From Melbourne to Melrose

Front matter

ADVERTISEMENTS. To "be Published in August next, M®M$ sieqtiii1^, 1888. A GRAND & IMPORTANT NATIONAL WORK, Far surpassing in literary merit, extent, typographical finish, binding, and general effect any volume as yet produced in the Southern Hemisphere. The Work will be profusely Illustrated with Views of Australian Scenery and Public Buildings, executed by a specially selected staff of Artists, and with Portraits of Prominent Politicians and Representative Men. GARNET WALCH, I E NAT. J. BARNET, } PRICE £3 IO. The Centennial Publishing Company, PREMIER CHAMBERS, 7 Collins-st. W., Melbourne. 311 George-st., Sydney. King William-st., Adelaide. Strand, London. STANDARD MUTUAL BUILDING SOCIETY »♦»»♦♦♦•»♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦ »♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦»♦»♦»■♦♦■♦♦♦« President: JAMES SMITH, Esq. Vice-President: EDWIN EXON, Esq. Treasurer: ANGELL ELLIS, Esq. Committee : D. SANGSTER, Esq. T. SMITH, Esq. T. W. SWINDLEY, Esq. M. L. SIODART, Esq. J. GREIG, Esq. A. W. HARSTON, Esq., J.P. A. LARARD, Esq. THOS. STEAD, Esq. J. ZEVENBOOM, Esq., J.P. Loans granted without delay under the Society's Tables, or for a fixed term, at the lowest possible rates.

Deposits received. Offices : 60 Queen Street, Melbourne JOSIAH MARKS, Secretary. ADVERTISEMENTS. W. U. WOOD & ©O., Established London, 1850. Victoria, 1870. Manufacturers of Exhibition SHOW CASES, 39 (Late of 46) POST OFFICE floASE, Melbourne, VICTORIA Whilst thanking the public for past farours and hoping for a continuance and extension of the same, we desire to inform our Patrons and the Public generally that, having removed to more commodious premises, we are now prepared to execute in the newest and best manner all Orders for every description of work connected wirh Shop and Office Fittings and EXHIBITION SHOW CASES, Stands, Partitions, Screens, Pedestals, Trophies, &c, connected with Exhibition Work, and to intimate that we have a specialty in NICKEL SILVER for SHOW CASE WORK, which has a light and graceful appearance, and only a slight increase in cost, to which we invite inspection, and, having entered into arrangements with representatives of Exhibitors, are prepared to buy, sell, exchange on commission or otherwise, all kinds of Exhibition Show Cases, &c, and to store Goods or Cases.

WOOID &c CO., GENERAL CONTRACTORS, JOINERS, and CABINET MAKERS, 39 POST OFFICE PLACE, The above firm undertakes the execution of all branches of the building trade and its appurtenance, always having practical men at command. All communications by letter promptly attended to. N.B. — We would kindly draw your attention to our Patent Self-acting Earth Closet. Trial solicited. Best extant references. ADVERTISEMENTS. COOK, DURRE & CO., Commercial £p GENERAL * PRINTERS Lithographers & Engravers. In course of Preparation : " Victorian * Tourists'* Kuido * and View* Album* for* 1888-9," Price £3 3s. TO BE PUBLISHED IN AUGUST. 129] RUSSELL STREET [129 MELBOURNE. ADVERTISEMENTS. THE COMMERCIAL BANK OF AUSTRALIA LIMITED. Authorised Capital £3,000,000 Subscribed Capital £2,500,000 Paid-up... £1,000,000 Reserve Fund ... £600,000 Directors : Thomas Moubray, Esq., J.P., Chairman.

Preface

. The contents of this volume appeared from week to week in the columns of the Melbourne Argus, from whence they are reprinted by permission of its proprie tors. Jotted down in railway carriages, on board steam boats, in churches, picture galleries, and other places of public resort, the notes which form the basis of each chapter, faithfully record the impressions ofthe moment ; and they are published in this collective form in the hope and belief that they may be used as a sort of hand book to the increasingly large number of Australians who take a holiday run through Europe, when they find their minds and bodies require the refreshment of a change. Hawthorn, December, 1887. TABLE OF CONTENTS. Chapter. Page, I. Naples .. .. .. .. .. i II. Pompeii .. .. .. .. ..13 III. The Island of Capri .. .. ..25 IV.

