Chapter 15

On the way to St Peter's the bridge of St Angelo is passed, and Corinne and Lord Nelville crossed it on foot. "It was on this bridge," said Oswald, "that, in returning from the Capitol, I for the first time thought deeply of you." "I did not flatter myself," replied Corinne, "that the coronation at the Capitol would have procured me a friend, but however, in the pursuit of fame it was always my endeavour to make myself beloved.--What would fame be to woman without such a hope?" "Let us stop here a few minutes," said Oswald. "What remembrance of past ages can produce such welcome recollections as this spot, which brings to mind the day when first I saw you." "I know not whether I deceive myself," replied Corinne; "but it seems to me that we become more dear to one another in admiring together those monuments which speak to the soul by true grandeur. The edifices of Rome are neither cold nor dumb, they have been conceived by genius, and consecrated by memorable events. Perhaps, Oswald, it is even necessary that we should be enamoured of such a character as yours, in order to derive such pleasure from feeling with you all that is noble and fine in the universe." "Yes," replied Lord Nelville; "but in beholding you, and listening to your observations, I feel no want of other wonders." Corinne thanked him in a bewitching smile.

On their way to St Peter's they stopped before the castle of St Angelo. "There," said Corinne, "is one of those edifices whose exterior is most original; this is the tomb of Adrian, which, changed into a fortress by the Goths, bears the double character of its first and second destination. Built for the dead, an impenetrable enclosure surrounds it; and, nevertheless, the living have added something hostile to it by the external fortifications, which form a contrast with the silence and noble inutility of a funereal monument. On the top is seen an angel of bronze with a naked sword[7], and in the interior the most cruel prisons are contrived. Every event of Roman history, from Adrian to our time, is connected with this monument. It was here that Belisarius defended himself against the Goths, and, almost as barbarous as they who attacked him, threw at his enemy the beautiful statues that adorned the interior of the edifice[8]. Crescentius, Arnault de Brescia, Nicolas Rienzi, those friends of Roman liberty who so often mistook memories for hopes, defended themselves for a long time in this imperial tomb. I love these stones which are connected with so many illustrious facts. I love this luxury of the master of the world--a magnificent tomb. There is something great in the man who, possessing every enjoyment, every terrestrial pomp, is not dismayed from making preparations for his death a long time before hand. Moral ideas and disinterested sentiments fill the soul when it in a manner breaks through the boundaries of mortality.

"It is from here that we ought to perceive St Peter's. The pillars before it were to extend as far as here:--such was the superb plan of Michael Angelo; he expected, at least, that it would be so finished after his death; but the men of our days no longer think of posterity. When once enthusiasm has been turned into ridicule every thing except money and power is destroyed." "It is you who will revive that sentiment," cried Lord Nelville. "Who ever experienced the happiness I enjoy? Rome shewn by you, Rome interpreted by imagination and genius, _Rome, that is a world animated by sentiment, without which the world itself is a desert_[9]. Ah, Corinne! what will succeed to these days, more happy than my heart and my fate permit!" Corinne answered him with sweetness: "All sincere affections proceed from heaven, Oswald! Why should it not protect what it inspires? To that Power belongs our fate."

At that moment St Peter's appeared to them, the greatest building that man has ever raised; for the pyramids of Egypt themselves are inferior to it in height. "Perhaps," said Corinne, "I ought to have shewn you the finest of our buildings last, but that is not my system. It is my opinion that to beget a sensibility for the fine arts, we must begin by beholding objects that inspire a deep and lively admiration. This sentiment once felt, reveals, if I may so express myself, a new sphere of ideas, and renders us afterwards more capable of loving, and of judging, what even in an inferior order recalls the first impression we have received. All those gradations, those prudent methods, one tint after another, to prepare for great effects, are not to my taste; we cannot arrive at the sublime by degrees; infinite distances separate it even from that which is only beautiful." Oswald felt an altogether extraordinary emotion on arriving opposite St Peter's. It was the first time that the work of man had produced upon him the same effect as one of the wonders of nature. This is the only work of art, now on our earth, possessing that kind of grandeur which characterises the immediate works of the creation. Corinne enjoyed the astonishment of Oswald. "I have chosen," said she, "a day when the sun is in all its lustre, to shew you this edifice. I have in reserve for you a still more exquisite, more religious pleasure, when you shall contemplate it by moonlight: but you must first witness the most brilliant intellectual feast--the genius of man adorned with the magnificence of nature."

