Part 12

Finally, I have fallen quite in love with this quaint, irregular old place. Nor do I know how long I might have loitered, had not the inevitable disillusion come, as come it will over so many promising things and fair. Otherwise I might have gone back--in imagination--to those honest old times of Durer, Vischer, Krafft, and Company, and imagined myself a free burgher of a free city. But the spell was doubly broken. At the old castle--whereof some small apartments are unpretendingly fitted up for the King and Queen of Bavaria--there comes upon one, in another part thereof, a vision of certain instruments of torture, used undoubtedly in those good old times to keep the burghers submissive to their oligarchy of merchant princes. And again at the Rath-haus, or Hotel de Ville; the maidenly show-woman lighted us by lanthorn-light through a set of subterranean dungeons, too numerous to have been destined for offenders only against the criminal laws, too horrible to be sanctioned under our creed of comparative gentleness. And so, on the whole, I returned back to actual existence, and to all the boredom of Parliamentary conflicts and Presidential elections, with a certain sense of relief.

ROMAN NOMENCLATURE.

By dint of many rambles I am become fairly versed in the topography of Rome; but its history, as elucidated by monuments or relics, is a perpetual riddle to the beholder. The Republic, the Empire, the Barbarian Invasions, Free Lances, Barons, Kings, and Popes--all are suggested; all come before you in confused array; not unfrequently, three or four at once. You shall go into a church to hear mass amid modern tawdriness, entering through a mediæval porch, taking your place between walls that were put up long before the Christian era, and under a roof supported by pillars whereon the sun of Phrygia has shone. Pagan and Christian--all is jumbled; until finally, unless you have the patience of Job and the zeal of an antiquarian, you begin to doubt all legendary and historic lore, and to measure what you see by its external attractiveness alone. One thing, however, is clearly marked. You are groping about, in a state of vexed uncertainty; suddenly you come upon an inscription, conspicuous, in large legible letters, often gilded. Now you are grateful. You stride up; and lo, there stands, emblazoned before you the interesting fact that such or such a Pontifex Maximus, some Benedict, or Clemens, or Pius, or Leo, or Gregory, restored, excavated, ornamented, or built, as the case may have been, the object upon which you have been pondering. Neither, in the dearth of desirable information, are you compensated by the opportunity of picking up chronological knowledge in regard to the Papacy. These fulsome records omit, not only all description that might be useful; they fail to mention the year of the World, or the year of Grace, altogether. In place thereof, you learn that the digging or decoration in question took place in a certain year of the reign of a certain Pope; but as the chair of St. Peter has had one hundred and sixteen occupants, between A.D. 1000 and A.D. 1860, "Anno VI. of Innocent VI." or "Anno II. of Julius II." does not materially aid the memory as to dates. This petty craving after chiselled or painted immortality is nowhere more contemptibly exhibited than in Raphael's famous Loggie at the Vatican, where, over each separate window, one reads in staring type, "Leo X., Pontifex Maximus." Surely there is something strangely inconsistent, in a power that boasts its remote origin and its endowment in perpetuity, thus taking infinite pains to isolate its historical fragments.

A smile only--not a grunt of indignation--is elicited by another peculiarity of Rome, which comes under the lounger's notice. Something of the same sort is perhaps also observable in all large cities; but it never struck me so strongly. I allude to the names of the streets and squares and public places, which names by the way are carefully and prominently labelled. The jumble is curious, though one starts a little at times from what to Protestant eyes seems irreverent. Take a sample, dispensing with the titles in Italian. You may stroll through the street of the Three Virgins, of the Three Robbers, of Jesus, of the Tarpeian Rock, of the Two Butchers' Shops, of the Baboon, of Divine Love, of the New Benches, of the Prefects, of the House-tops, of Jesus and Mary, of the Greeks, of the Tower of Blood, of the Triton, of the Guardian Angel, of the Strumpet, of the Soul, of the Scrofula, of the Eagle, of the Lion's Mouth, of the Five Moons, of Minerva, of the Incurables, of the Wind, of the Wolf, of St. John Beheaded. You may halt in the square of the Mouth of Truth, in that of the Field of Flowers, in that of the Satyrs, in that of Consolation, in that of the Goose. It is evident that no ruling mind or principle has regulated this public nomenclature. _Tot homines, quot sententiæ._

And is it not the same thing in private affairs? What variety of tastes! Here is a specimen. Two young men of my acquaintance, who have been campaigning in India, arrived here, the other day, on their first visit. One of them had a relative here, of a scholastic turn of mind, who was bringing a protracted sojourn to a close; and to him the cavalry officers were in a measure consigned. "Can you tell me what's to be seen at Ostia and Veii?" said one of them to me, forty-eight hours after their arrival. "Our friend, B., is going to take us a day's excursion to each place, to-morrow and the following day." I could scarcely keep my countenance. The poor innocents were sold to an antiquarian. Ostia is destitute of any objects that would repay a half-hour's walk. As for Veii, the learned have only agreed of late whereabouts that ancient city stood.

