Chapter V (4)

Why the first breath of far-distant summer should thus affect the oak and fig, yet leave the elm and apple as with us, the botanists must tell; few advances have been made in vegetation since we left Naples, that is certain; the hedges were as forward near Pozzuoli two full months ago. And here are no China oranges to be bought; no, nor a cherry or strawberry to be seen, while every man of fashion’s table in London is covered with them; and all the shops of Covent-garden and St. James’s-street hang out their luxurious temptations of fruit, to prove the proximity of summer, and the advantages of industrious cultivation. Our eating pleased me more at every town than this; where however a man might live very well I believe for sixpence a-day, and lodge for twenty pounds a-year; and whoever has no attachment to religion, friends, or country, no prejudices to plague his neighbours with, and no dislike to take the world as it goes, for six or seven years of his life, may spend them profitably at Rome, if either his business or his pleasure be made out of the works of art; as an income of two, or indeed one hundred pounds _per annum_, will purchase a man more refined delights of that kind here, than as many thousands in England: nor need he want society at the first houses, palaces one ought to call them, as Italians measure no man’s merit by the weight of his purse; they know how to reverence even poverty, and soften all its sorrows with an appearance of respect, when they find it unfortunately connected with noble birth. His own country folk’s neglect, as they pass through, would indeed be likely enough to disturb his felicity, and lessen the kindness of his Roman friends, who having no idea of a person’s being shunned for _any_ other _possible reason_ except the want of a pedigree, would conclude that _his_ must be essentially deficient, and lament their having laid out so many caresses on an impostor.

The air of this city is unwholesome to foreigners, but if they pass the first year, the remainder goes well enough; many English seem very healthy, who are established here without even the smallest intention of returning home to Great Britain, for which place we are setting out to-morrow, 19th April 1786, and quit a town that still retains so many just pretences to be styled the first among the cities of the earth; to which almost as many strangers are now attracted by curiosity, as were dragged thither by violence in the first stage of its dominion, impelled by superstitious zeal in the second. The rage for antiquities now seems to have spread its contagion of connoisseurship over all those people whose predecessors tore down, levelled, and destroyed, or buried under ground their statues, pictures, every work of art; Poles, Russians, Swedes, and Germans innumerable, flock daily hither in this age, to admire with rapture the remains of those very fabrics which their own barbarous ancestors pulled down ten centuries ago; and give for the head of a _Livia_, a _Probus_, or _Gallienus_, what emperors and queens could not then use with any efficacy, for the preservation of their own persons, now grown sacred by rust, and valuable from their difficulty to be decyphered. The English were wont to be the only travellers of Europe, the only dupes too in this way; but desire of distinction is diffused among all the northern nations, and our Romans here have it more in their power, with that prudence to assist them which it is said they do not want, if not to _conquer_ their neighbours once again, at least to _ruin_ them, by dint of digging up their dead heroes, and calling in the assistance of their old Pagan deities, _now_ useful to them in a _new_ manner, and ever propitious to this city, although

Enlighten’d Europe with disdain
Beholds the reverenc’d heathen train,
Nor names them more in this her clearer day,
Unless with fabled force to aid the poet’s lay.

R. MERRY.

FROM ROME TO ANCONA.

In our road hither we passed through what remains of Veia, once so esteemed and liked by the Romans, that they had a good mind, after they had driven Brennus back, to change the seat of empire and remove it there; but a belief in augury prevented it, and that event was put off till Constantine, seduced by beauties of situation, made the fatal change, and broke the last thread which had so long bound tight together the fasces of Roman sway. We did not taste the _Vinum Veientanum_ mentioned by Martial and Horace, but trotted on to Civita Castellana, where Camillus rejected the base offer of the schoolmaster of Fescennium; a good picture of his well-judged punishment is still preserved in the Capitol.

The first night of our journey was spent at Otricoli, where I heard the cuckoo sing in a shriller sharper note than he does in England. I had never listened to him before since I left my own country, and his song alone would have convinced me I was no longer in it. Porta di Fuga at Spoleta gates, commemorating poor Hannibal’s precipitate retreat after the battle of Thrasymene, may perhaps detain us a while upon this Flaminian way; it was not Titus Flaminius though, whose negotiations ruined Hannibal for ever, that gave name to the road, but Caius of the same family; they had been Flamens formerly, and were therefore called Flaminius, when drawn up by accident or merit into notice; the same custom still obtains with us: we have _Dr. Priestley_ and _Mr. Parsons_.

Narni Bridge cost us some trouble in clambering, and more in disputing whether it was originally an aqueduct or a bridge--or both. It is a magnificent structure, irregularly built, the arches of majestic height, but all unequal. There was water enough under it when I was there to take off the impropriety apparent to many of turning so large an arch over so small a stream. Yet notwithstanding that the river was much swelled by long continuance of the violent rains which lately so overflowed the city of Rome, assisted by the Tyber, that people went about the streets in boats, notwithstanding the snows tumbled down from the surrounding mountains, must have much increased the quantity, and lowered the colour of the river:--We found it even _now_ yellow with brimstone, and well deserving the epithet of _sulphureous Nar_.

The next day’s drive carried us forward to Terni, where a severe concussion of the earth suffered only three nights since, kept all the little town in terrible alarm; the houses were deserted, the churches crowded, supplications and processions in every street, and people singing all night to the Virgin under our window.

