Part 5
Van Vittelli’s aqueduct is a prodigiously beautiful, magnificent, and what is more, a useful performance: having the finest models of antiquity, he is said to have surpassed them all. Why such superb and expensive methods should be still used to conduct water up and down Italy, any more than other nations, or why they are not equally necessary in France and England, nobody informs me. Madame de Bocages enquired long ago, when she was taken to see the fountain Trevi at Rome, why they had no water at Paris but the Seine? I think the question so natural, that one wishes to repeat it; and one great reason, little urged by others, incites me to look with envy on the delicious and almost innumerable gushes of water that cool the air of Naples and of Rome, and pour their pellucid tides through almost every street of those luxurious cities: _it is this_, that I consider them as a preservative against that dreadfullest of all maladies, canine madness; a distemper which, notwithstanding the excessive heat, has here scarcely a name. Sure it is the plenty of drink the dogs meet at every turn, that must be the sole cause of a blessing so desirable.
My stay has been always much shorter than I wished it, in every great town of Italy; but _here!_ where numberless wonders strike the sense without fatiguing it, I do feel double pleasure; and among all the new ideas I have acquired since England lessened to my sight upon the sea, those gained at Naples will be the last to quit me. The works of art may be found great and lovely, but the drunken Faun and the dying Gladiator will fade from one’s remembrance, and leave the glow of Solfaterra and the gloom of Posilippo indelibly impressed. Vesuvius too! that terrified me so when first we drove into this amazing town, what future images can ever obliterate the thrilling sensations it at first occasioned? Surely the sight of old friends after a tedious absence can alone supply the vacancy that a mind must feel which quits such sublime, such animated scenery, and experiences a sudden deprivation of delight, finding the bosom all at once unfurnished of what has yielded it for three swiftly-flown months, perpetual change of undecaying pleasures.
To-morrow I shall take my last look at the Bay, and driving forward, hope at night to lodge at Terracina.
JOURNEY FROM NAPLES TO ROME.
The morning of the day we left our fair Parthenope was passed in recollecting her various charms: every one who leaves her carries off the same sensations. I have asked several inhabitants of other Italian States what they liked best in Italy except home; it was Naples always, dear delightful Naples! When I say this, I mean always to exclude those whose particular pursuits lead them to cities which contain the prize they press for. English people when unprejudiced express the like preference. Attachments formed by love or friendship, though they give charms to every place, cannot be admitted as a reason for commending any one above the rest. A traveller without candour it is vain to read; one might as well hope to get a just view of nature by looking through a coloured glass, as to gain a true account of foreign countries, by turning over pages dictated by prejudice.
With the nobility of Naples I had no acquaintance, and can of course say nothing of their manners. Those of the middling people seem to be behind-hand with their neighbours; it is so odd that they should never yet have arrived at calling their money by other names than those of the weights, an _ounce_ and a _grain_; the coins however are not ugly.
The evening of the day we left this surprising city was spent out of its king’s dominions, at Terracina, which now affords one of the best inns in Italy; it is kept by a Frenchman, whose price, though high, is regulated, whose behaviour is agreeable, and whose suppers and beds are delightful. Near the spot where his house now stands, there was in ancient Pagan days a temple, erected to the memory of the beardless Jupiter called Anxurus, of which Pausanias, and I believe Scaliger too, take notice; though the medal of Pansa is _imago barbata, sed intonsa_, they tell me; and Statius extends himself in describing the innocence of Jupiter and Juno’s conversation and connection in their early youth. Both of them had statues of particular magnificence venerated with very peculiar ceremonies, erected for them in this town, however, _ut Anxur fuit quæ nunc Terracinæ sunt_[8]. The tenth Thebaid too speaks much _de templo sacro et Junoni puellæ, Jovis Axuro_[9]; and who knows after all whether these odd circumstances might not be the original reason of Anxur’s grammatical peculiarity, well known to all from the line in old _Propria que maribus_,
Et genus Anxur quod dat utrumque?
This place was founded and colonised by Æmilius Mamercus and Lucius Plautus, Anno Mundi 3725 I think; they took the town of Priverna, and sent each three hundred citizens to settle this new city, where Jupiter Anxurus was worshipped, as Virgil among so many other writers bears testimony:
Circeumque jugum, queis Jupiter Anxuris arvis Præsidet[10].
7th ÆNEID.
Æmilius Mamercus was a very pious consul, and when he served before with Genutius his colleague, made himself famous for driving the nail into Minerva’s temple to stop the progress of the plague; he was therefore likely enough to encourage this superstitious worship of the beardless Jupiter.
