Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany Part 8

Now justice resumes her insignia, we find New light breaking in on each nebulous mind; While commission'd from Heaven, a parent, a friend Sees our swords at his nod into reaping-hooks bend, And souls s.n.a.t.c.h'd from death round the hero attend.

From these verses, written by a native of Brescia, one may see how matters stood there very, _very_ little while ago: but here at Venice the people are of a particularly sweet and gentle disposition, good-humoured with each other, and kind to strangers; little disposed to public affrays (which would indeed be punished and put a sudden end to in an instant), nor yet to any secret or hidden treachery. They watch the hour of a Regatta with impatience, to make some merit with the woman of their choice, and boast of their families who have won in the manly contest forty or fifty years ago, perhaps when honoured with the badge and livery of some n.o.ble house; for here almost every thing is hereditary, as in England almost every thing is elective; nor had I an idea how much state affairs influence the private life of individuals in a country, till I left trusting to books, and looked a little about me.

The low Venetian, however, knows that he works for the commonwealth, and is happy; for things go round, says he, _Il Turco magna St. Marco; St. Marco magna mi, mi magna ti, e ti tu magna un'altro_[S].

[Footnote S: The Turk feeds on St. Mark, St. Mark devours me; I eat thee, neighbour, and thou subsistest on somebody else.]

Apropos to this custom of calling Venice (when they speak of it) San Marco; I heard so comical a story yesterday that I cannot refuse the pleasure of inserting it; and if my readers do not find it as pleasant as I did, they may certainly leave it out, without the smallest prejudice either to the book, the author, or themselves.

The procurator Tron was at Padua, it seems, and had a fancy to drive forward to Vicenza that afternoon, but being particularly fond of a favourite pair of horses which drew his chariot that day, would by no means venture if it happened to rain; and took the trouble to enquire of Abate Toaldo, "Whether he thought such a thing likely to happen, from the appearance of the sky?" The professor, not knowing why the question was asked, said, "he rather thought it would _not_ rain for four hours at most." In consequence of this information our senator ordered his equipage directly, got into it, and bid the driver make haste to Vicenza: but before he was half-way on his journey, such torrents came down from a black cloud that burst directly over their heads, that his horses were drenched in wet, and their mortified master turned immediately back to Padua, that they might suffer no further inconvenience. To pa.s.s away the evening, which he did not mean to have spent there, and to quiet his agitated spirits by thinking on something else, he walked under the Portico to a neighbouring coffee-house, where fate the Abate Toaldo in company of a few friends; wholly unconscious that he had been the cause of vexing the Procuratore; who, after a short pause, cried out, in a true Venetian spirit of anger and humour oddly blended together, "_Mi dica Signor Professore Toaldo, chi e il piu gran minchion di tutti i fanti in Paradiso?_" Pray tell me Doctor (we should say), who is the greatest blockhead among all the saints of Heaven? The Abbe looked astonished, but hearing the question repeated in a more peevish accent still, replied gravely, "_Eccelenza non fon fatto io per rispondere a tale dimande_"--My lord, I have no answer ready for such extraordinary questions. Why then, replies the Procuratore Tron, I will answer this question myself.--_St. Marco ved'ella--"e'l vero minchion: mentre mantiene tanti professori per studiare (che so to mi) delle stelle; roba astronomica che non vale un fico; e loro non sanno dirli nemmeno s'ha da piovere o n._"--"Why it is St. Mark, do you see, that is the true blockhead and dupe, in keeping so many professors to study the stars and stuff; when with all their astronomy they cannot tell him whether it will rain or no."

Well, _pax tibi, Marce!_ I see that I have said more about Venice, where I have lived five weeks, than about Milan, where I stayed five months; but

Si placeat varios hominum cognoscere vultus, Area longa patet, sancto contermina Marco, Celsus ubi Adriacas, Venetus Leo despicit undas, Hic circ.u.m gentes cunctis e partibus...o...b..s, aethiopes, Turcos, Slavos, Arabesque, Syrosque, Inveniesque Cypri, Cretae, Macedumque colonos, Innumerosque alios varia regione profectos: Saepe etiam nec visa prius, nec cognita cernes, Quae si cuncta velim tenui describere versu, Heic omnes citius nautas celeresque Phaselos, Et simul Adriaci pisces numerabo profundi.

