association--an exquisite round temple, with its simple circle of
columns from the base to the roof, a faultless thing in proportion,
and as light and floating to the eye as if the wind might lift it. It
was no common place to stand beside, and recall the poetical truth
and fiction of which it has been the scene--the vestal lamp cherished
or neglected by its high-born votaries, their honors if pure, and
their dreadful death if faithless. It needed not the heavenly
moonlight that broke across its columns to make it a very shrine of
fancy.

My companion proposed a visit next to the Cloaca Maxima. A _common
sewer_, after the Temple of Vesta, sounds like an abrupt transition;
but the arches beneath which we descended were touched by moonlight,
and the vines and ivy crossed our path, and instead of a drain of
filth, which the fame of its imperial builder would scarce have
sweetened, a rapid stream leaped to the right, and disappeared again
beneath the solid masonry, more like a wild brook plunging into a
grotto than the thing one expects to find it. The clear little river
_Juturna_ (on the banks of which Castor and Pollux watered their
foaming horses, when bringing the news of victory to Rome), dashes now
through the Cloaca Maxima; and a fresher or purer spot, or waters with
a more musical murmur, it has not been my fortune to see. We stopped
over a broken column for a drink, and went home, refreshed, to bed.

FOOTNOTE:

[3] On my way to Rome (near Radicofani, I think), we passed an old
man, whose picturesque figure, enveloped in his brown cloak and
slouched hat, arrested the attention of all my companions. I had seen
him before. From a five minutes' sketch in passing, Mr. Cole had made
one of the most spirited heads I ever saw, admirably like, and worthy
of Caravaggio for force and expression.

LETTER XLIV.

     MASS IN THE SISTINE CHAPEL--THE CARDINALS--THE "LAST
     JUDGMENT"--THE POPE OF ROME--THE "ADAM AND EVE" CHANTING OF
     THE PRIESTS--FESTA AT THE CHURCH OF SAN CARLOS--GREGORY THE
     SIXTEENTH, HIS EQUIPAGE, TRAIN, ETC.

All the world goes to hear "mass 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 pushing, and
the guard retreated to the grated door, through which no woman is
permitted to pass. Their gay bonnets and feathers clustered 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 passed
the gate, their train bearers lifted their cassocks and helped them to
kneel, a moment's prayer was mumbled, and they took their seats with
the same servile assistance. 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, pronouncing the
sentence, the wicked plunging from his presence on the left hand, and
the righteous ascending with the assistance 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
worship, not of God, 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 God alone, for it was like music from heaven. The
choir was composed of priests, who sang from massive 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 clustered around with their hands clasped, their heads thrown
back, and their eyes closed or fixed upon the turning leaves in such
grouping and attitude 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 compass 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 gushing 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 passionate
repetition 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 nobles, stood even within the
railing of the altar, capped and motionless, conveying, as everything
else does, the irresistible impression that it was the worship of the
Pope, not of God.

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 pagoda of a carriage, it is difficult to look at
him without a smile. Among his cardinals, however, there are
magnificent heads, boldly marked, noble 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 noble 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 ships-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
classic and elegant to a very high degree. His coat is held by the
two centre buttons 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 passage before marking it, would assume the
attitude 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 principal 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 noble 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 Titian, 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 pass 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 Titian, 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 CLITUMNUS--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 massed 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 quantity of water at Niagara would make five
hundred such falls as those of Terni, without exaggeration. It is a
"hell of waters," however, notwithstanding, and leaps over with a
current all turned into foam by the roughness of its bed above--a
circumstance 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 wishing 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 _Clitumnus_, a
small stream, still, deep, and glassy--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 Clitumnus 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 _façade_,
just as it did when Cicero and his contemporaries passed 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,

     "Pass 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 mass 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 shores 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 principal 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 shore, 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 pass 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 principal 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, passes 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 accomplishing 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 shines 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 passed four of the seven
months I have been in Italy, here--and I think I shall pass 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 nobles have a _casino_, or club-house, to which most of the
respectable strangers are invited, and balls 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 noble 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
_soirées_ 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 title 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 ambassador, and neglects
nothing for our advantage in such matters, but he never fails to
express his regret that we should not have some _chargé 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 shores of the
Clitumnus, 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.

LETTER XLVII.

     FLORENCE--GRAND DUKE OF TUSCANY--THE GRAND CHAMBERLAIN--PRINCE
     DE LIGNE--THE AUSTRIAN AMBASSADOR--THE MARQUIS
     TORRIGIANI--LEOPOLD OF TUSCANY--VIEWS OF THE VAL
     D'ARNO--SPLENDID BALL--TREES OF CANDLES--THE DUKE AND
     DUCHESS--HIGHBORN ITALIAN AND ENGLISH BEAUTIES, ETC., ETC.

I was presented to the grand Duke of Tuscany yesterday morning, at a
private audience. As we have no minister at this court, I drove alone
to the ducal palace, and, passing through the body-guard of young
nobles, was met at the door of the ante-chamber by the Marquis Corsi,
the grand chamberlain. Around a blazing fire, in this room, stood five
or six persons, in splendid uniforms, to whom I was introduced on
entering. One was the Prince de Ligne--traveling at present in Italy,
and waiting to be presented by the Austrian ambassador--a young and
remarkably handsome man of twenty-five. He showed a knowledge of
America, in the course of a half hour's conversation, which rather
surprised me, inquiring particularly about the residences and
condition of the United States' ministers whom he had met at the
various courts of Europe. The Austrian ambassador, an old,
wily-looking man, covered with orders, joined in the conversation and
asked after our former minister at Paris, Mr. Brown, remarking that he
had done the United States great credit, during his embassy. He had
known Mr. Gallatin also, and spoke highly of him. Mr. Van Buren's
election to the vice-presidency, after his recall, seemed greatly to
surprise him.

The Prince was summoned to the presence of the Duke, and I remained
some fifteen minutes in conversation with a venerable and
noble-looking man, the Marquis Torrigiani, one of the chamberlains.
His eldest son has lately gone upon his travels in the United States,
in company with Mr. Thorn, an American gentleman living in Florence.
He seemed to think the voyage a great undertaking. Torrigiani is one
of the oldest of the Florentine nobles, and his family is in high
esteem.

As the Austrian minister came out, the Grand Chamberlain came for me,
and I entered the presence of the Duke. He was standing quite alone in
a small, plain room, dressed in a simple white uniform, with a star
upon his breast--a slender, pale, scholar-like looking young man, of
perhaps thirty years. He received me with a pleasant smile, and
crossing his hands behind him, came close to me, and commenced
questioning me about America. The departure of young Torrigiani for
the United States pleased him, and he said he should like to go
himself--"but," said he, "a voyage of three thousand miles and
back--_comment faire!_" and he threw out his hands with a look of mock
despair that was very expressive. He assured me he felt great pleasure
at Mr. Thorn's having taken up his residence in Florence. He had sent
for his whole family a few days before, and promised them every
attention to their comfort during the absence of Mr. Thorn. He said
young Torrigiani was _bien instruit_, and would travel to advantage,
without doubt. At every pause of his inquiries, he looked me full in
the eyes, and seemed anxious to yield me the _parole_ and listen. He
bowed with a smile, after I had been with him perhaps half an hour,
and I took my leave with all the impressions of his character which
common report had given me, quite confirmed. He is said to be the best
monarch in Europe, and it is written most expressively in his mild,
amiable features.

The Duke is very unwilling to marry again, although the crown passes
from his family if he die without a male heir. He has two daughters,
lovely children, between five and seven, whose mother died not quite a
year since. She was unusually beloved, both by her husband and his
subjects, and is still talked of by the people, and never without the
deepest regret. She was very religious, and is said to have died of a
cold taken in doing a severe penance. The Duke watched with her day
and night, till she died; and I was told by the old Chamberlain, that
he cannot yet speak of her without tears.

With the new year, the Grand Duke of Tuscany threw off his mourning.
Not from his countenance, for the sadness of that is habitual; but his
equipages have laid off their black trappings, his grooms and
outriders are in drab and gold, and, more important to us strangers in
his capital, the ducal palace is aired with a weekly reception and
ball, as splendid and hospitable as money and taste can make them.

Leopold of Tuscany is said to be the richest individual in Europe. The
Palazzo Pitti, in which he lives, seems to confirm it. The exterior is
marked with the character of the times in which it was built, and
might be that of a fortress--its long, dark front of roughly-hewn
stone, with its two slight, out-curving wings, bearing a look of more
strength than beauty. The interior is incalculably rich. The suite of
halls on the front side is the home of the choicest and most extensive
gallery of pictures in the world. The tables of inlaid gems and
mosaic, the walls encrusted with relievos, the curious floors, the
drapery--all satiate the eye with sumptuousness. It is built against a
hill, and I was surprised, on the night of the ball, to find myself
alighting from the carriage upon the same floor to which I had mounted
from the front by tediously long staircases. The Duke thus rides in
his carriage to his upper story--an advantage which saves him no
little fatigue and exposure. The gardens of the Boboli, which cover
the hill behind, rise far above the turrets of the palace, and command
glorious views of the Val d'Arno.

The reception hour at the ball was from eight to nine. We were
received at the steps on the garden side of the palace, by a crowd of
servants, in livery, under the orders of a fat major-domo, and passing
through a long gallery, lined with exotics and grenadiers, we arrived
at the anteroom, where the Duke's body-guard of nobles were drawn up
in attendance. The band was playing delightfully in the saloon beyond.
I had arrived late, having been presented a few days before, and
desirous of avoiding the stiffness of the first hour of presentation.
The rooms were in a blaze of light from eight _trees_ of candles,
cypress-shaped, and reaching from the floor to the ceiling, and the
company entirely assembled, crowded them with a dazzling show of
jewels, flowers, feathers, and uniforms.

The Duke and the Grand Duchess (the widow of the late Duke) stood in
the centre of the room, and in the pauses of conversation, the
different ambassadors presented their countrymen. His highness was
dressed in a suit of plain black, probably the worst made clothes in
Florence. With his pale, timid face, his bent shoulders, an
inexpressibly ill-tied cravat, and rank, untrimmed whiskers, he was
the most uncourtly person present. His extreme popularity as a monarch
is certainly very independent of his personal address. His
mother-in-law is about his own age, with marked features, full of
talent, a pale, high forehead, and the bearing altogether of a queen.
She wore a small diadem of the purest diamonds, and with her height
and her flashing jewels, she was conspicuous from every part of the
room. She is a high Catholic, and is said to be bending all her powers
upon the re-establishment of the Jesuits in Florence.

As soon as the presentations were over, the Grand Duke led out the
wife of the English ambassador, and opened the ball with a waltz. He
then danced a quadrille with the wife of the French ambassador, and
for his next partner selected an _American lady_--the daughter of
Colonel T----, of New York.

The supper rooms were opened early, and among the delicacies of a
table loaded with everything rare and luxurious, were a brace or two
of pheasants from the Duke's estates in Germany. Duly flavored with
_truffes_, and accompanied with Rhine wines, which deserved the
conspicuous place given them upon the royal table--and in this letter.

