Pebble VII.
Verona.
"I do not think there exists anywhere a more powerfully and fantastically individual town than Verona; it is to Italy what Nuremburg is to Germany; but it is a transfiguration of Nuremburg; in point of wildly picturesque variety it defies description and surpasses expectation; it is saturated with art; wherever one turns, the eye is struck by some beautiful remnant of the taste—that was; of that glowing, sterling feeling for art, which spread itself over everything, and ennobled whatever it touched. Hardly a house that cannot boast of a sculptured archway, or some such token of ancient splendour; not a church, even the most insignificant, but is crowded with old paintings in oil and fresco, few of which are bad, some very good, a few excellent, but all in a far higher tone of feeling than nine-tenths of the shallow, papery daubs with which the nineteenth century covers its carcase of steam engines. No wonder—they are all scriptural or apocryphal subjects, and were all painted with an ardent belief in the faith to which they all owe their existence; from thence arose, amongst other excellencies, a certain naïf, ingenuously childlike treatment of the miraculous, which, combined with the manly dignity of consummate art, gives them an indescribable charm, which nothing can replace. Now—with us, at least, of the cold belief—men throw really eminent talents—to the dogs. But, for us Protestant artists, things are made much worse than they in any way need be, by the total rejection of pictures and statuary in our churches. Now, three centuries back, in the first ebullition of reformatory fanaticism, such a practice was not only comprehensible, but even a natural and necessary consequence and token of their total disavowal of everything approaching to the Romish form of worship; but its continuance at present amongst us is, not only contrary to the spirit of the Anglican Church, which after all, when compared to Lutheranism and Calvinism, is a conservative one, but is founded on arguments altogether untenable with any degree of consistency; for if, as we are told, pictures and statues distract the attention and produce a worldly frame of mind, if it be true indeed that works of high art (for, of course, no others are here taken into consideration), than which surely nothing is more calculated to raise the tone of the mind and prepare it for the reception of elevated impressions, have indeed so pernicious an effect, then, it is evident, by the same argument, the beauties of architecture, the eldest of the sister arts, must be equally rejected; at the sight of a Gothic church, that offspring of Christianity, we must shrug our shoulders and say with pious aversion: 'Vanitas vanitatum!' But the Church of England has not gone as far as that; indeed, great attention is paid to our Church's architecture; is there no inconsistency here? Or does the Church, terrified by the example of Romish image-worship, fear a similar evil amongst us, whose belief is so infinitely more circumscribed than that of Rome? Or is she so tender of admitting symbols into her bosom, she, whose corner-stone is a symbol: the Last Supper?
"To return to Verona.
Pebble VIII.
The Veronese love flowers,
and have good legs.
"As Gamba, owing to the time which my letter took in reaching him, was not able to meet me at the time appointed, I remained two days at Verona, days to which I shall always look back with unmixed pleasure. I indulged, this time (the more that I knew the town already), in the luxury of not 'sight-seeing,' but strolled about the whole town in every direction, dropping into churches, staring at tombs and palaces and piazzas and pictures, just as if rolled past me in the ever-varying panorama. I was struck, in the Tyrol, with the profusion of flowers everywhere displayed; but here I see far more, and those, too, more artistically distributed; they rise in double and treble tiers on, in, and about the gracefully curved balconies, and assert their sway wherever human ingenuity makes it possible to place a flower-pot, and in a great many other places besides; creepers wreathe from window to window, and vines actually springing from holes in the walls, with no visible root or origin at all, spread their graceful mantle over the walls of crumbling palaces. Of the Veronese themselves, I cannot say that they are a handsome race; the women especially, though they have a great deal of character in their features, are generally far from good-looking. Amongst the peasants I saw some very fine men; they have, some of them, very good legs, slender and well shaped as a Donatello or a Ghiberti.