Part 20

One statue struck me exceedingly--not by the choice of the subject, nor the beauty of the workmanship, but from its wonderful force of expression. It is a dying gladiator; but very different from the gladiator of the Capitol. The latter declines gradually, and sickens into death; but memory and feeling are not yet extinct: and what thoughts may pass through that brain while life is thus languishing away! what emotions may yet dwell upon the last beatings of that heart! it is the sentiment which gives such profound pathos to that matchless statue: but the gladiator of the Studii has only physical expression: it is sudden death in all its horrors: the figure is still erect, though the mortal blow has been given; the sword has dropt from the powerless hand; the limbs are stiffening in death; the eyes are glazed; the features fixed in an expression of mortal agony; and in another moment you expect the figure to fall at your feet.

The Venus, the Hercules, the Atlas, the Antinous (not equal to that in the Capitol,) the Ganymede, the Apollo, the equestrian statues of the two Balbi, etc. are all familiar to my imagination, from the numerous copies and models I have seen: but the most interesting department of the Museum is the collection of antiques from Herculaneum and Pompeii, which have lately been removed hither from Portici. One room contains specimens of cooking utensils, portable kitchens, tripods, instruments of sacrifice, small bronze Lares, and Penates, urns, lamps, and candelabras of the most elegant forms, and the most exquisite workmanship. Another room contains specimens of ancient armour, children's toys, etc. I remarked here a helmet which I imagine formed part of a trophy; or at least was intended for ornament rather than use. It is exceedingly heavy; and on it is represented in the most exquisite relievo the War of Troy. Benvenuto Cellini himself never produced any thing equal to the chased work on this helmet.

In a third room is the paraphernalia of a lady's toilette: mirrors of different sizes, fragments of combs, a small crystal box of rouge, etc. Then follow flutes and pipes, all carved out of bone, surgical instruments, moulds for pastry, sculptors' tools, locks and keys, bells, etc.

The room containing the antique glass, astonished me more than any thing else. I knew that glass was an ancient invention: but I thought that its application to domestic purposes was of modern date. Here I found window panes, taken from the Villa of Diomed at Pompeii; bottles of every size and form, white and coloured; pitchers and vases; necklaces; imitations of gems, etc.

There is a little jeu d'esprit of Voltaire's "La Toilette de Madame de Pompadour," in which he wittily exalts the moderns above the ancients, and ridicules their ignorance of the luxuries and comforts of life: but Voltaire had not seen the museum of Portici. We can add few distinct articles to the list of comforts and luxuries it contains: though it must be confessed that we have improved upon them, and varied them ad infinitum. In those departments of the mechanics which are in any way connected with the fine arts, the ancients appear to have attained perfection. To them belongs the invention of all that embellishes life, of all the graceful forms of imitative art, varied with such exquisite taste, such boundless fertility of fancy, that nothing is left to us but to refine upon their ideas, and copy their creations. With all our new invented machines, and engines, we can do little more than what the ancients performed without them.

I ought not to forget one room containing some objects, more curious and amusing than beautiful, principally from Pompeii, such as loaves of bread, reduced to a black cinder, figs in the same state, grain of different kinds, colours from a painter's room, ear-rings and bracelets, gems, specimens of mosaic, etc. etc.

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March 7.--Frattinto brought me to-day the last numbers of the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews: a great treat so far from home. Both contain some clever essays: among them, an article on prisons, in the Edinburgh, interested me most.

Methinks these two Reviews stalk through the literary world, like the two giants in Pulci's Morgante Maggiore: the one pounding, slaying, mangling, despoiling with blind fury, like the heavy orthodox club-armed Morgante; the other, like the sneering, witty, half-pagan, half-baptized Margutte, slashing and cutting, and piercing through thick and thin; a tort et a travers. Truly the simile is more a-propos than I thought when it first occurred to me.

