as scenery. He enjoyed the country, in his way. He liked sitting out on a lawn, and seeing grass and flowers around him. Occasionally a view made a great impression on him, such as the view down upon Susa, going over Mont Cenis; but I doubt whether any scene pleased his eye more than his own beloved Holly Lodge, or Mr. Thornton's garden at Battersea Rise. When we were recalling the delights of an excursion among the Surrey hills, or in the by-ways at the English lakes, he would be inclined to ask, 'What went ye out for to see? Yet he readily took in the points of a landscape; and I remember being much struck by his description of the country before you reach Rome, which he gives in "Horatius." When I followed him over that ground many years after, I am sure that I marked the very turn in the road where the lines struck him: From where Cortona lifts to heaven Her diadem of towers; and so on through 'reedy Thrasymene,' and all the other localities of the poem." "Chalons-sur-Saône, Tuesday, October 23d, 1838.-The road from Autun is for some way more beautiful than any thing I had yet seen in France; or, indeed, in that style, anywhere else, except, perhaps, the ascent to the table-land of the Neilgherries. I traversed a winding pass, near two miles in length, running by the side of a murmuring brook, and between hills covered with forest. The landscape appeared in the richest coloring of October, under a sun like that of an English June. The earth was the earth of autumn, but the sky was the sky of summer. The foliage-darkgreen, light-green, purple, red, and yellow-seen by the evening sun, produced the effect of the plumage of the finest Eastern birds. I walked up the pass exceedingly pleased. To enjoy scenery you should ramble amidst it; let the feelings to which it gives rise mingle with other thoughts; look around upon it in intervals of reading; and not go to it as one goes to see the lions fed at a fair. The beautiful is not to be stared at, but to be lived with. I have no pleasure from books which equals that of reading over for the hundredth time great productions which I almost know by heart; and it is just the same with scenery." "Lyons, Thursday, October 25th.-My birthday. Thirty-eight years old. Thought of Job, Swift, and Antony. Dressed, and went down to the steamer. I was delighted by my first sight of the blue, rushing, healthful-looking Rhone. I thought, as I wandered along the quay, of the sin T gular love and veneration which rivers excite in those who live on their banks; of the feeling of the Hindoos about the Ganges; of the Hebrews about the Jordan; of the Egyptians about the Nile; of the Romans, Cuique fuit rerum promissa potentia Tibrin; of the Germans about the Rhine. Is it that rivers have, in a greater degree than almost any other inanimate object, the appearance of animation, and something resembling character? They are sometimes slow and darklooking; sometimes fierce and impetuous; sometimes bright, dancing, and almost flippant. The attachment of the French for the Rhone may be explained into a very natural sympathy. It is a vehement, rapid stream. It seems cheerful, and full of animal spirits, even to petulance. But this is all fanciful." “October 26th. --On board the steamer for Avignon. Saw the famous junction of the two rivers, and thought of Lord Chatham's simile.* But his expression 'languid, though of no depth,' is hardly just to the Saône, however just it may be to the Duke of Newcastle. We went down at a noble rate. The day, which had been dank and foggy, became exceedingly beautiful. After we had left Valence the scenery grew wilder: the hills bare and rocky like the sides of Lethe water in Cumberland; the mountains of Dauphiné in the distance reminded me of the outline of Ceylon as "I saw it from the sea; and, here and there, I could catch a glimpse of white peaks which I fancied to be the summits of the Alps. I chatted with the French gentlemen on board, and found them intelligent and polite. We talked of their roads and public works, and they complimented me on my knowledge of French history and geography. 'Ah, monsieur, vous avez beaucoup approfondi ces choses-là.' The evening was falling when we came to the Pont St. Esprit, a famous work of the monks, which pretends to no ornament, and needs none." "October 28th.—The day began to break as we descended into Marseilles. It was Sunday; but the town seemed only so much the gayer. I looked hard for churches, but for a long time I saw none. At last I heard bells, and the noise guided me to a chapel, mean inside and mean outside, but crowded as Simeon's church used to be crowded at Cambridge. The mass was nearly over. I staid to the end, wondering that so many reasonable beings could come together to see a man bow, drink, bow again, wipe a * "One fragment of this celebrated oration remains in a state of tolerable preservation. It is the comparison between the coalition of Fox and Newcastle, and the junction of the Rhone and the Saône. At Lyons,' said Pitt, 'I was taken to see the place where the two rivers meet; the one gentle, feeble, languid, and, though languid, yet of no depth; the other a boisterous and impetuous torrent. But, different as they are, they meet at last.”—Macaulay's Essay on Chatham. 1 cup, wrap up a napkin, spread his arms, and gesticulate with his hands; and to hear a low muttering which they could not understand, interrupted by the occasional jingling of a bell. A fine steamer sails to-morrow for Leghorn. I am going to lock this hulking volume up, and I shall next open it in Tuscany." "Wednesday, October 31st.—This was one of the most remarkable days of my life. After being detained, by the idle precautions which are habitual with these small absolute governments, for an hour on deck, that the passengers might be counted; for another hour in a dirty room, that the agent of the police might write down all our names; and for a third hour in another smoky den, while a custom-house officer opened razor-cases to see that they concealed no muslin, and turned over dictionaries to be sure that they contained no treason or blasphemy, I hurried on shore, and by seven in the morning I was in the streets of Genoa. Never had I been more struck and enchanted. There was nothing mean or small to break the charm, as one huge, massy, towering palace succeeded to another. True it is that none of these magnificent piles is a strikingly good architectural composition; but the general effect is majestic beyond description. When the King of Sardinia became sovereign of Genoa, he bought the house of the Durazzo family, and found himself at once lodged as nobly as a great prince need wish to be. What a city, where