Prose from the South

Front matter

PROSE FROM THE SOUTH. Bl JOHN EDMUND READE, AUTHOR OF " ITALY, ETC. " Tra 1' erba verde, e il bel monte vicino Levan di terra al ciel nostro intelletto." Petbarca. " J'ai necessairement la passion d'ecrire ceci, et toi, tu as la passion de me condamner; nous sommes tous deux egalement lesjouets de la destinee. Ta nature est de faire du mal: la mienne est d'aimer la verite, et de la publier, malgre toi." — Voltaire. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: CHARLES OLLIER, SOUTHAMPTON STREET, STRAND. 1846. TO SIR JOHN CHANDOS READE, Bart. THESE VOLUMES ARE INSCRIBED BV HIS KINSMAN AND FRIEND.

Preface

. I feel it necessary to state the design of these volumes. Every object of interest on the grand route from Paris through Switzerland to the Simplon, from Milan and the northern parts of Italy, to Florence, Rome, Naples, and Pompeii, on to the Temples of Pæstum, have been already noted; but the works of Nature and Art are eternal ; each half century demands a new expounder to harmonize the theories of his age, however crude or imperfect, with the grand simplicity of the ancients. Churches, pictures, statues, ruins, sites of ancient edifices and memorable spots are pointed out to VI

PREFACE.

. the new comer as objects of more or less enthu siasm. His mind, at the outset, is moulded to rule, rather than guided by his own taste. He walks in harness, instead of being self-led; he puts his faculties to school, instead of questioning him self why he is attracted or repeded — why he endures that which he is told to admire. He should rather assert his own judgment, formed from the works of Art and Nature round him. It has been my hope and aim in these volumes to become, as it were, identified with the Tourist on his journey, and with him who has returned from his pilgrimage : recalling, whde dweding on the sources of our admiration ; analysing, while magni fying the feelings that draw us towards the grander forms of Nature : not only her external images of beauty, and their instantaneous effect on the prepared mind, — but those moral impressions which her mountain altar-places force for awhile on the hearts even of unwilling worshippers. It would be difficult to dwed too strongly on the moral effects which mountain scenery impresses

PREFACE.

. VII on the character. Switzerland enforces the lesson on the coldest apprehension. Before scenes which have been hurried by with transient admiration, I have paused ; and, while trying to develop the causes of theh marvellous effects on my own mind, I have hoped to induce others to enlarge the impression. Every one should enter Italy through Switzer land: it tones and disciplines the mind for the revelations prepared for it beyond the Alps. It is a Spartan school. When returning from the moun tains of Italy, on which the cold and desolate has been forgotten among scenes where the sublime and beautiful contend, the mind feels that, in the contrast, its education and experience is finished. The reader, it is hoped, will find that scarcely a prominent object of interest has been passed over, while many are dwelt on for the first time.

Scarcely any topics of temporal interest have arrested me ; the political aspects of the hour have received only a passing notice. The objects illus trated are unchangeable.

PREFACE.

. It is before the known and familiar that the reader is invited to pause. Is not the Campagna hurried over by the majority of travellers ? Opens there a more impressive spot on the face of the earth ? The church of St. Peter may be indolently termed a hackneyed sight : can it, in truth, ever become so, save to a hackneyed mind? May we not pause on that mountain-fabric, which will be as novel a thousand years hence as it was yesterday ? a Titanic and absorbing marvel to the future as to the present ? The ruins of the Roman Forum have been questioned by antiquaries, usque ad nauseam ; are they, or our moral feelings affected thereby? May we not venerate their outward grace and beauty, and, with healthful thoughts, with a solemn, almost a devotional feeling, contemplate them, while we gather strength from their im pressive remembrances ?

Will not the imagination still cast new beauties round the baths of Caracalla — or can Poetry herself, divine as she is, add a charm to the Colosseum which it does not possess ?

PREFACE.

