have put together the Latin nations, as well as those of Eastern Europe, for convenience’ sake. Indeed the literature of Italy forms, of itself, one library, and that of Venice another; for there seems no native of any distant country who has not tried his prentice hand on Venice, in some of her many aspects. The American authors have been much attracted by the Queen of the Adriatic. From Byron to Browning, our English masters of poetry have delighted in it, and we must by no means omit the Stories of Venice and other works on it by Ruskin, which will take some time to read. Shelley, Rogers, and Browning—the first-named in Euganean Hills and the last in In a Gondola and many other poems—showed they were full of its spirit and colour.
Howell lived there for many years, and has given us Venetian Life, besides Italian Journeys, Tuscan Cities, and Alfieri and the Modern Italian Poets. Its book-lore, music, and the Technical History of its Lace Manufacture, glass, ceramics, and architecture, have all been written of in turn by different writers. One of the last and best is Robertson’s Bible of St. Mark’s. J. A. Symonds has written New Italian Sketches, and Life on a Doge’s Farm. There is also a delightful new book in A. M. Hopkinson Smith’s Gondola Days. Mrs. Oliphant has a book on the Makers of Venice, as well as the Makers of Florence.
In the way of Italian stories, we have Hans Andersen’s Improvisatore, Whyte Melville’s Gladiators, and the series of Marion Crawford, beginning with Saracenesca, which are full of older days in Rome, the middle portion of this century. Bulwer too has given us Rienzi and The Last Days of Pompeii. Romola by George Eliot, and many of Lever’s novels, picture for us a Florence which has passed away. Nor must we forget John Inglesant, and its remarkable picture of an Italy in the middle ages. In Italian we have the famous novel, I Promessi Sposi, Marco Visconti, and many much more modern books, including those of Silvio Pellico, Amicis, which are all interesting, and written also in Italian of a more modern style, which has taken on some shades of difference from the French. If you intend going to Italy, you should by all means try to get a few Italian lessons, if only to accustom your ear to the sound of the spoken tongue.
The Venetian school of painters is famous for their colouring. The best known of the great Venetian masters are, Paul Veronese, Tintoretto, and Titian; and you must know something of them. The last half of the fifteenth century and the first half of the sixteenth were the great periods of Italian art, and besides Varsari’s great works, you should read Benvenuto Cellini’s autobiography; and also a good history of Italian art, such as Crowe and Cavalcaselle’s History of Painting in Italy. Nor must you omit to learn something of the early history of music, which has so much of Italian in its origin; and poetry which numbers Dante and Petrarch, Ariosto and Tasso, in its ranks. You should likewise understand something of Italian architecture, and of its three schools, Venetian, Florentian, and Roman.
I remember well my own burning desire to learn something of the meaning of the things which surrounded me, and how I devoured everything that came in my way, so that the book list in my note-book and the copious notes surprise me to this day: Sismondi’s Italian Republics, Roscoe’s Life of Lorenzo di Medicis, Sir William Gell’s works, Mrs. Jameson’s books, and the lives of all the painters I could reach in English, French, and Italian.
If we wander away from the more modern side of life in Italy, we are even more interested. The Etruscans and their cities, the early days of Rome, Rome in Christian days, and the wars and tumults of the middle ages, have all in turn swayed the Peninsula, and have all had their historians too. The Etruscans are the most mysterious people of antiquity, and in the Etruscan museum at Florence you will first be able to gauge the artistic products of this ancient people in bronze and earthenware. Their power attained its zenith in the sixth century B.C., and you ought to know something about them in order to comprehend better the Roman civilisation.
Next in interest to the Etruscans, to me, were the Catacombs in Rome, and all the Roman monuments there; and you will speedily learn to distinguish the different styles both of architecture and ornament. An excellent Handbook to Christian and Ecclesiastical Rome by M. A. R. Tuker and H. Malleson has just been published in a series of four parts, two of which are now out, and parts three and four will soon be issued in one volume. It is intended to give the visitor a complete historical and descriptive account of Christian Rome in a handy form not at present otherwise available. The first part deals with the wonderful churches and basilicas of Rome, while Part II. deals with the various ceremonies, and Parts III. and IV. with all the monastic orders, the colleges, palaces, etc., in fact, all those particulars that everyone wants to know so much, and finds it so difficult to discover for themselves. This handbook is published by A. & C. Black at a very moderate price, and is being much recommended by the well-known travelling agents, Messrs. Cook and Dr. Lund. Middleton’s Rome deals more with classical Rome, and Story’s Roba di Roma with things as they are. Augustus Hare’s Walks about Rome is very useful, and so are Mrs. Jameson’s great books, Sacred and Legendary Art and Legends of the Monastic Orders; and also Withrow’s Catacombs of Rome. Rienzi, The Gladiators, the Improvisatore, and Marion Crawford’s novels, all deal with Rome from that fictitious side which is founded on facts; and all of them paint a different Rome. T. A. Trollope’s books on Italy, Leader Scott’s, and the delightful books of Professor Villari and his wife, are all delightful reading, and you will gain an idea of those two wonderful Italians, Giordano Bruno and Savonarola, who were at once patriots, reformers and martyrs. There are, and have ever been, so many Romes, the scenes of which pass before you like those in a drama; and the more you know the more you will enjoy, in your visits to her storied stones. Do you think I am laying too much stress on your study of Rome? When you begin to read you will see that in art, poetry, and literature, in science and in things that made the beauty of life, she has always led the way. But two things you will have to return to England to study, the growth of true freedom and the development of constitutional law; these were of home manufacture.
To understand Italian poets, especially Dante, your knowledge of Italian history must be fairly good, and the study of Italian literature would demand more time, probably, than you will have to give to it. So I will not enter into that subject, but I will advise you to take an Italian daily paper directly you begin your study of Italian, if you do so; for you will very soon be able to spell out a great deal of its contents, and this will aid you in mastering the language. They are fortunately very cheap indeed. My first purchase when I get into North Italy, after passing through the St. Gotthard, and getting near Milan, is the Corriere della Sera (or the Evening Courier) of that city, of which I am very fond, as it is full of general news and is amusing. In Florence and Rome I am very erratic in my choice, and only think of avoiding too fine and close print, and bad paper, as these are often the faults of Italian papers. But at all times there is the delightful Nuova Antologia to be had; and at Lausanne there is the Révue Nationale. Both of these reviews, or magazines, are of the best kind, and the same may be said of the Révue de Deux Mondes. If you can enjoy French, all these can be easily obtained in England, as most libraries take them.
And now I must turn from Italy, as I think you will know quite enough about it for a short visit; and let me hope that you will not be one of the disappointed ones, to whom none of her attractions have appealed, who see nothing of her many-sidedness, and note none of that endless procession of people who made her history through the ages, and understand none of the things which make her everlasting charm. A well-known prelate said the other day, “General culture is sympathetic interest in the world of human intelligence,” and this to me is a definition which explains much of the so-called “disappointment” we hear of to-day.