PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. (continued 6)

I strayed down the aisle, and stood before the "Dead Christ" of Michael Angelo. The Saviour lies in the arms of Mary. The limbs hang lifelessly down, and, exquisitely beautiful as they are, express death with a wonderful power. It is the best work of the artist, I think, and the only one I was ever moved in looking at.

The greatest statue and the first picture in the world are under the same roof, and we mounted to the Vatican. The museum is a wilderness of statuary. Old Romans, men and women, stand about you, copied, as you feel when you look on them, from the life; and conceptions of beauty in children, nymphs, and heroes, from minds that conceived beauty in a degree that has never been transcended, confuse and bewilder you with their number and wonderful workmanship. It is like seeing a vision of past ages. It is calling up from Athens and old classic Rome, all that was distinguished and admired of the most polished ages of the world. On the right of the long gallery, as you enter, stands the bust of the "Young Augustus"—a kind of beautiful, angelic likeness of Napoleon, as Napoleon might have been in his youth. It is a boy, but with a serene dignity about the forehead and lips, that makes him visibly a boy-emperor—born for his throne, and conscious of his right to it. There is nothing in marble more perfect, and I never saw anything which made me realize that the Romans of history and poetry were men—nothing which brought them so familiarly to my mind, as the feeling for beauty shown in this infantine bust. I would rather have it than all the gods and heroes of the Vatican.

No cast gives you any idea worth having of the Apollo Belvidere. It is a god-like model of a man. The lightness and the elegance of the limbs; the free, fiery, confident energy of the attitude; the breathing, indignant nostril and lips; the whole statue's mingled and equal grace and power, are, with all its truth to nature, beyond any conception I had formed of manly beauty. It spoils one's eye for common men to look at it. It stands there like a descended angel, with a splendor of form and an air of power, that makes one feel what he should have been, and mortifies him for what he is. Most women whom I have met in Europe, adore the Apollo as far the finest statue in the world, and most men say as much of the Medicean Venus. But, to my eye, the Venus, lovely as she is, compares with the Apollo as a mortal with an angel of light. The latter is incomparably the finest statue. If it were only for its face, it would transcend the other infinitely. The beauty of the Venus is only in the limbs and body. It is a faultless, and withal, modest representation of the flesh and blood beauty of a woman. The Apollo is all this, and has a soul. I have seen women that approached the Venus in form, and had finer faces—I never saw a man that was a shadow of the Apollo in either. It stands as it should, in a room by itself, and is thronged at all hours by female worshippers. They never tire of gazing at it; and I should believe, from the open-mouthed wonder of those whom I met at its pedestal, that the story of the girl who pined and died for love of it, was neither improbable nor singular.

Raphael's "Transfiguration" is agreed to be the finest picture in the world. I had made up my mind to the same opinion from the engravings of it, but was painfully disappointed in the picture. I looked at it from every corner of the room, and asked the custode three times if he was sure this was the original. The color offended my eye, blind as Raphael's name should make it, and I left the room with a sigh, and an unsettled faith in my own taste, that made me seriously unhappy. My complacency was restored a few hours after on hearing that the wonder was entirely in the drawing—the colors having quite changed with time. I bought the engraving immediately, which you have seen too often, of course, to need my commentary. The aerial lightness with which he has hung the figures of the Saviour and the apostles in the air, is a triumph of the pencil over the laws of nature, that seem to have required the power of the miracle itself.

I lost myself in coming home, and following a priest's direction to the Corso, came unexpectedly upon the "Pantheon," which I recognised at once. This wonder of architecture has no questionable beauty. A dunce would not need to be told that it was perfect. Its Corinthian columns fall on the eye with that sense of fulness that seems to answer an instinct of beauty in the very organ. One feels a fault or an excellence in architecture long before he can give the feeling a name; and I can see why, by Childe Harold and others, this heathen temple is called "the pride of Rome," though I cannot venture on a description. The faultless interior is now used as a church, and there lie Annibal Carracci and the divine Raphael—two names worthy of the place, and the last, of a shrine in every bosom capable of a conception of beauty. Glorious Raphael! If there was no other relic in Rome, one would willingly become a pilgrim to his ashes.

With my countryman and friend, Mr. Cleveland, I stood in the Roman forum by the light of a clear half moon. The soft silver rays poured in through the ruined columns of the Temple of Fortune and threw our shadows upon the bases of the tall shafts near the capitol, the remains, I believe, of the temple erected by Augustus to Jupiter Tonans. Impressive things they are, even without their name, standing tall and alone, with their broken capitals wreathed with ivy, and neither roof nor wall to support them, where they were placed by hands that have mouldered for centuries. It is difficult to rally one's senses in such a place, and be awake coldly to the scene. We stood, as we supposed, in the Rostrum. The noble arch, still almost perfect, erected by the senate to Septimius Severus, stood up clear and lofty beside us, the three matchless and lonely columns of the supposed temple of Jupiter Stator threw their shadows across the Forum below, the great arch, built at the conquest of Jerusalem to Titus, was visible in the distance, and above them all, on the gentle ascent of the Palatine, stood the ruined palace of the Cesars, the sharp edges of the demolished walls breaking up through vines and ivy, and the mellow moon of Italy softening rock and foliage into one silver-edged mass of shadow. It seems as if the very genius of the picturesque had arranged these immortal ruins. If the heaps of fresh excavation were but overgrown with grass, no poet nor painter could better image out the Rome of his dream. It surpasses fancy.

We walked on, over fragments of marble columns turned up from the mould, and leaving the majestic arches of the Temple of Peace on our left, passed under the arch of Titus (so dreaded by the Jews), to the Coliseum. This too is magnificently ruined—broken in every part, and yet showing still the brave skeleton of what it was—its gigantic and triple walls, half encircling the silent area, and its rocky seats lifting one above the other amid weeds and ivy, and darkening the dens beneath, whence issued the gladiators, beasts, and Christian martyrs, to be sacrificed for the amusement of Rome. A sentinel paced at the gigantic archway, a capuchin monk, whose duty is to attend the small chapels built around the arena, walked up and down in his russet cowl and sandals, the moon broke through the clefts in the wall, and the whole place was buried in the silence of a wilderness. I have given you the features of the scene—I leave you to people it with your own thoughts. I dare not trust mine to a colder medium than poetry.

LETTER XLIII.

TIVOLI—RUINS OF THE BATHS OF DIOCLETIAN—FALLS OF TIVOLI—CASCATELLI—SUBJECT OF ONE OF COLE'S LANDSCAPES—RUINS OF THE VILLAGE OF MECÆNAS—RUINED VILLA OF ADRIAN—THE FORUM—TEMPLE OF VESTA—THE CLOACA MAXIMA—THE RIVER JUTURNA, ETC.

I have spent a day at Tivoli with Messrs. Auchmuty and Bissell, of our navy, and one or two others, forming quite an American party. We passed the ruins of the baths of Diocletian, with a heavy cloud over our heads; but we were scarce through the gate, when the sun broke through, the rain swept off over Soracte, and the sky was clear till sunset.

I have seen many finer falls than Tivoli; that is, more water, and falling farther; but I do not think there is so pretty a place in the world. A very dirty village, a dirtier hotel, and a cicerone all rags and ruffianism, are somewhat dampers to anticipation. We passed through a broken gate, and with a step, were in a glen of fairy-land; the lightest and loveliest of antique temples on a crag above, a snowy waterfall of some hundred and fifty feet below, grottoes mossed to the mouth at the river's outlet, and all up and down the cleft valley vines twisted in the crevices of rock, and shrubbery hanging on every ledge, with a felicity of taste or nature, or both, that is uncommon even in Italy. The fall itself comes rushing down through a grotto to the face of the precipice, over which it leaps, and looks like a subterranean river just coming to light. Its bed is rough above, and it bursts forth from its cavern in dazzling foam, and falls in one sparry sheet to the gulf. The falls of Montmorenci are not unlike it.

We descended to the bottom, and from the little terrace, wet by the spray, and dark with overhanging rocks, looked up the "cavern of Neptune," a deep passage, through which the divided river rushes to meet the fall in the gulf. Then remounting to the top, we took mules to make the three miles' circuit of the glen, and see what are called the Cascatelli.

No fairy-work could exceed the beauty of the little antique Sybil's temple perched on the top of the crag above the fall. As we rode round the other edge of the glen, it stood opposite us in all the beauty of its light and airy architecture; a thing that might be borne, "like Loretto's chapel, through the air," and seem no miracle.

A mile farther on I began to recognize the features of the scene, at a most lovely point of view. It was the subject of one of Cole's landscapes, which I had seen in Florence; and I need not say to any one who knows the works of this admirable artist, that it was done with truth and taste.[3] The little town of Tivoli hangs on a jutting lap of a mountain, on the side of the ravine opposite to your point of view. From beneath its walls, as if its foundations were laid upon a river's fountains, bursts foaming water in some thirty different falls; and it seems to you as if the long declivities were that moment for the first time overflowed, for the currents go dashing under trees, and overleaping vines and shrubs, appearing and disappearing continually, till they all meet in the quiet bed of the river below. "It was made by Bernini," said the guide, as we stood gazing at it; and, odd as this information sounded, while wondering at a spectacle worthy of the happiest accident of nature, it will explain the phenomena of the place to you—the artist having turned a mountain river from its course, and leading it under the town of Tivoli, threw it over the sides of the precipitous hill upon which it stands. One of the streams appears from beneath the ruins of the "Villa of Mecænas," which topples over a precipice just below the town, looking over the campagna toward Rome—a situation worthy of the patron of the poets. We rode through the immense subterranean arches, which formed its court, in ascending the mountain again to the town.

