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 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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 SAUNTERINGS 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES D. WARNER, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "my SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 
 
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 BOSTON : 
 JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, 
 
 (late TICKNOR & FIELDS, AND FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO.) 
 1872. 
 

 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, 
 
 By JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO., 
 
 In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 
 
 ssssssc 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 or CONGRESS 
 
 WASHINGTON 
 
 Boston : 
 Stereotyped and Printed by Rand, Avery, 6r' Co. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Misapprehensions Corrected. . , • . vii 
 
 Paris and London i 
 
 Surface Contrasts of Paris and London ... 3 
 Paris in May. — French Girls. — The Emperor at 
 
 Longchamps 9 
 
 An Imperial Review .14 
 
 The Low Countries and Rhineland ... 19 
 
 Amiens and Quaint Old Bruges . . . .21 
 
 Ghent and Antwerp . . . . . . .27 
 
 Amsterdam . . . . .; , , .30 
 
 Cologne and St. Ursula . . . . . .37 
 
 A Glimpse of the Rhine .40 
 
 Heidelberg . . . . . , . .43 
 
 Alpine Notes . . . . . . . ~. 47 
 
 Entering Switzerland. — Berne, its Beauties and 
 
 Bears 49 
 
 Hearing the Freiburg Organ. — First Sight of Lake 
 
 Leman . . . 54 
 
 Our English Friends 57 
 
 iii 
 
iv , CONTENTS. v 
 
 The Diligence to Chamouny 6 1 
 
 The Man who speaks EngUsh . . , . .66 
 
 A Walk to the Gorner-Grat 70 
 
 The Baths of Leuk .76 
 
 Over the Gemmi 80 
 
 Bavaria 83 
 
 American Impatience .85 
 
 A City of Color 88 
 
 A City living on the Past 92 
 
 Outside Aspects of Munich 96 
 
 The Military Life of Munich . . • . . . 104 
 The Emancipation of Munich ..... 107 
 
 Fashion in the Streets . . . . . . 1 10 
 
 The Gottesacker and Bavarian Funerals . . .116 
 The October Fest. — The Peasants and the King , 120 
 
 Indian Summer 131 
 
 A Taste of Ultramontanism . . . . .134 
 
 Changing Quarters 141 
 
 Christmas Time. — Music 150 
 
 Looking for Warm Weather . . , • iS7 
 From Munich to Naples 159 
 
 Ravenna 169 
 
 A Dead City 171 
 
 Down to the Pineta 175 
 
 Dante and Byron 179 
 
 Resting-place of Caesars. — Picture of a Beautiful 
 
 Heretic • . . i8i 
 
 A High Day in Rome . . . ". . .187 
 Palm Sunday in St. Peter's 189 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Vesuvius , , . . jgy 
 
 Climbing a Volcano jog 
 
 Sorrento Days 209 
 
 Outlines 211 
 
 The Villa Nardi ....... 216 
 
 Sea and Shore ....,,,. 223 
 
 On Top of the House 228 
 
 The Price of Oranges . , . , , , 232 
 
 Fascination 239 
 
 Monkish Perches . , , , , , , 243 
 
 A Dry Time 248 
 
 Children of the Sun . ...... 252 
 
 Saint Antonino 256 
 
 Punta Delia Campanella 262 
 
 Capri 268 
 
 The Story of Fiametta ....,, 273 
 
 St. Maria a Castello . . , , , , , 280 
 
 The Myth of the Sirens . , • . , , 286 
 
MISAPPREHENSIONS CORRECTED. 
 
 I SHOULD not like to ask an indulgent and idle public to 
 saunter about with me under a misapprehension. It 
 would be more agreeable to invite it to go nowhere than 
 somewhere ; for almost every one has been somewhere, and 
 has written about it. The only compromise I can suggest is, 
 that we shall go somewhere, and not learn any thing about 
 it. The instinct of the public against any thing like informa- 
 tion in a volume of this kind is perfectly justifiable ; and the 
 reader will perhaps discover that this is illy adapted for a text- 
 book in schools, or for the use of competitive candidates in 
 the civil-service examinations. 
 
 Years ago, people used to saunter over the Atlantic, and 
 spend weeks in filling journals with their monotonous emo- 
 tions. That is all changed now, and there is a misapprehen- 
 sion that ^the Atlantic has been practically subdued ; but no 
 one ever gets beyond the " rolling forties " without having 
 this impression corrected. 
 
 I confess to have been deceived about this Atlantic, the 
 roughest and windiest of oceans. If you look at it on the 
 map, it doesn't appear to be much, and, indeed, it is spoken of 
 as a ferry. What with the eight and nine days passages over 
 it, and the laying of the cable, which annihilates distance, I 
 had the impression that its tedious three thousand and odd 
 miles had been, somehow, partly done away with ; but they 
 are aU there. When one has sailed a thousand miles due east. 
 
viii MISAPPREHENSIONS CORRECTED. 
 
 and finds that he is then nowhere in particular, but is still 
 out, pitching about on an uneasy sea, under an inconstant sky, 
 and that a thousand miles more will not make any perceptible 
 change, he begins to have some conception of the unconquer- 
 able ocean. Columbus rises in my estipiation. 
 
 I was feeling uncomfortable that nothing had been done 
 for the memory of Christopher Columbus, when I heard some 
 months ago that thirty-seven guns had been fired off for him 
 in Boston. It is to be hoped that they were some satisfaction 
 to him. They were discharged by countrymen of his, who 
 are justly proud that he should have been able, after a search 
 of only a few weeks, to find a land where the hand-organ had 
 never been heard. The Italians, as a people, have not profited 
 much by this discovery ; not so much, indeed, as the Spaniards, 
 who got a reputation by it which even now gilds their decay. 
 That Columbus was born in Genoa, entitles the Italians to 
 celebrate the great achievement of his Ufe ; though why they 
 should discharge e:xactly thirty-seven guns I do not know. 
 Columbus did not discover the United States : that we partly 
 found ourselves, and partly bought, and gouged the Mexicans 
 out of. He did not even appear to know that there was a 
 continent here. He discovered the West Indies, which he 
 thought were the East ; and ten guns would be enough for 
 them. It is probable that he did open the way to the dis- 
 covery of the New World. If he had waited, however, some- 
 body else would have discovered it, — perhaps some English- 
 man ; and then we might have been spared all the old French 
 and Spanish wars. Columbu^i let the Spaniards into the 
 New World ; and their civilization has uniformly been a curse 
 to it. If he had brought Italians, who neither at that time 
 showed, nor since have shown, much inclination to come, we 
 should have had the opera, and made it a paying institution 
 by this time. Columbus was evidently a person who liked to 
 sail about, and didn't care much for consequences. 
 
MISAPPREHENSIONS CORRECTED. ix 
 
 Perhaps it is not an open question whether Columbus did 
 a good thing in first coming over here, — one that we ought 
 to celebrate with salutes and dinners. The Indians never 
 thanked him, for one party. The Africans had small ground 
 to be gratified for the market he opened for them. Here are 
 two continents that had no use for him. He led Spain into a 
 dance of great expectations, which ended in her gorgeous 
 ruin. He introduced tobacco into Europe, and laid the foun- 
 dation for more tracts and nervous diseases than the Romans 
 had in a thousand years. He introduced the potato into 
 Ireland indirectly ; and that caused such a rapid increase of 
 population, that the great famine was the result, and an enor- 
 mous emigration to New York, — hence Tweed and the con- 
 stituency of the Ring. Columbus is really responsible for 
 New York. He is responsible for our whole tremendous 
 experiment of democracy, open to all comers, the best three 
 in five to win. We cannot yet tell how it is coming out, what 
 with the foreigners and the communists and the women. On 
 our great stage we are playing a piece of mingled tragedy 
 and comedy, with what d^noument we cannot yet say. If it 
 comes out well, we ought to erect a monument to Christo- 
 pher as high as the one at Washington expects to be; and 
 we presume it is well to fire a salute occasionally to keep the 
 ancient mariner in mind while we are trying our great experi- 
 ment. And this reminds me that he ought to have had a 
 naval salute. 
 
 There is something almost heroic in the idea of firing off 
 guns for a man who has been stone-dead for about four cen- 
 turies. It must have had a lively and festive sound in Bos- 
 ton, when the meaning of the salute was explained. No one 
 could hear those great guns without a quicker beating of the 
 heart in gratitude to the great discoverer who had made 
 Boston possible. We are tiying to " realize " to ourselves 
 the importance of the 12th of October as an anniversary of 
 
X MISAPPREHENSIONS CORRECTED. 
 
 our potential existence. If any one wants to see how vivid 
 is the gratitude to Columbus, let him start out among our 
 business-houses with a subscription-paper to raise money for 
 powder to be exploded in his honor. And yet Columbus was 
 a well-meaning man ; and, if he did not discover a perfect con- 
 tinent, he found the only one that was left. 
 
 Columbus made voyaging on the Atlantic popular, and is 
 responsible for much of the delusion concerning it. Its great 
 practical use in this fast age is to give one an idea of distance 
 and of monotony. 
 
 I have listened in my time with more or less pleasure to 
 very rollicking songs about the sea, the flashing brine, the 
 spray and the tempest's roar, the wet sheet and the flowing 
 sea, a life on the ocean wave, and aU the rest of it. To para- 
 phrase a land proverb, let me write the songs of the sea, and 
 I care not who goes to sea and sings 'em. A square yard of 
 solid ground is worth miles of the pitching, turbulent stuff. 
 Its inability to stand still for one second is the plague of it. To 
 lie on deck when the sun shines, and swing up and down, 
 while the waves run hither and thither and toss their white 
 caps, is all weU enough : to lie in your narrow berth and 
 roll from side to side all night long ; to walk up-hill to your 
 stateroom door, and, when you get there, find you have got to 
 the bottom of the hill, and opening the door is like lifting up 
 a trap-door in the floor ; to deliberately start for some object, 
 and, before you know it, to be flung against it like a bag of 
 sand ; to attempt to sit down on your sofa, and find you are 
 sitting up ; to slip and slide and grasp at every thing within 
 reach, and to meet everybody leaning and walking on a slant, 
 as if a, heavy wind were blowing, and the laws of gravitation 
 were reversed ; to lie in your berth, and hear all the dishes on 
 the cabin-table go sousing off against the wall in a general 
 smash ; to sit at table holding your soup-plate with one hand, 
 and watching for a chance to put your spoon in when it comes 
 
MISAPPREHENSIONS CORRECTED. xi 
 
 high tide on your side of the dish ; to vigilantly watch the 
 lurch of the heavy dishes while holding your glass and your 
 plate and your knife and fork, and not to notice it when 
 Brown, who sits next you, gets the whole swash of the gravy 
 from the roast-beef dish on his light-colored pantaloons, and 
 see the look of dismay that only Brown can assume on such 
 an occasion ; to see Mrs. Brown advance to the table, sudden- 
 ly stop and hesitate, two waiters rush at her, with whom she 
 struggles wildly, only to go down in a heap with them in the 
 opposite corner ; to see her partially recover, but only to shoot 
 back again through her stateroom door, and be seen no more ; 
 — all this is quite pleasant and refreshing if you are tired of land, 
 but you get quite enough of it in a couple of weeks. You 
 become, in time, even a little tired of the Jew who goes about 
 wishing " he vas a veek older ; " and the eccentric man, who 
 looks at no one, and streaks about the cabin and on deck, 
 without any purpose, and plays shuffle-board alone, always 
 beating himself, and goes on the deck occasionally through the 
 sky-light instead of by the cabin door, washes himself at the 
 salt-water pump, and won't sleep in his stateroom, saying he 
 isn't used to sleeping in a bed,— as if the hard, narrow, uneasy 
 shelf of a berth was any thing like a bed ! — and you have heard 
 at last pretty nearly all about the officers, and their twenty 
 and thirty years of sea-life, and every ocean and port on the 
 habitable globe where they have been. There comes a day 
 when you are quite ready for land, and the scream of the 
 "gull " is a welcome sound. 
 
 Even the sailors lose the vivacity of the first of the voyage. 
 The first two or three days we had their quaint and half- 
 doleful singing in chorus as they pulled at the ropes : now 
 they are satisfied with short ha-ho's, and uncadenced grunts. 
 It used to be that the leader sang, in ever-varying lines of 
 nonsense, and the chorus struck in with fine effect, like this : — 
 
xii MISAPPREHENSIONS CORRECTED. 
 
 I wish I was in Liverpool town. 
 (^Ckorus.) Handy-pan, handy O I 
 
 O captain I where'd ship your crew? 
 
 Handy-pan, handy O I 
 Oh I pull away, my bully crew, 
 
 Handy-pan, handy O ! 
 
 There are verses enough of this sort to reach across the 
 Atlantic ; and they are not the worst thing about it either, or 
 the most tedious. One learns to respect this ocean, but not 
 to love it; and he leaves it with mingled feelings about 
 Columbus. 
 
 And now, having crossed it, — a fact that cannot be con- 
 cealed, — let us not be under the misapprehension that we 
 are set to any task other than that of sauntering where it 
 pleases us. 
 
PARIS AND LONDON. 
 
SURFACE CONTRASTS OF PARIS AND 
 LONDON. 
 
 I WONDER if it is the Channel ? Almost every thing 
 is laid to the Channel : it has no friends. The 
 sailors call it the nastiest bit of water in the world. All 
 travellers anathematize it. I have now crossed it three 
 times in different places, by long routes and short ones, 
 and have always found it as comfortable as any sailing 
 anywhere, — sailing being one of the most tedious and 
 disagreeable inventions of a fallen race. But such is not 
 the usual experience : most people would make great 
 sacrifices to avoid the hour and three-quarters in one of, 
 those loathsome little Channel boats, — they always call 
 them loathsome, though I didn't see but they are as 
 good as any boats. I. have never found any boat that 
 hasn't a detestable habit of bobbing round. The Chan- 
 nel is hated : and no one who has much to do with it is 
 surprised at the projects for bridging it and for boring a 
 hole under it; though I have scarcely ever met an 
 Englishman who wants either done, — he does not desire 
 any more facile communication with the French than 
 now exists. The traditional hatred may not be so strong 
 as it was, but it is hard to say on which side is the most 
 ignorance and contempt of the other. 
 
 It must be the Channel : that is enough to produce a 
 physical disagreement even between the two coasts ; and 
 there cannot be a greater contrast in the cultivated 
 world than between the two lands lying so close to each 
 other; and the contrast of their capitals is even more 
 
 3 
 
4 SURFACE CONTRASTS 
 
 decided, — I was about to say rival capitals, but they have 
 not enough in common to make them rivals. I have 
 lately been over to London for a week, going by the 
 Dieppe and New-Haven route at night, and returning by 
 another ; and the contrasts I speak of were impressed 
 upon me anew. Every thing here in and about Paris was 
 in the green and bloom of spring, and seemed to me very 
 lovely ; but my first glance at an English landscape 
 made it all seem pale and flat. We went up from New 
 Haven to London in the morning, and feasted our eyes 
 all the way. The French foliage is thin, spindling, 
 sparse ; the grass is thin and light in color — in contrast. 
 The English trees are massive, solid in substance and 
 color ; the grass is thick, and green as emerald ; the turf 
 is.like the heaviest Wilton carpet. The whole effect is 
 that of vegetable luxuriance and solidity, as it were a 
 tropical luxuriance, condensed and hardened by northern 
 influences. If my eyes remember well, the French land- 
 scapes are more like our own, in spring tone, at least ; but 
 the English are a revelation to us strangers of what green 
 really is, and what grass and trees can be. I had been 
 told that we did well to see England before going to the 
 Continent, for it would seem small and only pretty after- 
 wards. Well, leaving out Switzerland, I have seen noth- 
 ing in that beauty which satisfies the eye and wins the 
 heart to compare with England in spring. When we 
 annex it to our sprawling country, which lies out-doors 
 in so many climates, it will make a charming little 
 retreat for us in May and June, — a sort of garden of 
 delight, whence we shall draw our May butter and our 
 June roses. It will only be necessary to put it under 
 glass to make it pleasant the year round. 
 
 When we passed within the hanging smoke of London 
 town, threading our way amid numberless railway tracks, 
 sometimes over a road and sometimes under one, now 
 burrowing into the ground, and now running along 
 among the chimney-pots, — when we came into the pale 
 light and the thickening industry of a London day, we 
 
OF PARIS AND LONDON. 5 
 
 could but at once contrast Paris. Unpleasant weatlier 
 usually reduces places to an equality of disagreeableness. 
 But Paris, with its wide streets, light, handsome houses, 
 gay windows, and smiling little parks and fountains, 
 keeps up a tolerably pleasant aspect, let the weather do 
 its worst. But London, with its low, dark, smutty brick 
 houses and insignificant streets, settles down hopelessly 
 into the dumps when the weather is bad. Even with 
 the sun doing its best on the eternal cloud of smoke, it is 
 dingy and gloomy enough, and so dirty, after spic-span, 
 shining Paris. And there is a contrast in the matter 
 of order and system ; the lack of both in London is ap- 
 parent. You detect it in public places, in crowds, in the 
 streets. The " social evil " is bad enough in its demon- 
 strations in Paris : it is twice as offensive in London. I 
 have never seen a drunken woman in Paris : I saw many 
 of them in the daytime in London. I saw men and 
 women fight in the streets, — a man kick and pound a wo- 
 man ; and nobody interfered. There is a brutal streak in 
 the Anglo-Saxon, I fear, — a downright animal coarseness, 
 that does not exhibit itself the other side of the Channel. 
 It is a proverb, that the London policemen are never at 
 hand. The stout fellows with their clubs look as if they 
 might do service ; but what a contrast they are to the 
 Paris ser gents de ville ! The latter, with his dress -coat, 
 cocked hat, long rapier, white gloves, neat, polite, atten- 
 tive, alert, — always with the manner of a Jesuit turned 
 soldier, — you learn to very much trust, if not respect ; 
 and you feel perfectly secure that he will protect you, and 
 give you your rights in any corner of Paris. It does look 
 as if he might slip that slender rapier through your body 
 in a second, and pull it out and wipe it, and not move a 
 muscle ; but I don't think he would do it unless he were 
 directly ordered to. He would not be likely to knock 
 you down and drag you out, in mistake for the rowdy 
 who was assaulting you. 
 
 A great contrast between the habits of the people of 
 London and Paris is shown by their eating and drinking. 
 
6 SURFACE CONTRASTS 
 
 Paris is brilliant witli cafes : all the world frequents them 
 to sip coiFee (and too often absinthe), read the papers, 
 and gossip over the news ; take them away, as all travel- 
 lers know, and Paris would not know itself. There is not 
 a cafe in London : instead of cafes, there are gin-mills ; 
 instead of light wine, there is heavy beer. The restau- 
 rants and restaurant life are as different as can be. You 
 can get any thing you wish in Paris : you can live very 
 cheaply or very dearly, as you like. The range is more 
 limited in London. I do not fancy the usual run of Paris 
 restaurants. You get a great deal for your money, in 
 variety and quantity ; but you don't exactly know what 
 it is : and in time you tire of odds and ends, which destroy 
 your hunger without exactly satisfying you. For myself, 
 after a pretty good run of French cookery (and it beats 
 the world for making the most out of little), when I sat 
 down again to what the eminently-respectable waiter in 
 white and black calls " a dinner off the joint, sir," with 
 what belongs to it, and ended up with an attack on a 
 section of a cheese as big as a bass-drum, not to forget a 
 pewter mug of amber liquid, I felt as if I had touched 
 bottom again, — got something substantial, had what 
 you call a square meal. The English give you the sub- 
 stantials, and better, I believe, than any other people. 
 Thackeray used to come over to Paris to get a good din- 
 ner now and then. I have tried his favorite restaurant 
 here, the cuisine of which is famous far beyond the banks 
 of the Seine ; but I think if he, hearty trencher-man that 
 he was, had lived in Paris, he would have gone to Lon- 
 don for a dinner oftener than he came here. 
 
 And as for a lunch, — this eating is a fascinating theme, 
 — commend me to a quiet inn of England. We happened 
 to be out at Kew Gardens the other afternoon. You 
 ought to go to Kew, even if the Duchess of Cambridge is 
 not at home. There is not such a park out of England, 
 considering how beautiful the Thames is there. What 
 splendid trees it has ! the horse-chestnut, now a mass of 
 pink-and- white blossoms, from its broad base, which rests 
 
OF PARIS AND LONDON. 7 
 
 on the ground, to its high rounded dome ; the hawthorns, 
 white and red, in full flower ; the sweeps and glades of 
 living green, — turf on which you walk with a grateful 
 sense of drawing life directly from the yielding, bountiful 
 earth, — a green set out and heightened by flowers in 
 masses of color (a great variety of rhododendrons, for 
 one thing), to say nothing of magnificent greenhouses 
 and outlying flower-gardens. Just beyond are Richmond 
 Hill and Hampton Court, and five or six centuries of tra- 
 dition and history and romance. Before you enter the 
 garden, you pass the green. On one side of it are cottages, 
 and on the other the old village church and its quiet 
 churchyard. Some boys were playing cricket on the 
 sward, and children were getting as intimate with the 
 turf and the sweet earth as their nurses would let them. 
 We turned into a little cottage, which gave notice of hos- 
 pitality for a consideration ; and were shown, by a pretty 
 maid in calico, into an upper room, — a neat, cheerful, com- 
 mon room, with bright flowers in the open windows, and 
 white muslin curtains for contrast. We looked out on 
 the green and over to the beautiful churchyard, where 
 one of England's greatest painters, Gainsborough, lies in 
 rural repose. It is nothing to you, who always dine off 
 the best at home, and never encounter dirty restaurants 
 and snuffy inns, or run the gauntlet of Continental hotels, 
 every meal being an experiment of great interest, if not 
 of danger, to say that this brisk little waitress spread a 
 snowy cloth, and set thereon meat and bread and but- 
 ter and a salad: that conveys no idea to your mind. 
 Because you cannot see that the loaf of wheaten bread 
 was white and delicate, and full of the goodness of the 
 grain ; or that the butter, yellow as a guinea, tasted of 
 grass and cows, and all the rich juices of the verdant 
 year, and was not mere flavorless grease ; or that the cuts 
 of roast beef, fat and lean, had qualities that indicate to 
 me some moral elevation in the cattle, — high-toned, rich 
 meat ; or that the salad was crisp and delicious, and rather 
 seemed to enjoy being eaten, at least, didn't disconsolately 
 
8 
 
 PARIS AND LONDON. 
 
 wilt down at the prospect, as most salad does. I do not 
 wonder that Walter Scott dwells so much on eating, or 
 lets his heroes pull at the pewter mugs so often. Per- 
 haps one might find a better lunch in Paris, but he surely 
 couldn't find this one. 
 
 I 
 
PARIS IN MAY. — FRENCH GIRLS. — THE 
 EMPEROR AT LONGCHAMPS. 
 
 IT was tlie first of May when we came up from Italy. 
 The spring grew on us as we advanced north : 
 veo;etation seemed further alono; than it was south of the 
 Alps. Paris was bathed in sunshine, wrapped in deli- 
 cious weather, adorned with all the delicate colors of 
 blushing spring. Now the horse-chestnuts are all in 
 bloom, and so is the hawthorn ; and in parks and gar- 
 dens there are rows and alleys of trees, with blossoms 
 of pink and of white ; patches of flowers set in the light 
 green grass ; solid masses of gorgeous color, which fill all 
 the air with perfume ; fountains that dance in the sun- 
 light as if just released from prison; and every where the 
 soft sufiusion of May. Young maidens who make their 
 first communion go into the churches in processions of 
 hundreds, all in white, from the flowing veil to the satin 
 slipper ; and I see them everywhere for a week after the 
 ceremony, in their robes of innocence, often with bouquets 
 of flowers, and attended by their friends ; all concerned 
 making it a joyful holiday, as it ought to be. I hear, of 
 course, with what false ideas of life these girls are edu- 
 cated ; how they are watched before marriage ; how the 
 marriage is only one of arrangement, and Avhat liberty 
 they eagerly seek afterwards. I met a charming Paris 
 lady last winter in Italy, recently married, v/ho said she 
 had never been in the Louvre in her life ; never had seen 
 any of the magnificent pictures or Avorld-famous statuary 
 there, because girls were not allowed to go there, lest 
 
 9 
 
10 PARIS IN MA V, 
 
 they should see something that they ought not to see. I 
 suppose they look with wonder at the young American 
 girls who march up to any thing that ever was created 
 with undismayed front. 
 
 Another Frenchwoman, a lady of talent and the best 
 breeding, recently said to a friend, in entire unconscious- 
 ness that she was saying any thing remarkable, that, when 
 she was seventeen, her great desire was to marry one 
 of her uncles (a thing not very unusual with the papal 
 dispensation), in order to keep all the money in the 
 family ! That was the ambition of a girl of seventeen. 
 
 I like, on these sunny days, to look into the Luxem- 
 bourg Garden : nowhere else is the eye more delighted 
 with life and color. In the afternoon, especially, it is a 
 baby-show worth going far to see. The avenues are full 
 of children, whose animated play, Hght laughter, and 
 happy chatter, and pretty, picturesque dress, make a sort 
 of fairy grove of the garden; and all the nurses of that 
 quarter bring their charges there, and sit in the shade, 
 sewing, gossiping, and comparing the merits of the little 
 dears. One baby differs from another in glory, I sup- 
 pose ; but I think on such days that they are all lovely, 
 taken in the mass, and all in sweet harmony with the 
 delicious atmosphere, the tender green, and the other 
 flowers of spring. A baby can't do better than to spend 
 its spring days in the Luxembourg Garden. 
 
 There are several ways of seeing Paris besides roam- 
 ing up and down before the blazing shop-windows, and 
 lounging by daylight or gaslight along the crowded and 
 gay boulevards ; and one of the best is to go to the Bois 
 de Boulogne on a fete-day, or when the races are in prog- 
 ress. This famous wood is very disappointing at first to 
 one who has seen the English parks, or who remembers 
 the noble trees and glades and avenues of that at Munich. 
 To be sure, there is a lovely little lake and a pretty arti- 
 ficial cascade, and the roads and walks are good ; but the 
 trees are all saplings, and nearly all the " wood " is a 
 thicket of small stuff. Yet there is green grass that one 
 
PARIS IN MAY. II 
 
 can roll on, and there is a grove of small pines that one 
 can sit under. It is a pleasant place to drive toward 
 evening; but its great attraction is the crowd there. All 
 the principal avenues are lined with chairs, and there 
 people sit to watch the streams of carriages. 
 
 I went out to the Bois the other day, when there were 
 races going on ; not that I went to the races, for I know 
 nothing about them, "per se, and care less. All running 
 races are pretty much alike. You see a lean horse, neck 
 and tail, flash by you, with a jockey in colors on his back; 
 and that is the whole of it. Unless you have some money 
 on it, in the pool or otherwise, it is impossible to raise 
 any excitement. The day I went out, the Champs 
 Elysees, on both sides, its whole length, was crowded 
 with people, rows and ranks of them sitting in chairs and 
 on benches. The Avenue de I'lmperatrice, from the Arc 
 de I'Etoile to the entrance of the Bois, was full of prome- 
 naders ; and the main avenues of the Bois, from the chief 
 entrance to the race-course, were lined with people, who 
 stood or sat, simply to see the passing show. There 
 could not have been less than ten miles of spectators, in 
 double or triple rows, who had taken places that after- 
 noon to watch the turnouts of fashion and rank. These 
 great avenues were at all times, from three till seven, 
 filled with vehicles ; and at certain points, and late in the 
 day, there was, or would have been anywhere else except 
 in Paris, a jam. I saw a great many splendid horses, 
 but not so many fine liveries as one will see on a swell- 
 day in London. There was one that I liked. A hand- 
 some carriage, with one seat, was drawn by four large 
 and elegantblack horses, the two near horses ridden by 
 postilions in blue and silver, — blue roundabouts, white 
 breeches and top-boots, a round-topped silver cap, and the 
 hair, or wig, powdered, and showing just a little behind. 
 A footman mounted behind, seated, wore the same colors ; 
 and the whole establishment was exceedingly tonnish. 
 
 The race-track (Longchamps, as it is called), broad 
 and beautiful springy turf, is not different from some 
 
12 PARIS IN MA V. 
 
 others, except that the enclosed oblong space is not flat, 
 but undulating just enough for beauty, and so framed in 
 by graceful woods, and looked on by chateaux and upland 
 forests, that I thought I had never seen a sweeter bit 
 of greensward. St. Cloud overlooks it, and villas also 
 regard it from other heights. The day I saw it, the horse- 
 chestnuts were in bloom ; and there was, on the edges, a 
 cloud of pink-and-white blossoms, that gave a soft and 
 charming appearance to the entire landscape. The crowd 
 in the grounds, in front of the stands for judges, royalty, 
 and people who are privileged or will pay for places, was, 
 I suppose, much as usual, — =■ aii excited throng of young 
 and jockey-looking men, with a few women-gamblers in 
 their midst, making up the pool ; a pack of carriages 
 along the circuit of the track, with all sorts of people, 
 except the very good; and conspicuous the elegantly- 
 habited daughters of sin and satin, with servants in 
 livery, as if they had been born to it ; gentlemen and 
 ladies strolling about, or reclining on the sward, and a 
 refreshment-stand in lively operation. 
 
 When the bell rang, we all cleared out from the track, 
 and I happened to get a position by the railing. I was 
 looking over to the Pavilion, where I supposed the Em- 
 peror to be, when the man next to me cried, " Voila ! " 
 and, looking up, two horses brushed right by my face, of 
 which I saw about two tails and one neck, and they were 
 gone. Pretty soon they came round again, and one was 
 ahead, as is apt to be the case ; and somebody cried, 
 " Bully for Therese ! " or French to that effect, and it 
 was all over. Then we rushed across to the emperor's 
 Pavilion, except that I walked with all the dignity con- 
 sistent with rapidity, and there, in the midst of his suite, 
 sat the Man of December, a stout, broad, and heavy- 
 faced man as you know, but a man who impresses one 
 with a sense of force and purpose, — sat, as I say, and 
 looked at us through his narrow, half-shut eyes, till he 
 was satisfied that I had got his features through my glass, 
 when he deliberately arose and went in. 
 
PARIS IN MA Y, 13 
 
 All Paris was out that day, — it is always out, by the 
 way, when the sun shines, and in whatever part of the 
 city you happen to be ; and it seemed to me there was a 
 special throng clear down to the gate of the Tuileries, to 
 see the emperor and the rest of us come home. He went 
 round by the Rue Rivoli, but I walked through the gar- 
 dens. The soldiers from Africa sat by the gilded portals, 
 . as usual, — aliens, and yet always with the port of con- 
 querors here in Paris. Their nonchalant indifference 
 and soldierly bearing always remind me of the sort of 
 force the Emperor has at hand to secure his throne. I 
 think the blouses must look askance at these satraps of 
 the desert. The single jet fountain in the basin was 
 springing its highest, — a quivering pillar of water to 
 match the stone shaft of Egypt which stands close by. 
 The sun illuminated it, and threw a rainbow from it a 
 hundred feet long, upon the white and green dome of 
 chestnut-trees near. When I was farther down the 
 avenue, I had the dancing column of water, the obelisk, 
 and the Arch of Triumph all in line, and the rosy sunset 
 beyond. 
 
 2 
 
AN IMPERIAL REVIEW. 
 
 THE Prince and Princess of Wales came iip to 
 Paris in the beginning of May, from Italy, Egypt, 
 and alongshore, staid at a hotel on the Place Ven- 
 dome, where they can get beef that is not horse, and 
 is rare, and beer brewed in the royal dominions, and 
 have been entertained with cordiality by the Emperor. 
 Among the spectacles which he has shown them, is one 
 calculated to give them an idea of his peaceful inten- 
 tions, — a grand review of cavalry and artillery at the 
 Bois de Boulogne. It always seems to me a curious com- 
 ment upon the state of our modern civilization, that, when 
 one prince visits another here in Europe, the first thing 
 that the visited does, by way of hospitality, is to get out 
 his troops, and show his rival how easily he could 
 " lick " him, if it came to that. It is a little puerile. At 
 any rate, it is an advance upon the old fashion of getting 
 up a joust at arms, and inviting the guest to come out 
 and have his head cracked in a friendly way. 
 
 The review, which had been a good deal talked about, 
 came off in the afternoon ; and all the world went to it. 
 The avenues of the Bois were crowded with carriages, 
 and the walks with footpads. Such a constellation of 
 royal personages met on one field must be seen ; lor, 
 besides the imperial family and Albert Edward and his 
 Danish beauty, there was to be the Archduke of Aus- 
 tria, and no end of titled personages besides. At three 
 o'clock the royal company, in the Emperor's carriages, 
 drove upon the training-ground of the Bois, where the 
 14 
 
AN IMPERIA L RE VIE W. 1 5 
 
 troops awaited them. All the party, except the Princess 
 of Wales, then mounted horses, and rode along the lines, 
 and afterwards retired to a wood-covered knoll at one 
 end to witness the evolutions. The training-ground is a 
 noble, slightly-undulating piece of greensward, perhaps 
 three-quarters of a mile long and half that in breadth, 
 hedged about with graceful trees, and bounded on one 
 side by the Seine. Its borders were rimmed that day 
 with thousands of people on foot and in carriages, — a 
 gay sight, in itself, of color and fashion. A more brilliant 
 spectacle than the field presented cannot well be ima- 
 gined. Attention was divided between the gentle emi- 
 nence where the imperial party stood, -■ — a throng of noble 
 persons backed by the gay and glittering Guard of the 
 Emperor, as brave a show as chivalry ever made, — 
 and the field of green, with its lono- lines in martial 
 array ; every variety of splendid uniforms, the colors and 
 combinations that most dazzle and attract, with shining 
 brass and gleaming steel, and magnificent horses of war, 
 regiments of black, gray, and bay. 
 
 The evolutions were such as to stir the blood of the 
 most sluo-o-ish. A regiment, full front, would charge 
 down upon a dead run from the far field, men shouting, 
 sabres flashing, horses thundering along, so that the 
 ground shook, towards the imperial party, and, when 
 near, stop suddenly, wheel to right and left, and gallop 
 back. Others would succeed them.rapidly, coming up the 
 centre while their predecessors filed down the sides ; so 
 that the whole field was a moving mass of splendid color 
 and glancing steel. Now and then a rider was unhorsed 
 in the furious rush, and went scrambling out of harm, 
 while the steed galloped off with free rein. This display 
 was followed by that of the flying artillery, battalion after 
 battalion, which came clatterino; and roaring along, in 
 double lines stretching half across the field, stopped and 
 rapidly discharged its pieces, waking up all the region 
 with echoes, filling the plain with the smoke of gunpow- 
 der, and starting into rearing activity all the carriage- 
 
i6 AN IMPERIAL REVIEW. 
 
 ^i 
 
 horsBs in the Bois. How long this continued I do not 
 know, nor how many men participated in the review ; 
 but they seemed to pour up from the far end in unend- 
 inoj columns. I think the reoiments must have charsred 
 over and over again. It gave some people the impression 
 that there were a hundred thousand troops on the 
 ground. I set it at fifteen to twenty thousand. Gallig- 
 nani next morning said there were only six thousand ! 
 After the charging was over, the reviewing party rode 
 to the centre of the field, and the troops galloped round 
 them ; and the Emperor distributed decorations. We 
 could recognize the Emperor and Empress ; Prince 
 Albert in huzzar uniform, with a green plume in his cap ; 
 and the Prince Imperial, in cap and the uniform of a 
 lieutenant, — on horseback in front ; while the Princess 
 occupied a carriage behind them. 
 
 There was a crush of people at the entrance to see 
 the royals make their exit. Gendarmes were busy, and 
 mounted guards went smashing through the crowd to 
 clear a space. Everybody was on the tiptoe of expec- 
 tation. There is a portion of the Emperor's guard ; 
 there is an officer of the household ; there is an embla- 
 zoned carriage ; and, quick, there ! with a rush they 
 come, driving as if there was no crowd, with imperial 
 haste, postilions and outriders and the imperial carriage. 
 There is a sensation, a cordial and not loud greeting, 
 but no Yankee-like cheers. That heavy gentleman in 
 citizen's dress, who looks neither to right nor left, is Na- 
 poleon III. ; that handsome woman, grown full in the 
 face of late, but yet with the bloom of beauty and the 
 sweet grace of command, in hat and dark riding-habit, 
 bowing constantly to right and left, and smiling, is the 
 Empress Eugenie. And they are gone. As we look for 
 something more, there is a rout in the side avenue ; some- 
 thing is coming, unexpected, from another quarter: dra- 
 goons dash through the dense mass, shouting and ges- 
 ticulating, and a dozen horses go by, turning the corner 
 Uke a small whirlwind, urged on by whip and spur, a 
 
AN IMPERIAL KE VIE W. 1 7 
 
 handsome boy riding in the midst, — a boy in cap and 
 simple uniJbrm, riding gracefully and easily and jauntily, 
 and out of sight in a minute. It is the boy Prince Im- 
 perial and his guard. It was like him to dash in unex- 
 pectedly, as he has broken into the line of European 
 princes. He rides gallantly, and Fortune smiles on him 
 to-day ; but he rides into a troubled future. There was 
 one more show, — a carriage of the Emperor, with offi- 
 cers, in English colors and side-whiskers, riding in ad- 
 vance and behind : in it the future Kins; of Eng-land, 
 the heavy, selfish-faced young man, and beside him his 
 princess, popular wherever she shows her winning face, 
 — a fair, sweet woman, in light and flowing silken stuffs 
 of spring, a vision of lovely youth and rank, also gone in 
 a minute. 
 
 These English visitors are enjoying the pleasures of 
 the French capital. On Sunday, as I passed the Hotel 
 Bristol, a crowd, principally English, was waiting in 
 front of it to see the Prince and Princess come out, and 
 enter one of the Emperor's carriages in waiting. I heard 
 an Englishwoman, who was looking on with admiration 
 " sticking out " all over, remark to a friend in a very 
 loud whisper,, " I tell you, the Prince lives every day of 
 his life." It struck me as a very meaty expression, from 
 her point of view. The princely pair came out at length, 
 and drove away, going to visit Versailles. I don't know 
 what the Queen would think of this way of spending 
 Sunday ; but, if Albert Edward never does any thing 
 worse, he don't need half the praying for that he gets 
 every Sunday in all the English churches and chapels. 
 
 2* 
 
THE LOW COUNTRIES AND 
 RHINELAND. 
 
AMIENS AND QUAINT OLD BRUGES. 
 
 THEY have not yet found out tlie secret in France 
 of banishing dust from railway-carriages. Paris, 
 late in June, was hot, but not dusty : the country was 
 both. There is an uninteresting glare and hardness in 
 a French landscape on a sunny day. The soil is thin, 
 the trees are slender, and one sees not much luxury or 
 comfort. Still, one does not usually see much of either 
 on a flying train. We spent a night at Amiens, and 
 had several hours for the old cathedral, the sunset light 
 on its noble front and towers and spire and flying but- 
 tresses, and the morning rays bathing its rich stone. As 
 one stands near it in front, it seems to tower away into 
 -heaven, a mass of carving and sculpture, — figures of 
 saints and martyrs who have stood in the sun and storm 
 for ages, as they stood in their lifetime, with a patient 
 waiting. It was like a great company, a Christian host, 
 in attitudes of praise and worship. There they were, 
 ranks on ranks, silent in stone, when the last of the 
 Ions; twilight illumined them : and there in the same 
 impressive patience they waited the golden day. It 
 required little fancy to feel that they had lived, and now 
 in long procession came down the ages. The central 
 portal is lofty, wide, arid crowded with figures. The side 
 is only less rich than the front. Here the old Gothic build- 
 ers let their fancy riot in grotesque gargoyles, — figures 
 of animals, and imps of sin,- which stretch out their long 
 necks for water-spouts above. From the ground to the 
 top of the unfinished towers is one mass of rich stone 
 
 21 
 
22 AMIENS AND QUAINT OLD BRUGES. 
 
 work, the creation of genius that hundreds of years ago 
 knew no other way to write its poems than with the 
 chisel. The interior is very magnificent also, and has 
 some splendid stained glass. At eight o'clock, the 
 priests were chanting vespers to a larger congregation 
 than many churches have on Sunday : their voices 
 were rich and musical, and, joined with the organ notes, 
 floated sweetly and impressively through the dim and 
 vast interior. We sat near the great portal, and, look- 
 ing down the long, arched nave and choir to the cluster 
 of candles burning on the high altar, before which the 
 priests chanted, one could not but remember how many 
 centuries the same act of worship had been almost un- 
 interrupted within, while the apostles and martyrs stood 
 without, keeping watch of the unchanging heavens. 
 
 When I stepped in, early in the morning, the first 
 mass was in progress. The church was nearly empty. 
 Looking within the choir, I saw two stout young priests 
 lustily singing the prayers in deep, rich voices. .One 
 of them leaned back in his seat, and sang away, as if he 
 had taken a contract to do it, using, from time to time, 
 an enormous red handkerchief, with which and his nose 
 he produced a trumpet obligato. As I stood there, a 
 poor dwarf hobbled in and knelt on the bare stones, and 
 was the only worshipper, until, at length, a half-dozen 
 priests swept in from the sacristy, and two processions 
 of young school-girls entered from either side. They 
 have the skull of John the Baptist in this cathedral. I 
 did not see it, although I suppose I could have done so 
 for a franc to the beadle : but I saw a very good stone 
 imitation of it ; and his image and story fill the church. 
 It is something to have seen the place that contains his 
 skull. 
 
 The country becomes more interesting as one gets 
 into Belgium. Windmills are frequent: in and near 
 Lille are some six hundred of them ; and they are a 
 great help to a landscape that wants fine trees. At 
 Courtrai, we looked into Notre Dame, a thirteenth-cen- 
 
AMIENS AND QUAINT OLD BRUGES. 23 
 
 tury cathedral, which has a Vandyke (" The Raising of 
 the Cross "), and the chapel of the Counts of Flanders, 
 where workmen were uncovering some frescos that were 
 whitewashed over in the war-times. The town hall has 
 two fine old chimney-pieces carved in wood, with quaint 
 figures, — work that one must go to the Netherlands 
 to see. Toward evening we came into the ancient town 
 of Bruges. The country all day has been mostly flat, 
 but thoroughly cultivated. Windmills appear to do all 
 the labor of the people, — raising the water, grinding the 
 grain, sawing the lumber ; and they everywhere lift their 
 long arms up to the sky. Things look more and more 
 what we call " foreign." Harvest is going on, of hay and 
 grain ; and men and women work together in the fields. 
 The gentle sex has its rights here. We saw several 
 women acting as switch-tenders. Perhaps the use of the 
 switch comes natural to them. Justice, however, is still 
 in the hands of the men. We saw a Dutch court in 
 session in a little room in the town hall at Courtrai. 
 The justice wore a little red cap, and sat informally be- 
 hind a cheap table. I noticed that the witnesses were 
 treated with unusual consideration, being allowed to sit 
 down at the table opposite the little justice, who inter- 
 rogated them in a loud voice. At the stations to-day 
 we see more friars in coarse, woollen dresses, and sandals, 
 and the peasants with wooden sabots. 
 
 "As the sun goes to the horizon, we have an effect 
 sometimes produced by the best Dutch artists, — a won- 
 derful transparent light, in which the landscape looks 
 like a_ picture, with its church-spires of stone, its wind- 
 mills, its slender trees, and red-roofed houses. It is a good 
 light and a good hour in which to enter Bruges, that 
 city of the past. Once the city was greater than Ant- 
 werp ; and up the Rege came the commerce of the East, — 
 merchants from the Levant, traders in jewels and silks. 
 Now the tall houses wait for tenants, and the streets 
 have a deserted air. After nightfall, as we walked in 
 the middle of the roughly-paved streets, meeting few 
 
24 AMIENS AND QUAINT OLD BRUGES, 
 
 people, and hearing only the echoing clatter of the 
 wooden sabots of the few who were abroad, the old 
 spirit of the place came over us. We sat on a bench 
 in the market-place, a treeless square, hemmed in 
 by quaint, gabled houses, late in the evening, to listen to 
 the chimes from the belfry. The tower is less than four 
 hundred feet high, and not so high by some seventy feet 
 as the one on Notre Dame near by ; but it is very pic- 
 turesque, in spite of the fact that it springs out of a 
 rummagy-looking edifice, one-half of which is devoted 
 to soldiers' barracks, and the other to markets. The 
 chimes are called the finest in Europe. It is well to 
 hear the finest at once, and so have done with the tedious 
 things. The Belgians are as fond of chimes as the Dutch 
 are of stagnant water. We heard them everywhere in 
 Belgium ; and in some towns they are incessant, jangling 
 every seven and a half minutes. The chimes at Bruges 
 ring every quarter-hour for a minute, and at the full 
 hour attempt a tune. The revolving machinery grinds 
 out the tune, which is changed at least once a year ; 
 and on Sundays a musician, chosen by the town, plays 
 the chimes. In so many bells (there are forty-eight), 
 the least of which weighs twelve pounds, and the largest 
 over eleven thousand, there must be soft notes and son- 
 orous tones; so sweet jangled sounds were showered 
 down : but we liked better than the confused chiming 
 the solemn notes of the great bell striking the hour. 
 There is something very poetical about this chime of 
 bells high in the air, flinging down upon the hum and 
 traflSc of the city its oft-repeated benediction of peace ; 
 but anybody but a Lowlander would get very weary 
 of it. These chimes, to be sure, are better than those 
 in London, which became a nuisance ; but there is in all 
 of them a tinkling attempt at a tune, which always fails, 
 that is very annoying. 
 
 Bruges has altoo-ether an odd flavor. Piles of wooden 
 sabots are for sale in front of the shops ; and this ugly 
 shoe, which is mysteriously kept on the foot, is worn by , 
 
AMIENS AND QUAINT OLD BRUGES. 25 
 
 all the common sort. We see long, slender carts in the 
 street, with one horse hitched far ahead with rope traces, 
 and no thills or pole. The women — nearly every one we 
 saw — wear long cloaks of black cloth with a silk hood 
 thrown back. Bruges is famous of old for its beautiful 
 women, who are enticingly described as always walking 
 the streets with covered faces, and peeping out from 
 their mantles. They are not so handsome now they 
 show their faces, I can testify. Indeed, if there is in 
 Bruges another besides the beautiful girl who showed 
 us the old council-chamber in the Palace of Justice, she 
 must have had her hood pulled over her face. 
 
 Next morning was market-day. The square was 
 lively with carts, donkeys, and country people, and that 
 and all the streets leading; to it were filled with the 
 women m black cloaks, who flitted about as numerous 
 as the rooks at Oxford, and very much like them, mov- 
 ing in a winged way, their cloaks outspread as they 
 walked, and distended with the market-basket under- 
 neath. Though the streets were full, the town did not 
 seem any less deserted ; and the early marketers had 
 only come to life for a day, revisiting the places that once 
 they thronged. In the shade of the tall houses in the 
 narrow streets, sat red-cheeked girls and women making 
 lace, the bobbins jumping under their nimble fingers. 
 At the church-doors hideous beggars crouched and 
 whined, — specimens of the fifteen thousand paupers of 
 Bruges. In the fish-market we saw odd old women, with 
 Rembrandt colors in faces and costume ; and, while we 
 strayed about in the strange city, all the time from 
 the lofty tower the chimes fell down. What history 
 crowds upon us ! Here in the old cathedral, with its 
 monstrous tower of brick, a portion of it as old as the 
 tenth century, Philip the Good established, in li29, the 
 Order of the Golden Fleece, the last chapter of which 
 was held by Philip the Bad in 1559, in the rich old 
 Cathedral of St. Bavon, at Ghent. Here, on the square, 
 is the site of the house where the Emperor Maximilian 
 3 
 
26 AMIENS AND QUAINT OLD BRUGES. 
 
 was imprisoned by his rebellious Flemings ; and next it, 
 with a carved lion, that in which Charles II. of England 
 lived after the martyrdom of that patient and virtuous 
 ruler, whom the English Prayer-book calls that " blessed 
 martyr, Charles the First." In Notre Dame are the 
 tombs of Charles the Bold and Mary his daughter. 
 
 We begin here to enter the portals of Dutch painting. 
 Here died Jan van Eyck, the father of oil painting ; and 
 here, in the hospital of St. John, are the most celebrated 
 pictures of Hans Memling. The most exquisite in color 
 and finish is the series painted on the casket made to 
 contain the arm of St. Ursula, and representing the 
 story of her martyrdom. You know she went on a pil- 
 grimage to Rome, with her lover, Conan, and eleven 
 thousand virgins ; and, on their return to Cologne, they 
 were all massacred by the Huns. One would scarcely 
 believe the story, if he did not see all their bones at 
 Cologne. 
 
GHENT AND ANTWERP. 
 
 "TTTHAT can one do in this Belgium but write down 
 VV names, and let memory recall tlie past? We 
 came to Ghent, still a handsome city, though one thinks 
 of the days when it was the capital of Flanders, and its 
 merchants were princes. On the shabby old belfry- 
 tower is the gilt dragon which Philip van Artevelde 
 captured, and brought in triumph from Bruges. It was 
 originally fetched from a Greek church in Constantino- 
 ple by some Bruges Crusader ; and it is a link to recall 
 to us how, at that time, the merchants of Venice and the 
 far East traded up the Schelde, and brought to its 
 wharves the rich stuflf's of India and Persia. The old 
 bell Roland, that was used to call the burghers together 
 on the approach of an enemy, hung in this tower. What 
 fierce broils and bloody fights did these streets witness 
 centuries ago ! There in the Marche au Vendredi, a 
 large square of old-fashioned houses, with a statue of 
 Jacques van Artevelde, fifteen hundred corpses were 
 strewn in a quarrel between the hostile guilds of fullers 
 and brewers ; and here, later, Alva set blazing the fires 
 of the Inquisition. Near the square is the old cannon. 
 Mad Margery, used in 1382 at the siege of Oudenarde, — 
 a hammered-iron hooped affair, eighteen feet long. But 
 why mention this, or the magnificent town hall, or St. 
 Bavon, rich in pictures and statuary ; or try to put you 
 back three hundred years to the wild days when the 
 iconoclasts sacked this and every other church in the 
 Low Countries ? 
 
 27 
 
28 GHENT AND ANTWERP. 
 
 Up to Antwerp toward evening. All the country flat 
 as the flattest part of Jersey, rich in grass and grain, cut 
 up by canals, picturesque with windmills and red-tiled 
 roofs, framed with trees in rows. It has been all day hot 
 and dusty. The country everywhere seems to need rain ; 
 and dark clouds are cratherino; in the south for a storm, as 
 we drive up the broad Place de Meir to our hotel, and 
 take rooms that look out to the lace-like spire of the cathe- 
 dra], which is sharply defined against the red western sky. 
 
 Antwerp takes hold of you, both by its present and its 
 past, very strongly. It is still the home of wealth. It 
 has stately buildings, splendid galleries of pictures, and 
 a spire of stone which charms more than a picture, and 
 fascinates the eye as music does the ear. It still keeps 
 its strong fortifications drawn around it, to which the 
 broad and deep Scheldt is like a string to a bow, mind- 
 ful of the unstable state of Europe. While Berlin is 
 only a vast camp of soldiers, every less city must daily 
 beat its drums, and call its muster-roll. From the tower 
 here one looks upon the cockpit of Europe. And yet 
 Antwerp ought to have rest : she has had tumult enough 
 in her time. Prosperity seems returning to her ; but her 
 old, comparative splendor can never come back. In the 
 sixteenth century there was no richer city in Europe. 
 
 We walked one evening past the cathedral spire, 
 which begins in the richest and most solid Gothic work, 
 and grows up into the sky into an exquisite lightness and 
 grace, down a broad street to the Scheldt. What traffic 
 have not these high old houses looked on, when two 
 thousand and five hundred vessels lay in the river at one 
 time, and the commerce of Europe found here its best 
 mart. Along the stream now is a not very clean prome- 
 nade for the populace; and it is linedrwith beer-houses, 
 shabby theatres, and places of the most childish amuse- 
 ments. There is an odd liking for the simple among 
 these people. In front of the booths, drums were beaten 
 and instruments played in bewildering discord. Actors 
 in paint and tights stood- without to attract the crowd 
 
GHENT AND ANTWERP. 29 
 
 ■witliiii. On one low balcony, a copper-colored man, 
 with a huge feather cap and the traditional dress of the 
 American savage, was beating two drums ; a burnt-cork 
 black man stood beside him ; while on the steps was a 
 woman, in hat and shawl, making an earnest speech to 
 the crowd. In another place, where a crazy band made 
 furious music, was an enormous " go-round " of wooden 
 ponies, like those in the Paris gardens, only here, in- 
 stead of children, grown men and women rode the hobby- 
 horses, and seemed delighted with the sport. In the gen- 
 eral Babel, everybody was good-natured and jolly. Little 
 things suffice to amuse the lower classes, who do not have 
 to bother their heads with elections and mass meetings. 
 In front of the cathedral is the well, and the fine can- 
 opy of iron work, by Quentin Matsys, the blacksmith of 
 Antwerp, some of whose pictures we saw in the Museum, 
 where one sees also some of the finest pictures of the 
 Dutch school, — the " Crucifixion " of Rubens, the " Christ 
 on the Cross " of Vandyke ; paintings also by Teniers, 
 Otto Vennius, Albert Cuyp, and others, and Rembrandt's 
 portrait of his wife, — a picture whose sweet strength and 
 wealth of color draws one to it with almost a passion of 
 admiration. We had ah-eady seen " The Descent from the 
 Cross " and " The Raising of the Cross" by Rubens, in the 
 cathedral. With all his power and rioting luxuriance 
 of color, I cannot come to love him as I do Rembrandt. 
 Doubtless he painted what he saw ; and we still find the 
 types of his female figures in the broad-hipped, ruddy- 
 colored women of Antwerp. We walked down to his 
 house, which remains much as it was two hundred and 
 twenty-five years ago. From the interior court, an 
 entrance in the Italian style leads into a , pleasant little 
 garden full of old trees and flowers, with a summer-house 
 embellished with plaster casts, and having the very 
 stone table upon which Rubens painted. It is a quiet 
 place, and fit for an artist ; but Rubens had other houses 
 in the city, and lived the life of a man who took a strong 
 hold of the world. 
 3* 
 
AMSTERDAM. 
 
 THE rail from Antwerp north was through a land 
 flat and sterile. After a little, it becomes a little 
 richer ; but a forlorner land to live in I never saw. One 
 wonders at the perseverance of the Flemings and Dutch- 
 men to keep all this vast tract above water, when there 
 is so much good solid earth elsewhere unoccupied. At 
 Moerdjik we changed from the cars to a little steamer 
 on the Maas, which flows between high banks. The wa- 
 ter is higher than the adjoining land, and from the deck 
 we look down upon houses and farms. At Dort, the 
 Rhine comes in with little promise of the noble stream 
 it is in the highlands. Everywhere canals and ditches 
 dividing the small fields instead offences; trees planted 
 in straight lines, and occasionally trained on a trellis in 
 front of the houses, with the trunk painted white or 
 green ; so that every likeness of nature shall be taken 
 away. From Rotterdam, by cars, it is still the same. 
 The Dutchman spends half his life, apparently, in fight- 
 ing the water. He has to watch the huge dykes which 
 keep the ocean from overwhelming him, and the river- 
 banks, which may break, and let the floods of the Rhine 
 swallow him up. The danger from within is not less 
 than from without. Yet so fond is he of his one enemy, 
 that, when he can afibrd it, he builds him a fantastic 
 summer-house over a stagnant pool or a slimy canal, in 
 one corner of his garden, and there sits to enjoy the 
 aquatic beauties of nature ; that is, nature as he has 
 made it. The river-banks are woven with osiers to keep 
 30 
 
AMSTERDAM. 31 
 
 them from washing ; and at intervals on the banks are 
 piles of the long withes to be used in emergencies when 
 the swollen streams threaten to break through. 
 
 And so we come to Amsterdam, the oddest city of all, 
 — a city wholly built on piles, with as many canals as 
 streets, and an architecture so quaint as to even impress 
 one who has come from Belgium. The whole town 
 has a wharf-y look ; and it is difficult to say why the tall 
 brick houses, their gables running by steps to a peak, 
 and each one leaning forward or backward or sideways, 
 and none perpendicular, and no two on a line, are so 
 interesting. But certainly it is a most entertaining 
 place to the stranger, whether he explores the crowded 
 Jews' quarter, with its swarms of dirty people, its nar- 
 row streets, and high houses hung with clothes, as if 
 every day were washing-day ; or ^strolls through the 
 equally narrow streets of rich shops ; or lounges upon 
 the bridges, and looks at the queer boats with clumsy 
 rounded bows, great helms, painted in gay colors, with 
 flowers in the cabin- windows, — boats where families live ; 
 or walks down the Plantage, with the zoological gardens 
 on the one hand and rows of beer-gardens on the other ; 
 or round the great docks ; or saunters at sunset by the 
 banks of the Y, and looks upon flat North Holland 
 and the Zuyder Zee. 
 
 The palace on the Dam (square) is a square, stately 
 edifice, and the only building that the stranger will care 
 to see. Its interior is richer and more fit to live in than 
 any palace we have seen. There is nothing usually so 
 dreary as your fine palace. There are some good fres- 
 cos, rooms richly decorated in marble, and a magnifi- 
 cent hall, or ball-room, one hundred feet in height, with- 
 out pillars. Back of it is, of course, a canal, which does 
 not smell fragrantly in the summer ; and I do not won- 
 der that William III. and his queen prefer to stop away. 
 From the top is a splendid view of Amsterdam and all 
 the flat region. I speak of it with entire impartiality, 
 for I did not go up to see it. But better than palaces are 
 
32 AMSTERDAM, 
 
 the picture-galleries, three of which are open to the 
 sight-seer. Here the ancient and modern Dutch paint- 
 ers are seen at their best, and I know of no richer feast 
 of this sort. Here Rembrandt is to be seen in his glory ; 
 here Yan der Heist, Jan Steen, Gerard Douw ; Teniers 
 the younger, Hondekoeter, Weenix, Ostade, Cuyp, and 
 other names as familiar. These men also painted what 
 they saw, — the people, the landscapes, with which they 
 were familiar. It was a strange pleasure to meet again 
 and again in the streets of the town the faces, or types 
 of them, that we had just seen on canvas so old. 
 
 In the Low Countries, the porters have the grand title 
 of commissionaires. They carry trunks and bundles, 
 black boots, and act as valets de place. As guides, they 
 are quite as intolerable in Amsterdam as their brethren 
 in other cities. Many of them are Jews ; and they have 
 a keen eye for a stranger. The moment he sallies from 
 his hotel, there is a guide. Let him hesitate for an 
 instant in his walk, either to look at something or to 
 consult his map, or let him ask the way, and he will 
 have a half-dozen of the persistent guild upon him ; and 
 they cannot easily be shaken off. The afternoon we 
 arrived, we had barely got into our rooms at Brack's 
 Oude Doelan, when a gray-headed commissionaire 
 knocked at our door, and offered his services to show us 
 the city. We deferred the pleasure of his valuable so- 
 ciety. Shortly, when we came down to the street, a 
 smartly-dressed Israelite took off his hat to us, and 
 offered to show us the city. We declined with impres- 
 sive politeness, and walked on. The Jew accompanied 
 us, and attempted conversation, in which we did not 
 join. He would show us every thing for a guilder an 
 hour, — for half a guilder. Having plainly told the Jew 
 that we did not desire his attendance, he crossed to the 
 other side of the street, and kept us in sight, biding his 
 opportunity. At the end of the street, we hesitated a 
 moment whether to cross the bridge or turn up by the 
 broad canal. The Jew was at our side in a moment. 
 
