Pencillings by the Way Part 19

All the world goes to hear "ma.s.s in the Sistine chapel," and all travellers describe it. It occurs infrequently and is performed by the Pope. We were there to-day at ten, crowding at the door with hundreds of foreigners, mostly English, elbowed alternately by priests and ladies, and kept in order by the Swiss guards in their harlequin dresses and long pikes. We were admitted after an hour's pus.h.i.+ng, and the guard retreated to the grated door, through which no woman is permitted to pa.s.s. Their gay bonnets and feathers cl.u.s.tered behind the gilded bars, and we could admire them for once without the qualifying reflection that they were between us and the show. An hour more was occupied in the entrance, one by one, of some forty cardinals with their rustling silk trains supported by boys in purple. They pa.s.sed the gate, their train bearers lifted their ca.s.socks and helped them to kneel, a moment's prayer was mumbled, and they took their seats with the same servile a.s.sistance. Their attendants placed themselves at their feet, and, taking the prayer-books, the only use of which appeared to be to display their jewelled fingers, they looked over them at the faces behind the grating, and waited for his Holiness.

The intervals of this memory, gave us time to study the famous _frescoes_ for which the Sistine chapel is renowned. The subject is the "Last Judgment." The Saviour sits in the midst, p.r.o.nouncing the sentence, the wicked plunging from his presence on the left hand, and the righteous ascending with the a.s.sistance of angels on the right.

The artist had, of course, infinite scope for expression, and the fame of the fresco (which occupies the whole of the wall behind the altar) would seem to argue his success. The light is miserable, however, and incense or lamp-smoke, has obscured the colors, and one looks at it now with little pleasure. As well as I could see, the figure of the Saviour was more that of a tiler throwing down slates from the top of a house in some fear of falling, than the Judge of the world upon his throne. Some of the other parts are better, and one or two naked females figures might once have been beautiful, but one of the succeeding popes ordered them dressed, and they now flaunt at the judgment-seat in colored silks, obscuring both saints and sinners with their finery. There are some redeeming frescoes, also by Michael Angelo, on the ceiling, among them "Adam and Eve," exquisitely done.

The Pope entered by a door at the side of the altar. With him came a host of dignitaries and church servants, and, as he tottered round in front of the altar, to kneel, his cap was taken off and put on, his flowing robes lifted and spread, and he was treated in all respects, as if he were the Deity himself. In fact, the whole service was the wors.h.i.+p, not of G.o.d, but of the Pope. The cardinals came up, one by one, with their heads bowed, and knelt reverently to kiss his hand and the hem of his white satin dress; his throne was higher than the altar, and ten times as gorgeous; the incense was flung toward him, and his motions from one side of the chapel to the other, were attended with more ceremony and devotion than all the rest of the service together. The chanting commenced with his entrance, and this should have been to G.o.d alone, for it was like music from heaven. The choir was composed of priests, who sang from ma.s.sive volumes bound in golden clasps, in a small side gallery. One stood by the book, turning the leaves as the chant proceeded, and keeping the measure, and the others cl.u.s.tered around with their hands clasped, their heads thrown back, and their eyes closed or fixed upon the turning leaves in such grouping and att.i.tude as you see in pictures of angels singing in the clouds. I have heard wonderful music since I have been on the continent, and have received new ideas of the compa.s.s of the human voice, and its capacities for pathos and sweetness. But, after all the wonders of the opera, as it is learned to sing before kings and courts, the chanting of these priests transcended every conception in my mind of music. It was the human voice, cleared of all earthliness, and gus.h.i.+ng through its organs with uncontrollable feeling and nature.

The burden of the various parts returned continually upon one or two simple notes, the deepest and sweetest in the octave for melody, and occasionally a single voice outran the choir in a pa.s.sionate repet.i.tion of the air, which seemed less like musical contrivance, than an abandonment of soul and voice to a preternatural impulse of devotion. One writes nonsense in describing such things, but there is no other way of conveying an idea of them. The subject is beyond the wildest superlatives.

