Julia Ward Howe

“ The city is so modern, and its circle so small! The trumpeters who shriek around the Theseum in the morning, the café keeper who taxes you for a chair beneath the shadow of the Olympian columns, the custode who hangs about to see that you do not break the broken marbles further, or carry off their piteous fragments, all of these are significant of modern Greece; but the ruins have nothing to do with it.
Poor as these relics are in comparison with what one would wish them to be, they are still priceless. This Greek marble is the noblest in descent ”

“ The voice of Naples trills, shrieks, scolds, mingling laughter, wail, and entreaty, in a new and confused symphony. Little piano-fortes, played like a barrel organ, go about the streets, giving a pulse to the quick rhythm of life. The common people are pictures, the aristocracy caricatures. When you rise above low life, Italian taste is too splendid for good effects in costume. The most ill-married colors, the most ill-assorted ornaments, deform the pale olive faces, and contradict the dignity of the dark eyes and massive hair. This is somewhat the case in Rome, much more in Naples. ”

“ In the evening there was to be a Fresco, or procession of gondolas on the great canal, with lanterns and music, in honor of Prince Plomplon, who was at Danieli's hotel. Uncertain whether to engage a gondola or not, I sat in the garden balcony of Barbesi's, immediately over the canal. I saw the gondolas of high society flit by, gay with flags and colored lanterns, the gondoliers in full livery. Their attitude in rowing is singular. They stand slanting forward, so that one almost expects to see them fall on their faces. ”

“ But the man's mind is the castle and edifice of his life. Look at these rough and ragged people, unwashed, uncombed, untaught. See how little sensible they are of the decencies and amenities of life. Search their faces for an intelligent smile, a glance that recognizes beauty or fitness in any of the stately circumstances that surround them. They are kept like human cattle, and have been so kept for centuries. And their dominants suppose themselves to be of one sort, and these of another. But give us absolutism, and take away education, even in rich and roomy America, and what shall we have? ”

“ For this is the ruined palace of Tiberius Cæsar himself, which you go to seek and see, if possible. He still plagues the world, as he would have wished to do. Your expedition in search of his stony vestiges is a long network of torment, spun by you, the donkey, and the donkey-driver, undisguised Apollo standing by to weld the golden chains by which you suffer. As often as you seem to approach the object, a new détour leads you at a zigzag from the straight direction. But this is little. At every turn in the road a beggar, in some variety, addresses you. ”

“ Rome is rich in both, and with a sort of studious contentment, one embraces one's Murray, picks out the palace that unfolds its art treasures to-day, and travels up the stairs, and along the marble corridors, to wonderful suites of apartments, in which the pasteboard programmes lie about waiting for you, while the still drama of the pictures acts itself upon the thronged wall, yourself their small public, and they giving their color-eloquence, whether any one gives heed or not. ”

“ You alight from your cloud of dust, demand a guide. "Yes; you can have the guide by paying also for the litter. This being Sunday, the entrance is free, and the government supplies no guide. You must have the portantina, or blunder about alone." The litter, with its pink gingham frill and cushion, looks hateful to you. You remember it twenty-three years ago with dislike. The sun of noon is hot upon you. The men are unpersuadable. Red and fierce as lava, you storm through the deserted streets of the ancient capital of seaside luxury. ”

“ We have left Venice. We have passed an intolerable night on board the Austrian steamer, whose state-rooms are without air, its cabin without quiet, and its deck without shelter. So inconvenient a transport, in these days of steamboat luxury, makes one laugh and wonder. Trieste, our stopping-place, is the strangest mongrel, a perfect cur of a city (cur-i-o-sity) . It is neither Italian, Greek, nor German, but all three of these, and many more. The hotel servants speak German and Italian, the shop-keepers also. Paper money passes without fight or agio upon the prices demanded. ”

