Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany Part 17

Mean time the weather is exceedingly bad, heavy, thick, and foggy as our own, for aught I see; but so it was at Milan too I well remember: one's eye would not reach many mornings across the Naviglio that ran directly under our windows. For fine bright Novembers we must go to Constantinople I fancy; certain it is that Rome will not supply them.

What however can make these Roman ladies fly from _odori_ so, that a drop of lavenderwater in one's handkerchief, or a carnation in one's stomacher, is to throw them all into, convulsions thus? Sure this is the only instance in which they forbear to _fabbricare fu l'antico_[Footnote: Build upon the old foundations.], in their own phrase: the dames, of whom Juvenal delights to tell, liked perfumes well enough if I remember; and Horace and Martial cry "_Carpe rosas_"

perpetually. Are the modern inhabitants still more refined than _they_ in their researches after pleasure? and are the present race of ladies capable of increasing, beyond that of their ancestors, the keenness of any corporeal sense? I should think not. Here are however amus.e.m.e.nts enough at Rome without trying for their conversations.

The Barberini palace, whither I carried a distracting tooth-ach, amused even that torture by the variety of its wonders. The sleeping faun, praised on from century to century, and never yet praised enough; so drunk, so fast asleep, so like a human body! Modesty reproving Vanity, by Leonardo da Vinci, so totally beyond my expectation or comprehension, great! wise! and fine! Raphael's Mistress, painted by himself, and copied by Julio Romano; this picture gives little satisfaction though except from curiosity gratified, the woman is too coa.r.s.e. Guido's Magdalen up stairs, the famous Magdalen, effacing every beauty, of softness mingled with distress. A St. John too, by dear Guercino, transcendent! but such was my anguish the very rooms turned round: I must come again when less ill I believe.

Nothing can equal the nastiness at one's entrance to this magazine of perfection: but the Roman n.o.bles are not disgusted with _all sorts_ of scents it is plain; these are not what we should call perfumes indeed, but certainly _odori_: of the same nature as those one is obliged to wade through before Trajan's Pillar can be climbed.

That the general appearance of a city which contains such treasures should be mean and disgusting, while one literally often walks upon granite, and tramples red porphyry under one's feet, is one of the greatest wonders to me, in a town of which the wonders seem innumerable: that it should be nasty beyond all telling, all endurance, with such perennial streams of the purest water liberally dispersed, and triumphantly scattered all over it, is another unfathomable wonder: that so many poor should be suffered to beg in the streets, when not a hand can be got to work in the fields, and that those poor should be permitted to exhibit sights of deformity and degradations of our species to me unseen till now, at the most solemn moments, and in churches where silver and gold, and richly-arrayed priests, scarcely suffice to call off attention from their squallid miseries, I do not try to comprehend.

That the palaces which taste and expence combine to decorate should look quietly on, while common pa.s.sengers use their n.o.ble vestibules, nay flairs, for every nauseous purpose; that princes whose incomes equal those of our Dukes of Bedford and Marlborough, should suffer their servants to dress other men's dinners for hire, or lend out their equipages for a day's pleasuring, and hang wet rags out of their palace windows to dry, as at the mean habitation of a pauper; while looking in at those very windows, nothing is to be seen but proofs of opulence, and scenes of splendour, I will not undertake to explain; sure I am, that whoever knows Rome, will not condemn this _ebauche_ of it.

When I spoke of their beggars, many not unlike Salvator Rosa's Job at the Santa Croce palace, I ought not to have omitted their eloquence, and various talents. We talked to a lame man one day at our own door, whose account of his illness would not have disgraced a medical professor; so judicious were his sentiments, so scientific was his discourse. The accent here too is perfectly pleasing, intelligible, and expressive; and I like their _cantilena_ vastly.

