Part 2

Full of rapture are the letters of Shelley from Rome: "Since I last wrote to you," he says to Peacock, "I have seen the ruins of Rome, the Vatican, St Peter's, and all the miracles of ancient and modern art contained in that majestic city. The impression of it exceeds anything I have ever experienced in my travels.... We visited the Forum, and the ruins of the Coliseum every day. The Coliseum is unlike any work of human hands I ever saw before. It is of enormous height and circuit, and the arches, built of massy stones, are piled on one another, and jut into the blue air, shattered into the forms of overhanging rocks."

Shelley was entranced by the arch of Constantine. "It is exquisitely beautiful and perfect." In March 1819, he writes: "Come to Rome. It is a scene by which expression is overpowered, which words cannot convey." The Cathedral scarcely appealed to Shelley; he thought it inferior externally to St Paul's, though he admired the façade and colonnade. More satisfying to the poet's æsthetic taste was the Pantheon, with its handsome fluted columns of yellow marble, and the beauty of the proportions in the structure.

The Pantheon is generally admitted to be the most noble of the ancient edifices of the city. It was erected by Agrippa 27 B.C., and sumptuously adorned with fine marbles. The dome is vast and nobly planned, and the building truly merits Shelley's designation, "sublime."

Keats was buried in the Protestant cemetery in Rome, in a tomb bearing the inscription: "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." His loyal and admiring friend, Shelley, wrote a truer memorial of the young poet:

"Go thou to Rome--at once the paradise, The grave, the city, and the wilderness; And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise, And flowering weeds, and fragrant copses dress The bones of desolation's nakedness Pass, till the spirit of the spot shall lead Thy footsteps to a slope of green access, Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread."

In 1850 Robert Browning and his wife were in Rome, and it was then that Browning wrote the beautiful love poem, "Two in the Campagna," telling of the joy of roaming in:

"The champaign with its endless fleece Of feathery grasses everywhere! Silence and passion, joy and peace An everlasting wash of air----"

Poets and painters have through the centuries drawn inspiration from this wondrous city of splendid monuments and ancient grandeur. How true was Goethe's statement that wherever you turn in Rome there is an object of beauty and arresting interest.

The appeal of the city is strong, the variety bewildering, whether you elect to muse upon the remains of the imperial days, or to study the Renaissance art of the Christian churches. It is well, if possible, to make a survey of the antiquities in chronological order, beginning with an inspection of the ruins of the Romulean wall and the traces of the oldest gates. Then the Forum should be visited in its valley, and the art of the temple of Saturn, the Basilica Julia, and the Arch of Fabius examined. The Temple of Vespasian, the Palace of Caligula, Trajan's Column, and the numerous arches will all arouse memories of the emperors and the splendid purple days.

The Campagna is not only a wilderness, but it is rich in historic memories. Here lived the cultured Cynthia, the friend of Catullus, the poet, and of Quintilius Varus. Numerous villas dotted the Campagna in the days of the emperors, and here, during the summer heats, retired many of the wealthy citizens of Rome. Valuable antiquities, vases, urns, and figures, have been unearthed from this classic soil.

ASSISI

"There was a man in the city of Assisi, by name Francis, whose memory is blessed, for that God, graciously presenting him with blessings of goodness, delivered him in His mercy from the perils of this present life, and abundantly filled him with the gifts of heavenly grace."

So speaks Saint Bonaventura of the noble character of the holy man of Assisi, whose figure arises before us as we tread the streets of the town of his birth. For Assisi is a place of pilgrimage, filled with fragrant memories of that saint of whom even the heterodox speak with loving reverence. St Francis stands distinct in an age of fanatic religious zeal, as an example of tolerance, a lover of mercy, and a practical follower of the teaching of Christian benevolence.

