It is but fifteen miles from Antwerp to Mechlin, or Malines, (as the people here, in the depths of their ignorance, insist upon calling it,) and as a representative of a nation whose sole criterion is success, and whose list of the cardinal virtues is headed by Prosperity, I felt that it would be a grievous sin of omission for me not to stop and visit that thriving old town. It did not require much time to walk through its nice, quiet streets, and look at the pictures and wood carvings in its venerable churches. The white-capped and bright-eyed lace-makers sat in windows and doorways, their busy fingers forming fabrics, the sight of which would kindle the fire of covetousness in any female heart. Three hours in Mechlin sufficed to make me about as well acquainted with it as if I had daily waked up its echoes with the creaking of my shoes, until their thick soles were worn out past all hope of tapping. Selecting one of the numerous railways that branch out from Mechlin, like the reins from the hand of a popular circus rider in his favourite "six-horse-act," the "Courier of St. Petersburg," I took a ticket for Brussels, and soon found myself spinning along over these fertile plains, whose joyous verdure I had not sufficient time to appreciate before I found myself in the capital of Belgium.
And what a charming place this city of lace and carpets is! Clean as a parlour, not a speck nor a stain to be seen any where, with less of Dutch stiffness and more of French ease, so that you do not feel so much like an intruder as in most other strange cities. Brussels is a kind of vestibule to Paris; its streets, its shops, its public edifices are all reflections in miniature of those of the French metropolis. It has long seemed to me so natural a preparation for the meridian splendours of Paris, that to go thither in any other way than through Brussels, is as if you should enter a saloon by a back window, rather than through the legitimate front door. In one respect I prefer Brussels to Paris; it is smaller, and your mind takes it all in at once. In the French capital, its very vastness bewilders you. You are in the condition of the gentleman whose wife was so fat that when he wished to embrace her, he was obliged to make two actions of the feat, and use a bit of chalk to insure the proper distribution of his caress. But in Brussels every thing is so harmoniously and compactly combined, that you can enjoy it all at once. How does one's mind treasure up his rambles through these fair streets and gay arcades, his leisurely walks on these spacious boulevards, or under the dense shade of this lovely park, his musings in this fine old church of Ste. Gudule, whose gorgeous windows symbolize the heavenly bow, and whose air of devotion is eloquent of the undying hope which abides within its consecrated precincts! How one looks back years after leaving Brussels, and conjures up, in his memory, its public monuments, from that exceedingly diminutive and peculiar statue near the Hôtel de Ville, which has pursued its useful and ornamental career for so many centuries, to the heroic equestrian figure of Godfrey of Bouillon, in the Place Royale! How vividly does one remember the old Gothic hall, which has remained unchanged during the many years that have passed since the Emperor Charles V. there laid down the burden of his power, and exchanged the throne for the cloister.
One of the most delightful recollections of my term of residence in Brussels, is of a bright summer day, when I made an excursion to the field of Waterloo. Some Englishmen have established a line of coaches for the purpose—real old fashioned coaches, with a driver and a guard, which latter functionary performed Yankee Doodle most admirably on his melodious horn as we rattled out of town. The roadside views cannot have changed much since the night when the pavement shook beneath the heavy artillery and thundering tramp of Wellington's army. The forest of Soignies (or, to use its poetical name, Arden) looked as it might have looked before it was immortalized by a Tacitus and a Shakspeare; and its fresh foliage was "dewy with Nature's tear-drops," over our two coach loads of pleasure-seekers, just as Byron describes it to have been over the "unreturning brave," who passed beneath it forty years ago. Our party was shown over the memorable field by an old English sergeant who was in the battle; a fine bluff old fellow, and a gentleman withal, who, though his head was white, had all the enthusiasm of a young soldier. It was the most interesting trip of the kind that I ever made, far surpassing my expectations, for the ground remains literally in statu quo ante bellum. No commissioners of highways have interfered with its historical boundaries. It remains, for the most part, under cultivation, as it was before it became famous, and the grain grows, perhaps, more luxuriantly for the chivalric blood once shed there. There they are, unchanged, those localities which seem to so many mere inventions of the historian, Mont St. Jean, the farm of La Haye Sainte, the château of Hougoumont, the orchard with its low brick wall, over which the chosen troops of France and England fought hand to hand, and the spot where the last great charge was made, and the spell which held Europe in awe of the name of Napoleon, and made that name his country's watchword, and the synonyme of victory, was broken forever. Perhaps I err in saying forever, for France is certainly not unmindful of that name even now. That showery afternoon, when the great conqueror saw his veterans, against whom scores of battle fields, and all the terrors of a Russian campaign, proved powerless, cut to pieces and dispersed by a superior force, to which the news of coming reënforcements gave new strength and courage,—that very afternoon a boy, without a thought of battles or their consequences, was playing in the quiet grounds of the château of Malmaison. If Napoleon could have looked forward forty years, if he could have foreseen the romantic career of that child, and followed him through thirty years of exile, imprisonment, and discouragement, until he saw him reëstablish the empire which was then overthrown, and place France on a higher pinnacle of power than she ever knew before, how comparatively insignificant would have seemed to him the consequences of that last desperate charge! If he could have seen that it was reserved to his nephew, the grandchild of his divorced but faithful Josephine, to avenge Waterloo by an alliance more fatal to England's prestige than any invasion could be, and that the armies which had that day borne such bloody witness to their unconquerable daring, would forty years later be united to resist the encroachments of the power which first checked him in his career of victory, he would have had something to think of during that gloomy night besides the sad events that had wrought such a fearful change in his condition.