Well! the next morning we hired horses for our gentlemen; a little cart, not inconvenient at all, for my maid and me; and scrambled over many rocks to view the far-famed waterfall, through a sweet country, pleasingly intersected with hedges and planted with vines; the ground finely undulated, and rising by gradations of hill till the eye loses itself among the lofty Appenines; surly as they seem, and one would think impervious; but against human art and human ambition, the boundary of rocks and roaring seas lift their proud heads in vain. Man renders them subservient to his imperial will, and forces them to facilitate, not impede his dominion; while ocean’s self supports his ships, and the mountain yields marble to decorate his palace.

This is however no moment and no place to begin a panegyric upon the power of man, and of his skill to subjugate the works of nature, where the people are trembling at its past, and dreading its future effects.

The cascade we came to see is formed by the fall of a whole river, which here abruptly drops into the Nar, from a height so prodigious, and by a course so unbroken, that it is difficult to communicate, so as to receive the idea: for no eye can measure the depth of the precipice, such is the tossing up of foam from its bottom; and the terrible noise heard long before one arrives so stunned and confounded all my wits at once, that many minutes passed before I observed the horror in our conductors, who coming with us, then first perceived how the late earthquake had twisted the torrent out of its proper channel, and thrown it down another neighbouring rock, leaving the original bed black and deserted, as a dismal proof of the concussion’s force.

One of our English friends who had visited Schaffhausen, made no difficulty to prefer this wonderful cascade to the fall of the Rhine at that place; and what with the fissures made in the ground by recent earthquakes, the sight of propt-up cottages which fright the fancy more than those already fallen, and the roar of dashing waters driven from their destined currents by what the people here emphatically term palpitations of the earth; one feels a thousand sensations of sublimity unexcited by less accidents, and soon obliterated by real danger.

Why the inhabitants will have this tumbling river be _Topino_, I know not; but no suggestions of mine could make them name it Velino, as our travellers uniformly call it: for, say they, _quello è il nome del sorgente_[21]; and in fact Virgil’s line,

Sulfureâ Nar, albus acqua fontesque Velini,

says no more.

The mountains after Terni grow steep and difficult; no one who wishes to see the Appenines in perfection must miss this road, yet are they not comparable to the Alps at best, which being more lofty, more craggy, and almost universally terminating in points of granite devoid of horizontal strata, give one a more majestic idea of their original and duration. Spoleto is on the top of one of them, and Porta della Fuga meets one at its gates. Here as our coach broke (and who can wonder?) we have time to talk over old stories, and _look for streams immortaliz’d in song_: for being tied together only with ropes, we cannot hurry through a country most delightful of all others to be detained in.

The little temple to the river god Clitumnus afforded matter of discussion amongst our party, whether this was, or was not the very one mentioned by Pliny: _Adjacet templum priscum et religiosum. Stat Clitumnus ipse amictus ornatusque_[22].

Mr. Greatheed was angry with me for admiring spiral columns, as he said pillars were always meant to support something, and spiral lines betrayed weakness. Mr. Chappelow quoted every classic author that had ever mentioned the white cattle; and I said that so far as they were whiter than other beasts of the same kind, so far were they worse; for that whiteness in the works of nature shewed feebleness still more than spirals in the works of art perhaps. So chatting on--but on no Flaminian way, we arrived at Foligno; where the people told us that it was the quality of those waters to turn the clothing of many animals white, and accordingly all the fowls looked like those of _Darking_. I had however no taste of their beauty, recollecting that when I kept poultry, some accident poisoned me a very beautiful black hen, the breed of Lord Mansfield at Caen Wood: she recovered her illness; but at the next moulting season, her feathers came as white as the swans. “Let us look,” says Mr. Sh----, “if all the women here have got grey hair.”

