village of the Simplon. Necessity—or rather the God of Love, compelled us to sleep in a "house of ill fame," on the summit of the Apennines. The cavalcade of a marriage in high life-the betrothed Princess of Naples on her way to wedlock with her uncle, Ferdinand the embroiderer-stopped us full an hour between Pietra Mala and Caviliajo, obliging us to sleep at the latter place, a solitary inn in the centre of these mountains-" the scene of one of those deep-laid confederacies for plunder and assassination, of which Italy has always been a prolific theatre.”* We had the pleasure of reading in Forsyth, that, from this same inn, "travellers daily disappeared, and could never be traced by their spoils." Two of his acquaintances escaped by stratagem; and, not long afterwards, the banditti were surprised while feasting at the parsonage in the neighbourhood, when the horrible mystery was revealed.

"It was the law of this society to murder all the passengers they stopped —to kill and bury the horses, burn the carriages and baggage, rescuing only the money, jewels, and watches. BIONDI, the curate, was their captain-the MISTRESS of the INN was their accomplice, who sent him notice of every traveller that lodged at her house."-FORSYTH.

Notwithstanding this astounding intelligence, we supped very comfortably, and I retired to my chamber, which was in the back of the house, over the stables-the window being without fastenings, and a pile of stones reaching up to within two feet of the window-sill, from a dreary and suspicious wood, offering a most tempting facility to any of BIONDI's gang who might wish to pay me a nocturnal visit. In despite of this appalling history and these ominous phenomena-nay, in spite of a tremendous storm of "thunder, lightning, and of rain," which demolished the few remaining panes of glass in my chamber window, I slept as soundly, and I believe as safely, as I should have done in "Modern Babylon."+ A journey from one end of Italy to the other -sometimes with tempting equipage-sometimes as a solitary, unarmed, and defenceless rambler, has convinced me that, with common prudence and good humour, a traveller is as safe in this land of banditti, as in any part of the British dominions. An Italian will outwit you-or, if you please, cheat you, in every possible way-but he will not murder you-pillage you-or steal from you, if you leave your baggage open in the court of the inn where you sleep. This assertion will be proved and illustrated in the sequel.

*Rome in the Nineteenth Century.

Lady Morgan characterizes this as a "wretched inn." It is one of the best country inns between Bologna and Naples. We had silver tea-potssilver spoons-silver forks-china plates (or good imitations)-clean linengood beds-excellent provender-obsequious attendance-and a fair charge. Perhaps the silver teapots and other fine things here were purchased by blood!

DESCENT OF THE APENNINES.

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The scenery of the Apennines has been well described by many of my fair countrywomen-but by none in more animated language than by the authoress of "Rome in the Nineteenth Century" and Lady Morgan. It was probably from my eye being familiar with a greater variety of scenery, in various quarters of the globe, than the eyes of these talented travellers, that I was less enraptured with the Apennines than they were. I acknowledge, indeed, with Lady M. that the ascents and descents among these elevated chains of mountains produce much mental excitement, “bracing alike the nerves and the intellect." They are less majestic than the Alps, as well as less terrific-but they are more luxuriant—perhaps more beautiful. They rise not so high as to be uninhabitable-the snows are not so lasting as to prevent partial cultivation-and wherever we look, we see a mixture of sterility and fertilityabrupt masses of naked limestone, and other rocks, impending over dells, glades, and vales of romantic beauty-perpetual contrasts of the tiny but useful labours of man, with the stupendous, but desolating, work of earthquakes.

I was taught to expect, among the mountains of Italy, those fine figures, healthful athletic frames, and angelic countenances, which are banished from the plains by the deleterious effects of climate. I rarely or never could find them. Lady Morgan, indeed, saw “children, whose loveliness often approached the laughing infants of Corregio." But the ladies, in general, are so passionately fond of children, that I have known them bespatter with praise the ugliest urchins on earth. This, coupled with Lady Morgan's acknowledgement, that "among the villages through which she passed there was an appearance of much squalid poverty, unknown in the plains of Bologna," makes me somewhat distrustful of the "laughing infants of Corregio." To say the truth, I saw but very few instances of this laughing propensity among the babes of the Apennines. On the contrary, our ears were much more frequently stunned with their squalls than our eyes delighted with their smiles. And no wonder. They are swaithed as tight as Egyptian mummies -and not unfrequently pommelled and pounced by the little miscreants employed to nurse them in the absence of their mothers, who, in Italy as well as in France, perform the greater part of the drudgery and labour of rural life. The descent of the Apennines, on the side of Florence, is more interesting than the ascent from Bologna. After winding along precipices, where walls are built to defend us from the winds, we begin to meet the slender vine, the funereal cypress, and the sober olive. Why the tall, pyramidal evergreen, and almost everlasting cypress, should be selected by the ancients as the emblem of death-or rather of eternal sleep—and planted round their tombs, is not quite clear. Its roots in mother Earth-its body rising naked from the grave—and its tall spiral head pointing to Heaven, in youthful verdure, after the extinction of 60 generations-would rather indicate the Christian's hope of "life everlasting," than the heathen's creed of final annihilation.