The excessive lenity of all Italian states makes it dangerous to live among them; a seeming paradox, yet certainly most true; and whatever is evil in this way at any other town, is worst at Rome; where those who deserve hanging, enjoy almost a moral certainty of never being hanged; so unwilling is everybody to detect the offender, and so numerous the churches to afford him protection if found out.

A man asked importunately in our antichamber this morning for the _padrone,_ naming no names, and our servants turned him out. He went however only five doors, further, found a sick old gentleman sitting in his lodging attended by a feeble servant, whom he bound, stuck a knife in the master, rifled the apartments, and walked coolly out again at noon-day: nor should we have ever heard of _such a trifle_, but that it happened just by so; for here are no newspapers to tell who is murdered, and n.o.body's pity is excited, unless for the malefactor when they hear he is caught.

But the Palazzo Farnese is a more pleasing speculation; the Hercules faces us entering; Guglielmo della Porta made his legs I hear, and when the real ones were found, _his were better:_ and Michael Angelo said, it was not worth risquing the statue to try at restoring the old ones.

There is another Hercules stands near, as a foil to Glycon's, I suppose; and the Italians tell you of our Mr. Sharp's acuteness in finding some fault till then undiscovered, a very slight one though, with some of the neck muscles: they tell it approvingly however, and make one admire their candour, even beyond their Flora, who carries that in her countenance which they possess in their hearts. Under a shed on the right hand you find the famous groupe called Toro Farnese. It has been touched and repaired, they tell you, till much of the spirit is lost; but I did not miss it. The Bull and the Brothers are greatness itself; but Dirce draws no compa.s.sion by her looks somehow, and the lady who comes to her relief, seems too cold a spectatress of the scene.

There were several broken statues in the place, and while my companions were examining the groupe after I had done, the wench's conversation who shewed it made my amus.e.m.e.nt: as we looked together at an Egyptian _Isis_, or, as many call her, _the Ephesian Diana_, with a hundred b.r.e.a.s.t.s, very hideous, and swathed about the legs like a mummy at Cairo, or a baby at Rome, I said to the girl, "_They wors.h.i.+pped these filthy things formerly before Jesus Christ came; but he taught us better_,"

added I, "_and we are wiser now: how foolish was not it to pray to this ugly stone_?"--"The people were _wickeder_ then, very likely;" replied my friend the wench, "but I do not see that it _was foolish at all."_

Who says the modern Romans are degenerated? I swear I think them so like their ancestors, that it is my delight to contemplate the resemblance.

A statue of a peasant carrying game at this very palace, is habited precisely in the modern dress, and shews how very little change has yet been made. The shoes of the low fellows too particularly attract my notice: they exactly resemble the ancient ones, and when Persius mentions his ploughman _peronatus arator_, one sees he would say so to-day.

The Dorian palace calls however, and people must give way to things where the miraculous powers of Benvenuto Garofani are concerned; where Lodovico Caracci exhibits a _testa del redentore_ beyond all praise, uniting every excellence, and expressing every perfection; where, in the deluge represented by Bonati, one sees the eagle drooping from a weight of rain, majestic in his distress, and looking up to the luminous part of the picture as if hoping to discover some ray of that sun he never shall see again. How characteristic! how tasteful is the expression! The famous Virgin and Child too, so often engraved and copied.

I will run away from this Doria; it is too full of beauty--it dazzles: and I will let them shew the pale green Gaspar Pouffins, so valuable, so curious, to whom they please, while Nature and Claude content my fancy and fill up every idea.

At the Colonna palace what have I remarked? That it possesses the gayest gallery belonging to any subject upon earth: one hundred and thirty-nine feet long, thirty-four broad, and seventy high: profusely ornamented with pillars, pictures, statues, to a degree of magnificence difficult to express. The Herodias here by Guido, is the perfection of dancing grace. No Frenchman enters the room that does not bear testimony to its peculiar excellence. But here's Guercino's sweet returning Prodigal, and here is a _Madonna disperata_ bursting as from a cavern to embrace the body of her dead son and saviour.--Such a sky too! But it is treating too theatrically a subject which impresses one more at last in the simple _Pieta_[AI] d'Annibale Caracci at Palazzo Doria.