Naples to Rome .. .. .. 34 V. In and About Rome . . . . . . 48 VI. Art in Rome .. .. .. ..61 VII. Florence.. .. .. .. ..69 VIII. Pisa .. .. .. .. . . <M IX. Venice .. .. .. .. ..107 X. Shakespeare's Venice .. .. .. 133 XI. The Armenian Monastery .. .. 146 XII. Murano and Torcello .. .. .. -o1-1 XIII. Vicenza and Conegliano.. .. .. 103 XIV. Padua and Verona .. .. .. 176 XV. Milan .. .. .. .. .. 1S9 XVI. Bergamo .. .. .. .. .. 200 XVII. Como .. .. .. .. .. 214 XVIII. The Certosa .. .. .. ..227 XIX. Geneva . . . . . . . . . . 240 XX. The Lake of Geneva . . . . . . 251 XXI. Bordeaux . . . . . . . . 262 XXII. Paris .. .. .. .. .. 275 XXIII. Some Features of Paris . . . . . . 288 XXIV. London . . . . . . . . . . 300 XXV. York .. .. .. .. ..312 XXVI. Some Aeeeys in Yorkshire . . . . 326 XXVII. From York to Edinburgh . . . . 336 XXVIII.

" In Edineoro' Toun" .. .. .-348 XXIX. Scott's Country . . . . . . . . COOA", DURRE &■ CO., PRINTERS, 129 RUSSELL STREET, MELBOURNE. FROM B|ELB0Op to W[EL^0^E.

Chapter I

Naples. The first sight of Naples at sunrise from the sea is something worth remembering. So indeed is the passage, after sunset, through the Straits of Messina, with the mountains of Sicily bulking large on the one hand, and those of Calabria towering to a considerable height on the other. On the edge ofthe water to the right, the lights of Reggio look like a procession of brilliant glow worms, which have come to a halt on the margin of a mass of sombre foliage. Before these have disappeared, Messina comes in view, and the effect is that of a general illumination. All along the Corso Vittorio Emmanuele there is a line of sparkling stars, and you can trace the perspective of the Torrente Boccetta, and of the Torrente Trapani, which run at right-angles with it, by a far reaching avenue of glittering points, while the streets of the city, which lie upon the spurs of the hills behind, are defined with equal luminousness.

You can even make out the red lights of the omnibuses as they move along the quay. When we lose sight of this spectacle we are steaming through the narrow passage which bore such an evil reputation in antiquity, when the coast-hugging naviga tors of the Homeric epoch, who succeeded in avoiding the fascinations of that beautiful sea-monster Scylla, were liable to be swept into the currents of Charybdis. Happily the whirlpools of the latter are "doffed aside" as things of no account whatever, and the vessel ploughs her way into the open sea again in the teeth of a head wind, BI NAPLES. 2 which makes a wild music in the shrouds, and brings with it suggestions of wintry snows, lying upon far distant mountains. By daybreak we have swept past Cape Spartivento, and have entered the Gulf of Salerno ; and the first beams of the morning sun show us the peninsula of Sorrento, with little villages nestling up among the hills ; and far beyond, towering above the green heights of the coast range, the cone of Vesuvius, with its wreath of white smoke beaten downwards by the cold north wind.

On a sudden, the picturesquely rugged outline of the island of Capri is arrayed in a robe of rose pink, shot with gold, and streaked with cooler grey, where deep fissures and sombre caverns intervene. The beautiful form of this remarkable rock changes almost every instant, with the altered position of the vessel, and the town of Capri, with the zig-zag road behind it, opens out, and then, when you are well abreast of the east side of the island, Ischia and Procida are both in view, and the lovely panorama of Naples begins to unfold itself, commencing with Posilipo, and thence passing on to Mergellina, the western extremity of the city proper, from whence it curves round to Portici, Resina, Torre del Greco, and Torre dell' Annunziata to Castellamare, with the waters of the bay for a foreground, and the grand mass of Vesuvius dominating both land and sea.

