I can allow that one-half, at least, of the beauty and interest we see, lies in our own souls; that it is our own enthusiasm which sheds this mantle of light over all we behold: but, as colours do not exist in the objects themselves, but in the rays which paint them—so beauty is not less real, is not less beauty, because it exists in the medium through which we view certain objects, rather than in those objects themselves. I have met persons who think they display a vast deal of common sense, and very uncommon strength of mind, in rising superior to all prejudices of education and illusions of romance—to whom enthusiasm is only another name for affectation—who, where the cultivated and the contemplative mind finds ample matter to excite feeling and reflection, give themselves airs of fashionable nonchalance, or flippant scorn—to whom the crumbling ruin is so much brick and mortar, no more—to whom the tomb of the Horatii and Curiatii is a stack of chimneys, the Pantheon an old oven, and the Fountain of Egeria a pig-sty. Are such persons aware that in all this there is an affectation, a thousand times more gross and contemptible, than that affectation (too frequent perhaps) which they design to ridicule?
"Whose mind is but the mind of his own eyes,
He is a slave—the meanest we can meet."
2.—Our journey to-day has been long, but delightfully diversified, and abounding in classical beauty and interest. I scarce know what to say, now that I open my little book to record my own sensations: they are so many, so various, so painful, so delicious—my senses and my imagination have been so enchanted, my heart so very heavy—where shall I begin?
In some of the scenes of to-day—at Terracina, particularly, there was beauty beyond what I ever beheld or imagined: the scenery of Switzerland is of a different character, and on a different scale: it is beyond comparison grander, more gigantic, more overpowering, but it is not so poetical. Switzerland is not Italy—is not the enchanting south. This soft balmy air, these myrtles, orange-groves, palm-trees; these cloudless skies, this bright blue sea, and sunny hills, all breathe of an enchanted land; "a land of Faery."
Between Velletri and Terracina the road runs in one undeviating line through the Pontine Marshes. The accounts we have of the baneful effects of the malaria here, and the absolute solitude, (not a human face or a human habitation intervening from one post-house to another,) invest the wild landscape with a frightful and peculiar character of desolation. As for the mere exterior of the country, I have seen more wretched and sterile looking spots, (in France, for instance,) but none that so affected the imagination and the spirits. On leaving the Pontine Marshes, we came almost suddenly upon the sunny and luxuriant region near Terracina: here was the ancient city of Anxur; and the gothic ruins of the castle of Theodoric, which frown on the steep above, are contrasted with the delicate and Grecian proportions of the temple below. All the country round is famed in classic and poetic lore. The Promontory (once poetically the island) of Circe is still the Monte Circello: here was the region of the Lestrygons, and the scene of part of the Æneid and Odyssey; and Corinne has superadded romantic and charming associations quite as delightful, and quite as true.
Antiquarians, who, like politicians, "seem to see the things that are not," have placed all along this road, the sites of many a celebrated town and fane—"making hue and cry after many a city which has run away, and by certain marks and tokens pursuing to find it:" as some old author says so quaintly. At every hundred yards, fragments of masonry are seen by the road-side; portions of brickwork, sometimes traced at the bottom of a dry ditch, or incorporated into a fence; sometimes peeping above the myrtle bushes on the wild hills, where the green lizards lie basking and glittering on them in thousands, and the stupid ferocious buffalo, with his fierce red eyes, rubs his hide and glares upon us as we pass. No—not the grandest monuments of Rome—not the Coliseum itself, in all its decaying magnificence, ever inspired me with such profound emotions as did those nameless, shapeless vestiges of the dwellings of man, starting up like memorial tombs in the midst of this savage but luxuriant wilderness. Of the beautiful cities which rose along this lovely coast, the colonies of elegant and polished Greece—one after another swallowed up by the "insatiate maw" of ancient Rome, nothing remains—their sites, their very names have passed away and perished. We might as well hunt after a forgotten dream.
Vain was the chief's, the sage's pride,
They had no POET, and they died!
In vain they toil'd, in vain they bled,
They had no POET—and are dead.
I write this a Gaëta—a name famous in the poetical, the classical, the military story of Italy, from the day of Æneas, from whom it received its appellation, down to the annals of the late war. On the site of our inn, (the Albergo di Cicerone,) stood Cicero's Formian Villa; and in an adjoining grove he was murdered in his litter by the satellites of the Triumviri, as he attempted to escape. I stood to-night on a little terrace, which hung over an orange grove, and enjoyed a scene which I would paint, if words were forms, and hues, and sounds—not else. A beautiful bay, enclosed by the Mola di Gaëta, on one side, and the Promontory of Misenum on the other: the sky studded with stars and reflected in a sea as blue as itself—and so glassy and unruffled, it seemed to slumber in the moonlight: now and then the murmur of a wave, not hoarsely breaking on rock and shingles, but kissing the turfy shore, where oranges and myrtles grew down to the water edge. These, and the remembrances connected with all, and a mind to think, and a heart to feel, and thoughts both of pain and pleasure mingling to render the effect more deep and touching.—Why should I write this? O surely I need not fear that I shall forget!
LINES WRITTEN AT MOLA DI GAETA, NEAR THE RUINS OF CICERO'S FORMIAN VILLA.
We wandered through bright climes, and drank the beams
Of southern suns: Elysian scenes we view'd,
Such as we picture oft in those day dreams
That haunt the fancy in her wildest mood.
Upon the sea-heat vestiges we stood,
Where Cicero dwelt, and watch'd the latest gleams
Of rosy light steal o'er the azure flood:
And memory conjur'd up most glowing themes,
Filling the expanded heart, till it forgot
Its own peculiar grief!—O! if the dead
Yet haunt our earth, around this hallow'd spot,
Hovers sweet Tully's spirit, since it fled
The Roman Forum—Forum now no more!
Though cold and silent be the sands we tread,
Still burns the "eloquent air," and to the shore
There rolls no wave, and through the orange shade
There sighs no breath, which doth not speak of him,
The father of his country: and though dim
Her day of empire—and her laurel crown
Torn and defaced, and soiled with blood and tears,
And her imperial eagles trampled down—
Still with a queen-like grace, Italia wears
Her garland of bright names,—her coronal of stars,
(Radiant memorials of departed worth!)
That shed a glory round her pensive brow,
And make her still the worship of the earth!