The Mediterranean: Its Storied Cities and Venerable Ruins Part 7

Sh.e.l.ley's last months at Lerici--Story of his death--Carrara and its marble quarries--Pisa--Its grand group of ecclesiastical buildings--The cloisters of the Campo Santo--Napoleon's life on Elba--Origin of the Etruscans--The ruins of Tarquinii--Civita Vecchia, the old port of Rome--Ostia.

The Bay of Spezzia is defined sharply enough on its western side by the long, hilly peninsula which parts it from the Mediterranean, but as this makes only a small angle with the general trend of the coast-line, its termination is less strongly marked on the opposite side. Of its beauties we have spoken in an earlier article, but there is a little town at the southern extremity which, in connection with the coast below, has a melancholy interest to every lover of English literature. Here, at Lerici, Sh.e.l.ley spent what proved to be the last months of his life. The town itself, once strongly fortified by its Pisan owners against their foes of Genoa on the one side and Lucca on the other, is a picturesque spot. The old castle crowns a headland, guarding the little harbor and overlooking the small but busy town. At a short distance to the southeast is the Casa Magni, once a Jesuit seminary, which was occupied by Sh.e.l.ley. Looking across the beautiful gulf to the hills on its opposite sh.o.r.e and the island of Porto Venere, but a few miles from the grand group of the Carrara mountains, in the middle of the luxuriant scenery of the Eastern Riviera, the house, though in itself not very attractive, was a fit home for a lover of nature. But Sh.e.l.ley's residence within its walls was too soon cut short. There are strange tales (like those told with bated breath by old nurses by the fireside) that as the closing hour approached the spirits of the unseen world took bodily form and became visible to the poet's eye; tales of a dark-robed figure standing by his bedside beckoning him to follow; of a laughing child rising from the sea as he walked by moonlight on the terrace, clapping its hands in glee; and of other warnings that the veil which parted him from the spirit world was vanis.h.i.+ng away. Sh.e.l.ley delighted in the sea. On the 1st of July he left Lerici for Leghorn in a small sailing vessel. On the 8th he set out to return, accompanied only by his friend, Mr. Williams, and an English lad.

The afternoon was hot and sultry, and as the sun became low a fearful squall burst upon the neighboring sea. What happened no one exactly knows, but they never came back to the sh.o.r.e. Day followed day, and the great sea kept its secret; but at last, on the 22d, the corpse of Sh.e.l.ley was washed up near Viareggio and that of Williams near Bocca Lerici, three miles away. It was not till three weeks afterwards that the body of the sailor lad came ash.o.r.e. Probably the felucca had either capsized or had been swamped at the first break of the storm; but when it was found, some three months afterwards, men said that it looked as if it had been run down, and even more ugly rumors got abroad that this was no accident, but the work of some Italians, done in the hope of plunder, as it was expected that the party had in charge a considerable sum of money. The bodies were at first buried in the sand with quicklime; but at that time the Tuscan law required "any object then cast ash.o.r.e to be burned, as a precaution against plague," so, by the help of friends, the body of Sh.e.l.ley was committed to the flames "with fuel and frankincense, wine, salt, and oil, the accompaniments of a Greek cremation," in the presence of Byron Leigh Hunt, and Trelawny. The corpse of Williams had been consumed in like fas.h.i.+on on the previous day. "It was a glorious day and a splendid prospect; the cruel and calm sea before, the Appennines behind. A curlew wheeled close to the pyre, screaming, and would not be driven away; the flames arose golden and towering." The inurned ashes were entombed, as everyone knows, in the Protestant burial ground at Rome by the side of Keats' grave, near the pyramid of Cestius. Much as there was to regret in Sh.e.l.ley's life, there was more in his death, for such genius as his is rare, and if the work of springtide was so glorious, what might have been the summer fruitage?

As the Gulf of Spezzia is left behind, the Magra broadens out into an estuary as it enters the sea, the river which formed in olden days the boundary between Liguria and Etruria. Five miles from the coast, and less than half the distance from the river, is Sarzana, the chief city of the province, once fortified, and still containing a cathedral of some interest. It once gave birth to a Pope, Nicholas V., the founder of the Vatican Library, and in the neighborhood the family of the Buonapartes had their origin, a branch of it having emigrated to Corsica. Sarzana bore formerly the name of Luna Nova, as it had replaced another Luna which stood near to the mouth of the river. This was in ruins even in the days of Lucan, and now the traveller from Saranza to Pisa sees only "a strip of low, gra.s.sy land intervening between him and the sea. Here stood the ancient city. There is little enough to see. Beyond a few crumbling tombs and a fragment or two of Roman ruins, nothing remains of Luna. The fairy scene described by Rutilus, so appropriate to the spot which bore the name of the virgin-queen of heaven, the 'fair white walls' shaming with their brightness the untrodden snow, the smooth, many-tinted rocks overrun with laughing lilies, if not the pure creation of the poet, have now vanished from the sight. Vestiges of an amphitheater, of a semicircular building which may be a theater, of a circus, a _piscina_, and fragments of columns, pedestals for statues, blocks of pavement and inscriptions, are all that Luna has now to show."

