Part 20

We have passed a day in visiting palaces. There are some eight or ten in Venice, whose galleries are still splendid. We landed first at the stairs of the _Palazzo Grimani_, and were received by an old family servant, who sat leaning on his knees, and gazing idly into the canal. The court and staircase were ornamented with statuary, that had not been moved for centuries. In the ante-room was a fresco painting by Georgione, in which there were two _female_ cherubs, the first of that sex I ever saw represented. They were beautifully contrasted with the two male cherubs, who completed the picture, and reminded me strongly of Greenough's group in sculpture. After examining several rooms, tapestried and furnished in such a style as befitted the palace of a Venetian noble, when Venice was in her glory, we passed on to the gallery. The best picture in the first room was a large one by Cigoli, _the bath of Cleopatra_. The four attendants of the fair Egyptian are about her, and one is bathing her feet from a rich vase. Her figure is rather a voluptuous one, and her head is turned, but without alarm, to Antony, who is just putting aside the curtain and entering the room. It is a piece of fine coloring, rather of the Titian school, and one of the few good pictures left by the English, who have bought up almost all the private galleries of Venice.

We stopped next at the stairs of the noble old _Barberigo_ Palace, in which Titian lived and died. We mounted the decaying staircases, imagining the choice spirits of the great painter's time, who had trodden them before us, and (as it was for ages the dwelling of one of the proudest races of Venice) the beauty and rank that had swept up and down those worn slabs of marble on nights of revel, in the days when Venice was a paradise of splendid pleasure. How thickly come romantic fancies in such a place as this. We passed through halls hung with neglected pictures to an inner room, occupied only with those of Titian. Here he painted, and here is a picture half finished, as he left it when he died. His famous _Magdalen_, hangs on the wall, covered with dirt; and so, indeed, is everything in the palace. The neglect is melancholy. On a marble table stood a plaster bust of Titian, moulded by himself in his old age. It is a most noble head, and it is difficult to look at it, and believe he could have painted a picture which hangs just against it--_his own daughter in the arms of a satyr_. There is an engraving from it in one of the souvenirs; but instead of a satyr's head, she holds a casket in her hands, which, though it does not sufficiently account for the delight of her countenance, is an improvement upon the original. Here, too, are several slight sketches of female heads, by the same master. Oh how beautiful they are! There is one, less than the size of life, which I would rather have than his Magdalen.

* * * * *

I have spent my last day in Venice in visiting churches. Their splendor makes the eye ache and the imagination weary. You would think the surplus wealth of half the empires of the world would scarce suffice to fill them as they are. I can give you no descriptions. The gorgeous tombs of the Doges are interesting, and the plain black monument over Marino Faliero made me linger. Canova's tomb is splendid; and the simple slab under your feet in the church of the Frari, where Titian lies with his brief epitaph, is affecting--but, though I shall remember all these, the simplest as well as the grandest, a description would be wearisome to all who had not seen them. This evening at sunset I start in the post-boat for the mainland, on my way to the place of Juliet's tomb--Verona. My friends, the painters, are so attracted with the galleries here that they remain to copy, and I go back alone. Take a short letter from me this time, and expect to hear from me by the next earliest opportunity, and more at length. Adieu.

LETTER XXXIV.

DEPARTURE FROM VENICE--A SUNSET SCENE--PADUA--SPLENDID HOTEL--MANNERS OF THE COUNTRY--VICENZA--MIDNIGHT--LADY RETURNING FROM A PARTY--VERONA--JULIET'S TOMB--THE TOMB OF THE CAPULETS--THE TOMBS OF THE SCALIGERS--TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA--A WALKING CHRONICLE--PALACE OF THE CAPULETS--ONLY COOL PLACE IN AN ITALIAN CITY--BANQUETING HALL OF THE CAPULETS--FACTS AND FICTION, ETC.

We pushed from the post-office stairs in a gondola with six oars at sunset. It was melancholy to leave Venice. A hasty farewell look, as we sped down the grand canal, at the gorgeous palaces, even less famous than beautiful--a glance at the disappearing Rialto, and we shot out into the Giudecca in a blaze of sunset glory. Oh how magnificently looked Venice in that light--rising behind us from the sea--all her superb towers and palaces, turrets and spires, fused into gold; and the waters about her, like a mirror of stained glass, without a ripple!

An hour and a half of hard rowing brought us to the nearest land. You should go to Venice to know how like a dream a reality may be. You will find it difficult to realize, when you smell once more the fresh earth and grass and flowers, and walk about and see fields and mountains, that this city upon the sea exists out of the imagination. You float to it and about it and from it, in their light craft, so aerially, that it seems a vision.

