University of Virginia Library

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.