University of Virginia Library

PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY.

1. LETTER I.

At Sea.—I have emerged from my berth this morning
for the first time since we left the Capes. We
have been running six or seven days before a strong
northwest gale, which, by the scuds in the sky, is not
yet blown out, and my head and hand, as you will see
by my penmanship, are anything butt at rights. If you
have ever plunged about in a cold rain-storm at sea
for seven successive days, you can imagine how I have
amused myself.

I wrote to you after my pilgrimage to the tomb of
Washington. It was almost the only object of natural
or historical interest in our own country that I had
not visited, and that seen, I made all haste back to embark,
in pursuance of my plans of travel, for Europe. At
Philadelphia I found a first-rate merchant-brig, the
Pacific, on the eve of sailing for Havre. She was
nearly new, and had a French captain, and no passengers,
three very essential circumstances to my taste,
and I took a berth in her without hesitation. The
next day she fell down the river, and on the succeeding
morning I followed her with the captain in the steamboat.

Some ten or fifteen vessels, bound on different voyages,
lay in the roads waiting for the pilot-boat, and
as she came down the river, they all weighed anchor
together and we got under way. It was a beautiful
sight—so many sail in close company under a smart
breeze, and I stood on the quarter-deck and watched
them in a mood of mingled happiness and sadness till
we reached the Capes. There was much to elevate
and much to depress me. The dream of my lifetime
was about to be realized. I was bound to France, and
those fair Italian cities, with their world of association
and interest were within the limit of a voyage, and all
that one looks to for happiness in change of scene, and
all that I had been passionately wishing and imagining
since I could dream a day-dream or read a book, was
before me with a visible certainty; but my home was
receding rapidly, perhaps for years, and the chances
of death and adversity in my absence crowded upon
my mind—and I had left friends (many—many as dear
to me, any of them, as the whole sum of my coming enjoyment),
whom a thousand possible accidents might
remove or estrange, and I scarce knew whether I was
more happy or sad.

We made Cape Henlopen about sundown, and all
shortened sail and came to. The little boat passed
from one to another, taking off the pilots, and in a
few minutes every sail was spread again, and away they
went with a dashing breeze, some on one course and
some on another, leaving us, in less than an hour, apparently
alone on the sea. By this time the clouds
had grown black, the wind had strengthened into a
gale, with fits of rain; and as the order was given to
“close-reef the topsails,” I took a last look at Cape
Henlopen, just visible in the far edge of the horizon,
and went below.

Oct. 18.—It is a day to make one in love with life.
The remains of the long storm, before which we have
been driven for a week, lie in white, turreted masses
around the horizon the sky overhead is spotlessly
blue, the sun is warm, the wind steady and fresh, but
soft as a child's breath, and the sea—I must sketch it
to you more elaborately. We are in the Gulf Stream.
The water here, as you know, even to the cold banks
of Newfoundland, is always blood-warm, and the temperature
of the air mild at all seasons, and just now,
like a south wind on land in June. Hundred of sea-birds
are sailing around us—the spongy sea-weeds
washed from the West Indian rocks, a thousand miles
away in the southern latitudes, float by in large masses—the
sailors, barefoot and bareheaded, are scattered
over the rigging, doing “fair-weather work”—and
just in the edge of the horizon, hidden by every swell,
stand two vessels with all sail spread, making, with
the first fair wind they have had in many days, for
America.

This is the first day that I have been able to be long
enough on deck to study the sea. Even were it not,
however, there has been a constant and chilly rain
which would have prevented me from enjoying its
grandeur, so that I am reconciled to my unusually severe
sickness. I came on deck this morning and
looked around, and for an hour or two I could scarce
realize that it was not a dream. Much as I had
watched the sea from our bold promontory at Nahant,
and well as I thought I knew its character in storms
and calms, the scene which was before me surprised
and bewildered me utterly. At the first glance, we
were just in the gorge of the sea, and looking over the
leeward quarter, I saw, stretching up from the keel,
what I can only describe as a hill of dazzling blue,
thirty or forty feet in real altitude, but sloped so far
away that the white crest seemed to me a cloud, and
the space between a sky of the most wonderful beauty
and brightness. A moment more, and the crest

burst over with a splendid volume of foam; the sun
struck through the thinner part of the swell in a line
of vivid emerald, and the whole mass swept under us,
the brig rising and riding on the summit with the
buoyancy and grace of a bird.

The single view of the ocean which I got at that moment,
will be impressed upon my mind for ever. Nothing
that I ever saw on land at all compares with it for
splendor. No sunset, no lake scene of hill and water,
no fall, not even Niagara, no glen or mountain gap ever
approached it. The waves had had no time to
“knock down,” as the sailors phrase it, and it was a
storm at sea without the hurricane and rain. I looked
off to the horizon, and the long majestic swells were
heaving into the sky upon its distant limit, and between
it and my eye lay a radius of twelve miles, an immense
plain flashing with green and blue and white,
and changing place and color so rapidly as to be almost
painful to the sight. I stood holding by the tafferel
an hour, gazing on it with a childish delight and
wonder. The spray had broken over me repeatedly,
and as we shipped half a sea at the scuppers at every
roll, I was standing half the time up to the knees in
water; but the warm wind on my forehead, after a
week's confinement to my berth, and the excessive
beauty lavished upon my sight, were so delicious, that
I forgot all, and it was only in compliance with the
captain's repeated suggestion that I changed my position.

I mounted the quarter-deck, and pulling off my
shoes, like a schoolboy, sat over the leeward rails, and
with my feet dipping into the warm sea at every lurch,
gazed at the glorious show for hours. I do not hesitate
to say that the formation, progress, and final burst
of a sea-wave, in a bright sun, are the most gorgeously
beautiful sight under heaven. I must describe it like
a jeweller to you, or I can never convey my impressions.

First of all, a quarter of a mile away to windward,
your eye is caught by an uncommonly high wave,
rushing right upon your track, and heaping up slowly
and constantly as it comes, as if some huge animal
were ploughing his path steadily and powerfully beneath
the surface. Its “ground,” as a painter would
say, is of a deep indigo, clear and smooth as enamel,
its front curved inward, like a shell, and turned overat
the summit with a crest of foam, flashing and changing
perpetually in the sunshine, like the sudden out-burst
of a million of “unsunned diamonds,” and right
through its bosom, as the sea falls off, or the angle of
refraction changes, there runs a shifting band of the
most vivid green, that you would take to have been
the cestus of Venus as she rose from the sea, it is so
supernaturally translucent and beautiful. As it nears
you, it looks in shape like the prow of Cleopatra's
barge, as they paint it in the old pictures; but its colors,
and the grace and majesty of its march, and its
murmur (like the low tones of an organ, deep and
full, and, to my ear, ten times as articulate and solemn),
almost startle you into the belief that it is a sentient
being, risen glorious and breathing from the ocean.
As it reaches the ship, she rises gradually, for there is
apparently an under-wave driven before it, which prepares
her for its power; and as it touches the quarter,
the whole magnificent wall breaks down beneath you
with a deafening surge, and a volume of foam issues
from its bosom, green and blue and white, as if it had
been a mighty casket in which the whole wealth of
the sea, crysoprase, and emerald, and brilliant spars,
had been heaped and lavished at a throw. This is the
“tenth wave,” and, for four or five minutes, the sea
will be smooth about you, and the sparkling and dying
foam falls into the wake, and may be seen like a
white path, stretching away over the swells behind, till
you are tired of gazing at it. Then comes another
from the same direction, and with the same shape and
motion, and so on till the sun sets, or your eyes are
blinded and your brain giddy with splendor.

I am sure this language will seem exaggerated to
you, but, upon the faith of a lonely man (the captain
has turned in, and it is near midnight and a dead
calm), it is a mere skeleton, a goldsmith's inventory, of
the reality. I long ago learned that first lesson of a
man of the world, “to be astonished at nothing,” but
the sea has overreached my philosophy—quite. I am
changed to a mere child in my wonder. Be assured no
view of the ocean from land can give you a shadow of an
idea of it. Within even the outermost Capes, the swell
is broken, and the color of the water in soundings is
essentially different—more dull and earthy. Go to
the mineral cabinets of Cambridge or New Haven,
and look at the fluor spars, and the turquoises, and
the clearer specimens of crysoprase, and quartz, and
diamond, and imagine them all polished and clear, and
flung at your feet by millions in a noonday sun, and
it may help your conceptions of the sea after a storm.
You may “swim on bladders” at Nahant and Rockaway
till you are gray, and be never the wiser.

The “middle watch” is called, and the second mate,
a fine rough old sailor, promoted from “the mast,” is
walking the quarter-deck, stopping his whistle now
and then with a gruff “how do you head?” or “keep
her up, you lubber,” to the man at the helm; the
“silver-shell” of a waning moon, is just visible through
the dead-lights over my shoulder (it has been up two
hours, to me, and, by the difference of our present
meridians, is just rising now over a certain hill, and
peeping softly in at an eastern window that I have
watched many a time when its panes have been silvered
by the same chaste alchymy), and so, after a walk
on the deck for an hour to look at the stars and watch
the phosphorus in the wake, and think of —, I'll
get to mine own uneven pillow, and sleep too!

2. LETTER II.

At Sea, October 20.—We have had fine weather
for progress, so far, running with north and north-westerly
winds from eight to ten knots an hour, and
making of course over two hundred miles a day. The
sea is still rough; and though the brig is light laden
and rides very buoyantly, these mounting waves break
over us now and then with a tremendous surge, keeping
the decks constantly wet, and putting me to many
an uncomfortable shiver. I have become reconciled,
however, to much that I should have anticipated with
no little horror. I can lie in my berth forty-eight
hours, if the weather is chill or rainy, and amuse myself
very well with talking bad French across the cabin
to the captain, or laughing at the distresses of my
friend and fellow-passenger, Turk (a fine setter dog,
on his first voyage), or inventing some disguise for the
peculiar flavor which that dismal cook gives to all his
abominations; or, at the worst, I can bury my head
in my pillow, and brace from one side to the other
against the swell, and enjoy my disturbed thoughts—
all without losing my temper, or wishing that I had
not undertaken the voyage.

Poor Turk! his philosophy is more severely tried.
He has been bred a gentleman, and is amusingly exclusive.
No assiduities can win him to take the least
notice of the crew, and I soon discovered that when
the captain and myself were below, he endured many
a persecution. In an evil hour, a night or two since,
I suffered his earnest appeals for freedom to work upon
my feelings, and, releasing him from his chain under
the windlass, I gave him the liberty of the cabin.
He slept very quietly on the floor till about midnight,
when the wind rose and the vessel began to roll very
uncomfortably. With the first heavy lurch a couple

of chairs went tumbling to leeward, and by the yelp
of distress, Turk was somewhere in the way. He
changed his position, and, with the next roll, the
mate's trunk “brought away,” and shooting across the
cabin, jammed him with such violence against the
captain's state-room door, that he sprang howling to
the deck, where the first thing that met him was a
washing sea, just taken in at mid-ships, that kept him
swimming above the hatches for five minutes. Half-drowned,
and with a gallon of water in his long hair,
he took again to the cabin, and making a desperate
leap into the steward's berth, crouched down beside
the sleeping creole with a long whine of satisfaction.
The water soon penetrated however, and with a “sacré!”
and a blow that he will remember the remainder of the
voyage, the poor dog was again driven from the cabin,
and I heard no more of him till morning. His decided
preference for me has since touched my vanity,
and I have taken him under my more special protection—a
circumstance which costs me two quarrels a
day at least, with the cook and steward.

The only thing which forced a smile upon me during
the first week of the passage was the achievement
of dinner. In rough weather, it is as much as
one person can do to keep his place at the table at all;
and to guard the dishes, bottles, and castors, from a
general slide in the direction of the lurch, requires a
sleight and coolness reserved only for a sailor. “Prenez
garde!” shouts the captain, as the sea strikes, and
in the twinkling of an eye, everything is seized and
help up to wait for the other lurch, in attitudes which
it would puzzle the pencil of Johnson to exaggerate.
With his plate of soup in one hand, and the larboard
end of the tureen in the other, the claret bottle between
his teeth, and the crook of his elbow caught
around the mounting corner of the table, the captain
maintains his seat upon the transom, and with a look
of the most grave concern, keeps a wary eye on the
shifting level of his vermicelli; the old weather-beaten
mate, with the alacrity of a juggler, makes a long
leg back to the cabin panels at the same moment,
and with his breast against the table, takes his own
plate and the castors and one or two of the smaller
dishes under his charge; and the steward, if he can
keep his legs, looks out for the vegetables, or if he
falls, makes as wide a lap as possible to intercept the
volant articles in their descent. “Gentlemen that live
at home at ease” forget to thank Providence for the
blessing of a water-level.

Oct. 24.—We are on the Grand Bank, and surrounded
by hundreds of sea-birds. I have been watching
them nearly all day. Their performances on the wing
are certainly the perfection of grace and skill. With
the steadiness of an eagle and the nice adroitness of a
swallow, they wheel round in their constant circles
with an arrowy swiftness, lifting their long tapering
pinions scarce perceptibly, and mounting and falling
as if by a mere act of volition, without the slightest
apparent exertion of power. Their chief enjoyment
seems to be to scoop through the deep hollows of the
sea, and they do it so quickly that your eye can scarce
follow them, just disturbing the polish of the smooth
crescent, and leaving a fine line of ripple from swell to
swell, but never wetting a wing, or dipping their white
breasts a feather too deep in the capricious and wind-driven
surface. I feel a strange interest in these wild-hearted
birds. There is something in this fearless instinct,
leading them away from the protecting and
pleasant land to make their home on this tossing and
desolate element, that moves both my admiration and
my pity. I can not comprehend it. It is unlike the
self-caring instincts of the other families of heaven's
creatures. If I were half the Pythagorean that I used
to be, I should believe they were souls in punishment
—expiating some lifetime sin in this restless meempsychosis.

Now and then a land-bird has flown on board, driven
to sea probably by the gale, and so fatigued as
hardly to be able to rise again upon the wing. Yesterday
morning a large curlew came struggling down
the wind, and seemed to have just sufficient strength
to reach the vessel. He attempted to alight on the
main yard, but failed and dropped heavily into the
long-boat, where he suffered himself to be taken without
an attempt to escape. He must have been on the
wing two or three days without food, for we were at
least two hundred miles from land. His heart was
throbbing hard through his ruffled feathers, and he
held his head up with difficulty. He was passed aft,
but while I was deliberating on the best means for resuscitating
and fitting him to get on the wing again,
the captain had taken him from me and handed him
over to the cook, who had his head off before I could
remember French enough to arrest him. I dreamed
all that night of the man “that shot the albatross.”
The captain relieved my mind, however, by telling me
that he had tried repeatedly to preserve them, and that
they died invariably in a few hours. The least food,
in their exhausted state, swells in their throats and
suffocates them. Poor curlew! there was a tenderness
in one breast for him at least—a feeling, I have
the melancholy satisfaction to know, fully reciprocated
by the bird himself—that seat of his affections
having been allotted to me for my breakfast the morning
succeeding his demise.

Oct. 29.—We have a tandem of whales ahead
They have been playing about the ship an hour, and
now are coursing away to the east, one after the other,
in gallant style. If we could only get them into traces
now, how beautiful it would be to stand in the foretop
and drive a degree or two on a summer sea! It
would not be more wonderful, de novo, than the discovery
of the lightning-rod, or navigation by steam!
And, by the way, the sight of these huge creatures
has made me realize, for the first time, the extent to
which the sea has grown upon my mind during the
voyage. I have seen one or two whales, exhibited in
the docks, and it seemed to me always that they were
monsters—out of proportion, entirely, to the range of
the ocean. I had been accustomed to look out to
the horizon from land (the radius, of course, as great
as at sea), and, calculating the probable speed with
which they would compass the diagonal, and the disturbance
they would make in doing it, it appeared that
in any considerable numbers, they would occupy more
than their share of notice and sea-room. Now—after
sailing five days, at two hundred miles a day, and not
meeting a single vessel—it seems to me that a troop
of a thousand might swim the sea a century and
chance to be never crossed, so endlessly does this eternal
horizon open and stretch away!

Oct. 30.—The day has passed more pleasantly than
usual. The man at the helm cried “a sail,” while
we were at breakfast, and we gradually overtook a
large ship, standing on the same course, with every
sail set. We were passing half a mile to leeward,
when she put up her helm and ran down to us, hoisting
the English flag. We raised the “star-spangled
banner” in answer, and “hove too,” and she came
dashing along on our quarter, heaving most majestically
to the sea, till she was near enough to speak us
without a trumpet. Her fore-deck was covered with
sailors dressed all alike and very nearly, and around
the gangway stood a large group of officers in uniform,
the oldest of whom, a noble-looking man with
gray hair, hailed and answered us. Several ladies
stood back by the cabin-door—passengers apparently.
She was a man-of-war, sailing as a king's packet between
Halifax and Falmouth, and had been out from
the former port nineteen days. After the usual courtesies
had passed, she bore away a little, and then kept
on her course again, the two vessels in company at

the distance of half a pistol shot. I rarely have seen
a more beautiful sight. The fine effect of a ship under
sail is entirely lost to one on board, and it is only
at sea and under circumstances like these, that it can
be observed. The power of the swell, lifting such a
huge body as lightly as an egg-shell on its bosom, and
tossing it sometimes half out of water without the
slightest apparent effort, is astonishing. I sat on deck
watching her with undiminished interest for hours.
Apart from the spectacle, the feeling of companionship,
meeting human beings in the middle of the
ocean after so long a deprivation of society (five days
without seeing a sail, and nearly three weeks unspoken
from land), was delightful. Our brig was the faster
sailer of the two, but the captain took in some of
his canvass for company's sake; and all the afternoon
we heard her half-hour bells, and the boatswain's
whistle, and the orders of the officer of the deck, and
I could distinguish very well with a glass, the expression
of the faces watching our own really beautiful
vessel as she skimmed over the water like a bird. We
parted at sunset, the man-of-war making northerly for
her port, and we stretching south for the coast of
France. I watched her till she went over the horizon,
and felt as if I had lost friends when the night closed
in and we were once more

Nov. 3.—We have just made the port of Havre, and
the pilot tells us that the packet has been delayed by
contrary winds, and sails early to-morrow morning.
The town bells are ringing “nine” (as delightful a
sound as I ever heard, to my sea-weary ear), and I
close in haste, for all is confusion on board.

3. LETTER III.

Havre.—This is one of those places which scribbling
travellers hurry through with a crisp mention of
their arrival and departure, but as I have passed a day
here upon customhouse compulsion, and passed it
pleasantly too, and as I have an evening entirely to
myself, and a good fire, why I will order another pound
of wood (they sell it like a drug here), and Monsieur
and Mademoiselle Somebodies, “violin players right
from the hands of Paganini, only fifteen years of age,
and miracles of music” (so says the placard), may delight
other lovers of precocious talent than I. Pen,
ink, and paper, for number two!

If I had not been warned against being astonished
short of Paris, I should have thought Havre quite an
affair. I certainly have seen more that is novel and
amusing since morning than I ever saw before in any
seven days of my life. Not a face, not a building, not
a dress, not a child even, not a stone in the street, nor
shop, nor woman, nor beast of burden, looks in any
comparable degree like its namesake the other side of
the water.

It was very provoking to eat a salt supper and go to
bed in that tiresome berth again last night, with a
French hotel in full view, and no permission to send
for a fresh biscuit even, or a cup of milk. It was nine
o'clock when we reached the pier, and at that late
hour there was, of course, no officer to be had for permission
to land; and there paced the patrole, with his
high black cap and red pompon, up and down the
quay, within six feet of our tafferel, and a shot from his
arquebuss would have been the consequence of any
unlicensed communication with the shore. It was
something, however, to sleep without rocking; and
after a fit of musing anticipation, which kept me conscious,
of the sentinel's measured tread till midnight,
the “gentle goddess” sealed up my cares effectually,
and I awoke at sunrise—in France!

It is a common thing enough to go abroad, and it
may seem idle and common-place to be enthusiastic
about it; but nothing is common, or a trifle, to me,
that can send the blood so warm to my heart, and the
color to my temples as generously, as did my first
conscious thought when I awoke this morning. In
France! I would not have had it a dream for the
price of an empire!

Early in the morning a woman came clattering into
the cabin with wooden shoes, and a patois of mingled
French and English—a blanchisseuse—spattered to the
knees with mud, but with a cap and 'kerchief that
would have made the fortune of a New-York milliner.
Ciel! what politeness! and what white teeth! and
what a knowing row of papillotes, laid in precise parallel
on her clear brunette temples.

“Quelle nouvelle?” said the captain.

“Poland est a bas!” was the answer, with a look
of heroic sorrow, that would have become a tragedy
queen, mourning for the loss of a throne. The French
manner, for once, did not appear exaggerated. It was
news to sadden us all. Pity! pity! that the broad
Christian world could look on and see this glorious
people trampled to the dust in one of the most noble
and desperate struggles for liberty that the earth ever
saw! What an opportunity was here lost to France
for setting a seal of double truth and splendor on her
own newly-achieved triumph over despotism. The
washerwoman broke the silence with “Any clothes to
wash, monsieur?” and in the instant return of my
thoughts to my own comparatively-pitiful interests, I
found the philosophy for all I had condemned in kings
—the humiliating and selfish individuality of human
nature. And yet I believe with Dr. Channing on that
dogma!

At ten o'clock I had performed the traveller's routine—had
submitted my trunk and my passport to the
three authorities, and had got into (and out of) as
many mounting passions at what seemed to me the
intolerable impertinences of searching my linen, and
inspecting my person for scars. I had paid the porter
three times his due rather than endure his cataract of
French expostulation; and with a bunch of keys, and
a landlady attached to it, had ascended by a cold, wet,
marble staircase, to a parlor and bedroom on the fifth
floor; as pretty a place, when you get there, and as
difficult to get to as if it were a palace in thin air. It
is perfectly French! Fine, old, last-century chairs,
covered with splendid yellow damask, two sofas of the
same, the legs or arms of every one imperfect; a coarse
wood dressing-table, covered with fringed drapery and
a sort of throne pincushion, with an immense glass
leaning over it, gilded probably in the time of Henri
Quatre; artificial flowers all round the room, and
prints of Atala and Napoleon mourant over the walls;
windows opening to the floor on hinges, damask and
muslin curtains inside, and boxes for flower-pots without;
a bell-wire that pulls no bell, a bellows too asthmatic
even to wheeze, tongs that refuse to meet, and
a carpet as large as a table-cloth in the centre of
the floor, may answer for an inventory of the “parlor.”
The bedchamber, about half as large as the
boxes in Rattle-row at Saratoga, opens by folding-doors,
and discloses a bed, that for tricksy ornament
as well as size might look the bridal couch for a faery
queen in a panorama; the same golden-sprig damask
looped over it, tent-fashion, with splendid crimson
cord, tassels, fringes, etc., and a pillow beneath that I
shall be afraid to sleep on, it is so dainty a piece of
needlework. There is a delusion about it, positively.
One can not help imagining that all this splendor
means something, and it would require a worse evil
than any of these little deficiencies of comfort to disturb

the self-complacent, Captain-Jackson sort of
feeling, with which one throws his cloak on one sofa
and his hat on the other, and spreads himself out
for a lounge before this mere apology of a French
fire.

But for eating and drinking! if they cook better in
Paris, I shall have my passport altered. The next
prefet that signs it shall substitute gourmand for proprietaire.
I will profess a palate, and live to eat.
Making every allowance for an appetite newly from
sea, my experience hitherto in this department of
science is transcended in the degree of a rushlight to
Arcturns.

I strolled about Havre from breakfast till dinner,
seven or eight hours, following curiosity at random,
up one street and down another, with a prying avidity
which I fear travel will wear fast away. I must compress
my observations into a sentence or two, for my
fire is out, and this old castle of a hotel lets in the
wind “shrewdly cold,” and, besides, the diligence calls
for me in a few hours, and one must sleep.

Among my impressions the most vivid are—that of
the twenty thousand inhabitants of Havre, by far the
greater portion are women and soldiers—that the buildings
all look toppling, and insecurely antique and unsightly—that
the privates of the regular army are the
most stupid, and those of the national guard the most
intelligent-looking troops I ever saw—that the streets
are filthy beyond endurance, and the shops clean beyond
all praise—that the women do all the buying and
selling, and cart-driving, and sweeping, and even shoemaking,
and other sedentary craftswork, and at the
same time have (the meanest of them) an air of ambitious
elegance and neatness, that sends your hand to
your hat involuntarily when you speak to them—that
the children speak French, and look like little old
men and women, and the horses (the famed Norman
breed) are the best of draught animals, and the worst
for speed in the world—and that for extremes ridiculously
near, dirt and neatness, politeness and knavery,
chivalry and petitesse, of learning and language, the
people I have seen to-day must be pre-eminently remarkable,
or France, for a laughing philosopher, is a
paradise indeed! And now for my pillow, till the diligence
calls. Good night.

4. LETTER IV.

Paris.—It seems to me as if I were going back a
month to recall my departure from Havre, my memory
is so clouded with later incidents. I was awaked
on the morning after I had written to you by a servant,
who brought me at the same time a cup of coffee,
and at about an hour before daylight we were
passing through the huge gates of the town on our
way to Paris. The whole business of diligence-travelling
amused me exceedingly. The construction of
this vehicle has been often described; but its separate
apartments (at four different prices), its enormous size,
its comfort and clumsiness, and, more than all, the
driving of its postillions, struck me as equally novel
and diverting. This last-mentioned performer on the
whip and voice (the only two accomplishments he at
all cultivates), rides one of the three wheel-horses, and
drives the four or seven which are in advance, as a
grazier in our country drives a herd of cattle, and
they travel very much in the same manner. There is
leather enough in two of their clumsy harnesses, to
say nothing of the postillion's boots, to load a common
horse heavily. I never witnessed such a ludicrous
absence of contrivance and tact as in the appoint
ments and driving of horses in a diligence. It is so in
everything in France, indeed. They do not possess
the quality, as a nation. The story of the Gascoigne,
who saw a bridge for the first time, and admired the
ingenious economy that placed it across the river, instead
of lengthwise, is hardly an exaggeration.

At daylight I found myself in the coupé (a single
seat for three in the front of the body of the carriage,
with windows before and at the sides), with two whiskered
and mustached companions, both very polite,
and very unintelligible. I soon suspected, by the
science with which my neighbor on the left hummed
little snatches of popular operas, that he was a professed
singer (a conjecture which proved true), and it
was equally clear, from the complexion of the portfeuille
on the lap of the other, that his vocation was a
liberal one—a conjecture which proved true also, as
he confessed himself a diplomat, when we became
better acquainted. For the first hour or more my attention
was divided between the dim but beautiful outline
of the country by the slowly-approaching light of
the dawn, and my nervousness at the distressing want
of skill in the postillion's driving. The increasing and
singular beauty of the country, even under the disadvantage
of rain and the late season, soon absorbed all
my attention, however, and my involuntary and half-suppressed
exclamations of pleasure, so unusual in an
Englishman (for whom I found I was taken), warmed
the diplomatist into conversation, and I passed the
three ensuing hours very pleasantly. My companion
was on his return from Lithuania, having been sent
out by the French committee with arms and money
for Poland. He was, of course, a most interesting
fellow-traveller; and, allowing for the difficulty with
which I understood the language, in the rapid articulation
of an enthusiastic Frenchman, I rarely have
been better pleased with a chance acquaintance. I
found he had been in Greece during the revolution,
and knew intimately my friend, Dr. H—, the best
claim he could have on my interest, and I soon dicovered
an answering recommendation of myself to
him.

The province of Normandy is celebrated for its picturesque
beauty, but I had no conception before of
the cultivated picturesque of an old country. I have
been a great scenery-hunter in America, and my eye
was new, like its hills and forests. The massive, battlemented
buildings of the small villages we passed
through, the heavy gateways and winding avenues and
antique structure of the distant and half-hidden châteaux,
the perfect cultivation, and, to me, singular appearance
of a whole landscape without a fence or a
stone, the absence of all that we define by comfort and
neatness, and the presence of all that we have seen in
picturs and read of in books, but consider as the representations
and descriptions of ages gone by—all
seemed to me irresistibly like a dream. I could not
rub my hand over my eyes, and realize myself. I
could not believe that, within a month's voyage of my
home, these spirit-stirring places had stood all my life-time
as they do, and have for ages, every stone as it
was laid in times of worm-eaten history, and looking
to my eyes now as they did to the eyes of knights and
dames in the days of French chivalry. I looked at the
constantly-occurring ruins of the old priories, and the
magnificent and still-used churches; and my blood
tingled in my veins, as I saw in the stepping-stones at
their doors cavities that the sandals of monks, and the
iron-shod feet of knights in armor a thousand years
ago, had trodden and helped to wear, and the stone
cross over the threshold, that hundreds of generations
had gazed upon and passed under.

By a fortunate chance the postillion left the usual
route at Balbec, and pursued what appeared to be a
by-road through the grain-fields and vineyards for
twenty or twenty-five miles. I can only describe it as

an uninterrupted green lane, winding almost the whole
distance through the bosom of a valley that must be
one of the very loveliest in the world. Imagine one
of such extent, without a fence to break the broad
swells of verdure, stretching up from the winding and
unenclosed road on either side, to the apparent sky;
the houses occurring at distances of miles, and every
one with its thatched roof covered all over with bright
green moss, and its walls of marl interlaid through all
the crevices with clinging vines, the whole structure
and its appurtenances faultlessly picturesque, and when
you have conceived a valley that might have contented
Rasselas, scatter over it here and there groups of
men, women, and children, the Norman peasantry in
their dresses of all colors, as you see them in the prints
—and if there is anything that can better please the
eye, or make the imagination more willing to fold up
its wings and rest, my travels have not crossed it. I
have recorded a vow to walk through Normandy.

As we approached Rouen the road ascended gradually,
and a sharp turn brought us suddenly to the
brow of a steep hill, opposite another of the same
height, and with the same abrupt descent, at the distance
of a mile across. Between lay Rouen. I hardly
know how to describe, for American eyes, the peculiar
beauty of this view; one of the most exquisite,
I am told, in all France. A town at the foot of a hill
is common enough in our country, but of the hundreds
that answer to this description, I can not name
one that would afford a correct comparison. The
nice and excessive cultivation of the grounds in so old
a country gives the landscape a complexion essentially
different from ours. If there were another Mount
Holyoke, for instance, on the other side of the Connecticut,
the situation of Northampton would be very
similar to that of Rouen; but, instead of the rural village,
with its glimpses of white houses seen through
rich and luxurious masses of foliage, the mountain
sides above broken with rocks, and studded with the
gigantic and untouched relics of the native forest, and
the fields below waving with heavy crops, irregularly
fenced and divided, the whole picture one of an over-lavish
and half-subdued Eden of fertility; instead of
this, I say, the broad meadows, with the winding Seine
in their bosom, are as trim as a girl's flower-garden,
the grass closely cut, and of a uniform surface of green,
the edges of the river set regularly with willows, the
little bright islands circled with trees, and smooth as a
lawn; and instead of green lanes lined with bushes,
single streets running right through the unfenced verdure
from one hill to another, and built up with antique
structures of stone, the whole looking, in the
coup d'æeil of distance, like some fantastic model of a
town, with gothic houses of sand-paper, and meadows
of silk velvet.

You will find the size, population, etc., of Rouen in
the guide-books. As my object is to record impressions,
not statistics, I leave you to consult those laconic
chronicles, or the books of a thousand travellers,
for all such information. The Maid of Orleans was
burnt here, as you know, in the fourteenth century.
There is a statue erected to her memory, which I did
not see, for it rained; and after the usual stop of two
hours, as the barometer promised no change in the
weather, and as I was anxious to be in Paris, I took
my place in the night diligence, and kept on.

I amused myself till dark watching the streams that
poured into the broad mouth of the postillion's boots
from every part of his dress, and musing on the fate
of the poor Maid of Orleans; and then, sinking down
into the comfortable corner of the coupé, I slept almost
without interruption till the next morning—the best
comment in the world on the only comfortable thing I
have yet seen in France, a diligence.

It is a pleasant thing in a foreign land to see the familiar
face of the sun; and as he rose over a distant
hill on the left, I lifted the window of the coupé to let
him in, as I would open the door to a long-missed
friend. He soon reached a heavy cloud, however, and
my hopes of bright weather when we should enter the
metropolis departed. It began to rain again; and the
postillion, after his blue cotton frock was soaked
through, put on his great-coat over it—an economy
which is peculiarly French, and which I observed in
every succeeding postillion on the route. The last
twenty-five miles to Paris are uninteresting to the eye;
and with my own pleasant thoughts, tinct as they were
with the brightness of immediate anticipation, and an
occasional laugh at the grotesque figures and equipages
on the road, I made myself passably contented
till we entered the suburb of St. Denis.

It is something to see the outside of a sepulchre for
kings, and the old abbey of Saint Denis needs no association
to make a sight of it worth many a mile of
weary travel. I could not stop within four miles of
Paris, however, and I contented myself with running
to get a second view of it in the rain while the postillion
breathed his horses. The strongest association
about it, old and magnificent as it is, is the fact, that
Napoleon repaired it after the revolution; and standing
in probably the finest point for its front view, my
heart leaped to my throat as I fancied that Napoleon,
with his mighty thoughts, had stood in that very spot,
possibly, and contemplated the glorious old pile before
me as the place of his future repose.

After four miles more, over a broad straight avenue,
paved in the centre and edged with trees, we arrived
at the Porte St. Denis. I was exceedingly struck
with the grandeur of the gate as we passed under, and
referring to the guide-book I find it was a triumphal
arch erected to Louis XIV., and the one by which
the kings of France invariably enter. This also was
restored by Napoleon, with his infallible taste, without
changing its design; and it is singular how everything
that great man touched became his own, for who remembers
for whom it was raised while he is told who
employed his great intellect in its repairs?

I entered Paris on Sunday at eleven o'clock. I
never should have recognised the day. The shops
were all open, the artificers all at work, the unintelligible
criers vociferating their wares, and the people in
their working-day dresses. We wound through street
after street, narrow and dark and dirty, and with my
mind full of the splendid views of squares, and columns,
and bridges, as I had seen them in the prints, I
could scarce believe I was in Paris. A turn brought
us into a large court, that of the Messagerie, the place
at which all travellers are set down on arrival. Here
my baggage was once more inspected, and, after a
half-hour's delay, I was permitted to get into a fiacre,
and drive to a hotel. As one is a specimen of all, I
may as well describe the Hotel d'Etrangers, Rue Vivienne,
which, by the way, I take the liberty at the
same time to recommend to my friends. It is the precise
centre for the convenience of sight-seeing, admirably
kept, and, being nearly opposite Galignani's, that
bookstore of Europe, is a very pleasant resort for the
half hour before dinner, or a rainy day. I went there
at the instance of my friend the diplomat.

The fiacre stopped before an arched passage, and a
fellow in livery, who had followed me from the Messagerie
(probably in the double character of porter and
police agent, as my passport was yet to be demanded),
took my trunk into a small office on the left, over
which was written “Concierge.” This person, who is
a kind of respectable doorkeeper, addressed me in
broken English, without waiting for the evidence of
my tongue that I was a foreigner, and, after inquiring
at what price I would have room, introduced me to the
landlady, who took me across a large court (the houses
are built round the yard always in France), to the
corresponding story of the house. The room was

quite pretty, with its looking-glasses and curtains, but
there was no carpet, and the fireplace was ten feet
deep. I asked to see another, and another, and another;
they were all curtains, and looking-glasses, and
stone floors! There is no wearying a Frenchwoman,
and I pushed my modesty till I found a chamber to
my taste—a nutshell, to be sure, but carpeted—and
bowing my polite housekeeper out, I rang for breakfast
and was at home in Paris!

There are few things bought with money that are
more delightful than a French breakfast. If you take it
at your room, it appears in the shape of two small vessels,
one of coffee and one of hot milk, two kinds of
bread, with a thin, printed slice of butter, and one or
two of some thirty dishes from which you choose, the
latter flavored exquisitely enough to make one wish
to be always at breakfast; but cooked and composed I
know not how or of what. The coffee has an aroma
peculiarly exquisite, something quite different from
any I ever tasted before; and the petite-pain, a slender
biscuit between bread and cake, is, when crisp and
warm, a delightful accompaniment. All this costs
about one third as much as the beefsteaks and coffee
in America, at the same time that you are waited upon
with a civility that is worth three times the money.

It still rained at noon, and finding that the usual
dinner hour was five I took my umbrella for a walk.
In a strange city I prefer always to stroll about at hazard,
coming unawares upon what is fine or curious.
The hackneyed descriptions in the guidebooks profane
the spirit of a place, I never look at them till after I
have found the object, and then only for dates. The
Rue Vivienne was crowded with people, as I emerged
from the dark archway of the hotel to pursue my wanderings.

A walk of this kind, by the way, shows one a great
deal of novelty. In France there are no shop-men.
No matter what the article of trade—hats, boots, pictures,
books, jewellery, anything and everything that
gentlemen buy—you are waited upon by girls, always
handsome, and always dressed in the height of the
mode. They sit on damask-covered settees, behind
the counters; and when you enter, bow and rise to
serve you, with a grace and a smile of courtesy that
would become a drawing-room. And this is universal.

I strolled on until I entered a narrow passage, penetrating
a long line of buildings. It was thronged with
people, and passing in with the rest, I found myself
unexpectedly in a scene that equally surprised and
delighted me. It was a spacious square enclosed by
one entire building. The area was laid out as a garden,
planted with long avenues of trees and beds of flowers,
and in the centre a fountain was playing in the shape
of a fleur-de-lis, with a jet about forty feet in height.
A superb colonnade ran round the whole square, making
a covered gallery of the lower story, which was
occupied by shops of the most splendid appearance,
and thronged through its long sheltered pavés by thousands
of gay promenaders. It was the far-famed Palais
Royal. I remembered the description I had heard
of its gambling-houses, and facilities for every vice,
and looked with a new surprise on its Aladdin-like
magnificence. The hundreds of beautiful pillars,
stretching away from the eye in long and distant perspective,
the crowd of citizens, and women, and officers
in full uniform, passing and repassing with French
liveliness and politeness, the long windows of plated
glass glittering with jewellery, and bright with everything
to tempt the fancy, the tall sentinels pacing between
the columns, and the fountain turning over its
clear waters with a fall audible above the tread and
voices of the thousands who walked around it—who
could look upon such a scene and believe it what it is,
the most corrupt spot, probably, on the face of the
civilized world?

5. LETTER V.

The salient object in my idea of Paris has always
been the Louvre. I have spent some hours in its
vast gallery to-day, and I am sure it will retain the
same prominence in my recollections. The whole
palace is one of the oldest, and said to be one of the
finest, in Europe; and, if I may judge by its impressiveness,
the vast inner court (the facades of which
were restored to their original simplicity by Napoleon),
is a specimen of high architectural perfection.
One could hardly pass through it without being better
fitted to see the masterpieces of art within; and it
requires this, and all the expansiveness of which the
mind is capable besides, to walk through the Muséc
Royale without the painful sense of a magnificence
beyond the grasp of the faculties.

I delivered my passport at the door of the palace,
and, as is customary, recorded my name, country, and
profession in the book, and proceeded to the gallery.
The grand double staircase, one part leading to the
private apartments of the royal household, is described
voluminously in the authorities; and, truly, for one
who has been accustomed to convenient dimensions
only, its breadth, its lofty ceilings, its pillars and statuary,
its mosaic pavements and splendid windows, are
enough to unsettle for ever the standards of size and
grandeur. The strongest feeling one has as he stops
half way up to look about him, is the ludicrous disproportion
between it and the size of the inhabiting
animals. I should smile to see any man ascend such
a staircase, except, perhaps, Napoleon.

Passing through a kind of entrance-hall, I came to
a spacious salle ronde, lighted from the ceiling, and
hung principally with pictures of a large size, one of
the most conspicuous of which, “The Wreck,” has
been copied by an American artist, Mr. Cooke, and
is now exhibiting in New York. It is one of the best
of the French school, and very powerfully conceived.
I regret, however, that he did not prefer the wonderfully
fine piece opposite, which is worth all the pictures
ever painted in France, “The Marriage Supper
at Cana.” The left wing of the table, projected toward
the spectator, with the seven or eight guests
who occupy it, absolutely stands out into the hall.
It seems impossible that color and drawing upon a flat
surface can so cheat the eye.

From the salle ronde on the right opens the grand
gallery, which, after the lesson I had just received in
perspective, I took, at the first glance, to be a painting.
You will realize the facility of the deception
when you consider that, with a breadth of but forty-two
feet, this gallery is one thousand three hundred
and thirty-two feet (more than a quarter of a mile) in
length. The floor is of tesselated woods, polished
with wax like a table; and along its glassy surface
were scattered perhaps a hundred visiters, gazing at
the pictures in varied attitudes, and with sizes reduced
in proportion to their distance, the farthest off looking
in the long perspective like pigmies of the most diminutive
description. It is like a matchless painting to
the eye after all. The ceiling is divided by nine or
ten arches, standing each on four corinthian columns,
projecting into the area, and the natural perspective
of these, and the artists scattered from one end to the
other, copying silently at their easels; and a soldier
at every division, standing upon his guard, quite as
silent and motionless, would make it difficult to convince
a spectator, who was led blindfold and unprepared
to the entrance, that it was not some superb
diorama, figures and all.

I found our distinguished countryman, Morse, copying
a beautiful Murillo at the end of the gallery. He

is also engaged upon a Raffaelle for Cooper, the novelist.
Among the French artists, I noticed several
soldiers, and some twenty or thirty females, the latter
with every mark in their countenances of absorbed
and extreme application. There was a striking difference
in this respect between them and the artists of
the other sex. With the single exception of a lovely
girl, drawing from a Madonna, by Guido, and protected
by the presence of an elderly companion, these
lady-painters were anything but interesting in their
appearance.

Greenough, the sculptor, is in Paris, and engaged
just now in taking the bust of an Italian lady. His
reputation is very enviable; and his passion for his
art, together with his untiring industry and his fine
natural powers, will work him up to something that
will, before long, be an honor to our country. If the
wealthy men of taste in America would give Greenough
liberal orders for his time and talents, and send
out Augur, of New Haven, to Italy, they would do
more to advance this glorious art in our country, than
by expending ten times the sum in any other way.
They are both men of rare genius, and both ardent
and diligent, and they are both cramped by the universal
curse of genius—necessity. The Americans in
Paris are deliberating at present on some means for
expressing unitedly to our government their interest
in Greenough, and their appreciation of his merit of
public and private patronage. For the love of true
taste, do everything in your power to second such an
appeal when it comes.

It is a queer feeling to find oneself a foreigner.
One can not realize long at a time how his face or his
manners should have become peculiar; and after looking
at a print for five minutes in a shop-window, or
dipping into an English book, or in any manner throwing
off the mental habit of the instant, the curious gaze
of the passer-by, or the accent of a strange language,
strikes one very singularly. Paris is full of foreigners
of all nations, and of course physiognomies of all characters
may be met everywhere; but, differing as the
European nations do decidedly from each other, they
differ still more from the American. Our countrymen,
as a class, are distinguishable wherever they are
met; not as Americans however, for of the habits and
manners of our country, people know nothing this
side the water. But there is something in an American
face, of which I never was aware till I met them
in Europe, that is altogether peculiar. The French
take the Americans to be English; but an Englishman,
while he presumes him his countryman, shows
a curiosity to know who he is, which is very foreign
to his usual indifference. As far as I can analyze it,
it is the independent, self-possessed bearing of a man
unused to look up to any one as his superior in rank,
united to the inquisitive, sensitive, communicative expression
which is the index to our national character.
The first is seldom possessed in England but by a man
of decided rank, and the latter is never possessed by an
Englishman at all. The two are united in no other
nation. Nothing is easier than to tell the rank of
an Englishman, and nothing puzzles a European
more than to know how to rate the pretensions of an
American.

On my way home from the Boulevards this evening,
I was fortunate enough to pass through the grand
court of the Louvre, at the moment when the moon
broke through the clouds that have concealed her own
light and the sun's ever since I have been in France.
I had often stopped, in passing the sentinels at the
entrance, to admire the grandeur of the interior to this
oldest of the royal palaces; but to-night, my dead halt
within the shadow of the arch, as the view broke upon
my eye, and my sudden exclamation in English, star
tled the grenadier, and he had half presented his musket,
when I apologized, and passed on. It was magically
beautiful indeed! and with the moonlight pouring
obliquely into the sombre area, lying full upon the
taller of the three façades, and drawing its soft line
across the rich windows and massive pilasters and
arches of the eastern and western, while the remaining
front lay in the heavy black shadow of relief, it
seemed to me more like an accidental regularity in
some rocky glen of America, than a pile of human
design and proportion. It is strange how such high
walls shut out the world. The court of the Louvre is
in the very centre of the busiest quarter of Paris, thousands
of people passing and repassing constantly at the
extremity of the long arched entrances, and yet, standing
on the pavement of that lonely court, no living
creature in sight but the motionless grenadiers at
either gate, the noises without coming to your ear in
a subdued murmur, like the wind on the sea, and
nothing visible above but the sky, resting like a ceiling
on the lofty walls, the impression of utter solitude
is irresistible. I passed out by the archway for which
Napoleon constructed his bronze gates, said to be the
most magnificent of modern times, and which are now
lying in some obscure corner unused, no succeeding
power having had the spirit or the will to complete, even
by the slight labor that remained, his imperial design.
All over Paris you may see similar instances; they
meet you at every step: glorious plans defeated;
works, that with a mere moiety of what has been
already expended in their progress, might be finished
with an effect that none but a mind like Napoleon's
could have originally projected.

Paris, of course, is rife with politics. There is but
one opinion on the subject of another pending revolution.
The “people's king” is about as unpopular
as he need be for the purposes of his enemies; and
he has aggravated the feeling against him very unnecessarily
by his late project in the Tuileries. The
whole thing is very characteristic of the French people.
He might have deprived them of half their civil
rights without immediate resistance; but to cut off a
strip of the public garden to make a play-ground for
his children—to encroach a hundred feet on the pride
of Paris, the daily promenade of the idlers, who do all
the discussion of his measures, it was a little too venturesome.
Unfortunately, too, the offence is in the
very eye of curiosity, and the workmen are surrounded,
from morning till night, by thousands of people,
of all classes, gesticulating, and looking at the palace-windows,
and winding themselves gradually up to the
revolutionary pitch.

In the event of an explosion, the liberal party will
not want partisans, for France is crowded with refugees
from tyranny of every nation. The Poles are
flocking hither every day, and the streets are full of
their melancholy faces! Poor fellows! they suffer
dreadfully from want. The public charity for refugees
has been wrung dry long ago, and the most heroic
hearts of Poland, after having lost everything but
life, in their unavailing struggle, are starving absolutely
in the streets. Accident has thrown me into
the confidence of a well-known liberal—one of those
men of whom the proud may ask assistance without
humiliation, and circumstances have thus come to my
knowledge, which would move a heart of stone. The
fictious sufferings of “Thaddeus of Warsaw,” are
transcended in real-life misery every day, and by natures
quite as noble. Lafayette, I am credibly assured,
has anticipated several years of his income in
relieving them; and no possible charity could be so
well bestowed as contributions for the Poles, starving
in these heartless cities.

I have just heard that Chodsko, a Pole, of distinguished
talent and learning, who threw his whole fortune

and energy into the late attempted revolution,
was arrested here last night, with eight others of his
countrymen, under suspicions by the government.
The late serious insurrection at Lyons has alarmed
the king, and the police is exceedingly strict. The
Spanish and Italian refugees, who receive pensions
from France, have been ordered off to the provincial
towns, by the minister of the interior, and there is
every indication of extreme and apprehensive caution.
The papers, meantime, are raving against the ministry
in the most violent terms, and the king is abused, without
qualification, everywhere. We apprehend oppressive
measures in our country with sufficient indignation
and outcry; but to see the result upon those who
bear their burdens till they are galled into the bone, is
enough to fire the most unwilling blood to resentment.
The irresistible enthusiasm to which one is kindled by
contact with an oppressed people, loses here all the
pleasure of a fine excitement, by the painfulness of the
sympathies it causes with it. Thank God! our own
country is yet free from the scourges of Europe!

I went, a night or two since, to one of the minor
theatres to see the representation of a play, which has
been performed for the hundredth and second time!—
“Napoleon at Schoenbrun and St. Helena.” My object
was to study the feelings of the people toward
Napoleon II., as the exile's love for his son is one of
the leading features of the piece. It was beautifully
played—most beautifully! and I never saw more enthusiasm
manifested by an audience. Every allusion
of Napoleon to his child, was received with that undertoned,
guttural acclamation, that expresses such deep
feeling in a crowd; and the piece is so written, that its
natural pathos alone is irresistible. No one could
doubt, for an instant, it seems to me, that the entrance
of young Napoleon into France, at any critical
moment, would be universally and completely triumphant.
The great cry at Lyons was, “Vive Napoleon
II.!”

I have altered my arrangements a little, in consequence
of the state of feeling here. My design was
to go to Italy immediately, but affairs promise such an
interesting and early change, that I shall pass the winter
in Paris.

6. LETTER VI.

I went last night to the French opera, to see the
first dancer of the world. The prodigious enthusiasm
about her all over Europe had, of course, raised my
expectations to the highest possible pitch. “Have you
seen Taglioni?” is the first question addressed to a
stranger in Paris; and you hear her name constantly
over all the hum of the cafés, and in the crowded resorts
of fashion. The house was overflowed. The
king and his numerous family were present; and my
companion pointed out to me many of the nobility,
whose names and titles have been made familiar to our
ears by the innumerable private memoirs and autobiographies
of the day. After a little introductory
piece, the king arrived, and, as soon as the cheering
was over, the curtain drew up for “Le Dieu et la Bayadere.”
This is the piece in which Taglioni is most
famous. She takes the part of a dancing girl, of
whom the Bramah and an Indian prince are both enamored;
the former in the disguise of a man of low
rank at the court of the latter, in search of some one
whose love for him shall be disinterested. The disguised
god succeeds in winning her affection, and after
testing her devotion by submitting for a while to the
resentment of his rival, and by a pretended caprice in
favor of a singing girl, who accompanies her, he marries
her, and then saves her from the flames as she is
about to be burned for marrying beneath her caste.
Talioni's part is all pantomime. She does not speak
during the play, but her motion is more than articulate.
Her first appearance was in a troop of Indian
dancing girls, who performed before the prince in the
public square. At a signal from the vizier a side pavilion
opened, and thirty or forty bayaderes glided out
together, and commenced an intricate dance. They
were received with a tremendous round of applause
from the audience; but, with the exception of a little
more elegance in the four who led the dance, they were
dressed nearly alike; and, as I saw no particularly conspicuous
figure, I presumed that Taglioni had not yet
appeared. The splendor of the spectacle bewildered
me for the first moment or two, but I presently found
my eyes riveted to a childish creature floating about
among the rest, and, taking her for some beautiful
young elève making her first essays in the chorus, I
interpreted her extraordinary fascination as a triumph
of nature over my unsophisticated taste; and wondered
to myself whether, after all, I should be half so much
captivated with the show of skill I expected presently
to witness. This was Taglioni! She came forward
directly, in a pas seul, and I then observed that her
dress was distinguished from that of her companions
by its extreme modesty both of fashion and ornament,
and the unconstrained ease with which it adapted itself
to her shape and motion. She looks not more than
fifteen. Her figure is small, but rounded to the very
last degree of perfection; not a muscle swelled beyond
the exquisite outline; not an angle, not a fault. Her
back and neck, those points so rarely beautiful in woman,
are faultlessly formed; her feet and hands are in
full proportion to her size, and the former play as freely
and with as natural a yieldingness in her fairy slippers, as
if they were accustomed only to the dainty uses of a
drawing-room. Her face is most strangely interesting;
not quite beautiful, but of that half-appealing, half-retiring
sweetness that you sometimes see blended with
the secluded reserve and unconscious refinement of a
young girl just “out” in a circle of high fashion. In
her greatest exertions her features retain the same
timid half smile, and she returns to the alternate by
play of her part without the slightest change of color,
or the slightest perceptible difference in her breathing,
or the ease of her look and posture. No language
can describe her motion. She swims in your eye like
a curl of smoke, or a flake of down. Her difficulty
seems to be to keep to the floor. You have that feeling
while you gaze upon her, that if she were to rise
and float away like Ariel, you would scarce be surprised.
And yet all is done with such a childish unconsciousness
of admiration, such a total absence of
exertion or fatigue, that the delight with which she
fills you is unmingled, and, assured as you are by the
perfect purity of every look and attitude, that her hitherto
spotless reputation is deserved beyond a breath of
suspicion, you leave her with as much respect as admiration;
and find with surprise that a dancing-girl,
who is exposed night after night to the profaning gaze
of the world, has crept into one of the most sacred
niches of your memory.

I have attended several of the best theatres in Paris,
and find one striking trait in all their first actors—nature.
They do not look like actors, and their playing is not
like acting. They are men, generally, of the most
earnest, unstudied simplicity of countenance; and
when they come upon the stage it is singularly without
affection, and as the character they represent
would appear. Unlike most of the actors I have seen,
too, they seem altogether unaware of the presence of
the audience. Nothing disturbs the fixed attention

they give to each other in the dialogue, and no private
interview between simple and sincere men could be
more unconscious and natural. I have formed consequently
a high opinion of the French drama, degenerate
as it is said to be since the loss of Talma; and it
is easy to see that the root of its excellence is in the
taste and judgment of the people. They applaud judiciously.
When Taglioni danced her wonderful pas
seul, for instance, the applause was general and sufficient.
It was a triumph of art, and she was applauded
as an artist. But when, as the neglected bayadere,
she stole from the corner of the cottage, and with her
indescribable grace, hovered about the couch of the
disguised Bramah, watching and fanning him while he
slept, she expressed so powerfully by the saddened
tenderness of her manner, the devotion of a love that
even neglect could not estrange, that a murmur of delight
ran through the whole house; and when her silent
pantomime was interrupted by the waking of the
god, there was an overwhelming tumult of acclamation
that came from the hearts of the audience, and as
such must have been both a lesson, and the highest
compliment to Taglioni. An actor's taste is of course
very much regulated by that of his audience. He
will cultivate that for which he is most praised. We
shall never have a high-toned drama in America, while,
as at present, applause is won only by physical exertion,
and the nice touches of genius and nature pass
undetected and unfelt.

Of the French actresses I have been most pleased
with Leontine Fay. She is not much talked of here,
and perhaps, as a mere artist in her prefession, is inferior
to those who are more popular; but she has that
indescribable something in her face that has interested
me through life—that strange talisman which is linked
wisely to every heart, confining its interest to some
nice difference invisible to other eyes, and, by a happy
consequence, undisputed by other admiration. She,
too, has that retired sweetness of look that seems to
come only from secluded habits, and in the highly-wrought
passages of tragedy, when her fine dark eyes
are filled with tears, and her tones, which have never
the out-of-doors key of the stage, are clouded and imperfect,
she seems less an actress than a refined and
lovely woman, breaking through the habitual reserve
of society in some agonizing crisis of real life. There
are prints of Leontine Fay in the shops, and I have
seen them in America, but they resemble her very
little.

7. LETTER VII.

I met at a breakfast party, to-day, Joachim Lelewel,
the celebrated scholar and patriot of Poland. Having
fallen in with a great deal of revolutionary and emigrant
society since I have been in Paris, I have often
heard his name, and looked forward to meeting him
with high pleasure and curiosity. His writings are
passionately admired by his countrymen. He was
the principal of the university, idolized by that effective
part of the population, the students of Poland;
and the fearless and lofty tone of his patriotic principles
is said to have given the first and strongest momentum
to the ill-fated struggle just over. Lelewel
impressed me very strongly. Unlike most of the
Poles, who are erect, athletic, and florid, he is thin,
bent, and pale; and were it not for the fire and decision
of his eye, his uncertain gait and sensitive address
would convey an expression almost of timidity. His
form, features, and manners, are very like those of
Percival, the American poet, though their counte
nances are marked with the respective difference of
their habits of mind. Lelewel looks like a naturally
modest, shrinking man, worked up to the calm resolution
of a martyr. The strong stamp of his face is
devoted enthusiasm. His eye is excessively bright,
but quiet and habitually downcast; his lips are set
firmly, but without effort, together; and his voice is
almost sepulchral, it is so low and calm. He never
breaks through his melancholy, though his refugee
countrymen, except when Poland is alluded to, have
all the vivacity of French manners, and seem easily
to forget their misfortunes. He was silent, except
when particularly addressed, and had the air of a man
who thought himself unobserved, and had shrunk into
his own mind. I felt that he was winning upon my
heart every moment. I never saw a man in my life
whose whole air and character were so free from self-consciousness
or pretension—never one who looked
to me so capable of the calm, lofty, unconquerable
heroism of a martyr.

“Paris is the centre of the world,” if centripetal
tendency is any proof of it. Everything struck off
from the other parts of the universe flies straight to
the Palais Royal. You may meet in its thronged
galleries, in the course of an hour, representatives of
every creed, rank, nation, and system, under heaven.
Hussein Pacha and Don Pedro pace daily the same
pavé—the one brooding on a kingdom lost, the other
on the throne he hopes to win; the Polish general and
the proscribed Spaniard, the exiled Italian conspirator,
the contemptuous Turk, the well-dressed negro from
Hayti, and the silk-robed Persian, revolve by the hour
together round the same jet d'cau, and costumes of
every cut and order, mustaches and beards of every
degree of ferocity and oddity, press so fast and thick
upon the eye that one forgets to be astonished. There
are no such things as “lions” in Paris. The extraordinary
persons outnumber the ordinary. Every other
man you meet would keep a small town in a ferment
for a month.

I spent yesterday at Pere la Chaise, and to-day at
Versailles. The two places are in opposite environs,
and of very opposite characters—one certainly making
you in love with life, the other almost as certainly with
death. One could wander for ever in the wilderness
of art at Versailles, and it must be a restless ghost that
could not content itself with Pere la Chaise for its
elysium.

This beautiful cemetery is built upon the broad
ascent of a hill, commanding the whole of Paris at a
glance. It is a wood of small trees, laid out in alleys,
and crowded with tombs and monuments of every possible
description. You will scarce get through it
without being surprised into a tear; but if affectation
and fantasticalness in such a place do not more grieve
than amuse you, you will much oftener smile. The
whole thing is a melancholy mock of life. Its distinctions
are all kept up. There are the fashionable avenues,
lined with costly chapels and monuments, with
the names of the exclusive tenants in golden letters
upon the doors, iron railings set forbiddingly about
the shrubs, and the blessing-scrap writ ambitiously in
Latin. The tablets record the long family titles, and
the offices and honors, perhaps the numberless virtues
of the dead. They read like chapters of heraldry
more than like epitaphs. It is a relief to get into the
outer alleys, and see how poverty and simple feeling
express what should be the same thing. It is usually
some brief sentence, common enough, but often exquisitely
beautiful in this prettiest of languages, and
expressing always the kind of sorrow felt by the
mourner. You can tell, for instance, by the sentiment

simply, without looking at the record below,
whether the deceased was young, or much loved, or
mourned by husband, or parent, or brother, or a circle
of all. I noticed one, however, the humblest and
simplest monument perhaps in the whole cemetery,
which left the story beautifully untold: it was a slab
of common marl, inscribed “Pauvre Marie!” nothing
more. I have thought of it, and speculated upon it, a
great deal since. What was she? and who wrote her
epitaph? why was she pauvre Marie?

Before almost all the poorer monuments is a miniature
garden with a low wooden fence, and either the
initials of the dead sown in flowers, or rose-trees, carefully
cultivated, trained to hang over the stone. I was
surprised to find in a public cemetery, in December,
roses in full bloom and valuable exotics at almost every
grave. It speaks both for the sentiment and delicate
principle of the people. Few of the more costly
monuments were either interesting or pretty. One
struck my fancy—a small open chapel, large enough
to contain four chairs, with the slab facing the door,
and a crucifix encircled with fresh flowers on a simple
shrine above. It is a place where the survivors in a
family might come and sit any time, nowhere more
pleasantly. From the chapel I speak of, you may
look out and see all Paris; and I can imagine how it
would lessen the feeling of desertion and forgetfulness
that makes the anticipation of death so dreadful, to be
certain that your friends would come, as they may
here, and talk cheerfully and enjoy themselves near
you, so to speak. The cemetery in summer must be
one of the sweetest places in the world. It would be
a sufficient inducement of itself to bring me to Pairs
from almost any distance in another season.

Versailles is a royal summer chateau, about twelve
miles from Paris, with a demesne of twenty miles in
circumference. Take that for the scale, and imagine
a palace completed in proportion in all its details of
grounds, ornament, and architecture. It cost, says
the guide book, two hundred and fifty millions of dollars;
and leaving your fancy to expend that trifle over
a residence, which, remember, is but one out of some
half dozen, occupied during the year by a single
family, I commend the republican moral to your consideration,
and proceed with the more particular
description of my visit.

My friend, Dr. Howe, was my companion. We
drove up the grand avenue on one of the loveliest
mornings that ever surprised December with a bright
sun and a warm south wind. Before us, at the distance
of a mile, lay a vast mass of architecture, with
the centre falling back between the two projecting
wings, the whole crowning a long and gradual ascent,
of which the tricolored flag waving against the sky
from the central turrets was the highest point. As
we approached, we noticed an occasional flash in
the sun, and a stir of bright colors through the broad
deep court between the wings, which, as we advanced
nearer, proved to be a body of about two or three
thousand lancers and troops of the line under review.
The effect was indescribably fine. The gay uniforms,
the hundreds of tall lances, each with its red flag flying
in the wind, the imposing crescent of architecture in
which the array was embraced, the ringing echo of
the grand military music from the towers, and all this
intoxication for the positive senses, fused with the historical
atmosphere of the place, the recollection of the
king and queen, whose favorite residence it had been
(the unfortunate Louis and Marie Antoinette), of the
celebrated women who had lived in their separate
palaces within its grounds, of the genius and chivalry
of court after court that had made it, in turn, the
scene of their brilliant follies, and, over all, Napolean,
who must have rode through its gilded gates with the
thought of pride that he was its imperial master by
the royalty of his great nature alone, it was in truth,
enough, the real and the ideal, to dazzle the eyes of a
simple republican.

After gazing at the fascinating show an hour, we
took a guide and entered the palace. We were walked
through suite after suite of cold apartments, desolately
splendid with gold and marble, and crowded
with costly pictures, till I was sick and weary of magnificence.
The guide went before, saying over his
rapid rigmarole of names and dates, giving us about
three minutes to a room in which there were some
twenty pictures, perhaps, of which he presumed he
had told us all that was necessary to know. I fell behind,
after a while; and as a considerable English
party had overtaken and joined us, I succeeded in
keeping one room in the rear, and enjoying the remainder
in my own way.

The little marble palace, called “Petit Trianon”
built for Madame Pompadour in the garden grounds,
is a beautiful affair, full of what somebody calls “affectionate-looking
rooms;” and “Grand Trianon,”
built also on the grounds at the distance of half a mile,
for Madame Maintenon, is a very lovely spot, made
more interesting by the preference given to it over all
other places by Marie Antoinette. Here she amused
herself with her Swiss village. The cottages and artificial
“mountains” (ten feet high, perhaps) are exceedingly
pretty models in miniature, and probably illustrate
very fairly the ideas of a palace-bred fancy upon natural
scenery. There are glens and grottoes, and rocky beds
for brooks that run at will (“les rivieres à volanté,” the
guide called them), and trees set out upon the crags at
most uncomfortable angles, and every contrivance to
make a lovely lawn as inconveniently like nature as possible.
The Swiss families, however, must have been
very amusing. Brought fresh from their wild country,
and set down in these pretty mock cottages, with orders
to live just as they did in their own mountains, they
must have been charmingly puzzled. In the midst of
the village stands an exquisite little Corinthian temple;
and our guide informed us that the cottage which the
queen occupied at her Swiss tea-parties was furnished
at an expense of sixty thousand francs—two not very
Switzer-like circumstances.

It was in the little palace of Trianon that Napoleon
signed his divorce from Josephine. The guide showed
us the room, and the table on which he wrote. I
have seen nothing that brought me so near Napoleon.
There is no place in France that could have for me a
greater interest. It is a little boudoir, adjoining the
state sleeping-room, simply furnished, and made for
familiar retirement, not for show. The single sofa—
the small round table—the enclosing, tent-like curtains—the
modest, unobtrusive elegance of ornaments
and furniture, give it rather the look of a retreat,
fashioned by the tenderness and taste of private life,
than any apartment in a royal palace. I felt unwilling
to leave it. My thoughts were too busy. What was
the motive of that great man in this most affecting and
disputed action of his life? That he loved Josephine
with his whole power of loving, no one can doubt.
That he was above making such a sacrifice to his ambition
merely, I equally believe. There is but one
other principle into which it can be resolved—one
that has not been sufficiently weighed by those who
have written upon his character, but which, as a spring
of action, is second only to the ruling passion in the
bosoms of men—the desire for offspring. I can conceive
Napoleon's sacrifice of that glorious woman on
no other ground; and, ascribing it to this, it more
proves than discredits the tenderness of his great
nature.

After having been thridded through the palaces, we
had a few moments left for the grounds. They are

magnificent beyond description. We know very little
of this thing in America, as an art; but it is one, I
have come to think, that, in its requisition of genius,
is scarce inferior to architecture. Certainly the three
palaces of Versailles together did not impress me so
much as the single view from the upper terrace of the
gardens. It stretches clear over the horizon. You
stand on a natural eminence that commands the
whole country, and the plan seems to you like some
work of the Titans. The long sweep of the avenue,
with a breadth of descent that at the first glance takes
away your breath, stretching its two lines of gigantic
statues and vases to the water level; the wide, slumbering
canal at its foot, carrying on the eye to the
horizon, like a river of an even flood lying straight
through the bosom of the landscape; the side avenues
almost as extensive; the palaces in the distant grounds,
and the strange union altogether to an American, of as
much extent as the eye can reach, cultivated equally
with the trim elegance of a garden—all these, combining,
together, form a spectacle which nothing but
nature's royalty of genius could design, and (to descend
ungracefully from the climax) which only the exactions
of an unnatural royalty could pay for.

I think the most forcible lesson one learns at Paris
is the value of time and money. I have always been
told, erroneously, that it was a place to waste both.
You could do so much with another hour, if you had
it, and buy so much with another dollar, if you could
afford it, that the reflected economy upon what you
can command, is inevitable. As to the worth of time,
for instance, there are some twelve or fourteen gratuitous
lectures every day at the Sorbonne, the school of
medicine and the college of France, by men like Cuvier,
Say, Spurzheim, and others, each in his professed
pursuit, the most eminent perhaps in the world; and
there are the Louvre, and the Royal Library, and the
Mazarin Library, and similar public institutions, all
open to gratuitous use, with obsequious attendants,
warm rooms, materials for writing, and perfect seclusion;
to say nothing of the thousand interesting but
less useful resorts with which Paris abounds, such as
exhibitions of flowers, porcelains, mosaics, and curious
handiwork of every description, and (more amusing
and time-killing still) the never-ending changes of
sights in the public places, from distinguished foreigners
down to miracles of educated monkeys. Life
seems most provokingly short as you look at it. Then,
for money, you are more puzzled how to spend a poor
pitiful franc in Paris (it will buy so many things you
want) than you would be in America with the outlay
of a month's income. Be as idle and extravagant as
you will, your idle hours look you in the face as they
pass, to know whether, in spite of the increase of their
value, you really mean to waste them; and the money
that slipped through your pocket you know not how
at home, sticks embarrassed to your fingers, from the
mere multiplicity of demands made for it. There are
shops all over Paris called the “Vingt-cinq-sous,”
where every article is fixed at that price—twenty-five
cents! They contain everything you want, except a
wife and fire-wood—the only two things difficult to be
got in France. (The latter, with or without a pun, is
much the dearer of the two.) I wonder that they are not
bought out, and sent over to America on speculation.
There is scarce an article in them that would not be
held cheap with us at five times its purchase. There
are bronze standishes for ink, sand, and wafers, pearl
paper-cutters, spice-lamps, decanters, essence-bottles,
sets of china, table-bells of all devices, mantel ornaments,
vases of artificial flowers, kitchen utensils, dog-collars,
canes, guard-chains, chessmen, whips, hammers,
brushes, and everything that is either convenient
or pretty. You might freight a ship with them, and
all good and well finished, at twenty-five cents the set
or article! You would think the man was joking, to
walk through his shop.

8. LETTER VIII.

I have met Dr. Bowring in Paris, and called upon
him to-day with Mr. Morse, by appointment. The
translator of the “Ode to the Deity” (from the Russian
of Derzzhavin) could not by any accident be an
ordinary man, and I anticipated great pleasure in his
society. He received us at his lodgings in the Place
Vendome. I was every way pleased with him. His
knowledge of our country and its literature surprised
me, and I could not but be gratified with the unprejudiced
and well-informed interest with which he discoursed
on our government and institutions. He expressed
great pleasure at having seen his ode in one
of our schoolbooks (Pierpont's Reader, I think), and
assured us that the promise to himself of a visit to
America was one of his brightest anticipations. This
is not at all an uncommon feeling, by the way, among
the men of talent in Paris; and I am pleasingly surprised,
everywhere, with the enthusiastic hopes expressed
for the success of our experiment in liberal
principles. Dr. Bowring is a slender man, a little
above the middle height, with a keen, inquisitive expression
of countenance, and a good forehead, from
which the hair is combed straight back all round, in
the style of the Cameronians. His manner is all life,
and his motion and gesture nervously sudden and angular.
He talks rapidly, but clearly, and uses beautiful
language—concise, and full of select expressions
and vivid figures. His conversation in this particular
was a constant surprise. He gave us a great deal of
information, and when we parted, inquired my route
of travel, and offered me letters to his friends, with a
cordiality very unusual on this side the Atlantic.

It is a cold but common rule with travellers in
Europe to avoid the society of their own countrymen.
In a city like Paris, where time and money
are both so valuable, every additional acquaintance,
pursued either for etiquette or intimacy, is felt, and
one very soon learns to prefer his advantage to any
tendency of his sympathies. The infractions upon
the rule, however, are very delightful, and at the general
reunion at our ambassador's on Wednesday evening,
or an occasional one at Lafayette's, the look of
pleasure and relief at beholding familiar faces, and
hearing a familiar language once more, is universal.
I have enjoyed this morning the double happiness of
meeting an American circle, around an American
breakfast. Mr. Cooper had invited us (Morse, the
artist, Dr. Howe, a gentleman of the navy, and myself).
Mr. C. lives with great hospitality, and in all
the comfort of American habits; and to find him, as
he is always found, with his large family about him,
is to get quite back to the atmosphere of our country.
The two or three hours we passed at his table were,
of course, delightful. It should endear Mr. Cooper
to the hearts of his countrymen, that he devotes all his
influence, and no inconsiderable portion of his large
income, to the encouragement of American artists. It
would be natural enough, after being so long abroad,
to feel or affect a preference for the works of foreigners;
but in this, as in his political opinions, most decidedly,
he is eminently patriotic. We feel this in
Europe, where we discern more clearly by comparison
the poverty of our country in the arts, and meet, at the
same time, American artists of the first talent, without
a single commission from home for original works,

copying constantly for support. One of Mr. Cooper's
purchases, the “Cherubs,” by Greenough, has been
sent to the United States, and its merit was at once
acknowledged. It was done, however (the artist, who
is here, informs me), under every disadvantage of feeling
and circumstances; and, from what I have seen
and am told by others of Mr. Greenough, it is, I am
confident, however beautiful, anything but a fair specimen
of his powers. His peculiar taste lies in a
bolder range, and he needs only a commission from
government to execute a work which will begin the
art of sculpture nobly in our country.

My curiosity led me into a strange scene to-day. I
had observed for some time among the affichés upon
the walls an advertisement of an exhibition of “fighting
animals,” at the Barriere du Combat. I am disposed
to see almost any sight once, particularly where
it is, like this, a regular establishment, and, of course,
an exponent of the popular taste. The place of the
“Combats des Animaux,” is in one of the most obscure
suburbs, outside the walls, and I found it with
difficulty. After wandering about in dirty lanes for
an hour or two, inquiring for it in vain, the cries of the
animals directed me to a walled place, separated from
the other houses of the suburb, at the gate of which a
man was blowing a trumpet. I purchased a ticket of
an old woman, who sat shivering in the porter's lodge;
and, finding I was an hour too early for the fights, I
made interest with a savage-looking fellow, who was
carrying in tainted meat, to see the interior of the establishment.
I followed him through a side gate, and
we passed into a narrow alley, lined with stone kennels,
to each of which was confined a powerful dog,
with just length of chain enough to prevent him from
reaching the tenant of the opposite hole. There were
several of these alleys, containing, I should think, two
hundred dogs in all. They were of every breed of
strength and ferocity, and all of them perfectly frantic
with rage or hunger, with the exception of a pair of
noble-looking black dogs, who stood calmly at the
mouths of their kennels: the rest struggled and howled
incessantly, straining every muscle to reach us, and
resuming their fierceness toward each other when we
had passed by. They all bore, more or less, the
marks of severe battles; one or two with their noses
split open, and still unhealed; several with their necks
bleeding and raw, and galled constantly with the iron
collar, and many with broken legs, but all apparently
so excited as to be insensible to suffering. After following
my guide very unwillingly through the several
alleys, deafened with the barking and howling of the
savage occupants, I was taken to the department of
wild animals. Here were all the tenants of the menagerie,
kept in dens, opening by iron doors upon the
pit in which they fought. Like the dogs, they were
terribly wounded; one of the bears especially, whose
mouth was torn all off from his jaws, leaving his teeth
perfectly exposed, and red with the continually exuding
blood. In one of the dens lay a beautiful deer,
with one of his haunches severely mangled, who, the
man told me, had been hunted round the pit by the
dogs but a day or two before. He looked up at us,
with his large soft eye, as we passed, and lying on the
damp stone floor, with his undressed wounds festering
in the chilly atmosphere of mid-winter: he presented
a picture of suffering which made me ashamed to the
soul of my idle curiosity.

The spectators began to collect, and the pit was
cleared. Two thirds of those in the amphitheatre
were Englishmen, most of whom were amateurs, who
had brought dogs of their own to pit against the regular
mastiffs of the establishment. These were despatched
first. A strange dog was brought in by the
collar, and loosed in the arena, and a trained dog let
in upon him. It was a cruel business. The sleek,
well-fed, good-natured animal was no match for the
exasperated, hungry savage, he was compelled to encounter.
One minute, in all the joy of a release from
his chain, bounding about the pit, and fawning upon
his master, and the next attacked by a furious mastiff,
who was taught to fasten on him at the first onset in a
way that deprived him at once of his strength; it was
but a murderous exhibition of cruelty. The combats
between two of the trained dogs, however, were more
equal. These succeeded to the private contests, and
were much more severe and bloody. There was a
small terrier among them, who disabled several dogs
successively, by catching at their fore-legs, and breaking
them instantly with a powerful jerk of his body
I was very much interested in one of the private dogs,
a large yellow animal, of a noble expression of countenance,
who fought several times very unwillingly,
but always gallantly and victoriously. There was a
majesty about him, which seemed to awe his antagonists.
He was carried off in his master's arms, bleeding
and exhausted, after severely punishing the best
dogs of the establishment.

The baiting of the wild animals succeeded the canine
combats. Several dogs (Irish, I was told), of a
size and ferocity such as I had never before seen,
were brought in, and held in the leash opposite the
den of the bear whose head was so dreadfully mangled.

The door was then opened by the keeper, but poor
bruin shrunk from the contest. The dogs became
unmanageable at the sight of him, however, and fastening
a chain to his collar, they drew him out by
main force, and immediately closed the grating. He
fought gallantly, and gave more wounds than he received,
for his shaggy coat protected his body effectually.
The keepers rushed in and beat off the dogs,
when they had nearly finished peeling the remaining
flesh from his head; and the poor creature, perfectly
blind and mad with pain, was dragged into his den
again, to await another day of amusement!

I will not disgust you with more of these details.
They fought several foxes and wolves afterward, and
last of all, one of the small donkeys of the country, a
creature not so large as some of the dogs, was led in,
and the mastiffs loosed upon her. The pity and indignation
I felt at first at the cruelty of baiting so unwarlike
an animal, I soon found was quite unnecessary.
She was the severest opponent the dogs had yet
found. She went round the arena at full gallop, with
a dozen savage animals springing at her throat, but
she struck right and left with her fore-legs, and at
every kick with her heels threw one of them clear
across the pit. One or two were left motionless on
the field, and others carried off with their ribs kicked
in, and their legs broken, while their inglorious antagonist
escaped almost unhurt. One of the mastiffs
fastened on her ear and threw her down, in the beginning
of the chase, but she apparently received no other
injury.

I had remained till the close of the exhibition with
some violence to my feelings, and I was very glad to
get away. Nothing would tempt me to expose myself
to a similar disgust again. How the intelligent and
gentlemanly Englishmen whom I saw there, and whom
I have since met in the most refined society of Paris,
can make themselves familiar, as they evidently were,
with a scene so brutal, I can not very well conceive.

9. LETTER IX.

Our beautiful and favorite Malibran is playing in
Paris this winter. I saw her last night in Desdemona.

The other theatres are so attractive, between Taglioni,
Robert le Diable (the new opera), Leontine Fay, and
the political pieces constantly coming out, that I had
not before visited the Italian opera. Madame Malibran
is every way changed. She sings, unquestionably,
better than when in America. Her voice is
firmer, and more under control, but it has lost that
gushing wildness, that brilliant daringness of execution,
that made her singing upon our boards so indescribably
exciting and delightful. Her person is perhaps
still more changed. The round, graceful fulness
of her limbs and features has yielded to a half-haggard
look of care and exhaustion, and I could not
but think that there was more than Desdemona's fictitious
wretchedness in the expression of her face.
Still, her forehead and eyes have a beauty that is not
readily lost, and she will be a strikingly interesting,
and even splendid creature, as long as she can play.
Her acting was extremely impassioned; and in the
more powerful passages of her part, she exceeded
everything I had conceived of the capacity of the human
voice for pathos and melody. The house was
crowded, and the applause was frequent and universal.

Madame Malibran, as you probably know, is divorced
from the man whose name she bears, and has
married a violinist of the Italian orchestra. She is just
now in a state of health that will require immediate
retirement from the stage, and, indeed, has played already
too long. She came forward after the curtain
dropped, in answer to the continual demand of the audience,
leaning heavily on Rubini, and was evidently
so exhausted as to be scarcely able to stand. She
made a single gesture, and was led off immediately,
with her head drooping on her breast, amid the most
violent acclamations. She is a perfect passion with
the French, and seems to have out-charmed their
usual caprice.

It was a lovely night, and after the opera I walked
home. I reside a long distance from the places of
public amusement. Dr. Howe and myself had stopped
at a café on the Italian Boulevards an hour, and
it was very late. The streets were nearly deserted—
here and there a solitary cabriolet with the driver
asleep under his wooden apron, or the motionless figure
of a municipal guardsman, dozing upon his horse,
with his helmet and brazen armor glistening in the
light of the lamps. Nothing has impressed me more,
by the way, than a body of these men passing me in
the night. I have once or twice met the king returning
from the theatre with a guard, and I saw them
once at midnight on an extraordinary patrol winding
through the arch into the Place Carrousel. Their
equipments are exceedingly warlike (helmets of brass,
and coats of mail), and with the gleam of the breast-plates
through their horsemen's cloaks, the tramp of
hoofs echoing through the deserted streets, and the
silence and order of their march, it was quite a realization
of the descriptions of chivalry.

We kept along the Boulevards to the Rue Richelieu.
A carriage, with footmen in livery, had just driven up
to Frascati's, and, as we passed, a young man of uncommon
personal beauty jumped out and entered that
palace of gamblers. By his dress he was just from a
ball, and the necessity of excitement after a scene
meant to be so gay, was an obvious if not a fair satire
on the happiness of the “gay” circle in which he evidently
moved. We turned down the Paysage Panorama,
perhaps the most crowded thoroughfare in all
Paris, and traversed its long gallery without meeting a
soul. The widely-celebrated patisserie of Felix, the
first pastry-cook in the world, was the only shop open
from one extremity to the other. The guard, in his gray
capote, stood looking in at the window, and the girl,
who had served the palates of half the fashion and
rank of Paris since morning, sat nodding fast asleep
behind the counter, paying the usual fatiguing penalty
of notoriety. The clock struck two as we passed the
façade of the Bourse. This beautiful and central
square is, night and day, the grand rendezvous of public
vice; and late as the hour was, its pavé was still
thronged with flaunting and painted women of the
lowest description, promenading without cloaks or
bonnets, and addressing every passer-by.

The Palais Royal lay in our way, just below the
Bourse, and we entered its magnificent court with
an exclamation of new pleasure. Its thousand lamps
were all burning brilliantly, the long avenues of trees
were enveloped in a golden atmosphere created by the
bright radiation of light through the mist, the Corinthian
pillars and arches retreated on either side from
the eye in distinct and yet mellow perspective, the
fountain filled the whole palace with its rich murmur,
and the broad marble-paved galleries, so thronged by
day, were as silent and deserted as if the drowsy gens
d'armes standing motionless on their posts were the
only living beings that inhabited it. It was a scene
really of indescribable impressiveness. No one who
has not seen this splendid palace, enclosing with its
vast colonnades so much that is magnificent, can have
an idea of its effect upon the imagination. I had seen
it hitherto only when crowded with the gay and noisy
idlers of Paris, and the contrast of this with the utter
solitude it now presented—not a single footfall to be
heard on its floors, yet every lamp burning bright, and
the statues and flowers and fountains all illuminated
as if for a revel—was one of the most powerful and
captivating that I have ever witnessed. We loitered
slowly down one of the long galleries, and it seemed to
me more like some creation of enchantment than the
public haunt it is of pleasure and merchandise. A
single figure, wrapped in a cloak, passed hastily by us
and entered the door to one of the celebrated “hells,”
in which the playing scarce commences till this hour
—but we met no other human being.

We passed on from the grand court to the Galerie
Nemours. This, as you may find in the descriptions,
is a vast hall, standing between the east and the west
courts of the Palais Royal. It is sometimes called
the “glass gallery.” The roof is of glass, and the
shops, with fronts entirely of windows, are separated
only by long mirrors, reaching in the shape of pillars
from the roof to the floor. The pavement is tasselated,
and at either end stand two columns completing its
form, and dividing it from the other galleries into
which it opens. The shops are among the costliest
in Paris; and what with the vast proportions of the
hall, its beautiful and glistening material, and the lightness
and grace of its architecture, it is, even when deserted,
one of the most fairy-like places in this fantastic
city. It is the lounging place of military men particularly;
and every evening from six to midnight, it
is thronged by every class of gayly dressed people, officers
off duty, soldiers, polytechnic scholars, ladies, and
strangers of every costume and complexion, promenading
to and fro in the light of the cafés and the dazzling
shops, sheltered completely from the weather,
and enjoying, without expense or ceremony, a scene
more brilliant than the most splendid ball-room in
Paris. We lounged up and down the long echoing
pavement an hour. It was like some kingly “banquet-hall
deserted.” The lamps burned dazzlingly bright,
the mirrors multiplied our figures into shadowy and
silent attendants, and our voices echoed from the glittering
roof in the utter stillness of the hour as if we
had broken in, Thalaba-like, upon some magical palace
of silence.

It is singular how much the differences of time and
weather affects scenery. The first sunshine I saw in

Paris, unsettled all my previous impressions completely.
I had seen every place of interest through
the dull heavy atmosphere of a week's rain, and it was
in such leaden colors alone that the finer squares and
palaces had become familiar to me. The effect of a
clear sun upon them was wonderful. The sudden
gilding of the dome of the Invalides by Napoleon must
have been something like it. I took advantage of it
to see everything over again, and it seemed to me like
another city. I never realized so forcibly the beauty
of sunshine. Architecture, particularly is nothing
without it. Everything looks heavy and flat. The
tracery of the windows and relievos, meant to be definite
and airy, appears clumsy and confused, and the
whole building flattens into a solid mass, without design
or beauty.

I have spent the whole day in a Paris mob. The
arrival of General Romarino and some of his companions
from Warsaw, gave the malcontents a plausible
opportunity of expressing their dislike to the measures
of government; and, under cover of a public welcome
to this distinguished Pole, they assembled in immense
numbers at the Port St. Denis, and on the Boulevard
Montmartre. It was very exciting altogether. The
cavalary were out, and patroled the streets in companies,
charging upon the crowd wherever there was a
stand; the troops of the line marched up and down
the Boulevards, continually dividing the masses of
people, and forbidding any one to stand still. The
shops were all shut, in anticipation of an affray. The
students endeavored to cluster, and resisted, as far as
they dared, the orders of the soldiery; and from noon
till night there was every prospect of a quarrel. The
French are a fine people under excitement. Their
handsome and ordinarily heartless faces become very
expressive under the stronger emotions; and their
picturesque dresses and violent gesticulation set off a
popular tumult exceedingly. I have been highly
amused all day, and have learned a great deal of what it
is very difficult for a foreigner to acquire—the language
of French passion. They express themselves very
forcibly when angry. The constant irritation kept up
by the intrusion of the cavalry upon the sidewalks,
and the rough manner of dispersing gentlemen by
sabre-blows and kicks with the stirrup, gave me sufficient
opportunity of judging. I was astonished,
however, that their summary mode of proceeding was
borne at all. It is difficult to mix in such a vast body,
and not catch its spirit, and I found myself, without
knowing why, or rather with a full conviction that the
military measures were necessary and right, entering
with all my heart into the rebellious movements of the
students, and boiling with indignation at every dispersion
by force. The students of Paris are probably the
worst subjects the king has. They are mostly young
men of from twenty to twenty-five, full of bodily vigor
and enthusiasm, and excitable to the last degree.
Many of them are Germans, and no small proportion
Americans. They make a good amalgam for a mob,
dress being the last consideration, apparently, with a
medical or law student in Paris. I never saw such a
collection of atrocious-looking fellows as are to be
met at the lectures. The polytechnic scholars, on
the other hand, are the finest looking body of young
men I ever saw. Aside from their uniform, which is
remarkably neat and beautiful, their figures and faces
seem picked for spirit and manliness. They have always
a distinguished air in a crowd, and it is easy, after
seeing them, to imagine the part they played as
leaders in the revolution of the three days.

Contrary to my expectation, night came on without
any serious encounter. One or two individuals attempted
to resist the authority of the troops, and were
considerably bruised; and one young man, a student,
had three of his fingers cut off by the stroke of a dra
goon's sabre. Several were arrested, but by eight
o'clock all was quiet, and the shops on the Boulevards
once more exposed their tempting goods, and lit
up their brilliant mirrors without fear. The people
thronged to the theatres to see the political pieces, and
evaporate their excitement in cheers at the liberal allusions;
and so ends a tumult that threatened danger,
but operated, perhaps, as a healthful event for the accumulating
disorders of public opinion.

10. LETTER X.

The garden of the Tuileries is an idle man's paradise.
Magnificent as it is in extent, sculptures, and
cultivation, we all know that statues may be too dumb,
gravel walks too long and level, and trees and flowers
and fountains a little too Platonic, with any degree of
beauty. But the Tuileries are peopled at all hours
of sunshine with, to me, the most lovely objects in the
world—children. You may stop a minute, perhaps,
to look at the thousand gold fishes in the basin under
the palace-windows, or follow the swans for a single
voyage round the fountain in the broad avenue—but
you will sit on your hired chair (at this season) under
the shelter of the sunny wall, and gaze at the children
chasing about, with their attending Swiss maids, till
your heart has outwearied your eyes, or the palace-clock
strikes five. I have been there repeatedly since
I have been in Paris, and have seen nothing like the
children. They move my heart always, more than
anything under heaven; but a French child, with an
accent that all your paid masters can not give, and
manners, in the midst of its romping, that mock to the
life the air and courtesy for which Paris has a name
over the world, is enough to make one forget Napoleon,
though the column of Vendome throws its shadow
within sound of their voices. Imagine sixty-seven
acres of beautiful creatures (that is the extent of the
garden, and I have not seen such a thing as an ugly
French child),—broad avenues stretching away as far
as you can see, covered with little foreigners (so they
seem to me), dressed in gay colors, and laughing and
romping and talking French, in all the amusing mixture
of baby passions and grown-up manners, and answer
me—is it not a sight better worth seeing than all
the grand palaces that shut it in?

The Tuileries are certainly very magnificent, and to
walk across from the Seine to the Rue Rivoli, and
look up the endless walks and under the long perfect
arches cut through the trees, may give one a very
pretty surprise for once—but a winding lane is a better
place to enjoy the loveliness of green leaves, and a
single New England elm, letting down its slender
branches to the ground in the inimitable grace of nature,
has, to my eye, more beauty than all the clipped
vistas from the king's palace to the Arc de l'Etoile,
the Champs Elysées inclusive.

One of the finest things in Paris, by the way, is the
view from the terrace in front of the palace to this
“Arch of Triumph,” commenced by Napoleon at the
extremity of the “Elysian Fields,” a single avenue
of about two miles. The part beyond the gardens is
the fashionable drive, and by a saunter on horseback
to the Bois de Boulogne, between four and five, on a
pleasant day, one may see all the dashing equipages
in Paris. Broadway, however, would eclipse everything
here, either for beauty of construction or appointments.
Our carriages are every way handsomer
and better hung, and the horses are harnessed more
compactly and gracefully. The lumbering vehicles

here make a great show, it is true, for the box, with
its heavy hammer cloth, is level with the top, and the
coachman and footmen and outriders are very striking
in their bright liveries; but the elegant, convenient,
light-running establishments of Philadelphia and New
York, excel them, out of all comparison, for taste and
fitness. The best driving I have seen is by the king's
whips, and really it is beautiful to see his retinue on
the road, four or five coaches and six, with footmen
and outriders in scarlet liveries, and the finest horses
possible for speed and action. His majesty generally
takes the outer edge of the Champs Elyseés, on the
bank of the river, and the rapid glimpses of the bright
show through the breaks in the wood, are exceedingly
picturesque.

There is nothing in Paris that looks so outlandish
to my eye as the common vehicles. I was thinking
of it this morning as I stood waiting for the St. Sulpice
omnibus, at the corner of the Rue Vivienne, the great
thoroughfare between the Boulevards and the Palais
Royal. There was the hack-cabriolet lumbering by
in the fashion of two centuries ago, with a horse and
harness that look equally ready to drop in pieces; the
hand-cart with a stout dog harnessed under the axletree,
drawing with twice the strength of his master;
the market-wagon, driven always by women, and drawn
generally by a horse and a mule abreast, the horse of
the Norman breed, immensely large, and the mule
about the size of a well-grown bull-dog; a vehicle of
which I have not yet found out the name, a kind of
long demi-omnibus, with two wheels and a single
horse, and carrying nine; and last, but not least amusing,
a small close carriage for one person, swung
upon two wheels and drawn by a servant, very much
used, apparently, by elderly women and invalids, and
certainly most admirable conveniences either for the
economy or safety of getting about a city. It would
be difficult to find an American servant who would
draw in harness as they do here; and it is amusing to
see a stout, well-dressed fellow, strapped to a carriage,
and pulling along the pavés, sometimes at a jog-trot,
while his master or mistress sits looking unconcernedly
out of the window.

I am not yet decided whether the French are the
best or the worst drivers in the world. If the latter,
they certainly have most miraculous escapes. A cabdriver
never pulls the reins except upon great emergencies,
or for a right-about turn, and his horse has a
ludicrous aversion to a straight line. The streets are
built inclining toward the centre, with the gutter in the
middle, and it is the habit of all cabriolet-horses to run
down one side and up the other constantly at such
sudden angles that it seems to you they certainly will
go through the shop-windows. This, of course, is
very dangerous to foot-passengers in a city where there
are no side-walks; and, as a consequence, the average
number of complaints to the police of Paris for people
killed by careless driving, is about four hundred
annually. There are probably twice the number of
legs broken. One becomes vexed in riding with these
fellows, and I have once or twice undertaken to get
into a French passion, and insist upon driving myself.
But I have never yet met with an accident.
“Gar-r-r-r-e!” sings out the driver, rolling the word
off his tongue like a bullet from a shovel, but never
thinking to lift his loose reins from the dasher, while
the frightened passenger, without looking round, makes
for the first door with an alacrity that shows a habit of
expecting very little from the cocher's skill.

Riding is very cheap in Paris, if managed a little.
The city is traversed constantly in every direction by
omnibuses, and you may go from the Tuileries to
Père la Chaise, or from St. Surplice to the Italian
Boulevards (the two diagonals), or take the “Tous les
Boulevards,” and ride quite round the city for six sous
the distance. The “fiacre” is like our own hacks,
except that you pay but “twenty sous the course,”
and fill the vehicle with your friends if you please;
and, more cheap and comfortable still, there is the
universal cabriolet, which for fifteen sous the course,”
or “twenty the hour,” will give you at least three
times the value of your money, with the advantage of
seeing ahead and talking bad French with the driver.

Everything in France is either grotesque or picturesque.
I have been struck with it this morning, while
sitting at my window, looking upon the close inner
court of the hotel. One would suppose that a pavé,
between four high walls, would offer very little to seduce
the eye from its occupation; but, on the contrary,
one's whole time may be occupied in watching
the various sights presented in constant succession.
First comes the itinerant cobbler, with his seat and
materials upon his back, and coolly selecting a place
against the wall, opens his shop under your window,
and drives his trade, most industriously, for half an
hour. If you have anything to mend, he is too happy;
if not, he has not lost his time, for he pays no rent,
and is all the while at work. He packs up again,
bows to the concierge, as politely as his load will permit,
and takes his departure, in the hope to find your
shoes more worn another day. Nothing could be
more striking than his whole appearance. He is met
in the gate, perhaps, by an old clothes-man, who will
buy or sell, and compliment you for nothing, cheapening
your coat by calling the Virgin to witness that
your shape is so genteel that it will not fit one man in
a thousand; or by a family of singers, with a monkey
to keep time; or a regular beggar, who, however,
does not dream of asking charity till he has done
something to amuse you: after these, perhaps, will
follow a succession of objects singularly peculiar to
this fantastic metropolis; and, if one could separate
from the poor creatures the knowledge of the cold
and hunger they suffer, wandering about, houseless,
in the most inclement weather, it would be easy to
imagine it a diverting pantomime, and give them the
poor pittance they ask, as the price of an amused hour.
An old man has just gone from the court who comes
regularly twice a week, with a long beard, perfectly
white, and a strange kind of an equipage. It is an
organ, set upon a rude carriage, with four small
wheels, and drawn by a mule, of the most diminutive
size, looking (if it were not the venerable figure
crouched upon the seat) like some roughly-contrived
plaything. The whole affair, harness and all, is evidently
his own work; and it is affecting to see the
difficulty, and, withal the habitual apathy with which
the old itinerant fastens his rope-reins beside him, and
dismounts to grind his one—solitary—eternal tune, for
charity.

Among the thousands of wretched objects in Paris
(they make the heart sick with their misery at every
turn), there is, here and there, one of an interesting
character; and it is pleasant to select them, and make
a habit of your trifling gratuity. Strolling about, as I
do, constantly, and letting everybody and everything
amuse me that will, I have made several of these
penny-a-day acquaintances, and find them very agreeable
breaks to the heartless solitude of a crowd. There
is a little fellow who stands by the gate of the Tuileries,
opening to the Place Vendome, who, with all the
rags and dirt of a street-boy, begs with an air of superiority
that is absolutely patronizing. One feels
obliged to the little varlet for the privilege of giving
to him—his smile and manner are so courtly. His
face is beautiful, dirty as it is; his voice is clear, and
unaffected, and his thin lips have an expression of
high-bred contempt, that amuses me a little, and puzzles
me a great deal. I think he must have a gentleman's
blood in his veins, though he possibly came
indirectly by it. There is a little Jewess hanging
about the Louvre, who begs with her dark eyes very

eloquently; and, in the Rue de la Paix there may be
found at all hours, a melancholy, sick-looking Italian
boy, with his hand in his bosom, whose native language
and picture-like face are a diurnal pleasure to
me, cheaply bought with the poor trifle which makes
him happy. It is surprising how many devices there
are in the streets for attracting attention and pity.
There is a woman always to be seen upon the Boulevards,
playing a solemn tune on a violin, with a child
as pallid as ashes, lying, apparently, asleep in her lap.
I suspected, after seeing it once or twice, that it was
wax, and, a day or two since I satisfied myself of the
fact, and enraged the mother excessively by touching
its cheek. It represents a sick child to the life, and
any one less idle and curious, would be deceived. I
have often seen people give her money with the most
unsuspecting look of sympathy, though it would be
natural enough to doubt the maternal kindness of
keeping a dying child in the open air in mid-winter.
Then there is a woman without hands, making braid
with wonderful adroitness; and a man without legs or
arms, singing, with his hat set appealingly on the
ground before him; and cripples, exposing their abbreviated
limbs, and telling their stories over and
over, with or without listeners, from morning till
night; and every description of appeal to the most
acute sympathies, mingled up with all the gayety,
show, and fashion, of the most crowded promenade in
Paris.

In the present dreadful distress of trade, there are
other still more painful cases of misery. It is not uncommon
to be addressed in the street by men of perfectly
respectable appearance, whose faces bear every
mark of strong mental struggle, and often of famishing
necessity, with an appeal for the smallest sum that
will buy food. The look of misery is so general, as to
mark the whole population. It has struck me most
forcibly everywhere, notwithstanding the gayety of
the national character, and, I am told by intelligent
Frenchmen, it is peculiar to the time, and felt and
observed by all. Such things startle one back to nature
sometimes. It is difficult to look away from the
face of a starving man, and see the splendid equipages,
and the idle waste upon trifles, within his very sight,
and reconcile the contrast with any belief of the existence
of human pity—still more difficult, perhaps, to
admit without reflection, the right of one human being
to hold in a shut hand, at will, the very life and breath
for which his fellow-creatures are perishing at his
door. It is this that is visited back so terribly in the
horrors of a revolution.

11. LETTER XI.

I had the pleasure to-day of being introduced to
the young sculptor Foyetiér, the author of the new
statue on the terrace of the Tuileries. Aside from
his genius, he is interesting from a circumstance connected
with his early history. He was a herd-driver
in one of the provinces, and amused himself in his
leisure moments with the carving of rude images,
which he sold for a sous or two on market-days in the
provincial town. The celebrated Dr. Gall fell in with
him accidentally, and felt of his head, en passant. The
bump was there which contains his present greatness,
and the phrenologist took upon himself the risk of his
education in the arts. He is now the first sculptor,
beyond all competition, in France. His “Spartacus,”
the Thracian gladiator, is the admiration of Paris. It
stands in front of the palace, in the most conspicuous
part of the regal gardens, and there are hundreds of
people about the pedestal at all hours of the day.
The gladiator has broken his chain, and stands with
his weapon in his hand, every muscle and feature
breathing action, his body thrown back, and his right
foot planted powerfully for a spring. It is a gallant
thing. One's blood stirs to look at it. I think that
Forrest (however well he may be playing now in the
new tragedy, of which I see so much in the papers),
would get from it even a more intense conception of
the gladiator. If I had written such a play, I would
make the voyage of the Atlantic to see the character
thus bodied out.

Foyetiér is a young man, I should think about thirty.
He is small, very plain in appearance; but he
has a rapid, earnest eye, and a mouth of singular
suavity of expression. I liked him extremely. His
celebrity seems not to have trenched a step on the nature
of his character. His genius is everywhere allowed,
and he works for the king altogether, his majesty
bespeaking everything he attempts, even in the
model; but he is certainly, of all geniuses, one of the
most modest.

The celebrated Mars has come out from her retirement
once more, and commenced an engagement at the
Theatre Français. I went a short time since to see
her play in Tartuffe. This stage is the home of the
true French drama. Here Talma played when he and
Mademoiselle Mars were the delight of Napoleon and
of France. I have had few gratifications greater than
that of seeing this splendid woman reappear in the
place where she won her brilliant reputation. The
play, too, was Moliere's, and it was here that it was
first performed. Altogether it was like something
plucked back from history; a renewal, as in a magic
mirror, of glories gone by.

I could scarce believe my eyes when she appeared
as the “wife of Argon.” She looked about twenty-five.
Her step was light and graceful; her voice was
as unlike that of a woman of sixty as could well be
imagined; sweet, clear, and under a control which
gives her a power of expression I never had conceived
before; her mouth had the definite, firm play of youth;
her teeth (though the dentist might do that) were
white and perfect; and her eyes can have lost none
of their fire, I am sure. I never saw so quiet a player.
Her gestures were just perceptible, no more; and
yet they were done so exquisitely at the right moment
—so unconsciously, as if she had not meant them,
that they were more forcible than even the language
itself. She repeatedly drew a low murmur of delight
from the whole house with a single play of expression
across her face, while the other characters were speaking,
or by a slight movement of her fingers, in pantomimic
astonishment or vexation. It was really something
new to me. I had never before seen a first-rate
female player in comedy. Leontine Fay is inimitable
in tragedy; but, if there is any comparison between
them, it is that this beautiful young creature overpowers
the heart with her nature, while Mademoiselle
Mars satisfies the uttermost demand of the judgment
with her art.

I yesterday visited the house occupied by Franklin
while he was in France. It is one of the most beautiful
country residences in the neighborhood of Paris,
standing on the elevated ground of Passy, and over-looking
the whole city on one side, and the valley of
the Seine for a long distance toward Versailles on the
other. The house is otherwise celebrated. Madame
de Genlis lived there while the present king was her
pupil; and Louis the Fifteenth occupied it six months
for the country air, while under the infliction of the
gout—its neighborhood to the palace probably rendering
it preferable to the more distant chaleaux of

St. Cloud or Versailles. Its occupants would seem
to have been various enough, without the addition of
a lieutenant general of the British army, whose hospitality
makes it delightful at present. The lightning-rod,
which was raised by Franklin, and which was the
first conductor used in France, is still standing. The
gardens are large; and form a sort of terrace, with the
house on the front edge. It must be one of the
sweetest places in the world in summer.

The great annual ball for the poor was given at the
Academie Royale, a few nights since. This is attended
by the king and royal family, and is ordinarily the
most splendid affair of the season. It is managed by
twenty or thirty lady-patronesses, who have the control
of the tickets; and, though by no means exclusive,
it is kept within very respectable limits; and, if
one is content to float with the tide, and forego dancing,
is an unusually comfortable and well-behaved
spectacle.

I went with a large party at the early hour of eight.
We fell into the train of carriages, advancing slowly
between files of dragoons, and stood before the door
in our turn in the course of an hour. The staircases
were complete orangeries, with immense mirrors at
every turn, and soldiers on guard, and servants in livery,
from top to bottom. The long saloon, lighted by
ten chandeliers, was dressed and hung with wreaths
as a receiving-room; and passing on through the spacious
lobbies, which were changed into groves of
pines and exotics, we entered upon the grand scene.
The coup d'œil would have astonished Aladdin. The
theatre, which is the largest in Paris, and gorgeously
built and ornamented, was thrown into one vast ballroom,
ascending gradually from the centre to platforms
raised at either end, one of which was occupied
by the throne and seats for the king's family and suite.
The four rows of boxes were crowded with ladies, and
the house presented, from the floor to the paradis, one
glittering and waving wall of dress, jewelry, and feathers.
An orchestra of near a hundred musicians occupied
the centre of the hall; and on either side of them
swept by the long countless multitudes of people,
dressed with a union of taste and show; while, instead
of the black coats which darken the complexion of a
party in a republican country, every other gentleman
was in a gay uniform; and polytechnic scholars with
their scarlet-faced coats, officers of the “National
Guard” and the “line,” gentlemen of the king's
household, and foreign ministers, and attaches, presented
a variety of color and splendor which nothing
could exceed.

The theatre itself was not altered, except by the
platform occupied by the king; it is sufficiently splendid
as it stands; but the stage, whose area is much
larger than that of the pit, was hung in rich drapery
as a vast tent, and garnished to profusion with flags
and arms. Along the sides, on a level with the lower
row of boxes, extended galleries of crimson velvet,
festooned with flowers. These were filled with ladies,
and completed a circle about the house of beauty and
magnificence, of which the king and his dazzling
suite formed the corona. Chandeliers were hung
close together from one end of the hall to the other.
I commenced counting them once or twice, but some
bright face flitting by in the dance interrupted me.
An English girl near me counted fifty-five, and I think
there must have been more. The blaze of light was
almost painful. The air glittered, and the fine grain
of the most delicate complexions was distinctly visible.
It is impossible to describe the effect of so much light
and space and music crowded into one spectacle. The
vastness of the hall, so long that the best sight could
not distinguish a figure at the opposite extremity, and
so high as to absorb and mellow the vibration of a
hundred instruments—the gorgeous sweep of splendor
from one platform to the other, absolutely drowning
the eye in a sea of gay colors, nodding feathers, jewelry,
and military equipment—the delicious music, the
strange faces, dresses, and tongues (one half of the
multitude at least being foreigners), the presence of
the king, and the gallant show of uniforms in his conspicuous
suite, combined to make up a scene more
than sufficiently astonishing. I felt the whole night
the smothering consciousness of senses too narrow—
eyes, ears, language—all too limited for the demand
made upon them.

The king did not arrive till after ten. He entered
by a silken curtain in the rear of the platform on which
seats were placed for his family. The “Vive le Roi”
was not so hearty as to drown the music, but his
majesty bowed some twenty times very graciously, and
the good-hearted queen courtsied, and kept a smile
on her excessively plain face, till I felt the muscles of
my own ache for her. King Philippe looks anxious.
By the remarks of the French people about me when
he entered, he has reason for it. I observed that the
polytechnic scholars all turned their backs upon him;
and one exceedingly handsome, spirited-looking boy,
standing just at my side, muttered a “sacré!” and bit
his lip, with a very revolutionary air, at the continuance
of the acclamation. His majesty came down,
and walked through the hall about midnight. His eldest
son, the Duke of Orleans, a handsome, unoffending-looking
youth of eighteen, followed him, gazing round
upon the crowd with his mouth open, and looking very
much annoyed at his part of the pageant. The young
duke has a good figure, and is certainly a very beautiful
dancer. His mouth is loose and weak, and his
eyes are as opaque as agates. He wore the uniform
of the Garde Nationale, which does not become him.
In ordinary gentleman's dress he is a very authentical
copy of a Bond-street dandy, and looks as little like a
Frenchman as most of Stultz's subjects. He danced
all the evening, and selected, very popularly, decidedly
the most vulgar women in the room, looking all the
while as one who had been petted by the finest women
in France (Leoutine Fay among the number), might
be supposed to look under such an infliction. The
king's second son, the Duke of Nemours, pursued the
same policy. He has a brighter face than his brother,
with hair almost white, and dances extremely well.
The second daughter is also much prettier than the
eldest. On the whole, the king's family is very plain,
though a very amiable one, and the people seem attached
to them.

These general descriptions, are, after all, very vague.
Here I have written half a sheet with a picture in my
mind of which you are getting no semblable idea.
Language is a mere skeleton of such things. The
Academie Royale should be borne over the water like
the chapel of Loretto, and set down in Broadway with
all its lights, music, and people to give you half a notion
of the “Bal en faveur des Pauvres.” And so it
is with everything except the little histories of one's
own personal atmosphere, and that is the reason why
egotism should be held virtuous in a traveller, and the
reason why one can not study Europe at home.

After getting our American party places, I abandoned
myself to the strongest current, and went in
search of “lions.” The first face that arrested my
eye was that of the Duchess D'Istria, a woman celebrated
here for her extraordinary personal beauty.

Directly opposite this lovely dutchess, in the other
stage-box sat Donna Maria, the young Queen of Portugal,
surrounded by her relatives. The ex-emperess
her mother, was on her right, her grandmother on her
left, and behind her some half-dozen of her Portuguese
cousins. She is a little girl of twelve or fourteen,
with a fat, heavy face, and a remarkably pampered,
sleepy look. She was dressed like an old woman,
and gaped incessantly the whole evening. The box

was a perfect blaze of diamonds. I never before realized
the beauty of these splendid stones. The necks,
heads, arms, and waists of the ladies royal were all
streaming with light. The necklace of the emperess
mother particularly flashed on the eye in every part of
the house. By the unceasing exclamation of the
women, it was an unusually brilliant show, even here.
The little Donna has a fine, well-rounded chin.; and
when she smiled in return to the king's bow, I thought
I could see more than a child's character in the expression
of her mouth. I should think a year or two
of mental uneasiness might let out a look of intelligence
through her heavy features. She is likely to
have it, I think, with the doubtful fortunes that seem
to beset her.

I met Don Pedro often in society before his departure
upon his expedition. He is a short, well-made
man, of great personal accomplishment, and a very bad
expression, rather aggravated by an unfortunate cutaneous
eruption. The first time I saw him, I was induced
to ask who he was, from the apparent coldness
and dislike with which he was treated by a lady whose
beauty had strongly arrested my attention. He sat by
her on a sofa in a very crowded party, and seemed to
be saying something very earnestly, which made the
lady's Spanish eyes flash fire, and brought a curl of
very positive anger upon a pair of the loveliest lips
imaginable. She was a slender, aristocratic-looking
creature, and dressed most magnificently. After glancing
at them a minute or two, I made up my mind
that, from the authenticity of his dress and appointments,
he was an Englishman, and that she was some
French lady of rank whom he was particularly annoying
with his addresses. On inquiry, the gentleman
proved to be Don Pedro, and the lady the Countess
de Lourle, his sister! I have often met her since,
and never without wondering how two of the same
family could look so utterly unlike each other. The
Count de Lourle is called the Adonis of Paris. He
is certainly a very splendid fellow, and justifies the romantic
admiration of his wife, who married him clandestinely,
giving him her left hand in the ceremony,
as is the etiquette, they say, when a princess marries
below her rank. One can not help looking with great
interest on a beautiful creature like this, who has broken
away from the imposing fetters of a royal sphere,
to follow the dictates of natural feeling. It does not
occur so often in Europe that one may not sentimentalize
about it without the charge of affectation.

To return to the ball. The king bowed himself
out a little after midnight, and with him departed most
of the fat people, and all the little girls. This made
room enough to dance, and the French set themselves
at it in good earnest. I wandered about for an hour
or two; after wearying my imagination quite out in
speculating on the characters and rank of people whom
I never saw before and shall probably never see again,
I mounted to the paradis to take a last look down upon
the splendid scene, and made my exit. I should
be quite content never to go to such a ball again,
though it was by far the most splendid scene of the
kind I ever saw.

12. LETTER XII.

I have spent the day in a long stroll. The wind
blew warm and delicious from the south this morning,
and the temptation to abandon lessons and lectures
was irresistible. Taking the Arc de l'Etoile as my
extreme point, I yielded to all the leisurely hinder
ances of shop-windows, beggars, book-stalls, and views
by the way. Among the specimen-cards in an engraver's
window I was amused at finding, in the latest
Parisian fashion, “Hussein-Pacha, Dey d'Algiers.”

These delightful Tuileries! We rambled through
them (I had met a friend and countryman, and enticed
him into my idle plans for the day), and amused ourselves
with the never-failing beauty and grace of the
French children for an hour. On the inner terrace
we stopped to look at the beautiful hotel of Prince
Polignac, facing the Tuileries, on the opposite bank.
By the side of this exquisite little model of a palace
stands the superb commencement of Napoleon's ministerial
hotel, breathing of his glorious conception in
every line of its ruins. It is astonishing what a god-like
impress that man left upon all he touched.

Every third or fourth child in the gardens was
dressed in the full uniform of the National Guard—
helmet, sword, epaulets, and all. They are ludicrous
little caricatures, of course, but it inoculates
them with love of the corps, and it would be better if
that were synonymous with a love of liberal principles.
The Garde Nationale are supposed to be more than
half “Carlists” at this moment.

We passed out by the guarded gate of the Tuileries
to the Place Louis XV. This square is a most beautiful
spot, as a centre of unequalled views, and yet a
piece of earth so foully polluted with human blood
probably does not exist on the face of the globe. It
divides the Tuileries from the Champs Elysées, and
ranges, of course, in the long broad avenue of two
miles, stretching between the king's palace and the
Arc de l'Etoile. It is but a list of names to write down
the particular objects to be seen in such a view,
but it commands, at the extremities of its radii, the
most princely edifices, seen hence with the most advantageous
foregrounds of space and avenue, and
softened by distance into the misty and unbroken surface
of engraving. The king's palace is on one hand,
Napoleon's Arch at a distance of nearly two miles on
the other, Prince Talleyrand's regal dwelling behind,
with the church of Madeline seen through the Rue
Royale, while before you, to the south, lies a picture
of profuse splendor: the broad Seine, spanned by
bridges that are the admiration of Europe, and crowded
by specimens of architectural magnificence; the
chamber of deputies; and the Palais Bourbon, approached
by the Pont Louis XVI. with its gigantic
statues and simple majesty of structure; and, rising
over all, the grand dome of the “Invalides,” which
Napoleon gilded, to divert the minds of his subjects
from his lost battle, and which Peter the Great admired
more than all Paris beside. What a spot for a
man to stand upon, with but one bosom to feel and
one tongue to express his wonder!

And yet, of what, that should make a spot of earth
sink to perdition, has it not been the theatre? Here
were beheaded the unfortunate Louis XVI.—his wife,
Marie Antoinette—his kinsman, Philip duke of Orleans,
and his sister Elizabeth; and here were guillotined
the intrepid Charlotte Corday, the deputy Brissot, and
twenty of his colleagues, and all the victims of the
revolution of 1793, to the amount of two thousand
eight hundred; and here Robespierre and his cursed
crew met at last with their insufficient retribution;
and, as if it were destined to be the very blood-spot
of the earth, here the fireworks, which were celebrating
the marriage of the same Louis that was afterward
brought hither to the scaffold, exploded and
killed fourteen hundred persons. It has been the
scene, also, of several minor tragedies not worth mentioning
in such a connexion. Were I a Bourbon, and
as unpopular as King Philippe I. at this moment, the
view of the Place Louis XV. from my palace windows
would very much disturb the beauty of the perspective.
Without an equivoque, I should look with a very

ominous dissatisfaction on the “Elysian fields” that
lie beyond.

We loitered slowly on to the Barrier Neuilly, just
outside of which, and right before the city gates,
stands the Trimphal Arch. It has the stamp of
Napoleon—simple grandeur. The broad avenue from
the Tuileries swells slowly up to it for two miles, and
the view of Paris at its foot, even, is superb. We
ascended to the unfinished roof, a hundred and thirty-five
feet from the ground, and saw the whole of the
mighty capital of France at a coup d'œil—churches,
palaces, gardens; buildings heaped upon buildings
clear over the edge of the horizon, where the spires
of the city in which you stand are scarcely visible for
the distance.

I dined a short time since, with the editors of the
Revue Encyclopedique at their monthly reunion. This
is a sort of club dinner, to which the eminent contributors
of the review invite once a month all the strangers
of distinction who happen to be in Paris. I owed
my invitation probably to the circumstance of my living
with Dr. Howe, who is considered the organ of
American principles here, and whose force of character
has given him a degree of respect and prominence
not often attained by foreigners. It was the most remarkable
party, by far, that I had ever seen. There
were nearly a hundred guests, twenty or thirty of
whom were distinguished Poles, lately arrived from
Warsaw. Generals Romarino and Langermann were
placed beside the president, and another general, whose
name is as difficult to remember as his face is to forget,
and who is famous for having been the last on
the field, sat next to the head seat. Near him were
General Bernard and Dr. Bowring, with Sir Sidney
Smith (covered with orders, from every quarter of the
world), and the President of Colombia. After the
usual courses of a French dinner, the president, Mons.
Julien, a venerable man, with snow-white hair, addressed
the company. He expressed his pleasure at
the meeting, with the usual courtesies of welcome,
and in the fervent manner of the old school of French
politeness; and then, pausing a little, and lowering
his voice, with a very touching cadence, he looked
around to the Poles, and began to speak of their country.
Every movement was instantly hushed about the
table—the guests leaned forward, some of them half
rising in their earnestness to hear; the old man's voice
trembled, and sunk lower; the Poles dropped their
heads upon their bosoms, and the whole company
were strongly affected. His manner suddenly changed
at this moment, in a degree that would have seemed
too dramatic, if the strong excitement had not sustained
him. He spoke indignantly of the Russian barbarity
toward Poland—assured the exiles of the strong
sympathy felt by the great mass of the French people
in their cause, and expressed his confident belief that
the struggle was not yet done, and the time was near
when, with France at her back, Poland would rise and
be free. He closed, amid tumultuous acclamation,
and all the Poles near him kissed the old man, after
the French manner, upon both his cheeks.

This speech was followed by several others, much
to the same effect. Dr. Bowring replied handsomely,
in French, to some compliment paid to his efforts on
the “question of reform,” in England. Cesar Moreau,
the great schemist, and founder of the Academie d'Industrie,
said a few very revolutionary things quite emphatically,
rolling his fine visionary-looking eyes about
as if he saw the “shadows cast before” of coming
events; and then rose a speaker, whom I shall never
forget—he was a young Polish noble, of about nineteen,
whose extreme personal beauty and enthusiastic
expression of countenance had particularly arrested
my attention in the drawing-room, before dinner. His
person was slender and graceful—his eye and mouth
full of beauty and fire, and his manner had a quiet native
superiority, that would have distinguished him
anywhere. He had behaved very gallantly in the
struggle, and some allusion had been made to him in
one of the addresses. He rose modestly, and half unwillingly,
and acknowledged the kind wishes for his
country in language of great elegance. He then went
on to speak of the misfortunes of Poland, and soon
warmed into eloquence of the most vivid earnestness
and power. I never was more moved by a speaker—
he seemed perfectly unconscious of everything but the
recollections of his subject. His eyes swam with
tears and flashed with indignation alternately, and his
refined spirited mouth assumed a play of varied expression,
which, could it have been arrested, would have
made a sculptor immortal. I can hardly write extravagantly
of him, for all present were as much excited
as myself. One ceases to wonder at the desperate
character of the attempt to redeem the liberty of a
land when he sees such specimens of its people. I
have seen hundreds of Poles, of all classes, in Paris,
and I have not yet met with a face of even common
dulness among them.

You have seen by the papers, I presume, that a
body of several thousand Poles fled from Warsaw, after
the defeat, and took refuge in the northern forests of
Prussia. They gave up their arms under an assurance
from the king that they should have all the rights of
Prussian subjects. He found it politic afterward to
recall his protection, and ordered them back to Poland.
They refused to go, and were surrounded by a detachment
of his army, and the orders given to fire upon
them. The soldiers refused, and the Poles, taking
advantage of the sympathy of the army, broke through
the ranks, and escaped to the forest, where, at the last
news, they were armed with clubs, and determined to
defend themselves to the last. The consequence of a
return to Poland would be, of course, an immediate
exile to Siberia. The Polish committee, American
and French, with General Lafayette at their head,
have appropriated a great part of their funds to the relief
of this body, and our countryman, Dr. Howe, has
undertaken the dangerous and difficult task of carrying
it to them. He left Paris for Brussels, with letters
from the Polish generals, and advices from Lafayette
to all Polish committees upon his route, that they
should put all their funds into his hands. He is a gallant
fellow, and will succeed if any one can; but he
certainly runs great hazard. God prosper him!

13. LETTER XIII.

I accepted, last night, from a French gentleman
of high standing, a polite offer of introduction to one
of the exclusive gambling clubs of Paris. With the
understanding, of course, that it was only as a spectator,
my friend, whom I had met at a dinner party,
despatched a note from the table, announcing to the
temporary master of ceremonies his intention of presenting
me. We went at eleven, in full dress. I was
surprised at the entrance with the splendor of the
establishment—gilt balustrades, marble staircases,
crowds of servants in full livery, and all the formal
announcement of a court. Passing through several
ante-chambers, a heavy folding-door was thrown open,
and we were received by one of the noblest-looking
men I have seen in France—Count —. I was put
immediately at my ease by his dignified and kind politeness;
and after a little conversation in English,
which he spoke fluently, the entrance of some other
person left me at liberty to observe at my leisure.

Everything about me had the impress of the studied
taste of high life. The lavish and yet soft disposition
of light, the harmony of color in the rich hangings
and furniture, the quiet manners and subdued tones
of conversation, the respectful deference of the servants,
and the simplicity of the slight entertainment,
would have convinced me, without my Asmodeus, that
I was in no every-day atmosphere. Conversation proceeded
for an hour, while the members came dropping
in from their evening engagements, and a little after
twelve a glass door was thrown open, and we passed
from the reception-room to the spacious suite of apartments
intended for play. One or two of the gentlemen
entered the side rooms for billiards and cards, but
the majority closed about the table of hazard in the
central hall. I had never conceived so beautiful an
apartment. It can be described in two words—columns
and mirrors. There was nothing else between the
exquisitely-painted ceiling and the floor. The form
was circular, and the wall was laid with glass, interrupted
only with pairs of Corinthian pillars, with their
rich capitals reflected and re-reflected innumerably.
It seemed like a hall of colonnades of illimitable
extent—the multiplication of the mirrors into each
other was so endless and illusive. I felt an unconquerable
disposition to abandon myself to a waking
revery of pleasure; and as soon as the attention of
the company was perfectly engrossed by the silent
occupation before them, I sank upon a sofa, and gave
my senses up for a while to the fascination of the
scene. My eye was intoxicated. As far as my sight
could penetrate, stretched apparently interminable
halls, carpeted with crimson, and studded with graceful
columns and groups of courtly figures, forming
altogether, with its extent and beauty, and in the subdued
and skilfully-managed light, a picture that, if
real, would be one of unsurpassable splendor. I quite
forgot my curiosity to see the game. I had merely
observed, when my companion reminded me of the
arrival of my own appointed hour for departure, that,
whatever was lost or won, the rustling bills were
passed from one to the other with a quiet and imperturbable
politeness, that betraved no sign either of
chagrin or triumph; though, from the fact that the
transfers were in paper only, the stakes must have
been anything but trifling. Refusing a polite invitation
to partake of the supper, always in waiting, we
took leave about two hours after midnight.

As we drove from the court, my companion suggested
to me, that, since we were out at so late an
hour, we might as well look in for a moment at the
more accessible “hells,” and, pulling the cordon, he
ordered to “Frascati's.” This you know of course,
is the fashionable place of ruin, and here the heroes
of all noveis, and the rakes of all comedies, mar or
make their fortunes. An evening dress, and the look
of a gentleman, are the only required passport. A
servant in attendance took our hats and canes, and
we walked in without ceremony. It was a different
scene from the former. Four large rooms, plainly
but handsomely furnished, opened into each other,
three of which were devoted to play, and crowded
with players. Elegantly-dressed women, some of
them with high pretensions to French beauty, sat and
stood at the table, watching their own stakes in the
rapid games with fixed attention. The majority of
the gentlemen were English. The table was very
large, marked as usual with the lines and figures of
the game, and each person playing had a small rake
in his hand, with which he drew toward him his proportion
of the winnings. I was disappointed at the
first glance in the faces: there was very little of the
high-bred courtesy I had seen at the club-house, but
there was no very striking exhibition of feeling, and I
should think, in any but an extreme case, the whis
pering silence and general quietness of the room
would repress it. After watching the variations of
luck awhile, however, I selected one or two pretty
desperate losers, and a young Frenchman who was a
large winner, and confined my observation to them
only. Among the former was a girl of about eighteen,
a mild, quiet-looking creature, with her hair curling
long on her neck, and hands childishly small and white,
who lost invariably. Two piles of five-france pieces and
a small heap of gold lay on the table beside her, and I
watched her till she laid the last coin upon the losing
color. She bore it very well. By the eagerness with
which, at every turn of the last card, she closed her
hand upon the rake which she held, it was evident
that her hopes were high; but when her last piece
was drawn in to the bank, she threw up her little
fingers with a playful desperation, and commenced
conversation even gayly with a gentleman who stood
leaning over her chair. The young Frenchman continued
almost as invariably to win. He was excessively
handsome; but there was a cold, profligate, unvarying
hardness of expression in his face, that made me dislike
him. The spectators drew gradually about his
chair; and one or two of the women, who seemed to
know him well, selected a color for him occasionally,
or borrowed of him and staked for themselves. We
left him winning. The other players were mostly
English, and very uninteresting in their exhibition of
disappointment. My companion told me that there
would be more desperate playing toward morning, but
I had become disgusted with the cold selfish faces of
the scene, and felt no interest sufficient to detain me.

14. LETTER XIV.

It is March, and the weather has all the characteristics
of New-England May. The last two or three
days have been deliciously spring-like, clear, sunny,
and warm. The gardens of the Tuileries are crowded.
The chairs beneath the terraces are filled by the old
men reading the gazettes, mothers and nurses watching
their children at play, and, at every few steps,
circles of whole families sitting and sewing, or conversing,
as unconcernedly as at home. It strikes a
stranger oddly. With the privacy of American feelings,
we can not conceive of these out-of-door French
habits. What would a Boston or New York mother
think of taking chairs for her whole family, grown-up
daughters and all, in the Mall or upon the Battery,
and spending the day in the very midst of the gayest
promenade of the city! People of all ranks do it here.
You will see the powdered, elegant gentleman of the
ancien regime, handing his wife or his daughter to a
straw-bottomed chair, with all the air of drawing-room
courtesy; and begging pardon for the liberty, pull his
journal from his pocket, and sit down to read beside
her; or a tottering old man, leaning upon a stout Swiss
servant girl, goes bowing and apologizing through the
crowd, in search of a pleasant neighbor, or some old
compatriot, with whom he may sit and nod away the
hours of sunshine. It is a beautiful custom, positively.
The gardens are like a constant fête. It is a holyday
revel, without design or disappointment. It is a
masque, where every one plays his character unconsciously,
and therefore naturally and well. We get
no idea of it at home. We are too industrious a nation
to have idlers enough. It would even pain most

of the people of our country to see so many thousands
of all ages and conditions of life spending day after day
in such absolute uselessness.

Imagine yourself here, on the fashionable terrace,
the promenade, two days in the week, of all that is distinguished
and gay in Paris. It is a short raised walk,
just inside the railings, and the only part of all these
wide and beautiful gardens where a member of the
beau monde is ever to be met. The hour is four, the
day Friday, the weather heavenly. I have just been
long enough in Paris to be an excellent walking dictionary,
and I will tell you who people are. In the
first place, all the well-dressed men you see are English.
You will know the French by those flaring
coats, laid clear back on their shoulders, and their
execrable hats and thin legs. Their heads are right
from the hair-dresser; their hats are chapeaux de soie,
or imitation beaver; they are delicately rouged, and
wear very white gloves; and, those who are with ladies,
lead, as you observe, a small dog by a string, or carry
it in their arms. No French lady walks out without
her lap-dog. These slow-paced men you see in brown
mustaches and frogged coats are refugee Poles. The
short, thick, agile looking man before us is General
—, celebrated for having been the last to surrender on
the last field of that brief contest. His handsome face
is full of resolution, and, unlike the rest of his countrymen,
he looks still unsubdued and in good heart.
He walks here every day an hour or two, swinging his
cane round his forefinger, and thinking, apparently, of
anything but his defeat. Observe these two young
men approaching us. The short one on the left, with
the stiff hair and red mustache, is Prince Moskowa,
the son of Marshal Ney. He is an object of more
than usual interest just now, as the youngest of the new
batch of peers. The expression of his countenance
is more bold than handsome, and indeed he is anything
but a carpet knight; a fact of which he seems,
like a man of sense, quite aware. He is to be seen at
the parties standing with his arms folded, leaning silently
against the wall for hours together. His companion
is, I presume to say, quite the handsomest man
you ever saw. A little over six feet, perfectly proportioned,
dark silken-brown hair, slightly curling about
his forehead, a soft curling mustache, and beard just
darkening the finest cut mouth in the world, and an
olive complexion, of the most golden richness and
clearness—Mr.—is called the handsomest man in
Europe. What is more remarkable still, he looks like
the most modest man in Europe, too; though, like
most modest looking men, his reputation for constancy
in the gallant world is somewhat slender. And here
comes a fine looking man, though of a different order
of beauty—a natural son of Napoleon. He is about
his father's height, and has most of his features, though
his person and air must be quite different. You see
there Napoleon's beautiful mouth and thinly chiselled
nose, but I fancy that soft eye is his mother's. He is
said to be one of the most fascinating men in France.
His mother was the Countess Walewski, a lady with
whom the emperor became acquainted in Poland. It
is singular that Napoleon's talents and love of glory
have not descended upon any of the eight or ten sons
whose claims to his paternity are admitted. And here
come two of our countrymen, who are to be seen constantly
together—Cooper and Morse. That is Cooper
with the blue surtout buttoned up to his throat, and
his hat over his eyes. What a contrast between the
faces of the two men! Morse, with his kind, open,
gentle countenance, the very picture of goodness and
sincerity; and Cooper, dark and corsair-looking, with
his brows down over his eyes, and his strongly lined
mouth fixed in an expression of moodiness and reserve.
The two faces, however, are not equally just to their
owners—Morse is all that he looks to be, but Cooper's
features do him decided injustice. I take a pride in
the reputation this distinguished countrymen of ours
has for humanity and generous sympathy. The distress
of the refugee liberals from all countries comes
home especially to Americans, and the untiring liberality
of Mr. Cooper particularly, is a fact of common
admission and praise. It is pleasant to be able to say
such things. Morse is taking a sketch of the Gallery
of the Louvre, and he intends copying some of the
best pictures also, to accompany it as an exhibition,
when he returns. Our artists do our country credit
abroad. The feeling of interest in one's country artists
and authors become very strong in a foreign land.
Every leaf of laurel awarded them seems to touch one's
own forehead. And talking of laurels, here comes
Sir Sidney Smith—the short, fat, old gentleman yonder,
with the large acquiline nose and keen eye. He
is one of the few men who ever opposed Napoleon
successfully, and that should distinguish him, even if
he had not won by his numerous merits and achievements
the gift of almost every order in Europe. He
is, among other things, of a very mechanical turn, and
is quite crazy just now about a six-wheeled coach,
which he has lately invented, and of which nobody
sees the exact benefit but himself. An invitation to
his rooms, to hear his description of the model, is
considered the last new bore.

And now for ladies. Whom do you see that looks
distinguished? Scarce one whom you would take
positively for a lady, I venture to presume. These
two, with the velvet pelisses and small satin bonnets,
are rather the most genteel-looking people in the garden.
I set them down for ladies of rank the first walk
I ever took here; and the two who have just passed
us, with the curly lap-dog, I was equally sure were persons
of not very dainty morality. It is precisely au
contrarie. The velvet pelisses are gamblers from Frascati's,
and the two with the lap-dog are the Countess
N. and her unmarried daughter—two of the most exclusive
specimens of Parisian society. It is very odd—
but if you see a remarkably modest-looking woman in
Paris, you may be sure, as the periphrasis goes, that
“she is no better than she should be.” Everything
gets travestied in this artificial society. The general
ambition seems to be, to appear that which one is not.
White-haired men cultivate their sparse mustaches,
and dark-haired men shave. Deformed men are successful
in gallantry, where handsome men despair.
Ugly women dress and dance, while beauties mope
and are deserted. Modesty looks brazen, and vice
looks timid; and so all through the calendar. Life
in Paris is as pretty a series of astonishments as an
ennuyé could desire.

But there goes the palace-bell—five o'clock! The
sun is just disappearing behind the dome of the “Invalides,”
and the crowd begins to thin. Look at the
atmosphere of the gardens. How deliciously the twilight
mist softens everything. Statues, people, trees,
and the long perspectives down the alleys, all mellowed
into the shadowy indistinctness of fairy-land.
The throng is pressing out at the gates, and the
guard, with his bayonet presented, forbids all re-entrance,
for the gardens are cleared at sundown. The
carriages are driving up and dashing away, and if you
stand a moment you will see the most vulgar-looking
people you have met in your promenade, waited for
by chasscurs, and departing with indications of rank in
their equipages, which nature has very positively denied
to their persons. And now all the world dines,
and dines well. The “chef” stands with his gold repeater
in his hand, waiting for the moment to decide
the fate of the first dish; the garçons at the restaurants
have donned their white aprons, and laid the silver
forks upon the napkins; the pretty women are
seated on their thrones in the saloons, and the interesting
hour is here. Where shall we dine? We will walk
toward the Palais Royal, and talk of it as we go along.

That man would “deserve well of his country” who
should write a “Paris Guide” for the palate. I would
do it myself if I could elude the immortality it would
occasion me. One is compelled to pioneer his own
stomach through the endless cartes of some twelve
eating-houses, all famous, before he half knows whether
he is dining well or ill. I had eaten a week at
Very's, for instance, before I discovered that, since
Pelham's day, that gentleman's reputation has gone
down. He is a subject for history at present. I was
misled also by an elderly gentleman at Havre, who
advised me to eat at Grignon's, in the Passage Vivienne.
Not liking my first coquilles aux huitres, I made
some private inquiries, and found that his chef had
deserted him about the time of Napoleon's return
from Elba. A stranger gets misguided in this way.
And then, if by accident you hit upon the right house,
you may be eating a month before you find out the
peculiar triumphs which have stamped its celebrity.
No mortal man can excel in everything, and it is as
true of cooking as it is of poetry. The “Rochers de
Cancalee” is now the first eating-house in Paris, yet
they only excel in fish. The “Trois Freres Provencaux,”
have a high reputation, yet their cotelettes provencale
are the only dish which you can not get equally
well elsewhere. A good practice is to walk about in
the Palais Royal for an hour before dinner, and select
a master. You will know a gourmet easily—a man
slightly past the prime of life, with a nose just getting
its incipient blush, a remarkably loose, voluminous
white cravat, and a corpulence more of suspicion than
fact. Follow him to his restaurant, and give the garcon
a private order to serve you with the same dishes
as the bald gentleman. (I have observed that dainty
livers universally lose their hair early.) I have been
in the wake of such a person now for a week or more,
and I never lived, comparatively, before. Here we
are, however, at the “Trois Freres,” and there goes
my unconscious model deliberately up stairs. We'll
follow him, and double his orders, and if we dine not
well, there is no eating in France.

15. LETTER XV.

The weather still holds warm and bright, as it has
been all the month, and the scarcely “premature white
pantaloons” appeared yesterday in the Tuileries. The
ladies loosen their “boas;” the silken greyhounds of
Italy follow their mistresses without shivering; the
birds are noisy and gay in the clipped trees—who that
had known February in New England would recognise
him by such a description?

I took an indolent stroll with my friend, Mr. Van
B—, this morning to the Hopital des Invalides,
on the other side of the river. Here, not long since,
were twenty-five thousand old soldiers. There are
but five thousand now remaining, most of them having
been dismissed by the Bourbons. It is of course one
of the most interesting spots in France; and of a
pleasant day there is no lounge where a traveller can
find so much matter for thought, with so much pleasure
to the eye. We crossed over by the Pons Louis
Quinze, and kept along the bank of the river to the
esplanade in front of the hospital. There was never
a softer sunshine, or a more deliciously tempered air;
and we found the old veterans out of doors, sitting
upon the cannon along the rampart, or halting about,
with their wooden legs, under the trees, the pictures
of comfort and contentment. The building itself, as
you know, is very celebrated for its grandeur. The
dome of the Invalides rises upon the eye from all
parts of Paris, a perfeet model of proportion and
beauty. It was this which Bonaparte ordered to be
gilded, to divert the people from thinking too much
upon his defeat. It is a living monument of the most
touching recollections of him now. Positively the
blood mounts, and the tears spring to the eyes of
the spectator, as he stands a moment, and remembers
what is around him in that place. To see his maimed
followers, creeping along the corridors, clothed and
fed by the bounty he left, in a place devoted to his
soldiers alone, their old comrades about them, and all
glowing with one feeling of devotion to his memory,
to speak to them, to hear their stories of “L'Empereur”—it
is better than a thousand histories to make
one feel the glory of “the great captain.” The interior
of the dome is vast, and of a splendid style of
architecture, and out from one of its sides extends a
superb chapel, hung all round with the tattered flags
taken in his victories alone. Here the veterans of his
army worship, beneath the banners for which they
fought. It is hardly appropriate, I should think, to
adorn thus the church of a “religion of peace;” but
while there, at least, we feel strangely certain, somehow,
that it is right and fitting; and when, as we stood
deciphering the half-effaced insignia of the different
nations, the organ began to peal, there certainly was
anything but a jar between this grand music, consecrated
as it is by religious associations, and the thrilling
and uncontrolled sense in my bosom of Napoleon's
glory. The anthem seemed to him!

The majestic sounds were still rolling through the
dome when we came to the monument of Turenne.
Here is another comment on the character of Bonaparte's
mind. There was once a long inscription on
this monument, describing, in the fulsome style of an
epitaph, the deeds and virtues of the distinguished
man who is buried beneath. The emperor removed
and replaced it by a small slab, graven with the single
word Turenne. You acknowledge the sublimity
of this as you stand before it. Everything is in keeping
with its grandeur. The lofty proportions and
magnificence of the dome, the tangible trophies of
glory, and the maimed and venerable figures, kneeling
about the altar, of those who helped to win them, are
circumstances that make that eloquent word as articulate
as if it was spoken in thunder. You feel that
Napoleon's spirit might walk the place, and read the
hearts of those who should visit it, unoffended.

We passed on to the library. It is ornamented
with the portraits of all the generals of Napoleon,
save one. Ney's is not there. It should, and will be,
at some time or other, doubtless; but I wonder that,
in a day when such universal justice is done to the
memory of this brave man, so obvious and it would
seem necessary a reparation should not be demanded.
Great efforts have been making of late to get his sentence
publicly reversed, but, though they deny his
widow and children nothing else, this melancholy and
unavailing satisfaction is refused them. Ney's memory
little needs it, it is true. No visiter looks about
the gallery at the Invalides without commenting feelingly
on the omission of his portrait; and probably no
one of the scarred veterans who sit there, reading their
own deeds in history, looks round on the faces of the
old leaders of whom it tells, without remembering and
feeling that the brightest name upon the page is wanting.
I would rather, if I were his son, have the regret
than the justice.

We left the hospital, as all must leave it, full of
Napoleon. France is full of him. The monuments
and the hearts of the people, all are alive with his
name and glory. Disapprove and detract from his
reputation as you will (and as powerful minds, with

apparent justice, have done), as long as human nature
is what it is, as long as power and loftiness of heart
hold their present empire over the imagination, Napoleon
is immortal.

The promenading world is amused just now with the
daily appearance in the Tuileries of a Polish lady,
dressed in the Polonaise undress uniform, decorated
with the order of distinction given for bravery at Warsaw.
She is not very beautiful, but she wears the
handsome military cap quite gallantly; and her small
feet and full chest are truly captivating in boots and a
frogged coat. It is an exceedingly spirited, well-charactered
face, with a complexion slightly roughened
by her new habits. Her hair is cut short, and brushed
up at the sides, and she certainly handles the little
switch she carries with an air which entirely forbids
insult. She is ordinarily seen lounging very idly along
between two polytechnic boys, who seem to have a
great admiration for her. I observe that the Polish
generals touch their hats very respectfully as she
passes, but as yet I have been unable to come at her
precise history.

By the by, masquerading in men's clothes is not at
all uncommon in Paris. I have sometimes seen two
or three women at a time dining at the restaurants in
this way. No notice is taken of it, and the lady is perfectly
safe from insult, though every one that passes
may penetrate the disguise. It is common at the
theatres, and at the public balls still more so. I have
noticed repeatedly at the weekly soirees of a lady of
high respectability, two sisters in boy's clothes, who
play duets upon the piano for the dance. The lady
of the house told me they preferred it, to avoid attention,
and the awkwardness of position natural to their
vocation, in society. The tailors tell me it is quite a
branch of trade—making suits for ladies of a similar
taste. There is one particularly, in the Rue Richelieu,
who is famed for his nice fits to the female figure. It
is remarkable, however, that instead of wearing their
new honors meekly, there is no such impertinent puppy
as a femme deguisée. I saw one in a café, not long
ago, rap the garçon very smartly over the fingers with
a rattan, for overrunning her cup; and they are sure
to shoulder you off the sidewalk, if you are at all in
the way. I have seen several amusing instances of a
probable quarrel in the street, ending in a gay bow,
and a “pardon, madame!”

There has been a great deal of excitement here for
the past two days on the result of a gambling quarrel.
An English gentleman, a fine, gay, noble-looking fellow,
whom I have often met at parties, and admired for
his strikingly winning and elegant manners, lost fifty
thousand francs on Thursday night at cards. The
Count St. Leon was the winner. It appears that
Hesse, the Englishman, had drank freely before sitting
down to play, and the next morning his friend, who
had bet upon the game, persuaded him that there had
been some unfairness on the part of his opponent. He
refused consequently to pay the debt, and charged the
Frenchman, and another gentleman who backed him,
with deception. The result was a couple of challenges,
which were both accepted. Hesse fought the
Count on Friday, and was dangerously wounded at the
first fire. His friend fought on Saturday (yesterday),
and is reported to be mortally wounded. It is a little
remarkable that both the losers are shot, and still more
remarkable, that Hesse should have been, as he was
known to be, a natural son of George the Fourth; and
Count Leon, as was equally well known, a natural son
of Bonaparte!

Everybody gambles in Paris. I had no idea that so
desperate a vice could be so universal, and so little
deprecated as it is. The gambling-houses are as open
and as ordinary a resort as any public promenade, and
one may haunt them with as little danger to his reputation.
To dine from six to eight, gamble from eight
to ten, go to a ball, and return to gamble till morning,
is as common a routine for married men and bachelors
both, as a system of dress, and as little commented on.
I sometimes stroll into the card-room at a party, but
I can not get accustomed to the sight of ladies losing
or winning money. Almost all Frenchwomen, who
are too old to dance, play at parties, and their daughters
and husbands watch the game as unconcernedly
as if they were turning over prints. I have seen English
ladies play, but with less philosophy. They do
not lose their money gayly. It is a great spoiler of
beauty, the vexation of a loss. I think I never could
respect a woman upon whose face I had remarked the
shade I often see at an English card-table. It is certain
that vice walks abroad in Paris, in many a shape
that would seem, to an American eye, to show the
fiend too openly. I am not over particular, I think,
but I would as soon expose a child to the plague as
give either son or daughter a free reign for a year in
Paris.

16. LETTER XVI.

You see by the papers, I presume, the official accounts
of the cholera in Paris. It seems very terrible
to you, no doubt, at your distance from the scene, and
truly it is terrible enough, if one could realize it, anywhere;
but many here do not trouble themselves about
it, and you might be in this metropolis a month, and
if you observed the people only, and frequented only
the places of amusement, and the public promenades,
you might never suspect its existence. The weather
is June-like, deliciously warm and bright; the trees
are just in the tender green of the new buds, and the
public gardens are thronged all day with thousands of
the gay and idle, sitting under the trees in groups,
laughing and amusing themselves, as if there were no
plague in the air, though hundreds die every day.
The churches are all hung in black; there is a constant
succession of funerals; and you cross the biers
and hand-barrows of the sick, hurrying to the hospitals
at every turn, in every quarter of the city. It is
very hard to realize such things, and, it would seem,
very hard even to treat them seriously. I was at a
masque ball at the Théatre des Varietés, a night or
two since, at the celebration of the Mi-Careme, or
half-lent. There were some two thousand people, I
should think, in fancy dresses, most of them grotesque
and satirical, and the ball was kept up till seven in the
morning, with all the extravagant gayety, noise, and
fun, with which the French people manage such matters.
There was a cholera-waltz, and a cholera-galopade,
and one man, immensely tall, dressed as a personification
of the Cholera itself, with skeleton armor,
bloodshot eyes, and other horrible appurtenances of a
walking pestilence. It was the burden of all the
jokes, and all the cries of the hawkers, and all the
conversation; and yet, probably, nineteen out of twenty
of those present lived in the quarters most ravaged
by the disease, and many of them had seen it face to
face, and knew perfectly its deadly character!

As yet, with few exceptions, the higher classes of
society have escaped. It seems to depend very much
on the manner in which people live, and the poor have
been struck in every quarter, often at the very next
door to luxury. A friend told me this morning, that
the porter of a large and fashionable hotel, in which
he lives, had been taken to the hospital; and there
have been one or two cases in the airy quarter of St.
Germain, in the same street with Mr. Cooper, and

nearly opposite. Several physicians and medical students
have died too, but the majority of these live with
the narrowest economy, and in the parts of the city
the most liable to impure effluvia. The balls go on
still in the gay world; and I presume they would go
on if there were only musicians enough left to make
an orchestra, or fashionists to compose a quadrille. I
was walking home very late from a party the night before
last, with a captain in the English army. The
gray of the morning was just stealing into the sky;
and after a stopping a moment in the Place Vendome,
to look at the column, stretching up apparently unto
the very stars, we bade good morning, and parted.
He had hardly left me, he said, when he heard a frightful
scream from one of the houses in the Rue St. Honoré,
and thinking there might be some violence going
on, he rang at the gate and entered, mounting the
first staircase that presented. A woman had just
opened a door, and fallen on the broad stair at the top,
and was writhing in great agony. The people of the
house collected immediately; but the moment my
friend pronounced the word cholera, there was a general
dispersion, and he was left alone with the patient.
He took her in his arms, and carried her to a coach-stand
without assistance, and driving to the Hotel Dieu,
left her with the Sœurs de Charite. She has since
died.

As if one plague was not enough, the city is still
alive in the distant fauxbourgs with revolts. Last
night, the rappel was beat all over the town, the national
guard called to arms, and marched to the Porte
St. Denis, and the different quarters where the mobs
were collected.

Many suppose there is no cholera except such as is
produced by poison; and the Hotel Dieu, and the other
hospitals, are besieged daily by the infuriated mob,
who swear vengeance against the government for all
the mortality they witness.

I have just returned from a visit to the Hotel Dieu
—the hospital for the cholera. Impelled by a powerful
motive, which it is not now necessary to explain, I
had previously made several attempts to gain admission
in vain; but yesterday I fell in fortunately with
an English physician, who told me I could pass with
a doctor's diploma, which he offered to borrow for me
of some medical friend. He called by appointment at
seven this morning, to accompany me on my visit.

It was like one of our loveliest mornings in June—
an inspiriting, sunny, balmy day, all softness and
beauty—and we crossed the Tuileries by one of its
superb avenues, and kept down the bank of the river
to the island. With the errand on which we were
bound in our minds, it was impossible not to be struck
very forcibly with our own exquisite enjoyment of life.
I am sure I never felt my veins fuller of the pleasure
of health and motion; and I never saw a day when
everything about me seemed better worth living for.
The splendid palace of the Louvre, with its long fa
çade of nearly half a mile, lay in the mellowest sunshine
on our left; the lively river, covered with boats,
and spanned with its magnificent and crowded bridges
on our right; the view of the island, with its massive
old structures below, and the fine gray towers of the
church of Notre Dame rising, dark and gloomy, in the
distance, rendered it difficult to realize anything but
life and pleasure. That under those very towers,
which added so much to the beauty of the scene, there
lay a thousand and more of poor wretches dying of a
plague, was a thought my mind would not retain a
moment.

Half an hour's walk brought us to the Place Notre
Dame, on one side of which, next this celebrated
church, stands the hospital. My friend entered, leaving
me to wait till he had found an acquaintance of
whom he could borrow a diploma. A hearse was
standing at the door of the church, and I went in for
a moment. A few mourners, with the appearance of
extreme poverty, were kneeling round a coffin at one
of the side altars; and a solitary priest, with an attendant
boy, was mumbling the prayers for the dead.
As I came out, another hearse drove up; with a rough
coffin, scantily covered with a pall, and followed by one
poor old man. They hurried in, and I strolled around
the square. Fifteen or twenty water-carriers were
filling their buckets at the fountain opposite, singing
and laughing; and at the same moment four different
litters crossed toward the hospital, each with its two
or three followers, women and children, friends or relatives
of the sick, accompanying them to the door,
where they parted from them, most probably for ever.
The litters were set down a moment before ascending
the steps; the crowd pressed around and lifted the
coarse curtains; farewells were exchanged, and the
sick alone passed in. I did not see any great demonstration
of feeling in the particular cases that were before
me; but I can conceive, in the almost deadly certainty
of this disease, that these hasty partings at the
door of the hospital might often be scenes of unsurpassed
suffering and distress.

I waited, perhaps, ten minutes more. In the whole
time that I had been there, twelve litters, bearing the
sick, had entered the Hotel Dieu. As I exhibited the
borrowed diploma, the thirteenth arrived, and with it
a young man, whose violent and uncontrolled grief
worked so far on the soldier at the door, that he allowed
im to pass. I followed the bearers to the
ward, interested exceedingly to observe the first treatment
and manner of reception. They wound slowly
up the stone staircase to the upper story, and entered
the female department—a long low room, containing
nearly a hundred beds, placed in alleys scarce two feet
from each other. Nearly all were occupied, and those
which were empty my friend told me were vacated by
deaths yesterday. They set down the litter by the
side of a narrow cot, with coarse but clean sheets, and
a Sœur de Charité, with a white cap, and a cross at her
girdle, came and took off the canopy. A young woman,
of apparently twenty-five, was beneath, absolutely
convulsed with agony. Her eyes were started from
the sockets, her mouth foamed, and her face was of
a frightful, livid purple. I never saw so horrible a
sight. She had been taken in perfect health only
three hours before, but her features looked to me
marked with a year of pain. The first attempt to lift
her produced violent vomiting, and I thought she
must die instantly. They covered her up in bed, and
leaving the man who came with her hanging over her
with the moan of one deprived of his senses, they went
to receive others, who were entering in the same manner.
I inquired of my companion how soon she would
be attended to. He said, “possibly in an hour, as the
physician was just commencing his rounds.” An hour
after this I passed the bed of this poor woman, and she
had not yet been visited. Her husband answered my
question with a choking voice and a flood of tears.

I passed down the ward, and found nineteen or
twenty in the last agonies of death. They lay perfectly
still, and seemed benumbed. I felt the limbs
of several, and found them quite cold. The stomach
only had a little warmth. Now and then a half groan
escaped those who seemed the strongest; but with the
exception of the universally open mouth and upturned
ghastly eye, there were no signs of much suffering. I
found two who must have been dead half an hour,
undiscovered by the attendants. One of them was an
old woman, nearly gray, with a very bad expression of
face, who was perfectly cold—lips, limbs, body, and
all. The other was younger, and looked as if she had
died in pain. Her eyes appeared as if they had been
forced half out of the sockets, and her skin was of the
most livid and deathly purple. The woman in the

next bed told me she had died since the Sœur de
Charité had been there. It is horrible to think how
these poor creatures may suffer in the very midst of
the provisions that are made professedly for their relief.
I asked why a simple prescription of treatment
might not be drawn up by the physicians, and administered
by the numerous medical students who were
in Paris, that as few as possible might suffer from delay.
“Because,” said my companion, “the chief
physicians must do everything personally, to study
the complaint.” And so, I verily believe, more human
lives are sacrificed in waiting for experiments,
than ever will be saved by the results. My blood
boiled from the beginning to the end of this melancholy
visit.

I wandered about alone among the beds till my
heart was sick, and I could bear it no longer; and
then rejoined my friend, who was in the train of one
of the physicians, making the rounds. One would
think a dying person should be treated with kindness.
I never saw a rougher or more heartless manner than
that of the celebrated Dr. —, at the bedsides of
these poor creatures. A harsh question, a rude pulling
open of the mouth, to look at the tongue, a sentence
or two of unsuppressed commands to the students
on the progress of the disease, and the train
passed on. If discouragement and despair are not
medicines, I should think the visits of such physicians
were of little avail. The wretched sufferers turned
away their heads after he had gone, in every instance
that I saw, with an expression of visibly increased distress.
Several of them refused to answer his questions
altogether.

On reaching the bottom of the Salle St. Monique,
one of the male wards, I heard loud voices and laughter.
I had noticed much more groaning and complaining
in passing among the men, and the horrible
discordance struck me as something infernal. It proceeded
from one of the sides to which the patients
had been removed who were recovering. The most
successful treatment has been found to be punch, very
strong, with but little acid, and being permitted to
drink as much as they would, they had become partially
intoxicated. It was a fiendish sight, positively.
They were sitting up, and reaching from one bed to
the other, and with their still pallid faces and blue lips,
and the hospital dress of white, they looked like so
many carousing corpses. I turned away from them
in horror.

I was stopped in the door-way by a litter entering
with a sick woman. They set her down in the main
passage between the beds, and left her a moment to
find a place for her. She seemed to have an interval
of pain, and rose up on one hand, and looked about
her very earnestly. I followed the direction of her
eyes, and could easily imagine her sensations. Twenty
or thirty death-like faces were turned toward her from
the different beds, and the groans of the dying and the
distressed came from every side. She was without a
friend whom she knew, sick of a mortal disease, and
abandoned to the mercy of those whose kindness is
mercenary and habitual, and of course without sympathy
or feeling. Was it not enough alone, if she
had been far less ill, to imbitter the very fountains of
life, and kill her with mere fright and horror? She
sank down upon the litter again, and drew her shawl
over her head. I had seen enough of suffering, and I
left the place.

On reaching the lower staircase, my friend proposed
to me to look into the dead-room. We descended to
a large dark apartment below the street-level, lighted
by a lamp fixed to the wall. Sixty or seventy bodies
lay on the floor, some of them quite uncovered, and
some wrapped in mats. I could not see distinctly
enough by the dim light, to judge of their discoloration.
They appeared mostly old and emaciated.

I can not describe the sensation of relief with which
I breathed the free air once more. I had no fear of
the cholera, but the suffering and misery I had seen,
oppressed and half smothered me. Every one who
has walked through an hospital, will remember how
natural it is to subdue the breath, and close the nostrils
to the smells of medicine and the close air. The
fact, too, that the question of contagion is still disputed,
though I fully believe the cholera not to be contagious,
might have had some effect. My breast
heaved, however, as if a weight had risen from my
lungs, and I walked home, blessing God for health
with undissembled gratitude.

P. S.—I began this account of my visit to the Hotel
Dieu yesterday. As I am perfectly well this morning,
I think the point of non-contagion, in my own case at
least, is clear. I breathed the same air with the dying
and the diseased for two hours, and felt of nearly a
hundred to be satisfied of the curious phenomena of
the vital heat. Perhaps an experiment of this sort,
in a man not professionally a physician, may be considered
rash or useless; and I would not willingly be
thought to have done it from any puerile curiosity. I
have been interested in such subjects always; and I
considered the fact that the king's sons had been permitted
to visit the hospital, a sufficient assurance that
the physicians were seriously convinced there could
be no possible danger. If I need an apology, it may
be found in this.

17. LETTER XVII.

As I was getting out of a fiacre this morning on the
Boulevard, I observed that the driver had the cross of
the legion of honor, worn very modestly under his coat.
On taking a second look at his face, I was struck with
its soldier-like, honest expression; and with the fear
that I might imply a doubt by a question, I simply observed,
that he probably received it from Napoleon.
He drew himself up a little as he assented, and with
half a smile pulled the coarse cape of his coat across
his bosom. It was done evidently with a mixed feeling
of pride and a dislike of ostentation, which showed the
nurture of Napoleon. It is astonishing how superior
every being seems to have become that served under
him. Wherever you find an old soldier of the “emperor,”
as they delight to call him, you find a noble,
brave, unpretending man. On mentioning this circumstance
to a friend, he informed me, that it was possibly
a man who was well known, from rather a tragical
circumstance. He had driven a gentleman to a party
one night, who was dissatisfied with him, for some
reason or other, and abused him very grossly. The
cocher the next morning sent him a challenge; and, as
the cross of honor levels all distinctions, he was compelled
to fight him, and was shot dead at the first fire.

Honors of this sort must be a very great incentive.
They are worn very proudly in France. You see
men of all classes, with the striped riband in their button-hole,
marking them as the heroes of the three
days of July. The Poles and the French and English,

who fought well at Warsaw, wear also a badge; and
it certainly produces a feeling of respect as one passes
them in the street. There are several very young
men, lads really, who are wandering about Paris, with
the latter distinction on their breasts, and every indication
that it is all they have brought away from their
unhappy country. The Poles are coming in now from
every quarter. I meet occasionally in society the
celebrated Polish countess, who lost her property and
was compelled to flee, for her devotion to the cause.
Louis Philippe has formed a regiment of the refuges,
and sent them to Algiers. He allows no liberalists to
remain in Paris, if he can help it. The Spaniards and
Italians, particularly, are ordered off to Tours, and
other provincial towns, the instant they become pensioners
upon the government.

I was presented last night, with Mr. Carr and Mr.
Ritche, two of our countrymen, to the king. We
were very naturally prepared for an embarrassing ceremony—an
expectation which was not lessened in my
case, by the necessity of a laced coat, breeches, and
sword. We drove into the court of the Tuileries, as
the palace clock struck nine, in the costume of courtiers
of the time of Louis the Twelfth, very anxious
about the tenacity of our knee buckles, and not at all
satisfied as to the justice done to our unaccustomed
proportions by the tailor. To say nothing of my looks.
I am sure I should have felt much more like a gentleman
in my costume bourgeois. By the time we had
been passed through the hands of all the chamberlains,
however, and walked through all the preparatory halls
and drawing rooms, each with its complement of gentlemen
in waiting, dressed like ourselves in lace and
small-clothes. I became more reconciled to myself,
and began to fed that I might possibly have looked
out of place in my ordinary dress. The atmosphere
of a court is certainly very contagious in this particular.

After being sufficiently astonished with long rooms,
frescoes, and guardsmen, seven or eight feet high,
(the tallest men I ever saw, standing with halberds at
the doors), we were introduced into the Salle du
Trône—a large hall lined with crimson velvet throughout,
with the throne in the centre of one of the sides.
Some half dozen gentlemen were standing about the
fire, conversing very familiarly, among whom was the
British ambassador Lord Grenville, and the Brazilian
minister, both of whom I had met before. The king
was not there. The Swedish minister, a noble-looking
man, with snow-white hair, was the only other
official person present each of the ministers having
come to present one or two of his countrymen. The
king entered in a few moments, in the simple uniform
of the line, and joined the group at the fire, with the
most familiar and cordial politeness; each minister
presenting his countrymen as occasion offered, certainly
with far less ceremony than one sees at most
dinner-parties in America. After talking a few minutes
with Lord Grenville, inquiring the progress of
the cholera, he turned to Mr. Rives, and we were presented.
We stood in a little circle around him, and
he conversed with us about America for ten or fifteen
minutes. He inquired from what states we came,
and said he had been as far west as Nashville. Tennessee,
and had often slept in the woods, quite as
soundly as he ever did in more luxurious quarters.
He begged pardon of Mr. Carr, who was from South
Carolina, for saying that he had found the southern
taverns not particularly good. He preferred the north.
All this time I was looking out for some accent in the
“king's English.” He speaks the language with all
the careless correctness and fluency of a vernacular
tongue. We were all surprised at it. It is American
English, however. He has not a particle of the cockney
drawl, half Irish and half Scotch, with which
many Englishmen speak. He must be the most cosmopolite
king that ever reigned. He even said he had
been at Tangiers, the place of Mr. Carr's consulate.
After some pleasant compliment to our country, he
passed to the Brazilian minister, who stood on the
other side, leaving us delighted with his manner; and,
probably, in spite of our independence, much more
inclined than before to look indulgently upon his bad
politics. The queen had entered, meantime, with the
king's sister. Lady Adelaide, and one or two of the
ladies of honor; and, after saying something courteous
to all, in her own language, and assuring us that
his majesty was very fond of America, the royal group
bowed out, and left us once more to ourselves.

