"A traveller passing through Genoa, and visiting the churches, particularly on a feast-day, would fancy that the Genoese, or, indeed, the Catholics in Sardinia generally, are the most devoted Catholics in Italy. Many have gone away with that impression. The reason is this. All who attend the churches in Genoa do so from choice,—from religious motives; and even feel, in these days of heresy, that they are wearing the martyr's crown,—standing firmly for the true Church, while all without are scoffers; whereas in the Tuscan, Roman, and Neapolitan States, people attend church from compulsion. If they are not in church on certain days, and at mass, they are immediately suspected. I believe the male population of Italy is one moving mass of infidelity. Sardinia is professedly so. In Genoa not one young man in a hundred attends church. If you see him there, it is to select a pretty woman for his own purposes. Morality is at a very low ebb,—lower far than you can have any idea of. Every man is sighing after his neighbour's wife; and he confesses it, and talks as gallantly of his conquest as if he had fought on the heights of Alma. A stranger walking the streets in the evening would not suppose this, for he would not be attacked, as in a town in Britain; but they have their dens, and licensed ones too. Shocking as it may appear, these houses are regularly licensed by the Government; and medical men visit them once every week for sanitary purposes. The defilement of the marriage-bed is little or nothing thought of. Marriage here is generally a money speculation, and is very frequently brought about through means of regular brokers or agents, who receive a per centage on the bride's dowry. A woman without a pretty good dowry has very little chance of a husband, unless she is young and very pretty, and willing to accept an old man. There are very few women in Geymonat's congregation. The converts are nearly all men."
While we rejoice in the spread of the light, we cannot but marvel at the mysterious connection which may be traced between the first and the second reformations in Italy, as regards the spots where this divine illumination is now breaking out. We have already adverted to the progress of the Gospel in the sixteenth century in so many of the cities of Italy, and the long roll of confessors and martyrs which every class of her citizens contributed to furnish. Not only did these men, in their prisons and at their stakes, sow the seeds of a future harvest, but they appear to have earned for the towns in which they lived, and the families from which they were sprung, a hereditary right, as it were, to be foremost in confessing that cause at every subsequent era of its revival. We cannot mark but with a feeling of heartfelt gratitude to God, in whose sight the death of his saints is precious, and who, by the eternal laws of his providence, has ordained that the example of the martyr shall prove more powerful and more lasting than that of the persecutor, that on the self-same spots where these men died of old, the same mighty movement has again broken out. And not only are the same cities of Turin, and Milan, and Venice, and Genoa, and Florence, figuring in this second reformation of Italy, but the same families and the same names from which God chose his martyrs in Italy three centuries ago are again coming forward, and offering themselves to the dungeon, and the galleys, and the scaffold, in the cause of the Gospel. Does not this finely illustrate the indestructible nature of truth, which enables it to survive a long period of dormancy and of apparent death, and to flourish anew from what seemingly was its tomb? And does it not also shed a beautiful light upon the order of the providence of God, whereby he remembers and revisits the seed of the righteous man, and keeps his mercy to a thousand generations of them that fear Him?
On Wednesday the 6th of November, after a stay of well-nigh a week in Florence, I took my departure by rail for Pisa. The weather was still wild and wintry, and the Apennines were white with snow to almost their bottom. The railway runs along the valley, close to the Arno, which, swollen with the rains, had flooded the vineyards and meadows in many places. A truly Italian vale is that of the Arno, whose silvery stream in ordinary times is seen winding and glistening amid the olives and the chestnut groves which border its course. When evening came, a deep spiritual beauty pervaded the region. As we swept along, many a romantic hill rose beside our path, with its clustering village, its mantling vines, and its robe of purple shadows; and many a long withdrawing ravine opened on the right and left, with its stream, and its crags, and its olives, and its castles. What would we have given for but a minute's pause, to admire the finer points! But the engine held its onward way, as if its course had been amidst the most indifferent scenery in the world. It made amends, however, for the enchanting views which it swept into oblivion behind, by perpetually opening in front others as lovely and fascinating. The twilight had set, and the moon was shining brightly, when we reached the station at Pisa.
The Austrian soldier who kept the gate challenged me as I passed, but I paid no attention, and hurried on. Had he secured my passport, I would infallibly have been detained a whole day. I traversed the long winding streets of the decaying town, crossed the Arno, on which the city stands, and, coming out on the other side of Pisa, found myself in presence of its fine ecclesiastical buildings. A moon nearly full, which seemed to veil while it in reality heightened their beauty, enabled me to see these venerable edifices to advantage. The hanging tower is a beautiful pile of white marble; the Cathedral is one of the most chastely elegant specimens of architecture in all Italy; the baptistry, too peculiar to be classic, is, nevertheless, a tasteful and elegant design. Having surveyed these lovely creations of the wealth and genius of a past age, I returned in time to take my seat in the last train for Leghorn.
The country betwixt Pisa and the coast is perfectly flat, and the flooded Arno had converted it into a sea. I could see nothing around me but a watery waste, above which the railway rose but a few inches. I felt as if again amid the Lagunes of Venice. After an hour and a half's riding, we reached Leghorn, where I took up my abode at Thomson's hotel, so well and so favourably known to English travellers. After my long sojourn in Italian albergi, whose uncarpeted floors, and chinky windows and doors, are but ill fitted to resist the winds and cold of winter, I sat down in "Thomson's,"—furnished as it is with all the comforts of an English inn,—with a feeling of home-comfort such as I have rarely experienced.
CHAPTER XX.
FROM LEGHORN TO ROME.
First Sight of the Mediterranean—Embark at Leghorn—Elba—Italian Coast—Civita Vecchia—Passport Offices—Aspect and Population of Civita Vecchia—Papal Dungeons—Start for Rome—First View of the Campagna—Its Desolation—Changed Times—The Postilion—The Road—The Milestones—First Sight of the Eternal City—The Gate—Desolate Look of the City by Night—The Pope's Custom-House and Custom-House Officer.