The square of St Peter is surrounded by pillars--those at a distance of a light, and those near of a massive structure. The ground, which is upon a gentle ascent up to the portico of the church, still adds to the effect which it produces. An obelisk, 80 feet high, stands in the middle of the square, but its height appears as nothing in presence of the cupola of St Peter's. The form of an obelisk alone has something in it that pleases the imagination; its summit is lost in the air, and seems to lift the mind of man to heaven. This monument, which was constructed in Egypt to adorn the baths of Caligula, and which Sixtus Quintus caused to be transported to the foot of the temple of St Peter, this cotemporary of so many centuries, which have spent their fury upon it in vain, inspires us with a sentiment of respect; man, sensible of his own fleeting existence, cannot contemplate without emotion that which appears to be immutable. At some distance on each side of the obelisk are two fountains, whose waters form a perpetual and abundant cascade. This murmuring of waters, which we are accustomed to hear in the open country, produces, in this enclosure, an entirely new sensation; but this sensation is quite in harmony with that to which the aspect of a majestic temple gives birth.

Painting and sculpture, imitating generally the human figure or some object existing in nature, awaken in our soul perfectly clear and positive ideas; but a beautiful architectural monument has not any determinate meaning, if it may be so expressed, so that we are seized, in contemplating it, with that kind of aimless reverie, which leads us into a boundless ocean of thought. The sound of fountains harmonises with all these vague and deep impressions; it is uniform as the edifice is regular.

"Eternal motion, and eternal rest,"

are thus blended with each other. It is particularly in a spot like this that Time seems stript of his power, for he appears no more able to dry up the fountains than to shake these immovable stones. The waters, which spout in sheaves from these fountains, are so light and cloudlike that on a fine day the rays of the sun produce on them little rainbows, formed of the most beautiful colours.

"Stop here a moment," said Corinne to Lord Nelville, when they had already reached the portico of the church; "stop a little before you lift up the curtain which covers the door of the temple. Does not your heart beat as you approach this sanctuary? And do not you feel at the moment of entrance all that excites expectation of a solemn event?" Corinne herself lifted up the curtain and held it to let Nelville pass; she displayed so much grace in this attitude that the first look of Oswald was to admire her as she stood, and for some moments she engrossed his whole observation. However, he proceeded into the temple, and the impression which he received beneath these immense arches was so deep, and so solemn, that love itself was no longer able to fill his soul entirely. He walked slowly by the side of Corinne, both preserving silence. Indeed here every thing seemed to command silence; the least noise re-echoes to such a distance that no language seems worthy of being repeated in an abode which may almost be called eternal! Prayer alone, the voice of calamity, produces a powerful emotion in these vast regions; and when beneath these immense domes you hear some old man dragging his feeble steps along the polished marble, watered with so many tears, you feel that man is imposing even by the infirmity of his nature which subjects his divine soul to so many sufferings; and that Christianity, the worship of suffering, contains the true guide for the conduct of man upon earth.

Corinne interrupted the reverie of Oswald, and said to him, "You have seen Gothic churches in England and in Germany; you must have remarked that they have a much more gloomy effect than this church. There was something mysterious in the Catholicism of the northern nations; ours speaks to the imagination by external objects. Michael Angelo said on beholding the cupola of the Pantheon, 'I will place it in the air;' and, in effect, St Peter's is a temple built upon a church. There is some connection between the ancient religions and Christianity, in the effect which the interior of this edifice produces upon the imagination. I often come and walk here to restore to my soul that serenity which it sometimes loses: the sight of such a monument is like continual and sustained music, which waits to do you good when you approach; and certainly we must reckon among the claims of our nation to glory, the patience, the courage and the disinterestedness of the heads of the church, who have devoted one hundred and fifty years, so much money, and so much labour, to the completion of an edifice which they who built it could not expect to enjoy[10]. It is even a service rendered to the public morals to present a nation with a monument which is the emblem of so many noble and generous ideas." "Yes," answered Oswald; "here the arts possess grandeur, and imagination and invention are full of genius; but how is the dignity of man himself protected here! What institutions! what feebleness in the greater part of the governments of Italy! and, nevertheless, what subjugation in the mind!" "Other nations," interrupted Corinne, "have borne the yoke the same as we, and have lacked the imagination to dream of another fate.

'Servi siam sì, ma servi ognor frementi.'

'_Yes! we are slaves, but slaves ever quivering with hope,_'

says Alfieri, the most bold of our modern writers. There is so much soul in our fine arts that perhaps one day our character will be equal to our genius.

"Behold," continued Corinne, "those statues placed on the tombs, those pictures in mosaic--patient and faithful copies of the masterpieces of our great artists. I never examine St Peter's in detail, because I do not wish to discover those multiplied beauties which disturb in some degree the impression of the whole. But what a monument is that, where the masterpieces of the human mind appear superfluous ornaments! This temple is like a world by itself; it affords an asylum against heat and cold; it has its own peculiar season--a perpetual spring, which the external atmosphere can never change. A subterraneous church is built beneath this temple;--the popes, and several foreign potentates, are buried there: Christina after her abdication--the Stuarts since the overthrow of their dynasty. Rome has long afforded an asylum to exiles from every part of the world. Is not Rome herself dethroned? Her aspect affords consolation to kings, fallen like herself.

