FROM ROME TO ANCONA.
In our road hither we passed through what remains of Veia, once so esteemed and liked by the Romans, that they had a good mind, after they had driven Brennus back, to change the seat of empire and remove it there; but a belief in augury prevented it, and that event was put off till Constantine, seduced by beauties of situation, made the fatal change, and broke the last thread which had so long bound tight together the fasces of Roman sway. We did not taste the Vinum Veientanum mentioned by Martial and Horace, but trotted on to Civita Castellana, where Camillus rejected the base offer of the schoolmaster of Fescennium; a good picture of his well-judged punishment is still preserved in the Capitol.
The first night of our journey was spent at Otricoli, where I heard the cuckoo sing in a shriller sharper note than he does in England. I had never listened to him before since I left my own country, and his song alone would have convinced me I was no longer in it. Porta di Fuga at Spoleta gates, commemorating poor Hannibal’s precipitate retreat after the battle of Thrasymene, may perhaps detain us a while upon this Flaminian way; it was not Titus Flaminius though, whose negotiations ruined Hannibal for ever, that gave name to the road, but Caius of the same family; they had been Flamens formerly, and were therefore called Flaminius, when drawn up by accident or merit into notice; the same custom still obtains with us: we have Dr. Priestley and Mr. Parsons.
Narni Bridge cost us some trouble in clambering, and more in disputing whether it was originally an aqueduct or a bridge—or both. It is a magnificent structure, irregularly built, the arches of majestic height, but all unequal. There was water enough under it when I was there to take off the impropriety apparent to many of turning so large an arch over so small a stream. Yet notwithstanding that the river was much swelled by long continuance of the violent rains which lately so overflowed the city of Rome, assisted by the Tyber, that people went about the streets in boats, notwithstanding the snows tumbled down from the surrounding mountains, must have much increased the quantity, and lowered the colour of the river:—We found it even now yellow with brimstone, and well deserving the epithet of sulphureous Nar.
The next day’s drive carried us forward to Terni, where a severe concussion of the earth suffered only three nights since, kept all the little town in terrible alarm; the houses were deserted, the churches crowded, supplications and processions in every street, and people singing all night to the Virgin under our window.
Well! the next morning we hired horses for our gentlemen; a little cart, not inconvenient at all, for my maid and me; and scrambled over many rocks to view the far-famed waterfall, through a sweet country, pleasingly intersected with hedges and planted with vines; the ground finely undulated, and rising by gradations of hill till the eye loses itself among the lofty Appenines; surly as they seem, and one would think impervious; but against human art and human ambition, the boundary of rocks and roaring seas lift their proud heads in vain. Man renders them subservient to his imperial will, and forces them to facilitate, not impede his dominion; while ocean’s self supports his ships, and the mountain yields marble to decorate his palace.
This is however no moment and no place to begin a panegyric upon the power of man, and of his skill to subjugate the works of nature, where the people are trembling at its past, and dreading its future effects.
The cascade we came to see is formed by the fall of a whole river, which here abruptly drops into the Nar, from a height so prodigious, and by a course so unbroken, that it is difficult to communicate, so as to receive the idea: for no eye can measure the depth of the precipice, such is the tossing up of foam from its bottom; and the terrible noise heard long before one arrives so stunned and confounded all my wits at once, that many minutes passed before I observed the horror in our conductors, who coming with us, then first perceived how the late earthquake had twisted the torrent out of its proper channel, and thrown it down another neighbouring rock, leaving the original bed black and deserted, as a dismal proof of the concussion’s force.
One of our English friends who had visited Schaffhausen, made no difficulty to prefer this wonderful cascade to the fall of the Rhine at that place; and what with the fissures made in the ground by recent earthquakes, the sight of propt-up cottages which fright the fancy more than those already fallen, and the roar of dashing waters driven from their destined currents by what the people here emphatically term palpitations of the earth; one feels a thousand sensations of sublimity unexcited by less accidents, and soon obliterated by real danger.
