Livorno

“ Families have been separated at the port of Livorno, to find each other how they could in the streets of Florence. In vain you jump into a fiacre, they leap up before, above, behind; and at the gate of the hotel, there you are in the midst of the same group of villains, who are only the more clamorous for having been kept waiting. Reduced to extremities, you declare that you have come to Livorno upon commercial business, and that you intend staying eight days at least, and you ask of the garçon, loud enough for all to hear, if there is an apartment at liberty for the next week. ”

“ The English, save the mercantile marine and a stray traveller or two, never go to Livorno, as it is called in Italian, and yet it is in summer the Brighton of Italy, and one of the gayest places in Europe during the bathing season.
It was nearly two o’clock in the morning when I alighted at the “Palace,” that great white hotel on the sea-front, and went to the room allotted to me—one with an inviting balcony overlooking the promenade and the fashionable bathing establishment of Pancaldi.
Livorno was full, the night-porter informed me. ”

“ Not that I would not admit that the Pistojans are all voice and pen, that the Aretines are excessively devout, not to say hypocrites, that the Siennese are vain, and the Pisans—why, Dante called them ‘the scorn of nations,’ and the Florentines—well! excuse me, a little given to loud talking and short of action ... but the Livornese—ah! the Livornese are really the flower of the Tuscans!... And you may say what you please, but the finest street in Livorno is Via Vittorio Emmanuele, where I live.... I don’t know how any one can stay at Livorno and not have a house in that street.... ”

“ Unless one has lived among the sly, secretive, proud but carelessly happy Livornesi, has shared their joys, sympathised with their sorrows, fraternised with them and noted their little peculiarities, one can never enjoy Livorno. ”

“ Southwest from Lucca, with Pisa lying between, is the great port of Leghorn, whence are shipped the marbles of Carrara, the oil of Lucca, the wines of Chianti and the Leghorn hats and braids of all Tuscany. These four things keep Livorno going.
Leghorn is as modern as Lucca is antiquated and is the most cosmopolitan of all Italian cities. ”

“ He improved the natural advantages of its harbour, which had already excited the attention of some of his predecessors, by several grand and useful works; he invested the town which rose on the site with liberal privileges; and from this epoch, Livorno continued to flourish, until it attained the mercantile prosperity and opulence which have rendered it one of the first maritime cities of the peninsula. The skilful policy which Ferdinand I pursued in this and other respects produced a rapid influx of wealth into his states ”

“ Gisborne, Livorno—and I shall receive them, though sometimes somewhat circuitously, yet always securely.
We left Milan on the first of May, and travelled across the Apennines to Pisa. This part of the Apennine is far less beautiful than the Alps; the mountains are wide and wild, and the whole scenery broad and undetermined—the imagination cannot find a home in it. The plain of the Milanese, and that of Parma, is exquisitely beautiful—it is like one garden, or rather cultivated wilderness ”

“ If you would see a Tuscan city that is absolutely free from the tourist, I think you must go to Livorno. It is true, works of art are not many there; but the statue of Grand Duke Ferdinand, with four Moors in bronze chained to his feet, a work of Piero Jacopo Tacca, made in 1617-1625, is something; though I confess those chained robbers at the feet of a petty tyrant who was as great a robber, he and his forebears, as any among them, are in this age of sentimental liberalism, from which who can escape, a little disconcerting. ”

“ Florence was without trade, while Livorno—or Leghorn as it is known to the English—was full of shipping and other interests. Florence had too long been practically a sinecure, and its Consul-General a picturesque figure, hence the question afoot—the Ambassador being asked to write his opinion upon the proposed reduction.
Durrant, the Councillor of Embassy, being absent in England on leave, it devolved upon Waldron to attend to the clerical duties, and it was nearly six o’clock ere he had sealed the last dispatch and placed it in the small Foreign Office bag of white canvas. ”