Tolentino and Macerata we will not speak about, while Loretto courts description, and the richest treasures of Europe stand in the most delicious district of it. The number of beggars offended me, because I hold it next to impossibility that they should want in a country so luxuriantly abundant; and their prostrations as they kneel and kiss the ground before you, are more calculated to produce disgust from British travellers, than compassion. Nor can I think these vagabonds distressed in earnest at _this_ time above all others; when their sovereign provides them with employment on the beautiful new road he is making, and insists on their being well paid, who are found willing to work. But the town itself of Loretto claims my attention; so clear are its streets, so numerous and cheerful and industrious are its inhabitants: one would think they had resolved to rob passengers of the trite remark which the sight of dead wealth always inspires, _that the money might be better bestowed upon the living poor_. For here are very few poor families, and fewer idlers than one expects to see in a place where not business but devotion is the leading characteristic. So quiet too and inoffensive are the folks here, that scarcely any robberies or murders, or any but very petty infringements of the law, are ever committed among them. Yet people grieve to see that wealth collected, which once diffused would certainly make many happy; and those treasures lying dead, which well dispersed might keep thousands alive. This observation, not always made perhaps by those who feel it most, or that would soonest give their share of it away, if once possessed, is now, from being so often repeated, become neither _bright_ nor _new_. We will not however be petulantly hasty to censure those who first began the lamentation, remembering that our blessed Saviour’s earliest disciples, and those most immediately about him too, could not forbear grudging to see precious ointment poured upon his feet, whom they themselves confessed to be the Son of God. We should likewise recollect his mild but grave reproof of those men who gave so decided a preference to the poor over his sacred person, so soon to be sacrificed _for them_, and his testimony to the woman’s earnest love and zeal expressed by giving him the finest thing she had. Such acceptance as she met with, I suppose prompted the hopes of many who have been distinguished by their rich presents to Loretto; and let not those at least mock or molest them, who have been doing nothing better with their money. Upon examination of the jewels it is curious to observe that the intrinsic value of the presents is manifestly greater, the more ancient they are; but taste succeeds to solidity in every thing, and proofs of that position may be found every step one treads. The vestments, all embroidered over with picked pearl, are quite beyond my powers of estimation. The gold baby given at the birth of Louis Quatorze, of size and weight equal to the real infant, has had its value often computed; I forget the sum though. A rock of emeralds in their native bed presented by the Queen of Portugal, though of Occidental growth, is surely inestimable; and our sanguinary Mary’s heart of rubies is highly esteemed. I asked if Charles the Ninth of France had sent any thing; for I thought _their_ presents should have been placed together: far, far even from the wooden image of _her_ who was a model of meekness, and carried in her spotless bosom the Prince of Peace. Many very exquisite pieces of art too have found their way into the Virgin’s cabinet; the pearl however is the striking rarity, as it exhibits in the manner of a blot on marble, the figure of our blessed Saviour sitting on a cloud clasped in his mother’s arms. Princess Borghese sent an elegantly-set diamond necklace no longer ago than last Christmas-day; it is valued at a thousand pounds sterling English: but the riches of that family appear to me inexhaustible. Whoever sees it will say, she might have spent the money better; but let them reflect that one may say that of _all_ expence almost; and it is not from the state of Loretto these treasures are taken at last: they _bring_ money there; and if any person has a right to complain, it must be the subjects of distant princes, who yet would scarcely have divided among _them_ the sapphires, &c. they have sent in presents to Loretto.

It was curious to see the devotees drag themselves round the holy house upon their knees; but the Santa Scala at Rome had shewn me the same operation performed with more difficulty; and a written injunction at bottom, less agreeable for Italians to comply with, than any possible prostration; viz. That no one should spit as he went up or down, except in his pocket-handkerchief. The lamps which burn night and day before the black image here at Loretto are of solid gold, and there is such a crowd of them I scarcely could see the figure for my own part; and that one may see still less, the attendant canons throw a veil over one’s face going in.

The confessionals, where all may be heard in their own language, is not peculiar to this church; I met with it somewhere else, but have forgotten where, though I much esteemed the establishment. It is very entertaining here too, to see inscriptions in twelve different tongues, giving an account of the miraculous removal and arrival here of the _Santa Casa_: I was delighted with the Welch one; and our conductor said there came not unfrequently pilgrims from the vale of Llwydd, who in their turns told the wonders of their _holy well_. In Latin then, and Greek, and Hebrew, Syriac, Phœnician, Arabic, French, Spanish, German, Welch, and Tuscan, may you read a story, once believed of equal credit, and more revered I fear, than even the sacred words of God speaking by the scriptures; but which is now certainly upon the wane. I told a learned ecclesiastic at Rome, that we should return home by the way of Loretto:--“There is no need,” said he, “to caution a native of your island against credulity; but pray do not believe that we are ourselves satisfied with the tale you will read there; no man of learning but knows, that Adrian destroyed every trace and vestige of Christianity that he could find in the East; and he was acute, and diligent, and powerful. The empress Helena long after him, with piety that equalled even his profaneness, could never hear of this holy house; how then should it have waited till so many long years after Jesus Christ? Truth is, Pope Boniface the VIIIth, who canonized St. Louis, who instituted the jubilee, who quarrelled with Philippe le Bel about a new crusade, and who at last fretted himself to death, though he had conquered all his enemies, because he feared some loss of power to the church;--desired to give mankind a new object of attention, and encouraged an old visionary, in the year 1296, to propagate the tale he half-believed himself; how the blessed Virgin had appeared to him, and related the story you will read upon the walls, which was then first committed to paper. In consequence of this intelligence, Boniface sent men into the East that he could best depend upon, and they brought back just such particulars as would best please the Pope; and in those days you can scarce think how quick the blaze of superstition caught and communicated itself: no one wished to deny what his neighbour was willing to believe, and what he himself would then have gained no credit by contradicting. Positive evidence of what the house really was, or whence it came, it was in a few years impossible to obtain; nor did Boniface the VIIIth know it himself I suppose, much less the old visionary who first set the matter a-going. Meantime the house itself has _no foundation_, whatever the story may have; it is a very singular house as you may see; it has been venerated by the best and wisest among Christians now for five hundred years: even the Turks (who have the same method of honouring their Prophet with gifts, as we do the Virgin Mary) respect the very name of Loretto:--why then should the place be to any order of thinking beings a just object of insult or mockery?”--Here he ended his discourse, the recollection of which never left me whilst we remained at the place.

What Dr. Moore says of the singing chaplains with _soprano_ voices, who say mass at the altars of Loretto, is true enough, and may perhaps have been originally borrowed from the Pagan celebration of the rites of Cybele. When Christianity was young, and weak, and tender, and unsupported by erudition, dreadful mistakes and errors easily crept in: the heathen converts hearing much of _Mater Dei_, confounded her idea with that of their _Mater Deorum_; and we were shewn, among the rarities of Rome, a _bronze Madonna_, with a tower on her head, exactly as Cybele is represented.