Near Tivoli is the ruined villa of Adrian, where was found the Venus de Medicis, and some other of the wonders of antique art. The sun had set, however, and the long campagna of twenty miles lay between us and Rome. We were compelled to leave it unseen. We entered the gates at nine o'clock, unrobbed—rather an unusual good fortune, we were told, for travellers after dark on that lonely waste. Perhaps our number deprived us of the romance.

I left a crowded ball-room at midnight, wearied with a day at Tivoli, and oppressed with an atmosphere breathed by two hundred, dancing and card-playing, Romans and foreigners; and with a step from the portico of the noble palace of our host, came into a broad beam of moonlight, that with the stillness and coolness of the night refreshed me at once, and banished all disposition for sleep. A friend was with me, and I proposed a ramble among the ruins.

The sentinel challenged us as we entered the Forum. The frequent robberies of romantic strangers in this lonely place have made a guard necessary, and they are now stationed from the Arch of Severus to the Coliseum. We passed an hour rambling among the ruins of the temples. Not a footstep was to be heard, nor a sound even from the near city; and the tall columns, with their broken friezes and capitals, and the grand imperishable arches, stood up in the bright light of the moon, looking indeed like monuments of Rome. I am told they are less majestic by daylight. The rubbish and fresh earth injure the effect. But I have as yet seen them in the garb of moonlight only, and I shall carry this impression away. It is to me, now, all that my fancy hoped to find it—its temples and columns just enough in ruin to be affecting and beautiful.

We went thence to the Temple of Vesta. It is shut up in the modern streets, ten or fifteen minutes walk from the Forum. The picture of this perfect temple, and the beautiful purpose of its consecration, have been always prominent in my imaginary Rome. It is worthy of its association—an exquisite round temple, with its simple circle of columns from the base to the roof, a faultless thing in proportion, and as light and floating to the eye as if the wind might lift it. It was no common place to stand beside, and recall the poetical truth and fiction of which it has been the scene—the vestal lamp cherished or neglected by its high-born votaries, their honors if pure, and their dreadful death if faithless. It needed not the heavenly moonlight that broke across its columns to make it a very shrine of fancy.

My companion proposed a visit next to the Cloaca Maxima. A common sewer, after the Temple of Vesta, sounds like an abrupt transition; but the arches beneath which we descended were touched by moonlight, and the vines and ivy crossed our path, and instead of a drain of filth, which the fame of its imperial builder would scarce have sweetened, a rapid stream leaped to the right, and disappeared again beneath the solid masonry, more like a wild brook plunging into a grotto than the thing one expects to find it. The clear little river Juturna (on the banks of which Castor and Pollux watered their foaming horses, when bringing the news of victory to Rome), dashes now through the Cloaca Maxima; and a fresher or purer spot, or waters with a more musical murmur, it has not been my fortune to see. We stopped over a broken column for a drink, and went home, refreshed, to bed.

LETTER XLIV.

MASS IN THE SISTINE CHAPEL—THE CARDINALS—THE "LAST JUDGMENT"—THE POPE OF ROME—THE "ADAM AND EVE" CHANTING OF THE PRIESTS—FESTA AT THE CHURCH OF SAN CARLOS—GREGORY THE SIXTEENTH, HIS EQUIPAGE, TRAIN, ETC.

All the world goes to hear "mass in the Sistine chapel," and all travellers describe it. It occurs infrequently and is performed by the Pope. We were there to-day at ten, crowding at the door with hundreds of foreigners, mostly English, elbowed alternately by priests and ladies, and kept in order by the Swiss guards in their harlequin dresses and long pikes. We were admitted after an hour's pushing, and the guard retreated to the grated door, through which no woman is permitted to pass. Their gay bonnets and feathers clustered behind the gilded bars, and we could admire them for once without the qualifying reflection that they were between us and the show. An hour more was occupied in the entrance, one by one, of some forty cardinals with their rustling silk trains supported by boys in purple. They passed the gate, their train bearers lifted their cassocks and helped them to kneel, a moment's prayer was mumbled, and they took their seats with the same servile assistance. Their attendants placed themselves at their feet, and, taking the prayer-books, the only use of which appeared to be to display their jewelled fingers, they looked over them at the faces behind the grating, and waited for his Holiness.

The intervals of this memory, gave us time to study the famous frescoes for which the Sistine chapel is renowned. The subject is the "Last Judgment." The Saviour sits in the midst, pronouncing the sentence, the wicked plunging from his presence on the left hand, and the righteous ascending with the assistance of angels on the right. The artist had, of course, infinite scope for expression, and the fame of the fresco (which occupies the whole of the wall behind the altar) would seem to argue his success. The light is miserable, however, and incense or lamp-smoke, has obscured the colors, and one looks at it now with little pleasure. As well as I could see, the figure of the Saviour was more that of a tiler throwing down slates from the top of a house in some fear of falling, than the Judge of the world upon his throne. Some of the other parts are better, and one or two naked females figures might once have been beautiful, but one of the succeeding popes ordered them dressed, and they now flaunt at the judgment-seat in colored silks, obscuring both saints and sinners with their finery. There are some redeeming frescoes, also by Michael Angelo, on the ceiling, among them "Adam and Eve," exquisitely done.

The Pope entered by a door at the side of the altar. With him came a host of dignitaries and church servants, and, as he tottered round in front of the altar, to kneel, his cap was taken off and put on, his flowing robes lifted and spread, and he was treated in all respects, as if he were the Deity himself. In fact, the whole service was the worship, not of God, but of the Pope. The cardinals came up, one by one, with their heads bowed, and knelt reverently to kiss his hand and the hem of his white satin dress; his throne was higher than the altar, and ten times as gorgeous; the incense was flung toward him, and his motions from one side of the chapel to the other, were attended with more ceremony and devotion than all the rest of the service together. The chanting commenced with his entrance, and this should have been to God alone, for it was like music from heaven. The choir was composed of priests, who sang from massive volumes bound in golden clasps, in a small side gallery. One stood by the book, turning the leaves as the chant proceeded, and keeping the measure, and the others clustered around with their hands clasped, their heads thrown back, and their eyes closed or fixed upon the turning leaves in such grouping and attitude as you see in pictures of angels singing in the clouds. I have heard wonderful music since I have been on the continent, and have received new ideas of the compass of the human voice, and its capacities for pathos and sweetness. But, after all the wonders of the opera, as it is learned to sing before kings and courts, the chanting of these priests transcended every conception in my mind of music. It was the human voice, cleared of all earthliness, and gushing through its organs with uncontrollable feeling and nature. The burden of the various parts returned continually upon one or two simple notes, the deepest and sweetest in the octave for melody, and occasionally a single voice outran the choir in a passionate repetition of the air, which seemed less like musical contrivance, than an abandonment of soul and voice to a preternatural impulse of devotion. One writes nonsense in describing such things, but there is no other way of conveying an idea of them. The subject is beyond the wildest superlatives.

To-day we have again seen the Pope. It was a festa, and the church of San Carlos was the scene of the ceremonies. His Holiness came in the state-coach with six long-tailed black horses, and all his cardinals in their red and gold carriages in his train. The gaudy procession swept up to the steps, and the father of the church was taken upon the shoulders of his bearers in a chair of gold and crimson, and solemnly borne up the aisle, and deposited within the railings of the altar, where homage was done to him by the cardinals as before, and the half-supernatural music of his choir awaited his motions. The church was half filled with soldiers armed to the teeth, and drawn up on either side, and his body-guard of Roman nobles, stood even within the railing of the altar, capped and motionless, conveying, as everything else does, the irresistible impression that it was the worship of the Pope, not of God.

Gregory the sixteenth, is a small old man, with a large heavy nose, eyes buried in sluggish wrinkles, and a flushed, apoplectic complexion. He sits, or is borne about with his eyes shut, looking quite asleep, even his limbs hanging lifelessly. The gorgeous and heavy papal costumes only render him more insignificant, and when he is borne about, buried in his deep chair, or lost in the corner of his huge black and gold pagoda of a carriage, it is difficult to look at him without a smile. Among his cardinals, however, there are magnificent heads, boldly marked, noble and scholarlike, and I may say, perhaps, that there is no one of them, who had not nature's mark upon him of superiority. They are a dignified and impressive body of men, and their servile homage to the Pope, seems unnatural and disgusting.

LETTER XLV.

ROME—A MORNING IN THE STUDIO OF THORWALDSEN—COLOSSAL STATUE OF THE SAVIOUR—STATUE OF BYRON—GIBSON'S ROOMS—CUPID AND PSYCHE—HYLAS WITH THE RIVER NYMPHS—PALAZZO SPADA—STATUE OF POMPEY—BORGHESE PALACE—PORTRAIT OF CESAR BORGIA—DOSSI'S PSYCHE—SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE—ROOM DEVOTED TO VENUSES—THE SOCIETY OF ROME, ETC.

