Northern Italy

“ The frontiers of northern and north-eastern Italy were drawn according to the methods of the old diplomacy after the war of 1866, when Bismarck, seeking to keep Austria neutral in the next war on his schedule, that with France, willingly sacrificed the interests of his Italian Allies. For half a century Lombardy and Venetia have lived under the continual threat of an Austrian descent from the mountains, both from the Trentino, thrust like a wedge into the heart of Northern Italy, and across the Isonzo from the east. ”

“ Still descending the slope of the Apennines, we came in sight of the great plain of northern Italy, extending towards Milan, and bounded by the distant Alps. This wide extent of level country is considered the garden of Italy, in regard to fertility, though for picturesque and variegated scenery, it will not compare with Tuscany or Naples. The region through which we were travelling, however, continued broken and hilly: the soil was stony and poor, and the hills so steep, that we had frequent occasion to lock our wheels. ”

“ Venice gives it the command of the Adriatic, the Apennine railways connect it with Genoa, Savona, the Gulf of Spezia, and the Tyrrhenian, and it thus commands the two seas which wash the shores of Italy. Other railways cross the Alps, and put it into communication with France and Germany. This central position, joined to the natural fertility of the country, has converted Northern Italy into one of the most flourishing portions of Europe. Human hands have conquered original geographical disadvantages, and the true centre of Italy is in the ancient Cisalpine Gaul, and not at Rome. ”

“ In northern Italy only the coast of Liguria is occupied by the Mediterranean race. In the valley of the Po the Mediterraneans predominated during the early Neolithic but with the introduction of bronze the Alpines appear and round skulls to this day prevail north of the Apennines. About 1100 B. C. the Nordic Umbrians and Oscans swept over the Alps from the northeast, conquered northern Italy and introduced their Aryan speech, which gradually spread southward. ”

“ It lies there, our Mediterranean region, on a blue ocean, protected by barriers of granite from the Northern influences, an infinite variety of plain, cañon, hills, valleys, sea-coast; our New Italy without malaria, and with every sort of fruit which we desire (except the tropical) , which will be grown in perfection when our knowledge equals our ambition; and if you cannot find a winter home there or pass some contented weeks in the months of Northern inclemency, you are weighing social advantages against those of the least objectionable climate within the Union. ”

“ The villages of Northern Italy are almost uniformly neat and clean. The inhabitants are honest, industrious, and self-respecting. We have not seen a beggar within the boundaries of the Italian lakes. The scarcity of men in these out-of-the-way places is very noticeable. All the young and strong fellows are at work in the larger towns along the lakes, where there is plenty to do for willing hands in the “season.” We saw [Pg 105] no natives except old men, children, and women. The latter do everything inside and outside of the houses, the shops, and the taverns. ”

“ Present Italian aspirations are similarly directed.
The only other part of the northern frontier of Italy where the boundary is not clearly marked by nature is Tirol or the valley of the Adige. Here the main chain of the Alps (as marked by the watershed) recedes so far to the north that it has never constituted the frontier. In ancient times the upper valleys of the Adige and its tributaries were inhabited by Raetian tribes and included in the province of Raetia; and the line of demarcation between that province and Italy was purely arbitrary, as it remains to this day. ”

“ The fact that the emigrants from the north of Italy wander chiefly to South America, where industrially they dominate, while the emigrants from central and southern Italy come to this country, where they are dominated, makes it important to remember that in race advancement the North Italians differ from the rest of their fellow-countrymen. In the veins of the broadhead people of Piedmont, Lombardy, and Venetia runs much Northern blood—Celtic, Gothic, Lombard, and German. ”

“ It is even true that the first works in Northern Italy which indicated that the awakening which had come north of the Alps had reached that country were executed wholly or in part by German artists; but by the end of the twelfth century both the sculpture and bronze-casting of Italy gave promise of the great revival of true art which was to come in that home of the arts. ”

“ Any one who has entered Italy from the north must have instinctively felt, as he reached the summit of this mighty mountain wall and looked down on the warm and fertile slopes sweeping southward to the plains, "Here Italy begins."
Italy further justifies her annexation of the German-speaking Upper Adige on the ground of national security. She must, she insists, possess henceforward a strong and easily defended northern frontier. She is tired of crouching in the valleys while her enemies dominate her from the mountain-tops. ”

“ In contrast to southern Italy, the conditions of living in the northern provinces are good, and it has long been necessary for the north Italians to contribute to the support of their compatriots in Calabria and Sicily. ”

“ The North Italian is an educated, skilled artisan, coming from a manufacturing section and largely from the cities. He is Teutonic in blood and appearance. The South Italian is an illiterate peasant from the great landed estates, with wages less than one-third his northern compatriot. He descends with less mixture from the ancient inhabitants of Italy. ”

“ Southern Italy indeed has in general a very different climate from the northern portion of the kingdom; and, though large tracts are still occupied by rugged mountains of sufficient elevation to retain the snow for a considerable part of the year, the districts adjoining the sea enjoy a climate similar to that of Greece and the southern provinces of Spain. ”

“ Irruption of Northern people upon the Roman territories—Visigoths—Barbarians called in by Stilicho—Vandals in Africa—Franks and Burgundians give their names to France and Burgundy—The Huns—Angles give the name to England—Attila, king of the Huns, in Italy—Genseric takes Rome—The Lombards.
The people who inhabit the northern parts beyond the Rhine and the Danube, living in a healthy and prolific region, frequently increase to such vast multitudes that part of them are compelled to abandon their native soil, and seek a habitation in other countries. ”

