As most travellers come into Italy over the Simplon, Milan makes generally the first enthusiastic chapter in their books. I have reversed the order myself, and have a better right to praise it from comparison. For exterior, there is certainly no city in Italy comparable to it. The streets are broad and noble, the buildings magnificent, the pavement quite the best in Europe, and the Milanese (all of whom I presume I have seen, for it is Sunday, and the streets swarm with them), are better dressed, and look "better to do in the world" than the Tuscans, who are gayer and more Italian, and the Romans, who are graver and vastly handsomer. Milan is quite like Paris. The showy and mirror-lined cafés, the elegant shops, the variety of strange people and costumes, and a new gallery lately opened in imitation of the glass-roofed passages of the French capital, make one almost feel that the next turn will bring him upon the Boulevards.
The famous cathedral, nearly completed by Napoleon, is a sort of Aladdin creation, quite too delicate and beautiful for the open air. The filmly traceries of gothic fretwork, the needle-like minarets, the hundreds of beautiful statues with which it is studded, the intricate, graceful, and bewildering architecture of every window and turret, and the frost-like frailness and delicacy of the whole mass, make an effect altogether upon the eye that must stand high on the list of new sensations. It is a vast structure withal, but a middling easterly breeze, one would think in looking at it, would lift it from its base and bear it over the Atlantic like the meshes of a cobweb. Neither interior nor exterior impresses you with the feeling of awe common to other large churches. The sun struggles through the immense windows of painted glass, staining every pillar and carved cornice with the richest hues, and wherever the eye wanders it grows giddy with the wilderness of architecture. The people on their knees are like paintings in the strong artificial light, the checkered pavement seems trembling with a quivering radiance, the altar is far and indistinct, and the lamps burning over the tomb of Saint Carlo, shine out from the centre like gems glistening in the midst of some enchanted hall. This reads very like rhapsody, but it is the way the place impressed me. It is like a great dream. Its excessive beauty scarce seems constant while the eye rests upon it.
The Brera is a noble palace, occupied by the public galleries of statuary and painting. I felt on leaving Florence that I could give pictures a very long holyday. To live on them, as one does in Italy, is like dining from morn till night. The famous Guercino, is at Milan, however, the "Hagar," which Byron talks of so enthusiastically, and I once more surrendered myself to a cicerone. The picture catches your eye on your first entrance. There is that harmony and effect in the color that mark a masterpiece, even in a passing glance. Abraham stands in the centre of the group, a fine, prophet-like, "green old man," with a mild decision in his eye, from which there is evidently no appeal. Sarah has turned her back, and you can just read in the half-profile glance of her face, that there is a little pity mingled in her hard-hearted approval of her rival's banishment. But Hagar—who can describe the world of meaning in her face? The closed lips have in them a calm incredulousness, contradicted with wonderful nature in the flushed and troubled forehead, and the eyes red with long weeping. The gourd of water is hung over her shoulder, her hand is turning her sorrowful boy from the door, and she has looked back once more, with a large tear coursing down her cheek, to read in the face of her master if she is indeed driven forth for ever. It is the instant before pride and despair close over her heart. You see in the picture that the next moment is the crisis of her life. Her gaze is straining upon the old man's lips, and you wait breathlessly to see her draw up her bending form, and depart in proud sorrow for the wilderness. It is a piece of powerful and passionate poetry. It affects you like nothing but a reality. The eyes get warm, and the heart beats quick, and as you walk away you feel as if a load of oppressive sympathy was lifting from your heart.
I have seen little else in Milan, except Austrian soldiers, of whom there are fifteen thousand in this single capital! The government has issued an order to officers not on duty, to appear in citizen's dress, it is supposed, to diminish the appearance of so much military preparation. For the rest, they make a kind of coffee here, by boiling it with cream, which is better than anything of the kind either in Paris or Constantinople; and the Milanese are, for slaves, the most civil people I have seen, after the Florentines. There is little English society here; I know not why, except that the Italians are rich enough to be exclusive and make their houses difficult of access to strangers.
LETTER LXIII.
A MELANCHOLY PROCESSION—LAGO MAGGIORE—ISOLA BELLA—THE SIMPLON—MEETING A FELLOW-COUNTRYMAN—THE VALLEY OF THE RHONE.
In going out of the gates of Milan, we met a cart full of peasants, tied together and guarded by gens d'armes, the fifth sight of the kind that has crossed us since we passed the Austrian border. The poor fellows looked very innocent and very sorry. The extent of their offences probably might be the want of a passport, and a desire to step over the limits of his majesty's possessions. A train of beautiful horses, led by soldiers along the ramparts, the property of the Austrian officers, were in melancholy contrast to their sad faces.
The clear snowy Alps soon came in sight, and their cold beauty refreshed us in the midst of a heat that prostrated every nerve in the system. It is only the first of May, and they are mowing the grass everywhere on the road, the trees are in their fullest leaf, the frogs and nightingales singing each other down, and the grasshopper would be a burden. Toward night we crossed the Sardinian frontier, and in an hour were set down at an auberge on the bank of Lake Maggiore, in the little town of Arona. The mountains on the other side of the broad and mirror-like water, are speckled with ruined castles, here and there a boat is leaving its long line of ripples behind in its course, the cattle are loitering home, the peasants sit on the benches before their doors, and all the lovely circumstances of a rural summer's sunset are about us, in one of the very loveliest spots in nature. A very old Florence friend is my companion, and what with mutual reminiscences of sunny Tuscany, and the deepest love in common for the sky over our heads, and the green land around us, we are noting down "red days" in our calendar of travel.
We walked from Arona by sunrise, four or five miles along the borders of Lake Maggiore. The kind-hearted peasants on their way to the market raised their hats to us in passing, and I was happy that the greeting was still "buon giorno." Those dark-lined mountains before us were to separate me too soon from the mellow accents in which it was spoken. As yet, however, it was all Italian—the ultra-marine sky, the clear, half-purpled hills, the inspiring air—we felt in every pulse that it was still Italy.
We were at Baveno at an early hour, and took a boat for Isola Bella. It looks like a gentleman's villa afloat. A boy would throw a stone entirely over it in any direction. It strikes you like a kind of toy as you look at it from a distance, and getting nearer, the illusion scarcely dissipates—for, from the water's edge, the orange-laden terraces are piled one above another like a pyramidal fruit-basket, the villa itself peers above like a sugar castle, and it scarce seems real enough to land upon. We pulled round to the northern side, and disembarked at a broad stone staircase, where a cicerone, with a look of suppressed wisdom, common to his vocation, met us with the offer of his services.