Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany Part 4

FROM MILAN TO PADUA.

The first evening's drive carried us no farther than Lodi, a place renowned through all Europe for its excellent cheese, as out well-known ballad bears testimony:

Let Lodi or Parmesan bring up the rear.

Those verses were imitated, I fancy, from a French song written by Monsieur des Yveteaux, of whose extraordinary life and death much has been said by his cotemporary wits, particularly how some of them found him playing at shepherd and shepherdess in his own garden with a pretty Savoyard wench, at seventy-eight years old, _en habit de berger, avec un chapeau couleur de rose_[Footnote: In a pastoral habit, and a hat turned up with pink], &c. when he shewed them the famous lines, _Avoir peu de parens, moins de train que de rente_, &c. which do certainly bear a very near affinity to our Old Man's Wish, published in Dryden's Miscellanies; who, among other luxuries, resolves to eat Lodi cheese, I remember.

The town, however, bringing no other ideas either new or old to our minds, we went to the opera, and heard Morich.e.l.li sing: after which they gave us a new dramatic dance, made upon the story of Don John, or the Libertine; a tale which, whether true or false, fact or fable, has furnished every Christian country in the world, I believe, with some subject of representation. It makes me no sport, however; the idea of an impenitent sinner going to h.e.l.l is too seriously terrifying to make amus.e.m.e.nt out of. Let mythology, which is now grown good for little else, be danced upon the stage; where Mr. Vestris may bounce and struggle in the character of Alcides on his funeral pile, with no very glaring impropriety; and such baubles serve beside to keep old cla.s.sical stories in the heads of our young people; who, if they _must_ have torches to blaze in their eyes, may divert themselves with Pluto catching up Ceres's daughter, and driving her away to Tartarus; but let Don John alone. I have at least _half a notion_ that the horrible history is _half true_; if so, it is surely very gross to represent it by dancing. Should such false foolish taste prevail in England (but I hope it will not), we might perhaps go happily through the whole book of G.o.d's Revenge against Murder, or the Annals of Newgate, on the stage, as a variety of pretty stories may be found there of the same cast; while statues of Hercules and Minerva, with their insignia as heathen deities, might be placed, with equal attention to religion, costume, and general fitness, as decorations for the monuments of _Westminster Abbey_.

The country we came through to Cremona is rich and fertile, the roads deep and miry of course; very few of the Lombardy poplars, of which I expected to see so many: but Phaeton's sisters seem to have danced all away from the odoriferous banks of the Po, to the green sides of the Thames, I think; meantime here is no other timber in the country but a few straggling ash, and willows without end. The old Erida.n.u.s, however, makes a majestic figure at Cremona, and frights the inhabitants when it overflows. There are not many to be frighted though, for the town is thinly peopled; but exquisitely clean, perhaps for that very reason; and the cathedral, of a mixed Grecian and Gothic architecture, has a respectable appearance; while two enormous lions, of red marble, frown at its door, and the crucifixion, painted by Pordenone, with a rough but powerful pencil, strikes one at the entrance: I have seen nothing finer than the figure of the Centurion upon the fore-ground, who seems to cry out, with soldier-like courage and apostolic fervour, Truly this is the Son of G.o.d.

The great clock here too is very curious: having, besides the twenty-four hours, a minute and second finger, like a stop watch, and shews the phases of the moon, with her triple rotation clearly to all who walk across the piazza. Yet I trust the dwellers at Cremona are no better astronomers than those who live in other places; to what purpose then all these representations with which Italy is crowded; processions, paintings, &c. besides the moral dances, as they call them now? One word of solid instruction to the ear, conveys more knowledge to the mind at last, than all these marionettes presented to the eye.

The tower of Cremona is of a surprising height and elegant form; we climbed, not without some difficulty, to its top, and saw the flat plains of Lombardy stretched out all round us. Prospects, however, and high towers have I seen; that in Mr. h.o.a.re's grounds, dedicated to King Alfred, is a much finer structure than this, and the view from it much more variegated certainly; I think of greater extent; though there is more dignity in these objects, while the Po twists through them, and distant mountains mingle with the sky at the end of a lengthened horizon.

What I have never seen till now, we were made to observe in the octagon gallery which crowns this pretty structure, where in every compartment there are channels cut in the stone to guide the eye or rest the telescope, that so a spectator need not be fruitlessly teized, as one almost always is, by those who shew one a prospect, with _Look there!

See there!_ &c. At this place nothing needs be done but lay the gla.s.s or put the eye even with the lines which point to Bergamo, Mantua, or where you please; and _look there_ becomes superfluous as offensive.