The brightness of spring is on the hills, the crispness of spring is in the atmosphere, and the blue sky and the bluer water derive additional transparency from the purifying influence of spring upon the aerial medium through which all objects are perceived. When Sannazaro spoke of Naples as " un pezzo di cieio caduio in terra " — a bit of heaven dropped down upon earth — he scarcely exaggerated the beauty of its situation or its surroundings ; and the more you see of both the better do you comprehend the hold which old Parthenope, and Palæopolis, and Neapolis respectively took upon the affections of those who were brought under the spell of the genius loci in the days of old. If the Greeks named it " the end of sorrow" ; if Horace exclaimed, " Nullus NAPLES. 3 in orbe sinus Baiis pvœlucet animis " ; if Virgil placed the Elysian Fields close by and spoke of them as being invested with a purple light ; if Lucullus chose Posilipo for the site of his magnificent gardens ; if some of the worst as well as some of the best of the Roman emperors regarded the place as the loveliest spot in all their splendid realm ; you cannot but admit that that preference and those eulogies were well deserved ; for, as Madame de Stael has said, " Nature, poetry, and history are rivals here in grandeur ; and here one may embrace in a single view all times and all prodigies."

More than 3,000 years ago a colony of Æolians settled on this spot from Chalcis; and something of the old Greek beauty of face and figure still lingers among certain ofthe poorer classes of the Neapolitans; other im migrants followed, and they seem to have flourished for upwards of seven centuries, when they succumbed to the military powers of Rome; and Naples fascinated its new masters. Augustus delighted in its beauty, and Virgil sang its praises. Stormed by Belisarius and captured by the Goths, it nevertheless succeeded in achieving its independence, which it maintained until it fell under the dominion of the Normans. Since then its history has been full of vicissitudes ; and perhaps the darkest hour of Naples was that which preceded the downfall of the contemptible and detested Bourbons, and its incorpora tion with the Kingdom of Italy.

Under its new rulers it has witnessed a genuine risorgimento. Those who knew it in the old times might well have asked "can these dry bones live? " Events have answered the question in the affirmative. Politically and industrially, a great change has passed over the city. A new life has been breathed into it ; and although it is probably impossible that any thing can alter the easy, pleasure-loving nature of the great mass of the people, or infuse into them that energy, that love of work, and that insatiable desire for wealth which actuate the northern races of Europe, and notably our own, yet there is, undoubtedly, a revival in art, in literature, in manufactures, in commerce, and in the B2 NAPLES. 4 building trades more especially. Formerly you might visit city after city in Italy without seeing a single new edifice in course of erection, except, perhaps, in and round Genoa.

Now, however, in Naples there is con siderable activity in this respect, attributable both to public and to private enterprise, and a really gigantic work has been performed by the municipality, namely the continuation of the Chiaja right round the bay to the foot of Vesuvius. And this reminds me to remark that most Englishmen are unaware that the people of Italy enjoy a larger measure of local self-government than we ourselves do. Each city is a little kingdom in itself, and the functions of the municipal body are extensive and comprehensive. It undertakes the supply of water and gas, it founds and maintains free schools, in which education, from the most elementary to the highest grade, is imparted; it establishes and supports hospitals, benevolent asylums, reformatories, foundling hospitals, re fuges, and other charitable institutions; it organises an efficient municipal guard or police; it keeps a little army of street cleaners constantly at work, and as every thoroughfare is paved, there is an almost entire freedom from dust, and anything like the disgraceful state of things which prevails in Melbourne whenever the wind blows from any quarter is next to impossible in Naples, and, if it could occur, would probably stir the inhabitants to insurrection.

Of the city itself no adequate idea can be formed even with the assistance of a good plan, for this would not show the irregularity of its surface. Much of it has been hewn out of the solid rock, upon the face of which, six, seven, and eight storey houses have been cemented, as it were ; and above these you see pleasure gardens, and orchards, and vineyards, and shrubberies ; and above these, it may be, another wall of rock, 80 ft. or 100 ft. high, surmounted by terraces divided into as many stories as those so far beneath them ; and so the eye is carried up and up to the lofty heights crowned by the castle of St. Elmo or the palace of Capodimonte. NAPLES. 5 To these you ascend through a succession of zig-zag streets, from one side of which you look down upon the roofs of houses and the tops of trees, and the higher you mount, the more irregular appears the contour of the city, and the wider the prospect of sea and mountain, until, when you have reached either of the eminences I have named, the outlook is something marvellous in point of variety, extent, and beauty.

