Part 18

After a few minutes one of the company went out of the room, and wrote upon a sheet of paper the last words of every line for a sonnet; and a gentleman who had remained within, gave a subject to fill it up. She took the paper, and looking at it a moment or two, repeated the sonnet as fluently as if it had been written out before her. Several other subjects were then given her, and she filled the same sonnet with the same terminations. It was wonderful. I could not conceive of such facility. After she had satisfied them with this, she turned to me and said, that in compliment to the American improvisatore she would give an ode upon America. To disclaim the character and the honor would have been both difficult and embarrassing even for one who knew the language better than I, so I bowed and submitted. She began with the discovery of Columbus, claimed him as her countryman; and with some poetical fancies about the wild woods and the Indians, mingled up Montezuma and Washington rather promiscuously, and closed with a really beautiful apostrophe to liberty. My acknowledgments were fortunately lost in the general murmur.

A tragedy succeeded, in which she sustained four characters. This, by the working of her forehead and the agitation of her breast, gave her more trouble, but her fluency was unimpeded; and when she closed, the company was in raptures. Her gestures were more passionate in this performance, but, even with my imperfect knowledge of the language, they always seemed called for and in taste. Her friends rose as she sunk back on the sofa, gathered round her, and took her hands, overwhelming her with praises. It was a very exciting scene altogether, and I went away with new ideas of poetical power and enthusiasm.

* * * * *

One lodges like a prince in Florence, and pays like a beggar. For the information of artists and scholars desirous to come abroad, to whom exact knowledge on the subject is important, I will give you the inventory and cost of my whereabout.

I sit at this moment in a window of what was formerly the archbishop's palace--a noble old edifice, with vast staircases and resounding arches, and a hall in which you might put a dozen of the modern brick houses of our country. My chamber is as large as a ball-room, on the second story, looking out upon the garden belonging to the house, which extends to the eastern wall of the city. Beyond this lies one of the sweetest views in the world--the ascending amphitheatre of hills, in whose lap lies Florence, with the tall eminence of _Fiesolé_ in the centre, crowned with the monastery in which Milton passed six weeks, while gathering scenery for his Paradise. I can almost count the panes of glass in the windows of the bard's room; and, between the fine old building and my eye, on the slope of the hill, lie thirty or forty splendid villas, half-buried in trees (Madame Catalani's among them), piled one above another on the steep ascent, with their columns and porticoes, as if they were mock temples in a vast terraced garden. I do not think there is a window in Italy that commands more points of beauty. Cole, the American landscape painter, who occupied the room before me, took a sketch from it. For neighbors, the Neapolitan ambassador lives on the same floor, the two Greenoughs in the ground-rooms below, and the palace of one of the wealthiest nobles of Florence overlooks the garden, with a front of eighty-five windows, from which you are at liberty to select any two or three, and imagine the most celebrated beauty of Tuscany behind the crimson curtains--the daughter of this same noble bearing that reputation. She was pointed out to me at the Opera a night or two since, and I have seen as famous women with less pretensions.

For the interior, my furniture is not quite upon the same scale, but I have a clean snow-white bed, a calico-covered sofa, chairs and tables enough, and pictures three deep from the wall to the floor.

For all this, and the liberty of the episcopal garden, I pay _three dollars a month_! A dollar more is charged for lamps, boots, and service, and a dark-eyed landlady of thirty-five mends my gloves, and pays me two visits a day--items not mentioned in the bill. Then for the feeding, an excellent breakfast of coffee and toast is brought me for six cents; and, without wine, one may dine heartily at a fashionable restaurant for twelve cents, and with wine, quite magnificently for twenty-five. Exclusive of postage and pleasures, this is all one is called upon to spend in Florence. Three hundred dollars a year would fairly and largely cover the expenses of a man living at this rate; and a man who would not be willing to live half as well for the sake of his art, does not deserve to see Italy. I have stated these unsentimental particulars, because it is a kind of information I believe much wanted. I should have come to Italy years ago if I had known as much, and I am sure there are young men in our country, dreaming of this paradise of art in half despair, who will thank me for it, and take up at once "the pilgrim's sandal-shoon and scollop-shell."

LETTER XXIX.

EXCURSION TO VENICE--AMERICAN ARTISTS--VALLEY OF FLORENCE-- MOUNTAINS OF CARRARA--TRAVELLING COMPANIONS--HIGHLAND TAVERN--MIST AND SUNSHINE--ITALIAN VALLEYS--VIEW OF THE ADRIATIC--BORDER OF ROMAGNA--SUBJECTS FOR THE PENCIL--HIGHLAND ITALIANS--ROMANTIC SCENERY--A PAINFUL OCCURRENCE--AN ITALIAN HUSBAND--A DUTCHMAN, HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN--BOLOGNE--THE PILGRIM--MODEL FOR A MAGDALEN.

