"This day completes the second year of my journal. How quick are they flown! those two years which are supposed to be the happiest in life. I think any time in life is happy if one knows the secret of making it so. I have not learnt it yet, and have had a great deal of unhappiness since going to College. But for what? Nothing but my own imagination and weaknesses, for everything which generally gives happiness I have enjoyed. I have made several friends, been successful enough in my College studies, and have never wanted anything; but I have a morbid constitution which makes me raise phantoms of unhappiness where there is none, and clouds the fairest scenes with a veil of melancholy. This must be conquered, somehow or other, or I shall be a creature useless to others and tormenting to myself."
He feels much distaste at what he terms the dirty style in which an Italian gentleman chooses to live, because that gentleman finds himself quite comfortable without such furniture and appliances as are deemed essential in England. He happened to be a man fond of books, and spent his spare time in libraries and academies.
The travellers leave Milan after a fortnight's stay, and proceed through Placentia, Parma, Modena, and Bologna. Here the celebrated Cardinal Mezzofanti called upon them, and Spencer remarks that the only thing worth seeing, as far as he has gone, in Italy, are churches and their ornaments. He singled out one of those latter for special remark, as we find by the following passage:—
"Oct. 30. At nine o'clock Dr. Wilson's friend, a lawyer, took him and me up to a church on the mountain, near the town, famous for a picture—done, as they say, by St. Luke! There is a fine arcade to it for 2½ miles, and pilgrims go by this to adore this nonsense!"
Their next stay is at Florence, where he had the ill-luck of not providing against mosquitoes, who took the liberty of biting him heartily the first night he slept there. News reaches him next day that a great friend of his at Cambridge, a Mr. Gambler, has obtained a fellowship in Trinity. This makes him merry all the evening. They halt again for some rest at Perugia. All he says about this classic town is, "Before breakfast the Doctor and I saw a gallery of frightful old pictures, and other maraviglia of Perugia, and then set off, still through mountainous country, to Spoleto. They start for Rome next day, they see it fifteen miles off, but he does not seem to have had a single spark of enthusiasm as he looks upon the great mistress of the world for the first time. Of course Rome, as the capital of Christendom, was not likely to stir up his best feelings, when we remember the then frame of his religious mind. At all events, cold and listless as it might be, he entered Rome on Wednesday, the 10th November, 1819. The first thing he and his father with the Doctor did on arriving, was to pay a visit to St. Peter's. "We saw it inside and out. It was most glorious: but its size from some reason or other disappoints me, as it does all strangers; it improves upon acquaintance, I fancy." How like Byron's opinion. "Childe Harold:" Canto iv. 65:—
"Enter: its grandeur overwhelms thee not;
And why? it is not lessened: but thy mind,
Expanded by the Genius of the spot,
Has grown colossal, and can only find
A fit abode wherein appear enshrined
Thy hopes of immortality; and thou
Shalt one day, if found worthy, so defined,
See thy God face to face, as thou dost now
His Holy of Holies, nor be blasted by His brow."
He visits next the Capitoline, the ancient Forum, and the Coliseum; he remarks: "this last is quite stupendous, and quite answers my expectations. I could not yet understand the plan of the staircases and seats. The Pope has stuck it all over with little chapels." He meets Tom Moore, and spends a day with him and other merry companions in Tivoli.
He stayed in Rome this time only a week: for on the 17th November they all started for Naples. In passing through Terracina he meets what Catholics will recognize as a svegliarino. It is customary, when a mission is being given in some parts of Italy, for one of the missioners to go out, accompanied by a bell, and such companions, lay and clerical, as wish to take part in the ceremony, go around the village, and preach from a table in three or four different places. This has a remarkable effect—the listless loungers who prefer basking in the sun, or swallowing maccaroni, to going to the church for the sermons, are thus roused so far as to put their heads out of the window or door and ask what's the matter. By-and-bye the crowd thickens, one looks inquisitively at the other, and when their curiosity has been worked upon sufficiently, the missioner gets up, and in a fiery zealous discourse puts the fear of God into his hearers. Thousands are brought to repentance by these means every year. The sermon, of course, is not a polished oration, with points of rhetoric to suit the laws of criticism. It is rather broken and inflamed, short and telling sentences, and delivered with all that unction and impetuosity for which Italians are remarkable; and which is anything but intelligible to an Englishman, who is accustomed to the measured discourses of a London Churchman. Accordingly we find this proceeding thus dotted down in the journal:—"At Terracina we were very much amused by a procession of penitents with the Bishop of Terracina, and an extravagant sermon preached by a priest from a table before the inn." At that time, how little could he foresee that he should afterwards give such a mission in Italy himself, and further, to the utmost of his power, with equal zeal, though with more sedateness, even such an extravaganza, as it now appeared to him. His style of preaching, however, as we shall hereafter see, was never such as to qualify him for an emphatic svegliarino.
On November 21 they arrive in Naples, not very pleasantly, as Lady Spencer had suffered from the roughness of the road, and was obliged to rest a night in Capua, and George was suffering from a soreness in his eye. These inconveniences were forgotten for a moment on meeting Lord George Quin and his lady, daughter to Lord Spencer. Young Spencer was delighted with the children, though they could only speak French or Italian. The soreness of his eye keeps him at home next day, which he enjoys as he has full opportunity of chatting with his sister, whom he seems to have loved very much. He has already alluded to the plan his mother formed for his learning to play on the guitar; so we shall not quote any of the handsome greetings which the guitar-master receives as he comes to inflict the penance of making his pupil tune the strings of this romantic instrument.