But all the while the grand group of the Carrara hills is in view, towering above a lowland region which rolls down towards the coast. A branch line now leads from Avenza, a small seaport town from which the marble is s.h.i.+pped, to the town of Carrara, through scenery of singular beauty. The shelving banks and winding slopes of the foreground hills are clothed with olives and oaks and other trees; here and there groups of houses, white and grey and pink, cl.u.s.ter around a campanile tower on some coign of vantage, while at the back rises the great mountain wall of the Apuan Alps, with its gleaming crags, scarred, it must be admitted, rather rudely and crudely by its marble quarries, though the long slopes of screes beneath these gashes in the more distant views almost resemble the Alpine snows. The situation of the town is delightful, for it stands at the entrance of a rapidly narrowing valley, in a sufficiently elevated position to command a view of this exquisitely rich lowland as it shelves and rolls down to the gleaming sea. Nor is the place itself devoid of interest. One of its churches at least, S. Andrea, is a really handsome specimen of the architecture of this part of Italy in the thirteenth century, but the quarries dominate, and their products are everywhere.

Here are the studios of sculptors and the ateliers of workmen. The fair white marble here, like silver in the days of Solomon, is of little account; it paves the street, builds the houses, serves even for the basest uses, and is to be seen strewn or piled up everywhere to await dispersal by the trains to more distant regions. Beyond the streets of Carrara, in the direction of the mountains, carriage roads no longer exist. Lanes wind up the hills here and there in rather bewildering intricacy, among vines and olive groves, to hamlets and quarries; one, indeed, of rather larger size and more fixity of direction, keeps for a time near the river, if indeed the stream which flows by Carrara be worthy of that name, except when the storms are breaking or the snows are melting upon the mountains. But all these lanes alike terminate in a quarry, are riven with deep ruts, ploughed up like a field by the wheels of the heavy wagons that bring down the great blocks of marble. One meets these grinding and groaning on their way, drawn by yokes of dove-colored oxen (longer than that with which Elisha was ploughing when the older prophet cast his mantle upon his shoulders), big, meek-looking beasts, mild-eyed and melancholy as the lotus-eaters. To meet them is not always an unmixed pleasure, for the lanes are narrow, and there is often no room to spare; how the traffic is regulated in some parts is a problem which I have not yet solved.

Carrara would come near to being an earthly paradise were it not for the mosquitos, which are said to be such that they would have made even the Garden of Eden untenable, especially to its first inhabitants. Of them, however, I cannot speak, for I have never slept in the town, or even visited it at the season when this curse of the earth is at its worst; but I have no hesitation in a.s.serting that the mountains of Carrara are not less beautiful in outline than those of any part of the main chain of the Alps of like elevation, while they are unequalled in color and variety of verdure.

To Avenza succeeds Ma.s.sa, a considerable town, beautifully situated among olive-clad heights, which are spotted with villas and densely covered with foliage. Like Carrara, it is close to the mountains, and disputes with Carrara for the reputation of its quarries. This town was once the capital of a duchy, Ma.s.sa-Carrara, and the t.i.tle was borne by a sister of Napoleon I. Her large palace still remains; her memory should endure, though not precisely in honor, for according to Mr. Hare, she pulled down the old cathedral to improve the view from her windows. But if Ma.s.sa is beautiful, so is Pietra Santa, a much smaller town enclosed by old walls and singularly picturesque in outline. It has a fine old church, with a picturesque campanile, which, though slightly more modern than the church itself, has seen more than four centuries. The piazza, with the Town Hall, this church and another one, is a very characteristic feature. In the baptistry of one of the churches are some bronzes by Donatello. About half a dozen miles away, reached by a road which pa.s.ses through beautiful scenery, are the marble quarries of Seravezza, which were first opened by Michael Angelo, and are still in full work. There is only one drawback to travelling by railway in this region; the train goes too fast. Let it be as slow as it will, and it can be very slow, we can never succeed in coming to a decision as to which is the most picturesquely situated place or the most lovely view. Comparisons notoriously are odious, but delightful, as undoubtedly is the Riviera di Ponenta to me, the Riviera di Levante seems even more lovely.

After Pietra Santa, however, the scenery becomes less attractive, the Apuan Alps begin to be left behind, and a wider strip of plain parts the Apennines from the sea. This, which is traversed by the railway, is in itself flat, stale, though perhaps not unprofitable to the husbandman.

Viareggio, mentioned on a previous page, nestles among its woods of oaks and pines, a place of some little note as a health resort; and then the railway after emerging from the forest strikes away from the sea, and crosses the marshy plains of the Serchio, towards the banks of the Arno.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