AMSTERDAM. 33 
 
 havino- divined that we were on tlie way to the Dam and 
 the palace. He obligingly pointed the way, and began 
 to walk with us, entering into conversation. We tola 
 him pointedly, that we did not desire bis services, and 
 requested him to leave us. He still walked in our direc- 
 tion, with the air of one much injured, but forgiving, and 
 was more than once beside us with a piece ot^ inlorma- 
 tion. When we finally turned upon him with great 
 fierceness, and told him to begone, he regarded us with a 
 mournful and pitying expression; and as the last act ot 
 one who returned good for evil, before he turned away, 
 pointed out to us the next turn we were to make. 1 saw 
 him several times afterward ; and I once had occasion to 
 say to him, that I had abeady told him I would not em- 
 ploy him ; and he always lifted his hat, and looked at me 
 with a foro-iving smile. I felt that I had deeply wronged 
 him. As we stood by the statue, looking up at the east- 
 ern pediment of the palace, another of the tribe (they 
 all speak a little English) asked me if I wished to see 
 the palace. I told him I was looking at it, and could 
 see it quite distinctly. Half a dozen more crowded 
 round, and proffered their aid. Would I like to go into 
 the palace^ They knew, and I knew, that they could do 
 nothing more than go to the open door, through which 
 they would not be admitted, and that I could walk across 
 the open square to that, and enter alone. I asked the 
 first speaker if he wished to go into the palace. Uh, 
 yes ! he would like to go. I told him he had better go at 
 once,— they had all better go in together and see the 
 palace, - it was an excellent opportunity. They seemed 
 to see the point, and slunk away to the other side to wait 
 for another stranger. . , , 
 
 I find that this plan works very well with guides . 
 when I see one approaching, I at once ofier to gmd^ 
 him. It is an idea from which he does not rally m time 
 to annoy us. The other day I offered to show a persist- 
 ent fellow through an old ruin for fifty k^euzers : as 
 his price for showing me was forty-eight, we did not 
 
34 AMSTERDAM. 
 
 come to terms. One of the most remarkable guides, by 
 the way, we encountered at Stratford-on-Avon. As we 
 walked down from the Red^-florse Inn to the church, a 
 full-grown boy came beari^'^wn upon us in the most 
 wonderful fashion. Early rickets, I think, had been suc- 
 ceeded by the St. Vitus' d^ce. He came down upon 
 us sideways, his legs all in a talf^le, and his right arm, 
 bent and twisted, going rouH^ and round, as if in vain 
 efforts to get into his poqlfet, his fingers spread out in 
 impotent desire to clutch' something. There was great 
 danger that he would run into us, as he was like a 
 steamer with only one side-wheel and no rudder. He 
 came up puffing and blowing, and offered to show us 
 Shakespeare's tomb. Shade of the past, to be accompa- 
 nied to thy resting-place by such an object ! But he 
 fastened himself on us, and jerked and hitched along in 
 his side-wheel fashion. We declined his help. He pad- 
 dled on, twisting himself into knots, and grinning in the 
 most friendly manner. We told, him to begone. " I 
 am," said he, Avrenching himself^ inito a new contortion, 
 " I am what showed Artemus Ward round Stratford." 
 This information he repeated «gain and again, as if we 
 could not resist him after we had jcomprehended that. 
 We shook him off; but when we^e turned at sundown 
 across the fields, from a visit to' Anne Hathaway's cot- 
 tage, we met the side-wheeler cheerfully towing along a 
 large party, upon whom he had fastened. 
 
 The people of Amsterdam are only less queer than 
 their houses. The men dress in a solid, old-fashioned 
 way. Every one wears the straight, high-crowned silk 
 hat, that went out with us years ago, and the cut of 
 clothing of even the most buckish young fellows is 
 behind the times. I stepped into the Exchange, an 
 immense interior, that will hold five thousand people, 
 where the stock-gamblers meet twice a day. It was 
 very different from the terrible excitement and noise of 
 the Paris Bourse. There were three or four thousand 
 brokers there, yet there was very little noise and no con- 
 
AMSTERDAM. 35 
 
 fusion. No stocks were called, and there was no central 
 ring for bidding, as at the Bourse and the New York 
 Gold Room ; but they quietly bought and sold. Some of 
 the leading firms had desks or tables at the side, and 
 there awaited orders. Every thing was phlegmatically 
 and decorously done. 
 
 In the streets one still s^s peasant-women in native 
 costume. There was a group to-day that I saw by the 
 river, evidently just crossed over from North Holland. 
 They wore short dresses, with the upper skirt looped 
 up, and had broad hips and big waists. On the head 
 was a cap with a fall of lace behind ; across the back 
 of the head a broad band of silver (or tin) three inches 
 broad, which terminated in front and just above the ears 
 in bright pieces of metal about two inches square, like a 
 horse's blinders, only flaring more from the head ; across 
 the forehead and just above the eyes a gilt band, em- 
 bossed ; on the temples two plaits of hair in circular 
 coils ; and on top of all a straw hat, like an old-fashioned 
 bonnet, stuck on hindside before. Spiral coils of brass 
 wire, coming to a point in front, are also worn on each 
 side of the head by many. Whether they arq for orna- 
 ment or defence, I could not determine. 
 
 Water is brought into the city now from Haarlem, and 
 introduced into the best houses ; but it is still sold in the 
 streets by old men and women, who sit at the faucets. I 
 saw one dried-up old grandmother, who sat in her little 
 caboose, fighting away the crowd of dirty children who 
 tried to steal a drink when her back was turned, keep- 
 ing count of the pails of water carried away with a piece 
 of chalk on the iron pipe, and trying to darn her stock- 
 ing at the same time. Odd things strike you at every 
 turn. There is a sledge drawn by one poor horse, and 
 on the front of it is a cask of water pierced with holes, 
 so that the water squirts out and wets the stones, making 
 it easier sliding for the runners. It is an ingenious 
 people ! 
 
 After all, we drove out five miles to Broek, the clean 
 
36 AMSTERDAM. 
 
 villajre ; across the Y, up the canal, over flatness flat- 
 tened. Broek is a humbug, as almost all show places 
 are. A wooden little village on a stagnant canal, into 
 which carriages do not drive, and where the front-doors 
 of the houses are never open ; a dead, uninteresting 
 place, neat but not specially pretty, where you are 
 shown into one house got up for the purpose, which 
 looks inside like a crockery shop, and has a stiff Uttle 
 garden with box trained in shapes of animals and furni- 
 ture. A roomy-breeched young Dutchman, whose trou- 
 sers went up to his neck, and his hat to a peak, walked 
 before us in slow and cowlike fashion, and showed us 
 the place ; especially some horrid pleasure-grounds, with 
 an image of an old man reading in a summer-house, and 
 an old couple in a cottage who sat at a table and 
 worked, or ate, I forget which, by clock-work ; while a 
 dog barked by the same means. In a pond was a wooden 
 swan sitting on a stick, the water having receded, and 
 left it high and dry. Yet the trip is worth while for the 
 view of the country and the people on the way : men 
 and women towing boats on the canals ; the red-tiled 
 houses painted green, and in the distance the villages, 
 with their spires and pleasing mixture of brown, green, 
 and red tints, are very picturesque. The best thing 
 that I saw, however, was a traditional Dutchman walk- 
 ing on the high bank of a canal, with soft hat, short pipe, 
 and breeches that came to the armpits above, and a little 
 below the knees, and were broad enough about the seat 
 and thighs to carry his no doubt numerous family. He 
 made a fine figure against the sky. 
 
COLOGNE AND ST. URSULA. 
 
 IT is a relief to- get out of Holland and into a coun- 
 try nearer to hills. The' people also seem more 
 obliging. In Cologne, a brown-cheeked girl pointed us 
 out the way without waiting for a kreuzer. Perhaps the 
 women have more to busy themselves about in the cities, 
 and are not so curious about passers-by. We rarely see 
 a reflector to exhibit us to the occupants of the second- 
 story windows. In all the cities of Belgium and Holland 
 the ladies have small mirrors, with reflectors, fastened 
 to their windows ; so that they can see everybody who 
 passes, without putting their heads out. I trust we are 
 not inverted or thrown out of shape when we are thus 
 caught up and cast into my lady's chamber. Cologne 
 has a cheerful look, for the Rhine here is wide and prom- 
 ising ; and as for the " smells," they are certainly not 
 so many nor so vile as those at Mainz. 
 
 Our windows at the hotel looked out on the finest 
 front of the cathedral. If the Devil really built it, he is 
 to be credited with one good thing, and it is now Hkely 
 to be finished, in spite of him. Large as it is, it is on 
 the exterior not so impressive as that at Amiens ; but 
 within it has a magnificence born of a vast design and 
 the most harmonious proportions, and the grand effect 
 is not broken by any subdivision but that of the choir. 
 Behind the altar and in front of the chapel, where lie 
 the remains of the Wise Men of the East who came to 
 worship the Child, or, as they are called, the Three Kings 
 of Cologne, we walked over a stone in the pavement 
 
 37 
 
38 COLOGNE AND ST. URSULA, 
 
 under whicli is the heart of Mary de Medicis : the re- 
 mainder of her body is in St. Denis, near Paris. The 
 beadle in red clothes, who stalks about the cathedral 
 like a converted flamingo, offered to open for us the 
 chapel ; but we declined a sight of the very bones of the 
 Wise Men. It was difficult enough to believe they were 
 there, without seeing them. One ought not to subject 
 his faith to too great a strain at first in Europe. The 
 bones of the Three Kings, by the way, made the fortune 
 of the cathedral. They were the greatest religious card 
 of the Middle Ages, and their fortunate possession 
 brought a flood of wealth to this old Domkirche. The 
 old feudal lords would swear by the Almighty Father, 
 or the Son, or Holy Ghost, or by every thing sacred on 
 earth, and break their oaths as they would break a wisp 
 of straw : but, if you could get one of them to swear by 
 the Three Kings of Cologne, he was fast ; for that oath 
 he dare not disregard. 
 
 The prosperity of the cathedral on these valuable 
 bones set all the other churches in the neighborhood on 
 the same track ; and one can study right here in this 
 city the growth of relic worship. But the most success- 
 ful achievement was the collection of the bones of St. 
 Ursula and the eleven thousand virgins, and their pres- 
 ervation in the church on the very spot where they 
 suffered martyrdom. There is probably not so large a 
 collection of the bones of virgins elsewhere in the world ; 
 and I am sorry to read that Professor Owen has thought 
 proper to see and say that many of them are the bones 
 of lower orders of animals. They are built into the walls 
 of the church, arranged about the choir, interred in stone 
 cofiins, laid under the pavements ; and their skulls grin 
 at you everywhere. In the chapel the bones are taste- 
 fully built into the wall and overhead, like rustic wood- 
 work ; and the skulls stand in rows, some with silver 
 masks, like the jars on the shelves of an apothecary's 
 shop. It is a cheerful place. On the little altar is the 
 very skull of the saint herself, and that of Conan, her 
 
COLOGNE AND ST. URSULA. 39 
 
 lover, who made the holy pilgrimage to Rome with 
 her and her virgins, and also was slain by the Huns at 
 Cologne. There is a picture of the eleven thousand dis- 
 embarking from one boat on the Rhine, which is as 
 wonderful as the trooping of hundreds of spirits out of a 
 conjurer's bottle. The right arm of St. Ursula is pre- 
 served here : the left is at Bruges. I am gradually get- 
 ting the hang of this excellent but somewhat scattered 
 woman, and bringing her together in my mind. Her 
 body, I believe, lies behind the altar in this same church. 
 She must have been a lovely character, if Hans Memling's 
 portrait of her is a faithful one. I was glad to see here 
 one of the jars from the marriage-supper in Cana. We 
 can identify it by a piece which is broken out ; and the 
 piece is in Notre Dame in Paris. It has been in this 
 church five hundred years. The sacristan, a very intel- 
 hgent person, with a shaven crown and his hair cut 
 straight across his forehead, who showed us the church, 
 gave us much useful information about bones, teeth, and 
 the remains of the garments that the virgins wore ; and 
 I could not tell from his face how much he expected us 
 to believe. I asked the little fussy old guide of an 
 English party who had joined us, how much he believed 
 of the story. He was a Protestant, and replied, still 
 anxious to keep up the credit of his city, " Tousands 
 is too many; some hundreds maybe; tousands is too 
 many." 
 
A GLIMPSE OF THE RHINE. 
 
 TOU have seen tlie Rhine in pictures; you have 
 read its legends. You know, in imagination at 
 least, how it winds among craggy hills of splendid form, 
 turning so abruptly as to leave you often shut in with no 
 visible outlet from the wall of rock and forest ; how the 
 castles, some in ruins so as to be as unsightly as any old 
 pile of rubbish, others with feudal towers and iDattle- 
 ments, still perfect, hanging on the crags, or standing 
 sharp against the sky, or nestling by the stream, or on 
 some lonely island. You know that the Khine has been 
 to Germans what the Nile was to the Egyptians, — a 
 delight, and the theme of song and story. Here the 
 Roman eagles were planted ; here were the camps of 
 Drusus here Caesar bridged and crossed the Rhine ; 
 here, at v^v^ery turn, a feudal baron, from his high castle, 
 levied toll on the passers ; and here the French found 
 a momentary halt to their invasion of Germany at dif- 
 ferent times. You can imagine how, in a misty morn- 
 ing, as you leave Bonn, the Seven Mountains rise up in 
 their veiled might, and how the Drachenfels stands in new 
 and changing beauty as you pass it and sail away. You 
 have been told that the Hudson is like the Rhine. Be- 
 lieve me, there is no resemblance ; nor would there be 
 if the Hudson were lined with castles, and Julius Caesar 
 had crossed it every half-mile. The Rhine satisfies you, 
 and you do not recall any other river. It only disap- 
 points you as to its " vine-clad hills." You miss trees 
 and a coverino; vegetation, and are not enamoured of the 
 40 
 
A GLIMPSE OF THE RHINE. 41 
 
 patches of green vines on wall-supported terraces, look- 
 ing from the river like hills of beans or ^potatoes. And, 
 if you try the Rhine wine on the steamers, you will 
 wholly lose your faith in the vintage. We decided that 
 the wine on our boat was manufactured in the boiler. 
 
 There is a mercenary atmosphere about hotels and 
 steamers on the Rhine, a watering-place, show-sort of 
 feeling, that detracts very much from one's enjoyment. 
 The old habit of the robber barons of levying toll on all 
 who sail up and down has not been lost. It is not that 
 one actually pays so much for sight-seeing, but the charm 
 of any thing vanishes when it is made merchandise. 
 One is almost as reluctant to buy his " views " as he is 
 to sell his opinions. But one ought to be weeks on the 
 Rhine before attempting to say any thing about it. 
 
 One morning, at Bingen, — I assure you it was not 
 six o'clock, — we took a big little row-boat, and dropped 
 down the stream, past the Mouse Tower, where the cruel 
 Bishop Hatto was eaten up by rats, under the shattered 
 Castle of Ehrenfels, round the bend to the little village 
 of Assmannshausen, on the hills back of which is grown 
 the famous red wine of that name. On the bank walked 
 in line a dozen peasants, men and women, in picturesque 
 dress, towing, by a line passed from shoulder to shoulder, 
 a boat filled with marketing for Riidesheim. We were 
 bound up the Niederwald, the mountain opposite Bin- 
 gen, whose noble crown of forest attracted us. At the 
 landing, donkeys awaited us ; and we began the ascent, 
 a stout, good-natured German girl acting as guide and 
 driver. Behind us, on the opposite shore, set round 
 about with a wealth of foliage, was the Castle of Rhein- 
 stein, a fortress more pleasing in its proportions and 
 situation than any other. Our way was through the 
 little town which is jammed into the gorge; and as we 
 clattered up the pavement, past the church, its heavy 
 bell began to ring loudly for matins, the sound rever- 
 berating in the narrow way, and following us with its 
 benediction when we were far up the hill, breathing the 
 
42 A GLIMPSE OF THE RHINE. 
 
 fresh, inspiring morning air. The top of the Ni^derwald 
 is a splendid forest of trees, which no impious French- 
 man has been allowed to trim, and cut into allees of 
 arches, taking one in thought across the water to the 
 free Adirondacks. We walked for a long time under 
 the welcome shade, approaching the brow of the hill 
 now and then, where some tower or hermitage is erected, 
 for a view of the Rhine and the Nahe, the villages below, 
 and the hills around ; and then crossed the mountain, 
 down through cherry orchards, and vineyards, walled up, 
 with images of Christ on the cross on the angles of the 
 walls, down through a hot road, where wild-flowers grew 
 in great variety, to the quaint village of Riidesheim, 
 with its queer streets and ancient ruins. Is it possible 
 that we can have too many ruins ? " Oh, dear 1 " ex- 
 claimed the jung-frau, as we sailed along the last day, 
 " if there isn't another castle 1 ** 
 
HEIDELBERG. 
 
 IF you come to Heidelberg, you will never want to go 
 away. To arrive here is to come into a peaceful 
 state ofrest and content. The great hills out of which 
 the Neckar flows infold the town in a sweet security ; 
 and yet there is no sense of imprisonment, for the view 
 is always wide open to the great plains where the Neckar 
 goes to join the Rhine, and where the Rhine runs for 
 many a league through a rich and smiling land. One 
 could settle down here to study, without a desire to go 
 farther, nor any wish to change the dingy, shabby old 
 buildings of the university for any thing newer and 
 smarter. What the students can find to fight their 
 little duels about I cannot see ; but fight they do, as 
 many a scarred cheek attests. The students give life to 
 the town. They go about in little caps of red, green, and 
 blue, many of them embroidered in gold, and stuck so far 
 on the forehead that they require an elastic, like that 
 worn by ladies, under the back hair, to keep them on ; 
 and they are also distinguished by colored ribbons across 
 the breast. The majority of them are well-behaved 
 young gentlemen, who carry switch-canes, and try to 
 keep near the fashions, like students at home. Some 
 like to swagger about in their little skull-caps, and now 
 and then one is attended by a bull-dog. 
 
 I write in a room which opens out upon a balcony. 
 Below it is a garden, below that foliage, and farther 
 down the town with its old speckled roofs, spires, and 
 queer little squares. Beyond is the Neckar, with the 
 
 43 
 
44 HEIDELBERG. 
 
 bridge, and white statues on it, and an old city gate at 
 this end, with pointed towers. Beyond that is a white 
 road with a wall on one side, along which I see peasant- 
 women walking with large baskets balanced on their 
 heads. The road runs down the river to Neuenheim. 
 Above it on the steep hillside are vineyards ; and a 
 winding path goes up to the Philosopher's Walk, which 
 runs along for a mile or more, giving delightful views of 
 the castle and the glorious woods and hills back of it. 
 Above it is the mountain of Heiligenberg, from the other 
 side of which one looks off toward Darmstadt and the 
 famous road, the Bergstrasse. If I look down the stream, 
 I see the narrow town, and the Neckar flowing out of it 
 into the vast level plain, rich with grain and trees and 
 grass, with many spires and villages ; Mannheim to the 
 northward, shining when the sun is low ; the Khine 
 gleaming here and there near the. horizon; and the 
 Vosges Mountains, purple in the last distance : on my 
 right, and so near that I could throw a stone into them, 
 the ruined tower and battlements of the north-west corner 
 of the castle, half hidden in foliage, with statues framed' 
 in ivy, and the garden terrace, built for Elizabeth Stuart 
 when she came here the bride of the Elector Frederick, 
 where giant trees grow. Under the walls a steep path 
 goes down into the town, along which little houses cling 
 to the hillside. High above the castle rises the noble 
 Konigstuhl, whence the whole of this part of Germany 
 is visible, and, in a clear day, Strasburg Minster, ninety 
 miles away. 
 
 I have only to go a few steps up a narrow, steep street, 
 lined with the queerest houses, where is an ever-run- 
 ning pipe of good water, to which all the neighborhood 
 resorts, and I am within the grounds of the castle. I 
 scarcely know where to take you ; for I never know 
 where to go myself, and seldom do go where I intend 
 when I set forth. We have been here several days ; and 
 I have not yet seen the Great Tun, nor the inside of the 
 show-rooms, nor scarcely any thing that is set down as a 
 
_ HEIDELBERG. 45 
 
 " sight." I do not know whether to wander on through 
 the extensive grounds, with splendid trees, bits of old 
 ruin, overgrown, cosey nooks, and seats where, through 
 the foliage, distant prospects open into quiet retreats 
 that lead to winding walks up the terraced hill, round to 
 -the open terrace overlooking the Neckar, and giving the 
 best general view of the great mass of ruins. If we do, 
 we shall be likely to sit in some delicious place, listen- 
 ing to the band playing in the " Restauration," and to 
 the nightingales, till the moon comes up. Or shall we 
 turn into the garden through the lovely Arch of the 
 Princess Elizabeth, with its stone columns cut to resem- 
 ble tree-trunks twined with ivy ? Or go rather through 
 the great archway, and under the teeth of the portcul- 
 lis, into the irregular quadrangle, whose buildings mark 
 the changing style and fortune of successive centuries, 
 from 1300 down to the seventeenth century? There is 
 probably no richer quadrangle in Europe : there is cer- 
 tainly no other ruin so vast, so impressive, so ornamented 
 with carving, except the Alhambra. And from here we 
 pass out upon the broad terrace of masonry, with a 
 splendid flanking octagon tower, its base hidden in trees, 
 a rich facade for a background, and below the town the 
 river, and beyond the plain and floods of golden sun- 
 light. What shall we do ? Sit and dream in the Rent 
 Tower under the lindens that grow in its top ? The day 
 passes while one is deciding how to spend it, and the 
 sun over Heiligenberg goes down on his purpose. 
 
ALPINE NOTES. 
 
ENTERING SWITZERLAND. — BERNE, 
 ITS BEAUTIES AND BEARS. 
 
 IF you come to Bale, you should take rooms on tte 
 river, or stand on the bridge at evening, and have 
 a sunset of gold and crimson streaming down upon 
 the wide and strong Rhine, where it rushes between 
 the houses built plumb up to it, or you will not care 
 much for the city. And yet it is pleasant on the high 
 ground, where are some stately buildings, and where 
 new gardens are laid out, and where the American 
 consul on the Fourth of July flies our flag over the 
 balcony of a little cottage smothered in vines and gay 
 with flowers. I had the honor of saluting it that day, 
 though I did not know at the time that gold had risen 
 two or three per cent under its blessed folds at home. 
 Not being a shipwrecked sailor, or a versatile and accom- 
 plished but impoverished naturalized citizen, desirous 
 of quick transit to the land of the free, I did not call 
 upon the consul, but left him under the no doubt cor- 
 rect impression that he was doing a good thing by un- 
 folding the flag on the Fourth. 
 
 You have not journeyed far from Bale before you are 
 aware that you are in Switzerland. It was showery the 
 day we went down ; but the ride filled us with the most 
 exciting expectations. The country recalled New Eng- 
 land, or what New England might be, if it were culti- 
 vated and adorned, and had good roads and no fences. 
 Here at last, after the dusty German valleys, we entered 
 among real hills, round which and through which, by 
 
 49 
 
50 ENTERING SWITZERLAND. 
 
 enormous tunnels, our train slowly went : rocks looking 
 out of foliage ; sweet little valleys, green as in early 
 spring ; the dark evergreens in contrast ; snug cottages 
 nestled in the hillsides, showing little else than enor- 
 mous brown roofs that come nearly to the ground, giving 
 the cottages the appearance of huge toadstools; fine 
 harvests of grain ; thrifty apple-trees, and cherry-trees 
 purple with luscious fruit. And this shifting panorama 
 continues until, towards evening, behold, on a hill, Berne, 
 shining through showers, the old feudal round tower and 
 buildinsrs overhano-ino; the Aar, and the tower of the 
 cathedral over all. From the balcony of our rooms at 
 the Bellevue, the long range of the Bernese Oberland 
 shows its white summits for a moment in the slant sun- 
 shine, and then the clouds shut down, not to lift again 
 for two days. Yet it looks warmer on the snow peaks 
 than in Berne, for summer sets in in Switzerland with a 
 New England chill and rigor. 
 
 The traveller finds no city with more flavor of the 
 picturesque and quaint than Berne ; and I think it must 
 have preserved the Swiss characteristics better than any 
 other of the large towns in Helvetia. It stands upon a 
 peninsula, round which the Aar, a hundred feet below, 
 rapidly flows ; and one has on nearly every side very 
 pretty views of the green basin of hills which rise beyond 
 the river. It is a most comfortable town on a rainy day ; 
 for all the principal streets have their houses built on 
 arcades, and one walks under the low arches, with the 
 shops on one side and the huge stone pillars on the 
 other. These pillars so stand out toward the street as 
 to give the house-fronts a curved look. Above are bal- 
 conies, in which, upon red cushions, sit the daughters of 
 Berne, reading and sewing, and watching their neigh- 
 bors; and in every window nearly are quantities of 
 flowers of the most brilliant colors. The gray stone of 
 the houses, which are piled up from the streets, harmo- 
 nizes well with the colors in the windows and balconies ; 
 and the scene is quite Oriental as one looks down, espe- 
 
BERNE, ITS BEAUTIES AND BEARS. 51 
 
 cially if it be upon a market morning, when the streets 
 are as thronged as the Strand. Several terraces, with 
 great trees, overlook the river, and command prospects 
 of the Alps. These are public places ; for the city gov- 
 ernment has a queer notion that trees are not hideous, 
 and that a part of the use of living is the enjoyment of 
 the beautiful. I saw an elegant bank building, with 
 carved figures on the front, and at each side of the 
 entrance door a large stand of flowers, — oleanders, gera- 
 niums, and fuchsias ; while the windows and balconies 
 above bloomed with a like warmth of floral color. 
 Would you put an American bank president in the Re- 
 treat who should so decorate his banking-house ? We 
 all admire the tasteful display of flowers in foreign 
 towns : we go home, and carry nothing with us but a 
 recollection. But Berne has also fountains everywhere ; 
 some of them grotesque, like the ogre that devours his 
 own children, but all a refreshment and delight. And 
 it has also its clock-tower, with one of those ingenious 
 pieces of mechanism, in which the sober people of this 
 region take pleasure. At the hour, a procession of little 
 bears goes round, a jolly figure strikes the time, a cock 
 flaps his wings and crows, and a solemn Turk opens his 
 mouth to announce the flight of the hours. It is more 
 grotesque, but less elaborate, than the equally childish 
 toy in the cathedral at Strasburg. 
 
 We went Sunday morning to the cathedral ; and the ex- 
 cellent woman who guards the portal — where in ancient 
 stone the Last Judgment is enacted, and the cheerful and 
 conceited wise virgins stand over against the foolish vir- 
 gins, one of whom has been in the penitential attitude 
 of having a stone finger in her eye now for over three 
 hundred years — refused at first to admit us to the German 
 Lutheran service, which was just beginning. It seems 
 that doors are locked, and no one is allowed to issue 
 forth until after service. There seems to be an impres- 
 sion that strangers only go to hear the organ, which is a 
 sort of rival of that at Freiburg, and do not care much 
 
52 ENTERING SWITZERLAND, 
 
 for the well-prepared and protracted discourse in Swiss- 
 German. We agreed to the terms of admission ; but it 
 did not speak well for former travellers that the woman 
 should think it necessary to say, " You must sit still, and 
 not talk." It is a barn-like interior. The women all sit 
 on hard, high-backed benches in the centre of the church, 
 and the men on hard, higher-backed benches about the 
 sides, enclosing and facing the women, who are more 
 directly under the droppings of the little pulpit, hung 
 on one of the pillars, — a very solemn and devout con- 
 gregation, who sang very well, and paid strict attention 
 to the sermon. I noticed that the names of the owners, 
 and sometimes their coats-of-arms, were carved or 
 painted on the backs of the seats, as if the pews were 
 not put up at yearly auction. One would not call it a 
 dressy congregation, though the homely women looked 
 neat in black waists and white puffed sleeves and broad- 
 brimmed hats. 
 
 The only concession I have anywhere seen to women 
 in Switzerland, as the more delicate sex, was in this 
 church : they sat during most of the service, but the 
 men stood all the time, except during the delivery of 
 the sermon. The service began at nine o'clock, as it 
 ought to with us in summer. The costume of the peas- 
 ant-women in and about Berne comes nearer to being 
 picturesque than in most other parts of Switzerland, 
 where.it is simply ugly. You know the sort of thing in 
 pictures, — the broad hat, short skirt, black, pointed stom- 
 acher, with white puffed sleeves, and from each breast a 
 large silver chain hanging, which passes under the arm 
 and fastens on the shoulder behind, — a very favorite 
 ornament. This costume would not be unbecoming to 
 a pretty face and figure : whether there are any such 
 native to Switzerland, I trust I may not be put upon the 
 witness-stand to declare. Some of the peasant young 
 men went without coats, and with the shirt-sleeves 
 fluted ; and others wore butternut-colored suits, the coats 
 of which I can recommend to those who like the swal- 
 
BERNE, ITS BEAUTIES AND BEARS. 53 
 
 low-tailed variety. I suppose one would take a man 
 into the opera in London, where he cannot go in any- 
 thing but that sort. The buttons on the backs of these 
 came high up between the shoulders, and the tails did 
 not reach below the waistband. There is a kind of 
 rooster of similar appearance. I saw some of these 
 young men from the country, with their sweethearts, 
 leaning over the stone parapet, and looking into the pit 
 of the bear-garden, where the city bears walk round, or 
 sit on their hind legs for bits of bread thrown to them, 
 or douse themselves in the tanks, or climb the dead trees 
 set up for their gambols. Years ago they ate up a British 
 officer who fell in ; and they walk round now ceaselessly, 
 as if looking for another. But one cannot expect good 
 taste in a bear. 
 
 If you would see how charming a farming country can 
 be, drive out on the highway towards Thun. For miles 
 it is well shaded with giant trees of enormous trunks, 
 and a clean sidewalk runs by the fine road. On either 
 side, at little distances from the. road, are picturesque 
 cottages and rambling old farmhouses peeping from the 
 trees and vines and flowers. Everywhere flowers, be- 
 fore the house, in the windows, at the railway stations. 
 But one cannot stay forever even in delightful Berne, 
 with its fountains and terraces, and girls on red cushions 
 in the windows, and noble trees and flowers, and its 
 stately federal Capitol, and its bears carved everywhere 
 in stone and wood ; nor its sunrises, when all the Bernese 
 Alps lie like molten silver in the early light, and the 
 clouds drift over them, now hiding, now disclosing, the 
 enchanting heights. 
 
HEARING THE FREIBURG ORGAN.— 
 FIRST SIGHT OF LAKE LEMAN. 
 
 FREIBURG, with its aerial suspension-bridges, is 
 also on a peninsula, formed by the Sarine ; with its 
 old walls, old watch-towers, its piled-up old houses, and 
 streets that go up stairs, and its delicious cherries, which 
 you can eat while you sit in the square by the famous 
 linden-tree, and wait for the time when the organ will 
 be played in the cathedral. For all the world stops at 
 Freiburg to hear and enjoy the great organ, — all except 
 the self-satisfied English clergyman, who says he doesn't 
 care much for it, and would rather go about town and 
 see the old walls; and the young and boorish French 
 couple, whose refined amusement in the railway-carriage 
 consisted in the young man's catching his wife's foot in 
 the window-strap, and hauling it up to the level of the 
 window, and who cross themselves and go out after the 
 first tune ; and the two bread-and-butter English young 
 ladies, one of whom asks the other in the midst of the 
 performance, if she has thought yet to count the pipes, 
 — a thoughtful verification of Murray, which is very 
 commendable in a young woman travelling for the im- 
 provement of her little mind. 
 
 One has heard so much of this organ, that he expects 
 impossibilities, and is at first almost disappointed, al- 
 though it is not long in discovering its vast compass, 
 and its wonderful imitations, now of a full orchestra, 
 and again of a single instrument. One has not to wait 
 long before he is mastered by its spell. The vox humana 
 54 
 
HEARING THE FREIBURG ORGAN. 55. 
 
 stop did not strike me as so perfect as that of the organ 
 in the Rev, Mr. Hale's church in Boston, though the 
 imitation of choir-voices responding to the organ was 
 very effective. But it is not in tricks of imitation that 
 this organ is so wonderful : it is its power of revealing, 
 by all its compass, the inmost part of any musical com- 
 position. 
 
 The last piece we -heard was something like this: 
 the sound of a bell, tolling at regular intervals, Uke the 
 throbbing of a life begun ; about it an accompaniment 
 of hopes, inducements, fears, the flute, the violin, the 
 violoncello, promising, urging, entreating, inspiring; the 
 life beset with trials, lured with pleasures, hesitating, 
 doubting, questioning ; its purpose at length grows more 
 certain and fixed, the bell tolling becomes a prolonged 
 undertone, the flow of a definite life ; the music goes on, 
 twinino; round it, now one sweet instrument and now 
 many, in strife or accord, all the influences of earth and 
 heaven and the base under world meeting and warring 
 over the aspiring soul ; the struggle becomes more earnest, 
 the undertone is louder and clearer ; the accompaniment 
 indicates striving, contesting passion, an agony of en- 
 deavor and resistance, until at length the steep and rocky 
 way is passed, the world and self are conquered, and, in 
 a burst of triumph from a full orchestra, the soul attains 
 the serene summit. But the rest is only for a moment. 
 Even in the highest places are temptations. The sun- 
 shine fails, clouds roll up, growling of low, pedal thun- 
 der is heard, while sharp lightning-flashes soon break in 
 clashing peals about the peaks. This is the last Alpine 
 storm and trial. After it the sun bursts out again, the 
 wide, sunny valleys are disclosed, and a sweet evening 
 hymn floats through all the peaceful air. We go out 
 from the cool church into the busy streets of the white, 
 gray town awed and comforted. 
 
 And such a ride afterwards ! It was as if the organ 
 music still continued. All the world knows the exquisite 
 views southward from Freiburg ; but such an atmosphere 
 
56 FIRST SIGHT OF LAKE LEMAN. 
 
 as we had does not overhang them many times in a sea- 
 son. First the Moleross, and a range of mountains 
 bathed in misty blue light, — rugged peaks, scarred sides, 
 ■white and tawny at once, rising into the clouds which 
 hung large and soft in the blue ; soon Mont Blanc, dim 
 and aerial, in the south; the lovely valley of the River 
 Sense ; peasants walking with burdens on the white 
 highway; the quiet and soft-tinted mountains beyond ; 
 towns perched on hills, with old castles and towers ; the 
 land rich with grass, grain, fruit, flowers ; at Palezieux 
 a magnificent view of the silver, purple, and blue moun- 
 tains, with their chalky seams and gashed sides, near at 
 hand ; and at length, coming through a long tunnel, as 
 if we had been shot out into the air above a country 
 more surprising than any in dreams, the most wonderful 
 sight burst upon us, — the low-lying, deep-blue Lake 
 Leman, and the gigantic mountains rising from its shores, 
 and a sort of mist, translucent, suffused with sunlight, 
 like the liquid of the golden wine the Steinberger 
 poured into the vast basin. We came upon it out of 
 total darkness, without warning ; and we seemed, from 
 our great height, to be about to leap into the splendid 
 gulf of tremulous light and color. 
 
 This Lake of Geneva is said to combine the robust 
 mountain grandeur of Luzerne with all the softness of 
 atmosphere of Lake Maggiore. Surely, nothing could 
 exceed the loveliness as we wound down the hillside, 
 through the vineyards, to Lausanne, and farther on, near 
 the foot of the lake, to Montreux, backed by precipitous 
 but tree-clad hills, fronted by the lovely water, and the 
 great mountains which run away south into Savoy, 
 where Velan lifts up its snows. Below us, round the 
 curving bay, lies white Chillon ; and at sunset we row 
 down to it over the bewitched water, and wait under its 
 grim walls till the failing light brings back the romance 
 of castle and prisoner. Our gar^on had never heard of 
 the prisoner ; but he knew about the gendarmes who 
 now occupy the castle. 
 
OUR ENGLISH FRIENDS. 
 
 "IVTOT the least of the traveller's pleasure in Switzer- 
 , 1 Nl land is derived from the English people who over- 
 run it : they seem to regard it as a kind of private park 
 or preserve belonging to England ; and they establish 
 themselves at hotels, or on steamboats and diligences, 
 with a certain air of ownership that is very pleasant. I 
 am not very fresh in my geology ; but it is my impression 
 that Switzerland was created especially for the English, 
 about the year of the Magna Charta, or a little later. 
 The Germans who come here, and who don't care very 
 Qiuch what they eat, or how they sleep, provided they do 
 not have any fresh air in dining-room or bedroom, and 
 provided, also, that the bread is a little sour, growl a good 
 deal about the English, and declare that they have spoiled 
 Switzerland. The natives, too, who live off' the English, 
 seem, to thoroughly hate them ; so that one is often com- 
 pelled, in self-defence, to proclaim his nationality, which 
 is like running from Scylla upon Charybdis ; for, while 
 the American is more popular, it is believed that there 
 is no bottom to his pocket. 
 
 There was a sprig of the Church of England on the 
 steamboat on Lake Leman, who spread himself upon a 
 centre bench, and discoursed very instructively to his 
 friends, — a stout, fat-faced young man in a white cravat, 
 whose voice was at once loud and melodious, and whom 
 our manly Oxford student set down as a man who had 
 just rubbed through the university, and got into a scanty 
 living. 
 
 57 
 
58 OUR ENGLISH FRIENDS. 
 
 " I met an American on the boat yesterday," the oracle 
 was saying to his friends, "who was really quite a 
 pleasant fellow. He — a really was, you know, quite a 
 sensible man. I asked him if they had any thing like 
 this in America; and he was obliged to say that they 
 hadn't any thing like it in his country ; they really hadn't. 
 He was really quite a sensible fellow ; said he was over 
 here to do the European tour, as he called it." 
 
 Small, sympathetic laugh from the attentive, wiry, red- 
 faced woman on the oracle's left, and also a chuckle, at 
 the expense of the American, from the thin Englishman 
 on his right, who wore a large white waistcoat, a blue veil 
 on his hat, and a face as red as a live coal. 
 
 " Quite an admission, wasn't it, from an American ? 
 But I think they have changed since the wah, you know." 
 
 At the next landing, the smooth and beaming church- 
 man was left by his friends ; and he soon retired to the 
 cabin, where I saw him self-sacrificingly denying himself 
 the views on deck, and consoling himself with a substan- . 
 tial lunch and a bottle of English ale. 
 
 There is one thing to be said about the English abroad : 
 the variety is almost infinite. The best acquaintances 
 one makes will be English, — people with no nonsense 
 and strong individuality ; and one gets no end of enter- 
 tainment from the other sort. Very different from the 
 clergyman on the boat was the old lady at table-dliote 
 in one of the hotels on the lake. One would not like to 
 call her a delightfully-wicked old woman, like the Bar- 
 oness Bernstein ; but she had her own witty and satiri- 
 cal way of regarding the world. She had lived twenty- 
 five years at Geneva, where people, years ago, coming 
 over the dusty and hot roads of France, used to faint 
 away when they first caught sight of the Alps. Be- 
 lieve they don't do it now. She never did ; was past 
 the susceptible age when she first came ; was tired of 
 the people. • Honest ? Why, yes, honest, but ^^ixy fond 
 of money. Fine Swiss wood-carving? Yes. You'll 
 get very sick of it. It's very nice, but I'm tired of it. 
 
OUR ENGLISH FRIENDS, ' 59 
 
 Years ago, I sent some of it home to the folks in Eng- 
 land. They thought every thing of it ; and it wasn't 
 very nice, either, — a cheap sort. Moral ideas ? I don't 
 care for moral ideas : people make such a fuss about 
 them lately (this in reply to her next neighbor, an 
 eccentric, thin man, with bushy hair, shaggy eyebrows, 
 
 jgend a, high, falsetto voice, who rallied the witty old lady 
 all dinner-time about her lack of moral ideas, and accu- 
 rately described the thin wine on the table as " water- 
 bewitched "). Why didn't the baroness go back to Eng- 
 
 ' land, if she was so tired of Switzerland ? Well, she was 
 too infirm now ; and, besides, she didn't like to trust 
 herself on the railroads. And there were so many new 
 inventions now-a-days, of which she read. What was 
 this nitro-glycerine, that exploded so dreadfully ? No : 
 she thought she should stay where she was. 
 
 There is little risk of mistakino; the Eno;lisliman, with 
 or without his family, who has set out to do Switzerland. 
 He wears a brandy-flask, a field-glass, and a haversack. 
 Whether he has a silk or soft hat, he is certain to wear a 
 veil tied round it. This precaution is adopted when he 
 makes up his mind to come to Switzerland, I think, be- 
 cause he has read that a veil is necessary to protect the 
 eyes from the snow-glare. There is probably not one 
 traveller in a hundred who gets among tiie ice and snow- 
 fields where he needs a veil or green glasses: but it is 
 well to have it on the hat; it looks adventurous. The 
 veil and the spiked alpenstock are the signs of peril. 
 Everybody — almost everybody — has an alpenstock. 
 It is usually a round pine stick, with an iron spike in one 
 end. That, also, is a sign of peril. We saw a noble 
 young Briton on the steamer the other day, who was 
 got up in the best Alpine manner. He wore a short 
 sack, — in fact, an entire suit of light gray flannel, which 
 closely fitted his lithe form. His shoes were of un- 
 dressed leather, with large spikes in the soles ; and on 
 his white hat he wore a large quantity of gauze, which 
 fell in folds down his neck. I am sorry to say that he 
 
6o OUR ENGLISH FRIENDS. 
 
 had a red face, a shaven chin, and long side-whiskers. 
 He carried a formidable alpenstock ; and at the little 
 landino; where we first saw him, and afterward on the 
 boat, he leaned on it m a series of the most graceful and 
 daring attitudes that I ever saw the human form assume. 
 Our Oxford student knew the variety, and guessed 
 rightly that he was an army man. He had his face 
 burned at Malta. Had he been over the Gemmi ? iBr 
 up this or that mountain V asked another English offi- 
 cer. "No, I have not." And it turned out that he 
 hadn't been anywhere, and didn't seem likely to do any 
 thing but show himself at the frequented valley places. 
 And yet I never saw one whose gallant bearing I so 
 much admired. We saw him afterward at Interlaken, 
 enduring all the hardships of that fashionable place. 
 There was also there another of the same country, got 
 up for the most dangerous Alpine climbing, conspicuous 
 in red woollen stockings that came above his knees. I 
 could not learn that he ever went up any thing higher 
 than the top of a diligence. 
 
' THE DILIGENCE TO CHAMOUNY. 
 
 THE greatest diligence we have seen, one of the few 
 of the old-fashioned sort, is the one from Geneva 
 to Chamouny. It leaves early in the morning ; and 
 there is always a crowd about it to see the mount and 
 start. The great ark stands before the diligence-office, 
 and, for half an hour before the hour of starting, the por- 
 ters are busy stowing away the baggage, and getting the 
 passengers on board. On top, in the banquette, are 
 seats for eight, besides the postilion and guard ; in the 
 coupe, under the postilion's seat, and looking upon the 
 horses, seats for three ; in the interior, for three ; and on 
 top, behind, for six or eight. The baggage is stowed in 
 the capacious bowels of the vehicle. At seven, the six 
 horses are brought out and hitched on, three abreast. 
 We climb up a ladder to the banquette : there is an 
 irascible Frenchman, who gets into the wrong seat ; and 
 before he gets right there is a terrible war of words 
 between him and the guard and the porters and the 
 hostlers, everybody joining in with great vivacity : in 
 front of us are three quiet Americans, and a slim French- 
 man with a tall hat and one eye-glass. The postilion 
 gets up to his place. Crack, crack, crack, goes the 
 whip ; and, amid " sensation " from the crowd, we are 
 off at a rattling pace, the whip cracking all the time hke 
 Chinese fireworks. The great passion of the drivers is 
 noise ; and they keep the whip going all day. No 
 sooner does a fresh one mount the box than he gives a 
 half-dozea preliminary snaps ; to which the horses pay 
 
 61 
 
62 THE DILIGENCE TO CHAMOUNY. 
 
 no heed, as they know it is only for the driver's amuse- 
 ment. We go at a good gait, changing horses every 
 six miles, till we reach the Baths of St. Gervais, where 
 we dine, from near which we get our first glimpse of Mont 
 Blanc through clouds, — a section of a dazzlingly- white 
 glacier, a very exciting thing to the imagination. Thence 
 we go on in small carriages, over a still excellent bSat 
 more hilly road, and begin to enter the real mountain 
 wonders ; until, at length, real glaciers pouring down out 
 of the clouds nearly to the road meet us, and we enter 
 the narrow Valley of Chamouny, through which we drive 
 to the village in a rain. 
 
 Everybody goes to Chamouny, and up the Flegere, 
 and to Montanvert, and over the Mer de Glace ; and 
 nearly everybody down the Mauvais Pas to the Chapeau, 
 and so back to the village. It is all easy to do ; and yet 
 we saw some French people at the Chapeau who seemed 
 to think they had accomplished the most hazardous thing 
 in the world in coming down the rocks of the Mauvais 
 Pas. There is, as might be expected, a great deal of 
 humbug about the difficulty of getting about in the Alps, 
 and the necessity of guides. Most of the dangers van- 
 ish on near approach.* The Mer de Glace is inferior to 
 many other glaciers, and is not nearly so fine as the 
 Glacier des Bossons : but it has a reputation, and is easy 
 of access ; so people are content to walk over the dirty 
 ice. One sees it to better effect from below, or he must 
 ascend it to the Jardin to know that it has deep cre- 
 vasses, and is as treacherous as it is grand. And yet no 
 one will be disappointed at the view from Montanvert, 
 of the upper glacier, and the needles of rock and snow 
 which rise beyond. 
 
 We met at the Chapeau two jolly young fellows from 
 Charleston, S. C, who had been in the war, on the 
 wrong side. They knew no language but American, and 
 were unable to order a cutlet and an omelet for break- 
 fast. They said they believed they were going over the 
 Tete Noire. They supposed they had four mules wait- 
 
THE DILIGENCE TO CIIAMOUNY. d^ 
 
 ing for them somewlaere, and a guide ; but tliey couldn't 
 understand a word he said, and he couldn't understand 
 them. The day before, they had nearly perished of 
 thirst, because they couldn't make their guide compre- 
 hend that they wanted water. _One of them had slung 
 over his shoulder an Alpine horn, which he blew occa- 
 sionally, and seemed much to enjoy. All this while we 
 sit on a rock at the foot of the Mauvais Pas, looking out 
 upon the green glacier, which here jjiles itself up finely, 
 and above to the Aiguilles de Charmoz and the innu- 
 merable ice-pinnacles that run up to the clouds, while 
 our muleteer is getting his breakfast. This is his third 
 breakfast this morning. 
 
 The day after we reached Chamouny, Monseigneur 
 the bishop arrived there on one of his rare pilgrimages 
 into these wild valleys. Nearly all the way down from 
 Geneva, we had seen signs of his coming, in preparations 
 as for the celebration of a great victory. I did not know 
 at first but the Atlantic cable had been laid, or rather that 
 the decorations were on account of the news of it reach- 
 ing this region. It was a holiday for all classes; and 
 everybody lent a hand to the preparations. First, the 
 little church where the confirmations were to take place 
 was trimmed within and without ; and an arch of green 
 spanned the gateway. At Les Pres, the women were 
 sweeping the road, and the men were setting small ever- 
 green trees on each side. The peasants were in their 
 best clothes ; and in front of their wretched hovels were 
 tables set out with flowers. So cheerful and eager were 
 they about the bishop, that they forgot to beg as we 
 passed : the whole valley was in a fever of expectation. 
 At one hamlet on the mule-path over the Tete Noire, 
 where the bishop was that day expected, and the wo- 
 men were sweeping away all dust and litter from the 
 road, I removed my hat, and gravely thanked them for 
 their thoughtful preparation for our coming. But they 
 only stared a little, as if we were not worthy to be even 
 forerunners of Monseigrneur. 
 
64 THE DILIGENCE TO CHAMOUNY. 
 
 I do not care to write here how serious a drawback to 
 the pleasures of this region are its inhabitants. You get 
 the impression that half of them are beggars. The other 
 half are watching for a chance to prey upon you in other 
 ways. I heard of a woman in the Zormatt Valley who 
 refused pay for a glass of milk ; but I did not have time 
 to verify the report. Besides the beggars, who may or 
 may not be horrid-looking creatures, there are the grin- 
 ning Cretins, the old women with skins of parchment 
 and the goitre, and even young children with the loath- 
 some appendage, the most wretched and filthy hovels, 
 and the dirtiest, ugliest people in them. The poor 
 women are the beasts of burden. They often lead, mow- 
 ing in the hayfield ; they carry heavy baskets on their 
 backs ; they balance on their heads and carry large wash- 
 tubs full of water. The more appropriate load of one 
 was a cradle with a baby in it, which seemed not at all 
 to fear falling. When one sees how the women are 
 treated, he does not wonder that there are so many de- 
 formed, hideous children. I think the pretty girl has yet 
 to be born in Switzerland. 
 
 This is not much about the Alps ? Ah, well, the Alps 
 are there. Go read your guide-book, and find out what 
 your emotions are. As I said, everybody goes to Cha- 
 mouny. Is it not enough to sit at your window, and 
 watch the clouds when they lift from the Mont Blanc 
 range, disclosing splendor after splendor, from the 
 Aiguille de Goute to the Aiguille Verte, — white needles 
 which pierce the air for twelve thousand feet, until, jubi- 
 late ! the round summit of the monarch himself is visible, 
 and the vast expanse of white snow-fields, the whiteness of 
 which is rather of heaven than of earth, dazzles the eyes, 
 even at so great a distance ? Everybody who is patient, 
 and waits in the cold and inhospitable-looking valley of 
 the Chamouny long enough, sees Mont Blanc ; but every 
 one does not see a sunset of the royal order. The clouds 
 breaking up and clearing, after days of bad weather, 
 showed us height after height, and peak after peak, now 
 
THE DILIGENCE TO C HA MO UN Y. 65 
 
 ■wreathing the summits, now settling below or hanging in 
 patches on the sides, and again soaring above, until we 
 had the whole range lying, far and brilliant, in the even- 
 ing light. The clouds took on gorgeous colors, at length, 
 and soon the snow caught the hue, and whole fields were 
 rosy pink, while uplifted peaks glowed red, as with inter- 
 nal fire. Only Mont Blanc, afar off, remained purely 
 white, in a kind of regal inaccessibility. And, after- 
 ward, one star came out over it, and a bright light shone 
 from the hut on the Grand Mulets, a rock in the waste 
 of snow, where a Frenchman was passing the night on 
 his way to the summit. 
 
 Shall I describe the passage of the Tete Noire ? My 
 friend, it is twenty-four miles, a road somewhat hilly, 
 with splendid views of Mont Blanc in the morning, and 
 of the Bernese Oberland range in the afternoon, when 
 you descend into Martigny, — a hot place in the dusty 
 Rhone Valley, which has a comfortable hotel, with a 
 pleasant garden, in which you sit after dinner and let 
 the mosquitoes eat you. 
 
 6« 
 
THE MAN WHO SPEAKS ENGLISH. 
 
 IT was eleven o'clock at night when we reached Sion, 
 a dirty little town at the end of the Khone -Valley 
 Railway, and got into the omnibus for the hotel ; and it 
 was also dark and rainy. They speak German in this 
 part of Switzerland, or what is called German. There 
 were two very pleasant Americans, who spoke American, 
 going on in the diligence at half-past five in the morn- 
 ing, on their way over the Simplon. One of them was 
 accustomed to speak good, broad English very distinctly 
 to all races ; and he seemed to expect that he must be 
 understood if he repeated his observations in a louder 
 tone, as he always did. I think he would force all this 
 country to speak English in two months. We all desired 
 to secure places in the dili2;ence, which was likely to be 
 full, as is usually the case when a railway discharges itself 
 into a post-road. 
 
 We were scarcely in the omnibus, when the gentleman 
 said to the conductor : — 
 
 " I want two places in the coupe of the diligence in the 
 morning. Can I have them ? " 
 
 " Yah," replied the good-natured German, who didn't 
 understand a word. 
 
 " Two places, diligence, coupe, morning. Is it full ? " 
 
 " Yah," replied the accommodating fellow. " Hotel, 
 man spik English." 
 
 I suggested the banquette as desirable, if it could be 
 obtained, and the German was equally willing to give it 
 to us. Descending from the omnibus at the hotel, in a 
 66 
 
THE MAN WHO SPEAKS ENGLISH. 67 
 
 drizzling rain, and amidst a crowd of porters and postil- 
 ions and runners, the "man who spoke English " imme- 
 diately presented himself; and upon him the American 
 pounced with a torrent of questions. He was a willing 
 lively little waiter, with his moony face on the top of his 
 head ; and he jumped round in the rain like a parchino- 
 pea, rolling his head about in the funniest manner. 
 
 The American steadied the little man by the collar 
 and began, — ' 
 
 "I want to secure two seats in the coupe of the dili- 
 gence in the mornino-," 
 
 " Yaas," jumping l-ound, and looking from one to an- 
 other. " Diligence, coupe, morning." 
 
 "I — want — two seats — in — coupe. If I can't get 
 them, two — in — banquette." 
 
 " Yaas — banquette, coupe,— yaas, diligence." 
 
 " Do you understand ? Two seats, diligence, Simplon, 
 morning. Will you get them ? " 
 
 " Oh, yaas ! morning, diligence. Yaas, sirr." 
 
 " Hang the fellow ! Where is the office ? " And the 
 gentleman left the spry little waiter bobbing about in the 
 middle of the street, speaking English, but probably com- 
 prehending nothing that was said to him. I inquired the 
 way to the office of the conductor : it was closed, but 
 would soon be open, and I waited; and at length the 
 official, a stout Frenchman, appeared, and I secured 
 places in the interior, the only ones to be had to Visp. 
 1 had seen a diligence at the door with three places in 
 tl^ coupe, and one perched behind ; no banquette. The 
 office is brightly lighted ; people are waiting to secure 
 places; there is the usual crowd of loafers, men and 
 women, and the Frenchman sits at his desk. Enter the 
 American. 
 
 ^ " I want two places in coupe, in the mornino-. Or 
 banqi^tte. Two places, diligence." The officiarwaves 
 mm off, and says somethintr. 
 " What does he say ? " ° 
 
 "He tells you to sit down on that bench till he is 
 ready." 
 
68 THE MAN WHO SPEAKS ENGLISH. 
 
 Soon the Frenchman has run over his big way-bills, and 
 turns to us. 
 
 " I want two places in the diligence, coupe," &c., &c., 
 says the American. 
 
 This remark being lost on the official, I explain to 
 him as well as I can what is wanted, at first, — two places 
 in the coupe. 
 
 " One is taken," is his reply. 
 
 " The gentleman will take two," I said, having in mind 
 the diligence in the yard, with three places in the coupe. 
 
 " One is taken," be repeats. 
 
 " Then the gentleman will take the other two." 
 
 " One is taken ! " he cries, jumping up and smiting the 
 table, — " one is taken, I tell you ! " 
 
 " How many are there in the coupe ? ** 
 
 ''Two." 
 
 " Oh ! then the gentleman will take the one remaining 
 in the coupe, and the one on top." 
 
 So it is arranged. When I come back to the hotel, the 
 Americans are explaining to the lively waiter " who 
 speaks English " that they are to go in the diligence at 
 half-past five, and that they are to be called at half-past 
 four, and have breakfast. He knows all about it, — 
 " Diligence, half-past four, breakfast. Oh, yaas ! " While 
 I have been at the diligence-office, my companions have 
 secured rooms, and gone to them ; and I ask the waiter to 
 show me to my room. First, however, I tell him that we 
 three, two ladies and myself, who came together, are 
 going in the diligence at half-past five, and want to be 
 called, and have breakfast. Did he comprehend ? 
 
 " Yaas," rolling his face about on the top of his head 
 violently. " You three gentleman want breakfast. What 
 you hare ? " 
 
 I had told him before what we would have, and now I 
 gave up all hope of keeping our parties separate in his 
 mind ; so I said, — 
 
 " Five persons want breakfast at five o'clock. Five 
 persons, five hours. Call all of them at half-past four." 
 
THE MAN WHO SPEAKS ENGLISH. 69 
 
 And T repeated it, and made him repeat it in English 
 and French. He then insisted on putting me into the 
 room of one of the American gentlemen ; and then he 
 knocked at the door of a lady, who cried out in indigna- 
 tion at being disturbed ; and, finally, I found my room. 
 At the door I reiterated the instructions for the morn- 
 ing; and he cheerfully bade me good-night. But he 
 almost immediately came back, and poked in his head 
 with, — 
 
 " Is you go by de diligence ? " 
 
 " Yes, you stupid." 
 
 In the morning one of our party was called at half-past 
 three, and saved the rest of us from a like fate ; and we 
 were not aroused at all, but woke time enough to get 
 down and find the diligence nearly ready, and no break- 
 fast, but " the man who spoke English " as lively as ever. 
 And we had a breakfast brought out, so filthy in all re- 
 spects that nobody could eat it. Fortunately, there was 
 not time to seriously try ; but we paid for it, and departed. 
 The two American gentlemen sat in front of the house, 
 waiting. The lively waiter had called them at half-past 
 three, — for the railway train, instead of the diligence ; 
 and they had their wretched breakfast early. They will 
 remember the funny adventure with " the man who speaks 
 English," and, no doubt, unite with us in warmly com- 
 mending the Hotel Lion d'Or at Sion as the nastiest inn 
 in Switzerland. 
 
A WALK TO THE GORNER-GRAT. 
 
 11 THEN one leaves the dusty Rhone Valley, and 
 VV turns southward from Visp, he plunges into the 
 wildest and most savage part of Switzerland, and pene- 
 trates the heart of the Alps. The valley is scarcely 
 more than a narrow gorge, with high precipices on 
 either side, through which the turbid and rapid Visp 
 tears along at a furious rate, boiling and leaping in foam 
 over its rocky bed, and nearly as large as the Rhone at 
 the junction. From Visp to St. Mcolaus, twelve miles, 
 there is only a mule-path, but a very good one, winding- 
 along on the slope, sometimes high up, and again de- 
 scending to cross the stream, at first by vineyards and 
 high stone walls, and then on the edges of precipices, 
 but always romantic and wild. It is noon when we set 
 out from Visp, in true pilgrim fashion, and the sun is at 
 first hot ; but as we slowly rise up the easy ascent, we 
 get a breeze, and forget the heat in the varied charms 
 of the walk. 
 
 Every thing for the use of the upper valley and 
 Zermatt, now a place of considerable resort, must be 
 carried by porters, or on horseback ; and we pass or 
 meet men and women, sometimes a dozen of them 
 together, laboring along under the long, heavy bas- 
 kets, broad at the top and coming nearly to a point 
 below, which are universally used here for carrying 
 every thing. The tubs for transporting water are of the 
 same sort. There is no level ground, but every foot is 
 cultivated. High up on the sides of the precipices, 
 
 ro 
 
A WALK TO THE GORNEK-GRAT. 71 
 
 where it seems impossible for a goat to climb, are vine- 
 yards and houses, and even villages, hung on slopes, 
 nearly up, to the clouds, and with no visible way of com- 
 munication with the rest of the world. 
 
 In two hours' time we are at Stalden, a village 
 perched upon a rocky promontory, at the junction of the 
 valleys of the Saas and the Visp, with a church and 
 white tower conspicuous from afar. We climb up to the 
 terrace in ^ front of it, on our way into the town. A 
 seedy-looking priest is pacing up and down, taking the 
 fresh breeze, his broad-brimmed, shabby hat held down 
 upon the wall by a big stone. His clothes are worn 
 threadbare ; and he looks as thin and poor as a Method- 
 ist minister in a stony town at home, on three hundred 
 a year. He politely returns our salutation, and we walk 
 on. Nearly all the priests in this region look wretch- 
 edly poor, — as poor as the people. Through crooked, nar- 
 row streets, with houses overhanging and thrusting out 
 corners and gables, houses with stables below, and quaint 
 carvings and odd little windows above, — the panes of 
 glass hexagons, so that the windows looked like sections 
 of honeycomb, — we found our way to the inn, a many- 
 storied chalet, with stairs on the outside, stone floors in the 
 upper passages, and no end of queer rooms ; built right 
 in the midst of other houses as odd, decorated with Ger- 
 man-text carving, from the windows of which the occu- 
 pants could look in upon us, if they had cared to do so ; 
 but they did not. They seem little interested in any 
 thing ; and no wonder, with their hard fight with Nature. 
 Below is a wine-shop, Avith a little side booth, in which 
 some German travellers sit drinking their wine, and 
 sputtering away in harsh gutturals. The inn is very 
 neat inside, and we are well served. Stalden is high ; 
 but away above it on the opposite side is a village on 
 the steep slope, with a slender white spire that rivals 
 some of the snowy needles. Stalden is high, but the 
 hill on which it stands is rich in grass. The secret of 
 the fertile meadows is the most thorough irrigation. 
 