Why the inhabitants will have this tumbling river be Topino, I know not; but no suggestions of mine could make them name it Velino, as our travellers uniformly call it: for, say they, quello è il nome del sorgente[21]; and in fact Virgil’s line,
Sulfureâ Nar, albus acqua fontesque Velini,
says no more.
The mountains after Terni grow steep and difficult; no one who wishes to see the Appenines in perfection must miss this road, yet are they not comparable to the Alps at best, which being more lofty, more craggy, and almost universally terminating in points of granite devoid of horizontal strata, give one a more majestic idea of their original and duration. Spoleto is on the top of one of them, and Porta della Fuga meets one at its gates. Here as our coach broke (and who can wonder?) we have time to talk over old stories, and look for streams immortaliz’d in song: for being tied together only with ropes, we cannot hurry through a country most delightful of all others to be detained in.
The little temple to the river god Clitumnus afforded matter of discussion amongst our party, whether this was, or was not the very one mentioned by Pliny: Adjacet templum priscum et religiosum. Stat Clitumnus ipse amictus ornatusque[22].
Mr. Greatheed was angry with me for admiring spiral columns, as he said pillars were always meant to support something, and spiral lines betrayed weakness. Mr. Chappelow quoted every classic author that had ever mentioned the white cattle; and I said that so far as they were whiter than other beasts of the same kind, so far were they worse; for that whiteness in the works of nature shewed feebleness still more than spirals in the works of art perhaps. So chatting on—but on no Flaminian way, we arrived at Foligno; where the people told us that it was the quality of those waters to turn the clothing of many animals white, and accordingly all the fowls looked like those of Darking. I had however no taste of their beauty, recollecting that when I kept poultry, some accident poisoned me a very beautiful black hen, the breed of Lord Mansfield at Caen Wood: she recovered her illness; but at the next moulting season, her feathers came as white as the swans. “Let us look,” says Mr. Sh——, “if all the women here have got grey hair.”
Tolentino and Macerata we will not speak about, while Loretto courts description, and the richest treasures of Europe stand in the most delicious district of it. The number of beggars offended me, because I hold it next to impossibility that they should want in a country so luxuriantly abundant; and their prostrations as they kneel and kiss the ground before you, are more calculated to produce disgust from British travellers, than compassion. Nor can I think these vagabonds distressed in earnest at this time above all others; when their sovereign provides them with employment on the beautiful new road he is making, and insists on their being well paid, who are found willing to work. But the town itself of Loretto claims my attention; so clear are its streets, so numerous and cheerful and industrious are its inhabitants: one would think they had resolved to rob passengers of the trite remark which the sight of dead wealth always inspires, that the money might be better bestowed upon the living poor. For here are very few poor families, and fewer idlers than one expects to see in a place where not business but devotion is the leading characteristic. So quiet too and inoffensive are the folks here, that scarcely any robberies or murders, or any but very petty infringements of the law, are ever committed among them. Yet people grieve to see that wealth collected, which once diffused would certainly make many happy; and those treasures lying dead, which well dispersed might keep thousands alive. This observation, not always made perhaps by those who feel it most, or that would soonest give their share of it away, if once possessed, is now, from being so often repeated, become neither bright nor new. We will not however be petulantly hasty to censure those who first began the lamentation, remembering that our blessed Saviour’s earliest disciples, and those most immediately about him too, could not forbear grudging to see precious ointment poured upon his feet, whom they themselves confessed to be the Son of God. We should likewise recollect his mild but grave reproof of those men who gave so decided a preference to the poor over his sacred person, so soon to be sacrificed for them, and his testimony to the woman’s earnest love and zeal expressed by giving him the finest thing she had. Such acceptance as she met with, I suppose prompted the hopes of many who have been distinguished by their rich presents to Loretto; and let not those at least mock or molest them, who have been doing nothing better with their money. Upon examination of the jewels it is curious to observe that the intrinsic value of the presents is manifestly greater, the more ancient they are; but taste succeeds to solidity in every thing, and proofs of that position may be found every step one treads. The vestments, all embroidered over with picked pearl, are quite beyond my powers of estimation. The gold baby given at the birth of Louis Quatorze, of size and weight equal to the