It now approaches the grand group of ecclesiastical buildings which rise above the walls of Pisa. As this town lies well inland, being six miles from the sea, we must content ourselves with a brief mention. But a long description is needless, for who does not know of its cathedral and its Campo Santo, of its baptistry and its leaning tower? There is no more marvelous or complete group of ecclesiastical buildings in Europe, all built of the white marble of Carrara, now changed by age into a delicate cream color, but still almost dazzling in the glory of the mid-day sun, yet never so beautiful as when walls, arches, and pinnacles are aglow at its rising, or flushed at its setting. In the cloisters of the Campo Santo you may see monuments which range over nearly five centuries, and contrast ancient and modern art; the frescoes on their walls, though often ill preserved, and not seldom of little merit, possess no small interest as ill.u.s.trating medieval notions of a gospel of love and peace. Beneath their roof at the present time are sheltered a few relics of Roman and Etruscan days which will repay examination. The very soil also of this G.o.d's acre is not without an interest, for when the Holy Land was lost to the Christians, fifty-and-three s.h.i.+ploads of earth were brought hither from Jerusalem that the dead of Pisa might rest in ground which had been sanctified by the visible presence of their Redeemer. The cathedral is a grand example of the severe but stately style which was in favor about the end of the eleventh century, for it was consecrated in the year 1118. It commemorates a great naval victory won by the Pisans, three years before the battle of Hastings, and the columns which support the arches of the interior were at once the spoils of cla.s.sic buildings and the memorials of Pisan victories. The famous leaning tower, though later in date, harmonizes well in general style with the cathedral. Its position, no doubt, attracts most attention, for to the eye it seems remarkably insecure, but one cannot help wis.h.i.+ng that the settlement had never occurred, for the slope is sufficient to interfere seriously with the harmony of the group. The baptistry also harmonizes with the cathedral, though it was not begun till some forty years after the latter was completed, and not only was more than a century in building, but also received some ornamental additions in the fourteenth century. But though this cathedral group is the glory and the crown of Pisa, the best monument of its proudest days, there are other buildings of interest in the town itself; and the broad quays which flank the Arno on each side, the Lungarno by name, which form a continuous pa.s.sage from one end of the town to the other, together with the four bridges which link its older and newer part, are well worthy of more than a pa.s.sing notice.

The land bordering the Arno between Pisa and its junction with the Mediterranean has no charm for the traveller, however it may commend itself to the farmer. A few miles south of the river's mouth is Leghorn, and on the eleven miles' journey by rail from it to Pisa the traveller sees as much, and perhaps more, than he could wish of the delta of the Arno. It is a vast alluvial plain, always low-lying, in places marshy; sometimes meadow land, sometimes arable. Here and there are slight and inconspicuous lines of dunes, very probably the records of old sea margins as the river slowly encroached upon the Mediterranean, which are covered sometimes with a grove of pines.

Leghorn is not an old town, and has little attraction for the antiquarian or the artist. In fact, I think it, for its size, the most uninteresting town, whether on the sea or inland, that I have entered in Italy. Brindisi is a dreary hole, but it has one or two objects of interest. Bari is not very attractive, but it has two churches, the architecture of which will repay long study; but Leghorn is almost a miracle of commonplace architecture and of dullness. Of course there is a harbor, of course there are s.h.i.+ps, of course there is the sea, and all these possess a certain charm; but really this is about as small as it can be under the circ.u.mstances. The town was a creation of the Medici, "the masterpiece of that dynasty." In the middle of the sixteenth century it was an insignificant place, with between seven and eight hundred inhabitants.

But it increased rapidly when the princes of that family took the town in hand and made it a cave of Adullam, whither the discontented or oppressed from other lands might resort: Jews and Moors from Spain and Portugal, escaping from persecution; Roman Catholics from England, oppressed by the retaliatory laws of Elizabeth; merchants from Ma.r.s.eilles, seeking refuge from civil war. Thus fostered, it was soon thronged by men of talent and energy; it rapidly grew into an important center of commerce, and now the town with its suburbs contains nearly a hundred thousand souls.

Leghorn is intersected by ca.n.a.ls, sufficiently so to have been sometimes called a "Little Venice," and has been fortified, but as the defenses belong to the system of Vauban, they add little to either the interest or the picturesqueness of the place. Parts of the walls and the citadel remain, the latter being enclosed by a broad water-ditch. The princ.i.p.al street has some good shops, and there are two fairly large piazzas; in one, bearing the name of Carlo Alberto, are statues of heroic size to the last Grand Duke and to his predecessor. The inscription on the latter is highly flattering; but that on the former states that the citizens had come to the conclusion that the continuance of the Austro-Lorenese dynasty was incompatible with the good order and happiness of Tuscany, and had accordingly voted union with Italy. The other piazza now bears Victor Emmanuel's name; in it are a building which formerly was a royal palace, the town hall, and the cathedral; the last a fair-sized church, but a rather plain specimen of the Renaissance style, with some handsome columns of real marble and a large amount of imitation, painted to match. There are also some remains of the old fortifications, though they are not so very old, by the side of the inner or original harbor. As this in course of time proved too shallow for vessels of modern bulk, the Porto Nuovo, or outer harbor, was begun nearly fifty years since, and is protected from the waves by a semicircular mole. Among the other lions of the place, and they are all very small, is a statue of Duke Ferdinand I., one of the founders of Leghorn, with four Turkish slaves about the pedestal. The commerce of Leghorn chiefly consists of grain, cotton, wool, and silk, and is carried on mainly with the eastern ports of the Mediterranean. There is also an important s.h.i.+pbuilding establishment. It has, however, one link of interest with English literature, for in the Protestant cemetery was buried Tobias Smollet. There is a pleasant public walk by the sea margin outside the town, from where distant views of Elba and other islands are obtained.