We remained a few minutes, and I occupied myself
with looking at the gold and crimson throne before
me, and recalling to my mind the world of historical
circumstances connected with it. You can easily
imagine it all. The throne of France is, perhaps, the
most interesting one in the world. But of all its associations,
none rushed upon me so forcibly, or retained
my imagination so long, as the accidental
drama of which it was the scene during the three days
of July. It was here that the people brought the
polytechnic scholar, mortally wounded in the attack
on the palace, to die. He breathed his last on the
throne of France, surrounded with his comrades and
a crowd of patriots. It is one of the most striking and
affecting incidents, I think, in all history.

As we passed out I caught a glimpse, through a
side door, of the queen and the princesses sitting
round a table, covered with books, in a small drawing-room,
while a servant, in the gaudy livery of the court,
was just entering with tea. The careless attitudes of
the figures, the mellow light of the shade-lamp and
the happy voices of children coming through the door,
reminded me more of home than anything I have seen
in France. It is odd, but really the most aching
sense of home-sickness I have felt since I left America,
was awakened at that moment—in the palace of a
king, and at the sight of his queen and daughters!

We stopped in the antechamber to have our names
recorded in the visiting-book—a ceremony which insures
us invitations to all the balls given at court during
the winter. The first has already appeared in the
shape of a printed note, in which we are informed by
the “aide-de-camp of the king and the lady of honor
of the queen,” that we are invited to a ball at the palace
on Monday night. To my distress there is a little
direction at the bottom, “Les hommes seront en uniforme,”
which subjects those of us who are not military,
once more to the awkwardness of this ridiculous
court dress. I advise all Americans coming abroad to
get a commission in the militia to travel with. It is
of use in more ways than one.

I met the Countess Guiccioli, walking yesterday in
the Tuileries. She looks much younger than I anticipated,
and is a handsome blonde, apparently about
thirty. I am told by a gentleman who knows her,
that she has become a great flirt, and is quite spoiled
by admiration. The celebrity of Lord Byron's attachment
would, certainly, make her a very desirable acquaintance,
were she much less pretty than she really
is; and I am told her drawing-room is thronged with
lovers of all nations, contending for a preference,
which having been once given, as it has, should be
buried. I think, for ever. So, indeed, should have
been the Emperess Maria Louisa's, and that of the
widow of Bishop Heber; and yet the latter has married
a Greek count, and the former a German baron!

I find I was incorrect in the statement I gave you
of the duel between Mr. Hesse and Count Leon.
The particulars have come out more fully, and from
the curious position of the parties (Mr. Hesse, as I

stated, being the natural son of George the Fourth;
and Count Leon of Napoleon) are worth recapitulating.
Count Leon had lost several thousand frances to
Mr. Hesse, which he refused to pay, alleging that
there had been unfair dealing in the game. The
matter was left to arbitration, and Mr. Hesse fully
cleared of the charge. Leon still refused to pay, and
for fifteen days practised with the pistol from morning
till night. At the end of this time he paid the
money, and challenged Hesse. The latter had lost
the use of his right arm in the battle of Waterloo,
(fighting of course against Count Leon's father), but
accepted his challenge, and fired with his left hand.
Hesse was shot through the body, and has since died,
and Count Leon was not hurt. The affair has made
a great sensation here, for Hesse had a young and
lovely wife, only seventeen, and was unusually beloved
and admired; while his opponent is a notorious gambler,
and every way detested. People meet at the
gaming-table here, however, as they meet in the street,
without question of character.

Carnival is over. Yesterday was “Mardi Gras”—
the last day of the reign of Folly. Paris has been like
a city of grown-up children for a week. What with
masking all night, supping, or breakfasting, what you
will, at sunrise, and going to bed between morning and
noon, I feel that I have done my devoir upon the experiment
of French manners.

It would be tedious, not to say improper, to describe
all the absurdities I have seen and mingled in for the
last fortnight; but I must try to give you some idea of
the meaning the French attach to the season of carnival,
and the manner in which it is celebrated.

In society it is the time for universal gayety and
freedom. Parties, fancy balls, and private masques,
are given, and kept up till morning. The etiquette is
something more free, and gallantry is indulged and
followed with the privileges, almost, of a Saturnalia.
One of the gayest things I have seen was a fancy ball,
given by a man of some fashion, in the beginning of
the season. Most of the dislingués of Paris were
there; and it was, perhaps, as fair a specimen of the
elegant gayety of the French capital, as occurred
during the carnival. The rooms were full by ten.
Everybody was in costume, and the ladies in dresses
of unusual and costly splendor. At a bal costumé
there are no masks, of course, and dancing, waltzing,
and galopading followed each other in the ordinary
succession, but with all the heightened effect and additional
spirit of a magnificent spectacle. It was really
beautiful. There were officers from all the English
regiments, in their fine showy uniforms; and French
officers who had brought dresses from their far-off campaigns;
Turks, Egyptians, Mussulmans, and Algerine
rovers—every country that had been touched by
French soldiers, represented in its richest costume,
and by men of the finest appearance. There was a
colonel of the English Madras cavalry, in the uniform
of his corps—one mass of blue and silver, the most
spendidly dressed man I ever saw; and another Englishman,
who is said to be the successor of Lord Byron
in the graces of the gay and lovely Countess Guiccioli,
was dressed as a Greek; and between the exquisite
taste and richness of his costume, and his
really excessive personal beauty, he made no ordinary
sensation. The loveliest woman there was a young
baroness, whose dancing, figure, and face, so resembled
a celebrated Philadelphia belle, that I was constantly
expecting her musical French voice to break into English.
She was dressed as an eastern dancing-girl, and
floated about with the lightness and grace of a fairy.
Her motion intoxicated the eye completely. I have
seen her since at the Tuileries, where, in a waltz with
the handsome Duke of Orleans, she was the single object
of admiration for the whole court. She is a small,
lightly-framed creature, with very little feet, and a face
of more brilliancy than regular beauty, but all airiness
and spirit. A very lovely, indolent-looking English
girl, with large sleepy eyes, was dressed as a Circassian
slave, with chains from her ankles to her waist.
She was a beautiful part of the spectacle, but too passive
to interest one. There were sylphs and nuns,
broom-girls and Italian peasants, and a great many in
rich Polonaise dresses. It was unlike any other fancy
ball I ever saw, in the variety and novelty of the characters
represented, and the costliness with which they
were dressed. You can have no idea of the splendor
of a waltz in such a glittering assemblage. It was
about time for an early breakfast when the ball was
over.

The private masks are amusing to those who are
intimate with the circle. A stranger, of course, is
neither acquainted enough to amuse himself within
proper limits, nor incognito enough to play his gallantries
at hazard. I never have seen more decidedly
triste assemblies than the balls of this kind which I
have attended, where the uniform black masks and
dominoes gave the party the aspect of a funeral, and the
restraint made it quite as melancholy.

The public masks are quite another affair. They
are given at the principal theatres, and commence at
midnight. The pit and stage are thrown into a brilliant
hall, with the orchestra in the centre; the music
is divine, and the etiquette perfect liberty. There is,
of course, a great deal of vulgar company, for every
one is admitted who pays the ten francs at the door;
but all classes of people mingle in the crowd; and if
one is not amused, it is because he will neither listen
nor talk. I think it requires one or two masks to get
one's eye so much accustomed to the sight, that he is
not disgusted with the exteriors of the women. There
was something very diabolical to me at first in a dead,
black representation of the human face, and the long
black domino. Persuading one's self that there is
beauty under such an outside, is like getting up a passion
for a very ugly woman, for the sake of her mind—
difficult, rather. I soon became used to it, however,
and amuse myself infinitely. One is liable to waste his
wit, to be sure; for in a crowd so rarely bien composée,
as they phrase it, the undistinguishing dress gives
every one the opportunity of bewildering you; but the
feet and manner of walking, and the tone and mode of
expression, are indices sufficiently certain to decide,
and give interest to a pursuit; and, with tolerable caution,
one is paid for his trouble, in nineteen cases out
of twenty.

At the public masks, the visiters are not all in domino.
One half at least are in caricature dresses, men
in petticoats, and women in boots and spurs. It is not
always easy to detect the sex. An English lady, a
carnival-acquaintance of mine, made love successfully,
with the aid of a tall figure and great spirit, to a number
of her own sex. She wore a half uniform, and
was certainly a very elegant fellow. France is so remarkable
indeed, for effeminate looking men and masculine
looking women, that half the population might
change costume to apparent advantage. The French
are fond of caricaturing English dandies, and they do
it with great success. The imitation of Bond-street
dialect in another language is highly amusing. There
were two imitation exquisites at the “Varietiés” one
night, who were dressed to perfection, and must have
studied the character thoroughly. The whole theatre
was in a roar when they entered. Malcontents take the
opportunity to show up the king and ministers, and these
are excellent, too. One gets weary of fun. It is a
life which becomes tedious long before carnival is
over. It is a relief to sit down once more to books and
pen.

The three last days are devoted to street-masking.
This is the most ridiculous of all. Paris pours our

its whole population upon the Boulevards, and guards
are stationed to keep the goers and comers in separate
lines, and prevent all collecting of groups on the pavé.
People in the most grotesque and absurd dresses pass
on foot, and in loaded carriages, and all is nonsense
and obscenity. It is difficult to conceive the motive
which can induce grown-up people to go to the expense
and trouble of such an exhibition, merely to
amuse the world. A description of these follies would
be waste of paper.

On the last night but one of the carnival. I went to
a ball at the palace. We presented our invitations at
the door, and mounted through piles of soldiers of the
line, crowds of servants in the king's livery, and groves
of exotics at the broad landing places, to the reception
room. We were ushered into the Salle des Marechals—a
large hall, the ceiling of which rises into the
dome of the Tuileries, ornamented with full-length
portraits of the living marshals of France. A gallery
of a light airy structure runs round upon the capitals
of the pillars, and this, when we entered, and at all the
after hours of the ball, was crowded with loungers from
the assembly beneath—producing a splendid effect, as
their glittering uniforms passed and repassed under the
flags and armor with which the ceilings were thickly
hung. The royal train entered presently, and the
band struck up a superb march. Three rows of velvet-covered
seats, one above another, went round the
hall, leaving a passage behind, and in front of these the
queen and her family made a circuit of courtesy, followed
by the wives of the ambassadors, among whom
was our countrywoman, Mrs. Rives. Her majesty
went smiling past, stopping here and there to speak to
a lady whom she recognised, and the king followed
her with his eternal and painfully forced smile, saying
something to every second person he encountered.
The princesses have good faces, and the second one
has an expression of great delicacy and tenderness, but
no beauty. As soon as the queen was seated, the
band played a quadrille, and the crowd cleared away
from the centre for the dance. The Duke of Orleans
selected his partner, a pretty girl, who. I believe, was
English, and forward went the head couples to the exquisite
music of the new opera—Robert le Diable.

I fell into the little cartige standing about the queen,
and watched the interesting party dancing in the head
quadrille for an hour. The Duke of Orleans, who is
nearly twenty, and seems a thoughtless, good-natured,
immature young man, moved about very gracefully
with his handsome figure, and seemed amused, and
quite unconscious of the attention he drew. The
princesses were vis-a-vis, and the second one a dark-haired,
slender, interesting girl of nineteen, had a
polytechnic scholar for her partner. He was a handsome,
gallant-looking fellow, who must have distinguished
himself to have been invited to court, and I
could not but admire the beautiful mixture of respect
and self-confidence with which he demanded the hand
of the princess from the lady of honor, and conversed
with her during the dance. If royalty does not seal
up the affections, I could scarce conceive how a bring
so decidedly of nature's best nobility, handsome, graceful,
and confident, could come within the sphere of a
sensitive-looking girl, like the princess Christine, and
not leave more than a transient recollection upon her
fancy. The music stopped, and I had been so occupied
with my speculations upon the polytechnic boy,
that I had scarcely noticed any other person in the
dance. He led the princess back to her seat by the
dame d'hounour, bowing low, colored a little, and mingled
with the crowd. A few minutes after I saw him
in the gallery, quite alone, leaning over the railing,
and looking down upon the scene below, having apparently
abandoned the dance for the evening. From
something in his face, and in the manner of resuming
his sword, I was certain he had come to the palace
with that single object, and would dance no more. I
kept him in my eye most of the night, and am very
sure he did not. If the little romance I wove out of
it was not a true one, it was not because the material
was improbable.

As I was looking still at the quadrille dancing before
the queen, Dr. Bowring took my arm and proposed a
stroll through the other apartments. I found that the
immense crowd in the Salle des Marechals was but
about one fifth of the assembly. We passed through
hall after hall, with music and dancing in each, all
crowded and gay alike, till we came at last to the Salle
du Tróne, where the old men were collected at card-tables
and in groups for conversation. My distinguished
companion was of the greatest use to me here, for
he knew everybody, and there was scarce a person in
the room who did not strongly excite my curiosity.
One half of them at least were maimed; some without
arms, and some with wooden legs, and faces scarred
and weather-burnt, but all in full uniform, and nearly
all with three or four orders of honor on the breast.
You would have held your breath to have heard the
recapitulation of their names. At one table sat Marshal
Grouchy and General Excelmans; in a corner
stood Marshal Soult, conversing with a knot of peers
of France; and in the window nearest the door, General
Bernard, our country's friend and citizen, was
earnestly engaged in talking to a group of distinguished
looking men, two of whom, my companion said, were
members of the chamber of deputies. We stood a
moment, and a circle was immediately formed around
Dr. Bowring, who is a great favorite among the literary
and liberal people of France. The celebrated General
Fabvier came up among others, and Cousin the poet.
Fabvier, as you know, held a chief command in Greece,
and was elected governor of Paris pro tem, after the
“three days.” He is a very remarkable looking man,
with a head almost exactly resembling that of the bust of
Socrates. The engravings give him a more animated
and warlike expression than he wears in private.
Cousin is a mild, retired looking man, and was one of
the very few persons present not in the court uniform.
Among so many hundred coats embroidered with gold,
his plain black dress looked singularly simple and
poet-like.

I left the diplomatist-poet conversing with his
friends, and went back to the dancing rooms. Music
and female beauty are more attractive metal than disabled
generals playing at cards: and encountering in
my way an attaché to the American legation. I inquired
about one or two faces that interested me, and
collecting information enough to pass through the
courtesies of a dance, I found a partner and gave myself
up, like the rest, to amusement.

Supper was served at two, and a more splendid affair
could not be conceived. A long and magnificent
hall on the other side of the Salle du Trône, was set
with tables, covered with everything that France could
afford, in the royal services of gold and silver, and in
the greatest profusion. There was room enough for
all the immense assemblage, and when the queen was
seated with her daughters and ladies of honor, the
company sat down and all was as quiet and well-regulated
as a dinner party of four.

After supper the dancing was resumed, and the
queen remained till three o'clock. At her departure
the band played cotillions or waltzes with figures, in
which the Duke of Orleans displayed the grace for
which he is celebrated, and at four, quite exhausted
with fatigue and heat. I went with a friend or two into
the long glass verandah, built by Napoleon as a promenade
for the Emperess Maria Louisa during her illness,
where tea, coffee, and ices were served to those who
wished them after supper. It was an interesting place
enough, and had my eyes and limbs ached less. I
should have liked to walk up and down, and muse a

little upon its recollections, but swallowing my tea as
hastily as possible, I was but too happy to make my
escape and get home to bed.

18. LETTER XVIII.

Cholera! Cholera! It is now the only topic.
There is no other interest—no other dread—no
other occupation, for Paris. The invitations for
parties are at last recalled—the theatres are at last
shut or languishing—the fearless are beginning to be
afraid—people walk the streets with camphor bags
and vinaigrettes at their nostrils—there is a universal
terror in all classes, and a general flight of all who
can afford to get away. I never saw a people so engrossed
with one single and constant thought. The
waiter brought my breakfast this morning with a pale
face, and an apprehensive question, whether I was
quite well. I sent to my boot-maker yesterday, and
he was dead. I called on a friend, a Hanoverian, one
of those broad-chested, florid, immortal-looking men,
of whose health for fifty years, violence apart, one is
absolutely certain, and he was at death's door with the
cholera. Poor fellow! He had fought all through
the revolution in Greece; he had slept in rain and
cold, under the open sky, many a night, through a ten
years' pursuit of the profession of a soldier of fortune,
living one of the most remarkable lives, hitherto, of
which I ever heard, and to be taken down here in the
midst of ease and pleasure, reduced to a shadow with
so vulgar and unwarlike a disease as this, was quite too
much for his philosophy. He had been ill three days
when I found him. He was emaciated to a skeleton
in that short time, weak and helpless, and, though he
is not a man to exaggerate suffering, he said he never
had conceived such intense agony as he had endured.
He assured me, that if he recovered, and should ever
be attacked with it again, he would blow out his brains
at the first symptom. Nothing but his iron constitution
protracted the disorder. Most people who are
attacked die in from three to twenty-four hours.

For myself, I have felt and still feel quite safe. My
rooms are in the airiest quarter of Paris, facing the
gardens of the Tuileries, with windows overlooking
the king's; and, as far as air is concerned, if his majesty
considers himself well situated, it would be quite
ridiculous in so insignificant a person as myself to be
alarmed. With absolute health, confident spirits, and
tolerably regular habits, I have usually thought one
may defy almost anything but love or a bullet. Today,
however, there have been, they say, two cases
within the palace-walls, members of the royal household,
and Casimir Perier, who probably lives well and
has enough to occupy his mind, is very low with it,
and one cannot help feeling that he has no certain exemption,
when a disease has touched both above and
below him. I went to-day to the messagerie to engage
my place for Marseilles, on the way to Italy, but
the seats are all taken, in both mail-post and diligence,
for a fortnight to come, and, as there are no
extras in France, one must wait his turn. Having
done my duty to myself by the inquiry, I shall be content
to remain quiet.

I have just returned from a social tea-party at a
house of one of the few English families left in Paris.
It is but a little after ten, and the streets, as I came
along, were as deserted and still as if it were a city of
the dead. Usually, until four or five in the morning,
the same streets are thronged with carriages hurrying
to and fro, and always till midnight the trottoirs are
crowded with promenaders. To-night I scarce met a
foot-passenger, and but one solitary cabriolet in a walk
of a mile. The contrast was really impressive. The
moon was nearly full, and high in the heavens, and
the sky absolutely without a trace of a cloud; nothing
interrupted the full broad light of the moon, and the
empty streets were almost as bright as at noon-day;
and, as I crossed the Place Vendome, I could hear, for
the first time since I have been in Paris, though I
have passed it at every hour of the night, the echo of
my footsteps reverberated from the walls around. You
should have been in these crowded cities of Europe to
realize the impressive solemnity of such solitude.

It is said that fifty thousand people have left Paris
within the past week. Adding this to the thousand a
day who are struck with the cholera, and the attendance
necessary to the sick, and a thinned population
is sufficiently accounted for. There are, however,
hundreds ill of this frightful disease, whose cases are
not reported. It is only those who are taken to the
hospitals, the poor and destitute, who are numbered in
the official statements. The physicians are wearied
out with their private practice. The medical lectures
are suspended, and a regular physician is hardly to be
had at all. There is scarce a house in which some
one has not been taken. You see biers and litters
issuing from almost every gate, and the better ranks
are no longer spared. A sister of the premier, M.
Perier, died yesterday; and it was reported at the
Bourse, that several distinguished persons, who have
been ill of it, are also dead. No one feels safe; and
the consternation and dread on every countenance you
meet, is enough to chill one's very blood. I went out
to-day for a little exercise, not feeling very well, and I
was glad to get home again. Every creature looks
stricken with a mortal fear. And this among a French
population, the gayest and merriest of people under
all depressions ordinarily, is too strong a contrast not
to be felt painfully. There is something singular in
the air, too; a disagreeable, depressing dryness, which
the physicians say must change, or all Paris will be
struck with the plague. It is clear and cold, but almost
suffocating with dryness.

It is very consoling in the midst of so much that is
depressing, that the preventives recommended against
the cholera are so agreeable. “Live well,” say the
doctors, “and bathe often. Abstain from excesses,
keep a clear head and good spirits, and amuse yourself
as much and as rationally as possible.” It is a
very excellent recipe for happiness, let alone the cholera.
There is great room for a nice observance of this
system in Paris, particularly the eating and bathing.
The baths are delightful. You are received in handsome
saloons, opening upon a garden in the centre of
the building, ornamented with statues and fountains,
the journals lying upon the sofas, and everything arranged
with quite the luxury of a palace. The bathing-rooms
are furnished with taste; the baths are of
marble, and covered inside with spotlessly white linen
cloths; the water is perfumed, and you may lie and
take your coffee, or have your breakfast served upon
the mahogany cover which shuts you in—a union of
luxuries which is enough to enervate a cynic. When
you are ready to come out, a pull of the bell brings a
servant, who gives you a peignoir—a long linen wrapper,
heated in an oven, in the warm folds of which you
are enveloped, and in three minutes are quite dry. In
this you may sit, at your ease, reading, or musing, or
lie upon the sofa without the restraint of a tight dress,
till you are ready to depart; and then four or five
francs, something less than a dollar, pays for all.

19. LETTER XIX.

It is now the middle of April, and sitting at my
window on the Rue Rivoli, I look through one of the
long, clipped avenues of the Tuileries, and see an
arch of green leaves, the sun of eight o'clock in the
morning just breaking through the thin foliage and
dappling the straight, even gravel-walk below, with a
look of summer that makes my heart leap. The
cholera has put an end to dissipation, and one gets up
early from necessity. It is delicious to step out before
breakfast, and cross the street into those lovely gardens,
for an hour or two of fresh air and reflection. It
is warm enough now to sit on the stone benches about
the fountains, by the time the dew is dry; and I know
nothing so contemplative as the occupation of watching
these royal swans in the dreamy, almost imperceptible
motion with which they glide around the edges
of the basins. The gold fish swim up and circle
about the breast of the imperial birds with a motion
almost as idle; and the old wooden-legged soldier,
who has been made warden of the gardens for his
service, sits nodding on one of the chairs, or drawing
fortifications with his stick in the gravel; and so it
happens, that in the midst of a gay and busy city one
may feel always a luxurious solitude; and, be he ever
so poor, loiter all day if he will, among scenes which
only regal munificence could provide for him. With
the Seine bounding them on one side, the splendid
uniform facade of the Rue Rivoli on the other, the
palace stretching across the southern terrace, and the
thick woods of the Champs Elysées at the opposite
gate, where could one go in the world to give his taste
or his eye a more costly or delightful satisfaction?

The Bios de Boulogne, about which the Parisians
talk so much, is less to my taste. It is a level wood
of small trees, covering a mile or two square, and cut
from corner to corner with straight roads for driving.
The soil is sandy, and the grass grows only in tufts,
the walks are rough, and either muddy or dusty always,
and, barring the equipages and the pleasure of
a word in passing an acquaintance, I find a drive to
this famous wood rather a dull business. I want either
one thing or the other—cultivated grounds like
the Tuileries, or the wild wood.

I have just left the Countess Guiccioli, with whom
I have been acquainted for some two or three weeks.
She is very much frightened at the cholera, and thinks
of going to America. The conversation turned principally
upon Shelley, whom of course she knew intimately;
and she gave me one of his letters to herself as
an autograph. She says he was at times a little crazy—“
fou,” as she expressed it—but that there never
was a nobler or a better man. Lord Byron, she says,
loved him like a brother. She is still in correspondence
with Shelley's wife, of whom also she speaks
with the greatest affection. There was several miniatures
of Byron hanging up in the room, and I asked
her if any of them were perfect in the resemblance.
“No,” she said, “this was the most like him,” taking
down an exquisitely finished miniature by an Italian
artist, “mais el etaít beaucoup plus beau—beaucoup!—
beaucoup!” She reiterated the word with a very
touching tenderness, and continued to look at the picture
for some time, either forgetting our presence, or
affecting it. She speaks English sweetly, with a
soft, slow, honeyed accent, breaking into French when
ever she gets too much interested to choose her words.
She went on talking in French of the painters who
had drawn Byron, and said the American, West's, was
the best likeness. I did not like to tell her that West's
picture of herself was excessively flattered. I am
sure no one would know her from the engraving of it
at least. Her cheek bones are high, her forehead is
badly shaped, and altogether, the frame of her features
is decidedly ugly. She dresses in the worst
taste, too, and yet, with all this, and poetry and celebrity
aside, the Countess Guiccioli is both a lovely and
a fascinating woman, and one whom a man of sentiment
would admire even at this age, very sincerely,
but not for beauty. She has white and regular teeth,
however, and her hair is incomparably the most beautiful
I ever saw. It is of the richest and glossiest
gold, silken and luxuriant, and changes, as the light
falls upon it, with a mellow softness, than which nothing
could be lovelier. It is this and her indescribably
winning manner which are lost in a picture, and therefore,
it is perhaps fair that she should be otherwise
flattered. Her drawing-room is one of the most
agreeable in Paris at present, and it is one of the chief
agrénens which console me for a detention in an atmosphere
so triste as well as dangerous.

My bed-room window opens upon the court in the
interior of the hotel Rivoli, in which I lodge. In
looking out occasionally upon my very near neighbors
opposite, I have frequently observed a gray-headed,
scholar-like, fine-looking old man, writing at a
window in the story below. One does not trouble
himself much about his fellow-lodgers, and I had
seen this gentleman at his work at all hours, for a
month or more, without curiosity enough to inquire
even his name. This morning the servant came in,
with a Mon Dieu! and said M. Sismondi was frighteded
by the cholera, and was leaving his lodgings at
that moment. The name startled me, and making
some inquiries, I found that my gray-headed neighbor
was no other than the celebrated historian of Italian
literature, and that I had been living under the same
roof with him for weeks, and watching him at his
classical labors, without being at all aware of the honor
of his neighborhood. He is a kind, benevolent-looking
man, of about sixty, I should think; and always
had a peculiarly affectionate manner to his wife,
who, I am told by the valet, is an Englishwoman. I
regretted exceedingly the opportunity I had lost of
knowing him, for there are few writers of whom one
retains a more friendly and agreeable remembrance.

In a conversation with Mr. Cooper, the other day,
he was remarking of how little consequence any one
individual found himself in Paris, even the most distinguished.
We were walking in the Tuileries, and
the remark was elicited by my pointing out to him
one or two celebrated persons, whose names are sufficiently
known, but who walk the public promenades,
quite unnoticed and unrecognised. He said he did
not think there were five people in Paris who knew
him at sight, though his works were advertised in all
the bookstores, and he had lived in Paris one or two
years, and walked there constantly. This was putting
a strong case, for the French idolize Cooper; and the
peculiarly translateable character of his works makes
them read even better in a good translation than in
the original. It is so all over the continent, I am told.
The Germans, Italians, and Spaniards, prefer Cooper
to Scott; and it is easily accounted for when one remembers
how much of the beauty of the Waverley
novels depends on their exquisite style, and how peculiarly
Cooper's excellence lies in his accurate, definite,
tangible descriptions. There is not a more admired
author in Europe than Cooper, it is very certain;
and I am daily asked whether he is in America
at present—so little do the people of these crowded
cities interest themselves about that which is immediately
at their elbows.

20. LETTER XX.

My room-mate called a day or two since on General
Bertrand, and yesterday he returned the visit, and
spent an hour at our lodgings. He talked of Napoleon
with difficulty, and became very much affected
when my friend made some inquiries about the safety
of the body at St. Helena. The inquiry was suggested
by some notice we had seen in the papers of
an attempt to rob the tomb of Washington. The
general said that the vault was fifteen feet deep, and
covered by a slab that could not be moved without
machinery. He told us that Madame Bertrand had
many mementoes of the emperor, which she would be
happy to show us, and we promised to visit him.

At a party, a night or two since, I fell into conversation
with an English lady, who had lived several years
in Dublin, and was an intimate friend of Lady Morgan.
She was an uncommonly fine woman, both in
appearance and conversational powers, and told me
many anecdotes of the authoress, defending her from
all the charges usually made against her, except that
of vanity, which she allowed. I received, on the whole,
the impression that Lady Morgan's goodness of heart
was more than an offset to her certainly very innocent
weaknesses. My companion was much amused at an
American's asking after the “fender in Kildare street;”
though she half withdrew her cordiality when I told
her I knew the countryman of mine who wrote the
account of Lady Morgan, of which she complains so
bitterly in the “Book of the Boudoir.” It was this
lady with whom the fair authoress “dined in the
Chaussee d'Antin,” so much to her satisfaction.

While we were conversing, the lady's husband came
up, and finding I was an American, made some inquiries
about the progress of phrenology on the other
side of the water. Like most enthusiasts in the science,
his own head was a remarkably beautiful one;
and I soon found that he was the bosom friend of Dr.
Spurzheim, to whom he offered to introduce me. We
made an engagement for the next day, and the party
separated.

My new acquaintance called on me the next morning,
according to appointment, and we went together
to Dr. Spurzheim's residence. The passage at the
entrance was lined with cases, in which stood plaster
casts of the heads of distinguished men, orators, poets,
musicians—each class on its particular shelf—
making altogether a most ghastly company. The
doctor received my companion with great cordiality,
addressing him in French, and changing to very good
German-English when he made any observation to
me. He is a tall, large-boned man, and resembles
Harding, the American artist, very strikingly. His
head is finely marked; his features are bold, with
rather a German look; and his voice is particularly
winning, and changes its modulations, in argument,
from the deep, earnest tone of a man, to an almost
child-like softness. The conversation soon turned
upon America, and the doctor expressed, in ardent
terms, his desire to visit the United States, and said he
had thought of accomplishing it the coming summer.
He spoke of Dr. Channing—said he had read all his
works with avidity and delight, and considered him one
of the clearest and most expansive minds of the age.
If Dr. Channing had not strong developments of the
organs of ideality and benevolence, he said, he should
doubt his theory more than he had ever found reason
to. He knew Webster and Professor Silliman by
reputation, and seemed to be familiar with our country,
as few men in Europe are. One naturally, on meeting
a distinguished phrenologist, wishes to have his
own developments pronounced upon; but I had been
warned by my friend that Dr. Spurzheim refused such
examinations as a general principle, not wishing to deceive
people, and unwilling to run the risk of offending
them. After a half-hour's conversation, however, he
came across the room, and putting his hands under
my thick masses of hair, felt my head closely all over,
and mentioned at once a quality, which, right or wrong,
has given a tendency to all my pursuits in life. As
he knew absolutely nothing of me, and the gentleman
who introduced me knew no more, I was a little
startled. The doctor then requested me to submit to
the operation of having a cast taken of my head, an
offer which was too kind and particular to be declined;
and, appointing an hour to be at his rooms the following
day, we left him.

I was there again at twelve the morning after, and
found De Potter (the Belgian patriot) and Dr. Bowring,
with the phrenologist, waiting to undergo the
same operation. The preparations looked very formidable.
A frame, of the length of the human body,
lay in the middle of the room, with a wooden bowl to
receive the head, a mattress, and a long white dress to
prevent stain to the clothes. As I was the youngest,
I took my turn first. It was very like a preparation
for being beheaded. My neck was bared, my hair cut,
and the long white dress put on. The back of the
head is taken first; and, as I was only immersed up to
the ears in the liquid plaster, this was not very alarming.
The second part, however, demanded more
patience. My head was put once more into the stiffened
mould of the first half, and as soon as I could
get my features composed I was ordered to shut my
eyes; my hair was oiled and laid smooth, and the
liquid plaster poured slowly over my mouth, eyes, and
forehead, till I was cased completely in a stiffening
mask. The material was then poured on thickly, till
the mask was two or three inches thick, and the voices
of those standing over me were scarcely audible. I
breathed prettily freely through the two small orifices
at my nose; but the dangerous experiment of Mademoiselle
Sontag, who was nearly smothered in the
same operation, came across my mind rather vividly;
and it seemed to me that the doctor handled the plaster
quite too ungingerly, when he came to mould about
my nostrils. After a half hour's imprisonment, the
plaster became sufficiently hardened, and the thread
which was laid upon my face was drawn through, dividing
the mask into two parts. It was then gradually
removed, pulling very tenaciously upon my eyelashes
and eyebrows, and leaving all the cavities of my face
filled with particles of lime. The process is a tribute
to vanity, which one would not be willing to pay very
often.

I looked on at Dr. Bowring's incarceration with no
great feeling of relief. It is rather worse to see than
to experience, I think. The poet is a nervous man;
and as long as the muscles of his face were visible, his
lips, eyelids, and mouth, were quivering so violently
that I scarcely believed it would be possible to get an
impression of them. He has a beautiful face for a
scholar—clear, well-cut, finished features, expressive
of great purity of thought; and a forehead of noble
amplitude, white and polished as marble. His hair is
black and curling (indicating in most cases, Dr. Spurzheim
remarked, activity of mind), and forms a classical
relief to his handsome temples. Altogether, his
head would look well in a picture, though his ordinary
and ungraceful dress, and quick, oustling manner,
rather destroy the effect of it in society.

De Potter is one of the noblest-looking men I ever
saw. He is quite bald, with a broad, ample, majestic
head, the very model of dignity and intellect. De

Spurzheim considers his head one of the most extraordinary
he has met. Firmness is the great development
of its organs. His tone and manner are calm
and very impressive, and he looks made for great occasions—a
man stamped with the superiority which
others acknowledge when circumstances demand it.
He employs himself in literary pursuits at Paris, and
has just published a pamphlet on “the manner of
conducting a revolution, so that no after-revolution
shall be necessary.” I have translated the title awkwardly,
but that is the subject.

I have since heard Dr. Spurzheim lecture twice, and
have been with him to a meeting of the “Anthropological
society” (of which he is the president and De
Potter the secretary), where I witnessed the dissection
of the human brain. It was a most interesting and
satisfactory experiment, as an illustration of phrenology.
David the sculptor is a member of the society,
and was present. He looks more like a soldier
than an artist, however—wearing the cross of the
legion of honor, with a military frock coat, and an
erect, stern, military carriage. Spurzheim lectures in
a free, easy, unconstrained style, with occasionally a
little humor, and draws his arguments from admitted
facts only. Nothing could be more reasonable than
his premises, and nothing more like an axiom than
the results, as far as I have heard him. At any rate,
true or false, his theory is one of extreme interest,
and no time can be wasted in examining it; for it is
the study of man, and therefore the most important
of studies.

I have had several long conversations with Dr.
Spurzheim about America, and have at last obtained
his positive assurance that he would visit it. He
gave me permission this morning to say (what I am
sure all lovers of knowledge will be pleased to hear)
that he should sail for New York in the course of the
ensuing summer, and pass a year or more in lecturing
and travelling in the United States. He is a man to
obtain the immediate confidence and respect of a people
like ours, of the highest moral worth, and the
most candid and open mind. I hope, my dear M.
and F., that you will make our paper a vehicle for any
information he may wish to convey to the public, and
that you and all our friends will receive him with the
warmth and respect due to his reputation and worth.
If he arrive in August, as he anticipates, he proposes
to pass a month or so at New Haven, and then to proceed
to Boston, to commence his tour at the North.

P.S.—As I shall leave Paris shortly, you may expect
but one or two letters more from this metropolis. I
shall, however, as I extend my travels, find a greater
variety of materials for my future communications.

21. LETTER XXI.

I take my departure from Paris to-morrow. I have
just been making preparations to pack, and it has given
me a fit of bad spirits. I have been in France only
a few months, but if I had lived my life here, I could
not be more at home. In my almost universal acquaintance,
I have of course made pleasant friends,
and, however time and travel should make us indifferent
to such volant attachments, I can not now cast off
these threads of intimacy, without pulling a little upon
very sincere feelings. I have been burning the
mass of papers and cards that have accumulated in
my drawers; and the sight of these French invitations,
mementoes, as they are, of delightful and fascinating
hours, almost staggers my resolution of departure.
It has been an intoxicating time to me. Aside
from lighter attractions, this metropolis collects within
itself so much of the distinction and genius of the
world; and gifted men in Paris, coming here merely
for pleasure, are so peculiarly accessible, that one
looks upon them as friends to whom he has become
attached and accustomed, and leaves the sphere in
which he has met them, as if he had been a part of
it, and had a right to be regretted. I do not think I
shall ever spend so pleasant a winter again. And then
my local interest is not a light one. I am a great lover
of out-of-doors, and I have ransacked Paris thoroughly.
I know it all from its broad faubourgs to
its obscurest cul de sac. I have hunted with antiquaries
for coins and old armor; with lovers of adventure
for the amusing and odd; with the curious for
traces of history; with the romantic for the picturesque.
Paris is a world for research. It contains
more odd places, I believe, more odd people, and every
way more material for uncommon amusement,
than any other city in the universe. One might live
a life of novelty without crossing the barrier. All this
insensibly attaches one. My eye wanders at this moment
from my paper to these lovely gardens lying beneath
my window, and I could not feel more regret if
they were mine. Just over the long line of low clipped
trees, edging the fashionable terrace, I see the windows
of the king within half a stone's throw—the
windows at which Napoleon has stood, and the long
line of the monarchs of France, and it has become
to me so much a habit of thought, sitting here in the
twilight and musing on the thousand, thousand things
linked with the spot my eye embraces, that I feel as
if I had grown to it—as if Paris had become to me,
what it is proverbially and naturally enough to a
Frenchman—“the world.”

I have other associations which I part from less
painfully, because I hope at some future time to renew
them—those with my own countrymen. There
are few pleasanter circles than that of the Americans
in Paris. Lafayette and his numerous family make a
part of them. I could not learn to love this good
man more, but seeing him often brings one's reverence
more within the limits of the affections; and I
consider the little of his attention that has fallen to
my share the honored part of my life, and the part
best worth recording and remembering. He called
upon me a day or two ago, to leave with me some
copies of a translation of Mr. Cooper's letter on the
finances of our government, to be sent to my friend
Dr. Howe; but, to my regret, I did not see him. He
neglects no American, and is ever busied about some
project connected with their welfare. May God continue
to bless him!

And speaking of Mr. Cooper, no one who loves or
owns a pride in his native land, can live abroad without
feeling every day what we owe to the patriotism
as well as the genius of this gifted man. If there is an
individual who loves the soil that gave him birth, and so
shows it that we are more respected for it, it is he. Mr.
Cooper's position is a high one; he has great advantages,
and he improves them to the uttermost. His
benevolence and activity in all enterprises for the relief
of suffering, give him influence, and he employs
it like a true philanthropist and a real lover of his
country. I say this particularly, though it may look
like too personal a remark, because Americans abroad
are not always national. I am often mortified by reproaches
from foreigners, quoting admissions made by
my countrymen, which should be the last on their
lips. A very distinguished person told me a day or
two since, that “the Americans abroad were the worst
enemies we had in Europe. It is difficult to conceive
at home how such a remark stings. Proportionately,
one takes a true patriot to his heart, and I feel it right
to say here, that the love of country and active benevolence
of Mr. Cooper, distinguish him abroad,

even more than his genius. His house is one of the
most hospitable and agreeable in Paris; and with
Morse and the circle of artists and men of distinction
and worth about him, he is an acquaintance sincerely
to regret leaving.

From Mr. Rives, our minister, I have received every
possible kindness. He has attached me to his legation,
to facilitate my access to other courts and the
society of other cities, and to free me from all delays
and annoyances at frontiers and custom-houses. It
is a particular and valuable kindness, and I feel a pleasure
in acknowledging it. Then there is Dr. Bowring,
the lover and defender of the United States, who, as
the editor of the Westminster Review, should be well
remembered in America, and of him I have seen
much, and from him I have received great kindness.
Altogether, as I said before, Paris is a home to me,
and I leave it with a heavy heart.

I have taken a place on the top of the diligence for
a week. It is a long while to occupy one seat, but the
weather and the season are delicious; and in the covered
and roomy cabriolet, with the conducteur for a
living reference, and all the appliances for comfort, I
expect to live very pleasantly, night and day, till I
reach Marseilles. Vaucleuse is on the way, and I
shall visit it if I have time and good weather, perhaps.
At Marseilles I shall take the steamboat for Leghorn,
and thence get directly to Florence, where I shall remain
till I become familiar with the Italian, at least. I
lay down my pen till all this plan of travel is accomplished,
and so, for the present, adieu!

22. LETTER XXII.

Chalons, on the Saone.—I have broken my route
to stop at this pretty town, and take the steamboat
which goes down the Saone to Lyons to-morrow
morning. I have travelled two days and nights; but
an excellent dinner and a quickened imagination indispose
me for sleep, and, for want of better amusement
in a strange city at night, I will pass away an hour in
transcribing the hurried notes I have made at the
stopping places.

I chose, by advice, the part of the diligence called
the banquette—a covered seat over the front of the carriage,
commanding all the view, and free from the
dust of the lower apartments. The conducteur had
the opposite corner, and a very ordinary-looking man
sat between us; the seat holding three very comfortably.
A lady and two gentlemen occupied the coupé;
a dragoon and his family, going to join his regiment,
filled the rotonde; and in the interior was a motley
collection, whom I scarce saw after starting; the occupants
of the different parts of a diligence having
no more association, even in a week's travel, than people
living in an adjoining house in the city.

We rolled out of Paris by the faubourg St. Antoine,
and at the end of the first post passed the first object
that interested me—a small brick pavilion, built by
Henri Quatre for the beautiful Gabrielle d'Estrees.
It stands on a dull, level plain, not far from the banks
of the river; and nothing but the fact that it was once
occupied by the woman who most enslaved the heart
of the most chivalrous and fickle of the French monarchs,
would call your attention to it for a moment.

For the twenty or thirty miles which we travelled
by daylight, I saw nothing particularly curious or
beautiful. The guide-book is very diffuse upon the
chateaux and villages on the road, but I saw nothing
except very ordinary country-houses, and the same
succession of small and dirty villages, steeped to the
very chimneys in poverty. If ever I return to America,
I shall make a journey to the west, for the pure
refreshment of seeing industry and thrift. I am sick
to the heart of pauperism and misery. Everything
that is near the large towns in France is either splendid
or disgusting. There is no medium in condition
—nothing that looks like content—none of that class
we define in our country as the “respectable.”

The moon was a little in the wane, but bright, and
the night lovely. As we got further into the interior,
the towns began to look more picturesque and antique;
and, with the softening touch of the moonlight, and
the absence of beggars, the old low-browed buildings
and half-ruined churches assumed the beauty they
wear in description. I slept on the road, but the echo
of the wheels in entering a post-town woke me always;
and I rarely have felt the picturesque more keenly
than at these sudden wakings from dreams, perhaps,
of familiar things, finding myself opposite some shadowy
relic of another age; as if it were by magical
transportation, from the fireside to some place of which
I had heard or read the history.

I awoke as we drove into Sens at broad daylight.
We were just passing a glorious old pile of a cathedral,
which I ran back to see while the diligence stopped
to change horses. It is of pointed architecture.
black with age, and crusted with moss. It was to
this town that Thomas a Becket retired in disgrace at
his difference with Henry the Second. There is a
chapel in the cathedral, dedicated to his memory.
The French certainly should have the credit of leaving
things alone. This old pile stands as if the town
in which it is built had been desolate for centuries:
not a letter of the old sculptures chiselled out, not a
bird unnested, not a filament of the gathering moss
pulled away. All looks as if no human hand had
been near it—almost as if no human eye had looked
upon it. In America they would paint such an old
church white or red, shove down the pillars, and put
up pews, sell the pictures for fireboards, and cover
the tesselated pavement with sand, or a home-made
carpet.

As we passed under a very ancient gate, crowning
the old Roman ramparts of the town, a door opened,
and a baker, in white cap and apron, thrust out his
head to see us pass. His oven was blazing bright,
and he had just taken out a batch of hot bread, which
was smoking on the table; and what with the chill of
the morning air and having fasted for some fourteen
hours, I quite envied him his vocation. The diligence,
however, pushed on most mercilessly till twelve
o'clock, the French never dreaming of eating before
their late dejeuner—a mid-day meal always. When
we did get it, it was a dinner in every respect—meats
of all kinds, wine, and dessert, certainly as solid and
various as any of the American breakfasts, at which
travellers laugh so universally.

Auxerre is a pretty town, on a swelling bank of the
river Yonne; and I had admired it as one of the most
improved-looking villages of France. It was not till
I had breakfasted there, and travelled a league or two
toward Chalons, that I discovered by the guide-book
it was the ancient capital of Auxerrois, a famous
town in the time of Julius Cæsar, and had the honor
of being ravaged “at different times by Attila, the
Saracens, the Normans, and the Calvinists, vestiges
of whose devastations may still be seen.” If I had
not eaten of a positively modern paté foie gras, and an
omelette soufflé, at a nice little hotel, with a mistress in
a cap, and a coquettish French apron, I should for
give myself less easily for not having detected antiquity
in the atmosphere. One imagines more readily
than he realizes the charm of mere age without
beauty.

We were now in the province of Burgundy, and to
say nothing of the historical recollections, the vineyards
were all about us that delighted the palates of
the world. One does not dine at the Trois Freres, in
the Palais Royal, without contracting a tenderness for

the very name of Burgundy. I regretted that I was not
there in the season of the grape. The vines were just
budding, and the paysans, men and women, were scattered
over the vineyards, loosening the earth about the
roots, and driving stakes to support the young shoots.
At Saint Bris I found the country so lovely, that I left
the diligence at the post-house, and walked on to
mount a long succession of hills on foot. The road
sides were quite blue with the violets growing thickly
among the grass, and the air was filled with perfume.
I soon got out of sight of the heavy vehicle, and made
use of my leisure to enter the vineyards and talk to
the people at their work. I found one old man, with
all his family about him; the little ones with long baskets
on their backs, bringing manure, and one or two
grown-up boys and girls raking up the earth with the
unhandy hoe of the country, and setting it firmly
around the roots with their wooden shoes. It was a
pretty group, and I was very much amused with their
simplicity. The old man asked my country, and set
down his hoe in astonishment when I told him I was
an American. He wondered I was not more burnt,
living in such a hot country, and asked me what language
we spoke. I could scarce get away from his
civilities when I bade him “Good day.” No politeness
could have been more elegant than the manner
and expressions of this old peasant, and certainly
nothing could have appeared sincerer or kinder. I
kept on up the hill till I reached a very high point,
passing on my way a troop of Italians, going to Paris
with their organs and shows—a set of as ragged specimens
of the picturesque as I ever saw in a picture.
A lovely scene lay before me when I turned to look
back. The valley, on one side of which lies St. Bris,
is as round as a bowl, with an edge of mountain-tops
absolutely even all around the horizon. It slopes
down from every side to the centre, as if it had been
measured and hollowed by art; and there is not a fence
to be seen from one side to the other, and scarcely a
tree, but one green and almost unbroken carpet of
verdure, swelling up in broad green slopes to the top,
and realizing, with a slight difference, the similitude
of Madame de Genlis, of the place of satiety, eternal
green meadow and eternal blue sky. St. Bris is a
little handful of stone buildings around an old church;
just such a thing as a painter would throw into a picture—and
the different-colored grain, and here and
there a ploughed patch of rich yellow earth, and the
road crossing the hollow from hill to hill like a white
band; and then for the life of the scene, the group of
Italians, the cumbrous diligence, and the peasants in
their broad straw hats, scattered over the fields—it
was something quite beyond my usual experience of
scenery and accident. I had rarely before found so
much in one view to delight me.

After looking a while, I mounted again, and stood
on the very top of the hill; and, to my surprise, there,
on the other side, lay just such another valley, with
just such a village in its bosom, and the single improvement
of a river—the Yonne stealing through it,
with its riband-like stream; but all the rest of the
valley almost exactly as I have described the other.
I crossed a vineyard to get a view to the southeast,
and once more there lay a deep hollow valley before
me, formed like the other two, with its little hamlet
and its vineyards and mountains—as if there had been
three lakes in the hills, with their edges touching like
three bowls, and the terrace on which I stood was the
platform between them. It is a most singular formation
of country, really, and as beautiful as it is singular.
Each of these valleys might be ten miles across; and
if the dukes of Burgundy in feudal times rode ever
to St. Bris, I can conceive that their dukedom never
seemed larger to them than when crossing this triple
pex of highland.

At Saulieu we left the usual route, and crossed over
to Chagny. Between these two places lay a spot,
which, out of my own country, I should choose before
all others for a retreat from the world. As it was
off the route, the guide-book gave me not even the
name, and I have discovered nothing but that the little
hamlet is called Rochepot. It is a little nest of wild
scenery, a mimic valley shut in by high overhanging
crags, with the ruins of a battlemented and noble old
castle, standing upon a rock in the centre, with the
village of some hundred stone cottages at its very foot.
You might stand on the towers of the ruins, and toss
a biscuit into almost every chimney in the village.
The strong round towers are still perfect, and the
turrets and loop-holes and windows are still there;
and rank green vines have overrun the whole mass
everywhere; and nothing but the prodigious solidity
with which it was built could have kept it so long from
falling, for it is evidently one of the oldest castles in
Burgundy. I never saw before anything, even in a
picture, which realized perfectly my idea of feudal
position. Here lived the lord of the domain, a hundred
feet in the air in his rocky castle, right over the
heads of his retainers, with the power to call in every
soul that served him at a minute's warning, and with
a single blast of his trumpet. I do not believe a stone
has been displaced in the village for a hundred years.
The whole thing was redolent of antiquity. We
wound out of the place by a sharp narrow pass, and
there, within a mile of this old and deserted fortress,
lay the broad plains of Beaune and Chagny—one of
the most fertile and luxurious parts of France. I
was charmed altogether. How many things I have
seen this side the water that I have made an involuntary
vow in my heart to visit again, and at more leisure,
before I die!

From Chagny it was but one post to Chalons, and
here I am in a pretty, busy town, with broad beautiful
quays, where I have promenaded till dark, observing
this out-of-doors people; and now, having written a
long letter for a sleepy man, I will get to bed, and
redeem some portion of my two nights' wakefulness

23. LETTER XXIII.

I looked out of my window the last thing before
going to bed at Chalons, and the familiar constellation
of ursa major never shone brighter, and never made
me a more agreeable promise than that of fair weather
the following day for my passage down the Saone. I
was called at four, and it rained in torrents. The
steamboat was smaller than the smallest I have seen
in our country, and crowded to suffocation with children,
women, and lap-dogs. I appropriated my own
trunk, and spreading my umbrella, sat down upon it,
to endure my disappointment with what philosophy I
might. A dirty-looking fellow, who must have slept
in his clothes for a month, came up, with a loaf of
coarse bread under his arm, and addressed me, to my
sufficient astonishment, in Latin! He wanted to sit
under my umbrella. I looked at him a second time,
but he had touched my passion. Latin is the only
thing I have been driven to, in this world, that I ever
really loved; and a clear, mellow, unctuous pronunciation
of my dirty companion equally astonished and
pleased me. I made room for him on my trunk, and
though rusted somewhat since I philosophized over
Lucretius, we got on very tolerably. He was a German
student, travelling to Italy, and a fine specimen of
the class. A dirtier man I never saw, and hardly a

finer or more intellectual face. He knew everything,
and served me as a talking guide to the history of all
the places on the river.

Instead of eating all at once, as we do on board the
steamboats in America, the French boats have a restaurant,
from which you order what you please, and at
any hour. The cabin was set round with small tables,
and the passengers made little parties, and breakfasted
and dined at their own time. It is much the better
method. I descended to the cabin very hungry about
twelve o'clock, and was looking about for a place, when
a French gentleman politely rose, and observing that I
was alone, (my German friend living on bread and
water only), requested me to join his party at breakfast.
Two young ladies and a lad of fourteen sat at the
table, and addressing them by their familiar names, my
polite friend requested them to give me a place; and
then told me that they were his daughters and son,
and that he was travelling to Italy for the health of the
younger girl, a pale, slender creature, apparently about
eighteen. I was very well pleased with my position,
and rarely have passed an hour more agreeably.
French girls of the better classes never talk, but the
father was very communicative, and a Parisian, with
the cross of the legion of honor, and we found
abundance of matter for conversation. They have
stopped at Lyons, where I write at present, and I shall
probably join their party to Marseilles.

The clouds broke away after mid-day, and the banks
of the river brightened wonderfully with the change.
The Saone is about the size of the Mohawk, but not
half so beautiful; at least for the greater part of its
course. Indeed, you can hardly compare American
with European rivers, for the charm is of another description
quite, With us it is nature only, here it is
almost all art. Our rivers are lovely, because the outline
of the shore is graceful, and particularly because
the vegetation is luxuriant. The hills are green, the
foliage deep and lavish, the rocks grown over with
vines or moss, the mountains in the distance covered
with pines and other forest-trees; everything is wild,
and nothing looks bare or steril. The rivers of
France are crowned on every height with ruins, and in
the bosom of every valley lies a cluster of picturesque
stone cottages; but the fields are naked, and there are
no trees; the mountains are barren and brown, and
everything looks as if the dwellings had been deserted
by the people, and nature had at the same time gone
to decay. I can conceive nothing more melancholy
than the views upon the Saone, seen, as I saw them,
though vegetation is out everywhere, and the banks
should be beautiful if ever. As we approached Lyons
the river narrowed and grew bolder, and the last ten
miles were enchanting. Naturally the shores at this
part of the Saone are exceedingly like the highlands
of the Hudson above West Point. Abrupt hills rise
from the river's edge, and the windings are sharp and
constant. But imagine the highlands of the Hudson
crowded with antique chateaux, and covered to the
very top with terraces and summer-houses and hanging-gardens,
gravel walks and beds of flowers, instead
of wild pines and precipices, and you may get a very
correct idea of the Saone above Lyons. You emerge
from one of the dark passes of the river by a sudden
turn, and there before you lies this large city, built on
both banks, at the foot and on the sides of mountains.
The bridges are fine, and the broad, crowded
quays, all along the edges of the river, have a beautiful
effect. We landed at the stone stairs, and I selected
a hotel by chance, where I have found seven Americans
of my acquaintance. We have been spending
the evening at the rooms of a townsman of mine, very
pleasantly.

There is a great deal of magnificence at Lyons, in
the way of quays, promenades, and buildings; but its
excessive filthiness spoils everything. One could
scarce admire a Venus in such an atmosphere; and
you can not find room to stand in Lyons where you
have not some nauseating odor. I was glad to escape
from the lower streets, and climb up the long staircases
to the observatory that overhangs the town. From
the base of this elevation the descent of the river is almost
a precipice. The houses hang on the side of the
steep hill, and their doors enter from the long alleys
of stone staircases by which you ascend. On every
step, and at almost every foot of the way, stood a beggar.
They might have touched hands from the quay
to the summit. If they were not such objects of real
wretchedness, it would be laughable to hear the church
calendar of saints repeated so volubly. The lame
hobble after you, the blind stumble in your way, the
sick lie and stretch out their hands from the wall, and
all begin in the name of the Virgin Mary, and end
with “Mon bon Monsieur,” and “un petit sous.” I
confined my charities to a lovely child, that started out
from its mother's lap, and ran down to meet us—a dirty
and ragged little thing, but with the large dark eyes of
the province; and a skin, where one could see it, of
the clearest nut-brown teint. Her mother had five
such, and each of them, to any one who loved children,
would have been a treasure of beauty and interest.

It was holy-week, and the church of Notre Dame de
Fourvières, which stands on the summit of the hill,
was crowded with people. We went in for a moment,
and sat down on a bench to rest. My companion was
a Swiss captain of artillery, who was a passenger in the
boat, a very splendid fellow, with a mustache that he
might have tied behind his ears. He had addressed
me at the hotel, and proposed that we should visit the
curiosities of the town together. He was a model of
a manly figure, athletic, and soldier-like, and standing
near him was to get the focus of all the dark eyes in
the congregation.

The new square tower stands at the side of the
church, and rises to the height of perhaps sixty feet.
The view from it is said to be one of the finest in the
world. I have seen more extensive ones, but never one
that comprehended more beauty and interest. Lyons
lies at the foot, with the Saone winding through its
bosom in abrupt curves; the Rhone comes down from
the north on the other side of the range of mountains,
and meeting the Saone in a broad stream below the
town, they stretch off to the south, through a diversified
landscape; the Alps rise from the east like the
edges of a thunder-cloud, and the mountains of Savoy
fill up the interval to the Rhone. All about the foot
of the monument lie gardens, of exquisite cultivation;
and above and below the city the villas of the rich;
giving you altogether as delicious a nucleus for a broad
circle of scenery as art and nature could create, and
one sufficiently in contrast with the barrenness of the
rocky circumference to enhance the charm, and content
you with your position. Half way down the hill
lies an old monastery, with a lovely garden walled in
from the world: and several of the brotherhood were
there, idling up and down the shaded alleys, with their
black dresses sweeping the ground, possibly in holy
contemplation. The river was covered with boats, the
bells were ringing to church, the glorious old cathedral,
so famous for its splendor, stood piled up, with
its arches and gray towers, in the square below; the
day was soft, sunny, and warm, and existence was a
blessing. I leaned over the balustrade, I know not
how long, looking down upon the scene about me;
and I shall ever remember it as one of those few unalloyed
moments, when the press of care was taken off
my mind, and the chain of circumstances was strong
enough to set aside both the past and the future, and
leave me to the quiet enjoyment of the present. I have
found such hours “few and far between.”

24. LETTER XXIV.

I found a day and a half quite enough for Lyons.
The views from the mountain and the river were the
only things that pleased me. I made the usual dry
visit to the library and the museum, and admired the
Hotel de Ville, and the new theatre, and the front of
the Maison de Tolosan, that so struck the fancy of
Joseph II., and having “despatched the lions,” like a
true cockney traveler, I was too happy to escape the
offensive smells of the streets, and get to my rooms.
One does not enjoy much comfort within doors either.
Lyons is a great imitation metropolis—a sort of second-hand
Paris. I am not very difficult to please, but
I found the living intolerable. It was an affectation
of abstruse cookery throughout. We sat down to
what is called the best table in the place, and it was a
series of ludicrous travesties, from the soup to the
salad. One can eat well in the country, because the
dishes are simple, and he gets the natural taste of
things; but to come to a table covered with artificial
dishes, which he has been accustomed to see in their
perfection, and to taste and send away everything in
disgust, is a trial of temper which is reserved for the
traveller at Lyons.

The scenery on the river, from Lyons to Avignon,
has great celebrity, and I had determined to take that
course to the south. Just at this moment, however,
the Rhone had been pronounced too low, and the
steamboats were stopped. I probably made the last
passage by steam on the Saone, for we ran aground
repeatedly, and were compelled to wait till horses could
be procured to draw the boat into deep water. It was
quite amusing to see with what a regular, business-like
air, the postillions fixed their traces to the prow, and
whipped into the middle of the river. A small boat
was my only resource, and I found a man on the quay
who plied the river in what is called batteaux de poste,
rough shallops with flat bottoms, which are sold for
firewood on their arrival, the rapidity of the Rhone
rendering a return against the current next to impossible.
The sight of the frail contrivance in which I
was to travel nearly two hundred miles, rather startled
me, but the man assured me he had several other passengers,
and two ladies among them. I paid the
arrhes, or earnest money, and was at the river-stairs
punctually at four the next morning.

To my very sincere pleasure the two ladies were the
daughters of my polite friend and fellow passenger
from Chalons. They were already on board, and the
little shalop sat deep in the water with her freight.
Besides these, there were two young French chasseurs
going home on leave of absence, a pretty Parisian
dress-maker flying from the cholera, a masculine woman,
the wife of a dragoon, and my friend the captain.
We pushed out into the current, and drifted slowly
down under the bridges, without oars, the padrone
quietly smoking his pipe at the helm. In a few minutes
we were below the town, and here commenced
again the cultivated and ornamented banks I had so
much admired on my approach to Lyons from the
other side. The thin haze was just stirring from the
river's surface, the sunrise flush was on the sky, the
air was genial and impregnated with the smell of grass
and flowers, and the little changing landscapes; as we
followed the stream, broke upon us like a series of exquisite
dioramas. The atmosphere was like Doughty's
pictures, exactly. I wished a thousand times for
that delightful artist, that he might see how richly the
old chateaux and their picturesque appurtenances filled
up the scene. It would have given a new turn to his
pencil.

We soon arrived at the junction of the rivers, and as
we touched the rapid current of the Rhone, the little
shallop yielded to its sway, and redoubled its velocity.
The sun rose clear, the cultivation grew less and less,
the hills began to look distant and barren, and our little
party became sociable in proportion. We closed around
the invalid, who sat wrapped in a cloak in the stern,
leaning on her father's shoulder, and talked of Paris
and its pleasures—a theme of which the French are
never weary. Time passed delightfully. Without
being decidedly pretty, our two Parisiennes were quiet-mannered
and engaging; and the younger one particularly,
whose pale face and deeply-sunken eyes gave
her a look of melancholy interest, seemed to have
thought much, and to feel besides, that her uncertain
health gave her a privilege of overstepping the rigid
reserve of an unmarried girl. She talks freely, and
with great delicacy of expression and manner.

We ran ashore at the little village of Condrieu to
breakfast. We were assailed on stepping out of the
boat by the demoiselles of two or three rival auberges—
nice-looking, black-eyed girls, in white aprons, who
seized us by the arm, and pulled each to her own
door, with torrents of unintelligible patois. We left
it to the captain, who selected the best-looking leader,
and we were soon seated around a table covered with
a lavish breakfast; the butter, cheese, and wine excellent,
at least. A merrier party, I am sure, never
astonished the simple people of Condrieu. The pretty
dress-maker was full of good-humor and politeness,
and delighted at the envy with which the rural belles
regarded her knowing Parisian cap; the chasseurs
sang the popular songs of the army, and joked with
the maids of the auberge; the captain was inexhaustibly
agreeable, and the hour given us by the padrone
was soon gone. We embarked with a thousand adieus
from the pleased people, and altogether it was more
like a scene from Wilhelm Meister, than a passage
from real life.

The wind soon rose free and steady from the northwest,
and with a spread sail we ran past Vienne, at ten
miles in the hour. This was the metropolis of my
old friends, “the Allobrogues,” in Cesar's Commentaries.
I could not help wondering at the feelings
with which I was passing over such classic ground.
The little dress-maker was giving us an account of
her fright at the cholera, and every one in the boat
was in agonies of laughter. I looked at the guide-book
to find the name of the place, and the first glance
at the word carried me back to my old school-desk at
Andover, and conjured up for a moment the redolent
classic interest with which I read the history of the
land I was now hurrying through. That a laugh with
a modern grisette should engross me entirely, at the
moment I was traversing such a spot, is a possibility
the man may realize much more readily than the
school-boy. A new roar of merriment from my companions
plucked me back effectually from Andover to
the Rhone, and I thought no more of Gaul or its great
historian.

We floated on during the day, passing chateaux and
ruins constantly; but finding the country barren and
rocky to a dismal degree, I can not well imagine how
the Rhone has acquired its reputation for beauty. It
has been sung by the poets more than any other river
in France, and the various epithets that have been applied
to it have become so common, that you can not
mention it without their rising to your lips; but the
Saone and the Seine are incomparably more lovely,
and I am told the valleys of the Loire are the most
beautiful part of France. From its junction with the
Saone to the Mediterranean, the Rhone is one stretch
of barrenness.

We passed a picturesque chateau, built very wildly
on a rock washed by the river, called “La Roche de
Glun,” and twilight soon after fell, closing in our view

to all but the river edge. The wind died away, but
the stars were bright and the air mild; and, quite
fatigued to silence, our little party leaned on the sides
of the boat, and waited till the current should float us
down to our resting-place for the night. We reached
Valence at ten, and with a merry dinner and supper in
one, which kept us up till after midnight, we got to
our coarse but clean beds, and slept soundly.

The following forenoon we ran under the Pont St.
Esprit, an experiment the guide-book calls very dangerous.
The Rhone is rapid and noisy here, and we
shot under the arches of the fine old structure with
great velocity; but the “Rapids of the St. Lawrence”
are passed constantly without apprehension by travellers
in America, and those of the Rhone are a mere
mill-race in comparison. We breakfasted just below,
at a village where we could scarce understand a syllable,
the patois was so decided, and at sunset we were
far down between the provinces of Dauphiny and Languedoc,
with the villages growing thicker and greener,
and a high mountain within ten or fifteen miles, covered
with snow nearly to the base. We stopped opposite
the old castle of Rocheméuse to pay the droit.
It was a demi-fete day, and the inhabitants of a village
back from the river had come out to the green bank
in their holyday costume for a revel. The bank swelled
up from the stream to a pretty wood, and the green
sward between was covered with these gay people, arrested
in their amusements by our arrival. We jumped
out for a moment, and I walked up the bank and
endeavored to make the acquaintance of a strikingly
handsome woman of about thirty, but the patois was
quite too much. After several vain attempts to understand
each other, she laughed and turned on her
heel, and I followed the call of the padrone to the
batteau. For five or six miles below, the river passed
through a kind of meadow, and an air more loaded
with fragrance I never breathed. The sun was just
down, and with the mildness of the air, and quiet glide
of the boat on the water, it was quite enchanting.
Conversation died away, and I went forward and lay
down in the bow alone, with a fit of desperate musing.
It is as singular as it is certain, that the more one enjoys
the loveliness of a foreign land, the more he feels
how absolutely his heart is at home only in his own
country.

25. LETTER XXV.

I entered Avignon after a delicious hour on the
Rhone, quite in the mood to do poetical homage to
its associations, My dreams of Petrarch and Vaucluse
were interrupted by a scene between my friend
the captain, and a stout boatman, who had brought
his baggage from the batteau. The result was an
appeal to the mayor, who took the captain aside
after the matter was argued, and told him in his ear
that he must compromise the matter, for he dared
not give a judgment in his favor! The man had
demanded twelve francs where the regulations allowed
him but one, and palpable as the imposition
was, the magistrate refused to interfere. The captain
curled his mustache and walked the room in a terrible
passion, and the boatman, an herculean fellow, eyed
him with a look of assurance which quite astonished
me. After the case was settled, I asked an explanation
of the mayor. He told me frankly, that the fellow
belonged to a powerful class of men of the lowest
description, who, having declared first for the
present government, were and would be supported by
it in almost any question where favor could be shown
—that all the other classes of inhabitants were malcontents,
and that between positive strength and royal
favor, the boatmen and their party had become too
powerful even for the ordinary enforcement of the law.

The following day was so sultry and warm, that I
gave up all idea of a visit to Vaucluse. We spent
the morning under the trees which stand before the
café, in the village square, and at noon we took the
steamboat upon the Rhone for Arles. An hour or
two brought us to this ancient town, where we were
compelled to wait till the next day, the larger boat
which goes hence by the mouths of the Rhone to
Marseilles, being out of order.

We left our baggage in the boat, and I walked up
with the captain to see the town. An officer whom
we addressed for information on the quay politely offered
to be our guide, and we passed three or four
hours rambling about, with great pleasure. Our first
object was the Roman ruins, for which the town is
celebrated. We traversed several streets, so narrow
that the old time-worn houses on either side seemed
to touch at the top, and in the midst of a desolate and
poverty-stricken neighborhood, we came suddenly upon
a noble Roman amphitheatre of gigantic dimensions,
and sufficiently preserved to be a picturesque
ruin. It was built on the terrace of a hill, overlooking
the Rhone. From the towers of the gateway, the
view across the river into the lovely province of Languedoc,
is very extensive. The arena is an excavation
of perhaps thirty feet in depth, and the rows of seats,
all built of vast blocks of stone, stretch round it in retreating
and rising platforms to the surface of the hill.
The lower story is surrounded with dens; and the
upper terrace is enclosed with a circle of small apartments,
like boxes in a theatre, opening by handsome
arches upon the scene. It is the ruin of a noble
structure, and even without the help of the imagination,
exceedingly impressive. It seems to be at present
turned into a play-ground. The dens and cavities
were full of black-eyed and happy creatures, hiding
and hallooing with all the delightful spirit and gayety
of French children. Probably, it was never appropriated
to a better use.

We entered the cathedral in returning. It is an
antique, and considered a very fine one. The twilight
was just falling; and the candles burning upon the
altar, had a faint, dull glare, making the dimness of
the air more perceptible. I walked up the long aisle
to the side chapel, without observing that my companions
had left me, and quite tired with my walk,
seated myself against one of the gothic pillars, enjoying
the quiet of the place, and the momentary relief
from exciting objects. It struck me presently that
there was a dead silence in the church, and, as much
to hear the sound of English as for any better motive,
I approached the priest's missal, which lay open on a
stand near me, and commenced translating a familiar
psalm aloud. My voice echoed through the building
with a fulness which startled me, and looking over my
shoulder, I saw that a simple, poor old woman was
kneeling in the centre of the church, praying alone.
She had looked up at my interruption of the silence
of the place, but her beads still slipped slowly through
her fingers, and feeling that I was intruding possibly
between a sincere worshipper and her Maker, I withdrew
to the side aisle, and made my way softly out of
the cathedral.

Arles appears to have modernized less than any
town I have seen in France. The streets and the inhabitants
look as if they had not changed for a century.
The dress of the women is very peculiar; the
waist of the gown coming up to a point behind, between
the shoulder blades, and consequently very short
in front, and the high cap bound to the head with
broad velvet ribands, suffering nothing but the jet

black curls to escape over the forehead. As a class,
they are the handsomest women I have seen. Nothing
could be prettier than the small-featured lively
brunettes we saw sitting on the stone benches at every
door.

We ran down the next morning, in a few hours to
Marseilles. It was a cloudy, misty day, and I did not
enjoy, as I expected, the first view of the Mediterranean
from the mouths of the Rhone. We put quite
out into the swell of the sea, and the passengers were
all strewn on the deck in the various gradations of
sickness. My friend the captain, and myself, had the
only constant stomachs on board. I was very happy
to distinguish Marseilles through the mist, and as we
approached nearer, the rocky harbor and the islands
of chatéau d'If and Pomègue, with the fortress at the
mouth of the harbor, came out gradually from the
mist, and the view opened to a noble amphitheatre of
rocky mountains, in whose bosom lies Marseilles at
the edge of the sea. We ran into the narrow cove
which forms the inner harbor, passing an American
ship, the “William Penn,” just arrived from Philadelphia,
and lying in quarantine. My blood started at
the sight of the starred flag; and as we passed closer
and I read the name upon her stern, a thousand recollections
of that delightful city sprang to my heart, and
I leaned over to her from the boat's side, with a feeling
of interest and pleasure to which the foreign tongue
that called me to bid adieu to newer friends, seemed
an unwelcome interruption.

I parted from my pleasant Parisian friend and his
family, however, with real regret. They were polite
and refined, and had given me their intimacy voluntarily
and without reserve. I shook hands with them
on the quay, and wished the pale and quiet invalid better
health, with more of feeling than is common with
acquaintances of a day. I believe them kind and sincere,
and I have not found these qualities growing so
thickly in the world that I can thrust aside anything
that resembles them with a willing mistrust.

The quay of Marseilles is one of the most varied
scenes to be met with in Europe. Vessels of all nations
come trading to its port, and nearly every costume
in the world may be seen in its busy crowds. I
was surprised at the number of Greeks. Their picturesque
dresses and dark fine faces meet you at every
step, and it would be difficult, if it were not for the
shrinking eye, to believe them capable of an ignoble
thought. The mould of the race is one for heroes,
but if all that is said of them be true, the blood has
become impure. Of the two or three hundred I must
have seen at Marseilles, I scarce remember one whose
countenance would not have been thought remarkable.

I have remained six days in Marseilles by the advice
of the Sardinian consul, who assured me that so
long a residence in the south of France, is necessary
to escape quarantine for the cholera, at the ports or on
the frontiers of Italy. I have obtained his certificate
to-day, and depart to-morrow for Nice. My forced
sejour here has been far from an amusing or a willing
one. The “mistral” has blown chilly and with suffocating
dryness, so that I have scarce breathed freely
since I entered the town, and the streets, though
handsomely laid out and built, are intolerable from the
dust. The sun scorches your skin to a blister, and
the wind chills your blood to the bone. There are
beautiful public walks, which, at the more moist seasons,
must be delightful, but at present the leaves on
the trees are all white, and you can not keep your eyes
open long enough to see from one end of the promenade
to the other. Within doors, it is true, I have
found everything which could compensate for such
evils; and I shall carry away pleasant recollections of
the hospitality of the Messrs. Fitch, and others of my
countrymen, living here—gentlemen whose courtesies
are well-remembered by every American traveller
through the south of France.

I sank into the corner of the coupé of the diligence
for Toulon, at nine o'clock in the evening, and awoke
with the gray of the dawn at the entrance of the pass
of Ollioules, one of the wildest defiles I ever saw.
The gorge is the bed of a winter torrent, and you
travel three miles or more between two mountains
seemingly cleft asunder, on a road cut out a little
above the stream, with naked rock to the height of
two or three hundred feet almost perpendicularly
above you. Nothing could be more bare and desolate
than the whole pass, and nothing could be richer or
more delightfully cultivated than the low valleys upon
which it opens. It is some four or five miles hence
to Toulon, and we traversed the road by sunrise, the
soft, gray light creeping through the olive and orange
trees with which the fields are laden, and the peasants
just coming out to their early labor. You see no
brute animal here except the mule; and every countryman
you meet is accompanied by one of these serviceable
little creatures, often quite hidden from sight
by the enormous load he carries, or pacing patiently
along with a master on his back, who is by far the
larger of the two.

The vineyards begin to look delightfully; for the
thick black stump which was visible over the fields
I have hitherto passed, is in these warm valleys covered
already with masses of luxuriant vine leaves, and
the hill-sides are lovely with the light and tender verdure.
I saw here for the first time, the olive and date
trees in perfection. They grow in vast orchards
planted regularly, and the olive resembles closely the
willow, and reaches about the same height and shape.
The leaves are as slender but not quite so long, and
the color is more dusky, like the bloom upon a grape.
Indeed, at a short distance, the whole tree looks like a
mass of untouched fruit.

I was agreeably disappointed in Toulon. It is a rural
town with a harbor—not the dirty seaport one naturally
expects to find it. The streets are the cleanest
I have seen in France, some of them lined with trees,
and the fountains all over it freshen the eye delightfully.
We had an hour to spare, and with Mr. D—e,
an Irish gentleman, who had been my travelling companion,
since I parted with my friend the Swiss, I
made the circuit of the quays. They were covered
with French naval officers and soldiers, promenading
and conversing in the lively manner of this gayest of
nations. A handsome child, of perhaps six years, was
selling roses at one of the corners, and for a sous, all
she demanded, I bought six of the most superb damask
buds just breaking into flower. They were the
first I had seen from the open air since I left America,
and I have not often purchased so much pleasure with
a copper coin.

Toulon was interesting to me as the place where
Napoleon's career began. The fortifications are very
imposing. We passed out of the town over the draw-bridge,
and were again in the midst of a lovely landscape,
with an air of bland and exhilarating softness, and everything
that could delight the eye. The road runs
along the shore of the Mediterranean, and the fields
are green to the water edge.

We arrived at Antibes to-day at noon, within fifteen
miles of the frontier of Sardinia. We have run
through most of the south of France, and have found
it all like a garden. The thing most like it in our
country is the neighborhood of Boston, particularly
the undulated country about Brookline and Dorchester.
Remove all the stone fences from that sweet
country, put here and there an old chateau on an eminence,
and change the pretty white mock cottages of
gentlemen, for the real stone cottages of peasantry,
and you have a fair picture of the scenery of this celebrated

shore. The Mediterranean should be added
as a distance, with its exquisite blue, equalled by
nothing but an American sky in a July noon—its
crowds of sail, of every shape and nation, and the
Alps in the horizon crested with snow, like clouds half
touched by the sun. It is really a delicious climate.
Out of the scorching sun the air is bracing and cool;
and though my ears have been blistered in walking up
the hills in a travelling cap, I have scarcely experienced
an uncomfortable sensation of heat, and this in my
winter dress, with flannels and a surtout, as I have
worn them for the six months past in Paris. The air
could not be tempered more accurately for enjoyment.
I regret to go in-doors. I regret to sleep it away.

Antibes was fortified by the celebrated Vauban, and
it looks impregnable enough to my unscientific eye.
If the portcullises were drawn up, I would not undertake
to get into the town with the full consent of the
inhabitants. We walked around the ramparts which
are washed by the Mediterranean, and got an appetite
in the sea-breeze, which we would willingly have dispensed
with. I dislike to abuse people, but I must
say that the cuisine of Madame Agarra, at the “Gold
Eagle,” is rather the worst I have fallen upon in my
travels. Her price, as is usual in France, was proportionably
exorbitant. My Irish friend, who is one
of the most religious gentlemen of his country I ever
met, came as near getting into a passion with his supper
and bill, as was possible for a temper so well disciplined.
For myself, having acquired only polite
French, I can but “look daggers” when I am abused.
We depart presently for Nice, in a ricketty barouche,
with post-horses, the courier, or post-coach, going no
farther. It is a roomy old affair, that has had pretensions
to style some time since Henri Quarte, but the
arms on its panels are illegible now, and the ambitious
driving-box is occupied by the humble materials
to remedy a probable break-down by the way. The
postillion is cracking his whip impatiently, my friend
has called me twice, and I must put up my pencil.

Antibes again! We have returned here after an
unsuccessful attempt to enter the Sardinian dominions.
We were on the road by ten in the morning,
and drove slowly along the shores of the Mediterranean,
enjoying to the utmost the heavenly weather and
the glorious scenery about us. The driver pointed
out to us a few miles from Antibes, the very spot on
which Napoleon landed on his return from Elba, and
the tree, a fine old olive, under which he slept three
hours, before commencing his march. We arrived at
the Pont de Var about one, and crossed the river, but
here we were met by a guard of Sardinian soldiers,
and our passports were demanded. The commissary
came from the guard-house with a long pair of tongs
and receiving them open, read them at the longest
possible distance. They were then handed back to
us in the same manner, and we were told we could not
pass. We then handed him our certificates of quarantine
at Marseilles; but were told it availed nothing,
a new order having arrived from Turin that very morning,
to admit no travellers from infected or suspected
places across the frontier. We asked if there were
no means by which we could pass; but the commissary
only shook his head, ordered us not to dismount
on the Sardinian side of the river, and shut his door.
We turned about and recrossed the bridge in some
perplexity. The French commissary at St. Laurent,
the opposite village, received us with a suppressed
smile, and informed us that several parties of travellers,
among others an English gentleman and his wife
and sister, were at the auberge, waiting for an answer
from the prefect of Nice, having been turned back in
the same manner since morning. We drove up, and
they advised us to send our passports by the postillion,
with a letter to the consuls of our respective nations,
requesting information, which we did immediately.

Nice is three miles from St. Laurent, and as we
could not expect an answer for several hours, we
amused ourselves with a stroll along the banks of the
Var to the Mediterranean. The Sardinian side is bold,
and wooded to the tops of the hills very richly. We
kept along a mile or more through the vineyards, and
returned in time to receive a letter from the American
consul, confirming the orders of the commissary, but
advising us to return to Antibes, and sail thence for
Villa Franca, a lazaretto in the neighborhood of Nice,
whence we could enter Italy, after seven days quarantine!
By this time several travelling-carriages had
collected, and all, profiting by our experience, turned
back together. We are now at the “Gold Eagle,”
deliberating. Some have determined to give up their
object altogether, but the rest of us sail to-morrow
morning in a fishing-boat for the lazaretto.

Lazaretto, Villa Franca.—There were but
eight of the twenty or thirty travellers stopped at the
bridge who thought it worth while to persevere. We
are all here in this pest-house, and a motley mixture
of nations it is. There are two young Sicilians returning
from college to Messina; a Belgian lad of
seventeen, just started on his travels; two aristocratic
young Frenchmen, very elegant and very ignorant of
the world, running down to Italy in their own carriage,
to avoid the cholera; a middle-aged surgeon in the
British navy, very cool and very gentlemanly; a vulgar
Marseilles trader, and myself.

We were from seven in the morning till two getting
away from Antibes. Our difficulties during the whole
day are such a practical comparison of the freedom
of European states and ours, that I may as well detail
them.

First of all, our passports were to be vised by the
police. We were compelled to stand an hour with
our hats off, in a close, dirty office, waiting our turn
for this favor. The next thing was to get the permission
of the prefect of the marine to embark; and this
occupied another hour. Thence we were taken to
the health-office, where a bill of health was made out
for eight persons going to a lazaretto! The padrone's
freight duties were then to be settled, and we went
back and forth between the Sardinian consul and the
French, disputing these for another hour or more.
Our baggage was piled upon the charrette at last, to
be taken to the boat. The quay is outside the gate,
and here are stationed the douanes, or custom-officers,
who ordered our trunks to be taken from the cart, and
searched them from top to bottom. After a half hour
spent in repacking our effects in the open street, amid
a crowd of idle spectators, we were suffered to proceed.
Almost all these various gentlemen expect a
fee, and some demand a heavy one; and all this trouble
and expense of time and money to make a voyage
of fifteen miles in a fishing-boat!

We hoisted the fisherman's lateen sail, and put out
of the little harbor in very bad temper. The wind
was fair, and we ran along the shore for a couple of
hours, till we came to Nice, where we were to stop for
permission to go to the lazaretto. We were hailed
off the mole with a trumpet, and suffered to pass.
Doubling a little point, half a mile farther on, we ran
into the bay of Villa Franca, a handful of houses at
the base of an amphitheatre of mountains. A little
round tower stood in the centre of the harbor, built
upon a rock, and connected with the town by a draw-bridge,
and we were landed at a staircase outside, by
which we mounted to show our papers to the health-officer.
The interior was a little circular yard, separated
from an office on the town side by an iron grating,
and looking out on the sea by two embrasures
for cannon. Two strips of water and the sky above

was our whole prospect for the hour that we waited
here. The cause of the delay was presently explained
by clouds of smoke issuing from the interior. The
tower filled, and a more nauseating odor I never inhaled.
We were near suffocating with the intolerable
smell, and the quantity of smoke deemed necessary to
secure his majesty's officers against contagion.

A cautious-looking old gentleman, with gray hair,
emerged at last from the smoke, with a long cane-pole
in his hand, and, coughing at every syllable, requested
us to insert our passports in the split at the extremity,
which he thrust through the gate. This being done,
we asked him for bread. We had breakfasted at seven,
and it was now sundown—near twelve hours' fast.
Several of my companions had been seasick with the
swell of the Mediterranean, in coming from Antibes,
and all were faint with hunger and exhaustion. For
myself, the villanous smell of our purification had
made me sick, and I had no appetite; but the rest ate
very voraciously of a loaf of coarse bread, which was
extended to us with a tongs and two pieces of paper.

After reading our passports, the magistrate informed
us that he had no orders to admit us to the lazaretto,
and we must lie in our boat till he could send a messenger
to Nice with our passports and obtain permission.
We opened upon him, however, with such a
flood of remonstrance, and with such an emphasis
from hunger and fatigue, that he consented to admit
us temporarily on his own responsibility, and gave the
boatmen orders to row back to a long, low stone building,
we had observed at the foot of a precipice at the
entrance to the harbor.

He was there before us, and as we mounted the
stone ladder he pointed through the bars of a large
inner gate to a single chamber, separated from the
rest of the building, and promising to send us something
to eat in the course of the evening, left us to
take possession. Our position was desolate enough.
The building was new, and the plaster still soft and
wet. There was not an article of furniture in the
chamber, and but a single window; the floor was of
brick, and the air as damp within as a cellar. The
alternative was to remain out of doors, in the small
yard, walled up thirty feet on three sides, and washed
by the sea on the other; and here, on a long block of
granite, the softest thing I could find, I determined to
make an al fresco night of it.

Bread, cheese, wine, and cold meat, seethed, Italian
fashion, in nauseous oil, arrived about nine o'clock;
and, by the light of a candle standing in a boot, we
sat around on the brick floor, and supped very merrily.
Hunger had brought even our two French exquisites
to their fare, and they ate well. The navy surgeon
had seen service, and had no qualms; the Sicilians
were from a German university, and were not delicate;
the Marseilles trader knew no better; and we should
have been less contented with a better meal. It was
superfluous to abuse it.

A steep precipice hangs immediately over the lazaretto,
and the horn of the half moon was just dipping
below it, as I stretched myself to sleep. With a folded
coat under me, and a carpet-bag for a pillow, I soon fell
asleep, and slept soundly till sunrise. My companions
had chosen shelter, but all were happy to be early
risers. We mounted our wall upon the sea, and
promenaded till the sun was broadly up, and the breeze
from the Mediterranean sharpened our appetites, and
then finishing the relics of our supper, we waited with
what patience we might the appearance of our breakfast.

The magistrate arrived at twelve, yesterday, with a
commissary from Villa Franca, who is to be our victualler
during the quarantine. He has enlarged our
limits, by a stone staircase and an immense chamber,
on condition that we pay for an extra guard, in the
shape of a Sardinian soldier, who is to sleep in our
room, and eat at our table. By the way, we have a
table, and four rough benches, and these, with three
single mattresses, are all the furniture we can procure.
We are compelled to sleep across the latter, of course,
to give every one his share.

We have come down very contentedly to our situation,
and I have been exceedingly amused at the
facility with which eight such different tempers can
amalgamate upon compulsion. Our small quarters
bring us in contact continually, and we harmonize
like schoolboys. At this moment the Marseilles trader
and the two Frenchmen are throwing stones at something
that is floating out with the tide; the surgeon
has dropped his Italian grammar to decide upon the
best shot; the Belgian is fishing off the wall, with a
pin hook and a bit of cheese; and the two Sicilians
are talking lingua franca, at the top of their voices, to
Carolina, the guardian's daughter, who stands coquetting
on the pier just outside the limits. I have got
out my books and portfolio, and taken possession of
the broad stair, depending on the courtesy of my companions
to jump over me and my papers when they go
up and down. I sit here most of the day laughing
at the fun below, and writing or reading alternately.
The climate is too delicious for discontent. Every
breath is a pleasure. The hills of the amphitheatre
opposite to us are covered with olive, lemon, and
orange trees; and in the evening, from the time the
land breeze commences to blow off shore, until ten or
eleven, the air is impregnated with the delicate perfume
of the orange-blossom, than which nothing could
be more grateful. Nice is called the hospital of
Europe; and truly, under this divine sky, and with
the inspiriting vitality and softness of the air, and all
that nature can lavish of luxuriance and variety upon
the hills, it is the place, if there is one in the world,
where the drooping spirit of the invalid must revive
and renew. At this moment the sun has crept from
the peak of the highest mountain across the bay, and
we shall scent presently the spicy wind from the shore.
I close my book to go upon the wall, which I see the
surgeon has mounted already with the same object,
to catch the first breath that blows seaward.

It is Sunday, and an Italian summer morning. I do
not think my eyes ever woke upon so lovely a day. The
long, lazy swell comes in from the Mediterranean as
smooth as glass; the sails of a beautiful yacht, belonging
to an English nobleman at Nice, and lying becalmed
just now in the bay, are hanging motionless
about the masts; the sky is without a speck, the air just
seems to me to steep every nerve and fibre of the
frame with repose and pleasure. Now and then in
America I have felt a June morning that approached
it, but never the degree, the fulness, the sunny softness
of this exquisite clime. It tranquillizes the mind
as well as the body. You can not resist feeling contented
and genial. We are all out of doors, and my
companions have brought down their mattresses, and
are lying along the shade of the east wall, talking
quietly and pleasantly; the usual sounds of the workmen
on the quays of the town are still, our harbor-guard
lies asleep in his boat, the yellow flag of the
lazaretto clings to the staff, everything about us
breathes tranquillity. Prisoner as I am, I would not
stir willingly to-day.

We have had two new arrivals this morning—a boat
from Antibes, with a company of players bound for the
theatre at Milan; and two French deserters from the
regiment at Toulon, who escaped in a leaky boat, and
have made this voyage along the coast to get into Italy.
They knew nothing of the quarantine, and were very
much surprised at their arrest. They will, probably,
be delivered up to the French consul. The new
comers are all put together in the large chamber next

us, and we have been talking with them through the
grate. His majesty of Sardinia is not spared in their
voluble denunciations.

Our imprisonment is getting to be a little tedious.
We lengthen our breakfasts and dinners, go to sleep
early and get up late, but a lazaretto is a dull place after
all. We have no books except dictionaries and grammars,
and I am on my last sheet of paper. What I shall
do the two remaining days, I can not divine. Our meals
were amusing for a while. We have but three knives
and four glasses; and the Belgian, having cut his plate
in two on the first day, has eaten since from the mash-bowl.
The salt is in a brown paper, the vinegar in a
shell; and the meats, to be kept warm during their
passage by water, are brought in the black utensils in
which they are cooked. Our tablecloth appeared to-day
of all the colors of the rainbow. We sat down to
breakfast with a general cry of horror. Still, with
youth and good spirits, we manage to be more contented
than one would expect; and our lively discussions
of the spot on the quay where the table shall be laid
and the noise of our dinners en plein air, would convince
a spectator that we were a very merry and sufficiently
happy company.

I like my companions, on the whole, very much.
The surgeon has been in Canada and the west of New
York, and we have travelled the same routes, and
made, in several instances, the same acquaintances.
He has been in almost every part of the world also,
and his descriptions are very graphic and sensible.
The Belgian talks of his new king Leopold, the
Sicilians of the German universities; and, when I
have exhausted all they can tell me, I turn to our
Parisians, whom I find I have met all last winter without
noticing them at the parties; and we discuss the
belles, and the different members of the beau monde,
with all the touching air and tone of exiles from paradise.
In a case of desperate ennui, wearied with
studying and talking, the sea-wall is a delightful lounge,
and the blue Mediterranean plays the witch to the indolent
fancy, and beguiles it well. I have never seen
such a beautiful sheet of water. The color is peculiarly
rich and clear, like an intensely blue sky, heaving
into waves. I do not find the often-repeated description
of its loveliness exaggerated.

Our seven days expire to-morrow, and we are preparing
to eat our last dinner in the lazaretto with great
glee. A temporary table is already laid upon the
quay, and two strips of board raised upon some ingenious
contrivance, I can not well say what, and covered
with all the private and public napkins that retained
any portion of their maiden whiteness. Our
knives are reduced to two, one having disappeared unaccountably;
but the deficiency is partially remedied.
The surgeon has “whittled” a pine knot, which floated
in upon the tide, into a distant imitation; and one of
the company has produced a delicate dagger, that
looks very like a keepsake from a lady; and, by the reluctant
manner in which it was put to service, the profanation
cost his sentiment an effort. Its white handle
and silver sheath lie across a plate, abridged of its
proportions by a very formidable segment. There
was no disguising the poverty of the brown paper that
contained the salt. It was too necessary to be made
an “aside,” and lies plump in the middle of the table.
I fear there has been more fun in the preparation than
we shall feel in eating the dinner when it arrives. The
Belgian stands on the wall, watching all the boats
from town; but they pass off down the harbor, one
after another, and we are destined to keep our appetites
to a late hour, Their detestable cookery needs the
“sauce of hunger.”

The Belgian's hat waves in the air, and the commissary's
boat must be in sight. As we get off at six
o'clock to-morrow morning, my portfolio shuts till I
find another resting place, probably Genoa.

26. LETTER XXVI.

The health-magistrate arrived at an early hour on
the morning of our departure, from the lazaretto of
Villa Franca. He was accompanied by a physician,
who was to direct the fumigation. The iron pot was
placed in the centre of the chamber, our clothes were
spread out upon the beds, and the windows shut. The
chlorin soon filled the room, and its detestable odor became
so intolerable that we forced the door, and rushed
past the sentinel into the open air, nearly suffocated.
This face over, we were permitted to embark, and
rounding the point put into Nice.

The Mediterranean curves gracefully into the crescented
shore of this lovely bay, and the high hills lean
away from the skirts of the town in one unbroken
slope of cultivation to the top. Large, handsome
buildings, face you on the long quay, as you approach;
and white chimneys, and half-concealed parts of country-houses
and suburban villas, appear through the
olive and orange trees, with which the whole amphitheatre
is covered. We landed amid a crowd of half-naked
idlers, and were soon at a hotel, where we ordered
the best breakfast the town would afford, and sat
down once more to clean cloths and unrepulsive food.

As we rose from the table, a note, edged with black,
and sealed and enveloped with considerable circumstance,
was put into my hand by the master of the hotel.
It was an invitation from the governor to attend
a funeral service, to be performed in the cathedral that
day, at ten o'clock, for the “late queen-mother, Maria
Therese, archduchess of Austria.” Wondering
not a little how I came by the honor, I joined the
crowd flocking from all parts of the town to see the
ceremony. The central door was guarded by a file of
Sardinian soldiers; and, presenting my invitation to
the officer on duty, I was handed over to the master
of ceremonies, and shown to an excellent seat in the
centre of the church. The windows were darkened,
and the candles of the altar not yet lit; and, by the
indistinct light that came in through the door, I could
distinguish nothing clearly. A little silver bell tinkled
presently from one of the side-chapels, and boys
dressed in white appeared, with long tapers, and the
house was soon splendidly illuminated. I found myself
in the midst of a crowd of four or five hundred
ladies, all in deep mourning. The church was hung
from the floor to the roof in black cloth, ornamented
gorgeously with silver; and under the large dome,
which occupied half the ceiling, was raised a pyramidal
altar, with tripods supporting chalices for incense
at the four corners, a walk round the lower base
for the priests, and something in the centre, surrounded
with a blaze of light, representing figures weeping
over a tomb. The organ commenced pealing, there
was a single beat on the drum, and a procession entered.
It was composed of the nobility of Nice, and
the military and civil officers, all in uniform and court
dresses. The gold and silver flashing in the light, the
tall plumes of the Sardinian soldiery below, the solemn
music, and the moving of the censers from the
four corners of the altar, produced a very impressive
effect. As soon as the procession had quite entered,
the fire was kindled in the four chalices; and as the
white smoke rolled up to the roof, an anthem commenced
with the full power of the organ The singing
was admirable, and there was one female voice in
the choir, of singular power and sweetness.

The remainder of the service was the usual ceremonies
of the catholic church, and I amused myself

with observing the people about me. It was little like
a scene of mourning. The officers gradually edged
in between the seats, and every woman of the least
pretension to prettiness was engaged in anything but
her prayers for the soul of the late archduchess.
Some of these, the very young girls, were pretty; and
the women of thirty-five or forty apparently were fine-looking;
but, except a decided air of style and rank,
the fairly grown-up belles seemed to me of very small
attraction.

I saw little else in Nice to interest me. I wandered
about with my friend the surgeon, laughing at the ridiculous
figures and villanous uniforms of the Sardinian
infantry, and repelling the beggars, who radiated
to us from every corner; and, having traversed the
terrace of a mile on the tops of the houses next the
sea, unravelled all the lanes of the old town, and admired
all the splendor of the new, we dined and got
early to bed, anxious to sleep once more between
sheets, and prepare for an early start on the following
morning.

We were on the road to Genoa with the first gray
of the dawn—the surgeon, a French officer, and myself,
three passengers of a courier barouche. We
were climbing up mountains and sliding down with
locked wheels for several hours, by a road edging on
precipices, and overhung by tremendous rocks, and
descending at last to the sea-level, we entered Mentore,
a town of the little principality of Monaco. Having
paid our twenty sous tribute to this prince of a territory
not larger than a Kentucky farm, we were suffered
to cross his borders once more into Sardinia, having
posted through a whole state in less than half an
hour.

It is impossible to conceive a route of more grandeur
than the famous road along the Mediterranean from
Nice to Genoa. It is near a hundred and fifty miles,
over the edges of mountains bordering the sea for the
whole distance. The road is cut into the sides of the
precipice, often hundreds of feet perpendicular above
the surf, descending sometimes into the ravines formed
by the numerous rivers that cut their way to the sea,
and mounting immediately again to the loftiest summits.
It is a dizzy business from beginning to end.
There is no parapet usually, and there are thousands
of places where half a “shie” by a timid horse would
drop you at once some hundred fathoms upon rocks
wet by the spray of every sea that breaks upon the
shore. The loveliest little nests of valleys lie between
that can be conceived. You will see a green spot,
miles below you, in turning the face of a rock; and
right in the midst, like a handful of plaster models on
a carpet, a cluster of houses, lying quietly in the warm
southern exposure, embosomed in everything refreshing
to the eye, the mountain sides cultivated in a
large circle around, and the ruins of an old castle to a
certainty on the eminence above. You descend and
descend, and wind into the curves of the shore, losing
and regaining sight of it constantly, till, entering at a
gate on the sea level, you find yourself in a filthy, narrow,
half-whitewashed town, with a population of beggars,
priests, and soldiers; not a respectable citizen to
be seen from one end to the other, nor a clean woman,
nor a decent house. It is so all through Sardinia.
The towns from a distance lie in the most exquisitely-chosen
spots possible. A river comes down from the
hills and washes the wall; the uplands above are always
of the very choicest shelter and exposure. You
would think man and nature had conspired to complete
its convenience and beauty; yet within, all is
misery, dirt, and superstition. Every corner has a
cross—every bench a priest, idling in the sun—every
door a picture of the Virgin. You are delighted to
emerge once more, and get up a mountain to the
fresh air.

As we got farther on toward Genoa, the valleys became
longer by the sea, and the road ran through gardens
down to the very beach, of great richness and
beauty. It was new to me to travel for hours among
groves of orange and lemon trees, laden with both
fruit and flower, the ground beneath covered with the
windfalls, like an American apple-orchard. I never
saw such a profusion of fruit. The trees were breaking
under the rich yellow clusters. Among other
things, there were hundreds of tall palms, spreading
out their broad fans in the sun, apparently perfectly
strong and at home under this warm sky. They are
cultivated as ornaments for the churches on sacred
days.

I caught some half dozen views on the way that I
shall never get out of my memory. At one place particularly,
I think near Fenale, we ran round the corner
of a precipice by a road cut right into the face of
a rock, two hundred feet at least above the sea, and a
long view burst upon us at once of a sweet green valley,
stretching back into the mountains as far as the
eye could go, with three or four small towns, with their
white churches, just checkering the broad sweeps of
verdure, a rapid river winding through its bosom, and a
back ground of the Piedmontese Alps, with clouds half-way
up their sides, and snow glittering in the sun on
their summits. Language can not describe these scenes.
It is but a repetition of epithets to attempt it. You
must come and see them to feel how much one loses
to live always at home, and read of such things only.

The courier pointed out to us the place in which
Napoleon imprisoned the pope of Rome; a low house,
surrounded with a wall close upon the sea; and the
house a few miles from Genoa, believed to have been
that of Columbus.

We entered Genoa an hour after sunrise, by a noble
gate, placed at the western extremity of the crescented
harbor. Thence to the centre of the city was one
continued succession of sumptuous palaces. We
drove rapidly along the smooth, beautifully paved
streets, and my astonishment was unbroken till we
were set down at the hotel. Congratulating ourselves
on the hinderances which had conspired to bring us
here against our will, we took coffee, and went to bed
for a few hours, fatigued with a journey more wearisome
to the body than the mind.

I have spent two days in merely wandering about
Genoa, looking at the exterior of the city. It is a
group of hills, piled with princely palaces. I scarce
know how to commence a description of it. If there
were but one of these splendid edifices, or if I could
isolate a single palace, and describe it to you minutely,
it would be easy to convey an impression of the surprise
and pleasure of a stranger in Genoa. The whole
city, to use the expression of a French guide-book,
“respire la magnificence”—breathes of splendor! The
grand street, in which most of the palaces stand, winds
around the foot of a high hill; and the gardens and
terraces are piled back, with palaces above them; and
gardens, and terraces, and palaces still above these,
forming wherever you can catch a vista, the most exquisite
rising perspective. On the summit of this
hill stands the noble fortress of St. George; and behind
it a lovely open garden, just now alive with millions
of roses, a fountain playing into a deep oval basin
in the centre, and a view beneath and beyond of
a broad winding valley, covered with the country villas
of the nobility and gentry, and blooming with all
the luxuriant vegetation of a southern clime.

My window looks out upon the bay, across which I
see the palace of Andrea Doria, the great winner of
the best glory of the Genoese; and just under me
floats an American flag, at the peak of a Baltimore
schooner, that sails to-morrow morning for the United

States. I must close my letter, to send by her. I
shall remain in Genoa a week, and will write you of
its splendor more minutely.

27. LETTER XXVII.

Florence.—It is among the pleasantest things in
this very pleasant world, to find oneself for the first
time in a famous city. We sallied from the hotel this
morning an hour after our arrival, and stopped at the
first corner to debate where we should go. I could
not help smiling at the magnificence of the alternatives.
“To the gallery, of course,” said I, “to see the
Venus de Medicis.” “To Santa Croce,” said one,
“to see the tombs of Michael Angelo, and Alfieri, and
Machiavelli.” “To the Palazzo Pitti,” said another,
“the grand duke's palace, and the choicest collection
of pictures in the world.” The embarrassment alone
was quite a sensation.

The Venus carried the day. We crossed the Piazza
del Granduca, and inquired for the gallery. A
fine court was shown us, opening out from the square,
around the three sides of which stood a fine uniform
structure, with a colonnade, the lower story occupied
by shops and crowded with people. We mounted a
broad staircase, and requested of the soldier at the
door to be directed to the presence of the Venus without
delay. Passing through one of the long wings of
the gallery, without even a glance at the statues, pictures,
and bronzes that lined the walls, we arrived at
the door of a cabinet, and putting aside the large crimson
curtain at the entrance, stood before the enchantress.
I must defer a description of her. We
spent an hour there, but, except that her divine beauty
filled and satisfied my eye, as nothing else ever did,
and that the statue is as unlike a thing to the casts
one sees of it as one thing could well be unlike another,
I made no criticism. There is an atmosphere of
fame and circumstantial interest about the Venus,
which bewilders the fancy almost as much as her
loveliness does the eye. She has been gazed upon
and admired by troops of pilgrims, each of whom it
were worth half a life to have met at her pedestal.
The painters, the poets, the talent and beauty, that have
come there from every country under the sun, and the
single feeling of love and admiration that she has
breathed alike into all, consecrate her mere presence
as a place for revery and speculation. Childe Harold
has been here, I thought, and Shelley and Wordsworth
and Moore; and, farther removed from our sympathies,
but interesting still, the poets and sculptors
of another age, Michael Angelo and Alfieri, the men
of genius of all nations and times; and to stand in the
same spot, and experience the same feeling with them,
is an imaginative pleasure, it is true, but as truly a
deep and real one. Exceeding, as the Venus does
beyond all competition, every image of loveliness painted
or sculptured that one has ever before seen, the
fancy leaves the eye gazing upon it, and busies itself
irresistibly with its pregnant atmosphere of recollections.
At least I found it so, and I must go there
again and again before I can look at the marble separately,
and with a merely admiring attention.

Three or four days have stolen away, I scarce know
how. I have seen but one or two things, yet have
felt so unequal to the description, that but for my
promise I should never write a line about them.
Really, to sit down and gaze into one of Titian's faces
for an hour, and then to go away and dream of putting
into language its color and expression, seems to me
little short of superlative madness. I only wonder at
the divine faculty of sight. The draught of pleasure
seems to me immortal, and the eye the only Ganymede
that can carry the cup steadily to the mind. How
shall I begin to give you an idea of the Fornarina?
What can I tell you of the St. John in the desert, that
can afford you a glimpse even of Raphael's inspired
creations?

The Tribune is the name of a small octagonal cabinet
in the gallery, devoted to the masterpieces of the
collection. There are five statues, of which one is the
Venus de Medicis; and a dozen or twenty pictures,
of which I have only seen as yet Titian's Two Venuses,
and Raphael's St. John and Fornarina. People walk
through the other parts of the gallery, and pause
here and there a moment before a painting or a statute;
but on the Tribune they sit down, and you may wait
hours before a chair is vacated, or often before the occupant
shows a sign of life. Everybody seems entranced
there. They get before a picture, and bury
their eyes in it, as if it had turned them to stone.
After the Venus, the Fornarina strikes me most forcibly,
and I have stood and gazed at it till my limbs
were numb with the motionless posture. There is no
affectation in this. I saw an English girl yesterday
gazing at the St. John. She was a flighty, coquettish-looking
creature, and I had felt that the spirit of the
place was profaned by the way she sailed into the room.
She sat down with half a glance at the Venus, and
began to look at this picture. It is a glorious thing,
to be sure, a youth of apparently seventeen, with a
leopard-skin about his loins, in the very pride of maturing
manliness and beauty. The expression of the
face is all human, but wrought to the very limit of
celestial enthusiasm. The wonderful richness of the
coloring, the exquisite ripe fulness of the limbs, the
passionate devotion of the kindling features combine
to make it the faultless ideal of a perfect human being
in youth. I had quite forgotten the intruder for an
hour. Quite a different picture had absorbed all my
attention. The entrance of some one disturbed me,
and as I looked round I caught a glance of my coquet,
sitting with her hands awkwardly clasped over her
guide-book, her mouth open, and the lower jaw hanging
down with a ludicrous expression of unconsciousness
and astonished admiration. She was evidently
unaware of everything in the world except the form
before her, and a more absorbed and sincere wonder I
never witnessed.

I have been enjoying all day an Italian Festa. The
Florentines have a pleasant custom of celebrating this
particular festival, Ascension-day, in the open air;
breakfasting, dining, and dancing under the superb
trees of the Cascino. This is, by the way, quite the
loveliest public pleasure-ground I ever saw—a wood of
three miles in circumference, lying on the banks of the
Arno, just below the town; not, like most European
promenades a bare field of clay or ground, set out
with stunted trees, and cut into rectangular walks, or
without a secluded spot or an untrodden blade of
grass; but full of sward-paths, green and embowered,
the underbrush growing wild and luxuriant between,
ivy and vines of all descriptions hanging from the
limbs, and winding about every trunk; and here and
there a splendid opening of velvet grass for half a mile,
with an ornamental temple in the centre, and beautiful
contrivances of perspective in every direction. I
have been not a little surprised with the enchantment
of so public a place. You step into the woods from
the very pavement of one of the most populous streets
in Florence; from dust and noise and a crowd of busy
people to scenes where Boccacio might have fitly
laid his “hundred tales of love.” The river skirts
the Cascino on one side, and the extensive grounds of
a young Russian nobleman's villa on the other; and

here at sunset comes all the world to walk and drive,
and on festas like this to encamp, and keep holyday
under the trees. The whole place is more like a
half-redeemed wild-wood in America, than a public
promenade in Europe.

It is the custom, I am told for the grand duke and
the nobles of Tuscany to join in this festival, and
breakfast in the open air with the people. The late
death of the young and beautiful grand-dutchess has
prevented it this year, and the merry-makings are diminished
of one half their interest. I should not
have imagined it, however, without the information.
I took a long stroll among the tents this morning, with
two ladies from Albany, old friends, whom I have encountered
accidentally in Florence. The scenes were
peculiar and perfectly Italian. Everything was done
fantastically and tastefully. The tables were set about
the knolls, the bonnets and shawls hung upon the trees,
and the dark-eyed men and girls, with their expressive
faces full of enjoyment, leaned around upon the grass,
with the children playing among them, in innumerable
little parties, dispersed as if it had been managed
by a painter. At every few steps a long embowered
alley stretched off to the right or left, with strolling
groups scattered as far as the eye could see under the
trees, the red ribands and bright colored costumes
constrasting gayly with the foliage of every teint, from
the dusky leaf of the olive to the bright soft green of
the acacia. Wherever there was a circular opening
there were tents just in the edges of the wood, the
white festoons of the cloth hung from the limbs, and
tables spread under them, with their antique-looking
Tuscan pitchers wreathed with vines, and tables spread
with broad green leaves, making the prettiest cool covering
that could be conceived. I have not come up
to the reality in this description, and yet, on reading
it, it sounds half a fiction. One must be here to feel
how little language can convey an idea of this “garden
of the world.”

The evening was the fashionable hour, and with the
addition of Mr. Greenough, the sculptor, to our party,
we drove to the cascines about an hour before sunset
to see the equipages, and enjoy the close of the
festival. The drives intersect these beautiful grounds
irregularly in every direction, and the spectacle was
even more brilliant than in the morning. The nobility
and the gay world of Florence flew past us in their
showy carriages of every description, the distinguished
occupants differing in but one respect from well-bred
people of other countries—they looked happy.
If I had been lying on the grass, an Italian peasant,
with my kinsmen and friends, I should not have felt
that among the hundreds who were rolling past me
richer and better born, there was one face that looked
on me contemptuously or condescendingly. I was
very much struck with the universal air of enjoyment
and natural exhilaration. One scarce felt like a stranger
in such a happy-looking crowd.

Near the centre of the grounds is an open space,
where it is the custom for people to stop in driving to
exchange courtesies with their friends. It is a kind
of fashionable open air soiree. Every evening you
may see from fifty to a hundred carriages at a time,
moving about in this little square in the midst of the
woods, and drawing up side by side, one after the other,
for conversation. Gentlemen come ordinarily on horseback,
and pass round from carriage to carriage, with
their hats off, talking gayly with the ladies within.
There could not be a more brilliant scene, and there
never was a more delightful custom. It keeps alive
the intercourse in the summer months, when there
are no parties, and it gives a stranger an opportunity
of seeing the lovely and the distinguished without the
difficulty and restraint of an introduction to society.
I wish some of these better habits of Europe were
imitated in our country as readily as worse ones.

After thridding the embowered roads of the cascines
for an hour, and gazing with constant delight at
the thousand pictures of beauty and happiness that
meet us at every turn, we came back and mingled in
the gay throng of carriages at the centre. The valet
of our lady-friends knew everybody, and taking a convenient
stand, we amused ourselves for an hour, gazing
at them as they were named in passing. Among others,
several of the Bonaparte family went by in a
splendid barouche; and a heavy carriage, with a
showy, tasselled hammer-cloth, and servants in dashy
liveries, stopped just at our side, containing Madame
Catalani, the celebrated singer. She has a fine face
yet, with large expressive features, and dark, handsome
eyes. Her daughter was with her, but she has none
of her mother's pretensions to good looks.

28. LETTER XXVIII.

I have got into the “back-stairs interest,” as the
politicians say, and to-day I wound up the staircase
of the Pitti Palace, and spent an hour or two in its
glorious halls with the younger Greenough, without
the insufferable and usually inevitable annoyance of a
cicerone. You will not of course, expect a regular
description of such a vast labyrinth of splendor. I
could not give it to you even if I had been there the
hundred times that I intend to go, if I live long enough
in Florence. In other galleries you see merely the
arts, here you are dazzled with the renewed and costly
magnificence of a royal palace. The floors and ceilings
and furniture, each particular part of which it
must have cost the education of a life to accomplish,
bewilder you out of yourself quite; and, till you can
tread on a matchless pavement or imitated mosaic,
and lay your hat on a table of inlaid gems, and sit on
a sofa wrought with you know not what delicate and
curious workmanship, without nervousness or compunction,
you are not in a state to appreciate the pictures
upon the walls with judgment or pleasure.

I saw but one thing well—Titian's Bella, as the
Florentines call it. There are two famous Venuses
by the same master, as you know in the other gallery,
hanging over the Venus de Medicis—full-length figures
reclining upon couches, one of them usually
called Titian's mistress. The Bella in the Pitti gallery,
is a half-length portrait, dressed to the shoulders,
and a different kind of picture altogether. The others
are voluptuous, full-grown women. This represents
a young girl of perhaps seventeen; and if the
frame in which it hangs were a window, and the loveliest
creature that ever trod the floors of a palace
stood looking out upon you, in the open air, she could
not seem more real, or give you a stronger feeling of
the presence of exquisite, breathing, human beauty.
The face has no particular character. It is the look
with which a girl would walk to the casement in a
mood of listless happiness, and gaze out, she scarce
knew why. You feel that it is the habitual expression.
Yet, with all its subdued quiet and sweetness,
it is a countenance beneath which evidently sleeps
warm and measureless passion, capacities for loving
and enduring and resenting everything that makes up
a character to revere and adore. I do not know how
a picture can express so much—but it does express all
this, and eloquently too.

In a fresco on the ceiling of one of the private
chambers, is a portrait of the late lamented grand-dutchess.
On the mantelpiece in the duke's cabinet also is

a beautiful marble bust of her. It is a face and head
corresponding perfectly to the character given her by
common report, full of nobleness and kindness. The
duke, who loved her with a devotion rarely found in
marriages of state, is inconsolable since her death, and
has shut himself from all society. He hardly slept
during her illness, watching by her bedside constantly.
She was a religious enthusiast, and her health is said
to have been first impaired by too rigid an adherence
to the fasts of the church, and self-inflicted penance.
The Florentines talk of her still, and she appears to
have been unusually loved and honored.

I have just returned from hearing an improvisatrice.
At a party last night I met an Italian gentleman, who
talked very enthusiastically of a lady of Florence,
celebrated for her talent of improvisation. She was
to give a private exhibition to her friends the next day
at twelve, and he offered politely to introduce me. He
called this morning, and we went together.

Some thirty or forty people were assembled in a
handsome room, darkened tastefully by heavy curtains.
They were sitting in perfect silence when we
entered, all gazing intently on the improvisatrice, a
lady of some forty or fifty years, of a fine countenance,
and dressed in deep mourning. She rose to receive
us; and my friend introducing me, to my infinite dismay,
as an improvisatore Americano, she gave me a seat
on the sofa at her right hand, an honor I had not Italian
enough to decline. I regretted it the less that it gave
me an opportunity of observing the effects of the
“fine phrensy,” a pleasure I should otherwise certainly
have lost through the darkness of the room.

We were sitting in profound silence, the head of
the improvisatrice bent down upon her breast, and her
hands clasped over her lap, when she suddenly raised
herself, and with both hands extended, commenced in
a thrilling voice, “Patria!” Some particular passage
of Florentine history had been given her by one of
the company, and we had interrupted her in the midst
of her conception. She went on with astonishing fluency,
in smooth harmonious rhyme, without the hesitation
of a breath, for half an hour. My knowledge
of the language was too imperfect to judge of the
finish of the style, but the Italians present were quite
carried away with their enthusiasm. There was an
improvisatore in company, said to be the second in
Italy; a young man, of perhaps twenty-five, with a
face that struck me as the very beau ideal of genius.
His large expressive eyes kindled as the poetess went
on, and the changes of his countenance soon attracted
the attention of the company. She closed and
sunk back upon her seat, quite exhausted; and the
poet, looking round for sympathy loaded her with
praises in the peculiarly beautiful epithets of the Italian
language. I regarded her more closely as she sat
by me. Her profile was beautiful; and her mouth,
which at the first glance had exhibited marks of age,
was curled by her excitement into a firm animated
curve, which restored twenty years at least by its expression.

After a few minutes one of the company went out
of the room, and wrote upon a sheet of paper the last
words of every line for a sonnet; and a gentleman
who had remained within, gave a subject to fill it up.
She took the paper, and looking at it a moment or
two, repeated the sonnet as fluently as if it had been
written out before her. Several other subjects were
then given her, and she filled the same sonnet with the
same terminations. It was wonderful. I could not
conceive of such facility. After she had satisfied
them with this, she turned to me and said, that in
compliment to the American improvisatore she would
give an ode upon America. To disclaim the character
and the honor would have been both difficult and
embarrassing even for one who knew the language
better than I, so I bowed and submitted. She began
with the discovery by Columbus, claimed him as her
countryman; and with some poetical fancies about the
wild woods and the Indians, mingled up Montezuma
and Washington rather promiscuously, and closed
with a really beautiful apostrophe to liberty. My acknowledgments
were fortunately lost in the general
murmur.

A tragedy succeeded, in which she sustained four
characters. This, by the working of her forehead
and the agitation of her breast, gave her more trouble,
but her fluency was unimpeded; and when she closed,
the company was in raptures. Her gestures were
more passionate in this performance, but, even with
my imperfect knowledge of the language, they always
seemed called for and in taste. Her friends rose as
she sunk back on the sofa, gathered round her, and
took her hands, overwhelming her with praises. It
was a very exciting scene altogether, and I went away
with new ideas of poetical power and enthusiasm.

One lodges like a prince in Florence, and pays like
a beggar. For the information of artists and scholars
desirous to come abroad, to whom exact knowledge on
the subject is important, I will give you the inventory
and cost of my whereabout.

I sit at this moment in a window of what was formerly
the archbishop's palace—a noble old edifice,
with vast staircases and resounding arches, and a hall
in which you might put a dozen of the modern brick
houses of our country. My chamber is as large as a
ball-room, on the second story, looking out upon the
garden belonging to the house, which extends to the
eastern wall of the city. Beyond this lies one of the
sweetest views in the world—the ascending amphitheatre
of hills, in whose lap lies Florence, with the tall
eminence of Fiesolé in the centre, crowned with the
monastery in which Milton passed six weeks, while
gathering scenery for his Paradise. I can almost
count the panes of glass in the windows of the bard's
room; and, between the fine old building and my eye,
on the slope of the hill, lie thirty or forty splendid
villas, half-buried in trees (Madame Catalani's among
them), piled one above another on the steep ascent,
with their columns and porticoes, as if they were
mock temples in a vast terraced garden. I do not
think there is a window in Italy that commands more
points of beauty. Cole, the American landscape
painter, who occupied the room before me, took a
sketch from it. For neighbors, the Neapolitan ambassador
lives on the same floor, the two Greenoughs
in the ground-rooms below, and the palace of one of
the wealthiest nobles of Florence overlooks the garden,
with a front of eighty-five windows, from which you
are at liberty to select any two or three, and imagine
the most celebrated beauty of Tuscany behind the
crimson curtains—the daughter of this same noble
bearing that reputation. She was pointed out to me
at the opera a night or two since, and I have seen as
famous women with less pretensions.

For the interior, my furniture is not quite upon the
same scale, but I have a clean snow-white bed, a calico-covered
sofa, chairs and tables enough, and pictures
three deep from the wall to the floor.

For all this, and the liberty of the episcopal garden,
I pay three dollars a month! A dollar more is charged
for lamps, boots, and service, and a dark-eyed landlady
of thirty-five, mends my gloves, and pays me two visits
a day—items not mentioned in the bill. Then for
the feeding, an excellent breakfast of coffee and toast
is brought me for six cents; and, without wine, one
may dine heartily at a fashionable restaurant for twelve
cents, and with wine, quite magnificently for twenty-five.
Exclusive of postage and pleasures, this is all
one is called upon to spend in Florence. Three hundred
dollars a year would fairly and largely cover the

expenses of a man living at this rate; and a man who
would not be willing to live half as well for the sake
of his art, does not deserve to see Italy. I have stated
these unsentimental particulars, because it is a
kind of information I believe much wanted. I should
have come to Italy years ago if I had known as much,
and I am sure there are young men in our country
dreaming of this paradise of art in half despair, who
will thank me for it, and take up at once “the pilgrim's
sandal-shoon and scollop-shell.”

29. LETTER XXIX.

I started for Venice yesterday, in company with
Mr. Alexander and Mr. Cranch, two American artists.
We had taken the vetturino for Bologna, and at daylight
were winding up the side of the amphitheatre of
Appenines that bends over Florence, leaving Fiesolé
rising sharply on our right. The mist was creeping
up the mountain just in advance of us, retreating
with a scarcely perceptible motion to the summits,
like the lift of a heavy curtain. Florence, and its
long, heavenly valley, full of white palaces sparkling in
the sun, lay below us, more like a vision of a better
world than a scene of human passion; away in the
horizon the abrupt heads of the mountains of Carrara
rose into the sky, and with the cool, fresh breeze of
the hills, and the excitement of the pleasant excursion
before us, we were three of as happy travellers probably
as were to be met on any highway in this garden
of the world.

We had six companions, and a motley crew they
were—a little effeminate Venitian, probably a tailor,
with a large, noble-looking, handsome contadina for a
wife; a sputtering Dutch merchant, a fine, little,
coarse, good-natured fellow, with his wife, and two
very small and very disagreeable children; an Austrian
corporal in full uniform, and a fellow in a straw hat,
speaking some unknown language, and a nondescript
in every respect. The women and children, and my
friends, the artists, were my companions inside, the
double dickey in front accommodating the others.
Conversation commenced with the journey. The
Dutch spoke their dissonant language to each other,
and French to us, the contadina's soft Venitian dialect
broke in like a flute in a chorus of harsh instruments,
and our own hissing English added to a mixture
already sufficiently various.

We were all day ascending mountains, and slept
coolly under three or four blankets at a highland tavern,
on a very wild Appenine. Our supper was gayly
eaten, and our mirth served to entertain five or six
English families, whose chambers were only separated
from the rough raftered dining hall by double curtains.
It was pleasant to hear the children and nurses
speaking English unseen. The contrast made us
realize forcibly the eminently foreign scene about us.
The next morning, after travelling two or three hours
in a thick, drizzling mist, we descended a sharp hill,
and emerged at its foot into a sunshine so sudden and
clear, that it seemed almost as if the night had burst
into mid-day in a moment. We had come out of a
black cloud. The mountain behind us was capped
with it to the summit. Beneath us lay a map of a
hundred valleys, all bathed and glowing in unclouded
light, and on the limit of the horizon, far off as the
eye could span, lay a long sparkling line of water, like
a silver frame round the landscape. It was our first
view of the Adriatic. We looked at it with the singular
and indefinable emotion with which one alway-sees
a celebrated water for the first time—a sensation,
it seems to me, which is like that of no other addition
to our knowledge. The Mediterranean at Marseilles,
the Arno at Florence, the Seine at Paris, affected me
in the same way. Explain it who will, or can!

An hour after, we reached the border of Romagna,
the dominions of the pope running up thus far into
the Appenines. Here our trunks were taken off and
searched minutely. The little village was full of the
dark-skinned, romantic-looking Romagnese, and my
two friends, seated on a wall, with a dozen curious gazers
about them, sketched the heads looking from the
old stone windows, beggars, buildings, and scenery, in
a mood of professional contentment. Dress apart,
these highland Italians are like North American Indians—the
same copper complexions, high cheek
bones, thin lips, and dead black hair. The old women
particularly, would pass in any of our towns for full-blooded
squaws.

The scenery after this grew of the kind “which
savage Rosa dashed”—the only landscape I ever saw
exactly of the teints so peculiar to Salvator's pictures.
Our painters were in ecstasies with it, and truly, the
dark foliage, and blanched rocks, the wild glens, and
wind-distorted trees, gave the country the air of a
home for all the tempests and floods of a continent.
The Kaatskills are tame to it.

The forenoon came on, hot and sultry, and our little
republic began to display its character. The tailor's
wife was taken sick; and fatigue, and heat, and
the rough motion of the vetturino in descending the
mountains, brought on a degree of suffering which it
was painful to witness. She was a woman of really
extraordinary beauty, and dignified and modest as few
women are in any country. Her suppressed groans,
her white, tremulous lips, the tears of agony pressing
thickly through her shut eyelids, and the clenching
of her sculpture-like hands, would have moved anything
but an Italian husband. The little effeminate
villain treated her as if she had been a dog. She bore
everything from him till he took her hand, which she
raised faintly to intimate that she could not rise, when
the carriage stopped, and threw it back into her face
with a curse. She roused, and looked at him with a
natural majesty and calmness that made my blood
thrill. “Aspetta?” was her only answer, as she sunk
back and fainted.

The Dutchman's wife was a plain, honest, affectionate
creature, bearing the humors of two heated and
ill-tempered children, with a patience we were compelled
to admire. Her husband smoked and laughed,
and talked villanous French and worse Italian, but
was glad to escape to the cabriolet in the hottest of the
day, leaving his wife to her cares. The baby screamed,
and the child blubbered and fretted, and for hours
the mother was a miracle of kindness. The “drop
too much,” came in the shape of a new crying fit
from both children, and the poor little Dutchwoman,
quite wearied out, burst into a flood of tears, and hiccupped
her complaints in her own language, weeping
unrestrainedly for a quarter of an hour. After this
she felt better, took a gulp of wine from the black bottle,
and settled herself once more quietly and resignedly
to her duties. We had certainly opened one or
two very fresh veins of human character, when we
stopped at the gates.

There is but one hotel for American travellers in
Bologna, of course. Those who have read Rogers's
Italy, will remember his mention of “The Pilgrim,”
the house where the poet met Lord Byron by appointment,
and passed the evening with him which he describes

so exquisitely. We took leave of our motley
friends at the door, and our artists who had greatly admired
the lovely Venitian, parted from her with the
regret of old acquaintances. She certainly was, as
they said, a splendid model for a Magdalen, “majestical
and sad,” and, always in attitudes for a picture:
sleeping or waking, she afforded a succession of studies
of which they took the most enthusiastic advantage.

30. LETTER XXX.

Another evening is here, and my friends have crept
to bed with the exclamation, “how much we may live
in a day.” Bologna is unlike any other city we have
ever seen, in a multitude of things. You walk all over
it under arcades, sheltered on either side from the
sun, the elegance and ornament of the lines of pillars,
depending on the wealth of the owner of the particular
house, but columns and arches, simple or rich, everywhere.
Imagine porticoes built on the front of every
house in Philadelphia or New York, so as to cover the
sidewalks completely, and down the long perspective
of every street, continued lines of airy Corinthian, or
simple Doric pillars, and you may faintly conceive the
impression of the streets of Bologna. With Lord
Byron's desire to forget everything English, I do not
wonder at his selection of this foreign city for a residence,
so emphatically unlike, as it is, to everything
else in the world.

We inquired out the gallery after breakfast, and
spent two or three hours among the celebrated master-pieces
of the Carracci, and the famous painters of the
Bolognese school. The collection is small, but said
to be more choice than any other in Italy. There
certainly are five or six among its forty or fifty gems,
that deserve each a pilgrimage. The pride of the
place is the St. Cecilia, by Raphael. This always
beautiful personification of music, a woman of celestial
beauty, stands in the midst of a choir who have been
interrupted in their anthem by a song, issuing from a
vision of angels in a cloud from heaven. They have
dropped their instruments, broken, upon the ground,
and are listening with rapt attention, all, except the
saint, with heads dropped upon their bosoms, overcome
with the glory of the revelation. She alone,
with her harp hanging loosely from her fingers, gazes
up with the most serene and cloudless rapture beaming
from her countenance, yet with a look of full and
angelic comprehension, and understanding of the
melody and its divine meaning. You feel that her
beauty is mortal, for it is all woman; but you see that,
for the moment, the spirit that breathes through and
mingles with the harmony in the sky, is seraphic and
immortal. If there ever was inspiration, out of holy
writ, it touched the pencil of Raphael.

It is tedious to read descriptions of pictures. I
liked everything in the gallery. The Bolognese style
of color suits my eye. It is rich and forcible, without
startling or offending. Its delicious mellowness of
color, and the vigor and triumphant power of conception,
show two separate triumphs of the art, which in
the same hand are delightful. The pictures of Ludovico
Carracci especially fired my admiration. And
Domenichino, who died of a broken heart at Rome,
because his productions were neglected, is a painter
who always touches me nearly. His Madonna del
Rosario is crowded with beauty. Such children I
never saw in painting—the very ideals of infantile
grace and innocence. It is said of him, that after
painting his admirable frescoes in the church of St.
Andrew, at Rome, which, at the time, were ridiculed
unsparingly by the artists, he used to walk in on his
return from his studio, and gazing at them with a dejected
air, remark to his friend, that he “could not
think they were quite so bad—they might have been
worse.” How true it is, that “the root of a great
name is in the dead body.”

Guido's celebrated picture of the “Massacre of the
Innocents,” hangs just opposite the St. Cecilia. It is a
powerful and painful thing. The marvel of it to me
is the simplicity with which its wonderful effects are
produced, both of expression and color. The kneeling
mother in the foreground, with her dead children
before her, is the most intense representation of agony
I ever saw. Yet the face is calm, her eyes thrown up
to heaven, but her lips undistorted, and the muscles of
her face, steeped as they are in suffering, still and natural.
It is the look of a soul overwhelmned—that has
ceased to struggle because it is full. Her gaze is on
heaven, and in the abandonment of her limbs, and the
deep, but calm agony of her countenance, you see
that nothing between this and heaven can move her
more. One suffers in seeing such pictures. You go
away exhausted, and with feelings harassed and excited.

As we returned, we passed the gates of the university.
On the walls were pasted a sonnet printed with
some flourish, in honor of Camillo Rosalpina, the
laureate of one of the academical classes.

We visited several of the churches in the afternoon.
The cathedral and the Duomo are glorious places—
both. I wish I could convey to minds accustomed to
the diminutive size and proportions of our churches
in America, an idea of the enormous size and often almost
supernatural grandeur of those in Italy. Aisles
in whose distance the figure of a man is almost lost—
pillars, whose bases you walk round in wonder, stretching
into the lofty vaults of the roof, as if they ended in
the sky—arches of gigantic dimensions, mingling and
meeting with the fine tracery of a cobweb—altars piled
up on every side with gold, and marble, and silver—
private chapels ornamented with the wealth of nobles,
let into the sides, each large enough for a communion,
and through the whole extent of the interior, an unencumbered
breadth of floor, with here and there a
solitary worshipper on his knees, or prostrated on his
face—figures so small in comparison with the immense
dome above them, that it seems as if, could distance
drown a prayer, they were as much lost as if they
prayed under the open sky! Without having even a
leaning to the catholic faith, I love to haunt their
churches, and I am not sure that the religious awe of
the sublime ceremonies and places of worship does
not steal upon me daily. Whenever I am heated, or
fatigued, or out of spirits, I go into the first cathedral,
and sit down for an hour. They are always dark, and
cool, and quiet; and the distant tinkling of the bell
from some distant chapel, and the grateful odor of the
incense, and the low, just audible murmur of prayer,
settles on my feelings like a mist, and softens and
soothes and refreshes me, as nothing else will. The
Italian peasantry who come to the cities to sell or bargain,
pass their noons in these cool places. You see
them on their knees asleep against a pillar, or sitting
in a corner, with their heads upon their bosoms; and,
if it were as a place of retreat and silence alone, the
churches are an inestimable blessing to them. It seems
to me, that any sincere Christian, of whatever faith,

would find a pleasure in going into a sacred place and
sitting down in the heat of the day, to be quiet and
devotional for an hour. It would promote the objects
of any demonination in our country, I should think,
if the churches were thus left always open.

Under the cathedral of Bologna is a subterranean
confession-chapel—as singular and impressive a device
as I ever saw. It is dark like a cellar, the daylight
faintly struggling through a painted window above the
altar, and the two solitary wax candles giving a most
ghastly intensity to the gloom. The floor is paved
with tomb-stones, the inscriptions and death's heads
of which you feel under your feet as you walk through.
The roof is so vaulted that every tread is reverberated
endlessly in hollow tones. All around are the confession-boxes,
with the pierced plates at which the priest
within puts his ear, worn with the lips of penitents, and
at one of the sides is a deep cave, far within which, as in
a tomb, lies a representation on limestone of our Savior,
bleeding as he came from the cross, with the
apostles made of the same cadaverous material, hanging
over him!

We have happened, by a fortunate chance, upon an
extraordinary day in Bologna—a festa, that occurs but
once in ten years. We went out as usual after breakfast
this morning, and found the city had been decorated
over-night in the most splendid and singular
manner. The arcades of some four or five streets in
the centre of the town were covered with rich crimson
damask, the pillars completely bound, and the arches
dressed and festooned with a degree of gorgeousness
and taste as costly as it was magnificent. The streets
themselves were covered with cloths stretched above
the second stories of the houses from one side to the
other, keeping off the sun entirely, and making in
each street one long tent of a mile or more, with
two lines of crimson columns at the sides, and festoons
of gauze, of different colors, hung from window
to window in every direction. It was by far the
most splendid scene I ever saw. The people were all
there in their gayest dresses, and we probably saw in
the course of the day every woman in Bologna. My
friends, the painters, give it the palm for beauty over
all the cities they had seen. There was a grand procession
in the morning, and in the afternoon the bands
of the Austrian army made the round of the decorated
streets, playing most delightfully before the principal
houses. In the evening there was an illumination,
and we wandered up and down till midnight
through the fairy scene, almost literally “dazzled and
drunk with beauty.”

The people of Bologna have a kind of earnest yet
haughty courtesy, very different from that of most of
the Italians I have seen. They bow to the stranger,
as he enters the cafe: and if they rise before him, the
men raise their hats and the ladies smile and courtesy
as they go out; yet without the least familiarity which
could authorize farther approach to acquaintance.
We have found the officers, whom we meet at the
eating-houses particularly courteous. There is something
delightful in this universal acknowledgment of a
stranger's claims on courtesy and kindness. I could
well wish it substituted in our country, for the surly
and selfish manners of people in public-houses to each
other. There is neither loss of dignity nor committal
of acquaintance in such attentions; and the manner
in which a gentleman steps forward to assist you
in any difficulty of explanation in a foreign tongue, or
sends the waiter to you if you are neglected, or hands
you the newspaper or his snuff-box, or rises to give
you room in a crowded place, takes away, from me at
least, all that painful sense of solitude and neglect
one feels as a stranger in a foreign land.

We go to Ferrara to-morrow, and thence by the Po
to Venice My letter must close for the present.

31. LETTER XXXI.

You will excuse me at present from a description of
Venice. It is a matter not to be hastily undertaken.
It has also been already done a thousand times; and
I have just seen a beautiful sketch of it in the public
prints of the United States. I proceed with my letters.

The Venetian festa is a gay affair, as you may imagine.
If not so beautiful and fanciful as the revels
by moonlight, it was more satisfactory, for we could
see and be seen, those important circumstances to
one's individual share in the amusement. At four
o'clock in the afternoon, the links of the long bridge
of boats across the Gindecca were cut away, and the
broad canal left clear for a mile up and down. It was
covered in a few minutes with gondolas, and all the
gayety and fashion of Venice fell into the broad promenade
between the city and the festal island. I should
think five hundred were quite within the number of
gondolas. You can scarcely fancy the novelty and
agreeableness of this singular promenade. It was
busy work for the eyes to the right and left, with the
great proportion of beauty, and the rapid glide of their
fairy-like boats. And the quietness of the thing was
so delightful—no crowding, no dust, no noise but the
dash of oars and the ring of merry voices; and we
sat so luxuriously upon our deep cushions the while,
thridding the busy crowd rapidly and silently, without
a jar or touch of anything but the yielding element
that sustained us.

Two boats soon appeared with wreaths upon their
prows, and these had won the first and second prizes
at the last year's regatta. The private gondolas fell
away from the middle of the canal, and left them free
space for a trial of their speed. They were the most
airy things I ever saw afloat, about forty feet long, and
as slender and light as they could well be, and hold
together. Each boat had six oars, and the crews
stood with their faces to the beak of their craft;
slight, but muscular men, and with a skill and quickness
at their oars which I had never conceived. I realized
the truth and force of Cooper's inimitable description
of the race in the Brayo. The whole of his
book gives you the very air and spirit of Venice, and
one thanks him constantly for the lively interest which
he has thrown over everything in this bewitching city.
The races of the rival boats to-day were not a regular
part of the festa, and were not regularly contested.
The gondoliers were exhibiting themselves merely,
and the people soon ceased to be interested in them.

We rowed up and down till dark, following here
and there the boats whose freights attracted us, and
exclaiming every moment at some new glimpse of
beauty. There is really a surprising proportion of
loveliness in Venice. The women are all large, probably
from never walking, and other indolent habits
consequent upon want of exercise: and an oriental air,
sleepy and passionate, is characteristic of the whole
race. One feels that he has come among an entirely
new class of women, and hence, probably, the far-famed
fascination of Venice to foreigners.

The sunset happened to be one of those so peculiar
to Italy, and which are richer and more enchanting in
Venice than in any other part of it, from the character

of its scenery. It was a sunset without a cloud;
but at the horizon the sky was died of a deep orange,
which softened away toward the zenith almost imperceptibly,
the whole west like a wall of burning gold.
The mingled softness and splendor of these skies is
indescribable. Everything is touched with the same
hue. A mild, yellow glow is all over the canals and
buildings. The air seems filled with glittering golden
dust, and the lines of the architecture, and the outlines
of the distant islands, and the whole landscape
about you is mellowed and enriched with a new and
glorious light. I have seen one or two such sunsets
in America; but there the sunsets are bolder and
clearer, and with much more sublimity—they have
rarely the voluptuous coloring of those in Italy.

It was delightful to glide along over a sea of light
so richly teinted, among those graceful gondolas, with
their freights of gayety and beauty. As the glow on
the sky began to fade, they all turned their prows toward
San Marc, and dropping into a slower motion,
the whole procession moved on together to the stairs
of the piazzetta; and by the time the twilight was perceptible,
the cafés were crowded, and the square was
like one great fête. We passed the evening in wandering
up and down, never for an instant feeling like strangers,
and excited and amused till long after midnight.

After several days delay, we received an answer this
morning from the authorities, with permission to see
the bridge of sighs, and the prisons of the ducal palace.
We landed at the broad stairs, and passing the desolate
court, with its marble pillars and statues green
with damp and neglect, ascended the “giant's steps,”
and found the warder waiting for us, with his enormous
keys, at the door of a private passage. At the
bottom of a staircase we entered a close gallery, from
which the first range of cells opened. The doors
were broken down, and the guide holding his torch in
them for a moment in passing, showed us the same
dismal interior in each—a mere cave, in which you
would hardly think it possible to breathe, with a raised
platform for a bed, and a small hole in the front wall
to admit food and what air could find its way through
from the narrow passage. There were eight of these;
and descending another flight of damp steps, we came
to a second range, differing only from the first in their
slimy dampness. These are the cells of which Lord
Byron gives a description in the notes to the fourth
canto of Childe Harold. He has transcribed, if you
remember, the inscription from the ceilings and walls
of one which was occupied successively by the victims
of the inquisition. The letters are cut rudely enough,
and must have been done entirely by feeling, as there
is no possibility of the penetration of a ray of light.
I copied them with some difficulty, forgetting that
they were in print, and comparing them afterward
with my copy of Childe Harold, I found them exactly
the same, and I refer you, therefore, to his notes.

In a range of cells still below these, and almost suffocating
from their closeness, one was shown us in which
prisoners were strangled. The rope was passed through
an iron grating of four bars, the executioner standing
outside the cell. The prisoner within sat upon a
stone, with his back to the grating, and the cord was
passed round his neck, and drawn till he was choked.
The wall of the cell was covered with blood, which
had spattered against it with some violence. The
guide explained it by saying, that owing to the narrowness
of the passage the executioner had no room
to draw the cord, and to expedite his business his assistant
at the same time plunged a dagger into the
neck of the victim. The blood had flowed widely
over the wall, and ran to the floor in streams. With
the darkness of the place, the difficulty I found in
breathing, and the frightful reality of the scenes before
me, I never had in my life a comparable sensation of
horror.

At the end of the passage a door was walled up. It
led in the times of the republic, to dungeons under the
canal, in which the prisoner died in eight days from
his incarceration at the farthest, from the noisome
dampness and unwholesome vapors of the place. The
guide gave us a harrowing description of the swelling
of their bodies, and the various agonics of their slow
death. I hurried away from the place with a sickness
at my heart. In returning by the same way I passed
the turning, and stumbled over a raised stone across
the passage. It was the groove of a secret guillotine.
Here many of the state and inquisition victims were
put to death in the darkness of a narrow passage, shut
out even in their last moment from the light and
breath of heaven. The frame of the instrument had
been taken away; but the pits in the wall, which had
sustained the axe, were still there; and the sink on
the other side, where the head fell, to carry off the
blood. And these shocking executions took place directly
before the cells of the other prisoners, within
twenty feet from the farthest. In a cell close to this
guillotine had been confined a state criminal for sixteen
years. He was released at last by the arrival of
the French, and on coming to the light in the square
of San Marc was struck blind, and died into a few days.
In another cell we stopped to look at the attempts of
a prisoner upon its walls, interrupted, happily, by his
release. He had sawed several inches into the front
wall, with some miserable instrument, probably a nail.
He had afterward abandoned this, and had, with prodigious
strength, taken up a block from the floor;
and, the guide assured us, had descended into the cell
below. It was curious to look around his pent prison,
and see the patient labor of years upon those rough
walls, and imagine the workings of the human mind in
such a miserable lapse of existence.

We ascended to the light again, and the guide led us
to a massive door, with two locks, secured by heavy
iron bars. It swung open with a scream, and we
mounted a winding stair, and

Two windows of close grating looked on either side
upon the long canal below, and let in the only light
to the covered passage. It is a gloomy place within,
beautifully as its light arch hangs in the air from without.
It was easy to employ the imagination as we
stood on the stone where Childe Harold had stood before
us, and conjured up in fancy the despair and agony
that must have been pressed into the last glance
at light and life that had been sent through those barred
windows. Across this bridge the condemned were
brought to receive their sentence in the chamber of
the ten, or to be confronted with bloody inquisitors,
and then were led back over it to die. The last light
that ever gladdened their eyes came through those
close bars, and the gay Gindecca in the distance, with
its lively waters covered with boats, must have made
that farewell glance to a Venetian bitter indeed. The
side next the prison is now massively walled up. We
stayed, silently musing at the windows, till the old cicerone
ventured to remind us that his time was precious.

Ordering the gondola round to the stairs of the
piazzetta, we strolled for the first time into the church
of San Marc. The four famous bronze horses stood
with their dilated nostrils and fine action over the
porch, bringing back to us Andrea Doria, and his
threat; and as I remembered the ruined palace of the
old admiral at Genoa, and glanced at the Austrian soldier
upon guard, in the very shadow of the winged
lion, I could not but feel most impressively the moral
of the contrast. The lesson was not attractive enough,
however, to keep us in a burning sun, and we put
aside the heavy folds of the drapery and entered.
How deliciously cool are these churches in Italy!
We walked slowly up toward the distant altar. An

old man rose from the base of one of the pillars, and
put out his hand for charity. It is an incident that
meets one at every step, and with half a glance at his
face I passed on. I was looking at the rich mosaic on
the roof, but his features lingered in my mind. They
grew upon me still more strongly; and as I became
aware of the full expression of misery and pride upon
them, I turned about to see what had become of him.
My two friends had done each the very same thing,
with the same feeling of regret, and were talking of
the old man when I came back to them. We went
to the door, and looked all about the square, but he
was nowhere to be seen. It is singular that he should
have made the same impression upon all of us, of an
old Venetian nobleman in poverty. Slight as my
glance was, the noble expression of sadness about his
fine white head and strong features, are still indelible
in my memory. The prophecy which Byron puts into
the mouth of the condemned doge, is still true in
every particular:—

The church of San Marc is rich to excess, and its
splendid mosaic pavement is sunk into deep pits with
age and the yielding foundations on which its heavy
pile is built. Its pictures are not so fine as those of
the other churches of Venice, but its age and historic
associations make it by far the most interesting.

32. LETTER XXXII.

We stepped into the gondola to-night as the shadows
of the moon began to be perceptible, with orders
to Giuseppe to take us where he would. Abroad in a
summer's moonlight in Venice, is a line that might never
be written but as the scene of a play. You can not
miss pleasure. If it were only the tracking silently
and swiftly the bosom of the broader canals, lying
asleep like streets of molten silver between the marble
palaces, or shooting into the dark shadows of the narrower,
with the black spirit-like gondolas gliding past,
or lying in the shelter of a low and not unoccupied
balcony; or did you but loiter on in search of music,
lying unperceived beneath the windows of a palace,
and listening, half asleep, to the sound of the guitar
and the song of the invisible player within; this, with
the strange beauty of every building about you, and
the loveliness of the magic lights and shadows, were
enough to make a night of pleasure, even were no
charm of personal adventure to be added to the enumeration.

We glided along under the Rialto, talking of Belvidera,
and Othello, and Shylock, and, entering a cross
canal, cut the arched shadow of the bridge of sighs,
hanging like a cobweb in the air, and shot in a moment
forth to the full, ample, moonlit bosom of the
Gindecca. This is the canal that makes the harbor
and washes the stairs of San Marc. The Lido lay
off at a mile's distance across the water, and, with the
moon riding over it, the bay between as still as the sky
above, and brighter, it looked like a long cloud pencilled
like a landscape in the heavens. To the right lay
the Armenian island, which Lord Byron visited so often,
to study with the fathers at the convent; and, a
little nearer the island of the Insane—spite of its misery,
asleep, with a most heavenly calmness on the sea.
You remember the touching story of the crazed girl,
who was sent here with a broken heart, described as
putting her hand through the grating at the dash of
every passing gondola, with her unvarying and affecting
“Venite per me? Venite per me?”

At a corner of the harbor, some three quarters of a
mile from San Marc, lies an island once occupied by
a convent. Napoleon raised the buildings, and connecting
it with the town by a new, handsome street
and a bridge, laid out the ground as a public garden.
We debarked at the stairs, and passed an hour in strolling
through shaded walks, filled with the gay Venetiants,
who come to enjoy here what they find nowhere
else, the smell of grass and green leaves. There is a
pavilion upon an artificial hill in the centre, where the
best lemonades and ices of Venice are to be found;
and it was surrounded to-night by merry groups, amusing
themselves with all the heart-cheering gayety of
this delightful people. The very sight of them is an
antidote to sadness.

In returning to San Marc a large gondola crossed
us, filled with ladies and gentlemen, and followed by
another with a band of music. This is a common
mode of making a party on the canals, and a more
agreeable one never was imagined. We ordered the
gondolier to follow at a certain distance, and spent an
hour or two just keeping within the softened sound of
the instruments. How romantic are the veriest every-day
occurrences of this enchanting city.

We have strolled to-day through most of the narrow
streets between the Rialto and the San Marc.
They are, more properly, alleys. You wind through
them at sharp angles, turning constantly, from the interruption
of the canals, and crossing the small bridges
at every twenty yards. They are dark and cool; and
no hoof of any description ever passing through them,
the marble flags are always smooth and clean; and
with the singular silence, only broken by the shuffling
of feet, they are pleasant places to loiter in at noon-day,
when the canals are sunny.

We spent a half hour on the Rialto. This is the
only bridge across the grand canal, and connects the
two main parts of the city. It is, as you see by engravings,
a noble span of a single arch, built of pure
white marble. You pass it, ascending the arch by a
long flight of steps to the apex, and descending again
to the opposite side. It is very broad, the centre
forming a street, with shops on each side, with alleys
outside these, next the parapet, usually occupied by
idlers or merchants, probably very much as in the
time of Shylock. Here are exposed the cases of
shell-work and jewelry for which Venice is famous.
The variety and cheapness of these articles are surprising.
The Rialto has always been to me, as it is probably
to most others, quite the core of romantic locality.
I stopped on the upper stair of the arch, and
passed my hand across my eyes to recall my idea of it,
and realize that I was there. One is disappointed,
spite of all the common sense in the world, not to
meet Shylock and Antonio and Pierre.

says Childe Harold; and that, indeed, is the feeling
everywhere in these romantic countries. You can
not separate them from the characters with which poetry
or history once peopled them.

At sunset we mounted into the tower of San Marc,
to get a general view of the city. The gold-dust atmosphere,

so common in Italy at this hour, was all
over the broad lagunes and the far stretching city;
and she lay beneath us, in the midst of a sea of light,
an island far out into the ocean, crowned with towers
and churches, and heaped up with all the splendors of
architecture. The Friuli mountains rose in the north
with the deep blue dies of distance, breaking up the
else level horizon; the shore of Italy lay like a low
line-cloud in the west; the spot where the Brenta
empties into the sea glowing in the blaze of the sunset.
About us lay the smaller islands, the suburbs of
the sea-city, and all among them, and up and down
the Gindecca, and away off in the lagunes were sprinkled
the thousand gondolas, meeting and crossing in
one continued and silent panorama. The Lido, with
its long wall hemmed in the bay, and beyond this lay
the wide Adriatic. The floor of San Marc's vast
square was beneath, dotted over its many-colored marbles
with promenaders, its cafés swarmed by the sitters
outside, and its long arcades thronged. One of
my pleasantest hours in Venice was passed here.

33. LETTER XXXIII.

We have passed a day in visiting palaces. There
are some eight or ten in Venice, whose galleries are
still splendid. We landed first at the stairs of the
Palazzo Grimani, and were received by an old family
servant, who sat leaning on his knees, and gazing idly
into the canal. The court and staircase were ornamented
with statuary, that had not been moved for
centuries. In the ante-room was a fresco painting by
Georgione, in which there were two female cherubs,
the first of that sex I ever saw represented. They
were beautifully contrasted with the two male cherubs,
who completed the picture, and reminded me strongly
of Greenough's group in sculpture. After examining
several rooms, tapestried and furnished in such a style
as befitted the palace of a Venetian noble, when Venice
was in her glory, we passed on to the gallery. The
best picture in the first room was a large one by Cigoli,
the bath of Cleopatra. The four attendants of the
fair Egyptian are about her, and one is bathing her
feet from a rich vase. Her figure is rather a voluptuous
one, and her head is turned, but without alarm,
to Antony, who is just putting aside the curtain and
entering the room. It is a piece of fine coloring,
rather of the Titian school, and one of the few good
pictures left by the English, who have bought up almost
all the private galleries of Venice.

We stopped next at the stairs of the noble old Barberigo
Palace, in which Titian lived and died. We
mounted the decaying staircases, imagining the choice
spirits of the great painter's time, who had trodden
them before us, and (as it was for ages the dwelling of
one of the proudest races of Venice) the beauty and
rank that had swept up and down those worn slabs of
marble on nights of revel, in the days when Venice
was a paradise of splendid pleasure. How thickly
come romantic fancies in such a place as this. We
passed through halls hung with neglected pictures to
an inner room, occupied only with those of Titian.
Here he painted, and here is a picture half-finished,
as he left it when he died. His famous Magdalen,
hangs on the wall, covered with dirt; and so, indeed,
is everything in the palace. The neglect is melancholy.
On a marble table stood a plaster bust of Titian,
moulded by himself in his old age. It is a most noble
head, and it is difficult to look at it and believe he
could have painted a picture which hangs just against
it—his own daughter in the arms of a satyr. There
is an engraving from it in one of the souvenirs; but
instead of the satyr's head, she holds a casket in her
hands, which, though it does not sufficiently account
for the delight of her countenance, is an improvement
upon the original. Here, too, are several slight
sketches of female heads, by the same master. Oh
how beautiful they are! There is one, less than the
size of life, which I would rather have than his Magdalen.

I have spent my last day in Venice in visiting
churches. Their splendor makes the eye ache and
the imagination weary. You would think the surplus
wealth of half the empires of the world would scarce
suffice to fill them as they are. I can give you no
descriptions. The gorgeous tombs of the doges are
interesting, and the plain black monument over Marino
Faliero made me linger. Canova's tomb is splendid;
and the simple slab under your feet in the church
of the Frari, where Titian lies with his brief epitaph,
is affecting—but, though I shall remember all these,
the simplest as well as the grandest, a description
would be wearisome to all who had not seen them.
This evening at sunset I start in the post-boat for the
mainland, on my way to the place of Juliet's tomb—
Verona. My friends, the painters, are so attracted
with the galleries here that they remain to copy, and
I go back alone. Take a short letter from me this
time, and expect to hear from me by the next earliest
opportunity, and more at length. Adieu.

34. LETTER XXXIV.

We pushed from the post-office stairs in a gondola
with six oars at sunset. It was melancholy to leave
Venice. A hasty farewell look, as we sped down the
grand canal, at the gorgeous palaces, even less famous
than beautiful—a glance at the disappearing Rialto,
and we shot out into the Gindecca in a blaze of sunset
glory. Oh how magnificently looked Venice in that
light—rising behind us from the sea—all her superb
towers and palaces, turrets and spires fused into gold;
and the waters about her, like a mirror of stained
glass, without a ripple!

An hour and a half of hard rowing brought us to
the nearest land. You should go to Venice to know
how like a dream a reality may be. You will find it
difficult to realize when you smell once more the
fresh earth and grass and flowers, and walk about and
see fields and mountains, that this city upon the sea
exists out of the imagination. You float to it and
about it and from it, in their light craft, so aerially,
that it seems a vision.

With a drive of two or three hours, half twilight,
half moonlight, we entered Padua. It was too late to
see the portrait of Petrarch, and I had not time to go
to his tomb at Argua, twelve miles distant, so, musing
on Livy and Galileo, to both of whom Padua was a

home, I inquired for a café. A new one had lately
been built in the centre of the town, quite the largest
and most thronged I ever saw. Eight or ten large,
high-roofed halls were open, and filled with tables, at
which sat more beauty and fashion than I supposed
all Padua could have mustered. I walked through
one after another, without finding a seat, and was
about turning to go out, and seek a place of less pretension,
when an elderly lady, who sat with a party of
seven, eating ices, rose, with Italian courtesy, and offered
me a chair at their table. I accepted it, and
made the acquaintance of eight as agreeable and polished
people as it has been my fortune to meet. We
parted as if we had known each other as many weeks
as minutes. I mention it as an instance of the manners
of the country.

Three hours more, through spicy fields and on a
road lined with the country-houses of the Venetian
nobles, brought us to Vicenza. It was past midnight,
and not a soul stirring in the bright moonlight streets.
I remember it as a kind of city of the dead. As we
passed out of the opposite gate, we detained for a moment
a carriage, with servants in splendid liveries, and
a lady inside returning from a party in full dress. I
rarely have seen so beautiful a head. The lamps
shone strongly on a broad pearl fillet on her forehead,
and lighted up features such as we do not often meet
even in Italy. A gentleman leaned back in the corner
of the carriage, fast asleep—probably her husband!

I breakfasted at Verona at seven. A humpbacked
cicerone there took me to “Juliet's tomb.” A very
high wall, green with age, surrounds what was once a
cemetery, just outside the city. An old woman answered
the bell at the dilapidated gate, and, without
saying a word, pointed to an empty granite sarcophagus,
raised upon a rude pile of stones. “Questa?”
asked I, with a doubtful look. “Questa,” said the
old woman. “Questa!” said the hunchback. And
here, I was to believe, lay the gentle Juliet! There
was a raised place in the sarcophagus, with a hollowed
socket for the head, and it was about the measure
for a woman! I ran my fingers through the cavity,
and tried to imagine the dark curls that covered the
hand of Father Lawrence as he laid her down in the
trance, and fitted her beautiful head softly to the
place. But where was “the tomb of the Capulets?”
The beldame took me through a cabbage-garden, and
drove off a donkey who was feeding on an artichoke
that grew on the very spot. “Ecco!” said she, pointing
to one of the slightly sunken spots on the surface.
I deferred my belief, and paying an extra paul for the
privilege of chipping off a fragment of the stone coffin,
followed the cicerone.

The tombs of the Scaligers were more authentic.
They stand in the centre of the town, with a highly
ornamental railing about them, and are a perfect mockery
of death with their splendor. If the poets and
scholars whom these petty princes drew to their court
had been buried in these airy tombs beside them, one
would look at them with some interest. Now, one
asks, “who were the Scaligers, that their bodies
should be lifted high in air in the midst of a city,
and kept for ages, in marble and precious stones?”
With less ostentation, however, it were pleasant to be
so disposed of after death, lifted thus into the sun, and
in sight of moving and living creatures.

I inquired for the old palace of the Capulets. The
cicerone knew nothing about it, and I dismissed her
and went into a café. “Two gentlemen of Verona”
sat on different sides; one reading, the other asleep,
with his chin on his cane—an old, white-headed man,
of about seventy. I sat down near the old gentleman,
and by the time I had eaten my ice, he awoke. I addressed
him in Italian, which I speak indifferently;
but, stumbling for a word, he politely helped me out
in French, and I went on in that language with my inquiries.
He was the very man—a walking chronicle
of Verona. He took up his hat and cane to conduct
me to casa Capuletti, and on the way told me the true
history, as I had heard it before, which differs but little,
as you know, from Shakspere's version. The
whole story is in the annuals.

After a half hour's walk among the handsomer, and
more modern parts of the city, we stopped opposite a
house of an antique construction, but newly stuccoed
and painted. A wheelwright occupied the lower story,
and by the sign, the upper part was used as a tavern.
“Impossible!” said I, as I looked at the fresh
front and the staring sign. The old gentleman smiled,
and kept his cane pointed at it in silence. “It is well
authenticated,” said he, after enjoying my astonishment
a minute or two, and the interior still bears
marks of a palace. We went in and mounted the
dirty staircase to a large hall on the second floor. The
frescoes and cornices had not been touched, and, I invited
my kind old friend to an early dinner on the spot.
He accepted, and we went back to the cathedral, and
sat an hour in the only cool place in an Italian city.
The best dinner the house could afford was ready
when we returned, and a pleasanter one it has never
been my fortune to sit down to; though, for the meats,
I have eaten better. That I relished an hour in the
very hall where the masque must have been held, to
which Romeo ventured in the house of his enemy, to
see the fair Juliet, you may easily believe. The wine
was not so bad either that my imagination did not
warm all fiction into fact; and another time, perhaps, I
may describe my old friend and the dinner more particularly.

35. LETTER XXXV.

I left Verona with the courier at sunset, and was
at Mantua in a few hours. I went to bed in a dirty
hotel, the best in the place, and awoke, bitten at every
pore by fleas—the first I have encountered in Italy,
strange as it may seem, in a country that swarms with
them. For the next twenty-four hours I was in such
positive pain that my interest in “Virgil's birthplace”
quite evaporated. I hired a caleche, and travelled all
night to Modena.

I liked the town as I drove in, and after sleeping an
hour or two, I went out in search of “Tassoni's bucket”
(which Rogers says is not the true one), and the
picture of “Ginevra.” The first thing I met was a
man going to execution. He was a tall, exceedingly
handsome man; and, I thought, a marked gentleman,
even in his fetters. He was one of the body-guard of
the duke, and had joined a conspiracy against him, in
which he had taken the first step by firing at him
from a window as he passed. I saw him guillotined,
but I will spare you the description. The duke is the
worst tyrant in Italy, it is well known, and has been
fired at eighteen times in the streets. So said the
cicerone, who added, that “the d—l took care of his
own.” After many fruitless inquiries, I could find
nothing of “the picture,” and I took my place for
Bologna in the afternoon.

I was at Bologna at ten the next morning. As I
felt rather indisposed, I retained my seat with the
courier for Florence; and, hungry with travel and a
long fast, went into a restaurant, to make the best use

of the hour given me for refreshment. A party of
Austrian officers sat at one end of the only table,
breakfasting; and here I experienced the first rudeness
I have seen in Europe. I mention it to show its
rarity, and the manner in which, even among military
men, a quarrel is guarded against or prevented. A
young man, who seemed the wit of the party, chose to
make comments from time to time on the solidity of
what he considered my breakfast. These became at
last so pointed, that I was compelled to rise and demand
an apology. With one voice, all except the
offender, immediately sided with me, and insisted on
the justice of the demand, with so many apologies of
their own, that I regretted noticing the thing at all.
The young man rose, after a minute, and offered me
his hand in the frankest manner; and then calling for
a fresh bottle, they drank wine with me, and I went
back to my breakfast. In America, such an incident
would have ended, nine times out of ten, in a duel.

The two mounted gens d'armes, who usually attend
the courier at night, joined us as we began to ascend
the Appenines. We stopped at eleven to sup on the
highest mountain between Bologna and Florence, and
I was glad to get to the kitchen fire, the clear moonlight
was so cold. Chickens were turning on the long
spit, and sounds of high merriment came from the
rooms above. A bridal party of English had just arrived,
and every chamber and article of provision was
engaged. They had nothing to give us. A compliment
to the hostess and a bribe to the cook had their
usual effect, however; and as one of the dragoons had
ridden back a mile or two for my travelling cap, which
had dropped off while I was asleep, I invited them both,
with the courier, to share my bribed supper. The
cloth was spread right before the fire, on the same
table with all the cook's paraphernalia, and a merry
and picturesque supper we had of it. The rough Tuscan
flasks of wine and Etruscan pitchers, the brazen
helmets formed on the finest models of the antique,
the long mustaches, and dark Italian eyes of the
men, all in the bright light of a blazing fire, made a
picture that Salvator Rosa would have relished. We
had time for a hasty song or two after the dishes were
cleared, and then went gayly on our way to Florence.