I hardly dare speak of the degree of _beauty_ in the assembly; it is
so difficult to compare a new impression with an old one, and the
thing itself is so indefinite. But there were two persons present
whose extreme loveliness, as it is not disputed even by admiring envy,
may be worth describing, for the sake of the comparison.

The Princess S---- may be twenty-four years of age. She is of the
middle height, with the slight stoop in her shoulders, which is rather
a grace than a fault. Her bust is exquisitely turned, her neck slender
but full, her arms, hands, and feet, those of a Psyche. Her face is
the abstraction of highborn Italian beauty--calm, almost to
indifference, of an indescribably _glowing paleness_--a complexion
that would be alabaster if it were not for the richness of the blood
beneath, betrayed in lips whose depth of color and fineness of curve
seem only too curiously beautiful to be the work of nature. Her eyes
are dark and large, and must have had an indolent expression in her
childhood, but are now the very seat and soul of feeling. A constant
trace of pain mars the beauty of her forehead. She dresses her hair
with a kind of characteristic departure from the mode, parting its
glossy flakes on her brow with nymph-like simplicity, a peculiarity
which one regrets not to see in the too Parisian dress of her person.
In her manner she is strikingly elegant, but without being absent, she
seems to give an unconscious attention to what is about her, and to be
gracious and winning without knowing or intending it, merely because
she could not listen or speak otherwise. Her voice is sweet, and, in
her own Italian, mellow and soft to a degree inconceivable by those
who have not heard this delicious language spoken in its native land.
With all these advantages, and a look of pride that nothing could
insult, there is an expression in her beautiful face that reminds you
of her sex and its temptations, and prepares you fully for the history
which you may hear from the first woman that stands at your elbow.

The other is that English girl of seventeen, shrinking timidly from
the crowd, and leaning with her hands clasped over her father's arm,
apparently listening only to the waltz, and unconscious that every eye
is fixed upon her in admiration. She has lived all her life in Italy,
but has been bred by an English mother, in a retired villa of the Val
d'Arno--her character and feelings are those of her race, and nothing
of Italy about her, but the glow of its sunny clime in the else
spotless snow of her complexion, and an enthusiasm in her downcast eye
that you may account for as you will--it is not English! Her form has
just ripened into womanhood. The bust still wants fullness, and the
step confidence. Her forehead is rather too intellectual to be
maidenly; but the droop of her singularly long eye-lashes over eyes
that elude the most guarded glance of your own, and the modest
expression of her lips closed but not pressed together, redeem her
from any look of conscious superiority, and convince you that she only
seeks to be unobserved. A single ringlet of golden brown hair falls
nearly to her shoulder, catching the light upon its glossy curves with
an effect that would enchant a painter. Lilies of the valley, the
first of the season, are in her bosom and her hair, and she might be
the personification of the flower for delicacy and beauty. You are
only disappointed in talking with her. She expresses herself with a
nerve and self-command, which, from a slight glance, you did not
anticipate. She shrinks from the general eye, but in conversation she
is the high-minded woman more than the timid child for which her
manner seems to mark her. In either light, she is the very presence of
purity. She stands by the side of her not less beautiful rival, like a
Madonna by a Magdalen--both seem not at home in the world, but only
one could have dropped from heaven.

LETTER XLVIII.

     VALLOMBROSA--ITALIAN OXEN--CONVENT--SERVICE IN THE
     CHAPEL--HOUSE OCCUPIED BY MILTON.

I left Florence for Vallombrosa at daylight on a warm summer's
morning, in company with four ladies. We drove along the northern bank
of the Arno for four or five miles, passing several beautiful villas,
belonging to the Florentine nobles; and, crossing the river by a
picturesque bridge, took the road to the village of Pelago, which lies
at the foot of the mountain, and is the farthest point to which a
carriage can mount. It is about fourteen miles from Florence, and the
ascent thence to the convent is nearly three.

We alighted in the centre of the village, in the midst of a ragged
troop of women and children, among whom were two idiot beggars; and,
while the preparations were making for our ascent, we took chairs in
the open square around a basket of cherries, and made a delicious
luncheon of fruit and bread, very much to the astonishment of some two
hundred spectators.

Our conveyances appeared in the course of half an hour, consisting of
two large baskets, each drawn by a pair of oxen and containing two
persons, and a small Sardinian pony. The ladies seated themselves with
some hesitation in their singular sledges; I mounted the pony, and we
made a dusty exit from Pelago, attended to the gate by our gaping
friends, who bowed, and wished us the _bon viaggio_ with more
gratitude than three Tuscan _crazie_ would buy, I am sure, in any
other part of the world.

The gray oxen of Italy are quite a different race from ours, much
lighter and quicker, and in a small vehicle they will trot off five or
six miles in the hour as freely as a horse. They are exceedingly
beautiful. The hide is very fine, of a soft squirrel gray, and as
sleek and polished often as that of a well-groomed courser. With their
large, bright, intelligent eyes, high-lifted heads, and open nostrils,
they are among the finest-looking animals in the world in motion. We
soon came to the steep path, and the facility with which our singular
equipages mounted was surprising. I followed, as well as I could, on
my diminutive pony, my feet touching the ground, and my balance
constantly endangered by the contact of stumps and stones--the
hard-mouthed little creature taking his own way, in spite of every
effort of mine to the contrary.

We stopped to breathe in a deep, cool glen, which lay across our path,
the descent into which was very difficult. The road through the bottom
of it ran just above the bank of a brook, into which poured a pretty
fall of eight or ten feet, and with the spray-wet grass beneath, and
the full-leaved chestnuts above, it was as delicious a spot for a rest
in a summer noontide as I ever saw. The ladies took out their pencils
and sketched it, making a group themselves the while, which added all
the picture wanted.

The path wound continually about in the deep woods, with which the
mountain is covered, and occasionally from an opening we obtained a
view back upon the valley of the Arno, which was exceedingly fine. We
came in sight of the convent in about two hours, emerging from the
shade of the thick chestnuts into a cultivated lawn, fenced and mown
with the nicety of the grass-plot before a cottage, and entering upon
a smooth, well-swept pavement, approached the gate of the
venerable-looking pile, as anxious for the refreshment of its
far-famed hospitality as ever pilgrims were.

An old cheerful-looking monk came out to meet us, and shaking hands
with the ladies very cordially, assisted in extracting them from their
cramped conveyances. He then led the way to a small stone cottage, a
little removed from the convent, quoting gravely by the way the law of
the order against the entrance of females over the monastic threshold.
We were ushered into a small, neat parlor, with two bedrooms
communicating, and two of the servants of the monastery followed, with
water and snow-white napkins, the _padre degli forestieri_, as they
called the old monk, who received us, talking most volubly all the
while.

The cook appeared presently with a low reverence, and asked what we
would like for dinner. He ran over the contents of the larder before
we had time to answer his question, enumerating half a dozen kinds of
game, and a variety altogether that rather surprised our ideas of
monastical severity. His own rosy gills bore testimony that it was not
the kitchen of Dennis Bulgruddery.

While dinner was preparing, Father Gasparo proposed a walk. An avenue
of the most majestic trees opened immediately away from the little
lawn before the cottage door. We followed it perhaps half a mile round
the mountain, threading a thick pine forest, till we emerged on the
edge of a shelf of greensward, running just under the summit of the
hill. From this spot the view was limited only by the power of the
eye. The silver line of the Mediterranean off Leghorn is seen hence on
a clear day, between which and the mountain lie sixty or seventy
miles, wound into the loveliest undulations by the course of the Arno.
The vale of this beautiful river, in which Florence stands, was just
distinguishable as a mere dell in the prospect. It was one of the
sultriest days of August, but the air was vividly fresh, and the sun,
with all the strength of the climate of Italy, was unoppressive. We
seated ourselves on the small fine grass of the hillside, and with the
good old monk narrating passages of his life, enjoyed the glorious
scene till the cook's messenger summoned us back to dinner.

We were waited upon at table by two young servitors of the convent,
with shaven crowns and long black cassocks, under the direction of
Father Gasparo, who sat at a little distance, entertaining us with his
inexhaustible stories till the bell rung for the convent supper. The
dinner would have graced the table of an emperor. Soup, beef, cutlets,
ducks, woodcocks, followed each other, cooked in the most approved
manner, with all the accompaniments established by taste and usage;
and better wine, white and red, never was pressed from the Tuscan
grape. The dessert was various and plentiful; and while we were
sitting, after the good father's departure, wondering at the luxuries
we had found on a mountain-top, strong coffee and _liqueurs_ were set
before us, both of the finest flavor.

I was to sleep myself in the convent. Father Gasparo joined us upon
the wooden bench in the avenue, where we were enjoying a brilliant
sunset, and informed me that the gates shut at eight. The vesper-bell
soon rung, echoing round from the rocks, and I bade my four companions
good night, and followed the monk to the cloisters. As we entered the
postern, he asked me whether I would go directly to the cell, or
attend first the service in the chapel, assisting my decision at the
same time by gently slipping his arm through mine and drawing me
toward the cloth door, from which a strong peal of the organ was
issuing.

We lifted the suspended curtain, and entered a chapel so dimly lit,
that I could only judge of its extent from the reverberations of the
music. The lamps were all in the choir, behind the altar, and the
shuffling footsteps of the gathering monks approached it from every
quarter. Father Gasparo led me to the base of a pillar, and telling me
to kneel, left me and entered the choir, where he was lost in the
depth of one of the old richly-carved seats for a few minutes,
appearing again with thirty or forty others, who rose and joined in
the chorus of the chant, making the hollow roof ring with the deep
unmingled base of their voices.

I stood till I was chilled, listening to the service, and looking at
the long line of monks rising and sitting, with their monotonous
changes of books and positions, and not knowing which way to go for
warmth or retirement. I wandered up and down the dim church during the
remaining hour, an unwilling, but not altogether an unamused spectator
of the scene. The performers of the service, with the exception of
Father Gasparo, were young men from sixteen to twenty; but during my
slow turns to and fro on the pavement of the church, fifteen or twenty
old monks entered, and, with a bend of the knee before the altar went
off into the obscure corners, and knelt motionless at prayer, for
almost an hour. I could just distinguish the dark outline of their
figures when my eye became accustomed to the imperfect light, and I
never saw a finer spectacle of religious devotion.

The convent clock struck ten, and shutting up their "clasped missals,"
the young monks took their cloaks about them, bent their knees in
passing the altar, and disappeared by different doors. Father Gasparo
was the last to depart, and our footsteps echoed as we passed through
the long cloisters to the cell appropriated for me. We opened one of
some twenty small doors, and I was agreeably surprised to find a
supper of cold game upon the table, with a bottle of wine, and two
plates--the monk intending to give me his company at supper. The cell
was hung round with bad engravings of the Virgin, the death of
martyrs, crosses, &c., and a small oaken desk stood against the wall
beneath a large crucifix, with a prayer-book upon it. The bed was
high, ample, and spotlessly white, and relieved the otherwise
comfortless look of a stone floor and white-washed walls. I felt the
change from summer heat to the keen mountain air, and as I shivered
and buttoned my coat, my gay guest threw over me his heavy black cowl
of cloth--a dress that, with its closeness and numerous folds, would
keep one warm in Siberia. Adding to it his little black scull-cap, he
told me, with a hearty laugh, that but for a certain absence of
sanctity in the expression of my face, and the uncanonical length of
my hair, I looked the monk complete. We had a merry supper. The wine
was of a choicer vintage than that we had drank at dinner, and the
father answered, upon my discovery of its merits, that he _never
wasted it upon women_.

