When you leave the duomo, wander through the Venetian streets of this wonderful little island city, where Gothic windows and beautifully carved balconies look out to, lean forth to, the calm, blue waters, edged by the red and the gold of the vines. For this place is unique and has an unique charm. Peace dwells here, and beauty has found a quiet abiding-place, where it lingers, and will linger, I hope, for many centuries yet, girdled by olive-groves, by vineyards, by sun-kissed waters, guarded by the lions of Venice.
From Spalato I visited the white ruins of Salona, where the Emperor Diocletian was born, and near which, in his palace at Spalato, he spent the last eight years of his life, cultivating his garden, seeking after philosophy, and, let us hope, repenting of his bitter persecution of the Christians. From the hill, on the site of the Basilica Urbana, I saw one of those frigid and almost terrible lemon sunsets which come with the wind of the dead. I stayed till night despite the intense cold, till the fragments of the city, scattered far over the sloping ground above the riviera of the Sette Castelli, and creeping up to the solitary dwelling-house built by Professor Bulic of old Roman stones, took on sad and unnatural pallors in the darkness, till lonely columns stood up like watching specters, and fragments of wall were like specters crouching. For a long while the lemon hue persisted in the western sky, and the voice of the wind rose with the night, crying among the burial-places.
A few hours' voyage on a splendid ship, and you step ashore at Gravosa, the port for Ragusa, the most popular place in Dalmatia, and in many ways the most attractive. For it is embowered in woods and gardens; contains remarkable old buildings; is girdled about by tremendous fortress walls, and by forts perched on bastions of rock overlooking the sea and the isle of Lacroma, where Richard Cœur de Lion touched land and founded a monastery; is thoroughly and deliciously medieval, yet full of Slav and Austrian life; possesses a railway-station, many well-built villas, and a good hotel, and is surrounded by delightful country. Perhaps in all Dalmatia Ragusa is the best center from which to take long walks and make expeditions. It is cheery, cozy, and wonderful at the same time. The terrific walls of the fortresses do not appal or overwhelm, for all about them cluster the gardens. Ivy climbs over the archways. In what was once a moat the grass grows thickly, the flowers bloom, and many trees give shade. This is a medieval paradise, and its inhabitants have reason to rejoice in it and to say there is no place like it.
Though small, it is intricate. At every moment one is surprised by some unexpected view, by some marvel of masonry, militant or ecclesiastical; by a fountain or a statue, an old doorway, a courtyard, a campanile, an exquisite façade, with arches and lovely columns, balconies and carved window-frames; by cloisters, a strange alley ending in flights of steps, which lead to a mountain from which a fort looks down; by a secret harbor, or a secret garden, or a little magical grove nestling beneath a protecting wall which dates from the Middle Ages, when Ragusa was a proud republic.
Was Burne-Jones ever in Ragusa? It is like one of the little enchanted towns he loved to paint in the backgrounds of his pictures. Was William Morris ever there? It is like a city in one of his poems. It is full of churches, and their towers are full of bells. Monks and priests pass perpetually through the narrow streets with smartly dressed Austrian soldiers. And military music, the triumph of bugles and trumpets, the beat and rattle of drums, joins with the drowsy sound of church organs, and the old voices of clocks chiming the hours, to make the symphony of Ragusa. Men and women from the Breno Valley, from Canali the golden, where oaks grow among the rocks, and the autumn vineyards are a wonder forever to haunt the memory, from Melada and the Stag Islands, from the Ombla and Herzegovina, pass all day down "the Stradone," stroll in the Brsalje, a piazza with mulberry-trees overlooking the sea, talk by the Amerling fountain, or sit on the wall by Porta Pille under the statue of San Biagio, the patron saint of the town. And each one is in a picturesque, perhaps even a brilliant, costume. The men often wear long chains, and carry handsomely chased weapons and long, elaborate pipes. Some have sheepskins flung jauntily over their shoulders, and bright-red caps. The women wear golden ornaments, embroidered jackets, and marvelous aprons almost like prayer-rugs, handsome pins, pleated head-dresses, bright-colored handkerchiefs or tiny caps, coins hanging on chains over their thickly growing hair.
The chief hotels, the villas, and the railway-station, where a row of victorias is drawn up,—for this is no Zara, but a city which believes that it "moves with the times,"—lie among roses, oleanders, single rhododendrons, trees, and masses of luxuriant vegetation outside Porta Pille. As soon as you have passed beneath San Biagio and descended the hill, you are in a bright, medieval world, in the heart of one of the most original and fascinating little cities that exists in Europe.
THE RECTOR'S PALACE AND THE PUBLIC SQUARE AT RAGUSA
On the left of the Stradone, the chief street and the newest, between two and three hundred years old, at right angles to it, shadowed by tall and ancient houses, tiny alleys, ending in steep flights of steps, lead up toward the mountain. On the flat to its right is a happy maze of alleys, clean, strange, old, yet never sad. A delicious cheerfulness reigns in Ragusa. From the dimness of venerable doorways smiling faces look forth. They lean down from carved stone balconies. Gay voices chatter at the foot of frowning walls, huge bastions, mighty watch-towers; before the statue of Roland, near the Dogana which has a loggia and Gothic windows; by the fine and massive Onofrio fountain, which for over four hundred and seventy years has given water to the inhabitants; among the doves by Porta Place, which leads to the harbor. The wide, but intimate, Stradone toward noon and evening is thronged with cheerful and neatly dressed citizens, strolling to and fro in the soft air between the delicious little shops full of fine rugs, weapons, chains, and filigree ornaments.