To-day we have again seen the Pope. It was a festa, and the church of San Carlos was the scene of the ceremonies. His Holiness came in the state-coach with six long-tailed black horses, and all his cardinals in their red and gold carriages in his train. The gaudy procession swept up to the steps, and the father of the church was taken upon the shoulders of his bearers in a chair of gold and crimson, and solemnly borne up the aisle, and deposited within the railings of the altar, where homage was done to him by the cardinals as before, and the half-supernatural music of his choir awaited his motions. The church was half filled with soldiers armed to the teeth, and drawn up on either side, and his body-guard of Roman n.o.bles, stood even within the railing of the altar, capped and motionless, conveying, as everything else does, the irresistible impression that it was the wors.h.i.+p of the Pope, not of G.o.d.

Gregory the sixteenth, is a small old man, with a large heavy nose, eyes buried in sluggish wrinkles, and a flushed, apoplectic complexion. He sits, or is borne about with his eyes shut, looking quite asleep, even his limbs hanging lifelessly. The gorgeous and heavy papal costumes only render him more insignificant, and when he is borne about, buried in his deep chair, or lost in the corner of his huge black and gold paG.o.da of a carriage, it is difficult to look at him without a smile. Among his cardinals, however, there are magnificent heads, boldly marked, n.o.ble and scholarlike, and I may say, perhaps, that there is no one of them, who had not nature's mark upon him of superiority. They are a dignified and impressive body of men, and their servile homage to the Pope, seems unnatural and disgusting.

LETTER XLV.

ROME--A MORNING IN THE STUDIO OF THORWALDSEN--COLOSSAL STATUE OF THE SAVIOUR--STATUE OF BYRON--GIBSON'S ROOMS--CUPID AND PSYCHE--HYLAS WITH THE RIVER NYMPHS--PALAZZO SPADA--STATUE OF POMPEY--BORGHESE PALACE--PORTRAIT OF CESAR BORGIA--DOSSI'S PSYCHE--SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE--ROOM DEVOTED TO VENUSES--THE SOCIETY OF ROME, ETC.

I have spent a morning in the studio of _Thorwaldsen_. He is probably the greatest sculptor now living. A colossal statue of Christ, thought by many to be his masterpiece, is the prominent object as you enter.

It is a n.o.ble conception--the mild majesty of a Saviour expressed in a face of the most dignified human beauty. Perhaps his full-length statue of Byron is inferior to some of his other works, but it interested me, and I spent most of my time in looking at it. It was taken from life; and my friend, Mr. Auchmuty, who was with me, and who had seen Byron frequently on board one of our s.h.i.+ps-of-war at Leghorn, thought it the only faithful likeness he had ever seen. The poet is dressed oddly enough, in a morning frock coat, cravat, pantaloons, and shoes; and, unpromising as these materials would seem, the statue is cla.s.sic and elegant to a very high degree. His coat is held by the two centre b.u.t.tons in front (a more exquisite cut never came from the hands of a London tailor), swelled out a little above and below by the fleshy roundness of his figure; his cravat is tied loosely, leaving his throat bare (which, by the way, both in the statue and the original, was very beautifully chiselled); and he sits upon a fragment of a column, with a book in one hand and a pencil in the other. A man reading a pleasant poem among the ruins of Rome, and looking up to reflect upon a fine pa.s.sage before marking it, would a.s.sume the att.i.tude and expression exactly. The face has half a smile upon it, and, differing from the Apollo faces usually drawn for Byron, is finer, and more expressive of his character than any I ever met with.

Thorwaldsen is a Dane, and is beloved by every one for his simplicity and modesty. I did not see him.