That the jewels are taken out of this treasury and replaced with false stones, is a speech always said over fine things by the vulgar: I have heard the same thing affirmed of the diamonds at St. Denis; and can recollect the common people saying, when our King of England was crowned, that all the real precious stones were locked up, or sold for state expences; while the jewels shewn to _them_ were only calculated to dazzle for the day. As there is always infinite falsehood in the world, so there is always wonderful care, however ill applied, to avoid being duped; a terror which hangs heavily over weak minds in particular, and frights them as far from truth on the one side, as credulity tempts them away from it on the other.

But we must visit the apothecary’s pots, painted by Raphael, and leave Loretto, to proceed along the side of this lovely sea, hearing the pilgrims sing most sweetly as they go along in troops towards the town, with now and then a female voice peculiarly distinguished from the rest: by this means a new image is presented to one’s mind; the sight of such figures too half alarm the fancy, and give an air of distance from England, which nothing has hitherto inspired half so strongly. This charming Adriatic gulph beside, though more than delicious to drive by, does not, like the Mediterranean, convey homeish or familiar ideas; one feels that it belongs exclusively to Venice; one knows that ancient Greece is on the opposite shore, and that with a quick sail one should soon see Macedonia; and descending but a little to the southward, visit Athens, Corinth, Sparta, Thebes--seats of philosophy, freedom, virtue; whence models of excellence and patterns of perfection have been drawn for twenty succeeding centuries!

Here are plenty of nightingales, but they do not sing as well as in Hertfordshire: birds gain in colour as you approach the tropic, but they lose in song; under the torrid zone I have heard they never sing at all; with us in England the latest leave off by midsummer, when the work of incubation goes forward, and the parental duties begin: the nightingale too chuses the coolest hour; and though I have yet heard her in Italy only early in the mornings, Virgil knew she sung in the night:

Flet noctem, &c.[23]

To hear birds it is however indispensably necessary that there should be high trees; and except in these parts of Italy, and those about Genoa and Sienna, no timber of any good growth can I find. The _roccolo_ too, and other methods taken to catch small birds, which many delight in eating, and more in taking, lessen the quantity of natural music vexatiously enough; while gaudy insects ill supply their place, and sharpen their stings at pleasure when deprived of their greatest enemies. We are here less tormented than usual however, while the prospects are varied so that every look produces a new and beautiful landscape.

Ancona is a town perfectly agreeable to strangers, from the good humour with which every nation is received, and every religion patiently endured: something of all this the scholars say may be found in the derivation of its name, which being Greek I have nothing to do with. Pliny tells us its original, and says;

A Siculis condita est colonia Ancona[24].

That Dalmatia should be opposite, yet to us at present inaccessible, we all regret; I drank sea water however, so did not leave untasted the waves which Lucan speaks of:

Illic Dalmaticis obnoxia fluctibus Ancon[25].

The fine turbots did not any of them fall to our share; but here are good fish, and, to say true, every thing eatable as much in perfection as possible: I could never since I arrived at Turin find real cause of complaint--_serious_ complaint I mean except at that savage-looking place called Radicofani; and some other petty town in Tuscany, near Sienna, where I eat too many eggs and grapes, because there was nothing else.

Nice accommodations must not be looked for, and need not be regretted, where so much amusement during the day gives one good disposition to sleep sound at night: the worst is, men and women, servants and masters, must often mess together; but if one frets about such things, it is better stay at home. The Italians like travelling in England no better than the English do travelling in Italy; whilst an exorbitant expence is incurred by the journey, not well repaid to them by the waiters white chitterlins, tambour waistcoats, and independent “_No, Sir_,” echoed round a well-furnished inn or tavern; which puts them but in the place of Socrates at the fair, who cried out--“_How many things have these people gathered together that I do not want!_”--A noble Florentine complained exceedingly to me once of the English hotels, where he was made to help pay for those good gold watches the fellows who attended him drew from their pockets; so he set up his quarters comically enough at the waggoners full Moon upon the old bridge at Bath, to be quit of the _schiavitù_, as he called it, of living like a gentleman, “where,” says he, “I am not known to be one.” The truth is, a continental nobleman can have little heart of a country, where, to be treated as a man of fashion, he must absolutely behave as such: his rank is ascertained at _home_, and people’s deportment to him regulated by long-established customs; nor can it be supposed flattering to its prejudices, to feel himself jostled in the street, or driven against upon the road by a rich trader, while he is contriving the cheapest method of going to look over his manufactory. Wealth diffused makes all men comfortable, and leaves no man splendid; gives every body two dishes, but nobody two hundred. Objects of show are therefore unfrequent in England, and a foreigner who travels through our country in search of positive sights, will, after much money spent, go home but poorly entertained:--“There is neither _quaresima_,” will he say, “nor _carnovale_ in _any_ sense of the word, among those insipid islanders.”--For he who does not love our government, and taste our manners which result from it, can never be delighted in England; while the inhabitants of our nation may always be amused in theirs, without any esteem of it at all.

