VERONA,
Whither some sweet leave-taking verses have followed us, written by the facetious Abate Ravasi, a native of Rome, but for many years an inhabitant of Milan. His agreeable sonnet, every line ending with tutto, being upon a subject of general importance, would serve as a better specimen of his abilities than lines dictated only by partial friendship;—but I hear that is already circulated about the world, and printed in one of our magazines; to them let him trust his fame, they will pay my just debts.
We have now seen this enchanting spot in spring, summer, and autumn; nor could winter’s self render it undelightful, while uniting every charm, and gratifying every sense. Greek and Roman antiquities salute one at the gates; Gothic remains render each place of worship venerable: Nature in her holiday dress decks the environs, and society animates with intellectual fire the amiable inhabitants. Oh! were I to live here long, I should not only excuse, but applaud the Scaligers for straining probability, and neglecting higher praise, only to claim kindred with the Scalas of Verona. Improvisation at this place pleases me far better than it did in Tuscany. Our truly-learned Abate Lorenzi astonishes all who hear him, by repeating, not singing, a series of admirably just and well-digested thoughts, which he, and he alone, possesses the power of arranging suddenly as if by magic, and methodically as if by study, to rhymes the most melodious, and most varied; while the Abbé Bertola, of the university at Pavia, gives one pleasure by the same talent in a manner totally different, singing his unpremeditated strains to the accompaniment of a harpsichord, round which stand a little chorus of friends, who interpolate from time to time two lines of a well-known song, to which he pleasingly adapts his compositions, and goes on gracing the barren subject, and adorning it with every possible decoration of wit, and every desirable elegance of sentiment. Nothing can surely surpass the happy promptitude of his expression, unless it is the brilliancy of his genius.
We were in a large company last night, where a beautiful woman of quality came in dressed according to the present taste, with a gauze head-dress, adjusted turbanwise, and a heron’s feather; the neck wholly bare. Abate Bertola bid me look at her, and, recollecting himself a moment, made this Epigram improviso:
Volto e Crin hai di Sultana,
Perchè mai mi vien disdetto,
Sodducente Mussulmana
Di gittarti il Fazzoletto?
of which I can give no better imitation than the following:
While turban’d head and plumage high
A Sultaness proclaims my Cloe;
Thus tempted, tho’ no Turk, I’ll try
The handkerchief you scorn—to throw ye.
This is however a weak specimen of his powers, whose charming fables have so completely, in my mind, surpassed all that has ever been written in that way since La Fontaine. I am strongly tempted to give one little story out of his pretty book.
Una lucertoletta
Diceva al cocodrillo,
Oh quanto mi diletta
Di veder finalmente
Un della mia famiglia
Si grande e si potente!
Ho fatto mille miglia
Per venirvi a vedere,
Mentre tra noi si serba
Di voi memoria viva;
Benche fuggiam tra l’erba
E il sassoso sentiero:
In sen però non langue
L’onor del prisco sangue.
L’anfibio rè dormiva
A questi complimenti,
Pur sugli ultimi accenti
Dal sonno se riscosse
E dimandò chi fosse?
La parentela antica,
Il viaggio, la fatica,
Quella torno a dire,
Ed ei torne a dormire.
Lascia i grandi ed i potenti,
A sognar per parenti;
Puoi cortesi stimarli
Se dormon mentre parli.
Walking full many a weary mile
The lizard met the crocodile;
And thus began—how fat, how fair,
How finely guarded, Sir, you are!
’Tis really charming thus to see
One’s kindred in prosperity.
I’ve travell’d far to find your coast,
But sure the labour was not lost:
For you must think we don’t forget
Our loving cousin now so great;
And tho’ our humble habitations
Are such as suit our slender stations,
The honour of the lizard blood
Was never better understood.
Th’ amphibious prince, who slept content,
Ne’er listening to her compliment,
At this expression rais’d his head,
And—Pray who are you? cooly said;
The little creature now renew’d
Her history of toils subdu’d,
Her zeal to see her cousin’s face,
The glory of her ancient race;
But looking nearer, found my lord
Was fast asleep again—and snor’d.
