It now approaches the grand group of ecclesiastical buildings which rise above the walls of Pisa. As this town lies well inland, being six miles from the sea, we must content ourselves with a brief mention. But a long description is needless, for who does not know of its cathedral and its Campo Santo, of its baptistry and its leaning tower? There is no more marvelous or complete group of ecclesiastical buildings in Europe, all built of the white marble of Carrara, now changed by age into a delicate cream color, but still almost dazzling in the glory of the mid-day sun, yet never so beautiful as when walls, arches, and pinnacles are aglow at its rising, or flushed at its setting. In the cloisters of the Campo Santo you may see monuments which range over nearly five centuries, and contrast ancient and modern art; the frescoes on their walls, though often ill preserved, and not seldom of little merit, possess no small interest as illustrating medieval notions of a gospel of love and peace. Beneath their roof at the present time are sheltered a few relics of Roman and Etruscan days which will repay examination. The very soil also of this God’s acre is not without an interest, for when the Holy Land was lost to the Christians, fifty-and-three shiploads of earth were brought hither from Jerusalem that the dead of Pisa might rest in ground which had been sanctified by the visible presence of their Redeemer. The cathedral is a grand example of the severe but stately style which was in favor about the end of the eleventh century, for it was consecrated in the year 1118. It commemorates a great naval victory won by the Pisans, three years before the battle of Hastings, and the columns which support the arches of the interior were at once the spoils of classic buildings and the memorials of Pisan victories. The famous leaning tower, though later in date, harmonizes well in general style with the cathedral. Its position, no doubt, attracts most attention, for to the eye it seems remarkably insecure, but one cannot help wishing that the settlement had never occurred, for the slope is sufficient to interfere seriously with the harmony of the group. The baptistry also harmonizes with the cathedral, though it was not begun till some forty years after the latter was completed, and not only was more than a century in building, but also received some ornamental additions in the fourteenth century. But though this cathedral group is the glory and the crown of Pisa, the best monument of its proudest days, there are other buildings of interest in the town itself; and the broad quays which flank the Arno on each side, the Lungarno by name, which form a continuous passage from one end of the town to the other, together with the four bridges which link its older and newer part, are well worthy of more than a passing notice.
The land bordering the Arno between Pisa and its junction with the Mediterranean has no charm for the traveller, however it may commend itself to the farmer. A few miles south of the river’s mouth is Leghorn, and on the eleven miles’ journey by rail from it to Pisa the traveller sees as much, and perhaps more, than he could wish of the delta of the Arno. It is a vast alluvial plain, always low-lying, in places marshy; sometimes meadow land, sometimes arable. Here and there are slight and inconspicuous lines of dunes, very probably the records of old sea margins as the river slowly encroached upon the Mediterranean, which are covered sometimes with a grove of pines.
Leghorn is not an old town, and has little attraction for the antiquarian or the artist. In fact, I think it, for its size, the most uninteresting town, whether on the sea or inland, that I have entered in Italy. Brindisi is a dreary hole, but it has one or two objects of interest. Bari is not very attractive, but it has two churches, the architecture of which will repay long study; but Leghorn is almost a miracle of commonplace architecture and of dullness. Of course there is a harbor, of course there are ships, of course there is the sea, and all these possess a certain charm; but really this is about as small as it can be under the circumstances. The town was a creation of the Medici, “the masterpiece of that dynasty.” In the middle of the sixteenth century it was an insignificant place, with between seven and eight hundred inhabitants. But it increased rapidly when the princes of that family took the town in hand and made it a cave of Adullam, whither the discontented or oppressed from other lands might resort: Jews and Moors from Spain and Portugal, escaping from persecution; Roman Catholics from England, oppressed by the retaliatory laws of Elizabeth; merchants from Marseilles, seeking refuge from civil war. Thus fostered, it was soon thronged by men of talent and energy; it rapidly grew into an important center of commerce, and now the town with its suburbs contains nearly a hundred thousand souls.
Leghorn is intersected by canals, sufficiently so to have been sometimes called a “Little Venice,” and has been fortified, but as the defenses belong to the system of Vauban, they add little to either the interest or the picturesqueness of the place. Parts of the walls and the citadel remain, the latter being enclosed by a broad water-ditch. The principal street has some good shops, and there are two fairly large piazzas; in one, bearing the name of Carlo Alberto, are statues of heroic size to the last Grand Duke and to his predecessor. The inscription on the latter is highly flattering; but that on the former states that the citizens had come to the conclusion that the continuance of the Austro-Lorenese dynasty was incompatible with the good order and happiness of Tuscany, and had accordingly voted union with Italy. The other piazza now bears Victor Emmanuel’s name; in it are a building which formerly was a royal palace, the town hall, and the cathedral; the last a fair-sized church, but a rather plain specimen of the Renaissance style, with some handsome columns of real marble and a large amount of imitation, painted to match. There are also some remains of the old fortifications, though they are not so very old, by the side of the inner or original harbor. As this in course of time proved too shallow for vessels of modern bulk, the Porto Nuovo, or outer harbor, was begun nearly fifty years since, and is protected from the waves by a semicircular mole. Among the other lions of the place, and they are all very small, is a statue of Duke Ferdinand I., one of the founders of Leghorn, with four Turkish slaves about the pedestal. The commerce of Leghorn chiefly consists of grain, cotton, wool, and silk, and is carried on mainly with the eastern ports of the Mediterranean. There is also an important shipbuilding establishment. It has, however, one link of interest with English literature, for in the Protestant cemetery was buried Tobias Smollet. There is a pleasant public walk by the sea margin outside the town, from where distant views of Elba and other islands are obtained.
