Part 9 (2/2)
It has all that grand simplicity, that _entireness_ which characterizes his works: it contains, too, some admirable pictures. On leaving the church, I saw on each side of the door, the monuments of Salvator Rosa and Carlo Maratti--what a contrast do they exhibit in their genius, in their works, in their characters, in their countenances, in their lives! Near this church (the Santa Maria dei Angeli) is the superb fountain of the Acqua Felice, the first view of which rather disappointed me. I had been told that it represented Moses striking the rock,--a magnificent idea for a fountain! but the execution falls short of the conception. The water, instead of gus.h.i.+ng from the rock, is poured out from the mouths of two prodigious lions of basalt, brought, I believe, from Upper Egypt: they seem misplaced here. A little beyond the Ponta Pia is the Campo Scelerato, where the Vestals were interred alive. We afterwards drove to the Santi Apostoli to see the tomb of the excellent Ganganelli, by Canova. Then to Sant'
Ign.a.z.io, to see the famous ceiling painted in perspective by the jesuit Pozzo. The effect is certainly marvellous, making the interior appear to the eye, at least twice the height it really is; but though the illusion pleased me as a work of art, I thought the trickery unnecessary and misplaced. At the magnificent church of the Gesuiti (where there are two entire columns of giallo antico) I saw a list of relics for which the church is celebrated, and whose efficacy and sanct.i.ty were vouched for by a very respectable catalogue of miracles.
Among these relics there are a few worth mentioning for their oddity, viz. one of the Virgin's _s.h.i.+fts_, three of her hairs, and the skirt of Joseph's coat.
31.--We spent nearly the whole day in the gallery of the Vatican, and in the Pauline and Sistine chapels.
_February 1st, at Valletri._--I left Rome this morning exceedingly depressed: Madame de Stael may well call travelling _un triste plaisir_. My depression did not arise from the feeling that I left behind me any thing or any person to regret, but from mixed and melancholy emotions, and partly perhaps from that weakness which makes my hand tremble while I write--which has bound down my mind, and all its best powers, and all its faculties of enjoyment, to a languid pa.s.siveness, making me feel at every moment, I am not what I was, or ought to be, or might have been.
We arrived, after a short and most delightful journey by Albano, the Lake Nemi, Gensao, etc. at Velletri, the birth-place of that wretch Octavius, and famous for its wine. The day has been as soft and as sunny as a May-day in England, and the country, through which we travelled but too rapidly, beyond description lovely. The blue Mediterranean spread far to the west, and on the right we had the snowy mountains, with their wild fantastic peaks ”rus.h.i.+ng on the sky.”
I felt it all in my heart with a mixture of sadness and delight which I cannot express.
This land was made by nature a paradise: it seems to want no charm, ”unborrowed from the eye,”--but how has memory sanctified, history ill.u.s.trated, and poetry illumined the scenes around us; where every rivulet had its attendant nymph, where every wood was protected by its sylvan divinity; where every tower has its tale of heroism, and ”not a mountain lifts its head unsung;” and though the faith, the glory, and the power of the antique time be pa.s.sed away--still
A spirit hangs, Beautiful region! o'er thy towns and farms, Statues and temples, and memorial tombs.
I can allow that one-half, at least, of the beauty and interest we see, lies in our own souls; that it is our own enthusiasm which sheds this mantle of light over all we behold: but, as colours do not exist in the objects themselves, but in the rays which paint them--so beauty is not less real, is not less BEAUTY, because it exists in the medium through which we view certain objects, rather than in those objects themselves. I have met persons who think they display a vast deal of common sense, and very uncommon strength of mind, in rising superior to all prejudices of education and illusions of romance--to whom enthusiasm is only another name for affectation--who, where the cultivated and the contemplative mind finds ample matter to excite feeling and reflection, give themselves airs of fas.h.i.+onable _nonchalance_, or flippant scorn--to whom the crumbling ruin is so much brick and mortar, no more--to whom the tomb of the Horatii and Curiatii is a _stack of chimneys_, the Pantheon _an old oven_, and the Fountain of Egeria a _pig-sty_. Are such persons aware that in all this there is an affectation, a thousand times more gross and contemptible, than that affectation (too frequent perhaps) which they design to ridicule?
”Whose mind is but the mind of his own eyes, He is a slave--the meanest we can meet.”
2.--Our journey to-day has been long, but delightfully diversified, and abounding in cla.s.sical beauty and interest. I scarce know what to say, now that I open my little book to record my own sensations: they are so many, so various, so painful, so delicious--my senses and my imagination have been so enchanted, my heart so very heavy--where shall I begin?
In some of the scenes of to-day--at Terracina, particularly, there was beauty beyond what I ever beheld or imagined: the scenery of Switzerland is of a different character, and on a different scale: it is beyond comparison grander, more gigantic, more overpowering, but it is not so poetical. Switzerland is not Italy--is not the enchanting _south_. This soft balmy air, these myrtles, orange-groves, palm-trees; these cloudless skies, this bright blue sea, and sunny hills, all breathe of an enchanted land; ”a land of Faery.”
