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Title: Pencillings by the Way

Author: Nathaniel Parker Willis

Release date: March 17, 2012 [eBook #39179]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Melissa McDaniel and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY ***

Transcriber's Note:

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation in the original document have been preserved. The author's use of accents was retained as printed.

PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY:

WRITTEN

DURING SOME YEARS OF RESIDENCE AND TRAVEL

IN

EUROPE.

BY

N. PARKER WILLIS.

NEW YORK:
CHARLES SCRIBNER, 124 GRAND STREET.

MDCCCLX.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1852, by
CHARLES SCRIBNER,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York.

PREFACE.

A word or two of necessary explanation, dear reader.

I had resided on the Continent for several years, and had been a year in England, without being suspected, I believe, in the societies in which I lived, of any habit of authorship. No production of mine had ever crossed the water, and my Letters to the New-York Mirror, were (for this long period, and I presumed would be forever), as far as European readers were concerned, an unimportant and easy secret. Within a few months of returning to this country, the Quarterly Review came out with a severe criticism on the Pencillings by the Way, published in the New-York Mirror. A London publisher immediately procured a broken set of this paper from an American resident there, and called on me with an offer of £300 for an immediate edition of what he had—rather less than one half of the Letters in this present volume. This chanced on the day before my marriage, and I left immediately for Paris—a literary friend most kindly undertaking to look over the proofs, and suppress what might annoy any one then living in London. The book was printed in three volumes, at about $7 per copy, and in this expensive shape three editions were sold by the original publisher. After his death a duodecimo edition was put forth, very beautifully illustrated; and this has been followed by a fifth edition lately published, with new embellishments, by Mr. Virtue. The only American edition (long ago out of print) was a literal copy of this imperfect and curtailed book.

In the present complete edition, the Letters objected to by the Quarterly, are, like the rest, re-published as originally written. The offending portions must be at any rate, harmless, after being circulated extensively in this country in the Mirror, and prominently quoted from the Mirror in the Quarterly—and this being true, I have felt that I could gratify the wish to be put fairly on trial for these alleged offences—to have a comparison instituted between my sins, in this respect, and Hamilton's, Muskau's, Von Raumer's, Marryat's and Lockhart's—and so, to put a definite value and meaning upon the constant and vague allusions to these iniquities, with which the critiques of my contemporaries abound. I may state as a fact, that the only instance in which a quotation by me from the conversation of distinguished men gave the least offence in England, was the one remark made by Moore the poet at a dinner party, on the subject of O'Connell. It would have been harmless, as it was designed to be, but for the unexpected celebrity of my Pencillings; yet with all my heart I wished it unwritten.

I wish to put on record in this edition (and you need not be at the trouble of perusing them unless you please, dear reader!) an extract or two from the London prefaces to "Pencillings," and parts of two articles written apropos of the book's offences.

The following is from the Preface to the first London edition:—

"The extracts from these Letters which have appeared in the public prints, have drawn upon me much severe censure. Admitting its justice in part, perhaps I may shield myself from its remaining excess by a slight explanation. During several years' residence in Continental and Eastern countries, I have had opportunities (as attaché to a foreign Legation), of seeing phases of society and manners not usually described in books of travel. Having been the Editor, before leaving the United States, of a monthly Review, I found it both profitable and agreeable, to continue my interest in the periodical in which that Review was merged at my departure, by a miscellaneous correspondence. Foreign courts, distinguished men, royal entertainments, &c. &c.,—matters which were likely to interest American readers more particularly—have been in turn my themes. The distance of America from these countries, and the ephemeral nature and usual obscurity of periodical correspondence, were a sufficient warrant to my mind, that the descriptions would die where they first saw the light, and fulfil only the trifling destiny for which they were intended. I indulged myself, therefore, in a freedom of detail and topic which is usual only in posthumous memoirs—expecting as soon that they would be read in the countries and by the persons described, as the biographer of Byron and Sheridan, that these fruitful and unconscious themes would rise from the dead to read their own interesting memoirs! And such a resurrection would hardly be a more disagreeable surprise to that eminent biographer, than was the sudden appearance to me of my own unambitious Letters in the Quarterly Review.

"The reader will see (for every Letter containing the least personal detail has been most industriously republished in the English papers) that I have in some slight measure corrected these Pencillings by the Way. They were literally what they were styled—notes written on the road, and despatched without a second perusal; and it would be extraordinary if, between the liberty I felt with my material, and the haste in which I scribbled, some egregious errors in judgment and taste had not crept in unawares. The Quarterly has made a long arm over the water to refresh my memory on this point. There are passages I would not re-write, and some remarks on individuals which I would recall at some cost, and would not willingly see repeated in these volumes. Having conceded thus much, however, I may express my surprise that this particular sin should have been visited upon me, at a distance of three thousand miles, when the reviewer's own literary fame rests on the more aggravated instance of a book of personalities, published under the very noses of the persons described. Those of my Letters which date from England were written within three or four months of my first arrival in this country. Fortunate in my introductions, almost embarrassed with kindness, and, from advantages of comparison, gained by long travel, qualified to appreciate keenly the delights of English society, I was little disposed to find fault. Everything pleased me. Yet in one instance—one single instance—I indulged myself in stricture upon individual character, and I repeat it in this work, sure that there will be but one person in the world of letters who will not read it with approbation—the editor of the Quarterly himself. It was expressed at the time with no personal feeling, for I had never seen the individual concerned, and my name had probably never reached his ears. I but repeated what I had said a thousand times, and never without an indignant echo to its truth—an opinion formed from the most dispassionate perusal of his writings—that the editor of that Review was the most unprincipled critic of his age. Aside from its flagrant literary injustice, we owe to the Quarterly, it is well known, every spark of ill-feeling that has been kept alive between England and America for the last twenty years. The sneers, the opprobrious epithets of this bravo in literature, have been received in a country where the machinery of reviewing was not understood, as the voice of the English people, and an animosity for which there was no other reason, has been thus periodically fed and exasperated. I conceive it to be my duty as a literary man—I know it is my duty as an American—to lose no opportunity of setting my heel on the head of this reptile of criticism."

The following is part of an article, written by myself, on the subject of personalities, for a periodical in New York:

"There is no question, I believe, that pictures of living society, where society is in very high perfection, and of living persons, where they are "persons of mark," are both interesting to ourselves, and valuable to posterity. What would we not give for a description of a dinner with Shakspeare and Ben Jonson—of a dance with the Maids of Queen Elizabeth—of a chat with Milton in a morning call? We should say the man was a churl, who, when he had the power, should have refused to 'leave the world a copy' of such precious hours. Posterity will decide who are the great of our time—but they are at least among those I have heard talk, and have described and quoted, and who would read without interest, a hundred years hence, a character of the second Virgin Queen, caught as it was uttered in a ball-room of her time? or a description of her loveliest Maid of Honor, by one who had stood opposite her in a dance, and wrote it before he slept? or a conversation with Moore or Bulwer?—when the Queen and her fairest maid, and Moore and Bulwer have had their splendid funerals, and are dust, like Elizabeth and Shakspeare?

"The harm, if harm there be in such sketches, is in the spirit in which they are done. If they are ill-natured or untrue, or if the author says aught to injure the feelings of those who have admitted him to their confidence or hospitality, he is to blame, and it is easy, since he publishes while his subjects are living, to correct his misrepresentations, and to visit upon him his infidelities of friendship.

"But (while I think of it), perhaps some fault-finder will be pleased to tell me, why this is so much deeper a sin in me than in all other travellers. Has Basil Hall any hesitation in describing a dinner party in the United States, and recording the conversation at table? Does Miss Martineau stick at publishing the portrait of a distinguished American, and faithfully recording all he says in a confidential tête-à-tête? Have Captain Hamilton and Prince Pukler, Von Raumer and Captain Marryat, any scruples whatever about putting down anything they hear that is worth the trouble, or of describing any scene, private or public, which would tell in their book, or illustrate a national peculiarity? What would their books be without this class of subjects? What would any book of travels be, leaving out everybody the author saw, and all he heard? Not that I justify all these authors have done in this way, for I honestly think they have stepped over the line, which I have but trod close upon."

Surely it is the abuse, and not the use of information thus acquired, that makes the offence.

The most formal, unqualified, and severe condemnation recorded against my Pencillings, however, is that of the renowned Editor of the Quarterly, and to show the public the immaculate purity of the forge where this long-echoed thunder is manufactured, I will quote a passage or two from a book of the same description, by the Editor of the Quarterly himself. 'Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk,' by Mr. Lockhart, are three volumes exclusively filled with portraits of persons, living at the time it was written in Scotland, their conversation with the author, their manners, their private histories, etc., etc. In one of the letters upon the 'Society of Edinburgh,' is the following delicate passage:—

"'Even you, my dear Lady Johnes, are a perfect history in every branch of knowledge. I remember, only the last time I saw you, you were praising with all your might the legs of Col. B——, those flimsy, worthless things that look as if they were bandaged with linen rollers from the heel to the knee. You may say what you will, but I still assert, and I will prove it if you please by pen and pencil, that, with one pair of exceptions, the best legs in Cardigan are Mrs. P——'s. As for Miss J—— D——'s, I think they are frightful.'      *      *      *      *

"Two pages farther on he says:—

"'As for myself, I assure you that ever since I spent a week at Lady L——'s and saw those great fat girls of hers, waltzing every night with that odious De B——, I can not endure the very name of the thing.'

"I quote from the second edition of these letters, by which it appears that even these are moderated passages. A note to the first of the above quotations runs as follows:

"'A great part of this letter is omitted in the Second Edition in consequence of the displeasure its publication gave to certain ladies in Cardiganshire. As for the gentleman who chose to take what I said of him in so much dudgeon, he will observe, that I have allowed what I said to remain in statu quo, which I certainly should not have done, had he expressed his resentment in a proper manner.'

"So well are these unfortunate persons' names known by those who read the book in England, that in the copy which I have from a circulating library, they are all filled out in pencil. And I would here beg the reader to remark that these are private individuals, compelled by no literary or official distinction to come out from their privacy and figure in print, and in this, if not in the taste and quality of my descriptions, I claim a fairer escutcheon than my self-elected judge—for where is a person's name recorded in my letters who is not either by tenure of public office, or literary, or political distinction, a theme of daily newspaper comment, and of course fair game for the traveller.