. IX Before these grand and immutable forms I have paused ; nothing doubting that the thoughts and feelings which they awakened in me will be shared and magnified by more enlarged minds to which I have yearned to confess them. Brief commentaries only could be made on galleries of paintings whose illustrations would fill volumes. To Raffaelle, Correggio, Domenichino, Titian, and Claude, among many others, are given the veneration which their names command. From the enduring master-pieces of Art, the leading Statues, I have endeavoured to elicit the one ruling expression, more or less, alike pervading all of them — calm moral grandeur concentrating its energies, while augustly rising above the throes of convulsive or agitating passion. On the City of the Dead — Pompeii, on the Fire-Altar smouldering above the disenhumed sacrifice — I have needfully looked.

The scene leaves an impression for life ; nothing else resembles it. That grander ruins exist we know — Egyptian Thebes, above them all ; but— they are ruins. X

PREFACE.

. Nature hid Pompeii with a fiery mantle, but, while scathing, preserved her. The ancient inhabitants returning, would each recognise his domicile ; each would find his domestic furniture ; they could re-establish and occupy their unroofed houses in a day. Baiæ, with its inexhaustible memories, the Elysian fields, Cuma, with the deep magic of its name, have found but scanty illustrators. Inde pendently of each step within its walls being hallowed ground, the site of Cuma may be termed a terrestrial Paradise ; the generality of tourists appear scarcely to have entered its gates. Comparatively few of the mass of traveUers have visited Pæstum. The Temples, in theh grand preservation, on theh grander site, rank among the most impressive monuments upon earth. My hope is that my pages may induce the many to visit this Ultima Thule of Neapolitan travel.

The plain, the desert, the solemn Altars, are the nurses of healthful thought. I trust that worthier re flections and higher imaginations than those which

PREFACE.

. XI I drew from the spot may be inspired in the minds of others : sufficient gratulation for me if I have indicated their paths. I have occasionally introduced some stanzas from a Poem on Italy. The reader may not consider them unwelcome in the present " Prose," as they were written on the different spots, and in presence of the objects they endeavoured to idustrate. Hence, they may have derived the advantage which Truth never fails to confer. In duty to myself and to another, I am bound here to add, that I could not conscientiously permit these volumes to go forth without expressing the benefit which they have derived from the refined taste and judgment of Mr. Charles Oilier ; faculties which he has illustrated to the public by various successful works, which, long since, have esta blished his name among the prominent novelists ofthe time. CONTEXTS OF VOL. I. Introduction p. 3

Letter I

Prejudices of Englishmen — Peculiar beauties of the river Seine — A record of Tankerville 7

Letter III

Napoleon's opinion of French music — Questionable encouragement given by England to music and painting — Remarks on French operas — Robert le Diable — Temptation of St. Anthony — Changes in the French character — Chateaubriand's remark already falsified — George Sand's novels — Sir Walter Scott — The Louvre — French artists — Analogies of poetry and painting 26

Letter XVI

Grottoes ofthe Simplon — The ancient Hospice — Sublime rock scenery : its moral effects — Scenes on the Simplon — Appearance of the fir-trees — Prognostics — Sudden contrast — Vale of Lombardy — Bavano — Lago Maggiore — Isola Bella — The Borromean statue 219

Letter XVII

First view ofthe Duomo of Milan: its internal grandeur- Influences of Catholicism — Distinctions of Fame — Roof of the cathedral — The Milanese gallery— Italian music — Dominican monastery — Last Supper— Napoleon . CONTENTS. LETTER XVin. View on leaving Milan — The lake Como — Reflections — Pliny's letter : his character — An English party — Ancient Temple at Lodi — Modena — Italian sunset — Italian peasants — Ariosto's house at Reggio — Correggio's paintings at Parma p. 246

Letter XIX

Padua — House of Livy — The university — Chaucer — Arqua — Reflections on Petrarca — Thoughts on the poetical character as illustrated by him — Genoa ; a record, by Lassells 270

Letter XX

The Brenta, from Padua to Venice — First appearance of the city — Venetian characteristics — St. Mark's — Thoughts on the decline and fall of Venice — Description of Venetian gentlemen of the past time, by Lassells — Venetian ladies — Venetian paintings — Titian's Doges — Michael Angelo's remark on Titian — Fuseli — Titian's landscapes — The Martyrdom of St. Peter — Memorabilia of Venice — Giorgione's " Elements" 284