Excuse the brevity of this epistle, but I must stop
here, or lose the opportunity of sending. If my letters
do not reach you with the utmost regularity, it is
no fault of mine. You can not imagine the difficulty
I frequently experience in getting a safe conveyance.

36. LETTER XXXVI.

I spent a week at the baths of Lucca, which is
about sixty miles north of Florence, and the Saratoga
of Italy. None of the cities are habitable in summer
for the heat, and there flocks all the world to bathe
and keep cool by day, and dance and intrigue by night,
from spring to autumn. It is very like the month of
June in our country in many respects, and the differences
are not disagreeable. The scenery is the finest
of its kind in Italy. The whole village is built about
a bridge across the river Lima, which meets the Serchio
a half mile below. On both sides of the stream
the mountains rise so abruptly, that the houses are
erected against them, and from the summits on both
sides you look directly down on the street. Half-way
up one of the hills stands a cluster of houses, over
looking the valley to fine advantage, and these are
rather the most fashionable lodgings. Round the base
of this mountain runs the Lima, and on its banks for
a mile is laid out a superb road, at the extremity of
which is another cluster of buildings, called the Villa,
composed of the duke's palace and baths, and some
fifty lodging-houses. This, like the pavilion at Saratoga,
is usually occupied by invalids and people of
more retired habits. I have found no hill scenery in
Europe comparable to the baths of Lucca. The
mountains ascend so sharply and join so closely, that
two hours of the sun are lost, morning and evening,
and the heat is very little felt. The valley is formed
by four or five small mountains, which are clothed
from the base to the summit with the finest chestnut
woods; and dotted over with the nest-like cottages of
the Luccese peasants, the smoke from which, morning
and evening, breaks through the trees, and steals up
to the summits with an effect than which a painter
could not conceive anything more beautiful. It is
quite a little paradise; and with the drives along the
river on each side at the mountain foot, and the trim
winding-paths in the hills, there is no lack of opportunity
for the freest indulgence of a love of scenery
or amusement,

Instead of living as we do in great hotels, the people
at these baths take their own lodgings, three or
four families in a house, and meet in their drives and
walks, or in small exclusive parties. The duke gives
a ball every Tuesday, to which all respectable strangers
are invited; and while I was there an Italian prince,
who married into the royal family of Spain, gave a
grand fete at the theatre. There is usually some party
every night, and with the freedom of a watering-place,
they are rather the pleasantest I have seen in
Italy. The duke's chamberlain, an Italian cavalier,
has the charge of a casino, or public hall, which is
open day and night for conversation, dancing and play.
The Italians frequent it very much, and it is free to
all well-dressed people; and as there is always a band
of music, the English sometimes make up a party,
and spend the evening there in dancing or promenading.
It is maintained at the duke's expense, lights,
music, and all, and he finds his equivalent in the profits
of the gambling bank.

I scarce know who of the distinguished people I
met there would interest you. The village was full
of coroneted carriages, whose masters were nobles of
every nation, and every reputation. The originals of
two well-known characters happened to be there—
Scott's Diana Vernon, and the Miss Pratt of the Inheritance.
The former is a Scotch lady, with five or
six children: a tall, superb woman still, with the look
of a mountain-queen, who rode out every night with
two gallant boys mounted on ponies, and dashing after
her with the spirit you would bespeak for the sons of
Die Vernon. Her husband was the best horseman
there, and a “has been” handsome fellow, of about
forty-five. An Italian abbé came up to her one night,
at a small party, and told her he “wondered the king
of England did not marry her.” “Miss Pratt” was
the companion of an English lady of fortune, who
lived on the floor below me. She was still what she
used to be, a much-laughed-at but much-sought person,
and it was quite requisite to know her. She flew
into a passion whenever the book was named. The
rest of the world there was very much what it is elsewhere—a
medley of agreeable and disagreeable, intelligent
and stupid, elegant and awkward. The women
were perhaps superior in style and manner to those
ordinarily met in such places in America, and the men
vastly inferior. It is so wherever I have been on the
continent.

I remained at the baths a few weeks, recruiting—
for the hot weather and travel had, for the first time in

my life, worn upon me. They say that a summer in
Italy is equal to five years elsewhere, in its ravages
upon the constitution, and so I found it.

37. LETTER XXXVII.

After five or six weeks sejour at the baths of Lucca,
the only exception to the pleasure of which was an
attack of the “country fever,” I am again on the road,
with a pleasant party, bound for Venice; but passing
by cities I had not seen, I have been from one place
to another for a week, till I find myself to-day in Modena—a
place I might as well not have seen at all as
to have hurried through, as I was compelled to do a
month or two since. To go back a little, however,
our first stopping-place was the city of Lucca, about
fifteen miles from the baths; a little, clean, beautiful
gem of a town, with a wall three miles round only,
and on the top of it a broad carriage road, giving you
on every side views of the best cultivated and loveliest
country in Italy. The traveller finds nothing so
rural and quiet, nothing so happy-looking, in the whole
land. The radius to the horizon is nowhere more
than five or six miles; and the bright green farms and
luxuriant vineyards stretch from the foot of the wall
to the summits of the lovely mountains which form
the theatre around. It is a very ancient town, but the
dutchy is so rich and flourishing that it bears none of
the marks of decay, so common to even more modern
towns in Italy. Here Cesar is said to have stopped to
deliberate on passing the Rubicon.

The palace of the duke is the prettiest I ever saw.
There is not a room in it you could not live in—and
no feeling is less common than this in visiting palaces.
It is furnished with splendor, too—but with such an
eye to comfort, such taste and elegance, that you
would respect the prince's affections that should order
such a one. The duke of Lucca, however, is never
at home. He is a young man of twenty-eight or
thirty, and spends his time and money in travelling, as
caprice takes him. He has been now for a year at
Vienna, where he spends the revenue of these rich
plains most lavishly. The dutchess, too, travels always,
but in a different direction, and the people complain
loudly of the desertion. For many years they have
now been both absent and parted. The duke is a
member of the royal family of Spain, and at the death
of Maria Louisa of Parma, he becomes Duke of Parma,
and the dutchy goes to Tuscany.

From Lucca we crossed the Appenines, by a road
seldom travelled, performing the hundred miles to
Modena in three days. We suffered, as all must who
leave the high roads in continental countries, more
privations than the novelty was worth. The mountain
scenery was fine, of course, but I think less so
than that on the passes between Florence and Bologna,
the account of which I wrote a few weeks since. We
were too happy to get to Modena.

Modena lies in the vast campagnia lying between
the Appenines and the Adriatic—an immense plain
looking like the sea as far as the eye can stretch from
north to south. The view of it from the mountains
in descending is magnificent beyond description. The
capital of the little dutchy lay in the midst of us, like a
speck on a green carpet, and smaller towns and rivers
varied its else unbroken surface of vineyards and fields.
We reached the gates just as a fine sunset was reddening
the ramparts and towers, and, giving up our passports
to the soldier on guard, rattled in to the hotel.

The town is full of Austrian troops, and in our walk
to the ducal palace we met scarce any one else. The
streets look gloomy and neglected, and the people
singularly dispirited and poor. This petty duke of
Modena is a man of about fifty, and said to be the
greatest tyrant after Don Miguel in the world. The
prisons are full of suspected traitors: one hundred
and thirty of the best families of the dutchy are banished
for liberal opinions; three hundred and over are
now under arrest (among them a considerable number
of ladies); and many of the Modenese nobility are
now serving in the galleys for conspiracy. He has
been shot at eighteen times. The last man who attempted
it, as I stated in a former letter, was executed
the morning I passed through Modena on my return
from Venice. With all this he is a fine soldier, and
his capital looks in all respects like a garrison in the
first style of discipline. He is just now absent at a
chateau three miles in the country.

The palace is a union of splendor and meanness
within. The endless succession of state apartments
are gorgeously draped and ornamented, but the entrance
halls and intermediate passages are furnished
with an economy you would scarce find exceeded in
the “worst inn's worst room.” Modena is Corregio's
birthplace, and it was from a duke of Modena that he
received the bag of copper coin which occasioned his
death. It was, I think, the meager reward of his
celebrated “Night,” and he broke a bloodvessel in
carrying it to his house. The duke has sold this picture,
as well as every other other sufficiently celebrated
to bring a princely price. His gallery is a
heap of trash, with but here and there a redeeming
thing. Among others, there is a portrait of a boy, I
think by Rembrandt, very intellectual and lofty, yet
with all the youthfulness of fourteen; and a copy of
“Giorgione's mistress,” the “love in life” of the
Manfrein palace, so admired by Lord Byron. There
is also a remarkably fine crucifixion, I forget by whom.

The front of the palace is renowned for its beauty.
In a street near it, we passed a house half battered
down by cannon. It was the residence of the chief
of a late conspiracy, who was betrayed a few hours
before his plot was ripe. He refused to surrender,
and before the ducal troops had mastered his house,
the revolt commenced and the duke was driven from
Modena. He returned in a week or two with some
three thousand Austrians, and has kept possession by
their assistance ever since. While we were waiting
dinner at the hotel, I took up a volume of the Modenese
law, and opened upon a statute forbidding all
subjects of the dutchy to live out of the duke's territories
under pain of the entire confiscation of their property.
They are liable to arrest, also, if it is suspected
that they are taking measures to remove. The alternatives
are oppression here or poverty elsewhere, and
the result is that the duke has scarce a noble left in
his realm.

Modena is a place of great antiquity. It was a
strong-hold in the time of Cesar, and after his death
was occupied by Brutus, and besieged by Antony.
There are no traces left, except some mutilated and
uncertain relics in the museum.

We drove to Bologna the following morning, and I
slept once more in Rogers's chamber at “the Pilgrim”

I have described this city, which I passed on my way
to Venice, so fully before, that I pass it over now with
the mere mention. I should not forget, however, my
acquaintance with a snuffy little librarian, who showed
me the manuscripts of Tasso and Ariosto, with much
amusing importance.

We crossed the Po to the Austrian custom-house.
Our trunks were turned inside out, our papers and
books examined, our passports studied for flaws—as
usual. After two hours of vexation, we were permitted
to go on board the steamboat, thanking Heaven
that our troubles were over for a week or two, and
giving Austria the common benediction she gets from
travellers. The ropes were cast off from the pier
when a police retainer came running to the boat, and
ordered our whole party on shore, bag and baggage.
Our passports, which had been retained to be sent on
to Venice by the captain, were irregular. We had
not passed by Florence, and they had not the signature
of the Austrian ambassador. We were ordered
imperatively back over the Po, with a flat assurance
that without first going to Florence, we never could
see Venice. To the ladies of the party, who had
made themselves certain of seeing this romance of
cities in twelve hours, it was a sad disappointment, and
after seeing them safely seated in the return shallop,
I thought I would go and make a desperate appeal to
the commissary in person. My nominal commission
as attaché to the legation at Paris, served me in this
case as it had often done before, and making myself
and the honor of the American nation responsible for
the innocent designs of a party of ladies upon Venice,
the dirty and surly commissary signed our passports
and permitted us to remand our baggage.

It was with unmingled pleasure that I saw again the
towers and palaces of Venice rising from the sea.
The splendid approach to the Piazzetta; the transfer
to the gondola and its soft motion; the swift and still
glide beneath the balconies of palaces, with whose
history I was familiar; and the renewal of my own
first impressions in the surprise and delight of others,
made up, altogether, a moment of high happiness.
There is nothing like—nothing equal to Venice. She
is the city of the imagination—the realization of romance—the
queen of splendor and softness and luxury.
Allow all her decay—feel all her degradation—see the
“Huns in her palaces,” and the “Greek upon her
mart,” and, after all, she is alone in the world for
beauty, and, spoiled as she has been by successive
conquerors, almost for riches too. Her churches of
marble, with their floors of precious stones, and walls
of gold and mosaic; her ducal palace, with its world
of art and massy magnificence; her private palaces,
with their fronts of inland gems, and balconies and
towers of inimitable workmanship and richness; her
lovely islands and mirror-like canals—all distinguish
her, and will till the sea rolls over her, as one of the
wonders of time.

38. LETTER XXXVIII.

In a first visit to a great European city it is difficult
not to let many things escape notice. Among several
churches which I did not see when I was here before,
is that of the Jesuits. It is a temple worthy of the celebrity
of this splendid order. The proportions are
finer than those of most of the Venetian churches,
and the interior is one tissue of curious marbles and
gold. As we entered, we were first struck with the
grace and magnificence of a large heavy curtain, hanging
over the pulpit, the folds of which, and the figures
wrought upon it, struck us as unusually elegant and
ingenious. Our astonishment was not lessened when
we found it was one solid mass of verd-antique marble.
Its sweep over the side and front of the pulpit is as
careless as if it were done by the wind. The whole
ceiling of the church is covered with sequin gold—the
finest that is coined. In one of the side chapels is the
famous “Martyrdom of St. Lawrence,” by Titian. A
fine copy of it (said in the catalogue to be the original)
was exhibited in the Boston Athenæum a year or two
since.

It is Sunday, and the morning has been of a heavenly,
summer, sunny calmness, such as is seen often
in Italy, and once in a year, perhaps, in New England.
It is a kind of atmosphere that to breathe is to be
grateful and happy. We have been to the Armenian
island—a little gem on the bosom of the Lagune, a
mile from Venice, where stands the monastery, to
which place Lord Byron went daily to study and translate
with the fathers. There is just room upon it for
a church, a convent, and a little garden. It looks
afloat on the water. Our gondola glided up to the
clean stone stairs, and we were received by one of the
order, a hale but venerable looking monk, in the Armenian
dress, the long black cassock and small round
cap, his beard long and scattered with gray, and his
complexion and eyes of a cheerful, child-like clearness,
such as regular and simple habits alone can give. I
inquired, as we walked through the cloister, for the father
with whom Lord Byron studied, and of whom the
poet speaks so often and so highly in his letters. The
monk smiled and bowed modestly, and related a little
incident that had happened to him at Padua, where he
had met two American travellers, who had asked him
of himself in the same manner. He had forgotten
their names, but from his description I presumed one
to have been Professor Longfellow, of Bowdoin university.

The stillness and cleanliness about the convent, as
we passed through the cloisters and halls, rendered
the impression upon a stranger delightful. We passed
the small garden, in which grew a stately oleander in
full blossom, and thousands of smaller flowers, in neat
beds and vases, and after walking through the church,
a plain and pretty one, we came to the library, where
the monk had studied with the poet. It is a proper
place for study—disturbed by nothing but the dash of
oars from a passing gondola, or the scream of a sea-bird,
and well furnished with books in every language,
and very luxurious chairs. The monk showed us an
encyclopædia, presented to himself by an English lady
of rank, who had visited the convent often. His handsome
eyes flashed as he pointed to it on the shelves.
We went next into a smaller room, where the more
precious manuscripts are deposited, and he showed us
curious illuminated copies of the Bible, and gave us
the stranger's book to inscribe our names. Byron
had scrawled his there before us, and the emperess Maria
Louisa had written hers twice on separate visits.
The monk then brought us a volume of prayers, in
twenty-five languages, translated by himself. We
bought copies, and upon some remark of one of the
ladies upon his acquirements, he ran from one language
to another, speaking English, French, Italian,
German, and Dutch, with equal facility. His English

was quite wonderful; and a lady from Rotterdam,
who was with us, pronounced his Dutch and German
excellent. We then bought small histories of the order,
written by an English gentleman, who had studied
at the island, and passed on to the printing-office—the
first clean one I ever saw, and quite the best appointed.
Here the monks print their bibles and prayer-books in
really beautiful Armenian type, beside almanacs, and
other useful publications for Constantinople, and other
parts of Turkey. The monk wrote his name at our
request (Pascal Aucher) in the blank leaves of our
books, and we parted from him at the water-stairs
with sincere regret. I recommend this monastery to
all travellers to Venice.

On our return we passed near an island, upon which
stands a single building—an insane hospital. I was
not very curious to enter it, but the gondolier assured
us that it was a common visit for strangers, and we consented
to go in. We were received by the keeper,
who went through the horrid scene like a regular
cicerone, giving us a cold and rapid history of every
patient that arrested our attention. The men's apartment
was the first, and I should never have supposed
them insane. They were all silent, and either read
or slept like the inmates of common hospitals. We
came to a side door, and as it opened, the confusion of
a hundred tongues burst through, and we were introduced
into the apartment for women. The noise was
deafening. After traversing a short gallery, we entered
a large hall, containing perhaps fifty females. There
was a simultaneous smoothing back of the hair and
prinking of the dress through the room. These,
the keeper said, were the well-behaved patients, and
more innocent and happy-looking people I never saw.
If to be happy is to be wise, I should believe with the
mad philosopher, that the world and the lunatic should
change names. One large, fine-looking woman took
upon herself to do the honors of the place, and came
forward with a graceful courtesy and a smile of condescension
and begged the ladies to take off their bonnets,
and offered me a chair. Even with her closely-shaven
head and coarse flannel dress, she seemed a lady.
The keeper did not know her history. Her attentions
were occasionally interrupted by a stolen
glance at the keeper, and a shrinking in of the shoulders,
like a child that had been whipped. One handsome
and perfectly healthy-looking girl of eighteen,
walked up and down the hall, with her arms folded,
and a sweet smile on her face, apparently lost in pleasing
thought, and taking no notice of us. Only one
was in bed, and her face might have been a conception
of Michael Angelo for horror. Her hair was uncut,
and fell over her eyes, her tongue hung from her
mouth, her eyes were sunken and restless, and the
deadly pallor over features drawn into the intensest
look of mental agony completed a picture that made
my heart sick. Her bed was clean, and she was as well
cared for as she could be; apparently.

We mounted a flight of stairs to the cells. Here
were confined those who were violent and ungovernable.
The mingled sounds that came through the
gratings as we passed were terrific. Laughter of a
demoniac wildness, moans, complaints in every language,
screams—every sound that could express impatience
and fear and suffering saluted our ears. The
keeper opened most of the cells and went in, rousing
occasionally one that was asleep, and insisting that all
should appear at the grate. I remonstrated, of course,
against such a piece of barbarity, but he said he did
it for all strangers, and took no notice of our pity.
The cells were small, just large enough for a bed, upon
the post of which hung a small coarse cloth bag,
containing two or three loaves of the coarsest bread.
There was no other furniture. The beds were bags
of straw, without sheets or pillows, and each had a
coarse piece of matting for a covering. I expressed
some horror at the miserable provision made for their
comfort, but was told that they broke and injured
themselves with any loose furniture, and were so reckless
in their habits, that it was impossible to give them
any other bedding than straw, which was changed every
day. I observed that each patient had a wisp of
long straw tied up in a bundle, given them, as the
keeper said, to employ their hands and amuse them.
The wooden blind before one of the gratings was removed,
and a girl flew to it with the ferocity of a tiger,
thrust her hands at us through the bars, and threw
her bread out into the passage, with a look of violent
and uncontrolled anger such as I never saw. She
was tall and very fine-looking. In another cell lay a
poor creature, with her face dreadfully torn, and her
hands tied strongly behind her. She was tossing about
restlessly upon her straw, and muttering to herself indistinctly.
The man said she tore her face and bosom
whenever she could get her hands free, and was his
worst patient. In the last cell was a girl of eleven or
twelve years, who began to cry piteously the moment
the bolt was drawn. She was in bed, and uncovered
her head very unwillingly, and evidently expected to
be whipped. There was another range of cells above,
but we had seen enough, and were glad to get out
upon the calm Lagune. There could scarcely be a
stronger contrast than between those two islands lying
side by side—the first the very picture of regularity
and happiness, and the last a refuge for distraction and
misery. The feeling of gratitude to God for reason
after such a scene is irresistible.

In visiting again the prisons under the ducal palace,
several additional circumstances were told us. The
condemned were compelled to become executioners.
They were led from their cells into the dark passage
where stood the secret guillotine, and without warning
forced to put to death a fellow-creature either by this
instrument, or the more horrible method of strangling
against a grate. The guide said that the office of executioner
was held in such horror that it was impossible
to fill it, and hence this dreadful alternative. When
a prisoner was about to be executed, his clothes were
sent home to his family with the message, that “the
state would care for him.” How much more agonizing
do these circumstances seem, when we remember
that most of the victims were men of rank and education,
condemned on suspicion of political crimes, and
often with families refined to a most unfortunate capacity
for mental torture! One ceases to regret the
fall of the Venetian republic, when he sees with how
much crime and tyranny her splendor was accompanied.

I saw at the arsenal to-day the model of the “Bucentaur,”
the state galley in which the doge of Venice
went out annually to marry him to the sea. This
poetical relic (which, in Childe Harold's time, “lay
rotting unrestored”) was burnt by the French—why,
I can not conceive. It was a departure from their
usual habit of respect of the curious and beautiful;
and if they had been jealous of such a vestige of the
grandeur of a conquered people, it might at least
have been sent to Paris as easily as “Saint Mark's
steeds of brass,” and would have been as great a curiosity.
I would rather have seen the Bucentaur than
all their other plunder. The arsenal contains many
other treasures. The armor given to the city of Venice
by Henry the Fourth is there, and a curious key constructed
to shoot poisoned needles, and used by one
of the Henrys, I have forgotten which, to despatch
any one who offended him in his presence. One or
two curious machines for torture were shown us—
mortars into which the victim was put, with an iron
armor open only at the ear, which was screwed down
upon him till his head was crushed, or confession
stopped the torture.

39. LETTER XXXIX.

I was loitering down one of the gloomy aisles of
San Marc's church, just at twilight this evening, listening
to the far-off Ave Maria in one of the distant
chapels, when a Boston gentleman, who I did not
know was abroad, entered with his family, and passed
up to the altar. It is difficult to conceive with what a
tide the half-forgotten circumstances of a home, so far
away, rush back upon one's heart in a strange land,
after a long absence, at the sight of familiar faces. I
could realize nothing about me after it—the glittering
mosaic of precious stones under my feet, the gold and
splendid colors of the roof above me, the echoes of
the monotonous chant through the arches—foreign
and strange as these circumstances all were. I was
irresistibly at home, the familiar pictures of my native
place filling my eye, and the recollections of those
whom I love and honor there crowding upon my heart
with irrepressible emotion. The feeling is a painful
one, and with the necessity for becoming again a forgetful
wanderer, remembering home only as a dream,
one shrinks from such things. The reception of a
letter, even, destroys a day.

There has been a grand festa to-day at the Lido.
This, you know, is a long island, forming part of the
sea-wall of Venice. It is, perhaps, five or six miles
long, covered in part with groves of small trees, and a
fine green sward; and to the Venetians, to whom leaves
and grass are holyday novelties, is the scene of their
gayest festas. They were dancing and dining under
the trees; and in front of the fort which crowns the
island, the Austrian commandant had pitched his tent,
and with a band of military music, the officers were
waltzing with ladies in a circle of green-sward, making
altogether a very poetical scene. We passed an hour
or two wandering among this gay and unconscious
people, and came home by one of the loveliest sunsets
that ever melted sea and sky together. Venice looked
like a vision of a city hanging in mid-air.

We have been again to that delightful palace of
Manfrini. The “Portia swallowing fire,” the Rembrandt
portrait, the far-famed “Giorgione, son and
wife,” and twenty others, which to see is to be charmed,
delighted me once more. I believe the surviving
Manfrein is the only noble left in Venice. Pesaro,
who disdained to live in his country after its liberty
was gone, died lately in London. His palace here is
the finest structure I have seen, and his country-house
on the Brenta is a paradise. It must have been a
strong feeling which exiled him from them for eighteen
years.

In coming from the Manfrini, we stopped at the
church of “St. Mary of Nazareth.” This is one of
those whose cost might buy a kingdom. Its gold and
marbles oppress one with their splendor. In the centre
of the ceiling is a striking fresco of the bearing of
“Loretto's chapel through the air;” and in one of the
corners a lovely portrait of a boy looking over a balustrade,
done by the artist at fourteen years of age!

Padua.—We have passed two days in this venerable
city of learning, including a visit to Petrarch's
tomb at Arqua. The university here is still in its
glory, with fifteen hundred students. It has never
declined, I believe, since Livy's time. The beautiful
inner court has two or three galleries, crowded with
the arms of the nobles and distinguished individuals
who have received its honors. It has been the “cradle
of princes” from every part of Europe.

Around one of the squares of the city, stand forty
or fifty statues of the great and distinguished foreigners
who have received their education here. It happened
to be the month of vacation, and we could not
see the interior.

At a public palace, so renowned for the size and
singular architecture of its principal hall, we saw a
very antique bust of Titus Livy—a fine, cleanly-chiselled,
scholastic old head, that looked like the spirit
of Latin imbodied. We went thence to the Duomo,
where they show a beautiful bust of Petrarch, who
lived at Padua some of the latter years of his life. It
is a softer and more voluptuous conntenance than is
given him in the pictures.

The church of Saint Antony here has stood just
six hundred years. It occupied a century in building,
and is a rich and noble old specimen of the taste of
the times, with eight cupolas and towers, twenty-seven
chapels inside, four immense organs, and countless
statues and pictures. Saint Antony's body lies in the
midst of the principal chapel, which is surrounded
with relievos representing his miracles, done in the
best manner of the glorious artists of antiquity. We
were there during mass, and the people were nearly
suffocating themselves in the press to touch the altar
and tomb of the saint. This chapel was formerly lit
by massive silver lamps, which Napoleon took, presenting
them with their models in gilt. He also exacted
from them three thousand sequins for permission
to retain the chin and tongue of St. Antony, which
works miracles still, and are preserved in a splendid
chapel with immense brazen doors. Behind the main
altar I saw a harrowing picture by Teipolo, of the
martyrdom of St. Agatha. Her breasts are cut off,
and lying in a dish. The expression in the face of
the dying woman is painfully well done.

Returning to the inn, we passed a magnificent palace
on one of the squares, upon whose marble steps and
column-bases, sat hundreds of brutish Austrian troops,
smoking and laughing at the passers-by. This is a
sight you may see now all through Italy. The palaces
of her proudest nobles are turned into barracks for
foreign troops, and there is scarce a noble old church
or monastery that is not defiled with their filth. The
German soldiers are, without exception, the most stolid
and disagreeable looking body of men I ever saw,
and they have little to soften the indignant feeling with
which one sees them rioting in this lovely and oppressed
country.

We passed an hour before bedtime in the usual
amusement of travellers in a foreign hotel—reading
the traveller's record-book. Walter Scott's name was
written there, and hundreds of distinguished names
besides. I was pleased to find, on a leaf far back,
“Edward Everett,” written in his own round legible
hand. There were at least the names of fifty Americans,
within the dates of the year past—such a wandering
nation we are. Foreigners express their astonishment
always at their numbers in these cities.

On the afternoon of the next day, we went to Arqua,
on a pilgrimage to Petrarch's cottage and tomb. It
was an Italian summer afternoon, and the Euganean
hills were rising green and lovely, with the sun an hour

high above them, and the yellow of the early sunset
already commencing to glow about the horizon.

We left the carriage at the “pellucid lake,” and
went into the hills a mile, plucking the ripe grapes
which hung over the road in profusion. We were
soon at the little village and the tomb, which stands
just before the church door, “reared in air.” The
four laurels Byron mentions are dead. We passed up
the hill to the poet's house, a rural stone cottage,
commanding a lovely view of the compagna from the
portico. Sixteen villages may be counted from the
door, and the two large towns of Rovigo and Ferrara
are distinguishable in a clear atmosphere. It was a
retreat fit for a poet. We went through the rooms,
and saw the poet's cat, stuffed and exhibited behind a
wire grating, his chair and desk, his portrait in fresco,
and Laura's, and the small closet-like room where he
died. It was an interesting visit, and we returned by
the golden twilight of this heavenly climate, repeating
Childe Harold, and wishing for his pen to describe
afresh the scene about us.

40. LETTER XL.

Our gondola set us on shore at Fusina an hour or
two before sunset, with a sky (such as we have had
for five months) without a cloud, and the same promise
of a golden sunset, to which I have now become
so accustomed, that rain and a dark heaven would
seem to me almost unnatural. It was the hour and
the spot at which Childe Harold must have left Venice,
and we look at the “blue Friuli mountains,” the
“deep-died Brenta,” and the “far Rhœtian hill,” and
feel the truth of his description as well as its beauty.
The two banks of the Brenta are studded with the
palaces of the Venetian nobles for almost twenty
miles, and the road runs close to the water on the
northern side, following all its graceful windings, and,
at every few yards, surprising the traveller with some
fresh scene of cultivated beauty, church, palace, or
garden, while the gondolas on the stream, and the fair
“damas” of Italy sitting under the porticoes, enliven
and brighten the picture. These people live out of
doors, and the road was thronged with the contadini;
and here and there rolled by a carriage, with servants
in livery; or a family of the better class on their evening
walk, sauntered along at the Italian pace of indolence,
and a finer or happier looking race of people
would not easily be found. It is difficult to see the
athletic frames and dark flashing eyes of the Lombardy
peasantry, and remember their degraded condition.
You can not believe it will remain so. If they
think at all, they must in time, feel too deeply to endure.

The guide-book says, the “traveller wants words to
express his sensations at the beauty of the country
from Padua to Verona.” Its beauty is owing to the perfection
of a method of cultivation universal in Italy.
The fields are divided into handsome squares, by rows
of elms or other forest trees, and the vines are trained
upon these with all the elegance of holyday festoons,
winding about the trunks, and hanging with their
heavy clusters from one to the other, the foliage of
vine and tree mingled so closely that it appears as if
they sprung from the same root. Every square is perfectly
enclosed with these fantastic walls of vine-leaves
and grapes, and the imagination of a poet could conceive
nothing more beautiful for a festival of Bacchus.
The ground between is sown with grass or corn. The
vines are luxuriant always, and often send their tendrils
into the air higher than the topmost branch of
the tree, and this extends the whole distance from
Padua to Verona, with no interruption except the palaces
and gardens of the nobles lying between.

It was just the season for gathering and pressing the
grape, and the romantic vineyards were full of the happy
peasants, of all ages, mounting the ladders adventurously
for the tall clusters, heaping the baskets and
carts, driving in the stately gray oxen with their loads,
and talking and singing as merrily as if it were Arcadia.
Oh how beautiful these scenes are in Italy. The
people are picturesque, the land is like the poetry of
nature, the habits are all as they were described centuries
ago, and as the still living pictures of the glorious
old masters represent them. The most every-day
traveller smiles and wonders, as he lets down his carriage
windows to look at the vintage.

We have been three or four days in Verona, visiting
Juliet's tomb, and riding through the lovely environs.
The opera here is excellent, and we went last night to
see “Romeo and Juliet” performed in the city renowned
by their story. The prima donna was one
of those sirens found often in Italy—a young singer
of great promise, with that daring brilliancy which
practice and maturer science discipline, to my taste,
too severely. It was like the wild, ungovernable trill
of a bird, and my ear is not so nice yet, that I even
would not rather feel a roughness in the harmony than
lose it. Malibran delighted me more in America than
in Paris.

The opera was over at twelve, and, as we emerged
from the crowded lobby, the moon, full, and as clear
and soft as the eye of a child, burst through the arches
of the portico. The theatre is opposite the celebrated
Roman amphitheatre, and the wish to visit it
by moonlight was expressed spontaneously by the
whole party. The custode was roused, and we entered
the vast arena and stood in the midst, with the gigantic
ranges of stone seats towering up in a receding
circle, as if to the very sky, and the lofty arches and
echoing dens lying black and silent in the dead shadows
of the moon. A hundred thousand people could
sit here; and it was in these arenas, scattered through
the Roman provinces, that the bloody gladiator fights
and the massacre of Christians, and every scene of
horror, amused the subjects of the mighty mistress of
the world. You would never believe it, if you could
have seen how peacefully the moonlight now sleeps
on the moss-gathering walls, and with what untrimmed
grace the vines and flowers creep and blossom on
the rocky crevices of the windows.

We arrived at Bologna just in time to get to the
opera. Malibran in La Gazza Ladra was enough to
make one forget more than the fatigue of a day's travel.
She sings as well as ever, and plays much better
though she had been ill, and looked thin. In the prison
scene, she was ghastlier even than the character
required. There are few pleasures in Europe like
such singing as hers, and the Italians, in their excellent
operas, and the cheap rate at which they can be
frequented, have a resource corresponding to everything
else in their delightful country. Every comfort
and luxury is better and cheaper in Italy than elsewhere,
and it is a pity that he who can get his wine
for three cents a bottle, his dinner and his place at the
opera for ten, and has lodgings for anything he chooses

to pay, can not find leisure, and does not think it
worth the trouble, to look about for means to be free.
It is vexatious to see nature lavishing such blessings
on slaves.

The next morning we visited a palace, which, as it
is not mentioned in the guide-books of travel, I had
not before seen—the Lambaccari. It was full of glorious
pictures, most of them for sale. Among others
we were captivated with a Magdalen of unrivalled
sweetness, by Guido Carracci. It has been bought
since by Mr. Cabot, of Boston, who passed through
Bologna the day after, and will be sent to America, I
am happy to say, immediately. There were also six
of “Charles the Second's beauties,”—portraits of the
celebrated women of that gay monarch's court, by
Sir Peter Lely—ripe, glowing English women, more
voluptuous than chary-looking, but pictures of exquisite
workmanship. There were nine or ten apartments
to this splendid palace, all crowded with paintings
by the first masters, and the surviving Lambaccari
is said to be selling them one by one for bread. It is
really melancholy to go through Italy, and see how
her people are suffering, and her nobles starving under
oppression.

We crossed the Appenines in two of the finest days
that ever shone, and descending through clouds and
mist to the Tuscan frontier, entered the lovely valley
of the Arno, sparkling in the sunshine, with all its
palaces and spires, as beautiful as ever. I am at Florence
once more, and parting from the delightful party
with whom I have travelled for two months. I start
for Rome to-morrow, in company with five artists.

41. LETTER XLI.

I left Florence in company with the five artists
mentioned in my last letter, one of them an Englishman,
and the other four pensioners of the royal academy
at Madrid. The Spaniards had but just arrived
in Italy, and could not speak a syllable of the language.
The Englishman spoke everything but French,
which he avoided learning from principle. He “hated
a Frenchman!”

There are two roads to Rome. One goes by Sienna,
and is a day shorter; the other by Perugia, the
Falls of Terni, Lake Thrasymene, and the Clitumnus.
Childe Harold took the latter, and his ten or twelve
best cantos describe it. I was compelled to go by Sienna,
and shall return, of course, by the other road.

I was at Sienna on the following day. As the second
capital of Tuscany, this should be a place of some
interest, but an hour or two is more than enough to
see all that is attractive. The public square was a gay
scene. It was rather singularly situated, lying fifteen
or twenty feet lower than the streets about it. I should
think there were several thousand people in its area—
all buying or selling, and vociferating, as usual, at the
top of their voices. We heard the murmur, like the
roar of the sea, in all the distant streets. There are
few sights more picturesque than an Italian fair, and I
strolled about in the crowd for an hour, amused with
the fanciful costumes, and endeavoring to make out
with the assistance of the eye what rather distracted
my unaccustomed ear—the cries of the various wandering
venders of merchandise. The women, who
were all from the country, were coarse, and looked
well only at a distance.

The cathedral is the great sight of Sienna. It has
a rich exterior, encrusted with curiously wrought marbles,
and the front, as far as I can judge, is in beautiful
taste. The pavement of the interior is very precious,
and covered with a wooden platform, which is
removed but once a year. The servitor raised a part
of it, to show us the workmanship. It was like a
drawing in India ink, quite as fine as if pencilled, and
representing, as is customary, some miracle of a saint.

A massive iron door, made ingeniously to imitate a
rope-netting, opens from the side of the church into the
library. It contained some twenty volumes in black
letter, bound with enormous clasps, and placed upon
inclined shelves. It would have been a task for a man
of moderate strength to lift either of them from the
floor. The little sacristan found great difficulty in
only opening one to show us the letter.

In the centre of the chapel, on a high pedestal,
stands the original antique group, so often copied, of
the three Grecian Graces. It is shockingly mutilated;
but its original beauty is still, in a great measure, discernible.
Three naked women are an odd ornament
for the private chapel of a cathedral.[1] One often
wonders, however, in Italian churches, whether his
devotion is most called upon by the arts or the Deity.

As we were leaving the church, four young officers
passed us in gay uniform, their long steel scabbards
rattling on the pavement, and their heavy tread disturbing
visibly every person present. As I turned to
look after them, with some remark on their coxcombry,
they dropped on their knees at the bases of the
tall pillars about the altar, and burying their faces in
their caps, bowed their heads nearly to the floor, in attitudes
of the deepest devotion. Sincere or not, catholic
worshippers of all classes seem absorbed in their religious
duties. You can scarce withdraw the attention
even of a child in such places. In the six months
that I have been in Italy, I never saw anything like irreverence
within the church walls.

The public promenade, on the edge of the hill upon
which the town is beautifully situated, commands a
noble view of the country about. The peculiar landscape
of Italy lay before us in all its loveliness—the
far-off hills lightly teinted with the divided colors of
distance, the atmosphere between absolutely clear and
invisible, and villages clustered about, each with its
ancient castle on the hill-top above, just as it was settled
in feudal times, and just as painters and poets
would imagine it. You never get a view in this “garden
of the world” that would not excuse very extravagant
description.

Sienna is said to be the best place for learning the
language. Just between Florence and Rome, it combines
the “lingua Toscano,” with the “bocca Romana”—the
Roman pronunciation with the Florentine
purity of language. It looks like a dull place, however,
and I was very glad after dinner to resume my
passport at the gate and get on.

The next morning, after toiling up a considerable ascent,
we suddenly rounded the shoulder of the mountain,
and found ourselves at the edge of a long glen,
walled up at one extremity by a precipice, with an old
town upon its brow, and a waterfall pouring off at its
side, and opening away at the other into a broad gently-sloped
valley, cultivated like a garden as far as the
eye could distinguish. I think I have seen an engra

ving of it in the Landscape Annual. Taken together,
it is positively the most beautiful view I ever saw,
from the road edge, as you wind up into the town of
Acquapendenk. The precipice might be a hundred
feet, and from its immediate edge were built up the
walls of the houses, so that a child at the window
might throw its plaything into the bottom of the ravine.
It is scarce a pistol-shot across the glen, and the
two hills on either side lean off from the level of the
town in one long soft declivity to the valley—the little
river which pours off the rock at the very base of the
church, fretting and fuming its way between to the
meadows—its stony bed quite hidden by the thick vegetation
of its banks. The bells were ringing to mass,
and the echoes came back to us at long distances with
every modulation. The streets, as we entered the
town, were full of people hurrying to the churches;
the women with their red shawls thrown about their
heads, and the men with their immense dingy cloaks
flung romantically over their shoulders, with a grace,
one and all, that in a Parisian dandy, would be attributed
to a consummate study of effect. For outline
merely, I think there is nothing in costume
which can surpass the closely-stockinged leg, heavy
cloak, and slouched hat of an Italian peasant. It is
added to by his indolent, and, consequently, graceful
motion and attitudes. Johnson, in his book on the
climate of Italy, says their sloth is induced by malaria.
You will see a man watching goats or sheep,
with his back against a rock, quite motionless for hours
together. His dog feels, apparently, the same influence,
and lies couched in his long white hair, with
his eyes upon the flock, as lifeless, and almost as picturesque,
as his master.

The town of San Lorenzo is a handful of houses on
the top of a hill which hangs over Lake Bolsena.
You get the first view of the lake as you go out of the
gate toward Rome, and descend immediately to its
banks. There was a heavy mist upon the water, and
we could not see across, but it looked like as quiet
and pleasant a shore as might be found in the world—
the woods wild, and of uncommonly rich foliage for
Italy, and the slopes of the hills beautiful. Saving the
road, and here and there a house with no sign of an inhabitant,
there can scarcely be a lonelier wilderness
in America. We stopped two hours at an inn on its
banks, and whether it was the air, or the influence of
the perfect stillness about us, my companions went to
sleep, and I could scarce resist my own drowsiness.

The mist lifted a little from the lake after dinner,
and we saw the two islands said by Pliny to have
floated in his time. They look like the tops of green
hills rising from the water.

It is a beautiful country again as you approach
Montefiascone. The scenery is finely broken up with
glens formed by columns of basalt, giving it a look of
great wildness. Montefiascone is built on the river of
one of these ravines. We stopped here long enough
to get a bottle of the wine for which the place is famous,
drinking it to the memory of the “German prelate,”
who, as Madame Stark relates, “stopped here
on his journey to Rome, and died of drinking it to excess.”
It has degenerated, probably, since his time,
or we chanced upon a bad bottle.

The walls of Viterbo are flanked with towers, and
have a noble appearance from the hill-side on which
the town stands. We arrived too late to see anything
of the place. As we were taking coffee at the café the
next morning, a half hour before daylight, we heard
music in the street, and looking out at the door, we
saw a long procession of young girls, dressed with
flowers in their hair, and each playing a kind of cymbal,
and half dancing as she went along. Three or four at
the head of the procession sung a kind of verse, and the
rest joined in a short merry chorus at intervals. It
was more like a train of Corybantes than anything I
had seen. We inquired the object of it, and were told
it was a procession to the vintage. They were going
out to pluck the last grapes, and it was the custom to
make it a festa. It was a striking scene in the otherwise
perfect darkness of the streets, the torch-bearers
at the sides waving their flambeaux regularly over their
heads, and shouting with the rest in chorus. The
measure was quick, and the step very fast. They
were gone in an instant. The whole thing was poetical,
and in keeping for Italy. I have never seen it
elsewhere.

We left Viterbo on a clear, mild autumnal morning;
and I think I never felt the excitement of a delightful
climate more thrillingly. The road was wild, and with
the long ascent of the Monte-Cimino before us, I left the
carriage to its slow pace and went ahead several miles
on foot. The first rain of the season had fallen, and
the road was moist, and all the spicy herbs of Italy perceptible
in the air. Half way up the mountain, I overtook
a fat, bald, middle-aged priest, slowly toiling up
on his mule. I was passing him with a “buon giorno,”
when he begged me for my own sake, as well as his,
to keep him company. “It was the worst road for
thieves,” he said, “in all Italy,” and he pointed at
every short distance to little crosses erected at the
road-side, to commemorate the finding of murdered
men on the spot. After he had told me several stories
of the kind, he elevated his tone, and began to talk of
other matters. I think I never heard so loud and long
a laugh as his. I ventured to express a wonder at his
finding himself so happy in a life of celibacy. He
looked at me slily a moment or two as if he were hesitating
whether to trust me with his opinions on the
subject; but he suddenly seemed to remember his
caution, and pointing off to the right, showed me a
lake brought into view by the last turn of the road. It
was Lake Vico. From the midst of it rose a round
mountain covered to the top with luxuriant chestnuts—
the lake forming a sort of trench about it, with the
hill on which we stood rising directly from the other
edge. It was one faultless mirror of green leaves.
The two hill sides shadowed it completely. All the
views from Monte-Cimino were among the richest in
mere nature that I ever saw, and reminded me strongly
of the country about the Seneca lake of America.
I was on the Cayuga at about the same season three
summers ago, and I could have believed myself back
again, it was so like my recollection.

We stopped on the fourth night of our journey,
seventeen miles from Rome, at a place called Baccano.
A ridge of hills rose just before us, from the top of
which we were told we could see St. Peter's. The
sun was just dipping under the horizon, and the ascent
was three miles. We threw off our cloaks, determining
to see Rome before we slept, ran unbreathed
to the top of the hill, an effort which so nearly exhausted
us, that we could scarce stand long enough
upon our feet to search over the broad campagna for
the dome.

Tho sunset had lingered a great while—as it does
in Italy. Four or five light feathery streaks of cloud
glowed with intense crimson in the west, and on the
brow of Mount Soracte, (which I recognised instantly
from the graphic simile[2] of Childe Harold), and along
on all the ridges of mountain in the east, still played
a kind of vanishing reflection, half purple, half gray.
With a moment's glance around to catch the outline
of the landscape, I felt instinctively where Rome should
stand, and my eye fell at once upon “the mighty
dome.” Jupiter had by this time appeared, and hung
right over it, trembling in the sky with its peculiar
glory, like a lump of molten spar, and as the color
faded from the clouds, and the dark mass of “the
eternal city” itself mingled and was lost in the shadows

of the campagna, the dome still seemed to
catch light, and tower visibly, as if the radiance of the
glowing star above fell more directly upon it. We
could see it till we could scarcely distinguish each
other's features. The dead level of the campagna
extended between and beyond for twenty miles, and it
looked like a far-off beacon in a dim sea. We sat an
hour on the summit of the hill, gazing into the increasing
darkness, till our eyes ached. The stars
brightened one by one, the mountains grew indistinct,
and we rose unwillingly to retrace our steps to Baccano.

42. LETTER XLII.

To be rid of the dust of travel, and abroad in a
strange and renowned city, is a sensation of no slight
pleasure anywhere. To step into the street under
these circumstances and inquire for the Roman Forum,
was a sufficient advance upon the ordinary feeling to
mark a bright day in one's calendar. I was hurrying
up the Corso with this object before me a half hour
after my arrival in Rome, when an old friend arrested
my steps, and begging me to reserve the “Ruins” for
moonlight, took me off to St. Peter's.

The façade of the church appears alone, as you
walk up the street from the castle of St. Angelo. It
disappointed me. There is no portico, and it looks
flat and bare. But approaching nearer, I stood at the
base of the obelisk, and with those two magnificent
fountains sending their musical waters as if to the
sky, and the two encircling wings of the church embracing
the immense area with its triple colonnades, I
felt the grandeur of St. Peter's. I felt it again in the
gigantic and richly-wrought porches, and again with
indescribable surprise and admiration at the first step
on the pavement of the interior. There was not a
figure on its immense floor from the door to the altar,
and its far-off roof, its mighty pillars. its gold and
marbles in such profusion that the eye shrinks from
the examination, made their overpowering impression
uninterrupted. You feel that it must be a glorious
creature that could build such a temple to his Maker.

An organ was playing brokenly in one of the distant
chapels, and, drawing insensibly to the music, we
found the door half open, and a monk alone, running
his fingers over the keys, and stopping sometimes as
if to muse, till the echo died and the silence seemed
to startle him anew. It was strange music very irregular,
but sweet, and in a less excited moment, I could
have sat and listened to it till the sun set.

I strayed down the aisle, and stood before the
“Dead Christ” of Michael Angelo. The Savior lies
in the arms of Mary. The limbs hang lifelessly down,
and, exquisitely beautiful as they are, express death
with a wonderful power. It is the best work of the
artist, I think, and the only one I was ever moved in
looking at.

The greatest statue and the first picture in the world
are under the same roof, and we mounted to the Vatican.
The museum is a wilderness of statuary. Old
Romans, men and women, stand about you, copied,
as you feel when you look on them, from the life,
and conceptions of beauty in children, nymphs, and
heroes, from minds that conceived beauty in a degree
that has never been transcended, confuse and bewilder
you with their number and wonderful workmanship.
It is like seeing a vision of past ages. It is calling up
from Athens and old classic Rome, all that was distinguished
and admired of the most polished ages of
the world. On the right of the long gallery, as you
enter, stands the bust of the “Young Augustus”—a
kind of beautiful, angelic likeness of Napoleon, as
Napoleon might have been in his youth. It is a boy,
but with a serene dignity about the forehead and lips,
that makes him visibly a boy-emperor—born for his
throne, and conscious of his right to it. There is
nothing in marble more perfect, and I never saw anything
which made me realize that the Romans of history
and poetry were men—nothing which brought
them so familiarly to my mind, as the feeling for beauty
shown in this infantine bust. I would rather have
it than all the gods and heroes of the Vatican.

No cast gives you any idea worth having of the
Apollo Belvidere. It is a god-like model of a man.
The lightness and the elegance of the limbs; the free,
fiery, confident energy of the atitude; the breathing,
indignant nostril and lips; the whole statue's mingled
and equal grace and power, are, with all its truth to
nature, beyond any conception I had formed of manly
beauty. It spoils one's eye for common men to look
at it. It stands there like a descended angel, with a
splendor of form and an air of power, that makes one
feel what he should have been, and mortifies him for
what he is. Most women whom I have met in Europe,
adore the Apollo as far the finest statue in the
world, and most men say as much of the Medicean
Venus. But, to my eye, the Venus, lovely as she is
compares with the Apollo as a mortal with an angel of
light. The later is incomparably the finest statue.
If it were only for its face, it would transcend the other
infinitely. The beauty of the Venus is only in the
limbs and body. It is a faultless, and withal, modest
representation of the flesh and blood beauty of a woman.
The Apollo is all this, and has a soul. I have
seen women that approached the Venus in form, and
had finer faces—I never saw a man that was a shadow
of the Apollo in either. It stands as it should, in a
room by itself, and is thronged at all hours by female
worshippers. They never tire of gazing at it; and I
should believe, from the open-mouthed wonder of
those whom I met at its pedestal, that the story of the
girl who pined and died for love of it, was neither improbable
nor singular.

Raphael's “Transfiguration” is agreed to be the
finest picture in the world. I had made up my mind
to the same opinion from the engravings of it, but was
painfully disappointed in the picture. I looked at it
from every corner of the room, and asked the custode
three times if he was sure this was the original. The
color offended my eye, blind as Raphael's name should
make it, and I left the room with a sigh, and an unsettled
faith in my own taste, that made me seriously
unhappy. My complacency was restored a few hours
after on hearing that the wender was entirely in the
drawing—the colors having quite changed with time.
I bought the engraving immediately, which you have
seen too often, of course, to need my commentary.
The aerial lightness with which he has hung the figures
of the Savior and the apostles in the air, is a triumph
of the pencil over the laws of nature, that seem
to have required the power of the miracle itself.

I lost myself in coming home, and following a
priest's direction to the Corso, came unexpectedly upon
the “Pantheon,” which I recognised at once.
This wonder of architecture has no questionable beauty.
A dunce would not need to be told that it was
perfect. Its Corinthian columns fall on the eye with
that sense of fulness that seems to answer an instinct
of beauty in the very organ. One feels a fault or an

excellence in architecture long before he can give the
feeling a name; and I can see why, by Childe Harold
and others, this heathen temple is called “the pride of
Rome,” though I can not venture on a description.
The faultless interior is now used as a church, and
there lie Annibal Carracci and the divine Raphael—
two names worthy of the place, and the last of a shrine
in every bosom capable of a conception of beauty.
Glorious Raphael! If there was no other relic in
Rome, one would willingly become a pilgrim to his
ashes.

With my countryman and friend, Mr. Cleveland, I
stood in the Roman forum by the light of a clear half
moon. The soft silver rays poured in through the
ruined columns of the Temple of Fortune and threw
our shadows upon the bases of the tall shafts near the
capitol, the remains, I believe, of the temple erected
by Augustus to Jupiter Tonans. Impressive things
they are, even without their name, standing tall and
alone, with their broken capitals wreathed with ivy,
and neither roof nor wall to support them where they
were placed by hands that have mouldered for centuries.
It is difficult to rally one's senses in such a
place, and be awake coldly to the scene. We stood,
as we supposed, in the Rostrum. The noble arch,
still almost perfect, erected by the senate to Septimius
Severus, stood up clear and lofty beside us, the three
matchless and lonely columns of the supposed temple
of Jupiter Stator threw their shadows across the Forum
below, the great arch, built at the conquest of
Jerusalem to Titus, was visible in the distance, and
above them all, on the gentle ascent of the Palatine,
stood the ruined palace of the Cesars, the sharp edges
of the demolished walls breaking up through vines
and ivy, and the mellow moon of Italy softening rock
and foliage into one silver-edged mass of shadow. It
seems as if the very genius of the picturesque had arranged
these immortal ruins. If the heaps of fresh
excavation were but overgrown with grass, no poet nor
painter could better image out the Rome of his dream.
It surpasses fancy.

We walked on over fragments of marble columns
turned up from the mould, and leaving the majestic
arches of the Temple of Peace on our left, passed
under the arch of Titus (so dreaded by the Jews), to
the Coliseum. This too is magnificently ruined—
broken in every part, and yet showing still the brave
skeleton of what it was—its gigantic and triple walls,
half encircling the silent arena, and its rocky seats
lifting one above the other amid weeds and ivy, and
darkening the dens beneath, whence issued the gladiators,
beasts, and Christian martyrs, to be sacrificed for
the amusement of Rome. A sentinel paced at the
gigantic archway, a capuchin monk, whose duty is to
attend the small chapels built around the arena, walked
up and down in his russet cowl and sandals, the
moon broke through the clefts in the wall, and the
whole place was buried in the silence of a wilderness.
I have given you the features of the scene—I leave
you to people it with your own thoughts. I dare not
trust mine to a colder medium than poetry.

43. LETTER XLIII.

I have spent a day at Tivoli with Messrs. Auchmuty
and Bissell, of our navy, and one or two others,
forming quite an American party. We passed the ru
ins of the baths of Diocletian, with a heavy cloud over
our heads; but we were scarce through the gate,
when the sun broke through, the rain swept off over
Soracte, and the sky was clear till sunset.

I have seen many finer falls than Tivoli; that is,
more water, and falling farther; but I do not think
there is so pretty a place in the world. A very dirty
village, a dirtier hotel, and a cicerone all rags and ruffianism,
are somewhat dampers to anticipation. We
passed through a broken gate, and with a step, were in
a glen of fairy-land; the lightest and loveliest of antique
temples on a crag above, a snowy waterfall of
some hundred and fifty feet below, grottoes mossed to
the mouth at the river's outlet, and all up and down
the cleft valley vines twisted in the crevices of rock,
and shrubbery hanging on every ledge, with a felicity
of taste or nature, or both, that is uncommon even in
Italy. The fall itself comes rushing down through a
grotto to the face of the precipice, over which it leaps,
and looks like a subterranean river just coming to light.
Its bed is rough above, and it bursts forth from its cavern
in dazzling foam, and falls in one sparry sheet to
the gulf. The falls of Montmorenci are not unlike it.

We descended to the bottom, and from the little terrace,
wet by the spray, and dark with overhanging
rocks, looked up the “cavern of Neptune,” a deep passage,
through which half the divided river rushes to
meet the fall in the gulf. Then remounting to the
top, we took mules to make the three miles' circuit of
the glen, and see what are called the Cascatelli.

No fairy-work could exceed the beauty of the little antique
Sybil's temple perched on the top of the crag above
the fall. As we rode round the other edge of the glen, it
stood opposite us in all the beauty of its light and airy
architecture; a thing that might be borne, “like Loretto's
chapel, through the air,” and seem no miracle.

A mile farther on I began to recognise the features
of the scene, at a most lovely point of view. It was
the subject of one of Cole's landscapes, which I had
seen in Florence; and I need not say to any one who
knows the works of this admirable artist, that it was
done with truth and taste.[3] The little town of Tivoli
hangs on a jutting lap of the mountain, on the side of
the ravine opposite to your point of view. From beneath
its walls, as if its foundations were laid upon a
river's fountains, bursts foaming water in some thirty
different falls; and it seems to you as if the long declivities
were that moment for the first time overflowed,
for the currents go dashing under trees, and overleaping
vines and shrubs, appearing and disappearing continually,
till they all meet in the quiet bed of the river
below. “It was made by Bernini,” said the guide, as
we stood gazing at it; and, odd as this information
sounded, while wondering at a spectacle worthy of the
happiest accident of nature, it will explain the phenomena
of the place to you—the artist having turned
a mountain river from its course, and leading it under
the town of Tivoli, threw it over the sides of the precipitous
hill upon which it stands. One of the streams
appears from beneath the ruins of the “Villa of Mecænas,”
which topples over a precipice just below the
town, looking over the campagna toward Rome—a
situation worthy of the patron of the poets. We rode
through the immense subterranean arches, which formed
its court in ascending the mountain again to the
town.

Near Tivoli is the ruined villa of Adrian, where was
found the Venus de Medicis, and some other of the
wonders of antique art. The sun had set, however,
and the long campagna of twenty miles lay between us

and Rome. We were compelled to leave it unseen.
We entered the gates at nine o'clock, unrobbed—rather
an unusual good fortune, we were told, for travellers
after dark on that lonely waste. Perhaps our
number deprived us of the romance.

I left a crowded ball-room at midnight, wearied with
a day at Tivoli, and oppressed with an atmosphere
breathed by two hundred, dancing and card-playing,
Romans and foreigners; and with a step from the portico
of the noble palace of our host, came into a broad
beam of moonlight, that with the stillness and coolness
of the night refreshed me at once, and banished
all disposition for sleep. A friend was with me, and I
proposed a ramble among the ruins.

The sentinel challenged us as we entered the Forum.
The frequent robberies of romantic strangers
in this lonely place have made a guard necessary, and
they are now stationed from the Arch of Severus to
the Coliseum. We passed an hour rambling among
the ruins of the temples. Not a footstep was to be
heard, nor a sound even from the near city; and the
tall columns, with their broken friezes and capitals,
and the grand imperishable arches, stood up in the
bright light of the moon, looking indeed like monuments
of Rome. I am told they are less majestic by
daylight. The rubbish and fresh earth injure the effect.
But I have as yet seen them in the garb of
moonlight only, and I shall carry this impression away.
It is to me, now, all that my fancy hoped to find it—
its temples and columns just enough in ruin to be affecting
and beautiful.

We went thence to the Temple of Vesta. It is
shut up in the modern streets, ten or fifteen minutes
walk from the Forum. The picture of this perfect
temple, and the beautiful purpose of its consecration,
have been always prominent in my imaginary Rome.
It is worthy of its association—an exquisite round
temple, with its simple circle of columns from the
base to the roof, a faultless thing in proportion, and as
light and floating to the eye as if the wind might lift
it. It was no common place to stand beside, and recall
the poetical truth and fiction of which it has been
the scene—the vestal lamp cherished or neglected by
its high-horn votaries, their honors if pure, and their
dreadful death if faithless. It needed not the heavenly
moonlight that broke across its columns to make it
a very shrine of fancy.

My companion proposed a visit next to the Cloaca
Maxima. A common sewer, after the Temple of Vesta,
sounds like an abrupt transition; but the arches beneath
which we descended were touched by moonlight,
and the vines and ivy crossed our path, and instead of
a drain of filth, which the fame of its imperial builder
would scarce have sweetened, a rapid stream leaped to
the right, and disappeared again beneath the solid masonry,
more like a wild brook plunging into a grotto
than the thing one expects to find it. The clear little
river Juturna (on the banks of which Castor and Pollux
watered their foaming horses, when bringing the
news of victory to Rome), dashes now through the
Cloaca Maxima; and a fresher and purer spot, or waters
with a more musical murmur, it has not been my
fortune to see. We stopped over a broken column
for a drink, and went home, refreshed, to bed.

44. LETTER XLIV.

All the world goes to hear “mass in the Sistine
chapel,” and all travellers describe it. It occurs infre
quently and is performed by the pope. We were there
to-day at ten, crowding at the door with hundreds of
foreigners, mostly English, elbowed alternately by
priests and ladies, and kept in order by the Swiss
guards in their harlequin dresses and long pikes. We
were admitted after an hour's pushing, and the guard
retreated to the grated door, through which no woman
is permitted to pass. Their gay bonnets and feathers
clustered behind the gilded bars, and we could admire
them for once without the qualifying reflection that
they were between us and the show. An hour more
was occupied in the entrance, one by one, of some
forty cardinals with their rustling silk trains supported
by boys in purple. They passed the gate, their train-bearers
lifted their cassocks and helped them to kneel
a moment's prayer was mumbled, and they took their
seats with the same servile assistance. Their attendants
placed themselves at their feet, and, taking the
prayer-books, the only use of which appeared to be
to display their jewelled fingers, they looked over
them at the faces behind the grating, and waited for his
holiness.

The intervals of this memory, gave us time to study
the famous frescoes for which the Sistine chapel is renowned.
The subject is the “Last judgment.” The
Savior sits in the midst, pronouncing the sentence, the
wicked plunging from his presence on the left hand,
and the righteous ascending with the assistance of angels
on the right. The artist had, of course, infinite
scope for expression, and the fame of the fresco (which
occupies the whole of the wall behind the altar) would
seem to argue his success. The light is miserable,
however, and incense or lamp-smoke, has obscured
the colors, and one looks at it now with little pleasure.
As well as I could see, too, the figure of the Savior
was more that of a tiler throwing down slates from the
top of a house in some fear of falling, than the judge
of the world upon his throne. Some of the other
parts are better, and one or two naked female figures
might once have been beautiful, but one of the succeeding
popes ordered them dressed, and they now
flaunt at the judgment seat in colored silks, obscuring
both saints and sinners with their finery. There are
some redeeming frescoes, also by Michael Angelo, on
the ceiling, among them “Adam and Eve,” exquisitely
done.

The pope entered by a door at the side of the altar.
With him came a host of dignitaries and church servants,
and, as he tottered round in front of the altar,
to kneel, his cap was taken off and put on, his flowing
robes lifted and spread, and he was treated in all respects,
as if he were the Deity himself. In fact, the
whole service was the worship, not of God, but of the
pope. The cardinals came up, one by one, with their
heads bowed, and knelt reverently to kiss his hand and
the hem of his white satin dress; his throne was higher
than the altar, and ten times as gorgeous; the incense
was flung toward him, and his motions from one side
of the chapel to the other, were attended with more
ceremony and devotion than all the rest of the service
together. The chanting commenced with his entrance,
and this should have been to God alone, for it
was like music from heaven. The choir was composed
of priests, who sang from massive volumes
bound in golden clasps, in a small side gallery. One
stood by the book, turning the leaves as the chant
proceeded, and keeping the measure, and the others
clustered around with their hands clasped, their heads
thrown back, and their eyes closed or fixed upon the
turning leaves in such grouping and attitude as you
see in pictures of angels singing in the clouds. I
have heard wonderful music since I have been on the
continent, and have received new ideas of the compass
of the human voice, and its capacities for pathos and
sweetness. But, after all the wonders of the opera, as
it is learned to sing before kings and courts, the chant

ing of these priests transcended every conception in
my mind of music. It was the human voice, cleared
of all earthliness, and gushing through its organs with
uncontrollable feeling and nature. The burden of the
various parts returned continually upon one or two
simple notes, the deepest and sweetest in the octave
for melody, and occasionally a single voice outran the
choir in a passionate repetition of the air, which seemed
less like musical contrivance, than an abandonment
of soul and voice to a preternatural impulse of devotion.
One writes nonsense in describing such things,
but there is no other way of conveying an idea of them.
The subject is beyond the wildest superlatives.

To-day we have again seen the pope. It was a
festa, and the church of San Carlos was the scene of
the ceremonies. His holiness came in the state-coach
with six long-tailed black horses, and all his cardinals
in their red and gold carriages in his train. The
gaudy procession swept up to the steps, and the father
of the church was taken upon the shoulders of his
bearers in a chair of gold and crimson, and solemnly
borne up the aisle, and deposited within the railings
of the altar, where homage was done to him by the
cardinals as before, and the half-supernatural music
of his choir awaited his motions. The church was
half filled with soldiers armed to the teeth, and drawn
up on either side, and his body-guard of Roman nobles,
stood even within the railing of the altar, capped
and motionless, conveying, as everything else does,
the irresistible impression that it was the worship of
the pope, not of God.

Gregory the sixteenth, is a small old man, with a
large heavy nose, eyes buried in sluggish wrinkles, and
a flushed apoplectic complexion. He sits, or is borne
about with his eyes shut, looking quite asleep, even
his limbs hanging lifelessly. The gorgeous and heavy
papal costumes only render him more insignificant,
and when he is borne about, buried in his deep chair,
or lost in the corner of his huge black and gold pagoda
of a carriage, it is difficult to look at him without
a smile. Among his cardinals, however, there are
magnificent heads, boldly marked, noble and scholar-like,
and I may say, perhaps, that there is no one of
them, who had not nature's mark upon him of superiority.
They are a dignified and impressive body of men,
and their servile homage to the pope, seems unnatural
and disgusting.

45. LETTER XLV.

I have spent a morning in the studio of Thorwalsden.
He is probably the greatest sculptor now living.
A colossal statue of Christ, thought by many to be his
masterpiece, is the prominent object as you enter. It
is a noble conception—the mild majesty of a Savior
expressed in a face of the most dignified human beauty.
Perhaps his full-length statue of Byron is inferior to
some of his other works, but it interested me, and I
spent most of my time in looking at it. It was taken
from life; and my friend, Mr. Anchmuty, who was
with me, and who had seen Byron frequently on board
one of our ships-of-war at Leghorn, thought it the
only faithful likeness he had ever seen. The poet is
dressed oddly enough, in a morning frock coat, cravat,
pantaloons, and shoes; and, unpromising as these ma
terials would seem, the statue is classic and elegant to
a very high degree. His coat is held by the two centre
buttons in front (a more exquisite cut never came from
the hands of a London tailor), swelled out a little above
and below by the fleshy roundness of his figure; his
cravat is tied loosely, leaving his throat bare (which,
by the way, both in the statue and the original, was
very beautifully chiselled); and he sits upon a fragment
of a column, with a book in one hand and a pencil
in the other. A man reading a pleasant poem
among the ruins of Rome, and looking up to reflect
upon a fine passage before marking it, would assum
the attitude and expression exactly. The face has
half a smile upon it, and, differing from the Apollo
faces usually drawn for Byron, is finer, and more
expressive of his character than any I ever met with.
Thorwalsden is a Dane, and is beloved by every one
for his simplicity and modesty. I did not see him.

We were afterward at Gibson's rooms. This gentleman
is an English artist, apparently about thirty,
and full of genius. He has taken some portraits which
are esteemed admirable; but his principal labor has
been thrown upon the most beautiful fables of antiquity.
His various groups and bas-reliefs of Cupid
and Psyche are worthy of the beauty of the story.
His chef d'œuvre, I think, is a group of three figures,
representing the boy “Hylas with the river nymphs.”
He stands between them with the pitcher in his hand,
startled with their touch, and listening to their persuasions.
The smaller of the two female figures is an
almost matchless conception of loveliness. Gibson
went round with us kindly, and I was delighted with
his modesty of manner, and the apparently completely
poetical character of his mind. He has a noble head,
a lofty forehead well marked, and a mouth of finely
mingled strength and mildness.

We devoted this morning to palaces. At the Palazzo
Spada we saw the statue of Pompey, at the
base of which Cesar fell. Antiquaries dispute its
authenticity, but the evidence is quite strong enough
for a poetical belief; and if it were not; one's time is
not lost, for the statue is a majestic thing, and well
worth the long walk necessary to see it. The mutilated
arm, and the hole in the wall behind, remind one
of the ludicrous fantasy of the French, who carried it
to the Forum to enact “Brutus” at its base.

The Borghese Palace is rich in pictures. The portrait
of Cesar Borgia, by Titian, is one of the most
striking. It represents that accomplished villain with
rather slight features, and, barring a look of cool determination
about his well-formed lips, with rather a
prepossessing countenance. One detects in it the capabilities
of such a character as his, after the original
is mentioned; but otherwise he might pass for a handsome
gallant, of no more dangerous trait than a fiery
temper. Just beyond it is a very strong contrast
in a figure of Psyche, by Dossi, of Ferrara. She is
coming on tiptoe, with the lamp, to see her lover.
The Cupid asleep is not so well done; but for an
image of a real woman, unexaggerated and lovely, I
have seen nothing which pleases me better than this
Psyche. Opposite it hangs a very celebrated Titian,
representing “Sacred and Profane Love.” Two female
figures are sitting by a well—one quite nude,
with her hair about her shoulders, and the other
dressed, and coiffed a la mode, but looking less modest
to my eye than her undraped sister. It is little wonder,
however, that a man who could paint his own
daughter in the embraces of a satyr (a revolting picture,
which I saw in the Barberigo palace at Venice) should
fail in drawing the face of Virtue. The coloring of
the picture is exquisite, but the design is certainly a
failure.

The last room in the palace is devoted to Venuses—
all very naked and very bad There might be forty,

I think, and not a limb among them that one's eye
would rest upon with the least pleasure for a single
moment.

The society of Rome is of course changing continually.
At this particular season, strangers from
every part of the continent are beginning to arrive, and
it promises to be pleasant. I have been at most of
the parties during the fortnight that I have been here,
but find them thronged with priests, and with only the
resident society, which is dull. Cards and conversation
with people one never saw before, and will certainly
never see again, are heavy pastimes. I start for
Florence to-morrow, and shall return to Rome for
Holy Week and the spring months.

46. LETTER XLVI.

I left Rome by the magnificent “Porta del Popolo,”
as the flush of a pearly and spotless Italian sunrise
deepened over Soracte. They are so splendid
without clouds—these skies of Italy! so deep to the
eye, so radiantly clear! Clouds make the glory of an
American sky. The “Indian summer” sunsets excepted,
our sun goes down in New England, with the
extravagance of a theatrical scene. The clouds are
massed and heavy, like piles of gold and fire, and day
after day, if you observe them, you are literally astonished
with the brilliant phenomena of the west. Here,
for seven months, we have had no rain. The sun has
risen faultlessly clear, with the same gray, and silver,
and rose teints, succeeding each other as regularly as
the colors in a turning prism, and it has set as constantly
in orange, gold, and purple, with scarce the
variation of a painter's pallet, from one day to another.
It is really most delightful to live under such heavens
as these; to be depressed never by a gloomy sky, nor
ill from a chance exposure to a chill wind, nor out of
humor because the rain or damp keeps you a prisoner
at home. You feel the delicious climate in a thousand
ways. It is a positive blessing, and were worth
more than a fortune, if it were bought and sold. I
would rather be poor in Italy, than rich in any other
country in the world.

We ascended the mountain that shuts in the campagna
on the north, and turned, while the horses
breathed, to take a last look at Rome. My two friends,
the lieutenants, and myself, occupied the interior of
the vetturino, in company with a young Roman woman,
who was making her first journey from home.
She was going to see her husband. I pointed out of
the window to the distant dome of St. Peter's, rising
above the thin smoke hung over the city, and she
looked at it with the tears streaming from her large
black eyes in torrents. She might have cried because
she was going to her husband, but I could not divest
myself of the fact that she was a Roman, and leaving
a home that could be very romantically wept for. She
was a fine specimen of this finest of the races of women—amply
proportioned without grossness, and with
that certain presence or dignity that rises above manners
and rank, common to them all.

We saw beautiful scenery at Narni. The town
stands on the edge of a precipice, and the valley, a
hundred feet or two below, is coursed by a wild stream,
that goes foaming along its bed in a long line of froth
for miles away. We dined here, and drove afterward
to Terni, where the voitnrier stopped for the night, to
give us an opportunity to see the Falls.

We drove to the mountain base, three miles, in an
old post barouche, and made the ascent on foot. A
line of precipices extends along from the summit, and
from the third or fourth of these leaps the Velino,
clear into the valley. We saw it in front as we went
on, and then followed the road round, till we reached
the bed of the river behind. The fountain of Egeria
is not more secludedly beautiful than its current above
the fall. Trees overhang and meet, and flowers spring
in wonderful variety on its banks, and the ripple
against the roots is heard amid the roar of the cataract,
like a sweet, clear voice in a chorus. It is a
place in which you half expect to startle a fawn, it
looks so unvisited and wild. We wound out through
the shrubbery, and gained a projecting point, from
which we could see the sheet of the cascade. It is
“horribly beautiful,” to be sure. Childe Harold's
description of it is as true as a drawing.

I should think the quantity of water at Niagara
would make five hundred such falls as those of Terni,
without exaggeration. It is a “hell of waters,”
however, notwithstanding, and leaps over with a current
all turned into foam by the roughness of its bed
above—a circumstance that gives the sheet more richness
of surface. Two or three lovely little streams
steal off on either side of the fall, as if they shrunk
from the leap, and drop down, from rock to rock, till
they are lost in the rising mist.

The sun set over the little town of Terni, while we
stood silently looking down into the gulf, and the wet
spray reminded us that the most romantic people may
take cold. We descended to our carriage; and in an
hour were sitting around the blazing fire at the post-house,
with a motley group of Germans, Swiss,
French, and Italians—a mixture of company universal
in the public room of an Italian albergo, at night.
The coming and going vetturini stop at the same
houses throughout, and the concourse is always amusing.
We sat till the fire burned low, and then wishing
our chance friends a happy night, had the “priests”[4]
taken from our beds, and were soon lost to everything
but sleep.

Terni was the Italian Tempe, and its beautiful scenery
was shown to Cicero, whose excursion hither is
recorded. It is part of a long, deep valley, between
abrupt ranges of mountains, and abounds in loveliness.

We went to Spoleto, the next morning, to breakfast.
It is a very old town, oddly built, and one of its
gates still remains, at which Hannibal was repulsed
after his victory at Thrasimene. It bears his name in
timeworn letters.

At the distance of one post from Spoleto we came
to the Clitumnus, a small stream, still, deep, and glassy—the
clearest water I ever saw. It looks almost
like air. On its bank, facing away from the road,
stands the temple, “of small and delicate proportion,”
mentioned so exquisitely by Childe Harold.

The temple of the Clitumnus might stand in a
drawing-room. The stream is a mere brook, and this
little marble gem, whose richly fretted columns were
raised to its honor with a feeling of beauty that makes
one thrill, seems exactly of relative proportions. It is
a thing of pure poetry; and to find an antiquity of
such perfect preservation, with the small clear stream
running still at the base of its façade, just as it did
when Cicero and his contemporaries passed it on their
visits to a country called after the loveliest vale of
Greece for its beauty, was a gratification of the highest
demand of taste. Childe Harold's lesson,

was scarce necessary.[5]

We slept at Foligno. For many miles we had observed
that the houses were propped in every direction,
many of them in ruins apparently recent, and
small wooden sheds erected in the midst of the squares,
or beside the roads, and crowded with the poor. The
next morning we arrived at St. Angelo, and found its
gigantic cathedral a heap of ruins. Its painted chapels,
to the number of fifteen or sixteen, were half
standing in the shattered walls, the altars all exposed,
and the interior of the dome one mass of stone and
rubbish. It was the first time I had seen the effects
of an earthquake. For eight or ten miles further, we
found every house cracked and deserted, and the people
living like the settlers in a new country, half in the
open air. The beggars were innumerable.

We stopped the next night on the shores of lake
Thrasimene. For once in my life, I felt that the time
spent at school on the “dull drilled lesson,” had not
been wasted. I was on the battle ground of Hannibal
—the “locus aptus insidiis,” where the consul Flaminius
was snared and beaten by the wily Carthaginian
on his march to Rome. I longed for my old copy
of Livy, “much thumbed,” that I might sit on the
hill and compare the image in my mind, made by his
pithy and sententious description, with the reality.

The battle ground, the scene of the principal
slaughter, was beyond the albergo, and the increasing
darkness compelled us to defer a visit to it till the next
morning. Meantime the lake was beautiful. We
were on the eastern side, and the deep-red sky of a
departed sunset over the other shore, was reflected
glowingly on the water. All around was dark, but
the light in the sky and lake seemed to have forgotten
to follow. It is a phenomenon peculiar to Italy. The
heavens seem “died” and steeped in the glory of the
sunset.

We drank our host's best bottle of wine, the grape
plucked from the battle-ground; and if it was not
better for the Roman blood that had manured its ancestor,
it was better for some other reason.

Early the next morning we were on our way, and
wound down into the narrow pass between the lake
and the hill, as the sun rose. We crossed the Sanguinetto,
a little stream which took its name from the
battle. The principal slaughter was just on its banks,
and the hills are so steep above it, that everybody
which fell near must have rolled into its bed. It crawls
on very quietly across the road, its clear stream scarce interrupted
by the wheels of the vetturino, which in crossing
it, passes from the Roman states into Tuscany.
I ran a little up the stream, knelt and drank at a small
gurgling fall. The blood of the old Flaminian Cohort
spoiled very delicious water, when it mingled
with that brook.

We were six days and a half accomplishing the hundred
and eighty miles from Rome to Florence—slow
travelling—but not too slow in Italy, where every stone
has its story, and every ascent of a hill its twenty
matchless pictures, sprinkled with ruins, as a painter's
eye could not imagine them. We looked down on the
Eden-like valley of the Arno at sunrise, and again my
heart leaped to see the tall dome of Florence, and the
hills all about the queenly city, sparkling with palaces
and bright in a sun that shines nowhere so kindly. If
there is a spot in the world that could wean one from
his native home, it is Florence! “Florence the fair,”
they call her! I have passed four of the seven months
I have been in Italy, here—and I think I shall pass
here as great a proportion of the rest of my life.
There is nothing that can contribute to comfort and
pleasure, that is not within the reach of the smallest
means in Florence. I never saw a place where wealth
made less distinction. The choicest galleries of art in
the world, are open to all comers. The palace of the
monarch may be entered and visited, and enjoyed by
all. The ducal gardens of the Boboli rich in everything
that can refine nature, and commanding views
that no land can equal, cooled by fountains, haunted in
every grove by statuary, are the property of the stranger
and the citizen alike. Museums, laboratories, libraries,
grounds, palaces, are all free as Utopia. You
may take any pleasure that others can command, and
have any means of instruction, as free as the common
air. Where else would one live so pleasantly—so
profitably—so wisely?

The society of Florence is of a very fascinating description.
The Florentine nobles have a casino, or
club-house, to which most of the respectable strangers
are invited, and balls are given there once a week,
frequently by the duke and his court, and the best society
of the place. I attended one on my first arrival
from Rome, at which I saw a proportion of beauty
which astonished me. The female descendants of
the great names in Italian history, seem to me to have
almost without exception the mark of noble beauty by
nature. The loveliest woman in Florence is a Medici.
The two daughters of Capponi, the patriot and
the descendant of patriots, are of the finest order of
beauty. I could instance many others, the mention
of whose names, when I have first seen them, has
made my blood start. I think if Italy is ever to be redeemed,
she must owe it to her daughters. The men,
the brothers of these women, with very rare exceptions,
look like the slaves they are, from one end of
Italy to the other.

One of the most hospitable houses here, is that of
Prince Poniatowski, the brother of the hero of Poland.
He has a large family, and his soirées are
thronged with all that is fair and distinguished. He is a
venerable, grayheaded old man, of perhaps seventy, very
fond of speaking English, of which rare acquisition
abroad he seems a little vain. He gave me the heartiest
welcome as an American, and said he loved the nation.

I had the honor of dining, a day or two since, with
the ex-king of Westphalia, Jerome Bonaparte. He
lives here with the title of Prince Montfort, conferred
on him by his father-in-law, the king of Wurtemburg.
Americans are well received at this house also;
and his queen, as the prince still calls her, can never
say enough in praise of the family of Mr. H., our former
secretary of legation at Paris. It is a constantly
recurring theme, and ends always with “J'aime beaucoup
les Americans.” The prince resembles his
brother, but has a milder face, and his mouth is less
firm and less beautiful than Napolcon's. His second
son is most remarkably like the emperor. He is
about ten years of age; but except his youth, you can
detect no difference between his head and the busts of
his uncle. He has a daughter of about twelve, and
an elder son at the university of Sienna. His family
is large, as his queen still keeps up her state, with the
ladies of honor and suite. He never goes out, but his
house is open every night, and the best society of
Florence may be met there almost at the prima sera,
or early part of the evening.

The grand duke is about to be married, and the
court is to be unusually gay in the carnival. Our
countryman, Mr. Thorn, was presented some time
since, and I am to have that honor in two or three
days. By the way, we feel exceedingly in Italy the
want of a minister. There is no accredited agent of
our government in Tuscany, and there are rarely less
than three hundred Americans within its dominions.
Fortunately the marquis Corsi, the grand chamberlain
of the duke, offers to act in the capacity of an ambassador,
and neglects nothing for our advantage in

such matters, but he never fails to express his regret
that we should not have some chargé d'affaires at his
court. We have officers in many parts of the world
where they are much less needed.

47. LETTER XLVII.

I was presented to the grand duke of Tuscany yesterday
morning, at a private audience. As we have
no minister at this court, I drove alone to the ducal
palace, and, passing through the body-guard of young
nobles, was met at the door of the antechamber by
the Marquis Corsi, the grand chamberlain. Around
a blazing fire, in this room, stood five or six persons,
in splendid uniforms, to whom I was introduced on
entering. One was the Prince de Ligne—travelling at
present in Italy, and waiting to be presented by the
Austrian ambassador—a young and remarkably handsome
man of twenty-five. He showed a knowledge
of America, in the course of a half hour's conversation,
which rather surprised me, inquiring particularly
about the residences and condition of the United
States' ministers whom he had met at the various
courts of Europe. The Austrian ambassador, an
old, wily-looking man, covered with orders, joined in
the conversation, and asked after our former minister
at Paris, Mr. Brown, remarking that he had done the
United States great credit, during his embassy. He
had known Mr. Gallatin also, and spoke highly of him.
Mr. Van Buren's election to the vice-presidency, after
his recall, seemed greatly to surprise him.

The prince was summoned to the presence of the
duke, and I remained some fifteen minutes in conversation
with a venerable and noble looking man, the
Marquis Torrigiani, one of the chamberlains. His
eldest son has lately gone upon his travels in the
United States, in company with Mr. Thorn, an American
gentleman living in Florence. He seemed to
think the voyage a great undertaking. Torrigiani is
one of the oldest of the Florentine nobles, and his family
is in high esteem.

As the Austrian minister came out, the grand chamberlain
came for me, and I entered the presence of the
duke. He was standing quite alone in a small plain
room, dressed in a simple white uniform, with a star
upon his breast—a slender, pale, scholar-like looking
young man, of perhaps thirty years. He received me
with a pleasant smile, and crossing his hands behind
him, came close to me, and commenced questioning
me about America. The departure of young Torrigiani
for the United States pleased him, and he said
he should like to go himself—“but,” said he, “a voyage
of three thousand miles and back—comment faire!”
and he threw out his hands with a look of mock despair
that was very expressive. He assured me he felt
great pleasure at Mr. Thorn's having taken up his residence
in Florence. He had sent for his whole family
a few days before, and promised them every attention
to their comfort during the absence of Mr. Thorn.
He said young Torrigiani was bien instruit, and would
travel to advantage, without doubt. At every pause
of his inquiries, he looked me full in the eyes, and
seemed anxious to yield me the parole and listen. He
bowed with a smile, after I had been with him perhaps
half an hour, and I took my leave with all the impressions
of his character which common report had given
me, quite confirmed. He is said to be the best monarch
in Europe, and it is written most expressively in
his mild amiable features.

The duke is very unwilling to marry again, although
the crown passes from his family if he die without a
male heir. He has two daughters, lovely children,
between five and seven, whose mother died not quite
a year since. She was unusually beloved, both by
her husband and his subjects, and is still talked of by
the people, and never without the deepest regret.
She was very religious, and is said to have died of a
cold taken in doing a severe penance. The duke
watched with her day and night, till she died; and I
was told by the old chamberlain, that he can not yet
speak of her without tears.

With the new year, the grand duke of Tuscany
threw off his mourning. Not from his countenance,
for the sadness of that is habitual; but his equipages
have laid off their black trappings, his grooms and
outriders are in drab and gold, and, more important
to us strangers in his capital, the ducal palace is aired
with a weekly reception and ball, as splendid and hospitable
as money and taste can make them.

Leopold of Tuscany is said to be the richest individual
in Europe. The Palazzo Pitti, in which he
lives, seems to confirm it. The exterior is marked
with the character of the times in which it was built,
and might be that of a fortress—its long, dark front of
roughly-hewn stone, with its two slight, out-curving
wings, bearing a look of more strength than beauty.
The interior is incalculably rich. The suite of halls
on the front side is the home of the choicest and most
extensive gallery of pictures in the world. The tables
of inlaid gems and mosaic, the walls encrusted with
relievos, the curious floors, the drapery—all satiate the
eye with sumptuousness. It is built against a hill,
and I was surprised, on the night of the ball, to find
myself alighting from the carriage upon the same floor
to which I had mounted from the front by tediously
long staircases. The duke thus rides in his carriage
to his upper story—an advantage which saves him no
little fatigue and exposure. The gardens of the Boboli,
which cover the hill behind, rise far above the
turrets of the palace, and command glorious views of
the Val d'Arno.

The reception hour at the ball was from eight to
nine. We were received at the steps on the garden
side of the palace, by a crowd of servants, in livery,
under the orders of a fat major-domo, and passing
through a long gallery, lined with exotics and grenadiers,
we arrived at the anteroom, where the duke's
body-guard of nobles were drawn up in attendance.
The band was playing delightfully in the saloon beyond.
I had arrived late, having been presented a
few days before, and desirous of avoiding the stiffness
of the first hour of presentations. The rooms were
in a blaze of light from eight trees of candles, cypress-shaped,
and reaching from the floor to the ceiling,
and the company entirely assembled, crowded them
with a dazzling show of jewels, flowers, feathers, and
uniforms.

The duke and the grand dutchess (the widow of the
late duke) stood in the centre of the room, and in the
pauses of conversation, the different ambassadors presented
their countrymen. His highness was dressed
in a suit of plain black, probably the worst made
clothes in Florence. With his pale, timid face, his
bent shoulders, an inexpressibly ill-tied cravat, and
rank, untrimmed whiskers, he was the most uncourtly
person present. His extreme popularity as a monarch
is certainly very independent of his personal address.
His mother-in-law is about his own age, with marked
features, full of talent, a pale, high forehead, and the
bearing altogether of a queen. She wore a small
diadem of the purest diamonds, and with her height
and her flashing jewels, she was conspicuous from

every part of the room. She is a high catholic, and
is said to be bending all her powers upon the reestablishment
of the Jesuits in Florence.

As soon as the presentations were over, the grand
duke led out the wife of the English ambassador, and
opened the ball with a waltz. He then danced a
quadrille with the wife of the French ambassador, and
for his next partner selected an American lady—the
daughter of Colonel T—, of New York.

The supper rooms were opened early, and among
the delicacies of a table loaded with everything rare
and luxurious, were a brace or two of pheasants from
the duke's estates in Germany. Duly flavored with
truffes, and accompanied with Rhine wines, which
deserved the conspicuous place given them upon the
royal table—and in this letter.

I hardly dare speak of the degree of beauty in the
assembly; it is so difficult to compare a new impression
with an old one, and the thing itself is so indefinite.
But there were two persons present whose
extreme loveliness, as it is not disputed even by admiring
envy, may be worth describing, for the sake of
the comparison.

The princess S— may be twenty-four years of
age. She is of the middle height, with the slight
stoop in her shoulders, which is rather a grace than a
fault. Her bust is exquisitely turned, her neck slender
but full, her arms, hands, and feet, those of a
Psyche. Her face is the abstraction of highborn
Italian beauty—calm, almost to indifference, of an
indescribably glowing paleness—a complexion that
would be alabaster if it were not for the richness of
the blood beneath, betrayed in lips whose depth of
color and fineness of curve seem only too curiously
beautiful to be the work of nature. Her eyes are
dark and large, and must have had an indolent expression
in her childhood, but are now the very seat
and soul of feeling. A constant trace of pain mars
the beauty of her forehead. She dresses her hair
with a kind of characteristic departure from the mode,
parting its glossy flakes on her brow with nymph-like
simplicity, a peculiarity which one regrets not to see
in the too Parisian dress of her person. In her manner
she is strikingly elegant, but without being absent,
she seems to give an unconscious attention to what is
about her, and to be gracious and winning without
knowing or intending it, merely because she could not
listen or speak otherwise. Her voice is sweet, and, in
her own Italian, mellow and soft to a degree inconceivable
by those who have not heard this delicious
language spoken in its native land. With all these
advantages, and a look of pride that nothing could
insult, there is an expression in her beautiful face that
reminds you of her sex and its temptations, and prepares
you fully for the history which you may hear
from the first woman that stands at your elbow.

The other is that English girl of seventeen, shrinking
timidly from the crowd, and leaning with her
hands clasped over her father's arm, apparently listening
only to the waltz, and unconscious that every eye
is fixed upon her in admiration. She has lived all her
life in Italy, but has been bred by an English mother,
in a retired villa of the Val d'Arno—her character
and feelings are those of her race, and nothing of
Italy about her, but the glow of its sunny clime in
the else spotless snow of her complexion, and an
enthusiasm in her downcast eye that you may account
for as you will—it is not English! Her form has
just ripened into womanhood. The bust still wants
fulness, and the step confidence. Her forehead is
rather too intellectual to be maidenly; but the droop
of her singularly long eye-lashes over eyes that elude
the most guarded glance of your own, and the modest
expression of her lips closed but not pressed together,
redeem her from any look of conscious superiority,
and convince you that she only seeks to be unob
served. A single ringlet of golden brown hair falls
nearly to her shoulder, catching the light upon its
glossy curves with an effect that would enchant a
painter. Lilies of the valley, the first of the season,
are in her bosom and her hair, and she might be the
personification of the flower for delicacy and beauty.
You are only disappointed in talking with her. She
expresses herself with a nerve and self-command
which, from a slight glance, you did not anticipate.
She shrinks from the general eye, but in conversation
she is the high-minded woman more than the timid
child for which her manner seems to mark her. In
either light, she is the very presence of purity. She
stands by the side of her not less beautiful rival, like
a Madonna by a Magdalen—both seem not at home
in the world, but only one could have dropped from
heaven.

48. LETTER XLVIII.

I left Florence for Vallombrosa at daylight on a
warm summer's morning, in company with four ladies.
We drove along the northern bank of the Arno for four
or five miles, passing several beautiful villas, belonging
to the Florentine nobles; and, crossing the river by a
picturesque bridge, took the road to the village of Pelago,
which lies at the foot of the mountain, and is
the farthest point to which a carriage can mount. It
is about fourteen miles from Florence, and the ascent
thence to the convent is nearly three.

We alighted in the centre of the village, in the
midst of a ragged troop of women and children,
among whom were two idiot beggars; and, while the
preparations were making for our ascent, we took
chairs in the open square around a basket of cherries,
and made a delicious luncheon of fruit and bread,
very much to the astonishment of some two hundred
spectators.

Our conveyances appeared in the course of half an
hour, consisting of two large baskets, each drawn by a
pair of oxen and containing two persons, and a small Sardinian
pony. The ladies seated themselves with some
hesitation in their singular sledges: I mounted the
pony, and we made a dusty exit from Pelago, attended
to the gate by our gaping friends, who bowed, and
wished us the bon viaggio with more gratitude than
three Tuscan crazie would buy. I am sure, in any other
part of the world.

The gray oxen of Italy are quite a different race
from ours, much lighter and quicker, and in a small
vehicle they will trot off five or six miles in the hour
as freely as a horse. They are exceedingly beautiful.
The hide is very fine, of a soft squirrel gray, and as
sleek and polished often as that of a well-groomed
courser. With their large, bright, intelligent eyes,
high-lifted heads, and open nostrils, they are among
the finest-looking animals in the world in motion. We
soon came to the steep path, and the facility with
which our singular equipages mounted was surprising.
I followed, as well as I could, on my diminutive pony,
my feet touching the ground, and my balance constantly
endangered by the contact of stumps and
stones—the hard-mouthed little creature taking his
own way, in spite of every effort of mine to the contrary.

We stopped to breathe in a deep, cool glen. which
lay across our path, the descent into which was very
difficult. The road through the bottom of it ran just
above the bank of a brook, into which poured a pretty
fall of eight or ten feet, and with the spray-wet grass
beneath, and the full-leaved chestnuts above, it was as

delicious a spot for a rest in a summer noontide as I
ever saw. The ladies took out their pencils and
sketched it, making a group themselves the while,
which added all the picture wanted.

The path wound continually about in the deep
woods, with which the mountain is covered, and occasionally
from an opening we obtained a view back upon
the valley of the Arno, which was exceedingly fine.
We came in sight of the convent in about two hours,
emerging from the shade of the thick chestnuts into
a cultivated lawn, fenced and mown with the nicety of
the grass-plot before a cottage, and entering upon a
smooth, well-swept pavement, approached the gate of
the venerable-looking pile, as anxious for the refreshment
of its far-famed hospitality as ever pilgrims
were.

An old cheerful-looking monk came out to meet us,
and shaking hands with the ladies very cordially, assisted
in extracting them from their cramped conveyances.
He then led the way to a small stone cottage,
a little removed from the convent, quoting gravely by
the way the law of the order against the entrance of
females over the monastic threshold. We were ushered
into a small, neat parlor, with two bedrooms
communicating, and two of the servants of the monastery
followed, with water and show-white napkins, the
padre degli forestieri, as they called the old monk,
who received us, talking most volubly all the while.

The cook appeared presently with a low reverence,
and asked what we would like for dinner. He ran
over the contents of the larder before we had time to
answer his question, enumerating half a dozen kinds
of game, and a variety altogether that rather surprised
our ideas of monastical severity. His own rosy gills
bore testimony that it was not the kitchen of Dennis
Bulgruddery.

While dinner was preparing, Father Gasparo proposed
a walk. An avenue of the most majestic trees
opened immediately away from the little lawn before
the cottage door. We followed it perhaps half a mile
round the mountain, thridding a thick pine forest, till
we emerged on the edge of a shelf of greensward,
running just under the summit of the hill. From
this spot the view was limited only by the power of the
eye. The silver line of the Mediterranean off Leghorn
is seen hence on a clear day, between which and
the mountain lie sixty or seventy miles, wound into
the loveliest undulations by the course of the Arno.
The vale of this beautiful river, in which Florence
stands, was just distinguishable as a mere dell in the
prospect. It was one of the sultriest days of August,
but the air was vividly fresh, and the sun, with all the
strength of the climate of Italy, was unoppressive.
We seated ourselves on the small fine grass of the hillside,
and with the good old monk narrating passages
of his life, enjoyed the glorious scene till the cook's
messenger summoned us back to dinner.

We were waited upon at table by two young servitors
of the convent, with shaven crowns and long black
cassocks, under the direction of Father Gasparo, who
sat at a little distance, entertaining us with his inexhaustible
stories till the bell rung for the convent supper.
The dinner would have graced the table of an
emperor. Soup, beef, cutlets, ducks, woodcock, followed
each other, cooked in the most approved manner,
with all the accompaniments established by taste
and usage; and better wine, white and red, never was
pressed from the Tuscan grape. The dessert was various
and plentiful; and while we were sitting, after
the good father's departure, wondering at the luxuries
we had found on a mountain-top, strong coffee and
liqueurs were set before us, both of the finest flavor.

I was to sleep myself in the convent. Father Gasparo
joined us upon the wooden bench in the avenue,
where we were enjoying a brilliant sunset, and informed
me that the gates shut at eight. The vesper-bell
soon rung, echoing round from the rocks, and I bade
my four companions good night, and followed the
monk to the cloisters. As we entered the postern, he
asked me whether I would go directly to the cell, or
attend first the service in the chapel, assisting my decision
at the same time by gently slipping his arm
through mine and drawing me toward the cloth door,
from which a strong peal of the organ was issuing.

We lifted the suspended curtain, and entered;
chapel so dimly lit, that I could only judge of its extent
from the reverberations of the music. The lamps
were all in the choir, behind the altar, and the shuffling
footsteps of the gathering monks approached it
from every quarter. Father Gasparo led me to the
base of a pillar, and telling me to kneel, left me and
entered the choir, where he was lost in the depth of
one of the old richly-carved seats for a few minutes,
appearing again with thirty or forty others, who rose
and joined in the chorus of the chant, making the
hollow roof ring with the deep unmingled base of their
voices.

I stood till I was chilled, listening to the service,
and looking at the long line of monks rising and sitting,
with their monotonous changes of books and
positions, and not knowing which way to go for warmth
or retirement. I wandered up and down the dim
church during the remaining hour, an unwilling, but
not altogether an unamused spectator of the scene.
The performers of the service, with the exception of
Father Gasparo, were young men of from sixteen to
twenty; but during my slow turns to and fro on the
pavement of the church, fifteen or twenty old monks
entered, and, with a bend of the knee before the altar,
went off into the obscure corners, and knelt motionless
at prayer, for almost an hour. I could just distinguish
the dark outline of their figures when my eye
became accustomed to the imperfect light, and I never
saw a finer spectacle of religious devotion.

The convent clock struck ten, and shutting up their
“clasped missals,” the young monks took their cloaks
about them, bent their knees in passing the altar, and
disappeared by different doors. Father Gasparo was
the last to depart, and our footsteps echoed as we
passed through the long cloisters to the cell appropriated
for me. We opened one of some twenty small
doors, and I was agreeably surprised to find a supper
of cold game upon the table, with a bottle of wine,
and two plates—the monk intending to give me his
company at supper. The cell was hung round with
bad engravings of the virgin, the death of martyrs,
crosses, &c., and a small oaken desk stood against the
wall beneath a large crucifix, with a prayer-book upon
it. The bed was high, ample, and spotlessly white,
and relieved the otherwise comfortless look of a stone
floor and white-washed walls. I felt the change from
summer heat to the keen mountain air, and as I shivered
and buttoned my coat, my gay guest threw over
me his heavy black cowl of cloth—a dress that, with
its closeness and numerous folds, would keep one
warm in Siberia. Adding to it his little black scull-cap,
he told me, with a hearty laugh, that but for a
certain absence of sanctity in the expression of my
face, and the uncanonical length of my hair, I looked
the monk complete. We had a merry supper. The
wine was of a choicer vintage than that we had drank
at dinner, and the father answered, upon my discovery
of its merits, that he never wasted it upon women.

In the course of the conversation, I found out that
my entertainer was a kind of butler, or heard-servitor
of the convent, and that the great body of the monks
were of noble lineage. The feeling of pride still remains
among them from the days when the Certosa of
Vallombrosa was a residence for princes, before its
splendid pictures were pillaged by a foreign army, its
wealth scattered, and its numbers demolished. “In
those days,” said the monk, “we received nothing for

our hospitality but the pleasure it gave us”—relieving
my mind, by the remark, of what I looked forward to
at parting as a delicate point.

My host left me at midnight, and I went to bed, and
slept under a thick covering in an Italian August.
“The blanched linen, white and lavendered,” seemed
to have a peculiar charm, for though I had promised
to meet my excluded companions at sunrise, on the
top of the mountain, I slept soundly till nine, and was
obliged to breakfast alone in the refectory of the convent.

We were to dine at three, and start for Florence at
four the next day, and we spent our morning in traversing
the mountain paths, and getting views on every
side. Fifty or a hundred feet above the convent,
perched on a rock like an eyry, stands a small building
in which Milton is supposed to have lived, during
his six weeks sojourn at the convent. It is now fitted
up as a nest of small chapels—every one of its six or
eight little chambers having an altar. The ladies were
not permitted to enter it. I selected the room I presumed
the poet must have chosen—the only one commanding
the immense view to the west, and, looking
from the window, could easily feel the truth of his
simile, “thick as leaves in Vallombrosa.” It is a
mountain of foliage.

Another sumptuous dinner was served, Father Gasparo
sitting by, even more voluble than before, the
baskets and the pony were brought to the door, and
we bade farewell to the old monk with more regret
than a day's acquaintance often produces. We reached
our carriage in an hour, and were in Florence at
eight—having passed, by unanimous opinion, the two
brightest days in our calendar of travel.

49. LETTER XLIX.

I went with a party this morning to visit the house
of Michael Angelo. It stands as he lived in it, in the
Via Ghibellini, and is still in possession of his descendants.
It is a neat building of three stories,
divided on the second floor into three rooms, shown as
those occupied by the painter, sculptor, and poet.
The first is panelled and painted by his scholars after
his death—each picture representing some incident of
his life. There are ten or twelve of these, and several
of them are highly beautiful. One near the window
represents him in his old age on a visit to “Lorenzo
the Magnificent,” who commands him to sit in his
presence. The duke is standing before his chair, and
the figure of the old man is finely expressive.

The next room appears to have been his parlor, and
the furniture is exactly as it stood when he died. In
one corner is placed a bust of him in his youth, with
his face perfect; and opposite, another, taken from a
cast after his nose was broken by a fellow painter in
the church of the Carmine. There are also one or
two portraits of him, and the resemblance through
them all shows that the likenesses we have of him in
the engravings are uncommonly correct.

In the inner room, which was his studio, they show
his pallet, brushes, pots, maul-sticks, slippers, and
easel—all standing carelessly in the little closets
around, as if he had left them but yesterday. The
walls are painted in fresco, by Angelo himself, and
represent groups of all the distinguished philosophers,
poets and statesmen of his time. Among them are
the heads of Petrarch, Dante, Galileo, and Lorenzo
de Medici. It is a noble gallery! perhaps a hundred
heads in all.

The descendant of Buonarotti is now an old man,
and fortunately rich enough to preserve the house of
his great ancestor as an object of curiosity. He has
a son, I believe, studying the arts at Rome.

On a beautiful hill which ascends directly from one
of the southern gates of Florence, stands a church
built so long ago as at the close of the first century.
The gate, church, and hill, are all called San Miniato,
after a saint buried under the church pavement. A
large, and at present flourishing convent, hangs on
the side of the hill below, and around the church
stand the walls of a strong fortress, built by Michael
Angelo. A half mile or more south, across a valley,
an old tower rises against the sky, which was erected
for the observations of Galileo. A mile to the left, on
the same ridge, an old villa is to be seen in which
Boccaccio wrote most of his “Hundred Tales of Love.”
The Arno comes down from Vallombrosa, and passing
through Florence at the foot of San Miniato, is
seen for three miles further on its way to Pisa; the
hill, tower, and convent of Fiesole, where Milton
studied and Catiline encamped with his conspirators,
rise from the opposite bank of the river; and right
below, as if you could leap into the lantern of the
dome, nestles the lovely city of Florence, in the lap
of the very brightest vale that ever mountain sheltered
or river ran through. Such are the temptations
to a walk in Italy, and add to it the charms of the
climate, and you may understand one of a hundred
reasons why it is the land of poetry and romance, and
why it so easily becomes the land of a stranger's
affection.

The villas which sparkle all over the hills which
lean unto Florence, are occupied mainly by foreigners
living here for health or luxury, and most of them are
known and visited by the floating society of the place.
Among them are Madame Catalani, the celebrated
singer, who occupies a beautiful palace on the ascent
of Fiesole, and Walter Savage Landor, the author
of the “Imaginary Conversations,” as refined a scholar
perhaps as is now living, who is her near neighbor.
A pleasant family of my acquaintance lives just back
of the fortress of San Miniato, and in walking out to
them with a friend yesterday, I visited the church
again, and remarked more particularly the features of
the scene I have described.

The church of San Miniato was built by Henry I.
of Germany, and Cunegonde his wife. The front is
pretty—a kind of mixture of Greek and Arabic architecture,
crusted with marble. The interior is in the
style of the primitive churches, the altar standing in
what was called the presbytery, a high platform occupying
a third of the nave, with two splendid flights of
stairs of the purest white marble. The most curious
part of it is the rotuned in the rear, which is lit by
five windows of transparent oriental alabaster, each
eight or nine feet high and three broad, in single slabs.
The sun shone full on one of them while we were
there, and the effect was inconceivably rich. It was
like a sheet of half molten gold and silver. The
transparency of course was irregular, but in the yellow
spots of the stone the light came through like
the effect of deeply stained glass.

A partly subterranean chapel, six or eight feet lower
than the pavement of the church, extends under the
presbytery. It is a labyrinth of marble columns
which support the platform above, no two of which
are alike. The ancient cathedral of Modena is the
only church I have seen in Italy built in the same
manner.

The midnight mass on “Christmas eve,” is abused
in all catholic countries, I believe, as a kind of saturnalia
of gallantry. I joined a party of young men
who were leaving a ball for the church of the An

nunciata, the fashionable rendezvous, and we were set
down at the portico when the mass was about half
over. The entrances of the open vestibule were
thronged to suffocation. People of all ages and conditions
were crowding in and out, and the sound of
the distant chant at the altar came to our ears as we
entered, mingled with every tone of address and reply
from the crowd about us. The body of the church
was quite obscured with the smoke of the incense.
We edged our way on through the press, carried
about in the open area of the church by every tide
that rushed in from the various doors, till we stopped
in a thick eddy in the centre, almost unable to stir a
limb. I could see the altar very clearly from this
point, and I contented myself with merely observing
what was about me, leaving my motions to the impulse
of the crowd.

It was a curiously mingled scene. The ceremonies
of the altar were going on in all their mysterious
splendor. The waving of censers, the kneeling and
rising of the gorgeously clad priests, accompanied
simultaneously by the pealing of solemn music from
the different organs—the countless lights burning
upon the altar, and, ranged within the paling, a semicircle
of the duke's grenadiers, standing motionless,
with their arms presented, while the sentinel paced to
and fro, and all kneeling, and grounding arms at the
tinkle of the slight bell—were the materials for the
back-ground of the picture. In the immense area of
the church stood perhaps, four thousand people, one
third of whom, doubtless, came to worship. Those
who did and those who did not, dropped alike upon
the marble pavement at the sound of the bell; and
then, as I was heretic enough to stand, I had full
opportunity for observing both devotion and intrigue.
The latter was amusingly managed. Almost all the
pretty and young women were accompanied by an
ostensible duenna, and the methods of eluding their
vigilance in communication were various. I had
detected under a blond wig, in entering, the young
ambassador of a foreign court, who being cavaliere servante
to one of the most beautiful women in Florence,
certainly had no right to the amusement of the hour.
We had been carried up the church in the same tide,
and when the whole crowd were prostrate, I found
him just beyond me, slipping a card into the shoe of
an uncommonly pretty girl kneeling before him. She
was attended by both father and mother apparently,
but as she gave no sign of surprise, except stealing an
almost imperceptible glance behind her, I presumed
she was not offended. I passed an hour, perhaps, in
amused observation of similar matters, most of which
could not be well described on paper. It is enough
to say, that I do not think more dissolute circumstances
accompanied the worship of Venus in the
most defiled of heathen temples.

50. LETTER L.

I heard the best passage of the opera of “Romeo
and Juliet” delightfully played in the church of San
Gaetano this morning. I was coming from the café,
where I had been breakfasting, when the sound of the
organ drew me in. The communion was administering
at one of the side chapels, the showy Sunday mass
was going on at the great altar, and the numerous confession
boxes were full of penitents, all female, as usual.
As I took a seat near the communicants, the sacred
water was dipped into the cup and put into the mouth
of a young woman kneeling before the railing. She
rose soon after, and I was not lightly surprised to find
it was a certain errand-girl of a bachelor's washerwoman,
as unfit a person for the holy sacrament as wears
a petticoat in Florence.

I was drawn by the agreable odor of the incense to
the paling of the high altar. The censers were flung
by unseen hands from the doors of the sacristy at the
sides, and an unseen chorus of boys in the choir behind
broke in occasionally with the high-keyed chant
that echoes with its wild melody from every arch and
corner of these immense churches. It seems running
upon the highest note that the ear can bear, and yet
nothing could be more musical. A man knelt on the
pavement near me, with two coarse baskets beside
him, and the traces of long and dirty travel from his
heels to his hips. He had stopped in to the mass
probably on his way to market. There can be no
greater contrast than that seen in catholic churches,
between the splendor of architecture, renowned pictures,
statues and ornaments of silver and gold, and
the crowd of tattered, famished, misery-marked, worshippers
that throng them. I wonder it never occurs
to them, that the costly pavement upon which they
kneel might feed and clothe them.[6]

Penitential processions are to be met all over Florence
to-day, on account of the uncommon degree of
sickness. One of them passed under my window just
now. They are composed of people of all classes,
upon whom it is inflicted as a penance by the priests.
A white robe covers them entirely, even the face, and,
with their eyes glaring through the two holes made
for that purpose, they look like processions of shrouded
corpses. Eight of the first carry burning candles
of six feet in length, and a company in the rear have
the church books, from which they chant, the whole
procession joining in a melancholy chorus of three
notes. It rains hard to-day, and their white dresses
cling to them with a ludicrously ungraceful effect.

Florence is an unhealthful climate in the winter.
The tramontane winds come down from the Appenines
so sharply, that delicate constitutions, particularly
those liable to pulmonary complaints, suffer invariably.
There has been a dismal mortality among the Italians.
The Marquis Corsi, who presented me at court a
week ago (the last day he was out, and the last duty
he performed), lies in state, at this moment, in the
church of Santa Trinita, and another of the duke's
counsellors of state died a few days before. His prime
minister, Fossombroni, is dangerously ill also, and all
of the same complaint, the mal di petto, as it is called,
or disease of the lungs. Corsi is a great loss to Americans.
He was the grand chamberlain of court,
wealthy and hospitable, and took particular pride in
fulfilling the functions of an American ambassador.
He was a courtier of the old school, accomplished,
elegant, and possessed of universal information.

The refugee Carlists are celebrating to-day, in the
church of Santa Maria Novella, the anniversary of the
death of Louis XVI. The bishop of Strasbourg is
here, and is performing high mass for the soul of the
“martyr,” as they term him. Italy is full of the more
aristocratic families of France, and it has become
mauvais ton in society to advocate the present government
of France, or even its principles. They detest
Louis Philippe with the virulence of a deadly private
enmity, and declare universally, that they will exile
themselves till they can return to overthrow him.
Among the refugees are great numbers of young men,

who are sent away from home with a chivalrous devotion
to the cause of the Dutchess of Berri, which they
avow so constantly in the circles of Italian society, that
she seems the exclusive heroine of the day. There
was nothing seen of the French exquisites in Florence
for a week after she was taken. They were in mourning
for the misfortune of their mistress.

All Florence is ringing with the miracle. The city
fountains have for some days been dry, and the whole
country was suffering for rain. The day before the
moon changed, the processions began, and the day after,
when the sky was full of clouds, the holy picture
in the church of the Annunciata, “painted by St.
Luke himself,” was solemnly uncovered. The result
was the present miracle of rain, and the priests
are preaching upon it from every pulpit. The padrone
of my lodgings came in this morning, and told me the
circumstances with the most serious astonishment.

I joined the crowd this morning, who are still
thronging up the via de Servi to the church of the
Annunciata at all hours of the day. The square in
front of the church was like a fair—every nook occupied
with the little booths of the sellers of rosaries,
saint's books, and pictures. We were assailed by a
troop of pedlars at the door, holding leaden medals
and crucifixes, and crying, at the top of their voices,
for fidele Christiani to spend a crazie for the love of
God.

After crowding up the long cloister with a hundred
or two of wretches, steaming from the rain, and fresh
from every filthy occupation in the city, we were
pushed under the suspended leather door, and reached
the nave of the church. In the slow progress we
made toward the altar, I had full opportunity to study
the fretted-gold ceiling above me, the masterly pictures
in the side chapels, the statuary, carving, and
general architecture. Description can give you no
idea of the waste of splendor in these places.

I stood at last within sight of the miraculous picture.
It is painted in fresco above an altar surrounded
with a paling of bronze and marble projecting into the
body of the church. Eight or ten massive silver
lamps, each one presented by some trade in Florence,
hung from the roof of the chapel, burning with a
dusky glare in the daylight. A grenadier, with cap
and musket, stood on each side of the bronze gate, repressing
the eager rush of the crowd. Within, at the
side of the altar, stood the officiating priest, a man
with a look of intellect and nobleness on his fine features
and lofty forehead, that seemed irreconcilable
with the folly he was performing. The devotees came
in, one by one, as they were admitted by the sentinel,
knelt, offered their rosary to the priest, who touched
it to the frame of the picture with one hand, and received
their money with the other, and then crossing
themselves, and pressing the heads to their bosom,
passed out at the small door leading into the cloisters.

As the only chance of seeing the picture, I bought
a rosary for two crazie (about three cents); and pressed
into the throng. In a half hour it came to my turn
to pass the guard. The priest took my silver paul,
and while he touched the beads to the picture. I had
a moment to look at it nearly. I could see nothing
but a confused mass of black paint, with an indistinct
outline of the head of a Madonna in the centre. The
large spiked rays of glory standing out from every side
were all I could see in the imperfect light. The richness
of the chapel itself, however, was better worth the
trouble to see. It is quite encrusted with silver. Silver
bassi relievi, two silver candelabra, six feet in
height, two very large silver statues of angels, a ciborio
(enclosing a most exquisite bead of our Savior by Andrea
del Sarto), a massive silver cornice sustaining a
heavily folded silver curtain, and silver lilies and lamps
in any quantity all around. I wonder, after the plundering
of the church of San Antonio, at Padua, that
these useless riches escaped Napoleon.

How some of the priests, who are really learned and
clever men, can lend themselves to such barefaced imposture
as this miracle, it is difficult to conceive. The
picture has been kept as a doer of these miracles, perhaps
for a century. It is never uncovered in vain. Supernatural
results are certain to follow, and it is done
as often as they dare make a fresh draught on the
credulity and money of the people. The story is as
follows: “A certain Bartolomeo, while painting a
fresco of the annunciation, being at a loss how to make
the countenance of the Madonna properly seraphic,
fell asleep while pondering over his work; and, on
waking, found it executed in a style he was unable to
equal.” I can only say that St. Luke, or the angel,
or whoever did it, was a very indifferent draughtsman.
It is ill drawn, and whatever the colors might have been
upon the pallet of the sleepy painter, they were not
made immortal by angelic use. It is a mass of confused
black.

I was glad to get away from the crowd and their
mummery, and pay a new tribute of reverence at the
tomb of Giovanni di Bologna. He is buried behind
the grand altar, in a chapel ornamented at his own expense,
and with his owe immitable works. Six bas-reliefs
in bronze, than which life itself is not more natural,
represent different passages of our Savior's history.
They were done for the grand duke, who, at the
death of the artist, liberally gave them to ornament his
tomb. After the authors of the Venus and the Apollo
Belvidere, John of Bologna is, in my judgment, the
greatest of sculptors. His mounting Mercury, in the
Florence gallery, might have been a theft from heaven
for its divine beauty.

In passing out by the cloisters of the adjoining convent,
I stopped a moment to see the fresco of the Madonna
del Sacco, said to have been the masterpiece
of Andrea del Sarto. Michael Angelo and Raphael
are said to have “gazed at it unceasingly.” It is
much defaced, and preserves only its graceful drawing.
The countenance of Mary has the beau reste of singular
loveliness. The models of this delightful artist
(who, by the way, is buried in the vestibule of this
same church), must have been the most beautiful in
the world. All his pictures move the heart.

51. LETTER LI.

I am about starting on my second visit to Rome,
after having passed nearly three months in Florence.
As I have seen most of the society of this gayest and
fairest of the Italian cities, it may not be uninteresting
to depart a little from the traveller's routine by sketching
a feature or two.

Florence is a resort for strangers from every part of
the world. The gay society is a mixture of all nations,
of whom one third may be Florentine, one
third English, and the remaining part equally divided
between Russians, Germans, French, Poles, and Americans.
The English entertain a great deal, and give
most of the balls and dinner parties. The Floren

tines seldom trouble themselves to give parties, but
are always at home for visits in the prima sera (from
seven till nine), and in their box at the opera. They
go, without scruple, to all the strangers' balls, considering
courtesy repaid, perhaps, by the weekly reception
of the grand duke, and a weekly ball at the club-house
of young Italian nobles.

The ducal entertainments occur every Tuesday,
and are the most splendid of course. The foreign
ministers present all of their countrymen who have
been presented at their own courts, and the company
is necessarily more select than elsewhere. The Florentines
who go to court are about seven hundred, of
whom half are invited on each week—strangers, when
once presented, having the double privilege of coming
uninvited to all. There are several Italian families,
of the highest rank, who are seen only here; but,
with the single exception of one unmarried girl, of
uncommon beauty, who bears a name celebrated in
Italian history, they are no loss to general society.
Among the foreigners of rank, are three or four German
princes, who play high and waltz well, and are
remarkable for nothing else; half a dozen star-wearing
dukes, counts, and marquises, of all nations and in
any quantity, and a few English noblemen and noble
ladies—only the latter nation showing their blood at
all in their features and bearing.

The most exclusive society is that of the Prince
Montfort (Jerome Bonaparte), whose splendid palace
is shut entirely against the English, and difficult of
access to all. He makes a single exception in favor
of a descendant of the Talbots, a lady whose beauty
might be an apology for a much graver departure
from rule. He has given two grand entertainments
since the carnival commenced, to which nothing was
wanting but people to enjoy them. The immense
rooms were flooded with light, the music was the best
Florence could give, the supper might have supped
an army—stars and red ribands entered with every
fresh comer, but it looked like a “banquet hall deserted.”
Some thirty ladies, and as many men, were all
that Florence contained worthy of the society of the
ex-king. A kinder man in his manners, however, or
apparently a more affectionate husband and father, I
never saw. He opened the dance by waltzing with
the young princess, his daughter, a lovely girl of fourteen,
of whom he seems fond to excess, and he was
quite the gayest person in the company till the ball
was over. The ex-queen, who is a miracle of size,
sat on a divan, with her ladies of honor about her, following
her husband with her eyes, and enjoying his
gayety with the most childish good humor.

The Saturday evening soirées, at Prince Poniatowski's
(a brother of the hero), are perhaps as agreeable
as any in Florence. He has several grown-up
sons and daughters married, and, with a very sumptuous
palace and great liberality of style, he has made
his parties more than usually valued. His eldest
daughter is the leader of the fashion, and his second
is the “cynosure of all eyes.” The old prince is a
tall, bent, venerable man, with snow-white hair, and
very peculiarly marked features. He is fond of speaking
English, and professes a great affection for America.

Then there are the soirées of the rich banker, Fenzi,
which, as they are subservient to business, assemble
all ranks on the common pretensions of interest.
At the last, I saw, among other curiosities, a young
girl of eighteen from one of the more common families
of Florence—a fine specimen of the peasant
beauty of Italy. Her heavily moulded figure, hands,
and feet, were quite forgiven when you looked at her
dark, deep, indolent eye, and glowing skin, and strongly-lined
mouth and forehead. The society was evidently
new to her, but she had a manner quite beyond
being astonished. It was the kind of animal dignity
so universal in the lower classes of this country.

A German baroness of high rank receives on the
Mondays, and here one sees foreign society in its
highest coloring. The prettiest woman that frequents
her parties, is a Genoese marchioness, who has left her
husband to live with a Lucchese count, who has left
his wife. He is a very accomplished man, with the
look of Mephistopheles in the “Devil's Walk,” and
she is certainly a most fascinating woman. She is received
in most of the good society of Florence—a severe,
though a very just comment on its character. A
prince, the brother of the king of—, divided the
attention of the company with her last Monday. He
is a tall, military-looking man, with very bad manners,
ill at ease, and impudent at the same time. He entered
with his suite in the middle of a song. The
singer stopped, the company rose, the prince swept
about, bowing like a dancing-master, and, after the
sensation had subsided, the ladies were taken up and
presented to him, one by one. He asked them all the
same question, stayed through two songs, which he
spoiled by talking loudly all the while, and then bowed
himself out in the same awkward style, leaving everybody
more happy for his departure.

One gains little by his opportunities of meeting
Italian ladies in society. The cavaliere servente flourishes
still as in the days of Beppo, and it is to him
only that the lady condescends to talk. There is a
delicate, refined-looking, little marchioness here, who
is remarkable as being the only known Italian lady
without a cavalier. They tell you, with an amused
smile, “that she is content with her husband.” It
really seems to be a business of real love between the
lady of Italy and her cavalier. Naturally enough too
—for her patients marry her without consulting her at
all, and she selects a friend afterward, as ladies in other
countries select a lover, who is to end in a husband.
The married couple are never seen together by any
accident, and the lady and her cavalier never apart.
The latter is always invited with her as a matter of
course, and the husband, if there is room, or if he is
not forgotten. She is insulted if asked without a cavalier,
but is quite indifferent whether her husband
goes with her or not. These are points really settled
in the policy of society, and the rights of the cavalier
are specified in the marriage contracts. I had thought,
until I came to Italy, that such things were either a
romance, or customs of an age gone by.

I like very much the personal manners of the Italians.
They are mild and courteous to the farthest extent
of looks and words. They do not entertain, it is
true, but their great dim rooms are free to you whenever
you can find them at home, and you are at liberty
to join the gossipping circle around the lady of
the house, or sit at the table and read, or be silent
unquestioned. You are let alone, if you seem to
choose it, and it is neither commented on, nor thought
uncivil, and this I take to be a grand excellence in
manners.

The society is dissolute, I think, almost without an
exception. The English fall into its habits, with the
difference that they do not conceal it so well, and have
the appearance of knowing its wrong—which the Italians
have not. The latter are very much shocked at the
want of propriety in the management of the English.
To suffer the particulars of an intrigue to get about is
a worse sin, in their eyes, than any violation of the
commandments. It is scarce possible for an American
to conceive the universal corruption of a society
like this of Florence, though, if he were not told of
it he would think it all that was delicate and attractive.
There are external features in which the society
of our own country is far less scrupulous and
proper.

52. LETTER LII.

Sienna.—A day and a half on my second journey to
Rome. With a party of four nations inside, and two
strangers, probably Frenchmen, in the cabriolet, we
have jogged on at some three miles in the hour, enjoying
the lovely scenery of these lower Appenines at our
leisure. We slept last night at Poggiobonsi, a little
village on a hill-side, and arrived at Sienna for our
mid-day rest. I pencil this note after an hour's ramble
over the city, visiting once more the cathedral,
with its encrusted marbles and naked graces, and the
three shell-shaped square in the centre of the city, at
the rim of which the eight principal streets terminate.
There is a fountain in the midst, surrounded with
bassi relievi much disfigured. It was mentioned by
Dante. The streets were deserted, it being Sunday,
and all the people at the Corso, to see the racing of
horses without riders.

Bonconvento.—We sit, with the remains of a traveller's
supper on the table—six very social companions.
Our cabriolet friends are two French artists, on their
way to study at Rome. They are both pensioners of
the government, each having gained the annual prize
at the academy in his separate branch of art, which
entitles him to five years' support in Italy. They are
full of enthusiasm, and converse with all the amusing
vivacity of their nation. The academy of France
send out in this manner five young men annually, who
have gained the prizes for painting, sculpture, architecture,
music, and engraving.

This is the place where Henry the Seventh of Germany
was poisoned by a monk, on his way to Rome.
The drug was given to him in the communion cup.
The “ave marie” was ringing when we drove into
town, and I left the carriage and followed the crowd,
in the hope of finding an old church where the crime
might have been committed. But the priest was
mumbling the service in a new chapel, which no romance
that I could summon would picture as the
scene of tragedy.

Acquapendente.—While the dirty customhouse
officer is deciphering our passports, in a hole a dog
would live in unwillingly, I take out my pencil to
mark once more the pleasure I have received from the
exquisite scenery of this place. The wild rocks enclosing
the little narrow valley below, the waterfalls,
the town on its airy perch above, the just starting vegetation
of spring, the roads lined with snowdrops, crocuses
and violets, have renewed, in a tenfold degree,
the delight with which I saw this romantic spot on
my former journey to Rome.

We crossed the mountain of Radicofani yesterday,
in so thick a mist that I could not even distinguish the
ruin of the old castle, towering into the clouds above.
The wild, half-naked people thronged about us as before,
and I gave another paul to the old beggar with
whom I became acquainted by Mr. Cole's graphic
sketch. The winter had, apparently, gone hard with
him. He was scarce able to come to the carriage
window, and coughed so hollowly that I thought he
had nearly begged his last pittance.

Bolsena.—We have walked in advance of the vetturino
along the borders of this lovely and beautiful lake
till we are tired. Our artists have taken off their coats
with the heat, and sit, a quarter of a mile further on,
pointing in every direction at these unparalleled views.
The water is as still as a mirror, with a soft mist on
its face, and the water-fowl in thousands are diving
and floating within gunshot of us. An afternoon in
June could not be more summer-like, and this, to a
lover of soft climate, is no trifling pleasure.

A mile behind us lies the town, the seat of ancient
Volscinium, the capital of the Volscians. The country
about is one quarry of ruins, mouldering away in
the moss. Nobody can live in health in the neighborhood,
and the poor pale wretches who call it a home
are in melancholy contrast to the smiling paradise
about them. Before us, in the bosom of the lake, lie
two green islands, those which Pliny records to have
floated in his time; and one of which, Martana, a
small conical isle, was the scene of the murder of the
queen of the Goths by her cousin Theodatus. She
was taken there and strangled. It is difficult to imagine,
with such a sea of sunshine around and over it,
that it was ever anything but a spot of delight.

The whole neighborhood is covered with rotten
trunks of trees—a thing which at first surprised me
in a country where wood is so economised. It is accounted
for in the French guide-book of one of our
party by the fact, that the chestnut woods of Bolsena
are considered sacred by the people from their antiquity,
and are never cut. The trees have ripened and
fallen and rotted thus for centuries—one cause, perhaps,
of the deadly change in the air.

The vetturino comes lumbering up, and I must
pocket my pencil and remount.

53. LETTER LIII.

Montefiascone.—We have stopped for the night
at the hotel of this place, so renowned for its wine—
the remnant of a bottle of which stands, at this moment,
twinkling between me and my French companions.
The ladies of our party have gone to bed, and
left us in the room where sat Jean Defoucris, the merry
German monk, who died of excess in drinking the
same liquor that flashes through this straw-covered
flask. The story is told more fully in the French
guide-books. A prelate of Augsbourg, on a pilgrimage
to Rome, sent forward his servant with orders to
mark every tavern where the wine was good with the
word est, in large letters of chalk. On arriving at
this hotel, the monk saw the signal thrice written over
the door—Est! Est! Est? He put up his mule,
and drank of Montefiascone till he died. His servant
wrote his epitaph, which is still seen in the church of
St. Florian:—

“Est, Est, Est!” is the motto upon the sign of the
hotel to this day.

In wandering about Viterbo in search of amusement,
while the horses were baiting, I stumbled upon the
shop of an antiquary. After looking over his medals,
Etruscan vases, cameos, &c., a very interesting collection,
I inquired into the state of trade for such
things in Viterbo. He was a cadaverous, melancholy
looking old man, with his pockets worn quite out with
the habit of thrusting his hands into them, and about
his mouth and eye there was the proper virtuoso expression
of inquisitiveness and discrimination. He
kept also a small café adjoining his shop, into which
we passed, as he shrugged his shoulders at my question.
I had wondered to find a vender of costly curiosities

in a town of such poverty, and I was not surprised
at the sad fortunes which had followed upon his
enterprise. They were a base herd, he said, of the
people, utterly ignorant of the value of the precious
objects he had for sale, and he had been compelled to
open a café, and degrade himself by waiting on them
for a contemptible crazie worth of coffee, while his
lovely antiquities lay unappreciated within. The old
gentleman was eloquent upon his misfortunes. He
had not been long in trade, and had collected his museum
originally for his own amusement. He was an
odd specimen, in a small way, of a man who was quite
above his sphere, and suffered for his superiority. I
bought a pretty intaglio, and bad him farewell, after
an hour's acquaintance, with quite the feeling of a
friend.

Mount Cimino rose before us soon after leaving Viterbo,
and we walked up most of the long and gentle
ascent, inhaling the odor of the spicy plants for which
it is famous, and looking out sharply for the brigands
with which it is always infested. English carriages
are constantly robbed on this part of the route of late.
The robbers are met usually in parties of ten and
twelve, and, a week before we passed, Lady Berwick
(the widow of an English nobleman, and a sister of the
famous Harriet Wilson) was stopped and plundered in
broad mid-day. The excessive distress among the
peasantry of these misgoverned states accounts for
these things, and one only wonders why there is not
even more robbing among such a starving population.
This mountain, by the way, and the pretty lake below
it, are spoken of in the æneid: “Cimini cum monte
locum,” etc. There is an ancient tradition, that in the
crescent-shaped valley which the lake fills, there was
formerly a city, which was overwhelmed by the rise
of the water, and certain authors state that, when the
lake is clear, the ruins are still to be seen at the bottom.

The sun rose upon us as we reached the mountain
above Baccano, on the sixth day of our journey, and,
by its clear golden flood, we saw the dome of St. Peter's,
at a distance of sixteen miles, towering amid
the campagna in all its majestic beauty. We descended
into the vast plain, and traversed its gentle undulations
for two or three hours. With the forenoon well
advanced, we turned into the valley of the Tiber, and
saw the home of Raphael, a noble chateau on the side
of a hill, near the river, and, in the little plain between,
the first peach-trees we had seen, in full blossom.
The tomb of Nero is on one side of the road,
before crossing the Tiber, and on the other a newly
painted and staring restaurant, where the modern Roman
cockneys drive for punch and ices. The bridge
of Pontemolle, by which we passed into the immediate
suburb of Rome, was the ancient Pons æmilius, and
here Cicero arrested the conspirators on their way to
join Catiline in his camp. It was on the same bridge,
too, that Constantine saw his famous vision, and gained
his victory over the tyrant Maxentius.

Two miles over the Via Flaminia, between garden
walls that were ornamented with sculpture and inscription
in the time of Augustus, brought us to the Porta
del Popolo. The square within this noble gate is
modern, but very imposing. Two streets diverge before
you, as far away as you can see into the heart of
the city, a magnificent fountain sends up its waters in
the centre, the facades of two handsome churches face
you as you enter, and on the right and left are gardens
and palaces of princely splendor. Gay and
sumptuous equipages cross it in every direction, driving
out to the villa Borghese, and up to the Pincian
mount, the splendid troops of the pope are on guard,
and the busy and stirring population of modern Rome
swell out to its limit like the ebb and flow of the sea.
All this disappoints while it impresses the stranger.
He has come to Rome—but it was old Rome that he
had pictured to his fancy. The Forum, the ruins of
her temples, the palaces of her emperors, the homes
of her orators, poets, and patriots, the majestic relics
of the once mistress of the world, are the features in
his anticipation. But he enters by a modern gate to
a modern square, and pays his modern coin to a
whiskered officer of customs; and in the place of a
venerable Belisarius begging an obolus in classic Latin,
he is beset by a troop of lusty and filthy lazzaroni
entreating for a baioch in the name of the Madonna,
and in effeminate Italian. He drives down the Corso,
and reads nothing but French signs, and sees all the
familiar wares of his own country exposed for sale,
and every other person on the pave is an Englishman,
with a narrow-rimmed hat and whalebone stick, and
with an hour at the Dogama where his baggage is
turned inside out by a snuffy old man who speaks
French, and a reception at a hotel where the porter
addresses him in his own language, whatever it may
be; he goes to bed under Parisian curtains, and tries
to dream of the Rome he could not realize while
awake.

54. LETTER LIV.

With the intention of returning to Rome for the
ceremonies of the holy week, I have merely passed
through on my way to Naples. We left it the morning
after our arrival, going by the “Appian way,” to
Mount Albano, which borders the Campagna on the
south, at a distance of fifteen miles. This celebrated
road is lined with the ruined tombs of the Romans.
Off at the right, some four or five miles from the city,
rises the fortress-like tomb of Cecilia Metella, so exquisitely
mused upon by Childe Harold. This, says
Sismondi, with the tombs of Adrian and Augustus,
became fortresses of banditti, in the thirteenth century,
and were taken by Brancallone, the Bolognese
governor of Rome, who hanged the marauders from
the walls. It looks little like “a woman's grave.”

We changed horses at the pretty village of Albano,
and, on leaving it, passed an ancient mausoleum, believed
to be the tomb of the Curiatii who fought the
Horatii on this spot. It is a large structure, and had
originally four pyramids on the corners, two of which
only remain.

A mile from Albano lies Aricia, in a country of the
loveliest rural beauty. Here was the famous temple
of Diana, and here were the lake and grove sacred to
the “virgin huntress,” and consecrated as her home
by peculiar worship. The fountain of Egeria is here,
where Numa communed with the nymph, and the
lake of Nemi, on the borders of which the temple
stood, and which was called Dian's mirror (speculum
Dianœ), is at this day, perhaps, one of the sweetest
gems of natural scenery in the world.

We slept at Velletri, a pretty town of some twelve
thousand inhabitants, which stands on a hill-side,
leaning down to the Pontine marshes. It was one of
the grand days of carnival, and the streets were full of
masks, walking up and down in their ridiculous
dresses, and committing every sort of foolery. The
next morning, by daylight, we were upon the Pontine

marshes, the long thirty miles level of which we
passed in an unbroken trot, one part of a day's journey
of seventy-five miles, done by the same horses, at
the rate of six miles in the hour! They are small,
compact animals, and look in good condition, though
they do as much habitually.

At a distance of fifteen miles from Velletri, we
passed a convent, which is built opposite the spot
where St. Paul was met by his friends, on his journey
from the seaside to Rome. The canal upon which
Horace embarked on his celebrated journey to Brundusium,
runs parallel with the road for its whole distance.
This marshy desert is inhabited by a race of
as wretched beings, perhaps, as are to be found upon
the face of the earth. The pestiferous miasma of the
pools is certain destruction to health, and the few who
are needed at the distant post-houses, crawl out to the
road-side like so many victims from a pest-house,
stooping with weakness, hollow-eyed, and apparently
insensible to everything. The feathered race seems
exempt from its influence, and the quantities of game
of every known description are incredible. The
ground was alive with wild geese, turkeys, pigeons,
plover, ducks, and numerous birds we did not know,
as far as the eye could distinguish. The travelling
books caution against sleeping in the carriage while
passing these marshes, but we found it next to impossible
to resist the heavy drowsiness of the air.

At Terracina the marshes end, and the long avenue
of elms terminates at the foot of a romantic precipice,
which is washed by the Mediterranean. The town
is most picturesquely built between the rocky wall
and the sea. We dined with the hollow murmur of
the surf in our ears, and then, presenting our passports,
entered the kingdom of Naples. This Terracina,
by the way, was the ancient Anxur, which Horace
describes in his line—

For twenty or thirty miles before arriving at Terracina,
we had seen before us the headland of Circœum,
lying like a mountain island off the shore. It is
usually called San Felice, from the small town seated
upon it. This was the ancient abode of the “daughter
of the sun,” and here were imprisoned, according
to Homer, the champions of Ulysses, after their
metamorphoses.

From Terracina to Fondi, we followed the old Appian
way, a road hedged with flowering myrtles and
orange trees laden with fruit. Fondi itself is dirtier
than imagination could picture it, and the scowling
men in the streets look like myrmidons of Fra Diavolo,
their celebrated countryman. This town, however,
was the scene of the romantic story of the beautful
Julia Gonzaga, and was destroyed by the corsair Barbarossa,
who had intended to present the rarest beauty
of Italy to the sultan. It was to the rocky mountains
above the town that she escaped in her night-dress,
and lay concealed till the pirate's departure.

In leaving Fondi, we passed the ruined walls of a
garden said to have belonged to Cicero, whose tomb
is only three leagues distant. Night came on before
we reached the tomb, and we were compelled to promise
ourselves a pilgrimage to it on our return.

We slept at Mola, and here Cicero was assassinated.
The ruins of his country-house are still here. The
town lies in the lap of a graceful bay, and in all Italy,
it is said, there is no spot more favored by nature.
The mountains shelter it from the winds of the north;
the soil produces, spontaneously, the orange, the
myrtle, the olive, delicious grapes, jasmine, and many
odoriferous herbs. This and its neighborhood was
called, by the great orator and statesman who selected
it for his retreat, “the most beautiful patrimony of the
Romans.” The Mediterranean spreads out from its
bosom, the lovely islands near Naples bound its view,
Vesuvius sends up its smoke and fire in the south,
and back from its hills stretches a country fertile and
beautiful as a paradise. This is a place of great resort
for the English and other travellers in the summer.
The old palaces are turned into hotels, and we entered
our inn through an avenue of shrubs that must have
been planted and trimmed for a century.

We left Mola before dawn and crossed the small
river Garigliano as the sun rose. A short distance
from the southern bank, we found ourselves in the
midst of ruins, the golden beams of the sun pouring
upon us through the arches of some once magnificent
structure, whose area is now crossed by the road.
This was the ancient Minturna, and the ruins are
those of an amphitheatre, and a temple of Venus.
Some say that it was in the marshes about this now
waste city, that the soldier, sent by Sylla to kill Marius,
found the old hero, and, struck with his noble
mien, fell with respect at his feet.

The road soon enters a chain of hills, and the scenery
becomes enchanting. At the left of the first ascent
lies the Falernian mount, whose wines are immortalized
by Horace. It is a beautiful hill, which
throws round its shoulder to the south, and is covered
with vineyards. I dismounted and walked on while
the horses breathed at the post-house of St. Agatha,
and was overtaken by a good-natured-looking man,
mounted on a mule, of whom I made some inquiry
respecting the modern Falernian. He said it was still
the best wine of the neighborhood, but was far below
its ancient reputation, because never kept long enough
to ripen. It is at its prime from the fifteenth to the
twentieth year, and is usually drank the first or second.
My new acquaintance, I soon found, was the physician
of the two or three small villages nested about
among the hills and a man of some pretensions to
learning. I was delighted with his frank good-humor,
and a certain spice of drollery in his description of his
patients. The peasants at work in the fields saluted
him from any distance as he passed; and the pretty
contadini going to St. Agatha with their baskets on
their heads, smiled as he nodded, calling them all by
name, and I was rather amused than offended with the
inquisitiveness he manifested about my age, family,
pursuits, and even morals. His mule stopped of its
own will at the door of the apothecary of the small
village on the summit of the hill, and as the carriage
came in sight the doctor invited me, seizing my hand
with a look of friendly sincerity, to stop at St. Agatha
on my return, to shoot, and drink Falernian with
him for a month. The apothecary stopped the vetturino
at the door; and, to the astonishment of my companions
within, the doctor seized me in his arms and
kissed me on both sides of my face with a volume of
blessings and compliments which I had no breath in
my surprise to return. I have made many friends on
the road in this country of quick feelings, but the doctor
of St. Agatha had a readiness of sympathy which
threw all my former experience into the shade.

We dined at Capua, the city whose luxuries enervated
Hannibal and his soldiers—the “dives, amorosa,
felix” Capua. It is in melancholy contrast with
the description now—its streets filthy, and its people
looking the antipodes of luxury. The climate should
be the same, as we dined with open doors, and with
the branch of an orange tree heavy with fruit hanging
in at the window, in a month that with us is one of the
wintriest.

From Capua to Naples, the distance is but fifteen
miles, over a flat uninteresting country. We entered
“this third city in the world” in the middle of the afternoon,
and were immediately surrounded with beggars
of every conceivable degree of misery. We sat
an hour at the gate while our passports were recorded,
and the vetturino examined, and then passing up a noble
street, entered a dense crowd, through which was

creeping slowly a double line of carriages. The
mounted dragoons compelled our postillion to fall into
the line, and we were two hours following in a fashionable
corso with our mud-spattered vehicle and tired
horses, surrounded by all that was brilliant and gay
in Naples. It was the last day of carnival. Everybody
was abroad, and we were forced, however unwillingly
to see all the rank and beauty of the city. The
carriages in this fine climate are all open, and the ladies
were in full dress. As we entered the Toledo, the
cavalcade came to a halt, and with hats off and handkerchiefs
flying in every direction about them, the
young new-married queen of Naples rode up the middle
of the street preceded and followed by outriders in
the gayest livery. She has been married about a
month, is but seventeen, and is acknowledged to be
the most beautiful woman in the kingdom. The description
I had heard of her, though very extravagant,
had hardly done her justice. She is a little above
the middle height, with a fine lift to her head and neck,
and a countenance only less modest and maidenly than
noble.

55. LETTER LV.

Drawn in twenty different directions on starting
from my lodgings this morning, I found myself, undecided
where to pass my day, in front of St. Peter's.
Some gorgeous ceremony was just over, and the sumptuous
equipages of the cardinals, blazing in the sun
with their mountings of gold and silver, were driving
up and dashing away from the end of the long colonnades,
producing any effect upon the mind rather than
a devout one. I stood admiring their fiery horses and
gay liveries, till the last rattled from the square, and
then mounted to the deserted church. Its vast vestibule
was filled with beggars, diseased in every conceivable
manner, halting, groping, and crawling about in
search of strangers of whom to implore charity—a
contrast to the splendid pavement beneath and the
gold and marble above and around, which would
reconcile one to see the “mighty dome” melted into
alms, and his holiness reduced to a plain chapel and
a rusty cassock.

Lifting the curtain I stood in the body of the church.
There were perhaps twenty persons, at different distances,
on its immense floor, the farthest off (six hundred
and fourteen feet from me!) looking like a pigmy in the
far perspective. St. Peter's is less like a church than
a collection of large churches enclosed under a gigantic
roof. The chapels at the sides are larger than most
houses of public worship in our country, and of these
there may be eight or ten, not included in the effect
of the vast interior. One is lost in it. It is a city of
columns and sculpture and mosaie. Its walls are encrusted
with precious stones and masterly workman
ship to the very top, and its wealth may be conceived
when you remember that, standing in the centre and
raising your eyes aloft, there are four hundred and
forty feet between you and the roof of the dome—the
height, almost of a mountain.

I walked up toward the tomb of St. Peter, passing
in my way a solitary worshipper here and there, upon
his knees, and arrested constantly by the exquisite
beauty of the statuary with which the columns are
carved. Accustomed, as we are in America, to churches
filled with pews, it is hardly possible to imagine the
noble effect of a vast mosaic floor, unencumbered even
with a chair, and only broken by a few prostrate figures,
just specking its wide area. All catholic churches
are without fixed seats, and St. Peter's seems scarce
measurable to the eye, it is so far and clear, from one
extremity to the other.

I passed the hundred lamps burning over the tomb
of St. Peter, the lovely female statue (covered with a
bronze drapery, because its exquisite beauty was
thought dangerous to the morality of the young
priests), reclining upon the tomb of Paul III., the
ethereal figures of Canova's geniuses weeping at the
door of the tomb of the Stuarts (where sleeps the
pretender Charles Edward), the thousand, thousand
rich and beautiful monuments of art and taste crowding
every corner of this wondrous church—I passed them, I
say, with the same lost and unexamining, unparticularizing
feeling which I can not overcome in this place
—a mind borne quite off its feet and confused and
overwhelmed with the tide of astonishment—the one
grand impression of the whole. I dare say, a little
more familiarity with St. Peter's will do away the
feeling, but I left the church, after two hours loitering
in its aisles, despairing, and scarce wishing to examine
or make a note.

Those beautiful fountains, moistening the air over
the whole area of the column encircled front!—and
that tall Egyptian pyramid, sending up its slender
and perfect spire between! One lingers about, and
turns again and again to gaze around him, as he leaves
St. Peter's, in wonder and admiration.

I crossed the Tiber, at the fortress-tomb of Adrian,
and thridding the long streets at the western end of
Rome, passed through the Jews' quarter, and entered
the Forum. The sun lay warm among the ruins of
the great temples and columns of ancient Rome, and,
seating myself on a fragment of an antique frieze,
near the noble arch of Septimius Severus, I gazed on
the scene, for the first time, by daylight. I had been
in Rome, on my first visit, during the full moon, and
my impressions of the forum with this romantic enhancement
were vivid in my memory. One would
think it enough to be upon the spot at any time, with
light to see it, but what with modern excavations, fresh
banks of earth, carts, boys playing at marbles, and
wooden sentry-boxes, and what with the Parisian
promenade, made by the French through the centre,
the imagination is too disturbed and hindered in daylight.
The moon gives it all one covering of gray and
silver. The old columns stand up in all their solitary
majesty, wrecks of beauty and taste; silence leaves
the fancy to find a voice for itself; and from the palaces
of the Cesars to the prisons of the capitol, the
whole train of emperors, senators, conspirators, and
citizens, are summoned with but half a thought and
the magic glass is filled with moving and reanimated
Rome. There, beneath those walls, on the right, in
the Mamertine prisons, perished Jugurtha (and
there, too, were imprisoned St. Paul and St. Peter),
and opposite upon the Palatine-hill, lived the mighty
masters of Rome, in the “palaces of the Cesars,”
and beneath the majestic arch beyond, were led, as a
seal of their slavery, the captives from Jerusalem, and
in these temples, whose ruins cast their shadows at my
feet, walked and discoursed Cicero and the philoso

phers, Brutus and the patriots, Catiline and the conspirators,
Augustus and the scholars and poets, and
the great stranger in Rome, St. Paul, gazing at the
false altars, and burning in his heart to reveal to them
the “unknown God.” What men have crossed the
shadows of these very columns! and what thoughts,
that have moved the world, have been born beneath
them!

The Barberini palace contains three or four master-pieces
of painting. The most celebrated is the portrait
of Beatrice Cenci, by Guido. The melancholy
and strange history of this beautiful girl has been told
in a variety of ways, and is probably familar to every
reader. Guido saw her on her way to execution, and
has painted her as she was dressed, in the gray habit
and head-dress made by her own hands, and finished
but an hour before she put it on. There are engravings
and copies of the picture all over the world, but
none that I have seen give any idea of the excessive
gentleness and serenity of the countenance. The
eyes retain traces of weeping, but the child-like mouth,
the soft, girlish lines of features that look as if they
never had worn more than the one expression of youthfulness
and affection, are all in repose, and the head is
turned over the shoulder with as simple a sweetness as
if she had but looked back to say a good-night before
going to her chamber to sleep. She little looks like
what she was—one of the firmest and boldest spirits
whose history is recorded. After murdering her father
for his fiendish attempts upon her virtue, she endured
every torture rather than disgrace her family by
confession, and was only moved from her constancy,
at last, by the agonies of her younger brother on the
rack. Who would read capabilities like these, in these
heavenly and child-like features?

I have tried to purchase the life of the Cenci, in vain.
A bookseller told me to-day, that it was a forbidden
book, on account of its reflections upon the pope.
Immense interest was made for the poor girl, but, it is
said, the papal treasury ran low, and if she was pardoned,
the large possessions of the Cenci family could
not have been confiscated.

The gallery contains also, a delicious picture of the
Fornarina, by Raphael himself, and a portrait of Giorgione's
mistress, as a Carthaginian slave, the same
head multiplied so often in his and Titian's pictures.
The original of the admirable picture of Joseph and
the wife of Potiphar, is also here. A copy of it is in
the gallery of Florence.

I have passed a day between the two palaces Doria
and Sciarra, nearly opposite each other in the Corso
at Rome. The first is an immense gallery of perhaps
a thousand pictures, distributed through seven large
halls, and four galleries encircling the court. In the
first four rooms I found nothing that struck me particularly.
In the fifth was a portrait, by an unknown artist,
of Olivia Waldachini, the favorite and sister-in-law
of Pope Innocent X.—a handsome woman, with
that round fulness in the throat and neck, which
(whether it existed in the originals, or is a part of a
painter's ideal of a woman of pleasure), is universal in
portraits of that character. In the same room was a
portrait of a “celebrated widow,” by Vandyck,[7] a
had-been beautiful woman, in a staid cap (the hands
wonderfully painted), and a large and rich picture of
Semiramis, by one of the Carraccis.

In the galleries hung the landscapes by Claude, famous
through the world. It is like roving through
a paradise, to sit and look at them. His broad green
lawns, his half-hidden temples, his life-like luxuriant
trees, his fountains, his sunny streams—all flush into
the eye like the bright opening of a Utopia, or some
dream over a description from Boccaccio. It is what
Italy might be in a golden age—her ruins rebuilt into
the transparent air, her woods unprofaned, her people
pastoral and refined, and every valley a landscape of
Arcadia. I can conceive no higher pleasure for the
imagination than to see a Claude in travelling through
Italy. It is finding a home for one's more visionary
fancies—those children of moonshine that one begets
in a colder clime, but scarce dares acknowledge till he
has seen them under a more congenial sky. More
plainly, one does not know whether his abstract imaginations
of pastoral life and scenery are not ridiculous
and unreal, till he has seen one of these landscapes,
and felt steeped, if I may use such a word, in the very
loveliness which inspired the pencil of the painter.
There he finds the pastures, the groves, the fairy
structures, the clear waters, the straying groups, the
whole delicious scenery, as bright as in his dreams,
and he feels as if he should bless the artist for the liberty
to acknowledge freely to himself the possibility
of so beautiful a world.

We went on through the long galleries, going back
again and again to see the Claudes. In the third division
of the gallery were one or two small and bright
landscapes, by Brill, that would have enchanted us if
seen elsewhere; and four strange pictures, by Breughel,
representing the four elements, by a kind of half-poetical,
half-supernatural landscapes, one of which
had a very lovely view of a distant village. Then
there was the famous picture of the “woman catching
fleas,” by Gherardodelle Notti, a perfect piece of life.
She stands close to a lamp, with a vessel of hot water
before her, and is just closing her thumb and finger
over a flea, which she has detected on the bosom of
her dress. Some eight or ten are boiling already in
the water, and the expression upon the girl's face is
that of the most grave and unconscious interest in her
employment. Next to this amusing picture hangs a
portrait of Queen Giovanna, of Naples, by Leonardo
da Vinci, a copy of which I had seen, much prized, in
the possession of the archbishop of Torento. It
scarce looks like the talented and ambitious queen she
was, but it does full justice to her passion for amorous
intrigue—a face full of the woman.

The last picture we came to, was one not even mentioned
in the catalogue, an old portrait of one of the
females of the Doria family. It was a girl of eighteen,
with a kind of face that in life must have been extremely
fascinating. While we were looking at it, we
heard a kind of gibbering laugh from the outer apartment,
and an old man, in a cardinal's dress, dwarfish in
size, and with deformed and almost useless legs, came
shuffling into the gallery, supported by two priests.
His features were imbecility itself, rendered almost
horrible by the contrast of the cardinal's red cap.
The custode took off his hat and bowed low, and the
old man gave us a half-bow and a long laugh in passing,
and disappeared at the end of the gallery. This
was the Prince Doria, the owner of the palace, and a
cardinal of Rome! the sole remaining representative
of one of the most powerful and ambitious families of
Italy! There could not be a more affecting type of
the great “mistress of the world” herself. Her very
children have dwindled into idiots.

We crossed the Corso to the Palace Sciarra. The
collection here is small, but choice. Half a dozen
small but exquisite landscapes, by Brill and Both,
grace the second room. Here are also three small
Claudes, very, very beautiful. In the next room is a
finely-colored but most indecent picture of Noah intoxicated,
by Andrea Sacchi, and a portrait by Giulio

Romano, of Raphael's celebrated Fornarina, to whose
lovely face one becomes so accustomed in Italy, that it
seems like that of an acquaintance.

In the last room are two of the most celebrated pictures
in Rome. The first is by Leonardo da Vinci,
and represents Vanity and Modesty, by two females
standing together in conversation—one a handsome,
gay, volatile looking creature, covered with ornaments,
and listening unwillingly to what seems a lecture from
the other, upon her foibles. The face of the other is
a heavenly conception of woman—earnest, delicate, and
lovely—the idea one, forms to himself, before intercourse
with the world, gives him a distaste for its purity.
The moral lesson of the picture is more forcible
than language. The painter deserved to have died, as
he did, in the arms of an emperor.

The other picture represents two gamblers cheating
a youth, a very striking picture of nature. It is common
from the engravings. On the opposite side of
the room, is a very expressive picture by Schidone.
On the ruins of an old tomb stands a scull, beneath
which is written—“I, too, was of Arcadia;” and, at a
little distance, gazing at it in attitudes of earnest reflection,
stand two shepherds, struck simultaneously
with the moral. It is a poetical thought, and wrought
out with great truth and skill.

Our eyes aching and our attention exhausted with
pictures, we drove from the Sciarra to the ruined palaces
of the Cesars. Here, on an eminence above the
Tiber, with the Forum beneath us on one side, the
Coliseum on the other, and all the towers and spires
of modern and catholic Rome arising on her many
hills beyond, we seated ourselves on fragments of
marble, half buried in the grass, and mused away the
hours till sunset. On this spot Romulus founded
Rome. The princely Augustus, in the last days of
her glory, laid here the foundations of his imperial
palace, which, continued by Caligula and Tiberius,
and completed by Domitian, covered the hill, like a
small city. It was a labyrinth of temples, baths, pavilions,
fountains, and gardens, with a large theatre at
the western extremity; and, adjoining the temple of
Apollo, was a library filled with the best authors, and
ornamented with a colossal bronze statue of Apollo,
“of excellent Etruscan workmanship.” “Statues of
the fifty daughters of Danaus Siuramdert, surrounded
the portico” (of this same temple), “and opposite
them were equestrian statues of their husbands.”
About a hundred years ago, accident discovered, in the
gardens buried in rubbish, a magnificent hall, two
hundred feet in length and one hundred and thirty-two
in breadth, supposed to have been built by Domitian.
It was richly ornamented with statues, and columns
of precious marbles, and near it were baths in excellent
preservation. “But,” says Stark, “immense and
superb as was this first-built palace of the Cesars,
Nero, whose extravagance and passion for architecture
knew no limits, thought it much too small for him,
and extended its edifices and gardens from the Palatine
to the Esquiline. After the destruction of the whole,
by fire, sixty-five years after Christ, he added to it his
celebrated `Golden House,' which extended from one
extremity to the other of the Cœlian Hill.”[8]

The ancient walls, which made the whole of the
Mount Palatine a fortress, still hold together its earth
and its ruins. It is a broad tabular eminence, worn
into footpaths which wind at every moment around
broken shafts of marble, fragments of statuary, or broken
and ivy-covered fountains. Part of it is cultivated
as a vineyard, by the degenerate modern Romans,
and the baths, into which the water still pours from
aqueducts encrusted with aged stalactites, are public
washing-places for the contadini, eight or ten of whom
were splashing away in their red jackets, with gold
bodkins in their hair, while we were moralizing on
their worthier progenitors of eighteen, centuries ago.
It is a beautiful spot of itself, and with the delicious
soft sunshine of an Italian spring, the tall green grass
beneath our feet, and an air as soft as June just stirring
the myrtles and jasmines, growing wild wherever
the ruins gave them place, our enjoyment of the overpowering
associations of the spot was ample and untroubled.
I could wish every refined spirit in the
world had shared our pleasant hour upon the Palatine.

56. LETTER LVI.

The yearly ceremony of giving dowries to twelve
girls, was performed by the pope, this morning, in the
church built over the ancient temple of Minerva. His
holiness arrived, in state, from the Vatican, at ten,
followed by his red troop of cardinals, and preceded
by a clerical courier, on a palfrey, and the body-guard
of nobles. He blessed the crowd, right and left, with
his three fingers (precisely as a Parisian dandy salutes
his friend across the street), and, descending from his
carriage (which is like a good-sized glass boudoir upon
wheels), he was received in the papal sedan, and
carried into the church by his Swiss bearers. My legation
button carried me through the guard, and I
found an excellent place under a cardinal's wing, in
the penetralia within the railing of the altar. Mass
commenced presently, with a chant from the celebrated
choir of St. Peter's. Room was then made through
the crowd, the cardinals put on their red caps, and the
small procession of twelve young girls entered from a
side chapel, bearing each a taper in her hand, and
robed to the eyes in white, with a chaplet of flowers
round the forehead. I could form no judgment of anything
but their eyes and feet. A Roman eye could
not be otherwise than fine, and a Roman woman's foot
could scarce be other than ugly, and, consequently,
there was but one satin slipper in the group that a
man might not have worn, and every eye I could see
from my position, might have graced an improvisatrice.
They stopped in front of the throne, and, giving
their long tapers to the servitors, mounted in
conples, hand in hand, and kissed the foot of his holiness,
who, at the same time, leaned over and blessed
them, and then turning about, walked off again behind
the altar in the same order in which they had entered.

The choir now struck up their half-unearthly chant
(a music so strangely shrill and clear, that I scarce
know whether the exquisite sensation is pleasure or
pain), the pope was led from his throne to his sedan,
and his mitre changed for a richly jewelled crown, the
bearers lifted their burden, the guard presented arms,

the cardinals summoned their officious servants to unrobe,
and the crowd poured out as it came.

This ceremony, I found, upon inquiry, is performed
every year, on the day of the annunciation—just nine
months before Christmas, and is intended to commemorate
the incarnation of our Savior.

As I was returning from a twilight stroll upon the
Pincian hill, this evening, the bells of the convent of
Santa Trinita rung to vespers. I had heard of the
singing of the nuns in the service at the convent chapel,
but the misbehavior of a party of English had excluded
foreigners, of late, and it was thought impossible
to get admittance. I mounted the steps, however,
and rung at the door. It was opened by a pale nun,
of thirty, who hesitated a moment, and let me pass.
In a small, plain chapel within, the service of the altar
was just commencing, and, before I reached a seat,
a low plaintive chant commenced, in female voices,
from the choir. It went on, with occasional interruptions
from the prayers, for perhaps an hour. I can
not describe the excessive mournfulness of the music.
One or two familiar hymns occurred in the course of
it, like airs in a recitative, the same sung in our churches,
but the effect was totally different. The neat, white
caps of the nuns were just visible over the railing before
the organ, and, as I looked up at them and listened
to their melancholy notes, they seemed, to me,
mourning over their exclusion from the world. The
small white cloud from the censer mounted to the ceiling,
and creeping away through the arches, hung over
the organ till it was lost to the eye in the dimness of
the twilight. It was easy, under the influence of their
delightful music, to imagine within it the wings of
that tranquillizing resignation one would think so necessary
to keep down the heart in these lonely cloisters.

The most considerable ruins of ancient Rome are
those of the Baths. The Emperors Titus, Caracalla,
Nero, and Agrippa, constructed these immense places
of luxury, and the remains of them are among the
most interesting and beautiful relics to be found in the
world. It is possible that my readers have as imperfect
an idea of the extent of a Roman bath as I have
had, and I may as well quote from the information
given by writers upon antiquities. “They were open
every day, to both sexes. In each of the great baths,
there were sixteen hundred seats of marble, for the
convenience of the bathers, and three thousand two
hundred persons could bathe at the same time. There
were splendid porticoes in front for promenade, arcades
with shops, in which was found every kind of
luxury for the bath, and halls for corporeal exercises,
and for the discussion of philosophy; and here the
poets read their productions and rhetoricians harangued,
and sculptors and painters exhibited their
works to the public. The baths were distributed into
grand halls, with ceilings enormously high and painted
with admirable frescoes, supported on columns of
the rarest marble, and the basins were of oriental alabaster,
porphyry, and jasper. There were in the centre
vast reservoirs, for the swimmers, and crowds of
slaves to attend gratuitously upon all who should
come.”

The baths of Diocletian (which I visited to-day),
covered an enormous space. They occupied seven
years in building, and were the work of forty thousand
Christian slaves, two thirds of whom died of fatigue and
misery! Mounting one of the seven hills of Rome,
we come to some half-ruined arches, of enormous
size, extending a long distance, in the sides of which
were built two modern churches. One was the work
of Michael Angelo, and one of his happiest efforts.
He has turned two of the ancient halls into a magnificent
church, in the shape of a Greek cross, leaving in
their places eight gigantic columns of granite. Af
ter St. Peter's it is the most imposing church in
Rome.

We drove thence to the baths of Titus, passing the
site of the ancient gardens of Mecænas, in which still
stands the tower from which Nero beheld the conflagration
of Rome. The houses of Horace and Virgil
communicated with this garden, but they are now undistinguishable.
We turned up from the Coliseum
to the left, and entered a gate leading to the baths of
Titus. Five or six immense arches presented their
front to us, in a state of picturesque ruin. We took a
guide, and a long pole, with a lamp at the extremity,
and descended to the subterranean halls, to see the
still inimitable frescoes upon the ceilings. Passing
through vast apartments, to the ruined walls of which
still clung, here and there, pieces of the finely-colored
stucco of the ancients, we entered a suite of long galleries,
some forty feet high, the arched roofs of which
were painted with the most exquisite art, in a kind of
fanciful border-work, enclosing figures and landscapes,
in as bright colors as if done yesterday. Farther on
was the niche in which was found the famous group
of Laocoon, in a room belonging to a subterranean
palace of the emperor, communicating with the baths.
The Belvedeve Meleager was also found here. The
imagination loses itself in attempting to conceive the
splendor of these under-ground palaces, blazing with
artificial light, ornamented with works of art, never
equalled, and furnished with all the luxury which
an emperor of Rome, in the days when the wealth
of the world flowed into her treasury, could command
for his pleasure. How short life must have
seemed to them, and what a tenfold curse became
death and the common ills of existence, interrupting
or taking away pleasures so varied and inexhaustible.

