University of Virginia Library

109. LETTER CIX.

Milan.—My fifth journey over the Apennines—dull
of course. On the second evening we were at Bologna.
The long colonnades pleased me less than before,
with their crowds of foreign officers and ill-dressed
inhabitants, and a placard for the opera,
announcing Malibran's last night, relieved us of the
prospect of a long evening of weariness. The divine
music of La Norma and a crowded and brilliant audience,
enthusiastic in their applause, seemed to inspire
this still incomparable creature even beyond her
wont. She sang with a fulness, an abandonment, a
passionate energy and sweetness that seemed to come
from a soul rapt and possessed beyond control, with
the melody it had undertaken. They were never done
calling her on the stage after the curtain had fallen.
After six reappearances, she came out once more to
the footlights, and murmuring something inaudible
from her lips that showed strong agitation, she pressed
her hands together, bowed till her long hair, falling
over her shoulders, nearly touched her feet, and retired
in tears. She is the siren of Europe for me!

I was happy to have no more to do with the Duke
of Modena, than to eat a dinner in his capital. We
did “not forget the picture,” but my inquiries for it
were as fruitless as before. I wonder whether the author
of the Pleasures of Memory has the pleasure of
remembering having seen the picture himself! “Tassoni's
bucket which is not the true one,” is still shown
in the tower, and the keeper will kiss the cross upon
his fingers, that Samuel Rogers has written a false line.

At Parma we ate parmesan and saw the Correggio.
The angel who holds the book up to the infant Savior,
the female laying her cheek to his feet, the
countenance of the holy child himself, are creations
that seem apart from all else in the schools of painting.
They are like a group, not from life, but from
heaven. They are superhuman, and, unlike other
pictures of beauty which stir the heart as if they resembled
something one had loved onmight have loved,
these mount into the fancy like things transcending
sympathy, and only within reach of an intellectual
and elevated wonder. This is the picture that Sir
Thomas Lawrence returned six times in one day to
see. It is the only thing I saw to admire in the dutchy
of Maria Louisa. An Austrian regiment marched into
the town as we left it, and an Italian at the gate told
us that the dutchess had disbanded her last troops of
the country, and supplied their place with these yellow
and black Croats and Illyrians. Italy is Austria
now to the foot of the Apennines—if not to the top
of Radicofani.

Lombardy is full of nightingales. They sing by
day, however (as not specified in poetry). They are
up quite as early as the lark, and the green hedges are
alive with their gurgling and changeful music till
twilight. Nothing can exceed the fertility of these
endless plains. They are four or five hundred miles
of uninterrupted garden. The same eternal level
road, the same rows of elms and poplars on either side,
the same long, slimy canals, the same square, vine-laced,
perfectly green pastures and cornfields, the same
shaped houses, the same-voiced beggars with the same
sing-song whine, and the same villanous Austrians
poring over your passports and asking to be paid for
it, from the Alps to the Apennines. It is wearisome,
spite of green leaves and nightingales. A bare rock
or a good brigand-looking mountain would so refresh
the eye!

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At Piacenza, one of those admirable German bands
was playing in the public square, while a small corps
of picked men were manœuvred. Even an Italian, I
should think, though he knew and felt it was the music
of his oppressors, might have been pleased to listen.
And pleased they seemed to be—for there were
hundreds of dark-haired and well-made men, with
faces and forms for heroes, standing and keeping time
to the well-played instruments, as peacefully as if
there were no such thing as liberty, and no meaning
in the foreign uniforms crowding them from their own
pavement. And there were the women of Piacenza,
nodding from the balconies to the white mustaches
and padded coats strutting below, and you would never
dream Italy thought herself wronged, watching the
exchange of courtesies between her dark-eyed daughters
and these fair-haired coxcombs.

We crossed the Po, and entered Austria's nominal
dominions. They rummaged our baggage as if they
smelt republicanism somewhere, and after showing
a strong disposition to retain a volume of very bad
poetry as suspicious, and detaining us two long hours,
they had the modesty to ask to be paid for letting us
off lightly. When we declined it, the chef threatened
us a precious searching “the next time.” How willingly
I would submit to the annoyance to have that
next time assured to me! Every step I take toward
the bounds of Italy, pulls so upon my heart!