The hilly ground south of the broad valley of the Arno is of little interest, and for a considerable distance a broad strip of land, a level plain of cornfields and meadow, intervenes between the sea and the foot of the hills. Here and there long lines of pine woods seem almost to border the former; the rounded spurs of the latter are thickly wooded, but are capped here and there by grey villages, seemingly surrounded by old walls, and are backed by the bolder outlines of the more distant Apennines. For many a long mile this kind of scenery will continue, this flat, marshy, d.y.k.e-intersected plain, almost without a dwelling upon it, though village after village is seen perched like epaulettes on the low shoulders of the hills. It is easy to understand why they are placed in this apparently inconvenient position, for we are at the beginning of the Tuscan Maremma, a district scourged by malaria during the summer months, and none too healthy, if one may judge by the looks of the peasants, during any time of the year. But one cannot fail to observe that towards the northern extremity houses have become fairly common on this plain, and many of them are new, so that the efforts which have been made to improve the district by draining seem to have met with success. For some time the seaward views are very fine; comparatively near to the coast a hilly island rises steeply from the water and is crowned with a low round tower. Behind this lies Elba, a long, bold, hilly ridge, and far away, on a clear day, the great mountain ma.s.s of Corsica looms blue in the distance.

Elba has its interests for the geologist, its beauties for the lover of scenery. It has quarries of granite and serpentine, but its fame rests on its iron mines, which have been noted from very early times and from which fine groups of crystals of hemat.i.te are still obtained. So famed was it in the days of the Roman Empire as to call forth from Virgil the well-known line, "Insula inexhaustis chalyb.u.m generosa metallis." When these, its masters, had long pa.s.sed away, it belonged in turn to Pisa, to Genoa, to Lucca, and, after others, to the Grand Duke Cosimo of Florence. Then it became Neapolitan, and at last French. As everyone knows, it was a.s.signed to Napoleon after his abdication, and from May, 1814, to February, 1815, he enjoyed the t.i.tle of King of Elba. Then, while discontent was deepening in France, and amba.s.sadors were disputing round the Congress-table at Vienna, he suddenly gave the slip to the vessels which were watching the coast and landed in France to march in triumph to Paris, to be defeated at Waterloo, and to die at St. Helena.

The island is for the most part hilly, indeed almost mountainous, for it rises at one place nearly three thousand feet above the sea. The valleys and lower slopes are rich and fertile, producing good fruit and fair wine, and the views are often of great beauty. The fisheries are of some importance, especially that of the tunny. Porto Ferrajo, the chief town, is a picturesquely situated place, on the northern side, which still retains the forts built by Cosimo I. to defend his newly obtained territory, and the mansion, a very modest palace, inhabited by Napoleon.

"It must be confessed my isle is very little," was Napoleon's remark when for the first time he looked around over his kingdom from a mountain summit above Porto Ferrajo. Little it is in reality, for the island is not much more than fifteen miles long, and at the widest part ten miles across; and truly little it must have seemed to the man who had dreamed of Europe for his empire, and had half realized his vision. Nevertheless, as one of his historians remarks, "If an empire could be supposed to exist within such a brief s.p.a.ce, Elba possesses so much both of beauty and variety as might const.i.tute the scene of a summer night's dream of sovereignty."

At first he professed to be "perfectly resigned to his fate, often spoke of himself as a man politically dead, and claimed credit for what he said on public affairs, as having no remaining interest in them." A comment on himself in connection with Elba is amusing. He had been exploring his new domain in the company of Sir Niel Campbell, and had visited, as a matter of course, the iron mines. On being informed that they were valuable, and brought in a revenue of about twenty thousand pounds per annum, "These then," he said, "are mine." But being reminded that he had conferred that revenue on the Legion of Honor, he exclaimed, "Where was my head when I made such a grant? But I have made many foolish decrees of that sort!"

He set to work at once to explore every corner of the island, and then to design a number of improvements and alterations on a scale which, had they been carried into execution with the means which he possessed, would have perhaps taken his lifetime to execute. The instinct of the conqueror was by no means dead within him; for "one of his first, and perhaps most characteristic, proposals was to aggrandize and extend his Lilliputian dominions by the occupation of an uninhabited island called Pianosa, which had been left desolate on account of the frequent descents of the corsairs. He sent thirty of his guards, with ten of the independent company belonging to the island, upon this expedition (what a contrast to those which he had formerly directed!), sketched out a plan of fortification, and remarked with complacency, 'Europe will say that I have already made a conquest.'"

He was after a short time joined on the island by his mother and his sister Pauline, and not a few of those who had once fought under his flag drifted gradually to Elba and took service in his guards. A plot was organized in France, and when all was ready Napoleon availed himself of the temporary absence of Sir Neil Campbell and of an English cruiser and set sail from Elba.

At four in the afternoon of Sunday, the 26th of February, "a signal gun was fired, the drums beat to arms, the officers tumbled what they could of their effects into flour-sacks, the men arranged their knapsacks, the embarkation began, and at eight in the evening they were under weigh." He had more than one narrow escape on his voyage; for he was hailed by a French frigate. His soldiers, however, had concealed themselves, and his captain was acquainted with the commander of the frigate, so no suspicions were excited. Sir Niel Campbell also, as soon as he found out what had happened, gave chase in a sloop of war, but only arrived in time to obtain a distant view of Napoleon's flotilla as its pa.s.sengers landed.