Between Velletri and Terracina the road runs in one undeviating line through the Pontine Marshes. The accounts we have of the baneful effects of the malaria here, and the absolute solitude, (not a human face or a human habitation intervening from one post-house to another,) invest the wild landscape with a frightful and peculiar character of desolation. As for the mere exterior of the country, I have seen more wretched and sterile looking spots, (in France, for instance,) but none that so affected the imagination and the spirits.
On leaving the Pontine Marshes, we came almost suddenly upon the sunny and luxuriant region near Terracina: here was the ancient city of Anxur; and the gothic ruins of the castle of Theodoric, which frown on the steep above, are contrasted with the delicate and Grecian proportions of the temple below. All the country round is famed in cla.s.sic and poetic lore. The Promontory (once poetically the _island_) of Circe is still the Monte Circello: here was the region of the Lestrygons, and the scene of part of the aeneid and Odyssey; and Corinne has superadded romantic and charming a.s.sociations quite as delightful, and quite as _true_.
Antiquarians, who, like politicians, ”seem to see the things that are not,” have placed all along this road, the sites of many a celebrated town and fane--”making hue and cry after many a city which has run away, and by certain marks and tokens pursuing to find it:” as some old author says so quaintly. At every hundred yards, fragments of masonry are seen by the road-side; portions of brickwork, sometimes traced at the bottom of a dry ditch, or incorporated into a fence; sometimes peeping above the myrtle bushes on the wild hills, where the green lizards lie basking and glittering on them in thousands, and the stupid ferocious buffalo, with his fierce red eyes, rubs his hide and glares upon us as we pa.s.s. No--not the grandest monuments of Rome--not the Coliseum itself, in all its decaying magnificence, ever inspired me with such profound emotions as did those nameless, shapeless vestiges of the dwellings of man, starting up like memorial tombs in the midst of this savage but luxuriant wilderness. Of the beautiful cities which rose along this lovely coast, the colonies of elegant and polished Greece--one after another swallowed up by the ”insatiate maw”
of ancient Rome, nothing remains--their sites, their very names have pa.s.sed away and perished. We might as well hunt after a forgotten dream.
Vain was the chief's, the sage's pride, They had no POET, and they died!
In vain they toil'd, in vain they bled, They had no POET--and are dead.
I write this a Gaeta--a name famous in the poetical, the cla.s.sical, the military story of Italy, from the day of aeneas, from whom it received its appellation, down to the annals of the late war. On the site of our inn, (the Albergo di Cicerone,) stood Cicero's Formian Villa; and in an adjoining grove he was murdered in his litter by the satellites of the Triumviri, as he attempted to escape. I stood to-night on a little terrace, which hung over an orange grove, and enjoyed a scene which I would paint, if words were forms, and hues, and sounds--not else. A beautiful bay, enclosed by the Mola di Gaeta, on one side, and the Promontory of Misenum on the other: the sky studded with stars and reflected in a sea as blue as itself--and so gla.s.sy and unruffled, it seemed to slumber in the moonlight: now and then the murmur of a wave, not hoa.r.s.ely breaking on rock and s.h.i.+ngles, but kissing the turfy sh.o.r.e, where oranges and myrtles grew down to the water edge. These, and the remembrances connected with all, and a mind to think, and a heart to feel, and thoughts both of pain and pleasure mingling to render the effect more deep and touching.--Why should I write this? O surely I need not fear that I shall _forget_!
LINES WRITTEN AT MOLA DI GAETA, NEAR THE RUINS OF CICERO'S FORMIAN VILLA.
We wandered through bright climes, and drank the beams Of southern suns: Elysian scenes we view'd, Such as we picture oft in those day dreams That haunt the fancy in her wildest mood.
Upon the sea-heat vestiges we stood, Where Cicero dwelt, and watch'd the latest gleams Of rosy light steal o'er the azure flood: And memory conjur'd up most glowing themes, Filling the expanded heart, till it forgot Its own peculiar grief!--O! if the dead Yet haunt our earth, around this hallow'd spot, Hovers sweet Tully's spirit, since it fled The Roman Forum--Forum now no more!
Though cold and silent be the sands we tread, Still burns the ”eloquent air,” and to the sh.o.r.e There rolls no wave, and through the orange shade There sighs no breath, which doth not speak of him, THE FATHER OF HIS COUNTRY: and though dim Her day of empire--and her laurel crown Torn and defaced, and soiled with blood and tears, And her imperial eagles trampled down-- Still with a queen-like grace, Italia wears Her garland of bright names,--her coronal of stars, (Radiant memorials of departed worth!) That shed a glory round her pensive brow, And make her still the wors.h.i.+p of the earth!
_Naples. Sunday 3rd._--We left Gaeta early. If the scene was so beautiful in the evening--how bright, how lovely it was this morning!
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