As most travellers come into Italy over the Simplon,
Milan makes generally the first enthusiastic chapter
in their books. I have reversed the order myself, and
have a better right to praise it from comparison. For
exterior, there is certainly no city in Italy comparable
to it. The streets are broad and noble, the buildings
magnificent, the pavement quite the best in Europe,
and the Milanese (all of whom I presume I have seen,
for it is Sunday, and the streets swarm with them), are
better dressed, and look “better to do in the world”
than the Tuscans, who are gayer and more Italian,
and the Romans, who are graver and vastly handsomer.
Milan is quite like Paris. The showy and mirror-lined
cafés, the elegant shops, the variety of strange
people and costumes, and a new gallery lately opened
in imitation of the glass-roofed passages of the French
capital, make one almost feel that the next turn will
bring him upon the Boulevards.

The famous cathedral, nearly completed by Napoleon,
is a sort of Aladdin creation, quite too delicate
and beautiful for the open air. The filmly traceries
of gothic fretwork, the needle-like minarets, the hundreds
of beautiful statues with which it is studded, the
intricate, graceful, and bewildering architecture of every
window and turret, and the frost-like frailness and
delicacy of the whole mass, make an effect altogether
upon the eye that must stand high on the list of new
sensations. It is a vast structure withal, but a middling
easterly breeze, one would think in looking at it,
would lift it from its base and bear it over the Atlantic
like the meshes of a cobweb. Neither interior nor
exterior impresses you with the feeling of awe common
to other large churches. The sun struggles
through the immense windows of painted glass staining
every pillar and carved cornice with the richest
hues, and wherever the eye wanders it grows giddy
with the wilderness of architecture. The people on
their knees are like paintings in the strong artificial
light, the checkered pavement seems trembling with
a quivering radiance, the altar is far and indistinct, and
the lamps burning over the tomb of Saint Carlo, shine
out from the centre like gems glistening in the midst
of some enchanted hall. This reads very like rhapsody,
but it is the way the place impressed me. It is
like a great dream. Its excessive beauty scarce seems
constant while the eye rests upon it.

The Brera is a noble palace, occupied by the public
galleries of statuary and painting. I felt on leav
ing Florence that I could give pictures a very long
holyday. To live on them, as one does in Italy, is
like dining from morn till night. The famous Guercino,
is at Milan, however, the “Hagar,” which Byron
talks of so enthusiastically, and I once more surrendered
myself to a cicerone. The picture catches
your eye on your first entrance. There is that harmony
and effect in the color that mark a masterpiece,
even in a passing glance. Abraham stands in the centre
of the group, a fine, prophet-like, “green old
man,” with a mild decision in his eye, from which
there is evidently no appeal. Sarah has turned her
back, and you can just read in the half-profile glance
of her face, that there is a little pity mingled in her
hard-hearted approval of her rival's banishment. But
Hagar—who can describe the world of meaning in
her face? The closed lips have in them a calm incredulousness,
contradicted with wonderful nature in
the flushed and troubled forehead, and the eyes red
with long weeping. The gourd of water is hung over
her shoulder, her hand is turning her sorrowful boy
from the door, and she has looked back once more,
with a large tear coursing down her cheek, to read in
the face of her master if she is indeed driven forth
for ever. It is the instant before pride and despair close
over her heart. You see in the picture that the next
moment is the crisis of her life. Her gaze is straining
upon the old man's lips, and you wait breathlessly
to see her draw up her bending form, and depart in
proud sorrow for the wilderness. It is a piece of powerful
and passionate poetry. It affects you like nothing
but a reality. The eyes get warm, and the heart
beats quick, and as you walk away you feel as if a
load of oppressive sympathy was lifting from your
heart.

I have seen little else in Milan, except Austrian soldiers,
of whom there are fifteen thousand in this single
capital! The government has issued an order
to officers not on duty, to appear in citizen's dress, it
is supposed to diminish the appearance of so much
military preparation. For the rest, they make a kind
of coffee here, by boiling it with cream, which is better
than anything of the kind either in Paris or Constantinople;
and the Milanese are, for slaves, the
most civil people I have seen, after the Florentines.
There is little English society here; I know not why,
except that the Italians are rich enough to be exclusive
and make their houses difficult of access to strangers.