These baths were built in the last great days of
Rome, and one reads the last stages of national corruption
and, perhaps, the secret of her fall, in the character
of these ornamented walls. They breathe the very
spirit of voluptuousness. Naked female figures fill every
plafond, and fauns and satyrs, with the most licentious
passions in their faces, support the festoons and hold
together the intricate ornament of the frescos. The
statues, the pictures, the object of the place itself, inspired
the wish for indulgence, and the history of the
private lives of the emperors and wealthier Romans
shows the effect in its deepest colors.

We went on to the baths of Caracalla, the largest
ruins of Rome. They are just below the palaces of
the Cesars, and ten minutes' walk from the Coliseum.
It is one labyrinth of gigantic arches and ruined halls,
the ivy growing and clinging wherever it can fasten its
root, and the whole as fine a picture of decay as
imagination could create. This was the favorite haunt
of Shelley, and here he wrote his fine tragedy of Prometheus.
He could not have selected a more fitting
spot for solitary thought. A herd of goats were
climbing over one of the walls, and the idle boy who
tended them lay asleep in the sun, and every footstep
echoed loud through the place. We passed two or
three hours rambling about, and regained the populous
streets of Rome in the last light of the sunset.

57. LETTER LVII.

The last days of March have come, clothed in sunshine
and summer. The grass is tall in the Campagna,
the fruit-trees are in blossom, the roses and
myrtles are in full flower, the shrubs are in full leaf,
the whole country about breathes of June. We left
Rome this morning on an excursion to the “Fountain
of Egeria.” A more heavenly day never broke. The
gigantic baths of Caracalla turned us aside once more,
and we stopped for an hour in the shade of their romantic
arches, admiring the works, while we execrated
the character of their ferocious builder.

This is the beginning of the ancient Appian Way,
and, a little farther on, sunk in the side of a hill, near
the road, is the beautiful doric tomb of the Scipios.
We alighted at the antique gate, a kind of portico,
with seats of stone beneath, and reading the inscription,
“Sepulchro degli Scipioni,” mounted, by ruined
steps, to the tomb. A boy came out from the house,
in the vineyard above, with candles to show us the
interior; but, having no curiosity to see the damp cave
from which the sarcophagi have been removed (to
the museum), we sat down upon a bank of grass
opposite the chaste facade, and recalled to memory
the early-learnt history of the family once entombed
within. The edifice (for it is more like a temple to
a river-nymph or a dryad than a tomb) was built by
an ancestor of the great Scipio Africanus, and here
was deposited the noble dust of his children. One
feels, in these places, as if the improvisatore's inspiration
was about him—the fancy draws, in such vivid
colors, the scenes that have passed where he is standing.
The bringing of the dead body of the conqueror
of Africa from Rome, the passing of the funeral train
beneath the portico, the noble mourners, the crowd of
people, the eulogy of perhaps some poet or orator,
whose name has descended to us—the air seems to
speak, and the gray stones of the monument against
which the mourners of the Scipios have leaned, seem
to have had life and thought, like the ashes they have
sheltered.

We drove on to the Catacombs. Here, the legend
says, St. Sebastian was martyred, and the modern
church of St. Sebastains stands over the spot. We
entered the church, where we found a very handsome
young capuchin friar, with his brown cowl and the
white cord about his waist, who offered to conduct us
to the catacombs. He took three wax-lights from
the sacristy, and we entered a side door, behind the
tomb of the saint, and commenced a descent of a long
flight of stone steps. We reached the bottom and
found ourselves upon damp ground, following a narrow
passage, so low that I was compelled constantly
to stoop, in the sides of which were numerous small
niches of the size of a human body. These were the
tombs of the early Christian martyrs. We saw near
a hundred of them. They were brought from Rome,
the scene of their sufferings, and buried in these
secret catacombs by the small church of perhaps the
immediate converts of St. Paul and the apostles.
What food for thought is here, for one who finds more
interest in the humble traces of the personal followers
of Christ, who knew his face and had heard his voice,
to all the splendid ruins of the works of the persecuting
emperors of his time! Most of the bones have
been taken from their places, and are preserved at the
museum, or enclosed in the rich sarcophagi raised to
the memory of the martyrs in the catholic churches.
Of those that are left we saw one. The niche was
closed by a thin slab of marble, through a crack of
which the monk put his slender candle. We saw the
skeleton as it had fallen from the flesh in decay, untouched,
perhaps, since the time of Christ.

We passed through several cross-passages, and
came to a small chamber, excavated simply in the
earth, with an earthen altar, and an antique marble
cross above. This was the scene of the forbidden
worship of the early Christians, and before this very
cross, which was, perhaps, then newly selected as the
emblem of their faith, met the few dismayed followers
of Christ, hidden from their persecutors, while they
breathed their forbidden prayers to their lately crucified
master.

We reascended to the light of day by the rough
stone steps, worn deep by the feet of those who, for
ages, for so many different reasons, have passed up and
down, and, taking leave of our capuchin conductor,
drove on to the next object upon the road—the tomb
of Cecilia Metella. It stands upon a slight elevation,
in the Appian Way, a “stern round tower,” with the
ivy dropping over its turrets and waving from the embrasures,
looking more like a castle than a tomb.
Here was buried “the wealthiest Roman's wife,” or,
according to Corinne, his unmarried daughter. It
was turned into a fortress by the marauding nobles of
the thirteenth century, who sallied from this and the
tomb of Adrian, plundering the ill-defended subjects
of Pope Innocent IV. till they were taken and hanged
from the walls by Brancaleone, the Roman senator.
It is built with prodigious strength. We stooped in
passing under the low archway, and emerged into the
round chamber within, a lofty room, open to the sky,
in the circular wall of which there is a niche for a
single body. Nothing could exceed the delicacy
and fancy with which Childe Harold muses on this
spot.

The lofty turrets command a wide view of the
Campagna, the long aqueducts stretching past at a
short distance, and forming a chain of noble arches
from Rome to the mountains of Albano. Cole's picture
of the Roman Campagna, as seen from one of
these elevations, is, I think, one of the finest landscapes
ever painted.

Just below the tomb of Metella, in a flat valley, lie
the extensive ruins of what is called the “circus of
Caracalla” by some, and the “circus of Romulus”
by others—a scarcely distinguishable heap of walls
and marble, half buried in the earth and moss; and
not far off stands a beautiful ruin of a small temple
dedicated (as some say) to Ridicule. One smiles to
look at it. If the embodying of that which is powerful,
however, should make a deity, the dedication of a
temple to ridicule is far from amiss. In our age particularly,
one would think, the lamp should be relit,
and the reviewers should repair the temple. Poor
Keats sleeps in his grave scarce a mile from the spot,
a human victim, sacrificed, not long ago, upon its
highest altar.

In the same valley almost hidden with the luxuriant
ivy waving before the entrance, flows the lovely Fountain
of Egeria, trickling as clear and musical into its
pebbly bed as when visited by the enamored successor
of Romulus twenty-five centuries ago! The hill
above leans upon the single arch of the small temple
which embosoms it, and the green soft meadow spreads
away from the floor, with the brightest verdure conceivable.
We wound around by a halfworn path in
descending the hill, and, putting aside the long
branches of ivy, entered an antique chamber, sprinkled
with quivering spots of sunshine, at the extremity of
which, upon a kind of altar, lay the broken and defaced
statue of the nymph. The fountain poured
from beneath in two streams as clear as crystal. In
the sides of the temple were six empty niches, through
one of which stole, from a cleft in the wall, a little
stream, which wandered from its way. Flowers, pale
with growing in the shade, sprang from the edges of
the rivulet as it found its way out, the small creepers,
dripping with moisture, hung out from between the
diamond-shaped stones of the roof, the air was refreshingly
cool, and the leafy door at the entrance,
seen against the sky, looked of a transparent green, as
vivid as emerald. No fancy could create a sweeter

spot. The fountain and the inspiration it breathed
into Childe Harold are worthy of each other.

Just above the fountain, on the crest of a hill,
stands a thick grove, supposed to occupy the place of
the consecrated wood, in which Numa met the nymph.
It is dark with shadow, and full of birds, and might
afford a fitting retreat for meditation to another king
and lawgiver. The fields about it are so thickly
studded with flowers, that you can not step without
crushing them, and the whole neighborhood seems a
favorite of nature. The rich banker, Torlonia, has
bought this and several other classic spots about Rome
—possessions for which he is more to be envied than
for his purchased dukedom.

All the travelling world assembles at Rome for the
ceremonies of the holy week. Naples, Florence, and
Pisa, send their hundreds of annual visiters, and the
hotels and palaces are crowded with strangers of every
nation and rank. It would be difficult to imagine a
gayer or busier place than this usually sombre city has
become within a few days.

58. LETTER LVIII.

Palm Sunday opens the ceremonies. We drove
to the Vatican this morning, at nine, and, after waiting
a half hour in the crush, kept back, at the point
of the spear, by the pope's Swiss guard, I succeeded
in getting an entrance into the Sistine chapel. Leaving
the ladies of the party behind the grate, I passed
two more guards, and obtained a seat among the cowled
and bearded dignitaries of the church and state
within, where I could observe the ceremony with ease.

The pope entered, borne in his gilded chair by
twelve men, and, at the same moment, the chanting
from the Sistine choir commenced with one long,
piercing note, by a single voice, producing the most
impressive effect. He mounted his throne as high as
the altar opposite him, and the cardinals went through
their obeisances, one by one, their trains supported by
their servants, who knelt on the lower steps behind
them. The palms stood in a tall heap beside the altar.
They were beautifully woven in wands of perhaps
six feet in length, with a cross at the top. The cardinal
nearest the papal chair mounted first, and a palm
was handed him. He laid it across the knees of the
pope, and, as his holiness signed the cross upon it, he
stooped, and kissed the embroidered cross upon his
foot, then kissed the palm, and taking it in his two
hands, descended with it to his seat. The other forty
or fifty cardinals did the same, until each was provided
with a palm. Some twenty other persons, monks of
apparent clerical rank of every order, military men,
and members of the catholic embassies, followed and
took palms. A procession was then formed, the cardinals
going first with their palms held before them,
and the pope following, in his chair, with a small frame
of palmwork in his hands, in which was woven the
initial of the Virgin. They passed out of the Sistine
chapel, the choir chanting most delightfully, and, having
made a tour around the vestibule, returned in the
same order.

The ceremony is intended to represent the entrance
of the Savior into Jerusalem. Bishop England, of
Charleston, South Carolina, delivered a lecture at the
house of the English cardinal Weld, a day or two ago,
explanatory of the ceremonies of the holy week. It
was principally an apology for them. He confessed
that, to the educated, they appeared empty, and even
absurd rites, but they were intended not for the refined,
but the vulgar, whom it was necessary to instruct and
impress through their outward senses. As nearly all
these rites, however, take place in the Sistine chapel,
which no person is permitted to enter who is not furnished
with a ticket, and in full dress, his argument
rather fell to the ground.

With all the vast crowd of strangers in Rome, I
went to the Sistine chapel on Holy Tuesday, to hear
the far-famed Miserere. It is sung several times during
the holy week, by the pope's choir, and has been
described by travellers, of all nations in the most rapturous
terms. The vestibule was a scene of shocking
confusion, for an hour, a constant struggle going on
between the crowd and the Swiss guard, amounting
occasionally to a fight, in which ladies fainted, children
screamed, men swore, and, unless by force of
contrast, the minds of the audience seemed likely to
be little in tune for the music. The chamberlains at
last arrived, and two thousand people attempted to get
into a small chapel which scarce holds four hundred.
Coat-skirts, torn cassocks, hats, gloves, and fragments
of ladies' dresses, were thrown up by the suffocating
throng, and, in the midst of a confusion beyond description,
the mournful notes of the tenebræ (or lamentations
of Jeremiah) poured in full volume from the
choir. Thirteen candles burned in a small pyramid
within the paling of the altar, and twelve of these,
representing the apostles, were extinguished, one by
one (to signify their desertion at the cross), during the
singing of the tenabræ. The last, which was left
burning, represented the mother of Christ. As the
last before this was extinguished, the music ceased.
The crowd had, by this time, become quiet. The
twilight had deepened through the dimly-lit chapel,
and the one solitary lamp looked lost at the distance of
the altar. Suddenly the miserére commenced with
one high prolonged note, that sounded like a wail;
another joined it, and another and another, and all the
different parts came in, with a gradual swell of plaintive
and most thrilling harmony, to the full power of
the choir. It continued for perhaps half an hour.
The music was simple, running upon a few notes, like
a dirge, but there were voices in the choir that seemed
of a really supernatural sweetness. No instrument
could be so clear. The crowd, even in their uncomfortable
positions, were breathless with attention, and
the effect was universal. It is really extraordinary
music, and if but half the rites of the catholic church
had its power over the mind, a visit to Rome would
have quite another influence.

The candles were lit, and the motley troop of cardinals
and red-legged servitors passed out. The harlequin-looking
Swiss guard stood to their tall halberds,
the chamberlains and mace-bearers, in their cassock
and frills, took care that the males and females should
not mix until they reached the door, the pope disappeared
in the sacristy, and the gay world, kept an hour
beyond their time, went home to cold dinners.

The ceremonies of Holy Thursday commenced
with the mass in the Sistine chapel. Tired of seeing
genuflexions, and listening to a mumbling of which I
could not catch a syllable, I took advantage of my
privileged seat, in the ambassador's box, to lean back
and study the celebrated frescoes of Michael Angelo
upon the ceiling. A little drapery would do no harm
to any of them. They illustrate, mainly, passages of

scripture history, but the “creation of Eve,” in the
centre, is an astonishingly fine representation of a
naked man and woman, as large as life; and “Lot
intoxicated and exposed before his two daughters,”
is about as immodest a picture, from its admirable
expression as well as its nudity, as could easily
be drawn. In one corner there is a most beautiful
draped figure of the Delphic Sybil—and I think
this bit of heathenism is almost the only very decent
part of the pope's most consecrated chapel.

After the mass, the host was carried, with a showy
procession, to be deposited among the thousand lamps
in the Capella Paolina, and, as soon as it had passed,
there was a general rush for the room in which the
pope was to wash the feet of the pilgrims.

Thirteen men, dressed in white, with sandals open
at the top, and caps of paper covered with white linen,
sat on a high bench, just under a beautiful copy of the
last supper of Da Vinci, in gobelin tapestry. It was
a small chapel, communicating with the pope's private
apartments. Eleven of the pilgrims were as vulgar
and brutal-looking men as could have been found in
the world; but of the two in the centre, one was the
personification of wild fanaticism. He was pale, emaciated,
and abstracted. His hair and beard were neglected,
and of a singular blackness. His lips were
firmly set in an expression of severity. His brows
were gathered gloomily over his eyes, and his glances,
occasionally sent among the crowd, were as glaring
and flashing as a tiger's. With all this, his
countenance was lofty, and if I had seen the face on
canvass, as a portrait of a martyr, I should have
thought it finely expressive of courage and devotion.
The man on his left wept, or pretended to weep, continually;
but every person in the room was struck
with his extraordinary resemblance to Judas, as he is
drawn in the famous picture of the last supper. It
was the same marked face, the same treacherous, ruffian
look, the same style of hair and beard, to a wonder.
It is possible that he might have been chosen on
purpose, the twelve pilgrims being intended to represent
the twelve apostles of whom Judas was one—but
if accidental, it was the most remarkable coincidence
that ever came under my notice. He looked the hypocrite
and traitor complete, and his resemblance to
the Judas in the picture directly over his head, would
have struck a child.

The pope soon entered from his apartments, in a
purple stole, with a cape of dark crimson satin, and
the mitre of silver-cloth, and, casting the incense into
the golden censer, the white smoke was flung from
side to side before him, till the delightful odor filled
the room. A short service was then chanted, and
the choir sang a hymn. His holiness was then unrobed,
and a fine napkin, trimmed with lace, was tied
about him by the servitors, and with a deacon before
him, bearing a splendid pitcher and basin, and a procession
behind him, with large bunches of flowers, he
crossed to the pilgrims' bench. A priest, in a snow-white
tunic, raised and bared the foot of the first. The
pope knelt, took water in his hand, and slightly rubbed
the instep, and then drying it well with a napkin,
he kissed it.

The assistant-deacon gave a large bunch of flowers
and a napkin to the pilgrim, as the pope left him, and
another person in rich garments, followed, with pieces
of money presented in a wrapper of white paper. The
same ceremony took place with each—one foot only
being honored with a lavation. When his holiness
arrived at the “Judas,” there was a general stir, and
every one was on tip-toe to watch his countenance.
He took his handkerchief from his eyes, and looked
at the pope very earnestly, and when the ceremony
was finished, he seized the sacred hand, and, imprinting
a kiss upon it, flung himself back, and buried his
face again in his handkerchief, quite overwhelmed with
his feelings. The other pilgrims took it very coolly,
comparatively, and one of them seemed rather amused
than edified. The pope returned to his throne, and
water was poured over his hands. A cardinal gave
him a napkin, his splendid cape was put again over his
shoulders, and, with a paternoster the ceremony was
over.

Half an hour after, with much crowding and several
losses of foothold and temper, I had secured a place
in the hall where the apostles, as the pilgrims are
called after the washing, were to dine, waited on by
the pope and cardinals. With their gloomy faces and
ghastly white caps and white dresses, they looked
more like criminals waiting for execution, than guests
at a feast. They stood while the pope went round
with a gold pitcher and basin, to wash their hands,
and then seating themselves, his holiness, with a good-natured
smile, gave each a dish of soup, and said
something in his ear, which had the effect of putting
him at his ease. The table was magnificently set out
with the plate and provisions of a prince's table, and
spite of the thousands of eyes gazing on them, the
pilgrims were soon deep in the delicacies of every
dish, even the lachrymose Judas himself, eating most
voraciously. We left them at their dessert.

59. LETTER LIX.

A beautiful pyramid, a hundred and thirteen feet
high, built into the ancient wall of Rome, is the proud
Sepulchre of Caius Cestius. It is the most imperishable
of the antiquities, standing as perfect after
eighteen hundred years as if it were built but yesterday.
Just beyond it, on the declivity of a hill, over
the ridge of which the wall passes, crowning it with
two mouldering towers, lies the protestant burying-ground.
It looks toward Rome, which appears in
the distance, between Mount Aventine and a small hill
called Mont Testaccio, and leaning to the southeast,
the sun lies warm and soft upon its banks, and the
grass and wild flowers are there the earliest and tallest
of the Campagna. I have been here to-day, to see
the graves of Keats and Shelley. With a cloudless
sky and the most delicious air ever breathed, we sat
down upon the marble slab laid over the ashes of
poor Shelley, and read his own lament over Keats,
who sleeps just below, at the foot of the hill. The
cemetery is rudely formed into three terraces, with
walks between, and Shelley's grave and one other,
without a name, occupy a small nook above, made by
the projections of a mouldering wall-tower, and
crowded with ivy and shrubs, and a peculiarly fragrant
yellow flower, which perfumes the air around for
several feet. The avenue by which you ascend from
the gate is lined with high bushes of the marsh-rose
in the most luxuriant bloom, and all over the cemetery
the grass is thickly mingled with flowers of every die.
In his preface to his lament over Keats, Shelley says,
“he was buried in the romantic and lonely cemetery
of the protestants, under the pyramid which is the
tomb of Cestius, and the massy walls and towers, now
mouldering and desolate, which formed the circuit of
ancient Rome. It is an open space among the ruins,
covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might

make one in love with death, to think that one should be
buried in so sweet a place.” If Shelley had chosen
his own grave at the time, he would have selected the
very spot where he has since been laid—the most
sequestered and flowery nook of the place he describes
so feelingly. In the last verses of the elegy,
he speaks of it again with the same feeling of its
beauty:—

m

Shelley has left no poet behind, who could write so
touchingly of his burial-place in turn. He was, indeed,
as they have graven on his tombstone, “cor
cordium”—the heart of hearts. Dreadfully mistaken
as he was in his principles, he was no less the soul of
genius than the model of a true heart and of pure intentions.
Let who will cast reproach upon his
memory, I believe, for one, that his errors were of the
kind most venial in the eye of Heaven, and I read,
almost like a prophecy, the last lines of his elegy on
one he believed had gone before him to a happier
world:—

On the second terrace of the declivity, are ten or
twelve graves, two of which bear the names of Americans
who have died in Rome. A portrait carved in
bas-relief, upon one of the slabs, told me, without the
inscription, that one whom I had known was buried
beneath.[9] The slightly rising mound was covered
with small violets, half hidden by the grass. It takes
away from the pain with which one stands over the
grave of an acquaintance or a friend, to see the sun
lying so warm upon it, and the flowers springing so
profusely and cheerfully. Nature seems to have cared
for those who have died so far from home, binding the
earth gently over them with grass, and decking it with
the most delicate flowers.

A little to the left, on the same bank, is the new-made
grave of a very young man, Mr. Elliot. He
came abroad for health, and died at Rome, scarce two
months since. Without being disgusted with life, one
feels, in a place like this, a certain reconciliation, if I
may so express it, with the thought of a burial—an
almost willingness, if his bed could be laid amid such
loveliness, to be brought and left here to his repose.
Purely imaginary as any difference in this circumstance
is, it must, at least, always affect the sick
powerfully; and with the common practice of sending
the dying to Italy, as a last hope, I consider the exquisite
beauty of this place of burial, as more than a
common accident of happiness.

Farther on, upon the same terrace, are two monuments
that interested me. One marks the grave of a
young English girl,[10] the pride of a noble family, and,
as a sculptor told me, who had often seen and admired
her, a model of high-born beauty. She was riding
with a party on the banks of the Tiber, when her
horse became unmanageable, and backed into the
river. She sank instantly, and was swept so rapidly
away by the current, that her body was not found for
many months. Her tombstone is adorned with a bas-relief,
representing an angel receiving her from the
waves.

The other is the grave of a young lady of twenty,
who was at the baths of Lucca, last summer, in pursuit
of health. She died at the first approach of
winter. I had the melancholy pleasure of knowing
her slightly, and we used to meet her in the winding
path upon the bank of the romantic river Lima, at
evening, borne in a sedan, with her mother and sister
walking at her side, the fairest victim consumption
ever seized. She had all the peculiar beauty of the
disease, the transparent complexion and the unnaturally
bright eye, added to features cast in the clearest
and softest mould of female loveliness. She excited
general interest even among the gay and dissipated
crowd of a watering place; and if her sedan was
missed in the evening promenade, the inquiry for her
was anxious and universal. She is buried in a place
that seems made for such as herself.

We descended to the lower enclosure at the foot of
the slight declivity. The first grave here is that of
Keats. The inscription on his monument runs thus:
“This grave contains all that was mortal of a young
English poet, who, on his deathbed, in the bitterness of
his heart at the malicious power of his enemies, desired
these words to be engraved on his tomb: HERE LIES ONE
WHOSE NAME WAS WRITTEN IN WATER.” He died at
Rome in 1821. Every reader knows his history and
the cause of his death. Shelley says, in the preface
to his elegy, “The savage criticism on his poems,
which appeared in the Quarterly Review, produced
the most violent effect on his susceptible mind; the
agitation thus originated ended in a rupture of a
blood-vessel in the lungs; a rapid consumption ensued,
and the succeeding acknowledgments, from more candid
critics, of the true greatness of his powers, were ineffectual
to heal the wound thus wantonly inflicted.”
Keats was, no doubt, a poet of very uncommon
promise. He had all the wealth of genius within
him, but he had not learned, before he was killed by
criticism, the received, and, therefore, the best manner
of producing it for the eye of the world. Had he
lived longer, the strength and richness which break
continually through the affected style of Endymion
and Lamia and his other poems, must have formed
themselves into some noble monuments of his powers.
As it is, there is not a poet living who could surpass
the material of his “Endymion”—a poem, with all
its faults, far more full of beauties. But this is not
the place for criticism. He is buried fitly for a poet,
and sleeps beyond criticism now. Peace to his
ashes!

Close to the grave of Keats is that of Dr. Bell, the
author of “Observations on Italy.” This estimable
man, whose comments on the fine arts are, perhaps, as
judicious and high-toned as any ever written, has left
behind him, in Naples (where he practised his profession
for some years), a host of friends, who remember
and speak of him as few are remembered and
spoken of in this changing and crowded portion of the
world. His widow, who edited his works so ably
and judiciously, lives still at Naples, and is preparing
just now a new edition of his book on Italy. Having
known her, and having heard from her own lips many
particulars of his life, I felt an additional interest in
visiting his grave. Both his monument and Keats's
are almost buried in the tall flowering clover of this
beautiful place.

60. LETTER LX.

I have been presented to the pope this morning, in
company with several Americans—Mr. and Mrs. Gray,
of Boston, Mr. Atherton and daughters, and Mr.
Walsh, of Philadelphia, and Mr. Mayer of Baltimore.
With the latter gentleman, I arrived rather late, and
found that the rest of the party had been already received,
and that his holiness was giving audience, at
the moment, to some Russian ladies of rank. Bishop
England, of Charleston, however, was good enough to
send in once more, and, in the course of a few minutes,
the chamberlain in waiting announced to us that
Il Padre Santo would receive us. The ante-room
was a picturesque and rather peculiar scene. Clusters
of priests, of different rank, were scattered about
in the corners, dressed in a variety of splendid costumes,
white, crimson, and ermine, one or two monks,
with their picturesque beards and flowing dresses of
gray or brown, were standing near one of the doors,
in their habitually humble attitudes, two gentleman
mace-bearers guarded the door of the entrance to the
pope's presence, their silver batons under their arms,
and their open-breasted cassocks covered with fine
lace; the deep bend of the window was occupied by
the American party of ladies, in the required black
veils, and around the outer door stood the helmeted
guard, a dozen stout men-at-arms, forming a forcible
contrast to the mild faces and priestly company within.

The mace-bearers lifted the curtain, and the pope
stood before us, in a small plain room. The Irish
priest who accompanied us prostrated himself on the
floor, and kissed the embroidered slipper, and Bishop
England hastily knelt and kissed his hand, turning to
present us as he rose. His holiness smiled, and stepped
forward, with a gesture of his hand, as if to prevent
our kneeling, and, as the bishop mentioned our
names, he looked at us and nodded smilingly, but
without speaking to us. Whether he presumed we
did not speak the language, or whether he thought us
too young to answer for ourselves, he confined his inquiries
about us entirely to the good bishop, leaving
me, as I had wished, at leisure to study his features
and manner. It was easy to conceive that the father
of the catholic church stood before me, but I
could scarcely realize that it was a sovereign of Europe,
and the temporal monarch of millions. He was
dressed in a long vesture of snow-white flannel, buttoned
together in front, with a large crimson velvet cape over
his shoulders, and band and tassels of silver cloth
hanging from beneath. A small white scull-cap covered
the crown of his head, and his hair, slightly grizzled,
fell straight toward a low forehead, expressive of
good-nature merely. A large emerald on his fingers,
and slippers wrought in gold, with a cross on the instep,
completed his dress. His face is heavily moulded,
but unmarked, and expressive mainly of sloth and
kindness; his nose is uncommonly large, rather
pendent than prominent, and an incipient double chin,
slightly hanging cheeks, and eyes, over which the lids
drop, as if in sleep, at the end of every sentence, confirm
the general impression of his presence—that of
an indolent and good old man. His inquiries were
principally of the catholic church in Baltimore (mentioned
by the bishop as the city of Mr. Mayer's residence),
of its processions, its degree of state, and
whether it was recognised by the government. At the
first pause in the conversation, his holiness smiled and
bowed, the Irish priest prostrated himself again, and
kissed his foot, and, with a blessing from the father of
the church, we retired.

On the evening of holy Thursday, as I was on my
way to St. Peter's, to hear the miserere once more, I
overtook the procession of the pilgrims going up to
vespers. The men went first in couples, following a
cross, and escorted by gentlemen penitents covered
conveniently with sackcloth, their eyes, peeping
through two holes, and their well-polished boots beneath,
being the only indications by which their penance
could be betrayed to the world. The pilgrims
themselves, perhaps a hundred in all, were the dirtiest
collection of beggars imaginable, distinguished from
the lazars in the street, only by a long staff with a faded
bunch of flowers attached to it, and an oil-cloth
cape stitched over with scallop shells. Behind came
the female pilgrims, and these were led by the first ladies
of rank in Rome. It was really curious to see
the mixture of humility and pride. There were, perhaps,
fifty ladies of all ages, from sixteen to fifty,
walking each between two filthy old women, who supported
themselves by her arms, while near them, on
either side of the procession, followed their splendid
equipages, with numerous servants, in livery, on foot,
as if to contradict to the world their temporary degradation.
The lady penitents, unlike the gentlemen,
walked in their ordinary dress. I had several acquaintances
among them; and it was inconceivable, to me,
how the gay, thoughtless, fashionable creatures I had
met in the most luxurious drawing-rooms of Rome,
could be prevailed upon to become a part in such a ridiculous
parade of humility. The chief penitent,
who carried a large, heavy crucifix at the head of the
procession, was the Princess —, at whose weekly
soirees and balls assemble all that is gay and pleasure-loving
in Rome. Her two nieces, elegant girls of
eighteen or twenty, walked at her side, carrying lighted
candles, of four or five feet in length, in broad day-light,
through the streets!

The procession crept slowly up to the church, and
I left them kneeling at the tomb of St. Peter, and
went to the side chapel, to listen to the miserere. The
choir here is said to be inferior to that in the Sistine
chapel, but the circumstances more than make up for
the difference, which, after all, it takes a nice ear to
detect. I could not but congratulate myself, as I sat
down upon the base of a pillar, in the vast aisle, without
the chapel where the choir were chanting, with
the twilight gathering in the lofty arches, and the
candles of the various processions creeping to the consecrated
sepulchre from the distant parts of the church.
It was so different in that crowded and suffocating
chapel of the Vatican, where, fine as was the music, I
vowed positively never to subject myself to such annoyance
again.

It had become almost dark, when the last candle
but one was extinguished in the symbolical pyramid,
and the first almost painful note of the miserere wailed
out into the vast church of St. Peter. For the next
half hour, the kneeling listeners, around the door of
the chapel, seemed spell-bound in their motionless attitudes.
The darkness thickened, the hundred lamps
at the far-off sepulchre of the saint, looked like a galaxy
of twinkling points of fire, almost lost in the distance,
and from the now perfectly obscured choir,
poured, in ever-varying volume, the dirge-like music,
in notes inconceivably plaintive and affecting. The
power, the mingled mournfulness and sweetness, the
impassioned fulness, at one moment, and the lost,
shrieking wildness of one solitary voice, at another,
carry away the soul like a whirlwind. I have never
been so moved by anything. It is not in the scope of
language to convey an idea to another of the effect of
the miserere.

It was not till several minutes after the music had
ceased, that the dark figures rose up from the floor
about me. As we approached the door of the church,
the full moon, about three hours risen, poured broadly

under the arches of the portico, inundating the whole
front of the lofty dome with a flood of light, such as
falls only on Italy. There seemed to be no atmosphere
between. Daylight is scarce more intense.
The immense square, with its slender obelisk and embracing
crescents of colonnade, lay spread out as definitely
to the eye as at noon, and the two famous fountains
shot up their clear waters to the sky, the moonlight
streaming through the spray, and every drop as
visible and bright as a diamond.

I got out of the press of carriages, and took a by-street
along the Tiber, to the Coliseum. Passing the
Jews' quarter, which shuts at dark by heavy gates,
I found myself near the Tarpeian rock, and entered
the Forum, behind the ruins of the temple of Fortune.
I walked toward the palace of the Cesars,
stopping to gaze on the columns, whose shadows have
fallen on the same spot, where I now saw them for sixteen
or seventeen centuries. It checks the blood at
one's heart, to stand on the spot and remember it. There
was not the sound of a footstep through the whole
wilderness of the Forum. I traversed it to the arch
of Titus in a silence, which, with the majestic ruins
around, seemed almost supernatural—the mind was
left so absolutely to the powerful associations of the
place.

Ten minutes more brought me to the Coliseum.
Its gigantic walls, arches on arches, almost to the very
clouds, lay half in shadow, half in light, the ivy hung
trembling in the night air, from between the cracks of
the ruin, and it looked like some mighty wreck in
a desert. I entered, and a hundred voices announced
to me the presence of half the fashion of Rome. I
had forgotten that it was the mode “to go to the Coliseum
by moonlight.” Here they were dancing and
laughing about the arena where thousands of Christians
had been torn by wild beasts, for the amusement
of the emperors of Rome; where gladiators had fought
and died; where the sands beneath their feet were
more eloquent of blood than any other spot on the
face of the earth—and one sweet voice proposed a
dance, and another wished she could have music and
supper, and the solemn old arches re-echoed with
shouts and laughter. The travestie of the thing was
amusing. I mingled in the crowd, and found acquaintances
of every nation, and an hour I had devoted
to romantic solitude and thought passed away perhaps
quite as agreeably, in the nonsense of the most
thoughtless triflers in society.

61. LETTER LXI.

Rome, 1833.—This is Friday of the holy week.
The host, which was deposited yesterday amid its
thousand lamps in the Paoline chapel, was taken from
its place this morning, in solemn procession, and carried
back to the Sistine, after lying in the consecrated
place twenty-four hours. Vigils were kept over it all
night. The Paoline chapel has no windows, and the
lights are so disposed as to multiply its receding arches
till the eye is lost in them. The altar on which
the host lay was piled up to the roof in a pyramid of
light, and with the prostrate figures constantly covering
the floor, and the motionless soldier in antique armor
at the entrance, it was like some scene of wild
romance.

The ceremonies of Easter Sunday were performed
where all others should have been—in the body of St.
Peter's. Two lines of soldiers, forming an aisle up
the centre, stretched from the square without the portico
to the sacred sepulchre. Two temporary platforms
for the various diplomatic corps and other privileged
persons occupied the sides, and the remainder
of the church was filled by thousands of strangers, Roman
peasantry, and contadini (in picturesque red boddices,
and with golden bodkins through their hair),
from all the neighboring towns.

A loud blast of trumpets, followed by military music,
announced the coming of the procession. The
two long lines of soldiers presented arms, and the esquires
of the pope entered first, in red robes, followed
by the long train of proctors, chamberlains, mitre-bearers,
and incense-bearers, the men-at-arms escorting
the procession on either side. Just before the
cardinals, came a cross-bearer, supported on either
side by men in showy surplices carrying lights, and
then came the long and brilliant line of white-headed
cardinals, in scarlet and ermine. The military dignitaries
of the monarch preceded the pope, a splendid
mass of uniforms, and his holiness then appeared, supported,
in his great gold and velvet chair, upon the
shoulders of twelve men, clothed in red damask, with
a canopy over his head, sustained by eight gentlemen,
in short, violet-colored silk mantles. Six of the Swiss
guard (representing the six catholic cantons) walked
near the pope, with drawn swords on their shoulders,
and after his chair followed a troop of civil officers,
whose appointments I did not think it worth while to
inquire. The procession stopped when the pope was
opposite the “chapel of the holy sacrament,” and his
holiness descended. The tiara was lifted from his
head by a cardinal, and he knelt upon a cushion of velvet
and gold to adore the “sacred host,” which was
exposed upon the altar. After a few minutes he returned
to his chair, his tiara was again set on his head,
and the music rang out anew, while the procession
swept on to the sepulchre.

The spectacle was all splendor. The clear space
through the vast area of the church, lined with glittering
soldiery, the dazzling gold and crimson of the
coming procession, the high papal chair, with the immense
fan-banners of peacock's feathers, held aloft,
the almost immeasurable dome and mighty pillars
above and around, and the multitudes of silent people,
produced a scene which, connected with the idea of
religious worship, and added to by the swell of a hundred
instruments of music, quite dazzled and overpowered
me.

The high mass (performed but three times a year)
proceeded. At the latter part of it, the pope mounted
to the altar, and, after various ceremonies, elevated the
sacred host. At the instant that the small white wafer
was seen between the golden candlesticks, the two
immense lines of soldiers dropped upon their knees,
and all the people prostrated themselves at the same
instant.

This fine scene over, we hurried to the square in
front of the church, to secure places for a still finer
one—that of the pope blessing the people. Several
thousand troops, cavalry and footmen, were drawn up
between the steps and the obelisk, in the centre of the
piazza, and the immense area embraced by the two
circling colonnades was crowded by, perhaps, a hundred
thousand people, with eyes directed to one single
point. The variety of bright costumes, the gay liveries
of the ambassadors' and cardinals' carriages, the
vast body of soldiery, and the magnificent frame of
columns and fountains in which this gorgeous picture
was contained, formed the grandest scene conceivable.

In a few minutes the pope appeared in the balcony,
over the great door of St. Peter's. Every hat in the
vast multitude was lifted and every knee bowed in an

instant. Half a nation prostrate together, and one
gray old man lifting up his hands to heaven, and blessing
them!

The cannon of the castle of St. Angelo thundered,
the innumerable bells of Rome pealed forth simultaneously,
the troops fell into line and motion, and the
children of the two hundred and fifty-seventh successor
of St. Peter departed blessed.

In the evening all the world assembled to see the illumination,
which it is useless to attempt to describe.

The night was cloudy and black, and every line in
the architecture of the largest building in the world
was defined in light, even to the cross, which, as I
have said before, is at the height of a mountain from
the base. For about an hour it was a delicate but vast
structure of shining lines, like the drawing of a glorious
temple on the clouds. At eight, as the clock
struck, flakes of fire burst from every point, and the
whole building seemed started into flame. It was done
by a simultaneous kindling of torches in a thousand
points a man stationed at each. The glare seemed to
exceed that of noonday. No description can give an
idea of it.

I am not sure that I have not been a little tedious in
describing the ceremonies of the holy week. Forsyth
says in his bilious book, that he “never could read,
and certainly never could write, a description of them.”
They have struck me, however, as particularly unlike
anything ever seen in our own country, and I have endeavored
to draw them slightly and with as little particularity
as possible. I trust that some of the readers
of the Mirror may find them entertaining and
novel.

Florence, 1833.—I found myself at six this morning,
where I had found myself at the same hour a
year before—in the midst of the rural festa in the Cascine
of Florence. The duke, to-day, breakfasts at his
farm. The people of Florence, high and low, come
out, and spread their repasts upon the fine sward of
the openings in the wood, the roads are watered, and
the royal equipages dash backward and forward, while
the ladies hang their shawls in the trees, and children
and lovers stroll away into the shade, and all looks
like a scene from Boccaccio.

I thought it a picturesque and beautiful sight last
year, and so described it. But I was a stranger then,
newly arrived in Florence, and felt desolate amid the
happiness of so many. A few months among so frank
and warm-hearted a people as the Tuscans, however,
makes one at home. The tradesman and his wife,
familiar with your face, and happy to be seen in their
holyday dresses, give you the “buon giorno,” as you
pass, and a cup of red wine or a seat at the cloth on
the grass is at your service in almost any group in the
prato. I am sure I should not find so many acquaintances
in the town in which I have passed my life.

A little beyond the crowd, lies a broad open glade
of the greenest grass, in the very centre of the woods
of the farm. A broad fringe of shade is flung by the
trees along the eastern side, and at their roots cluster
the different parties of the nobles and the ambassadors.
Their gayly-dressed chasseurs are in waiting, the silver
plate quivers and glances, as the chance rays of
the sun break through the leaves over head, and at a
little distance, in the road, stand their showy equipages
in a long line from the great oak to the farmhouse.

In the evening, there was an illumination of the
green alleys and the little square in front of the house,
and a band of music for the people. Within, the
halls were thrown open for a ball. It was given by the
grand duke to the Dutchess of Lichtenberg, the widow
of Eugene Beauharnois. The company assembled at
eight, and the presentations (two lovely countrywomen
of our own among them), were over at nine. The
dancing then commenced, and we drove home, through
the fading lights still burning in the trees, an hour or
two past midnight.

The grand duke is about to be married to one of the
princesses of Naples, and great preparations are making
for the event. He looks little like a bridegroom,
with his sad face, and unshorn beard and hair. It is,
probably, not a marriage of inclination, for the fat
princess expecting him, is every way inferior to the
incomparable woman he has lost, and he passed half
the last week in a lonely visit to the chamber in which
she died, in his palace at Pisa.

62. LETTER LXII.

I left Florence on one of the last days of May for
Pisa, with three Italian companions, who submitted as
quietly as myself to being sold four times from one
vetturino to another, at the different stopping-places,
and we drove into the grass-grown, melancholy streets
of Pisa, in the middle of the afternoon, thankful to
escape from the heat and dust of the low banks of the
Arno. My fellow-travellers were Florentines, and in
their sarcastic remarks upon the dulness of Pisa, I
imagined I could detect a lingering trace of the ancient
hatred of these once rival republics. Preparations
for the illumination in honor of the new grand
dutchess, were going on upon the streets bordering
the river, but other sign of life there was none. It
must have been solitude itself which tempted Byron
to reside in Pisa. I looked at the hot sunny front of
the Palazzo Lanfranchi in which he lived, and tried
in vain to imagine it the home of anything in the
shape of pleasure.

I hurried to dine with the friends whose invitation
had brought me out of my way (I was going to Leghorn),
and with a warm, golden sunset flushing in the
sky, we left the table a few hours after to mount to
the top of the “leaning tower.” On the north and
east lay the sharp terminating ridges of the Appenines
in which lay nested Lucca and its gay baths, and on
the west and south, over a broad bright green meadow
of from seven to fourteen miles, thridded by the Arno
and the Serchio, coiled the distant line of the Mediterranean,
peaked with the many ships, entering and
leaving the busy port of Leghorn, and gilded like a
flaunting riband, with the gold of the setting sun.
Below us lay Pisa, and away to the mountains, and off
over the plains, the fertile farms of Tuscany. Every
point of the scene was lovely. But there was an unaccustomed
feature in the southern view, which had
more power over my feelings than all else around me.
Floating like small clouds in the distance, I could
just distinguish two noble frigates, lying at anchor in
the roads. The guardian of the tower handed me his
glass, and I strained my eye till I fancied I could see
the “stars and stripes” of my country's flag flying at
the peaks. I pointed them out with pride to my
English friends; and while they hung over the dizzy
railing, watching the fading teints of the sunset on the
mountains of Tuscany, I kept my eye on the distant
ships, lost in a thousand reveries of home. The
blood so stirs to see that free banner in a foreign land.

We remained on the tower till the moon rose, clear
and full, and then descended by its circling galleries
to the square, looked at the tall fairy structure in hermellower

light, its sides laced with the shadows of the
hundred columns winding around it, and the wondrous
pile, as it leaned forward to meet the light, seeming in
the very act of toppling to the earth.

I had come from Florence to join the “United
States,” at the polite invitation of the officers of the
ward-room, on a cruise up the Mediterranean. My
cot was swung immediately on my arrival, but we lay
three days longer than was expected in the harbor,
riding out a gale of wind, which broke the chain
cables of both ships, and drove several merchant vessels
on the rocks. We got under way on the third of
June, and the next morning were off Elba, with
Corsica on our quarter, and the little island of Capreja
just ahead.

The firing of guns took me just now to the deck.
Three Sardinian gun-boats had saluted the commodore's
flag in passing, and it was returned with twelve
guns. They were coming home from the affair at
Tunis. It is a fresh, charming morning, and we are
beating up against a light head-wind, all the officers
on deck, looking at the island with their glasses, and
discussing the character of the great man to whom
this little barren spot was a temporary empire. A
bold fortification just appears on the point, with the
Tuscan flag flying from the staff. The sides of the
hills are dotted with desolate looking buildings, among
which are one or two monasteries, and in rounding
the side of the island, we have passed two or three
small villages, perched below and above on the rocks.
Off to the east, we can just distinguish Piombino, the
nearest town of the Italian shore, and very beautiful
it looks, rising from the edge of the water like Venice,
with a range of cloudy hills relieving it in the rear.

Our anchor is dropped in the bay of Porto Ferrajo.
As we ran lightly in upon the last tack, the walls of
the fort appeared crowded with people, the whole
town apparently assembled to see the unusual spectacle
of two ships-of-war entering their now quiet
waters. A small curving bay opened to us, and as we
rounded directly under the walls of the fort, the tops
of the houses in the town behind, appeared crowded
with women, whose features we could easily distinguish
with a glass. By the constant exclamations of the
midshipmen, who were gazing intently from the quarter
deck, there was among them a fair proportion of
beauty, or what looked like it in the distance. Just
below the summit of the fort, upon a terrace commanding
a view of the sea, stood a handsome house,
with low windows shut with Venetian blinds and shaded
with acacias, which the pilot pointed out to us as the
town residence of Napoleon. As the ship lost her
way, we came in sight of a gentle amphitheatre of
hills rising away from the cove, in a woody ravine of
which stood a handsome building, with eight windows,
built by the exile as a country-house. Twenty
or thirty, as good or better, spot the hills around,
ornamented with avenues and orchards of low olive-trees.
It is altogether a rural scene, and disappoints
us agreeably after the barren promise of the outer
sides of the isle.

The Constellation came slowly in after us, with
every sail set, and her tops crowded with men, and as
she fell under the stern of the commodore's ship, the
word was given, and her vast quantity of sail was
furled with that wonderful alacrity which so astonishes
a landsman. I have been continually surprised in the
few days that I have been on board, with the wonders
of sea discipline; but for a spectacle, I have seen
nothing more imposing than the entrance of these two
beautiful frigates into the little port of Elba, and their
magical management. The anchors were dropped,
the yards came down by the run, the sails disappeared,
the living swarm upon the rigging slid below, all in a
moment, and then struck up the delightful band on
our quarter deck, and the sailors leaned on the guns,
the officers on the quarter railing, and boats from the
shore filled with ladies, lay off at different distances,
the whole scene as full of repose and enjoyment, as if
we had lain idle for a month in these glassy waters.
How beautiful are the results of order!

We had made every preparation for a pic-nic party
to the country-house of Napoleon yesterday—but it
rained. At sunset, however, the clouds crowded into
vast masses, and the evening gave a glorious promise,
which was fulfilled this morning in freshness and sunshine.
The commodore's barge took off the ladies
for an excursion on horseback to the iron mines, on
the other side of the island—the midshipmen were set
ashore in various directions for a ramble, and I,
tempted with the beauty of the ravine which enclosed
the villa of Napoleon, declined all invitations with an
eye to a stroll thither.

We were first set ashore at the mole to see the town.
A medley crowd of soldiers, citizens, boys, girls, and
galley-slaves, received us at the landing, and followed
us up to the town-square, gazing at the officers with
undisguised curiosity. We met several gentlemen
from the other ship at the café. and taking a cicerone
together, started for the town-residence of the emperor.
It is now occupied by the governor, and stands on
the summit of the little fortified city. We mounted
by clean excellent pavements, getting a good-natured
“buon giorno!” from every female head thrust from
beneath the blinds of the houses. The governor's
aid received us at the door, with his cap in his hand,
and we commenced the tour of the rooms with all the
household, male and female, following to gaze at us.
Napoleon lived on the first floor. The rooms were as
small as those of a private house, and painted in the
pretty fresco common in Italy. The furniture was all
changed, and the fireplaces and two busts of the emperor's
sisters (Eliza and Pauline) were all that remained
as it was. The library is a pretty room, though
very small, and opens on a terrace level with his favorite
garden. The plants and lemon-trees were planted
by himself, we were told, and the officers plucked souvenirs
on all sides. The officer who accompanied us
was an old soldier of Napoleon's, and a native of Elba,
and after a little of the reluctance common to the teller
of an oft-told tale, he gave us some interesting particulars
of the emperor's residence at the island. It appears
that he employed himself, from the first day of
his arrival, in the improvement of his little territory,
making roads, &c., and behaved quite like a man, who
had made up his mind to relinquish ambition, and content
himself with what was about him. Three assassins
were discovered and captured in the course of
the eleven months, the first two of whom he pardoned.
The third made an attempt upon his life, in the
disguise of a beggar, at a bridge leading to his country-house,
and was condemned and executed. He was a
native of the emperor's own birthplace in Corsica.

The second floor was occupied by his mother and
Pauline. The furniture of the chamber of the renowned
beauty is very much as she left it. The bed
is small, and the mirror opposite its foot very large, and
in a mahogany frame. Small mirrors were set also in
to the bureau, and in the back of a pretty cabinet of
dark wood standing at the head of the bed. It is delightful
to breathe the atmosphere of a room that has
been the home of the lovely creature whose marble
image by Canova thrills every beholder with love, and
is fraught with such pleasing associations. Her sitting-room,
though less interesting, made us linger and
muse again. It looks out over the sea to the west, and
the prospect is beautiful. One forgets that her history
could not be written without many a blot. How
much we forgive to beauty! Of all the female branches
of the Bonaparte family, Pauline bore the greatest

resemblance to her brother Napoleon. But the grand
and regular profile which was in him marked with the
stern air of sovereignty and despotic rule, was in her
tempered with an enchanting softness and fascinating
smile. Her statue, after the Venus de Medicis, is the
chef d'œuvre of modern sculpture.

We went from the governor's house to the walls of
the town, loitering along and gazing at the sea; and
then rambled through the narrow streets of the town,
attracting, by the gay uniforms of the officers, the attention
and courtesies of every smooched petticoat far
and near. What the faces of the damsels of Elba
might be, if washed, we could hardly form a conjecture.

The country-house of Napoleon is three miles from
the town, a little distance from the shore, farther round
into the bay. Captain Nicholson proposed to walk
to it, and send his boat across—a warmer task for the
mid-day of an Italian June than a man of less enterprise
would choose for pleasure. We reached the
stone steps of the imperial casino, after a melting and
toilsome walk, hungry and thirsty, and were happy to
fling ourselves upon broken chairs in the denuded
drawing-room, and wait for an extempore dinner of
twelve eggs and bottle of wine as bitter as criticism.
A farmer and his family live in the house, and a couple
of bad busts and the fireplaces, are all that remain of
its old appearance. The situation and the view, however,
are superb. A little lap of a valley opens right
away from the door to the bosom of the bay, and in
the midst of the glassy basin lies the bold peninsular
promontory and fortification of Porto Ferrajo, like a
castle in a loch, connected with the body of the island
by a mere rib of sand. Off beyond sleeps the mainland
of Italy, mountain and vale, like a smoothly-shaped
bed of clouds; and for the foreground of the
landscape, the valleys of Elba are just now green
with fig-trees and vines, speckled here and there with
fields of golden grain, and farmhouses shaded with all
the trees of this genial climate.

We examined the place, after our frugal dinner, and
found a natural path under the edge of the hill behind,
stretching away back into the valley, and leading, after
a short walk, to a small stream and a waterfall.
Across it, just above the fall, lay the trunk of an old
and vigorous fig-tree, full of green limbs, and laden
with fruit half ripe. It made a natural bridge over the
stream, and as its branches shaded the rocks below,
we could easily imagine Napoleon, walking to and fro
in the smooth path, and seating himself on the broadest
stone in the heat of the summer evenings he passed
on the spot. It was the only walk about the place,
and a secluded and pleasant one. The groves of firs
and brush above, and the locust and cherry-trees on
the edges of the walk, are old enough to have shaded
him. We sat and talked under the influence of the
“genius of the spot,” till near sunset, and then, cutting
each a walking-stick from the shoots of the old
fig-tree, returned to the boats and reached the ship as
the band struck up their exhilarating music for the
evening on the quarter-deck.

We have passed two or three days at Elba most
agreeably. The weather has been fine, and the ships
have been thronged with company. The common
people of the town come on board in boat-loads, men,
women, and children, and are never satisfied with gazing
and wondering. The inhabitants speak very pure
Tuscan, and are mild and simple in their manners.
They all take the ships to be bound upon a mere voyage
of pleasure; and, with the officers in their gay
dresses, and the sailors in their clean white and blue,
the music morning and evening, and the general gayety
on board, the impression is not much to be wondered
at.

Yesterday, after dinner, Captain Nicholson took us
ashore in his gig, to pass an hour or two in the shade.
His steward followed, with a bottle or two of old wine,
and landing near the fountain to which the boats are
sent for water, we soon found a spreading fig-tree, and,
with a family of the country people from a neighboring
cottage around us, we idled away the hours till
the cool of the evening. The simplicity of the old
man and his wife, and the wonder of himself and several
laborers in his vineyard, to whom the captain gave
a glass or two of his excellent wines, would have made
a study for Wilkie. Sailors are merry companions for
a party like this. We returned over the unruffled expanse
of the bay, charmed with the beauty of the
scene by sunset, and as happy as a life, literally sans
souci, could make us. What is it, in this rambling ab
sence from all to which we look forward to in love and
hope, that so fascinates the imagination?

I went, in the commodore's suite, to call upon the
governor this morning. He is a military, commanding
looking man, and received us in Napoleon's saloon,
surrounded by his officers. He regretted that
his commission did not permit him to leave the shore,
even to visit a ship, but offered a visit on the part of
his sister and a company of the first ladies of the town.
They came off this evening. She was a lady-like
woman, not very pretty, of thirty years perhaps. As
she spoke only Italian, she was handed over to me, and
I waited on her through the ship, explaining a great
many things of which I knew as much as herself.
This visit over, we get under way to-morrow morning
for Naples.

63. LETTER LXIII.

I have passed my first day in Naples in wandering
about, without any definite object. I have walked
around its famous bay, looked at the lazzaroni, watched
the smoke of Vesuvius, traversed the square where
the young Conradine was beheaded and Masaniello
commenced his revolt, mounted to the castle of St.
Elmo, and dined on macaroni in a trattoria, where the
Italian I had learned in Tuscany was of little more
use to me than Greek.

The bay surprised me most. It is a collection of
beauties, which seems more a miracle than an accident
of nature. It is a deep crescent of sixteen
miles across and a little more in length, between the
points of which lies a chain of low mountains, called
the island of Capri, looking, from the shore, like a
vast heap of clouds brooding at sea. In the bosom of
the crescent lies Naples. Its palaces and principal
buildings cluster around the base of an abrupt hill
crowned by the castle of St. Elmo, and its half million
of inhabitants have stretched their dwellings over
the plain toward Vesuvius, and back upon Posilipo,
bordering the curve of the shore on the right and left,
with a broad white band of city and village for twelve
or fourteen miles. Back from this, on the southern
side, a very gradual ascent brings your eye to the base
of Vesuvius, which rises from the plain in a sharp
cone, broken in at the top, its black and lava-streaked
sides descending with the evenness of a sand-hill, on
one side to the disinterred city of Pompeii, and on
the other to the royal palace of Portici, built over the
yet unexplored Herculaneum. In the centre of the
crescent of the shore, projecting into the sea by a
bridge of two or three hundred feet in length, stands
a small castle built upon a rock, on one side of which
lies the mole with its shipping. The other side is
bordered, close to the beach, with the gardens of the

royal villa, a magnificent promenade of a mile, ornamented
with fancy temples and statuary, on the smooth
alleys of which may be met, at certain hours, all that
is brilliant and gay in Naples. Farther on, toward the
nothern horn of the bay, lies the mount of Posilipo,
the ancient coast of Baiæ, Cape Mysene, and the
mountain isles of Procida and Ischia, the last of which
still preserves the costumes of Greece, from which it
was colonized centuries ago. The bay itself is as blue
as the sky, scarcely ruffled all day with the wind, and
covered by countless boats fishing or creeping on with
their picturesque lateen sails just filled; while the atmosphere
over sea, city, and mountain, is of a clearness
and brilliancy which is inconceivable in other countries.
The superiority of the sky and climate of Italy
is no fable in any part of this delicious land—but
in Naples, if the day I have spent here is a fair specimen,
it is matchless even for Italy. There is something
like a fine blue veil of a most dazzling transparency
over the mountains around, but above and between
there seems nothing but viewless space—nothing
like air that a bird could rise upon. The eye gets
intoxicated almost with gazing on it.

We have just returned from our first excursion to
Pompeii. It lies on the southern side of the bay, just
below the volcano which overwhelmed it, about twelve
miles from Naples. The road lay along the shore,
and is lined with villages which are only separated by
name. The first is Portici, where the king has a summer
palace, through the court of which the road passes.
It is built over Herculaneum, and the danger of
undermining it has stopped the excavations of unquestionably
the richest city buried by Vesuvius. We
stopped at a little gate in the midst of the village, and
taking a guide and two torches, descended to the only
part of it now visible, by near a hundred steps. We
found ourselves at the back of an amphitheatre. We
entered the narrow passage, and the guide pointed to
several of the upper seats for the spectators which
had been partially dug out. They were lined with
marble, as the whole amphitheatre appears to have
been. To realize the effect of these ruins, it is to be
remembered that they are imbedded in solid lava, like
rock, near a hundred feet deep, and that the city which
is itself ancient is built above them. The carriage in
which we came stood high over our heads, in a time-worn
street, and ages had passed and many generations
of men had lived and died over a splendid city, whose
very name had been forgotten! It was discovered in
sinking a well, which struck the door of the amphitheatre.
The guide took us through several other
long passages, dug across and around it, showing us
the orchestra, the stage, the numerous entrances, and
the bases of several statues which are taken to the
museum at Naples. This is the only part of the excavation
that remains open, the others having again
been filled with rubbish. The noise of the carriages
overhead in the street of Portici was like a deafening
thunder.

In a hurry to get to Pompeii, which is much more
interesting, we ascended to daylight, and drove on.—
Coasting along the curve of the bay, with only a succession
of villas and gardens between us and the beach,
we soon came to Torre del Greco, a small town which
was overwhelmed by an eruption thirty-nine years ago.
Vesuvius here rises gradually on the left, the crater
being at a distance of five miles. The road crossed
the bed of dry lava, which extends to the sea in a
broad black mass of cinders, giving the country the most
desolate aspect. The town is rebuilt just beyond the
ashes, and the streets are crowded with the thoughtless
inhabitants, who buy and sell, and lounge in the
sun, with no more remembrance or fear of the volcano
than the people of a city in America.

Another half hour brought us to a long, high bank
of earth and ashes, thrown out from the excavations;
and, passing on, we stopped at the gate of Pompeii.
A guide met us, and we entered. We found ourselves
in the ruins of a public square, surrounded with small
low columns of red marble. On the right were several
small prisons, in one of which was found the
skeleton of a man with its feet in iron stocks. The
cell was very small, and the poor fellow must have
been suffocated without even a hope of escape. The
columns just in front were scratched with ancient
names, possibly those of the guard stationed at the
door of the prison. This square is surrounded with
shops, in which were found the relics and riches of
tradesmen, consisting of an immense variety. In one
of the buildings was found the skeleton of a newborn
child, and in one part of the square the skeletons of
sixty men, supposed to be soldiers, who, in the severity
of Roman discipline, dared not fly, and perished at
their post. There were several advertisements of
gladiators on the pillars, and it appears that at the
time of the eruption the inhabitants of Pompeii were
principally assembled in the great amphitheatre, at a
show.

We left the square, and visiting several small private
houses near it, passed into a street with a slight
ascent, the pavement of which was worn deep with
carriage-wheels. It appeared to have led from the upper
part of the city directly to the sea, and in rainy
weather must have been quite a channel for water, as
high stones at small distances were placed across the
street, leaving open places between for the carriage
wheels. (I think there is a contrivance of the same
kind in one of the streets of Baltimore.)

We mounted thence to higher ground, the part of
the city not excavated. A peasant's hut and a large
vineyard stand high above the ruins, and from the door
the whole city and neighborhood are seen to advantage.
The effect of the scene is strange beyond description.
Columns, painted walls, wheelworn streets,
amphitheatres, palaces, all as lonely and deserted as
the grave, stand around you, and behind is a poor cottage
and a vineyard of fresh earth just putting forth
its buds, and beyond the broad, blue, familiar bay, covered
with steamboats and sails, and populous modern
Naples in the distance—a scene as strangely mingled,
perhaps, as any to be found in the world. We looked
around for a while, and then walked on through the
vineyard to the amphitheatre which lies beyond, near
the other gate of the city. It is a gigantic ruin, completely
excavated, and capable of containing twenty
thousand spectators. The form is oval, and the architecture
particularly fine. Besides the many vomitories
or passages for ingress and egress, there are three smaller
alleys, one used as the entrance for wild beasts, one
for the gladiators, and the third as that by which the
dead were taken away. The skeletons of eight lions
and a man, supposed to be their keeper, were found in
one of the dens beneath, and those of five other persons
near the different doors. It is presumed that the
greater proportion of the inhabitants of Pompeii must
have escaped by sea, as the eruption occurred while
they were nearly all assembled on this spot, and these
few skeletons only have been found.[11]

We returned through the vineyard, and stopping at
the cottage, called for some of the wine of the last
vintage (delicious, like all those in the neighborhood
of Vesuvius), and producing our basket of provisions,
made a most agreeable dinner. Two parties of English
passed while we were sitting at our out-of-doors
table. Our attendant was an uncommonly pretty
girl of sixteen, born on the spot, and famous just now
as the object of a young English nobleman's particular
admiration. She is a fine, dark-eyed creature, but

certainly no prettier than every fifth peasant girl in Italy.
Having finished our picturesque meal, we went down
into the ancient streets once more, and arrived at the
small temple of Isis, a building in excellent preservation.
On the altar stood, when it was excavated, a
small situate of Isis, of exquisite workmanship (now
in the museum, to which all the curiosities of the
place are carried), and behind this we were shown the
secret penetralia, where the priests were concealed
who uttered the oracles supposed to be pronounced by
the goddess. The access was by a small secret flight
of stairs, communicating with the apartments of the
priests in the rear. The largest of these apartments
was probably the refectory, and here was found a human
skeleton near a table, upon which lay dinner
utensils, chicken bones, bones of fishes, bread and
wine, and a faded garland of flowers. In the kitchen,
which we next visited, were found cooking utensils,
remains of food, and the skeleton of a man leaning
against the wall with an axe in his hand, and near him
a considerable hole, which he had evidently cut to
make his escape when the door was stopped by cinders.
The skeleton of one of the priests was found prostrate
near the temple, and in his hand three hundred and
sixty coins of silver, forty-two of bronze, and eight of
gold, wrapped strongly in a cloth. He had probably
stopped before his flight to load himself with the
treasures of the temple, and was overtaken by the
shower of cinders and suffocated. The skeletons of
one or two were found upon beds, supposed to have
been smothered while asleep or ill. The temple is
beautifully paved with mosaic (as indeed are all the
better private houses and public buildings of Pompeii),
and the open inner court is bordered with a
quadrilateral portico. The building is of the Roman
Doric order. (I have neither time nor room to enumerate
the curiosities found here and in the other parts
of the city, and I only notice those which most impressed
my memory. The enumeration by Madame
Stark, will be found exceedingly interesting to those
who have not read her laconic guide-book.)

We passed next across a small street to the tragic
theatre, a large handsome building, where the seats for
the vestals, consuls, and other places of honor, are
well preserved, and thence up the hill to the temple
of Hercules, which must have been a noble edifice,
commanding a superb view of the sea.

The next object was the triangular forum, an open
space surrounded with three porticoes, supported by
a hundred Doric columns. Here were found several
skeletons, one of which was that of a man who had
loaded himself with plunder. Gold and silver coins,
cups, rings, spoons, buckles, and other things, were
found under him. Near here, under the ruins of a
wall, were discovered skeletons of a man and a woman,
and on the arms of the latter two beautiful
bracelets of gold.

We entered from this a broad street, lined with
shops, against the walls of which were paintings in
fresco and inscriptions in deep-red paint, representing
the occupations and recording the names of the occupants.
In one of them was found a piece of salt-fish,
smelling strongly after seventeen centuries! In a
small lane leading from this street, the guide led us to
a shop, decorated with pictures of fish of various
kinds, and furnished with a stove, marble dressers, and
earthen jars, supposed to have belonged to a vender of
fish and olives. A little further on was a baker's shop,
with a well-used oven, in which was found a batch of
bread burnt to a cinder. Near this was the house of a
midwife. In it were found several instruments of a
simple and excellent construction, unknown to the
moderns, a forceps, remains of medicines in a wooden
box, and various pestles and mortars. The walls were
ornamented with frescoes of the Graces, Venus, and
Adonis, and similar subjects.

The temple of the pantheon is a magnificent ruin,
and must have been one of the choicest in Pompeii.
Its walls are decorated with exquisite paintings in fresco,
arabesques, mosaics, &c., and its court is one hundred
and eighty feet long, and two hundred and thirty broad,
and contains an altar, around which are twelve pedestals
for statues of the twelve principal deities of the
ancients. Gutters of marble are placed at the base of
the triclinium, to carry away the blood of the victims.
A thousand coins of bronze, and forty or fifty of silver,
were found near the sanctuary.

We passed on to the Curea, a semicircular building,
for the discussion of matters of religion by the magistrates;
a temple of Romulus; the remains of a temple
of Janus; a splendid building called the chalcidicum,
constructed by the priestess Eumachea and her
son, and dedicated as a temple of concord, and came
at last, by a regular ascent, into a large and spacious
square, called the forum civile. This part of the city
of Pompeii must have been extremely imposing.
Porticoes, supported by noble columns, encompassed
its vast area; the pedestals of colossal statues, erected
to distinguished citizens, are placed at the corners; at
the northern extremity rose a stately temple of Jupiter;
on the right was another temple to Venus; beyond, a
large public edifice, the use of which is not known;
across the narrow street which bounds it stood the
Basilica, an immense building, which served as a court
of justice and an exchange.

We passed out at the gate of the city and stopped
at a sentry-box, in which was found a skeleton in full
armor—a soldier who had died at his post! From
hence formerly the road descended directly to the sea,
and for some distance was lined on either side with the
magnificent tombs of the Pompeians. Among them
was that of the vestal virgins, left unfinished when
the city was destroyed; a very handsome tomb, in
which was found the skeleton of a woman, with a lamp
in one hand and jewels in the other (who had probably
attempted to rob before her flight), and a very handsome
square monument, with a beautiful relievo on
one of the slabs, representing (as emblematic of death)
a ship furling her sails on coming into port. Near
one of the large family sepulchres stands a small semicircular
room, intended for the funeral feast after a
burial; and here were found the remains of three men
around a table, scattered with relics of a meal. They
were overwhelmed ere their feast was concluded over
the dead!

The principal inn of Pompeii was just inside the
gate. We went over the ruins of it. The skeleton
of an ass was found chained to a ring in the stable, and
the tire of a wheel lay in the court yard. Chequers
are painted on the side of the door, as a sign.

Below the tombs stands the “suburban vill of
Diomed,” one of the most sumptuous edifices of
Pompeii. Here was found everything that the age
could furnish for the dwelling of a man of wealth.
Statues, frescoes, jewels, wine, household utensils of
every description, skeletons of servants and dogs, and
every kind of elegant furniture. The family was large,
and in the first moment of terror, they all retreated to
a wine vault under the villa, where their skeletons
(eighteen grown persons and two children) were found
seventeen centuries after! There was really something
startling in walking through the deserted rooms
of this beautiful villa—more than one feels elsewhere
in Pompeii, for it is more like the elegance and taste
of our own day; and with the brightness of the preserved
walls, and the certainty with which the use of
each room is ascertained, it seems as if the living inhabitant
would step from some corner and welcome
you. The figures on the walls are as fresh as if done
yesterday. The baths look as if they might scarce be
dry from use. It seems incredible that the whole
Christian age has elapsed since this was a human

dwelling—occupied by its last family while our Savior
was walking the world!

It would be tedious to enumerate all the curious
places to which the guide led us in this extraordinary
city. On our return through the streets, among the objects
of interest was the house of Sallust, the historian.
I did not think, when reading his beautiful latin at
school, that I should ever sit down in his parlor!
Sallust was rich, and his house is uncommonly hand-some.
Here is his chamber, his inner court, his
kitchen, his garden, his dining-room, his guest chamber,
all perfectly distinguishable by the symbolical
frescoes on the walls. In the court was a fountain of
pretty construction, and opposite, in the rear, was a
flower-garden, containing arrangements for dining in
open air in summer. The skeleton of a female (supposed
to be the wife of the historian) and three servants,
known by their different ornaments, were found near
the door of the street.

We passed a druggist's shop and a cook-shop, and
entered, treading on a beautiful mosaic floor, the
“house of the dramatic poet,” so named, from the
character of the paintings with which it is ornamented
throughout. The frescoes found here are the finest
ancient paintings in the world, and from some peculiarity
in the rings upon the fingers of the female
figures, they are supposed to be family portraits. With
assistance like this, how easily the imagination repeoples
these deserted dwellings!

A heavy shower drove us to the shelter of the wine-vaults
of Diomed, as we were about stepping into our
carriage to return to Naples. We spent the time in
exploring, and found some thirty or forty earthen jars
still half-buried in the ashes which drifted through the
loop-holes of the cellar. In another half hour the
black cloud had passed away over Vesuvius, and the
sun set behind Posilipo in a flood of splendor. We
were at home soon after dark, having had our fill of
astonishment for once. I have seen nothing in my life
so remarkable as this disentombed city. I have passed
over, in the description, many things which were well
worth noting, but it would have grown into a mere
catalogue else. You should come to Italy. It is a
privilege to realize these things which could not be
bought too dearly, and they can not be realized but
by the eye. Description conveys but a poor shadow
of them to the fancy.

64. LETTER LXIV.

Mounted upon asses much smaller than their riders,
and with each a barelegged driver behind, we
commenced the ascent of Vesuvius. It was a troublesome
path worn through the rough scoria of old
eruptions, and after two hours' toiling, we were glad
to dismount at “the hermitage.” Here lives a capuchin
friar on a prominent rib in the side of the volcano,
the red-hot lava dividing above his dwelling every year
or two, and coursing away to the valley in two rivers
of fire on either side of him. He has been there
twelve years, and supports himself, and probably half
the brotherhood at the monastery by selling lagrima
Christi to strangers. It is a small white building with
a little grass and a few trees about it, and looks like an
island in the black waste of cinders and lava.

A shout from the guide was answered by the opening
of a small window above, and the shaven crown
of the old friar was thrust forth with a welcome and a
request that we would mount the stairs to the parlor.
He received us at the top, and gave us chairs around
a plain board table, upon which he set several bottles
of the far-famed wine of Vesuvius. One drinks it,
and blesses the volcano that warmed the roots of the
grape. It is a ripe, rich, full-bodied liquor which
“ascends me into the brain” sooner than any continental
wine I have tasted. I never drank anything
more delicious.

We remounted our asses and rode on, much more
indifferent than before to the roughness of the path.
It strikes one like the road to the infernal regions.
No grass, not a shrub, nothing but a wide mountain
of cinders, black and rugged, diversified only by the
deeper die of the newer streaks of lava. The eye
wearied of gazing on it. We mounted thus for an
hour or more, arriving at last at the base of a lofty
cone whose sides were but slopes of deep ashes. We
left our donkeys here in company with those of a large
party that had preceded us, and made preparations to
ascend on foot. The drivers unlaced their sashes and
passing them round the waists of the ladies, took the
ends over their shoulders, and proceeded. Harder
work could scarce be conceived. The feet had no
hold, sinking knee-deep at every step, and we slipped
back so much, that our progress was almost imperceptible.
The ladies were soon tired out, although
more than half dragged up by the guides. At every
few steps there was a general cry for a halt, and we lay
down in the warm ashes, quite breathless and discouraged.

In something more than an hour from the hermitage
we reached the edge of the old crater. The
scene here was very curious. A hollow, perhaps a
mile round, composed entirely of scoria (like the cinders
under a blacksmith's window) contained in its
centre the sharp new cone of the last eruption.
Around, in various directions, sat some thirty groups
of travellers, with each their six or seven Italian guides,
refreshing themselves with a lunch after the fatigues
of the ascent. There were English, Germans, French,
Russians, and Italians, each speaking their own language,
and the largest party, oddly enough, was from
the United States. As I was myself travelling with
foreigners, and found my countrymen on Vesuvius unexpectedly,
the mixture of nations appeared still more
extraordinary. The combined heat of the sun and the
volcano beneath us, had compelled the Italians to
throw off half their dress, and they sat, or stood leaning
on their long pikes, with their brown faces and
dark eyes glowing with heat, as fine models of ruffians
as ever startled a traveller in this land of bandits.
Eight or ten of them were grouped around a crack in
the crater, roasting apples and toasting bread. There
were several of these cracks winding about in different
directions, of which I could barely endure the heat,
holding my hand at the top. A stick thrust in a foot
or more, was burnt black in a moment.

With another bottle or two of “lagrima Christi”
and a roasted apple, our courage was renewed, and we
picked our way across the old crater, sometimes lost
in the smoke which steamed up through the cracks,
and here and there treading on beautiful beds of crystals
of sulphur. The ascent of the new cone was
shorter but very difficult. The ashes were so new
and light, that it was like a steep sandbank, giving discouragingly
at the least pressure, and sinking till the
next step was taken. The steams of sulphur as we
approached the summit, were all but intolerable. The
ladies coughed, the guides sneezed and called on the
Madonna, and I never was more relieved than in
catching the first clear draught of wind on the top of
the mountain.

Here we all stood at last—crowded together on the

narrow edge of a crater formed within the year, and
liable every moment to be overwhelmed with burning
lava. There was scarce room to stand, and the hot
ashes burnt our feet as they sunk into it. The females
of each party sunk to the ground, and the common
danger and toil breaking down the usual stiff barrier
of silence between strangers, the conversation became
general, and the hour on the crater's edge passed
very agreeably.

A strong lad would just about throw a stone from
one side to the other of the new crater. It was about
forty feet deep, perhaps more, and one crust of sulphur
lined the whole. It was half the time obscured
in smoke, which poured in volumes from the broad
cracks with which it was divided in every direction,
and occasionally an eddy of wind was caught in the
vast bowl, and for a minute its bright yellow surface
was perfectly clear. There had not been an eruption
for four or five months, and the abyss which is for
years together a pit of fire and boiling lava, has had
time to harden over, and were it not for the smoking
seams, one would scarce suspect the existence of the
tremendous volcano slumbering beneath.

After we had been on the summit a few minutes, an
English clergyman of my acquaintance to our surprise
emerged from the smoke. He had been to the bottom
for specimens of sulphur for his cabinet. Contrary to
the advice of the guide, I profited by his experience,
and disappearing in the flying clouds, reached the lowest
depths of the crater with some difficulties of foothold
and breath. The cracks, which I crossed twice,
were so brittle as to break like the upper ice of a twice
frozen pond beneath my feet, and the stench of the exhaling
gases, was nauseating beyond all the sulphuretted
hydrogen I have ever known. The sensation was
painfully suffocating from the moment I entered the
crater. I broke off as many bits of the bright golden
crystals from the crust as my confusion and failing
strength would allow, and then remounted, feeling my
way up through the smoke to the summit.

I can compare standing on the top of Vesuvius and
looking down upon the bay and city of Naples, to
nothing but mounting a peak in the infernal regions
overlooking paradise. The larger crater encircles you
entirely for a mile, cutting off the view of the sides of
the mountain, and from the elevation of the new cone,
you look over the rising edge of this black field of smoke
and cinders, and drop the eye at once upon Naples,
lying asleep in the sun, with its lazy sails upon the
water, and the green hills enclosing it clad in the indescribable
beauty of an Italian atmosphere. Beyond
all comparison, by the testimony of every writer and
traveller, the most beautiful scene in the world, the
loveliest water, and the brightest land, lay spread out
before us. With the stench of hot sulphur in our
nostrils, ankle deep in black ashes, and a waste of
smouldering cinders in every direction around us, the
enjoyment of the view certainly did not want for the
heightening of contrast.

We made our descent by jumps through the sliding
ashes, frequently tumbling over each other, and retracing
in five minutes the toil of an hour. Our donkeys
stood tethered together on the herbless field of
cinders, and we were soon in the clumsy saddles, and
with a call at the hermitage, and a parting draught of
wine with the friar, we reached our carriages at the
little village of Resina in safety. The feet of the whole
troop were in a wretched condition. The ladies had
worn shoes, or slight boots, which were cut to pieces
of course, and one very fine-looking girl, the daughter
of an elderly French gentleman, had, with the usual
improvidence of her nation, started in satin slippers.
She was probably lamed for a month, as she insisted
on persevering, and wrapped her feet in handkerchiefs
to return.

We rode along the curve of the bay, by one of these
matchless sunsets of Italy, and arrived at Naples at
dark

I have had the pleasure lately of making the acquaintance
of Mr. Mathias, the distinguished author of the
“Pursuits of Literature,” and the translator of Spenser
and other English poets into Italian. About twenty
years ago, this well-known scholar came to Italy on a
desperate experiment of health. Finding himself
better, almost against hope, he has remained from year
to year in Naples, in love with the climate and the
language, until, at this day, he belongs less to the
English than the Italian literature, having written
various original poems in Italian, and translated into
Italian verse to the wonder and admiration of the
scholars of the country. I found him this morning
at his lodgings, in an old palace on the Pizzofalcone,
buried in books as usual, and good-humored enough
to give an hour to a young man, who had no claim on
him beyond the ordinary interest in a distinguished
scholar. He talked a great deal of American naturally,
and expressed a very strong friendship for Mr. Everett,
whom he had met on his travels, requesting me at the
same time to take to him a set of his works as a remembrance.
Mr. Mathias is a small man, of perhaps sixty
years, perfectly bald, and a little inclined to corpulency.
His head is ample, and would make a fine picture of a
scholar. His voice is hurried and modest, and from
long residence in Italy his English is full of Italian
idioms. He spoke with rapture of Da Ponte, calling
me back as I shut the door to ask for him. It seemed
to give him uncommon pleasure that we appreciated
and valued him in America.

I have looked over, this evening, a small volume,
which he was kind enough to give me. It is entitled
“Lyric Poetry, by T. I. Mathias, a new edition, printed
privately.” It is dated 1832, and the poems were
probably all written within the last two years. The
shortest extract I can make is a “Sonnet to the Memory
of Gray,” which strikes me as very beautiful.

I have met also, at a dinner party lately, the celebrated
antiquary, Sir William Gell. He too lives
abroad. His work on Pompeii has become authority,
and displays very great learning. He is a tall, large-featured
man, and very commanding in his appearance,
though lamed terribly with the gout.

A friend, whom I met at the same house, took me
to see the archbishop of Tarento yesterday. This
venerable man, it is well known, lost his gown for his
participation in the cause of the Carbonari (the revolutionary
conspirators of Italy). He has always played
a conspicuous part in the politics of his time, and
now, at the age of ninety, unlike the usual fate of meddlers
in troubled waters, he is a healthy, happy, venerated
old man, surrounded in his palace with all that
luxury can give him. The lady who presented me,
took the privilege of intimate friendship to call at an
unusual hour, and we found the old churchman in his
slippers, over his breakfast, with two immense tortoise-shell
cats, upon stools, watching his hand for bits of
bread and purring most affectionately. He looks like
one of Titian's pictures. His face is a wreck of commanding

features, and his eye seems less to have lost
its fire, than to slumber in its deep socket. His hair
is snowy white—his forehead of prodigious breadth
and height—and his skin has that calm, settled, and
yet healthy paleness, which carries with it the history
of a whole life of temperance and thought.

The old man rose from his chair with a smile, and
came forward with a stoop and a feeble step, and took
my two hands, as my friend mentioned my name, and
looked me in the face very earnestly. “Your country,”
said he, in Italian, “has sprung into existence like
Minerva, full grown and armed. We look for the
result.” He went on with some comments upon the
dangers of republics, and then sent me to look at a portrait
of Queen Giovanna, of Naples, by Leonardo da
Vinci, while he sat down to talk with the lady who
brought me. His secretary accompanied me as a
cicerone. Five or six rooms, communicating with
each other were filled with choice pictures, every one
a gift from some distinguished individual. The prescut
king of France had sent him his portrait; Queen
Adelaide had sent a splendid set of Sèvres china, with
the portraits of her family; the queen of Belgium had
presented him with her miniature and that of Leopold;
the king and queen of Naples had half furnished his
house; and so the catalogue went on. It seemed as
if the whole continent had united to honor the old man.
While I was looking at a curious mosaic portrait of a
cat, presented to him on the death of the original, by
some prince whose name I have forgotten, he came to
us, and said he had just learned that my pursuits were
literary, and would present me with his own last work.
He opened the drawer of a small bureau and produced
a manuscript of some ten pages, written in a feeble
hand. “This,” said he, “is an enumeration from
memory of what I have not seen for many years, the
classic spots about our beautiful city of Naples, and
their associations. I have written it in the last month
to wile away the time, and call up again the pleasure
I have received many times in my life in visiting them.”
I put the curious document in my bosom with many
thanks, and we kissed the hand of the good old priest
and left him. We found his carriage, with three or
four servants in handsome livery, waiting for him in
the court below. We had intruded a little on the hour
for his morning ride.

I found his account of the environs merely a simple
catalogue, with here and there a classic quotation from
a Greek or Latin author, referring to them. I keep
the MS. as a curious memento of one of the noblest
relics I have seen of an age gone by.

65. LETTER LXV.

I have been all day at “the races.” The king of
Naples, who has a great admiration for everything
English, has abandoned the Italian custom of running
horses without riders through the crowded street, and
has laid out a magnificent course on the summit of a
broad hill overlooking the city on the east. Here he
astonishes his subjects with ridden races, and it was
to see one of the best of the season, that the whole
fashionable world of Naples poured out to the campo
this morning. The show of equipages was very brilliant,
the dashing liveries of the various ambassadors,
and the court and nobles of the kingdom, showing on
the bright green-sward to great effect. I never saw a
more even piece of turf, and it was fresh in the just-born
vegetation of spring. The carriages were drawn
up in two lines, nearly half round the course, and for
an hour or two before the races, the king and his brother,
Prince Carlo, rode up and down between with the
royal suite, splendidly mounted, the monarch himself
upon a fiery gray blood horse, of uncommon power
and beauty. The director was an Aragonese nobleman,
cousin to the king, and as perfect a specimen of
the Spanish cavalier as ever figured in the pages of
romance. He was mounted on a Turkish horse, snow-white,
and the finest animal I ever saw; and he carried
all eyes with him, as he dashed up and down, like
a meteor. I like to see a fine specimen of a man, as I
do a fine picture, or an excellent horse, and I think I
never saw a prettier spectacle of its kind, than this
wild steed from the Balkan and his handsome rider.

The king is tall, very fat, but very erect, of a light
complexion, and a good horseman, riding always in
the English style, trotting and rising in his stirrup.—
(He is about twenty-three, and so surprisingly like a
friend of mine in Albany, that the people would raise
their hats to them indiscriminately, I am sure.)
Prince Charles is smaller and less kingly in his appearance,
dresses carelessly and ill, and is surrounded
always in public with half a dozen young Englishmen.
He is said to have been refused lately by the niece of
the wealthiest English nobleman in Italy, a very beautiful
girl of eighteen, who was on the ground to-day
in a chariot and four.

The horses were led up and down—a delicate, fine-limbed
sorrel mare, and a dark chestnut horse, compact
and wiry—both English. The bets were arranged,
the riders weighed, and, at the beat of a bell, off
they went like arrows. Oh what a beautiful sight!
The course was about a mile round, and marked with
red flags at short distances; and as the two flying
creatures described the bright green circle, spread out
like greyhounds, and running with an ease and grace
that seemed entirely without effort, the king dashed
across the field followed by the whole court; the Turkish
steed of Don Giovanni restrained with difficulty
in the rear, and leaping high in the air at every bound,
his nostrils expanded, and his head thrown up with
the peculiar action of his race, while his snow-white
mane and tail flew with every hair free to the wind.
I had, myself, a small bet upon the sorrel. It was
nothing, a pair of gloves with a lady, but as the horses
came round, the sorrel a whip's length a-head, and
both shot by like the wind, scarce touching the earth
apparently, and so even in their speed that the rider
in blue might have kept his hand on the other's back,
the excitement became breathless. Away they went
again, past the starting post, pattering, pattering on
with their slender hoofs, the sorrel still keeping her
ground, and a thousand bright lips wishing the graceful
creature success. Half way round the blue jacket
began to whip. The sorrel still held her way, and I
felt my gloves to be beyond peril. The royal cortége
within the ring spurred across at the top of their speed
to the starting post. The horses came on—their nostrils
open and panting, bounding upon the way with
the same measured leaps a little longer and more
eager than before; the rider of the sorrelleaning over
the neck of his horse with a loose rein, and his whip
hanging untouched from his wrist. Twenty leaps
more! With every one the rider of the chestnut gave
the fine animal a blow. The sorrel sprang desperately

on, every nerve strained to the jump, but at the instant
that they passed the carriage in which I stood, the
chestnut was developing his wiry frame in tremendous
leaps, and had already gained on his opponent the
length of his head. They were lost in the crowd that
broke instantly into the course behind them, and in a
moment after a small red flag was waved from the
stand. My favorite had lost!

The next race was ridden by a young Scotch nobleman,
and the son of the former French ambassador,
upon the horses with which they came to the ground.
It was a match made up on the spot. The Frenchman
was so palpably better mounted, that there was a
general laugh when the ground was cleared and the
two gentlemen spurred up and down to show themselves
as antagonists. The Parisian himself stuffed
his white handkerchief in his bosom, and jammed
down his hat upon his head with a confident laugh,
and among the ladies there was scarce a bet upon the
grave Scotchman, who borrowed a stout whip, and
rode his bony animal between the lines with a hard
rein and his feet set firmly in the stirrups. The
Frenchman generously gave him every advantage, beginning
with the inside of the ring. The bell struck,
and the Scotchman drove his spurs into his horse's
flanks and started away, laying on with his whip most
industriously. His opponent followed, riding very
gracefully, but apparently quite sure that he could
overtake him at any moment, and content for the first
round with merely showing himself off to the best
advantage. Round came Sawney, twenty leaps
ahead, whipping unmercifully still; the blood of his
hired hack completely up, and himself as red in the
face as an alderman, and with his eye fixed only on
the road. The long-tailed bay of the Frenchman
came after, in handsome style, his rider sitting complacently
upright, and gathering up his reins for the
first time to put his horse to his speed. The Scotchman
flogged on. The Frenchman had disdained to
take a whip, but he drove his heels hard into his horse's
sides soon after leaving the post, and leaned forward
quite in earnest. The horses did remarkably well,
both showing much more bottom than was expected.
On they came, the latter gaining a little and working
very hard. Sawney had lost his hat, and his red hair
streamed back from his redder face; but flogging and
spurring, with his teeth shut and his eyes steadily
fixed on the road, he kept the most of his ground and
rode away. They passed me a horse's length apart,
and the Scotchman's whip flying to the last, disappeared
beyond me. He won the race by a couple of
good leaps at least. The king was very much amused,
and rode off laughing heartily, and the discomfited
Frenchman came back to his party with a very ill-concealed
dissatisfaction.

A very amusing race followed between two midshipmen
from an English corvette lying in the bay, and
then the long lines of splendid equipages wheeled
into train and dashed off the ground. The road after
leaving the campo, runs along the edge of the range
of hills enclosing the city, and just below, within a
high white wall, lies the public burial-place of Naples.
I had read so many harrowing descriptions of this
spot, that my curiosity rose as we drove along in sight
of it, and requesting my friends to set me down, I
joined an American of my acquaintance, and we started
to visit it together.

An old man opened the iron door, and we entered a
clean, spacious, and well-paved area, with long rows
of iron rings in the heavy slabs of the pavement.
Without asking a question, the old man walked across
to the farther corner, where stood a moveable lever,
and fastening the chain into the fixture, raised the
massive stone cover of a pit. He requested us to
stand back for a few minutes to give the effluvia time
to escape, and then, sheltering our eyes with our hats,
we looked in. You have read of course, that there
are three hundred and sixty-five pits in this place, one
of which is opened every day for the dead of the city.
They are thrown in without shroud or coffin, and the
pit is sealed up at night for a year. They are thirty
or forty feet deep, and each would contain perhaps
two hundred bodies. Lime is thrown upon the daily
heap, and it soon melts into a mass of garbage, and by
the end of the year the bottom of the pit is covered
with dry white bones.

It was some time before we could distinguish any
thing in the darkness of the abyss. Fixing my eyes
on one spot, however, the outlines of a body became
defined gradually, and in a few minutes, sheltering my
eyes completely from the sun above, I could see all
the horrors of the scene but too distinctly. Eight
corpses, all of grown persons, lay in a confused heap
together, as they had been thrown in one after another
in the course of the day. The last was a powerfully
made, gray old man, who had fallen flat on his back,
with his right hand lying across and half covering the
face of a woman. By his full limbs and chest, and
the darker color of his legs below the knee, he was
probably one of the lazzaroni, and had met with a
sudden death. His right heel lay on the forehead of
a young man, emaciated to the last degree, his chest
thrown up as he lay, and his ribs showing like a skeleton
covered with skin. The close black curls of the
latter, as his head rested on another body, were in
such strong relief that I could have counted them.
Off to the right, quite distinct from the heap, lay, in a
beautiful attitude, a girl, as well as I could judge, of
not more than nineteen or twenty. She had fallen on
the pile and rolled or slid away. Her hair was very
long, and covered her left shoulder and bosom; her
arm was across her body, and if her mother had laid
her down to sleep, she could not have disposed her
limbs more decently. The head had fallen a little
away to the right, and the feet, which were small,
even for a lady, were pressed one against the other,
as if she were about turning on her side. The sexton
said that a young man had come with the body,
and was very ill for some time after it was thrown in.
We asked him if respectable people were brought
here. “Yes,” he said, “many. None but the rich
would go to the expense of a separate grave for their
relations. People were often brought in handsome
grave clothes, but they were always stripped before
they were left. The shroud, whenever there was one,
was the perquisite of the undertakers.” And thus are
flung into this noisome pit, like beasts, the greater part
of the population of this vast city—the young and
the old, the vicious and the virtuous together, without
the decency even of a rag to keep up the distinctions
of life! Can human beings thus be thrown away?—
men like ourselves—women, children, like our sisters
and brothers? I never was so humiliated in my life
as by this horrid spectacle. I did not think a man—a
felon even, or a leper—what you will that is guilty or
debased—I did not think anything that had been human
could be so recklessly abandoned. Pah! It
makes one sick at heart! God grant I may never die
at Naples!

While we were recovering from our disgust, the
old man lifted the stone from the pit destined to receive
the dead on the following day. We looked in.
The bottom was strewn with bones, already fleshless
and dry. He wished us to see the dead of several
previous days, but my stomach was already tried to its
utmost. We paid our gratuity, and hurried away.
A few steps from the gate, we met a man bearing a
coffin on his head. Seeing that we came from the
cemetery, he asked us if we wished to look into it
He set it down, and the lid opening with a hinge, we
were horror-struck with the sight of seven dead infants!
The youngest was at least three months old,

the eldest perhaps a year; and they lay heaped together
like so many puppies, one or two of them
spotted with disease, and all wasted to baby-skeletons.
While we were looking at them, six or seven noisy
children ran out from a small house at the road-side
and surrounded the coffin. One was a fine girl of
twelve years of age, and instead of being at all shocked
at the sight, she lifted the whitest of the dead
things, and looked at its face very earnestly, loading it
with all the tenderest diminutives of the language.
The others were busy in pointing to those they
thought had been prettiest, and none of them betrayed
fear or disgust. In answer to a question of my friend
about the marks of disease, the man rudely pulled out
one by the foot that lay below the rest, and holding it
up to show the marks upon it, tossed it again carelessly
into the coffin. He had brought them from the
hospital for infants, and they had died that morning.
The coffin was worn with use. He shut down the
lid, and lifting it again upon his head, went on to the
cemetery, to empty it like so much offal upon the heap
we had seen!

I have been struck repeatedly with the little value
attached to human life in Italy. I have seen several
of these houseless lazzaroni literally dying in the
streets, and no one curious enough to look at them.
The most dreadful sufferings, the most despairing
cries, in the open squares, are passed as unnoticed as
the howling of a dog. The day before yesterday, a
woman fell in the Toledo, in a fit, frothing at the
mouth, and livid with pain; and though the street
was so crowded that one could make his way with difficulty,
three or four ragged children were the only
persons even looking at her.

I have devoted a week to the museum at Naples.
It is a world! Anything like a full description of it
would tire even an antiquary. It is one of those things
(and there are many in Europe) that fortunately compel
travel. You must come abroad to get an idea of it.

The first day I buried myself among the curiosities
found at Pompeii. After walking through the chambers
and streets where they were found, I came to
them naturally with an intense interest. I had visited a
disentombed city, buried for seventeen centuries—had
trodden in their wheel-tracks—had wandered through
their dining rooms, their chambers, their baths, their
theatres, their market-places. And here were gathered
in one place, their pictures, their statues, their
cooking-utensils, their ornaments, the very food as it
was found on their tables! I am puzzled, in looking
over my note-book, to know what to mention. The
catalogue fills a printed volume.

A curious corner in one of the cases was that containing
the articles found on the toilet of the wealthiest
Pompeian's wife. Here were pots of rouge, ivory pins,
necklaces, ear-rings, bracelets, small silver mirrors,
combs, ear-pickers, etc., etc. In the next case were
two loaves of bread, found in a baker's oven, and stamped
with his name. Two large cases of precious gems,
cameos and intaglios of all descriptions, stand in the
centre of this room (among which, by the way, the
most exquisitely done are two which one can not look
at without a blush). Another case is filled with eatables,
found upon the tables—eggs, fish-bones, honeycomb,
grain, fruits, etc. In the repository for ancient
glass are several cinerary urns, in which the ashes of
the dead are perfectly preserved; and numerous small
glass lachrymatories, in which the tears of the survivors
were deposited in the tombs.

The brazen furniture of Pompeii, the lamps particularly,
are of the most curious and beautiful models.
Trees, to which the lamps were suspended like fruit,
vines, statues holding them in their hands, and numerous
other contrivances, were among them, exceeding
far in beauty any similar furniture of our time. It ap
pears that the ancients did not know the use of the
fork, as every other article of table service except this
has been found here.

To conceive the interest attached to the thousand
things in this museum, one must imagine a modern
city, Boston for example, completely buried by an unexpected
and terrific convulsion of nature. Its inhabitants
mostly escape, but from various causes leave
their city entombed, and in a hundred years the grass
grows over it, and its very locality is forgotten. Near
two thousand years elapse, and then a peasant, digging
in the field, strikes upon some of its ruins, and it is unearthed
just as it stands at this moment, with all its
utensils, books, pictures, houses, and streets, in untouched
preservation. What a subject for speculation!
What food for curiosity! What a living and breathing
chapter of history were this! Far more interesting
is Pompeii. For the age in which it flourished
and the characters who trod its streets, are among the
most remarkable in history. This brazen lamp, shown
to me to-day as a curiosity, was lit every evening in
the time of Christ. The handsome chambers through
which I wandered a day or two ago, and from which
were brought this antique chair, were the home of
Sallust, and doubtless had been honored by the visits
of Cicero (whose villa, half-excavated, is near by), and
by all the poets and scholars and statesmen of his
time. One might speculate endlessly thus! And it is
that which makes these lands of forgotten empires so
delightful to the traveller. His mind is fed by the
very air. He needs no amusements, no company, no
books except the history of the place. The spot is
peopled, wherever he may stray, and the common necessities
of life seem to pluck him from a far-reaching
dream, in which he had summoned back receding
ages, and was communing, face to face, with philosophers
and poets and emperors, like a magician before
his mirror. Pompeii and Herculaneum seem to me visions.
I can not shake myself and wake to their reality.
My mind refuses to go back so far. Seventeen
hundred years!

I followed the cicerone on, listening to his astonishing
enumeration, and looking at everything as he pointed
to it, in a kind of stupor. One has but a certain
capacity. We may be over-astonished. Still he went
on in the same every-day tone, talking as indifferently
of this and that surprising antiquity as a pedlar of his
two-penny wares. We went from the bronzes to the
hall of the papyri—thence to the hall of the frescoes,
and beautiful they were. Their very number makes
them indescribable. The next morning we devoted
to the statuary—and of this, if I knew where to begin,
I should like to say a word or two.

First of all comes the Balbi family—father, mother,
sons, and daughters. He was proconsul of Herculaneum,
and by the excellence of the statues, which are
life itself for nature, he and his family were worth the
artist's best effort. He is a fine old Roman himself,
and his wife is a tall, handsome woman, much better-looking
than her daughters. The two Misses Balbi
are modest-looking girls, and that is all. They were
the high-born damsels of Herculaneum, however;
and, if human nature has not changed in seventeen
centuries, they did not want admirers who compared
them to the Venuses who have descended with them
to the “Museo Borbonico.” The eldest son is on
horseback in armor. It is one of the finest equestrian
statues in the world. He is a noble youth, of grave
and handsome features, and sits the superb animal
with the freedom of an Arab and the dignity of a Roman.
It is a beautiful thing. If one had visited these
Balbis, warm and living, in the time of Augustus, he
could scarcely feel more acquainted with them than
after having seen their statues as they stand before
him here.

Come a little farther on! Bacchus on the shoulders

of a faun—a child delighted with a grown-up playfellow.
I have given the same pleasure to just such another
bright “picture in little” of human beauty. It
moves one's heart to see it.

Pass now a whole gallery of Dians, Cupids, Joves,
Mercuries and Apollos, and come to the presence of
Aristides—him whom the Athenians exiled because
they were tired of hearing him called “The Just.”
Canova has marked three spots upon the floor where
the spectator should place himself to see to the best
advantage this renowned statue. He stands wrapped
in his toga, with his head a little inclined, as if in reflection,
and in his face there is a mixture of firmness
and goodness from which you read his character as
clearly as if it were written across his forehead. It
was found at Herculaneum, and is, perhaps, the simplest
and most expressive statue in the world.

66. LETTER LXVI.

Salvator Rosa studied the scenery of La Cava—the
country between Pompeii and Salerno, on the road to
Pæstum. It is a series of natively abrupt glens, but
gemmed with cottages and hanging gardens, through
which the wildness of every feature is as apparent as
those of a savage through his trinkets. I was going
to Pæstum with an agreeable party, and we came out
upon the bluffs overhanging Salerno and the sea, an
hour before sunset. We darted down upon the little
city lying in the bend of the bay, like a bird's descent
upon her nest. The road is cut through the side of
the precipice, and runs to the bottom with a single
sweep. We were to pass the night here and go to
Pæstum the next morning, see the ruins, and return
here to sleep once more before returning to Naples.

We were five or six miles from Salerno before sunrise,
and entering upon the dreary wastes of Calabria.
The people we passed on the road were dressed in
skins with the wool outside, and the country looked
abandoned by nature itself, scarce a flourishing tree
or a healthy plant within the range of the sight. We
turned from the main road after a while, crossed a rumous
bridge, and tracked a broad, waste, gloomy plain,
till my eyes ached with its barrenness. In an hour
more, three stately temples began to rise in the distance,
increasing in grandeur as we approached. A
cluster of ruined tombs on the right—a grass-grown
and broken city wall, through a rent of which passed
the road—and we stood among them, in the desert,
amid temples of inimitable beauty!

There seemed to be a general feeling in the party
that silence and solitude were the spirits of the place.
We separated and rambled about alone. The grand
temple of Neptune stands in the centre. A temple in
the midst of the sea could scarce seem more strangely
placed. I stood on the high base of the altar within,
and looked out between the columns on every side.
The Mediterranean slept in a broad sheet of silver
on the west, and on every other side lay the bare,
houseless desert, stretching away to the naked mountains
on the south and east, with a barrenness that
made the heart ache, while it filled the imagination
with its singleness and grandeur. I desconded to look
at the columns. They were eaten through and
through with snails and worms, and all of the same
rich yellow so admirably represented in the cork models.
But their size, and their noble proportion as
they stand, can not be represented. They seem the
conception and the work of giant minds and hands.
One's soul rises among them.

We walked round the ruins for hours. A little
toward the sea, lie the traces of an amphitheatre,
filled with fragments of statuary, and parts of immense
friezes and columns. We all assembled at last in the
great temple, and sat down on the immense steps
toward the east, in the shadow of the pediment, speculating
on the wonderful fabric above us, till we were
summoned to start on our return. To think that these
very temples were visited as venerable antiquities in
the time of Christ! What events have these worm-eaten
columns outlived! What moths of an hour, in
comparison, are we?

It is difficult to conceive how three such magnificent
structures, so near the sea, the remains of a great
city, should have been lost for ages. A landscape-painter,
searching for the picturesque, came suddenly
upon them fifty years ago, and astonished the world
with his discovery! It adds to their interest now.

We turned our horses' heads toward Naples. What
an extraordinary succession of objects were embraced
in the fifty miles between!—Pæstum, Pompeii, Vesuvius,
Herculaneum!—and, added to these, the thousand
classic associations of the lovely coast along
Sorrento! The value of life deepens incalculably
with the privileges of travel.

Written on board the frigate United States
—We set sail from Elba on the third of June. The in
habitants, all of whom, I presume, had been on board
of the ships, were standing along the walls and looking
from the embrasures of the fortress to see us off
It was a clear summer's morning, without much wind
and we crept slowly off from the point, gazing up at
the windows of Napoleon's house as we passed under,
and laying on our course for the shore of Italy. We
soon got into the fresher breeze of the open sea, and
the low white line of villages on the Tuscan coast appeared
more distant, till, with a glass, we could see
the people at the windows watching our progress.
Fishing boats were drawn up on shore, and the idle
sailors were leaning in the half shadow which they
afforded; but with the almost total absence of trees,
and the glaring white of the walls, we were content to
be out upon the cool sea, passing town after town unvisited.
Island after island was approached and left
during the day; barren rocks, with only a lighthouse
to redeem their nakedness; and in the evening at sunset
we were in sight at Ischia, the towering isle in the
bosom of the bay of Naples. The band had been
called as usual at seven, and were playing a delightful
waltz upon the quarter deck; the sea was even, and
just crisped by the breeze from the Italian shore: the
sailors were leaning on the guns listening; the officers
clustered in their various places; and the murmur of
the foam before the prow was just audible in the lighter
passages of the music. Above and in the west glowed
the eternal but untiring teints of the summer sky of
the Mediterranean, a gradually fading gold from the
edge of the sea to the zenith, and the early star soon
twinkled through it, and the air dampened to a reviving
freshness. I do not know that a mere scene like this,
without incident, will interest a reader, but it was so
delightful to myself, that I have described it for the
mere pleasure of dwelling on it. The desert stillness
and loneliness of the sea, the silent motion of the ship,
and the delightful music swelling beyond the bulwarks
and dying upon the wind, were such singularly combined
circumstances! It was a moving paradise in
the waste of the ocean.

Sail was shortened last night, and we lay to under
the shore of Ischia, to enter the bay of Naples by
daylight. As the morning mist lifted a little, the peculiar
shape of Vesuvius, the boldness of the island

of Capri, the sweeping curves of Baia and Portici,
and the small promontory which lifts Naples toward
the sea, rose like the features of a familiar friend to
my eye. It would be difficult to have seen Naples
without having a memory steeped in its beauty. A
fair wind set us straight into the bay, and one by one
the towns on its shore, the streaks of lava on the sides
of its volcano, and, soon after, the houses of friends on
the street of the Chiaga, became distinguishable to
the eye. There had been a slight eruption since I
was here; but now, as before, there was scarce a puff
of smoke to be seen rising from Vesuvius. My little
specimen of sulphur which I took from the just hardened
bosom of the crater now destroyed, lies before
me on the table as I write, more valued than ever,
since its bed has been melted and blown into the air.
The new and lighter-colored streak on the right of the
mountain, would have informed me of itself that the
lava had issued since I was here. The sound of bells
and the hum of the city reached our ears, and running
in between the mole and the castle, the anchor was
dropped, and the ship surrounded with boats from the
shore.

The heat kept us on board till the evening, and
with several of the officers I landed and walked up the
Toledo as the lazzaroni were stirring from their sleep
under the walls of the houses. With the exception
of the absence of the English, who have mostly flitted
to the baths, Naples was the same place as ever,
crowded, busy, dirty, and gay. Her thousand beggars
were still “dying of hunger,” and telling it to the
passenger in the same exhausted tone; her gay carriages
and skeleton hacks were still flying up and
down, and dashing at and over you for your custom;
the cows and goats were driven about to be milked in
the street; the lemonade sellers stood in their stalls;
the money changers at their tables in the open
squares; puncinello squeaked and beat his mistress at
every corner; the awnings of the cafés covered hundreds
of smokers and loungers; and this gay, miserable,
homeless, out-of-doors people, seemed as degraded
and thoughtless, and, it must be owned, as insensibly
happy as before. You would think, to walk
through the Toledo of Naples, that two thirds of its
crowd of wretches, and all its horses and dogs, were at
their last extremity, and yet they go on, and, I was
told by an Englishman resident here, who has been
accustomed to meet always the same faces, seem
never to change or disappear, suffering, and groaning,
and dragging up and down, shocking the eye and
sickening the heart of the inexperienced stranger for
years and years.

We passed the prima sera the first part of the evening,
as most men in Italy pass it, eating ices at the thronged
café, and at nine we went to the splendid theatre of San
Carlo to see “La Somnambula.” The king and queen
were present, with the dissolute old queen-mother
and her grayheaded lover. I was instantly struck
with the alteration in the appearance of the young
queen. When I was here three months ago, she was
just married, and appeared frequently in the public
walks, and a fresher or brighter face I never had seen.
She was acknowledged the most beautiful woman in
Naples, and had, what is very much valued in this
land of pale brunettes, a clear rosy cheek, and lips
as bright as a child's. She is now thin and white, and
looks to me like a person fading with a rapid consumption.

Several conspiracies have been detected within a
month or two, the last of which was very nearly successful.
The day before we arrived, two officers in
the royal army, men of high rank, had shot themselves,
each putting a pistol to the other's breast, believing
discovery inevitable. One died instantly, and the
other lingers to-day without any hope of recovery.
The king was fired at on parade the day previous,
which was supposed to have been the first step, but
the plot had been checked by partial disclosure, and
hence the tragedy I have just related.

The ships have been thronged with visiters during
the two or three days we have lain at Naples, among
whom have been the prime minister and his family.
Orders are given to admit every one on board that
wishes to come, and the decks, morning and evening,
present the most motley scene imaginable. Cameo
and lava sellers expose their wares on the gun-carriages,
surrounded by the midshipmen—Jews and
fruit-sellers hail the sailors through the ports—boats
full of chickens and pigs, all in loud outcry, are held
up to view with a recommendation in broken English
—contadini in their best dresses walk up and down,
smiling on the officers, and wondering at the cleanliness
of the decks, and the elegance of the captain's
cabin—Punch plays his tricks under the gun-deck
ports—bands of wandering musicians sing and hold
out their hats, as they row around, and all is harmony
and amusement. In the evening it is pleasanter still,
for the band is playing, and the better classes of people
come off from the shore, and boats filled with
these pretty dark-eyed Neapolitans, row round and
round the ship, eying the officers as they lean over
the bulwarks, and ready with but half a nod to make
acquaintance and come up the gangway. I have had
a private pride of my own in showing the frigate as
American to many of my foreign friends. One's nationality
becomes nervously sensitive abroad, and in
the beauty and order of the ships, the manly elegance
of the officers, and the general air of superiority and
decision throughout, I have found food for some of
the highest feelings of gratification of which I am capable.

We weighed anchor yesterday morning (the twentieth
of June), and stood across the bay for Castellamare.
Running close under Vesuvius, we passed
Portici, Torre del Greco, and Pompeii, and rounded
to in the little harbor of this fashionable watering-place
soon after noon. Castellamare is about fifteen
miles from Naples, and in the summer months it is
crowded with those of the fashionables who do not
make a northern tour. The shore rises directly from
the sea into a high mountain, on the side of which the
king has a country-seat, and around it hang, on terraces,
the houses of the English. Strong mineral
springs abound on the slope.

We landed directly, and mounting the donkeys
waiting on the pier, started to make the round of the
village walks. English maids with their prettily
dressed and rosy children, and English ladies and gentlemen,
mounted like ourselves on donkeys, met us at
every turn as we wound up the shady and zigzag roads
to the palace. The views became finer as we ascended,
till we look down into Pompeii, which was but
four miles off, and away toward Naples, following the
white road with the eye along the shore of the sea.
The paths were in fine order, and as beautiful as green
trees, and shade, and living fountains, crossing the
road continually, could make them. In the neighborhood
of the royal casino, the ground was planted
more like a park, and the walks were terminated with
artificial fountains, throwing up their bright waters
amid statuary and over grottoes, and here we met the
idlers of the place of all nations, enjoying the sunset.
I met an acquaintance or two, and felt the yearning
unwillingness to go away which I have felt on every
spot almost of this “delicious land.”

We set sail again with the night-breeze, and at this
moment are passing between Ischia and Capri, running
nearly on our course for Sicily. We shall probably
be at Palermo to morrow. The ship's bell beats
ten, and the lights are ordered out, and under this imperative
government, I must say “good night!”

67. LETTER LXVII.

We made the excursion to Baiœ on one of those
premature days of March common to Italy. A south
wind and a warm sun gave it the feeling of June. The
heat was even oppressive as we drove through the city,
and the long echoing grotto of Pausilyppo, always dim
and cool, was peculiarly refreshing. Near the entrance
to this curious passage under the mountain,
we stopped to visit the tomb of Virgil. A ragged boy
took us up a steep path to the gate of a vineyard, and
winding in among the just budding vines, we came to
a small ravine, in the mouth of which, right over the
deep cut of the grotto, stands the half-ruined mausoleum
which held the bones of the poet. An Englishman
stood leaning against the entrance, reading
from a pocket copy of the æneid. He seemed
ashamed to be caught with his classic, and put the
book in his pocket as I came suddenly upon him, and
walked off to the other side whistling an air from the
Pirata, which is playing just now at San Carlo. We
went in, counted the niches for the urns, stood a few
minutes to indulge in what recollections we could
summon, and then mounted to the top to hunt for the
“myrtle.” Even its root was cut an inch or two below
the ground. We found violets however, and they
answered as well. The pleasure of visiting such places,
I think, is not found on the spot. The fatigue of
the walk, the noise of a party, the difference between
reality and imagination, and worse than all, the caprice
of mood—one or the other of these things disturbs and
defeats for me the dearest promises of anticipation.
It is the recollection that repays us. The picture recurs
to the fancy till it becomes familiar; and as the
disagreeable circumstances of the visit fade from the
memory, the imagination warms it into a poetic feeling,
and we dwell upon it with the delight we looked for
in vain when present. A few steps up the ravine, almost
buried in luxuriant grass, stands a small marble
tomb, covering the remains of an English girl. She
died at Naples. It is as lovely a place to lie in as the
world could show. Forward a little toward the edge
of the hill some person of taste has constructed a little
arbor, laced over with vines, whence the city and
bay of Naples is seen to the finest advantage. Paradise
that it is!

It is odd to leave a city by a road piercing the base
of a broad mountain, in at one side and out at the
other, after a subterranean drive of near a mile! The
grotto of Pausilyppo has been one of the wonders of
the world these two thousand years, and it exceeds all
expectation as a curiosity. Its length is stated at two
thousand three hundred and sixteen feet, its breadth
twenty-two, and its height eighty-nine. It is thronged
with carts and beasts of burden of all descriptions, and
the echoing cries of these noisy Italian drivers are almost
deafening. Lamps, struggling with the distant
daylight as you near the end, just make darkness visible,
and standing in the centre and looking either way,
the far distant arch of daylight glows like a fire through
the cloud of dust. What with the impressiveness of
the place, and the danger of driving in the dark amid
so many obstructions, it is rather a stirring half-hour
that is spent in its gloom! One emerges into the
fresh open air and the bright light of day with a feeling
of relief.

The drive hence to Pozzuoli, four or five miles, was
extremely beautiful. The fields were covered with
the new tender grain, and by the short passage through
the grotto we had changed a busy and crowded city for
scenes of as quiet rural loveliness as ever charmed the
eye. We soon reached the lip of the bay, and then
the road turned away to the right, along the beach,
passing the small island of Nisida (where Brutus had
a villa, and which is now a prison for the carbonari).

Pozzuoli soon appeared, and mounting a hill we descended
into its busy square, and were instantly beset
by near a hundred guides, boatmen, and beggars, all
preferring their claims and services at the tops of their
voices. I fixed my eye on the most intelligent face
among them, a curly-headed fellow in a red lazzaroni
cap, and succeeded, with some loss of temper, in getting
him aside from the crowd and bargaining for our boats.

While the boatmen were forming themselves into a
circle to cast lots for the bargain, we walked up to the
famous ruins of the temple of Jupiter Serapis. This
was one of the largest and richest of the temples of antiquity.
It was a quadrangular building, near the edge
of the sea, lined with marble, and sustained by columns
of solid cipollino, three of which are still standing.
It was buried by an earthquake and forgotten
for a century or two, till in 1750 it was discovered by
a peasant, who struck the top of one of the columns
in digging. We stepped around over the prostrate
fragments, building it up once more in fancy, and
peopling the aisles with priests and worshippers. In
the centre of the temple was the place of sacrifice,
raised by flights of steps, and at the foot still remain
two rings of Corinthian brass, to which the victims
were fastened, and near them the receptacles for their
blood and ashes. The whole scene has a stamp of
grandeur. We obeyed the call of our red-bonnet
guide, whose boat waited for us at the temple stairs,
very unwillingly.

As we pushed off from the shore, we deviated a moment
from our course to look at the ruins of the ancient
mole. Here probably St. Paul set his foot, landing
to pursue his way to Rome. The great apostle
spent seven days at this place, which was then called
Puteoli—a fact that attaches to it a deeper interest
than it draws from all the antiquities of which it is the
centre.

We kept on our way along the beautiful bend of the
shore of Baiæ, and passing on the right a small mountain
formed in thirty-six hours by a volcanic explosion,
some three hundred years ago, we came to the Lucrine
Lake, so famous in the classics for its oysters.
The same explosion that made the Monte Nuovo, and
sunk the little village of Tripergole, destroyed the
oyster-beds of the poets.

A ten minutes' walk brought us to the shores of
Lake Avernus—the “Tartarus” of Virgil. This was
classic ground indeed, and we hoped to have found a
thumbed copy of the æneid in the pocket of the
cicerone. He had not even heard of the poet. A
ruin on the opposite shore, reflected in the still dark
water, is supposed to have been a temple dedicated to
Proserpine. If she was allowed to be present at her
own worship, she might have been consoled for her abduction.
A spot of more secluded loveliness could
scarce be found. The lake lay like a sheet of silver
at the foot of the ruined temple, the water looking unfathomly
deep through the clear reflection, and the
fringes of low shrubbery leaning down on every side,
were doubled in the bright mirror, the likeness even
fairer than the reality.

Our unsentimental guide hurried us away as we
were seating ourselves upon the banks, and we struck
into a narrow footpath of wild shrubbery which circled
the lake, and in a few minutes stood before the door
of a grotto sunk in the side of the hill. Here dwelt
the Cumæan sybil, and by this dark passage, the souls

of the ancients passed from Tartarus to Elysium. The
guide struck a light and kindled two large torches, and
we followed him into the narrow cavern, walking downward
at a rapid pace for ten or fifteen minutes. With
a turn to the right, we stood before a low archway
which the guide entered, up to his knees in water at
the first step. It looked like the mouth of an abyss,
and the ladies refused to go on. Six or seven stout
fellows had followed us in, and the guide assured us
we should be safe on their backs. I mounted first
myself to carry the torch, and holding my head very
low, we went plunging on, turning to the right and left
through a crooked passage, dark as Erebus, till I was
set down on a raised ledge called the sybil's bed. The
lady behind me, I soon discovered by her screams had
not made so prosperous a voyage. She had insisted
on being taken up something in the side-saddle fashion;
and the man, not accustomed to hold so heavy a burden
on his hip with one arm, had stumbled and let her
slip up to her knees in water. He took her up immediately,
in his own homely but safer fashion, and
she was soon set beside me on the sybil's stony couch,
dripping with water, and quite out of temper with antiquities.

The rest of the party followed, and the guide lifted
the torches to the dripping roof of the cavern, and
showed us the remains of beautiful mosaic with which
the place was once evidently encrusted. Whatever
truth there may be in the existence of the sybil, these
had been, doubtlessly, luxurious baths, and probably
devoted by the Roman emperors to secret licentionsness.
The guide pointed out to us a small perforation
in the rear of the sybil's bed, whence, he said (by what
authority I know not), Caligula used to watch the
lavations of the nymph. It communicates with an
outer chamber.

We reappeared, our nostrils edged with black from
the smoke of the torches, and the ladies' dresses in a
melancholy plight, between smoke and water. It
would be a witch of a sybil that would tempt us to repeat
our visit.

We retraced our steps, and embarked for Nero's
villa. It was perhaps a half mile further down the
bay. The only remains of it were some vapor baths,
built over a boiling spring which extended under the
sea. One of our boatmen waded first a few feet into
the surf, and plunging under the cold sea-water, brought
up a handful of warm gravel—the evidence of a submarine
outlet from the springs beyond. We then
mounted a high and ruined flight of steps, and entered
a series of chambers dug out of the rock, where an old
man was stripping off his shirt, to go through the usual
process of taking eggs down to boil in the fountain.
He took his bucket, drew a long breath of fresh air,
and rushed away by a dark passage, whence he reappeared
in three or four minutes, the eggs boiled,
and the perspiration streaming from his body like rain.
He set the bucket down, and rushed to the door, gasping
as if from suffocation. The eggs were boiled hard,
but the distress of the old man, and the danger of such
sudden changes of atmosphere to his health, quite
destroyed our pleasure at the phenomenon.

Hence to the cape of Misenum, the curve of the bay
presents one continuation of Roman villas. And certainly
there was not probably in the world, a place
more adapted to the luxury of which it was the scene.
These natural baths, the many mineral waters, the
balmy climate, the fertile soil, the lovely scenery, the
matchless curve of the shore from Pozzuoli to the
cape, and the vicinity, by that wonderful subterranean
passage, to a populous capital on the other side of a
range of mountains, rendered Baiæ a natural paradise
to the emperors. It was improved as we see. Temples
to Venus, Diana, and Mercury, the villas of Marius,
of Hortensius, of Cæsar, of Lucullus, and others whose
masters are disputed, follow each other in rival beauty
of situation. The ruins are not much now, except
the temple of Venus, which is one of the most picturesque
fragments of antiquity I have ever seen. The
long vines hang through the rent in its circular roof,
and the bright flowers cling to the crevices in its still
half-splendid walls with the very poetry of decay. Our
guide here proposed a lunch. We sat down on the
immense stone which has fallen from the ceiling, and
in a few minutes the rough table was spread with a
hundred open oysters from Fusaro (near Lake Avernus),
bottles at will of lagrima christi from Vesuvius, boiled
crabs from the shore beneath the temple of Mercury,
fish from the Lucrine lake, and bread from Pozzuoli.
The meal was not less classic than refreshing. We
drank to the goddess (the only one in mythology, by
the way, whose worship has not fallen into contempt),
and leaving twenty ragged descendants of ancient Baiæ
to feast on the remains, mounted our donkeys and
started over land for “Elysium.”

We passed the villa of Hortensius, to which Nero
invited his mother, with the design of murdering her,
visited the immense subterranean chambers in which
water was kept for the Roman fleet, the horrid prisons
called the Cento Camerelle of the emperors, and then
rising the hill at the extremity of the cape, the Stygian
lake lay off on the right, a broad and gloomy pool, and
around its banks spread the Elysian fields, the very
home and centre of classic fable. An overflowed
march, and an adjacent cornfield will give you a perfect
idea of it. The sun was setting while we swallowed
our disappointment, and we turned our donkeys'
heads toward Naples.

We left the city again this morning by the grotto of
Pausilyppo, to visit the celebrated “Grotto del Cane.”
It is about three miles off, on the borders of a pretty
lake, once the crater of a volcano. On the way there
arose a violent debate in the party on the propriety of
subjecting the poor dogs to the distress of the common
experiment. We had not yet decided the point when
we stopped before the door of the keeper's house.
Two miserable-looking terriers had set up a howl, accompanied
with a ferocious and half-complaining bark
from our first appearance around the turn of the road,
and the appeal was effectual. We dismounted and
walking toward the grotto, determined to refuse to see
the phenomenon. Our scruples were unnecessary.
The door was surrounded with another party less
merciful, and as we approached, two dogs were dragged
out by the heels, and thrown lifeless on the grass. We
gathered round them, and while the old woman coolly
locked the door of the grotto, the poor animals began
to kick, and after a few convulsions, struggled to their
feet and crept feebly away. Fresh dogs were offered
to our party, but we contented ourselves with the more
innocent experiments. The mephitic air of this cave
rises to a foot above the surface of the ground, and a
torch put into it, was immediately extinguished. It has
been described too often, however, to need a repetition.
We took a long stroll around the lake, which was
covered with wild-fowl, visited the remains of a villa
of Lucullus on the opposite shore, and returned to
Naples to dinner.

68. LETTER LXVIII.

Frigate United States, June 25.—The mountain
coast of Sicily lay piled up before us at the distance
of ten or twelve miles, when I came on deck

this morning. The quarter-master handed me the
glass, and running my eye along the shore, I observed
three or four low plains, extending between projecting
spurs of the hills, studded thickly with country-houses,
and bright with groves which I knew, by the deep
glancing green, to be the orange. In a corner of the
longest of these intervals, a sprinkling of white, looking
in the distance like a bed of pearly shells on the
edge of the sea, was pointed out as Palermo. With
a steady glass its turrets and gardens became apparent,
and its mole, bristling above the wall with masts; and,
running in with a free wind, the character of our ship
was soon recognised from the shore, and the flags of
every vessel in the harbor ran up to the mast, the customary
courtesy to a man-of-war entering port.

As the ship came to her anchorage, the view of the
city was very captivating. The bend of the shore
embraced our position, and the eastern half of the
curve was a succession of gardens and palaces. A
broad street extended along in front, crowded with
people gazing at the frigates, and up one of the long
avenues of the public gardens we could distinguish
the veiled women walking in groups, children playing,
priests, soldiers, and all the motley frequenters of such
places in this idle clime, enjoying the refreshing sea-breeze,
upon whose wings we had come. I was impatient
to get ashore, but between the health-officer
and some other hinderances, it was evening before we
set foot upon the pier.

With Captain Nicholson and the purser I walked
up the Toledo, as the still half-asleep tradesmen were
opening their shops after the siesta. The oddity of
the Palermitan style of building struck me forcibly.
Of the two long streets, crossing each other at right
angles and extending to the four gates of the city, the
lower story of every house is a shop, of course. The
second and third stories are ornamented with tricksy-looking
iron balconies, in which the women sit at work
universally, while from above projects, far over the
street, a grated enclosure, like a long bird-cage, from
which look down girls and children (or, if it is a convent,
the nuns), as if it were an airy prison to keep
the household from the contact of the world. The
whole air of Palermo is different from that of the
towns upon the continent. The peculiarities are said
to be Saracenic, and inscriptions in Arabic are still
found upon the ancient buildings. The town is poetically
called the concha d'oro, or “the golden shell.”

We walked on to the cathedral, followed by a troop
of literally naked beggars, baked black in the sun, and
more emaciated and diseased than any I have yet seen
abroad. Their cries and gestures were painfully energetic.
In the course of five minutes we had seen two
or three hundred. They lay along the sidewalks, and
upon the steps of the houses and churches, men, women,
and children, nearly or quite naked, and as unnoticed
by the inhabitants as the stones of the street.

Ten or twenty indolent-looking priests sat in the
shade at the porch of the cathedral. The columns
of the vestibule were curiously wrought, the capitals
exceedingly rich with fretted leaf-work, and the ornaments
of the front of the same wild-looking character
as the buildings of the town. A hunchback scarce
three feet high, came up and offered his services as a
cicerone, and we entered the church. The antiquity
of the interior was injured by the new white paint, covering
every part except the more valuable decorations,
but with its four splendid sarcophagi standing like separate
buildings in the aisles, and covering the ashes
of Ruggiero and his kinsmen; the eighty columns of
Egyptian granite in the nave; the ciborio of entire
lapis-lazuli with its lovely blue, and the mosaics, frescoes
and relievoes about the altar, it could scarce fail of
producing an effect of great richness. The floor was
occupied by here and there a kneeling beggar, praying
in his rags, and undisturbed even by the tempting
neighborhood of strangers. I stood long by an old
man, who seemed hardly to have the strength to hold
himself upon his knees. His eyes were fixed upon a
lovely picture of the Virgin, and his trembling hands
loosed bead after bead as his prayer proceeded. I
slipped a small piece of silver between his palm and
the cross of his rosary, and without removing his eyes
from the face of the holy mother, he implored an audible
blessing upon me in a tone of the most earnest
feeling. I have scarce been so moved within my recollection.

The equipages were beginning to roll toward the
“Marina,” and the seabreeze was felt even through
the streets. We took a carriage and followed to the
corso, where we counted near two hundred gay, well-appointed
equipages, in the course of an hour. What
a contrast to the wretchedness we had left behind!
Driving up and down this half-mile in front of the
palaces on the sea, seemed quite a sufficient amusement
for the indolent nobility of Palermo. They
were named to us by their imposing titles as they
passed, and we looked in vain into their dull unanimated
faces for the chivalrous character of the once renowned
knights of Sicily. Ladies and gentlemen sat
alike silent, leaning back in their carriages in the elegant
attitudes studied to such effect on this side of the
water, and gazing for acquaintances among those
passing on the opposite line.

Toward the dusk of the evening, an avant-courier
on horseback announced the approach of the viceroy
Leopold, the brother of the king of Naples. He
drove himself in an English hunting-wagon with two
seats, and looked like a dandy whip of the first water
from Regent street. He is about twenty, and quite
handsome. His horses, fine English bays, flew up
and down the short corso, passing and repassing every
other minute, till we were weary of touching our hats
and stopping till he had gone by. He noticed the
uniform of our officers, and raised his hat with particular
politeness to them.

As it grew dark, the carriages came to a stand
around a small open gallery raised in the broadest part
of the Marina. Rows of lamps, suspended from the
roof, were lit, and a band of forty or fifty musicians
appeared in the area, and played parts of the popular
operas. We were told they performed every night
from nine till twelve. Chairs were set around for the
people on foot, ices circulated, and some ten or
twelve thousand people enjoyed the music in a delicious
moonlight, keeping perfect silence from the first
note to the last. These heavenly nights of Italy are
thus begun, and at twelve the people separate and go
to visit, or lounge at home till morning, when the windows
are closed, the cool night air shut in, and they
sleep till evening comes again, literally “keeping the
hours the stars do.” It is very certain that it is the
only way to enjoy life in this enervating climate. The
sun is the worst enemy to health, and life and spirits
sink under its intensity. The English, who are the
only people abroad in an Italian noon, are constant victims
to it.

We drove this morning to the monastery of the
capuchins. Three or four of the brothers in long
gray beards, and the heavy brown sackcloth cowls of
the order tied around the waist with ropes, received
us cordially and took us through the cells and chapels.
We had come to see the famous catacombs of the convent.
A door was opened on the side of the main
cloister, and we descended a long flight of stairs into
the centre of three lofty vaults, lighted each by a
window at the extremity of the ceiling. A more
frightful scene never appalled the eye. The walls
were lined with shallow niches, from which hung,
leaning forward as if to fall upon the gazer, the dried
bodies of monks in the full dress of their order. Their

hands were crossed upon their breasts or hung at their
sides, their faces were blackened and withered, and
every one seemed to have preserved, in diabolical caricature,
the very expression of life. The hair lay reddened
and dry on the dusty scull, the teeth, perfect or
imperfect, had grown brown in their open mouths, the
nose had shrunk, the cheeks fallen in and cracked, and
they looked more like living men cursed with some
horrid plague, than the inanimate corpses they were.
The name of each was pinned upon his cowl, with his
age and the time of his death. Below in three or four
tiers, lay long boxes painted fantastically, and containing,
the monk told us, the remains of Sicilian nobles.
Upon a long shelf above sat perhaps a hundred children
of from one year to five, in little chairs worn with their
use while in life, dressed in the gayest manner, with
fanciful caps upon their little blackened heads, dolls in
their hands, and in one or two instances, a stuffed dog
or parrot lying in their laps. A more horribly ludicrous
collection of little withered faces, shrunk into expression
so entirely inconsistent with the gayety of their
dresses, could scarce be conceived. One of them had
his arm tied up, holding a child's whip in the act of
striking, while the poor thing's head had rotted and
dropped upon its breast; and a leather cap fallen on
one side, showed his bare scull, with the most comical
expression of carelessness. We quite shocked the
old monk with our laughter, but the scene was irresistible.

We went through several long galleries filled in the
same manner, with the dead monks standing over the
coffins of nobles, and children on the shelf above.
There were three thousand bodies and upward in the
place, monks and all. Some of them were very ancient.
There was one, dated a century and a half
back, whose tongue still hangs from his mouth. The
frair took hold of it, and moved it up and down, rattling
it against his teeth. It was like a piece of dried fish-skin,
and as sharp and thin as a nail.

At the extremity of the last passage was a new vault
appropriated to women. There were nine already
lying on white pillows in the different recesses, who
had died within the year, and among them a young
girl, the daughter of a noble family of Palermo, stated
in the inscription to have been a virgin of seventeen
years. The monk said her twin-sister was the most
beautiful woman of the city at this moment. She was
laid upon her back, on a small shelf faced with a wire
grating, dressed in white, with a large bouquet of artificial
flowers on the centre of the body. Her hands and face
were exposed, and the skin which seemed to me scarcely
dry, was covered with small black ants. I struck
with my stick against the shelf, and, startled by the
concussion, the disgusting vermin poured from the
mouth and nostrils in hundreds. How difficult it is
to believe that the beauty we worship must come to
this!

As we went toward the staircase, the friar showed
us the deeper niches, in which the bodies were placed
for the first six months. There were fortunately no
fresh bodies in them at the time of our visit. The
stench, for a week or two, he told us, was intolerable.
They are suffered to get quite dry here, and then are
disposed of according to their sex or profession. A
rope passed round the middle, fastens the dead monk
to his shallow niche, and there he stands till his bones
rot from each other, sometimes for a century or more.

We hurried up the gloomy stairs, and giving the
monk our gratuity, were passing out of the cloister to
our carriage when two of the brothers entered, bearing
a sedan chair with the blinds closed. Our friend called
us back, and opened the door. An old gray-headed
woman sat bolt upright within, with a rope around her
body and another around her neck, supporting her by
two rings in the back of the sedan. She had died that
morning, and was brought to be dried in the capuchin
catacombs. The effect of the newly deceased body in
a handsome silk dress and plaited cap was horrible.

We drove from the monastery to the gardens of a
Sicilian prince, near by. I was agreeably disappointed
to find the grounds laid out in the English taste, winding
into secluded walks shaded with unclipped trees,
and opening into glades of greensward cooled by fountains.
We strolled on from one sweet spot to another,
coming constantly upon little Grecian temples, ruins,
broken aqueducts, aviaries, bowers furnished with
curious seats and tables, bridges over streams, and
labyrinths of shrubbery ending in hermitages built
curiously of cane. So far, the garden, though lovely,
was like many others. On our return, the person who
accompanied us began to surprise us with singular
contrivances, fortunately selecting the coachman who
had driven us as the subject of his experiments. In
the middle of a long green alley he requested him to
step forward a few paces, and, in an instant, streams
of water poured upon him from the bushes around in
every direction. There were seats in the arbors, the
least pressure of which sent up a stream beneath the
unwary visiter; steps to an ascent, which you no sooner
touched than you were showered from an invisible
source; and one small hermitage, which sent a jet
d'eau into the face of a person lifting the latch. Nearly
in the centre of the garden stood a pretty building,
with an ascending staircase. At the first step, a friar
in white, represented to the life in wax, opened the
door, and fixed his eyes on the comer. At the next
step, the door was violently shut. At the third, it was
half opened again, and as the foot pressed the platform
above, both doors flew wide open, and the old friar
made room for the visiter to enter. Life itself could
not have been more natural. The garden was full of
similar tricks. We were hurried away by an engagement
before we had seen them all, and stopping for a
moment to look at a magnificent Egyptian Ibis, walking
around in an aviary like a temple, we drove into
town to dinner.

69. LETTER LXIX.

Palermo, June 28.—Two of the best-conducted
lunatic asylums in the world are in the kingdom of
Naples—one at Aversa, near Capua, and the other at
Palermo. The latter is managed by a whimsical Sicilian
baron, who has devoted his time and fortune to
it, and with the assistance of the government, has carried
it to great extent and perfection. The poor are
received gratuitously, and those who can afford it enter
as boarders, and are furnished with luxuries according
to their means.

The hospital stands in an airy situation in the lovely
neighborhood of Palermo. We were received by
a porter in a respectable livery, who introduced us immediately
to the old barou—a kind-looking man, rather
advanced beyond middle life, of manners singularly
genteel and prepossessing. “Je suis le premier fou,”
said he, throwing his arms out, as he bowed on our
entrance. We stood in an open court, surrounded
with porticoes lined with stone seats. On one of
them lay a fat, indolent-looking man, in clean gray
clothes, talking to himself with great apparent satisfaction.
He smiled at the baron as he passed without
checking the motion of his lips, and three others
standing in the doorway of a room marked as the
kitchen, smiled also as he came up, and fell into his
train, apparently as much interested as ourselves in
the old man's explanations.

The kitchen was occupied by eight or ten people
all at work, and all, the baron assured us, mad. One

man, of about forty, was broiling a steak with the gravest
attention. Another, who had been furious till employment
was given him, was chopping meat with violent
industry in a large wooden bowl. Two or three
girls were about, obeying the little orders of a middle-aged
man, occupied with several messes cooking on a
patent stove. I was rather incredulous about his insanity,
till he took a small bucket and went to the jet
of a fountain, and getting impatient from some cause
or other, dashed the water upon the floor. The baron
mildly called him by name, and mentioned to him as
a piece of information that he had wet the floor. He
nodded his head, and filling his bucket quietly, poured
a little into one of the pans, and resumed his occupation.

We passed from the kitchen into an open court, curiously
paved, and ornamented with Chinese grottoes,
artificial rocks, trees, cottages, and fountains. Within
the grottoes reclined figures of wax. Before the altar
of one, fitted up as a Chinese chapel, a mandarin was
prostrated in prayer. The walls on every side were
painted in perspective scenery, and the whole had as
little the air of a prison as the open valley itself. In
one of the corners was an unfinished grotto, and a
handsome young man was entirely absorbed in thatching
the ceiling with strips of cane. The baron
pointed to him, and said he had been incurable till he
had found this employment for him. Everything
about us, too, he assured us, was the work of his patients.
They had paved the court, built the grottoes
and cottages, and painted the walls, under his direction.
The secret of his whole system, he said, was
employment and constant kindness. He had usually
about one hundred and fifty patients, and he dismissed
upon an average two thirds of them quite recovered.

We went into the apartment of the women. These,
he said, were his worst subjects. In the first room sat
eight or ten employed in spinning, while one infuriated
creature, not more than thirty, but quite gray, was
walking up and down the floor, talking and gesticulating
with the greatest violence. A young girl of sixteen,
an attendant, had entered into her humor, and
with her arm put affectionately round her waist, assented
to everything she said, and called her by every
name of endearment while endeavoring to silence her.
When the baron entered, the poor creature addressed
herself to him, and seemed delighted that he had
come. He made several mild attempts to check her,
but she seized his hands, and with the veins of her
throat swelling with passion, her eyes glaring terribly,
and her tongue white and trembling, she continued to
declaim more and more violently. The baron gave an
order to a male attendant at the door, and beckoning
us to follow, led her gently through a small court
planted with trees, to a room containing a hammock.
She checked her torrent of language as she observed
the preparations going on, and seemed amused with
the idea of swinging. The man took her up in his
arms without resistance, and laced the hammock over
her, confining everything but her head, and the female
attendant, one of the most playful and prepossessing
little creatures I ever saw, stood on a chair, and at every
swing threw a little water on her face as if in sport.
Once or twice, the maniac attempted to resume the
subject of her ravings, but the girl laughed in her face
and diverted her from it, till at last she smiled and
dropping her head into the hammock, seemed disposed
to sink into an easy sleep.

We left her swinging and went out into the court,
where eight or ten women in the gray gowns of the
establishment were walking up and down, or sitting
under the trees, lost in thought. One, with a fine, intelligent
face, came up to me and courtesied gracefully
without speaking. The physician of the establishment
joined me at the moment, and asked her what
she wished. “To kiss his hand,” said she, “but his
looks forbade me.” She colored deeply, and folded
her arms across her breast and walked away. The
baron called us, and in going out I passed her again,
and taking her hand, kissed it, and bade her good-by.
“You had better kiss my lips,” said she, “you'll never
see me again.” She laid her forehead against the iron
bars of the gate, and with a face working with emotion,
watched us till we turned out of sight. I asked
the physician for her history. “It was a common
case,” he said. “She was the daughter of a Sicilian
noble, who, too poor to marry her to one of her own
rank, had sent her to a convent, where confinement
had driven her mad. She is now a charity patient in
the asylum.”

The courts in which these poor creatures are confined,
open upon a large and lovely garden. We walked
through it with the baron, and then returned to the
apartments of the females. In passing a cell, a large
majestic woman strided out with a theatrical air, and
commenced an address to the Deity, in a language
strangely mingled of Italian and Greek. Her eyes were
naturally large and soft, but excitement had given
them additional dilation and fire, and she looked a
prophetess. Her action, with all its energy, was ladylike.
Her feet, half covered with slippers were well-formed
and slight, and she had every mark of superiority
both of birth and endowment. The baron took
her by the hand with the deferential courtesy of the
old school, and led her to one of the stone seats. She
yielded to him politely, but resumed her harangue,
upbraiding the Deity, as well as I could understand
her, for her misfortunes. They succeeded in soothing
her by the assistance of the same playful attendant
who had accompanied the other to the hammock, and
she sat still, with her lips white and her tongue trembling
like an aspen. While the good old baron was
endeavoring to draw her into a quiet conversation, the
physician told me some curious circumstances respecting
her. She was a Greek, and had been brought to
Palermo when a girl. Her mind had been destroyed
by an illness, and after seven years madness, during
which she had refused to rise from her bed and had
quite lost the use of her limbs, she was brought to this
establishment by her friends. Experiments were tried
in vain to induce her to move from her painful position.
At last the baron determined upon addressing
what he considered the master-passion in all female
bosoms. He dressed himself in the gayest manner,
and, in one of her gentle moments, entered her room
with respectful ceremony and offered himself to her
in marriage! She refused him with scorn, and with
seeming emotion he begged forgiveness and left her.
The next morning, on his entrance, she smiled—the
first time for years. He continued his attentions for a
day or two, and after a little coquetry she one morning
announced to him that she had re-considered his
proposal, and would be his bride. They raised her
from her bed to prepare her for the ceremony, and she
was carried in a chair to the garden, where the bridal
feast was spread, nearly all the other patients of the
hospital being present. The gayety of the scene absorbed
the attention of all; the utmost decorum prevailed;
and when the ceremony was performed, the
bride was crowned, and carried back in state to her
apartment. She recovered gradually the use of her
limbs, her health is improved, and excepting an occasional
paroxysm, such as we happened to witness, she
is quiet and contented. The other inmates of the
asylum still call her the bride; and the baron, as her
husband, has the greatest influence over her.

While the physician was telling me these circumstances,
the baron had succeeded in calming her, and
she sat with her arms folded, dignified and silent. He
was still holding her hand, when the woman whom we
had left swinging in the hammock, came stealing up
behind the trees on tiptoe, and putting her hand suddenly

over the baron's eyes, kissed him on both sides
of his face, laughing heartily, and calling him by every
name of affection. The contrast between this mood
and the infuriated one in which we had found her, was
the best comment on the good man's system. He
gently disengaged himself, and apologised to his lady
for allowing the liberty, and we followed him to another
apartment.

It opened upon a pretty court, in which a fountain
was playing, and against the columns of the portico sat
some half dozen patients. A young man of eighteen,
with a very-pale, scholar-like face, was reading Ariosto.
Near him, under the direction of an attendant, a fair,
delicate girl, with a sadness in her soft blue eyes that
might have been a study for a mater dolorosa, was cutting
paste upon a board laid across her lap. She
seemed scarcely conscious of what she was about, and
when I approached and spoke to her, she laid down
the knife and rested her head upon her hand, and
looked at me steadily, as if she was trying to recollect
where she had known me. “I can not remember,”
she said to herself, and went on with her occupation.
I bowed to her as we took our leave, and she returned
it gracefully but coldly. The young man looked up
from his book and smiled, the old man lying on the
stone seat in the outer court rose up and followed us
to the door, and we were bowed out by the baron and
his gentle madmen as politely and kindly as if we were
concluding a visit with a company of friends.

An evening out of doors, in summer, is pleasant
enough anywhere in Italy: but I have found no place
where the people and their amusements were so concentrated
at that hour, as upon the “Marina” of Palermo.
A ramble with the officers up and down, renewing
the acquaintances made with visiters to the
ships, listening to the music and observing the various
characters of the crowd, concludes every day agreeably.
A terraced promenade, twenty feet above the street,
extends nearly the whole length of the Marina, and
here, under the balconies of the viceroy's palace, with
the crescent harbor spread out before the eye, trees
above, and marble seats tempting the weary at every
step, may be met pedestrians of every class, from the
first cool hour when the seabreeze sets in till midnight
or morning. The intervals between the pieces performed
by the royal band in the centre of the drive, is
seized by the wandering improvisatrice, or the ludicrous
puncinello, and even the beggars cease to importune in
the general abandonment to pleasure. Every other
moment the air is filled with a delightful perfume, and
you are addressed by the bearer of a tail pole tied
thickly with the odorous flowers of this voluptuous
climate—a mode of selling these cheap luxuries which
I believe is peculiar to Palermo. The gayety they
give a crowd, by the way, is singular. They move
about among the gaudily-dressed contadini like a troop
of banners—tulips, narcissus, moss-roses, branches of
jasmine, geraniums, every flower that is rare and beautiful
scenting the air from a hundred overladen poles,
and the merest pittance will purchase the rarest and
loveliest. It seems a clime of fruits and flowers: and
if one could but shut his eyes to the dreadful contrasts
of nakedness and starvation, he might believe himself
in a Utopia.

We were standing on the balcony of the consul's
residence (a charming situation overlooking the Marina),
and remarking the gayety of the scene on the
first evening of our arrival. The conversation turned
upon the condition of the people. The consul remarked
that it was an every-day circumstance to find
beggars starved to death in the streets; and that, in
the small villages near Palermo, eight or ten were often
taken up dead from the road-side in the morning.
The difficulty of getting a subsistence is every day increasing,
and in the midst of one of the most fertile
spots of the earth, one half the population are driven
to the last extremity for bread. The results appear
in constant conspiracies against the government, detected
and put down with more or less difficulty. The
island is garrisoned with troops from Italy, and the
viceroy has lately sent to his brother for a reinforcement,
and is said to feel very insecure. A more lamentably
misgoverned kingdom than that of the Sicilies,
probably does not exist in the world.

70. LETTER LXX.

Palermo, June 28.—The curve of “The Golden
Shell,” which bends to the east of Palermo, is a luxuriant
plain of ten miles in length, terminated by a
bluff which forms a headland corner of the bay. A
broad neck of land between this bay and another indenting
the coast less deeply on the other side, is occupied
by a cluster of summer palaces belonging to
several of the richer princes of Sicily. The breeze,
whenever there is one on land or sea, sweeps freshly
across this ridge, and a more desirable residence for
combined coolness and beauty could scarce be imagined.
The Palermitan princes, however, find every
country more attractive than their own; and while you
may find a dozen of them in any city of Europe, their
once magnificent residences are deserted and falling to
decay, almost without an exception.

The old walls of one of these palaces were enlivened
yesterday, by a féte given to the officers of the squadron
by the American consul, Mr. Gardiner. We left
Palermo in a long cavalcade, followed by a large omnibus
containing the ship's band, early in the forenoon.
The road was lined with prickly pear and oleander in
the most luxuriant blossom. Exotics in our country,
these plants are indigenous to Sicily, and form the only
hedges to the large plantations of cane and the spreading
vineyards and fields. A more brilliant show than
these long lines of trees, laden with bright pink flowers,
and varied by the gigantic and massive leaf of the pear,
can not easily be imagined.

We were to visit one or two places on our way. The
carriage drew up about eight miles from town, at the
gate of a ruinous building, and passing through a
deserted court, we entered an old-fashioned garden,
presenting one succession of trimmed walks, urns,
statues and fountains. The green mould of age and
exposure upon the marbles, the broken seats, the once
costly but now ruined and silent fountains, the tall
weeds in the seldom-trodden walks, and the wild vegetation
of fragrant jasmine and brier burying everything
with its luxuriance, all told the story of decay. I remembered
the scenes of the Decameron; the many
“tales of love,” laid in these very gardens; the gay
romances of which Palermo was the favorite home;
and the dames and knights of Sicily the fairest and
bravest themes, and I longed to let my merry companions
pass on, and remain to realize more deeply the
spells of poetry and story. The pleasure of travel is
in the fancy. Men and manners are so nearly alike
over the world, and the same annoyances disturb so
certainly, wherever we are, the gratification of seeing
and conversing with our living fellow-beings, that it is
only by the mingled illusion of fancy and memory, by
getting apart, and peopling the deserted palace or the
sombre ruin from the pages of a book, that we ever
realize the anticipated pleasure of standing on celebrated
ground. The eye, the curiosity, are both disappointed,
and the voice of a common companion reduces
the most romantic ruin to a heap of stone. In

some of the footsteps of Childe Harold himself, with
his glorious thoughts upon my lips, and all that moved
his imagination addressing my eye, with the additional
grace which his poetry has left around them, I have
found myself unable to overstep the vulgar circumstances
of the hour—the “Temple of the Clitumnus”
was a ruined shed glaring in the sunshine, and the
“Cottage of Petrarch” an apology for extortion and
annoyance.

I heard a shout from the party, and followed them
to a building at the foot of the garden. I passed the
threshold and started back. A ghastly monk, with a
broom in his hand, stood gazing at me, and at a door
just beyond, a decrepit nun was see-sawing backward
and forward, ringing a bell with the most impatient
violence. I ventured to pass in, and a door opened at
the right, disclosing the self-denying cell of a hermit
with his narrow bed and single chair, and at the table
sat the rosy-gilled friar, filling his glass from an antiquated
bottle, and nodding his head to his visiter in
grinning welcome. A long cloister with six or eight
cells extended beyond, and in each was a monk in some
startling attitude, or a pale and saintly nun employed in
work or prayer. The whole was as like a living monastery
as wax could make it. The mingling of monks
and nuns seemed an anachronism, but we were told
that it represented a tale, the title of which I have forgotten.
It was certainly an odd as well as an expensive
fancy for a garden ornament, and shows by its uselessness
the once princely condition of the possessors of
the palace. An Englishman married not many years
since an old princess, to whom the estates had descended,
and with much unavailable property and the title
of prince, he has entered the service of the king of the
Sicilies for a support.

We drove on to another palace, still more curious
in its ornaments. The extensive walls which enclosed
it, the gates, the fountains in the courts and gardens,
were studded with marble monsters of every conceivable
deformity. The head of a man crowned the body
of an eagle standing on the legs of a horse; the lovely
face and bosom of a female crouched upon the body
of a dog; alligators, serpents, lions, monkeys, birds,
and reptiles, were mixed up with parts of the human
body in the most revolting variety. So admirable was
the work, too, and so beautiful the material, that even
outraged taste would hesitate to destroy them. The
wonder is that artists of so much merit could have been
hired to commit such sins against decency, or that a
man in his senses would waste upon them the fortune
they must have cost.

We mounted a massive flight of steps, with a balustrade
of gorgeously-carved marble, and entered a hall
hung round with the family portraits, the eccentric
founder at their head. He was a thin, quizzical-looking
gentleman, in a laced coat and sword, and had precisely
the face I imagined for him—that of a whimsied madman.
You would select it from a thousand as the
subject for a lunatic asylum.

We were led next to a long narrow hall, famous for
having dined the king and his courtiers an age or two
ago. The ceiling was of plate mirror, reflecting us all,
upside down, as we strolled through, and the walls
were studded from the floor to the roof with the quartz
diamond, (valueless but brilliant), bits of colored glass,
spangles, and everything that could reflect light.
The effect, when the quaint old chandeliers were lit,
and the table spread with silver and surrounded by a
king and his nobles, in the costume of a court in the
olden time, must have exceeded faery.

Beyond, we were ushered into the state drawing-room,
a saloon of grand proportions, roofed like the
other with mirrors, but paved and lined throughout
with the costliest marbles, Sicilian agates, aintings
set in the wall and covered with glass, while on pedestals
around, stood statues of the finest workmanship, rep
resenting the males of the family in the costume or
armor of the times. A table of inlaid precious stones
stood in the centre, cabinets of lapis-lazuli and side-tables,
occupied the spaces between the furniture, and
the chairs and sofas were covered with the rich velvet
stuffs now out of use, embroidered and fringed magnificently.
I sat down upon a tripod stool, and with my
eyes half closed, looked up at the mirrored reflections
of the officers in the ceiling, and tried to imagine back
the gay throngs that had moved across the floor they
were treading so unceremoniously, the knightly and
royal feet that had probably danced the stars down with
the best beauty of Sicily beneath those silent mirrors;
the joy, the jealousy, the love and hate, that had lived
their hour and been repeated, as were our lighter feelings
and faces now, outlived by the perishing mirrors
that might still outlive ours as long. How much there
is an atmosphere! How full the air of these old palaces
is of thought! How one might enjoy them could he
ramble here alone, or with one congenial and musing
companion to answer to his moralizing.

We drove on to our appointment. At the end of a
handsome avenue stood a large palace, in rather more
modern taste than those we had left. The crowd of
carriages in the court, the gold-laced midshipmen
scattered about the massive stairs and in the formal
walks of the gardens, the gay dresses of the ship's
band, playing on the terrace, and the troops of ladies
and gentlemen in every direction, gave an air of bustle
to the stately structure that might have reminded the
marble nymphs of the days when they were first lifted
to their pedestals.

The old hall was thrown open at two, and a table
stretching from one end to the other, loaded with every
luxury of the season, and capable of accommodating
sixty or seventy persons, usurped the place of unsubstantial
romance, and brought in the wildest straggler
willingly from his ramble. No cost had been spared,
and the hospitable consul (a Bostonian) did the honors
of his table in a manner that stirred powerfully my
pride of country and birthplace. All the English
resident in Palermo were present; and it was the more
agreeable to me that their countrymen are usually the
only givers of generous entertainment in Europe. One
feels ever so distant a reflection on his country abroad.
The liberal and elegant hospitality of one of our countrymen
at Florence, has served me as a better argument
against the charge of hardness and selfishness
urged upon our nation, than all which could be drawn
from the acknowledgments of travellers.

When dinner was over, an hour was passed at coffee
in a small saloon stained after the fashion of Pompeii,
and we then assembled on a broad terrace facing the
sea, and with the band in the gallery above, commenced
dances which lasted till an hour or two into the
moonlight. The sunset had the eternal but untiring
glory of the Italian summer, and it never set on a gayer
party. There were among the English one or two
lovely girls, and with the four ladies belonging to the
squadron (the commodore's family and Captain Reed's),
the dancers were sufficient to include all the officers,
and the scene in the soft light of the moon was like a
description in an old tale. The broad sea on either
side, broke by the headland in front, the distant crescent
of lights glancing along the seaside at Palermo, the
solemn old palaces seen from the eminence around us,
and the noble pile through whose low windows we
strolled out upon the terrace, the music and the excitement,
all blended a scene that is drawn with bright
and living lines in my memory. We parted unwillingly,
and reaching Palermo about midnight, pulled off
to the frigates, and were under way at daylight for
Messina.

This is the poetry of sailing. The long, low frigate
glides on through the water with no more motion than

is felt in a dining-room on shore. The sea changes
only from a glossy calm to a feathery ripple, the sky
is always serene, the merchant sail appears and disappears
on the horizon edge, the island rides on the
bow, creeps along the quarter, is examined by the
glasses of the idlers on deck and sinks gradually astern,
the sun-fish whirls in the eddy of the wake, the tortoise
plunges and breathes about us, and the delightful
temperature of the sea, even and invigorating, keeps
both mind and body in an undisturbed equilibrium
of enjoyment. For me it is a paradise. I am glad
to escape from the contact, the dust, the trials of temper,
the noon-day sultriness, and the midnight chill,
the fatigue and privation and vexation, which beset the
traveller on shore. I shall return to it no doubt willingly
after a while, but for the present, it is rest, it is relief,
refreshment, to be at sea. There is no swell in
the Mediterranean during the summer months, and
this gliding about, sleeping or reading as if at home,
from one port to another, seems to me just now the
Utopia of enjoyment.

We have been all day among the Lipari islands.
It is pleasant to look up at the shaded and peaceful
huts on their mountainous sides, as we creep along
under them or to watch the fisherman's children with
a glass, as they run out from their huts on the seashore
to gaze at the uncommon apparition of a ship-of-war.
They seem seats of solitude and retirement.
I have just dropped the glass, which I had raised to
look at what I took to be a large ship in full sail rounding
the point of Felicudi. It is a tall, pyramidal rock,
rising right from the sea, and resembling exactly a ship
with studding-sails set, coming down before the wind.
The band is playing on the deck; and a fisherman's
boat with twenty of the islanders resting on their oars
and listening in wondering admiration, lies just under
our quarter. It will form a tale for the evening meal,
to which they were hastening home.

We run between Scylla and Charybdis, with a fresh
wind and a strong current. The “dogs” were silent,
and the “whirlpool” is a bubble to Hurl-gate. Scylla
is quite a town, and the tall rock at the entrance of the
strait is crowned with a large building, which seems
part of a fortification. The passage through the Faro
is lonely—quite like a river. Messina lies in a curve
of the western shore, at the base of a hill; and, opposite,
a graceful slope covered with vineyards, swells up to a
broad table plain on the mountain, which looked like
the home of peace and fertility.

We rounded to, off the town, to send in for letters,
and I went ashore in the boat. Two American friends,
whom I had as little expectation of meeting as if I had
dropped upon Jerusalem, hailed me from the grating
of the health-office, before we reached the land, and
having exhibited our bill of health, I had half an hour
for a call upon an old friend, resident at Messina, and
we were off again to the ship. The sails filled, and
we shot away on a strong breeze down the straits.
Rhegium lay on our left, a large cluster of old-looking
houses on the edge of the sea. It was at this town of
Calabria that St. Paul landed on his journey to Rome.
We sped on without much time to look at it, even
with a glass, and were soon rounding the toe of “the
boot,” the southern point of Italy. We are heading
at this moment for the gulf of Tarento, and hope to
be in Venice by the fourth of July.

71. LETTER LXXI.

The doge of Venice has a fair bride in the Adriatic.
It is the fourth of July, and with the Italian Cape
Colonna on our left, and the long, low coast of Albania
shading the horizon on the east, we are gazing
upon her from the deck of the first American frigate
that has floated upon her bosom. We head for Venice,
and there is a stir of anticipation on board, felt
even through the hilarity of our cherished anniversary.
I am the only one in the ward-room to whom
that wonderful city is familiar, and I feel as if I had
forestalled my own happiness—the first impression of
it is so enviable.

It is difficult to conceive the gay costumes and
handsome features of the Albanese, existing in these
barren mountains that bind the Adriatic. It has been
but a continued undulation of rock and sand, for three
days past; and the closer we hug to the shore, the
more we look at the broad canvass above us, and pray
for wind. We make Capo d'Istria now, a small town
nestled in a curve of the sea, and an hour or two more
will bring us to Trieste, where we drop anchor, we
hope, for many an hour of novelty and pleasure.

Trieste lies sixty or eighty miles from Venice,
across the head of the gulf. The shore between is
piled up to the sky with the “blue Friuli mountains;”
and from the town of Trieste, the low coast of Istria
breaks away at a right angle to the south, forming the
eastern bound of the Adriatic. As we ran into the
harbor on our last tack, we passed close under the
garden walls of the villa of the ex-queen of Naples, a
lovely spot just in the suburbs. The palace of Jerome
Bonaparte was also pointed out to us by the
pilot on the hill just above. They have both removed
since to Florence, and their palaces are occupied by
English. We dropped anchor within a half mile of
the pier, and the flags of a dozen American vessels
were soon distinguishable among the various colors of
the shipping in the port.

I accompanied Commodore Patterson to-day on a
visit of ceremony to the Austrian authorities of the
province. We made our way with difficulty through
the people, crowding in hundreds to the water-side,
and following us with the rude freedom of a showman's
audience. The vice-governor, a polite but
Frenchified German count, received us with every
profession of kindness. His Parisian gestures sat ill
enough upon his national high cheek-bones, lank hair,
and heavy shoulders. We left him to call upon the
military commandant, an Irishman, who occupies part
of the palace of the ex-king of Westphalia. Our
reception by him was gentlemanly, cordial, and dignified.
I think the Irish are, after all, the best-mannered
people in the world. They are found in every
country, as adventurers for honor, and they change
neither in character nor manner. They follow foreign
fashions, and acquire a foreign language; but in the
first they retain their heart, and in the latter their
brogue. They are Irishmen always. Count Nugent
is high in the favor of the emperor, has the commission
of a field marshal, and is married to a Neapolitan
princess, who is a most accomplished and lovely woman,
and related to most of the royal houses of Europe.
His reputation as a soldier is well known, and
he seems to me to have no drawback to the enviableness
of his life, except its expatriation.

Trieste is a busy, populous place, resembling extremely
our new towns in America. We took a stroll

through the principal streets after our visits were
over, and I was surprised at the splendor of the shops,
and the elegance of the costumes and equipages. It
is said to contain thirty thousand inhabitants.

Vienna.—The frigates were to lie three or four
weeks at Trieste. One half of the officers had taken
the steamboat for Venice on the second evening of
our arrival, and the other half waited impatiently their
turn of absence. Vienna was but some four hundred
miles distant, and I might never be so near it again.
On a rainy evening, at nine o'clock, I left Trieste in
the “eil-wagon,” with a German courier, and commenced
the ascent of the spur of the Friuli mountains
that overhangs the bay.

My companions inside were, a merchant from Gratz,
a fantastical and poor Hungarian count, a Corfu shopkeeper,
and an Italian ex-militaire and present apothecary,
going to Vienna to marry a lady whom he had
never seen. After a little bandying of compliments in
German, of which I understood nothing except that
they were apologies for the incessant smoking of three
disgusting pipes, the conversation, fortunately for me,
settled into Italian. The mountain was steep and
very high, and my friends soon grew conversible.
The novelty of two American frigates in the harbor
naturally decided the first topic. Our Gratz merchant
was surprised at the light color of the officers he had
seen, and doubted if they were not Englishmen in the
American service. He had always heard Americans
were black. “They are so,” said the soldier-apothecary;
“I saw the real Americans yesterday in a boat,
quite black.” (One of the cutters of the Constellation
has a negro crew, which he had probably seen at
the pier.) The assertion seemed to satisfy the doubts
of all parties. They had wondered how such beautiful
ships could come from a savage country. It was
now explained. “They were bought from the English,
and officered by Englishmen.” I was too much
amused with their speculations to undeceive them;
and with my head thrust half out of the window to
avoid choking with the smoke of their pipes, I gazed
back at the glittering lights of the town below, and
indulged the never-palling sensation of a first entrance
into a new country. The lantern at the peak of the
“United States” was the last thing I saw as we rose
the brow of the mountain, and started off on a rapid
trot toward Vienna.

I awoke at daylight with the sudden stop of the
carriage. We were at the low door of a German tavern,
and a clear, rosy, good-humored looking girl bade
us good morning, as we alighted one by one. The
phrase was so like English, that I asked for a basin of
water in my mother tongue. The similarity served
me again. She brought it without hesitation; but
the question she asked me as she set it down was like
nothing that had ever before entered my ears. The
count smiled at my embarrassment, and explained that
she wished to know if I wanted soap.