In the course of the conversation, I found out that my entertainer was
a kind of butler, or head-servitor of the convent, and that the great
body of the monks were of noble lineage. The feeling of pride still
remains among them from the days when the Certosa of Vallombrosa was a
residence for princes, before its splendid pictures were pillaged by a
foreign army, its wealth scattered, and its numbers diminished. "In
those days," said the monk, "we received nothing for our hospitality
but the pleasure it gave us"--relieving my mind, by the remark, of
what I looked forward to at parting as a delicate point.

My host left me at midnight, and I went to bed, and slept under a
thick covering in an Italian August. "The blanched linen, white and
lavendered," seemed to have a peculiar charm, for though I had
promised to meet my excluded companions at sunrise, on the top of the
mountain, I slept soundly till nine, and was obliged to breakfast
alone in the refectory of the convent.

We were to dine at three, and start for Florence at four the next day,
and we spent our morning in traversing the mountain paths, and getting
views on every side. Fifty or a hundred feet above the convent,
perched on a rock like an eyry, stands a small building in which
Milton is supposed to have lived, during his six weeks sojourn at the
convent. It is now fitted up as a nest of small chapels--every one of
its six or eight little chambers having an altar. The ladies were not
permitted to enter it. I selected the room I presumed the poet must
have chosen--the only one commanding the immense view to the west,
and, looking from the window, could easily feel the truth of his
simile, "thick as leaves in Vallombrosa." It is a mountain of foliage.

Another sumptuous dinner was served, Father Gasparo sitting by, even
more voluble than before, the baskets and the pony were brought to the
door, and we bade farewell to the old monk with more regret than a
day's acquaintance often produces. We reached our carriage in an hour,
and were in Florence at eight--having passed, by unanimous opinion,
the two brightest days in our calendar of travel.

LETTER XLIX.

     HOUSE OF MICHAEL ANGELO--THE ANCIENT CHURCH OF SAN
     MINIATO--MADAME CATALANI--WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR--MIDNIGHT MASS,
     ETC.

I went with a party this morning to visit _the house of Michael
Angelo_. It stands as he lived in it, in the Via Ghibellini, and is
still in possession of his descendants. It is a neat building of three
stories, divided on the second floor into three rooms, shown as those
occupied by the painter, sculptor, and poet. The first is panelled and
painted by his scholars after his death--each picture representing
some incident of his life. There are ten or twelve of these, and
several of them are highly beautiful. One near the window represents
him in his old age on a visit to "Lorenzo the Magnificent," who
commands him to sit in his presence. The Duke is standing before his
chair, and the figure of the old man is finely expressive.

The next room appears to have been his parlor, and the furniture is
exactly as it stood when he died. In one corner is placed a bust of
him in his youth, with his face perfect; and opposite, another, taken
from a cast after his nose was broken by a fellow painter in the
church of the Carmine. There are also one or two portraits of him, and
the resemblance through them all, shows that the likeness we have of
him in the engravings are uncommonly correct.

In the inner room, which was his studio, they show his pallet,
brushes, pots, maul-sticks, slippers, and easel--all standing
carelessly in the little closets around, as if he had left them but
yesterday. The walls are painted in fresco, by Angelo himself, and
represent groups of all the distinguished philosophers, poets and
statesmen of his time. Among them are the heads of Petrarch, Dante,
Galileo, and Lorenzo de Medici. It is a noble gallery! perhaps a
hundred heads in all.

The descendant of Buonarotti is now an old man, and fortunately rich
enough to preserve the house of his great ancestor as an object of
curiosity. He has a son, I believe studying the arts at Rome.

On a beautiful hill which ascends directly from one of the southern
gates of Florence, stands a church built so long ago as at the close
of the first century. The gate, church, and hill, are all called San
Miniato, after a saint buried under the church pavement. A large, and
at present flourishing convent, hangs on the side of the hill below,
and around the church stand the walls of a strong fortress, built by
Michael Angelo. A half mile or more south, across a valley, an old
tower rises against the sky, which was erected for the observations of
Galileo. A mile to the left, on the same ridge, an old villa is to be
seen in which Boccaccio wrote most of his "Hundred Tales of Love."
The Arno comes down from Vallombrosa, and passing through Florence at
the foot of San Miniato, is seen for three miles further on its way to
Pisa; the hill, tower, and convent of Fiesole, where Milton studied
and Catiline encamped with his conspirators, rise from the opposite
bank of the river; and right below, as if you could leap into the
lantern of the dome, nestles the lovely city of Florence, in the lap
of the very brightest vale that ever mountain sheltered or river ran
through. Such are the temptations to a _walk in Italy_, and add to it
the charms of the climate, and you may understand one of a hundred
reasons why it is the land of poetry and romance, and why it so easily
becomes the land of a stranger's affection.

The villas which sparkle all over the hills which lean unto Florence,
are occupied mainly by foreigners living here for health or luxury,
and most of them are known and visited by the floating society of the
place. Among them are Madame Catalani, the celebrated singer, who
occupies a beautiful palace on the ascent of Fiesole, and Walter
Savage Landor, the author of the "Imaginary Conversations," as refined
a scholar perhaps as is now living, who is her near neighbor. A
pleasant family of my acquaintance lives just back of the fortress of
San Miniato, and in walking out to them with a friend yesterday, I
visited the church again, and remarked more particularly the features
of the scene I have described.

The church of San Miniato was built by Henry I. of Germany, and
Cunegonde his wife. The front is pretty--a kind of mixture of Greek
and Arabic architecture, crusted with marble. The interior is in the
style of the primitive churches, the altar standing in what was called
the _presbytery_, a high platform occupying a third of the nave, with
two splendid flights of stairs of the purest white marble. The most
curious part of it is the rotunda in the rear, which is lit by five
windows of transparent oriental alabaster, each eight or nine feet
high and three broad, in single slabs. The sun shone full on one of
them while we were there, and the effect was inconceivably rich. It
was like a sheet of half molten gold and silver. The transparency of
course was irregular, but in the yellow spots of the stone the light
came through like the effect of deeply stained glass.

A partly subterranean chapel, six or eight feet lower than the
pavement of the church, extends under the presbytery. It is a
labyrinth of marble columns which support the platform above, no two
of which are alike. The ancient cathedral of Modena is the only church
I have seen in Italy built in the same manner.

The _midnight mass_ on "Christmas eve," is abused in all catholic
countries, I believe, as a kind of saturnalia of gallantry. I joined a
party of young men who were leaving a ball for the church of the
Annunciata, the fashionable rendezvous, and we were set down at the
portico when the mass was about half over. The entrances of the open
vestibule were thronged to suffocation. People of all ages and
conditions were crowding in and out, and the sound of the distant
chant at the altar came to our ears as we entered, mingled with every
tone of address and reply from the crowd about us. The body of the
church was quite obscured with the smoke of the incense. We edged our
way on through the press, carried about in the open area of the church
by every tide that rushed in from the various doors, till we stopped
in a thick eddy in the centre, almost unable to stir a limb. I could
see the altar very clearly from this point, and I contented myself
with merely observing what was about me, leaving my motions to the
impulse of the crowd.

It was a curiously mingled scene. The ceremonies of the altar were
going on in all their mysterious splendor. The waving of censers, the
kneeling and rising of the gorgeously clad priests, accompanied
simultaneously by the pealing of solemn music from the different
organs--the countless lights burning upon the altar, and, ranged
within the paling, a semicircle of the duke's grenadiers, standing
motionless, with their arms presented, while the sentinel paced to and
fro, and all kneeling, and grounding arms at the tinkle of the slight
bell--were the materials for the back-ground of the picture. In the
immense area of the church stood perhaps, four thousand people, one
third of whom, doubtless, came to worship. Those who did and those who
did not, dropped alike upon the marble pavement at the sound of the
bell; and then, as I was heretic enough to stand, I had full
opportunity for observing both devotion and intrigue. The latter was
amusingly managed. Almost all the pretty and young women were
accompanied by an ostensible duenna, and the methods of eluding their
vigilance in communication were various. I had detected under a
_blond_ wig, in entering, the young ambassador of a foreign court, who
being _cavaliere servente_ to one of the most beautiful women in
Florence, certainly had no right to the amusement of the hour. We had
been carried up the church in the same tide, and when the whole crowd
were prostrate, I found him just beyond me, slipping a card into the
shoe of an uncommonly pretty girl kneeling before him. She was
attended by both father and mother apparently, but as she gave no sign
of surprise, except stealing an almost imperceptible glance behind
her, I presumed she was not offended. I passed an hour, perhaps, in
amused observation of similar matters, most of which could not be well
described on paper. It is enough to say, that I do not think more
dissolute circumstances accompanied the worship of Venus in the most
defiled of heathen temples.

LETTER L.

     FLORENCE--VISIT TO THE CHURCH OF SAN GAETANO--PENITENTIAL
     PROCESSIONS--THE REFUGEE CARLISTS--THE MIRACLE OF RAIN--CHURCH
     OF THE ANNUNCIATA--TOMB OF GIOVANNI DI BOLOGNA--MASTERPIECE OF
     ANDREA DEL SARTO, ETC., ETC.

I heard the best passage of the opera of "Romeo and Juliet"
delightfully played in the church of _San Gaetano_ this morning. I was
coming from the _café_, where I had been breakfasting, when the sound
of the organ drew me in. The communion was administering at one of the
side chapels, the showy Sunday mass was going on at the great altar,
and the numerous confession boxes were full of penitents, _all
female_, as usual. As I took a seat near the communicants, the sacred
wafer was dipped into the cup and put into the mouth of a young woman
kneeling before the railing. She rose soon after, and I was not
lightly surprised to find it was a certain errand-girl of a bachelor's
washerwoman, as unfit a person for the holy sacrament as wears a
petticoat in Florence.

I was drawn by the agreeable odor of the incense to the paling of the
high altar. The censers were flung by unseen hands from the doors of
the sacristy at the sides, and an unseen chorus of boys in the choir
behind, broke in occasionally with the high-keyed chant that echoes
with its wild melody from every arch and corner of these immense
churches. It seems running upon the highest note that the ear can
bear, and yet nothing could be more musical. A man knelt on the
pavement near me, with two coarse baskets beside him, and the traces
of long and dirty travel from his heels to his hips. He had stopped in
to the mass, probably, on his way to market. There can be no greater
contrast than that seen in Catholic churches, between the splendor of
architecture, renowned pictures, statues and ornaments of silver and
gold, and the crowd of tattered, famished, misery-marked worshippers
that throng them. I wonder it never occurs to them, that the costly
pavement upon which they kneel might feed and clothe them.[6]

Penitential processions are to be met all over Florence to-day, on
account of the uncommon degree of sickness. One of them passed under
my window just now. They are composed of people of all classes, upon
whom it is inflicted as a penance by the priests. A white robe covers
them entirely, even the face, and, with their eyes glaring through the
two holes made for that purpose, they look like processions of
shrouded corpses. Eight of the first carry burning candles of six feet
in length, and a company in the rear have the church books, from which
they chant, the whole procession joining in a melancholy chorus of
three notes. It rains hard to-day, and their white dresses cling to
them with a ludicrously ungraceful effect.