Ne’er press upon a rich relation
Rais’d to the ranks of higher station;
Or if you will disturb your coz,
Be happy that he does but doze.
But I will not be seduced by the pleasure of praising my sweet friends at Verona, to lengthen this chapter with further panegyrics upon a place I leave with the truest tenderness, and with the sincerest regret; while the correspondence I hope long to maintain with the charming Contessa Mosconi, must compensate all it can for the loss of her agreeable Coterie, where my most delightful evenings have been spent; where so many topics of English literature have been discussed; where Lorenzi read Tasso to us of an afternoon, Bertola made verses, and the cavalier Pindemonte conversed; where the three Graces, as they are called, joined their sweet voices to sing when satiety of pleasure made us change our mode of being happy, and kept one from wishing ever to hear any thing else; while countess Carminati sung Bianchi’s duets with the only tenor fit to accompany a voice so touching, and a taste so refined. Verona! qui te viderit, et non amarit, says some old writer, I forget who, protinus amor perditissimo; is credo se ipsum non amat[47]. Indeed I never saw people live so pleasingly together as these do; the women apparently delighting in each other’s company, without mean rivalry, or envy of those accomplishments which are commonly bestowed by heaven with diversity enough for all to have their share. The world surely affords room for every body’s talents, would every body that possessed them but think so; and were malice and affectation once completely banished from cultivated society, Verona might be found in many places perhaps; she is now confined, I think, to the sweet state of Venice.
JOURNEY
through
TRENT, INSPRUCK, MUNICK, and
SALTZSBURG, to VIENNA.
The Tyrolese Alps are not as beautiful as those of Savoy, though the river that runs between them is wider too; but that very circumstance takes from the horror which constitutes beauty in a rocky country, while a navigable stream and the passage of large floats convey ideas of commerce and social life, leaving little room for the solitary fancies produced, and the strokes of sublimity indelibly impressed, by the mountains of La Haute Morienne. The sight of a town where all the theological learning of Europe was once concentred, affords however much ground of mental amusement; while the sight of two nations, not naturally congenial, living happily together, as the Germans and Italians here do, is pleasing to all.
We saw the apartments of the Prince Bishop, but found few things worth remarking, except that in the pictures of Carlo Loti there is a shade of the Flemish school to be discerned, which was pretty as we are now hard upon the confines. Our sovereign here keeps his little menagerie in a mighty elegant style: the animals possess an insulated rock, surrounded by the Adige, and planted with every thing that can please them best; the wild, or more properly the predatory creatures, are confined, but in very spacious apartments; with each a handsome outlet for amusement: while such as are granivorous rove at pleasure over their domain, to which their master often comes in summer to eat ice at a banquetting house erected for him in the middle, whence a prospect of a peculiar nature is enjoyed; great beauty, much variety, and a very limited horizon, like some of the views about Bath.
At the death of one prince another is chosen, and government carried on as at Rome in miniature. We staid here two nights and one day, thought perpetually of Matlock and Ivy Bridge, and saw some rarities belonging to a man who shewed us a picture of our Saviour’s circumcision, and told us it was San Simeone, a baby who having gone through many strange operations and torments among some Jews who stole him from his parents, as the story goes here at Trent, they murdered him at last, and he became a saint and a martyr, to whom much devotion is paid at this place, though I fancy he was never heard of any where else.
