Peoria

“ In 1788 or 1789 the first house was built on the present site of Peoria and by the close of the century the inhabitants of the old town, because of its more healthful location, moved to the new village of Peoria, which at first was called La Ville de Maillet, in honor of a French Canadian who commanded a company of volunteers in the War of the Revolution. Later the name was changed to its present form. At the opening of the War of 1812-15, the French inhabitants were charged with having aroused the Indians against the Americans in Illinois. ”

“ PEORIA. An important manufacturing city and railroad centre, the county-seat of Peoria County, Ill., 160 miles southwest of Chicago, on the Illinois River, at the outlet of the expansion called Peoria Lake, and on the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy, the Chicago and Alton, the Chicago, Peoria and Saint Louis, the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific, the Iowa Central, the Lake Erie and Western, the Toledo, Peoria and Western, and other railroads (Map: Illinois, C 3) . The city occupies an area of more than 81⁄4 square miles on a plateau, and is surrounded by a fine rolling country. ”

“ Peoria was then, and I believe is now, a beautiful city, rising amphitheatrically from the west bank of the Illinois River, or rather lake into which the river widens at that point. It had about twenty thousand inhabitants in 1855 (over forty thousand now) , and was laid out in the usual rectangular way. I stopped over night at a hotel, and next morning presented my letter of introduction to Messrs. Manning & Merriman. I was kindly received, and, after a brief colloquy, assigned to a desk in the office and instructed as to my duties. ”

“ Peoria is all excited today over the announcement by Benjamin H. Serkowich of the Peoria Art League that a canvas painted by a woman in her dream with the hand of the immortal and long since departed Whistler guiding her brush, is on display at a local theater mezzanine floor which gave space to the annual exhibit of the League.
Mrs. William Hawley Smith, wife of Dr. W.H. Smith of Peoria, is the woman. She and her husband are among the wealthiest and most socially prominent families in Peoria. ”

“ His life was that of the French woods ranger, roaming the forest as an Indian partisan from Lake Erie to the Rocky mountains. He is best known for his daring capture of Fort St. Joseph in 1778. This same year he founded Peoria. Ill., opposite the present city. Here in 1805 the trader lost his life in a quarrel with another ranger named Senegal who shot him dead. ”

“ In 1900 and in 1905 Peoria ranked second among the cities of Illinois in the value of its manufactures. The invested capital amounted in 1905 to $22,243,821, and the factory products were valued at $60,920,411. The principal industry is the manufacture of distilled liquors, which were valued in 1905 at $42,170,815. ”

“ Lydia Bradley in 1897, endowed with $2,000,000 by her and affiliated with Chicago University. Peoria manufactures whiskey, agricultural implements, automobiles, wire fences and other products. It has several meatpacking houses, and takes first rank in its distillery products. Its distilleries number ten and consume 60,000 bushels of corn daily. Peoria is per capita the richest city in the United States. Population 66,950. ”

“ In 1812, war was declared between the United States and England. Soon followed the surrender of Detroit, by Hull, and the Chicago massacre. At this time no settlement existed in Illinois, north of Alton, except the small French settlement of Peoria. An expedition, in which the present Buchanan candidate for Superintendent of public instruction, John Reynolds, the "Old Ranger," participated, attacked and destroyed an Indian village on the bluff, at the head of Peoria Lake. On the 24th of Dec. 1814, the treaty of Ghent was signed. ”

“ From Indianapolis, Hampton, Danville, New Winchester, Bainbridge, Portland Mills, Rockville, Armiesburg, Montezuma, to the State line between Indiana and Illinois, in the direction of Springfield, Illinois. From Peoria, in the county of Peoria, via Mount Hawley, Wyoming, Toulon, Wethersfield, Geneseo, Sharon, Crandall’s Ferry, to Albany, in the county of Whiteside. From Peoria, in the county of Peoria, via Mount Hawley, Wyoming, Toulon, Wethersfield, Geneseo, Sharon, Crandall’s Ferry, Parker’s Grove, Otter creek, and Johnson’s creek, to Savannah, in the county of Carroll. ”

