were a mere mask for helpless impotence, when patriotism; the lifeblood of a people, had stagnated into selfishness; when the genius of Rome, kneeling in abject terror to the barbarian, shrieked out, Slay me not, for I am immortal!' That history has not told the whole truth, these buildings suffice to show. Princes must have had some confidence in the destinies of their race when they built them such sepulchres, the people must have had some love to God when they bestowed such wealth and pains on the decoration of his temples. Even now the little children of Ravenna are baptised in the baptistery built fourteen hundred years ago. We see that, even in the darkest period of the world's and the church's history, there were some men and Christians who did not despair of either. These temples and their rites may survive to witness other transferences of the empire of the world.

If I were to describe them in de tail, I should have to write a book, and not an article, which book would be useless unless its author possessed a more technical knowledge of architecture and art than I do. Nor, dear reader, would you thank me for a dry catalogue. I shall therefore briefly touch upon some of the most remarkable objects which present themselves in the mirror of my memory, happy if I shall be able to induce you, when you next cross the Alps, to forsake the grande route and the track of ten thousand travellers, and take this most interesting of the byways of Italy.' I cannot

say

Ille terrarum mihi præter omnes,
Angulus ridet,

for no corner of earth can well be more sombre and lonely; but I think that in after years the grassgrown streets of Ravenna, and the silent aisles of its pine-wood, as they dwell in your recollection, will be thronged with associations as charming as the noisy via Toledo or the gay piazza of St. Mark.

Of all their lions'-excepting perhaps their new theatre-the people of Ravenna are proudest of San Vitale, built by an exarch in the days of Justinian. It is a copy of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, and was so much ad

mired by Charlemagne, that in its turn he made it the model for his great church at Aix-la-Chapelle. If that imperial virtuoso had contented himself with taking copies only from Ravenna, we should have had less reason to regret his visit to that city. As it was, he despoiled the palace which had been the abode of Exarchs, of Theodoric, of Honorius, and perhaps even of Augustus himself. The robbery, it is true, was committed with the sanction of the Pope, but Popes in those days would sanction anything. What Charlemagne did with his spoils doth not appear. To return to San Vitale, where time has destroyed much of what Charlemagne, Turpin, and Co. had the grace to spare. The central cupola was once covered with mosaics, but within the last century they have all crumbled away and been replaced by daubery, such as would disgrace a respectable artist of the house, sign, and ornamental' school. The pilasters, however, below are still clothed with their rich coloured marbles, and the mosaics in the choir are as perfect as when the great Frank looked at them and regretted they were not portable. On the one side is Justinian-think of that, a contemporary portrait of Justinian!-and on the other, Theodora, the lady whom he raised from the stage to the throne, doubtless justifying the step by a proclamation, and assigning excelfent political reasons for preferring a marriage of affection to an alliance with a royal house of secondary rank. She is represented as carrying, like her husband, a vase of sacred gifts; she wears an elaborate head-dress, apparently composed of lace and pearls; for the rest she is hardly distinguished from her attendants, either by feature or expression. Certainly in the lifeless, stiff, and angular figure before us, it must be a vivid imagination, like that of Monsieur Valéry, which can detect the coquetry of the pidevant danseuse, or in any way recognise the prototype of the historian's description. Her features' (says Gibbon, vol. iii. p. 488) were delicate and regular; her complexion, though somewhat pale, was tinged with a natural colour; every sensation was instantly expressed by the vivacity

1853.]

of her eyes; her easy motions displayed the graces of a small but elegant figure; and either love or adulation might proclaim that painting and poetry were incapable of delineating the matchless excellence of her form.'

What the poet and the painter could not do with their comparatively tractable materials, ought not to be expected from a poor maître mosaiste, who had to work with bits of smalt, and glass, and stone, nearly the size of one's thumb. The truth is, I believe, that no attempt was made to give individual expression, and that one conventional type, one lay figure-and a strange Guy it must have been-served for the empress and her attendants, another for the emperor and his. At all events, the faces being full, and the bodies in profile, they resemble no living creatures who can boast of spinal vertebræ. It must not be supposed, because I treat the matter lightly, that the effect upon the spectator is ludicrous; quite the reverse: the absence of all effort on the artist's part after reality and variety seems to deepen the solemn effect, and make you half forget that they are man's handiwork at all. When I think how, of an evening, as the shadows grew and gathered over the silent and deserted church, and the pale, ghostly faces upon the wall, looking out through the gloom, seemed to take substance and distinctness, one could not but feel a chill, creeping sensation of awe, a sense, as it were, of the presence of beings not of this earth, mingled with a strange yearning after the impossible past; when I remember the inexplicable medley of feelings, which the very confusion of my description best describes, and contrast it with my present inclination to laugh, I cannot but acknowledge that in my futile attempts at wordpainting I am endeavouring vainly to communicate secrets which can only be revealed by the lips of the genus Loci.

