University of Virginia Library

The Appenines.

I shook her hand, and in an hour afterward was
passing with my friend, by the Trajan forum, toward
the deep shadow of San Maggiore, which lay in our
way to the mountains. At sunset, we were wandering
over the ruin of Adrian's villa, which lies upon the

first step of the Appenines. Behind us, the vesper
bells of Tivoli were sounding, and their echoes
floating sweetly under the broken arches; before us,
stretching all the way to the horizon, lay the broad
Campagna; while in the middle of its great waves,
turned violet-coloured, by the hues of twilight, rose
the grouped towers of the Eternal City; and lording
it among them all, like a giant, stood the black dome
of St. Peter's.

Day after day we stretched on over the mountains,
leaving the Campagna far behind us. Rocks and
stones, huge and ragged, lie strewed over the surface
right and left, deep yawning valleys lie in the
shadows of mountains, that loom up thousands of
feet, bearing perhaps upon their tops old castellated
towns, perched like birds' nests. But mountain and
valley are blasted and scarred; the forests even, are
not continuous, but struggle for a livelihood; as if
the brimstone fire that consumed Nineveh, had withered
their energies. Sometimes, our eyes rest on a
great white scar of the broken calcareous rock, on
which the moss cannot grow, and the lizards dare not
creep. Then we see a cliff beetling far aloft, with
the shining walls of some monastery of holy men glistening
at its base. The wayside brooks do not seem
to be the gentle offspring of bountiful hills, but the
remnants of something greater, whose greatness has

expired;—they are turbid rills, rolling in the bottom
of yawning chasms. Even the shrubs have a look, as
if the Volscian war-horse had trampled them down to
death; and the primroses and the violets by the
mountain path, alone look modestly beautiful amid
the ruin.

Sometimes, we loiter in a valley, above which the
goats are browsing on the cliffs, and listen to the sweet
pastoral pipes of the Appenines. We see the shepherds
in their rough skin coats, high over our heads.
Their herds are feeding, as it seems, on ledges of a
hand's breadth. The sweet sound floats and lingers
in the soft atmosphere, without a breath of wind to
bear it away, or a noise to disturb its melody. The
shadows slant more and more as we linger; and the
kids begin to group together. And as we wander on,
through the stunted vineyards in the bottom of the
valley, the sweet sound flows after us, like a river of
song,—nor leaves us, till the kids have vanished in
the distance, and the cliffs themselves, become one
dark wall of shadow.

At night, in some little meagre mountain town, we
stroll about in the narrow pass-ways, or wander under
the heavy arches of the mountain churches. Shuffling
old women grope in and out; dim lamps glimmer
faintly at the side altars, shedding horrid light
upon painted images of the dying Christ. Or perhaps,

to make the old pile more solemn, there stands
some bier in the middle, with a figure or two kneeling
at the foot, and ragged boys move stealthily under
the shadows of the columns. Presently comes a
young priest, in black robes, and lights a taper at the
foot, and another at the head—for there is a dead
man on the bier; and the parched, thin features look
awfully under the yellow light of the tapers, in the
gloom of the great building. It is very, very damp
in the church, and the body of the dead man seems
to make the air heavy, so we go out into the starlight
again.

In the morning, the western slopes wear broad
shadows, and the frosts crumple, on the herbage, to
our tread: across the valley, it is like summer; and
the birds—for there are songsters in the Appenines,—
make summer music. Their notes blend softly
with the faint sounds of some far off convent bell,
tolling for morning mass, and strike the frosted
and shaded mountain side, with a sweet echo. As
we toil on, and the shaded hills begin to glow in the
sunshine, we pass a train of mules, loaded with wine.
We have seen them an hour before—little black dots
twining along the white streak of foot-way upon the
mountain above us. We lost them as we began to
ascend, until a wild snatch of an Appenine song
turned our eyes up, and there, straggling through the

brush, they appeared again; a foot slip would have
brought the mules and wine casks rolling upon us.
We keep still, holding by the brushwood, to let them
pass. An hour more, and we see them toiling slowly,—
mule and muleteer,—big dots, and little dots,—far
down where we have been before. The sun is hot
and smoking on them in the bare valleys; the sun is
hot and smoking on the hill-side, where we are toiling
over the broken stones. I thought of little Enrica,
when she said—the spring was coming!

Time and again, we sit down together—my friend
and I—upon some fragment of rock, under the
broad-armed chestnuts, that fringe the lower skirts of
the mountains, and talk through the hottest of the
noon, of the warriors of Seylla, and of the Sabine
women,—but oftener—of the pretty peasantry, and
of the sweet-faced Roman girl. He too tells me of
his life and loves, and of the hopes that lie misty
and grand before him:—little did we think that in so
few years, his hopes would be gone, and his body
lying low in the Adriatic, or tost with the drift upon
the Dalmatian shores! Little did I think, that here
under the ancestral wood,—still a wishful and blundering
mortal, I should be gathering up the shreds,
that memory can catch of our Appenine wandering,
and be weaving them into my bachelor dreams.