a king has only to go into the market to buy a Luxembourg, or a St. James's! Next to the palaces, or rather quite as much, I admired the churches. Outside they are poor and bad, but within they dazzled and pleased me more than I can express. It was the awakening of a new sense, the discovery of an unsuspected pleasure. I had drawn all my notions of classical interiors from the cold, white, and naked walls of such buildings as St. Paul's, or St. Geneviève's; but the first church-door that I opened at Genoa let me into another world. One harmonious glow pervaded the whole of the long Corinthian arcade from the entrance to the altar. In this way I passed the day, greatly excited and delighted." With this, perhaps the only jingling sentence which he ever left unblotted, Macaulay closes the account of his first, but far from his last, visit to the queen of the Tyrrhenian sea. To the end of his days, when comparing, as he loved to compare, the claims of European cities to the prize of beauty, he would place at the head of the list the august names of Oxford, Edinburgh, and Genoa. "November 2d.--I shall always have an interesting recollection of Pisa. There is something pleasing in the way in which all the monuments of Pisan greatness lie together, in a place not unlike the close of an English cathedral, surrounded with green turf; still kept in the most perfect preservation, and evidently matters of admiration and of pride to the whole population. Pisa has always had a great hold on my mind: partly from its misfortunes; and partly, I believe, because my first notions about the Italian republics were derived from Sismondi, whom I read while at school and Sismondi, who is, or fancies that he is, of Pisan descent, does all in his power to make the country of his ancestors an object of interest. I like Pisa, too, for having been Ghibelline. After the time of Frederick Barbarossa, my preference, as far as one can have preferences in so wretched a question, are all Ghibelline. "As I approached Florence the day became brighter; and the country looked, not indeed strikingly beautiful, but very pleasing. The sight of the olive-trees interested me much. I had, indeed, seen what I was told were olive-trees, as I was whirled down the Rhone from Lyons to Avignon; but they might, for any thing I saw, have been willows or ash-trees. Now they stood, covered with berries, along the road for miles. I looked at them with the same sort of feeling with which Washington Irving says that he heard the nightingale for the first time when he came to England, after having read descriptions of her in poets from his childhood. I thought of the Hebrews, and their numerous images drawn from the olive; of the veneration in which the tree was held by the Athenians; of Lysias's speech; of the fine ode in the 'Edipus at Colonus;' of Virgil and Lorenzo de' Medici. Surely it is better to travel in mature years, with all these things in one's head, than to rush over the Continent while still a boy!" 'Florence, November 3d.-Up before eight, and read Boiardo at breakfast. My rooms look into a court adorned with orange-trees and marble statues. I never look at the statues without thinking of poor Mignon. Und Marmorbilder stehn und schn mich an: I know no two lines in the world which I would sooner have written than those. I went to a Gabinetto Litterario hard by, subscribed, and read the last English newspapers. I crossed the river, and walked through some of the rooms in the Palazzo Pitti; greatly admiring a little painting, by Raphael, from Ezekiel, which was so fine that it almost reconciled me to seeing God the Father on canvas. "Then to the Church of Santa Croce: an ugly, mean outside; and not much to admire in the architecture within, but consecrated by the dust of some of the greatest men that ever lived. It was to me what a first The first tomb visit to Westminster Abbey would be to an American. which caught my eye, as I entered, was that of Michael Angelo. I was much moved, and still more so when, going forward, I saw the stately monument lately erected to Dante. The figure of the poet seemed to me fine and finely placed, and the inscription very happy-his own words, the proclamation which resounds through the shades when Virgil returns, Onorate l'altissimo poeta. The two allegorical figures were not much to my taste. It is particularly absurd to represent Poetry weeping for Dante. These weeping figures are all very well when a tomb is erected to a person lately dead; but when a group of sculpture is set up over a man who has been dead more than five hundred years, such lamentation is nonsensical. Who can help laughing at the thought of tears of regret shed because a man who was born in the time of our Henry the Third is not still alive? Yet I was very near shedding tears of a different kind as I looked at this magnificent monument, and thought of the sufferings of the great poet, and of his incomparable genius, and of all the pleasure which I have derived from him, and of his death in exile, and of the late justice of posterity. I believe that very few people have ever had their minds more thoroughly penetrated with the spirit of any great work than mine is with that of the 'Divine Comedy.' His execution I take to be far beyond that of any other artist who has operated on the imagination by means of words. O degli altri poeti onore e lume, Vagliami il lungo studio e 'l grande amore Che m' han fatto cercar lo tuo volume.1 I was proud to think that I had a right to apostrophize him thus. I went on, and next I came to the tomb of Alfieri, set up by his mistress, the Countess of Albany. I passed forward, and in another minute my foot was on the grave of Machiavel." "November 7th.-While walking about the town, I picked up a little mass-book, and read for the first time in my life-strange, and almost disgraceful that it should be so-the service of the mass from beginning to end. It seemed to me inferior to our Communion Service in one most important point. The phraseology of Christianity has in Latin a barbarous air, being altogether later than the age of pure Latinity. But the English language has grown up in Christian times, and the whole vocabulary of Christianity is incorporated with it. The fine passage in the Communion Service, 'Therefore with angels, and archangels, and all the company of heaven,' is English of the best and most genuine description. But the answering passage in the mass, 'Laudant angeli, adorant dominationes, tremunt potestates, cœli cœlorumque virtutes ac beata seraphim,' would not 1 Glory and light of all the tuneful train, May it avail me that I long with zeal Have sought thy volume, and with love immense |