At the beginning of the thirteenth century, Pope Innocent III. offered indulgences to the faithful who would unite in a crusade against the Albigensian heretics of Languedoc. For twenty years blood was shed plentifully in this war upon heresy; for twenty years the hounds of persecution were let loose on the hated enemies of papal absolutism. "Kill all; God will know," was the answer of the Pope's legate during this massacre, when asked by the crusaders how they could recognise the heretics. While Languedoc and Provence were ravaged by the truculent persecutors, and fires were lighted to burn the bodies of men, women and children, St Francis lived in Assisi, preaching humanity and good will. There is no testimony that he protested expressly against the Albigensian crusades; but we know from his life and his writings that he detested cruelty and violence, and never directly counselled persecution.

In "The Golden Legend" we read that "Francis, servant and friend of Almighty God, was born in the city of Assisi, and was made a merchant in the twenty-fifth year of his age, and wasted his time by living vainly, whom our Lord corrected by the scourge of sickness, and suddenly changed him into another man, so that he began to shine by the spirit of prophecy."

Putting on the rags of a beggar, St Francis went to Rome, where he sat among the mendicants before St Peter's. Then began the miraculous cures of lepers whose hands he kissed, and his many works of charity and healing. He extolled "holy poverty," and called poverty his "lady." When he saw a worm lying on the path, the compassionate saint removed it, so that it should not be trodden on by passers-by. The birds he called his brothers and sisters; he fed them, bade them sing or keep silence, and they obeyed him. All birds and beasts loved him; and he taught the birds to sing praises to their creator. St Francis was perhaps the first eminent Christian who showed pity and love for the lower animals. In the morass of Venice, he came upon a great company of singing-birds, and entering among them, caused them to sing lauds to the Almighty.

St Francis taught asceticism to his followers, but it was the asceticism of joy rather than of grief and pain. The saint had in him the qualities of poet and artist as well as of pious mystic. He lived for a time the life of the luxurious, and found it profitless and hollow; he passed through the ordeal of the temptations that beset a young man born of wealthy parents.

"The more thou art assailed by temptations, the more do I love thee," said the blessed St Francis to his friend Leo. "Verily I say unto thee that no man should deem himself a true friend of God, save in so far as he hath passed through many temptations and tribulations."

Flung into the prison of Perugia, he rejoiced and sang, and when the vulgar threw dirt upon him and his friars, he did not resent their rudeness.

Trudging bare-footed through Umbria, scantily clothed, and subsisting upon crusts offered by the charitable, St Francis set an example of the holiness of poverty which impressed the peasants and excited their veneration for the preacher and his gospel.

He worked as a mason, repairing the decayed Church of St Damian, and preached a doctrine of labour and industry, forsaking all that he had so that he might reap the ample harvest of Divine blessing. In winter the saint would plunge into a ditch of snow, that he might check the promptings of carnal desire. He refused to live under a roof at Assisi, preferring a mere shelter of boughs, with the company of Brother Giles and Brother Bernard. A cell of wood was too sumptuous for him.

As St Francis grew in holiness there appeared in him the stigmata of Christ's martyrdom. In his side there was the wound of the spear; in his hands and feet were the marks of the nails. St Bonaventura relates that after his death, the flesh of the saint was so soft that he seemed to have become a child again, and that the wound in the side was like a lovely rose.

He died, according to this historian, in 1226, on the fourth day of October. His remains were interred in Assisi, and afterwards removed to "the Church built in his honour," in 1230.

After the canonisation of the holy St Francis many miracles happened in Italy. In the church of his name in Assisi, when the Bishop of Ostia was preaching, a huge stone fell on the head of a devout woman. It was thought that she was dead, but being before the altar of St Francis, and having "committed herself in faith" to him, she escaped without any hurt. Many persons were cured of disease by calling upon the blessed name of the Saint of Assisi, and mariners were often saved from wrecks through his intervention.

