Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 61, No. 376, February, 1847

"I cannot tell you," said Mildred, quite acquiescing in this dismissal of the subject. "I cannot tell you what a singular pleasure it gave me when I first saw the classic ruin—the few upright Corinthian pillars with their entablature across them, and the broken column lying at their feet—which the pictures of Claude make us so familiar with. It must be confessed, that the back-ground of my picture—such as the Campo Vaccino afforded me—was not exactly what a Claude would have selected. How different in character and significance are the two ruins—the classic and the romantic! The one square, well-defined, well-proportioned, speaks of an age of order,—when Time stood still a little, and looked with complacency on what he was about; the other, with its round towers of unequal height, its arches of all shapes and dimensions, full of grandeur, but never exhibiting either completeness or congruity, tells us clearly of a period of turmoil and disorder, and great designs withal,—when Time had struck his tent, and was hurrying on in confused march, with bag and baggage, knight, standard, and the sutler's wagon all jumbled together.—Let us, on our return, pass through that group of desolate Corinthians; and, looking in at the Capitol, bid farewell to the Dying Gladiator."

In retracing their steps, they therefore passed through the old forum, and then ascending the Capitol, entered the museum there, and renewed their impression of that admirable statue. What pain!—but pain overmastered—on that brow, as he sinks in death! Nor was the charming little group of Cupid and Psyche forgotten. That kiss! it merits to be eternised. In his love, what delight! In hers, what devotion!

"But above all," said Mildred, "let us do reverence, before we part, to Aristides the Just. How self-contained! Austere—the lover more of virtue than of man. Full of his grand abstractions, he asks for nothing even of the gods. Let them do justice! Nay, let them submit to justice too! Great leveller! Is not virtue so uncompromising as this, very near to rebellion against the gods and destiny?"

CHAPTER VIII

The next morning the whole party were packed in their travelling carriage to start from Rome. Winston had no longer refused that fourth seat which had been destined for him at Genoa. To say nothing of some diminution of expense (a very worthy subject of consideration with all travellers,) it was a great relief to Mr. Bloomfield to have a second gentleman in their party. It decreased materially his own share of personal trouble. Besides which, the travelling experience of Winston, and his more familiar acquaintance with the Italian, rendered him very acceptable. Mildred had generally acted as interpreter; and so long as the speaker would answer in the same pure Tuscan in which she addressed him, she could perform the office admirably well. But unfortunately, the traveller in Italy has most need for his Italian exactly where any thing but pure Tuscan is spoken. She could always succeed in making herself understood; but was often sadly at a loss to understand that answer which, with all due dexterity, she had elicited.

On they now rattled through the streets of Rome. What rags upon those beggars! Patches of all colours, red, blue, brown; but worn with such an air of calm assurance, as if the garment of many colours had been bestowed on the most favoured son of humanity. They passed the peasant dame, or damsel, in her gaudy attire, with gold comb and ear-rings glittering in her jet black hair, and that square folded handkerchief on her head, which we always associate with the bandit's wife; and amidst the squalid populace there appeared now and then, quite distinct from the rest, a form or face of some youth, or maiden, or old man, that might have issued from the canvass of Raphael. The apostles of the old masters, at least, are walking still about Rome; and sometimes a Virgin Mary is seen sitting at the door, and still more often a young John the Baptist looks up to you from the pavement. Their own postilion reminded the whole party of the Suonatore di Violino of Raphael—whose fiddlestick, by the way, being that of a bass viol, might at first sight be mistaken for a folded riding-whip.

On they pass by the beautiful church of St. Giovanni, the statues on the roof and over the portico of which have at least one point of resemblance with their saintly prototypes—they are standing out there in the clear blue heavens, to which, and not to the earth, they seem to belong. At the Port Sebastian they are detained by a string of wine-carts, each drawn by one horse, with his plume of black feathers on his head, and each cart furnished with its goatskin umbrella, under the shade of which the driver lies fast asleep. Then follow a long cavalcade of peasants, mounted on mules or asses—mounted of a truth, for they sit on a high wooden saddle, their arms folded under their long brown cloaks, and a black pointed hat upon their heads. Strange figures!