The bells in the tower amused us in another way: an old man who has the care of them, delighted much in telling us how he rung tunes upon them before the Duke of Parma, who presented him with money, and bid him ring again: and not a little was the good man amazed, when one of our company sate down and played on them himself: a thing he had never before been witness to, he said, except once, when a surprising musician arrived from England, and performed the like seat: by his description of the person, and the time of his pa.s.sing through Cremona, we conjectured he meant Dr. Burney.

The most dreadful of all roads carried us next morning to Mantua, where we had letters for an agreeable friend, who neglected nothing that could entertain or instruct us. He shewed me the field where it is supposed the house stood in which Virgil was born, and told me what he knew of the evidence that he was born there: certain it is that much care is taken to keep the place fenced, from an idea of its being the identical spot, and I hope it is so.

The theatres here are beautiful beyond all telling: it is a shame not to take the model of the small one, and build a place of entertainment on the plan. There cannot surely be any plan more elegant.

We had a concert of admirable music at the house of our new acquaintance, in the evening, and were introduced by his means to many people of fas.h.i.+on; the ladies were pretty, and dressed with much taste; no caps at all, but flowers in their heads, and earrings of silver fillagree finely worked; long, light, and thin: I never saw such before, but it would be an exceeding pretty fas.h.i.+on. They hung down quite low upon the neck and shoulders, and had a pleasing effect.

Mantua stands in the middle of a deep swampy marsh, that sends up a thick foggy vapour all winter, a stench intolerable during the summer months. Its inhabitants lament the want of population; and indeed I counted but five carriages in the streets while we remained in the town.

Seven thousand Jews occupy a third part of the city, founded by old Tiresias's daughter, where they have a synagogue, and live after their own fas.h.i.+on. The dialect here is closer to that Italian which foreigners learn, and the ladies speak more Tuscan, I think, than at Milan, but it is a _lady's_ town as I told them.

"Ille etiam patriis agmen ciet Ocnus ab oris Fatidicae _Mantus_ et Tusci filius amnis, Qui muros matrisque dedit tibi. _Mantua_ nomen."

Ocnus was next, who led his native train Of hardy warriors thro' the wat'ry plain, The son of Manto by the Tuscan stream, From whence the _Mantuan_ town derives its name.

DRYDEN.

The annual fair is what contributes most to keeping their folks alive though, for such are the roads it is scarce possible any strangers should come near them, and our people complain that the inns are very extortionate: here is one building, however, that promises wonders from its prodigious size and magnificence; I only wonder such accommodation should be thought necessary.

The gentleman who shewed us the Ducal palace, seemed himself much struck with its convenience and splendour; but I had seen Versailles, Turin, and Genoa. What can be seen here, and here alone, are the numerous and incomparable works of Giulio Romano; of which no words that I can use would give my readers any adequate idea.--For such excellence language has no praise, and of such performances taste will admit no criticism.

The giants could scarcely have been more amazed at Jupiter's thunder, than I was at their painted fall. If Rome is to exhibit any thing beyond this, I shall really be more dazzled than delighted; for imagination will stretch no further, and admiration will endure no more.

Sunday, April 10.

Here is no appearance of spring yet, though so late in the year; what must it be in England? One almond and one plum tree have I seen in blossom; but no green leaf out of the bud: so cheerless has been the road between Mantua and Verona, which, however, makes amends for all on our arrival. How beautiful the entrance is of this charming city, how grand the gate, how handsome the drive forward, may all be read here in a printed book called _Verona ill.u.s.trata_: but my felicity in finding the amphitheatre so well preserved, can only be found in my own heart, which began sensibly to dilate at the seeing an old Roman colisseum kept so nicely, and repaired so well. It is said that the arena here is absolutely perfect; and if the galleries are a little deficient, there can be no dispute concerning the _podium_, or lower seats, which remain exactly as they were in old times: while I have heard that the building of the same kind now existing at Nismes, shews the manner of entering exceeding well; and the great one built by Vespasian has every thing else: so that an exact idea of the old Circus may be obtained among them all. That something should always be left to conjecture, is however not unpleasing; various opinions animate the arguments on both sides, and bring out fire by collision with the understanding of others engaged in the same researches.

A bull-feast given here to divert the Emperor as he pa.s.sed through, must have excited many pleasing sensations, while the inhabitants sate on seats once occupied by the masters of the world; and what is more worth wonder, fate at the feet of a Transalpine _Caesar_, for so the sovereign of Germany is even now called by his Milanese subjects in common discourse; and when one looks upon the arms of Austria, a spread eagle, and recollects that when the Roman empire was divided, the old eagle was split, one face looking toward the East, the other toward the West, in token of shared possession, it affects one; and calls up cla.s.sic imagery to the mind.

