I have said nothing about the Carnival, the observance of which is a custom too different from any of ours to be entirely neglected. The whole term lasts six weeks. I do not know if all the period ever used to be filled up with these vagaries, but the time now allowed for the reign of masking and folly is only eight days. These were preceded by a severe edict against carrying any weapon. The punishment for this offence is to be six years in the galleys; for drawing it, twelve years; for striking a person, eighteen years; for wounding him, confinement for life; for killing him, death. Premeditated assassinations are not, and perhaps never have been common at Rome; but when the common people quarrelled, and got into a passion, they sometimes used to stab each other. They are indebted to the French for the correction of this evil. The carrying the long sharp knives, which used to be the instrument of such assassinations, was declared to be immediate death, and it is said that no less than nineteen persons were shot the day after this law was promulgated; the following day two more, and afterwards now and then a straggler, but the habit was effectually broken: it seems a terrible remedy, but it was also a terrible disease. Confinement to real hard labour would perhaps have effected the cure, but more slowly, and the Roman police has yet no correct idea of this. The edict above mentioned also enjoined that no person should be masked except from the sounding of the bell of the Capitol, to that of the Ave Maria, that is, from half past one to half past five. There are masked balls on some evenings, about which the edict says nothing, but every body understands that this is permitted. The edict also determines the size of the sugar-plums (which by the by are little pellets of whitening or plaster,) with which persons might be pelted without offence. At about four o’clock, people assemble on the Corso, and the rich parade up and down in their carriages; as indeed they do throughout the winter, though it does not seem a very pleasant ride. Close against the houses is a line of people sitting or standing, and where the street is wider, a row of chairs, or perhaps two rows of benches supported on scaffolding. Where this is the case, the front of the scaffold is usually adorned with old tapestry, and old tapestry is also hung out of the windows. Next to these is the stream of carriages, going up on one side, and down on the other; and in the middle a confused mixture of people, passing some one way and some another, interrupted now and then by the horse, or foot soldiers, parading up and down the streets. About a quarter before five, a gun sounds, as a signal for all carriages to go off the Corso, and at five, those which still remain there are turned off by the soldiers into the nearest streets. A rope is then stretched across, at the spot where the Corso opens into the Piazza del Popolo, and the horses are led up close to it. They have bits of tin hanging about them, and balls with pins to knock against their sides, and excite their speed as they go along. It is said that blisters are previously applied, to make the parts more tender. At a quarter past five, the rope is dropt, and off they start. The race is merely once along the Corso, and therefore is only an affair of a few minutes on the whole, and for any individual spectator hardly of half a minute. There is no time for betting, and I think this is one reason why the English are so generally dissatisfied with these races. The continued interest of our own races warms up the feelings, and produces a mental excitement, which such contests as these could never reach, either with or without riders, or with bad or good horses. After the race, carriages are again admitted on the Corso, but they soon disperse, and at the Ave Maria all is quiet again. The first day was very dull, with very few masks, and no humour. On the following days the scene became more lively, especially in Giovedì Grasso. A great many men had female masks and dresses, and several women were dressed as men. The principal amusement seemed to be in the female masks, mobbing the unmasked gentlemen, and in pelting all their acquaintances with the so called sugar-plums. Some seemed to pelt every body, but I believe these were principally English. A party of students of the Neapolitan academy went about with a drawing-board and crayons, and affected to take portraits; when you looked at their production there was an ass’s head. Another party, consisting of French students, personated armed knights on horseback, and performed their gambols very well. After the Ave Maria, the theatres begin. There is plenty of time for every one to change his dress, but a large portion choose to preserve them, though all are obliged to abandon their masks, and the playhouses consequently present a most ridiculous scene. Before the gay time of the Carnival began, we had some very good acting, but during those mad days Pulcinella was pushed into every thing. This Pulcinella talks Neapolitan, and I lost many things which appeared to delight the audience; but most of the replies which I could comprehend had very little wit, though they excited a great deal of laughter; the barbarous language and pronunciation were more than half the jest.
