September 26th.
Left Arona for Milan, a beautiful morning. We followed the lake, though no longer near its edge, but the road winding through a grove of fine chestnut-trees, and the blue water seen through the vistas made by their branches. Arrived at its extremity, at the turn of the road we quitted its shore, crossing the plain which here bounds it; with the view of its bright expanse, (Arona with its ruin, and Angera opposite,) now on our left, and behind us the splendid ridge of Monterosa. We rode along the flat till we entered a stunted oak wood, and issuing from it, were about to leave the Piedmontese frontier, and cross the Ticino (which at this spot issues from the lake), to Sesto Calende. The douaniers came to demand the passport, and retiring withal, spent half an hour in its examination, during which time we sate on our horses, looking at the lake, and the ferry, improperly called Pont Volant, approaching most leisurely—stared at ourselves by a dozen women, who pressed round us, some veiled by the elegant mantilla, and the poorer wearing the silver or pewter ornaments, ranged round the back of the head, which, being hollow and of the exact shape, look like a crown of spoons; all with the handsome faces and most undaunted dark eyes peculiar to their nation, and here I think also to their sex; for the men have an expression of effeminacy and the females of hardihood.
The passport returned and the flying bridge arrived, we led our horses on board, during which operation Fanny in gratitude pulled me off the plank into a foot and a half of water. The ferry-boat, unlike the last, was a barge, and had barriers; and during the crossing, which occupied three quarters of an hour, a stone-deaf man beat the flies off, and a blind one played the violin, and sang far from badly. They are friends, and find companionship convenient, each supplying to the other the sense wanting. They divided most amicably the money we gave them, and having paid our fare, and the buona mano, and then something more, under what pretext I forget, we landed through the water again, and now in Austria’s dominions. A soldier desired me to follow to the commissary, while D—— remained with the horses: so, obeying the mandate, I found him lodged at the end of a dirty street and top of a dark stair. He asked me fifty questions quite irrelevant, fidgeted exceedingly, because D——’s description was not down in the passport, and at last, Oh, Wisdom! desired me to dictate one, which he wrote down, and being “Middle height, grey eyes,” and otherwise as explicit, would suit four-fifths of her majesty’s subjects. He then made me a polite bow, said there was nothing to pay, and we went on again.
Sesto Calende and its environs enjoy a very indifferent reputation. I can say nothing of the honesty of its inhabitants, but a great deal of their incivility. Walking our horses through the town, the boys hooted us as usual, but arrived at the outskirts, they were joined and augmented by youths and men, till there were about thirty of these last following at a few paces behind us, and shouting with the whole force of their lungs. We bore it till it became insupportable, and at last turned the horses, who were excited by the noise, and fretting at being insulted, and I think perfectly understood they were to scatter the enemy, for they darted on them at full speed; Fanny, in particular, very warlike, with her small ears laid back, and her heels thrown up to make way. The road was clear in a second, and when our charge was executed and we quietly walked on, I suppose they returned to the town, as no one followed us farther. Between Sesto and Somma we crossed wild tracts of melancholy moor, and here and there a stunted copse. At Somma is the ancient and superb cypress tree, averred to have been a sapling in Julius Cæsar’s time, and certainly measuring twenty feet round its stem, and a hundred and twenty in height. For the sake of its green old age the road diverged from the straight line by Napoleon’s order. We passed on our right, and within the village, a castle belonging to the Visconti family, in which was born Teobaldo, who was archdeacon of Liege, and elected pope in 1271, when absent in the Holy Land in company of Edward the First of England, then Prince of Wales. When the news of his promotion reached him, he ascended the pulpit and pronounced a brilliant discourse, taking for text the two verses of the 137th Psalm:—
“If I forget thee, O Jerusalem! may my right hand forget her cunning.”
“If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.”
Arrived in Italy, Teobaldo, become Gregory the Tenth, exerted himself to promote a crusade, and to accomplish his end commenced by striving to reconcile Guelphs with Ghibellines, and to pacify Italy. It was he who first made the law, after his death revoked, and then again put in force, inclosing the cardinals in conclave after the decease of a pope, till they should have elected his successor, to prevent the papal chair from again remaining vacant through their tardiness, as it had done before his accession, two years and nine months. The founder of his family’s grandeur was Otho Visconti, born in 1208, created archbishop of Milan by Pope Urban the Fourth, in opposition to the La Torre, then chief of the Republic; but after long wars and various fortune, presented with the perpetual lordship of the Milanese territory by the people, weary of the cruelty and exertions of his descendant Napoleon, and profiting by his defeat to free themselves from the yoke of his family, substituting in its place that of the Visconti, whose sovereignty (with one brief interval) was destined to flourish during nearly two hundred years.
