The Mediterranean: Its Storied Cities and Venerable Ruins

Several of these palazzi contain pictures and art-collections of considerable value, and the interest of those has perhaps enhanced the admiration which they have excited in visitors. One of the most noteworthy is the Palazzo Brignole Sale, commonly called the Palazzo Rosso, because its exterior is painted red. This has now become a memorial of the munificence of its former owner, the Duchess of Galliera, a member of the Brignole Sale family, who, with the consent of her husband and relations, in the year 1874 presented this palace and its contents to the city of Genoa, with a revenue sufficient for its maintenance. The Palazzo Reale, in the Via Balbi, is one of those where the garden adds a charm to an otherwise not very striking, though large, edifice. This, formerly the property of the Durazzo family, was purchased by Charles Albert, King of Sardinia, and has thus become a royal residence. The Palazzo Ducale, once inhabited by the Doges of Genoa, has now been converted into public offices, and the palazzo opposite to the Church of St. Matteo bears an inscription which of itself gives the building an exceptional interest: “Senat. Cons. Andreæ de Oria, patriæ liberatori, munus publicum.” It is this, the earlier home of the great citizen of Genoa, of which Rogers has written in the often-quoted lines: —

“He left it for a better; and ’tis now
A house of trade, the meanest merchandise
Cumbering its floors. Yet, fallen as it is,
’Tis still the noblest dwelling – even in Genoa!
And hadst thou, Andrea, lived there to the last,
Thou hadst done well: for there is that without,
That in the wall, which monarchs could not give
Nor thou take with thee – that which says aloud,
It was thy country’s gift to her deliverer!”

The great statesman lies in the neighboring church, with other members of his family, and over the high altar hangs the sword which was given to him by the Pope. The church was greatly altered – embellished it was doubtless supposed – by Doria himself; but the old cloisters, dating from the earliest part of the fourteenth century, still remain intact. The grander palazzo which he erected, as an inscription outside still informs us, was in a more open, and doubtless then more attractive, part of the city. In the days of Doria it stood in ample gardens, which extended on one side down to a terrace overlooking the harbor, on the other some distance up the hillside. From the back of the palace an elaborate structure of ascending flight of steps in stone led up to a white marble colossal statue of Hercules, which from this elevated position seemed to keep watch over the home of the Dorias and the port of Genoa. All this is sadly changed; the admiral would now find little pleasure in his once stately home. It occupies a kind of peninsula between two streams of twentieth-century civilization. Between the terrace wall and the sea the railway connecting the harbor with the main line has intervened, with its iron tracks, its sheds, and its shunting-places – a dreary unsightly outlook, for the adjuncts of a terminus are usually among the most ugly appendages of civilization. The terraced staircase on the opposite side of the palace has been swept away by the main line of the railway, which passes within a few yards of its façade, thus severing the gardens and isolating the shrine of Hercules, who looks down forlornly on the result of labors which even he might have deemed arduous, while snorting, squealing engines pass and repass – beasts which to him would have seemed more formidable than Lernæan hydra or Nemaean lion.

The palace follows the usual Genoese rule of turning the better side inwards, and offering the less attractive to the world at large. The landward side, which borders a narrow street, and thus, one would conjecture, must from the first have been connected with the upper gardens by a bridge, or underground passage, is plain, almost heavy, in its design, but it does not rise to so great an elevation as is customary with the palazzi in the heart of the city. The side which is turned towards the sea is a much more attractive composition, for it is associated with the usual cloister of loggia which occupies three sides of an oblong. This, as the ground slopes seaward, though on the level of the street outside, stands upon a basement story, and communicates by flights of steps with the lower gardens. The latter are comparatively small, and in no way remarkable; but in the days – not so very distant – when their terraces looked down upon the Mediterranean, when the city and its trade were on a smaller scale, when the picturesque side of labor had not yet been extruded by the dust and grime of over-much toil, no place in Genoa could have been more pleasant for the evening stroll, or for dreamy repose in some shaded nook during the heat of the day. The palazzo itself shows signs of neglect – the family, I believe, have for some time past ceased to use it for a residence; two or three rooms are still retained in their original condition, but the greater part of the building is let off. In the corridor, near the entrance, members of the Doria family, dressed in classic garb, in conformity with the taste which prevailed in the sixteenth century, are depicted in fresco upon the walls. On the roof of the grand saloon Jupiter is engaged in overthrowing the Titans. These frescoes are the work of Perini del Vaga, a pupil of Raphael. The great admiral, the builder of the palace, is represented among the figures in the corridor, and by an oil painting in the saloon, which contains some remains of sumptuous furniture and a few ornaments of interest. He was a burly man, with a grave, square, powerful face, such a one as often looks out at us from the canvas of Titian or of Tintoret – a man of kindly nature, but masterful withal; cautious and thoughtful, but a man of action more than of the schools or of the library; one little likely to be swayed by passing impulse or transient emotion, but clear and firm of purpose, who meant to attain his end were it in mortal to command success, and could watch and wait for the time. Such men, if one may trust portraits and trust history, were not uncommon in the great epoch when Europe was shaking itself free from the fetters of mediæval influences, and was enlarging its mental no less than its physical horizon. Such men are the makers of nations, and not only of their own fortunes; they become rarer in the days of frothy stump oratory and hysteric sentiment, when a people babbles as it sinks into senile decrepitude.