_Imitated loosely_.

If change of faces please your roving sight, Or various characters your mind delight, To gay St. Mark's with eagerness repair; For curiosity may pasture there.

Venetia's lion bending o'er the waves, There sees reflected--tyrants, freemen, slaves.

The swarthy Moor, the soft Circa.s.sian dame, The British sailor not unknown to fame; Innumerous nations crowd the lofty door, Innumerous footsteps print the sandy sh.o.r.e; While verse might easier name the scaly tribe, } That in her seas their nourishment imbibe, } Than Venice and her various charms describe. }

It is really pity ever to quit the sweet seducements of a place so pleasing; which attracts the inclination and flatters the vanity of one, who, like myself, has received the most polite attentions, and been diverted with every amus.e.m.e.nt that could be devised. Kind, friendly, lovely Venetians! who appear to feel real fondness for the inhabitants of Great Britain, while Cavalier Pindemonte writes such verses in its praise. Yet _must_ the journey go forward, no staying to pick every flower upon the road.

On Sat.u.r.day next then am I to forsake--but I hope not for ever--this gay, this gallant city, so often described, so certainly admired; seen with rapture, quitted with regret: seat of enchantment! head-quarters of pleasure, farewell!

Leave us as we ought to be, Leave the Britons rough and free.

It was on the twenty-first of May then that we returned up the Brenta in a barge to _Padua_, stopping from time to time to give refreshment to our conductors and their horse, which draws on the side, as one sees them at Richmond; where the banks are scarcely more beautifully adorned by art, than here by nature; though the Brenta is a much narrower river than the Thames at Richmond, and its villas, so justly celebrated, far less frequent. The sublimity of their architecture however, the magnificence of their orangeries, the happy construction of the cool arcades, and general air of festivity which breathes upon the banks of this truly _wizard stream_, planted with _dancing_, not _weeping_ willows, to which on a bright evening the lads and la.s.ses run for shelter from the sun beams,

Et fugit ad salices, et se cupit ante videri[T];

[Footnote T: While tripping to the wood my wanton hies, She wishes to be seen before she flies.

are I suppose peculiar to itself, and best described by Monsieur de Voltaire, whose Pococurante the Venetian senator in Candide that possesses all delights in his villa upon the banks of the Brenta, is a very lively portrait, and would be natural too; but that Voltaire, as a Frenchman, could not forbear making his character speak in a very unItalian manner, boasting of his felicity in a style they never use, for they are really no puffers, no vaunters of that which they possess; make no disgraceful comparisons between their own rarities and the want of them in other countries, nor offend you as the French do, with false pity and hateful consolations.

If any thing in England seem to excite their wonder and ill-placed compa.s.sion, it is our coal fires, which they persist in thinking strangely unwholesome--and a melancholy proof that we are grievously devoid of wood, before we can prevail upon ourselves to dig the bowels of old earth for fewel, at the hazard of our precious health, if not of its certain loss; nor could I convince the wisest man I tried at, that wood burned to chark is a real poison, while it would be difficult by any process of chemistry to force much evil out of coal. They are steadily of opinion, that consumptions are occasioned by these fires, and that all the subjects of Great Britain are consumptively disposed, merely because those who are so, go into Italy for change of air: though I never heard that the wood smoke helped their breath, or a brazierfull of ashes under the table their appet.i.te. Mean time, whoever seeks to convince instead of persuade an Italian, will find he has been employed in a Sisyphean labour; the stone may roll to the top, but is sure to return, and rest at his feet who had courage to try the experiment.

Logic is a science they love not, and I think steadily refuse to cultivate; nor is argument a style of conversation they naturally affect--as Lady Macbeth says, "_Question enrageth him_;" and the dialogues of Socrates would to them be as disgusting as the violence of Xantippe.

