My Unknown Chum: "Aguecheek". Fairbanks Charles Bullard

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      I lingered among the attractions of Genoa for a few days. I enjoy not only those magnificent palaces with their spacious quadrangles, broad staircases, and sculptured façades, but those narrow, winding streets of which three quarters of the city are composed – so narrow indeed that a carriage never is seen in them, and a donkey, pannier-laden, after the manner of Ali Baba's faithful animal, compels you to keep very close to the buildings. Genoa is the very reverse of Philadelphia. Its streets are as narrow and crooked as those of Philadelphia are broad and straight. The Quaker City was always a wearisome place to me. Its rectangular avenues – so wide that they afford no protection from the wintry blast nor shelter from the canicular sunshine, and as interminable as a tale in a weekly newspaper – tire me out. They make me long for something more social and natural than their straight lines. Man is a gregarious animal. It is his nature to snuggify himself. But the Quaker affects a contempt for snugness, and includes Hogarth's line of beauty among the worldly vanities which his religion obliges him to shun. Every time I think of Philadelphia my disrespect for the science of geometry is increased, and I find myself more and more inclined to believe the most unkind things that Lord Macaulay can say about Mr. Penn, its founder. Cherishing such sentiments as these, is it wonderful that I find Genoa a pleasant city? I enjoy its gay port, its thronged market place, its sumptuous churches, with gilded vaults and panels, and checkered exteriors, its well-dressed people, from the bluff coachman, who laughed at my attempts to understand the Genoese dialect, to the devout feminines in their graceful white veils, which give the whole city a peculiarly festive and nuptial appearance: but it must be acknowledged, that the up-and-down-stairsy feature of the town is not grateful to my gouty feet.

      I must not weary you, dear reader, with any attempts to describe the delightful four days' journey from Genoa to Florence, in a vettura. The Cornice road, with its steep cliffs or trim villas on one side, and the clear blue Mediterranean on the other, – those pleasant old towns, pervaded with an air of respectable antiquity, Chiavari, Sestri, Sarzana, Spezzia, with its beautiful gulf, whose waters looked so pure and calm that it was difficult to think that they could ever have swallowed poor Percy Shelley, and robbed English literature of one of its brightest ornaments, – Pietra Santa, Carrara, with its queer old church, its quarries, its doorsteps and window-sills of milk-white marble, and its throng of artists, – the little marble city of Massa Ducale, nestling among the mountains, – the vast groves of olives, whose ash-coloured leaves made noontide seem like twilight, – all these things would require a great expenditure of time and rhetoric, and therefore I will not even allude to them.

      Neither will I tire you with any reference to my brief sojourn in Pisa. I will not tell how delightful it was to perambulate the clean streets of that peaceful city, – how I enjoyed the view from the bridges, the ancient towers and domes, and the lofty palaces, whose fair fronts are mirrored in the soft-flowing Arno. I will not attempt to describe the enchantment produced by that noble architectural group, – the Cathedral, the Baptistery, the Campanile, and the Campo Santo, – nor the joy I felt on making a closer acquaintance with that graceful tower, whose inexplicable dereliction from the perfect uprightness which is inculcated as a primary duty in all similar structures, was made familiar to me at an early age, through the medium of a remarkable wood-cut in my school Geography. I will not tell how I fatigued my sense with the forms of beauty with which that glorious church is filled, – how refreshing its holy quiet and subdued light were to my travel-worn spirit, – nor how the majestic cloisters of the Campo Santo, with their delicate traceries, antique frescoes, and constantly varying light and shade, elevated and purified my heart of the sordid spirit of this mean, practical age, until I felt that to live amid such scenes, and to be buried at last in the earth of Palestine, under the shade of those solemn arches, was the only worthy object of human ambition.

      I entered Florence late in the afternoon, under cover of a fog that would have done credit to London in the depths of its November nebulosity. It was rather an unbecoming dress for the style of beauty of the Tuscan capital, – that mantle of chill vapour, – but it was worn but a few hours, and the sun rose the next morning in all his legitimate splendour, and darted his rays through as clear and frosty an atmosphere as ever fell to the lot of even that favoured country. I have once or twice heard the epithet "beautiful" applied to this city; indeed, I will not be sure that I have not met with it in some book or other. It is, in fact, the only word that can be used with any propriety concerning this charming place. It is not vast like Rome, nor is the soul of its beholder saddened by the sight of mighty ruins, or burdened with the weight of thousands of years of heroic history. It does not possess the broad Bay of Naples, nor is it watched over by a stupendous volcano, smoking leisurely for want of some better occupation. But it lies in the valley of the Arno, one of the most harmonious and impressive works of art that the world has ever seen, surrounded by natural beauties that realize the most ecstatic dreams of poesy.

      Firenze la bella! Who can look at her from any of the terraced hills that enclose her from the rude world, and deny her that title? That fertile plain which stretches from her very walls to the edge of the horizon – those picturesque hills, dotted with lovely villas – those orchards and vineyards, in their glory of gold and purple – that river, stealing noiselessly to the sea – and far away the hoary peaks of the Apennines, changing their hue with every hour of sunlight, and displaying their most gorgeous robes, in honour of the departing day, – I pity the man who can look upon them without a momentary feeling of inspiration. The view from Fiesole is consolation enough for a life of disappointment, and ought to make all future earthly trials seem as nothing to him who is permitted to enjoy it.

      And then, those domes and towers, so eloquent of the genius of Giotto and Brunelleschi and of the public spirit and earnest devotion of ages which modern ignorance stigmatizes as "dark," – who can behold them without a thrill? The battlemented tower of the Palazzo Vecchio – which seems as if it had been hewn out of solid rock, rather than built up by the patient labour of the mason – looks down upon the peaceful city with a composure that seems almost intelligent, and makes you wonder whether it appeared the same when the signiory of Florence held their councils under its massive walls, and in those dark days when the tyrannous factions of Guelph and Ghibelline celebrated their bloody carnival. The graceful Campanile of the cathedral, with its coloured marbles, seems too much like a mantel ornament to be exposed to the changes of the weather. Amid the other domes and towers of the city rises the vast dome of the cathedral, the forerunner of that of St. Peter's, and almost its equal. It appears to be conscious of its superiority to the neighbouring architectural monuments, and merits Hallam's description – "an emblem of the Catholic hierarchy under its supreme head; like Rome itself, imposing, unbroken, unchangeable, radiating in equal expansion to every part of the earth, and directing its convergent curves to heaven."

      There is no city in the world so full of memories of the middle ages as Florence. Its very palaces, with their heavily barred basement windows, look as if they were built to stand a siege. Their sombre walls are in strong contrast with the bloom and sunshine which we naturally associate with the valley of the Arno. Their magnificent proportions and the massiveness of their construction oppress you with recollections of the warlike days in which they were erected. You wonder, as you stand in their courtyards, or perambulate the streets darkened by their overhanging cornices, what has become of all the cavaliers; and if a gentleman in "complete steel" should lift his visor to accost you, it would not startle you so much as to hear two English tourists with the inevitable red guide-books under their arms, conversing about the "Grand Juke." Wherever one may turn his steps in Florence, he meets with some object of beauty or historical interest; yet among all these charms and СКАЧАТЬ