"This casual introduction of literary topics furnished us with ample matter for conversation while we were not engaged in contemplating the sublime ruins over which, when the sentinel returned, we climbed. I asked him respecting the literature of Poland, and particularly if there were now any living poets of eminence. He observed: 'Yes, sir, I am happily travelling in company with the most celebrated of our poets, Meinenvitch'; and who, as I understood him, was one of the party walking in another part of the ruins.
"Engaged in conversation we left the Coliseum together and slowly proceeded into the city. I told him of the deep interest with which Poland was regarded in the United States, and that her heroes were spoken of with the same veneration as our own. As some evidence of this estimation I informed him of the monument erected by the cadets of West Point to the memory of Kosciusko. With this intelligence he was evidently much affected; he took my hand and exclaimed with great enthusiasm and emphatically: 'We, too, sir, shall be free; the time is coming; we too shall be free; my unhappy country will be free.' (This was before the revolution in France.)
"As I came to the street where we were to part he took out his notebook, and, going under the lamp of a Madonna, near the Piazza Colonna, he wished me to write my name for him among the other names of Americans which he had treasured in his book. I complied with his request. In bidding me adieu he said: 'It will be one of my happiest recollections of Rome that the last night which I passed in this city was passed in the Coliseum, and with an American, a citizen of a free country. If you should ever visit Warsaw, pray enquire for Prince——; I shall be exceedingly glad to see you.'
"Thus I parted with this interesting Pole. That I should have forgotten a Polish name, pronounced but once, you will not think extraordinary. The sequel remains to be told. When the Polish revolution broke out, what was my surprise to find the poet Meinenvitch and a prince, whose name seemed like that which he pronounced to me, and to which was added—'just returned from Italy'—among the first members of the provisional government."
Morse assured himself afterwards, and so noted it in his journal, that this chance acquaintance was Prince Michael Jerome Radziwill, who had served as lieutenant in the war of independence under Kosciusko; fought under Napoleon in Russia (by whom he was made a brigadier-general); and, shortly after the meeting in the Coliseum, was made general-in-chief of the Polish army. After the defeat of this army he was banished to central Russia until 1836, when he retired to Dresden.
Reverting again to the notebooks, we find that Florence, with her wealth of beauty in architecture, sculpture, and painting, appealed strongly to the artist, and the notes are chiefly descriptions of what he sees, and which it will not be necessary to transcribe. He had, during all the time he was in Italy, been completing, one after another, the copies for which he had received commissions, and had been sending them home. He thus describes to his friend, Mr. Van Schaick, the paintings made for him:—
"Florence, May 12, 1831. I have at length completed the two pictures which you were so kind as to commission me to execute for you, and they are packed in a case, ready to send to you from Leghorn by the first opportunity, through Messrs. Bell, de Yongh & Co. of that city.
"As your request was that these pictures should be heads, I have chosen two of the most celebrated in the gallery of portraits in the Florence Gallery. These are the heads of Rubens and Titian from the portraits by themselves. As the portraits of the two great masters of color they will alone be interesting, but they are more so from giving a fair specimen of their two opposite styles of color. That of Rubens, from its gaiety, will doubtless be more popular, but that of Titian, from its sobriety and dignity, pleases me better. In hanging the pictures they should be placed apart. The styles are so opposed that, were they placed near to each other, they would mutually affect each other unfavorably. Rubens may be placed in more obscurity, but Titian demands to be more in the light.
"I have no time to add, as I am preparing to leave Florence on Monday for
Bologna and Venice."
Travelling in Italy in those days was fraught with many annoyances, for, in addition to the slow progress made in the vetture, there seems to have been (judging from the journal) a dogana, or custom-house, every few miles, where the luggage and clothing of travellers were examined, sometimes hastily and courteously, sometimes with more rigor. And yet this leisurely rate of progress, the travellers walking up most of the hills, must have had a charm unknown to the present-day tourist, who is whisked unseeing through the most characteristic parts of a foreign country. The beautiful scenery of the Apennines was in this way enjoyed to the full by the artist, but I shall not linger over the journey nor shall I include any notes concerning Bologna. He found the city most interesting—"A piece of porphyry set in verd antique"—and those to whom he had letters of introduction more hospitable than in any other city in Italy.