Tuscany

“ Yet it was not for Santa Margherita that we climbed Cortona's hill at dawn, but to see the rich plain of Tuscany in its amphitheatre of blue hills, each with a towered city for its crown—Chiusi, Città della Pieve, Montepulciano, and a host of others to which we had not learned to give their names. It was a panorama of surpassing beauty which opened out before us. Fold on fold the mountains lifted their heads above the mists of the valley, rising always towards the mighty crest of Monte Amiata, which was to loom upon so many of our horizons while we were journeying through the heart of Italy. ”

“ Truly they are come to Tuscany where Beauty is, and are far from Bethlehem, where Love lies sleeping. There on a mule, a black slave beside his stirrup, rides Cosimo Pater Patriae, and beside him comes Piero his son, attended too, and before them on a white horse stepping proudly, with jewels in his cap, rides the golden-haired Lorenzo, the youngest of the three kings, already magnificent, the darling of this world of hills and streams, which one day he will sing better than anyone of his time. ”

“ You have been to Pisa, of course, to Sienna, to San Gemigorano and Perugia?”
O sweet little red and golden towns of lovely green Tuscany, which indent with your towers the heights of the slopes planted with vines and olives! O generous artists with whom I lived so long, and whose visions are to me still my soul’s daily bread! Pardon me if I blasphemed your memory and your cult in replying as I did to the odious pedant. ”

“ Often as I wander through those rooms or loiter in the shadow under the cloisters of the beautiful courtyard, perhaps the most lovely court in Tuscany, the remembrance of that old fierce life which desired beauty so passionately and was so eager for every superiority, comes to me, and I ask myself how the dream which that world pursued with so much simplicity and enthusiasm can have led us at last to the world of to-day, with its orderly disorder, its trams and telegraphs and steam-engines, its material comfort which, how strangely, we have mistaken for civilisation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Siena or Florence, Pisa or Lucca, any of the flowery cities of Tuscany would have been its proper setting. It is too gay for Umbria, whose hills are bathed in the serene, ineffable calm of a mystic holiness, who, remembering her many saints, still keeps the low estate of a handmaiden of the Lord. It is like a golden iris plucked from some Tuscan garden, and transplanted upon the bosom of this sombre precipice of tufa upheaved by Nature in primeval struggles. For chance and the Papacy have grafted the most exotic bloom of Italian Gothic architecture upon the rock of Orvieto. ”

“ It is as though the dream of some Attic poet, for I cannot think that the heavy-eyed people of Etruria imagined such gods, lingers on in this little Tuscan town, and the echo of its ancient music vibrates in the stillness of the museum [5] like the murmur of waves in a shell. Or perhaps it is a magic in the air, the subtle air of Tuscany, that poets sing of, which has inspired more genius than we can find in all the rest of Italy.
For Arezzo, like Florence, has been the mother of great men. ”

“ Here is neither the dignity of Rome nor the gracious charm of Tuscany, but another world, a life more hot and passionate, more noisy and more sensuous, a character strangely blended out of the blood of many nations—Greek, Saracen, Norman, Spaniard—each of which contributed some burning drop to the quick glow of the Campanian nature, making it both fierce and languid, keen and subtle beyond measure when its interests are engaged, capable of labour, but not loving it, easily depressed, and when thwarted turning swiftly to the thought of blood. ”

“ It was very early in the morning when I came into Tuscany. Leaving Spezia overnight, I had slept at Lerici, and, waking in the earliest still dawn, I had set out over the hills, hoping to cross the Macra before breakfast.
In this tremulous and joyful hour, full of the profound gravity of youth hesitating on the threshold of life, the day rose out of the sea; so, a lily opening in a garden while we sleep transfigures it with its joy. ”

“ This ancient order, quietness, and beauty, which you may find everywhere in the country round about Florence, is the true Tuscany. The vulgarity of the city, for even in Italy the city life has become insincere, blatant, and for the most part a life of the middle class, seldom reaches an hundred yards beyond the barriera: and this is a charm in Florence, for you may so easily look on her from afar. ”