72 A WALK TO THE GORNER-GRAT. 
 
 Water is carried along the banks from the river, and dis- 
 tributed by numerous sluiceways below; and above the 
 little mountain streams are brought where they are 
 needed by artificial channels. Old men and women in 
 the fields were constantly changing the direction of the 
 currents. All the inhabitants appeared to be porters : 
 women were transporting on their backs baskets full of 
 soil ; hay was being backed to the stables ; burden-bearers 
 were coming and going upon the road: we were told 
 that there are only three horses in the place. There is 
 a pleasant girl who brings us luncheon at the inn ; but 
 the inhabitants for the most part are as hideous as those 
 we see all day : some have hardly the shape of human 
 beings, and they all live in the most filthy manner in the 
 dirtiest habitations. A clialet is a sweet thing when you 
 buy a little model of it at home. 
 
 After we leave Stalden, the walk becomes more pic- 
 turesque, the precipices are higher, the gorges deeper.. It 
 required some engineering to carry the footpath round, 
 the mountain buttresses and over the ravines. Soon the 
 village of Emd appears on the right, — a very considerable 
 collection of brown houses, and a shining white church- 
 spire, above woods and precipices and apparently un- 
 scalable heights, on a green spot which seems painted 
 on the precipices; with nothing visible to keep the 
 whole from sliding down, down, into the gorge of the 
 Visp. Switzerland may not have so much population to 
 the square mile as some countries ; but she has a popula- 
 tion to some of her square miles that would astonish 
 some parts of the earth's surface elsewhere. Farther 
 on, we saw a faint, zigzag footpath, that we conjectured 
 led to Emd; but it might lead up to heaven. All day 
 we had been solicited for charity by squalid little chil- 
 dren, who kiss their nasty little paws at us, and ask I'or 
 centimes. The children of Emd, however, did not 
 trouble us. It must be a serious affair if they ever roll 
 out of bed. 
 
 Late in the afternoon thunder besan to tumble about 
 
A WALK TO THE GORNER-GRAT, 73 
 
 the hills, and clouds snatched away from our sight the 
 snow peaks at the end of the valley ; and at length the 
 rain fell on those who had just arrived and on the un- 
 just. We took refuge from the hardest of it in a lonely 
 chalet high up on the hillside, where a roughly-dressed, 
 frowzy Swiss, who spoke bad German, and said he was 
 a schoolmaster, gave us a bench in the shed of his school- 
 room. He had only two pupils in attendance, and I did 
 not get a very favorable impression of this high school. 
 Its master quite overcame us with thanks when we gave 
 him a few centimes on leaving. It still rained, and we 
 arrived in St. Nicolaus quite damp. 
 
 There is a decent road from St. Nicolaus to Zermatt, 
 over which go wagons without springs. The scenery is 
 constantly grander as we ascend. The day is not 
 wholly clear ; but high on our right are the vast snow- 
 fields of the Weishorn, and out of the very clouds near 
 it seems to pour the Bies Glacier, In front are the 
 splendid Briethorn, with its white, round summit ; the . 
 black Riffelhorn ; the sharp peak of the little Matter- 
 horn ; and at last the giant Matterhorn itself rising before 
 us, the most finished and impressive single mountain in 
 Switzerland. Not so high as Mont Blanc by a thousand 
 feet, it appears immense in its isolated position and its 
 slender aspiration. It is a huge pillar of rock, with 
 sharply-cut edges, rising to a defined point, dusted with 
 snow, so that the rock is only here and there revealed. 
 To ascend it, seems as impossible as to go up the Column 
 of Luxor; and one can believe that the gentlemen who 
 first attempted it in 1864, and lost their lives, did fall 
 four thousand feet before their bodies rested on the 
 glacier below. 
 
 We did not stay at Zermatt, but pushed on for the 
 hotel on the top of the Rifielberg, — a very stiff and tire- 
 some climb of about three hours, an unending pull up a 
 stony footpath. Within an hour of the top, and when 
 the white hotel is in sight above the zigzag on the 
 breast of the precipice, we reach a green and wide-spread 
 
74 A WALK TO THE GORNER-GRA T. 
 
 Alp, where hundreds of cows are feeding, watched by- 
 two forlorn women, — the " milkmaids all forlorn " of 
 poetry. At the rude chalets we stop, and get draughts 
 of rich, sweet cream. As we wind up the slope, the 
 tinkling of multitudinous bells from the herd comes to 
 us, which is also in the domain of poetry. All the way 
 up, we have found wild-flowers in the greatest profusion ; 
 and the higher we ascend, the more exquisite is their 
 color and the more perfect their form. There are pan- 
 sies ; gentians of a deeper blue than flower ever was 
 before ; forget-me-nots, a pink variety among them ; vio- 
 lets, the Alpine rose and the Alpine violet ; delicate pink 
 flowers of moss ; harebells ; and quantities for which we 
 know no names, more exquisite in shape and color than 
 the choicest products of the greenhouse. Large slopes 
 are covered with them, — a brilliant show to the eye, and 
 most pleasantly beguiling the way of its tediousness. 
 As high as I ascended, I still found some of these delicate 
 flowers, the pink moss growing in profusion amongst the 
 rocks of the Gorner-Grat, and close to the snow-drifts. 
 
 The inn on the Eiffelberg is nearly eight thousand 
 feet high, — almost two thousand feet above the hut on 
 Mount Washington ; yet it is not so cold and desolate as 
 the latter. Grass grows and flowers bloom on its smooth 
 upland, and behind it and in front of it are the snow- 
 peaks. That evening we essayed the Gorner-Grat, a 
 rocky ledge nearly ten thousand feet above the level of 
 the sea ; but after a climb of an hour and a half, and a 
 good view of Monte Rosa and the glaciers and peaks of 
 that range, we were prevented from reaching the sum- 
 mit, and driven back by a sharp storm of hail and rain. 
 Tlie next morning I started for the Gorner-Grat again, 
 at four o'clock. The Matterhorn lifted its huge bulk 
 sharply against the sky, except where fleecy clouds 
 lightly draped it and fantastically blew about it. As I 
 ascended, and turned to look at it, its beautifully-cut 
 peak had caught the first ray of the sun, and burned 
 with a rosy glow. Some great clouds drifted high in 
 
A WALK TO THE GORNER-GRAT. 75 
 
 the air : the summits of the Breithorn, the Lyscamm, 
 and their companions, lay cold and white ; but the snow 
 down their sides had a tinge of pink. When I stood 
 upon the summit of the Gorner-Grat, the two prominent 
 silver peaks of Monte Rosa were just touched with the 
 sun, and its great snow-fields were visible to the glacier 
 at its base. The Gorner-Grat is a rounded ridge of 
 rock, entirely encircled by glaciers and snow-peaks. 
 The panorama from it is unexcelled in Switzerland. 
 
 Returning down the rocky steep, I descried, solitary 
 in that great waste of rock and snow, the form of a lady 
 whom I supposed I had left sleeping at the inn, over- 
 come with the fatigue of yesterday's tramp. Lured on 
 by the apparently short distance to the back-bone of the 
 ridge, she had climbed the rocks a mile or more above 
 the hotel, and come to meet me. She also had seen the 
 great peaks lift themselves out of the gray dawn, and 
 Monte Rosa catch the first rays. We stood a while 
 together to see how jocund day ran hither and thither 
 along the mountain-tops, until the light was all abroad, 
 and then silently turned downward, as one goes from a 
 mount of devotion. 
 
THE BATHS OF LEUK. 
 
 IN order to make the pass of the Gemmi, it is necessary 
 to go through the Baths of Leuk. The ascent from 
 the Rhone bridge at Susten is full of interest, affording 
 fine views of the valley, which is better to look at than 
 to travel through, and bringing you almost immediately 
 to the old town of Leuk, a queer, old, towered place, 
 perched on a precipice, with the oddest inn, and a notice 
 posted up to the effect, that any one who drives through 
 its steep streets faster than a walk will be fined five 
 francs. I paid nothing extra for a fast walk. The road, 
 which is one of the best in the country, is a wonderful 
 piece of engineering, spanning streams, cut in rock, 
 rounding precipices, following the wild valley of the 
 Dala by many a winding and zigzag. 
 
 The Baths of Leuk, or Loeche-les-Bains, or Leuker- 
 bad, is a little village at the very head of the valley, 
 over four thousand feet above the sea, and overhung by 
 the perpendicular walls of the Gemmi which rise on all 
 sides, except the south, on an average of two thousand 
 feet above it. There is a nest of brown houses, clus- 
 tered together like bee-hives, into which the few inhabit- 
 ants creep to hibernate in the long winters, and several 
 shops, grand hotels, and bathing-houses open for the 
 season. Innumerable springs issue out of this green, 
 sloping meadow among the mountains, some of them 
 icy cold, but over twenty of them hot, and seasoned 
 with a great many disagreeable sulphates, carbonates, 
 and oxides, and varying in temperature from ninety-five 
 76 
 
THE BATHS OF LEUK. 77 
 
 to one hundred and twenty-three degrees Fahrenheit. 
 Italians, French, and Swiss resort here in great numbers 
 to take the baths, which are supposed to be very effica- 
 cious for rheumatism and cutaneous affections. Doubt- 
 less many of them do up their bathing for the year while 
 here ; and they may need no more after scalding and 
 soaking in this water for a couple of months. 
 
 Before we reached the hotel, we turned aside into one 
 of the ba,th-houses. We stood inhaling a sickly steam 
 in a large, close hall, which was wholly occupied by a 
 huge vat, across which low partitions, with bridges, ran, 
 dividing it into four compartments. When we entered, 
 we were assailed with yells, in many languages, and 
 howls in the common tongue, as if all the fiends of the 
 pit had broken loose. We took off our hats in obedience 
 to the demand ; but the clamor did not wholly subside, 
 and was mingled with singing and horrible laughter. 
 Floating about in each vat, we at first saw twenty or 
 thirty human heads. The women could be distinguished 
 from the men by the manner of dressing the hair. Each 
 wore a loose woollen gown. Each had a little table 
 floating before him or her, which he or she pushed about 
 at pleasure. One wore a hideous mask ; another kept 
 diving in the opaque pool and coming up to blow, like 
 the hippopotamus in the Zoological Gardens ; some were 
 taking a lunch from their tables, others playing chess ; 
 some sitting on the benches round the edges, with only 
 heads out of water, as doleful as owls, while others 
 roamed about, engaged in the game of spattering with 
 their comrades, and sang and shouted at the top of their 
 voices. The people in this bath were said to be second 
 class ; but they looked as well and behaved better than 
 those of the first class, whom we saw in the establish- 
 ment at our hotel afterward. 
 
 It may be a valuable scientific fact, that the water in 
 these vats, in which people of all sexes, all diseases, and 
 all nations spend so many hours of the twenty-four, is 
 changed once a day. The temperature at which the 
 
78 THE BATHS OF LEUK. 
 
 batli is given is ninety-eight. The water is let in at 
 night, and allowed to cool. At five in the morning, the 
 bathers enter it, and remain until ten o'clock, — five hours, 
 having breakfast served to them on the floating tables, 
 " as they sail, as they sail." They then have a respite 
 till two, and go in till five. Eight hours in hot water ! 
 Nothing can be more disgusting than the sight of these 
 baths. Gustave Dore must have learned here how to 
 make those ghostly pictures of the lost floating about in 
 the Stygian pools, in his illustrations of the Inferno ; 
 and the rocks and cavernous precipice's may have enabled 
 him to complete the picture. On what, principle cm?es 
 are eifected in these filthy vats, I could not learn. I 
 have a theory, that, where so many diseases meet and 
 mingle in one swashing fluid, they neutralize each other. 
 It may be that the action is that happily explained by 
 one of the Hibernian bathmen in an American water- 
 cure establishment. " You see, sir," said Jie, " that the 
 shock of the water unites with the electricity of the sys- 
 tem, and explodes the disease." I should think that' 
 the shock to one's feeling of decency and cleanliness, at 
 these baths, would explod'e any disease in Europe. But, 
 whatever the result may be, I am not sorry to see so 
 many French and Italians soak themselves once a year. 
 Out of the bath these people seem to enjoy_ life. 
 There is a long promenade, shaded and picturesque, 
 which they take at evening, sometimes as far as the Lad- 
 ders, eight of which are fastened, in a shackling manner, 
 to the perpendicular rocks, — a high and somewhat dan- 
 gerous ascent to the village of Albinen, but undertaken 
 constantly by peasants with baskets on their backs. It 
 is in winter the only mode Leukerbad has of communi- 
 cating with the world ; and in summer it is the only way 
 of reaching Albinen, except by a long journey down the 
 Dala and up ancTther valley and height. The bathers 
 were certainly very lively and social at table-d'hote, 
 where we had the pleasure of meeting some hundred of 
 tliem, dressed. It was presumed that the baths were the 
 
THE BATHS OF LEUK. 79 
 
 subject of tlie entertaining conversation ; for I read in a 
 charminor little work which sets forth the delights of 
 Leuk, that La poussee forms the staple of most of the 
 talk. La poussee, or, as this book poetically calls it, 
 " that daughter of the waters of Loeche," — "that eruption 
 of which we have already spoken, and which .proves the 
 action of the baths upon the skin," — becomes the object, 
 and often the end, of all conversation. And it gives 
 specimens of this pleasant. eon verse, as : — 
 
 " Comment va vptre .poussee ? " 
 
 " Avez-vous la p6ussee ? " 
 
 " Je suis en pleine poussee ! " 
 
 "Ma poussee s'est fort bien passee ! " 
 
 Indeed, says this €!titertaining tract, sans poussee, one 
 wbuld not be able to hold, at table or in the salon, with 
 a neighbor of either sex, the least conversation. Fur- 
 ther, it is by "grace a la poussee" that one arrives at 
 those intimacies which are the characteristics of the baths. 
 Blessed, then, be La poussee, which renders possible such 
 a high society and such select and entertaining conver- 
 sation ! >Long may the bathers of Leuk live to soak and 
 converse ! In-'the morning, when we departed for the 
 ascent of the Gemmi, we passed one of the bathing- 
 houses. 1 fancied that a hot steam issued out of the 
 crevices ; from within came a discord of singing and 
 caterwauling ; and, as a door swung open, I saw that the 
 heads floating about on the turbid tide were eating 
 breakfast from the swimming tables. 
 
OVER THE GEMMI. 
 
 I SPENT some time, the evening before, studying the 
 face of the cliff we were to ascend, to discover the 
 path; but I could only trace its zigzag beginning. 
 When we came to the base of the rock, we found a way 
 cut, a narrow path, most of the distance hewn out of the 
 rock, winding upward along the face of the precipice. 
 The view, as one rises, is of the break-neck description. 
 The way is really safe enough, even on mule-back, as- 
 cending ; but one would be foolhardy to ride down. We 
 met a lady on the summit who was about to be carried 
 down on a chair ; and she seemed quite to like the mode 
 of conveyance : she had harnessed her husband in tem- 
 porarily for one of the bearers, which made it still more 
 jolly for her. When we started, a cloud of mist hung 
 over the edge of the rocks. As we rose, it descended 
 to meet us, and sunk below, hiding the valley and its 
 houses, which had looked like Swiss toys from our height. 
 When we reached the summit, the mist came boiling up 
 after us, rising like a thick wall to the sky, and hiding 
 all that great mountain range, the Vallais Alps, from 
 which we had come, and which we hoped to see from 
 this point. Fortunately, there were no clouds on the 
 other side, and we looked down into a magnificent rocky 
 basin, encircled by broken and over-topping crags and 
 snow-fields, at the bottom of which was a green lake. 
 It is one of the wildest of scenes. 
 
 An hour from the summit, we came to a green Alp, 
 where a herd of cows were feeding ; and in the midst of 
 80 
 
OVER THE GEMMI. 8i 
 
 it were three or four dirty chalets, where pigs, chickens, 
 cattle, and animals constructed very much like human 
 beings, lived ; yet I have nothing to say against these 
 chalets, for we had excellent cream there. We had, on 
 the way down, fine views of the snowy Altels, the Rinder- 
 horn, the Finster-Aarhorn, — a deep valley which enor- 
 mous precipices guard, but which avalanches nevertheless 
 invade, — and, farther on, of the Bllimlisalp, with its sum- 
 mit of crystalline whiteness. The descent to Kandersteg 
 is very rapid, and in a rain slippery. This village is a 
 resort for artists for its splendid views of the range we 
 had crossed: it stands at the gate of the mountains. 
 From there to the Lake of Thun is a delightful drive, — 
 a rich country, with handsome cottages and a charming 
 landscape, even if the pyramidal Niesen did not lift up 
 its seven thousand feet on the edge of the lake. So, 
 through a smiling land, and in the sunshine after the 
 rain, we come to Spiez, and find ourselves at a little 
 hotel on the slope, overlooking town and lake and moun- 
 tains. 
 
 ^ Spiez is not large : indeed, its few houses are nearly all 
 picturesquely grouped upon a narrow rib of land which 
 is thrust into the lake on purpose to make the loveliest 
 picture in the world. There is the old castle, with its 
 many slim spires and its square-peaked roofed tower ; 
 the slender-steepled church; a fringe of old houses below 
 on the lake, one overhanging towards the point ; and the 
 promontory, finished by a willow drooping to the water. 
 Beyond, in hazy light, over the lucid green of the lake, 
 are mountains whose masses of rock seem soft and sculp- 
 tured. To the right, at the foot of the lake, tower the 
 great snow mountains, — the cone of the Schreckhorn, 
 the square top of the Eiger, the Jungfrau, just shoving 
 over the hills, and the Blumlisalp rising into heaven clear 
 and silvery. 
 
 What can one do in such a spot, but swim in the lake, 
 lie on the shore, and watch the passing steamers and the 
 changing light on the mountains ? Down at the wharf, 
 
82 OVER THE GEM MI. 
 
 when the small boats put off for the steamer, one can 
 well entertain himself. The small boat is an enormous 
 thing, after all, and propelled by two long, heavy sweeps, 
 one of which is pulled, and the other pushed. The labor- 
 ing oar is, of course, pulled by a woman ; while her hus- 
 band stands up in the stern of the boat, and gently dips 
 the other in a gallant fashion. There is a boy there, 
 whom I cannot make out, — a short, square boy, with tas- 
 selled skull-cap, and a face that never changes its expres- 
 sion, and never has any expression to change ; he may 
 be older than these hills ; he looks old enough to be his 
 own father : and there is a girl, his counterpart, who 
 might be, judging her age by her face, the mother of 
 both of them. These solemn old-young people are quite 
 busy doing nothing about the wharf, and appear to be 
 afflicted with an undue sense of the responsibility of 
 life. There is a beer-garden here, where several sober 
 couples sit seriously drinking their beer. There are 
 some horrid old women, with the parchment skin and 
 the disagreeable necks. Alone, in a window of the cas- 
 tle, sits a lady at her work, who might be the countess ; 
 only, I am sorry, there is no countess, nothing but a 
 frau, in that old feudal dwelling. And there is a for- 
 eigner, thinking how queer it all is. And, while he sits 
 there, the melodious bell in the church-tower rings its 
 evening sons;. 
 
BAVARIA. 
 
AMERICAN IMPATIENCE. 
 
 "TTTE left Switzerland, as we entered it, in a rain, — 
 VV a kind of double baptism that may have been 
 necessary, and was certainly not too heavy a price to 
 pay for the privileges of the wonderful country. The 
 wind blew freshly, and swept a shower over the deck of 
 the little steamboat, on board of which we stepped from 
 the shabby little pier and town of Romanshorn. After 
 the other Swiss lakes, Constance is tame, except at the 
 southern end, beyond which rise the Appenzell range 
 and the wooded peaks of the Bavarian hills. Through 
 the dash of rain, and under the promise of a magnificent 
 rainbow, — rainbows don't mean any thing in Switzer- 
 land, and have no office as weather-prophets, except to 
 assure you, that, as it rains to-day, so it will rain to-mor- 
 row, — we skirted the lower bend of the lake, and at twi- 
 light sailed into the little harbor of Lindau, through the 
 narrow entrance between the piers, on one of which is a 
 small lighthouse, and on the other sits upright a gigantic 
 stone lion, — a fine enough figure of a Bavarian lion, but 
 with a comical, wide-awake, and expectant expression of 
 countenance, as if he might bark right out at any minute, 
 and become a dog. Yet in the moonlight, shortly after- 
 ward, the lion looked very grand and stately, as he sat 
 regarding the softly-plashing waves, and the high, drift- 
 ing clouds, and the old Roman tower by the bridge, 
 which connects the Island of Lindau with the mainland, 
 and thinking perhaps, if stone lions ever do think, of 
 the time when Roman galleys sailed on Lake Constance^ 
 
 85 
 
86 AMERICAN IMP A TIENCE. 
 
 and when Lindau was an imperial town with a thriying 
 trade. 
 
 On board the little steamer was an American, accom- 
 panied by two ladies, and travelling, I thought, for their 
 gratification, who was very anxious to get on faster than 
 he was able to do, — though why any one should desire to 
 go fast in Europe I do not know. One easily falls into 
 the habit of the country, — to take things easily, to go 
 wlien the slow German fates will, and not to worry one's 
 self beforehand about times and connections. But the 
 American was in a fever of impatience, desirous, if possi- 
 ble, to get on that night. I knew he was from the Land 
 of the Free by a phrase I heard him use in the cars : he 
 said, " I'll bet a dollar." Yet I must flatter myself that 
 Americans do not always thus betray themselves. I 
 happened, on the Isle of Wight, to hear a bland land- 
 lord " blow up " his glib-tongued son because the latter 
 had not driven a stiffer bargain with us for the hire of a 
 carriage round the island. 
 
 " Didn't you know they were Americans ? " asks the 
 irate father. " I knew it at once." 
 
 " No," replies young hopeful : " they didn't say guess 
 once." 
 
 And straightway the fawning innkeeper returns to 
 us, professing, with his butter-lips, the greatest admira- 
 tion of all Americans, and the intensest anxiety to serve 
 them, and all for pure good-will. The English are even 
 more bloodthirsty at sight of a traveller than the Swiss, 
 and twice as obsequious. But to return to our Ameri- 
 can. He had all the railway-time tables that he could 
 procure ; and he was busily studying them, with the de- 
 sign of " getting on." I heard him say to his compan- 
 ions, as he ransacked his pockets, that he was a mass of 
 hotel- bills and time-tables. He confided to me after- 
 ward, that his wife and her friend had got it into their 
 heads that they must go both to Vienna and Berlin. 
 Was Berlin much out of the way in going from Vienna 
 to Paris ? He said they told him it wasn't. At any 
 
AMERICAN IMPATIENCE. 87 
 
 rate, he must get round at such a date : he had no time 
 to spare. Then, besides the slowness of getting on, 
 there were the trunks. He lost a trunk in Switzerland, 
 and consumed a whole day in looking it up. While the 
 steamboat lay at the wharf at Rorschach, two stout por- 
 ters came on board, and shouldered his baggage to take 
 it ashore. To his remonstrances in English they paid 
 no heed ; and it was some time before they could be 
 made to understand that the trunks were to go on to 
 Lindau. " There," said he, " I should have lost my 
 trunks. Nobody understands what I tell them : I can't 
 get any information." Especially was he unable to get 
 any information as to how to " get on." I confess that 
 the restless American almost put me into a fidget, and 
 revived the American desire to " get on," to take the 
 fast trains, make all the connections, — in short, in the 
 handsome language of the great West, to " put her 
 through." When I last saw our traveller, he was getting 
 his luggage through the custom-house, still undecided 
 whether to push on that night at eleven o'clock. But I 
 forgot all about him and his hurry, when, shortly after, 
 we sat at the table-dliote at the hotel, and the sedate 
 Germans lit their cigars, some of them before they had 
 finished eating, and sat smoking as if there were plenty 
 of leisure for every thing in this world. 
 
A CITY OF COLOR. 
 
 AFTEB, a slow ride, of nearly eight hours, in what, 
 in Germany, is called an express train, through a 
 rain and clouds that hid from our view the Tyrol and 
 the Swabian mountains, over a rolling, pleasant country, 
 past pretty little railway station-houses, covered with 
 vines, gay with flowers in the windows, and surrounded 
 with beds of flowers, past switchmen in flaming scarlet 
 jackets, who stand at the switches and raise the hand to 
 the temple, and keep it there, in a military salute, as we 
 go by, we come into old Augsburg, whose Confession is 
 not so fresh in our minds as it ought to be. Portions of 
 the ancient wall remain, and many of the towers ; and 
 there are archways, picturesquely opening from street to 
 street, under several of which we drive on our way to the 
 Three Moors, a stately hostelry and one of the oldest in 
 Germany. 
 
 It stood here in the year 1500 ; and the room is still 
 shown, unchanged since then, in which thp rich Count 
 Fugger entertained Charles V. The chambers are 
 nearly all immense. That in which we are lodged is 
 large enough for Queen Victoria ; indeed, I am glad to 
 say that her sleeping-room at St. Cloud was not half so 
 spacious. One feels either like a count, or very lone- 
 some, to sit down in a lofty chamber, say thirty-five feet 
 square, with little furniture, and historical and tragical 
 lile-size figures staring at one from the wall-paper. One 
 fears that they may come down in the deep night, 
 88 
 
A CITY OF COLOR. 89 
 
 and stand at the bedside, — those narrow, canopied beds 
 there in the distance, like the marble couches in the 
 cathedral. It must be a fearful thing to be a royal per- 
 son, and dwell in a palace, with resounding rooms and 
 naked, waxed, inlaid floors. At the Three Moors one 
 sees a visitors' book, begun in 1800, which contains the 
 names of many noble and great people, as well as poets 
 and doctors and titled ladies, and much sentimental 
 writino- in French. It is my impression, from an in- 
 spection of the book, that we are the first untitled 
 visitors. 
 
 The traveller cannot but like Augsburg at once, for its 
 quaint houses, colored so diversely and yet harmoniously. 
 Remains of its former brilliancy yet exist -in the frescos 
 on the outside of the buildings, some of which are still 
 bright in color, though partially defaced. Those on the 
 House of Fugger have been restored,- and are very brave 
 pictures. These frescos give great animation and life 
 to the appearance of a street, and I am glad to see a 
 taste for them reviving. Augsburg must have been very 
 gay with them two and three hundred years ago, when, 
 also, it was the home of beautiful women of the middle 
 class, who married princes. We went to see the house 
 in which lived the beautiful Agnes Bernauer, daughter 
 of a barber, who married Duke Albert III., of Bavaria. 
 The house was nought, as old Samuel Pepys would say, 
 only a high stone building, in a block of such ; but it is 
 enough to make a house attractive for centuries if a 
 pretty woman once looks out of its latticed windows, as 
 1 have no doubt Agnes often did when the duke and his 
 retinue rode by in clanking armor. 
 
 But there is no lack of reminders of old times. The 
 cathedral, which was begun before the Christian era 
 could express its age with four figures, has two fine por- 
 tals, with quaint carving, and bronze doors of very old 
 work, whereon the story of Eve and the serpent is liter- 
 ally given, — a representation of great theological, if of 
 small artistic value. And there is the old clock and 
 
90 A CITY OF COLOR. 
 
 watch tower, which for eight hundred years has enabled 
 the Augsburgers to keep the time of day and to look 
 out over the plain for the approach of an enemy. The 
 city is full of fine bronze fountains, some of them of very 
 elaborate design, and adding a convenience and a beauty 
 to the town which American cities wholly want. In one 
 quarter of the town is the Fuggerei, a little city by 
 itself, surrounded by its own wall, the gates of which 
 are shut at night, with narrow streets and neat little 
 houses. It was built by Hans Jacob Fugger the Rich, 
 as long ago as 1519, and is still inhabitated by indigent 
 Rom an- Catholic families, according to the intention of 
 its founder. In the windows were lovely flowers. I saw 
 in the street several of those mysterious, short, old 
 women, — so old and yet so little, all body and hardly any 
 legs, who appear to have grown down into the ground 
 with advancing years. 
 
 It happened to be a rainy day, and cold, on the 30th 
 of July, when we left Augsburg; and the flat fields 
 through which we passed were uninviting under the 
 gray light. Large flocks of geese were feeding on the 
 windy plains, tended by boys and women, who are 
 the living fences of this country. I no longer wonder at 
 the number of feather-beds at the inns, under which we 
 are apparently expected to sleep even in the warmest 
 nights. Shepherds with the regulation crooks, also were 
 watching herds of sheep. Here and there a cluster of 
 red-rooted houses were huddled together into a village, 
 and in all directions rose tapering spires. Especially we 
 marked the steeple of Blenheim, where Jack Churchill 
 won the name for his magnificent country-seat, early in 
 the last century. All this plain where the silly geese 
 feed has been marched over and fought over by armies 
 time and again. We effect the passage of the Danube 
 without difficulty, and on to Harburg, a little town of 
 little red houses, inhabited principally by Jews, huddled 
 under a rocky ridge, upon the summit of which is a pic- 
 turesque mediasval castle, with many towers and turrets, 
 
A CITY OF COLOR. 91 
 
 in as perfect preservation as when feudal flags floated 
 over it. And so on, slowly, with long stops at many sta- 
 tions, to give opportunity, I suppose, for the honest pas- 
 sengers to idk.Q in supplies of beer and sausages, to 
 Nuremberg. 
 
A CITY LIVING ON THE PAST. 
 
 ""VrUKEMBERG, or Nurnberg, was built, I believe, 
 -LX about the beginning of time. At least, in an old 
 black-letter history of the city which I have seen, illus- 
 trated with powerful wood-cuts, the first representation 
 is that of the creation of the world, which is immediately 
 followed by another of Nuremberg. No one who visits 
 it is likely to dispute its antiquity." " Nobody ever goes 
 to Nuremberg but Americans," said a cynical British 
 officer at Chamouny ; " but they always go there. I 
 never saw an American who hadn't been or was not 
 going to Nuremberg." Well, I suppose they wish to see 
 the oldest-looking, and, next to a true Briton on his 
 travels, the oddest thing on the Continent. The city lives 
 in the past still, and on its memories, keeping its old 
 walls and moat entire, and nearly fourscore waTl-towers, 
 in stern array. But grass grows in the moat, fruit-trees 
 thrive there, and vines clamber on the walls. One wan- 
 ders about in the queer streets with the feeling of beino- 
 transported back to the Middle Ages ; but it is difficult 
 to reproduce the impression on paper. Who can describe 
 the narrow and intricate ways; the odd houses with 
 many little gables; great roofs breaking out from eaves 
 to ridgepole, with dozens of dormer-windows ; hanging 
 balconies of stone, carved and figure-beset, ornamented 
 and fi:escoed fronts; the archways, leading into queer 
 courts and alleys, and out again into broad "streets ; the 
 towers and fantastic steeples ; and the many old bridges, 
 with obelisks and memorials of triumphal entries of con- 
 querors and princes ? 
 92 
 
A CITY LIVING ON THE PAST. 93 
 
 The city, as I said, lives upon the memory of what it 
 has been, and trades upon relics of its former fame. 
 What it would have been without Albrecht Diirer, and 
 Adam Kraft the stone-mason, and Peter Vischer the 
 bronze-worker, and Viet Stoss who carved in wood, and 
 Hans Sachs the shoemaker and poet-minstrel, it is diffi- 
 cult to say. Their statues are set up in the streets ; their 
 works still live in the churches and city buildings, — pic- 
 tures, and groups in stone and wood ; and their statues, 
 in all sorts of carving, are reproduced, big and little, in all 
 the shop-windows, for sale. So, literally, the city is full 
 of the memory of them ; and the business of the city, 
 aside from its manufactory of endless, curious toys, seems 
 to consist in reproducing them and their immortal works 
 to sell to strangers. 
 
 Other cities project new things, and grow with a 
 modern impetus : Nuremberg lives in the past, and traf- 
 fics on its ancient reputation. Of course, we went to see 
 the houses where these old worthies lived, and the works 
 of art they have left behind them, — things seen and 
 described by everybody. The stone carving about the 
 church-portals and on side buttresses is inexpressibly 
 quaint and naive. The subjects are sacred ; and with the 
 sacred is mingled the comic, here as at Augsburg, where 
 over one portal of the cathedral, with saints and angels, 
 monkeys climb and gibber. A favorite subject is that 
 of our Lord praying in the Garden, while the apostles, 
 who could not watch one hour, are sleeping in various 
 attitudes of stony comicality. All the stone-cutters seem 
 to have tried their chisels on this group, and there are 
 dozens of them. The wise and foolish virgins also stand 
 at the church-doors in time-stained stone, — the one 
 with a perked-up air of conscious virtue, and the other 
 with a penitent dejection that seems to merit better treat- 
 ment. Over the great portal of St. Lawrence — a mag- 
 nificent structure, with lofty twin spires and glorious 
 rose-window — is carved " The Last Judgment." Un- 
 derneath, the dead are climbing out of their stone coffins ; 
 
94 A CITY LIVING ON THE PAST 
 
 above sits the Judge, with the attending angels. On 
 the right hand go away the stiff, prim saints, in flowing 
 robes, and with palms and harps, up steps into heaven, 
 through a narrow door which St. Peter opens for them ; 
 while on the left depart the wicked, with wry faces and 
 distorted forms, down into the stone flames, towards 
 which the Devil is dragging them by their stony hair. 
 
 The interior of the Church of St. Lawrence is richer 
 than any other I remember, with its magnificent pil- 
 lars of dark red stone, rising and foliating out to form 
 the roof; its splendid windows of stained glass, glowing 
 with sacred story ; a high gallery of stone entirely round 
 the choir, and beautiful statuary on every column. Here, 
 too, is the famous Sacrament House of honest old Adam 
 Kraft, the most exquisite thing I ever saw in stone. The 
 color is light gray ; and it rises beside one of the dark, 
 massive pillars, sixty-four feet, growing to a point, which 
 then strikes the arch of the roof, and there curls up like 
 a vine to avoid it. The base is supported by the kneel- 
 ing figures of Adam Kraft and two fellow-workmen, who 
 labored on it for four years. Above is the Last Supper, 
 Christ blessing little children, and other beautiful tableaux 
 in stone. The Gothic spire grows up and around these, 
 now and then throwing out graceful tendrils, like a vine, 
 and seeming to be rather a living plant than inanimate 
 stone. The faithful artist evidently had this feeling for 
 it ; for, as it grew under his hands, he found that it would 
 strike the roof, or he must sacrifice something of its grace- 
 ful proportion. So his loving and daring genius sug- 
 gested the happy design of letting it grow to its curving, 
 graceful completeness. 
 
 He who travels by a German railway needs patience 
 and a full haversack. Time is of no value. The rate of 
 speed of the trains is so slow, that one sometimes has a 
 desire to get out and walk, and the stoppages at the sta- 
 tions seem eternal ; but then we must remember that it 
 is a long distance to the bottom of a great mug of beer. 
 We left Lindau on one of the usual trains at half-past 
 
A CITY LIVING ON THE PAST, 95 
 
 five in the morning, and reached Augsburg at one o'clock 
 in the afternoon : the distance cannot be more than a 
 hundred miles. That is quicker than by diligence, and 
 one has leisure to see the country as he jogs along. 
 There is nothing more sedate than a German train in 
 motion; nothing can stand so dead still as a German 
 train at a station. But there are express trains. We 
 were on one from Augsburg to Nuremberg, and I think 
 must have run twenty miles an hour. The fare on the 
 express trains is one-fifth higher than on the others. 
 The cars are all comfortable ; and the officials, who wear 
 a good deal of uniform, are much more civil and obliging 
 than officials in a country where they do not wear uni- 
 form. So, not swiftly, but safely and in good-humor, we 
 rode to the capital of Bavaria. 
 
OUTSIDE ASPECTS OF MUNICH. 
 
 I SAW yesterday, on tlie 31st of August, in the 
 Englisli Garden, dead leaves whirling down to the 
 ground, a too evident sign that the summer weather is 
 going. Indeed, it has been sour, chilly weather for a 
 week now, raining a little every day, and with a very 
 autumn feeling in the air. The nightly concerts in the 
 beer-gardens must have shivering listeners, if the bands 
 do not, as many of them do, play within doors. The 
 line of droschke drivers, in front of the post-office colon- 
 nade, hide the red facings of their coats under long over- 
 coats, and stand in cold expectancy beside their blanketed 
 horses, which must need twice the quantity of black- 
 bread in this chilly air ; for the horses here eat bread, 
 like people. I see the drivers every day slicing up the 
 black loaves, and feeding them, taking now and then a 
 mouthful themselves, wetting it down with a pull from 
 the mug of beer that stands within reach. And lastly (I 
 am still speaking of the weather), the gay military offi- 
 cers come abroad in long cloaks, to some extent conceal- 
 ing their manly forms and smart uniforms, which I am 
 sure they would not do, except under the pressure of 
 necessity. 
 
 Yet I think this raw weather is not to continue. It is 
 only a rough visit from the Tyrol, which will give place 
 to kinder influences. We came up here from hot Swit- 
 zerland at the end of July, expecting to find Munich a 
 furnace. It will be dreadful in Munich, everybody said. 
 So we left Luzerne, where it was warm, not daring to 
 96 
 
OUTSIDE ASPECTS OF MUNICH. 97 
 
 stay till the expected rival sun, Victoria of England, 
 should make the heat overpowering. But the first week 
 of August in Munich it was delicious weather, — clear, 
 sparkling, bracing air, with no chill in it and no languor 
 in it, just as you would say it ought to be on a high, 
 gravelly plain, seventeen hundred feet above the sea. 
 Then came a week of what the Miincheners call hot 
 weather, with the thermometer up to eighty degrees 
 Fahrenheit, and the white wide streets and gray build- 
 ino-s in a g-lare of lisfht ; since then, weather of the most 
 uncertain sort. 
 
 Munich needs the sunlight. Not that it cannot better 
 spare it than grimy London ; for its prevailing color is 
 light gray, and its many-tinted and frescoed fronts go far 
 to relieve the most cheerless day. Yet Munich attempts 
 to be an architectural reproduction of classic times ; and, 
 in order to achieve any success in this direction, it is 
 necessary to have the blue heavens and golden sunshine 
 of Greece. The old portion of the city has some remains 
 of the Gothic, and abounds in archways and rambling 
 alleys, that suddenly become broad streets, and then again 
 contract to the width of an alderman, and portions of 
 the old wall and city gates ; old feudal towers stand in 
 the market-place, and faded frescos on old clock-faces 
 and over archways speak of other days of splendor. 
 
 But the Munich of to-day is as if built to order, — raised 
 in a day by the command of one man. It was the old 
 Kino; Ludwio; I whose flower-wreathed bust stands in 
 these days in the vestibule of the Glyptothek, in token 
 of his recent death, who gave the impulse for all this, 
 though some of the best buildings and streets in the city 
 have been completed by his successors. The new city is 
 laid out on a magnificent scale of distances, with wide 
 streets, fine, open squares, plenty of room for gardens, 
 both public and private ; and the art buildings and art 
 monuments are well distributed ; in fact, many a stately 
 building stands in such isolation that it seems to ask 
 every passer what it was put there for. Then, again, 
 
98 OUTSIDE ASPECTS OF MUNICH. 
 
 some of the new adornments lack fitness of location or 
 purpose. At the end of the broad, monotonous Ludwig 
 Strasse, and yet not at the end, for the road runs straight 
 on into the flat country between rows of slender trees, 
 stands the Siegesthor, or Gate of Victory, an imitation 
 of the Constantine arch at Rome. It is surmounted by a 
 splendid group in bronze, by Schwanthaler, — Bavaria in 
 her war-chariot, drawn by four lions ; and it is in itself, 
 both in its proportions and its numerous sculptural figures 
 and bas-reliefs, a fine recognition of the valor " of the 
 Bavarian army," to whom it is erected. Yet it is so 
 dwarfed by its situation, that it seems to have been placed 
 in the middle of the street as an obstruction. A walk 
 runs on each side of it. The Propylaeum, another mag- 
 nificent gateway, thrown across the handsome Brienner 
 Strasse, beyond the Glyptothek, is an imitation of that on 
 the Acropolis at Athens. It has fine Doric columns on 
 the outside, and Ionic within, and the pediment groups 
 are bas-reliefs, by Schwanthaler, representing scenes in 
 modern Greek history. The passage-ways for carriages 
 are through the side arches ; and thus the '' sidewalk " 
 runs into the centre of the street, and foot-passers must 
 twice cross the carriage-drive in going through the gate. 
 Such things as these give one the feeling that art has 
 been forced beyond use in Munich ; and it is increased 
 when one wanders through the new churches, palaces, 
 galleries, and finds frescos so prodigally crowded out of 
 the way, and only occasionally-opened rooms so over- 
 loaded with them, and not always of the best, as to sacri- 
 fice all effect, and leave one with the sense that some 
 demon of unrest has driven painters and sculptors and 
 plasterers, night and day, to adorn the eity at a stroke ; 
 at least, to cover it with paint and bedeck it with mar- 
 bles, and to do it at once, leaving nothing for the sweet 
 growth and blossoming of time. 
 
 You see, it is easy to grumble, and especially in a 
 cheerful, open, light, and smiling city, crammed with 
 works of art, ancient and modern, its architecture a 
 
OUTSIDE ASPECTS OF MUNICH. 99 
 
 study of all styles, and its foaming beer, said by anti- 
 quarians to be a good deal better than the mead drunk 
 in Odin's halls, only seven and a half kreuzers the 
 quart. Munich has so much, that it, of course, contains 
 much that can be criticised. The long, wide Ludwig 
 Strasse is a street of palaces, — a street built up by the old 
 king, and regarded by him with great pride. But all 
 the buildings are in the Romanesque style, — a repetition 
 of one another to a monotonous degree : only at the 
 lower end are there any shops or shop-windows, and a 
 more dreary promenade need not be imagined. It has 
 neither shade nor fountains ; and on a hot day you can 
 see how the sun would pour into it, and blind the passers. 
 But few ever walk there at any time. A street that 
 leads nowhere, and has no gay windows, does not attract. 
 Toward the lower end, in the Odeon Platz, is the eques- 
 trian statue of Ludwig, a royally commanding figure, 
 with a page on either side. The street is closed (so 
 that it flows off on either side into streets of handsome 
 shops) by the Feldherrnhalle, Hall of the Generals, an 
 imitation of the beautiful Loggia dei Lanzi, at Florence, 
 that as yet contains only two statues, which seem lost 
 in it. Here at noon, with parade of infantry, comes a 
 military band to play for half an hour ; and there are 
 always plenty of idlers to listen to them. In the high 
 arcade a colony of doves is domesticated; and I like to 
 watch them circling about and wheeling round the spires 
 of the over-decorated Theatine church opposite, and 
 perching on the heads of the statues on the fa9ade. 
 
 The royal palace, near by, is a huddle of buildings 
 and courts, that I think nobody can describe or under- 
 stand, built at different times and in imitation of many 
 styles. The front, toward the Hof Garden, a grassless 
 square of small trees, with open arcades on two sides for 
 shops, and partially decorated with frescos of land- 
 scapes and historical subjects, is " a building of festive 
 halls," a fa9ade eight hundred feet long, in the revived 
 Italian style, and with a fine Ionic porch. The color is 
 
loo OUTSIDE ASPECTS OF MUNICH. 
 
 the royal, dirty yellow. On tlie Max Joseph Plat?, 
 which has a bronze statue of King Max, a seated figure, 
 and some elaborate bas-reliefs, is another front of the 
 palace, the Konigsbau, an imitation, not fully carried 
 out, of the Pitti Palace, at Florence. Between these is 
 the old Residenz, adorned with fountain groups and 
 statues in bronze. On another side are the church and 
 theatre of the Residenz. The interior of this court 
 chapel is dazzling in appearance : the pillars are, I 
 think, imitation of variegated marble ; the sides are imi- 
 tation of the same ; the vaulting is covered with rich fres- 
 cos on gold ground. The whole effect is rich, but it is 
 not at all sacred. Indeed, there is no church in Munich, 
 except the old cathedral, the Frauenkirche, with its 
 high Gothic arches, stained windows, and dusty old carv- 
 ings, that gives one at all the sort of feeling that it is 
 supposed a church should give. The court chapel in- 
 terior is boastingly said to resemble St. Mark's, in Venice. 
 You see how far imitation of the classic and Italian is 
 carried here in Munich ; so, as I said, the buildings need 
 the southern sunlight. Fortunately, they get the right 
 quality much of the time. The Glyptothck, a Grecian 
 structure of one story, erected to hold the treasures of 
 classic sculpture that King LudAvig collected, has a 
 beautiful Ionic porch and pediment. On the outside are 
 niches filled with statues. In the pure sunshine and 
 under a deep blue sky, its white marble glows with an 
 almost ethereal beauty. Opposite stands another suc- 
 cessful imitation of the Grecian style of architecture, — a 
 building with a Corinthian porch, also of white marble. 
 These, with the Propylaeum, before mentioned, come out 
 wonderfully against a blue sky. A few squares distant 
 is the Pinakothek, with its treasures of old pictures, and 
 beyond it the New Pinakothek, containing works of mod- 
 ern artists. Its exterior is decorated with frescos, from 
 designs by Kaulbach : these certainly appear best in a 
 sparkling light ; though I am bound to say that no light 
 can make very much of them. 
 
OUTSIDE ASPECTS OF MUNTCH. loi 
 
 Yet Munich is not all imitation. Its finest street, the 
 Maximilian, built by the late king of that name, is of a 
 novel and wholly modern style of architecture, not an 
 imitation, though it may remind some of the new por- 
 tions of Paris. It runs for three-quarters of a mile, be- 
 ginning with the post-office and its colonnades, with 
 frescos on one side, and the Hof Theatre, with its pedi- 
 ment frescos, the largest opera-house in Germany, I 
 believe; with stately buildings adorned with statues, 
 and elegant shops, down to the swift-flowing Isar, which 
 is spanned by a handsome bridge; or rather by two 
 bridges, for the Isar is partly turned from its bed above, 
 and made to turn wheels and drive machinery. At the 
 lower end the street expands into a handsome platz, with 
 young shade-trees, plats of grass, and gay beds of flow- 
 ers. I look out on it as I write ; and I see across the 
 Isar the college building begun by Maximilian for the 
 education of government officers ; and I see that it is 
 still unfinished, indeed, a staring mass of brick, with 
 unsightly scafiblding and gaping windows. Money was 
 left to complete it ; but the young king, who does not 
 care for architecture, keeps only a mason or two on the 
 brick work, and an artist on the exterior frescos. At 
 this rate the Cologne Cathedral will be finished and 
 decay before this is built. On either side of it, on the 
 elevated bank of the river, stretch beautiful grounds, 
 with green lawns, fiiie trees, and well-kept walks. 
 
 Not to mention the English Garden in speaking of the 
 outside aspects of the city, would be a great oversight. 
 It was laid out originally by the munificent American, 
 Count Rumford, and is called English, I suppose, because 
 it is not in the artificial Continental style. Paris has 
 nothing to compare with i"*. for natural beauty, — Paris, 
 which cannot let a tree g.ow, but mu«t clip it down to 
 suit French taste. It is a noble park four miles in 
 length, and perhaps a quarter of that in width, — a park 
 of splendid old trees, grand, sweeping avenues, open 
 glades of free-growing grass, with delicious, shady walks, 
 
102 OUTSIDE- ASPECTS OF MUNICH. 
 
 charming drives, and rivers of water. For the Isar is 
 trained to flow through it in two rapid streams, under 
 bridges and over rapids, and by willow-hung banks. 
 There is not wanting even a lake ; and there is, I am 
 sorry to say, a temple on a mound, quite in the classic 
 style, from which one can see the sun set behind the 
 many spires of Munich. At the Chinese Tower two 
 military bands play every Saturday evening in the sum- 
 mer ; and thither the carriages drive, and the prome- 
 naders assemble there, Between five and six o'clock ; and 
 while the bands play, the Germans drink beer, and smoke 
 cigars, and the fashionably-attired young men walk round 
 and round the circle, and the smart young soldiers ex- 
 hibit their handsome uniforms, and stride about with 
 clanking swords. 
 
 We felicitated ourselves that we should have no lack 
 of music when we came to Munich. I think we have 
 not ; though the opera has only just begun, and it is the 
 vacation of the Conservatoire. There are first the mili- 
 tary bands : there is continually a parade somewhere, 
 and the streets are full of military musie, and finely exe- 
 cuted too. Then of beer-gardens there is literally no 
 end, and there are nightly concerts in them. There are 
 two brothers Hunn, each with his band, who, like the 
 ancient Huns, have taken the city ; and its gardens are 
 given over to their unending waltzes, polkas, and opera 
 medleys. Then there is the church music on Sundays 
 and holidays, which is largely of a military character ; at 
 least, has the aid of drums and trumpets, and the whole 
 band of brass. For the first few days of our stay here 
 we had rooms near the Maximilian Platz and the Karl's 
 Thor. I think there was some sort of a yearly fair in 
 progress, for the great platz was filled with temporary 
 booths : a circus had set itself up there, and there were 
 innumerable side-shows and lottery-stands ; and I believe 
 that each little shanty and puppet-show had its band or 
 fraction of a band, for there was never heard such a toot- 
 ing and blowing and scraping, such a pounding and din- 
 
OUTSIDE ASPECTS OF MUNICH. 103 
 
 ning and slang-whanging, since the day of stopping work 
 on the Tower of Babel. The circus band confined itself 
 mostly to one tune ; and as it went all day long, and late 
 into the night, we got to know it quite well ; at least, the 
 bass notes of it, for the lighter tones came to us indis- 
 tinctly. You know that blurt, blurt, thump, thump, disso- 
 lute sort of caravan tune. That was it. The English Cafe 
 was not far off, and there the Hunns and others also 
 made night melodious. The whole air was one throb and 
 thrump. The only refuge from it was to go into one of 
 the gardens, and give yourself over to one band. And so 
 it was possible to have delightful music, and see the 
 honest Germans drink beer, and gossip in friendly fellow- 
 ship and with occasional hilarity. But music we had, 
 early and late. We expected quiet in our present quar- 
 ters. The first morning, at six o'clock, we were startled 
 by the resonant notes of a military band, that set the 
 echoes flying between the houses, and a regiment of 
 cavalry went clanking down the street. But that is a 
 not unwelcome morning serenade and reveille. Not so 
 agreeable is the young man next door, who gives hirari- 
 ous concerts to lus friends, and sings and bangs his piano 
 all day Sunday 5 nor the screaming young woman oppo- 
 site. Yet it is something to be in an atmosphere of 
 music. 
 
THE MILITARY LIFE OF MUNICH. 
 
 TmS morning I was awakened early by the strains 
 of a military band. It was a clear, sparkling morn- 
 ing, the air full of life, and yet the sun showing its warm, 
 southern side. As the mounted musicians went by, the 
 square was quite filled with the clang of drum and trum- 
 pet, which became fainter and fainter, and at length was 
 lost on the ear beyond the Isar, but preserved the per- 
 fection of time and the precision of execution for which 
 the military bands of the city are remarkable. After the 
 band came a brave array of officers in bright uniform, 
 upon horses that pranced and curvetted in the sunshine ; 
 and the regiment of cavalry followed, rank on rank of 
 splendidly-mounted men, who ride as if born to the sad- 
 dle. The clatter of hoofs on the pavement, the jangle 
 of bit and sabre, the occasional word of command, the 
 onward sweep of the well-trained cavalcade, continued 
 for a long time, as if the lovely morning had brought all 
 the cavalry in the city out of barracks. But this is an 
 almost daily sight in Munich. One regiment after an- 
 other goes over the river to the drill-ground. In the hot 
 mornings I used quite to pity the troopers who rode away 
 in the glare in scorching brazen helmets and breast- 
 plates. But only a portion of the regiments dress in that 
 absurd manner. The most wear a simple uniform, and 
 look very soldierly. The horses are almost invariably 
 fine animals, and I have not seen such riders in Europe. 
 Indeed, everybody in Munich who rides at all rides 
 well. Either most of the horsemen have served in the 
 104 
 
THE MILITARY LIFE OF MUNICH. 105 
 
 cavalry, or horsemanship, that noble art " to witch the 
 world," is in high repute here. 
 
 Speaking of soldiers, Munich is full of them. There 
 are huge caserns in every part of the city crowded 
 with troops. This little kingdom of Bavaria has a 
 hundred and twenty thousand troops of the Hue. Every 
 man is obliged to serve in the army continuously three 
 years ; and every man between the ages of twenty-one 
 and forty-five must go with his regiment into camp or 
 barrack several weeks in each year, no matter if the 
 harvest rots in the field, or the customers desert the 
 uncared-for shop. The service takes three of the best 
 years of a young man's life. Most of the soldiers in Mu- 
 nich are young : one meets hundreds of mere boys in 
 the uniform of officers. I think every seventh man you 
 meet is a soldier. There must be between fifteen and 
 twenty thousand troops quartered in the city now. The 
 young officers are everywhere, lounging in the cafes, 
 smoking and sipping coffee, on all the public promenades, 
 in the gardens, the theatres, the churches. And most 
 of them are fine-looking fellows, good figures in elegantly- 
 fitting and tasteful uniforms ; but they do like to show 
 their handsome forms and hear their sword-scabbards 
 rattle on the pavement as they stride by. The beer- 
 gardens are full of the common soldiers, who empty no 
 end of quart mugs in alternate pulls from the same 
 earthen jug, with the utmost jolUty and good fellowship. 
 On the street, salutes between officers and men are per- 
 petual, punctiliously given and returned, — the hand raised 
 to the temple, and held there for a second. A young 
 gallant, lounging down the Theatiner or the Maximilian 
 Strasse, in his shining and snug uniform, white kids, and 
 polished boots, with jangling spurs and the long sword 
 clanking on the walk, raising his hand ever and°anon in 
 condescending salute to a lower in rank, or with affable 
 grace to an equal, is a sight worth beholding, and for 
 which one cannot be too grateful. We have not all been 
 created with the natural shape for soldiers, but we have 
 eyes given us that we may behold them. 
 
io6 THE MILITARY LIFE OF MUNICH. 
 
 Bavaria fought, you know, on the wrong side at Sa- 
 dowa ; but the result of the war left her in confederation 
 with Prussia. The company is getting to be very dis- 
 tasteful, for Austria is at present more liberal than Prus- 
 sia. Under Prussia one must either be a soldier or a 
 slave, the democrats of Munich say. Bavaria has the 
 most liberal constitution in Germany, except that of 
 Wiirtemberg, and the people are jealous of any curtail- 
 ment of liberty. It seems odd that anybody should look 
 to the house of Hapsburg for liberality. The attitude 
 of Prussia compels all the little states to keep up armies, 
 which eat up their substance, and burden the people with 
 taxes. This is the more to be regretted now, when Bava- 
 ria is undergoing a peaceful revolution, and throwing off 
 the trammels of galling customs in other respects. 
 
THE EMANCIPATION OF MUNICH. 
 
 THE 1st of September saw go into complete effect 
 the laws enacted in 1867, whicli have inaugurated 
 the greatest changes in business and social life, and mark 
 an era in the progress of the people worthy of fetes and 
 commemorative bronzes. We heard the other night at 
 the opera-house " William Tell " unmutilated. For many- 
 years this liberty-breathing opera was not permitted to 
 be given in Bavaria, except with all the life of it cut out. 
 It was first presented entire by order of young King 
 Ludwig, who, they say, was induced to command its 
 unmutilated reproduction at the solicitation of Richard 
 Wagner, who used to be, and very likely is now, a 
 " Red," and was banished from Saxony in 1848 for fight- 
 ing on the people's side of a barricade in Dresden. It is 
 the fashion to say of the young king, that he pays no 
 heed to the business of the kingdom. You hear that the 
 handsome boy only cares for music and horseback exer- 
 cise : he plays much on the violin, and rides away into 
 the forest attended by only one groom, and is gone for 
 days together. He has composed an opera, which has 
 not yet been put on the stage. People, when they speak 
 of him, tap their foreheads with one finger. But I don't 
 believe it. The same liberality that induced him, years 
 ago, to restore William Tell to the stage has character- 
 ized the government under him ever since. 
 
 Formerly no one could engage in any trade or busi- 
 ness in Bavaria without previous examination before, 
 
 I05r 
 
io8 THE EMANCIPA TION OF MUNICH. 
 
 and permission from, a magistrate. If a boy wished to 
 be a baker, for instance, he had first to serve four years 
 of apprenticeship. If then he wished to set up business 
 for himself, he must get permission, after passing an 
 examination. This permission could rarely be obtained ; 
 for the magistrate usually decided that there were 
 already as many bakers as the town needed. His only 
 other resource was to buy out an existing business, and 
 this usually costs a good deal. When he petitioned for 
 the privilege of starting a bakery, all the bakers pro- 
 tested. And he could not even buy out a stand, and 
 carry it on, without strict examination as to qualificar- 
 tions. This was the case in every trade. And to make 
 matters worse, a master workman could not employ a 
 journeyman out of his shop ; so that, if a journeyman 
 could not get a regular situation, he had no work. Then 
 there were endless restrictions upon the manufacture and 
 sale of articles : one person could only make one article, 
 or one portion of an article; one might manufacture 
 shoes for women, but not for men ; he might make an 
 article in the shop and sell it, but could not sell it if any 
 one else made it outside, or vice versa. 
 
 Nearly all this mass of useless restriction on trades 
 and business, which palsied all effort in Bavaria, is 
 removed. Persons are free to enter into any business 
 they like. The system of apprenticeship continues, but 
 so modified as not to be oppressive ; and all trades are 
 left to regulate themselves by natural competition. Al- 
 ready Munich has felt the benefit of the removal of 
 these restrictions, which for nearly a year has been anti- 
 cipated, in a growth of population and increased busi- 
 ness. 
 
 But the social change is still more important. The 
 restrictions upon marriage were a serious injury to the 
 state. If Hans wished to marry, and felt himself ade- 
 quate to the burdens and responsibilities of the double 
 state, and the honest fraulein was quite willing to under- 
 take its trials and risks with him, it was not at all 
 
THE EMANCIPA TION OF MUNICH. 109 
 
 enough that in the moonlighted beer-garden, while the 
 band played, and they peeled the stinging radish, and 
 ate the Switzer cheese, and drank from one mug, she 
 allowed his arm to steal around her stout waist. All 
 this love and fitness went for nothing in the eyes of the 
 magistrate, who referred the application for permission 
 to marry to his associate advisers, and they inquired into 
 the applicant's circumstances ; and if, in their opinion, 
 he was not worth enough money to support a wife prop- 
 erly, permission was refused for him to try. The conse- 
 quence was late marriages, and fewer than there ought 
 to be, and other ill results. Now the matrimonial gates 
 are lifted high, and the young man has not to ask per- 
 mission of any snuffy old magistrate to marry. I do not 
 hear that the consent of the maidens is more difficult to 
 obtain than formerly. 
 
 No city of its size is more prolific of pictures than 
 Munich. I do not know how all its artists manage to 
 live, but many of them count upon the American public. 
 I hear everywhere that the Americans like this, and do 
 not like that ; and I am sorry to say that some artists, 
 who have done better things, paint professedly to suit 
 Americans, and not to express their own conceptions of 
 beauty. There is one who is now quite devoted to 
 dashing off rather lamp-blacky moonhghts, because, he 
 says, the Americans fancy that sort of thing. I see one 
 of his smirchy pictures hanging in a shop-window, await- 
 ing the advent of the citizen of the United States. I 
 trust that no word of mine will injure the sale of the 
 moonlights. There are some excellent figure-painters 
 here, and one can still buy good modern pictures for 
 reasonable prices. 
 
FASHION IN THE STREETS. 
 
 "\ ITAS there ever elsewhere such a blue, transparent 
 VV sky as this here in Munich? At noon, looking 
 up to it from the street, above the gray houses, the color 
 and depth are marvellous. It makes a background for 
 the Grecian art buildings and gateways, that would 
 cheat a risen Athenian who should see it into the behef 
 that he was restored to his beautiful city. The color 
 holds, too, toward sundown, and seems to be poured, like 
 something solid, into the streets of the city. 
 