Florence is an unhealthful climate in the winter. The tramontane winds
come down from the Appenines so sharply, that delicate constitutions,
particularly those liable to pulmonary complaints, suffer invariably.
There has been a dismal mortality among the Italians. The Marquis
Corsi, who presented me at court a week ago (the last day he was out,
and the last duty he performed), lies in state, at this moment, in the
church of Santa Trinita, and another of the duke's counsellors of
state died a few days before. His prime minister, Fossombroni, is
dangerously ill also, and all of the same complaint, the _mal di
petto_, as it is called, or disease of the lungs. Corsi is a great
loss to Americans. He was the grand chamberlain of court, wealthy and
hospitable, and took particular pride in fulfilling the functions of
an American ambassador. He was a courtier of the old school,
accomplished, elegant, and possessed of universal information.

The _refugee Carlists_ are celebrating to-day, in the church of Santa
Maria Novella, the anniversary of the death of _Louis XVI_. The bishop
of Strasbourg is here, and is performing high mass for the soul of the
"_martyr_," as they term him. Italy is full of the more aristocratic
families of France, and it has become _mauvais ton_ in society to
advocate the present government of France, or even its principles.
They detest Louis Philippe with the virulence of a deadly private
enmity, and declare universally, that they will exile themselves till
they can return to overthrow him. Among the refugees are great numbers
of young men, who are sent away from home with a chivalrous devotion
to the cause of the Duchess of Berri, which they avow so constantly in
the circles of Italian society, that she seems the exclusive heroine
of the day. There was nothing seen of the French exquisites in
Florence for a week after she was taken. They were in mourning for the
misfortune of their mistress.

All Florence is ringing with _the miracle_. The city fountains have
for some days been dry, and the whole country was suffering for rain.
_The day before the moon changed_, the procession began, and the day
after, when the sky was full of clouds, the holy picture in the church
of the Annunciata, "painted by St. Luke himself," was solemnly
uncovered. The result was the present miracle of _rain_, and the
priests are preaching upon it from every pulpit. The _padrone_ of my
lodgings came in this morning, and told me the circumstances with the
most serious astonishment.

I joined the crowd this morning, who are still thronging up the _via
de Servi_ to the church of the Annunciata at all hours of the day. The
square in front of the church was like a fair--every nook occupied
with the little booths of the sellers of rosaries, saints books, and
pictures. We were assailed by a troop of pedlars at the door, holding
leaden medals and crucifixes, and crying, at the top of their voices,
for _fidele Christiani_ to spend a crazie for the love of God.

After crowding up the long cloister with a hundred or two of wretches,
steaming from the rain, and fresh from every filthy occupation in the
city, we were pushed under the suspended leather door, and reached the
nave of the church. In the slow progress we made toward the altar, I
had full opportunity to study the fretted-gold ceiling above me, the
masterly pictures in the side chapels, the statuary, carving, and
general architecture. Description can give you no idea of the waste
of splendor in these places.

I stood at last within sight of the miraculous picture. It is painted
in fresco, above an altar surrounded with a paling of bronze and
marble projecting into the body of the church. Eight or ten massive
silver lamps, each one presented by some _trade_ in Florence, hung
from the roof of the chapel, burning with a dusky glare in the
daylight. A grenadier, with cap and musket, stood on each side of the
bronze gate, repressing the eager rush of the crowd. Within, at the
side of the altar, stood the officiating priest, a man with a look of
intellect and nobleness on his fine features and lofty forehead, that
seemed irreconcilable with the folly he was performing. The devotees
came in, one by one, as they were admitted by the sentinel, knelt,
offered their rosary to the priest, who touched it to the frame of the
picture with one hand, and received their money with the other, and
then crossing themselves, and pressing the beads to their bosom,
passed out at the small door leading into the cloisters.

As the only chance of seeing the picture, I bought a rosary for two
crazie (about three cents), and pressed into the throng. In a half
hour it came to my turn to pass the guard. The priest took my silver
paul, and while he touched the beads to the picture, I had a moment to
look at it nearly. I could see nothing but a confused mass of black
paint, with an indistinct outline of the head of the Madonna in the
centre. The large spiked rays of glory standing out from every side
were all I could see in the imperfect light. The richness of the
chapel itself, however, was better worth the trouble to see. It is
quite encrusted with silver. Silver _bassi relievi_, two silver
candelabra, six feet in height, two very large silver statues of
angels, a _ciborio_ (enclosing a most exquisite head of our Saviour,
by _Andrea del Sarto_), a massive silver cornice sustaining a heavily
folded silver curtain, and silver lilies and lamps in any quantity all
around. I wonder, after the plundering of the church of San Antonio,
at Padua, that these useless riches escaped Napoleon.

How some of the priests, who are really learned and clever men, can
lend themselves to such barefaced imposture as this miracle, it is
difficult to conceive. The picture has been kept as a doer of these
miracles, perhaps for a century. It is never uncovered in vain.
Supernatural results are certain to follow, and it is done as often as
they dare to make a fresh draught on the credulity and money of the
people. The story is as follows: "A certain Bartolomeo, while painting
a fresco of the annunciation, being at a loss how to make the
countenance of the Madonna properly seraphic, fell asleep while
pondering over his work; and, on waking, found it executed in a style
he was unable to equal." I can only say that St. Luke, or the angel,
or whoever did it, was a very indifferent draughtsman. It is ill
drawn, and whatever the colors might have been upon the pallet of the
sleepy painter, they were not made immortal by angelic use. It is a
mass of confused black.

I was glad to get away from the crowd and their mummery, and pay a new
tribute of reverence at the tomb of _Giovanni di Bologna_. He is
buried behind the grand altar, in a chapel ornamented at his own
expense, and with his own inimitable works. Six bas-reliefs in bronze,
than which life itself is not more natural, represent different
passages of our Saviour's history. They were done for the Grand Duke,
who, at the death of the artist, liberally gave them to ornament his
tomb. After the authors of the Venus and the Apollo Belvidere, John of
Bologna is, in my judgment, the greatest of sculptors. His _mounting
Mercury_, in the Florence gallery, might have been a theft from heaven
for its divine beauty.

In passing out by the cloisters of the adjoining convent, I stopped a
moment to see the fresco of the _Madonna del Sacco_, said to have been
the masterpiece of _Andrea del Sarto_. Michael Angelo and Raphael are
said to have "gazed at it unceasingly." It is much defaced, and
preserves only its graceful drawing. The countenance of Mary has the
_beau reste_ of singular loveliness. The models of this delightful
artist (who, by the way, is buried in the vestibule of this same
church), must have been the most beautiful in the world. All his
pictures move the heart.

FOOTNOTE:

[6] The Tuscans, who are the best governed people in Italy, pay
_twenty per cent._ of their property in taxes--paying the whole value
of their estates, of course, in five years. The extortions of the
priests, added to this, are sufficiently burdensome.

LETTER LI.

     FLORENTINE PECULIARITIES--SOCIETY--BALLS--DUCAL
     ENTERTAINMENTS--PRIVILEGE OF STRANGERS--FAMILIES OF HIGH
     RANK--THE EXCLUSIVES--SOIREES--PARTIES OF A RICH
     BANKER--PEASANT BEAUTY--VISITERS OF A BARONESS--AWKWARD
     DEPORTMENT OF A PRINCE--A CONTENTED MARRIED LADY--HUSBANDS,
     CAVALIERS, AND WIVES--PERSONAL MANNERS--HABITS OF SOCIETY,
     ETC.

I am about starting on my second visit to Rome, after having passed
nearly three months in Florence. As I have seen most of the society of
this gayest and fairest of the Italian cities, it may not be
uninteresting to depart a little from the traveller's routine by
sketching a feature or two.

Florence is a resort for strangers from every part of the world. The
gay society is a mixture of all nations, of whom one third may be
Florentine, one third English, and the remaining part equally divided
between Russians, Germans, French, Poles, and Americans. The English
entertain a great deal, and give most of the balls and dinner parties.
The Florentines seldom trouble themselves to give parties, but are
always at home for visits in the _prima sera_ (from seven till nine),
and in their box at the opera. They go, without scruple, to all the
strangers' balls, considering courtesy repaid, perhaps, by the weekly
reception of the Grand Duke, and a weekly ball at the club-house of
young Italian noblemen.

The ducal entertainments occur every Tuesday, and are the most
splendid of course. The foreign ministers present all of their
countrymen who have been presented at their own courts, and the
company is necessarily more select than elsewhere. The Florentines who
go to court are about seven hundred, of whom half are invited on each
week--strangers, when once presented, having the double privilege of
coming uninvited to all. There are several Italian families, of the
highest rank, who are seen only here; but, with the single exception
of one unmarried girl, of uncommon beauty, who bears a name celebrated
in Italian history, they are no loss to general society. Among the
foreigners of rank, are three or four German princes, who play high
and waltz well, and are remarkable for nothing else; half a dozen
star-wearing dukes, counts, and marquises, of all nations and in any
quantity, and a few English noblemen and noble ladies--only the latter
nation showing their blood at all in their features and bearing.

The most exclusive society is that of the Prince Montfort (Jerome
Bonaparte), whose splendid palace is shut entirely against the
English, and difficult of access to all. He makes a single exception
in favor of a descendant of the Talbots, a lady whose beauty might be
an apology for a much graver departure from rule. He has given two
grand entertainments since the carnival commenced, to which nothing
was wanting but people to enjoy them. The immense rooms were flooded
with light, the music was the best Florence could give, the supper
might have supped an army--stars and red ribands entered with every
fresh comer, but it looked like a "banquet hall deserted." Some thirty
ladies, and as many men, were all that Florence contained worthy of
the society of the Ex-King. A kinder man in his manners, however, or
apparently a more affectionate husband and father, I never saw. He
opened the dance by waltzing with the young Princess, his daughter, a
lovely girl of fourteen, of whom he seems fond to excess, and he was
quite the gayest person in the company till the ball was over. The
Ex-Queen, who is a miracle of size, sat on a divan, with her ladies of
honor about her, following her husband with her eyes, and enjoying his
gayety with the most childish good humor.

The Saturday evening _soirées_, at Prince Poniatowski's (a brother of
the hero), are perhaps as agreeable as any in Florence. He has several
grown-up sons and daughters married, and, with a very sumptuous palace
and great liberality of style, he has made his parties more than
usually valued. His eldest daughter is the leader of the fashion, and
his second is the "cynosure of all eyes." The old Prince is a tall,
bent, venerable man, with snow-white hair, and very peculiarly marked
features. He is fond of speaking English, and professes a great
affection for America.

Then there are the _soirées_ of the rich banker, Fenzi, which, as they
are subservient to business, assemble all ranks on the common
pretensions of interest. At the last, I saw, among other curiosities,
a young girl of eighteen from one of the more common families of
Florence--a fine specimen of the peasant beauty of Italy. Her heavily
moulded figure, hands, and feet, were quite forgiven when you looked
at her dark, deep, indolent eye, and glowing skin, and strongly-lined
mouth and forehead. The society was evidently new to her, but she had
a manner quite beyond being astonished. It was the kind of _animal
dignity_ so universal in the lower classes of this country.