real infant, has had its value often computed; I forget the sum though. A rock of emeralds in their native bed presented by the Queen of Portugal, though of Occidental growth, is surely inestimable; and our sanguinary Mary’s heart of rubies is highly esteemed. I asked if Charles the Ninth of France had sent any thing; for I thought their presents should have been placed together: far, far even from the wooden image of her who was a model of meekness, and carried in her spotless bosom the Prince of Peace. Many very exquisite pieces of art too have found their way into the Virgin’s cabinet; the pearl however is the striking rarity, as it exhibits in the manner of a blot on marble, the figure of our blessed Saviour sitting on a cloud clasped in his mother’s arms. Princess Borghese sent an elegantly-set diamond necklace no longer ago than last Christmas-day; it is valued at a thousand pounds sterling English: but the riches of that family appear to me inexhaustible. Whoever sees it will say, she might have spent the money better; but let them reflect that one may say that of all expence almost; and it is not from the state of Loretto these treasures are taken at last: they bring money there; and if any person has a right to complain, it must be the subjects of distant princes, who yet would scarcely have divided among them the sapphires, &c. they have sent in presents to Loretto.
It was curious to see the devotees drag themselves round the holy house upon their knees; but the Santa Scala at Rome had shewn me the same operation performed with more difficulty; and a written injunction at bottom, less agreeable for Italians to comply with, than any possible prostration; viz. That no one should spit as he went up or down, except in his pocket-handkerchief. The lamps which burn night and day before the black image here at Loretto are of solid gold, and there is such a crowd of them I scarcely could see the figure for my own part; and that one may see still less, the attendant canons throw a veil over one’s face going in.
The confessionals, where all may be heard in their own language, is not peculiar to this church; I met with it somewhere else, but have forgotten where, though I much esteemed the establishment. It is very entertaining here too, to see inscriptions in twelve different tongues, giving an account of the miraculous removal and arrival here of the Santa Casa: I was delighted with the Welch one; and our conductor said there came not unfrequently pilgrims from the vale of Llwydd, who in their turns told the wonders of their holy well. In Latin then, and Greek, and Hebrew, Syriac, Phœnician, Arabic, French, Spanish, German, Welch, and Tuscan, may you read a story, once believed of equal credit, and more revered I fear, than even the sacred words of God speaking by the scriptures; but which is now certainly upon the wane. I told a learned ecclesiastic at Rome, that we should return home by the way of Loretto:—“There is no need,” said he, “to caution a native of your island against credulity; but pray do not believe that we are ourselves satisfied with the tale you will read there; no man of learning but knows, that Adrian destroyed every trace and vestige of Christianity that he could find in the East; and he was acute, and diligent, and powerful. The empress Helena long after him, with piety that equalled even his profaneness, could never hear of this holy house; how then should it have waited till so many long years after Jesus Christ? Truth is, Pope Boniface the VIIIth, who canonized St. Louis, who instituted the jubilee, who quarrelled with Philippe le Bel about a new crusade, and who at last fretted himself to death, though he had conquered all his enemies, because he feared some loss of power to the church;—desired to give mankind a new object of attention, and encouraged an old visionary, in the year 1296, to propagate the tale he half-believed himself; how the blessed Virgin had appeared to him, and related the story you will read upon the walls, which was then first committed to paper. In consequence of this intelligence, Boniface sent men into the East that he could best depend upon, and they brought back just such particulars as would best please the Pope; and in those days you can scarce think how quick the blaze of superstition caught and communicated itself: no one wished to deny what his neighbour was willing to believe, and what he himself would then have gained no credit by contradicting. Positive evidence of what the house really was, or whence it came, it was in a few years impossible to obtain; nor did Boniface the VIIIth know it himself I suppose, much less the old visionary who first set the matter a-going. Meantime the house itself has no foundation, whatever the story may have; it is a very singular house as you may see; it has been venerated by the best and wisest among Christians now for five hundred years: even the Turks (who have the same method of honouring their Prophet with gifts, as we do the Virgin Mary) respect the very name of Loretto:—why then should the place be to any order of thinking beings a just object of insult or mockery?”—Here he ended his discourse, the recollection of which never left me whilst we remained at the place.