I returned to Brussels in the afternoon, meditating on the scenes I had visited, and repeating the five stanzas of Childe Harold in which Byron has commemorated the battle of Waterloo. In the evening I read, with new pleasure, Thackeray's graphic Waterloo chapter in Vanity Fair, and dreamed all night of falling empires and "garments rolled in blood." And now I turn my face towards Italy.
GENOA AND FLORENCE
It is a happy day in every one's life when he commences his journey into Italy. That glorious land, "rich with the spoils of time" above all others, endeared to every heart possessing any sense of the beautiful in poetry and art, or of the heroic in history, rises up before him as it was wont to do in the days of his youth, when Childe Harold's glowing numbers gave a tone of enthusiasm to his every thought, and filled him with longings, for the realization of which he hardly dared to hope. For the time, the commonest actions of the traveller seem to catch something of the indescribable charm of the land to which he is journeying. The ticketing of luggage and the securing of a berth on board a steamer—occupations which are not ordinarily considered particularly agreeable—become invested with an attractiveness that makes him wonder how he could ever have found them irksome. If he approaches Italy by land from France or Switzerland, with what curiosity does he study the varied features of the Piedmontese landscape! He recognizes the fertile fields which he read about in Tacitus years ago, and endeavours to find in the strange dialect which he hears spoken in the brief stops of the diligence to change horses, something to remind him even faintly of the melodious tongue with whose accents Grisi and Bosio had long since made him familiar. Meanwhile his imagination is not idle, and his mind is filled with historical pictures drawn from the classical pages which he once found any thing but entertaining. Though he may be fresh from the cloudless atmosphere of fair Provence, he fancies that the sky is bluer and the air more pure than he ever saw before.
It is a great advantage to enter Italy from the sea. In this way you perceive more clearly the national characteristics, and enter at once into the Italian way of life. You avoid in this way that gradual change from one pure nationality to another, which is eminently unsatisfactory. You do not weary yourself with the mixed population and customs of those border towns which bear about the same relation to Italy that Boulogne, with its multitude of English residents, bears to France. It was my good fortune when I first visited Italy, years ago, to make the voyage from America direct to the proud city of Genoa. Fifty-five weary days passed away before the end of the voyage was reached. Twenty-six of those days were spent in battling with a terrible north-easter, before whose might many a better craft than the one I was in went down into the insatiable depths. My Italian anticipations kept me up through all the cheerlessness of that time. The stormy sky, the wet, the cold, and all the discomfort could not keep from my mind's eye the vineyards, palaces, churches, and majestic ruins which made up the Italy I had looked forward to from childhood. My first sight of that romantic land did somewhat shock, I must acknowledge, my preconceived notions. I was called on deck early one December morning to see the land which is associated in most minds with perpetual sunshine. Facing a biting, northerly blast, I saw the maritime range of the Alps covered with snow and looking as relentless as arctic icebergs. My disappointment was forgotten, however, two mornings after, when Genoa, wearing "the beauty of the morning," lay before our weather-beaten bark. It was something to remember to my dying day—that approach to the city of palaces. Surrounded by its amphitheatre of hills crested on every side with heavy fortifications, its palaces, and towers, and domes, and terraced gardens rising apparently from the very edge of that tideless sea, there sat Genoa, surpassing in its splendour the wildest imaginings of my youth. I shall never forget the thrill that ran through every fibre of my frame, when the sun rose above those embattled ridges, and poured his flood of saffron glory over the whole wonderful scene, and the bells from a hundred churches and convents rang out as cheerily as if the sunbeams made them musical, like the statue in the ancient fable, and there was no further need of bell ropes. The astonishment of Aladdin when he rubbed the lamp and saw the effects of that operation could not have equalled mine, when I saw Genoa put on the light and life of day like a garment. It was like a scene in a theatrical pageant, or one of the brilliant changes in a great firework, so instantaneous was the transition from the subdued light and calmness of early morning to the activity and golden light of day. All the discomfort of the eight preceding weeks was forgotten in the exultation of that moment. I had found the Italy of my young dreams, and my happiness was complete.