"I must give one more extract from Mr. Lockhart's book, an account of a dinner with a private merchant of Glasgow.

"'I should have told you before, that I had another visiter early in the morning, besides Mr. H. This was a Mr. P——, a respectable merchant of the place, also an acquaintance of my friend W——. He came before H——, and after professing himself very sorry that his avocations would not permit him to devote his forenoon to my service, he made me promise to dine with him.... My friend soon joined me, and observing from the appearance of my countenance that I was contemplating the scene with some disgust,' (the Glasgow Exchange) 'My good fellow,' said he, 'you are just like every other well-educated stranger that comes into this town; you can not endure the first sight of us mercantile whelps. Do not, however, be alarmed; I will not introduce you to any of these cattle at dinner. No, sir! You must know that there are a few men of refinement and polite information in this city. I have warned two or three of these raræ aves, and depend upon it, you shall have a very snug day's work.' So saying he took my arm, and observing that five was just on the chap, hurried me through several streets and lanes till we arrived in the ——, where his house is situated. His wife was, I perceived, quite the fine lady, and, withal, a little of the blue stocking. Hearing that I had just come from Edinburgh, she remarked that Glasgow would be seen to much more disadvantage after that elegant city. 'Indeed,' said she, 'a person of taste, must, of course, find many disagreeables connected with a residence in such a town as this; but Mr. P——'s business renders the thing necessary for the present, and one can not make a silk purse of a sow's ear—he, he, he!' Another lady of the company, carried this affectation still farther; she pretended to be quite ignorant of Glasgow and its inhabitants, although she had lived among them the greater part of her life, and, by the by, seemed no chicken. I was afterward told by my friend Mr. H——, that this damsel had in reality sojourned a winter or two in Edinburgh, in the capacity of lick-spittle or toad-eater to a lady of quality, to whom she had rendered herself amusing by a malicious tongue; and that during this short absence, she had embraced the opportunity of utterly forgetting everything about the West country.

"'The dinner was excellent, although calculated apparently for forty people rather than sixteen, which last number sat down. While the ladies remained in the room, there was such a noise and racket of coarse mirth, ill restrained by a few airs of sickly sentiment on the part of the hostess, that I really could neither attend to the wine nor the dessert; but after a little time a very broad hint from a fat Falstaff, near the foot of the table, apparently quite a privileged character, thank Heaven! sent the ladies out of the room. The moment after which blessed consummation, the butler and footman entered, as if by instinct, the one with a huge punch bowl, the other with, &c.'"

I do thank Heaven that there is no parallel in my own letters to either of these three extracts. It is a thing of course that there is not. They are violations of hospitality, social confidence, and delicacy, of which even my abusers will allow me incapable. Yet this man accuses me of all these things, and so runs criticism!

And to this I add (to conclude this long Preface) some extracts from a careful review of the work in the North American:—

"'Pencillings by the Way,' is a very spirited book. The letters out of which it is constructed, were written originally for the New-York 'Mirror,' and were not intended for distinct publication. From this circumstance, the author indulged in a freedom of personal detail, which we must say is wholly unjustifiable, and we have no wish to defend it. This book does not pretend to contain any profound observations or discussions on national character, political condition, literature, or even art. It would be obviously impossible to carry any one of these topics thoroughly out, without spending vastly more time and labor upon it than a rambling poet is likely to have the inclination to do. In fact, there are very few men, who are qualified, by the nature of their previous studies, to do this with any degree of edification to their readers. But a man of general intellectual culture, especially if he have the poetical imagination superadded, may give us rapid sketches of other countries, which will both entertain and instruct us. Now this book is precisely such a one as we have here indicated. The author travelled through Europe, mingling largely in society, and visited whatever scenes were interesting to him as an American, a scholar, and a poet. The impressions which these scenes made upon his mind, are described in these volumes; and we must say, we have rarely fallen in with a book of a more sprightly character, a more elegant and graceful style, and full of more lively descriptions. The delineations of manners are executed with great tact; and the shifting pictures of natural scenery pass before us as we read, exciting a never-ceasing interest. As to the personalities which have excited the wrath of British critics, we have, as we said before, no wish to defend them; but a few words upon the tone, temper, and motives, of those gentlemen, in their dealing with our author, will not, perhaps, be considered inappropriate.

"It is a notorious fact, that British criticism, for many years past, has been, to a great extent, free from all the restraints of a regard to literary truth. Assuming the political creed of an author, it would be a very easy thing to predict the sort of criticism his writings would meet with, in any or all of the leading periodicals of the kingdom. This tendency has been carried so far, that even discussions of points in ancient classical literature have been shaped and colored by it. Thus, Aristophanes' comedies are turned against modern democracy, and Pindar, the Theban Eagle, has been unceremoniously classed with British Tories, by the London Quarterly. Instead of inquiring 'What is the author's object? How far has he accomplished it? How far is that object worthy of approbation?'—three questions that are essential to all just criticism; the questions put by English Reviewers are substantially 'What party does he belong to? Is he a Whig, Tory, Radical, or is he an American?' And the sentence in such cases depends on the answer to them. Even where British criticism is favorable to an American author, its tone is likely to be haughty and insulting; like the language of a condescending city gentleman toward some country cousin, whom he is kind enough to honor with his patronage.

"Now, to critics of this sort, Mr. Willis was a tempting mark. No one can for a moment believe that the London Quarterly, Frazer's Magazine, and Captain Marryat's monthly, are honest in the language they hold toward Mr. Willis. Motives, wide enough from a love of truth, guided the conduct of these journals. The editor of the London Quarterly, it is well known, is the author of 'Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk,' a work full of personalities, ten times more objectionable than anything to be found in the 'Pencillings.' Yet this same editor did not blush to write and print a long and most abusive tirade upon the American traveller, for doing what he had himself done to a much greater and more reprehensible extent; and, to cap the climax of inconsistency, republished in his journal the very personalities, names and all, which had so shocked his delicate sensibilities. It is much more likely that a disrespectful notice of the London Quarterly and its editor, in these 'Pencillings,' was the source from which this bitterness flowed, than that any sense of literary justice dictated the harsh review. Another furious attack on Mr. Willis's book appeared in the monthly journal, under the editorial management of Captain Marryat, the author of a series of very popular sea novels. Whoever was the author of that article, ought to be held disgraced in the opinions of all honorable men. It is the most extraordinary tissue of insolence and coarseness, with one exception, that we have ever seen, in any periodical which pretended to respectability of literary character. It carries its grossness to the intolerable length of attacking the private character of Mr. Willis, and throwing out foolish sneers about his birth and parentage. It is this article which led to the well-known correspondence, between the American Poet and the British Captain, ending in a hostile meeting. It is to be regretted that Mr. Willis should so far forget the principles of his New England education, as to participate in a duel. We regard the practice with horror; we believe it not only wicked, but absurd. We can not possibly see how, Mr. Willis's tarnished fame could be brightened by the superfluous work of putting an additional quantity of lead into the gallant captain. But there is, perhaps, no disputing about tastes; and, bad as we think the whole affair was, no candid man can read the correspondence without feeling that Mr. Willis's part of it, is infinitely superior to the captain's, in style, sense, dignity of feeling, and manly honor.

"But, to return to the work from which we have been partially drawn aside. Its merits in point of style are unquestionable. It is written in a simple, vigorous, and highly descriptive form of English, and rivets the reader's attention throughout. There are passages in it of graphic eloquence, which it would be difficult to surpass from the writings of any other tourist, whatever. The topics our author selects, are, as has been already stated, not those which require long and careful study to appreciate and discuss; they are such as the poetic eye would naturally dwell upon, and a poetic hand rapidly delineate, in a cursory survey of foreign lands. Occasionally, we think, Mr. Willis enters too minutely into the details of the horrible. Some of his descriptions of the cholera, and the pictures he gives us of the catacombs of the dead, are ghastly. But the manners of society he draws with admirable tact; and personal peculiarities of distinguished men, he renders with a most life-like vivacity. Many of his descriptions of natural scenery are more like pictures, than sketches in words. The description of the Bay of Naples will occur as a good example.

"It would be impossible to point out, with any degree of particularity, the many passages in this book whose beauty deserves attention. But it may be remarked in general, that the greater part of the first volume is not so fresh and various, and animated, as the second. This we suppose arises partly from the fact that France and Italy have long been beaten ground.

"The last part of the book is a statement of the author's observations upon English life and society; and it is this portion, which the English critics affect to be so deeply offended with. The most objectionable passage in this is the account of a dinner at Lady Blessington's. Unquestionably Mr. Moore's remarks about Mr. O'Connell ought not to have been reported, considering the time when, and the place where, they were uttered; though they contain nothing new about the great Agitator, the secrets disclosed being well known to some millions of people who interest themselves in British politics, and read the British newspapers. We close our remarks on this work by referring our readers to a capital scene on board a Scotch steamboat, and a breakfast at Professor Wilson's, the famous editor of Blackwood, both in the second volume, which we regret our inability to quote."

"Every impartial reader must confess, that for so young a man, Mr. Willis has done much to promote the reputation of American literature. His position at present is surrounded with every incentive to a noble ambition. With youth and health to sustain him under labor; with much knowledge of the world acquired by travel and observation, to draw upon; with a mature style, and a hand practised in various forms of composition, Mr. Willis's genius ought to take a wider and higher range than it has ever done before. We trust we shall meet him again, ere long, in the paths of literature; and we trust that he will take it kindly, if we express the hope, that he will lay aside those tendencies to exaggeration, and to an unhealthy tone of sentiment, which mar the beauty of some of his otherwise most agreeable books."

CONTENTS.