Well, here we are at Padua again! where I will run, and see once more the places I was before so pleased with. The beautiful church of Santa Giustina, the ancient church adorned by Cimabue, Giotto, &c. where you fancy yourself on a sudden transported to Dante's Paradiso, and with for Barry the painter, to point your admiration of its sublime and extraordinary merits; but not the shrine of St. Anthony, or the tomb of Antenor, one rich with gold, the other venerable with rust, can keep my attention fixed on _them_, while an Italian _May_ offers to every sense, the sweets of nature in elegant perfection. One view of a smiling landschape, lively in verdure, enamelled with flowers, and exhilarating with the sound of music under every tree,

Where many a youth and many a maid Dances in the chequer'd shade; And young and old come forth to play, On a sun-s.h.i.+ne holiday;

drives Palladio and Sansovino from one's head; and leaves nothing very strongly impressed upon one's heart but the recollection of kindness received and esteem reciprocated. Those pleasures have indeed pursued me hither; the amiable Countess Ferris has not forgotten us; her attentions are numerous, tender, and polite. I went to the play with her, where I was unlucky enough to miss the representation of Romeo and Juliet, which was acted the night before with great applause, under the name of _Tragedia Veronese_. Monsieur de Voltaire was then premature in his declarations, that Shakespear was unknown, or known only to be censured, except in his native country. Count Kinigl at Milan took occasion to tell me that they acted Hamlet and Lear when he was last at Vienna; and I know not how it is, but to an English traveller each place presents ideas originally suggested by Shakespear, of whom nature and truth are the perpetual mirrors: other authors remind one of things which one has seen in life--but the scenes of life itself remind one of Shakespear. When I first looked on the Rialto, with what immediate images did it supply me? Oh, the old long-cherished images of the pensive merchant, the generous friend, the gay companion, and their final triumph over the practices of a cruel Jew. Anthonio, Gratiano, met me at every turn; and when I confessed some of these feelings before the professor of natural history here, who had spent some time in London; he observed, that no native of our island could sit three hours, and not speak of Shakespear: he added many kind expressions of partial liking to our nation, and our poets: and l'Abate Cesarotti good-humouredly confessed his little skill in the English language when he translated their so much-admired Ossian; but he had studied it pretty hard since, he said, and his version of Gray's Elegy is charming.

Gray and Young are the favourite writers among us, as far as I have yet heard them talked over upon the continent; the first has secured them by his residence at Florence, and his Latin verses I believe; the second, by his piety and brilliant thoughts. Even Romanists are disposed to think dear Dr. Young very _near_ to Christianity--an idea which must either make one laugh or cry, while

Sweet peace, and heavenly hope, and humble joy, Divinely beam on _his_ exalted soul.

But I must tell what I have been seeing at the theatre, and should tell it much better had not the charms of Countess Ferris's conversation engaged my mind, which would otherwise perhaps have been more seized on than it _was_, by the sight of an old pantomime, or wretched farce (for there was speaking in it, I remember), exploded long since from our very lowest places of diversion, and now exhibited here at Padua before a very polite and a very literary audience; and in a better theatre by far than our newly-adorned opera-house in the Hay-market. Its subject was no other than the birth of Harlequin; but the place and circ.u.mstances combined to make me look on it in a light which shewed it to uncommon advantage. The storm, for example, the thunder, darkness, &c. which is so solemnly made to precede an incantation, apparently not meant to be ridiculous, after which, a huge egg is somehow miraculously produced upon the stage, put me in mind of the very old mythologists, who thus desired to represent the chaotic state of things, when Night, Ocean, and Tartarus disputed in perpetual confusion; till _Love_ and _Music_ separated the elements, and as Dryden says,

Then hot and cold, and moist and dry, In order to their stations leap, And music's power obey.

