We left Mola before dawn and crossed the small river Garigliano as the sun rose. A short distance from the southern bank, we found ourselves in the midst of ruins, the golden beams of the sun pouring upon us through the arches of some once magnificent structure, whose area is now crossed by the road. This was the ancient Minturna, and the ruins are those of an amphitheatre, and a temple of Venus. Some say that it was in the marshes about the now waste city, that the soldier sent by Sylla to kill Marius, found the old hero, and, struck with his noble mien, fell with respect at his feet.
The road soon enters a chain of hills, and the scenery becomes enchanting. At the left of the first ascent lies the Falernian mount, whose wines are immortalized by Horace. It is a beautiful hill, which throws round its shoulder to the south, and is covered with vineyards. I dismounted and walked on while the horses breathed at the post-house of St. Agatha, and was overtaken by a good-natured-looking man, mounted on a mule, of whom I made some inquiry respecting the modern Falernian. He said it was still the best wine of the neighborhood, but was far below its ancient reputation, because never kept long enough to ripen. It is at its prime from the fifteenth to the twentieth year, and is usually drank the first or second. My new acquaintance, I soon found, was the physician of the two or three small villages nested about among the hills and a man of some pretensions to learning. I was delighted with his frank good-humor, and a certain spice of drollery in his description of his patients. The peasants at work in the fields saluted him from any distance as he passed; and the pretty contadini going to St. Agatha with their baskets on their heads, smiled as he nodded, calling them all by name, and I was rather amused than offended with the inquisitiveness he manifested about my age, family, pursuits, and even morals. His mule stopped of its own will, at the door of the apothecary of the small village on the summit of the hill, and as the carriage came in sight the doctor invited me, seizing my hand with a look of friendly sincerity, to stop at St. Agatha on my return, to shoot, and drink Falernian with him for a month. The apothecary stopped the vetturino at the door; and, to the astonishment of my companions within, the doctor seized me in his arms and kissed me on both sides of my face with a volume of blessings and compliments, which I had no breath in my surprise to return. I have made many friends on the road in this country of quick feelings, but the doctor of St. Agatha had a readiness of sympathy which threw all my former experience into the shade.
We dined at Capua, the city whose luxuries enervated Hannibal and his soldiers—the "dives, amorosa, felix" Capua. It is in melancholy contrast with the description now—its streets filthy, and its people looking the antipodes of luxury. The climate should be the same, as we dined with open doors, and with the branch of an orange tree heavy with fruit hanging in at the window, in a month that with us is one of the wintriest.
From Capua to Naples, the distance is but fifteen miles, over a flat, uninteresting country. We entered "this third city in the world" in the middle of the afternoon, and were immediately surrounded with beggars of every conceivable degree of misery. We sat an hour at the gate while our passports were recorded, and the vetturino examined, and then passing up a noble street, entered a dense crowd, through which was creeping slowly a double line of carriages. The mounted dragoons compelled our postillion to fall into the line, and we were two hours following in a fashionable corso with our mud-spattered vehicle and tired horses, surrounded by all that was brilliant and gay in Naples. It was the last day of carnival. Everybody was abroad, and we were forced, however unwillingly to see all the rank and beauty of the city. The carriages in this fine climate are all open, and the ladies were in full dress. As we entered the Toledo, the cavalcade came to a halt, and with hats off and handkerchiefs flying in every direction about them, the young new-married Queen of Naples rode up the middle of the street preceded and followed by outriders in the gayest livery. She has been married about a month, is but seventeen, and is acknowledged to be the most beautiful woman in the kingdom. The description I had heard of her, though very extravagant, had hardly done her justice. She is a little above the middle height, with a fine lift to her head and neck, and a countenance only less modest and maidenly than noble.
LETTER LV.