The river soon after we left Trent contracted to a rapid and narrow torrent, such as dashes at the foot of the Alps in Savoy; the rocks grew more pointed, and the prospects gained in sublimity at every step; though the neatness of the culture, and quantity of vines, with the variegated colouring of the woods, continued to excite images more soft than formidable, less solemn than lovely. The barberry bushes bind every mountain round the middle as with a scarlet sash, and when we looked down upon them from a house situated as if in the place which the Frenchman seemed to have a notion of, when he thought the aerian travellers were gone au lieu ou les vents se forment, they looked wonderfully pretty. The cleanliness and comfort with which we are now lodged at every inn, evince our distance from France however, and even from Italy, where low cielings, clean windows, and warm rooms, are deemed pernicious to health, and destructive of true delight. Here however we find ourselves cruelly distressed for want of language, and must therefore depend on our eyes only, not our ears, for information concerning the golden house, or more properly the golden roof, long known to subsist at Inspruck. The story, as well as I can gather it, is this: That some man was reproached with spending more than he could afford, till some of his neighbours cried out, “Why he’ll roof his house with gold soon, but who shall pay the expence?”—“I will;” quoth the piqued German, and actually did gild his tiles. My heart tells me however, though my memory will not call up the particulars, that I have heard a tale very like this before now; but one is always listening to the same stories I think: At Rome, when they shew a fine head lightly sketched by Michael Angelo, they inform you how he left it on Raphael’s wall, after the manner of Apelles and Protogenes; it is called Testa di Ciambellaro, because he came disguised as a seller of ciambelle, or little biscuits, while Raphael’s scholars were painting at the Farnesini. At Milan, when they point out to you the extraordinary architecture of the church detto il Giardino, the roof of which is supported by geometrical dependance of one part upon another, without columns or piers, they tell how the architect ran away the moment it was finished, for fear its sudden fall might disgrace him. This tale was very familiar to me, I had heard it long ago related of a Welch bridge; but it is better only say what is true.
This is a sweetly situated town, and a rapid stream runs through it as at Trent; and it is no small comfort to find one’s self once more waited on by clean looking females, who make your bed, sweep your room, &c. while the pewters in the little neat kitchens, as one passes through, amaze me with their brightness, that I feel as if in a new world, it is so long since I have seen any metal but gold unencrusted by nastiness, and gold will not be dirty.
The clumsy churches here are more violently crowded with ornaments than I have found them yet; and for one crucifix or Madonna to be met with on Italian roads, here are at least forty; an ill carved and worse painted figure of a bleeding Saviour, large as life, meets one at every turn; and I feel glad when the odd devotion of the inhabitants hangs a clean shirt or laced waistcoat over it, or both. Another custom they have wholly new to me, that of keeping the real skeletons of their old nobles, or saints, or any one for whom they have peculiar veneration, male or female, in a large clean glass box or crystal case, placed horizontally, and dressed in fine scarlet and gold robes, the poor naked skull crowned with a coronet, and the feet peeping out below the petticoats. These melancholy objects adorn all their places of worship, being set on brackets by the wall inside, and remind me strangely of our old ballad of Death and the Lady;
Fair lady, lay your costly robes aside, &c.
No body ever mentions that Inspruck is subject to fires, and I wonder at it, as the roofs are all wood cut tile-ways; and heavily pensile, like our barns in England, for the snow to roll off the easier.
Well! we are far removed indeed from Italian architecture, Italian sculpture, and Italian manners; but here are twenty-eight old kings, or keysers, as our German friends call them, large as life, and of good solid bronze, curiously worked to imitate lace, embroidery, &c. standing in two rows, very extraordinarily, up one of their churches. I have not seen more frowning visages or finer dresses for a long time; and here is a warm feel as one passes by the houses, even in the street, from the heat of the stoves, which most ingeniously conceal from one’s view that most cheerful of all sights in cold weather, a good fire. This seems a very unnecessary device, and the heated porcelain is apt to make one’s head ache beside; all for the sake of this cunning contrivance, to make one enjoy the effect of fire without seeing the cause.
The women that run about the town, mean time, take the nearest way to be warm, wrapping themselves up in cloth clothes, like so many fishermen at the mouth of the Humber, and wear a sort of rug cap grossly unbecoming. But too great an attention to convenience disgusts as surely as too little; and while a Venetian wench apparently seeks only to captivate the contrary sex, these German girls as plainly proclaim their resolution not to sacrifice a grain of personal comfort for the pleasure of pleasing all the men alive.
How truly hateful are extremes of every thing each day’s experience convinces; from superstition and infidelity, down to the Fribble and the Brute, one’s heart abhors the folly of reversing wrong to look for right, which lives only in the middle way; and Solomon, the wisest man of any age or nation, places the sovereign good in mediocrity of every thing, moral, political, and religious.