Andrea Doria himself – “Il principe” as he was styled – had a long and in some respects a checkered career. In his earlier life he obtained distinction as a successful naval commander, and in the curious complications which prevailed in those days among the Italian States and their neighbors ultimately became Admiral of the French fleet. But he found that Genoa would obtain little good from the French King, who was then practically its master; so he transferred his allegiance to the Emperor Charles, and by his aid expelled from his native city the troops with which he had formerly served. So great was his influence in Genoa that he might easily have obtained supreme power; but at this, like a true patriot, he did not grasp, and the Constitution, which was adopted under his influence, gradually put an end to the bitter party strife which had for so long been the plague of Genoa, and it remained in force until the French Revolution. Still, notwithstanding the gratitude generally felt for his great services to the State, he experienced in his long life – for he died at the age of ninety-two – the changefulness of human affairs. He had no son, and his heir and grand-nephew – a young man – was unpopular, and, as is often the case, the sapling was altogether inferior in character to the withering tree. The members of another great family – the Fieschi – entered into a conspiracy, and collected a body of armed men on the pretext of an expedition against the corsairs who for so long were the pests of the Mediterranean. The outbreak was well planned; on New Year’s night, in the year 1547, the chief posts in the city were seized. Doria himself was just warned in time, and escaped capture; but his heir was assassinated, and his enemies seemed to have triumphed. But their success was changed to failure by an accident. Count Fiescho in passing along a plank to a galley in the harbor made a false step, and fell into the sea. In those days the wearing of armor added to the perils of the deep; the count sank like a stone, and so left the conspirators without a leader exactly at the most critical moment. They were thus before long defeated and dispersed, and had to experience the truth of the proverb, “Who breaks pays,” for in those days men felt little sentimental tenderness for leaders of sedition and disturbers of the established order. The Fieschi were exiled, and their palace was razed to the ground. So the old admiral returned to his home and his terrace-walk overlooking the sea, until at last his long life ended, and they buried him with his fathers in the Church of S. Matteo.

Not far from the Doria Palace is the memorial to another admiral, of fame more world-wide than that of Doria. In the open space before the railway station – a building, a façade of which is not without architectural merit – rises a handsome monument in honor of Christopher Columbus. He was not strictly a native of the city, but he was certainly born on Genoese soil, and, as it seems to be now agreed, at Cogoleto, a small village a few miles west of the city. He was not, however, able to convince the leaders of his own State that there were wide parts of the world yet to be discovered; and it is a well-known story how for a long time he preached to deaf ears, and found, like most heralds of startling physical facts, his most obstinate opponents among the ecclesiastics of his day. Spain at last, after Genoa and Portugal and England had all refused, placed Columbus in command of a voyage of discovery; and on Spanish ground also – in neglect and comparative poverty, worn out by toil and anxieties – the great explorer ended his checkered career. Genoa, however, though inattentive to the comparatively obscure enthusiast, has not failed to pay honor to the successful discoverer; and is glad to catch some reflected light from the splendor of successes to the aid of which she did not contribute. In this respect, however, the rest of the world cannot take up their parable at her; men generally find that on the whole it is less expensive, and certainly less troublesome, to build the tombs of the prophets, instead of honoring them while alive; then, indeed, whether bread be asked or no, a stone is often given. So now the effigy of Columbus stands on high among exotic plants, where all the world can see, for it is the first thing encountered by the traveller as he quits the railway station.

One of the most characteristic – if not one of the sweetest – places in Genoa is the long street, which, under more than one name, intervenes between the last row of houses in the town and the harbor. From the latter it is, indeed, divided by a line of offices and arched halls; these are covered by a terrace-roof and serve various purposes more or less directly connected with the shipping. The front walls of houses which rise high on the landward side are supported by rude arches. Thus, as is so common in Italian towns, there is a broad foot-walk, protected alike from sun and rain, replacing the “ground-floor front,” with dark shops at the back, and stalls, for the sale of all sorts of odds and ends, pitched in the spaces between the arches. In many towns these arcades are often among the most ornamental features; but in Genoa, though not without a certain quaintness, they are so rude in design and construction that they hardly deserve this title. The old Dogana, one of the buildings in the street, gives a good idea of the commercial part of Genoa before the days of steam, and has a considerable interest of its own. In the first place, it is a standing memorial of the bitter feud between Genoa and Venice, for it is built with the stones of a castle which, being captured by the one from the other, was pulled down and shipped to Genoa in the year 1262. Again, within its walls was the Banca di San Georgio, which had its origin in a municipal debt incurred in order to equip an expedition to stop the forays of a family named Grimaldi, who had formed a sort of Cave of Adullam at Monaco. The institution afterwards prospered, and held in trust most of the funds for charitable purposes, till “the French passed their sponge over the accounts, and ruined all the individuals in the community.” It has also an indirect connection with English history, for on the defeat of the Grimaldi many of their retainers entered the service of France, and were the Genoese bowmen who fought at Cressy. Lastly, against its walls the captured chains of the harbor of Pisa were suspended for nearly six centuries, for they were only restored to their former owners a comparatively few years since.

Turning up from this part of the city we thread narrow streets, in which many of the principal shops are still located. We pass, in a busy piazza, the Loggia dei Banchi Borsa– the old exchange – a quaint structure of the end of the sixteenth century, standing on a raised platform; and proceed from it into the Via degli Orefici– a street just like one of the lanes which lead from Cheapside to Cannon Street, if, indeed, it be not still narrower, but full of tempting shops. Genoa is noted for its work in coral and precious metals, but the most characteristic, as all visitors know, is a kind of filigree work in gold or silver, which is often of great delicacy and beauty, and is by no means so costly as might be anticipated from the elaborate workmanship.

