LETTER XLI.
JOURNEY TO THE ETERNAL CITY—TWO ROADS TO ROME—SIENNA—THE PUBLIC SQUARE—AN ITALIAN FAIR—THE CATHEDRAL—THE LIBRARY—THE THREE GRECIAN GRACES—DANDY OFFICERS—PUBLIC PROMENADE—LANDSCAPE VIEW—LONG GLEN—A WATERFALL—A CULTIVATED VALLEY—THE TOWN OF AQUAPENDENTE—SAN LORENZO—PLINY'S FLOATING ISLANDS—MONTEFIASCONE—VITERBO—PROCESSION OF FLOWER AND DANCING GIRLS TO THE VINTAGE—ASCENT OF THE MONTECIMINO—THE ROAD OF THIEVES—LAKE VICO—BACCANO—MOUNT SORACTE—DOME OF ST. PETER'S, ETC.
I left Florence in company with the five artists mentioned in my last letter, one of them an Englishman, and the other four pensioners of the royal academy at Madrid. The Spaniards had but just arrived in Italy, and could not speak a syllable of the language. The Englishman spoke everything but French, which he avoided learning from principle. He "hated a Frenchman!"
There are two roads to Rome. One goes by Sienna, and is a day shorter; the other by Perugia, the Falls of Terni, Lake Thrasymene, and the Clitumnus. Childe Harold took the latter, and his ten or twelve best cantos describe it. I was compelled to go by Sienna, and shall return, of course, by the other road.
I was at Sienna on the following day. As the second capital of Tuscany, this should be a place of some interest, but an hour or two is more than enough to see all that is attractive. The public square was a gay scene. It was rather singularly situated, lying fifteen or twenty feet lower than the streets about it. I should think there were several thousand people in its area—all buying or selling, and vociferating, as usual, at the top of their voices. We heard the murmur, like the roar of the sea, in all the distant streets. There are few sights more picturesque than an Italian fair, and I strolled about in the crowd for an hour, amused with the fanciful costumes, and endeavoring to make out with the assistance of the eye, what rather distracted my unaccustomed ear—the cries of the various wandering venders of merchandise. The women, who were all from the country, were coarse, and looked well only at a distance.
The cathedral is the great sight of Sienna. It has a rich exterior, encrusted with curiously wrought marbles, and the front, as far as I can judge, is in beautiful taste. The pavement of the interior is very precious, and covered with a wooden platform, which is removed but once a year. The servitor raised a part of it, to show us the workmanship. It was like a drawing in India ink, quite as fine as if pencilled, and representing, as is customary, some miracle of a saint.
A massive iron door, made ingeniously to imitate a rope-netting, opens from the side of the church into the library. It contained some twenty volumes in black letter, bound with enormous clasps and placed upon inclined shelves. It would have been a task for a man of moderate strength to lift either of them from the floor. The little sacristan found great difficulty in only opening one to show us the letter.
In the centre of the chapel on a high pedestal, stands the original antique group, so often copied, of the three Grecian Graces. It is shockingly mutilated; but its original beauty is still in a great measure discernable. Three naked women are an odd ornament for the private chapel of a cathedral.[1] One often wonders, however, in Italian churches, whether his devotion is most called upon by the arts or the Deity.
As we were leaving the church, four young officers passed us in gay uniform, their long steel scabbards rattling on the pavement, and their heavy tread disturbing visibly every person present. As I turned to look after them, with some remark on their coxcombry, they dropped on their knees at the bases of the tall pillars about the altar, and burying their faces in their caps, bowed their heads nearly to the floor, in attitudes of the deepest devotion. Sincere or not, Catholic worshippers of all classes seem absorbed in their religious duties. You can scarce withdraw the attention even of a child in such places. In the six months that I have been in Italy, I never saw anything like irreverence within the church walls.
The public promenade, on the edge of the hill upon which the town is beautifully situated, commands a noble view of the country about. The peculiar landscape of Italy lay before us in all its loveliness—the far-off hills lightly tinted with the divided colors of distance, the atmosphere between absolutely clear and invisible, and villages clustered about, each with its ancient castle on the hill-top above, just as it was settled in feudal times, and as painters and poets would imagine it. You never get a view in this "garden of the world" that would not excuse very extravagant description.