 You should see then the Maximilian Strasse, when the 
 light floods the platz where Maximilian in bronze sits 
 in his chair, illuminates the frescos on the pediments 
 of the Hof Theatre, brightens the Pompeian red under 
 the colonnade of the post-office, and streams down the 
 gay thoroughfare to the trees and statues in front of the 
 National Museum, and into the gold-dusted atmosphere 
 beyond the Isar. The street is filled with promenaders : 
 strangers who saunter alons; with the red book in one 
 hand, — a man and his wife, the woman dragged reluc- 
 tantly past the windows of fancy articles, which are " so 
 cheap," the man breaking his neck to look up at the 
 buildings, especially at the comical heads and figures in 
 stone that stretch out from the little oriel-windows in 
 the highest story of the Four-Seasons Hotel, and look 
 down upon the moving throng ; Munich bucks in coats 
 of velvet, swinging; ligbt canes, and smoking cigars 
 through long and elaborately-carved meerschaum hold- 
 ers ; Munich ladies in dresses of that inconvenient length 
 110 
 
FASHION m THE STREE TS. in 
 
 tliat neither sweeps the pavement nor clears it ; peasants 
 
 from the Tyrol, the men in black, tight breeches, that 
 
 button from the knee to the ankle, short jackets and 
 
 vests set thickly with round silver buttons, and conical 
 
 -hats with feathers, and the women in short quilted and 
 
 quilled petticoats, of barrel-like roundness from the 
 
 broad hips down, short waists ornamented with chains 
 
 and barbarous brooches of white metal, with the oddest 
 
 head-gear of gold and silver heirlooms ; students with 
 
 little red or green embroidered brimless caps, with the 
 
 ribbon across the breast, a folded shawl thrown over one 
 
 shoulder, and the inevitable switch-cane ; porters in red 
 
 caps, with a coil of twine about the waist ; young fellows 
 
 from Bohemia, with green coats, or coats trimmed with 
 
 green, and green felt hats with a stiff feather stuck in 
 
 the side ; and soldiers by the hundreds, of a,ll ranks and 
 
 organizations ; common fellows in blue, staring in at the 
 
 shop-windows, officers in resplendent uniforms, clanking 
 
 their swords as they swagger past. Now and then, an 
 
 elegant equipage dashes by, — perhaps the four horses of 
 
 the handsome young king, with mounted postihons and 
 
 outriders, or a liveried carriage of somebody born with 
 
 a von before his name. As the twilight comes on, the 
 
 shutters of the shop-windows are put up. It is time to 
 
 go to the opera, for the curtain rises at half-past six, or 
 
 to the beer-gardens, where delicious music marks, but 
 
 does not interrupt, the flow of excellent beer. 
 
 Or you may if you choose, and I advise you to do it, 
 walk at the same hour in the English Garden, which is 
 but a step from the arcades of the Hof Garden, — but a 
 step to the entrance, whence you may wander for miles 
 and miles in the most enchanting scenery. Art has not 
 been allowed here to spoil nature. The trees, which 
 are of magnificent size, are left to grow naturally ; the 
 Isar, which is turned into it, flows in more than one 
 stream with its mountain impetuosity ; the lake is grace- 
 fully indented and overhung with trees, and presents 
 ever-changing aspects of loveliness as you walk along its 
 
112 FASHION IN THE STREETS. 
 
 banks ; there are open, sunny meadows, in whicli single 
 giant trees or splendid groups of them stand, and walks 
 without end winding under leafy Gothic arches. You 
 know already that Munich owes this fine park to the 
 foresight and liberality of an American Tory, Benjamin 
 Thompson (Count Rumford), born in E,umford, Vt., who 
 also relieved Munich of beo-gars. 
 
 I have spoken of the number of soldiers in Munich. 
 For six weeks the Landwehr, or militia, has been in 
 camp in various parts of Bavaria. There was a grand 
 review of them the other day on the Field of Mars, by 
 the king, and many of them have now gone home. They 
 strike an unmilitary man as a very efficient body of troops. 
 So far as I could see, they were armed with breech-load- 
 ing rifles. There is a treaty by which Bavaria agreed 
 to assimilate her military organization to that of Prussia. 
 It is thus that Bismarck is continually getting ready. 
 But if the Landwehr is gone, there are yet remaining 
 troops enough of the line. Their chief use, so far as it 
 concerns me, is to make pageants in the streets, and to 
 send their bands to play at noon in the public squares. 
 Every day, when the sun shines down upon the mounted 
 statue of Ludwig I., in front of the Odeon, a band plays 
 in an open Loggia, and there is always a crowd of idlers 
 in the square to hear it. Everybody has leisure for that 
 sort of thing here in Europe ; and one can easily learn 
 how to be idle and let the world wag. They have found 
 out here what is disbelieved in America, — that the world 
 will continue to turn over once in about twenty-four 
 hours (they are not accurate as to the time) without 
 their aid. To return to our soldiers. The cavalry most 
 impresses me ; the men are so finely mounted, and they 
 ride royally. In these sparkling mornings, when the 
 regiments clatter past, with swelling music and shining 
 armor, riding away to I know not what adventure and 
 glory, I confess that I long to follow them. I have long had 
 this desire ; and the other morning, determining to satisfy 
 it, I seized my hat and went after the prancing proces- 
 
FASHION IN THE STREE TS. 1 13 
 
 sion. I am sorry I did. For, after trudging after it 
 through street after street, the fine horsemen all rode 
 through an arched gateway, and disappeared in barracks, 
 to my great disgust ; and the troopers dismounted, and 
 led their steeds into stables. 
 
 And yet one never loses a walk here in Munich. I 
 found myself that morning by the Isar Thor, a restored 
 mediaeval city-gate. The gate is double, with flanking 
 octagonal towers, enclosing a quadrangle. Upon the 
 inner wall is a fresco of '' The Crucifixion." Over the 
 outer front is a representation, in fresco painting, of the 
 triumphal entry into the city of the Emperor Louis of 
 Bavaria after the battle of Ampfing. On one side of the 
 gate is a portrait of the Virgin, on gold ground, and on 
 the other a very passable one of the late Dr. Hawes of 
 Hartford, with a Pope's hat on. Walking on, I came to 
 another arched gateway and clock-tower ; near it an old 
 church, with a high wall adjoining, whereon is a fresco 
 of cattle led to slaughter, showing that I am in the vicin- 
 ity of the Victual Market; and I enter it through a 
 narrow, crooked alley. There is nothing there but an 
 assemblage of shabby booths and fruit-stands, and au 
 ancient stone tower in ruins and overgrown with ivy. 
 
 Leaving this, I came out to the Marian Platz, where 
 stands the column, with the statue of the Virgin and 
 Child, set up by Maximilian I. in 1638 to celebrate the 
 victory in the battle which established the Catholic 
 supremacy in Bavaria. It is a favorite praying-place 
 for the lower classes. Yesterday was a fete day, and 
 the base of the column and half its height are lost in a 
 mass of flowers and evergreens. Li front is erected an 
 altar •V7ith a broad, carpeted platform ; and a strip of the 
 platz before it is enclosed with a railing, within which 
 are praying-benches. The sun shines down hot ; but 
 there are several poor women kneeling there, with their 
 baskets beside them. I happen along there at sundown ; 
 and there are a score of women kneeling on the hard 
 stoneSj outside the railing saying their prayers in loud 
 10* 
 
114 FASHION IN THE STREETS. 
 
 voices. The mass of flowers is still sweet and gay and 
 fresh ; a fountain with fantastic figures is flashing near 
 by ; the crowd, going home to supper and beer, gives no 
 heed to the praying; the stolid drosche-drivers stand 
 listlessly by. At the head of the square is an artillery 
 station, and a row of cannon frowns on it. On one side 
 is a house with a tablet in the wall, recording the fact 
 that Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden once lived in it. 
 
 When we came to Munich, the great annual fair was 
 in progress ; and the large Maximilian Platz (not to be 
 confounded with the street of that name) was filled with 
 booths of cheap merchandise, puppet-shows, lottery 
 shanties, and all sorts of popular amusements. It was 
 a fine time to study peasant costumes. The city was 
 crowded with them on Sunday; and let us not forget 
 that the first visit of the peasants was to the churches : 
 they invariably attended early mass before they set out 
 upon the day's pleasure. Most of the churches have 
 services at all hours till noon, some of them with fine 
 classical and military music. One could not but be 
 struck with the devotional manner of the simple women, 
 in their queer costumes, who walked into the gaudy edi- 
 fices, were absorbed in their prayers for an hour, and 
 then went away. I suppose they did not know how odd 
 they looked in their high, round fur hats, or their fan- 
 tastic old ornaments, nor that there was any thing amiss 
 in bringing their big baskets into church with them. 
 At least, their simple, unconscious manner was better 
 than that of many of the city people, some of whom 
 stare about a good deal, while going through the service, 
 and stop in the midst of crossings and genuflections to 
 take snuff" and pass it to their neighbors. But there are 
 always present simple and homelike sort of people, who 
 neither follow the fashions nor look round on them ; 
 respectable, neat old ladies, in the faded and carefully- 
 preserved silk gowns, such as the New-England women 
 wear to " meeting." 
 
 No one can help admiring the simplicity, kindliness, 
 
FASHION IN THE STREE TS. 115 
 
 and honesty of the Germans. The universal courtesy 
 and friendliness of manner have a very different seeming 
 from the politeness of the French. At the hotels in the 
 country, the landlord and his wife and the servant join 
 in hoping you will sleep well when you go to bed. The 
 little maid at Heidelberg who served our meals always 
 went to the extent of wishing us a good appetite when 
 she had brought in the dinner. Here in Munich the 
 people we have occasion to address in the street are uni- 
 formly courteous. The shop-keepers are obliging, and 
 rarely servile, like the English. You are thanked, and 
 punctiliously wished the good day, whether you purchase 
 any thing or not. In shops tended by women, gentlemen 
 invariably remove their hats. If you buy only a kreu- 
 zer's worth of fruit of an old woman, she says words that 
 would be, literally translated, " I thank you beautifully.'* 
 With all this, one looks kindly on the childish love the 
 Germans have for titles. It is, I believe, difficult for the 
 German mind to comprehend that we can be in good 
 standing at home, unless we have some title prefixed to 
 our names, or some descriptive phrase added. Our good 
 landlord, who waits at the table and answers our bell, 
 one of whose tenants is a living baron, having no title 
 to put on his door-plate under that of the baron, must 
 needs dub himself " privatier ; " and he insists upon 
 prefixing the name of this unambitious writer with the 
 ennobling von; and at the least he insists, in common 
 with the tradespeople, that I am a "Herr Doctor." 
 The bills of purchases by madame come made out to 
 
 "Frau , well-born." At a hotel in Heidelberg, 
 
 where I had registered my name with that distinctness 
 of penmanship for which newspaper men are justly con- 
 spicuous, and had added to my own name " & wife," I 
 was not a little flattered to appear in the reckoning aa 
 " Herr Doctor Mamesweise." 
 
THE GOTTESACKER AND BAVARIAN 
 FUNERALS. 
 
 TO change the subject from gay to grave. The 
 Gottesacker of Munich is called the finest cemetery 
 in Germany ; at least, it surpasses them in the artistic 
 taste of its monuments. Natural beauty it has none : it is 
 simply a long, narrow strip of ground enclosed in walls, 
 with straight, parallel walks running the whole length, 
 and narrow cross-walks; and yet it is a lovely burial- 
 ground. There are but few trees ; but the whole enclosure 
 is a conservatory of beautiful flowers. Every grave is cov- 
 ered with them, every monument is surrounded with 
 them. The monuments are unpretending in size, but 
 there are many fine designs, and many finely-executed 
 busts and statues and allegorical figures, in both marble 
 and bronze. The place is full of sunlight and color. I 
 noticed that it was much frequented. In front of every 
 place of sepulchre stands a small urn for water, with a 
 brush hanging by, with which to sprinkle the flowers. I 
 saw, also, many women and children coming and going 
 with watering-pots, so that the flowers never droop for 
 want of care. At the lower end of the old ground is an 
 open arcade, wherein are some effigies and busts, and 
 many ancient tablets set into the wall. Beyond this is 
 the new cemetery, an enclosure surrounded by a high 
 wall of. brick, and on the inside by an arcade. The 
 space within is planted with flowers, and laid out for the 
 burial of the people; the arcades are devoted to the 
 occupation of those who can afford costly tombs. Only 
 116 
 
THE GO TTES ACKER AND 117 
 
 a small number of tliem are yet occupied ; there are some 
 good busts and monuments, and some frescos on tlie 
 panels rather more striking for size and color than for 
 beauty. 
 
 Between the two cemeteries is the house for the dead. 
 When I walked down the long central allee of the old 
 ground, I saw at the farther end, beyond a fountain, 
 twinkling lights. Coming nearer, I found that they pro- 
 ceeded from the large windows of a building, which was 
 a part of the arcade. People were looking in at the win- 
 dows, going and coming to and from them continually ; 
 and I was prompted by otiriosity to look within. A most 
 unexpected sight met my eye. In a long room, upon ele- 
 vated biers, lay people dead: they were so disposed 
 that the faces could be seen ; and there they rested in a 
 solemn repose. Officers in uniform, citizens in plain 
 dress, matrons and maids in the habits that they wore 
 when living, or in the white robes of the grave. About 
 most of them were lighted candles. About all of them 
 were flowers : some were almost covered with bouquets. 
 There were rows of children, — little ones scarce a span 
 long, — in the white caps and garments of innocence, as 
 if asleep in beds of bowers. How naturally they all were 
 lying, as if only waiting to be called ! Upon the thumb 
 of every adult was a ring in which a string was tied that 
 went through a pulley above and communicated with a 
 bell in the attendant's room. How frightened he would 
 be if the bell should ever sound, and he should go into 
 that hall of the dead to see who rang ! And yet it is a 
 most wise and humane provision ; and many years ago, 
 there is a tradition, an entombment alive was prevented 
 by it. There are three rooms in all ; and all those who 
 die in Munich must be brought and laid in one of them, 
 to be seen of all who care to look therein. 1 suppose 
 that wealth and rank have some privileges ; but it is the 
 law that a person having been pronounced dead by the 
 
 Ehysician shall be the same day brought to the dead- 
 ouse, and lie there three whole days before interment. 
 
1 18 BA V ART AN FUNERALS. 
 
 There is something peculiar in the obsequies of Mu- 
 nich, especially in the Catholic portion of the population. 
 Shortly after the death, there is a short service in the 
 courtyard of the house, which, with the entrance, is liung 
 in costly mourning, if the deceased was rich. The body 
 is then carried in the car to the dead-house, attended by 
 the priests, the male members of the family, and a pro- 
 cession of torch-bearers, if that can be afforded. Tliree 
 days after, the bui-ial takes place from the dead-house, 
 only males attending. The women never go to the fune- 
 ral ; but some days after, of which public notice is given 
 by advertisement, a public service is held in church, at 
 which all the family are present, and to which the friends 
 are publicly invited. Funeral obsequies are as costly 
 here as in America ; but every thing is here regulated 
 and fixed by custom. There are as many as five or six 
 classes of funerals recognized. Those of the first class, 
 as to rank and expense, cost about a thousand guldens. 
 The second class is divided into six sub-classes. The 
 third is divided into two. The cost of the first of the 
 third class is about four hundred guldens. The low- 
 est class of those able to have a funeral costs twenty-five 
 guldens. A gulden is about two francs. There are no 
 carriages used at the funerals of Catholics, only at those 
 of Protestants and Jews. 
 
 I spoke of the custom of advertising the deaths. A 
 considerable portion of the daily newspapers is devoted 
 to these announcements, which are printed in display 
 type, like the advertisements of dry-goods sellers with 
 you. I will roughly translate one which I happen to see 
 just now. It reads, " Death advertisement. It has 
 pleased God the Almighty, in his inscrutable providence, 
 to take away our innermost loved, best husband, father, 
 
 grandfather, uncle, brother-in-law, and cousin, Herr 
 
 , dyer of cloth and silk, yesterday night, at eleven 
 
 o'clock, after three weeks of severe suffering, having par- 
 taken of the holy sacrament, in his sixty-sixth year, out 
 of this earthly abode of calamity into the better Beyond, 
 
THE GO TTES ACKER. 119 
 
 Those who knew his good heart, his great honesty, as 
 well as his patience in suffering, will know how justly to 
 estimate our grief." This is signed by the " deep-griev- 
 ing survivors," — the widow, son, daughter, and daughter- 
 in-law, in the name of the absent relatives. After the 
 name of the son is written, " Dyer in cloth and silk." 
 The notice closes with an announcement of the funeral 
 at the cemetery, and a service at the church the day 
 after. The advertisement I have given is not uncommon 
 either for quaintness or simplicity. It is common to 
 engrave upon the monument the business as well as the 
 title of the departed. 
 
THE OCTOBER FEST. —THE PEASANTS 
 AND THE KING. 
 
 ON the 11th of October the sun came out, after a 
 retirement of nearly two weeks. The cause of the 
 appearance was the close of the October Fest. This 
 great popular carnival has the same effect upon the 
 weather in Bavaria that the Yearly Meeting of Friends 
 is known to produce in Philadelphia, and the Great Na- 
 tional Horse Fair in New England. It always rains 
 during; the October Fest. Havinsj found this out, I do 
 not know why they do not change the time of it ; but I ' 
 presume they are wise enough to feel that it would be 
 useless. A similar attempt on the part of the Pennsyl- 
 vania Quakers merely disturbed the operations of nature, 
 but did not save the drab bonnets from the annual wet- 
 ting. There is a subtle connection between such gather- 
 ings and the gathering of what are called the elements, 
 — a sympathetic connection, which we shall, no doubt, 
 one day understand, when we have collected facts enough 
 on the subject to make a comprehensive generalization, 
 after Mr. Buckle's method. 
 
 This fair, which is just concluded, is a true Folks- 
 Fest, a season especially for the Bavarian people, an 
 agricultural fair and cattle show, but a time of gene- 
 ral jollity and amusement as well. Indeed, the main 
 object of a German fair seems to be to have a good time ; 
 and in this it is in marked contrast with American fairs. 
 The October Fest was instituted for the people by the 
 old Ludwig I. on the occasion of his marriage ; and it 
 120 
 
THE OCTOBER PEST i2i 
 
 has ever since retained its position as the great festival 
 of the Bavarian people, and particularly of the peasants. 
 It offers a rare opportunity to the stranger to study the 
 costumes of th-e peasants, and to see how they amuse 
 themselves. One can judge a good deal of the progress 
 of a people by the sort of amusements that satisfy them. 
 I am not about to draw any philosophical interferences, — 
 I am a mere looker-on in Munich ; but I have never 
 anywhere else seen puppet-shows afford so much delight, 
 nor have I ever seen anybody get more satisfaction out 
 of a sausage and a mug of beer, with the tum-tum of a 
 band near by, than a Bavarian peasant. 
 
 The Fest was held on the Theresien Wiese, a vast 
 meadow on the outskirts of the city. The ground rises 
 on one side of this by an abrupt step, some thirty or 
 forty feet high, like the "bench" of a Western river. 
 This bank is terraced for seats the whole length, or as 
 far down as the statue of Bavaria ; so that there are turf 
 seats, I should judge, for three-quarters of a mile, for a 
 great many thousands of people, who can look down 
 upon the race-course, the tents, houses, and booths of the 
 fair ground, and upon the roof and spires of the city 
 beyond. The statue is, as you know, the famous bronze 
 Bavaria of Schwanthaler, a colossal female figure, fifty 
 feet high, and, with its pedestal, a hundred feet high, 
 which stands in front of the Hall of Fame, a Doric edi- 
 fice, in the open colonnades of which are displayed the 
 busts of the most celebrated Bavarians, together with 
 those of a few poets and scholars who were so unfortu- 
 nate as not to be born here. The Bavaria stands with 
 the right hand upon the sheathed sword, and the left 
 raised in the act of bestowing a wreath of victory ; and 
 the Ron of the kingdom is beside her. This representa- 
 tive being is, of course, hollow. There is room for eight 
 people in her head, which I can testify is a warm place 
 on a sunny day ; and one can peep out through loop- 
 holes and get a good view of the Alps of the Tyrol. To 
 say that this statue is graceful or altogether successful, 
 11 
 
122 THE PEASANTS AND THE KING. 
 
 would be an error ; but it is rather impressive, from its 
 size, if for- no other reason. In the cast of the hand 
 exhibited at the bronze foundery, the forefinger meas- 
 ures over three feet long. 
 
 Akhough the Fest did not officially begin until Fri- 
 day, Oct. 2, yet the essential part of it, the amusements, 
 "was well under way on the Sunday before. The town 
 began to be filled with country people, and the holiday 
 might be said to have commenced ; for the city gives 
 itself up to the occasion. The new art galleries are 
 closed for some days ; but the collections and museums 
 of various sorts are daily open, gratis ; the theatres 
 redouble their efforts ; the concert-halls are in full blast ; 
 there are dances nightly, and masked balls in the Folks' 
 Theatre ; country relatives are entertained ; the peasants 
 go about the streets in droves, in a simple and happy 
 frame of mind, wholly unconscious that they are the 
 oddest-looking guys that have come down from the Mid- 
 dle Ages ; there is music in all the gardens, singing in 
 the cq/es, beer flowing in rivers, and a mighty smell of . 
 cheese, that goes up to heaven. If the eating of cheese 
 were a religious act, and its odor an incense, I could not 
 say enough of the devoutness of the Bavarians. 
 
 Of the picturesqueness and oddity of the Bavarian 
 peasants' costumes, nothing but a picture can give you 
 any idea. You can imagine the men in tight breeches, 
 buttoned below the knee, jackets of the jockey cut, and 
 both jacket and waistcoat covered with big metal but- 
 tons, sometimes coins, as thickly as can be sewed on : 
 hut the women defy the pen; a Bavarian peasant-woman, 
 in holiday dress, is the most fearfully and wonderfully 
 made object in the universe. She displays a good length 
 of striped stockings, and wears thin slippers, or sandals ; 
 her skirts are like a hogshead, in size and shape, and 
 reach so near her shoulders as to make her appear hump- 
 backed ; the sleeves are hugely swelled out at the shoul- 
 der, and taper to the wrist ; the bodice is a stifi" and most 
 elaborately-ornamented piece of armor ; and there is a 
 
THE OCTOBER TEST. 123 
 
 kind of breastplate, or centre-piece, of gold, silver, and 
 precious stones, or what passes for them ; and the head 
 is adorned with some monstrous heirloom, of finely- 
 worked gold or silver, or a tower, gilded and shining 
 with long streamers, or bound in a simple black turban, 
 with flowing ends. Little old girls, dressed like their 
 mothers, have the air of creations of the fancy, who have 
 walked out of a fairy-book. There is an endless variety 
 in these old costumes ; and one sees, every moment, one 
 more preposterous than the preceding. The girls from 
 the Tyrol, with their bright neckerchiefs and pointed 
 black felt hats, with gold cord and tassels, are some of 
 them very pretty : but one looks a long time for a bright 
 face among the other class ; and, when it is discovered, 
 the owner appears like a maiden who was enchanted a 
 hundred years ago, and has not been released irom the 
 spell, but is still doomed to wear the garments and the 
 ornaments that should long ago have mouldered away 
 with her ancestors. 
 
 The Theresien Wiese was a city of Vanity Fair for 
 two weeks, every day crowded with a motley throng. 
 Booths, and even structures of some solidity, rose on it 
 as if by magic. The lottery-houses were set up early, 
 and, to the last, attracted crowds, who could not resist 
 the tempting display of goods and trinkets, which might 
 be won by investing six kreuzers in a bit of paper, which 
 might, when unrolled, contain a number. These lotter- 
 ies are all authorized : some of them were for the bene- 
 fit of the agricultural society ; some were for the poor, 
 and others on individual account : and they always 
 thrive ; for the German, above all others, loves to try his 
 luck. There were streets of shanties, where various 
 things were offered for sale besides cheese and sausages. 
 There was a long line of booths, where images could be 
 shot at with bird-guns ; and, when the shots were success- 
 ful, the images went through astonishing revolutions. 
 There was a circus, in front of which some of the span- 
 gled performers always stood beating drums and postur- 
 
124 THE PEASANTS AND THE KING. 
 
 ing, in order to entice in spectators. Tliere were the 
 pnppet-booths, before which all day stood gaping, de- 
 lighted crowds, who roared with laughter whenever the 
 little frau beat her loutish husband about the head, and 
 set him to tend the baby, who continued to wail, not- 
 withstanding the man knocked its head against the door- 
 post. There were the great beer-restaurants, with tem- 
 porary benches and tables, planted about with evergreens, 
 always thronged witji a noisy, jolly crowd. There were 
 the fires, over which fresh fish were broiling on sticks ; 
 and, if you lingered, you saw the fish taken alive from 
 tubs of water standing by, dressed and e pitted and broil- 
 ing before the wiggle was out of their tails. There were 
 the old women who mixed the flour and fried the brown 
 cakes before your eyes, or cooked the fragrant sausage, 
 and offered it piping hot. 
 
 And every restaurant and show had its band, brass or 
 string, — a full array of red-faced fellows tooting through 
 horns, or a sorry quartet, — the fat woman with the 
 harp, the lean man blowing himself out through the clari- 
 net, the long-haired fellow with the flute, and the robust 
 and thick-necked fiddler. Everywhere there was music ; 
 the air was full of the odor of cheese and cooking sau- 
 sage ; so that there was nothing wanting to the most com- 
 plete enjoyment. The crowd surged round, jammed to- 
 gether, in the best possible humor. Those who could 
 not sit at tables sat on the ground, with a link of an 
 eatable I have already named in one hand, and a mug 
 of beer beside them. Toward evening, the ground was 
 strewn with these gray quart mugs, which gave as per- 
 fect evidence of the battle of the day as the cannon-balls 
 on the sand before Fort Fisher did of the contest there. 
 Besides this, for the amusement of the crowd, there is, 
 every day, a wheelbarrow race, a sack race, a blindfold 
 contest, or something of the sort, which turns out to be 
 a very flat performance. But, all the time, the eatino; and 
 the drinking go on, and the clatter and clink of it fill the 
 air ; so that the great object of the fair is not lost sight of. 
 
THE OCTOBER FEST. 125 
 
 Meantime, where is the agricultural fair and cattle- 
 show ? You must know that we do these things differ- 
 ently in Bavaria. On the fair-ground, there is very lit- 
 tle to be seen of the fair. There is an enclosure where 
 steam-engines are smoking and puffing, and threshing- 
 machines are making a clamor ; where some big church- 
 bells hang, and where there are a few stalls for horses 
 and cattle. But the competing horses and cattle are 
 led before the judges elsewhere ; the horses, for instance, 
 by the royal stables in the city. I saw no such general 
 exhibition of domestic animals as you have at your fairs. 
 The horses that took the prizes were of native stock, a 
 very serviceable breed, excellent for carriage-horses, and 
 admirable in the cavalry service. The bulls and cows 
 seemed also native and to the manor born, and were 
 worthy of little remark. The mechanical, vegetable, 
 and fruit exhibition was in the great glass palace, in the 
 city, and was very creditable in the fruit department, — in 
 the show of grapes and pears especially. The products 
 of the dairy were less, though I saw one that I do not 
 recollect ever to have seen in America, — a landscape in 
 butter. Enclosed in a case, it looked very much like a 
 wood-carving. There was a Swiss cottage, a milkmaid, 
 with cows in the foreground ; there were trees, and in 
 the rear rose rocky precipices, with chamois in the act 
 of skipping thereon. I should think something might be 
 done in our country in this line of the fine arts ; cer- 
 tainly, some of the butter that is always being sold so 
 cheap at St. Albans, when it is high everywhere else, 
 must be strong enough to warrant the attempt. As to 
 the other departments of the fine arts in the glass palace, 
 I cannot give you a better idea of them than by saying 
 that they were as well filled as the like ones in the 
 American county fairs. There were machines for 
 threshing, for straw-cutting, for apple-paring, and gene- 
 rally such a display of implements as would give one a 
 favorable idea of Bavarian agriculture. There was an 
 interesting exhibition of live fish, great and small, of 
 11* 
 
126 THE PEASANTS AND THE KING. 
 
 nearly every sort, I should think, in Bavarian waters. 
 The show in the fire-department was so antiquated, that 
 I was convinced that the people of Munich never intend 
 to have any fires. 
 
 The great day of the fete was Sunday, Oct. 5 ; for on 
 that day the king went out to the fair-ground, and dis- 
 tributed the prizes to the owners of the best horses, and, 
 as they appeared to me, of the most ugly-colored bulls. 
 The city was literally crowded with peasants and coun- 
 try people ; the churches were full all the morning with 
 devout -masses, which poured into the waiting beer- 
 houses afterward with equal zeal. By twelve o'clock, 
 the city began to empty itself upon the Theresien 
 meadow ; and long before the time for the king to arrive 
 — two o'clock — there were acres of people waiting for 
 the performance to begin. The terraced bank, of which 
 I have spoken, was taken possession of early, and held 
 by a solid mass of people ; while the fair-ground proper 
 was packed with a swaying concourse, densest near the 
 royal pavilion, which was erected immediately on the 
 race-course, and opposite the bank. 
 
 At one o'clock the grand stand opposite to the royal 
 one is taken possession of by a regiment band and by 
 invited guests. All the space, except the race-course, 
 is, by this time, packed with people, who watch the red 
 and white gate at the head of the course with growing 
 impatience. It opens to let in a regiment of infantry, 
 which marches in and takes position. It swings, every 
 now and then, for a solitary horseman, who gallops down 
 the line in all the pride of mounted civic dignity, to the 
 disgust of the crowd ; or to let in a carriage, with some 
 over-dressed officer or splendid minister, who is entitled 
 to a place in the royal pavilion. It is a people's fete^ 
 and the civic officers enjoy one day of conspicuous 
 glory. Now a majestic person in gold lace is set down; 
 and now one in a scarlet coat, as beautiful as a flamingo. 
 These driblets of splendor only feed the popular impa- 
 tience. Music is heard in the distance, and a procession 
 
THE OCTOBER FEST. 127 
 
 with colored banners is seen approaclimg from the city. 
 That, like every thing else that is to come, stops beyond 
 the c osed gate; and^there it halts, ready to stream down 
 before our lyes in a variegated pageant. The tmie goes 
 on: the crowd gets denser, for there have been steady 
 rivers of people pouring into the grounds for m?re than 
 an hour. "^The military bands pay m the lon^n^^^^^^^^ 
 the peasants jabber in unmtelligible dialects the high 
 functionaries in the royal stand are good enough to move 
 around, and let us see how brave and majestic they aie. 
 At last the firing of cannon announces the coming ot 
 royalty. There is a commotion in the vast crowd yonder, 
 the ea-erly-watched gates swing wide, and a well-mounted 
 company of cavalry dashes down the turf, m unifor^^ of 
 liaht blue and gold. It is a citizen s company of bu ch- 
 ers and bakers and candlestick-makers, which would do 
 no discredit to the regular army. Driving close alter is 
 a four-horse carriage^with two of the king's ministers; 
 Ld then, at a rapid pace, six coal-black horses in si^er 
 harness, with mounted postilions, drawing ^ long, slen 
 der, open carriage with one seat, m which ride the km- 
 and his brotherr Prince Otto, come down the way, and 
 are pulenp in front of the pavilion; while the cannon 
 ^oarrlhe b S bells ring, all the flags of Bavaria, Prussia 
 and Aus?riaron innum;rable polel, are blowing straight 
 out tte band plays " God save the King," tl-P-P^ break 
 into enthusiastic shouting, and the young king, thiowmg 
 off his cloak, rises and stands m his carnage foi a 
 moment bowino- right and left before he descends. He 
 we"rrto-day the simple uniform of the citi-ns' com^ 
 which has escorted him, and is consequently more plamly 
 and neatly dressed than any one else on the P^attorm, — a 
 Ull (say L feet), slender, gallant-looking young tellow 
 of three and twenty, with an open face and a graceful 
 
 manner. , . . , ^ „ cfonrl • 
 
 But, when he has arrived, things again come to a stand , 
 
 and we wait for an hour, and watch the thickening of 
 
 the clouds, while the king goes from this to that delighted 
 
128 THE PEASANTS AND THE KING. 
 
 dignitary on the stand and converses. At the end of 
 this time, there is a movement. A white dog has got 
 into the course, and runs up and down between the 
 ■walls of people in terror, headed off by soldiers at 
 either side of the grand stand, and finally, becoming 
 desperate, he makes a dive for the royal pavilion. The 
 consternation is extreme. The people cheer the dog and 
 laugh : a white-handed official, in gold lace, and without 
 his hat, rushes out to " shoo " the dog away, but is unsuc- 
 cessful ; for the animal dashes between his legs, and 
 approaches the royal and carpeted steps. More men of 
 rank run at him, and he is finally captured and borne 
 away ; and we all breathe freer that the danger to royalty 
 is averted. At one o'clock six youths in white jackets, 
 with clubs and coils of rope, had stationed themselves by 
 the pavilion, but they did not go into action at this 
 juncture ; and I thought they rather enjoyed the activity 
 of the great men who kept off the dog. 
 
 At lens^th there was another stir : and the king de- 
 scended from the rear of his pavilion, attended by his 
 ministers, and moved about among the people, who made 
 way for him, and uncovered at his approach. He spoke 
 with one and another, and strolled about as his fancy 
 took him. I suppose this is called mingling with the 
 common people. After he had mingled about fifteen 
 minutes, he returned, and took his place on the steps in 
 front of the pavilion ; and the distribution of prizes 
 began. First the horses were led out ; and their owners, 
 approaching the king, received from his hands the diplo- 
 mas, and a flag from an attendant. Most of them were 
 peasants ; and they exhibited no servility in receiving 
 their marks of distinction, but bowed to the king as 
 they would to any other man, and his majesty touched 
 his cocked hat in return. Then came the prize-cattle, 
 many of them led by women, who are as interested as 
 their husbands in all farm matters. Every thing goes 
 off smoothly, except there is a momentary panic over a 
 fractious bull, who plunges into the crowd ; but the six 
 
 
THE OCTOBER TEST. 129 
 
 white jackets are about liim in an instant, and entangle 
 liiai with their ropes. 
 
 This over, the gates again open, and the gaj caval- 
 cade that has been so long in sight approaches. First 
 a band of musicians in costumes of the Middle Ages ; 
 and then a band of pages in ih.Q gayest apparel, bearing 
 pictured banners and flags of all colors, whose silken 
 lustre would have been gorgeous in sunshine ; these 
 were followed by mounted heralds with trumpets, and 
 after them were led the running horses entered for the 
 race. The banners go upon the royal stand, and group 
 themselves picturesquely ; the heralds disappear at the 
 other end of the list ; and almost immediately the horses, 
 ridden by young jockeys in stunning colors, come flying 
 past in a general scramble. There are a dozen or more 
 horses ; but, after the first round, the race lies between 
 two. The course is considerably over an English mile, 
 and they make four circuits ; so that the race is fully six 
 miles, — a very hard one. It was a run in a rain, how- 
 ever, which began wheii it did, and soon forced up the 
 umbrellas. The vast crowd disappeared under a shed of 
 umbrellas, of all colors, — black, green, red, blue ; and 
 the effect Vas very singular, especially when it moved from 
 the field : there was then a Niagara of umbrellas. The 
 race was soon over : it is only a peasants' race, after all ; 
 the aristocratic races of the best horses take place in 
 May. It was over. The king's carriage was brought 
 round, the people again shouted, the cannon roared, the 
 six black horses reared and plunged, and away he 
 went. 
 
 " After all," says the artist, " the King of Bavaria has 
 not much power." 
 
 " You can see," returns a gentleman who speaks Eng- 
 lish, "just how much he has : it is a six-horse power." 
 
 On other days there was horse-trotting, music produc- 
 tion, and for several days prize-shooting. The latter was 
 admirably conducted : the targets were placed at the 
 foot of the bank ; and opposite, I should think not more 
 
I30 THE PEASANTS AND THE KING. 
 
 than two hundred yards off, were shooting-houses, each 
 with a room for the register of the shots, and on each side 
 of him closets where the shooters stand. Signal-wires run 
 from these houses to the targets, where there are attend- 
 ants who telegraph the effect of every shot. Each com- 
 petitor has a little book ; and he shoots at any booth he 
 pleases, or at all, and has his shots registered. There 
 was a continual fusillade for a couple of days ; but what 
 it all came to, I cannot tell. I can only say, that, if they 
 shoot as steadily as they drink beer, there is no other 
 corps of shooters that can stand before them. 
 
INDIAN SUMMER. 
 
 W"E are all quiet along the Isar since the October 
 Fest ; since the young king has come back from 
 his summer castle on the Starnberg See to live in his 
 dingy palace ; since the opera has got into good work- 
 ing order, and the regular indoor concerts at the cafes have 
 begun. There is no lack of amusements, with balls, 
 theatres, and the cheap concerts, vocal and instrumental. 
 I stepped into the West Ende Halle the other night, 
 having first surrendered twelve kreuzers to the money- 
 changer at the entrance, — double the usual fee, by the 
 way. It was large and' well lighted, with a gallery all 
 round it and an orchestral platform at one end. The 
 floor and gallery were filled with people of the most 
 respectable class, who sat about little round tables, and 
 drank beer. Every man was smoking a cigar ; and the 
 atmosphere was of that degree of haziness that we asso- 
 ciate with Indian summer at home ; so that through it 
 the people in the gallery appeared like glorified objects 
 in a heathen Pantheon, and the orchestra like men play- 
 ing in a dream. Yet nobody seemed to mind it ; and 
 there was, indeed, a general air of social enjoyment and 
 good feeling. Whether this good feeling was in process 
 of being produced by the twelve or twenty glasses of 
 beer which it is not unusual for a German to drink 
 of an evening, I do not know. " I do not drink much 
 beer now," said a German acquaintance, — " not more 
 than four or five glasses in an evening." This is indeed 
 moderation, when we remember that sixteen glasses of 
 
 131 
 
132 INDIAN SUMMER. 
 
 beer is only two gallons. The orchestra playing that 
 night was Gungl's; and it performed, among other 
 things, the whole of the celebrated Third (or Scotch) 
 Symphony of Mendelssohn in a manner that would be 
 greatly to the credit of orchestras that play without the 
 aid of either smoke or beer. Concerts of this sort, gen- 
 erally with more popular music and a considerable dash 
 of Wagner, in whom the Munichcrs believe, take place 
 every nioiit in several cafes : while comic sino-ins:, some 
 of it exceedingly well done, can be heard in others. 
 Such amusements — and nothing can be more harm- 
 less — are very cheap. 
 
 Speaking of Indian summer, the only approach to it 
 I have seen was in the hazy atmosphere at the West 
 Ende Halle. October outdoors has been an almost 
 totally disagreeable month, with the exception of some 
 days, or rather parts of days, when we have seen the sun, 
 and experienced a mild atmosphere. At such times, 
 I have liked to sit down on one of the empty benches in 
 the Hof Garden, where the leaves already half cover the 
 ground, and the dropping horse-chestnuts keep up a 
 pattering on them. Soon the fat woman who has a 
 fruit-stand at the gate is sure to come waddling along, 
 her beaming face making a sort of illumination in the 
 autumn scenery, and sit down near me. As soon as she 
 comes, the little brown birds and the doves all fly that 
 way, and look up expectant at her. They all know her, 
 and expect the usual supply of bread-crumbs. Indeed, 
 I have seen her on a still Sunday morning, when I have 
 been sitting there waiting for the English ceremony of 
 praying for Queen Victoria and Albert Edward to begin 
 in the Odeon, sit for an hour, and cut up bread for her 
 little brown flock. She sits now knittino; a red stoekinor, 
 the picture of content ; one after another her old gossips 
 pass that way, and stop a moment to exchange the chat 
 of the day ; or the policeman has his joke with her ; 
 and, when there is nobody else to converse with, she 
 talks to the birds. A benevolent old soul, I am sure, 
 
/ 
 
 INDIAN SUMMER. 133 
 
 who, in a New-England village, Would be universally 
 called " Aunty," and would lay all the rising generation 
 under obligation to her for doughnuts and sweet-cake. 
 As she rises to go away, she scrapes together a half- 
 dozen shining chestnuts with her feet ; and, as she cannot 
 possibly stoop to pick them up, she motions to a boy 
 playing near, and smiles so happily as the urchin gathers 
 them and runs away without even a " thank-ye." 
 
A TASTE OF ULTRAMONTANISM. 
 
 IF that of which every German dreams, and so few 
 are ready to take any practical steps to attain, — 
 German unity, — ever comes, it must ride rough-shod 
 over the Romish clergy, for one thing. Of course there 
 are other obstacles. So long as beer is cheap, and songs 
 of the Fatherland are set to lilting strains, will these excel- 
 lent people " Ho, ho, my brothers," and " Hi, hi, my 
 brothers," and wait for fate, in the shape of some com- 
 pelling Bismarck, to drive them into any thing more than 
 the brotherhood of brown mugs of beer and Wagner's 
 mysterious music of the future. I am not sure, by the 
 way, that the music of Richard Wagner is not highly 
 typical of the present (in 1868) state of German unity, 
 — an undefined longing which nobody exactly under- 
 stands. There are those who think they can discern 
 in his music the same revolutionary tendency which 
 placed the composer on the right side of a Dresden bar- 
 ricade in 1848, and who go so far as to believe that the 
 liberalism of the young King of Bavaria is not a little 
 due to his passion for the disorganizing operas of this 
 transcendental writer. Indeed, I am not sure that any 
 other people than Germans would not find in the repe- 
 tition of the five hours of the Meister- Sanger von 
 Niirnberg, which was given the other night at the Hof 
 Theatre, sufficient reason for revolution. 
 
 Well, what I set out to say was, that most Germans 
 would like unity if they could be the unit. Each State 
 would like to be the centre of the consolidated system ; 
 134 
 
A TASTE OF ULTRAMONTANISM. 135 
 
 and tlius it happens that every practical step toward 
 political unity meets a host of opponents at once. When 
 Austria, or rather the house of Hapsburg, had a pre- 
 ponderance in the Diet, and it seemed, under it, possible 
 to revive the past reality, or to realize the dream of a 
 great German empire, it was clearly seen that Austria 
 was a tyranny that would crush out all liberties. And 
 now that Prussia, with its vital Protestantism and free 
 schools, proposes to undertake the reconstruction of 
 Germany, and make a nation where there are now 
 only the fragmentary possibilities of a great power, why, 
 Prussia is a military despot, whose subjects must be 
 either soldiers or slaves, and the young emperor at 
 Vienna is indeed another Joseph, filled with the most 
 tender solicitude for the welfare of the chosen German 
 people. 
 
 But to return to the clergy. While the monasteries 
 and nunneries are going to the ground in superstition- 
 satiu-ated Spain ; while eager workmen are demolishing 
 the last hiding-places of monkery, and letting the day- 
 light into places that have well kept the frightful secrets 
 of three hundred years, and turning the ancient cloister 
 demesne into public parks and pleasure-grounds, — the 
 Eomish priesthood here, in free Bavaria, seem to imagine 
 that they cannot only resist the progress of events, but 
 that they can actually bring back the owlish twilight of 
 the Middle Ages. The reactionary party in Bavaria 
 has, in some of the provinces, a str ng majority; and its 
 supporter's and newspapers are bei.igerent and aggres- 
 sive. A few words about the politics of Bavaria will 
 give you a clew to the general politics of the country. 
 
 The reader of the little newspapers here in Munich 
 finds evidence of at least three parties. There is first 
 the radical. Its members sincerely desire a united Ger- 
 many, and, of course, are friendly to Prussia, hate Napo- 
 leon, have little confidence in the Hapsburgs, like to 
 read of uneasiness in Paris, and hail any movement that 
 overthrows tradition and the prescriptive right of classes. 
 
136 A TASTE OF ULTRAMONTANISM. 
 
 If its members are Catholic, they are very mildly so ; 
 if they are Protestant, they are not enough so to harm 
 them ; and, in short, if their religious opinions are not 
 as deep as a well, they are certainly broader than a 
 church-door. They are the party of free inquiry, liberal 
 thought, and progress. Akin to them are what may be 
 called the conservative liberals, the majority of whom 
 may be Catholics in profession, but are most likely 
 rationalists in fact : and with this party the king natu- 
 rally affiliates, taking his music devoutly every Sunday 
 morning in the AUerheiligenkirche, attached to the 
 Residenz, and getting his religion out of Wagner ; for, 
 progressive as the youthful king is, he cannot be sup- 
 posed to long for a unity which should wheel his throne 
 off into the limbo of phantoms. The conservative liberals, 
 therefore, while laboring for thorough internal reforms, 
 look with little delight on the increasing strength of 
 Prussia, and sympathize with the present liberal tenden- 
 cies of Austria. Opposed to both these parties is the 
 ultramontane, the head of which is the Romish hie- 
 rarchy, and the body of which is the inert mass of igno- 
 rant peasantry, over whom the influence of the clergy 
 seems little shaken by any of the modern moral earth- 
 quakes. Indeed, I-doubt if any new ideas will ever pene- 
 trate a class of peasants who still adhere to styles of 
 costume that must have been ancient when the Turks 
 threatened Vienna, which would be highly picturesque if 
 they were not painfu' ly ugly, and arrayed in which their 
 possessors walk aboit in the broad light of these latter 
 days, with entire unconsciousness that they do not belong 
 to this age, and that their appearance is as much of an 
 anachronism as if the figures should step out of Holbein's 
 pictures (which Heaven forbid), or the stone images 
 come down from the portals of the cathedral, and walk 
 about. The ultramontane party, which, so far as it is 
 an intelligent force in modern affairs, is the Romish 
 clergy, and nothing more, hears with aversion any hint 
 of German unity, listens with dread to the needle-guns 
 
A TASTE OF ULTRA MONTAJVISM. 137 
 
 at Sadowa, hates Prussia in proportion as it fears her, 
 and just now does not draw either with the Austrian 
 Government, whose liberal tendencies are exceedingly 
 distasteful. It relies upon that great unenlightened 
 mass of Catholic people in Southern Germany and in 
 Austria proper, one of whose sins is certainly not scep- 
 ticism. The practical fight now in Bavaria is on the 
 question of education ; the priests being resolved to keep 
 the schools of the people in their own control, and the 
 liberal parties seeking to widen educational facilities and 
 admit laymen to a share in the management of institu- 
 tions of learning. Now the school visitors must all be 
 ecclesiastics; and although their power is not to be 
 dreaded in the cities, where teachers, like other citizens, 
 are apt to be liberal, it gives them immense power in the 
 rural districts. The election of the Lower House of the 
 Bavarian parliament, whose members have a six years' 
 tenure of office, which takes place next spring, excites 
 uncommon interest ; for the leading issue will be that of 
 education. The little local newspapers — and every city 
 has a small swarm of them, which are remarkable for the 
 absence of news, and an abundance of advertisements — 
 have broken out into a style of personal controversy, 
 which, to put it mildly, makes me, an American, feel 
 quite at home. Both parties are very much in earnest, 
 and both speak with a freedom that is, in itself, a very 
 hopeful sign. 
 
 The pretensions of the ultramontane clergy are, indeed, 
 remarkable enough to attract the attention of others 
 besides the liberals of Bavaria. They assume an influence 
 and an importance in the ecclesiastical profession, or 
 rather an authority, equal to that ever asserted by the 
 Church in its strongest days. Perhaps you will get an 
 idea of the height of this pretension if I translate a pas- 
 sage which the liberal journal here takes from a sermon 
 preached in the parish church of Ebersburg, in Ober- 
 Dorfen, by a priest, Herr Kooperator Anton Haring, no 
 longer ago than Aug. 16, 1868. It reads, "With the 
 12* 
 
138 A TASTE OF ULTRAMONTANISM.- 
 
 power of absolution, Christ has endued the priesthood 
 with a might which is terrible to hell, and against whicli 
 Lucifer himself cannot stand, — a might which, indeed, 
 reaches over into eternity, where all other earthly pow- 
 ers find their limit and end, — a might, I say, which 
 is able to break the fetters which, for an eternity, were 
 forged through the commission of heavy sin. Yes, fur- 
 ther, this power of the forgiveness of sins makes the 
 priest, in a certain measure, a second God; for God 
 alone naturally can forgive sins. And yet this is not the 
 highest reach of the priestly might : his power reaches 
 still higher ; he compels God himself to serve him. How 
 so ? When the priest approaches the altar, in order to 
 bring there the holy mass-offering, there, at that moment, 
 lifts himself up Jesus Christ, who sits at the right hand 
 of the Father, upon his throne, in order to be ready for 
 the beck of his priests upon earth. And scarcely does 
 the priest begin the words of consecration, than there 
 Christ already hovers, surrounded by the heavenly host, 
 come down from heaven to earth, and to the altar of 
 sacrifice, and changes, upon the words of the priest, the 
 bread and wine into his holy flesh and blood, and per- 
 mits himself then to be taken up and to lie in the hands 
 of the priest, even though the priest is the most sinful 
 and the most unworthy. Further, his power surpasses 
 that of the highest archangels, and of the Queen of 
 Heaven. Right did the holy Franciscus say, 'If I 
 should meet a priest and an angel at the same time, I 
 should salute the priest first, and then the angel ; because 
 the priest is possessed of far higher might and holiness 
 than the angel.' " 
 
 The radical journal calls this " ultramontane blas- 
 phemy," and, the day after quoting it, adds a charge 
 that must be still more annoying to the Herr Kooporator 
 Haring than that of blasphemy : it accuses him of pla- 
 giarism ; and, to substantiate the charge, quotes almost 
 the very same language from a sermon preached in 1 785. 
 In this it is boldly claimed that " in heaven, on earth, or 
 
A TASTE OF ULTRAMONTANISM. 139 
 
 under the earth, there is nothing mightier than a priest, 
 except God ; and, to be exact, God himself must obey 
 the priest in the mass." And then, in words whicli I 
 do not care to translate, the priest is made greater than 
 the Virgin Mary, because Christ was only born of the 
 Virgin once, while the priest " with five words, as often 
 and wherever he will," can " bring forth the Saviour of the 
 world." So to-day keeps firm hold of the traditions of 
 a hundred years ago, and ultramontanism wisely de- 
 fends the last citadel where the Middle- Age super- 
 stition makes a stand, — the popular veneration for the 
 clergy. 
 
 And the^ clergy take good care to keep up the pomps 
 and shows even here in sceptical Munich. It was my 
 inestimable privilege the other morning — it was All- 
 Saints' Day — to see the archbishop in the old Frauen- 
 kirche, the ancient cathedral, where hang tattered ban- 
 ners that were captured from the Turks three centuries 
 ago, — to see him seated in the choir, overlooked by 
 saints and apostles carved in wood by some forgotten 
 artist of the fifteenth century. I supposed he was at 
 least an archbishop, from the retinue of priests who 
 attended and served him, and also from his great size. 
 When he sat down, it required a dignitary of considerable 
 rank to put on his hat ; and, when he arose to speak a few 
 precious words, the effect was visible a good many yards 
 from where he stood. At the close of the service he 
 went in great state down the centre aisle, preceded by 
 the gorgeous beadle — a character that is always awe- 
 inspiring to me in these churches, being a cross between 
 a magnificent drum-major and a verger — and two per- 
 sons in livery, and followed by a train of splendidly- 
 attired priests, six of whom bore up his long train of 
 purple silk. The whole cortege was resplendent in 
 embroidery and ermine ; and as the great man swept 
 out of my sight, and was carried On a priestly wave into 
 his shining carriage, and the noble footman jumped up 
 behind, and he rolled away to his dinner, I stood lean- 
 
140 A TASTE OF ULTRA MONTANISM. 
 
 ing against a pillar, and reflected if it could be possible 
 that that religion could be any thing but genuine which 
 had so much genuine ermine. And the organ-notes, 
 rolling down the arches, seemed to me to have a very 
 ultramontane sound. 
 
CHANGING QUARTERS. 
 
 PERHAPS it may not interest you to know how we 
 moved, that is, changed our apartments. I did not 
 see it mentioned in the cable despatches, and it may not be 
 generally known, even in Germany ; but, then, the cable 
 is so occupied with relating how his Serenity this, and his 
 Highness that, and her Loftiness the other one, went out 
 doors and came in again, owing to a slight superfluity of 
 the liquid element in the atmosphere, that it has no time 
 to notice the real movements of the people. And yet, 
 so dry are some of these little German newspapers of 
 news, that it is refreshing to read, now and then, that the 
 king, on Sunday, walked out with the Duke of Hesse 
 after dinner (one would like to know if they also had 
 sauer-kraut and sausage), and that his prospective mother- 
 in-law, the Empress of Russia, who was here the other 
 day, on her way home from Como, where she was nearly 
 drowned out by the inundation, sat for an hour on Sun- 
 day night, after the opera, in the winter garden of the 
 palace, enjoying the most easy family intercourse. 
 
 But about moving. Let me tell you that to change 
 quarters in the face of a Munich winter, which arrives 
 here the 1st of November, is like changing front to the 
 enemy just before a battle ; and, if we had perished in the 
 attempt, it might have been put upon our monuments, as 
 it is upon the out-of-cannon-cast obelisk in the Karolina 
 Platz, erected to the memory of the thirty thousand Ba- 
 varian soldiers who fell in the disastrous Russian winter 
 campaign of Napoleon, fighting against all the interests 
 
 141 
 
142 CHANGING QUARTERS. 
 
 of Grermany, — " they, too, died for their Fatherland." 
 Bavaria happened also to fight on the wrong side at Sa- 
 dowa, and I suppose that those who fell there also died 
 for Fatherland : it is a way the Germans have of doing, 
 and they mean nothing serious by it. But, as I was say- 
 ing, to change quarters here as late as November is a 
 little difficult, for the wise ones seek to get housed for 
 the winter by October : they select the sunny apartments, 
 get on the double-windows, and store up wood. The 
 plants are tied up in the gardens, the fountains are cov- 
 ered over, and the inhabitants go about in furs and the 
 heaviest winter clothing long before we should think of 
 doing so at home. And they are wise : the snow comes 
 early, and, besides, a cruel fog, cold as the grave and 
 penetrating as remorse, comes down out of the near 
 Tyrol. One morning early in November, I looked out 
 of the window to find snow falling, and the ground cov- 
 ered with it. There was dampness and frost enough in 
 the air to make it cling to all the tree-twigs, and to take 
 fantastic shapes on all the queer roofs and the slenderest 
 pinnacles and most delicate architectural ornamenta- 
 tions. The city spires had a mysterious appearance in 
 the gray haze ; and above all, the round-topped towers of 
 the old Frauen Kircke, frosted with a little snow, loomed 
 up more grandly than ever. When I went around to 
 the Hof Garden, where I late had sat in the sun, and 
 heard the brown horse-chestnuts drop on the leaves, the 
 benches were now full of snow, and the fat and friendly 
 fruit-woman at the gate had retired behind glass windows 
 into a little shop, which she might well warm by her 
 own person, if she radiated heat as readily as she used 
 to absorb it on the warm autumn days, when I have 
 marked her knitting in the sunshine. 
 
 But we are not moving. The first step we took was 
 to advertise our wants in the " Neueste Nachrichten," 
 (" Latest News ") newspaper. We desired, if possible, 
 admission into some respectable German family, where 
 we should be forced to speak German, and in which our 
 
CHANGING QUARTERS. 143 
 
 society, if I may so express it, would be some compensa- 
 tion for our bad grammar. We wished also to live in 
 the central part of the city, — in short, in the immediate 
 neighborhood of all the objects of interest (which are 
 here very much scattered), and to have pleasant rooms. 
 In Dresden, where the people are not so rich as in Mu- 
 nich, and where different customs prevail, it is custom- 
 ary for the best people, I mean the families of university 
 professors, for instance, to take in foreigners, and give 
 them tolerable food and a liberal education. Here it is 
 otherwise. Nearly all families occupy one floor of a 
 building, renting just rooms enough for the family, so 
 that their apartments are not elastic enough to take in 
 strangers, even if they desire to do so. And generally 
 they do not. Munich society is perhaps chargeable with 
 being a little stiff and exclusive. Well, we advertised 
 in the " Neueste Naehrichten." This is the liberal paper 
 of Munich. It is a poorly-printed, black-looking daily 
 sheet, folded in octavo size, and containing anywhere 
 from sixteen to thirty-four pages, more or less, as it hap- 
 pens to have advertisements. It sometimes will not have 
 more than two or three pages of reading matter. There 
 will be a scrap or two of local news, the brief telegrams 
 taken from the official paper of the day before, a bit or 
 two of other news, and perhaps a short and slashing edi- 
 torial on the ultramontane party. The advantage of 
 printing and folding it in such small leaves is, that the 
 size can be varied according to the demands of adver- 
 tisements or news (if the German papers ever find out 
 what that is) : so that the publisher is always giving, 
 every day, just what it pays to give that day; and the 
 reader has his regular quantity of reading matter, and 
 does not have to pay for advertising space, which in 
 journals of unchangeable form cannot always be used 
 profitably. This little journal was started something 
 like twenty years ago. It probably spends little for news, 
 has only one or, at most, two editors, is crowded with 
 advertisements, which are inserted cheap, and costs, de- 
 
144 CHANGING QUARTERS. 
 
 livered, a little over six francs a year. It circulates in 
 the city some thirty-five thousand. There is another 
 little paper here of the same size, but not so many leaves, 
 called " The Daily Advertiser," with nothing but adver- 
 tisements, principally of theatres, concerts, and the daily 
 sights, and one page devoted to some prodigious yarn, 
 generally concerning America, of which country its read- 
 ers must get the most extraordinary and frightful impres- 
 sion. The " Nachrichten " made the fortune of its first 
 owner, who built himself a fine house out of it, and 
 retired to enjoy his wealth. It was recently sold for one 
 hundred thousand guldens ; and I can see that it is piling 
 up another fortune for its present owner. The Germans, 
 who herein show their good sense and the high state of 
 civilization to which they have reached, are very free 
 advertisers, going to the newspapers with all their wants, 
 and finding in them that aid which all interests and all 
 sorts of people, from kaiser to kerl, are compelled, in 
 these days, to seek in the daily journal. Every German 
 town of any size has three or four of these little journals 
 of flying leaves, which are excellent papers in every 
 respect, except that they look like badly-printed, hand- 
 bills, and have very little news and no editorials worth 
 speaking of. An exception to these in Bavaria is the 
 " Allgemeine Zeitung " of Augsburg, which is old and 
 immensely respectable, and is perhaps, for extent of cor- 
 respondence and splendidly-written editorials on a great 
 variety of topics, excelled by no journal in Europe 
 except " The London Times.'* It gives out two editions 
 daily, the evening one about the size of " The New-York 
 Nation ; " and it has all the telegraphic news. It is 
 absurdly old-grannyish, and is malevolent in its pre- 
 tended conservatism and impartiality. Yet it circulates 
 over forty thousand copies, and goes all over Germany. 
 