Pianosa, the island mentioned above, lies to the north of Elba, and gets its name from its almost level surface; for the highest point is said to be only eighty feet above the sea. Considering its apparent insignificance, it figures more than could be expected in history. The ill-fated son of Marcus Agrippa was banished here by Augustus, at the instigation of Livia, and after a time was more effectually put out of the way, in order to secure the succession of her son Tiberius. We read also that it was afterwards the property of Marcus Piso, who used it as a preserve for peac.o.c.ks, which were here as wild as pheasants with us. Some remnants of Roman baths still keep up the memory of its former masters.

Long afterwards it became a bone of contention between Pisa and Genoa, and the latter State, on permitting the former to resume possession of these islands of the Tuscan Archipelago, stipulated that Pianosa should be left forever uncultivated and deserted. To secure the execution of this engagement the Genoese stopped up all the wells with huge blocks of rock.

Capraja, a lovely island to the northwest of Elba, is rather nearer to Corsica than to Italy. Though less than four miles long, and not half this breadth, it rivals either in hilliness, for its ridges rise in two places more than fourteen hundred feet above the sea. Saracen, Genoese, Pisan, and Corsican have caused it in bygone times to lead a rather troubled existence, and even so late as 1796 Nelson knocked to pieces the fort which defended its harbor, and occupied the island.

"The 'stagno,' or lagoon, the sea-marsh of Strabo, is a vast expanse of stagnant salt water, so shallow that it may be forded in parts, yet never dried up by the hottest summer; the curse of the country around for the foul and pestilent vapour and the swarms of mosquitoes and other insects it generates at that season, yet compensating the inhabitants with an abundance of fish. The fishery is generally carried on at night, and in the way often practiced in Italy and Sicily, by harpooning the fish, which are attracted by a light in the prow of the boat. It is a curious sight on calm nights to see hundreds of these little skiffs or canoes wandering about with their lights, and making an ever-moving illumination on the surface of the lake."[2]

Elba seems to maintain some relation with the mainland by means of the hilly promontory which supports the houses of Piombino, a small town, chiefly interesting as being at no great distance from Populonia, an old Etruscan city of which some considerable ruins still remain. Here, when the clans gathered to bring back the Tarquins to Rome, stood

"Sea-girt Populonia, Whose sentinels descry Sardinia's snowy mountain tops Fringing the southern sky."

But long after Lars Porsenna of Clusium had retreated baffled from the broken bridge Populonia continued to be a place of some importance, for it has a castle erected in the Middle Ages. But now it is only a poor village; it retains, however, fragments of building recalling its Roman masters, and its walls of polygonal masonry carry us back to the era of the Etruscans.

It must not be forgotten that almost the whole of the coast line described in this chapter, from the river Magra to Civita Vecchia, belonged to that mysterious and, not so long since, almost unknown people, the Etruscans.

Indeed, at one time their sway extended for a considerable distance north and south of these limits. Even now there is much dispute as to their origin, but they were a powerful and civilized race before Rome was so much as founded. They strove with it for supremacy in Italy, and were not finally subdued by that nation until the third century before our era.

"Etruria was of old densely populated, not only in those parts which are still inhabited, but also, as is proved by remains of cities and cemeteries, in tracts now desolated by malaria and relapsed into the desert; and what is now the fen or the jungle, the haunt of the wild boar, the buffalo, the fox, and the noxious reptile, where man often dreads to stay his steps, and hurries away from a plague-stricken land, of old yielded rich harvests of corn, wine and oil, and contained numerous cities mighty and opulent, into whose laps commerce poured the treasures of the East and the more precious produce of h.e.l.lenic genius. Most of these ancient sites are now without a habitant, furrowed yearly by the plough, or forsaken as unprofitable wilderness; and such as are still occupied are, with few exceptions, mere phantoms of their pristine greatness, mere villages in the place of populous cities. On every hand are traces of bygone civilization, inferior in quality, no doubt, to that which at present exists but much wider in extent and exerting far greater influence on the neighboring nations and on the destinies of the world."[3]

South of this headland the Maremma proper begins. Follonica, the only place for some distance which can be called a town, is blackened with smoke to an extent unusual in Italy, for here much of the iron ore from Elba is smelted. But the views in the neighborhood, notwithstanding the flatness of the marshy or scrub-covered plain, are not without a charm.

