Part 8

But I shall be glad _now_ to exchange lapis lazuli for violets, and verd antique for green fields. Here are more amethysts about Rome than lilacs; and the laburnum which at this gay season adorns the environs of London, I look for in vain about the Porta del Popolo. The proud purple tulip which decorates the ground hereabouts, opposed to the British harebell, is _Italy_ and _England_ again; but the _harebell_ by cultivation becomes a _hyacinth_, the _tulip_ remains where it began. We are now at the 16th of April, yet I know not how or why it is, although the oaks, young, small, and straggling as they are, have the leaves come out all broad and full already, though the fig is bursting out every day and hour, and the mulberry tree, so tardy in our climate, that I have often been unable to see scarcely a bud upon them even in May, is here completely furnished. Apple trees are yet in blossom round this city, and the few elms that can be found, are but just unfolding. Common shrubs continue their wintry appearance, and in the general look of spring little is gained. The hedges now of Kent and Surrey are filled with fragrance I am sure, and primroses in the remoter provinces torment the sportsmen with spoiling the drag on a soft scenting morning; while limes, horse-chesnuts, &c. contribute to produce an effect not so inferior to that fostered by Italian sunshine, as I expected to find it.

Why the first breath of far-distant summer should thus affect the oak and fig, yet leave the elm and apple as with us, the botanists must tell; few advances have been made in vegetation since we left Naples, that is certain; the hedges were as forward near Pozzuoli two full months ago. And here are no China oranges to be bought; no, nor a cherry or strawberry to be seen, while every man of fashion’s table in London is covered with them; and all the shops of Covent-garden and St. James’s-street hang out their luxurious temptations of fruit, to prove the proximity of summer, and the advantages of industrious cultivation. Our eating pleased me more at every town than this; where however a man might live very well I believe for sixpence a-day, and lodge for twenty pounds a-year; and whoever has no attachment to religion, friends, or country, no prejudices to plague his neighbours with, and no dislike to take the world as it goes, for six or seven years of his life, may spend them profitably at Rome, if either his business or his pleasure be made out of the works of art; as an income of two, or indeed one hundred pounds _per annum_, will purchase a man more refined delights of that kind here, than as many thousands in England: nor need he want society at the first houses, palaces one ought to call them, as Italians measure no man’s merit by the weight of his purse; they know how to reverence even poverty, and soften all its sorrows with an appearance of respect, when they find it unfortunately connected with noble birth. His own country folk’s neglect, as they pass through, would indeed be likely enough to disturb his felicity, and lessen the kindness of his Roman friends, who having no idea of a person’s being shunned for _any_ other _possible reason_ except the want of a pedigree, would conclude that _his_ must be essentially deficient, and lament their having laid out so many caresses on an impostor.

The air of this city is unwholesome to foreigners, but if they pass the first year, the remainder goes well enough; many English seem very healthy, who are established here without even the smallest intention of returning home to Great Britain, for which place we are setting out to-morrow, 19th April 1786, and quit a town that still retains so many just pretences to be styled the first among the cities of the earth; to which almost as many strangers are now attracted by curiosity, as were dragged thither by violence in the first stage of its dominion, impelled by superstitious zeal in the second. The rage for antiquities now seems to have spread its contagion of connoisseurship over all those people whose predecessors tore down, levelled, and destroyed, or buried under ground their statues, pictures, every work of art; Poles, Russians, Swedes, and Germans innumerable, flock daily hither in this age, to admire with rapture the remains of those very fabrics which their own barbarous ancestors pulled down ten centuries ago; and give for the head of a _Livia_, a _Probus_, or _Gallienus_, what emperors and queens could not then use with any efficacy, for the preservation of their own persons, now grown sacred by rust, and valuable from their difficulty to be decyphered. The English were wont to be the only travellers of Europe, the only dupes too in this way; but desire of distinction is diffused among all the northern nations, and our Romans here have it more in their power, with that prudence to assist them which it is said they do not want, if not to _conquer_ their neighbours once again, at least to _ruin_ them, by dint of digging up their dead heroes, and calling in the assistance of their old Pagan deities, _now_ useful to them in a _new_ manner, and ever propitious to this city, although

Enlighten’d Europe with disdain Beholds the reverenc’d heathen train, Nor names them more in this her clearer day, Unless with fabled force to aid the poet’s lay.

R. MERRY.

FROM ROME TO ANCONA.

In our road hither we passed through what remains of Veia, once so esteemed and liked by the Romans, that they had a good mind, after they had driven Brennus back, to change the seat of empire and remove it there; but a belief in augury prevented it, and that event was put off till Constantine, seduced by beauties of situation, made the fatal change, and broke the last thread which had so long bound tight together the fasces of Roman sway. We did not taste the _Vinum Veientanum_ mentioned by Martial and Horace, but trotted on to Civita Castellana, where Camillus rejected the base offer of the schoolmaster of Fescennium; a good picture of his well-judged punishment is still preserved in the Capitol.