I went the other day to a circulating library and reading-room kept here by a little cross French-woman, and asked to see a catalogue. She showed me, first, a list of all the books, Italian, French, and English, she was allowed to keep and sell: it was a thin pamphlet of about one hundred pages. She then showed me the catalogue of prohibited books, which was at least as thick as a good sized octavo. The book to which I wished to refer, was the second volume of Robertson's Charles the Fifth. After some hesitation, Madame P** led me into a back room; and opening a sliding pannel, discovered a shelf let into the wall, on which were arranged a number of authors, chiefly English and French. I was not surprised to find Rousseau and Voltaire among them; but am still at a loss to guess what Robertson has done or written to entitle him to a place in such select company.

8th.--Forsyth might well say that Naples has no parallel on earth. Viewed from the sea it appears like an amphitheatre of palaces, temples and castles, raised one above another, by the wand of a necromancer: viewed within, Naples gives me the idea of a vast Bartholomew fair. No street in London is ever so crowded as I have seen the streets of Naples. It is a crowd which has no pause or cessation: early in the morning, late at night, it is ever the same. The whole population seems poured into the streets and squares; all business and amusement is carried on in the open air: all those minute details of domestic life, which, in England, are confined within the sacred precincts of home, are here displayed to public view. Here people buy and sell, and work, wash, wring, brew, bake, fry, dress, eat, drink, sleep, etc. etc. all in the open streets. We see every hour, such comical, indescribable appalling sights; such strange figures, such wild physiognomies, picturesque dresses, attitudes and groups--and eyes--no! I never saw such eyes before, as I saw to-day, half languor and half fire, in the head of a ruffian Lazzarone, and a ragged Calabrian beggar girl. They would have embrase half London or Paris.

I know not whether it be incipient illness, or the enervating effects of this soft climate, but I feel unusually weak, and the least exertion or excitement is not only disagreeable but painful. While the rest were at Capo di Monte, I stood upon my balcony looking out upon the lovely scene before me, with a kind of pensive dreamy rapture, which if not quite pleasure, had at least a power to banish pain: and thus hours passed away insensibly--

"As if the moving time had been A thing as stedfast as the scene, On which we gazed ourselves away."

All my activity of mind, all my faculties of thought and feeling and suffering, seemed lost and swallowed up in an indolent delicious reverie, a sort of vague and languid enjoyment, the true "dolce far niente" of this enchanting climate. I stood so long leaning on my elbow without moving, that my arm has been stiff all day in consequence.

"How I wish," said I this evening, when they drew aside the curtain, that I might view the sunset from my sofa, and sky, earth and ocean, seemed to commingle in floods of glorious light--"how I wish I could transport those skies to England!" Cruelle! exclaimed an Italian behind me, otez-nous notre beau ciel, tout est perdu pour nous.

THE LAST EVENING AT NAPLES

Yes, Laura! draw the shade aside And let me gaze--while yet I may, Upon that gently heaving tide, Upon that glorious sun-lit bay.

Land of Romance! enchanting shore! Fair scenes, near which I linger yet! Never shall I behold ye more, Never this last--last look forget!

What though the clouds that o'er me lour Have tinged ye with a mournful hue, Deep in my heart I felt your power, And bless ye, while I sigh--Adieu!

Velletri, March 13.--It is now a week since I opened my little book. Ever since the 9th I have been seriously ill: and yesterday morning I left Naples still low and much indisposed, but glad of a change which should substitute any external excitement, however painful, to that unutterable dying away of the heart and paralysis of the mind which I have suffered for some days past. When we turned into the Strada Chiaja, and I gave a last glance at the magnificent bay and the shores all resplendent with golden light, I could almost have exclaimed like Eve, "must I then leave thee, Paradise!" and dropped a few natural tears--tears of weakness, rather than of grief: for what do I leave behind me worthy one emotion of regret? Even at Naples, even in this all-lovely land, "fit haunt for gods," has it not been with me as it has been elsewhere? as long as the excitement of change and novelty lasts, my heart can turn from itself "to luxuriate with indifferent things:" but it cannot last long; and when it is over, I suffer, I am ill: the past returns with tenfold gloom; interposing like a dark shade between me and every object: an evil power seems to reside in every thing I see, to torment me with painful associations, to perplex my faculties, to irritate and mock me with the perception of what is lost to me: the very sunshine sickens me, and I am forced to confess myself weak and miserable as ever. O time! how slowly you move! how little you can do for me! and how bitter is that sorrow which has no relief to hope but from time alone!

