THE NEW IONTHLY BELLE ASSEMBLÉE. MAY, 1849. LETTERS FROM ITALY. No. I. It is curious, my dear Friend, to remark how ferently foreign lands affect our imaginations en they are looked on with the mere traveller's 2, and when they are pondered over as our me. In passing rapidly through town after vn, the faculty of perception is in full playe senses are at their utmost strain; we are sy storing the outer receptacles, the anteambers of the mind. But when we live in e of these strange suggestive foreign cities, en the eyes become habituated to the peculiar rms of all around, a very different mental proSs commences. We begin to sort our impresons, to remove the more precious into the inner cesses of the spirit, there to be refined in the ucible of reflection. I have now been some onths in Florence; things that surprised me e now the daily experience of my life. I have rown used to what was distasteful; the vulgar ad inconvenient have ceased to annoy me, hile on the other hand the beautiful remains ver fresh. It is but one of the many remindings re have in life, that the mean and bad are for time, the good and fair for all eternity. Sighteeing is the business of the traveller; it is the efreshment of the foreign resident. When arred by the little discords of the house, the mall cheatings which characterize Italian hojesty, the endless bargainings that afflict an English spirit in this country, it is a great boon o trace the stores, ever open, of ancient genius n those wondrous picture galleries. Nothing is more immediately calming than their presence. Who can feel cross before a Virgin of Raphael? or "worried" when gazing on one of Salvator's sunset shores? or who can remember a squabble about pauls and crazie, when before him is enacted the awful scene of the entombment, by the pathetic touch of Perugino? The very knowledge that they are always within our reach, fills the mind with pleasant recollections, and rich imagery, and carries it at once out of the nar row sphere of selfish interests. Moreover, the architecture of Florence is to me a never-sating feast; it is the want of prettiness in its grandeur which makes it so satisfying. Its perfectly unique character strikes you always with the consciousness of the great original mind that created it. There is no dalliance there with the art; no fantastic ornament, injurious to its stern dignity; colossal and awe-inspiring, it never loses its effect on you. Every day I go into the Piazza of the Gran Duca, where towers the majestic Palazzo Vecchio, my mind returns instantaneously to the past. The dead are no more dead there-Giotto and Orgagna are my familiar friends-Arnolfodel Lapo stands spiritually beside his palace fortress. All dates are at once annihilated; Michael Angelo is as recent to me as Tennyson or Mr. Barry. But I see you are laughing at that dread sign of ridicule, away flies my romance! Perhaps you would prefer this lordly Piazza when it is the theatre of one of the hundred meditated revolutions which have agitated the worthy Florentines during the last six months. In it you might have seen the excitedly playful populace pelting the stolid sentry at his post. Alas for a warrior's dignity! Think what a painful duty it must be to stand still and be pelted by the rabble. Does the unlucky soldier expect that serving his country, as it is so magnificently called, is to comprise the humiliation of a vagrant in the village stocks, or a stray donkey in the village pound? In the fair moonlight evenings, when the three white giant statues stood spectral in the warm, yellow beams that softened all around, this Piazza often resounded to the ringing hoofs of horses, as the cavalry patrols passed through it on their rounds. It was a pretty enough sight, the uniforms glistening in the night-rays; the grave and soTemn figures on their horses' backs, sitting silent as wanderers from the tomb, come back to guard their beloved city; but as far as military S in among them as avengers of their oft-bewalled wrongs? Did not Leghorn, in its rebellious outbreaks, pour contempt on the irresolution of Florence, while Sienna offered to send volu teers to annihilate Leghorn? The allied lam army, too, worked about as harmoniously in the disastrous Lombard warfare, as Charles Edward's Highlanders and Bordermen on their march to Derby. But I am growing prosy and struck out like sparks in the electrical state of the social world here, are certainly among the notabilia of an Italian residence, I did meat, when I began this letter, to confine myself to more peaceful topics. During my summer stay in Florence, there is a sight I never tire of, because it varies ever, and is ever lovely-I mean the views from the three bridges, particularly from the centre one. the Trinita. Surely the housebuilders in this country have a painter's eye-every tall root, every broad cave, tells so effectively in the pic ture. You never wish one house higher er lower, broader or narrower, than it is, as you do so often in English street-views; every int gularity seems to have been made on purpose, so well it fills its place in the mass. And then the colouring - the infinity of shades, modified by the hour, the weather, the season--always a new combination; now glowing as a Salvator Ros now coldly stern and feudal, as the background of a Spagnoletto. efficiency was concerned, I believe the cavaliers, other than are the