The first night of our journey was spent at Otricoli, where I heard the cuckoo sing in a shriller sharper note than he does in England. I had never listened to him before since I left my own country, and his song alone would have convinced me I was no longer in it. Porta di Fuga at Spoleta gates, commemorating poor Hannibal’s precipitate retreat after the battle of Thrasymene, may perhaps detain us a while upon this Flaminian way; it was not Titus Flaminius though, whose negotiations ruined Hannibal for ever, that gave name to the road, but Caius of the same family; they had been Flamens formerly, and were therefore called Flaminius, when drawn up by accident or merit into notice; the same custom still obtains with us: we have _Dr. Priestley_ and _Mr. Parsons_.

Narni Bridge cost us some trouble in clambering, and more in disputing whether it was originally an aqueduct or a bridge--or both. It is a magnificent structure, irregularly built, the arches of majestic height, but all unequal. There was water enough under it when I was there to take off the impropriety apparent to many of turning so large an arch over so small a stream. Yet notwithstanding that the river was much swelled by long continuance of the violent rains which lately so overflowed the city of Rome, assisted by the Tyber, that people went about the streets in boats, notwithstanding the snows tumbled down from the surrounding mountains, must have much increased the quantity, and lowered the colour of the river:--We found it even _now_ yellow with brimstone, and well deserving the epithet of _sulphureous Nar_.

The next day’s drive carried us forward to Terni, where a severe concussion of the earth suffered only three nights since, kept all the little town in terrible alarm; the houses were deserted, the churches crowded, supplications and processions in every street, and people singing all night to the Virgin under our window.

Well! the next morning we hired horses for our gentlemen; a little cart, not inconvenient at all, for my maid and me; and scrambled over many rocks to view the far-famed waterfall, through a sweet country, pleasingly intersected with hedges and planted with vines; the ground finely undulated, and rising by gradations of hill till the eye loses itself among the lofty Appenines; surly as they seem, and one would think impervious; but against human art and human ambition, the boundary of rocks and roaring seas lift their proud heads in vain. Man renders them subservient to his imperial will, and forces them to facilitate, not impede his dominion; while ocean’s self supports his ships, and the mountain yields marble to decorate his palace.

This is however no moment and no place to begin a panegyric upon the power of man, and of his skill to subjugate the works of nature, where the people are trembling at its past, and dreading its future effects.

The cascade we came to see is formed by the fall of a whole river, which here abruptly drops into the Nar, from a height so prodigious, and by a course so unbroken, that it is difficult to communicate, so as to receive the idea: for no eye can measure the depth of the precipice, such is the tossing up of foam from its bottom; and the terrible noise heard long before one arrives so stunned and confounded all my wits at once, that many minutes passed before I observed the horror in our conductors, who coming with us, then first perceived how the late earthquake had twisted the torrent out of its proper channel, and thrown it down another neighbouring rock, leaving the original bed black and deserted, as a dismal proof of the concussion’s force.

One of our English friends who had visited Schaffhausen, made no difficulty to prefer this wonderful cascade to the fall of the Rhine at that place; and what with the fissures made in the ground by recent earthquakes, the sight of propt-up cottages which fright the fancy more than those already fallen, and the roar of dashing waters driven from their destined currents by what the people here emphatically term palpitations of the earth; one feels a thousand sensations of sublimity unexcited by less accidents, and soon obliterated by real danger.

Why the inhabitants will have this tumbling river be _Topino_, I know not; but no suggestions of mine could make them name it Velino, as our travellers uniformly call it: for, say they, _quello è il nome del sorgente_[21]; and in fact Virgil’s line,

Sulfureâ Nar, albus acqua fontesque Velini,

says no more.

The mountains after Terni grow steep and difficult; no one who wishes to see the Appenines in perfection must miss this road, yet are they not comparable to the Alps at best, which being more lofty, more craggy, and almost universally terminating in points of granite devoid of horizontal strata, give one a more majestic idea of their original and duration. Spoleto is on the top of one of them, and Porta della Fuga meets one at its gates. Here as our coach broke (and who can wonder?) we have time to talk over old stories, and _look for streams immortaliz’d in song_: for being tied together only with ropes, we cannot hurry through a country most delightful of all others to be detained in.

The little temple to the river god Clitumnus afforded matter of discussion amongst our party, whether this was, or was not the very one mentioned by Pliny: _Adjacet templum priscum et religiosum. Stat Clitumnus ipse amictus ornatusque_[22].

