LEAVING ITALY.
I have not been long in Italy, yet I have gone over a good share of its surface, and seen nearly all that I much desired to see, except Naples and its vicinity, with the Papal territory on the Perugia route from Rome to Florence. I should have liked more time in Genoa, Rome, Florence and Venice; but sight-seeing was never a passion with me, and I soon tire of wandering from ruin to ruin, church to church, and gallery to gallery. Yet when I stop gazing the next impulse is to move on; for if I have time to rest anywhere, why not at home? Hotel life among total strangers was never agreeable to me—(was it to any one?)—and I do not like that of Italy so well as I at first thought I should. The attendance is well enough, and as to food, I make a point of never quarreling with that I have; though meals far simpler than those served at the regular hotel dinners here would suit me much better. The charges in general are quite reasonable, though I have paid one or two absurd bills. It was at first right pleasant to lodge in what was once a palace, and I still deem a large, high, airy sleeping-room, such as we seldom have in American hotels, but are common here, a genuine luxury. But when with such rooms you have doors that don't shut so as to stay, windows that won't open, locks that won't hold, bolts that won't slide and fleas that won't—ah! won't they bite!—the case is somewhat altered. I should not like to end my days in Italy.
As to the People, if I shall seem to have spoken of them disparagingly, it has not been unkindly. I cherish an earnest desire for their well-being. They do not need flattery, and do not, as a body, deserve praise. Of what are sometimes called the "better classes" (though I believe they are here no better), I have seen little, and have not spoken specially. Of the great majority who, here, as everywhere, must exert themselves to live, whether by working, or begging, or petty swindling, I have seen something, and of these certain leading characteristics are quite unmistakable. An Italian Picture-Gallery seems to me a pretty fair type of the Italian mind and character. The habitual commingling of the awful with the paltry—the sacred and the sensual—Madonna and Circé—Christ on the Cross and Venus in the Bath—which is exhibited in all the Italian galleries, seems an expression of the National genius. Am I wrong in the feeling that the perpetual (and often execrable) representation of such awful scenes as the Crucifixion is calculated first to shock but ultimately to weaken the religious sentiment? Of the hundreds of pictures of the infant Jesus I have seen in Italy, there are not five which did not strike me as utterly unworthy of the subject, allowing that it ought to be represented at all. "Men of Athens!" said the straight-forward Paul, "I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious." I think the Italians, quite apart from what is essential to their creed, have this very failing, and that it exerts a debilitating influence on their National character. They need to be cured of it, as well as of the vices I have already indicated, in order that their magnificent country may resume its proper place among great and powerful Nations. I trust I am not warring on the faith of their Church, when I urge that "To do justice and judgment is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice"—that no man can be truly devout who is not strictly upright and manly—and that one living purpose of diffusive, practical well-doing, is more precious in the sight of Heaven, than the bones of all the dead Saints in Christendom.
Farewell, trampled, soul-crushed Italy!
XXXI.
SWITZERLAND.
Lucerne, July 12, 1851.
I left Milan at 5 o'clock, on the morning of the 10th, via Railroad to Como, at the foot of the Lake of like name, which we reached in an hour and a half, thence taking the Swiss Government Diligence for this place, via the pass of St. Gothard. Even before reaching Como (only some twenty miles from Milan), the spurs of the Alps had begun to gather around us, and the little Lake itself is completely embosomed by them. Barely skirting its southern border, we crossed the Swiss frontier and bade adieu to the Passport swindle for a season, crossed a ridge into the valley of Lake Lugano, which we skirted for two-thirds its length, crossing it by a fine stone bridge near its center. (All the Swiss lakes I have seen are very narrow for a good part of their length, of a greenish blue color, derived from the mountain snows, very irregular in their form, being shut in, narrowed and distorted by the bold cliffs which crowd them on one side or on both, often reducing them to a crooked strait, resembling the passage of the Highlands by the Hudson.) Threading the narrow streets of the pleasant village of Lugano, we struck boldly up the hill to the east, and over it into the valley of the little river Ticino, which we reached at Bellinzona, a smart town of some five to ten thousand inhabitants, and followed the river thence to its source in the eternal snows of Mount St. Gothard. All this is, I believe, in the Canton of Ticino, in which Italian is the common language, and of which Bellinzona is the chief town.