Letter XXI

The Apennines — Sienna — Remembrances of Anne Radcliffe — Florence — Miltonic recollections — Analogies between Florence and Athens — Political aspect of the Past — The Ducal ascendancy — Florentine Gallery — The Venus — Titian — The lesser Apollo — The hall of Niobe — The Dancing Fawn — The Flayer — Head of Medusa — Raffael's St. John —The Fornarina — The Virgin by Michael Angelo — Guido's Madonna — Guercino's Endymion — Correggio's paintings — The Genius of Death VOL. I. E

Introduction

. There can be few feelings more desolating than his who, dropping down the Thames, feels, whilst borne away from his native land, that he does not, perhaps, leave one behind him in the busy world who will lament his loss — who will even miss his presence, or remember his departure. How many — how very many are there daily and hourly departing from our shores with this last " iron entering in their souls" — atoms of a momentary existence, borne away upon a fragment which is to deposit them among a new race as unsympathizing as those they have left behind them. Such were the words that almost involuntarily b

INTRODUCTION.

. broke from me as the steamer bore me rapidly from the Tower-stairs ; yet the fate which I lamented in others, was not my own. I mechani cally looked towards the enormous mass of the metropolis looming through the heavy fogs of day-break — "Thank Heaven," I said, mentally, " I shad leave for a long time that sink of so much that is forced and unnatural before my feelings are grown old, or indurated and deadened by time, life, and habit. There is more of concentrated mind slumbering beneath that smoky cauldron than in all Europe, or in the banded world. This we know : and daily and hourly how worthily, yet unworthily is it employed. What lines of demar cation are there drawn between the aristocracy and their so often superiors — the real best — the ruling and pervading aristocrats of the mind ; lines of demarcation which, under the present dis pensation of things, may not be transgressed, in despite of the hopes too often expressed in public by men who should be above complaining of such default : of men who too often endeavour to derive additional personal consequence bv the supports of that which they have not, by leaning

INTRODUCTION.

. themselves against those recoiling pillars of sand — wealth and rank ; perceiving not that, then onlv, and not till then, is their inferiority owned and made manifest. They have made themselves little by tacitly allowing others to be greater ; they have sold their heritage of freedom for something more worthless than ' a mess of pottage.' What endless personal jealousies do literary men there foster and manifest towards each other, to end with their existence only ! — rendering thus, in the eyes of all men of the world, literature a mere trade, and themselves a jest ; they, who above all men should live together in brotherly charities. The eloquent and beautiful words of Mirabeau should never be forgotten by the literary man ; then least so, when his feelings or prejudices are unworthily excited: — ' Ah ! s'ils se devouaient loyalement au noble metier d'etre utiles !

INTRODUCTION.

. prisant le metier de gladiateurs litteraires, ils se croisaient en veritables freres d'armes contre les prejuges, le mensonge, le charlatisme, la supersti tion, la tyrannie, de quelque genre qu'elle soit, en moins d'un siecle la face de la terre serait changee !' " * The localities of my country vanished away while indulging in these dispiriting reflections. The boat parted from the river, entered into the general waters, and I became a citizen of the world. * Memoires de Mirabeau. ENGLISH PREJUDICES.

Letter I. Prejudices Of Englishmen

— PECULIAR BEAUTIES OF THE KTVEB SEINE — A RECORD OF TANKERVLLLE. " For the profit of travelling, its certain that if this world be a great booke, as St. Augustin calls it, none study this great booke so much as the traveler." — Richard Lassels, Gent. All individuals of all nations leave their own country with some envy and jealousy towards that of others. Travellers are, more or less, the slaves of habit, which fits them like a natural garment, and hides the nakedness, and sometimes the moral deformities which time and life have reconciled. Of all who wander over the face of this beautiful globe, the English have the least right to be prejudiced — of all people on earth, they are the most so. Their insular position renders them naturally dependent for most of the refinements of ENGLISH PREJUDICES. life on others ; almost all we enjoy, indeed, of its luxuries is drawn from extrinsic sources.