The hilly ground south of the broad valley of the Arno is of little interest, and for a considerable distance a broad strip of land, a level plain of cornfields and meadow, intervenes between the sea and the foot of the hills. Here and there long lines of pine woods seem almost to border the former; the rounded spurs of the latter are thickly wooded, but are capped here and there by grey villages, seemingly surrounded by old walls, and are backed by the bolder outlines of the more distant Apennines. For many a long mile this kind of scenery will continue, this flat, marshy, dyke-intersected plain, almost without a dwelling upon it, though village after village is seen perched like epaulettes on the low shoulders of the hills. It is easy to understand why they are placed in this apparently inconvenient position, for we are at the beginning of the Tuscan Maremma, a district scourged by malaria during the summer months, and none too healthy, if one may judge by the looks of the peasants, during any time of the year. But one cannot fail to observe that towards the northern extremity houses have become fairly common on this plain, and many of them are new, so that the efforts which have been made to improve the district by draining seem to have met with success. For some time the seaward views are very fine; comparatively near to the coast a hilly island rises steeply from the water and is crowned with a low round tower. Behind this lies Elba, a long, bold, hilly ridge, and far away, on a clear day, the great mountain mass of Corsica looms blue in the distance.
Elba has its interests for the geologist, its beauties for the lover of scenery. It has quarries of granite and serpentine, but its fame rests on its iron mines, which have been noted from very early times and from which fine groups of crystals of hematite are still obtained. So famed was it in the days of the Roman Empire as to call forth from Virgil the well-known line, “Insula inexhaustis chalybum generosa metallis.” When these, its masters, had long passed away, it belonged in turn to Pisa, to Genoa, to Lucca, and, after others, to the Grand Duke Cosimo of Florence. Then it became Neapolitan, and at last French. As everyone knows, it was assigned to Napoleon after his abdication, and from May, 1814, to February, 1815, he enjoyed the title of King of Elba. Then, while discontent was deepening in France, and ambassadors were disputing round the Congress-table at Vienna, he suddenly gave the slip to the vessels which were watching the coast and landed in France to march in triumph to Paris, to be defeated at Waterloo, and to die at St. Helena.
The island is for the most part hilly, indeed almost mountainous, for it rises at one place nearly three thousand feet above the sea. The valleys and lower slopes are rich and fertile, producing good fruit and fair wine, and the views are often of great beauty. The fisheries are of some importance, especially that of the tunny. Porto Ferrajo, the chief town, is a picturesquely situated place, on the northern side, which still retains the forts built by Cosimo I. to defend his newly obtained territory, and the mansion, a very modest palace, inhabited by Napoleon.
“It must be confessed my isle is very little,” was Napoleon’s remark when for the first time he looked around over his kingdom from a mountain summit above Porto Ferrajo. Little it is in reality, for the island is not much more than fifteen miles long, and at the widest part ten miles across; and truly little it must have seemed to the man who had dreamed of Europe for his empire, and had half realized his vision. Nevertheless, as one of his historians remarks, “If an empire could be supposed to exist within such a brief space, Elba possesses so much both of beauty and variety as might constitute the scene of a summer night’s dream of sovereignty.”
At first he professed to be “perfectly resigned to his fate, often spoke of himself as a man politically dead, and claimed credit for what he said on public affairs, as having no remaining interest in them.” A comment on himself in connection with Elba is amusing. He had been exploring his new domain in the company of Sir Niel Campbell, and had visited, as a matter of course, the iron mines. On being informed that they were valuable, and brought in a revenue of about twenty thousand pounds per annum, “These then,” he said, “are mine.” But being reminded that he had conferred that revenue on the Legion of Honor, he exclaimed, “Where was my head when I made such a grant? But I have made many foolish decrees of that sort!”
He set to work at once to explore every corner of the island, and then to design a number of improvements and alterations on a scale which, had they been carried into execution with the means which he possessed, would have perhaps taken his lifetime to execute. The instinct of the conqueror was by no means dead within him; for “one of his first, and perhaps most characteristic, proposals was to aggrandize and extend his Lilliputian dominions by the occupation of an uninhabited island called Pianosa, which had been left desolate on account of the frequent descents of the corsairs. He sent thirty of his guards, with ten of the independent company belonging to the island, upon this expedition (what a contrast to those which he had formerly directed!), sketched out a plan of fortification, and remarked with complacency, ‘Europe will say that I have already made a conquest.’”