Lugano is more savage, more free in its beauty. I was on it in a high gale; there was a little clanger, just enough to exhilarate; its waters were wild, and clouds blowing across the neighboring peaks. I like very much the boatmen on these lakes; they have strong and prompt character. Of simple features, they are more honest and manly than Italian men are found in the thoroughfares; their talk is not so witty as that of the Venetian gondoliers, but picturesque, and what the French call incisive. Very touching were some of their histories, as they told them to me while pausing sometimes on the lake.
On this lake, also, I met Lady Franklin, wife of the celebrated navigator. She has been in the United States, and showed equal penetration and candor in remarks on what she had seen there. She gave me interesting particulars as to the state of things in Van Diemen's Land, where she passed seven years when her husband was in authority there.
I returned to Milan for the great feast of the Madonna, 8th September, and those made for the Archbishop's entry, which took place the same week. These excited as much feeling as the Milanese can have a chance to display, this Archbishop being much nearer tire public heart than his predecessor, who was a poor servant of Austria.
The Austrian rule is always equally hated, and time, instead of melting away differences, only makes them more glaring. The Austrian race have no faculties that can ever enable them to understand the Italian character; their policy, so well contrived to palsy and repress for a time, cannot kill, and there is always a force at work underneath which shall yet, and I think now before long, shake off the incubus. The Italian nobility have always kept the invader at a distance; they have not been at all seduced or corrupted by the lures of pleasure or power, but have shown a passive patriotism highly honorable to them. In the middle class ferments much thought, and there is a capacity for effort; in the present system it cannot show itself, but it is there; thought ferments, and will yet produce a wine that shall set the Lombard veins on fire when the time for action shall arrive. The lower classes of the population are in a dull state indeed. The censorship of the press prevents all easy, natural ways of instructing them; there are no public meetings, no free access to them by more instructed and aspiring minds. The Austrian policy is to allow them a degree of material well-being, and though so much wealth is drained from, the country for the service of the foreigners, jet enough must remain on these rich plains comfortably to feed and clothe the inhabitants. Yet the great moral influence of the Pope's action, though obstructed in their case, does reach and rouse them, and they, too, felt the thrill of indignation at the occupation of Ferrara. The base conduct of the police toward the people, when, at Milan, some youths were resolute to sing tire hymn in honor of Pius IX., when the feasts for the Archbishop afforded so legitimate an occasion, roused all the people to unwonted feeling. The nobles protested, and Austria had not courage to persist as usual. She could not sustain her police, who rushed upon a defenceless crowd, that had no share in what excited their displeasure, except by sympathy, and, driving them like sheep, wounded them in the backs. Austria feels that there is now no sympathy for her in these matters; that it is not the interest of the world to sustain her. Her policy is, indeed, too thoroughly organized to change except by revolution; its scope is to serve, first, a reigning family instead of the people; second, with the people to seek a physical in preference to an intellectual good; and, third, to prefer a seeming outward peace to an inward life. This policy may change its opposition from the tyrannical to the insidious; it can know no other change. Yet do I meet persons who call themselves Americans,—miserable, thoughtless Esaus, unworthy their high birthright,—who think that a mess of pottage can satisfy the wants of man, and that the Viennese listening to Strauss's waltzes, the Lombard peasant supping full of his polenta, is happy enough. Alas: I have the more reason to be ashamed of my countrymen that it is not among the poor, who have so much, toil that there is little time to think, but those who are rich, who travel,—in body that is, they do not travel in mind. Absorbed at home by the lust of gain, the love of show, abroad they see only the equipages, the fine clothes, the food,—they have no heart for the idea, for the destiny of our own great nation: how can they feel the spirit that is struggling now in this and others of Europe?
But of the hopes of Italy I will write more fully in another letter, and state what I have seen, what felt, what thought. I went from Milan, to Pavia, and saw its magnificent Certosa, I passed several hours in examining its riches, especially the sculptures of its façade, full of force and spirit. I then went to Florence by Parma and Bologna. In Parma, though ill, I went to see all the works of the masters. A wonderful beauty it is that informs them,—not that which is the chosen food of my soul, yet a noble beauty, and which did its message to me also. Those works are failing; it will not be useless to describe them in a book. Beside these pictures, I saw nothing in Parma and Modena; these states are obliged to hold their breath while their poor, ignorant sovereigns skulk in corners, hoping to hide from the coming storm. Of all this more in my next.
LETTER XVII.
First Impressions of Rome in the Spring.—The Pope.—Rome as a Capital.—Tuscany.—The Liberty of the Press there just established.—The Enlightened Minds and Available Instructors of Tuscany.—Italian Estimation of Pius IX., and the Influence, Present and Future, of his Labors.—Foreign Intrusion the Curse of Italy.—Irruption of the Austrians into Italy, and its Effects.—Louis Philippe's Apostasy turned to the Advantage of Freedom.—The Great Fête at Florence in Honor of the Grant of a National Guard.—The American Sculptors, Greenough, Crawford, and their Participation in the Fête.—Americans generally in Italy.—Hymns In Florence in Honor of Pius IX.—Happy Augury to be drawn from the wise Docility of the People.—An Expression of Sympathy from America toward Italy earnestly hoped for.
Rome, October 18, 1847.