ROME—FRONT OF ST. PETER'S—EQUIPAGES OF THE CARDINALS—BEGGARS—BODY OF THE CHURCH—TOMB OF ST. PETER—THE TIBER—FORTRESS-TOMB OF ADRIAN—JEWS' QUARTER—FORUM BARBERINI PALACE—PORTRAIT OF BEATRICE CENCI—HER MELANCHOLY HISTORY—PICTURE OF THE FORNARINA—LIKENESS OF GIORGIONE'S MISTRESS—JOSEPH AND POTIPHAR'S WIFE—THE PALACES DORIA AND SCIARRA—PORTRAIT OF OLIVIA WALDACHINI—OF "A CELEBRATED WIDOW"—OF SEMIRAMIS—CLAUDE'S LANDSCAPES—BRILL'S—BRUGHEL'S—NOTTI'S "WOMAN CATCHING FLEAS"—DA VINCI'S QUEEN GIOVANNA—PORTRAIT OF A FEMALE DORIA—PRINCE DORIA—PALACE SCIARRA—BRILL AND BOTH'S LANDSCAPES—CLAUDE'S—PICTURE OF NOAH INTOXICATED—ROMANA'S FORNARINA—DA VINCI'S TWO PICTURES.
Drawn in twenty different directions on starting from my lodgings this morning, I found myself, undecided where to pass my day, in front of St. Peter's. Some gorgeous ceremony was just over, and the sumptuous equipages of the cardinals, blazing in the sun with their mountings of gold and silver, were driving up and dashing away from the end of the long colonnades, producing any effect upon the mind rather than a devout one. I stood admiring their fiery horses and gay liveries, till the last rattled from the square, and then mounted to the deserted church. Its vast vestibule was filled with beggars, diseased in every conceivable manner, halting, groping, and crawling about in search of strangers of whom to implore charity—a contrast to the splendid pavement beneath and the gold and marble above and around, which would reconcile one to see the "mighty dome" melted into alms, and his holiness reduced to a plain chapel and a rusty cassock.
Lifting the curtain I stood in the body of the church. There were perhaps twenty persons, at different distances, on its immense floor, the farthest off (six hundred and fourteen feet from me!) looking like a pigmy in the far perspective. St. Peter's is less like a church than a collection of large churches enclosed under a gigantic roof. The chapels at the sides are larger than most houses of public worship in our country, and of these there may be eight or ten, not included in the effect of the vast interior. One is lost in it. It is a city of columns and sculpture and mosaic. Its walls are encrusted with precious stones and masterly workmanship to the very top, and its wealth may be conceived when you remember that, standing in the centre and raising your eyes aloft, there are four hundred and forty feet between you and the roof of the dome—the height, almost of a mountain.
I walked up toward the tomb of St. Peter, passing in my way a solitary worshipper here and there, upon his knees, and arrested constantly by the exquisite beauty of the statuary with which the columns are carved. Accustomed as we are in America, to churches filled with pews, it is hardly possible to imagine the noble effect of a vast mosaic floor, unencumbered even with a chair, and only broken by a few prostrate figures, just specking its wide area. All Catholic churches are without fixed seats, and St. Peter's seems scarce measurable to the eye, it is so far and clear, from one extremity to the other.
I passed the hundred lamps burning over the tomb of St. Peter, the lovely female statue (covered with a bronze drapery, because its exquisite beauty was thought dangerous to the morality of the young priests), reclining upon the tomb of Paul III., the ethereal figures of Canova's geniuses weeping at the door of the tomb of the Stuarts (where sleeps the pretender Charles Edward), the thousand thousand rich and beautiful monuments of art and taste crowding every corner of this wondrous church—I passed them, I say, with the same lost and unexamining, unparticularizing feeling which I cannot overcome in this place—a mind borne quite off its feet and confused and overwhelmed with the tide of astonishment—the one grand impression of the whole. I dare say, a little more familiarity with St. Peter's will do away the feeling, but I left the church, after two hours loitering in its aisles, despairing, and scarce wishing to examine or make a note.