petty towns and states of could not boast. The flag-stones, irregular in to-day. Did not the Lombards prove lukewarm form, but smooth in level, of which the pave- to the Piedmontese, when the latter marched ments are here composed, had been rendered more slippery than usual by a long drought, and they shone as greasy as much-trodden snow in our own English winters. A charge in such circumstances would have been impossible -the first forward plunge would have unhorsed the whole squadron! Indeed, in many a night was the nervous ear that listened for the shout of insurrection, greeted instead with the deep bell of the Misericordia, summoning its benevo-political; and though the traits of character, lent brethren to carry off the injured trooper, whose falling charger had broken its rider's bones. Fractures of leg and arm by such accidents were really quite numerous, and formed an excellent commentary on the actual uselessness of these imposing guards. But outward show in war as well as religion is here all in all. The people saw the cavalry, and heard the clank of the hoofs ringing at midnight through their streets, and they required no more tangible proof of their prowess. One night, however, when a contagious spirit of mutiny had floated thither from Leghorn, a great mob assembled, loudly announcing their intention of giving battle to the soldiers. And what did the patrols do in these trying circumstances? They carefully avoided the Piazza del Gran Duca where their foes were gathering. They took great pains that evening to extend their surveillance over the peaceful quarters of Florence, leaving the disturbed part to help itself; and by this discretionary valour preserved intact their bubble reputation, and escaped a beating from mobweapons of very equivocal purity. I doubt not, after all, that their opponents were as glad to be escaped from, as the martial men were to escape. You cannot live in Italy without daily experiences of the mighty chasm between an Italian's threat and its execution. It is seen in the domestic life as well as in the political. The same flagrant anticlimaxes of valour, which have cast ridicule on the " Holy Crusade" of Lombardy, are found in every pot-house squabble. They talk like men, they fight like women. Their language is fertile in evil designations, any one of which to an Englishman would entail a sound thrashing on the speaker; but the Italian returns the compliment with interest. Consider how an uccio or an accio tacked to the end of a word, can turn the softest praise into the foulest abuse. And thus, like a couple of cats, will they spit venom at each other for hours, retiring exhausted with passion at the moment when the northern fury would explode in manual violence. The national vanity also is excessive. They all believe they can govern their country; but the fruit of their interference is most humiliating to me, who last year gave too happy credence to the fair chimera of Italian regeneration. I came to this country with lively hope; I have been shamed into, not fear, but certainty, that Italy is as far as Ireland from an united national government. The republics of the middle ages were not more jealous of each 1 Can you, can any one, explain to me the curious associations which nature brings us by her resemblances in one part of her landscape to that she showed us in some far distant country? It is like her endless variety in faces; a stranger will often remind us of a dear friend, thoug neither feature nor expression may bear the least tangible similitude, only an airy likeness, that evaporates when you try to seize it. Coming up the Rhine some time ago, I was continually thinking of the Caledonian Canal, with its green high hills, its old castles of Urquhart, Inver. garry, and Locheil; and yet nothing can be more different than the wild heather mantle of our Highlands, and the scarped terraces of vine yards, and sunny, low orchards, that overlo the Rhine; and little relationship of feature have Fort Augustus and Coblentz, or the sheat ings of Badenoch, with the broad-eaved antique houses of St. Joan. In the same manner a sunmer sunset from the lowest of the bridges, the Ponte Carraja, always reminds me of Gordos Reach, on the Hooghly, near Calcutta. The same orange belt of setting sunshine, the s melancholy droop of the trees into the water, the same curve of the stream amid the greenery. and yet how different are the accessories of the scene! It is true that the Duke's casino at the Cascine, with its white pillars and fanciful architecture gleaming out among the dark screa of trees, has not a little likeness to the plaster palaces of Calcutta, and their long rows of co lonnades. But then again the mighty Hooghly, hurling sea-ward its rapid flood, could drown a dozen summer Arnos, creeping silently over their pebbles, where the little boys wade, scarcely up to their knees, instead of the riding of huge frigates on their anchors, as on the Indian stream. The Florentine foreground, too, is far gayer. The gushing forth of the population at evening, sparkles with glee; how different from the sickly, languid sauntering of the Calcutta exiles! Yet still, in spite of the difference, there is always to me a resemblance-vague, inexplicable, depressing-for oh! very mournful is it to be reminded of a place of disease and orrow, of long-parted friends and relatives, the dearest of whom