“ GIAN GALEAZZO MARIA VISCONTI It is a day in early summer, as beautiful as such days were in the Southern lands of 500 years ago. It is Italy steeped in golden sunlight which lies like a haze over the spreading view; the year 1360, when cities were beautiful and nature all-pervading. Here is Lombardy, spread like a garden in the hollow of the hills, ringed about with the purple Apennines, covered with flowers, white, yellow, purple, and pink. This wide road, one of the finest in Italy, winds from Milan to Brescia, its whole length through chestnut woods and plains covered with flowering myrtle. ”

“ Lombardy is the garden of Italy. The whole of the extensive valley, from the Alps to the Apennines, is cultivated to the highest degree, presenting in its vineyards, its orchards, its waving fields of grain, its flocks and herds, one of the most rich and attractive features earth can exhibit. Milan, its beautiful capital, abounding in wealth and luxury, contained a population of one hundred and twenty thousand souls. Here Napoleon allowed his weary troops, exhausted by their unparalleled exertions, to repose for six days. ”

“ In its every aspect the town is beautiful. From the sea it presents a handsome appearance, with its lines of high white houses with their red roofs and closed sun-shutters, backed by the distant blue peaks of the Lucca Mountains, and the serrated spurs of the purple Apennines, while in its sun-whitened streets the dress of the Livornesi, with their well-made skirts of the palest and most delicate tints of blue, grey, and rose, and with their black silk scarves or lace mantillas twisted about their handsome heads, is the most artistic and tasteful in all fair Italy. ”

“ Ambrogio and its compeers of the era of liberty, a rare fragment of the older imperial civilisation—does he become conscious of the long and painful course of the centuries, and remember that he stands in the secular capital of Lombardy, on ground as storied almost as the sacred dust of Rome.
The name alone of Lombardy calls up visions of continuous strife. There the nations who have made their grave in Italy lie most thickly. The sunny fruitful plains at the foot of the barren mountains have been fattened from the beginning by human blood. ”

“ A proud old city was Milan, heavy with its weight of years, rich and powerful, arrogant and independent, the capital of Lombardy and the lord of many of the Lombard cities. For some twenty centuries it had existed, and now had so grown in population, wealth, and importance, that it could almost lay claim to be the Rome of northern Italy. But its day of pride preceded not long that of its downfall, for a new emperor had come to the German throne, Frederick the Red-bearded, one of the ablest, noblest, and greatest of all that have filled the imperial chair. ”

“ What the Spaniards, the Gauls, the Macedonians, the Carthaginians did not dare to do, this the Ligurian is doing today; he comes up to the Roman rampart and actually surrounds and attacks our camp. And yet, formerly, it was hard to discover him after a close search as he lurked in his trackless hiding-places!" His words were met by a unanimous shout of approval from the soldiers. It was no fault of theirs, they said; no one had given the signal for a sortie; let him give the signal now, he would soon learn that the Romans and the Ligurians were the same that they had always been. ”

“ On my passage through Milan, a great people aroused was for a moment opening its eyes. Italy was recovering from her sleep, and remembering her genius as it were a heavenly dream: useful to our reviving country, she brought to the shabbiness of our poverty the grandeur of the Transalpine nature, nurtured as she was, that Ausonia, on the master-pieces of the arts and the lofty reminiscences of the famous motherland. Austria has come; she has again laid her cloak of lead over the Italians; she has forced them back into their coffin. Rome has re-entered her ruins, Venice her sea. ”

“ Here four thousand soldiers fell, and three standards of the second legion, with eleven ensigns of the Latin allies, were taken; abundance of arms were likewise lost, which were thrown away by the men in every direction, because they impeded their flight through the woody paths. The Ligurians ceased to pursue, sooner than the Romans to fly. As soon as the consul had effected his escape out of the enemy’s territories, he disbanded the troops, in the country of their friends, in order that the greatness of the loss sustained might not appear. ”