We were afterward at _Gibson's_ rooms. This gentleman is an English artist, apparently about thirty, and full of genius. He has taken some portraits which are esteemed admirable; but his princ.i.p.al labor has been thrown upon the most beautiful fables of antiquity. His various groups and bas-reliefs of Cupid and Psyche are worthy of the beauty of the story. His _chef d'oeuvre_, I think, is a group of three figures, representing the boy, "Hylas with the river nymphs." He stands between them with the pitcher in his hand, startled with their touch, and listening to their persuasions. The smaller of the two female figures is an almost matchless conception of loveliness. Gibson went round with us kindly, and I was delighted with his modesty of manner, and the apparently completely poetical character of his mind.

He has a n.o.ble head, a lofty forehead well marked, and a mouth of finely mingled strength and mildness.

We devoted this morning to _palaces_. At the _Palazzo Spada_ we saw the statue of Pompey, at the base of which Cesar fell. Antiquaries dispute its authenticity, but the evidence is quite strong enough for a poetical belief; and if it were not, one's time is not lost, for the statue is a majestic thing, and well worth the long walk necessary to see it. The mutilated arm, and the hole in the wall behind, remind one of the ludicrous fantasy of the French, who carried it to the Forum to enact "Brutus" at its base.

The _Borghese Palace_ is rich in pictures. The portrait of _Cesar Borgia_, by t.i.tian, is one of the most striking. It represents that accomplished villain with rather slight features, and, barring a look of cool determination about his well-formed lips, with rather a prepossessing countenance. One detects in it the capabilities of such a character as his, after the original is mentioned; but otherwise he might pa.s.s for a handsome gallant, of no more dangerous trait than a fiery temper. Just beyond it is a very strong contrast in a figure of _Psyche_, by Dossi, of Ferrara. She is coming on tiptoe, with the lamp, to see her lover. The Cupid asleep is not so well done; but for an image of a real woman, unexaggerated and lovely, I have seen nothing which pleases me better than this Psyche. Opposite it hangs a very celebrated t.i.tian, representing "Sacred and Profane Love." Two female figures are sitting by a well--one quite nude, with her hair about her shoulders, and the other dressed, and coiffed _a la mode_, but looking less modest to my eye than her undraped sister. It is little wonder, however, that a man who could paint his own daughter in the embraces of a satyr (a revolting picture, which I saw in the Barberigo palace at Venice) should fail in drawing the face of Virtue. The coloring of the picture is exquisite, but the design is certainly a failure.

The last room in the palace is devoted to Venuses--all very naked and very bad. There might be forty, I think, and not a limb among them that one's eye would rest upon with the least pleasure for a single moment.

The society of Rome is of course changing continually. At this particular season, strangers from every part of the continent are beginning to arrive, and it promises to be pleasant. I have been at most of the parties during the fortnight that I have been here, but find them thronged with priests, and with only the resident society which is dull. Cards and conversation with people one never saw before, and will certainly never see again, are heavy pastimes. I start for Florence to-morrow, and shall return to Rome for Holy Week, and the spring months.

LETTER XLVI.

ITALIAN AND AMERICAN SKIES--FALLS OF TERNI--THE c.l.i.tUMNUS--THE TEMPLE--EFFECTS OF AN EARTHQUAKE AT FOLIGNO--LAKE THRASIMENE--JOURNEY FROM ROME--FLORENCE--FLORENTINE SCENERY--PRINCE PONIATOWSKI--JEROME BONAPARTE AND FAMILY--WANT OF A MINISTER IN ITALY.