What Dr. Moore says of the singing chaplains with soprano voices, who say mass at the altars of Loretto, is true enough, and may perhaps have been originally borrowed from the Pagan celebration of the rites of Cybele. When Christianity was young, and weak, and tender, and unsupported by erudition, dreadful mistakes and errors easily crept in: the heathen converts hearing much of Mater Dei, confounded her idea with that of their Mater Deorum; and we were shewn, among the rarities of Rome, a bronze Madonna, with a tower on her head, exactly as Cybele is represented.
That the jewels are taken out of this treasury and replaced with false stones, is a speech always said over fine things by the vulgar: I have heard the same thing affirmed of the diamonds at St. Denis; and can recollect the common people saying, when our King of England was crowned, that all the real precious stones were locked up, or sold for state expences; while the jewels shewn to them were only calculated to dazzle for the day. As there is always infinite falsehood in the world, so there is always wonderful care, however ill applied, to avoid being duped; a terror which hangs heavily over weak minds in particular, and frights them as far from truth on the one side, as credulity tempts them away from it on the other.
But we must visit the apothecary’s pots, painted by Raphael, and leave Loretto, to proceed along the side of this lovely sea, hearing the pilgrims sing most sweetly as they go along in troops towards the town, with now and then a female voice peculiarly distinguished from the rest: by this means a new image is presented to one’s mind; the sight of such figures too half alarm the fancy, and give an air of distance from England, which nothing has hitherto inspired half so strongly. This charming Adriatic gulph beside, though more than delicious to drive by, does not, like the Mediterranean, convey homeish or familiar ideas; one feels that it belongs exclusively to Venice; one knows that ancient Greece is on the opposite shore, and that with a quick sail one should soon see Macedonia; and descending but a little to the southward, visit Athens, Corinth, Sparta, Thebes—seats of philosophy, freedom, virtue; whence models of excellence and patterns of perfection have been drawn for twenty succeeding centuries!
Here are plenty of nightingales, but they do not sing as well as in Hertfordshire: birds gain in colour as you approach the tropic, but they lose in song; under the torrid zone I have heard they never sing at all; with us in England the latest leave off by midsummer, when the work of incubation goes forward, and the parental duties begin: the nightingale too chuses the coolest hour; and though I have yet heard her in Italy only early in the mornings, Virgil knew she sung in the night:
Flet noctem, &c.[23]
To hear birds it is however indispensably necessary that there should be high trees; and except in these parts of Italy, and those about Genoa and Sienna, no timber of any good growth can I find. The roccolo too, and other methods taken to catch small birds, which many delight in eating, and more in taking, lessen the quantity of natural music vexatiously enough; while gaudy insects ill supply their place, and sharpen their stings at pleasure when deprived of their greatest enemies. We are here less tormented than usual however, while the prospects are varied so that every look produces a new and beautiful landscape.
Ancona is a town perfectly agreeable to strangers, from the good humour with which every nation is received, and every religion patiently endured: something of all this the scholars say may be found in the derivation of its name, which being Greek I have nothing to do with. Pliny tells us its original, and says;
A Siculis condita est colonia Ancona[24].
That Dalmatia should be opposite, yet to us at present inaccessible, we all regret; I drank sea water however, so did not leave untasted the waves which Lucan speaks of:
Illic Dalmaticis obnoxia fluctibus Ancon[25].
The fine turbots did not any of them fall to our share; but here are good fish, and, to say true, every thing eatable as much in perfection as possible: I could never since I arrived at Turin find real cause of complaint—serious complaint I mean except at that savage-looking place called Radicofani; and some other petty town in Tuscany, near Sienna, where I eat too many eggs and grapes, because there was nothing else.
