Nothing is so injurious to the cause of truth, as attempts to support it by fiction. Many evidences of the justness of this observation occur in the course of a tour through Italy. That mountains were rent at the death of our Saviour, we know from the New Testament; but, as none of them are there particularized, it is presumptuous in others to imagine they can point out what the Evangelists have thought proper to conceal.
This rock, however, is much resorted to by pilgrims; and the Tartanes, and other vessels, often touch there, that the seamen may be provided with little pieces of marble, which they earnestly request may be taken as near the fissure as possible. These they wear constantly in their pockets, in case of shipwreck, from a persuasion, that they are a more certain preservative from drowning, than a cork jacket. Some of these poor people have the misfortune to be drowned, notwithstanding; but the sacred marble loses none of its reputation on that account. Such accidents are always imputed to the weight of the unfortunate person’s sins, which have sunk him to the bottom, in spite of all the efforts of the marble to keep him above water; and it is allowed on all hands, that a man so oppressed with iniquity, as to be drowned with a piece of this marble in his pocket, would have sunk much sooner, if, instead of that, he had had nothing to keep him up but a cork jacket.
Strangers are next led to the Castle, and are shewn, with some other curiosities, the skeleton of the famous Bourbon, Constable of France, who was killed in the service of the emperor Charles the Fifth, as he scaled the walls of Rome.
It is remarkable that France, a nation which values itself so much on an affectionate attachment to its princes, and places loyalty at the head of the virtues, should have produced, in the course of the two last centuries, so many illustrious rebels: Bourbon, Coligni, Guise, Turenne, and the Condés; all of them were, at some period of their lives, in arms against their sovereign.
That it is the duty of subjects to preserve their allegiance, however unjustly and tyrannically their prince may conduct himself, is one of the most debasing and absurd doctrines that ever was obtruded on the understanding of mankind. When Francis forgot the services which the gallant Bourbon had rendered him at Mirignan; when, by repeated acts of oppression, he forgot the duty of a king; Bourbon spurned at his allegiance, as a subject. The Spanish nobleman, who declared that he would pull down his house, if Bourbon should be allowed to lodge in it, either never had heard of the injurious treatment which that gallant soldier had received, or he betrayed the sentiments of a slave, and meant to insinuate his own implicit loyalty to the Emperor. Mankind in general have a partiality for princes. The senses are imposed on by the splendour which surrounds them; and the respect due to the office of a king, is naturally converted into an affection for his person: there must therefore be something highly unpopular in the character of the monarch, and highly oppressive in the measures of government, before people can be excited to rebellion. Subjects seldom rise through a desire of attacking, but rather from an impatience of suffering. Where men are under the yoke of feudal lords, who can force them to fight in any cause, it may be otherwise; but when general discontent pervades a free people, and when, in consequence of this, they take arms against their prince, they must have justice on their side. The highest compliment which subjects can pay, and the best service they can render, to a good prince, is, to behave in such a manner, as to convince him that they would rebel against a bad one.
From Mola we were conducted by the Appian way, over the fertile fields washed by the silent Liris:
——Rura quæ Liris quieta
Mordet aqua, taciturnus amnis.
This river bounded Latium. On its banks are still seen some ruins of the ancient Minturnæ. After Manlius Torquatus, in what some will call a phrenzy of virtue, had offered up his son as a sacrifice to military discipline; and his colleague Decius, immediately after, devoted himself in a battle against the Latins; the broken army of that people assembled at Minturnæ, and were a second time defeated by Manlius, and their lands divided by the senate among the citizens of Rome. The first battle was fought near Mount Vesuvius, and the second between Sinuessa and Minturnæ. In the morasses of Minturnæ, Caius Marius, in the seventieth year of his age, was taken, and brought a prisoner to that city, whose magistrates ordered an assassin to put him to death, whom the fierce veteran disarmed with a look. What mortal, says Juvenal, would have been thought more fortunate than Marius, had he breathed out his aspiring soul, surrounded by the captives he had made, his victorious troops, and all the pomp of war, as he descended from his Teutonic chariot, after his triumph over the Cimbri.