LETTER I.
|  | PAGE
Getting under Way—The Gulf Stream—Aspect of the Ocean—Formation of a Wave—Sea Gems—The Second Mate, | 11
LETTER II.
A Dog at Sea—Dining, with a High Sea—Sea Birds—Tandem of Whales—Speaking a Man-of-War—Havre, | 18
LETTER III.
Havre—French Bed-room—The Cooking—Chance Impressions, | 25
LETTER IV.
Pleasant Companion—Normandy—Rouen—Eden of Cultivation—St. Denis—Entrance to Paris—Lodgings—Walk of Discovery—Palais Royal, | 30
LETTER V.
Gallery of the Louvre—Greenough—Feeling as a Foreigner—Solitude in the Louvre—Louis Philippe—The Poles—Napoleon II, | 40
LETTER VI.
Taglioni—French Acting—French Applause—Leontine Fay, | 48
LETTER VII.
Lelewel—Pére La Chaise—Pauvre Marie—Versailles—The Trianons—Josephine's Boudoir—Time and Money at Paris—Wives and Fuel—One Price Shops, | 53
LETTER VIII.
Mr. Cooper—Mr. Greenough—Fighting Animals—The Dog Pit—Fighting Donkey—Sporting Englishmen, | 63
LETTER IX.
Malibran—Paris at a Late Hour—Glass Gallery—Cloud and Sunshine—General Romarino—Parisian Students—Tumult Ended, | 70
LETTER X.
French Children—Royal Equipages—French Driving—City Riding—Parisian Picturesque—Beggar's Deception—Genteel Beggars, | 78
LETTER XI.
Madame Mars—Franklin's House—Ball for the Poor—Theatrical Splendor—Louis Philippe—Duke of Orleans—Young Queen of Portugal—Don Pedro—Close of the Ball, | 86
LETTER XII.
Champs Elysées—Louis Philippe—Literary Dinner—Bowring and others—The Poles—Dr. Howe's Mission, | 96
LETTER XIII.
Club Gambling House—Frascati's—Female Gambler, | 103
LETTER XIV.
Tuileries—Men of Mark—Cooper and Morse—Contradictions—Dinner Hour—How to Dine Well, | 107
LETTER XV.
The Emperor—Turenne—Lady Officer—Gambling Quarrel—Curious Antagonists—Influence of Paris, | 114
LETTER XVI.
Cholera Gaieties—Cholera Patient—Morning in Paris—Cholera Hospital—New Patient—Physician's Indifference—Punch Remedy—Dead Room—Non-Contagion, | 121
LETTER XVII.
Unexpected Challenge—Court Presentation—Louis Philippe—Royal Family at Tea—Countess Guiccioli—Mardi Gras—Bal Costumé—Public Masks—Lady Cavalier—Ball at the Palace—Duke of Orleans—Dr. Bowring—Celebrated Men—Glass Verandah, | 131
LETTER XVIII.
Cholera—Social Tea Party—Recipe for Caution—Baths and Happiness, | 146
LETTER XIX.
Bois de Boulogne—Guiccioli—Sismondi—Cooper, | 151
LETTER XX.
Friend of Lady Morgan—Dr. Spurzheim—Cast-Taking—De Potter—David the Sculptor, | 156
LETTER XXI.
Attractions of Paris—Mr. Cooper—Mr. Rives, | 162
LETTER XXII.
Chalons—Sens—Auxerre—St. Bris—Three Views In One—Chalons, | 166
LETTER XXIII.
Boat on the Saone—Scenery above Lyons—Lyons—Churches at Lyons—Monastery, | 173
LETTER XXIV.
Travelling Party—Breakfast on the Road—Localities of Antiquity—Picturesque Chateau—French Patois, | 179
LETTER XXV.
Arles—The Cathedral—Marseilles—Parting with Companions—Pass of Ollioules—Toulon—Antibes—Coast of Mediterranean—Forced to Return—Lazaretto—Absurd Hindrances—Fear of Contagion—Sleep out of Doors—Lazaretto Occupations—Delicious Sunday—New Arrivals—Companions—End of Quarantine, | 185
LETTER XXVI.
Nice—Funeral of an Arch-Duchess—Nice to Genoa—Views—Entrance to Genoa—Genoa, | 204
LETTER XXVII.
The Venus—The Fornarina—A Coquette and the Arts—A Festa—Ascension Day—The Cascine—Madame Catalani, | 211
LETTER XXVIII.
Titian's Bella—The Grand-Duchess—An Improvisatrice—Living in Florence—Lodgings at Florence—Expense of Living, | 219
LETTER XXIX.
Companions—Scenery of Romagna—Wives—Bologna, | 225
LETTER XXX.
Gallery at Bologna—A Guido—Churches—Confession-Chapel—Festa—Agreeable Manners, | 231
LETTER XXXI.
Regatta—Venetian Sunset—Privileged Admission—Guillotining—Bridge of Sighs—San Marc—The Nobleman Beggar, | 238
LETTER XXXII.
An Evening in Venice—The Streets of Venice—The Rialto—Sunset from San Marc, | 246
LETTER XXXIII.
Titian's Pictures—Last Day in Venice, | 251
LETTER XXXIV.
Italian Civility—Juliet's Tomb—The Palace of the Capuletti—A Dinner, | 254
LETTER XXXV.
Good and Ill-Breeding—Bridal Party, | 259
LETTER XXXVI.
Manner of Living—Originals of Novels—Ill, | 262
LETTER XXXVII.
The Duke of Lucca—Modena—The Palace—Bologna—Venice Again—Its Splendor, | 266
LETTER XXXVIII.
Armenian Island—Agreeable Monk—Insane Hospital—Insane Patients—The Lagune—State Galley—Instruments of Torture, | 273
LETTER XXXIX.
Venice at Evening—The Patriotism of a Noble—Church of St. Antony—Petrarch's Cottage and Tomb—Petrarch's Room, | 281
LETTER XL.
Cultivation of the Fields—The Vintage—Malibran in Gazza Ladra—Gallery of the Lambaccari, | 287
LETTER XLI.
Sienna—Catholic Devotion—Acquapendente—Lake Bolsena—Vintage Festa—Monte Cimino—First Sight of Rome—Baccano, | 292
LETTER XLII.
St. Peter's—The Apollo Belvidere—Raphael's Transfiguration—The Pantheon—The Forum, | 301
LETTER XLIII.
The Falls of Tivoli—Villa of Adrian—A Ramble by Moonlight—The Cloaca Maxima, | 307
LETTER XLIV.
The Last Judgment—The Music—Gregory the Sixteenth, | 312
LETTER XLV.
Byron's Statue—The Borghese Palace—Society of Rome, | 316
LETTER XLVI.
The Climate—Falls of Terni—The Clitumnus—A Lesson not Lost—Thrasimene—Florence—Florentine Women—Need of an Ambassador, | 320
LETTER XLVII.
Chat in the Ante-Chamber—Love in High Life—Ball at the Palazzo Pitti—The Grand Duke—An Italian Beauty—An English Beauty, | 329
LETTER XLVIII.
Oxen of Italy—Vallombrosa—A Convent Dinner—Vespers at Vallombrosa—The Monk's Estimate of Women—Milton's Room—Florence, | 336
LETTER XLIX.
The House of Michael Angelo—Fiesole—San Miniato—Christmas Eve—Amusing Scenes in Church, | 344
LETTER L.
Penitential Processions—The Carlist Refugees—The Miracle of Rain—The Miraculous Picture—Giovanni Di Bologna—Andrea Del Sarto, | 350
LETTER LI.
The Entertainments of Florence—A Peasant Beauty—The Morality of Society—The Italian Cavalier—The Features of Society, | 357
LETTER LII.
Artists and the French Academy—Beautiful Scenery—Sacred Woods of Bolsena, | 363
LETTER LIII.
The Virtuoso of Viterbo—Robberies—Rome as Fancied—Rome as Found, | 367
LETTER LIV.
The Fountain of Egeria—The Pontine Marshes—Mola—The Falernian Hills—The Doctor of St. Agatha—The Queen of Naples, | 372
LETTER LV.
St. Peter's—The Fountains—The Obelisk—The Forum—Its Memories—The Cenci—Claude's Pictures—Fancies Realized—The Last of the Dorias—A Picture by Leonardo Da Vinci—Palace of the Cesars—An Hour on the Palatine, | 379
LETTER LVI.
Roman Eyes versus Feet—Vespers at Santa Trinita—Roman Baths—Baths of Titus—Shelley's Haunt, | 390
LETTER LVII.
The Tomb of the Scipios—The Early Christians—The Tomb of Metella—Fountain of Egeria—Changed Aspect of Rome, | 396
LETTER LVIII.
Palm Sunday—A Crowd—The Miserere—A Judas—The Washing of Feet—The Dinner, | 402
LETTER LIX.
The Protestant Cemetery—Shelley's Grave—Beauty of the Place—Keats—Dr. Bell, | 409
LETTER LX.
Audience with the Pope—Humility and Pride in Contrast—The Miserere at St. Peter's—Italian Moonlight—Dancing at the Coliseum, | 415
LETTER LXI.
Easter Sunday—The Pope's Blessing—Illumination of St. Peter's—Florentine Sociability—A Marriage of Convenience, | 421
LETTER LXII.
The Correggio—Austrians in Italy—The Cathedral at Milan—Guercino's Hagar—Milanese Coffee, | 427
LETTER LXIII.
Still in Italy—Isola Bella—Ascent of the Simplon—Farewell to Italy—An American—Descent of the Simplon, | 433
LETTER LXIV.
The Cretins—The Goitre—First Sight of Lake Leman—Mont Blanc—June in Geneva—The Winkelreid, | 440
LETTER LXV.
American and Genevese Steamers—Lilies of the Valley—A Frenchman's Apology—Genevese Women—Voltaire's Room, | 446
LETTER LXVI.
The Jura—Arrival at Morez—Lost my Temper—National Characteristics—Politeness versus Comfort, | 452
LETTER LXVII.
Lafayette's Funeral—Crossing the Channel—An English Inn—Mail Coaches and Horses—A Gentleman Driver—A Subject for Madame Trollope, | 458
LETTER LXVIII.
First Dinner in London—The King's Birth-day—A Handsome Street—Introduction to Lady Blessington—A Chat about Bulwer—The D'Israeli's—Contrast of Criticism—Countess Guiccioli—Lady Blessington—An Apology, | 465
LETTER LXIX.
An Evening at Lady Blessington's—Fonblanc—Tribute to American Authors—A Sketch of Bulwer—Bulwer's Conversation—An Author his own Critic, | 476
LETTER LXX.
Ascot Races—Handsome Men—The Princess Victoria—Charles Lamb—Mary Lamb—Lamb's Conversation—The Breakfast at Fault, | 483
LETTER LXXI.
A Dinner at Lady Blessington's—D'Israeli, the Younger—The Author of Vathek—Mr. Beckford's Whims—Irish Patriotism—The Effect of Eloquence, | 491
LETTER LXXII.
The Opera House—What Books will pay for—English Beauty—A Belle's Criticism on Society—Celebrities, | 498
LETTER LXXIII.
Breakfast with Proctor—A Story of Hazlitt—Procter as a Poet—Impressions of the Man, | 504
LETTER LXXIV.
Moore's Dread of Criticism—Moore's Love of Rank—A generous Offer nobly Refused—A Sacrifice to Jupiter—The Election of Speaker—Miss Pardoe—Prices of Books, | 509
LETTER LXXV.
Dinner at Lady Blessington's—Scott—The Italians—Scott's Mode of Living—O'Connell—Grattan—Moore's Manner of Talking—Lady Blessington's Tact—Moore's Singing—A Curious Incident—The Maid Metamorphosed, | 517

PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY.