I was struck with the cleanliness of everything.
The tables, chairs, and floors, looked worn away with
scrubbing. Breakfast was brought in immediately,
eggs, rolls, and coffee, the latter in a glass bottle like
a chemist's retort, corked up tightly, and wrapped in
a snowy napkin. It was an excellent breakfast, served
with cleanliness and good humor, and cost about fourteen
cents each. Even from this single meal, it seemed
to me that I had entered a country of simple manners
and kind feelings. The conductor gravely kissed
the cheek of the girl who had waited on us, my companions
lit their pipes afresh, and the postillion, in
cocked hat and feather, blew a stave of a waltz on his
horn, and fell into a steady trot, which he kept up
with phlegmatic perseverance to the end of his post.

As we get away from the sea, the land grows richer,
and the farm-houses more frequent. We are in the
dutchy of Carniola, forty or fifty miles from Trieste.
How very unlike Italy and France, and how very like
New England it is! There are no ruined castles, nor
old cathedrals. Every village has its small white
church with a tapering spire, large manufactories
cluster on the water-courses, the small rivers are rapid
and deep, the horses large and strong, the barns immense,
the crops heavy, the people grave and hard at
work, and not a pauper by the post together. We are
very far north, too, and the climate is like New England.
The wind, though it is midsummer, is bracing,
and there is no travelling as in Italy, with one's hat off
and breast open, dissolving at midnight in the luxury
of the soft air. The houses, too, are ugly and comfortable,
staring with paint and pierced in all directions
with windows. The children are white-headed and
serious. The hills are half covered with woods, and
clusters of elms are left here and there through the
meadows, as if their owners could afford to let them
grow for a shade to the mowers. I was perpetually
exclaiming, “how like America!”

We dined at Laybach. My companions had found
out by my passport that I was an American, and their
curiosity was most amusing. The report of the arrival
of the two frigates had reached the capital of Illyria,
and with the assistance of the information of my
friends, I found myself an object of universal attention.
The crowd around the door of the hotel, looked into
the windows while we were eating, and followed me
round the house as if I had been a savage. One of
the passengers told me they connected the arrival of
the ships with some political object, and thought I
might be the envoy. The landlord asked me if we
had potatoes in our country.

I took a walk through the city after dinner with my
mincing friend the count. The low, two-story wooden
houses, the sidewalks enclosed with trees, the matter-of-fact
looking people, the shut windows, and neat
white churches remind me again strongly of America.
It was like the more retired streets of Portland or
Portsmouth. The Illyrian language spoken here,
seemed to me the most inarticulate succession of
sounds I had ever heard. In crossing the bridge in
the centre of the town, we met a party of German students
travelling on foot with their knapsacks. My
friend spoke to them to gratify my curiosity. I wished
to know where they were going. They all spoke
French and Italian, and seemed in high heart, bold,
cheerful, and intelligent. They were bound for
Egypt, determined to seek their fortunes in the service
of the present reforming and liberal pacha. Their
enthusiasm, when they were told I was an American,
quite thrilled me. They closed about me and looked
into my eyes, as if they expected to read the spirit of
freedom in them. I was taken by the arms at last,
and almost forced into a beer-shop. The large
tankards were filled, each touched mine and the others,
and “America” was drank with a grave earnestness of
manner that moved my heart within me. They shook
me by the hand on parting, and gave me a blessing in
German, which, as the old count translated it, was the
first word I have learned of their language. We had
met constantly parties of them on the road. They all
dress alike, in long travelling frocks of brown stuff, and
small green caps with straight visors; but, coarsely as
they are clothed, and humbly as they seem to be
faring, their faces bear always a mark that can never
be mistaken. They look like scholars.

The roads, by the way, are crowded with pedestrians.
It seems to be the favorite mode of travelling in this
country. We have scarce met a carriage, and I have
seen, I am sure, in one day, two hundred passengers
on foot. Among them is a class of people peculiar to
Germany. I was astonished occasionally at being
asked for charity by stout, well-dressed young men,

to all appearance as respectable as any travellers on
the road. Expressing my surprise, my companions
informed me that they were apprentices, and that the
custom or law of the country compelled them, after
completing their indentures, to travel in some distant
province, and depend upon charity and their own exertions
for two or three years before becoming masters
at their trade. It is a singular custom, and, I should
think, a useful lesson in hardship and self-reliance.
They held out their hats with a confident independence
of look that quite satisfied me they felt no degradation
in it.

We soon entered the province of Styria, and brighter
rivers, greener woods, richer and more graceful uplands
and meadows, do not exist in the world. I had
thought the scenery of Stockbridge, in my own state,
unequalled till now. I could believe myself there,
were not the women alone working in the fields, and
the roads lined for miles together with military wagons
and cavalry upon march. The conscript law of
Austria compels every peasant to serve fourteen years!
and the labors of agriculture fall, of course, almost exclusively
upon females. Soldiers swarm like locusts
through the country, but they seem as inoffensive and
as much at home as the cattle in the farm-yards. It
is a curious contrast, to my eye, to see parks of artillery
glistening in the midst of a wheat-field, and soldiers
sitting about under the low thatches of these
peaceful-looking cottages. I do not think, among the
thousands that I have passed in three days' travel, I
have seen a gesture or heard a syllable. If sitting,
they smoke and sit still, and if travelling, they economise
motion to a degree that is wearisome to the eye.

Words are limited, and the description of scenery becomes
tiresome. It is a fault that the sense of beauty,
freshening constantly on the traveller, compels him
who makes a note of impressions to mark every other
line with the same ever-recurring exclamations of
pleasure. I saw a hundred miles of unrivalled scenery
in Styria, and how can I describe it? I were keeping
silence on a world of enjoyment to pass it over. We
come to a charming descent into a valley. The town
beneath, the river, the embracing mountains, the
swell to the ear of its bells ringing some holyday, affect
my imagination powerfully. I take out my tablets,
What shall I say? How convey to your minds who
have not seen it, the charm of a scene I can only describe
as I have described a thousand others?

72. LETTER LXXII.

We had followed stream after stream through a
succession of delicious valleys for a hundred miles.
Descending from a slight eminence, we came upon
the broad and rapid Muhr, and soon after caught sight
of a distant citadel upon a rock. As we approached,
it struck me as one of the most singular freaks of nature
I had ever seen. A pyramid, perhaps three hundred
feet in height, and precipitous on every side, rose
abruptly in the midst of a broad and level plain, and
around it in a girdle of architecture, lay the capital
of Styria. The fortress on the summit hung like an
eagle's nest over the town, and from its towers, a pistol-shot
would reach the outermost point of the wall.

Wearied with travelling near three hundred miles
without sleep, I dropped upon a bed at the hotel, with
an order to be called in two hours. It was noon, and
we were to remain at Gratz till the next morning.
My friend, the Hungarian, had promised as he threw
himself on the opposite bed, to wake and accompany
me in a walk through the town, but the shake of a
stout German chambermaid at the appointed time had
no effect upon him, and I descended to my dinner
alone. I had lost my interpreter. The carte was in
German, of which I did not know even the letters.
After appealing in vain in French and Italian to the
persons eating near me, I fixed my finger at hazard
upon a word, and the waiter disappeared. The result
was a huge dish of cabbage cooked in some filthy oil
and graced with a piece of beef. I was hesitating
whether to dine on bread or make another attempt,
when a gentlemanly man of some fifty years came in
and took the vacant seat at my table. He addressed
me immediately in French, and smiling at my difficulties,
undertook to order a dinner for me something
less national. We improved our acquaintance with a
bottle of Johannesburgh, and after dinner he kindly
offered to accompany me in my walk through the
city.

Gratz is about the size of Boston, a plain German
city, with little or no pretensions to style. The military
band was playing a difficult waltz very beautifully
in the public square, but no one was listening except
a group of young men dressed in the worst taste of
dandyism. We mounted by a zig-zag path to the
fortress. On a shelf of the precipice, half way up,
hangs a small casino, used as a beer-shop. The view
from the summit was a feast to the eye. The wide
and lengthening valley of the Muhr lay asleep beneath
its loads of grain, its villas and farmhouses, the picture
of “waste and mellow fruitfulness,” the rise to
the mountains around the head of the valley was clustered
with princely dwellings, thick forests with glades
between them, and churches with white slender spires
shooting from the bosom of elms, and right at our
feet, circling around the precipitous rock for protection,
lay the city enfolded in its rampart, and sending
up to our ears the sound of every wheel that rolled
through her streets. Among the striking buildings
below, my friend pointed out to me a palace which he
said had been lately purchased by Joseph Bonaparte,
who was coming here to reside. The people were
beginning to turn out for their evening walk upon the
ramparts which are planted with trees and laid out for
a promenade, and we descended to mingle in the
crowd.

My old friend had a great many acquaintances.
He presented me to several of the best-dressed people
we met, all of whom invited me to supper. I had
been in Italy almost a year and a half, and such a
thing had never happened to me. We walked about
until six, and as I prefer ed going to the play, which
opened at that early hour, we took tickets for “Der
Schlimme Leisel,” and were seated presently in one of
the simplest and prettiest theatres I have ever seen.

Der Schlimme Leisel was an old maid who kept
house for an old bachelor brother, proposing, at the
time the play opens, to marry. Her dislike to the
match, from the dread of losing her authority over
his household, formed the humor of the piece, and
was admirably represented. After various unsuccessful
attempts to prevent the nuptials, the lady is brought
to the house, and the old maid enters in a towering
passion, throws down her keys, and flirts out of the
room with a threat that she “will go to America!”
Fortunately she is not driven to that extremity. The
lady has been already married secretly to a poorer
lover, and the old bachelor, after the first shock of
the discovery, settles a fortune on them, and returns
to his celibacy and his old maid sister, to the satisfaction
of all parties. Certainly the German is the most
unmusical language of Babel. If my good old friend
had not translated it for me word for word, I should
scarce have believed the play to be more than a gibbering
pantomime. I shall think differently when I
have learned it, no doubt, but a strange language
strikes upon one's ear so oddly! I was quite too tired
when the play was over (which, by the way, was at

the sober hour of nine), to accept any of the kind invitations
of which my companion reminded me. We
supped tête-à-tête, instead, at the hotel. I was delighted
with my new acquaintance. He was an old citizen
of the world. He had left Gratz at twenty, and after
thirty years wandering from one part of the globe to
the other, had returned to end his days in his birth-place.
His relations were all dead, and speaking all
the languages of Europe, he preferred living at a hotel
for the society of strangers. With a great deal of
wisdom, he had preserved his good humor toward the
world; and I think I have rarely seen a kinder and
never a happier man. I parted from him with regret,
and the next morning at daylight, had resumed my
seat at the Eil-wagon.

Imagine the Hudson, at the highlands, reduced to
a sparkling little river a bowshot across, and a rich
valley thridded by a road accompanying the remaining
space between the mountains, and you have the
scenery for the first thirty miles beyond Gratz. There
is one more difference. On the edge of one of the
most towering precipices, clear up against the clouds,
hang the ruins of a noble castle. The rents in the
wall, and the embrazures in the projecting turrets,
seem set into the sky. Trees and vines grow within
and about it, and the lacings of the twisted roots seem
all that keep it together. It is a perfect “castle in
the air.”

A long day's journey and another long night (during
which we passed Neustadt, on the confines of Hungary)
brought us within sight of Baden, but an hour or
two from Vienna. It was just sunrise, and market-carts
and pedestrians and suburban vehicles of all descriptions
notified us of our approach to a great capital.
A few miles farther we were stopped in the midst
of an extensive plain by a crowd of carriages. A
criminal was about being guillotined. What was that
to one who saw Vienna for the first time? A few
steps farther the postillion was suddenly stopped. A
gentleman alighted from a carriage in which were two
ladies, and opened the door of the diligence. It was
the bride of the soldier-apothecary come to meet him
with her mother and brother. He was buried in dust,
just waked out of sleep, a three day's beard upon his
face, and, at the best, not a very lover-like person.
He ran to the carriage door, jumped in, and there was
an immediate cry for water. The bride had fainted!
We left her in his arms and drove on. The courier
had no bowels for love.

There is a small Gothic pillar before us, on the rise
of a slight elevation. Thence we shall see Vienna.
“Stop, thou tasteless postillion!” Was ever such a
scene revealed to mortal sight! It is like Paris from
the Barrière de l'Etoile—it seems to cover the world.
Oh, beautiful Vienna! What is that broad water on
which the rising sun glances so brightly? “The
Danube!” What is that unparalleled Gothic structure
piercing the sky? What columns are these? What
spires? Beautiful, beautiful city!

Vienna.—It must be a fine city that impresses one
with its splendor before breakfast, after driving all night
in a mail-coach. It was six o'clock in the morning
when I left the postoffice, in Vienna, to walk to a
hotel. The shops were still shut, the milkwomen
were beating at the gates, and the short, quick ring
upon the church bells summoned all early risers to
mass. A sudden turn brought me upon a square. In
its centre stood the most beautiful fabric that has ever
yet filled my eye. It looked like the structure of a
giant, encrusted by fairies—a majestically proportioned
mass, and a spire tapering to the clouds, but a surface
so curiously beautiful, so traced and fretted, so full of
exquisite ornament, that it seemed rather some curious
cabinet gem, seen through a magnifier, than a building
in the open air. In these foreign countries, the laborer
goes in with his load to pray, and I did not hesitate to
enter the splendid church of St. Etienne, though a
man followed me with a portmanteau on his back.
What a wilderness of arches! Pulpits, chapels, altars,
ciboriums, confessionals, choirs, all in the exquisite
slenderness of Gothic tracery, and all of one venerable
and timeworn die, as if the incense of a myriad censers
had steeped them in their spicy odors. The mass
was chanting, and hundreds were on their knees about
me, and not one without some trace that he had come
in on his way to his daily toil. It was the hour of the
poor man's prayer. The rich were asleep in their beds.
The glorious roof over their heads, the costly and
elaborated pillars against which they pressed their foreheads,
the music and the priestly service, were, for that
hour, theirs alone. I seldom have felt the spirit of a
place of worship so strong upon me.

The foundations of St. Etienne were laid seven hundred
years ago. It has twice been partly burnt, and
has been embellished in succession by nearly all the
emperors of Germany. Among its many costly tombs,
the most interesting is that of the hero Eugene of Savoy,
erected by his niece, the Princess Therese, of Liechtenstein.
There is also a vault in which it is said, in
compliance with an old custom, the entrails of all the
emperors are deposited.

Having marked thus much upon my tablets, I remembered
the patient porter of my baggage, who had
taken the opportunity to drop on his knees while I was
gazing about, and having achieved his matins, was now
waiting submissively till I was ready to proceed. A
turn or two brought us to the hotel, where a bath and
a breakfast soon restored me, and in an hour I was
again on the way with a valet de place, to visit the
tomb of the son of Napoleon.

He lies in the deep vaults of the capuchin convent,
with eighty-four of the imperial family of Austria beside
him. A monk answered our pull at the cloister-bell,
and the valet translated my request into German. He
opened the gate with a guttural “Yaw!” and lighting
a wax candle at a lamp burning before the image of
the Virgin, unlocked a massive brazen door at the end
of the corridor, and led the way into the vault. The
capuchin was as pale as marble, quite bald, though
young, and with features which expressed, I thought,
the subdued fierceness of a devil. He impatiently
waved away the officious interpreter after a moment or
two, and asked me if I understood Latin. Nothing
could have been mere striking than the whole scene.
The immense bronze sarcophagi, lay in long isles behind
railings and gates of iron, and as the long-robed
monk strode on with his lamp through the darkness,
pronouncing the name and title of each as he unlocked
the door and struck it with his heavy key, he seemed
to me, with his solemn pronunciation, like some mysterious
being calling forth the imperial tenants to judgment.
He appeared to have a something of scorn in
his manner as he looked on the splendid workmanship
of the vast coffin and pronounced the sounding titles of
the ashes within. At that of the celebrated Emperess
Maria Theresa alone, he stopped to make a comment.
It was a simple tribute to her virtues, and he uttered it
slowly, as if he were merely musing to himself. He
passed on to her husband, Francis the first, and then
proceeded uninterruptedly till he came to a new copper
coffin. It lay in a niche, beneath a tall, dim window,
and the monk, merely pointing to the inscription, set
down his lamp, and began to pace up and down the
damp floor, with his head on his breast, as if it was a
matter of course that here I was to be left awhile to
my thoughts.

It was certainly the spot, if there is one in the world,
to feel emotion. In the narrow enclosure on which
my finger rested lay the last hopes of Napoleon. The
heart of the master-spirit of the world was bound up
in these ashes. He was beautiful, accomplished,

generous, brave. He was loved with a sort of idolatry
by the nation with which he had passed his childhood.
He had won all hearts. His death seemed impossible.
There was a universal prayer that he might live, his
inheritance of glory was so incalculable.

I read his epitaph. It was that of a private individual.
It gave his name, and his father's and mother's; and
then enumerated his virtues, with a commonplace
regret for his early death. The monk took up his
lamp and reascended to the cloister in silence. He
shut the convent-door behind me, and the busy street
seemed to me profane. How short a time does the
most moving event interrupt the common current of
life.

73. LETTER LXXIII.

I had quite forgotten, in packing up my little portmanteau
to leave the ship, that I was coming so far
north. Scarce a week ago, in the south of Italy, we
were panting in linen jackets. I find myself shivering
here, in a latitude five hundred miles north of Boston,
with no remedy but exercise and an extra shirt, for a
cold that would grace December.

It is amusing, sometimes, to abandon one's self to a
valet de place. Compelled to resort to one from my
ignorance of the German, I have fallen upon a dropsical
fellow, with a Bardolph nose, whose French is execrable,
and whose selection of objects of curiosity is
worthy of his appearance. His first point was the emperor's
stables. We had walked a mile and a half to
see them. Here were two or three hundred horses of
all breeds, in a building that the emperor himself
might live in, with a magnificent inner court for a
menáge, and a wilderness of grooms, dogs, and other
appurtenances. I am as fond of a horse as most people,
but with all Vienna before me, and little time to
lose, I broke into the midst of the head groom's pedigrees,
and requested to be shown the way out. Monsieur
Karl did not take the hint. We walked on a
half mile, and stopped before another large building.
“What is this!”—“The imperial carriage-house, monseigneur.”
I was about turning on my heel and taking
my liberty into my own hands, when the large door
flew open, and the blaze of gilding from within, turned
me from my purpose. I thought I had seen the ne
plus ultra of equipages at Rome. The imperial family
of Austria ride in more style than his holiness.
The models are lighter and handsomer, while the gold
and crimson is put on quite as resplendently. The
most curious part of the show were ten or twelve state
traineaux or sleighs. I can conceive nothing more
brilliant than a turnout of these magnificent structures
upon the snow. They are built with aerial lightness,
of gold and sable, with a seat fifteen or twenty feet
from the ground, and are driven, with two or four
horses, by the royal personage himself. The grace
of their shape and the splendor of their gilded trappings
are inconceivable to one who has never seen them.

Our way lay through the court of the imperial palace.
A large crowd was collected round a carriage
with four horses standing at the side-door. As we approached
it, all hats flew off, and a beautiful woman,
of perhaps twenty-eight, came down the steps, leading
a handsome boy of two or three years. It was the
young queen of Hungary and her son. If I had seen
such a face in a cottage ornée on the borders of an
American lake, I should have thought it made for the
spot.

We entered a door of the palace at which stood a
ferocious-looking croat sentinel, near seven feet high.
Three German travelling students had just been refused
admittance. A little man appeared at the ring of the
bell within, and after a preliminary explanation by my
valet, probably a lie, he made a low bow, and invited
me to enter. I waited a moment, and a permission
was brought me to see the imperial treasury. Handing
it to Karl, I requested him to get permission inserted
for my three friends at the door. He accomplished
it in the same incomprehensible manner in
which he had obtained my own, and introducing them
with the ill-disguised contempt of a valet for all men
with dusty coats, we commenced the rounds of the
curiosities together.

A large clock, facing us as we entered, was just
striking. From either side of its base, like companies
of gentlemen and ladies advancing to greet each other,
appeared figures in the dress and semblance of the
royal family of Austria, who remained a moment, and
then retired bowing themselves courteously out backward.
It is a costly affair, presented by the landgrave
of Hesse to Maria Theresa, in 1750.

After a succession of watches, snuff-boxes, necklaces,
and jewels of every description, we came to the famous
Florentine diamond, said to be the largest in the world.
It was lost by a duke of Burgundy upon the battle-field
of Granson, found by a soldier, who parted with
it for five florins, sold again, and found its way at last
to the royal treasury of Florence, whence it was
brought to Vienna. Its weight is one hundred and
thirty-nine and a half carats, and it is estimated at one
million forty-three thousand three hundred and thirty-four
florins. It looks like a lump of light. Enormous
diamonds surround it, but it hangs among them like
Hesperus among the stars.

The next side of the gallery is occupied by specimens
of carved ivory. Many of them are antique, and
half of them are more beautiful than decent. There
were two bas-reliefs among them by Raphael Donner,
which were worth, to my eye, all the gems in the gallery.
They were taken from scripture, and represented
the Woman of Samaria at the well, and Hagar waiting
for the death of her son. No powers of elocution, no
enhancement of poetry, could bring those touching passages
of the Bible so movingly to the heart. The
latter particularly arrested me. The melancholy
beauty of Hagar, sitting with her head bowed upon her
knees, while her boy is lying a little way off, beneath
a shrub of the desert, is a piece of unparalleled workmanship.
It may well hang in the treasury of an emperor.

Miniatures of the royal family in their childhood,
set in costly gems, massive plate curiously chased,
services of gold, robes of diamonds, gem-hilted swords,
dishes wrought of solid integral agates, and finally the
crown and sceptre of Austria upon red velvet cushions,
looking very much like their imitations on the stage,
were among the world of splendors unfolded to our
eyes. The Florentine diamond and the bas-reliefs by
Raphael Donner were all I coveted. The beauty of
the diamond was royal. It needed no imagination
to feel its value. A savage would pick it up in the
desert for a star dropped out of the sky. For the
rest, the demand on my admiration fatigued me, and
I was glad to escape with my dusty friends from the
university, and exchange courtesies in the free air.
One of them spoke English a little, and called me
“Mister Englishman,” on bidding me adieu. I was
afraid of a beer-shop scene in Vienna, and did not
correct the mistake.

As we were going out of the court, four covered
wagons, drawn each by four superb horses, dashed
through the gate. I waited a moment to see what

they contained. Thirty or forty servants in livery
came out from the palace, and took from the wagons
quantities of empty baskets carefully labelled with
directions. They were from Schoenbrunn, where the
emperor is at present residing with his court, and had
come to market for the imperial kitchen. It should
be a good dinner that requires sixteen such horses to
carry to the cook.

It was the hungry hour of two, and I was still musing
on the emperor's dinner, and admiring the anxious
interest his servants took in their disposition of the
baskets, when a blast of military music came to my
ear. It was from the barracks of the imperial guard,
and I stepped under the arch, and listened to them
an hour. How gloriously they played! It was probably
the finest band in Austria. I have heard much
good music, but of its kind this was like a new sensation
to me. They stand, in playing, just under the
window at which the emperor appears daily when in
the city.

I have been indebted to Mr. Schwartz, the American
consul at Vienna, for a very unusual degree of
kindness. Among other polite attentions, he procured
for me to-day an admission to the Polytechnic school
—a favor granted with difficulty, except on the appointed
days for public visits.

The Polytechnic school was established in 1816, by
the present emperor. The building stands outside the
rampart of the city, of elegant proportions, and about
as large as all the buildings of Yale or Harvard college
thrown into one. Its object is to promote instruction
in the practical sciences, or, in other words,
to give a practical education for the trades, commerce,
or manufactures. It is divided into three departments.
The first is preparatory, and the course occupies two
years. The studies are religion and morals, elementary
mathematics, natural history, geography, universal
history, grammar, and “the German style,” declamation,
drawing, writing, and the French, Italian, and
Bohemian languages. To enter this class, the boy
must be thirteen years of age, and pays fifty cents per
month.

The second course is commercial, and occupies one
year. The studies are mercantile correspondence,
commercial law, mercantile arithmetic, the keeping of
books, geography, and history, as they relate to commerce,
acquaintance with merchandise, &c., &c.

The third course lasts one year. The studies are
chymistry as applicable to arts and trades, the fermentation
of woods, tannery, soap-making, dying, blanching,
&c., &c.; also mechanism, practical geometry,
civil architecture, hydraulics, and technology. The
two last courses are given gratis.

The whole is under the direction of a principal,
who has under him thirty professors and two or three
guardians of apparatus.

We were taken first into a noble hall, lined with
glass cases containing specimens of every article manufactured
in the German dominions. From the finest
silks down to shoes, wigs, nails, and mechanics' tools,
here were all the products of human labor. The variety
was astonishing. Within the limits of a single
room, the pupil is here made acquainted with every
mechanic art known in his country.

The next hall was devoted to models. Here was
every kind of bridge, fortification, lighthouse, dry-dock,
breakwater, canal-lock, &c., &c.; models of steamboats,
of ships, and of churches, in every style of architecture.
It was a little world.

We went thence to the chemical apartment. The
servitor here, a man without education, has constructed
all the apparatus. He is an old gray-headed man,
of a keen German countenance, and great simplicity
of manners. He takes great pride in having constructed
the largest and most complete chemical apparatus
now in London. The one which he exhibited
to us occupies the whole of an immense hall, and produces
an electric discharge like the report of a pistol.
The ordinary batteries in our universities are scarce a
twentieth part as powerful.

After showing us a variety of experiments, the old
man turned suddenly and asked us if we knew the geometrical
figures described by the vibrations of musical
notes. We confessed our ignorance, and he produced
a pane of glass covered with black sand. He
then took a fiddle-bow, and holding the glass horizontally,
drew it downward against the edge at a peculiar
angle. The sand flew as if it had been bewitched,
and took the shape of a perfect square. He asked us
to name a figure. We named a circle. Another
careful draw of the bow, and the sand flew into a circle,
with scarce a particle out of its perfect curve.
Twenty times he repeated the experiment, and with
the most complicated figures drawn on paper. He had
reduced it to an art. It would have hung him for a
magician a century ago.

However one condemns the policy of Austria with
respect to her subject provinces and the rest of Europe,
it is impossible not to be struck with her liberal
provision for her own immediate people. The public
institutions of all kinds in Vienna are allowed to be
the finest and most liberally endowed on the continent.
Her hospitals, prisons, houses of industry, and schools,
are on an imperial scale of munificence. The emperor
himself is a father to his subjects, and every tongue
blesses him. Napoleon envied him their affection, it
is said, and certainly no monarch could be more universally
beloved.

Among the institutions of Vienna are two which
are peculiar. One is a maison d'accouchement, into
which any female can enter veiled, remain till after
the period of her labor, and depart unknown, leaving
her child in the care of the institution, which rears it
as a foundling. Its object is a benevolent prevention
of infanticide.

The other is a private penitentiary, to which the
fathers of respectable families can send for reformation
children they are unable to govern. The name
is kept a secret, and the culprits are returned to their
families after a proper time, punished without disgrace.
Pride of character is thus preserved, while the
delinquent is firmly corrected.

74. LETTER LXXIV.

At the foot of a hill in one of the beautiful suburbs
of Vienna, stands a noble palace, called the Lower
Belvidere. On the summit of the hill stands another,
equally mangnificent, called the Upper Belvidere, and
between the two extend broad and princely gardens,
open to the public.

On the lower floor of the entrance-hall in the former
palace, lies the copy, in mosaic, of Leonardo da Vinci's
“Last Supper,” done at Napoleon's order. Though
supposed to be the finest piece of mosaic in the world,
it is so large that they have never found a place for it.
A temporary balcony has been erected on one side of
the room, and the spectator mounts nearly to the

ceiling to get a fair position for looking down upon it.
That unrivalled picture, now going to decay in the
convent at Milan, will probably depend upon this copy
for its name with posterity. The expression in the
faces of the apostles is as accurately preserved as in
the admirable engraving of Morghen.

The remaining halls in the palace are occupied by
a grand collection of antiquities, principally of a warlike
character. When I read in my old worm-eaten Burton,
of “Scanderburg's strength,” I never thought to see
his sword. It stands here against the wall, a long straight
weapon with a cross hilt, which few men could heave
to their shoulders. The tomahawk of poor Montezuma
hangs near it. It was presented to the emperor by the
king of Spain. It is of a dark granite, and polished very
beautifully. What a singular curiosity to find in Austria!

The windows are draped with flags dropping in pieces
with age. This, so in tatters, was renowned in the
crusades. It was carried to the Holy Land and brought
back by the archduke Ferdinand.

A hundred warriors in bright armor stand round the
hall. Their visors are down, their swords in their
hands, their feet planted for a spring. One can scarce
believe there are no men in them. The name of some
renowned soldier is attached to each. This was the
armor of the cruel Visconti of Milan—that, of Duke
Alba of Florence—both costly suits, beautifully inlaid
with gold. In the centre of the room stands a gigantic
fellow in full armor, with a sword on his thigh and a
beam in his right hand. It is the shell of the famous
farmer of Augsburgh, who was in the service of one
of the emperors. He was over eight feet in height,
and limbed in proportion. How near such relics bring
history! With what increased facility one pictures
the warrior to his fancy, seeing his sword, and hearing
the very rattle of his armor. Yet it puts one into Hamlet's
vein to see a contemptible valet lay his hand with
impunity on the armed shoulder, shaking the joints
that once belted the soul of a Visconti! I turned, in
leaving the room, to take a second look at the flag of
the crusade. It had floated, perhaps, over the helmet
of Cæur de Lion. Saladin may have had it in his eye,
assaulting the Christian camp with his pagans.

In the next room hung fifty or sixty portraits of
celebrated individuals, presented in their time to the
emperors of Austria. There was one of Mary of
Scotland. It is a face of superlative loveliness, taken
with a careless and most bewitching half smile, and
yet not without the look of royalty, which one traces
in all the pictures of the unfortunate queen. One of
the emperors of Germany married Phillippina, a farmer's
daughter, and here is her portrait. It is done in the
prim old style of the middle ages, but the face is full
of character. Her husband's portrait hangs beside it,
and she looks more born for an emperor than he.

Hall after hall followed, of costly curiosities. A
volume would not describe them. Two gold busts of
Jupiter and Juno, by Benvenuto Cellini, attracted my
attention particularly. They were very beautiful, but
I would copy them in bronze, and coin “the thunderer
and his queen,” were they mine.

Admiration is the most exhausting thing in the world.
The servitor opened a gate leading into the gardens of
the palace, that we might mount to the Upper Belvidere,
which contains the imperial gallery of paintings.
But I had no more strength. I could have dug in the
field till dinner-time—but to be astonished more than
three hours without respite is beyond me. I took a
stroll in the garden. How delightfully the unmeaning
beauty of a fountain refreshes one after this inward
fatigue. I walked on, up one alley and down another,
happy in finding nothing that surprised me, or worked
upon my imagination, or bothered my historical recollections,
or called upon my wornout superlatives
for expression. I fervently hoped not to have another
new sensation till after dinner.

Vienna is an immense city (two hundred and fifty
thousand inhabitants), but its heart only is walled in.
You may walk from gate to gate in twenty minutes.
In leaving the walls you come upon a feature of the
city which distinguishes it from every other in Europe.
Its rampart is encircled by an open park (called
the Glacis), a quarter of a mile in width and perhaps
three miles in circuit, which is, in fact, in the centre
of Vienna. The streets commence again on the other
side of it, and on going from one part of the city to
the other, you constantly cross this lovely belt of verdure,
which girds her heart like a cestus of health.
The top of the rampart itself is planted with trees, and,
commanding beautiful views in every direction, it is
generally thronged with people. (It was a favorite
walk of the Duke of Reichstadt.) Between this and
the Glacis lies a deep trench, crossed by drawbridges
at every gate, the bottom of which is cultivated prettily
as a flower-garden. Altogether Vienna is a beautiful
city. Paris may have single views about the
Tuileries that are finer than anything of the same
kind here, but this capital of western Europe, as a
whole, is quite the most imposing city I have seen.

The Glacis is full of gardens. I requested my disagreeable
necessity of a valet, this afternoon, to take
me to two or three of the most general resorts of the
people. We passed out by one of the city gates, five
minutes walk from the hotel, and entered immediately
into a crowd of people, sauntering up and down under
the alleys of the Glacis. A little farther on we found
a fanciful building, buried in trees, and occupied as
a summer café. In a little circular temple in front
was stationed a band of music, and around it for a considerable
distance were placed small tables, filled just
now with elegantly-dressed people, eating ices, or
drinking coffee. It was in every respect like a private
fête champêtre. I wandered about for an hour, expecting
involuntarily to meet some acquaintance—there
was such a look of kindness and unreserve throughout.
It is a desolate feeling to be alone in such a
crowd.

We jumped into a carriage and drove round the
Glacis for a mile, passing everywhere crowds of people
idling leisurely along and evidently out for pleasure.
We stopped before a superb façade, near one of
the gates of the city. It was the entrance to the
Volksgarten. We entered in front of a fountain, and
turning up a path to the left, found our way almost
impeded by another crowd. A semicircular building,
with a range of columns in front encircling a stand for
a band of music, was surrounded by perhaps two or
three thousand people. Small tables and seats under
trees, were spread in every direction within reach of
the music. The band played charmingly. Waiters
in white jackets and aprons were running to and fro,
receiving and obeying orders for refreshments, and
here again all seemed abandoned to one spirit of enjoyment.
I had thought we must have left all Vienna
at the other garden. I wondered how so many
people could be spared from their occupations and
families. It was no holyday. “It is always as gay in
fair weather,” said Karl.

A little back into the garden stands a beautiful little
structure, on the model of the temple of Theseus in
Greece. It was built for Canova's group of “Theseus
and the Centaur,” bought by the emperor. I had
seen copies of it in Rome, but was of course much
more struck with the original. It is a noble piece of
sculpture.

Still farther back, on the rise of a mount, stood
another fanciful café, with another band of music—and
another crowd! After we had walked around it, my
man was hurrying me away. “You have not seen the
augarten,” said he. It stands upon a little green
island in the Danube, and is more extensive than either
of the others. But I was content where I was; and

dismissing my Asmodeus, I determined to spend the
evening wandering about in the crowds alone. The
sun went down, the lamps were lit, the alleys were illuminated,
the crowd increased, and the emperor himself
could not have given a gayer evening's entertainment.

Vienna has the reputation of being the most profligate
capital in Europe. Perhaps it is so. There is
certainly, even to a stranger, no lack of temptation to
every species of pleasure. But there is, besides, a
degree of simplicity and confidence in the manners of
the Viennese which I had believed peculiar to America,
and inconsistent with the state of society in Europe.
In the most public resorts, and at all hours of
the day and evening, modest and respectable young
women of the middle classes walk alone perfectly secure
from molestation. They sit under the trees in
these public gardens, eat ices at the cafés, walk home
unattended, and no one seems to dream of impropriety.
Whole families, too, spend the afternoon upon a
seat in a thronged place of resort, their children playing
about them, the father reading, and the mother
sewing or knitting, quite unconscious of observation.
The lower and middle classes live all summer, I am
told, out of doors. It is never oppressively warm in
this latitude, and their houses are deserted after three
or four o'clock in the afternoon, and the whole population
pours out to the different gardens on the Glacis,
where till midnight, they seem perfectly happy in
the enjoyment of the innocent and unexpensive pleasures
which a wise government has provided for them.

The nobles and richer class pass their summer in
the circle of rural villages near the city. They are
nested about on the hills, and crowded with small and
lovely rural villas, more like the neighborhood of Boston
than anything I have seen in Europe.

Baden, where the emperor passes much of his time,
is called “the miniature Switzerland.” Its baths are
excellent, its hills are cut into retired and charming
walks, and from June till September it is one of the
gayest of watering-places. It is about a two hours'
drive from the city, and omnibuses at a very low rate,
run between at all times of the day. The Austrians
seldom travel, and the reason is evident. They have
everything for which others travel, at home.

75. LETTER LXXV.

The red-nosed German led on through the crowded
Graben, jostling aside the Parisian-looking lady and
her handsome Hungarian cavalier, the phlegmatic
smoker and the bearded Turk, alike. We passed the
imperial guard, the city gate, the lofty bridge over the
trench (casting a look below at the flower garden laid
out in “the ditch” which encircles the wall), and entered
upon the lovely Glacis—one step from the
crowded street to the fresh greenness of a park.

Would you believe, as you walk up this shaded
alley, that you are in the heart of the city still?

The Glacis is crossed, with its groups of fair children
and shy maids, its creeping invalids, its solitude-seeking
lovers, and its idling soldiers, and we again
enter the crowded street. A half hour more, and the
throng thins again, the country opens, and here you
are, in front of the palace of Liechstenstein, the first
noble of Austria. A modern building, of beautiful
and light architecture, rises from its clustering trees;
servants in handsome livery hang about the gates and
lean against the pillars of the portico, and with an explanation
from my lying valet, who evidently makes
me out an ambassador at least by the ceremony with
which I am received, a gray servitor makes his appear
ance and opens the immense glass door leading from
the side of the court.

One should step gingerly on the polished marble of
this superb staircase! It opens at once into a lofty
hall, the ceiling of which is painted in fresco by an
Italian master. It is a room of noble proportions.
Few churches in America are larger, and yet it seems
in keeping with the style of the palace, the staircase
—everything but the creature meant to inhabit it.

How different are the moods in which one sees pictures!
To-day I am in the humor to give it to the
painter's delusion. The scene is real. Asmodeus is
at my elbow, and I am witched from spot to spot, invisible
myself, gazing on the varied scenes revealed
only to the inspired vision of genius.

A landscape opens.[12] It is one of the woody recesses
of Lake Nervi, at the very edge of “Dian's Mirror.”
The huntress queen is bathing with her
nymphs. The sandal is half laced over an ankle that
seems fit for nothing else than to sustain a goddess,
when casting her eye on the lovely troop emerging
from the water, she sees the unfortunate Calista surrounded
by her astonished sisters, and fainting with
shame. Poor Calista! one's heart pleads for her.
But how expressive is the cold condemning look in
the beautiful face of her mistress queen! Even the
dogs have started from their reclining position on the
grass, and stand gazing at the unfortunate, wondering
at the silent astonishment of the virgin troop. Pardon
her, imperial Dian!

Come to the baptism of a child! It is a vision of
Guido Reni's.[13] A young mother, apparently scarce
sixteen, has brought her first child to the altar. She
kneels with it in her arms, looking earnestly into the
face of the priest while he sprinkles the water on its
pure forehead, and pronounces the words of consecration.
It is a most lovely countenance, made lovelier
by the holy feeling in her heart. Her eyes are moist,
her throat swells with emotion—my own sight dims
while I gaze upon her. We have intruded on one of
the most holy moments of nature. A band of girls,
sisters by the resemblance, have accompanied the
young mother, and stand, with love and wonder in
their eyes, gazing on the face of the child. How
strangely the mingled thoughts, crowding through
their minds, are expressed in their excited features.
It is a scene worthy of an audience of angels.

We have surprised Giorgione's wife (the “Flora”
of Titian, the “love in life” of Byron) looking at a
sketch by her husband. It stands on his easel, outlined
in crayons, and represents Lucretia the moment
before she plunges the dagger into her bosom. She
was passing through his studio, and you see by the half
suspended foot, that she stopped but for a momentary
glance, and has forgotten herself in thoughts that
have risen unaware. The head of Lucretia resembles
her own, and she is wondering what Giorgione thought
while he drew it. Did he resemble her to the Roman's
wife in virtue as well as in feature? There is
an embarrassment in the expression of her face, as if
she doubted he had drawn it half in mischief. We
will leave the lovely Venetian to her thoughts. When
she sits again to Titian, it will be with a colder
modesty.

Hoogstraeten, a Dutch painter, conjures up a scene
for you. It is an old man, who has thrust his head
through a prison gate, and is looking into the street
with the listless patience and curiosity of one whom
habit has reconciled to his situation. His beard is
neglected, his hair is slightly grizzled, and on his

head sits a shabby fur cap, that has evidently shared
all his imprisonment, and is quite past any pride of
appearance. What a vacant face! How perfectly he
seems to look upon the street below, as upon something
with which he has nothing more to do. There
is no anxiety to get out, in its expression. He is past
that. He looks at the playing children, and watches
the zigzag trot of an idle dog with the quiet apathy
of one who can find nothing better to help off the
hour. It is a picture of stolid, contented, unthinking
misery.

Look at this boy, standing impatiently on one foot
at his mother's knee, while she pares an apple for
him! With what an amused and playful love she
listens to his hurrying entreaties, stealing a glance at
him as he pleads, with a deeper feeling than he will
be able to comprehend for years! It is one of the
commonest scenes in life, yet how pregnant with speculation!

On—on—what an endless gallery! I have seen
twelve rooms, with forty or fifty pictures in each, and
there are thirteen halls more! The delusion begins
to fade. These are pictures merely. Beautiful ones,
however! If language could convey to your eye the
impressions that this waste and wealth of beauty have
conveyed to mine, I would write of every picture.
There is not an indifferent one here. All Italy together
has not so many works by the Flemish masters
as are contained in this single gallery—certainly
none so fine. A most princely fortune for many generations
must have been devoted to its purchase.

I have seen seven or eight things in all Italy, by
Corregio. They were the gems of the galleries in
which they exist, but always small, and seemed to me
to want a certain finish. Here is a Corregio, a large
picture, and no miniature ever had so elaborate a
beauty. It melts into the eye. It is a conception of
female beauty so very extraordinary, that it seems to
me it must become, in the mind of every one who sees
it, the model and the standard of all loveliness. It is
a nude Venus, sitting lost in thought, with Cupid
asleep in her lap. She is in the sacred retirement of
solitude, and the painter has thrown into her attitude
and expression so speaking an unconsciousness of all
presence, that you feel like a daring intruder while you
gaze upon the picture. Surely such softness of coloring,
such faultless proportions, such subdued and yet
eloquent richness of teint in the skin, was never before
attained by mortal pencil. I am here, some five thousand
miles from America, yet would I have made the
voyage but to raise my standard of beauty by this ravishing
image of woman.

In the circle of Italian galleries, one finds less of
female beauty, both in degree and in variety, than his
anticipations had promised. Three or four heads at
the most, of the many hundreds that he sees, are imprinted
in his memory, and serve as standards in his
future observations. Even when standing before the
most celebrated pictures, one often returns to recollections
of living beauty in his own country, by which
the most glowing head of Titian or the Veronese suffer
in comparison. In my own experience this has
been often true, and it is perhaps the only thing in
which my imagination of foreign wonders was too
fervent. To this Venus of Corregio's, however, I
unhesitatingly submit all knowledge, all conception
even, of female loveliness. I have seen nothing in
life, imagined nothing from the descriptions of poets,
that is any way comparable to it. It is matchless.

In one of the last rooms the servitor unlocked two
handsome cases, and showed me, with a great deal of
circumstance, two heads by Denner. They were an
old man and his wife—two hale, temperate, good old
country gossips—but so curiously finished! Every
pore was painted. You counted the stiff stumps of
the goodman's beard as you might those of a living
person, till you were tired, Every wrinkle looked as
if a month had been spent in elaborating it. The man
said they were extremely valuable, and I certainly
never saw anything more curiously and perhaps uselessly
wrought.

Near them was a capital picture of a drunken fellow,
sitting by himself and laughing heartily at his own performance
on the pipe. It was irresistible, and I joined
in the laugh till the long suite of halls rung again.

Landscapes by Van Delen—such as I have seen
engravings of in America, and sighed over as unreal—
the skies, the temples, the water, the soft mountains,
the distant ruins, seemed so like the beauty of a dream.
Here, they recall to me even lovelier scenes in Italy—
atmospheres richer than the painter's pallet can imitate,
and ruins and temples whose ivy-grown and melancholy
grandeur are but feebly copied at the best

Come, Karl! I am bewildered with these pictures.
You have twenty such galleries in Vienna, you say!
I have seen enough for to-day, however, and we will
save the Belvidere till to-morrow. Here! pay the
servitor, and the footman, and the porter, and let us
get into the open air. How common look your Viennese
after the celestial images we have left behind!
And, truly, this is the curse of refinement. The faces
we should have loved else, look dull! The forms
that were graceful before, move somehow heavily. I
have entered a gallery ere now, thinking well of a face
that accompanied me, and I have learned indifference
to it, by sheer comparison, before coming away.

We return through the Kohlmarket, one of the most
fashionable streets of Vienna. It is like a fancy-ball.
Hungarians, Poles, Croats, Wallachians, Jews, Moldavians,
Greeks, Turks, all dressed in their national and
striking costumes, promenade up and down, smoking
all, and none exciting the slightest observation. Every
third window is a pipe-shop, and they show, by their
splendor and variety, the expensiveness of the passion.
Some of them are marked “two hundred dollars.”
The streets reek with tobacco smoke. You never
catch a breath of untainted air within the Glacis.
Your hotel, your café, your coach, your friend, are
all redolent of the same disgusting odor.

76. LETTER LXXVI.

Drove to Schoenbrunn. It is a princely palace, some
three miles from the city, occupied at present by the
emperor and his court. Napoleon resided here during
his visit to Vienna, and here his son died—the two
circumstances which alone make it worth much trouble
to see. The afternoon was too cold to hope to
meet the emperor in the grounds, and being quite
satisfied with drapery and modern paintings, I contented
myself with having driven through the court, and
kept on to Hietzing.

This is a small village of country-seats within an
hour's drive of the city—another Jamaica-Plains, or
Dorchester in the neighborhood of Boston. It is the
summer retreat of most of the rank and fashion of
Vienna. The American consul has here a charming
country-house, buried in trees, where the few of our
countrymen who travel to Austria find the most hospitable
of welcomes. A bachelor friend of mine from
New-York is domesticated in the village with a German

family. I was struck with the Americanism of their
manners. The husband and wife, a female relative
and an intimate friend of the family, were sitting in the
garden engaged in grave, quiet, sensible conversation.
They had passed the afternoon together. Their manners
were affectionate to each other, but serious and
respectful. When I entered, they received me with
kindness, and the conversation was politely changed to
French, which they all spoke fluently. Topics were
started, in which it was supposed I would be interested,
and altogether the scene was one of the simplest and
purest domestic happiness. This seems to you, I dare
say, like the description of a very common thing, but I
have not seen such a one before since I left my country.
It is the first family I have found in two years'
travel who lived in, and seemed sufficient for, themselves.
It came over me with a kind of feeling of
refreshment.

In the evening there was a ball at a public room in
the village. It was built in the rear of a café, to which
we paid about thirty cents for entrance. I was not
prepared for the splendor with which it was got up.
The hall was very large and of beautiful proportions,
built like the interior of a temple, with columns on the
four sides. A partition of glass divided it from a supper-room
equally large, in which were set out perhaps
fifty tables, furnished with a carte, from which each
person ordered his supper when he wished it, after the
fashion of a restaurant. The best band in Vienna
filled the orchestra, led by the celebrated Strauss, who
has been honored for his skill with presents from half
the monarchs of Europe.

The ladies entered, dressed in perfect taste, a la
Parisienne, but the gentlemen (hear it, Basil Hall and
Mrs. Trollope!) came in frock coats and boots, and
danced with their hats on! It was a public ball, and
there was, of course, a great mixture of society; but I
was assured that it was attended constantly by the most
respectable people of the village, and was as respectable
as anything of the kind in the middle classes.
There were, certainly, many ladies in the company of
elegant manners and appearance, and among the gentlemen
I recognised two attachés to the French embassy,
whom I had known in Paris, and several Austrian
gentlemen of rank were pointed out to me among the
dancers. The galopade and the waltz were the only
dances, and dirty boots and hats to the contrary notwithstanding,
it was the best waltzing I ever saw. They
danced with a soul.

The best part of it was the supper. They danced
and eat—danced and eat, the evening through. It
was quite the more important entertainment of the two.
The most delicate ladies present returned three and
four times to the supper, ordering fried chicken, salads,
cold meats, and beer, again and again, as if every
waltz created a fresh appetite. The bill was called
for, the ladies assisted in making the change, the tankard
was drained, and off they strolled to the ball-room to
engage with renewed spirit in the dance. And these,
positively, were ladies who, in dress, manners, and modest
demeanor, might pass uncriticised in any society
in the world! Their husbands and brothers attended
them, and no freedom was attempted, and I am sure it
would not have been permitted even to speak to a lady
without a formal introduction.

We left most of the company supping at a late hour,
and I drove into the city, amused with the ball, and
reconciled to any or all of the manners which travellers
in America find so peculiarly entertaining.

These cold winds from the Danube have given me
a rheumatism. I was almost reconciled to it this
morning, however, by a curtain-scene which I should
have missed but for its annoyance. I had been driven
out of my bed at daylight, and was walking my room
between the door and the window, when a violent
knocking in the street below arrested my attention.
A respectable family occupies the house opposite, consisting
of a father and mother and three daughters, the
least attractive of whom has a lover. I can not well
avoid observing them whenever I am in my room, for
every house in Vienna has a leaning cushion on the
window for the elbows, and the ladies of all classes are
upon them the greater part of the day. A handsome
carriage, servants in livery, and other circumstances,
leave no doubt in my mind that my neighbors are rather
of the better class.

The lover stood at the street door with a cloak on
his arm, and a man at his side with his portmanteau.
He was going on a journey and had come to take leave
of his mistress. He was let in by a gaping servant,
who looked rather astonished at the hour he had chosen
for his visit, but the drawing-room windows were soon
thrown open, and the lady made her appearance with
her hair in papers and other marks of a hasty toilet.
My room is upon the same floor, and as I paced to and
fro, the narrowness of the street in a manner forced
them upon my observation. The scene was a very
violet one, and the lady's tears flowed without restraint.
After twenty partings at least, the lover scarce getting
to the door before he returned to take another embrace,
he finally made his exit, and the lady threw herself on
a sofa and hid her face—for five minutes! I had began
to feel for her, although her swollen eyes added very
unnecessarily to her usual plainness, when she rose
and rang the bell. The servant appeared and disappeared,
and in a few minutes returned with a ham, a
loaf of bread, and a mug of beer! and down sets my
sentimental miss and consoles the agony of parting
with a meal that I would venture to substitute in quantity
for any working man's lunch.

I went to bed and rose at nine, and she was sitting
at breakfast with the rest of the family, playing as good
a knife and fork as her sisters, though, I must admit,
with an expression of sincere melancholy in her countenance.

The scene, I am told by my friend the consul, was
perfectly German. They eat a great deal, he says, in
affliction. The poet writes:—

For silent read hungry.

The Upper Belvidere, a palace containing eighteen
large rooms, filled with pictures. This is the imperial
gallery and the first in Austria. How can I give you
an idea of perhaps five hundred masterpieces! You
see here now, and by whom Italy has been stripped.
They have bought up all Flanders one would
think, too. In one room here are are twenty-eight
superb Vandykes. Austria, in fact, has been growing
rich while every other nation on the continent has
been growing poor, and she has purchased the treasures
of half the world at a discount.[14]

It is wearisome writing of pictures, one's language
is so limited. I must mention one or two in this collection,
however, and I will let you off entirely on the
Esterhazy, which is nearly as fine.

Cleopatra dying. She is represented younger than
usual and with a more fragile and less queenly style of
beauty than is common. It is a fair slight creature of
seventeen, who looks made to depend for her very
breath upon affection, and is dying of a broken heart.
It is painted with great feeling, and with a soft and delightful
tone of color which is peculiar to the artist.
It is the third of Guido Cagnacci's pictures that I have

seen. One was the gem of a gallery at Bologna, and
was bought last summer by Mr. Cabot of Boston.

The wife of Potiphar is usually represented as a
woman of middle age, with a full voluptuous person.
She is so drawn, I remember, in the famous picture in
the Barberini palace at Rome, said to be the most expressive
thing of its kind in the world. Here is a
painting, less dangerously expressive of passion, but
full of beauty. She is eighteen at the most, fair, delicate,
and struggles with the slender boy, who seems
scarce older than herself, more like a sister from whom
a mischievous brother has stolen something in sport.
Her partly disclosed figure has all the incomplete
slightness of a girl. The handsome features of Joseph
express more embarrassment than anger. The
habitual courtesy to his lovely mistress is still there,
his glance is just averted from the snowy bosom toward
which he is drawn, but in the firmly curved lip the
sense of duty sits clearly defined, and evidently will
triumph. I have forgotten the painter's name. His
model must have been some innocent girl whose modest
beauty led him away from his subject. Called by
another name the picture were perfect.

A portrait of Count Wallenstein, by Vandyke. It
looks a man, in the fullest sense of the word. The
pendant to it is the Countess Turentaxis, and she is a
woman he might well have loved—calm, lofty, and
pure. They are pictures I should think would have
an influence on the character of those who saw them
habitually.

Here is a curious picture by Schnoer—Mephistopheles
tempting Faust. The scholar sits at his table,
with a black letter volume open before him, and apparatus
of all descriptions around. The devil has entered
in the midst of his speculations, dressed in
black like a professor, and stands waiting the decision
of Faust, who gazes intently on the manuscript held
in his hand. His fingers are clenched, his eyes start
from his head, his feet are braced, and the devil eyes
him with a side glance, in which malignity and satisfaction
are admirably mingled. The features of Faust
are emaciated, and show the agitation of his soul very
powerfully. The points of his compasses, globes, and
instruments, emit electric sparks toward the infernal
visiter; his lamp burns blue, and the picture altogether
has the most diabolical effect. It is quite a large
painting, and just below, by the same artist, hangs a
small, simple, sweet Madonna. It is a singular contrast
in subjects by the same hand.

A portrait of the Princess Esterhazy, by Angelica
Kauffman—a beautiful woman, painted in the pure,
touching style of that interesting artist.

Then comes a Cleopatra dropping the pearl into the
cup. How often, and how variously, and how admirably
always, the Egyptian queen is painted! I never
have seen an indifferent one. In this picture the
painter seems to have lavished all he could conceive
of female beauty upon his subject. She is a glorious
creature. It reminds me of her own proud description
of herself, when she is reproaching Antony to one
of her maids, in the “The False One” of Beaumont
and Fletcher:—

I have marked a great many pictures in this collection
I can not describe without wearying you, yet I feel
unwilling to let them go by. A female, representing
religion, feeding a dove from a cup, a most lovely thing
by Guido; portraits of Gerard Douw and Rembrandt,
by themselves; Rubens's children, a boy and girl ten
or twelve years of age, one of the most finished paintings
I ever saw, and entirely free from the common
dropsical style of coloring of this artist; another portrait
of Giorgione's wife, the fiftieth that I have seen,
at least, yet a face of which one would never become
weary; a glowing landscape by Fischer, the first by
this celebrated artist I have met; and last (for this is
mere catalogue-making), a large picture representing
the sitting of the English parliament in the time of
Pitt. It contains about a hundred portraits, among
which those of Pitt and Fox are admirable. The
great prime minister stands speaking in the foreground,
and Fox sits on the opposite side of the house listening
attentively with half a smile on his features. It is
a curious picture to find in Vienna.

One thing more, however—a Venus, by Lampi. It
kept me a great while before it. She lies asleep on a
rich couch, and, apparently in her dream, is pressing
a rose to her bosom, while one delicate foot, carelessly
thrown back, is half imbedded in a superb cushion
supporting a crown and sceptre. It is a lie, by all experience.
The moral is false, but the picture is delicious.

77. LETTER LXXVII.

I left Vienna at daylight in a diligence nearly as
capacious as a steamboat—inaptly called the eil-wagon.
A Friuli count with a pair of cavalry mustaches, his
wife, a pretty Viennese of eighteen, scarce married a
year, two fashionable looking young Russians, an Austrian
midshipman, a fat Gratz lawyer, a trader from
the Danube, and a young Bavarian student, going to
seek his fortune in Egypt, were my companions. The
social habits of continental travellers had given me
thus much information by the end of the first post.

We drove on with German regularity, three days
and three nights, eating four meals a-day (and very
good ones), and improving hourly in our acquaintance.
The Russians spoke all our languages. The Friulese
and the Bavarian spoke everything but English, and
the lady, the trader, and the Gratz avocat, were confined
to their vernacular. It was a pretty idea of Babel
when the conversation became general.

We were coursing the bank of a river, in one of the
romantic passes of the mountains of Styria, with a
dark thunder-storm gathering on the summit of a
crag overhanging us. I was pointing out to one of
my companions a noble ruin of a castle seated very
loftily on the edge of one of the precipices, when a
streak of the most vivid lightning shot straight upon
the northernmost turret, and the moment after several
large masses rolled slowly down the mountain-side.
It was so like the scenery in a play, that I looked at
my companion with half a doubt that it was some optical
delusion. It reminded me of some of Martin's
engravings. The sublime is so well imitated in our
day that one is less surprised than he would suppose
when nature produces the reality.

The night was very beautiful when we reached the
summit of the mountain above Trieste. The new
moon silvered the little curved bay below like a polished
shield, and right in the path of its beams lay the
two frigates like a painting. I must confess that the
comfortable cot swinging in the ward-room of the
“United States” was the prominent thought in my
mind as I gazed upon the scene. The fatigue of
three days and nights' hard driving had dimmed my
eye for the picturesque. Leaving my companions to

the short beds[15] and narrow coverlets of a German hotel,
I jumped into the first boat at the pier, and in a
few minutes was alongside the ship. How musical is
the hail of a sentry in one's native tongue, after a short
habituation to the jargon of foreign languages!
“Boat ahoy!” It made my heart leap. The officers
had just returned from Venice, some over land by the
Friuli and some by the steamer through the gulf, and
were sitting round the table laughing with professional
merriment over their various adventures. It was
getting back to country and friends and home.

I accompanied the commodore's family yesterday in
a visit to the Grotto of Adelsburg. It is about thirty
miles back into the Friuli mountains, near the province
of Cariola. We arrived at the nearest tavern at
three in the afternoon, and subscribing our names
upon the magistrate's books, took four guides and the
requisite number of torches, and started on foot. A
half hour's walk brought us a large, rushing stream,
which, after turning a mill, disappeared with violence
into the mouth of a broad cavern, sunk in the base of
a mountain. An iron gate opened on the nearest side,
and lighting our torches, we received an addition of
half a dozen men to our party of guides, and entered.
We descended for ten or fifteem minutes, through a
capacious gallery of rock, up to the ankles in mud,
and feeling continually the drippings exuding from
the roof, till by the echoing murmurs of dashing water
we found ourselves approaching the bed of a subterraneous
river. We soon emerged in a vast cavern,
whose height, though we had twenty torches, was lost
in the darkness. The river rushed dimly below us, at
the depth of perhaps fifty feet, partially illuminated by
a row of lamps, hung on a slight wooden bridge by
which we were to cross to the opposite side.

We descended by a long flight of artificial stairs,
and stood upon the bridge. The wildness of the
scene is indescribable. A lamp or two glimmered
faintly from the lofty parapet from which we had descended,
the depth and breadth of the surrounding
cave could only be measured by the distance of the
echoes of the waters, and beneath us leaped and
foamed a dark river, which sprang from its invisible
channel, danced a moment in the faint light of our
lamps, and was lost again instantly in darkness. It
brought with it, from the green fields through which
it had come, a current of soft warm air, peculiarly delightful
after the chilliness of the other parts of the
cavern; there was a smell of new-mown hay in it
which seemed lost in the tartarean blackness around.

Our guides led on, and we mounted a long staircase
on the opposite side of the bridge. At the head of it
stood a kind of monument, engraved with the name
of the emperor of Austria, by whose munificence the
staircase had been cut and the conveniences for strangers
provided. We turned hence to the right, and
entered a long succession of natural corridors, roofed
with stalactites, with a floor of rock and mud, and so
even and wide that the lady under my protection had
seldom occasion to leave my arm. In the narrowest
part of it, the stalactites formed a sort of reversed
grove, with the roots in the roof. They were of
a snowy white, and sparkled brilliantly in the light of
the torches. One or two had reached the floor, and
formed slender and beautiful sparry columns, upon
which the names of hundreds of visiters were written
in pencil.

The spars grew white as we proceeded, and we were
constantly emerging into large halls of the size of handsome
drawing-rooms, whose glittering roofs, and sides
lined with fantastic columns, seemed like the brilliant
frost-work of a crystallized cavern of ice. Some of
the accidental formations of the stalagmites were very
curious. One large area was filled with them of the
height of small plants. It was called by the guides
the “English Garden.” At the head of another saloon,
stood a throne, with a stalactite canopy above it,
so like the work of art, that it seemed as if the sculptor
had but left the finishing undone.

We returned part of the way we had come, and
took another branch of the grotto, a little more on the
descent. A sign above informed us that it was the
“road to the infernal regions.” We walked on an hour
at a quick pace, stopping here and there to observe
the oddity of the formations. In one place, the stalactites
had enclosed a room, leaving only small openings
between the columns, precisely like the grating
of a prison. In another, the ceiling lifted out of the
reach of torch-light, and far above us we heard the
deep-toned beat as upon a muffled-bell. It was a thin
circular sheet of spar, called “the bell,” to which one
of the guides had mounted, striking upon it with a billet
of wood.

We came after a while to a deeper descent, which
opened into a magnificent and spacious hall. It is
called “the ballroom,” and used as such once a year,
on the occasion of a certain Illyrian festa. The floor
has been cleared of stalagmites, the roof and sides are
ornamented beyond all art with glittering spars, a natural
gallery with a balustrade of stalactites contains
the orchestra, and side-rooms are all around where
supper might be laid, and dressing-rooms offered in
the style of a palace. I can imagine nothing more
magnificent than such a scene. A literal description
of it even would read like a fairy tale.

A little farther on, we came to a perfect representation
of a waterfall. The impregnated water had fallen
on a declivity, and with a slightly ferruginous tinge of
yellow, poured over in the most natural resemblance
to a cascade after a rain. We proceeded for ten or
fifteen minutes, and found a small room like a chapel,
with a pulpit, in which stood one of the guides, who
gave us, as we stood beneath, an Illyrian exhortation.
There was a sounding-board above, and I have seen
pulpits in old gothic churches that seemed at a first
glance, to have less method in their architecture. The
last thing we reached, was the most beautiful. From
the cornice of a long gallery, hung a thin, translucent
sheet of spar, in the graceful and waving folds of a curtain;
with a lamp behind, the hand could be seen
through any part of it. It was perhaps twenty feet in
length, and hung five or six feet down from the roof
of the cavern. The most singular part of it was the
fringe. A ferruginous stain ran through it from one
end to the other, with the exactness of a drawn line,
and thence to the curving edge a most delicate rose-teint
faded gradually down like the last flush of sunset
through a silken curtain. Had it been a work of art,
done in alabaster, and stained with the pencil, it would
have been thought admirable.

The guide wished us to proceed, but our feet were
wet, and the air of the cavern was too chill. We were
at least four miles, they told us, from the entrance,
having walked briskly for upward of two hours. The
grotto is said to extend ten miles under the mountains,
and has never been thoroughly explored. Parties
have started with provisions, and passed forty-eight
hours in it without finding the extremity. It seems
to me that any city I ever saw might be concealed in
its caverns. I have often tried to conceive of the grottoes
of Antiparos, and the celebrated caverns of our
own country, but I received here an entirely new idea
of the possibility of space under ground. There is no
conceiving it unseen. The river emerges on the other
side of the mountain, seven or eight miles from its first
entrance.

We supped and slept at the little albergo of the village,
and returned the next day to an early dinner.

Trieste.—A ball on board the United States. The
guns were run out of the ports; the main and mizen-masts
were wound with red and white bunting; the
capstan was railed with arms and wreathed with
flowers; the wheel was tied with nose-gays; the
American eagle stood against the mainmast, with a
star of midshipmen's swords glittering above it; festoons
of evergreens were laced through the rigging;
the companion-way was arched with hoops of green
leaves and roses; the decks were tastefully chalked;
the commodore's skylight was piled with cushions and
covered with red damask for an ottoman; seats were
laid along from one carronade to the other; and the
whole was enclosed with a temporary tent lined
throughout with showy flags, and studded all over
with bouquets of all the flowers of Illyria. Chandeliers
made of bayonets, battle-lanterus, and candles in
any quantity, were disposed all over the hall. A splendid
supper was set out on the gun-deck below, draped
in with flags. Our own and the Constellation's boats
were to be at the pier at nine o'clock to bring off the
ladies, and at noon everything promised of the brightest.

First, about four in the afternoon came up a saucy-looking
cloud from the westernmost peak of the Friuli.
Then followed from every point toward the north, an
extending edge of a broad solid black sheet which rose
with the regularity of a curtain, and began to send
down a wind upon us which made us look anxiously
to our ball-room bowlines. The midshipmen were all
forward, watching it from the forecastle. The lieutenants
were in the gangway, watching it from the
ladder. The commodore looked seriously out of the
larboard cabin port. It was as grave a ship's company
as ever looked out for a shipwreck.

The country about Trieste is shaped like a bellows,
and the city and harbor lie in the nose. They have
a wind that comes down through the valley, called the
“bora,” which several times in the year is strong
enough to lift people from their feet. We could see,
by the clouds of dust on the mountain roads, that it
was coming. At six o'clock the shrouds began to
creak; the white tops flew from the waves in showers
of spray, and the roof of our sea-palace began to shiver
in the wind. There was no more hope. We had
waited even too long. All hands were called to take
down the chandeliers, sword-stars, and ottomans, and
before it was half done, the storm was upon us; the
bunting was flying and flapping, the nicely-chalked
decks were swashed with rain, and strown with leaves
of flowers, and the whole structure, the taste and labor
of the ship's company for two days, was a watery wreck.

Lieutenant C—, who had had the direction of the
whole, was the officer of the deck. He sent for his
pea-jacket, and leaving him to pace out his watch
among the ruins of his imagination, we went below to
get early to bed, and forget our disappointment in sleep.

The next morning the sun rose without a veil. The
“blue Friuli” looked clear and fresh; the southwest
wind came over softly from the shore of Italy, and we
commenced retrieving our disaster with elastic spirit.
Nothing had suffered seriously except the flowers, and
boats were despatched ashore for fresh supplies, while
the awnings were lifted higher and wider than before,
the bright-colored flags replaced, the arms polished
and arranged in improved order, and the decks rechalked
with new devices. At six in the evening everything
was swept up, and the ball-room astonished
even ourselves. It was the prettiest place for a dance
in the world.

The ship has an admirable band of twenty Italians,
collected from Naples and other ports, and a fanciful
orchestra was raised for them on the larboard side of
the mainmast. They struck up a march as the first
boatful of ladies stepped upon the deck, and in the
course of half an hour the waltzing commenced with
at least two hundred couples, while the ottoman and
seats under the hammock-cloths were filled with spectators.
The frigate has a lofty poop, and there was
room enough upon it for two quadrilles after it had
served as a reception-room. It was edged with a temporary
balustrade, wreathed with flowers and studded
with lights, and the cabin beneath (on a level with the
main ball-room), was set out with card-tables. From
the gangway entrance, the scene was like a brilliant
theatrical ballet.

An amusing part of it was the sailors' imitation on
the forward decks. They had taken the waste shrubbery
and evergreens, of which there was a great quantity,
and had formed a sort of grove, extending all
round. It was arched with festoons of leaves, with
quantities of fruit tied among them; and over the entrance
was suspended a rough picture of a frigate with
the inscription, “Free trade and sailors' rights.” The
forecastle was ornamented with cutlasses and one or
two nautical transparencies, with pistols and miniature
ships interspersed, and the whole lit up handsomely.
The men were dressed in their white duck trowsers
and blue jackets, and sat round on the guns playing at
draughts, or listening to the music, or gazing at the
ladies constantly promenading fore and aft, and to me
this was one of the most interesting parts of the spectacle.
Five hundred weather-beaten and manly faces
are a fine sight anywhere.

The dance went gayly on. The reigning belle was
an American, but we had lovely women of all nations
among our guests. There are several wealthy Jewish
families in Trieste, and their dark-eyed daughters, we
may say at this distance, are full of the thoughtful
loveliness peculiar to the race. Then we had Illyrians
and Germans, and—Terpsichore be our witness—how
they danced! My travelling companion, the Count
of Friuli, was there; and his little Viennese wife,
though she spoke no Christian language, danced as
featly as a fairy. Of strangers passing through the
Trieste, we had several of distinction. Among them
was a fascinating Milanese marchioness, a relative of
Manzoni's, the novelist (and as enthusiastic and eloquent
a lover of her country as I ever listened to on
the subject of oppressed Italy), and two handsome
young men, the counts Neipperg, sons-in-law to Maria
Louisa, who amused themselves as if they had seen
nothing better in the little dutchy of Parma.

We went below at midnight to supper, and the ladies
came up with renewed spirit to the dance. It was a
brilliant scene indeed. The officers of both ships, in
full uniform, the gentlemen from shore, mostly military,
in full dress, the gayety of the bright red bunting,
laced with white and blue, and studded, wherever they
would stand, with flowers, and the really uncommon
number of beautiful women, with the foreign features
and complexions so rich and captivating to our eyes,
produced altogether an effect unsurpassed by anything
I have ever seen even at the court fêtes of Europe.
The daylight gun fired at the close of a galopade,
and the crowded boats pulled ashore with their lovely
freight by the broad light of morning.

78. LETTER LXXVIII.

Trieste is certainly a most agreeable place. Its
streets are beautifully paved and clean, its houses new

and well built, and its shops as handsome and as well
stocked with every variety of thing as those of Paris.
Its immense commerce brings all nations to its port,
and it is quite the commercial centre of the continent.
The Turk smokes cross-legged in the café, the English
merchant has his box in the country and his snug
establishment in town, the Italian has his opera and
his wife her cavalier, the Yankee captain his respectable
boarding-house, and the German his four meals a
day at a hotel died brown with tobacco. Every nation
is at home in Trieste.

The society is beyond what is common in a European
mercantile city. The English are numerous enough
to support a church, and the circle, of which our
hospitable consul is the centre, is one of the most
refined and agreeable it has been my happiness to
meet. The friends of Mr. Moore have pressed every
possible civility and kindness upon the commodore
and his officers, and his own house has been literally
our home on shore. It is the curse of this volant life,
otherwise so attractive, that its frequent partings are
bitter in proportion to its good fortune. We make
friends but to lose them.

We got under way with a light breeze this morning,
and stole gently out of the bay. The remembrance
of a thousand kindnesses made our anchors lift heavily.
We waved our handkerchiefs to the consul, whose
balconies were filled with his charming family watching
our departure, and, with a freshening wind, disappeared
around the point, and put up our helm for Pola.

The ruins of Pola, though among the first in the
world, are seldom visited. They lie on the eastern
shore of the Adriatic, at the head of a superb natural
bay, far from any populous town, and are seen only by
the chance trader who hugs the shore for the land-breeze,
or the Albanian robber who looks down upon
them with wonder from the mountains. What their
age is I can not say nearly. The country was conquered
by the Romans about one hundred years before
the time of our Savior, and the amphitheatre and temples
were probably erected soon after.

We ran into the bay, with the other frigate close
astern, and anchored off a small green island which
shuts in the inner harbor. There is deep water up
to the ancient town on either side, and it seems as if
nature had amused herself with constructing a harbor
incapable of improvement. Pola lay about two miles
from the sea.

It was just evening, and we deferred our visit to the
ruins till morning. The majestic amphitheatre stood
on a gentle ascent, a mile from the ship, goldenly
bright in the flush of sunset; the pleasant smell of the
shore stole over the decks, and the bands of the two
frigates played alternately the evening through. The
receding mountains of Istria changed their light blue
veils gradually to gray and sable, and with the pure
stars of these enchanted seas, and the shell of a new
moon bending over Italy in the west, it was such a
night as one remembrances like a friend. The Constellation
was to part from us here, leaving us to pursue
our voyage to Greece. There were those on board
who had brightened many of our “hours ashore,” in
these pleasant wanderings. We pulled back to our
own ship, after a farewell visit, with regrets deepened
by crowds of pleasant remembrances.

The next morning we pulled ashore to the ruins.
The amphitheatre was close upon the sea, and, to my
surprise and pleasure, there was no cicerone. A contemplative
donkey was grazing under the walls, but
there was no other living creature near. We looked
at its vast circular wall with astonishment. The coliseum
at Rome, a larger building of the same description,
is, from the outside, much less imposing. The
whole exterior wall, a circular pile one hundred feet
high in front, and of immense blocks of marble and
granite, is as perfect as when the Roman workman
hewed the last stone. The interior has been nearly
all removed. The well-hewn blocks of the many rows
of seats were too tempting, like those of Rome, to the
barbarians who were building near. The circle of the
arena, in which the gladiators and wild beasts of these
then new-conquered provinces fought, is still marked
by the foundations of its barrier. It measures two
hundred and twenty-three feet. Beneath it is a broad
and deep canal, running toward the sea, filled with
marble columns, still erect upon their pedestals, used
probably for the introduction of water for the naumachia.
The whole circumference of the amphitheatre is twelve
hundred and fifty-six feet, and the thickness of the exterior
wall seven feet six inches. Its shape is oblong,
the length being four hundred and thirty-six feet, and
the breadth three hundred and fifty. The measurements
were taken by the captain's orders, and are doubtless
critically correct.

We loitered about the ruins several hours, finding
in every direction the remains of the dilapidated interior.
The sculpture upon the fallen capitals and
fragments of frieze was in the highest style of ornament.
The arena is overgrown with rank grass, and the crevices
in the walls are filled with flowers. A vineyard,
with its large blue grape just within a week of ripeness,
encircles the rear of the amphitheatre. The
boat's crew were soon among them, much better amused
than they could have been by all the antiquities in
Istria.

We walked from the amphitheatre to the town; a
miserable village built around two antique temples,
one of which still stands alone, with its fine corinthian
columns, looking just ready to crumble. The other
is incorporated barbarously with the guard-house of
the place, and is a curious mixture of beautiful sculpture
and dirty walls. The pediment, which is still perfect,
in the rear of the building, is a piece of carving, worthy
of the choicest cabinet of Europe. The thieveries
from the amphitheatre are easily detected. There is
scarce a beggar's house in the village, that does not
show a bit or two of sculptural marble upon its front.

At the end of the village stands a triumphal arch,
recording the conquests of a Roman consul. Its front,
toward the town, is of Parian marble, beautifully
chiselled. One recognises the solid magnificence of
that glorious nation, when he looks on these relies of
their distant conquests, almost perfect after eighteen
hundred years. It seems as if the foot-print of a Roman
were eternal.

We stood out of the little bay, and with a freshwind,
ran down the coast of Dalmatia, and then crossing
to the Italian side, kept down the ancient shore of
Apulia and Calabria to the mouth of the Adriatic. I
have been looking at the land with the glass, as we ran
smoothly along, counting castle after castle built boldly
on the sea, and behind them, on the green hills, the
thickly built villages, with their smoking chimneys and
tall spires, pictures of fertility and peace. It was upon
these shores that the Barbary corsairs descended so
often during the last century, carrying off for eastern
harems, the lovely women of Italy. We are just off
Otranto, and a noble old castle stands frowning from
the extremity of the Cape. We could throw a shot
into its embrasures as we pass. It might be the “Castle
of Otranto,” for the romantic looks it has from the sea.

We have out-sailed the Constellation, or we should
part from her here. Her destination is France; and
we should be to-morrow amid the [16] Isles of Greece.
The pleasure of realizing the classic dreams of one's
boyhood, is not to be expressed in a line. I look forward
to the succeeding month or two as to the “red-letter”
chapter of my life. Whatever I may find the

reality, my heart has glowed warmly and delightfully
with the anticipation. Commodore Patterson is,
fortunately for me, a scholar and a judicious lover of
the arts, and loses no opportunity, consistently with his
duty, to give his officers the means of examining the
curious and the beautiful in these interesting seas.
The cruise, thus far, has been one of continually mingled
pleasure and instruction, and the best of it, by every
association of our early days, is to come.

79. LETTER LXXIX.

This is proper dream-land. The “Isle of Calypso,”
[17] folded in a drapery of blue air, lies behind,
fading in the distance, “the Acroceraunian mountains
of old name,” which caught Byron's eye as he entered
Greece, are piled up before us on the Albanian shore,
and the Ionian sea is rippling under our bow, breathing,
from every wave, of Homer, and Sappho, and
“sad Penelope.” Once more upon Childe Harold's
footsteps. I closed the book at Rome, after following
him for a summer through Italy, confessing, by many
pleasant recollections, that

I resume it here, with the feeling of Thalaba when he
caught sight of the green bird that led him through
the desert. It lies open on my knee at the second
canto, describing our position, even to the hour:
We shall lie off-and-on to-night, and go in to Corfu
in the morning. Two Turkish vessels-of-war, with
the crescent flag flying, lie in a small cove a mile off,
on the Albanian shore, and by the discharge of musketry
our pilot presumes that they have accompanied
the sultan's tax-gatherer, who gets nothing from these
wild people without fighting for it.

The entrance of Corfu is considered pretty, but the
English flag flying over the forts, divested ancient
Corcyra of its poetical associations. It looked to me
a commonplace seaport, glaring in the sun. The
“Gardens of Alcinous” were here, but who could imagine
them, with a red-coated sentry posted on every
corner of the island.

The lord high commissioner of the Ionian Isles,
Lord Nugent, came off to the ship this morning in a
kind of Corfiate boat, called a Scampavia, a greyhound-looking
craft, carrying sail enough for a schooner.
She cut the water like the wing of a swallow. His
lordship was playing sailor, and was dressed like the
mate of one of our coasters, and his manners were as
bluff. He has a fine person, however, and is said to
be a very elegant man when he chooses it. He is the
author of the “Life and Times of John Hampden,”
and Whig, of course. Southey has lately reviewed
him rather bitterly in the Quarterly. Lady N. is literary,
too, and they have written between them a book
of tales called (I think) “Legends of the Lilies,” of
which her ladyship's half is said to be the better.

Went on shore for a walk. Greeks and English
soldiers mix oddly together. The streets are narrow,
and crowded with them in about equal proportions.
John Bull retains his red face, and learns no Greek.
We passed through the Bazar, and bad English was
the universal language. There is but one square in
the town, and round its wooden fence, enclosing a
dusty area without a blade of grass, were riding the
English officers, while the regimental band played in
the centre. A more arid and cheerless spot never
pained the eye. The appearance of the officers, retaining
all their Bond street elegance and mounted
upon English hunters, was in singular contrast with
the general shabbiness of the houses and people. I
went into a shop at a corner to inquire for the residence
of a gentleman to whom I had a letter. “It's
werry 'ot, sir,” said a little red-faced woman behind
the counter, as I went out, “perhaps you'd like a glass
of vater.” It was odd to hear the Wapping dialect in
the “isles of Greece.” She sold green groceries, and
wished me to recommend her to the hofficers. Mrs.
Mary Flack's “grocery” in the gardens of Alcinous.

“The wild Albanian kirtled to the knee,” walks
through the streets of Corfu, looking unlike and superior
to everything about him. I met several in returning
to the boat. Their gait is very lofty, and the
snow-white juktanilla, or kirtle, with its thousand folds,
sways from side to side as they walk, with a most
showy effect. Lord Byron was very much captivated
with these people, whose capital (just across the strait
from Corfu) he visited once or twice in his travels
through Greece. Those I have seen are all very tall,
and have their prominent features, with keen eyes and
limbs of the most muscular proportions. The common
English soldiers look like brutes beside them.

The placard of a theatre hung on the walls of a
church. A rude picture of a battle between the
Greeks and Turks hung above it, and beneath was
written, in Italian, “Honor the representation of the
immortal deeds of your hero Macro Bozzaris.” It is
singular that even a pack of slaves can find pleasure
in a remembrance that reproaches every breath they
draw.

Called on Lord Nugent with the commodore. The
governor, sailor, author, antiquary, nobleman (for he is
all these, and a jockey, to boot), received us in a calico
morning-frock, with his breast and neck bare, in a large
library lumbered with half-packed antiquities and strewn
with straw. Books, miniatures of his family (a lovely
one of Lady Nugent among them), Whig pamphlets,
riding-whips, spurs, minerals, hammer and nails, half-eaten
cakes, plans of fortifications, printed invitations
to his own balls and dinners, military reports, Turkish
pistols, and, lastly, his own just printed answer to Mr.
Southey's review of his book, occupied the table. He
was reading his own production when we entered. His
lordship mentioned, with great apparent satisfaction, a
cruise he had taken some years ago with Commodore
Chauncey. The conversation was rather monologue
than dialogue; his excellency seeming to think, with
Lord Bacon, that “the honorablest part of talk was to
give the occasion, and then to moderate and pass to
something else.” He started a topic, exhausted and
changed it with the same facility and rapidity with
which he sailed his scampavia. An engagement with
the artillery-mess prevented my acceptance of an invitation
to dine with him to-morrow, a circumstance I
rather regret, as he is said to be, at his own table, one
of the most polished and agreeable men of his time.

Thank Heaven, revolutions do not affect the climate!
The isle that gave a shelter to the storm-driven Ulysses
is an English barrack, but the same balmy air that
fanned the blind eyes of old Homer blows over it still.
“The breezes,” says Landor, beautifully, “are the
children of eternity.” I never had the hair lifted so
pleasantly from my temples as to-night, driving into
the interior of the island. The gardening of Alcinous

seems to have been followed up by nature. The rhododendron,
the tamarisk, the almond, cypress, olive, and
fig, luxuriate in the sweetest beauty everywhere.

There was a small party in the evening at the house
of the gentleman who had driven me out, and among
other foreigners present were the count Dionisio Salomos,
of Zante, and the Cavaliere Andrea Mustoxidi,
both men of whom I had often heard. The first is
almost the only modern Greek poet, and his “hymns,”
principally patriotic, arc in the common dialect of the
country, and said to be full of fire. He is an excessively
handsome man, with large, dark eyes, almost effeminate
in its softness. His features are of the clearest
Greek chiselling as faultless as a statue, and are
stamped with nature's most attractive marks of refinement
and feeling. I can imagine Anacreon to have
resembled him.

Mustoxidi has been a conspicuous man in the late
chapter of Grecian history. He was much trusted by
Capo d'Istria, and among other things had the whole
charge of his school at Egina. An Italian exile (a
Modenese, and a very pleasant fellow), took me aside
when I asked something of his history, and told me a
story of him, which proves either that he was a dishonest
man, or (no new truth) that conspicuous men
are liable to be abused. A valuable donation of books
was given by some one to the school library. They
stood on the upper shelves, quite out of reach, and
Mustoxidi was particular in forbidding all approach to
them. Some time after his departure from the island,
the library was committed to the charge of another
person, and the treasures of the upper shelves were
found to be—painted boards! His physiognomy
would rather persuade me of the truth of the story.
He is a small man, with a downcast look, and a sly,
gray eye, almost hidden by his projecting eyebrows.
His features are watched in vain for an open expression.

The ladies of the party were principally Greeks.
None of them were beautiful, but they had the melancholy,
retired expression of face which one looks
for, knowing the history of their nation. They are
unwise enough to abandon their picturesque national
costume, and dress badly in the European style. The
servant-girls, with their hair braided into the folds of
their turbans, and their open-laced bodices and sleeves
are much more attractive to the stranger's eye. The
liveliest of the party, a little Zantiote girl of eighteen,
with eyes and eyelashes that contradicted the merry
laugh on her lips, sang us an Albanian song to the
guitar, very sweetly.

Dined to-day with the artillery-mess, in company
with the commodore and some of his officers. In a
place like this, the dinner naturally is the great circumstance
of the day. The inhabitants do not take
kindly to their masters, and there is next to no society
for the English. They sit down to their soup after
the evening drive, and seldom rise till midnight. It
was a gay dinner, as dinners will always be where the
whole remainder of what the “day may bring forth”
is abandoned to them, and we parted from our hospitable
entertainers, after four or five hours “measured
with sands of gold.” We must do the English the
justice of confessing the manners of their best bred
men to be the best in the world. It is inevitable that
one should bear the remainder of the nation little
love. Neither the one class nor the other, doubtless,
will ever seek it at our hands. But mutual hospitality
may soften so much of our intercourse as happens in
the traveller's way, and without loving John Bull better,
all in all, one soon finds out in Europe that the
dog and the lion are not more unlike, than the race
of bagmen and runners with which our country is
overrun, and the cultivated gentlemen of England.

On my right sat a captain of the corps, who had
spent the last summer at the Saratoga Springs. We
found any number of mutual acquaintances, of course,
and I was amused with the impressions which some
of the fairest of my friends had made upon a man who
had passed years in the most cultivated society of Europe.
He liked America, with reservations. He preferred
our ladies to those of any other country except
England, and he had found more dandies in
one hour in Broadway than he should have met in a
week in Regent-street. He gave me a racy scene or
two from the City Hotel, in New York, but he doubted
if the frequenters of a public table in any country
in the world were, on the whole, so well-mannered. If
Americans were peculiar for anything, he thought it
was for confidence in themselves and tobacco-chewing.

80. LETTER LXXX.

Corfu.—Called on one of the officers of the tenth
this morning, and found lying on his table two books
upon Corfu. They were from the circulating library
of the town, much thumbed, and contained the most
unqualified strictures on the English administration in
the islands. In one of them, by a Count or Colonel
Boig de St. Vincent, a Frenchman, the Corfiotes
were taunted with their slavish submission, and called
upon to shake off the yoke of British dominion in the
most inflammatory language. Such books in Italy or
France would be burnt by the hangman, and prohibited
on penalty of death. Here, with a haughty consciousness
of superiority, which must be galling
enough to an Ionian who is capable of feeling, they
circulate uncensured in two languages, and the officers
of the abused government read them for their amusement,
and return them coolly to go their rounds
among the people. They have twenty-five hundred
troops upon the island, and they trouble themselves
little about what is thought of them. They confess
that their government is excessively unpopular, the
officers are excluded from the native society, and the
soldiers are scowled upon in the streets.

The body of St. Spiridion was carried through the
streets of Corfu to-day, sitting bolt upright in a sedan-chair,
and accompanied by the whole population. He
is the great saint of the Greek church, and such is his
influence, that the English government thought proper,
under Sir Frederick Adam's administration, to
compel the officers to walk in the procession. The
saint was dried at his death, and makes a neat, black
mummy, sans eyes and nose, but otherwise quite perfect.
He was carried to-day by four men in a very
splendid sedan, shaking from side to side with the motion,
preceded by one of the bands of music from the
English regiments. Sick children were thrown under
the feet of the bearers, half dead people brought to
the doors as he passed, and every species of disgusting
mummery practised. The show lasted about four
hours, and was, on the whole, attended with more
marks of superstition than anything I found in Italy.
I was told that the better educated Christians of the
Greek church, disbelieve the saint's miracles. The
whole body of the Corfiote ecclesiastics were in the
procession, however.

I passed the first watch in the hammock-nettings tonight,
enjoying inexpressibly the phenomena of this
brilliant climate. The stars seem burning like lamps
in the absolute clearness of the atmosphere. Meteors
shoot constantly with a slow liquid course, over the
sky. The air comes off from the land laden with the
breath of the wild thyme, and the water around the
ship is another deep blue heaven, motionless with its
studded constellations. The frigate seems suspended
between them.

We have little idea, while conning an irksome
school-task, how strongly the “unwilling lore” is
rooting itself in the imagination, The frigate lies
perhaps a half mile from the most interesting scenes
of the Odyssey. I have been recalling from the long
neglected stores of memory, the beautiful descriptions
of the court of King Alcinous, and of the meeting of
his matchless daughter with Ulysses. The whole
web of the poet's fable has gradually unwound, and
the lamps ashore, and the outline of the hills, in the
deceiving dimness of night, have entered into the delusion
with the facility of a dream. Every scene in
Homer may be traced to this day, the blind old poet's
topography was so admirable. It was over the point
of land sloping down to the right, that the Princess
Nausicaa, went with her handmaids to wash her bridal
robes in the running streams, The description still
guides the traveller to the spot where the damsels of
the royal maid spread the linen on the grass, and commenced
the sports that waked Ulysses from his slumbers
in the bed of leaves.

Ashore with one of the officers this morning, amusing
ourselves with trying on dresses in a Greek tailor's
shop. It quite puts one out of conceit with these
miserable European fashions. The easy and flowing
juktanilla, the unembarrassed leggins, the open sleeve
of the collarless jacket leaving the throat exposed,
and the handsome close-binding girdle from it, seems
to me the very dress dictated by reason and nature.
The richest suit in the shop, a superb red velvet,
wrought with gold, was priced at one hundred and
forty dollars. The more sober colors were much
cheaper. A dress lasts several years.

We made our farewell visits to the officers of the
English regiments, who had overwhelmed us with hospitality
during our stay, and went on board to get under
way with the noon breeze. We were accompanied
to the ship, not as the hero of Homer, when he
left the same port, by three damsels of the royal train,
bearing, “one a tunic, another a rich casket, and a
third bread and wine” for his voyage, but by Mrs.
Thompson and Mrs. Wilson, soldiers' wives, and
washerwomen, with baskets of hurriedly dried linen,
pinned, every bundle, with a neat bill in shillings and
half-pence

Ulysses slept all the way from Corcyra to Ithaca.
He lost a great deal of fine scenery. The passage
between Corfu and Albania is beautiful. We ran
past the southern cape of the island with a free wind,
and are now off the Paxian Isles, where, according to
Plutarch, Emilanus, the rhetorician, voyaging by
night, “heard a voice louder than human, announcing
the death of Pan.” A “schoolboy midshipman” is
breaking the same silence with “on deck, all hands!
on deck, all of you!”

Off the mouth of the Alpheus. If he still chases
Arethusa under the sea, and she makes straight for
Sicily, her bed is beneath our keel. The moon is
pouring her broad light over the ocean, the shadows
of the rigging on the deck lie in clear and definite
lines, the sailors of the watch sit around upon the
guns in silence, and the ship, with her clouds of
snowy sail spread aloft, is stealing through the water
with the noiseless motion of a swan. Even the gallant
man-of-war seems steeped in the spirit of the
scene. The hour wants but an “Ionian Myrrha” to
fill the last void of the heart.

Cape Leucas on the lee—the scene of Sappho's leap.
We have coursed down the long shore of ancient Leucadia,
and the precipice to which lovers came from all
parts of Greece for an oblivious plunge is shining in
the sun, scarce a mile from the ship. The beautiful
Grecian here sung her last song, and broke her lyre
and died. The leap was not always so tragical, there
are two lovers, at least, on record (Maces of Buthrotum,
and Cephalos son of Deioneos), who survived the
fall, and were cured effectually by salt water. It was
a common resource in the days of Sappho, and Strabo
says that they were accustomed to check their descent
by tying birds and feathers to their arms. Females,
he says, were generally killed by the rapidity
of the fall, their frames being too slight to bear the
shock; but the men seldom failed to come safe to
shore. The sex has not lost its advantages since the
days of Phaon.

We have caught a glimpse of Ithaca through the
isles, the land

and which Ulysses loved, non quia larga, sed quia sua
—the most natural of reasons. We lose Childe Harold's
track here. He turned to the left into the gulf
of Lepanto. We shall find him again at Athens.
Missolonghi, where he died, lies about twenty or thirty
miles on our lee, and it is one, of several places in the
gulf, that I regret to pass so near, unvisited.

Entering the bay of Navarino. A picturesque and
precipitous rock, filled with caves, nearly shuts the
mouth of this ample harbor. We ran so close to it,
that it might have been touched from the deck with a
tandem whip. On a wild crag to the left, a small,
white marble monument, with the earth still fresh
about it, marks the grave of some victim of the late
naval battle. The town and fortress, miserable heaps
of dirty stone, lie in the curve of the southern shore.
A French brig-of-war is at anchor in the port, and
broad, barren hills, stretching far away on every side,
complete the scene before us. We run up the harbor,
and tack to stand out again, without going ashore.
Not a soul is to be seen, and the bay seems the very
sanctuary of silence. It is difficult to conceive, that
but a year or two ago, the combined fleets of Europe,
were thundering among these silent hills, and hundreds
of human beings lying in their blood, whose
bones are now whitening in the sea beneath. Our pilot
was in the fight, on board an English frigate. He
has pointed out to us the position of the different
fleets, and among other particulars, he tells me, that
when the Turkish ships were boarded, Greek sailors
were found chained to the guns, who had been compelled,
at the muzzle of the pistol, to fight against the
cause of their country. Many of them must thus
have perished in the vessels that were sunk.

Navarino was the scene of a great deal of fighting,
during the late Greek revolution. It was invested,
while in possession of the Turks, by two thousand
Pelopennesians and a band of Ionians, and the
garrison were reduced to such a state of starvation, as
to eat their slippers. They surrendared at last, under
promise that their lives should be spared; but the
news of the massacre of the Greek patriarchs and
clergy, at Adrianople, was received at the moment,
and the exasperated troops put their prisoners to death,
without mercy.

The peaceful aspect of the place is better suited to
its poetical associations. Navarino was the ancient
Pylos, and it is here that Homer brings Telemachus
in search of his father. He finds old Nestor and his
sons sacrificing on the seashore to Neptune, with nine
altars, and at each five hundred men. I should think
the modern town contained scarce a twentieth of this
number.

Rounding the little fortified town of Modon, under
full sail. It seems to be built on the level of the water,
and nothing but its high wall and its towers are
seen from the sea. This, too, has been a much contested
place, and remained in possession of the Turks
till after the formation of the provisional government
under Mavrocordato. It forms the southwestern point
of the Morea, and is a town of great antiquity. King
Philip gained his first battle over the Athenians here,
some thousands of years ago; and the brave old Miualis
beat the Egyptian fleet in the same bay, without
doubt in a manner quite as deserving of as long a remembrance.
It is like a city of the dead—we can not
even see a sentinel on the wall.

Passed an hour in the mizen-chains with “the Corsair”
in my hand, and “Coran's Bay” opening on the
lee. With what exquisite pleasure one reads, when
he can look off from the page, and study the scene of
the poet's fiction:—

It is a small, deep bay, with a fortified town, on the
western shore, crowned on the very edge of the sea,
with a single, tall tower. A small aperture near the
top, helps to realize the Corsair's imprisonment, and
his beautiful interview with Gulnare:—

The Pirate's Isle is said to have been Poros, and
the original of the Corsair himself, a certain Hugh
Crevelier, who filled the ægean with terror, not many
years ago.

Made the Cape St. Angelo, the southern point of
the Peloponnesus, and soon after the island of Cythera,
near which Venus rose from the foam of the sea.
We are now running northerly, along the coast of ancient
Sparta. It is a mountainous country, bare and
rocky, and looks as rude and hardy as the character of
its ancient sons. I have been passing the glass in vain
along the coast, to find a tree. A small hermitage
stands on the desolate extremity of the Cape, and a
Greek monk, the pilot tells me, has lived there many
years, who comes from his cell, and stands on the
rock with his arms outspread to bless the passing ship.
I looked for him in vain.

A French man-of-war bore down upon us a few
minutes ago, and saluted the commodore. He ran so
close, that we could see the features of his officers on
the poop. It is a noble sight at sea, a fine ship passing,
with all her canvass spread, with the added rapidity
of your own course and hers. The peal of the
guns in the midst of the solitary ocean, had a singular
effect. The echo came back from the naked shores
of Sparta, with a warlike sound, that might have stirred
old Leonidas in his grave. The smoke rolled
away on the wind, and the noble ship hoisted her royals
once more, and went on her way. We are making
for Napoli di Romania, with a summer breeze,
and hope to drop anchor beneath its fortress, at sunset.

81. LETTER LXXXI.

Napoli di Romania.—Anchored in the harbor of
Napoli after dark. An English frigate lies a little
in, a French and Russian brig-of-war astern, and two
Greek steamboats, King Otho's yacht, and a quantity
of caiques, fill the inner port. The fort stands a hundred
feet over our heads on a bold promontory, and
the rocky Palamidi soars a hundred feet still higher,
on a crag that thrusts its head sharply into the clouds,
as if it would lift the little fortress out of eyesight.
The town lies at the base of the mountain, an irregular
looking heap of new houses; and here, at present,
resides the boy-king of Greece, Otho the first. His
predecessors were Agamemnon and Perseus, who,
some three thousand years ago (more or less, I am
not certain of my chronology), reigned at Argos and
Mycenæ, within sight of his present capitol.

Went ashore with the commodore, to call on Tricoupi
and Mavrocordato, the king's cabinet counsellors.
We found the former in a new stone house,
slenderly furnished, and badly painted, but with an
entry full of servants, in handsome Greek costumes.
He received the commodore with the greatest friendliness.
He had dined on board the Constitution six
years before, when his prospects were less promising
than now. He is a short, stout man, of dark complexion,
and very bright black eyes, and looks very
honest and very vulgar. He speaks English perfectly.
He shrugged his shoulders when the commodore alluded
to having left him fighting for a republic, and
said anything was better than anarchy. He spoke in
the highest terms of my friend, Dr. Howe (who was
at Napoli with the American provisions, when Grivas
held the Palamidi). Greece, he said, had never a better
friend. Madam Tricoupi (the sister of Prince
Mavrocordato) came in presently with two very pretty
children. She spoke French fluently, and seemed an
accomplished woman. Her family had long furnished
the Prince Hospodars of Wallachia, and though not
a beautiful woman, she has every mark of the gentle
blood of the east. Colonel Gordon, the famous Philhellene,
entered, while we were there. He was an intimate
friend of Lord Byron's, and has expended the
best part of a large fortune in the Greek cause. He
is a plain man, of perhaps fifty, with red hair and
freckled face, and features and accent very Scotch. I
liked his manners. He had lately written a book upon
Greece, which is well spoken of in some review that
has fallen in my way.

Went thence to Prince Mavrocordato's. He occupies
the third story of a very indifferent house, furnished
with the mere necessaries of life. A shabby
sofa, a table, two chairs, and a broken tumbler, holding
ink and two pens, is the inventory of his drawing-room.
He received us with elegance and courtesy,
and presented us to his wife, a pretty and lively little
Constantinopolitan, who chattered French like a magpie.
She gave the uncertainty of their residence until
the seat of government was decided on, as the apology
for their lodgings, and seemed immediately to
forget that she was not in a palace. Mavrocordato is
a strikingly handsome man, with long, curling black
hair, and most luxuriant mustaches. His mouth is
bland, and his teeth uncommonly beautiful; but without
being able to say where it lies, there is an expression
of guile in his face, that shut my heart to him.
He is getting fat, and there is a shade of red in the

clear olive of his cheek, which is very uncommon in
this country. The commodore remarked that he was
very thin when he was here six years before. The
settlement of affairs in Greece, has probably relieved
him from a great deal of care.

Presented, with the commodore, to King Otho.
Tricoupi officiated as chamberlain, dressed in a court
suit of light-blue, wrought with silver. The royal
residence is a comfortable house, built by Capo d'Istria,
in the principal street of Napoli. The king's
aid, a son of Marco Bozzaris, a very fine, resolute-looking
young man of eighteen, received us in the
antechamber, and in a few minutes the door of the
inner room was thrown open. His majesty stood at
the foot of the throne (a gorgeous red velvet arm-chair,
raised on a platform, and covered with a splendid
canopy of velvet), and with a low bow to each of us
as we entered, he addressed his conversation immediately,
and without embarrassment, to the commodore.
I had leisure to observe him closely for a few minutes.
He appears about eighteen. He was dressed in an
exceedingly well cut, swallow-tailed coat, of very
light blue, with a red standing collar, wrought with
silver. The same work upon a red ground, was set
between the buttons of the waist, and upon the edges
of the skirts. White pantaloons, and the ordinary
straight court-sword, completed his dress. He is
rather tall, and his figure is extremely light and elegant.
A very flat nose, and high cheek-bones, are the
most marked features of his face; his hair is straight,
and of a light brown, and with no claim to beauty;
the expression of his countenance is manly, open, and
prepossessing. He spoke French fluently, though
with a German accent, and went through the usual
topics of a royal presentation (very much the same all
over the world) with grace and ease. In the few remarks
which he addressed to me, he said that he
promised himself great pleasure in the search for antiquities
in Greece. He bowed us out after an audience
of about ten minutes, no doubt extremely happy
to exchange his court-coat and our company for a riding-frock
and saddle. His horse and a guard of
twelve lancers were in waiting at the door.

The king usually passes his evenings with the Misses
Armanspergs, the daughters of the president of the
regency. They accompanied him from Munich, and
are the only ladies in his realm with whom he is acquainted.
They keep a carriage, which is a kind of
wonder at Napoli; ride on horseback in the English
style, very much to the amusement of the Greeks;
and give soirées once or twice a week, which are particularly
dull. One of the three is a beautiful girl,
and if policy does not interfere, is likely to be Queen
of Greece. The Count Armansperg is a small,
shrewd-looking man, with a thin German countenance,
and agreeable manners. He is, of course, the real
king of Greece.

The most agreeable man I found in Napoli, was
the king's uncle, the prince of Saxe, at present in
command of his army. He is a tall, and uncommonly
handsome soldier, of perhaps thirty-six years, and,
with all the air of a man of high birth, has the open
and frank manners of the camp. He has been twice
on board the ship, and seemed to consider his acquaintance
with the commodore's family as a respite
from exile. The Bavarian officers in his suite spoke
nothing but the native German, and looked like mere
beef-eaters. The prince returns in two years, and
when the king is of age, his Bavarian troops leave
him, and he commits himself to the country.

Hired the only two public vehicles in Napoli, and
set off with the commodore's family, on an excursion
to the ancient cities in the neighborhood. We left the
gate built by the Venetians, and still adorned with a
bas relief of a winged lion, at nine o'clock of a clear
Grecian summer's day. Auguries were against us.
Pyrrhus did the same thing with his elephants and his
army, one morning about two thousand years ago, and
was killed before noon; and our driver stopped his
horses a half mile out of the gate, and told us very
gravely that the evil eye was upon him. He had dreamed
that he had found a dollar the night before—a certain
sign by the laws of witchcraft in Greece, that he
should lose one. He concluded by adding another
dollar to the price of each carriage.

We passed the house of old Miaulis, the Greek admiral,
a pretty cottage a mile from the city, and immediately
after came the ruins of the ancient Terynthus,
the city of Hercules. The walls, built of the largest
hewn stones in the world, still stand, and will till time
ends. It would puzzle modern mechanics to carry
them away. We drove along the same road upon
which Autolycus taught the young hero to drive a
chariot, and passing ruins and fragments of columns
strewn over the whole length of the plain of Argos,
stopped under a spreading aspen tree, the only shade
within reach of the eye. A dirty khan stood a few
yards off, and our horses were to remain here while
we ascended the hills to Mycenæ.

It was a hot walk. The appearance of ladies, as we
passed through a small Greek village on our way,
drew out all the inhabitants, and we were accompanied
by about fifty men, women, and children, resembling
very much in complexion and dress, the Indians
of our country. A mile from our carriages we arrived
at a subterranean structure, built in the side of the
hill, with a door toward the east, surmounted by the
hewn stone so famous for its size among the antiquities
of Greece. It shuts the tomb of old Agamemnon.
The interior is a hollow cone, with a small chamber at
the side, and would make “very eligible lodgings for
a single gentleman,” as the papers say.

We kept on up the hill, wondering that the “king
of many islands and of all Argos,” as Homer calls
him, should have built his city so high in this hot climate.
We sat down at last, quite fagged, at the gate
of a city built only eighteen hundred years before
Christ. A descendant of Perseus brought us some
water in a wooden piggin, and somewhat refreshed, we
went on with our examination of the ruins. The
mere weight of the walls has kept them together three
thousand six hundred years. You can judge how immoveable
they must be. The antiquarians call them
the “cyclopean walls of Mycenæ;” and nothing less
than a giant, I should suppose, would dream of heaving
such enormous masses one upon the other. “The
gate of the Lions,” probably the principal entrance to
the city, is still perfect. The bas-relief from which it
takes its name, is the oldest sculptured stone in Europe.
It is of green basalt, representing two lions
rampant, very finely executed, and was brought from
Egypt. An angle of the city wall is just below, and
the ruins of a noble aqueduct are still visible, following
the curve of the opposite hill, and descending to
Mycenæ on the northern side. I might bore you now
with a long chapter on antiquities (for, however dry in
the abstract, they are exceedingly interesting on the
spot), but I let you off. Those who like them will
find Sphon and Wheeler, Dodwell, Leake, and Gell,
diffuse enough for the most classic enthusiasm.

We descended by a rocky ravine, in the bosom of
which lay a well with six large fig-trees growing at its
brink. A woman, burnt black with the sun, was drawing
water in a goat-skin, and we were too happy to get
into the shade, and, in the name of Pan, sink delicacy
and ask for a drink of water. I have seen the time
when nectar in a cup of gold would have been less refreshing.

We arrived at the aspen about two o'clock, and
made preparations for our dinner. The sea-breeze
had sprung up, and came freshly over the plain of

Argos. We put our claret in a goat-skin of water
hung at one of the wheels, the basket was produced,
the ladies sat in the interior of the carriage, and the
commodore and his son and myself, made tables of the
footboards; and thus we achieved a meal which, if
meals are measured by content, old King Danaus and
his fifty daughters might have risen from their graves
to envy us.

A very handsome Greek woman had brought us
water and stood near while we were eating, and making
over to her the remnants of the ham and its
condiments and the empty bottles, with which she
seemed made happy for a day, we went on our way to
Argos.

“Rivers die,” it is said, “as well as men and cities.”
We drove through the bed of “Father Inachus,”
which was a respectable river in the time of Homer,
but which, in our day, would be puzzled to drown a
much less thing than a king. Men achieve immortality
in a variety of ways. King Inachus might have
been forgotten as the first Argive; but by drowning
himself in the river which afterward took his name,
every knowledge-hunter that travels is compelled to
look up his history. So St. Nepomuc became the
guardian of bridges by breaking his neck over one.

The modern Argos occupies the site of the ancient.
It is tolerably populous, but it is a town of most wretched
hovels. We drove through several long streets of
mud houses with thatched roofs, completely open in
front, and the whole family huddled together on the
clay floor, with no furniture but a flock bed in the
corner. The first settlement by Deucalion and Pyrrha,
on the sediment of the deluge, must have looked
like it. Mud, stones, and beggars, were all we saw.
Old Pyrrhus was killed here, after all his battles, by a
tile from a house-top; but modern Argos has scarce a
roof high enough to overtop his helmet.

We left our carriages in the street, and walked to
the ruins of the amphitheatre. The brazen thalamos
in which Danœ was confined when Jupiter visited her
in a shower of gold, was near this spot, the supposed
site of most of the thirty temples once famous in
Argos.

Some solid brick walls, the seats of the amphitheatre
cut into the solid rock of the hill, the rocky acropolis
above, and twenty or thirty horses tied together,
and treading out grain on a thrashing-floor in the open
field, were all we found of ancient or picturesque in
the capitol of the Argives. A hot, sultry afternoon,
was no time to weave romance from such materials.

We returned to our carriages, and while the Greek
was getting his horses into their harness, we entered
a most unpromising café for shade and water. A billiard-table
stood in the centre; and the high, broad
bench on which the Turks seat themselves, with their
legs crooked under them, stretched around the wall.
The proprietor was a Venetian woman, who sighed, as
she might well, for a gondola. The kingdom of Agamemnon
was not to her taste.

After waiting awhile here for the sun to get behind
the hills of Sparta, we received a message from our
coachman, announcing that he was arrested. The
“evil eye” had not glanced upon him in vain. There
was no returning without him, and I walked over with
the commodore to see what could be done. A fine-looking
man sat cross-legged on a bench, in the upper
room of a building, adjoining a prison, and a man with
a pen in his hand, was reading the indictment. The
driver had struck a child who was climbing on his
wheel. I pleaded his case in “choice Italian,” and
after half an hour's delay, they dismissed him, exacting
a dollar as a security for reappearance. It was a
curious verification of his morning's omen.

We drove on over the plain, met the king, five
camels, and the Misses Armanpergs, and were on
board soon after sunset.

82. LETTER LXXXII.

Napoli di Romania.—Went ashore with one of the
officers, to look for the fountain of Canathus. Its
waters had the property (vide Pausanias) of renewing
the infant purity of the women who bathed in them.
Juno used it once a year. We found but one natural
spring in all Napoli. It stands in a narrow street, filled
with tailors, and is adorned with a marble font bearing
a Turkish inscription. Two girls were drawing water
in skins. We drank a little of it, but found nothing
peculiar in the taste. Its virtues are confined probably
to the other sex.

The king visited the ship. As his barge left the
pier, the vessels of war in the harbor manned their
yards and fired the royal salute. He was accompanied
by young Bozzaris and the prince, his uncle, and
dressed in the same uniform in which he received us
at our presentation. As he stepped on the deck, and
was received by Commodore Patterson, I thought I
had never seen a more elegant and well-proportioned
man. The frigate was in her usual admirable order,
and the king expressed his surprise and gratification
at every turn. His questions were put with uncommon
judgment for a landsman. We had heard, indeed, on
board the English frigate which brought him from
Trieste, that he lost no opportunity of learning the
duties and management of the ship, keeping watch
with the midshipmen, and running from one deck to
the other at all hours. After going thoroughly through
the ship, the commodore presented him to his family.
He seemed very much pleased with the ease and frankness
with which he was received, and seating himself
with our fair countrywomen in the after-cabin, prolonged
his visit to a very unceremonious length, conversing
with the most unreserved gayety. The yards
were manned again, the salutes fired once more, and
the king of Greece tossed his oars for a moment under
the stern, and pulled ashore.

Had the pleasure and honor of showing Miaulis
through the ship. The old man came on board very
modestly, without even announcing himself, and as he
addressed one of the officers in Italian, I was struck
with his noble appearance, and offered my services as
interpreter. He was dressed in the Hydriote costume,
the full blue trowsers gathered at the knee, a short open
jacket worked with black braid, and a red scull-cap.
His lieutenant, dressed in the same costume, a tall,
superb-looking Greek, was his only attendant. He
was quite at home on board, comparing the “United
States” continually to the Hellas, the American-built
frigate which he commanded. Every one on board
was struck with the noble simplicity and dignity of his
address. I have seldom seen a man who impressed
me more. He requested me to express his pleasure
at his visit, and his friendly feelings to the commodore,
and invited us to his country-house, which he pointed
out from the deck, just without the city. Every officer
in the ship uncovered as he passed. The gratification
at seeing him was universal. He looks worthy to be
one of the “three” that Byron demanded, in his impassioned
verse,

Returned visits of ceremony with the commodore,
to the English and Russian vessels of war. The British
frigate Madagascar is about the size of the United
States, but not in nearly so fine a condition. The
superior cleanliness and neatness of arrangement on

board our own ship are indisputable. The cabin of
Captain Lyon (who is said to be one of the best officers
in the English service), was furnished in almost oriental
luxury, and, what I should esteem more, crowded with
the choicest books. He informed us that of his twenty-four
midshipmen, nine were sons of noblemen, and
possessed the best family influence on both father's
and mother's side, and several of the remainder had
high claims for preferment. There is small chance
there, one would think, for commoners.

Captain Lyon spoke in the highest terms of his late
passenger, King Otho, both as to disposition and talent.
Somewhere in the ægean, one of his Bavarian servants
fell overboard, and the boatswain jumped after him,
and sustained him till the boat was lowered to his relief.
On his reaching the deck, the king drew a valuable
repeater from his pocket, and presented it to him in
the presence of the crew. He certainly has caught the
“trick of royalty” in its perfection.

The guard presented, the boatswain “piped us over
the side,” and we pulled alongside the Russian. The
file of marines drawn up in honor of the commodore
on her quarterdeck, looked like so many standing bears.
Features and limbs so brutally coarse I never saw.
The officers, however, were very gentlemanly, and the
vessel was in beautiful condition. In inquiring after
the health of the ladies on board our ship, the captain
and his lieutenant rose from their seats and made a low
bow—a degree of chivalrous courtesy very uncommon,
I fancy, since the days of Sir Piercie Shafton. I left
his imperial majesty's ship with an improved impression
of him.

They are a gallant-looking people, the Greeks. Byron
says of them, “all are beautiful, very much resembling
the busts of Alcibiades.” We walked beyond
the walls of the city this evening, on the plain
of Argos. The whole population were out in their
Sunday costumes, and no theatrical ballet was ever
more showy than the scene. They are a very affectionate
people, and walk usually hand in hand, or sit
upon the rocks at the road side, with their arms over
each other's shoulders; and their picturesque attitudes
and lofty gait, combined with the flowing beauty of
their dress, give them all the appearance of heroes on
the stage. I saw literally no handsome women, but
the men were magnificent, almost without exception.
Among others, a young man passed us with whose
personal beauty the whole party were struck. As he
went by he laid his hand on his breast and bowed to
the ladies, raising his red cap, with its flowing blue
tassel, at the same time with perfect grace. It was a
young man to whom I had been introduced the day
previous, a brother of Mavromichalis, the assassin of
Capo d'Istrias. He is about seventeen, tall and straight
as an arrow, and has the eye of a falcon. His family
is one of the first in Greece; and his brother who was
a fellow of superb beauty, is said to have died in the
true heroic style, believing that he had rid his country
of a tyrant.

The view of Napoli and the Palamidi from the
plain, with its back ground of the Spartan mountains,
and the blue line of the Argolic gulf between, is very
fine. The home of the Nemean lion, the lofty hill
rising above Argos, was enveloped in a black cloud as
the sun set on our walk, the short twilight of Greece
thickened upon us, and the white, swaying juktanillas
of the Greeks striding past, had the effect of spirits
gliding by in the dark.

The king, with his guard of lancers on a hard trot,
passed us near the gate, followed close by the Misses
Armansperg, mounted on fine Hungarian horses. His
majesty rides beautifully, and the effect of the short
high-borne flag on the tips of the lances, and the tall
Polish caps with their cord and tassels, is highly picturesque.

Made an excursion with the commodore across the
gulf, to Lake Lerna, the home of the hydra. We saw
nothing save the half dozen small marshy lakes, whose
overflow devastated the country, until they were dammed
by Hercules, who is thus poetically said to have
killed a many-headed monster. We visited, near-by,
“the mills,” which were the scene of one of the most
famous battles of the late struggle. The mill is supplied
by a lovely stream, issuing from beneath a rock,
and running a short course of twenty or thirty rods to
the sea. It is difficult to believe that human blood
has ever stained its pure waters.

Left Napoli with the daylight breeze, and are now
entering the Hermionicus Sinus A more barren land
never rose upon the eye. The ancients considered
this part of Greece so near to hell, that they omitted
to put the usual obolon into the hands of those who
died here, to pay their passage across the Styx.

Off the town of Hydra. This is the birthplace of
Miaulis, and its neighbor island, Spesia, that of the sailor
heroine Bobolina. It is a heap of square stone houses
set on the side of a hill, without the slightest reference
to order. I see with the glass, an old Greek
smoking on his balcony, with his feet over the railing,
and half a dozen bare-legged women getting a boat
into the water on the beach. The whole island has
a desolate and steril aspect. Across the strait, directly
opposite the town, lies a lovely green valley, with olive
groves and pastures between, and hundreds of gray
cattle feeding in all the peace of Arcadia. I have seen
such pictures so seldom of late, that it is like a medicine
to my sight. “The sea and the sky,” after a
while, “lie like a load on the weary eye.”

In passing two small islands just now, we caught a
glimpse between them of the “John Adams,” sloop-of-war,
under full sail in the opposite direction. Five
minutes sooner or later we should have missed her.
She has been cruising in the archipelago a month or
two, waiting the commodore's arrival, and has on board,
despatches and letters, which make the meeting a very
exciting one to the officers. There is a general stir of
expectation on board, in which my only share is that
of sympathy. She brings her news from Smyrna, to
which port, though my course has been errant enough,
you will scarce have thought of directing a letter for
me.

Anchored off the island of Egina, a mile from the
town. The rocks which King æacus (since Judge
æacus of the infernal regions) raised in the harbor to
keep off the pirates, prevent our nearer approach. A
beautiful garden of oranges and figs close to our anchorage,
promises to reconcile us to our position.
The little bay is completely shut in by mountainous
islands, and the sun pours down upon us, unabated by
the “wooing Egean wind.”

83. LETTER LXXXIII.

Island of Egina.—The “Maid of Athens,” in the
very teeth of poetry, has become Mrs. Black of Egina!
The beautiful Teresa Makri, of whom Byron asked
back his heart, of whom Moore and Hobhouse, and

the poet himself have written so much and so passionately,
has forgotten the sweet burthen of the sweetest
of love songs, and taken the unromantic name,
and followed the unromantic fortunes, of a Scotchman!

The commodore proposed that we should call upon
her on our way to the temple of Jupiter, this morning.
We pulled up to the town in the barge, and landed on
the handsome pier built by Dr. Howe (who expended
thus, most judiciously, a part of the provisions sent
from our country in his charge), and, finding a Greek
in the crowd, who understood a little Italian, we were
soon on our way to Mrs. Black's. Our guide was a
fine, grave-looking man of forty, with a small cockade
on his red cap, which indicated that he was some
way in the service of the government. He laid his
hand on his heart, when I asked him if he had
known any Americans in Egina. “They built this,”
said he, pointing to the pier, the handsome granite
posts of which we were passing at the moment. “They
gave us bread, and meat, and clothing, when we should
otherwise have perished.” It was said with a look
and tone that thrilled me. I felt as if the whole
debt of sympathy which Greece owes our country,
were repaid by this one energetic expression of gratitude.

We stopped opposite a small gate, and the Greek
went in without cards. It was a small stone house of
a story and a half, with a rickety flight of wooden steps
at the side, and not a blade of grass or sign of a flower
in court or window. If there had been but a geranium
in the porch, or a rose-tree by the gate, for description's
sake.

Mr. Black was out—Mrs. Black was in. We walked
up the creaking steps, with a Scotch terrier barking
and snapping at our heels, and were met at the door
by, really, a very pretty woman. She smiled as I
apologized for our intrusion, and a sadder or a sweeter
smile I never saw. She said her welcome in a few,
simple words of Italian, and I thought there were few,
sweeter voices in the world. I asked her if she had
not learned English yet. She colored, and said, “No,
signore!” and the deep spot in her cheek faded gradually
down, in teints a painter would remember. Her
husband, she said, had wished to learn her language,
and would never let her speak English. I began to
feel a prejudice against him. Presently, a boy of perhaps
three years, came into the room—an ugly, white-headed,
Scotch-looking little ruffian, thin-lipped and
freckled, and my aversion for Mr. Black became quite
decided. “Did you not regret leaving Athens?” I
asked. “Very much, signore,” she answered with
half a sigh; “but my husband dislikes Athens.”
Horrid Mr. Black! thought I.

I wished to ask her of Lord Byron, but I had heard
that the poet's admiration had occasioned the usual
scandal attendant on every kind of pre-eminence, and
her modest and timid manners, while they assured me
of her purity of heart, made me afraid to venture
where there was even a possibility of wounding her.
She sat in a drooping attitude on the coarsely-covered
divan, which occupied three sides of the little room,
and it was difficult to believe that any eye but her
husband's had ever looked upon her, or that the
“wells of her heart” had ever been drawn upon for
anything deeper than the simple duties of a wife and
mother.

She offered us some sweetmeats, the usual Greek
compliment to visiters, as we rose to go, and laying
her hand upon her heart, in the beautiful custom
of the country, requested me to express her thanks to
the commodore for the honor he had done her in calling,
and to wish him and his family every happiness.
A servant-girl, very shabbily dressed, stood at the side
door, and we offered her some money, which she
might have taken unnoticed. She drew herself up
very coldly, and refused it, as if she thought we had
quite mistaken her. In a country where gifts of the
kind are so universal, it spoke well for the pride of the
family, at least.

I turned after we had taken leave, and made an
apology to speak to her again; for, in the interest of
the general impression she had made upon me, I had
forgotten to notice her dress, and I was not sure that
I could remember a single feature of her face. We
had called unexpectedly of course, and her dress was
very plain. A red cloth cap bound about the temples,
with a colored shawl, whose folds were mingled with
large braids of dark brown hair, and decked with a
tassel of blue silk, which fell to her left shoulder,
formed her head-dress. In other respects she was
dressed like a European. She is a little above the
middle height, slightly and well formed, and walks
weakly, like most Greek women, as if her feet were
too small for her weight. Her skin is dark and clear,
and she has a color in her cheek and lips that looks to
me consumptive. Her teeth are white and regular,
her face oval, and her forehead and nose form the
straight line of the Grecian model—one of the few instances
I have ever seen of it. Her eyes are large,
and of a soft, liquid hazel, and this is her chief beauty.
There is that “looking out of the soul through them,”
which Byron always described as constituting the loveliness
that most moved him. I made up my mind, as
we walked away, that she would be a lovely woman
anywhere. Her horrid name, and the unprepossessing
circumstances in which we found her, had uncharmed,
I thought, all poetical delusion that would
naturally surround her as the “Maid of Athens.” We
met her as simple Mrs. Black, whose Scotch husband's
terrier had worried us at her door, and we left
her, feeling that the poetry which she had called forth
from the heart of Byron, was her due by every law of
loveliness.

From the house of the maid of Athens we walked
to the school of Capo d'Istrias. It is a spacious stone
quadrangle, enclosing a court handsomely railed and
gravelled, and furnished with gymnastic apparatus.
School was out, and perhaps a hundred and fifty
boys were playing in the area. An intelligent-looking
man accompanied us through the museum of antiquities,
where we saw nothing very much worth noticing,
after the collections of Rome, and to the library, where
there was a superb bust of Capo d'Istrias, done by a
Roman artist. It is a noble head, resembling Washington.

We bought a large basket of grapes for a few cents
in returning to the boat, and offered money to one or
two common men who had been of assistance to us,
but no one would receive it. I italicise the remark, because
the Greeks are so often stigmatized as utterly
mercenary.

We pulled along the shore, passing round the point
on which stands a single fluted column, the only remains
of a magnificent temple of Venus, and, getting
the wind, hoisted a sail, and ran down the northern
side of the island five or six miles, till we arrived opposite
the mountain on which stands the temple of
Jupiter Panhellenios. The view of it from the sea
was like that of a temple drawn on the sky. It occupies
the very peak of the mountain, and is seen many
miles on either side by the mariner of the Egean.

A couple of wild-looking, handsome fellows, bareheaded
and barelegged, with shirts and trowsers
reaching to the knee, lay in a small caique under
the shore; and, as we landed, the taller of the two
laid his hand on his breast, and offered to conduct
us to the temple. The ascent was about a mile.

We toiled over ploughed fields, with here and there
a cluster of fig-trees, wild patches of rock and brier,

and an occasional wall, and arrived breathless at the
top, where a cool wind met us from the other side of
the sea with delicious refreshment.

We sat down among the ruins of the oldest temple
of Greece after that of Corinth. Twenty-three noble
columns still lifted their heads over us, after braving
the tempests of more than two thousand years. The
ground about was piled up with magnificent fragments
of marble, preserving, even in their fall, the
sharp edges of the admirable sculpture of Greece.
The Doric capital, the simple frieze, the well-fitted
frustra, might almost be restored in the perfection
with which they were left by the last touch of the
chisel.

The view hence comprised a classic world. There
was Athens! The broad mountain over the intensely
blue gulf at our feet was Hymettus, and a bright white
summit as of a mound between it and the sea, glittering
brightly in the sun, was the venerable pile of temples
in the Acropolis. To the left, Corinth was distinguishable
over its low isthmus, and Megara and
Salamis, and following down the wavy line of the
mountains of Attica, the promontory of Sunium, modern
Cape Colonna, dropped the horizon upon the sea.
One might sit out his life amid these loftily-placed
ruins, and scarce exhaust in thought the human history
that has unrolled within the scope of his eye.

We passed two or three hours wandering about
among the broken columns, and gazing away to the
main and the distant isles, confessing the surpassing
beauty of Greece. Yet have its mountains scarce a
green spot, and its vales are treeless and uninhabited,
and all that constitutes desolation is there, and strange
as it may seem, you neither miss the verdure, nor the
people, nor find it desolate. The outline of Greece,
in the first place, is the finest in the world. The
mountains lean down into the valleys, and the plains
swell up to the mountains, and the islands rise from
the sea, with a mixture of boldness and grace altogether
peculiar. In the most lonely parts of the
Egean, where you can see no trace of a human foot,
it strikes you like a foreign land. Then the atmosphere
is its own, and it exceeds that of Italy, far. It
gives it the look of a landscape seen through a faintly-teinted
glass. Soft blue mists of the most rarefied and
changing shapes envelop the mountains on the clearest
day, and without obscuring the most distant points
perceptibly, give hill and vale a beauty that surpasses
that of verdure. I never saw such air as I see in
Greece. It has the same effect on the herbless and
rocky scenery about us, as a veil over the face of a
woman.

The islander who had accompanied us to the temple,
stood on a fragment of a column, still as a statue,
looking down upon the sea toward Athens. His figure
for athletic grace of mould, and his head and features,
for the expression of manly beauty and character,
might have been models to Phidias. The beautiful
and poetical land, of which he inherited his share
of unparalleled glory, lay around him. I asked myself
why it should have become, as it seems to be, the despair
of the philanthropist. Why should its people,
who, in the opinion of Child Harold, are “nature's favorites
still,” be branded and abandoned as irreclaimable
rogues, and the source to which we owe, even to
this day, our highest models of taste, be neglected and
forgotten? The nine days' enthusiasm for Greece
has died away, and she has received a king from a
family of despots. But there seems to me in her very
beauty, and in the still superior qualities of her children,
wherever they have room for competition, a
promise of resuscitation. The convulsions of Europe
may leave her soon to herself, and the slipper of the
Turk, and the hand of the Christian, once lifted fairly
from her neck, she will rise, and stand up amid these
imperishable temples, once more free!

84. LETTER LXXXIV.

Egean Sea.—We got under way this morning, and
stood toward Athens, followed by the sloop-of-war,
John Adams, which had come to anchor under our
stern the evening of our arrival at Egina. The day is
like every day of the Grecian summer, heavenly. The
stillness and beauty of a new world lie about us. The
ships steal on with their clouds of canvass just filling
in the light breeze of the Egean, and withdrawing the
eye from the lofty temple crowning the mountain on
our lee, whose shining columns shift slowly as we pass;
we could believe ourselves asleep on the sea. I have
been repeating to myself the beautiful reflection of
Servius Sulpitius, which occurs in his letter of condolence
to Cicero, on the death of his daughter, written
on this very spot. [18] “On my return from Asia,” he
says, “as I was sailing from Egina toward Megara, I
began to contemplate the prospect of the countries
around me. Egina was behind, Megara before me;
Piræus on the right, Corinth on the left; all which
towns, once famous and flourishing, now lie overturned
and buried in the ruins; upon this sight, I could
not but presently think within myself, `Alas! how do
we poor mortals fret and vex ourselves if any of our
friends happen to die or be killed, whose life is yet so
short, when the carcases of so many cities lie here exposed
before me in one view.”'

The columns of the Parthenon are easily distinguishable
with the glass, and to the right of the Acropolis,
in the plain, I see a group of tall ruins, which by
the position must be near the banks of the Ilissus. I
turn the glass upon the sides of the mount Hymettus,
whose beds of thyme, “the long, long summer gilds,”
and I can scarce believe that the murmur of the bees
is not stealing over the water to my ear. Can this be
Athens? Are these the same isles and mountains Alcibiades
saw, returning with his victorious galleys from
the Hellespont; the same that faded on the long gaze
of the conqueror of Salamis, leaving his ungrateful
country for exile: the same that to have seen, for a
Roman, was to be complete as a man; the same whose
proud dames wore the golden grasshopper in their
hair, as a boasting token that they had sprung from
the soil; the same where Pericles nursed the arts, and
Socrates and Plato taught “humanity,” and Epicurus
walked with his disciples, looking for truth? What
an offset are these thrilling thoughts, with the nearing
view in my sight, to a whole calendar of common misfortune!

Dropped anchor in the Piræus, the port of Athens.
The city is five miles in the interior, and the “arms
of Athens,” as the extending walls were called, stretched
in the times of the republic from the Acropolis to
the sea. The Piræus, now nearly a deserted port,
with a few wretched houses, was then a large city. It
wants an hour to sunset, and I am about starting with
one of the officers to walk to Athens.

Five miles more sacred in history than those between
the Piræus and the Acropolis, do not exist in
the world. We walked them in about two hours,
with a golden sunset at our backs, and the excitement
inseparable from an approach to “the eye of Greece,”
giving elasticity to our steps. Near the Parthenon,

which had been glowing in a flood of saffron light before
us, the road separated, and taking the right, we
entered the city by its southern gate. A tall Greek,
who was returning from the plains with a gun on his
shoulder, led us through the narrow streets of the
modern town to a hotel, where a comfortable supper,
of which the most attractive circumstance to me was
some honey from Hymettus, brought us to bed-time.

We were standing under the colonnades of the
temples of Theseus, the oldest, and the best preserved
of the antiquities of Athens, at an early hour. We
walked around it in wonder. The sun that threw inward
the shadows of its beautiful columns, had risen
on that eastern porch for more than two thousand
years, and it is still the transcendent model of the
world. The Parthenon was a copy of it. The now
venerable and ruined temples of Rome, were built in
its proportions when it was already an antiquity. The
modern edifices of every civilized nation are considered
faulty only as they depart from it. How little dreamed
the admirable Grecian, when its proportions rose
gradually to his patient thought, that the child of his
teeming imagination would be so immortal!

The situation of the Theseion has done much to
preserve it. It stands free of the city, while the Parthenon
and the other temples of the Acropolis, being
within the citadel, have been battered by every assailant,
from the Venetian to the ikonoklast and the Turk.
It looks at a little distance like a modern structure, its
parts are so nearly perfect. It is only on coming close
to the columns that you see the stains in the marble
to be the corrosion of the long-feeding tooth of ages.
A young Englishman is buried within the nave of the
temple, and the son of Miaulis, said to have been a
young man worthy of the best days of Greece, lies in
the eastern porch, with the weeds growing rank over
his grave.

We passed a handsome portico, standing alone amid
a heap of ruins. It was the entrance to the ancient
Agora. Here assembled the people of Athens, the
constituents and supporters of Pericles, the first possessors
of these god-like temples. Here were sown,
in the ears of the Athenians, the first seeds of glory
and sedition, by patriots and demagogues, in the stirring
days of Platæa and Marathon. Here was it first
whispered that Aristides had been too long called
“the just,” and that Socrates corrupted the youth of
Athens. And, for a lighter thought, it was here that
the wronged wife of Alcibiades, compelled to come
forth publicly and sign her divorce, was snatched up
in the arms of her brilliant, but dissolute husband, and
carried forcibly home, forgiving him, woman-like, with
but half a repentance. The feeling with which I read
the story when a boy, is strangely fresh in my memory.

We hurried on to the Acropolis. The ascent is
winding and difficult, and, near the gates, encumbered
with marble rubbish. Volumes have been written on
the antiquities which exist still within the walls. The
greater part of four unrivalled temples are still lifted to
the sun by this tall rock in the centre of Athens, the
majestic Parthenon, visible over half Greece, towering
above all. A Bavarian soldier received our passport
at the gate. He was resting the butt of his musket
on a superb bas-relief, a fragment from the ruins.
How must the blood of a Greek boil to see a barbarian
thus set to guard the very sanctuary of his glory.

We stood under the portico of the Parthenon, and
looked down on Greece. Right through a broad gap
in the mountains, as if they had been swept away that
Athens might be seen, stood the shining Acropolis of
Corinth. I strained my eyes to see Diogenes lying
under the walls, and Alexander standing in his sunshine.
“Sea-born Salamis” was beneath me, but the
“ships by thousands” were not there, and the king had
vanished from his “rocky throne” with his “men and
nations.” ægina lay far down the gulf, folded in its
blue mist, and I strained my sight to see Aristides
wandering in exile on its shore. “Mars Hill,” was
within the sound of my voice, but its Areopagus was
deserted of its judges, and the intrepid apostle was
gone. The rostrum of Demosthenes, and the academy
of Plato, and the banks of the Ilissus, where Socrates
and Zeno taught, were all around me, but the
wily orator, and the philosopher “on whose infant lips
the bees shed honey as he slept,” and he whose death
and doctrine have been compared to those of Christ,
and the self-denying stoic, were alike departed. Silence
and ruin brood over all!

I walked through the nave of the Parthenon, passing
a small Turkish mosque (built sacrilegiously by the
former Disdar of Athens, within its very sanctuary),
and mounted the southeastern rampart of the Acropolis.
Through the plain beneath ran the classic Ilissus,
and on its banks stood the ruins of the temple
of Jupiter Olympus, which I had distinguished with
the glass in coming up the Egean. The Ilissus was
nearly dry, but a small island covered with verdure divided
its waters a short distance above the temple, and
near it were distinguishable the foundations of the
Lyceum. Aristotle and his Peripatetics ramble there
no more. A herd of small Turkish horses were feeding
up toward Hymettus, the only trace of life in a
valley that was once alive with the brightest of the
tides of human existence.

The sun poured into the Acropolis with an intensity
I have seldom felt. The morning breeze had
died away, and the glare from the bright marble ruins
was almost intolerable to the eye. I climbed around
over the heaps of fragmented columns, and maimed and
fallen statues, to the northwestern corner of the citaadel,
and sat down in the shade of one of the embrasures
to look over toward Plato's academy. The part
of the city below this corner of the wall was the ancient
Pelasgicum. It was from the spot where I sat
that Parrhesiades, the fisherman, is represented in
Lucian to have angled for philosophers, with a hook
baited with gold and figs.

The academy (to me the most interesting spot of
Athens) is still shaded with olive groves, as in the
time of Plato. The Cephissus, whose gentle flow has
mingled its murmur with so much sweet philosophy,
was hidden from my sight by the numberless trees. I
looked toward the spot with inexpressible interest. I
had not yet been near enough to dispel the illusion.
To me, the academy was still beneath those silvery
olives in all its poetic glory. The “Altar of Love”
still stood before the entrance; the temple of Prometheus,
the sanctuary of the Muses, the statues of
Plato and of the Graces, the sacred olive, the tank in
the coal gardens, and the tower of the railing Timon
were all there. I could almost have waited till even
ing to see Epicurus and Leontium, Socrates and As
pasia, returning to Athens.

We passed the Tower of the Winds, the ancient
Klepsydra or water-clock of Athens, in returning to
the hotel. The Eight Winds sculptured on the octagonal
sides, are dressed according to their temperatures,
six of them being more or less draped, and the
remaining two nude. It is a small marble building,
more curious than beautiful.

Our way lay through the sultry streets of modern
Athens. I can give you an idea of it in a single sentence.
It is a large village, of originally mean houses,
pulled down to the very cellars, and lying choked in its
rubbish. A large square in ruins after a fire in one of
our cities, looks like it. It has been destroyed so often
by Turks and Greeks alternately, that scarce one stone
is left upon the other. The inhabitants thatch over
one corner of these wretched and dusty holes with

maize stalks and straw, and live there like beasts. The
fineness of the climate makes a roof almost unnecessary
for eight months in the year. The consuls and
authorities of the place, and the missionaries, have
tolerable houses, but the paths to them are next to
impracticable for the rubbish. Nothing but a Turkish
horse, which could be ridden up a precipice, would
ever pick his way through the streets.

85. LETTER LXXXV.

Took a walk by sunset to the Ilissus. I passed, on
the way, the “Lantern of Demosthenes,” a small octagonal
building of marble, adorned with splendid columns
and a beautifully-sculptured frieze, in which it
is said the orator used to shut himself for a month,
with his head half shaved, to practise his orations.
The Franciscan convent, Byron's residence while in
Athens, was built adjoining it. It is now demolished.
The poet's name is written with his own hand on a
marble slab of the wall.

I left the city by the gate of Hadrian, and walked on
to the temple of Jupiter Olympus. It crowns a small
elevation on the northern bank of the Ilissus. It was
once beyond all comparison the largest and most costly
building in the world. During seven hundred years
it employed the attention of the rulers of Greece, from
Pisistratus to Hadrian, and was never quite completed.
As a ruin it is the most beautiful object I ever saw.
Thirteen columns of Pentelic marble, partly connected
by a frieze, are all that remain. They are of the
flowery Corinthian order, and sixty feet in height, exclusive
of base or capital.

Three perfect columns stand separate from the rest,
and lift from the midst of that solitary plain with an
effect that, to my mind, is one of the highest sublimity.
The sky might rest on them. They seem made
to sustain it. As I lay on the parched grass and gazed
on them in the glory of a Grecian sunset, they seemed
to me proportioned for a continent. The mountains
I saw between them were not designed with more amplitude,
nor corresponded more nobly to the sky above.

The people of Athens have a superstitious reverence
for these ruins. Dodwell says, “The single column
toward the western extremity was thrown down, many
years ago, by a Turkish voivode, for the sake of the
materials, which were employed in constructing the
great mosque of the bazar. The Athenians relate,
that, after it was thrown down, the three others nearest
it were heard to lament the loss of their sister! and
these nocturnal lamentations did not cease till the
sacrilegious voivode was destroyed by poison.

Two of the columns, connected by one immense
slab, are surmounted by a small building, now in ruins,
but once the hermitage of a Greek monk. Here he
passed his life, seventy feet in the air, sustained by two
of the most graceful columns of Greece. A basket,
lowered by a line, was filled by the pious every morning,
but the romantic eremite was never seen. With
the lofty Acropolis crowned with temples just beyond
him, the murmuring Ilissus below, the thyme-covered
sides of Hymettus to the south, and the blue Egean
stretching away to the west, his eye, at least, could
never tire. There are times when I could envy him
his lift above the world.

I descended to the Fountain of Callirhoe, which
gushes from beneath a rock in the bed of the Ilissus,
just below the temple. It is the scene of the death
of the lovely nymph-mother of Ganymede. The twilight
air was laden with the fragrant thyme, and the
songs of the Greek laborers returning from the fields
came faintly over the plains. Life seems too short,
when every breath is a pleasure. I loitered about the
clear and rocky lip of the fountain, till the pool below
reflected the stars in its trembling bosom. The lamps
began to twinkle in Athens, Hesperus rose over Mount
Pentelicus like a blazing lamp, the sky over Salamis
faded down to the sober teint of night, and the columns
of the Parthenon mingled into a single mass of shade.
And so, I thought, as I strolled back to the city, concludes
a day in Athens—one, at least, in my life, for
which it is worth the trouble to have lived.

I was again in the Acropolis the following morning.
Mr. Hill had kindly given me a note to Petarches
the king's antiquary, a young Athenian, who married
the sister of the Maid of Athens.[19] We went together
through the ruins. They have lately made new excavations,
and some superb bassi-relievi are among the
discoveries. One of them represented a procession
leading victims to sacrifice, and was quite the finest
thing I ever saw. The leading figure was a superb
female, from the head of which the nose had lately
been barbarously broken. The face of the enthusiastic
antiquary flushed while I was lamenting it. It
was done, he told me, but a week before, by an officer
of the English squadron then lying at the Piræus.
Petarches detected it immediately, and sent word to
the admiral, who discovered the heartless Goth in a
nephew of an English duke, a midshipman of his own
ship. I should not have taken the trouble to mention
so revolting a circumstance if I had not seen, in a
splendid copy of the “Illustrations of Byron's Travels
in Greece,” a most virulent attack on the officers of
the Constellation, and Americans generally, for the
same thing. Who but Englishmen have robbed
Athens, and Egina, and all Greece? Who but Englishmen
are watched like thieves in their visits to every
place of curiosity in the world? Where is the superb
caryatid of the Erechtheion? stolen, with such barbarous
carelessness, too, that the remaining statues
and the superb portico they sustained are tumbling to
the ground! The insolence of England's laying such
sins at the door of another nation is insufferable.

For my own part, I can not conceive the motive for
carrying away a fragment of a statue or a column. I
should as soon think of drawing a tooth as a specimen
of some beautiful woman I had seen in my travels.
And how one dare show such a theft to any person of
taste, is quite as singular. Even when a whole column
or statue is carried away, its main charm is gone with
the association of the place. I venture to presume,
that no person of classic feeling ever saw Lord Elgin's
marbles without execrating the folly that could bring
them from their bright, native sky, to the vulgar atmosphere
of London. For the love of taste, let us discountenance
such barbarisms in America.

The Erechtheion and the adjoining temple are gems
of architecture. The small portico of the caryatides
(female figures, in the place of columns, with their
hands on their hips) must have been one of the most
exquisite things in Greece. One of them (fallen in
consequence of Lord Elgin's removal of the sister

statue), lies headless on the ground, and the remaining
ones are badly mutilated, but they are very, very beautiful.
I remember two in the Villa Albani, at Rome,
brought from some other temple in Greece, and considered
the choicest gems of the gallery.

We climbed up to the sanctuary of the Erechtheion,
in which stood the altars to the two elements to which
the temples were dedicated. The sculpture around
the cornices is still so sharp that it might have been
finished yesterday. The young antiquary alluded to
Byron's anathema against Lord Elgin, in Chile Harold,
and showed me, on the inside of the capital of
one of the columns, the place where the poet had
written his name. It was, as he always wrote it, simply
“Byron,” in small letters, and would not be noticed
by an ordinary observer.

If the lover, as the poet sings, was jealous of the
star his mistress gazed upon, the sister of the “Maid
of Athens” may well be jealous of the Parthenon.
Petarches looks at it and talks of it with a fever in his
eyes. I could not help smiling at his enthusiasm.
He is about twenty-five, of a slender person, with
downcast, melancholy eyes, and looks the poet according
to the most received standard. His reserved
manners melted toward me on discovering that I knew
our countryman, Dr. Howe, who, he tells me, was his
groomsman (or the corresponding assistant at a Greek
wedding), and to whom he seems, in common with all
his countrymen, warmly attached. To a man of his
taste, I can conceive nothing more gratifying than his
appointment to the care of the Acropolis. He spends
his day there with his book, attending the few travellers
who come, and when the temples are deserted, he
sits down in the shadow of a column, and reads amid
the silence of the ruins he almost worships. There
are few vocations in this envious world so separated
from the jarring passions of our nature.

Passed the morning on horseback, visiting the antiquities
without the city. Turning by the temple of
Theseus, we crossed Mars Hill, the seat of the Areopagus,
and passing a small valley, ascended the Pnyx.
On the right of the path we observed the rock of the
hill worn to the polish of enamel by friction. It was
an almost perpendicular descent of six or seven feet,
and steps were cut at the sides to mount to the top.
It is the famous sliding stone, believed by the Athenians
to possess the power of determining the sex of unborn
children. The preference of sons, if the polish of the
stone is to be trusted, is universal in Greece.

The rostrum of Demosthenes was above us on the
side of the hill facing from the sea. A small platform
is cut into the rock, and on either side a seat is hewn
out, probably for the distinguished men of the state.
The audience stood on the side-hill, and the orator
and his listeners were in the open air. An older rostrum
is cut into the summit of the hill, facing the sea.
It is said that when the maritime commerce of Greece
began to enrich the lower classes, the thirty tyrants
turned the rostrum toward the land, lest their orators
should point to the ships of the Piræus, and remind
the people of their power.

Scene after scene swept through my fancy as I stood
on the spot. I saw Demosthenes, after his first unsuccessful
oration, descending with a dejected air toward
the temple of Theseus, followed by old Eunomas;[20]
abandoning himself to despair, and repressing the fiery
consciousness within him as a hopeless ambition. I
saw him again, with the last glowing period of a Phil
lipic on his lips, standing on this rocky eminence, his
arm stretched toward Macedon; his eye flashing with
success, and his ear catching the low murmur of the
crowd below, which told him he had moved his country
as with the heave of an earthquake. I saw the
calm Aristides rise, with his mantle folded majestically
about him; and the handsome Alcibiades waiting with
a smile on his lips to speak; and Socrates, gazing on
his wild but winning disciple with affection and fear.
How easily is this bare rock, whereon the eagle now
alights unaffrighted, repeopled with the crowding
shadows of the past.

86. LETTER LXXXVI.

Athens.—We dismounted at the door of Socrates's
prison. A hill between the Areopagus and the sea, is
crowned with the remains of a showy monument to a
Roman pro-consul. Just beneath it the hill forms a
low precipice, and in the face of it you see three low
entrances to caverns hewn in the solid rock. The
farthest to the right was the room of the Athenian
guard, and within it is a chamber with a round ceiling,
which the sage occupied during the thirty days of his
imprisonment. There are marks of an iron door which
separated it from the guard-room, and through the
bars of this he refused the assistance of his friends to
escape, and held those conversations with Crito, Plato,
and others, which have made his name immortal. On
the day upon which he was doomed to die, he was removed
to the chamber nearest the Acropolis, and here
the hemlock was presented to him. A shallower excavation
between, held an altar to the gods; and after
his death, his body was here given to his friends.

Nothing, except some of the touching narrations of
scripture, ever seemed to me so affecting as the history
of the death of Socrates. It has been likened (I think,
not profanely), to that of Christ. His virtuous life, his
belief in the immortality of the soul and a future state
of reward and punishment, his forgiveness of his enemies
and his godlike death, certainly prove him, in
the absence of revealed light, to have walked the
“darkling path of human reason” with an almost inspired
rectitude. I stood in the chamber which had
received his last breath, not without emotion. The
rocky walls about me had witnessed his composure as
he received the cup from his weeping jailer; the
roughly-hewn floor beneath my feet had sustained
him, as he walked to and fro, till the poison had chilled
his limbs; his last sigh, as he covered his head with
his mantle and expired, passed forth by that low portal.
It is not easy to be indifferent on spots like these.
The spirit of the place is felt. We can not turn back
and touch the brighter links of that “fleshly chain,”
in which all human beings since the creation have been
bound alike, without feeling, even through the rusty
coil of ages, the electric sympathy. Socrates died
here! The great human leap into eternity, the inevitable
calamity of our race, was here taken more nobly
than elsewhere. Whether the effect be to “fright us
from the shore,” or, to nerve us by the example, to look
more steadily before us, a serious thought, almost of
course a salutary one, lurks in the very air.

We descended the hill and galloped our small Turkish
horses at a stirring pace over the plain. The short
stirrup and high peaked saddle of the country, are (at
least to men of my length and limb) uncomfortable
contrivances. With the knees almost up to the chin,
one is compelled, of course, to lean far over the horse's

head, and it requires all the fullness of Turkish trousers
to conceal the awkwardness of the position. We drew
rein at the entrance of the “olive grove.” Our horses
walked leisurely along the shaded path between the
trees, and we arrived in a few minutes at the site of
Plato's academy. The more ethereal portion of my
pleasure in seeing it must be in the recollection. The
Cephissus was dry, the noon-day sun was hot, and we
were glad to stop, with throbbing temples, under a
cluster of fig-trees, and eat the delicious fruit, forgetting
all the philosophers incontinently. We sat in our
saddles, and a Greek woman, of great natural beauty,
though dressed in rags, bent down the boughs to our
reach. The honey from the over-ripe figs, dropped
upon us as the wind shook the branches. Our dark-eyed
and bright-lipped Pomona served us with a grace
and cheerfulness that would draw me often to the
neighborhood of the academy if I lived in Athens. I
venture to believe that Phryne herself, in so mean a
dress, would scarce have been more attractive. We
kissed our hand to her as our spirited horses leaped
the hollow with which the trees were encircled, and
passing the mound sacred to the Furies, where Œdipus
was swallowed up, dashed over the sultry plain once
more, and were soon in Athens.

I have passed most of my leisure hours here in a
scene I certainly did not reckon in anticipation, among
the pleasures of a visit to Athens—the American missionary
school. We have all been delighted with it,
from the commodore to the youngest midshipman.
Mr. and Mrs. Hill have been here some four or five
years, and have attained their present degree of success
in the face of every difficulty. Their whole
number of scholars from the commencement, has
been upward of three hundred; at present they have
a hundred and thirty, mostly girls.

We found the school in a new and spacious stone
building on the site of the ancient “market,” where
Paul, on his visit to Athens, “disputed daily with
those that met with him.” A large court-yard, shaded
partly with a promegranate-tree, separates it from the
marble portico of the Agora, which is one of the finest
remains of antiquity. Mrs. Hill was in the midst of
the little Athenians. Two or three serious-looking
Greek girls were assisting her in regulating their movements,
and the new and admirable system of combined
instruction and amusement was going on swimmingly.
There were, perhaps, a hundred children in the benches,
mostly from three to six or eight years of age;
dark-eyed, cheerful little creatures, who looked as if
their “birthright of the golden grasshopper” had made
them nature's favorites as certainly as in the days when
their ancestor-mothers settled questions of philosophy.
They marched and recited, and clapped their sunburnt
hands, and sung hymns, and I thought I never
had seen a more gratifying spectacle. I looked around
in vain for one who seemed discontented or weary.
Mrs. Hill's manner to them was most affectionate.
She governs, literally, with a smile.

I selected several little favorites. One was a fine
fellow of two to three years, whose name I inquired
immediately. He was Plato Petarches, the nephew
of the “maid of Athens,” and the son of the second
of the three girls so admired by Lord Byron. Another
was a girl of six or seven, with a face, surpassing, for
expressive beauty, that of any child I ever saw. She
was a Hydriote by birth, and dressed in the costume
of the islands. Her little feet were in Greek slippers;
her figure was prettily set off with an open jacket,
laced with buttons from the shoulder to the waist, and
her head was enveloped in a figured handkerchief,
folded gracefully in the style of a turban, and brought
under her chin, so as to show suspended a rich metal'ic
fringe. Her face was full, but marked with
childish dimples, and her mouth and eyes, as beautiful
as ever those expressive features were made, had a retiring
seriousness in them, indescribably sweet. She
looked as if she had been born in some scene of Turkish
devastation, and had brought her mother's heartache
into the world.

At noon, at the sound of a bell, they marched out,
clapping their hands in time to the instructer's voice,
and seated themselves in order upon the portico, in
front of the school. Here their baskets were given
them, and each one produced her dinner and ate it
with the utmost propriety. It was really a beautiful
scene.

It is to be remembered that here is educated a class
of human beings who were else deprived of instruction
by the universal custom of their country. The females
of Greece are suffered to grow up in ignorance. One
who can read and write is rarely found. The school
has commenced fortunately at the most favorable moment.
The government was in process of change, and
an innovation was unnoticed in the confusion that at a
later period might have been opposed by the prejudices
of custom. The king and the president of the
regency, Count Armansperg, visited the school frequently
during their stay in Athens, and expressed
their thanks to Mrs. Hill warmly. The Countess
Armansperg called repeatedly to have the pleasure
of sitting in the school-room for an hour. His majesty,
indeed, could hardly find a more useful subject in
his realm. Mrs. Hill, with her own personal efforts,
has taught more than one hundred children to read the
Bible! How few of us can write against our names
an equal offset to the claims of human duty?

Circumstances made me acquainted with one or two
wealthy persons residing in Athens, and I received
from them a strong impression of Mr. Hill's usefulness
and high standing. His house is the hospitable
resort of every stranger of intelligence and respectability.

Mr. King and Mr. Robinson, missionaries of the
Foreign Board, are absent at Psera. Their families
are here.

I passed my last evening among the magnificent
ruins on the banks of the Ilissus. The next day was
occupied in returning visits to the families who had
been polite to us, and, with a farewell of unusual regret
to our estimable missionary friends, we started on
horseback to return by a gloomy sunset to the Piræus.
I am looking more for the amusing than the useful in
my rambles about the world, and I confess I should
not have gone far out of my way to visit a missionary
station anywhere. But chance has thrown this of
Athens across my path, and I record it as a moral
spectacle to which no thinking person could be indifferent.
I freely say I never have met with an equal
number of my fellow-creatures, who seemed to me so
indisputably and purely useful. The most cavilling
mind must applaud their devoted sense of duty, bearing
up against exile from country and friends, privations,
trial of patience, and the many, many ills inevitable
to such an errand in a foreign land, while even
the coldest politician would find in their efforts the
best promise for an enlightened renovation of Greece.

Long after the twilight thickened immediately about
us, the lofty Acropolis stood up, bathed in a glow of
light from the lingering sunset. I turned back to gaze
upon it with an enthusiasm I had thought laid on the
shelf with my half-forgotten classics. The intrinsic
beauty of the ruins of Greece, the loneliness of their
situation, and the divine climate in which, to use Byron's
expression, they are “buried,” invest them with
an interest which surrounds no other antiquities in the
world. I rode on, repeating to myself Milton's beautiful
description:

87. LETTER LXXXVII.

Piræus.—With a basket of ham and claret in the
stern-sheets, a cool awning over our heads, and twelve
men at the oars, such as the coxswain of Themistocles'
galley might have sighed for, we pulled away from the
ship at an early hour, for Eleusis. The conqueror of
Salamis delayed the battle for the ten o'clock breeze,
and as nature (which should be called he instead of
she, for her constancy) still ruffles the Egean at the
same hour, we had a calm sea through the strait,
where once lay the “ships by thousands.”

We soon rounded the point, and shot along under
the

It is a bare, bold precipice, a little back from the sea,
and commands an entire view of the strait. Here sat
Xerxes, “on his throne of gold,[21] with many secretaries
about him to write down the particulars of the action.”
The Athenians owed their victory to the wisdom
of Themistocles, who managed to draw the Persians
into the strait (scarce a cannon shot across just
here), where only a small part of their immense fleet
could act at one time. The wind, as the wily Greek
had foreseen, rose at the same time, and rendered the
lofty-built Persian ships unmanageable; while the
Athenian galleys, cut low to the water, were easily
brought into action in the most advantageous position.
It is impossible to look upon this beautiful and lovely
spot and imagine the stirring picture it presented.
The wild sea-bird knows no lonelier place. Yet on
that rock once sat the son of Darius, with his royal
purple floating to the wind, and, below him, within
these rocky limits, lay “one thousand two hundred
ships-of-war, and two thousand transports,” while behind
him, on the shores of the Piræus, were encamped
“seven hundred thousand foot, and four hundred
thousand horse”—“amounting,” says Potter, in his
notes, “with the retinue of women and servants that
attended the Asiatic princes in their military expeditions,
to more than five millions.” How like a king
must the royal Persian have felt, when

With an hour or two of fast pulling, we opened into
the broad bay of Eleusis. The first sabbath after the
creation could not have been more absolutely silent.
Megara was away on the left, Eleusis before us at the
distance of four or five miles, and the broad plains
where agriculture was first taught by Triptolemus,
the poetical home of Ceres, lay an utter desert in the
sunshine. Behind us, between the mountains, descended
the Sacra Via, by which the procession came
from Athens to celebrate the “Eleusinian mysteries”—
a road of five or six miles, lined, in the time of Pericles,
with temples and tombs. I could half fancy the
scene as it was presented to the eyes of the invading
Macedonians—when the procession of priests and virgins,
accompanied by the whole population of Athens,
wound down into the plain, guarded by the shining
spears of the army of Alcibiades. It is still doubtful,
I believe, whether these imposing ceremonies were the
pure observances of a lofty and sincere superstition, or
the orgies of licentious saturnalia.

We landed at Eleusis, and were immediately surrounded
by a crowd of people, as simple and curious
in their manners, and resembling somewhat in their
dress and complexion, the Indians of our country.
The ruins of a great city lay about us, and their huts
were built promiscuously among them. Magnificent
fragments of columns and blocks of marble interrupted
the path through the village, and between two of the
houses lay, half buried, a gigantic medallion of Pentelic
marble, representing, in alto relievo, the body and
head of a warrior in full armor. A hundred men
would move it with difficulty. Commodore Patterson
attempted it six years ago, in the Constitution, but his
launch was found unequal to its weight.

The people here gathered more closely around the
ladies of our party, examining their dress with childish
curiosity. They were doubtless the first females ever
seen at Eleusis in European costume. One of the
ladies happening to pull off her glove, there was a
general cry of astonishment. The brown kid had
clearly been taken as the color of the hand. Some
curiosity was then shown to see their faces, which
were covered with thick green veils, as a protection
against the sun. The sight of their complexion (in
any country remarkable for a dazzling whiteness) completed
the astonishment of these children of Ceres.

We, on our part, were scarcely less amused with
their costumes in turn. Over the petticoat was worn
a loose jacket of white cloth reaching to the knee,
and open in front—its edges and sleeves wrought very
tastefully with red cord. The head-dress was composed
entirely of money. A fillet of gold sequins was
first put, a la feroniere, around the forehead, and a
close cap, with a throat-piece like the gorget of a helmet,
fitted the scull exactly, stitched with coins of all
values, folded over each other according to their sizes,
like scales. The hair was then braided and fell down
the back, loaded also with money. Of the fifty or sixty
women we saw, I should think one half had money
on her head to the amount of from one to two hundred
dollars. They suffered us to examine them with perfect
good humor. The greater proportion of pieces
were paras, a small and thin Turkish coin of very small
value. Among the larger pieces were dollars of all
nations, five-franc pieces, Sicilian piastres, Tuscan
colonati, Venetian swansicas, etc., etc. I doubted
much whether they were not the collections of some
piratical caique. There is no possibility of either
spending or getting money within many miles of Eleusis,
and it seemed to be looked upon as an ornament
which they had come too lightly by to know its use.

We walked over the foundations of several large
temples with the remains of their splendor lying unvalued
about them, and at half a mile from the village
came to the “well of Proserpine,” whence, say the
poets, the ravished daughter of Ceres emerged from
the infernal regions on her visits to her mother. The
modern Eelusinians know it only as a well of the purest
water.

On our return, we stopped at the southern point of
the Piræus, to see the tomb of Themistocles. We
were directed to it by thirteen or fourteen frusta of
enormous columns, which once formed the monument
to his memory. They buried him close to the edge
of the sea, opposite Salamis. The continual beat of
the waves for so many hundred years has worn away

the promontory, and his sarcophagus, which was laid
in a grave cut in the solid rock, is now filled by every
swell from the Egean. The old hero was brought
back from his exile to be gloriously buried. He could
not lie better for the repose of his spirit (if it returned
with his bones from Argos). The sea on which he
beat the haughty Persians with his handful of galleys,
sends every wave to his feet. The hollows in the
rock around his grave are full of snowy salt left by the
evaporation. You might scrape up a bushel within
six feet of him. It seems a natural tribute to his
memory.[22]

On a high and lonely rock, stretching out into the
midst of the sea, stands a solitary temple. As far as
the eye can reach, along the coast of Attica and to
the distant isles, there is no sign of human habitation.
There it stands, lifted into the blue sky of Greece, like
the unreal “fabric of a vision.”

Cape Colonna and its “temple of Minerva,” were
familiar to my memory, but my imagination had pictured
nothing half so beautiful. As we approached
it from the sea, it seemed so strangely out of place,
even for a ruin, so far removed from what had ever
been the haunt of man, that I scarce credited my eyes.
We could soon count them—thirteen columns of
sparkling marble, glittering in the sun. The sea-air
keeps them spotlessly white, and, until you approach
them nearly, they have the appearance of a structure,
from its freshness, still in the sculptor's hands.

The boat was lowered, and the ship lay off-and-on
while we landed near the rocks where Falconer was
shipwrecked, and mounted to the temple. The summit
of the promontory is strewn with the remains of
the fallen columns, and their smooth surfaces are
thickly inscribed with the names of travellers. Among
others, I noticed Byron's and Hobhouse's, and that
of the agreeable author of “A year in Spain.” Byron,
by the way, mentions having narrowly escaped robbery
here, by a band of Mainote pirates. He was surprised
swimming off the point, by an English vessel containing
some ladies of his acquaintance. He concludes
the “Isles of Greece” beautifully with an allusion to
it by its ancient name:—

The view from the summit is one of the finest in all
Greece. The isle where Plato was sold as a slave,
and where Aristides and Demosthenes passed their
days in exile, stretches along the west; the wide
Egean, sprinkled with here and there a solitary rock,
herbless, but beautiful in its veil of mist, spreads away
from its feet to the southern line of the horizon, and
crossing each other almost imperceptibly on the light
winds of this summer sea, the red-sailed caique of
Greece, the merchantmen from the Dardanelles, and
the heavy men-of-war of England and France, cruising
wherever the wind blows fairest, are seen like
broad-winged and solitary birds, lying low with spread
pinions upon the waters. The place touched me. I
shall remember it with an affection.