The most notable building in Genoa, anterior to the days when the architecture of the Renaissance was in favor, is the cathedral, which is dedicated to S. Lorenzo. The western façade, which is approached by a broad flight of steps, is the best exposed to view, the rest of the building being shut in rather closely after the usual Genoese fashion. It is built of alternating courses of black and white marble, the only materials employed for mural decoration, so far as I remember, in the city. The western façade in its lower part is a fine example of “pointed” work, consisting of a triple portal which, for elegance of design and richness of ornamentation, could not readily be excelled. It dates from about the year 1307, when the cathedral was almost rebuilt. The latter, as a whole, is a very composite structure, for parts of an earlier Romanesque cathedral still remain, as in the fine “marble” columns of the nave; and important alterations were made at a much later date. These, to which belongs the mean clerestory, painted in stripes of black and white, to resemble the banded courses of stone below, are generally most unsatisfactory; and here, as in so many other buildings, one is compelled, however reluctantly, “to bless the old and ban the new.” The most richly decorated portion of the interior is the side chapel, constructed at the end of the fifteenth century, and dedicated to St. John the Baptist; here his relics are enshrined for the reverence of the faithful and, as the guide-books inform us, are placed in a magnificent silver-gilt shrine, which is carried in solemn procession on the day of his nativity. We are also informed that women, as a stigma for the part which the sex played in the Baptist’s murder, are only permitted to enter the chapel once in a year. This is not by any means the only case where the Church of Rome gives practical expression to its decided view as to which is the superior sex. The cathedral possesses another great, though now unhappily mutilated, treasure in the sacro catino. This, in the first place, was long supposed to have been carved from a single emerald; in the next, it was a relic of great antiquity and much sanctity; though as to its precise claims to honor in this respect authorities differed. According to one, it had been a gift from the Queen of Sheba to Solomon; according to another, it had contained the paschal lamb at the Last Supper; while a third asserted that in this dish Joseph of Arimathea had caught the blood which flowed from the pierced side of the crucified Saviour. Of its great antiquity there can at least be no doubt, for it was taken by the Genoese when they plundered Cæsarea so long since as the year 1101, and was then esteemed the most precious thing in the spoil. The material is a green glass – a conclusion once deemed so heretical that any experiment on the catino was forbidden on pain of death. As regards its former use, no more can be said than that it might possibly be as old as the Christian era. It is almost needless to say that Napoleon carried it away to Paris; but the worst result of this robbery was that when restitution was made after the second occupation of that city, the catino, through some gross carelessness, was so badly packed that it was broken on the journey back, and has been pieced together by a gold-setting of filigree, according to the guide-books. An inscription in the nave supplies us with an interesting fact in the early history of Genoa which perhaps ought not to be omitted. It is that the city was founded by one Janus, a great grandson of Noah; and that another Janus, after the fall of Troy, also settled in it. Colonists from that ill-fated town really seem to have distributed themselves pretty well over the known world.

More than one of the smaller churches of Genoa is of archæological interest, and the more modern fabric, called L’Annunziata, is extremely rich in its internal decorations, though these are more remarkable for their sumptuousness than for their good taste. But one structure calls for some notice in any account of the city. This is the Campo Santo, or burial-place of Genoa, situated at some distance without the walls in the Valley of the Bisagno. A large tract of land on the slope which forms the right bank of that stream has been converted into a cemetery, and was laid out on its present plan rather more than twenty-five years since. Extensive open spaces are enclosed within and divided by corridors with cloisters; terraces also, connected by flights of steps, lead up to a long range of buildings situated some distance above the river, in the center of which is a chapel crowned with a dome, supported internally by large columns of polished black Como marble. The bodies of the poorer people are buried in the usual way in the open ground of the cemetery, and the floor of the corridors appears to cover a continuous series of vaults, closed, as formerly in our churches, with great slabs of stone; but a very large number of the dead rest above the ground in vaults constructed on a plan which has evidently been borrowed from catacombs like those of Rome. There is, however, this difference, that in the latter the “loculi,” or separate compartments to contain the corpses, were excavated in the rock, while here they are constructed entirely of masonry. In both cases the “loculus” is placed with its longer axis parallel to the outer side, as was occasionally the method in the rock-hewn tombs of Palestine, instead of having an opening at the narrower end, so that the corpse, whether coffined or not, lies in the position of a sleeper in the berth of a ship. After a burial, the loculus, as in the catacombs, is closed, and an inscription placed on a slab outside. Thus in the Campo Santo at Genoa we walk through a gallery of tombs. On either hand are ranges of low elongated niches, rising tier above tier, each bearing a long white marble tablet, surrounded by a broad border of dark serpentine breccia. The interior generally is faced with white marble, which is toned down by the interspaces of the darker material, and the effect produced by these simple monumental corridors, these silent records of those who have rested from their labors, is impressive, if somewhat melancholy. In the cloisters, as a rule, the more sumptuous memorials are to be found. Here commonly sections of the wall are given up to the monuments of a family, the vaults, as I infer, being underneath the pavement. These memorials are often elaborate in design, and costly in their materials. They will be, and are, greatly admired by those to whose minds sumptuousness is the chief element in beauty, and rather second-rate execution of conceptions distinctly third-rate gives no offense. Others, however, will be chiefly impressed with the inferiority of modern statuary to the better work of classic ages, and will doubt whether the more ambitious compositions which met our eyes in these galleries are preferable to the simple dignity of the mediæval altar tomb, and the calm repose of its recumbent figure.

The drive to the Campo Santo, in addition to affording a view of one of the more perfect parts of the old defensive enclosure of Genoa, of which the Porta Chiappia, one of the smaller gates, may serve as an example, passes within sight, though at some distance below, one of the few relics of classic time which the city has retained. This is the aqueduct which was constructed by the Romans. Some portions of it, so far as can be seen from below, appear to belong to the original structure; but, as it is still in use, it has been in many parts more or less reconstructed and modernized.

The environs of Genoa are pleasant. On both sides, particularly on the eastern, are country houses with gardens. The western for a time is less attractive. The suburb of Sanpierdarena is neither pretty nor interesting; but at Conigliano, and still more at Sestre Ponente, the grimy finger-marks of commerce become less conspicuous, and Nature is not wholly expelled by the two-pronged fork of mechanism. Pegli, still farther west, is a very attractive spot, much frequented in the summer time for sea-bathing. On this part of the coast the hills in places draw near to the sea, and crags rise from the water; the rocks are of interest in more than one respect to the geologist. One knoll of rock rising from the sand in the Bay of Pra is crowned by an old fortress, and at Pegli itself are one or two villas of note. Of these the gardens of the Villa Pallavicini commonly attract visitors. They reward some by stalactite grottoes and “sheets of water with boats, under artificial caverns, a Chinese pagoda, and an Egyptian obelisk;” others will be more attracted by the beauty of the vegetation, for palms and oleanders, myrtles, and camellias, with many semi-tropical plants, flourish in the open air.