are laid in Indian graves; the once young and beautiful, doomed by the quick appetite of death. But if the harmony of outward loveliness be too much shaken by the agitated beatings of memory, what is more soothing than to enter at twilight one of the old churches of Florence! Suppose it be Santa Maria Novella, the one nearest at hand. There is no one but the attendant, who is arranging a few feeble votive lights. The vesper service is over; but perhaps an old woman may still be kneeling before the Madonna image, or a gray-beard labourer may be praying audibly at a pietà of coarsely-painted wood, enshrined in a glass case, and thickly strewn with rosaries and flowers, and silver hearts, the humble offerings of the poor. There often have I sate and pondered, and felt the religious atmosphere of the place more powerfully than when illuminated for a festa, crowded with worshippers, and redolent of incense. In the perfect solitude and tranquillity of these ancient fanes, a holy peace seems brooding. The lofty arches springing sheer upwards, the magnificent and gorgeously-coloured windows, the strange rich sculptures, the suggestive, though half-faded frescoes-all in such a deathly calm, as if time went on and on, and yet nothing here had altered from the days of Cimabue and Oreagna. It makes you forget the vicissitudes of life; you feel as if you had at last seized something nearly immortal upon earth-something man had made which had not descended with him into oblivion. Sometimes the moon rises while you are sitting there; and through the open door into the cloisters its white beams penetrate the dusty recesses of the aisles. In its smile round the grassy court, lie the tombs of many generations. The floor of the church is all death's chronicle. Were you dreaming of immortality!-poor mortal! look downwards on the marble effigies that perpetuate a few names! Yet mourn not long, look up again, and lo! the straggling rays of the far yellow tapers at the choir fall fitfully on the imaged Saviour's face; the Crucified is there, the sting of death is passed. At such times, Í approve with my feelings and my imagination the Catholic adornments of "the House of God." The house should have some memorials I was lately detained for an hour of its owner. or two by some mischance in the English church here, upon a week day. Nothing could be more chilling, more formal, more unecclesiastical. But for a few indistinctly painted sentences over the communion table, it might have been a college lecture-room, or an empty concert-hall, or a boy's school-room, or anything that suggests stiff attention and uneasy constraint. No reminder of the prayer, save the calico-covered pulpit and reading desk. It was like going too soon to a friend's party, and finding the chandelier and sofas in dishabille. The rows of seats on each side, the bare white walls, the glaring whitewash, the colourless, unpicturesque windows, like great square holes cut in the sides, all looked comfortless and common-place, and awakened no spiritual associations. No wonder clergymen object to opening such churches for week-day service. To assist at such a desolate ceremony, is like seeing a rehearsal out of regular hours, with the candle-snuffer for audience. I could not but wish for a few pictures, a few statues, to break the severe monotony of the building. It is not necessary, in order to avoid idolatry, that the temple of the Lord be meaner and more vulgar than our own dwellinghouses. I have often planned to myself a simple church of pure architecture, the side walls adorned with fresco landscapes of the Holy Land, and the scenes of our Lord's life introduced into the foreground; the figures to be kept so subordinate by their smallness of scale, that they should not attract the eye too saliently. Surely this could not be idolatrous! The swelling waters of the Sea of Gennesareth, the arid rocks of Mount Sinai, the Wilderness, the vil lage, the fishing cottages and their inmates-all might be represented simply, without fear of evil effects. I would have the communion-table richly sculptured with high relief figures of animals, emblematic or allusive, scrolls of foliage, and sprays of flowers. I would have massy books upon the slab of the altar, standing upright on either side of a large but perfectly plain cross; and furthermore I would have pulpit and reading-desk of equal height, and no pews not a single "reserved seat" for any worshipper whatsoever. Let all fare the same in the presence of the Almighty. On the exterior of the church I would have finely-executed statues of the apostles, the prophets, or the Old Testament saints and warriors. You will think me perhaps presumptuous, certainly chimerical, but now that every girl in the boarding-school delivers her opinion on political economy and ecclesiastical polity, surely I may drop a few hints on my "Ideal of a Christian Church," taking church in the sense of the house of prayer. You know Bacon's charming ideals of houses and gardens; well, mine is a respectful imitation of his more perfect precedents. And now, while I have been chatting, the old verger is going his rounds, and informs us the doors must be shut for the night. Adieu, fair Maria Novello! the Sposa of the enthusiastic Michael Angelo, the only Sposa his grave heart admitted. It must be allowed, that had he sought a woman as perfect in her kind as thou art