St Francis lived when the fourth Lateran Council gave a new impetus to persecution, by increasing the scope and power of the inquisition. This gentlest of all the saints was surrounded by a host of influences that made for religious rancour, and yet he preached a doctrine of love, and was, so far as we can learn, quite untouched by the persecuting zeal that characterised so many of his sainted contemporaries. It is with relief, after the contemplation of the cruelty of his age, that we greet the tattered ascetic of Assisi, as, in imagination, we see him pass up the steps of the house wherein Brother Bernard was a witness of his ecstasy.

The little city of Assisi stands on a hill; a mediæval town of a somewhat stern character meets the eye as we approach it. Outside the town is a sixteenth-century church, Santa Maria degli Angeli, which will interest by reason of the Portinucula, a little chapel repaired by St Francis. It was around this church that the first followers of the saint lived in hovels with wattled roofs. Here was the garden in which the holy brother delighted to wander, and to watch his kindred the birds, and here are the rose bushes without thorns, that grew from the saint's blood.

Entering Assisi, we soon reach the Church of San Francisco, in which is the reputed tomb of St Francis. This is not a striking edifice, but its charm is in the pictures of Giotto. Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience are the subjects of these frescoes. Ruskin copied the Poverty, and made a long study of these works. The picture symbolises the Lady of Poverty, the bride of St Francis, who is given to him by Christ. This is one of Giotto's chief pictures. Chastity is a young woman in a castle; she is worshipped by angels, and the walls of the fortress are surrounded by men in armour. In another fresco St Francis is dressed in canonical garb, attended by angels, who sing praise to him. It is said that Dante suggested this subject to Giotto.

The frescoes of Simone, in a chapel of the lower church, are of much interest to the art student. They are richly coloured and very decorative, and have been considered by some authorities as equal to the works of Giotto at Assisi. Simone was a painter of the Sienese School, and according to Vasari, he was taught by Giotto. His "Annunciation" is a rich work, preserved in the Uffizi Palace at Florence.

The twenty-eight scenes in the history of St Francis are in the upper church, and in these we see again Giotto's noblest art in the harmonious grouping and the fluidity of his colour.

The Cathedral of San Rufino is a handsome church. Here St Francis was baptised, and in this edifice he preached.

The father of the saint was a woollen merchant, and his shop was in the Via Portica. The house still stands, and may be recognised by its highly decorated portal. This was not the birthplace of St Francis, for the Chiesa Nuova, built in 1615, covers the site of the house.

In the Church of St Clare you are shown the "remains" of Saint Clare, in a crypt, lying in a glass case.

When Goethe was in Assisi, the building that interested him more than any other was the Temple of Minerva, built in the time of Augustus.

"At last we reached what is properly the old town, and behold before my eyes stood the noble edifice, the first complete memorial of antiquity that I had ever seen.... Looking at the façade, I could not sufficiently admire the genius-like identity of design which the architects have here as elsewhere maintained. The order is Corinthian, the inter-columnar spaces being somewhat above the two modules. The bases of the columns, and the plinths seem to rest on pedestals, but it is only an appearance." Goethe concludes his description: "The impression which the sight of this edifice left upon me is not to be expressed, and will bring forth imperishable fruits."

VENICE

The very name breathes romance and spells beauty. Poets, artists, and historians without number have revealed to us the glories of this city. Dull indeed must be the perception of loveliness of form and colour in the mind of the man who is not deeply moved by the contemplation of the Stones of Venice. Yet it seems to me that no city is so difficult to describe; everything has been said, every scene painted by master hands. One's impression must read inevitably like that which has been written over and over again. And in a brief enumeration of the buildings to be seen by the visitor, how can the unhappy writer avoid the charge of baldness and inefficiency?

Well, then, to say that Venice is supremely beautiful among the towns of Italy is to set down a commonplace. It is a town in which the matter-of-fact man realises the meaning of romance and poetry; a town where the phlegmatic become sentimental, and the poetic are stirred to ecstasies. George Borrow wept at beholding the beauty of Seville by the Guadalquivir in the evening light. "Tears of rapture" would have filled his eyes as he gazed upon the splendours of the Grand Canal.

