To return. The Collection of Pictures in the Academy is worthy of Italy and of Bologna. It is chiefly of the Bolognese school; or in that fine, sombre, shadowy tone that seems reflected from sacred subjects or from legendary lore, that corresponds with crucifixions and martyrdoms, that points to skyey glories or hovers round conventual gloom. Here is the St. Cecilia of Raphael (of which the engraving conveys a faithful idea), several Caraccis, Domenichino’s St. Teresa, and his St. Peter Martyr, (a respectable, not a formidable rival of Titian’s) a Sampson, by Guido (an ill-chosen subject, finely coloured) and the Five Patron-Saints of Bologna, by the same, a very large, finely-painted and impressive picture, occupying the end of the Gallery. Four out of five of the Saints are admirable old Monkish heads (even their very cowls seem to think): the Dead Christ above has a fine monumental effect; and the whole picture, compared with this master’s general style, is like ‘the cathedral’s gloom and choir,’ compared with sunny smiles and the shepherd’s pipe upon the mountains. I left this Gallery, once more reconciled to my favourite art. Guido also gains upon me, because I continually see fine pictures of his. ‘By their works ye shall know them,’ is a fair rule for judging of painters or men.
There is a side pavement at Bologna, Modena, and most of the other towns in Italy, so that you do not walk, as in Paris, in continual dread of being run over. The shops have a neat appearance, and are well supplied with the ordinary necessaries of life, fruit, poultry, bread, onions or garlick, cheese and sausages. The butchers’ shops look much as they do in England. There is a technical description of the chief towns in Italy, which those who learn the Italian Grammar are told to get by heart—Genoa la superba, Bologna la dotta, Ravenna l’antica, Firense la bella, Roma la santa. Some of these I have seen, and others not; and those that I have not seen seem to me the finest. Does not this list convey as good an idea of these places as one can well have? It selects some one distinct feature of them, and that the best. Words may be said, after all, to be the finest things in the world. Things themselves are but a lower species of words, exhibiting the grossnesses and details of matter. Yet, if there be any country answering to the description or idea of it, it is Italy; and to this theory, I must add, the Alps are also a proud exception.
CHAPTER XVI
We left Bologna on our way to Florence in the afternoon, that we might cross the Apennines the following day. High Mass had been celebrated at Bologna; it was a kind of gala day, and the road was lined with flocks of country-people returning to their homes. At the first village we came to among the hills, we saw, talking to her companions by the road-side, the only very handsome Italian we have yet seen. It was not the true Italian face neither, dark and oval, but more like the face of an English peasant, with heightened grace and animation, with sparkling eyes, white teeth, a complexion breathing health,
——‘And when she spake,
Betwixt the pearls and rubies softly brake
A silver sound, which heavenly music seem’d to make.’
Our voiture was ascending a hill; and as she walked by the side of it with elastic step, and a bloom like the suffusion of a rosy cloud, the sight of her was doubly welcome, in this land of dingy complexions, squat features, scowling eye-brows and round shoulders.
We slept at ——, nine miles from Bologna, and set off early the next morning, that we might have the whole day before us. The moon, which had lighted on us on our way the preceding evening, still hung over the western horizon, its yellow orb nigh dropping behind the snowy peaks of the highest Apennines, while the sun was rising with dazzling splendour behind a craggy steep that overhung the frozen road we were passing over. The white tops of the Apennines, covered with hoar-frost gleamed in the misty morning. There was a delightful freshness and novelty in the scene. The Apennines have not the vastness nor the unity of effect of the Alps; but are broken up into a number of abrupt projecting points, that crossing one another, and presenting new combinations as the traveller shifts his position, produce, though a less sublime and imposing, a more varied and picturesque effect. A brook brawled down the precipice on the road-side, a pine-tree or mountain-ash hung over it, and shewed the valley below in a more distant, airy perspective; on the point of a rock half-way down was perched some village-spire or ruined battlement, while hamlets and farm-houses were sheltered in the bosom of the vale far below: a pine-forest rose on the sides of the mountain above, or a bleak tract of brown heath or dark morass was contrasted with the clear pearly tints of the snowy ridges in the higher distance, above which some still loftier peak saluted the sky, tinged with a rosy light.—Such were nearly the features of the landscape all round, and for several miles; and though we constantly ascended and descended a very winding road, and caught an object now in contact with one part of the scene, now giving relief to another, at one time at a considerable distance beneath our feet, and soon after soaring as high above our heads, yet the elements of beauty or of wildness being the same, the coup d’œil, though constantly changing, was as often repeated, and we at length grew tired of a scenery that still seemed another and the same. One of our pleasantest employments was to remark the teams of oxen and carts that we had lately passed, winding down a declivity in our rear, or suspended on the edge of a precipice, that on the spot we had mistaken for level ground. We had some difficulty too with our driver, who had talked gallantly over-night of hiring a couple of oxen to draw us up the mountain; but when it came to the push, his heart failed him, and his Swiss economy prevailed. In addition to his habitual closeness, the windfall of the ten guineas, which was beyond