Meditations of this kind were broken abruptly by a view of the VAL D'ARNO bursting on the enraptured and astonished sight. I shall not attempt description here. "The boldness, (says a modern female traveller-not Lady Morgan) the romantic grandeur, the rich luxuriance of the country which now lay extended beneath our feet, I have never seen, nor do I ever expect to see, equalled. The VAL DI MUGELLA, famed in Gothic warfare and Italian numbers-and the more celebrated VALE of the ARNO beyond, to which the morning mists that hovered around added increased loveliness-were backed, as far as the eye could reach, by the distant hills towards Siena, retiring in ranges of softening purple, till they melted away in the brighter tints of the horizon;—while the intermediate heights that divide the two valleys, forming the romantic ridge of the lower Apennines, and the broken summits among which we stood, were crowned with faded oak forests, interspersed with olive groves, and their more pointed declivities picturesquely tufted with cypress trees, whose spiral shape and deep verdure relieved the broad form and varied tints of the oak, and the diminutive size and pale green of the olive.”*

I believe I am not singular in thinking that many of the most laboured, the most beautiful, the most eloquent, descriptions that ever flowed from the pen of genius, although they delight the ear and the imagination during perusal, have failed to convey, and consequently to leave, a distinct picture on the mind's eye;-while a very few words happily-perhaps accidentally, strung together, have instantly held up an image to the sensorial mirror, that has left an indelible impression on the tablet of the memory. The eye of the spectator, however, is the only medium through which a perfectly correct representation of a scene can be conveyed to the mind; and verbal descriptions are often as painful, from their difficulty, to the writer, as they are unsatisfactory to the reader. This conviction will often prevent me from inflicting on others the penalty of perusing formal and elaborate delineations of scenery, in which fancy sometimes guides the pencil, and adds colours to the picture, that tend to obscure, rather than distinguish its features.†

If a person could imagine a great city of palaces, (such as was Rome two thousand years ago, when her population was four, or, as some say, seven millions, and her walls 50 miles in circumference) suddenly blown up by a

* Anonymous Sketches of Italy, 1817.

The ladies have a finer set of nerves, and, consequently, more exquisite perceptions of things than men. Lady Morgan, in describing the first view of Florence and the VAL D'ARNO, on descending the Apennines, appears to have been put in extacies by -"the cupolas, spires, and picturesque chimnies of Florence, peering through woods and vales.” The cupolas and spires can certainly be seen in the usual way; but the picturesque chimnies peering through woods and vales are not readily seen, nor very easily conceived.

FLORENCE APPROACH TO.

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volcano, and miraculously scattered along the banks of a river, for ten or twelve miles, without injury; the intervening spaces being filled up with gardens, pleasure-grounds, vineyards, orangeries, groves of cypress, and plantations of olive :-If he could conceive that this scene was an ample valley, the adjacent eminences being crowned with convents, churches, and villas, white as Parian marble, with a stream flowing through the middle-a magnificent city at one extremity-the whole encircled by towering mountains, and canopied by an Italian sky-he would have no bad idea of the VAL D'ARNO and Florence, when first seen from one of the Apennine ridges. Such was the idea suggested to my mind by the actual scene-but whether or not it conveys any distinct image to the minds of others I cannot tell.

