Part 12 (1/2)

--Trans. W.S. ROSE.

TURIN, 14 August.

Turin is a large, extremely fine and regular city, with all the streets built at right angles. The shops are very brilliant; the two _Places_, the _Piazza del Castello_ and the _Piazza di San Carlo_, are very s.p.a.cious and striking, and there are arcades on each side of the quadrangle formed by them. The _Contrada del Po_ (for in Turin the streets are called _Contrade_) leads down to the Po, and is one of the best streets in Turin.

Over the Po is a superb bridge built by Napoleon. In the centre of the _Piazza del Castello_ stands the Royal Palace, and on one side of the _Piazza_ the Grand Opera house. The streets in Turin are kept clean by sluices. The favorite promenades are, during the day, under the arcades of the _Piazza del Castello_ and those of the _Contrada del Po_; and in the evening round the ramparts of the city, or rather on the site where the ramparts stood. The French, on blowing up the ramparts, laid out the s.p.a.ce occupied by them in walks aligned by trees. The fortifications of the citadel were likewise destroyed.

In the Cathedral Church here the most remarkable thing is the _Chapelle du Saint Suaire_ (holy winding sheet). It is of a circular form, is inlaid with black marble and admits scarce any light; so that it has more the appearance of a Mausoleum than of a Chapel. It reminded me of the _Palace of Tears_ in the Arabian Nights.

In the environs of Turin, the most remarkable buildings are a villa belonging to the King called _La Venezia_, and the _Superga_, a magnificent church built on an eminence, five miles distant from Turin. In the Royal Palace, on the _Piazza del Castello_, there is some superb furniture, but the exterior is simple enough. The country environing Turin forms a plain with gentle undulations, increasing in elevation towards the Alps, which are forty miles distant, and is so stocked with villas, gardens and orchards as to form a very agreeable landscape. From the steeple of the _Superga_ the view is very fine.

In the University of Turin is a very good _Cabinet d'Histoire naturelle_, containing a great variety of beasts, birds and fishes stuffed and preserved; there is also a Cabinet of Comparative Anatomy, and various imitations in wax of anatomical dissections. Among the antiquities, of which there is a most valuable collection, are two very remarkable ones: the one a beautiful bronze s.h.i.+eld, found in the Po, called the s.h.i.+eld of Marius; it represents, in figures in bas-relief, the history of the Jugurthine war.[76] This s.h.i.+eld is of the most exquisite workmans.h.i.+p. The other is a table of the most beautiful black marble incrusted and inlaid with figures and hieroglyphics of silver. It is called the _Table of Isis_, was brought from Egypt and is supposed to be of the most remote antiquity.

It is always kept polished. Among the many valuable pieces of sculpture to be met with here is a most lovely Cupid in Parian marble. He is represented sleeping on a lion's skin. It is the most beautiful piece of sculpture I have ever seen next to the Apollo Belvedere and the Venus dei Medici; it appears alive, and as if the least noise would awake it.[77]

Turin used to be in the olden time one of the most brilliant Courts and cities in Europe, and the most abounding in splendid equipages; now very few are to be seen. When Piedmont was torn from the domination of the House of Savoy and annexed to France, Turin, ceasing to be the capital of a Kingdom, necessarily decayed in splendor, nor did its being made the _Chef lieu_ of a _Prefecture_ of the French Empire make amends for what it once was. The Restoration arrived, but has not been able to reanimate it; an air of dullness pervades the whole city. Obscurantism and anti-liberal ideas are the order of the day.

I witnessed a military review at which the King of Sardinia a.s.sisted. The troops made a very brilliant appearance and manoeuvred well. His Majesty has a very good seat on horseback and a distinguished military air. He is a man of honor tho' he has rather too high notions of the royal dignity and authority, and is too much of a bigot in religion; but his word can be depended on, a great point in a King; there are so many of them that break theirs and falsify all their promises. He will not hear of a const.i.tution, and endeavors to abolish or discountenance all that has been effected during his absence. The priests are caressed and restored to their privileges, so that the inhabitants of Piedmont are exposed to a double despotism, a military and a sacerdotal one; the last is ten times more ruinous and fatal to liberty and improvement than the former.

I have put up in Turin in the _Pension Suisse_, where for seven franks per diem I have breakfast, dinner, supper and a princely bed room. The houses are in general lofty, s.p.a.cious and on a grand scale.

[67] Francois Lamarque, born 1756, a member of the Convention, amba.s.sador in Sweden, prefect of the Tarn and member of the Cour de Ca.s.sation (1804). He was exiled in 1816.--ED.

[68] Major Frye (who wrote the name Despina.s.sy) certainly means Antoine-Joseph Marie Espina.s.sy de Fontanelle's (1787-1829), who was a member of the Convention, voted the King's death and served in the Republican army of the Alps. In 1816, he was banished and went to Lausanne, where he died 1829.--ED.

[69] Pardoux Bordas (1748-1842) was a member of the Convention. Though he had not voted the death of Louis XVI, he was banished from France in 1816 and did not return there before 1828.--ED.

[70] Antoine Francis Gauthier des Orcieres (1752-1838) was elected to the Etats Generaux in 1789, and, in 1792, to the Convention, where he voted the death of Louis XVI. Later on, he was member of the Conseil des Anoiena, juge au tribunal de la Seine and conseiller a la cour imperiale de Paris (1815). Banished in 1816, he returned to France in 1828.

[71] Jean Baptists Michaud, a member of the Directoire du departement du Doubs, and a member of the National Convention, voted the death of Louis XVI and against the proposed appeal to the people.--ED.

[72] Jean Daniel Paul Etienne Levade (1750-1834), Protestant minister first in England, then in Amsterdam, finally minister at Lausanne and professor of theology at the _Academie_ of the same town.--ED.

[73] Countess de Boigne, in her interesting _Memoirs_ (of which there is an English translation) abstained from describing her husband's career in India; this lends additional interest to the information collected by Major Frye,--ED.

[74] The ma.n.u.script has _Sennar_, a name quite unknown at Suza.--ED.

[75] Ariosto, _Orlando Furioso_, iv, 13, 5.--ED.

[76] This s.h.i.+eld, now at the _Armoria Reale_, is not antique, but is ascribed to Benvenuto Cellini.--ED.

[77] This statue of Cupid is not antique, and has been recently ascribed to Michelangelo (Knapp, _Michelangelo_, p. 155.)--ED.

CHAPTER VIII

Journey from Turin to Bologna--Asti--Schiller and Alfieri--Italian _cuisine_--The _vetturini_--Marengo--Piacenza--The Trebbia--Parma--The Empress Maria Louisa--Modena--Bologna--The University--The Marescalchi Gallery--Character of the Bolognese.

August ---- 1816