The collection of antiquities belonging to the Philharmonic society is very respectable; they reminded me of the Arundel marbles at Oxford, and I said so. "_Oh!_" replied the man who shewed these, "_that collection was very valuable to be sure, but the bad air, and the smoke of coal fires in England, have ruined them long ago_." I suspected that my gentleman talked by rote, and examining the book called _Verona ill.u.s.trata_, found the remark there; but that is _malasede_, and a very ridiculous prejudice. I will confess however, if they please, that our original treaty between Mardonius and the Persian army, at the end of which the Greek general Aristides, although himself a Sabian, attested the fun as witness, in compliance with their religion who wors.h.i.+pped that luminary, at least held it in the highest veneration, as the residence of Oromasdes the good Principle, who was considered by the Magians as for ever clothed with light: I will consider _that_, I say, if they insist upon it, as a marble of less consequence than the last will and testament of an old inhabitant of Sparta which is shewn at Verona, and which _they say_ disposes of the iron money used during the first of many years that the laws of Lycurgus lasted.

Here is a very fine palace belonging to the Bevi-l'acqua family, besides the Casa Verzi, as famous for its elegant Doric architecture, as the charming mistress of it for her Attic wit.

St. Zeno is the church which struck me most: the eternal and all-seeing eye placed over the door; Fortune's wheel too, composed of six figures curiously disposed, and not unlike our man alphabet, two mounting, two sitting, and two tumbling, over against it: on the outside of the wheel this distich,

En ego Fortuna moderor mortalibus usum, Elevo, depono, bona cunctis vel mala dono[J]--

this other on the inside of the wheel, less plainly to be read:

Induo nudatos, denudo veste paratos, In me confidit, si quis derisus abibit[K].

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote J: Here I Madam Fortune my favours bestow, Some good and some ill to the high and the low.

[Footnote K: The naked I clothe, and the pompous I strip; If in me you confide, I may give you the slip.

This is a town full of beauties, wits, and rarities: numberless persons of the first eminence have always adorned it, and the present inhabitants have no mind to degenerate; while the n.o.bleman that is immediately descended from that house which Giambattista della Torre made famous for his skill in astronomy, employs himself in a much more useful, if not a n.o.bler study; and is completing for the press a new system of education. It was very petulantly, and very spitefully said by Voltaire, that Italy was now no more than _la boutique_[Footnote: The old clothes shop.], and the Italians, _les merchands fripiers de l'Europe_[Footnote: The slop-sellers of Europe]. The Greek remains here have still an air of youthful elegance about them, which strikes one very forcibly where so good opportunity offers of comparing them with the fabrics formed by their destructive successors, the Goths; who have left some fine old black-looking monuments (which look as if they had stood in our _coal smoke_ for centuries) to the memory of the Scaligers; and surely the great critic of that name could not have taken a more certain method of proving his descent from these his barbarous ancestors, than that which his relations.h.i.+p to them naturally, I suppose, inspired him with--the avowed preference of birth to talents, of long-drawn genealogy to hardly-acquired literature. We will however grow less prejudiced ourselves; and since there are still whole nations of people existing, who consider the counting up many generations back as a felicity not to be exchanged for any other without manifest loss, we may possibly reconcile the opinion to common sense, by reflecting that one preconception of the sovereign good is, that it should certainly be _indeprivable_ and except birth, what is there earthly after all that may not drop, or else be torn from its possessor by accident, folly, force, or malice?

James Harris says, that virtue answers to the character of indeprivability, but one is left only to wish that his position were true; the continuance of virtue depends on the continuance of reason, from which a blow on the head, a sudden fit of terror, or twenty other accidents may separate us in a moment. Nothing can make us not one's father's child however, and the advantages of _blood_, such as they are, may surely be deemed _indeprivable_.

Gothic and Grecian architecture resembles Gothic and Grecian manners, which naturally do give their colour to such arts as are naturally the result of them. Tyranny and gloomy suspicion are the characteristics of the one, openness and sociability strongly mark the other--when to the gay portico succeeded the sullen drawbridge, and to the lively corridor, a secret pa.s.sage and a winding staircase.

It is difficult, if not impossible however, to withhold one's respect from those barbarians who could thus change the face of art, almost of nature; who could overwhelm courage and counteract learning; who not only devoured the works of wisdom and the labours of strength, but left behind them too a settled system of feudatorial life and aristocratic power, still undestroyed in Europe, though hourly attacked, battered by commerce, and sapped by civilization.