BRIGANDS, BEGGARS, AND SOUVENIRS.

My last communication was from Rome. It was piquant, on the day of departure thence from Naples, to dine at Terracina with a Prussian family, who had been stopped and robbed by brigands, at eight o'clock the previous morning, at a spot between Velletri and Cisterna. There was however no _Fra Diavolo_ in the case. The respectable _père de famille_, who with his sons and daughters had been laid under contribution, informed us that the fellows were evidently peasants unused to the trade; that they presented guns, in exacting their demand for money; but that they were nervous in their brief operation, and that they did not ransack the trunks, nor even carry off the watches and rings of the party. The chief sufferer was the vetturino, whom fright and the loss of thirty-six dollars had thrown into a fever, causing the detention which brought us into contact with the narrators. We passed on our way, without adventure; the safest period, there as elsewhere, being that which immediately follows one. I incline to think that extreme destitution induced this recourse to a practice almost obsolete, as it probably gave rise to the personal robberies, unattended with violence, which have been recently rife in Rome itself.

And in connection with this point, I may swell the laments of late travellers as to the chronic prevalence, throughout Southern Italy, of those other unceasing robberies of extortion and mendicancy, which are so much more difficult of toleration. I declare that of all the mythical personages of classic lore brought back to one's memory by local association, whether in the Elysian Fields or on the borders of Lake Avernus, the Harpies are those who alone survive, and who obtrude themselves always and everywhere, in season and out of season. The foul brood have assumed human semblance, and haunt you in all varieties. The unbidden cicerone, or the sturdy beggar--it is hard to say which is the worse.

How I anathematized them both at Sorrento, where there are certain souvenirs of Tasso, not so direct and tangible as those preserved in the Convent of San Onofrio at Rome, but which are worth the tracing. You will remember that the hapless poet found a resting place here in the house of his sister, after he escaped from his seven years' imprisonment at Ferrara. To be adjured, for charity, in the name of the Virgin and every Saint in the calendar--to have a jackass and a guide, or a jackass of a guide, thrust upon you, _nolens volens_ for an excursion that you have no mind to take, or to be importuned to "put out, put out, put out to sea," when you know that March winds and waves make the azure grotto of Capri totally inaccessible--these diversions, I say, do not assist one in gathering up one's reminiscences of Tasso, however much they may chasten and so improve the temper.

And here I may observe also upon a peculiarity that marks the research of certain travellers, somewhat akin perhaps to the taste which induces certain readers to trace history through personal memoirs, in place of studying broader narrations. If truth were told, there are a hundred who commune with Pepys and Horace Walpole, to ten who find delight in Hume. So is it--though by no means in the same proportion--with sight-seers on ground that is rich in historical associations. All their sympathies, or the larger portion of them at least, are with individuals, as though there were no grappling with a race, a nation, an age that is past. Stories, wholly or in part fictitious, are their hand-books. To them the Capitol of Rome is the scene of Rienzi's rise and fall, as interpreted by Bulwer Lytton. At Pompeii their chief care is to find out the abode of Glaucus and Ione. Nor can it be denied that there is an additional charm in this mode of viewing localities that are new to us, if it be not the most philosophical. In my own case, without needless parading of the degree in which I share this gentle weakness or disapprove it, I must own that its exercise gives at times an unexpected zest to a ramble. Whilst in Rome, for instance, I do not think that one's serious views of history or art are in any manner jarred upon, because here and there one stumbles upon relics that savour of individuality. At any rate I should not like to have missed the old mansion of the Anviti family, near the bridge of St. Angelo, mentioned by that old gossip, Benvenuto Cellini, as the frequent rendezvous of Michael Angelo, Raffaele, Cardinal Bembo, and other choice spirits of his day. I should have been sorry to have omitted a visit to the boudoir of Lucrezia Borgia, in the Convent close beside the church of St. Pietro in Vincolo, once the residence of Pope Alexander VI., and now mainly converted into a barrack for the troops of "the elder son of the Church." The part however in which is placed this small apartment, decorated with frescoes of the period, is still applied to conventual purposes. There is no legend about the matter, at least so far as regards the possession of the Borgia family; and the room being small in size, and unique in situation and style of ornament within and without, it is not difficult to believe that it was the chosen resort of a young lady in days when there was less gadding about than now. Still, to be candid, I must own that in musing here, as in looking at the lock of the same amiable woman's hair preserved in the Ambrosian Library of Milan, one is apt to have one's recollections of mediæval depravity not slightly tinctured by visions of Giulia Grisi in the prime of her voice and beauty, to say nothing of Victor Hugo's grand drama, and old Mademoiselle Georges' unrivalled performance therein.