“ RETURN we now to the fair city of flowers—to thee, delightful Florence—vine crowned queen of Tuscany! The summer has come, and the gardens are brilliant with dyes and hues of infinite variety; the hills and the valleys are clothed in their brightest emerald garment—and the Arno winds its peaceful way between banks blushing with choicest fruits of the earth. ”

“ Already the streets were bound in shadows, so we wandered out among the olive-trees to the little ruined church of the Templars. From here we passed out of the city by an ancient gate, and down the hill to the Gothic washing-pool, where the women of San Gimignano wash and wring their linen in the cool of the evening. The delicate afterglow of Tuscany filled the sky, and the tall poplars whispered and shivered in the sunset wind. Up and down that steep and stony hill under the old Gothic gate went the women, with their snowy linen piled in baskets on their heads. ”

“ A kingdom of justice, goodness and morality, founded upon the free decision of the people, of the nation itself—which is the aim of all free people,—this it is which Tuscan patriots desire for their land and people. And this beautiful Tuscany, remarkable also for the good-heartedness and natural amiability of its people, seems well worthy to be conducted to such a noble fate. ”

“ Of the manifold charms of Tuscany, perhaps there is none so great or so enduring as the charm of manner peculiar to its rural population. Frank without being free, deferential but never servile, not without a fine reserve yet with never a touch of shyness, withholding not a certain tribute to social superiority, while tacitly intimating the fundamental equality that appertains to human brotherhood, the demeanour and speech of Tuscan contadini keep intercourse perpetually fresh, and impart to conversation on the tritest and most familiar themes perennial liveliness and interest. ”

“ There are pleasant shades, wild beasts, and leafy groves; there flow deep cool streams; there the eye can rest with delight upon the greater part of this earthly paradise which we salute by the name of Tuscany. No one can hope to taste the pleasures of domestic life better than in the quiet of the fields or under the shade of the forests; there we shall feel ourselves happy. Are you not pleased, Isabella? ”

“ That which the true friends of their country here, as well as in Piedmont, and, it may indeed be said, as well as the cultivated Italian community at large, desire above all things, is, for Tuscany, not a realm and a power like those of the middle ages,—that splendid blossom rather of beauty and prosperity than of moral nobility, not unlike the Cathedral of Florence, a work of art in form and outward covering, but imperfect and inwardly empty;—they want not this, for their ideal is one far more inward, far higher ”

“ It is not necessary to believe in ghosts; but I'll go bail that story is true. We are but two stones' throw from the gaunt hulk of a Franciscan Church; a file of dusty cypresses marks the ruins of a painful Calvary cut in the waste and shale of the hill-side. Below, as in a green pasture, Florence shines like a dove's egg in her nest of hills; I can pick out among the sheaf of spears which hedge her about the daintiest of them all, the crocketed pinnacle of Santa Croce, grey on blue; and then the lean ridge of a shrine the barest, simplest and most honest in all Tuscany. ”

“ Tuscany belongs to the Italian states, which were unsuccessful in their struggle for liberty in 1848, and is now, as I have heard from experienced men, more than formerly subjected to the caprices of the government. This government is neither loved nor obeyed from love, but rather from fear,—therefore imperfectly. Nevertheless the present Grand Duke is a mild, rather than a severe ruler, and Tuscany, during the latter half of this century, has variously advanced in the direction which is the peculiar excellence of our time. ”

“ But Tuscany was more than a commercial and industrial country. What Athens had been to the world two thousand years ago, republican Florence became during its period of prosperity, and for the second time in the history of mankind there arose one of those centres of light the reflected rays from which still illuminate our own times. Arts, letters, sciences, and political economy—everything, in fact, that is noble in this world was cultivated with an energy to which nations had been strangers for a long time. ”