[Footnote AI: The Christ in his mother's lap, after crucifixion, is always called in Italy a _Pieta_.]

One wonderfully-imagined picture by Andrea Sacchi, of Cain flying from the sight of his murdered brother, shall alone detain me from mentioning here at Rome what certainly would never have been thought on by Englishmen had it remained at Windsor; no other than our old King Charles's cabinet, sold to the Colonna family by Cromwell, and set about in the old-fas.h.i.+oned way with gems, cameos, &c. one of which has been stolen.

And now to the Borghese, which I am told is for a time to finish my fatigues, as after three days more we go to Naples. News perfectly agreeable to me, who never have been well here for two hours together.

All the great churches remain yet unvisited: they are to be taken at our return in spring; mean while I will go see Mons Sacer in spite of connoisseurs.h.i.+p, though the place it seems is nothing, and the prospect from it dull; but it produces thoughts, or what is next to thought,--recollection of books read, and events related in one's early youth, when names and stories make impression on a mind not yet hardened by age, or contracted by necessary duty, so as no longer to receive with equal relish the _tales of other times._ The lake too, with the floating islands, should be mentioned; the colour of which is even blue with venom, and left a bra.s.sy taste in my mouth for a whole day, after only observing how it boiled with rage on dropping in a stone, and incrusted a stick with its tartar in two minutes. One of our companions indeed leaped upon the little spots of ground which float in it, and deserved to feel some effect of his rashness; but it is sufficient to stand near, I think; one scarcely can escape contagion. The sudden and violent powers observable in this lake should at least check the computists from thinking they can gather the world's age from its petrefactions.

But we are called to the Vatican, where the Apollo, Laoc.o.o.n, Antinous, and Meleager, with others of less distinguished merit, suffer one to think on nothing but themselves, and of the artists who framed such models of perfection. Laoc.o.o.n's agonies torment one. I was forced to recollect the observation Dr. Moore says was first made by Mr. Locke, in order to harden my heart against him who appears to feel only for himself, when two such youths are expiring close beside him. But though painting can do much, and sculpture perhaps more, at least one learns to think so here at Rome, the comfort is, that poetry beats them both.

Virgil knew, and Shakespeare would have known, how to heighten even this distress, by adding paternal anguish:--here is distress enough however.

Let us once more acknowledge the modesty and candour of Italians, when we repeat what has been so often recorded, that Michael Angelo refused adding the arm that was wanting to this chef d'oeuvre; and when Bernini undertook the task, he begged it might remain always a different colour, that he might not be suspected of hoping that his work could ever lie confounded with that of the Greek artist.

Such is not the spirit of the French: they have been always adding to Don Quixote! a personage whose adventures were little likely to cross one's fancy in the Vatican; but perfection is perfection.

Here stands the Apollo though, in whom alone no fault has yet been found. They tell you, he has just killed the serpent Python. "Let us beg of him," says one of the company, "just to turn round and demolish those cursed snakes which are devouring the poor old man and his boys yonder."

This was like the speech of _Marchez donc_ to the fine bronze horse under the heavenly statue of Marcus Aurelius at the Capitol, and made me hope that story might be true. It is the fas.h.i.+on for every body to go see Apollo by torch light: he looks like _Phoebus_ then, the Sun's bright deity, and seems to say to his admirers, as that Divinity does to the presumptuous hero in Homer,

Oh son of Tydeus, cease! be wise, and see How vast the difference 'twixt the G.o.ds and thee.

Indeed every body finds the remark obvious, that this statue is of beauty and dignity beyond what human nature now can boast; and the Meleager just at hand, with the Antinous, confirm it; for all elegance and all expression, unpossessed by the Apollo, _they have_, while none can miss the inferiority of their general appearance to his.