I went one evening to the masked ball or festina, which is given in a theatre not used at present for any other purpose: there were three parties of dancers, but the rooms were so crowded, that there was hardly space for them; a large proportion of the company was without masks: there was not much wit, but a good deal of cheerfulness and good humour. The entertainment was to begin at half an hour, and end at five, i. e. from six o’clock to half past ten; accordingly before eleven, the attendants began to put out the candles, and a file of soldiers gradually advancing, swept the place. There is no city where despotic authority assumes so undisguised a form as at Rome; where power, and not law, is so apparently the ruling principle; but perhaps we might not be the worse for it, if some of our public amusements were limited in as peremptory a manner. The masked ball on Friday night did not begin till after midnight, in order not to disturb the religious observances of the day: the same rule was observed on Sunday, but I did not go to either. On the evening which closed this period of license, we had a new scene. It is the practice here, for the mourners at a funeral to carry lighted wax tapers; and on this evening, after the races, almost every body carried lighted tapers to celebrate the funeral of the Carnival; the street was crowded, the windows and balconies were all full of people, and everywhere we saw abundance of these candles; some persons carried them upon sticks, some stuck them upon their hats, others in the noses of their masks, but most were carried in the hand, and many persons had six or eight tapers twisted together to give a stronger light. Part of the amusement consisted in a mutual endeavour to blow out each other’s lights; the whole was very gay and splendid, and indeed the best thing in the carnival; but it seemed rather premature, as after that there was a masked ball, and after the ball, midnight suppers, where good catholics stuffed themselves as full as possible, to prepare for their long abstinence in Lent. In this year their holy father has spared them the mortification of abstinence; and as fish is dear, and the people very poor, he has granted a general dispensation to eat meat, except on Friday and Saturday.
It is always a difficult thing to hear, or learn, good Italian in Italy, for the provincialisms extend to all ranks, and the inhabitants of one city are continually turning those of another into ridicule. It is true that in many places they speak their own provincial dialect to one another, and the Tuscan or Italian, when they converse with those who are not of the same province. “When these Bolognese chatter to one another,” said a Roman gentleman to me at Bologna, “I do not understand a word of what they say.” Yet some peculiarities will creep into the conversation, even when they think they are speaking the purest Tuscan. In spite of this, companies of dramatists go about from city to city, through the whole country, representing the same plays, with precisely the same words in each. It occurred to me, that these actors must thus get rid of all their own provincialisms; that they must study their language, and would probably understand it; and moreover would be able to point out the usual defects of each place. I will confess however, that I have heard upon the stage, cielo pronounced as an Englishman would pronounce, shailo, and occhi with the ch like our ch in church. This was not favourable to my theory, but it was in the opera, and I thought the comedians must do better; and indeed, as far as I can judge they are much more correct; I was not therefore deterred from fixing on one who was guilty of no blunders which I was able to detect, who spoke very clearly and distinctly, and whose tones and actions were perfectly natural, though perhaps rather too faintly marked for stage effect; and I applied to him for some instruction in Italian. He seemed to be quite willing to assist me, but as this was just before the eight days of the carnival, he requested me to postpone the scheme for about ten days, as the company intended to stay the Lent in Rome, when he should have nothing else to do; however the company changed their mind, and went away immediately, and I lost my master. It was quite a disappointment to me, for he seemed very pleasing in his manners, and moreover was a Tuscan, so that I promised myself great advantage from the scheme. On missing him I procured another, with whom I am very well pleased, and of whom you have just heard my attendant’s criticism. One of his greatest faults is, that he is much given to flatter his pupils.
Now the Carnival is over, Rome seems dead. The contrast is very striking, as the change takes place in a single day, and the gaiety does not diminish gradually, as at London, and the English watering places. The weather is delightful, and if the sun is rather too hot, it is easy at present to find shade; and while sitting to draw under the shelter of some venerable monument of antiquity, contemplating the clear blue sky, and some richly tinted ruin, while a mild and gentle breeze wafts perfumes from the beds of violets around, I seem to be as near an earthly paradise as imagination can conceive. I wish I could bring you here just for a moment, and show you what Rome is, and make you feel a Roman winter; yet I am told they are not always so fine, but that they usually have two months of continued wet. What astonishes me is to see the trees without leaves during all this warm weather; the vegetation even now, is not much more forward than in a favourable season in England, but it is advancing with great rapidity.