Excepting the Chiaja and the Marina Nuova, there are no wide thoroughfares in Naples, and the Strada di Roma, formerly the Toledo, is very little broader, I think, than Little Collins-street. Yet it is one of the main arteries of the city, and it is thronged with vehicles and with foot passengers from morning till night. There is no rule of the road, as regards the former, and they wind in and out, and dodge, and meander in a way which you would imagine would create endless confusion, and give rise to innumerable accidents, especially as the stream of traffic is constantly being swelled by innumerable affluents from the side streets ; but somehow or other there are no collisions, and the drivers accommodate themselves to this irregular and disorderly state of things with surprising tact and good-humour.

The coachman on the box of a carriage with a coronet on its panels, complacently allows a ragged urchin seated in a donkey-truck to slip in before him, while the penny omnibus pursues a course as devious as though the horses were intoxicated. As to the motley character of the crowd who walk, and of the still greater crowd who ride, it is indescribable. The one-horse carrozzelle which ply for hire in all parts of Naples, and convey two and even three persons from one end of the city to the other at a total cost of sixpence, are taken advantage of by all manner of people, and contain representatives of the middle and poorer classes of society. Drays which resemble shallow corn-bins, 8ft. or ioft. long, and 3ft. or 4ft. wide, drawn by a horse or an ass, or by these animals coupled, or by a pair of mules, or by an ox an ass and a horse, and laden with country produce, with NAPLES. barrels of wine, with jars of water, with firewood from the mountains, with building stone, with greenery for the decoration of the churches on Palm Sunday, with fruit, flour, or milk, pursue the uneven tenour of their way, and the animal in the shaft is probably proud of the extraordinary structure of brass — consisting of a small barrel, some flags, a bell or two, and sundry non descript objects — which adorns his saddle, and of the high feather which erects itself on the head-piece of his bridle.

To him it may be what the plume and stars and crosses of a great general, or the decorations of a famous diplomatist, or of a distinguished savan are to the wearer of them ; and he is perhaps envied and hated by the undecorated quadruped who is attached to the vehicle as an outrider, and is usually most shabbily caparisoned. Sleek kine, with bells on their necks, are led from house to house to be milked in the street, and are fed the while with crisp cabbages and savoury lettuces. Droves of goats are brought into the city, morning and evening, for the same purpose ; and tall mules and patient-looking donkeys, carrying paniers of fresh vegetables, move from door to door with their cheap and wholesome-looking freight. A stranger is struck, not so much by the proverbial laziness as by the restless activity of the Neapolitans.

The city is like a hive of bees at swarming time, and extreme mobility appears to be the characteristic of most of its inhabitants ; and the trading instinct seems to be as fully developed as among our countrymen. There must be thousands of street hawkers, whose importunities are only to be repressed by a sternly uttered "Non ne ho bisogno," which the}7 meet with a smiling " Grazie, Signor," spoken with such perfect good temper as to cause you to feel half ashamed at the austere firmness of your refusal ; while the look of wonder with which the little match-sellers receive your peremptory " Non sumo," is quite dramatic. Translated into words, it means this : — " How eccentric these English are ! They wear light summer clothes and white NAPLES. 7 hats in Lent, and here is one of them who doesn't smoke.

What a wretched life the poor man must lead without the solace of tobacco !" At the street corners the vendors of lemon juice and acqua fresca set up their gaily ornamented stands, garnished with flowering broom, and itinerant florists offer you beautifully-arranged bouquets of violets, mignonette, and white camellias, a foot in diameter, for half-a-crown, but are well content to receive tenpence for them, while a half-penny will purchase a handsome and fragrant nosegay for the buttonhole. Wherever the dead wall of a church, or other public edifice, offers an available space for the exhibition of his commodities, the second-hand book seller displays his stock-in-trade ; and the roaster of chestnuts establishes his brazier, or the vendor of figs impales his fruit upon skewers, and will provide you with a meal of them for a half-penny ; and, generally speaking, it may be affirmed of this coin, the cinque centesimi, that its purchasing power in Naples is equivalent to that of threepence in Melbourne.

Where the streets have footpaths, which is only the case with the wider of them, the passengers overflow into the carriage-way, and, like the vehicles, " stand not on the order of their going." It may be said of the costumes of the surging throng that " motley is your only wear."

