Beyond all other curious excursions that even a Magic Land can offer is that to the Campo Santo of Genoa. A cloistered promenade encloses a square, and above are terraced colonnades, each and all revealing statues, and monuments, and groups of sculpture whose varied beauty, oddity, or bizarre effects are a curious study. Some memorials—as one of an angel with outstretched wings; another of a flight of angels bearing the soul away; another combining the figure of Christ with the cross, and angels hovering near—are full of beauty. Others are a marvel of ingenious and incongruous combination. One of the latter represents the man whose memory it commemorates as lying on his bed in his last illness; the physician stands by, his fingers on the patient’s pulse; on the opposite side a maid is approaching with a dish holding some article of food, and near the physician are grouped the wife, with a little child clinging to her skirts; the son, holding his hat with both hands and looking down on it, and the daughter, a young girl, with her eyes raised to heaven. Each of these figures is in life size; the bed is reproduced in marble, with the pillows and all the coverings in the most absolute realism, and the entire effect is so startling in its bizarre aspect that one could hardly believe in its existence until by personal observation he had verified so singular a monument.
Yet there is beauty and symbolic loveliness, too, in many of the memorial sculptures of this Campo Santo, and turning away from this cemetery in which lies the body of the noble Mazzini, one hears on the air the refrain of his words on Dante:—
“It appeared to him of more importance to hasten to accomplish his mission upon earth, than to meditate upon the inevitable hour which marks for all men the beginning of a new task. And if at times he speaks of weariness of life, it is only because he sees evil more and more triumphant in the places where his mission was appointed. He concerned himself, not about the length or the shortness of life, but about the end for which life was given; for he felt God in life, and knew the creative virtue there is in action.”
Eighty thousand people followed Mazzini to his tomb, and his name lives in the Italy of to-day as one to be associated with that of Dante as prophet and inspirer.
The enchantment of approaching Genoa from the sea at night is an experience to remain as one of the pictorial treasures of memory. The magnificent lanterna, the lighthouse with its revolving light, that can be seen for fifty miles out from the coast; the brilliant illumination defining the fortezza on the summit of one hill; the curving lights of the terraced residential district and the illumination of the very forest of shipping clustered in the bay,—all combine into a scene not easily effaced from the memories of foreign scenes.
It is only in close relations with Italian literature that Italy can be adequately enjoyed and that the sojourner may enter into sympathetic associations with contemporary Italian life. Dr. Richard Garnett believes that the literature of Italy “is a less exhaustive manifestation than elsewhere of the intellect of the nation,” and that “the best energies of the country are employed in artistic production. It is, indeed, remarkable,” he continues, “that out of the nine Italians most brilliantly conspicuous in the first rank of genius and achievement,—Aquinas, Dante, Columbus, Leonardo, Michael Angelo, Raphael, Titian, Galileo, Napoleon,—only one should have been a man of letters.”
Contemporary Italian literature follows the trend of the day in reflecting the life of the people. The novels of Fogazzaro, the poems of Carducci, the biography and history written by Villari, to say nothing of several other writers who, while not approaching these authors, have still a definite place in the literature of the present, offer illumination on the outer scenery of life, and offer interpretation of the life itself. Art has declined; literature has advanced in Italy, even within the past decade. The law of progress is as inevitable as is the law of gravitation.
“Onward the chariot of the Unvarying moves;
Nor day divulges him nor night conceals;
Thou hear’st the echo of unreturning hooves,
And thunder of irrevocable wheels.”
The future of Italy inspires faith in the renewal of its noblest ideals of achievement. Its ineffable beauty is a heritage of joy to every visitor who comes under the indescribable spell of its attraction and finds that, in all the panorama of foreign life which haunts his memory, it is Italy which shines resplendent as the Magic Land!