I must however turn away from all this trifling, to my more serious object of pursuit, and having given you an account of St. Peter’s, and a sketch of the principal ancient churches of this city, I shall now survey some of the modern ones.
The most common arrangement of these is that of a nave with three arches on each side, opening into chapels; or in the more magnificent ones, with side aisles and chapels beyond them. In the centre is a dome resting on four piers. There is one arch in the length of each tribune, with the addition of a semicircular end to the choir: sometimes there are four arches, or five, instead of three, in the nave, and sometimes one or two smaller ones besides the three larger. The order is always Corinthian, and the nave a continued vault, springing, not from the top of the cornice, but from an Attic, or continued pedestal above it. The windows are generally groined into this vault, but sometimes the pedestal is cut to make room for them, and they are partly in the vault, and partly in the upright, which is displeasing. The principal arches opening into the nave, sometimes reach to the architrave of the principal order, and sometimes fall considerably short of it. In the latter case they have a gallery, or a panel, or perhaps something like a window over them, but the arrangement is much more beautiful when these arches are carried up to the full height of the opening, and the key-stone seems to contribute to the support of the entablature. This connects them with the principal order, with which otherwise, they have not sufficient union. When the parts are well proportioned, it is impossible to refuse our tribute of admiration to these churches; and if indeed it may be said with truth, that there is not one good front to any church in Rome, yet internally, they surpass, beyond all comparison, those of every other city. To produce the best effect, the pedestal above the cornice ought to be unbroken; and perhaps a wide plinth, without any mouldings, would be better than a pedestal. It is probable indeed, that the frieze and cornice of the principal order might be omitted with advantage, but I am only going to theorize so far as to select the best parts of such as really exist, not to wander in the realms of imagination without a guide. The vault should be in coffers, and have the look of a stone vault; not pretend to be a peep into heaven, which is frequently the idea intended to be conveyed, and a heaven adorned in general with a very whimsical painted architecture, such as would not be at all commendable here on earth. The Italian artists have been very fond, in these paintings, of contradicting the architecture, and making their lines appear straight on a curved surface, and representing on the vault of a church a range of upright piers or columns; such a design is assuredly in bad taste, for the building would be much worse with such an addition; and in practice it has this further defect, that it can only look well from one point, and from every other is more or less distorted. The Jesuit Pozzi was famous for the skill with which he executed these deceptions, and I have already mentioned a production of his at Siena, which is admirable, as far as the mere accomplishing a thing apparently very difficult, can deserve admiration. The gilding (and say what you please about simplicity, the advantage of gilding is frequently very great) ought to be principally in the vault. The Attic should have little or none; it should appear again in the cornice, in the capitals of the pilasters, and in the key-stone of the arches. The impost of the arch should receive a little of it. Thus being gradually lost as it comes downward, it will produce the effect of richness without glare, and without separating the building into distinct and unconnected parts, a fault I have already noticed to you in St. Peter’s. In the disposition of the gilding two faults are always to be avoided, this separation into parts, and the too equal and regular distribution on all the similar members of the architecture. It is surprising how much gilding may be employed without any effect of richness, by this too regular and equal distribution; and I shall mention to you by and by some churches in Rome, where there is a considerable portion of gilding, but without any effect; a failure arising entirely from this cause.