I have spent a morning in the studio of Thorwaldsen. He is probably the greatest sculptor now living. A colossal statue of Christ, thought by many to be his masterpiece, is the prominent object as you enter. It is a noble conception—the mild majesty of a Saviour expressed in a face of the most dignified human beauty. Perhaps his full-length statue of Byron is inferior to some of his other works, but it interested me, and I spent most of my time in looking at it. It was taken from life; and my friend, Mr. Auchmuty, who was with me, and who had seen Byron frequently on board one of our ships-of-war at Leghorn, thought it the only faithful likeness he had ever seen. The poet is dressed oddly enough, in a morning frock coat, cravat, pantaloons, and shoes; and, unpromising as these materials would seem, the statue is classic and elegant to a very high degree. His coat is held by the two centre buttons in front (a more exquisite cut never came from the hands of a London tailor), swelled out a little above and below by the fleshy roundness of his figure; his cravat is tied loosely, leaving his throat bare (which, by the way, both in the statue and the original, was very beautifully chiselled); and he sits upon a fragment of a column, with a book in one hand and a pencil in the other. A man reading a pleasant poem among the ruins of Rome, and looking up to reflect upon a fine passage before marking it, would assume the attitude and expression exactly. The face has half a smile upon it, and, differing from the Apollo faces usually drawn for Byron, is finer, and more expressive of his character than any I ever met with. Thorwaldsen is a Dane, and is beloved by every one for his simplicity and modesty. I did not see him.

We were afterward at Gibson's rooms. This gentleman is an English artist, apparently about thirty, and full of genius. He has taken some portraits which are esteemed admirable; but his principal labor has been thrown upon the most beautiful fables of antiquity. His various groups and bas-reliefs of Cupid and Psyche are worthy of the beauty of the story. His chef d'œuvre, I think, is a group of three figures, representing the boy, "Hylas with the river nymphs." He stands between them with the pitcher in his hand, startled with their touch, and listening to their persuasions. The smaller of the two female figures is an almost matchless conception of loveliness. Gibson went round with us kindly, and I was delighted with his modesty of manner, and the apparently completely poetical character of his mind. He has a noble head, a lofty forehead well marked, and a mouth of finely mingled strength and mildness.

We devoted this morning to palaces. At the Palazzo Spada we saw the statue of Pompey, at the base of which Cesar fell. Antiquaries dispute its authenticity, but the evidence is quite strong enough for a poetical belief; and if it were not, one's time is not lost, for the statue is a majestic thing, and well worth the long walk necessary to see it. The mutilated arm, and the hole in the wall behind, remind one of the ludicrous fantasy of the French, who carried it to the Forum to enact "Brutus" at its base.

The Borghese Palace is rich in pictures. The portrait of Cesar Borgia, by Titian, is one of the most striking. It represents that accomplished villain with rather slight features, and, barring a look of cool determination about his well-formed lips, with rather a prepossessing countenance. One detects in it the capabilities of such a character as his, after the original is mentioned; but otherwise he might pass for a handsome gallant, of no more dangerous trait than a fiery temper. Just beyond it is a very strong contrast in a figure of Psyche, by Dossi, of Ferrara. She is coming on tiptoe, with the lamp, to see her lover. The Cupid asleep is not so well done; but for an image of a real woman, unexaggerated and lovely, I have seen nothing which pleases me better than this Psyche. Opposite it hangs a very celebrated Titian, representing "Sacred and Profane Love." Two female figures are sitting by a well—one quite nude, with her hair about her shoulders, and the other dressed, and coiffed a la mode, but looking less modest to my eye than her undraped sister. It is little wonder, however, that a man who could paint his own daughter in the embraces of a satyr (a revolting picture, which I saw in the Barberigo palace at Venice) should fail in drawing the face of Virtue. The coloring of the picture is exquisite, but the design is certainly a failure.

The last room in the palace is devoted to Venuses—all very naked and very bad. There might be forty, I think, and not a limb among them that one's eye would rest upon with the least pleasure for a single moment.

The society of Rome is of course changing continually. At this particular season, strangers from every part of the continent are beginning to arrive, and it promises to be pleasant. I have been at most of the parties during the fortnight that I have been here, but find them thronged with priests, and with only the resident society which is dull. Cards and conversation with people one never saw before, and will certainly never see again, are heavy pastimes. I start for Florence to-morrow, and shall return to Rome for Holy Week, and the spring months.

LETTER XLVI.

ITALIAN AND AMERICAN SKIES—FALLS OF TERNI—THE CLITUMNUS—THE TEMPLE—EFFECTS OF AN EARTHQUAKE AT FOLIGNO—LAKE THRASIMENE—JOURNEY FROM ROME—FLORENCE—FLORENTINE SCENERY—PRINCE PONIATOWSKI—JEROME BONAPARTE AND FAMILY—WANT OF A MINISTER IN ITALY.

I left Rome by the magnificent "Porta del Popolo," as the flush of a pearly and spotless Italian sunrise deepened over Soracte. They are so splendid without clouds—these skies of Italy! so deep to the eye, so radiantly clear! Clouds make the glory of an American sky. The "Indian summer" sunsets excepted, our sun goes down in New England, with the extravagance of a theatrical scene. The clouds are massed and heavy, like piles of gold and fire, and day after day, if you observe them, you are literally astonished with the brilliant phenomena of the west. Here, for seven months, we have had no rain. The sun has risen faultlessly clear, with the same gray, and silver, and rose tints succeeding each other as regularly as the colors in a turning prism, and it has set as constantly in orange, gold, and purple, with scarce the variation of a painter's pallet, from one day to another. It is really most delightful to live under such heavens as these; to be depressed never by a gloomy sky, nor ill from a chance exposure to a chill wind, nor out of humor because the rain or damp keeps you a prisoner at home. You feel the delicious climate in a thousand ways. It is a positive blessing, and were worth more than a fortune, if it were bought and sold. I would rather be poor in Italy, than rich in any other country in the world.

We ascended the mountain that shuts in the campagna on the north, and turned, while the horses breathed, to take a last look at Rome. My two friends, the lieutenants, and myself, occupied the interior of the vetturino, in company with a young Roman woman, who was making her first journey from home. She was going to see her husband. I pointed out of the window to the distant dome of St. Peter's, rising above the thin smoke hung over the city, and she looked at it with the tears streaming from her large black eyes in torrents. She might have cried because she was going to her husband, but I could not divest myself of the fact that she was a Roman, and leaving a home that could be very romantically wept for. She was a fine specimen of this finest of the races of woman—amply proportioned without grossness, and with that certain presence or dignity that rises above manners and rank, common to them all.

We saw beautiful scenery at Narni. The town stands on the edge of a precipice, and the valley, a hundred feet or two below, is coursed by a wild stream, that goes foaming along its bed in a long line of froth for miles away. We dined here, and drove afterward to Terni, where the voiturier stopped for the night, to give us an opportunity to see the Falls.

We drove to the mountain base, three miles, in an old post barouche, and made the ascent on foot. A line of precipices extends along from the summit, and from the third or fourth of these leaps the Velino, clear into the valley. We saw it in front as we went on, and then followed the road round, till we reached the bed of the river behind. The fountain of Egeria is not more secludedly beautiful than its current above the fall. Trees overhang and meet, and flowers spring in wonderful variety on its banks, and the ripple against the roots is heard amid the roar of the cataract, like a sweet, clear voice in a chorus. It is a place in which you half expect to startle a fawn, it looks so unvisited and wild. We wound out through the shrubbery, and gained a projecting point, from which we could see the sheet of the cascade. It is "horribly beautiful" to be sure. Childe Harold's description of it is as true as a drawing.

I should think the quantity of water at Niagara would make five hundred such falls as those of Terni, without exaggeration. It is a "hell of waters," however, notwithstanding, and leaps over with a current all turned into foam by the roughness of its bed above—a circumstance that gives the sheet more richness of surface. Two or three lovely little streams steal off on either side of the fall, as if they shrunk from the leap, and drop down, from rock to rock, till they are lost in the rising mist.

The sun set over the little town of Terni, while we stood silently looking down into the gulf, and the wet spray reminded us that the most romantic people may take cold. We descended to our carriage; and in an hour were sitting around the blazing fire at the post-house, with a motley group of Germans, Swiss, French, and Italians—a mixture of company universal in the public room of an Italian albergo, at night. The coming and going vetturini stop at the same houses throughout, and the concourse is always amusing. We sat till the fire burned low, and then wishing our chance friends a happy night, had the "priests"[4] taken from our beds, and were soon lost to everything but sleep.

Terni was the Italian Tempe, and its beautiful scenery was shown to Cicero, whose excursion hither is recorded. It is part of a long, deep valley, between abrupt ranges of mountains, and abounds in loveliness.

We went to Spoleto, the next morning, to breakfast. It is a very old town, oddly built, and one of its gates still remains, at which Hannibal was repulsed after his victory at Thrasimene. It bears his name in time-worn letters.

At the distance of one post from Spoleto we came to the Clitumnus, a small stream, still, deep, and glassy—the clearest water I ever saw. It looks almost like air. On its bank, facing away from the road, stands the temple, "of small and delicate proportions," mentioned so exquisitely by Childe Harold.