We may regard Genoa as the meeting-place of the two Rivieras. The coast to the west – the Riviera di Ponente – what has now, by the cession of Nice, become in part French soil, is the better known; but that to the east, the Riviera di Levante, though less accessible on the whole, and without such an attractive feature as the Corniche road, in the judgment of some is distinctly the more beautiful. There is indeed a road which, for a part of the way, runs near the sea; but the much more indented character of the coast frequently forces it some distance inland, and ultimately it has to cross a rather considerable line of hills in order to reach Spezzia. The outline of the coast, indeed, is perhaps the most marked feature of difference between the two Rivieras. The hills on the eastern side descend far more steeply to the water than they do upon the western. They are much more sharply furrowed with gullies and more deeply indented by inlets of the sea; thus the construction of a railway from Genoa to Spezzia has been a work involving no slight labor. There are, it is stated, nearly fifty tunnels between the two towns, and it is strictly true that for a large part of the distance north of the latter place the train is more frequently under than above ground. Here it is actually an advantage to travel by the slowest train that can be found, for this may serve as an epitome of the journey by an express: “Out of a tunnel; one glance, between rocks and olive-groves, up a ravine, into which a picturesque old village is wedged; another glance down the same to the sea, sparkling in the sunlight below; a shriek from the engine, and another plunge into darkness.” So narrow are some of these gullies, up which, however, a village climbs, that, if I may trust my memory, I have seen a train halted at a station with the engine in the opening of one tunnel and the last car not yet clear of another.

But the coast, when explored, is full of exquisite nooks, and here and there, where by chance the hills slightly recede, or a larger valley than usual comes down to the sea, towns of some size are situated, from which, as halting-places, the district might be easily explored, for trains are fairly frequent, and the distances are not great. For a few miles from Genoa the coast is less hilly than it afterwards becomes; nevertheless, the traveller is prepared for what lies before him by being conducted from the main station, on the west side of Genoa, completely beneath the city to near its eastern wall. Then Nervi is passed, which, like Pegli, attracts not a few summer visitors, and is a bright and sunny town, with pleasant gardens and villas. Recco follows, also bright and cheerful, backed by the finely-outlined hills, which form the long promontory enclosing the western side of the Bay of Rapallo. Tunnels and villages, as the railway now plunges into the rock, now skirts the margin of some little bay, lead first to Rapallo and then to Chiavari, one with its slender campanile, the other with its old castle. The luxuriance of the vegetation in all this district cannot fail to attract notice. The slopes of the hills are grey with olives; oranges replace apples in the orchards, and in the more sheltered nooks we espy the paler gold of the lemon. Here are great spiky aloes, there graceful feathering palms; here pines of southern type, with spreading holm-oaks, and a dozen other evergreen shrubs.

Glimpse after glimpse of exquisite scenery flashes upon us as we proceed to Spezzia, but, as already said, its full beauty can only be appreciated by rambling among the hills or boating along the coast. There is endless variety, but the leading features are similar: steep hills furrowed by ravines, craggy headlands and sheltered coves; villages sometimes perched high on a shoulder, sometimes nestling in a gully; sometimes a campanile, sometimes a watch-tower; slopes, here clothed with olive groves, here with their natural covering of pine and oak scrub, of heath, myrtle, and strawberry-trees. A change also in the nature of the rock diversifies the scenery, for between Framura and Bonasola occurs a huge mass of serpentine, which recalls, in its peculiar structure and tints, the crags near the Lizard in England. This rock is extensively quarried in the neighborhood of Levanto, and from that little port many blocks are shipped.

Spezzia itself has a remarkable situation. A large inlet of the sea runs deep into the land, parallel with the general trend of the hills, and almost with that of the coast-line. The range which shelters it on the west narrows as it falls to the headland of Porto Venere, and is extended yet farther by rocky islands; while on the opposite coast, hills no less, perhaps yet more, lofty, protect the harbor from the eastern blasts. In one direction only is it open to the wind, and against this the comparative narrowness of the inlet renders the construction of artificial defenses possible. At the very head of this deeply embayed sheet of water is a small tract of level ground – the head, as it were, of a valley – encircled by steep hills. On this little plain, and by the waterside, stands Spezzia. Formerly it was a quiet country town, a small seaport with some little commerce; but when Italy ceased to be a geographical expression, and became practically one nation, Spezzia was chosen, wisely it must be admitted, as the site of the chief naval arsenal. A single glance shows its natural advantages for such a purpose. Access from the land must always present difficulties, and every road can be commanded by forts, perched on yet more elevated positions; while a hostile fleet, as it advances up the inlet, must run the gauntlet of as many batteries as the defenders can build. Further, the construction of a breakwater across the middle of the channel at once has been a protection from the storms, and has compelled all who approach to pass through straits commanded by cannon. The distance of the town from its outer defenses and from the open sea seems enough to secure it even from modern ordnance; so that, until the former are crushed, it cannot be reached by projectiles. But it must be confessed that the change has not been without its drawbacks. The Spezzia of to-day may be a more prosperous town than the Spezzia of a quarter of a century since, but it has lost some of its beauty. A twentieth-century fortress adds no charm to the scenery, and does not crown a hill so picturesquely as did a mediæval castle. Houses are being built, roads are being made, land is being reclaimed from the sea for the construction of quays. Thus the place has a generally untidy aspect; there is a kind of ragged selvage to town and sea, which, at present, on a near view, is very unsightly. Moreover, the buildings of an arsenal can hardly be picturesque or magnificent; and great factories, more or less connected with them, have sprung up in the neighborhood, from which rise tall red brick chimneys, the campaniles of the twentieth century. The town itself was never a place of any particular interest; it has neither fine churches nor old gateways nor picturesque streets – a ruinous fort among the olive groves overlooking the streets is all that can claim to be ancient – so that its growth has not caused the loss of any distinctive feature – unless it be a grove of old oleanders, which were once a sight to see in summer time. Many of these have now disappeared, perhaps from natural decay; and the survivors are mixed with orange trees. These, during late years, have been largely planted about the town. In one of the chief streets they are growing by the side of the road, like planes or chestnuts in other towns. The golden fruit and the glossy leaves, always a delight to see, appear to possess a double charm by contrast with the arid flags and dusty streets. Ripe oranges in dozens, in hundreds, all along by the pathway, and within two or three yards of the pavement! Are the boys of Spezzia exceptionally virtuous? or are these golden apples of the Hesperides a special pride of the populace, and does “Father Stick” still rule in home and school, and is this immunity the result of physical coercion rather than of moral suasion? Be this as it may, I have with mine own eyes seen golden oranges by hundreds hanging on the trees in the streets of Spezzia, and would be glad to know how long they would remain in a like position in those of an English town, among “the most law-abiding people in the universe!”

