"On Friday we all went again to the Vorder See, and then, taking a woodcutter as guide, scrambled on for two hours through woods and rocks to the Hinter See,[118] which is like a turquoise set in the mountains.
"We returned together to Ischl, and left in a carriage next day. At the end of St. Wolfgang Lake we engaged a boat and crossed to the curious old gothic church which contains the shrine of St. Wolfgang, and his rocky bed projecting through the pavement of a chapel, upon which the peasants throw kreutzers through a grating. We did not arrive at Salzburg till dark. What a fine old town it is!—but what most interested me was seeing here an old lady in black walking to church with a lady behind her. It was the Kaiserin Caroline, widow of the Emperor Francis I., grand-daughter-in-law of Maria Theresa, niece of Marie Antoinette, sister-in-law of Marie Louise!"
"Reichenhall, August 26.—From Salzburg we visited the mines of Hallein, into which we descended in full miner's costume—thick white trousers, smock-frock, cap, and a leathern apron behind. The guide gave us each a light, and marshalled us in single file through the narrow dark passages. On the summit of the first descent, we were all made to sit down upon our leathern aprons, to put our legs round each others' heads, hold a rope, and then slide off like a train into the dark abyss—alarming at first, and then very amusing. After three slides, we reached a black lake like the Styx, with lamps glittering like stars on faraway rocks. Here a boat moved by invisible hands came soundlessly gliding towards us: we stepped in, and in death-like silence, without oars or rowers, floated across the ghastly waters. On the opposite bank a wooden horse was waiting, on which we were made to sit, each behind the other, and, when we were mounted, rushed away with the speed of a whirlwind through the dark unearthly passages. At last, what looked like a twinkling star appeared in the distance, and it gradually increased till we emerged in open daylight. It is a most extraordinary expedition, but as the salt is all black, there is no beauty. We went on to Berchtesgaden and the Königsee and Obersee, but the wet weather only cleared enough to show us the beauties of the myrtle-green water."
It was a most wearisome journey then—two days of twelve hours in a carriage—to Innsbruck, where I parted with my companions. Hence a terrible long diligence journey of seventeen hours brought me to Botzen. The driver beguiled the way by telling me the history of his life—how when quite young he had given up smoking, and constantly put by all the money he should have spent on tobacco, in the hope of using it in revisiting Naples and the Island of Ischia, where he had been in boyhood as a soldier; but that two years before these designs had been cut short, because one day, when he returned with his diligence from Verona, he found his house burnt to the ground, and nothing saved except six silver spoons which his wife had carried off in her apron.
From Botzen I went to Meran and Trafoi, whence I walked across the Stelvio to the Baths of Bormio; but this part of the tour was not enjoyable, as my sufferings were always so great from bad weather, and hunger owing to want of money. Still less pleasant were the immense journeys afterwards by Finstermuntz and the Great Arlberg, along horrible roads and in wretched diligences, which, in these days of luxurious railway travelling, we should think perfectly unendurable. At Wesen, on the Lake of Wallenstadt, I had the happiest of meetings with my dear mother and her old servants, and vividly does the impression come back to me of the luxurious sense of rest in the first evening, and of freedom from discomfort, privation, and want.
We crossed the Bernardino to Locarno, where we were joined by mother's widowed niece, Mrs. Charles Stanley, and by her friend Miss Cole. There were many circumstances which made me see the whole of North Italy through jaundiced eyes at this time, so that Milan, Venice, and even beautiful Verona, became more associated in my mind with mental and bodily fatigue than with any pleasure. One of the happiest recollections which comes back to me is an excursion alone with my sweet mother to the old deserted convent of Chiaravalle near Milan, and the grave of the enthusiast Wilhelmina. At Venice we had much pleasure in sight-seeing with Miss Louisa Cole, and her cousins Mr. and Miss Warre, the latter of whom afterwards married Froude the historian.
At Padua we engaged two vetturino carriages, in one of which our companions travelled, and in the other my mother and I with our two old servants. The first day's journey, through the rich plain of the vintage in October, was very pleasant, meeting the immense wains and waggons laden with grapes, and the merry peasants, who delighted to give us large ripe bunches as we passed. But we had a perilous passage of the swollen Po, on which our carriage was embarked in a large boat, towed with ropes by numbers of men in smaller boats. In our long journey in our roomy excellent carriage—our home for about three weeks—we were provided with a perfect library of books, for my mother was quite of the opinion of Montaigne when he said, "Je ne voyage sans livres, n'y en paix, n'y en guerre. C'est la meilleure munition j'aye trouvé à cet humain voyage." So we studied the whole of Arnold, Gibbon, Ranke, and Milman at this time. The slower the mode of travel, the greater its variety. In the middle of the day the vetturini rested often in some picturesque town, where there were churches, convents, and pictures to sketch or visit; sometimes in quiet country inns, near which we wandered in country lanes, and collected the wild-flowers of the district. How vividly the recollections of these quiet weeks come back to me—of the charm of our studies and the weekly examination upon them: of the novel which my mother and I used afterwards to tell each other alternately, in which the good characters lived at a place called "Holmhurst," but somehow contrived to have always some link with the scenes through which we were travelling: of our early luncheon of bread and preserved apricots: of our arrival in the evenings at rooms which had always a wholesome barn-like smell, from the fresh straw under the carpets: of the children, who scampered along by the sides of the carriage calling out "Tà-tà"—as short for Carità: of my mother screaming at Ferrara as she ran away from a white spectral figure, with eyes gleaming out of holes in a peaked hood and rattling a money-box—a figure to which we became well accustomed afterwards as a Frate della Misericordia: of the great castle of Ferrara, whose picturesque outlines seemed so strangely familiar till I recollected where I had seen them—at the bottom of willow-patterned washing-basins.
Ravenna was at this time reached by a wearisome journey through marshy flats overgrown by a dark-berried plant much used in the making of dye: we afterwards imported it to Hurstmonceaux. The Stanleys, whom we seldom contradicted, had greatly opposed our going thither, so that our journey to Ravenna had the charm of eating forbidden fruit; but I was able to silence their angry reproaches afterwards for having "taken my mother into so unhealthy a climate" by finding in Gibbon the remark that Ravenna, though situated in the midst of fœtid marshes, possesses one of the most salubrious climates in Italy! My mother was even more enchanted with the wonderful old city than myself, especially with the peerage of martyrs in the long palm-bearing procession in the mosaics of S. Apollinare Nuovo, and with the exquisite and ever-varied loveliness of the Pineta.