"A flower in that hat!" exclaimed Mildred, as one passed her with a beautiful carnation stuck into a beaver, which, except that it retained its pyramidal form, and was there upon a human head, could not have been recognised as hat at all. "And he wears it seriously," she continued, "serenely—without the least feeling of incongruity. Oh, I like that!"

Getting clear of this train, they advanced through the gate into the open country. To their left the old aqueduct extended on the horizon its long line of ruined arches; to the right the plain was dotted with mere massive fragments of undistinguishable ruin, looking like what the geologists call boulders. The trace of man's labour was lost in them; the work of the artificer had come to resemble the rudest accident of Nature.

And so Rome was left behind.

"Is that smoke or a cloud," asked Miss Bloomfield, "that rests so constantly upon that mountain?"

"It is Vesuvius! Vesuvius!" exclaimed the rest of the party.

But they found themselves in a position, at that moment, the least of all favourable to enthusiastic emotions. Their carriage was delayed at the entrance into Naples, in the middle of a wide road, the hottest and the dustiest that can be imagined. There they were arrested to undergo the examination and the extortions of the custom-house gentry. Poor Mr. Bloomfield was in a fever. His passport had been asked for six several times between Rome and Naples, and each time solely, as it seemed, to extract a gratuity. Even the military guard stationed at the gates of the towns had begged. No one in Italy seemed to speak to him but to beg, or to lay the foundation, as a lawyer would say, for a begging question. And now these fellows were examining, or pretending to examine his baggage, and were evidently resolved to keep them there, in the sun and the dust, till they had paid a sufficient ransom. In this position it was that Winston and Mildred were, by stolen glances, taking their first survey of the burning mountain. By stolen glances, because they were compelled from a certain feeling of politeness to share in the anxieties and chagrin of Mr. Bloomfield. For themselves, they both agreed it was much better to submit quietly, and at once, to all these impositions; even if there were a fair chance, after much controversy, of a successful resistance. There is surely no money so well laid out as that which purchases equanimity.

They were extricated at length, and the carriage rattled on into Naples. Mr. Bloomfield had written to procure apartments in the quarter of the Chiaja, opposite the Villa Reale, (or royal gardens.) To these therefore they drove. Winston of course found his way to an hotel.

That evening he walked out to look at the burning mountain. It was now, and during the whole period of their stay, in a state of great activity, which some dignified with the name of an eruption. As Winston watched its burning summit across an angle of the bay, he thought he had never seen any thing which so completely fascinated the eye. The flame alternately rising and falling leads the spectator every moment to expect something more than he has hitherto seen, and that now it is about to burst forth. And even at this distance it is so evidently not a fire upon but within the mountain, from the manner in which the flame sinks down, and that red metallic glare which shoots along the rocky summits and cavities, here the fire is not visible. Yet fascinating as the object was, it did not entirely rivet the thoughts of Winston. To his own surprise and confusion, he found that he, a professed admirer of nature, was standing, for the first time, by the bay of Naples, under the beautiful star-light of Italy, watching one of the most magnificent of nature's wonders with a divided and distracted mind. All this scene, and all its novelty, could not keep Mildred from his thoughts. Evidently he was a lost man.

And who or what, after all, was Alfred Winston? The, question, it may be supposed, had often occurred to the Bloomfields. That he was an artist, was a conjecture long ago given up; he travelled with no portfolio, and was never known to use the pencil. That he was a literary man was also contradicted by his own straightforward unaffected denials; if he had cultivated his mind, it was solely for the pleasure or profit accruing to himself. The manner in which his time was at his own disposal, seemed to contradict the idea that he belonged to any of the learned professions. What could he be therefore but simply a gentleman? And such they had satisfied themselves, from many reasons, that he was. But there are gentlemen and gentlemen—rich, and poor. To which of these two classes did he belong? Question of questions. The moment it is asked how all vain enchantments are dispersed! how the bare earth shows itself directly beneath our feet! Where is now the bay of Naples, and star-light, and Vesuvius? Is he rich or poor?