With a drive of two or three hours, half twilight, half moonlight, we entered _Padua_. It was too late to see the portrait of Petrarch, and I had not time to go to his tomb at Arqua, twelve miles distant, so, musing on Livy and Galileo, to both of whom Padua was a home, I inquired for a _café_. A new one had lately been built in the centre of the town, quite the largest and most thronged I ever saw. Eight or ten large, high-roofed halls were open, and filled with tables, at which sat more beauty and fashion than I supposed all Padua could have mustered. I walked through one after another, without finding a seat, and was about turning to go out, and seek a place of less pretension, when an elderly lady, who sat with a party of seven, eating ices, rose, with Italian courtesy, and offered me a chair at their table. I accepted it, and made the acquaintance of eight as agreeable and polished people as it has been my fortune to meet. We parted as if we had known each other as many weeks as minutes. I mention it as an instance of the manners of the country.

Three hours more, through spicy fields and on a road lined with the country-houses of the Venetian nobles, brought us to _Vicenza_. It was past midnight, and not a soul stirring in the bright moonlit streets. I remember it as a kind of city of the dead. As we passed out of the opposite gate, we detained for a moment a carriage, with servants in splendid liveries, and a lady inside returning from a party, in full dress. I have rarely seen so beautiful a head. The lamps shone strongly on a broad pearl fillet on her forehead, and lighted up features such as we do not often meet even in Italy. A gentleman leaned back in the corner of the carriage, fast asleep--probably her husband!

* * * * *

I breakfasted at _Verona_ at seven. A humpbacked _cicerone_ there took me to "Juliet's tomb." A very high wall, green with age, surrounds what was once a cemetery, just outside the city. An old woman answered the bell at the dilapidated gate, and, without saying a word, pointed to an empty granite sarcophagus, raised upon a rude pile of stones. "Questa?" asked I, with a doubtful look. "Questa," said the old woman. "Questa!" said the hunchback. And here, I was to believe, lay the gentle Juliet! There was a raised place in the sarcophagus, with a hollowed socket for the head, and it was about the measure for a woman! I ran my fingers through the cavity, and tried to imagine the dark curls that covered the hand of Father Lawrence as he laid her down in the trance, and fitted her beautiful head softly to the place. But where was "the tomb of the Capulets?" The beldame took me through a cabbage-garden, and drove off a donkey who was feeding on an artichoke that grew on the very spot. "Ecco!" said she, pointing to one of the slightly sunken spots on the surface. I deferred my belief, and paying an extra paul for the privilege of chipping off a fragment of the stone coffin, followed the cicerone.

The _tombs of the Scaligers_ were more authentic. They stand in the centre of the town, with a highly ornamental railing about them, and are a perfect mockery of death with their splendor. If the poets and scholars whom these petty princes drew to their court had been buried in these airy tombs beside them, one would look at them with some interest. _Now_, one asks, "who were the Scaligers, that their bodies should be lifted high in air in the midst of a city, and kept for ages, in marble and precious stones?" With less ostentation, however, it were pleasant to be so disposed of after death, lifted thus into the sun, and in sight of moving and living creatures.

I inquired for the old palace of the Capulets. The cicerone knew nothing about it, and I dismissed her and went into a _café_. "Two gentlemen of Verona" sat on different sides; one reading, the other asleep, with his chin on his cane--an old, white-headed man, of about seventy. I sat down near the old gentleman, and by the time I had eaten my ice, he awoke. I addressed him in Italian, which I speak indifferently; but, stumbling for a word, he politely helped me out in French, and I went on in that language with my inquiries. He was the very man--a walking chronicle of Verona. He took up his hat and cane to conduct me to _casa Capuletti_, and on the way told me the true history, as I had heard it before, which differs but little, as you know, from Shakspeare's version. The whole story is in the annuals.

After a half hour's walk among the handsomer, and more modern parts of the city, we stopped opposite a house of an antique construction, but newly stuccoed and painted. A wheelwright occupied the lower story, and by the sign, the upper part was used as a tavern. "Impossible!" said I, as I looked at the fresh front and the staring sign. The old gentleman smiled, and kept his cane pointed at it in silence. "It is well authenticated," said he, after enjoying my astonishment a minute or two, "and the interior still bears marks of a palace." We went in and mounted the dirty staircase to a large hall on the second floor. The frescoes and cornices had not been touched, and I invited my kind old friend to an early dinner on the spot. He accepted, and we went back to the cathedral, and sat an hour in the only cool place in an Italian city. The best dinner the house could afford was ready when we returned, and a pleasanter one it has never been my fortune to sit down to; though, for the meats, I have eaten better. That I relished an hour in the very hall where the masque must have been held, to which Romeo ventured in the house of his enemy, to see the fair Juliet, you may easily believe. The wine was not so bad, either, that my imagination did not warm all fiction into fact; and another time, perhaps, I may describe my old friend and the dinner more particularly.