We are not an inventive, but an improving people. Our cathedrals, paintings, sculptures, laws, and arts of war and peace, are, for the most part, drawn from foreign shores. The very first step of the stranger on a foreign land should remove some units from this multitude of home-fed prejudices ; we should land with all our humanities about us. How common is it, for example, to talk of the sterility of fair France ; to proclaim that from Calais to Paris, from Dan to Beersheba, ad is barren. We forget, or we have not seen, how much of barrenness and ap parent sterility may be found in very many parts, even among the richest, of our own garden land. Let him condemn France, if he can, who has tra versed certain leagues of our Lincolnshire, and many other shires I could name. Have we not some twenty thousand acres of our Dartmoor wastes, even in the heart of Devonshire ?

Let the truth be told — there is no point from which England may be entered, even in her most fa voured districts, that discloses on either side more richly luxuriant and variegated scenery than that which opens to the traveller on the high road from the fine old city of Havre to Rouen. THOUGHTS ON THE SEINE. Let him, however, who would enter France, and indulge at leisure in his first impressions, eschew the heavy diligence ; and leaving the grey tower of Francis I. on Havre pier to his left, glide from the sea into the opening Seine, which there, like a silvery vein, runs up into the heart of France — even Paris. I do not remember to have felt a more quiet sense of delight, a mood in which the mind loves to dwell upon its own impressions, than when first entering into that picturesque and noble river, or being more surprised and delighted with its con tinually unfolding and striking changes.

The waters of this so often dangerous estuary were without a ripple ; standing apart on the deck from the rest for awhile, I gave myself up to the im presses of pleasure which the time and scene created in me, indulging, hke the Roman of old,* in my reflections. Behind me lay Havre instead of Ægina, and before me Honfleur instead of Megara ; on my right, Tankerville stood substitute for the Piræus ; and on my left, the stiff and formal Meillerie did duty for Corinth. My reflections were as inferior in tenderness and sublimity to the philosopher of * The famous letter of Servius Sulpicius to Cæsar, on the death of his daughter. E THOUGHTS ON THE SEINE. old, as were the localities themselves to their archetypes. I reflected that Fame seems almost as capricious in the favours she bestows on great rivers as on great men.

The Danube and the Rhine have had their thousand bards ; the latter has recently been immortalized by a noble writer ; the Rhone, too, has become a familiar and household word, but not so the more reserved and delicate Seine. Traveders may have raved about her retiring beauties in prose ; but only one poet (an exquisite one,*) has mentioned her " clad in w-atchet weeds." Like many other noble streams, she wants the records of guilt to immortalize her ; they are, in fact, the only sort of immortality which man can bestow. Nature's more quiet gifts of fertility, of beauty, and of grandeur, with the blessing of Good attached to them, are over looked. Theyr do not interest the restless curiosity of the passer-by ; a river which marks a battle field is a far more interesting object than one which supplies good trout or salmon.

Why is it ever thus, that the storms and the invasions of man, or of nature, which alike carried devastation in theh course, are carefully recorded ? nay, we feel a sort of self-complacency in magni fying evils which have been, and may be again * Collins. THOUGHTS ON THE SEINE. avoided, while those whose gifts were blessings, are forgotten; their benefits are enjoyed, the givers unthought of, and unthanked. It is because fear is a more powerful preserver of remembrance than gratitude. When man suffers, and may again suffer, he remembers the cause — mere selfishness makes him do so ; but he enjoys the good pre sented, without troubling himself to inquire the cause ; it is there before him, his senses are gratified, and that is sufficient. Gratitude is the sweetest, therefore, the briefest of all earthly sensations, the very last efflorescence of our full-branched humanity, and may be easily made oppressive.

How the mind revolts when reminded of past benefits, nay, feels it a reproach ! how easily, then, in a more general and extended sense, may the very existence of gratitude be unknown ! The Seine, on its first opening, certainly pos sesses rather a Circean character, for a startling sensation is felt by " the Inquisitive traveller," on beholding the mast-heads of small vessels rising up with a wild and forlorn look above the waters ; the nameless monuments of those who, caught in the treacherous quicksands, sleep there for ever. The steam-voyager involuntarily gives a glance at the tightness of his own boat, exults in the strength of her paddles, and — passes on. SCENERY ON THE SEINE. And then open, one after the other, silently as the changes of a dream, all the hidden and softer beauties which the Seine reveals, as one traces her serpentine form.