A German baroness of high rank receives on the Mondays, and here one
sees foreign society in its highest coloring. The prettiest woman that
frequents her parties, is a Genoese marchioness, who has _left her
husband_ to live with a Lucchese count, who has _left his wife_. He is
a very accomplished man, with the look of Mephistopheles in the
"Devil's Walk," and she is certainly a most fascinating woman. She is
received in most of the good society of Florence--a severe, though a
very just comment on its character. A Prince, the brother of the King
of ----, divided the attention of the company with her last Monday. He
is a tall, military-looking man, with very bad manners, ill at ease,
and impudent at the same time. He entered with his suite in the middle
of a song. The singer stopped, the company rose, the Prince swept
about, bowing like a dancing-master, and, after the sensation had
subsided, the ladies were taken up and presented to him, one by one.
He asked them all the same question, stayed through two songs, which
he spoiled by talking loudly all the while, and then bowed himself out
in the same awkward style, leaving everybody more happy for his
departure.

One gains little by his opportunities of meeting Italian ladies in
society. The _cavaliere servente_ flourishes still as in the days of
Beppo, and it is to him only that the lady condescends to _talk_.
There is a delicate, refined-looking, little marchioness here, who is
remarkable as being the only known Italian lady without a cavalier.
They tell you, with an amused smile, "that she is content with her
husband." It really seems to be a business of real love between the
lady of Italy and her cavalier. Naturally enough too--for her parents
marry her without consulting her at all, and she selects a friend
afterward, as ladies in other countries select a lover who is to end
in a husband. The married couple are never seen together by any
accident, and the lady and her cavalier never apart. The latter is
always invited with her as a matter of course, and the husband, if
there is room, or if he is not forgotten. She is insulted if asked
without a cavalier, but is quite indifferent whether her husband goes
with her or not. These are points _really settled_ in the policy of
society, and the rights of the cavalier are specified in the marriage
contracts. I had thought, until I came to Italy, that such things were
either a romance, or customs of an age gone by.

I like very much the personal manners of the Italians. They are mild
and courteous to the farthest extent of looks and words. They do not
entertain, it is true, but their great dim rooms are free to you
whenever you can find them at home, and you are at liberty to join the
gossiping circle around the lady of the house, or sit at the table and
read, or be silent unquestioned. You are _let alone_, if you seem to
choose it, and it is neither commented on, nor thought uncivil, and
this I take to be a grand excellence in manners.

The society is dissolute, I think, almost without an exception. The
English fall into its habits, with the difference that they do not
conceal it so well, and have the appearance of knowing its
wrong--which the Italians have not. The latter are very much shocked
at the want of propriety in the management of the English. To suffer
the particulars of an intrigue to get about is a worse sin, in their
eyes, than any violation of the commandments. It is scarce possible
for an American to conceive the universal corruption of a society
like this of Florence, though, if he were not told of it he would
think it all that was delicate and attractive. There are external
features in which the society of our own country is far less
scrupulous and proper.

LETTER LII.

     SIENNA--POGGIOBONSI--BONCONVENTO--ENCOURAGEMENT OF FRENCH
     ARTISTS BY THEIR GOVERNMENT--ACQUAPENDENTE--POOR BEGGAR, THE
     ORIGINAL OF A SKETCH BY COLE--BOLSENA--VOLSCENIUM--SCENERY--
     CURIOUS STATE OF THE CHESTNUT WOODS.

SIENNA.--A day and a half on my second journey to Rome. With a party
of four nations inside, and two strangers, probably Frenchmen, in the
cabriolet, we have jogged on at some three miles in the hour, enjoying
the lovely scenery of these lower Appenines at our leisure. We slept
last night at Poggiobonsi, a little village on a hill-side, and
arrived at Sienna for our mid-day rest. I pencil this note after an
hour's ramble over the city, visiting once more the cathedral, with
its encrusted marbles and naked graces, and the shell-shaped square in
the centre of the city, at the rim of which the eight principal
streets terminate. There is a fountain in the midst, surrounded with
_bassi relievi_ much disfigured. It was mentioned by Dante. The
streets were deserted, it being Sunday, and all the people at the
Corso, to see the racing of horses without riders.

BONCONVENTO.--We sit, with the remains of a traveller's supper on the
table--six very social companions. Our cabriolet friends are two
French artists, on their way to study at Rome. They are both
pensioners of the government, each having gained the annual prize at
the academy in his separate branch of art, which entitles him to five
years' support in Italy. They are full of enthusiasm, and converse
with all the amusing vivacity of their nation. The academy of France
send out in this manner five young men annually, who have gained the
prizes for painting, sculpture, architecture, music, and engraving.

This is the place where Henry the Seventh of Germany was poisoned by a
monk, on his way to Rome. The drug was given to him in the communion
cup. The "Ave Marie" was ringing when we drove into town, and I left
the carriage and followed the crowd, in the hope of finding an old
church where the crime might have been committed. But the priest was
mumbling the service in a new chapel, which no romance that I could
summon would picture as the scene of a tragedy.

ACQUAPENDENTE.--While the dirty customhouse officer is deciphering our
passports, in a hole a dog would live in unwillingly, I take out my
pencil to mark once more the pleasure I have received from the
exquisite scenery of this place. The wild rocks enclosing the little
narrow valley below, the waterfalls, the town on its airy perch above,
the just starting vegetation of spring, the roads lined with
snowdrops, crocuses and violets, have renewed, in a tenfold degree,
the delight with which I saw this romantic spot on my former journey
to Rome.

We crossed the mountain of Radicofani yesterday, in so thick a mist
that I could not even distinguish the ruin of the old castle, towering
into the clouds above. The wild, half-naked people thronged about us
as before, and I gave another paul to the old beggar with whom I
became acquainted by Mr. Cole's graphic sketch. The winter had,
apparently, gone hard with him. He was scarce able to come to the
carriage window, and coughed so hollowly that I thought he had nearly
begged his last pittance.

BOLSENA.--we walked in advance of the vetturino along the borders of
this lovely and beautiful lake till we are tired. Our artists have
taken off their coats with the heat, and sit, a quarter of a mile
further on, pointing in every direction at these unparalleled views.
The water is as still as a mirror, with a soft mist on its face, and
the water-fowl in thousands are diving and floating within gunshot of
us. An afternoon in June could not be more summer-like, and this, to a
lover of soft climate, is no trifling pleasure.

A mile behind us lies the town, the seat of ancient _Volscinium_, the
capital of the Volscians. The country about is one quarry of ruins,
mouldering away in the moss. Nobody can live in health in the
neighborhood, and the poor pale wretches who call it a home are in
melancholy contrast to the smiling paradise about them. Before us, in
the bosom of the lake, lie two green islands, those which Pliny
records to have floated in his time and one of which, _Martana_, a
small conical isle, was the scene of the murder of the queen of the
Goths, by her cousin Theodatus. She was taken there and strangled. It
is difficult to imagine, with such a sea of sunshine around and over
it, that it was ever anything but a spot of delight.

The whole neighborhood is covered with rotten trunks of trees--a thing
which at first surprised me in a country where wood is so economised.
It is accounted for in the French guide-book of one of our party by
the fact, that the chestnut woods of Bolsena are considered sacred by
the people, from their antiquity, and are never cut. The trees have
ripened and fallen and rotted thus for centuries--one cause, perhaps,
of the deadly change in the air.

The vetturino comes lumbering up, and I must pocket my pencil and
remount.

LETTER LIII.

     MONTEFIASCONE--ANECDOTE OF THE WINE--VITERBO--MOUNT
     CIMINO--TRADITION--VIEW OF ST. PETER'S--ENTRANCE INTO ROME--A
     STRANGER'S IMPRESSIONS OF THE CITY.

MONTEFIASCONE.--We have stopped for the night at the hotel of this
place, so renowned for its wine--the remnant of a bottle of which
stands, at this moment, twinkling between me and my French companions.
The ladies of our party have gone to bed, and left us in the room
where sat _Jean Defoucris_, the merry German monk, who died of excess
in drinking the same liquor that flashes through this straw-covered
flask. The story is told more fully in the French guide-books. A
prelate of Augsbourg, on a pilgrimage to Rome, sent forward his
servant with orders to mark every tavern where the wine was good with
the word _est_, in large letters of chalk. On arriving at this hotel,
the monk saw the signal thrice written over the door--_Est! Est! Est!_
He put up his mule, and drank of Montefiascone till he died. His
servant wrote his epitaph, which is still seen in the church of St.
Florian:--

     "Propter minium EST, EST,
     Dominus meus mortuus EST!"

"_Est, Est, Est!_" is the motto upon the sign of the hotel to this
day.

In wandering about Viterbo in search of amusement, while the horses
were baiting, I stumbled upon the shop of an antiquary. After looking
over his medals, Etruscan vases, cameos, &c., a very interesting
collection, I inquired into the state of trade for such things in
Viterbo. He was a cadaverous, melancholy looking old man, with his
pockets worn quite out with the habit of thrusting his hands into
them, and about his mouth and eye there was the proper virtuoso
expression of inquisitiveness and discrimination. He kept also a small
_café_ adjoining his shop, into which we passed, as he shrugged his
shoulders at my question. I had wondered to find a vender of costly
curiosities in a town of such poverty, and I was not surprised at the
sad fortunes which had followed upon his enterprise. They were a base
herd, he said, of the people, utterly ignorant of the value of the
precious objects he had for sale and he had been compelled to open a
_café_, and degrade himself by waiting on them for a contemptible
_crazie_ worth of coffee, while his lovely antiquities lay
unappreciated within. The old gentleman was eloquent upon his
misfortunes. He had not been long in trade, and had collected his
museum originally for his own amusement. He was an odd specimen, in a
small way, of a man who was quite above his sphere, and suffered for
his superiority. I bought a pretty _intaglio_, and bade him farewell,
after an hour's acquaintance, with quite the feeling of a friend.

Mount Cimino rose before us soon after leaving Viterbo, and we walked
up most of the long and gentle ascent, inhaling the odor of the spicy
plants for which it is famous, and looking out sharply for the
brigands with which it is always infested. English carriages are
constantly robbed on this part of the route of late. The robbers are
met usually in parties of ten and twelve, and, a week before we
passed, Lady Berwick (the widow of an English nobleman, and a sister
of the famous Harriet Wilson) was stopped and plundered in broad
mid-day. The excessive distress among the peasantry of these
misgoverned States accounts for these things, and one only wonders why
there is not even more robbing among such a starving population. This
mountain, by the way, and the pretty lake below it, are spoken of in
the Æneid: "_Cimini cum monte locum_," etc. There is an ancient
tradition, that in the crescent-shaped valley which the lake fills,
there was formerly a city, which was overwhelmed by the rise of the
water, and certain authors state that when the lake is clear, the
ruins are still to be seen at the bottom.