The temple of the Clitumnus might stand in a drawing-room. The stream is a mere brook, and this little marble gem, whose richly fretted columns were raised to its honor with a feeling of beauty that makes one thrill, seems exactly of relative proportions. It is a thing of pure poetry; and to find an antiquity of such perfect preservation, with the small clear stream running still at the base of its façade, just as it did when Cicero and his contemporaries passed it on their visits to a country called after the loveliest vale of Greece for its beauty, was a gratification of the highest demand of taste. Childe Harold's lesson,

"Pass not unblest the genius of the place"

was scarce necessary.[5]

We slept at Foligno. For many miles we had observed that the houses were propped in every direction, many of them in ruins apparently recent, and small wooden sheds erected in the midst of the squares, or beside the roads, and crowded with the poor. The next morning we arrived at St. Angelo, and found its gigantic cathedral a heap of ruins. Its painted chapels, to the number of fifteen or sixteen, were half standing in the shattered walls, the altars all exposed, and the interior of the dome one mass of stone and rubbish. It was the first time I had seen the effects of an earthquake. For eight or ten miles further, we found every house cracked and deserted, and the people living like the settlers in a new country, half in the open air. The beggars were innumerable.

We stopped the next night on the shores of lake Thrasimene. For once in my life, I felt that the time spent at school on the "dull drilled lesson," had not been wasted. I was on the battle ground of Hannibal—the "locus aptus insidiis" where the consul Flaminius was snared and beaten by the wily Carthaginian on his march to Rome. I longed for my old copy of Livy "much thumbed," that I might sit on the hill and compare the image in my mind, made by his pithy and sententious description, with the reality.

The battle ground, the scene of the principal slaughter, was beyond the albergo, and the increasing darkness compelled us to defer a visit to it till the next morning. Meantime the lake was beautiful. We were on the eastern side, and the deep-red sky of a departed sunset over the other shore, was reflected glowingly on the water. All around was dark, but the light in the sky and lake seemed to have forgotten to follow. It is a phenomenon peculiar to Italy. The heavens seem "dyed" and steeped in the glory of the sunset.

We drank our host's best bottle of wine, the grape plucked from the battle ground; and if it was not better for the Roman blood that had manured its ancestor, it was better for some other reason.

Early the next morning we were on our way, and wound down into the narrow pass between the lake and the hill, as the sun rose. We crossed the Sanguinetto, a little stream which took its name from the battle. The principal slaughter was just on its banks, and the hills are so steep above it, that everybody who fell near must have rolled into its bed. It crawls on very quietly across the road, its clear stream scarce interrupted by the wheels of the vetturino, which in crossing it, passes from the Roman states into Tuscany. I ran a little up the stream, knelt and drank at a small gurgling fall. The blood of the old Flaminian Cohort spoiled very delicious water, when it mingled with that brook.

We were six days and a half accomplishing the hundred and eighty miles from Rome to Florence—slow travelling—but not too slow in Italy, where every stone has its story, and every ascent of a hill its twenty matchless pictures, sprinkled with ruins, as a painter's eye could not imagine them. We looked down on the Eden-like valley of the Arno at sunrise, and again my heart leaped to see the tall dome of Florence, and the hills all about the queenly city, sparkling with palaces and bright in a sun that shines nowhere so kindly. If there is a spot in the world that could wean one from his native home, it is Florence! "Florence the fair," they call her! I have passed four of the seven months I have been in Italy, here—and I think I shall pass here as great a proportion of the rest of my life. There is nothing that can contribute to comfort and pleasure, that is not within the reach of the smallest means in Florence. I never saw a place where wealth made less distinction. The choicest galleries of art in the world, are open to all comers. The palace of the monarch may be entered and visited, and enjoyed by all. The ducal gardens of the Boboli, rich in everything that can refine nature, and commanding views that no land can equal, cooled by fountains, haunted in every grove by statuary, are the property of the stranger and the citizen alike. Museums, laboratories, libraries, grounds, palaces, are all free as Utopia. You may take any pleasure that others can command, and have any means of instruction, as free as the common air. Where else would one live so pleasantly—so profitably—so wisely.

The society of Florence is of a very fascinating description. The Florentine nobles have a casino, or club-house, to which most of the respectable strangers are invited, and balls are given there once a week, frequently by the duke and his court, and the best society of the place. I attended one on my first arrival from Rome, at which I saw a proportion of beauty which astonished me. The female descendants of the great names in Italian history, seem to me to have almost without exception the mark of noble beauty by nature. The loveliest woman in Florence is a Medici. The two daughters of Capponi, the patriot and the descendant of patriots, are of the finest order of beauty. I could instance many others, the mention of whose names, when I have first seen them, has made my blood start. I think if Italy is ever to be redeemed, she must owe it to her daughters. The men, the brothers of these women, with very rare exceptions, look like the slaves they are, from one end of Italy to the other.

One of the most hospitable houses here, is that of Prince Poniatowski, the brother of the hero of Poland. He has a large family, and his soirées are thronged with all that is fair and distinguished. He is a venerable, grayheaded old man, of perhaps seventy, very fond of speaking English, of which rare acquisition abroad he seems a little vain. He gave me the heartiest welcome as an American, and said he loved the nation.

I had the honor of dining, a day or two since, with the Ex-King of Westphalia, Jerome Bonaparte. He lives here with the title of Prince Montfort, conferred on him by his father-in-law, the king of Wurtemburg. Americans are well received at this house also; and his queen, as the prince still calls her, can never say enough in praise of the family of Mr. H., our former secretary of legation at Paris. It is a constantly recurring theme, and ends always with "J'aime beaucoup les Americains." The prince resembles his brother, but has a milder face, and his mouth is less firm and less beautiful than Napoleon's. His second son is most remarkably like the emperor. He is about ten years of age; but except his youth, you can detect no difference between his head and the busts of his uncle. He has a daughter of about twelve, and an elder son at the university of Sienna. His family is large as his queen still keeps up her state, with the ladies of honor and suite. He never goes out, but his house is open every night, and the best society of Florence may be met there almost at the prima sera, or early part of the evening.

The Grand Duke is about to be married, and the court is to be unusually gay in the carnival. Our countryman, Mr. Thorn, was presented some time since, and I am to have that honor in two or three days. By the way, we feel exceedingly in Italy the want of a minister. There is no accredited agent of our government in Tuscany, and there are rarely less than three hundred Americans within its dominions. Fortunately the Marquis Corsi, the grand chamberlain of the duke, offers to act in the capacity of an ambassador, and neglects nothing for our advantage in such matters, but he never fails to express his regret that we should not have some chargé d'affaires at his court. We have officers in many parts of the world where they are much less needed.

LETTER XLVII.

FLORENCE—GRAND DUKE OF TUSCANY—THE GRAND CHAMBERLAIN—PRINCE DE LIGNE—THE AUSTRIAN AMBASSADOR—THE MARQUIS TORRIGIANI—LEOPOLD OF TUSCANY—VIEWS OF THE VAL D'ARNO—SPLENDID BALL—TREES OF CANDLES—THE DUKE AND DUCHESS—HIGHBORN ITALIAN AND ENGLISH BEAUTIES, ETC., ETC.

I was presented to the grand Duke of Tuscany yesterday morning, at a private audience. As we have no minister at this court, I drove alone to the ducal palace, and, passing through the body-guard of young nobles, was met at the door of the ante-chamber by the Marquis Corsi, the grand chamberlain. Around a blazing fire, in this room, stood five or six persons, in splendid uniforms, to whom I was introduced on entering. One was the Prince de Ligne—traveling at present in Italy, and waiting to be presented by the Austrian ambassador—a young and remarkably handsome man of twenty-five. He showed a knowledge of America, in the course of a half hour's conversation, which rather surprised me, inquiring particularly about the residences and condition of the United States' ministers whom he had met at the various courts of Europe. The Austrian ambassador, an old, wily-looking man, covered with orders, joined in the conversation and asked after our former minister at Paris, Mr. Brown, remarking that he had done the United States great credit, during his embassy. He had known Mr. Gallatin also, and spoke highly of him. Mr. Van Buren's election to the vice-presidency, after his recall, seemed greatly to surprise him.

The Prince was summoned to the presence of the Duke, and I remained some fifteen minutes in conversation with a venerable and noble-looking man, the Marquis Torrigiani, one of the chamberlains. His eldest son has lately gone upon his travels in the United States, in company with Mr. Thorn, an American gentleman living in Florence. He seemed to think the voyage a great undertaking. Torrigiani is one of the oldest of the Florentine nobles, and his family is in high esteem.

As the Austrian minister came out, the Grand Chamberlain came for me, and I entered the presence of the Duke. He was standing quite alone in a small, plain room, dressed in a simple white uniform, with a star upon his breast—a slender, pale, scholar-like looking young man, of perhaps thirty years. He received me with a pleasant smile, and crossing his hands behind him, came close to me, and commenced questioning me about America. The departure of young Torrigiani for the United States pleased him, and he said he should like to go himself—"but," said he, "a voyage of three thousand miles and back—comment faire!" and he threw out his hands with a look of mock despair that was very expressive. He assured me he felt great pleasure at Mr. Thorn's having taken up his residence in Florence. He had sent for his whole family a few days before, and promised them every attention to their comfort during the absence of Mr. Thorn. He said young Torrigiani was bien instruit, and would travel to advantage, without doubt. At every pause of his inquiries, he looked me full in the eyes, and seemed anxious to yield me the parole and listen. He bowed with a smile, after I had been with him perhaps half an hour, and I took my leave with all the impressions of his character which common report had given me, quite confirmed. He is said to be the best monarch in Europe, and it is written most expressively in his mild, amiable features.