Some of the many writers upon Venice have found the scene "theatrical"; others assert that the influence of Venice is sad, while others again declare that the city provokes hilarity of spirits in a magical way. Whatever the nature of the spell, it is strong, and few escape it. Ruskin, Byron, the Brownings, and Henry James, are among the souls to whom Venice has appealed with the force of a personality.

The spirit of Venice has been felt by thousands of travellers. Its pictures--for every street is a picture--remain deeply graven on the mind's tablet.

Perhaps there is nothing made by man to float upon the waters more graceful in its lines than a gondola. To think of Venice, is to recall these gliding, swan-like, silent craft, that ply upon the innumerable waterways. Like ghosts by night they steal along in the deep shadows of the palaces, impelled by boatmen whose every attitude is a study in lissome grace. To lie in a gondola, while the attendant noiselessly propels the stately skiff with his pliant oar, is to realise romance and the perfection of leisurely locomotion.

What can be said of the sunsets, the almost garish colouring of sea and sky, and the witchery of reflection upon tower and roof? What can be written for the thousandth time of the resplendent churches, the rich gilding, the noble façades, the hundred picturesque windings of the canals between houses, each one of them a subject for the artist's brush? Is there any other city that grips us in every sense like Venice? The eyes and the mind grow dazed and bewildered with the beauty and the colour, till the scene seems almost unreal, a fantasy of the brain under the influence of a drug.

The student of life and the philosopher will find here matter for cogitation, tinged maybe with seriousness, even sadness. Venetian history is not all glorious, and the city to-day has its social evils, like every other populous place on the globe. There are beggars, many of them, artistic beggars, no doubt; but they are often diseased and always unclean. Yet even the dirty faces of the alleys, in this city of loveliness, have, according to artists, a value and a harmony. There is the same obvious, sordid poverty here as in London or Manchester. But the dress of the people, even if ragged, is bright, and the faces, even though wrinkled and haggard, fit the scene and the setting in the estimate of the painter.

If your habit is analytic and critical, you will find defects in the modern life of Venice that cannot be hidden. The city is not prosperous in our British sense of the word. There is an air of decayed grandeur, an impression that existence in this town of exquisite art is not happiness for the swarm of indigents that live in the historic purlieus.

On the other hand, there is the climate, a soft, sleepy climate, not very healthy perhaps, but usually kindly. The sun is generous, the sky rarely frowns. Life passes lazily, dreamily, on the oily waters of the canals, in the piazza, and in those tall tumble-down houses built on piles. No one appears to hurry about the business of money-getting; no one apparently is eager to work, except perhaps the unfortunate mendicants and the persuasive hawkers, who do indeed toil hard at their occupations.

When the evening breeze bears the interesting malodours of the canals, with other indescribable and characteristic smells, and the sun sinks in crimson in a flaming sky, and music sounds from the piazza and the water, and the gondolas glide and pass, and beautiful women smile and stroll in streets bathed in gold, you will think only of the loveliness of Venice, and forget the terrors of its history and the misery of to-day. And it is well, for one cannot always grapple with the problems of life; there must be hours of sensuous pleasure. Sensuous seems to me the right word to convey the influence of Venice upon a summer evening, when, a little wearied by the heat of the day, you loll upon a bridge, smoking a cigar, and drinking in languidly the beauty of the scene, while a grateful breeze comes from the darkening sea.

Go to the Via Garibaldi, if you wish to lounge and to study the Venetians of "the people." Here the natives come and go and saunter. The women are small, like the women of Spain, dark in complexion, and in manner animated. They are very feminine; often they are lovely.

You will be struck with the gaiety of the people, a sheer lightheartedness more evident and exuberant than the gaiety of Spanish folk. Perhaps the struggle for existence is less keen than it seems among the inhabitants of the more lowly quarters of the city. At anyrate, the Venetians are lovers of song and laughter. A flower delights a woman, a cigarette is a gift for a man. They are able to divert themselves in Venice without sport, and with very few places of amusement.