The pale grey rocks towering upwards from grassy slopes of the most rich and velvet green — hollow dells inter vening, where the very air seems concentrated in coolness, and where the eye — for the eye has, too, its fatigues — dehghtedly reposes from the sunny water ; there, also, rise up tall and slender poplars in rows, or in detached groups, like young creatures of beauty standing out lightly and gracefully for the dance, relieved from the denser and darker groups behind them. As the stream narrows, the headlands become bolder, and appear, shutting out each turning, in every fantastic form; now in pyramidical shapes, and now in the verv undulations which the waves of the deluge might have left them when rolling back to their seas. At times, deep chasms and caves yawn open among the thunder-splitten crags, sug gesting mysterious impressions of a power exerted in an age of revolutions passed by.

And then, who coidd forget those tiny creeks and nooks which expand themselves beneath, sheltered from all harm by overshadowing rocks ? nooks where Ariel might trip it along ; just wide enough for fairies to hold SCENERY ON THE SEINE. their moonlight revels on, while the most tiny poplars, shooting up there so slim, and so delicately formed, seemed planted by their hands. Their faint rustlings, as the breeze dies away among them, and the crisping water rippling against their mossy embankments, are the only sounds heard among these softest of sylvan solitudes ! No— to the Rhine and the Danube be assigned the sublimer beauties ; but for delicacy of proportion, and for harmonies of a softer, and a more alluring character, be the palm accorded to this cabinet-picture of nature, the delicate Seine.

Nor does it want its numerous legends, many of which, I doubt not, have been retailed. But there is one, a record of truth, attached to the ruined towers of Chateau Tankerville, which I knoiv, (from a peculiar circumstance,) has not been told by any tourist or annalist. It is of a striking character, and would form a more powerful subject for the poet than even " The Prisoner of Chillon." 3&«ort> of Canfecrbtlh. During those middle ages, when might was right, and when gold and the falsest vision of honour were the only idols worshipped, the name of Hugh de Tankerville ranked high among the chivalry of his day. That he was powerful and wealthy, the extent of his ruined castle testifies ; that man was more savage than he now is in his more polished state, and that woman leaned then, as now, to the weaker side of the heart, this record affords a terrible example.

Perhaps the name of Clotilde might have been a theme for song, even in those days when personal attraction was frequently the sole cause which laid so many lances in rest ; certain it is that her ex ceeding beauty won the heart, or flattered the pride, of this powerful baron, who succeeded in obtaining her from her guardians or parents, (her consent, it would seem by the sequel, being the last thing considered,) and in carrying her down from the gay world to the savage solitudes of Tankerville. If, as doubtless she was, of a gay temperament, the change must have been trying; the touches of the harp were exchanged for the clang of sea-fowl, and the applause of admiring crowds for the monotonous sound of waters. But this life could not have lasted very long. Unfortunately for her, her first lover, to whom, it would seem, she had plighted herself in earlier years secretly, discovered her abode, and, disguised as a minstrel, not only obtained entrance into Tankerville, but succeeded in lulling every suspicion of the watchful baron.

The dames of that age had perhaps more virtue, but less chcumspection, than at present, for opportunity was rarely given as a temptation ; shut up in strong fortahces during the better half of their lives, they were untried ; here occurred almost a solitary ex ception. She forgot the insuperable bar which had risen between them ; she dared to love again. The tale was hinted to the baron : his fury may be imagined but not described ; all strong passions must be felt — description of them is vain. It would seem that the fact surpassed his belief; his own eyes must witness the infidelity of the one, and the madness of the other. He feigned, therefore, a journey ; and so entirely deceived his frail but lovely lady, that she fancied herself never more secure from intrusion than in those moments when the very suppressed breathing of the listening Avenger might have been heard in the chamber : when the very manner and moment ofthe dreadful death of herself and companion were settled — even in those very moments when their lives seemed as boundless as were their raptures.

The baron's eyes could not deceive him ; that his vengeance was premeditated is evident by the refinement of thought which it must have required — otherwise, nature and his choking passions would have sacrificed them on the spot. They were seized and bound in his presence ; the despair of the one, and the execrations of the other, being unheard by him whose word was law, whose will only was his god ; they were dragged down to the lowest dungeon of the castle, himself fodowing them. There, they beheld two iron stakes driven into the earth, a chain being attached to each of them. The erring lover was bound to the one, his speechless and unfortunate victim to the other; the chain, by a refinement of cruelty, being made of that exact length, that they could approach, without touching each other.