With this good axiom of nequid nimis[48] in our mouths and minds, we should not perhaps have driven so very hard; but a less effort would have detained us longer from the finest object I almost ever saw; the sun rising between six and seven o’clock upon the plains of Munich, and discovering to our soothed sight a lovely champain country, such as might be called a flat I fear, by those who were not like us accustomed to a hilly one; but after four-and-twenty hours passed among the Alps, I feel sincerely rejoiced to quit the clouds and get upon a level with human creatures, leaving the goats and chamois to delight as they do in bounding from rock to rock, with an agility that amazes one.
Our weather continuing particularly fine, it was curious to watch one picturesque beauty changing for another as we drove along; for no sooner were the rich vineyards and small inclosures left behind, than large pasture lands filled with feeding or reposing cattle, cows, oxen, horses, fifty in a field perhaps, presented to our eyes an object they had not contemplated for two years before, and revived ideas of England, which had long lain buried under Italian fertility.
Instead of lying down to rest, having heard we had friends at the same inn, we ran with them to see the picture gallery, more for the sake of doing again what we had once done before at Paris with the same agreeable company, than with any hope of entertainment, which however upon trial was found by no means deficient. Had there been no more than the glow of colouring which results from the sight of so many Flemish pictures at once, it must have struck one forcibly; but the murder of the Innocents by Rubens, a great performance, gave me an opportunity of observing the different ways by which that great master, Guido Rheni, and Le Brun, lay hold of the human heart. The difference does not however appear to me inspired at all by what we term national character; for the inhabitants of Germany are reckoned slow to anger, and of phlegmatic dispositions, while a Frenchman is accounted light and airy in his ideas, an Italian fiery and revengeful. Yet Rubens’s principal figure follows the ruffian who has seized her child, and with a countenance at once exciting and expressive of horror, endeavours, and almost arrives at tearing both his eyes out. One actually sees the fellow struggling between his efforts to hold the infant fast, and yet rid himself of the mother, while blood and anguish apparently follow the impression her nails are making in the tenderest parts of his face. Guido, on the contrary, in one of the churches at Bologna, exhibits a beautiful young creature of no mean rank, elegant in her affliction, and lovely in her distress, sitting with folded arms upon the fore-ground, contemplating the cold corpse of her murdered baby; his nurse wringing her hands beside them, while crowds of distracted parents fill the perspective, and the executioners themselves appear to pay unwilling obedience to their inhuman king, who is seen animating them himself from the top of a distant tower.—Le Brun mean time, with more imagination and sublimity than either, makes even brute animals seem sensible, and shudder at a scene so dreadful; while the very horses who should bear the cruel prince over the theatre of his crimes, snort and tremble, and turning away with uncontrollable fury, refuse by trampling in their blood to violate such injured innocence!—Enough of this.
The patient German is seen in all they shew us, from the painting of Brughuel to the music of Haydn. A friend here who speaks good Italian shewed us a collection of rarities, among which was a picture formed of butterflies wings; and a set of boxes one within another, till my eyes were tired with trying to discern, and the patience of my companions was wearied with counting them, when the number passed seventy-three: this amusement has at least the grace of novelty to recommend it. I had not formed to myself an idea of such unmeaning, such tasteless, yet truly elaborate nicety of workmanship, as may be found in the Elector’s chapel, where every relic reposes in some frame, enamelled and adorned with a minuteness of attention and delicacy of manual operation that astonishes. The prodigious quantity of these gold or ivory figures, finished so as to require a man’s whole life to each of them, are of immense value in their way at least, and fill one’s mind with a sort of petty and frivolous wonder totally unexperienced till now, bringing to one’s recollection every hour Pope’s famous line—
Lo! what huge heaps of littleness around!
The contrast between this chapel and Cappella Borghese never left my fancy for a moment: but if the cost of these curious trifles caused my continued surprise, how was that surprise increased by observing the bed-chamber of the Elector; where they told us that no less than one hundred thousand pounds sterling were buried under loads of gold tissue, red velvet, and old-fashioned carved work, without the merit even of an attempt towards elegance or taste?
Nimphenbourg palace and gardens reminded me of English gardening forty years ago, while—
Grove nods at grove, each alley has a brother,
And half the platform just reflects the other.