One word on the father of Alfred Winston will best explain his own present position in the world. That father was one of a class of men altogether inexplicable, quite unintelligible to sober-minded and methodical persons; and yet the class is not so very rare. He was of good birth and fortune, of agreeable manners, and witty conversation, but utterly destitute of all prudential, all providential care, whether for himself or others. He was born to an ample estate; and, fond of pleasure as he was, he might have found it sufficient, with very little effort of prudence, to gratify all his tastes. But from the very commencement of his career, he entered upon the ruinous practice of "eating the land with the revenue," and continued, in this manner, consuming every year more of land and less of revenue. He early lost his wife. He had been an amiable husband, and manifested a decorous sorrow on the occasion; but could not disguise from his intimate friends the pleasure he felt at the recovery of his bachelor freedom. He hated the necessity of having to yield his own inclinations to another; though he hated still more the alternative of having to dispute with that other for liberty to follow his own inclinations.

After the decease of his wife, the elder Winston lived, for the most part, a roaming life upon the Continent. A little intrigue, a little gaming, the dinner, and the opera, sufficiently filled up the time of one who, while he courted pleasure, was not difficult in his amusements. And for this he could continue, with the utmost calmness and freedom from anxiety, a scale of expenditure which was rapidly dissipating his hereditary estates. His son he treated with indulgence and liberality, and when he saw him, which was seldom, with great kindness of manner. He encouraged him in all the idle and expensive habits of a gentleman of fortune, while he was utterly destroying the property which could alone support them.

He died suddenly; a fever carried him off at the age of fifty. Had he lived three years longer, he would have spent every shilling he possessed. What had he intended to do then? It is impossible to say. To all appearance he had never entertained the question. When young Winston had paid off his father's debts and his own, he who had expected to enter into an ample revenue found himself in the possession only of a few thousand pounds. This was all his patrimony. What to do he had not yet resolved; but this reverse had not prevented him from accomplishing a long cherished wish of visiting Italy. Some idea also was floating in his mind that perhaps he should select some place upon the Continent where to reside permanently upon the small pittance that was left to him.

It will be now seen at a glance, why it was that Winston fled from the attractions of Mildred at Genoa: he knew himself to be poor, and had become acquainted with the peculiar, and perhaps dependent, position in which Miss Willoughby stood. No one will blame him for running away from Genoa; but ought he to have lingered at Rome? We fear our friend was not remarkable for resolution of character. He had ardent feelings, and to counteract them he had just perceptions of what life demands from us; but he lacked, evidently, in steadiness of purpose.

And what now could he do? Flight, as at Genoa, was out of the question. He could not, by any rude or abrupt behaviour, forfeit that share of Mildred's esteem which he possessed. On his way back to his hotel he resolved—it was the utmost that his prudence suggested—that he would take occasion quietly and unostentatiously to intimate that, like Bassanio,

"All the wealth he had Ran in his veins, he was a gentleman."

It would then be seen by Miss Willoughby, as clearly as by himself, that his attentions, to use the appropriate phrase, meant nothing. What might follow would be a torture merely to himself—the torture of a hopeless passion. She would know how to regulate her own feelings towards him. He alone should be the sufferer.

Very fallacious reasoning! If he with his eyes open loved and suffered, how could he tell but that Mildred might do the same? and this quiet intimation of certain barriers and impediments to his passion was likely to prove—as indeed it did prove—little better than a declaration of love, and not the less ardent because coupled with avowals of despondency.

Meanwhile, having made this concession to the cause of prudence and his honour, he resigned himself to the charms of Mildred's society. Every day brought some new excursion to scenes of surpassing beauty, in companionship with one of the most lovely and gifted of women. Winston's theory, that what is most beautiful in nature ought to be enjoyed in solitude, was entirely overthrown. He cared to visit nothing unless in her society; nor was there any scene whatever in which her presence was not felt to be the higher gratification.