The savage tyrant then bade them note, that the small arched door opening on the back (through which they had often passed to their rendezvous) was recently walled up, so that their cries would be unheard : that their punishment was, to be fixed there until starved to death — food being displayed just without their reach ! that their bones should whiten the ground whereon they stood, and remain for ever unburied. Who can imagine their war of feelings when, being stunned by this dreadful sentence, which cut off all hope, they were restored to their sense of hearing by the retreating footsteps, and the harsh locks and bolts drawing upon them for ever ? Centuries on centuries rolled away : the baron's line, and his castle, following the laws of change and time, passed and were forgotten. A tra veller, straying on that unfrequented beach, observed, while wandering among the vaults of the chateau, a small door walled up ; the stones had become uncemented, and scarcely supported each other.

The traveller's curiosity prevailed : he forced his way through the half mantling brushwood, and overthrowing the stones, he entered into a small dungeon-vault. From the ground, in the centre, rose two iron stakes, each placed opposite the other, with fragments of chains hanging from them, half eaten by rust ; at the foot of each stake was gathered a small portion of white dust, and intermingled with them, pieces which were discovered to be parts of a skull. And these were once animated — and formed two erring human beings ! Even so does the tale of murder come to light when the very names of the perpetrators are forgotten ; so does the earth reveal the deeds of the secret man of blood. The legend was indeed preserved ; but it was this traveller who illustrated its truth : now, it may be known to every villager of Tankervide : the gudt of the unfortunate pah is revived, which else had been buried and forgotten with the mdlion of simdar cases ; but theh punishment has cancelled it on earth as in heaven.

When I heard this tale, I could not help throwing myself back into the far-off moment of their existence. I drew before me the agonizing changes of their last hours. I pictured to myself the first fond bursts of regret, and of passionate tenderness — the afterwards slowly commencing languor from exhaustion of body and of mind — and then, as the still clinging hope utterly failed them, the wdd remorse — ending in the exe crations, perhaps, ofthe one, and in the unanswering despair of the other — until the struggles of both became feeble, and, at length — silent : the little span of existence given them here, for good or for evil, past for ever ! ROUEN CATHEDRAL.

Letter II. Rouen Cathedral Remembrances Of The Days Of Chivalry

If you wish to concentrate at a glance, all that is grandand great in the outlines of a Gothiccathedral, all that is harmonious also in its minutest detail; if you love to feel those impressions, grave, yet not melancholy, which their solemnly rising fronts, like venerable Prophets, convey — to gaze on their pictured windows, where the very light is only admitted to tone with its character ; their walls wrought into the tracery7 of an ancient mossy forest, which was their archetype, with all its innumerable twining leaves, its hollow arches, its dim lanes or aisles, hued by time with autumnal tints ofthe mellowest softness, a network of light and shadow, but har monizing and blending into each other — and all this, embodied, and rising before you as silently as an exhalation from the earth, yet the monument of ages ; and, if records add an interest— if the tide of English warlike peers that once thronged through that door to see their own king crowned also king of France — if the bravest of the brave who laid their bones there, in expectation ofthe last trump to wake them, confident that their sons would be able to keep what theh own good swords had won ; — if these can inspire, then is the cathedral of Rouen, to an Englishman, one ofthe most interest ing and awakening sights in France, or in the world.

Impressed with such sentiments, I found myself standing, and with no irreverent feeling, above the graves of such men as Robert, Duke of Normandy, and the stone, beneath which was deposited the lion heart of Richard ; the effigy of the king being destroyed by the fanatics of the revolution. Who could look without an intense feeling of interest on the spot beneath which was laid the heart of the most redoubted warrior that ever laid lance in rest ? — of the man who rode singly along the lines of three hundred thousand Saracens, nor could find one who would answer his challenge to single com bat — so affirms his cotemporary historian, De Join ville, whom Gibbon follows, asking — "Am I writing * si O O romance or history?" I thought of the rough sun-burnt faces which must have thronged round, and looked down into the vault on that dav ; the soldiers' pride mixed with their regret.