Last night we reached Mola di Gaeta, which looked even more beautiful than before, in the eyes of all but one, whose senses were blinded and dulled by dejection, lassitude, and sickness. When I felt myself passively led along the shore, placed where the eye might range at freedom over the living and rejoicing landscape--when I heard myself repeating mechanically the exclamations of others, and felt no ray of beauty, no sense of pleasure penetrate to my heart--shall I own, even to myself, the mixture of anguish and terror with which I shrunk back, conscious of the waste within me? The conviction that now it was all over, that the last and only pleasures hitherto left to me had perished, that my mind was contracted by the selfishness of despondency, and my quick spirit of enjoyment utterly subdued into apathy, gave me for a moment a pang sharper than if a keen knife had cut me to the quick; and then I relapsed into a kind of torpid languor of mind and frame, which I thought was resignation, and as such indulged it.

From my bed this morning I stepped out upon my balcony just as the sun was rising. I wished to convince myself whether the beauty on which I had lately looked with such admiration and delight, had indeed lost all power to touch my heart. The impression made upon my mind at that instant I can only compare to the rolling away of a palpable and suffocating cloud: every thing on which I looked had the freshness and brightness of novelty: a glory beyond its own was again diffused over the enchanting scene from the stores of my own imagination: the sea breeze which blew against my temples new-strung every nerve; and I left Mola with a heart so lightened and so grateful, that not for hours afterwards, not till fatigue and hurry had again wearied down my spirits, did that impression of happy thankfulness pass away.

I am sensible I owed this sudden renovation of health solely to the contemplation of Nature; and a true feeling for all the "maggior pompa" she has poured forth over this glorious region. The shores of Terracina, the azure sea, dancing in the breeze, the waves rolling to our feet, the sublime cliffs, the fleet of forty sail stretching away till lost in the blaze of the horizon, the Circean promontory, even the picturesque fisherman, whom we saw throwing his nets from an insulated rock at some distance from the shore, and whom a very trifling exertion of fancy might have converted into some sea divinity, a Glaucus, or a Proteus, formed altogether a picture of the most wonderful and luxuriant beauty. In England there is a peculiar charm in the soft aerial perspective, which even in the broadest glare of noonday, blends and masses the forms of the distant landscape; and in that mingling of colours into a cool neutral gray tint so grateful to the eye. Hence it has happened that in some of the Italian pictures I have seen in England, I have often been struck by what appeared to me a violence in the colouring, and a sharp decision in the outline, o'erstepping the modesty of nature--that is, of English nature: but there is in this climate a prismatic splendour of tint, a glorious all-embracing light, a vivid distinctness of outline, something in the reality more gorgeous, glowing, and luxuriant, than poetry could dare to express, or painting imitate.

"Ah that such beauty, varying in the light Of living nature, cannot be portrayed By words, nor by the pencil's silent skill; But is the property of those alone Who have beheld it, noted it with care, And in their minds recorded it with love."

WORDSWORTH.

And now we have left the enchanting south; myrtle-hedges, palm-trees, orange-groves, bright Mediterranean, all adieu! How, under other circumstances, should I regret you, with what reluctance should I leave you, thus half explored, half enjoyed! but now other thoughts engross me, the hard struggle to overcome myself, or at least to appear the thing I am not.----

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Man has done what he can to deform this lovely region. The most horrible places we have yet met with are Itri and Fondi, which look like recesses of depravity and dirt, and the houses more like the dens and kennels of wild beasts, than the habitations of civilized human beings. In fact, the populace of these towns consists chiefly of the families of the briganti. The women we saw here were bold coarse Amazons; and the few men who appeared had a slouching gait, and looked at us from under their eyebrows with an expression at once cunning and fierce. We met many begging friars--horrible specimens of their species: altogether I never beheld such a desperate set of canaille as appear to have congregated in these two wretched towns.