Although in Switzerland, shut in by steep mountains, often snow-crowned, which leave it an average width of less than half a mile, this valley is Italian in many of its natural characteristics. For two-thirds of its length, Wheat, Indian Corn and the Vine are the chief objects of attention, and every little patch of level ground, save the rocky bed of the impetuous mountain torrent, is laboriously, carefully cultivated. Such mere scraps of earth do not admit of efficient husbandry, but are made to produce liberally by dint of patient effort. I should judge that a peck of corn is about the average product of a day's work through all this region. There is some pasturage, mainly on the less abrupt declivities far up the mountains, but not one acre in fifty of the Canton yields aught but it may be a little fuel for the sustenance of man. Nature is here a rugged mother, exacting incessant toil of her children as the price of the most frugal subsistence; but under such skies, in the presence of so much magnificence, and in a land of equality and freedom, mere life is worth working for, and the condition is accepted with a hearty alacrity. Men and women work together, and almost equally, in the fields; and here, where the necessity is so palpably of Nature's creation, not Man's, the spectacle is far less revolting than on the fertile plains of Piedmont or Lombardy. The little patch of Wheat is so carefully reaped that scarcely a grain is left, and children bear the sheaves on their backs to the allotted shelter, while mothers and maidens are digging up the soil with the spade, and often pulling up the stubble with their hands, preparatory to another crop. Switzerland could not afford to be a Kingdom,—the expense of a Court and Royal Family would famish half her people. Yet everywhere are the signs of frugal thrift and homely content. I met only two beggars in that long day's ride through sterile Switzerland, while in a similar ride through the fertile plains of Italy I should have encountered hundreds, though there each day's labor produces as much as three days' do here. If the Swiss only could live at home, by the utmost industry and economy, I think they would very seldom be found elsewhere; but in truth the land has long been peopled to the extent of its capacity for subsisting, and the steady increase which their pure morals and simple habits ensure must drive off thousands in search of the bread of honest toil. Hence their presence elsewhere, in spite of their passionate attachment to their free native hills.
Most of the dwellings through all this region are built of stone—those of the poor very rudely, of the roughest boulders, commonly laid up with little or no mortar. The roofs are often of split stone. The houses of the more fortunate class are generally of hewn or at least tolerably square-edged stone, laid up in mortar, often plastered and whitened on the outside, so as to present a very neat appearance. Barns are few, and generally of stone also. The Vine is quite extensively cultivated, and often trained on a rude frame-work of stakes and poles, so as completely to cover the ground and forbid all other cultivation. Elsewhere it is trained to stakes—rarely to dwarf trees as in Italy. The Mulberry holds its ground for two-thirds of the way up the valley, giving out a little after the Vine and before Indian Corn does so. Wheat gives place to Rye about the same time, and the Potato, at first comparatively rare, becomes universal. As the Mulberry gives out the Chestnut comes in, and flourishes nobly for some ten or twenty miles about midway from Bellinzona to Airolo. I suspect, from the evident care taken of it, that its product is considerably relied on for food. Finally, as we gradually ascend, this also disappears, leaving Rye and the Potato to struggle a while longer, until at Airolo, at the foot of St. Gothard, where we stopped at 10 o'clock for the night, though the valley forks and is consequently of some width, there remain only a few slender potato-stalks, in shivering expectation of untimely frost, a patch or two of headless oats, with grass on the slopes, still tender and green from the lately sheltering snows, and a dwarfish hemlock clinging to the steep acclivities and hiding from the fierce winds in the deep ravines which run up the mountains. Snow is in sight on every side, and seems but a mile or so distant. Yet here are two petty villages and thirty or forty scattered dwellings, whose inhabitants keep as many small cows and goats as they can find grass for, and for the rest must live mainly by serving in the hotels, or as postillions, road-makers, &c. Yet no hand was held out to me in beggary at or around Airolo.