Mr. Greatheed was angry with me for admiring spiral columns, as he said pillars were always meant to support something, and spiral lines betrayed weakness. Mr. Chappelow quoted every classic author that had ever mentioned the white cattle; and I said that so far as they were whiter than other beasts of the same kind, so far were they worse; for that whiteness in the works of nature shewed feebleness still more than spirals in the works of art perhaps. So chatting on--but on no Flaminian way, we arrived at Foligno; where the people told us that it was the quality of those waters to turn the clothing of many animals white, and accordingly all the fowls looked like those of _Darking_. I had however no taste of their beauty, recollecting that when I kept poultry, some accident poisoned me a very beautiful black hen, the breed of Lord Mansfield at Caen Wood: she recovered her illness; but at the next moulting season, her feathers came as white as the swans. “Let us look,” says Mr. Sh----, “if all the women here have got grey hair.”

Tolentino and Macerata we will not speak about, while Loretto courts description, and the richest treasures of Europe stand in the most delicious district of it. The number of beggars offended me, because I hold it next to impossibility that they should want in a country so luxuriantly abundant; and their prostrations as they kneel and kiss the ground before you, are more calculated to produce disgust from British travellers, than compassion. Nor can I think these vagabonds distressed in earnest at _this_ time above all others; when their sovereign provides them with employment on the beautiful new road he is making, and insists on their being well paid, who are found willing to work. But the town itself of Loretto claims my attention; so clear are its streets, so numerous and cheerful and industrious are its inhabitants: one would think they had resolved to rob passengers of the trite remark which the sight of dead wealth always inspires, _that the money might be better bestowed upon the living poor_. For here are very few poor families, and fewer idlers than one expects to see in a place where not business but devotion is the leading characteristic. So quiet too and inoffensive are the folks here, that scarcely any robberies or murders, or any but very petty infringements of the law, are ever committed among them. Yet people grieve to see that wealth collected, which once diffused would certainly make many happy; and those treasures lying dead, which well dispersed might keep thousands alive. This observation, not always made perhaps by those who feel it most, or that would soonest give their share of it away, if once possessed, is now, from being so often repeated, become neither _bright_ nor _new_. We will not however be petulantly hasty to censure those who first began the lamentation, remembering that our blessed Saviour’s earliest disciples, and those most immediately about him too, could not forbear grudging to see precious ointment poured upon his feet, whom they themselves confessed to be the Son of God. We should likewise recollect his mild but grave reproof of those men who gave so decided a preference to the poor over his sacred person, so soon to be sacrificed _for them_, and his testimony to the woman’s earnest love and zeal expressed by giving him the finest thing she had. Such acceptance as she met with, I suppose prompted the hopes of many who have been distinguished by their rich presents to Loretto; and let not those at least mock or molest them, who have been doing nothing better with their money. Upon examination of the jewels it is curious to observe that the intrinsic value of the presents is manifestly greater, the more ancient they are; but taste succeeds to solidity in every thing, and proofs of that position may be found every step one treads. The vestments, all embroidered over with picked pearl, are quite beyond my powers of estimation. The gold baby given at the birth of Louis Quatorze, of size and weight equal to the real infant, has had its value often computed; I forget the sum though. A rock of emeralds in their native bed presented by the Queen of Portugal, though of Occidental growth, is surely inestimable; and our sanguinary Mary’s heart of rubies is highly esteemed. I asked if Charles the Ninth of France had sent any thing; for I thought _their_ presents should have been placed together: far, far even from the wooden image of _her_ who was a model of meekness, and carried in her spotless bosom the Prince of Peace. Many very exquisite pieces of art too have found their way into the Virgin’s cabinet; the pearl however is the striking rarity, as it exhibits in the manner of a blot on marble, the figure of our blessed Saviour sitting on a cloud clasped in his mother’s arms. Princess Borghese sent an elegantly-set diamond necklace no longer ago than last Christmas-day; it is valued at a thousand pounds sterling English: but the riches of that family appear to me inexhaustible. Whoever sees it will say, she might have spent the money better; but let them reflect that one may say that of _all_ expence almost; and it is not from the state of Loretto these treasures are taken at last: they _bring_ money there; and if any person has a right to complain, it must be the subjects of distant princes, who yet would scarcely have divided among _them_ the sapphires, &c. they have sent in presents to Loretto.

It was curious to see the devotees drag themselves round the holy house upon their knees; but the Santa Scala at Rome had shewn me the same operation performed with more difficulty; and a written injunction at bottom, less agreeable for Italians to comply with, than any possible prostration; viz. That no one should spit as he went up or down, except in his pocket-handkerchief. The lamps which burn night and day before the black image here at Loretto are of solid gold, and there is such a crowd of them I scarcely could see the figure for my own part; and that one may see still less, the attendant canons throw a veil over one’s face going in.