But if the vicinity of the town has lost some of its ancient charm, if modern Spezzia reminds us too much, now of Woolwich, now of a “new neighborhood” on the outskirts of London, we have but to pass into the uplands, escaping from the neighborhood of forts, to find the same beauties as the mountains of this coast ever afford. There the sugar-cane and the vine, the fig and the olive cease, though the last so abounds that one might suppose it an indigenous growth; there the broken slopes are covered with scrub oak and dwarf pine; there the myrtle blossoms, hardly ceasing in the winter months; there the strawberry-tree shows its waxen flowers, and is bright in season with its rich crimson berries. Even the villages add a beauty to the landscape – at any rate, when regarded from a distance; some are perched high up on the shoulders of hills, with distant outlooks over land and sea; others lie down by the water’s edge in sheltered coves, beneath some ruined fort, which in olden time protected the fisher-folk from the raids of corsairs. Such are Terenza and Lerici, looking at each other across the waters of the little “Porto;” and many another village, in which grey and white and pink tinted houses blend into one pleasant harmony of color. For all this part of the coast is a series of rocky headlands and tiny bays, one succession of quiet nooks, to which the sea alone forms a natural highway. Not less irregular, not less sequestered, is the western coast of the Bay of Spezzia, which has been already mentioned. Here, at Porto Venere, a little village still carries us back in its name to classic times; and the old church on the rugged headland stands upon a site which was once not unfitly occupied by a temple of the seaborn goddess. The beauty of the scene is enhanced by a rocky wooded island, the Isola Palmeria, which rises steeply across a narrow strait; though the purpose to which it has been devoted – a prison for convicts – neither adds to its charm nor awakens pleasant reflections.

To some minds also the harbor itself, busy and bright as the scene often is, will suggest more painful thoughts than it did in olden days. For it is no preacher of “peace at any price,” and is a daily witness that millennial days are still far away from the present epoch. Here may be seen at anchor the modern devices for naval war: great turret-ships and ironclads, gunboats and torpedo launches – evils, necessary undoubtedly, but evils still; outward and visible signs of the burden of taxation, which is cramping the development of Italy, and is indirectly the heavy price which it has to pay for entering the ranks of the great Powers of Europe. These are less picturesque than the old line-of-battle ships, with their high decks, their tall masts, and their clouds of canvas; still, nothing can entirely spoil the harbor of Spezzia, and even these floating castles group pleasantly in the distance with the varied outline of hills and headlands, which is backed at last, if we look southward, by the grand outline of a group of veritable mountains – the Apuan Alps.

IX

THE TUSCAN COAST

Shelley’s last months at Lerici – Story of his death – Carrara and its marble quarries – Pisa – Its grand group of ecclesiastical buildings – The cloisters of the Campo Santo – Napoleon’s life on Elba – Origin of the Etruscans – The ruins of Tarquinii – Civita Vecchia, the old port of Rome – Ostia.

The Bay of Spezzia is defined sharply enough on its western side by the long, hilly peninsula which parts it from the Mediterranean, but as this makes only a small angle with the general trend of the coast-line, its termination is less strongly marked on the opposite side. Of its beauties we have spoken in an earlier article, but there is a little town at the southern extremity which, in connection with the coast below, has a melancholy interest to every lover of English literature. Here, at Lerici, Shelley spent what proved to be the last months of his life. The town itself, once strongly fortified by its Pisan owners against their foes of Genoa on the one side and Lucca on the other, is a picturesque spot. The old castle crowns a headland, guarding the little harbor and overlooking the small but busy town. At a short distance to the southeast is the Casa Magni, once a Jesuit seminary, which was occupied by Shelley. Looking across the beautiful gulf to the hills on its opposite shore and the island of Porto Venere, but a few miles from the grand group of the Carrara mountains, in the middle of the luxuriant scenery of the Eastern Riviera, the house, though in itself not very attractive, was a fit home for a lover of nature. But Shelley’s residence within its walls was too soon cut short. There are strange tales (like those told with bated breath by old nurses by the fireside) that as the closing hour approached the spirits of the unseen world took bodily form and became visible to the poet’s eye; tales of a dark-robed figure standing by his bedside beckoning him to follow; of a laughing child rising from the sea as he walked by moonlight on the terrace, clapping its hands in glee; and of other warnings that the veil which parted him from the spirit world was vanishing away. Shelley delighted in the sea. On the 1st of July he left Lerici for Leghorn in a small sailing vessel. On the 8th he set out to return, accompanied only by his friend, Mr. Williams, and an English lad. The afternoon was hot and sultry, and as the sun became low a fearful squall burst upon the neighboring sea. What happened no one exactly knows, but they never came back to the shore. Day followed day, and the great sea kept its secret; but at last, on the 22d, the corpse of Shelley was washed up near Viareggio and that of Williams near Bocca Lerici, three miles away. It was not till three weeks afterwards that the body of the sailor lad came ashore. Probably the felucca had either capsized or had been swamped at the first break of the storm; but when it was found, some three months afterwards, men said that it looked as if it had been run down, and even more ugly rumors got abroad that this was no accident, but the work of some Italians, done in the hope of plunder, as it was expected that the party had in charge a considerable sum of money. The bodies were at first buried in the sand with quicklime; but at that time the Tuscan law required “any object then cast ashore to be burned, as a precaution against plague,” so, by the help of friends, the body of Shelley was committed to the flames “with fuel and frankincense, wine, salt, and oil, the accompaniments of a Greek cremation,” in the presence of Byron Leigh Hunt, and Trelawny. The corpse of Williams had been consumed in like fashion on the previous day. “It was a glorious day and a splendid prospect; the cruel and calm sea before, the Appennines behind. A curlew wheeled close to the pyre, screaming, and would not be driven away; the flames arose golden and towering.” The inurned ashes were entombed, as everyone knows, in the Protestant burial ground at Rome by the side of Keats’ grave, near the pyramid of Cestius. Much as there was to regret in Shelley’s life, there was more in his death, for such genius as his is rare, and if the work of springtide was so glorious, what might have been the summer fruitage?

