JOURNEY
through
TRENT, INSPRUCK, MUNICK, and
SALTZSBURG, to VIENNA.
The Tyrolese Alps are not as beautiful as those of Savoy, though the river that runs between them is wider too; but that very circumstance takes from the horror which constitutes beauty in a rocky country, while a navigable stream and the passage of large floats convey ideas of commerce and social life, leaving little room for the solitary fancies produced, and the strokes of sublimity indelibly impressed, by the mountains of La Haute Morienne. The sight of a town where all the theological learning of Europe was once concentred, affords however much ground of mental amusement; while the sight of two nations, not naturally congenial, living happily together, as the Germans and Italians here do, is pleasing to all.
We saw the apartments of the Prince Bishop, but found few things worth remarking, except that in the pictures of Carlo Loti there is a shade of the Flemish school to be discerned, which was pretty as we are now hard upon the confines. Our sovereign here keeps his little menagerie in a mighty elegant style: the animals possess an insulated rock, surrounded by the Adige, and planted with every thing that can please them best; the wild, or more properly the predatory creatures, are confined, but in very spacious apartments; with each a handsome outlet for amusement: while such as are granivorous rove at pleasure over their domain, to which their master often comes in summer to eat ice at a banquetting house erected for him in the middle, whence a prospect of a peculiar nature is enjoyed; great beauty, much variety, and a very limited horizon, like some of the views about Bath.
At the death of one prince another is chosen, and government carried on as at Rome in miniature. We staid here two nights and one day, thought perpetually of Matlock and Ivy Bridge, and saw some rarities belonging to a man who shewed us a picture of our Saviour’s circumcision, and told us it was San Simeone, a baby who having gone through many strange operations and torments among some Jews who stole him from his parents, as the story goes here at Trent, they murdered him at last, and he became a saint and a martyr, to whom much devotion is paid at this place, though I fancy he was never heard of any where else.
The river soon after we left Trent contracted to a rapid and narrow torrent, such as dashes at the foot of the Alps in Savoy; the rocks grew more pointed, and the prospects gained in sublimity at every step; though the neatness of the culture, and quantity of vines, with the variegated colouring of the woods, continued to excite images more soft than formidable, less solemn than lovely. The barberry bushes bind every mountain round the middle as with a scarlet sash, and when we looked down upon them from a house situated as if in the place which the Frenchman seemed to have a notion of, when he thought the aerian travellers were gone au lieu ou les vents se forment, they looked wonderfully pretty. The cleanliness and comfort with which we are now lodged at every inn, evince our distance from France however, and even from Italy, where low cielings, clean windows, and warm rooms, are deemed pernicious to health, and destructive of true delight. Here however we find ourselves cruelly distressed for want of language, and must therefore depend on our eyes only, not our ears, for information concerning the golden house, or more properly the golden roof, long known to subsist at Inspruck. The story, as well as I can gather it, is this: That some man was reproached with spending more than he could afford, till some of his neighbours cried out, “Why he’ll roof his house with gold soon, but who shall pay the expence?”—“I will;” quoth the piqued German, and actually did gild his tiles. My heart tells me however, though my memory will not call up the particulars, that I have heard a tale very like this before now; but one is always listening to the same stories I think: At Rome, when they shew a fine head lightly sketched by Michael Angelo, they inform you how he left it on Raphael’s wall, after the manner of Apelles and Protogenes; it is called Testa di Ciambellaro, because he came disguised as a seller of ciambelle, or little biscuits, while Raphael’s scholars were painting at the Farnesini. At Milan, when they point out to you the extraordinary architecture of the church detto il Giardino, the roof of which is supported by geometrical dependance of one part upon another, without columns or piers, they tell how the architect ran away the moment it was finished, for fear its sudden fall might disgrace him. This tale was very familiar to me, I had heard it long ago related of a Welch bridge; but it is better only say what is true.
This is a sweetly situated town, and a rapid stream runs through it as at Trent; and it is no small comfort to find one’s self once more waited on by clean looking females, who make your bed, sweep your room, &c. while the pewters in the little neat kitchens, as one passes through, amaze me with their brightness, that I feel as if in a new world, it is so long since I have seen any metal but gold unencrusted by nastiness, and gold will not be dirty.
The clumsy churches here are more violently crowded with ornaments than I have found them yet; and for one crucifix or Madonna to be met with on Italian roads, here are at least forty; an ill carved and worse painted figure of a bleeding Saviour, large as life, meets one at every turn; and I feel glad when the odd devotion of the inhabitants hangs a clean shirt or laced waistcoat over it, or both. Another custom they have wholly new to me, that of keeping the real skeletons of their old nobles, or saints, or any one for whom they have peculiar veneration, male or female, in a large clean glass box or crystal case, placed horizontally, and dressed in fine scarlet and gold robes, the poor naked skull crowned with a coronet, and the feet peeping out below the petticoats. These melancholy objects adorn all their places of worship, being set on brackets by the wall inside, and remind me strangely of our old ballad of Death and the Lady;
Fair lady, lay your costly robes aside, &c.