Close to the basilica of San Vitale, and indeed within the sacred precinct, is one of the most interesting relics of old days to be found in the world. Conceive a small, low brick edifice, not unlike the lock-up house which stands on many a village

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green in England, and which you would pass a hundred times without notice. Yet there repose undisturbed the remains of Galla Placidia, wife of Theodosius, and of her stepson Honorius, and her second husband Constantius. The interior is in the shape of a Latin cross, and you enter by a door at the end of the longer arm. In the centre is an altar of alabaster, behind which is the sarcophagus of the empress, of rough marble, without emblem or ornament, but doubtless covered originally with carved slabs, perhaps the very alabaster which composes the said altar, evidently, I think, of a more recent date than the tombs. In niches to the right and left are the sarcophagi of Honorius and Constantius, of white marble, and covered with the symbols of Christianity-the bleeding lamb with the cross, two sheep eating the fruit of the palm, and so forth. Near the entrance, let into the wall, are two plain stone coffins, said-on what authority I know not-to contain the remains of Honorius's tutors. The walls are covered with mosaics in excellent preservation; one, in particular, representing the good shepherd with his flock, struck me as being the most artistic design I saw in Ravenna. There is a certain grace in the attitude of the shepherd as he sits on a rock caressing a sheep with his right hand, and holding a cross with his left.

Another shows us two harts panting for the cooling stream. A third represents, if I mistake not, Christ's descent into hell, and a fourth displays an open book-case with four volumes lying one upon another, meaning of course the Evangelists. These are not rolls, but quartos, and prove that by the time of Honorius the old classical volumen had gone out of use. All the figures in these mosaics have on them a symbol in shape like a double T, the meaning of which no one could explain to me. In the church of Saint Apollinare Nuovo, where the walls of the nave are covered from end to end with a procession of saints, and martyrs, and angels bringing gifts to the Saviour and the Virgin, I remarked the same peculiarity. In this latter case, however, the symbols were very various; the angels, for in

stance, were marked with a Greek Gamma in gold, the other figures with different letters of the Latin alphabet, single or double.

I am not going to weary my readers with a catalogue of all the churches in Ravenna; but before I take leave of the subject I must mention the ancient baptistery, where for fourteen hundred years the people of the city, from father to son, have been admitted into the Christian church. When I was there, a child was brought to be baptised, and I watched the ceremony with some interest. The Roman Catholics, it seems, have, like ourselves, discontinued the practice of immersion, and a sort of box, placed within the huge porphyry font, serves to contain the scanty supply of water and the cruet of oil necessary for the modern rite. The water is poured on the child's head with a ladle, and then the oil rubbed in with cotton wool. On the whole, prejudice apart, the ceremony did not seem so impressive as it is in our church, although we, too, have marred the significance of the rite by waiving the immersion.

If there be no city in Europe where man has done less ravage on the works of man within its walls than in Ravenna, there is also none in whose vicinity natural features have suffered more change from natural causes. In the time of Augustus I suppose that the town of Ravenna occupied the extreme verge of terra firma, and between it and the sea intervened two or three miles of marsh. Over this marsh Augustus built a causeway connecting the city with his newly constructed harbour. Along the causeway in process of time grew a suburb called Cæsarea, in honour of him who laid its first foundation; and by the side of the quays grew another suburb, called Portus Classis, the harbour of the navy. Subsequently, we may conjecture, the name was divided, and to the northern portion of the seaboard town was appropriated the name Portus, to the southern portion, Classis. Two churches, three miles apart, standing in the marshy waste, are the sole memorials of a place which, in size and population, may have rivalled any English seaport except Liver

pool. They bear the names of Santa Maria in Portofuori, and Sant' Apollinare in Classe, and date res spectively from the eleventh and sixth centuries. Of all the im perial works, the quays of marble and granite, not a trace remains. The rivers Ronco and Montone, drawing down Eonian hills, have buried them out of the sight and beyond the conjecture of men in alluvial deposit, and thrust out the sea so that the traveller who sets out in the direction of Classis to find the coast would have ten weary miles to go over marsh, and pine forest, and sand dunes before reach. ing the marge of the Adriatic. One of these rivers, the Montone, passed to the north of the town and contri buted much to its military strength, till the last century, when, in order to check the ravages of its inundations, it was diverted from its course and made to join the Ronco on the south side. This fact ought to be remembered by one who reads on the spot the account of Gaston de Foix's siege and battle. These rivers, among others, are alluded to, I take it, in the famous lines put into the mouth of Francesca (Inferno, Canto v.):

Siede la terra dove nata fui,
Sulla marina dove il Po discende,
Per aver pace coi seguaci sui.

The commentators usually interpret the last words as tributaries of the Po;' but surely the Po's tributaries have nothing to do with Ravenna, and i seguaci mean the i. e., flow in the same direction to streams which follow the Po's lead, the same sea. Otherwise, the words coi seguaci sui, would be an otiose addition to fill up the line, a weakness utterly alien to Dante, whose every word is weighed and measured and fitted to its place. In any case, misinterpreted passage, was not jusLord Byron, in his imitation of this tified in apostrophising the Po as

River that rollest by those ancient walls, the walls of Ravenna, to wit, when that river is at least thirty miles

away.

From this digression-if indeed it be a digression when on Italian ground to speak of Dante - I return to Sant' Apollinare in Classe. One day, as soon as the