As the Gulf of Spezzia is left behind, the Magra broadens out into an estuary as it enters the sea, the river which formed in olden days the boundary between Liguria and Etruria. Five miles from the coast, and less than half the distance from the river, is Sarzana, the chief city of the province, once fortified, and still containing a cathedral of some interest. It once gave birth to a Pope, Nicholas V., the founder of the Vatican Library, and in the neighborhood the family of the Buonapartes had their origin, a branch of it having emigrated to Corsica. Sarzana bore formerly the name of Luna Nova, as it had replaced another Luna which stood near to the mouth of the river. This was in ruins even in the days of Lucan, and now the traveller from Saranza to Pisa sees only “a strip of low, grassy land intervening between him and the sea. Here stood the ancient city. There is little enough to see. Beyond a few crumbling tombs and a fragment or two of Roman ruins, nothing remains of Luna. The fairy scene described by Rutilus, so appropriate to the spot which bore the name of the virgin-queen of heaven, the ‘fair white walls’ shaming with their brightness the untrodden snow, the smooth, many-tinted rocks overrun with laughing lilies, if not the pure creation of the poet, have now vanished from the sight. Vestiges of an amphitheater, of a semicircular building which may be a theater, of a circus, a piscina, and fragments of columns, pedestals for statues, blocks of pavement and inscriptions, are all that Luna has now to show.”

But all the while the grand group of the Carrara hills is in view, towering above a lowland region which rolls down towards the coast. A branch line now leads from Avenza, a small seaport town from which the marble is shipped, to the town of Carrara, through scenery of singular beauty. The shelving banks and winding slopes of the foreground hills are clothed with olives and oaks and other trees; here and there groups of houses, white and grey and pink, cluster around a campanile tower on some coign of vantage, while at the back rises the great mountain wall of the Apuan Alps, with its gleaming crags, scarred, it must be admitted, rather rudely and crudely by its marble quarries, though the long slopes of screes beneath these gashes in the more distant views almost resemble the Alpine snows. The situation of the town is delightful, for it stands at the entrance of a rapidly narrowing valley, in a sufficiently elevated position to command a view of this exquisitely rich lowland as it shelves and rolls down to the gleaming sea. Nor is the place itself devoid of interest. One of its churches at least, S. Andrea, is a really handsome specimen of the architecture of this part of Italy in the thirteenth century, but the quarries dominate, and their products are everywhere. Here are the studios of sculptors and the ateliers of workmen. The fair white marble here, like silver in the days of Solomon, is of little account; it paves the street, builds the houses, serves even for the basest uses, and is to be seen strewn or piled up everywhere to await dispersal by the trains to more distant regions. Beyond the streets of Carrara, in the direction of the mountains, carriage roads no longer exist. Lanes wind up the hills here and there in rather bewildering intricacy, among vines and olive groves, to hamlets and quarries; one, indeed, of rather larger size and more fixity of direction, keeps for a time near the river, if indeed the stream which flows by Carrara be worthy of that name, except when the storms are breaking or the snows are melting upon the mountains. But all these lanes alike terminate in a quarry, are riven with deep ruts, ploughed up like a field by the wheels of the heavy wagons that bring down the great blocks of marble. One meets these grinding and groaning on their way, drawn by yokes of dove-colored oxen (longer than that with which Elisha was ploughing when the older prophet cast his mantle upon his shoulders), big, meek-looking beasts, mild-eyed and melancholy as the lotus-eaters. To meet them is not always an unmixed pleasure, for the lanes are narrow, and there is often no room to spare; how the traffic is regulated in some parts is a problem which I have not yet solved.

Carrara would come near to being an earthly paradise were it not for the mosquitos, which are said to be such that they would have made even the Garden of Eden untenable, especially to its first inhabitants. Of them, however, I cannot speak, for I have never slept in the town, or even visited it at the season when this curse of the earth is at its worst; but I have no hesitation in asserting that the mountains of Carrara are not less beautiful in outline than those of any part of the main chain of the Alps of like elevation, while they are unequalled in color and variety of verdure.

To Avenza succeeds Massa, a considerable town, beautifully situated among olive-clad heights, which are spotted with villas and densely covered with foliage. Like Carrara, it is close to the mountains, and disputes with Carrara for the reputation of its quarries. This town was once the capital of a duchy, Massa-Carrara, and the title was borne by a sister of Napoleon I. Her large palace still remains; her memory should endure, though not precisely in honor, for according to Mr. Hare, she pulled down the old cathedral to improve the view from her windows. But if Massa is beautiful, so is Pietra Santa, a much smaller town enclosed by old walls and singularly picturesque in outline. It has a fine old church, with a picturesque campanile, which, though slightly more modern than the church itself, has seen more than four centuries. The piazza, with the Town Hall, this church and another one, is a very characteristic feature. In the baptistry of one of the churches are some bronzes by Donatello. About half a dozen miles away, reached by a road which passes through beautiful scenery, are the marble quarries of Seravezza, which were first opened by Michael Angelo, and are still in full work. There is only one drawback to travelling by railway in this region; the train goes too fast. Let it be as slow as it will, and it can be very slow, we can never succeed in coming to a decision as to which is the most picturesquely situated place or the most lovely view. Comparisons notoriously are odious, but delightful, as undoubtedly is the Riviera di Ponenta to me, the Riviera di Levante seems even more lovely.

After Pietra Santa, however, the scenery becomes less attractive, the Apuan Alps begin to be left behind, and a wider strip of plain parts the Apennines from the sea. This, which is traversed by the railway, is in itself flat, stale, though perhaps not unprofitable to the husbandman. Viareggio, mentioned on a previous page, nestles among its woods of oaks and pines, a place of some little note as a health resort; and then the railway after emerging from the forest strikes away from the sea, and crosses the marshy plains of the Serchio, towards the banks of the Arno.