In stating how a building of this sort should be managed, the greatest difficulty is in the manner of introducing the light. Three different methods offer themselves to our choice; the first is to light the nave by one large window at the end. There would then also be a large window at each end of the transept, and the choir would be comparatively dark; but the altar, if brought forward in front of it, and receiving the light from both transept windows, and from the dome, which would remain with lights round the drum, as at present, would occupy, as it ought to do, by far the most conspicuous and best illuminated point in the church. If the altar must be kept back towards the end of the choir, there should also be windows in the choir, not visible from the entrance of the building, in order to throw a strong light upon it, and give it its proper consequence. In either case I am persuaded the effect internally would be most beautiful, but I should be puzzled to make an equally beautiful outside. In a Greek cross, the whole might be lighted from the central dome, but this would not do in a Latin one. A second plan would be to keep the side aisles very lofty by omitting the frieze, cornice, and pedestal, of the order, and springing the vault immediately from the architrave, and lighting the edifice entirely from the aisles. A degree of solemn gloom would result from the comparative darkness of the upper part, which perhaps would not be inconsistent with a religious edifice. The third plan is to introduce semicircular windows over the order, and to groin them into the vault. The perfect continuity of the design is in some degree injured by this arrangement, yet it cannot be considered as objectionable, if care be taken that these windows do not interrupt the leading lines of the architecture. If the whole curve be divided into five panels, and these windows occupy only the lower, the light would be amply sufficient.
Having thus endeavoured to give you some idea of the general distribution of the parts in the churches of Rome, I shall proceed to particularize a few of the finest examples, beginning with the Church of Sant Andrea della Valle, which I think on the whole deserves the first place. Here the nave has three arches on each side, besides a smaller division towards the dome. This alteration of design is a defect. The piers of the dome ought to be decidedly distinguished from the rest, both by their larger size, and by some contraction of the width of the opening; but there is no reason to make the adjoining division smaller, or of a different character, for it will always connect itself to the eye with the nave, and not with the dome; and consequently communicate no character of strength and firmness. Perhaps the architect (Olivieri) considered these smaller openings, with the piers on each side of them, as forming each in fact, one great pier; but if such was his idea, he has entirely counteracted its effect by making openings in the mass. The order is bold and magnificent; the vault is nobly divided into three large panels, but unfortunately, as the ornaments have never been executed, the present appearance is rather bald and unfinished. This vaulting springs upon detached pedestals, which would be better if continued, and the windows occupy part of the space between them, and also part of the first division of the vault. The transepts have each two small divisions without side aisles, the choir has one small arch on each side, and beyond that a semicircle. The proportions altogether are very fine, and the effect truly sublime. Yet it is a sublime of a very different character from that of a Gothic cathedral, and I think seldom fully understood by the English. We expect from habitual associations, a different sort of impression, while the Italians, from similar causes, do not readily see or feel the merits of the Gothic. All however will admire the beauty of Domenichino’s exquisite frescos, which I will not describe to you, for I could not do them justice.
There is a chapel in this church said to be built after designs left by M. A. Buonarotti, and whose ornaments are copies of some of his most celebrated works. It is oblong on the plan, and covered with a cupola, which this shape of the building renders slightly elliptical. This always appears defective; it seems too much like a circle badly drawn. Four columns on each of the three sides, make a sort of front to each, with a large semicircular window above one of them. The architecture is much broken, which though not to be admired anywhere, is much more tolerable in tombs than in large edifices. Before the basement of these fronts are sarcophagi of a bad shape but of a rich material, being of the black and gold marble. The columns are of lumachelli; the beauty of the design consists in the harmony of all the parts, both as to form and colour (except some ridiculous new moons and flames on the pendentives).
The Church of St. Ignatius, like so many other churches in Rome, and other parts of Italy, is the result of private magnificence, having been erected at the expense of Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi, who left a sum of 200,000 crowns for its completion. Domenichino made two designs for this edifice, of which Father Grassi, a Jesuit, compounded the one which was executed. Domenichino was so much offended at this, that he refused to have any thing more to do with the building. How much the defects we now see in it are attributable to this procedure, it is impossible to decide. The circumstances which displease us are, that the side arches spring from little columns, and that whitewash is mixed with the rich marbles. The vault is smooth, and painted by Pozzi, with an ingenious perspective of bad architecture, and angels hanging about it. The cupola has not been executed. The general proportions are good, but the order is by no means equal to that of the Valle; still it is a noble church. I sometimes think that a considerably greater proportion of height to the breadth would be desirable in this arrangement, which additional height ought to be given almost exclusively to the order. This notion may have arisen from the habit of admiring Gothic churches. Yet in the narrow courts of their hypæthral temples, the Greeks seem to have been aware of the great effect produced by a height very considerable in proportion to the breadth.