I started for Venice yesterday, in company with Mr. Alexander and Mr. Cranch, two American artists. We had taken the vetturino for Bologna, and at daylight we were winding up the side of the amphitheatre of Appenines that bends over Florence, leaving Fiesolé rising sharply on our right. The mist was creeping up the mountain just in advance of us, retreating with a scarcely perceptible motion to the summits, like the lift of a heavy curtain; Florence, and its long, heavenly valley, full of white palaces sparkling in the sun, lay below us, more like a vision of a better world than a scene of human passion; away in the horizon the abrupt heads of the mountains of Carrara rose into the sky; and with the cool, fresh breeze of the hills, and the excitement of the pleasant excursion before us, we were three of as happy travellers probably as were to be met on any highway in this garden of the world.

We had six companions, and a motley crew they were--a little effeminate Venetian, probably a tailor, with a large, noble-looking, handsome contadina for a wife; a sputtering Dutch merchant, a fine, little, coarse, good-natured fellow, with _his_ wife, and two very small and very disagreeable children; an Austrian corporal in full uniform; and a fellow in a straw hat, speaking some unknown language, and a nondescript in every respect. The women and children, and my friends, the artists, were my companions inside, the double dicky in front accommodating the others. Conversation commenced with the journey. The Dutch spoke their dissonant language to each other, and French to us, the contadina's soft Venetian dialect broke in like a flute in a chorus of harsh instruments, and our own hissing English added to a mixture already sufficiently various.

We were all day ascending mountains, and slept coolly under three or four blankets at a highland tavern, on a very wild Appenine. Our supper was gaily eaten, and our mirth served to entertain five or six English families, whose chambers were only separated from the rough raftered dining hall by double curtains. It was pleasant to hear the children and nurses speaking English unseen. The contrast made us realize forcibly the eminently foreign scene about us. The next morning, after travelling two or three hours in a thick, drizzling mist, we descended a sharp hill, and emerged at its foot into a sunshine so sudden and clear, that it seemed almost as if the night had burst into mid-day in a moment. We had come out of a black cloud. The mountain behind us was capped with it to the summit. Beneath us lay a map of a hundred valleys, all bathed and glowing in unclouded light, and on the limit of the horizon, far off as the eye could span, lay a long sparkling line of water, like a silver frame around the landscape. It was our first view of the _Adriatic_. We looked at it with the singular and indefinable emotion with which one always sees a celebrated _water_ for the first time--a sensation, it seems to me, which is like that of no other addition to our knowledge. The Mediterranean at Marseilles, the Arno at Florence, the Seine at Paris, affected me in the same way. Explain it who will, or can!

An hour after, we reached the border of _Romagna_, the dominions of the Pope running up thus far into the Appenines. Here our trunks were taken off and searched more minutely. The little village was full of the dark-skinned, romantic-looking Romagnese, and my two friends, seated on a wall, with a dozen curious gazers about them, sketched the heads looking from the old stone windows, beggars, buildings, and scenery, in a mood of professional contentment. Dress apart, these highland Italians are like North American Indians--the same copper complexions, high cheek bones, thin lips, and dead, black hair. The old women particularly, would pass in any of our towns for full-blooded squaws.

The scenery, after this, grew of the kind "which savage Rosa dashed"--the only landscape I ever saw _exactly_ of the tints so peculiar to Salvator's pictures. Our painters were in ecstasies with it, and truly, the dark foliage, and blanched rocks, the wild glens, and wind-distorted trees, gave the country the air of a home for all the tempests and floods of a continent. The Kaatskills are tame to it.

The forenoon came on, hot and sultry, and our little republic began to display its character. The tailor's wife was taken sick; and fatigue, and heat, and the rough motion of the vetturino in descending the mountains, brought on a degree of suffering which it was painful to witness. She was a woman of really extraordinary beauty, and dignified and modest as few women are in any country. Her suppressed groans, her white, tremulous lips, the tears of agony pressing thickly through her shut eyelids, and the clenching of her sculpture-like hands, would have moved anything but an Italian husband. The little effeminate villain treated her as if she had been a dog. She bore everything from him till he took her hand, which she raised faintly to intimate that she could not rise when the carriage stopped, and threw it back into her face with a curse. She roused, and looked at him with a natural majesty and calmness that made my blood thrill. "_Aspetta?_" was her only answer, as she sunk back and fainted.