I know not how Ancona produced all these tedious reflexions: it is a trading place, and a sea-port town. Men working in chains upon the new mole did not please me though, and their insensibility shocks one:--“Give a poor thief something, master,” says one impudent fellow;--“_Son stato ladro padrone_[26];”--with a grin. That such people should be corrupt or coarse however is no wonder; what surprised me most was, that when one of our company spoke of his conduct to a man of the town--“Why, what would you have, Sir?”--replies the person applied to--“when the poor creature is _castigato_, it is enough sure, no need to make him be melancholy too:”--and added with true Italian good-nature,--“_Siamo tutti peccatori_[27].”

The mole is a prodigious work indeed; a warm friend to Venice can scarce wish its speedy conclusion, as the useful and necessary parts of the project are already nearly accomplished, and it would be pity to seduce more commerce away from Venice, which has already lost so much.

The triumphal arch of Trajan, described by every traveller, and justly admired by all; white as his virtue, shining as his character, and durable as his fame; fixed our eyes a long time in admiration, and made us, while we examined the beautiful structure, recollect his incomparable qualities to whom it was dedicated,--“_Inter Cæsares optimus_[28],”--says one of their old writers: nor could either column or arch be so sure a proof that he was thought so, as the wish breathed at the inauguration of succeeding emperors; _Sis tu felicior Augusto, melior Trajano_[29].

If these Ancona men were not proud of themselves, one should hate them; descended as they are from those Syracusans liberated by Timoleon, who freed them first from the tyranny of Dionysius; fostered afterwards by Trajan, as peculiarly worth _his_ notice; and patronised in succeeding times by the good Corsini Pope, Clement XII., whose care for them appears by the useful _lazaretto_ he built, “to save,” said he, “our best subjects, our subjects of Ancona.”

But we are hastening forward as fast as our broken carriage will permit, to Padua, where we shall leave it: thither to arrive, we pass through Senegallia, built by the Gauls, and still retaining the Gaulish name, but now little remarkable. What struck me most was my own crossing the _Rubicon_ in my way back to England, and our comfortable return to

BOLOGNA,

After admiring the high forehead and innocent simper of Baroccio’s beauties at Pesaro, where the best European silk now comes from; against which the produce of Rimini vainly endeavours to vie. That town was once an Umbrian colony I think, and there is a fine memorial there where _Diocletianus reposuit_, resolving perhaps to end where Julius Cæsar had begun; he died at Salo however in Dalmatia,

Quâ maris Adriaci longas ferit unda Salones.

Ravenna l’Antica tired more than it pleased us; _Fano_ is a populous pretty little town; but I know no reason why it was originally dedicated to Fortune. Truth is, we are weary of these sacred _fanes_, and long to see once more our amiable friends at Venice and at Milan.

I have missed San Marino at last, but receive kind assurances every day that the loss is small; being now little more than a convent seated on a hill, which affords refuge for robbers; and that the present Pope meditates its destruction as a nuisance to the neighbouring towns. There never was any coin struck there it seems; I thought there had: but the train of reflections excited by even a distant view of it are curious enough as opposed to its protectress Rome; which, founded by robbers and banditti, ends in being the seat of sanctity and priestly government; while San Marino, begun by a hermit, and secluded from all other states for the mere purposes of purer devotion, finishes by its necessary removal as a repository for assassins, and a refuge for those who break the laws with violence.

Such is this variable and capricious world! and so dies away my desire to examine this political curiosity; the extinction of which I am half sorry for. Privation is still a melancholy idea, and were one to hear that the race of wasps were extirpated, it would grieve one.

Bologna affords one time for every meditation. No inn upon the Bath road is more elegant than the Pellegrino; and we regretted our broken equipage the less as it drew us slowly through so sweet a country. The medlar blossoms adorn the hedges with their blanche roses; the hawthorn bushes, later here than with us, perfume them; and the roads, little travelled, do not torment one with the dust as in England, where it not only offends the traveller, but takes away some beauty from the country, by giving a brown or whitish look to the shrubs and trees. We shall repose here very comfortably, or at least change our mode of being busy, which refreshes one perhaps more than positive idleness. “But life,” says some writer, “is a continual fever;” and sure ours has been completely so for these two years. A charming lady of our country, for whom I have the highest esteem, protests she shall be happy to get back to London if it is only for the relief of sitting still, and resolving to see no more sights: exchanging fasto, fiera, and frittura, for a muffin, a mop, and a morning newspaper: three things equally unknown in Italy, as the other three among us.

With regard to pictures however, _l’Appetit vient en mangeant_[30], as I experienced completely when traversing the Zampieri palace with eagerness that increased at every step. I once more half-worshipped the works of divine Guercino. Nothing shall prevent my going to his birth-place at Cento, whether in our way or out of it.