There is a small island close to Sunium, which was
fortified by one of the heroes of the Iliad on his return
from Troy—why, heaven only knows. It was here,
too, that Phrontes, the pilot of Menelaus, died and
was buried.

We returned on board after an absence of two hours
from the ship, and are steering now straight for the
Dardanelles. The plains of Marathon are but a few
hours north of our course, and I pass them unwillingly;
but what is there one would not see? Greece
lies behind, and I have realized one of my dearest
dreams in rambling over its ruins. Travel is an appetite
that “grows by what it feeds on.”

88. LETTER LXXXVIII.

Lesbos to windward. A caique, crowded with
people, is running across our bow, all hands singing
a wild chorus (perhaps the Lesboun carmen), most
merrily. The island is now called Mytilene, said to
be the greenest and most fertile of the Mediterranean.
The Lesbean wine is still good, but they have had no
poetesses since Sappho. Cause and effect have quarrelled,
one would think.

Tenedos on the lee. The tomb of Achilles is distinguishable
with the glass on the coast of Asia. The
column which Alexander “crowned and anointed and
danced around naked,” in honor of the hero's ghost,
stands above it no longer. The Macedonian wept over
Achilles, says the schoolbook, and envied him the
blind bard who had sung his deeds. He would have
dried his tears if he had known that his pas seul would
be remembered as long.

Tenedos seems a pretty island as we near it. It
was here that the Greeks hid, to persuade the Trojans
that they had abandoned the siege, while the
wooden horse was wheeled into Troy. The site of
the city of Priam is visible as we get nearer the coast
of Asia. Mount Ida and the marshy valley of the
Scamander are appearing beyond Cape Sigæum, and
we shall anchor in an hour between Europe and Asia,
in the mouth of the rapid Dardanelles. The wind is
not strong enough to stem the current that sets down
like a mill-race from the sea of Marmora.

Went ashore on the Asian side for a ramble. We
landed at the strong Turkish castle that, with another
on the European side, defends the strait, and passing
under their bristling batteries, entered the small Turkish
town in the rear. Our appearance excited a great
deal of curiosity. The Turks, who were sitting cross-legged
on the broad benches extending like a tailor's
board, in front of the cafês, stopped smoking as we
passed, and the women, wrapping up their own faces
more closely, approached the ladies of our party, and
lifted their veils to look at them with the freedom of
our friends at Eleusis. We came unaware upon two
squalid wretches of women in turning a corner, who
pulled their ragged shawls over their heads with looks
of the greatest resentment at having exposed their
faces to us.

A few minutes' walk brought us outside of the
town. An extensive Turkish grave-yard lay on the
left. Between fig-trees and blackberry bushes it was
a green spot, and the low tombstones of the men,
crowned each with a turban carved in marble of the
shape befitting the sleeper's rank, peered above the
grass like a congregation sitting in a uniform head-dress
at a field-preaching. Had it not been for the
female graves, which were marked with a slab like
ours, and here and there the tombstone of a Greek,
carved, after the antique, in the shape of a beautiful
shell, the effect of an assemblage sur l'herbe would
have been ludicrously perfect.

We walked on to the Scamander. A rickety bridge
gave us a passage, toll free, to the other side, where
we sat round the rim of a marble well, and ate delicious
grapes, stolen for us by a Turkish boy from a near
vineyard. Six or seven camels were feeding on the
unenclosed plain, picking a mouthful and then lifting
their long, snaky necks into the air to swallow; a stray
horseman, with the head of his bridle decked with red
tassels and his knees up to his chin, scoured the bridle
path to the mountains; and three devilish-looking
buffaloes scratched their hides and rolled up their

fiendish green eyes under a bramble-hedge near the
river. Voila! a scene in Asia.

The poets lie, or the Scamander is as treacherous
as Macassar. Venus bathed in its waters before contending
for the prize of beauty adjudged to her on
this very Mount Ida that I see covered with brown
grass in the distance. Her hair became “flowing
gold” in the lavation. My friends compliment me
upon no change after a similar experiment. My long
locks (run riot with a four months' cruise) are as dingy
and untractable as ever, and, except in the increased
brownness of a Mediterranean complexion, the cracked
glass in the state-room of my friend the lieutenant
gives me no encouragement of a change. It is soft
water, and runs over fine white sand; but the fountain
of Callirhoc, at Athens (she was the daughter of the
Scamander, and, like most daughters, is much more
attractive than her papa), is softer and clearer. Perhaps
the loss of the Scamander's virtues is attributable
to the cessation of the tribute paid to the god in Helen's
time.

The twilights in this part of the world are unparalleled—but
I have described twilights and sunsets in
Greece and Italy till I am ashamed to write the words.
Each one comes as if there never had been and never
were to be another, and the adventures of the day,
however stirring, are half forgotten in its glory, and
seem, in comparison, unworthy of description; but
one look at the terms that might describe it, written
on paper, uncharms even the remembrance. You
must come to Asia and feel sunsets. You can not get
them by paying postage.

At anchor, waiting for a wind. Called to-day on
the Bey Effendi, commander of the two castles, “Europe”
and “Asia,” between which we lie. A pokerish-looking
dwarf, with ragged beard and high turban, and
a tall Turk, who I am sure never smiled since he was
born, kicked off their slippers at the threshold, and
ushered us into a chamber on the second story. It
was a luxurious little room, lined completely with
cushions, the muslin-covered pillows of down leaving
only a place for the door. The divan was as broad as
a bed, and, save the difficulty of rising from it, it was
perfect as a lounge. A ceiling of inlaid woods, embrowned
with smoke, windows of small panes fantastically
set, and a place lower than the floor for the
attendants to stand and leave their slippers, were all
that was peculiar else.

The bey entered in a few minutes, with a pipe-bearer,
an interpreter, and three or four attendants.
He was a young man, about twenty, and excessively
handsome. A clear, olive complexion, a mustache
of silky black, a thin, aquiline nose, with almost transparent
nostrils, cheeks and chin rounded into a perfect
oval, and mouth and eyes expressive of the most resolute
firmness, and, at the same time, girlishly beautiful,
completed the picture of the finest-looking fellow I
have seen within my recollection. His person was
very slight, and his feet and hands small, and particularly
well shaped. Like most of his countrymen of
latter years, his dress was half European, and much
less becoming, of course, than the turban and trowser.
Pantaloons, rather loose, a light fawn-colored short-jacket,
a red cap, with a blue tassel, and stockings,
without shoes, were enough to give him the appearance
of a dandy half through his toilet. He entered
with an indolent step, bowed, without smiling, and,
throwing one of his feet under him, sunk down upon
the divan, and beckoned for his pipe. The Turk in
attendance kicked off his slippers, and gave him the
long tube with its amber mouth-piece, setting the bowl
into a basin in the centre of the room. The bey put it
to his handsome lips, and drew till the smoke mounted
to the ceiling, and then handed it, with a graceful
gesture, to the commodore.

The conversation went on through two interpretations.
The bey's interpreter spoke Greek and Turkish,
and the ship's pilot, who accompanied us, spoke
Greek and English, and the usual expressions of good
feeling, and offers of mutual service, were thus passed
between the puffs of the pipe with sufficient facility.
The dwarf soon entered with coffee. The small gilded
cups had about the capacity of a goodwife's thimble,
and were covered with gold tops to retain the aroma.
The fragrance of the rich berry filled the room. We
acknowledged, at once, the superiority of the Turkish
manner of preparing it. It is excessively strong, and
drunk without milk.

I looked into every corner while the attendants were
removing the cups, but could see no trace of a book.
Ten or twelve guns, with stocks inlaid with pearl and
silver, two or three pair of gold-handled pistols, and a
superb Turkish cimeter and belt, hung upon the
walls, but there was no other furniture. We rose,
after a half hour's visit, and were bowed out by the
handsome effendi, coldly and politely. As we passed
under the walls of the castle, on the way to the boat,
we saw six or seven women, probably a part of his
harem, peeping from the embrasures of one of the
bastions. Their heads were wrapped in white, one
eye only left visible. It was easy to imagine them
Zuleikas after having seen their master.

Went ashore at Castle Europe, with one or two of
the officers, to take a bath. An old Turk, sitting upon
his hams, at the entrance, pointed to the low door at
his side, without looking at us, and we descended, by
a step or two, into a vaulted hall, with a large, circular
ottoman in the centre, and a very broad divan all
around. Two tall young mussulmans, with only turbans
and waistcloths to conceal their natural proportions,
assisted us to undress, and led us into a stone
room, several degrees warmer than the first. We
walked about here for a few minutes, and, as we began
to perspire, were taken into another, filled with hot
vapor, and, for the first moment or two, almost intolerable.
It was shaped like a dome, with twenty or
thirty small windows at the top, several basins at the
sides into which hot water was pouring, and a raised
stone platform in the centre, upon which we were all
requested, by gestures, to lie upon our backs. The
perspiration, by this time, was pouring from us like
rain. I lay down with the others, and a Turk, a dark-skinned,
fine-looking fellow, drew on a mitten of rough
grass cloth, and, laying one hand upon my breast to
hold me steady, commenced rubbing me, without
water, violently. The skin peeled off under the friction,
and I thought he must have rubbed into the flesh
repeatedly. Nothing but curiosity to go through the
regular operation of a Turkish bath prevented my
crying out “enough!” He rubbed away, turning me
from side to side, till the rough glove passed smoothly
all over my body and limbs, and then, handing me a
pair of wooden slippers, suffered me to rise. I walked
about for a few minutes, looking with surprise at the
rolls of skin he had taken from me, and feeling almost
transparent as the hot air blew upon me.

In a few minutes my mussulman beckoned to me to
follow him to a smaller room, where he seated me on
a stone beside a fount of hot water. He then made
some thick soap-suds in a basin, and, with a handful
of fine flax, soaped and rubbed me all over again, and
a few dashes of the hot water, from a wooden saucer,
completed the bath.

The next room, which had seemed so warm on our
entrance, was now quite chilly. We remained here
until we were dry, and then returned to the hall in
which our clothes were left, where beds were prepared
on the divans, and we were covered in warm cloths,
and left to our repose. The disposition to sleep was

almost irresistible. We rose in a short time, and went
to the coffee-house opposite, when a cup of strong
coffee, and a hookah smoked through a highly ornamented
glass bubbling with water, refreshed us deliciously.

I have had ever since a feeling of suppleness and
lightness, which is like wings growing at my feet. It
is certainly a very great luxury, though, unquestionably,
most enervating as a habit.

89. LETTER LXXXIX.

Dardanelles.—The oddest invitation I ever had
in my life was from a Turkish bey to a féte champêtre,
on the ruins of Troy! We have just returned, full
of wassail and pillaw, by the light of an Asian moon.

The morning was such a one as you would expect
in the country where mornings were first made. The
sun was clear, but the breeze was fresh, and as we sat
on the bey's soft divans, taking coffee before starting,
I turned my cheek to the open window, and confessed
the blessing of existence.

We were sixteen, from the ship, and our boat was
attended by his interpreter, the general of his troops,
the governor of Bournabashi (the name of the Turkish
town near Troy), and a host of attendants on foot and
horseback. His cook had been sent forward at daylight
with the provisions.

The handsome bey came to the door, and helped
to mount us upon his own horses, and we rode off,
with the whole population of the village assembled to
see our departure. We forded the Scamander, near
the town, and pushed on at a hard gallop over the
plain. The bey soon overtook us upon a fleet gray
mare, caparisoned with red trappings, holding an umbrella
over his head, which he courteously offered to
the commodore on coming up. We followed a grass
path, without hill or stone, for nine or ten miles, and
after having passed one or two hamlets, with their
open thrashing-floors, and crossed the Simois, with
the water to our saddle-girths, we left a slight rising
ground by a sudden turn, and descended to a cluster
of trees, where the Turks sprang from their horses,
and made signs for us to dismount.

It was one of nature's drawing-rooms. Thickets
of brush and willows enclosed a fountain, whose clear
waters were confined in a tank, formed of marble slabs,
from the neighboring ruins. A spreading tree above,
and soft meadow-grass to its very tip, left nothing to
wish but friends and a quiet mind to perfect its beauty.
The cook's fires were smoking in the thicket, the
horses were grazing without saddle or bridle in the
pasture below, and we lay down upon the soft, Turkish
carpets, spread beneath the trees, and reposed from
our fatigues for an hour.

The interpreter came when the sun had slanted a
little across the trees, and invited us to the bey's gardens,
hard by. A path, overshadowed with wild brush,
led us round the little meadow to a gate, close to the
fountain-head of the Scamander. One of the common
cottages of the country stood upon the left, and in
front of it a large arbor, covered with a grape-vine,
was underlaid with cushions and carpets. Here we
reclined, and coffee was brought us with baskets of
grapes, figs, quinces, and pomegranates, the bey and
his officers waiting on us themselves with amusing
assiduity. The people of the house, meantime, were
sent to the fields for green corn, which was roasted for
us, and this with nuts, wine, and conversation, and a
ramble to the source of the Simois, which bursts from
a cleft in the rock very beautifully, whiled away the
hours till dinner.

About four o'clock we returned to the fountain. A
white muslin cloth was laid upon the grass between
the edge and the overshadowing tree, and all around
it were spread the carpets upon which we were to recline
while eating. Wine and melons were cooling
in the tank, and plates of honey and grapes, and new-made
butter (a great luxury in the archipelago), stood
on the marble rim. The dinner might have fed Priam's
army. Half a lamb, turkeys, and chickens, were
the principal meats, but there was, besides, “a rabble
route” of made dishes, peculiar to the country, of ingredients
at which I could not hazard even a conjecture.

We crooked our legs under us with some awkwardness,
and producing our knives and forks (which we
had brought with the advice of the interpreter), commenced,
somewhat abated in appetite by too liberal a
lunch. The bey and his officers sitting upright, with
their feet under them, pinched off bits of meat dexterously
with the thumb and forefinger, passing from one
to the other a dish of rice, with a large spoon, which
all used indiscriminately. It is odd that eating with
the fingers seemed only disgusting to me in the bey.
His European dress probably made the peculiarity
more glaring. The fat old governor who sat beside
me was greased to the elbows, and his long grey beard
was studded with rice and drops of gravy to his girdle.
He rose when the meats were removed, and waddled
off to the stream below, where a wash in the clean
water made him once more a presentable person.

It is a Turkish custom to rise and retire while the
dishes are changing, and after a little ramble through
the meadow, we returned to a lavish spread of fruits
and honey, which concluded the repast.

It is doubted where Troy stood. The reputed site
is a rising ground, near the fountain of Bournabashi,
to which we strolled after dinner. We found nothing
but quantities of fragments of columns, believed by
antiquaries to be the ruins of a city, that sprung up
and died long since Troy.

We mounted and rode home by a round moon,
whose light filled the air like a dust of phosphoric silver.
The plains were in a glow with it. Our Indian
summer nights, beautiful as they are, give you no idea
of an Asian moon.

The bey's rooms were lit, and we took coffee with
him once more, and, fatigued with pleasure and excitement,
got to our boats, and pulled up against the
arrowy current of the Dardanelles to the frigate

A long, narrow valley, with precipitous sides, commences
directly at the gate of Trieste, and follows a
small stream into the mountains of Friuli. It is a
very sweet, green place, and studded on both sides
with cottages and kitchen-gardens, which supply the
city with flowers and vegetables. The right hand
slope is called the Boschetto, and is laid out with pretty
avenues of beach and elm as a public walk, while,
at every few steps, stands a bowling-alley or drinking
arbor, and here and there a trim little restaurant, just
large enough for a rural party. It is, perhaps, a mile
and a half in length, and one grand café in the centre,
usually tempts the better class of promenaders into
the expense of an ice.

It was a Sunday afternoon, and all Trieste was pouring
out to the Boschetto. I had come ashore with
one of the officers, and we fell into the tide. Few
spots in the world are so variously peopled as this
thriving seaport, and we encountered every style of
dress and feature. The greater part were Jewesses.
How instantly the most common observer distinguishes
them in a crowd! The clear sallow skin, the sharp
black eye and broad eyebrow, the aqueline nose, the
small person, the slow, cautious step of the old, and

the quick, restless one of the young, the ambitious ornaments,
and the look of cunning, which nothing but
the highest degree of education does away, mark the
race with the definiteness of another species.

We strolled on to the end of the walk, amused constantly
with the family groups sitting under the trees
with their simple repast of a fritata and a mug of beer,
perfectly unconscious of the presence of the crowd.
There was something pastoral and contented in the
scene that took my fancy. Almost all the female
promenaders were without bonnets, and the mixture
of the Greek style of head-dress with the Parisian
coiffure, had a charming effect. There was just
enough of fashion to take off the vulgarity.

We coquetted along, smiled upon by here and there
a group that had visited the ship, and on our return
sat down at a table in front of the café, surrounded by
some hundreds of people of all classes, conversing and
eating ices. I thought as I glanced about me, how
oddly such a scene would look in America. In the
broad part of an open walk, the whole town passing
and repassing, sat elegantly dressed ladies with their
husbands or lovers, mothers with their daughters, and
occasionally a group of modest girls alone, eating or
drinking with as little embarrassment as at home, and
preserving toward each other that courtesy of deportment
which in these classes of society can result only
from being so much in public.

Under the next tree to us sat an excessively pretty
woman with two gentlemen, probably her husband
and cavalier. I touched my hat to them as we seated
ourselves, and this common courtesy of the country
was returned with smiles that put us instantly upon
the footing of a half acquaintance. A caress to the
lady's greyhound, and an apology for smoking, produced
a little conversation, and when they rose to leave
us, the compliments of the evening were exchanged
with a cordiality that in America would scarce follow
an acquaintance of months. I mention it as an every-day
instance of the kind-hearted and open manners of
Europe. It is what makes these countries so agreeable
to the stranger and the traveller. Every café, on
a second visit, seems like a home.

We were at a rural fête last night, given by a wealthy
merchant of Trieste, at his villa in the neighborhood.
We found the company assembled on a terraced observatory,
crowning a summer-house, watching the
sunset over one of the sweetest landscapes in the world.
We were at the head of a valley broken at the edge
of the Adriatic by the city, and beyond spread the
golden waters of the gulf toward Venice, headed in on
the right by the long chain of the Friuli. The country
around was green and fertile, and small white villas
peeped out everywhere from the foliage, evidences
of the prosperous commerce of the town. We watched
the warm colors out of the sky, and the party having
by this time assembled, we walked through the
long gardens to a house open with long windows from
the ceiling to the floor, and furnished only with the
light and luxurious arrangement of summer.

Music is the life of all amusement within the reach
of Italy, and the waltzing was mingled with performances
on the piano (and very wonderful ones to me)
by an Italian count and his friend, a German. They
played duetts in a style I have seldom heard even by
professors.

The supper was fantastically rural. The table was
spread under a large tree, from the branches of which
was trailed a vine, by a square frame of lattice-work in
the proportions of a pretty saloon. The lamps were
hung in colored lanterns among the branches, and the
trunk of the tree passed through the centre of the table
hollowed to receive it. The supper was sumptuously
splendid, and the effect of the party within, seen
from the grounds about, through the arched and vine-concealed
doors, was the most picturesque imaginable.

A waltz or two followed, and we were about calling
for our horses, when the whole place was illuminated
with a discharge of fireworks. Every description of
odd figures was described in flame during the hour
they detained us, and the bright glare on the trees,
and the figures of the party strolling up and down the
gravelled walks, was admirably beautiful.

They do these things so prettily here! We were
invited out on the morning of the same day, and expected
nothing but a drive and a cup of tea, and we
found an entertainment worthy of a king. The simplicity
and frankness with which we were received, and
the unpretendingness of the manner of introducing the
amusements of the evening, might have been lessons
in politeness to nobles.

A drive to town by starlight, and a pull off to the
ship in the cool and refreshing night air, concluded a
day of pure pleasure. It has been my good fortune
of late to number many such.

90. LETTER XC.

Coast of Asia.—We have lain in the mouth of the
Dardanelles sixteen mortal days, waiting for a wind.
Like Don Juan (who passed here on his way to Con
stantinople)—

An occasional trip with the boats to the watering-place,
a Turkish bath, and a stroll in the bazar of the town
behind the castle, gazing with a glass at the tombs of
Ajax and Achilles, and the long, undulating shores of
Asia, eating often and sleeping much, are the only
appliances to our philosophy. One can not always be
thinking of Hero and Leander, though he lie in the
Hellespont.

A merchant-brig from Smyrna is anchored just
astern of us, waiting like ourselves for this eternal
northeaster to blow itself out. She has forty or fifty
passengers for Constantinople, among whom are the
wife of an American merchant (a Greek lady), and Mr.
Schauffler, a missionary, in whom I recognised a quondam
fellow student. They were nearly starved out on
board the brig, as she was provisioned but for a few
days, and the commodore has courteously offered them
a passage in the frigate. Fifty or sixty sail lie below
Castle Europe, in the same predicament. With the
“cap of King Erricus,” this cruising, pleasant as it is
would be a thought pleasanter to my fancy.

Still wind-bound. The angel that

suffered a week or so to escape him here. Not that
the ship is not pleasant enough, and the climate deserving
of its Sybarite fame, and the sunsets and stars
as much brighter than those of the rest of the world,
as Byron has described them to be (vide letter to
Leigh Hunt), but life has run in so deep a current
with me of late, that the absence of incident seems
like water without wine. The agreeable stir of travel,
the incomplete adventure, the change of costumes and
scenery, the busy calls upon the curiosity and the
imagination, have become, in a manner, very breath
to me. Hitherto upon the cruise, we have scarce
ever been more than one or two days at a time out
of port. Elba, Sicily, Naples, Vienna, the Ionian
Isles, and the various ports of Greece have come and
gone so rapidly, and so entirely without exertion of my
own, that I seem to have lived in a magic panorama.
After dinner on one day I visit a city here, and the day
or two after, lounging and reading and sleeping meanwhile
quietly at home, I find myself rising from table,
hundreds of miles farther to the north or east, and
another famous city before me, having taken no care,
and felt no motion, nor encountered danger or fatigue.
A summer cruise in the Mediterranean is certainly the
perfection of sight-seeing. With a sea as smooth as
a river, and cities of interest, classical and mercantile,
everywhere on the lee, I can conceive of no class of
persons to whom it would not be delightful. A company
of pleasure, in a private vessel, would see all
Greece and Italy with less trouble and expense than
is common on a trip to the lakes.

“All hands up anchor!” The dog-vane points at
last to Constantinople. The capstan is manned, the
sails loosed, the quarter-master at the wheel, and the
wind freshens every moment from the “sweet south.”
“Heave round merrily!” The anchor is dragged in by
this rushing Hellespont, and holds on as if the bridge
of Xerxes were tangled about the flukes. “Up she
comes at last,” and yielding to her broad canvass, the
gallant frigate begins to make headway against the
current. There is nothing in the whole world of
senseless matter, so like a breathing creature as a
ship! The energy of her motion, the beauty of her
shape and contrivance, and the ease with which she
is managed by the one mind upon her quarter-deck,
to whose voice she is as obedient as the courser to the
rein, inspire me with daily admiration. I have been
four months a guest in this noble man-of-war, and to
this hour, I never set my foot on her deck without a
feeling of fresh wonder. And then Cooper's novels
read in a ward-room as grapes eat in Tuscany. It
were missing one of the golden leaves of a life not to
have thumbed them on a cruise.

The wind has headed us off again, and we have
dropped anchor just below the castles of the Dardanelles.
We have made but eight miles, but we have
new scenery from the ports, and that is something to
a weary eye. I was as tired of “the shores of Ilion”
as ever was Ulysses. The hills about our present
anchorage are green and boldly marked, and the
frowning castles above us give that addition to the
landscape which is alone wanting on the Hudson.
Sestos and Abydos are six or seven miles up the
stream. The Asian shore (I should have thought it
a pretty circumstance, once, to be able to set foot
either in Europe or Asia in five minutes) is enlivened
by numbers of small vessels, tracking up with buffaloes,
against wind and tide. And here we lie, says the
old pilot, without hope till the moon changes. The
“fickle moon,” quotha! I wish my friends were half
as constant!

The pacha of the Dardanelles has honored us
with a visit. He came in a long caique, pulled by
twenty stout rascals, his excellency of “two tails”
sitting on a rich carpet on the bottom of the boat with
his boy of a year old in the same uniform as himself,
and his suite of pipe and slipper-bearers, dwarf and
executioner, sitting cross-legged about him. He was
received with the guard and all the honor due his
rank. His face is that of a cold, haughty, and resolute,
but well-born man, and his son is like him. He
looked at everything attentively, without expressing
any surprise, till he came to the pianoforte, which
one of the ladies played to his undisguised delight. It
was the first he had ever seen. He inquired, through
his interpreter, if she had not been all her life in
learning.

The poet says, “The seasons of the year come in
like masquers.” To one who had made their acquaintance
in New-England, most of the months
would literally pass incog. in Italy. But here is honest
October, the same merry old gentleman, though I
meet him in Asia, and I remember him, last year, at
the baths of Lucca, as unchanged as here. It has
been a clear, bright, invigorating day, with a vitality
in the air as rousing to the spirits as a blast from the
“horn of Astolpho.” I can remember just such a day
ten years ago. It is odd how a little sunshine will
cling to the memory when loves and hates that, in
their time, convulsed the very soul, are so easily forgotten.

We heard yesterday that there was a Turkish village
seven or eight miles in the mountains on the Asian
side, and, as a variety to the promenade on the quarter-deck,
a ramble was proposed to it.

We landed, this morning, on the bold shore of the
Dardanelles, and, climbing up the face of a sand-hill,
struck across a broad plain, through bush and brier,
for a mile. On the edge of a ravine we found a pretty
road, half hedged over with oak and hemlock, and a
mounted Turk, whom we met soon after, with a gun
across his pummel, and a goose looking from his
saddle-bag, directed us to follow it till we reached the
village.

It was a beautiful path, flecked with the shade of
leaves of all the variety of eastern trees, and refreshed
with a fountain at every mile. About half way we
stopped at a spring welling from a rock, under a large
fig-tree, from which the water poured, as clear as
crystal, into seven tanks, and one after the other rippling
away from the last into a wild thicket, whence a
stripe of brighter green marked its course down the
mountain. It was a spot worthy of Tempé. We
seated ourselves on the rim of the rocky basin, and,
with a drink of bright water, and a half hour's repose,
re-commenced our ascent, blessing the nymph of the
fount, like true pilgrims of the east.

A few steps beyond we met a caravan of the pacha's
tithe-gatherers, with mules laden with grapes; the
turbaned and showily-armed drivers, as they came
winding down the dell, produced the picturesque
effect of a theatrical ballet. They laid their hands
on their breasts, with grave courtesy as they approached,
and we helped ourselves to the ripe, blushing
clusters, as the panniers went by, with Arcadian
freedom.

We reached the summit of the ridge a little before
noon, and turned our faces back for a moment to
catch the cool wind from the Hellespont. The Dardanelles
came winding out from the hills, just above
Abydos, and sweeping past the upper castles of Europe
and Asia, rushed down by Tenedos into the archipelago.
Perhaps twenty miles of its course lay within
our view. Its colors were borrowed from the divine
sky above, and the rainbow is scarce more varied or
brighter. The changing purple and blue of the mid-stream,
specked with white crests, the crysoprase green
of the shallows, and the dies of the various depths
along the shore, gave it the appearance of a vein of
transparent marble, inlaid through the valley. The
frigate looked like a child's boat on its bosom. To
our left, the tombs of Ajax and Achilles were just distinguishable
in the plains of the Scamander, and Troy
(if Troy ever stood), stood back from the sea, and the
blue-wreathed isles of the archipelago bounded the
reach of the eye. It was a view that might “cure a
month's grief in a day.”

We descended now into a kind of cradle valley,
yellow with rich vineyards. It was alive with people
gathering in the grapes. The creaking wagons filled
the road, and shouts and laughter rang over the mountain-sides
merrily. The scene would have been Italian,
but for the Turbans peering out everywhere from the
leaves, and those diabolical-looking buffaloes in the

wagons. The village was a mile or two before us, and
we loitered on, entering here and there a vineyard,
where the only thing evidently grudged us was our
peep at the women. They scattered like deer as we
stepped over the walls.

Near the village we found a grave Turk, of whom
one of the officers made some inquiries, which were a
part of our errand to the mountains. It may spoil the
sentiment of my description, but, in addition to the
poetry of the ramble, we were to purchase beef for the
mess. His bullocks were out at grass (feeding in pastoral
security, poor things!), and he invited us to his
house, while he sent his boy to drive them in. I recognised
them, when they came, as two handsome
steers, which had completed the beauty of an open
glade, in the centre of a clump of forest trees, on our
route. The pleasure they have afforded the eye will
be repeated upon the palate—a double destiny not accorded
to all beautiful creatures.

Our host led us up a flight of rough stone steps to
the second story of his house, where an old woman
sat upon her heels, rolling out paste, and a younger
one nursed a little Turk at her bosom. They had,
like every man, woman, or child I have seen in this
country, superb eyes and noses. No chisel could improve
the meanest of them in these features. Our
friend's wife seemed ashamed to be caught with her
face uncovered, but she offered us cushions on the
floor before she retired, and her husband followed up
her courtesy with his pipe.

We went thence to the café, where a bubbling
hookah, a cup of coffee, and a divan, refreshed us a
little from our fatigues. While the rest of the party
were lingering over their pipes, I took a turn through
the village in search of the house of the aga. After
strolling up and down the crooked streets for half an
hour, a pretty female figure, closely enveloped in her
veil, and showing, as she ran across the street, a dainty
pair of feet in small yellow slippers, attracted me into
the open court of the best-looking house in the village.
The lady had disappeared, but a curious-looking carriage,
lined with rich Turkey carpeting and cushions,
and covered with red curtains, made to draw close in
front, stood in the centre of the court. I was going up
to examine it, when an old man, with a beard to his
girdle, and an uncommonly rich turban, stepped from
the house, and motioned me angrily away. A large
wolf-dog, which he held by the collar, added emphasis
to his command, and I retreated directly.
A giggle and several female voices from the closely-latticed
window, rather aggravated the mortification.
I had intruded on the premises of the aga,
a high offence in Turkey, when a woman is in the
case.

It was “deep i' the afternoon,” when we arrived at
the beach, and made signal for a boat. We were on
board as the sky kindled with the warm colors of an
Asian sunset—a daily offset to our wearisome detention
which goes far to keep me in temper. My fear is
that the commodore's patience is not “so good a continuer”
as this “vento maledetto,” as the pilot calls it,
and in such a case I lose Constantinople most provokingly.

Walked to the Upper Castle Asia, some eight miles
above our anchorage. This is the main town on the
Dardanelles, and contains forty or fifty thousand inhabitants.
Sestos and Abydos are a mile or two farther
up the strait.

We kept along the beach for an hour or two, passing
occasionally a Turk on horseback, till we were stopped
by a small and shallow creek without a bridge, just on
the skirts of the town. A woman with one eye peeping
from her veil, dressed in a tunic of fine blue cloth,
stood at the head of a large drove of camels on the
other side, and a beggar with one eye, smoked his pipe
on the sand at a little distance. The water was knee-deep,
and we were hesitating on the brink when the
beggar offered to carry us across on his back—a task
he accomplished (there were six of us) without taking
his pipe from his mouth.

I tried in vain to get a peep at the camel-driver's
wife or daughter, but she seemed jealous of showing
even her eyebrow, and I followed on to the town.
The Turks live differently from every other people, I
believe. You walk through their town and see every
individual in it, except perhaps the women of the
pacha. Their houses are square boxes, the front
side of which lifts on a hinge in the day time, exposing
the whole interior, with its occupants squatted in
the corners or on the broad platform where their trades
are followed. They are scarce larger than boxes in
the theatre, and the roof projects into the middle of
the street, meeting that of the opposite neighbor, so
that the pavement between is always dark and cool.
The three or four Turkish towns I have seen, have
the appearance of cabins thrown up hastily after a fire.
You would not suppose they were intended to last
more than a month at the farthest.

We roved through the narrow streets an hour or
more, admiring the fine-bearded old Turks, smoking
cross-legged in the cafés, the slipper-makers with their
gay morocco wares in goodly rows around them, the
wily Jews with their high caps and caftans (looking,
crouched among their merchandise, like the “venders
of old bottles and abominable lies,” as they are drawn
in the plays of Queen Elizabeth's time), the muffled
and gliding spectres of the moslem women, and the
livelier-footed Greek girls, in their velvet jackets and
braided hair, and by this time we were kindly disposed
to our dinners.

On our way to the consul's, where we were to dine,
we passed a mosque. The minaret (a tall peaked
tower, about of the shape and proportions of a pencil-case)
commanded a view down the principal streets;
and a stout fellow, with a sharp clear voice, leaned
over the balustrade at the top, crying out the invitation
to prayer in a long drawling sing-song, that must
have been audible on the other side of the Hellespont.
Open porches, supported by a paling extended all
around the church, and the floors were filled with
kneeling Turks, with their pistols and ataghans lying
beside them. I had never seen so picturesque a congregation.
The slippers were left in hundreds at the
threshold, and the bare and muscular feet and legs,
half concealed by the full trowsers, supported as
earnest a troop of worshippers as ever bent forehead
to the ground. I left them rising from a flat
prostration, and hurried after my companions to
dinner.

Our consul of the Dardanelles is an American.
He is absent just now, in search of a runaway female
slave of the sultan's; and his wife, a gracious Italian,
full of movement and hospitality, does the honors
of his house in his absence. He is a physician as
well as consul and slave-catcher, and the presents of
a hand-organ, a French clock, and a bronze standish,
rather prove him to be a favorite with the “brother of
the sun.”

We were smoking the hookah after dinner, when
an intelligent-looking man, of fifty or so, came in to
pay us a visit. He is at present an exile from Constantinople,
by order of the grand seignior, because
a brother physician, his friend, failed in an attempt
to cure one of the favorites of the imperial harem!
This is what might be called “sympathy upon compulsion.”
It is unnecessary, one would think, to
make friendship more dangerous than common human
treachery renders it already.

91. LETTER XCI.

A half hour's walk brought us within sight of the
pacha's camp. The green and white tents of five thousand
Turkish troops were pitched on the edge of a
stream, partly sheltered by a grove of noble oaks, and
defended by wicker batteries at distances of thirty or
forty feet. We were stopped by the sentinel on guard,
while a message was sent in to the pacha for permission
to wait upon him. Meantime a number of young
officers came out from their tents, and commenced
examining our dresses with the curiosity of boys.
One put on my gloves, another examined the cloth of
my coat, a third took from me a curious stick I had
purchased at Vienna, and a more familiar gentleman
took up my hand, and after comparing it with his own
black fingers, stroked it with an approving smile that
was meant probably as a compliment. My companions
underwent the same review, and their curiosity
was still unsated when a good-looking officer, with his
cimeter under his arm, came to conduct us to the
commander-in-chief.

The long lines of tents were bent to the direction
of the stream, and, at short distances, the silken banner
stuck in the ground under the charge of a sentinel,
and a divan covered with rich carpets under the
shade of the nearest tree, marked the tent of an officer.
The interior of those of the soldiers exhibited
merely a stand of muskets and a raised platform for
bed and table, covered with coarse mats, and decked
with the European accoutrements now common in
Turkey. It was the middle of the afternoon, and
most of the officers lay asleep on low ottomans, with
their tent-curtains undrawn, and their long chibouques
beside them, or still at their lips. Hundreds of soldiers
loitered about, engaged in various occupations,
sweeping, driving their tent-stakes more firmly into the
ground, cleaning arms, cooking, or with their heels
under them playing silently at dominoes. Half the
camp lay on the opposite bank of the stream, and
there was repeated the same warlike picture, the
white uniform and the loose red cap with its gold bullion
and blue tassel, appearing and disappearing between
the rows of tents, and the bright red banners
clinging to the staff in the breathless sunshine.

We soon approached the splendid pavilion of the
pacha, unlike the rest in shape, and surrounded by a
quantity of servants, some cooking at the root of a
tree, and all pursuing their vocation with a singular
earnestness. A superb banner of bright crimson silk,
wrought with long lines of Turkish characters, probably
passages from the Koran, stood in a raised socket
guarded by two sentinels. Near the tent, and not far
from the edge of the stream, stood a gayly-painted
kiosk, not unlike the fantastic summer-houses sometimes
seen in a European garden, and here our conductor
stopped, and kicking off his slippers, motioned
for us to enter.

We mounted the steps, and passing a small entrance-room
filled with guards, stood in the presence
of the commander-in-chief. He sat on a divan, cross-legged,
in a military frock-coat wrought with gold on
the collar and cuffs, a sparkling diamond crescent on
his breast, and a cimeter at his side, with a belt richly
wrought, and held by a buckle of dazzling brilliants.
His aid sat beside him, in a dress somewhat similar,
and both appeared to be men of about forty. The
pacha is a stern, dark, soldier-like man, with a thick,
straight beard as black as jet, and features which look
incapable of a smile. He bowed without rising when
we entered, and motioned for us to be seated. A little
conversation passed between him and the consul's
son, who acted as our interpreter, and coffee came in
almost immediately. There was an aroma about it
which might revive a mummy. The small china-cups,
with thin gold filagree sockets, were soon emptied
and taken away, and the officer in waiting introduced
a soldier to go through the manual exercise by
way of amusing us.

He was a powerful fellow, and threw his musket
about with so much violence, that I feared every moment,
the stock, lock, and barrel, would part company.
He had taken off his shoes before venturing into
the presence of his commander, and looked oddly
enough, playing the soldier in his stockings. I was
relieved of considerable apprehension when he ordered
arms, and backed out to his slippers.

The next exhibition was that of a military band.
A drum-major, with a proper gold-headed stick,
wheeled some sixty fellows with all kinds of instruments
under the windows of the kiosk, and with a
whirl of his baton, the harmony commenced. I could
just detect some resemblance to a march. The drums
rolled, the “ear-piercing fifes” fulfilled their destiny,
and trombone, serpent, and horn, showed of what
they were capable. The pacha got upon his knees to
lean out of the window, and, as I rose from my low
seat at the same time, he pulled me down beside him,
and gave me half his carpet, patting me on the back,
and pressing me to the window with his arm over my
neck. I have observed frequently among the Turks
this singular familiarity of manners both to strangers
and one another. It is an odd contrast with their habitual
gravity.

The sultan, I think unwisely, has introduced the
European uniform into his army. With the exception
of the Tunisian cap, which is substituted for the
thick and handsome turban, the dress is such as is
worn by the soldiers of the French army. Their tailors
are of course bad, and their figures, accustomed
only to the loose and graceful costume of the east,
are awkward and constrained. I never saw so uncouth
a set of fellows as the five thousand mussulmans in
this army of the Dardanelles; and yet in their Turkish
trowsers and turban, with the belt stuck full of
arms, and their long mustache, they would be as martial-looking
troops as ever followed a banner.

We embarked at sunset to return to the ship. The
shell-shaped caique, with her tall sharp extremities
and fantastic sail, yielded to the rapid current of the
Hellespont; and our two boatmen, as handsome a
brace of Turks as ever were drawn in a picture, pulled
their legs under them more closely, and commenced
singing the alternate stanzas of a villanous duet.
The helmsman's part was rather humorous, and his
merry black eyes redeemed it somewhat, but his fellow
was as grave as a dervish, and howled as if he
were ferrying over Xerxes after his defeat.

If I were to live in the east as long as the wandering
Jew, I think these heavenly sunsets, evening after
evening, scarce varying by a shade, would never become
familiar to my eye. They surprise me day after
day, like some new and brilliant phenomenon, though
the thoughts which they bring, as it were by a habit
contracted of the hour, are almost always the same.
The day, in these countries where life flows so thickly,
is engrossed, and pretty busily too, by the present.
The past comes up with the twilight, and wherever I
may be, and in whatever scene mingling, my heart
breaks away, and goes down into the west with the
sun. I am at home as duly as the bird settles to her
nest.

It was natural in paying the boatman, after such a
musing passage, to remember the poetical justice of
Uhland in crossing the ferry:—

I should have paid for one other seat, at least, by
this fanciful tariff. Our unmusical mussulmans were
content, however, and we left them to pull back
against the tide, by a star that cast a shadow like a
meteor.

The moon changed this morning, and the wind,
that in this clime of fable is as constant to her as Endymion,
changed too. The white caps vanished from
the hurrying waves of the Dardanelles, and after an
hour or two of calm, the long-expected breeze came
tripping out of Asia, with oriental softness, and is now
leading us gently up the Hellespont.

As we passed between the two castles of the Dardanelles,
the commodore saluted the pacha with nineteen
guns, and in half an hour we were off Abydos,
where our friend from the south has deserted us, and
we are compelled to anchor. It would be unclassical
to complain of delay on so poetical a spot. It is beautiful,
too. The shores on both the Asian and European
sides are charmingly varied and the sun lies on
them, and on the calm strait that links them, with a
beauty worthy of the fair spirit of Hero. A small
Turkish castle occupies the site of the “torch-lit
tower” of Abydos, and there is a corresponding one
at Sestos. The distance between looks little more
than a mile—not a surprising feat for any swimmer, I
should think. Lady-loves in our day, alas! are not
won so lightly. The current of the Hellespont, however,
remains the same, and so does the moral of Leander's
story. The Hellespont of matrimony may be
crossed with the tide. The deuse is to get back!

Lampsacus on the starboard-bow, and a fairer spot
lies on no river's brink. Its trees, vineyards, and cottages,
slant up almost imperceptibly from the water's
edge, and the hills around have the look “of a clean
and quiet privacy,” with a rural elegance that might
tempt Shakspere's Jaques to come and moralize.
By the way, there have been philosophers here. Did
not Alexander forgive the city its obstinate defence for
the sake of Anaximenes? There was a sad dog of a
deity worshipped here about that time.

I take a fresh look at it from the port, as I write.
Pastures, every one with a bordering of tall trees, cattle
as beautiful as the daughter of Ianchus, lanes of
wild shrubbery, a greener stripe through the fields like
the track of a stream, and smoke curling from every
cluster of trees, telling as plainly as the fancy can
read, that there is both poetry and pillaw at Lampsacus.

Just opposite stands the modern Gallipoli, a Turkish
town of some thirty thousand inhabitants, at the
head of the Hellespont. The Hellespont gets broader
here, and a few miles farther up we open into the
Sea of Marmora. A French brig-of-war, that has
been hanging about us for a fortnight (watching our
movements in this unusual cruise for an American
frigate, perhaps), is just ahead, and a quantity of
sail are stretching off on the southern tack, to make
the best use of their new sea-room for beating up to
Constantinople.

We hope to see Seraglio Point to-morrow. Mr.
Hodgson, the secretary of our embassy to Turkey,
has just come on board from the Smyrna packet, and
the agreeable preparations for going on shore, are already
on the stir. I do not find that the edge of curiosity
dulls with use. The prospect of seeing a strange
city to-morrow, produces the same quick-pulsed emotion
that I felt in the diligence two years ago, rattling
over the last post to Paris. The entrances to Florence,
Rome, Venice, Vienna, Athens, are marked
each with as white a stone. He may “gather no moss”
who rolls about the world; but that which the gold
of the careful can not buy—pleasure—when the soul
is most athirst for it, grows under his feet. Of
the many daily reasons I find to thank Providence,
not the least is that of being what Clodio calls himself
in the play “a here-and-thereian.”

92. LETTER XCII.

What an image of life it is! The good ship dashes
bravely on her course—the spray flies from her
prow—her sheets are steady and full—to look up to
her spreading canvass, and feel her springing away beneath,
you would not give her “for the best horse the
sun has in his stable.” The next moment, hey! the
foresail is aback! the wind baffles and dies, the ripples
sink from the sea, the ship loses her “way,” and the
pennant drops to the mast in a breathless calm!
“Clear away the anchor!” and here we are till this
“crab in the ascendant” that makes “all our affairs go
backward,” yields to our better stars.

We went ashore to take a stroll through the streets
of Gallipoli (the ancient Gallipoli of Thrace) as a sop
to our patience. A deeply-laden Spanish merchant
lay off the pier, with a crew of red-capped and olive-complexioned
fellows taking in grain from a Turkish
caique, and a crowd of modern Thracians, in the noble
costumes and flowing beards of the country, closed
around us as we stepped from the boat.

A street of cafés led from the end of the pier, and
as usual, they were all crowded with Turks, leaning
forward over their slippers, and crossing their long
chibouques as they conversed together. It is odd
that even the habit of a life can make their painful
and unnatural posture an agreeable one. Yet they
will sit with their legs crooked under them, in a way
that strains the unaccustomed knee till it cracks again,
motionless by the hour together.

I had no idea till I came to Turkey how rare a
beauty is a handsome beard. Here no man shaves,
and there is as great a difference in beards as in stature.
The men of rank that we have seen, might have been
picked out anywhere by their superior beauty in this
respect. It grows vilely, it seems to me, on scoundrels.
The beggars ashore, the low Jews who board
us with provisions, the greater part of the soldiers and
petty shopkeepers of the towns, have all some mark
in their beards that nature never intended them for
gentlemen. Your smooth chin is a great leveller, trust
me!

These Turkish towns have a queer look altogether.
Gallipoli is so seldom touched by a Christian foot,
that it preserves all its peculiarities entire, and is likely
to do so for the next century. We walked on, ascending
a narrow street completely shut in by the roofs of
the low houses meeting above. There are no carriages
or carts, and the Turks glide over the stones in
their loose slippers with an indolent shuffle that seems
rather to add to the silence. You hear no voice, for
they seldom speak, and never above the key of a bassoon;
and what with the odd costumes, long beards,
grave faces, and twilight darkness all about you, it is
like a scene on the stage when the lights are lowered
in some incantation scene.

Each street is devoted to some one trade. We first
got among the grocers. Every shop was a fellow to
the other, containing an old Turk squatted among
soap, jars of oil, raisins, olives, pickled fish, and sweet
meats, and everything within his reach. He would
sell you his whole stock in trade without taking his
pipe from his mouth, or disturbing his yellow slipper.

The next turn brought us into the Jews' quarter.

They were all tailors, and their shops were as dark as
Erebus. The light crept through the chinks in the
roof, falling invariably on the same aquiline nose and
ragged beard, with now and then a pair of copper spectacles,
while in the back of the dim tenement sat an
old woman with a group of handsome little Hebrews,
(they are always handsome when very young, with
their clear skins and dark eyes) the whole family
stitching away most diligently. It was laughable to
see how every shop in the street presented the same
picture.

We then got among the slipper-makers, and vile
work they turned out. We were hesitating between
two turnings when an old Jew, with a high lamb's-wool
cap and long black caftan, rather shabby for
wear, addressed me in a sort of lingua Franca, half
Italian, half French, with a sprinkling of Spanish, and
inquiring whether I belonged to the frigate in the harbor,
offered to supply us with provisions, etc., etc. I
declined his services, and he asked us directly to his
house to take coffee, as plump a non sequitur as I
have met in my travels.

We followed the old man to a very secluded part of
the town, stopping a moment by the way to look at
the remains of an old fort built by the Genoese in the
stout times of Andrea Doria. (Where be their galleys
now?) Hajji (so he was called, he said, from
having been to Jerusalem) stopped at last at the door
of a shabby house, and throwing it open with a hospitable
smile, bade us welcome. We mounted a creaking
stair, and found things within better than the promise
of the exterior. One half the floor of the room
was raised perhaps a foot, and matted neatly, and a
nicely carpeted and cushioned divan ran around the
three sides, closed at the two extremities by a lattice-work
like the arm of a sofa. The windows were set
in fantastical arabesque frames, the upper panes coarsely
colored, but with a rich effect, and the view hence
stretched over the Hellespont toward the south, with a
delicious background of the valleys about Lampsacus.
No palace window looks on a fairer scene. The broad
strait was as smooth as the amber of the old Hebrew's
pipe, and the vines that furnished Themistocles with
wine during his exile in Persia, looked of as golden a
green in the light of the sunset, as if the honor of the
tribute still warmed their classic juices.

The rich Turkish coffee was brought in by an old
woman, who left her slippers below as she stepped
upon the mat, and our host followed with chibouques
and a renewed welcome. A bright pair of eyes had
been peeping for some time from one of the chambers,
and with Hajji's permission I called out a graceful
creature of fourteen, with a shape like a Grecian Cupidon,
and a timid sweetness of expression that might
have descended to her from the gentle Ruth of scripture.
There are lovely beings all over the world. It
were a desert else. But I did not think to find such
a diamond in a Hebrew's bosom. I have forgotten to
mention her hair, which was very remarkable. I
thought at first it was died with henna. It covered
her back and shoulders in the greatest profusion, braided
near the head, and floating below in glossy and
silken curls of a richness you would deny nature had
you seen it in a painting. The color was of the deep
burnt brown of a berry, almost black in the shade, but
catching the light at every motion like threads of gold.
In my life I have seen nothing so beautiful. It was
the “hair lustrous and smiling” of quaint old Burton.[23] There was something in it that you could scarce avoid
associating with the character of the wearer—as if it
stole its softness from some inborn gentleness in her
heart. I shall never thread my fingers through such
locks again!

We shook our kind host by the hand, and stepped
gingerly down in the fading twilight to our boat. As
we were crossing an open space between the bazars,
two gentlemen in a costume half European half Oriental,
with spurs and pistols, and a quantity of dust on
their mustaches, passed, and immediately turned and
called me by name. The last place in which I should
have looked for acquaintances, would be Gallipoli.
They were two French exquisites whom I had known
at Rome, travelling to Constantinople with no more
serious object, I dare be sworn, than to return with
long beards from the east. They had just arrived on
horseback, and were looking for a khan. I commended
them to my old friend the Jew, who offered at once
to lodge them at his house, and we parted in this by-corner
of Thrace, as if we had but met for the second
time in a morning stroll to St. Peter's.

We lay till noon in the glassy harbor of Gallipoli,
and then the breeze came slowly up the Hellespont,
its advancing edge marked by a crowd of small sail
keeping even pace with its wings. We soon opened
into the extending sea of Marmora, and the cloudy
island of the same name is at this moment on our lee.
The sun is setting gorgeously over the hills of Thrace,
and thankful for sea-room once more, and a good
breeze, we make ourselves certain of seeing Constantinople
to-morrow.

We were ten miles distant when I came on deck
this morning. A long line of land with a slightly-waving
outline began to emerge from the mist of sunrise,
and with a glass I could distinguish the clustering
masses and shining eminences of a distant and far
extending city. We were approaching it with a cloud
of company. A Turkish ship-of-war with the crescent
and star fluttering on her blood-red flag, a French
cutter bearing the handsome tri-color at her peak, and
an uncounted swarm of merchantmen, taking advantage
of the newly-changed wind, were spreading every
thread of canvass, and stretching on as eagerly as we
toward the metropolis of the east. There was something
in the companionship which elated me. It
seemed as if all the world shared in my anticipations—
as if all the world were going to Constantinople.

I approached the mistress of the east with different
feelings from that which had inspired me in entering
the older cities of Europe. The interest of the latter
sprang from the past. Rome, Florence, Athens, were
delightful from the store of history and poetry I
brought with me and had accumulated in my youth—
from what they once were, and for that of which they
preserved the ruins. Constantinople, on the contrary,
is still the gem of the Orient—still the home of the
superb Turk, and the resort of many nations of the
east—still all that fires curiosity and excites the imagination
in the descriptions of the traveller. I was
coming to a living city, full of strange people and
strange costumes, language, and manners. It was, to
the places I had seen, like the warm and breathing
woman perfect in life, to the interesting but lifeless
and mutilated statue.

As the distance lessened, the tall, slender, glittering
minarets of a hundred mosques were first distinguishable.
Towers, domes, and dark spots of cypresses
next emerged to the eye, and a sea of buildings, followed
undulating in many swells and widening along
the line of the sea as if we were approaching a continent
covered to its farthest limits with one unbroken
city.

We kept on with unslackened sail to the shore
which seemed closed before us. A few minutes opened
to us a curving bay, winding in and lost to the eye
behind a swelling eminence, and as if mosques, towers,
and palaces, had spread away and opened to receive us

into their bosom, we shot into the heart of a busy city,
and dropped anchor at the feet of a cluster of hills,
studded from base to summit with buildings of indescribable
splendor.

An American gentleman had joined us in the Dardanelles,
and stood with us, looking at the transcendant
panorama. “What is this lovely point, gemmed
with gardens and fantastic palaces, and with every variety
of tree and building on its gentle slope descending
so gracefully to the sea?” The Seraglio! “What
is this opening of bright water, crowded with shipping,
and sprinkled with these fairy boats so gayly decked and
so slender, shooting from side to side like the crossing
flight of a thousand arrows?” The Golden Horn, that
winds up through the city and terminates in the valley
of Sweet Waters! “And what is this other stream,
opening into the hills to the east, and lined with glittering
palaces as far as the eye can reach?” The
Bosphorus. “And what is this, and that, and the
other exquisite and surpassing beauty—features of a
scene to which the earth surely has no shadow of a
parallel!” Patience! patience! We have a month
before us, and we will see.

93. LETTER XCIII.

The invariable “Where am I?” with which a traveller
awakes at morning was to me never more agreeably
answered. At Constantinople! The early ship-of-war
summons to “turn out,” was obeyed with
alacrity, and with the first boat after breakfast I was
set ashore at Tophana, the landing-place of the Frank
quarter of Stamboul.

A row of low-built cafés, with a latticed enclosure
and a plentiful shade of plane-trees on the right; a
large square, in the centre of which stood a magnificent
Persian fountain, as large as a church, covered
with lapis-lazuli and gold, and endless inscriptions in
Turkish; a mosque buried in cypresses on the left; a
hundred indolent-looking, large-trousered, mustached,
and withal very handsome men, and twice the number
of snarling, wolfish, and half starved dogs, are some of
the objects which the first glance, as I stepped on
shore, left on my memory.

I had heard that the dogs of Constantinople knew
and hated a Christian. By the time I had reached
the middle of the square, a wretched puppy at my
heels had succeeded in announcing the presence of a
stranger. They were upon me in a moment from
every heap of garbage, and every hole and corner. I
was beginning to be seriously alarmed, standing perfectly
still, with at least a hundred infuriated dogs barking
in a circle around me, when an old Turk, selling
sherbet under the shelter of the projecting roof of the
Persian fountain, came kindly to my relief. A stone
or two well aimed, and a peculiar cry, which I have
since tried in vain to imitate, dispersed the hungry
wretches, and I took a glass of the old man's raisin-water,
and pursued my way up the street. The
circumstance, however, had discolored my anticipations;
nothing looked agreeably to me for an hour
after it.

I ascended through narrow and steep lanes, between
rows of small wooden houses, miserably built and
painted, to the main street of the quarter of Pera.
Here live all Christians and Christian ambassadors,
and here I found our secretary of legation, Mr. H.,
who kindly offered to accompany me to old Stamboul.

We descended to the water-side, and stepping into
an egg-shell caique, crossed the Golden Horn, and
landed on a pier between the sultan's green kiosk and
the seraglio. I was fortunate in a companion who
knew the people and spoke the language. The red-trousered
and armed kervas, at the door of the kiosk,
took his pipe from his mouth, after a bribe and a little
persuasion, and motioned to a boy to show us the interior.
A circular room, with a throne of solid silver
embraced in a double colonnade of marble pillars, and
covered with a roof laced with lapis lazuli and gold,
formed the place from which Sultan Mahmoud formerly
contemplated, on certain days, the busy and
beautiful panorama of his matchless bay. The kiosk
is on the edge of the water, and the poorest caikjee
might row his little bark under its threshold, and fill
his monarch's eye, and look on his monarch's face
with the proudest. The green canvass curtains, which
envelop the whole building, have, for a long time, been
unraised, and Mahmoud is oftener to be seen on horseback,
in the dress of a European officer, guarded by
troops in European costume and array. The change
is said to be dangerously unpopular.

We walked on to the square of Sultana Valide. Its
large area was crowded with the buyers and sellers of
a travelling fair—a sort of Jews' market held on different
days in different parts of this vast capital. In
Turkey every nation is distinguished by its dress, and
almost as certainly by its branch of trade. On the
right of the gate, under a huge plane-tree, shedding
its yellow leaves among the various wares, stood the
booths of a group of Georgians, their round and rosy-dark
faces (you would know their sisters must be half
houris) set off with a tall black cap of curling wool,
their small shoulders with a tight jacket studded with
silk buttons, and their waists with a voluminous silken
sash, whose fringed ends fell over their heels as they
sat cross-legged, patiently waiting for custom. Hardware
is the staple of their shops, but the cross-pole in
front is fantastically hung with silken garters and tasselled
cords, and their own Georgian caps, with a gay
crown of cashmere, enrich and diversify the shelves.
I bought a pair or two of blushing silk garters of
a young man, whose eyes and teeth should have
been a woman's, and we strolled on to the next
booth.

Here was a Turk, with a table covered by a broad
brass waiter, on which was displayed a tempting array
of mucilage, white and pink, something of the consistency
of blanc-mange. A dish of sugar, small gilded
saucers, and long-handled, flat, brass spoons, with a
vase of rose-water, completed his establishment. The
grave mussulman cut, sugared, and scented the portions
for which we asked, without condescending to
look at us or open his lips, and, with a glass of mild
and pleasant sherbet from his next neighbor, as immoveable
a Turk as himself, we had lunched, extremely
to my taste, for just five cents American currency.

A little farther on I was struck with the appearance
of two men, who stood bargaining with a Jew. My
friend knew them immediately as fakeers, or religious
devotees, from Hindoostan. He addressed them in
Arabic, and, during their conversation of ten minutes,
I studied them with some curiosity. They were singularly
small, without any appearance of dwarfishness,
their limbs and persons slight, and very equally and
gracefully proportioned. Their features were absolutely
regular, and, though small as a child's of ten or
twelve years, were perfectly developed. They appeared
like men seen through an inverted opera-glass. An
exceedingly ashy, olive complexion, hair of a kind of
glittering black, quite unlike in texture and color any

I have ever before seen; large, brilliant, intense black
eyes, and lips (the most peculiar feature of all), of
lustreless black,[24] completed the portraits of two as
remarkable-looking men as I have anywhere met.
Their costume was humble, but not unpicturesque.
A well-worn sash of red silk enveloped the waist in
many folds, and sustained trousers tight to the legs,
but of the Turkish ampleness over the hips. Their
small feet, which seemed dried up to the bone, were
bare. A blanket, with a hood marked in a kind of
arabesque figure, covered their shoulders, and a high-quilted
cap, with a rim of curling wool, was prossed
down closely over the forehead. A crescent-shaped
tin vessel, suspended by a leather strap to the waist,
and serving the two purposes of a charity-box, and a
receptacle for bread and vegetables, seemed a kind of
badge of their profession. They were lately from
Hindoostan, and were begging their way still farther
into Europe. They received our proffered alms without
any mark of surprise or even pleasure, and laying
their hands on their breasts, with countenances perfectly
immoveable, gave us a Hindoostance blessing,
and resumed their traffic. They see the world, these
rovers on foot! And I think, could I see it myself in
no other way, I would e'en take sandal and scrip, and
traverse it as dervish or beggar!

The alleys between the booths were crowded with
Turkish women, who seemed the chief purchasers.
The effect of their enveloped persons, and eyes peering
from the muslin folds of the yashmack, is droll to
a stranger. It seemed to me like a masquerade, and
the singular sound of female voices, speaking through
several thicknesses of a stuff, bound so close on the
mouth as to show the shape of the lips exactly, perfected
the delusion. It reminded me of the half-smothered
tones beneath the masks in carnival-time.
A clothes-bag with yellow slippers would have about
as much form, and might be walked about with as
much grace as a Turkish woman. Their fat hands,
the finger-nails dyed with henna, and their unexceptionably
magnificent eyes, are all that the stranger is
permitted to peruse. It is strange how universal is
the beauty of the eastern eye. I have looked in vain
hitherto, for a small or an unexpressive one. It is
quite startling to meet the gaze of such large liquid
orbs, bent upon you from their long silken fringes,
with the unwinking steadiness of look common to the
females of this country. Wrapped in their veils, they
seem unconscious of attracting attention, and turn and
look you full in the face, while you seek in vain for a
pair of lips to explain by their expression the meaning
of such particular notice.

The Jew is more distinguishable at Constantinople
than elsewhere. He is compelled to wear the dress
of his tribe (and its “badge of sufferance,” too), and
you will find him, wherever there is trafficking to be
done, in a small cap, not ungracefully shaped, twisted
about with a peculiar handkerchief of a small black
print, and set back so as to show the whole of his national
high and narrow forehead. He is always good-humored
and obsequious, and receives the curse with
which his officious offers of service are often repelled,
with a smile, and a hope that he may serve you another
time. One of them, as we passed his booth, called
our attention to some newly-opened bales, bearing the
stamp, “TREMONT MILL, LOWELL, MASS.” It was
a long distance from home to meet such familiar
words!

We left the square of the sultan mother, and entered
a street of confectioners. The east is famous for its
sweetmeats, and truly a more tempting array never
visited the Christmas dream of a schoolboy. Even
Felix, the patissier nonpareil of Paris, might take a
lesson in jellies. And then for “candy” of all colors
of the rainbow (not shut enviously in with pitiful glass
cases, but piled up to the ceiling in a shop all in the
street, as it might be in Utopia, with nothing to pay),
it is like a scene in the Arabian Nights. The last
part of the parenthesis is almost true, for with a small
coin of the value of two American cents, I bought of a
certain kind called, in Turkish, “peace to your throat”
(they call things by such poetical names in the east),
the quarter of which I could not have eaten, even in
my best “days of sugar-candy.” The women of
Constantinople, I am told, almost live on confectionary.
They eat incredible quantities. The sultan's
eight hundred wives and women employ five hundred
cooks, and consume two thousand five hundred pounds
of sugar daily! It is probably the most expensive
item of the seraglio kitchen.

A turn or two brought us to the entrance of a long
dark passage, of about the architecture of a covered
bridge in our country. A place richer in the oriental
and picturesque could scarce be found between the
Danube and the Nile. It is the bazar of drugs. As
your eye becomes accustomed to the light, you distinguish
vessels of every size and shape, ranged along
the receding shelves of a stall, and filled to the uncovered
brim with the various productions of the Orient.
The edges of the baskets and jars are turned over with
rich colored papers (a peculiar color to every drug),
and broad spoons of boxwood are crossed on the top.
There is the henna in a powder of deep brown, with
an envelope of deep Tyrian purple, and all the precious
gums in their jars, golden-leafed, and spices and dies
and medicinal roots, and above hang anatomies of
curious monsters, dried and stuffed, and in the midst
of all, motionless as the box of sulphur beside him,
and almost as yellow, sits a venerable Turk, with his
beard on his knees, and his pipe-bowl thrust away
over his drugs, its ascending smoke-curls his only
sign of life. This class of merchants is famous for
opium-eaters, and if you pass at the right hour, you
find the large eye of the silent smoker dilated and
wandering, his fingers busy in tremulously counting
his spicewood beads, and the roof of his stall wreathed
with clouds of smoke, the vent to every species of
eastern enthusiasm. If you address him, he smiles,
and puts his hand to his forehead and breast, but condescends
to answer no question till it is thrice reiterated,
and then in the briefest word possible, he answers
wide of your meaning, strokes the smoke out of his
mustache, and slipping the costly amber between his
lips, abandons himself again to his exalted revery. I
write this after being a week at Constantinople, during
which the Egyptian bazar has been my frequent
and most fancy-stirring lounge. Of its forty merchants,
there is not one whose picturesque features
are not imprinted deeply in my memory. I have idled
up and down in the dim light, and fingered the soft
henna, and bought small parcels of incense-wood for
my pastille lamp, studying the remarkable faces of
the unconscious old mussulmans, till my mind became
somehow tinctured of the east, and (what will be better
understood) my clothes steeped in the mixed and
agreeable odors of the thousand spices. Where are
the painters, that they have never found this mine of
admirable studies? There is not a corner of Constantinople,
nor a man in its streets, that were not a
novel and a capital subject for the pencil. Pray, Mr.
Cole, leave things that have been painted so often, as
aqueducts and Italian ruins (though you do make delicious
pictures, and could never waste time or pencils
on anything), and come to the east for one single book
of sketches! How I have wished I was a painter since
I have been here!

94. LETTER XCIV.

An Abyssinian slave, with bracelets on his wrists
and ankles, a white turban, folded in the most approved
fashion around his curly head, and a showy silk
sash about his waist, addressed us in broken English
as we passed a small shop on the way to the Bezestein.
His master was an old acquaintance of my polyglot
friend, and, passing in at a side door, we entered a
dimly-lighted apartment in the rear, and were received,
with a profusion of salaams, by the sultan's perfumer.
For a Turk, Mustapha Effendi was the most
voluble gentleman in his discourse that I had yet met
in Stamboul. A sparse gray beard just sprinkled a
pair of blown-up cheeks, and a collapsed double chin
that fell in curtain folds to his bosom, a mustache, of
seven or eight hairs on a side, curled demurely about
the corners of his mouth, his heavy, oily black eyes
twinkled in their pursy recesses, with the salacious good
humor of a satyr; and, as he coiled his legs under
him on the broad ottoman in the corner, his boneless
body completely lapped over them, knees and all, and
left him, apparently, bolt upright on his trunk, like a
man amputated at the hips. A string of beads in one
hand, and a splendid narghilé, or rose-water pipe in
the other, completed as fine a picture of a mere animal
as I remember to have met in my travels.

My learned friend pursued the conversation in Turkish,
and, in a few minutes, the black entered, with
pipes of exquisite amber filled with the mild Persian
tobacco. Leaving his slippers at the door, he dropped
upon his knee, and placed two small brass dishes
in the centre of the room to receive the hot pipe-bowls,
and, with a showy flourish of his long, naked
arm, brought round the rich mouth-pieces to our
lips. A spicy atom of some aromatic composition,
laid in the centre of the bowl, removed from the
smoke all that could offend the most delicate organs,
and, as I looked about the perfumer's retired sanctum,
and my eye rested on the small heaps of spice-woods,
the gilded pastilles, the curious bottles of ottar of roses
and jasmine, and thence to the broad, soft divans
extending quite around the room, piled in the corners
with cushions of down, I thought Mustapha, the perfumer,
among those who lived by traffic, had the
cleanliest and most gentleman-like vocation.

Observing that I smoked but little, Mustapha gave
an order to his familiar, who soon appeared, with two
small gilded saucers; one containing a jelly of incomparable
delicacy and whiteness, and the other a candied
liquid, tinctured with quince and cinnamon. My
friend explained to me that I was to eat both, and that
Mustapha said, “on his head be the injury it would
do me.” There needed little persuasion. The cook
to a court of fairies might have mingled sweets less
delicately.

For all this courtesy Mustapha finds his offset in
the opened hearts of his customers, when the pipes
are smoked out, and there is nothing to delay the offer
of his costly wares. First calling for a jar of jessamine,
than which the sultan himself perfumes his
beard with no rarer, he turned it upside down, and,
leaning toward me, rubbed the moistened cork over
my nascent mustache, and waited with a satisfied certainty
for my expression of admiration as it “ascended
me into the brain.” There was no denying that it
was of a celestial flavor. He held up his fingers:
“One? two? three? ten? How many bottles shall
your slave fill for you?” It was a most lucid pantomime.
An interpreter would have been superfluous.

The ottar of roses stood next on the shelf. It was
the best ever sent from Adrianople. Bottle after bottle
of different extracts was passed under nasal review;
each, one might think, the triumph of the alchymy
of flowers, and of each a specimen was laid aside for
me in a slender vial, dexterously capped with vellum,
and tied with a silken thread by the adroit Abyssinian.
I escaped emptying my purse by a single worthless
coin, the fee I required for my return boat over the
Golden Horn—but I had seen Mustapha, the perfumer.

My friend led the way through several intricate
windings, and passing through a gateway, we entered
a circular area, surrounded with a single building divided
into small apartments, faced with open porches.
It was the slave-market of Constantinople. My first
idea was to look round for Don Juan and Johnson.
In their place we found slaves of almost every eastern
nation, who looked at us with an “I wish to heaven
that somebody would buy us” sort of an expression,
but none so handsome as Haidce's lover. In a low
cellar, beneath one of the apartments, lay twenty or
thirty white men chained together by the legs, and
with scarce the covering required by decency. A
small-featured Arab stood at the door, wrapped in a
purple-hooded cloak, and Mr. H. addressing him in
Arabic, inquired their nations. He was not their
master, but the stout fellow in the corner, he said, was
a Greek by his regular features, and the boy chained
to him was a Circassian by his rosy cheek and curly
hair, and the black-lipped villain with the scar over his
forehead, was an Egyptian, doubtless, and the two that
looked like brothers, were Georgians or Persians, or
perhaps Bulgarians. Poor devils! they lay on the
clay floor with a cold easterly wind blowing in upon
them, dispirited and chilled, with the prospect of being
sold to a task-master for their best hope of relief.

A shout of African laughter drew us to the other
side of the bazar. A dozen Nubian-damsels, flat-nosed
and curly-headed, but as straight and fine-limbed
as pieces of black statuary, lay around on a platform
in front of their apartment, while one sat upright in
the middle, and amused her companions by some narration
accompanied by grimaces irresistibly ludicrous.
Each had a somewhat scant blanket, black with dirt,
and worn as carelessly as a lady carries her shawl.
Their black, polished frames were disposed about, in
postures a painter would scarce call ungraceful, and
no start or change of attitude when we approached betrayed
the innate coyness of the sex. After watching
the improvisatrice awhile, we were about passing on,
when a man came out from the inner apartment, and
beckoning to one of them to follow him, walked into
the middle of the bazar. She was a tall, arrow-straight
lass of about eighteen, with the form of a
nymph, and the head of a baboon. He commenced
by crying in a voice that must have been educated in
the gallery of a minaret, setting forth the qualities of
the animal at his back, who was to be sold at public
auction forthwith. As he closed his harangue he
slipped his pipe back into his mouth, and lifting the
scrimped blanket of the ebon Venus, turned her twice
round, and walked to the other side of the bazar,
where his cry and the exposure of the submissive
wench were repeated.

We left him to finish his circuit, and walked on in
search of the Circassian beauties of the market.
Several turbaned slave-merchants were sitting round a
manghal, or brass vessel of coals, smoking or making

their coffee, in one of the porticoes, and my friend addressed
one of them with an inquiry on the subject.
“There were Circassians in the bazar,” he said, “but
there was an express firman, prohibiting the exposing
or selling of them to Franks, under heavy penalties.”
We tried to bribe him. It was of no use. He pointed
to the apartment in which they were, and, as it was
upon the ground floor, I took advice of modest assurance,
and approaching the window, sheltered my eyes
with my hand, and looked in. A great, fat girl, with
a pair of saucer-like black eyes, and cheeks as red and
round as a cabbage-rose, sat facing the window, devouring
a pie most voraciously. She had a small carpet
spread beneath her, and sat on one of her heels,
with a row of fat, red toes, whose nails were tinged
with henna, just protruding on the other side from the
folds of her ample trousers. The light was so dim
that I could not see the features of the others, of
whom there were six or seven in groups in the corners.
And so faded the bright colors of a certain
boyish dream of Circassian beauty! A fat girl eating
a pie!

As we were about leaving the bazar, the door of a
small apartment near the gate opened, and disclosed
the common cheerless interior of a chamber in a khan.
In the centre burned the almost extinguished embers
of a Turkish manghal, and, at the moment of my
passing, a figure rose from a prostrate position, and
exposed, as a shawl dropped from her face in rising,
the exquisitely small features and bright olive skin of
an Arab girl. Her hair was black as night, and the
bright braid of it across her forehead seemed but another
shade of the warm dark eye that lifted its heavy
and sleepy lids, and looked out of the accidentally
opened door as if she were trying to remember how
she had dropped out of “Araby the blest” upon so
cheerless a spot. She was very beautiful. I should
have taken her for a child, from her diminutive size,
but for a certain fulness in the limbs and a womanly
ripeness in the bust and features. The same dusky lips
which give the males of her race a look of ghastliness,
either by contrast with a row of dazzlingly white teeth,
or from their round and perfect chiselling, seemed in
her almost a beauty. I had looked at her several minutes
before she chose to consider it as impertinence.
At last she slowly raised her little symmetrical figure
(the “Barbary shape” the old poets talk of), and slipping
forward to reach the latch, I observed that she was
chained by one of her ankles to a ring in the floor.
To think that only a “malignant and a turbaned Turk”
may possess such a Hebe! Beautiful creature!
Your lot,

And yet it is very possible she would eat pies, too!

We left the slave-market, and wishing to buy a piece
of Brusa silk for a dressing-gown, my friend conducted
me to a secluded khan in the neighborhood of the
far-famed “burnt column.” Entering by a very mean
door, closed within by a curtain, we stood on fine Indian
mats in a large room, piled to the ceiling with
silks enveloped in the soft satin-paper of the east.
Here again coffee must be handed round before a single
fold of the old Armenian's wares could see the
light, and fortunate it is, since one may not courteously
refuse it, that Turkish coffee is very delicious, and
served in acorn cups for size. A handsome boy took
away the little filagree holders at last, and the old trader,
setting his huge calpack firmly on his shaven
head, began to reach down his costly wares. I had
never seen such an array. The floor was soon like a
shivered rainbow, almost paining the eye with the
brilliancy and variety of beautiful fabrics. And all
this to tempt the taste of a poor description-monger,
who wanted but a plain robe de chambre to conceal
from a chance visiter the poverty of an unmade toilet!
There were stuffs of gold for a queen's wardrobe;
there were gauze-like fabrics interwoven with flowers
of silver; and there was no leaf in botany, nor device
in antiquity, that was not imitated in their rich borderings.
I laid my hand on a plain pattern of blue and
silver, and half-shutting my eyes to imagine how I
should look in it, resolved upon the degree of depletion
which my purse could bear, and inquired the
price. As “green door and brass knocker” says of
his charges in the farce, it was “ridiculously trifling.”
It is a cheap country, the east! A beautiful Circassian
slave for a hundred dollars (if you are a Turk),
and an emperor's dressing-gown for three! The Armenian
laid his hand on his breast, as if he had made
a good sale of it, the coffee-bearer wanted but a sous,
and that was charity; and thus, by a mere change of
place, that which were but a gingerbread expenditure
becomes a rich man's purchase.

95. LETTER XCV.

We left the ship with two caiques, each pulled by
three men, and carrying three persons, on an excursion
to the Black sea. We were followed by the
captain in his fast-pulling gig with six oars, who proposed
to beat the feathery boats of the country in a
twenty miles' pull against the tremendous current of
the Bosphorus.

The day was made for us. We coiled ourselves
à la Turque, in the bottom of the sharp caique, and
as our broad-brimmed pagans, after the first mile, took
off their shawled turbans, unwound their cashmere
girdles, laid aside their gold-broidered jackets, and
with nothing but the flowing silk shirt and ample
trousers to embarrass their action, commenced “giving
way,” in long, energetic strokes—I say, just then,
with the sunshine and the west wind attempered to
half a degree warmer than the blood (which I take to
be the perfection of temperature), and a long, long
autumn day, or two, or three before us, and not a
thought in the company that was not kindly and joyous—just
then, I say, I dropped a “white stone” on
the hour, and said, “here is a moment, old Care, that
has slipped through your rusty fingers! You have
pinched me the past somewhat, and you will doubtless
mark your cross on the future—but the present, by a
thousand pulses in this warm frame laid along in the
sunshine, is care-free, and the last hour of Eden came
not on a softer pinion!”

We shot along through the sultan's fleet (some
eighteen or twenty lofty ships-of-war, looking, as they
lie at anchor in this narrow strait, of a supernatural
size), and then, nearing the European shore to take
advantage of the counter-current, my kind friend, Mr.
H., who is at home on these beautiful waters, began
to name to me the palaces we were shooting by, with
many a little history of their occupants between, to
which in a letter, written with a traveller's haste, and
in moments stolen from fatigue, or pleasure, or sleep,
I could not pretend to do justice.

The Bosphorus is quite—there can be no manner
of doubt of it—the most singularly beautiful scenery
in the world. From Constantinople to the Black
Sea, a distance of twenty miles, the two shores of
Asia and Europe, separated by but half a mile of
bright blue water, are lined by lovely villages, each
with its splendid palace or two, its mosque and minarets,
and its hundred small houses buried in trees.
each with its small dark cemetery of cypresses and
turbaned head-stones, and each with its valley stretching

back into the hills, of which every summit and
swell is crowned with a fairy kiosk. There is no tide,
and the palaces of the sultan and his ministers, and of
the wealthier Turks and Armenians, are built half over
the water, and the ascending caique shoots beneath
his window, within the length of the owner's pipe;
and with his own slender boat lying under the stairs,
the luxurious oriental makes but a step from the cushions
of his saloon to those of a conveyance, which
bears him (so built on the water's edge is this magnificent
capital) to almost every spot that can require
his presence.

A beautiful palace is that of the “Marble Cradle,”
or Beshiktash, the sultan's winter residence. Its bright
gardens with latticed fences (through which, as we
almost touched in passing, we saw the gleam of the
golden orange and lemon trees, and the thousand
flowers, and heard the splash of fountains and the
singing of birds) lean down to the lip of the Bosphorus,
and declining to the south, and protected from
everything but the sun by an enclosing wall, enjoy,
like the terrace of old King René, a perpetual summer.
The brazen gates open on the water, and the
palace itself, a beautiful building, painted in the oriental
style, of a bright pink, stands between the gardens,
with its back to the wall.

The summer palace, where the “unmuzzled lion”
as his flatterers call him, resides at present, is just
above on the Asian side, at a village called Beylerbey.
It is an immense building, painted yellow, with white
cornices, and has an extensive terrace-garden, rising
over the hill behind. The harem has eight projecting
wings, each occupied by one of the sultan's lawful
wives.

Six or seven miles from Constantinople, on the
European shore, stands the serai of the sultan's eldest
sister. It is a Chinese-looking structure, but exceedingly
picturesque, and like everything else on the
Bosphorus, quite in keeping with the scene. There
is not a building on either side, from the Black sea to
Marmora, that would not be ridiculous in other countries;
and yet, here, their gingerbread balconies, imitation
perspectives, lattices, bird-cages, and kiosks,
seem as naturally the growth of the climate as the
pomegranate and the cypress. The old maid sultana
lives here with a hundred or two female slaves of condition,
a little emperess in an empire sufficiently large
(for a woman), seeing no bearded face, it is presumed,
except her black eunuchs' and her European physician's,
and having, though a sultan's sister, less liberty
than she gives even her slaves, whom she permits to
marry if they will. She can neither read nor write,
and is said to be fat, indolent, kind, and childish.

A little farther up, the sultan is repairing a fantastical
little palace for his youngest sister, Esmeh Sultana,
who is to be married to Haleil Pacha, the commander
of the artillery. She is about twenty, and,
report says, handsome and spirited. Her betrothed
was a Georgian slave, bought by the sultan when a
boy, and advanced by the usual steps of favoritism.
By the laws of imperial marriages in this empire, he
is to be banished to a distant pachalik after living with
his wife a year, his connexion with blood-royal making
him dangerously eligible to the throne. His bride
remains at Stamboul, takes care of her child (if she
has one), and lives the remainder of her life in a widow's
seclusion, with an allowance proportioned to her
rank. His consolation is provided for by the mussulman
privilege of as many more wives as he can support.
Heaven send him resignation—if he needs it
notwithstanding.

The hakim, or chief physician to the sultan, has a
handsome palace on the same side of the Bosphorus;
and the Armenian seraffs, or bankers, though compelled,
like all rayahs, to paint their houses of a dull
lead color (only a mussulman may live in a red house
in Constantinople), are said, in those dusky-looking
tenements, to maintain a luxury not inferior to that
of the sultan himself. They have a singular effect,
those black, funereal houses, standing in the foreground
of a picture of such light and beauty!

We pass Orta-keni, the Jew village, the Arnaout-keni,
occupied mostly by Greeks; and here, if you
have read “the Armenians,” you are in the midst of
its most stirring scenes. The story is a true one, not
much embellished in the hands of the novelist, and
there, on the hill opposite, in Anatolia, stands the
house of the heroine's father, the old seraff Oglou
and, behind the garden, you may see the small cottage,
inhabited, secretly, by the enamored Constantine,
and here, in the pretty village of Bebec, lives, at
this moment, the widowed and disconsolate Veronica,
dressed ever in weeds, and obstinately refusing all society
but her own sad remembrance. I must try to
see her. Her “husband of a night” was compelled to
marry again by the hospodar, his father (but this is
not in the novel, you will remember), and there is late
news that his wife is dead, and the lovers of romance
in Stamboul are hoping he will return and make a
happier sequel than the sad one in the story. The
“orthodox catholic Armenian, broker and moneychanger
to boot,” who was to have been her forced
husband, is a very amiable and good-looking fellow,
now in the employ of our chargé d'affaires as second
dragoman.

We approach Roumeli-Hissar, a jutting point almost
meeting a similar projection from the Asian
shore, crowned, like its vis-a-vis, with a formidable
battery. The Bosphorus here is but half an arrow-flight
in width, and Europe and Asia, here at their
nearest approach, stand looking each other in the
face, like boxers, with foot forward, fist doubled, and
a most formidable row of teeth on either side. The
current scampers through between the two castles, as
if happy to get out of the way, and, up-stream, it is
hard pulling for a caique. They are beautiful points,
however, and I am ashamed of my coarse simile, when
I remember how green was the foliage that half enveloped
the walls, and how richly picturesque the
hills behind them. Here, in the European castle,
were executed the greater part of the janisaries, hundreds
in a day, of the manliest frames in the empire,
thrown into the rapid Bosphorus, headless and stripped,
to float, unmourned and unregarded, to the sea.

Above Roumeli-Hissar, the Bosphorus spreads
again, and a curving bay, which is set like a mirror, in
a frame of the softest foliage and verdure, is pointed
out as a spot at which the crusaders, Godfrey of Bouillon
and Raymond of Toulouse encamped on their
way to Palestine. The hills beyond this are loftier,
and the Giant's mountain, upon which the Russian
army encamped at their late visit to the Porte, would
be a respectable eminence in any country. At its
foot, the strait expands into quite a lake, and on the
European side, in a scoop of the shore, exquisitely
placed, stand the diplomatic villages of Terapia and
Buyukdere. The English, French, Russian, Austrian
and other flags were flying over a half dozen of
the most desirable residences I have seen since
Italy.

We soon pulled the remaining mile or two, and our
spent caikjees drew breath, and lay on their oars in the
Black sea. The waves were breaking on the “blue
Symplegades,” a mile on our left, and, before us, toward
the Cimmerian, Bosphorus, and, south, toward
Colchis and Trebizond, spread one broad, blue waste
of waters, apparently as himitless as the ocean. The
Black sea is particularly blue.

We turned our prow to the west, and I sighed to
remember that I had reached my farthest step into
the east. Henceforth I shall be on the return. I
sent a long look over the waters to the bright lands

beyond, so famed in history and fiction, and wishing
for even a metamorphosis into the poor sea-bird flying
above us (whose travelling expenses Nature pays), I
lay back in the boat with a “change in the spirit of
my dream.”

We stopped on the Anatolian shore to visit the
ruins of a fine old Genoese castle, which looks over
the Black sea, and after a lunch upon grapes and coffee,
at a small village at the foot of the hill on which
it stands, we embarked and followed our companions.
Running down with the current to Buyukdere, we
landed and walked along the thronged and beautiful
shore to Terapia, meeting hundreds of fair Armenians
and Greeks (all beautiful, it seemed to me), issuing
forth for their evening promenade, and, with a call of
ceremony on the English ambassador, for whom I
had letters, we again took to the caique, and fled down
with the current like a bird. Oh, what a sunset was
there!

We were to dine and pass the night at the country-house
of an English gentleman at Bebec, a secluded
and lovely village, six or eight miles from Constantinople.
We reached the landing as the stars began to
glimmer, and, after one of the most agreeable and hospitable
entertainments I remember to have shared, we
took an early breakfast with our noble host, and returned
to the ship. I could wish my friends no
brighter passage in their lives than such an excursion
as mine to the Black sea.

96. LETTER XCVI.

The “Golden Horn” is a curved arm of the sea,
the broadest extremity meeting the Bosphorus and
forming the harbor of Constantinople, and the other
tapering away till it is lost in the “Valley of Sweet
Waters.” It curls through the midst of the “seven-hilled”
city, and you cross it whenever you have an
errand in old Stamboul. Its hundreds of shooting
caiques, its forests of merchantmen and men-of-war,
its noise and its confusion, are exchanged in scarce
ten minutes of swift pulling for the breathless and
Eden-like solitude of a valley that has not its parallel,
I am inclined to think, between the Mississippi and
the Caspian. It is called in Turkish khyat-khana.
Opening with a gentle curve from the Golden Horn,
it winds away into the hills toward Belgrade, its long
and even hollow, thridded by a lively stream, and
carpeted by a broad belt of unbroken green sward
swelling up to the enclosing hills, with a grass so verdant
and silken that it seems the very floor of faery.
In the midst of its longest stretch to the eye (perhaps
two miles of level meadow) stands a beautiful serai of
the sultan's, unfenced and open, as if it had sprung
from the lap of the green meadow like a lily. The
stream runs by its door, and over a mimic fall whose
lip is of scolloped marble, is built an oriental kiosk, all
carving and gold, that is only too delicate and fantastical
for reality.

Here, with the first grass of spring, the sultan sends
his fine-footed Arabians to pasture; and here come
the ladies of his harem (chosen, women and horses,
for much the same class of qualities), and in the long
summer afternoons, with mounted eunuchs on the
hills around, forbidding on pain of death, all approach
to the sacred retreat, they venture to drop their jealous
veils and ramble about in their unsunned beauty.

After a gallop of three or four miles over the broad
waste table plains, in the neighborhood of Constantinople,
we checked our horses suddenly on the brow
of a precipitous descent, with this scene of beauty
spread out before us. I had not yet approached it
by water, and it seemed to me as if the earth had burst
open at my feet, and revealed some realm of enchantment.
Behind me, and away beyond the valley to the
very horizon, I could see only a trackless heath, brown
and treeless, while a hundred feet below lay a strip of
very Paradise, blooming in all the verdure and heavenly
freshness of spring. We descended slowly, and
crossing a bridge half hidden by willows, rode in upon
the elastic green sward (for myself) with half a feeling
of profanation. There were no eunuchs upon the
hills, however, and our spirited Turkish horses threw
their wild heads into the air, and we flew over the verdant
turf like a troop of Delhis, the sound of the hoofs
on the yielding carpet scarcely audible. The fair
palace in the centre of this domain of loveliness was
closed, and it was only after we had walked around it
that we observed a small tent of the prophet's green
couched in a small dell on the hill-side, and containing
probably the guard of its imperial master.

We mounted again and rode up the valley for two
or three miles, following the same level and verdant
curve, the soft carpet broken only by the silver thread
of the Barbyses, loitering through it on its way to the
sea. A herd of buffaloes, tended by a Bulgarian boy,
stretched on his back in the sunshine, and a small
caravan of camels bringing wood from the hills, and
keeping to the soft valley as a relief to their spongy
feet, were the only animated portions of the landscape.
I think I shall never form to my mind another picture
of romantic rural beauty (an employment of the imagination
I am much given to when out of humor with
the world) that will not resemble the “Valley of Sweet
Waters”—the khyat-khana of Constantinople. “Poor
Slingsby” never was here.[25]

The lofty mosque of Sulymanye, the bazars of the
opium-eaters, and the Timar-hané, or mad-house of
Constantinople, are all upon one square in the highest
part of the city. We entered the vast court of the
mosque from a narrow and filthy street, and the impression
of its towering plane-trees and noble area, and
of the strange, but grand and costly pile in its centre,
was almost devotional. An inner court, enclosed by
a kind of romanesque wall, contained a sacred marble
fountain of light and airy architecture, and the portico
facing this was sustained by some of those splendid
and gigantic columns of porphyry and jasper, the
spoils of the churches of Asia Minor.[26]

I think the most beautiful spire that rises into the

sky is the Turkish minaret. If I may illustrate an
object of such magnitude by so trifling a comparison,
it is exactly the shape and proportions of an ever-pointed
pencil-case—the silver bands answering to the
encircling galleries, one above another, from which
the muezzin calls out the hour of prayer. The minaret
is painted white, the galleries are fantastically
carved, and rising to the height of the highest steeples
in our country (four and sometimes six to a single
mosque), these slender and pointed fingers of devotion
seem to enter the very sky. Remembering. dear
reader, that there are two hundred and twenty mosques,
and three hundred chapels in Constantinople, raising,
perhaps, in all, a thousand minarets to heaven, you
may get some idea of the magnificence of this seven-hilled
capital of the east.

It was near the hour of prayer, and the devout mussulmans
were thronging into the court of Sulymanye
by every gate. Passing the noble doors, with their
strangely-carved arches of arabesque, which invite all
to enter but the profaning foot of the Christian, the
turbaned crowd repaired first to the fountains. From
the walls of every mosque, by small conduits pouring
into a marble basin, flow streams of pure water for the
religious ablutions of the faithful. The mussulman
approaches, throws off his flowing robe, steps out of
his yellow slippers, and unwinds his voluminous turban
with devout deliberateness. A small marble step,
worn hollow with pious use, supports his foot while
he washes from the knee downward. His hands and
arms, with the flowing sleeve of his silk shirt rolled to
the shoulder, receive the same lavation, and then,
washing his face, he repeats a brief prayer, resumes
all but his slippers, and enters the mosque barefooted.
The mihrab (or niche indicating the side toward the
tomb of the prophet), fixes his eye. He folds his
hands together, prays a moment standing, prostrates
himself flat on his face toward the hallowed quarter,
rises upon his knees, and continues praying and prostrating
himself for perhaps half an hour. And all this
process is required by the mufti, and performed by
every good mussulman five times a day! A rigid adherence
to it is almost universal among the Turks. In
what an odor of sanctity would a Christian live, who
should make himself thus “familiar with heaven!”

As the muezzin from the minaret was shouting his
last “mashallah!” with a voice like a man calling out
from the clouds, we left the court of the majestic
mosque, with Byron's reflection:—

and, having delivered ourselves of this scrap of poetical
philosophy, we crossed over the square to the
opium-eaters.

A long row of half-ruined buildings, of a single story,
with porticoes in front, and the broad, raised platform
beneath, on which the Turks sit cross-legged at
public places, is the scene of what was once a peculiarly
oriental spectacle. The mufti has of late years
denounced the use of opium, and the devotees to its
sublime intoxication have either conquered the habit,
or what is more probable, indulge it in more secret
places. The shops are partly ruinous, and those that
remain in order are used as cafés, in which, however,
it is said that the dangerous drug may still be procured.
My companion inquired of a good-humored-looking
caffejee whether there was any place at which a confirmed
opium-eater could be seen under its influence.
He said there was an old Turk, who was in the habit
of frequenting his shop, and, if we could wait an hour
or two, we might see him in the highest state of intoxication.
We had no time to spare, if the object
had been worth our while.

And here, thought I, as we sat down and took a cup
of coffee in the half-ruined café, have descended upon
the delirious brains of these noble drunkards, the visions
of Paradise so glowingly described in books—
visions, it is said, as far exceeding the poor invention
of the poet, as the houris of the prophet exceed the
fair damsels of this world. Here men, otherwise in
their senses, have believed themselves emperors, warriors,
poets; these wretched walls and bending roof
the fair proportions of a palace; this gray old caffejee
a Hylas or a Ganymede. Here men have come to
cast off, for an hour, the dull thraldom of the body;
to soar into the glorious world of fancy at a penalty of
a thousand times the proportion of real misery; to
sacrifice the invaluable energies of health, and deliberately
poison the very fountain of life, for a few brief
moments of magnificent and phrensied blessedness.
It is powerfully described in the “Opium-Eater” of
De Quincy.

At the extremity of this line of buildings, by a natural
proximity, stands the Timar-hané. We passed
the porter at the gate without question, and entered a
large quadrangle, surrounded with the grated windows
of cells on the ground-floor. In every window was
chained a maniac. The doors of the cells were all
open, and, descending by a step upon the low stone
floor of the first, we found ourselves in the presence
of four men chained to rings, in the four corners, by
massy iron collars. The man in the window sat
crouched together, like a person benumbed (the day
was raw and cold as December), the heavy chain of
his collar hanging on his naked breast, and his shoulders
imperfectly covered with a narrow blanket. His
eyes were large and fierce, and his mouth was fixed in
an expression of indignant sullenness. My companion
asked him if he were ill. He said he should be
well, if he were out—that he was brought there in a
fit of intoxication two years ago, and was no more
crazy than his keeper. Poor fellow! It might easily
be true! He lifted his heavy collar from his neck
as he spoke, and it was not difficult to believe that
misery like his for two long years would, of itself, destroy
reason. There was a better dressed man in the
opposite corner, who informed us, in a gentlemanly
voice, that he had been a captain in the sultan's army,
and was brought there in the delirium of a fever. He
was at a loss to know, he said, why he was imprisoned
still.

We passed on to a poor, half naked wretch in the
last stage of illness and idiocy, who sat chattering to
himself, and, though trembling with the cold, interrupted
his monologue continually with fits of the
wildest laughter. Farther on sat a young man of a
face so full of intellectual beauty, an eye so large and
mild, a mouth of such mingled sadness and sweetness,
and a forehead so broad, and marked so nobly,
that we stood, all of us, struck with a simultaneous
feeling of pity and surprise. A countenance more
beaming with all that is admirable in human nature, I
have never seen, even in painting. He might have sat
to Da Vinci for the “beloved apostle.” He had tied
the heavy chain by a shred to a round of the grating,
to keep its weight from his neck, and seemed calm
and resigned, with all his sadness. My friend spoke
to him, but he answered obscurely, and, seeing that
our gaze disturbed him, we passed unwillingly on.
Oh, what room there is in the world for pity! If that
poor prisoner be not a maniac (as he may not be), and,
if nature has not falsified in the structure of his mind
the superior impress on his features, what Prometheus-like
agony has he suffered! The guiltiest felon
is better cared for. And allowing his mind to be a
wreck, and allowing the hundred human minds, in the
same cheerless prison, to be certainly in ruins, oh what
have they done to be weighed down with iron on their
necks, and exposed, like caged beasts, shivering and
naked, to the eye of pitiless curiosity? I have visited
lunatic asylums in France, Italy, Sicily, and Germany,
but, culpably neglected as most of them are, I have
seen nothing comparable to this in horror.

“Is he never unchained?” we asked. “Never!”
And yet, from the ring to the iron collar, there was
just chain enough to permit him to stand upright!
There were no vessels near them, not even a pitcher
of water. Their dens were cleansed and the poor sufferers
fed at appointed hours, and, come wind or rain,
there was neither shutter nor glass to defend them
from the inclemency of the weather.

We entered most of the rooms, and found in all the
same dampness, filth, and misery. One poor wretch
had been chained to the same spot for twenty years.
The keeper said he never slept. He talked all the
night long. Sometimes at mid-day his voice would
cease, and his head nod for an instant, and then with
a start as if he feared to be silent, he raved on with
the same incoherent rapidity. He had been a dervish.
His collar and chain were bound with rags, and a tattered
coat was fastened up on the inside of the window,
forming a small recess in which he sat, between the
room and the grating. He was emaciated to the last
degree. His beard was tangled and filthy, his nails
curled over the ends of his fingers, and his appearance,
save only an eye of the keenest lustre, that of a
wild beast.

In the last room we entered, we found a good-looking
young man, well dressed, healthy, composed, and
having every appearance of a person in the soundest
state of mind and body. He saluted us courteously,
and told my friend that he was a renegade Greek. He
had turned mussulman a year or two ago, had lost his
reason, and so was brought here. He talked of it quite
as a thing of course, and seemed to be entirely satisfied
that the best had been done for him. One of the
party took hold of his chain. He winced as the collar
stirred on his neck, and said the lock was on the
outside of the window (which was true), and that the
boys came in and tormented him by pulling it sometimes.
“There they are,” he said, pointing to two or
three children who had just entered the court, and
were running round from one prisoner to another.
We bade him good morning, and he laid his hand to
his breast and bowed with a smile. As we passed toward
the gate, the chattering lunatic on the opposite
side screamed after us, the old dervish laid his skinny
hands on the bars of his window, and talked louder
and faster, and the children, approaching close to the
poor creatures, laughed with delight at their excitement.

It was a relief to escape to the common sights and
sounds of the city. We walked on to the Hippodrome.
The only remaining beauty of this famous
square is the unrivalled mosque of Sultan Achmet,
which, though inferior in size to the renowned Santa
Sophia, is superior in elegance both within and without.
Its six slender and towering minarets are the
handsomest in Constantinople. The wondrous obelisk
in the centre of the square, remains perfect as in
the time of the Christian emperors, but the brazen tripod
is gone from the twisted column, and the serpent-like
pillar itself is leaning over with its brazen folds to
its fall.

Here stood the barracks of the powerful Janisaries,
and from the side of Sultan Achmet the cannon were
levelled upon them, as they rushed from the conflagration
within. And here, when Constantinople was
the “second Rome,” were witnessed the triumphal
processions of Christian conquest, the march of the
crusaders, bound for Palestine, and the civil tumults
which Justinian, walking among the people with the
gospel in his hand, tried in vain to allay ere they burnt
the great edifice built of the ruins of the temple of
Solomon. And around this now neglected area, the
captive Gelimer followed in chains the chariot of the
conquering Belisarius, repeating the words of Solomon,
“Vanity of vanities! all is vanity!” while the
conquerer himself, throwing aside his crown, prostra
ted himself at the feet of the beautiful Theodora,
raised from a Roman actress to be the Christian emperess
of the east. From any elevated point of the
city, you may still see the ruins of the palace of the
renowned warrior, and read yourself a lesson on human
vicissitudes, remembering the school-book story
of “an obolon for Belisarius!”

The Hippodrome was, until late years, the constant
scene of the games of the jereed. With the destruction
of the Janizaries, and the introduction of European
tactics, this graceful exercise has gone out of
fashion. The east is fast losing its picturesqueness.
Dress, habits, character, everything seems to be undergoing
a gradual change, and when, as the Turks
themselves predict, the moslem is driven into Asia,
this splendid capital will become another Paris, and
with the improvements in travel, a summer in Constantinople
will be as little thought of as a tour in Italy.
Politicians in this part of the world predict such
a change as about to arrive.

97. LETTER XCVII

I had slept on shore, and it was rather late before I
remembered that it was Friday (the moslem Sunday),
and that Sultan Mahmoud was to go in state to
mosque at twelve. I hurried down the precipitous
street of Pera, and, as usual, escaping barely with my
life from the Christian-hating dogs of Tophana, embarked
in a caique, and made all speed up the Bosphorus.
There is no word in Turkish for faster, but
I was urging on my caikjees by a wave of the hand
and the sight of a bishlik (about the value of a quarter
of a dollar), when suddenly a broadside was fired from
the three-decker, Mahmoudier, the largest ship in the
world, and to the rigging of every man-of-war in the
fleet through which I was passing, mounted, simultaneously,
hundreds of blood-red flags, filling the air
about us like a shower of tulips and roses. Imagine
twenty ships-of-war, with yards manned, and scarce a
line in their rigging to be seen for the flaunting of
colors! The jar of the guns, thundering in every direction
close over us, almost lifted our light boat out
of the water, and the smoke rendered our pilotage between
the ships and among their extending cables
rather doubtful. The white cloud lifted after a few
minutes, and, with the last gun, down went the flags
all together, announcing that the “Brother of the
Sun” had left his palace.

He had but crossed to the mosque of the small village
on the opposite side of the Bosphorus, and was
already at his prayers when I arrived. His body-guard
was drawn up before the door, in their villanous European
dress, and, as their arms were stacked, I presumed
it would be some time before the sultan reappeared,
and improved the interval in examining the
handja-bashes, or state-caiques, lying at the landing.
I have arrived at my present notions of equipage by
three degrees. The pope's carriages at Rome, rather
astonished me. The emperor of Austria's sleighs diminished
the pope in my admiration, and the sultan's
caiques, in their turn, “pale the fires” of the emperor
of Austria. The handja-bash is built something like
the ancient galley, very high at the prow and stern,
carried some fifty oars, and has a roof over her poop,

supported by four columns, and loaded with the most
sumptuous ornaments, the whole gilt brilliantly. The
prow is curved over, and wreathed into every possible
device that would not affect the necessary lines of the
model; her crew are dressed in the beautiful costume
of the country, rich and flowing, and with the costly
and bright-colored carpets hanging over her side, and
the flashing of the sun on her ornaments of gold, she
is really the most splendid object of state equipage
(if I may be allowed the misnomer) in the world.

I was still examining the principal barge, when the
troops stood to their arms, and preparation was made
for the passing out of the sultan. Thirty or forty of
his highest military officers formed themselves into
two lines from the door of the mosque to the landing,
and behind them were drawn up single files of soldiers.
I took advantage of the respect paid to the rank of
Commodore Patterson, and obtained an excellent position,
with him, at the side of the caique. First issued
from the door two Georgian slaves, bearing censers,
from which they waved the smoke on either side,
and the sultan immediately followed, supported by the
capitan-pacha, the seraskier, and Haleil Pacha (who
is to marry the Sultana Esmeh). He walked slowly
down to the landing, smiling and talking gayly with
the seraskier, and, bowing to the commodore in passing,
stepped into his barge, seated himself on a raised
sofa, while his attendants coiled their legs on the carpet
below, and turned his prow across the Bosphorus.

I have, perhaps, never set my eyes on a handsomer
man than Sultan Mahmoud. His figure is tall,
straight, and manly, his air unembarrassed and dignified,
and his step indicative of the well-known firmness
of his character. A superb beard of jetty blackness,
with a curling mustache, conceals all the lower part of
his face; the decided and bold lines of his mouth just
marking themselves when he speaks. It is said he
both paints and dies his beard, but a manlier brown
upon a cheek, or a richer gloss upon a beard, I never
saw. His eye is described by writers as having a
doomed darkness of expression, and it is certainly one
that would well become a chief of bandits—large,
steady, and overhung with an eyebrow like a thunder-cloud.
He looks the monarch. The child of a seraglio
(where mothers are chosen for beauty alone)
could scarce escape being handsome. The blood of
Circassian upon Circassian is in his veins, and the
wonder is, not that he is the handsomest man in his
empire, but that he is not the greatest slave. Our
“mother's humor,” they say, predominates in our
mixtures. Sultan Mahmoud, however, was marked
by nature for a throne.

I accompanied Mr. Goodell and Mr. Dwight, American
missionaries at Constantinople, to visit a Lancasterian
school established with their assistance in the
Turkish barracks. The building stands on the ascent
of one of the lovely valleys that open into the Bosphorus,
some three miles from the city, on the European
side. We were received by the colonel of the
regiment, a young man of fine appearance, with the
diamond crescent and star glittering on the breast of
his military frock, and after the inevitable compliment
of pipes and coffee, the drum was beat and the soldiers
called to school.

The sultan has an army of boys. Nine tenths of
those I have seen are under twenty. They marched
in, in single file, and facing about, held up their hands
at the word of command, while a subaltern looked
that each had performed the morning ablution. They
were healthy-looking lads, mostly from the interior
provinces, whence they are driven down like cattle to
fill the ranks of their sovereign. Duller-looking subjects
for an idea it has not been my fortune to see.

The Turkish alphabet hung over the teacher's desk
(the colonel is the schoolmaster, and takes the greatest
interest in his occupation), and the front seats are
faced with a long box covered with sand, in which the
beginners write with their fingers. It is fitted with a
slide that erases the clumsy imitation when completed,
and seemed to me an ingenious economy of ink and
paper. (I would suggest to the minds of the benevolent,
a school on the same principle for beginners in
poetry. It would save the critics much murder, and
tend to the suppression of suicide.) The classes having
filed into their seats, the school opened with a
prayer by the colonel. The higher benches then
commenced writing, on slates and paper, sentences
dictated from the desk, and I was somewhat surprised
at the neatness and beauty of the characters.

We passed afterward into another room where arithmetic
and geography were taught, and then mounted
to an apartment on the second story occupied by students
in military drawing. The proficiency of all
was most creditable, considering the brief period during
which the schools have been in operation—something
less than a year. Prejudiced as the Turks are against
European innovation, this advanced step toward improvement
tells well. Our estimable and useful missionaries
appear, from the respect everywhere shown
them, to be in high esteem, and with the sultan's energetic
disposition for reform, they hope everything in
the way of an enlightened change in the moral condition
of the people.

Went to the chapel of the dancing dervishes. It is
a beautiful marble building, with a court-yard ornamented
with a small cemetery shaded with cypresses,
and a fountain enclosed in a handsome edifice, and
defended by gilt gratings from the street of the suburb
of Pera, in which it stands. They dance here twice
a week. We arrived before the hour, and were detained
at the door by a soldier on guard, who would
not permit us to enter without taking off our boots—a
matter, about which, between straps and their very
muddy condition, we had some debate. The dervishes
began to arrive before the question was settled, and
one of them, a fine-looking old man, inviting us to
enter, Mr. H. explained the difficulty. “Go in,” said
he, “go in!” and turning to the more scrupulous
mussulman with the musket, as he pushed us within
the door, “stupid fellow!” said he, “if you had been
less obstinate, they would have given you a bakshish”
(Turkish for a fee). He should have said less religious—for
the poor fellow looked horror-struck as our
dirty boots profaned the clean white Persian matting
of the sacred floor. One would think, “the nearer
the church the farther from God,” were as true here
as it is said to be in some more civilized countries.

It was a pretty, octagonal interior, with a gallery,
the mihrab or niche indicating the direction of the
prophet's tomb, standing obliquely from the front
of the building. Hundreds of small lamps hung in
the area, just out of the reach of the dervishes' tall
caps, and all around between the gallery; a part of
the floor was raised, matted, and divided from the
body of the church by a balustrade. It would have
made an exceedingly pretty ball-room.

None but the dervishes entered within the paling,
and they soon began to enter, each advancing first
toward the mihrab, and going through fifteen or twenty
minutes' prostrations and prayers. Their dress is
very humble. A high, white felt-cap, without a rim,
like a sugar-loaf enlarged a little at the smaller end,
protects the head, and a long dress of dirt-colored
cloth, reaching quite to the heels and bound at the
waist with a girdle, completes the costume. They
look like men who have made up their minds to seem
religious, and though said to be a set of very good fellows,
they have a Mawworm expression of face generally,
which was very repulsive. I must except the
chief of the sect, however, who entered when all the
rest had seated themselves on the floor, and after a

brief genuflection or two, took possession of a rich
Angora carpet placed for him near the mihrab. He
was a small old man, distinguished in his dress only
by the addition of a green band to his cap (the sign
of his pilgrimage to Mecca) and the entire absence of
the sanctimonious look. Still he was serious, and
there was no mark in his clear, intelligent eye and
amiable features, of any hesitancy or want of sincerity
in his devotion. He is said to be a learned man, and
he is certainly a very prepossessing one, though he
would be taken up as a beggar in any city in the United
States. It is a thing one learns in “dangling
about the world,” by the way, to form opinions of
men quite independently of their dress.

After sitting a while in quaker meditation, the
brotherhood rose one by one (there were ten of them
I think), and marched round the room with their toes
turned in, to the music of a drum and a Persian flute,
played invisibly in some part of the gallery. As they
passed the carpet of the cross-legged chief, they twisted
dexterously and made three salaams, and then
raising their arms, which they held out straight during
the whole dance, they commenced twirling on one
foot, using the other after the manner of a paddle to
keep up the motion. I forgot to mention that they
laid aside their outer dresses before commencing the
dance. They remained in dirty white tunics reaching
to the floor, and very full at the bottom, so that with
the regular motion of their whirl, the wind blew them
out into a circle, like what the girls in our country
call “making cheeses.” They twisted with surprising
exactness and rapidity, keeping clear of each other,
and maintaining their places with the regularity of
machines. I have seen a great deal of waltzing, but I
think the dancing dervishes for precision and spirit,
might give a lesson even to the Germans.

We left them twisting. They had been going for
half an hour, and it began to look very like perpetual
motion. Unless their brains are addled, their devotion,
during this dizzy performance at least, must be
quite suspended. A man who could think of his
Maker, while revolving so fast that his nose is indistinct,
must have some power of abstraction.

The frigate was visited to-day by the sultan's cabinet.
The seraskier pacha came alongside first in his
state caique, and embraced the commodore as he
stepped upon the deck, with great cordiality. He is a
short, fat old man, with a snow-white beard, and so
bow-legged as to be quite deformed. He wore the
red Fez cap of the army, with a long blue frock-coat,
the collar so tight as nearly to choke him, and the
body not shaped to the figure, but made to fall around
him like a sack. The red, bloated skin of his neck
fell over, so as almost to cover the gold with which the
collar was embroidered. He was formerly capitan
pacha, or admiral-in-chief of the fleet, and though a
good-humored, merry-looking old man, has shown
himself, both in his former and present capacity, to be
wily, cold, and a butcher in cruelty. He possesses
unlimited influence over the sultan, and though nominally
subordinate to the grand vizier, is really the
second if not the first person in the empire. He was
originally a Georgian slave.

The seraskier was still talking with the commodore
in the gang-way, when the present capitan pacha
mounted the ladder, and the old man, who is understood
to be at feud with his successor, turned abruptly
away and walked aft. The capitan pacha is a tall,
slender man, of precisely that look and manner which
we call gentlemanly. His beard grows untrimmed in
the Turkish fashion, and is slightly touched with gray.
His eye is anxious, but resolute, and he looks like a
man of resource and ability. His history is as singular
as that of most other great men in Turkey. He
was a slave of Mohammed Ali, the rebellious pacha
of Egypt. Being intrusted by his master with a brig
and cargo for Leghorn, he sold vessel and lading,
lived like a gentleman in Italy for some years with the
proceeds, and as the best security against the retribution
of his old master, offered his services to the sultan,
with whom Ali was just commencing hostilities. Naval
talent was in request, and he soon arrived at his
present dignity. He is said to be the only officer in
the fleet who knows anything of his profession.

Haleil Pacha arrived last. The sultan's future son-in-law
is a man of perhaps thirty-five. He is light-complexioned,
stout, round-faced, and looks, like a
respectable grocer, “well to do in the world.” He
has commanded the artillery long enough to have acquired
a certain air of ease and command, and carries
the promise of good fortune in his confident features.
He is to be married almost immediately. He, too,
was a Georgian, sent as a present to the sultan.

The three dignitaries made the rounds of the ship
and then entered the cabin, where the pianoforte (a
novelty to the seraskier and Haleil Pacha, and to most
of the attendant officers), and the commodore's agreeable
society and champagne, promised to detain them
the remainder of the day. They were like children
with a holyday. I was engaged to dine on shore, and
left them on board.

In a country where there is no education and no
rank, except in the possession of present power, it is
not surprising that men should rise from the lowest
class to the highest offices, or that they should fill
those offices to the satisfaction of the sultan. Yet it
is curious to hear their histories. An English physician,
who is frequently called into the seraglio, and
whose practice among all the families in power gives
him the best means of information, has entertained
me not a little with these secrets. I shall make use
of them when I have more leisure, merely mentioning
here, in connexion with the above accounts, that the
present grand vizier was a boatman on the Bosphorus,
and the commander of the sultan's body-guard, a
shoemaker! The latter still employs all his leisure
in making slippers, which he presents to the sultan
and his friends, not at all ashamed of his former vocation.
So far, indeed, are any of these mushroom officers
from blushing at their origin, that it is common
to prefix the name of their profession to the title of
pacha, and they are addressed by it as a proper name.
This is one respect in which their European education
will refine them to their disadvantage.

98. LETTER XCVIII.

Bring all the shops of New York, Philadelphia,
and Boston, together around the City Hall, remove
their fronts, pile up all their goods on shelves facing
the street, cover the whole with a roof, and metamorphose
your trim clerks into bearded, turbaned, and
solemn old mussulmans, smooth Jews, and calpacked
and rosy Armenians, and you will have something like
the grand bazar of Constantinople. You can scarcely
get an idea of it, without having been there. It is
a city under cover. You walk all day, and day after
day, from one street to another, winding and turning,

and trudging up hill and down, and never go out of
doors. The roof is as high as those of our three-story
houses, and the dim light so favorable to shop-keepers,
comes struggling down through skylights, never
cleaned except by the rains of heaven.

Strolling through the bazar is an endless amusement.
It is slow work, for the streets are as crowded
as a church-aisle after service; and, pushed aside one
moment by a bevy of Turkish ladies, shuffling along
in their yellow slippers, muffled to the eyes, the next
by a fat slave carrying a child, again by a kervas armed
to the teeth, and clearing the way for some coming
dignitary, you find your only policy is to draw in your
elbows, and suffer the motley crowd to shove you about
at their pleasure.

Each shop in this world of traffic may be two yards
wide. The owner sits cross-legged on the broad
counter below, the height of a chair from the ground,
and hands you all you want without stirring from his
seat. One broad bench or counter runs the length of
the street, and the different shops are only divided by
the slight partition of the shelves. The purchaser
seats himself on the counter, to be out of the way of
the crowd, and the shopman spreads out his goods on
his knees, never condescending to open his lips except
to tell you the price. If he exclaims “bono,” or
“calo,” (the only words a real Turk ever knows of another
language), he is stared at by his neighbors as a
man would be in Broadway who should break out
with an Italian bravura. Ten to one, while you are
examining his goods, the bearded trader creeps
through the hole leading to his kennel of a dormitory
in the rear, washes himself and returns to his counter,
where, spreading his sacred carpet in the direction
of Mecca, he goes through his prayers and prostrations,
perfectly unconscious of your presence, or that
of the passing crowd. No vocation interferes with
his religious duty. Five times a day, if he were running
from the plague, the mussulman would find time
for prayers.

The Frank purchaser attracts a great deal of curiosity.
As he points to an embroidered handkerchief,
or a rich shawl, or a pair of gold-worked slippers,
Turkish ladies of the first rank, gathering their yashmacks
securely over their faces, stop close to his side,
not minding if they push him a little to get nearer
the desired article. Feeling not the least timidity, except
for their faces, these true children of Eve examine
the goods in barter, watch the stranger's countenance,
and if he takes off his glove, or pulls out his
purse, take it up and look at it, without even saying
“by your leave.” Their curiosity often extends to
your dress, and they put out their little henna-stained
fingers and pass them over the sleeve of your coat
with a gurgling expression of admiration at its fineness,
or if you have rings or a watch-guard, they lift
your hand or pull out your watch with no kind of
scruple. I have met with several instances of this in
the course of my rambles. But a day or two ago I
found myself rather more than usual a subject of curiosity.
I was alone in the street of embroidered
handkerchiefs (every minute article has its peculiar
bazar), and wishing to look at some of uncommon
beauty, I called one of the many Jews always near a
stranger to turn a penny by interpreting for him, and
was soon up to the elbows in goods that would tempt
a female angel out of Paradise. As I was selecting
one for a purchase, a woman plumped down upon the
seat beside me, and fixed her great, black, unwinking
eyes upon my face, while an Abyssinian slave and another
white woman, both apparently her dependants,
stood respectfully at her back. A small turquoise
ring (the favorite color in Turkey), first attracted her
attention. She took up my hand, and turned it over
in her soft, fat fingers, and dropped it again without
saying a word. I looked at my interpreter, but he
seemed to think it nothing extraordinary, and I went
on with my bargain. Presently my fine-eyed friend
pulled me by the sleeve, and as I leaned toward her,
rubbed her forefinger very quickly over my cheek,
looking at me intently all the while. I was a little
disturbed with the lady's familiarity, and asked my Jew
what she wanted. I found that my rubicund complexion
was something uncommon among these dark-skinned
orientals, and she wished to satisfy herself
that I was not painted! I concluded my purchase,
and putting the parcel into my pocket, did my prettiest
at an oriental salaam, but to my mortification, the lady
only gathered up her yashmack, and looked surprised
out of her great eyes at my freedom. My Constantinople
friends inform me that I am to lay no “unction
to my soul” from her notice, such liberties being not
at all particular. The husband exacts from his half-dozen
wives only the concealment of their faces, and
they have no other idea of impropriety in public.

In the centre of the bazar, occupying about as
much space as the body of the City Hall in New
York, is what is called the bezestein. You descend
into it from four directions by massive gates, which
are shut, and all persons excluded, except between
seven and twelve of the forenoon. This is the core
of Constantinople—the soul and citadel of orientalism.
It is devoted to the sale of arms and to costly
articles only. The roof is loftier and the light more
dim than in the outer bazars, and the merchants who
occupy its stalls, are old and of established credit.
Here are subjects for the pencil! If you can take
your eye from those Damascus sabres, with their jewelled
hilts and costly scabbards, or from those gemmed
daggers and guns inlaid with silver and gold, cast a
glance along that dim avenue and see what a range
there is of glorious old gray beards, with their snowy
turbans! These are the Turks of the old regime, before
Sultan Mahmoud disfigured himself with a coat
like a “dog of a Christian,” and broke in upon the
customs of the orient. These are your opium-eaters,
who smoke even in their sleep, and would not touch
wine if it were handed them by houris! These are
your fatalists, who would scarce take the trouble to
get out of the way of a lion, and who are as certain
of the miracle of Mohammed's coffin as of the length
of the pipe, or of the quality of the tobacco of
Shiraz!

I have spent many an hour in the bezestein, steeping
my fancy in its rich orientalism, and sometimes
trying to make a purchase for myself or others. It is
curious to see with what perfect indifference these old
cross-legs attend to the wishes of a Christian. I was
idling round one day with an English traveller, whom
I had known in Italy, when a Persian robe of singular
beauty hanging on one of the stalls arrested my
companion's attention. He had with him his Turkish
dragoman, and as the old merchant was smoking
away and looking right at us, we pointed to the dress
over his head, and the interpreter asked to see it. The
mussulman smoked calmly on, taking no more notice
of us than of the white clouds curling through his
beard. He might have sat for Michael Angelo's Moses.
Thin, pale, calm, and of a statue-like repose of
countenance and posture, with a large old-fashioned
turban, and a curling beard half mingled with gray,
his neck bare, and his fine bust enveloped in the flowing
and bright colored drapery of the east—I had
never seen a more majestic figure. He evidently did
not wish to have anything to do with us. At last I
took out my snuff-box, and addressing him with “effendi!”
the Turkish title of courtesy, laid my hand
on my breast and offered him a pinch. Tobacco in
this unaccustomed shape is a luxury here, and the
amber mouth-piece emerged from his mustache, and
putting his three fingers into my box, he said “pekkhe!”
the Turkish ejaculation of approval. He then

made room for us on his carpet and with a cloth measure
took the robe from its nail, and spread it before
us. My friend bought it unhesitatingly for a dressing-gown,
and we spent an hour in looking at shawls, of
prices perfectly startling, arms, chalices for incense,
spotless amber for pipes, pearls, bracelets of the time
of Sultan Selim, and an endless variety of “things
rich and rare.” The closing of the bezestein gates
interrupted our agreeable employment, and our old
friend gave us the parting salaam very cordially for a
Turk. I have been there frequently since, and never
pass without offering my snuff-box, and taking a whiff
or two from his pipe, which I can not refuse, though it
is not out of his mouth, except when offered to a
friend, from sunrise till midnight.

One of the regular “lions” of Constantinople is a
kibaub shop, or Turkish restaurant. In a ramble with
our consul, the other day, in search of the newly-discovered
cistern of a “thousand and one columns,”
we found ourselves, at the hungry hour of twelve, opposite
a famous shop near the slave-market. I was
rather staggered at the first glance. A greasy fellow,
with his shirt rolled to his shoulders, stood near the
door, commending his shop to the world by slapping
on the flank a whole mutton that hung beside him,
while, as a customer came in, he dexterously whipped
out a slice, had it cut in a twinkling into bits as large
as a piece of chalk (I have stopped five minutes in
vain, to find a better comparison), strung upon a long
iron skewer, and laid on the coals. My friend is an
old Constantinopolitan, and had eaten kibaubs before.
He entered without hesitation, and the adroit butcher,
giving his big trowsers a fresh hitch, and tightening
his girdle, made a new cut for his “narrow legged”
customers, and wished us a good appetite (the Turks
look with great contempt on our tight pantaloons, and
distinguish us by this epithet). We got up on the
platform, crossed our legs under us as well as we
could, and I can not deny that the savory missives that
occasionally reached my nostrils, bred a gradual reconciliation
between my stomach and my eyes.

In some five minutes, a tin platter was set between
us, loaded with piping hot kibaubs, sprinkled with
salad, and mixed with bits of bread; our friend the
cook, by way of making the amiable, stirring it up
well with his fingers as he brought it along. As Modely
says in the play, “In love or mutton, I generally
fall to without ceremony,” but, spite of its agreeable
flavor, I shut my eyes, and selected a very small bit,
before I commenced upon the kibaubs. It was very
good eating, I soon found out, and, my fingers once
greased (for we are indulged with neither knife, fork,
nor skewer, in Turkey), I proved myself as good a
trencher-man as my friend.

The middle and lower classes of Constantinople live
between these shops and the cafés. A dish of kibaubs
serves them for dinner, and they drink coffee, which
they get for about half a cent a cup, from morning till
night. We paid for our mess (which was more than
any two men could eat at once, unless very hungry),
twelve cents.

We started again with fresh courage, in search of
the cistern. We soon found the old one, which is an
immense excavation, with a roof, supported by five
hundred granite columns, employed now as a place
for twisting silk, and escaping from its clamorous
denizens, who rushed up after us to the daylight, begging
paras, we took one of the boys for a guide, and
soon found the object of our search.

Knocking at the door of a half-ruined house, in one
of the loneliest streets of the city, an old, sore-eyed
Armenian, with a shabby calpack, and every mark of
extreme poverty, admitted us, pettishly demanding
our entrance money, before he let us pass the threshold.
Flights of steps, dangerously ruinous, led us
down, first into a garden, far below the level of the
street, and thence into a dark and damp cavern, the
bottom of which was covered with water. As the eye
became accustomed to the darkness, we could distinguish
tall and beautiful columns of marble and granite,
with superb corinthian capitals, perhaps thirty-feet
in height, receding as far as the limits of our obscured
sight. The old man said there were a thousand of
them. The number was doubtless exaggerated, but
we saw enough to convince us, that here was covered
up, almost unknown, one of the mostly and magnificent
works of the Christian emperors of Constantinople

99. LETTER XCIX.

I left Constantinople on horseback with a party of
officers, and two American travellers in the east, early
on one of nature's holyday mornings, for Belgrade.
We loitered a moment in the small Armenian cemetery,
the only suburb that separates the thickly crowded
street from the barren heath that stretches away
from the city on every side to the edge of the horizon.
It is singular to gallop thus from the crowded pavement,
at once into an uncultivated and unfenced desert.
We are so accustomed to suburban gardens that
the traveller wonders how the markets of this overgrown
and immense capital are supplied. A glance
back upon the Bosphorus, and toward the Asian shore,
and the islands of the sea of Marmora, explains the
secret. The waters in every direction around this
sea-girdled city are alive with boats, from the larger
kachambas and sandals to the egg-shell caique, swarming
into the Golden Horn in countless numbers, laden
with every vegetable of the productive east. It is
said, however, that it is dangerous to thrive too near the
eye of the sultan. The summary mode for rewarding
favorites and providing for the residence of ambassadors,
by the simple confiscation of the prettiest estate
desirably situated, is thought to have something to do
with the barrenness of the immediate neighborhood.

The Turks carry their contempt of the Christian
even beyond the grave. The funereal cypress, so singularly
beautiful in its native east, is permitted to
throw its dark shadows only upon turbaned tombstones.
The Armenian rayah, the oppressed Greek, and the
more hated Jew, slumber in their unprotected graves
on the open heath. It almost reconciles one to the
haughtiness and cruelty of the Turkish character,
however, to stand on one of the “seven hills” of
Stamboul, and look around upon their own beautiful
cemeteries. On every sloping hill side, in every rural
nook, in the court of the splendid mosque, stands a
dark nekropolis, a small city of the dead, shadowed so
thickly by the close-growing cypresses, that the light
of heaven penetrates but dimly. You can have no
conception of the beauty it adds to the landscape.
And then from the bosom of each, a slender minaret
shoots into the sky as if pointing out the flight of the
departed spirit, and if you enter within its religious
darkness, you find a taste and elegance unknown in
more civilized countries, the humblest headstone lettered
with gold, and the more costly sculptured into
forms the most sumptuous, and fenced and planted
with flowers never neglected.

In the east, the graveyard is not, as with us, a place
abandoned to its dead. Occupying a spot of chosen
loveliness it is resorted to by women and children, and
on holydays by men, whose indolent natures find hap

piness enough in sitting on the green bank around the
resting-place of their relatives and friends. Here,
while their children are playing around them, they
smoke in motionless silence, watching the gay Bosphorus
or the busier curve of the Golden Horn, one
of which is visible from every cemetery in the Stamboul.
Occasionally you see large parties of twenty or
thirty, sitting together, their slight feast of sweetmeats
and sherbet spread in some grassy nook, and the surrounding
headstones serving as leaning-places for the
women, or bounds for the infant gambols of the gayly-dressed
little mussulmans.

Whatever else we may deny the Turk, we must allow
him to possess a genuine love for rural beauty.
The cemeteries we have described, the choice of his
dwelling on the Bosphorus, and his habit of resorting,
whenever he has leisure, to some lovely scene to sit
the livelong day in the sunshine, are proof enough.
And then all over the hills, both in Anatolia and Roumelia,
wherever there is a fine view or a greener spot
than elsewhere, you find the small sairgah, the grassy
platform on which he spreads his carpet, and you may
look in vain for a spot better selected for his purpose.

Things are sooner seen than described (I wish it
were as agreeable to describe as to see them!) and all
this digression, and much more which I spare the
reader, is the fruit of five minutes' reflection while the
suridjee tightens his girths in the Armenian burying-ground.
The turbaned Turk once more in his saddle
then we will canter on some three miles, if you please,
over as naked a heath as the sun looks upon, to the
“Valley of Sweet Waters.” I have described this,
I think, before. We live to learn, and my intelligent
friend tells me, as we draw rein, and wind carefully
down the steep descent, that the site of the sultan's
romantic serai, in the bosom of the valley, was once
occupied by the first printing-press established in Turkey—the
fruit of an embassy to the court of Louis
the fifteenth, by Mehemet Effendi, in the reign of Achmet
the third. And thus having delivered myself of a
fact, a thing for which I have a natural antipathy in
writing, let us gallop up the velvet brink of the Barbyses.

We had kept our small Turkish horses to their
speed for a mile, with the enraged suridjee crying after
us at the top of his voice, “ya-wash! ya-wash!”
(slowly, slowly!) when, at a bend of the valley, right
through the midst of its velvet verdure, came rolling
along an aruba, loaded with ladies. This pretty word
signifies in Turkish a carriage, and the thing itself reminds
you directly of the fantastic vehicles in which
fairy queens come upon the stage. First appear two
gray oxen, with their tails tied to a hoop bent back
from the end of the pole, their heads and horns and
the long curve of the hoop decked with red and yellow
tassels so profusely, that it looks at a distance
like a walking clump of hollyhocks. As you pass
the poor oxen (almost lifted off their hind legs by the
straining of the hoop upon their tails), a four-wheeled
vehicle makes its appearance, the body and wheels
carved elaborately and gilt all over, and the crimson
cover rolled up just so far as to show a cluster of veiled
women, cross-legged upon cushions within, and
riding in perfect silence![27] A eunuch or a very old
Turk walks at the side, and thus the moslem ladies
“take kaif” as it is called—in other words go-a-pleasuring.
But a prettier sight than this gay affair rolling
noiselessly over the pathless green sward of the Valley
of Sweet Waters, you may not see in a year's travel.

A beautiful Englishwoman, mounted (if I may dare
to write it) on a more beautiful Arabian, came flying
toward us as we approached the head of the valley, the
long feathers in her riding-cap all but brushing our
admiring eyes out as she passed, and other living thing
met we none till we drew up in the edge of the forest
of Belgrade. A half hour brought us to a bold descent,
and through the openings in the wood we caught
a glimpse of the celebrated retreat of Lady Montague,
a village, tossed into the lap of as bright a dell as the
sun looks upon in his journey. A lively brook, that
curls about in the grass like a silver flower worked into
the green carpet, overcomes at last its unwillingness
to depart, and vanishes from the fair scene under a
clump of willows; and, as if it knew it was sitting for its
picture, there must needs be a group of girls with
their trowsers tucked up to the knee, washing away so
busily in the brook, that they did not see that half a
dozen Frank horsemen were upon them, and their forgotten
yashmacks all fallen about their shoulders!

We dismounted, and finding (what I never saw before)
a red-headed Frenchman, walking about in his
slippers, we inquired for the house of Lady Montague.
He had never heard of her! A cottage, a little separated
from the village, untenanted, and looking as if it
should be hers, stood on a swell of the valley, and we
found by the scrawled names and effusions of travellers
upon the gates, that we were not mistaken in selecting
it for the shrine of our sentiment.

I am sorry to be obliged to add, that in the romantic
forest of Belgrade, we listened to the calls of mortal
hunger. With some very sour wine, however,
we did drink to the memory of Lady Mary and the
“fair Fatima,” washing down with the same draught
as brown bread as ever I saw, and some very indifferent
filberts.

We mounted once more, and followed our silent
guide across the brook, politely taking it below the
spot where our naiads of the stream were washing,
and following its slender valley for a mile, arrived at one
of the gigantic bendts, for which the place is famous.
To give romance its proper precedence over reality,
however, I must first mention, that on the soft bank
of the artificial lake, which I shall presently describe,
Constantine Ghika, disguised as a shepherd, stole an
interview with the fair Veronica, and in the wild forest
to the right, they wandered till they lost their way;
an adventure of which they only regretted the sequel,
finding it again! If you have not read “The Armenians,”
this pretty turn in my travels is thrown away
upon you.

The valley of Belgrade widens and rounds into a
lake-shaped hollow just here, and across it, to form a
reservoir for the supply of the city by the aqueducts
of Valens and Justinian, is built a gigantic marble wall.
There is no water just now, which, for a lake, is rather
a deficiency; but the vast white wall only stands up
against the sky, bolder and more towering, and coming
suddenly upon it in that lonely place, you might take
it, if the “fine phrensy” were on you, for the barrier
of some enchanted demesne.

We passed on into the forest, winding after an almost
invisible path, up hill and down dale, till we came
to the second bendt. This, and the third, which is
near by, are larger and of more ornamental architecture
than the first, and the forest around them is one in
which, if he turned his back on the lofty walls, a wild
Indian would feel himself at home. I have not seen
such trees since I left America; clear of all underwood,
and the long vistas broken only by the trunk of some
noble oak, fallen aslant, it has for miles the air of a
grand old wilderness, unprofaned by axe or fire. In
the midst of such scenery as this, to ride up to the
majestic bendt, faced with a front like a temple, and
crowned by a marble balustrade, with a salient and raised
crescent in the centre, like a throne for some monarch
of the forest, it must be a more staid imagination
than mine that would not feel a touch of the knight

of La Mancha, and spur up to find a gate, and a bugle
to blow a blast for the warder! It is just the looking
place I imagined for an enchanted castle, when reading
my first romances.

Farther on in the forest we found several circular
structures, like baths, sunk in the earth, with flights
of steps winding to the bottom, but with the same gigantic
trees growing at their very rim, and nothing
near them to show the purpose of their costly masonry.
We stopped to form a conjecture or two with the
aid of the genus loci, but the surly suridjee, probably
at a loss to comprehend the object of looking into a
hole full of dead leaves, chose to put his horse to a
gallop; and having no Veronica to make a romance
of a lost path, we left our conjectures to gallop after.

We reached the waste plains above the city at sunset,
and turned a little out of our way to enter through
the Turkish cemetery (poetically called by Mr. MacFarlane
“death's coronal”), on the summit and sides
of the hill behind Pera. Broad daylight, as it was
still without, it was deep twilight among its thick-planted
cypresses; and our horses, starting at the tall,
white tombstones, hurried through its damp hollows
and emerged on a brow overlooking the bright and
crowded Bosphorus, bathed at the moment in a flood
of sunset glory. I said again, as I reined in my horse
and gazed down upon those lovely waters, there is no
such scene of beauty in the world! And again I say,
“poor Slingsby” never was here!

100. LETTER C.

Pulled over to Scutari in a caique, for a day's
ramble. The Chrysopolis, the “golden city” of the
ancients, forms the Asian side of the bay, and, though
reckoned, generally, as a part of Constantinople, is in
itself a large and populous capital. It is built on a
hill, very bold upon the side washed by the sea of
Marmora, but leaning toward the seraglio, on the opposite
shore, with the grace of a lady (Asia) bowing
to her partner (Europe). You will find the simile
very beautifully elaborated in the first chapter of “The
Armenians.”

We strolled through the bazar awhile, meeting, occasionally,
a caravan of tired and dusty merchants,
coming in from Asia, some with Syrian horses, and
some with dusky, Nubian slaves, following barefoot,
in their blankets; and, emerging from the crowded
street upon a square, we stopped a moment to look at
the cemetery and gilded fountains of a noble mosque.
Close to the street, defended by a railing of gilt iron,
and planted about closely with cypresses, stands a
small temple of airy architecture, supported on four
slender columns, and enclosed by a net of gilt wire,
forming a spacious aviary. Within sleeps the Sultana
Valide. Her costly monument, elaborately inscribed
in red and gold, occupies the area of this poetical
sepulchre; small, sweet-scented shrubs half bury it in
their rich flowers, and birds of the gayest plumage
flutter and sing above her in their beautiful prison. If
the soul of the departed sultana is still susceptible of
sentiment, she must look down with some complacency
upon the disposition of her “mortal coil.” I have
not seen so fanciful a grave in my travels.

We ascended the hill to the mosque of the Howling
Dervishes. It stands in the edge of the great cemetery
of Scutari, the favorite burial-place of the Turks.
The self-torturing worship of this singular class of
devotees takes place only on a certain day of the week,
and we found the gates closed. A small café stood
opposite, sheltered by large plane-trees, and on a
bench at the door, sat a dervish, employed in the unclerical
vocation of mending slippers. Calling for a
cup of the fragrant Turkish coffee, we seated ourselves
on the matted bench beside him, and, entering
into conversation, my friend and he were soon upon
the most courteous terms. He laid down his last, and
accepted a proffered narghilê, and, between the heavily
drawn puffs of the bubbling vase, gave us some information
respecting his order, of which the peculiarity
that most struck me was a law compelling them to
follow some secular profession. In this point, at least,
they are more apostolic than the clergy of Christendom.
Whatever may be the dervish's excellence as a
“mender of souls,” thought I, as I took up the last,
and looked at the stitching of the bright new patch,
(may I get well out of this sentence without a pun!)
I doubt whether there is a divine within the Christian
pale who could turn out so pretty a piece of work in
any corresponding calling. Our coffee drunk and our
chibouques smoked to ashes, we took leave of our
papoosh-mending friend, who laid his hand on his
breast, and said, with the expressive phraseology of
the east, “You shall be welcome again.”

We entered the gloomy shadow of the vast cemetery,
and found its cool and damp air a grateful exchange
for the sunshine. The author of Anastasius
gives a very graphic description of this place, throwing
in some horrors, however, for which he is indebted to
his admirable imagination. I never was in a more
agreeable place for a summer-morning's lounge, and,
as I sat down on a turbaned headstone, near the tomb
of Mohammed the second's horse, and indulged in a
train of reflections arising from the superior distinction
of the brute's ashes over those of his master, I
could remember no place, except Plato's Academy at
Athens, where I had mused so absolutely at my ease.

We strolled on. A slender and elegantly-carved
slab, capped with a small turban, fretted and gilt, arrested
my attention. “It is the tomb,” said my companion,
“of one of the ichoglans or sultan's pages.
The peculiar turban is distinctive of his rank, and the
inscription says, he died at eighteen, after having seen
enough of the world! Similar sentiments are to be
found on almost every stone.” Close by stood the
ambitious cenotaph of a former pacha of Widin, with
a swollen turban, crossed with folds of gold, and a foot-stone
painted and carved, only less gorgeously than
the other; and under his name and titles was written,
“I enjoyed not the world.” Farther on, we stopped at
the black-banded turban of a cadi, and read again, underneath,
“I took no pleasure in this evil world.” You
would think the Turks a philosophizing people, judging
by these posthumous declarations; but one need
not travel to learn that tombstones are sad liars.

The cemetery of Scutari covers as much ground as
a city. Its black cypress pall spreads away over hill
and dale, and terminates, at last, on a long point projecting
into Marmora, as if it would pour into the sea
the dead it could no longer cover. From the Armenian
village, immediately above, it forms a dark, and
not unpicturesque foreground to a brilliant picture of
the gulf of Nicomedia and the clustering Princes' islands.
With the economy of room which the Turks
practise in their burying-grounds, laying the dead,
literally, side by side, and the immense extent of this
forest of cypresses, it is probable that on no one spot
on the earth are so many of the human race gathered
together.

We wandered about among the tombs till we began
to desire to see the cheerful light of day, and crossing
toward the height of Bulgurlu, commenced its ascent,
with the design of descending by the other side to the
Bosphorus, and returning, by caique, to the city.

Walking leisurely on between fields of the brightest
cultivation, we passed, half way up, a small and rural
serai, the summer residence of Esmeh Sultana, the
younger sister of the sultan, and soon after stood, well
breathed, on the lofty summit of Bulgurlu. The constantly-occurring
sairgahs, or small grass platforms,
for spreading the carpet and “taking kaif,” show how
well the Turks appreciate the advantages of a position
commanding, perhaps, views unparallelled in the
world for their extraordinary beauty. But let us take
breath and look around us.

We stood some three miles back from the Bosphorus,
perhaps a thousand feet above its level. There
lay Constantinople! The “temptation of Satan”
could not have been more sublime. It seemed as if
all the “kingdoms of the earth” were swept confusedly
to the borders of the two continents. From Seraglio
Point, seven miles down the coast of Roumelia,
the eye followed a continued wall; and from the same
point, twenty miles up the Bosphorus, on either shore,
stretched one crowded and unbroken city! The star-shaped
bay in the midst, crowded with flying boats;
the Golden Horn sweeping out from behind the hills,
and pouring through the city like a broad river, studded
with ships; and, in the palace-lined and hill-sheltered
Bosphorus, the sultan's fleet at anchor, the lofty
men-of-war flaunting their blood-red flags, and thrusting
their tapering spars almost into the balconies of
the fairy dwellings, and among the bright foliage of
the terraced gardens above them. Could a scene be
more strangely and beautifully mingled?

But sit down upon this silky grass, and let us listen
to my polyglot friend, while he explains the details of
the panorama.

First, clear over the sea of Marmora, you observe a
snow-white cloud resting on the edge of the horizon.
That is Olympus. Within sight of his snowy summit,
and along toward the extremity of this long line
of eastern hills, lie Bithynia, Phrygia, Cappadocia,
Paphlagonia, and the whole scene of the apostles'
travels in Asia Minor; and just at his feet, if you will
condescend to be modern, lies Brusa, famous for its
silks, and one of the most populous and thriving of
the sultan's cities. Returning over Marmora by the
Princes' Islands, at the western extremity of Constantinople,
stands the Fortress of the Seven Towers,
where fell the Emperor Constantine Palæologus,
where Othman the second was strangled, where refractory
ambassadors are left to come to their senses and
the sultan's terms, and where, in short, that “zealous
public butcher,” the seraskier, cuts any Gordian knot
that may tangle his political meshes; and here was
the famous “Golden Gate,” attended no more by its
“fifty porters with white wands,” and its crowds of
“ichoglans and mutes, turban-keepers, nail-cutters,
and slipper-bearers,” as in the days of the Selims.

Between the Seven Towers and the Golden Horn
you may count the “seven hills” of ancient Stamboul,
the towering arches of the aqueduct of Valens,
crossing from one to the other, and the swelling dome
and gold-tipped minarets of a hundred imperial
mosques crowning and surrounding their summits.
What an orient look do those gallery-bound and sky-piercing
shafts give to the varied picture!

There is but one “Seraglio Point” in the world.
Look at that tapering cape, shaped like a lady's foot,
proiecting from Stamboul toward the shore of Asia,
and dividing the bay from the sea of Marmora. It is
cut off from the rest of the city, you observe, by a
high wall, flanked with towers, and the circumference
of the whole seraglio may be three miles. But what
a gem of beauty it is! In what varied foliage its unapproachable
palaces are buried, and how exquisitely
gleam from the midst of the bright leaves its gilded
cupolas, its gay balconies, its airy belvideres, and its
glittering domes! And mark the height of those
dark and arrowy cypresses, shooting from every corner
of its imperial gardens, and throwing their deep shadows
on every bright cluster of foliage, and every gilded
lattice of the sacred enclosure. They seem to remind
one, that amid all its splendor and with all its
secluded retirement, this gorgeous sanctuary of royalty
has been stained, from its first appropriation by
the monarchs of the east till now, with the blood of
victims to the ambition of its changing masters. The
cypresses are still young over the graves of an uncle
and a brother, whose cold murder within those lovely
precincts prepared the throne for the present sultan.
The seraglio, no longer the residence of Mahmoud
himself, is at present occupied by his children, two
noble boys, of whom one, by the usual system, must
fall a sacrifice to the security of the other.

Keeping on toward the Black sea, we cross the
Golden Horn to Pera, the European and diplomatic
quarter of the city. The high hill on which it stands
overlooks all Constantinople; and along its ridge
toward the beautiful cemetery on the brow, runs the
principal street of the Franks, the promenade of the
dragoman exquisites, and the Broadway of shops and
belles. Here meet, on the narrow pavé, the veiled
Armenian, who would die with shame to show her
chin to a stranger, and the wife of the European merchant,
in a Paris hat and short petticoats, mutually
each other's sincere horror. Here the street is somewhat
cleaner, the dogs somewhat less anti-Christian,
and hat and trowsers somewhat less objects of contempt.
It is a poor abortion of a place, withal, neither
Turkish nor Christian; and nobody who could
claim a shelter for his head elsewhere, would take the
whole of its slate-colored and shingled palaces as a gift.

Just beyond is the mercantile suburb of Galata
which your dainty diplomatist would not write on his
card for an embassy, but for which, as being honestly
what it calls itself, I entertain a certain respect, wanting
in my opinion of its mongrel neighbor. Heavy
gates divide these different quarters of the city, and
if you would pass after sunset, you must anoint the
hinges with a piastre.

101. LETTER CI.

From this elevated point, the singular effect of a
desert commencing from the very streets of the city is
still more observable. The compact edge of the metropolis
is visible even upon the more rural Bosphorus,
not an enclosure or a straggling house venturing
to protrude beyond the closely pressed limit. To repeat
the figure, it seems, with the prodigious mass of
habitations on either shore, as if all the cities of both
Europe and Asia were swept to their respective borders,
or as if the crowded masses upon the long extending
shores were the deposite of some mighty overflow
of the sea.

From Pera commence the numerous villages, separated
only by name, which form a fringe of peculiarly
light and fantastic architecture to the never-wearying
Bosphorus. Within the small limit of your eye, upon
that silver link between the two seas, there are fifty
valleys and thirty rivers, and an imperial palace on every
loveliest spot from the Black Sea to Marmora
The Italians say, “See Naples and die!” but for Naples
I would read Stamboul and the Bosphorus.

Descending unwillingly from this enchanting spot,
we entered a long glen, closed at the water's edge by
the sultan's summer-palace, and present residence of
Beylerbey. Half way down, we met a decrepit old
woman, toiling up the path, and my friend, with a
Wordsworthian passion for all things humble and simple,
gave her the Turkish good-morrow, and inquired
her business at the village. She had been to Stavros,
to sell the paras' worth of herbs—about one cent of
our currency. He put a small piece of silver into her
hand, while, with the still strong habit of Turkish
modesty, she employed the other in folding her tattered
yashmack so as to conceal her features from the
gaze of strangers. She had not expected charity.
“What is this for?” she asked, looking at it with some
surprise. “To buy bread for your children, mother?”
“Effendi!” said the poor old creature, her voice trembling,
and the tears streaming from her eyes, “My
children are all dead! There is no one now between me
and Allah!” It were worth a poet's while to live in
the east. Like the fairy in the tale, they never open
their lips but they “speak pearls.”

We took a caique at the mosque of Sultan Selim,
at Beylerbey, and floated slowly past the imperial palace.
Five or six eunuchs, with their red caps and
long blue dresses, were talking at a high tenor in the
courtyard of the harem, and we gazed long and earnestly
at the fine lattices above, concealing so many of
the picked beauties of the empire. A mandolin, very
indifferently strummed in one of the projecting wings,
betrayed the employment of some fair Fatima, and
there was a single moment when we could see, by the
relief of a corner window, the outline of a female figure;
but the caique floated remorselessly on, and our
busy imaginations had their own unreal shadows for
their reward. As we approached the central facade
the polished brazen gates flew open, and a band of
thirty musicians came out and ranged themselves on
the terrace beneath the palace-windows, announcing,
in their first flourish, that Sultan Mahmoud had thrust
his fingers into his pilaw, and his subjects were at liberty
to dine. Not finding their music much to our
taste, we ordered the caikjees to assist the current a
little, and shooting past Stavros, we put across the
strait from the old palace of Shemsheh the vizier,
and, in a few minutes, I was once more in my floating
home, under the “star-spangled banner.”

Constantinople was in a blaze last night, with the
illumination for the approach of the Turkish feast of
Bairam. The minarets were extremely beautiful, their
encircling galleries hung with colored lamps, and illuminated
festoons suspended from one to the other.
The ships of the fleet were decked also with thousands
of lamps, and the effect was exceedingly fine, with the
reflection in the Bosphorus, and the waving of the
suspended lights in the wind. The sultan celebrates
the festa by taking a virgin to his bed, and sacrificing
twenty sheep with his own hand. I am told by an intelligent
physician here, that this playing the butcher
is an every-day business with the “Brother of the
Sun,” every safe return from a ride, or an excursion in
his sultanethe caique, requiring him to cut the throat
of his next day's mutton. It may account partly for
the excessive cruelty of character attributed to him.

Among other bad traits, Mahmoud is said to be
very avaricious. It is related of his youth, that he
was permitted occasionally, with his brother (who was
murdered to make room for him on the throne), to
walk out in public on certain days with their governor;
and that, upon these occasions, each was intrusted
with a purse to be expended in charity. The elder
brother soon distributed his piastres, and borrowed of
his attendants to continue his charities; while Mahmoud
quietly put the purse in his pocket, and added
it to his private hoard on his return. It is said, too,
that he has a particular passion for upholstery, and in
his frequent change from one serai to another, allows
no nail to be driven without his supervision. Add to
this a spirit of perverse contradiction, so truculent
that none but the most abject flatterers can preserve
his favor, and you have a pretty handful of offsets
against a character certainly not without some royal
qualities.

With one of the Reis Effendi's and one of the se
raskier's officers, followed by four kervasses in the
Turkish military dress, and every man a pair of slippers
in his pocket, we accompanied the commodore,
to-day, on a visit to the principal mosques.

Landing first at Tophana, on the Pera side, we entered
the court of the new mosque built by the present
sultan, whose elegant exterior of white marble and
two freshly gilded minarets we had admired daily, lying
at anchor without sound of the muezzin. The
morning prayers were just over, and the retiring Turks
looked, with lowering brows, at us, as we pulled off
our boots on the sacred threshold.

We entered upon what, but for the high pulpit, I
should have taken for rather a superb ball-room. An
unencumbered floor carpeted gayly, a small arabesque
gallery over the door quite like an orchestra, chandeliers
and lamps in great profusion, and walls painted of
the brightest and most varied colors, formed an interior
rather wanting in the “dim religious light” of a
place of worship. We were shuffling around in our
slippers from one side to the other, examining the
marble Mihrab and the narrow and towering pulpit,
when a ragged and decrepit dervish, with his papooshes
in his hand, and his toes and heels protruding from
a very dirty pair of stockings, rose from his prayers
and began walking backward and forward, eying us
ferociously and muttering himself into quite a passion.
His charity for infidels was evidently at a low
ebb. Every step we took upon the holy floor seemed
to add to his fury. The kervasses observed him, but
his sugar-loaf cap carried some respect with it, and
they evidently did not like to meddle with him. He
followed us to the door, fixing his hollow gray eyes
with a deadly glare upon each one as he went out, and
the Turkish officers seemed rather glad to hurry us out
of his way. He left us in the vestibule, and we mounted
a handsome marble staircase to a suite of apartments
above, communicating with the sultan's private
gallery. The carpets here were richer, and the divans
with which the half dozen saloons were surrounded,
were covered with the most costly stuffs of the east.
The gallery was divided from the area of the mosque
by a fine brazen grating curiously wrought, and its
centre occupied by a rich ottoman, whereon the imperial
legs are crossed in the intervals of his prostrations.
It was about the size and had the air altogether
of a private box at the opera.

We crossed the Golden Horn, and passing the eunuch's
guard, entered the gardens of the seraglio on
our way to Santa Sophia. An inner wall still separated
us from the gilded kiosks, at whose latticed windows
peering above the trees, we might have clearly
perused the features of any peeping inmate; but the
little cross bars revealed nothing but their own provoking
eye of the size of a roseleaf in the centre, and
we reached the upper gate without even a glimpse
of a waved handerchief to stir our chivalry to the rescue.

A confused mass of buttresses without form or order,
is all that you are shown for the exterior of that
“wonder of the world,” the mosque of mosques, the
renowned Santa Sophia. We descended a dark avenue,
and leaving our boots in a vestibule that the
horse of Mohammed the second, if he was lodged as
ambitiously living as dead, would have disdained for
his stable, we entered the vaulted area. A long breath

and an admission of its almost attributable supernatural
grandeur, followed our too hasty disappointment. It is
indeed a “vast and wondrous dome!” Its dimensions
are less than those of St. Peter's, at Rome, but its effect,
owing to its unity and simplicity of design, is, I think
superior. The numerous small galleries let into its
sides add richness to it without impairing its apparent
magnitude, and its vast floor, upon which a single individual
is almost lost, the sombre colors of its walls
untouched probably for centuries, and the dim sepulchral
light that struggles through the deep-niched and
retiring windows, form altogether an interior from
which the imagination returns, like the dove to the
ark, fluttering and bewildered.

Our large party separated over its wilderness of a
floor, and each might have had his hour of solitude,
had the once Christian spirit of the spot (or the present
pagan demon) affected him religiously. I found,
myself, a singular pleasure in wandering about upon
the elastic mats (laid four or five thick all over the
floor), examining here a tattered banner hung against
the wall, and there a rich cashmere which had covered
the tomb of the prophet; on one side a slab of transparent
alabaster from the temple of Solomon (a
strange relic for a Mohammedan mosque!) and on the
other, a dark Mihrab surrounded by candles of incredible
proportions, looking like the marble columns of
some friezeless portico. The four “six-winged cherubim”
on the roof of the dome, sole remaining trace
as they are of the religion to which the building was
first dedicated, had better been left to the imagination.
They are monstrous in Mosaic. It is said that the
whole interior of the mosque is cased beneath its
dusky plaster with the same costly Mosaic which covers
the ceiling. To make a Mohammedan mosque of a
Christian church, however, it was necessary to erase
Christian emblems from the walls; besides which the
Turks have a superstitious horror of all imitative arts,
considering the painting of the human features particularly,
as a mockery of the handiwork of Allah.

We went hence to the more modern mosque of Sultan
Achmet, which is an imitation of Santa Sophia
within, but its own beautiful prototype in exterior. Its
spacious and solemn court, its six heaven-piercing
minarets, its fountains, and the mausoleums of the
sultans, with their gilded cupolas and sarcophagi covered
with cashmeres (the murdering sultan and his
murdered brothers lying in equal splendor side-by-side!),
are of a style of richness peculiarly oriental and
imposing. We visited in succession Sultan Bajazet,
Sulymanye, and Sultana Validé, all of the same arabesque
exterior and very similar within. The description
of one leaves little to be said of the other, and,
with the exception of Santa Sophia, of which I should
like to make a lounge when I am in love with my own
company, the mosques of Constantinople are a kind
of “lion” well killed in a single visit.

102. LETTER CII.

Pulling up the Golden Horn to-day in a caique
without any definite errand (a sort of excursion particularly
after my own heart), I was amused at the
caikjee's asking my companion, who shaves clean like
a Christian, and has his clothes from Regent street,
and looks for aught I can see, as much like a foreigner
in Constantinople as myself, “in what vessel I had arrived.”
We asked him if he had ever seen either of us
before. “No!” How then did he know that my
friend, who had not hitherto spoken a word of Turkish,
was not as lately arrived as myself? What is it
that so infallibly, in every part of the world, distin
guishes the stranger?

We passed under the stern of an outlandish-looking
vessel just dropping her anchor. Her deck was crowded
with men and women in singular costumes, and
near the helm, apparently under the protection of a
dark-visaged fellow in a voluminous turban, stood three
young, and, as well as we could see, uncommonly
pretty girls. The captain answered to our hail that
he was from Trebizond, and his passengers were slaves
for the bazar. How redolent of the east! Were one
but a Turk, now, to forestall the market and barter for
a pair of those dark eyes while they are still full of
surprise and innocence!

We landed at the Fanar. Bow-windows crowded
with fair faces, in enormous pink turbans, naked
shoulders (which I am already so orientalized as to
think very indecent), puffed curls and pinched waists,
reminded us at every step that we were in a Christian
quarter of Constantinople. From this paltry and miserable
suburb, spring the modern princes of Greece,
the Mavrocordatos, and Ghikas, the Hospodars of
Wallachia and Moldavia, the subtle, insinuating, intriguing,
but talented and ever-successful Fanariotes.
One hears so much of them in Europe, and so much
is made of a stray scion from the very far-traced root
of Palœologus or some equally boasted blood of the
Fanar (I met a Fanariote princess G—at the baths of
Lucca last year, whom I except from every disparaging
remark), that he is a little disappointed with the
dirty alleys and the stuffed windows, shown him as
the hereditary homes of these very sounding names.
There are a hundred families at least in the Fanar,
that trace their origin back to no less than an imperial
stock, and there is not a house in the whole quarter
that would pass in our country for a respectable barn.
In personal appearance they are certainly very inferior
to any other race of their own nation. The Albanians,
and the Greeks I saw at Napoli and in the Morea, were
(except the North American Indians) the finest people,
physically, I have ever been among; while it would
be difficult to find a more diminutive and degenerate-looking
body of men and women, than swarm in this
nest of Grecian princes.

We re-entered our little bark, and gliding along
leisurely through the crowd of piades, kachambas, and
caiques, landed at Stamboul, and walked on toward
the bazar. Always discovering new passages in that
labyrinth of shops, we found ourselves after an hour's
rambling, in a long street of booksellers. This is rather
the oldest and narrowest part of the bazar, and the
light of heaven meets with the additional interruption
of two rows of pillars with arched friezes standing in
the middle of the street. On entering the literary twilight
of the passage in the rear of these columns, the
classic nostril detects instantly the genuine odor of
manuscript, black-letter, and ancient binding; and the
trained eye, accustomed to the dim niches of libraries,
wanders over the well-piled shelves with their quaint
rows of volumes in vellum, and appreciates at once
their varied riches. Here is nothing of the complexion
of a shelf at the Harpers', or the Hendees', or the
Careys'—no fresh and uncut novel, no new-born poem,
no political pamphlet or gay souvenir! And the priceless
treasures of learning are not here doled out by a
talkative publisher or dapper clerk, skilled only in the
lettered backs of the volumes he barters. But in sombre
and uneven rows, or laid in heaps, whose order is
not in their similarity of binding, but in the correspondence
of their contents, lie venerable and much-thumbed

tomes of Arabic or Persian; while the venerable
bibliopole, seated motionless on his hams, with his
gray beard reaching to his crossed slippers, peruses an
illuminated volume of Hafiz, lifting his eyes from the
page only to revolve some sweet image in his mind,
and murmur a low “pekke!” of approbation.

We had stepped back into the last century. Here
was the calamus still in use. The small, brown reed,
not yet superseded by the more useful but less classic
quill, stood in every clotted inkstand, and nothing less
than the purchase of a whole scrivener's furniture,
from a bearded bookworm, whose benevolent face took
my fancy, would suffice my enthusiasm. Not to waste
all our oriental experience at a single stall, we strolled
farther on to buy an illuminated Hafiz. We stopped
simultaneously before an old Armenian who seemed,
by his rusty calpack and shabby robe, to be something
poorer than even his plainly-clad neighbors; for in
Turkey, as elsewhere, he who lives in a world of his
own, has but a slender portion in that of the vulgar.
A choice-looking volume lay open upon one of the
old man's knees, while from a wooden bowl he was
eating hastily a pottage of rice. His meal was evidently
an interruption. He had not even laid aside
his book.

There was something in his handling of the volume,
as he took down a pocket-sized Hafiz, that showed an
affection for the author. He turned it over with a
slight dilation of countenance, and opening it with a
careful thumb, read a line in mellifluous Persian. I
took it from him open at the place, and marked the
passage with my nail, to look for it in the translation.

With my cheaply-bought treasures in my pockets,
we turned up the street of the diamond-merchants,
and making a single purchase more in the bazar, of a
tesbih or Turkish rosary of spice-wood, emerged to the
open air in the neighborhood of the mosque of Sultan
Bajazet.

Whether slipping the pagan beads through my
fingers affected me devoutly, or whether it was the
mellow humor of the moment, I felt a disposition to
forgive my enemies, and indulge in an act of Mohammedan
piety—feeding the unowned dogs of the street.
We stepped into a baker's shop, and laid out a piastre
in bread, and were immediately observed and surrounded,
before we could break a loaf, by twenty or thirty
as ill-looking curs, as ever howled to the moon. Having
distributed about a dozen loaves, and finding that
our largess had by no means satisfied the appetites of
the expecting rabble, we found ourselves embarrassed
to escape. Nothing but the baker's threshold prevented
them from jumping upon us, in their eagerness, and
the array of so many formidable mouths, ferocious
with hunger, was rather staggering. The baker drew
off the hungry pack at last, by walking round the
corner with a loaf in his hand, while we made a speedy
exit, patted on the back in passing by several of the
assembled spectators.

It is surprising that the Turks can tolerate this filthy
breed of curs, in such extraordinary numbers. They
have a whimsical punishment for killing one of them.
The dead dog is hung by his heels, so that his nose
just touches the ground, and the canicide is compelled
to heap wheat about him, till he is entirely covered;
the wheat is then given to the poor, and the dog buried
at the expense of the culprit. There are, probably,
five dogs to every man in Constantinople, and besides
their incessant barking, they often endanger the lives
of children and strangers. MacFarlane, I think, tells
the story of a drunken sea-captain, who was entirely
devoured by the dogs at Tophana; nothing being
found of him in the morning but his “indigestible pigtail!”

We entered the court of Sultan Bajazet, and found
the majestic plane-trees that shadow its arabesque
fountains, bending beneath the weight of hundreds of
pensionary pigeons. Here, as at several of the
mosques, an old man sits by the gate, whose business
it is to expend the alms given him in distributing
grain to these sacred birds. Not to be outdone in
piety, my friend gave the blind old Turk a piastre;
and, as he arose and unlocked the box beneath him,
the pigeons descended about us in such a cloud, as
literally to darken the air. Handful after handful was
then thrown among them, and the beautiful creatures
ran over our feet and fluttered round us with a fearlessness
that sufficiently proved the safety in which
they haunted the sacred precincts. In a few minutes
they soared altogether again to the trees, and their
mussulman-feeder resumed his seat upon the box to
wait for another charity.