I do think I can recollect going with my parents and friends to see Lord Royston’s seat at Wrest, when we lived in Hertfordshire, in the year 1750; and it was just such a place as Nimphenbourg is at this day. Now for some just praise: every thing is kept so neat here, so clean, so sweet, so comfortably nice, that it is a real pleasure somehow either to go out in this town or stay at home: the public baths are delicious; the private rooms with boarded floors, all swept, and brushed, and dusted, that not a cobweb can be seen in Munich, except one kept for a rarity, with the Virgin and Child worked in it, and wrought to such an unrivalled pitch of delicate fineness, that till we held it up to the light no naked eye could discern the figures it contained, till a microscope soon discovered the skill and patience requisite to its production;—great pains indeed, and little effect! We have left the country where things were exactly the reverse,—great effect, and little pains! But it is the same in every thing.
The women’s scrupulous attention to keep their persons clear from dirt, makes their faces look doubly fair; their complexions have quite a lustre upon them, like some of our wenches in the West of England, whose transparent skins shew, by the motion of the blood beneath, an illuminated countenance that stands in the place of eye-language, and betrays the sentiments of the innocent heart with uncontrolable sincerity. These girls however will not be found to attract or retain lovers, like an Italian, whose black eyes and white teeth (though their possessor thinks no more of cleaning the last-named beauty than the first) tell her mind clearly, and with little pains again produce certain and strong effect. Our stiff gold-stuff cap here too, as round, as hard, and as heavy as an old Japan China bason, and not very unlike one, is by no means favourable to the face, as it is clapped close round the head, the hair combed all smooth out of sight, and a plaited border of lace to it made firm with double-sprigged wire; giving its wearer all the hardness and prim look of a Quaker, without that idea of simplicity which in their dress compensates for the absence of every ornament.
The gentlemen’s maniere de s’ajuster is to me equally striking: an old nobleman who takes delight in shewing us the glories of his little court (where I have a notion he himself holds some honourable office) came to dine with us yesterday in a dressed coat of fine, clean, white broad-cloth, laced all down with gold, and lined with crimson sattin, of which likewise the waistcoat was made, and laced about with a narrower lace, but pretty broad too; so that I thought I saw the very coat my father went in to the old king’s birth-day five and thirty years ago. There is more stateliness too and ceremonious manners in the conversation of this gentleman, and the friends he introduced us to, than I have of late been accustomed to; and they fatigue one with long, dry, uninteresting narratives. The innkeepers are honest, but inflexible; the servants silent and sullen; the postillions slow and inattentive; and every thing exhibits the reverse of what we have left behind.
The treasures of this little Elector are prodigious, his jewels superb; the Electress’s pearls are superior in size and regularity to those at Loretto, but that distinguished by the name of the “Pearl of the Palatinate” is surely incomparable, and, as such, always carried to the election of a new Emperor, when each brings his finest possession in his hand, like the Princess of Babylon’s wooers,—which was perhaps meant by Voltaire as a joke upon the custom. This pearl is about the bigness and shape of a very fine filberd, the upper part or cap of it jet black, smooth and perfectly beautiful; it is unique in the known world.
Our Prince’s dinner here is announced by the sound of drums and trumpets, and he has always a concert playing while he dines: pomp is at this place indeed so artfully substituted instead of general consequence, that while one remains here one scarcely feels aware how little any one but his own courtiers can be thinking about the Elector of Bavaria; but ceremony is of most use where there is least importance, and glitter best hides the want of solidity.
From Munich to Saltzbourg nothing can exceed the beauties of the country; whole woods, and we may say forests, of ever-green timber, keep all idea of winter kindly at a distance: the road lies through these elegantly-varied thickets, which sometimes are formed of cedars, often of foxtailed pines, while a pale larch sometimes, and gloomy cypress, hinder the verdure from being too monotonous; here are likewise mingled among them some oak and beech of a majestic size. Nor do our prospects want that dignity which mountains alone can bestow; those which separate Bavaria from Hungary are high, and of considerable extent; a long range they are of bulky fortifications, behind which I am informed the country is far coarser than here.