Some books of geography, very old ones, had given me reason to make enquiry after a poisonous fountain in the rocks near Terracina. My enquiries were not vain. The fountain still exists, and whoever drinks it dies; though Martial says,
Sive salutiferis candidus Anxur acquis[11].
The place is now cruelly unwholesome however; so much so, that our French landlord protests he is obliged to leave it all the summer months, at least the very hot season, and retire with his family to Molo di Gaeta. He told us with rational delight enough of a visit the Pope had made to those places some few years ago; and that he had been heard to say to some of his attendants how there was no _mal aria_ at all thereabouts in past days: an observation which had much amazed them. It was equally their wonder how his Holiness went o’walking about with a book in his hand or pocket, repeating verses by the sea-side. One of them had asked the name of the book, but nobody could remember it. “Was it _Virgil_?” said one of our company. “_Eh mon Dieu, Madame, vous l’avez divinée_[12],” replied the man. But, O dear (thought I), how would these poor people have stared, if their amiable sovereign, enlightened and elegant as his mind is, had happened to talk more in their presence of what he had been reading on the sea shore, _Virgil_ or _Homer_; had he chanced to mention that _Molo di Gaeta_ was in ancient times the seat of the Lestrygones, and inhabited by canibals, men who eat one another! and surely it is scarcely less comical than curious, to recollect how Ulysses expresses his sensations on first landing just by this now lovely and highly-cultivated spot, when he pathetically exclaims,
----Upon what coast, On what _new_ region is Ulysses tost? Possest by wild barbarians fierce in arms, Or men whose bosoms tender pity warms?
POPE’S ODYSSEY.
Poor Cicero might indeed have asked the question seven or eight centuries after, in days falsely said to be civilized to a state of perfection; when his most inhuman murder near this town, completed the measure of their crimes; who to their country’s fate added that of its philosopher, its orator, its acknowledged father and preserver.--Cruel, ungrateful Rome! ever crimson with the blood of its own best citizens--theatre of civil discord and proscriptions, unheard of in any history but her’s; who, next to Jerusalem in sins, has been next in sufferings too; though twice so highly favoured by Heaven--from the dreadful moment when all her power was at once crushed by barbarism, and even her language rendered _dead_ among mankind--to the present hour, when even her second splendours, like the last gleams of an _aurora borealis_, fade gradually from the view, and sink almost imperceptibly into decay. Nor can the exemplary virtues and admirable conduct of _this_, and of her four last princes, redeem her from ruin long threatened to her past tyrannical offences; any more than could the merits of Marcus Aurelius and Antoninus Pius compensate for the crimes of Tiberius, Caligula, and Nero.--Let the death of Cicero, which inspired this rhapsody, contribute to excuse it; and let me turn my eyes to the bewitching spot--
Where Circe dwelt, the daughter of the day.
That such enchantresses should inhabit such regions could have been scarce a wonder in Homer’s time I trow; the same country still retains the same power of producing singers, to whom our English may with propriety enough cry out;
----Hail, _foreign_ wonder! Whom certes our rough shades did never breed.
MILTON.
That she should be the offspring of Phœbus too, in a place where the sun’s rays have so much power, was a well-imagined fable one may _feel_; and her instructions to Ulysses for his succeeding voyage, just, apt, and proper: enjoining him a prayer to Crateis the mother of Scylla, to pacify her rapacious daughter’s fury, is the least intelligible of all Circe’s advice, to me. But when I saw the nasty trick they had at Naples, of spreading out the ox-hides to dry upon the sea shore, as one drives to Portici; the Sicilian herds, mentioned in the Odyssey, and their crawling skins, came into my head in a moment.
We have left these scenes of fabulous wonder and real pleasure however; left the warm vestiges of classic story, and places which have produced the noblest efforts of the human mind; places which have served as no ignoble themes for truly immortal song; all quitted now! all left for recollection to muse on, and for fancy to combine: but these eyes I fear will never more survey them. Well! no matter--
When like the baseless fabric of a vision, The cloud-capt tow’rs, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea all which it inherit, shall dissolve; And like some unsubstantial pageant faded Leave not a wreck behind.
ROME.
