I have not been long in Italy, yet I have gone over a good share of its surface, and seen nearly all that I much desired to see, except Naples and its vicinity, with the Papal territory on the Perugia route from Rome to Florence. I should have liked more time in Genoa, Rome, Florence and Venice; but sight-seeing was never a passion with me, and I soon tire of wandering from ruin to ruin, church to church, and gallery to gallery. Yet when I stop gazing the next impulse is to move on; for if I have time to rest anywhere, why not at home? Hotel life among total strangers was never agreeable to me—(was it to any one?)—and I do not like that of Italy so well as I at first thought I should. The attendance is well enough, and as to food, I make a point of never quarreling with that I have; though meals far simpler than those served at the regular hotel dinners here would suit me much better. The charges in general are quite reasonable, though I have paid one or two absurd bills. It was at first right pleasant to lodge in what was once a palace, and I still deem a large, high, airy sleeping-room, such as we seldom have in American hotels, but are common here, a genuine luxury. But when with such rooms you have doors that don't shut so as to stay, windows that won't open, locks that won't hold, bolts that won't slide and fleas that won't—ah! won't they bite!—the case is somewhat altered. I should not like to end my days in Italy.
As to the People, if I shall seem to have spoken of them disparagingly, it has not been unkindly. I cherish an earnest desire for their well-being. They do not need flattery, and do not, as a body, deserve praise. Of what are sometimes called the "better classes" (though I believe they are here no better), I have seen little, and have not spoken specially. Of the great majority who, here, as everywhere, must exert themselves to live, whether by working, or begging, or petty swindling, I have seen something, and of these certain leading characteristics are quite unmistakable. An Italian Picture-Gallery seems to me a pretty fair type of the Italian mind and character. The habitual commingling of the awful with the paltry—the sacred and the sensual—Madonna and Circé—Christ on the Cross and Venus in the Bath—which is exhibited in all the Italian galleries, seems an expression of the National genius. Am I wrong in the feeling that the perpetual (and often execrable) representation of such awful scenes as the Crucifixion is calculated first to shock but ultimately to weaken the religious sentiment? Of the hundreds of pictures of the infant Jesus I have seen in Italy, there are not five which did not strike me as utterly unworthy of the subject, allowing that it ought to be represented at all. "Men of Athens!" said the straight-forward Paul, "I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious." I think the Italians, quite apart from what is essential to their creed, have this very failing, and that it exerts a debilitating influence on their National character. They need to be cured of it, as well as of the vices I have already indicated, in order that their magnificent country may resume its proper place among great and powerful Nations. I trust I am not warring on the faith of their Church, when I urge that "To do justice and judgment is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice"—that no man can be truly devout who is not strictly upright and manly—and that one living purpose of diffusive, practical well-doing, is more precious in the sight of Heaven, than the bones of all the dead Saints in Christendom.
Farewell, trampled, soul-crushed Italy!
XXXI.
SWITZERLAND.
Lucerne, July 12, 1851.
I left Milan at 5 o'clock, on the morning of the 10th, via Railroad to Como, at the foot of the Lake of like name, which we reached in an hour and a half, thence taking the Swiss Government Diligence for this place, via the pass of St. Gothard. Even before reaching Como (only some twenty miles from Milan), the spurs of the Alps had begun to gather around us, and the little Lake itself is completely embosomed by them. Barely skirting its southern border, we crossed the Swiss frontier and bade adieu to the Passport swindle for a season, crossed a ridge into the valley of Lake Lugano, which we skirted for two-thirds its length, crossing it by a fine stone bridge near its center. (All the Swiss lakes I have seen are very narrow for a good part of their length, of a greenish blue color, derived from the mountain snows, very irregular in their form, being shut in, narrowed and distorted by the bold cliffs which crowd them on one side or on both, often reducing them to a crooked strait, resembling the passage of the Highlands by the Hudson.) Threading the narrow streets of the pleasant village of Lugano, we struck boldly up the hill to the east, and over it into the valley of the little river Ticino, which we reached at Bellinzona, a smart town of some five to ten thousand inhabitants, and followed the river thence to its source in the eternal snows of Mount St. Gothard. All this is, I believe, in the Canton of Ticino, in which Italian is the common language, and of which Bellinzona is the chief town.