April 14th, 1830
Set off early to make up an arrear of churches. First to Santa Maria sopra Minerva, and lit upon the funeral of a cardinal (Bertazzoli), which I was obliged to see instead of Michael Angelo’s Christ. All the cardinals attended; the church hung with black and gold; guards, tapers, mob, &c. Then to the SS. Apostoli, Araceli (built where the Citadel stood, and is a corruption of Arx, but with a legend); a curious church enough, with some fine frescoes of Pintoriccio, and the Chapel of the Virgin with hundreds of ex voto’s hang round it, almost all wretched daubs of pictures, and principally representing accidents in gigs, carriages, or carts, broken heads or limbs. To Santa Anastasia, Santa Maria in Cosmedin, Santa Sabina. Santa Maria in Cosmedin, or the Bocca della Verità, built in and on the ruins of an old temple (di Pudicizia), is one of the best worth seeing in Rome; the columns, if freed from the modern church, would present as perfect a front as the temples in the Forum. To Monte Aventino to see the view of Rome and the Chapel of the Order of Malta, where Cardinal Zurla as Grand Prior has a most agreeable residence. The garden contains immense orange-trees and a very large palm. To San Gregorio to see the famous rival frescoes of Guido and Domenichino, which are much impaired. I began by liking Guido’s and ended by liking the other best. The view of the Palatine from this convent is magnificent. To San Gregorio and San Paolo, and saw the ruins, which must have belonged to the Coliseum, for the architecture is exactly similar, and they have every appearance of having been the Vivarium from their shape. To the Corsini Palace, containing one of the best collections of pictures, of which the finest are two portraits of cardinals by Raphael and Domenichino. The palace is very fine, and the villa joins it on the opposite hill of the Janiculum, but both are affected by the malaria. Then to the Vatican and saw all the frescoes and pictures; the collection of pictures is very small, but they are all masterpieces. To the gallery below to see the mosaics and the process of copying the great pictures. The coloured bits are numbered, and though there are not above six or seven colours, the sub-divisions of various shades amount to 18,000. This art is in a great degree mechanical, but requires ingenuity, attention, and some knowledge of painting. On the large pictures, such as those which are in St. Peter’s, several men are employed at the same time, but on the lesser only one. It is very tedious, requiring years to copy one of the largest size. All the pictures in St. Peter’s are in mosaic, except one, and they are at work on one which is to replace this single oil-piece. The studio appeared in good order, but there were only two men at work, as the Government spends very little money upon it at present. From one of the open galleries we (Morier and I) saw a thunderstorm, with gusts of wind, flashes of lightning, and rain. It was amazingly grand from that place as it swept over the city and made us ‘sharers in its fierce delight.’ Then to the Borghese Gardens, and back to one of those sunsets from the Pincian which will long be remembered among the smoke and fogs in which I am destined to live.
CHAPTER IX.
Lake of Albano — Velletri — Naples — Rapid Travelling in 1830 — A Trial at Naples — Deciphering Manuscripts — Ball at the Duchesse d’Eboli’s — Matteis’s Plot and Trial — Pompeii — Taking the Veil — Pausilippo — Baiæ — La Cava — Salerno — Pæstum — Lazaroni — Museum of Naples — Grotto del Cane — The Camaldoli — Herculaneum — Vesuvius — Sorrento — Miracle of St. Januarius — Astroni — Farewell to Naples.
Velletri, April 15th, 1830
Left Rome at nine o’clock this morning; at Albano procured an ancient rural cicerone, a boy, and two donkeys, and set out on the grand giro of the place. The road over the Campagna is agreeable, because the prospect roundabout is so fine, and the aqueducts stretching over the plain so grand. After climbing up to the Capuchin Convent, close to which are the remains of what is called Domitian’s Theatre, we came to the lake, which is beautiful, but does not look large, and still less as if it had ever threatened Rome with destruction. There is a road called the Upper Gallery, shaded by magnificent ilexes, which leads to the Villa Barberini, a delicious garden, once Clodius’s and afterwards part of Domitian’s Villa, containing many remains of former magnificence. This villa was probably the scene of the council described by Juvenal (Fourth Satire).
Misso proceres exire jubentur
Concilio, quos Albanam Dux magnus in arcem
Traxerat attonitos.
I could not make out that any excavations have ever been made here, though they would be certain of finding marbles. The road passes along the hill which overhangs the margin of the lake to Castel Gandolfo, and thence a path leads to the bottom, where are the Emissarium, the Nyphæum (called the Baths of Diana), and a beautiful view of the lake, Monte Albano, and its towns. There is nothing more curious than the Emissarium, built with a solidity which has defied the effect of time, for it has never required reparations, and performs its office still as it did more than 2,000 years ago (393 years before the Christian era). Nothing is so incomprehensible as the magnitude and grandeur of the works of the Republic before it had acquired power, territory, or population. The Romans built as if they had an instinctive prescience of future greatness, and not even the pressure of immediate danger could induce them to sacrifice solidity to haste. After wondering at their enterprise and industry we may go and admire their subsequent luxury in the Baths of Diana, as the place is called, but which is evidently a natural cave improved into a delicious retreat by some inhabitant of one of the villas above. We mounted the hill and went by another road (called the Lower Gallery, shaded by the finest ilexes, elms, and oaks, which ‘high over-arch’d embower,’ and where there is one ilex which twelve men can hardly embrace) to the Doria Villa, once Pompey’s and likewise Domitian’s, who included both Clodius’s and Pompey’s in his own. There are no remains here, but some arabesques in a sort of grotto, which I suspect are modern. All their villas command views of the Campagna, the sea, Rome, and the mountains. It is no wonder Hannibal was deeply mortified when he looked down on Rome from these hills (the hills at least close by called the Prati d’Annibale) at having twice just missed taking it. Poetry and history contribute alike to the interest of this beautiful scenery. We met an Englishman, a single bird who had lost his covey, and had procured a guide who could not understand what he said. He wanted to go to Albano, and the man was taking him to the Emissarium. We put him right, but his fury in mixed Italian, French, and English was exceedingly comical. It was unlucky that we met him at the top instead of the bottom of the hill.