Again, and lastly--lest the reader imagine that when once I get back to Rome, I am spell-bound and cannot leave it--what traveller has not cast a pleased eye upwards towards the window whence the baker's daughter, A. D. 1515, or thereabouts, ogled the young prince of painters as he passed by on his way to, or from his work, at the Farnesina Palace? You know the precise spot, O Viator, in a small piazza very near the Ponte Sisto? The house is white-washed or yellow-washed now; but there is the old Ionic pilaster, yet embedded in the wall, and the ornamental architectural mouldings yet shut in the Fornarina's window. And here it occurs to me to make one more digression, for the purpose of suggesting a theory of my own touching one of the many portraits of La Fornarina that have come down to us, and that vary so much in expression though all evidently intended for the same person. Between the fine one in the Tribune at Florence, and the filthy one in the Sciarra Palace at Rome, there is the widest possible difference. The former is evidently enough a woman unrefined, though beautiful; but there is neither coarseness nor indelicacy in the portraiture. The latter has both these characteristics, pushed to an extreme that is repulsive. It is said to be a copy from Raffaele by Giulio Romano. Now my belief is, that it was painted as a quiz upon his master's grace and delicacy, by the scapegrace pupil who ran counter to those special attributes. Meretricious, ugly, and vulgar, this wretched creature bears emblasoned in large letters on the bracelet upon her arm the name of Raffaele Sanzio d'Urbino. This piece of impudence seems to me the crowning touch. I can't credit that such a Fornarina ever came from Raffaele's easel. I do think that a coarse-minded and coarse-handed young artist may have made fun of his superior in oil--as modern literary wags have sometimes done in ink--and that Raffaele therefore is in no way answerable for that caricature in the Sciarra, which affects to be a reproduction from himself.

LIVRES DES VOYAGEURS.

Verily there is no lack of the plainer symbols of humanity, to remind the wanderer that Childe Harold was bitterly truthful, when he appended to his inimitable descriptions of the Alps the assertion that they

"serve to show, How Earth may pierce to Heaven, yet leave vain man below."

The impertinences and follies that are penned by men and women in the various Livres des Voyageurs, wherein they record their names, were alone sufficient proof of this. It is true that enthusiasm and fine feeling cannot endure for an indefinite period; and that he would be a sorry companion who always brought his stilts to the dinner-table. Still, one must regret that a certain craving for notoriety seems to impel so many a tourist to write himself down an ass, whilst no sense of fairness restrains others from commenting, appropriately or inappropriately, upon the names or remarks of predecessors. There is a cowardice and cruelty herein which has, I confess, sometimes made me angry, when the identity, characters, and conduct of the individuals concerned were alike unknown or indifferent to me. In place, however, of prolonging this digression, and without the least notion of proving anything whatever by the citation, I beg to offer the reader a brace of extracts from the visitors' record book at the Montanvert.

The first tickled me exceedingly, as a genuine specimen of the so-called Irish Bull. Mr. Somebody had entered his name, and added thereto this valuable bit of information: "Walked up from Chamouni in four hours and a-half, _having lost the greater part of his way_?" The italics are mine, of course; but is not the _mot_ worth its space in print?

My other extract concerns some of my young countrywomen, and I trust that their countrywomen who may read it will forgive me for putting it into circulation. They are very poor laughers, who never laugh when the joke tells against themselves; in this instance it is we who pay the piper. A party of English school girls had been lately at Montanvert with their governess, and had set down their names one after another in the big book, as is the custom there. A waggish Frenchman, waiting of course until their backs were turned, had bracketted the list, and written against the conclave this pithy and caustic criticism: "_Teint rouge; appétit géant; langage embarrassé._" What an ungallant scamp! Yet it must be owned that the same absurd album is rich in provocatives. A running fire of sarcasm, exchanged between English and French tourists, marks almost every page.

A SINGULAR ANAGRAM.

Among the curiosities--not of literature--but of letters, the Anagram was wont to be a favourite in the days of a by-gone generation. Who, for instance, has not smiled blandly over that famous transposition, which aptly converts "Horatio Nelson" into _Honor est à Nilo_?

The taste, however, for this sort of laborious trifling has almost passed away; nor do we propose to re-open the subject of cabalistic lettering. Our only purport is to offer a new specimen of its eccentricities, which came upon us recently during a vain attempt to solve certain mysteries, that occupy just now many serious minds. It is commended alike to snappers-up of unconsidered trifles, and to readers who chance to be imbued with a little tinge of superstitious sensitiveness. We strive to hope that, though almost as curious, it is not so unimpeachably appropriate as the one quoted above. The name, so much in men's mouths, "Louis Napoleon Bonaparte," may by this method be converted into, _An open plot--arouse, Albion_!

A WELL KNOWN DOCUMENT,

_Very Slightly Paraphrased_.