This time, however, I entered Italy from the north. I pass by clean, prosperous-looking Milan, with its elegant churches, and its white-coated Austrian soldiers standing guard in every public place. I have not a word of lament to utter at seeing a stranger force sustaining social order there. It is better that it should be sustained by a despotism far more cruel than that of Austria, than to become the prey of that sanguinary anarchy which is dignified in Europe with the name of republicanism. The most absolute of all absolute monarchies is to be preferred to the best government that could possibly be built upon such a foundation as Mazzini's stiletto. Far better is the severest military despotism than the irresponsible tyranny of those who deny the first principles of government and common morality, and who seem to consider assassination the chief of virtues and the most heroic of actions. I pass by that magnificent cathedral, with its thousands of pinnacles and shining statues piercing the clear atmosphere like the peaks of a stupendous iceberg, and its subterranean chapel, glittering with precious metals and jewels, where, in a crystal shrine, repose the relics of the great St. Charles, and the lamps of gold and silver burn unceasingly, and symbolize the shining virtues of the self-forgetful successor of St. Ambrose, and the glowing gratitude of the faithful Milanese for his devotion to the welfare of their forefathers.
I lingered among the attractions of Genoa for a few days. I enjoy not only those magnificent palaces with their spacious quadrangles, broad staircases, and sculptured façades, but those narrow, winding streets of which three quarters of the city are composed—so narrow indeed that a carriage never is seen in them, and a donkey, pannier-laden, after the manner of Ali Baba's faithful animal, compels you to keep very close to the buildings. Genoa is the very reverse of Philadelphia. Its streets are as narrow and crooked as those of Philadelphia are broad and straight. The Quaker City was always a wearisome place to me. Its rectangular avenues—so wide that they afford no protection from the wintry blast nor shelter from the canicular sunshine, and as interminable as a tale in a weekly newspaper—tire me out. They make me long for something more social and natural than their straight lines. Man is a gregarious animal. It is his nature to snuggify himself. But the Quaker affects a contempt for snugness, and includes Hogarth's line of beauty among the worldly vanities which his religion obliges him to shun. Every time I think of Philadelphia my disrespect for the science of geometry is increased, and I find myself more and more inclined to believe the most unkind things that Lord Macaulay can say about Mr. Penn, its founder. Cherishing such sentiments as these, is it wonderful that I find Genoa a pleasant city? I enjoy its gay port, its thronged market place, its sumptuous churches, with gilded vaults and panels, and checkered exteriors, its well-dressed people, from the bluff coachman, who laughed at my attempts to understand the Genoese dialect, to the devout feminines in their graceful white veils, which give the whole city a peculiarly festive and nuptial appearance: but it must be acknowledged, that the up-and-down-stairsy feature of the town is not grateful to my gouty feet.
I must not weary you, dear reader, with any attempts to describe the delightful four days' journey from Genoa to Florence, in a vettura. The Cornice road, with its steep cliffs or trim villas on one side, and the clear blue Mediterranean on the other,—those pleasant old towns, pervaded with an air of respectable antiquity, Chiavari, Sestri, Sarzana, Spezzia, with its beautiful gulf, whose waters looked so pure and calm that it was difficult to think that they could ever have swallowed poor Percy Shelley, and robbed English literature of one of its brightest ornaments,—Pietra Santa, Carrara, with its queer old church, its quarries, its doorsteps and window-sills of milk-white marble, and its throng of artists,—the little marble city of Massa Ducale, nestling among the mountains,—the vast groves of olives, whose ash-coloured leaves made noontide seem like twilight,—all these things would require a great expenditure of time and rhetoric, and therefore I will not even allude to them.