 But were we not saying something about moving? 
 The truth is, that the best German families did not re- 
 spond to our appeal with that alacrity which we had no 
 right to expect, and did not exhibit that anxiety for our 
 
CHANGING QUARTERS. 145 
 
 society which would have been such a pleasant evidence 
 of their appreciation of the honor done to the royal city 
 of Munich by the selection of it as a residence during 
 the most disagreeable months of the year by the adver- 
 tising undersigned. Even the young king, whose ap- 
 proaching marriage to the Russian princess, one would 
 think, might soften his heart, did nothing to win our 
 regard, or to show that he appreciated our residence 
 " near " his court, and, so far as I know, never read with 
 any sort of attention our advertisement, which was com- 
 posed with as much care as Goethe's Faust, and prob- 
 ably with the use of more dictionaries. And this, when 
 he has an extraordinary large Kesidenz, to say nothing 
 about other outlying palaces and comfortable places to 
 live in, in which I know there are scores of elegantly- 
 furnished apartments, which stand idle almost the year 
 round, and might as well be let to appreciative strangers, 
 who would accustom the rather washy and fierce fres- 
 cos on the walls to be stared at. I might have selected 
 rooms, say on the court which looks on the exquisite 
 bronze fountain, Perseus with the head of Medusa, a 
 copy of the one in Florence by Benvenuto Cellini, where 
 we could have a southern exposure. Or we might, so it 
 would seem, have had rooms by the winter garden, 
 where tropical plants rejoice in perennial summer, and 
 blossom and bear fruit while a northern winter rage 
 without. Yet the king did not see it " by those lamps ; " 
 and I looked in vain on the gates of the Residenz for 
 the notice so frequently seen on other houses, of apart- 
 ments to let. And yet we had responses. The day 
 after the announcement appeared, our bell rang per- 
 petually ; and we had as many letters as if we had 
 advertised for wives innumerable. The German notes 
 poured in upon us in a flood ; each one of them contain- 
 ing an offer tempting enough to beguile an angel out of 
 paradise, at least, according to our translation : they 
 proffered us chambers that were positively overheated 
 by the flaming sun (which, I can take my oath, only 
 13 
 
146 CHANGING QUARTERS. 
 
 ventures a few feet above the horizon at this season), 
 which were friendly in appearance, splendidly furnished, 
 and near to every desirable thing, and in which, usually, 
 some American family had long resided, and experienced 
 a content and happiness not to be felt out of Germany. 
 
 I spent some days in calling upon the worthy frauen 
 who made these alluring offers. The visits were full of 
 profit to the student of human nature, but profitless 
 otherwise. I was ushered into low, dark chambers, small 
 and dreary, looking towards the sunless north, which 
 I was assured were dehsrhtful and even elegant. I was 
 taken up to the top of tall houses, through a smell of 
 cabbage that was appalling, to find empty and dreary 
 rooms, from which I fled in fright. We were visited by 
 so many people who had chambers to rent, that we were 
 impressed with the idea that all Munich was to let ; and 
 yet, when we visited the places offered, we found they 
 were only to be let alone. One of the frauen who did 
 us the honor to call, also wrote a note, and enclosed 
 a. letter that she had just received from an American- 
 gentleman (I make no secret of it that he came from 
 Hartford), in which were many kindly expressions for 
 her welfare, and thanks for the aid he had received in 
 his study of German ; and yet I think her chambers are 
 the most uninviting in the entire city. There were 
 people who were willing to teach us German, without 
 rooms or board ; or to lodge us without giving us German 
 or food ; or to feed us, and let us starve intellectually, and 
 lodge where we could. 
 
 But all things have an end, and so did our hunt for 
 lodgings. I chanced one day in my walk to find, with no 
 help from the advertisement, very nearly what we desired, 
 — cheerful rooms in a pleasant neighborhood, where 
 the sun comes when it comes out at all, and opposite the 
 Glass Palace, through- which the sun streams in the after- 
 noon with a certain splendor, and almost next door to 
 the residence and laboratory of the famous chemist, 
 Prof Liebig ; so that we can have our feelings analyzed 
 
CHANGING QUARTERS. 147 
 
 whenever it is desirable. When we had set up our 
 household gods, and a fire was kindled in the tall white 
 porcelain family monument, that is called here a stove, 
 — and which, by the way, is much more agreeable than 
 your hideous, black, and air-scorching cast-iron stoves, — 
 and seen that the feather-beds under which we were 
 expected to lie were thick enough to roast the half of 
 the body, and short enough to let the other half freeze, 
 we determined to try for a season the regular German 
 cookery, our table heretofore having been served with 
 food cooked in the English style with only a slight Ger- 
 man flavor. A week of the experiment was quite 
 enough. I do not mean to say that the viands served 
 us were not good, only that we could not make up our 
 minds to eat them. The Germans eat a great deal of 
 meat ; and we were obliged to take meat when we pre- 
 ferred vegetables. Now, when a deep dish is set before 
 you wherein are chunks of pork reposing on stewed 
 potatoes, and another wherein a fathomless depth of 
 sauer-kraut supports coils of boiled sausage, which, con- 
 sidering that you are a mortal and responsible being, 
 and have a stomach, will you choose ? Here in Munich, 
 nearly all the bread is filled with anise or caraway seed : 
 it is possible to get, however, the best wheat bread we 
 have eaten in Europe, and we usually have it ; but one 
 must maintain a constant vigilance against the inroads 
 of the fragrant seeds. Imagine, then, our despair, when 
 one day the potato, the one vegetable we had always 
 eaten with perfect confidence, appeared stewed with 
 caraway-seeds. This was too much for American human 
 nature, constituted as it is. Yet the dish that finally 
 sent us back to our ordinary and excellent way of living 
 is one for which I have no name. It may have been 
 compounded at different times, have been the result of 
 many tastes or distastes : but there was, after all, a unity 
 in it that marked it as the composition of one master 
 artist; there was an unspeakable harmony in all its 
 flavors and apparently ununitable substances. It looked 
 
148 CHANGING QUARTERS, 
 
 like a terrapin soup, but it was not. Every dive of the 
 spoon into its dark liquid brought up a different object, — 
 a junk of unmistakable pork, meat of tlie color of roast 
 hare, what seemed to be the neck of a goose, some- 
 thing in strings that resembled the rags of a silk dress, 
 shreds of cabbage, and what I am quite willing to take 
 my oath was a bit of Astrachan fur. If Prof. Liebig 
 wishes to add to his reputation, he could do so by analyz- 
 ing this dish, and publishing the result to the world. 
 
 And, while we are speaking of eating, it may be in- 
 ferred that the Germans are good eaters ; and although 
 they do not begin early, seldom taking much more than 
 a cup of coffee before noon, they make it up by very sub- 
 stantial dinners and suppers. To say nothing of the 
 extraordinary dishes of meats which the restaurants 
 serve at night, the black-bread and odorous cheese and 
 beer which the men take on board in the course of an 
 evening would soon wear out a cast-iron stomach in 
 America ; and yet I ought to remember the deadly pie 
 and the corroding whiskey of my native land. The res- 
 taurant life of the people is, of course, different froin 
 their home life, and perhaps an evening entertainment 
 here is no more formidable than one in America, but it 
 is different. Let me give you the outlines of a supper 
 to which we were invited the other night : it certainly 
 cannot hurt you to read about it. We sat down at eight. 
 There were first courses of three sorts of cold meat, 
 accompanied with two sorts of salad ; the one, a compo- 
 site, with a potato basis, of all imaginable things that 
 are eaten. Beer and bread were unlimited. There was 
 then roast hare, with some supporting dish, followed by 
 jellies of various sorts, and ornamented plates of some- 
 thing that seemed unable to decide whether it would be 
 jelly or cream ; and then came assorted cake and the 
 white wine of the Ehine and the red of Hungary. We 
 were then surprised with a dish of fried eels, with a 
 sauce. Then came cheese ; and, to crown all, enormous, 
 triumphal-looking loaves of cake, works of art in appear- 
 
CHANGING QUARTERS. 149 
 
 anije, and delicious to the taste. We sat at tlie table till 
 twelve o'clock ; but you must not imagine that every- 
 body sat still all the time, or that, appearances to the 
 contrary notwithstanding, the principal object of the 
 entertainment was eating. The songs that were sung 
 in Hungarian as well as German, the poems that were 
 recited, the burlesques of actors and acting, the imita- 
 tions that were inimitable, the take-off of table-tipping 
 and of prominent musicians, the wit and constant flow 
 of fun, as constant as the good-humor and free hospi- 
 tality, the unconstrained ease of the whole evening, — 
 these things made the real supper which one remembers 
 when the grosser meal has vanished, as all substantial 
 things do vanish. 
 
CHRISTMAS TIME. — MUSIC. 
 
 I OR a month Munich has been preparing for Christ- 
 mas. The shop-windows have had a holiday look 
 December. I see one every day in which are dis- 
 ayed all the varieties of fruits, vegetables, and confec- 
 tionery possible to be desired for a feast, done in wax, — 
 a most dismal exhibition, and calculated to make the 
 adjoining window, which has a little fountain and some 
 green plants waving amidst enormous pendent sausages 
 and pigs' heads and various disagreeable hashes of 
 pressed meat, positively enticing. And yet there are 
 some vegetables here that I should prefer to have in wax, 
 — for instance, sauer-kraut. The toy windows are 
 worthy of study, and next to them the bakers'. A favor- 
 ite toy of the season is a little crib, with the Holy Child, 
 in sugar or wax, lying in it in the most uncomfortable 
 attitude. Babies here are strapped upon pillows, or 
 between pillows, and so tied up and wound up that they 
 cannot move a muscle, except, perhaps, the tongue ; and 
 so, exactly like little mummies, they are carried about 
 the street by the nurses, — poor little things, packed away 
 so, even in the heat of summer, their little faces looking 
 out of the down in a most pitiful fashion. The popular 
 toy is a representation, in sugar or wax, of this period 
 of life. Generally the toy represents twins, so swathed 
 and bound ; and, not infrequently, the bold conception 
 of the artist carries the point of the humor so far as to 
 introduce triplets, thus sporting with the most dreadful 
 possibilities of life. 
 150 
 
CHRISTMAS TIME. — MUSIC. 151 
 
 , The German bakers are very ingenious ; and if they 
 could be convinced of this great error, that because 
 things are good separately, they must be good in com- 
 bination, the produce of their ovens would be much more 
 eatable. As it is, they make delicious cake, and of end- 
 less variety ; but they also offer us conglomerate forma- 
 tions that may have a scientific value, but are utterly 
 useless to a stomach not trained in Germany. Of this 
 sort, for the most part, is the famous Lebkuchen, a sort 
 of gingerbread manufactured in Niirnberg, and sent all 
 over Germany : " age does not [seem to] impair, nor 
 custom stale its infinite variety." It is very different 
 from our simple cake of that name, although it is usually 
 baked in flat cards. It may contain nuts or fruit, and is 
 spoiled by a flavor of conflicting spices. I should think 
 it might be sold by the cord, it is piled up in such quan- 
 tities ; and, as it grows old and is much handled, it ac- 
 quires that brown, not to say dirty, familiar look, which 
 may, for aught I know, be one of its chief recommenda- 
 tions. The cake, however, which prevails at this season 
 of the year comes from the Tyrol ; and, as the holidays 
 approach, it is literally piled up on the fruit-stands. It 
 is called Klatzenbrod, and is not a bread at all, but an 
 amalgamation of fruits and spices. It is made up into 
 small round or oblong forms ; and the top is ornamented, 
 in various patterns, with split almond meats. The color 
 is a faded black, as if it had been left for some time in 
 a country store ; and the weight is just about that of pig- 
 iron. I had formed a strong desire, mingled with dread, 
 to taste it, which I was not likely to gratify, — one gets 
 so tired of such experiments after a time, — when a friend 
 sent us a ball of it. There waS' no occasion to call in 
 Prof. Liebig to analyze the substance : it is a plain case. 
 The black mass contains, cut up and pressed together, 
 figs, citron, oranges, raisins, dates, various kinds of nuts, 
 cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and I know not what Other 
 spices, together with the inevitable anise and caraway 
 seeds. It would make an excellent cannon-ball, and 
 
152 CHRISTMAS TIME. — MUSIC. 
 
 would be specially fatal if it hit an enemy in the stomach. . 
 These seeds invade all dishes. The cooks seem pos- 
 sessed of one of the rules of whist, — in case of doubt, 
 play a trump : in case of doubt, they always put in 
 anise-seed. It is sprinkled profusely in the blackest rye 
 bread, it gets into all the vegetables, and even into the 
 holiday cakes. 
 
 The extensive Maximilian Platz has suddenly grown 
 up into booths and shanties, and looks very much like a 
 temporary Western village. There are shops for the 
 sale of Christmas articles, toys, cakes, and gimcracks; 
 and there are, besides, places of amusement, if one of the 
 sorry menageries of sick beasts with their hair half worn 
 off can be so classed. One portion of the platz is now 
 a lively and picturesque forest of evergreens, an exten- 
 sive thicket of large and small trees, many of them 
 trimmed with colored and gilt strips of paper. I meet 
 in every street persons lugging home their little trees ; 
 for it must be a very poor household that cannot have its 
 Christmas-tree, on which are hung the scanty store of 
 candy, nuts, and fruit, and the simple toys that the 
 needy people will pinch themselves otherwise to obtain. 
 
 At this season, usually, the churches get up some 
 representations for the children, — the stable at Bethle- 
 hem, with the figures of the Virgin and Child, the wise 
 men, and the oxen standing by. At least, the churches 
 must be put in spic-and-spah order. I confess that I 
 like to stray into these edifices, some of them gaudy 
 enough when they are, so to speak, off duty, when the 
 choir is deserted, and there is only here and there a 
 solitary worshipper at his prayers ; unless, indeed, as it 
 sometimes happens, when I fancy myself quite alone, I 
 come by chance upon a hundred people, in some remote 
 corner before a side chapel, where mass is going on, but 
 so quietly that the sense of solitude in the church is not 
 disturbed. Sometimes, when the place is left entirely to 
 myself, and the servants who are putting it to rights, 
 and, as it were, shifting the scenes, I get a glimpse of 
 
CHRISTMAS TIME. — MUSIC. 153 
 
 the reality of all the pomp and parade of the services. 
 At first I may be a little shocked with the familiar man- 
 ner in which the images and statues and the gilded para- 
 phernalia are treated, very different from the stately 
 ceremony of the morning, when the priests are at the 
 altar, the choir is in the organ-loft, and the people crowd 
 nave and aisles. Then every thing is sanctified and 
 inviolate. Now, as I loiter here, the old woman sweeps 
 and dusts about as if she were in an ordinary crockery 
 store : the sacred things are handled without gloves. 
 And, lo ! an unclerical servant, in his shirt-sleeves, 
 climbs up to the altar, and, taking down the silver-gilded 
 cherubs, holds them, head down, by one fat foot, while 
 he wipes them off with a damp cloth. To think of sub- 
 mitting a holy cherub to the indignity of a damp cloth ! 
 
 One could never say too much about the music here. 
 I do not mean that of the regimental bands, or the or- 
 chestras in every hall and beer-garden, or that in the 
 churches on Sundays, both orchestral and vocal. Nearly 
 every day, at half-past eleven, there is a parade by the 
 Residenz, and another on the Marian Platz; and at 
 each the bands play for half an hour. In the Loggie by 
 the palace the music-stands can always be set out, and 
 they are used in the platz when it does not storm ; and 
 the bands play choice overtures and selections from the 
 operas in fine style. The bands are always preceded 
 and followed by a great crowd as they march through 
 the streets, — people who seem to live only for this half- 
 hour in the day, and whom no mud or snow can deter 
 from keeping up with the music. It is a little gleam of 
 comfort in the day for the most wearied portion of the 
 community : I mean those who have nothing to do. 
 
 But the music of which I speak is that of the con- 
 servatoire and opera. The Hof Theatre, opera, and con- 
 servatoire are all under one royal direction. The latter 
 has been recently re-organized with a new director, in 
 accordance with the Wagner notions somewhat. The 
 young king is cracked about Wagner, and appears to 
 
154 CHRISTMAS TIME. — MUSIC. 
 
 care little for other music : lie brings out liis operas at 
 great expense, and it is the fashion here to like Wagner 
 whether he is understood or not. The opera of the 
 Meister-Sano-er von Niirnbers;, which was brouo;ht out 
 last summer, occupied over five hours in the representa- 
 tion, which is unbearable to the Germans, who go to the 
 opera at six o'clock or half-past, and expect to be at 
 home before ten. His latest opera, which has not yet 
 been produced, is founded on the Niebelungen Lied, and 
 will take three evenings in the representation, which is 
 almost as bad as a Chinese play. The present director 
 of the conservatoire and opera, a Prussian, Herr von 
 Bulow, is a friend of Wagner. There are formed here 
 in town two parties, — the Wagner and the conservative, 
 the new and the old, the modern and classical ; only the 
 Wagnerites do not admit that their admiration of Beet- 
 hoven and the older composers is less than that of 
 the others, and so for this reason Bulow has given us 
 more music of Beethoven than of any other composer. 
 One thing is certain, that the royal orchestra is trained 
 to a high state of perfection : its rendition of the grand 
 operas and its weekly concerts in the Odeon cannot 
 easily be surpassed. The singers are not equal to the 
 orchestra, for Berlin and Vienna offer greater induce- 
 ments ; but there are people here who regard this orches- 
 tra as superlative. They say that the best orchestras in 
 the world are in Germany ; that the best in Germany is 
 in Munich ; and, therefore, you can see the inevitable 
 deduction. We have another parallel syllogism. The 
 greatest pianist in the world is Liszt ; but then Herr 
 Bulow is actually a better performer than Liszt ; there- 
 fore you see again to what you must come. At any rate, 
 we are quite satisfied in this provincial capital ; and, if 
 there is anywhere bettor music, we don't know it. Bu- 
 low's orchestra is not very large, — there are less than 
 eighty pieces, — but it is so handled and drilled, that, 
 when we hear it give one of the symphonies of Beetho- 
 ven or Mendelssohn, there is little left to be desired. 
 
CHRISTMAS TIME. —MUSIC. 155 
 
 Bulow is a wonderful conductor, — a little man, all nerve 
 and fire, and he seems to inspire every instrument. It 
 is worth something to see him lead an orchestra : his 
 baton is magical ; head, arms, and the whole body are 
 in motion ; he knows every note of the compositions ; 
 and the precision with which he evokes a solitary note 
 out of a distant instrument with a jerk of his rod, or 
 brino;s a wail from the concurring!; violins, like the moan- 
 ing of a pine forest in winter, with a sweep of his arm, is 
 most masterly. About the platform of the Odeon are 
 the marble busts of the great composers ; and, while the 
 orchestra is giving some of Beethoven's masterpieces, I 
 like to fix my eyes on his serious and genius-full face, 
 which seems cognizant of all that is passing, and believe 
 that he has a posthumous satisfaction in the interpreta- 
 tion of his great thoughts. 
 
 The managers of the conservatoire also give vocal con- 
 certs, and there are, besides, quartet soirees; so that 
 there are few evenings without some attraction. The 
 opera alternates with the theatre two or three times a 
 week. The singers are, perhaps, not known in Paris 
 and London, but some of them are not unworthy to be. 
 There is the barytone, Herr Kindermann, who now, at 
 the age of sixty-five, has a superb voice and manner, and 
 has had few superiors in his time on the German stage. 
 There is Frau Dietz, at forty-five, the best of actresses, 
 and with a still fresh and lovely voice. -There is Herr 
 Nachbar, a tenor, who has a future ; Fraulein Stehle, a 
 soprano, young and with an uncommon voice, who enjoys 
 a large salary, and was the favorite until another soprano, 
 the Malinger, came and turned the heads of king and 
 opera habitues. The resources of the Academy are, how- 
 ever, tolerably large ; and the practice of pensioning for 
 life the singers enables them to keep always a tolerable 
 company. This habit of pensioning officials, as well as 
 musicians and poets, is very agreeable to the Germans. 
 A gentleman the other day, who expressed great surprise 
 at the smallness of the salary of our President, said, that, 
 
IS6 CHRISTMAS TIME. ^ MUSIC. 
 
 of course, Andrew Johnson would receive a pension when 
 he retired from office. I could not explain to him how 
 comical the idea was to me; but when I think of the 
 American people pensioning Andrew Johnson, — well, 
 like the jfictitious Yankee in " Mugby Junction," " I laff, 
 I du." 
 
 There is some fashion, in a fudgy, quaint way, here in 
 Munich ; but it is not exhibited in dress for the opera. 
 People go — and it is presumed the music is the attrac- 
 tion — in ordinary apparel. They save all their dress 
 parade for the concerts ; and the hall of the Odeon is as 
 brilliant as provincial taste can make it in toilet. The 
 ladies also go to operas and concerts unattended by gen- 
 tlemen, and are brought, and fetched away, by their ser- 
 vants. There is a freedom and simplicity about this 
 which I quite like ; and, besides, it leaves their husbands 
 and brothers at liberty to spend a congenial evening in 
 the cafes^ beer-gardens, and clubs. But there is always 
 a heavy fringe of young officers and gallants both at 
 opera and concert, standing in the outside passages. It 
 is cheaper to stand, and one can hear quite as well, and 
 see more. 
 
LOOKING FOR WARM 
 WEATHER. 
 
FROM MUNICH TO NAPLES. 
 
 AT all events, saith the best authority, " pray that 
 your flight be not in winter ; " and it might have 
 added, don't go south if you desire warm weather. In 
 January, 1869, I had a little experience of hunting after 
 genial skies ; and I will give you the benefit of it in some 
 free running notes on my journey from Munich to 
 Naples. 
 
 It was the middle of January, at eleven o'clock at 
 night, that we left Munich, on a mixed railway train, 
 choosing that time, and the slowest of slow trains, that 
 we might make the famous Brenner Pass by daylight. It 
 was no easy matter, at last, to pull up from the dear old 
 city in which we had become so firmly planted, and to 
 leave the German friends who made the place like home 
 to us. One gets to love Germany and the Germans as 
 he does no other country and people in Europe. There 
 has been something so simple, honest, genuine, in our 
 Munich life, that we look back to it with longing eyes 
 from this land of fancy, of hand-organ music and squalid 
 splendor. I presume the streets are yet half the day hid 
 in a mountain fog ; but I know the superb military bands 
 are still playing at noon in the old Marian Platz and in 
 the Loggie by the Residenz ; that at half-past six in the 
 evening our friends are quietly stepping in to hear the 
 opera at the Hof Theatre, where everybody goes to hear 
 the music, and nobody for display, and that they will be 
 at home before half-past nine, and have despatched the 
 servant for the mugs of foaming beer ; I know that they 
 
 159 
 
i6o I^ROM MUNICH TO NAPLES. 
 
 still hear every week the choice conservatou'e orchestral 
 concerts in the Odeon ; and, alas that experience should 
 force me to think of it ! I have no doubt that they sip, 
 every morning, coffee which is as much superior to that 
 of Paris as that of Paris is to that of London ; and that 
 they eat the delicious rolls, in comparison with which 
 those of Paris are tasteless. I wonder, in this land of 
 wine, — and yet it must be so, — if the beer-gardens are 
 still filled nightly ; and if it could be that I should sit at 
 a little table there, a comely lass would, before I could ask 
 for what everybody is presumed to want, place before me 
 a tall glass full of amber liquid, crowned with creamy 
 foam. Are the handsome officers still sipping their coffee 
 in the Cafe Maximilian ; and, on sunny days, is the crowd 
 of fashion still streaming down to the Isar, and the high, 
 sightly walks and gardens beyond ? 
 
 As I said, it was eleven o'clock of a clear and not very 
 severe night ; for Munich had had no snow on the ground 
 since November. A deputation of our friends were at 
 the station to see us off, and the farewells between the 
 gentlemen were in the hearty fashion of the country. I 
 know there is a prejudice with us against kissing between 
 men ; but it is only a question of taste : and the experi- 
 ence of anybody will tell him that the theory that this 
 sort of salutation must necessarily be desirable between 
 opposite sexes is a delusion. But I suppose it cannot be 
 denied that kissing between men was invented in Ger- 
 many before they wore full beards. Well, our good-bys 
 said, we climbed into our bare cars. There is no way of 
 heating the German cars, except by tubes filled with hot 
 water, which are placed under the feet, and are called 
 foot-warmers. As we slowly moved out over the plain, 
 we found it was cold ; in an hour the foot-warmers, not 
 hot to start with, were stone cold. You are going to 
 sunny Italy, our friends had said : as soon as you pass 
 the Brenner you will have sunshine and delightful 
 weather. This thought consoled us, but did not warm 
 our feet. The Germans, when they travel by rail, wrap 
 themselves in furs, and carry foot-sacks. 
 
FROM MUNICH TO NAPLES, i6i 
 
 We creaked alon.<T, with many stoppings. At two 
 o'clock we were at Rosenheim. Rosenheim is a windy 
 place, with clear starlight, with a multitude of cars on a 
 multiplicity of tracks, and a large, lighted refreshment- 
 room, which has a glowing, jolly stove. We stay there 
 an hour, toasting by the fire and drinking excellent coffee. 
 Groups of Germans are seated at tables playing cards, 
 smoking, and taking coflfee. Other trains arrive ; and 
 huge men stalk in, from Vienna or Russia, you would 
 say, enveloped in enormous fur overcoats, reaching to the 
 heels, and with big fur boots coming above the knees, in 
 which they move like elephants. Another start, and a 
 cold ride with cooling foot-warmers, droning on to Kurf- 
 stein. It is five o'clock when we reach Kurfstein, which 
 is also a restaurant, with a hot stove, and more Germans 
 going on as if it were daytime ; but by this time in the 
 morning the coffee had got to be wretched. After an 
 hour's waiting, we dream on again, and, before we know 
 it, come out of our cold doze into the cold dawn. 
 Through the thick frost on the windows we see the faint 
 outlines of mountains. Scraping away the incrustation, 
 we find that we are in the Tyjol, — high hills on all 
 sides, no snow in the valley, a bright morning, and the 
 snow peaks are soon rosy in the sunrise. It is just as we 
 expected, — little villages under the hills, and slender 
 church-spires with brick-red tops. At nine o'clock we 
 are in Innsbruck, at the foot of the Brenner. No snow 
 yet. It must be charming here in the summer. 
 
 Durino; the night we have got out of Bavaria. The 
 waiter at the restaurant wants us to pay him nmety 
 kreuzers for our coffee, which is only six kreuzers a cup 
 in Munich. Remembering that it takes one hundred 
 kreuzers to make a gulden in Austria, I launch out a 
 Bavarian gulden, and expect ten kreuzers in change. I 
 have heard that sixty Bavarian kreuzers are equal to 
 one hundred Austrian ; but this waiter explains to me 
 that my gulden is only good for ninety kreuzers. I, in 
 my turn, explain to the waiter that it is better than the 
 13* 
 
i62 FROM MUNICH TO NAPLES, 
 
 coffee ; but we come to no understanding, and I give up, 
 before I begin, trying to understand the Austrian cur- 
 rency. During the day I get my pockets full of coppers, 
 which are very convenient to take in change, but appear 
 to have a very slight purchasing power in Austria even, 
 and none at all elsewhere, and the only use for which I 
 have found is to give to Italian beggars. One of these 
 pieces satisfies a beggar when it drops into his hat ; and 
 then it detains him long enough in the examination of it, 
 so that your carriage has time to get so far away that his 
 renewed pursuit is usually unavailing. 
 
 The Brenner Pass repaid us for the pains we had 
 taken to see it, especially as the sun shone and took the 
 frost from our windows, and we encountered no snow on 
 the track ; and, indeed, the fall was not deep, except on 
 the high peaks about us. Even if the engineering of the 
 road were not so interesting, it was something to be again 
 amidst mountains that can boast a height of ten thousand 
 feet. After we passed the summit, and began the zigzag 
 descent, we were on a sharp lookout for sunny Italy. I 
 expected to lay aside my heavy overcoat, and sun myself 
 at the first station among the vineyards. Instead of that, 
 we bade good-by to bright sky, and plunged into a snow- 
 storm, and, so greeted, drove down into the narrow 
 gorges, whose steep slopes we could see were terraced to 
 the top, and planted with vines. We could distinguish 
 enough to know that, with the old Roman ruins, the 
 churches and convent towers perched on the crags, and 
 all, the scenery in summer must be finer than that of the 
 Rhine, especially as the vineyards here are picturesque, 
 — the vines being trained so as to hide and clothe the 
 ground with verdure. 
 
 It was four o'clock when we reached Trent, and colder 
 than on top of the Brenner. As the Council, owing to 
 the dead state of its members for now three centuries, ■ 
 was not in session, we made no long tarry. We went 
 into the magnificent large refresliment-room to get warm ; 
 but it was as cold as a New-England barn. I asked the 
 
FROM MUNICH TO NAPLES. 163 
 
 proprietor if we could not get at a fire ; but he insisted 
 that the room was warm, — that it was heated with a fur- 
 nace, and that he burned good stove-coal, and pointed 
 to a register high up in the wall. Seeing that I looked 
 incredulous, he insisted that I should test it. Accord- 
 ingly, I climbed upon a table, and reached up my hand. 
 A faint warmth came out ; and I gave it up, and congrat- 
 ulated the landlord on his furnace. But the register 
 had no effect on the great hall. You might as well try 
 to heat the dome of St. Peter's with a lucifcr-match. At 
 dark, Allah be praised ! we reached Ala, where we went 
 through the humbug of an Italian custom-house, and had 
 our first glimpse of Italy in the picturesque-looking idlers 
 in red-tasselled caps, and the jabber of a strange tongue. 
 The snow turned into a cold rain : the foot-warmers, we 
 having reached the sunny lands, could no longer be 
 afforded ; and we shivered along, till nine o'clock, dark 
 and rainy, brought us to Verona. We emerged from the 
 station to find a crowd of omnibuses, carriages, drivers, 
 runners, and people anxious to help us, all vociferating in 
 the highest key. Amidst the usual Italian clamor about 
 nothing, we gained our hotel omnibus, and sat there for 
 ten minutes watching the dispute over our luggage, and 
 serenely listening to the angry vituperations of policemen 
 and drivers. It sounded like a revolution, but it was only 
 the ordinary Italian way of doing things ; and we were at 
 last rattling away over the broad pavements. 
 
 Of course, we stopped at a palace turned hotel, drove 
 into a court with double flights of high stone and marble 
 stairways, and were hurried up to the marble-mosaic 
 landing by an active boy, and, almost before we could ask 
 for rooms, were shown into a suite of magnificent apart- 
 ments. I had a glimpse of a garden in the rear, — 
 flowers and plants, and a balcony up which I suppose 
 Romeo climbed to hold that immortal love-prattle with 
 the lovesick Juliet. Boy began to light the candles. 
 Asked in English the price of such fine rooms. Reply in 
 Italian. Asked in German. Reply in Italian. Asked in 
 
i64 FROM MUNICH TO NAPLES, 
 
 French, with the same result. Other servants appeared, 
 each with a piece of baggage. Other candles were 
 lighted. Everybody talked in chorus. The landlady, a 
 woman of elegant manners and great command of her 
 native tongue, appeared with a candle, and joined in the 
 melodious confusion. What is the price of these rooms ? 
 More jabber, more servants bearing lights. We seemed 
 suddenly to have come into an illumination and a private 
 lunatic asylum. The landlady and her troop grew more 
 and more voluble and excited. Ah, then, if these rooms 
 do not suit the signor and signoras, there are others ; 
 and we were whisked off to apartments yet grander, — 
 great suites with high, canopied beds, mirrors, and furni- 
 ture that was luxurious a hundred years ago. The 
 price ? Again a torrent of Italian ; servants pouring in, 
 lights flashing, our baggage arriving, until, in the tumult, 
 hopeless of any response to our inquiry for a servant who 
 could speak any thing but Italian, and when we had 
 decided, in despair, to hire the entire estabHshment, a 
 waiter appeared who was accomplished in all languages, 
 the row subsided, and we were left alone in our glory, 
 and soon in welcome sleep forgot our desperate search 
 for a warm climate. 
 
 The next day it was rainy and not warm ; but the sun 
 came out occasionally, and we drove about to see some 
 of the sights. The first Italian town which the stranger 
 sees he is sure to remember, the out-door life of the peo- 
 ple is so different from that at the North. It is the 
 fiction in Italy that it is always summer ; and the people 
 sit in the open market-place, shiver in the open door- 
 ways, crowd into corners where the sun comes, and try 
 to keep up the beautiful pretence. The picturesque 
 groups of idlers and trafl3.ckers were more interesting to 
 us than the palaces with sculptured fronts and old Ro- 
 man busts, or tombs of the Scaligers, and old gates. Per- 
 haps I ought to except the wonderful and perfect Roman 
 amphitheatre, over every foot of which a handsome boy 
 in rags followed us, looking over every wall that we 
 
FROM MUNICH TO NAPLES. 165 
 
 looked over, peering into every hole that we peered 
 into, thus showing his fellowship with us, and at every 
 pause planting himself before us, and throwing a somer- 
 set, and then extending his greasy cap for coppers, as 
 if he knew that the modern mind ought not to dwell 
 too exclusively on hoary antiquity without some relief. 
 
 Anxious, as I have said, to find the sunny South, we 
 left Verona that afternoon for Florence, by way of Padua 
 and Bologna. The ride to Padua was tJarough a plain 
 at this season dreary enough, were it not, here and there, 
 for the abrupt little hills and the snowy Alps, which 
 were always in sight, and towards sundown and between 
 showers transcendently lovely in a purple and rosy light. 
 But nothing now could be more desolate than the rows 
 of unending mulberry-trees, pruned down to the stumps, 
 through which we rode all the afternoon. I suppose 
 they look better when the branches grow out with the 
 tender leaves for the silk-worms, and when they are 
 clothed with grapevines. Padua was only to us a name. 
 There we turned south, lost mountains and the near 
 hills, and had nothing but the mulberry flats and ditches 
 of water, and chilly rain and mist. It grew unpleasant 
 as we went south. At dark we were riding slowly, very 
 slowly, for miles through a country overflowed with 
 water, out of which trees and houses loomed up in a 
 ghastly show. At all the stations soldiers were getting 
 on board, shouting and singing discordantly choruses 
 from the operas ; for there was a rising at Padua, and 
 one feared at Bologna the populace getting up insur- 
 rections against the enforcement of the grist-tax, — a tax 
 which has made the Government very unpopular, as it 
 falls principally upon the poor. 
 
 Creeping along at such a slow rate, we reached Bologna 
 too late for the Florence train. It was eight o'clock, and 
 still raining. The next train went at two o'clock in the 
 morning, and was the best one for us to take. We had 
 supper in an inn near by, and a fair attempt at a fire in 
 our parlor. I sat before it, and kept it as lively as pos- 
 
i66 FROM MUNICH TO NAPLES. 
 
 sible, as the hours wore away, and tried to make believe 
 that I was ruminating on the ancient greatness of Bo- 
 logna and its famous university, some of whose chairs 
 had been occupied by women, and upon the fact that it 
 was on a little island in the Reno, just below here, that 
 Octavius and Lepidus and Mark Antony formed the 
 second Triumvirate, which put an end to what little 
 Kberty Rome had left ; but in reality I was thinking of 
 the draught on my back, and the comforts of a sunny 
 clime. But the time came at length for starting ; and in 
 luxurious cars we finished the night very comfortably, 
 and rode into Florence at eight in the morning to find, 
 as we had hoped, on the other side of the Apennines, a 
 sunny sky and balmy air. 
 
 As this is strictly a chapter of travel and weather, I 
 may not stop to say how impressive and beautiful Flor- 
 ence seemed to us ; how bewildering in art treasures, 
 which one sees at a glance in the streets ; or scarcely to 
 hint how lovely were the Boboli Gardens behind the 
 Pitti Palace, the roses, geraniums, &c., in bloom, the 
 birds singing, and all in a soft, dreamy air. The next 
 day was not so genial ; and we sped on, following our 
 original intention of seeking the summer in winter. In 
 order to avoid trouble with baggage and passports in 
 Rome, we determined to book through for Naples, 
 making the trip in about twenty hours. We started at 
 nine o'clock in the evening, and I do not recall a more 
 thoroughly uncomfortable journey. It grew colder as 
 the night wore on, and we went farther south. Late in 
 the morning we were landed at the station outside of 
 Rome. There was a general appearance of ruin and 
 desolation. The wind blew fiercely from the hills, and 
 the snow-flakes from the flying clouds added to the gene- 
 ral chilliness. There was no chance to get even a cup 
 of coffee, and we waited an hour in the cold car. If I 
 had not been so half frozen, the consciousness that I was 
 actually on the outskirts of the Eternal City, that I saw 
 the Campagna and the aqueducts, that yonder were the 
 
FROM MUNICH TO NAPLES. 167 
 
 Alban Hills, and that every foot of soil on which I looked 
 was saturated with history, would have excited me. 
 The sun came out here and there as we went south, and 
 we caught some exquisite lights on the near and snowy 
 hills ; and there was something almost homelike in the 
 miles and miles of olive orchards, that recalled the apple- 
 trees, but for their shining silvered leaves. And yet 
 nothing could be more desolate than the brown marshy 
 ground, the brown hillocks, with now and then a shabby 
 stone hut or a bit of ruin, and the flocks of sheep shiv- 
 ering near their corrals, and their shepherd, clad in 
 sheepskin, as his ancestor was in the time of Eomulus, 
 leaning on his staff, with his back to the wind. Now 
 and then a white town perched on a hillside, its houses 
 piled above each other, relieved the eye ; and I could 
 imagine that it might be all the poets have sung of it, 
 in the spring, though the Latin poets, I am convinced, 
 have wonderfully imposed on us. 
 
 To make my long story short, it happened to be colder 
 next morning at Naples than it was in Germany. The 
 sun shone ; but the north-east wind, which the natives 
 poetically call the Tramontane, was blowing, and the 
 white smoke of Vesuvius rolled towards the sea. It 
 would only last three days, it was very unusual, and all 
 that. The next day -it was colder, and the next colder 
 yet. Snow fell, and blew about unmelted : I saw it in 
 the streets of Pompeii. The fountains were frozen, 
 icicles hung from the locks of the marble statues in the 
 Chiaia. And yet the oranges glowed like gold amono- 
 their green leaves ; the roses, the heliotrope, the gera° 
 mums, bloomed in all the gardens. It is the most con- 
 tradictory climate. We lunched one day, sittino- in our 
 open carriage in a lemon grove, and near at hand the 
 L.ucrine Lake was half frozen over. We feasted our eyes 
 on the brilliant light and color on the sea, and the 
 lovely outlined mountains round the shore, and waited 
 for a change of wind. The Neapolitans declare that 
 they have not had such weather in twenty years. It is 
 scarcely one's ideal of balmy Italy. 
 
i68 FROM MUNICH TO NAPLES. 
 
 Before the weather changed, I began to feel in this 
 great Naples, with its roaring population of over half a 
 million, very much like the sailor I saw at the American 
 consul's, who applied for help to be sent home, claiming 
 to be an American. He was an oratorical bummer, and 
 told his story with all the dignity and elevated language 
 of an old Roman. He had been cast away in London. 
 How cast away ? Oh ! it was all along of a boarding- 
 house. And then he found himself shipped on an 
 English vessel, and he had lost his discharge-papere ; 
 and " Listen, your honor," said he, calmly extending his 
 right hand, " here I am cast away on this desolate island, 
 with nothing before me but wind and weather." 
 
RAVENNA. 
 
A DEAD CITY. 
 
 EAVENNA is so remote from the route of general 
 travel in Italy, that I am certain you can have no 
 late news from there, nor can I bring you any thing much 
 later than the sixth century. Yet, if you were to see 
 Ravenna, you would say that that is late enough. I am 
 surprised that a city which contains the most interesting 
 early Christian churches and mosaics, is the richest in 
 undisturbed specimens of early Christian art, and con- 
 tains the only monuments of Roman emperors still in 
 their original positions, should be so seldom visited. 
 Ravenna has been dead for some centuries ; and, be- 
 cause nobody has cared to bury it, its ancient monuments 
 are yet above ground. Grass grows in its wide streets, 
 and its houses s'tand in a sleepy, vacant contemplation 
 of each other : the wind must like to mourn about its 
 silent squares. The, waves of the Adriatic once brought 
 the commerce of the East to its wharves ; but the 
 deposits of the Po and the tides have, in process of time, 
 made it an inland town, and the sea is four miles away. 
 In the time of Augustus, Ravenna was a favorite 
 Roman port and harbor for fleets of war and merchan- 
 dise. There Theodoric, the ^reat king of the Goths, 
 set up his palace, and there is his enormous mausoleum. 
 As early as A.D. 44 it became an episcopal see, with 
 St. Apollinaris, a disciple of St. Peter, for its bishop. 
 There some of the later Roman emperors fixed their 
 residences, and there they repose. In and about it 
 revolved the adventurous Ufe of Galla Placidia, a wo- 
 
 171 
 
172 A DEAD CITY. 
 
 man of considerable talent and no principle, the daugh- 
 ter of Theodosius (the great Theodosius, who subdued 
 the Arian heresy, the first emperor baptized in the 
 true faith of the Trinity, the last who had a spark of 
 genius), the sister of one emperor, and the mother 
 of another, — twice a slave, once a queen, and once an 
 empress; and she, too, rests there in the great mau- 
 soleum builded for lier. There, also, lies Dante, in his 
 tomb " by the upbraiding shore ; " rejected once of un- 
 grateful Florence, and forever after passionately longed 
 for. There, in one of the earliest Christian churches in 
 existence, are the fine mosaics of the Emperor Justinian, 
 and Theodora, the handsome courtesan whom he raised 
 to the dignity and luxury of an empress on his throne in 
 Constantinople. There is the famous forest of pines, 
 stretching unbroken twenty miles down the coast to 
 Rimini, in whose cool and breezy glades Dante and 
 Boccaccio walked and meditated, which Dryden has 
 commemorated, and Byron has invested with the fas^ 
 cination of his genius ; and under the whispering boughs 
 of which moved the glittering cavalcade which fetched 
 the bride to Kimini, — the fair Francesca, whose sinful 
 confession Dante heard in hell. 
 
 We went down to Ravenna from Bologna one after- 
 noon, through a country level and rich, riding along 
 toward hazy evening, the land getting flatter as we pro- 
 ceeded (you know, there is a difierence between level 
 and flat), through interminable mulberry-trees and vines, 
 and fields with the tender green of spring, with church- 
 spires in the rosy horizon ; on till the meadows became 
 marshes, in which millions of frogs sang the overture of 
 the opening year. Our arrival, I have reason to believe, 
 was an event in the old town. We had a crowd of 
 mouldy loafers to witness it at the station, not one of 
 whom had ambition enough to work to earn a sou by 
 lilting our travelling-bags. We had our hotel to our- 
 selves, and wished that anybody else had it. The rival 
 house was quite aware of our advent, and watched us with 
 
A DEAD CITY. 173 
 
 jealous eyes ; and we, in turn, looked wistfully at it, for 
 our own food was so scarce that, as an old traveller says, 
 we feared tliat we shouldn't have enough, until we saw 
 it on the table, when its quality made it appear too much. 
 The next morning, when I sallied out to hire a convey- 
 ance, I was an object of interest to the entire population, 
 who seemed to think it very odd that any one should 
 walk about and explore the quiet streets. If I were to 
 describe Ravenna, I should say that it is as flat as Hol- 
 land and as lively as New London. There are broad 
 streets, with high houses, that once were handsome, 
 palaces that were once the abode of luxury, gardens 
 that still bloom, and churches by the score. It is an 
 open gate through which one walks unchallenged into 
 the past, with little to break the association with the early 
 Christian ages, their monuments undimmed by time, un- 
 touched by restoration and innovation, the whole struck 
 with ecclesiastical death. With all that we saw that 
 day, — churches, basilicas, mosaics, statues, mausoleums, 
 — I will not burden these pages ; but I will set down 
 enough to give you the local color, and to recall some 
 of the most interesting passages in Christian history in 
 this out-of-the-way city on the Adriatic. 
 
 Our first pilgrimage was to the Church of St. Apol- 
 linare Nuova ; but why it is called new I do not know, 
 as Theodoric built it, for an Arian cathedral in about 
 the year 500. It is a noble interior, having twenty-four 
 inarble columns of gray Cippolino, brought from Con- 
 stantinople, with composite capitals, on each of which is 
 an impost with Latin crosses sculptured on it. These 
 columns support round arches, which divide the nave 
 from the aisles, and on the whole length of the wall of 
 the nave so supported are superb mosaics, full-length 
 fi:^ures, in colors as fresh as if done yesterday, though 
 they were executed thirteen hundred years ago. The 
 mosaic on the left side — which is, perhaps, the finest 
 oue of the period in existence — is interestmg on an- 
 other account. It represents the city of Classis, with 
 15* 
 
174 A DEAD CITY. 
 
 sea and ships, and a long procession of twenty-two 
 virgins presenting offerings to the Virgin and Child, 
 seated on a throne. The Virgin is surrounded by 
 angels, and has a glory round her head, which shows 
 that homage is being paid to her. It has been supposed, 
 from the early monuments of Christian art, that the 
 worship of the Virgin is of comparatively recent origin ; 
 but this mosaic would go to show that Mariolatry was 
 established before the end of the sixth century. Near 
 this church is part of the front of the palace of Theo- 
 doric, in which the Exarchs and Lombard kings sub- 
 sequently resided. Its treasures and marbles Char- 
 lemagne carried off to Germany. 
 
DOWN TO THE PINETA. 
 
 \ ITE drove three miles beyond tlie city, to the 
 VV Church of St. Apollinare ia Classe, a lonely edi- 
 fice in a waste of marsh, a grand old basilica, a purer 
 specimen of Christian art than Rome or any other Italian 
 town can boast. Just outside the city gate stands a 
 Greek cross on a small fluted column, which marks the 
 site of the once magnificent Basilica of St. Laurentius, 
 which was demolished in the sixteenth century, its stone 
 built into a new church in town, and its rich marbles car- 
 ried to all-absorbing Rome. It was the last relic of the old 
 port of Caesarea, famous since the time of Augustus. A 
 marble column on a green meadow is all that remains 
 of a once prosperous city. Our road lay through the 
 marshy plain, across an elevated bridge over the slug- 
 gish united stream of the Ronco and Montone, from 
 which there is a wide view, including the Pineta (or 
 Pine Forest), the Church of St. Apollinare in the midst 
 of rice-fields and marshes, and on a clear day the Alps 
 and Apennines. 
 
 I can imagine nothing more desolate than this soli- 
 tary church, or the approach to it. Laborers were 
 busy spading up the heavy, wet ground, or digging 
 trenches, which instantly filled with water, for the whole 
 country was afloat. The frogs greeted us with clamor- 
 ous chorus out of their slimy pools, and the mosquitoes 
 attacked us as we rode along. I noticed about on 
 the bogs, wherever they could find standing-room, half- 
 naked wretches, with long spears, having several prongs, 
 
 175 
 
176 DOWN TO THE PINETA. 
 
 like tridents, which they thrust into the grass and shal- 
 low water. Callins^ one of them to us, we found that 
 his business was fishing, and that he forked out very 
 fat and edible-looking fish with his trident. Shaggy, 
 undersized horses were wading in the water, nipping 
 ofi" the thin spears of grass. Close to the church is a 
 rickety farmhouse. If I lived there, I would as lief be 
 a fish as a horse. 
 
 The interior of this primitive old basilica is lofty and 
 imposing, with twenty-four handsome columns of the 
 gray Cippolino marble, and an elevated high altar and 
 tribune, decorated with splendid mosaics of the sixth 
 century, — biblical subjects, in all the stiff faithfulness 
 of the holy old times. The marble floor is green and 
 damp and sHppery. Under the tribune is the crypt, 
 where the body of St. Apollinaris used to lie (it is now 
 under the high altar above) ; and, as I desired to see 
 where he used to rest, I walked in. I also walked into 
 about six inches of water, in the dim, irreligious light ; 
 and so made a cold-water Baptist devotee of myself. In 
 the side aisles are wonderful old sarcophagi, containing 
 the ashes of archbishops of Ravenna, so old that the 
 owners' names are forgotten of two of them, which shows 
 that a man may build a tomb more enduring than his 
 memory. The sculptured bas-reliefs are very interest- 
 ing, being early Christian emblems and curious devices, 
 — symbols of sheep, palms, peacocks, crosses, and the 
 four rivers of Paradise flowing down in stony streams 
 from stony sources, and monograms, and pious rebuses. 
 At the entrance of the crypt is an open stone book, called 
 the Breviary of Gregory the Great. Detached from the 
 church is the Bell Tower, a circular campanile of a sort 
 peculiar to Ravenna, which adds to the picturesqueness 
 of the pile, and suggests the notion that it is a mast 
 unshipped from its vessel, the church, which consequently 
 stands there water-logged, with no power to catch any 
 wind, of doctrine or other, and move. I forgot to say 
 that the basilica was launched in the year 534. 
 
DOWN TO THE PINETA. 177 
 
 A little weary -with the good but damp old Christians, 
 •we ordered our driver to continue across the marsh to 
 the Pineta, whose dark fringe bounded all our horizon 
 toward the Adriatic. It is the largest unbroken forest in 
 Italy, and by all odds the most poetic in itself and its 
 associations. It is twenty-five miles long, and from one 
 to three in breadth, a free growth of stately pines, whose 
 boughs are full of music and sweet odors, — a succession 
 of lovely glades and avenues, with miles and miles of 
 drives over the springy turf At the point where we 
 entered is a farmhouse. Laborers had been gathering 
 the cones, which were heaped up in immense windrows, 
 hundreds of feet in length. Boys and men were busy 
 pounding out the seeds from the cones. The latter are 
 used for fuel, and the former are pressed for their oil. 
 They are also eaten : we have often had them served at 
 hotel-tables, and found them rather tasteless, but not 
 unpleasant. The turf, as we drove into the recesses of 
 the forest, was thickly covered with wild-flowers, of many 
 colors and delicate forms ; but we liked best the violets, 
 for they reminded us of home, though the driver seemed 
 to think them less valuable than the seeds of the pine- 
 cones. A lovely day and history and romance united 
 to fascinate us with the place. We were driving over 
 the spot where, eighteen centuries ago, the Roman fleet 
 used to ride at anchor. Here, it is certain, the gloomy 
 spirit of Dante found congenial place for meditation, and 
 the gay Boccaccio material for fiction. Here for hours, 
 day after day, Byron used to gallop his horse, giving 
 vent to that restless impatience which could not all 
 escape from his fiery pen, hearing those voices of a past 
 and dead Italy which he, more truthfully and patheti- 
 cally than any other poet, has put into living verse. 
 The driver pointed out what is called Byron's Path, 
 where he was wont to ride. Everybody here, indeed, 
 knows of Byron ; and I think his memory is more secure 
 than any saint of them all in their stone boxes, — partly 
 because his poetry has celebrated the region, perhaps 
 
178 DOWN TO THE PINETA. 
 
 rather from the perpetuated tradition of his generosity. 
 No foreigner was ever so popular as he while he lived at 
 Ravenna. At least, the people say so now, since they 
 find it so profitable to keep his memory alive and to point 
 out his haunts. The Italians, to be sure, know how to 
 make capital out of poets and heroes, and are quick to 
 learn the curiosity of foreigners, and to gratify it for a 
 compensation. But the evident esteem in which Byron's 
 memory is held in the Armenian monastery of St. 
 Lazzare, at Venice, must be otherwise accounted- for. 
 The monks keep his library-room and table as they 
 were when he wrote there, and like to show his portrait, 
 and tell of his quick mastery of the difficult Armenian 
 tongue. We have a notable example of a Person who 
 became a monk when he was sick ; but Byron accom- 
 plished too much work during the few months he was on 
 the Island of St. Lazzare, both in original composition 
 and in translating English into Armenian, for one phy- 
 sically ruined and broken. 
 
DANTE AND BYRON. 
 
 THE pilgrim to Ravenna, wlio has any idea of what 
 is due to the genius of Dante, will be disappointed 
 when he approaches his tomb. Its situation is in a not 
 very conspicuous corner, at the foot of a narrow street, 
 bearing the poet's name, and beside the Church of San 
 Francisco, which is interesting as containing the tombs 
 of the Polenta family, whose hospitality to the wander- 
 ing exile has rescued their names from oblivion. Op- 
 posite the tomb is the shabby old brick house of the 
 Polentas, where Dante passed many years of his life. 
 It is tenanted now by all sorts of people, and a dirty 
 carriage-shop in the courtyard kills the poetry of it. 
 Dante died in 1321, and was at first buried in the neigh- 
 boring church ; but this tomb, since twice renewed, was 
 erected, and his body removed here, in 1482. It is a 
 square stuccoed structure, stained light green, and cov- 
 ered by a dome, — a tasteless monument, embellished 
 with stucco medallions; inside, of the poet, of Virgil, 
 of Brunetto Latini, the poet's master, and of his patron, 
 Guido da Polenta. On the sarcophagus is the epitaph, 
 composed in Latin by Dante himself, who seems to have 
 thought, with Shakspeare, that for a poet to make his 
 own epitaph was the safest thing to do. Notwithstand- 
 ing the mean appearance of this sepulchre, there is none 
 in all the soil of Italy that the traveller from America 
 will visit with deeper interest. Near by is the house 
 where Byron first resided in Ravenna, as a tablet re- 
 cords. 
 
 179 
 
i8o DANTE AND BYRON 
 
 The people here preserve all the memorials of Byron ; 
 and, I should judge, hold his memory in something like 
 afiection. The Palace Guiccioli, in which he subse- 
 quently resided, is in another part of the town. He 
 spent over two years in Ravenna, and said he preferred 
 it to any place in Italy. Why I cannot see ; unless it 
 was reinote from the route of travel, and the desolation 
 of it was congenial to him. Doubtless he loved these 
 wide, marshy expanses on the Adriatic, and especially 
 the great forest of pines on its shore ; but Byron was 
 apt to be governed in his choice of a residence by 
 the woman with whom he was intimate. The palace 
 was certainly pleasanter than his gloomy house in the 
 Strada di Porta Sisi, and the society of the Countess 
 Guiccioli was rather than otherwise a stimulus to his 
 literary activity. At her suggestion he wrote the Pro- 
 phecy of Dante ; and the translation of Francesca da 
 Kimini was " executed at Ravenna, where, five centuries 
 before, and in the very house in which the unfortunate 
 lady was born, Dante's poem had been composed." 
 Some of his finest poems were also produced here, ■=— 
 poems for which Venice is as grateful as Ravenna. 
 Here he wrote " Marino Faliero," " The Two Foscari," 
 « Morganti Maggiore," " Sardanapalus," " The Blues," 
 the fifth canto of " Don Juan," " Cain," " Heaven and 
 Earth," and " The Vision of Judgment." I looked in 
 at the court of the palace, — a pleasant, quiet place, — 
 where he used to work, and tried to guess which were 
 the windows of his apartments. The sun was shining 
 brightly, and a bird was singing in the court ; but there 
 was no other sign of life, nor any thing to remind one 
 of the profligate genius who was so long a guest here. 
 
RESTING-PLACE OF C^SARS. — PIC- 
 TURE OF A BEAUTIFUL HERETIC. 
 
 "V7"ERY different from the tomb of Dante, and dif- 
 V ferent in the associations it awakes, is the Ro- 
 tunda or Mausoleum of Theodoric the Goth, outside 
 the Porta Serrata, whose daughter, Amalasuntha, as it 
 is supposed, about the year 530, erected this imposing 
 structure as a certain place " to keep his memory whole 
 and mummy hid " forever. But the Goth had not lain 
 in it long before Arianism went out of fashion quite, and 
 the zealous Roman Catholics despoiled his costly sleep- 
 ing-place, and scattered his ashes abroad. I do not 
 know that any dead person has lived in it since. The 
 tomb is still a very solid affair, — a rotunda built of solid 
 blocks of limestone, and resting on a ten-sided base, 
 each side having a recess surmounted by an arch. The 
 upper story is also decagonal, and is reached by a flight 
 of modern stone steps. The roof is composed of a single 
 block of Istrian limestone, scooped out like a shallow 
 bowl inside ; and, being the biggest roof-stone I ever 
 saw, I will give you the dimensions. It is thirty-six feet 
 in diameter, hollowed out to the depth of ten feet, four 
 feet thick at the centre, and two feet nine inches at the 
 edges, and is estimated to weigh two hundred tons. 
 Amalasuntha must have had help in getting it up there. 
 The lower story is partly 'under water. The green grass 
 of the enclosure in which it stands is damp enough for 
 frogs. An old woman opened the iron gate to let us in. 
 Whether she was any relation of the ancient proprietor, 
 16 181 
 
l82 RESTING-PLACE OF CMSARS. 
 
 I did not inquire ; but she had so much trouble in turn- 
 ing the key in the rusty lock, and letting us in, that I 
 presume we were the only visitors she has had for some 
 centuries. 
 
 Old women abound in Ravenna ; at least, she was not 
 young who showed us the mausoleum of Galla Placidia. 
 Placidia was also prudent and foreseeing, and built this 
 once magnificent sepulchre for her own occupation. It 
 is in the form of a Latin cross, forty-six feet in length 
 by about forty in width. The floor is paved with rich 
 marbles ; the cupola is covered with mosaics of the time 
 of the empress ; and in the arch over the door is a fine 
 representation of the Good Shepherd. Behind the altar 
 is the massive sarcophagus of marble (its cover of silver 
 plates was long ago torn off) in which are literally the 
 ashes of the empress. She was immured in it as a mummy, 
 in a sitting position, clothed in imperial robes ; and there 
 the ghastly corpse sat in a cypress-wood chair, to be looked 
 at by anybody who chose to peep through the aperture, 
 for more than eleven hundred years, till one day, in 1577, 
 some children introduced a lighted candle, perhaps out 
 of compassion for her who sat so long in darkness, when 
 her clothes caught fire, and she was burned up, — a 
 warning to all children not to play with a dead and dry 
 empress. In this resting-place are also the tombs of 
 Honorius II., her brother, of Constantius III., her sec- 
 ond husband, and of Honoria, her daughter. There are 
 no other undisturbed tombs of the Csesars in existence. 
 Hers is almost the last, and the very small last, of a 
 great succession. What thoughts of a great empire in 
 ruins do not force themselves on one in the confined 
 walls of this little chamber I What a woman was she 
 whose ashes lie there ! She saw and aided the ruin of 
 the empire ; but it may be said of her, that her vices 
 were greater than her misfortunes. And what a story 
 is her life ! Born to the purple, educated in the palace 
 at Constantinople, accomplished but not handsome, at the 
 age of twenty she was in Rome when Alaric besieged it. 
 
PICTURE OF A BEAUTIFUL HERETIC. 183 
 
 Carried off captive by the Goths, she became the not 
 unwilling object of the passion of King Adolphus, who at 
 length married her at Narbonne. At the nuptials the 
 king, in a Roman habit, occupied a seat lower than hers, 
 while she sat on a throne habited as a Roman empress, 
 and received homage. Fifty handsome youths bore to 
 her in each hand a dish of gold, one filled with coin, and 
 the other with precious stones, — a small part only, these 
 hundred vessels of treasure, of the spoils the Goths 
 brought from her country. When Adolphus, who never 
 abated his fondness for his Roman bride, was assassinated 
 at Barcelona, she was treated like a slave by his as- 
 sassins, and driven twelve miles on foot before the horse 
 of his murderer. Ransomed at length for six hundred 
 thousand measures of wheat by her brother Honorius, 
 who handed her over struggling to Constantius, one of 
 his generals. But, once married, her reluctance ceased ; 
 and she set herself to advance the interests of herself 
 and husband, ruling him as she had done the first one. 
 Her purpose was accomplished when he was declared 
 joint emperor with Honorius. He died shortly after ; 
 and scandalous stories of her intimacy with her brother 
 caused her removal to Constantinople ; but she came 
 back again, and reigned long as the regent of her son, 
 Valentinian HI., a feeble youth, who never grew to have 
 either passions or talents, and was very likely, as was 
 said, enervated by his mother in dissolute indulgence, 
 so that she might be supreme. But she died at Rome 
 in 450, much praised for her orthodoxy and her devotion 
 to the Trinity. And there was her daughter, Honoria, 
 who ran off with a chamberlain, and afterward offered 
 to throw herself into the arms of Attila, who wouldn't 
 take her as a gift at first, but afterward demanded her, 
 and fought to win her and her supposed inheritance. 
 But they were a bad lot altogether ; and it is no credit 
 to a Christian of the nineteenth century to stay in this 
 tomb so long. 
 
 Near this mausoleum is the magnificent Basilica of St. 
 
l84 RESTING-PLACE OF CMSARS, 
 
 Vitale, built in the reign of Justinian, and consecrated in 
 547. I was interested to see it because it was erected 
 in confessed imitation of St. Sophia, at Constantinople, 
 is in the octagonal form, and has all the accessories 
 of Eastern splendor, according to the architectural au- 
 thorities. Its eflfect is really rich and splendid ; and it 
 rather dazzled us with its maze of pillars, its upper and 
 lower columns, its galleries, complicated capitals, arches 
 on arches, and Byzantine intricacies. To the student 
 of the very early ecclesiastical art, it must be an object 
 of more interest than even of wonder. But what I cared 
 most to see were the mosaics in the choir, executed in 
 the time of Justinian, and as fresh and beautiful as on 
 the day they were made. The mosaics and the exquisite 
 arabesques on the roof of the choir, taken together, are 
 certainly unequalled by any other early church-deco- 
 ration I have seen ; and they are as interesting as they 
 are beautiful. Any description of them is impossible ; 
 but mention may be made of two characteristic groups, 
 remarkable for execution, and having yet a deeper in- 
 terest. 
 