The inland hills are often attractive; to the north lie the headland of Piombino and sea-girt Elba, to the south the promontory of Castiglione, which ends in a lower line of bluff capped by a tower, and the irregular little island of Formica. At Castiglione della Pescaia is a little harbor, once fortified, which exports wool and charcoal, the products of the neighboring hills. The promontory of Castiglione must once have been an island, for it is parted from the inland range by the level plain of the Maremma. Presently Grosseto, the picturesque capital of the Maremma, appears, perched on steeply rising ground above the enclosing plain, its sky-line relieved by a couple of low towers and a dome; it has been protected with defenses, which date probably from late in the seventeenth century. Then, after the Omborne has been crossed, one of the rivers, which issue from the Apennines, the promontory of Talamone comes down to the sea, protecting the village of the same name. It is a picturesque little place, overlooked by an old castle, and the anchorage is sheltered by the island of S. Giglio, quiet enough now, but the guide-book tells us that here, two hundred and twenty-five years before the Christian era, the Roman troops disembarked and scattered an invading Gaulish army. But to the south lies another promontory on a larger scale than Tlamone; this is the Monte Argentario, the steep slopes of which are a ma.s.s of forests. The views on this part of the coast are exceptionally attractive. Indeed, it would be difficult to find anything more striking than the situation of Orbitello. The town lies at the foot of the mountain, for Argentario, since it rises full two thousand feet above the sea, and is bold in outline, deserves the name. It is almost separated from the mainland by a great salt-water lagoon, which is bounded on each side by two low and narrow strips of land. The best view is from the south, where we look across a curve of the sea to the town and to Monte Argentario with its double summit, which, as the border of the lagoon is so low, seems to be completely insulated.

Orbitello is clearly proved to have been an Etruscan town; perhaps, according to Mr. Dennis, founded by the Pelasgi, "for the foundations of the sea-wall which surrounds it on three sides are of vast polygonal blocks, just such as are seen in many ancient sites of central Italy (Norba, Segni, Palaestrina, to wit), and such as compose the walls of the neighboring Cosa." Tombs of Etruscan construction have also been found in the immediate neighborhood of the city, on the isthmus of sand which connects it with the mainland. Others also have been found within the circuit of the walls. The tombs have been unusually productive; in part, no doubt, because they appear to have escaped earlier plunderers. Vases, numerous articles in bronze, and gold ornaments of great beauty have been found. Of the town itself, which from the distance has a very picturesque aspect, Mr. Dennis says: "It is a place of some size, having nearly six thousand inhabitants, and among Maremma towns is second only to Grosseto.

It is a proof how much population tends to salubrity in the Maremma that Orbitello, though in the midst of a stagnant lagoon ten square miles in extent, is comparatively healthy, and has more than doubled its population in thirty years, while Telamona and other small places along the coast are almost deserted in summer, and the few people that remain become bloated like wine-skins or yellow as lizards." But the inland district is full of ruins and remnants of towns which in many cases were strongholds long before Romulus traced out the lines of the walls of Rome with his plough, if indeed that ever happened. Ansedonia, the ancient Cosa, is a very few miles away, Rusellae, Saturnia, Sovana at a considerably greater distance; farther to the south rises another of these forest-clad ridges which, whether insulated by sea or by fen, are so characteristic of this portion of the Italian coast. Here the old walls of Corno, another Etruscan town, may be seen to rise above the olive-trees and the holm-oaks.

Beyond this the lowland becomes more undulating, and the foreground scenery a little less monotonous. Corneto now appears, crowning a gently shelving plateau at the end of a spur from the inland hills, which is guarded at last by a line of cliffs. Enclosed by a ring of old walls, like Cortona, it "lifts to heaven a diadem of towers." In site and in aspect it is a typical example of one of the old cities of Etruria. Three hundred feet and more above the plain which parts it from the sea, with the gleaming water full in view on one side and the forest-clad ranges on the other, the outlook is a charming one, and the attractions within its walls are by no means slight. There are several old churches, and numerous Etruscan and Roman antiquities are preserved in the munic.i.p.al museum. The town itself, however, is not of Etruscan origin, its foundation dates only from the Middle Ages; but on an opposite and yet more insulated hill the ruins of Tarquinii, one of the great cities of the Etrurian League, can still be traced; hardly less important than Veii, one of the most active cities in the endeavor to restore the dynasty of the Tarquins, it continued to flourish after it had submitted to Rome, but it declined in the dark days which followed the fall of the Empire, and never held up its head after it had been sacked by the Saracens, till at last it was deserted for Corneto, and met the usual fate of becoming a quarry for the new town. Only the remnants of buildings and of its defenses are now visible; but the great necropolis which lies to the southeast of the Corneto, and on the same spur with it, has yielded numerous antiquities. A romantic tale of its discovery, so late as 1823, is related in the guide-books. A native of Corneto in digging accidentally broke into a tomb. Through the hole he beheld the figure of a warrior extended at length, accoutred in full armour. For a few minutes he gazed astonished, then the form of the dead man vanished almost like a ghost, for it crumbled into dust under the influence of the fresh air. Numerous subterranean chambers have since been opened; the contents, vases, bronzes, gems and ornaments, have been removed to museums or scattered among the cabinets of collectors, but the mural paintings still remain.

They are the works of various periods from the sixth to the second or third century before the Christian era, and are indicative of the influence exercised by Greek art on the earlier inhabitants of Italy.