“ Italy received her Pointed architecture from France and Germany, and mingled it freely with her Classico-Lombardic traditions. The union produced many noble and many incongruous developments. The lessons they offer must be used with caution; but Italy being the land of ancient art, the land of sculpture, of painting, of rich marbles, of mosaic work, and of municipal and other civic edifices, the graft of Northern art upon so prolific a stock has, as may readily be imagined, produced varieties which the circumstances of Northern nations would have rendered impracticable in its native lands ”

“ Where the winding chain of the Apennines stretches upward from the sea, crossing and recrossing the land with so many and such strange devices that from off the height of one of the mountains themselves there seems scarce room for a space of level plain, wedged in between ridges or sunk in clefts of hills, are the fair valleys of North Italy. Away from the blue sea and its blinding beauty, and from the leaden heat of the shores, they hold a fresh and free life of their own. ”

“ I see everywhere the gardens, the vineyards, the orchards, with the various greens of the olive, the fig, and the orange. It is always picturesque, because the country is broken and even rugged; it is always interesting, because of the contrast with the mountains and the desert; it has the color that makes Southern Italy so poetic. It is the fairest field for the experiment of a contented community, without any poverty and without excessive wealth. ”

“ While this Ecclesiastical Dominion was rising up, the northern barbarous nations invaded the Western Empire, and founded several kingdoms therein, of different religions from the Church of Rome. But these kingdoms by degrees embraced the Roman faith, and at the same time submitted to the Pope's authority. The Franks in Gaul submitted in the end of the fifth Century, the Goths in Spain in the end of the sixth; and the Lombards in Italy were conquered by Charles the great A.C. 774. ”

“ Its hard yet beneficent climate, with sharp delimitations of season, its passes so obdurate to the tainting allurements of railways, its hundreds of sturdy self-contained little towns, each with its story of its own saints and heroes, its ancestry of tradition that laughs at the flight of centuries—all this has bred a race of men and women of whom modern Italy knows little, but who form the residue by which the mixed enfeebled masses of her cities and plains will in the end be saved. ”

“ On very early spring days a mantle was suddenly lifted; the Alps were an apex of natural glory, towards which, in broadening spaces of light, the whole of Europe sloped upwards. Through them, on the right hand, as he journeyed on, were the doorways to Italy, to Como or Venice, from yonder peak Italy's self was visible!—as, on the left hand, in the South-german towns, in a high-toned, artistic fineness, in the dainty, flowered ironwork for instance, the overflow of Italian genius was traceable. ”

“ The plains of Lombardy are eternally covered with flowers and fruit. The valleys of Tuscany still boast the olive, the orange, and the vine. The wide waste of the Campagna di Roma is of the richest soil, and, spread out beneath the warm sun, might mingle on its surface the fruits of the torrid with those of the temperate zones. Instead of this, Italy presents to the traveller's eye a deplorable spectacle of wretched cabins, untilled fields, and a population oppressed by sloth and covered with rags. The towns are filled mostly with idlers and beggars. ”

“ I never cast my eyes over this poor map of Italy, capriciously rent into unequal fragments, without one consoling reflection.
Nature, which has done everything for the Italians, has taken care to surround their country with magnificent barriers. The Alps and the sea protect it on all sides, isolate it, bind it together as a distinct body, and seem to design it for an individual existence. To crown all, no internal barrier condemns the Italians to form separate nations. ”

“ Here the bold dark outlines of the granite precipices hanging over the luxuriant yet untamed loveliness of the valley appeal to our emotions with the strong power of contrast. The majesty of the central ranges wedded to the beauty of Italy excites in us that enthusiasm beyond tranquil admiration which is our tribute to the highest expression of the Romantic whether in Art or Nature. We can contemplate calmly a rich lake-scene or an Umbrian Madonna; we feel disposed to cry out with delight before a figure of Michael Angelo or this view in Val Maggia. ”

“ In our parlance all that is not the Adriatic is the Mediterranean, but the Italians only give this name to the waters that separate Italy and Spain from Africa, and differentiate the remainder as the Ligurean Sea—in the Bay of Genoa, the Tyrrhenian that Rome and Naples contemplate, and the Ionian, which washes up from Sicily under Italy’s instep in the Gulf of Taranto. ”

“ 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. ”

“ So we came to the vast Alpine wall, and stood on a bare granite slab, and looked over into Italy, as men might lean from the battlements of a fortress. Behind lies the Alpine valley, grim, declining slowly northward, with wind-lashed lakes and glaciers sprawling from storm-broken pyramids of gneiss. Below spread the unfathomable depths that lead to Lombardy, flooded with sunlight, filled with swirling vapour, but never wholly hidden from our sight. ”

“ The inhabitants of the north—the Piedmontese, Lombards and Genoese especially—have suffered less than those of the rest of the peninsula from foreign domination and from the admixture of inferior racial elements, and the cold winter climate prevents the heat of summer from being enervating. They, and also the inhabitants of central Italy, are more industrious than the inhabitants of the southern provinces, who have by no means recovered from centuries of misgovernment and oppression, and are naturally more hot-blooded and excitable, but less stable, capable of organization or trustworthy. ”

“ HE limits of the Italian peninsula have been most distinctly traced by nature. The Alps, which bound it in the north, from the promontories of Liguria to the mountainous peninsula of Istria, present themselves like a huge wall, the only breaches in which are formed by passes situated high up in the zones of pines, pastures, or eternal snows. Italy, like its two sister peninsulas of Southern Europe, thus constitutes a world of its own, destined by nature to become the theatre of a special evolution of humanity. ”

“ But the whole Italian slope is free at all times from the alleged defects of Swiss scenery. Further east lies the Trentino, where the mountains stand apart and the valleys spread out to an ampler width, where nature is rich and open-handed, and the landscapes unite 340 Alpine nobility of form to the sunny spaciousness and deep colour of Italy. And close at hand, beyond the Adige, is the country of Titian, where the new school may find a precedent and an example in the great painter of Cadore. ”