A comparison of the following lines, with the original American Declaration of Independence, will show that the earnest and impassioned language of real life is sometimes closely assimilated to blank verse.

When, in their course, human events compel One people to dissolve the social bands That linked them with another, and to take Among the powers of the Earth that station, Equal and separate, to which the laws Of Nature and of Nature's God, by right, Entitle them--respect to the opinions Of fellow men calls on them to declare The causes, which have rendered necessary Such separation. We, then, hold these truths To be self-evident: That all mankind Are equal, and endowed by their Creator With certain unalienable rights: That amongst these are Life, and Liberty, And the Pursuit of Happiness: That men, To make these rights available and safe, Have instituted Governments, deriving Their lawful power from the free consent

Of those they govern: That when any form Of Government is proved to be destructive Of these their ends, it is the People's right To alter, or abolish it, and found A Government anew, with principles So laid for its foundation, and with powers In such form organized, as shall to them Seem most conducive to their happiness And safety. Prudence will, indeed, dictate That long-established Governments should not Be changed for any light or transient cause: And all experience, accordingly, Hath shown that men are more disposed to suffer, So long as evils are endurable, Than to assert their rights, and throw aside Their customary forms. But when abuses And usurpations, in a lengthened train, Pursue an object steadfastly, evincing A firm design to bow them down beneath Absolute despotism, it is their right, It is their bounden duty, to throw off Such Government, and to provide new guards For their security in future. Such Has been the patient sufferance of these Our Colonies, and such is now the need, That forces them to change their present systems Of Government. Great Britain's present King Hath made his history the history Of usurpation, and of injuries Often repeated, and directly tending To the establishment of Tyranny

Over these States: to prove this, let the World In candour listen to undoubted facts. He has refused to give assent to laws, Wholesome, and needful for the public good. He has denied his Governors the power To sanction laws of pressing urgency, Unless suspended in their operation, Till his assent should be obtained; and when Suspended thus, he has failed wilfully To give them further thought. He has refused To sanction other laws, deemed advantageous To districts thickly peopled, unless they, Who dwelt therein, would basely throw away Their right to representatives--a right Inestimable, to themselves and only To Tyrants formidable. In the hope To weary them into a weak compliance With his obnoxious measures, he has summoned The Legislative Bodies to assemble At places inconvenient, and unusual, And whence their public records were remote. He has repeatedly dissolved the Houses Of Representatives for interfering With manly firmness, when he has invaded The People's rights. Long time he has refused, After such dissolutions, to convene Others in lieu of them; whereby, the powers Of Legislation, since they might not be Annihilated, have for exercise Been forced upon the body of the people; Leaving, meanwhile, the unprotected State To dangers of invasion from without, And inward anarchy. He has endeavoured

To check the population of these States, Thwarting the laws for naturalization Of foreigners, withholding his assent From other laws, that might encourage them In immigrating hither, and enhancing The price of new allotments of the soil. He has obstructed the administration Of Justice, by his veto on the laws Establishing judiciary powers He has made Judges on his will alone Dependent, for the tenure of their office, For the amount, and for the proper payment Of their emoluments. He has erected New offices in multitudes, and sent Swarms of his officers to harass us, And to eat out our substance. He has kept, In times of peace, among us, standing armies, Without the sanction of our Legislatures. His aim has been to place the military Above the civil power, and beyond Its just control. He has combined with others To make us subject to a jurisdiction, In spirit foreign to our Constitution, And unacknowledged by our laws; assenting To acts, that they have passed with semblance only Of legislation: Acts for quartering Among us bodies of armed troops: For shielding, By a mock trial, those their instruments From punishment for any murders done On our inhabitants: For cutting off Our trade with every quarter of the world-- For laying on us taxes not approved By our consent: For oft-times robbing us

Of any benefit that might attend Trial by jury: For transporting us Beyond the seas, to answer for offences, Imputed to us: For abolishing, Within a neighbouring province, the free system Of English laws; establishing therein An arbitrary power; and enlarging Its boundaries, to render it at once The fit example, and the instrument For bringing into these our Colonies The same despotic rule: For taking from us Our Charters; and abolishing our laws Most valued; changing thus, in principle, Our forms of Government: And for suspending Our Legislatures, with the declaration That they, themselves, in each and every case, Were vested with supreme authority To legislate for us. He has laid down His sway, by holding us without the pale Of his protection, and by waging war Against us. He has plundered on our seas; Ravaged our coasts; our cities burnt; and taken Our people's lives. He is transporting hither Armies composed of foreign mercenaries, To end the works of death, and desolation, And tyranny, begun with circumstances Of cruelty and perfidy unequalled In the most barbarous ages, and unworthy The Ruler of a nation civilized. He has constrained our fellow-citizens, On the high seas made captive, to bear arms Against their country, and of friends and brothers