Part 25 (2/2)
Six of the Swiss guard (representing the six Catholic canons) walked near the Pope, with drawn swords on their shoulders, and after his chair followed a troop of civil officers, whose appointments I did not think it worth while to enquire. The procession stopped when the Pope was opposite the ”chapel of the holy sacrament,” and his Holiness descended. The tiara was lifted from his head by a cardinal, and he knelt upon a cus.h.i.+on of velvet and gold to adore the ”sacred host,”
which was exposed upon the altar. After a few minutes he returned to his chair, his tiara was again set on his head, and the music rang out anew, while the procession swept on to the sepulchre.
The spectacle was all splendor. The clear s.p.a.ce through the vast area of the church, lined with glittering soldiery, the dazzling gold and crimson of the coming procession, the high papal chair, with the immense fan-banners of peac.o.c.k's feathers, held aloft, the almost immeasurable dome and mighty pillars, above and around, and the mult.i.tudes of silent people, produced a scene which, connected with the idea of religious wors.h.i.+p, and added to by the swell of a hundred instruments of music, quite dazzled and overpowered me.
The high ma.s.s (performed but three times a year) proceeded. At the latter part of it, the Pope mounted to the altar, and, after various ceremonies, elevated the sacred host. At the instant that the small white wafer was seen between the golden candlesticks, the two immense lines of soldiers dropped upon their knees, and all the people prostrated themselves at the same instant.
This fine scene over, we hurried to the square in front of the church, to secure places for a still finer one--that of the Pope blessing the people. Several thousand troops, cavalry and footmen, were drawn up between the steps and the obelisk, in the centre of the piazza, and the immense area embraced by the two circling colonnades was crowded by, perhaps, a hundred thousand people, with eyes directed to one single point. The variety of bright costumes, the gay liveries of the amba.s.sadors' and cardinals' carriages, the vast body of soldiery, and the magnificent frame of columns and fountains in which this gorgeous picture was contained, formed the grandest scene conceivable.
In a few minutes the Pope appeared in the balcony, over the great door of St. Peter's. Every hat in the vast mult.i.tude was lifted and every knee bowed in an instant. _Half a nation prostrate together, and one gray old man lifting up his hands to heaven and blessing them!_
The cannon of the castle of St. Angelo thundered, the innumerable bells of Rome pealed forth simultaneously, the troops fell into line and motion, and the children of the two hundred and fifty-seventh successor of St. Peter departed _blessed_.
In the evening all the world a.s.sembled to see the illumination, which it is useless to attempt to describe.
The night was cloudy and black, and every line in the architecture of the largest building in the world was defined in light, even to the cross, which, as I have said before, is at the height of a mountain from the base. For about an hour it was a delicate but vast structure of s.h.i.+ning lines, like a drawing of a glorious temple on the clouds.
At eight, as the clock struck, flakes of fire burst from every point, and the whole building seemed started into flame. It was done by a simultaneous kindling of torches in a thousand points, a man stationed at each. The glare seemed to exceed that of noonday. No description can give an idea of it.
I am not sure that I have not been a little tedious in describing the ceremonies of the holy week. Forsyth says in his bilious book, that he ”never could read, and certainly never could write, a description of them.” They have struck me, however, as particularly unlike anything ever seen in our own country, and I have endeavored to draw them slightly and with as little particularity as possible. I trust that some of the readers of the Mirror may find them entertaining and novel.
FLORENCE, 1833.--I found myself at six this morning, where I had found myself at the same hour a year before--in the midst of the rural festa in the Cascine of Florence. The Duke, to-day, breakfasts at his farm.
The people of Florence, high and low, come out, and spread their repasts upon the fine sward of the openings in the wood, the roads are watered, and the royal equipages dash backward and forward, while the ladies hang their shawls in the trees, and children and lovers stroll away into the shade, and all looks like a scene from Boccaccio.
I thought it a picturesque and beautiful sight last year, and so described it. But I was a stranger then, newly arrived in Florence, and felt desolate amid the happiness of so many. A few months among so frank and warm-hearted a people as the Tuscans, however, makes one at home. The tradesman and his wife, familiar with your face, and happy to be seen in their holyday dresses, give you the ”_buon giorno_” as you pa.s.s, and a cup of red wine or a seat at the cloth on the gra.s.s is at your service in almost any group in the _prato_. I am sure I should not find so many acquaintances in the town in which I have pa.s.sed my life.