The cathedral at Saltzbourg is modern, built upon the model of St. Peter’s at Rome, but on a small scale: one now sees how few the defects are of that astonishing pile, though brought close to one’s eye, by being stript of the awful magnitude that kept examination at a distance. The musical bells remind me of those at Bath, and every thing here seems, as at Bath, the work of this present century; but there is a Benedictine convent seated on the top of a hill above the town, of exceeding antiquity, founded before the conquest of England by William the Norman; under which lie its founder and protectors, the old Dukes of Bavaria; which they are happy to shew travellers, with the registered account of their young Prince Adam, who came over to our island with William, and gained a settlement: they were pleased when I proved to them, that his blood was not yet wholly extinct among us.
A fever hindered us here from looking at the salt-works, from which the city takes its name: but the water-works at Heelbrun pleased us for a moment; and I never saw beavers live so happily as with the Archbishop of Saltzbourg, who suffers, and even encourages, his tame ones to dig, and build, and amuse themselves their own way: he has fish too which eat out of his hand, and are not carp, but I do not know what they are; my want of language distracts me. These German streams appear to us particularly pellucid, and, by what I can gather from the people, this water never freezes. The taste of gardening seems just what ours was in England before Stowe was planned, and they divert you now with puppets moved by concealed machinery, as I recollect their doing at places round London, called the Spaniard at Hampstead and Don Saltero’s at Chelsea.
The Prince Archbishop’s income is from three to four hundred thousand a year I understand, and he spends it among his subjects, who half adore him. His chief delight is in brute animals they tell me, particularly horses, which engross so much of his attention that he keeps one hundred and seventeen for his own private and personal use, of various merits, beauties, and pedigrees; never surely was so elegant, so capital a stud! And he is singularly fond of a breed of fine silky-haired English setting-dogs, red and white, and very high upon their legs.
The country which carried us forward to Vienna is eminently fine, and fine in a way that is now once more grown new to me; no hedges here, no small inclosures at all; but rich land, lying like as in Dorsetshire, divided into arable and pasture grounds, clumped about with woods of ever-green. Such is the genius of this sovereign for English manners and English agriculture, that no conversation is said to be more welcome at his court than what relates to the sports or profits of the field in Britain; to which accounts he listens with good-humoured earnestness, and talks of a fine scenting day with the true taste of an English country gentleman.
On this day I first saw the Danube at Lintz, where, though but just burst from the spring, it is already so deep and strong that scarcely any wooden bridge is capable to resist it, and accordingly it did a few months ago overwhelm many cottages and fields, among which we passed. The inhabitants here call it Donaw from its swiftness; and it deserves beside, any name expressive of that singular purity which distinguishes the German torrents.
The rivers of France, Italy, and England, give one no idea of that elemental perfection found in the fluids here; not a pebble, not a fish in these translucent streams, but may be discerned to a depth of twelve feet. As the water in Germany, so is the atmosphere in Italy, a medium so little obstructed by vapour I remember, that Vesuvius looked as near to Naples, from our window, as does lord Lisburne’s park from the little town of Exmouth opposite, a distance of about five miles I believe, and the other is near ten. Let me add, that this peculiarity brings every object forward with a certain degree of hardness not wholly pleasing to the eye. The prospects round Naples have another fault, resulting from too great perfection: the sky’s brilliant uniformity, and utter cloudlessness for many months together, takes away those broad masses of light and shade, with the volant shadows that cross our British hills, relieving the sight, and discriminating the landscape.
The scenery round Conway Castle in North Wales, with a thunder-storm rolling over the mountain; the sea strongly illuminated on one side, with the sun shining bright upon the verdure on the other; the lights dropping in patches about one; exhibits a variety, the which to equal will be very difficult, let us travel as far as we please.
Magnificence of a far different kind however claims our present attention—a convent and church shewn us at Molcke upon our way, the residence of eighteen friars who inhabit a stately palace it is confessed, while three immense courts precede your entrance to a splendid structure of enormous size, on which the finery bestowed amazed even me, who came from Rome; nor had entertained an idea of seeing such gilding, and carving, and profusion of expence, lavished on a place of religious retirement in our road to