As the headland, crowned by the walls of Corneto, recedes into the distance a little river is crossed, which, unimportant as it seems, has a place in ecclesiastical legend, for we are informed that at the Torre Bertaldo, near its mouth, an angel dispelled St. Augustine's doubts on the subject of the Trinity. Then the road approaches the largest port on the coast since Leghorn was left. Civita Vecchia, as the name implies, is an old town, which, after the decline of Ostia, served for centuries as the port of Rome. It was founded by Trajan, and sometimes bore his name in olden time, but there is little or nothing within the walls to indicate so great an antiquity. It was harried, like so many other places near the coast, by the Saracens, and for some years was entirely deserted, but about the middle of the ninth century the inhabitants returned to it, and the town, which then acquired its present name, by degrees grew into importance as the temporal power of the Papacy increased. If there is little to induce the traveller to halt, there is not much more to tempt the artist. Civita Vecchia occupies a very low and faintly defined headland. Its houses are whitish in color, square in outline, and rather flat-topped. There are no conspicuous towers or domes. It was once enclosed by fortifications, built at various dates about the seventeenth century. These, however, have been removed on the land side, but still remain fairly perfect in the neighborhood of the harbor, the entrance to which is protected by a small island, from which rises a low ma.s.sive tower and a high circular pharos. There is neither animation nor commerce left in the place; what little there was disappeared when the railway was opened. It is living up to its name, and its old age cannot be called vigorous.

South of Civita Vecchia the coast region, though often monotonous enough, becomes for a time slightly more diversified. There is still some marshy ground, still some level plain, but the low and gently rolling hills which border the main ma.s.s of the Apennines extend at times down to the sea, and even diversify its coast-line, broken by a low headland. This now and again, as at Santa Marinella, is crowned by an old castle. All around much evergreen scrub is seen, here growing in tufts among tracts of coa.r.s.e herbage, there expanding into actual thickets of considerable extent, and the views sometimes become more varied, and even pretty. Santa Severa, a large castle built of grey stone, with its keep-like group of higher towers on its low crag overlooking the sea, reminds us of some old fortress on the Fifes.h.i.+re coast. Near this headland, so antiquarians say, was Pyrgos, once the port of the Etruscan town of Caere, which lies away among the hills at a distance of some half-dozen miles. Here and there also a lonely old tower may be noticed along this part of the coast. These recall to mind in their situation, though they are more picturesque in their aspect, the Martello Towers on the southern coast of England. Like them, they are a memorial of troublous times, when the invader was dreaded. They were erected to protect the Tuscan coast from the descents of the Moors, who for centuries were the dread of the Mediterranean.

Again and again these corsairs swooped down; now a small flotilla would attack some weakly defended town; now a single s.h.i.+p would land its boatload of pirates on some unguarded beach to plunder a neighboring village or a few scattered farms, and would retreat from the raid with a little spoil and a small band of captives, doomed to slavery, leaving behind smoking ruins and bleeding corpses. It is strange to think how long it was before perfect immunity was secured from these curses of the Mediterranean. England, whatever her enemies may say, has done a few good deeds in her time, and one of the best was when her fleet, under the command of Admiral Pellew, shattered the forts of Algiers and burnt every vessel of the pirate fleet.

The scenery for a time continues to improve. The oak woods become higher, the inland hills are more varied in outline and are forest-clad. Here peeps out a crag, there a village or a castle. At Palo a large, unattractive villa and a picturesque old castle overlook a fine line of sea-beach, where the less wealthy cla.s.ses in Rome come down for a breath of fresh air in the hot days of summer. It also marks the site of Alsium, where, in Roman times, one or two personages of note, of whom Pompey was the most important, had country residences. For a time there is no more level plain; the land everywhere shelves gently to the sea, covered with wood or with coa.r.s.e herbage. But before long there is another change, and the great plain of the Tiber opens out before our eyes, extending on one hand to the not distant sea, on the other to the hills of Rome. It is flat, dreary, and unattractive, at any rate in the winter season, as is the valley of the Nen below Peterborough, or of the Witham beyond the Lincolns.h.i.+re wolds. It is cut up by d.y.k.es, which are bordered by low banks. Here and there herds of mouse-colored oxen with long horns are feeding, and hay-ricks, round with low conical tops, are features more conspicuous than cottages. The Tiber winds on its serpentine course through this fenland plain, a muddy stream, which it was complimentary for the Romans to designate _flavus_, unless that word meant a color anything but attractive. One low tower in the distance marks the site of Porto, another that of Ostia and near the latter a long grove of pines is a welcome variation to the monotony of the landscape.

These two towns have had their day of greatness. The former, as its name implies, was once the port of Rome, and in the early days of Christianity was a place of note. It was founded by Trajan, in the neighborhood of a harbor constructed by Claudius; for this, like that of Ostia, which it was designed to replace, was already becoming choked up. But though emperors may propose, a river disposes, especially when its mud is in question. The port of Trajan has long since met with the same fate; it is now only a shallow basin two miles from the sea. Of late years considerable excavations have been made at Porto on the estate of Prince Tortonia, to whom the whole site belongs. The port constructed by Trajan was hexagonal in form; it was surrounded by warehouses and communicated with the sea by a ca.n.a.l. Between it and the outer or Claudian port a palace was built for the emperor, and the remains of the wall erected by Constantine to protect the harbor on the side of the land can still be seen. The only mediaeval antiquities which Porto contains are the old castle, which serves as the episcopal palace, and the flower of the church of Santa Rufina, which is at least as old as the tenth century.