in thine, his search might have been prolonged till now without success. But the wise sculptor knew better, and his stony Sposa contented him. The transition is sudden from the dark and mournful nave to the piazza, where the large-faced moon looks down, and breathes a soft warm breeze upon her worshippers. The whole population is out, and laughter and music resound. Tread your way through yon narrow crowded street, and emerging in face of the Grandiose palace of the Strezzi, you will ask yourself what festa is this; how gay are the people! It is nature's festa, celebrated every night of summer. After the long hot day, shut up in a dark room, whose green twilight mocked all attempts at reading or working, how rejoiced are the Florentines to feel the cool air, and to roam under the harmless moon! Every one is out, the houses are deserted; the baby is in its mother's arms; the elder children drag themselves after the father's hand; the old people sit at their doors; the shopkeepers pack away their goods, and hold conversaziones over their gaily-lighted counters. Every door and window is open, every café is full. Enter one, you will laugh at its strange combinations. Here see a knot of dirty beards, very closely mingling over a sheet of the democratic Alba. Their voices are loud in altercation; perhaps they are discussing the last news from stormtossed Rome. There is a domestic group, papa, mamma, and a string of bright-ribboned daughters, eating ices silently, and staring around them with their large black eyes; and in the farthermost corner is a tall man in black, with a voluble contadina at his side, both intently watching the manoeuvres of a two-year old urchin, with his tiny glass of ice. The nursemaid is full of attentions and directions to her charge the father's eye says more; I read in it the yearning love of the widower for the sole creature left for him to cherish. Close to the child, a great, rough, cross guardsman clanks his sword against the marble table, smoking, spitting, and swallowing milkless coffee with frightful haste. Probably this night is his turn on guard; he looks angrily at his red-rimmed cap, as if it had brought him into trouble. But why do I run on? - I could describe to you café after café, each brimful of lively pictures. Mark that young lady lounging haughtily after her mustachioed companion. They take seats at one of the little square tables set out before the café door in the Piazza del Duomo. He bespeaks ices; and in the mean time two oily-jacketed workmen jostle up among the crowd, and deposit their unsavoury persons on the bench close to her. They call for capillaire, commencing their regale, as they end it, by a loud and copious discharge of saliva, which very probably has not escaped her showy shot-silk dress. A ragged beggar, one of the habitués of the café, croaks sullenly behind the lady; and a hideous little hunchback thrusts a bunch of roses into her hand. She has strong nerves apparently, and no senses that can be disgusted by sight or sound, for she takes her ice in pas sionless calm of face, and retires in unruffled gravity. The Italian girls of the higher order have to me an expression of peculiar sullenness. I often try to persuade myself that it is partly caused by their way of wearing their bonnets, stuck on the top of their heads behind, thus casting an undue shadow over the brow. It is pleasant to encounter among these stolid damsels a lively French face-perhaps not half so strictly handsome, but infinitely more attractive; the eyes espiegle and coquettish, the lips ready to break into smiles. Here we are, on our way homewards at last, crossing the bridge of the Santa Trinita. The pavements on both sides are lined with benches, the speculation of an enterprising seat-letter. For a coin less than a farthing you may rest yourself as long as you like, eye your neighbours, or sketch mentally the sublime panorama of the Luieg' Arno by moonlight. If there be a breeze anywhere, it is always to be found here; and I am told that within the last ten or twelve years, it was customary among the Italian ladies to sit on this bridge till daylight; but since the English invaded Florence, this practice has been on the decline, and now-a-days the female part of the sitters retire before midnight. Long after that, however, the town is alive with strollers, and deep manly choruses frighten sleep away. Dawn comes all too soon, for when the songs cease the carts begin; the city gates are thrown open, and in jingle all the peasants with their tinkling bells and uncouth vehicles. Truy it is vain to hope for slumber on a summer's night in Florence. Try noon; and if you can sleep by day, which I cannot, you will find it infinitely quieter; the siesta has hushed every wheel, hoof, and voice; the sun, creeping swelteringly along the sky, is the only traveller to be seen. And now, having carried you through the hours of a sultry night in fair Florence, I must, my Friend, bid you a temporary adieu, premising, that while I thus recall the tropic heats and wakeful moons of July and August, I am sitting in December with an extra mantle, beside a bright wood-fire, having nearly lost my way in a milk-white fog, that might have come from London, getting bleached in its sea-voyage. once again farewell. P. P. C. THE SONG OF SPRING. BY ROBERT H. BROWN, ESQ. And life and light to your earth I bring; So |