For _Cupid_, advancing to a slow tune, steadies with his wand the rolling ma.s.s upon the stage, that then begins to teem with its _motley inhabitant_, and just representative of the _created world_, active, wicked, gay, amusing, which gains your heart, but never your esteem: tricking, s.h.i.+fting, and worthless as it is--but after all its _frisks_, all its _escapes_, is condemned at last to burn in _fire, and pa.s.s entirely away_. Such was, I trust, the idea of the person, whoever he was, that had the honour first to compose this curious exhibition, and model this mythological device into a pantomime! for the _mundane_, or as Proclus calls it, the _orphick_ egg, is possibly the earliest of all methods taken to explain the rise, progress, and final conclusion of our earth and atmosphere; and was the original _theory_ brought from Egypt into Greece by Orpheus. Nor has that prodigious genius, Dr. Thomas Burnet, scorned to adopt it seriously in his _Telluris Theoria sacra_, written less than a century ago, adapting it with wonderful ingenuity to the Christian system and Mosaical account of things; to which it certainly does accommodate itself the better, as the form of an egg well resembles that of our habitable globe; and the internal divisions, our four elements, leaving the central fire for the yolk. I therefore regarded our pantomime here at Padua with a degree of reverence I should have found difficult to excite in myself at Sadler's Wells; where ideas of antiquity would have been little likely to cross my fancy. Sure I am, however, that the original inventor of this old pantomime had his head very full at the time of some very ancient learning.

Now then I must leave this lovely state of Venice, where if the paupers in every town of it did not crowd about one, tormenting pa.s.sengers with unextinguishable clamour, and surrounding them with sights of horror unfit to be surveyed by any eyes except those of the surgeon, who should alleviate their anguish, or at least conceal their truly unspeakable distresses--one should break one's heart almost at the thoughts of quitting people who show such tenderness towards their friends, that less than ocular conviction would scarce persuade me to believe such wandering misery could remain disregarded among the most amiable and pleasing people in the world. His excellency Bragadin half promised me that some steps should be taken at Venice at least, to remove a nuisance so disgraceful; and said, that when I came again, I should walk about the town in white sattin slippers, and never see a beggar from one end of it to the other.

On the twenty-sixth of May then, with the senator Quirini's letters to Corilla, with the Countess of Starenberg's letters to some Tuscan friends of her's; and with the light of a full moon, if we should want it, we set out again in quest of new adventures, and mean to sleep this night under the pope's protection:--may G.o.d but grant us his!

FERRERA.

We have crossed the Po, which I expected to have found more magnificent, considering the respectable state I left it in at Cremona; but scarcely any thing answers that expectation which fancy has long been fermenting in one's mind.

I took a young woman once with me to the coast of Suss.e.x, who, at twenty-seven years old and a native of England, had never seen the sea; nor any thing else indeed ten miles out of London:--And well, child!

said I, are not you much surprised?--"It is a fine sight, to be sure,"

replied she coldly, "but,"--but what? you are not disappointed are you?--"No, not disappointed, but it is not quite what I expected when I saw the ocean." Tell me then, pray good girl, and tell me quickly, what did you expect to see? "_Why I expected_," with a hesitating accent, "_I expected to see a great deal of water_." This answer set me _then_ into a fit of laughter, but I have _now_ found out that I am not a whit wiser than Peggy: for what did I figure to myself that I should find the Po? only a great deal of water to be sure; and a very great deal of water it certainly is, and much more, G.o.d knows, than I ever saw before, except between the sh.o.r.es of Calais and Dover; yet I did feel something like disappointment too; when my imagination wandering over all that the poets had said about it, and finding earth too little to contain their fables, recollected that they had thought Erida.n.u.s worthy of a place among the constellations, I wished to see such a river as was worthy all these praises, and even then, says I,

O'er golden sands let rich Pactolus flow.

And trees weep amber on the banks of Po.

But are we sure after all it was upon the _banks_ these trees, not now existing, were ever to be found? they grew in the Electrides if I remember right, and even there Lucian laughingly said, that he spread his garments in vain to catch the valuable distillation which poetry had taught him to expect; and Strabo (worse news still!) said that there were no Electrides neither; so as we knew before--fiction is false: and had I not discovered it by any other means, I might have recollected a comical contest enough between a literary lady once, and Doctor Johnson, to which I was myself a witness;--when she, maintaining the happiness and purity of a country life and rural manners, with her best eloquence, and she had a great deal; added as corroborative and almost incontestable authority, that the _Poets_ said so: "and didst thou not know then," replied he, my darling dear, that the _Poets lye_?