We ran about the Specola again, and received a thousand polite attentions from the gentleman who shewed it. The piece of native gold here is much finer than that we saw among the treasures of Loretto, which being _du nouveau continent_ is always inferior. “But every thing does,” as Mons. de Buffon observes, “degenerate in the West except birds;” and the Brazilian plumage seems to surpass all possibility of further glow. The continent however shews us no specimens preserved half as well as those of Sir Ashton Lever. The marine rarities here at Bologna are very capital; but I saw them to advantage now, in company of Mr. Chappelow. We find this city at once hot, and loud, and pious; less empty of occupation though than last time; for here is a new Gonfaloniere chosen in to-day, and the drums beat, and the trumpets sound, and some donations are distributed about, much in the proportions Tom Davis describes Garrick’s to have been; small pieces of money, and large pieces of cake, with quantities of meat, bread, and birds, borne about the town in procession, to make display of _his_ bounty, who gives all this away at the time he is elected into office. Kids dressed with ribbon therefore, alive and carried on men’s shoulders showily adorned, lambs washed white as snow, and pretty red and white calves hanging their simple faces out of fine gilt baskets, paraded the streets all day. What struck us most however was an ox, handsomer and of a more silvery coat than I thought an ox’s hide capable of being brought to; his horns gold, and a garland of roses between them. This was beautiful; reminded one of all one had ever read and heard of victims going to sacrifice; and put in our heads again the old stories of Hercules, Eurystheus, &c.

At Bologna though, every thing puts people in mind of their _prayers_; so a few good women nothing doubting but when shows were going forward, religious meanings must be near at hand, dropt down on their knees in the street, and recommended themselves, or their dead friends perhaps, to heaven, with fervent and innocent earnestness, while the cattle passed along. An English clergyman in our company, hurt and grieved, yet half-disposed to laugh, cried, _What are these dear creatures muttering about now for, as if their salvation depended upon it?_--It was absurd enough to be sure; but in order to check our tittering disposition, I recollected to him, that I had once heard an ignorant woman in Hertfordshire repeat the absolution herself after the priest, with equally ill-placed fervour: for which he reprimanded her, and afterwards explained to her the grossness of the impropriety. When we have added to our stock of connoisseurship the graceful Sampson, drinking after his victory, by Guido, in this town, we shall quit it, and proceed through empty and deserted Ferrara to

PADUA.

We set out then for Ferrara, in our kind friend’s post-chaise; that is, my maid and I did: our good-natured gentlemen creeping slowly after in the broken coach; and how ended this project for insuring safety? Why in the chaise losing its hind wheel, and in our return to the carriage we had quitted. But it is for ever so, I think;--the sick folks live always, and the well ones die.

We took turn therefore and left our friends; but could not forbear a visit to Cento, where I wished much to see what Guercino had done for the ornament of his native place, and was amply repaid my pains by the sight of one picture, which, for its immediate power over the mind, at least over mine, has no equal even in Palazzo Zampieri. It is a scene highly touching. The appearance of our Saviour to his Mother after his resurrection. The dignity, the divinity of the Christ! the terror-checked transport visible in the parent Saint, whose expressive countenance and pathetic attitude display fervent adoration, maternal tenderness, and meek humility at once! How often have I said, _this_ is the finest picture we have seen yet! when looking on the Caraccis and their school. I will say no more, the painter’s art can go no further than _this_. My partial preference of Guercino to any thing and to every thing, shall not however bribe me to suppress my grief and indignation at his strange method of commemorating his own name over the altar where he was baptised, which shocks every protestant traveller by its profaneness, while the Romanists admire his invention, and applaud his piety. Guercino then, so called because he was the _little one-eyed man_, had a fancy to represent his _real_ appellation of _John Francis Barbieri_ in the church; and took this mode as an ingenious one, painting St. John upon the right hand, St. Francis on the left, as two large full-length figures, and God the Father in the middle with a _long beard_ for _Barbieri_.

This is a mixture of Abel Drugger’s contrivance in the Alchymist, and the infantine folly of three babies I once knew in England, children of a nobleman, who were severely whipt by their governess for playing at Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, sitting upon three chairs, with solemn countenances, in order to impress their tender fancies with a representation of what the good governess innocently and laudably had told them about the mysterious and incomprehensible Trinity. Let me add, that the eldest of these babies was not six years old, and the youngest but four, when they were caught in the blasphemous folly. Our Italians seem to be got very little further at forty.

Padua appears cleaner and prettier than it did last year; but so many things contribute to make me love it better, that it is no wonder one is prejudiced in its favour. It was _so_ difficult to get safe hither, the roads being very bad, the people were so kind when we were here last, and the very inn-keeper and his assistants seemed so obligingly rejoiced to see us again, that I felt my heart quite expand at entering the Aquila d’oro, where we were soon rejoined by Mr. and Mrs. Greatheed, with whom we had parted in the Romagna, when they took the Perugia road, instead of returning by Bologna, a place they had seen before. Had we come three days sooner we might have seen the transit of Mercury from Abate Toaldo’s observatory; but our own transit took up all our thoughts, and it is a very great mercy that we are come safe at last. I think it was as much as four bulls and six horses could do to drag us into Rovigo.

Bologna la Grassa
Ma Padua la passa[31],

say the Venetians: and round this town where the heat is indeed prodigious, they get the best vipers for the Venice treacle, I am told. Here are quantities of curious plants to be seen blooming now in the botanical garden, and our kind professor told me I need not languish so for horse chesnuts; for they would all be in flower as we returned up the Brenta from Venice. “They are all in flower _now_, Sir,” said I, “in my own grounds, eight miles from London: but our English oaks are not half so forward as yours are.” He recollected the aphorism so much a favourite with our country folks; how a British heart ought not to dilate with the early sunshine of prosperity, or droop at the first blasts of adverse fortune, as the British oak refuses to put out his leaves at summer’s early felicitations, and scorns to drop them at winter’s first rude shake.

