"Pass not unblest the genius of the place"
was scarce necessary.[5]
We slept at Foligno. For many miles we had observed that the houses were propped in every direction, many of them in ruins apparently recent, and small wooden sheds erected in the midst of the squares, or beside the roads, and crowded with the poor. The next morning we arrived at St. Angelo, and found its gigantic cathedral a heap of ruins. Its painted chapels, to the number of fifteen or sixteen, were half standing in the shattered walls, the altars all exposed, and the interior of the dome one mass of stone and rubbish. It was the first time I had seen the effects of an earthquake. For eight or ten miles further, we found every house cracked and deserted, and the people living like the settlers in a new country, half in the open air. The beggars were innumerable.
We stopped the next night on the shores of lake Thrasimene. For once in my life, I felt that the time spent at school on the "dull drilled lesson," had not been wasted. I was on the battle ground of Hannibal—the "locus aptus insidiis" where the consul Flaminius was snared and beaten by the wily Carthaginian on his march to Rome. I longed for my old copy of Livy "much thumbed," that I might sit on the hill and compare the image in my mind, made by his pithy and sententious description, with the reality.
The battle ground, the scene of the principal slaughter, was beyond the albergo, and the increasing darkness compelled us to defer a visit to it till the next morning. Meantime the lake was beautiful. We were on the eastern side, and the deep-red sky of a departed sunset over the other shore, was reflected glowingly on the water. All around was dark, but the light in the sky and lake seemed to have forgotten to follow. It is a phenomenon peculiar to Italy. The heavens seem "dyed" and steeped in the glory of the sunset.
We drank our host's best bottle of wine, the grape plucked from the battle ground; and if it was not better for the Roman blood that had manured its ancestor, it was better for some other reason.
Early the next morning we were on our way, and wound down into the narrow pass between the lake and the hill, as the sun rose. We crossed the Sanguinetto, a little stream which took its name from the battle. The principal slaughter was just on its banks, and the hills are so steep above it, that everybody who fell near must have rolled into its bed. It crawls on very quietly across the road, its clear stream scarce interrupted by the wheels of the vetturino, which in crossing it, passes from the Roman states into Tuscany. I ran a little up the stream, knelt and drank at a small gurgling fall. The blood of the old Flaminian Cohort spoiled very delicious water, when it mingled with that brook.
We were six days and a half accomplishing the hundred and eighty miles from Rome to Florence—slow travelling—but not too slow in Italy, where every stone has its story, and every ascent of a hill its twenty matchless pictures, sprinkled with ruins, as a painter's eye could not imagine them. We looked down on the Eden-like valley of the Arno at sunrise, and again my heart leaped to see the tall dome of Florence, and the hills all about the queenly city, sparkling with palaces and bright in a sun that shines nowhere so kindly. If there is a spot in the world that could wean one from his native home, it is Florence! "Florence the fair," they call her! I have passed four of the seven months I have been in Italy, here—and I think I shall pass here as great a proportion of the rest of my life. There is nothing that can contribute to comfort and pleasure, that is not within the reach of the smallest means in Florence. I never saw a place where wealth made less distinction. The choicest galleries of art in the world, are open to all comers. The palace of the monarch may be entered and visited, and enjoyed by all. The ducal gardens of the Boboli, rich in everything that can refine nature, and commanding views that no land can equal, cooled by fountains, haunted in every grove by statuary, are the property of the stranger and the citizen alike. Museums, laboratories, libraries, grounds, palaces, are all free as Utopia. You may take any pleasure that others can command, and have any means of instruction, as free as the common air. Where else would one live so pleasantly—so profitably—so wisely.
The society of Florence is of a very fascinating description. The Florentine nobles have a casino, or club-house, to which most of the respectable strangers are invited, and balls are given there once a week, frequently by the duke and his court, and the best society of the place. I attended one on my first arrival from Rome, at which I saw a proportion of beauty which astonished me. The female descendants of the great names in Italian history, seem to me to have almost without exception the mark of noble beauty by nature. The loveliest woman in Florence is a Medici. The two daughters of Capponi, the patriot and the descendant of patriots, are of the finest order of beauty. I could instance many others, the mention of whose names, when I have first seen them, has made my blood start. I think if Italy is ever to be redeemed, she must owe it to her daughters. The men, the brothers of these women, with very rare exceptions, look like the slaves they are, from one end of Italy to the other.
One of the most hospitable houses here, is that of Prince Poniatowski, the brother of the hero of Poland. He has a large family, and his soirées are thronged with all that is fair and distinguished. He is a venerable, grayheaded old man, of perhaps seventy, very fond of speaking English, of which rare acquisition abroad he seems a little vain. He gave me the heartiest welcome as an American, and said he loved the nation.