Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

“ We passed Vico—halfway—and then turning the shoulder of a headland, rattled down towards the populous plain of Sorrento—with its many villages, its orange gardens and sheltering hills—and reached our quiet hotel, where we were gladly welcomed. The Cocumella has become a home—it is a joy to return to our terrace, to breathe the fragrance of the orange-flowers—to see the calm sea spread out at our feet, as we look over the bay to Naples—while above us bends a sky—in whose pure depths ship-like clouds glide—and the moon hangs luminous, a pendant sphere of silver fire. ”

“ Various valleys branch off at intervals, all affording the scenery peculiar to the Tyrol. I own I had no desire to linger longer in this land: we had continued for so many days among ravines, defiles, and narrow valleys, peering up at the sky from the depths between mountains, that the eye grew eager for a view of heaven, and yearned to behold a more extensive horizon. When the bourne of a journey lies beyond, the desire to linger, even in beautiful scenery, is weak. Since I had left Gmunden and Salzburg I had experienced no desire to stop short. ”

“ Passing this extensive palace, we ascended the height on which the Hradschin is situated; old princely Prague, the native city of the savage Ziska, of the martyred Huss, and of generations of resolute, free, and noble citizens, lay beneath in sleepy decay. It is impossible not to ponder upon the world’s fate. Had the Prince Palatine been a hero; had Wallenstein, by birth a Bohemian, not fallen in his youth into the hands of the Jesuits; had he grown up as he was baptized, a Lutheran, would not Bohemia have been able to maintain its political and religious liberty? ”

“ As it is, though singularly Venetian—the wave-paved streets beneath, the bridge close at hand—the peep we get at wider waters at the opening,—it is but a promise of what we may find beyond, and tempts us to wander.
There is something so different in Venice from any other place in the world, that you leave at once all accustomed habits and everyday sights to enter enchanted ground. We live in a palace; though an inn, such it is: and other palaces have been robbed of delicately-carved mouldings and elegant marbles, to decorate the staircase and doorways. ”

“ In all respects he is averse to strong measures. For many years no capital punishment has been inflicted in Tuscany; a fact, which of itself demands our admiration, and must be replete with good effects.
“All this is true,” said an Italian to me; “and yet I, who wish my countrymen to cultivate manly habits of thought and action, regard our state as almost worse than any other. Tyranny is, with us, a serpent hid among flowers; and I, for one, sympathise with the sentiment of a Florentine poet—odio il tiranno che col sonno uccide. ”

“ Besides all that Rome itself affords of delightful to the eye and imagination, I revisit it as the bourne of a pious pilgrimage. The treasures of my youth lie buried here.
The sky is bright—the air impregnated with the soft odours of spring—we take our books and wile away the morning among the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla, or the Coliseum. From the shattered walls of the former, the view over the city and the Campagna is very beautiful. The Palatine is near at hand, and majestic ruins guide the eye to where the golden palace spreads its vast extent. ”

“ We must look on the state of society from a wholly different point of view—we must think of the hunger of the mind; of the nobler aspirations of the soul, held in check and blighted—of the tendency of man to improve, here held down—of the peculiar and surpassing gifts of genius appertaining to this people, who are crushed and trod under foot by the jealousy of government—to understand, with how dead and intolerable a weight King Log hangs round the necks of those among them, who regret the generous passions and civic virtues of bygone times. ”

“ I grieved also not to be going by steam to Vienna.
Our drive by the railroad to Gmunden was delightful. We had a little carriage to ourselves. Our road lay through a valley watered by a stream, and adorned by woods; it was a sequestered home-felt scene; while the high distant mountains redeemed it from tameness. After the sandy deserts of Prussia, and the burnt-up country round Dresden, the freshness and green of a pastoral valley, the murmur of streams and rivulets, the delightful umbrage of the trees, imparted a sense of peace and amenity that lapped me in Elysium. ”