The Dutchman's wife was a plain, honest, affectionate creature, bearing the humors of two heated and ill-tempered children, with a patience we were compelled to admire. Her husband smoked and laughed, and talked villainous French and worse Italian, but was glad to escape to the cabriolet in the hottest of the day, leaving his wife to her cares. The baby screamed, and the child blubbered and fretted, and for hours the mother was a miracle of kindness. The "drop too much," came in the shape of a new crying fit from both children, and the poor little Dutchwoman, quite wearied out, burst into a flood of tears, and hiccupped her complaints in her own language, weeping unrestrainedly for a quarter of an hour. After this she felt better, took a gulp of wine from the black bottle, and settled herself once more quietly and resignedly to her duties. We had certainly opened one or two very fresh veins of human character, when we stopped at the gates.

There is but one hotel for American travellers in Bologna, of course. Those who have read Rogers's Italy, will remember his mention of "The Pilgrim," the house where the poet met Lord Byron by appointment, and passed the evening with him which he describes so exquisitely. We took leave of our motley friends at the door, and our artists who had greatly admired the lovely Venetian, parted from her with the regret of old acquaintances. She certainly was, as they said, a splendid model for a Magdalen, "majestical and sad," and, always in attitudes for a picture: sleeping or waking, she afforded a succession of studies of which they took the most enthusiastic advantage.

LETTER XXX.

EXCURSION TO VENICE CONTINUED--BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF BOLOGNA-- GALLERY OF THE FINE ARTS--RAPHAEL'S ST. CECILIA--PICTURES OF CARRACCI--DOMENICHINOS' MADONNA DEL ROSARIO--GUIDO'S MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS--THE CATHEDRAL AND THE DUOMO--EFFECTS OF THESE PLACES OF WORSHIP, AND THE CEREMONIES, UPON THE MIND-- RESORT OF THE ITALIAN PEASANTRY--OPEN CHURCHES-- SUBTERRANEAN-CONFESSION CHAPEL--THE FESTA--GRAND PROCESSIONS-- ILLUMINATIONS--AUSTRIAN BANDS OF MUSIC--DEPORTMENT OF THE PEOPLE TO A STRANGER.

Another evening is here, and my friends have crept to bed with the exclamation, "how much we may live in a day." Bologna is unlike any other city we have ever seen, in a multitude of things. You walk all over it under arcades, sheltered on either side from the sun, the elegance and ornament of the lines of pillars depending on the wealth of the owner of the particular house, but columns and arches, simple or rich, everywhere. Imagine porticoes built on the front of every house in Philadelphia or New York, so as to cover the sidewalks completely, and, down the long perspective of every street, continued lines of airy Corinthian, or simple Doric pillars, and you may faintly conceive the impression of the streets of Bologna. With Lord Byron's desire to forget everything English, I do not wonder at his selection of this foreign city for a residence, so emphatically unlike, as it is, to everything else in the world.

We inquired out the gallery after breakfast, and spent two or three hours among the celebrated master-pieces of the _Carracci_, and the famous painters of the Bolognese school. The collection is small, but said to be more choice than any other in Italy. There certainly are five or six among its forty or fifty gems, that deserve each a pilgrimage. The pride of the place is the St. Cecilia, by Raphael. This always beautiful personification of music, a woman of celestial beauty, stands in the midst of a choir who have been interrupted in their anthem by a song, issuing from a vision of angels in a cloud from heaven. They have dropped their instruments, broken, upon the ground, and are listening with rapt attention, all, except the saint, with heads dropped upon their bosoms, overcome with the glory of the revelation. She alone, with her harp hanging loosely from her fingers, gazes up with the most serene and cloudless rapture beaming from her countenance, yet with a look of full and angelic comprehension, and understanding of the melody and its divine meaning. You feel that her beauty is mortal, for it is all woman; but you see that, for the moment, the spirit that breathes through, and mingles with the harmony in the sky, is seraphic and immortal. If there ever was inspiration, out of holy writ, it touched the pencil of Raphael.

It is tedious to read descriptions of pictures. I liked everything in the gallery. The Bolognese style of color suits my eye. It is rich and forcible, without startling or offending. Its delicious mellowness of color, and vigor and triumphant power of conception, show two separate triumphs of the art, which in the same hand are delightful. The pictures of Ludovico Carracci especially fired my admiration. And Domenichino, who died of a broken heart at Rome, because his productions were neglected, is a painter who always touches me nearly. His _Madonna del Rosario_ is crowded with beauty. Such children I never saw in painting--the very ideals of infantile grace and innocence. It is said of him, that, after painting his admirable frescoes in the church of St. Andrew, at Rome, which, at the time, were ridiculed unsparingly by the artists, he used to walk in on his return from his studio, and gazing at them with a dejected air, remark to his friend, that he "could not think they were _quite_ so bad--they _might_ have been worse." How true it is, that, "the root of a great name is in the dead body."