 In one compartment of the tribune is the figure of the 
 Emperor Justinian, holding a vase with consecrated offer- 
 ings, and surrounded by courtiers and soldiers. Oppo- 
 site is the figure of the Empress Theodora, holding a 
 similar vase, and attended by ladies of Jaer court. There is 
 a refinement and an elegance about the empress, a grace 
 and sweet dignity, that is fascinating. This is royalty, 
 — stately and cold perhaps : even the mouth may be 
 a Httle cruel, I begin to perceive, as I think of her ; but 
 she wears the purple by divine right. I have not seen 
 on any walls any figure walking out of history so cap- 
 tivating as this lady, who would seem to have been 
 worthy of apotheosis in a Christian edifice. Can there 
 be any doubt that this lovely woman was orthodox? 
 She, also, has a story, which you doubtless have been 
 recalling as you read. Is it worth while to repeat even 
 its outlines? This charming regal woman was the 
 
PICTURE OF A BEAUTIFUL HERETIC, 185 
 
 daughter of the keeper of the bears in the circus at 
 Constantinople ; and she early went upon the stage as 
 a pantomimist and buffoon. She was beautiful, with 
 regular features, a little pale, but with a tinge of natural 
 color, vivacious eyes, and an easy motion that displayed 
 to advantage the graces of her small but elegant figure. 
 I can see all that in the mosaic. But she sold her charms 
 to whoever cared to buy them in Constantinople ; she 
 led a life of dissipation that cannot be even hinted at in 
 these days ; she went off to Egypt as the concubine of 
 a general ; was deserted, and destitute even to misery 
 in Cairo ; wandered about a vagabond in many Eastern 
 cities, and won the reputation everywhere of the most 
 beautiful courtesan of her time ; re-appeared in Constan- 
 tinople ; and, having, it is said, a vision of her future, 
 suddenly took to a pretension of virtue and plain sew- 
 ing ; contrived to gain the notice of Justinian, to inflame 
 his passions as she did those of all the world besides, 
 to captivate him into first an alliance, and at length a 
 marriage. The emperor raised her to an equal seat 
 with himself on his throne ; and she was worshipped 
 as empress in that city where she had been admired 
 as harlot. And on the throne she was a wise woman, 
 courageous and chaste; and had her palaces on the 
 Bosphorus ; and took good care of her beauty, and in- 
 dulged in the pleasures of a good table ; had ministers 
 who kissed her feet ; a crowd of women and eunuchs in 
 her secret chambers, whose passions she indulged ; was 
 avaricious and sometimes cruel ; and founded a convent 
 for the irreclaimably bad of her own sex, some of whom 
 liked it, and some of whom threw themselves into the 
 sea in despak ; and when she died was an irreparable 
 loss to her emperor. So that it seems to me it is a pity 
 that the historian should say that she was devout, but a 
 little heretic. 
 
A HIGH DAY IN ROME. 
 
PALM SUNDAY IN ST. PETER'S. 
 
 THE splendid and tiresome ceremonies of Holy Week 
 set in ; also the rain, which held up for two days. 
 Kome without the sun, and with rain and the bone- 
 penetrating damp cold of the season, is a wretched 
 place. Squalor and ruins and cheap splendor need the 
 sun ; the galleries need it ; the black old masters in the 
 dark corners of the gaudy churches need it ; I think 
 scarcely any thing of a cardinal's big, blazing footman, 
 unless the sun shines on him, and radiates from his 
 broad back and his splendid calves ; the models, who 
 get up in theatrical costumes, and get put into pictures, 
 and pass the world over for Roman peasants (and 
 beautiful many of them are) can't sit on the Spanish 
 Stairs in indolent pose when it rains ; the streets are 
 slimy and horrible ; the carriages try to run over you, 
 and stand a very good chance of succeeding, where there 
 are no sidewalks, and you are limping along on the slip- 
 pery, round cobble-stones ; you can't get into the coun- 
 try, which is the best part of Rome : but when the sun 
 shines all this is changed ; the dear old dirty town exer- 
 cises its fascinations on you then, and you speedily forget 
 your recent misery. 
 
 Holy Week is a vexation to most people. All the 
 world crowds here to see its exhibitions and theatrical 
 shows, and works hard to catch a glimpse of them, and 
 is tired out, if not disgusted, at the end. The things to 
 see and hear are Palm Sunday in St. Peter's ; singing 
 of the miserere by the pope's choir on Wednesday, 
 
 189 
 
190 PALM SUNDA Y IN ST. PE TER 'S. 
 
 Thursday, and Friday in the Sistine Chapel ; washing 
 of the pilgrims' feet in a chapel of St. Peter's, and serv- 
 ing the apostles at table by the pope on Thursday, with 
 a papal benediction from the balcony afterwards ; Easter 
 Sunday, with the illumination of St. Peter's in the even- 
 ing ; and fireworks (this year in front of St. Peter's in 
 Montorio) Monday evening. Raised seats are built up 
 about the high altar under the dome in St. Peter's, which 
 will accommodate a thousand, and perhaps more, ladies ; 
 and for these tickets are issued without numbers, and 
 for twice as many as they will seat. Gentlemen who 
 are in evening dress are admitted to stand in the re- 
 served places inside the lines of soldiers. For th^ 
 miserere in the Sistine Chapel tickets are also issued. As 
 there is only room for about four hundred ladies, and a 
 thousand and more tickets are given out, you may ima- 
 gine the scramble. Ladies go for hours before the singing 
 begins, and make a grand rush when the doors are open. 
 I do not know any sight so unseemly and cruel as a 
 crowd of women intent on getting in to such a ceremony : 
 they are perfectly rude and unmerciful to each other. 
 They push and trample one another under foot ; veils 
 and dresses are torn ; ladies faint away in the scrim- 
 mage, and only the strongest and most unscrupulous get 
 in. I have heard some say, who have been in the pell- 
 mell, that, not content with elbowing and pushing and 
 pounding, some women even stick pins into those who 
 are in the way. I hope this latter is not true ; but it is 
 certain that the conduct of most of the women is brutal. 
 A weak or modest or timid woman stands no more 
 chance than she would in a herd of infuriated Campagna 
 cattle. The same scenes are enacted in the efforts to 
 see the pope wash feet, and serve at the table. For the 
 possession of the seats under the dome on Palm Sunday 
 and Easter there is a like crush. The ceremonies do 
 not begin until half-past nine ; but ladies go between 
 five and six o'clock in the morning, and when the pas- 
 sages are open they make a grand rush. The seats, 
 
PALM SUNDA V IN ST. PE TER 'S. 191 
 
 except those saved for the nobility, are soon all taken ; 
 and the ladies who come after seven are lucky if they 
 can get within the charmed circle, and find a spot to sit 
 down on a camp-stool. They can then see only a part 
 of the proceedings, and have a weary, exhausting time 
 of it for hours. This year Rome is more crowded 
 than ever before. There are American ladies enough 
 to fill all the reserved places ; and I fear they are ener- 
 getic enough to get their share of them. 
 
 It rained Sunday ; but there was a steady stream of 
 people and carriages all the morning pouring over the 
 Bridge of St. Angelo, and discharging into the piazza 
 of St. Peter's. It was after nine when I arrived on the 
 ground. There was a crowd of carriages under the 
 colonnades, and a heavy fringe in front of them ; but 
 the hundreds of people moving over the piazza, and up 
 the steps to the entrances, made only the impression of 
 dozens in the vast space. I do not know if there*, are 
 people enough in Rome to fill St. Peter's ; certainly there 
 was no appearance of a crowd as we entered, although 
 they had been pouring in all the morning, and still 
 thronged the doors. I heard a traveller say that he fol- 
 lowed ten thousand soldiers into the church, and then 
 lost them from sight : they disappeared in the side 
 chapels. He did not make his affidavit as to the num- 
 ber of soldiers. The interior area of the building is not 
 much greater than the square of St. Mark in Venice. 
 To go into the great edifice is almost like going out doors. 
 Lines of soldiers kept a wide passage clear from the front 
 door away down to the high altar ; and there was a good 
 mass of spectators on the outside. The tribunes for the 
 ladies, built up under the dome, were, of course, filled 
 with masses of ladies in solemn black ; and there was 
 more or less of a press of people surging about in that 
 vicinity. Thousands of people were also roaming about 
 in the great spaces of the edifice ; but there was no- 
 where else any thing like a crowd. It had very much 
 the appearance of a large fair-ground, with little crowds 
 
192 PALM SUNDA Y IN ST. PE TER 'S. 
 
 about favorite booths. Gentlemen in dress-coats were 
 admitted to the circle under the dome. The pope's 
 choir was stationed in a gallery there opposite the high 
 altar. Back of the altar was a wide space for the dig- 
 nitaries ; seats were there, also, for ambassadors and 
 those born to the purple ; and the pope's seat was on a 
 raised dais at the end. Outsiders could see nothing of 
 what went on within there ; and the ladies under the 
 dome could only partially see, in the seats they had 
 fought so gallantly to obtain. 
 
 St. Peter's is a good place for grand processions and 
 ceremonies ; but it is a poor one for viewing - them. A 
 procession which moves down the nave is hidden by the 
 soldiers who stand on either side, or is only visible by 
 sections as it passes : there is no good place to get the 
 grand effect of the masses of color, and the total of the 
 gorgeous pageantry. I should like to see the display 
 upon a grand stage, and enjoy it in a cowp d'(Eil. It is 
 a fine study of color and effect, and the groupings are 
 admirable ; but the whole affair is nearly lost to the mass 
 of spectators. It must be a sublime feeling to one in the 
 procession to walk about in such monstrous fine clothes ; 
 but what would his emotions be if more people could see 
 him ! The grand altar stuck up under the dome, not 
 only breaks the effect of what would be the fine sweep 
 of the nave back to the apse, but it cuts off all view of 
 the celebration of the mass behind it, and, in effect, 
 reduces what should be the great point of display in the 
 church to a mere chapel. And, when you add to that 
 the temporary tribunes erected under the dome for seat- 
 ing the ladies, the entire nave is shut off from a view 
 of the gorgeous ceremony of high mass. The effect 
 would be incomparable if one could stand in the door, 
 or anywhere in the nave, and, as in other churches, 
 look down to the end upon a great platform, with the high 
 altar and all the sublime spectacle in full view, with the 
 blaze of candles and the clouds of incense rising in the 
 distance. 
 
PALM SUNDA V IN ST. PE TER 'S. 193 
 
 At half-past nine the great doors opened, and the pro- 
 cession began, in slow and stately moving fashion, to 
 enter. One saw a throng of ecclesiastics in robes and 
 ermine; the white plumes of the Guard Noble; the 
 pages and chamberlains in scarlet ; other pages, or what 
 not, in black short-clothes, short swords, gold chains, 
 cloak hanging from the shoulder, and stiff white ruffs ; 
 thirty-six Isardinals in violet robes, with high, mitre- 
 shaped white silk hats, that looked not unlike the paste- 
 board "trainer-caps" that boys wear when they play 
 soldier; crucifixes, and a blazoned banner here and 
 there ; and, at last, the pope, in his red chair, borne on 
 the shoulders of red lackeys, heaving along in a sea- 
 sicky motion, clad in scarlet and gold, with a silver 
 mitre on his head, feebly making the papal benediction 
 with two upraised fingers, and moving his lips in blessing. 
 As the pope came in, a supplementary choir of men and 
 soprano hybrids, stationed near the door, set up a high, 
 welcoming song, or chant, which echoes rather finely 
 through the building. All the music of the day is 
 vocal. 
 
 The procession having reached its destination, and 
 disappeared behind the altar of the dome, the pope dis- 
 mounted, and took his seat on his throne. The blessing 
 of the palms began, the cardinals first approaching, and 
 afterwards the members of the diplomatic corps, the 
 archbishops and bishops, the heads of the religious 
 orders, and such private persons as have had permission 
 to do so. I had previously seen the palms carried in by 
 servants in great baskets. It is, perhaps, not necessary 
 to say that they are not the poetical green waving palms, 
 but stiff sort of wands, woven out of dry, yellow, split 
 palm-leaves, sometimes four or five feet in length, braided 
 into the semblance of a crown on top, — a kind of rough 
 basket-work. The palms having been blessed, a proces- 
 sion was again formed down the nave and out the door, 
 all in it " carrying palms in their hands," the yellow color 
 of which added a new element of picturesqueness to the 
 17 
 
194 PALM SUNDA Y IN ST. PE TER 'S. 
 
 splendid pageant. The pope was carried as before, 
 and bore in his hand a short, braided palm, with gold 
 woven in, flowers added, and the monogram I. H. S. 
 worked in the top. It is the pope's custom to give this 
 away when the ceremony is over. Last year he pre- 
 sented it to an American lady, whose devotion attracted 
 him : this year, I saw it go away in a gilded coach in 
 the hands of an ecclesiastic. The procession disappeared 
 through the great portal into the vestibule, and the door 
 closed. In a moment, somebody knocked three times 
 on the door : it opened, and the procession returned, 
 and moved again to the rear of the altar, the singers 
 marchinor with it and chanting. The cardinals then 
 changed their violet for scarlet robes ; and high mass, for 
 an hour, was celebrated by a cardinal priest : and I was 
 told that it was the pope's voice that we heard, high and 
 clear, singing the passion. The choir made the responses, 
 and performed at intei'vals. The singing was not with- 
 out a certain power ; indeed, it was marvellous how some 
 of the voices really filled the vast spaces of the edifice, 
 and the choruses rolled in solemn waves of sound through 
 the arches. The singing, with the male sopranos, is not 
 to my taste ; but it cannot be denied that it had a wild 
 and strange effect. 
 
 While this was going on behind the altar, the people 
 outside were wandering about, looking at each other, and 
 on the watch not to miss any of the shows of the day. 
 People were talking, chattering, and greeting each other 
 as they might do in the street. Here and there some- 
 body was kneeling on the pavement, unheeding the 
 passing throng. At several of the chapels, services were 
 being conducted ; and there was a large congregation, an 
 ordinary church full, about each of them. But the most 
 of those present seemed to regard it as a spectacle only ; 
 and, as a display of dress, costumes, and nationalities, it 
 was almost unsurpassed. There are few more wonder- 
 ful sights in this world than an Englishwoman in what 
 she considers fiill dress. An English dandy is also a 
 
PALM SUNDA Y IN ST. PE TER 'S 195 
 
 pleasing object. For my part, as I liaye hinted, I like 
 almost as well as any thing the big footmen, — those in 
 scarlet breeches and blue, gold-embroidered coats. I 
 stood in front of one of the fine creations for some time, 
 and contemplated him as one does the Farnese Hercules. 
 One likes to see to what a splendor his species can come, 
 even if the brains have all run down into the calves of 
 the legs. There were also the pages, the officers of the 
 pope's household, in costumes of the Middle Ages ; the 
 pope's Swiss guard in the showy harlequin uniform de- 
 signed by Michael Angelo ; the foot-soldiers in white 
 short-clothes, which threatened to burst, and let them fly 
 into pieces; there were fine ladies and gentlemen, 
 loafers and loungers, from every civilized country, jabber- 
 ing in all the languages ; there were beggars in rags, and 
 boors in coats so patched, that there was probably none 
 of the original material left ; there were groups of peas- 
 ants from the Campagna, the men in short jackets and 
 sheepskin breeches with the wool side out, the women 
 with gay-colored folded cloths on their heads, and coarse, 
 woollen gowns ; a squad of wild-looking Spanish gypsies, 
 burning-eyed, olive-skinned, hair long, black, crinkled, 
 and greasy, as wild in raiment as in face ; priests and 
 friars. Zouaves in jaunty light gray and scarlet ; rags and 
 velvets, silks and serge cloths, — a cosmopolitan gath- 
 ering poured into the world's great place of meeting, — 
 a fine religious Vanity Fair on Sunday. 
 
 There came an impressive moment in all this con- 
 fusion, a point of august solemnity. Up to that instant, 
 what with chanting and singing the many services, and 
 the noise of talking and walking, there was a wild Babel. 
 But at the stroke of the bell and the elevation of the 
 Host, down went the muskets of the guard with one 
 clang on the marble ; the soldiers kneeled ; the multitude 
 in the nave, in the aisles, at all the chapels, kneeled ; and 
 for a minute in that vast edifice there was perfect stillness : 
 if the whole great concourse had been swept from the 
 earth, the spot where it lately was could not have been 
 
196 PALM SUNDAY IN ST. PETER'S. 
 
 more silent. And then the military order went down 
 the line, the soldiers rose, the crowd rose, and the mass 
 and the hum went on. 
 
 It was all over before one ; and the pope was borne 
 out again, and the vast crowd began to discharge itself. 
 But it was a long time before the carriages were all filled 
 and rolled off". I stood for a half-hour watching the 
 stream go by, — the pompous soldiers, the peasants and 
 citizens, the dazzling equipages, and jaded, exhausted 
 women in black, who had sat or stood half a day under 
 the dome, and could get no carriage ; and the great 
 state coaches of the cardinals, swinging high in the air, 
 painted and gilded, with three noble footmen hanging 
 on behind each, and a cardinal's broad face in the 
 window. 
 
VESUVIUS. 
 
CLIMBING A VOLCANO. 
 
 EVERYBODY who comes to Naples, — that is, 
 everybody except the lady who fell from her 
 horse the other day at Eesina, and injured her shoulder, 
 as she was mounting for the ascent, — everybody, I say, 
 goes up Vesuvius, and nearly every one writes impres- 
 sions and descriptions of the performance. If you be- 
 lieve the tales of travellers, it is an undertaking of great 
 hazard, an experience of frightful emotions. How 
 unsafe it is, especially for ladies, I heard twenty times 
 in Naples before I had been there a day. Why, there 
 was a lady thrown from her horse and nearly killed, 
 only a week ago ; and she still lay ill at the next hotel, a 
 witness of the truth of the story. I imagined her plunged 
 down a precipice of lava, or pitched over the lip of the 
 crater, and only rescued by the devotion of a gallant 
 guide, who threatened to let go of her if she didn't pay 
 him twenty francs instantly. This story, which will live 
 and grow for years in this region, a waxing and never- 
 waning peril of the volcano, I found, subsequently, had 
 the foundation I have mentioned above. The lady did 
 go to Resina in order to make the ascent of Vesuvius, 
 mounted a horse there, fell off, being utterly unhorsewo- 
 manly, and hurt herself; but her injury had no more 
 to do with Vesuvius than it had with the entrance of 
 Victor Emanuel into Naples, which took place a couple 
 of weeks after. Well, as I was saying, it is the fashion 
 to write descriptions of Vesuvius ; and you might as well 
 have mine, which I shall give to you in rough outline. 
 
 199 
 
200 CLIMBING A X^OLCANO. 
 
 There came a day when the Tramontane ceased to 
 blow down on us the cold air of the snowy Apennines, 
 and the white cap of Vesuvius, which is, by the way, 
 ■worn generally like the caps of the Neapolitans, drifted 
 inland instead of toward the sea. Warmer weather had 
 come to make the bright sunshine no longer a mockery. 
 For some days I had been getting the gauge of the 
 mountain. With its white plume it is a constant quan- 
 tity in the landscape : one sees it from every point of 
 view ; and we had been scarcely anywhere that volcanic 
 remains, or signs of such action, — a thin crust shaking 
 under our feet, as at Solfatara, where blasts of sulphur- 
 ous steam drove in our faces, — did not remind us that 
 the whole ground is uncertain, and undermined by the sub- 
 terranean fires that have Vesuvius for a chimney. All 
 the coast of the bay, within recent historic periods, in 
 different spots at different times, has risen and sunk and 
 risen again, in simple obedience to the pulsations of the 
 great fiery monster below. It puffs up or sinks, like the 
 crust of a baking apple-pie. This region is evidently 
 not done ; and I think it not unlikely it may have to be 
 turned over again before it is. We had seen where Her- 
 culaneum lies under the lava and under the town of Re- 
 sina ; we had walked those clean and narrow streets of 
 Pompeii, and seen the workmen picking away at the 
 embedded gravel, sand, and ashes which still cover 
 nearly two-thirds of the nice little, tight little Roman 
 city ; we had looked at the black gashes on the moun- 
 tain-sides, Avhere the lava streams had gushed and rolled 
 and twisted over vineyards and villas and villages ; and 
 we decided to take a nearer look at the immediate cause 
 of all this abnormal state of things. 
 
 In the morning when I awoke the sun was just rising 
 behind Vesuvius ; and there was a mighty display of gold, 
 and crimson in that quarter, as if the curtain was about 
 to be lifted on a grand performance, ■ — say a ballet at 
 San Carlo, which is the only thing the Neapolitans think 
 worth looking at. Straight up in the air, out of the 
 
CLIMBING A VOLCANO. 201 
 
 mountain, rose a white pillar, spreading out at the top 
 like a palm-tree, or, to compare it to something I have 
 seen, to the Italian pines, that come so picturesquely into 
 all these Naples pictures. If you will believe me, that 
 pillar of steam was like a column of fire, from the sun 
 shining on and through it, and perhaps from the reflec- 
 tion of the background of crimson clouds and blue and 
 gold sky, spread out there and hung there in royal and 
 extravagant profusion, to make a highway and a regal 
 gateway, through which I could just then see coming the 
 horses and the chariot of a southern perfect day. They 
 said that the tree-shaped cloud was the sign of an erup- 
 tion ; but the hotel-keepers here are always predicting 
 that. The eruption is usually about two or three weeks 
 distant ; and the hotel proprietors get this information 
 from experienced guides, who observe the action of the 
 water in the wells ; so that there can be no mistake about 
 it. 
 
 We took carriages at nine o'clock to Resina, a drive 
 of four miles, and one of exceeding interest, if you wish 
 to see Naples life. The way is round the curving bay 
 by the sea; but so continuously built up is it, and so 
 enclosed with high walls of villas, through the open 
 gates of which the golden oranges gleam, that you seem 
 never to leave the city. The streets and quays swarm 
 with the most vociferous, dirty, multitudinous life. It is 
 a drive through Rag Fair. The tall, whitey-yellow 
 houses fronting the water, six, seven, eight stories high, 
 are full as bee-hives ; people are at all the open windows ; 
 garments hang from the balconies and from poles thrust 
 out; up every narrow, gloomy, ascending street are 
 crowds of struggling human shapes ; and you see how 
 like herrings in a box are packed the over half a million 
 people of Naples. In front of the houses are the mar- 
 kets in the open air, — fish, vegetables, carts of oranges ; 
 in the sun sit women spinning from distaffs or weaving 
 fishing-nets ; and rows of children who were never washed 
 and never clothed but once, and whose garments have 
 
202 CLIMBING A VOLCANO. 
 
 nearly wasted away ; beggars, fishermen in red caps, 
 sailors, priests, donkeys, fruit-venders, street-musicians, 
 carriages, carts, two-wheeled break-down vehicles, — the 
 whole tangled in one wild roar and rush and Babel, — a 
 shifting, varied panorama of color, rags, — a pandemonium 
 such as the world cannot show elsewhere, — thai is what 
 one sees on the road to Resina. The drivers all drive 
 in the streets here as if they held a commission from the 
 Devil, cracking their whips, shouting to their horses, and 
 dashing; into the thickest tangle with entire recklessness. 
 They have one cry, used alike for getting more speed out 
 of their horses or for checking them, or in warning to 
 the endangered crowds on foot. It is an exclamatory 
 grunt, which may be partially expressed by the letters 
 " a-e-ugh." Everybody shouts it, — mule-driver, "coachee," 
 or cattle driver; and even I, a passenger, fancied I could 
 do it to disagreeable perfection after a time. Out of this 
 throng in the streets I like to select the meek, patient, 
 diminutive little donkeys, with enormous panniers that 
 almost hide them. One would have a woman seated on 
 top, with a child in one pannier and cabbages in the 
 other ; another, with an immense stock of market-greens 
 on his back, or big baskets of oranges, or with a row of 
 wine-casks and a man seated behind, adhering, by some 
 unknown law of adhesion, to the sloping tail. Then 
 there was the cart drawn by one diminutive donkey, or 
 by an ox, or by an ox and a donkey, or by a donkey and 
 horse abreast, — never by any possibility a matched team. 
 And, funniest of all, was the high, two-wheeled caCeche, 
 with one seat, and top thrown back, with long thills and 
 poor horse. Upon this vehicle were piled, Heaven knows 
 how, behind, before, on the thills, and underneath the 
 high seat, sometimes ten, and not seldom as many as 
 eighteen people, — men, women, and children, — all in 
 flaunting rags, with a colored scarf here and there, or a gay 
 petticoat, or a scarlet cap, — perhaps a priest, with broad 
 black hat, in the centre, — driving along like a comet, the 
 poor horse in a gallop, the bells on his ornamented sad- 
 
CLIMBING A VOLCANO. ,203 
 
 die merrily jingling, and tlie wliole load in a roar of mer- 
 riment. 
 
 But we sliall never get to Vesuvius at this rate. I 
 will not even stop to examine the macaroni manufacto- 
 ries on the road. The long strips of it were hung out on 
 poles to dry in the streets, and to get a rich color from 
 the dirt and dust, to say nothing of its contact with the 
 filthy people who were making it. I am very fond of 
 macaroni. At Resina we take horses for the ascent. 
 We had sent ahead for a guide and horses for our party 
 of ten ; but we found besides, I should think, pretty 
 nearly the entire population of the locality awaiting us, 
 not to count the importunate beggars, the hags, male and 
 female, and the ordinary loafers of the place. We were 
 besieged to take this and that horse or mule, to buy 
 walking-sticks for the climb, to purchase lava cut into 
 charms, and veritable ancient coins, and dug-up cameos, 
 — all manufactured for the demand. One wanted to 
 hold the horse, or to lead it, to carry a shawl, or to show 
 the way. In the midst of infinite clamor and noise, we 
 at last got mounted, and, turning into a narrow lane 
 between hiofh walls, beo;an the ascent, our cavalcade 
 attended by a procession of rags and wretchedness up 
 throuo;h the villao;e. Some of them fell off as we rose 
 among the vineyards, and they found us proof against 
 begging ; but several accompanied us all day, hoping 
 that, in some unguarded moment, they could do us some 
 slight service, and so establish a claim on us. Among 
 these I noticed some stout fellows with short ropes, with 
 which they intended to assist us up the steeps. If I looked 
 away an instant, some urchin would seize my horse's bri- 
 dle ; and when I carelessly let my stick fall on his hand, 
 in token for him to let go, he would fall back with an 
 injured look, and grasp the tail, from which I could only 
 loosen him by swinging my staff and preparing to break 
 his head. 
 
 The ascent is easy at first between walls and the vine- 
 yards which produce the celebrated Lachryma Christi. 
 
204 CLIMBING A VOLCANO, 
 
 After a lialf-hour we readied and began to cross the 
 lava of 1858, and the wild. desolation and gloom of the 
 mountain began to strike us. One is here conscious of 
 the Titanic forces at work. Sometimes it is as if a giant 
 had ploughed the ground, and left the furrows without har- 
 rowins: them to harden into black and brown stone. We 
 could see again how the broad stream, flowing down, 
 squeezed and squashed like mud, had taken all fantastic 
 shapes, — now like gnarled tree-roots ; now like serpents 
 in a coil ; here the human form, or a part of it, — a torso or 
 a limb, — in agony ; now in other nameless convolutions 
 and contortions, as if heaved up and twisted in fiery pain 
 and suffering, — for there was almost a human feeling in 
 it ; and again not unlike stone billows. We could see 
 how the cooling crust had been lifted and split and 
 turned over by the hot stream underneath, which, con- 
 tinually oozing from the rent of the eruption, bore it 
 down and pressed it upward. Even so low as the point 
 where we crossed the lava of 1858 were fissures whence 
 came hot air. 
 
 An hour brought us to the resting-place called the' 
 Hermitage, an osteria and observatory established by 
 the Government. Standing upon the end of a spur, it 
 seems to be safe from the lava, whose course has always 
 been on either side ; but it must be an uncomfortable 
 place in a shower of stones and ashes. We rode half 
 an hour longer on horseback, on a nearly level path, to 
 the foot of the steep ascent, the base of the great crater. 
 This ride gave us completely the wide and ghastly deso- 
 lation of the mountain, the ruin that the lava has 
 wrought upon slopes that were once green with vine 
 and olive, and busy with the hum of hfe. This black, 
 contorted desert waste is more sterile and hopeless than 
 any mountain of stone, because the idea of relentless 
 destruction is involved here. This great, hummocked, 
 sloping plain, ridged and seamed, was all about us, with- 
 out cheer or relaxation of grim solitude. Before us rose, 
 as black and bare, what the guides call the mountain, 
 
CLIMBING A VOLCANO. 205 
 
 and whicli used to be the crater. Up one side is worked 
 in the lava a zigzag path, steep, but not very fatiguing, 
 if you take it slowly. Two-thirds of the way up, I saw 
 specks of people climbing. Beyond it rose the cone of 
 ashes, out of which the great cloud of sulphurous smoke 
 rises and rolls night and day now. On the very edge of 
 that, on the lip of it, where the smoke rose, I also saw 
 human shapes ; and it seemed as if they stood on the 
 brink of Tartarus and in momently, imminent peril. 
 
 We left our horses in a wild spot, where scorched 
 bowlders had fallen upon the lava bed ; and guides and 
 boys gathered about us like cormorants : but, declining 
 their offers to pull us up, we began the ascent, which 
 took about three-quarters of an hour. We were then on 
 the summit, which is, after all, not a summit at all, but an 
 uneven waste, sloping away from the Cone in the centre. 
 This sloping lava waste was full of little cracks, — not fis- 
 sures with hot lava in them, or any thing of the sort, — out 
 of which white steam issued, not unlike the smoke from 
 a great patch of burned timber ; and the wind blew it 
 along the ground -towards us. It was cool, for the sun 
 was hidden by light clouds, but not cold. The ground 
 under foot was slightly warm. I had expected to feel 
 some dread, or shrinking, or at least some sense of inse- 
 curity, but I did not the slightest, then or afterwards ; 
 and I think mine is the usual experience. I had no 
 more sense of danger on the edge of the crater than I 
 had in the streets of Naples. 
 
 We next addressed ourselves to the Cone, which is a 
 loose hill of ashes and sand, — a natural slope, I should 
 say, of about one and a half to one, offering no foothold. 
 The climb is very fatiguing, because you sink in to the 
 ankles, and slide back at every step ; but it is short, — we 
 were up in six to eight minutes, — though the ladies, who 
 had been helped a little by the guides, were nearly 
 exhausted, and sank down on the very edge of the cra- 
 ter, with their backs to the smoke. What did we see ? 
 What would you see if you looked into a steam boiler ? 
 18 
 
2o6 CLIMBING A VOLCANO. 
 
 We stood on tlie ashy- edge of the crater, the sharp edge 
 sloping one way down the mountain, and the other into 
 the bowels, whence the thick, stijfling smoke rose. We 
 rolled stones down, and heard them rumbling for half a 
 minute. The diameter of the crater on the brink of 
 which we stood was said to be an eighth of a mile ; but 
 the whole was completely filled with vapor. The edge 
 where we stood was quite warm. We ate some rolls we 
 had brought in our pockets, and some of the party tried 
 a bottle of the wine that one of the cormorants had 
 brought up, but found it any thing but the Lachryma 
 Christi it was named. We looked with longing eyes 
 down into the vapor-boiling caldron ; we looked at the 
 wide and lovely view of land and sea ; we tried to realize 
 our awful situation, munched our dry bread, and laughed 
 at the monstrous demands of the vagabonds about us for 
 money, and then turned and went down quicker than we 
 came up. 
 
 We had chosen to ascend to the old crater rather than 
 to the new one of the recent eruption on the side of the 
 mountain, where there is nothing to be seen. When we 
 reached the bottom of the Cone, our guide led us to the 
 north side, and into a region that did begin to look like 
 business. The wind drove all the smoke round there, 
 and we were half stifled with sulphur fumes to begin 
 with. Then the Vhole ground was discolored red and 
 yellow, and with many more gay and sulphur-suggesting 
 colors. And it actually had deep fissures in it, over 
 which we stepped and among which we went, out of 
 which came blasts of hot, horrid vapor, with a roaring as 
 if we were in the midst of furnaces. And if we came 
 near the cracks the heat was powerful in our faces, and 
 if we thrust our sticks down them they were instantly 
 burned ; and the guides cooked eggs ; and the crust was 
 thin, and very hot to our boots ; and half the time we 
 couldn't see any thing ; and we would rush away where 
 the vapor was not so thick, and, with handkerchiefs to our 
 mouths, rush in again to get the full effect. After we 
 
CLIMBING A VOLCANO. 207 
 
 came out again into better air, it was as if we had been 
 through the burning, fiery furnace, and had the smell 
 of it on our garments. And, indeed, the sulphur had 
 changed to red certain of our clothes, and noticeably my 
 pantaloons and the black velvet cap of one of the ladies ; 
 and it was some days before they recovered their color. 
 But, as I say, there was no sense of danger in the adven- 
 ture. 
 
 We descended by a different route, on the south side 
 of the mountain, to our horses, and made a lark of it. 
 We went down an ash slope, very steep, where we sank 
 in a foot or little less at every step, and there was noth- 
 ing to do for it, but to run and jump. We took steps as 
 lonoj as if we had worn seven-leao;ue boots. When the 
 whole party got in motion, the entire slope seemed to 
 slide a little with us, and there appeared some danger of 
 an avalanche. But we didn't stop for it. It was exactly 
 like plunging down a steep hillside that is covered 
 thickly with light, soft snow. There was a gray-haired 
 gentleman with us, with a good deal of the boy in him, 
 who thought it great fun. 
 
 I have said little about the view ; but I might have 
 written about nothing else, both in the ascent and de- 
 scent. Naples, and all the villages which rim the bay 
 with white, the gracefully-curving arms that go out to 
 sea, and do not quite clasp rocky Capri, which lies at 
 the entrance, made the outline of a picture of sur- 
 passing loveliness. But, as we came down, there was 
 a sight that I am sure was unique. As one in a balloon 
 sees the earth concave beneath, so, now, from where we 
 stood, it seemed to rise, not fall, to the sea, and all the 
 white villages were raised to the clouds ; and, by the 
 peculiar light, the sea looked exactly like sky, and the 
 little boats on it seemed to float, like balloons in the air. 
 The illusion was perfect. As the day waned, a heavy 
 cloud hid the sun, and so let down the light that the 
 waters were a dark purple. Then the sun went behind 
 Posilipo in a perfect blaze of scarlet, and all the sea was 
 
2o8 CLIMBING A VOLCANO. 
 
 violet. Only it still was not the sea at all ; but the 
 little chopping waves looked like •flecked clouds ; and it 
 was exactly as if one of the violet, cloud-beautified skies 
 that we see at home over some sunsets had fallen to the 
 ground. And the slant white sails and the black specks 
 of boats on it hung in the sky, and were as unsubstantial 
 as the whole pageant. Capri alone was dark and solid. 
 And as we descended and a high wall hid it, a little 
 handsome rascal, who had attended me for an hour, now 
 at the head and now at the tail of my pony, recalled me 
 to the realities by the request that I should give him a 
 franc. For what ? For carrying signor's coat up the 
 mountain. I rewarded the little liar with a German 
 copper. I had carried my own overcoat all day. 
 
 1 
 
SORRENTO DAYS. 
 
OUTLINES. 
 
 THE day came when we tired of the brilliancy and din 
 of Naples, most noisy of cities. Neapolis, or Par- 
 thenope, as is well known, was founded by Parthenope, a 
 siren who was cast ashore there. Her descendants still 
 live here ; and we have become a little weary of their 
 inherited musical ability : they have learned to play upon 
 many new instruments, with which they keep us awake 
 late at night, and arouse us early in the morning. One 
 of them is always there under the window, where the 
 moonlight will strike him, or the early dawn will light 
 up his love-worn visage, strumming the guitar with his 
 horny thumb, and wailing through his nose as if his 
 throat was full of sea-weed. He is as inexhaustible as 
 Vesuvius. We shall have to flee, or stop our ears with 
 wax, like the sailors of Ulysses. 
 
 The day came when we had checked off the Posilipo, 
 and the Grotto, Pozzuoli, Baiae, Cape Misenum, the 
 Museum, Vesuvius, Pompeii, Herculaneum, the moderns 
 buried at the Campo Santo ; and we said. Let us go and 
 lie in the sun at Sorrento. But first let us settle our 
 geography. 
 
 The Bay of Naples, painted and sung forever, but 
 never adequately, must consent to be here described as 
 essentially a parallelogram, with an opening towards the 
 south-west. The north-east side of this, with Naples in 
 the right-hand corner, looking seaward, and Castellamare 
 in the left-hand corner, at a distance of some fourteen 
 miles, is a vast rich plain, fringed on the shore with 
 
 211 
 
212 OUTLINES. 
 
 towns, and covered witli white houses and gardens. Out 
 of this rises the isolated bulk of Vesuvius. This grow- 
 ing mountain is manufactured exactly, like an ant-hill. 
 
 The north-west side of the bay, keeping a general 
 westerly direction, is very uneven, with headlands, deep 
 bays, and outlying islands. First comes the promontory 
 of Posilipo, pierced by two tunnels, partly natural and 
 partly Greek and Roman work, above the entrance of 
 one of which is the tomb of Virgil, let us believe ; then 
 a beautiful bay, the shore of which is incrusted with 
 classic ruins. On this bay stands Pozzuoli, the ancient 
 Puteoli where St. Paul landed one May day, and doubt- 
 less walked up this paved road, which leads direct to 
 Rome. At the entrance, near the head of Posilipo, is 
 the volcanic island of " shining Nisida," to which Brutus 
 retired after the assassination of Caesar, and where he 
 bade Portia good-by before he departed for Greece and 
 Philippi : the favorite villa of Cicero, where he wrote 
 many of his letters to Atticus, looked on it. Baite, 
 epitome of the luxury and profligacy, of the splendor and 
 crime, of the most sensual years of the Roman empire, 
 spread there its temples, palaces, and pleasure-gardens, 
 which crowded the low slopes, and extended over the 
 water ; and yonder is Cape Misenum, which sheltered 
 the great fleets of Rome. 
 
 This region, which is still shaky from fires bubbling 
 under the thin crust, through which here and there the 
 sulphurous vapor breaks out, is one of the most sacred 
 in the ancient world. Here are the Lucrine Lake, the 
 Elysian Fields, the cave of the Cumean Sibyl, and the 
 Lake Avernus. This entrance to the infernal regions 
 was frozen over the day I saw it ; so that the profane 
 prophecy of skating on the bottomless pit might have 
 been realized. The Islands of Procida and Ischia con- 
 tinue and complete this side of the bay, which is about 
 twenty miles long as the boat sails. 
 
 At Castellamare the shore makes a sharp bend, and 
 runs south-west alonoj the side of the Sorrentine Prom- 
 
OUTLINES. 213 
 
 ontory. This promontory is a high, rocky, diversified 
 ridge, which extends out between the Bays of Naples and 
 Salerno, with its short and precipitous slope towards the 
 latter. Below Castellamare, the mountain range of the 
 Great St. Angelo (an offshoot of the Apennines) runs 
 across the peninsula, and cuts off that portion of it which 
 we have to consider. The most conspicuous of the 
 three parts of this short range is over four thousand 
 seven hundred feet above the Bay of Naples, and the 
 highest land on it. From Great St. Angelo to the point, 
 the Punta di Campanella, it is, perhaps, twelve miles by 
 balloon, but twenty by any other conveyance. Three 
 miles off this point lies Capri. 
 
 This promontory has a backbone of rocky ledges and 
 hills ; but it has, at intervals, transverse ledges and 
 ridges, and deep valleys and chains cutting in from either 
 side ; so that it is not very passable in any direction. 
 These little valleys and bays are warm nooks for the olive 
 and the orange ; and all the precipices and sunny slopes 
 are terraced nearly to the top. This promontory of 
 rocks is far from being barren. 
 
 From Castellamare, driving along a winding, rock-cut 
 road by the bay, — one of the most charming in South- 
 ern Italy, — a distance of seven miles, we reach the 
 Punta di Scutolo. This point, and the opposite head- 
 land, the Capo di Sorrento, enclose the Piano di Sorrento, 
 an irregular plain, three miles long, encircled by lime- 
 stone hills, which protect it from the east and south 
 winds. In this amphitheatre it lies, a mass of green 
 foliage and white villages, fronting Naples and Vesuvius. 
 
 If Nature first scooped out this nook level with the sea, 
 and then filled it up to a depth of two hundred to three 
 hundred feet with volcanic tufa, forming a precipice of 
 tbtP-t height along the shore, I can understand how the 
 present state of things came about. 
 
 This plain is not all level, however. Decided spurs 
 push down into it from the hills ; and great chasms, deep, 
 ragged, impassable, split in the tufa, extend up into it 
 
214 OUTLINES. 
 
 from the sea. At intervals, at the openings of these 
 ravines, are little marinas, where the fishermen have their 
 huts, and where their boats land. Little villages, sepa- 
 rate from the world, abound on these marinas. The 
 warm volcanic soil of the sheltered plain makes it a para- 
 dise of fruits and flowers. 
 
 Sorrento, ancient and romantic city, lies at the south- 
 west end of this plain, built along the sheer sea preci- 
 pice, and running back to the hills, — a city of such 
 narrow streets, high walls, and luxuriant groves, that it 
 can only be seen from the heights adjacent. The ancient 
 boundary of the city proper was the famous ravine on 
 the east side, a similar ravine on the south, which met it 
 at right angles, and was supplemented by a high Roman 
 wall, and the same wall continued on the west to the 
 sea. The growing town has pushed away the wall on 
 the west side ; but that on the south yet stands as good 
 as when the Romans made it. There is a little attempt 
 at a mall, with double rows of trees, under that wall, 
 where lovers walk, and ragged, handsome urchins play 
 the exciting game of fives, or sit in the dirt, gambling 
 with cards for the Sorrento currency. I do not know 
 what sin it may be to gamble for a bit of printed paper 
 which has the value of one sou. 
 
 The great ravine, three-quarters of a mile long, the 
 ancient boundary which now cuts the town in two, is 
 bridged where the main street, the Corso, crosses, the 
 bridge resting on old Roman substructions, as every thing 
 else about here does. This ravine, always invested with 
 mystery, is the theme of no end of poetry and legend. 
 Demons inhabit it. Here and there, in its perpendicu- 
 lar sides, steps have been cut for descent. Vines and 
 lichens grow on the walls : in one place, at the bottom, 
 an orange-grove has taken root. There is even a mill 
 down there, where there is breadth enough for a build- 
 ing ; and, altogether, the ravine is not so delivered over 
 to the power of darkness as it used to be. It is still 
 damp and slimy, it is true ; but, from above, it is always 
 
OUTLINES. 21$ 
 
 beautiful, with its luxuriant growth of vines, and at 
 twilight mysterious. I like as well, however, to look into 
 its entrance from the little marina, where the old fish- 
 wives are weaving nets. 
 
 These little settlements under the cliflf, called marinas, 
 are worlds in themselves, picturesque at a distance, but 
 squalid seen close at hand. They are not very different 
 from the little fishing-stations on the Isle of Wight ; 
 but they are more sheltered, and their inhabitants sing 
 at their work, wear bright colors, and bask in the sun a 
 good deal, feeling no sense of responsibility for the 
 world they did not create. To weave nets, to fish in the 
 bay, to sell their fish at the wharves, to eat unexciting 
 vegetables and fish, to drink moderately, to go to the 
 chapel of St. Antonino on Sunday, not to work on fast 
 and feast days, nor more than compelled to any day, — 
 this is life at the marinas. Their world is what they 
 can see, and Naples is distant and almost foreign. Gen- 
 eration after generation is content with the same simple 
 life. They have no more idea of the bad way the world 
 is in than bees in their cells. 
 
THE VILLA NARDL 
 
 THE Villa Nardi hangs over the sea. It is built on 
 a rock, and I know not what Roman and Greek 
 foundations, and the remains of yet earlier peoples, 
 traders, and traffickers, whose galleys used to rock there 
 at the base of the cliff, where the gentle waves beat even 
 in this winter-time with a summer swing and sound of 
 peace. 
 
 It was at the close of a day in January that I first 
 knew the Villa Nardi, — a warm, lovely day, at the hour 
 when the sun was just going behind the Capo di Sor- 
 rento, in order to disrobe a little, I fancy, before plun- 
 ging into the Mediterranean off the end of Capri, as is 
 his wont about this time of year. When we turned out 
 of the little piazza, our driver was obliged to take off 
 one of our team of three horses driven abreast, so that 
 we could pass through the narrow and crooked streets, 
 or rather lanes of blank walls. With cracking whip, 
 rattling wheels, and shouting to clear the way, we drove 
 into the Strada di San Francisca, and to an arched gate- 
 way. This led down a straight path, between olives and 
 orange and lemon trees, gleaming with shining leaves 
 and fruit of gold, with hedges of rose-trees in full bloom, 
 to another leafy arch; through which I saw tropical 
 trees, and a terrace with a low wall and battered busts 
 guarding it, and, beyond, the blue sea, a white sail or 
 two slanting across the opening, and the whiteness of 
 Naples some twenty miles away on the shore. 
 
 The noble family of the Villa did not descend into 
 216 
 
THE VILLA NARDL 217 
 
 the garden to welcome us, as we should have liked ; in 
 fact, they have been absent now for a long time, so long 
 that even their ghosts, if they ever pace the terrace-walk 
 towards the convent, would appear strange to one who 
 should meet them ; and yet our hostess, the Tramontano, 
 did what the ancient occupants scarcely could have done, 
 gave us the choice of rooms in the entire house. The 
 stranger who finds himself in this secluded paradise, at 
 this season, is always at a loss whether to take a room 
 on the sea, with all its changeable loveliness, but no sun, 
 or one overlooking the garden, where the sun all day 
 pours itself into the orange boughs, and where the birds 
 are just beginning to get up a spring twitteration. My 
 friend, whose capacity for taking in the luxurious repose 
 of this region is something extraordinary, has tried, I 
 believe, nearly every room in the house, and has at length 
 gone up to a solitary room on the top, where, like a bird 
 on a tree, he looks all ways, and, so to say, swings in the 
 entrancing air. But, wherever you are, you will grow 
 into content with your situation. 
 
 At the Villa Nardi, we have no sound of wheels, no 
 noise of work or traffic, no suggestion of conflict. I am 
 under the impression that every thing that was to have 
 been done has been done. I am, it is true, a little afraid 
 that the Saracens will come here again, and carry off 
 more of the nut-brown girls, who lean over the walls, and 
 look down on us from under the boughs. I am not quite 
 sure that a French Admiral of the Republic will not 
 some morning anchor his three-decker in front, and open 
 fire on us ; but nothing else can happen. Naples is a 
 thousand miles away. The boom of the saluting guns 
 of Castel Nuovo is to us scarcely an echo of modern life. 
 Rome does not exist. And, as for London and New 
 York, they send their people and their newspapers here, 
 but no pulse of unrest from them disturbs our tranquil- 
 lity. Hemmed in on the land side by hi^h walls, groves, 
 and gardens, perched upon a rock two hundred feet above 
 the water, how much more secure from invasion is this 
 
2i8 THE VILLA NARDL 
 
 than any fabled island of the southern sea, or any remote 
 stream where the boats of the lotus-eaters float 1 
 
 There is a little terrace and flower-plat, where we 
 sometimes sit, and over the wall of which we like to lean, 
 and look down the cliff to the sea. This terrace is the 
 common ground of many exotics as well as native trees 
 and shrubs. Here are the magnolia, the laurel, the Jap- 
 anese medlar, the oleander, the pepper, the bay, the 
 date-palm, a tree called the plumbago, another from the 
 Cape of Good Hope, the pomegranate, the elder in full 
 leaf, the olive, salvia, heliotrope ; close by is a banana- 
 tree. 
 
 I find a good deal of companionship in the rows of 
 plaster busts that stand on the wall, in all attitudes of 
 listlessness, and all stages of decay. I thought at first 
 they were Penates of the premises ; but better acquaint- 
 ance has convinced me that they never were gods, but 
 the clayey representations of great men and noble dames. 
 The stains of time are on them ; some have lost a nose 
 or an ear ; and one has parted with a still more important 
 member, his head, — an accident that might profitably 
 have befallen his neighbor, whose curly locks and vil- 
 lanously low forehead proclaim him a Roman emperor. 
 Cut in the face of the rock is a walled and winding way 
 down to the water. I see below the archway where it 
 issues from the underground recesses of our establish- 
 ment ; and there stands a bust, in serious expectation that 
 some one will walk out and saunter down among the 
 rocks ; but no one ever does. Just at the right is a little 
 beach, with a few old houses, and a mimic stir of life, a 
 little curve in the cliff, the mouth of the gorge, where 
 the waves come in with a lazy swash. Some fishing- 
 boats ride there ; and the shallow water, as I look down 
 this sunny morning, is thickly strewn with floating peels 
 of oranges and lemons, as if some one was brewing a 
 gigantic bowl of punch. And there is an uncommon stir 
 of life ; for a schooner is shipping a cargo of oranges, and 
 the entire population is in a clamor. Donkeys are com- 
 
THE VILLA NARDL 219 
 
 ing down the winding way, with a heavy basket on either 
 flank ; stout girls are stepping lightly down with loads 
 on their heads ; the drivers shoiit, the donkeys bray, the 
 people jabber and order each other about; and the 
 oranges, in a continual stream, are poured into the long, 
 narrow vessel, rolling in with a thud, until there is a yel- 
 low mass of them.*. Shouting, scolding, singing, and bray- 
 ing, all come up to me a little mellowed. The disorder 
 is not so great as on the opera stage of San Carlo in 
 Naples ; and the effect is much more pleasing. 
 
 This settlement, the marina, under the cliff, used to 
 extend along the shore ; and a good road ran down 
 there close by the water. The rock has split off, and 
 covered it ; and perhaps the shore has sunk. They tell 
 me that those who dig down in the edge of the shallow 
 water find sunken walls, and the remains of old founda- 
 tions of Koman workmanship. People who wander there 
 pick up bits of marble, serpentine, and malachite, — 
 remains of the palaces that long ago fell into the sea, and 
 have not left even the names of their owners and build- 
 ers, — the ancient loafers who idled away their days as 
 everybody must in this seductive spot. Not far from 
 here, they point out the veritable caves of the Sirens, 
 who have now shut up house, and gone away, like the 
 rest of the nobility. If I had been a mariner in their day, 
 I should have made no effort to sail by and away from 
 their soothing shore. 
 
 I went, one day, through a long, sloping arch, near 
 the sailors' Chapel of St. Antonino, past a pretty shrine 
 of the Virgin, down the zigzag path to this little 
 marina; but it is better to be content with looking at 
 it from above, and imagining how delightful it would be 
 to push off in one of the little tubs of boats. Sometimes, 
 at night, I hear the fishermen coming home, singing in 
 their lusty fashion ; and I think it is a good haven to 
 arrive at. I never go down to search for stones on the 
 beach : I like to believe that there are great treasures 
 there, which I might find ; and I know that the green 
 
220 THE VILLA NARDL 
 
 and brown and spotty appearance of the water is caused 
 by the showing through of the pavements of courts, and 
 •marble floors of palaces, which might vanish if I went 
 nearer, such a place of illusion is this. 
 
 The Villa Nardi stands in pleasant relations to Vesu- 
 vius, which is just across the bay, and is not so useless 
 as it has been represented ; it is our weather-sign and 
 prophet. When the white plume on his top floats inland, 
 that is one sort of weather ; when it streams out to sea, 
 that is another. But I can never tell which is which : 
 nor in my experience does it much matter ; for it seems 
 impossible for Sorrento to do any thing but woo us with 
 gentle weather. But the use of Vesuvius, after all, is to 
 furnish us a background for the violet lio;;ht at sundown, 
 when the villao;es at its foot gleam like a silver fring-e. 
 I have become convinced of one thing : it is always best 
 when you build a house to have it front toward a vol- 
 cano, if you can. There is just that lazy activity about 
 a volcano, ordinarily, that satisfies your demand for 
 something that is not exactly dead, and yet does not 
 disturb you. 
 
 Sometimes when I wake in the night, — though I 
 don't know why one ever wakes in the night, or the 
 daytime either here, — I hear the bell of the convent, 
 which is in our demesne, — a convent which is sup- 
 pressed, and where I hear, when I pass in the morning, 
 the hummino; of a school. At first, I tried to count the 
 hour ; but, when the bell went on to strike seventeen, 
 and even twenty-one o'clock, the absurdity of the thing 
 came over me, and I wondered whether it was some 
 frequent call to prayer for a feeble band of sisters re- 
 maining, some reminder of midnight penance and vigil, 
 or whether it was not something more ghostly than that, 
 and was not responded to by shades of nuns, who were 
 wont to look out from their narrow latticed windows 
 upon these same gardens, as long ago as when the beau- 
 tiful Queen Joanna used to come down here to repent 
 — if she ever did repent — of her wanton ways in Naples. 
 
THE VILLA NARDL 221 
 
 On one side of the garden is a suppressed monastery. 
 The narrow front towards the sea has a secluded little 
 balcony, where I like to fancy the poor, orphaned souls 
 used to steal out at night for a breath of fresh air, and 
 perhaps to see, as I did one dark evening, Naples with 
 its lights like a conflagration on the horizon. Upon the 
 tiles of the parapet are cheerful devices, — the crossbones 
 tied with a cord, and the like. How many heavy- 
 hearted recluses have stood in that secluded nook, and 
 been tempted by the sweet, lulling sound of the waves 
 below ; how many have paced along this narrow terrace, 
 and felt like prisoners who wore paths in the stone floor 
 where they tread; and how many stupid louts have 
 walked there, insensible to all the charm of it I 
 
 If I pass into the Tramontano garden, it is not to 
 escape the presence of history, or to get into the modern 
 world, where travellers are arriving, and where there is 
 the bustle and the proverbial discontent of those who 
 travel to enjoy themselves. In the pretty garden, which 
 is a constant surprise of odd nooks and sunny hiding- 
 places, with ruins, and most luxuriant ivy, is a little 
 cottage where, I am told in confidence, the young king 
 of Bavaria slept three nights not very long ago. I hope 
 he slept well. But more important than the sleep, or 
 even death, of a king, is the birth of a poet, I take it ; 
 and within this enclosure, on the eleventh day of March, 
 1541, Torquato Tasso, most melancholy of men, fi^rst saw 
 the light ; and here was born his noble sister Cornelia, 
 the descendants of whose union with the cavalier Spa- 
 siano still live here, and in a manner keep the memory 
 of the poet green with the present generation. I am 
 indebted to a gentleman who is of this lineage for many 
 favors, and for precise information as to the position in 
 the house that stood here of the very room in which 
 Tasso was born. It is also minutely given in a memoir 
 of Tasso and his family, by Bartolommeo Capasso, whose 
 careful researches have disproved the slipshod statements 
 of the guide-books, that the poet was born in a house 
 
222 THE VILLA NARDL 
 
 which is still standing, farther to the west, and that 
 the room has fallen into the sea. The descendant of 
 the sister pointed out to me the spot on the terrace of the 
 Tramontano where the room itself was, when the house 
 still stood ; and, of course, seeing is believing. The sun 
 shone full upon it, as we stood there ; and the air was 
 full of the scent of tropical fruit and just-coming blos- 
 soms. One could not desire a more tranquil scene of 
 advent into life; and the wandering, broken-hearted 
 author of *' Jerusalem Delivered " never found at court 
 or palace any retreat so soothing as that offered him 
 here by his steadfast sister. 
 
 If I were an antiquarian, I think I should have had 
 Tasso born at the Villa Nardi, where I like best to stay, 
 and where I find traces of many pilgrims from other 
 countries. Here, in a little corner-room on the terrace, 
 Mrs. Stowe dreamed and wrote; and I expect, every 
 morning, as I take my morning sun here by the gate, 
 Agnes of Sorrento will come down the sweet-scented 
 path with a basket of oranges on her head. 
 
SEA AND SHORE. 
 
 IT is not always easy, wlien one stands upon the high- 
 lands which encircle the Piano di Sorrento, in some 
 conditions of the atmosphere, to tell where the sea ends, 
 and the sky begins. It seems practicable, at such times, 
 for one to take ship, and sail up into heaven. I have 
 often, indeed, seen white sails climbing up there, and 
 fishing-boats, at secure anchor I suppose, riding appar- 
 ently like balloons in the hazy air. Sea and air and land 
 here are all kin, I suspect, and have certain immaterial 
 qualities in common. The contours of the shores and 
 the outlines of the hills are as graceful as the mobile 
 waves ; and if there is anywhere ruggedness and sharp- 
 ness, the atmosphere throws a friendly veil over it, and 
 tones all that is inharmonious into the repose of beauty. 
 
 The atmosphere is really something more than a 
 medium : it is a drapery, woven, one could affirm, with 
 colors, or dipped in Oriental dyes. One might account 
 thus for the prismatic colors I have often seen on the 
 horizon at noon, when the sun was pouring down floods 
 of clear, golden light. The simple light here, if one 
 could ever represent it by pen, pencil, or brush, would 
 draw the world hither to bathe in it. It is not thin 
 sunshine, but a royal profusion, a golden substance, a 
 transforming quality, a vesture of splendor for all these 
 Mediterranean shores. 
 
 The most comprehensive idea of Sorrento and the great 
 plain on which it stands, embedded almost out of sight 
 in foliage, we obtained one day from our boat, as we put 
 
 223 
 
224 SEA AND SHORE. 
 
 out round the Capo di Sorrento, and stood away for 
 Capri. There was not wind enough for sails ; but there 
 were chopping waves, and swell enough to toss us about, 
 and to produce bright flashes of light far out at sea. The 
 red-shirted rowers silently bent to their long sweeps; 
 and I lay in the tossing bow, and studied the high, reced- 
 ing shore. The picture is simple, — a precipice of rock 
 or earth, faced with masonry in spots, almost of uniform 
 height from point to point of the little bay, except where 
 a deep gorge has split the rock, and comes to the sea, 
 forming a cove, where a cluster of rude buildings is likely 
 to gather. Along the precipice, which now juts and now 
 recedes a little, are villas, hotels, old convents, gardens, 
 and groves. I can see steps and galleries cut in the face 
 of the cliff, and caves and caverns, natural and artificial : 
 for one can cut this tufa with a knife ; and it would 
 hardly seem preposterous to attempt to dig out a cool, 
 roomy mansion in this rocky front with a spade. 
 
 As we pull away, I begin to see the depth of the plain 
 of Sorrento, with its villages, walled roads, its groves of 
 oranges, olives, lemons, its figs, pomegranates, almonds, 
 mulberries, and acacias ; and soon the terraces above, 
 where the vineyards are planted, and the olives also. 
 These terraces must be a brave sight in spring, when the 
 masses of olives are white as snow with blossoms, which 
 fill all the plain with their sweet perfume. Above the 
 terraces, the eye reaches the fine outline of the hill ; and, 
 to the east, the bare precipice of rock, softened by the 
 purple light; and turning still to the left, as the boat 
 lazily swings, I have Vesuvius, the graceful dip into the 
 plain, and the rise to the heights of Naples, Nisida, the 
 shining houses of Pozzuoli, Cape Misenum, Procida, and 
 rough Ischia. Rounding the headland, Capri is before 
 us, so sharp and clear that we seem close to it ; but it is 
 a weary pull before we get under its rocky side. 
 
 Returning from Capri late in the afternoon, we had 
 one of those effects which are the despair of artists. I 
 had been told that twilights are short here, and that. 
 