The Duke is very unwilling to marry again, although the crown passes from his family if he die without a male heir. He has two daughters, lovely children, between five and seven, whose mother died not quite a year since. She was unusually beloved, both by her husband and his subjects, and is still talked of by the people, and never without the deepest regret. She was very religious, and is said to have died of a cold taken in doing a severe penance. The Duke watched with her day and night, till she died; and I was told by the old Chamberlain, that he cannot yet speak of her without tears.

With the new year, the Grand Duke of Tuscany threw off his mourning. Not from his countenance, for the sadness of that is habitual; but his equipages have laid off their black trappings, his grooms and outriders are in drab and gold, and, more important to us strangers in his capital, the ducal palace is aired with a weekly reception and ball, as splendid and hospitable as money and taste can make them.

Leopold of Tuscany is said to be the richest individual in Europe. The Palazzo Pitti, in which he lives, seems to confirm it. The exterior is marked with the character of the times in which it was built, and might be that of a fortress—its long, dark front of roughly-hewn stone, with its two slight, out-curving wings, bearing a look of more strength than beauty. The interior is incalculably rich. The suite of halls on the front side is the home of the choicest and most extensive gallery of pictures in the world. The tables of inlaid gems and mosaic, the walls encrusted with relievos, the curious floors, the drapery—all satiate the eye with sumptuousness. It is built against a hill, and I was surprised, on the night of the ball, to find myself alighting from the carriage upon the same floor to which I had mounted from the front by tediously long staircases. The Duke thus rides in his carriage to his upper story—an advantage which saves him no little fatigue and exposure. The gardens of the Boboli, which cover the hill behind, rise far above the turrets of the palace, and command glorious views of the Val d'Arno.

The reception hour at the ball was from eight to nine. We were received at the steps on the garden side of the palace, by a crowd of servants, in livery, under the orders of a fat major-domo, and passing through a long gallery, lined with exotics and grenadiers, we arrived at the anteroom, where the Duke's body-guard of nobles were drawn up in attendance. The band was playing delightfully in the saloon beyond. I had arrived late, having been presented a few days before, and desirous of avoiding the stiffness of the first hour of presentation. The rooms were in a blaze of light from eight trees of candles, cypress-shaped, and reaching from the floor to the ceiling, and the company entirely assembled, crowded them with a dazzling show of jewels, flowers, feathers, and uniforms.

The Duke and the Grand Duchess (the widow of the late Duke) stood in the centre of the room, and in the pauses of conversation, the different ambassadors presented their countrymen. His highness was dressed in a suit of plain black, probably the worst made clothes in Florence. With his pale, timid face, his bent shoulders, an inexpressibly ill-tied cravat, and rank, untrimmed whiskers, he was the most uncourtly person present. His extreme popularity as a monarch is certainly very independent of his personal address. His mother-in-law is about his own age, with marked features, full of talent, a pale, high forehead, and the bearing altogether of a queen. She wore a small diadem of the purest diamonds, and with her height and her flashing jewels, she was conspicuous from every part of the room. She is a high Catholic, and is said to be bending all her powers upon the re-establishment of the Jesuits in Florence.

As soon as the presentations were over, the Grand Duke led out the wife of the English ambassador, and opened the ball with a waltz. He then danced a quadrille with the wife of the French ambassador, and for his next partner selected an American lady—the daughter of Colonel T——, of New York.

The supper rooms were opened early, and among the delicacies of a table loaded with everything rare and luxurious, were a brace or two of pheasants from the Duke's estates in Germany. Duly flavored with truffes, and accompanied with Rhine wines, which deserved the conspicuous place given them upon the royal table—and in this letter.

I hardly dare speak of the degree of beauty in the assembly; it is so difficult to compare a new impression with an old one, and the thing itself is so indefinite. But there were two persons present whose extreme loveliness, as it is not disputed even by admiring envy, may be worth describing, for the sake of the comparison.

The Princess S—— may be twenty-four years of age. She is of the middle height, with the slight stoop in her shoulders, which is rather a grace than a fault. Her bust is exquisitely turned, her neck slender but full, her arms, hands, and feet, those of a Psyche. Her face is the abstraction of highborn Italian beauty—calm, almost to indifference, of an indescribably glowing paleness—a complexion that would be alabaster if it were not for the richness of the blood beneath, betrayed in lips whose depth of color and fineness of curve seem only too curiously beautiful to be the work of nature. Her eyes are dark and large, and must have had an indolent expression in her childhood, but are now the very seat and soul of feeling. A constant trace of pain mars the beauty of her forehead. She dresses her hair with a kind of characteristic departure from the mode, parting its glossy flakes on her brow with nymph-like simplicity, a peculiarity which one regrets not to see in the too Parisian dress of her person. In her manner she is strikingly elegant, but without being absent, she seems to give an unconscious attention to what is about her, and to be gracious and winning without knowing or intending it, merely because she could not listen or speak otherwise. Her voice is sweet, and, in her own Italian, mellow and soft to a degree inconceivable by those who have not heard this delicious language spoken in its native land. With all these advantages, and a look of pride that nothing could insult, there is an expression in her beautiful face that reminds you of her sex and its temptations, and prepares you fully for the history which you may hear from the first woman that stands at your elbow.

The other is that English girl of seventeen, shrinking timidly from the crowd, and leaning with her hands clasped over her father's arm, apparently listening only to the waltz, and unconscious that every eye is fixed upon her in admiration. She has lived all her life in Italy, but has been bred by an English mother, in a retired villa of the Val d'Arno—her character and feelings are those of her race, and nothing of Italy about her, but the glow of its sunny clime in the else spotless snow of her complexion, and an enthusiasm in her downcast eye that you may account for as you will—it is not English! Her form has just ripened into womanhood. The bust still wants fullness, and the step confidence. Her forehead is rather too intellectual to be maidenly; but the droop of her singularly long eye-lashes over eyes that elude the most guarded glance of your own, and the modest expression of her lips closed but not pressed together, redeem her from any look of conscious superiority, and convince you that she only seeks to be unobserved. A single ringlet of golden brown hair falls nearly to her shoulder, catching the light upon its glossy curves with an effect that would enchant a painter. Lilies of the valley, the first of the season, are in her bosom and her hair, and she might be the personification of the flower for delicacy and beauty. You are only disappointed in talking with her. She expresses herself with a nerve and self-command, which, from a slight glance, you did not anticipate. She shrinks from the general eye, but in conversation she is the high-minded woman more than the timid child for which her manner seems to mark her. In either light, she is the very presence of purity. She stands by the side of her not less beautiful rival, like a Madonna by a Magdalen—both seem not at home in the world, but only one could have dropped from heaven.

LETTER XLVIII.

VALLOMBROSA—ITALIAN OXEN—CONVENT—SERVICE IN THE CHAPEL—HOUSE OCCUPIED BY MILTON.

I left Florence for Vallombrosa at daylight on a warm summer's morning, in company with four ladies. We drove along the northern bank of the Arno for four or five miles, passing several beautiful villas, belonging to the Florentine nobles; and, crossing the river by a picturesque bridge, took the road to the village of Pelago, which lies at the foot of the mountain, and is the farthest point to which a carriage can mount. It is about fourteen miles from Florence, and the ascent thence to the convent is nearly three.

We alighted in the centre of the village, in the midst of a ragged troop of women and children, among whom were two idiot beggars; and, while the preparations were making for our ascent, we took chairs in the open square around a basket of cherries, and made a delicious luncheon of fruit and bread, very much to the astonishment of some two hundred spectators.

Our conveyances appeared in the course of half an hour, consisting of two large baskets, each drawn by a pair of oxen and containing two persons, and a small Sardinian pony. The ladies seated themselves with some hesitation in their singular sledges; I mounted the pony, and we made a dusty exit from Pelago, attended to the gate by our gaping friends, who bowed, and wished us the bon viaggio with more gratitude than three Tuscan crazie would buy, I am sure, in any other part of the world.

The gray oxen of Italy are quite a different race from ours, much lighter and quicker, and in a small vehicle they will trot off five or six miles in the hour as freely as a horse. They are exceedingly beautiful. The hide is very fine, of a soft squirrel gray, and as sleek and polished often as that of a well-groomed courser. With their large, bright, intelligent eyes, high-lifted heads, and open nostrils, they are among the finest-looking animals in the world in motion. We soon came to the steep path, and the facility with which our singular equipages mounted was surprising. I followed, as well as I could, on my diminutive pony, my feet touching the ground, and my balance constantly endangered by the contact of stumps and stones—the hard-mouthed little creature taking his own way, in spite of every effort of mine to the contrary.

We stopped to breathe in a deep, cool glen, which lay across our path, the descent into which was very difficult. The road through the bottom of it ran just above the bank of a brook, into which poured a pretty fall of eight or ten feet, and with the spray-wet grass beneath, and the full-leaved chestnuts above, it was as delicious a spot for a rest in a summer noontide as I ever saw. The ladies took out their pencils and sketched it, making a group themselves the while, which added all the picture wanted.

The path wound continually about in the deep woods, with which the mountain is covered, and occasionally from an opening we obtained a view back upon the valley of the Arno, which was exceedingly fine. We came in sight of the convent in about two hours, emerging from the shade of the thick chestnuts into a cultivated lawn, fenced and mown with the nicety of the grass-plot before a cottage, and entering upon a smooth, well-swept pavement, approached the gate of the venerable-looking pile, as anxious for the refreshment of its far-famed hospitality as ever pilgrims were.