When Smeathman told us about twelve years ago, how an immense body of African ants, which appeared, as they moved forwards, like the whole earth in agitation--covered and suddenly arrested a solemn elephant, as he grazed unsuspiciously on the plain; he told us too that in eight hours time no trace was left either of the devasters or devasted, excepting the skeleton of the n.o.ble creature neatly picked; a standing proof of the power of numbers against single force.

These northern emigrants the Goths, however, have done more; they have fixed a mode of carrying on human affairs, that I think will never be so far exterminated as to leave no vestiges behind: and even while one contemplates the mischief they have made--even while one's pen engraves one's indignation at their success; the old baron in his castle, preceded and surrounded by loyal dependants, who desired only to live under his protection and die in his defence, inspires a notion of dignity unattainable by those who, seeking the beautiful, are by so far removed from the sublime of life, and affords to the mind momentary images of surly magnificence, ill exchanged perhaps by _fancy_, though _truth_ has happily subst.i.tuted a succession of soft ideas and social comforts: knowledge, virtue, riches, happiness. Let it be remembered however, that if the theme is superior to the song, we always find those poets who live in the second cla.s.s, celebrating the days past by those who had their existence in the first. These reflections are forced upon me by the view of Lombard manners, and the accounts I daily pick up concerning the Brescian and Bergamase n.o.bility; who still exert the Gothic power of protecting murderers who profess themselves their va.s.sals; and who still exercise those virtues and vices natural to man in his semi-barbarous state: fervent devotion, constant love, heroic friends.h.i.+p, on the one part; gross superst.i.tion, indulgence of brutal appet.i.te, and diabolical revenge, on the other.

In all hot countries, however, flowers and weeds shoot up to enormous growth: in colder climes, where poison can scarce be feared, perfumes can seldom be boasted.

Verona is the gayest looking town I ever lived in; beautifully situated, the hills around it elegant, the mountains at a distance venerable: the silver Adige rolling through the Valley, while such a glow of blossoms now ornament the rising grounds, and such cheerfulness smiles in the sweet countenances of its inhabitants, that one is tempted to think it the birth-place of Euphrosyne, where

Zephyr with Aurora playing, As he met her once a maying, &c.

Fill'd her with thee a daughter fair, So buxom, blythe, and debonair--

as Milton says. Here are vines, mulberries, olives; of course, wine, silk, and oil: every thing that can seduce, every thing that ought to satisfy desiring man. Here then in consequence do actually delight to reside mirth and good-humour in their holiday dress. _A verona mezzi matti_[Footnote: The people at Verona are half out of their wits], say the Italians themselves of them, and I see nothing seemingly go forward here but Improvisatori, reciting stories or verses to entertain the populace; boys flying kites, cut square like a diamond on the cards, and called Stelle; men amusing themselves at a game called Pallamajo, something like our cricket, only that they throw the ball with a hollow stick, not with the hand, but it requires no small corporal strength; and I know not why our English people have such a notion of Italian effeminacy: games of very strong exertion are in use among them; and I have not yet felt one hot day since I left France.

They shewed us an agreeable garden here belonging to some man of fas.h.i.+on, whose name I know not; it was cut in a rock, yet the grotto disappointed me: they had not taken such advantages of the situation as Lomellino would have done, and I recollected the tasteful creations in my own country, _Pains Hill_ and _Stour Head_.

The Veronese n.o.bleman shewed however the spirit of _his_ country, if we let loose the genius of _ours_. The emperor had visited his improvements it seems, and on the spot where he kissed the children of the house, their father set up a stone to record the honour.

Our attendant related a tender story to _me_ more interesting, which happened in this garden, of an English gentleman, who having hired the house, &c. one season, found his favourite servant ill there, and like to die: the poor creature expressed his concern at the intolerant cruelty of that fact which denies Christians of any other denomination but their own a place in consecrated ground, and lamented his distance from home with an anxious earnestness that hastened his end: when the humanity of his master sent him to the landlord, who kindly gave permission that he might lie undisturbed under his turf, as one places one's lap-dog in England; and _there_, as our Laquais de place observed, _he did no harm_, though _he was a heretic_; and the English gentleman wept over his grave.

I never saw cypress trees of such a growth as in this spot--but then there are no other trees; _inter viburna cypressi_ came of course into one's head: and this n.o.ble plant, rich in foliage, and bright, not dusky in colour, looked from its manner of growing like a vast evergreen poplar.

Our equipages here are strangely inferior to those we left behind at Milan. Oil is burned in the conversation rooms too, and smells very offensively--but they _lament our suffocation in England, and black smoke_, while what proceeds from these lamps would ruin the finest furniture in the world before five weeks were expired; I saw no such used at Turin, Genoa, or Milan.