There are priests in their broad-brimmed three-cornered hats, their long black cloaks, well-brushed sottaue, and irreproachably neat silk stockings and shoes ; there are monks who are both shabby and dirty ; there are bersaglieri with plumes of cocks' feathers, emulating the "raven down of darkness" in color and gloss, falling down one side of their faces ; there are the municipal guard or city police, with their glazed military caps, dark blue coats and light blue trousers, each armed with a sword, and all maintaining a vigilant supervision ofthe street traffic ; there are solemn-looking " swells," in the most severely respectable of broughams, with armorial bearings on the panels, and a liveried coachman and " buttons" on the box, behind as well-appointed a NAPLES. pair of horses as you can see outside of Hyde-park or the Bois de Boulogne ; there are pifferari, with their primitive bagpipes, from the wilds of Abruzzi ; there are withered old women with more wrinkles in their tanned faces than you can count, bringing in huge flag-baskets filled with clean linen, poised upon their heads, from laundries in the suburbs ; there are boys and girls, with large black eyes, having all the softness and the sheen of the richest silk velvet ; there are peasants bronzed by the sunshine of Calabria ; there are English, French, Russian, and German tourists ; there are Sisters of Mercy ; and there are street Arabs and beggars, and itinerant musicians, and flaneurs, and women with Spanish veils and others bareheaded, and newsboys and letter carriers, e tutti quant i. To get upon the steps of a church and to watch the tide of traffic ebb and flow is an occupation of which it would be difficult to weary.

Now it is a pair of the large cream-coloured oxen, with their great, soft, patient eyes, from the province of Puglia, drawing a butt of the vino nostrali ; now a file of donkeys, almost hidden by the pile of brushwood they are bringing in from the forests in the mountains, for heating the bakers' ovens ; now it is a string of mules, with small kegs of Capri bianco slung over their flanks ; and now it is a hearse, all carving, gilding and plate-glass, looking like a reduced copy of the Lord Mayor of London's state carriage, which is bearing to the grave a young girl who has died before receiving her first communion — which pass by. Then comes a carriage full of strangers, with red guide-books in their hands, and opera-glasses buckled on to their backs, and a look of eager curiosity in their wandering eyes ; and then another funeral crosses the street, the coffin covered with flowers, the host carried under a velvet canopy, and the procession augmented by the brethren of the Misericordia, in their robes and cowls, the latter covering their faces, and leaving only two small glazed apertures for the outlook of their eyes.

Between 4 and 5 o'clock the carriages of NAPLES. 9 the fashionable world of Naples may be seen streaming down to the beautiful gardens lying between the Riviera and the Spiaggia di Chiaja, where the band plays, and where, in the height of the season, you are enabled to form a very good idea of the wealth and luxury of the upper ten thousand of Naples. Just now, however, the Rotten-row of the city wears a somewhat sombre aspect, because we are in the last week of Lent, and it is dc rigucur for all ladies and gentlemen to wear black. For the same reason the churches are very fairly attended, although, in half-a-dozen of the most fashionable which I visited, the preaching is more remarkable for its earnest ness than for its eloquence; and there were far more people pouring in and out of the lottery offices on the eve of Palm Sunday than were to be found at their devotions.

Formerly, there was scarcely a street-corner of any prominence in Naples without its image of the Madonna, but of late years these were found to be so often stabbed or hacked in the night by Mazzinians, who hated the religion with which they were associated, or by the par tisans of the dethroned Bourbons, who were angry with the Virgin for allowing the Kingdom of Naples to fall into the hands of its new rulers, that the Government thought it expedient, out of consideration for the feelings of that section of the population which con tinued loyal to the old faith, to remove these images to the interiors of the nearest churches. From all I have observed, and from all I have learned by enquiries, I should say that a great change has come over the intellectual atmosphere of the city since the ex pulsion of King Bomba.

The countrymen of Vico have fallen under the influence of the French, German, and English thought; that is to say, the educated classes of Naples have done so. In the booksellers' shops, which are numerous in the Strada di Roma, or Toledo, more particularly, you find the best works of the most philosophical writers ofthe three countries previously referred to, those of Great Britain and Germany, being popular ised by means of translations. Indeed, it requires but NAPLES. 10 y very little sagacity to discern that a revolution is silentl in progress, and that the Naples of the year 1900 will no more resemble the Naples of 1850, which was cursed with a Government described by Mr. Gladstone as " founded on the negation of God," than the France of 1882 resembles that of 1782. Education promises event ually to transform a people, demoralised and degraded by long 3'ears of despotism.