An old cheerful-looking monk came out to meet us, and shaking hands with the ladies very cordially, assisted in extracting them from their cramped conveyances. He then led the way to a small stone cottage, a little removed from the convent, quoting gravely by the way the law of the order against the entrance of females over the monastic threshold. We were ushered into a small, neat parlor, with two bedrooms communicating, and two of the servants of the monastery followed, with water and snow-white napkins, the padre degli forestieri, as they called the old monk, who received us, talking most volubly all the while.

The cook appeared presently with a low reverence, and asked what we would like for dinner. He ran over the contents of the larder before we had time to answer his question, enumerating half a dozen kinds of game, and a variety altogether that rather surprised our ideas of monastical severity. His own rosy gills bore testimony that it was not the kitchen of Dennis Bulgruddery.

While dinner was preparing, Father Gasparo proposed a walk. An avenue of the most majestic trees opened immediately away from the little lawn before the cottage door. We followed it perhaps half a mile round the mountain, threading a thick pine forest, till we emerged on the edge of a shelf of greensward, running just under the summit of the hill. From this spot the view was limited only by the power of the eye. The silver line of the Mediterranean off Leghorn is seen hence on a clear day, between which and the mountain lie sixty or seventy miles, wound into the loveliest undulations by the course of the Arno. The vale of this beautiful river, in which Florence stands, was just distinguishable as a mere dell in the prospect. It was one of the sultriest days of August, but the air was vividly fresh, and the sun, with all the strength of the climate of Italy, was unoppressive. We seated ourselves on the small fine grass of the hillside, and with the good old monk narrating passages of his life, enjoyed the glorious scene till the cook's messenger summoned us back to dinner.

We were waited upon at table by two young servitors of the convent, with shaven crowns and long black cassocks, under the direction of Father Gasparo, who sat at a little distance, entertaining us with his inexhaustible stories till the bell rung for the convent supper. The dinner would have graced the table of an emperor. Soup, beef, cutlets, ducks, woodcocks, followed each other, cooked in the most approved manner, with all the accompaniments established by taste and usage; and better wine, white and red, never was pressed from the Tuscan grape. The dessert was various and plentiful; and while we were sitting, after the good father's departure, wondering at the luxuries we had found on a mountain-top, strong coffee and liqueurs were set before us, both of the finest flavor.

I was to sleep myself in the convent. Father Gasparo joined us upon the wooden bench in the avenue, where we were enjoying a brilliant sunset, and informed me that the gates shut at eight. The vesper-bell soon rung, echoing round from the rocks, and I bade my four companions good night, and followed the monk to the cloisters. As we entered the postern, he asked me whether I would go directly to the cell, or attend first the service in the chapel, assisting my decision at the same time by gently slipping his arm through mine and drawing me toward the cloth door, from which a strong peal of the organ was issuing.

We lifted the suspended curtain, and entered a chapel so dimly lit, that I could only judge of its extent from the reverberations of the music. The lamps were all in the choir, behind the altar, and the shuffling footsteps of the gathering monks approached it from every quarter. Father Gasparo led me to the base of a pillar, and telling me to kneel, left me and entered the choir, where he was lost in the depth of one of the old richly-carved seats for a few minutes, appearing again with thirty or forty others, who rose and joined in the chorus of the chant, making the hollow roof ring with the deep unmingled base of their voices.

I stood till I was chilled, listening to the service, and looking at the long line of monks rising and sitting, with their monotonous changes of books and positions, and not knowing which way to go for warmth or retirement. I wandered up and down the dim church during the remaining hour, an unwilling, but not altogether an unamused spectator of the scene. The performers of the service, with the exception of Father Gasparo, were young men from sixteen to twenty; but during my slow turns to and fro on the pavement of the church, fifteen or twenty old monks entered, and, with a bend of the knee before the altar went off into the obscure corners, and knelt motionless at prayer, for almost an hour. I could just distinguish the dark outline of their figures when my eye became accustomed to the imperfect light, and I never saw a finer spectacle of religious devotion.

The convent clock struck ten, and shutting up their "clasped missals," the young monks took their cloaks about them, bent their knees in passing the altar, and disappeared by different doors. Father Gasparo was the last to depart, and our footsteps echoed as we passed through the long cloisters to the cell appropriated for me. We opened one of some twenty small doors, and I was agreeably surprised to find a supper of cold game upon the table, with a bottle of wine, and two plates—the monk intending to give me his company at supper. The cell was hung round with bad engravings of the Virgin, the death of martyrs, crosses, &c., and a small oaken desk stood against the wall beneath a large crucifix, with a prayer-book upon it. The bed was high, ample, and spotlessly white, and relieved the otherwise comfortless look of a stone floor and white-washed walls. I felt the change from summer heat to the keen mountain air, and as I shivered and buttoned my coat, my gay guest threw over me his heavy black cowl of cloth—a dress that, with its closeness and numerous folds, would keep one warm in Siberia. Adding to it his little black scull-cap, he told me, with a hearty laugh, that but for a certain absence of sanctity in the expression of my face, and the uncanonical length of my hair, I looked the monk complete. We had a merry supper. The wine was of a choicer vintage than that we had drank at dinner, and the father answered, upon my discovery of its merits, that he never wasted it upon women.

In the course of the conversation, I found out that my entertainer was a kind of butler, or head-servitor of the convent, and that the great body of the monks were of noble lineage. The feeling of pride still remains among them from the days when the Certosa of Vallombrosa was a residence for princes, before its splendid pictures were pillaged by a foreign army, its wealth scattered, and its numbers diminished. "In those days," said the monk, "we received nothing for our hospitality but the pleasure it gave us"—relieving my mind, by the remark, of what I looked forward to at parting as a delicate point.

My host left me at midnight, and I went to bed, and slept under a thick covering in an Italian August. "The blanched linen, white and lavendered," seemed to have a peculiar charm, for though I had promised to meet my excluded companions at sunrise, on the top of the mountain, I slept soundly till nine, and was obliged to breakfast alone in the refectory of the convent.

We were to dine at three, and start for Florence at four the next day, and we spent our morning in traversing the mountain paths, and getting views on every side. Fifty or a hundred feet above the convent, perched on a rock like an eyry, stands a small building in which Milton is supposed to have lived, during his six weeks sojourn at the convent. It is now fitted up as a nest of small chapels—every one of its six or eight little chambers having an altar. The ladies were not permitted to enter it. I selected the room I presumed the poet must have chosen—the only one commanding the immense view to the west, and, looking from the window, could easily feel the truth of his simile, "thick as leaves in Vallombrosa." It is a mountain of foliage.

Another sumptuous dinner was served, Father Gasparo sitting by, even more voluble than before, the baskets and the pony were brought to the door, and we bade farewell to the old monk with more regret than a day's acquaintance often produces. We reached our carriage in an hour, and were in Florence at eight—having passed, by unanimous opinion, the two brightest days in our calendar of travel.

LETTER XLIX.

HOUSE OF MICHAEL ANGELO—THE ANCIENT CHURCH OF SAN MINIATO—MADAME CATALANI—WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR—MIDNIGHT MASS, ETC.

I went with a party this morning to visit the house of Michael Angelo. It stands as he lived in it, in the Via Ghibellini, and is still in possession of his descendants. It is a neat building of three stories, divided on the second floor into three rooms, shown as those occupied by the painter, sculptor, and poet. The first is panelled and painted by his scholars after his death—each picture representing some incident of his life. There are ten or twelve of these, and several of them are highly beautiful. One near the window represents him in his old age on a visit to "Lorenzo the Magnificent," who commands him to sit in his presence. The Duke is standing before his chair, and the figure of the old man is finely expressive.

The next room appears to have been his parlor, and the furniture is exactly as it stood when he died. In one corner is placed a bust of him in his youth, with his face perfect; and opposite, another, taken from a cast after his nose was broken by a fellow painter in the church of the Carmine. There are also one or two portraits of him, and the resemblance through them all, shows that the likeness we have of him in the engravings are uncommonly correct.

In the inner room, which was his studio, they show his pallet, brushes, pots, maul-sticks, slippers, and easel—all standing carelessly in the little closets around, as if he had left them but yesterday. The walls are painted in fresco, by Angelo himself, and represent groups of all the distinguished philosophers, poets and statesmen of his time. Among them are the heads of Petrarch, Dante, Galileo, and Lorenzo de Medici. It is a noble gallery! perhaps a hundred heads in all.

The descendant of Buonarotti is now an old man, and fortunately rich enough to preserve the house of his great ancestor as an object of curiosity. He has a son, I believe studying the arts at Rome.

On a beautiful hill which ascends directly from one of the southern gates of Florence, stands a church built so long ago as at the close of the first century. The gate, church, and hill, are all called San Miniato, after a saint buried under the church pavement. A large, and at present flourishing convent, hangs on the side of the hill below, and around the church stand the walls of a strong fortress, built by Michael Angelo. A half mile or more south, across a valley, an old tower rises against the sky, which was erected for the observations of Galileo. A mile to the left, on the same ridge, an old villa is to be seen in which Boccaccio wrote most of his "Hundred Tales of Love." The Arno comes down from Vallombrosa, and passing through Florence at the foot of San Miniato, is seen for three miles further on its way to Pisa; the hill, tower, and convent of Fiesole, where Milton studied and Catiline encamped with his conspirators, rise from the opposite bank of the river; and right below, as if you could leap into the lantern of the dome, nestles the lovely city of Florence, in the lap of the very brightest vale that ever mountain sheltered or river ran through. Such are the temptations to a walk in Italy, and add to it the charms of the climate, and you may understand one of a hundred reasons why it is the land of poetry and romance, and why it so easily becomes the land of a stranger's affection.