A crowd of women at the harem gate, in the rear
of the seraskier's palace, attracted our attention.
Upon inquiry, we found that he had married a daughter
to one of the sultan's military officers, and the bridal
party was expected presently to come out in arubahs,
and make the tour of the Hippodrome, on the
way to the house of the bridegroom. We wiled away
an hour returning the gaze of curiosity bent upon us
from the idle and bright eyes of a hundred women, and
the first of the gilded vehicles made its appearance;
though in the same style of ornament with the one I
have already described, it differed in being drawn by
horses, and having a frame top, with small round mirrors
set in the corners. Within sat four very young
women, one of whom was the bride; but which, we
found no one who could tell us. It is no description
of a face in the east to say, that the eyes were dark,
and the nose regular—all that the jealous yashmack
permitted us to ascertain of the beauty of the bride.
Their eyes are all dark, and their noses are all regular;
the Turkish nose differing from the Grecian, as that
of the Antinous from the Apollo, only in its more voluptuous
fullness, and a nostril less dilated. Four
darker pairs of eyes, however, and four brows of whiter
orb, never pined in a harem, or were reflected in those
golden-rimmed mirrors; and as the twelve succeeding
arubas rattled by, and in each suit four young women,
with the same eternal dark eyes, “full of sleep,” and
the same curved and pearly forehead, and noses like
the Antinous, I thought of toujours perdrix, and felt
that if there had been but one with a slight toss in
that prominent member, it would not have been displeasing.

In a conversation with a Greek lady the other day,
she remarked that the veils of the Turkish ladies conceal
no charms. Their mouths, she says, are generally
coarse, and their teeth, from the immoderate use
of sweetmeats, or neglect, or some other cause, almost
universally defective. How far the interest excited by
these hidden features may have jaundiced the eyes of
my fair informer, I can not say; but as a general fact,
uneducated women, whatever other beauties they may
possess, have rarely expressive or agreeable mouths.
Nature forms and colors the nose, the eyes, the forehead,
and the complexion; but the character, from
the cradle up, moulds gradually to its own inward
changes, the plastic and passion breathing lines of the
lips. Allowing this, it would be rather surprising if
there was a mouth in all Turkey that had more than
a pretty silliness at the most—the art of dying their
finger-nails, and painting their eyebrows, being the
highest branches of female education. How they
came by these “eyes that teach us what the sun is
made of,” the vales of Georgia and Circassia best can
tell.

And so having rambled away a sunny autumn day,
and earned some little appetite, if not experience, we
will get out of Stamboul, before the sunset guard
makes us prisoners, and climb up to our dinner in
Pera.

103. LETTER CIII.

“Time is (not) money” in the east. We were
three hours to-day at the principal bath of Constantinople,
going through the ordinary process of the
establishment, and were out-stayed, at last, by two
Turkish officers who had entered with us. During
this time, we had each the assiduous service of an
attendant, and coffee, lemonade and pipes ad libitum,
for the consideration of half a Spanishdollar.

Although I have once described a Turkish bath, the
metropolitan “pomp and circumstance” so far exceed
the provincial in this luxury, that I think I shall be
excused for dwelling a moment upon it again. The
dressing-room opens at once from the street. We
descended half a dozen steps to a stone floor, in the
centre of which stood a large marble fountain. Its
basin was kept full by several jets d'eau, which threw
their silver curves into the air, and the edge was set
round with narghilés (or Persian water-pipes with
glass vases), ready for the smokers of the mild tobacco
of Shiraz. The ceiling of this large hall was lofty,
and the sides were encircled by three galleries, one
above the other, with open balustrades, within which
the bathers undressed. In a corner sat several attendants,
with only a napkin around their waists, smoking
till their services should be required; and one who
had just come from the inner bath, streaming with
perspiration, covered himself with cloths, and lay
crouched upon a carpet till he could bear, with safety,
the temperature of the outer air.

A half-naked Turk, without his turban, looks more
a Mephistopheles than a Ganymede, and I could
scarce forbear shrinking as this shaven-headed troop
of servitors seized upon us, and, without a word, pulled
off our boots, thrust our feet into slippers, and led
us up into the gallery to undress. An ottoman, piled
with cushions, and overhung, on the wall, by a small
mirror, was allotted to each, and with the assistance
of my familiar (who was quite too familiar!) I found
myself stripped nolens volens, and a snowy napkin,
with a gold-embroidered edge, twisted into a becoming
turban around my head.

We were led immediately into the first bath, a small
room, in which the heat, for the first breath or two,
seemed rather oppressive. Carpets were spread for
us on the warm marble floor, and crossing our legs,
with more ease than when cased in our un-oriental
pantaloons, we were served with pipes and coffee of a
delicious flavor.

After a half hour, the atmosphere, so warm when
we entered, began to feel chilly, and we were taken by
the arm, and led by our speechless mussulman,
through an intermediate room, into the grand bath.
The heat here seemed to me, for a moment, almost
intolerable. The floor was hot, and the air so moist
with the suffocating vapor, as to rest like mist upon
the skin. It was a spacious and vaulted room, with,
perhaps, fifty small square windows in the dome, and
four arched recesses in the sides, supplied with marble
seats, and small reservoirs of hot and cold water. In
the centre was a broad platform, on which the bather
was rubbed and shampooed, occupied, just then, by
two or three dark-skinned Turks, lying on their backs,
with their eyes shut, dreaming, if one might judge
by their countenances, of Paradise.

After being left to walk about for half an hour, by
this time bathed in perspiration, our respective demons
seized upon us again, and led us to the marble seats
in the recesses. Putting a rough mitten on the right
hand, my Turk then commenced upon my breast,
scouring me, without water or mercy, from head to
foot, and turning me over on my face or my back,
without the least “by-your-leave” expression in his
countenance, and with an adroitness which, in spite
of the novelty of my situation, I could not but admire.
I hardly knew whether the sensation was pleasurable
or painful. I was less in doubt presently, when he
seated me upright, and, with the brazen cup of the
fountain, dashed upon my peeled shoulders a quantity
of half boiling water. If what Barnacle, in the play,
calls “a circular justice,” existed in the world, I should
have thought it a judgment for eating of lobsters.
My familiar was somewhat startled at the suddenness
with which I sprang upon my feet, and, turning some
cold water into the reservoir, laid his hand on his
breast, and looked an apology. The scalding was
only momentary, and the qualified contents of the
succeeding cups highly grateful.

We were left again, for a while, to our reflections,
and then reappeared our attendants, with large bowls
of the suds of scented soap, and small bunches of soft
Angora wool. With this we were tenderly washed,
and those of my companions who wished it were shaved.
The last operation they described as peculiarly
agreeable, both from the softened state of the skin and
dexterity of the operators.

Rinsed once more with warm water, our snowy turbans
were twisted around our heads again, cloths were
tied about our waists, and we returned to the second
room. The transition from the excessive heat within,
made the air, that we had found oppressive when we
entered, seem disagreeably chilly. We wrapped ourselves
in our long cloths, and, resuming our carpets,
took coffee and pipes as before. In a few minutes we
began to feel a delightful glow in our veins, and then
our cloths became unpleasantly warm, and, by the
time we were taken back to the dressing-room, its cold
air was a relief. They led us to the ottomans, and,
piling the cushions so as to form a curve, laid us upon
them, covered with clean white cloths, and bringing us
sherbets, lemonade, and pipes, dropped upon their
knees, and commenced pressing our limbs all over
gently with their hands. My sensations during the
half hour that we lay here were indescribably agreeable.
I felt an absolute repose of body, a calm, half-sleepy
languor in my whole frame, and a tranquillity
of mind, which, from the busy character of the scenes
in which I was daily conversant, were equally unusual
and pleasurable. Scarce stirring a muscle or a nerve,
I lay the whole hour, gazing on the lofty ceiling, and
listening to the murmur of the fountain, while my silent
familiar pressed my limbs with a touch as gentle
as a child's, and it seemed to me as if pleasure was
breathing from every pore of my cleansed and softened
skin. I could willingly have passed the remainder of
the day upon the luxurious couch. I wonder less
than ever at the flowery and poetical character of the
oriental literature, where the mind is subjected to influences
so refining and exhilarating. One could
hardly fail to grow a poet, I should think, even with
this habit of eastern luxury alone. If I am to conceive
a romance, or to indite an epithalamium, send
me to the bath on a day of idleness, and, covering me
up with their snowy and lavendered napkins, leave me
till sunset!

With a dinner in prospect at a friend's house, six
or eight miles up the Bosphorus, we started in the
morning on foot, with the intention of seeing Sultan

Mahmoud go to mosque, by the way. We stopped
a moment to look into the marble pavilion, containing
the clocks of the mosque of Tophana, and
drank at the opposite pavilion, from the brass cup
chained in the window, and supplied constantly from
the fountain within, and then kept on through the long
street to the first village of Dolma-baktchi, or the
Garden of Gourds.

Determined, with the day before us, to yield to every
temptation on the road, we entered a small café,
overlooking a segment of the Bosphorus, and while
the acorn-sized cups were simmering on the mangkal,
my friend entered into conversation in Arabic, with a
tawny old Egyptian, who sat smoking in the corner.
He was a fine specimen of the “responsible-looking”
oriental, and had lately arrived from Alexandria on
business. Pleasant land of the east! where, to be
the pink of courtesy, you must pass your snuff-box,
or your tobacco-pouch to the stranger, and ask him
those questions of his “whereabouts,” so impertinent
in more civilized Europe!

After a brief dialogue, which was Hebrew to me,
our Alexandrian, knocking the ashes from his pipe,
commenced a narration with a great deal of expressive
gesture, at which my friend seemed very provokingly
amused. I sipped my coffee, and wondered what
could have lead one of these silent gray-beards into
an amusing story, till a pause gave me an opportunity
to ask a translation. Hearing that we were Americans,
the Egyptian had begun by asking whether there
was a superstition in our country against receiving
back money in change. He explained his question
by saying that he was in a café, at Tophana, when a
boat's crew, from the American frigate, waiting for
some one at the landing, entered, and asked for coffee.
They drank it very quietly, and one of them gave the
cafejee a dollar, receiving in change a handful of the
shabby and adulterated money of Constantinople.
Jack was rather surprised at getting a dozen cups of
coffee, and so much coin for his dollar, and requested
the boy, by signs, to treat the company at his expense.
This was done, the Turks all acknowledging
the courtesy by laying their hands upon their foreheads
and breasts, and still Jack's money lay heavy in
his hands. He called for pipes, and they smoked
awhile; but finding still that his riches were not perceptibly
diminished, he hitched up his trousers, and
with a dexterous flirt, threw his piastres and pares all
round upon the company, and rolled out of the café.
From the gravity of the other sailors at this remarkable
flourish, the old Egyptian and his fellow cross-legs
had imagined it to be a national custom!

Idling along through the next village, we turned to
admire a Turkish child, led by an Abyssinian slave.
There is no country in the world where the children
are so beautiful, and this was a cherub of a boy, like
one of Domenichino's angels. As we stopped to look
at him, the little fellow commenced crying most
lustily.

“Hush! my rose!” said the Abyssinian, “these are
good Franks! these are not the Franks that eat children!
hush!”

It certainly takes the nonsense out of one to travel.
I should never have thought it possible, if I had not
been in Turkey, that I could be made a bugbear to
scare a child!

We passed the tomb of Frederick Barbarossa, getting
between the walls of the palaces on the water's
edge, continual and incomparable views of the Bosphorus,
and arrived at Beshiktash (or the marble cradle),
just as the troops were drawn up to the door of
the mosque. We took our stand under a plane-tree,
in the midst of a crowd of women, and presently the
noisy band struck up the sultan's march, and the led
horses appeared in sight. They came on with their
grooms and their rich housings, a dozen matchless
Arabians, scarce touching the ground with their prancings!
Oh how beautiful they were! Their delicate
limbs, their small, veined heads and fiery nostrils, their
glowing, intelligent eyes, their quick, light, bounding
action, their round bodies, trembling with restrained
and impatient energy, their curved, haughty necks,
and dark manes flowing wildly in the wind! El Borak,
the mare of the prophet, with the wings of a bird,
was not lighter or more beautiful.

The sultan followed, preceded by his principal officers,
with a stirrup-holder running at each side, and
mounted on a tame-looking Hungarian horse. He
wore the red Fez cap, and a cream-colored cloak,
which covered his horse to the tail. His face was
lowering, his firm, powerful jaw, set in an expression
of fixed displeasure, and his far-famed eye had a
fierceness within its dark socket, from which I involuntarily
shrank. The women, as he came along, set
up a kind of howl, according to their custom, but he
looked neither to the right nor left, and seemed totally
unconscious of any one's existence but his own. He
was quite another-looking man from the Mahmoud I
had seen smiling in his handja-bash on the Bosphorus.

As he dismounted and entered the mosque, we went
on our way, moralizing sagely on the novel subject
of human happiness—our text, the cloud on the brow
of a sultan, and the quiet sunshine in the bosoms of
two poor pedestrians by the way-side.

104. LETTER CIV.

A Turkish woman was sacked and thrown into the
Bosphorus this morning. I was idling away the day
in the bazar and did not see her. The ward-room
steward of the “United States,” a very intelligent
man, who was at the pier when she was brought down
to the caique, describes her as a young woman of
twenty-two or three years, strikingly beautiful; and
with the exception of a short quick sob in her throat,
as if she had wearied herself out with weeping, she
was quite calm and submitted composedly to her fate.
She was led down by two soldiers, in her usual dress,
her yashmack only torn from her face, and rowed off
to the mouth of the bay, where the sack was drawn
over her without resistance. The plash of her body
in the sea was distinctly seen by the crowd who had
followed her to the water.

It is horrible to reflect on these summary executions,
knowing as we do, that the poor victim is taken
before the judge, upon the least jealous whim of her
husband or master, condemned often upon bare suspicion,
and hurried instantly from the tribunal to this
violent and revolting death. Any suspicion of commerce
with a Christian particularly, is, with or without
evidence, instant ruin. Not long ago, the inhabitants
of Arnaout-keni, a pretty village on the Bosphorus,
were shocked with the spectacle of a Turkish woman
and a young Greek, hanging dead from the shutters
of a window on the water's-side. He had been detected
in leaving her house at daybreak, and in less
than an hour the unfortunate lovers had met their
fate. They are said to have died most heroically, embracing
and declaring their attachment to the last.

Such tragedies occur every week or two in Constantinople,
and it is not wonderful, considering the

superiority of the educated and picturesque Greek to
his brutal neighbor, or the daring and romance of Europeans
in the pursuit of forbidden happiness. The
liberty of going and coming, which the Turkish women
enjoy, wrapped only in veils, which assist by their
secrecy, is temptingly favorable to intrigue, and the
self-sacrificing nature of the sex, when the heart is
concerned, shows itself here in proportion to the demand
for it.

An eminent physician, who attends the seraglio of
the sultan's sister, consisting of a great number of
women, tells me that their time is principally occupied
in sentimental correspondence, by means of flowers,
with the forbidden Greeks and Armenians. These
platonic passions for persons whom they have only
seen from their gilded lattices, are their only amusement,
and they are permitted by the sultana, who has
herself the reputation of being partial to Franks, and
old as she is, ingenious in contrivances to obtain their
society. My intelligent informant thinks the Turkish
women, in spite of their want of education, somewhat
remarkable for their sentiment of character.

With two English travellers, whom I had known in
Italy, I pulled out of the bay in a caique, and ran
down under the wall of the city, on the side of the
sea of Marmora. For a mile or more we were beneath
the wall of the seraglio, whose small water-gates,
whence so many victims have found

are beset, to the imaginative eye of the traveller, with
the dramatis personœ of a thousand tragedies. One
smiles to detect himself gazing on an old postern,
with his teeth shut hard together, and his hair on end,
in the calm of a pure, silent, sunshiny morning of
September!

We landed some seven miles below, at the Seven
Towers, and dismissed our boat to walk across to the
Golden Horn. Our road was outside of the triple
walls of Stamboul, whose two hundred and fifty towers
look as if they were toppling after an earthquake, and
are overgrown superbly with ivy. Large trees, rooted
in the crevices, and gradually bursting the thick walls,
overshadow entirely their once proud turrets, and for
the whole length of the five or six miles across, it is
one splendid picture of decay. I have seen in no
country such beautiful ruins.

At the Adrianople gate, we found a large troop of
horsemen, armed in the wild manner of the east, who
had accompanied a Roumeliote chief from the mountains.
They were not allowed to enter the city, and,
with their horses picketed on the plain, were lying
about in groups, waiting till their leader should conclude
his audience with the seraskier. They were as
cut-throat looking a set as a painter would wish to see.
The extreme richness of eastern arms, mounted
showily in silver, and of shapes so cumbersome, yet
picturesque, contrasted strangely with their ragged capotes,
and torn leggins, and their way-worn and weary
countenances. Yet they were almost without exception
fine-featured, and of a resolute expression of face,
and they had flung themselves, as savages will,
into attitudes that art would find it difficult to improve.

Directly opposite this gate stand five marble slabs,
indicating the spots in which are buried the heads of
Ali Pacha, of Albania, his three sons and grandson.
The inscription states, that the rebel lost his head for
having dared to aspire to independence. He was a
brave old barbarian, however, and, as the worthy chief
of the most warlike people of modern times, one
stands over his grave with regret. It would have been
a classic spot had Byron survived to visit it. No event
in his travels made more impression on his mind than
the pacha's detecting his rank by the beauty of his
hands. His fine description of the wild court of
Yanina, in Childe Harold, has already made the poet's
return of immortality, but had he survived the revolution
in Greece, with his increased knowledge of the
Albanian soldier and his habits, and his esteem for the
old chieftain, a hero so much to his taste would have
been his most natural theme. It remains to be seen
whether the age or the language will produce another
Byron to take up the broken thread.

As we were poring over the Turkish inscription,
four men, apparently quite intoxicated, came running
and hallooing from the city gate, bearing upon their
shoulders a dead man in his bier. Entering the cemetery,
they went stumbling on over the footstones, tossing
the corpse about so violently, that the helpless
limbs frequently fell beyond the limits of the rude
barrow, while the grave-digger, the only sober person,
save the dead man, in the company, followed at his
best speed, with his pick-axe and shovel. These extraordinary
bearers set down their burden not far from
the gate, and, to my surprise, walked laughing off like
men who had merely engaged in a moment's frolic by
the way, while the sexton, left quite alone, composed
a little the posture of the disordered body, and sat
down to get breath for his task.

My Constantinopolitan friend tells me that the Koran
blesses him who carries a dead body forty paces
on its way to the grave. The poor are thus carried
out to the cemeteries by voluntary bearers, who, after
they have completed their prescribed paces, change
with the first individual whose reckoning with heaven
may be in arrears.

The corpse we had seen so rudely borne on its last
journey, was, or had been, a middle-aged Turk. He
had neither shroud nor coffin, but

in his slippers and turban, the bunch of flowers on his
bosom the only token that he was dressed for any particular
occasion. We had not time to stay and see
his grave dug, and “his face laid toward the tomb of
the prophet.”

We entered the Adrianople gate, and crossed the
triangle, which old Stamboul nearly forms, by a line
approaching its hypothenuse. Though in a city so
thickly populated, it was one of the most lonely walks
conceivable. We met, perhaps, one individual in a
street; and the perfect silence, and the cheerless look
of the Turkish houses, with their jealously closed
windows, gave it the air of a city devastated by the
plague. The population of Constantinople is only
seen in the bazars, or in the streets bordering on the
Golden Horn. In the extensive quarter occupied by
dwelling-houses only, the inhabitants, if at home, occupy
apartments opening on their secluded gardens,
or are hidden from the gaze of the street by their fine
dull-colored lattices. It strikes one with melancholy
after the gay balconies and open doors of France and
Italy!

We passed the Eskai serai, the palace in which the
imperial widows wear their chaste weeds in solitude;
and, weary with our long walk, emerged from the silent
streets at the bazar of wax-candles, and took
caique for the Argentopolis of the ancients, the “Silver
city” of Galatia.

The thundering of guns from the whole Ottoman
fleet in the Bosphorus announced, some days since,
that the sultan had changed his summer for his winter
serai, and the commodore received yesterday, a firman
to visit the deserted palace of Beylerbey.

We left the frigate at an early hour, our large party
of officers increased by the captain of the Acteon,
sloop-of-war, some gentlemen of the English ambassador's

household, and several strangers who took advantage
of the commodore's courtesy to enjoy a privilege
granted so very rarely.

As we pulled up the strait, some one pointed out
the residence, on the European shore, of the once favorite
wife, and now fat widow, of Sultan Selim. She
is called by the Turks, the “boneless sultana,” and is
the model of shape by the oriental standard. The
poet's lines,

though a very neat compliment in some countries,
would be downright rudeness in the East. Near this
jelly in weeds lives a venerable Turk, who was once
ambassador to England. He came back too much
enlightened, and the mufti immediately procured his
exile, for infidelity. He passes his day, we are told,
in looking at a large map hung on the wall before him,
and wondering at his own travels.

We were received at the shining brazen gate of
Beylerbey, by Hamik Pacha (a strikingly elegant
man, just returned from a mission to England), deputed
by the sultan to do the honors. A side-door introduced
us immediately to the grand hall upon the
lower floor, which was separated only by four marble
pillars, and a heavy curtain rolled up at will, from the
gravel walk of the garden in the rear. We ascended
thence by an open staircase of wood, prettily inlaid,
to the second floor, which was one long suite of spacious
rooms, built entirely in the French style, and
thence to the third floor, the same thing over again.
It was quite like looking at lodgings in Paris. There
was no furniture, except an occasional ottoman turned
with its face upon another, and a prodigious quantity
of French musical clocks, three or four in every
room, and all playing in our honor with an amusing
confusion. One other article, by the way—a large,
common, American rocking-chair! The poor thing
stood in a great gilded room, all alone, looking pitiably
home-sick. I seated myself in it, malgre a thick
coat of dust upon the bottom, as I would visit a sick
countryman in exile.

The harem was locked, and the polite pacha regretted
that he had no orders to open it. We descended
to the gardens, which rise by terraces to a gim-crack
temple and orangery, and having looked at the sultan's
poultry, we took our leave. If his pink palace in Europe
is no finer than his yellow palace in Asia, there
is many a merchant in America better lodged than the
padishah of the Ottoman empire. We have not seen
the old seraglio, however, and in its inaccessible recesses,
probably, moulders that true oriental splendor
which this upholsterer monarch abandons in his rage
for the novel luxuries of Europe.

105. LETTER CV.

I have spent the last day or two in farewell visits to
my favorite haunts in Constantinople. I galloped up
the Bosphorus, almost envying les ames damnées that
skim so swiftly and perpetually from the Symplegades
to Marmora, and from Marmora back to the Symple
gades. I took a caique to the Valley of Sweet Waters,
and rambled away an hour on its silken sward.
I lounged a morning in the bazars, smoked a parting-pipe
with my old Turk in the Bezestein, and exchanged
a last salaam with the venerable Armenian bookseller,
still poring over his illuminated Hafiz. And
last night, with the sundown boat waiting at the pier,
I loitered till twilight in the small and elevated cemetery
between Galata and Pera, and, with feelings of
even painful regret, gazed my last upon the matchless
scene around me. In the words of the eloquent
author of Anastasius, when taking the same farewell,
“For the last time, my eye wandered over the dimpled
hills, glided along the winding waters, and dived
into the deep and delicious dells, in which branch out
its jagged shores. Reverting from these smiling outlets
of its sea-beat suburbs to its busy centre, I surveyed,
in slow succession, every chaplet of swelling
cupolas, every grove of slender minarets, and every
avenue of glittering porticoes, whose pinnacles dart
their golden shafts from between the dark cypress-trees
into the azure sky. I dwelt on them as on things
I never was to behold more; and not until the evening
had deepened the veil it cast over the varied scene
from orange to purple, and from purple to the sable
hue of night, did I tear myself away from the impressive
spot. I then bade the city of Constantine farewell
for ever, descended the high-crested hill, stepped
into the heaving boat, turned my back upon the
shore, and sank my regrets in the sparkling wave,
across which the moon had already flung a trembling
bar of silvery light, pointing my way, as it were, to
other unknown regions.”

There are few intellectual pleasures like that of
finding our own thoughts and feelings well described
by another!

I certainly would not live in the east; and when I
sum up its inconveniences and the deprivations to
which the traveller from Europe, with his refined
wants, is subjected, I marvel at the heart-ache with
which I turn my back upon it, and the deep die it has
infused into my imagination. Its few peculiar luxuries
do not compensate for the total absence of comfort;
its lovely scenery can not reconcile you to
wretched lodgings; its picturesque costumes and poetical
people, and golden sky, fine food for a summer's
fancy as they are, can not make you forget the civilized
pleasures you abandon for them—the fresh literature,
the arts and music, the refined society, the elegant
pursuits, and the stirring intellectual collision of
the cities of Europe.

Yet the world contains nothing like Constantinople!
If we could compel all our senses into one, and live
by the pleasures of the eye, it were a paradise untranscended.
The Bosphorus—the superb, peculiar, incomparable
Bosphorus! the dream-like, fairy-built seraglio!
the sights within the city so richly strange,
and the valleys and streams around it so exquisitely
fair! the voluptuous softness of the dark eyes haunting
your every step on shore, and the spirit-like swiftness
and elegance of your darting caique upon the
waters! In what land is the priceless sight such a
treasure? Where is the fancy so delicately and divinely
pampered?

Every heave at the capstan-bars drew upon my
heart; and when the unwilling anchor at last let go its
hold, and the frigate swung free with the outward current,
I felt as if, in that moment, I had parted my
hold upon a land of faëry. The dark cypresses and
golden pinnacles of Seraglio Point and the higher
shafts of Sophia's sky-touching minarets were the last
objects in my swiftly receding eye, and, in a short
hour or two, the whole bright vision had sunk below
the horizon.

We crossed Marmora, and shot down the rapid
Dardanelles in as many hours as a passage up had oc

cupied days, and, rounding the coast of Anatolia, entered
between Mitylene and the Asian shore, and, on
the third day, anchored in the bay of Smyrna.

“Everybody knows Smyrna,” says Mac Farlane,
“it is such a place for figs!” It is a low-built town,
at the head of the long gulf, which bears its name,
and, with the exception of the high rock immediately
over it, topped by the ruins of an old castle, said to
imbody in its walls the ancient Christian church, it has
no very striking features. Extensive gardens spread
away on every side, and, without exciting much of
your admiration for its beauty, there is a look of peace
and rural comfort about the neighborhood that affects
the mind pleasantly.

Almost immediately on my arrival, I joined a party
for a few days' tour in Asia Minor. We were five,
and, with a baggage-horse, and a mounted suridjee,
our caravan was rather respectable. Our appointments
were orientally simple. We had each a Turkish
bed (alias, a small carpet), a nightcap, and a
“copyhold” upon a pair of saddlebags, containing
certain things forbidden by the Koran, and therefore
not likely to be found by the way. Our attendant was
a most ill-favored Turk, whose pilgrimage to Mecca
(he was a hajji, and wore a green turban) had, at least,
imparted no sanctity to his visage. If he was not a
rogue, nature had mis-labelled him, and I shelter my
want of charity under the Arabic proverb: “Distrust
thy neighbor if he has made a hajji; if he has made
two, make haste to leave thy house.”

We wound our way slowly out of the narrow and
ill-paved streets of Smyrna, and passing through the
suburban gardens, yellow with lemons and oranges,
crossed a small bridge over the Hermus. This is the
favorite walk of the Smyrniotes, and if its classic river,
whose “golden sands” (here, at least), are not golden,
and its “Bath of Diana” near by, whose waters would
scarce purify her “silver bow,” are something less
than their sounding names; there is a cool, dark cemetery
beyond, less famous, but more practicable for sentiment,
and many a shadowy vine and drooping tree in
the gardens around, that might recompense lovers,
perhaps, for the dirty labyrinth of the intervening
suburb.

We spurred away over the long plain of Hadjilar,
leaving to the right and left the pretty villages, ornamented
by the summer residences of the wealthy merchants
of Smyrna, and in two or three hours reached
a small lone café, at the foot of its bounding range of
mountains. We dismounted here to breathe our
horses, and while coffee was preparing, I discovered,
in a green hollow hard by, a small encampment of
gipsies. With stones in our hands, as the caféjee told
us the dogs were troublesome, we walked down into
the little round-bottomed dell, a spot selected with “a
lover's eye for nature,” and were brought to bay by a
dozen noble shepherd-dogs, within a few yards of their
outer tent.

The noise brought out an old sunburnt woman, and
two or three younger ones, with a troop of boys, who
called in the dogs, and invited us kindly within their
limits. The tents were placed in a half circle, with
their doors inward, and were made with extreme neatness.
There were eight or nine of them, very small
and low, with round tops, the cloth stretched tightly
over an inner frame, and bound curiously down on
the outside with beautiful wicker-work. The curtains
at the entrance were looped up to admit the grateful
sun, and the compactly arranged interiors lay open to
our prying curiosity. In the rounded corner farthest
from the door, lay uniformly the same goat-skin beds,
flat on the ground, and in the centre of most of them,
stood a small loom, at which the occupant plied her
task like an automaton, not betraying by any sign a
consciousness of our presence. They sat cross-leg
ged like the Turks, and had all a look of habitua
sternness, which, with their thin, strongly-marked
gipsy features, and wild eyes, gave them more the appearance
of men. It was the first time I had ever remarked
such a character upon a class of female faces,
and I should have thought I had mistaken their sex,
if their half-naked figures had not put it beyond a
doubt. The men were probably gone to Smyrna, as
none were visible in the encampment, As we were
about returning, the curtain of the largest tent,
which had been dropped on our entrance, was lifted
cautiously, by a beautiful girl, of perhaps thirteen,
who, not remarking that I was somewhat in the rear
of my companions, looked after them a moment, and
then fastening back the dingy folds by a string, returned
to her employment of swinging an infant in a small
wicker hammock, suspended in the centre of the tent.
Her dark, but prettily-rounded arm, was decked with
a bracelet of silver pieces, and just between two of the
finest eyes I ever saw, was suspended by a yellow
thread, one of the small gold coins of Constantinople.
Her softly-moulded bust was entirely bare, and might
have served for the model of a youthful Hebe. A
girdle around her waist sustained loosely a long pair
of full Turkish trousers, of the color and fashion usually
worn by women in the east, and, caught over her
hip, hung suspended by its fringe the truant shawl
that had been suffered to fall from her shoulders and
expose her guarded beauty. I stood admiring her a
full minute, before I observed a middle-aged woman in
the opposite corner, who, bending over her work, was
fortunately as late in observing my intrusive presence.
As I advanced half a step, however, my shadow fell
into the tent, and starting with surprise, she rose and
dropped the curtain.

We remounted, and I rode on, thinking of the
vision of loveliness I was leaving in that wild dell.
We travel a great way to see hills and rivers, thought
I, but, after all, a human being is a more interesting
object than a mountain. I shall remember the little
gipsy of Hadjilar, long after I have forgotten Hermus
and Sypilus.

Our road dwindled to a mere bridle-path, as we advanced,
and the scenery grew wild and barren. The
horses were all sad stumblers, and the uneven rocks
gave them every apology for coming down whenever
they could forget the spur, and so we entered the
broad and green valley of Yackerhem (I write it as I
heard it pronounced), and drew up at the door of a
small hovel, serving the double purpose of a café and
a guard-house.

A Turkish officer of the old regime, turbanned and
cross-legged, and armed with pistols and ataghan, sat
smoking on one side the brazier of coals, and the
caféjee exercised his small vocation on the other. Before
the door, a raised platform of greensward, and a
marble slab, facing toward Mecca, indicated the place
for prayer; and a dashing rider of a Turk, who had
kept us company from Smyrna, flying past us and
dropping to the rear alternately, had taken off his slippers
at the moment we arrived, and was commencing
his noon devotions.

We gathered round our commissary's saddle-bags,
and shocked our mussulman friends, by producing the
unclean beast[28] and the forbidden liquor, which, with
the delicious Turkish coffee, never better than in these
wayside hovels, furnished forth a traveller's meal.

106. LETTER CVI.

Three or four hours more of hard riding brought
us to a long glen, opening upon the broad plains of
Lydia. We were on the look-out here for the “natural
statue of Niobe,” spoken of by the ancient writers
as visible from the road in this neighborhood; but
there was nothing that looked like her, unless she was,
as the poet describes her, a “Niobe, all tears,” and
runs down toward the Sarabat, in what we took to be
only a very pretty mountain rivulet. It served for
simple fresh water to our volunteer companion, who
darted off an hour before sunset, and had finished his
ablutions and prayers, and was rising from his knees as
we overtook him upon its grassy border. Almost the
only thing that grows in these long mountain passes,
is the peculiar thorn of Syria, said to be the same of
which our Savior's crown was plaited. It differs from
the common species, in having a hooked thorn alternating
with the straight, adding cruelly to its power
of laceration. It is remarkable that the flower, at this
season withering on the bush, is a circular golden-colored
leaf, resembling exactly the radiated glory
usually drawn around the heads of Christ and the
Virgin.

Amid a sunset of uncommon splendor, firing every
peak of the opposite range of hills with an effulgent
red, and filling the valley between with an atmosphere
of heavenly purple, we descended into the plain.

Mount Sypilus, in whose rocks the magnetic ore is
said to have been first discovered, hung over us in
bold precipices; and, rounding a projecting spur, we
came suddenly in sight of the minarets and cypresses
of Magnesia (not pronounced as if written in an
apothecary's bill), the ancient capital of the Ottoman
empire.

On the side of the ascent, above the town, we observed
a large isolated mansion, surrounded with a
wall, and planted about with noble trees, looking,
with the exception that it was too freshly painted, like
one of the fine old castle palaces of Italy. It was
something very extraordinary for the east, where no
man builds beyond the city wall, and no house is
very much larger than another. It was the hereditary
residence, we afterward discovered, of almost the
only noble family in Turkey—that of the Bey-Oglou.
You will recollect Byron's allusion to it in the “Bride
of Abydos:”

I quote from memory, perhaps incorrectly.

The present descendant is still in possession of the
title, and is said to be a liberal-minded and hospitable
old Turk, of the ancient and better school. His camels
are the finest that come into Smyrna, and are famous
for their beauty and appointments.

Our devout companion left us at the first turning in
the town, laying his hand to his breast in gratitude
for having been suffered to annoy us all day with his
brilliant equitation, and we stumbled in through the
increasing shadows of twilight to the caravanserai.

It is very possible that the reader has but a slender
conception of an oriental hotel. Supposing it, at least,
from the inadequacy of my own previous ideas, I shall
allow myself a little particularity in the description
of the conveniences which the travelling Zuleikas and
Fatimas, the Maleks and Othmans, of eastern story,
encounter in their romantic journeys.

It was near the farther outskirt of the large city of
Magnesia (the accent, I repeat, is on the penult), that
we found the way encumbered with some scores of
kneeling camels, announcing our vicinity to a khan.
A large wooden building, rather off its perpendicular,
with a great many windows, but no panes in them, and
only here and there a shutter “hanging by the eyelids,”
presently appeared, and entering its hospitable
gateway, which had neither gate nor porter, we dismounted
in a large court, lit only by the stars, and
pre-occupied by any number of mules and horses
An inviting staircase led to a gallery encircling the
whoie area, from which opened thirty or forty small
doors; but, though we made as much noise as could
be expected of as many men and horses, no waiter
looked over the balustrade, nor maid Cicely, nor Boniface,
or their corresponding representatives in Turkey,
invited us in. The suridjee looked to his horses,
which was his business, and to look to ourselves was
ours; though, with our stiff limbs and clamorous appetites,
we set about it rather despairingly.

The Figaro of the Turks is a caféjee, who, besides
shaving, making coffee, and bleeding, is supposed to
be capable of every office required by man. He is
generally a Greek, the Mussulman seldom having
sufficient facility of character for the vocation. In a
few minutes, then, the nearest Figaro was produced,
who, scarce dissembling his surprise at the improvidence
of travellers who went about without pot or
kettle, bag of rice or bottle of oil, led the way with
his primitive lamp to our apartment. We might have
our choice of twenty. Having looked at the other
nineteen, we came back to the first, reconciled to it
by sheer force of comparison. Of its two windows,
one alone had a shutter that would fulfil its destiny.
It contained neither chair, table, nor utensil of any
description. Its floor had not been swept, nor its
walls whitewashed since the days of Timour the Tartar.
“Kalo! Kalo!” (Greek for you will be very
comfortable), cried our commissary, throwing down
some old mats to spread our carpets upon. But
the mats were alive with vermin, and, for sweeping
the room, the dust would not have been laid
till midnight. So we threw down our carpets upon
the floor, and driving from our minds the too
luxurious thoughts of clean straw, and a corner
in a warm barn, sat down, by the glimmer of a
flaring taper, to wait, with what patience we might,
for a chicken still breathing freely on his roost, and
turn our backs as ingeniously as possible on a chilly
December wind, that came in at the open window, as
if it knew the caravanserai were free to all comers.
There is but one circumstance to add to this faithful
description—and it is one which, in the minds of many
very worthy persons, would turn the scale in favor
of the hotels of the east, with all their disadvantages
—there was nothing to pay!

Ali Bey, in his travels, predicts the fall of the Ottoman
empire from the neglected state of the khans;
this inattention to the public institutions of hospitality,
being a falling away from the leading Mussulman
virtue. They never gave the traveller more than a
shelter, however, in their best days; and to enter a
cold, unfurnished room, after a day's hard travel, even
if the floor were clean, and the windows would shut,
is rather comfortless. Yet such is eastern travel, and
the alternative is to take “the sky for a great-coat,”
and find as soft a stone as possible for your pillow.

We gathered around our pilaw, which came in the

progress of time, and consisted of a chicken, buried
in a handsomely-shaped cone of rice and butter, forming,
with a large crater-like black bowl in which it
stood, the cloud of smoke issuing from its peak, and
the lava of butter flowing down its sides, as pretty a
miniature Vesuvius, as you would find in a modeller's
window in the Toledo. Encouraging that sin in
Christians, which they would not commit themselves,
they brought us some wine of the country, the sin of
drinking which, one would think, was its own sufficient
punishment. With each a wooden spoon, the immediate
and only means of communication between the
dish and the mouth, we soon solved the doubtful
problem of the depth of the crater, and then casting
lots who should lie next the window to take off the
edge of the December blast, we improved upon some
hints taken from the fig-packers of Smyrna, and with
an economy of exposed surface, which can only be
learned by travel, disposed ourselves in a solid body to
sleep.

The tinkling of the camels' bells awoke me as the
day was breaking, and my toilet being already made,
I sprang readily up and descended to the court of the
caravanserai. It was an eastern scene, and not an unpoetical
one. The patient and intelligent camels were
kneeling in regular ranks to receive their loads, complaining
in a voice almost human, as the driver flung
the heavy bales upon the saddles too roughly, while
the small donkey; no larger than a Newfoundland
dog, leader of the long caravan, took his place at the
head of the gigantic file, pricking back his long ears
as if he were counting his spongy-footed followers, as
they fell in behind him. Here and there knelt six or
seven, with their unsightly humps still unburdened,
eating with their peculiar deliberateness from small
heaps of provender, and scattered over the adjacent
fields, wandered separately the caravan of some indolent
driver, browsing upon the shrubs, and looking occasionally
with intelligent expectation toward the
khan, for the appearance of their tardy master. Over
all rose the mingled music of the small bells, with
which their gay-covered harness was profusely covered,
varied by the heavy beat of the larger ones borne
at the necks of the leading and last camels of the file,
while the retreating sounds of the caravans already on
their march, came in with the softer tones which completed
its sweetness.

In a short time my companions joined me, and we
started for a walk in the town. The necessity of attending
the daylight prayers, makes all Mussulmans
early risers, and we found the streets already crowded,
and the merchants and artificers as busy as at noon.
Turning a corner to get out of the way of a row of
butchers, who were slaughtering sheep revoltingly in
front of their stalls, we met two old Turks coming
from the mosque, one of whom, with the familiarity
of manners which characterizes the nation, took from
my hand a stout English riding-whip which I carried,
and began to exercise it on the bag-like trousers of
his friend. After amusing himself a while in this
manner, he returned the whip, and, patting me condescendingly
on the cheek, gave me two figs from his
voluminous pocket, and walked on. Considering that
I stand six feet in my stockings, an unwiedly size, you
may say, for a pet, this freak of the old Magnesian
would seem rather extraordinary. Yet it illustrates
the Turkish manners, which, as I have often had occasion
to notice, are a singular mixture of profound
gravity and the most childish simplicity.

We found a few fine old marble columns in the
porches of the mosques, but one Turkish town is just
like another, and after an hour or two of wandering
about among the wooden houses and narrow streets,
we returned to the khan, and, with a cup of coffee,
mounted and resumed our journey.

I have never seen a finer plain than that of Magne
sia. With an even breadth of seven or eight miles,
its length can not be less than fifty or sixty, and
throughout its whole extent it is one unbroken picture
of fertile field and meadow, shut in by two lofty ranges
of mountains, and watered by the full and winding
Hermus. Without fence, and almost without human
habitation, it is a noble expanse to the eye, possessing
all the untrammelled beauty of a wilderness without
its detracting inutility. It is literally “clothed with
flocks.” As we rode on under the eastern brow of
Mount Sypilus, and struck out more into the open
plain, as far as we could distinguish by the eye, spread
the snowy sheep in hundreds, at merely separating
distances, checkered here and there by a herd of the tall
jet-black goats of the east, walking onward in slow
and sober procession, with the solemn state of a funeral.
The road was lined with camels, coming into
Smyrna by this grand highway of nature, and bringing
all the varied produce of Asia Minor to barter in
its busy mart. We must have passed a thousand in
our day's journey.

107. LETTER CVII.

Unsightly as the camel is, with its long snaky
neck, its frightful hump, and its awkward legs and action,
it wins much upon your kindness with a little
acquaintance. Its eye is exceedingly fine. There is
a lustrous, suffused softness in the large hazel orb that
is the rarest beauty in a human eye, and so remarkable
is this feature in the camel, that I wonder it has
never fallen into use as a poetical simile. They do
not shun the gaze of man like other animals, and I
pleased myself often when the suridjee slackened his
pace, with riding close to some returning caravan, and
exchanging steady looks in passing with the slow-paced
camels. It was like meeting the eye of a kind old
man.

The face of Mount Sypilus, in its whole extent, is
excavated into sepulchres. They are mostly ancient,
and form a very singular feature in the scenery. A
range of precipices, varying from one to three hundred
feet in height, is perforated for twenty miles with these
airy depositories for the dead, many of them a hundred
feet from the plain. Occasionally they are extended
to considerable caves, hewn with great labor in
the rock, and probably from their numerous niches,
intended as family sepulchres. They are now the
convenient eyries of great numbers of eagles, which
circle continually around the summits, and poise
themselves on the wing along the sides of these lonely
mountains, in undisturbed security.

We arrived early in the afternoon at Casabar, a
pretty town at the foot of Mount Tmolus. Having
eaten a melon, the only thing for which the place is
famous, we proposed to go on to Achmet-lee, some
three hours farther. The suridjee, however, whose
horses were hired by the day, had made up his mind
to sleep at Casabar, and so we were at issue. Our
stock of Turkish was soon exhausted, and the haji
was coolly unbuckling the girths of the baggage-horse
without condescending even to answer our appeal
with a look. The mussulman idlers of the café
opposite, took their pipes from their mouths and
smiled. The gay caféjee went about his arrangements
for our accommodation, quite certain that we were
there for the night. I had given up the point myself,
when one of my companions, with a look of the most

confident triumph, walked up to the suridjee, and tapping
him on the shoulder, held before his eyes a paper
with the seal of the pacha of Smyrna in broad characters
at the top. After the astonished Turk had
looked at it for a moment, he commenced in good
round English, and poured upon him a volume of incoherent
rhapsody, slapping the paper violently with
his hand and pointing to the road. The effect was instantaneous.
The girth was hastily rebuckled, and
the frightened suridjee put his hand to his head in token
of submission, mounted in the greatest hurry and
rode out of the court of the caravanserai. The caféjee
made his salaam, and the spectators wished us respectfully
a good journey. The magic paper was an
old passport, and our friend had calculated securely on
the natural dread of the incomprehensible, quite sure
that there was not more than one man in the village
that could read, and none short of Smyrna who could
understand his English.

The plain between Casabar and Achmet-lee, is quite
a realization of poetry. It is twelve miles of soft,
bright green-sward, broken only with clumps of luxuriant
oleanders, an occasional cluster of the “black
tents of Kedar” with their flocks about them, and here
and there a loose and grazing camel indolently lifting
his broad foot from the grass as if he felt the coolness
and verdure to its spongy core. One's heart seems
to stay behind as he rides onward through such
places.

The village of Achmet-lee consists of a coffeehouse
with a single room. We arrived about sunset,
and found the fireplace surrounded by six or seven
Turks squatted on their hams, travellers like ourselves,
who had arrived before us. There was fortunately a
second fireplace, which was soon blazing with fagots
of fir and oleander, and with a pilaw between us, we
crooked our tired legs under us on the earthen floor,
and made ourselves as comfortable as a total absence
of every comfort would permit. The mingled smoke
of tobacco and the chimney drove me out of doors as
soon as our greasy meal was finished, and the contrast
was enough to make one in love with nature.
The moon was quite full, and pouring her light down
through the transparent and dazzling sky of the east
with indescribable splendor. The fires of twenty or
thirty caravans were blazing in the fields around, and
the low cries of the camels and the hum of voices
from the various groups, were mingled with the sound
of a stream that came noisily down its rocky channel
from the nearest spur of Mount Tmolus. I walked
up and down the narrow camel-path till midnight;
and if the kingly spirits of ancient Lydia did not keep
me company in the neighborhood of their giant graves,
it was perhaps because the feet that trod down their
ashes came from a world of which Crœsus and Abyattis
never heard.

The sin of late rising is seldom chargeable upon an
earthen bed, and we were in the saddle by sunrise,
breathing an air that, after our smoky cabin, was like
a spice-wind from Arabia. Winding round the base
of the chain of mountains which we had followed for
twenty or thirty miles, we ascended a little, after a
brisk trot of two or three hours, and came in sight of
the citadel of ancient Sardis, perched like an eagle's
nest on the summit of a slender rock. A natural terrace,
perhaps a hundred feet above the plain, expanded
from the base of the hill, and this was the commanding
site of the capital of Lydia. Dividing us
from it ran the classic and “golden-sanded” Pactolus,
descending from the mountains in a small, narrow valley,
covered with a verdure so fresh, that it requires
some power of fancy to realize that a crowded empire
ever swarmed on its borders. Crossing the small,
bright stream, we rode along the other bank, winding
up its ascending curve, and dismounted at the ruins
of the temple of Cybele, a heap of gigantic frag
ments strewn confusedly over the earth, with two majestic
columns rising lone and beautiful into the air.

A Dutch artist, who was of our party, spread his
drawing-board and pencils upon one of the fallen
Ionic capitals, the suridjee tied his horses' heads together,
and laid himself at his length upon the grass,
and the rest of us ascended the long steep hill to the
citadel. With some loss of breath, and a battle with
the dogs of a gipsy encampment, hidden so as almost
to be invisible among the shrubbery of the hill-side,
we stood at last upon a peak, crested with one tottering
remnant of a wall, the remains of a castle whose
foundations have crumbled beneath it. It looks as if
the next rain must send the whole mass into the valley.

It puzzled my unmilitary brain to conceive how
Alexander and his Macedonians climbed these airy
precipices, if taking the citadel was a part of his conquest
of Lydia. The fortifications in the rear have a
sheer descent from their solid walls of two or three
hundred perpendicular feet, with scarce a vine clinging
by the way. I left my companions discussing the
question, and walked to the other edge of the hill,
overlooking the immense plains below. The tumuli
which mark the sepulchres of the kings of Lydia, rose
like small hills on the opposite and distant bank of the
Hermus. The broad fields, which were once the
“wealth of Crœsus,” lay still fertile and green along
the banks of their historic river. Thyatira and Philadelphia
were almost within reach of my eye, and I
stood upon Sardis—in the midst of the sites of the
Seven Churches. Below lay the path of the myriad
armies of Persia, on their march to Greece; here
Alexander pitched his tents after the battle of Granicus,
wiling away the winter in the lap of captive
Lydia: and over the small ruin just discernible on the
southern bank of the Pactolus, “the angel of the
church of Sardis” brooded with his protecting wings
till the few who had “not defiled their garments,” were
called to “walk in white,” in the promised reward of
the apocalypse.

We descended again to the temple of Cybele, and
mounting our horses, rode down to the palace of
Crœsus. Parts of the outer walls, the bases of the
portico, and the marble steps of an inner court, are all
that remain of the splendor that Solon was called upon
in vain to admire. With the permission of six or
seven storks, whose coarse nests were built upon the
highest points of the ruins, we selected the broadest
of the marble blocks, lying in the deserted area, and
spreading our traveller's breakfast upon it, forgot even
the kingly builder in our well-earned appetites.

There are three parallel walls remaining of the ancient
church of Sardis. They stand on a gentle slope,
just above the edge of the Pactolus, and might easily
be rebuilt into a small chapel, with only the materials
within them. There are many other ruins on the site
of the city, but none designated by a name. We loitered
about, collecting relics, and indulging our fancies,
till the suridjee reminded us of the day's journey
before us, and with a drink from the Pactolus, and a
farewell look at the beautiful Ionic columps standing
on its lonely bank, we put spurs to our horses and galloped
once more down into the valley.

Our Turkish saddles grew softer on the third day's
journey, and we travelled more at ease. I found the
freedom and solitude of the wide and unfenced country
growing at every mile more upon my liking. The
heart expands as one gives his horse the rein and gallops
over these wild paths without toll-gate or obstacle.
I can easily understand the feeling of Ali Bey
on his return to Europe from the east.

Our fourth day's journey lay through the valley between
Tmolus and Semering—the fairest portion of
the dominion of Timour the Tartar. How gracefully
shaped were those slopes to the mountains! How
bright the rivers! How green the banks! How like

a new created and still unpeopled world it seemed,
with every tree and flower and fruit the perfect model
of its kind!

Leaving the secluded village of Nymphi nested in
the mountains on our left, as we approached the end
of our circuitous journey, we entered early in the afternoon
the long plains of Hadjilar, and with tired
horses and (malgré romance) and an agreeable anticipation
of Christian beds and supper, we dismounted
in Smyrna at sunset.

108. LETTER CVIII.

What can I say of Smyrna? Its mosques and
bazars scarce deserve description after those of Constantinople.
It has neither pictures, scenery, nor any
peculiarities of costume or manners. There are no
“lions” here. It is only one of the most agreeable
places in the world, exactly the sort of thing, that
(without compelling private individuals to sit for their
portraits),[29] is the least describable. Of the fortnight
of constant pleasure that I have passed here, I do not
well know how I can eke out half a page that would
amuse you.

The society of Smyrna has some advantages over
that of any other city I have seen. It is composed
entirely of the families of merchants, who, separated
from the Turkish inhabitants, occupy a distinct quarter
of the town, are responsible only to their consuls,
and having no nobility above, and none but dependants
below them, live in a state of cordial republican equality
that is not found even in America. They are of
all nations, and the principal languages of Europe are
spoken by everybody. Hospitality is carried to an
extent more like the golden age than these “days of
iron;” and, as a necessary result of the free mixture
of languages and feelings, there is a degree of information
and liberality of sentiment among them, united
to a free and joyous tone of manners and habits of
living, that is quite extraordinary in men of their care-fraught
profession. Our own country, I am proud to
say, is most honorably represented. There is no traveller
to the east, of any nation, who does not carry
away with him from Smyrna, grateful recollections of
one at least whose hospitality is as open as his gate.
This living over warehouses of opium, I am inclined
to think, is healthy for the heart.

After having seen the packing of figs, wondered at
the enormous burdens carried by the porters, ridden
to Bougiar and the castle on the hill, and admired the
caravan of the Bey-Oglou, whose camels are the
handsomest that come into Smyrna, one has nothing
to do but dine, dance, and walk on the Marina. The
last is a circumstance the traveller does well not to
miss. A long street extends along the bay, lined with
the houses of the rich merchants of the town, and for
the two hours before sunset, every family is to be seen
sitting outside its door upon the public pavement,
while beaux and belles stroll up and down in all the
gayety of perpetual holyday. They are the most out-of-doors
people, the Smyrniotes, that I have ever seen.
And one reason perhaps is, that they have a beauty
which has nothing to fear from the daylight. The
rich, classic, glowing faces of the Greeks, the paler
and livelier French, the serious and impassioned Italian,
the blooming English, and the shrinking and fragile
American, mingle together in this concourse of
grace and elegance like the varied flowers in the garden.
I would match Smyrna against the world for
beauty. And then such sociability, such primitive
cordiality of manners as you find among them! It is
quite a Utopia. You would think that little republic
of merchants, separate from the Christian world on a
heathen shore, had commenced de novo, from Eden—
ignorant as yet of jealousy, envy, suspicion, and
the other ingredients with which the old world mingles
up its refinements. It is a very pleasant place,
Smyrna!

The stranger, on his arrival, is immediately introduced
to the Casino—a large palace, supported by the
subscription of the residents, containing a reading-room,
furnished with all the gazettes and reviews of
Europe, a ball-room frequently used, a coffee-room
whence the delicious mocha is brought to you whenever
you enter, billiard-tables, card-rooms, etc., etc.
The merchants are all members, and any member can
introduce a stranger, and give him all the privileges
of the place during his stay in the city. It is a courtesy
that is not a little drawn upon. English, French,
and American ships-of-war are almost always in the
port, and the officers are privileged guests. Every
traveller to the east passes by Smyrna, and there are
always numbers at the Casino. In fact, the hospitality
of this kindest of cities, has not the usual demerit
of being rarely called upon. It seems to have grown
with the demand for it.

Idling away the time very agreeably at Smyrna,
waiting for a vessel to go—I care not where. I have
offered myself as a passenger in the first ship that
sails. I rather lean toward Palestine and Egypt, but
there are no vessels for Jaffa or Alexandria. A brig,
crowded with hajjis to Jerusalem, sailed on the first
day of my arrival at Smyrna, and I was on the point
of a hasty embarkation, when my good angel, in the
shape of a sudden caprice, sent me off to Sardis. The
plague broke out on board immediately on leaving the
port, and nearly the whole ship's company perished at
sea!

There are plenty of vessels bound to Trieste and
the United States, but there would be nothing new to
me in Illyria and Lombardy; and much as I love my
country, I am more enamored for the present of my
“sandal-shoon.” Besides, I have a yearning to the
south, and the cold “Bora” of that bellows-like Adriatic,
and the cutting winter winds of my native shore,
chill me even in the thought. Meantime I breathe an
air borrowed by December of May, and sit with my
windows open, warming myself in a broad beam of
the soft sun of Asia. With such “appliances,” even
suspense is agreeable.

The commodore sailed this morning for his winter
quarters in Minorca. I watched the ship's preparations
for departure from the balcony of the hotel, with
a heavy heart. Her sails dropped from the yards, her
head turned slowly outward as the anchor brought
away, and with a light breeze in her topsails the gallant
frigate moved majestically down the harbor, and

in an hour was a speak on the horizon. She had
been my home for more than six months. I had seen
from her deck, and visited in her boats some of the
fairest portions of the world. She had borne me to
Cicily, to Illyria, to the Isles and shores of Greece, to
Marmora and the Bosphorus, and the thousand lovely
pictures with which that long summer voyage had
stored my memory, and the thousand adventures and
still more numerous kindnesses and courtesies, linked
with these interesting scenes, crowded on my mind as
the noble ship receded from my eye, with an emotion
that I could not repress.

There is a “pomp and circumstance” about a man-of-war,
which is exceedingly fascinating. Her imposing
structure and appearance, the manly and deferential
etiquette, the warlike appointment and impressive
order upon her decks, the ready and gallantly manned
boat, the stirring music of the band, and the honor
and attention with which her officers are received in
every port, conspire in keeping awake an excitement,
a kind of chivalrous elation, which, it seems to me,
would almost make a hero of a man of straw. From
the hoarse “seven bells, sir!” with which you are
turned out of your hammock in the morning, to the
blast of the bugle and the report of the evening
gun, it is one succession of elevating sights and
sounds, without any of that approach to the ridiculous
which accompanies the sublime or the impressive
on shore.

From the comparisons I have made between our
own and the ships-of-war of other nations, I think we
may well be proud of our navy. I had learned in Europe,
long before joining the “United States,” that
the respect we exact from foreigners is paid more to
Americans afloat, than to a continent they think as far
off at least as the moon. They see our men-of-war,
and they know very well what they have done, and
from the appearance and character of our officers,
what they might do again—and there is a tangibility
in the deductions from knowledge and eyesight, which
beats books and statistics. I have heard Englishmen
deny, one by one, every claim we have to political and
moral superiority; but I have found no one illiberal
enough to refuse a compliment, and a handsome one,
to Yankee ships,

I consider myself, I repeat, particularly fortunate to
have made a cruise on board an American frigate.
It is a chapter of observation in itself, which is worth
much to any one. But, in addition to this, it was my
good fortune to have happened upon a cruise directed
by a mind full of taste and desire for knowledge, and
a cruise which had for its principal objects improvement
and information. Commodore Patterson knew
the ground well, and was familiar with the history and
localities of the interesting countries visited by the
ship, and every possible facility and encouragement
was given by him to all to whom the subjects and places
were new. An enlightened and enterprising traveller
himself, he was the best of advisers and the best
and kindest of guides. I take pleasure in recording
almost unlimited obligations to him.

And so, to the gallant ship—to the “warlike world
within”—to the decks I have so often promenaded, and
the moonlight watches I have so often shared—to the
groups of manly faces I have learned to know so well
—to the drum-beat and the bugle-call, and the stirring
music of the band—to the hammock in which I
swung and slept so soundly, and last and nearest my
heart, to the gay and hospitable mess with whom for
six happy months I have been a guest and a friend,
whose feelings I have learned but to honor my country
more, and whose society has become to me even a
painful want—to all this catalogue of happiness, I am
bidding a heavy-hearted farewell. Luck and Heaven's
blessing to ship and company!

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!

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.

110. LETTER CX.

In going out of the gates of Milan, we met a cart
full of peasants, tied together and guarded by gens
d'armes, the fifth sight of the kind that has crossed us
since we passed the Austrian border. The poor fellows
looked very innocent and very sorry. The extent
of their offences probably might be the want of a
passport, and a desire to step over the limits of his
majesty's possessions. A train of beautiful horses,
led by soldiers along the ramparts, the property of the
Austrian officers, were in melancholy contrast to their
sad faces.

The clear snowy Alps soon came in sight, and their
cold beauty refreshed us in the midst of a heat that
prostrated every nerve in the system. It is only the
first of May, and they are mowing the grass everywhere
on the road, the trees are in their fullest leaf,
the frogs and nightingales singing each other down,
and the grasshopper would be a burden. Toward night

we crossed the Sardinian frontier, and in an hour were
set down at an auberge on the bank of Lake Maggiore,
in the little town of Arona. The mountains on
the other side of the broad and mirror-like water, are
speckled with ruined castles, here and there a boat is
leaving its long line of ripples behind in its course,
the cattle are loitering home, the peasants sit on the
benches before their doors, and all the lovely circumstances
of a rural summer's sunset are about us, in
one of the very loveliest spots in nature. A very old
Florence friend is my companion, and what with mutual
reminiscences of sunny Tuscany, and the deepest
love in common for the sky over our heads, and
the green land around us, we are noting down “red
days” in our calendar of travel.

We walked from Arona by sunrise, four or five miles
along the borders of Lake Maggiore. The kind-hearted
peasants on their way to the market raised their
hats to us in passing, and I was happy that the greeting
was still “buon giorno.” Those dark-lined mountains
before us were to separate me too soon from the
mellow accents in which it was spoken. As yet, however,
it was all Italian—the ultra-marine sky, the clear,
half-purpled hills, the inspiring air—we felt in every
pulse that it was still Italy.

We were at Baveno at an early hour, and took a
boat for Isola Bella. It looks like a gentleman's villa
afloat. A boy would throw a stone entirely over it in
any direction. It strikes you like a kind of toy as you
look at it from a distance, and getting nearer, the illusion
scarcely dissipates—for, from the water's edge,
the orange-laden terraces are piled one above another
like a pyramidal fruit-basket, the villa itself peers
above like a sugar castle, and it scarce seems real
enough to land upon. We pulled round to the northern
side, and disembarked at a broad stone staircase,
where a cicerone, with a look of suppressed wisdom,
common to his vocation, met us with the offer of his
services.

The entrance-hall was hung with old armor, and a
magnificent suite of apartments above, opening on all
sides upon the lake, was lined thickly with pictures,
none of them remarkable except one or two landscapes
by the savage Tempesta. Travellers going the
other way would probably admire the collection more
than we. We were glad to be handed over by our
pragmatical custode to a pretty contadino, who announced
herself as the gardener's daughter, and gave
us each a bunch of roses. It was a proper commencement
to an acquaintance upon Isola Bella. She
led the way to the water's edge, where, in the foundations
of the palace, a suite of eight or ten spacious
rooms is constructed a la grotte—with a pavement laid
of small stones of different colors, walls and roof of
fantastically set shells and pebbles, and statues that
seem to have reason in their nudity. The only light
came in at the long doors opening down to the lake,
and the deep leather sofas, and dark cool atmosphere,
with the light break of the waves outside, and the long
views away toward Isola Madra, and the far-off opposite
shore, composed altogether a most seductive spot
for an indolent humor and a summer's day. I shall
keep it as a cool recollection till sultry summers
trouble me no more.

But the garden was the prettiest place. The lake
is lovely enough any way; but to look at it through
perspectives of orange alleys, and have the blue
mountains broken by stray branches of tulip-trees,
clumps of crimson rhododendron, and clusters of citron,
yellower than gold; to sit on a garden-seat in the
shade of a thousand roses, with sweet-scented shrubs
and verbenums, and a mixture of novel and delicious
perfumes embalming the air about you, and gaze up
at snowy Alps and sharp precipices, and down upon a
broad smooth mirror in which the islands lie like
clouds, and over which the boats are silently creeping
with their white sails, like birds asleep in the sky—
why (not to disparage nature), it seems to my poor
judgment, that these artificial appliances are an improvement
even to Lago Maggiore.

On one side, without the villa walls, are two or three
small houses, one of which is occupied as a hotel;
and here, if I had a friend with matrimony in his eye,
would I strongly recommend lodgings for the honeymoon.
A prettier cage for a pair of billing doves no
poet would conceive you.

We got on to Domo d'Ossola to sleep, saying many
an oft-said thing about the entrance to the valleys of
the Alps. They seem common when spoken of, these
romantic places, but they are not the less new in the
glow of a first impression.

We were a little in start of the sun this morning,
and commenced the ascent of the Simplon by a gray
summer's dawn, before which the last bright star had
not yet faded. From Domo d'Ossola we rose directly
into the mountains, and soon wound into the wildest
glens by a road which was flung along precipices and
over chasms and waterfalls like a waving riband. The
horses went on at a round trot, and so skilfully are the
difficulties of the ascent surmounted, that we could
not believe we had passed the spot that from below
hung above us so appallingly. The route follows the
foaming river Vedro, which frets and plunges along at
its side or beneath its hanging bridges, with the impetuosity
of a mountain torrent, where the stream is
swollen at every short distance with pretty waterfalls,
messengers from the melting snows on the summits.
There was one, a water-slide rather than a fall, which
I stopped long to admire. It came from near the peak
of the mountain, leaping at first from a green clump
of firs, and descending a smooth inclined plane, of
perhaps two hundred feet. The effect was like drapery
of the most delicate lace, dropping into festoons
from the hand. The slight waves overtook each other
and mingled and separated, always preserving their elliptical
and foaming curves, till, in a smooth scoop
near the bottom, they gathered into a snowy mass,
and leaped into the Vedro in the shape of a twisted
shell. If wishing could have witched it into Mr.
Cole's sketch-book, he would have a new variety of
water for his next composition.

After seven hours' driving, which scarce seemed ascending
but for the snow and ice and the clear air it
brought us into, we stopped to breakfast at the village
of Simplon, “three thousand, two hundred and sixteen
feet above the sea level.” Here we first realized
that we had left Italy. The landlady spoke French
and the postillions German! My sentiment has
grown threadbare with travel, but I don't mind confessing
that the circumstance gave me an unpleasant
thickness in the throat. I threw open the southern
window, and looked back toward the marshes of Lombardy,
and if I did not say the poetical thing, it was
because

In sober sadness, one may well regret any country
where his life has been filled fuller than elsewhere of
sunshine and gladness; and such, by a thousand enchantments,
has Italy been to me. Its climate is life
in my nostrils, its hills and valleys are the poetry of
such things, and its marbles, pictures, and palaces, beset
the soul like the very necessities of existence.
You can exist elsewhere, but oh! you live in Italy!

I was sitting by my English companion on a sledge
in front of the hotel, enjoying the sunshine, when the
diligence drove up, and six or eight young men alighted.
One of them, walking up and down the road to
get the cramp of a confined seat out of his legs, addressed
a remark to us in English. We had neither
of us seen him before, but we exclaimed simultaneously,
as he turned away, “That's an American.”

“How did you know he was not an Englishman?” I
asked. “Because,” said my friend, “he spoke to us
without an introduction and without a reason, as Englishmen
are not in the habit of doing, and because he
ended his sentence with `sir,' as no Englishman does
except he is talking to an inferior, or wishes to insult
you. And how did you know it?” asked he.
“Partly by instinct,” I answered, “but more, because,
though a traveller, he wears a new hat that cost him
ten dollars, and a new cloak that cost him fifty (a peculiarly
American extravagance), because he made no
inclination of his body either in addressing or leaving
us, though his intention was to be civil, and because
he used fine dictionary words to express a common
idea, which, by the way, too, betrays his southern
breeding. And, if you want other evidence, he has
just asked the gentleman near him to ask the conducteur
something about his breakfast, and an American
is the only man in the world that ventures to come
abroad without at least French enough to keep himself
from starving.” It may appear ill-natured to
write down such criticisms on one's own countryman;
but the national peculiarities by which we are distinguished
from foreigners, seemed so well defined in this
instance, that I thought it worth mentioning. We
found afterward that our conjecture was right. His
name and country were on the brass plate of his portmanteau
in most legible letters, and I recognised it directly
as the address of an amiable and excellent man,
of whom I had once or twice heard in Italy, though I
had never before happened to meet him. Three of
the faults oftenest charged upon our countrymen, are
over-fine clothes, over-fine words, and over-fine, or over-free
manners!

From Simplon we drove two or three miles between
heaps of snow, lying in some places from ten to six
feet deep. Seven hours before, we had ridden through
fields of grain almost ready for the harvest. After
passing one or two galleries built over the road to protect
it from the avalanches where it ran beneath the
loftier precipices, we got out of the snow, and saw
Brig, the small town at the foot of the Simplon, on the
other side, lying almost directly beneath us. It looked
as if one might toss his cap down into its pretty gardens.
Yet we were four or five hours in reaching it,
by a road that seemed in most parts scarcely to descend
at all. The views down the valley of the Rhone,
which opened continually before us, were of exquisite
beauty. The river itself, which is here near its source,
looked like a meadow rivulet in its silver windings, and
the gigantic Helvetian Alps which rose in their snow
on the other side of the valley, were glittering in the
slant rays of a declining sun, and of a grandeur of
size and outline which diminished, even more than
distance, the river and the clusters of villages at their
feet.

111. LETTER CXI.

We have been two days and a half loitering down
through the Swiss canton of Valais, and admiring every
hour the magnificence of these snow-capped and
green-footed Alps. The little chalets seem just lodged
by accident on the crags, or stuck against slopes so
steep, that the mowers of the mountain-grass are literally
let down by ropes to their dizzy occupation.
The goats alone seem to have an exemption from all
ordinary laws of gravitation, feeding against cliffs
which it makes one giddy to look on only; and the
short-waisted girls, dropping a courtesy and blushing
as they pass the stranger, emerge from the little mountain-paths,
and stop by the first spring, to put on their
shoes and arrange their ribands coquetishly, before
entering the village.

The two dreadful curses of these valleys meet one
at every step—the cretins, or natural fools, of which
there is at least one in every family; and the goitre or
swelled throat, to which there is hardly an exception
among the women. It really makes travelling in
Switzerland a melancholy business, with all its beauty;
at every turn in the road, a gibbering and mowing
idiot, and in every group of females, a disgusting array
of excrescences too common even to be concealed.
Really, to see girls that else were beautiful, arrayed
in all their holyday finery, but with a defect that makes
them monsters to the unaccustomed eye, their throats
swollen to the size of their heads, seems to me one
of the most curious and pitiable things I have met in
my wanderings. Many attempts have been made to
account for the growth of the goitre, but it is yet unexplained.
The men are not so subject to it as the
women, though among them, even, it is frightfully
common. But how account for the continual production
by ordinary parents of this brute race of cretins?
They all look alike, dwarfish, large-mouthed, grinning,
and of hideons features and expression. It is said
that the children of strangers, born in the valley, are
very likely to be idiots, resembling the cretin exactly.
It seems a supernatural curse upon the land. The
Valaisians, however, consider it a blessing to have one
in the family.

The dress of the women of La Valais is excessively
unbecoming, and a pretty face is rare. Their manners
are kind and polite, and at the little auberges,
where we have stopped on the road, there have been
a cleanliness and a generosity in the supply of the
table, which prove virtues among them not found in
Italy.

At Turttmann, we made a little excursion into the
mountains to see a cascade. It falls about a hundred
feet, and has just now more water than usual from the
melting of the snows. It is a pretty fall. A Frenchman
writes in the book of the hotel, that he has seen
Niagara and Trenton Falls, in America, and that they
do not compare with the cascade of Turttmann!

From Martigny the scenery began to grow richer,
and after passing the celebrated Fall of the Pissevache
(which springs from the top of a high Alp almost
into the road, and is really a splendid cascade),
we approached Lake Leman in a gorgeous sunset.
We rose a slight hill, and over the broad sheet of water
on the opposite shore, reflected with all its towers
in a mirror of gold, lay the castle of Chillon. A bold
green mountain, rose steeply behind, the sparkling village
of Vevey lay farther down on the water's edge;
and away toward the sinking sun, stretched the long
chain of the Jura, teinted with all the hues of a dolphin.
Never was such a lake of beauty—or it never
sat so pointedly for its picture. Mountains and water,
chateaux and shallops, vineyards and verdure, could
do no more. We left the carriage and walked three
or four miles along the southern bank, under the
“Rocks of Meillerie,” and the spirit of St. Preux's
Julie, if she haunt the scene where she caught her
death, of a sunset in May, is the most enviable of
ghosts. I do not wonder at the prating in albums of
Lake Leman. For me, it is (after Val d'Arno from
Fiezoli) the ne plus ultra of a scenery Paradise.

We are stopping for the night at St. Gingoulf, on
a swelling bank of the lake, and we have been lying
under the trees in front of the hotel till the last perceptible
teint is gone from the sky over Jura. Two
pedestrian gentlemen, with knapsacks and dogs, have

just arrived, and a whole family of French people, including
parrots and monkeys, came in before us, and
are deafening the house with their chattering. A cup
of coffee, and then good night!

My companion, who has travelled all over Europe
on foot, confirms my opinion that there is no drive on
the continent equal to the forty miles between the
rocks of Meillerie and Geneva, on the southern bank
of the Leman. The lake is not often much broader
than the Hudson, the shores are the noble mountains
sung so gloriously by Childe Harold; Vevey, Lausanne,
Copet, and a string of smaller villages, all famous
in poetry and story, fringe the opposite water's
edge with cottages and villages, while you wind for
ever along a green lane following the bend of the
shore, the road as level as your hall pavement, and
green hills massed up with trees and verdure, overshadowing
you continually. The world has a great
many sweet spots in it, and I have found many a one
which would make fitting scenery for the brightest act
of life's changeful drama—but here is one, where it
seems to me as difficult not to feel genial and kindly,
as for Taglioni to keep from floating away like a smoke-curl
when she is dancing in La Bayadere.

We passed a bridge and drew in a long breath to
try the difference in the air—we were in the republic
of Geneva. It smelt very much as it did in the dominions
of his majesty of Sardinia—sweet-brier, hawthorn,
violets and all. I used to think when I first came
from America, that the flowers (republicans by nature
as well as birds) were less fragrant under a monarchy.

Mont Blanc loomed up very white in the south, but
like other distinguished persons of whom we form an
opinion from the description of poets, the “monarch
of mountains” did not seem to me so very superior to
his fellows. After a lok or two at him as we approached
Geneva, I ceased straining my head out of
the cabriolet, and devoted my eyes to things more
within the scale of my affections—the scores of lovely
villas sprinkling the hills and valleys by which we approached
the city. Sweet—sweet places they are to
be sure! And then the month is May, and the strawbonneted
and white-aproned girls, ladies and peasants
alike, were all out at their porches and balconies, lover-like
couples were sauntering down the park-lanes,
one servant passed us with a tri-cornered blue billet-doux
between his thumb and finger, the nightingales
were singing their very hearts away to the new-blown
roses, and a sense of summer and seventeen, days of
sunshine and sonnet-making, came over me irresistibly.
I should like to see June out in Geneva.

The little steamer that makes the tour of Lake Leman,
began to “phiz” by sunrise directly under the
windows of our hotel. We were soon on the pier,
where our entrance into the boat was obstructed by a
weeping cluster of girls, embracing and parting very
unwillingly with a young lady of some eighteen years,
who was lovely enough to have been wept for by as
many grown-up gentlemen. Her own tears were under
better government, though her sealed lips showed
that she dared not trust herself with her voice. After
another and another lingering kiss, the boatman expressed
some impatience, and she tore herself from
their arms and stepped into the waiting batteau. We
were soon along side the steamer, and sooner under
way, and then, having given one wave of her handkerchief
to the pretty and sad group on the shore, our
fair fellow-passenger gave way to her feelings, and
sinking upon a seat, burst into a passionate flood of
tears. There was no obtruding on such sorrow, and
the next hour or two were employed by my imagination
in filling up the little drama of which we had
seen but the touching conclusion.

I was pleased to find the boat (a new one) called the
“Winkelreid,” in compliment to the vessel which
makes the same voyage in Cooper's “Headsman of
Berne.” The day altogether had begun like a chapter
in a romance.

but there was the filmiest conceivable veil of mist over
its unruffled mirror, and the green uplands that rose
from its edge had a softness like dreamland upon their
verdure. I know not whether the tearful girl whose
head was drooping over the railing felt the sympathy,
but I could not help thanking nature for her in my
heart, the whole scene was so of the complexion of
her own feelings. I could have “thrown my ring into
the sea,” like Policrates Samius, “to have cause
for sadness too.”

The “Winkelreid” has (for a republican steamer)
rather the aristocratical arrangement of making those
who walk aft the funnel pay twice as much as those
who choose to promenade forward—for no earthly
reason that I can divine, other than that those who
pay dearest have the full benefit of the oily gases from
the machinery, while the humbler passenger breathes
the air of heaven before it has passed through that
improving medium. Our youthful Niobe, two French
ladies not particularly pretty, an Englishman with a
fishing-rod and gun, and a coxcomb of a Swiss artist
to whom I had taken a special aversion at Rome, from
a criticism I overheard upon my favorite picture in the
Colonna, my friends and myself, were the exclusive
inhalers of the oleaginous atmosphere of the stern.
A crowd of the ark's own miscellaneousness thronged
the forecastle—and so you have the programme of a
day on Lake Leman.

112. LETTER CXII.

The water of Lake Leman looks very like other
water, though Byron and Shelley were nearly drowned
in it; and Copet, a little village on the Helvetian side,
where we left three women and took up one man (the
village ought to be very much obliged to us), is no
Paradise, though Madame de Stael made it her residence.
There are Paradises, however, with very short
distances between, all the way down the northern
shore; and angels in them, if women are angels—a
specimen or two of the sex being visible with the aid
of the spyglass, in nearly every balcony and belvidere,
looking upon the water. The taste in country-houses
seems to be here very much the same as in New
England, and quite unlike the half-palace, half-castle
style common in Italy and France. Indeed the dress,
physiognomy, and manners of old Geneva might make
an American Genevese fancy himself at home on the
Leman. There is that subdued decency, that grave
respectableness, that black-coated, straight-haired,
saint-like kind of look which is universal in the small
towns of our country, and which is as unlike France
and Italy, as a playhouse is unlike a methodist chapel.
You would know the people of Geneva were
Calvinists, whisking through the town merely in a diligence.

I lost sight of the town of Morges, eating a tête-à-tête breakfast with my friend in the cabin. Switzerland
is the only place out of America where one gets cream for his coffee. I cry Morges mercy on that
plea.

We were at Lausanne at eleven, having steamed
forty miles in five hours. This is not quite up to
the thirty-milers on the Hudson, of which I see accounts

in the papers, but we had the advantage of not
being blown up either going or coming, and of looking
for a continuous minute on a given spot in the
scenery. Then we had an iron railing between us and
that portion of the passengers who prefer garlic to
lavender-water, and we achieved our breakfast without
losing our tempers or complexions in a scramble.
The question of superiority between Swiss and American
steamers, therefore, depends very much on the
value you set on life, temper, and time. For me, as
my time is not measured in “diamond sparks,” and
as my life and temper are the only gifts with which
fortune has blessed me, I prefer the Swiss.

Gibbon lived at Lausanne, and wrote here the last
chapter of his History of Rome—a circumstance
which he records with an affection. It is a spot of no
ordinary beauty, and the public promenade, where we
sat and looked over to Vevey and Chillon, and the
Rocks of Meillerie, and talked of Rousseau, and
agreed that it was a scene “faite pour une Julie, pour
une Claire, et pour un Saint Preux,” is one of the places
where, if I were to “play statue,” I should like
to grow to my seat, and compromise merely for eyesight.
We have one thing against Lausanne, however—it
is up hill and a mile from the water; and if
Gibbon walked often from Ouchet at noon, and “larded
the way” as freely as we, I make myself certain
he was not the fat man his biographers have drawn
him.

There were some other circumstances at Lausanne
which interested us—but which criticism has decided
can not be obtruded upon the public. We looked
about for “Julie” and “Claire,” spite of Rousseau's
“ne les y cherchez pas,” and gave a blind beggar a sous
(all he asked) for a handful of lilies-of-the-valley,
pitying him ten times more than if he had lost his
eyes out of Switzerland. To be blind on Lake Leman!
blind within sight of Mont Blanc! We turned
back to drop another sous into his hat, as we reflected
upon it.

The return steamer from Vevey (I was sorry not to
go to Vevey for Rousseau's sake, and as much for
Cooper's), took us up on its way to Geneva, and we
had the advantage of seeing the same scenery in a different
light. Trees, houses, and mountains, are so
much finer seen against the sun, with the deep shadows
toward you!

Sitting by the stern, was a fat and fair Frenchwoman,
who, like me, had bought lilies, and about as
many. With a very natural facility of dramatic position,
I imagined it had established a kind of sympathy
between us, and proposed to myself, somewhere
in the fair hours, to make it serve as an introduction.
She went into the cabin after a while, to lunch on cutlets
and beer, and returned to the deck without her
lilies. Mine lay beside me, within reach of her four
fingers; and as I was making up my mind to offer to
replace her loss, she coolly took them up, and without
even a French monosyllable, commenced throwing
them overboard, stem by stem. It was very clear she
had mistaken them for her own. As the last one flew
over the tafferel, the gentleman who paid for la bierre
et les cottelettes, husband or lover, came up with a
smile and a flourish, and reminded her that she had
left her bouquet between the mustard and the beer-bottle.
Sequitur, a scene. The lady apologized, and
I disclaimed; and the more I insisted on the delight
she had given me by throwing my pretty lilies into
Lake Leman, the more she made herself unhappy,
and insisted on my being inconsolable. One should
come abroad to know how much may be said upon
throwing overboard a bunch of lilies!

The clouds gathered, and we had some hopes of a
storm, but the “darkened Jura” was merely dim, and
the “live thunder” waited for another Childe Harold.
We were at Geneva at seven, and had the whole pop
ulation to witness our debarkation. The pier where
we landed, and the new bridge across the outlet of
the Rhone, are the evening promenade.

The far-famed jewellers of Geneva are rather an
aristocratic class of merchants. They are to be sought
in chambers, and their treasures are produced box by
box, from locked drawers, and bought, if at all, without
the pleasure of “beating down.” They are, withal,
a gentlemanly class of men; and, of the principal
one, as many stories are told as of Beau Brummel.
He has made a fortune by his shop, and has the manners
of a man who can afford to buy the jewels out of
a king's crown.

We were sitting at the table d'hote, with about forty
people, on the first day of our arrival, when the servant
brought us each a gilt-edged note, sealed with an
elegant device; invitations, we presumed, to a ball, at
least. Mr. So-and-so (I forget the name), begged
pardon for the liberty he had taken, and requested us
to call at his shop in the Rue de Rhone, and look at
his varied assortment of bijouterie. A card was enclosed,
and the letter in courtly English. We went,
of course; as who would not? The cost to him was
a sheet of paper, and the trouble of sending to the
hotel for a list of the new arrivals. I recommend the
system to all callow Yankees, commencing a “pushing
business.”

Geneva is full of foreigners in the summer, and it
has quite the complexion of an agreeable place. The
environs are, of course, unequalled, and the town itself
is a stirring and gay capital, full of brilliant shops,
handsome streets and promenades, where everything
is to be met but pretty women. Female beauty would
come to a good market anywhere in Switzerland. We
have seen but one pretty girl (our Niobe of the steamer)
since we lost sight of Lombardy. They dress
well here, and seem modest, and have withal an air of
style, but of some five hundred ladies, whom I may
have seen in the valley of the Rhone and about this
neighborhood, it would puzzle a modern Apelles to
compose an endurable Venus. I understand a fair
countrywoman of ours is about taking up her residence
in Geneva; and if Lake Leman does not “woo
her,” and the “live thunder” leap down from Jura,
the jewellers, at least, will crown her queen of the
Canton, and give her the tiara at cost.

I hope “Maria Wilhelmina Amelia Skeggs” will
forgive me for having gone to Ferney in an omnibus!
Voltaire lived just under the Jura, on a hill-side, overlooking
Geneva and the lake, with a landscape before
him in the foreground that a painter could not improve,
and Mont Blanc and its neighbor mountains,
the breaks to his horizon. At six miles off, Geneva
looks very beautifully, astride the exit of the Rhone
from the lake; and the lake itself looks more like a
broad river, with its edges of verdure and its outer-frame
of mountains. We walked up an avenue to a
large old villa, embosomed in trees, where an old gardener
appeared, to show us the grounds. We said
the proper thing under the tree planted by the philosopher,
fell in love with the view from twenty points,
met an English lady in one of the arbors, the wife of
a French nobleman to whom the house belongs, and
were bowed into the hall by the old man and handed
over to his daughter to be shown the curiosities of the
interior. These were Voltaire's rooms, just as he
left them. The ridiculous picture of his own apotheosis,
painted under his own direction, and representing
him offering his Henriade to Apollo, with all the
authors of his time dying of envy at his feet, occupies
the most conspicuous place over his chamber-door.
Within was his bed, the curtains nibbled quite bare
by relic-gathering travellers; a portrait of the Emperess
Catherine, embroidered by her own hand, and presented
to Voltaire; his own portrait and Frederick the
Great's, and many of the philosophers', including

Franklin. A little monument stands opposite the
fireplace, with the inscription “mon esprit est partout,
et mon cæur est ici.” It is a snug little dormitory,
opening with one window to the west; and, to those
who admire the character of the once illustrious occupant,
a place for very tangible musing. They
showed us afterward his walking-stick, a pair of silk-stockings
he had half worn, and a night-cap. The
last article is getting quite fashionable as a relic of genius.
They show Byron's at Venice.

113. LETTER CXIII.

Whether it was that I had offended the genius of
the spot, by coming in an omnibus, or from a desire I
never can resist in such places, to travesty and ridicule
the mock solemnity with which they are exhibited,
certain it is that I left Ferney, without having encountered,
even in the shape of a more serious thought,
the spirit of Voltaire. One reads the third canto of
Childe Harold in his library, and feels as if “Lausanne
and Ferney” should be very interesting places to
the traveller, and yet when he is shown Gibbon's bower
by a fellow scratching his head and hitching up his
trousers the while, and the nightcap that enclosed the
busy brain from which sprang the fifty brilliant tomes
on his shelves, by a country-girl, who hurries through
her drilled description, with her eye on the silver
douceur in his fingers, he is very likely to rub his hand
over his eyes, and disclaim, quite honestly, all pretensions
to enthusiasm. And yet, I dare say, I shall have
a great deal of pleasure in remembering that I have
been at Ferney. As an English traveller would say,
“I have done Voltaire!”

Quite of the opinion that it was not doing justice to
Geneva to have made but a three days' stay in it, regretting
not having seen Sismondi and Simond, and a
whole coterie of scholars and authors, whose home it
is, and with a mind quite made up to return to Switzerland,
when my beaux jours of love, money, and leisure,
shall have arrived, I crossed the Rhone at sunrise,
and turned my face toward Paris.

The Simplon is much safer travelling than the pass
of the Jura. We were all day getting up the mountains
by roads that would make me anxious if there
were a neck in the carriage I would rather should not
be broken. My company, fortunately, consisted of
three Scotch spinsters, who would try any precipice
of the Jura, I think, if there were a lover at the bottom.
If the horses had backed in the wrong place, it
would have been to all three, I am sure, a deliverance
from a world in whose volume of happiness

As to my own neck and my friend's, there is a special
providence for bachelors, even if they were of importance
enough to merit a care. Spinsters and bachelors,
we all arrived safely at Rousses, the entrance to
France, and here, if I were to write before repeating
the alphabet, you would see what a pen could do in a
passion.

The carriage was stopped by three custom-house
officers, and taken under a shed, where the doors were
closed behind it. We were then required to dismount
and give our honors that we had nothing new in the
way of clothes; no “jewelry; no unused manufactures
of wool, thread, or lace; no silks or floss silk;
no polished metals, plated or varnished; no toys, (ex
cept a heart each); nor leather, glass, or crystal manufactures.”
So far, I kept my temper.

Our trunks, carpet-bags, hat-boxes, dressing-cases,
and portfeuilles, were then dismounted and critically
examined—every dress and article unfolded; shirts,
cravats, unmentionables and all, and searched thoroughly
by two ruffians, whose fingers were no improvement
upon the labors of the washerwoman. In
an hour's time or so we were allowed to commence repacking.
Still, I kept my temper.

We were then requested to walk into a private room,
while the ladies, for the same purpose, were taken, by
a woman, into another. Here we were requested to
unbutton our coats, and, begging pardon for the liberty,
these courteous gentlemen thrust their hands into
our pockets, felt in our bosoms, pantaloons, and shoes,
examined our hats, and even eyed our “pet curls”
very earnestly, in the expectation of finding us crammed
with Geneva jewelry. Still, I kept my temper.

Our trunks were then put upon the carriage, and a
sealed string put upon them, which we were not to cut
till we arrived in Paris. (Nine days!) They then demanded
to be paid for the sealing, and the fellows who
had unladen the carriage were to be paid for their labor.
This done, we were permitted to drive on. Still
I kept my temper!

We arrived, in the evening, at Morez, in a heavy
rain. We were sitting around a comfortable fire, and
the soup and fish were just brought upon the table.
A soldier entered and requested us to walk to the police-office.
“But it rains hard, and our dinner is just
ready.” The man in the mustache was inexorable.
The commissary closed his office at eight, and we
must go instantly to certify to our passports, and get
new ones for the interior. Cloaks and umbrellas were
brought, and, bon gre, mal gre, we walked half a mile
in the mud and rain to a dirty commissary, who kept
us waiting in the dark fifteen minutes, and then, making
out a description of the person of each, demanded
half a dollar for the new passport, and permitted us
to wade back to our dinner. This had occupied an
hour, and no improvement to soup or fish. Still, I
kept my temper—rather!

The next morning, while we were forgetting the
annoyances of the previous night, and admiring the
new-pranked livery of May by a glorious sunshine, a
civil arretez vous brought up the carriage to the door
of another custom-house! The order was to dismount,
and down came once more carpet-bags, hat-boxes, and
dressing-cases, and a couple of hours were lost again
in a fruitless search for contraband articles. When it
was all through, and the officers and men paid as before,
we were permitted to proceed with the gracious
assurance that we should not be troubled again till we
got to Paris! I bade the commissary good morning,
felicitated him on the liberal institutions of his country
and his zeal in the exercise of his own agreeable
vocation, and—I am free to confess—lost my temper!
Job and Xantippe's husband! could I help it!

I confess I expected better things of France. In
Italy, where you come to a new dukedom every half-day,
you do not much mind opening your trunks, for
they are petty princes and need the pitiful revenue of
contraband articles and the officer's fee. Yet even
they leave the person of the traveller sacred; and
where in the world, except in France, is a party travelling
evidently for pleasure subjected twice at the
same border to the degrading indignity of a search!
Ye “hunters of Kentucky”—thank heaven that you
can go into Tennessee without having your “plunder”
overhauled and your pockets searched by successive
parties of scoundrels, whom you are to pay “by order
of the government” for their trouble!

The Simplon, which you pass in a day, divides two
nations, each other's physical and moral antipodes.

The handsome, picturesque, lazy, unprincipled Italian,
is left in the morning in his own dirty and exorbitant
inn; and, on the evening of the same day, having
crossed but a chain of mountains, you find yourself
in a clean auberge, nestled in the bosom of a Swiss
valley, another language spoken around you, and in
the midst of a people who seem to require the virtues
they possess to compensate them for more than their
share of uncomeliness. You travel a day or two down
the valley of the Rhone, and when you are become
reconciled to cretins and goitres, and ill-dressed and
worse formed men and women, you pass in another
single day the chain of the Jura, and find yourself in
France—a country as different from both Switzerland
and Italy as they are from each other. How is it that
these diminutive cantons preserve so completely their
nationality? It seems a problem to the traveller who
passes from one to the other without leaving his carriage.

One is compelled to like France in spite of himself.
You are no sooner over the Jura than you are enslaved,
past all possible ill-humor, by the universal politeness.
You stop for the night at a place, which, as
my friend remarked, resembles an inn only in its in
attention, and after a bad supper, worse beds, and every
kind of annoyance, down comes my lady-hostess in
the morning to receive her coin, and if you can fly
into a passion with such a cap, and such a smile, and
such a “bon jour,” you are of less penetrable stuff
than man is commonly made of.

I loved Italy, but detested the Italians. I detest
France, but I can not help liking the French. “Politeness
is among the virtues,” says the philosopher.
Rather, it takes the place of them all. What can you
believe ill of a people whose slightest look toward you
is made up of grace and kindness.

We are dawdling along thirty miles a day through
Burgundy, sick to death of the bare vine-stakes, and
longing to see a festooned vineyard of Lombardy.
France is such an ugly country! The diligences
lumber by, noisy and ludicrous; the cow-tenders wear
cocked hats; the beggars are in the true French extreme,
theatrical in all their misery; the climate is
rainy and cold, and as unlike that of Italy as if a
thousand leagues separated them, and the roads are
long, straight, dirty, and uneven. There is neither
pleasure nor comfort, neither scenery nor antiquities,
nor accommodations for the weary—nothing but politeness.
And it is odd how it reconciles you to it all.

114. LETTER CXIV.

It is pleasant to get back to Paris. One meets everybody
there one ever saw; and operas and coffee,
Taglioni and Leontine Fay, the belles and the Boulevards,
the shops, spectacles, life, lions, and lures to
every species of pleasure, rather give you the impression
that, outside the barriers of Paris, time is wasted
in travel.

What pleasant idlers they look! The very shopkeepers
seem standing behind their counters for
amusement. The soubrette who sells you a cigar, or
ties a crape on your arm (it was for poor old Lafayette),
is coiffed as for a ball; the frotteur who takes the dust
from your boots, sings his lovesong as he brushes
away, the old man has his bouquet in his bosom, and
the beggar looks up at the new statue of Napoleon in
the Place Vendome—everybody has some touch of
fancy, some trace of a heart on the look-out, at least,
for pleasure.

I was at Lafayette's funeral. They buried the old
patriot like a criminal. Fixed bayonets before and
behind his hearse, his own National Guard disarmed,
and troops enough to beleaguer a city, were the honors
paid by the “citizen king” to the man who had
made him! The indignation, the scorn, the bitterness,
expressed on every side among the people, and
the ill-smothered cries of disgust as the two empty
royal carriages went by, in the funeral train, seemed
to me strong enough to indicate a settled and universal
hostility to the government.

I met Dr. Bowring on the Boulevard after the funeral
was over. I had not seen him for two years, but
he could talk of nothing but the great event of the
day—“You have come in time,” he said, “to see
how they carried the old general to his grave! What
would they say to this in America? Well—let them
go on! We shall see what will come of it! They
have buried Liberty and Lafayette together—our last
hope in Europe is quite dead with him!”

After three delightful days in Paris we took the
northern diligence; and, on the second evening, having
passed hastily through Montreuil, Abbeville, Boulogne,
and voted the road the dullest couple of hundred
miles we had seen in our travels, we were set
down in Calais. A stroll through some very indifferent
streets, a farewell visit to the last French café we
were likely to see for a long time, and some unsatisfactory
inquiries about Beau Brummel, who is said to
live here still, filled up till bedtime our last day on
the continent.

The celebrated Countess of Jersey was on board the
steamer, and some forty or fifty plebeian stomachs
shared with her fashionable ladyship and ourselves the
horrors of a passage across the channel. It is rather
the most disagreeable sea I ever traversed, though I
have seen “the Euxine,” “the roughest sea the traveller
e'er—s in,” etc., according to Don Juan.

I was lying on my back in a berth when the steamer
reached her moorings at Dover, and had neither eyes
nor disposition to indulge in the proper sentiment on
approaching the “white cliffs” of my fatherland. I
crawled on deck, and was met by a wind as cold as
December, and a crowd of rosy English faces on the
pier, wrapped in cloaks and shawls, and indulging curiosity
evidently at the expense of a shiver. It was
the first of June!

My companion led the way to a hotel, and we were
introduced by English waiters (I had not seen such a
thing in three years, and it was quite like being waited
on by gentlemen), to two blazing coal fires in the
“coffee-room” of the “Ship.” Oh what a comfortable
place it appeared! A rich Turkey carpet snugly
fitted, nice-rubbed mahogany tables, the morning
papers from London, bellropes that would ring the
bell, doors that would shut, a landlady that spoke English,
and was kind and civil; and, though there were
eight or ten people in the room, no noise above the
rustle of a newspaper, and positively, rich red damask
curtains, neither second-hand nor shabby, to the windows!
A greater contrast than this to the things that
answer to them on the contiment, could scarcely be
imagined.

Malgré all my observations on the English, whom
I have found everywhere the most open-hearted and
social people in the world, they are said by themselves
and others to be just the contrary; and, presuming
they were different in England, I had made up my
mind to seal my lips in all public places, and be conscious

of nobody's existence but my own. There
were several elderly persons dining at the different tables;
and one party, of a father and son, waited on by
their own servants in livery. Candles were brought
in, the different cloths were removed; and, as my companion
had gone to bed, I took up a newspaper to keep
me company over my wine. In the course of an
hour, some remark had been addressed to me, provocative
of conversation, by almost every individual in
the room! The subjects of discussion soon became
general, and I have seldom passed a more social and
agreeable evening. And so much for the first specimen
of English reserve!

The fires were burning brilliantly, and the coffee-room
was in the nicest order when we descended to
our breakfast at six the next morning. The tea-kettle
sung on the hearth, the toast was hot, and done to a
turn, and the waiter was neither sleepy nor uncivil—
all, again, very unlike a morning at a hotel in la belle
France.

The coach rattled up to the door punctually at the
hour; and, while they were putting on my way-worn
baggage, I stood looking in admiration at the carriage
and horses. They were four beautiful bays, in small,
neat harness of glazed leather, brass-mounted, their
coats shining like a racer's, their small, blood-looking
heads curbed up to stand exactly together, and their
hoofs blacked and brushed with the polish of a gentleman's
boots. The coach was gaudily painted, the only
thing out of taste about it; but it was admirably built,
the wheel-horses were quite under the coach-man's
box, and the whole affair, though it would carry twelve
or fourteen people, covered less ground than a French
one-horse cabriolet. It was altogether quite a study.

We mounted to the top of the coach; “all right,”
said the ostler, and away shot the four fine creatures,
turning their small ears, and stepping together with
the ease of a cat, at ten miles in the hour. The driver
was dressed like a Broadway idler, and sat in his
place, and held his “ribands” and his tandemwhip
with a confident air of superiority, as if he were quite
convinced that he and his team were beyond criticism
—and so they were! I could not but smile at constrasting
his silence and the speed and ease with which
we went along, with the clumsy, cumbrous diligence
or vetturino, and the crying, whipping, cursing and
ill-appointed postillions of France and Italy. It seems
odd, in a two hours' passage, to pass over such strong
lines of national difference—so near, and not even a
shading of one into the other.

England is described always very justly, and always
in the same words: “it is all one garden.” There is
not a cottage between Dover and London (seventy
miles), where a poet might not be happy to live. I
saw a hundred little spots I coveted with quite a heartache.
There was no poverty on the road. Everybody
seemed employed, and everybody well-made and
healthy. The relief from the deformity and disease
of the way-side beggars of the continent was very
striking.

We were at Canterbury before I had time to get accustomed
to my seat. The horses had been changed
twice; the coach, it seemed to me, hardly stopping
while it was done; way-passengers were taken up and
put down, with their baggage, without a word, and in
half a minute; money was tossed to the keeper of the
turnpike gate as we dashed through; the wheels went
over the smooth road without noise, and with scarce
a sense of motion—it was the perfection of travel.

The new driver from Canterbury rather astonished
me. He drove into London every day, and was more
of a “swell.” He owned the first team himself, four
blood horses of great beauty, and it was a sight to see
him drive them! His language was free from all slang,
and very gentlemanlike and well chosen, and he discussed
everything. He found out that I was an Amer
ican, and said we did not think enough of the memory
of Washington. Leaving his bones in the miserable
brick tomb, of which he had read descriptions,
was not, in his opinion, worthy of a country like mine
He went on to criticise Julia Grisi (the new singer just
then setting London on fire), hummed airs from “Il
Pirata,” to show her manner; sang an English song
like Braham; gave a decayed count, who sat on the
box, some very sensible advice about the management
of a wild son; drew a comparison between French
and Italian women (he had travelled); told us who the
old count was in very tolerable French, and preferred
Edmund Kean and Fanny Kemble to all actors in the
world. His taste and his philosophy, like his driving,
were quite unexceptionable. He was, withal, very
handsome, and had the easy and respectful manners of
a well-bred person. It seemed very odd to give him
a shilling at the end of the journey.

At Chatham we took up a very elegantly dressed
young man, who had come down on a fishing excursion.
He was in the army, and an Irishman. We had
not been half an hour on the seat together, before he
had discovered, by so many plain questions, that I was
an American, a stranger in England, and an acquaintance
of a whole regiment of his friends in Malta and
Corfu. If this had been a Yankee, thought I, what
a chapter it would have made for Basil Hall or Madame
Trollope! With all his inquisitiveness I liked
my companion, and half-accepted his offer to drive me
down to Epsom the next day to the races. I know no
American who would have beaten that on a stagecoach
acquaintance.

115. LETTER CXV.

London.—From the top of Shooter's Hill we got
our first view of London—an indistinct, architectural
mass, extending all round to the horizon, and half enveloped
in a dim and lurid smoke. “That is St.
Paul's—there is Westminster Abbey!—there is the
Tower of London!” What directions were these to
follow for the first time with the eye!

From Blackheath (seven or eight miles from the
centre of London), the beautiful hedges disappeared,
and it was one continued mass of buildings. The
houses were amazingly small, a kind of thing that
would do for an object in an imitation perspective park,
but the soul of neatness pervaded them. Trellises
were nailed between the little windows, roses quite
overshadowed the low doors, a painted fence enclosed
the hand's breadth of grass-plot, and very, oh, very
sweet faces bent over lapfuls of work beneath the snowy
and looped-up curtains. It was all home-like and
amiable. There was an affectionateness in the mere
outside of every one of them.

After crossing Waterloo Bridge, it was busy work
for the eyes. The brilliant shops, the dense crowds
of people, the absorbed air of every passenger, the
lovely women, the cries, the flying vehicles of every
description, passing with the most daugerous speed—
accustomed as I am to large cities, it quite made me
dizzy. We got into a “jarvey” at the coach-office,
and in half an hour I was in comfortable quarters,
with windows looking down St. James street, and the
most agreeable leaf of my life to turn over. “Great
emotions interfere little with the mechanical operations

of life,” however, and I dressed and dined, though it
was my first hour in London.

I was sitting in the little parlor alone over a fried
sole and a mutton cutlet, when the waiter came in,
and pleading the crowded state of the hotel, asked my
permission to spread the other side of the table for a
clergyman. I have a kindly preference for the cloth,
and made not the slightest objection. Enter a fat
man, with top-boots and a hunting-whip, rosy as Bacchus,
and excessively out of breath with mounting
one flight of stairs. Beefsteak and potatoes, a pot of
porter, and a bottle of sherry followed close on his
heels. With a single apology for the intrusion, the
reverend gentleman fell to, and we ate and drank for a
while in true English silence.

“From Oxford, sir, I presume,” he said at last,
pushing back his plate, with an air of satisfaction.

“No, I had never the pleasure of seeing Oxford.”

“R—e—ally! may I take a glass of wine with you,
sir?”

We got on swimmingly. He would not believe I
had never been in England till the day before, but his
cordiality was no colder for that. We exchanged port
and sherry, and a most amicable understanding found
its way down with the wine. Our table was near the
window, and a great crowd began to collect at the corner
of St. James' street. It was the king's birth-day,
and the people were thronging to see the nobility come
in state from the royal levee. The show was less
splendid than the same thing in Rome or Vienna, but
it excited far more of my admiration. Gaudiness and
tinsel were exchanged for plain richness and perfect
fitness in the carriages and harness, while the horses
were incomparably finer. My friend pointed out to
me the different liveries as they turned the corner into
Piccadilly, the duke of Wellington's among others.
I looked hard to see his grace; but the two pale and
beautiful faces on the back seat, carried nothing like
the military nose on the handles of the umbrellas.

The annual procession of mail-coaches followed,
and it was hardly less brilliant. The drivers and
guard in their bright red and gold uniforms, the admirable
horses driven so beautifully, the neat harness,
the exactness with which the room of each horse was
calculated, and the small space in which he worked,
and the compactness and contrivance of the coaches,
formed altogether one of the most interesting spectacles
I have ever seen. My friend, the clergyman, with
whom I had walked out to see them pass, criticised
the different teams con amore, but in language which
I did not always understand. I asked him once for
an explanation; but he looked rather grave, and said
something about “gammon,” evidently quite sure that
my ignorance of London was a mere quiz.

We walked down Piccadilly, and turned into, beyond
all comparison, the most handsome street I ever
saw. The Toledo of Naples, the Corso of Rome, the
Kohl-market of Vienna, the Rue de la Paix and Boulevards
of Paris, have each impressed me strongly
with their magnificence, but they are really nothing to
Regent-street. I had merely time to get a glance at
it before dark; but for breadth and convenience, for
the elegance and variety of the buildings, though all
of the same scale and material, and for the brilliancy
and expensiveness of the shops, it seemed to me quite
absurd to compare it with anything between New
York and Constantinople—Broadway and the Hippodrome
included.

It is the custom for the king's tradesmen to illuminate
their shops on his majesty's birth-night, and the
principal streets on our return were in a blaze of light.
The crowd was immense. None but the lower order
seemed abroad, and I can not describe to you the effect
on my feelings on hearing my language spoken by
every man, woman, and child, about me. It seemed a
completely foreign country in every other respect, dif
ferent from what I had imagined, different from my
own and all that I had seen, and coming to it last, it
seemed to me the farthest off and strangest country
of all—and yet the little sweep, who went laughing
through the crowd, spoke a language that I had heard
attempted in vain by thousands of educated people,
and that I had grown to consider next to unattainable
by others, and almost useless to myself. Still, it did
not make me feel at home. Everything else about me
was too new. It was like some mysterious change in
my own ears—a sudden power of comprehension,
such as a man might feel who was cured suddenly of
deafness. You can scarcely enter into my feelings
till you have had the changes of French, Italian, German,
Greek, Turkish, Illyrian, and the mixtures and
dialects of each, rung upon your hearing almost exclusively,
as I have for years. I wandered about as if I
were exercising some supernatural faculty in a dream.

A friend in Italy had kindly given me a letter to
Lady Blessington, and with a strong curiosity to see
this celebrated lady, I called on the second day after
my arrival in London. It was “deep i' the afternoon,”
but I had not yet learned the full meaning of
“town hours.” “Her ladyship had not come down
to breakfast.” I gave the letter and my address to the
powdered footman, and had scarce reached home when
a note arrived inviting me to call the same evening
at ten.

In a long library lined alternately with splendidly
bound books and mirrors, and with a deep window of
the breadth of the room, opening upon Hyde Park, I
found Lady Blessington alone. The picture to my
eye as the door opened was a very lovely one. A woman
of remarkable beauty half buried in a fauteuil of
yellow satin, reading by a magnificent lamp, suspended
from the centre of the arched ceiling; sofas,
couches, ottomans, and busts, arranged in rather a
crowded sumptuousness through the room; enamel
tables, covered with expensive and elegant trifles in
every corner, and a delicate white hand relieved on the
back of a book, to which the eye was attracted by the
blaze of its diamond rings. As the servant mentioned
my name, she rose and gave me her hand very cordially,
and a gentleman entering immediately after,
she presented me to her son-in-law, Count D'Orsay,
the well known Pelham of London, and certainly the
most splendid specimen of a man and a well-dressed
one that I had ever seen. Tea was brought in immediately,
and conversation went swimmingly on.

Her ladyship's inquiries were principally about
America, of which, from long absence I knew very
little. She was extremely curious to know the degrees
of reputation the present popular authors of
England enjoy among us, particularly Bulwer, Galt,
and D'Israeli (the author of Vivian Grey). “If you
will come to-morrow night,” she said, “you will see
Bulwer. I am delighted that he is popular in America.
He is envied and abused by all the literary men
of London, for nothing, I believe, except that he gets
five hundred pounds for his books and they fifty, and
knowing this, he chooses to assume a pride (some
people call it puppyism), which is only the armor of a
sensitive mind, afraid of a wound. He is to his friends
the most frank and gay creature in the world, and
open to boyishness with those who he thinks understand
and value him. He has a brother, Henry, who
is as clever as himself in a different vein, and is just
now publishing a book on the present state of France.
Bulwer's wife, you know, is one of the most beautiful
women in London, and his house is the resort of both
fashion and talent. He is just now hard at work on a
new book, the subject of which is the last days of
Pompeii. The hero is a Roman dandy, who wastes
himself in luxury, till this great catastrophe rouses
him and develops a character of the noblest capabilities.
Is Galt much liked?”

I answered to the best of my knowledge that he
was not. His life of Byron was a stab at the dead
body of the noble poet, which, for one, I never could
forgive, and his books were clever, but vulgar. He
was evidently not a gentleman in his mind. This was
the opinion I had formed in America, and I had never
heard another.

“I am sorry for it,” said Lady B., “for he is the
dearest and best old man in the world. I know him
well. He is just on the verge of the grave, but comes
to see me now and then, and if you had known how
shockingly Byron treated him, you would only wonder
at his sparing his memory so much.”

“Nil mortuis nisi bonum,” I thought would have
been a better course. If he had reason to dislike
him, he had better not have written since he was dead.

“Perhaps—perhaps. But Galt has been all his life
miserably poor, and lived by his books. That must
be his apology. Do you know the D'Israeli's in
America?”

I assured her ladyship that the “Curiosities of Literature,”
by the father, and “Vivian Grey and Contarini
Fleming,” by the son, were universally known.

“I am pleased at that, too, for I like them both.
D'Israeli the elder, came here with his son the other
night. It would have delighted you to see the old
man's pride in him. He is very fond of him, and as
he was going away, he patted him on the head, and
said to me, “take care of him, Lady Blessington, for
my sake. He is a clever lad, but he wants ballast. I
am glad he has the honor to know you, for you will
check him sometimes when I am away!” D'Israeli,
the elder, lives in the country, about twenty miles
from town, and seldom comes up to London. He is
a very plain old man in his manners, as plain as his
son is the reverse. D'Israeli, the younger, is quite
his own character of Vivian Grey, crowded with talent,
but very soigné of his curls, and a bit of a coxcomb.
There is no reverse about him, however, and
he is the only joyous dandy I ever saw.”

I asked if the account I had seen in some American
paper of a literary celebration at Canandaigua, and
the engraving of her ladyship's name with some others
upon a rock, was not a quiz.

“Oh, by no means. I was equally flattered and
amused by the whole affair. I have a great idea of
taking a trip to America to see it. Then the letter,
commencing `Most charming countess—for charming
you must be since you have written the conversations
of Lord Byron'—oh, it was quite delightful. I
have shown it to everybody. By the way, I receive a
great many letters from America, from people I never
heard of, written in the most extraordinary style of
compliment, apparently in perfectly good faith. I
hardly know what to make of them.”

I accounted for it by the perfect seclusion in which
great numbers of cultivated people live in our country,
who, having neither intrigue, nor fashion, nor
twenty other things to occupy their minds as in England,
depend entirely upon books, and consider an
author who has given them pleasure as a friend.
America, I said, has probably more literary enthusiasts
than any country in the world; and there are thousands
of romantic minds in the interior of New England,
who know perfectly every writer this side the
water, and hold them all in affectionate veneration,
scarcely conceivable by a sophisticated European. If
it were not for such readers, literature would be the
most thankless of vocations. I, for one, would never
write another line.

“And do you think these are the people who write
to me? If I could think so, I should be exceedingly
happy. People in England are refined down to such
heartlessness—criticism, private and public, is so interested
and so cold, that it is really delightful to know
there is a more generous tribunal. Indeed I think all
our authors now are beginning to write for America.
We think already a great deal of your praise or
censure.”

I asked if her ladyship had known many Americans.

“Not in London, but a great many abroad. I was
with Lord Blessington in his yacht at Naples, when
the American fleet was lying there, eight or ten years
ago, and we were constantly on board your ships. I
knew Commodore Creighton and Captain Deacon extremely
well, and liked them particularly. They
were with us, either on board the yacht or the frigate
every evening, and I remember very well the bands
playing always `God save the King' as we went up
the side. Count D'Orsay here, who spoke very little
English at that time, had a great passion for Yankee
Doodle, and it was always played at his request.”

The count, who still speaks the language with a
very slight accent, but with a choice of words that
shows him to be a man of uncommon tact and elegance
of mind, inquired after several of the officers,
whom I have not the pleasure of knowing. He seemed
to remember his visits to the frigate with great
pleasure. The conversation, after running upon a variety
of topics, which I could not with propriety put
into a letter for the public eye, turned very naturally
upon Byron. I had frequently seen the Countess
Guiccioli on the continent, and I asked Lady Blessington
if she knew her.

“No. We were at Pisa when they were living together,
but though Lord Blessington had the greatest
curiosity to see her, Byron would never permit it.
`She has a red head of her own,' said he, `and don't
like to show it.' Byron treated the poor creature
dreadfully ill. She feared more than she loved him.”

She had told me the same thing herself in Italy.

It would be impossible, of course, to make a full
and fair record of a conversation of some hours. I
have only noted one or two topics which I thought
most likely to interest an American reader. During
all this long visit, however, my eyes were very busy in
finishing for memory a portrait of the celebrated and
beautiful woman before me.

The portrait of Lady Blessington in the Book of
Beauty is not unlike her, but it is still an unfavorable
likeness. A picture by Sir Thomas Lawrence hung
opposite me, taken, perhaps, at the age of eighteen,
which is more like her, and as captivating a representation
of a just matured woman, full of loveliness and
love, the kind of creature with whose divine sweetness
the gazer's heart aches, as ever was drawn in the
painter's most inspired hour. The original is now
(she confessed it very frankly) forty. She looks
something on the sunny side of thirty. Her person
is full, but preserves all the fineness of an admirable
shape; her foot is not crowded in a satin slipper, for
which a Cinderella might long be looked for in vain,
and her complexion (an unusually fair skin, with very
dark hair and eyebrows), is of even a girlish delicacy
and freshness. Her dress of blue satin (if I am describing
her like a milliner, it is because I have here
and there a reader of the Mirror in my eye who will
be amused by it), was cut low and folded across her
bosom, in a way to show to advantage the round and
sculpture-like curve and whiteness of a pair of exquisite
shoulders, while her hair dressed close to her
head, and parted simply on her forehead with a rich
ferronier of turquoise, enveloped in clear outline a
head with which it would be difficult to find a fault.
Her features are regular, and her mouth, the most expressive
of them, has a ripe fulness and freedom of
play, peculiar to the Irish physiognomy, and expressive
of the most unsuspicious good humor. Add to
all this a voice merry and sad by turns, but always musical,
and manners of the most unpretending elegance,
yet even more remarkable for their winning kindness,

and you have the most prominent traits of one of the
most lovely and fascinating women I have ever seen.
Remembering her talents and her rank, and the unenvying
admiration she receives from the world of
fashion and genius, it would be difficult to reconcile
her lot to the “doctrine of compensation.”

There is one remark I may as well make here, with
regard to the personal descriptions and anecdotes with
which my letters from England will of course be filled.
It is quite a different thing from publishing such
letters in London. America is much farther off from
England than England from America. You in New
York read the periodicals of this country, and know
everything that is done or written here, as if you lived
within the sound of Bow-bell. The English, however,
just know of our existence, and if they get a
general idea twice a year of our progress in politics,
they are comparatively well informed. Our periodical
literature is never even heard of. Of course,
there can be no offence to the individuals themselves
in anything which a visiter could write, calculated to
convey an idea of the person or manners of distinguished
people to the American public. I mention
it lest, at first thought, I might seem to have abused
the hospitality or frankness of those on whom letters
of introduction have given me claims for civility.

116. LETTER CXVI.

Spent my first day in London in wandering about
the finest part of the West End. It is nonsense to
compare it to any other city in the world. From the
Horse-Guards to the Regent's Park alone, there is
more magnificence in architecture than in the whole
of any other metropolis in Europe, and I have seen
the most and the best of them. Yet this, though a
walk of more than two miles, is but a small part even
of the fashionable extremity of London. I am not
easily tired in a city; but I walked till I could scarce
lift my feet from the ground, and still the parks and
noble streets extended before and around me as far as
the eye could reach, and strange as they were in reality,
the names were as familiar to me as if my childhood
had been passed among them. “Bond Street,”
“Grosvenor Square,” “Hyde Park,” look new to my
eye, but they sound very familiar to my ear.

The equipages of London are much talked of, but
they exceed even description. Nothing could be more
perfect, or apparently more simple than the gentleman's
carriage that passes you in the street. Of a
modest color, but the finest material, the crest just visible
on the panels, the balance of the body upon its
springs true and easy, the hammercloth and liveries of
the neatest and most harmonious colors, the harness
slight and elegant, and the horses “the only splendid
thing” in the establishment—is a description that answers
the most of them. Perhaps the most perfect
thing in the world, however, is a St. James's-street
stanhope or cabriolet, with its dandy owner on the
whip-seat, and the “tiger” beside him. The attitudes
of both the gentleman and the “gentleman's gentleman”
are studied to a point, but nothing could be
more knowing or exquisite than either. The whole
affair, from the angle of the bell-crowned hat (the
prevailing fashion on the steps of Crockford's at present),
to the blood legs of the thorough-bred creature
in harness, is absolutely faultless. I have seen many
subjects for study in my first day's stroll, but I leave
the men and women and some other less important features
of London for maturer observation.

In the evening I kept my appointment with Lady
Blessington. She had deserted her exquisite library
for the drawing-room, and sat, in fuller dress, with six
or seven gentlemen about her. I was presented immediately
to all, and when the conversation was resumed,
I took the opportunity to remark the distinguished
coterie with which she was surrounded.

Nearest me sat Smith, the author of “Rejected Addresses”—a
hale, handsome man, apparently fifty,
with white hair, and a very nobly-formed head and
physiognomy. His eye alone, small and with lids
contracted into an habitual look of drollery, betrayed
the bent of his genius. He held a cripple's crutch in
his hand, and though otherwise rather particularly
well dressed, wore a pair of large Indiarubber shoes—
the penalty he was paying doubtless for the many good
dinners he had eaten. He played rather an aside in
the conversation, whipping in with a quiz or a witticism
whenever he could get an opportunity, but more a listener
than a talker.

On the opposite side of Lady B. stood Henry Bulwer,
the brother of the novelist, very earnestly engaged
in a discussion of some speech of O'Connell's.
He is said by many to be as talented as his brother,
and has lately published a book on the present state
of France. He is a small man, very slight and gentleman-like,
a little pitted with the smallpox, and of
very winning and persuasive manners. I liked him at
the first glance.

His opponent in the argument was Fonblanc, the
famous editor of the Examiner, said to be the best
political writer of his day. I never saw a much worse
face—sallow, seamed, and hollow, his teeth irregular,
his skin livid, his straight black hair uncombed and
straggling over his forehead—he looked as if he might
be the gentleman

A hollow, croaking voice, and a small, fiery black eye,
with a smile like a skeleton's, certainly did not improve
his physiognomy. He sat upon his chair very awkwardly,
and was very ill-dressed, but every word he
uttered showed him to be a man of claims very superior
to exterior attraction. The soft musical voice,
and elegant manner of the one, and the satirical sneering
tone and angular gesture of the other, were in
very strong contrast.

A German prince, with a star on his breast, trying
with all his might, but, from his embarrassed look,
quite unsuccessfully, to comprehend the drift of the
argument, the Duke de Richelieu, whom I had seen
at the court of France, the inheritor of nothing but
the name of his great ancestor, a dandy and a fool,
making no attempt to listen; a famous traveller just
returned from Constantinople; and the splendid person
of Count D'Orsay in a careless attitude upon the
ottoman, completed the cordon.

I feel into conversation after a while with Smith,
who, supposing I might not have heard the names of
the others, in the hurry of an introduction, kindly
took the trouble to play the dictionary, and added a
graphic character of each as he named him. Among
other things he talked a great deal of America,
and asked me if I knew our distinguished countryman,
Washington Irving. I had never been so
fortunate as to meet him. “You have lost a great
deal,” he said, “for never was so delightful a fellow.
I was once taken down with him into the country by a
merchant, to dinner. Our friend stopped his carriage
at the gate of his park, and asked us if we would walk
through his grounds to the house. Irving refused
and held me down by the coat, so that we drove on to
the house together, leaving our host to follow on foot.
`I make it a principle,' said Irving, `never to walk
with a man through his own grounds. I have no idea
of praising a thing whether I like it or not. You and I
will do them to-morrow morning by ourselves.”' The

rest of the company had turned their attention to
Smith as he began his story, and there was a universal
inquiry after Mr. Irving. Indeed the first questions
on the lips of every one to whom I am introduced
as an American, are of him and Cooper. The
latter seems to me to be admired as much here as
abroad, in spite of a common impression that he dislikes
the nation. No man's works could have higher
praise in the general conversation that followed, though
several instances were mentioned of his having shown
an unconquerable aversion to the English when in England.
Lady Blessington mentioned Mr. Bryant, and
I was pleased at the immediate tribute paid to his delightful
poetry by the talented circle around her.

Toward twelve o'clock, “Mr. Lytton Bulwer” was
announced, and enter the author of Pelham. I had
made up my mind how he should look, and between
prints and descriptions thought I could scarcely be
mistaken in my idea of his person. No two things
could be more unlike, however than the ideal Mr.
Bulwer in my mind and the real Mr. Bulwer who followed
the announcement. Imprimis, the gentleman
who entered was not handsome. I beg pardon of the
boarding-schools—but he really was not. The engraving
of him published some time ago in America is as
much like any other man living, and gives you no idea
of his head whatever. He is short, very much bent
in the back, slightly knock-kneed, and, if my opinion
in such matters goes for anything, as ill-dressed a man
for a gentleman, as you will find in London. His figure
is slight and very badly put together, and the only
commendable point in his person, as far as I could
see, was the smallest foot I ever saw a man stand upon.
Au reste, I liked his manners extremely. He
ran up to Lady Blessington, with the joyous heartiness
of a boy let out of school; and the “how d'ye, Bulwer!”
went round, as he shook hands with everybody,
in the style of welcome usually given to “the best fellow
in the world.” As I had brought a letter of introduction
to him from a friend in Italy, Lady Blessington
introduced me particularly, and we had a long
conversation about Naples and its pleasant society.

Bulwer's head is phrenologically a fine one. His
forehead retreats very much, but is very broad and
well marked, and the whole air is that of decided mental
superiority. His nose is aquiline, and far too large
for proportion, though he conceals its extreme prominence
by an immense pair of red whiskers, which entirely
conceal the lower part of his face in profile.
His complexion is fair, his hair profuse, curly, and of
a light auburn, his eye not remarkable, and his mouth
contradictory, I should think, of all talent. A more
good-natured, habitually-smiling, nerveless expression
could hardly be imagined. Perhaps my impression
is an imperfect one, as he was in the highest spirits,
and was not serious the whole evening for a minute—
but it is strictly and faithfully my impression.

I can imagine no style of conversation calculated
to be more agreeable than Bulwer's. Gay, quick, various,
half-satirical, and always fresh and different from
everybody else, he seemed to talk because he could
not help it, and infected everybody with his spirits. I
can not give even the substance of it in a letter, for it
was in a great measure local or personal. A great
deal of fun was made of a proposal by Lady Blessington,
to take Bulwer to America and show him at so
much a head. She asked me whether I thought it
would be a good speculation. I took upon myself to
assure her ladyship, that, provided she played showman,
the “concern,” as they would phrase it in America,
would be certainly a profitable one. Bulwer said he
would rather go in disguise and hear them abuse his
books. It would be pleasant, he thought, to hear the
opinions of people who judged him neither as a member
of parliament nor a dandy—simply a book-maker.
Smith asked him if he kept an amanuensis. “No,”
he said, “I scribble it all out myself, and send it to
the press in a most ungentlemanlike hand, half print
and half hieroglyphic, with all its imperfections on its
head, and correct in the proof—very much to the dissatisfaction
of the publisher, who sends me in a bill
of sixteen pounds six shillings and fourpence for extra
corrections. Then I am free to confess I don't know
grammar. Lady Blessington, do you know grammar?
I detest grammar. There never was such a thing
heard of before Lindley Murray. I wonder what they
did for grammar before his day! Oh, the delicious
blunders one sees when they are irretrievable! And
the best of it is, the critics never get hold of them.
Thank Heaven for second editions, that one may scratch
out his blots, and go down clean and gentleman-like
to posterity!” Smith asked him if he had ever reviewed
one of his own books. “No—but I could!
And then how I should like to recriminate and defend
myself indignantly! I think I could be preciously
severe. Depend upon it nobody knows a book's defects
half so well as its author. I have a great idea
of criticising my works for my posthumous memoirs.
Shall I, Smith? Shall I, Lady Blessington?”

Bulwer's voice, like his brother's, is exceedingly
lover-like and sweet. His playful tones are quite delicious,
and his clear laugh is the soul of sincere and
careless merriment.

It is quite impossible to convey in a letter scrawled
literally between the end of a late visit and a tempting
pillow, the evanescent and pure spirit of a conversation
of wits. I must confine myself, of course, in such
sketches, to the mere sentiment of things that concern
general literature and ourselves.

“The Rejected Addresses” got upon his crutches
about three o'clock in the morning, and I made my
exit with the rest, thanking Heaven, that, though in a
strange country, my mother-tongue was the language
of its men of genius.

117. LETTER CXVII.

I have just returned from Ascot races. Ascot
Heath, on which the course is laid out, is a high platform
of land, beautifully situated on a hill above
Windsor Castle, about twenty-five miles from London.
I went down with a party of gentlemen in the
morning and returned at evening, doing the distance
with relays of horses in something less than three
hours. This, one would think, is very fair speed, but
we were passed continually by the “bloods” of the
road, in comparison with whom we seemed getting on
rather at a snail's pace.

The scenery on the way was truly English—one
series of finished landscapes, of every variety of
combination. Lawns, fancy-cottages, manor-houses,
groves, roses and flower-gardens, make up England.
It surfeits the eye at last. You could not drop a poet
out of the clouds upon any part of it I have seen,
where, within five minutes' walk, he would not find
himself in Paradise.

We flew past Virginia Water and through the sunflecked
shades of Windsor Park, with the speed of the
wind. On reaching the Heath, we dashed out of the
road, and cutting through fern and brier, our experienced
whip put his wheels on the rim of the course,
as near the stands as some thousands of carriages

arrived before us would permit, and then, cautioning
us to take the bearings of our position, least we
should lose him after the race, he took off his horses,
and left us to choose our own places.

A thousand red and yellow flags were flying from as
many snowy tents in the midst of the green heath;
ballad-signers and bands of music were amusing their
little audiences in every direction; splendid markees
covering gambling-tables, surrounded the winning-post;
groups of country people were busy in every
bush, eating and singing, and the great stands were
piled with row upon row of human heads waiting
anxiously for the exhilarating contest.

Soon after we arrived, the king and royal family
drove up the course with twenty carriages, and scores
of postillions and outriders in red and gold, flying over
the turf as majesty flies in no other country; and,
immediately after, the bell rang to clear the course
for the race. Such horses! The earth seemed to
fling them off as they touched it. The lean jockeys,
in their party-colored caps and jackets, rode the fine-limbed,
slender creatures up and down together, and
then returning to the starting-post, off they shot like
so many arrows from the bow.

Whiz! you could tell neither color nor shape as
they passed across the eye. Their swiftness was incredible.
A horse of Lord Chesterfield's was rather
the favorite; and for the sake of his great-grandfather,
I had backed him with my small wager.
“Glaucus is losing,” said some one on the top of a
carriage above me, but round they swept again, and I
could just see that one glorious creature was doubling
the leaps of every other horse, and in a moment
Glaucus and Lord Chesterfield had won.

The course between the races is a promenade of
some thousands of the best-dressed people in England,
I thought I had never seen so many handsome
men and women, but particularly men. The nobility
of this country, unlike every other, is by far the manliest
and finest looking class of its population. The
contadini of Rome, the lazzaroni of Naples, the paysans
of France, are incomparably more handsome
than their superiors in rank, but it is strikingly different
here. A set of more elegant and well-proportioned
men than those pointed out to me by my
friends as the noblemen on the course, I never saw,
except only in Greece. The Albanians are seraphs
to look at.

Excitement is hungry, and after the first race our
party produced their baskets and bottles, and spreading
out the cold pie and champaign upon the grass,
between the wheels of the carriages, we drank Lord
Chesterfield's health and ate for our own, in an al
fresco style worthy of Italy. Two veritable Bohemians,
brown, black-eyed gipsies, the models of those
I had seen in their wicker tents in Asia, profited by
the liberality of the hour, and came in for an upper
crust to a pigeon pie, that, to tell the truth, they
seemed to appreciate.

Race followed race, but I am not a contributor to
the Sporting Magazine, and could not give you their
merits in comprehensible terms if I were.

In one of the intervals, I walked under the king's
stand, and saw her majesty, the queen, and the young
Princess Victoria, very distinctly. They were listening
to a ballad-singer, and leaning over the front of
the box with an amused attention, quite as sincere,
apparently, as any beggar's in the ring. The queen
is the plainest woman in her dominions, beyond a
doubt. The princess is much better-looking than the
pictures of her in the shops, and, for the heir to such
a crown as that of England, quite unnecessarily pretty
and interesting. She will be sold, poor thing—bartered
away by those great dealers in royal hearts,
whose grand calculations will not be much consolation
to her if she happens to have a taste of her own.

[The following sketch was written a short time previous
to the death of Charles Lamb.]

Invited to breakfast with a gentleman in the temple to
meet Charles Lamb and his sister—“Elia and Bridget
Elia.” I never in my life had an invitation more to
my taste. The essays of Elia are certainly the most
charming things in the world, and it has been for the
last ten years my highest compliment to the literary
taste of a friend to present him with a copy. Who
has not smiled over the humorous description of Mrs.
Battle? Who that has read Elia would not give
more to see him than all the other authors of his time
put together?

Our host was rather a character. I had brought a
letter of introduction to him from Walter Savage
Landor, the author of Imaginary Conversations, living
at Florence, with a request that he would put me in a
way of seeing one or two men about whom I had a
curiosity, Lamb more particularly. I could not have
been recommended to a better person. Mr. R. is a
gentleman who everybody says, should have been an
author, but who never wrote a book. He is a profound
German scholar, has travelled much, is the intimate
friend of Southey, Coleridge, and Lamb, has
breakfasted with Goëthe, travelled with Wordsworth
through France and Italy, and spends part of every
summer with him, and knows everything and everybody
that is distinguished—in short, is, in his bachelor's
chambers in the temple, the friendly nucleus of
a great part of the talent of England.

I arrived a half hour before Lamb, and had time to
learn some of his peculiarities. He lives a little out
of London, and is very much of an invalid. Some
family circumstances have tended to depress him very
much of late years, and unless excited by convivial
intercourse, he scarce shows a trace of what he was.
He was very much pleased with the American reprint
of his Elia, though it contains several things which are
not his—written so in his style, however, that it is
scarce a wonder the editor should mistake them. If
I remember right, they were “Valentine's Day,” the
“Nuns of Caverswell,” and “Twelfth Night.” He
is excessively given to mystifying his friends, and is
never so delighted as when he has persuaded some
one into the belief of one of his grave inventions. His
amusing biographical sketch of Liston was in this vein,
and there was no doubt in anybody's mind that it was
authentic, and written in perfectly good faith. Liston
was highly enraged with it, and Lamb was delighted
in proportion.

There was a rap at the door at last, and enter a
gentleman in black small-clothes and gaiters, short
and very slight in his person, his head set on his
shoulders with a thoughtful, forward bent, his hair just
sprinkled with gray, a beautiful deepset eye, aquiline
nose, and a very indescribable mouth. Whether
it expressed most humor or feeling, good nature
or a kind of whimsical peevishness, or twenty other
things which passed over it by turns, I can not in the
least be certain.

His sister, whose literary reputation is associated
very closely with her brother's, and who, as the
original of “Bridget Elia,” is a kind of object for
literary affection, came in after him. She is a small,
bent figure, evidently a victim to illness, and hears
with difficulty. Her face has been, I should think, a
fine and handsome one, and her bright gray eye is still
full of intelligence and fire. They both seemed quite
at home in our friend's chambers, and as there was to
be no one else, we immediately drew round the breakfast
table. I had set a large arm chair for Miss Lamb.
“Don't take it, Mary,” said Lamb, pulling it away
from her very gravely, “it appears as if you were going
to have a tooth drawn.”

The conversation was very local. Our host and his

guest had not met for some weeks, and they had a
great deal to say of their mutual friends. Perhaps in
this way, however, I saw more of the author, for his
manner of speaking of them and the quaint humor
with which he complained of one, and spoke well of
another, was so in the vein of his inimitable writings,
that I could have fancied myself listening to an audible
composition of a new Elia. Nothing could be more
delightful than the kindness and affection between the
brother and the sister, though Lamb was continually
taking advantage of her deafness to mystify her with
the most singular gravity upon every topic that was
started. “Poor Mary!” said he, “she hears all of an
epigram but the point.” “What are you saying of
me, Charles?” she asked. “Mr. Willis,” said he,
raising his voice, “admires your Confessions of a
Drunkard very much, and I was saying that it was no
merit of yours, that you understood the subject.” We
had been speaking of this admirable essay (which is
his own) half an hour before.

The conversation turned upon literature after awhile,
and our host, the templar, could not express himself
strongly enough in admiration of Webster's speeches,
which he said were exciting the greatest attention
among the politicians and lawyers of England. Lamb
said, “I don't know much of American authors.
Mary, there, devours Cooper's novels with a ravenous
appetite, with which I have no sympathy. The only
American book I ever read twice, was the `Journal
of Edward Woolman,' a quaker preacher and tailor,
whose character is one of the finest I ever met with.
He tells a story or two about negro slaves, that brought
the tears into my eyes. I can read no prose now,
though Hazlitt sometimes, to be sure—but then Hazlitt
is worth all modern prose writers put together.”

Mr. R. spoke of buying a book of Lamb's a few
days before, and I mentioned my having bought a copy
of Elia the last day I was in America, to send as a
parting gift to one of the most lovely and talented
women in our country.

“What did you give for it?” said Lamb.

“About seven and sixpence.”

“Permit me to pay you that,” said he, and with the
utmost earnestness he counted out the money upon
the table.

“I never yet wrote anything that would sell,” he
continued. “I am the publisher's ruin. My last
poem won't sell a copy. Have you seen it, Mr.
Willis?”

I had not.

“It's only eighteen pence, and I'll give you sixpence
toward it;” and he described to me where I
should find it sticking up in a shop-window in the
Strand.

Lamb ate nothing, and complained in a querulous
tone of the veal pie. There was a kind of potted fish
(of which I forget the name at this moment) which he
had expected our friend would procure for him. He
inquired whether there was not a morsel left perhaps in
the bottom of the last pot. Mr. R. was not sure.

“Send and see,” said Lamb, “and if the pot has
been cleaned, bring me the cover. I think the sight
of it would do me good.”

The cover was brought, upon which there was a
picture of the fish. Lamb kissed it with a reproachful
look at his friend, and then left the table and began to
wander round the room with a broken, uncertain step,
as if he almost forgot to put one leg before the other.
His sister rose after awhile, and commenced walking
up and down very much in the same manner on the
opposite side of the table, and in the course of half an
hour they took their leave.

To any one who loves the writings of Charles Lamb
with but half my own enthusiasm, even these little
particulars of an hour passed in his company, will
have an interest. To him who does not, they will
seem dull and idle. Wreck as he certainly is, and
must be, however, of what he was, I would rather have
seen him for that single hour, than the hundred and
one sights of London put together.

118. LETTER CXVIII.

Dined at Lady Blessington's, in company with several
authors, three or four noblemen, and a clever exquisite
or two. The authors were Bulwer, the novelist,
and his brother, the statist; Procter (better known
as Barry Cornwall), D'Israeli, the author of Vivian
Grey; and Fonblanc, of the Examiner. The principal
nobleman was Lord Durham, and the principal
exquisite (though the word scarce applies to the magnificent
scale on which nature has made him, and on
which he makes himself), was Count D'Orsay.
There were plates for twelve.

I had never seen Procter, and, with my passionate
love for his poetry, he was the person at table of the
most interest to me. He came late, and as twilight
was just darkening the drawing-room, I could only see
that a small man followed the announcement, with a
remarkably timid manner, and a very white forehead.

D'Israeli had arrived before me, and sat in the deep
window, looking out upon Hyde Park, with the last
rays of daylight reflected from the gorgeous gold
flowers of a splendidly embroidered waistcoat. Patent
leather pumps, a white stick, with a black cord
and tassel, and a quantity of chains about his neck
and pockets, served to make him, even in the dim
light, rather a conspicuous object.

Bulwer was very badly dressed, as usual, and wore
a flashy waistcoat of the same description as D'Israeli's.
Count D'Orsay was very splendid, but very undefinable.
He seemed showily dressed till you looked to
particulars, and then it seemed only a simple thing,
well fitted to a very magnificent person. Lord Albert
Conyngham was a dandy of common materials; and
my Lord Durham, though he looked a young man, if
he passed for a lord at all in America, would pass for
a very ill-dressed one.

For Lady Blessington, she is one of the most handsome
and quite the best-dressed woman in London;
and, without farther description, I trust the readers of
the Mirror will have little difficulty in imagining a
scene that, taking a wild American into the account,
was made up of rather various material.

The blaze of lamps on the dinner table was very favorable
to my curiosity, and as Procter and D'Israeli
sat directly opposite me, I studied their faces to advantage.
Barry Cornwall's forehead and eye are all
that would strike you in his features. His brows are
heavy; and his eye, deeply sunk, has a quick, restless
fire, that would have struck me, I think, had I not
known he was a poet. His voice has the huskiness
and elevation of a man more accustomed to think
than converse, and it was never heard except to give a
brief and very condensed opinion, or an illustration,
admirably to the point, of the subject under discussion.
He evidently felt that he was only an observer
in the party.

D'Israeli has one of the most remarkable faces I
ever saw. He is lividly pale, and but for the energy
of his action and the strength of his lungs, would
seem a victim to consumption. His eye is as black as
Erebus, and has the most mocking and lying-in-wait
sort of expression conceivable. His mouth is alive
with a kind of working and impatient nervousness,

and when he has burst forth, as he does constantly,
with a particularly successful cataract of expression,
it assumes a curl of triumphant scorn that would be
worthy of a Mephistopheles. His hair is as extraordinary
as his taste in waistcoats. A thick heavy mass
of jet black ringlets falls over his left cheek almost to
his collarless stock, while on the right temple it is
parted and put away with the smooth carefulness of a
girl's, and shines most unctiously,

The anxieties of the first course, as usual, kept
every mouth occupied for awhile, and then the dandies
led off with a discussion of Count D'Orsay's rifle
match (he is the best rifle shot in England), and various
matters as uninteresting to transatlantic readers.
The new poem, Philip Van Artevelde, came up after
awhile, and was very much over-praised (me judice).
Bulwer said, that as the author was the principal writer
for the Quarterly Review, it was a pity it was first
praised in that periodical, and praised so unqualifiedly.
Procter said nothing about it, and I respected his silence;
for, as a poet, he must have felt the poverty
of the poem, and was probably unwilling to attack a
new aspirant in his laurels.

The next book discussed was Beckford's Italy, or
rather the next author, for the writer of Vathek is
more original, and more talked of than his books, and
just now occupies much of the attention of London.
Mr. Beckford has been all his life enormously rich,
has luxuriated in every country with the fancy of a
poet, and the refined splendor of a Sybarite, was the
admiration of Lord Byron, who visited him at Cintra,
was the owner of Fonthill, and, plus fort encore, his is
one of the oldest families in England. What could
such a man attempt that would not be considered extraordinary!

D'Israeli was the only one at table who knew him,
and the style in which he gave a sketch of his habits
and manners, was worthy of himself. I might as well
attempt to gather up the foam of the sea as to convey
an idea of the extraordinary language in which he
clothed his description. There were, at least, five
words in every sentence that must have been very much
astonished at the use they were put to, and yet no others
apparently could so well have conveyed his idea.
He talked like a race-horse approaching the winning-post,
every muscle in action, and the utmost energy
of expression flung out in every burst. It is a great
pity he is not in parliament.[30]

The particulars he gave of Beckford, though stripped
of his gorgeous digressions and parentheses, may
be interesting. He lives now at Bath, where he has
built a house on two sides of the street, connected by
a covered bridge a la Ponte de Sospiri, at Venice.
His servants live on one side, and he and his sole
companion on the other. This companion is a hideous
dwarf, who imagines himself, or is, a Spanish
duke; and Mr. Beckford for many years has supported
him in a style befitting his rank, treats him with all
the deference due to his title, and has, in general, no
other society (I should not wonder, myself, if it
turned out a woman); neither of them is often seen,
and when in London, Mr. Beckford is only to be approached
through his man of business. If you call,
he is not at home. If you would leave a card or address
him a note, his servant has strict orders not to
take in anything of the kind. At Bath he has built a
high tower, which is a great mystery to the inhabitants.
Around the interior, to the very top, it is lined with
books, approachable with a light spiral staircase; and
in the pavement below, the owner has constructed a
double crypt for his own body, and that of his dwarf
companion, intending, with a desire for human neighborhood
which has not appeared in his life, to leave
the library to the city, that all who enjoy it shall pass
over the bodies below.

Mr. Beckford thinks very highly of his own books,
and talks of his early production (Vathek) in terms of
unbounded admiration. He speaks slightingly of
Byron, and of his praise, and affects to despise utterly
the popular taste. It appeared altogether, from D'Israeli's
account, that he is a splendid egotist, determined
to free life as much as possible from its usual fetters,
and to enjoy it to the highest degree of which
his genius, backed by an immense fortune, is capable.
He is reputed, however, to be excessively liberal, and
to exercise his ingenuity to contrive secret charities in
his neighborhood.

Victor Hugo and his extraordinary novels came
next under discussion; and D'Israeli, who was fired
with his own eloquence, started off, apropos des bottes,
with a long story of an empalement he had seen in
Upper Egypt. It was as good, and perhaps as authentic,
as the description of the chow-chow-tow in Vivian
Grey. He had arrived at Cairo on the third day after
the man was transfixed by two stakes from hip to
shoulder, and he was still alive! The circumstantiality
of the account was equally horrible and amusing.
Then followed the sufferer's history, with a score of
murders and barbarities, heaped together like Martin's
Feast of Belshazzar, with a mixture of horror and
splendor that was unparalleled in my experience of
improvisation. No mystic priest of the Corybantes
could have worked himself up into a finer phrensy of
language.

Count D'Orsay kept up, through the whole of the
conversation and narration, a running fire of witty parentheses,
half French and half English; and, with
champaign in all the pauses, the hours flew on very
dashingly. Lady Blessington left us toward midnight,
and then the conversation took a rather political turn,
and something was said of O'Connell. D'Israeli's
lips were playing upon the edge of a champaign glass,
which he had just drained, and off he shot again with
a description of an interview he had had with the agitator
the day before, ending in a story of an Irish dragoon
who was killed in the peninsula. His name was
Sarsfield. His arm was shot off, and he was bleeding
to death. When told that he could not live, he called
for a large silver goblet, out of which he usually drank
his claret. He held it to the gushing artery and filled
it to the brim with blood, looked at it a moment, turned
it out slowly upon the ground, muttering to himself,
“If that had been shed for old Ireland!” and expired.
You can have no idea how thrillingly this little
story was told. Fonblanc, however, who is a cold
political satirist, could see nothing in a man's “decanting
his claret,” that was in the least sublime, and
so Vivian Grey got into a passion and for awhile was
silent.

Bulwer asked me if there was any distinguished
literary American in town. I said, Mr Slidell, one
of our best writers, was here.

“Because,” said he, “I received a week or more
ago a letter of introduction by some one from Washington
Irving. It lay on the table, when a lady came
in to call on my wife, who seized upon it as an autograph,
and immediately left town, leaving me with
neither name nor address.”

There was a general laugh and a cry of “Pelham!
Pelham!” as he finished his story. Nobody chose to
believe it.

“I think the name was Slidell,” said Bulwer.

“Slidell!” said D'Israeli, “I owe him two-pence,
by Jove!” and he went on in his dashing way to narrate
that he had sat next Mr. Slidell at a bull-fight in
Seville, that he wanted to buy a fan to keep off the

flies, and having nothing but doubloons in his pocket,
Mr. S. had lent him a small Spanish coin to that
value, which he owed him to this day.

There was another general laugh, and it was agreed
that on the whole the Americans were `done.'

Apropos to this, D'Israeli gave us a description in a
gorgeous, burlesque, galloping style, of a Spanish
bull-fight; and when we were nearly dead with laughing
at it, some one made a move, and we went up to
Lady Blessington in the drawing-room. Lord Durham
requested her ladyship to introduce him particularly
to D'Israeli (the effect of his eloquence). I sat
down in the corner with Sir Martin Shee, the president
of the Royal Academy, and had a long talk about
Allston and Harding and Cole, whose pictures he
knew; and “somewhere in the small hours,” we took
our leave, and Procter left me at my door in Cavendish
street, weary, but in a better humor with the
world than usual.

119. LETTER CXIX.

Went to the opera to hear Julia Grisi. I stood out
the first act in the pit, and saw instances of rudeness
the “Fop's-alley,” which I had never seen approached
in three years on the continent. The high price of
tickets, one would think, and the necessity of appearing
in full dress, would keep the opera clear of lowored
people; but the conduct to which I refer seemed
to excite no surprise and passed off without notice,
though, in America, there would have been ample
matter for at least four duels.

Grisi is young, very pretty, and an admirable actress
—three great advantages to a singer. Her voice is
under absolute command, and she manages it beautifully,
but it wants the infusion of soul—the gushing,
uncontrollable, passionate feeling of Malibran. You
merely feel that Grisi is an accomplished artist, while
Malibran melts all your criticism into love and admiration.
I am easily moved by music, but I came
away without much enthusiasm for the present passion
of London.

The opera-house is very different from those on the
continent. The stage only is lighted abroad, the
single lustre from the ceiling just throwing that clair
obscure over the boxes so favorable to Italian complexions
and morals. Here, the dress circles are
lighted with bright chandeliers, and the whole house
sits in such a blaze of light as leaves no approach
even, to a lady, unseen. The consequence is that
people here dress much more, and the opera, if less
interesting to the habitué, is a gayer thing to the many.

I went up to Lady Blessington's box for a moment,
and found Strangways, the traveller, and several other
distinguished men with her. Her ladyship pointed
out to me Lord Brougham, flirting desperately with a
pretty woman on the opposite side of the house, his
mouth going with the convulsive twitch which so disfigures
him, and his most unsightly of pug-noses in
the strongest relief against the red lining behind.
There never was a plainer man. The Honorable
Mrs. Norton, Sheridan's daughter and poetess, sat
nearer to us, looking like a queen, certainly one of the
most beautiful women I ever looked upon; and the
gastronomic and humpbacked Lord Sefton, said to be
the best judge of cookery in the world, sat in the
“dandy's omnibus,” a large box on a level with the
stage, leaning forward with his chin on his knuckles,
and waiting with evident impatience for the appearance
of Fanny Elssler in the ballet. Beauty and all, the
English opera-house surpasses anything I have seen
in the way of a spectacle.

An evening party at Bulwer's. Not yet perfectly
initiated in London hours, I arrived not far from
eleven and found Mrs. Bulwer alone in her illuminated
rooms, whiling away an expectant hour in playing
with a King Charles spaniel, that seemed by his fondness
and delight to appreciate the excessive loveliness
of his mistress. As far off as America, I may express
even in print an admiration which is no heresy in
London.

The author of Pelham is a younger son and depends
on his writings for a livelihood, and truly,
measuring works of fancy by what they will bring,
(not an unfair standard perhaps), a glance around his
luxurious and elegant rooms is worth reams of puff
in the quarterlies. He lives in the heart of the fashionable
quarter of London, where rents are ruinously
extravagant, entertains a great deal, and is expensive
in all his habits, and for this pay Messrs. Clifford,
Pelham, and Aram—(it would seem) most excellent
good bankers. As I looked at the beautiful woman
seated on the costly ottoman before me, waiting to
receive the rank and fashion of London, I thought
that old close-fisted literature never had better reason
for his partial largess. I half forgave the miser for
starving a wilderness of poets.

One of the first persons who came was Lord Byron's
sister, a thin, plain, middle-aged woman, of a
very serious countenance, and with very cordial and
pleasing manners. The rooms soon filled, and two
professed singers went industriously to work in their
vocation at the piano; but, except one pale man, with
staring hair, whom I took to be a poet, nobody pretended
to listen.

Every second woman has some strong claim to
beauty in England, and the proportion of those who
just miss it, by a hair's breadth as it were—who seem
really to have been meant for beauties by nature, but
by a slip in the moulding or pencilling are imperfect
copies of the design—is really extraordinary. One
after another entered, as I stood near the door with
my old friend Dr. Bowring for a nomenclator, and the
word “lovely” or “charming,” had not passed my
lips before some change in the attitude, or unguarded
animation had exposed the flaw, and the hasty homage
(for homage it is, and an idolatrous one, that we
pay to the beauty of woman) was coldly and unsparingly
retracted. From a goddess upon earth to a
slighted and unattractive trap for matrimony is a long
step, but taken on so slight a defect sometimes as,
were they marble, a sculptor would etch away with
his nail.

I was surprised (and I have been struck with the
same thing at several parties I have attended in London),
at the neglect with which the female part of the
assemblage is treated. No young man ever seems to
dream of speaking to a lady, except to ask her to
dance. There they sit with their mammas, their
hands hung over each other before them in the received
attitude; and if there happens to be no
dancing (as at Bulwer's), looking at a print, or eating
an ice, is for them the most enlivening circumstance
of the evening. As well as I recollect, it is better
managed in America, and certainly society is quite
another thing in France and Italy. Late in the
evening a charming girl, who is the reigning belle of
Naples, came in with her mother from the opera, and
I made the remark to her. “I detest England for
that very reason,” she said frankly. “It is the fash

ion in London for the young men to prefer everything
to the society of women. They have their clubs,
their horses, their rowing matches, their hunting and
betting, and everything else is a bore! How different
are the same men at Naples! They can never get
enough of one there! We are surrounded and run
after,
and really one feels that one is a belle.” She mentioned
several of the beaux of last winter who had returned
to England. “Here I have been in London a
month, and these very men that were dying for me, at
my side every day on the Strada Nuova, and all but
fighting to dance three times with me of an evening,
have only left their cards! Not because they care
less about me, but because it is `not the fashion'—it
would be talked of at the club, it is `knowing' to let us
alone.”

There were only three men in the party, which was
a very crowded one, who could come under the head
of beaux. Of the remaining part, there was much
that was distinguished, both for rank and talent.
Sheil, the Irish orator, a small, dark, deceitful, but
talented-looking man, with a very disagreeable squeaking
voice, stood in a corner, very earnestly engaged
in conversation with the aristocratic old earl of Clarendon.
The contrast between the styles of the two
men, the courtly and mild elegance of one, and the
uneasy and half-bred, but shrewd earnestness of the
other, was quite a study. Fonblanc of the Examiner,
with his pale and dislocated-looking face, stood in the
door-way between the two rooms, making the amiable
with a ghastly smile to Lady Stepney. The `bilious
Lord Durham,' as the papers call him, with his Brutus
head, and grave, severe countenance, high-bred in
his appearance, despite the worst possible coat and
trousers, stood at the pedestal of a beautiful statue,
talking politics with Bowring; and near them, leaned
over a chair the Prince Moscowa, the son of Marshal
Ney, a plain, but determined-looking young man,
with his coat buttoned up to his throat, unconscious
of everything but the presence of the Honorable Mrs.
Leicester Stanhope, a very lovely woman, who was
enlightening him in the prettiest English French,
upon some point of national differences. Her husband,
famous as Lord Byron's companion in Greece,
and a great liberal in England, was introduced to me
soon after by Bulwer; and we discussed the bank
and the president, with a little assistance from Bowring,
who joined us with a pæan for the old general
and his measures, till it was far into the morning.

120. LETTER CXX.

Breakfasted with Mr. Procter (known better as
Barry Cornwall). I gave a partial description of this
most delightful of poets in a former letter. In the
dazzling circle of rank and talent with which he was
surrounded at Lady Blessington's, however, it was
difficult to see so shrinkingly modest a man to advantage,
and with the exception of the keen gray eye, living
with thought and feeling, I should hardly have recognised
him at home for the same person.

Mr. Procter is a barrister; and his “whereabout”
is more like that of a lord chancellor than a poet
proper. With the address he had given me at parting,
I drove to a large house in Bedford square; and, not
accustomed to find the children of the Muses waited
on by servants in livery, I made up my mind as I
walked up the broad staircase, that I was blundering
upon some Mr. Procter of the exchange, whose respect
for his poetical namesake, I hoped would smooth
my apology for the intrusion. Buried in a deep morocco
chair, in a large library, notwithstanding, I found
the poet himself—choice old pictures, filling every
nook between the book-shelves, tables covered with
novels and annuals, rolls of prints, busts and drawings
in all the corners; and, more important for the nonce,
a breakfast table at the poet's elbow, spicily set forth,
not with flowers or ambrosia, the canonical food of
rhymers, but with cold hams and ducks, hot rolls and
butter, coffee-pot and tea-urn—as sensible a breakfast,
in short, as the most unpoetical of men could desire.

Procter is indebted to his poetry for a very charming
wife, the daughter of Basil Montagu, well known
as a collector of choice literature, and the friend and
patron of literary men. The exquisite beauty of the
Dramatic Sketches interested this lovely woman in his
favor before she knew him, and far from worldly-wise
as an attachment so grounded would seem, I never
saw two people with a more habitual air of happiness.
I thought of his touching song,

and looked at them with an irrepressible feeling of
envy. A beautiful girl, of eight or nine years, the
“golden-tressed Adelaide,” delicate, gentle and pensive,
as if she was born on the lip of Castaly, and
knew she was a poet's child, completed the picture of
happiness.

The conversation ran upon various authors, whom
Proctor had known intimately. Hazlitt, Charles
Lamb, Keats, Shelley, and others, and of all he gave
me interesting particulars, which I could not well repeat
in a public letter. The account of Hazlitt's
death-bed, which appeared in one of the magazines,
he said was wholly untrue. This extraordinary writer
was the most reckless of men in money matters, but
he had a host of admiring friends who knew his character,
and were always ready to assist him. He was
a great admirer of the picturesque in women. He
was one evening at the theatre with Procter, and
pointed out to him an Amazonian female, strangely
dressed in black velvet and lace, but with no beauty
that would please an ordinary eye. “Look at her!”
said Hazlitt, “isn't she fine?—isn't she magnificent?
Did you ever see anything more Titianesque?”[31]

After breakfast, Procter took me into a small closet
adjoining his library, in which he usually writes.
There was just room in it for a desk and two chairs,
and around were piled in true poetical confusion, his
favorite books, miniature likenesses of authors, manuscripts,
and all the interesting lumber of a true poet's
corner. From a drawer, very much thrust out of the
way, he drew a volume of his own, into which he proceeded
to write my name—a collection of songs, published
since I have been in Europe, which I had never
seen. I seized upon a worn copy of the Dramatic
Sketches, which I found crossed and interlined in
every direction. “Don't look at them,” said Procter,
“they are wretched things, which should never have
been printed, or at least with a world of correction.
You see how I have mended them; and, some day,
perhaps, I will publish a corrected edition, since I can

not get them back.” He took the book from my
hand, and opened to “The Broken Heart,” certainly
the most highly-finished and exquisite piece of pathos
in the language, and read it to me with his alterations.
It was to “gild refined gold and paint the lily.” I
would recommend to the lovers of Barry Cornwall, to
keep their original copy, beautifully as he has polished
his lines anew.

On a blank leaf of the same copy of the Dramatic
Sketches, I found some indistinct writing in pencil.
“Oh! don't read that,” said Procter, “the book was
given me some years ago by a friend at whose house
Coleridge had been staying, for the sake of the criticisms
that great man did me the honor to write at the
end.” I insisted on reading them, however, and his
wife calling him out presently, I succeeded in copying
them in his absence. He seemed a little annoyed, but
on my promising to make no use of them in England,
he allowed me to retain them. They are as follows:

“Barry Cornwall is a poet, me saltem judice, and in that
sense of the word in which I apply it to Charles Lamb and
W. Wordsworth. There are poems of great merit, the authors
of which I should not yet feel impelled so to designate.

“The faults of these poems are no less things of hope
than the beauties. Both are just what they ought to be: i. e.
now.

“If B. C. be faithful to his genius, it in due time will warn
him that as poetry is the identity of all other knowledge, so
a poet can not be a great poet, but as being likewise and inclusively
an historian and a naturalist in the light as well as
the life of philosophy. All other men's worlds are his chaos.

“Hints—Not to permit delicacy and exquisiteness to seduce
into effeminacy.

“Not to permit beauties by repetition to become mannerism.

“To be jealous of fragmentary composition as epicurism
of genius—apple-pie made all of quinces.

“Item. That dramatic poetry must be poetry hid in
thought and passion, not thought or passion hid in the dregs
of poetry.

“Lastly, to be economic and withholding in similes, figures,
etc. They will all find their place sooner or later, each in the
luminary of a sphere of its own. There can be no galaxy in
poetry, because it is language, ergo successive, ergo every the
smallest star must be seen singly.

“There are not five metrists in the kingdom whose works
are known by me, to whom I could have held myself allowed
to speak so plainly; but B. C. is a man of genius, and it depends
on himself (competence protecting him from gnauing and
distracting cares) to become a rightful poet—i. e. a great man.

“Oh, for such a man; worldly prudence is transfigured into
the high spiritual duty. How generous is self-interest in
him whose true self is all that is good and hopeful in all ages
as far as the language of Spenser, Shakspere, and Milton, is
the mother tongue.

“A map of the road to Paradise drawn in Purgatory on
the confines of Hell, by S. T. C. July 30, 1819.”

I took my leave of this true poet after half a day
passed in his company, with the impression that he
makes upon every one—of a man whose sincerity and
kind-heartedness were the most prominent traits in his
character. Simple in his language and feelings, a
fond father, an affectionate husband, a business-man
of the closest habits of industry—one reads his
strange imaginations, and passionate, high-wrought,
and even sublimated poetry, and is in doubt at which
most to wonder—the man as he is, or the poet as we
know him in his books.

121. LETTER CXXI.

I am obliged to “gazette” Lady Blessington rather
more than I should wish, and more than may seem
delicate to those who do not know the central position
she occupies in the circle of talent in London. Her
soirees and dinner-parties, however, are literally the
single and only assemblages of men of genius, without
reference to party—the only attempt at a republic of
letters in the world of this great, envious, and gifted
metropolis. The pictures of literary life, in which
my countrymen would be most interested, therefore,
are found within a very small compass, presuming
them to prefer the brighter side of an eminent character,
and presuming them (is it a presumption?) not
to possess that appetite for degrading the author to the
man by an anatomy of his secret personal failings,
which is lamentably common in England. Having
premised thus much, I go on with my letter.

I drove to Lady Blessington's an evening or two
since, with the usual certainty of finding her at home,
as there was no opera, and the equal certainty of finding
a circle of agreeable and eminent men about her.
She met me with the information that Moore was in
town, and an invitation to dine with her whenever she
should be able to prevail upon “the little Bacchus”
to give her a day. D'Israeli, the younger, was there,
and Dr. Beattie, the king's physician (and author,
unacknowledged, of “The Heliotrope”), and one or
two fashionable young noblemen.

Moore was naturally the first topic. He had appeared
at the opera the night before, after a year's ruralizing
at “Slopperton cottage,” as fresh and young and
witty as he ever was known in his youth—(for Moore
must be sixty at least). Lady B. said the only difference
she could see in his appearance was the loss
of his curls, which once justified singularly his title of
Bacchus, flowing about his head in thin glossy,
elastick tendrils, unlike any other hair she had ever
seen, and comparable to nothing but the rings of the
vine. He is now quite bald, and the change is very
striking. D'Israeli regretted that he should have been
met, exactly on his return to London, with the savage
but clever article in Fraser's Magazine on his plagiarisms.
“Give yourself no trouble about that,”
said Lady B. “for you may be sure he will never see
it. Moore guards against the sight and knowledge
of criticism as people take precautions against the
plague. He reads few periodicals, and but one newspaper.
If a letter comes to him from a suspicious
quarter, he burns it unopened. If a friend mentions
a criticism to him at the club, he never forgives him;
and, so well is this understood among his friends, that
he might live in London a year, and all the magazines
might dissect him, and he would probably never hear
of it. In the country he lives on the estate of Lord
Lansdown, his patron and best friend, with half a
dozen other noblemen within a dinner-drive; and he
passes his life in this exclusive circle, like a bee in
amber, perfectly preserved from everything that could
blow rudely upon him. He takes the world en philosophe,
and is determined to descend to his grave perfectly
ignorant if such things as critics exist.” Somebody
said this was weak, and D'Israeli thought it was
wise, and made a splendid defence of his opinion, as
usual, and I agreed with D'Israeli. Moore deserves a
medal, as the happiest author of his day, to possess
the power.