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 but 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 one 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 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 top-sails," 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. Hundreds 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 for 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 surprized 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 over at the summit with a crest of foam, flashing and changing perpetually in the sunshine, like the sudden outburst 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 merideans, 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, I think of ——, I'll get to mine own uneven pillow, and sleep too.

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 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 midships, 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 for 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 held 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 blessings of a permanent 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 cannot 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 metempsychosis.

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 intervening space, 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 to," and she came dashing along 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 neatly, 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 the 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 our captain took in some of his canvas for company's sake; and all the afternoon we heard her half-hour bells, and the boatswain's whistle, and the orders of the officers 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

"Alone on the wide, wide sea."

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.

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 No. 2!

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 impertinencies 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 around 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 needle-work. There is a delusion about it, positively. One cannot 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 Arcturus.

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 shoe-making, 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 bearing 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.

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 often been 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 appointments 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. Howe, the best claim he could have on my interest, and, I soon discovered, 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 pictures 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 lifetime 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 bye-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 overlavish 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'œil 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 postilion, after his blue cotton frock was soaked through, put on his greatcoat over it—an economy which is peculiarly French, and which I observed in every succeeding postilion 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 I entered the suburb of St. Denis.

It is something to see the outside of a sepulchre for kings, and the old abbey of St. 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 postilion 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 port of 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 recognized 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 a 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 French woman, 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 petit-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, and 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 is the article of trade—hats, boots, pictures, books, jewellery, anything or 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 pavès 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 re-passing 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?

LETTER V.

THE LOUVRE—AMERICANS IN PARIS—POLITICS, ETC.

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 from its impressiveness, the vast inner court (the façades 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 Musée 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 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 now 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 cannot 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, startled 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 persons 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 partizans, 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 fictitious 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 suspicion 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.

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 hundred 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, gutteral 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.

LETTER VI.

TAGLIONI—FRENCH STAGE, ETC.

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. Taglioni'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 rivetted 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 in 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 the 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 affectation, 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 profession, 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.

LETTER VII.

JOACHIM LELEWEL—PALAIS ROYAL—PERE LA CHAISE—VERSAILLES, ETC.

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 countenances 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 around the same jet d'eau, 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 Pére 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 Pére 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 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 minature 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 at 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.

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 tri-colored 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), or 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, Napoleon, 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 for 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 volonté," 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 strongest motive of that great man in this most affecting and disputed action of his life?

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 were joking, to walk through his shop.

LETTER VIII.

DR. BOWRING—AMERICAN ARTISTS—BRUTAL AMUSEMENT, ETC.

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 Derzhavin) 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 réunion 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 placards upon the walls an advertisement of an exhibition of "fighting animals," at the Barriére 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 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 cannot very well conceive.

LETTER IX.

MALIBRAN—PARIS AT MIDNIGHT—A MOB, ETC.

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 Passage 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 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 tesselated, 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 affect 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 cavalry 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 dragoon'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 vent for the accumulating disorders of public opinion.

LETTER X.

GARDEN OF THE TUILERIES—FASHIONABLE DRIVES—FRENCH OMNIBUSES—CHEAP RIDING—SIGHTS—STREET-BEGGARS—IMPOSTORS, ETC.

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 cannot 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 Elysées, 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 axle-tree, drawing with twice the strength of his master; the market-waggon, driven always by women, and drawn generally by a horse and 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 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 cab-driver never pulls the reins except upon great emergencies, or for a right-about turn, and his horse has a most 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. Sulpice 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 for 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 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 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.

LETTER XI.

FOYETIÉR—THE THRACIAN GLADIATOR—MADEMOISELLE MARS—DOCTOR FRANKLIN'S RESIDENCE IN PARIS—ANNUAL BALL FOR THE POOR.

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.

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 re-appear in the place were 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 be 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 overlooking 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 XV. 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 chateaux 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 ball-room, 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 attachés, 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 curtsied, 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 (Leontine 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 a 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 cannot 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-empress, 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 empress mother particularly flashed on the eye in every part of the house. By the unceasing exclamations 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.

LETTER XII.

PLACE LOUIS XV.—PANORAMIC VIEW OF PARIS—A LITERARY CLUB DINNER—THE GUESTS—THE PRESIDENT—THE EXILED POLES, ETC.

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 hinderances 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 godlike 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 principals. 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 Madelaine 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 Triumphal 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!

LETTER XIII.

THE GAMBLING-HOUSES OF PARIS.

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 betrayed 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 novels, 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 whispering 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-franc 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 into 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.

LETTER XIV.

THE GARDEN OF THE TUILERIES—PRINCE MOSCOWA—SONS OF NAPOLEON—COOPER AND MORSE—SIR SIDNEY SMITH—FASHIONABLE WOMEN—CLOSE OF THE DAY—THE FAMOUS EATING-HOUSES—HOW TO DINE WELL IN PARIS, ETC.

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 cannot 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 régime, handing his wife or 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 féte. It is a holiday 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 fresh 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 Moscowa, 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 Waleski, 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 which this distinguished countryman 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 becomes very strong in a foreign land. Every leaf of laurel awarded to 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 aquiline 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, in the first walk I ever took here; and 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 contraire. 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 astonishment, 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 chasseurs, 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 for 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 for 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 Cancale," is now the first eating-house in Paris, yet they only excel in fish. The "Trois Fréres Provençaux," have a high reputation, yet their cotelettes provençales 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 garçon 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 Fréres," 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.

LETTER XV.

HOPITAL DES INVALIDES—MONUMENT OF TURENNE—MARSHAL NEY—A POLISH LADY IN UNIFORM—FEMALES MASQUERADING IN MEN'S CLOTHES—DUEL BETWEEN THE SONS OF GEORGE IV. AND OF BONAPARTE—GAMBLING PROPENSITIES OF THE FRENCH.

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 recognize him by such a description?

I took an indolent stroll with a friend 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 perfect 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 were 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 soirées 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 rein for a year in Paris.

LETTER XVI.

THE CHOLERA—A MASQUE BALL—THE GAY WORLD—MOBS—VISIT TO THE HOTEL DIEU.

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 gaiety, 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 Charité. She has since died.

As if one plague were not enough, the city is still alive in the distant faubourgs 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 façade 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 him to pass. I followed the bearers to the yard, 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 their 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 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 comments 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.

LETTER XVII.

LEGION OF HONOR—PRESENTATION TO THE KING—THE THRONE OF FRANCE—THE QUEEN AND THE PRINCESSES—COUNTESS GUICCIOLI—THE LATE DUEL—THE SEASON OF CARNIVAL—ANOTHER FANCY BALL—DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PRIVATE AND PUBLIC MASKERS—STREET MASKING—BALL AT THE PALACE—THE YOUNG DUKE OF ORLEANS—PRINCESS CHRISTINE—LORD HARRY VANE—HEIR OF CARDINAL RICHELIEU—VILLIERS—BERNARD, FABVIER, COUSIN, AND OTHER DISTINGUISHED CHARACTERS—THE SUPPER—THE GLASS VERANDAH, ETC.

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 refugees, 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. Ritchie, 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 feel that I might possibly have looked out of place in my ordinary dress. The atmosphere of a court is very contagious in this particular.

After being sufficiently astonished with long rooms, frescoes, and guardsmen apparently seven or eight feet high, (the tallest men I ever saw, standing with halberds at the doors), we were introduced into the Salle du Tróne—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 round 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 compliments 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 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 Empress 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 francs 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, (which you please), 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 gaiety 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 distingués of Paris were there; and it was, perhaps, as fair a specimen of the elegant gaiety 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 splendidly 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 amused 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 visitors 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 "Varietés" 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 out 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 dress 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 recognized, 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 cortége standing about the queen, and watched the interesting party dancing 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 being 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'honneur, 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 Tróne 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 cotillons 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 Empress 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.

LETTER XVIII.

CHOLERA—UNIVERSAL TERROR—FLIGHT OF THE INHABITANTS—CASES WITHIN THE WALLS OF THE PALACE—DIFFICULTY OF ESCAPE—DESERTED STREETS—CASES NOT REPORTED—DRYNESS OF THE ATMOSPHERE—PREVENTIVES RECOMMENDED—PUBLIC BATHS, ETC.

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. To-day, 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.

LETTER XIX.

MORNING VIEW FROM THE RUE RIVOLI—THE BOIS DE BOULOGNE—GUICCIOLI—SISMONDI THE HISTORIAN, ETC.

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 façade 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 Bois 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 at times he was 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 were 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 il etaît 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 is one of the chief agrémens 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 frightened 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 Waverly 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.

LETTER XX.

GENERAL BERTRAND—FRIEND OF LADY MORGAN—PHRENOLOGY—DR. SPURZHEIM—HIS LODGINGS—PROCESS OF TAKING A CAST OF THE HEAD—INCARCERATION OF DR. BOWRING AND DE POTTER—DAVID THE SCULPTOR—VISIT OF DR. SPURZHEIM TO THE UNITED STATES.

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 Chaussée d'Antin," so much to her satisfaction.

While we were conversing, the lady's husband came up, and finding that 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 pretty freely through the 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, as 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, bustling 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. Dr. 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.