Ostia, which is a place of much greater antiquity than Porto, is not so deserted, though its star declined as that of the other rose. Founded, as some say, by Ancus Martius, it was the port of Rome until the first century of the present era. Then the silting up of its communication with the sea caused the transference of the commerce to Porto, but "the fame of the temple of Castor and Pollux, the numerous villas of the Roman patricians abundantly scattered along the coast, and the crowds of people who frequented its sh.o.r.es for the benefit of sea bathing, sustained the prosperity of the city for some time after the destruction of its harbor."

But at last it went down hill, and then invaders came. Once it had contained eighty thousand inhabitants; in the days of the Medici it was a poor village, and the people eked out their miserable existences by making lime of the marbles of the ruined temples! So here the vandalism of peasants, even more than of patricians, has swept away many a choice relic of cla.s.sic days. Villas and temples alike have been destroyed; the sea is now at a distance; Ostia is but a small village, "one of the most picturesque though melancholy sites near Rome," but during the greater part of the present century careful excavations have been made, many valuable art treasures have been unearthed, and a considerable portion of the ancient city has been laid bare. Shops and dwellings, temples and baths, the theater and the forum, with many a remnant of the ancient town, can now be examined, and numerous antiquities of smaller size are preserved in the museum at the old castle. This, with its strong bastions, its lofty circular tower and huge machicolations, is a very striking object as it rises above the plain "ma.s.sive and gray against the sky-line." It has been drawn by artists not a few, from Raffaelle, who saw it when it had not very long been completed, down to the present time.

X

VENICE

Its early days--The Grand Ca.n.a.l and its palaces--Piazza of St. Mark--A Venetian funeral--The long line of islands--Venetian gla.s.s--Torcello, the ancient Altinum--Its two unique churches.

So long as Venice is unvisited a new sensation is among the possibilities of life. There is no town like it in Europe. Amsterdam has its ca.n.a.ls, but Venice is all ca.n.a.ls; Genoa has its palaces, but in Venice they are more numerous and more beautiful. Its situation is unique, on a group of islands in the calm lagoon. But the Venice of to-day is not the Venice of thirty years ago. Even then a little of the old romance had gone, for a long railway viaduct had linked it to the mainland. In earlier days it could be reached only by a boat, for a couple of miles of salt water lay between the city and the marshy border of the Paduan delta. Now Venice is still more changed, and for the worse. The people seem more poverty-stricken and pauperized. Its buildings generally, especially the ordinary houses, look more dingy and dilapidated. The paint seems more chipped, the plaster more peeled, the brickwork more rotten; everything seems to tell of decadence, commercial and moral, rather than of regeneration. In the case of the more important structures, indeed, the effects of time have often been more than repaired. Here a restoration, not seldom needless and ill-judged, has marred some venerable relic of olden days with crude patches of color, due to modern reproductions of the ancient and original work: the building has suffered, as it must be admitted not a few of our own most precious heirlooms have suffered, from the results of zeal untempered by discretion, and the destroyer has worked his will under the guise of the restorer.

The mosquito flourishes still in Venice as it did of yore. It would be too much to expect that the winged representative of the genus should thrive less in Italian freedom than under Austrian bondage, but something might have been done to extirpate the two-legged species. He is present in force in most towns south of the Alps, but he is nowhere so abundant or so exasperating as in Venice. If there is one place in one town in Europe where the visitor might fairly desire to possess his soul in peace and to gaze in thoughtful wonder, it is in the great piazza, in front of the facade, strange and beautiful as a dream, of the duomo of St. Mark. Halt there and try to feast on its marvels, to wors.h.i.+p in silence and in peace.

Vain illusion. There is no crowd of hurrying vehicles or throng of hurrying men to interfere of necessity with your visions (there are often more pigeons than people in the piazza), but up crawls a beggar, in garments vermin-haunted, whining for "charity"; down swoop would-be guides, volunteering useless suggestions in broken and barely intelligible English; from this side and from that throng vendors of rubbish, sh.e.l.l-ornaments, lace, paltry trinkets, and long ribands of photographic "souvenirs," appalling in their ugliness. He who can stand five minutes before San Marco and retain a catholic love of mankind must indeed be blessed with a temper of much more than average amiability.

The death of Rome was indirectly the birth of Venice. Here in the great days of the Empire there was not, so far as we know, even a village.

Invaders came, the Adriatic littoral was wrecked; its salvage is to be found among the islands of the lagoons. Aquileia went up in flames, the cities of the Paduan delta trembled before the hordes of savage Huns, but the islands of its coast held out a hope of safety. What in those days these camps of refuge must have been can be inferred from the islands which now border the mainland, low, marshy, overgrown by thickets, and fringed by reeds; they were unhealthy, but only accessible by intricate and difficult channels, and with little to tempt the spoiler. It was better to risk fever in the lagoons than to be murdered or driven off into slavery on the mainland. It was some time before Venice took the lead among these scattered settlements. It became the center of government in the year 810, but it was well-nigh two centuries before the Venetian State attained to any real eminence. Towards this, the first and perhaps the most important step was crus.h.i.+ng the Istrian and Dalmatian pirates. This enabled the Republic to become a great "Adriatic and Oriental Company,"