Well! I have once more walked over St. Antony’s church, and examined the bas-reliefs that adorn his shrine; but their effect has ceased. Whoever has spent some time in the Musæum Clementinum is callous to the wonders which sculpture can perform.

Has one not read in Ulloa’s travels, of a resting-place on the side of a Cordillera among the Andes, where the ascending traveller is regularly observed to put on additional clothing, while he who comes down the mountain feels so hot that he throws his clothes away? So it is with the shrine of St. Antonio di Padua, and one’s passion for the sculpture that adorns it: while Santa Giustina’s church regains her power over the mind, a power never missed by simplicity, while great effort has often small effect. But we are hastening to Venice, and shall leave our cares and our coach behind; superfluous as they both are, in a city which admits of neither.

VENICE.

Our watery journey was indeed delightful; friendship, music, poetry combined their charms with those of nature to enchant us, and make one think the passage was too short, though longing to embrace our much-regretted sweet companions. The scent of odoriferous plants, the smoothness of the water, the sweetness of the piano forte, which allured to its banks many of the gay inhabitants, who glad of a change in the variety of their amusements, came down to the shores and danced or sang, as we went by, seized every sense at once, and filled me with unaffected pleasure. I longed to see the weeping willow planted along this elegant stream; but the Venetians like to see nothing weep I fancy: yet the Salix Babylonica would have a fine effect here, and spread to a prodigious growth, like those on which the captive Israelites once hung their harps, on the banks of the river Euphrates. “Of all Europe however,” Millar says, “it prospers best in pensive Britain;”

Nor prov’d the bliss that lulls Italia’s breast,
When red-brow’d evening calmly sinks to rest.

These lines, quoted from Merry’s Paulina, remind me of the pleasure we enjoyed in reading that glorious poem as we floated down the Brenta. I have certainly read no poetry since; that would be like looking at Sansovino’s sculpture, after having seen the Apollo, the Venus, and the Flora Farnese. The view of Venice only made us shut the book. Lovely Venice! wise in her councils, grave and steady in her just authority, splendid in her palaces, gay in her casinos, and charming in all.

Fama tra noi Roma pomposa e santa,
Venezia ricca, saggia, e signorile[32],

says the Italian who celebrates all their towns by adding a well-adapted epithet to each. But Sannazarius, who experienced in return for it more than even British bounty would have bestowed, exalts it in his famous epigram to a decided preference even over Rome itself.

Viderat Adriacis Venetam Neptunus in undis
Stare urbem, et toti ponere jura Mari;
Nunc mihi Tarpeias quantum vis Jupiter, arces
Objice, et illa tui mœnia Martis ait
Sit Pelago Tibrim præfers, urbem aspice utramque
Illam homines dices, hanc posuisse Deos.

And now really, if the subject did not bribe me to admiration of them, I should have much ado to think these six lines better worth fifty pounds a piece, the price Sannazarius was paid for them, than many lines I have read; as mythological allusions are always cheaply obtained, and this can hardly be said to run with any peculiar happiness: for if Mars built the Wall, and Jupiter founded the Capitol, how could Neptune justly challenge this last among all people, to look on both, and say, That men built Rome, but the Gods founded Venice. Had he said, that after all their pains, _this_ was the manner in which those two cities would in future times strike all impartial observers, it would have been _enough_; and it would have been _true_, and when fiction has done its best,

Le vray seul est aimable[33].

Here, however, is the best translation or imitation I can make, of the best praise ever given to this justly celebrated city. Baron Cronthal, the learned librarian of Brera, gave me, when at Milan, the epigram, and persuaded me to try at a translation, but I never could succeed till I had been upon the grand canal.

When Neptune first with pleasure and surprise,
Proud from her subject sea saw Venice rise;
Let Jove, said he, vaunt his fam’d walls no more,
Tarpeia’s rock, or Tyber’s fane-full shore;
While human hands those glittering fabrics frame,
By touch celestial beauteous Venice came.

It is a sweet place sure enough, and the caged[34] nightingales who, when men are most silent, answer each other across the canals, increase the enchantments of Venetian moonlight; while the full gondolas skimming over the tide with a lanthorn in their stern, like glow-worms of a dark evening, dashing the cool wave too as they glide along, leave no moments unmarked by peculiarity of pleasure. The Doge’s wedding has however been less brilliant this year; his galleys have been sent to fight the Turks and Corsairs, and the splendor at home of course suffers some temporary diminution; but the corso of boats in the evening must be for ever charming, and the musical parties upon the water delightful. We passed this morning in Pinelli’s library, a collection so valuable from the frequence of old editions, particularly the old fourteen hundreds as we call them, that it is supposed they will be purchased by some crowned head; and here are specimens of Aldus’s printing too, very curious; but there are too many curiosities,