The Musaeum Clementinum is altogether such though, that these singularly excellent productions of art are only proper and well-adapted ornaments of a gallery, so stately as, on the other hand, that n.o.ble edifice seems but the due repository of such inhabitants. Never were place and decorations so adapted: never perhaps was so refined a taste engaged on subjects so worthy its exertion. The statues are disposed with a propriety that charms one; the situation of the pillars so contrived, the colours of them so chosen to carry the eye forward--not fatigue it; the rooms so illuminated: Hagley park is not laid out with more judicious attention to diversify, and relieve with various objects a mind delighting in the contemplation of ornamented nature; than is the Pope's Musaeum calculated to enchain admiration, and fix it in those apartments where sublimity and beauty have established their residence; and those would be worse than Goths, who could think of moving even an old torso from the place where Pius s.e.xtus has commanded it to remain.

The other parts of this prodigious structure would take up one's life almost to see completely, to remember distinctly, and to describe accurately. When the reader recollects that St. Peter's, with all its appurtenances, palace, library, musaeum, every thing that we include in the word _Vatican_, is said by the Romans to occupy an equal quant.i.ty of s.p.a.ce, to that covered by the city of Turin: the a.s.sertion need not any longer be thought hyperbolical.

I will say no more about it till at our return from Naples we visit all the churches.

Vopiscus said, that the statues in his time at Rome out-numbered the people; and I trust the remark is now almost doubly true, as every day and hour digs up dead worthies, and the unwholesome weather must surely send many of the living ones to their ancestors: upon the whole, the men and women of Porphyry, &c. please me best, as they do not handle long knives to so good an effect as the others do, "_qui aime bien a s'egorger encore[Footnote: Who have still a taste to be cut-throats.],"_ says a French gentleman of them the other day. There is however an air of cheerfulness in the streets at a night among the poor, who fry fish, and eat roots, sausages, &c. as they walk about gaily enough, and though they quarrel too often, never get drunk at least.

The two houses belonging to the Borghese family shall conclude my first journey to Rome, and with that the first volume of my observations and reflexions.

Their town palace is a suite of rooms constructed like those at Wanstead exactly; and where you turn at the end to come back by another suite, you find two alabaster fountains of superior beauty, and two gla.s.s l.u.s.tres made in London, but never wiped since they left Fleet-street certainly. They do not however _want_ cleaning as the fountains do; which, by the extraordinary use made of them, give the whole palace an offensive smell.

Among the pictures here, the entombing our blessed Saviour by Rafaelle is most praised: It is supposed indeed wholly inestimable, and I believe is so, while Venus, binding Cupid's eyes, by t.i.tian, engraved by Strange, is possibly one of the pleasantest pictures in Rome. The Christ disputing with the Doctors is inimitable, one of the wonderful works of Leonardo da Vinci: but here is Domenichino's Diana among her nymphs, very laboured, and very learned. Why did it put me in mind of Hogarth's strolling actresses dressing in a barn?

Villa Borghese presents more to one's mind at once than it will bear, from the bas relief of Curtius over the door that faces you going in, to the last gate of the garden you drive out at;--large as the saloon is however, the figure of Curtius seems too near you; and the horse's hind quarters are heavy, and ill-suited to the forehand; but here are men and women enough, and odd things that are neither, at this house; so we may let the horse of Curtius alone.

Nothing can be gayer or more happily expressed in its way than the Centaur, which Dr. Moore, like Dr. Young, finds _not_ fabulous; while the brute runs away with the man, and Cupid keeps urging him forward.

The fawn nursing Bacchus when a baby, is another semi-human figure of just and high estimation; and that very famous composition for which Cavalier Bernini has executed a mattress infinitely softer to the eye than any real one I ever found in _his_ country, has here an apartment appropriated to itself.