"The place is as changeable as a nervous woman," writes Mr Henry James, "and you know it only when you know all the aspects of its beauty. It has high spirits or low, it is pale or red, grey or pink, cold or warm, fresh or wan, according to the weather or the hour."

Having given a faint presentment of the beauties of Venice, I will refer to some of the chief episodes of its great history. In the earliest years of its making, we are upon insecure ground in attempting to write accurately upon Venetia. The city probably existed when the Goths swept down upon Italy, about 420, and it fell a century later into the hands of the fierce Lombards. Under the Doges (dukes) the land was wrested here and there from the waves, the mudbanks protected with piles and fences, and the great buildings began to arise from a foundation of apparent instability.

The ingenuity of the architect and the builder in constructing this city is nothing short of marvellous. In the sixth century the town was no doubt a collection of huts on sandbanks, intersected by tidal streams. There were meadows and gardens by the verge of the sea, and the inhabitants made the most of every yard of firm soil. St Mark's Cathedral was built in the tenth century, to serve as a resting-place for the bones of the saint.

Under the wise rule of Pietro Tribuno, Venice withstood the attack of a Hungarian horde. The city was walled in and fortified, and the natives gathered at Rialto. The resistance was successful. The Doge who saved the city was one of the most honoured of all the rulers of Venice as a brave general and a man of scholarly parts.

Genoa and Pisa, formed into a powerful republic, warred with Venice in the eleventh century; but the Venetians won in the protracted warfare. Wars in Italy and wars in the East followed, and internal trouble reigned intermittently in the city.

The discovery of America by Columbus, and the opening up of trade with Hindustan, affected Venice injuriously. Until then the city had held a monopoly as a market for the products of the Orient. Her great power and wealth were imperilled by the discoveries of Columbus, the Genoese voyager, and by the rounding of Cape Horn by the Portuguese adventurers.

Spain and Portugal were reaping the splendid golden harvest while Venice was impoverished. Consternation filled the minds of the citizens. The great Republic had reached the height of its glory in the fifteenth century, but from the falling off of her commerce she never recovered. It is curious that in the period of decline, Venice expended much wealth in works of art, and in the embellishment of the buildings and palaces. Several of the city's greatest painters flourished at this time.

The Doge's Palace, often burned down, was rebuilt in its present grandeur. St Mark's was constantly repaired, decorations were added, and internal parts reconstructed. The palaces of the rich sprang up by the waterways of this city in the sea.

Printing was already an art and industry in Venice. John of Spires used movable type, and succeeding him were many distinguished printers, whose presses supplied the civilised world with books.

A terrible plague devastated the city in 1575. Among the victims were the great painter, Titian, then nearly a hundred years of age. The epidemic spread all over Venice.

When Pope Paul V. endeavoured to bring the citizens under his autocratic rule, they resisted with much firmness. One of the causes of offence was that the Venetians favoured the principle of toleration in religious beliefs, and permitted the heretical to worship according to their consciences. The Pope, after fruitless negotiations, excommunicated Venice, sending his agents with the documents. With all vigilance, the government of the city forbade the exposure of any papal decree in the streets, while the Doge stoutly asserted that the people of Venice regarded the bull with contempt.

Nearly all Europe sided with Venice in this conflict between Pope and Doge. England was prepared to ally herself with France, and to assist Venice. Months passed without developments. Venice remained Catholic, but refused to become a vassal of the Pope of Rome. Paul was enraged and humiliated. One cannot admire his action; yet pity for the proud, sincere, and baffled Pontiff tinges one's view of the struggle. Venice even refused to request the abolition of the ban. She remained quietly indifferent to the thunderings of the See, and haughtily criticised the overtures of reconciliation offered through the French cardinals. Finally, with dignity and yet a touch of farce, the Senate handed over to the Pope's emissaries certain offenders, "without prejudice," to be held by the King of France.