It now approaches the grand group of ecclesiastical buildings which rise above the walls of Pisa. As this town lies well inland, being six miles from the sea, we must content ourselves with a brief mention. But a long description is needless, for who does not know of its cathedral and its Campo Santo, of its baptistry and its leaning tower? There is no more marvelous or complete group of ecclesiastical buildings in Europe, all built of the white marble of Carrara, now changed by age into a delicate cream color, but still almost dazzling in the glory of the mid-day sun, yet never so beautiful as when walls, arches, and pinnacles are aglow at its rising, or flushed at its setting. In the cloisters of the Campo Santo you may see monuments which range over nearly five centuries, and contrast ancient and modern art; the frescoes on their walls, though often ill preserved, and not seldom of little merit, possess no small interest as illustrating medieval notions of a gospel of love and peace. Beneath their roof at the present time are sheltered a few relics of Roman and Etruscan days which will repay examination. The very soil also of this God’s acre is not without an interest, for when the Holy Land was lost to the Christians, fifty-and-three shiploads of earth were brought hither from Jerusalem that the dead of Pisa might rest in ground which had been sanctified by the visible presence of their Redeemer. The cathedral is a grand example of the severe but stately style which was in favor about the end of the eleventh century, for it was consecrated in the year 1118. It commemorates a great naval victory won by the Pisans, three years before the battle of Hastings, and the columns which support the arches of the interior were at once the spoils of classic buildings and the memorials of Pisan victories. The famous leaning tower, though later in date, harmonizes well in general style with the cathedral. Its position, no doubt, attracts most attention, for to the eye it seems remarkably insecure, but one cannot help wishing that the settlement had never occurred, for the slope is sufficient to interfere seriously with the harmony of the group. The baptistry also harmonizes with the cathedral, though it was not begun till some forty years after the latter was completed, and not only was more than a century in building, but also received some ornamental additions in the fourteenth century. But though this cathedral group is the glory and the crown of Pisa, the best monument of its proudest days, there are other buildings of interest in the town itself; and the broad quays which flank the Arno on each side, the Lungarno by name, which form a continuous passage from one end of the town to the other, together with the four bridges which link its older and newer part, are well worthy of more than a passing notice.

The land bordering the Arno between Pisa and its junction with the Mediterranean has no charm for the traveller, however it may commend itself to the farmer. A few miles south of the river’s mouth is Leghorn, and on the eleven miles’ journey by rail from it to Pisa the traveller sees as much, and perhaps more, than he could wish of the delta of the Arno. It is a vast alluvial plain, always low-lying, in places marshy; sometimes meadow land, sometimes arable. Here and there are slight and inconspicuous lines of dunes, very probably the records of old sea margins as the river slowly encroached upon the Mediterranean, which are covered sometimes with a grove of pines.

Leghorn is not an old town, and has little attraction for the antiquarian or the artist. In fact, I think it, for its size, the most uninteresting town, whether on the sea or inland, that I have entered in Italy. Brindisi is a dreary hole, but it has one or two objects of interest. Bari is not very attractive, but it has two churches, the architecture of which will repay long study; but Leghorn is almost a miracle of commonplace architecture and of dullness. Of course there is a harbor, of course there are ships, of course there is the sea, and all these possess a certain charm; but really this is about as small as it can be under the circumstances. The town was a creation of the Medici, “the masterpiece of that dynasty.” In the middle of the sixteenth century it was an insignificant place, with between seven and eight hundred inhabitants. But it increased rapidly when the princes of that family took the town in hand and made it a cave of Adullam, whither the discontented or oppressed from other lands might resort: Jews and Moors from Spain and Portugal, escaping from persecution; Roman Catholics from England, oppressed by the retaliatory laws of Elizabeth; merchants from Marseilles, seeking refuge from civil war. Thus fostered, it was soon thronged by men of talent and energy; it rapidly grew into an important center of commerce, and now the town with its suburbs contains nearly a hundred thousand souls.

Leghorn is intersected by canals, sufficiently so to have been sometimes called a “Little Venice,” and has been fortified, but as the defenses belong to the system of Vauban, they add little to either the interest or the picturesqueness of the place. Parts of the walls and the citadel remain, the latter being enclosed by a broad water-ditch. The principal street has some good shops, and there are two fairly large piazzas; in one, bearing the name of Carlo Alberto, are statues of heroic size to the last Grand Duke and to his predecessor. The inscription on the latter is highly flattering; but that on the former states that the citizens had come to the conclusion that the continuance of the Austro-Lorenese dynasty was incompatible with the good order and happiness of Tuscany, and had accordingly voted union with Italy. The other piazza now bears Victor Emmanuel’s name; in it are a building which formerly was a royal palace, the town hall, and the cathedral; the last a fair-sized church, but a rather plain specimen of the Renaissance style, with some handsome columns of real marble and a large amount of imitation, painted to match. There are also some remains of the old fortifications, though they are not so very old, by the side of the inner or original harbor. As this in course of time proved too shallow for vessels of modern bulk, the Porto Nuovo, or outer harbor, was begun nearly fifty years since, and is protected from the waves by a semicircular mole. Among the other lions of the place, and they are all very small, is a statue of Duke Ferdinand I., one of the founders of Leghorn, with four Turkish slaves about the pedestal. The commerce of Leghorn chiefly consists of grain, cotton, wool, and silk, and is carried on mainly with the eastern ports of the Mediterranean. There is also an important shipbuilding establishment. It has, however, one link of interest with English literature, for in the Protestant cemetery was buried Tobias Smollet. There is a pleasant public walk by the sea margin outside the town, from where distant views of Elba and other islands are obtained.

The hilly ground south of the broad valley of the Arno is of little interest, and for a considerable distance a broad strip of land, a level plain of cornfields and meadow, intervenes between the sea and the foot of the hills. Here and there long lines of pine woods seem almost to border the former; the rounded spurs of the latter are thickly wooded, but are capped here and there by grey villages, seemingly surrounded by old walls, and are backed by the bolder outlines of the more distant Apennines. For many a long mile this kind of scenery will continue, this flat, marshy, dyke-intersected plain, almost without a dwelling upon it, though village after village is seen perched like epaulettes on the low shoulders of the hills. It is easy to understand why they are placed in this apparently inconvenient position, for we are at the beginning of the Tuscan Maremma, a district scourged by malaria during the summer months, and none too healthy, if one may judge by the looks of the peasants, during any time of the year. But one cannot fail to observe that towards the northern extremity houses have become fairly common on this plain, and many of them are new, so that the efforts which have been made to improve the district by draining seem to have met with success. For some time the seaward views are very fine; comparatively near to the coast a hilly island rises steeply from the water and is crowned with a low round tower. Behind this lies Elba, a long, bold, hilly ridge, and far away, on a clear day, the great mountain mass of Corsica looms blue in the distance.