LETTER XXI.

DEPARTURE FROM PARIS—DESULTORY REMARKS.

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. Vaucluse is on the way, and I shall visit it if I have time and good weather, perhaps. At Marseilles I propose to 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!

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 adjoining houses 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 towards 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 forgive 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 Fréres, 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 expression 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 apex 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 before saw 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.

LETTER XXIII.

PASSAGE DOWN THE SAONE—AN ODD ACQUAINTANCE—LYONS—CHURCH OF NOTRE DAME DE FOURVIERES—VIEW FROM THE TOWER.

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 the 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 sterile. 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 crowned 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 cannot 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."

LETTER XXIV.

DEPARTURE FROM LYONS—BATTEAUX DE POSTE—RIVER SCENERY—VILLAGE OF CONDRIEU—VIENNE—VALENCE—POINT ST. ESPRIT—DAUPHINY AND LANGUEDOC—DEMI-FETE DAY, ETC.

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 traveller, 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 shallop 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 north-west, 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 widely 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 millrace 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 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 in his own country.

LETTER XXV.

INFLUENCE OF A BOATMAN—THE TOWN OF ARLES—ROMAN RUINS—THE CATHEDRAL—MARSEILLES—THE PASS OF OLLIOULES—THE VINEYARDS—TOULON—ANTIBES—LAZARETTO—VILLA FRANCA, ETC.

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 door of 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 fullness 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 Chateau 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 cannot 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. Doyle, 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 Quatre, 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 latteen 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 villainous 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, which 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 which is 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 tranquilizes the mind as well as the body. You cannot 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 cannot 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 wash-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 the 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.

LETTER XXVI.

SHORE OF THE MEDITERRANEAN—NICE—FUNERAL SERVICES OF MARIA THERESA, ARCHDUCHESS OF AUSTRIA—PRINCIPALITY OF MONACO—ROAD TO GENOA—SARDINIA—PRISON OF THE POPE—HOUSE OF COLUMBUS—GENOA.

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 farce 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 Theresa, 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 with 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 villainous 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 Mentone, 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 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 cannot 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 hindrances 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 Andria 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.

LETTER XXVII.

FLORENCE—THE GALLERY—THE VENUS DE MEDICIS—THE TRIBUNE—THE FORNARINA—THE CASCINE—AN ITALIAN FESTA—MADAME CATALANI.

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 de 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 statue; but in 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 around I caught a glance of my coquette, 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 Cascine. 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 Cascine on one side, and the extensive grounds of a young Russian nobleman's villa on the other; and here at sunset come all the world to walk and drive, and on festas like this, to encamp, and keep holy-day 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-Duchess 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 contrasting gayly with the foliage of every tint, 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 Cascine 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 soirée. 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 another, 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 threading the embowered roads of the Cascine for an hour, and gazing with constant delight at the thousand pictures of beauty and happiness that met 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.

LETTER XXVIII.

THE PITTI PALACE—TITIAN'S BELLA—AN IMPROVISATRICE—VIEW FROM A WINDOW—ANNUAL EXPENSE OF RESIDENCE AT FLORENCE.

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-duchess. 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 of 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."

LETTER XXIX.

EXCURSION TO VENICE—AMERICAN ARTISTS—VALLEY OF FLORENCE—MOUNTAINS OF CARRARA—TRAVELLING COMPANIONS—HIGHLAND TAVERN—MIST AND SUNSHINE—ITALIAN VALLEYS—VIEW OF THE ADRIATIC—BORDER OF ROMAGNA—SUBJECTS FOR THE PENCIL—HIGHLAND ITALIANS—ROMANTIC SCENERY—A PAINFUL OCCURRENCE—AN ITALIAN HUSBAND—A DUTCHMAN, HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN—BOLOGNE—THE PILGRIM—MODEL FOR A MAGDALEN.

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 we 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 Venetian, 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 dicky 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 Venetian 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 gaily 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 around the landscape. It was our first view of the Adriatic. We looked at it with the singular and indefinable emotion with which one always 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 more 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 tints 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 villainous 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 Venetian, 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.

LETTER XXX.

EXCURSION TO VENICE CONTINUED—BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF BOLOGNA—GALLERY OF THE FINE ARTS—RAPHAEL'S ST. CECILIA—PICTURES OF CARRACCI—DOMENICHINOS' MADONNA DEL ROSARIO—GUIDO'S MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS—THE CATHEDRAL AND THE DUOMO—EFFECTS OF THESE PLACES OF WORSHIP, AND THE CEREMONIES, UPON THE MIND—RESORT OF THE ITALIAN PEASANTRY—OPEN CHURCHES—SUBTERRANEAN-CONFESSION CHAPEL—THE FESTA—GRAND PROCESSIONS—ILLUMINATIONS—AUSTRIAN BANDS OF MUSIC—DEPORTMENT OF THE PEOPLE TO A STRANGER.

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 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 overwhelmed—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 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 denomination 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 tombstones, 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 Saviour, 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 café; and if they rise before him, the men raise their hats and the ladies smile and curtsy 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.

LETTER XXXI.

VENICE—THE FESTA—GONDOLIERS—WOMEN—AN ITALIAN SUNSET—THE LANDING—PRISONS OF THE DUCAL PALACE—THE CELLS DESCRIBED BY BYRON—APARTMENT IN WHICH PRISONERS WERE STRANGLED—DUNGEONS UNDER THE CANAL—SECRET GUILLOTINE—STATE CRIMINALS—BRIDGE OF SIGHS—PASSAGE TO THE INQUISITION AND TO DEATH—CHURCH OF ST. MARC—A NOBLEMAN IN POVERTY, ETC., ETC.

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 Giudecca 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, threading 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 the force of Cooper's inimitable description of the race in the Bravo. 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 dyed 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 tinted, 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 féte. 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 agonies 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 in 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

"Stood in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs."

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 Giudecca 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 piazetta, 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 no where 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:—

——"When the Hebrew's in thy palaces,

The Hun in thy high places, and the Greek

Walks o'er thy mart, and smiles on it for his;

When thy patricians beg their bitter bread," &c.

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.

LETTER XXXII.

VENICE—SCENES BY MOONLIGHT—THE CANALS—THE ARMENIAN ISLAND—THE ISLAND OF THE INSANE—IMPROVEMENTS MADE BY NAPOLEON—SHADED WALKS—PAVILION AND ARTIFICIAL HILL—ANTIDOTES TO SADNESS—PARTIES ON THE CANALS—NARROW STREETS AND SMALL BRIDGES—THE RIALTO—MERCHANTS AND IDLERS—SHELL-WORK AND JEWELRY—POETRY AND HISTORY—GENERAL VIEW OF THE CITY—THE FRIULI MOUNTAINS—THE SHORE OF ITALY—A SILENT PANORAMA—THE ADRIATIC—PROMENADERS AND SITTERS, ETC.

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 Giudecca. 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 us 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 rased 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 Venetians, 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.

"Shylock and the Moor
And Pierre cannot be swept or worn away,"

says Childe Harold; and that, indeed, is the feeling everywhere in these romantic countries. You cannot 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 dyes 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 Giudecca, 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.

LETTER XXXIII.

PALACES—PALAZZO GRIMANI—OLD STATUARY—MALE AND FEMALE CHERUBS—THE BATH OF CLEOPATRA—TITIAN'S PALACE—UNFINISHED PICTURE OF THE GREAT MASTER—HIS MAGDALEN AND BUST—HIS DAUGHTER IN THE ARMS OF A SATYR—BEAUTIFUL FEMALE HEADS—THE CHURCHES OF VENICE—BURIAL-PLACES OF THE DOGES—TOMB OF CANOVA—DEPARTURE FOR VERONA, ETC.

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 a 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.

LETTER XXXIV.

DEPARTURE FROM VENICE—A SUNSET SCENE—PADUA—SPLENDID HOTEL—MANNERS OF THE COUNTRY—VICENZA—MIDNIGHT—LADY RETURNING FROM A PARTY—VERONA—JULIET'S TOMB—THE TOMB OF THE CAPULETS—THE TOMBS OF THE SCALIGERS—TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA—A WALKING CHRONICLE—PALACE OF THE CAPULETS—ONLY COOL PLACE IN AN ITALIAN CITY—BANQUETING HALL OF THE CAPULETS—FACTS AND FICTION, ETC.

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 Giudecca 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 Arqua, 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 moonlit 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 have rarely 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 Shakspeare'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.

LETTER XXXV.

ANOTHER SHORT LETTER—DEPARTURE FROM VERONA—MANTUA—FLEAS—MODENA—TASSONI'S BUCKET—A MAN GOING TO EXECUTION—THE DUKE OF MODENA—BOLOGNA—AUSTRIAN OFFICERS—THE APPENINES—MOONLIGHT ON THE MOUNTAINS—ENGLISH BRIDAL PARTY—PICTURESQUE SUPPER, ETC.

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.

LETTER XXXVI.

BATHS OF LUCCA—SARATOGA OF ITALY—HILL SCENERY—RIVER LIMA—FASHIONABLE LODGINGS—THE VILLA—THE DUKE'S PALACE—MOUNTAINS—VALLEYS—COTTAGES—PEASANTS—WINDING-PATHS—AMUSEMENTS—PRIVATE PARTIES—BALLS—FETES—A CASINO—ORIGINALS OF SCOTT'S DIANA VERNON AND THE MISS PRATT OF THE INHERITANCE—A SUMMER IN ITALY, ETC., ETC.

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, overlooking 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.

LETTER XXXVII.

RETURN TO VENICE—CITY OF LUCCA—A MAGNIFICENT WALL—A CULTIVATED AND LOVELY COUNTRY—A COMFORTABLE PALACE—THE DUKE AND DUCHESS OF LUCCA—THE APPENINES—MOUNTAIN SCENERY—MODENA—VIEW OF AN IMMENSE PLAIN—VINEYARDS AND FIELDS—AUSTRIAN TROOPS—A PETTY DUKE AND A GREAT TYRANT—SUSPECTED TRAITORS—LADIES UNDER ARREST—MODENESE NOBILITY—SPLENDOR AND MEANNESS—CORREGIO'S BAG OF COPPER COIN—PICTURE GALLERY—CHIEF OF THE CONSPIRATORS—OPPRESSIVE LAWS—ANTIQUITY—MUSEUM—BOLOGNA—MANUSCRIPTS OF TASSO AND ARIOSTO—THE PO—AUSTRIAN CUSTOM-HOUSE—POLICE OFFICERS—DIFFICULTY ON BOARD THE STEAMBOAT—VENICE ONCE MORE, ETC.