Away again upon the quick wing of thought, I

follow our steps, as after weeks of wandering, we gained
once more a height that overlooked the Campagna—
and saw the sun setting on its edge, throwing into
relief the dome of St. Peter's, and blazing in a red
stripe upon the waters of the Tiber.

Below us was Palestrina—the Præneste of the poets
and philosophers;—the dwelling place of—I know
not how many—Emperors. We went straggling
through the dirty streets, searching for some tidy-looking
osteria. At length, we found an old lady,
who could give us a bed, but no dinner. My friend
dropped in a chair disheartened. A snub-looking
priest came out to condole with us.

And could Palestrina,—the frigidum Præneste of
Horace, which had entertained over and over, the
noblest of the Colonna, and the most noble Adrian—
could Palestrina not furnish a dinner to a tired
traveller?

“Si, Signore,” said the snub-looking priest.

“Si, Signorino,” said the neat old lady; and
away we went upon a new search. And we found
bright and happy faces;—especially the little girl of
twelve years, who came close by me as I ate, and
afterward strung a garland of marigolds, and put it
on my head. Then there was a bright-eyed boy of
fourteen, who wrote his name, and those of the whole
family, upon a fly leaf of my book: and a pretty,

saucy-looking girl of sixteen, who peeped a long time
from behind the kitchen door, but before the evening
was gone, she was in the chair beside me, and had
written her name—Carlotta—upon the first leaf of
my journal.

When I woke, the sun was up. From my bed I
could see over the town, the thin, lazy mists lying
on the old camp-ground of Pyrrhus; beyond it, were
the mountains, which hide Frascati, and Monte Cavi.
There was old Colonna too, that—

As the mist lifted, and the sun brightened the
plain, I could see the road, along which Sylla came
fuming and maddened after the Mithridaten war. I
could see, as I half dreamed and half slept, the frightened
peasantry whooping to their long-horned cattle,
as they drove them on tumultuously up through the
gateways of the town; and women with babies in
their arms, and children scowling with fear and hate,
—all trooping fast and madly, to escape the hand of
the Avenger;—alas! ineffectually, for Sylla murdered
them, and pulled down the walls of their town
—the proud Palestrina!

I had a queer fancy of seeing the nobles of Rome,

led on by Stefano Colonna, grouping along the plain,
their corslets flashing out of the mists,—their pennants
dashing above it,—coming up fast, and still as
the wind, to make the Mural Præneste, their strong-hold
against the Last of the Tribunes. And strangely
mingling fiction with fact, I saw the brother of Walter
de Montreal, with his noisy and bristling army,
crowd over the Campagna, and put up his white tents,
and hang out his showy banners, on the grassy knolls
that lay nearest my eye.

—But the knolls were all quiet; there was not
so much as a strolling contadino on them, to whistle
a mimic fife-note. A little boy from the inn went
with me upon the hill, to look out upon the town and
the wide sea of land below; and whether it was the
soft, warm April sun, or the gray ruins below me, or
whether the wonderful silence of the scene, or some
wild gush of memory, I do not know, but something
made me sad.

“Perché cosi penseroso?—why so sad?” said the
quick-eyed boy. “The air is beautiful, the scene is
beautiful; Signore is young, why is he sad?”

“And is Giovanni never sad?” said I.

“Quasi mai,” said the boy, “and if I could travel
as Signore, and see other countries, I would be always
gay.”

“May you be always that!” said I.

The good wish touched him; he took me by the
arms, and said—“Go home with me, Signore; you
were happy at the inn last night; go back, and we
will make you gay again!”

—If we could be always boys!

I thanked him in a way that saddened him. We
passed out shortly after from the city gates, and
strode on over the rolling plain. Once or twice we
turned back to look at the rocky heights beneath
which lay the ruined town of Palestrina;—a city that
defied Rome,—that had a king before a ploughshare
had touched the Capitoline, or the Janiculan hill!
The ivy was covering up richly the Etruscan foundations,
and there was a quiet over the whole place.
The smoke was rising straight into the sky from the
chimney tops; a peasant or two, were going along
the road with donkeys; beside this, the city was, to
all appearance, a dead city. And it seemed to me
that an old monk, whom I could see with my glass,
near the little chapel above the town, might be going
to say mass for the soul of the dead city.

And afterward, when we came near to Rome, and
passed under the temple tomb of Metella,—my friend
said,—“And will you go back now to your home?
or will you set off with me to-morrow for Ancona?”

“At least, I must say adieu,” returned I.

“God speed you!” said he, and we parted upon

the Piazza di Venezia,—he for his last mass at St.
Peter's, and I for the tall house upon the Corso.