Elba has its interests for the geologist, its beauties for the lover of scenery. It has quarries of granite and serpentine, but its fame rests on its iron mines, which have been noted from very early times and from which fine groups of crystals of hematite are still obtained. So famed was it in the days of the Roman Empire as to call forth from Virgil the well-known line, “Insula inexhaustis chalybum generosa metallis.” When these, its masters, had long passed away, it belonged in turn to Pisa, to Genoa, to Lucca, and, after others, to the Grand Duke Cosimo of Florence. Then it became Neapolitan, and at last French. As everyone knows, it was assigned to Napoleon after his abdication, and from May, 1814, to February, 1815, he enjoyed the title of King of Elba. Then, while discontent was deepening in France, and ambassadors were disputing round the Congress-table at Vienna, he suddenly gave the slip to the vessels which were watching the coast and landed in France to march in triumph to Paris, to be defeated at Waterloo, and to die at St. Helena.

The island is for the most part hilly, indeed almost mountainous, for it rises at one place nearly three thousand feet above the sea. The valleys and lower slopes are rich and fertile, producing good fruit and fair wine, and the views are often of great beauty. The fisheries are of some importance, especially that of the tunny. Porto Ferrajo, the chief town, is a picturesquely situated place, on the northern side, which still retains the forts built by Cosimo I. to defend his newly obtained territory, and the mansion, a very modest palace, inhabited by Napoleon.

“It must be confessed my isle is very little,” was Napoleon’s remark when for the first time he looked around over his kingdom from a mountain summit above Porto Ferrajo. Little it is in reality, for the island is not much more than fifteen miles long, and at the widest part ten miles across; and truly little it must have seemed to the man who had dreamed of Europe for his empire, and had half realized his vision. Nevertheless, as one of his historians remarks, “If an empire could be supposed to exist within such a brief space, Elba possesses so much both of beauty and variety as might constitute the scene of a summer night’s dream of sovereignty.”

At first he professed to be “perfectly resigned to his fate, often spoke of himself as a man politically dead, and claimed credit for what he said on public affairs, as having no remaining interest in them.” A comment on himself in connection with Elba is amusing. He had been exploring his new domain in the company of Sir Niel Campbell, and had visited, as a matter of course, the iron mines. On being informed that they were valuable, and brought in a revenue of about twenty thousand pounds per annum, “These then,” he said, “are mine.” But being reminded that he had conferred that revenue on the Legion of Honor, he exclaimed, “Where was my head when I made such a grant? But I have made many foolish decrees of that sort!”

He set to work at once to explore every corner of the island, and then to design a number of improvements and alterations on a scale which, had they been carried into execution with the means which he possessed, would have perhaps taken his lifetime to execute. The instinct of the conqueror was by no means dead within him; for “one of his first, and perhaps most characteristic, proposals was to aggrandize and extend his Lilliputian dominions by the occupation of an uninhabited island called Pianosa, which had been left desolate on account of the frequent descents of the corsairs. He sent thirty of his guards, with ten of the independent company belonging to the island, upon this expedition (what a contrast to those which he had formerly directed!), sketched out a plan of fortification, and remarked with complacency, ‘Europe will say that I have already made a conquest.’”

He was after a short time joined on the island by his mother and his sister Pauline, and not a few of those who had once fought under his flag drifted gradually to Elba and took service in his guards. A plot was organized in France, and when all was ready Napoleon availed himself of the temporary absence of Sir Neil Campbell and of an English cruiser and set sail from Elba.

At four in the afternoon of Sunday, the 26th of February, “a signal gun was fired, the drums beat to arms, the officers tumbled what they could of their effects into flour-sacks, the men arranged their knapsacks, the embarkation began, and at eight in the evening they were under weigh.” He had more than one narrow escape on his voyage; for he was hailed by a French frigate. His soldiers, however, had concealed themselves, and his captain was acquainted with the commander of the frigate, so no suspicions were excited. Sir Niel Campbell also, as soon as he found out what had happened, gave chase in a sloop of war, but only arrived in time to obtain a distant view of Napoleon’s flotilla as its passengers landed.

Pianosa, the island mentioned above, lies to the north of Elba, and gets its name from its almost level surface; for the highest point is said to be only eighty feet above the sea. Considering its apparent insignificance, it figures more than could be expected in history. The ill-fated son of Marcus Agrippa was banished here by Augustus, at the instigation of Livia, and after a time was more effectually put out of the way, in order to secure the succession of her son Tiberius. We read also that it was afterwards the property of Marcus Piso, who used it as a preserve for peacocks, which were here as wild as pheasants with us. Some remnants of Roman baths still keep up the memory of its former masters. Long afterwards it became a bone of contention between Pisa and Genoa, and the latter State, on permitting the former to resume possession of these islands of the Tuscan Archipelago, stipulated that Pianosa should be left forever uncultivated and deserted. To secure the execution of this engagement the Genoese stopped up all the wells with huge blocks of rock.

Capraja, a lovely island to the northwest of Elba, is rather nearer to Corsica than to Italy. Though less than four miles long, and not half this breadth, it rivals either in hilliness, for its ridges rise in two places more than fourteen hundred feet above the sea. Saracen, Genoese, Pisan, and Corsican have caused it in bygone times to lead a rather troubled existence, and even so late as 1796 Nelson knocked to pieces the fort which defended its harbor, and occupied the island.

“The ‘stagno,’ or lagoon, the sea-marsh of Strabo, is a vast expanse of stagnant salt water, so shallow that it may be forded in parts, yet never dried up by the hottest summer; the curse of the country around for the foul and pestilent vapour and the swarms of mosquitoes and other insects it generates at that season, yet compensating the inhabitants with an abundance of fish. The fishery is generally carried on at night, and in the way often practiced in Italy and Sicily, by harpooning the fish, which are attracted by a light in the prow of the boat. It is a curious sight on calm nights to see hundreds of these little skiffs or canoes wandering about with their lights, and making an ever-moving illumination on the surface of the lake.”[2 - Dennis: “Cities of Etruria.”]

Elba seems to maintain some relation with the mainland by means of the hilly promontory which supports the houses of Piombino, a small town, chiefly interesting as being at no great distance from Populonia, an old Etruscan city of which some considerable ruins still remain. Here, when the clans gathered to bring back the Tarquins to Rome, stood

“Sea-girt Populonia,
Whose sentinels descry
Sardinia’s snowy mountain tops
Fringing the southern sky.”