his expectations, had whetted his appetite for gain, and he appeared determined to make a good thing of his present journey. He pretended to bargain with several of the owners, but from his beating them down to the lowest fraction, nothing ever came of it, and when from the thawing of the ice in the sun, the inconvenience became serious, so that we were several times obliged to get out and walk, to enable the horses to proceed with the carriage, he said it was too late. The country now grew wilder, and the day gloomy. It was three o’clock before we stopped at Pietra Mala to have our luggage examined on entering the Tuscan States; and here we resolved to breakfast, instead of proceeding four miles farther to Covigliaio, where, though we did not choose to pass the night, we had proposed to regale our waking imaginations with a thrilling recollection of the superstitious terrors of the spot, at ease and in safety. Our reception at Pietra Mala was frightful enough; the rooms were cold and empty, and we were met with a vacant stare or with sullen frowns, in lieu of any better welcome. I have since thought that these were probably the consequence of the contempt and ill-humour shewn by other English travellers at the desolateness of the place, and the apparent want of accommodation; for, as the fire of brushwood was lighted, and the eggs, bread, and coffee were brought in by degrees, and we expressed our satisfaction in them, the cloud on the brow of our reluctant entertainers vanished, and melted into thankful smiles. There was still an air of mystery, of bustle, and inattention about the house; persons of both sexes, and of every age, passed and repassed through our sitting room to an inner chamber with looks of anxiety and importance, and we learned at length that the mistress of the inn had been, half an hour before, brought to bed of a fine boy!
We had now to mount the longest and steepest ascent of the Apennines; and Jaques, who began to be alarmed at the accounts of the state of the road, and at the increasing gloom of the weather, by a great effort of magnanimity had a yoke of oxen put to, and afterwards another horse, to drag us up the worst part; but as soon as he could find an excuse he dismissed both, and we crawled and stumbled on as before. The hills were covered with a dense cloud of sleet and vapour driven before the blast, that wrapped us round, and hung like a blanket or (if the reader pleases) a dark curtain over the more distant range of mountains. On our right were high ledges of frowning rocks, ‘cloud-clapt,’ and the summits impervious to the sight—on our farthest left, an opening was made which showed a milder sky, evening clouds pillowed on rocks, and a chain of lofty peaks basking in the rays of the setting sun; between, and in the valley below, there was nothing to be seen but mist and crag and grim desolation with the lowering symptoms of the impending storm. We felt uncomfortable, for the increased violence of the wind or thickening of the fog would have presented serious obstacles to our farther progress, which became every moment more necessary as the evening closed in—as it was, we only saw a few yards of the road distinctly before us, which cleared as we advanced forward; and at the side there was sometimes a precipice, beyond which we could distinguish nothing but mist, so that we seemed to be travelling along the edge of the world. The feeling was more striking than agreeable. Our horses were blinded by the mist, which drove furiously against them, and were nearly exhausted with continued exertion. At length, when we had arrived near the very top of the mountain, we had to cross a few yards of very slippery ice, which became a matter of considerable doubt and difficulty.—The horses could hardly keep their feet in straining to move forward, and if one of them had fallen and been hurt, the accident might have detained us on the middle of the mountain, without any aid near, or made it so late that the descent on the other side would have been dangerous. Luckily, a desperate effort succeeded, and we gained the summit of the hill without accident. We had still some miles to go, and we descended rapidly down on the other side, congratulating ourselves that we had daylight to distinguish the road from the abyss that often skirted it. About half-way down we emerged, to our great delight, from the mist (or brouillard, as it is called) that had hitherto enveloped us, and the valley opened at our feet in dim but welcome perspective. We proceeded more leisurely on to La Maschere, having escaped the dangers threatened us from precipices and robbers, and drove into a spacious covered court-yard belonging to the inn, where we were safely housed like a flock of sheep folded for the night. The inn at La Maschere is, like many of the inns in Italy, a set of wide dilapidated halls, without furniture, but with quantities of old and bad pictures, portraits or histories. The people (the attendants here were women) were obliging and good-humoured, though we could procure neither eggs nor milk with our coffee, but were compelled to have it black. We were put into a sitting-room with three beds in it without curtains, as they had no other with a fire-place disengaged, and which, with the coverlids like horse-cloths, and the strong smell of the leaves of Indian corn with which they were stuffed, brought to one’s mind the idea of a three-stalled stable. We were refreshed, however, for we slept securely; and we entered upon the last stage betimes the following day, less exhausted than we had been by the first. We had left the unqualified desolation and unbroken irregularity of the Apennines behind us; but we were still occasionally treated with a rocky cliff, a pine-grove, a mountain-torrent; while there was no end of sloping hills with old ruins or modern villas upon them, of farm-houses built in the Tuscan taste, of gliding streams with bridges over them, of meadow-grounds, and thick plantations of olives and cypresses by the road side.