LETTER XXXV.

ANOTHER SHORT LETTER--DEPARTURE FROM VERONA--MANTUA--FLEAS-- FLEAS--MODENA--TASSONI'S BUCKET--A MAN GOING TO EXECUTION--THE DUKE OF MODENA--BOLOGNA--AUSTRIAN OFFICERS--THE APPENINES-- MOONLIGHT ON THE MOUNTAINS--ENGLISH BRIDAL PARTY--PICTURESQUE SUPPER, ETC.

I left Verona with the courier at sunset, and was at _Mantua_ in a few hours. I went to bed in a dirty hotel, the best in the place, and awoke, bitten at every pore by fleas--the first I have encountered in Italy, strange as it may seem, in a country that swarms with them. For the next twenty-four hours I was in such positive pain that my interest in "Virgil's birthplace" quite evaporated. I hired a _caleche_, and travelled all night to _Modena_.

I liked the town as I drove in, and after sleeping an hour or two, I went out in search of "Tassoni's bucket" (which Rogers says _is not the true one_), and the picture of "_Ginevra_." The first thing I met was a man going to execution. He was a tall, exceedingly handsome man; and, I thought, a marked gentleman, even in his fetters. He was one of the body-guard of the duke, and had joined a conspiracy against him, in which he had taken the first step by firing at him from a window as he passed. I saw him guillotined, but I will spare you the description. The duke is the worst tyrant in Italy, it is well known, and has been fired at _eighteen times_ in the streets. So said the cicerone, who added, that "the d----l took care of his own." After many fruitless inquiries, I could find nothing of "the picture," and I took my place for Bologna in the afternoon.

I was at Bologna at ten the next morning. As I felt rather indisposed, I retained my seat with the courier for Florence; and, hungry with travel and a long fast, went into a _restaurant_, to make the best use of the hour given me for refreshment. A party of Austrian officers sat at one end of the only table, breakfasting; and here I experienced the first rudeness I have seen in Europe. I mention it to show its rarity, and the manner in which, even among military men, a quarrel is guarded against or prevented. A young man, who seemed the wit of the party, chose to make comments from time to time on the solidity of what he considered my breakfast. These became at last so pointed, that I was compelled to rise and demand an apology. With one voice, all except the offender, immediately sided with me, and insisted on the justice of the demand, with so many apologies of their own, that I regretted noticing the thing at all. The young man rose, after a minute, and offered me his hand in the frankest manner; and then calling for a fresh bottle, they drank wine with me, and I went back to my breakfast. In America, such an incident would have ended, nine times out of ten, in a duel.

The two mounted _gens d'armes_, who usually attend the courier at night, joined us as we began to ascend the Appenines. We stopped at eleven to sup on the highest mountain between Bologna and Florence, and I was glad to get to the kitchen fire, the clear moonlight was so cold. Chickens were turning on the long spit, and sounds of high merriment came from the rooms above. A _bridal party_ of English had just arrived, and every chamber and article of provision was engaged. They had nothing to give us. A compliment to the hostess and a bribe to the cook had their usual effect, however; and as one of the dragoons had ridden back a mile or two for my travelling cap, which had dropped off while I was asleep, I invited them both, with the courier, to share my bribed supper. The cloth was spread right before the fire, on the same table with all the cook's paraphernalia, and a merry and picturesque supper we had of it. The rough Tuscan flasks of wine and Etruscan pitchers, the brazen helmets formed on the finest models of the antique, the long mustaches, and dark Italian eyes of the men, all in the bright light of a blazing fire, made a picture that Salvator Rosa would have relished. We had time for a hasty song or two after the dishes were cleared, and then went gayly on our way to Florence.

Excuse the brevity of this epistle, but I must stop here, or lose the opportunity of sending. If my letters do not reach you with the utmost regularity, it is no fault of mine. You can not imagine the difficulty I frequently experience in getting a safe conveyance.

LETTER XXXVI.

BATHS OF LUCCA--SARATOGA OF ITALY--HILL SCENERY--RIVER LIMA--FASHIONABLE LODGINGS--THE VILLA--THE DUKE'S PALACE-- MOUNTAINS--VALLEYS--COTTAGES--PEASANTS--WINDING-PATHS-- AMUSEMENTS--PRIVATE PARTIES--BALLS--FETES--A CASINO--ORIGINALS OF SCOTT'S DIANA VERNON AND THE MISS PRATT OF THE INHERITANCE--A SUMMER IN ITALY, ETC., ETC.