“ July 9th.—While wandering along the shore this morning, we descried the smoke of our expected steamboat, and hastened back to the hotel to pack our trunks. It was the Home, from Peru to St. Louis, and we were to take passage in her for Alton, on the Mississippi. We bade adieu to sweet Peoria with regret. The remembrance of it will long ‘perfume our minds,’ as old Izaak Walton says. Its situation, its excellent society, and religious privileges, and its good schools, must certainly make it a desirable place of residence, or of trade. It is two hundred miles from St. ”

“ So a little before the hour at which my train was expected at Elmwood, I started for the station with my friend Mr. Brown, the gentleman who had kindly entertained me during my stay. On the way I said to him, "I am going to Peoria with something like a real dread of the place. I expect to be compelled to walk the streets of that city all night to keep from freezing." I told him that "the last time I was there I could obtain no shelter at any hotel and I fear I shall meet a similar exclusion to-night." Mr. ”

“ Peorias, &c.—The Peorias, Kaskaskias, Weas, and Piankeshaws, who were confederated in 1854, and at that time had a total population of 259, now number 160. They occupy a reservation of 72,000 acres, adjoining the Quapaw reservation on the south and west. ”

“ Perugia, if one ignores her history, is not so much a town as an eccentric freak of nature. All the winds and airs of heaven play and rush around her walls in summer and in winter. The sun beats down upon her roofs; one seems to see more stars at night, above her ramparts, than one sees in any other town one knows of. All Umbria is spread like a great pageant at her feet, and the pageant is never one day or one hour like the other. ”

“ Sunk, as it were, in a broad basin of plain, through which the quiet waters of Clitumnus drain slowly to the Tiber, is the city of Foligno—that city which Perugia so detested, so offended in the past. The town has all the character of the towns of the plain. Driving through its straight and even streets we felt as though we were in Lombardy, in Padua or Ferrara. There were Lombard lions in the porch and Lombard beasts around the arch of the Duomo. The houses were all shut up, square, silent, cool, preparing, as it seemed, for summer heat and dust, and infinite hours of afternoon. ”

“ To fully understand the city of Perugia, the marvellous fashion of its building, and the way in which its houses have become a part of the landscape and seem to creep about and cling to the unsteady crumbling soil, one should pass out into the country through one of its gates, and, rambling round the roads and lanes which wind beneath its walls, look ever up and back again towards the town. In this way only is it possible to understand what man can do with Nature, and how, with the centuries, Nature can gather to herself man’s handiwork and make of it a portion for herself. ”

“ We cannot stay long in Perugia without getting its surrounding landscape stamped upon our minds. That circle of small cities so distinctly seen: Assisi,{291} Spello, Foligno to the east, Montefalco, Trevi, Bettona, and Torgiano to the south, and Città della Pieve westwards, all of them perched upon their separate hill-top around the bed of the now vanished lake (see chapter i.) , excite one’s fancy and one’s longing, at first perhaps unconsciously, and later with an irresistible persistence. Finally we are driven to pack our trunks and wander out amongst them. ”

“ Even to-day there are few monks or nuns in Perugia; it is the military who are in evidence, and not a few churches and cloisters have been despoiled to house them. In fact Perugia, notwithstanding her mediaeval monuments, is a gay and much begarrisoned city, not provincial like Siena, but really the capital of a state. I have never seen so many smart and pretty women in any Italian town of the size as I found at Perugia in high summer, nor so many soldiers. ”

“ Before them there were around Perugia only phantoms: stiff saints on panels and on parchment, without dates, ghosts of unattained, though dimly felt, ideals—a scattered flock of “primitives,” left here and there on chapel walls or psalters. Then gradually, all through Umbria and her border lands, in a steady circle of glory, like the stars on a summer night, the lights arose and burned. At Gubbio, Camerino, Foligno, Gualdo, Fabriano, and Urbino we trace their steady progress through the work of men like Nelli, Piero della Francesca, Gentile da Fabriano, Niccolò Alunno, and many others. ”

“ The earliest Origins of Perugia and growth of the City SOMETIMES in a street or in a country road we meet an unknown person who seems to us wonderfully and inexplicably attractive. Perhaps we only catch a passing vision; the face, the figure passes us, oftener than not we never meet again, and even the memory of the vision which seemed so full of life, so strong, and so enduring, passes with the years, and we forget. ”

