Assuming the third route to be the one chosen, there was Ferrara to pass, but not to stay at when Venice was almost in sight—Venice in 1600! to have been a witness of that would make it well worth while to have been dead for the past three hundred years. The essence of the change is best expressed in the words of Mr. L. P. Smith in his "Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton," when he speaks of it as "a shell on the shores of the Adriatic deserted by the wonderful organism that once inhabited it." Outward and visible signs of the vividness and breadth of its life were two in particular; the infinite variety and number of persons and nationalities that filled its streets with colour and contrast and a sense of new worlds and of mystery in the midst of commerce; and secondly, the Arsenal. In all Europe there was not such another organisation as the Arsenal; not one so completely prepared with everything that went to the fitting out of a fleet, and very few so well able to fit out an army. Villamont was shown twenty-five great galleasses and eighty-five galleys, all of them so new that they had not been out to sea. Probably, also, its managers were the greatest direct employers of labour in Christendom; 2880 is one of the more moderate estimates of those permanently at work, including the 200 old women always mending sails, a number increased to 700 at times; and all these employees were assured of a pension from the State when past work, an otherwise unheard-of custom then, in practice, at least. It had its place, too, in the tourist's mythology; one after another repeating the tale how when Henry III of France visited Venice, a galley was built and three cannon turned out while he was at dinner.
Yet Montaigne has something to say about Venice that cancels all the intervening years and changes, and brings him into touch with us. He went his way towards it with the highest expectations, explored it eagerly, recollected it with the keenest pleasure: yet at the end of his second day there his feeling was one of disappointment. It may be taken as characteristic that he alone should experience then what seems more appropriate to the present; more probably, other visitors shared it but were too much subject to convention to say so; or, perhaps, re-writing their experiences later at home, as they generally did, they record their later thought only, whereas Montaigne left his unrevised and unashamed. This explanation seems the more reasonable inasmuch as the causes of the feeling had already come into being. On the surface the sight rested satisfied, while the imagination remained as hungry as ever. In a country, France, for instance, the tourist always had a consciousness of towns and districts unseen, all of which had contributed to the past, for evidence of the existence of which the imagination looks, however unconsciously; but after two days in Venice, all that is important and visible may seem to have been seen; no suggestion of anything beyond, not even the ruins of a half-buried city, as at Rome. It is true it was clear then that the word "Venice" meant an Empire as well as a city, though by the time the tourist had reached the city, he had passed through the conquests, barring an island or two in the Levant which the Turks were in course of subtracting. Yet the third meaning of the name was as dim to him as both the second and the third are to most of us, that of the source of an Empire, the whole collection of islands in the lagoons, whose larger life had already been drained away into the central settlement, but where Venice and its history were equally discoverable—but not in two days.
Another similarity between Venice of old and of to-day lies in the fact that the gondoliers knew much better than the visitors whither the latter wanted to go and took them there, with, or against, orders; only with this difference, that then it was always to the house of the courtesan in whose pay he was.
When the tourist had released himself and was proceeding on his way to Rome there were the beacons dotted along the coast for him to notice, beacons for signalling the sighting of a Turk or corsair vessel from south to north in a few hours. Ravenna received little notice, Rimini less, but Ancona was kept in the memory by one of those rhymes characteristic of the contemporary guide-book.
Unus Deus, Una Roma,
Unus turris, in Cremona,
Una portus, in Ancona.
And then Loreto. Here it must be remembered, first of all, that it was unpardonable to ask for a meal before visiting the "Santa Casa." The town was little more than one long street, well fortified by reason of the treasure that the offerings represented. Bassompierre relates in his memoirs how he was invited to be one of the witnesses at the quarterly offering of the poor-box one Christmas; the contents amounted to 6000 crowns (in our money about £7500); this for one quarter only. Many men, and towns too, were represented by models of themselves in solid silver. As to which votive offerings Montaigne makes an assertion, unconfirmed by any one else but with this in its favour, that no tourist but himself gives any details concerning a valuable offering from himself made at Loreto. He says that the craftsmen refuse to take any payment for such articles beyond the cost of the materials. It seems incredible that a town which had been the resort of pilgrims for more than two centuries should not have become demoralised, but Montaigne adds that the officials refused tips, or received them unwillingly; and certainly no one complains of extortion.
If the tourist was lucky enough to see a shipload of pilgrims arriving from the farther coast of the Adriatic, it would be worth while to stay and watch, for as soon as Loreto came in sight they rose and cried out without ceasing from that moment until they reached the "Santa Casa," beseeching the Madonna to return to Fiume, where, once upon a time, so the tale ran, her house had stood. Leaving Loreto, not forgetting, of course, to wear the pilgrim's badge peculiar to the shrine—a leaden image of Our Lady surmounted by three porcupine quills fastened together with a silk thread, a tiny flag on each quill—leaving Loreto, then, a détour was often made to visit Assisi, joining the main road again at Spoleto. And so to Rome, where the new arrival, if a Roman Catholic, should first make his way to the Scale Sante to return thanks for his preservation during the past journey; where, too, at his departure, he should pray for assistance on the one to come.
It made considerable difference to his recollections of Rome what date it was within this period that he arrived. If at the beginning, he would have found St. Peter's half-finished and the interior in a state better suited to a pig-sty; and the rest of the city to match; the most confident Protestant would be gratified to find himself scandalised beyond expectation. By 1601 St. Peter's was practically in all its glory, the city unsurpassed in its care for the needy and sick, and of average morality. In the interval, too, the catacombs had been discovered, and though Bosio, the explorer of them, did not publish the results of his explorations till 1632 they became more accessible meanwhile; continuing, however, to be regarded as isolated "crypts." It was his book "Roma Sotterranea" that first caused them to be considered collectively; and it was under that name that Evelyn paid his visit to them in 1645, the first of these tourists to make anything that can be called an excursion among them. He entered through a burrow in a cornfield two miles from the city, so small that he had to crawl on his stomach for the first twenty paces. But the main feature of the Rome of 1600 was still its power. Not simply influence in the present as a result of power in the past, but the strength of age, middle-age, and youth existing in unison. To begin with, their reverence for Ancient Rome was greater than ours; an effect partly of their theory of history, partly of the narrower limits of their acquaintance with the materials of history. For the former cause, it was bound to be an axiom of history as long as the Bible remained authoritative as a statement of historical fact, that mankind had proceeded from good to bad, and from bad to worse, as time had advanced. And whatever, in the thought of the age, tended to shake this view, was held in check by the discoveries, in different, previously unexplored, parts of the world, of communities which seemed to be possessed at once of a higher morality and also of a more primitive civilisation, than the European. It is probably impossible for us to realise the alteration that the theory of evolution has introduced into current ideas about history.