The confessionals, where all may be heard in their own language, is not peculiar to this church; I met with it somewhere else, but have forgotten where, though I much esteemed the establishment. It is very entertaining here too, to see inscriptions in twelve different tongues, giving an account of the miraculous removal and arrival here of the _Santa Casa_: I was delighted with the Welch one; and our conductor said there came not unfrequently pilgrims from the vale of Llwydd, who in their turns told the wonders of their _holy well_. In Latin then, and Greek, and Hebrew, Syriac, Phœnician, Arabic, French, Spanish, German, Welch, and Tuscan, may you read a story, once believed of equal credit, and more revered I fear, than even the sacred words of God speaking by the scriptures; but which is now certainly upon the wane. I told a learned ecclesiastic at Rome, that we should return home by the way of Loretto:--“There is no need,” said he, “to caution a native of your island against credulity; but pray do not believe that we are ourselves satisfied with the tale you will read there; no man of learning but knows, that Adrian destroyed every trace and vestige of Christianity that he could find in the East; and he was acute, and diligent, and powerful. The empress Helena long after him, with piety that equalled even his profaneness, could never hear of this holy house; how then should it have waited till so many long years after Jesus Christ? Truth is, Pope Boniface the VIIIth, who canonized St. Louis, who instituted the jubilee, who quarrelled with Philippe le Bel about a new crusade, and who at last fretted himself to death, though he had conquered all his enemies, because he feared some loss of power to the church;--desired to give mankind a new object of attention, and encouraged an old visionary, in the year 1296, to propagate the tale he half-believed himself; how the blessed Virgin had appeared to him, and related the story you will read upon the walls, which was then first committed to paper. In consequence of this intelligence, Boniface sent men into the East that he could best depend upon, and they brought back just such particulars as would best please the Pope; and in those days you can scarce think how quick the blaze of superstition caught and communicated itself: no one wished to deny what his neighbour was willing to believe, and what he himself would then have gained no credit by contradicting. Positive evidence of what the house really was, or whence it came, it was in a few years impossible to obtain; nor did Boniface the VIIIth know it himself I suppose, much less the old visionary who first set the matter a-going. Meantime the house itself has _no foundation_, whatever the story may have; it is a very singular house as you may see; it has been venerated by the best and wisest among Christians now for five hundred years: even the Turks (who have the same method of honouring their Prophet with gifts, as we do the Virgin Mary) respect the very name of Loretto:--why then should the place be to any order of thinking beings a just object of insult or mockery?”--Here he ended his discourse, the recollection of which never left me whilst we remained at the place.

What Dr. Moore says of the singing chaplains with _soprano_ voices, who say mass at the altars of Loretto, is true enough, and may perhaps have been originally borrowed from the Pagan celebration of the rites of Cybele. When Christianity was young, and weak, and tender, and unsupported by erudition, dreadful mistakes and errors easily crept in: the heathen converts hearing much of _Mater Dei_, confounded her idea with that of their _Mater Deorum_; and we were shewn, among the rarities of Rome, a _bronze Madonna_, with a tower on her head, exactly as Cybele is represented.

That the jewels are taken out of this treasury and replaced with false stones, is a speech always said over fine things by the vulgar: I have heard the same thing affirmed of the diamonds at St. Denis; and can recollect the common people saying, when our King of England was crowned, that all the real precious stones were locked up, or sold for state expences; while the jewels shewn to _them_ were only calculated to dazzle for the day. As there is always infinite falsehood in the world, so there is always wonderful care, however ill applied, to avoid being duped; a terror which hangs heavily over weak minds in particular, and frights them as far from truth on the one side, as credulity tempts them away from it on the other.

But we must visit the apothecary’s pots, painted by Raphael, and leave Loretto, to proceed along the side of this lovely sea, hearing the pilgrims sing most sweetly as they go along in troops towards the town, with now and then a female voice peculiarly distinguished from the rest: by this means a new image is presented to one’s mind; the sight of such figures too half alarm the fancy, and give an air of distance from England, which nothing has hitherto inspired half so strongly. This charming Adriatic gulph beside, though more than delicious to drive by, does not, like the Mediterranean, convey homeish or familiar ideas; one feels that it belongs exclusively to Venice; one knows that ancient Greece is on the opposite shore, and that with a quick sail one should soon see Macedonia; and descending but a little to the southward, visit Athens, Corinth, Sparta, Thebes--seats of philosophy, freedom, virtue; whence models of excellence and patterns of perfection have been drawn for twenty succeeding centuries!

Here are plenty of nightingales, but they do not sing as well as in Hertfordshire: birds gain in colour as you approach the tropic, but they lose in song; under the torrid zone I have heard they never sing at all; with us in England the latest leave off by midsummer, when the work of incubation goes forward, and the parental duties begin: the nightingale too chuses the coolest hour; and though I have yet heard her in Italy only early in the mornings, Virgil knew she sung in the night:

Flet noctem, &c.[23]