“ The earth is teeming with the wealth of September, the richest month of the year. The harvest of the Indian corn has begun; the grapes are hanging in rich ripening clusters from the vines, festooned from tree to tree: a genial atmosphere mantles the earth, and quickens a sense of delight in our hearts. The road lies through a richly cultivated country: the immense plain around us is bounded to the north by the mountains of the Tyrol, amongst which we seemed to have lost ourselves for an age, so refreshing, so new, so enchanting, is the wide expanse of fertile Lombardy, opening before our eyes. ”

“ I have been more struck even than I expected, by what I have seen; the limits of man’s power appear enlarged to the uttermost verge of all that the imagination can conceive of beautiful and great.
The admirable proportion of the temple-like chambers in which the finest relics of ancient statuary are placed—the snatches of views that you catch, from open windows, of the papal gardens and the country around the city, renders a visit to the Vatican a step out of everyday life into a world adorned by the works of the highest genius of all countries and all times. ”

“ The air of Rome inspires lassitude, and renders the inhabitants inert. The Romans who live in the healthy parts of the city are all inclined to grow fat; their language, unidiomatic, and, so to speak, long-winded in its expressions, is pronounced with a grace of accent, a slow and melodious emphasis, that renders it more agreeable than any other Italian to the ears of strangers, and is strangely in harmony with the dreamy contentment of their minds. ”

“ Still, among the Venetians, as all over Italy, you must not suppose because they are ignorant—because they live in a confined routine—because to make love in their youth, and take care of their money in later years, be the occupation of the greater number, that you find the provincial tone of a French or English country town. Graceful manners—accents modulated by the kindest courtesy—suavity that is all gentleness, and a desire to do more than please, to be useful, is innate among them—it reigns in every class of society, and wins irresistibly. ”

“ Play is the whirlpool that engulphs most of them. As with us during the middle of the last century—as among a certain set of our present aristocracy—play is their amusement, their occupation, their ruin;—many of the noblest Italian families are passing away, never more to be heard of, the heirs of their wealth having lost all in play.—New men, mostly of Jewish extraction, who have gained by banking, stock jobbing, and money lending, what the others have lost by their extravagance, are rising on their downfall.
A curious anomaly exists among the nobility of the north of Italy. ”

“ The Italian painters drank deep at the inspiration of his verses when they sought to give a visible image of Heaven and the beatitude of the saints, on their canvass.
There are other and other rooms, all filled with paintings of merit. One hall contains the earlier productions of Gentile and Giovanni Bellini. The genius and the elevated piety of these painters give expression to the countenances; but the dry colouring, the want of foreshortening, the absence of grace everywhere except in the faces—which are often touchingly beautiful—all exhibit the infancy of the art. ”

“ Here we view all that man can achieve of beautiful in sculpture, when his conceptions rise to the height of grace, majesty, and simplicity. Look at these, and a certain feeling of exalted delight will enter at your eyes and penetrate your heart, which is the praise to which a painter or a sculptor aspires. Nor forget when you visit the church of Santa Croce, to look at some fast-fading frescoes, on the loggie of a palace, on the right hand of the piazza. ”

“ The galleries of the Capitol often entice us. Here are some of the finest statues in the world. The Amazon, in whom a severe and martial expression is allied to feminine grace, and a something womanly softens the countenance in spite of sternness. The Venus of the Capitol is the only Queen of Beauty that can at all compete with the Goddess of the Tribune. The Cupid and Psyche is less tender and innocent than the Florentine group, but there is a passionate love in the caress that makes the marble appear tremulous with emotion. ”

“ At Padua, we paid a hurried visit to one or two churches adorned by frescoes by some of the earlier masters, admirable for the artless gesture—the earnest, rapt expression—the power of shewing the soul breathing in the face. Every painter who aims at the ideal—at expressing the purer and higher emotions of the soul, ought to make a particular study of these early Christian paintings; they must not imitate them—true genius, indeed, cannot imitate. He can catch the light which the labours of his predecessors throw over his path ”

“ These new societies can never be as powerful as the Carbonari were—they are but a shadow of that mighty influence; but, if they have less power, they have committed no crimes; and work by spreading knowledge and civilisation, instead of striking terror.
It is to be regretted, that the patriots of Italy have recourse to darkness and secrecy to carry on the regeneration of their country: for falsehood is the offspring of mystery, and integrity is destroyed by a system that hides itself from the light of day. The Italians must do away with oaths that cannot bind the traitor ”