SEA AND SHORE. 225 
 
 when the sun disappeared, color vanished from the sky. 
 There was a wonderful light on all the inner bay, as 
 we put oflf from shore. Ischia was one mass of violet 
 color. As we got from under the island, there was the 
 sun, a red ball of fire, just dipping into the sea. At once 
 the whole horizon line of water became a bright crimson, 
 which deepened as the evening advanced, glowing with 
 more intense fire, and holding a broad band of what 
 seemed solid color, for more than three-quarters of an 
 hour. The colors, meantime, on the level water, never 
 were on painter's palette, and never were counterfeited 
 by the changeable silks of Eastern looms ; and this gor- 
 geous spectacle continued till the stars came out, crowd- 
 ing the sky with silver points. 
 
 Our boatmen, who had been re-enforced at Capri, and 
 were inspired either by the wine of the island or the 
 beauty of the night, pulled with new vigor, and broke 
 out again and again into the wild songs of this coast. A 
 favorite was the Garibaldi song, which invariably ended 
 in a cheer and a tiger, and threw the singers into such a 
 spurt of excitement that the oars forgot to keep time, and 
 there was more splash than speed. The singers all sang 
 one part in minor : there was no harmony, the voices 
 were not. rich, and the melody was not remarkable; but 
 there was, after all, a wild pathos in it. Music is very 
 much here what it is in Naples. I have to keep saying 
 to myself that Italy is the land of song ; else I should 
 think that the people mistake noise for music. 
 
 The boatmen are an honest set of fellows, as Italians 
 go; and, let us hope, not unworthy followers of their 
 patron, St. Antonino, whose chapel is on the edge of the 
 gor^e near the Villa Nardi. A silver image of the saint, 
 half life-size, stands upon the rich marble altar. This 
 valuable statue has been, if tradition is correct, five 
 times captured and carried away by marauders, who 
 have at different times sacked Sorrento of its marbles, 
 bronzes, and precious things, and each time, by some 
 mysterious providence, has found its way back again, — 
 
226 SEA AND SHORE. 
 
 an instance of constancy in a solid silver image which is 
 worthy of commendation. The little chapel is hung all 
 about with votive ojfferings in wax of arms, legs, heads, 
 hands, effigies, and with coarse lithographs, in frames, of 
 storms at sea and perils of ships, hung up by sailors who, 
 having escaped the dangers of the deep, offer these tri- 
 butes to their dear saint. The skirts of the image are 
 worn quite smooth with kissing. Underneath it, at the 
 back of the altar, an oil light is always burning ; and 
 below repose the bones of the holy man. 
 
 The whole shore is fascinating to one in an idle mood, 
 and is good mousing ground for the antiquarian. For 
 myself, I am content with one generalization, which I 
 find saves a world of bother and perplexity : it is quite 
 safe to style every excavation, cavern, circular wall, or 
 arch by the sea, a Roman bath. It is the final resort of 
 the antiquarians. This theory has kept me from enter- 
 ing the discussion, whether the substructions in the cliff 
 under the Poggio Syracuse, a royal villa, are temples of 
 the Sirens, or caves of Ulysses. I only know that I 
 descend to the sea there by broad interior flights of steps', 
 which lead through galleries and corridors, and high, 
 vaulted passages, whence extend apartments and caves 
 far reaching into the solid rock. At intervals are land- 
 ings, where arched windows are cut out to the sea, with 
 stone seats and protecting walls. At the base of the 
 cliff, I find a hewn passage, as if there had once been 
 here a way of embarkation ; and enormous fragments of 
 rocks, with steps cut in them, which have fallen from 
 above. 
 
 Were these any thing more than royal pleasure gal- 
 leries, where one could sit in coolness in the heat of sum- 
 mer, and look on the bay and its shipping, in the days 
 when the great Roman fleet used to lie opposite, above 
 the point of Misenum ? How many brave and gay ret- 
 inues have swept down these broad interior stairways, 
 let us say in the picturesque Middle Ages, to embark on 
 voyages of pleasure or warlike forays ! The steps are 
 
SEA AND SHORE. 227 
 
 well worn, and must have been trodden for ages, by 
 nobles and robbers, peasants and sailors, priests of more 
 than one religion, and traders of many seas, who have 
 gone, and left no record. The sun was slanting his last 
 rays into the corridors as I musingly looked down from 
 one of the arched openings, quite spell-bound by the 
 strangeness and dead silence of the place, broken only 
 by the plash of waves on the sandy beach below. I had 
 found my way down through a wooden door half ajar ; 
 and I thought of the possibility of some one's shutting it 
 for the night, and leaving me a prisoner to await the 
 spectres which I have no doubt throng here when it grows 
 dark. Hastening up out of these chambers of the past, 
 I escaped into the upper air, and walked rapidly home 
 through the narrow orange lanes. 
 
ON TOP OF THE HOUSE. 
 
 THE tip-top of the Villa Nardi is a flat roof, with a 
 wall about it three feet high, and some little tur- 
 reted afiairs, that look very much like chimneys. Joseph, 
 the gray-haired servitor, has brought my chair and table 
 up here to-day ; and here I am, established to write. 
 
 I am here above most earthly annoyances, and on a 
 level with the heavenly influences. It has always seemed 
 to me that the higher one gets, the easier it must be to 
 write ; and that, especially at a great elevation, one could 
 strike into lofty themes, and launch out, without fear of 
 shipwreck on any of the earthly headlands, in his aerial 
 voyages. Yet, after all, he would be likely to arrive 
 nowhere, I suspect ; or, to change the figure, to find, that, 
 in parting with the taste of the earth, he had produced a 
 flavorless composition. If it were not for the haze in the 
 horizon to-day, I could distinguish the very house in 
 Naples — that of Manso, Marquis of Villa — where Tasso 
 found a home, and where John Milton was entertained 
 at a later day by that hospitable nobleman. I wonder, 
 if he had come to the Villa Nardi and written on the 
 roof, if the theological features of his epic would have 
 been softened, and if he would not have received new 
 suggestions for the adornment of the garden. Of course, 
 it is well that his immortal production was not composed 
 on this roofj and in sight of these seductive shores, or it 
 would have been more strongly flavored with classic 
 mythology than it is. But, letting Milton go, it may be 
 necessary to say, that my writing to-day has nothing to 
 228 
 
ON TOP OF THE HOUSE, 229 
 
 do with my theory of composition in an elevated posi- 
 tion ; for this is the laziest place that I have yet found. 
 
 I am above the highest olive-trees ; and, if I turned 
 that way, should look over the tops of what seems a vast 
 grove of them, out of which a white roof, and an old 
 time-eaten tower here and there, appears ; and the sun 
 is flooding them with waves of light, which I think a 
 person delicately enough organized could hear beat. 
 Beyond the brown roofs of the town, the terraced hilis 
 arise, in semi-circular embrace of the plain ; and the fine 
 veil over them is partly the natural shimmer of the heat, 
 and partly the silver duskiness of the olive-leaves. I sit 
 with my back to all this, taking the entire force of this 
 winter sun; which is full of life and genial heat, and 
 does not scorch one, as I remember such a full flood of it 
 would at home. It is putting sweetness, too, into the 
 oranges ; which, I observe, are" getting redder and softer 
 day by day. We have here, by the way, such a habit 
 of taking up an orange, weighing it in the hand, and 
 guessing if it is ripe, that the test is extending to other 
 things. I saw a gentleman this morning, at breakfast, 
 weio-hino- an eofs in the same manner; and some one 
 asked him if it was ripe. 
 
 It seems to me that the Mediterranean was never 
 bluer than it is to-day. It has a shade or two the advan- 
 tage of the sky : though I like the sky best, after all ; for 
 it Is less opaque, and offers an illimitable opportunity of 
 exploration. Perhaps this is because I am nearer to it. 
 There are some little ruffles of air on the sea, which I 
 do not feel here, making broad spots of shadow, and here 
 and there flecks and sparkles. But the schooners sail 
 idly ; and the fishing-boats that have put out from the 
 marina float in the most dreamy manner. I fear that 
 the fishermen who have made a show of industry, and 
 got away from their wives, who are busily weaving nets 
 on shore, are yielding to the seductions of the occasion, 
 and making a day of it. And, as I look at them, I found 
 myself debating which I would rather be, a fisherman 
 20 
 
230 ON TOP OF THE HOUSE. 
 
 there in the boat, rocked by the swell, and warmed by 
 the sun, or a friar, on the terrace of the garden on the 
 summit of Deserto, lying perfectly tranquil, and also 
 soaked in the sun. There is one other person, now that 
 I think of it, who may be having a good time to-day, 
 though I do not know as I envy him. His business is a 
 new one to me, and is an occupation that one would not 
 care to recommend to a friend until he had tried it : it is 
 being carried about in a basket. As I went up the new 
 Massa road the other day, I met a ragged, stout, and 
 rather dirty woman, with a large shallow basket on her 
 head. In it lay her husband, — a large man, though I 
 think a little abbreviated as to his legs. The woman 
 asked alms. Talk of Diogenes in his tub ! How must 
 the world look to a man in a basket, riding about on his 
 wife's head ? When I returned, she had put him down 
 beside the road in the sun, and almost in danger of the 
 passing vehicles. I suppose that the affectionate creature 
 thought, that, if he got a new injury in this way, his 
 value in the beggar market would be increased. I do 
 not mean to do this exemplary wife any injustice ; and I 
 only suggest the idea in this land, where every beggar 
 who is born with a deformity has something to thank the 
 Virgin for. This custom of carrying your husband on 
 your head in a basket has something to recommend it, 
 and is an exhibition of faith on the one hand, and of 
 devotion on the other, that is seldom met with. Its 
 consideration is commended to my countrywomen at 
 home. . It is, at least, a new commentary on the apos- 
 tolic remark, that the man is the head of the woman. 
 It is, in some respects, a happy division of labor in the 
 walk of life : she furnishes the locomotive power, and he 
 the directing brains, as he lies in the sun and looks 
 abroad ; which reminds me that the sun is getting hot 
 on my back. The little bunch of bells in the convent 
 tower is jangling out a suggestion of worship, or of the 
 departure of the hours. It is time to eat an orange. 
 Vesuvius appears to be about on a level with my eyes ; 
 
ON TOP OF THE HOUSE. 231 
 
 and I never knew him to do himself more credit than to- 
 day. The whole coast of the bay is in a sort of obscura- 
 tion, thicker than an Indian summer haze ; and the veil 
 extends almost to the top of Vesuvius. But his summit 
 is still distinct ; and out of it rises a gigantic billowy 
 column of white smoke, greater in quantity than on any 
 previous day of our sojourn ; and the sun turns it to sil- 
 ver. Above a long line of ordinary-looking clouds, float 
 great white masses, formed of the sulphurous vapor. 
 This manufacture of clouds in a clear, sunny day has an 
 odd appearance ; but it is easy enough, if one has such 
 a laboratory as Vesuvius. How it tumbles up the white 
 smoke ! It is piled up now, I should say, a thousand 
 feet above the crater, straight into the blue sky, — a 
 pillar of cloud by day. One might sit here all day, 
 watching it, listening the while to the melodious spring 
 singing of the hundreds of birds which have come to 
 take possession of the garden, receiving Southern re- 
 enforcements from Sicily and Tunis every morning, and 
 think he was happy. But the morning has gone ; and I 
 have written nothing. 
 
THE PRICE OF ORANGES. 
 
 IF ever a Northern wanderer could be suddenly trans- 
 ported to look down upon the Piano di Sorrento, he 
 would not doubt that he saw the Garden of the Hes- 
 perides. The orange-trees cannot well be fuller : their 
 branches bend with the weight of fruit. With the 
 almond-trees in full flower, and with the silver sheen of 
 the olive leaves, the oranges are apples of gold in pic- 
 tures of silver. As I walk in these sunken roads, and 
 between these high walls, the orange boughs everywhere 
 hang over ; and, through the open gates of villas, I look 
 down alleys of golden glimmer, roses and geraniums by 
 the walk, and the fruit above, — gardens of enchantment, 
 with never a dragon, that I can see, to guard them. 
 
 All the highways and the byways, the streets and 
 lanes, wherever I go, from the sea to the tops of the 
 hills, are strewn with orange-peel ; so that one, looking 
 above and below, comes back from a walk with a golden 
 dazzle in his eyes, — a sense that yellow is the prevail- 
 ing color. Perhaps the kerchiefs Qjf the dark-skinned 
 girls and women, which take that tone, help the impres- 
 sion. The inhabitants are all orange-eaters. The high 
 walls show that the gardens are protected with great 
 care ; yet the fruit seems to be as free as apples are in a 
 remote New-England town about cider-time. 
 
 I have been trying, ever since I have been here, to 
 ascertain the price of oranges ; not for purposes of ex- 
 portation, nor yet for the personal importation that I 
 daily practise, but in order to give an American basis 
 232 
 
THE PRICE OF ORANGES. 233 
 
 of fact to these idle chapters. In all the paths, I meet, 
 daily, girls and boys bearing on their heads large baskets 
 of the fruit, and little children with bags and bundles 
 of the same, as large as they can stagger under ; and I 
 understand they are carrying them to the packers, who 
 ship them to New York, or to the depots, where I see 
 them lying in yellow heaps, and where men and women 
 are cutting them up, and removing the peel, which goes 
 to England for preserves. I am told that these oranges 
 are sold for a couple of francs a hundred. That seems 
 to me so dear that I am not tempted into any speculation, 
 but stroll back to the Tramontano, in the gardens of 
 which I find better terms. 
 
 The only trouble is to find a sweet tree ; for the Sor- 
 rento oranges are usually sour in February; and one 
 needs to be a good judge of the fruit, and know the male 
 orange from the female, — though which it is that is the 
 sweeter I can never remember (and should not dare to 
 say, if I did, in the present state of feeling on the woman 
 question), — or he might as well eat a lemon. The 
 mercenary aspect of my query does not enter in here. 
 I climb into a tree, and reach out to the end of the 
 branch for an orange that has got reddish in the sun, 
 that comes off easily and is heavy ; or I tickle a large 
 one on the top bough with a cane pole ; and if it drops 
 readily, and has a fine grain, I call it a cheap one. I 
 can usually tell whether they are good,* by splitting them 
 open and eating a quarter. The Italians pare their 
 oranges as we do apples ; but I like best to open them 
 first, and see the yellow meat in the white casket. After 
 you have eaten a few from one tree, you can usually tell 
 whether it is a good tree ; but there is nothing certain 
 about it, — one bough that gets the sun will be better 
 than another that does not, and one-half of an orange 
 will fill your mouth with more delicious juices than the 
 other half. 
 
 The oranges that you knock off with your stick, as 
 you walk along the lanes, don't cost any thing ; but they 
 20* 
 
234 T^E PRICE OF ORANGES. 
 
 are always sour, as I think the girls know who lean over 
 the wall, and look on with a smile : and, in that, they 
 are more sensible than the lively dogs which bark at you 
 from the top, and wake all the neighborhood with their 
 clamor. I have no doubt the oranges have a market 
 price ; but I have been seeking the value the gardeners 
 set on them themselves. As I walked towards the 
 heights, the other morning, and passed an oi'chard, the 
 gardener, who saw my ineffectual efforts, with a M'di^j 
 long cane, to reach the boughs of a tree, came down to 
 me with a basketful he had been picking. As an exper- 
 iment on the price, I offered him a two-centime piece, 
 
 — which is a sort of satire on the very name of money, 
 
 — when he desired me to help myself to as many oranges 
 as I liked. He was a fine-looking fellow, with a spick- 
 span new red Phrygian cap; and I hadn't the heart 
 to take advantage of his generosity, especially as his 
 oranges were not of the sweetest. One ought never to 
 abuse generosity. 
 
 Another experience was of a different sort, and illus- 
 trates the Italian love of bargaining, and their notion of 
 a sliding scale of prices. One of our expeditions to the 
 hills was one day making its long, straggling way through 
 the narrow street of a little village of the Piano, when 
 I lingered behind my companions, attracted by a hand- 
 cart with several large baskets of oranges. The cart 
 stood untended in the street ; and selecting; a laro-e 
 
 ' or? 
 
 orange, which would measure twelve inches in circum- 
 ference, I turned to look for the owner. After some 
 time, a fellow got from the open front of the neighboring 
 cobbler's shop, where he sat with his lazy cronies, listen- 
 ing to the honest gossip of the follower of St. Crispin, 
 and sauntered towards me. 
 
 " How much for this ? " I ask. 
 
 " One franc, signor," says the proprietor, with a polite 
 bow, holding up one finger. 
 
 I shake my head, and intimate that that is altogether 
 too much, in tiact, preposterous. 
 
THE PRICE OF ORANGES. 235 
 
 The proprietor is very indifferent, and slirugs his 
 shoulders in an amiable manner. He picks up a fair, 
 handsome orano;e, weighs it in his hand, and holds it up 
 temptingly. That also is one franc. 
 
 I suggest one sou as a fair price, a suggestion which 
 he only receives with a smile of slight pity, and, I fancy, 
 a little disdain. A woman joins him, and also holds up 
 this and that gold-skinned one for my admiration. 
 
 As I stand, sorting over the fruit, trying to please 
 myself with size, color, and texture, a little crowd has 
 gathered round; and I see, by a glance, that all the 
 occupations in that neighborhood, including loafing, are 
 temporarily suspended to witness the trade. The inter- 
 est of the circle visibly increases ; and others take such 
 a part in the transaction, that I begin to doubt if the 
 first man is, after all, the proprietor. 
 
 At length I select two oranges, and again demand the 
 price. There is a little consultation and jabber, when I 
 am told that I can have both for a franc. I, in turn, sigh, 
 shrug my shoulders, and put down the oranges, amid a 
 chorus of exclamations over my graspingness. My offer 
 of two sous is met with ridicule, but not with indiffer- 
 ence. I can see that it has made a sensation. These 
 simple, idle children of the sun begin to show a little 
 excitement. I at length determine upon a bold stroke, 
 and resolve to show myself the Napoleon of oranges, or 
 to meet my Waterloo. I pick out four of the largest 
 oranges in the basket, while all eyes are fixed on me 
 intently, and, for the first time, pull out a piece of money. 
 It is a two-sous piece. I offer it for the four oranges." 
 
 " No, no, no, no, signor ! Ah, signor ! ah, signor ! " in 
 a chorus from the whole crowd. 
 
 I have struck bottom at last, and perhaps got some- 
 where near the value ; and all calmness is gone. Such 
 protestations, such indignation, such sorrow, I have never 
 seen before from so small a cause. It cannot be thought 
 of; it is mere ruin ! I am, in turn, as firm, and nearly 
 as excited in seeming. I hold up the fruit, and tender 
 the money. 
 
236 THE PRICE OF ORANGES. 
 
 " No, never, never ! The signer cannot be in earnest." 
 
 Looking round me for a moment, and assuming a the- 
 atrical manner, befitting the gestures of those about me, 
 I fling the fruit down, and, with a sublime renunciation, 
 stalk away. 
 
 There is instantly a buzz and a hum that rises almost 
 to a clamor. I have not proceeded far, when a skinny 
 old woman runs after me, and begs me to retm'n. I go 
 back, and the crowd parts to receive me. 
 
 The proprietor has a new proposition, the effect of which 
 upon me is intently watched. He proposes to give me five 
 big oranges for four sous. I receive it with utter scorn, and 
 a laugh of derision. I will give two sous for the origi- 
 nal four, and not a centesimo more. That I solemnly 
 say, and am ready to depart. Hesitation and renewed 
 conference ; but at last the proprietor relents ; and, with 
 the look of one who is ruined for life, and who yet is 
 willing to sacrifice himself, he hands me the oranges. 
 Instantly the excitement is dead, the crowd disperses, and 
 the street is as .quiet as ever ; when I walk away, bearing 
 my hard-won treasures. 
 
 A little while alter, as I sat upon the outer wall of the 
 terrace of the Camaldoli, with my feet hanging over, 
 these same oranges were taken from my pockets by 
 Americans; so that I am prevented from making any 
 moral reflections upon the honesty of the Italians. 
 
 There is an immense garden of oranges and lemons 
 at the village of Massa, through which travellers are 
 shown by a surly fellow, who keeps watch of his trees, 
 and has a bull-dog lurking about for the unwary. I hate 
 to see a bull-dog in a fruit-orchard. I have eaten a good 
 many oranges there, and been astonished at the boughs 
 of immense lemons which bend the trees to the ground. 
 I took occasion to measure one of the lemons, called a 
 citron-lemon, and found its circumference to be twenty- 
 one inches one way by fifteen inches the other, — about 
 as big as a railway-conductor's lantern. These lemons 
 are not so sour as the fellow who shows them : he is a 
 
THE PRICE OF ORANGES. 237 
 
 mercenary dog, and his prices afford me no clew to the 
 just value of oranges. 
 
 I like better to go to a little garden in the village of 
 Meta, under a sunny precipice of rocks, overhung by the 
 ruined convent of Camaldoli. I turn up a narrow lane, 
 and push open the wooden door in the garden of a little 
 villa. It is a pretty garden ; and, besides the orange 
 and lemon trees on the terrace, it has other fruit-trees, 
 and a scent of many flowers. My friend, the gardener, 
 is sorting oranges from one basket to another, on a green 
 bank, and evidently selling the fruit to some women, 
 who are putting it into bags to carry away. 
 
 When he sees me approach, there is always the same 
 pantomime. I propose to take some of the fruit he is 
 sorting. With a knowing air, and an appearance of 
 great mystery, he raises his left hand, the palm toward 
 me, as one says bush. Having despatched his business, 
 he takes an empty basket, and with another mysterious 
 flourish, desiring me to remain quiet, he goes to a store- 
 house in one corner of the garden, and returns with a 
 load of immense oranges, all soaked with the sun, ripe 
 and fragrant, and more tempting than lumps of gold. I 
 take one, and ask him if it is sweet. He shrugs his 
 shoulders, raises his haiids, and, with a sidewise shake 
 of the head, and a look which says. How can you be so 
 faithless ? makes me ashamed of my doubts. 
 
 I cut the thick skin, which easily falls apart, and dis- 
 closes the luscious quarters, plump, juicy, and waiting to 
 melt in the mouth. I look for a moment at the rich pulp 
 in its soft incasement, and then try a delicious morsel. 
 I nod. My gardener again shrugs his shoulders, with a 
 slight smile, as much as to say, it could not be otherwise, 
 and is evidently delighted to have me enjoy his fruit. ^ I fill 
 capacious pockets with the choicest ; and, if I have friends 
 with me, they do the same. I give our silent but most 
 expressive entertainer half a franc, never more ; and he 
 always seems surprised at the size of the largesse. We 
 exhaust his basket, and he proposes to get more. 
 
238 THE PRICE OF ORANGES. 
 
 When I am alone, I stroll about under the heavily- 
 laden trees, and pick up the largest, where they lie 
 thickly on the ground, liking to hold them in my hand 
 and feel the agreeable weight, even when I can carry 
 away no more. The gardener neither follows nor watches 
 me ; and I think perhaps knows, and is not stingy about 
 it, that more valuable to me than the oranges I eat or 
 take away are those on the trees among the shining 
 leaves. And perhaps he opines that I am from a coun- 
 try of snow and ice, where the year has six hostile 
 months, and that I have not money enough to pay for 
 the rich possession of the eye, the picture of beauty, 
 which I take with me. 
 
FASCINATION. 
 
 THERE are three places where I should like to live ; 
 namino; them in the inverse order of preference, — 
 the Isle of Wight, Sorrento, and Heaven. The first two 
 have something in common, — the almost mystic union 
 of sky and sea and shore, a soft atmospheric suffusion 
 that works an enchantment, and puts one into a dreamy 
 mood. And yet there are decided contrasts. The super- 
 abundant, soaking sunshine of Sorrento is of very differ- 
 ent quality from that of the Isle of Wight. On the 
 island there is a sense of home, which one misses on this 
 promontory, the fascination of which, no less strong, is 
 that of a southern beauty, whose charms conquer rather 
 than win. I remember with what feeling I one day 
 unexpectedly read on a white slab, in the little enclosure 
 of Bonchurch, where the sea whispered as gently as the 
 rustle of the ivy-leaves, the name of John Sterling. 
 Could there be any fitter resting-place for that tost, 
 weary, and gentle spirit V There I seemed to know he 
 had the rest that he could not have anywhere on these 
 brilliant historic shores. Yet so impressible was his sen- 
 sitive nature, that I doubt not, if he had given himself 
 up to the enchantment of these coasts in his lifetime, it 
 would have led him by a spell he could not break. 
 
 I am sometimes in doubt what is the spell of Sorrento, 
 and half believe that it is independent of any thing visi- 
 ble. There is said to be a fatal enchantment about Capri. 
 The influences of Sorrento are not so dangerous, but are 
 almost as marked. I do not wonder that the Greeks 
 
 239 
 
240 FASCINA TION. 
 
 peopled every cove and sea-cave with divinities, and built 
 temples on every headland and rocky islet here; that the 
 Romans built upon the Grecian ruins ; that the ecclesi- 
 astics in succeeding centuries gained possession of all the 
 heights, and built convents and monasteries, and set out 
 vineyards, and orchards of olives and oranges, and took 
 root as the creeping plants do, spreading themselves 
 abroad in the sunshine and charming air. The Italian 
 of to-day does not willingly emigrate, is tempted by no 
 seduction of better fortune in any foreign clime. And so 
 in all ages the swarming populations have clung to these 
 shores, filling all the coasts and every nook in these almost 
 inaccessible hills with life. Perhaps the delicious climate, 
 which avoids all extremes, sufficiently accounts for this ; 
 and yet I have sometimes thought there is a more subtle 
 reason why travellers from far lands are spell-bound here, 
 often against will and judgment, week after week, month 
 after month. 
 
 However this may be, it is certain that strangers who 
 come here, and remain long enough to get entangled in 
 the meshes which some influence, I know not what, throws - 
 around them, are in danger of never departing. I know 
 there are scores of travellers, who whisk down from 
 Naples, guide-book in hand, goaded by the fell purpose 
 of seeing every place in Europe, ascend some height, buy 
 a load of the beautiful inlaid wood-work, perhaps row 
 over to Capri and stay five minutes in the azure grotto, 
 and then whisk away again, untouched by the glamour 
 of the place. Enough that they write " delightful spot" 
 in their diaries, and hurry ofi' to new scenes, and more 
 noisy life. But the visitor who yields himself to the place 
 will soon find his power of will departing. ,Some satiri- 
 cal people say, that, as one grows strong in body here, 
 he becomes weak in mind. The theory I do not accept : 
 one simply folds his sails, unships his rudder, and waits 
 the will of Providence, or the arrival of some compelling 
 fate. The longer one remains, the more difficult it is to 
 go. We have a fashion — indeed, I may call it a habit 
 
FASCINA TION, '2.Ji^\ 
 
 — of deciding to go, and of never going. It is a subject 
 of infinite jest among the habitues of the villa, who meet 
 at table, and who are always bidding each other good- 
 by. We often go so far as to write to Naples at night, 
 and bespeak rooms in the hotels ; but we always counter- 
 mand the order before we sit down to breakfast. The 
 good-natured mistress of affairs, the head of the bureau 
 of domestic relations, is at her wits' end, with guests who 
 always promise to go and never depart. There are here 
 a gentleman and his wife, English people of decision 
 enough, I presume, in Cornwall, who packed their lug- 
 gage before Christmas to depart, but who have not gone 
 towards the end of February, — who daily talk of going, 
 and little by little unpack their wardrobe, as their deter- 
 mination oozes out. It is easy enough to decide at night 
 to go next day ; but in the morning, when the soft sun- 
 shine comes in at the window, and when we descend and 
 walk in the garden, all our good intentions vanish. It is 
 not simply that we do not go away, but we have lost the 
 motive for those long excursions which we made at first, 
 and which more adventurous travellers indulge in. 
 There are those here who have intended for weeks to 
 spend a day on Capri. Perfect day for the expedition 
 succeeds perfect day, boat-load after boat-load sails away 
 from the little marina at the base of the clitF, which we 
 follow with eyes of desire, but — to-morrow will do as 
 well. We are powerless to break the enchantment. 
 
 1 confess to the fancy that there is some subtle influ- 
 ence working this sea-change in us, which the guide- 
 books, in their enumeration of the delights of the region, 
 do not touch, and which maybe reaches back beyond the 
 Christian era. I have always supposed that the story of 
 Ulysses and the Sirens was only a fiction of the poets, 
 intended to illustrate the allurements of a soul given 
 over to pleasure, and deaf to the call of duty and the 
 excitement of a grapple with the world. But a lady here, 
 herself one of the entranced, tells me, that whoever climbs 
 the hills behind Sorrento, and looks upon the Isle of the 
 
242 FASCINA TION. 
 
 Sirens, is struck with an inability to form a desire to 
 depart from these coasts. I have gazed at those islands 
 more than once, as they lie there in the Bay of Salerno ; 
 and it has always happened that they have been in a 
 half-misty and not uncolored sunlight, but not so draped 
 that I could not see they were only three irregular rocks, 
 not far from shore, one of them with some ruins on it. 
 There are neither Sirens there now, nor any other 
 creatures ; but I should be sorry to think I should never 
 see them again. When I look down on them, I can also 
 turn and behold on the other side, across the Bay of 
 Naples, the Posilipo, where one of the enchanters who 
 threw magic over them is said to lie in his high tomb at 
 the opening of the grotto. Whether he does sleep in his 
 urn in that exact spot is of no moment. Modern life has 
 dis-illusioned this region to a great extent ; but the 
 romance that the old poets have woven about these bays 
 and rocky promontories comes very easily back upon one 
 who submits himself long to the eternal influences of sky 
 and sea which made them sing. It is all one, — to be a 
 Roman poet in his villa, a lazy friar of the Middle Ages 
 toasting in the sun, or a modern idler, who has drifted 
 here out of the active currents of life, and cannot make 
 up his mind to depart. 
 
MONKISH PERCHES. 
 
 ON heights at either end of the Piano di Sorrento, 
 and commanding it, stood two religious houses : 
 the Convent of the Camaldoli to the north-east, on the 
 crest of the hill above Meta; the Carthusian Monastery 
 of the Deserto, to the south-west, three miles above Sor- 
 rento. The longer I stay here, the more respect I have 
 for the taste of "the monks of the Middle Ages. They 
 invariably secured the best places for themselves. They 
 seized all the strategic points ; they appropriated all the 
 commanding heights ; they knew where the sun would 
 best strike the grape-vines; they perched themselves 
 wherever there was a royal view. When I see how 
 unerringly they did select and occupy the eho;ible places, 
 I think'^they were moved by a sort of inspiration. In 
 those days, when the Church took the first choice in 
 every thing, the temptation to a Christian life must 
 have been strong. 
 
 The monastery at the Deserto was suppressed by the 
 French of the first republic, and has long been in a ruin- 
 ous condition. Its buildings crown the apex of the high- 
 est elevation in this part of the promontory : from its roof 
 the fathers paternally looked down upon the churches 
 and chapels and nunneries which thickly studded all 
 this region ; so that I fancy the air must have been full 
 of the sound of bells, and of incense perpetually ascend- 
 ing. They looked also upon St. Agata under the hill, 
 with a church bigger than itself; upon more distinct 
 Massa, with its chapels and cathedral and overlooking 
 
 243 
 
244 MONKISH PERCHES. 
 
 feudal tower ; upon Torca, the Greek Theorica, witli its 
 Temple of Apollo, the scene yet of an annual religious 
 festival, to which the peasants of Sorrento go as their 
 ancestors did to the slirine of the heathen god; upon 
 olive and orange orchards, and winding paths and way- 
 side shrines innumerable. A sweet and peaceful scene 
 in the foreground, it must have been, and a whole hori- 
 zon of enchantment beyond the sunny peninsula over 
 which it lorded : the Mediterranean, with poetic Capri, 
 and Ischia, and all the classic shore from Cape Misenum, 
 Baiae, and Naples, round to Vesuvius ; all the sparkling 
 Bay of Naples ; and on the other side, the Bay of S derno, 
 covered with the fleets of the commerce of Amalfi, then 
 a republican city of fifty thousand people ; and Grecian 
 Psestum on the marshy shore, even then a ruin, its de- 
 serted porches and columns monuments of an archi- 
 tecture never equalled elsewhere in Italy. Upon this 
 charming perch, the old Carthusian monks took the 
 summer breezes and the winter sun, pruned their olives, 
 and trimmed their grape-vines, and said prayers for the 
 poor sinners toiling in the valleys below. 
 
 The monastery is a desolate old shed now. We left 
 our donkeys to eat thistles in front, while we climbed up 
 some dilapidated steps, and entered the crumbling hall. 
 The present occupants are half a dozen monks, and fine 
 fellows too, who have an orphan school of some twenty 
 lads. We were invited to witness their noonday pray- 
 ers. The flat-roofed rear buildings extend round an 
 oblong, quadrangular space, which is a rich garden, 
 watered from capacious tanks, and coaxed into easy 
 fertility by the impregnating sun. Upon these roofs 
 the brothers were wont to walk, and here they sat at 
 peaceful evening. Here, too, we strolled ; and here I 
 could not resist the temptation to lie an unheeded hour 
 or two, soaking in the benignant February sun, above 
 every human concern and care, looking upon a land 
 and sea steeped in romance. The sky was blue above ; 
 but in the south horizon, in the direction of Tunis, were 
 
MONKISH PERCHES. 
 
 245 
 
 the prismatic colors. Why not be a monk, and lie in 
 the sun ? 
 
 One of the handsome brothers invited us into the 
 refectory, a place as bare and cheerless as the feeding- 
 room of a reform school, and set before us bread ami 
 cheese, and red wine, made by the monks. I notice 
 that the monks do not water their wine so much as 
 the osteria keepers do ; which speaks equally well for 
 their religion and their taste. The floor of the room 
 was brick, the table plain boards, and the seats were 
 benches ; not much luxury. The monk who served us 
 was an accomplished man, travelled, and master of sev- 
 eral languages. He spoke Enghsh a little. He had 
 been several years in America, and was much interested 
 when we told him our nationality. 
 
 " Does the signor live near Mexico ? " 
 
 " Not in dangerous proximity," we replied ; but we 
 did not forfeit his good opinion by saying that we 
 visited it but seldom. 
 
 Well, he had seen all quarters of the globe : he had 
 been for years a traveller, but he had come back here 
 with a stronger love for it than ever ; it was to him the 
 most delightful spot on earth, he said. And we could 
 not tell him where its equal is. If I had nothing else to 
 do, I think I should cast in my lot with him, — at least 
 for a week. 
 
 But the monks never got into a cosier nook than the 
 Convent of the Camaldoli. That also is suppressed: its 
 gardens, avenues, colonnaded walks, terraces, buildings, 
 half in ruins. It is the level surface of a hill, sheltered 
 on the east by higher peaks, and on the north by the 
 more distant range of Great St. Angelo, across the val- 
 ley, and is one of the most extraordinarily fertile plots 
 of ground I ever saw. The rich ground responds gener- 
 ously to the sun. I should like to have seen the abbot 
 who grew on this fat spot. The workmen were busy in 
 the garden, spading and pruning. 
 
 A group of wild, half-naked children came about us 
 
246 MONKISH PERCHES. 
 
 begging, as we sat upon the walls of the terrace, — the 
 terrace which overhangs the busy plain below, and which 
 commands the entire, varied, nooky promontory, and the 
 two bays. And these children, insensible to beauty, want 
 centesimi ! 
 
 In the rear of the church are some splendid specimens 
 of the umbrella-like Italian pine. Here we found, also, 
 a pretty little ruin, — it might be Greek and it might be 
 Druid for any thing that appeared, — ivy-clad, and sug- 
 gesting a religion older than that of the convent. To 
 the east we look into a fertile, terraced ravine ; and 
 beyond to a precipitous brown mountain, which shows 
 a sharp outline against the sky ; half-way up are nests 
 of towns, white houses, churches, and above, creeping 
 along the slope, the thread of an ancient road, with 
 stone arches at intervals, as old as Cassar. 
 
 We descend, skirting for some distance the monastery 
 walls, over which patches of ivy hang like green shawls. 
 There are flowers in profusion, — scented violets, daisies, 
 dandelions, and crocuses, large and of the richest vari- 
 ety, with orange pistils, and stamens purple and violet, - 
 the back of every alternate leaf exquisitely pencilled. 
 
 We descend into a continuous settlement, past shrines, 
 past brown, sturdy men and handsome girls working in 
 the vineyards ; we descend — but words express noth- 
 ing — into a wonderful ravine, a sort of refined Swiss 
 scene, — high, bare steps of rock butting over a chasm, 
 ruins, old walls, vines, flowers. The very spirit of peace 
 is here, and it is not disturbed by the sweet sound of 
 bells echoed in the passes. On narrow ledges of pre- 
 cipices, aloft in the air where it would seem that a bird 
 could scarcely light, we distinguish the forms of men 
 and women ; and their voices come down to us. They 
 are peasants cutting grass, every spire of which is too 
 precious to waste. 
 
 We descend, and pass by a house on a knoll, and a 
 terrace of olives extending along the road in front. Half 
 a dozen children come to the road to look at us as we 
 
MONKISH PERCHES. 247 
 
 approach, and then scamper back to the house in fear," 
 tumbling over each other and shouting, the eldest girl 
 making good her escape with the baby. My companion 
 swings his hat, and cries, " Hullo, baby ! " And when we 
 have passed the gate, and are under the wall, the whole 
 ragged, brown-skinned troop scurry out upon the terrace, 
 and run along, calling after us, in perfect English, as 
 long as we keep in sight, " Hullo, baby ! " " Hullo, baby ! " 
 The next traveller who goes that way will no doubt be 
 hailed by the quick-witted natives with this salutation ; 
 and, if he is of a philological turn, he will probably ben- 
 efit his mind by running the phrase back to its ultimate 
 Greek roots. 
 
A DRY TIME. 
 
 FOR three years, once upon a time, it did not rain in- 
 Sorrento. Not a drop out of the clouds for three 
 years, an Italian lady here, born in Ireland, assures me. 
 If there was an occasional shower on the Piano during 
 all that drought, I have the confidence in her to think 
 that she would not spoil the story by noticing it. 
 
 The conformation of the hills encircling the plain 
 would be likely to lead any shower astray, and discharge 
 it into the sea, with whatever good intentions it may 
 have started down the promontory for Sorrento. I can 
 see how these sharp hills would tear the clouds asunder, 
 and let out all their water, while the people in the plain 
 below watched them with longing eyes. But it can rain 
 in Sorrento. Occasionally the north-east wind comes 
 down with whirling, howling fury, as if it would scoop 
 villao;es and orchards out of the little nook ; and the 
 rain, riding on the v/hirlwind, pours in drenching floods. 
 At such times I hear the beat of the waves at the foot 
 of the rock, and feel like a prisoner on an island. Eden 
 would not be Eden in a rain-storm. 
 
 The drought occurred just after the expulsion of the 
 Bourbons from Naples, and many think on account of it. 
 There is this to be said in favor of the Bourbons : that a 
 dry time never had occurred while they reigned, — a 
 statement in which all good Catholics in Sorrento will 
 concur. As the drought went on, almost all the wells in 
 the place dried up, except that of the Tramontane and 
 248 
 
A DRY TIME. 249 
 
 the one in tlie suppressed convent of the Sacred Heart, — 
 I think that is its name. 
 
 It is a rambling pile of old buildings, in the centre of 
 the town, with a court-yard in the middle, and in it a 
 deep well, boring down I know not how far into the rock, 
 and always full of cold, sweet water. The nuns have all 
 gone now ; and I look in vain up at the narrow slits in 
 the masonry, which served them for windows, for the 
 glance of a worldly or a pious eye. The poor people of 
 Sorrento, when the public wells and fountains had gone 
 dry, used to come and draw at the Tramontano ; but they 
 were not allowed to go to the well of the convent, — the 
 gates were closed. Why the Government shut them I 
 cannot see : perhaps it knew nothing of it, and some 
 stupid official took the pompous responsibility. The peo- 
 ple grumbled, and cursed the Government ; and, in their 
 simplicity, probably never took any steps to revoke the 
 prohibitory law. No doubt, as the Government had 
 caused the drought, it was all of a piece, the good rustics 
 thought. 
 
 For the Government did indirectly occasion the dry 
 spell. I have the information from the Italian lady of 
 whom I have spoken. Among the first steps of the new 
 Government of Italy was the suppression of the useless 
 convents and nunneries. This one at Sorrento early 
 came under the ban. It always seemed to me almost 
 a pity to rout out this asylum of praying and charitable 
 women, whose occupation was the encouragement of 
 beggary and idleness in others, but whose prayers were 
 constant, and whose charities to the sick of the little 
 city were many. If they never were of much good to 
 the community, it was a pleasure to have such a sweet 
 little hive in the centre of it ; and I doubt not that the 
 simple people felt a genuine satisfaction, as they walked 
 around the high walls, in believing that pure prayers 
 within were put up for them night and day ; and espe- 
 cially when they waked at night, and heard the bell of 
 the convent, and knew that at that moment some faith- 
 
250 A DRY TIME. 
 
 ful soul kept her vigils, and chanted prayers for them 
 and all the world besides ; and they slept the sounder for 
 it thereafter. I confess, that, if one is helped by vicari- 
 ous prayer, I would rather trust a convent of devoted 
 women (though many of them are ignorant, and some 
 of them are worldly, and none are fair to see) to pray 
 for me, than some of the houses of coarse monks which I 
 have seen. 
 
 But the order came down from Naples to pack off all 
 the nuns of the Sacred Heart on a day named, to close 
 up the gates of the nunnery, and hang a flaming sword 
 outside. The nuns were to be pulled up by the roots, so 
 to say, on the day specified, and without postponement, 
 and to be transferred to a house prepared for them at 
 Massa, a few miles down the promontory, and several 
 hundred feet nearer heaven. Sorrento was really in 
 momming : it went about in grief. It seemed as if some- 
 thing sacrilegious were about to be done. It was the 
 intention of the whole town to show its sense of it in 
 some way. 
 
 The day of removal came, and it rained ! It poured : 
 the water came down in sheets, in torrents, in deluges ; 
 it came down with the wildest tempest of many a year. 
 I think, from accurate reports of those who witnessed it, 
 that the beginning of the. great Deluge was only a moist- 
 ure compared to this. To turn the poor women out of 
 doors such a day as this, was unchristian, barbarous, 
 impossible. Everybody who had a shelter was shivering 
 in-doors. But the officials were inexorable. In the 
 order for removal, nothing was said about postponement 
 on account of- weather ; and go the nuns must. 
 
 And go they did ; the whole town shuddering at the 
 impiety of it, but kept from any demonstration by the 
 tempest. Carriages went round to the convent ; and 
 the women were loaded into them, packed into them, 
 carried and put in, if they were too infirm to go them- 
 selves. They were driven away, cross and wet and be- 
 draggled. They ibund their dwelling on the hill not 
 
A DRY TIME. 251 
 
 half prepared for them, leaking and cold and cheerless. 
 They experienced very rough treatment, if I can credit 
 my informant, who says she hates the Government, and 
 would not even look out of her lattice that day to see 
 the carriages drive past. 
 
 And when the Lady Superior was driven away from 
 the gate, she said to the officials, and the few faithful 
 attendants, prophesying in the midst of the rain that 
 poured about her, — 
 
 " The day will come shortly, when you will want rain, 
 and shall not have it ; and you will pray for my return." 
 
 And it did not rain, from that day for three years. 
 And the simple people thought of the good Superior, 
 whose departure had been in such a deluge, and who 
 had taken away with her all the moisture of the land ; 
 and they did pray for her return, and believed that the 
 gates of heaven would be again opened if only the nun- 
 nery were repeopled. But the Government could not 
 see the connection between convents and the theory of 
 storms, and the remnant of pious women was permitted 
 to remain in their lodgings at Massa. Perhaps the 
 Government thought they could, if they bore no malice, 
 pray as effectually for rain there as anywhere. 
 
 I do not know, said my informant, that the curse of 
 the Lady Superior had any thing to do with the drought, 
 but many think it had ; and those are the facts. 
 
CHILDREN OF THE SUN. 
 
 THE common people of this region are nothing but 
 children ; and ragged, dirty, and poor as they are, 
 apparently as happy, to speak idiomatically, as the day 
 is long. It takes very little to please them ; and their 
 easily-excited mirth is contagious. It is very rare that 
 one gets a surly return to a salutation ; and, if one shows 
 the least good-nature, his greeting is met with the most 
 jolly return. The boatman hauling in his net sings; 
 the brown girl, whom we meet descending a steep path 
 in the hills, with an enormous bag; or basket of orano-ea 
 on her head, or a building-stone under which she stands 
 as erect as a pillar, sings ; and, if she asks for something, 
 there is a merry twinkle in her eye, that says she hardly 
 expects money, but only puts in a " beg " at a venture, 
 because it is the fashion ; the workmen clipping the 
 olive-trees sing; the urchins, who dance about the 
 foreigner in the street, vocalize their petitions for un po' 
 di moneta in a tuneful manner, and beg more in a spirit 
 of deviltry than with any expectation of gain. When 
 I see how hard the peasants labor, what scraps and 
 vegetable odds and ends they eat, and in what wretched, 
 dark, and smoke-dried apartments they live, I wonder 
 they are happy ; but I suppose it is the all-nourishing 
 sun and the equable climate that do the business for 
 them. They have few artificial wants, and no uneasy 
 expectation, — bred by the reading of books and news- 
 papers, — that any thing is going to happen in the 
 world, or that any change is possible. Their fruit-trees 
 252 
 
CHILDREN OF THE SUN. 253 
 
 yield abundantly year after year ; their little patches of 
 rich earth, on the built-up terraces and in the crevices 
 of the rocks, produce fourfold. The sun does it all. 
 
 Every walk that we take here with open mind and 
 cheerful heart is sure to be an adventure. Only yester- 
 day, we were coming down a branch of the great gorge 
 which splits the plain in two. On one side the path is 
 a high wall, with garden trees overhanging. On the 
 other, a stone parapet ; and below, in the bed of the 
 ravine, an orange orchard. Beyond rises a precipice; 
 and, at its foot, men and boys were quarrying stone, 
 which workmen raised a couple of hundred feet to the 
 platform above with a windlass. As we came along, a 
 handsome girl on the height had just taken on her head 
 a large block of stone, which I should not care to lift, 
 to carry to a pile in the rear ; and she stopped to look 
 at us. We stopped, and looked at her. This attracted 
 the attention of the men and boys in the quarry below, 
 who stopped work, and set up a cry for a little money. 
 We laughed, and responded in English. The windlass 
 ceased to turn. The workmen on the height joined in 
 the conversation. A grizzly beggar hobbled up, and held 
 out his greasy cap. We nonplussed him by extending 
 our hats, and beseeching him for just a little something. 
 Some passers on the road paused, and looked on, amused 
 at the transaction. A boy appeared on the high wall, 
 and began to beg. I threatened to shoot him with my 
 walking-stick, whereat he ran nimbly along the wall in 
 terror. The workmen shouted ; and this started up a 
 couple of yellow dogs, which came to the edge of the 
 wall, and barked violently. The girl, alone calm in the 
 confusion, stood stock still under her enormous load, 
 looking at us. We swung our hats, and hurrahed. The 
 crowd replied from above, below, and around us ; shout- 
 ing, laughing, singing, until the whole little valley was 
 vocal with a gale of merriment, and all about nothing. 
 The beggar whined ; the spectators around us laughed ; 
 and the whole population was aroused into a jolly mood. 
 22 
 
254 CHILDREN OF THE SUN. 
 
 Fancy such a merry hullaballoo in America. For ten 
 minutes, wlaile the funny row was going on, the girl 
 never moved, having forgotten to go a few steps, and 
 deposit her load ; and, when we disappeared round a 
 bend of the path, she was still watching us, smiling and 
 statuesque. 
 
 As we descend, we come upon a group of little chil- 
 dren seated about a door-step, black-eyed, chubby little 
 urchins, who are cutting oranges into little bits, and 
 playing " party," as children do on the other side of the 
 Atlantic. The instant we stop to speak to them, the 
 skinny hand of an old woman is stretched out of a win- 
 dow just above our heads, the wrinkled palm itching for 
 money. The mother comes forward out of the house, 
 evidently pleased with our notice of the children, and 
 shows us the baby in her arms. At once we are on good 
 terms with the whole family. The woman sees that 
 there is nothing impertinent in our cursory inquiry into 
 her domestic concerns, but, I fancy, knows that we are 
 genial travellers, with human sympathies. So the people 
 universally are not quick to suspect any imposition, and 
 meet frankness with frankness, and good-nature with 
 good-nature, in a simple-hearted, primeval manner. If 
 they stare at us from doorway and balcony, or come and 
 stand near us when we sit reading or writing by the 
 shore, it is only a childlike curiosity, and they are quite 
 unconscious of any breach of good manners. In fact, I 
 think travellers have not much to say in the matter of 
 staring, I only pray that we Americans abroad may 
 remember that we are in the presence of older races, 
 and conduct ourselves with becoming modesty, remem- 
 bering always, that we were not born in Britain. 
 
 Very hkely I am in error ; but it has seemed to me that 
 even the funerals here are not so gloomy as in other 
 places. I have looked in at the churches when they are 
 in progress, now and then, and been struck with the gen- 
 eral good feeling of the occasion. The real mourners, I 
 could not always distinguish; but the seats would be 
 
CHILDREN OF THE SUN. 255 
 
 filled with a motley gathering of the idle and the ragged, 
 ■who seemed to enjoy the show and the ceremony. On 
 one occasion, it was the obsequies of an officer in the 
 army. Guarding the gilded casket, which stood upon a 
 raised platform before the altar, were four soldiers in uni- 
 form. Mass was being said and sung ; and a priest was 
 playing the organ. The church was light and cheerful, 
 and pervaded by a pleasant bustle. Kagged boys and 
 beggars, and dirty children and dogs, went and came 
 wherever they chose about the unoccupied spaces of the 
 church. The hired mourners, who are numerous in pro- 
 portion to the rank of the deceased, were clad in white 
 cotton, — a sort of night-gown put on over the ordinary 
 clothes, with a hood of the same drawn tightly over the 
 face, in which slits were cut for the eyes and mouth. 
 Some of them were seated on benches near the front ; 
 others were wandering about among the pillars, disap- 
 pearing in the sacristy, and re-appearing with an aimless 
 aspect, altogether conducting themselves as if it were a 
 holiday, and, if there was any thing they did enjoy, it was 
 mourning at other people's expense. They laughed and 
 talked with each other in excellent spirits ; and one varlet 
 near the coffin, who had slipped off his mask, winked at 
 me repeatedly, as if to inform me that it was not his 
 funeral. A masquerade might Lave been more gloomy 
 and depressing. 
 
SAINT ANTONINO. 
 
 THE most serviceable saint whom I know is St. Anto- 
 nino. He is the patron saint of the good town of 
 Sorrento ; he is the good genius of all sailors and fisher- 
 men ; and he has a humbler oflice, — that of protector of 
 the pigs. On his day the pigs are brought into the pub- 
 lic square to be blessed ; and this is one reason why the 
 pork of Sorrento is reputed so sweet and wholesome. 
 The saint is the friend, and, so to say, companion of the 
 common people. They seem to be all fond of him, and 
 there is little of fear in their confiding relation. His 
 humble origin and plebeian appearance have something 
 to do with his popularity, no doubt. There is nothing 
 awe-inspiring in the brown stone figure, battered and 
 cracked, that stands at one corner of the bridge, over the 
 chasm at the entrance of the city. He holds a crosier in 
 one hand, and raises the other, with fingers uplifted, in 
 act of benediction. If his face is an indication of his 
 character, he had in him a mixture of robust good-nature 
 witt a touch of vulgarity, and could rough it in a jolly 
 manner with fishermen and peasants. He may have 
 appeared to better advantage when he stood on top 
 of the massive old city gate, which the present Govern- 
 ment, with the impulse of a Vandal, took down a few 
 years ago. The demolition had to be accomplished in the 
 night, under a guard of soldiers, so indignant were the 
 populace. At that time the homely saint was deposed ; 
 and he wears now, I think, a snubbed and cast-aside 
 aspect. Perhaps he is dearer to the people than ever ; 
 256 
 
SAINT ANTONINO. 257 
 
 and I confess that I like him much better than many 
 grander saints, in stone, I have seen in more conspicuous 
 places. If ever I am in rough water and foul weather, I 
 hope he will not take amiss any thing I have here written 
 about him. 
 
 Sunday, and it happened to be St. Valentine's also, 
 was the great fete-day of St. Antonino. Early in the 
 morning there was a great clanging of bells ; and the 
 ceremony of the blessing of the pigs took place, I heard, 
 but I was not abroad early enough to see it, — a laziness 
 for which I fancy I need not apologize, as the Catholic 
 is known to be an earlier religion than the Protestant. 
 When I did go out, the streets were thronged with peo- 
 ple, the country-folk having come in from miles around. 
 The church of the patron saint was the great centre of 
 attraction. The blank walls of the little square in front, 
 and of the narrow streets near, were hung with cheap and 
 highly-colored lithographs of sacred subjects, for sale ; 
 tables and booths were set up in every available space 
 for the traffic in pre-Raphaelite gingerbread, molasses 
 candy, strings of dried nuts, pine-cone and pumpkin seeds, 
 scarfs, boots and shoes, and all sorts of trumpery. One 
 dealer had pre-empted a large space on the pavement, 
 where he had spread out an assortment of bits of old iron, 
 nails, pieces of steel traps, and various fragments which 
 might be useful to the peasants. The press was so great, 
 that it was difficult to get through it ; but the crowd was 
 a picturesque one, and in the highest good-humor. The 
 occasion was a sort of Fourth of July, but without its 
 worry and powder and flowing bars. 
 
 The spectacle of the day was the procession, bearing 
 the silver image of the saint through the streets. I 
 think there could never be any thing finer or more impres- 
 sive ; at least, I like these little fussy provincial displays, 
 — these tag-rags and ends of grandeur, in which all the 
 populace devoutly believe, and at which they are lost in 
 wonder, — better than those imposing ceremonies at the 
 capital, in which nobody believes. There was first a 
 22* 
 
258 SAINT ANTONINO. 
 
 band of musicians, walking in more or less disorder, but 
 blowing away with ^reat zeal, so that they could be heard 
 amid the clangor of bells the peals of which reverberate 
 so deafeningly between the high houses of these narrow 
 streets. Then follow boys in white, and citizens in black 
 and white robes, carrying huge silken banners, triangular 
 like sea-pennants, and splendid silver crucifixes which 
 flash- in the sun. Then come ecclesiastics, walking with 
 stately step, and chanting in loud and pleasant unison. 
 These are followed by nobles, among whom I recognize, 
 with a certain satisfaction, two descendants of Tasso, 
 whose glowing and bigoted soul may rejoice in the devo- 
 tion of his posterity, who help to bear to-day the gilded 
 platform upon which is the solid silver image of the saint. 
 The good old bishop walks humbly in the rear, in full 
 canonical rig, with crosier and mitre, his rich robes 
 upborne by priestly attendants, his splendid footman at 
 a respectful distance, and his roomy carriage not far 
 behind. 
 
 The procession is well spread out and long ; all its 
 members carry lighted tapers, a good many of which are 
 not lighted, having gone out in the wind. As I squeeze 
 into a shallow doorway to let the corteqe pass, I am sony 
 to say that several of the young fellows in white gowns 
 tip me the wink, and even smile in a knowing fashion, 
 as if it were a mere lark, after all, and that the saint must 
 know it. But not so thinks the paternal bishop, who 
 waves a blessing, which I catch in the flash of the enor- 
 mous emerald on his right hand. The procession ends, 
 where it started, in the patron's church ; and there his 
 image is set up under a gorgeous canopy of crimson and 
 gold, to hear high mass, and some of the choicest solos, 
 choruses, and bravuras from the operas. 
 
 In the public square I find a gaping and wondering 
 crowd of rustics, collected about one of the mountebanks 
 whose trade is not peculiar to any country. This one 
 might be a clock-peddler from Connecticitt. He is 
 mounted in a one-seat vettura, and his horse is quietly 
 
SAINT AN-TONINO. 259 
 
 eating his dinner out of a bag tied to his nose. There 
 is nothing unusual in the fellow's dress ; he wears a 
 shiny silk hat, and has one of those grave faces which 
 would be merry if their owner were not conscious of 
 serious business on hand. On the driver's perch before 
 him are arranged his attractions, — a box of notions, a 
 grinning skull, Avith full teeth and jaws that work on 
 hinges, some vials of red liquid, and a closed jar contain- 
 ing a most disagreeable anatomical preparation. This 
 latter he holds up and displays, turning it about occa- 
 sionally in an admiring manner. He is discoursing, all the 
 time, in the most voluble Italian. He has an ointment, 
 wonderfully efficacious for rheumatism and every sort of 
 bruise : he pulls up his sleeve, and anoints his arm with 
 it, binding it up with a strip of paper ; for the simplest 
 operation must be explained to these grown children. 
 He also pulls teeth, with an ease and expedition hitherto 
 unknown, and is in no want of patients among this open- 
 mouthed crowd. One sufferer after another climbs up 
 into the wagon, and goes through the operation in the 
 public gaze. A stolid, good-natured hind mounts the seat. 
 The dentist examines his mouth, and finds the offending 
 tooth. He then turns to the crowd, and explains the 
 case. He takes a little instrument that is neither forceps 
 nor turnkey, stands upon the seat, seizes the man's nose, 
 and jerks his head round between his knees, pulling 
 his mouth open (there is nothing that opens the mouth 
 quicker than a sharp upward jerk of the nose) with a 
 rude jollity that sets the spectators in a roar. Down he 
 goes into the cavern, and digs away for a quarter of a 
 minute, the man the while as immovable as a stone 
 image, when he holds up the bloody tooth. The patient 
 still persists in sitting with his mouth stretched open to 
 its widest limit, waiting for the operation to begin, and 
 will only close the orifice when he is well shaken and 
 shown the tooth. The dentist gives him some yellow 
 liquid to hold in his mouth, which the man insists on 
 swallowing, wets a handkerchief and washes his face, 
 
26o SAINT ANTONINO. 
 
 rougHy rubbing his nose the wrong way, and lets him 
 go. Every step of the process is eagerly watched by 
 the delighted spectators. 
 
 He is succeeded by a woman, who is put through the 
 same heroic treatment, and exhibits like fortitude. And 
 so they come ; and the dentist after every operation 
 waves the extracted trophy high in air, and jubilates 
 as if he had won another victory, pointing to the stone 
 statue yonder, and reminding them that this is the 
 glorious day of St. Antonino. But this is not all that 
 this man of science does. He has the genuine elixir 
 d'amour, love-philters and powders which never fail in 
 their effects. I see the bashful girls and the sheepish 
 swains come slyly up to the side of the wagon, and ex- 
 change their hard-earned francs for the hopeful prepara- 
 tion. O my brown beauty, with those soft eyes and 
 cheeks of smothered fire, you have no need of that red 
 philter ! What a simple, childlike folk ! The shrewd 
 fellow in the waggon is one of a race as old as Thebes and 
 as new as Porkopolis ; his brazen face is older than the 
 invention of bronze, but I think he never had to do with 
 a more credulous crowd than this. The very cunning in 
 the face of the peasants is that of the fox ; it is a sort of 
 instinct, and not an intelligent suspicion. 
 
 This is Sunday in Sorrento, under the blue sky. These 
 peasants, who are fooled by the mountebank and at- 
 tracted by the piles of adamantine gingerbread, do not 
 forget to crowd the church of the saint at vespers, and 
 kneel there in humble faith ; while the choir sings the 
 Agnus Dei, and the priests drone the service. Are they 
 so different, then, from other people? They have an 
 idea on Capri that England is such another island, only 
 not so pleasant ; that all Englishmen are rich, and con- 
 stantly travel to escape the dreariness at home ; and 
 that, if they are not absolutely mad, they are all a little 
 queer. It was a fancy prevalent in Hamlet's day. We 
 had the English service in the Villa Nardi in the even- 
 ing. There are some Englishmen staying here, of the 
 
SAINT ANTONINO. 261 
 
 class one finds in all tlie sunny spots of Europe, ennuy€ 
 and growling, in search of some elixir that shall bring 
 back youth and enjoyment. They seem divided in mind 
 between the attractions of the equable climate of this 
 region, and the fear of the gout which lurks in the unfer- 
 mented wine. One cannot be too grateful to the sturdy 
 islanders for carrying their prayers, like their drum-beat, 
 all round the globe ; and I was much edified that night, 
 as the reading went on, by a row of rather battered men 
 of the world, who stood in line on one side of the room, 
 and took their prayers with a certain British fortitude, 
 as if they were conscious of performing a constitutional 
 duty, and helping by the act to uphold the majesty of 
 English institutions. 
 