The sun rose upon us as we reached the mountain above Baccano, on the
sixth day of our journey, and, by its clear golden flood, we saw the
dome of St. Peter's, at a distance of sixteen miles, towering amid the
campagna in all its majestic beauty. We descended into the vast plain,
and traversed its gentle undulations for two or three hours. With the
forenoon well advanced, we turned into the valley of the Tiber, and
saw the home of Raphael, a noble chateau on the side of a hill, near
the river, and, in the little plain between, the first peach-trees we
had seen, in full blossom. The tomb of Nero is on one side of the
road, before crossing the Tiber, and on the other a newly painted and
staring _restaurant_, where the modern Roman cockneys drive for punch
and ices. The bridge of Pontemolle, by which we passed into the
immediate suburb of Rome, was the ancient _Pons Æmilius_, and here
Cicero arrested the conspirators on their way to join Catiline in his
camp. It was on the same bridge, too, that Constantine saw his famous
vision, and gained his victory over the tyrant Maxentius.

Two miles over the _Via Flaminia_, between garden walls that were
ornamented with sculpture and inscription in the time of Augustus,
brought us to the _Porta del Popolo_. The square within this noble
gate is modern, but very imposing. Two streets diverge before you, as
far away as you can see into the heart of the city, a magnificent
fountain sends up its waters in the centre, the façades of two
handsome churches face you as you enter, and on the right and left are
gardens and palaces of princely splendor. Gay and sumptuous equipages
cross it in every direction, driving out to the villa Borghese, and up
to the Pincian mount, the splendid troops of the Pope are on guard,
and the busy and stirring population of modern Rome swell out to its
limit like the ebb and flow of the sea. All this disappoints while it
impresses the stranger. He has come to Rome--but it was _old_ Rome
that he had pictured to his fancy. The Forum, the ruins of her
temples, the palaces of her emperors, the homes of her orators, poets,
and patriots, the majestic relics of the once mistress of the world,
are the features in his anticipation. But he enters by a modern gate
to a modern square, and pays his modern coin to a whiskered officer of
customs; and in the place of a venerable Belisarius begging an obolus
in classic Latin, he is beset by a troop of lusty and filthy
lazzaroni entreating for a _baioch_ in the name of the Madonna, and in
effeminate Italian. He drives down the Corso, and reads nothing but
French signs, and sees all the familiar wares of his own country
exposed for sale, and every other person on the _pave_ is an
Englishman, with a narrow-rimmed hat and whalebone stick, and with an
hour at the Dogama, where his baggage is turned inside out by a snuffy
old man who speaks French, and a reception at a hotel where the porter
addresses him in his own language, whatever it may be; he goes to bed
under Parisian curtains, and tries to dream of the Rome he could not
realize while awake.

LETTER LIV.

     APPIAN WAY--TOMB OF CECILIA METELLA--ALBANO--TOMB OF THE
     CURIATII--ARICIA--TEMPLE OF DIANA--FOUNTAIN OF EGERIA--LAKE OF
     NEMI--VELLETRI--PONTINE MARSHES--CONVENT--CANAL--TERRACINA--
     SAN FELICE--FONDI--STORY OF JULIA GONZAGA--CICERO'S GARDEN AND
     TOMB--MOLA--MINTURNA--RUINS OF AN AMPHITHEATRE AND TEMPLE--
     FALERNIAN MOUNT AND WINE--THE DOCTOR OF ST. AGATHA--CAPUA--
     ENTRANCE INTO NAPLES--THE QUEEN.

With the intention of returning to Rome for the ceremonies of the holy
week, I have merely passed through on my way to Naples. We left it the
morning after our arrival, going by the "Appian way" to mount Albano,
which borders the Campagna on the south, at a distance of fifteen
miles. This celebrated road is lined with the ruined tombs of the
Romans. Off at the right, some four or five miles from the city, rises
the fortress-like _tomb of Cecilia Metella_, so exquisitely mused upon
by Childe Harold. This, says Sismondi, with the tombs of Adrian and
Augustus, became fortresses of banditti, in the thirteenth century,
and were taken by Brancallone, the Bolognese governor of Rome, who
hanged the marauders from the walls. It looks little like "a woman's
grave."

We changed horses at the pretty village of Albano, and, on leaving it,
passed an ancient mausoleum, believed to be the tomb of the Curiatii
who fought the Horatii on this spot. It is a large structure, and had
originally four pyramids on the corners, two of which only remain.

A mile from Albano lies Aricia, in a country of the loveliest rural
beauty. Here was the famous temple of Diana, and here were the lake
and grove sacred to the "virgin huntress," and consecrated as her home
by peculiar worship. The fountain of Egeria is here, where Numa
communed with the nymph, and the lake of Nemi, on the borders of which
the temple stood, and which was called _Diana's mirror_ (_speculum
Dianæ_), is at this day, perhaps, one of the sweetest gems of natural
scenery in the world.

We slept at Velletri, a pretty town of some twelve thousand
inhabitants, which stands on a hill-side, leaning down to the Pontine
marshes. It was one of the grand days of carnival, and the streets
were full of masks, walking up and down in their ridiculous dresses,
and committing every sort of foolery. The next morning, by daylight,
we were upon the Pontine marshes, the long thirty miles level of which
we passed in an unbroken trot, one part of a day's journey of
seventy-five miles, done by the _same horses_, at the rate of six
miles in the hour! They are small, compact animals, and look in good
condition, though they do as much habitually.

At a distance of fifteen miles from Velletri, we passed a convent,
which is built opposite the spot where St. Paul was met by his
friends, on his journey from the seaside to Rome. The canal upon which
Horace embarked on his celebrated journey to Brundusium, runs
parallel with the road for its whole distance. This marshy desert is
inhabited by a race of as wretched beings, perhaps, as are to be found
upon the face of the earth. The pestiferous miasma of the pools is
certain destruction to health, and the few who are needed at the
distant post-houses, crawl out to the road-side like so many victims
from a pest-house, stooping with weakness, hollow-eyed, and apparently
insensible to everything. The feathered race seems exempt from its
influence, and the quantities of game of every known description are
incredible. The ground was alive with wild geese, turkeys, pigeons,
plover, ducks, and numerous birds we did not know, as far as the eye
could distinguish. The travelling books caution against sleeping in
the carriage while passing these marshes, but we found it next to
impossible to resist the heavy drowsiness of the air.

At Terracina the marshes end, and the long avenue of elms terminates
at the foot of a romantic precipice, which is washed by the
Mediterranean. The town is most picturesquely built between the rocky
wall and the sea. We dined with the hollow murmur of the surf in our
ears, and then, presenting our passports, entered the kingdom of
Naples. This Terracina, by the way, was the ancient _Anxur_, which
Horace describes in his line--

     "Impositum late saxis candentibus Anxur."

For twenty or thirty miles before arriving at Terracina, we had seen
before us the headland of Circoeum, lying like a mountain island off
the shore. It is usually called San Felice, from the small town seated
upon it. This was the ancient abode of the "daughter of the sun," and
here were imprisoned, according to Homer, the champions of Ulysses,
after their metamorphoses.

From Terracina to Fondi, we followed the old Appian way, a road hedged
with flowering myrtles and orange trees laden with fruit. Fondi itself
is dirtier than imagination could picture it, and the scowling men in
the streets look like myrmidons of Fra Diavolo, their celebrated
countryman. This town, however, was the scene of the romantic story of
the beautiful Julia Gonzaga, and was destroyed by the corsair
Barbarossa, who had intended to present the rarest beauty of Italy to
the Sultan. It was to the rocky mountains above the town that she
escaped in her night-dress, and lay concealed till the pirate's
departure.

In leaving Fondi, we passed the ruined walls of a garden said to have
belonged to Cicero, whose tomb is only three leagues distant. Night
came on before we reached the tomb, and we were compelled to promise
ourselves a pilgrimage to it on our return.

We slept at Mola, and here Cicero was assassinated. The ruins of his
country-house are still here. The town lies in the lap of a graceful
bay, and in all Italy, it is said, there is no spot more favored by
nature. The mountains shelter it from the winds of the north; the soil
produces, spontaneously, the orange, the myrtle, the olive, delicious
grapes, jasmine, and many odoriferous herbs. This and its neighborhood
was called, by the great orator and statesman who selected it for his
retreat, "the most beautiful patrimony of the Romans." The
Mediterranean spreads out from its bosom, the lovely islands near
Naples bound its view, Vesuvius sends up its smoke and fire in the
south, and back from its hills stretches a country fertile and
beautiful as a paradise. This is a place of great resort for the
English and other travellers in the summer. The old palaces are turned
into hotels, and we entered our inn through an avenue of shrubs that
must have been planted and trimmed for a century.

We left Mola before dawn and crossed the small river Garigliano as the
sun rose. A short distance from the southern bank, we found ourselves
in the midst of ruins, the golden beams of the sun pouring upon us
through the arches of some once magnificent structure, whose area is
now crossed by the road. This was the ancient Minturna, and the ruins
are those of an amphitheatre, and a temple of Venus. Some say that it
was in the marshes about the now waste city, that the soldier sent by
Sylla to kill Marius, found the old hero, and, struck with his noble
mien, fell with respect at his feet.

The road soon enters a chain of hills, and the scenery becomes
enchanting. At the left of the first ascent lies the Falernian mount,
whose wines are immortalized by Horace. It is a beautiful hill, which
throws round its shoulder to the south, and is covered with vineyards.
I dismounted and walked on while the horses breathed at the post-house
of St. Agatha, and was overtaken by a good-natured-looking man,
mounted on a mule, of whom I made some inquiry respecting the modern
Falernian. He said it was still the best wine of the neighborhood, but
was far below its ancient reputation, because never kept long enough
to ripen. It is at its prime from the fifteenth to the twentieth year,
and is usually drank the first or second. My new acquaintance, I soon
found, was the physician of the two or three small villages nested
about among the hills and a man of some pretensions to learning. I was
delighted with his frank good-humor, and a certain spice of drollery
in his description of his patients. The peasants at work in the fields
saluted him from any distance as he passed; and the pretty contadini
going to St. Agatha with their baskets on their heads, smiled as he
nodded, calling them all by name, and I was rather amused than
offended with the inquisitiveness he manifested about my age, family,
pursuits, and even morals. His mule stopped of its own will, at the
door of the apothecary of the small village on the summit of the hill,
and as the carriage came in sight the doctor invited me, seizing my
hand with a look of friendly sincerity, to stop at St. Agatha on my
return, to shoot, and drink Falernian with him for a month. The
apothecary stopped the vetturino at the door; and, to the astonishment
of my companions within, the doctor seized me in his arms and kissed
me on both sides of my face with a volume of blessings and
compliments, which I had no breath in my surprise to return. I have
made many friends on the road in this country of quick feelings, but
the doctor of St. Agatha had a readiness of sympathy which threw all
my former experience into the shade.

We dined at Capua, the city whose luxuries enervated Hannibal and his
soldiers--the "_dives, amorosa, felix_" Capua. It is in melancholy
contrast with the description now--its streets filthy, and its people
looking the antipodes of luxury. The climate should be the same, as we
dined with open doors, and with the branch of an orange tree heavy
with fruit hanging in at the window, in a month that with us is one of
the wintriest.