“ The arrangement made by Augustus lasted until the time of Diocletian, when the two Alpine provinces were abolished, and the watershed became the boundary between Italy and Gaul. At this time we find the name Liguria extended as far as Milan, while in the 6th century the old Liguria was separated from it, and under the Lombards formed the fifth Italian province under the name of Alpes Cottiae. In the middle ages the ancient Liguria north of the Apennines fell to Piedmont and Lombardy, while that to the south, with the coast strip, belonged to the republic of Genoa. ”

“ He lowered his sword and kissed the hilt, then turning in his saddle to the men who had followed him as their new leader: "Have I not led you well, Paduans," he cried, "safe into the fairest city of Lombardy? Do you repent you of following a Visconti through the proud gates of Milan—Milan that I have made more beautiful than Ravenna, and stronger than Rome? I am your leader now, knights of Padua, and Gian Visconti never yet led to aught but victory or turned against a foe he did not crush! ”

“ Built on a sunny and fertile tract of the Lombard plain, within view of the Alps, and close beneath the shelter of the Apennines, it shines like a well-set gem with stately towers and cheerful squares in the midst of verdure. The cities of Lombardy are all like large country houses: walking out of their gates, you seem to be stepping from a door or window that opens on a trim and beautiful garden, where mulberry-tree is married to mulberry by festoons of vines, and where the maize and sunflower stand together in rows between patches of flax and hemp. ”

“ Before the consul L. Quinctius reached his province Q. Minucius fought a pitched battle with the Ligurians near Pisae. He killed 9000 of the enemy and drove the rest in flight to their camp, which was attacked and defended with furious fighting until nightfall. During the night the Ligurians stole away in silence, and at daybreak the Romans entered the deserted camp. They found less plunder than might have been expected, as the Ligurians made a practice of sending what they seized in the fields to their homes. ”

“ I noticed Lombardy out of the windows. It is flat. I listened to the talk of the crowded peasants in the train. I did not understand it. I twice leaned out to see if Milan were not standing up before me out of the plain, but I saw nothing. Then I fell asleep, and when I woke suddenly it was because we were in the terminus of that noble great town, which I then set out to traverse in search of my necessary money and sustenance. It was yet but early in the afternoon.
What a magnificent city is Milan! The great houses are all of stone, and stand regular and in order, along wide straight streets. ”

“ Next day he also encamped on the other side of the river, about a mile from the enemy; and by slight skirmishes protected the lands of the allies from their depredations. He did not think it prudent to hazard a general engagement, because his troops were raw, composed of many different kinds of men, and not yet so well known among themselves that they could rely on one another. The Ligurians depended so much on their numbers, that they not only came out and offered battle, willing to risk every thing on the issue of it ”

“ The triumph of Francesco Sforza in 1450 began a new era of prosperity for Milanese art. A long peace, a succession of sovereigns in whom a policy of splendour was assisted by stupendous wealth and a genuine love of beauty and culture, the concourse of strangers of genius to their Court, bringing the inspiration of the great classic revival from Tuscany and Central Italy, roused the Lombards to an enthusiasm and activity which carried them to their highest pitch of achievement at the end of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. ”

“ The names of the villages—Quarto, Quinto, &c.—on the south-east side and Pontedecimo on the north of Genoa allude to their distance along the Roman roads. The Roman Liguria, forming the ninth region of Augustus, was thus far more extensive than the modern, including the country on the north slopes of the Apennines and Maritime Alps between the Trebia and the Po, and extending a little beyond Albintimilium. On the west Augustus formed the provinces of the Alpes Maritimae and the Alpes Cottiae. Towns of importance were few, owing to the nature of the country. ”

“ Milan’s greatest moment was one in her art, and in her public life. The same spirit of freedom which stood up to Barbarossa and Frederick II., raised her incomparable brick buildings of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In this development of architecture on the large and reasonable lines of the old Roman building, modified by the mystic ideas and melancholy sentiment of the North, and by the capabilities of the rich and plastic material yielded by the alluvial soil, Lombardy shows the highest result of the mingled elements of her artistic life. ”