The villas which sparkle all over the hills which lean unto Florence, are occupied mainly by foreigners living here for health or luxury, and most of them are known and visited by the floating society of the place. Among them are Madame Catalani, the celebrated singer, who occupies a beautiful palace on the ascent of Fiesole, and Walter Savage Landor, the author of the "Imaginary Conversations," as refined a scholar perhaps as is now living, who is her near neighbor. A pleasant family of my acquaintance lives just back of the fortress of San Miniato, and in walking out to them with a friend yesterday, I visited the church again, and remarked more particularly the features of the scene I have described.

The church of San Miniato was built by Henry I. of Germany, and Cunegonde his wife. The front is pretty—a kind of mixture of Greek and Arabic architecture, crusted with marble. The interior is in the style of the primitive churches, the altar standing in what was called the presbytery, a high platform occupying a third of the nave, with two splendid flights of stairs of the purest white marble. The most curious part of it is the rotunda in the rear, which is lit by five windows of transparent oriental alabaster, each eight or nine feet high and three broad, in single slabs. The sun shone full on one of them while we were there, and the effect was inconceivably rich. It was like a sheet of half molten gold and silver. The transparency of course was irregular, but in the yellow spots of the stone the light came through like the effect of deeply stained glass.

A partly subterranean chapel, six or eight feet lower than the pavement of the church, extends under the presbytery. It is a labyrinth of marble columns which support the platform above, no two of which are alike. The ancient cathedral of Modena is the only church I have seen in Italy built in the same manner.

The midnight mass on "Christmas eve," is abused in all catholic countries, I believe, as a kind of saturnalia of gallantry. I joined a party of young men who were leaving a ball for the church of the Annunciata, the fashionable rendezvous, and we were set down at the portico when the mass was about half over. The entrances of the open vestibule were thronged to suffocation. People of all ages and conditions were crowding in and out, and the sound of the distant chant at the altar came to our ears as we entered, mingled with every tone of address and reply from the crowd about us. The body of the church was quite obscured with the smoke of the incense. We edged our way on through the press, carried about in the open area of the church by every tide that rushed in from the various doors, till we stopped in a thick eddy in the centre, almost unable to stir a limb. I could see the altar very clearly from this point, and I contented myself with merely observing what was about me, leaving my motions to the impulse of the crowd.

It was a curiously mingled scene. The ceremonies of the altar were going on in all their mysterious splendor. The waving of censers, the kneeling and rising of the gorgeously clad priests, accompanied simultaneously by the pealing of solemn music from the different organs—the countless lights burning upon the altar, and, ranged within the paling, a semicircle of the duke's grenadiers, standing motionless, with their arms presented, while the sentinel paced to and fro, and all kneeling, and grounding arms at the tinkle of the slight bell—were the materials for the back-ground of the picture. In the immense area of the church stood perhaps, four thousand people, one third of whom, doubtless, came to worship. Those who did and those who did not, dropped alike upon the marble pavement at the sound of the bell; and then, as I was heretic enough to stand, I had full opportunity for observing both devotion and intrigue. The latter was amusingly managed. Almost all the pretty and young women were accompanied by an ostensible duenna, and the methods of eluding their vigilance in communication were various. I had detected under a blond wig, in entering, the young ambassador of a foreign court, who being cavaliere servente to one of the most beautiful women in Florence, certainly had no right to the amusement of the hour. We had been carried up the church in the same tide, and when the whole crowd were prostrate, I found him just beyond me, slipping a card into the shoe of an uncommonly pretty girl kneeling before him. She was attended by both father and mother apparently, but as she gave no sign of surprise, except stealing an almost imperceptible glance behind her, I presumed she was not offended. I passed an hour, perhaps, in amused observation of similar matters, most of which could not be well described on paper. It is enough to say, that I do not think more dissolute circumstances accompanied the worship of Venus in the most defiled of heathen temples.

LETTER L.

FLORENCE—VISIT TO THE CHURCH OF SAN GAETANO—PENITENTIAL PROCESSIONS—THE REFUGEE CARLISTS—THE MIRACLE OF RAIN—CHURCH OF THE ANNUNCIATA—TOMB OF GIOVANNI DI BOLOGNA—MASTERPIECE OF ANDREA DEL SARTO, ETC., ETC.

I heard the best passage of the opera of "Romeo and Juliet" delightfully played in the church of San Gaetano this morning. I was coming from the café, where I had been breakfasting, when the sound of the organ drew me in. The communion was administering at one of the side chapels, the showy Sunday mass was going on at the great altar, and the numerous confession boxes were full of penitents, all female, as usual. As I took a seat near the communicants, the sacred wafer was dipped into the cup and put into the mouth of a young woman kneeling before the railing. She rose soon after, and I was not lightly surprised to find it was a certain errand-girl of a bachelor's washerwoman, as unfit a person for the holy sacrament as wears a petticoat in Florence.

I was drawn by the agreeable odor of the incense to the paling of the high altar. The censers were flung by unseen hands from the doors of the sacristy at the sides, and an unseen chorus of boys in the choir behind, broke in occasionally with the high-keyed chant that echoes with its wild melody from every arch and corner of these immense churches. It seems running upon the highest note that the ear can bear, and yet nothing could be more musical. A man knelt on the pavement near me, with two coarse baskets beside him, and the traces of long and dirty travel from his heels to his hips. He had stopped in to the mass, probably, on his way to market. There can be no greater contrast than that seen in Catholic churches, between the splendor of architecture, renowned pictures, statues and ornaments of silver and gold, and the crowd of tattered, famished, misery-marked worshippers that throng them. I wonder it never occurs to them, that the costly pavement upon which they kneel might feed and clothe them.[6]

Penitential processions are to be met all over Florence to-day, on account of the uncommon degree of sickness. One of them passed under my window just now. They are composed of people of all classes, upon whom it is inflicted as a penance by the priests. A white robe covers them entirely, even the face, and, with their eyes glaring through the two holes made for that purpose, they look like processions of shrouded corpses. Eight of the first carry burning candles of six feet in length, and a company in the rear have the church books, from which they chant, the whole procession joining in a melancholy chorus of three notes. It rains hard to-day, and their white dresses cling to them with a ludicrously ungraceful effect.

Florence is an unhealthful climate in the winter. The tramontane winds come down from the Appenines so sharply, that delicate constitutions, particularly those liable to pulmonary complaints, suffer invariably. There has been a dismal mortality among the Italians. The Marquis Corsi, who presented me at court a week ago (the last day he was out, and the last duty he performed), lies in state, at this moment, in the church of Santa Trinita, and another of the duke's counsellors of state died a few days before. His prime minister, Fossombroni, is dangerously ill also, and all of the same complaint, the mal di petto, as it is called, or disease of the lungs. Corsi is a great loss to Americans. He was the grand chamberlain of court, wealthy and hospitable, and took particular pride in fulfilling the functions of an American ambassador. He was a courtier of the old school, accomplished, elegant, and possessed of universal information.

The refugee Carlists are celebrating to-day, in the church of Santa Maria Novella, the anniversary of the death of Louis XVI. The bishop of Strasbourg is here, and is performing high mass for the soul of the "martyr," as they term him. Italy is full of the more aristocratic families of France, and it has become mauvais ton in society to advocate the present government of France, or even its principles. They detest Louis Philippe with the virulence of a deadly private enmity, and declare universally, that they will exile themselves till they can return to overthrow him. Among the refugees are great numbers of young men, who are sent away from home with a chivalrous devotion to the cause of the Duchess of Berri, which they avow so constantly in the circles of Italian society, that she seems the exclusive heroine of the day. There was nothing seen of the French exquisites in Florence for a week after she was taken. They were in mourning for the misfortune of their mistress.

All Florence is ringing with the miracle. The city fountains have for some days been dry, and the whole country was suffering for rain. The day before the moon changed, the procession began, and the day after, when the sky was full of clouds, the holy picture in the church of the Annunciata, "painted by St. Luke himself," was solemnly uncovered. The result was the present miracle of rain, and the priests are preaching upon it from every pulpit. The padrone of my lodgings came in this morning, and told me the circumstances with the most serious astonishment.

I joined the crowd this morning, who are still thronging up the via de Servi to the church of the Annunciata at all hours of the day. The square in front of the church was like a fair—every nook occupied with the little booths of the sellers of rosaries, saints books, and pictures. We were assailed by a troop of pedlars at the door, holding leaden medals and crucifixes, and crying, at the top of their voices, for fidele Christiani to spend a crazie for the love of God.

After crowding up the long cloister with a hundred or two of wretches, steaming from the rain, and fresh from every filthy occupation in the city, we were pushed under the suspended leather door, and reached the nave of the church. In the slow progress we made toward the altar, I had full opportunity to study the fretted-gold ceiling above me, the masterly pictures in the side chapels, the statuary, carving, and general architecture. Description can give you no idea of the waste of splendor in these places.