In approaching most Italian cities, but especially Florence, Rome, and Naples, the stranger is mortified by the perpetual presence of high and dead walls, which flank both sides of the road, and completely exclude all prospect of town or country. Whether these horrid boundaries have been erected for the purpose of obscuring our vision, before the grand scene bursts on our view, according to the principle, " omne ignotum pro magnifico❞— -or for the meaner purpose of security against depredations, I shall not determine; but the effect is excessively annoying and repugnant to an English mind. It is an abridgment of LIBERTY, against which JOHN BULL and the whole British press would loudly and properly exclaim-a voice (vox populi or vox Dei) which has demolished a very humble wall between Kensington and Hyde-park Corner, and erected an iron railing in its stead. But clear, and shrill, and loud and mellifluous as are Italian throats and notes on the stage-they are as mute and ineffectual in the cause of human liberty, on the political arena, as are the tears of the stag or the bleating of the lamb against the tusks of the tiger, or the paws of the lion, in the jungles of the sunderbunds!

It was on a fine Autumnal evening that we drove past, not through, the magnificent triumphal arch before the Porta San Gallo-and on entering the long street of that name, the "endless anticipation," which, according to Lady Morgan, so fills the imagination, that "expectation becomes too eager for enjoyment," came to a full stop. I do not mean the STOP Occasioned by the official duties of the douaniers and the police; but the EXTINGUISHER which the entrance into every Italian city puts on the pleasure derived from natural scenery. The streets of Florence are more uniformly wide than those of most other cities of Italy-and (such is the force of habit) the English residents consider them as remarkably clean. Now there is not a street in this celebrated capital of Tuscany, which does not shock the eye and the olfactories of an Englishman, at every step, by presentations of filth-and that in the worst of all possible shapes! The reconcilement of the English eye and other organs of sense to such scenes, is a striking illustration of that general principle of reconcilement to all unusual, not to say indecent, things, which

N

is generated by habit and residence—and which I shall have occasion to bring on the tapis of investigation before this volume is concluded.

The paving of the streets of Florence attracts attention. It is said to be by Arnulfo (that of the Via San Gallo at least) but it is precisely that of the ancient Romans-precisely that of the streets of Pompeii at this moment— namely, large flat stones, of all shapes and sizes, but brought into close contact, and thus forming a smooth horizontal wall, with a slight declination to the centre, where the water runs till it falls through a grating into the common sewer-and ultimately into the Arno. The existence of a common sewer in the streets of Florence, takes away from the Florentines all excuse for the non-existence of separate sewers from individual houses. The fact is, that each mansion constitutes the receptacle or depôt of an annual, biennial, or triennial accumulation of filth, when an expurgation of the cess-pool generates an atmosphere around each house, that would nauseate, if not poison, any human being except an Italian ! And why is this infernal box of Pandora, compared with which assafoetida is incense, gradually collected in the cellar, and annually disgorged by carts, instead of being daily carried subterraneously into the Arno? Because it brings in a few scudi yearly from the gardeners of the romantic VAL D'ARNO!! The city of Florence, then, like too many of its neighbours, is a city of filth, where not a single wave of air is unimpregnated with the most disgusting, if not pestiferous, effluvia that imagination can conceive! Heaven has given Italy a blue sky-Nature has heaved up from the ocean a warm and fertile soil-odoriferous zephyrs are wafted over hill and dale-but man has polluted the atmosphere which he breathes with vapours more loathsome than ever issued from the Stygean lake!

From the PORTA SAN GALLO we drive across the greater part of the capital, before we arrive at SCHNEIDER'S PALACE, the most substantially-comfortable PALAZZO of any in Florence, or perhaps in Italy. One general character of massive strength and simplicity pervades the buildings in all the principal streets. Instead of the Greek façade and portico sublime, we have a chain of "domestic fortresses" on each side, adapted to a people who were forced, at one moment, to defend their liberties,like the inhabitants of Saragossa, from street to street-and, at another, to live in feudal warfare, while torn by domestic factions.

The stranger, in his way to the LUNG'-ARNO, stumbles on the celebrated DUOMO, or Cathedral-the admiration, or rather the despair, of Michael Angelo-together with that "gem of architecture," the CAMPANILE, or belfry, which Charles the 5th considered too exquisite for the plebeian gaze of republican citizens—and which Lady Morgan thinks “equally suited to a lady's cabinet, as to the mighty edifice to which it belongs." It is 252 Italian feet in height and admirably adapted to a lady's cabinet. The first view of the DUOMO and CAMPANILE conjured up one of those outrageous and barbaresque