I left Rome by the magnificent "Porta del Popolo," as the flush of a pearly and spotless Italian sunrise deepened over Soracte. They are so splendid without clouds--these skies of Italy! so deep to the eye, so radiantly clear! _Clouds_ make the glory of an American sky. The "Indian summer" sunsets excepted, our sun goes down in New England, with the extravagance of a theatrical scene. The clouds are ma.s.sed and heavy, like piles of gold and fire, and day after day, if you observe them, you are literally astonished with the brilliant phenomena of the west. Here, for seven months, we have had no rain. The sun has risen faultlessly clear, with the same gray, and silver, and rose tints succeeding each other as regularly as the colors in a turning prism, and it has set as constantly in orange, gold, and purple, with scarce the variation of a painter's pallet, from one day to another. It is really most delightful to live under such heavens as these; to be depressed never by a gloomy sky, nor ill from a chance exposure to a chill wind, nor out of humor because the rain or damp keeps you a prisoner at home. You feel the delicious climate in a thousand ways.

It is a positive blessing, and were worth more than a fortune, if it were bought and sold. I would rather be poor in Italy, than rich in any other country in the world.

We ascended the mountain that shuts in the campagna on the north, and turned, while the horses breathed, to take a last look at Rome. My two friends, the lieutenants, and myself, occupied the interior of the vetturino, in company with a young Roman woman, who was making her first journey from home. She was going to see her husband. I pointed out of the window to the distant dome of St. Peter's, rising above the thin smoke hung over the city, and she looked at it with the tears streaming from her large black eyes in torrents. She might have cried because she was going to her husband, but I could not divest myself of the fact that she was a Roman, and leaving a home that _could_ be very romantically wept for. She was a fine specimen of this finest of the races of woman--amply proportioned without grossness, and with that certain presence or dignity that rises above manners and rank, common to them all.

We saw beautiful scenery at Narni. The town stands on the edge of a precipice, and the valley, a hundred feet or two below, is coursed by a wild stream, that goes foaming along its bed in a long line of froth for miles away. We dined here, and drove afterward to Terni, where the voiturier stopped for the night, to give us an opportunity to see the _Falls_.

We drove to the mountain base, three miles, in an old post barouche, and made the ascent on foot. A line of precipices extends along from the summit, and from the third or fourth of these leaps the Velino, clear into the valley. We saw it in front as we went on, and then followed the road round, till we reached the bed of the river behind.

The fountain of Egeria is not more secludedly beautiful than its current above the fall. Trees overhang and meet, and flowers spring in wonderful variety on its banks, and the ripple against the roots is heard amid the roar of the cataract, like a sweet, clear voice in a chorus. It is a place in which you half expect to startle a fawn, it looks so unvisited and wild. We wound out through the shrubbery, and gained a projecting point, from which we could see the sheet of the cascade. It is "horribly beautiful" to be sure. Childe Harold's description of it is as true as a drawing.

I should think the quant.i.ty of water at Niagara would make five hundred such falls as those of Terni, without exaggeration. It is a "h.e.l.l of waters," however, notwithstanding, and leaps over with a current all turned into foam by the roughness of its bed above--a circ.u.mstance that gives the sheet more richness of surface. Two or three lovely little streams steal off on either side of the fall, as if they shrunk from the leap, and drop down, from rock to rock, till they are lost in the rising mist.

The sun set over the little town of Terni, while we stood silently looking down into the gulf, and the wet spray reminded us that the most romantic people may take cold. We descended to our carriage; and in an hour were sitting around the blazing fire at the post-house, with a motley group of Germans, Swiss, French, and Italians--a mixture of company universal in the public room of an Italian albergo, at night. The coming and going vetturini stop at the same houses throughout, and the concourse is always amusing. We sat till the fire burned low, and then wis.h.i.+ng our chance friends a happy night, had the "priests"[4] taken from our beds, and were soon lost to everything but sleep.

Terni was the Italian Tempe, and its beautiful scenery was shown to Cicero, whose excursion hither is recorded. It is part of a long, deep valley, between abrupt ranges of mountains, and abounds in loveliness.

We went to Spoleto, the next morning, to breakfast. It is a very old town, oddly built, and one of its gates still remains, at which Hannibal was repulsed after his victory at Thrasimene. It bears his name in time-worn letters.