“ It has not the majestic Danube, as at Linz, sweeping under dark, overhanging cliffs, and winding through a spacious valley, till lost to sight beneath distant mountains: it has not a lake sheltered by hills, with bay and inlet sacred to the sprites. It is observed that one of the most admirable features of a scene is where lofty mountains and an extensive plain unite. This is rare: usually mountains inclose a ravine, or valley, or lake; and the scenery around Salzburg is a specimen on the grandest scale in the world of this mixture. ”

“ The plain of Sorrento, which is spread on the top of the cliffs that overlook the sea, is shut in all round by a belt of hills—intersected here and there by narrow ravines—clefts, as it were, in the soil, thickly clothed with various trees and underwood. The plain itself is planted with orange trees. These gardens being shut in by high walls, the walks near us are not at all agreeable; therefore, when we leave our terrace, and our beach, and our cavern, it is in a boat or on mules—the rides are delightful. ”

“ In sublimity of a certain sort—more especially in the sublimity of desolation, Switzerland probably has no equal on earth; and perhaps to this may be added a certain unearthly aspect which the glaciers assume in particular conditions of the atmosphere; but these Italian scenes rise to a sublimity of a different kinds, which, though it does not awe, leaves behind it a tender sensation allied to that of love. I can conceive even an ardent admirer of nature wearying in time of the grandeur of the Alps; but I can scarce imagine one who could ever tire of the witchery of Italy.”—C. F. Cooper ”

“ It is curious to see all these solemnities—many of them doubtless of Pagan origin—dear to the people, and therefore preserved and christianised by the Popes—and to reflect, that such, for many, many centuries, was the chief link fostered by religion between man and the Divinity. We have obliterated all this among ourselves. No doubt the impulse of piety in the heart is a truer and purer oblation; but Catholics reason that these are aids and supports to enable weak humanity—a creature half matter, half soul—to sustain itself in its pious ecstacies. ”

“ Now evening has come, and still it rains hard; the many travellers are dispersed about the house in a state of listless anxiety. Another day like this is too fearful a vision: we have ceased even to speak of the chances of release, for we grow hopeless. The people of the inn finding the boat does not arrive, begin to talk of some accident in the machinery; conversation languishes among all the groupes. I sit writing at a window till twilight is thickening into darkness. ”

“ How sad a thing is human society: yet it is comforting, even where we find the laws by which it is said to be held together—but which ought rather to be likened to an iron yoke, pressing it down and depriving it of its native strength and elasticity—yet, I say, it warms my heart when I find the individuals that compose a population, poor, humble, ignorant, misguided, yet endowed with some of the brightest gifts of our nature, and hearing in their faces the stamp of intelligence and feeling. ”

“ A deep forest, in which the holy man is overtaken by his pursuers, sheds its gloom over the picture; his attendant flies, the most living horror depicted on his face; the saint has fallen, cut down by the sword of the soldier; an angel is descending from above, and, opening heaven, sheds the only light that irradiates the scene. It is very fine; but in spite of the celestial messenger, there is wanting that connecting link with Heaven,—the rapture of faith in the sufferer’s countenance, which alone makes pictures of martyrdom tolerable. ”

“ As far as I remember, there is no picture such as would idealise Ferruccio Ferruccini or Bayard—nor can I recollect the representation of mutual and tender love in any picture by a great artist, with one exception—that called the Three Ages of Man, by Titian—the original of which is in the Bridgwater collection; and there is a fine copy in Palazzo Manfrin, at Venice. The expression of the lover’s face seems to say, “I love a creature who is mortal, and for whose safety I fear; yet in her life I live—without her I die;” ”

“ Still, there can be no question that in poetry, music, or the plastic arts, the ideal must rank above the merely imitative. Those painters who can embody ideas conceived in their purest and most elevated contemplations, far removed from vulgar and trivial reality, are the greatest. Artists, however, are men formed by nature with the peculiar eye to see and represent form and colour; and it is not strange that the majority among them should turn to the study of these, and view in the perfection of representing the one or the other, the aim of their labours. ”