“ Within the Pitti Palace are things that astonish the world, and have a right to do so, as have all the original results of art. The paintings are all—so to speak—set on doors that open into new avenues of thought and speculation for mankind. The ideal world, of which the real is but a poor assertion, has, in these glimpses, its truest portraiture. Their use and dignity have also limits which the luxury and enthusiasm of mankind transgress. ”

“ A modern Dante, all in the force of prose, E. B. B. lies here like the sweet Beatrice, who was at hand when the cruel task of criticism was over, to build before the corrected vision of the great pilgrim the silvery shrines and turrets of the New Jerusalem. So will we leave them—a lesser Dante, a greater Beatrice, and one who has borne record of herself.
VENICE.
Venice, which I seek to hold fast, is already a thing of yesterday. "Haste is of the devil," truly says the Koran, whose prophet yet knew its value. ”

“ To the mere enjoyment of good victuals, with squabbles intervening, may be superadded the perception of fashionable life, as it goes on in these regions. When your eyes have taken the standard of light of the Piazza, you recognize in some of the groups about you persons whom you have seen, either in the balcony or in the gondola. Here are two young women whom I saw emerge from a narrow passage, this evening, rowed by a fine-looking servant, who stood bareheaded, and one other. They have diamond earrings, fashionable bonnets, and dresses dripping from a baptism of beads. ”

“ England finds it most convenient to be governed by a German; France, by an Italian; Russia, by a Tartar line. What more natural than that they should muffle new-born Greece in their own antiquated fashions? The Greeks assassinated Capo d'Istrias for acts of tyranny from which they knew no other escape. For, indeed, the head of their state was very clumsily adjusted to its body by the same powers who left out of their construction several of its most important members. An arbitrary president was no head for a nation which had just conquered its own liberty. ”

“ They at least teach that a man is to think for himself, pray for himself; and their worship, even when rudest and most uncultured, is more an instruction of the multitude than a propitiation of the infinite love which is always ready to do for us more and better than we can ask.
So, little Protestant congregation in Venice, my heart bids you God speed! But may the love of God be preached to you rather than the torment of fear, and may the simplicity and beauty of the Christian doctrine and example preserve you alike from the passional and the metaphysical dangers of the day. ”

“ It is a face that lifts one above the weakness and meanness of ordinary human life. This soul, one sees, had the true talisman, the true treasure. If we earn what he did, we can afford to let all else go. The Descent from the Cross is better known than its fellow-picture. It had not to me the wonderful interest of the living face of Christ in the supreme moment of his great life; for I shall always consider that the Christ represented in the Elevation is a true Christ, not a mere fancy figure or dramatic ghost. ”

“ We leave enchanting Naples,—tear ourselves from our hotel, whose very impositions grow dear to us; the precious window, too, which shows the bay and Capri, and close at hand the boats, the fish-market, and the chairs on which the populace sit at eventide to eat oysters and drink mineral water. A small boat takes us to a very small steamer, on whose deck we pay ten francs each to a stout young man, in appearance much like a southern poor Buckra, who departs in another small boat as soon as he has plundered us. The voyage to Capri is cool and reasonably smooth. ”

“ Venice has a Piazza, gorgeous with shops, lights, music, and, above all, the joyous life of the people. Athens also has a Piazza, bordered with hotels and cafés, with a square of trees and flowering shrubs in the middle. It lies broadly open to the sun all day long, and gives back his rays with a torrid refraction. When day declines, the evening breezes sweep it refreshingly. ”

“ As one dinner is like all, the briefest sketch of a single possible occasion may suffice. If you have been at afternoon tea before dinner, your toilet has been perforce a very hurried one. If it is your first appearance, the annonce of a French hair-dresser in the upper floor of your hotel may have inspired you with the insane idea of submitting your precious brain-case to his manipulations. Having you once in his dreadful seat, he imposes upon you at his pleasure. ”