When they tell us, however, that great rivers have horns, which twisted off become cornua copiae, dispensing pleasure and plenty, they entertain us it must be confessed; and never was allegory more nearly allied with truth, than in the lines of Virgil;

Gemina auratus taurino cornua vultu, Erida.n.u.s, quo non alius per pinguia culta, In mare purpureuin violentior influit amnis[U];

[Footnote U: Whence bull-fac'd, so adorn'd with gilded horns, Than whom no river through such level meads, Down to the sea in swifter torrents speeds.

so accurately translated by Doctor Warton, who would not reject the epithet _bull-faced_, because he knew it was given in imitation of the Thessalian river Achelous, that fought for Dejanira; and Servius, who makes him father to the Syrens, says that many streams, in compliment to this original one, were represented with horns, because of their winding course. Whether Monsieur Varillas, or our immortal Addison, mention their being so perpetuated on medals now existing, I know not; but in this land of rarities we shall soon hear or see.

Mean time let us leave looking for these weeping Heliades, and enquire what became of the Swan, that poor Phaeton's friend and cousin turned into, for very grief and fear at seeing him tumble in the water. For my part I believe that not only now he

Eligit contraria flumina flammis,

but that the whole country is grown disagreeably hot to him, and the sight of the sun's chariot so near frightens him still; for he certainly lives more to his taste, and sings sweeter I believe on the banks of the Thames, than in Italy, where we have never yet seen but _one_; and that was kept in a small marble bason of water at the Durazzo palace at Genoa, and seemed miserably out of condition. I enquired why they gave him no companion? and received for answer, "That it would be wholly useless, as they were creatures who never bred _out if their own country_." But any reply serves any common Italian, who is little disposed to investigate matters; and if you tease him with too much ratiocination, is apt to cry out, "_Cosa serve sosistieare cosi? ci fara andare tutti matti_[V]." They have indeed so many external amus.e.m.e.nts in the mere face of the country, that one is better inclined to pardon _them_, than one would be to forgive inhabitants of less happy climates, should they suffer _their_ intellectual powers to pine for want of exercise, not food: for here is enough to think upon, G.o.d knows, were they disposed so to employ their time; where one may justly affirm that,

[Footnote V: What signifies all this minuteness of inquiry?--it will drive us mad.]

On every thorn delightful wisdom grows, And in each rill, some sweet instruction flows; But some untaught o'erhear the murmuring rill, In spite of sacred leisure--blockheads still.

The road from Padua hither is not a good one; but so adorned, one cares not much whether it is good or no: so sweetly are the mulberry-trees planted on each side, with vines richly festooning up and down them, as if for the decoration of a dance at the opera. One really expects the flower-girls with baskets, or garlands, and scarcely can persuade one's self that all is real.

Never sure was any thing more rejoicing to the heart, than this lovely season in this lovely country. The city of Ferrara too is a fine one; Ferrara _la civile_, the Italians call it, but it seems rather to merit the epithet _solenne_; so stately are its buildings, so wide and uniform its streets. My pen was just upon the point of praising its cleanliness too, till I reflected there was n.o.body to dirty it. I looked half an hour before I could find one beggar, a bad account of poor Ferrara; but it brought to my mind how unreasonably my daughter and myself had laughed seven years ago, at reading in an extract from some of the foreign gazettes, how the famous Improvisatore Tala.s.si, who was in England about the year 1770, and entertained with his justly-admired talents the literati at London; had published an account of his visit to Mr. Thrale, at a villa eight miles from Westminster-bridge, during that time, when he had the good fortune, he said, to meet many celebrated characters at his country-seat; and the mortification which nearly overbalanced it, to miss seeing the immortal Garrick then confined by illness. In all this, however, there was nothing ridiculous; but we fancied his description of Streatham village truly so; when we read that he called it _Luogo a.s.sai popolato ed ameno_[Footnote: A populous and delightful place.], an expression apparently pompous, and inadequate to the subject: but the jest disappeared when I got into _his_ town; a place which perhaps may be said to possess every other excellence but that of being _popolato ed ameno_; and I sincerely believe that no Ferrara-man could have missed making the same or a like observation; as in this finely-constructed city, the gra.s.s literally grows in the street; nor do I hear that the state of the air and water is such as is likely to tempt new inhabitants. How much then, and how reasonably must he have wondered, and how easily must he have been led to express his wonder, at seeing a village no bigger than that of Streatham, contain a number of people equal, as I doubt not but it does, to all the dwellers in Ferrara!