I spent a week at the baths of Lucca, which is about sixty miles north of Florence, and the Saratoga of Italy. None of the cities are habitable in summer, for the heat, and there flocks all the world to bathe and keep cool by day, and dance and intrigue by night, from spring to autumn. It is very like the month of June in our country in many respects, and the differences are not disagreeable. The scenery is the finest of its kind in Italy. The whole village is built about a bridge across the river Lima, which meets the Serchio a half mile below. On both sides of the stream the mountains rise so abruptly, that the houses are erected against them, and from the summits on both sides you look directly down on the street. Half-way up one of the hills stands a cluster of houses, overlooking the valley to fine advantage, and these are rather the most fashionable lodgings. Round the base of this mountain runs the Lima, and on its banks for a mile is laid out a superb road, at the extremity of which is another cluster of buildings, called the Villa, composed of the duke's palace and baths, and some fifty lodging-houses. This, like the pavilion at Saratoga, is usually occupied by invalids and people of more retired habits. I have found no hill scenery in Europe comparable to the baths of Lucca. The mountains ascend so sharply and join so closely, that two hours of the sun are lost, morning and evening, and the heat is very little felt. The valley is formed by four or five small mountains, which are clothed from the base to the summit with the finest chestnut woods; and dotted over with the nest-like cottages of the Luccese peasants, the smoke from which, morning and evening, breaks through the trees, and steals up to the summits with an effect than which a painter could not conceive anything more beautiful. It is quite a little paradise; and with the drives along the river on each side at the mountain foot, and the trim winding-paths in the hills, there is no lack of opportunity for the freest indulgence of a love of scenery or amusement.

Instead of living as we do in great hotels, the people at these baths take their own lodgings, three or four families in a house, and meet in their drives and walks, or in small exclusive parties. The Duke gives a ball every Tuesday, to which all respectable strangers are invited; and while I was there an Italian prince, who married into the royal family of Spain, gave a grand _fete_ at the theatre. There is usually some party every night, and with the freedom of a watering-place, they are rather the pleasantest I have seen in Italy. The Duke's chamberlain, an Italian cavalier, has the charge of a _casino_, or public hall, which is open day and night for conversation, dancing and play. The Italians frequent it very much, and it is free to all well-dressed people; and as there is always a band of music, the English sometimes make up a party and spend the evening there in dancing or promenading. It is maintained at the Duke's expense, lights, music, and all, and he finds his equivalent in the profits of the gambling-bank.

I scarce know who of the distinguished people I met there would interest you. The village was full of coroneted carriages, whose masters were nobles of every nation, and every reputation. The originals of two well-known characters happened to be there--Scott's _Diana Vernon_, and the _Miss Pratt_ of the Inheritance. The former is a Scotch lady, with five or six children; a tall, superb woman still, with the look of a mountain-queen, who rode out every night with two gallant boys mounted on ponies, and dashing after her with the spirit you would bespeak for the sons of Die Vernon. Her husband was the best horseman there, and a "has been" handsome fellow, of about forty-five. An Italian abbé came up to her one night, at a small party, and told her he "wondered the king of England did not marry her." "Miss Pratt" was the companion of an English lady of fortune, who lived on the floor below me. She was still what she used to be, a much-laughed-at but much-sought person, and it was quite requisite to know her. She flew into a passion whenever the book was named. The rest of the world there was very much what it is elsewhere--a medley of agreeable and disagreeable, intelligent and stupid, elegant and awkward. The _women_ were perhaps superior in style and manner to those ordinarily met in such places in America, and the _men_ vastly inferior. It is so wherever I have been on the continent.

I remained at the baths a few weeks, recruiting--for the hot weather and travel had, for the first time in my life, worn upon me. They say that a summer in Italy is equal to five years elsewhere, in its ravages upon the constitution, and so I found it.

LETTER XXXVII.

RETURN TO VENICE--CITY OF LUCCA--A MAGNIFICENT WALL--A CULTIVATED AND LOVELY COUNTRY--A COMFORTABLE PALACE--THE DUKE AND DUCHESS OF LUCCA--THE APPENINES--MOUNTAIN SCENERY-- MODENA--VIEW OF AN IMMENSE PLAIN--VINEYARDS AND FIELDS-- AUSTRIAN TROOPS--A PETTY DUKE AND A GREAT TYRANT--SUSPECTED TRAITORS--LADIES UNDER ARREST--MODENESE NOBILITY--SPLENDOR AND MEANNESS--CORREGIO'S BAG OF COPPER COIN--PICTURE GALLERY-- CHIEF OF THE CONSPIRATORS--OPPRESSIVE LAWS--ANTIQUITY-- MUSEUM--BOLOGNA--MANUSCRIPTS OF TASSO AND ARIOSTO--THE PO--AUSTRIAN CUSTOM-HOUSE--POLICE OFFICERS--DIFFICULTY ON BOARD THE STEAMBOAT--VENICE ONCE MORE, ETC.