From Capua to Naples, the distance is but fifteen miles, over a flat,
uninteresting country. We entered "this third city in the world" in
the middle of the afternoon, and were immediately surrounded with
beggars of every conceivable degree of misery. We sat an hour at the
gate while our passports were recorded, and the vetturino examined,
and then passing up a noble street, entered a dense crowd, through
which was creeping slowly a double line of carriages. The mounted
dragoons compelled our postillion to fall into the line, and we were
two hours following in a fashionable corso with our mud-spattered
vehicle and tired horses, surrounded by all that was brilliant and gay
in Naples. It was the last day of carnival. Everybody was abroad, and
we were forced, however unwillingly to see all the rank and beauty of
the city. The carriages in this fine climate are all open, and the
ladies were in full dress. As we entered the Toledo, the cavalcade
came to a halt, and with hats off and handkerchiefs flying in every
direction about them, the young new-married Queen of Naples rode up
the middle of the street preceded and followed by outriders in the
gayest livery. She has been married about a month, is but seventeen,
and is acknowledged to be the most beautiful woman in the kingdom. The
description I had heard of her, though very extravagant, had hardly
done her justice. She is a little above the middle height, with a fine
lift to her head and neck, and a countenance only less modest and
maidenly than noble.

LETTER LV.

     ROME--FRONT OF ST. PETER'S--EQUIPAGES OF THE CARDINALS--
     BEGGARS--BODY OF THE CHURCH--TOMB OF ST. PETER--THE
     TIBER--FORTRESS-TOMB OF ADRIAN--JEWS' QUARTER--FORUM BARBERINI
     PALACE--PORTRAIT OF BEATRICE CENCI--HER MELANCHOLY
     HISTORY--PICTURE OF THE FORNARINA--LIKENESS OF GIORGIONE'S
     MISTRESS--JOSEPH AND POTIPHAR'S WIFE--THE PALACES DORIA AND
     SCIARRA--PORTRAIT OF OLIVIA WALDACHINI--OF "A CELEBRATED
     WIDOW"--OF SEMIRAMIS--CLAUDE'S LANDSCAPES--BRILL'S--
     BRUGHEL'S--NOTTI'S "WOMAN CATCHING FLEAS"--DA VINCI'S QUEEN
     GIOVANNA--PORTRAIT OF A FEMALE DORIA--PRINCE DORIA--PALACE
     SCIARRA--BRILL AND BOTH'S LANDSCAPES--CLAUDE'S--PICTURE OF
     NOAH INTOXICATED--ROMANA'S FORNARINA--DA VINCI'S TWO PICTURES.

Drawn in twenty different directions on starting from my lodgings this
morning, I found myself, undecided where to pass my day, in front of
St. Peter's. Some gorgeous ceremony was just over, and the sumptuous
equipages of the cardinals, blazing in the sun with their mountings of
gold and silver, were driving up and dashing away from the end of the
long colonnades, producing any effect upon the mind rather than a
devout one. I stood admiring their fiery horses and gay liveries, till
the last rattled from the square, and then mounted to the deserted
church. Its vast vestibule was filled with beggars, diseased in every
conceivable manner, halting, groping, and crawling about in search of
strangers of whom to implore charity--a contrast to the splendid
pavement beneath and the gold and marble above and around, which would
reconcile one to see the "mighty dome" melted into alms, and his
holiness reduced to a plain chapel and a rusty cassock.

Lifting the curtain I stood in the body of the church. There were
perhaps twenty persons, at different distances, on its immense floor,
the farthest off (_six hundred and fourteen feet from me!_) looking
like a pigmy in the far perspective. St. Peter's is less like a church
than a collection of large churches enclosed under a gigantic roof.
The chapels at the sides are larger than most houses of public worship
in our country, and of these there may be eight or ten, not included
in the effect of the vast interior. One is lost in it. It is a city of
columns and sculpture and mosaic. Its walls are encrusted with
precious stones and masterly workmanship to the very top, and its
wealth may be conceived when you remember that, standing in the centre
and raising your eyes aloft, there are _four hundred and forty feet_
between you and the roof of the dome--the height, almost of a
mountain.

I walked up toward the tomb of St. Peter, passing in my way a solitary
worshipper here and there, upon his knees, and arrested constantly by
the exquisite beauty of the statuary with which the columns are
carved. Accustomed as we are in America, to churches filled with
pews, it is hardly possible to imagine the noble effect of a vast
mosaic floor, unencumbered even with a chair, and only broken by a few
prostrate figures, just specking its wide area. All Catholic churches
are without fixed seats, and St. Peter's seems scarce measurable to
the eye, it is so far and clear, from one extremity to the other.

I passed the hundred lamps burning over the tomb of St. Peter, the
lovely female statue (covered with a bronze drapery, because its
exquisite beauty was thought dangerous to the morality of the young
priests), reclining upon the tomb of Paul III., the ethereal figures
of Canova's geniuses weeping at the door of the tomb of the Stuarts
(where sleeps the pretender Charles Edward), the thousand thousand
rich and beautiful monuments of art and taste crowding every corner of
this wondrous church--I passed them, I say, with the same lost and
unexamining, unparticularizing feeling which I cannot overcome in this
place--a mind borne quite off its feet and confused and overwhelmed
with the tide of astonishment--the one grand impression of the whole.
I dare say, a little more familiarity with St. Peter's will do away
the feeling, but I left the church, after two hours loitering in its
aisles, despairing, and scarce wishing to examine or make a note.

Those beautiful fountains, moistening the air over the whole area of
the column encircled front!--and that tall Egyptian pyramid, sending
up its slender and perfect spire between! One lingers about, and turns
again and again to gaze around him, as he leaves St. Peter's, in
wonder and admiration.

I crossed the Tiber, at the fortress-tomb of Adrian, and thridding the
long streets at the western end of Rome, passed through the Jews'
quarter, and entered the Forum. The sun lay warm among the ruins of
the great temples and columns of ancient Rome, and, seating myself on
a fragment of an antique frieze, near the noble arch of Septimius
Severus, I gazed on the scene, for the first time, by daylight. I had
been in Rome, on my first visit, during the full moon, and my
impressions of the Forum with this romantic enhancement were vivid in
my memory. One would think it enough to be upon the spot at any time,
with light to see it, but what with modern excavations, fresh banks of
earth, carts, boys playing at marbles, and wooden sentry-boxes, and
what with the Parisian promenade, made by the French through the
centre, the imagination is too disturbed and hindered in daylight. The
moon gives it all one covering of gray and silver. The old columns
stand up in all their solitary majesty, wrecks of beauty and taste;
silence leaves the fancy to find a voice for itself; and from the
palaces of the Cesars to the prisons of the capitol, the whole train
of emperors, senators, conspirators, and citizens, are summoned with
but half a thought and the magic glass is filled with moving and
re-animated Rome. There, beneath those walls, on the right, in the
Mamertine prisons, perished Jugurtha (and there, too, were imprisoned
St. Paul and St. Peter), and opposite, upon the Palatine-hill, lived
the mighty masters of Rome, in the "palaces of the Cesars," and
beneath the majestic arch beyond, were led, as a seal of their
slavery, the captives from Jerusalem, and in these temples, whose
ruins cast their shadows at my feet, walked and discoursed Cicero and
the philosophers, Brutus and the patriots, Catiline and the
conspirators, Augustus and the scholars and poets, and the great
stranger in Rome, St. Paul, gazing at the false altars, and burning in
his heart to reveal to them the "unknown God." What men have crossed
the shadows of these very columns! and what thoughts, that have moved
the world, have been born beneath them!

The Barberini palace contains three or four masterpieces of painting.
The most celebrated is the portrait of Beatrice Cenci, by Guido. The
melancholy and strange history of this beautiful girl has been told in
a variety of ways, and is probably familiar to every reader. Guido saw
her on her way to execution, and has painted her as she was dressed,
in the gray habit and head-dress made by her own hands, and finished
but an hour before she put it on. There are engravings and copies of
the picture all over the world, but none that I have seen give any
idea of the excessive gentleness and serenity of the countenance. The
eyes retain traces of weeping, but the child-like mouth, the soft,
girlish lines of features that look as if they never had worn more
than the one expression of youthfulness and affection, are all in
repose, and the head is turned over the shoulder with as simple a
sweetness as if she had but looked back to say a good-night before
going to her chamber to sleep. She little looks like what she was--one
of the firmest and boldest spirits whose history is recorded. After
murdering her father for his fiendish attempts upon her virtue, she
endured every torture rather than disgrace her family by confession,
and was only moved from her constancy, at last, by the agonies of her
younger brother on the rack. Who would read capabilities like these,
in these heavenly and child-like features?

I have tried to purchase the life of the Cenci, in vain. A bookseller
told me to-day, that it was a forbidden book, on account of its
reflections upon the pope. Immense interest was made for the poor
girl, but, it is said, the papal treasury ran low, and if she was
pardoned, the large possessions of the Cenci family could not have
been confiscated.

The gallery contains also, a delicious picture of the Fornarina by
Raphael himself, and a portrait of Giorgione's mistress, as a
Carthaginian slave, the same head multiplied so often in his and
Titian's pictures. The original of the admirable picture of Joseph and
the wife of Potiphar, is also here. A copy of it is in the gallery of
Florence.

I have passed a day between the two palaces Doria and Sciarra, nearly
opposite each other in the Corso at Rome. The first is an immense
gallery of perhaps a thousand pictures, distributed through seven
large halls, and four galleries encircling the court. In the first
four rooms I found nothing that struck me particularly. In the fifth
was a portrait, by an unknown artist, of Olivia Waldachini, the
favorite and sister-in-law of Pope Innocent X., a handsome woman, with
that round fulness in the throat and neck, which (whether it existed
in the originals, or is a part of a painter's ideal of a woman of
pleasure), is universal in portraits of that character. In the same
room was a portrait of a "celebrated widow," by Vandyck,[7] a had-been
beautiful woman, in a staid cap (the hands wonderfully painted), and a
large and rich picture of Semiramis, by one of the Carraccis.

In the galleries hung the landscapes by Claude, famous through the
world. It is like roving through a paradise, to sit and look at them.
His broad green lawns, his half-hidden temples, his life-like
luxuriant trees, his fountains, his sunny streams--all flush into the
eye like the bright opening of a Utopia, or some dream over a
description from Boccaccio. It is what Italy might be in a golden
age--her ruins rebuilt into the transparent air, her woods unprofaned,
her people pastoral and refined, and every valley a landscape of
Arcadia. I can conceive no higher pleasure for the imagination than to
see a Claude in travelling through Italy. It is finding a home for
one's more visionary fancies--those children of moonshine that one
begets in a colder clime, but scarce dares acknowledge till he has
seen them under a more congenial sky. More plainly, one does not know
whether his abstract imaginations of pastoral life and scenery are not
ridiculous and unreal, till he has seen one of these landscapes, and
felt _steeped_, if I may use such a word, in the very loveliness which
inspired the pencil of the painter. There he finds the pastures, the
groves, the fairy structures, the clear waters, the straying groups,
the whole delicious scenery, as bright as in his dreams, and he feels
as if he should bless the artist for the liberty to acknowledge freely
to himself the possibility of so beautiful a world.