From monsters the eye turns of its own accord towards Nero, and here is an incomparable one of about ten years old, in whose face I vainly looked for the seeds of parricide, and murderous tyranny; but saw only a st.u.r.dy boy, who might have been made an honest man perhaps, had not the rod been spared by his old tutor, whose lenity is repaid by death here in the next room. It is a relief to look upon the smiling Zingara; her lively character is exquisitely touched, her face the only one perhaps where Bernini could not go beyond the proper idea of arch waggery and roguish cunning, adorned with beauty that must have rendered its possessor, while living, irresistible. His David is scarcely young enough for a ruddy shepherd swain; he seems too muscular, and confident of his own strength; _this_ fellow could have worn Saul's armour well enough. aeneas carrying his father, I understand, is by the other Bernini; but the famous groupe of Apollo and Daphne is the work of our Chevalier himself.

There is a Miss Hillisberg, a dancer on the stage, who reminds every body of this graceful statue, when theatrical distress drives her to force expression: I mean the stage in Germany, not Rome, whence females are excluded. But the vases in this Borghese villa! the tables! the walls! the cameos stuck in the walls! the frames of the doors, all agate, porphyry, onyx, or verd antique! the enormous riches contained in every chamber, actually takes away my breath and leaves me stunned. Nor are the gardens unbecoming or inadequate to the house, where on the outside appear such bas-reliefs as would be treasured up by the sovereigns of France or England, and shewn as valuable rarities. The rape of Europa first; it is a beautiful antique. Up stairs you see the rooms constantly inhabited; in the princess's apartment, her chimney-piece is one elegant but solid amethyst: over the prince's bed, which changes with the seasons, hangs a Ganymede painted by t.i.tian, to which the connoisseurs tell you no rival has yet been found. The furniture is suitably magnificent in every part of the house, and our English friends a.s.sured me, that they met the lady of it last night, when one gentleman observing how pretty she was, another replied he could not see her face for the dazzling l.u.s.tre of her innumerable diamonds, that actually by their sparkling confounded his sight, and surrounded her countenance so that he could not find it.

Among all the curiosities however belonging to this wealthy and ill.u.s.trious family, the single one most prized is a well-known statue, called in Catalogues by the name of the Fighting Gladiator, but considered here at Rome as deserving of a higher appellation. They now dispute only what hero it can be, as every limb and feature is expressive of a loftier character than the ancients ever bestowed in sculpture upon those degraded mortals whom Pliny contemptuously calls _Hordiarij_, and says they were kept on barley bread, with ashes given in their drink to strengthen them. Indeed the statue of the expiring Gladiator at the Capitol, his rope about his neck, and his unpitied fate, marked strongly in his vulgar features, exhibits quite a separate cla.s.s in the variety of human beings; and though Faustina's favourite found in the same collection was probably the showiest fellow then among them, we see no marks of intelligent beauty or heroic courage in his form or face, where an undaunted steadiness and rustic strength make up the little merit of the figure.

This charming statue of the prince Borghese is on the other hand the first in Rome perhaps, for the distinguished excellencies of animated grace and active manliness: his head raised, the body's att.i.tude, not studied surely, but the apparent and seemingly sudden effect of patriotic daring. Such one's fancy forms young Isadas the Spartan; who, hearing the enemy's approach while at the baths, starts off unmindful of his own defenceless state, s.n.a.t.c.hes a spear and s.h.i.+eld from one he meets, flies at the foe, performs prodigies of valour, is looked on by both armies as a descended G.o.d, and returns home at last unhurt, to be fined by the Ephori for breach of discipline, at the same time that a statue was ordered to commemorate his exploits, and erected at the state's expence. Monsignor Ennio Visconti, who saw that the figure reminded me of this story, half persuaded himself for a moment that this was the very Isadas; and that Jason, for whom he had long thought it intended, was not young enough, and less likely to fight undefended by armour against bulls, of whose fury he had been well apprised. Mr.

Jenkins recollected an antique ring which confirmed our new hypothesis, and I remained flattered, whether they were convinced or no.

END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.