We are come here just in time to see the three last days of the carnival, and very droll it is to walk or drive, and see the people run about the streets, all in some gay disguise or other, and masked, and patched, and painted to make sport. The Corso is now quite a scene of distraction; the coachmen on the boxes pretending to be drunk, and throwing sugar-plumbs at the women, which it grows hard to find out in the crowd and confusion, as the evening, which shuts in early, is the festive hour: and there is some little hazard in parading the streets, lest an accident might happen; though a temporary rail and _trottoir_ are erected, to keep the carriages off. Our high joke, however, seems to consist in the men putting on girls clothes: a woman is somewhat a rarity at Rome, and strangely superfluous as it should appear by the extraordinary substitutes found for them on the stage: it is more than wonderful to see great strong fellows dancing the women’s parts in these fashionable dramas, pastoral and heroic ballets as they call them. _Soprano_ singers did not so surprise me with their feminine appearance in the Opera; but these clumsy _figurantes_! all stout, coarse-looking men, kicking about in hooped petticoats, were to me irresistibly ridiculous: the gentlemen with me however, both Italians and English, were too much disgusted to laugh, while _la premiere danseuse_ acted the coquet beauty, or distracted mother, with a black beard which no art could subdue, and destroyed every illusion of the pantomime at a glance. All this struck nobody but us foreigners after all; tumultuous and often _tender_ applauses from the pit convinced us of _their heart-felt_ approbation! and in the parterre fat gentlemen much celebrated at Rome for their taste and refinement.
As their exhibition did not please our party, notwithstanding its singularity, we went but once to the theatre, except when a Festa di Ballo was advertised to begin at eleven o’clock one night, but detained the company waiting on its stairs for two hours at least beyond the time: for my own part I was better amused _outside_ the doors, than _in_. Masquerades can of themselves give very little pleasure except when they are new things. What was most my delight and wonder to observe, was the sight of perhaps two hundred people of different ranks, all in my mind strangely ill-treated by a nobleman; who having a private supper in the room, prevented their entrance who paid for admission; all mortified, all crowded together in an inconvenient place; all suffering much from heat, and more from disappointment; yet all in perfect good humour with each other, and with the gentleman who detained in longing and ardent, but not impatiently-expressed expectation, such a number of _Romans_: who, as I could not avoid remarking, certainly deserve to rule over all the world once more, if, as we often read in history, _command_ is to be best learned from the practice of _obedience_.
The masquerade was carried on when we had once begun it, with more taste and elegance here, than either at Naples or Milan; so it was at Florence, I remember; more dresses of contrivance and fancy being produced. We had a very pretty device last night, of a man who pretended to carry statues about as if for sale: the gentlemen and ladies who personated the figures were incomparable from the choice of attitudes, and skill in colouring; but _il carnovale è morto_, as the women of quality told us last night from their coaches, in which they carried little transparent lanthorns of a round form, red, blue, green, &c. to help forward the shine; and these they throw at each other as they did sugar plums in the other towns, while the millions of small thin bougie candles held in every hand, and stuck up at every balcony, make the _Strada del Popolo_ as light as day, and produce a wonderfully pretty effect, gay, natural, and pleasing.
The unstudied hilarity of Italians is very rejoicing to the heart, from one’s consciousness that it is the result of cheerfulness really felt, not a mere incentive to happiness hoped for. The death of Carnovale, who was carried to his grave with so many candles suddenly extinguished at twelve o’clock last night, has restored us to a tranquil possession of ourselves, and to an opportunity of examining the beauties of nature and art that surround one.
St. Peter’s church is incontestably the first object in this city, so crowded with single figures: That this church should be built in the form of a Latin cross instead of a Greek one may be wrong for ought I know; that columns would have done better than piers inside, I do not think; but that whatever has been done by man might have been done better, if that is all the critics want, I readily allow. This church is, after all their objections, nearer to perfect than any other building in the world; and when Michael Angelo, looking at the Pantheon, said, “Is this the best our vaunted ancestors could do? If so, I will shew the advancement of the art, in suspending a dome of equal size to this up in the air.” he made a glorious boast, and was perhaps the only person ever existing who could have performed his promise.
The figures of angels, or rather cherubims, eight feet high, which support the vases holding holy water, as they are made after the form of babies, do perfectly and closely represent infants of eighteen or twenty months old; nor till one comes quite close to them indeed, is it possible to discern that they are colossal. This is brought by some as a proof of the exact proportions kept, and of the prodigious space occupied, by the area of this immense edifice; and urged by others, as a peculiarity of the _human_ body to deceive so at a distance, most unjustly; for one is surprised exactly in the same manner by the doves, which ornament the church in various parts of it. _They_ likewise appear of the natural size, and completely within one’s reach upon entering the door, but soon as approached, recede to a considerable height, and prove their magnitude nicely proportioned to that of the angels and other decorations.