At the distance of one post from Spoleto we came to the _c.l.i.tumnus_, a small stream, still, deep, and gla.s.sy--the clearest water I ever saw.

It looks almost like air. On its bank, facing away from the road, stands the temple, "of small and delicate proportions," mentioned so exquisitely by Childe Harold.

The temple of the c.l.i.tumnus might stand in a drawing-room. The stream is a mere brook, and this little marble gem, whose richly fretted columns were raised to its honor with a feeling of beauty that makes one thrill, seems exactly of relative proportions. It is a thing of pure poetry; and to find an antiquity of such perfect preservation, with the small clear stream running still at the base of its _facade_, just as it did when Cicero and his contemporaries pa.s.sed it on their visits to a country called after the loveliest vale of Greece for its beauty, was a gratification of the highest demand of taste. Childe Harold's lesson,

"Pa.s.s not unblest the genius of the place"

was scarce necessary.[5]

We slept at _Foligno_. For many miles we had observed that the houses were propped in every direction, many of them in ruins apparently recent, and small wooden sheds erected in the midst of the squares, or beside the roads, and crowded with the poor. The next morning we arrived at St. Angelo, and found its gigantic cathedral a heap of ruins. Its painted chapels, to the number of fifteen or sixteen, were half standing in the shattered walls, the altars all exposed, and the interior of the dome one ma.s.s of stone and rubbish. It was the first time I had seen the effects of an _earthquake_. For eight or ten miles further, we found every house cracked and deserted, and the people living like the settlers in a new country, half in the open air. The beggars were innumerable.

We stopped the next night on the sh.o.r.es of lake Thrasimene. For once in my life, I felt that the time spent at school on the "dull drilled lesson," had not been wasted. I was on the battle ground of Hannibal--the "_locus aptus insidiis_" where the consul Flaminius was snared and beaten by the wily Carthaginian on his march to Rome. I longed for my old copy of Livy "much thumbed," that I might sit on the hill and compare the image in my mind, made by his pithy and sententious description, with the reality.

The battle ground, the scene of the princ.i.p.al slaughter, was beyond the _albergo_, and the increasing darkness compelled us to defer a visit to it till the next morning. Meantime the lake was beautiful. We were on the eastern side, and the deep-red sky of a departed sunset over the other sh.o.r.e, was reflected glowingly on the water. All around was dark, but the light in the sky and lake seemed to have forgotten to follow. It is a phenomenon peculiar to Italy. The heavens seem "dyed" and steeped in the glory of the sunset.

We drank our host's best bottle of wine, the grape plucked from the battle ground; and if it was not better for the Roman blood that had manured its ancestor, it was better for some other reason.

Early the next morning we were on our way, and wound down into the narrow pa.s.s between the lake and the hill, as the sun rose. We crossed the _Sanguinetto_, a little stream which took its name from the battle. The princ.i.p.al slaughter was just on its banks, and the hills are so steep above it, that everybody who fell near must have rolled into its bed. It crawls on very quietly across the road, its clear stream scarce interrupted by the wheels of the vetturino, which in crossing it, pa.s.ses from the Roman states into Tuscany. I ran a little up the stream, knelt and drank at a small gurgling fall. The blood of the old Flaminian Cohort spoiled very delicious water, when it mingled with that brook.

We were six days and a half accomplis.h.i.+ng the hundred and eighty miles from Rome to Florence--slow travelling--but not too slow in Italy, where every stone has its story, and every ascent of a hill its twenty matchless pictures, sprinkled with ruins, as a painter's eye could not imagine them. We looked down on the Eden-like valley of the Arno at sunrise, and again my heart leaped to see the tall dome of Florence, and the hills all about the queenly city, sparkling with palaces and bright in a sun that s.h.i.+nes nowhere so kindly. If there is a spot in the world that could wean one from his native home, it is Florence!

