Not so did Margaret find Rome in 1847. The intervening years had wrought a change. Within the defiant fortress of superstition a divine accident had happened. A man had been brought to the chair of St. Peter who felt his own human power too strongly to consent to the impotence of the traditional non possumus. To the timid questioning of Freedom from without he gave the bold answer of Freedom from within. The Papal crown had sometimes covered the brows of honest, heroic men. Such an one would he[203] prove himself, and his first message was to that effect. Fortunate, fatal error! The thrones of the earth trembled at it. Crowned heads shook with the palsy of fear. The enslaved multitudes and their despised champions sent up a ringing shout to heaven, for the apocalyptic hour had come. The sixth seal was broken, and the cannon of St. Angelo, which saluted the crowning of the new Pontiff, really saluted the installation of the new era.
Alas! many woes had to intervene before this new order could establish itself upon any permanent foundation. The Pope forsook his lofty ground. France, republican for a day only, became the ally of absolutism, and sent an army to subdue those who had believed the papal promise and her own. After a frightful interval of suffering and resistance, this was effected, and Pius was brought back, shorn of his splendors, a Jove whose thunderbolt had been stolen, a man without an idea. Then came the confusion of endless doubt and question. What had been the secret of the Pope's early liberalism? What that of his volte-face? Was it true, as was afterwards maintained, that he had been, from the first, a puppet, moved by forces quite outside his own understanding, and that the moving hands, not the puppet, had changed? Or had he gone to war with mighty Precedent, without counting[204] the cost of the struggle, and so failed? Or had he undergone a poisoning which broke his spirit and touched his brain?
These were the questions of that time, not ours to answer, brought to mind here only because they belong to the history of Margaret's years in Italy, years in which she learned to love that country as her own, and to regard it as the land of her spiritual belonging.[205]
CHAPTER XII.
MARGARET'S FIRST DAYS IN ROME.—ANTIQUITIES.—VISITS TO STUDIOS AND GALLERIES.—HER OPINIONS CONCERNING THE OLD MASTERS.—HER SYMPATHY WITH THE PEOPLE.—POPE PIUS.—CELEBRATION OF THE BIRTHDAY OF ROME.—PERUGIA.—BOLOGNA.—RAVENNA.—VENICE.—A STATE BALL ON THE GRAND CANAL.—MILAN.—MANZONI.—THE ITALIAN LAKES.—PARMA.—SECOND VISIT TO FLORENCE.—GRAND FESTIVAL.
In this first visit to Rome, Margaret could not avoid some touch of the disenchantment which usually comes with the experience of what has been long and fondly anticipated. She had soon seen all that is preserved of "the fragments of the great time," and says: "They are many and precious; yet is there not so much of high excellence as I looked for. They will not float the heart on a boundless sea of feeling, like the starry night on our Western prairies." She confesses herself more interested at this moment in the condition and prospects of the Italian people than in works of art, ancient or modern. In[206] spite of this, she seems to have been diligent in visiting the galleries and studios of Rome. Among the latter she mentions those of the sculptors Macdonald, Wolff, Tenerani, and Gott, whose groups of young people and animals were to her "very refreshing after the grander attempts of the present time." She found our own Crawford just completing a bust of his beautiful wife, which is to-day a household treasure among her relatives. Margaret preferred his designs to those of Gibson, who was then considered the first of English sculptors. Among American painters she found Terry, Cranch, and Hicks at work. She saw the German Overbeck surrounded by his pictures, looking "as if he had just stepped out of one of them,—a lay monk, with a pious eye, and habitual morality of thought which limits every gesture."
Among the old masters, Domenichino and Titian were those whom she learned to appreciate only by the actual sight of their paintings. Other artists, she thinks, may be well understood through copies and engravings, but not these. She enjoyed the frescos of Caracci with "the purest pleasure," tired soon of Guercino, who had been one of her favorites, and could not like Leonardo da Vinci at all. His pictures, she confesses, "show a wonderful deal of study and thought. I hate to see the marks[207] of them. I want a simple and direct expression of soul." For the explanation of these remarks we must refer the reader back to what Mr. Emerson has said of Margaret's idiosyncratic mode of judgment. Raphael and Michael Angelo were already so well known to her through engravings, that their paintings and frescos made no new impression upon her. Not so was it with Michael's sculptures. Of his Moses she says: "It is the only thing in Europe so far which has entirely outgone my hopes."
But the time was not one in which an enthusiast like Margaret could be content to withdraw from living issues into the calm impersonality of art. The popular life around her was throbbing with hopes and excitements to which it had long been unaccustomed. Visions of a living Italy flashed through the crevices of a stony despair which had lasted for ages. The prospect of representative government was held out to the Roman people, and the promise was welcomed by a torchlight procession which streamed through the Corso like a river of fire, and surging up to the Quirinal, where Pius then dwelt, "made it a mound of light." The noble Greek figures were illuminated, and their calm aspect contrasted strongly with the animated faces of the Italians. "The Pope appeared on his balcony; the crowd shouted their vivas. He[208] extended his arms; the crowd fell on their knees and received his benediction." Margaret says that she had never seen anything finer.
In this new enthusiasm the people agreed to celebrate the birthday of Rome.
"A great dinner was given at the Baths of Titus, in the open air. The company was on the grass in the area, the music at one end; boxes filled with the handsome Roman women occupied the other sides. It was a new thing here, this popular dinner, and the Romans greeted it in an intoxication of hope and pleasure." Many political exiles, amnestied by the Pope, were present. The Marquis d'Azeglio, painter, novelist, and diplomatist, was the most noted of the speakers. From this renewed, regenerated Rome Margaret went on to visit the northern cities of Italy, passing through Perugia on her way to Florence. In this neighborhood she explored the churches of Assisi, and the Etruscan tombs, then newly discovered. She was enchanted with the beauty of Perugia, its noble situation, and its treasures of early art. Florence interested her less than "cities more purely Italian. The natural character is ironed out here, and done up in a French pattern; yet there is no French vivacity, nor Italian either." The Grand Duke was at the time in an impossible position between his allegiance to the liberalizing Pope[209] and his fealty to despotic Austria. Tuscany accordingly was "glum as death" on the outside, but glowing with dangerous fire within.