Guido's celebrated picture of the "Massacre of the Innocents," hangs just opposite the St. Cecilia. It is a powerful and painful thing. The marvel of it to me is the simplicity with which its wonderful effects are produced, both of expression and color. The kneeling mother in the foreground, with her dead children before her, is the most intense representation of agony I ever saw. Yet the face is calm, her eyes thrown up to heaven, but her lips undistorted, and the muscles of her face, steeped as they are in suffering, still and natural. It is the look of a soul overwhelmed--that has ceased to struggle because it is full. Her gaze is on heaven, and in the abandonment of her limbs, and the deep, but calm agony of her countenance, you see that nothing between this and heaven can move her more. One suffers in seeing such pictures. You go away exhausted, and with feelings harassed and excited.

As we returned, we passed the gates of the university. On the walls were pasted a sonnet printed with some flourish, in honor of _Camillo Rosalpina_, the laureate of one of the academical classes.

We visited several of the churches in the afternoon. The cathedral and the Duomo are glorious places--both. I wish I could convey, to minds accustomed to the diminutive size and proportions of our churches in America, an idea of the enormous and often almost supernatural grandeur of those in Italy. Aisles in whose distance the figure of a man is almost lost--pillars, whose bases you walk round in wonder, stretching into the lofty vaults of the roof, as if they ended in the sky--arches of gigantic dimensions, mingling and meeting with the fine tracery of a cobweb--altars piled up on every side with gold, and marble, and silver--private chapels ornamented with the wealth of nobles, let into the sides, each large enough for a communion--and through the whole extent of the interior, an unencumbered breadth of floor, with here and there a solitary worshipper on his knees, or prostrated on his face--figures so small in comparison with the immense dome above them, that it seems as if, could distance drown a prayer, they were as much lost as if they prayed under the open sky! Without having even a leaning to the Catholic faith, I love to haunt their churches, and I am not sure that the religious awe of the sublime ceremonies and places of worship does not steal upon me daily. Whenever I am heated, or fatigued, or out of spirits, I go into the first cathedral, and sit down for an hour. They are always dark, and cool, and quiet; and the distant tinkling of the bell from some distant chapel and the grateful odor of the incense, and the low, just audible murmur of prayer, settles on my feelings like a mist, and softens and soothes and refreshes me, as nothing else will. The Italian peasantry who come to the cities to sell or bargain, pass their noons in these cool places. You see them on their knees asleep against a pillar, or sitting in a corner, with their heads upon their bosoms; and, if it were as a place of retreat and silence alone, the churches are an inestimable blessing to them. It seems to me, that any sincere Christian, of whatever faith, would find a pleasure in going into a sacred place and sitting down in the heat of the day, to be quiet and devotional for an hour. It would promote the objects of any denomination in our country, I should think, if the churches were thus left always open.

Under the cathedral of Bologna is a _subterranean confession-chapel_ --as singular and impressive a device as I ever saw. It is dark like a cellar, the daylight faintly struggling through a painted window above the altar, and the two solitary wax candles giving a most ghastly intensity to the gloom. The floor is paved with tombstones, the inscriptions and death's heads of which you feel under your feet as you walk through. The roof is so vaulted that every tread is reverberated endlessly in hollow tones. All around are the confession-boxes, with the pierced plates, at which the priest within puts his ear, worn with the lips of penitents, and at one of the sides is a deep cave, far within which, as in a tomb, lies a representation on limestone of our Saviour, bleeding as he came from the cross, with the apostles, made of the same cadaverous material, hanging over him!

We have happened, by a fortunate chance, upon an extraordinary day in Bologna--a _festa_, that occurs but once in ten years. We went out as usual after breakfast this morning, and found the city had been decorated over-night in the most splendid and singular manner. The arcades of some four or five streets in the centre of the town were covered with rich crimson damask, the pillars completely bound, and the arches dressed and festooned with a degree of gorgeousness and taste as costly as it was magnificent. The streets themselves were covered with cloths stretched above the second stories of the houses from one side to the other, keeping off the sun entirely, and making in each street one long tent of a mile or more, with two lines of crimson columns at the sides, and festoons of gauze, of different colors, hung from window to window in every direction. It was by far the most splendid scene I ever saw. The people were all there in their gayest dresses, and we probably saw in the course of the day every woman in Bologna. My friends, the painters, give it the palm for beauty over all the cities they had seen. There was a grand procession in the morning, and in the afternoon the bands of the Austrian army made the round of the decorated streets, playing most delightfully before the principal houses. In the evening there was an illumination, and we wandered up and down till midnight through the fairy scene, almost literally "dazzled and drunk with beauty."