Nice accommodations must not be looked for, and need not be regretted, where so much amusement during the day gives one good disposition to sleep sound at night: the worst is, men and women, servants and masters, must often mess together; but if one frets about such things, it is better stay at home. The Italians like travelling in England no better than the English do travelling in Italy; whilst an exorbitant expence is incurred by the journey, not well repaid to them by the waiters white chitterlins, tambour waistcoats, and independent “No, Sir,” echoed round a well-furnished inn or tavern; which puts them but in the place of Socrates at the fair, who cried out—“How many things have these people gathered together that I do not want!”—A noble Florentine complained exceedingly to me once of the English hotels, where he was made to help pay for those good gold watches the fellows who attended him drew from their pockets; so he set up his quarters comically enough at the waggoners full Moon upon the old bridge at Bath, to be quit of the schiavitù, as he called it, of living like a gentleman, “where,” says he, “I am not known to be one.” The truth is, a continental nobleman can have little heart of a country, where, to be treated as a man of fashion, he must absolutely behave as such: his rank is ascertained at home, and people’s deportment to him regulated by long-established customs; nor can it be supposed flattering to its prejudices, to feel himself jostled in the street, or driven against upon the road by a rich trader, while he is contriving the cheapest method of going to look over his manufactory. Wealth diffused makes all men comfortable, and leaves no man splendid; gives every body two dishes, but nobody two hundred. Objects of show are therefore unfrequent in England, and a foreigner who travels through our country in search of positive sights, will, after much money spent, go home but poorly entertained:—“There is neither quaresima,” will he say, “nor carnovale in any sense of the word, among those insipid islanders.”—For he who does not love our government, and taste our manners which result from it, can never be delighted in England; while the inhabitants of our nation may always be amused in theirs, without any esteem of it at all.
I know not how Ancona produced all these tedious reflexions: it is a trading place, and a sea-port town. Men working in chains upon the new mole did not please me though, and their insensibility shocks one:—“Give a poor thief something, master,” says one impudent fellow;—“Son stato ladro padrone[26];”—with a grin. That such people should be corrupt or coarse however is no wonder; what surprised me most was, that when one of our company spoke of his conduct to a man of the town—“Why, what would you have, Sir?”—replies the person applied to—“when the poor creature is castigato, it is enough sure, no need to make him be melancholy too:”—and added with true Italian good-nature,—“Siamo tutti peccatori[27].”
The mole is a prodigious work indeed; a warm friend to Venice can scarce wish its speedy conclusion, as the useful and necessary parts of the project are already nearly accomplished, and it would be pity to seduce more commerce away from Venice, which has already lost so much.
The triumphal arch of Trajan, described by every traveller, and justly admired by all; white as his virtue, shining as his character, and durable as his fame; fixed our eyes a long time in admiration, and made us, while we examined the beautiful structure, recollect his incomparable qualities to whom it was dedicated,—“Inter Cæsares optimus[28],”—says one of their old writers: nor could either column or arch be so sure a proof that he was thought so, as the wish breathed at the inauguration of succeeding emperors; Sis tu felicior Augusto, melior Trajano[29].
If these Ancona men were not proud of themselves, one should hate them; descended as they are from those Syracusans liberated by Timoleon, who freed them first from the tyranny of Dionysius; fostered afterwards by Trajan, as peculiarly worth his notice; and patronised in succeeding times by the good Corsini Pope, Clement XII., whose care for them appears by the useful lazaretto he built, “to save,” said he, “our best subjects, our subjects of Ancona.”
But we are hastening forward as fast as our broken carriage will permit, to Padua, where we shall leave it: thither to arrive, we pass through Senegallia, built by the Gauls, and still retaining the Gaulish name, but now little remarkable. What struck me most was my own crossing the Rubicon in my way back to England, and our comfortable return to