A remark was made in rather a satirical tone upon
Moore's worldliness and passion for rank. “He was
sure,” it was said, “to have four or five invitations to
dine on the same day, and he tormented himself with
the idea that he had not accepted perhaps the most exclusive.
He would get off from an engagement with
a countess to dine with a marchioness, and from a
marchioness to accept the later invitation of a dutchess;
and as he cared little for the society of men, and
would sing and be delightful only for the applause of
women, it mattered little whether one circle was
more talented than another. Beauty was one of his
passions, but rank and fashion were all the rest.”
This rather left-handed portrait was confessed by all
to be just. Lady B. herself making no comment

upon it. She gave, as an offset, however, some particulars
of Moore's difficulties from his West Indian
appointment, which left a balance to his credit.

“Moore went to Jamaica with a profitable appointment.
The climate disagreed with him, and he returned
home, leaving the business in the hands of a
confidential clerk, who embezzled eight thousand
pounds in the course of a few months and absconded.
Moore's politics had made him obnoxious to the government,
and he was called to account with unusual
severity; while Theodore Hook, who had been recalled
at this very time from some foreign appointment
for a deficit of twenty thousand pounds in his
accounts, was never molested, being of the ruling
party. Moore's misfortune awakened a great sympathy
among his friends. Lord Lansdowne was the
first to offer his aid. He wrote to Moore, that for
many years he had been in the habit of laying aside
from his income eight thousand pounds, for the encouragement
of the arts and literature, and that he
should feel that it was well disposed of for that year
if Moore would accept it, to free him from his difficulties.
It was offered in the most delicate and noble
manner, but Moore declined it. The members of
“White's” (mostly noblemen) called a meeting, and
(not knowing the amount of the deficit) subscribed in
one morning twenty-five thousand pounds, and wrote
to the poet that they would cover the sum, whatever
it might be. This was declined. Longman and
Murray then offered to pay it, and wait for their remuneration
from his works. He declined even this,
and went to Passy with his family, where he economized
and worked hard till it was cancelled.”

This was certainly a story most creditable to the
poet, and it was told with an eloquent enthusiasim
that did the heart of the beautiful narrator infinite
credit. I have given only the skeleton of it. Lady
Blessington went on to mention another circumstance,
very honorable to Moore, of which I had never before
heard. “At one time two different counties of Ireland
sent committees to him, to offer him a seat in
parliament; and as he depended on his writings for a
subsistence, offering him at the same time twelve
hundred pounds a year while he continued to represent
them. Moore was deeply touched with it, and
said no circumstance of his life had ever gratified him
so much. He admitted that the honor they proposed
him had been his most cherished ambition, but the
necessity of receiving a pecuniary support at the same
time was an insuperable obstacle. He could never
enter parliament with his hands tied, and his opinions
and speech fettered, as they would be irresistibly in
such circumstances.” This does not sound like
“jump-up-and-kiss-me Tom Moore,” as the Irish
ladies call him; but her ladyship vouched for the truth
of it. It was worthy of an old Roman.

By what transition I know not, the conversation
turned on Platonism, and D'Israeli (who seemed to
have remembered the shelf on which Vivian Grey was
to find “the latter Platonists” in his father's library)
“flared up,” as a dandy would say, immediately. His
wild black eyes glistened, and his nervous lips quivered
and poured out eloquence; and a German professor,
who had entered late, and the Russian chargé
d'affaires, who had entered later, and a whole ottomanfull
of noble exquisites, listened with wonder. He
gave us an account of Taylor, almost the last of the
celebrated Platonists, who worshipped Jupiter in a
back parlor in London a few years ago with undoubted
sincerity. He had an altar and a brazen figure of the
Thunderer, and performed his devotions as regularly
as the most pious sacerdos of the ancients. In his old
age he was turned out of the lodgings he had occupied
for a great number of years, and went to a friend
in much distress to complain of the injustice. He
had “only attempted to worship his gods according to
the dictates of his conscience.” “Did you pay your
bills?” asked the friend. “Certainly.” “Then what
is the reason?” “His landlady had taken offence at
his sacrificing a bull to Jupiter in his back parlor!”

The story sounded very Vivian-Grey-ish, and everybody
laughed at it as a very good invention; but
D'Israeli quoted his father as his authority, and it
may appear in the Curiosities of Literature—where,
however; it will never be so well told as by the extraordinary
creature from whom we had heard it.

February 22d, 1835.—The excitement in London
about the choice of a speaker is something startling.
It took place yesterday, and the party are thunderstruck
at the non-election of Sir Manners Sutton. This is a
terrible blow upon them, for it was a defeat at the outset;
and if they failed in a question where they had
the immense personal popularity of the late speaker
to assist them, what will they do on general questions?
The house of commons was surrounded all day with
an excited mob. Lady — told me last night that she
drove down toward evening, to ascertain the result
(Sir C. M. Sutton is her brother-in-law), and the
crowd surrounded her carriage, recognising her as
the sister of the tory speaker, and threatened to tear
the coronet from the pannels. “We'll soon put an
end to your coronets,” said a rapscallion in the mob.
The tories were so confident of success that Sir
Robert Peel gave out cards a week ago for a soirée to
meet Speaker Sutton, on the night of the election.
There is a general report in town that the whigs will
impeach the duke of Wellington! This looks like
a revolution, does it not? It is very certain that the
duke and Sir Robert Peel have advised the king to
dissolve parliament again, if there is any difficulty in
getting on with the government. The duke was dining
with Lord Aberdeen the other day, when some one at
table ventured to wonder at his accepting a subordinate
office in the cabinet he had himself formed. “If
I could serve his majesty better,” said the patrician
soldier, “I would ride as king's messenger to-morrow!”
He certainly is a remarkable old fellow.

Perhaps, however, literary news would interest you
more. Bulwer is publishing in a volume his papers
from the New Monthly. I met him an hour age in
Regent-street, looking, what is called in London,
“uncommon seedy!” He is either the worst or the
best dressed man in London, according to the time of
day or night you see him. D'Israeli, the author of
Vivian Grey, drives about in an open carriage, with
Lady S—, looking more melancholy than usual.
The absent baronet, whose place he fills, is about
bringing an action against him, which will finish his
career, unless he can coin the damages in his brain.
Mrs. Hemans is dying of consumption in Ireland. I
have been passing a week at a country house, where
Miss Jane Porter, Miss Pardoe, and Count Krazinsky
(author of the Court of Sigismund), are domiliciated
for the present. Miss Porter is one of her own
heroines, grown old—a still handsome and noble
wreck of beauty. Miss Pardoe is nineteen, fairhaired
sentimental, and has the smallest feet and is the best
waltzer I ever saw, but she is not otherwise pretty.
The Polish count is writing the life of his grandmother,
whom I should think he strongly resembled in
person. He is an excellent fellow, for all that. I
dined last week with Joanna Baillie, at Hampstead—
the most charming old lady I ever saw. To-day I
dine with Longman to meet Tom Moore, who is living
incog. near this Nestor of publishers at Hampstead.
Moore is fagging hard on his history of Ireland. I
shall give you the particulars of all these things in my
letters hereafter.

Poor Elia—my old favorite—is dead. I consider
it one of the most fortunate things that ever happened
to me to have seen him. I think I sent you in

one of my letters an account of my breakfasting in
company with Charles Lamb and his sister (“Bridget
Elia,”) in the Temple. The exquisite papers on his
life and letters in the Atheneum, are by Barry Cornwall.

Lady Blessington's new book makes a great
noise. Living as she does twelve hours out of the
twenty-four in the midst of the most brilliant and
mind-exhausting circle in London, I only wonder how
she found the time. Yet it was written in six weeks.
Her novels sell for a hundred pounds more than any
other author's except Bulwer. Do you know the real
prices of books? Bulwer gets fifteen hundred pounds
—Lady B. four hundred, Honorable Mrs. Norton two
hundred and fifty, Lady Charlotte Bury two hundred,
Grattan three hundred and most others below this.
Captain Marryat's gross trash sells immensely about
Wapping and Portsmouth, and brings him five or six
hundred the book—but that can scarce be called literature.
D'Israeli can not sell a book at all, I hear?
Is not that odd? I would give more for one of his
novels than for forty of the common saleable things
about town.

The authoress of the powerful book called Two
Old Men's Tales, is an old unitarian lady, a Mrs.
Marsh. She declares she will never write another
book. The other was a glorious one, though!

122. LETTER CXXII.

I called on Moore with a letter of introduction,
and met him at the door of his lodgings. I knew him
instantly from the pictures I had seen of him, but was
surprised at the diminutiveness of his person. He
is much below the middle size, and with his white
hat and long chocolate frock-coat, was far from
prepossessing in his appearance. With this material
disadvantage, however, his address is gentleman-like
to a very marked degree, and I should think no
one could see Moore without conceiving a strong
liking for him. As I was to meet him at dinner, I
did not detain him. In the moment's conversation
that passed, he inquired very particularly after Washington
Irving, expressing for him the warmest friendship,
and asked what Cooper was doing.

I was at Lady Blessington's at eight. Moore had
not arrived, but the other persons of the party—a
Russian count, who spoke all the languages of Europe
as well as his own; a Roman banker, whose dynasty
is more powerful than the pope's; a clever English
nobleman, and the “observed of all observers,”
Count D'Orsay, stood in the window upon the park,
killing, as they might, the melancholy twilight half
hour preceding dinner.

“Mr. Moore!” cried the footman at the bottom of
the staircase. “Mr. Moore!” cried the footman at
the top. And with his glass at his eye, stumbling
over an ottoman between his near-sightedness and the
darkness of the room, enter the poet. Half a glance
tells you that he is at home on a carpet. Sliding his
little feet up to Lady Blessington (of whom he was
a lover when she was sixteen, and to whom some of
the sweetest of his songs were written), he made his
compliments, with a gayety and an ease combined
with a kind of worshipping deference that was worthy
of a prime-minister at the court of love. With the
gentlemen, all of whom he knew, he had the frank,
merry manner of a confident favorite, and he was
greeted like one. He went from one to the other,
straining back his head to look up at them (for, singularly
enough, every gentleman in the room was six
feet high and upward), and to every one he said something
which, from any one else, would have seemed
peculiarly felicitous, but which fell from his lips as if
his breath was not more spontaneous.

Dinner was announced, the Russian handed down
“miladi,” and I found myself seated opposite Moore,
with a blaze of light on his Bacchus head, and the
mirrors with which the superb octagonal room is pannelled
reflecting every motion. To see him only at
table, you would think him not a small man. His
principal length is in his body, and his head and shoulders
are those of a much larger person. Consequently
he sits tall, and with the peculiar erectness of head
and neck, his diminutiveness disappears.

The soup vanished in the busy silence that beseems
it, and as the courses commenced their procession,
Lady Blessington led the conversation with the brilliancy
and ease for which she is remarkable over all
the women of her time. She had received from Sir
William Gell, at Naples, the manuscript of a volume
upon the last days of Sir Walter Scott. It was a
melancholy chronicle of imbecility and the book was
suppressed, but there were two or three circumstances
narrated in its pages which were interesting. Soon
after his arrival at Naples, Sir Walter went with his
physician and one or two friends to the great museum.
It happened that on the same day a large collection
of students and Italian literati were assembled, in one
of the rooms, to discuss some newly-discovered manuscripts.
It was soon known that the “Wizard of the
North” was there, and a deputation was sent immediately
to request him to honor them by presiding at
their session. At this time Scott was a wreck, with a
memory that retained nothing for a moment, and
limbs almost as helpless as an infant's. He was dragging
about among the relics of Pompeii, taking no
interest in anything he saw, when their request was
made known to him through his physician. “No,
no,” said he, “I know nothing of their lingo. Tell
them I am not well enough to come.” He loitered
on, and in about half an hour after, he turned to Dr.
H. and said, “Who was that you said wanted to see
me?” The doctor explained. “I'll go,” said he,
“they shall see me if they wish it;” and, against the
advice of his friends, who feared it would be too much
for his strength, he mounted the staircase, and made
his appearance at the door. A burst of enthusiastic
cheers welcomed him on the threshold, and forming
in two lines, many of them on their knees, they seized
his hands as he passed, kissed them, thanked him in
their passionate language for the delight with which
he had filled the world, and placed him in the chair
with the most fervent expressions of gratitude for his
condescension. The discussion went on, but not
understanding a syllable of the language, Scott was
soon wearied, and his friends observing it, pleaded the
state of his health as an apology, and he rose to take
his leave. These enthusiastic children of the south
crowded once more around him, and with exclamations
of affection and even tears, kissed his hands once
more, assisted his tottering steps, and sent after him a
confused murmur of blessings as the door closed on
his retiring form. It is described by the writer as the
most affecting scene he had ever witnessed.

Some other remarks were made upon Scott, but
the parole was soon yielded to Moore, who gave us an
account of a visit he made to Abbotsford when its
illustrious owner was in his pride and prime. “Scott,”
he said, “was the most manly and natural character
in the world. You felt when with him, that he was
the soul of truth and heartiness. His hospitality was
as simple and open as the day, and he lived freely

himself, and expected his guests to do so. I remember
his giving us whiskey at dinner, and Lady Scott
met my look of surprise with the assurance that Sir
Walter seldom dined without it. He never ate or
drank to excess, but he had no system, his constitution
was herculean, and he denied himself nothing.
I went once from a dinner-party with Sir Thomas
Lawrence to meet Scott at Lockhart's. We had
hardly entered the room when we were set down to a
hot supper of roast chickens, salmon, punch, etc.,
etc., and Sir Walter ate immensely of everything.
What a contrast between this and the last time I
saw him in London! He had come down to embark
for Italy—broken quite down in mind and body. He
gave Mrs. Moore a book, and I asked him if he would
make it more valuable by writing in it. He thought
I meant that he should write some verses, and said,
`Oh I never write poetry now.' I asked him to write
only his own name and hers, and he attempted it, but
it was quite illegible.”

Some one remarked that Scott's life of Napoleon
was a failure.

“I think little of it,” said Moore; “but after all, it
was an embarrassing task, and Scott did what a wise
man would do—made as much of his subject as was
politic and necessary, and no more.”

“It will not live,” said some one else; “as much
because it is a bad book, as because it is the life of an
individual.”

“But what an individual!” Moore replied. “Voltaire's
life of Charles of Twelfth was the life of an individual,
yet that will live and be read as long as there
is a book in the world, and what was he to Napoleon?”

O'Connell was mentioned.

“He is a powerful creature,” said Moore, “but his
eloquence has done great harm both to England and
Ireland. There is nothing so powerful as oratory.
The faculty of `thinking on his legs,' is a tremendous
engine in the hands of any man. There is an undue
admiration for this faculty, and a sway permitted to it
which was always more dangerous to a country than
anything else. Lord Althorp is a wonderful instance
of what a man may do without talking. There is a
general confidence in him—a universal belief in his
honesty, which serves him instead. Peel is a fine
speaker, but, admirable as he had been as an oppositionist,
he failed when he came to lead the house.
O'Connell would be irresistible were it not for the two
blots on his character—the contributions in Ireland
for his support, and his retusal to give satisfaction
to the man he is still coward enough to attack.
They may say what they will of duelling, it is the
great preserver of the decencies of society. The
old school, which made a man responsible for his
words, was the better. I must confess I think so.
Then, in O'Connell's case, he had not made his vow
against duelling when Peel challenged him. He accepted
the challenge, and Peel went to Dover on his
way to France, where they were to meet; and O'Connell
pleaded his wife's illness, and delayed till the law
interfered. Some other Irish patriot, about the same
time, refused a challenge on account of the illness of
his daughter, and one of the Dublin wits made a good
epigram on the two:—

The great period of Ireland's glory was between '82
and '98, and it was a time when a man almost lived
with a pistol in his hand. Grattan's dying advice to
his son, was, `Be always ready with the pistol!' He
himself never hesitated a moment. At one time,
there was a kind of conspiracy to fight him out of the
world. On some famous question, Corrie was employed
purposely to bully him, and made a personal
attack of the grossest virulence. Grattan was so ill,
at the time, as to be supported into the house between
two friends. He rose to reply; and first, without alluding
to Corrie at all, clearly and entirely overturned
every argument he had advanced that bore upon
the question. He then paused a moment, and
stretching out his arm, as if he would reach across
the house, said, `For the assertions the gentleman
has been pleased to make with regard to myself, my
answer here is, they are false! elsewhere it would be—
a blow!' They met, and Grattan shot him through
the arm. Corrie proposed another shot, but Grattan
said, `No! let the curs fight it out!' and they were
friends ever after. I like the old story of the Irishman
who was challenged by some desperate blackguard.
`Fight him!' said he, `I would sooner go to
my grave without a fight!' Talking of Grattan, is it
not wonderful that, with all the agitation in Ireland,
we have had no such men since his time? Look at
the Irish newspapers. The whole country in convulsion—people's
lives, fortunes, and religion, at stake,
and not a gleam of talent from one year's end to the
other. It is natural for sparks to be struck out in a
time of violence like this—but Ireland, for all that is
worth living for, is dead! You can scarcely reckon
Shiel of the calibre of her spirits of old, and O'Connell,
with all his faults, stands `alone in his glory.”'

The conversation I have thus run together is a mere
skeleton, of course. Nothing but a short-hand report
could retain the delicacy and elegance of Moore's
language, and memory itself can not imbody again
the kind of frost-work of imagery which was formed
and melted on his lips. His voice is soft or firm as
the subject requires, but perhaps the word gentlemanly
describes it better than any other. It is upon a
natural key, but, if I may so phrase it, it is fused
with a high-bred affectation, expressing deference and
courtesy, at the same time that its pauses are constructed
peculiarly to catch the ear. It would be difficult
not to attend him while he is talking, though the
subject were but the shape of a wine-glass.

Moore's head is distinctly before me while I write,
but I shall find it difficult to describe. His hair,
which curled once all over it in long tendrils, unlike
anybody else's in the world, and which probably suggested
his soubriquet of “Bacchus,” is diminished
now to a few curls sprinkled with gray, and scattered
in a single ring above his ears. His forehead is
wrinkled, with the exception of a most prominent
development of the organ of gayety, which, singularly
enough, shines with the lustre and smooth polish
of a pearl, and is surrounded by a semicircle of
lines drawn close about it, like entrenchments against
Time. His eyes still sparkle like a champaign bubble,
though the invader has drawn his pencillings
about the corners; and there is a kind of wintry red,
of the tinge of an October leaf, that seems enamelled
on his cheek, the eloquent record of the claret his wit
has brightened. His mouth is the most characteristic
feature of all. The lips are delicately cut, slight
and changeable as an aspen; but there is a set-up
look about the lower lip, a determination of the muscle
to a particular expression, and you fancy that you
can almost see wit astride upon it. It is written legibly
with the imprint of habitual success. It is half
confident, and half diffident, as if he were disguising
his pleasure at applause, while another bright glean
of fancy was breaking on him. The slightly-tossed
nose confirms the fun of the expression, and altogether
it is a face that sparkles, beams, radiates,—every
thing but feels. Fascinating beyond all men as he is
Moore looks like a worldling.

This description may be supposed to have occupied
the hour after Lady Blessington retired from the table;
for with her vanished Moore's excitement, and
everybody else seemed to feel that light had gone out
of the room. Her excessive beauty is less an inspiration
than the wondrous talent with which she draws
from every person around her his peculiar excellence.
Talking better than anybody else, and narrating, particularly,
with a graphic power that I never saw excelled,
this distinguished woman seems striving only
to make others unfold themselves; and never had diffidence
a more apprehensive and encouraging listener.
But this is a subject with which I should never be
done.

We went up to coffee, and Moore brightened again
over his chasse-café, and went glittering on with criticisms
on Grisi, the delicious songstress now ravishing
the world, whom he placed above all but Pasta; and
whom he thought, with the exception that her legs
were too short, an incomparable creature. This introduced
music very naturally, and with a great deal
of difficulty he was taken to the piano. My letter is
getting long, and I have no time to describe his singing.
It is well known, however, that its effect is only
equalled by the beauty of his own words; and, for
one, I could have taken him into my heart with my
delight. He makes no attempt at music. It is a kind
of admirable recitative, in which every shade of
thought is syllabled and dwelt upon, and the sentiment
of the song goes through your blood, warming
you to the very eyelids, and starting your tears, if you
have soul or sense in you. I have heard of women's
fainting at a song of Moore's; and if the burden of it
answered by chance to a secret in the bosom of the
listener, I should think, from its comparative effect
upon so old a stager as myself, that the heart would
break with it.

We all sat around the piano, and after two or three
songs of Lady Blessington's choice, he rambled over
the keys awhile, and sang “When first I met thee,”
with a pathos that beggars description. When the
last word had faltered out, he rose and took Lady
Blessington's hand, said good-night, and was gone
before a word was uttered. For a full minute after
he had closed the door no one spoke. I could have
wished, for myself, to drop silently asleep where I sat,
with the tears in my eyes and the softness upon my
heart.

I was in company the other evening where Westmacott,
the sculptor, was telling a story of himself
and Leigh Hunt. They were together one day at
Fiesole, when a butterfly, of an uncommon sable
color, alighted on Westmacott's forehead, and remained
there several minutes. Hunt immediately
cried out, “The spirit of some dear friend is departed,”
and as they entered the gate of Florence on their
return, some one met them and informed them of the
death of Byron, the news of which had at that moment
arrived.

I have just time before the packet sails to send you
an anecdote that is bought out of the London papers.
A nobleman, living near Belgrave square, received a
visit a day or two ago from a police officer, who stated
to him, that he had a man-servant in his house,
who had escaped from Botany Bay. His lordship
was somewhat surprised, but called up the male part
of his household, at the officer's request, and passed
them in review. The culprit was not among them.
The officer then requested to see the female part of
the establishment; and, to the inexpressible astonishment
of the whole household, he laid his hand upon
the shoulder of the lady's confidential maid, and informed
her she was his prisoner. A change of dress
was immediately sent for, and miladi's dressing-maid
was remetamorphosed into an effeminate-looking
fellow, and marched off to a new trial. It is a most
extraordinary thing that he had lived unsuspected in
the family for nine months, performing all the functions
of a confidential Abigail, and very much in favor
with his unsuspecting mistress, who is rather a serious
person, and would as soon have thought of turning
out to be a man herself. It is said, that the husband
once made a remark upon the huskiness of the maid's
voice, but no other comment was ever made reflecting
in the least upon her qualities as a member of the
beau sexe. The story is quite authentic, but hushed
up out of regard to the lady.

123. LETTER CXXIII.

Almost giddy with the many pleasures and occupations
of London, I had outstayed the last fashionable
lingerer; and, on appearing again, after a fortnight's
confinement with the epidemic of the season,
I found myself almost without an acquaintance, and
was driven to follow the world. A preponderance of
letters and friends determined my route toward Scotland.

One realizes the immensity of London when he is
compelled to measure its length on a single errand. I
took a cab at my lodgings at nine in the evening, and
drove six miles through one succession of crowded and
blazing streets to the East India Docks, and with the
single misfortune of being robbed on the way of a
valuable cloak, secured a birth in the Monarch steamer,
bound presently for Edinburgh.

I found the drawing-room cabin quite crowded,
cold supper on the two long tables, everybody very
busy with knife and fork, and whiskey-and-water and
broad Scotch circulating merrily. All the world seemed
acquainted, and each man talked to his neighbor,
and it was as unlike a ship's company of dumb English
as could easily be conceived. I had dined too
late to attack the solids, but imitating my neighbor's
potation of whiskey and hot water, I crowded in between
two good-humored Scotchmen, and took the
happy color of the spirits of the company. A small
centre-table was occupied by a party who afforded
considerable amusement. An excessively fat old woman,
with a tall scraggy daughter and a stubby little
old fellow, whom they called “pa;” and a singular
man, a Major Somebody, who seemed showing them
up, composed the quartette. Noisier women I never
saw, nor more hideous. They bullied the waiter,
were facetious with the steward, and talked down all
the united buzz of the cabin. Opposite me sat a pale,
severe-looking Scotchman, who had addressed one or
two remarks to me; and, upon an uncommon burst
of uproariousness, he laughed with the rest, and remarked
that the ladies were excusable, for they were
doubtless Americans, and knew no better.

“It strikes me,” said I, “that both in manners and
accent they are particularly Scotch.”

“Sir!” said the pale gentleman.

“Sir!” said several of my neighbors on the right
and left.

I repeated the remark.

“Have you ever been in Scotland?” asked the
pale gentleman, with rather a ferocious air.

“No, sir! Have you ever been in America?”

“No, sir! but I have read Mrs. Trollope.”

“And I have read Cyril Thornton; and the manners
delineated in Mrs. Trollope, I must say, are
rather elegant in comparison.”

I particularized the descriptions I alluded to, which
will occur immediately to those who have read the
novel I have named; and then confessing I was an
American, and withdrawing my illiberal remark, which
I had only made to show the gentleman the injustice
and absurdity of his own, we called for another tass
of whiskey, and became very good friends. Heaven
knows I have no prejudice against the Scotch, or any
other nation—but it is extraordinary how universal the
feeling seems to be against America. A half hour incog,
in any mixed company in England I should think
would satisfy the most rose-colored doubter on the
subject.

We got under way at eleven o'clock, and the passengers
turned in. The next morning was Sunday.
It was fortunately of a “Sabbath stillness;” and the
open sea through which we were driving, with an easy
south wind in our favor, graciously permitted us to do
honor to as substantial a breakfast as ever was set before
a traveller, even in America. (Why we should
be ridiculed for our breakfasts I do not know.)

The “Monarch” is a superb boat, and, with the
aid of sails and a wind right aft, we made twelve miles
in the hour easily. I was pleased to see an observance
of the Sabbath which had not crossed my path before
in three years' travel. Half the passengers at least
took their bibles after breakfast, and devoted an hour
or two evidently to grave religious reading and reflection.
With this exception, I have not seen a person
with the Bible in his hand, in travelling over half the
world.

The weather continued fine, and smooth water
tempted us up to breakfast again on Monday. The
wash-room was full of half-clad men, but the week-day
manners of the passengers were perceptibly gayer.
The captain honored us by taking the head of the table,
which he had not done on the day previous, and
his appearance was hailed by three general cheers.
When the meats were removed, a gentleman rose, and,
after a very long and parliamentary speech, proposed
the health of the captain. The company stood up,
ladies and all, and it was drank with a tremendous
“hip-hip-hurrah,” in bumpers of whiskey. They
don't do that on the Mississippi, I reckon. If they
did, the travellers would be down upon us, “I guess,”
out-Hamiltoning Hamilton.

We rounded St. Abb's head into the Forth, at five,
in the afternoon, and soon dropped anchor off Leith.
The view of Edinburgh, from the water, is, I think,
second only to that of Constantinople. The singular
resemblance, in one or two features, to the view of
Athens, as you approach from the Piræus, seems to
have struck other eyes than mine, and an imitation
Acropolis is commenced on the Calton-hill, and has
already, in its half-finished state, much the effect of
the Parthenon. Hymettus is rather loftier than the
Pentland-hills, and Pentelicus farther off and grander
than Arthur's seat, but the old castle of Edinburgh is
a noble and peculiar feature of its own, and soars up
against the sky, with its pinnacle-placed turrets, superbly
magnificent. The Forth has a high shore on
either side, and, with the island of Inchkeith in its
broad bosom, it looks more like a lake than an arm of
the sea.

It is odd what strange links of acquaintance will
develop between people thrown together in the most
casual manner, and in the most out-of-the-way places.
I have never entered a steamboat in my life without
finding, if not an acquaintance, some one who should
have been an acquaintance from mutual knowledge of
friends. I thought, through the first day, that the
Monarch would be an exception. On the second
morning, however, a gentleman came up and called
me by name. He was an American, and had seen me
in Boston. Soon after, another gentleman addressed
some remark to me, and, in a few minutes, we discovered
that we were members of the same club in
London, and bound to the same hospitable roof in
Scotland. We went on, talking together, and I happened
to mention having lately been in Greece, when
one of a large party of ladies, overhearing the remark,
turned, and asked me, if I had met Lady — in my
travels. I had met her at Athens, and this was her
sister. I found I had many interesting particulars of
the delightful person in question which were new to
them, and, sequitur, a friendship struck up immediately
between me and a party of six. You would
have never dreamed, to have seen the adieux on the
landing, that we had been unaware of each other's existence
forty-four hours previous.

Leith is a mile or more from the town, and we drove
into the new side of Edinburgh—a splendid city of
stone—and, with my English friend, I was soon installed
in a comfortable parlor at Douglas's—an hotel
to which the Tremont, in Boston, is the only parallel.
It is built of the same stone and is smaller, but it has
a better situation than the Tremont, standing in a
magnificent square, with a column and statue to Lord
Melville in the centre, and a perspective of a noble
street stretching through the city from the opposite
side.

We dined upon grouse, to begin Scotland fairly,
and nailed down our sherry with a tass o' Glenlivet,
and then we had still an hour of daylight for a ramble

124. LETTER CXXIV.

It is an odd place, Edinboro'. The old town and
the new are separated by a broad and deep ravine,
planted with trees and shrubbery; and across this, on
a level with the streets on either side, stretches a
bridge of a most giddy height, without which all communication
would apparently be cut off. “Auld
Reekie” itself looks built on the back-bone of a ridgy
crag, and towers along on the opposite side of the
ravine, running up its twelve-story houses to the sky
in an ascending curve, till it terminates in the frowning
and battlemented castle, whose base is literally on
a mountain top in the midst of the city. At the foot
of this ridge, in the lap of the valley, lies Holyroodhouse;
and between this and the castle runs a single
street, part of which is the old Canongate. Princes'
street, the Broadway of the new town, is built along
the opposite edge of the ravine facing the long, many-windowed
walls of the Canongate, and from every
part of Edinboro' these singular features are conspicuously
visible. A more striking contrast than exists
between these two parts of the same city could hardly
be imagined. On one side a succession of splendid
squares, elegant granite houses, broad and well-paved
streets, columns, statues, and clean sidewalks, thinly
promenaded and by the well-dressed exclusively—a
kind of wholly grand and half-deserted city, which has
been built too ambitiously for its population—and
on the other, an antique wilderness of streets and
“wynds,” so narrow and lofty as to shut out much of
the light of heaven; a thronging, busy, and particularly
dirty population, sidewalks almost impassable
from children and other respected nuisances; and
altogether, between the irregular and massive architecture,
and the unintelligible jargon agonizing the air
about you, a most outlandish and strange city. Paris
is not more unlike Constantinople than one side of

Edinboro' is unlike the other. Nature has probably
placed “a great gulf” between them.

We toiled up the castle to see the sunset. Oh, but
it was beautiful! I have no idea of describing it; but
Edinboro', to me, will be a picture seen through an
atmosphere of powdered gold, mellow as an eve on the
campagna. We looked down on the surging sea of
architecture below us, and whether it was the wavy
cloudiness of a myriad of reeking chimneys, or
whether it was a fancy Glenlivet-born in my eye, the
city seemed to me like a troop of war-horses, rearing
into the air with their gallant riders. The singular
boldness of the hills on which it is built, and of the
crags and mountains which look down upon it, and the
impressive lift of its towering architecture into the sky,
gave it altogether a look of pride and warlikeness that
answers peculiarly to the chivalric history of Scotland.
And so much for the first look at “Auld
Reekie.”

My friend had determined to have what he called a
“flare-up” of a Scotch breakfast, and we were set
down the morning after our arrival, at nine, to cold
grouse, salmon, cold beef, marmalade, jellies, honey,
five kinds of bread, oatmeal cakes, coffee, tea, and
toast; and I am by no means sure that that is all. It is
a fine country in which one gets so much by the simple
order of “breakfast at nine.”

We parted after having achieved it, my companion
going before me to Dumbartonshire; and, with a
“wee callant” for a guide, I took my way to Holyrood.

At the very foot of Edinboro' stands this most interesting
of royal palaces—a fine old pile, though at the
first view rather disappointing. It might have been in
the sky, which was dun and cold, or it might have
been in the melancholy story most prominent in its
history, but it oppressed me with its gloom. A rosy
cicerone in petticoats stepped out from the porter's
lodge, and rather brightened my mood with her smile
and courtesy, and I followed on to the chapel royal,
built, Heaven knows when, but in a beautiful state of
gothic ruin. The girl went on with her knitting and
her well-drilled recitation of the sights upon which
those old fretted and stone traceries had let in the
light; and I walked about feeding my eyes upon its
hoar and touching beauty, listening little till she came
to the high altar, and in the same broad Scotch monotony,
and with her eyes still upon her work, hurried
over something about Mary Queen of Scots. She
was married to Darnley on the spot where I stood!
The mechanical guide was accustomed evidently to an
interruption here, and stood silent a minute or two to
give my surprise the usual grace. Poor, poor Mary!
I had the common feeling, and made probably the
same ejaculation that thousands have made on the
spot, that I had never before realized the melancholy
romance of her life half so nearly. It had been the
sadness of an hour before—a feeling laid aside with
the book that recorded it—now it was, as it were, a
pity and a grief for the living, and I felt struck with it
as if it had happened yesterday. If Rizzio's harp had
sounded from her chamber, it could not have seemed
more tangibly a scene of living story.

“And through this door they dragged the murdered
favorite; and here under this stone, he was buried!”

“Yes, sir.”

“Poor Rizzio!”

“I'm thinkin' that's a', sir!”

It was a broad hint, but I took another turn down
the nave of the old ruin, and another look at the scene
of the murder, and the grave of the victim.

“And this door communicated with Mary's apartments!”

“Yes—ye hae it a' the noo!”

I paid my shilling, and exit.

On inquiry for the private apartments, I was directed
to another Girzy, who took me up to a suite of rooms
appropriated to the use of the earl of Breadalbane, and
furnished very much like lodgings for a guinea a week
in London.

“And which was Queen Mary's chamber?”

“Ech! sir! It's t'ither side. I dinna show that.”

“And what am I brought here for?”

“Ye cam' yoursell!”

With this wholesome truth, I paid my shilling
again, and was handed over to another woman, who
took me into a large hall containing portraits of
Robert Bruce, Baliol, Macbeth, Queen Mary, and
some forty other men and women famous in Scotch
story; and nothing is clearer than that one patient
person sat to the painter for the whole. After
“doing” these, I was led with extreme deliberativeness
through a suite of unfurnished rooms, twelve, I think,
the only interest of which was their having been tenanted
of late by the royal exile of France. As if anybody
would give a shilling to see where Charles the
Tenth slept and breakfasted!

I thanked Heaven that I stumbled next upon the
right person, and was introduced into an ill-lighted
room, with one deep window looking upon the court,
and a fireplace like that of a country inn—the state
chamber of the unfortunate Mary. Here was a chair
she embroidered—there was a seat of tarnished velvet,
where she sat in state with Darnley—the very grate in
the chimney that she had sat before—the mirror in
which her fairest face had been imaged—the table at
which she had worked—the walls on which her eyes
had rested in her gay and her melancholy hours—all,
save the touch and mould of time, as she lived in it and
left it. It was a place for a thousand thoughts.

The woman led on. We entered another room—
her chamber. A small, low bed, with tattered hangings
of red and figured silk, tall, ill-shapen posts, and
altogether a paltry look, stood in a room of irregular
shape; and here, in all her peerless beauty, she had
slept. A small cabinet, a closet merely, opened on
the right, and in this she was supping with Rizzio,
when he was plucked from her and murdered. We
went back to the audience-chamber to see the stain of
his blood on the floor. She partitioned it off after his
death, not bearing to look upon it. Again—“poor
Mary!”

On the opposite side was a similar closet, which
served as her dressing-room, and the small mirror,
scarce larger than your hand, which she used at her
toilet. Oh for a magic wand, to wave back, upon
that senseless surface, the visions of beauty it has reflected!

125. LETTER CXXV.

Edinboro' has extended to “St. Leonard's,” and
the home of Jeanie Deans is now the commencement
of the railway! How sadly is romance ridden over
by the march of intellect!

With twenty-four persons and some climbers behind,
I was drawn ten miles in the hour by a single
horse upon the Dalkeith railroad, and landed within a
mile of Dalhousie Castle. Two “wee callants” here
undertook my portmanteau, and in ten minutes more
I was at the rustic lodge in the park, the gate of which
swung hospitably open with the welcome announcement
that I was expected. An avenue of near three
quarters of a mile of firs, cedars, laburnums, and
larches, wound through the park to the castle; and
dipping over the edge of a deep and wild dell, I found
the venerable old pile below me, its round towers and

battlemented turrets frowning among the trees, and
forming with the river, which swept round its base,
one of the finest specimens imaginable of the feudal
picturesque.[32] The nicely gravelled terraces, as I approached,
the plate-glass windows and rich curtains,
diminished somewhat of the romance; but I am not
free to say that the promise they gave of the luxury
within did not offer a succedaneum.

I was met at the threshold by the castle's noble and
distinguished master, and as the light modern gothic
door swung open on its noiseless hinges, I looked up
for the portcullis chains and the rough hollows in the
walls which had served for its rest, and it seemed to
me that the kind and polished earl, in his velvet cap,
and the modern door on its patent hinges, were pleasant
substitutes even for a raised drawbridge and a helmeted
knight. I beg pardon of the romantic, if this
be treason against Della Crusca.

The gong had sounded its first summons to dinner,
and I went immediately to my room to achieve my
toilet. I found myself in the south wing, with a glorious
view up the valley of the Esk, and comforts
about me such as are only found in a private chamber
in England. The nicely-fitted carpet, the heavy curtains,
the well-appointed dressing-table, the patent
grate and its blazing fire (for where is a fire not
welcome in Scotland?) the tapestry, the books, the
boundless bed, the bell that will ring, and the servants
that anticipate the pull—oh, you should have pined
for comfort in France and Italy to know what this catalogue
is worth.

After dinner, Lady Dalhousie, who is much of an
invalid, mounted a small poney to show me the
grounds. We took a winding path away from the
door, and descended at once into the romantic dell over
which the castle towers. It is naturally a most wild
and precipitous glen, through which the rapid Esk
pursues its way almost in darkness; but, leaving only
the steep and rocky shelves leaning over the river with
their crown of pines, the successive lords of Dalhousie
have cultivated the banks and hills around for a
park and a paradise. The smooth gravel walks cross
and interweave, the smoother lawns sink and swell
with their green bosoms, the stream dashes on murmuring
below, and the lofty trees shadow and overhang
all. At one extremity of the grounds are a flower
and a fruit garden, and beyond it the castle-farm;
at the other, a little village of the family dependants,
with their rose-imbowered cottages; and, as far as you
would ramble in a day, extend the woods and glades,
and hares leap across your path, and pheasants and
partridges whirr up as you approach, and you may fatigue
yourself in a scene that is formed in every feature
from the gentle-born and the refined. The labor
and the taste of successive generations can alone create
such an Eden. Primogeniture! I half forgive
thee.

The various views of the castle from the bottom of
the dell are perfectly beautiful. With all its internal
refinement, it is still the warlike fortress at a little distance,
and bartizan and battlement bring boldly back
the days when Bruce was at Hawthornden (six miles
distant), and Lord Dalhousie's ancestor, the knightly
Sir Alexander Ramsay, defended the ford of the Esk,
and made himself a name in Scottish story in the days
of Wallace and the Douglasses. Dalhousie was besieged
by Edward the first and by John of Gaunt,
among others, and being the nearest of a chain of castles
from the Esk to the Pentland Hills, it was the
scene of some pretty fighting in most of the wars of
Scotland.

Lord Dalhousie showed me a singular old bridle-bit,
the history of which is thus told in Scott's Tales
of a Grandfather:

“Sir Alexander Ramsay having taken by storm the strong
castle of Roxburgh, the king bestowed on him the office of
sheriff of the county, which was before engaged by the knight
of Liddesdale. As this was placing another person in his
room, the knight of Liddesdale altogether forgot his old
friendship for Ramsay, and resolved to put him to death. He
came suddenly upon him with a strong party of men while he
was administering justice at Hawick. Ramsay, having no
suspicion of injury from the hands of his old comrade, and
having few men with him, was easily overpowered; and, being
wounded, was hurried away to the lonely castle of the
Hermitage, which stands in the middle of the morasses of
Liddesdale. Here he was thrown into a dungeon (with his
horse) where he had no other sustenance than some grain
which fell down from a granary above; and, after lingering
awhile in that dreadful condition, the brave Sir Alexander
Ramsay died. This was in 1412. Nearly four hundred and
fifty years afterward, that is, about forty years ago, a mason,
digging among the ruins of Hermitage Castle, broke into a
dungeon, where lay a quantity of chaff, some human bones
and a bridle-bit, which were supposed to mark the vault as
the place of Ramsay's death. The bridle-bit was given to
grandpapa, who presented it to the present gallant earl of
Dalhousie, a brave soldier, like his ancestor, Sir Alexander
Ramsay, from whom he is lineally descended.”

There is another singular story connected with the
family which escaped Sir Walter, and which has never
appeared in print. Lady Dalhousie is of the ancient
family of Coulston, one of the ancestors of which,
Brown of Coulston, married the daughter of the famous
Warlock of Gifford, described in Marmion. As
they were proceeding to the church, the wizard lord
stopped the bridal procession beneath a pear-tree, and
plucking one of the pears, he gave it to his daughter,
telling her that he had no dowry to give her, but that
as long as she kept that gift, good fortune would never
desert her or her descendants. This was in 1270,
and the pear is still preserved in a silver box. About
two centuries ago, a maiden lady of the family chose
to try her teeth upon it, and very soon after two of the
best farms of the estate were lost in some litigation—
the only misfortune that has befallen the inheritance
of the Coulstons in six centuries—thanks (perhaps)
to the Warlock pear!

126. LETTER CXXVI.

The nominal attraction of Scotland, particularly
at this season, is the shooting. Immediately on your
arrival, you are asked whether you prefer a flint or a
percussion lock, and (supposing that you do not travel
with a gun, which all Englishmen do), a double-barrelled
Manton is appropriated to your use, the game-keeper
fills your powder and shot-pouches, and waits
with the dogs in a leash till you have done your breakfast;
and the ladies leave the table, wishing you a
good day's sport, all as matters of course.

I would rather have gone to the library. An aversion
to walking, except upon smooth flag-stones, a
poetical tenderness on the subject of “putting birds
out of misery,” as the last office is elegantly called,
and hands much more at home with a goose-quill than
a gun, were some of my private objections to the “order
of the day.” Between persuasion and a most
truant sunshine, I was overruled, however; and, with
a silent prayer that I might not destroy the hopes of
my noble host, by shooting his only son, who was to
be my companion and instructer, I shouldered the
proffered Manton and joined the game-keeper in the
park.

Lord Ramsay and his man looked at me with some
astonishment as I approached, and I was equally surprised
at the young nobleman's metamorphosis. From
the elegant Oxonian I had seen at breakfast, he was
transformed to a figure something rougher than his
highland dependant, in a woollen shooting-jacket, that
might have been cut in Kentucky, pockets of any
number and capacity, trousers of the coarsest plaid,
hob-nailed shoes, and leather gaiters, and a manner
of handling his gun that would have been respected
on the Mississippi. My own appearance in high-heeled
French boots and other corresponding geer for
a tramp over stubble and marsh, amused them equally;
but my wardrobe was exclusively metropolitan, and
there was no alternative.

The dogs were loosed from their leash and bounded
away, and crossing the Esk under the castle walls,
we found our way out of the park, and took to the
open fields. A large patch of stubble was our first
ground, and with a “hie away!” from the game-keeper,
the beautiful setters darted on before, their
tails busy with delight and their noses to the ground,
first dividing, each for a wall-side, and beating along
till they met, and then scouring toward the centre, as
regularly, as if every step were guided by human
reason. Suddenly they both dropped low into the
stubble, and with heads eagerly bent forward and the
intensest gaze upon a spot, a yard or more in advance,
stood as motionless as stone. `A covey, my lord!”
said the game-keeper, and, with our guns cocked, we
advanced to the dogs, who had crouched, and lay as
still, while we passed them, as if their lives depended
upon our shot. Another step, and whirr! whirr! a
dozen partridges started up from the furrow, and
while Lord Ramsey cried “Now!” and reserved his
fire to give me the opportunity, I stood stock still in
my surprise, and the whole covey disappeared over
the wall. My friend laughed, the game-keeper smiled,
and the dogs hied on once more.

I mended my shooting in the course of the morning,
but it was both exciting and hard work. A heavy
shower soaked us through, without extracting the
slightest notice from my companion; and on we
trudged through peas, beans, turnips, and corn, muddied
to the knees and smoking with moisture, excessively
to the astonishment, I doubt not, of the productions
of Monsieur Clerx, of the Rue Vivienne, which
were reduced to the consistency of brown paper, and
those of my London tailor, which were equally entitled
to some surprise at the use they were put to.
It was quite beautiful, however, to see the ardor and
training of the dogs; their caution, their obedience,
and their perfect understanding of every motion of
their master. I found myself interested quite beyond
fatigue, and it was only when we jumped the park
paling and took it once more leisurely down the gravel-walks,
that I realized at what an expense of mud,
water, and weariness, my day's sport had been purchased.
Mem. Never to come to Scotland again
without hob-nailed shoes and a shooting-jacket.

Rode over to Roslin castle. The country between
Dalhousie castle and Roslin, including the village of
Lasswade, is of uncommon loveliness. Lasswade
itself clings to the two sides of a small valley, with its
village church buried in trees, and the country-seat
of Lord Melvill looking down upon it, from its green
woods; and away over the shoulder of the hill, swell
the forests and rocks which imbosom Hawthornden
(the residence of Drummond, the poet, in the days of
Ben Jonson), and the Pentland Hills, with their bold
outline, from a background that completes the picture.

We left our horses at the neighboring inn, and
walked first to Roslin chapel. This little gem of
florid architecture is scarcely a ruin, so perfect are its
arches and pillars, its fretted cornices and its painted
windows. A whimsical booby undertook the cicerone,
with a long cane-pole to point out the beauties.
We entered the low side-door, whose stone thresh
old the feet of Cromwell's church-stabled troopers
assisted to wear, and walked at once to a singular column
of twisted marble, most curiously carved, standing
under the choir. Our friend with the cane-pole,
who had condescended to familiar Scotch on the way,
took his distance from the base, and drawing up his
feet like a soldier on drill, assumed a most extraordinary
elevation of voice, and recited its history in a
declamation of which I could only comprehend the
words “Awbraham and Isaac.” I saw by the direction
of the pole that there was a bas-relief of the
Father of the Faithful, done on the capital, but for
the rest I was indebted to Lord Ramsay, who did it
into English as follows: “The master-mason of this
chapel, meeting with some difficulties in the execution
of his design, found it necessary to go to Rome
for information, during which time his apprentice
carried on the work, and even executed some parts
concerning which his master had been most doubtful;
particularly this fine fluted column, ornamented with
wreaths of foliage and flowers twisting spirally round
it. The master on his return, stung with envy at this
proof of the superior abilities of his apprentice, slew
him by a blow of his hammer.”

The whole interior of the chapel is excessively
rich. The roof, capitals, key-stones, and architraves,
are covered with sculptures. On the architrave joining
the apprentice's pillar to a smaller one, is graved the
sententious inscription, “Forte est vinum, fortior est
rex, fortiores sunt mulieres; super omnia vincit veritas.”
It has been built about four hundred years, and is, I
am told, the most perfect thing of its kind in Scotland.

The ruins of Roslin castle are a few minutes walk
beyond. They stand on a kind of island rock, in the
midst of one of the wildest glens of Scotland, separated
from the hill nearest to the base by a drawbridge,
swung over a tremendous chasm. I have seen nothing
so absolutely picturesque in my travels. The North
Esk runs its dark course, unseen, in the ravine below;
the rocks on every side frown down upon it in black
shadows, the woods are tangled and apparently pathless,
and were it not for a most undeniable two-story
farm-house, built directly in the court of the old castle,
you might convince yourself that foot had never
approached it since the days of Wallace.

The fortress was built by William St. Clair, of
whom Grose writes: “He kept a great court and was
royally served at his own table in vessels of gold and
silver; Lord Dirleton being his master-household;
Lord Borthwick his cup-bearer, and Lord Fleming
his carver; in whose absence they had deputies to attend,
viz: Stewart, Laird of Drumlanrig; Tweddie,
Laird of Drumerline; and Sandilands, Laird of Calder.
He had his halls and other apartments richly
adorned with embroidered hangings. He flourished
in the reigns of James the First and Second. His
princess, Elizabeth Douglas, was served by seventy-five
gentlewomen, whereof fifty-three were daughters
of noblemen, all clothed in velvets and silks, with
their chains of gold and other ornaments, and was
attended by two hundred riding gentlemen in all her
journeys; and, if it happened to be dark when she
went to Edinburgh, where her lodgings were at the
foot of the Black Fryar's Wynd, eighty lighted
torches were carried before her.”

With a scrambling walk up the glen, which is, as
says truly Mr. Grose, “inconceivably romantic,” we
returned to our horses, and rode back to our dinner at
Dalhousie, delighted with Roslin castle, and uncommonly
hungry.

127. LETTER CXXVII.

One of my most valued letters to Scotland was an
introduction to Professor Wilson—the “Christopher
North” of Blackwood, and the well-known poet.
The acknowledgment of the reception of my note
came with an invitation to breakfast the following
morning, at the early hour of nine.

The professor's family were at a summer residence
in the country, and he was alone in his house in
Gloucester-place, having come to town on the melancholy
errand of a visit to poor Blackwood—(since
dead). I was punctual to my hour, and found the
poet standing before the fire with his coat-skirts expanded—a
large, muscular man, something slovenly
in his dress, but with a manner and face of high good
humor, and remarkably frank and prepossessing address.
While he was finding me a chair, and saying
civil things of the noble friend who had been the medium
of our acquaintance, I was trying to reconcile
my idea of him, gathered from portraits and descriptions,
with the person before me. I had imagined a
thinner and more scholar-like looking man, with a
much paler face, and a much more polished exterior.
His head is exceedingly ample, his eye blue and restless,
his mouth full of character, and his hair, of a
very light sandy color, is brushed up to cover an incipient
baldness, but takes very much its own way,
and has the wildness of a highlander's. He has the
stamp upon him of a remarkable man to a degree seldom
seen, and is, on the whole, fine-looking and certainly
a gentleman in his appearance; but (I know
not whether the impression is common) I expected in
Christopher North, a finished and rather over-refined
man of the world of the old school, and I was so far
disappointed.

The tea was made, and the breakfast smoked upon
the table, but the professor showed no signs of being
aware of the fact, and talked away famously, getting
up and sitting down, walking to the window and
standing before the fire, and apparently carried quite
away with his own too rapid process of thought. He
talked of the American poets, praised Percival and
Pierpont more particularly; expressed great pleasure
at the criticisms of his own works that had appeared
in the American papers and magazines—and still the
toast was getting cold, and with every move he seemed
less and less aware of the presence of breakfast.
There were plates and cups for but two, so that he
was not waiting for another guest, and after half an
hour had thus elapsed, I began to fear he thought he
had already breakfasted. If I had wished to remind
him of it, however, I should have had no opportunity,
for the stream of his eloquence ran on without a
break; and eloquence it certainly was. His accent is
very broadly Scotch, but his words are singularly well
chosen, and his illustrations more novel and poetical
than those of any man I ever conversed with. He
spoke of Blackwood, returning to the subject repeatedly,
and always with a softened tone of voice and a
more impressive manner, as if his feelings were entirely
engrossed by the circumstances of his illness.
“Poor Blackwood,” he said, setting his hands together,
and fixing his eyes on the wall, as if he were soliloquising
with the picture of the sick man vividly before
him, “there never was a more honest creature, or
a better friend. I have known him intimately for
years, and owe him much; and I could lose no friend
that would affect me more nearly. There is something
quite awful in the striking down thus of a fa
miliar companion by your side—the passing away—
the death—the end for ever of a man you have been
accustomed to meet as surely as the morning or evening,
and have grown to consider a part of your existence
almost. To have the share he took in your
thoughts thrown back upon you—and his aid and
counsel and company with you no more. His own
mind is in a very singular state. He knows he is to
die, and he has made every preparation in the most
composed and sensible manner, and if the subject is
alluded to directly, does not even express a hope of
recovery; yet, the moment the theme is changed, he
talks as if death were as far from him as ever, and
looks forward, and mingles himself up in his remarks
on the future, as if he were to be here to see this and
the other thing completed, and share with you the advantage
for years to come. What a strange thing it
is—this balancing between death and life—standing on
the edge of the grave, and turning, first to look into
its approaching darkness, and then back on the familiar
and pleasant world, yet with a certain downward
progress, and no hope of life, beyond the day over
your head!”

I asked if Blackwood was a man of refined literary
taste.

“Yes,” he said, “I would trust his opinion of a
book sooner than that of any man I know. He might
not publish everything he approved, for it was his business
to print only things that would sell; and, therefore,
there are perhaps many authors who would complain
of him; but, if his opinion had been against my
own, and it had been my own book, I should believe
he was right and give up my own judgment. He was
a patron of literature, and it owes him much. He is
a loss to the world.”

I spoke of the “Noctes.”

He smiled, as you would suppose Christopher
North would do, with the twinkle proper of genuine
hilarity in his eye, and said, “Yes, they have been very
popular. Many people in Scotland believe them to
be transcripts of real scenes, and wonder how a professor
of moral philosophy can descend to such carousings,
and poor Hogg comes in for his share of
abuse, for they never doubt he was there and said
everything that is put down for him.”

“How does the Shepherd take it?”

“Very good humoredly, with the exception of one
or two occasions, when cockney scribblers have visited
him in their tours, and tried to flatter him by convincing
him he was treated disrespectfully. But five
minutes' conversation and two words of banter restore
his good humor, and he is convinced, as he ought to
be, that he owes half his reputation to the Noctes.”

“What do you think of his Life of Sir Walter,
which Lockhart has so butchered in Fraser?”

“Did Lockhart write that?”

“I was assured so in London.”

“It was a barbarous and unjustifiable attack; and,
oddly enough, I said so yesterday to Lockhart himself,
who was here, and he differed from me entirely.
Now you mention it, I think from his manner, he must
have written it.”

“Will Hogg forgive him?”

“Never! never! I do not think he knows yet who
has done it, but I hear that he is dreadfully exasperated.
Lockhart is quite wrong. To attack an old
man, with gray hairs, like the Shepherd, and accuse
him so flatly and unnecessarily of lie upon lie—oh, it
was not right!”

“Do you think Hogg misrepresented facts wilfully?”

“No, oh no! he is perfectly honest, no doubt, and
quite revered Sir Walter. He has an unlucky inaccuracy
of mind, however; and his own vanity, which
is something quite ridiculous, has given a coloring to
his conversations with Scott, which puts them in a

very false light; and Sir Walter, who was the best
natured of men, may have said the things ascribed to
him in a variety of moods, such as no one can understand
who does not know what a bore Hogg must
sometimes have been at Abbottsford. Do you know
Lockhart?”

“No, I do not. He is almost the only literary man
in London I have not met; and I must say, as the
editor of the Quarterly, and the most unfair and unprincipled
critic of the day, I have no wish to know
him. I never heard him well spoken of. I probably
have met a hundred of his acquaintances, but I have
not yet seen one who pretended to be his friend.”

“Yet there is a great deal of good in Lockhart. I
allow all you say of his unfairness and severity; but
if he were sitting there, opposite you, you would find
him the mildest and most unpresuming of men, and so
he appears in private life always.”

“Not always. A celebrated foreigner, who had
been very intimate with him, called one morning to
deprecate his severity upon Baron D'Haussez's book
in a forthcoming review. He did his errand in a
friendly way, and, on taking his leave, Lockhart, with
much ceremony, accompanied him down to his carriage.
`Pray don't give yourself the trouble to come
down,' said the polite Frenchman. `I make a point
of doing it, sir;' said Lockhart, with a very offensive
manner, `for I understand from your friend's book,
that we are not considered a polite nation in France.'
Nothing certainly could be more ill-bred and insulting.”

“Still it is not in his nature. I do believe that it is
merely an unhappy talent he has for sarcasm, with
which his heart has nothing to do. When he sits
down to review a book, he never thinks of the author
or his feelings. He cuts it up with pleasure, because
he does it with skill in the way of his profession, as a
surgeon dissects a dead body. He would be the first
to show the man a real kindness if he stood before
him. I have known Lockhart long. He was in Edinboro'
a great while, and when he was writing `Valerius,'
we were in the habit of walking out together
every morning, and when we reached a quiet spot in
the country, he read to me the chapters as he wrote
them. He finished it in three weeks. I heard it all
thus by piecemeal as it went on, and had much difficulty
in persuading him that it was worth publishing.
He wrote it very rapidly, and thought nothing of it.
We used to sup together with Blackwood, and that
was the real origin of the `Noctes.”'

“At Ambrose's?”

“At Ambrose's.”

“But is there such a tavern, really?”

“Oh, certainly. Anybody will show it to you. It
is a small house, kept in an out-of-the-way corner of
the town, by Ambrose, who is an excellent fellow in
his way, and has had a great influx of custom in consequence
of his celebrity in the Noctes. We were
there one night very late, and had all been remarkably
gay and agreeable. `What a pity,' said Lockhart,
`that some short-hand writer had not been here to
take down the good things that have been said at this
supper.' The next day he produced a paper called
`Noctes Ambrosianæ,' and that was the first. I continued
them afterward.”

“Have you no idea of publishing them separately?
I think a volume or two should be made of the more
poetical and critical parts, certainly. Leaving out the
politics and the merely local topics of the day, no book
could be more agreeable.”

“It was one of the things pending when poor
Blackwood was taken ill. But, will you have some
breakfast?”

The breakfast had been cooling for an hour, and I
most willingly acceded to his proposition. Without
rising, he leaned back, with his chair still toward the
fire, and seizing the tea-pot as if it were a sledge-hammer,
he poured from one cup to the other without
interrupting the stream, overrunning both cup and
saucer, and partly flooding the tea-tray. He then set
the cream toward me with a carelessness which nearly
overset it, and in trying to reach an egg from the centre
of the table, broke two. He took no notice of his
own awkwardness, but drank his cup of tea at a single
draught, ate his egg in the same expeditious manner,
and went on talking of the Noctes and Lockhart and
Blackwood, as if eating his breakfast were rather a
troublesome parenthesis in his conversation. After a
while he digressed to Wordsworth and Southey, and
asked me if I was going to return by the Lakes. I
proposed doing so.

“I will give you letters to both, if you haven't
them. I lived a long time in that neighborhood, and
know Wordsworth perhaps as well as any one. Many
a day I have walked over the hills with him, and listened
to his repetition of his own poetry, which of course
filled my mind completely at the time, and perhaps
started the poetical vein in me, though I can not agree
with the critics that my poetry is an imitation of
Wordsworth's.”

“Did Wordsworlh repeat any other poetry than his
own?”

“Never in a single instance, to my knowledge. He
is remarkable for the manner in which he is wrapped
up in his own poetical life. He thinks of nothing
else. Everything ministers to it. Everything is done
with reference to it. He is all and only a poet.”

“Was the story true that was told in the papers of
his seeing, for the first time, in a large company some
new novel of Scott's, in which there was a motto taken
from his works; and that he went immediately to
the shelf and took down one of his own volumes and
read the whole poem to the party, who were waiting
for a reading of the new book?”

“Perfectly true. It happened in this very house.
Wordsworth was very angry at the paragraph, and I
believe accused me of giving it to the world. I was
as much surprised as himself, however, to see it in
print.”

“What is Southey's manner of life?”

“Walter Scott said of him that he lived too much
with women. He is secluded in the country, and surrounded
by a circle of admiring friends who glorify
every literary project he undertakes, and persuade
him in spite of his natural modesty, that he can do
nothing wrong or imperfectly. He has great genius
and is a most estimable man.”

“Hamilton lives on the Lakes too—does he not?”

“Yes. How terribly he was annoyed by the review
of his book in the North American. Who
wrote it?”

“I have not heard positively, but I presume it was
Everett. I know nobody else in the country who
holds such a pen. He is the American Junius.”

“It was excessively clever but dreadfully severe,
and Hamilton was frantic about it. I sent it to him
myself, and could scarce have done him a more ungracious
office. But what a strange thing it is that
nobody can write a good book on America! The ridiculous
part of it seems to me that men of common
sense go there as travellers, and fill their books with
scenes such as they may see every day within five
minutes' walk of their own doors, and call them American.
Vulgar people are to be found all over the
world, and I will match any scene in Hamilton or
Mrs. Trollope, any day or night, here in Edinburgh.
I have always had an idea that I should be the best
traveller in America myself. I have been so in the
habit of associating with people of every class in my
own country, that I am better fitted to draw the proper
distinctions, I think, between what is universal over
the world or peculiar to America.”

“I promise you a hearty welcome, if you should
be inclined to try.”

“I have thought seriously of it. It is, after all,
not more than a journey to Switzerland or Italy, of
which we think nothing, and my vacation of five
months would give me ample time, I suppose, to run
through the principal cities. I shall do it, I think.”

I asked if he had written a poem of any length
within the last few years.

“No, though I am always wishing to do it. Many
things interfere with my poetry. In the first place I
am obliged to give a lecture once a day for six months,
and in the summer it is such a delight to be released,
and get away into the country with my girls and boys,
that I never put pen to paper till I am driven. Then
Blackwood is a great care; and, greater objection still,
I have been discouraged in various ways by criticism.
It used to gall me to have my poems called imitations
of Wordsworth and his school; a thing I could not
see myself, but which was asserted even by those who
praised me, and which modesty forbade I should disavow.
I really can see no resemblance between the
Isle of Palms and anything of Wordsworth's. I think
I have a style of my own, and as my ain bairn, I think
better of it than other people, and so pride prevents
my writing. Until late years, too, I have been the
subject of much political abuse, and for that I should
not have cared if it were not disagreeable to have
children and servants reading it in the morning papers,
and a fear of giving them another handle in my poetry
was another inducement for not writing.”

I expressed my surprise at what he said, for, as far
as I knew the periodicals, Wilson had been a singularly
continued favorite.

“Yes, out of this immediate sphere, perhaps—but
it requires a strong mind to suffer annoyance at one's
lips, and comfort oneself with the praise of a distant
and outer circle of public opinion. I had a family
growing up of sons and daughters, who felt for me
more than I should have felt for myself, and I was annoyed
perpetually. Now, these very papers praise
me, and I really can hardly believe my eyes when I
open them and find the same type and imprint expressing
such different opinions. It is absurd to mind
such weathercocks; and, in truth, the only people
worth heeding or writing for are the quiet readers in
the country, who read for pleasure, and form sober
opinions apart from political or personal prejudice. I
would give more for the praise of one country clergyman
and his family than I would for the momentary
admiration of a whole city. People in towns require
a constant plantasmagoria, to keep up even the remembrance
of your name. What books and authors,
what battles and heroes, are forgotten in a day!”

My letter is getting too long, and I must make it
shorter, as it is vastly less agreeable than the visit itself.
Wilson went on to speak of his family, and his
eyes kindled with pleasure in talking of his children.
He invited me to stop and visit him at his place near
Selkirk, in my way south, and promised me that I
should see Hogg, who lived not far off. Such inducement
was scarce necessary, and I made a half
promise to do it and left him, after having passed several
hours of the highest pleasure in his fascinating
society.

128. LETTER CXXVIII.

I was engaged to dine with Lord Jeffrey on the
same day that I had breakfasted with Wilson, and the
opportunity of contrasting so closely these two distinguished
men, both editors of leading Reviews, yet
of different politics, and no less different minds, persons,
and manners, was highly gratifying.

At seven o'clock I drove to Moray-place, the Grosvenor-square
of Edinburgh. I was not sorry to be
early, for never having seen my host, nor his lady
(who, as is well known, is an American), I had some
little advantage over the awkwardness of meeting a
large party of strangers. After a few minutes' conversation
with Mrs. Jeffrey, the door was thrown
quickly open, and the celebrated editor of the Edinburgh,
the distinguished lawyer, the humane and
learned judge, and the wit of the day, par excellence,
entered with his daughter. A frank, almost merry
smile, a perfectly unceremonious, hearty manner, and
a most playful and graceful style of saying the half-apologetic,
half-courteous things, incident to a first
meeting after a letter of introduction, put me at once
at my ease, and established a partiality for him, impromptu,
in my feelings. Jeffrey is rather below the
middle size, slight, rapid in his speech and motion,
never still, and glances from one subject to another,
with less abruptness and more quickness than any
man I had ever seen. His head is small, but compact
and well-shaped; and the expression of his face,
when serious, is that of quick and discriminating
earnestness. His voice is rather thin, but pleasing;
and if I had met him incidentally, I should have described
him, I think, as a most witty and well-bred
gentleman of the school of Wilkes and Sheridan.
Perhaps as distinguishing a mark as either his wit or
his politeness, is an honest goodness of heart; which,
however it makes itself apparent, no one could doubt,
who had been with Jeffrey ten minutes.

To my great disappointment, Mrs. Jeffrey informed
me that Lord Brougham, who was their guest at the
time, was engaged to a dinner, given by the new lord
advocate to Earl Grey. I had calculated much on
seeing two such old friends and fellow-wits as Jeffrey
and Brougham at the same table, and I could well
believe what my neighbor told me at dinner, that it
was more than a common misfortune to have missed
it.

A large dinner-party began to assemble, some distinguished
men in the law among them, and last of all
was announced Lady Keith, rather a striking and very
fashionable person, with her husband, Count Flahault,
who, after being Napoleon's aid-de-camp at the battle
of Waterloo, offered his beauty and talents, both very
much above the ordinary mark, to the above named
noble heiress. I have seen few as striking-looking
men as Count Flahault, and never a foreigner who
spoke English so absolutely like a native of the
country.

The great “Grey dinner” had been given the day
before, and politics were the only subject at table. It
had been my lot to be thrown principally among tories
(conservatives is the new name), since my arrival
in England, and it was difficult to rid myself at
once of the impressions of a fortnight just passed in
the castle of a tory earl. My sympathies in the
“great and glorious” occasion, were slower than those
of the company, and much of their enthusiasm seemed
to me overstrained. Then I had not even dined
with the two thousand whigs under the pavilion, and
as I was incautious enough to confess it, I was rallied
upon having fallen into bad company, and altogether
entered less into the spirit of the hour than I could
have wished. Politics are seldom witty or amusing,
and though I was charmed with the good sense and
occasional eloquence of Lord Jeffrey, I was glad to
get up stairs after dinner to chasse-café and the ladies.

We were all bound to the public ball that evening
and at eleven I accompanied my distinguished host to

the assembly-room. Dancing was going on with
great spirit when we entered; Lord Grey's statesmanlike
head was bowing industriously on the platform;
Lady Grey and her daughters sat looking on from the
same elevated position, and Lord Brougham's ugliest
and shrewdest of human faces, flitted about through
the crowd, good fellow to everybody, and followed by
all eyes but those of the young. One or two of the
Scotch nobility were there, but whigism is not popular
among les hautes volailles, and the ball, though
crowded, was but thinly sprinkled with “porcelain.”
I danced till three o'clock, without finding my partners
better or worse for their politics, and having aggravated
a temporary lameness by my exertions, went
home with a leg like an elephant to repent my abandonment
of tory quiet.

Two or three days under the hands of the doctor,
with the society of a Highland crone, of whose ceaseless
garrulity over my poultices and plasters I could
not understand two consecutive words, fairly finished
my patience, and abandoning with no little regret a
charming land route to the north of Scotland, I had
myself taken, “this side up,” on board the steamer
for Aberdeen. The loss of a wedding in Perthshire
by the way, of a week's deer-shooting in the forest of
Athol, and a week's fishing with a noble friend at
Kinrara (long-standing engagements all), I lay at the
door of the whigs. Add to this Loch Leven, Cairn-Gorm,
the pass of Killicrankie, other sights lost on
that side of Scotland, and I paid dearly for “the Grey
ball.”

We steamed the hundred and twenty miles in
twelve hours, paying about three dollars for our passage.
I mention it for the curiosity of a cheap thing
in this country.

I lay at Aberdeen four days, getting out but once,
and then for a drive to the “Marichal College,” the
alma mater of Dugald Dalgetty. It is a curious and
rather picturesque old place, half in ruins, and is
about being pulled down. A Scotch gentleman, who
was a fellow-passenger in the steamer, and who lived
in the town, called on me kindly twice a day, brought
me books and papers, offered me the use of his carriage,
and did everything for my comfort that could
have been suggested by the warmest friendship. Considering
that it was a casual acquaintance of a day, it
speaks well, certainly, for the “Good Samaritanism”
of Scotland.

I took two places in the coach at last (one for my
leg), and bowled away seventy miles across the country,
with the delightful speed of these admirable conveyances,
for Gordon Castle. I arrived at Lochabers,
a small town on the estate of the duke of Gordon, at
three in the afternoon, and immediately took a postchaise
for the castle, the gate of which was a stone's
throw from the inn.

The immense iron gate surmounted by the Gordon
arms, the handsome and spacious stone lodges on
either side, the canonically fat porter in white stockings
and gay livery, lifting his hat as he swung open
the massive portal, all bespoke the entrance to a noble
residence. The road within was edged with velvet
sward, and rolled to the smoothness of a terrace-walk,
the winding avenue lengthened away before, with
trees of every variety of foliage; light carriages passed
me driven by ladies or gentlemen bound on their
afternoon airing; a groom led up and down two beautiful
blood-horses, prancing along, with side-saddles
and morocco stirrups, and keepers with hounds and
terriers; gentlemen on foot, idling along the walks,
and servants in different liveries, hurrying to and fro,
betokening a scene of busy gayety before me. I had
hardly noted these various circumstances, before a
sudden curve in the road brought the castle into view,
a vast stone pile with castellated wings, and in another
moment I was at the door, where a dozen lounging
and powdered menials were waiting on a party of
ladies and gentlemen to their several carriages. It was
the moment for the afternoon drive.

129. LETTER CXXIX.

The last phaeton dashed away and my chaise
advanced to the door. A handsome boy, in a kind of
page's dress, immediately came to the window, addressed
me by name, and informed me that his grace was
out deer-shooting, but that my room was prepared,
and he was ordered to wait on me. I followed him
through a hall lined with statues, deers' horns; and
armor, and was ushered into a large chamber, looking
out on a park, extending with its lawns and woods
to the edge of the horizon. A more lovely view never
feasted human eye.

“Who is at the castle?” I asked, as the boy busied
himself in unstrapping my portmanteau.

“Oh, a great many, sir.” He stopped in his occupation
and began counting on his fingers. “There's
Lord Aberdeen, and Lord Claud Hamilton and Lady
Harriette Hamilton (them's his lordship's two stepchildren,
you know, sir), and the Dutchess of Richmond
and Lady Sophia Lennox, and Lady Keith, and
Lord Mandeville and Lord Aboyne, and Lord Stormont
and Lady Stormont, and Lord Morton and Lady
Morton, and Lady Alicia, and—and—and—
twenty more, sir.”

“Twenty more lords and ladies?”

“No, sir! that's all the nobility.”

“And you can't remember the names of the others?”

“No, sir.”

He was a proper page. He could not trouble his
memory with the names of commoners.

“And how many sit down to dinner?”

“Above thirty, sir, besides the duke and dutchess.”

“That will do.” And off tripped my slender gentleman
with his laced jacket, giving the fire a terrible
stir-up in his way out, and turning back to inform me
that the dinner hour was seven precisely.

It was a mild, bright afternoon, quite warm for the
end of an English September, and with a fire in the
room, and a soft sunshine pouring in at the windows,
a seat by the open casement was far from disagreeable.
I passed the time till the sun set, looking out on
the park. Hill and valley lay between my eye and the
horizon; sheep fed in picturesque flocks; and small
fallow deer grazed near them; the trees were planted,
and the distant forest shaped by the hand of taste; and
broad and beautiful as was the expanse taken in by the
eye, it was evidently one princely possession. A mile
from the castle wall, the shaven sward extended in a
carpet of velvet softness, as bright as emerald, studded
by clumps of shrubbery, like flowers wrought
elegantly on tapestry; and across it bounded occasionaly
a hare, and the pheasants fed undisturbed near
the thickets, or a lady with flowing riding-dress and
flaunting feather, dashed into sight upon her fleet
blood-palfrey, and was lost the next moment in the
woods, or a boy put his pony to its mettle up the
ascent, or a gamekeeper idled into sight with his gun
in the hollow of his arm, and his hounds at his heels
—and all this little world of enjoyment and luxury,
and beauty, lay in the hand of one man, and was
created by his wealth in these northern wilds of Scotland,
a day's journey almost from the possession of

another human being. I never realized so forcibly the
splendid result of wealth and primogeniture.

The sun set in a blaze of fire among the pointed
firs crowning the hills, and by the occasional prance
of a horse's feet on the gravel, and the roll of rapid
wheels, and now and then a gay laugh and merry
voices, the different parties were returning to the
castle. Soon after a loud gong sounded through the
gallery, the signal to dress, and I left my musing occupation
unwillingly to make my toilet for an appearance
in a formidable circle of titled aristocrats,
not one of whom I had ever seen, the duke himself a
stranger to me, except through the kind letter of invitation
lying upon the table.

I was sitting by the fire imagining forms and faces
for the different persons who had been named to me,
when there was a knock at the door, and a tall, white-haired
gentleman, of noble physiognomy, but singularly
cordial address, entered, with the broad red riband
of a duke across his breast, and welcomed me most
heartily to the castle. The gong sounded at the next
moment, and, in our way down, he named over his
other guests, and prepared me in a measure for the
introductions which followed. The drawing-room
was crowded like a soirée. The dutchess, a very tall
and very handsome woman, with a smile of the most
winning sweetness, received me at the door, and I was
presented successively to every person present. Dinner
was announced immediately, and the difficult
question of precedence being sooner settled than I had
ever seen it before in so large a party, we passed
through files of servants to the dining-room.

It was a large and very lofty hall, supported at the
ends by marble columns, within which was stationed
a band of music, playing delightfully. The walls
were lined with full-length family pictures, from old
knights in armor to the modern dukes in kilt of the
Gorden plaid; and on the sideboards stood services
of gold plate, the most gorgeously massive, and the
most beautiful in workmanship I have ever seen.
There were, among the vases, several large coursing-cups,
won by the duke's hounds, of exquisite shape and
ornament.

I fell into my place between a gentleman and a very
beautiful woman, of perhaps twenty-two, neither of
whose names I remembered, though I had but just
been introduced. The duke probably anticipated as
much, and as I took my seat he called out to me, from
the top of the table, that I had upon my right, Lady
—, “the most agreeable woman in Scotland.” It
was unnecessary to say that she was the most lovely.

I have been struck everywhere in England with
the beauty of the higher classes, and as I looked
around me upon the aristocratic company at the table,
I thought I never had seen “heaven's image double-stamped
as man and noble” so unequivocally clear.
There were two young men and four or five young
ladies of rank—and five or six people of more decided
personal attractions could scarcely be found; the style
of form and face at the same time being of that cast
of superiority which goes by the expressive name of
“thoroughbred.” There is a striking difference in
this respect between England and the countries of the
continent—the paysans of France and the contadini
of Italy being physically far superior to their degenerate
masters; while the gentry and nobility of England
differ from the peasantry in limb and feature as
the racer differs from the dray-horse, or the greyhound
from the cur. The contrast between the manners
of English and French gentlemen is quite as
striking. The empressment, the warmth, the shrug
and gesture of the Parisian; and the working eyebrow,
dilating or contracting eye, and conspirator-like
action of the Italian in the most common conversation,
are the antipodes of English high breeding. I should
say a North American Indian, in his more dignified
phrase, approached nearer to the manner of an English
nobleman than any other person. The calm repose
of person and feature, the self-possession under
all circumstances, that incapability of surprise or
dereglément, and that decision about the slightest
circumstance, and the apparent certainty that he is
acting absolutely comme il faut, is equally “gentlemanlike”
and Indianlike. You can not astonish an
English gentleman. If a man goes into a fit at his
side, or a servant drops a dish upon his shoulder, or he
hears that the house is on fire, he sets down his wine-glass
with the same deliberation. He has made up
his mind what to do in all possible cases, and he does it.
He is cold at a first introduction, and may bow stiffly
(which he always does) in drinking wine with you, but
it is his manner; and he would think an Englishman
out of his senses, who should bow down to his very
plate and smile as a Frenchman does on a similar occasion.
Rather chilled by this, you are a little astonished
when the ladies have left the table, and he
closes his chair up to you, to receive an invitation to
pass a month with him at his country-house, and to
discover that at the very moment he bowed so coldly
he was thinking how he should contrive to facilitate
your plans for getting to him or seeing the country to
advantage on the way.

The band ceased playing when the ladies left the
table, the gentlemen closed up, conversation assumed
a merrier cast, coffee and chasse-café were brought in
when the wines began to be circulated more slowly;
and at eleven, there was a general move to the drawing-room.
Cards, tea, and music, filled up the time
till twelve, and then the ladies took their departure
and the gentleman sat down to supper. I got to bed
somewhere about two o'clock; and thus ended an
evening which I had anticipated as stiff and embarrassing,
but which is marked in my tablets as one of
the most social and kindly I have had the good fortune
to record on my travels. I have described it, and
shall describe others minutely—and I hope there is
no necessity of reminding any one that my apology
for thus disclosing scenes of private life has been
already made. Their interest as sketches by an
American of the society that most interests Americans,
and the distance at which they are published,
justify them, I would hope, from any charge of indelicacy.

130. LETTER CXXX.

I arose late on the first morning after my arrival at
Gordon Castle, and found the large party already
assembled about the breakfast-table. I was struck on
entering with the different air of the room. The deep
windows, opening out upon the park, had the effect
of sombre landscapes in oaken frames; the troops of
liveried servants, the glitter of plate, the music, that
had contributed to the splendor of the scene the night
before, were gone; the duke sat laughing at the head
of the table, with a newspaper in his hand, dressed in
a coarse shooting jacket and colored cravat; the
dutchess was in a plain morning-dress and cap of the
simplest character; and the high-born women about
the table, whom I had left glittering with jewels, and
dressed in all the attractions of fashion, appeared with
the simplest coiffure and a toilet of studied plainness.
The ten or twelve noblemen present were engrossed
with their letters or newspapers over tea and toast;
and in them, perhaps, the transformation was still
greater. The soigné man of fashion of the night before,

faultless in costume and distinguished in his appearance,
in the full force of the term, was enveloped
now in a coat of fustian, with a coarse waistcoat of
plaid, a gingham cravat, and hob-nailed shoes (for
shooting), and in place of the gay hilarity of the supper-table,
wore a face of calm indifference, and ate his
breakfast and read the paper in a rarely broken silence.
I wondered, as I looked about me, what would be the
impression of many people in my own country, could
they look in upon that plain party, aware that it was
composed of the proudest nobility and the highest
fashion of England.

Breakfast in England is a confidential and unceremonious
hour, and servants are generally dispensed
with. This is to me, I confess, an advantage it has
over every other meal. I detest eating with twenty
tall fellows standing opposite, whose business it is to
watch me. The coffee and tea were on the table, with
toast, muffins, oat-cakes, marmalade, jellies, fish, and
all the paparaphernalia of a Scotch breakfast; and on the
sideboard stood cold meats for those who liked them,
and they were expected to go to it and help themselves.
Nothing could be more easy, unceremonious, and affable,
than the whole tone of the meal. One after
another rose and fell into groups in the windows, or
walked up and down the long room, and, with one or
two others, I joined the duke at the head of the table,
who gave us some interesting particulars of the salmon
fisheries of the Spey. The privilege of fishing the
river within his lands, is bought of him at the pretty
sum of eight thousand pounds a year! A salmon was
brought in for me to see, as of remarkable size, which
was not more than half the weight of our common
American salmon.

The ladies went off unaccompanied to their walks
in the park and other avocations, those bound for the
covers joined the game-keepers, who were waiting
with their dogs in the leash at the stables; some paired
off to the billiard-room, and I was left with Lord Aberdeen
in the breakfast-room alone. The tory ex-minister
made a thousand inquiries, with great apparent
interest, about America. When secretary for foreign
affairs in the Wellington cabinet, he had known Mr.
McLane intimately. He said he seldom had been so
impressed with a man's man's and straight-forwardness,
and never did public business with any one with
more pleasure. He admired Mr. McLane, and hoped
he enjoyed his friendship. He wished he might return
as our minister to England. One such honorable,
uncompromising man, he said, was worth a score of
practised diplomatists. He spoke of Gallatin and Rush
in the same flattering manner, but recurred continually
to Mr. McLane, of whom he could scarcely say
enough. His politics would naturally lead him to approve
of the administration of General Jackson, but he
seemed to admire the president very much as a man.

Lord Aberdeen has the name of being the proudest
and coldest aristocrat of England. It is amusing to
see the person who bears such a character. He is of
the middle height, rather clumsily made, with an address
more of sober dignity than of pride or reserve.
With a black coat much worn, and always too large
for him, a pair of coarse check trousers very ill made.
a waistcoat buttoned up to his throat, and a cravat of
the most primitive negligé, his aristocracy is certainly
not in his dress. His manners are of absolute simplicity,
amounting almost to want of style. He crosses
his hands behind him, and balances on his heels; in
conversation his voice is low and cold, and he seldom
smiles. Yet there is a certain benignity in his countenance,
and an indefinable superiority and high breeding
in his simple address, that would betray his rank
after a few minutes' conversation to any shrewd observer.
It is only in his manner toward the ladies of the
party that he would be immediately distinguishable
from men of lower rank in society.

Still suffering from lameness, I declined all invitations
to the shooting parties, who started across the
park, with the dogs leaping about them in a phrensy
of delight, and accepted the dutchess's kind offer of a
pony phaeton to drive down to the kennels. The
duke's breed, both of setters and hounds, is celebrated
throughout the kingdom. They occupy a spacious
building in the centre of a wood, a quadrangle enclosing
a court, and large enough for a respectable poorhouse.
The chief huntsman and his family, and perhaps
a gamekeeper or two, lodge on the premises, and
the dogs are divided by palings across the court. I
was rather startled to be introduced into the small enclosure
with a dozen gigantic blood-hounds, as high
as my breast, the keeper's whip in my hand the only
defence. I was not easier for the man's assertion that,
without it, they would “hae the life oot o' me in a
crack.” They came around me very quietly, and one
immense fellow, with a chest like a horse, and a head
of the finest expression, stood up and laid his paws
on my shoulders, with the deliberation of a friend
about to favor me with some grave advice. One can
scarce believe these noble creatures have not reason
like ourselves. Those slender, thorough-bred heads,
large, speaking eyes, and beautiful limbs and graceful
action, should be gifted with more than mere animal
instinct. The greyhounds were the beauties of the
kennel, however. I never had seen such perfect creatures.
“Dinna tak' pains to caress 'em, sir,” said the
huntsman, “they'll only be hangit for it!” I asked
for an explanation, and the man, with an air as if I was
uncommonly ignorant, told me that a hound was hung
the moment he betrayed attachment to any one, or in
any way showed signs of superior sagacity. In coursing
the hare, for instance, if the dog abandoned the
scent to cut across and intercept the poor animal, he
was considered as spoiling the sport. Greyhounds are
valuable only as they obey their mere natural instinct,
and if they leave the track of the hare, either in their
own sagacity, or to follow their master, in intercepting
it, they spoil the pack, and are hung without mercy.
It is an object, of course, to preserve them what they
usually are, the greatest fools as well as the handsomest
of the canine species, and on the first sign of attachment
to their master, their death-warrant is signed.
They are too sensible to live. The dutchess told me
afterward that she had the greatest difficulty in saving
the life of the finest hound in the pack, who had committed
the sin of showing pleasure once or twice when
she appeared.

The setters were in the next division, and really
they were quite lovely. The rare tan and black dog
of this race, with his silky, floss hair, intelligent muzzle,
good-humored face and caressing fondness (lucky
dog! that affection is permitted in his family!), quite
excited my admiration. There were thirty or forty
of these, old and young; and a friend of the duke's
would as soon ask him for a church living as for the
present of one of them. The former would be by
much the smaller favor. Then there were terriers of
four or five breeds, of one family of which (long-haired,
long-bodied, short-legged and perfectly white little
wretches) the keeper seemed particularly proud. I
evidently sunk in his opinion for not admiring them.

I passed the remainder of the morning in threading
the lovely alleys and avenues of the park, miles after
miles of gravel-walk, extending away in every direction,
with every variety of turn and shade, now a deep
wood, now a sunny opening upon a glade, here along
the bank of a stream, and there around the borders of
a small lagoon, the little ponies flying on over the
smoothly-rolled paths, and tossing their mimicking
heads, as if they too enjoyed the beauty of the princely
domain. This, I thought to myself, as I sped on
through light and shadow, is very like what is called
happiness; and this (if to be a duke were to enjoy it

as I do with this fresh feeling of novelty and delight)
is a condition of life it is not quite irrational to envy.
And giving my little steeds the rein, I repeated to myself
Scott's graphic description, which seems written
for the park of Gordon castle, and thanked Heaven for
one more day of unalloyed happiness.

131. LETTER CXXXI.

The aim of Scotch hospitality seems to be, to convince
you that the house and all that is in it is your
own, and you are at liberty to enjoy it as if you were,
in the French sense of the French phrase, chez vous.
The routine of Gordon castle was what each one
chose to make it. Between breakfast and lunch the
ladies were generally invisible, and the gentlemen rode
or shot, or played billiards, or kept their rooms. At
two o'clock, a dish or two of hot game and a profusion
of cold meats were set on the small tables in the
dining-room, and everybody came in for a kind of
lounging half-meal, which occupied perhaps an hour.
Thence all adjourned to the drawing-room, under the
windows of which were drawn up carriages of all descriptions,
with grooms, outriders, footmen, and saddle-horses
for gentlemen and ladies. Parties were
then made up for driving or riding, and from a pony-chaise
to a phaeton and four, there was no class of
vehicle which was not at your disposal. In ten minutes
the carriages were usually all filled, and away
they flew, some to the banks of the Spey or the sea-side,
some to the drives in the park, and with the delightful
consciousness that, speed where you would,
the horizon scarce limited the possession of your host,
and you were everywhere at home. The ornamental
gates flying open at your approach, miles distant from
the castle; the herds of red deer trooping away from
the sound of wheels in the silent park; the stately
pheasants feeding tamely in the immense preserves;
the hares scarce troubling themselves to get out of the
length of the whip; the stalking game-keepers lifting
their hats in the dark recesses of the forest—there
was something in this perpetual reminding of your
privileges, which, as a novelty, was far from disagreeable.
I could not at the time bring myself to feel,
what perhaps would be more poetical and republican,
that a ride in the wild and unfenced forest of my own
country would have been more to my taste.

The second afternoon of my arrival, I took a seat
in the carriage with Lord Aberdeen and his daughter,
and we followed the dutchess, who drove herself in a
pony-chaise, to visit a school on the estate. Attached
to a small gothic chapel, a few minutes drive from the
castle, stood a building in the same style, appropriated
to the instruction of the children of the duke's tenantry.
There were a hundred and thirty little creatures,
from two years to five or six, and, like all infant
schools in these days of improved education, was an
interesting and affecting sight. The last one I had
been in was at Athens, and though I missed here the
dark eyes and Grecian faces of the ægean, I saw
health and beauty of a kind which stirred up more
images of home, and promised, perhaps, more for the
future. They went through their evolutions, and
answered their questions, with an intelligence and
cheerfulness that were quite delightful, and I was sorry
to leave them even for a drive in the loveliest sunset
of a lingering day of summer.

People in Europe are more curious about the comparison
of the natural productions of America with
those of England, than about our social and political
differences. A man who does not care to know
whether the president has destroyed the bank, or the
bank the president, or whether Mrs. Trollope has
flattered the Americans or not, will be very much interested
to know if the pine-tree in his park is comparable
to the same tree in America, if the same cattle
are found there, or the woods stocked with the
same game as his own. I would recommend a little
study of trees particularly, and of vegetation gener
ally, as valuable knowledge for an American coming
abroad. I think there is nothing on which I have
been so often questioned. The dutchess led the way
to a plantation of American trees, at some distance
from the castle, and stopping beneath some really noble
firs, asked if our forest-trees were often larger,
with an air as if she believed they were not. They
were shrubs, however, compared to the gigantic productions
of the west. Whatever else we may see
abroad, we must return home to find the magnificence
of nature.

The number at the dinner-table of Gordon castle
was seldom less than thirty, but the company was
continually varied by departures and arrivals. No
sensation was made by either one or the other. A
travelling-carriage dashed up to the door, was disburdened
of its load, and drove round to the stables, and
the question was seldom asked, “Who is arrived?”
You were sure to see at dinner—and an addition of
half a dozen to the party made no perceptible difference
in anything. Leave-takings were managed in
the same quiet way. Adieus were made to the duke
and dutchess, and to no one else except he happened
to encounter the parting guest upon the staircase, or
were more than a common acquaintance. In short,
in every way the géne of life seemed weeded out, and
if unhappiness or ennui found its way into the castle,
it was introduced in the sufferer's own bosom. For
me, I gave myself up to enjoyment with an abandon
I could not resist. With kindness and courtesy in
every look, the luxuries and comforts of a regal establishment
at my freest disposal; solitude when I
pleased, company when I pleased, the whole visible
horizon fenced in for the enjoyment of a household,
of which I was a temporary portion, and no enemy
except time and the gout, I felt as if I had been spirited
into some castle of felicity, and had not come by
the royal mailcoach at all.

The great spell of high life in this country seems to
be repose. All violent sensations are avoided as
out of taste. In conversation, nothing is so “odd” (aword,
by the way, that in England means everything
disagreeable) as emphasis or startling epithet, or gesture,
and in common intercourse nothing so vulgar as
any approach to “a scene.” The high-bred Englishman
studies to express himself in the plainest words
that will convey his meaning, and is just as simple and
calm in describing the death of his friend, and just as
technical, so to speak, as in discussing the weather.
For all extraordinary admiration the word “capital”
suffices; for all ordinary praise the word “nice!” for
all condemnation in morals, manners, or religion, the
word “odd!” To express yourself out of this simple
vocabulary is to raise the eyebrows of the whole

company at once, and stamp yourself under-bred, or a
foreigner.

This sounds ridiculous, but it is the exponent not
only of good breeding, but of the true philosophy of
social life. The general happiness of a party consists
in giving every individual an equal chance, and
in wounding no one's self-love. What is called an
“overpowering person,” is immediately shunned, for
he talks too much, and excites too much attention.
In any other country he would be called “amusing.”
He is considered here as a mere monopolizer of the
general interest, and his laurels, talk he never so well,
shadow the rest of the company. You meet your
most intimate friend in society after a long separation,
and he gives you his hand as if you had parted at
breakfast. If he had expressed all he felt, it would
have been “a scene,” and the repose of the company
would have been disturbed. You invite a clever man
to dine with you, and he enriches his descriptions with
new epithets and original words. He is offensive.
He eclipses the language of your other guests, and is
out of keeping with the received and subdued tone to
which the most common intellect rises with ease.
Society on this footing is delightful to all, and the
diffident man, or the dull man, or the quiet man, enjoys
it as much as another. For violent sensations
you must go elsewhere. Your escape-valve is not at
your neighbor's ear.

There is a great advantage in this in another respect.
Your tongue never gets you into mischief. The
“unsafeness of Americans” in society (I quote a
phrase I have heard used a thousand times) arises
wholly from the American habit of applying high-wrought
language to trifles. I can tell one of my
countrymen abroad by his first remark. Ten to one
his first sentence contains a superlative that would
make an Englishman imagine he had lost his senses.
The natural consequence is continual misapprehension,
offence is given where none was intended, words
that have no meaning are the ground of quarrels, and
gentlemen are shy of us. A good-natured young
nobleman, whom I sat next to at dinner on my first
arrival at Gordon castle, told me he was hunting with
Lord Abercorn when two very gentleman-like young
men rode up and requested leave to follow the
hounds, but in such extraordinary language that they
were not at first understood. The hunt continued for
some days, and at last the strangers, who rode well
and were seen continually, were invited to dine with
the principal nobleman of the neighborhood. They
turned out to be Americans, and were every way well-bred
and agreeable, but their extraordinary mode of
expressing themselves kept the company in continual
astonishment. They were treated with politeness, of
course, while they remained, but no little fun was
made of their phraseology after their departure, and
the impression on the mind of my informant was very
much against the purity of the English language, as
spoken by Americans. I mention it for the benefit of
those whom it may concern.

132. LETTER CXXXII.

Ten days had gone by like the “Days of Thalaba,”
and I took my leave of Gordon Castle. It seemed to
me, as I looked back upon it, as if I had passed a
separate life there—so beautiful had been every object
on which I had looked in that time, and so free from
every mixture of ennui had been the hours from the
first to the last, I have set them apart in my memory,
those ten days, as a bright ellipse in the usual procession
of joys and sorrows. It is a little world, walled
in from rudeness and vexation, in which I have lived a
life.

I took the coach for Elgin, and visited the fine old
ruins of the cathedral, and then kept on to Inverness,
passing over the “Blasted Heath,” the tryst of Macbeth
and the witches. We passed within sight of
Culloden Moor, at sunset, and the driver pointed out
to me a lonely castle where the Pretender slept the
night before the battle. The interest with which I
had read the romantic history of Prince Charlie, in
my boyhood, was fully awakened, for his name is still
a watch-word of aristocracy in Scotland; and the
jacobite songs, with their half-warlike, half-melancholy
music, were favorites of the Dutchess of Gordon,
who sung them in their original Scotch, with an
enthusiasm and sweetness that stirred my blood like
the sound of a trumpet. There certainly never was a
cause so indebted to music and poetry as that which
was lost at Culloden.

The hotel at Inverness was crowded with livery-servants,
and the door inaccessible for carriages. I
had arrived on the last day of a county meeting, and
all the chieftains and lairds of the north and west of
Scotland were together. The last ball was to be given
that evening, and I was strongly tempted to go by four
or five acquaintances whom I found in the hotel, but
the gout was peremptory. My shoe would not go on,
and I went to bed.

I was limping about in the morning when a kind old
baronet, whom I had met at Gordon Castle, when I
was warmly accosted by a gentleman whom I did not
immediately remember. On his reminding me that
we had parted last on Lake Leman, however, I recollected
a gentlemanlike Scotchman, who had offered
me his glass opposite Copet to look at the house of
Madame de Stael, and whom I had left afterward at
Lausanne, without even knowing his name. He invited
me immediately to dine, and in about an hour or
two after, called in his carriage, and drove me to a
charming country-house, a few miles down the shore
of Loch Ness, where he presented me to his family,
and treated me in every respect as if I had been the
oldest of his friends. I mention the circumstance for
the sake of a comment on what seems to me a universal
error with regard to the Scotch character. Instead
of a calculating and cold people, as they are always
described by the English, they seem to me more a
nation of impulse and warm feeling than any other I
have seen. Their history certainly goes to prove a
most chivalrous character in days gone by, and as far
as I know Scotchmen, they preserve it still with even
less of the modification of the times than other
nations. The instance I have mentioned above, is one
of many that have come under my own observation,
and in many inquiries since, I have never found an
Englishman, who had been in Scotland, who did not
confirm my impression. I have not traded with them,
it is true, and I have seen only the wealthier class, but
still I think my judgment a fair one. The Scotch in
England are, in a manner, what the Yankees are in
the southern states, and their advantages of superior
quickness and education have given them a success
which is ascribed to meaner causes. I think (common
prejudice contradicente) that neither the Scotch
nor the English are a cold or an unfriendly people,
but the Scotch certainly the farther remove from coldness
of the two.

Inverness is the only place I have ever been in where
no medicine could be procured on a Sunday. I did
not want, indeed, for other mementoes of the sacredness
of the day. In the crowd of the public room of
the hotel, half the persons at least, had either bible or
prayer-book, and there was a hush through the house,
and a gravity in the faces of the people passing in the

street, that reminded me more of New-England than
anything I have seen. I had wanted some linen
washed on Saturday. “Impossible!” said the waiter,
“no one does up linen on Sunday.” Toward evening
I wished for a carriage to drive over to my hospitable
friend. Mine host stared, and I found it was indecorous
to drive out on Sunday. I must add, however,
that the apothecary's shop was opened after the
second service, and that I was allowed a carriage on
pleading my lameness.

Inverness is a romantic-looking town, charmingly
situated between Loch Ness and the Murray Firth,
with the bright river Ness running through it, parallel
to its principal street, and the most picturesque eminences
in its neighborhood. There is a very singular
elevation on the other side of the Ness, shaped like a
ship, keel up, and rising from the centre of the plain,
covered with beautiful trees. It is called, in Gaelic,
Tonnaheuric, or the Hill of the Fairies.

It has been in one respect like getting abroad again,
to come to Scotland. Nothing seemed more odd to
me on my first arrival in England, than having suddenly
ceased to be a “foreigner.” I was as little at
home myself, as in France or Turkey (much less
than in Italy), yet there was that in the manner of
every person who approached me which conveyed the
presumption that I was as familiar with everything
about me as himself. In Scotland, however, the
Englishman is the “Sassenach,” and a stranger; and,
as I was always taken for one, I found myself once
more invested with that agreeable consequence which
accompanies it, my supposed prejudices consulted,
my opinion about another country asked, and comparisons
referred to me as an exparte judge. I found
here, as abroad, too, that the Englishman was expected
to pay more for trifling services than a native, and
that he would be much more difficult about his accommodations,
and more particular in his chance
company. I was amused at the hotel with an instance
of the want of honor shown “the prophet in his own
country.” I went down to the coffee-room for my breakfast
about noon, and found a remarkably fashionable,
pale, “Werter-like man,” excessively dressed, but
with all the air of a gentleman, sitting with the newspaper
on one side of the fire. He offered me the
paper after a few minutes, but with the cold, half-supercilious
politeness which marks the dandy tribe,
and strolled off to the window. The landlord entered
presently, and asked me if I had any objection to
breakfasting with that gentleman, as it would be a
convenience in serving it up. “None in the world,”
I said “but you had better ask the other gentleman
first.” “Hoot!” said Boniface, throwing up his chin
with an incredulous expression, “it's honor for the
like o'him. He's joost a laddie born and brought up
i' the toon. I kenn'd him weel.” And so enter
breakfast for two. I found my companion a well-bred
man; rather surprised, however, if not vexed, to
discover that I knew he was of Inverness. He had
been in the civil services of the East India Company
for some years (hence his paleness), and had returned
to Scotland for his health. He was not the least
aware that he was known, apparently and he certainly
had not the slightest trace of his Scotch birth. The
landlord told me afterward that his parents were poor,
and he had raised himself by his own cleverness alone,
and yet it was “honor for the like o' him” to sit at
table with a common stranger! The world is really
very much the same all over.

In the three days I passed at Inverness, I made the
acquaintance of several of the warm-hearted Highland
chiefs, and found great difficulty in refusing to go
home with them. One of the “Lords of the Isles”
was among the number, a handsome, high-spirited
youth, who would have been the chivalrous Lord
Ronald of a century ago, but was now only the best
shot, the best rider, the most elegant man, and the
most “capital fellow” in the west of Scotland. He
had lost everything but his “Isle” in his London campaigns,
and was beginning to listen to his friends'
advice, and look out for a wife to mend his fortune
and his morals. There was a peculiar style about all
these young men, something very like the manner of
our high-bred Virginians—a free, gallant self-possessed
bearing, fiery and prompt, yet full of courtesy.
I was pleased with them altogether.

I had formed an agreeable acquaintance, on my
passage from London to Edinburgh in the steamer,
with a gentleman bound to the Highlands for the
shooting season. He was engaged to pay a visit to
Lord Lumley, with whom I had myself promised to
pass a week, and we parted at Edinboro' in the hope
of meeting at Kinrara. On my return from Dalhousie,
a fortnight after, we met by chance at the hotel in
Edinboro', he having arrived the same day, and having
taken a passage like myself for Aberdeen. We
made another agreeable passage together, and he left
me at the gate of Gordon castle, proceeding north on
another visit. I was sitting in the coffee-room at
Inverness, pondering how I should reach Kinrara,
when, enter again my friend, to my great surprise,
who informed me that Lord Lumley had returned to
England. Disappointed alike in our visit, we took a
passage together once more in the steamer from
Inverness to Fort William for the following morning.
It was a singular train of coincidences, but I was
indebted to it for one of the most agreeable chance
acquaintances I have yet made.

133. LETTER CXXXIII.

We embarked early in the morning in the steamer
which goes across Scotland from sea to sea, by the
half-natural, half-artificial passage of the Caledonian
canal. One long glen, as the reader knows, extends
quite through this mountainous country, and in its
bosom lies a chain of the loveliest lakes, whose extremities
so nearly meet, that it seems as if a blow of a
spade should have run them together. Their different
elevations, however, made it an expensive work in
locks, and the canal altogether cost ten times the
original calculation.

I went on board with my London friend, who, from
our meeting so frequently, had now become my established
companion. The boat was crowded, yet more
with dogs than people; for every man, I think, had
his brace of terriers or his pointers, and every lady her
hound or poodle, and they were chained to every leg
of a sofa, chair, portmanteau, and fixture in the vessel.
It was like a floating kennel, and every passenger was
fully occupied in keeping the peace between his own
dog and his neighbor's. The same thing would have
been a much greater annoyance in any other country;
but in Scotland the dogs are all of beautiful and
thorough-bred races, and it is a pleasure to see them.
Half as many French pugs would have been insufferable.

We opened into Loch Ness immediately, and the
scenery was superb. The waters were like a mirror;
and the hills draped in mist, and rising one or two
thousand feet directly from the shore, and nothing to
break the wildness of the crags but the ruins of the
constantly occurring castles, perched like eyries upon
their summits. You might have had the same natural
scenery in America, but the ruins and the thousand

associations would have been wanting; and it is this,
much more than the mere beauty of hill or lake, which
makes the pleasure of travel. We ran close in to a
green cleft in the mountains on the southern shore, in
which stands one of the few old castles, still inhabited
by the chief of his clan—that of Fraser of Lovat, so
well-known in Scottish story. Our object was to visit
the Fall of Foyers, in sight of which it stands, and the
boat came to off the point, and gave us an hour for
the excursion. It was a pretty stroll up through the
woods, and we found a cascade very like the Turtmann
in Switzerland, but with no remarkable feature which
would make it interesting in description.

I was amused after breakfast with what has always
struck me on board English steamers—the gradual division
of the company into parties of congenial rank
or consequence. Not for conversation—for fellow-travellers
of a day seldom become acquainted—but, as
if it was a process of crystallization, the well-bred and
the half-bred, and the vulgar, each separating to his
natural neighbor, apparently from a mere fitness of
propinquity. This takes place sometimes, but rarely
and in a much less degree, on board an American
steamer. There are, of course, in England, as with
us, those who are presuming and impertinent, but an
instance of it has seldom fallen under my observation.
The English seem to have an instinct of each other's
position in life. A gentleman enters a crowd, looks
about him, makes up his mind at once from whom an
advance of civility would be agreeable or the contrary,
gets near the best set without seeming to notice them,
and if any chance accident brings on conversation
with his neighbors, you may be certain he is sure of
his man.

We had about a hundred persons on board (Miss
Inverarity, the singer, among others), and I could see
no one who seemed to notice or enjoy the lovely
scenery we were passing through. I made the remark
to my companion, who was an old stager in London
fashion, fifty, but still a beau, and he was compelled
to allow it, though piqued for the taste of his countrymen.
A baronet with his wife and sister sat in the
corner opposite us, and one lady slept on the other's
shoulder, and neither saw a feature of the scenery except
by an accidental glance in changing her position.
Yet it was more beautiful than most things I have
seen that are celebrated, and the ladies, as my friend
said, looked like “nice persons.”

I had taken up a book while we were passing the
locks at the junction of Loch Ness and Loch Oich,
and was reading aloud to my friend the interesting description
of Flora Macdonald's heroic devotion to
Prince Charles Edward. A very lady-like girl, who sat
next me, turned around as I laid down the book, and
informed me, with a look of pleased pride, that the
heroine was her grandmother. She was returning from
the first visit she had ever made to the Isle (I think of
Skye), of which the Macdonalds were the hereditary
lords, and in which the fugitive prince was concealed.
Her brother, an officer, just returned from India, had
accompanied her in her pilgrimage, and as he sat on
the other side of his sister he joined in the conversation,
and entered into the details of Flora's history
with great enthusiasm. The book belonged to the
boat, and my friend had brought it from below, and
the coincidence was certainly singular. The present
chief of the Macdonalds was on board, accompanying
his relatives back to their home in Sussex; and on arriving
at Fort William, where the boat stopped for
the night, the young lady invited us to take tea with
her at the inn; and for so improvised an acquaintance,
I have rarely made three friends more to my taste.

We had decided to leave the steamer at Fort William,
and cross through the heart of Scotland to Loch
Lomond. My companion was very fond of London
hours, and slept late, knowing that the cart—the only
conveyance to be had in that country—would wait our
time. I was lounging about the inn, and amusing
myself with listening to the Gaelic spoken by everybody
who belonged to the place, when the pleasant
family with whom we had passed the evening, drove
out of the yard (having brought their horses down in
the boat), intending to proceed by land to Glasgow.
We renewed our adieus, on my part with the sincerest
regret, and I strolled down the road and watched them
till they were out of sight, feeling that (selfish world
as it is) there are some things that look at least like
impulse and kindness—so like, that I can make out
of them a very passable happiness.

We mounted our cart at eleven o'clock, and with a
bright sun, a clear, vital air, a handsome and good-humored
callant for a driver, and the most renowned
of Scottish scenery before us, the day looked very
auspicious. I could not help smiling at the appearance
of my fashionable friend sitting, with his well-poised
hat and nicely-adjusted curls, upon the springless
cross-board of a most undisguised and unscrupulous
market-cart, yet in the highest good-humor with
himself and the world. The boy sat on the shafts,
and talked Gaelic to his horse; the mountains and the
lake, spread out before us, looked as if human eye had
never profaned their solitary beauty, and I enjoyed it
all the more, perhaps, that our conversation was of
London and its delights; and the racy scandal of the
distinguished people of that great Babel amused me
in the midst of that which is most unlike it—pure and
lovely nature. Everything is seen so much better by
contrast!

We crossed the head of Loch Linnhe, and kept
down its eastern bank, skirting the water by a winding
road directly under the wall of the mountains. We
were to dine at Ballyhulish, and just before reaching
it we passed the opening of a glen on the opposite
side of the lake, in which lay, in a green paradise shut
in by the loftiest rocks, one of the most enviable habitations
I have ever seen. I found on inquiry that it
was the house of a Highland chief, to whom Lord
Dalhousie had kindly given me a letter, but my lameness
and the presence of my companion induced me
to abandon the visit; and, hailing a fishing-boat, I
despatched my letters, which were sealed, across the
loch, and we kept on to the inn. We dined here;
and I just mention, for the information of scenery-hunters,
that the mountain opposite Ballyhulish sweeps
down to the lake with a curve which is even more exquisitely
graceful than that of Vesuvius in its far-famed
descent to Portici. That same inn of Ballyhulish, by
the way, stands in the midst of a scene, altogether,
that does not pass easily from the memory—a lonely
and sweet spot that would recur to one in a moment
of violent love or hate, when the heart shrinks from
the intercourse and observation of men.

We found the travellers' book, at the inn, full of
records of admiration, expressed in all degrees of doggerel.
People on the road write very bad poetry. I
found the names of one or two Americans, whom I
knew, and it was a pleasure to feel that my enjoyment
would be sympathized in. Our host had been a nobleman's
travelling valet, and he amused us with his descriptions
of our friends, every one of whom he perfectly
remembered. He had learned to use his eyes,
at least, and had made very shrewd guesses at the condition
and tempers of his visiters. His life, in that
lonely inn, must be in sufficient contrast with his former
vocation.

We had jolted sixteen miles behind our Highland
horse, but he came out fresh for the remaining twenty
of our day's journey, and with cushions of dried and
fragrant fern, gathered and put in by our considerate
landlord, we crossed the ferry and turned eastward into
the far-famed and much-boasted valley of Glencoe.
The description of it must lie over till my next letter.

134. LETTER CXXXIV.

We passed the head of the valley near Tyndrum,
where M`Dougal of Lorn defeated the Bruce, and
were half way up the wild pass that makes its southern
outlet, when our Highland driver, with a shout of delight,
pointed out to us a red deer, standing on the
very summit of the highest mountain above us. It
was an incredible distance to see any living thing, but
he stood clear against the sky, in a relief as strong as
if he had been suspended in the air, and with his head
up, and his chest toward us, seemed the true monarch
of the wild.

At Invarenden, Donald M`Phee begged for the discharge
of himself and his horse and cart from our
service. He had come with us eighty miles, and was
afraid to venture farther on his travels, having never
before been twenty miles from the Highland village
where he lived. It was amusing to see the curiosity
with which he looked about him, and the caution with
which he suffered the hostler at the inn to take the
black mare out of his sight. The responsibility of
the horse and cart weighed heavily on his mind, and
he expressed his hope to “get her back safe,” with an
apprehensive resolution that would have become a
knight-errant guiding himself for his most perilous
encounter. Poor Donald! how little he knew how
wide is the world, and how very like one part of it is
to another!

Our host of Invarerden supplied us with another
cart to take us down to Tarbot, and having dined with
a waterfall-looking inn at each of our two opposite
windows (the inn stands in a valley between two
mountains), we were committed to the care of his eldest
boy, and jolted off for the head of Loch Lomond.

I have never happened to see a traveller who had
seen Loch Lomond in perfectly good weather. My
companion had been there every summer for several
years, and believed it always rained under Ben Lomond.
As we came in sight of the lake, however, the
water looked like one sheet of gold-leaf, trembling, as
if by the motion of fish below, but unruffled by wind;
and if paradise were made so fair, and had such waters
in its midst, I could better conceive than before, the
unhappiness of Adam when driven forth. The sun
was just setting, and the road descended immediately
to the shore, and kept along under precipitous rocks,
and slopes of alternate cultivation and heather, to the
place of our destination. And a lovely place it is!
Send me to Tarbot when I would retreat from the
world. It is an inn buried in a grove at the foot of
the hills, and set in a bend of the lake shore, like a
diamond upon an “orbed brow;” and the light in its
kitchen, as we approached in the twilight, was as interesting
as a ray of the “first water” from the same.
We had now reached the route of the cockney tourists,
and while we perceived it agreeably in the excellence
of the hotel, we perceived it disagreeably in the
price of the wines, and the presence of what my friend
called “unmitigated vulgarisms” in the coffee-room.
That is the worst of England. The people are vulgar,
but not vulgar enough. One dances with the
lazzaroni at Naples, when he would scarce think of
handing the newspaper to the “person” on a tour at
Tarbot. Condescension is the only agreeable virtue,
I have made up my mind.

Well—it was moonlight. The wind was south and
affectionate, and the road in front of the hotel “fleck'd
with silver,” and my friend's wife, and the corresponding
object of interest to myself, being on the other
side of Ben Lomond and the Tweed, we had nothing
for it after supper but to walk up and down with one
another, and talk of the past. In the course of our
ramble, we walked through an open gate, and ascending
a gravel-walk, found a beautiful cottage, built between
two mountain streams, and ornamented with
every device of taste and contrivance. The mild pure
torrents were led over falls, and brought to the thresholds
of bowers; and seats, and bridges, and winding-paths,
were distributed up the steep channels, in a way
that might make it a haunt for Titania. It is the
property, we found afterward, of a Scotch gentleman,
and a great summer retreat of the celebrated Jeffrey,
his friend. It was one more place to which my heart
clung in parting.

Loch Lomond still sat for its picture in the morning,
and after an early breakfast, we took a row-boat,
with a couple of Highlanders, for Inversnade, and
pulled across the lake with a kind of drowsy delightfulness
in the scene and air which I have never before
found out of Italy. We overshot our destination a
little to look into Rob Roy's Cave, a dark den in the
face of the rock, which has the look of his vocation;
and then, pulling back along the shore, we were landed,
in the spray of a waterfall, at a cottage occupied
by the boatmen of this Highland ferry. From this
point across to Loch Katrine, is some five miles, and
the scene of Scott's novel of Rob Roy. It has been
“done” so often by tourists, that I leave all particular
description of the localities and scenery to the well-hammered
remembrance of readers of magazines,
and confine myself to my own private adventures.

The distance between the lakes is usually performed
by ladies on donkeys, and by gentlemen on foot,
but being myself rather tender-toed with the gout, my
companion started off alone, and I lay down on the
grass at Inversnade to wait the return of the long-eared
troop, who were gone across with an earlier
party. The waterfall and the cottage just above the
edge of the lake, a sharp hill behind, closely wooded
with birch and fir, and, on a green sward platform in
the rear of the house, two Highland lasses and a laddie,
treading down a stack of new hay, were not bad
circumstances in which to be left alone with the witcheries
of the great enchanter.

I must narrate here an adventure in which my own
part was rather a discomfiture, but which will show
somewhat the manners of the people. My companion
had been gone half an hour, and I was lying at
the foot of a tree, listening to the waterfall and looking
off on the lake, and watching, by fits, the lad and
lasses I have spoken of, who were building a haystack
between them, and chattering away most unceasingly
in Gaelick. The eldest of the girls was a tall, ill-favored
damsel, merry as an Oread, but as ugly as Donald
Bean; and, after a while, I began to suspect, by
the looks of the boy below, that I had furnished her
with a new theme. She addressed some remark to
me presently, and a skirmish of banter ensued, which
ended in a challenge to me to climb upon the stack.
It was about ten feet high, and shelving outward from
the bottom, and my Armida had drawn up the ladder.
The stack was built, however, under a high tree, and
I was soon up the trunk, and, swinging off from a long
branch, dropped into the middle of the stack. In the
same instant, I was raised in a grasp to which I could
offer no resistance, and, with a fling to which I should
have believed the strength of few men equal, thrown
clear of the stack to the ground. I alighted on my
back, with a fall of, perhaps, twelve feet, and felt seriously
hurt. The next moment, however, my gentle
friend had me in her arms (I am six feet high in my
stockings), and I was carried into the cottage, and laid
on a flock bed, before I could well decide whether my
back was broken or no. Whiskey was applied externally
and internally, and the old crone, who was the
only inhabitant of the hovel, commenced a lecture in
Gaelick, as I stood once more sound upon my legs,

which seemed to take effect upon the penitent, though
her victim was no wiser for it. I took the opportunity
to look at the frame which had proved itself of such
vigorous power; but, except arms of extraordinary
length, she was like any other equally ugly, middle-sized
woman. In the remaining half hour, before the
donkeys arrived, we became the best of friends, and
she set me off for Loch Katrine, with a caution to the
ass-driver to take care of me, which that sandy-haired
Highlander took as an excellent joke. And no wonder!

The long mountain-glen between these two lakes
was the home of Rob Roy, and the Highlanders point
out various localities, all commemorated in Scott's incomparable
story. The house where Helen M`Gregor
was born lies a stone's throw off the road to the left,
and Rob's gun is shown by an old woman who lives
near by. He must have been rich in arms by the
same token; for, beside the well-authenticated one at
Abbotsford, I have seen some dozen guns, and twice
as many daggers and shot-pouches, which lay claim
to the same honor. I paid my shilling to the old woman
not the less. She owed it to the pleasure I had
received from Sir Walter's novel.

The view of Loch Lomond back from the highest
point of the pass is incomparably fine; at least, when
I saw it; for sunshine and temperature, and the effect
of the light vapors on the hills, were at their loveliest
and most favorable. It looks more like the haunt of
a robber and his caterans, probably, in its more common
garb of Scotch mist; but, to my eye, it was a
scene of the most Arcadian peace and serenity. I
dawdled along the five miles upon my donkey, with
something of an ache in my back, but a very healthful
and sunny freedom from pain and impatience at
my heart. And so did not Baillie Nicol Jarvey make
the same memorable journey.

135. LETTER CXXXV.

The cottage-inn at the head of Loch Katrine, was
tenanted by a woman who might have been a horse-guardsman
in petticoats, and who kept her smiles for
other cattle than the Sassenach. We bought her
whiskey and milk, praised her butter, and were civil to
the little Highlandman at her breast; but neither
mother nor child were to be mollified. The rocks
were bare around, we were too tired for a pull in the
boat, and three mortal hours lay between us and the
nearest event in our history. I first penetrated, in the
absence of our Hecate, to the inner room of the
shieling. On the wall hung a broadsword, two guns,
a trophy or two of deers' horns, and a Sunday suit
of plaid, philibeg and short red coat, surmounted by
a gallant bonnet and feather. Four cribs, like the
births in a ship, occupied the farther side of the
chamber, each large enough to contain two persons;
a snow-white table stood between the windows; a sixpenny
glass, with an eagle's feather stuck in the frame,
hung at such a height that, “though tall of my
hands,” I could just see my nose; and just under the
ceiling on the left was a broad and capacious shelf, on
which reposed apparently the old clothes of a century
—a sort of place where the gude-wife would have
hidden Prince Charlie, or might rummage for her
grandmother's baby-linen.

The heavy steps of the dame came over the threshold,
and I began to doubt, from the look in her eyes,
whether I should get a blow of her hairy arm or a
“persuader” from the butt of a gun for my intrusion.
“What are ye wantin' here?” she speered at me,
with a Helen-M`Gregor-to-Baillie-Nicol-Jarvie-sort-of-an
expression.

“I was looking for a potato to roast, my good woman.”

“Is that a'? Ye'll find it ayont, then!” and, pointing
to a bag in the corner, she stood while I subtracted
the largest, and then followed me to the general
kitchen and receiving-room, where I buried my improvista
dinner in the remains of the peat fire, and
congratulated myself on my ready apology.

What to do while the potato was roasting! My
English friend had already cleaned his gun for amusement,
and I had looked on. We had stoned the pony
till he had got beyond us in the morass, (small thanks
to us, if the dame knew it!) We had tried to make
a chicken swim ashore from the boat, we had fired
away all my friend's percussion caps, and there was
nothing for it but to converse a rigueur. We lay on
our backs till the dame brought us the hot potato on a
shovel, with oat-cake and butter, and, with this Highland
dinner, the last hour came decently to its death.

An Englishman, with his wife and lady's maid,
came over the hills with a boat's crew; and a lassie
who was not very pretty, but who lived on the lake
and had found the means to get “Captain Rob” and
his men pretty well under her thumb. We were all
embarked, the lassie in the stern-sheets with the captain;
and ourselves, though we “paid the Scot,” of
no more consideration than our portmanteaus. I was
amused, for it was the first instance I had seen in any
country (my own not excepted), of thorough emancipation
from the distinction of superiors and inferiors.
Luckily the girl was bent on showing the captain to
advantage, and by ingenious prompting and catechism,
she induced him to do what probably was his custom
when he could not better amuse himself—point out
the localities as the boat sped on, and quote the Lady
of the Lake, with an accent which made it a piece of
good fortune to have “crammed” the poem beforehand.

The shores of the lake are flat and uninteresting at
the head, but, toward the scene of Scott's romance,
they rise into bold precipices, and gradually become
worthy of their celebrity. The Trosachs are a cluster
of small, green mountains, strewn, or rather piled,
with shrubs and mossy verdure, and from a distance
you would think only a bird, or Ranald of the Mist,
could penetrate their labyrinthine recesses. Captain
Rob showed us successively the Braes of Balquidder,
Rob Roy's birth and burial place, Benledi, and the
crag from which hung, by the well-woven skirts of
braidcloth, the worthy baillie of Glasgow; and, beneath
a precipice of remarkable wildness, the half-intoxicated
steersman raised his arm and began to repeat,
in the most unmitigated gutterals:—

I have underlined it according to the captain's judicious
emphasis, and in the last word have endeavored
to spell after his remarkable pronunciation.
Probably to a Frenchman, however, it would have
seemed all very fine—for Captain Rob (I must do him
justice, though he broke the strap of my portmanteau)
was as good-looking a ruffian as you would sketch on
a summer's tour.

Some of the loveliest water I have ever seen in my
life (and I am rather an amateur of that element—to
look at), lies deep down at the bases of these divine
Trosachs. The usual approaches from lake to mountain
(beach or sloping shore), are here dispensed with;
and, straight up from the deep water, rise the green

precipices and bold and ragged rocks, overshadowing
the glassy mirror below with teints like a cool corner
in a landscape of Ruysdael's. It is something—(indeed,
on a second thought, exceedingly) like—Lake
George; only that the islands in this extremity of
Loch Katrine lie closer together, and permit the sun
no entrance except by a ray almost perpendicular.
A painter will easily understand the effect of this—
the loss of all that makes a surface to the water, and
the consequent far depth to the eye, as if the boat in
which you shot over it, brought with it its own water
and sent its ripple through the transparent air. I
write currente calamo, and have no time to clear up
my meaning, but it will be evident to all lovers of
nature.

Captain Rob put up his helm for a little fairy green
island, lying like a lapfull of green moss on the water,
and, rounding a point, we ran suddenly into a cove
sheltered by a tree, and in a moment the boat grated
on the pebbles of a natural beach, perhaps ten feet in
length. A flight of winding steps, made roughly of
roots and stones, ascended from the water's edge.

“Gentlemen and ladies!” said the captain, with a
hiccup, “this is Ellen's Isle. This is the gnarled
oak,” (catching at a branch of the tree as the boat
swung astern), “and — you'll please to go up them
steps, and I'll tell ye the rest in Ellen's bower.”

The Highland lassie sprang on shore, and we followed
up the steep ascent, arriving breathless at last
at the door of a fanciful bower, built by Lord Willoughby
d'Eresby (the owner of the island), exactly
after the description in the Lady of the Lake. The
chairs were made of crooked branches of trees and
covered with deer-skins, the tables were laden with
armor and every variety of weapon, and the rough
beams of the building were hung with antlers and
other spoils of the chase.

“Here's where she lived!” said the captain, with
the gravity of a cicerone at the Forum, “and noo, if
ye'll come out, I'll show you the echo!”

We followed to the highest point of the island, and
the Highlandman gave a scream that showed considerable
practice, but I thought he would have burst his
throat in the effort. The awful echo went round, “as
mentioned in the bill of performance,” every separate
mountain screaming back the discord till you would
have thought the Trosachs a crew of mocking giants.
It was a wonderful echo, but, like most wonders, I
could have been content to have had less for my
money.

There was a “small silver beach” on the mainland
opposite, and above it a high mass of mountain.

“There,” said the captain, “gentlemen and ladies,
is where Fitz-James blow'd his bugle, and waited for
the `light shallop' of Ellen Douglas; and here,
where you landed and came up them steps, is where
she brought him to the bower, and the very tree's still
there (as you see'd me tak' hold of it), and over the
hill, yonder, is where the gallant gray giv out and
breathed his last, and (will you turn round, if you
please, them that like's) yonder's where Fitz-James
met Red Murdoch that killed Blanche of Devon, and
right across this water swum young Greme that disdained
the regular boat, and I 'spose on that lower
step set the old harper and Ellen many a time a-watching
for Douglas; and now if you'd like to hear the
echo once more”—

“Heaven forbid” was the universal cry; and, in
fear of our ears, we put the bower between us and
Captain Rob's lungs, and followed the Highland girl
back to the boat.

From Ellen's Isle to the head of the small creek,
so beautifully described in the Lady of the Lake, the
scenery has the same air of lavish and graceful vegetation,
and the same features of mingled boldness and
beauty. It was a spot altogether that one is sure to
live much in with memory. I see it as clearly now as
then.

The whiskey had circulated pretty freely among
the crew, and all were more or less intoxicated. Captain
Rob's first feat on his legs was to drop my friend's
gun-case and break it to pieces, for which he instantly
got a cuff between the eyes from the boxing dandy,
that would have done the business for a softer head.
The Scot was a powerful fellow, and I anticipated a
row; but the tremendous power of the blow and the
skill with which it was planted, quite subdued him.
He rose from the grass as white as a sheet, but quietly
shouldered the portmanteau with which he had fallen,
and trudged on with sobered steps to the inn.

We took a post-chaise immediately for Callender,
and it was not till we were five miles from the foot of
the lake, that I lost my apprehensions of an apparition
of the Highlander from the darkening woods. We
arrived at Callender at nine, and the next morning at
sunrise were on our way to breakfast at Stirling.

136. LETTER CXXXVI.

The lakes of Scotland are without the limits of
stage-coach and post-horse civilization, and to arrive at
these pleasant conveniences is to be consoled for the
corresponding change in the character of the scenery.
From Callander there is a coach to Stirling, and it was
on the top of the “Highlander” (a brilliant red coach,
with a picture of Rob Roy on the panels), that, with
my friend and his dog, I was on the road, bright and
early, for the banks of the Teith. I have scarce done
justice, by the way, to my last-mentioned companion
(a superb, thorough-bred setter, who answered to the
derogatory appellation of Flirt”) for he had accompanied
me in most of my wanderings for a couple of
months, and his society had been preferred to that of
many a reasoning animal on the road, in the frequent
dearth of amusement. Flirt's pedigree had been
taken on trust by my friend, the dog-fancier, of
whom he was bought, only knowing that he came of
a famous race, belonging to a gentleman living somewhere
between Stirling and Callander; and to determine
his birthplace and get another of the same breed,
was a greater object with his master than to see all the
lakes and mountains of Caledonia. Poor Flirt was
elevated to the highest seat on the coach, little aware
that his reputation for birth and breeding depended on
his recognising the scenes of his puppyhood—for if
his former master had told truly, these were the fields
where his young ideas had been taught a dog's share
in shooting, and his unconscious tail and ears were
now under watchful surveillance for a betrayal of his
presumed reminiscences.

The coach rolled on over the dew-damp road, crossing
continually those bright and sparkling rivulets,
which gladden the favored neighborhood of mountains;
and the fields and farm-houses took gradually
the look of thrift and care, which indicates an approach
to a thickly-settled country. The castle of Doune, a
lovely hunting-seat of the Queen of Scots, appeared
in the distance, with its gray towers half buried in
trees, when Flirt began to look before and behind, and
take less notice of the shabby gentleman on his left,
who, from sharing with him a volant breakfast of bread
and bacon, had hitherto received the most of his attention.
We kept on at a pretty pace, and Flirt's tail
shifted sides once or twice with a very decided whisk

and his intelligent head gradually grew more erect
upon his neck of white-and-tan. It was evident he
had travelled the road before. Still on, and as the
pellucid Teith began to reflect in her eddying mirror
the towers of Castle Doune—a scene worthy of its tender
and chivalrous associations—a suppressed whine
and a fixed look over the fields to the right, satisfied
us that the soul of the setter was stirring with the recognition
of the past. The coach was stopped and
Flirt loosed from his chain, and, with a promise to join
me at Stirling at dinner, my friend “hied away” the
delighted dog over the hedge, and followed himself
on foot, to visit, by canine guidance, the birthplace of
this accomplished family. It was quite beautiful to
see the fine creature beat the field over and over in his
impatience, returning to his slower-footed master, as
if to hurry him onward, and leaping about him with
an extravagance eloquent of such unusual joy. I lost
sight of them by a turning in the road, and reverted
for consolation to that loveliest river, on whose green
bank I could have lain (had I breakfasted) and dreamed
till the sunset of the unfortunate queen, for whose
soft eyes and loving heart it perhaps flowed no more
brightly in the days of Rizzio, than now for mine and
those of the early marketers to Stirling.

The road was thronged with carts, and peasants in
their best attire. The gentleman who had provided
against the enemy with a brown-paper of bread and
bacon, informed me that it was market-day. A very
great proportion of the country people were women
and girls, walking all of them barefoot, but with shoes
in their hands, and gowns and bonnets that would have
eclipsed in finery the bevy of noble ladies at Gordon
Castle. Leghorn straw-hats and dresses of silk, with
ribands of any quantity and brilliancy, were the commonest
articles. Feet excepted, however (for they
had no triflers of pedestals, and stumped along the
road with a sovereign independence of pools and pebbles),
they were a wholesome-looking and rather pretty
class of females; and, with the exception of here
and there a prim lassie, who dropped her dress over
her feet while the coach passed, and hid her shoes
under her handkerchief, they seemed perfectly satisfied
with their own mode of conveyance, and gave us a
smile in passing, which said very distinctly, “You'll be
there before us, but it's only seven miles, and we'll
foot it in time.” How various are the joys of life! I
went on with the coach, wondering whether I ever
could be reduced to find pleasure in walking ten miles
barefoot to a fair—and back again!

I thought again of Mary, as the turrets of the proud
castle where she was crowned became more distinct in
the approach—but it is difficult in entering a crowded
town, with a real breakfast in prospect and live Scotchmen
about me, to remember with any continuous enthusiasm
even the most brilliant events of history.

says somebody in the play, and with a similar thought
I looked up at the lofty towers of the home of Scotland's
kings, as the “Highlander” bowled round its
rocky base to the inn. The landlord appeared with
his white apron, “boots” with his ladder, the coachman
and guard with their hints to your memory; and,
having ordered breakfast of the first, descended the
“convenience” of the second, and received a tip of
the hat for a shilling to the remaining two, I was at
liberty to walk up stairs and while away a melancholy
half hour in humming such charitable stanzas as
would come uncalled to my aid.

So sang the servant of Diogenes, with an exception
able morality, which, nevertheless, it is difficult to get
out of one's head at Stirling, if one has not already
breakfasted.

I limped up the long street leading to the castle,
stopping on the way to look at a group of natives who
were gaping at an advertisement just stuck to the wall,
offering to take emigrants to New-York on terms “ridiculously
trifling.” Remembering the “bannocks
o' barley meal” I had eaten for breakfast, the haddocks
and marmalade, the cold grouse and porridge, I longed
to pull Sawney by the coat, and tell him he was just
as well where he was. Yet the temptation of the
Greenock trader, “cheap and nasty” though it were,
was not uninviting to me!

I was met on the drawbridge of the castle by a trim
corporal, who offered to show me the lions for a consideration.
I put myself under his guidance, and he
took me to Queen Mary's apartments, used at present
for a mess-room, to the chamber where Earl Douglas
was murdered, etc., etc., etc., in particulars which are
accurately treated of in the guide-books. The pipers
were playing in the court, and a company or two of a
Highland regiment, in their tartans and feathers, were
under parade. This was attractive metal to me, and I
sat down on a parapet, where I soon struck up a friendship
with a curly-headed varlet, some four years old,
who shouldered my stick without the ceremony of
“by-your-leave,” and commenced the drill upon an
unwashed regiment of his equals in a sunshiny corner
below. It was delightful to see their gravity and the
military air with which they cocked their bonnets and
stuck out their little round stomachs at the word of
command. My little Captain Cockchafer returned
my stick like a knight of honor, and familiarly climbed
upon my knee to repose after his campaign, very much
to the surprise of his mother, who was hanging out to
dry, what looked like his father's inexpressibles, from
a window above, and who came down and apologized
in the most unmitigated Scotch for the liberty the
“babby” had taken with “his honor.” For the child
of a camp-follower, it was a gallant boy, and I remember
him better than the drill-sergeant or the piper.

On the north side of Stirling Castle the view is
bounded by the Grampians and laced by the winding
Teith; and just under the battlements lies a green
hollow, called the “King's Knot,” where the gay tournaments
were held, and the “Ladies' Hill,” where sat
the gay and lovely spectators of the chivalry of Scotland.
Heading Hill is near it, where James executed
Albany and his sons, and the scenes and events of history
and poetry are thickly sown at your feet. Once
recapitulated, however—the Bruce and the Douglas,
Mary and the “Gudeman of Ballengiech,” once honored
in memory—the surpassing beauty of the prospect
from Stirling towers, engross the fancy and fill the
eye. It was a day of predominant sunshine, with here
and there the shadow of a cloud darkening a field of
stubble or a bend of the river, and I wandered round
from bastion to bastion, never sated with gazing, and
returning continually to the points from which the
corporal had hurried me on. There lay the Forth—
here Bannockburn and Falkirk, and all bathed and
flooded with beauty. Let him who thinks the earth
ill-looking, peep at it through the embrasures of Stirling
Castle.

My friend, the corporal, got but sixteen pence a
day, and had a wife and children—but much as I
should dislike all three as disconnected items, I envied
him his lot altogether. A garrison life at Stirling, and
plenty of leisure, would reconcile one almost to wife
and children and a couple of pistareens per diem.

137. LETTER CXXXVII.

I was delighted to find Stirling rather worse than
Albany in the matter of steamers. I had a running
fight for my portmanteau and carpet-bag from the
hotel to the pier, and was at last embarked in entirely
the wrong boat, by sheer force of pulling and lying.
They could scarce have put me in a greater rage between
Cruttenden's and the Overslaugh.

The two rival steamers, the “Victory” and the
“Ben Lomond,” got under way together; the former,
in which I was a compulsory passenger, having a
flagelet and a bass-drum by way of a band, and the
other a dozen lusty performers and most of the company.
The river was very narrow and the tide down,
and though the other was the better boat, we had the
bolder pilot and were lighter laden and twice as desperate.
I found my own spunk stirred irresistibly
after the first mile. We were contending against
odds, and there was something in it that touched my
Americanism nearly. We had three small boys
mounted on the box over the wheel, who cheered and
waved their hats at our momentary advantages; but
the channel was full of windings, and if we gained on
the larboard tack we lost on the starboard. Whenever
we were quite abreast, and the wheels touched
with the narrowness of the river, we marched our
flagelet and bass-drum close to the enemy and gave
them a blast “to wake the dead,” taking occasion,
during our moments of defeat, to recover breath and
ply the principal musician with beer and encouragement.
It was a scene for Cooper to describe. The
two pilots stood broad on their legs, every muscle on
the alert: and though Ben Lomond wore the cleaner
jacket, Victory had the “varminter” look. You
would have bet on Victory to have seen the man. He
was that wickedest of all wicked-looking things, a
wicked Scotchman—a sort of saint-turned-sinner.
The expression of early good principles was glazed
over with drink and recklessness, like a scene from the
Inferno painted over a Madonna of Raphael's. It was
written in his face that he was a transgressor against
knowledge. We were perhaps, a half-dozen passengers,
exclusive of the boys, and we rallied round our
Bardolph-nosed hero and applauded his skilful manœuvres;
sun, steam and excitement together, producing
a temperature on deck that left nothing to dread from
the boiler. As we approached a sharp bend in the
course of the stream, I perceived by the countenance
of our pilot, that it was to be a critical moment. The
Ben Lomond was a little ahead, but we had the advantage
of the inside of the course, and very soon, with
the commencement of the curve, we gained sensibly
on the enemy, and I saw clearly that we should cut
her off by a half-boat's length. The three boys on the
wheel began to shout, the flagelet made all split again
with “the Campbells are comin',” the brass-drum was
never so belabored, and “Up with your helm!”
cried every voice, as we came at the rate of twelve
miles in the hour sharp on to the angle of mud and
bulrushes, and, to our utter surprise, the pilot jammed
down his tiller, and ran the battered nose of the
Victory plump in upon the enemy's forward quarter!
The next moment we were going it like mad down
the middle of the river, and far astern stuck the Ben
Lomond in the mud, her paddles driving her deeper
at every stroke, her music hushed, and the crowd on
her deck standing speechless with amazement. The
flagelet and bass-drum marched aft and played louder
than ever, and we were soon in the open Frith, getting
on merrily, but without competition, to the sleep
ing isle of Inchkeith. Lucky Victory! luckier pilot!
to have found an historian! How many a red-nosed
Palinurus—how many a bass-drum and flagelet, have
done their duty as well, yet achieved no immortality.

I was glad to see “Auld Reekie” again, though the
influx of strangers to the “Scientific Meeting” had
over-run every hotel, and I was an hour or two without
a home. I lit at last upon a good old Scotchwoman
who had “a flat” to herself, and who, for the
sum of one shilling and sixpence per diem, proposed
to transfer her only boarder from his bed to a sofa, as
long as I should wish to stay. I made a humane
remonstrance against the inconvenience to her friend.
“It's only a Jew,” she said, “and they're na difficult,
puir bodies!” The Hebrew came in while we were
debating the point—a smirking gentleman, with very
elaborated whiskers, much better dressed than the
proposed usurper of his sanctum—and without the
slightest hesitation professed that nothing would give
him so much pain as to stand in the way of his land-lady's
interest. So for eighteen pence (and I could
not prevail on her to take another farthing) I had a
Jew put to inconvenience, a bed, boots and clothes
brushed, and Mrs. Mac— to sit up for me till two
in the morning—what the Jew himself would have
called a “cheap article.”

I returned to my delightful headquarters at Dalhousie
castle on the following day, and among many
excursions in the neighborhood during the ensuing
week, accomplished a visit to Abbottsford. This most
interesting of all spots has been so minutely and so
often described, that a detailed account of it would be
a mere repetition. Description, however, has anticipated
nothing to the visiter. The home of Sir Walter
Scott would possess an interest to thrill the heart, if it
were as well painted to the eye of fancy as the homes
of his own heroes.

It is a dreary country about Abbottsford, and the
house itself looks from a distance like a small, low
castle, buried in stunted trees, on the side of a long,
sloping upland or moor. The river is between you
and the chateau as you come down to Melrose from
the north, and you see the gray towers opposite you
from the road at the distance of a mile—the only
habitable spot in an almost desolate waste of country.
From the town of Melrose you approach Abbottsford
by a long, green lane, and, from the height of the
hedge, and the descending ground on which the house
is built, you would scarce suspect its vicinity till you
enter a small gate on the right and find yourself in an
avenue of young trees. This conducts you immediately
to the door, and the first effect on me was
that of a spacious castle seen through a reversed
glass. In fact it is a kind of castle cottage—not larger
than what is often called a cottage in England, yet to
the minutest point and proportion a model of an ancient
castle. The deception in the engravings of the
place lies in the scale. It seems like a vast building
as usually drawn.

One or two hounds were lounging round the door;
but the only tenant of the place was a slovenly house-maid,
whom we interrupted in the profane task of
scrubbing the furniture in the library. I could have
pitched her and her scrubbing-brushes out of the
window with a good will. It really is a pity that this
sacred place, with its thousand valuable and irreplaceable
curiosities, should be so carelessly neglected. We
were left to wander over the house and the museum
as we liked. I could have brought away (and nothing
is more common than this species of theft in England)
twenty things from that rare collection, of which the
value could scarce be estimated. The pistols and
dagger of Rob Roy, and a hundred equally valuable
and pocketable things, lay on the shelves unprotected,
quite at the mercy of the ill-disposed, to say nothing

of the merciless “cleanings” of the housemaid. The
present Sir Walter Scott is a captain of dragoons,
with his regiment in Ireland, and the place is never
occupied by the family. Why does not Scotland buy
Abbottsford, and secure to herself, while it is still perfect,
the home of her great magician, and the spot that
to after ages would be, if preserved in its curious
details, the most interesting in Great Britain?

After showing us the principal rooms, the woman
opened a small closet adjoining the study, in which
hung the last clothes that Sir Walter had worn.
There was the broad-skirted blue coat with large buttons,
the plaid trousers, the heavy shoes, the broad-rimmed
hat and stout walking-stick—the dress in
which he rambled about in the morning, and which
he laid off when he took to his bed in his last illness.
She took down the coat and gave it a shake and a
wipe of the collar, as if he were waiting to put it on
again?

It was encroaching somewhat on the province of
Touchstone and Wamba to moralize on a suit of
clothes—but I am convinced that I got from them a
better idea of Scott, as he was in his familiar hours,
than any man can have who has seen neither him nor
them. There was a character in the hat and shoes.
The coat was an honest and hearty coat. The
stout, rough walking-stick, seemed as if it could
have belonged to no other man. I appeal to my kind
friends and fellow-travellers who were there three days
before me (I saw their names on the book), if the same
impression was not made on them.

I asked for the room in which Sir Walter died.
She showed it to me, and the place where the bed had
stood which was now removed. I was curious to see
the wall or the picture over which his last looks must
have passed. Directly opposite the foot of the bed
hung a remarkable picture—the head of Mary Queen
of Scots, in a dish taken after her execution. The
features were composed and beautiful. On either side
of it hung spirited drawings from the Tales of a Grandfather—one
very clever sketch, representing the wife
of a border-knight serving up her husband's spurs for
dinner, to remind him of the poverty of the larder and
the necessity of a foray. On the left side of the bed
was a broad window to the west—the entrance of the
last light to his eyes—and from hence had sped the
greatest spirit that has walked the world since Shakspere.
It almost makes the heart stand still to be
silent and alone on such a spot.

What an interest there is in the trees of Abbottsford—planted
every one by the same hand that waved
its wand of enchantment over the world! One walks
among them as if they had thoughts and memories.

Everybody talks of Scott who has ever had the happiness
of seeing him, and it is strange how interesting
it is even when there is no anecdote, and only the
most commonplace interview is narrated. I have
heard, since I have been in England, hundreds of
people describe their conversations with him, and never
the dullest without a certain interest far beyond that
of common topics. Some of these have been celebrated
people, and there is the additional weight that
they were honored friends of Sir Walter's.

Lord Dalhousie told me that he was Scott's playfellow
at the high school of Edinboro'. There was a
peculiar arrangement of the benches with a head and
foot, so that the boys sat above or below, according to
their success in recitation. It so happened that the
warmest seat in the school, that next to the stove, was
about two from the bottom, and this Scott, who was
a very good scholar, contrived never to leave. He
stuck to his seat from autumn till spring, never so
deficient as to get down, and never choosing to answer
rightly if the result was to go up. He was very lame,
and seldom shared in the sports of the other boys, but
was a prodigious favorite, and loved to sit in the sunshine,
with a knot of boys around him telling stories.
Lord Dalhousie's friendship with him was uninterrupted
through life, and he invariably breakfasted at
the castle on his way to and from Edinboro'.

I met Moore at a dinner-party not long since, and
Scott was again (as at a previous dinner I have described)
the subject of conversation. “He was the
soul of honesty,” said Moore. “When I was on a
visit to him, we were coming up from Kelso at sunset,
and as there was to be a fine moon, I quoted to him
his own rule for seeing `fair Melrose aright,' and proposed
to stay an hour and enjoy it. `Bah!' said
Scott, `I never saw it by moonlight.' We went, however;
and Scott, who seemed to be on the most
familiar terms with the cicerone, pointed to an empty
niche and said to him, `I think, by the way, that I
have a Virgin and Child that will just do for your
niche. I'll send it to you!' `How happy you have
made that man!' said I to him. `Oh,' said Scott, `it
was always in the way, and Madame S. is constantly
grudging it house-room. We're well rid of it.”'

“Any other man,” said Moore, “would have allowed
himself at least the credit of a kind action.”

I have had the happiness since I have been in England
of passing some weeks at a country-house where
Miss Jane Porter was an honored guest, and, among
a thousand of the most delightful reminiscences that
were ever treasured, she has told me a great deal of
Scott, who visited at her mother's as a boy. She
remembers him then as a good-humored lad, but very
fond of fun, who used to take her younger sister (Anna
Maria Porter) and frighten her by holding her out of
the window. Miss Porter had not seen him since that
age; but, after the appearance of Guy Mannering, she
heard that he was in London, and drove with a friend
to his house. Not quite sure (as she modestly says)
of being remembered, she sent in a note, saying, that
if he remembered the Porters, whom he used to visit,
Jane would like to see him, He came rushing to the
door, and exclaimed, “Remember you! Miss Porter!”
and threw his arms about her neck and burst into
tears. After this he corresponded constantly with the
family, and about the time of his first stroke of paralysis,
when his mind and memory failed him, the
mother of Miss Porter died, and Scott sent a letter of
condolence. It began—“Dear Miss Porter”—but,
as he went on, he forgot himself, and continued the
letter as if addressed to her mother, ending it with—
“And now, dear Mrs. Porter, farewell! and believe
me yours for ever (as long as there is anything of
me), Walter Scott.” Miss Porter bears testimony,
like every one else who knew him, to his greatheartedness
no less than to his genius.

I am not sure that others like as well as myself
these “nothings” about men of genius. I would
rather hear the conversation between Scott and a
peasant on the road, for example, than the most
piquant anecdote of his brighter hours. I like a great
mind in dishabille.

We returned by Melrose Abbey, of which I can say
nothing new, and drove to Dryburgh to see the grave
of Scott. He is buried in a rich old gothic corner
of a ruin—fittingly. He chose the spot, and he
sleeps well. The sunshine is broken on his breast
by a fretted and pinnacled window, overrun with
ivy, and the small chapel in which he lies is open
to the air, and ornamented with the mouldering
scutcheons of his race. There are few more beautiful
ruins than Dryburgh Abbey, and Scott lies in its
sunniest and most fanciful nook—a grave that seems
divested of the usual horrors of a grave.

We were ascending the Gala-water at sunset, and
supped at Dalhousie, after a day crowned with thought
and feeling.

138. LETTER CXXXVIII.

If Scott had done nothing else, he would have deserved
well of his country for giving an interest to the
barren wastes by which Scotland is separated from
England. “A' the blue bonnets” must have had a
melancholy march of it “Over the Border.” From
Gala-Water to Carlisle it might be anywhere a scene
for the witches' meeting in Macbeth. We bowled
away at nearly twelve miles in the hour, however,
(which would unwind almost any “serpent of care”
from the heart), and if the road was not lined with
witches and moss-troopers, it was well macadamized.
I got a treacherous supper at Howick, where the
Douglas pounced upon Sir Alexander Ramsay; and,
recovering my good-humor at Carlisle, grew happier
as the fields grew greener, and came down by Kendal
and its emerald valleys with the speed of an arrow and
the light-heartedness of its feather. How little the
farmer thinks when he plants his hedges and sows his
fields, that the passing wayfarer will anticipate the
gleaners and gather sunshine from his ripening harvest.

I was admiring the fine old castle of Lancaster
(now desecrated to the purposes of a county jail),
when our thirteen-mile whip ran over a phaeton
standing quietly in the road, and spilt several women
and children, as you may say, en passant. The coach
must arrive, though it kill as many as Juggernaut,
and Jehu neither changed color, nor spoke a word,
but laid the silk over his leaders to make up the
back-water of the jar, and rattled away up the
street, with the guard blowing the French horn to the
air of “Smile again, my bonny lassie.” Nobody
threw stones after us; the horses were changed in a
minute and three quarters, and away we sped from
the town of the “red nose.” There was a cool, you-know-where-to-find-me
sort of indifference in this adventure,
which is peculiarly English. I suppose if
his leaders had changed suddenly into griffins, he
would have touched them under the wing and kept
his pace.

Bound on a visit to — Hall in Lancashire, I
left the coach at Preston. The landlady of the Red
Lion became very suddenly anxious that I should not
take cold when she found out the destination of her
post-chaise. I arrived just after sunset at my friend's
lodge, and ordering the postillion to a walk, drove
leisurely through the gathering twilight to the Hall.
It was a mile of winding road through the peculiarly
delicious scenery of an English park, the game visible
in every direction, and the glades and woods disposed
with that breadth and luxuriance of taste that make
the country-houses of England palaces in Arcadia.
Anxious as I had been to meet my friend, whose hospitality
I had before experienced in Italy, I was almost
sorry when the closely-shaven sward and glancing
lights informed me that my twilight drive was near its
end.

An arrival in a strange house in England seems, to
a foreigner, almost magical. The absence of all the
bustle consequent on the same event abroad, the
silence, respectfulness, and self-possession of the servants,
the ease and expedition with which he is installed
in a luxurious room, almost with his second
breath under the roof—his portmanteau unstrapped,
his toilet laid out, his dress-shoes and stockings at his
feet, and the fire burning as if he had sat by it all
day—it is like the golden facility of a dream. “Dinner
at seven!” are the only words he has heard, and
he finds himself (some three minutes having elapsed
since he was on the road), as much at home as if he
had lived there all his life, and pouring the hot water
into his wash-basin with the feeling that comfort and
luxury in this country are very much matters of
course.

The bell rings for dinner, and the new-comer finds
his way to the drawing-room. He has not seen his
host, perhaps, for a year, but his entrée is anything
but a scene. A cordial shake of the hand, a simple
inquiry after his health, while the different members
of the family collect in the darkened room, and the
preference of his arm by the lady of the house to
walk into dinner, are all that would remind him that
he and his host had ever parted. The soup is criticised,
the weather “resumed,” as the French have it,
gravity prevails, and the wine that he used to drink is
brought him without question by the remembering
butler. The stranger is an object of no more attention
than any other person, except in the brief “glad
to see you,” and the accompanying just perceptible
nod with which the host drinks wine with him; and,
not even in the abandon of after-dinner conversation,
are the mutual reminiscences of the host and his
friend suffered to intrude on the indifferent portion of
the company. The object is the general enjoyment,
and you are not permitted to monopolize the sympathies
of the hour. You thus escape the aversion
with which even a momentary favorite is looked upon
in society, and in your turn you are not neglected, or
bored with a sensation, on the arrival of another. In
what other country is civilization carried to the same
rational perfection?

I was under the hands of a physician during the
week of my stay at — Hall, and only crept out
with the lizards for a little sunshine at noon. There
was shooting in the park for those who liked it, and
fox hunting in the neighborhood for those who could
follow, but I was content (upon compulsion) to be innocent
of the blood of hares and partridges, and the
ditches of Lancashire are innocent of mine. The
well-stocked library, with its caressing chairs, was a
paradise of repose after travel; and the dinner, with
its delightful society, sufficed for the day's event.

My host was himself very much of a cosmopolite;
but his neighbors, one or two most respectable squires
of the old school among them, had the usual characteristics
of people who have passed their lives on one
spot, and though gentlemanlike and good humored,
were rather difficult to amuse. I found none of the
uproariousness which distinguished the Squire Western
of other times. The hale fox-hunter was in
white cravat and black coat, and took wine and politics
moderately; and his wife and daughters, though
silent and impracticable, were well-dressed, and marked
by that indefinable stamp of “blood” visible no
less in the gentry than in the nobility of England.

I was delighted to encounter at my friend's table
one or two of the old English peculiarities, gone out
nearer the metropolis. Toasted cheese and spiced
ale—“familiar creatures” in common life—were here
served up with all the circumstance that attended them
when they were not disdained as the allowance of
maids of honor. On the disappearance of the pastry,
a massive silver dish, chased with the ornate elegance
of ancient plate, holding coals beneath, and protected
by a hinged cover, was set before the lady of the
house. At the other extremity of the table stood a
“peg tankard” of the same fashion, in the same massive
metal, with two handles, and of an almost fabulous
capacity. Cold cheese and port were at a discount.
The celery, albeit both modish and popular,
was neglected. The crested cover erected itself on
its hinge and displayed a flat surface, covered thinly
with blistering cheese, with a soupçon of brown in its
complexion, quivering and delicate, and of a most

stimulating odor. A little was served to each guest
and commended as it deserved, and then the flagon's
lid was lifted in its turn by the staid butler, and the
master of the house drank first. It went around with
the sun, not disdained by the ladies' lips in passing,
and came to me, something lightened of its load. As
a stranger I was advised of the law before lifting it to
my head. Within, from the rim to the bottom, extended
a line of silver pegs, supposed to contain, in
the depth from one to the other, a fair draught for
each bibber. The flagon must not be taken from the
lips, and the penalty of drinking deeper than the first
peg below the surface, was to drink to the second—a
task for the friar of Copmanhurst. As the visible
measure was of course lost when the tankard was
dipped, it required some practice or a cool judgment
not to exceed the draught. Raising it with my two
hands, I measured the distance with my eye, and
watched till the floating argosy of toast should swim
beyond the reach of my nose. The spicy odor ascended
gratefully to the brain. The cloves and cinnamon
clung in a dark circle to the edges. I drank
without drawing breath, and complacently passed the
flagon. As the sea of all settled to a calm, my next
neighbor silently returned the tankard. I had exceeded
the draught. There was a general cry of “drink!
drink!” and sounding my remaining capacity with the
plummet of a long breath, I laid my hands once more
on the vessel, and should have paid the penalty or
perished in the attempt, but for the grace shown me
as a foreigner, at the intercession of that sex distinguished
for its mercy.

This adherence to the more hearty viands and customs
of olden time, by the way, is an exponent of a
feeling sustained with peculiar tenacity in that part of
England. Cheshire and Lancashire are the stronghold
of that race peculiar to this country, the gentry.
In these counties the peerage is no authority for gentle
birth. A title unsupported by centuries of honorable
descent, is worse than nothing; and there is
many a squire, living in his immemorial “Hall,” who
would not exchange his name and pedigree for the
title of ninety-nine in a hundred of the nobility of
England. Here reigns aristocracy. Your Baron
Rothschild, or your new-created lord from the Bank
or the Temple, might build palaces in Cheshire, and
live years in the midst of its proud gentry unvisited.
They are the cold cheese, celery, and port, in comparison
with the toasted cheese and spiced ale.

139. LETTER CXXXIX.

England would be a more pleasant country to
travel in if one's feelings took root with less facility.
In the continental countries, the local ties are those of
the mind and the senses. In England they are those
of the affections. One wanders from Italy to Greece,
and from Athens to Ephesus, and returns and departs
again; and, as he gets on shipboard, or mounts his
horse or his camel, it is with a sigh over some picture
or statue left behind, some temple or waterfall—perhaps
some cook or vintage. He makes his last visit
to the Fount of Egeria, or the Venus of the Tribune
—to the Caryatides of the Parthenon, or the Cascatelles
of Tivoli—or pathetically calls for his last bottle
of untransferable lachryma christi, or his last cotelettes
provençales. He has “five hundred friends” like
other people, and has made the usual continental inti
macies—but his valet-de-place takes charge of his
adieus—(distributes his “p. p. c.'s” for a penny each),
and he forgets and is forgotten by those he leaves behind,
ere his passport is recorded at the gates. In all
these countries, it is only as a resident or a native that
you are treated with kindness or admitted to the penetralia
of domestic life. You are a bird of passage,
expected to contribute a feather for every nest, but
welcomed to none. In England this same disqualification
becomes a claim. The name of a stranger
opens the private house, sets you the chair of honor,
prepares your bed, and makes everything that contributes
to your comfort or pleasure temporarily your
own. And when you take your departure, your host
has informed himself of your route, and provided you
with letters to his friends, and you may go through
the country from end to end, and experience everywhere
the same confiding and liberal hospitality. Every
foreigner who has come well introduced to England,
knows how unexaggerated is this picture.

I was put upon the road again by my kind friend,
and with a strong west wind coming off the Atlantic,
drove along within sound of the waves, on the road to
Liverpool. It was a mild wind, and came with a welcome—for
it was freighted with thoughts of home.
Goëthe says, we are never separated from our friends
as long as the streams run down from them to us.
Certain it is that distance seems less that is measured
by waters and winds. America seemed near, with the
ocean at my feet and only its waste paths between. I
sent my heart over (against wind and tide) with a blessing
and a prayer.

There are good inns, I believe, at Liverpool, but
the coach put me down at the dirtiest and worst specimen
of a public house that I have encountered in
England. As I was to stay but a night, I overcame
the prejudice of the first coup d'œil, and made the
best of a dinner in the coffeeroom. It was crowded
with people, principally merchants, I presumed, and
the dinner-hour having barely passed, most of them
were sitting over their wine or toddy at the small tables,
discussing prices or reading the newspapers.
Near me were two young men, whose faces I thought
familiar to me, and with a second look I resolved them
into two of my countrymen, who, I found out
presently by their conversation, were eating their first
dinner in England. They were gentlemanlike young
men, of good education, and I pleased myself with
looking about and imagining the comparison they
would draw, with their own country fresh in their
recollection, between it and this. I could not help
feeling how erroneous in this case would be a first impression.
The gloomy coffeeroom, the hurried and
uncivil waiters, the atrocious cookery, the bad air,
greasy tables, filthy carpet, and unsocial company—
and this one of the most popular and crowded inns of
the first commercial town in England! My neighbors
themselves, too, afforded me some little speculation.
They were a fair specimen of the young men of our
country, and after several years' exclusive conversance
with other nations, I was curious to compare an untravelled
American with the Europeans around me.
I was struck with the exceeding ambitiousness of their
style of conversation. Dr. Pangloss himself would
have given them a degree. They called nothing by
its week-day name, and avoided with singular pertinacity
exactly that upon which the modern English are
as pertinaciously bent — a concise homeliness of
phraseology. They were dressed much better than
the people about them (who were apparently in the
same sphere of life), and had on the whole a superior
air—owing possibly to the custom prevalent in America
of giving young men a university education before
they enter into trade. Like myself, too, they had not
yet learned the English accomplishment of total unconsciousness
of the presence of others. When not

conversing they did not study profoundly the grain of
the mahogany, nor gaze with solemn earnestness into
the bottom of their wine-glasses, nor peruse, with the
absorbed fixedness of Belshazzar, the figures on the
wall. They looked about them with undisguised curiosity,
ordered a great deal more wine than they
wanted (very American, that!) and were totally without
the self-complacent, self-amused, sober-felicity air
which John Bull assumes after his cheese in a coffee-room.

I did not introduce myself to my countrymen, for
an American is the last person in the world with whom
one should depart from the ordinary rules of society.
Having no fixed rank either in their own or a foreign
country, they construe all uncommon civility into
either a freedom, or a desire to patronise, and the last
is the unpardonable sin. They called after awhile for
a “mint julep” (unknown in England), for slippers,
(rather an unusual call also—gentlemen usually wearing
their own), and, seemed very much surprised on
asking for candles, at being ushered to bed by the
chambermaid.

I passed the next morning in walking about Liverpool.
It is singularly like New York in its general
air, and quite like it in the character of its population.
I presume I must have met many of my countrymen,
for there were some who passed me in the street, whom
I could have sworn to. In a walk to the American
consul's (to whose polite kindness I, as well as all my
compatriots, have been very much indebted), I was
lucky enough to see a New York packet drive into
the harbor under full sail—as gallant a sight as you
would wish to see. It was blowing rather stiffly, and
she ran up to her anchorage like a bird, and taking in
her canvass with the speed of a man-of-war, was lying
in a few moments with her head to the tide, as neat
and as tranquil as if she had slept for the last month
at her moorings. I could feel in the air that came
ashore from her, that I had letters on board.

Anxious to get on to Cheshire, where, as they say
of the mails, I had been due some days, and very
anxious to get rid of the perfume of beer, beefsteaks,
and bad soup, with which I had become impregnated
at the inn, I got embarked in an omnibus at noon, and
was taken to the railway. I was just in time, and
down we dived into the long tunnel, emerging from
the darkness at a pace that made my hair sensibly
tighten and hold on with apprehension. Thirty miles
in the hour is pleasant going when one is a little accustomed
to it. It gives one such a contempt for
time and distance! The whizzing past of the return
trains, going in the other direction with the same velocity,
making you recoil in one second, and a mile
off the next—was the only thing which, after a few
minutes, I did not take to very kindly. There were
near a hundred passengers, most of them precisely the
class of English which we see in our country—the
fags of Manchester and Birmingham—a class, I dare
say, honest and worthy, but much more to my taste
in their own country than mine.

I must confess to a want of curiosity touching spinning-jennies.
Half an hour of Manchester contented
me, yet in that half hour I was cheated to the amount
of four-and-six-pence—unless the experience was
worth the money. Under a sovereign I think it not
worth while to lose one's temper, and I contented myself
with telling the man (he was a coach proprietor)
as I paid him the second time for the same thing in
the course of twenty minutes, that the time and trouble
he must have had in bronzing his face to that degree
of impudence gave him some title to the money.
I saw some pretty scenery between Manchester and
my destination, and having calculated my time very
accurately, I was set down at the gates of — Hall,
as the dressing-bell for dinner came over the park
upon the wind. I found another English welcome,
passed three weeks amid the pleasures of English
country life, departed as before with regrets, and without
much more incident or adventure reached London
on the first of November, and established myself for
the winter.