I’m strangled with the waste fertility,

as Milton says. Pinelli had an excellent taste for pictures likewise, and here at Venice there are paintings to satisfy, nay satiate connoisseurship herself. Tintoret’s force of colouring at St. Rocque’s, displayed in the crucifixion, can surely be exceeded by no disposition of light and shade; but the Scuola Bolognese has hardened my heart against merit of any other sort, so much more easy to be obtained, than that of character, dignity, and truth. Paul Veronese forgets too seldom his original trade of _orefice_, there is too much gold and silver in his drapery; and though Darius’s ladies are judiciously adorned with a great deal of it here at Palazzo Pisani, I would willingly have abated some brocade, for an addition of expressive majesty in the Alexander. What a striking difference there is too between Guercino’s prodigal returned, and a picture at some Venetian palace of the same story treated by Leandro Bassano! yet who can forbear crying out Nature, nature! when in the last named work one sees the faithful spaniel run out to meet and acknowledge his poor young master though in rags, while the cook admiring the uncommon fatness of the calf, seems to anticipate the pleasure of a jolly day: so if the old father does look a little like pantaloon, why one forgives him, for we are not told that the fable had to do with _nobiltà_, though Guercino has made _his_ master of the house a rich and stately oriental, who meets and consoles, near a column of Grecian architecture, his penitent son, whose half-uncovered form exhibits beauty sunk into decay, and whose graceful expression of shame and sorrow shew the dignity of his original birth, and little expectation of the ill-endured pains his poverty has caused: the elder brother, meantime, glowing with resentment, and turning with apparent scorn away from the sight of a scene so little to the honour of the family. Basta! as the Italians say; when we were at Rome we purchased a fine view of St. Mark’s Place Venice; now we are at Venice we have bought a sketch of Guido’s Aurora. The Doge’s dinner was magnificent, the plate older and I think finer than the Pope’s; I forget on what occasion it was given, I mean the feast, but had it been an annual ceremony our kind friends would have shewn it us last year. We must leave them once more, for a long time I fear, but I part with less regret because the heat grows almost insupportable; and either the stench of the small canals, or else the too great abundance of sardelline, a fresh anchovy with which these seas abound, keep me unwell and in perpetual fear of catching a putrid fever, should I indulge in eating once again of so rich but dangerous a dainty. Besides that one may be tired of exertion, and fatigued with festivity, purchased at the price of sleep and quiet.

Non Hybla non me specifer capit Nilus,
Nec quæ paludes delicata Pomptinus
Ex arce clivi spectat uva Sestini.
Quid concupiscam? quæris ergo,--_dormire_[35].

To PADUA.

Then we returned the twelfth of June, and surely it is too difficult to describe the sweet sensations excited by the enjoyment of

Each rural sight, each rural sound;

as the dear banks of the Brenta first saluted our return to _terra firma_ from the watery residence of our _bella dominante_. We dined at a lovely villa belonging to an amiable friend upon the margin of the river, where the kind embraces of the Padrona di Casa, added to the fragrance of her garden, and the sweet breath of oxen drawing in her team, revived me once more to the enjoyment of cheerful conversation, by restoring my natural health, and proving beyond a possibility of doubt, that my late disorder was of the putrid kind. We dined in a grotto-like room, and partook the evening refreshments, cake, ice, and lemonade, under a tree by the river side, whilst my own feelings reminded me of the sailors delight described in Anson’s voyages when they landed at Juan Fernandez. Night was best disposed of in the barge, and I observed as we entered Padua early in the morning, how surprisingly quick had been the progress of summer; but in these countries vegetation is so rapid, that every thing makes haste to come and more to go. Scarce have you tasted green pease or strawberries, before they are out of season; and if you do _not_ swallow your pleasures, as Madame la Presidente said, you have a chance to miss of getting any pleasures at all. Here is no mediocrity in any thing, no moderate weather, no middle rank of life, no twilight; whatever is not night is day, and whatever is not love is hatred; and that the English should eat peaches in May, and green pease in October, sounds to Italian ears as a miracle; they comfort themselves, however, by saying that they _must_ be very insipid, while _we_ know that fruits forced by strong fire are at least many of them higher in flavour than those produced by sun; the pine-apple particularly, which West Indians confess eats better with us than with them. Figs and cherries, however, defy a hot-house, and grapes raised by art are worth little except for shew; peaches, nectarines, and ananas are the glory of a British gardener, and no country but England can shew such. Our morning, passed at the villa of the senator Quirini, set us on this train of thinking, for every culled excellence adorned it, and brought to my mind Voltaire’s description of Pococuranti in Candide, false only in the ostentation, and _there_ the character fails; misled by a French idea, that pleasure is nothing without the delight of shewing that you are pleased, like the old adage, or often-quoted passage about learning:

Scire tuum nihil est, nisi te scire hoc sciat alter[36].

A Venetian has no such notions; by force of mind and dint of elegance inherent in it, he pleases himself first, and finds every body else delighted of course, nor would quit his own country except for paradise; while an English nobleman clumps his trees, and twists his river, to comply with his neighbour’s taste, when perhaps he has none of his own; feels disgusted with all he has done, and runs away to live in Italy.

The evening of this day was spent at the theatre, where I was glad the audience were no better pleased, for the plaudits of an Italian Platea at an air they like, when one’s nerves are weak and the weather very hot, are all but totally insupportable. What then must these poor actors have suffered, who laboured so violently to entertain us? A tragedy in rhyme upon the subject of Julius Sabinus and his wife Epponina was the representation; and wonderfully indeed did the players struggle, and bounce, and sprunt, like vigorous patients resisting the influence of a disease called opisthotonos, or dry gripes of Jamaica; “Were their jaws once locked we should do better,” said Mr. Chappelow. “Che spacca monti mai!” exclaimed the gentle Padovani. _Spacca monte_ means just our English Drawcansir, a fellow that splits mountains with his bluster, a captain _Blowmedown_.