22nd June.—Left Milan for Dresden. We skirted Lodi, famous for its cheeses and deep sands. A violent thunderstorm came on at Pizzighettone, where I stopped; and notwithstanding abuse and threats I was resolved to stay and not risk my life and my child’s with hot horses near a deep river during a heavy storm.
23rd.—Got to Mantua. The waters of the Mincio being suffered to stagnate, the wells about Mantua are unwholesome and bad. The Palais du T. [sic] is a pretty villa belonging to the ancient Princes of Gonzaga. The walls are painted in fresco by Giulio Romano, the best of Raphael’s scholars: the subject represents the ‘Battle of the Giants.’ I looked around in vain for a beech tree under whose wide spreading branches a Tityrus was wont to recline and amuse his little lambkins with the soft notes of his pipe in the days of the Mantuan Bard. Tho’ Vergil was born, one might doubt much if he was bred, here; he seems to have described the pastoral manners of some happier soil of Italy.
The party reached Verona on the 24th. ‘The town is handsome; the bridge over the Adige very fine. The Corso is very noble.’ They left again two days later, and at Ala entered the Tyrol.
The entrance is through a narrow gorge, apparently opened by an earthquake, and probably widened by the deep and rapid course of the Adige. The mts. are not very high till Mt. Baldo, which does not exceed a 1000 ft. Between Ala and Roveredo we passed among rocks that have suffered some great convulsion; at a distance they resemble the ruins of a demolished city. A calcareous mountain stood where the road now passes; probably in one tremendous night when all the elements were waging war, the loud rolling thunder and the forked lightning darting upon this ill-fated spot, the earth trembled with the shock and the side of the mountain was split and broken into a thousand pieces. The falling of the mt., tho’ no history records the event, does not appear to have happened at an early period. The fragments are still sharp and angular. Owing to a fair at Trent we were forced to remain at Roveredo. Since the league of Cambray Roveredo is no longer in the possession of the Venetians.
1792 INNSPRUCK
27th.—The road from thence is through a tolerably well cultivated country of vines and mulberries, thro’ which the Adige moves along irregularly, sometimes slowly, at other times rapidly. The road in many places is very narrow with a precipice to the river undefended by a parapet. Monr. de Calonne was overturned into the river, and but for the assistance of Messrs. Wallace and Ellis, in the year ’91, must have been drowned.
After passing Neumarck, the travellers arrived at Brixen on the 28th.
Brixen is prettily situated in a very fertile vale; vines and corn appear in abundance. The hills are cultivated and a more genial soil is the consequence. The churches and castles built on the tops of craggy rocks along this valley are singularly romantic. The valley is extremely populous, and the younger part of the inhabitants have extremely pretty faces.
At Innspruck we were compelled to remain two nights, as we had not the plea of being Aulic Counsellors or Ambassadors. It is a paltry restriction on travellers that they must consent, unless privileged, to remain eight and forty hours in Austrian territory—a sort of tax that one must spend money in their dominions. In the principal church there is a magnificent tomb erected to the memory of the Emperor Maximilian, grandfather to Charles V. He was a complying, weak Prince, of whom Abbé Raynal says in his Mémoires Historiques ‘Il n’inspirait point de reconnaissance, quoiqu’il accordat presque tout qu’on lui demandait: on sentait qu’il ne cherchait pas à obliger, mais qu’il ne savait pas refuser.’ Near the town is a castle, the residence of the Archduchess, Governor of the Tyrol; the arsenal contains a curious collection of different suits of armour, which belonged to some of the most celebrated of warriors. I went to a German play, the pantomime of which, tho’ a deep tragedy, diverted me much, tho’ I did not comprehend a word of the dialogue.
2nd July.—Took the road to Munich. Immediately on leaving the town began ascending; slept at Wallensee, prettily situated among the mts., near a small lake. The change of temperature was sensible: thermometer in the morning at Innspruck was 75, at Wallensee fell to 59.