“ Florence looked most beautiful as we approached it from the south, girt with her theatre of verdant hills, and glittering in the sunshine. All the country from Sienna to Florence is richly cultivated; diversified with neat hamlets, farms and villas. I was more struck with the appearance of the Tuscan peasantry on my return from the Papal dominions than when we passed through the country before: no where in Tuscany have we seen that look of abject negligent poverty, those crowds of squalid beggars which shocked us in the Ecclesiastical States. ”

“ The conviction is at once forced upon us, that they must have enjoyed a long succession of wise rulers, but, above all, one is struck with the beauty and grandeur which distinguish all the public works and roads and bridges in Tuscany. Everything here is at once substantial and clean. Use and profit, not less than elegance, are alike kept in view: everywhere we discern traces of the care which is taken to preserve them. The cities of the Papal States, on the contrary, only seem to stand because the earth is unwilling to swallow them up. ”

“ Jog the foot-path way through Tuscany in my company, it's Lombard Street to my hat I charm you out of your lassitude by my open humour. Things I say will have been said before, and better; my tunes may be stale and my phrasing rough: I may be irrelevant, irreverent, what you please. Eh, well! I am in Italy,—the land of shrugs and laughing. Shrug me (or my book) away; but, pray Heaven, laugh! And, as the young are always very wise when they find their voice and have their confidence well put out to usury, laugh (but in your cloak) when I am sententious or apt to tears. ”

“ Thus from a Tuscany, pagan, kindly, exuberant and desponding by turns, but always ready with that long slow smile you first meet in the Lorenzetti of Siena and afterwards find so tenderly expressed in its different manifestations in the Delia Robbia and Botticelli—a smile where patience and wistfulness struggle together and finally kiss,—I came down to Umbria and a people dying of what M. Huysmans grandiosely calls "our immense fatigue." Here is a people that has loved asceticism not wisely. ”

“ He now spoke in a loud voice, arousing her from her deep reverie:
"Awake, prophetess; it is not well that you should sleep; the spirits of the air have work for you; all Tuscany feels your superhuman presence." ”

“ THE MUGELLO
VERY year Italy is thronged with thousands of travellers who are thoroughly familiar with the larger cities of Tuscany: Florence, Lucca, Siena, and Leghorn are crowded with visitors, while Florence has practically become the Italian home of English and American wanderers; they not only fill hotels, pensions, and apartments, but occupy many of the villas on neighbouring hillsides. Fiesole's terraces are converted into tea-gardens, and resound with Anglo-Saxon chaffer for straw fans and baskets. ”

“ There is nothing like this in the history of Tuscany, whose palaces not long were fortresses nor her monks at any time successful politicians. Cosimo had pulled down the Florentine towers or ever the last Oddi had loosed hold of Ridolfo's throat, I know that Siena is just within that province geographically; in temperament, in art and manner, she has always shown herself intensely Umbrian. ”

“ There are but few really handsome women in Tuscany, but these few are of a class of beauty that may well have ravished the rest of their sex in this fair clime. Her countenance was radiant with thought and feeling, and her large and dewy eyes of blue—nature's own sweet tint—rested fondly on him by her side. ”

“ She was affluent in people, treasure, and honor; she possessed thirty thousand citizens capable of bearing arms, to which seventy thousand might still be added from the country. The entire population of Tuscany obeyed her, partly as subjects, partly as allies; and although distrust and hatred prevailed between the nobles and the people, yet, so far, no evil results had followed, but all lived united and at peace. ”

“ As soon march through evil dreams!
The north is the place for men. Eden was there; and the four rivers of Paradise are the Seine, the Oise, the Thames, and the Arun; there are grasses there, and the trees are generous, and the air is an unnoticed pleasure. The waters brim up to the edges of the fields. But for this bare Tuscany I was never made.
How far I had gone I could not tell, nor precisely how much farther San Quirico, the neighbouring town, might be. The imperfect map I had bought at Siena was too minute to give me clear indications. ”