“ And I had a last row in the gondola, and a last ice in the Piazzetta, and, last of all, a midnight embarkation on board the Austrian steamer for Trieste. Farewell, Sebastiano, my trusty gondolier. I shall not hear you cry, "Oh, juiné" (giovine) again. I see the line of the Piazzetta, defined by the lamps. Brightly may they burn; glad be the hearts that beat near them. And now they are all out of sight, and the one outside light is disappearing, too. Farewell, wonderful Venice. Thou wert painfully gotten together, no doubt, like other dwelling-places of man. ”

“ And our donkey-driver is a handsome youth, with a bold, frank countenance, and the ripest olive and vermilion complexion. His walk is graceful and robust; he knows every one he meets, and has his bit of fun with sundry of the groups who pass us. These consist of men and women bearing on their heads large flat baskets filled with cocoons, or in their hands bundles of the same; girls leading mules, or carrying household burdens; soldiers, beggars, Neapolitan princes, the syndic of Sorrento, and other varieties of the species vaguely called human. ”

“ A fine gallery could as easily be spared from its endless apartments as are the public galleries from the Vatican.
Nor should this new kingling and his Russian bride be encouraged to people such an extent of masonry with smart aid-de-camps, lying diplomats, and plundering stewards and dames d'honneur. For pity's sake, let the poor kingdom have a modest representative, who shall follow the spirit of modern reform, and administer the people's revenues with clean hands. A sculpture gallery, therefore, in the palace by all means, open to the public, as are the galleries of Italian palaces. ”

“ Industry has a deeper mine of wealth than piracy or plunder can ever open. A man's success is in strict proportion to his use; and the servant of all is the master of all. So the new Venice for which I look is to be no more like the old Venice than the new Jerusalem will be like the city of David. Moral grandeur must make her great. Justice must make her people happy. And so beautiful and delightful is she, that I cannot help echoing the Psalmist's exclamation, "Pray for the peace of Jerusalem! They shall prosper who love thee!" ”

“ But the refreshing bath he takes is so little worth thirty sous to us that we feel tempted to harpoon him as he dodges about, sure that, if pierced, he can shed nothing more solid than humbug. On our return to the steamer we pay two francs each for this melancholy expedition, and presently make the little harbor of Capri.
And here the promised Hell begins. The way to it, remember, is always pleasant. No sooner does our boat touch the land than a nest of human rattlesnakes begins to coil and hiss about us, each trying to carry us off, each pouring into our ears discordant, rapid jargon. ”

“ A week is little for the grandeurs of Florence, much for the discomforts of its summer weather. The last week of May, which we passed there, mistook itself for June, and governed itself accordingly. We went out as early as human weakness, unsubdued by special discipline, permitted. We struggled with church, gallery, painting, sculpture, and antiquities. We breathlessly read sensible books, guides, and catalogues, in the little intervals of our sight-seeing. ”

“ At Marseilles we find a quasi tropical aspect—long streets, handsome and well-shaded, tempting shops, luxurious hotels, a motley company, and, above all, a friend, one of our own countrymen, divided between the glitter of the new life and the homesick weaning of the old. Half, he assumes the cicerone, and guides our ignorance about. Half, he sits to learn, and we expound to him what has befallen at home, so far as we are conscious of it. We take half a day for resting, the next day for sight-seeing. ”

“ The first impression is the strongest. Familiarity constantly wears off the edge of observation. The face of the new region astonishes us once, and once only. We soon grow used to it, and forget to describe it. The first day of our arrival in Liverpool or in London gave us volumes to write, which have proved as evanescent as the pictures of a swift panorama, vanishing to return no more. ”

“ A divine, mysterious force binds us to our place on its smiling borders. Of what lies beyond we construe as we can—Moses according to his ability, Christ and Paul according to theirs. Unseen and unmanifested it must ever remain; for though men say that God has done so and so, God has never said so. Of this we become sure: religion spiritualizes, inspires, and consoles us. The strait gate and narrow path are blessed for all who find them, and are the same for all who seek them. ”