"Florence the fair," they call her! I have pa.s.sed four of the seven months I have been in Italy, here--and I think I shall pa.s.s here as great a proportion of the rest of my life. There is nothing that can contribute to comfort and pleasure, that is not within the reach of the smallest means in Florence. I never saw a place where wealth made less distinction. The choicest galleries of art in the world, are open to all comers. The palace of the monarch may be entered and visited, and enjoyed by all. The ducal gardens of the Boboli, rich in everything that can refine nature, and commanding views that no land can equal, cooled by fountains, haunted in every grove by statuary, are the property of the stranger and the citizen alike. Museums, laboratories, libraries, grounds, palaces, are all free as Utopia. You may take any pleasure that others can command, and have any means of instruction, as free as the common air. Where else would one live so pleasantly--so profitably--so wisely.

The society of Florence is of a very fascinating description. The Florentine n.o.bles have a _casino_, or club-house, to which most of the respectable strangers are invited, and b.a.l.l.s are given there once a week, frequently by the duke and his court, and the best society of the place. I attended one on my first arrival from Rome, at which I saw a proportion of beauty which astonished me. The female descendants of the great names in Italian history, seem to me to have almost without exception the mark of n.o.ble beauty by nature. The loveliest woman in Florence is a _Medici_. The two daughters of _Capponi_, the patriot and the descendant of patriots, are of the finest order of beauty. I could instance many others, the mention of whose names, when I have first seen them, has made my blood start. I think if Italy is ever to be redeemed, she must owe it to her daughters. The men, the brothers of these women, with very rare exceptions, look like the slaves they are, from one end of Italy to the other.

One of the most hospitable houses here, is that of Prince Poniatowski, the brother of the hero of Poland. He has a large family, and his _soirees_ are thronged with all that is fair and distinguished. He is a venerable, grayheaded old man, of perhaps seventy, very fond of speaking English, of which rare acquisition abroad he seems a little vain. He gave me the heartiest welcome as an American, and said he loved the nation.

I had the honor of dining, a day or two since, with the Ex-King of Westphalia, Jerome Bonaparte. He lives here with the t.i.tle of Prince Montfort, conferred on him by his father-in-law, the king of Wurtemburg. Americans are well received at this house also; and his queen, as the prince still calls her, can never say enough in praise of the family of Mr. H., our former secretary of legation at Paris. It is a constantly recurring theme, and ends always with "_J'aime beaucoup les Americains_." The prince resembles his brother, but has a milder face, and his mouth is less firm and less beautiful than Napoleon's. His second son is most remarkably like the emperor. He is about ten years of age; but except his youth, you can detect no difference between his head and the busts of his uncle. He has a daughter of about twelve, and an elder son at the university of Sienna. His family is large as his queen still keeps up her state, with the ladies of honor and suite. He never goes out, but his house is open every night, and the best society of Florence may be met there almost at the _prima sera_, or early part of the evening.

The Grand Duke is about to be married, and the court is to be unusually gay in the carnival. Our countryman, Mr. Thorn, was presented some time since, and I am to have that honor in two or three days. By the way, we feel exceedingly in Italy the want of a _minister_. There is no accredited agent of our government in Tuscany, and there are rarely less than three hundred Americans within its dominions. Fortunately the Marquis Corsi, the grand chamberlain of the duke, offers to act in the capacity of an amba.s.sador, and neglects nothing for our advantage in such matters, but he never fails to express his regret that we should not have some _charge d'affaires_ at his court. We have officers in many parts of the world where they are much less needed.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] The name of a wooden frame by which a pot of coals is hung between the sheets of a bed in Italy.

[5] As if everything should be poetical on the sh.o.r.es of the c.l.i.tumnus, the beggars ran after us in quartettes, singing a chaunt, and sustaining the four parts as they ran. Every child sings well in Italy; and I have heard worse music in a church anthem, than was made by these half-clothed and homeless wretches, running at full speed by the carriage-wheels. I have never met the same thing elsewhere.