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 duchy is so rich and flourishing that it bears none of the marks of decay, so common to even more modern towns in Italy. Here Cæsar 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 Duchess, 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 duchy 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 campagna 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 duchy 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 into 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 duchy 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 meagre reward of his celebrated "Night," and he broke a blood-vessel in carrying it to his house. The Duke has sold this picture, as well as every 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 Manfrini 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 duchy 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 Cæsar, 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 riches; 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.

LETTER XXXVIII.

VENICE—CHURCH OF THE JESUITS—A MARBLE CURTAIN—ORIGINAL OF TITIAN'S MARTYRDOM OF ST. LAWRENCE—A SUMMER MORNING—ARMENIAN ISLAND—VISIT TO A CLOISTER—A CELEBRATED MONK—THE POET'S STUDY—ILLUMINATED COPIES OF THE BIBLE—THE STRANGER'S BOOK—A CLEAN PRINTING-OFFICE—THE HOSPITAL FOR THE INSANE—INNOCENT AND HAPPY-LOOKING MANIACS—THE CELLS FOR UNGOVERNABLE LUNATICS—BARBARITY OF THE KEEPER—MISERABLE PROVISIONS—ANOTHER GLANCE AT THE PRISONS UNDER THE DUCAL PALACE—THE OFFICE OF EXECUTIONER—THE ARSENAL—THE STATE GALLERY—THE ARMOR OF HENRY THE FOURTH—A CURIOUS KEY—MACHINES FOR TORTURE, ETC.

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 screams 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 Empress 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 curtesy 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, completing 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 to 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 which was screwed down upon him till his head was crushed, or confession stopped the torture.

LETTER XXXIX.

VENICE—SAN MARC'S CHURCH—RECOLLECTIONS OF HOME—FESTA AT THE LIDO—A POETICAL SCENE—AN ITALIAN SUNSET—PALACE OF MANFRINI—PESARO'S PALACE AND COUNTRY RESIDENCE—CHURCH OE SAINT MARY OF NAZARETH—PADUA—THE UNIVERSITY—STATUES OF DISTINGUISHED FOREIGNERS THE PUBLIC PALACE—BUST OF TITUS LIVY—BUST OF PETRARCH—CHURCH OF ST. ANTONY DURING MASS—THE SAINT'S CHIN AND TONGUE—MARTYRDOM OF ST. AGATHA—AUSTRIAN AND GERMAN SOLDIERS—TRAVELLER'S RECORD-BOOK—PETRARCH'S COTTAGE AND TOMB—ITALIAN SUMMER AFTERNOON—THE POET'S HOUSE—A FINE VIEW—THE ROOM WHERE PETRARCH DIED, ETC.

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 irresistible 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 Manfrini 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 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 embodied. 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 countenance 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 Tiepoli, 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 through all Italy. The palaces of the 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 campagna 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.

LETTER XL.

EXCURSION FROM VENICE TO VERONA—TRUTH OF BYRON'S DESCRIPTION OF ITALIAN SCENERY—THE LOMBARDY PEASANTRY—APPEARANCE OF THE COUNTRY—MANNER OF CULTIVATING THE VINE ON LIVING TREES—THE VINTAGE—ANOTHER VISIT TO JULIET'S TOMB—THE OPERA AT VERONA—THE PRIMA DONNA—ROMAN AMPHITHEATRE—BOLOGNA AGAIN—MADAME MALIBRAN IN LA GAZZA LADRA—CHEAP LUXURIES—THE PALACE OF THE LAMBACCARI—A MAGDALEN OF GUIDO CARRACCI—CHARLES THE SECOND'S BEAUTIES—VALLEY OF THE ARNO—FLORENCE ONCE MORE.

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 "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 cannot 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 syrens 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.

LETTER XLI.

JOURNEY TO THE ETERNAL CITY—TWO ROADS TO ROME—SIENNA—THE PUBLIC SQUARE—AN ITALIAN FAIR—THE CATHEDRAL—THE LIBRARY—THE THREE GRECIAN GRACES—DANDY OFFICERS—PUBLIC PROMENADE—LANDSCAPE VIEW—LONG GLEN—A WATERFALL—A CULTIVATED VALLEY—THE TOWN OF AQUAPENDENTE—SAN LORENZO—PLINY'S FLOATING ISLANDS—MONTEFIASCONE—VITERBO—PROCESSION OF FLOWER AND DANCING GIRLS TO THE VINTAGE—ASCENT OF THE MONTECIMINO—THE ROAD OF THIEVES—LAKE VICO—BACCANO—MOUNT SORACTE—DOME OF ST. PETER'S, ETC.

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 discernable. 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 tinted 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 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 Romano"—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 a 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 engraving 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 Acquapendente. 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.

The 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.

LETTER XLII.

FIRST DAY IN ROME—SAINT PETER'S—A SOLITARY MONK—STRANGE MUSIC—MICHAEL ANGELO'S MASTERPIECE—THE MUSEUM—LIKENESS OF YOUNG AUGUSTUS—APOLLO BELVIDERE—THE MEDICEAN VENUS—RAPHAEL'S TRANSFIGURATION—THE PANTHEON—THE BURIAL-PLACE OF CARRACCI AND RAPHAEL—ROMAN FORUM—TEMPLE OF FORTUNE—THE ROSTRUM—PALACE OF THE CESARS—THE RUINS—THE COLISEUM, ETC.

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 Saviour 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 attitude; 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 latter 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 wonder 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 Saviour 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 cannot 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 area, 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.

LETTER XLIII.

TIVOLI—RUINS OF THE BATHS OF DIOCLETIAN—FALLS OF TIVOLI—CASCATELLI—SUBJECT OF ONE OF COLE'S LANDSCAPES—RUINS OF THE VILLAGE OF MECÆNAS—RUINED VILLA OF ADRIAN—THE FORUM—TEMPLE OF VESTA—THE CLOACA MAXIMA—THE RIVER JUTURNA, ETC.

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 ruins 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 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 recognize 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 a 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-born 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 or 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.

LETTER XLIV.

MASS IN THE SISTINE CHAPEL—THE CARDINALS—THE "LAST JUDGMENT"—THE POPE OF ROME—THE "ADAM AND EVE" CHANTING OF THE PRIESTS—FESTA AT THE CHURCH OF SAN CARLOS—GREGORY THE SIXTEENTH, HIS EQUIPAGE, TRAIN, ETC.

All the world goes to hear "mass in the Sistine chapel," and all travellers describe it. It occurs infrequently 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 Saviour 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, the figure of the Saviour 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 females 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 chanting 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 scholarlike, 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.

LETTER XLV.

ROME—A MORNING IN THE STUDIO OF THORWALDSEN—COLOSSAL STATUE OF THE SAVIOUR—STATUE OF BYRON—GIBSON'S ROOMS—CUPID AND PSYCHE—HYLAS WITH THE RIVER NYMPHS—PALAZZO SPADA—STATUE OF POMPEY—BORGHESE PALACE—PORTRAIT OF CESAR BORGIA—DOSSI'S PSYCHE—SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE—ROOM DEVOTED TO VENUSES—THE SOCIETY OF ROME, ETC.

I have spent a morning in the studio of Thorwaldsen. 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 Saviour 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. Auchmuty, 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 materials 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 assume 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. Thorwaldsen 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.

LETTER XLVI.

ITALIAN AND AMERICAN SKIES—FALLS OF TERNI—THE CLITUMNUS—THE TEMPLE—EFFECTS OF AN EARTHQUAKE AT FOLIGNO—LAKE THRASIMENE—JOURNEY FROM ROME—FLORENCE—FLORENTINE SCENERY—PRINCE PONIATOWSKI—JEROME BONAPARTE AND FAMILY—WANT OF A MINISTER IN ITALY.

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 tints 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 woman—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 voiturier 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 time-worn 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 proportions," 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,

"Pass not unblest the genius of the place"

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 "dyed" 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 who 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 Americains." The prince resembles his brother, but has a milder face, and his mouth is less firm and less beautiful than Napoleon'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.

LETTER XLVII.

FLORENCE—GRAND DUKE OF TUSCANY—THE GRAND CHAMBERLAIN—PRINCE DE LIGNE—THE AUSTRIAN AMBASSADOR—THE MARQUIS TORRIGIANI—LEOPOLD OF TUSCANY—VIEWS OF THE VAL D'ARNO—SPLENDID BALL—TREES OF CANDLES—THE DUKE AND DUCHESS—HIGHBORN ITALIAN AND ENGLISH BEAUTIES, ETC., ETC.

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 ante-chamber 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—traveling 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 cannot 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 presentation. 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 Duchess (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 re-establishment 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 fullness, 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 unobserved. 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.

LETTER XLVIII.

VALLOMBROSA—ITALIAN OXEN—CONVENT—SERVICE IN THE CHAPEL—HOUSE OCCUPIED BY MILTON.

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 snow-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, threading 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, woodcocks, 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 a 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 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 head-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 diminished. "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.

LETTER XLIX.

HOUSE OF MICHAEL ANGELO—THE ANCIENT CHURCH OF SAN MINIATO—MADAME CATALANI—WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR—MIDNIGHT MASS, ETC.

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 likeness 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 rotunda 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 Annunciata, 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 servente 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.

LETTER L.

FLORENCE—VISIT TO THE CHURCH OF SAN GAETANO—PENITENTIAL PROCESSIONS—THE REFUGEE CARLISTS—THE MIRACLE OF RAIN—CHURCH OF THE ANNUNCIATA—TOMB OF GIOVANNI DI BOLOGNA—MASTERPIECE OF ANDREA DEL SARTO, ETC., ETC.

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 wafer 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 agreeable 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 Duchess 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 procession 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, saints 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 beads 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 the 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 head of our Saviour, 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 to 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 own inimitable works. Six bas-reliefs in bronze, than which life itself is not more natural, represent different passages of our Saviour'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.