Mr. Bloomfield and his sister, after their first visit to some of the environs of Naples, felt little disposed to make any unusual exertion. They had both discovered that the bay was much the same whether viewed from the right side or the left, and that in this warm weather—it was now the month of May—the shady walks in the Villa Reale, or a promenade in the town, was to be preferred to a ride in an open carriage. To Mildred, on the contrary, almost every excursion, whatever its professed object, derived its chief attraction from the different points of view it presented her of that bay, which every hour seemed to make more lovely. It followed, therefore, that Winston and Mildred were sometimes left to proceed on their expedition alone. How the heart of Winston beat as he, handed her into the carriage, and took his seat beside her! It was something very like a curse which fell at that moment upon the memory of his selfish parent. Had he been fairly dealt with, it might have been his lot to hand her into a carriage of his own—and hers.

Winston was almost in danger of forgetting the existence of Mr. Bloomfield; but habitual politeness so far prevailed, that he occasionally brought himself to listen to the account that gentleman gave of his own impressions or afflictions.

"I was never more disappointed," said Mr. Bloomfield on one of these occasions, "or rather, I was never more mistaken in any place in my life than in this town of Naples. I had heard much of lazzaroni lying about in the sun, eating maccaroni, and of the love of the people for gaudy colours and tinsel, even to the sticking gold-leaf and little flags of red paper upon the meat in the butcher's shop; and I had seen depicted the more curious costumes of man and horse, and especially this curiculo, as I believe they call it, which seems originally to have been like our old-fashioned one-horse chaise, but by the extension of the shafts into a sort of platform before and behind, and by means of a network suspended underneath between the wheels, has been made to hold a quite indefinite number of persons, and still remains a one-horse chaise, inasmuch as the whole cluster of mortals is generally carried on at a gallop by one little black horse, who, as some sort of compensation for the work they give him, is tricked out as fine as leather and brass nails, ribands and feathers, can make him. Well, out of all these materials I had contrived for myself a picture of utter and contented idleness on the one hand, and the extreme of hilarious activity on the other. I need not tell you how little such a picture answers to the reality, how little prepared I was to encounter the din, and more than Cheapside confusion of this main thoroughfare, the Toledo street. The impression which Naples actually makes, is of a city where noise and turmoil and confusion are at their very height. Carried one step further, "chaos would come again." There is the same incessant toil for gain as in London itself—as little of repose, as little of hilarity. Here is the spirit of trade without the order and method which trade should introduce. It is commerce bewildered, and passionate after pence. There are some parts of London more thickly stocked perhaps with carts and wagons, and carriages of all descriptions, but they are order itself compared to this Toledo street. Every thing one can desire to purchase, every thing one can desire to escape from, comes walking abroad upon its even, uniform pavement, where men and carriages are circulating together. Glass, and tea-trays, and crokery-ware, and haberdashery, all meet you in the street. You are running for dear life from some devil of a driver, who thinks that if he does but shout loud enough, he is at perfect liberty to break your bones, and you are stopt in your flight by an industrious chapman, who spreads his stock of pocket-handkerchiefs before your eyes. Men are walking about with live fowls, cocks, hens, turkeys, which they hold, head downwards, in a bunch, tied together by the legs. They are the quietest animals in the street. They seem to have been touched by the utter inutility of their loudest exclamations, and therefore to have resigned themselves in silence; only when some cart-wheel grazes that head of theirs, which they naturally hold up as high as possible, lest they should die of apoplexy, do they make any ineffectual attempt to call attention to their sufferings. Even money-changers, who, in all capitals of Europe, carry on their business with a certain dignity and decorum, are here to be seen, like our apple-women, ambulatory: they keep a stall with a sort of bird-cage upon it, between the wires of which are glistening a store of coins, gold, and silver, and much copper. I saw an old woman at one of these stalls laying down the rate of exchange. No doubt she knew her arithmetic that old crone, and made no mistake, at least on one side of the account. A couple of lads with a large trayful of spectacles and opera-glasses, were the great opticians of the day. I saw all sorts of men, priests among them, trying on spectacles in the jostle of this thoroughfare. The tailor and the hatter sit outside the door-way stitching. I look into a baker's shop, if that can be called a shop which is merely a square cavity laid open at the side near the street—it is verily a baker's, and bread is made there, for you may see the whole process carried on. Against the wall, on one side, a great wheel is turning—grinding the corn; at the opposite side stands a man up to his elbows in flour, kneading away with all his might; and in front of you, if you will wait a moment, you will see the fiery oven open, and the baked bread make its appearance—a sample of which is deposited in the wire safe that hangs up at the entrance, and serves for shop-window. Would that all handicrafts were but as peaceful! A few doors further on there is Rafaelle Papa, the copper-smith, hammering remorselessly at his copper pans. And, O heavens! the blacksmith himself has come out in the open air with his fire and his forge; he has established his smoking furnace in the only recess, the only place of refuge, the whole street afforded."