“ The inhabitants of Perugia, in every class, are unmistakably gentle and amiable, both in mind and manner. They are courteous to strangers, kind, helpful and calm. Even the street boys ask one for stamps instead of pennies. In their leisure they are gay, and in their work persistent. They are never frantic or demonstrative. As one sits at one’s window on warm spring nights, one almost wishes the people in the street would either fight or sing, but they do neither. They take their pleasures calmly, and hang upon their town walls by the hour, gazing out upon a view they love. ”

“ Early the following morning we turned our faces northward on Perugia, but took a last long look at Perugino’s altar-piece in the church of the Disciplinati. Faint golds, faint greens, a quiet landscape, with low hills falling peacefully on a low stretch of valley. No harsh shadows, no high lights, the shepherds crossing down the paths behind their browsing sheep. The Virgin, a type of purest girlhood with just enough of the woman in the way she holds the Child to show it is her own; young men, for kings, with angel faces, and the smile of saints ”

“ In these comparatively quiet times of ours we go about in foreign towns and look for art, and art alone. We seem to forget that art is but a small affair—a little landmark in the history of nations. There is an art in Umbria, an art so pure, so sweet, so tender that thinking of it we may easily forget the history of her men, or, if remembering, we seem to dream a dual dream. The art of Perugia was, maybe, the outcome of her almost fanatical religion, but the wars of her inhabitants have{92} always been her life-blood. ”

“ Away to the southwest of Perugia, above the lakes of Trasimene and Chiusi, with a wide view southwards towards Rome, and northwards to Cortona, is the little Umbrian hill-town of Città della Pieve. It is so deeply buried in its oak woods that one can barely see it from the hills and plains around it. The town is very old and very sleepy, built of red bricks with hardly any stones, and scarcely any buildings of importance. The streets seem fallen dead asleep. ”

“ Perugia (17) , Italian walled city on the right bank of the Tiber, 127 m. by rail N. of Rome, with a cathedral of the 15th century, some noteworthy churches, a Gothic municipal palace, picture gallery, university, and library; is rich in art treasures and antiquarian remains; it has silk and woollen industries; it was anciently called Perusia, and one of the cities of ancient Etruria, and in its day has experienced very varied fortunes; it was the centre of the Umbrian school of painting. ”

“ Mirrors, and beautifully painted pots, children’s toys and ladies’ curling-tongs—the Etruscan dead have left no lack of records of their ways of living. But, strong as was their personality, another and a stronger force had struggled through the soil of Italy. Rome had arisen to shine upon the growing world. It remained for Rome to leave the stamp of veritable history upon the city of Perugia.{9}
Throughout the early history of Rome, we catch dim rumours of an occasional connection or warfare with this corner of Etruria. ”

“ SIENA: BANNER-HOLDER.
We left at dawn, in the clear pale light which floods the Umbrian plain when the world is yet a little grey, and Perugia is nothing but a lovely outline on the crest of her hill. This is the light that [62] Perugino loved, the shadowless herald of the day, full of the mystery of the morning. The world woke slowly from her pale slumber in the arms of night; the sky deepened from beryl to gold. We found Thrasymene illumined with rosy morning fires, her hills empurpled, and the towers of her little cities aflame with sunrise. ”

“ But from the Age of Darkness men awoke both in their manners and in their buildings. Perugia of the Middle Ages shook the sleep from off her heavy eyelids, and with that passionate impulse towards Light which was perhaps the secret of the Renaissance, she too strove toward the Beautiful, and in a hurried, fevered fashion, she too decked herself with fairer things than castle towers and hovels. ”

“ It is one of those odd pathetic bits of bad taste which somehow charm us. The Saint is dressed in tawdry armour, but his face and limbs are exquisitely fine, his expression pure and very peaceful. His hair is long, the skin of his face waxen, he seems to be merely sleeping. One of the very earliest Umbrian frescoes of Perugia, “La Madonna del Verde,” is painted in a chapel to the right. The whole building is a remarkable mixture of early pagan, of Roman, and of Christian art, and we can only regret that the last should have been added later, and in its worst and most degraded era. ”