A little beyond the crowd, lies a broad open glade of the greenest gra.s.s, in the very centre of the woods of the farm. A broad fringe of shade is flung by the trees along the eastern side, and at their roots cl.u.s.ter the different parties of the n.o.bles and the amba.s.sadors. Their gayly-dressed _cha.s.seurs_ are in waiting, the silver plate quivers and glances, as the chance rays of the sun break through the leaves over head, and at a little distance, in the road, stand their showy equipages in a long line from the great oak to the farmhouse.
In the evening, there was an illumination of the green alleys and the little square in front of the house, and a band of music for the people. Within, the halls were thrown open for a ball. It was given by the Grand Duke to the d.u.c.h.ess of Litchtenberg, the widow of Eugene Beauharnois. The company a.s.sembled at eight, and the presentations (two lovely countrywomen of our own among them), were over at nine.
The dancing then commenced, and we drove home, through the fading lights still burning in the trees, an hour or two past midnight.
The Grand Duke is about to be married to one of the princesses of Naples, and great preparations are making for the event. He looks little like a bridegroom, with his sad face, and unshorn beard and hair. It is, probably, not a marriage of inclination, for the fat princess expecting him, is every way inferior to the incomparable woman he has lost, and he pa.s.sed half the last week in a lonely visit to the chamber in which she died, in his palace at Pisa.
LETTER LXII.
BOLOGNA--MALIBRAN--PARMA--NIGHTINGALES OF LOMBARDY--PLACENZA--AUSTRIAN SOLDIERS--THE SIMPLON--MILAN--RESEMBLANCE TO PARIS--THE CATHEDRAL--GUERCINO'S HAGAR--MILANESE COFFEE.
MILAN.--My fifth journey over the Apennines--dull of course. On the second evening we were at Bologna. The long colonnades pleased me less than before, with their crowds of foreign officers and ill-dressed inhabitants, and a placard for the opera, announcing Malibran's last night, relieved us of the prospect of a long evening of weariness. The divine music of _La Norma_ and a crowded and brilliant audience, enthusiastic in their applause, seemed to inspire this still incomparable creature even beyond her wont. She sang with a fulness, an abandonment, a pa.s.sionate energy and sweetness that seemed to come from a soul rapt and possessed beyond control, with the melody it had undertaken. They were never done calling her on the stage after the curtain had fallen. After six re-appearances, she came out once more to the footlights, and murmuring something inaudible from her lips that showed strong agitation, she pressed her hands together, bowed till her long hair, falling over her shoulders, nearly touched her feet, and retired in tears. She is the siren of Europe for me!
I was happy to have no more to do with the Duke of Modena, than to eat a dinner in his capital. We did ”not forget the picture,” but my inquiries for it were as fruitless as before. I wonder whether the author of the Pleasures of Memory has the pleasure of remembering having seen the picture himself! ”Ta.s.soni's bucket which is not the true one,” is still shown in the tower, and the keeper will kiss the cross upon his fingers, that Samuel Rogers has written a false line.
At Parma we ate parmesan and saw _the_ Correggio. The angel who holds the book up to the infant Saviour, the female laying her cheek to his feet, the countenance of the holy child himself, are creations that seem apart from all else in the schools of painting. They are like a group, not from life, but from heaven. They are superhuman, and, unlike other pictures of beauty which stir the heart as if they resembled something one had loved or might have loved, these mount into the fancy like things transcending sympathy, and only within reach of an intellectual and elevated wonder. This is the picture that Sir Thomas Lawrence returned six times in one day to see. It is the only thing I saw to admire in the Duchy of Maria Louisa. An Austrian regiment marched into the town as we left it, and an Italian at the gate told us that the d.u.c.h.ess had disbanded her last troops of the country, and supplied their place with these yellow and black Croats and Illyrians. Italy is Austria now to the foot of the Apennines--if not to the top of Radicofani.
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