I stood at last within sight of the miraculous picture. It is painted in fresco, above an altar surrounded with a paling of bronze and marble projecting into the body of the church. Eight or ten massive silver lamps, each one presented by some trade in Florence, hung from the roof of the chapel, burning with a dusky glare in the daylight. A grenadier, with cap and musket, stood on each side of the bronze gate, repressing the eager rush of the crowd. Within, at the side of the altar, stood the officiating priest, a man with a look of intellect and nobleness on his fine features and lofty forehead, that seemed irreconcilable with the folly he was performing. The devotees came in, one by one, as they were admitted by the sentinel, knelt, offered their rosary to the priest, who touched it to the frame of the picture with one hand, and received their money with the other, and then crossing themselves, and pressing the beads to their bosom, passed out at the small door leading into the cloisters.

As the only chance of seeing the picture, I bought a rosary for two crazie (about three cents), and pressed into the throng. In a half hour it came to my turn to pass the guard. The priest took my silver paul, and while he touched the beads to the picture, I had a moment to look at it nearly. I could see nothing but a confused mass of black paint, with an indistinct outline of the head of the Madonna in the centre. The large spiked rays of glory standing out from every side were all I could see in the imperfect light. The richness of the chapel itself, however, was better worth the trouble to see. It is quite encrusted with silver. Silver bassi relievi, two silver candelabra, six feet in height, two very large silver statues of angels, a ciborio (enclosing a most exquisite head of our Saviour, by Andrea del Sarto), a massive silver cornice sustaining a heavily folded silver curtain, and silver lilies and lamps in any quantity all around. I wonder, after the plundering of the church of San Antonio, at Padua, that these useless riches escaped Napoleon.

How some of the priests, who are really learned and clever men, can lend themselves to such barefaced imposture as this miracle, it is difficult to conceive. The picture has been kept as a doer of these miracles, perhaps for a century. It is never uncovered in vain. Supernatural results are certain to follow, and it is done as often as they dare to make a fresh draught on the credulity and money of the people. The story is as follows: "A certain Bartolomeo, while painting a fresco of the annunciation, being at a loss how to make the countenance of the Madonna properly seraphic, fell asleep while pondering over his work; and, on waking, found it executed in a style he was unable to equal." I can only say that St. Luke, or the angel, or whoever did it, was a very indifferent draughtsman. It is ill drawn, and whatever the colors might have been upon the pallet of the sleepy painter, they were not made immortal by angelic use. It is a mass of confused black.

I was glad to get away from the crowd and their mummery, and pay a new tribute of reverence at the tomb of Giovanni di Bologna. He is buried behind the grand altar, in a chapel ornamented at his own expense, and with his own inimitable works. Six bas-reliefs in bronze, than which life itself is not more natural, represent different passages of our Saviour's history. They were done for the Grand Duke, who, at the death of the artist, liberally gave them to ornament his tomb. After the authors of the Venus and the Apollo Belvidere, John of Bologna is, in my judgment, the greatest of sculptors. His mounting Mercury, in the Florence gallery, might have been a theft from heaven for its divine beauty.

In passing out by the cloisters of the adjoining convent, I stopped a moment to see the fresco of the Madonna del Sacco, said to have been the masterpiece of Andrea del Sarto. Michael Angelo and Raphael are said to have "gazed at it unceasingly." It is much defaced, and preserves only its graceful drawing. The countenance of Mary has the beau reste of singular loveliness. The models of this delightful artist (who, by the way, is buried in the vestibule of this same church), must have been the most beautiful in the world. All his pictures move the heart.

LETTER LI.

FLORENTINE PECULIARITIES—SOCIETY—BALLS—DUCAL ENTERTAINMENTS—PRIVILEGE OF STRANGERS—FAMILIES OF HIGH RANK—THE EXCLUSIVES—SOIREES—PARTIES OF A RICH BANKER—PEASANT BEAUTY—VISITERS OF A BARONESS—AWKWARD DEPORTMENT OF A PRINCE—A CONTENTED MARRIED LADY—HUSBANDS, CAVALIERS, AND WIVES—PERSONAL MANNERS—HABITS OF SOCIETY, ETC.

I am about starting on my second visit to Rome, after having passed nearly three months in Florence. As I have seen most of the society of this gayest and fairest of the Italian cities, it may not be uninteresting to depart a little from the traveller's routine by sketching a feature or two.

Florence is a resort for strangers from every part of the world. The gay society is a mixture of all nations, of whom one third may be Florentine, one third English, and the remaining part equally divided between Russians, Germans, French, Poles, and Americans. The English entertain a great deal, and give most of the balls and dinner parties. The Florentines seldom trouble themselves to give parties, but are always at home for visits in the prima sera (from seven till nine), and in their box at the opera. They go, without scruple, to all the strangers' balls, considering courtesy repaid, perhaps, by the weekly reception of the Grand Duke, and a weekly ball at the club-house of young Italian noblemen.

The ducal entertainments occur every Tuesday, and are the most splendid of course. The foreign ministers present all of their countrymen who have been presented at their own courts, and the company is necessarily more select than elsewhere. The Florentines who go to court are about seven hundred, of whom half are invited on each week—strangers, when once presented, having the double privilege of coming uninvited to all. There are several Italian families, of the highest rank, who are seen only here; but, with the single exception of one unmarried girl, of uncommon beauty, who bears a name celebrated in Italian history, they are no loss to general society. Among the foreigners of rank, are three or four German princes, who play high and waltz well, and are remarkable for nothing else; half a dozen star-wearing dukes, counts, and marquises, of all nations and in any quantity, and a few English noblemen and noble ladies—only the latter nation showing their blood at all in their features and bearing.

The most exclusive society is that of the Prince Montfort (Jerome Bonaparte), whose splendid palace is shut entirely against the English, and difficult of access to all. He makes a single exception in favor of a descendant of the Talbots, a lady whose beauty might be an apology for a much graver departure from rule. He has given two grand entertainments since the carnival commenced, to which nothing was wanting but people to enjoy them. The immense rooms were flooded with light, the music was the best Florence could give, the supper might have supped an army—stars and red ribands entered with every fresh comer, but it looked like a "banquet hall deserted." Some thirty ladies, and as many men, were all that Florence contained worthy of the society of the Ex-King. A kinder man in his manners, however, or apparently a more affectionate husband and father, I never saw. He opened the dance by waltzing with the young Princess, his daughter, a lovely girl of fourteen, of whom he seems fond to excess, and he was quite the gayest person in the company till the ball was over. The Ex-Queen, who is a miracle of size, sat on a divan, with her ladies of honor about her, following her husband with her eyes, and enjoying his gayety with the most childish good humor.

The Saturday evening soirées, at Prince Poniatowski's (a brother of the hero), are perhaps as agreeable as any in Florence. He has several grown-up sons and daughters married, and, with a very sumptuous palace and great liberality of style, he has made his parties more than usually valued. His eldest daughter is the leader of the fashion, and his second is the "cynosure of all eyes." The old Prince is a tall, bent, venerable man, with snow-white hair, and very peculiarly marked features. He is fond of speaking English, and professes a great affection for America.

Then there are the soirées of the rich banker, Fenzi, which, as they are subservient to business, assemble all ranks on the common pretensions of interest. At the last, I saw, among other curiosities, a young girl of eighteen from one of the more common families of Florence—a fine specimen of the peasant beauty of Italy. Her heavily moulded figure, hands, and feet, were quite forgiven when you looked at her dark, deep, indolent eye, and glowing skin, and strongly-lined mouth and forehead. The society was evidently new to her, but she had a manner quite beyond being astonished. It was the kind of animal dignity so universal in the lower classes of this country.

A German baroness of high rank receives on the Mondays, and here one sees foreign society in its highest coloring. The prettiest woman that frequents her parties, is a Genoese marchioness, who has left her husband to live with a Lucchese count, who has left his wife. He is a very accomplished man, with the look of Mephistopheles in the "Devil's Walk," and she is certainly a most fascinating woman. She is received in most of the good society of Florence—a severe, though a very just comment on its character. A Prince, the brother of the King of ——, divided the attention of the company with her last Monday. He is a tall, military-looking man, with very bad manners, ill at ease, and impudent at the same time. He entered with his suite in the middle of a song. The singer stopped, the company rose, the Prince swept about, bowing like a dancing-master, and, after the sensation had subsided, the ladies were taken up and presented to him, one by one. He asked them all the same question, stayed through two songs, which he spoiled by talking loudly all the while, and then bowed himself out in the same awkward style, leaving everybody more happy for his departure.

One gains little by his opportunities of meeting Italian ladies in society. The cavaliere servente flourishes still as in the days of Beppo, and it is to him only that the lady condescends to talk. There is a delicate, refined-looking, little marchioness here, who is remarkable as being the only known Italian lady without a cavalier. They tell you, with an amused smile, "that she is content with her husband." It really seems to be a business of real love between the lady of Italy and her cavalier. Naturally enough too—for her parents marry her without consulting her at all, and she selects a friend afterward, as ladies in other countries select a lover who is to end in a husband. The married couple are never seen together by any accident, and the lady and her cavalier never apart. The latter is always invited with her as a matter of course, and the husband, if there is room, or if he is not forgotten. She is insulted if asked without a cavalier, but is quite indifferent whether her husband goes with her or not. These are points really settled in the policy of society, and the rights of the cavalier are specified in the marriage contracts. I had thought, until I came to Italy, that such things were either a romance, or customs of an age gone by.