The canopied altar, and its appurtenances, are likewise all colossal I think, when they tell me of four hundred and fifty thousand pounds weight of bronze brought from the Pantheon, and used to form the wreathed pillars which support, and the torses that adorn it. Yet airy lightness and exquisite elegance are the characteristics of the fabric, not gloomy greatness, or heavy solidity. How immense then must be the space it stands on! four hundred and sixty-seven of my steps carried me from the door to the end. Warwick castle would be contained in its middle _aisle_. Here are one hundred and twenty silver lamps, each larger than I could lift, constantly burning round the altar; and one never sees either them, or the light they dispense, till forced upon the observation of them, so completely are they lost in the general grandeur of the whole. In short, with a profusion of wealth that astonishes, and of splendour that dazzles, as soon as you enter on an examination of its secondary parts, every man’s _first_ impression at entering St. Peter’s church, must be surprise at seeing it so clear of superfluous ornament. This is the true character of innate excellence, the _simplex munditiis_, or _freedom from decoration_; the noble simplicity to which no embellishment can add dignity, but seems a mere appendage. Getting on the top of this stupendous edifice, is however the readiest way to fill one’s mind with a deserving notion of its extent, capacity, and beauty; nor is any operation easier, so happily contrived is the ascent. Contrivance here is an ill-chosen word too, so luminous so convenient is the walk, so spacious the galleries beside, that all idea of danger is removed, when you perceive that even round the undefended cornice, our king’s state coach might be most safely driven.
The monuments, although incomparable, scarcely obtain a share of your admiration for the first ten times of your surveying the place; Guglielmo della Porta’s famous figure, supporting that dedicated to the memory of Paul the Third, was found so happy an imitation of female beauty by some madman here however, that it is said he was inflamed with a Pigmalion-like passion for it, of which the Pontiff hearing, commanded the statue to be draped. The steps at almost the end of this church we have all heard were porphyry, and so they are; how many hundred feet long I have now forgotten:--no matter; what I have not forgotten is, that I thought as I looked at them--why so they _should_ be porphyry--and that was all. While the vases and cisterns of the same beautiful substance at Villa Borghese attracted my wonder; and Clement X.’s urn at St. John de Lateran, appeared to me an urn fitter for the ashes of an Egyptian monarch, Busiris or Sesostris, than for a Christian priest or sovereign, since universal dominion has been abolished. Nothing, however, _can_ look very grand in St. Peter’s church; and though I saw the general benediction given (I hope partook it) upon Easter day, my constant impression was, that the people were below the place; no pomp, no glare, no dove and glory on the chair of state, but what looked too little for the area that contained them. Sublimity disdains to catch the vulgar eye, she elevates the soul; nor can long-drawn processions, or splendid ceremonies, suffice to content those travellers who seek for images that never tarnish, and for truths that never can decay. Pius Sextus, in his morning dress, paying his private devotions at the altar, without any pageantry, and with very few attendants, struck me more a thousand and a thousand times, than when arrayed in gold, in colours, and diamonds, he was carried to the front of a balcony big enough to have contained the conclave; and there, shaded by two white fans, which, though really enormous, looked no larger than that a girl carries in her pocket, pronounced words which on account of the height they came from were difficult to hear.
All this is known and felt by the managers of these theatrical exhibitions so certainly, that they judiciously confine great part of them to the _Capella Sestini_, which being large enough to impress the mind with its solemnity, and not spacious enough for the priests, congregation, and all, to be lost in it, is well adapted for those various functions that really make Rome a scene of perpetual gala during the holy week; which an English friend here protested to me he had never spent with so little devotion in his life before. The _miserere_ has, however, a strong power over one’s mind--the absence of all instrumental music, the steadiness of so many human voices, the gloom of the place, the picture of Michael Angelo’s last judgment covering its walls, united with the mourning dress of the spectators--is altogether calculated with great ingenuity to give a sudden stroke to the imagination, and kindle that temporary blaze of devotion it is wisely enough intended to excite: but even this has much of its effect destroyed, from the admission of too many people: crowd and bustle, and struggle for places, leave no room for any ideas to range themselves, and least of all, serious ones: nor would the opening of our sacred music in Westminster Abbey, when nine hundred performers join to celebrate _Messiah_’s praises, make that impression which it does upon the mind, were not the king, and court, and all the audience, as still as death, when the first note is taken.
The ceremony of washing the pilgrims feet is a pleasing one: it is seen in high perfection here at Rome; where all that the pope personally performs is done with infinite grace, and with an air of mingled majesty and sweetness, difficult to hit, but singularly becoming in him, who is both priest of God, and sovereign of his people.