At Somma and Gallerate, which is the next town on our way, have been found many Roman antiquities, inscriptions, and medals, and also arms: for near Somma was fought the first great battle between Hannibal and Scipio, in which the latter was defeated; and previously that of Marcellus against the Insubrians. Gallerate takes its name, say the antiquarians, from the legion Gallerata, encamped there under the command of the consuls Marcellus and Cornelius. Beyond these we were in the vine and corn country; for the first is trained to climb the trees, oak or elm, planted in avenues for the purpose, dropping from one to the other in deep festoons,—a mode of cultivation which seems wise as well as ornamental, as it leaves a much larger portion of ground free for other produce. The plain is here bounded by no mountains, and the country interesting only as the vintage had begun; and the peasantry, proceeding to or returning from it, reproducing at every step the beautiful picture in the Louvre by Robert, who died so early and unhappily: the oxen drawing slowly along the heavy car, with its barrel laden with grapes; the men with red handkerchiefs tied round their black hair, and male and female with legs bare and bronzed by the climate, but with heads of surpassing beauty. I particularly noticed one girl who had the fair hair and dark eyes, so seldom united, and the very perfection of Grecian form: that French artists should reap benefit in studying such features beneath such skies is not extraordinary. We found little or no shade, for the road was bordered only by low hedges of acacia, now in flower, and our horses missed the bright streams and stone reservoirs by the road-side in Switzerland, and impatiently sought muddy water in ditches not yet dried since the rains. Suffering from thirst ourselves, D—— hailed some of the vintagers, and they brought us a quantity of grapes, to which those of France bear no comparison. Fanny turned her head to ask and receive her share, and in gratitude walked on with unusual gentleness, though with the reins on her neck, as I feared to drop any part of my burden. We passed henceforth through a succession of villages, boasting most savage inhabitants, exciting the wrath of D——, lately accustomed to the more civilized Swiss of the German cantons. Before one auberge stood a half drunken crowd, one of whom, as we went slowly by, seized a long pole to rush on me withal, and was with difficulty held back by two of his comrades; the rest laughed; and I, who had no expectation of an attack, (not thinking a lady’s habit would wake such animosity,) as mine enemy struggled hard, and I did not know how the contest might end, thought proper not to wait to see, and we rode away. I dislike their country churches,—begun with overweening pomp and left unfinished when the funds have failed—their domes and pillared façades unsuited to their situation among trees and cabins, and far less picturesque than those of Switzerland built on their green or craggy mounds, with pointed windows and spires of grey stone. We passed crosses innumerable, many bearing, in lieu of the Saviour’s figure, the sponge, nails, and spear, carved in wood; and small cemeteries, the recesses of the low walls which inclose them, gaudily painted in fresco with saints and martyrs. On a wall of a miserable inn near Milan, the village artist has depicted a Lord’s supper! We rode through the Cascina delle corde; or, as it is called, the Cascina del buon Jesu! a little to the right of which is seen the town of Busto, whose church was designed by Bramante. Of the seven old towers, formerly the refuge of a famous robber-band, there remains but one standing. Near Legnarello, on the shore of the little river Olona, is Parabiago, celebrated as the site of a battle fought in February, 1339, by Luchino, third son of Maffeo Visconti, against his cousin Lodvisio and a rebel army. His horse had been killed under him, and his casque broken, and himself bound to an oak tree, the blood gushing from his wounds; till, the tide of fortune changing, he was delivered by a party of Savoyards, and Lodvisio in his place taken captive. A wondrous apparition startled, it was said, both armies, and put a stop to the carnage. Saint Ambrose, who in the fourth century was archbishop of Milan, suddenly arose between the rebels and allies. That he should have left his grave to protect Luchino, would at least prove he interested himself in an unworthy subject: for Luchino’s only merit seems to have been courage. He advised and directed the murder of his brother Marco (the bravest and perhaps the best of this stirring family), when Azzo, the nephew of both, as the son of their elder brother, was lord of Milan. Marco had distinguished himself in the service of the Ghibelline party, and choosing that no political consideration should interfere with its welfare, he saw indignantly that his brother Galeazzo negotiated with the pope, and denounced his proceedings to Louis of Bavaria. Galeazzo, his son Azzo, and his brother, were in consequence arrested; but Marco was no sooner aware of what his imprudence had caused, than he repented of it, solicited their liberty of the emperor, with an earnestness not to be silenced; himself aided in supplying their ransom, and, unable to furnish the entire sum, consented to remain hostage till its completion.
Galeazzo died, and Azzo was in no haste to deliver his uncle; but Marco, confided to a portion of the emperor’s army, so won the hearts of the soldiers placed to guard him, that they named him their general. Heading them, he surprised and took possession of Lucca, sold it to Spinola to satisfy his soldiers with its price, and returned to Milan in July, the citizens who had rejoiced in his triumphs—the soldiers whom he preceded in danger—the peasants whose fields he had guarded—flocking forth to meet him.
His nephew Azzo, and his brother Luchino, invited him to a festival in their castle of Milan, and when the feasting was over and the night far advanced, and Marco was about to retire, Azzo requested his private hearing of a few words, and led him to an apartment, whose windows looked on the public square. As the door closed on them, hired assassins rushed on and strangled Marco, flinging his dishonoured remains forth where the people, impotent to avenge, might see it and shudder as they passed at the dark end of their warrior. Azzo died in his bed; and Luchino, having inherited his authority, persecuted all who had held place or power during his reign. His severity causing a conspiracy to deprive him of his lordship, and elevate in his stead his nephews, sons of his brother Stefano, he discovered the plot. The conspirators died by the gibbet, by torture and famine; his nephews were banished; but from that time the sombre disposition of Luchino grew still more severe, and his pale and menacing brow never unbent thenceforward. He had married twice; his second wife was Isabella of Fiesco, a lady of rare beauty but shameless conduct, on whose account he had exiled his nephew Galeazzo. Reconciled to her husband, Isabella, under pretext of devotion, craved permission to make a pilgrimage to Venice. A splendid flotilla was got ready on the river Po, and the fairest dames of Milan accompanied their liege lady. Ugolino of Gonzagua, son of the lord of Mantua, now found favour in her eyes. He detained her some time in his father’s states, and accompanied her to Venice, whither she repaired for the festival of the Ascension. On her return to Milan the details of this journey became whispered abroad, and the mutual accusations of the ladies of the court at last brought the tale to Luchino’s ear. He listened in silence, for he meditated a fearful revenge, and Isabella, ere she heard she was betrayed, read his knowledge and her own fate in his dark features; and resolving to forestall him in crime, mixed poison in his drink, and he died in the castle wherein he had murdered Marco.