We went on through the long galleries, going back again and again to
see the Claudes. In the third division of the gallery were one or two
small and bright landscapes, by Brill, that would have enchanted us if
seen elsewhere; and four strange pictures, by Breughel, representing
the four elements, by a kind of half-poetical, half-supernatural
landscapes, one of which had a very lovely view of a distant village.
Then there was the famous picture of the "woman catching fleas" by
Gherardodelle Notti, a perfect piece of life. She stands close to a
lamp, with a vessel of hot water before her, and is just closing her
thumb and finger over a flea, which she has detected on the bosom of
her dress. Some eight or ten are boiling already in the water, and the
expression upon the girl's face is that of the most grave and
unconscious interest in her employment. Next to this amusing picture
hangs a portrait of Queen Giovanna, of Naples, by Leonardo da Vinci, a
copy of which I had seen, much prized, in the possession of the
archbishop of Torento. It scarce looks like the talented and ambitious
queen she was, but it does full justice to her passion for amorous
intrigue--a face full of the woman.

The last picture we came to, was one not even mentioned in the
catalogue, an old portrait of one of the females of the Doria family.
It was a girl of eighteen, with a kind of face that in life must have
been extremely fascinating. While we were looking at it, we heard a
kind of gibbering laugh from the outer apartment, and an old man in a
cardinal's dress, dwarfish in size, and with deformed and almost
useless legs, came shuffling into the gallery, supported by two
priests. His features were imbecility itself, rendered almost horrible
by the contrast of the cardinal's red cap. The _custode_ took off his
hat and bowed low, and the old man gave us a half-bow and a long laugh
in passing, and disappeared at the end of the gallery. This was the
Prince Doria, the owner of the palace, and a cardinal of Rome! the
sole remaining representative of one of the most powerful and
ambitious families of Italy! There could not be a more affecting type
of the great "mistress of the world" herself. Her very children have
dwindled into idiots.

We crossed the Corso to the _Palace Sciarra_. The collection here is
small, but choice. Half a dozen small but exquisite landscapes, by
Brill and Both, grace the second room. Here are also three small
Claudes, very, very beautiful. In the next room is a finely-colored
but most indecent picture of Noah intoxicated, by Andrea Sacchi, and a
portrait by Giulio Romano, of Raphael's celebrated Fornarina, to
whose lovely face one becomes so accustomed in Italy, that it seems
like that of an acquaintance.

In the last room are two of the most celebrated pictures in Rome. The
first is by Leonardo da Vinci, and represents Vanity and Modesty, by
two females standing together in conversation--one a handsome, gay,
volatile looking creature, covered with ornaments, and listening
unwillingly to what seems a lecture from the other, upon her foibles.
The face of the other is a heavenly conception of woman--earnest,
delicate, and lovely--the idea one forms to himself, before
intercourse with the world, gives him a distaste for its purity. The
moral lesson of the picture is more forcible than language. The
painter deserved to have died, as he did, in the arms of an emperor.

The other picture represents two gamblers cheating a youth, a very
striking picture of nature. It is common from the engravings. On the
opposite side of the room, is a very expressive picture, by Schidone.
On the ruins of an old tomb stands a skull, beneath which is
written--"_I, too, was of Arcadia_;" and, at a little distance, gazing
at it in attitudes of earnest reflection, stand two shepherds, struck
simultaneously with the moral. It is a poetical thought, and wrought
out with great truth and skill.

Our eyes aching and our attention exhausted with pictures, we drove
from the Sciarra to the ruined palaces of the Cesars. Here, on an
eminence above the Tiber, with the Forum beneath us on one side, the
Coliseum on the other, and all the towers and spires of modern and
Catholic Rome arising on her many hills beyond, we seated ourselves on
fragments of marble, half buried in the grass, and mused away the
hours till sunset. On this spot Romulus founded Rome. The princely
Augustus, in the last days of her glory, laid here the foundations of
his imperial palace, which, continued by Caligula and Tiberius, and
completed by Domitian, covered the hill, like a small city. It was a
labyrinth of temples, baths, pavilions, fountains, and gardens, with a
large theatre at the western extremity; and adjoining the temple of
Apollo, was a library filled with the best authors, and ornamented
with a colossal bronze statue of Apollo, "of excellent Etruscan
workmanship." "Statues of the fifty daughters of Danaus Siuramdert
surrounded the portico" (of this same temple), "and opposite them were
equestrian statues of their husbands." About a hundred years ago,
accident discovered, in the gardens buried in rubbish, a magnificent
hall, two hundred feet in length and one hundred and thirty-two in
breadth, supposed to have been built by Domitian. It was richly
ornamented with statues, and columns of precious marbles, and near it
were baths in excellent preservation. "But," says Stark, "immense and
superb as was this first-built palace of the Cesars, Nero, whose
extravagance and passion for architecture knew no limits, thought it
much too small for him, and extended its edifices and gardens from the
Palatine to the Esquiline. After the destruction of the whole, by
fire, sixty-five years after Christ, he added to it his celebrated
'Golden House,' which extended from one extremity to the other of the
Coelian Hill."[8]

The ancient walls, which made the whole of the Mount Palatine a
fortress, still hold together its earth and its ruins. It is a broad
tabular eminence, worn into footpaths which wind at every moment
around broken shafts of marble, fragments of statuary, or broken and
ivy-covered fountains. Part of it is cultivated as a vineyard, by the
degenerate modern Romans, and the baths, into which the water still
pours from aqueducts encrusted with aged stalactites are public
washing-places for the contadini, eight or ten of whom were splashing
away in their red jackets, with gold bodkins in their hair, while we
were moralizing on their worthier progenitors of eighteen centuries
ago. It is a beautiful spot of itself, and with the delicious soft
sunshine of an Italian spring, the tall green grass beneath our feet,
and an air as soft as June just stirring the myrtles and jasmines,
growing wild wherever the ruins gave them place, our enjoyment of the
overpowering associations of the spot was ample and untroubled. I
could wish every refined spirit in the world had shared our pleasant
hour upon the Palatine.

FOOTNOTES:

[7] So called in the catalogue. The custode, however, told us it was a
portrait of the wife of Vandyck, painted as an old woman to mortify
her excessive vanity, when she was but twenty-three. He kept the
picture until she was older, and, at the time of his death, it had
become a flattering likeness, and was carefully treasured by the
widow.

[8] The following description is given of this splendid palace, by
Suetonius. "To give an idea of the extent and beauty of this edifice,
it is sufficient to mention, that in its vestibule was placed his
colossal statue, one hundred and twenty feet in height. It had a
triple portico, supported by a thousand columns, with a lake like a
little sea, surrounded by buildings which resembled cities. It
contained pasture-grounds and groves in which were all descriptions of
animals, wild and tame. Its interior shone with gold, gems, and
mother-of-pearl. In the vaulted roofs of the eating-rooms were
machines of ivory, which turned round and scattered perfumes upon the
guests. The principal banqueting room was a rotunda, so constructed
that it turned round night and day, in imitation of the motion of the
earth." When Nero took possession of this fairy palace, his only
observation was--"Now I shall begin to live like a man."

LETTER LVI.

     ANNUAL DOWRIES TO TWELVE GIRLS--VESPERS IN THE CONVENT OF
     SANTA TRINITA--RUINS OF ROMAN BATHS--A MAGNIFICENT MODERN
     CHURCH WITHIN TWO ANCIENT HALLS--GARDENS OF MECÆNAS--TOWER
     WHENCE NERO SAW ROME ON FIRE--HOUSES OF HORACE AND
     VIRGIL--BATHS OF TITUS AND CARACALLA.

The yearly ceremony of giving dowries to twelve girls, was performed
by the Pope, this morning, in the church built over the ancient temple
of Minerva. His Holiness arrived, in state, from the Vatican, at ten,
followed by his red troop of cardinals, and preceded by a clerical
courier, on a palfrey, and the body-guard of nobles. He blessed the
crowd, right and left, with his three fingers (precisely as a Parisian
dandy salutes his friend across the street), and, descending from his
carriage (which is like a good-sized glass boudoir upon wheels), he
was received in the papal sedan, and carried into the church by his
Swiss bearers. My legation button carried me through the guard, and I
found an excellent place under a cardinal's wing, in the penetralia
within the railing of the altar. Mass commenced presently, with a
chant from the celebrated choir of St. Peter's. Room was then made
through the crowd, the cardinals put on their red caps, and the small
procession of twelve young girls entered from a side chapel, bearing
each a taper in her hand, and robed to the eyes in white, with a
chaplet of flowers round the forehead. I could form no judgment of
anything but their eyes and feet. A Roman eye could not be otherwise
than fine, and a Roman woman's foot could scarce be other than ugly,
and, consequently, there was but one satin slipper in the group that a
man might not have worn, and every eye I could see from my position,
might have graced an improvisatrice. They stopped in front of the
throne, and, giving their long tapers to the servitors, mounted in
couples, hand in hand, and kissed the foot of his Holiness, who, at
the same time, leaned over and blessed them, and then turning about,
walked off again behind the altar in the same order in which they had
entered.

The choir now struck up their half-unearthly chant (a music so
strangely shrill and clear, that I scarce know whether the sensation
is pleasure or pain), the Pope was led from his throne to his sedan,
and his mitre changed for a richly jewelled crown, the bearers lifted
their burden, the guard presented arms, the cardinals summoned their
officious servants to unrobe, and the crowd poured out as it came.

This ceremony, I found upon inquiry, is performed every year, _on the
day of the annunciation_--just nine months before Christmas, and is
intended to commemorate the incarnation of our Saviour.

As I was returning from a twilight stroll upon the Pincian hill this
evening, the bells of the convent of Santa Trinita rung to vespers. I
had heard of the singing of the nuns in the service at the convent
chapel, but the misbehavior of a party of English had excluded
foreigners, of late, and it was thought impossible to get admittance.
I mounted the steps, however, and rung at the door. It was opened by a
pale nun, of thirty, who hesitated a moment, and let me pass. In a
small, plain chapel within, the service of the altar was just
commencing, and, before I reached a seat, a low plaintive chant
commenced, in female voices from the choir. It went on with occasional
interruptions from the prayers, for perhaps an hour. I can not
describe the excessive mournfulness of the music. One or two familiar
hymns occurred in the course of it, like airs in a recitative, the
same sung in our churches, but the effect was totally different. The
neat, white caps of the nuns were just visible over the railing before
the organ, and, as I looked up at them and listened to their
melancholy notes, they seemed, to me, mourning over their exclusion
from the world. The small white cloud from the censer mounted to the
ceiling, and creeping away through the arches, hung over the organ
till it was lost to the eye in the dimness of the twilight. It was
easy, under the influence of their delightful music, to imagine within
it the wings of that tranquilizing resignation, one would think so
necessary to keep down the heart in these lonely cloisters.

The most considerable ruins of ancient Rome are those of the _Baths_.
The Emperors Titus, Caracalla, Nero, and Agrippa, constructed these
immense places of luxury, and the remains of them are among the most
interesting and beautiful relics to be found in the world. It is
possible that my readers have as imperfect an idea of the extent of a
Roman bath as I have had, and I may as well quote from the information
given by writers on antiquities. "They were open every day, to both
sexes. In each of the great baths, there were sixteen hundred seats of