The empty word of ‘progress’ which is repeated by all nations in this day, as if they were parrots, and has as much meaning in it as if it were only ‘poor poll,’ is continually used to cover, or feign to excuse, all these barbarous enormities; but most insincerely, most vainly. To turn a rich agricultural country into a fourth-rate manufacturing one can claim neither sagacity nor prudence as its defence. To demolish noble, ancient and beautiful things, in order to reproduce the modern mushroom-growths of a dreary and dusty ‘western township,’ can allege neither sense nor shrewdness as its excuse; it is simply extremely silly; even if inspired by greed it is both silly and short-sighted. Yet it is the only thing which the Italian municipal councils consider it excellent to do; they have, after their manner, sufficiently paid tribute to the arts when they have chipped a Luca Della Robbia medallion out of an ancient wall and put it away in a glass case in some gallery, or when they have taken an altar (as they have just taken the silver altar out of San Giovanni) and locked it up in some museum where nobody goes.[[E]]
To the arguments of common sense that an altar is as safe, and as visible, in the baptistery as in a museum, and that five centuries have passed over Luca’s out-of-door work without wind or weather, heat or frost, impairing it in the least, no one in the municipal council of any town would for a moment attend. They do not want reason or fitness; they only want the vaporous, fussy, greedy, braggart ‘modern tone.’
Everyone who has visited Florence knows the house fronting the gate of San Pier Gattolino (Porta Romana), on the front of which are found remnants of an almost wholly damaged fresco, through which a window has been cut. The house was once radiant with the frescoes of Giovanni di San Giovanni, which Cosimo dé Medici caused to be painted on its façade, because fronting the gateway by which all travellers came from Rome, ‘it was to be desired, for the honour of the city, that the first impression of all such travellers should be one of joy and beauty, to the end that such strangers might receive pleasure therein and tarry willingly.’ This wise and hospitable reasoning has been utterly lost sight of by those who rule our modern cities, and the approaches to all of them are defiled and disfigured, so that the heart of the traveller sinks within his breast. Instead of Cosimo’s gay and gracious fresco-pageantry upon the walls, there are only now, by the Romano gate, a steam tramway belching filthy smoke, a string of carts waiting to be taxed, and a masons’ scaffolding where lately towered the Torrigiani trees!
Reflect for a moment what the rule of—we will not say an Augustus, but merely of a Magnifico, of a Francois Premier—might have made in these thirty years of modern Italy. Marvellous beauty, incomparable grandeur of form, surpassing loveliness of Nature, entire sympathy of the cultured world and splendour immeasurable of tradition and example, all these after the peace of Villafranca, as after the breach of Porta Pia, lay ready to the hand of any ruler of the land who could have comprehended their meaning and their magnificence, their assured opportunity and their offered harmony.
But there was no one; and the moment has long passed.
The country has been guided instead into the trumpery and ephemeral triumphs of what is called modern civilisation, and an endless expenditure has gone hand in hand with a mistaken policy.
Whenever a royal visit is made to any Italian town, the preparations for it invariably include some frightful act of demolition, as when at Bologna, on the occasion of the late state visit of the sovereigns, the noble Communal Palace of that city was bedaubed all over with a light colouring, and its exquisitely picturesque and irregular casements were altered, enlarged, and cut about into the mathematical monotony dear to the municipal mind, no one present having sense to see that all the harmony and dignity of its architecture were ruthlessly obliterated. Some similar action is considered necessary in every town, big or little, before the reception of any prince, native or foreign. The results are easily conceived. It is said that William of Germany did not conceal his ridicule of the colossal equestrian statues in pasteboard which were set up in the station entrance at Rome in his honour; but as a rule the royal persons in Europe appear not to have any artistic feeling to offend. The only two who had any were hurled in their youth, by a tragic fate, out of a world with which they had little affinity. Those who remain have no sympathy for tradition or for the arts. The abominations done daily in their names and before their eyes leave them wholly unmoved. Nay, it is no secret that they do constantly approve and urge on the vandalism of their epoch.
The Italian people would have been easily led into a higher and wiser form of life. (I speak of the Italian people as distinguished from the Italian bureaucracy and borghesia, which are both of a crass and hopeless philistinism.) The country people especially have an artistic sense still latent in them, and they remain often artistic in their attire, despite the debasing temptations of cheap and vulgar modern clothing. Their ear for music is generally perfect, they detect instantly the false note or the faulty chord which many an educated hearer might let pass unnoticed. Their national songs, serenades, and poems are admirable in purity and grace, and although now, alas! comparatively rarely heard on hillside and by seashore, they remain essentially the verse of the people. Unfortunately this part of the nation is absolutely unrepresented. The noisy agitator, the greedy office-seeker, the unscrupulous politician, the pert, unhealthy lawyer crowd to the front and screech and roar until they are esteemed both at home and abroad to be the sole and indivisible ‘public,’ whilst their influence, by intrigue and bustle, does most unhappily predominate in all spheres municipal and political; and the entire press, subsidised by them, justifies them in all they do and pushes their selfish and soulless speculations down the throats of unwilling and helpless men.
‘Mi son meco,’ says Benedetto Varchi, ‘molte volte stranamente maravigliato com’ esser posso che in quelli uomini i quali son usati per piccolissimo prezzo, insino della prima fanciullezza loro, a portare le balle della Lana in guisi di facchini, e le sporte della Seta a uso di zanaiuoli, ed in somma a star poco meno che schiavi tutto il giorno, e gran pezza della notte alla Caviglia e al fuso, si ritrovi poi in molti di loro, dove e quando bisogna, tanta grandezza d’anima e cosi nobili e alti pensieri, che sappiamo, e osino non solo di dire ma di fare quelle tante e si belle cose, ch’ eglino parte dicono, e parte fanno.’[[F]]
A people of whom this was essentially, and not merely rhetorically, true, would have been with little difficulty kept within the fair realm of art and guided to a fine ideal, in lieu of being given for their guides the purchased quill-men of a venal journalism, and bidden to worship a dirty traction-engine, a plate-glass shop front, and a bridge of cast-iron, painted red.