The University, with its 60 professors and its 10,000 students, is one important agent for effecting the revolution I have spoken of; and the common schools, the lyceums, and the higher institu tions of education are its powerful auxiliaries. The Bourbons built prisons in which political prisoners were immured and subjected to infamous treatment. Under the house of Savoy, Naples erects a statue to the patri otic Carlo Poerio, one of the most illustrious ofthe state prisoners; and religously preserves his prison dress, and the sword, helmet, and pistols of his brother Alessandro, in the national museum of San Martino. The two epochs — the old and the new — are not inaptly typified by some of the public monuments in the squares of the city. Once upon a time men erected a lofty obelisk, of costly material and rococo design and planted on its summit the image of a saint.

To-day a grateful people testifies its veneration for a Vico, a Dante, and a Cavour, by setting up the marble effigies of these illustrious sons of Italy in the most public places of the cit}-. Formerly the Bourbons strengthened the fortresses of the city, with a view to overawe its inhabitants and repress in surrections; and now two of these have been demolished by the free government of the enfranchised municipality, and the materials employed in constructing works of great public utility — works resembling the noble Corso Vittoria Emmanuele which environs the city from Piedi grotta in the west, to the Strada Salvator Rosa in the north, which links it with the fine avenue of the Strada Foria, that stretches away to the north-eastern boundary of Naples; and thence to the village of Mori, which has given rise to the punning injunction, " Vedi Napoli, e pot NAPLES 1 1 mori" — See Naples, and then Mori (or then die), as you choose to read it.

I often wonder whether the lazzaroni went out with the Bourbons, or whether they have gone into winter quarters, and have not yet emerged from them. Hitherto I have not succeeded in discovering many of them. On the contrary, I have been struck by the in dustrious habits of the basso popolo ; and as all handi crafts and most domestic occupations are pursued in front of the houses in the poorer quarters of the city, an excellent opportunity is afforded you of seeing what is going on in this respect. The wash-tub, the spinning wheel, the cooking-stove, the cobbler's stall, the butcher's block, the carpenter's bench, the harnessmaker's "trees," the tailor's board, the chestnut-roaster's brazier, the baker's batch of bread, the seamstress's table, &c, are all in full view, and the family washing is hung out to dry from the balcony in front of the first floor window, or is exposed on lines stretched across those architectural ravines which reach so far and rise so high above flights of steps that may be reckoned by the hun dred, and are among the most characteristic features of Naples.

These artificial gullies, so to speak, which are formed by two rows of houses six, seven, and eight stories high, are impervious to the sunshine except for a very short period during the day, are frequently not more than gft. or ioft. wide, and from the projecting windows on each side the inhabitants can easily shake hands with their opposite neighbours. They swarm with men, women, and children ; for Naples, with its 670,000 inhabitants, is a human ant-hill ; and as every body is loquacious and voluble, and as young and old talk vehemently, declaim dramatically, and gesticulate with the utmost animation ; and as the street cries are innumerable, and are uttered with a rising inflection of the voice at the commencement, and a prolonged cadence at the end, and as the drivers of the diversified vehicles which throng the streets are continually exclaiming " e-e-eh " to the obstructors of the traffic, and " a-a-ah " NAPLES. -to their horses, the city is a perfect Babel.

When you overlook it from Capodimonte, or from the heights of St. Elmo, you hear all these sounds blended into a hoarse roar, not unlike that of an angry sea on an iron-bound coast. Let me, in conclusion, say a word or two in praise of the best Neapolitan hotels, of which, I take it, the Hotel Vesuvio, where I am staying, is a fair sample. Overlooking the bay, and commanding one of the loveliest prospects in the world, its situation is everything that could be desired, with a southern aspect to increase its attractions for the health-seeker. Internally, it is, as far as practicable, a reproduction on a larger scale, of ■one of the best of the houses in Pompeii, with its vestibule, its atrium, its peristile, its tablinum, its æcus, and its xystos. The Salve, the dog with its Cave canem, and all the mural decorations are copied from originals in the Museum.