"And in the midst of all this, and at every corner, what heaps of beautiful flowers!" said Mildred. "It is curious, too," she added, "to see, moving through this Cheapside throng, the mendicant friar, cowled and sandaled, with his wallet, or double sack that hangs across his shoulder before and behind, actually then and there collecting alms for his convent."

"But you must not forget the sugar saints and saviours," said Miss Bloomfield, "that one sees amongst the sweetmeats; and how in every shop there hangs up the picture of some patron saint, before which on holydays candles are burning; nor above all, those lemonade stalls, which are certainly the gayest things in the town. But tell me," she continued, "I do not quite understand them. First, there is a sort of dresser heaped up with lemons and oranges. At each end of this rise two little pillars, painted with red and white stripes, and supporting a sort of canopy, on which figures, of course, the Virgin Mary—so that the whole looks like a little altar. Well, but on each side, between these pillars, there swings, suspended by the middle, a sort of wooden barrel, and when the damsel, who makes the lemonade, has nothing else to do, she gives it a touch, and sets it swinging. Now, what are those for?"

"They hold the snow," said her brother, "which serves instead of ice, and which the damsel, by this swinging process, helps to dissolve. Some day we will have a glass of lemonade at one of these altars, as you call them. We shall get it fresh enough, and cheap enough. But you must take your sugar with you, for sugar they do not give; their customers are in the habit of taking it without. I was amused to-day," he continued, "by watching the progress down the street of a very simple style of water-cart. A butt of water, with a leathern pipe issuing from it, is drawn on a low cart by a donkey. A bare-legged fellow ties a string to the end of the leathern pipe, and follows jerking it to and fro, this side and that side—of course with many loud vociferations—and so continues to distribute the contents of his butt over a pretty large area."

"Very surprising!" said Winston, who for some time past had not heard one syllable of what was uttered.

CHAPTER IX

We will not indulge ourselves, at the risk of wearying our readers, by traversing in the society of Mildred and Winston the environs of Naples; we will not wander with them through the disinterred streets and temples of Pompeii; nor attempt to partake of their delight at those exquisite views which their excursions, on both sides of the bay presented to them. Often did Winston sit by the side of Mildred, looking at those scenes, and his happy spirit for a while reflected them as calmly as the blue waters those beautiful islands within them. Alas! the pebble soon fell in one of those mirrors—the tranquil mood was ever and anon cruelly disturbed.

We will not even trust ourselves in the museum of Naples, so rich in the curiosities of the antiquarian, and in works of art; nor stand with Mildred before those statues of the goddess Isis, from which it was difficult to persuade her to move, so much was there of thought as well as beauty in the countenances. One especially (for there are several) of these statues of Isis—it was the smallest in the group—she confessed, after all she had seen of sculpture, had affected her more intensely than any work of art, by its thrilling union of deep mystery with perfect loveliness. Of Isis herself, or of the religion taught under her name, she confessed, she said, to have very obscure ideas; but if ever a temple should be erected to human philosophy, that statue, she thought, was worthy to occupy the chief place in it.