LETTER LI.

FLORENTINE PECULIARITIES—SOCIETY—BALLS—DUCAL ENTERTAINMENTS—PRIVILEGE OF STRANGERS—FAMILIES OF HIGH RANK—THE EXCLUSIVES—SOIREES—PARTIES OF A RICH BANKER—PEASANT BEAUTY—VISITERS OF A BARONESS—AWKWARD DEPORTMENT OF A PRINCE—A CONTENTED MARRIED LADY—HUSBANDS, CAVALIERS, AND WIVES—PERSONAL MANNERS—HABITS OF SOCIETY, ETC.

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 Florentines 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 noblemen.

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 parents 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 gossiping 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.

LETTER LII.

SIENNA—POGGIOBONSI—BONCONVENTO—ENCOURAGEMENT OF FRENCH ARTISTS BY THEIR GOVERNMENT—ACQUAPENDENTE—POOR BEGGAR, THE ORIGINAL OF A SKETCH BY COLE—BOLSENA—VOLSCENIUM—SCENERY—CURIOUS STATE OF THE CHESTNUT WOODS.

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 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 a 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 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.

LETTER LIII.

MONTEFIASCONE—ANECDOTE OF THE WINE—VITERBO—MOUNT CIMINO—TRADITION—VIEW OF ST. PETER'S—ENTRANCE INTO ROME—A STRANGER'S IMPRESSIONS OF THE CITY.

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:—

"Propter minium EST, EST,

Dominus meus mortuus EST!"

"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 bade 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 façades 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.

LETTER LIV.

APPIAN WAY—TOMB OF CECILIA METELLA—ALBANO—TOMB OF THE CURIATII—ARICIA—TEMPLE OF DIANA—FOUNTAIN OF EGERIA—LAKE OF NEMI—VELLETRI—PONTINE MARSHES—CONVENT—CANAL—TERRACINA—SAN FELICE—FONDI—STORY OF JULIA GONZAGA—CICERO'S GARDEN AND TOMB—MOLA—MINTURNA—RUINS OF AN AMPHITHEATRE AND TEMPLE—FALERNIAN MOUNT AND WINE—THE DOCTOR OF ST. AGATHA—CAPUA—ENTRANCE INTO NAPLES—THE QUEEN.

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 Diana's mirror (speculum Dianæ), 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—

"Impositum late saxis candentibus Anxur."

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 beautiful 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 the 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.

LETTER LV.

ROME—FRONT OF ST. PETER'S—EQUIPAGES OF THE CARDINALS—BEGGARS—BODY OF THE CHURCH—TOMB OF ST. PETER—THE TIBER—FORTRESS-TOMB OF ADRIAN—JEWS' QUARTER—FORUM BARBERINI PALACE—PORTRAIT OF BEATRICE CENCI—HER MELANCHOLY HISTORY—PICTURE OF THE FORNARINA—LIKENESS OF GIORGIONE'S MISTRESS—JOSEPH AND POTIPHAR'S WIFE—THE PALACES DORIA AND SCIARRA—PORTRAIT OF OLIVIA WALDACHINI—OF "A CELEBRATED WIDOW"—OF SEMIRAMIS—CLAUDE'S LANDSCAPES—BRILL'S—BRUGHEL'S—NOTTI'S "WOMAN CATCHING FLEAS"—DA VINCI'S QUEEN GIOVANNA—PORTRAIT OF A FEMALE DORIA—PRINCE DORIA—PALACE SCIARRA—BRILL AND BOTH'S LANDSCAPES—CLAUDE'S—PICTURE OF NOAH INTOXICATED—ROMANA'S FORNARINA—DA VINCI'S TWO PICTURES.

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 mosaic. Its walls are encrusted with precious stones and masterly workmanship 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 cannot 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 re-animated 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 philosophers, 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 masterpieces 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 familiar 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 skull, 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.

LETTER LVI.

ANNUAL DOWRIES TO TWELVE GIRLS—VESPERS IN THE CONVENT OF SANTA TRINITA—RUINS OF ROMAN BATHS—A MAGNIFICENT MODERN CHURCH WITHIN TWO ANCIENT HALLS—GARDENS OF MECÆNAS—TOWER WHENCE NERO SAW ROME ON FIRE—HOUSES OF HORACE AND VIRGIL—BATHS OF TITUS AND CARACALLA.

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 couples, 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 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 Saviour.

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 tranquilizing 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 on 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. After 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 Belvedere 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 frescoes. 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.

LETTER LVII.

SUMMER WEATHER IN MARCH—BATHS OF CARACALLA—BEGINNING OF THE APPIAN WAY—TOMB OF THE SCIPIOS—CATACOMBS—CHURCH OF SAN SEBASTIANO—YOUNG CAPUCHIN FRIAR—TOMBS OF THE EARLY CHRISTIAN MARTYRS—CHAMBER WHERE THE APOSTLES WORSHIPPED—TOMB OF CECILIA METELLA—THE CAMPAGNA—CIRCUS OF CARACALLA OR ROMULUS—TEMPLE DEDICATED TO RIDICULE—KEATS'S GRAVE—FOUNTAIN OF EGERIA—THE WOOD WHERE NUMA MET THE NYMPH—HOLY WEEK.

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 façade, 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. Sebastiano 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 crossed through several cross-passages, and came to a small chamber, excavated simply in the earth, with an earthern 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 half-worn 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 cannot 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 visitors, 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.

LETTER LVIII.

PALM SUNDAY—SISTINE CHAPEL—ENTRANCE OF THE POPE—THE CHOIR—THE POPE ON HIS THRONE—PRESENTING THE PALMS—PROCESSION—BISHOP ENGLAND'S LECTURE—HOLY TUESDAY—THE MISERERE—ACCIDENTS IN THE CROWD—TENEBRÆ—THE EMBLEMATIC CANDLES—HOLY THURSDAY—FRESCOES OF MICHAEL ANGELO—"CREATION OF EVE"—"LOT INTOXICATED"—DELPHIC SYBIL—POPE WASHING PILGRIMS' FEET—STRIKING RESEMBLANCE OF ONE TO JUDAS—POPE AND CARDINALS WAITING UPON PILGRIMS AT DINNER.

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 Saviour 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 tenebræ. 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 genuflections, 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 canvas, 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.

LETTER LIX.

SEPULCHRE OF CAIUS CESTIUS—PROTESTANT BURYING GROUND—GRAVES OF KEATS AND SHELLEY—SHELLEY'S LAMENT OVER KEATS—GRAVES OF TWO AMERICANS—BEAUTY OF THE BURIAL PLACE—MONUMENTS OVER TWO INTERESTING YOUNG FEMALES—INSCRIPTION ON KEATS' MONUMENT—THE STYLE OF KEATS' POEMS—GRAVE OF DR. BELL—RESIDENCE AND LITERARY UNDERTAKINGS OF HIS WIDOW.

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:—

"The spirit of the spot shall lead

Thy footsteps to a slope of green access,

Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead,

A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread.

"And gray walls moulder round, on which dull time

Feeds like slow fire upon a hoary brand:

And one keen pyramid, with wedge sublime,

Pavilioning the dust of him who planned

This refuge for his memory, doth stand

Like flame transformed to marble; and beneath

A field is spread, on which a newer band

Have pitched, in heaven's smile, their camp of death,

Welcoming him we lose, with scarce extinguished breath.

"Here pause: these graves are all too young as yet

To have outgrown the sorrow which consigned

Its charge to each."

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 prophesy, the last lines of his elegy on one he believed had gone before him to a happier world:

"Burning through the inmost veil of heaven,

The soul of Adonais, like a star,

Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are."

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 death-bed, 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.

LETTER LX.

PRESENTATION AT THE PAPAL COURT—PILGRIMS GOING TO VESPERS—PERFORMANCE OF THE MISERERE—TARPEIAN ROCK—THE FORUM—PALACE OF THE CESARS—COLISEUM.

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 gentlemen 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 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 finger, 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 pendant 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 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 arch 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 streamed 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.

LETTER LXI.

VIGILS OVER THE HOST—CEREMONIES OF EASTER SUNDAY—THE PROCESSION—HIGH MASS—THE POPE BLESSING THE PEOPLE—CURIOUS ILLUMINATION—RETURN TO FLORENCE—RURAL FESTA—HOSPITALITY OF THE FLORENTINES—EXPECTED MARRIAGE OF THE GRAND DUKE.

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 canons) 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 enquire. 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 a 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 Duchess of Litchtenberg, 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.

LETTER LXII.

BOLOGNA—MALIBRAN—PARMA—NIGHTINGALES OF LOMBARDY—PLACENZA—AUSTRIAN SOLDIERS—THE SIMPLON—MILAN—RESEMBLANCE TO PARIS—THE CATHEDRAL—GUERCINO'S HAGAR—MILANESE COFFEE.

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 re-appearances, 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 Saviour, 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 or might 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 Duchy of Maria Louisa. An Austrian regiment marched into the town as we left it, and an Italian at the gate told us that the Duchess 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 Placenza, 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 with 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 Placenza, 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 leaving 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.

LETTER LXIII.

A MELANCHOLY PROCESSION—LAGO MAGGIORE—ISOLA BELLA—THE SIMPLON—MEETING A FELLOW-COUNTRYMAN—THE VALLEY OF THE RHONE.

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 contadina, 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

"It is the silent grief that cuts the heart-strings."

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 who 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 recognized 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.

LETTER LXIV.

SWITZERLAND—LA VALAIS—THE CRETINS AND THE GOITRES—A FRENCHMAN'S OPINION OF NIAGARA—LAKE LEMAN—CASTLE OF CHILLON—ROCKS OF MEILLERIE—REPUBLICAN AIR—MONT BLANC—GENEVA—THE STEAMER—PARTING SORROW.

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 moaning 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 hideous 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 has been a cleanliness and a generosity in the supply of the table, which prove virtues among them, not found in Italy.

At Turtmann, 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 Turtmann!

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 Fiesoli) 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-briar, 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 look 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 straw-bonneted 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.

"Lake Leman wooed us with its crystal face,"

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.

LETTER LXV.

