Bosnia. Antivari was easily won by the Turk, and it remained in
+the hands of its old inhabitants, Christian Albanians and Venetian
+settlers. Gradually, for the sake of their temporal interests, they
+conformed outwardly to the religion of their conquerors, and so passed
+from the subject to the ruling order. At first, this was a mere
+outward conformity for worldly ends; men still hoped that some chance
+of warfare would bring back the rule of Saint Mark. If so, they were
+ready to return to the faith which they still secretly held. But the
+happy revolution never came; new generations sprang up with whom Islam
+was an hereditary creed, and Antivari became a Mussulman city. But it
+never became a Turkish city. The descendants of the once Christian
+inhabitants lived on in their fathers' houses, and worshipped in the
+same temples as their fathers, though they were now turned to the use
+of another faith. Each church had a minaret added, and it became a
+mosque. In most cases of Mahometan conquest, the conquerors took the
+head church of the city as a trophy of their own faith, but left the
+subject Christians in possession of one or more of the lesser
+churches. So, in this same region, it was at Durazzo; so it was at
+Trebinje; in both there was a church, or more than one, within the
+walls. Here at Antivari, as the inhabitants gradually embraced Islam,
+all the churches became mosques; and thus, for the very reason that
+there was less of violent disturbance than in most cases of Turkish
+conquest, Antivari, while never becoming Turkish, became more strictly
+Mussulman than most cities under Turkish rule. The churches, or rather
+their ruins, still stand, examples of the usual churches of the
+country, none of them remarkable for size or antiquity or
+architectural splendour; but still essentially churches, with their
+fabrics untouched, save only the inevitable addition of the minaret.
+Some of them even keep memorials of their earlier use of which one
+would have expected Mussulman zeal to wipe out every trace as
+monuments of idolatry. Intruding Turks or Saracens would doubtless
+have done so; but the Mahometan descendants of the Christian citizens
+of Antivari still felt a tenderness for the works of their
+forefathers. Even pictures of Christian subjects have been spared. In
+one case especially, in a church which does not seem ever to have been
+a mosque, but, as having perhaps been a private chapel, to have formed
+part of a private house, among other kindred pictures, the baptism of
+our Lord in Jordan is still almost as clear as when the painter first
+traced it on the wall. Old ancestral memories, perhaps the vague
+feeling that after all a day of change might come--the feeling which
+led Bosnian beys, while holding their Christian countrymen in bondage,
+to keep Christian patents of nobility and even concealed objects of
+Christian worship--were clearly stronger in Antivari than any strict
+regard to the Mussulman law.
+
+And as it was with the churches, so it was with the houses. Antivari
+never became, like Trebinje, a tumble-down Eastern town, nor, like
+Butrinto, a collection of beggarly huts, not fit to be called a town
+at all. It was a small, but well-built city, after the pattern of the
+other cities on the eastern coast of the Hadriatic. There was clearly
+no moment of general havoc; the Mussulman lived on in the house of his
+Christian father. Some of those houses must have been still almost new
+when their owners embraced the faith of their conquerors. At every
+step we see among the shattered houses some pretty scrap, door or
+window, of the style which we commonly call Venetian; we see some too
+which belong to the confirmed _Renaissance_, and which can hardly be
+older than the sixteenth century. One stately building indeed seems to
+have perished. An old print of Antivari, in a book called _Viaggio da
+Venetia a Costantinopoli_, a book without date but which has an air of
+the sixteenth century, shows what is plainly meant for a municipal
+palace, after the same general type as the bigger one at Venice and
+the more beautiful one at Ragusa. It has arcades below and windows
+above. Still as we tread, even in their state of ruin, the streets,
+the little _piazze_, of what once was Antivari, we see that the city
+perched on its Albanian height must have been no unworthy fellow of
+its neighbours on the Dalmatian shore.
+
+It is sad that the enlargement of Europe and of Christendom, the
+winning back of their ancient coast by the valiant warriors of the
+Black Mountain, should have been bought only at such a price as the
+destruction of this interesting and really beautiful little city. The
+loss, it may be feared, cannot be repaired. A gently working hand
+might possibly set up again the ruined houses and churches nearly as
+they once were. Or it might at first sight seem a more obvious work to
+forsake the ruined hill-town, and to build another by the haven, a new
+Montenegrin Cattaro, to make up as far as may be for the city by the
+_Bocche_ so cruelly torn away from its free brethren. But either
+scheme seems to be forbidden by the growing unhealthiness of the spot.
+The place has been for some while getting more and more
+fever-stricken, and the disease has now--seemingly since the
+siege--spread upwards to the hill-town itself. It is for medical
+knowledge to judge whether, as is said to be the case in some parts
+of the Roman _Campagna_, sudden colonization, the settlement of a
+large number of new inhabitants at once, could do anything to check
+the evil. Failing this chance, it would seem as if Antivari was doomed
+utterly to perish. A new Montenegrin town and haven may arise, but not
+on the site of the ancient town and haven of the eastern Bari.
+
+On whom rests the blame? Surely not on the conquerors, whose warfare
+was waged in the noblest cause for which man can fight, for their
+faith, their freedom, their national life, the extension of freedom
+and national life to their brethren under the yoke. Nor can we say
+that it rests with the men who fought against them, who, from their
+own side, were fighting for faith and freedom and national life fully
+as much. It rather rests with the dangerous neighbour of both, whose
+very existence is founded on the trampling down of freedom and
+national life among all its neighbours. It rests with the power which
+takes care to strike no blows itself, but which knows how to suck no
+small advantage from the blows which are struck by others on either
+side. The ruin of Antivari is in truth the work, though the indirect
+work, of the power hard by, the power which was not ashamed to stretch
+forth its hand for such a spoil as Spizza, the hard-won earnings of
+its poor neighbour. The guilt of ruined Antivari rests with those who
+drove its conquerors to conquest in the wrong place by hindering them
+from peaceful advance in the right place. It rests with those who
+stirred up its defenders to a hopeless resistance by promises which
+never were fulfilled. When we see how in 1878 Montenegro was allowed
+to keep possession of ruined and almost worthless Antivari, but was
+forced to give up its other comparatively flourishing conquests of
+Spizza and Dulcigno, we better understand how the rule of doing as one
+would be done by is looked on in the council-chamber of an Apostolic
+King. And we see too, with some comfort, how England, as one of her
+first national acts when England found herself once more under English
+leadership, knew how to step in, with vigour and with patience, to
+undo at least one part of the wrong which had been done.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+     LONDON:
+     PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
+     STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sketches from the Subject and
+Neighbour Lands of Venice, by Edward A. Freeman
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 40394 ***