'Cadono le citta, cadono i regni, E l'uom, d'esser mortal, par che si sdegni.'

'_Cities fall. Empires disappear, and yet man is angry at being mortal!_'

"Place yourself here," said Corinne to Lord Nelville, "near the altar in the middle of the cupola; you will perceive through the iron grating, the church of the dead, which is beneath our feet, and lifting up your eyes, their ken will hardly reach the summit of the vault. This dome, viewing it even from below, inspires us with a sentiment of terror; we imagine that we see an abyss suspended over our head. All that is beyond a certain proportion causes man, limited creature as he is, an invincible dread. That which we know is as inexplicable as that which is unknown, but then we are accustomed to our habitual darkness, whilst new mysteries terrify us and disturb our faculties.

"All this church is ornamented with antique marble, and its stones know more than we concerning the ages that are past. There is the statue of Jupiter, which has been converted into St Peter, by adding the nimbus to the head. The general expression of this temple perfectly characterises the mixture of gloomy tenets with brilliant ceremonies; a depth of sadness in ideas, but the softness and vivacity of the south in external application; severe intentions, but mild interpretations; the Christian theology, and the images of Paganism; in a word, the most admirable union of splendour and majesty that man can infuse into his worship of the deity.

"The tombs, decorated by the wonders of the fine arts, do not present death under a formidable aspect. It is not altogether like the ancients, who engraved dances and games upon their sarcophagi; but the mind is abstracted from the contemplation of a coffin by the masterpieces of genius. They recall immortality, even upon the altar of death; and the imagination animated by the admiration which they inspire, does not feel, as in the north, silence and cold, the immutable guardians of sepulchres." "Without doubt," said Oswald, "we wish death to be surrounded by sadness; and even before we were enlightened by Christianity our ancient mythology, our Ossian, made lamentations and dirges concomitants of the tomb. Here one wishes to forget and to enjoy. I know not whether I should be desirous of such a benefit from your fine sky." "Do not believe, however," replied Corinne, "that our character is light, or our mind frivolous; it is only vanity that causes frivolity. Indolence may introduce some intervals of sleep, or of forgetfulness into our lives, but it neither wears out nor dries up the heart; and unfortunately for us we may be aroused from this state by passions more deep, and more terrible than those of souls habitually active."

In finishing these words, Corinne and Lord Nelville approached the door of the church. "Another glance towards this immense sanctuary," said she to Nelville: "See how little man appears in presence of religion, even when we are reduced to consider only its material emblem! See what immobility, what eternity, mortals can give to their works, whilst they themselves pass away so rapidly, and only survive themselves by their genius! This temple is an image of the infinite, and there is no limit to the sentiments to which it gives birth--to the ideas which it revives--to the immense quantity of years which it recalls to our reflection, either of past or future ages; and on quitting its walls we seem to pass from celestial thoughts to worldly interests, from the eternity of religion to the atmosphere of time."

When they were outside the church Corinne pointed out to Nelville Ovid's Metamorphoses, which were represented on the gates in basso-relievo. "We are not scandalised in Rome," said she to him, "with the images of Paganism when they have been consecrated by the fine arts. The wonders of genius always make a religious impression on the soul, and we make an offering to the Christian religion of all the masterpieces which other modes of worship have inspired." Oswald smiled at this explanation. "Believe me, my lord," continued Corinne, "there is much sincerity in the sentiments of nations who possess a very lively imagination. But to-morrow if you choose I will conduct you to the Capitol. I have, I hope, many other walks to propose to you. When they are finished will you go? Will you--" She stopped, fearing she had said too much. "No Corinne," replied Oswald; "no, I will never renounce that gleam of happiness which my guardian angel, perhaps, causes to shine upon me from the height of heaven."

FOOTNOTES:

[7] A Frenchman in the late war, commanded the Castle of St Angelo; the Neapolitan troops summoned him to capitulate; he answered that the fortress should be surrendered when the Angel of Bronze should sheathe his sword.

[8] These facts are to be found in the _History of the Italian Republics of the Middle Ages_, by M. Simonde, of Geneva. This history will certainly be considered as an authority; for we perceive, in reading it, that its author is a man of profound sagacity, as conscientious as he is energetic in his manner of relating and describing.

[9] "Eine Welt zwar bist du o Rom; doch ohne die Liebe, Wäre die Welt nicht die Welt, wäre denn Rom auch nicht Rom."

These two verses are from Goëthe, the German poet, the philosopher, the man of letters, whose originality and imagination are most remarkable.

[10] The Church of St Peter is said to be one of the chief causes of the Reformation, inasmuch as it cost the Popes so much money that they had recourse to the multiplication of indulgences in order to build it.