LAKE LEMAN—AMERICAN APPEARANCE OF THE GENEVESE—STEAMBOAT OF THE RHONE—GIBBON AND ROUSSEAU—ADVENTURE OF THE LILIES—GENEVESE JEWELLERS—RESIDENCE OF VOLTAIRE—BYRON'S NIGHT-CAP—VOLTAIRE'S WALKING-STICK AND STOCKINGS.

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 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 "Clare," 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 biere 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. Sequiter, 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 population 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 Appelles to compose an endurable Venus. I understand a fair countryman 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 Empress Catharine, 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 cœur 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.

LETTER LXVI.

PRACTICAL BATHOS OF CELEBRATED PLACES—TRAVELLING COMPANIONS AT THE SIMPLON—CUSTOM-HOUSE COMFORTS—TRIALS OF TEMPER—CONQUERED AT LAST!—DIFFERENT ASPECTS OF FRANCE, ITALY, AND SWITZERLAND—FORCE OF POLITENESS.

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 solemnities 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,

"their leaf

By some o'er-hasty angel was misplaced."

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 silk of floss silk; no polished metals, plated or varnished; no toys, (except 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.

LETTER LXVII.

PARIS AND LONDON—REASONS FOR LIKING PARIS—JOYOUSNESS OF ITS CITIZENS—LAFAYETTE'S FUNERAL—ROYAL RESPECT AND GRATITUDE—ENGLAND—DOVER—ENGLISH NEATNESS AND COMFORT, AS DISPLAYED IN THE HOTELS, WAITERS, FIRES, BELL-ROPES, LANDSCAPES, WINDOW-CURTAINS, TEA-KETTLES, STAGE-COACHES, HORSES, AND EVERYTHING ELSE—SPECIMEN OF ENGLISH RESERVE—THE GENTLEMAN DRIVER OF FASHION—A CASE FOR MRS. TROLLOPE.

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," 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 continent, could scarcely be imagined.

Malgré all my observations on the English, whom I have found elsewhere 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 coachman'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 contrasting 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 heart-ache. 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 wayside 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 American, and said we did not think enough of the memory of Washington. Leaving his bones in the miserable brick tomb, of which he had 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 Pirati," 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 stage-coach acquaintance.

LETTER LXVIII.

FIRST VIEW OF LONDON—THE KING'S BIRTHDAY—PROCESSION OF MAIL COACHES—REGENT STREET—LADY BLESSINGTON—THE ORIGINAL PELHAM—BULWER, THE NOVELIST—JOHN GALT—D'ISRAELI, THE AUTHOR OF VIVIAN GREY—RECOLLECTIONS OF BYRON—INFLUENCE OF AMERICAN OPINIONS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE.

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. Trelises 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 dangerous 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 cannot 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, different 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 soignè of his curls, and a bit of a coxcomb. There is no reserve 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 band 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 ferroniere 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 visitor 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.

LETTER LXIX.

THE LITERATI OF LONDON.

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 can 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 India rubber 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 small-pox, 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

Whose "coat was red, and whose breeches were blue."

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 attractions. The soft musical voice, and elegant manner of the one, and the satirical, sneering tone and angular gestures 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 fell 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 question 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.

LETTER LXX.

LONDON—VISIT TO A RACE-COURSE—GIPSIES—THE PRINCESS VICTORIA—SPLENDID APPEARANCE OF THE ENGLISH NOBILITY—A BREAKFAST WITH ELIA AND BRIDGET ELIA—MYSTIFICATION—CHARLES LAMB'S OPINION OF AMERICAN AUTHORS.

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 sun-flecked 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, lest 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-singers 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 the 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, deep-set 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 a while, 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 a while, 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.

LETTER LXXI.

DINNER AT LADY BLESSINGTON'S—BULWER, D'ISRAELI, PROCTER, FONBLANC, ETC.—ECCENTRICITIES OF BECKFORD, AUTHOR OF VATHEK—D'ISRAELI'S EXTRAORDINARY TALENT AT DESCRIPTION.

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 arrested my attention, 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 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,

"With thy incomparable oil, Macassar!"

The anxieties of the first course, as usual, kept every mouth occupied for a while, 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 Artevald's, came up after a while, and was very much over-praised (me judice). Bulwer said, that as the author was the principle 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.[11]

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 to be 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 Belshazzer, 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 a while 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.

LETTER LXXII.

THE ITALIAN OPERA—MADEMOISELLE GRISI—A GLANCE AT LORD BROUGHAM—MRS. NORTON AND LORD SEFTON—RAND, THE AMERICAN PORTRAIT PAINTER—AN EVENING PARTY AT BULWER'S—PALMY STATE OF LITERATURE IN MODERN DAYS—FASHIONABLE NEGLECT OF FEMALES—PERSONAGES PRESENT—SHIEL THE ORATOR, THE PRINCE OF MOSCOWA, MRS. LEICESTER STANHOPE, THE CELEBRATED BEAUTY, ETC., ETC.

Went to the opera to hear Julia Grisi. I stood out the first act in the pit, and saw instances of rudeness in "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 low-bred 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 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 mamas, 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 fashion 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,

"'Our poodle dog is quite adored,

Our sayings are extremely quoted,'

"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 trowsers, 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 paean for the old general and his measures, till it was far into the morning.

LETTER LXXIII.

BREAKFAST WITH BARRY CORNWALL—LUXURY OF THE FOLLOWERS OF THE MODERN MUSE—BEAUTY OF THE DRAMATIC SKETCHES GAINS PROCTOR A WIFE—HAZLITT'S EXTRAORDINARY TASTE FOR THE PICTURESQUE IN WOMEN—COLERIDGE'S OPINION OF CORNWALL.

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 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 ham 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 Montague, 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,

"How many summers, love,

Hast thou been mine?"

and looked at them with an inexpressible 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 Procter 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?"[12]

After breakfast, Procter took me into a small closet adjoining his library, in which he usually writes. There was just room enough 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 gnawing 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, Shakspeare, 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, businessman 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.

LETTER LXXIV.

AN EVENING AT LADY BLESSINGTON'S—ANECDOTES OF MOORE, THE POET—TAYLOR, THE PLATONIST—POLITICS—ELECTION OF SPEAKER—PRICES OF BOOKS.

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 soirées 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 "Sloperton 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, elastic 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 Lansdowne, 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 Duchess; 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 enthusiasm, 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 had 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 ottoman-full 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-Greyish, 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, recognizing her as the sister of the tory Speaker, and threatened to tear the coronet from the panels. "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 ago 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 domiciliated 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, fair-haired, 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") at the Temple. The exquisite papers on his life and letters in the Athenæum, 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. 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!

LETTER LXXV.

LONDON—THE POET MOORE—LAST DAYS OF SIR WALTER SCOTT—MOORE'S OPINION OF O'CONNELL—ANACREON AT THE PIANO—DEATH OF BYRON—A SUPPRESSED ANECDOTE.

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 "milady," 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 observed 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, assisting 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 him 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 the 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 refusal 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:—

"'Some men, with a horror of slaughter,

Improve on the scripture command,

And 'honor their'——wife and daughter—

That their days may be long in the land.'

"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 convulsions—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 cannot embody 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 to 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 sobriquet 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 arch, confident, and half diffident, as if he were disguising his pleasure at applause, while another bright gleam 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,—everything 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.

"Here's a health to thee, Tom Moore!"

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 re-metamorphosed 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.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] I remember hearing a friend receive a severe reproof from one of the most enlightened men in our country, for offering his daughter an annual, upon the cover of which was an engraving of these same "Graces."

[2]

——"A long swept wave about to break,

And on the curl hangs pausing."

[3] On my way to Rome (near Radicofani, I think), we passed an old man, whose picturesque figure, enveloped in his brown cloak and slouched hat, arrested the attention of all my companions. I had seen him before. From a five minutes' sketch in passing, Mr. Cole had made one of the most spirited heads I ever saw, admirably like, and worthy of Caravaggio for force and expression.

[4] The name of a wooden frame by which a pot of coals is hung between the sheets of a bed in Italy.

[5] As if everything should be poetical on the shores of the Clitumnus, the beggars ran after us in quartettes, singing a chaunt, and sustaining the four parts as they ran. Every child sings well in Italy; and I have heard worse music in a church anthem, than was made by these half-clothed and homeless wretches, running at full speed by the carriage-wheels. I have never met the same thing elsewhere.

[6] The Tuscans, who are the best governed people in Italy, pay twenty per cent. of their property in taxes—paying the whole value of their estates, of course, in five years. The extortions of the priests, added to this, are sufficiently burdensome.

[7] So called in the catalogue. The custode, however, told us it was a portrait of the wife of Vandyck, painted as an old woman to mortify her excessive vanity, when she was but twenty-three. He kept the picture until she was older, and, at the time of his death, it had become a flattering likeness, and was carefully treasured by the widow.

[8] The following description is given of this splendid palace, by Suetonius. "To give an idea of the extent and beauty of this edifice, it is sufficient to mention, that in its vestibule was placed his colossal statue, one hundred and twenty feet in height. It had a triple portico, supported by a thousand columns, with a lake like a little sea, surrounded by buildings which resembled cities. It contained pasture-grounds and groves in which were all descriptions of animals, wild and tame. Its interior shone with gold, gems, and mother-of-pearl. In the vaulted roofs of the eating-rooms were machines of ivory, which turned round and scattered perfumes upon the guests. The principal banqueting room was a rotunda, so constructed that it turned round night and day, in imitation of the motion of the earth." When Nero took possession of this fairy palace, his only observation was—"Now I shall begin to live like a man."

[9] Mr. John Hone, of New York.

[10] An interesting account of this ill-fated young lady, who was on the eve of marriage, has appeared in the Mirror.

[11] I have been told that he stood once for a London borough. A coarse fellow came up at the hustings, and said to him, "I should like to know on what ground you stand here, sir?" "On my head, sir!" answered D'Israeli. The populace had not read Vivian Grey, however, and he lost his election.

[12] The following story has been told me by another gentleman. Hazlitt was married to an amiable woman, and divorced after a few years, at his own request. He left London, and returned with another wife. The first thing he did, was to send to his first wife to borrow five pounds! She had not so much in the world, but she sent to a friend (the gentleman who told me the story), borrowed it, and sent it to him! It seems to me there is a whole drama in this single fact.

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