PUNTA BELLA CAMPANELLA. 
 
 THERE is always a mild excitement about mount- 
 ing donkeys in the morning here for an excursion 
 among the hills. The warm sun pouring into the gar- 
 den, the smell of oranges, the stimulating air, the general 
 openness and freshness, promise a day of enjoyment. 
 There is always a doubt as to who will go ; generally a 
 donkey wanting ; somebody wishes to join the party at 
 the last moment; there is no end of running up and 
 down stairs, calling from balconies and terraces ; some 
 never ready, and some waiting below in the sun; the 
 whole house in a tumult, drivers in a worry, and the 
 sleepy animals now and then joining in the clatter with 
 a vocal performance that is neither a trumpet-call nor a 
 steam-whistle, but an indescribable noise, that begins in 
 agony, and abruptly breaks down in despair. It is diffi- 
 cult to get the train in motion. The lady who ordered 
 Succarina has got a strange donkey, and Macaroni has 
 on the wrong saddle. Succarina is a f.ivorite, the kind- 
 est, easiest, and surest-footed of beasts, — a diminutive 
 animal, not bigger than a Friesland sheep ; old, in fact 
 grizzly with years, and not unlike the aged, wizened 
 little women who are so common here : for beauty in 
 this region dries up ; and these handsome Sorrento girls, 
 if they live, and almost everybody does live, have the 
 prospect, in their old a^e, of becoming mummies, with 
 parchment skins. I have heard of climates that preserve 
 female beauty ; this embalms it, only the beauty escapes 
 in the process. As I was saying, Succarina is little, old, 
 262 
 
PUNTA DELIA CAMPANELLA. 263 
 
 and grizzly ; but her head is large, and one might be 
 contented to be as wise as she looks. 
 
 The party is at length mounted, and clatters away 
 through the narrow streets. Donkey-riding is very good 
 for people who think they cannot walk. It looks very 
 much like riding, to a spectator ; and it deceives the 
 person undertaking it into an amount of exercise equal 
 to walking. I have a great admiration for the donkey 
 character. There never was such patience under wrong 
 treatment, such return of devotion for injury. Their 
 obstinacy, which is so much talked about, is only an 
 exercise of the right of private judgment, and an intel- 
 ligent exercise of it, no doubt, if we could take the don- 
 key point of view, as so many of us are accused of doing 
 in other things. I am certain of one thing : in ^ any 
 large excursion party, there will be more obstinate 
 people than obstinate donkeys ; and yet the poor brutes 
 get all the thwacks and thumps. We are bound to-day 
 for the Punta della Campanella, the extreme point of 
 the promontory, and ten miles away. The path lies up 
 the steps from the new Massa carriage-road, now on the 
 backbone of the ridge, and now in the recesses of the 
 broken country. What an animated picture is the don- 
 keycade, as it mounts the steeps, winding along the zig- 
 zags ! Hear the little bridle-bells jingling, the drivers 
 groaning their "a-e-ugh, a-e-ugh," the riders making 
 a merry din of laughter, and firing off a fusillade of 
 ejaculations of dehglit and wonder. 
 
 The road is between high walls; round the sweep of 
 curved terraces which rise above and below us, bearing 
 the glistening olive; through glens and guUies ; over 
 and under arches, vine-grown, — how little we make use 
 of the arch at home ! — round sunny dells where orange 
 orchards gleam ; past shrines, little chapels perched on 
 rocks, rude villas commanding most extensive sweeps 
 of sea and shore. The almond trees are in full bloom, 
 every twig a thickly-set spike of the pink and white 
 blossoms ;°daisies and dandelions are out ; the purple 
 
264 PUNTA DELLA CAMPANELLA. 
 
 crocuses sprinkle the ground, the petals exquisitely 
 varied on the reverse side, and the stamens of bright sal- 
 mon color ; the large double anemones have come forth, 
 certain that it is spring ; on the higher crags by the 
 wayside, the Mediterranean heather has shaken out its 
 delicate flowers, which fill the air with a mild fragrance ; 
 while blue violets, sweet of scent like the English, make 
 our path a perfumed one. And this is winter. 
 
 We have made a late start, owing to the fact that 
 everybody is captain of the expedition, and to the 
 Sorrento infirmity that no one is able to make up his 
 mind about any thing. It is one o'clock when we reach 
 a high transverse ridge, and find the headlands of the 
 peninsula rising before us, grim hills of limestone, one 
 of them with the ruins of a convent on top, and no 
 road apparent thither, and Capri ahead of us in the sea, 
 the only bit of land that catches any light ; for as we 
 have journeyed, the sky has thickened, the clouds of the 
 sirocco have come up from the south ; there has been 
 first a mist, and then a fine rain ; the ruins on the peak 
 of Santa Costanza are now hid in mist. We halt for 
 consultation. Shall we go on and brave a wetting, or 
 ignominiously retreat V There are many opinions, but 
 few decided ones. The drivers declare that it will be 
 a bad time. One gentleman, with an air of decision, 
 suo-gests that it is best to go on, or go back, if we do not 
 stand here and wait. The deaf lady, from near Dublin, 
 being appealed to, says that, perhaps, if it is more 
 prudent, we had better go back if it is going to rain. 
 It does rain. Water-proofs are put on, umbrellas spread, 
 backs turned to the wind ; and we look like a group 
 of explorers under adverse circumstances, " silent on a 
 peak in Darien," the donkeys especially downcast and 
 dejected. Finally, as is usual in life, a compromise pre- 
 vails. We decide to continue for half an hour longer, 
 and see what the weather is. No sooner have we set 
 forward over the brow of a hill than it grows lighter on 
 the sea horizon in the south-west, the ruins on the peak 
 
PUNTA BELLA CAMPANELLA. 265 
 
 become visible, Capri is in full sunlight. The clouds 
 lift more and more, and still hanging overhead, but with 
 no more rain, are like curtains gradually drawn up, 
 opening to us a glorious vista of sunshine and promise, 
 an illumined, sparkling, illimitable sea, and a bright 
 foreground of slopes and picturesque rocks. Before the 
 half-hour is up, there is not one of the party who does 
 not claim to have been the person who insisted upon 
 going forward. 
 
 We halt for a moment to look at Capri,.that enormous, 
 irregular rock, raising its huge back out of the sea, its 
 back broken in the middle, with the little village for a 
 saddle. On the farther summit, above Anacapri, a pre- 
 cipice of two thousand feet sheer down to the water on 
 the other side, hangs a light cloud. The east elevation, 
 whence the playful Tiberius used to amuse his green old 
 age by casting his prisoners eight hundred feet down 
 into the sea, has the strong sunlight on it ; and below, 
 the row of tooth-like rocks, which are the extreme eastern 
 point, shine in a warm glow. We descend through a 
 villagre, twisting about in its crooked streets. The in- 
 habitants, who do not see strangers every day, make 
 free to stare at and comment on us, and even laugh at 
 something that seems very comical in our appearance ; 
 which shows how ridiculous are the costumes of Paris 
 and New York in some places. Stalwart girls, with 
 only an apology for clothes, with bare legs, brown faces, 
 and beautiful eyes, stop in their spinning, holding the 
 distaff suspended, while they examine us at leisure. At 
 our left, as we ^nrn from the church and its svLnny piazza, 
 where old women sit and gabble, down the ravine, is a 
 snug village under the mountain by the shore, with a 
 great, square, mediaeval tower. On the right, upon 
 rocky points, are remains of round towers, and temples 
 perhaps. 
 
 We sweep away to the left round the base of the hill, 
 over a difficult and stony path. Soon the last dilapidated 
 villa is passed, the last terrace and olive-tree are left be- 
 23 
 
266 PUNTA DELLA CAMPANELLA. 
 
 hind ; and we emerge upon a wild, rocky slope, barren 
 of vegetation, except little tufts of grass and a sort of 
 lentil ; a wide sweep of limestone strata set on edge, 
 and crumbling in the beat of centuries, rising to a con- 
 siderable height on the left. Our path descends toward 
 the sea, still creeping round the end of the promontory. 
 Scattered here and there over the rocks, like conies, are 
 peasants, tending a few lean cattle, and digging grasses 
 from the crevices. The women and children are wild in 
 attire and manner, and set up a clamor of begging as 
 we pass. A group of old hags begin beating a poor 
 child as we approach to excite our compassion for the 
 abused little object, and draw out centimes. 
 
 Walking ahead of the procession, which gets slowly 
 down the rugged path, I lose sight of my companions, 
 and have the solitude, the sun on the rocks, the glisten- 
 ing sea, all to myself. Soon I espy a man below me, 
 sauntering down among the rocks. He sees me and 
 moves away, a solitary figure. I say solitary ; and so it 
 is in efiect, although he is leading a little boy, and call- 
 ing to his dog, which runs back to bark at me. Is this 
 the brigand of whom I have read, and is he luring me 
 to his haunt ? Probably. I follow. He throws his cloak 
 about his shoulders, exactly as brigands do in the opera, 
 and loiters on. At last there is the point in sight, a gray 
 wall with blind arches. The man disappears through ^ 
 narrow archway, and I follow. Within is an enormous 
 square tower. I think it was built in Spanish days, as 
 an outlook for Barbary pirates. A bell hung in it, which 
 was set clang-ing: when the white sails of the robbers 
 appeared to the southward ; and the alarm was repeated 
 up the coast, the towers were manned, and the brown- 
 cheeked girls flew away to the hills, I doubt not, for the 
 touch of the sirocco was not half so rnuch to be dreaded 
 as the rough importunity of a Saracen lover. The bell 
 is gone now, and no Moslem rovers were in sight. The 
 maidens we had just passed would be safe if there were. 
 My brigand disappears round the tower ; and I follow, 
 
PUNTA DELIA CAMPANELLA. 267 
 
 down steps, by a white wall, and, lo ! a house, — a red, 
 stucco, Egyptian-looking building, — on the very edge of 
 the rocks. The man unlocks a door and goes in. I con- 
 sider this an invitation, and enter. On one side of the 
 passage a sleeping-room, on the other a kitchen, not 
 sumptuous quarters ; and we come then upon a pretty 
 circular terrace ; and there, in its glass case, is the lan- 
 tern of the point. My brigand is a lighthouse keeper, 
 and welcomes me in a quiet way, glad, evidently, to see 
 the face of a civilized being. It is very solitary, he says. 
 I should think so. It is the end of every thing. The 
 Mediterranean waves beat with a dull thud on the worn 
 crags below. The rocks rise up to the sky behind. 
 There is nothing there but the sun, an occasional sail, 
 and quiet, petrified Capri, three miles distant across the 
 strait. It is an excellent place for a misanthrope to 
 spend a week, and get cured. There must be a very 
 dispiriting influence prevailing here ; the keeper refused 
 to take any money, the solitary Italian we have seen so 
 affected. 
 
 We returned late. The young moon, lying in the lap 
 of the old one, was superintending the brilliant sunset 
 over Capri, as we passed the last point commanding it ; 
 and the light, fading away, Jeft us stumbling over the 
 rough path among the hills, darkened by the high walls. 
 We were not sorry to emerge upon the crest above the 
 Massa road. For there lay the sea, and the plain of 
 Sorrento, with its darkening groves and hundreds of 
 twinkling Ughts. As we went down the last descent, 
 the bells of the town were all ringing, for it was the eve 
 of the fete of St. Antonino. 
 
CAPRI. 
 
 "/^AP, signer? Good day for Grott." Thus spoke a 
 \_J mariner, touching his Phrygian cap. The people 
 here abbreviate all names. With them Massa is Mas, 
 Meta is Met, Capri becomes Cap, the Grotta Azzurra is 
 reduced familiarly to Grott, and they even curtail musical 
 Sorrento into Serent. 
 
 Shall we go to Capri ? Should we dare return to the 
 great Republic, and own that we had not been into the 
 Blue Grotto ? We like to climb the steeps here, espe- 
 cially towards Massa, and look at Capri. I have read 
 in some book that it used to be always visible from Sorr 
 rento. But now the promontory has risen, the Capo di 
 Sorrento has thrust out its rocky spur with its ancient 
 Roman masonry, and the island itself has moved so far 
 round to the south, that Sorrento, which fronts north, 
 has lost sight of it. 
 
 We never tire of watching it, thinking that it could 
 not be spared from the landscape. It lies only three 
 miles from the curving end of the promontory, and is 
 about twenty miles due south of Naples. In this atmos- 
 phere distances dwindle. The nearest land, to the north- 
 west, is the larger island of Ischia, distant nearly as far 
 as Naples ; yet Capri has the effect of being anchored off 
 the bay to guard the entrance. It is really a rock, three 
 miles and a half long, rising straight out of the water, 
 eight hundred feet high at one end, and eighteen hun- 
 dred feet at the other, with a depression between. If it 
 had been chiselled by hand and set there, it could not 
 268 
 
CAPRI. 269 
 
 be more sharply defined. So precipitous are its sides 
 of rock, that there are only two fit boat-landings, — the 
 marina on the north side, and a smaller place opposite. 
 One of those light-haired and freckled Englishmen, 
 whose pluck exceeds their discretion, rowed round the 
 island alone in rough water, last summer, against the 
 advice of the boatman, and unable to make a landing, 
 and weary with the strife of the waves, was in consider- 
 able peril. 
 
 Sharp and clear as Capri is in outline, its contour is 
 still most graceful and poetic. This wonderful atmos- 
 phere softens even its ruggedness, and drapes it with 
 hues of enchanting beauty. Sometimes the' haze plays 
 fantastic tricks with it, — a cloud-cap hangs on Monte 
 Solaro, or a mist obscures the base, and the massive 
 summits of rock seem to float in the air, baseless fabrics 
 of a vision that the rising wind will carry away perhaps. 
 I know now what Homer means by " wandering islands." 
 Shall we take a boat and sail over there, and so destroy 
 forever another island of the imagination ? The bane of 
 travel is thfe destruction of illusions. 
 
 We like to talk about Capri, and to talk of going 
 there. The Sorrento people have no end of gossip 
 about the wild island ; and, simple and primitive as 
 they are, Capri is still more out of the world. I do 
 not know what enchantment there is on the island; 
 but whoever sets foot there, they say, goes insane or 
 dies a drunkard. I fancy the reason of this is found 
 in the fact that the Capri girls are raving beauties. I 
 am not sure but the monotony of being anchored off 
 there in the bay, the monotony of rocks and precipices 
 that goats alone can climb, the monotony of a tempera- 
 ture that scarcely ever, winter and summer, is below 55° 
 or above 75° Fahrenheit in-doors, might drive one into 
 lunacy. But I incHne to think it is due to the hand- 
 some Capri girls. 
 
 There are beautiful girls in Sorrento, with a beauty 
 more than skin deep, a glowing, hidden fire, a ripeness 
 23* 
 
270 CAPRI. 
 
 like that of the grape and the peach which grow in the 
 soft air and the sun. And they wither, like grapes that 
 hang upon the stem. I have never seen a handsome, 
 scarcely a decent-looking, old woman here. They are 
 lank and dry, and their bones are covered with parch- 
 ment. One of these brown-cheeked girls, with large, 
 longing eyes, gives the stranger a start, now and then, 
 when he meets her in a narrow way with a basket of 
 oranges on her head. I hope he has the grace to go 
 right by. Let him meditate what this vision of beauty 
 will be like in twenty years. 
 
 The Capri girls are famed as magnificent beauties, 
 but they fade like their mainland sisters. The Saracens 
 used to descend on their island, and carry them off to 
 their harems. The English, a very adventurous people, 
 who have no harems, have followed the Saracens. The 
 young lords and gentlemen have a great fondness for 
 Capri. I hear gossip enough about elopements, and not 
 seldom mamages, with the island girls, — bright girls, 
 with the Greek mother-wit, and surpassingly handsome ; 
 but they do not bear transportation to civilized life (any. 
 more than some of the native wines do) : they accept no 
 intellectual culture ; and they lose their beauty as they 
 grow old. What then ? The young English blade, who 
 was intoxicated by beauty into an injudicious match^ and 
 might, as the proverb says, have gone insane if he could 
 not have made it, takes to drink now, and so fulfils the , 
 other alternative. Alas ! the fatal gift of beauty. 
 
 But I do not think Capri is so dangerous as it is repre- 
 sented. For (of course we went to Capri) neither at the 
 marina, where a crowd of barelegged, vociferous maid- 
 ens with donkeys assailed us, nor in the village above, 
 did I see many girls for whom and one little isle a per- 
 son would forswear the world. But I can believe that 
 they grow here. • One of our donkey girls was a hand- 
 some, dark-skinned, black-eyed girl ; but her little sis- 
 ter, a mite of a being of six years, who could scarcely 
 step over the small stones in the road, and was forced 
 
CAPRI. 271 
 
 to lead the donkey by her sister in order to establish 
 another lien on us for buona mano, was a dirty little 
 angel in rags, and her great, soft, black eyes will look 
 somebody into the asylum or the drunkard's grave in 
 time, I have no doubt. There was a stout, manly, hand- 
 some little fellow of five years, who established himself 
 as the guide and friend of the tallest of our party. His 
 hat was nearly gone ; he was sadly out of repair in the 
 rear ; his short legs made the act of walking absurd ; but 
 he trudged up the hill with a certain dignity. And there 
 was nothing mercenary about his attachment : he and his 
 friend got upon very cordial terms ; they exchanged gifts 
 of shells and copper coin, but nothing was said about pay. 
 Nearly all the inhabitants, young and old, joined us 
 in lively procession, up the winding road of three-quar- 
 ters of a mile, to the town. At the deep gate, entering 
 between thick walls, we stopped to look at the sea. The 
 crowd and clamor at our landing had been so great, that 
 we enjoyed the sight of the quiet old woman sitting here 
 in the sun, and the few beggars almost too lazy to stretch 
 out their hands. Within the gate is a large paved square, 
 with the government offices and the tobacco-shop on one 
 side, and the church opposite ; between them, up a flight 
 of broad stone steps, is the Hotel Tiberio. Our donkeys 
 walk up them and into the hotel. The church and hotel 
 are six hundred years old ; the hotel was a villa belong- 
 ing to Joanna H. of Naples. We climb to the roof of 
 the quaint old building, and sit there to drink in the 
 strange Oriental scene. The landlord says it is like 
 Jafi'a or Jerusalem. The landlady, an Irish woman 
 from Devonshire, says it is six francs a day. In what 
 friendly intercourse the neighbors can sit on these flat 
 roofs I How sightly this is, and yet how sheltered ! _ To 
 the east is the height where Augustus, and after him Tibe- 
 rius, built palaces. To the west, up that vertical wall, 
 by means of five hundred steps cut in the face of the 
 rock, we go to reach the table-land of Anacapri, the 
 primitive village of that name, hidden from view here ; 
 
272 CAPRI. 
 
 the mediaeval castle of Barbarossa, which hangs over a 
 frightful precipice; and the height of Monte Solaro. 
 The island is everywhere strewn with Koman ruins, and 
 with faint traces of the Greeks. 
 
 Capri turns out not to be a barren rock. Broken and 
 picturesque as it is, it is yet covered with vegetation. 
 There is not a foot, one might say a point, of soil that 
 does not bear something ; and there is not a niche in the 
 rock, where a scrap of dirt will stay, that is not made 
 useful. The whole island is terraced. The most won- 
 derful thing about it, after all, is its masonry. You come 
 to think, after a time, that the island is not natural rock, 
 but a mass of masonry. If the labor that has been 
 expended here, only to erect platforms for the soil to rest 
 on, had been given to our country, it would have built 
 hcilf a dozen Pacific railways, and cut a canal through 
 the Isthmus. 
 
 But the Blue Grotto ? Oh, yes 1 Is it so blue ? That 
 depends upon the time of day, the sun, the clouds, and 
 something upon the person who enters it. It is fright- 
 fully blue to some. We bend down in our row-boat, 
 slide into the narrow opening which is three feet high, 
 and, passing into the spacious cavern, remain there for 
 half an hour. It is, to be sure, forty feet high, and a 
 hundred by a hundred and fifty in extent, with an arched 
 roof, and clear water for a floor. The water appears to 
 be as deep as the roof is high, and is of a light, beautiful 
 blue, in contrast with the deep blue of the bay. At the 
 entrance the water is illuminated, and there is a pleasant, 
 mild light within : one has there a novel subterranean 
 sensation ; but it did not remind me of any thing I have 
 seen in the " Arabian Nights." I have seen pictures of 
 it that were much finer. 
 
 As we rowed close to the precipice in returning, I saw 
 many similar openings, not so deep, and perhaps only 
 sham openings ; and the water-line was fretted to honey- 
 comb by the eating waves. Beneath the water-line, and 
 revealed here and there when the waves receded, was a 
 line of bright red coral. 
 
THE STORY OF FIAMETTA. 
 
 AT vespers on the fete of St. Antonino, and in his 
 church, I saw the Signorina Fiametta. I stood 
 leaning against a marble pillar near the altar-steps, 
 during the service, when I saw the young girl kneeling 
 on the pavement in act of prayer. Her black lace veil 
 had fallen a little back from her head ; and there 
 was something in her modest attitude and graceful 
 figure, that made her conspicuous among all her kneel- 
 ing companions, with their gay kerchiefs and bright 
 gowns. When she rose and sat down, with folded hands 
 and eyes downcast, there was something so pensive in 
 her subdued mien, that I could not take my eyes from 
 her. To say that she had the rich olive complexion, 
 with the gold struggling through, large, lustrous black 
 eyes, and harmonious features, is only to make a weak 
 photograph, when I should paint a picture in colors, and 
 infuse it with the sweet loveliness of a maiden on the way 
 to sainthood. I was sure that I had seen her before, 
 looking down from the balcony of a villa just beyond 
 the Roman wall, for the face was not one that even the 
 most unimpressible idler would forget. I was sure, that, 
 young as she was, she had already a history ; had lived 
 her life, and now walked amid these groves and old 
 streets in a dream. The story which I heard is not long. 
 In the drawing-room of the Villa Nardi, was shown, 
 and offered for sale, an enormous counterpane, crocheted 
 in white cotton. Loop by loop, it must have been an 
 immense labor to knit it; for it was fashioned in pretty 
 
 273 
 
274 THE STORY OF FIAMETTA. 
 
 devices, and when spread out was rich and showy enough 
 for the royal bed of a princess. It had been crocheted 
 by Fiametta for her marriage, the only portion the poor 
 child could bring to that sacrament. Alas ! the wedding 
 was never to be ; and the rich work, into which her del- 
 icate fingers had knit so many maiden dreams and hopes 
 and fears, was offered for sale in the resort of strangers. 
 It could not have been want only that induced her to put 
 this piece of work in the market, but the feeling, also, 
 that the time never again could return when she would 
 have need of it. I had no desire to purchase such a mel- 
 ancholy coverlet, but I could well enough fancy why she 
 would wish to part with what must be rather a pall than 
 a decoration in her little chamber. 
 
 Fiametta lived with her mother in a little villa, the 
 roof of which is in sight from my sunny terrace in the 
 Villa Nardi, just to the left of the square old convent 
 tower, rising there out of the silver olive-boughs, — a 
 tumble-down sort of villa, with a flat roof and odd angles 
 and parapets, in the midst of a thrifty but small grove of 
 lemons and oranges. They were poor enough, or would 
 be in any country where physical wants aregreater than 
 here, and yet did not belong to that lowest class, the young 
 girls of which are little more than beasts of burden, 
 accustomed to act as porters, bearing about on their 
 heads great loads of stone, wood, water, and baskets of 
 oranges in the shipping season. She could not have been 
 forced to such labor, or she never would have had the time 
 to work that wonderful coverlet. 
 
 Giuseppe was an honest and rather handsome young 
 fellow of Sorrento, industrious and good-natured, who 
 did not bother his head much about learning. He was, 
 however, a skilful workman in the celebrated inlaid and 
 mosaic wood-work of the place, and, it is said, had even 
 invented some new figures for the inlaid pictures in col- 
 ored woods. He had a little fancy for the sea as well, 
 and liked to pull an oar over to Capri on occasion, by 
 which he could earn a few francs easier than he could 
 
THE STORY OF FIAMETTA. 275 
 
 saw them out of the orange-wood. For the stupid fel- 
 low, who could not read a word in his prayer-book, had 
 an idea of thrift in his head, and already, I suspect, was 
 laying up liras with an object. There are one or two 
 dandies in Sorrento who attempt to dress as they do in 
 Naples. Giuseppe was not one of these ; but there was 
 not a gayer or handsomer gallant than he on Sunday, or 
 one more looked at by the Sorrento girls, when he had 
 on his clean suit and his fresh red Phrygian cap. At 
 least the good Fiametta thought so, when she met hirn 
 at church, though I feel sure she did not allow even his 
 handsome figure to come between her and the Virgin. 
 At any rate, there can be no doubt of her sentiments 
 after church, when she and her mother used to walk with 
 him, along the winding Massa road above the sea, and 
 stroll down to the shore to sit on the greensward over the 
 Temple of Hercules, or the Roman Baths, or the remains 
 of the villa of C. Fulvius Cunctatus Codes, or whatever 
 those ruins subterranean are, there on the Capo di Sor- 
 rento. Of course, this is mere conjecture of mine. They 
 may have gone on the hills behind the town instead, or 
 they may have stood leaning over the garden-wall of her 
 mother's little villa, looking at the passers-by in the deep 
 lane, thinking about nothing in the world, and talking 
 about it all the sunny afternoon, until Ischia was purple 
 with the last light, and the olive terraces behind them 
 be^an to lose their gray bloom. All I do know is, that 
 
 '111 
 
 they were in love, blossoming out in it as the almond- 
 trees do here in Feburary ; and that all the town knew 
 it, and saw a wedding in the future, just as plain as you 
 can see Capri from the heights above the town. 
 
 It was at this time that the wonderful counterpane 
 began to grow, to the continual astonishment of Giu- 
 seppe, to whom it seemed a marvel of skill and patience, 
 and who saw what love and sweet hope Fiametta was 
 knitting into it with her deft fingers. I declare, as _ I 
 think of it, the white cotton spread out on her knees, in 
 such contrast to the rich olive of her complexion and 
 
276 THE STORY OF FIAMETTA. 
 
 her black shiny hair, while she knits away so merrily, 
 glancing up occasionally with those liquid, laughing eyes 
 to Giuseppe, who is watching her as if she were an angel 
 right out of the blue sky, I am tempted not to tell this 
 story further, but to leave the happy two there at the 
 open gate of life, and to believe that they entered in. 
 
 This was about the time of the change of government, 
 after this region had come to be a part of the Kingdom 
 of Italy. After the first excitement was over, and the 
 simple people found they were not all made rich, nor 
 raised to a condition in which they could live without 
 work, there began to be some dissatisfaction. Why the 
 convents need have been suppressed, and especially the 
 poor nuns packed ofi*, they couldn't see ; and then the 
 taxes were heavier than ever before ; instead of being 
 supported by the Government, they had to support it ; 
 and, worst of all, the able young fellows must still go for 
 soldiers. Just as one was learning his trade, or perhaps 
 had acquired it, and was ready to earn his living and 
 begin to make a home for his wife, he must pass the 
 three best years of his life in the army. The conscrip- 
 tion was relentless. 
 
 The time came to Giuseppe, as it did to the others. 
 I never heard but he was brave enough ; there was no 
 storm on the Mediterranean that he dare not face in his 
 little boat ; and he would not have objected to a cam- 
 paign with the red shirts of Garibaldi. But to be torn 
 away from his occupations by which he was daily laying 
 aside a little for himself and Fiametta, and to leave her 
 for three years, — that seemed dreadful to him. Three 
 years is a long time ; and though he had no doubt of the 
 pretty Fiametta, yet women are women, said the shrewd 
 fellow to himself, and who knows what might happen, if 
 a gallant came along who could read and write, as Fi- 
 ametta could, and, besides, could play the guitar ? 
 
 The result was, that Giuseppe did not appear at the 
 mustering-office on the day set ; and, when the file of 
 soldiers came lor him, he was nowhere to be found. He 
 
THE STORY OF FIAMETTA. 277 
 
 had fled to the mountains. I scarcely know what his 
 plan was, but he probably trusted to some good luck to 
 escape the conscription altogether, if he could shun it 
 now ; and, at least, I know that he had many comrades 
 who did the same, so that at times the mountains were 
 full of young fellows who were lurking in them to escape 
 the soldiers. And they fared very roughly usually, and 
 sometimes nearly perished from hunger ; for though the 
 sympathies of the peasants were undoubtedly with the 
 quasi outlaws rather than with the carbineers, yet the 
 latter were at every hamlet in the hills, and liable to 
 visit every hut, so that any relief extended to the fugi- 
 tives was attended with great danger ; and, besides, the 
 hunted men did not dare to venture from their retreats. 
 Thus outlawed and driven to desperation by hunger, 
 these fugitives, whom nobody can defend for running 
 away from their duties as citizens, became brigands. A 
 cynical German, who was taken by them some years ago 
 on the road to Castellamare, a few miles above here, and 
 held for ransom, declared that they were the most honest 
 fellows he had seen in Italy ; but I never could see that 
 he intended the remark as any compliment to them. It 
 is certain that the inhabitants of all these towns held 
 very loose ideas on the subject of brigandage : the poor 
 fellows, they used to say, only robbed because they were 
 hungry, and they must live somehow. 
 
 What Fiametta thought, down in her heart, is not 
 told : but I presume she shared the feelings of those 
 about her concerning the brigands, and, when she heard 
 that Giuseppe had joined them, was more anxious for the 
 safety of his body than of his soul ; though I warrant she 
 did not forget either, in her prayers to the Virgin and 
 St. Antonino. And yet those must have been days, 
 weeks, months, of terrible anxiety to the poor child ; and 
 if she worked away at the counterpane, netting in that 
 elaborate border, as I have no doubt she did, it must, 
 have been with a sad heart and doubtful fingers. ^ I 
 think that one of the psychological sensitives could dis- 
 24 
 
278 THE STORY OF FIAMETTA, 
 
 tinguish the parts of the bed-spread that were knit in the 
 sunny days from those knit in the long hours of care and 
 deepening anxiety. 
 
 It was rarely that she received any message from him, 
 and it was then only verbal and of the briefest ; he was 
 in the mountains above Amalfi ; one day he had come 
 so far round as the top of the Great St. Angelo, frcmi 
 which he could look down upon the piano of Sorrento, 
 where the little Fiametta was ; or he had been on the 
 hills near Salerno, hunted and hungry ; or his company 
 had descended upon some travellers going to Passtum, 
 made a successful haul, and escaped into the steep 
 mountains beyond. He didn't intend to become a regu- 
 lar bandit, not at all. He hoped that something might 
 happen so that he could steal back into Sorrento, un- 
 marked by the Government ; or, at least, that he could 
 escape away to some other country or island, where Fi- 
 ametta could join him. Did she love him yet, as in the 
 old, happy days ? As for him, she was now every thing 
 to him ; and he would willingly serve three or thirty 
 years in the army, if the Government could forget he had 
 been a brigand, and permit him to have a little home 
 with Fiametta at the end of the probation. There was 
 not much comfort in all this, but the simple fellow could 
 not send any thing more cheerful ; and I think it used 
 to feed the little maiden's heart to hear from him, even 
 in this downcast mood, for his love for her was a dear 
 certainty, and his absence and wild life did not dim it. 
 
 My informant does not know how long this painful 
 life went on, nor does it matter much. There came a 
 day when the Government was shamed into new vigor 
 against the brigands. Some English people of conse- 
 quence (the German of whom I have spoken was with 
 them) had been captured, and it had cost them a heavy 
 ransom. The number of the carbineers was quadrupled 
 in the infested districts, soldiers penetrated the fastnesses 
 of the hills, there were daily fights with the banditti ; and, 
 to show that this was no sham, some of them were actu- 
 
THE STORY OF FIAMETTA. 279 
 
 ally shot, and others were taken and thrown into prison. 
 Among those who were not afraid to stand and fight, and 
 who would not be captured, was our Giuseppe. One 
 day the Italia newspaper of Naples had an account of a 
 fight with brigands ; and in the list of those who fell was 
 
 the name of Giuseppe , of Sorrento, shot through 
 
 the head, as he ought to have been, and buried without 
 funeral among the rocks. 
 
 This was all. But, when the news was read in the 
 little post-office in Sorrento, it seemed a great deal more 
 than it does as I write it ; for, if Giuseppe had an enemy 
 in the village, it was not among the people, and not one 
 who heard the news did not think at once of the poor 
 girl to whom it would be more than a bullet through the 
 heart. And so it was. The slender hope of her Ufe 
 then went out. I am told that there was little change 
 outwardly, and that she was as lovely as before ; but a 
 great cloud of sadness came over her, in which she was 
 always enveloped, whether she sat at home, or walked 
 abroad in the places where she and Giuseppe used to 
 wander. The simple people respected her grief, and 
 always made a tender-hearted stillness when the bereft 
 little maiden went through the streets, — a stillness 
 which she never noticed, for she never noticed any thing 
 apparently. The bishop himself when he walked 
 abroad could not be treated with more respect. 
 
 This was all the story of the sweet Fiametta that was 
 confided to me. And afterwards, as I recalled her pen- 
 sive face that evening as she kneeled at vespers, I could 
 not say whether, after all, she was altogether to be 
 pitied, in the holy isolation of her grief, which I am sure 
 sanctified her, and, in some sort, made her life complete. 
 For I take it that life, even in this sunny Sorrento, is 
 not alone a matter of time. 
 
ST. MARIA A CASTELLO. 
 
 rr^HE Great St. Angelo and that region are supposed 
 I to be tlie haunts of brigands. From those heights 
 they spy out the land, and from thence have, more than 
 once, descended upon the sea-road between Castellamare 
 and Sorrento, and caught up Enghsh and German travel- 
 lers. This elevation commands, also, the Paestum way. 
 We have no faith in brigands in these days ; for, in all 
 our remote and lonely explorations of this promontory, 
 we have never met any but the most simple-hearted and 
 good-natured people, who were quite as much afraid of 
 us as we were of them. But there are not wanting 
 stories, every day, to keep alive the imagination of 
 tourists. 
 
 We are waiting in the garden this sunny, enticing 
 morning — just the day for a tramp among the purple 
 hills — for our friend, the long Englishman., who prom- 
 ised, over night, to go with us. This excellent, good- 
 natured giant, whose head rubs the ceiling of any room 
 in the house, has a wife who is fond of him, and in great 
 dread of the brigands. He comes down with a sheepish 
 air, at length, and informs us that his wife won't let him 
 go. 
 
 " Of course I can go, if I like," he adds. " But the 
 fact is, I haven't slept much all night : she kept asking 
 me if I was going ! '* On the whole, the giant don't 
 care to go. There are things more to be feared than 
 brigands. 
 
 The expedition is, therefore, reduced to two unarmed 
 280 
 
ST. MARIA A CASTELLO. 281 
 
 persons. In tlie 'piazza we pick up a donkey and his 
 driver, for use in case of accident; and, mounting the 
 driver on tlie donkey, — an arrangement that seems en- 
 tirely satisfactory to him, — we set forward. If any thing 
 can bring back youth, it is a day of certain sunshine and 
 a bit of unexplored country ahead, with a whole day in 
 which to wander in it without a care or a responsibility. 
 We walk briskly up the walled road of the piano^ strik- 
 ing at the overhanging golden fruit with our staves ; 
 greeting the orange-girls who come down the side lanes ; 
 'chaffing with the drivers, the begsfars, the old women 
 who sit in the sun ; looking into the open doors of houses 
 and shops upon women weaving, boys and girls slicing 
 up heaps of oranges, upon the makers of macaroni, the 
 sellers of sour wine, the merry shoemakers, whose little 
 dens are centres of gossip here as in all the East : the 
 whole life of these people is open and social ; to be on 
 the street is to be at home. 
 
 We wind up the steep hill behind Meta, every foot of 
 which is terraced for olive-trees, getting, at length, views, 
 over the wayside wall, of the plain and bay, and rising 
 into the purer air and the scent of flowers and other 
 signs of coming spring, to the little village of Arola, 
 with its church and bell, its beggars and idlers, — just a 
 little street of houses jammed in between the hills of 
 Camaldoli and Pergola, both of which we know well. 
 
 Upon the cliff by Pergola is a stone house, in front of 
 which I like to lie, looking straight down a thousand or 
 two feet upon the roofs of Meta, the map of the plain, 
 and the always fascinating bay. I went down the back- 
 bone of the limestone ridge towards the sea the other 
 afternoon, before sunset, and unexpectedly came upon a 
 group of little stone cottages on a ledge, which are quite 
 hidden from below. The'inhabitants were as much sur- 
 prised to see a foreigner break through their seclusion as 
 I was to come upon them. However, they soon recov- 
 ered presence of mind to ask for a little money. Half 
 a dozen old hags with the parchment skin sat upon the 
 24* 
 
282 ST. MARIA A CASTELLO, 
 
 rocks in tlie sun, spinning from distaffs, exactly as tlieir 
 ancestors did in Greece two thousand years ago, I doubt 
 not. I do not know that it is true, as Tasso wrote, that 
 this climate is so temperate and serene that one almost 
 becomes immortal in it. Since two thousand years all 
 these coasts have changed more or less, risen and sunk, 
 and the temples and palaces of two civilizations have 
 tumbled into the sea. Yet I do not know but these 
 tranquil old women have been sitting here on the rocks 
 all the while, high above change and worry and decay, 
 gossiping and spinning, like Fates. Their yarn must be 
 uncanny. 
 
 But we wander. It is difficult to go to any particular 
 place here ; impossible to write of it in a direct manner. 
 Our mule-path continues most delightful, by slopes of 
 green orchards nestled in sheltered places, winding round 
 gorges, deep and ragged with loose stones, and groups 
 of rocks standing on the edge of precipices, like mediae- 
 val towers, and through village after village tucked away 
 in the hills. The abundance of population is a constant 
 surprise. As we proceed, the people are wilder and 
 much more curious about us, having, it is evident, seen 
 few strangers lately. Women and children, half-dressed 
 in dirty rags which do not hide the form, come out from 
 their low stone huts upon the windy terraces, and stand, 
 arms akimbo, staring at us, and, not seldom, hailing us 
 in harsh voices. Their sole dress is often a single split 
 and torn gown, not reaching to the bare knees, evidently 
 the original of those in the Naples ballet (it will, no doubt, 
 be different when those creatures exchange the ballet for 
 the ballot) ; and, with their tangled locks and dirty faces, 
 they seem rather beasts than women. Are their hus- 
 bands brigands, and are they in wait for us in the chest- 
 nut grove yonder ? 
 
 The grove is charming ; and the men we meet there 
 gathering sticks are not so surly as the women. They 
 point the way ; and, when we emerge from the wood, St. 
 Maria a Castello is before us on a height, its white and 
 
ST. MARIA A CASTELLO. 283 
 
 red church shining in the sun. We climb up to it. In 
 front is a broad, flagged terrace ; and on the edge are deep 
 wells in the rock, from which we draw cool water. Plen- 
 tifully victualed, one could stand a siege here, and per- 
 haps did in the gamey Middle Ages. Monk or soldier 
 need not wish a pleasanter place to lounge. Adjoining 
 the church, but lower, is a long, low building with three 
 rooms, at once house and stable, the stable in the centre, 
 though all of them have hay in the lofts. The rooms do 
 not communicate. That is the whole of the town of St. 
 Maria a Castello. 
 
 In one of the apartments, some rough-looking peasants 
 are eating dinner, a frugal meal : a dish of unclean po- 
 lenta, a plate of grated cheese, a basket of wormy figs, 
 and some sour red wine ; no bread, no meat. They 
 looked at us askance, and with no sign of hospitality. 
 We made friends, however, with the ragged children, 
 one of whom took great delight in exhibiting his litter of 
 puppies ; and we at length so far worked into the good 
 graces of the family, that the mother was prevailed upon 
 to get us some milk and eggs. I followed the woman 
 into one of the apartments to superintend the cooking 
 of the eggs. It was a mere den, with an earth floor. A 
 fire of twigs was kindled against the farther wall, and a 
 little girl, half-naked, carrying a baby still more economi- 
 cally clad, was stooping down to blow the smudge into a 
 flame. The smoke, some of it, went over our heads out 
 at the door. We boiled the eggs. We desired salt ; and 
 the woman brought us pepper in the berry. We insisted 
 on salt, and at length got the rock variety, which we 
 pounded on the rocks. We ate our eggs and drank our 
 milk on the terrace, with the entire family interested 
 spectators. The men were the hardest-looking ruffians 
 we had met yet : they were making a bit of road near 
 by, but they seemed capable of turning their hands to 
 easiei: money-getting ; and there couldn't be a more con- 
 venient place than this. 
 
 When our repast was over, and I had drank a glass 
 
284 ST. MARIA A CASTE LLO. 
 
 of wine with the proprietor, I offered to pay him, ten- 
 dering what I knew was a fair price in this region. 
 With some indignation of gesture, he refused it, intimat- 
 ing that it was too little. He seemed to be seeking an 
 excuse for a quarrel with us ; so I pocketed the affront, 
 money and all, and turned away. He appeared to be 
 surprised, and going in-doors presently came out with a 
 bottle of wine and glasses, and followed us down upon 
 the rocks, pressing us to drink. Most singular conduct ; 
 no doubt drugged wine ; travellers put into deep sleep ; 
 robbed ; thrown over precipice ; diplomatic correspond- 
 ence, flattering, but no compensation to them. Either 
 this, or a case of hospitality. We dechned to drink, 
 and the brigand went away. 
 
 We sat down upon the jutting ledge of a precipice, 
 the like of. which is not in the world: on our left, the 
 rocky, bare side of St. Angelo, against which the sun- 
 shine dashes in waves ; below us, sheer down two thou- 
 sand feet, the city of Positano, a nest of brown houses, 
 thickly clustered on a conical spur, and lying along the 
 shore, the home of three thousand people, — with a run- 
 ning jump I think I could land in the midst of it, — a 
 pygmy city, inhabited by mites, as we look down upon it ; 
 a little beach of white sand, a sail-boat lying on it, and 
 some fishermen just embarking; a long hotel on the 
 beach; beyond, by the green shore, a country seat 
 charmingly situated amid trees and vines ; higher up, the 
 ravine-seamed hill, little stone huts, bits of ruin, towers, 
 arches. How still it is ! All the stiller that I can, now 
 and then, catch the sound of an axe, and hear the shouts 
 of some children in a garden below. How still the sea 
 is ! How many ages has it been so ? Does the purple 
 mist always hang there upon the waters of Salerno Bay, 
 forever hiding from the gaze Paestum and its temples, 
 and all that shore which is so much more Grecian than 
 Roman ? 
 
 After all, it is a satisfaction to turn to the towering 
 rock of St. Angelo ; not a tree, not a shrub, not a spire 
 
ST. MARIA A CASTELLO. 285 
 
 of grass, on its perpendicular side. We try to analyze 
 the satisfaction there is in such a bald, treeless, verdure- 
 less mass. We can grasp it intellectually, in its sharp 
 solidity, which is undisturbed by any ornament : it is, to 
 the mind, like some complete intellectual performance ; 
 the mind rests on it, like a demonstration in Euclid. 
 And yet what a color of beauty it takes on in the 
 distance ! 
 
 When we return, the bandits have all gone to their 
 road-making : the suspicious landlord is nowhere to be 
 seen. We call the woman from the field, and give her 
 money, which she seemed not to expect, and for which 
 she shows no gratitude. Life appears to be indifferent 
 to these people. But, if these be brigands, we prefer 
 them to those of Naples, and even to the inn-keepers of 
 England. As we saunter home in the pleasant after- 
 noon, the vesper-bells are calling to each other, making 
 the sweetest echoes of peace everywhere in the hills, and 
 all the piano is jubilant with them, as we come down 
 the steeps at sunset. 
 
 " You see there was no danger," said the giant to his 
 wife, that evening, at the supper-table. 
 
 " You would have found there was danger, if you had 
 gone,'* returned the wife of the giant significantly. 
 
THE MYTH OF THE SIRENS. 
 
 I LIKE to walk upon the encircling ridge behind Sor- 
 rento, which commands both bays. From there I 
 can look down upon the Isles of the Sirens. The top is 
 a broad, windy strip of pasture, which falls off abruptly 
 to the Bay of Salerno on the south : a regular embank- 
 ment of earth runs along the side of the precipitous 
 steeps, towards Sorrento. It appears to be a line of 
 defence for musketry, such as our armies used to throw 
 up : whether the French, who conducted siege operations 
 from this promontory on Capri, under Murat, had a,ny 
 thing to do with it, does not appear. 
 
 Walking there yesterday, we met a woman — shep- 
 herdess, cowherd, or siren — standing guard over three 
 steers while they fed ; a scantily-clad, brown woman, 
 who had a distaff in her hand, and spun the flax as she 
 watched the straying cattle, — an example of double 
 industry which the men who tend herds never imitate. 
 Very likely her ancestors so spun and tended cattle on 
 the plains of Thessaly. We gave the rigid woman good- 
 morning, but she did not heed or reply ; we made some 
 inquiries as to paths, but she ignored us ; we bade her 
 good-day, and she scowled at us : she only spun. She 
 was so out of tune with the people, and the gentle influ- 
 ences of this region, that we could only regard her as an 
 anomaly, — the representative of some perversity and evil 
 genius, which, no doubt, lurks here as it does elsewhere in 
 the world. She could not have descended from either 
 286 
 
THE MYTH OF THE SIRENS. 287 
 
 » 
 of the groups of the Sirens ; for she was not fascinating 
 enough to be fatal. 
 
 I like to look upon these islets or rocks of the Sirens, 
 barren and desolate, with a few ruins of the Roman time 
 and remains of the Middle-Age prisons of the doges of 
 Amalfi ; but I do not care to dissipate any illusions by 
 going to them. I remember how the Sirens sat on flow- 
 ery meads by the shore, and sang, and are vulgarly 
 supposed to have allured passing mariners to a life of 
 ignoble pleasure, and then let them perish, hungry with 
 all unsatisfied lon2;ino;s. The bones of these unfortunates, 
 whitening on the rocks, of which Virgil speaks, I could 
 not see. Indeed, I think any one who lingers long in this 
 region will doubt if they were ever there, and will come 
 to believe that the characters of the Sirens are popularly 
 misconceived. Allowing Ulysses to be only another 
 name for the sun-god, who appears in myths as Indra, 
 Apollo, William Tell, the sure-hitter, the great archer, 
 whose arrows are sunbeams, it is a degrading conception 
 of him that he was obliged to lash himself to the mast 
 when he went into action with the Sirens, like Farragut 
 at Mobile, though for a very different reason. We should 
 be forced to believe that Ulysses was not free from the 
 basest mortal longings, and that he had not strength of 
 mind to resist them, but must put himself in durance ; as 
 our moderns, who cannot control their desires, go into 
 inebriate asylums. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin says that " the Sirens are the great con- 
 stant desires, the infinite sicknesses of heart, which, 
 rightly placed, give life, and, wrongly placed, waste it 
 away ; so that there are two groups of Sirens, — one noble 
 and saving, as the other is fatal." Unfortunately we are 
 all, as were the Greeks, ministered unto by both those 
 groups, but can fortunately, on the other hand, choose 
 which group we will listen to the singing of, though the 
 strains are somewhat mingled ; as, for instance, in the 
 modern opera, where the music quite as often wastes 
 life away, as gives to it the energy of pure desire. Yet, 
 
288 THE MYTH OF THE SIRENS, 
 
 if I were to locate tlie Sirens geographically, I should 
 place the beneficent desires on this coast, and the danger- 
 ous ones on that of wicked Baise ; to which group the 
 founder of Naples no doubt belonged. 
 
 Nowhere, perhaps, can one come nearer to the beau- 
 tiful myths of Greece, the springlike freshness of the 
 idyllic and heroic age, than on this Sorrentine promon- 
 tory. It was no chance that made these coasts the home 
 of the kind old monarch Eolus, inventor of sails and 
 storm- siojuals. On the Teleo;rafo di Mare Cuccola is a 
 rude signal-apparatus for communication with Capri, — 
 to ascertain if wind and wave are propitious for entrance 
 to the Blue Grotto, — which probably was not erected by 
 Eolus, although he doubtless used this sightly spot as 
 one of his stations. That he dwelt here, in great content, 
 with his six sons and six daughters, the Months, is nearly 
 certain ; and I feel as sure that the Sirens, whose islands 
 were close at hand, were elevators and not destroyers of 
 the primitive races living here. 
 
 It seems to me this must be so ; because the pilgrim, 
 who surrenders himself to the influences of these peace- 
 ful and sun-inundated coasts, under this sky which the 
 bright Athena loved and loves, loses, by and by, those 
 longings and heart-sicknesses which waste away his life, 
 and comes under the dominion, more and more, of those 
 constant desires after that which is peaceful and endur- 
 ing and has the saving quality of purity. I know, indeed, 
 that it is not always so ; and that, as Boreas is a better 
 nurse of rugged virtue than Zephyr, so the soft influences 
 of this clime only minister to the fatal desires of some : 
 and such are likely to sail speedily back to Naples. 
 
 The Sirens, indeed, are everywhere ; and I do not know 
 that we can go anywhere that we shall escape the infi- 
 nite longings, or satisfy them. Here, in the purple twi- 
 light of history, they offered men the choice of good and 
 evil. I have a fancy, that, in stepj^ing out of the whirl 
 of modern life upon a quiet headland, so blessed of two 
 powers, the air and the sea, wc are able to come to a 
 
THE MYTH OF THE SIRENS. 289 
 
 truer perception of tlie drift of the eternal desires within 
 us. But I cannot say whether it is a subtle fascination, 
 linked with these mythic and moral influences, or only 
 the physical loveliness of this promontory, that lures 
 travellers hither, and detains them on flowery meads. 
 
In the wigdom and wit of the thoughts, and the grrace 
 of the style, this book is so good as to bring to the read- 
 er's mind now Holmes, then Curtis, and again Mitchell, 
 and finally leave the conviction that this new author is 
 neither one nor the other, but quite the peer of either. 
 
 — SPRINGFtELD REPUBLICAN. 
 
 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 
 
 BY CHAELES DUDLEY WAENEK. 
 
 WITH AN INTEODUCTORY LETTER FROM REV. HENRY 
 WARD BEECHER. 
 
 1 Tol. 16mo, Sl.OO. Illustrated Edition, with 13 full- 
 page Pictures by Darley, $3.00. 
 
 Next to rambling with the author through his garden, is the 
 pleasure of reading his spicy descriptions in this volume. He is one 
 of the most delightful companions that you will meet with on a 
 summer day or at the winter fireside. You cannot open his hook 
 without lighting on something fresh and fragrant. Every page 
 abounds with mellow and juicy fruits, showing that whatever suc- 
 cess may attend his use of the hoe and spade, he knows how to 
 handle the pen with admirable effect. — New -York Tribune. 
 
 This is a set of humorous papers describing the experiences of an 
 amateur who busies himself for the first time with the cultivation of 
 a garden, humorous with that quiet humor in which, as well as in 
 its very antipodes, the wildly extravagant, the Americans seem to 
 excel. How he struggles against birds and weeds and all the ene- 
 mies of his craft, how his friends perplex him with their advice, 
 how his neighbors torment him with the intrusion of their four- 
 footed and two-footed cattle, is told in the pleasantest fashion. — 
 The Spectator {London). 
 
 Several times last summer the inquiry was made of us by friends 
 going into the country for a rest, "What is a good book to read 
 aloud?" We invariably answered, "Get 'My Summer in a Gar- 
 den,' " which is distinctively a book to be enjoyed in common 
 with one's friends. The only objection to it in this character lies 
 in the fact that the inevitable outbursts of laughter excited by 
 its delicious humor are likely to mar the beauty of the reader's elo- 
 cution. — The Literary World. 
 
 We advise all who wish to read a thoroughly charming book to 
 procure "My Summer in a Garden." There is a rich, hearty, de- 
 licious laugh in store for them there in every page. — Chicago Post. 
 
 *** For sale by all Booksellers. Sent, postpaid, on receipt of 
 price by the Publishers, 
 
 JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO., Boston. 
 
H. H. lias gone little out of the beaten track of travel, 
 and yet lier sketches are as fresh as though they -were 
 Eve's joiirual in the garden of Udeu. — New-Tobk Evening 
 Mail. 
 
 BITS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 By H. H. 
 
 1 vol. lemo. $1.50. 
 
 There are ten of these "bits" by themselves, of which the first 
 is that most inimitable sketch entitled "A German Landlady," a 
 portraiture quaint and simple as possible, yet full of poetry and 
 pathos as one of Whittier's ballads. After these ten chapters come 
 the "Encyclicals of a Traveller." The whole book is charming; 
 yet it is not easy to analyze its charm or to dissect its beauty, any 
 more than one can describe to an utter stranger the pleasure of an 
 interview with a delightful conversationist : it must be heard to be 
 enjoyed. So the best way to know about this little gem of a book 
 is to read it through : it will be found an easy task, only too soon 
 accomplished. — Detroit Tribune. 
 
 Some one has said, that, if one could open the mail-bags, and read 
 the women's letters, they would be more entertaining than any 
 books. This volume is an open mail-bag, forwarded from Germany 
 or Rome or the Tyrol. The faded wonders of Europe turn out to 
 be wholly fresh when seen through a fresh pair of eyes, and so the 
 result is very charming. As for the more elaborate sketch of " A 
 German Landlady," it cannot be forgotten by any reader of " The 
 Atlantic." It comprises so much, — such humor, such pathos, such 
 bewitching quaintness of dialect, — that I can at this moment think 
 of no American picture of a European subject to equal it. It is, of 
 course, the best thing in the volume; but every page is readable, 
 and almost all delightful. — T. W. Higginson. 
 
 The present sketches of travel display an exuberant vivacity; 
 the gayest humor is expressed in the most natural language; the 
 spirit of each scene is transferred to the living page ; and, with no 
 effort for effect, the writer revives her own experience in the sym- 
 pathies of the reader. Her book deals chiefly in common things, 
 but is never commonplace. She gives the originality of her own im- 
 pressions to familiar objects, furnishing even the sated vision of 
 tourists with fresh views of their accustomed haunts. The ease of 
 her descriptions is no less remarkable than their brilliancy. — New- 
 York Tribune. 
 
 It is entertaining and readable from cover to cover. — Hartford 
 Courant. 
 
 Rich in graphic, picturesque descriptions ; charming alike through 
 its freshness, simplicity, and originality of thought. — Worcester 
 Palladium. 
 
 *** For sale by all Booksellers. Sent, postpaid, on receipt of 
 price by the Publishers, 
 
 JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO., Boston. 
 
Turning over these pages is like gathering around a 
 fireside to listen to the bright and entertaining stories 
 of a friend who has travelled, and kept his eyes well open. 
 Only Mr. Hoppin's pencil is more eloquent and witty 
 than most men's tongues. — Boston Journal. 
 
 UPS AND DOWNS ON LAND 
 AND WATER. 
 
 THE EUROPEAN TOUR IN A SERIES OF PICTURES. 
 
 By AUGUSTUS HOPPIN. 
 
 Oblong Folio. ^10.00. 
 
 " Ups and Downs on Land and Water," by Augustus Hoppin, is 
 fairly an outbreak of graphic genius. It consists of a pictorial de- 
 lineation of picturesque places, and humorous cliai-acters, seen or 
 encountered in theEai-opean tour through England, France. Swit- 
 zerland, and G-erniany. It is a notable and unique production. 
 With the exception, perhaps, of the humorous sketches of Mr. 
 Richard Doyle, we know of no volume in whieh the pencil plays 
 such delightful pranks, or any that overflows with so much humor 
 and quaiutness. The striking vigor and boldness in the designs, 
 moreover, are entirely admirable, apart from the humorous conceits 
 which the compositions exhibit. Mr. Hoppin obtains by this book 
 the foremost rank as a graphic and humorous artist. — Appletons 
 Journal. 
 
 These sketches, forty-eight in number, tell the story of a summer 
 tour abroad, as no written words could tell it, though from the wifc 
 tiest newspaper correspondent who ever handled a pen. For here, 
 in a glance, we get the scenic effect, tlie ''situations," tlie person- 
 ality, which gives us at once more than a dozen paragraphs. . . . No 
 newspaper space will allow us to do justice, step by step, and sail 
 by sail, through this enchanting book of summer travel. And yet; 
 when we have said this word or two, we want to say much more 
 about all the inimitable sketches which make uji the forty-eiglit pic 
 tures of this summer tour. — Providence Journal. 
 
 The drawings, which are very many, from wee bits to full-page 
 size, are very remarkable for their offhand, sketch}', clever treat- 
 ment, — which has been retained completely by a new process, — 
 and their merit as art- work of this fashion. They comprise portraits 
 of compac/nons clu voyage., incidents of travel, street scenes, and the 
 like, whose humor is as admirable as mirth-provoking. A volume 
 of Leech's sketches could not be more diverting. — New - York Even- 
 ing Mail. 
 
 *^* For sale by all Booksellers. Sent, postpaid, on receipt of 
 price by the Publishers, 
 
 JAMES R. OSGOOD &. CO., Boston. 
 
*' Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada " is one of the 
 most marked books of the year, — one of the freshest, 
 most original and entertaining. — San Francisco Bulletin. 
 
 Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada. 
 
 By CLAREIS^CE KING, 
 
 United States Geologist. 
 
 1 vol., large 13mo S3.50. 
 
 Clarence King's " Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada " is a real 
 book among books. And it has so many separate merits that one is 
 like to obscure the other. The intelligent record of exploration in 
 the conquest of the highest peaks of the continent is a positive con- 
 tribution to several sciences of the highest value : reported tech- 
 nically elsewhere, it is here given in popular form. We ai*e all 
 fascinated by Professor Tyndall's singularly clear and simple de- 
 scriptions of his Alpine ascents; but he has done nothing better 
 than King's account of the ascent of the giant mountain which, by 
 right of discovery, he named Mount Tyndall. Mr. Whymper's 
 '• Scrambles among the Alps," with their graphic pictures of pei-il, 
 strike the imagination. Clarence King and his comrade, without a 
 guide, and remote from any human aid, encounter dangers and sur- 
 mount obstacles of certainly Alpine magnitude, and narrate them 
 without the least air of heroism. — Hartford Cour ant. 
 
 A book bracing in tone, vivid in description, exciting in adventure, 
 and abounding in valuable information. Since Tyndall's volume on 
 the Alps, we have i*ead nothing so vigorous and stimulating as Mr. 
 King's narrative of moimtain exploration ; and it exceeds Tyndall's 
 in the novelty of its subject. The accounts of the ascent of Mount 
 Tyndall, of Mount Shasta, and Mount Whitney are records of 
 "brave campaigns into the unknown realm of Nature." as full of 
 danger as of excitement. — E. P. Whipple, in Boston Globe. 
 
 There is a glorious ailment called " mountain fever;" happy is 
 the man who catches it. It is not altogether dependent on elevation, 
 and is endemic among the smaller mountains hereabouts — the Cats- 
 kills and the Adirondacks — as well as in the Alps; but to have it in 
 its fulness of glory, one must seek the snow-capped hills. Perhaps 
 the next best way is to catch it from this contagious book of Clarence 
 King's, " Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada." — New -York Even- 
 ing Mail. 
 
 His descriptions of scenery and adventure among the high Sierras 
 rival the best narratives of Alpine climbers, and he draws the 
 strange characters whom he meets v\rith a sureness and delicacy of 
 touch not often equalled. — Worcester Spy. 
 
 *** For sale by all Booksellers. Sent, postpaid, on receipt of 
 •ice by the Publishers, 
 
 ^ * ^ 9 6'*^'^^^ ^' OSGOOD & CO., Boston. 
 
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